Saturday, August 13, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
“The latest lovely, desperate film by one of the most brilliant filmmakers alive...should be seen by everyone interested in movies or in life, without hesitation or delay.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum
“A masterpiece of contemporary aimlessness in furious motion. Every image is suffused with such elegant and exquisite insights into what makes the medium interact with its material that the total effect is intoxicating.” – Andrew Sarris
Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man for Himself plays at Vancouver's Pacific Cinematheque from February 3rd to 7th.Monday, January 17, 2011
Cinema, 2010
2010 has been kind to me, and while the cinema of this year hasn't reached me on the level of last years masterpieces (Public Enemies, Two Lovers, and Adventureland), I've still had good times in the 90 or so feature films that I saw. Having acquired positions for both Mubi.com and Vancouver International Film Festival (the latter being volunteer) has provided me with chance to meet to film critics whom I admire while also giving me access to watch more movies! For VIFF I got the chance to view a great deal international submissions from relatively unknown filmmakers (but I only saw one which was actually good). And for Mubi I've assisted with editing work, which basically means I add films, films, and more films to our increasingly growing database. Blogging wise, I wrote my first piece of film criticism which might be worth something, and I also made a little short about two of my good friends– which wasn't my only venture into filmmaking this year, as I also shot my second narrative short during the summer, which will hopefully make an appearance in viral realms soonish. Anyways, enough "I's", lets get to the good stuff.
The Ten
1. Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/France)
The animals ("Des Animaux"), which originally protected the children on their way down Laughton's river in The Night of the Hunter return, but this time we are the children, and the river is an ocean that we cut across in a culture-sucking cruise ship as Llama's, Parrots, Kittens, and Owls look on at our wasted use of consciousness. But what cultural crime has been committed? Godard's furious mise-en-scene, and cacophonous video montages realize an invisible event which most of the world turned its back to. This digital vision of "our humanities" brings its creator to his knee's in front of the mediums future and our own. It's a masterpiece, really.
2. Karamay (Xu Xin, China)
Xu Xin's baroque 6 hour search for the cause of the deaths of nearly 800 children in a fire at Karamay's Friendship Hall in China is an arduous journey through static shots of the parents left behind: their words, their cries, all of it. Taking on an anti-didactic form, Xu abandons questions and opens the floor for every parent to repeat the same lamentations of those before them. In this act of repetition we begin to hear repeating rhythm's: in words, cries, and looks, to formulate that which is not being said.
3. The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel De Oliveira, Portugal)
The 102 year old Manoel De Oliveira returns to the setting of the first film he made in 1931 and writes a sublime farewell to a world which was once photographic prior to capitalism's gaze. Apart of the schema is a photographer, a dead woman he photographs – who is reborn in a slight glance at his photograph, and a small group of manual laborers who work across the canal. The mysterious threads which binds these figures together will be up for future generations to unravel, as De Oliveira's images are so dense that only time itself may loosen their density, unless your name is David Phelps.
4. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)
Cinema realized and distilled in its most spiritual form since Tarkovsky. Enough has been said about this film by people much more articulate about transcendentalist cinema than myself, so I'll just let the image above do my job for me!
5. White Material (Claire Denis, France)
A visually ferocious look at the unreconciled colonialism in Africa, White Material moves in logical progression from Denis' debut, Chocolat. But Denis' vision of Africa has rearranged itself for the times, and instead of focusing on a colonialist child's upbringing, Denis' camera turns to a subject of slight difficulty. Isabelle Huppert's Maria Vial is a woman who's determination destroys all that which still resides in her colony, and while things slowly disseminate into violent finale, Denis, with her wonderful cinematographer Agnes Godard, both grapple the morale width of it all in languid, sensuous images that transmute the violence of this land into dust, heat, and skin.
6. Cold Weather (Aaron Katz, U.S.)
Manages to return American genre cinema to a Hitchcockian zone where characters are not merely solving a case but are also unconsciously solving themselves. In a fresh and rare way, this film takes on a Psycho-esque structure to allow a brother and sister reconnect the idea of talking with each other instead of talking at one another. Katz exuberant use of a RED camera makes this film look unlike any other detective picture or American indie before it, and it's just a lot of fun.
7. Around A Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette, France)
Rivette snags a few worn-out concepts from recent Hollywood cinema (The Majestic, anyone?) and strings them together into a beautiful yet petit world of magic, love, loss, and the circus (or are they all the same thing?). Oddly staged to the effect that we, the viewer, are directly incorporated into the images by invitation via subtle meta-abridgments. I suspect, that Rivette brings us inside in order to experience this warmly staged yet familiar melodrama from a ethereal angle. The result? A quiet tale which is sure to envelop and entrench anyone with a sense of freedom that only an age old master could possibly concoct.
