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The Coen Brothers graced the stage at the Kodak Theatre last night a total of three times.  Ethan did his "Thank You"-watered-down bit and Joel, the unofficial spokesperson for the two, tried harking to some relatable banter via mentioning an old childhood movie project.  The night ended on a whimper.

As expected, the pair won the Best Picture Oscar for their overall exceptional adaptation: "No Country For Old Men."  There's nothing wrong with awarding a well-made picture, but here "No Country" found itself in the same ranks and category of the far-superior "There Will Be Blood"--which, no matter which way you look at it, should have won.  The film is the offspring of five-time Oscar nominee Paul Thomas Anderson, this generation's best and most influential filmmaker.  Usually, on Oscar night, there's an inexplicable excitement in the air, as the night comes to a close and the possibility of the Academy actually picking the real Best Picture as the winner, comes within grasp.  The chance to surprise.  The chance to inspire.

But last night found the Academy pulling the "Crash" card and picking the current critic-fave babe of "No Country" for it most coveted prize.  The Academy played it safe and a good movie won.  Ho-hum.

Though, as the Coens walked on the stage, without any excitement, I was met with the image of "Ordinary People"--the 1980s critical favorite--beating Scorsese's "Raging Bull" on that Oscar night.  Shit, now that I think about it, "Ordinary" and "No Country" each won 4 Oscars, all in the same categories: Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor.  That's funny.

In retrospect, as the years went on and countless critics groups gathered and analyzed past cinema, "Ordinary People's" importance somehow dwindled, and "Raging Bull" came into the spotlight.  The visceral, lyrical prose of its narrative, the off-putting maniac anti-hero DeNiro had created and the overall difficult initial viewing experience audiences had with it, all suddenly sank in.  "Raging" was great, and important.  So important, it stood the test of time.

I guarantee, as time will show, "There Will Be Blood" will find its path following a parallel journey to that of "Raging Bull's."  "Raging," like "Blood," was mildly awarded on Oscar night (each with a Best Actor award, and one technical prize win) but found its audience reinvented in each decade to follow.  "Blood" will only get better with each viewing, and will resonate more profoundly and deeply with viewers in the years to come.

 "It's too dark for the Academy..." "That ending!"  "It's not perfect!" --all common soundbites heard from the people back in the 80s.  The same kind of arguments were built against "Blood" these last few weeks.

Now, let me ask you film wizards, scholars and students this: Was it "Raging Bull" or "Ordinary People" that was a more influential film in your undergraduate studies?

That's what I thought.
   

Posted by nelsoncarvajal at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

-Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

My pick for the best film of 2007 is "There Will Be Blood"--and I cannot imagine a single reason why Oscar should not think the same.  Oh, wait, that's right: it's been a monkey-see-monkey-do awards season, with packs of critics hording around their "critical faves" and pitching to the world how this time they've found the 'perfect' movie.  It's total bullshit, as films (in the Best Picture category) like "Atonement," "Michael Clayton" and "Juno" have inexplicably found themselves beating the likes of such towering achievements as "The Diving Bell & The Butterfly," "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead" and "The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford." I mean, I thought "Atonement" was entertaining and had a wham-bam ending, and I very much admire "Michael Clayton" for its lean exercise of making the ideal adult thriller that every John Grisham adaptation aspired to be (hell, I think I even said it just like that to Director Tony Gilroy himself during the Chicago Film Festival last fall) but ultimately they were not better than the above mentioned titles.  Oh, and "Juno."  The more I hear misled critics and audience members gush and rave over it being "the year's best fim" the more I'm starting to dislike it.  That's not good.  I thought "Knocked Up" was the more engaging, utterly hilarious accidental-pregnancy movie of the year.  I'd be curious to see what would have happened if "Juno" had come out over the summer, and "Knocked Up" released with a coveted Christmas release date.  Hmmm. 

If "Juno" wins Best Picture tomorrow night, I hope the 2-disc unrated DVD has a big "Oscar Fucking Blew It" sticker slapped on it.

