tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79896082024-03-13T13:43:03.135+11:00filmismby & large, movies are crapfocyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-16452110892856552802008-07-03T15:17:00.002+10:002008-07-03T16:08:16.323+10:00chinatown<span style="font-size:85%;">i suspect this is one of the finest films ever made. in a way it works like a well-constructed sonnet; the body of the film like a series of coolly uncovered revelations; the ending punchline - 'it's chinatown' - like a severed rhyming couplet that functions to wearily justify what has gone before. nicholson's final loaded facial expression, staring into the car where dunaway has just been shot, mixes acceptance, fatigue, anger. anger because he's lost another potential kindred spirit to the perils of the chinatown miasma, acceptance because he's also looking at what cross (john huston) has claimed as his own - the future. huston gropes the writhing daughter away from the car; his enormous hands smother discordant and horrible screams; he is back in control of secrets. it struck me watching the film again recently that the last words heard here are actually not 'it's chinatown', but the bellowed orders of a cop ordering bystanders to 'stand back' and to 'get off the street' as the police sirens arrive. it's the staple of so many action films to end in the glow of sirens & blue/red police lights; they signify that atypical narrative chaos is over & that the authorities are here both to recognise the discord in their own terms & to reclaim control. as he does throughout the film, polanksi toys with genre by introducing the screaming police sirens here. in this context the cops do the inverse of comforting the spectator - rather they ensure that the site of cross's reclamation is undisturbed by onlookers or people who might obstruct the inevitable advancement of rich men - "get off the street!". as dunaway wails moments before she is killed: "he (cross) owns the police!".<br /></span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-79541236859328762212007-12-17T19:11:00.000+11:002007-12-17T20:23:05.400+11:00manhunter<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">michael mann is an american master & this is a wonderful film. i made the fatal error of seeing the 'red dragon' remake a few years back & 'manhunter' follows almost precisely the same plot line (tho mann excludes the emphasis on Blakean decryption that dominates the remake). already knowing the outcome of various investigative revelation scenes didn't much help in my appreciation of 'manhunter' as a geuinely 'scary' film, tho i'm sure it was at the time.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">i love directors that basically riff on a theme. in this respect 'manhunter' as a title is interesting. it's probably the worst title of mann's career (& it appears as if it was changed at the last minute to encourage some box office attraction), but it has slight ramifications for the rest of mann's career. his best films (heat/the insider/miami vice) have him 'hunting' after the spirit of brilliantly talented 'men' who can only become the men they want or can become by sacrificing connections with the women in their lives. it is probably the principal fault of mann as a dramatist that his women characters consistenly threaten to become little more than angelic obstacles to the proper exercise of male vocations. but this is slightly unfair; diane venora's character in 'heat' delivers the key soliloquy of that epic, summarising all that is grotesque about husband pacino's lifestyle, & the women in 'miami vice' are as much 'players' of the hyper-cool undercover game as the male leads. at the level of character development, however, 'manhunter' is almost wholly about will graham's ability to suspend familial easefulness such that he might get back on the 'manhunt'. indeed, momentary sequences (such as an astounding close-up of graham's disturbed face interlaced with scenes of mother/son innocence) hint at the potential impossibility of any reconciliation between what graham 'does' for a living with any form of familial ambition.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">in 'heat' this impossibility is pronounced at the film's climax. de niro/pacino leave their respective women at the moment of potentially mending connection to conclude the 'hunt' once & for all (in pacino's case this instant is shown in a stunning, silent dash down a flight of steps). the 'hunt' ends in the only way it can, in a final shot suggesting perpetually combative asymmetry; one man dead, slouched, facing in one direction; the other holding the combatant's hand limply, facing in the opposite direction. what's fascinating is that 'manhunter' opens with exactly the same composition; two men sitting on a beachside log; will graham facing camera, his boss seated in the opposite direction attempting to coax him back into the 'male game'. all gestures at cross-connection are ultra-tentative; the boss's hand slides some photographs of the murder victims part-way across the pallidly fragile log, quasi-flirtatiously. the 'wife & son' arrive on the scene & an affair is delayed.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">it's one of many examples (really, every scene is an example) of the stupendous suggestiveness of 'manhunter's' cinematography. i'll get to that soon enough.</span></span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1136548201045069582006-01-06T21:48:00.000+11:002006-01-06T22:50:01.096+11:00the family stone<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">excepting the last extraneous 8 minutes or so, there is something genuinely moving and meritorious about this little bit of xmas fodder. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">it's always a pity when a decent film can't sustain what it's attempting to do through a full 100 minutes or so. 'the family stone' falls slightly short of being a seriously good drama thanks to a few horrendously underwritten final scenes (the claire danes/mulroney 'love' scene in particular), as well as a tacked-on, semi-explanatory epilogue. sure, tight-knit comedy/dramas like this seem to demand some kind of pleasurable explanation - if the characters are at all memorable we want to know what became of them beyond the sunset future. the writing & the acting & the development of the characters up to a kind of blissful but ambiguous & still fallible xmas-night ending was just right - to go & spoil the lot by repeating what we already knew seemed both insulting & saddening. i mean you can literally see the spot where they should've called a final cut - luke wilson & sarah jessica-parker, lying together in the first grips of a weird love; wilson grinning, repeating to himself & pondering that ridiculous but oddly relevant line from 'joy to the world': "repeat the sounding joy". gorgeous scene.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">back to what i think this film was 'attempting to do', then. the story gets its template from the countless 'boyfriend/girlfriend meets family for the first time' films that've emerged in the last 20 years; 'father of the bride', 'meet the parents' etc. the only ones i can remember are outright comedies. 'the family stone' puts some mild emphasis on the gags, but i'm pretty sure i heard more sobbing than laughing in the cinema i was in. which is just the thing - the meaningful reinforcement of some dramatic moral is usually just tacked-on in films like this. in 'the family stone' it's the comedy that's tacked on, if not seamlessly integrated into scenes of (honestly) tear-jerking drama. diane keaton (via 'father of the bride') has a history in films like this; she knows how to hold the whole together, allowing the supporting actors/actresses do their bit. & they're ALL good. claire danes is radiant; rachel mcadams is almost as good as she was in 'mean girls' (see it if you haven't); dermot mulroney, in one scene in particular, does some great crying. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">not bad.</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1135768449531376362005-12-28T20:32:00.000+11:002005-12-28T22:14:09.586+11:00war of the worlds<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">the usual disclaimer then - i know nothing about previous incarnations of 'war of the worlds'. i approached spielberg's remake looking for a bit of apocalyptic fun. i came away thinking it's one of the better spielberg films i've ever seen. better, because it's simply interesting & eyebrow-raising on a number of levels. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">the apocalyptic genre went into a weird overdrive in the late 90's. at the time it seemed like spielberg missed the boat - known as the first great blockbuster director, i think he was too busy knuckling down on 'saving private ryan' to notice the surge of ultra-hyped films like 'independence day' & 'armageddon'. the other film contemporaneous to this lot was 'deep impact', which, though it cashed in on the tidal-wave-drenching-manhattan money shot, was a strangely intimate & emotional piece (when robert duvall starts reciting melville on the world-saving spaceship, you know something different is going on). 