8. Morgen (Marian Crisan, Romania)
A tragic comedy about a Romanian named Nelu at a time where his schematic life is interrupted by an illegal immigrant to tumultuous and often times hilarious effect. One of the virtues (not to say they have vices) of all these wonderful films coming from Romania of late, is their way of cooking comedy and tragedy together for a strange brew of results. Even better is this/these film(s) obstinate depiction of heroism in the everyman, and the cyclical nature of the country in which they reside and in doing so, the films themselves, move like Sisyphus along with their subjects.
9. Hereafter (Clint Eastwood, U.S.)
In a year where Hollywood cinema is almost entirely schematic and programmed for a conclusion (The Social Network especially), it's just damn nice to finally see a film that's at its characters level: lost, confused, but fervently searching. Lit with those familiar silent shadows from Million Dollar Baby, these characters gently serenade around each other until the time is right. And when the time is right, classical music queue's spool up to the perfect decibel, and close-ups make a perfect sized smile to ensure that theater is warmer then when you initially came in.
10. Scott Pilgrim v.s. The World (Edgar Wright, U.S.)
The story of 'boy-meets-girl' is reborn through a bricolage of cultural byproducts and 8-bit Legend of Zelda tunes. Boy/Girl's plight has drowned in the quagmire of our digital ruckus. Lazy philistines have stolen art and it's all up to Scott Pilgrim to save it–- as well as redefine that four letter word while he's at it. The formal exuberance of Brian De Palma is rhymed with the existential concerns of Douglas Sirk. An auteur is born?
Runner ups
The Anchorage (C.W. Winter & Anders Edstrom, U.S./Sweden)
HaHaHa (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
The Father of My Children (Mia Hansen-Løve, France/Germany)
Bellamy (Claude Chabrol, France)
Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, U.S.)
Of Mention
The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, France/Germany/U.K.)
Oki's Movie (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
Ruhr (James Benning, Germany/U.S.)
And Everything is Going Fine (Steven Soderbergh, U.S.)
Aurora (Cristi Puiu, Romania/Switzerland/Germany/France)
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu (Andrei Ujica, Romania)
Performances
Isabelle Huppert – White Material
Mickey Rourke – The Expendables
Alice de Lencquesaing – The Father of My Children
Elle Fanning – Somewhere
Sang-kyung Kim – HaHaHa
and the guy who plays Morgen in – Morgen
Shorts
1. 607 (Liu Jiayin, China)
2. TRISCO (Nathan Earl Hess, United States)
3. Love Lust and Everything Inbetween (Drew Gregory, United States)
4. The Anthem (Apichatpong, Thailand)
5. Get Out of the Car (Thomas Andersen, United States)
6. Tripped Up: Part 1 - Movement (James Maki, United States)
7. octopus steals my camera and swims off with it (while it's recording) (“chimpsnatch”/An Octopus, ?) –watch this one with the sound off, and ignore the textual commentary for some petit-Brakhage visual fun!
Moments (from movies which did not make the top ten)
Elle Fanning ice skates to Gwen Stefani's “Cool” – Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, United States)
In Coppola's vision of L.A. Culture, all of its inhabitants live under the illusion that they're moving when they're actually not. Johnny Marco's (Dorff) sports car does circles in the desert, pole-dancers twirl in the misogynistic stasis of the male gaze, and the only trace of freedom left in this place is in the circles which Cleo (Fanning) makes at an ice rink. The quiet allowance of her fathers gaze, the reversal of shots– not so dissimilar to Johnny watching the pole-dancers a few scenes prior, and the tender agreement voiced by Gwen Stefani's slickly delivered words “I know we're cool” defines this father-daughter relationship in a quiet yet enveloping way.
Oki Gets Her Turn – Oki's Movie (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
In a movie totally dominated by male perspective and a male hand clearly governing the show, it's just so god damned neat that Oki's Movie final moments rest in the lap of a woman. Male narration subsides for Oki's welcomed voice to slip into the soundtrack and begin to expound upon her physically similar yet emotionally differing walks with the two men from the films narrative. As the two walks reach their end, this quaint, pocket-sized movie begins to creep up on us with its calming emotional resolve, not underwhelming or overwhelming, but just about the right size to fit in your pocket and stay with you after you leave.
