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.
Possessed
10 August, 2008
I can’t help feeling strange when I watch this piece. It is carefully, even beautifully, crafted. And it scares the hell out of me, because I can see just where I might go mad as well.
I don’t really have words for it, but if you click below, you can watch it yourself.
Possessed on Vimeo.
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.
Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)
10 July, 2008
If ever there was proof that Lynch was not meant to be a sculptor, this is it. The piece is clever, in that art student way. And of course, there is Philadelphia all over the place. Vomited across the screen.
Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)
Just as an aside, did you know David Lynch sells coffee? Apparently it’s delicious. Tastes like existential terror.
House of Sand and Fog
1 July, 2008
Ben Kingsley is terrifying and beautiful. The film sags at points, but he never does.
Hard Candy
30 June, 2008
I figured out, after much puzzling, what it is about this film that I like. It isn’t particularly good, and it’s essentially morally bankrupt. But it is the first film to take the classic Hitchcock formula and modernize it in a way that is truly effective. Rather than copying Hitchcock, Slade has managed to re-tool him, make his typical bad versus worse scenario into something that does not feel clunky and mis-directed. Even the opening credits, which remind me so much of Saul Bass, and the score are perfectly Hitchcockian. Which, by the way, was almost certainly completely by mistake.
So that’s why I like this awful little film.
The Alphabet
18 June, 2008
David Lynch has always been… present… in my film consciousness, a sort of hovering phantasm whenever I consider creating anything. Not necessarily his later works, but his early shorts and Eraserhead. The Alphabet is, I think, my favorite of the early pieces. The animation is elegant in its simplicity and the ever-present Lynchian themes are more delicately wrought here than elsewhere. He is a simple man, really, neurotic to the bone about the things that every thinking man is. Children, women, dissemination of seed and of knowledge, power and the loss thereof, waking and sleeping, dying, aging.
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
15 June, 2008
I have, it could be said, a bit of a Herzog fetish. I am infatuated with him, truth be told, and with everything and everyone he has touched. My cat is named Kinski, for godsake. And I even hold a soft spot for Errol Morris, though I believe he reached a plateau quite some time ago, because it was Herzog who prodded him into making films.
Les Blank’s film is Herzogian not only in that it contains Herzog, but because it addresses Herzog as a Herzog character. Werner speaks of throwing himself onto a cactus for the cast of Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen because he said that he would; and of the perils of grown men not cooking their own meals; and of how in this life only cooking can replace filmmaking, or perhaps walking on foot. And he reveals himself to be no different from Steiner or from Aguirre. His assertions can vary wildly from one moment to the next, but they are all true, even as they are contradictory- that is the nature of Herzog. Truth can be found only in the moment. There is neither past nor future, truly.
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
(If you should choose to watch this, please be sure to set it to ‘original size’, otherwise the pixilation makes it nearly unwatchable. Smaller is better.)
Casa de los Babys
14 June, 2008
The stereotypes here are writ broad and large, but there is at least a bit of heart beneath and behind them. The performances of all of the women are quite stunning, and there are many opportunities for the cliché to surface that are not taken. Visually, however, the film is rather uninteresting- the focus is on storytelling rather than on aesthetic- which leaves me quite disinterested after a time. Things that could be taken advantage of, especially the out-of-frame space, are largely neglected. Overall, though, the story is engaging enough and the performances are compelling enough to make up for most of what is lacking in the aesthetic.