'independence day' & 'armageddon' were hilariously panoramic, all-devouring visions of against-all-odds collective human effort, complete with that mandatory montage of the 'arabs'/'russians'/'japanese'/'english' doing their military bit for the sake of humanity. 'armageddon' was unmistakeably the worst offender of this bunch - the characters & action came at you at such a ludicrous, music-video pace that you walked out of the cinema feeling slightly saturated.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">'war of the worlds' is all interior, mysterious microcosm to 'independence day's' macrocosm of fighting-back fervour. & this is where things get interesting. while it is a kind of analytical cliche, 'war of the worlds' does make a successful effort to trace the growth of its main character (tom cruise) over the course of these quite sublime events. cruise has appeared in two spielberg films since 'eyes wide shut', since the death of kubrick ('minority report' & 'war of the worlds'). i can't help but think that spielberg saw kubrick did something interesting to cruise in 'eyes wide shut'; brought him back to a kind of meditative, emotional acting earth; took him back to square one; taught him that you can get just as much of your character across by an anxious, prolonged stare than you can doing the kind of things cruise characters have always been renowned for - sprinting ridiculously, winning a fight or an argument with a compact, ideal rejoinder. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">'minority report' got the ball rolling, to some extent - yes, cruise's character in that film does a lot of running & problem-solving, but he also does enough serious deliberation with himself that you can't help but be moved by it all. in 'war of the worlds', it's as if spielberg (and his script writers, and his art designers) come to the introspective party as well. 'minority report' was neat & tidy; it had a plot of pristine resolution. 'war of the worlds' is, plot-wise, quite daringly panic-stricken for a 'blockbuster' film. through certain stages there's an ostensible similarity to another suspenseful, slightly left-of-centre blockbuster film based around a dysfunctional small family unit - m. night shyamalan's 'signs' - in which the terrifyingly fantastic things going on in an invisible wider world are chanelled solely through the experience of a few key characters. what 'war of the worlds' and 'signs' share, i suspect, is a lack of repeated watchability - they are both emotionally quite affecting films on first viewing, but for various reasons they lack punch on repeated viewings. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">backtracking, then, it's through 'war of the worlds's' lead character that the film gains its most noteworthy edge. one is at pains to really identify at all with cruise's character at first - to be blunt, he's purposely played as a desultory cunt. & to some extent he only marginally 'improves' himself as the film goes on, his heroic son doing a lot of the work for him. spielberg deserves credit for running with this lead who never really responds ideally or heroically to any of the various terrifying set-pieces through the film. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">what also helps 'war' on its way is an extravagant special-effects budget. & it's not as if the money is put to waste - importantly, the key design of the staple special-effect figure, the tripod, is toweringly terrifying; in its movements & its sonorous howling it is surely reminiscent of the original 'jurassic park' t-rex; sublime & awe-inspiring. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">undeniably the film seems to lose its way towards a kind of tacked-on & abrupt climax; all said, given the way 'war' tries to defy certain apocalyptic audience expectations (and cinematic conventions), it's worth taking seriously.</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1127886447963698462005-09-28T15:44:00.000+10:002005-09-28T15:48:33.286+10:00the saint (with digression)<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">let me preface by saying I know nothing about the original tv series of ‘the saint’.<br /><br />from memory the film performed underwhelmingly at the box office when it came out around 1997. I was attracted to it just recently for a few reasons – a) I have a weakness for what blurbs call ‘intelligent’ action/dramas, b) the lead baddie is played by the same actor who went on to play the grotesque costume-shop owner in ‘eyes wide shut’ (indeed, not wanting to exaggerate, but the two characters are almost EXACTLY the same), & needless to say anything that pricked kubrick’s interest in formulating his final dream-epic deserves attention, c) ‘the saint’s’ treatment of its female co-lead is interesting in comparison to another recent-ish sophisticated thriller, ‘the bourne identity’.<br /><br />a) & c) should be our main focus here. to be honest it’s hard to know what kubrick was thinking with relation to b). I’ve always suspected that ‘eyes wide shut’ has more to say about pop culture than people imagine (indeed, given his late-in-life reputation as uber-esoteric recluse, it’s intriguing to note the number of times kubrick references &/or subtly critiques ‘popular culture’ in his ‘mature films’, whether it’s US marines singing the mickey mouse club tune, jack torrance sardonically criticizing ‘television’ for teaching his distant son about cannibalism, alex the droog confidently wandering a hyper-coloured pop-record store in search of some ‘in-out’ – you can’t let kubrick’s stylistic straightness blind you to the fact he knew & had a lot to say about the mainstream; anecdotes suggest that for decades he had the latest sitcoms, series & even commercials mailed to his hideaway in England). I’ve said elsewhere that I think cruise’s character in ‘eyes wide shut’ was mildly influenced by his character in ‘the firm’, & there are other things – ‘strangers in the night’ playing wistfully in the background as cruise’s masked female-hero orders him to escape the sex mansion ‘before it’s too late!’ (which leads to the ridiculously anti-serious ‘I am ready to redeem him!’ scene); the fact ‘baby did a bad bad thing’ - sung by the most self-conscious crooner in recent memory, chris isaak – backs the only ‘sex’ scene between the leads in the whole film; the fact the film’s ‘fuck’ finale is set in a shopping mall during Christmas rush hour. frankly there’s a case for arguing that it’s kubrick’s most socially engaged film – the whole thing is underpinned by a commentary on the US class ladder, cruise’s status as a ‘medical professional’ (note the number of times he flashes his ‘medical card’) granting him access to nearly all arenas of urban life EXCEPT the house of complete sexual bliss, which is reserved for a kind of shady, impossible aristocracy – remember that the only actual ‘physical infidelity’ he partakes in is that beautifully rendered lip-kiss with a HIV-positive prostitute living in a seedy flat. the costume-shop owner, the bloke we are supposed to be talking about, as I say, it’s hard to know what he’s meant to represent – but the inference seems to be that he belongs to a grotesque underclass with a different sexual culture altogether; we of course discover late in the film that he’s happily selling off his daughter’s sexuality to a pair of completely comic & improbable Asian men. perhaps there was something about the bearded burbling of ‘the saint’s’ ribald bad-guy that kubrick was attracted to. perhaps. </span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I got sidetracked. I’ll cover a) & c) another time.</span></span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1124940212279176842005-08-25T13:22:00.000+10:002005-08-25T13:23:32.290+10:0021st<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">In Eltham I ask for grass & a girl<br />says ‘You are in Eltham’.<br />‘So I’m like the foot soldier in City Hall<br />in the movie version<br />of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,<br />when he wants a cigarette & gets cartons<br />of regular & menthol?’<br /><br />‘Yeah. So what are you after?’<br /><br />We grow on our acre.<br />A rock remains a cool pillow<br />you don’t have to turn over.<br />‘That’s smooth for a ceramic bong’.<br />She runs craft classes<br />at a child care centre.<br />‘Guess you’re used to hydroponics;<br />all the chemical fertiliser’.<br /><br />Told dad later about their in-ground pool.<br />Told him there’s green leaves for a jungle feel,<br />& he said ‘Sure!<br />Such an ecosystem takes time.’<br /><br />Next to hair of cane kelp I recited:<br />“I was much further out than you thought”.<br />Kookaburras in the boarded house<br />belly-laughed a nightclub theme.