The cinema thread

[klangspiel]

He may be my gate to India.

prepare to be overwhelmed once the gateway opens. india has a deep and rich history of cinema, even outside of its mainstream / bollywood. you might have heard of its "parallel cinema", a counter-movement of sorts vis-a-vis the mainstream. i'm no expert and only seen a handful. the wiki entry is pretty informative, though a few names are missing, most notably tapan sinha. great filmmaker.



watching cao guimarães's andarilho in the heat. great stuff.

[MASUGNEN]

Klangspiel is, as ever, a great cinematic informant, I know already he's one of the most knowledgeable cineasts I've encountered. Thanks for being here and emitting!

What strook me, besides Ray's visuals and substance matter, was the concrete sense of sagacity – however easily exotized; in confused, decadent, dying Europe the deep sense of being is often lost.

Also striking is Ray's width as craftsman. He's done fine, fine films along with work in typography, illustration, publishing. That was also the case for Ray's teacher, Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore. I regard them for not limiting himself in their professional expressions. That's very untyphical for the European/Western specialization craze.

Tonight at the cinema: Swedish Flickan [The Girl] with prize winning cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema and company by bookdealer Anita Linde. Svenska Filminstitutet [The Swedish Film Institute] talks about a new wave of Swedish cinema. I don't think that will happen quite as of now. We have several talented movie makers, but of course they'll be overshadowed by Ingmar Bergman for a long while. Sweden's too small for wide movie production – and to narrow-minded for artistic greatness.

[SHYE_POSER]

must see,if you enjoyed la haine,stoic,even godfather.

Only thing that put me off in a starnge way is that the corsican boss in the movie is the spitting image of brit tv chef Anthony Warrel Thompson

[MASUGNEN]

Audiard's De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (2005) is one of the most stupid films I've seen. But this new one is, according to one IMDb opinion, "Best. Movie. Ever." Such comments don't encourage me.

The success of Audiard et al. vindicates the impression of declination in French cinema. Which is not all that peculiar since the nouvelle vague generation surely was the strongest collective in the history of the art.

Sometimes the reorientation gives fruit. Fred Cavayé proves in Pour elle (2008) that modern, pure "American" police thrillers are possibile in French, that this reconnection still is possible within French cinema (given that the qualitative thriller as we now know it has developed within a French-American dynamics: film noir–Melville–Costa-Gavras–Chabrol–Coppola–Scorsese–Jarmuch–Besson–Tar antino–now Cavayé with of course a great many more names).

But as for the pure artistic film I'm pessimistic towards France's future. Look at how a genius like Leos Carax is consistently mistreated within the industry. To me the only remaining hope is Arnaud Desplechin.

We do have the angry Frenchmen: Gaspar Noé, Philippe Grandrieux, Mathieu Kassovitz. They're all interesting but could, with spirit intact, never be schooling. Have anyone yet seen Enter the Void or Un lac?

[MASUGNEN]

Oh, Preston Sturges is so good! Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels are amongst the funniest films I've seen. That Playful Pluto pastisch... My God!

[MASUGNEN]

Yeah, you could see Flickan. It's a melancholic viewpoint on adolescence, the somewhat traumatic introduction of sexuality, peer pressure, youth loneliness and confusion, such. Much of the feeling is however delivered by the score. During half a year it has been aesthetically hailed in Sweden. This is fair. It's a beautifully photographed movie, although Tarkovsky did much of the ground work in Zerkalo. Flickan is by the way produced by Acne.

[galia]

Audiard's De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (2005) is one of the most stupid films I've seen. But this new one is, according to one IMDb opinion, "Best. Movie. Ever." Such comments don't encourage me.

The success of Audiard et al. vindicates the impression of declination in French cinema. Which is not all that peculiar since the nouvelle vague generation surely was the strongest collective in the history of the art.

Sometimes the reorientation gives fruit. Fred Cavayé proves in Pour elle (2008) that modern, pure "American" police thrillers are possibile in French, that this reconnection still is possible within French cinema (given that the qualitative thriller as we now know it has developed within a French-American dynamics: film noir–Melville–Costa-Gavras–Chabrol–Coppola–Scorsese–Jarmuch– Besson–Tarantino–now Cavayé with of course a great many more names).

But as for the pure artistic film I'm pessimistic towards France's future. Look at how a genius like Leos Carax is consistently mistreated within the industry. To me the only remaining hope is Arnaud Desplechin.

We do have the angry Frenchmen: Gaspar Noé, Philippe Grandrieux, Mathieu Kassovitz. They're all interesting but could, with spirit intact, never be schooling. Have anyone yet seen Enter the Void or Un lac?

I agree with everything in this post, except I think Depleshin is creepy and somewhat overrated

Matthieu Kassovitz is WAY overrated, La Haine was decent, but everything else by him is beyond stupid

[deius]

Masugnan in addition to odd DOF in Avatar, photographs appear in 3D for some reason.

Closely Watched Trains. At times hilarious, very charming.

