The Proposition
4 October, 2008
Australia is a strange hell- an orange and green, oversaturated, overexposed, blinding-hot hell filled with demons of all breeds and in all shapes. Or so Nick Cave would have you believe.
The Western is never dead, though many proclaim it to be so. It simply requires re-imagining every so often.
Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies
4 October, 2008
Untie the strings. Pull the ends and unravel the world.
Barry Lyndon
4 October, 2008
This is Kubrick at his most incredibly overindulgent. Lighting indoor scenes with candles, moving at a pace so deliberate and so very achingly tense as to make each scene almost an exercise in eroticized vision, borrowing lenses from NASA- the entire production is over the top. And the end product is so delicate, so easily disrupted, that a single scene in which the lighting is not exactly perfect is so distracting it takes several scenes to recover from it.
I love this film, absolutely and completely, because it is so overwhelmingly beautiful. That kind of beauty is precisely what is necessary when the brain reaches a certain point of tension.
The Animation Show (Vol. One)
13 September, 2008
This is my favorite of the animation shows thus far, partly because of the intro, intermission, and closing animated by none other than Don Hertzfeldt. The work in this collection is, it seems to me, far more sophisticated and far more interesting than most of what has come later. The presence of work by Georges Schwizgebel and Adam Elliot lends the thing an air of true artistry, which isn’t necessarily lacking in later shows as much as it is harder to find, unless there is a Hertzfeldt piece playing. I do love, very much, the simpler pieces in this volume as well- Fifty Percent Grey and Das Rad will always hold special places in my heart.
While there are misses in this portion of the festival, of course- Cathedral being one of them- the hits seem to be much more powerful than the misses ever will.
Children of Men
6 September, 2008
The editing and cinematography is astounding, even now, even on a small screen. It kicks me in the gut. The disinterest… the apathy. It isn’t a wandering camera, like in Neorealism, it is a dispassionate camera that is slowly drawn in. A camera that is slowly captured by the story-line, that follows the arc of Owen’s character’s development from pathetic waste to savior. Absolutely brilliant.
Marie Antoinette
6 September, 2008
I cannot figure out why I like this film so much. It’s pretty, yes. It’s filmed luxuriously and is incredibly well-costumed. The art direction is spectacular and the acting is superb. The editing is quite good, the music and the sound are all exceptional. But it lacks depth. I think. Maybe it only appears to be superficial. I can’t decide. The glossy sheen on it is deliberate, right? I am so confused. Sophia Coppola is either a genius, or a very spoiled girl who gets to play with very expensive toys.
It is the ending, really, that leaves me wondering whether what I just watched was what it seemed. So smart, so abrupt, so very very unexpected. But of course, Sophia knows how to end a film. We know this, from her earlier work. I think she starts from the ending and works back, to be honest. She has an image, something she knows will catch and stick, and builds backwards from it.
No Country For Old Men
10 August, 2008
I saw this again after having read the book. And all I can say is, the Coen boys have big giant weepy bleeding hearts next to Mr. Cormac McCarthy. It retains its brilliance, even seen small. Breathtaking, heartbreaking, and so filled with narrative perfection it almost makes me forget to breathe. Also, Tommy Lee Jones really ought to be used more appropriately. He is so very perfect in this role.
Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies
10 August, 2008
I cannot stop humming the score to myself, and I cannot stop dreaming of things made of string. Like almost nothing else, the Brothers Quay can invade the mind and expose parts of the psyche that perhaps did not exist until they entered. The delicacy of this particular piece is astounding, the loops of narrative that play back and forth and parse the film of which they are part until aesthetic and story are one.
Werckmeister Harmonies
5 August, 2008
I drifted in and out of sleep while watching this and so I do not know for sure what happened, but it was beautiful and I awoke to compositional perfection and an enormous whale.
I will watch it again, I am quite sure.
Bela Tarr is a master of black and white cinematography, in a way that no one else is.