Sly and Mickey cry – The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, United States)
Outside of the films almost programmatic and video game-like “Mission mode” Sly and Mickey share a moment which is either the most talked about scene from a recent action picture, or the least. But it's probably the former, and for good reason to.
Mickey's degraded lips, in a close-up– which is just too close, murmurs words which just barely form themselves yet manage string together memories of fighting in Bosnia and the “god-damned Dracula-black” head space he was in. “There was this girl” Stallone says, and Mickey, like a relic from Nick Ray's cinema, says “there usually is.” This repose between the two men is only sustainable by them not directly facing one another but instead conversing via a mirror, and as Mickey's words go on and get to their point Stallone painfully retreats from his own reflection and into the dark. Strangely powerful, this sequence manages to cut through the films bone and gets to the marrow, and that is, American xenophobia and violence which lacks an authentic ideology at its foundation. But with this being an action vehicle, the film is bound to return to its violence. This scene goes on to be forgotten by the film in a way which is morally synonymous with Stallone's initial confusion brought on by this woman “who cares for something.”
Two Images of the Same Thing – Vapor Trail (John Gianvito, United States)
Two boys play on a muddy road during torrential rainfall at the water contaminated and American constructed Clark Airbase in the Philippines. One, clearly enjoying himself more than the other, lays down in a puddle. Gianvito then cuts to an old photograph, identical in composition, of a Filipino soldier similarly splayed out, but killed by an Americans hand.
Things
Greta Gerwig's murmuring in Greenberg
The tracking shots in Around a Small Mountain
Rebecca Hall's clarity v.s. Blake Lively's incoherence in The Town
Carlos' jacket in Cold Weather
That piece of paper that floats by in the first shot of Benning's Ruhr
and (only because I can) John Legend's voice on the Kanye West track "Blame Game"
The Worst
A Film Unfinished (Yael Heronski, Israel) Revives archived footage of Jewish life preemptive to the holocaust only to be looked at with nonconstructive lamentation. Interviewee's (victims) tell us their stories within the context of voyeuristic montage techniques that don't look so dissimilar to the tools used to build the core of a who-dun-it picture. Yet we know who did it, and while further generations need reminders, we do not need vessels of the worlds worst memories that are themselves, totally unmemorable.
Cold Fish (Sion Sono, Japan) Simplistic misanthropy drudges along to half-baked finish line reveal. Existential search on screen is almost completely bordered off to the audiences own questions and experience in just how god damned simple it all is. I've seen episodes of Friends with more formal exuberance than this.
The Man From Nowhere (Lee Jeong-Beom, South Korea) Boooooooooring.
Inception (Christopher Nolan, United States) a $160,000,000 audio-book.
Catfish (Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman, United States) Prime ingredients are left unacknowledged in the films crossover between misanthropic-mode to we-are-sorry-mode making the latter transparent and the former prevalent. The illusion that remains is kind of cute though.
Images
Retrospective Discoveries (Masterpieces)
The Mother and The Whore (Eustache, 1973)
L'Enfant Secret (Garrel, 1979)
The Bridges of Madison County (Eastwood, 1995)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg, 2001)
La Ceremonie (Chabrol, 1995)
The Addiction (Ferrara, 1995)
Mysterious Skin (Araki, 2004)
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965)
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (Carax, 1991)
The Apu Trilogy (Ray, 1955-1959)
Make Way for Tommorow (McCarey, 1937)
Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti, 1960)
Showgirls (Verhoeven, 1995)
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975)
Comrades (Douglas, 1986)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls, 1948)
Teorema (Pasolini, 1968)
Les Hautes Solitudes (Garrel, 1974)
Phantom India (Malle, 1969)
Out of the Blue (Hopper, 1980)
On the Horizon
1. A Burning Hot Summer – Philippe Garrel, France
2. Hugo Cabret – Martin Scorsese, U.S.
3. The Adventures of TinTin: The Secret of the Unicorn / The War Horse – Steven Spielberg, U.S.
4. A Igreja do Diabo – Manoel De Oliveira, Brazil
5. Promises Written in Water – Vincent Gallo, U.S.
6. The Tree of Life – Terrence Malick, U.S.
7. The Turin Horse – Bela Tarr, Hungary
8. Meek's Cutoff - Kelly Reichardt, U.S.
9. Paul – Greg Mottola, U.S.
10. You Aint Seen Nothing Yet – Alain Resnais, France
The Ten
1. Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/France)The animals ("Des Animaux"), which originally protected the children on their way down Laughton's river in The Night of the Hunter return, but this time we are the children, and the river is an ocean that we cut across in a culture-sucking cruise ship as Llama's, Parrots, Kittens, and Owls look on at our wasted use of consciousness. But what cultural crime has been committed? Godard's furious mise-en-scene, and cacophonous video montages realize an invisible event which most of the world turned its back to. This digital vision of "our humanities" brings its creator to his knee's in front of the mediums future and our own. It's a masterpiece, really.
