The cinema thread

[todestrieb]

[Fade to Black]

do the film critics at the Village Voice like anything? Every review I've read on there has been haughtily negative. Or is that the point?

[Faust]

Heh, try The New Yorker.

[MASUGNEN]

So Faust, let us hear your verdict on Avatar.

Soon Alice in Wonderland for me (not today, but soon, soonish).

[Faust]

So, I went to see that 2.5 hour videogame of a movie. Not much new to add - visually gorgeous, of course, but it will never be a Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, or the Matrix, because it lacks philosophical and/or emotional complexity of those films. And in our CGI/special effects saturated age, it doesn't even have the weight Terminator 1 and 2 had in their day. I did not hate it by any means, but I wouldn't watch it again.

[MASUGNEN]

I think you're right. Technical advancement is not artistic quality and can, as I think is the case in Avatar, inhibit artistic, even narrative quality.

I regard the characterization of Avatar as a video game to be quite revealing for a cross-boundary Zeitgeist culture. Pioneering in this film/video game æsthetics – but on another artistic level –, I find Aronofsky's The Fountain (2006).

I would possibly say that Avatar underachieves also as a video game. Is it more than ephemeral phantasmagoria? What good could it bring besides short-term entertainment? Isn't it rather hallucination than entertainment? (Tittitainment!)

The more I think of Avatar and its reception, I depress my confidence in the movie industry and folk psychology.

[Fade to Black]

Saw Bulworth (1998), a lot darker than I expected. Beatty's manic performance was good, and the cinematography showing the candidates' silhouettes in front of the flag when the studio lights went off was a stroke of inspiration.

[MASUGNEN]

So tonight in Lund:

• Coen brothers's A Serious Man. I've never been a fan of their overall work. Of course I love Big Lebowski, also like Fargo and laugh a lot to seldomly spoken-about, brilliantly anachronistic remake of Ladykillers. Otherwise I find the Coens cold, their much lauded characters always strike me as hollow. But A Serious Man is an excellent movie! It was very enjoyable and human. The ending is perfectly non-cathartic. And read the after texts carefully... (Perhaps I would have to reevaluate their œuvre.)

• Ruben Östlund's Berlin price-winning short Händelse vid en bank [Event by A Bank]. Östlund directed genius Gitarrmongot [The Guitar Mongoloid] (2004) and brilliant De ofrivilliga [Involuntary] (2008). This one is a reconstruction of a cell phone live-taped bank robbery. Östlund's sense is very congenial to life. This short flick is no exception.

[todestrieb]

[MASUGNEN]

Today, in Lund:

Iklimler [Climates] (2006) by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Quite good. Quietly true. Searching camera work, somewhat Bergmanesque in close-up facial æsthetics, some great tableaus. I recommend it for a calm, thoughtful Sunday afternoon like this. It's a minor Scenes from a Marriage.

[mass]

Heh, try The New Yorker.

speaking of the new yorker i love reading kael's old reviews, as when i was younger i found we enjoyed a lot of the same movies.

today aside from canada vs usa



rewatched this a couple days ago



before that




shura

[Visconti]

Today, in Lund:

Iklimler [Climates] (2006) by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Quite good. Quietly true. Searching camera work, somewhat Bergmanesque in close-up facial æsthetics, some great tableaus. I recommend it for a calm, thoughtful Sunday afternoon like this. It's a minor Scenes from a Marriage.

This is my favorite of the Ceylan work I've seen. He seems closer to Antonioni than Bergman for me, but Scenes is a good call. Sometimes I feel like he's more interested in spaces/interiors than he is in his characters, but since Climates stars he and his wife, there's more of a direct connection. Did you see Üç Maymun? It takes his aesthetic and attaches at least the basic mechanics of a thriller plot (husband/father is paid to take the blame for an accident involving his politician employer. Consequences ensue.). It's worth seeing, especially for more of his photography, but I wasn't too drawn in. I can understand wanting to play with genre elements, but since he's more or less doing what he always does, attaching the shell of standard narrative takes the focus from what he does best- set moods/capture images.



I recently watched the Eclipse series of early Chantal Akerman films. I saw one of her films (Le Captive) years ago, but wasn't thoroughly introduced until Jeanne Dielmann hit US DVD last year. This new set provides context and a much better understanding of who she is and what she's trying to show audiences. The first disc has non-narrative 3 shorts. Seeing these was very significant because it demonstrated that it is possible to produce interesting films with little to no budget. I've been toying with the idea of figuring out how to put together a film project for some time, but her minimalist aesthetic and the way she plays with time within the narrative was really inspirational. I only have a SD handheld cam, but her Letters From Home, a series of tableaus in 70s Manhattan/NYC streets was enough for me to want to figure out a way to pull together a similar project here in Chicago.