There's hope though.  "No Country For Old Men" is the fifth Best Picture nominee and here's an actual nominee deserving the nod (alongside "Blood"); it's ingenious in its minimal use of sound effects (the hotel scenes for example), it's strong pacing (for most of the movie anyway), and for its flat out unconventionality, largely due to author Cormac McCarthy himself.

But it's not the best film of the year.  Those last couple of scenes with the excess articulation of the film's already prominent and obvious themes were not needed.  They simply were not and they hurt the film's slick pacing.  In the novel, those scenes played better.  But film is a different medium.  On the big screen, in a dark auditorium, you can almost hear the air coming out of a tire while Tommy Lee Jones is talking about dead fathers and nightmares.

The shitty thing is, people have actually said, "Oh you don't get the ending..."  I obviously do, if the film landed on the number 3 spot on my yearly top ten list.  I think it's great.  But little mistakes like the all-too-literal adaptation the Coens took with the closing chapters just bumped it down from a possible higher spot.  Just the other day, I was in discussion about it, and someone perfectly explained it: "It's a good book ending.  It's not a good movie ending."

That's that.

I could go on about how many mistakes the Academy has already made, like where's the Best Original Song nomination for "Into The Wild"? Or where's Jonny Greenwood's Best Original Score nomination for "There Will Be Blood"?  Yeah, yeah the Academy and other pundits have aleady "explained" their omissions, but still, what the hell are they thinking?

So, without further wait, here goes my Oscar predictions on the day before its big telecast:

Note: The ACTUAL WINNER slots will be filled in as they are announed on Sunday February 24, 2008

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT

My Preference: Le Mozart Des Pickpockets

My Prediction: Le Mozart Des Pickpockets

ACTUAL WINNER: *Le Mozart Des Pickpockets*

BEST ANIMATED SHORT

My Preference: I Met The Walrus

My Prediction: I Met The Walrus

ACTUAL WINNER: *Peter & The Wolf*

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

My Preference: Freeheld

My Prediction: Freeheld

ACTUAL WINNER: *Freeheld*

BEST DOCUMENTARY

My Preference: Sicko

My Prediction: No End In Sight

ACTUAL WINNER: *Taxi To The Darkside*

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

My Preference: Persepolis

My Prediction: Ratatouille

ACTUAL WINNER: *Ratatouille*

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

My Preference: "Falling Slowly" Once

My Prediction: "Falling Slowly" Once

ACTUAL WINNER: *"Falling Slowly" Once*

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

My Preference: The Golden Compass

My Prediction: Transformers

ACTUAL WINNER: *The Golden Compass*

BEST MAKE-UP

My Preference: La Vie En Rose

My Prediction: Pirates of the Caribbean-At World's End

ACTUAL WINNER: *La Vie En Rose*

BEST FOREIGN FILM

My Preference: Die Falscher (Austria)

My Prediction: Die Falscher (Austria)

ACTUAL WINNER: *Die Falscher* (Austria)

BEST SOUND EDITING

My Preference: There Will Be Blood

My Prediction: There Will Be Blood

ACTUAL WINNER: *The Bourne Ultimatum*

BEST SOUND

My Preference: No Country For Old Men

My Prediction: No Country For Old Men

ACTUAL WINNER: *The Bourne Ultimatum*

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

My Preference: Atonement

My Prediction: Atonement

ACTUAL WINNER: *Atonement*

BEST ART DIRECTION

My Preference: There Will Be Blood

My Prediction: There Will Be Blood

ACTUAL WINNER: *Sweeney Todd*

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

My Preference: Across The Universe

My Prediction: Atonement

ACTUAL WINNER: *Elizabeth: The Golden Age*

BEST FILM EDITING

My Preference: There Will Be Blood

My Prediction: The Bourne Ultimatum

ACTUAL WINNER: *The Bourne Ultimatum*

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

My Preference: The Savages

My Prediction: Juno

ACTUAL WINNER: *Juno*

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

My Preference: There Will Be Blood

My Prediction: No Country For Old Men

ACTUAL WINNER: *No Country For Old Men* 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