</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1122528399293297212005-07-28T15:24:00.000+10:002005-07-28T15:26:39.300+10:00toyota echo<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">My youngest sister & I, forever aggressively planet-xish<br />with regards our massive, disparate familial solar system<br />(there is a sitcom cool about everyone’s interaction –<br />we only acknowledge connections or cry at the reunions)<br />we are 8am commuting together to respective workplaces<br />in Geelong. This involves Australia’s most boring drive,<br />one hour along four west-headed lanes with immense auction-<br />group car yards, the furtherest urban outliers and, eventually,<br />the yellowed Port Phillip flatlands as scenery. You try<br />(I’m not driving) to make something out of it, imagining<br />what goes on in lonely highway-side paddocks at night,<br />whether some starry-eyed wits-end type has ever parked their car<br />illegally and wandered without a torch towards<br />the indiscernible horizon. I would want a windy cigarette<br />after twenty yards & I suspect it would be tough<br />keeping the nervous shit tingling from your arse. This<br />one time at school camp, the teachers made us sit<br />about half a K apart from each other in national park dark.<br />The first thing I did was piss, then sit down, then laugh<br />for the required half an hour at how the class bullies</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">had held hands & cried in response to the task. It was hilarious.</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1118985093184139792005-06-17T15:09:00.000+10:002005-06-17T15:13:29.713+10:00recurring dreams<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Just as me & Caz are left bemoaning the Big 4 Caravan Park,<br />the hilariously persistent Gideons,<br />the blue vinyl book of local attractions like<br />the sausage meat pizza we got<br />& scampered to scoff in front of<br />the city news, the threat posed to her Birkenstocks<br />by the unglamorous Bass Strait tide<br />& the big broken-off rocks beachcombers need to climb<br /><br /><em>the shore of the Med is stone, she said</em><br /><br />So there are still millions<br />utterly blind to the cynicism<br />espoused by us who had all this as kids:<br />Commodores between each family cabin,<br />the drive from Melbourne to yr bit of ocean<br />not exactly that long but a cinematic marathon,<br />photos of flywire doors & dynasties of four,</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">boredom & worldliness left to future generations.</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1118143955739219272005-06-07T21:31:00.000+10:002005-06-07T21:32:35.746+10:00untitled<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Your silhouette stood to attention<br />against the luxuriating streetlight unmoved<br />in its diffusion through the bedroom when<br />we met for I was in a suit with that<br />stretch your gait a little further feeling<br />all guys get unfailingly at 3am when<br />every presentation is a success<br /><br />off the record less than transcendent investor yes<br />it is unconventional in my experience<br />for instantaneous interest to be expressed<br />I must warn you before I forget next morning<br />most blokes will have you as an odalisque<br />a fallback the constant possibility of sex<br />& if you think my saying that in shockingly </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">cad dispatches means different do not</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1117421696456472212005-05-30T12:53:00.000+10:002005-05-30T12:55:52.496+10:00after 1979<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">The way you want its<br />lane-marking drum line not to end’s<br /><br />like the first time you listen<br />to Blur’s <em>Coffee & TV</em>;<br /><br />bring on the highway,<br />the hedonistic drawl<br /><br />of Corgan’s limp wrist<br />out the passenger-side window.<br /><br />For the tallish boy we all destroyed<br />who hugged his Melon Collie double set<br /><br />as young Joaqin Phoenix clutched<br />his porn in <em>Parenthood</em> –<br /><br />I always thought he hoped the song<br />was where his older brother had gone,<br /><br />hit by a semi-trailer while<br />fielding a cricket ball on Christmas Eve,<br /><br />carried along to where Tooronga Road<br />turns into Dandenong & eternity.<br /><br />Sorry. This is getting a bit <em>Stand By Me</em>.</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1116206957266539042005-05-16T11:28:00.000+10:002005-05-16T11:31:51.126+10:00Minutes<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Can’t be sure, can we,<br />that the following’s not prohibited<br />by the first confidentiality agreement I’ve<br />been oddly hot to sign, as if it were<br />a financier’s manly handshake before<br />an Antarctica of secrets.<br /><br />Watching the entrepreneur<br />spruik a gospel of developing world goodwill<br />listen, India’s a brilliant source of human capital<br />I, retaining what Whitmanian retro chops<br />the expansive eye of the bothered unAustralian<br />& an infuriating ability to go along<br /><br />begin to recognise what<br />stuff like ‘service industries’ really means.<br />The movies, the restaurants, less the catalogues<br />of those still required to spot than<br />the well-clipped salesman or waiter<br />who fucking hate their jobs & clientele<br /><br />all your grand transacting schemata<br />of the working poor & goal-setting best<br />is there to farm one key interest:<br />the fecundity & comfort of our corporate activists.<br />If I could pass on one lesson on behalf<br />of, well, you wouldn’t even call it a niche market,<br /><br />it’d be: for fuck’s sake, just try & relax.<br />Ditch the gaudy colour photos saying VISION.<br />You are smarter than this, young businessmen<br />& women. <em>Revel that your works are but<br />extensions of a power to charm. The blessed<br />couldn’t care less what depths they are regarded from.</em></span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1115100836122210182005-05-03T16:12:00.000+10:002005-05-03T16:13:56.123+10:00untitled<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Like me, weed has laid him low.<br />Finally,<br />a drug that justifies one’s genetic desire<br />to stay at home via<br />the intensified appeal<br />of the private everyday:<br />meals, music, video games & tv shows.<br />Cannabis for us implies less<br />an angry flight from reality<br />than a rare shot at omniscience;<br />(being privately schooled suburban kids,<br />criticism, judgement & expertise<br />are habits you have to qualify<br />before a disbelieving panel<br />badges you with belief.)<br />Thus. Is it such a sin<br />that we supplement our indolence<br />with the feeling that everything is<br />either, a)<br />perfectly, brilliantly, happily intense,<br />or b) soul-destroying shit rich-deserving</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">all the hilarious disdain it gets?</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1114012266384402632005-04-21T01:49:00.000+10:002005-04-21T01:51:06.386+10:00untitled<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Reassuringly I’ve thought<br />to trace my nauseous anxiety<br />back to the fact I was born<br />with what the doctors & dad<br />said was a ‘wet lung’,<br /><br />concomitant possibly<br />to my disappointing inability<br />to scull, to smoke anything more<br />than a quarter of a cone<br />& to eat in tiny portions<br />that say anal austerity<br />over twentysomething gluttony.<br /><br />& then when the television<br />salesperson bemoans the<br /><em>third of the world that will<br />never learn to breath properly</em><br />your revelatory detective goes<br />a-ha & jots another origin.<br /><br />You know when I get time away<br />from the ironic small-scale<br />anti-self-help-sales-culture crusade,<br />there’s nothing I like more<br />than to try & meekly metaphorise<br />my private nausea as relating<br />to an overriding aversion<br />against complete digestion;<br /><br />I prefer surfaces & textures<br />& skipping along the aisles of love.<br />I am not conscious of heavy<br />Adamsonian aesthetic influences<br />except Stanley Kubrick, whose<br />straight lines & exact canvasses<br />make me freak & sparkle<br /><br />& when marijuana’s exaggerated<br />complacencies become too much<br />you can find me wandering<br />around wailing GET OUT<br />in front of my chuckling &<br />wonderful friends. Today<br />two lives for the price of one.</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1113919052886367792005-04-19T23:45:00.000+10:002005-04-19T23:57:32.886+10:00filmism is changing tack<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">films are getting me down. from now on i'm going to intersperse poems between rare reviews. something didactic to start with.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"><em>Untitled</em></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">PC’s not even a police force<br /><br />inspiring a quick hit the lights<br />here comes the principal type<br />of don’t show & tell<br /><br />Geez dead end streets<br />suburban sprawls<br />the shy stand-offish torches<br />of a tarmac night<br />must make policework impossible<br /><br />the young & slacker-naturally enlightened<br />are forced into Orwellian son &<br />daughter assumptions, draconic<br />detectives accidentally questing<br />to get riled every time<br />old farts slip up. Plain-clothed<br />in my DUI time tend to pose<br />a more appalling fear anyway<br /><br />So keep a siren in yr oversized<br />pockets, partner to what narcotics<br />& confusing technology<br />& never a photo of wrong-headed<br />antecedents. We will inherit<br />an earth parsimonious in its<br />open-heartedness, pathetic<br />in its brick veneer of ignorance.