2. Karamay (Xu Xin, China)Xu Xin's baroque 6 hour search for the cause of the deaths of nearly 800 children in a fire at Karamay's Friendship Hall in China is an arduous journey through static shots of the parents left behind: their words, their cries, all of it. Taking on an anti-didactic form, Xu abandons questions and opens the floor for every parent to repeat the same lamentations of those before them. In this act of repetition we begin to hear repeating rhythm's: in words, cries, and looks, to formulate that which is not being said.
3. The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel De Oliveira, Portugal)The 102 year old Manoel De Oliveira returns to the setting of the first film he made in 1931 and writes a sublime farewell to a world which was once photographic prior to capitalism's gaze. Apart of the schema is a photographer, a dead woman he photographs – who is reborn in a slight glance at his photograph, and a small group of manual laborers who work across the canal. The mysterious threads which binds these figures together will be up for future generations to unravel, as De Oliveira's images are so dense that only time itself may loosen their density, unless your name is David Phelps.
4. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)Cinema realized and distilled in its most spiritual form since Tarkovsky. Enough has been said about this film by people much more articulate about transcendentalist cinema than myself, so I'll just let the image above do my job for me!
5. White Material (Claire Denis, France)A visually ferocious look at the unreconciled colonialism in Africa, White Material moves in logical progression from Denis' debut, Chocolat. But Denis' vision of Africa has rearranged itself for the times, and instead of focusing on a colonialist child's upbringing, Denis' camera turns to a subject of slight difficulty. Isabelle Huppert's Maria Vial is a woman who's determination destroys all that which still resides in her colony, and while things slowly disseminate into violent finale, Denis, with her wonderful cinematographer Agnes Godard, both grapple the morale width of it all in languid, sensuous images that transmute the violence of this land into dust, heat, and skin.
6. Cold Weather (Aaron Katz, U.S.)Manages to return American genre cinema to a Hitchcockian zone where characters are not merely solving a case but are also unconsciously solving themselves. In a fresh and rare way, this film takes on a Psycho-esque structure to allow a brother and sister reconnect the idea of talking with each other instead of talking at one another. Katz exuberant use of a RED camera makes this film look unlike any other detective picture or American indie before it, and it's just a lot of fun.
7. Around A Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette, France)Rivette snags a few worn-out concepts from recent Hollywood cinema (The Majestic, anyone?) and strings them together into a beautiful yet petit world of magic, love, loss, and the circus (or are they all the same thing?). Oddly staged to the effect that we, the viewer, are directly incorporated into the images by invitation via subtle meta-abridgments. I suspect, that Rivette brings us inside in order to experience this warmly staged yet familiar melodrama from a ethereal angle. The result? A quiet tale which is sure to envelop and entrench anyone with a sense of freedom that only an age old master could possibly concoct.
8. Morgen (Marian Crisan, Romania)A tragic comedy about a Romanian named Nelu at a time where his schematic life is interrupted by an illegal immigrant to tumultuous and often times hilarious effect. One of the virtues (not to say they have vices) of all these wonderful films coming from Romania of late, is their way of cooking comedy and tragedy together for a strange brew of results. Even better is this/these film(s) obstinate depiction of heroism in the everyman, and the cyclical nature of the country in which they reside and in doing so, the films themselves, move like Sisyphus along with their subjects.
9. Hereafter (Clint Eastwood, U.S.)In a year where Hollywood cinema is almost entirely schematic and programmed for a conclusion (The Social Network especially), it's just damn nice to finally see a film that's at its characters level: lost, confused, but fervently searching. Lit with those familiar silent shadows from Million Dollar Baby, these characters gently serenade around each other until the time is right. And when the time is right, classical music queue's spool up to the perfect decibel, and close-ups make a perfect sized smile to ensure that theater is warmer then when you initially came in.