My Preference: There Will Be Blood

My Prediction: There Will Be Blood

ACTUAL WINNER: *There Will Be Blood*

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

My Preference: Cate Blancett, I'm Not There

My Prediction: Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There

ACTUAL WINNER: *Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton* 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

My Preference: Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men

My Prediction: Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men

ACTUAL WINNER: *Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men*

BEST ACTRESS

My Preference: Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose

My Prediction: Julie Christie, Away From Her

ACTUAL WINNER: *Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose*

BEST ACTOR

My Preference: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood

My Prediction: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood

ACTUAL WINNER: *Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood* 

BEST DIRECTOR

My Preference: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood

My Prediction: Paul Thomas Anderon, There Will Be Blood

ACTUAL WINNER: *The Coen Bros., No Country For Old Men*

BEST PICTURE

My Preference: There Will Be Blood

My Prediction: There Will Be Blood

ACTUAL WINNER: *The Coen Bros., No Country For Old Men*

My instincts tell me, 'NO COUNTRY IS GOING TO WIN' and it pretty much has won almost every major prize up until now.  But it is Saturday afternoon, and the Oscars are tomorrow.  I've admired Paul Thomas Anderson for some time now; he being the most influential of Directors to me personally.  I love the Coens, and if they win tomorrow, they're getting away with murder (c'mon, a pair winning Best Director?).  I guess as long as "Juno" doesn't win, "No Country's" assumed victory won't leave that much of a bad taste in my mouth.  Nevertheless, I'm going to take a chance and predict "Blood" going for the gold tomorrow.

It's the best film of the year; a masterpiece, pure and simple. 

Posted by nelsoncarvajal at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Marjane Satrapi is an expatriate.  She is also my new Frank Miller.  Up until now, I had no knowledge of her graphic novel, her biting humor or her zestful approach to storytelling. 

I mean, I was aware of the film's Jury Prize win at last year's Cannes Film Festival; I read Ebert's four-star review of it; the fact that it ended up Entertainment Weekly's top ten list (Scwarzbaum's list anyway) caught my eye.  But I still hadn't seen the movie.

A few hours ago, I went into "Persepolis" looking forward to eating my 2 for $3 Big Mac bag-o-goodies.  I must admit, I wasn't really holding "Persepolis" as a serious candidate for observation (it looked like a cute toon, nothing more).  After watching it, I can honestly say that if it beats "Ratatouille" for the Oscar on Sunday, it deserves it.  It's that good.

A quick plot synopsis would highlight the fact that it is autobiographical, concerns the progression into womanhood by an outspoken young girl (Marjane), and is set against the backdrop of an Iran going through a tumultuous revolution.  The Shah is being overthrown, the radical enforcement of the concealing of women--wait, all I'm doing is listing bullets about the movie.  This is not "Elizabeth: The Golden Age."  This is a film to embrace, and for avid comic book fans, it is the best cinematic interpretation of the genre that I've seen since Miller's "Sin City" (although that was a graphic novel as well).

It's insane how ingenious the animations unfold onscreen.  Satrapi, along with her co-Director Vincent Paronnaud, have found away to make flat drawings of her novel pop and unfurl beautifully.  I remember a few of the shots serving as slick transitions using the same outlines of key figures from previous shots; think of the opening shots of "Citizen Kane" where the lit window would stay in place, but the points of the mansion would blend into the points of the fence, and the sky would reflect itself unto a puddle of water--it's like that.

And the use of ambient sound is on par with a heavy Ken Burns recreation.  The soundtrack is pretty appealing too, featuring Iron Maiden and "Eye of the Tiger" in a hilarious scene of rejuvenation, just to name a few.  Just go see this movie if you haven't.

And don't let my celebration of its technical merit make you believe it's another eye-popping "Beowulf" or something.  It's better; this movie has heart.  And a lot of jasmine flowers in its bra.