<br />What we bring is implicitness,<br />a seen-it-all-before self-evidence,<br />a wisdom dating back to that<br />Thomas Jefferson lost<br />in yr bullshit gossip columns. </span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1111386304133671022005-03-21T16:15:00.000+11:002005-03-21T17:25:04.136+11:00runaway jury<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">make-a-movie-by-numbers & not a hint of innovation in this one. still, i find grisham movies fun, if only because he loves portraying ordinary folks as hard-working out-thinkers of enormous organisations. & there is such networking, montage-driven narrative verve in the out-thinking. i have seen 'the firm' that many times & it remains a gorgeously high-strung winner of a film, every intelligent storyline string tying towards a climax that is pleasurable less in the guttural action-movie sense of <em>drive that knife/gun into the embodiment of wrong </em>& more like <em>i cannot believe how beautifully & perfectly this plan has been synchronised. </em>sydney pollack is virtuosic in the way he makes 'the firm' work - recruiting tom cruise for starters; that master of the short & aspiring & young & courteous bourgeois performance (i maintain in my spare time that there are aspects of kubrick's 'eyes wide shut' undoubtedly & oddly influenced by 'the firm' - 'eyes wide shut' seemingly concerning itself with revealing the cliche that is cruise's typical big-screen hero, the intelligent & dapper professional - or, you might say, 'eyes wide shut' is about what the quintessential cruise character imagines <em>at night</em>). pollack also does perfectly to realise you need nought beside solid performances & some zippy editing to make a grisham movie work - extraneous artistic demands need not impinge - listen to 'the firm's' minimalistic but driven piano score for confirmation. it's a simple sonic consistent. perhaps it's too much to suggest that kubrick's decision to use ligeti's aggressively minimalistic 'musica ricercata' as eyes wide shut's primary musical motif was influenced, again, by 'the firm'? is that enough kubrick references for one entry?</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">so, to runaway jury. it's a far less forgiving yarn to convert to film than 'the firm' - there's a multitude of primary and secondary characters; casting must have been a nightmare, i.e. whether to go with big-names in the roles of the lead defence & prosecution attorneys, since the film is not really <em>about </em>the court-case as it is about the moral plight of the surrounding characters. further, the film depends for the most part on things that aren't dramatically exciting, or are somewhat flimsy - e.g. gene hackman's jury surveillance team, his own all-seeing 'expertise', a clairvoyancy that seems horrendously cliched. & how rare for hollywood to even want to attempt the underlying premise, that of a leftist anti-gun couple attempting to sabotage the legal system. at least it seems odd until you realise the film was released on the brink of 'bowling for columbine' mania. inevitably, big names feature - hoffman, hackman as a less-than-convincing villain (i'm not sure about hackman-as-villain, to be honest), cusack as a less bourgeois but funnier & more intelligent cruise.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">'the firm' is better.</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1108555737768957992005-02-16T22:28:00.000+11:002005-02-16T23:08:57.776+11:00grosse pointe blank<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">it's all tight & compact perfection, this film. i can't recommend it enough. admittedly it has liberal splashings of every plot device i've come to love in films - intensely over-stylised & 'cool' violence & dialogue (no one in real life wields a gun or talks like this), romance of 21st-century physicality & rhetorical interplay (the lovers almost too cool for touch, always skirting around the edges of outright heart-professions by way of sarcasm & irony, but the world around them always an abnormal sphere of less-impressiveness), & a story that moves towards revelation, outcome, & a sunset. i love it.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">in a strange way the film draws comparisons with a movie i lambasted elsewhere on this blog - 'collateral'. fundamentally different films, of course - as a director michael mann loves scenic evocation as much as script & character devices, & the way he intermingles these two filmic desires can be jarring &/or brilliant. 'grosse pointe blank' works on a bedrock of scripted wit & concrete character development (the writer/director makes sure we learn everything about cusack's character & past, even if it seems extraneous, i.e. cusack pouring booze onto his father's grave), & treats the professional killing thing as the unreal & funny & unknowable prop it is - something so cliched through years of gangster anti-heroes that it's hard to depict dramatically anymore. 'grosse pointe blank' can teach 'collateral' something about over-seriousness, about falling too much in love with gunfights & less with the dialogic shit in between. the comparison is a bit strained, come to think of it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">every performance is spot-on, both from the leads (cusack & minnie driver, who interact & work off each other on a chemical level that suggests utter mutual respect for one another as performers), & the bit-part players (cusack's ex-teacher, who features in one 90-second scene, is wonderfully sharp; dan ackroyd is viciously superb (watch for the scene between he & cusack over 'breakfast'); jeremy niven as cusack's angsty old high-school friend is fuckin hilarious (it's not surprising to find the two came through the theatre circuit together); etc etc.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">so the gun-toting conclusion is a bit much. so the post-shootout marriage proposal is a bit much. who cares. there is so much to be excited about here. not least the discovery of what can happen when writers/directors/performers strive to combine genres & create a kinda dramatic overlap that says: laughs, action, & love in 90 minutes. you gotta see this film.</span>focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1107750666491255752005-02-07T14:16:00.000+11:002005-02-07T19:06:12.850+11:00dodgeball<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">hmm. the first comedy to feature on filmism? i think so. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">dodgeball is not very good. even though he co-produced the picture, you get the feeling this is a minor aside of a movie for ben stiller, whose best & likely most influential work is done in the guise of the downtrodden hard-luck nice guy ('something about mary', 'meet the parents') around whom the most ridiculous shit happens. the polar opposite of such performances sees stiller as the centre & source of all that is ridiculous - zoolander, dodgeball's 'white goodman' - in which a lot of the comedy comes from realising this is stiller (the usually loveable & lame hero) camping things up to the extreme. or, to put it better, part of the lameness of a 'normal' stiller character seems to live on in his more ludicrous incarnations. no matter how outlandish his 'big' characters are, you can still see 'little stiller' in there somewhere - especially in his voice, which he modulates beautifully to make characters like 'white goodman' seem almost self-conscious or unsure of their own stupidity. in the midst of goodman's most nefarious proclamations you catch a little twang that makes it seem like we are watching greg focker trying to be funny. it's loveable hilarity.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">it's also an interestingly crude kind of hilarity. i don't find the self-conscious thematic aspect of the film that interesting at all - insofar as the film tries to subvert/make fun of the underdog comedy genre, it does nothing to avoid it. the film is as 'sister act'/'major league' etc formulaic as you can imagine. it's in the little lashings of impromptu dialogue or action - scattered, as it were, over the generic template - that we might discover whether this film is halfway decent. but there's not enough mustard for mine. think of 'there's something about mary' - there's really not one minor character ("step into my office! why? because you're fucking fired!") or comic set-piece that <em>isn't </em>funny. in 'dodgeball', there's a few. if anything there's too many minor characters in 'dodgeball' - the 'pirate' is hideously under-written; a funny pirate needs to be <em>really </em>funny nowadays, we can <em>all </em>do decent pirate impressions - & there's just one too many underdog idiot to come to terms with. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">but getting back to the crudity aspect. i guess 'south park' (&, in a way, 'something about mary') really raised the bar in terms of just how far comedy could go to get a laugh. political correctness is a thing of the past when it comes to comedy - one suspects kenny's 're-birth' sequence in the 'south park' movie was the beginning of the end - & 'dodgeball' is certainly at its funniest when it embraces the 'south park' spirit: the german dodgeball team coached by a hilariously fuhrer-esque david hasselhoff, the japanese 'kamikaze' team wearing 'diapers' on court, the senile coach 'patches o'houlihan' imploring his star player to come back to his room for some 'prostitutes', christine taylor vomiting into her mouth after being hit upon by white goodman etc. one also notes the 'south park' (& 'simpsons)-esque willingness to refer randomly to popular figures - chuck norris's classic cameo, for example, or lance armstrong's brilliant barside lecture (errrm, has lance had acting training? because his delivery was damn good). as i say, though, these comic sprinklings are hit & miss, & the whole seems watered down for the fact the film is about, well, a 'dodgeball' tournament. in 'something about mary' there was a beautiful freedom about the 'plot' - boy chases girl - that allowed for some brilliant visual & dialogic asides. 'dodgeball' races towards its 90-minute climax with all the regularity we expect from an underdog film, & one is stuck as to whether to try & laugh at the bit-pieces or savour the inevitable victory of the 'average joe's'. </span>