10. Scott Pilgrim v.s. The World (Edgar Wright, U.S.)The story of 'boy-meets-girl' is reborn through a bricolage of cultural byproducts and 8-bit Legend of Zelda tunes. Boy/Girl's plight has drowned in the quagmire of our digital ruckus. Lazy philistines have stolen art and it's all up to Scott Pilgrim to save it–- as well as redefine that four letter word while he's at it. The formal exuberance of Brian De Palma is rhymed with the existential concerns of Douglas Sirk. An auteur is born?
Runner ups
The Anchorage (C.W. Winter & Anders Edstrom, U.S./Sweden)
HaHaHa (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
The Father of My Children (Mia Hansen-Løve, France/Germany)
Bellamy (Claude Chabrol, France)
Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, U.S.)
Of Mention
The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, France/Germany/U.K.)
Oki's Movie (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
Ruhr (James Benning, Germany/U.S.)
And Everything is Going Fine (Steven Soderbergh, U.S.)
Aurora (Cristi Puiu, Romania/Switzerland/Germany/France)
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu (Andrei Ujica, Romania)
Performances
Isabelle Huppert – White Material
Mickey Rourke – The Expendables
Alice de Lencquesaing – The Father of My Children
Elle Fanning – Somewhere
Sang-kyung Kim – HaHaHa
and the guy who plays Morgen in – Morgen
Shorts
1. 607 (Liu Jiayin, China)
2. TRISCO (Nathan Earl Hess, United States)
3. Love Lust and Everything Inbetween (Drew Gregory, United States)
4. The Anthem (Apichatpong, Thailand)
5. Get Out of the Car (Thomas Andersen, United States)
6. Tripped Up: Part 1 - Movement (James Maki, United States)
7. octopus steals my camera and swims off with it (while it's recording) (“chimpsnatch”/An Octopus, ?) –watch this one with the sound off, and ignore the textual commentary for some petit-Brakhage visual fun!
Moments (from movies which did not make the top ten)
Elle Fanning ice skates to Gwen Stefani's “Cool” – Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, United States)
In Coppola's vision of L.A. Culture, all of its inhabitants live under the illusion that they're moving when they're actually not. Johnny Marco's (Dorff) sports car does circles in the desert, pole-dancers twirl in the misogynistic stasis of the male gaze, and the only trace of freedom left in this place is in the circles which Cleo (Fanning) makes at an ice rink. The quiet allowance of her fathers gaze, the reversal of shots– not so dissimilar to Johnny watching the pole-dancers a few scenes prior, and the tender agreement voiced by Gwen Stefani's slickly delivered words “I know we're cool” defines this father-daughter relationship in a quiet yet enveloping way.
Oki Gets Her Turn – Oki's Movie (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
In a movie totally dominated by male perspective and a male hand clearly governing the show, it's just so god damned neat that Oki's Movie final moments rest in the lap of a woman. Male narration subsides for Oki's welcomed voice to slip into the soundtrack and begin to expound upon her physically similar yet emotionally differing walks with the two men from the films narrative. As the two walks reach their end, this quaint, pocket-sized movie begins to creep up on us with its calming emotional resolve, not underwhelming or overwhelming, but just about the right size to fit in your pocket and stay with you after you leave.
Sly and Mickey cry – The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, United States)
Outside of the films almost programmatic and video game-like “Mission mode” Sly and Mickey share a moment which is either the most talked about scene from a recent action picture, or the least. But it's probably the former, and for good reason to.
Mickey's degraded lips, in a close-up– which is just too close, murmurs words which just barely form themselves yet manage string together memories of fighting in Bosnia and the “god-damned Dracula-black” head space he was in. “There was this girl” Stallone says, and Mickey, like a relic from Nick Ray's cinema, says “there usually is.” This repose between the two men is only sustainable by them not directly facing one another but instead conversing via a mirror, and as Mickey's words go on and get to their point Stallone painfully retreats from his own reflection and into the dark. Strangely powerful, this sequence manages to cut through the films bone and gets to the marrow, and that is, American xenophobia and violence which lacks an authentic ideology at its foundation. But with this being an action vehicle, the film is bound to return to its violence. This scene goes on to be forgotten by the film in a way which is morally synonymous with Stallone's initial confusion brought on by this woman “who cares for something.”
Two Images of the Same Thing – Vapor Trail (John Gianvito, United States)
Two boys play on a muddy road during torrential rainfall at the water contaminated and American constructed Clark Airbase in the Philippines. One, clearly enjoying himself more than the other, lays down in a puddle. Gianvito then cuts to an old photograph, identical in composition, of a Filipino soldier similarly splayed out, but killed by an Americans hand.