Posted by nelsoncarvajal at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Waiting for the Lasalle bus this afternoon, on my way to watch "George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead," I received a picture mail message on my cell phone.  It was of some animated character jumping around, trying to be funny.  On the bus, a young lad sitting across from me swept his finger across his iPhone, probably switching between photo browsing and checking his email. The bus grumbled forward. 

Inside the actual auditorium, in the row in front of me, a tall white guy with thinning hair, had his headphones blasting at full volume.  It sounded like Rammstein or something.  As I leaned forward to ask if he was going to turn it off by the time the show started, the house lights came down.  The first ad began to play onscreen but the projectionist forgot to stop the preshow slides that were still up; in front of me was a moving car in a Honda ad, racing across a Concession combo snapshot from the lobby.  There was a lot of shit going on.

The kind of shit that accumulated into a big problem for Jack Gladney in Don DeLillo's White Noise (no, not the Michael Keaton romp, it's an actual book) and the shit I was dealing with is at the epicenter of Romero's latest scathing zombie flick which, again, peels away at the layers of American consumerism and its instant gratification fix.  The fix these days comes in the form of what Peter Travers of Rolling Stone calls the "youtubification" of America; pretty much everyone and anyone has the capability to post whatever they want on the internet (from blogs to viral videos) for everyone to see.  What you want (not necessarily what you need) is only a click away and there's always so much of the same thing (why do people always re-post movie trailers on youtube?).  What's significant?  What's worth looking at?  This is what Romero's interested in exploring.

Once more, there is an inexplicable outbreak.  The dead are rising.  They move slow and go, "Ugghhhooohh."  A group of film students from the University of Pittsburgh are out shooting their semester mummy horror film in the dark woods when they begin hearing reports of attacks over the radio coming from their Winnebago.  The group splits in half; we follow the section of the group with videocameras who are going to head back toward the dorms to find their friends.  The leader of this group, the Director of their semester film, is glued to his camera.  He not only insists that he documents everything, but in a crucial scene in a hospital when his peers are being attacked in another room, instead of helping them, he finds a nearby electric outlet to recharge his camera battery.  This guy is serious about capturing this cataclysmic event. 

This might ring echoes of "Cloverfield," that loud and dizzying monster movie from last month, which I didn't know what to do with.  But that film was all spectacle.  It's brains lied in the aesthetic and sound design.  Romero's handheld camera film, on the other hand, is a masterclass in sociological film study.  "Diary" teeter-totters on a film that has genuine scares (thanks to the loud acoustics of a theatre auditorium) and a ripe black comedy that shines light on the insanity of the American bullshit-info-bloated existence.  A character late in the film basically voices Romero's concern with the access to and distribution of information, particularly the visual media.  When there's so much between the sender and the receiver, how do we know what we're watching is entirely factual--or truthful?

I can't say that the young individuals of "Diary" are especially well-prepared or smart (the only really creative character turns out to be Samuel, the deaf Amish farmer, who obviously read Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide), but they serve two purposes: 1) To be eaten by zombies and 2) To embody the generation of web savvy and ADD-addled young Americans that Romero finds both annoying and horrifying.  There are some memorable lines delivered in the film, most notably: "Everyone with a heartbeat, freeze and shut the fuck up!"

Another line that stuck out was, "There's always an audience for horror. Believable horror."  If that's the case, then there's always going to be an audience for Romero.

Posted by nelsoncarvajal at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

     

 
Just last week one of the very best movies of 2007 came out on DVD: "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford."  Upon purchasing the DVD at my local Blockbuster I noticed that there was a HD-DVD special combo edition to be released later this month.  What was different about that item?  A mild 30-minute featurette on Jesse James.  The standard DVD I was buying just had the movie itself.  Not even a theatrical trailer or teaser.

"Assassination" is not a small movie; it has a big star (Brad Pitt) in the lead role, some outstanding crew members (like Roger Deakins as the Director of Photography), lots of costumes, an ambitious score--pretty much all of it on paper reads like a Focus Features Oscar-Bait movie.  Though the film ultimately succeeds on a level more rewarding than an Oscar-hungry flick like say, "Atonement," and made my top ten list of 2007, the film is given the red-headed stepchild treatment on DVD.  The top of the back of the case cover, where usually some highlighted quotes from critics would appear, is replaced by a generic line of plot summary.