<br />focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1106538795201775952005-01-24T13:22:00.000+11:002005-01-24T15:46:10.023+11:00contact<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">for our first date, i once asked a girl if she'd like to come around & 'watch a video'. i'd seen 'contact' for the first time a few days before this enthralling offer was made, & i, umm, wanted to watch it again. terrible. anyway - we watched it, i had a great time, & the relationship lasted about a fortnight.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">what made me love this movie so much? part of it can be put down to cultural context. the movie's release coincided with the rise of the whole 'i want to believe' feeling among kids - i.e., 'the x-files'. for a few years there in high school you'd always look forward to wednesday nights, when every episode would seem to reveal answers but end up raising more questions, when mulder's faith & scully's doubt would be tested, when it was fun & ephemeral to believe in whatever supernatural sub-genre you enjoyed. the catchcry 'i want to believe' - which appeared during the title sequence of every show - symbolised something of this newfound desire to seemingly <em>consume each conspiracy</em>; each bit of skewed proof bolstering your belief in the world of truth lurking beneath the paternal, protective veneer of <em>the cover-up. </em>far be it from me to envisage a golden age of somewhat more imaginative kids, but it was only eight or so years ago that shopping malls around the country were bursting with teenagers trying to catch a glimpse of 'special agent dana scully', not the latest batch of big brother contestants. oh well.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">'contact' is an x-files episode writ extremely large. first & foremost, it actually presumes to imagine an answer to that over-arching 'x-file' (the one that only ever popped up in the season finales) - life on other planets. second, the lead characters are almost a mirror image of scully & mulder - mulder (believer in supernatural possibility) vs. scully (believer in science, medicine, evidence); jodie foster (believer in science & extraterrestrial possibility) vs. matthew howeveryouspellhisname (believer in god). &, just as in the x-files, the whole thing is supplemented not only by the possibility of love, but by the fact foster (mulder) is always pitted against a larger, organised & suspiciously sceptical authority (for mulder, the FBI; for foster, the government)</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">of course one doubts the directors/writers/whatever of 'contact' would appreciate the comparison. they take their characters & character development extremely seriously, foster recruited to give the occasionally simplistic script some depth. & she excels, both at being passionate & at enlivening the adventure side of the story. indeed it's probably during the most action-climactic scene in the film - the journey through the 'wormhole', that she does her best work. the scene demands of her an emotional & physical soliloquy of sorts - sitting on a chair in the middle of a hollywood set trying to convince us that she's travelling at the speed of light towards a weird celestial epiphany: it must have been bloody hard work. what results is the best ten or so minutes of the picture - the gorgeous, gorgeous special effects combining with foster's teary wonder & curiosity, the decently-performed meeting between foster & her dead father (or genius 'vegan') set against a heavenly, beautifully rendered background; the whole thing rounded out by one of those undeniable hollywood messages of goodwill - 'your race is interesting, capable of the beautiful & the terrible' etc. it's hard to counter this scene with cynicism, unless you are completely averse to science-fiction &/or ethereal matters. watching the film for the first time in a while the other night, i found myself guffawing for the most part. but during this sequence the best you can really do is shrug yr shoulders & just appreciate the imagistic, imaginative & moral bravura (or is it bravado?) of it all. </span>
<br />focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1105587993187572172005-01-13T13:53:00.000+11:002005-01-13T14:46:33.186+11:00in the line of fire<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">'in the line of fire' is about as straight-down-the-line formulaic a film as you'll find. but in keeping with the premise of this unfortunately irregular blog, i'd best mention certain things that, in pop-critical parlance, take this from being a 2 & a half star action flick to a 4 (i despise the gutlessness of a 2 & a half star review, by the way, so commonplace in newspaper reviews - critics need to tear stuff apart, not sit on the starry fence).</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">i love an action/drama flick that uses establishing shots of the big washington monuments as kind of visual/thematic bedrock (why do you think i've watched 'jfk' four billion times? kevin costner strolling sternly in front of lincoln's statue - i'm happy). 'in the line of fire' doesn't muck around, rushing through its opening credits with the aid of an equally rushed score (no frills, this film - the score is completely forgettable), & planting its title, in the blandest font imaginable, across the traditional head-on view of the whitehouse. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">'ok, that'll do', the director seems to say - 'let's get these characters established!'. first scene, therefore, is your usual cop-movie fare: heroic but troubled lead in full-flight, killing a few counterfeiters & arresting a ringleader, saving his wide-eyed partner's life etc. the role of the wide-eyed one is taken by dylan mcdermott, who plays it well enough - wife, kids, new recruit, nervous (unnecessary tears) = destined to die. inevitable death of partner (i can still hear it now; whenever these innocent types died in action films, my mum would always say, 'oh no! he was such a nice man!) is what tips gruff lead over the edge. character antecedents = holly hunter's love interest in 'copycat', jeff daniels in 'speed' etc.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">'gruff lead' is what clint eastwood does best, though, & the writer knew this. i like certain of his lines - 'i gotta put all that shit back on!', after stripping down his white-collar-copper-clobber before abandoned sex - & his nice impatience with our brilliant villain's rhetoric - 'how much longer do i need to listen to this shit?'. what eastwood does really well (in his old age) is constantly contradict his diminishing physicality with a fierce, short-of-words streak that's always surprising. & the initially weird relationship with rene russo (where is she, by the way?) is saved by some quite nice writing - again, the surprise factor is important; for such a tawdry, cliched-lonely-spirit-swilling-detective character, his genuine interest in russo is refreshing, his romanticism kind of sparse, don't-expect-much & unexpected at the same time. sitting in front of the lincoln statue, he pines, 'if she turns around, she's interested...come on, turn around'. this romantic-glance motif carries through nicely into their piano-side love scene - the whole matter is rather pleasant, actually. & what's more (& this may sound, what, boyish?) the love-stuff doesn't ever interfere with the action side of things, as often happens in an action-drama - new couple have fight over hero's priorities, eventual reconciliation, sunset prioritisation etc. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">that's all well & good. obviously the real feature of this film is john malkovich as our crazed but rhetorically controlled, nihilistic villain. he relates to eastwood (over the phone) in regards their mutual abjectness; malkovich as renegade CIA operative, eastwood as failed secret service agent (the 'failed to protect kennedy' theme is a bit jarring, i must say). & i guess the thing that separates the two men is russo; having found someone to brighten up the abjectness in his day, someone to, errrm, live for, we get that nice little postscript scene - russo & eastwood quietly walking out of the detective's desolate, dreary apartment as malkovich's voice prattles away on the answering machine - the ghost-voice of the villain now haunting the former haunt of the formerly nihilistic, deadpan detective. this last scene is a nice effort at character-thematics - again, it's something that takes this film over the 2 & a half star barrier. & it's bought off because of decent performers. watch this film if you haven't.</span>