Due to the last page I watched Kharhozat, I assume nobody has finished Sátántangó? 7 hours of running time, it's inconceivable.

[MASUGNEN]

Kárhozat is great, Sátántangó even better but Tarr is IMO best in Werckmeister harmóniák.

I've seen Sátántangó thrice, once on the silver screen with nine fellow endurers – a fantastic cinematic event, with the director himself present. (He never goes to minor film festivals, but we managed to lure him to Lund.)

Eastern-European cinema often laborates around the notion of time, what it contains, how it feels, what time means.

Eventlessness is life. Noone cares about the time it takes to breathe. Most of us don't think about the eight hours we lose every night. When confronted with the seven hours of Sátántangó, we recoil appalled. (Far longer movies do exist.)

Does life offer you anything more important than the coping of boredom, time passing, dying?

»I make films in order to tempt fate, to simultaneously be the most humiliated and, if only for a few moments, the freest person in the world. I despise stories, as they mislead people into believing that something has happened. In fact, nothing really happens as we flee from one condition to another. Because today there are only states of being – all stories have become obsolete and clichéd, and have resolved themselves. All that remains is time. This is probably the only thing that’s still genuine – time itself: the years, days, hours, minutes and seconds.«

[Fade to Black]

I'm glad Un Prophete got cinematic release here this week...gonna catch it soon. If anything the subject matter should make for an entertaining 2.5 hours.

I want to watch Noe's Enter the Void, but have heard virtually nothing about it in the past few months.

[Fade to Black]

Saw Un Prophete. Just about as close to perfect as the movies get.

SHYE - Every time Luciani came on screen I was pretty much sure I was looking at David Bailey.

Edit - The scene where we first see Malik practicing his Corsican reminded me so much of the "You talkin to me?" scene of Taxi Driver I'm wondering whether or not that was intentional. Rahim has potential, felt like I was watching De Niro back when he still had it.

[SHYE_POSER]

Hahahah very true he does resemble bailey. I also thought it was fantastic,i specifically enjoyed the scenes when reyeb appears.When he is trippin his tits off doing the swirling dervish was quite something.

On another note,im not to happy about another remake of scarface......

[MASUGNEN]

Yesterday Fish Tank (2009). I think the adultery and unfaithfulness scheme goes too far, but this mishap is definately overshadowed by excellent acting, good wit, strong portraits and a sometimes perfect, even innovative photography. The ending scene is one of the best I've seen. (Note the rhyme.)

We might have a new director to consider for future efforts: Andrea Arnold's previous Red Road (2006) was also well thought-out, nicely visualized and emotionally striking. Can she make (in-production) Wuthering Heights interesting?

I've not seen the defining movies of the '50s and '60s, e.g. Tony Richardson's Lock Back in Anger (1959) and Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). I like Lindsay Anderson, but I think his surrealistic jocularity surpasses the genre. I'm not too fond of British social realists Ken Loach and Mike Leigh. Possibly a new generation with Shane Meadows and Andrea Arnold can talk to me. Is it a question of less politics and real time?

[MASUGNEN]

Yes, that was something: intense, dramatic but not dramatized. Good. I will check this one out. Thanks Corsair Sanglot! (Is it Ray Winstone? I thought Ricky Gervais, haha!)

With Fish Tank, Precious and the recent Satyajit Ray retrospective here in Lund I understand I'm somewhat into a social realistic phase. The cinémathèque in Malmoe also runs a spring series of the Dardenne brothers. I like their œuvre and now got to see the break-through, La promesse (1996). It's hard to explain and pinpoint, but viewing this film I got a strong sense of the possibility of life. Not materialistic, socioeconomic development or (antithetic) realization of freedom or such, just the simple fact that life is possible (which so often is obfuscated). I don't at all relate this feeling to the ramifications of the young protagonist, just his breath, his vespa ride – as said, I can't explain it. But I was glad seeing that Seventh (in 2007) ranked it as his number 3 all-time favourite.

Can we speak about a social realistic tendency in European film making? I suppose social realism could be the relevant artistic reaction to the political development of the European Union with the social circumstances of integration, nivellation, new borders, les autres nouvelles, the clashes of civilizations, problems of hidden political agendas and hidden problems of factual differences... Perhaps, these poignant phenomena couldn't as of now be treated neither structuralisticly, philosophically nor even psychologically. We have a new wave of sociology.

I would like to put forward the once much spoken-about Swedish wonder Lukas Moodysson. Clearly pathos driven, he has given Sweden its best films the past decade. Have you seen his work? In this context, I think foremost of Together (2000) and Lilya 4 Ever (2002). Though claiming Ken Loach as his only directorial influence, he's possibly a bit too angry and left biased, and dreamy, furthermore cinematographically too artsy, to be cathegorized as a regular social realist director, but in particular Lilya 4 Ever was credited political importance in the work against trafficking.

[mike]

still quite anxious about this...glad to see ifc picked it up, but i wonder when i will actually get to see it