This isn't some new trend in Hollywood.  Last summer saw the DVD release of "Zodiac" David Fincher's superior film on the nature of obsession (in this case identifying a killer) and that too found itself stripped of any good extras.  No theatrical trailer there either.

Although "Zodiac" eventually received it's 2-disc treatment in January of 2008 (almost five months after its original DVD release date), consumers and avid film buffs found themselves shelling out another twenty-plus bucks to buy that edition.  And what about the single-disc they bought this past summer?

Obviously there's money to be made in DVD sales.  Films these days are finding shorter and shorter theatrical run spans, as Hollywood keeps pumping multiplexes with everything from 3-D Disney concerts to films that have catchphrases like "From 2 of the 6 writers of "Scary Movie.""  This pushes closer DVD release dates and thus has boatloads of movies spilling out every DVD Tuesday.  Then again, the best way to ensure sales is to keep the consumer coming back to purchase content they can't pirate or buy bootlegged.

I get that part.

But what about the rest of us, who faithfully watch the films in the cinema, eagerly await their DVD debut and then have to wrestle with our own feelings regarding buying it right away or waiting up to a half a year (sometimes longer) just to see some behind-the-scenes snippets?

This also brings up an idea to another topic that I probably won't get into but is worth getting into: How the hell does "The Mummy" (1999) have a handful of DVD editions (even an "Ultimate Edition") that have accumulated up until now?

Who is buying this crap? 

Posted by nelsoncarvajal at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On my stroll down a snowy Grand Avenue toward a twilight screening of "In Bruges," I began to fancy myself with possible titles for this blog entry.  Upon sitting on my seat in the auditorium, I settled on "Bruging The Elements."  What a find.

Martin McDonagh's new film, a surprising dark comedy, is being shortlisted by many American moviegoers because of its routine, British-tongue-in-cheek-aren't-we-dandy theatrical trailer.  I'm not going to be coy: though the trailer is on my iPod (what new trailer isn't?) it was so underwhelming that I was convinced Jason Statham was in it.

He's not.

Pronounced IN BROOOOJJJHHH (rhymes with the 'rouge' in "Moulin Rouge"), the film stars Colin Farrell in another excellent turn (following his role in the heavily overlooked "Cassandra's Dream" from last month) as a regretful and borderline suicidal first-time hitman who is ordered to hide, along with his associate Ken (played by the always award-worthy Brendan Gleeson), in the medieval city of Bruges after his rookie kill assignment went terribly wrong.  Obviously Ray (Farrell) is uneasy: not only is Bruges uninteresting and placid, but Ken seems to annoyingly enjoy it, and to top it all off, the two are to stay put in their shared hotel room until they get a ring from their big boss.  Ray would rather take his chances in the nearby pub to drown his sorrows.

The opening scenes in the film are a bit too drawn out; long silences on a river canoe, blank expressions of Farrell's face while sightseeing the historic edifices.  I wasn't convinced that I wanted to finish watching the movie. 

Then a flashback happens (part of which is stupidly shown in the theatrical trailer) and the second wave of surprise in that flashback (a morbidly funny twist) helps put some dramatic weight in the convictions of the Farrell character and turn all of his whining and crying he had done up until then on its head; he was drowning in quiet desperation all this time.

It's great that the film takes the time to show some actual artwork found in Bruges.  There is a crucial shot, close to the flashback scene, of a mural of a man playing cards with a skeleton in a toga-like garment (closely resembling the figure of 'Death') that Ray is looking at while he is near the worst of his depression.  Essentially, it is the representation of the film, or at least the themes it deals with; predominantly the conflicting matters of knowing you deserve to die and actually having the balls to go through with dying. 

I don't know any professional hitman like the characters Farrell and Gleeson play in the film, but I've seen enough hitmen films now to appreciate a movie like "In Bruges" for it's heartful take on the profession.  Some of these fucking guys have to be feeling guilty after awhile.  Not everyone is the stone-wallin' Leon character from "The Professional."