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<br />focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com56tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1102385293284233722004-12-07T11:49:00.000+11:002004-12-07T13:08:13.286+11:00heat<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">forgive the quietude. literary business has taken precedence.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">hmm. so the other night i finally completed a marathon 1.5GB download of michael mann's sixth (& probably most popular) film. it's a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous widescreen DVD version of the 160-odd-minute man vs. man, good crim vs. good cop drama-action. when not struck again with wonder at the crispness & classiness of the night-time cinematography (as a 15 year-old i remember thinking 'good grief, this is visually a class above most US action films going around'), i couldn't help but think how bloody hard it is to find fault with this film. sure, the script (written by mann) is a bit too cute in parts (unsubtle in the way it stresses the similarities between pacino/de niro, overloaded with sub-characters & sub-plots, generic in the smooth rhetorical perfection it grants the two leads), the score is underdone (incidentally, mann would go on to work with different composers for his next films, 'ali', & 'the insider'), some of the symbology is cliched (pacino chasing his own shadow during the film's climax) & by golly it takes itself seriously (tho pacino's initially jarring comic-over-the-topness offsets the seriousness a bit). but these are, in spite of appearances, minor qualms. it's a rich, character-deep, crystalline action epic of a film. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">in reality 'heat' deserves a thorough going-over by an expert in the epic & tragic genres. it'd be interesting to read up on mann's pre-filmic history (it's always nice to learn about what great directors did before coming to film; kubrick, for example, was a skilled photographer) to see if he had some kinda stage experience. 'heat' needs a dramatis personae - there are that many minor but compelling characters floating around, all played in turn by really interesting & really decent actors & actresses (val kilmer, great; tom sizemore, a beacon of sunglassed skill compared to his effort in 'saving private ryan'; ashley judd, impressive; de niro's wife, a regular in the mann 'troupe', honestly high-strung; amy breneman, wonderfully nice & wonderfully shot (her overflowing curls suggest an adventurousness that de niro loves); jon voight as an omnipresent, untouchable crime-organiser, absolutely ideal; a very young natalie portman is good; & the guy who plays 'waynegro' is masterfully evil, he exists like this weird devilish upsetter-of-equilibriums). where i waffled on a few months ago that 'the fugitive' had a decent minor cast, 'heat' blows it out of the water. & it's not like these minor-characters/big-name actors try to steal the show; they just do what they're told, cast as interesting people against whom we measure the two leads (&, as in some shakespeare, the 'minor cast' is split into two camps, half the characters loyal to de niro, half to pacino).</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">what of the two leads, then? as aforementioned, early on you get the feeling pacino is over-cooking things, playing along with an over-written part (too much sudden hollering for mine). by comparison de niro is mild-mannered & authoritative, believeably falling for breneman in some of the better scenes of the film (tho i always thought it disappointing that their 'first kiss' scene was played to a blue-screen backdrop of LA at night). thinking about it again, though, one senses pacino loosens up the film a little with his idiosyncracies. of course i'm no expert on acting, but i'm not sure mann would care - i think one of the real achievements of 'heat' is the way it draws attention to itself as a drama-action film, not an action-drama film. it wants us to analyse its characters, their relationships. upon release in 1995 mann made a lot of the fact the film featured two 'greats of the american screen together for the first time!' reports always mentioned how it took mann something like two takes to film their long coffee-house encounter (which in any case isn't really written that well; it stresses too overtly the way the two men are mirror-images of one another). </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">fundamentally he deserves full marks (& heat deserves to be watched several times, just so one can pick up on the little symbolic cinematographic flourishes scattered throughout) for sabotaging the action genre in the name of character-epic. the action scenes are memorable, if not idealistic (like swordfights really). but the drama is where the heart is, even if that heart beats bathed in the ultra-cool light of mann's dramatic-realist omniscience. with every kid he managed to sway away from all-out-action-film-devotion to something approaching character-appreciation, he did well.</span>
<br />focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1100226040931455872004-11-12T11:24:00.000+11:002004-11-12T13:20:40.930+11:00collateral<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">i'm an unabashed michael mann fan. stupidly i'd seen only two of his films before 'collateral' came along - 'heat' & 'the insider' - but they alone were enough to confirm him in my mind as a kind of latter-day kubrick. actually, let me rephrase. i think i <em>appreciate </em>mann's films in the same way i appreciate kubrick films. both provide enigmatic, indefensible pleasures. i doubt you'd ever catch me 'reviewing' a kubrick film on this blog - far too hard to encapsulate what on earth i'm feeling during his most extraordinary sequences: barry lyndon's first encounter with lady lyndon, 2001's space dance, pretty much all of 'eyes wide shut' etc. too difficult to separate irrational love & distanced critique. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">i would say mann is as <em>assured in his sensibilities </em>as kubrick. he knows what he's good at - (primarily) male character study, supplemented by the most well-honed visual sense of <em>the city </em>in modern cinema - & he'll happily repeat himself until he can get it spot-on every time. let's extend on these two points. unlike kubrick, who more often than not focussed his films around a sole lead male, mann enjoys the dual character study: pacino/de niro (heat), pacino/crowe (the insider), tom cruise/some guy i don't know (collateral). 'heat' is a study of male conflict - its mildly over-heated epic ending hints at subtle similarities between the warring parties. in 'the insider' a war is fought along moral lines - journalist pacino bringing corporation-man crowe up to speed with issues of modern-day moral courage. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">& so we come to 'collateral', in which we 'get to know' cruise & his taxi driver over the course of one evening. a very violent evening at that. which is where the problems begin. this is, at least to my knowledge, the first film in which mann works within a really limited time frame. it desperately restricts the amount of time we get to spend with the individual characters - the majority of the 'character study' takes place <em>between </em>the two men <em>inside </em>the taxi. in 'heat' & 'the insider' we got to know the respective leads by way of their behaviour within their own spheres - pacino as brilliant detective, de niro as brilliant criminal; pacino as wide-awake, savvy journo, crowe as anguished family man. in 'collateral' we have two somewhat ambiguous chaps (cruise plays the most mysterious, unlikely character mann has given us) thrown together <em>for the whole film. </em>kudos, certainly, to mann for setting himself a new character-challenge - a more direct, face-to-face, intense encounter than we've come to expect. but the writing (not done by mann) just ain't up to the challenge (at least i don't think so; another viewing & i might change my tune). some mild tension is created in certain exchanges - cruise challenging the taxi driver's lifestyle & dreams, the taxi driver defying & denying cruise's fundamental inhumanity - but all this proves subservient to what is a very un-mann-ish plot. it's a plot more typical of unmeditative, impatient, fast-paced & character-less action-thrillers, a plot dependent on a climactic, out-of-nowhere revelation-device, a plot that requires mann pack more style into cruise's execution-moves than the aesthetic sprawl he truly loves: the american city. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">how sad it is to see mann's delicious urban-neon-high-rise-power-line-at-night-time sensibility drowned out by the demands of an action plot. i love what he loves about the urban: the artificial lustre of a city at night, the cold mass of colour as seen from a cowardly omniscient distance - i've no idea of the intimacies being played out within that high-rise sprawl, but such mystery just adds to the technological spectacle. surely part of the attraction of 'collateral's' script was that it was set over one night in L.A. plenty of visual material, mann must've thought - & sure enough, early in the film, things are looking up. gorgeous helicopter shots, shots of random night-time traffic, as always backed by a somewhat prim electronic score ('the insider's' soundtrack is just a masterpiece of visual affiliation). but this whole aesthetic premise seems to get lost along the way. jammed in from time to time are a few meditative camera-pans - not only do they seem extraneous to the violent narrative, they are accompanied by some of the worst backing-score choices of mann's career. what on earth audioslave's 'shadow on the sun' is doing in this film i'll never know. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">i'll watch it again, no doubt, but first impressions are of a disappointing misfire.</span>
<br />focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1097815721982170872004-10-15T13:34:00.000+10:002004-10-15T16:27:38.276+10:00donnie darko<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">people have been raving about this film for a while now, & the DVD cover isn't exactly empty of praise: "a compelling motion picture", "a shattering, hypnotic work" etc. triple j (an australian 'youth' radio station) & now SBS's central movie buff, megan spencer, proclaimed it "one of those rare movie gems. truly flawless, unforgettable, & exciting". i expected something more formally risque than the sleek intelligent teenage page-turner 'donnie darko' turned out to be. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">'donnie darko' is more seamless than flawless. it successfully combines bits & pieces from various niche-genres which festered throughout the 90's - the teenage horror-thriller (admittedly these have been around for bloody ages, but they had a serious resurgence around the time of 'scream'), the detective-fiction-inspired whodunnit-multi-plot-mystery (in which various plot strands/characters combine & culminate in an explanatory ending that's only 'exciting' once; see 'the sixth sense', 'the usual suspects' etc), the fast-talking, quick-scripted pop-culture-savvy-bourgeois-adolescent/mid-twenties drama (see a kevin smith flick, or maybe 'reality bites') & the music video (donnie darko makes apparently amazing use of short, tracking-shot set pieces backed by famous 80's tunes; these are interesting but hardly artistically formidable, & they only work to distract us from the old-hat linearity of the film as a whole). indeed it probably derives its mildly exciting linear style (i.e. chapter-title-like headings, "2 october 1988, 20 days remain" etc, every 20 minutes or so) from kubrick's 'the shining', even tho kubrick's 'chapters' are far more effective because they <em>have such an ambiguous temporal function. </em></span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">ambiguity is good, filmmakers! ambiguity is not the very 'american beauty'-ish electro-piano score that seeks to infuse<em> every </em>scene with a sense of neat-suburban sadness. ambiguity is not in the ambivalence of this film's 'edward scissorhands' stylistic attitude to small-suburbia itself; it's all very well to shed a laughable light over suburban homes/schools & personalities, but to then unashamedly utilise almost every american-suruban-teen-film plot/character device available (the 'different' but cool lead character, his disenchanted but intelligent lover, the two dumb-talking court-jester kids (through whom is best expressed the kevin smith slacker script-spirit), the two rude & equally stupid 'bad guys', the completely off-the-planet gym teacher, & the mildly off-the-planet <em>but loving & stable </em>parental unit) - what does this say of the director/writer's underlying motivations? that he overlaid this movie's 80's-based-strange-time-travel-slasher-detective-fiction-subject-matter on an essentially generic (read: unambiguous & unchallenging) linear-narrative template. this film ain't nothing new. it's "ferris bueller's day off" + the stylistic/narrative influences i mentioned above. which is not necessarily a bad thing. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">& yet there's potential in various aspects of this film - the wonderful performances & chemistry between gyllenhaal & jena malone, the fine song-selection in certain scenes (the final 'mad world' montage is moving, in spite of it being based on an archaic & out-of-place omniscience), the pristine outdoor lighting - to suggest a truly hypnotic & unforgettable step forward for the artform might be just around the corner. perhaps. </span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span>
<br />focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1097725343987166952004-10-14T11:56:00.000+10:002004-10-14T13:46:16.383+10:00the elephant man<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">this film is troubling me. not so much for its psychological impact (isn't lynch lauded as the great weird/freaky/psychological auteur of our time?) but because i can't resist thinking it's a pretty mediocre movie. it's so very odd the way it drops away beyond that wonderful first 30 minutes i mentioned the other day. a gradual disintegration of depth, focus, power, pace, cinematographic <em>care </em>& narrative <em>flair. </em></span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">lynch likes it better when we can't see john merrick's face. he does the initial freakshow tension wonderfully well - the mystery of the flashback/explanatory prologue (featuring the extremely effective motif of merrick's mother screaming <em>with the elephant</em>; a sexual, sonic impregnation, i guess) compounded by the gorgeous 19th-century fair/freakshow & industrial settings. anthony hopkins has this first half hour all to himself, & he simply owns the screen. to kick things off, he does this brilliant swivel towards the camera - figuring himself in the role of an oddly introspective, medicinal impresario (a role he regrets later in the film). his initial examination of merrick is interesting for various reasons - the sound of merrick's breathing dominates the scene (perhaps inspired by kubrick's heavy-breathing spacemen in <em>2001</em>?): this kind of concern for auditory detail is an impressive feature of the film's early stages (lynch strikes me as being a very <em>auditory </em>director, & rightly so; for goodness sake, so few film-makers harness what is an obvious dramatic advantage of their art - <em>it can tap into/manipulate nearly every human sense!</em>). the scene is interrupted by a knock at the door; merrick's breathing becomes fast-paced, intense - as viewers we have no idea what's going on inside that bag on his head (complete with extraneous black hat & a small, suggestive hole, it's a very memorable prop). hopkins ducks outside & a friend mentions that he must have "quite a find in there!". when we re-enter the examination office we get this superb shot of the room as a whole - one's eye searches around for the hidden elephant, cowering gently in a dark corner. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">this scene, the scene previous (the 'private showing' of merrick by the theatrically manic owner/proprieter) & the scene following (the john merrick lecture to some kind of scientific society - hopkins's high-point) - are surely the best of the film. as an audience we still have no idea what merrick looks like - this tension jars against the very fine rendering of genteel, 19th-century men of science. it's when the bag is lifted & we first see merrick (via the effective device of the innocent, breakfast-serving nurse) that things start to fall apart. suddenly we (& lynch, it seems) care more for character study than evocative social horror. such character study entails a wave of dramatic low & high points, sad & happy points - merrick's revelatory eloquence & intelligence, his befriending of various high-society figures, counteracted by undeniably disturbing scenes of mass bullying & exhibitionism, culminating in his re-kidnapping by the owner/proprieter. this kidnapping kick-starts an extremely uneven freakshow sequence, in which merrick suddenly escapes his owner with the help of other 'freaks' & is seen traversing across 'the continent' & back to england on a ship. it's almost amateurish the way merrick's ultimate proclamation - "i am not an animal! i am a human being" - comes at the end of this poorly paced montage-sequence. it completely detracts from the character drama we're supposed to be appreciating.