The second and third discs are her first and third fictional feature (with Jeanne coming between). Les rendez-vous d'Anna is the only obviously "professional" film in the series (about a female director's failed attempts at achieving various forms of intimacy). Je tu il elle stars Akerman and is a sort of feminist proto-Brown Bunny. I knew nothing about her personally before seeing these films and now that I want to explore further, I think they provide a strong foundation in her themes/style/personal interests.

[MASUGNEN]

Good to hear Visconti speak about Antonioni and Bergman!

I'm not at all familiar with this Nuri Bilge Ceylan and overall not of Turkish cinema (with the exception of co-German Fatih Akin). Nice to hear him have his intelligent fans! The Antonionian connection interests me.

You know, by the way, Bergman hated Antonioni...

[Visconti]

Ha! I'm pretty burned out with Visconti's work at the moment. I was really into it a few years ago when I first saw the restored version of The Leopard. I still love a number of his themes (people who cling to collapsing traditions, in particular) and his attention to detail, but I currently prefers things a bit more stripped down or focused on present day.

Three Ceylan films have seen a decent release in the US. The first was Uzak from 02 or 03. It's translated as "distant", but a Turkish friend has explained there's more to it than that. In Turkish there's a difference between say the distance between something across the room that you could physically pick up or see and something across town or around the world that is, at least at that moment, totally unattainable. The title is apparently a play on this concept. It involves 2 brothers. One living in Istanbul. The other an oft unwanted guest from a smaller town (in the east, I believe, which has distinctly negative connotations of its own for more euro-centric Turks). As you probably noticed, weather, temperature, and seasons play a large part in his films. It's less apparent in Climates because much of it takes place outside of the capital, but he also puts a lot of emphasis on the bosphorus. Shots like these are typical-


Uzak


Üç Maymun

I've only seen a couple Akins. One on western music in Istanbul. Another recent one that reminded me of Fassbinder. I'll have to look further. From my understanding, Akin and Ceylan are the only widely recognized Turkish directors. The film industry only recently began to move away from overt copies of western pop films. Google Turkish Star Wars for an example. I'm interested to see if, like Iranian and Romanian cinema, once a few films break through, older work will surface.

Didn't know that about A + B. Interesting how they ended up dying so close together. We were having an Antonioni retrospective in Chicago at the same time. I think I ended up seeing Zabriskie Point within a day or two of his death. Not a favorite, but the ending fit at the time.

I'm hoping to watch the newly remastered Lola Montes tonight. my previous experience was a cut Fox Lorber dvd that seems sourced from VHS.

[MASUGNEN]

Didn't know that about A + B. Interesting how they ended up dying so close together. We were having an Antonioni retrospective in Chicago at the same time. I think I ended up seeing Zabriskie Point within a day or two of his death. Not a favorite, but the ending fit at the time.

Zabriske Point is actually one of my favourite Antonioni flicks. Well, the story I don't care for, but the perspectivistic camera work is hallucinatory outstanding.

Of course Antonioni and Bergman were competitors during the 60's. I believe the world-renowned Swedish grand master was somewhat taken by surprise by this sturdy new wave of European cinema. Godard and Antonioni were to him as Rudi Gernreich to Balenciaga. Godard he upfront loathed: »Godard is a fucking bore.« Antonioni he had to relate:

He's done two masterpieces, you don't have to bother with the rest. One is Blow-Up, which I've seen many times, and the other is La notte, also a wonderful film, although that's mostly because of the young Jeanne Moreau. In my collection I have a copy of Il grido, and damn what a boring movie it is. So devilishly sad, I mean. You know, Antonioni never really learned the trade. He concentrated on single images, never realising that film is a rhythmic flow of images, a movement. Sure, there are brilliant moments in his films. But I don't feel anything for L'avventura, for example. Only indifference. I never understood why Antonioni was so incredibly applauded. And I thought his muse Monica Vitti was a terrible actress.

How Antonioni found Bergman I don't know. Possibly he found the northerner too talkative, too psychological. Antonioni dreamt of another time when communication had liberated itself from spoken language. Bergman hosted the same desire in Silence (1963).

They died the same day. They had their deaths in common.

Their tempers were climat theoretically inverted. Swedish cirtic Carl-Johan Malmberg has characterized Bergman as soil and fire, Antonioni as water and air.