Killing for hire parallels the card game with death.  Sure most of the time no one can call your bluff; you're in and you're out, no hard feelings.  But sometimes death has a higher hand, and you've already pushed in all your chips on a suited pair.  You'll never know what that higher hand was, only that you lost.  And now you're dead.

Speaking of death personified, there's also Ralph Fiennes.  He plays Harry, the boss that's supposed to call their hotel room.  Once he shows up in Bruges, the real excitement starts (Academy take note, here's your first frontrunner in this year's Supporting Actor race).  Though, now that I think about it, the Harry character isn't so much death personified as he is a religious fighter sent by Bill Paxton in "Frailty."  Fiennes brilliantly articulates the dilemma of having to accept the fate of death while talking to Gleeson.  Their initial sitdown exchange is worth the price of admission alone.

So what does it all mean?  I don't know.  Some people in the film died for no reason.  Some died because they deserved and knew they did.  And some died because they thought they had to--even if it's not the case.

I guess the lesson is to not use head-exploding bullets.

Regardless, the film is hugely enjoyable and even when it runs a little messy (in sappiness and red-goo blood) we forgive it.  Midgets have feelings too. 

Posted by nelsoncarvajal at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If you look at "what's hot" on today's billboard charts, you'll find such forgetful tunes as "Low" by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain and "Sensual Seduction" by Snoop Dogg (I know, the artists' names alone would make for more interesting songs).  It's sad really, that my kid sister can listen to an artist who is her age (16) and dance to lyrics of 'baby mamas' and 'text messaging your bitch.'  Radio stations have discovered the repeat button on their modules and play the same 'hit' song on an hourly basis; MTV still does not air complete music videos. 

We live in a time where I am terrified to grow any older.  What am I going to brag to my grandkids about my music era?  Oh, you should have been there for Janet Jackson's nipple-exposé!  The group New Found Glory put the Chipmunks' winy voices to shame!  Yes, I am aware of some great talent we currently have.  The Killers are sublime.  The Strokes (sure they peaked a bit too early) are unmatched in their distinct scratchy sound.  Norah Jones has the voice of an angel.  Thank God we had Outkast, still giving rap that much-needed savvy edge.  But no current groups have carried century-changing music that has been accepted by the masses.  Nothing like The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and say, The Beatles.

A movie like Director Julie Taymor's "Across The Universe" is a treasure to behold.  Musicals, in general, are usually structured around a handful of heartless scenes that countdown to choreographed musical numbers.  The funny thing is that the actors in standard fare Hollywood musicals usually sound very different when they sing (from their normal voices). 

That was then. 

Taymor's "Universe," is revolutionary in its execution of music and story.  This is not a Beatles biopic.  It's the story of Jude, a Liverpool native who comes to the States looking for his biological father.  It's the 1960s, and America is going through a revolution: the Vietnam draft, the psychedelic orgy of drugs and sex, race riots and a radical celebration of music and art.  What better soundtrack to build a story like that around than The Beatles?  The opening chapters of the film use select tunes from the albums "A Hard Day's Night," "With The Beatles," and "Help!" while the closing chapters find their inspriations from "The White Album," "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club" and "Abbey Road" (among others).

And here the actors' dialogue voices actually sound like their singing voices and that's because Taymor had the actors sing their songs live on the spot (with an earpiece in their ears playing the actual Beatles songs).  Thus the result isn't a movie full of watered-down scenes broken up by extravagant Broadwayesque stage numbers; rather the music and songs serve as an extension of the dialougue.  It is at once nostalgic to watch and dazzling to discover.

I admire the film very much (it tied for no. 2 on my top ten list for 2007).  Even now, with the film on DVD, there are still idiots that come up to me and say, "How can you like "Across The Universe"?"  I usually ask then, "Well, what about it didn't you like?"  There answers varied from "I don't think Evan Rachel Wood is that pretty," to "They didn't sing "Eleanor Rigby"!"  Oh brother.