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">which is the primary problem with this film - i'm not sure whether lynch wanted it to be a full-scale psychological horror-portrait (something he might have easily achieved had he kept up the industrial-auditory thematics of the film's early stages, & perhaps honed in on merrick's subtly-suggested sexuality), or a full-scale freak/other-being-accepted-back-into-society character drama. either way the eventual acceptance of merrick into aristocratic english society seems strange & unlikely. there are real dramatic possibilities in hopkins's self-conflict over his role as well-mannered freakshow impresario (the culmination of his guilt might've been the standing ovation (?!) merrick receives while sitting in a box at the theatre), but this theme, as well as, criminally, hopkins himself, are drowned out by our concern with merrick's plight (which reminds of a side-note i wanted to make; merrick reminds me a lot of HAL from <em>2001</em>; perhaps it's the perfect politeness or something), & the concentration on certain side characters who work only as devices (amazingly, john gielgud seems to struggle through his first few scenes). </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">i really can't think of more appropriate subject material for a so-called psychological master than merrick's story - the ostricised, deformed but polite freak living in industrial-gothic, hostile times. the move to black & white was a step in the right direction, no doubt, & the first 30 minutes are superbly executed - but the rest of the movie just doesn't do it for me. the painful final suicide/sleep scene (complete with a very <em>2001</em>-ish imagistic re-birth epilogue) is certainly sad, but pretty much anything can seem sad when backed by barber's 'adagio for strings'. </span>
<br />focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1097372558027633902004-10-10T11:34:00.000+10:002004-10-10T11:42:38.026+10:00woops<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">it's been a while since i've updated - sorry. been well & truly sidetracked by literary (& political, ugh) matters. will try & get around to watching something soon.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">having said that, i did arrive home stoned the other night to find lynch's 'the elephant man' was on tv. never seen it before (i've stupidly ignored lynch for too long), & after watching the first half hour or so before passing out, i came to the conclusion it's in a different stratosphere to most films. impeccably crafted, filled with a meditative kubrickian tension - twas bloody ludicrously good. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">i promise to review something in full soon.</span>
<br />focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7989608.post-1096263921190515042004-09-27T14:27:00.000+10:002004-09-27T15:45:21.190+10:00jfk<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">interesting that i should choose to 'review' oliver stone's paranoid epic on the heels of my curtailed 'casino' review. both films push the 3-hour mark. both are packed full of facts & characters & general madness such that first-time viewing is, if anything, a chore. but both, my god, both are such good <em>films. </em>wonderfully sustained dramatic tapestries of fact & mistruth. wonderfully evocative of their respective periods - in jfk's case, the mid-60's. & while any comparison of the two would see scorcese win out as the more masterful 'tapestrist' (?) (casino is better-paced than jfk, less dependent on extended conversations/extraneous character development, & more alive with flair, energy) jfk retains an almost <em>film noir-</em>ish sense of conspiracy-theory fun. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">& getting back to my point about first-time viewing. must've been 1991. for some bizarre reason (i was, what, 9 or 10 years old?) i tagged along with my mum & her mum to see 'jfk' at the camperdown cinema. camperdown is a smallish country town about 2 & a half hours west of melbourne (a pretty town, actually, set below this big dormant volcano/crater-lake ) - as a kid we used to cruise down there two or three times a year & stay on a family farm.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">from memory the theatre was empty. it was night. a summerish night, & they opened the side doors of the cinema to let a gorgeous breeze thru the place. i sat between my mum & my grandma & was mildly contented to find i was the only one to stay awake until the credits. my grandma gave in about the time kevin costner (whose face now adorns my bedroom wall courtesy of the movie poster) started interviewing donald sutherland - oh, sorry, 'X' - a vital half-hour sustained only by the fedoras & experienced urgency of sutherland's delivery. my mum relaxed into breezy sleep after double-checking with me that her mum was still alive - my grandma had really settled in, her mouth alarmingly open in repose. i'm near-certain there's a poem in this whole episode.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">it wasn't that i was entranced that i managed to sit thru the full 3 hours. back then nothing really soaked in. there were a lot of names, a lot of connections, & a bit of action by way of flashbacks & the horrendous 'zapruder film' of the actual assassination, which we see towards the end of the film. more than anything i garnered a sense of intense, classy drama from the whole thing - especially from the black & white flashbacks, the very neatly edited packages of action that tend to accompany costner's voiceovers (inside & outside the courtroom).</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">i've sat thru 'jfk' about 10 times since. for a while there i embarrassed myself into believing much of what the film claims - that oswald didn't act alone, that he was indeed a 'patsy', as he claimed, & that kennedy was killed by way of an incredibly speculative & ludicrously multi-layered conspiracy involving about 1000 people, including LBJ. in high school i'd prattle onto various history teachers about my 'theories', ripped straight from the closing courtroom presentation of costner & co. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">what a shock i got when i decided to 'read around', to see what people thought of the film, to see how costner's character (new orleans DA jim garrison) is judged by conspiracy-theorists & lone-gunman-believers alike. needless to say, the general consensus was incredibly & often eloquently unkind. watch the film, then spend half an hour reading a website like 'One Hundred Errors of Fact and Judgment in Oliver Stone's JFK': </span>
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<br /><a href="http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100menu.html"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100menu.html</span></a>
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<br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">& you begin to realise just how negligent & irresponsible a film 'jfk' really is. it's a stupidly speculative, wildly inaccurate & revoltingly libelous vision (stone - via garrison - essentially lays the blame for kennedy's death at the feet of innocent, ordinary & conveniently dead men). & yet inexplicably i cannot stop acknowledging it as a masterpiece of detective/P.I. fiction (with admittedly jarring patriotic overtones). </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">perhaps it's the performances. costner is good because he's dull; stone knows the real interest lies in the surrounding cast (perhaps the oddest yet most ordinary set of real-life people ever portrayed on screen) - the same cast don delillo utilises in his 'libra'. tommy lee jones as the king conspirator, 'clay shaw'; entepreneur & socialite - such a fine, upright but arrogant performance. joe pesci as david ferrie - a rare instance wherein pesci doesn't play joe pesci, but an openly insecure, aggressive, ludicrously high-strung idiot. so many little cameo roles for people who would never have imagined they'd EVER be portrayed by hollywood stars on the big screen. & therein probably lies the secret behind the power of certain performances - pesci, lee jones etc realised that they were playing figures from history who are not really that special. they had to make them seem important in order to add to the gravity of this 'history as lightning' tale we're told. thus the powerful sense of farce about guys like shaw/ferrie/dean andrews/even oswald.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">but all blame, both for the film's wild inaccuracies & its dramatic successes, its fundamental ability to <em>get us interested </em>in such a convoluted tale, must rest with oliver stone. he's quoted somewhere as saying he loved the story for its mystery, its dramatic & stylistic possibilities - a plot traced to a random pistol-whipping in a P.I.'s office on a rainy night, a cross-texas drive in a massive thunderstorm. it's this kind of <em>noir</em>-ish spirit he combines so well with a paranoid patriotism to create such a horrendously flawed but compelling epic. </span>
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<br />focyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07109676371181553492noreply@blogger.com14