Things
Greta Gerwig's murmuring in Greenberg
The tracking shots in Around a Small Mountain
Rebecca Hall's clarity v.s. Blake Lively's incoherence in The Town
Carlos' jacket in Cold Weather
That piece of paper that floats by in the first shot of Benning's Ruhr
and (only because I can) John Legend's voice on the Kanye West track "Blame Game"
The Worst
A Film Unfinished (Yael Heronski, Israel) Revives archived footage of Jewish life preemptive to the holocaust only to be looked at with nonconstructive lamentation. Interviewee's (victims) tell us their stories within the context of voyeuristic montage techniques that don't look so dissimilar to the tools used to build the core of a who-dun-it picture. Yet we know who did it, and while further generations need reminders, we do not need vessels of the worlds worst memories that are themselves, totally unmemorable.
Cold Fish (Sion Sono, Japan) Simplistic misanthropy drudges along to half-baked finish line reveal. Existential search on screen is almost completely bordered off to the audiences own questions and experience in just how god damned simple it all is. I've seen episodes of Friends with more formal exuberance than this.
The Man From Nowhere (Lee Jeong-Beom, South Korea) Boooooooooring.
Inception (Christopher Nolan, United States) a $160,000,000 audio-book.
Catfish (Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman, United States) Prime ingredients are left unacknowledged in the films crossover between misanthropic-mode to we-are-sorry-mode making the latter transparent and the former prevalent. The illusion that remains is kind of cute though.
Images
Retrospective Discoveries (Masterpieces)
The Mother and The Whore (Eustache, 1973)
L'Enfant Secret (Garrel, 1979)
The Bridges of Madison County (Eastwood, 1995)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg, 2001)
La Ceremonie (Chabrol, 1995)
The Addiction (Ferrara, 1995)
Mysterious Skin (Araki, 2004)
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
Le Bonheur (Varda, 1965)
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (Carax, 1991)
The Apu Trilogy (Ray, 1955-1959)
Make Way for Tommorow (McCarey, 1937)
Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti, 1960)
Showgirls (Verhoeven, 1995)
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975)
Comrades (Douglas, 1986)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls, 1948)
Teorema (Pasolini, 1968)
Les Hautes Solitudes (Garrel, 1974)
Phantom India (Malle, 1969)
Out of the Blue (Hopper, 1980)
On the Horizon
1. A Burning Hot Summer – Philippe Garrel, France
2. Hugo Cabret – Martin Scorsese, U.S.
3. The Adventures of TinTin: The Secret of the Unicorn / The War Horse – Steven Spielberg, U.S.
4. A Igreja do Diabo – Manoel De Oliveira, Brazil
5. Promises Written in Water – Vincent Gallo, U.S.
6. The Tree of Life – Terrence Malick, U.S.
7. The Turin Horse – Bela Tarr, Hungary
8. Meek's Cutoff - Kelly Reichardt, U.S.
9. Paul – Greg Mottola, U.S.
10. You Aint Seen Nothing Yet – Alain Resnais, France
Friday, December 24, 2010
Visualizing Love: Eastwood's "The Bridges of Madison County"
1. Boy (Robert Kincaid) Meets Girl (Francesca Johnson)
a space is opened for her to fit.
2. A Bridge
Their movements are recorded via two opposing tracking shots.
Robert photographs not only out of duty but of requirement to confirm his surroundings and her presence.
Francesca needs the same confirmation as Robert, except hers is vulnerable and noticed through that missing plank.
3. The Next Day (Love)
The opposing tracking shots are absolved for Francesca and Robert to now exist in the same shot (pan) but be divided into separate images...
Francesca now walks the bridge without feeling the need to confirm his presence.
4. Not a "Goodbye." Instead, A Final "Hello."
Francesca gets in her truck and puts a bag of groceries in the space which Robert once cleared, thus closing their spatial distance and making what remains of their love space itself.
a space is opened for her to fit.2. A Bridge
Their movements are recorded via two opposing tracking shots. 
Robert photographs not only out of duty but of requirement to confirm his surroundings and her presence.
Francesca needs the same confirmation as Robert, except hers is vulnerable and noticed through that missing plank.3. The Next Day (Love)
The opposing tracking shots are absolved for Francesca and Robert to now exist in the same shot (pan) but be divided into separate images...
Francesca now walks the bridge without feeling the need to confirm his presence.
4. Not a "Goodbye." Instead, A Final "Hello."
Francesca gets in her truck and puts a bag of groceries in the space which Robert once cleared, thus closing their spatial distance and making what remains of their love space itself.
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