Stephen Holden, of the New York Times, perhaps best justified overlooking snippets of "Universe" that aren't perfect: "Somewhere around its midpoint, “Across the Universe” captured my heart, and I realized that falling in love with a movie is like falling in love with another person. Imperfections, however glaring, become endearing quirks once you’ve tumbled."

Now do yourself a favor, and turn off that garbage on your iPod and go watch "Across The Universe."  You'll find yourself downloading a whole new slew of tunes.  Good ones.

Posted by nelsoncarvajal at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

There's something about raw, uninterrupted footage that holds a deeper meaning and truth than something with a highly stylized compilation of sound effects and cool video transitions would.  Directors Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman have created a documentary that closely illustrates the struggle between the voice of the subject under observation and the voice of the docu-filmmaker. "Nanking" an 88-minute heartbreaking look at a highly-overlooked moment in history when Japan invaded the city in December of 1937 (pre-Pearl Harbor days) and conducted a massacre of over 250,000 Chinese civilians (many women and children) and ex-soldiers over the course of a handful of weeks.

First the good: "Nanking" boldly lets minutes of footage roll at a time, sometimes without voiceover, of Chinese victims burning alive, being beheaded, or getting dragged away to get raped.  And I don't mean these are "good" incidents, but rather good in the aesthetic choice to let the images speak for themselves, plainly.  Nothing is more startling than watching it unfold, in horror, in real time.  Another well-thought out choice was the swiftness in the script: there are less than ten talking heads of actual Chinese survivors describing their horrid stories of survival and loss.  This isn't a Ken Burns spectacle; think of Tim Blake Nelson's "The Grey Zone" where we have a more intimate story set in front of a scope of war.

Diverse aesthetic choices both bless and plague this doc, however.  When the actual survivors are not on the screen, the Directors have inexplicably decided to tell the parts of the story that concern the expatriates (American missionaries, doctors, college professors, and a Nazi affiliate) who helped in the saving of an innumerable amount of lives, through modern Hollywood actors reading the actual letters and memoirs of those individuals.  It's the weirdest of an experience watching it.  I don't mind the dramatization of hard materials, but having a Hollywood actor, dressed in the same garment of the person they are representing, and reading off a cue card into a camera (shot from the shoulders up) plays like an awkward SNL skit at times.  Sometimes it's embarassing to watch.  Watching Jurge Prochnow play Josh Rabe (the Nazi affiliate) read a cue card (you can tell by his skewered eye direction) is both off-putting and tremendously fake.  Other times, it's down right creepy.  Mariel Hemingway as Minnie Vautrin overdoes her reading, and is borderline parodying the role Vautrin played in the ordeal.  Her squinted eyes at certain syllables in her lines almost help her reach an iambic pentameter in her oration; she should have had a skull in one of her hands, in the manner of Hamlet.  Other players like Jon Getz ("Blood Simple"), Stephen Dorff ("Blade"), and Woody Harrelson (one-time auteur of the oxygen bar) are harmless but the whole gimmick is just--well, a gimmick.

The documentary could have sat next to such iconic and important docs like "Hearts & Minds" had it stuck to the bare bones material: actual incident-associated talking heads, uncompromising footage and tight editing. Again, I'm all for voiceovers and dramatizations, but here with this Hollywood stage trick--it just doesn't play.  Think of that scene in "No Direction Home" where Scorsese's voice is heard reading Bob Dylan's speech at the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, while actual photos from the event are keyframed across the screen. Now imagine that same scene played out with Scorsese, actually sitting in front of the camera, dressed like Dylan, harmonica and all, reading the speech into the camera.  Not too appealing.

Again, I don't want to detract too much from the overall importance of the doc.  It's a stunning story and a reminder to the triumph of human moral victory (to think that as many refugees were saved near the close is as astounding as the huge number that were slaughtered in the weeks before) but it doesn't need Billy from "White Men Can't Jump" in it, at all.

Guttentag and Sturman pay respect to the voice of their subject, but they make the fatal mistake of letting their misled stylistic impulses get the best of them. 

Posted by nelsoncarvajal at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This one is going to be short.

I was out an establishment watching, or at least amusing myself with, the superbowl and its shower of superlative TV spots.  Somehow, by the divine power of alcohol, someone started bragging about "Juno" being the best movie of the year, and one of the greatest movies ever.

I frowned, shook my head and cried out, "What?!"

I looked over at a colleague of mine, to see if I was just hearing things.  He made a face.  

He must have heard it too.

I looked over at the clan, or should I say group of of morbidly misinformed TMZ watchers, and (even though I was butting in on the conversation) said, "Don't even get me started on that whole craze of "Juno"; it's by now grossly overrated--I still admire its cute approach to essentially serious material.  Yet it's nothing special or is nowhere of being an exceptional piece of the cinema."

"Well, what's a great movie?" one of the voices bellowed.

"Try "Stroszek" Directed Werner Herzog," I quipped.  

"What?  What is that from like the 80s...(laughter)..?" more of the group taunted.

I stood there motionless.  It's actually from 1976, I thought.  Is this the world we live in now?  More people know what "Hannah Montana: The Best of Both Worlds in 3-D" is, but not what quintessential art is?

Woe is me.

And for those of you reading this sheerly for the fact of recognizing the still shot up above, well then my hat's off to you.  May you spread your seed.

And shit, it's not that short now. 

Posted by nelsoncarvajal at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Monsieur Hire (Michel Blanc) stands by his window--having finished his routine hard-boiled egg for supper--and watches his neighbor Alice (Sandrine Bonnaire) from the across building, with lustful and adoring eyes; Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella) sits at his desk, clad in in shirt and tie, staring at his typewriter, unable to bring himself to type with any conviction or passion.  Both men are at a standstill--incapable of seizing and acting on their greatest desires.

"Monsieur Hire" (1989-left picture) and "Starting Out In The Evening" (2007-right picture), two very different pieces of work, end their narratives on two polar notes--yet the "wants" that drive the story up until then come from the same womb, plump with desideratum.  Monsieur Hire, a man who is despised by his neighbors and is the focal suspect to the local Chief Inspector, is an enigma of a Don Juan.  He is at once creepy and toweringly romantic.  For much of the short running time, he is made to be a mild-mannered voyeur, whose only connection to societal acceptance is by being an expert bowler at the local bowling alley.  After the audience is convinced that Hire could in fact be the murderer that the Inspector is trying to weed out, Director Patrice Leconte pulls the rug from under and unspools Hire to be one of the most faithful lovers and admirers of postmodern cinema. 

Hire's lust for Alice moves past the Norman-Bates-Peephole-Fascination, and into the role of a romantic martyr whose real intentions and desires are so moving that it may take an immediate second viewing to take it all in at a recommended dosage.  Leonard Schiller, in "Starting," has equal desires of the heart to finish his last novel, yet his intentions are firmly guarded behind his weathered stoic stare and restrained vernacular.  Schiller's muse comes in the form of a female grad student Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose) but she is no Alice to him; the finished text is Schiller's lover from the across building.  Essentially, the roles of Alice, Heather, the book, and the subject of murder are all interchangeable variables that revolve around the nucleus of male adoration.  Schiller very much wants to finish his novel, not so much for revived literary fame, but to give him purpose in this life.  The language, the ideas and the story have supplied the yearned for nourishment to Schiller, so much as to drive the seperation from his wife in the earlier years.  In Hire's case, his love and dedication to Alice has forced him into a corner, an almost metaphysical one indeed, as he shrouds in the confinements of his tiny studio apartment.

What happens to these two men in the end is very different and yet we see each man's fate clearly from the beginning, almost from the opening frame.  Both films strike at the absurdity of manhood, and the bag of expectations that arrive with it.  The notions of duty, honor and family go out of the window when the desires of the heart are ignorantly exposed or threatened.

And if you take that idea into consideration, then Hire's "letting go" at the end of the film can be seen as a liberation. 

Posted by nelsoncarvajal at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)