24 posts tagged “film”

Oh, the animationn

Just got back from the “OH, THE ANIMATION!” film festival at the Egyptian in Hollywood. There was some really great stuff there. Three of the films “failed to show up”, which was kind of weird. I think all of the films were CG so I don’t understand why they didn’t just send over a file. But the Egyptian probably isn’t set up for that kind of thing.

Here’s a quick rundown of the flicks that seemed to do well with the crowd - and by crowd I guess I really mean me.

Juan Pablo Zaramella’s "Lapsus" (Argentina, 4 min) really killed at the fest. Easily the biggest favorite all night. People couldn’t stop laughing at its seemingly endless wit.

Here’s a link to Zaramella’s site where you can check out the first 40 seconds of the short.

The big closer was  Bob Ray’s "Apeshit Wa-Hoo" (USA, 5 min), which seemed to get a lot of “What the Fuck?!” laughs. I thought it was funny but to be honest I was really distracted by how much the clerk reminded me of H.I. McDonnough in Raising Arizona.

Here’s a pic of H.I. and the short is right below it.

RaisingArizona

The Intruder Flyer

And finally there’s Alessandro Ceglia’s "Intruder" (USA, 3 min) which played really early on and kind of stayed with me throughout the rest of the festival. It’s pretty awesome in my book. Its heavy line work and clever 3D camera moves got me really jazzed about animation. The story is a little too simple for me but what I dug so much about it was it’s overall design. It feels crafted. Which is what i generally love about animation. That sense of the surreal. Because it’s the one of the few mediums where you can just go crazy in terms of visual playfulness.
Ceglia seems to be into dynamic camera moves and strong dynamic, framing. It’s gothic design and monochromed palette made it my personal favorite of the festival.

Here's the link to the films site.

This has been around for awhile now but after reading this over at Ain’t It Cool I feel like  it’ll be the only time I'll get to see what Spike Jonze & Dave Eggers intended.While the performances in the clip are a little cold (this is test footage) the warmth of the cinematography is amazing. The tenderness of the image breathtaking. It looks beautiful, heartbreaking and just downright lovely.

So it hurts to think that this could all go down the potty because of petty desires for  “accessible characters” and the ever present goal of capitalizing on merchandising opportunities.  Ironically, all the problems that the studio seems to be having are the SAME problems that Maurice Sendak had when he originally published the book in 1963.

The Librarians Guild found the book to be violent and was disappointed that the book featured a main character that was rude to his parents and had no remorse about it at the end. And you know what? They’re right. The kid is a bit of a shithead. He’s mean to everybody. And he never apologizes for it. But where is it written that every book that’s presented to children should encourage them to be docile, subservient automatons?

I like the idea of films with characters that are a difficult to be around. It’s fascinating watching how they react to a world that they clearly reject. (See the work of Martin Scorsese for examples of how hypnotizing this can be.) So I  hope and pray to the Movie-Gods above that they let this one through the Valley of Death of focus groups, and test-screenings  unharmed and delivered at multiplexes with love.

But if they don’t you always have the loving memory of that test footage.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Director David Fincher

This has been out for a while now, but better late than never. David Fincher’s interview with Ain’t It Cool News’ Quint is fantastic. I personally have always dug the AICN interview format. Sparingly edited, candid, and always fanboyish I can’t think of one that I don’t like. Although I wish they would produce a podcast of the interviews.

Check out the interview here.

The other day me and the girlfriend finished up Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD. While at first the clarity of the image was distracting (I personally found myself stunned by the smoothness of Hayden Pantierre's skin), as the series went along, I found something a lot more distracting.

The is an eerie similarity between Splat Pack horror Director Eli Roth and Zachary Quinto who plays Sylar the homicidal empath on the show.

I'm fully aware that only a real nerd would be distracted by this. I'm fully aware because my girlfriend was kind enough to inform me of this dismal fact when I presented her with the evidence.

Here's a side by side comparison.

Image

Heroes_l

Sure it's not identical, but it drives me nuts. 

For awhile now I've thought that Chris Cunningham would have the career of a David Lynch or David Cronenberg, but it looks like I'll have to wait on that. The good news is that while Chris is off working on the sequel to Rubber Johnny (just guessing) his style is being used to market a movie that he could have directed.

Exhibit A: The Trailer for "The Work of Chris Cunningham"

Primer Poster

At night and on weekends, four men in a suburban garage have built a cottage industry of error-checking devices. But, they know that there is something more. There is some idea, some mechanism, some accidental side effect that is standing between them and a pure leap of innovation. And so, through trial and error they are building the device that is missing most. However, two of these men find the device and immediately realize that it is too valuable to market. The limit of their trust in each other is strained when they are faced with the question, If you always want what you can't have, what do you want when you can have anything? Written by Sujit R. Varma

When El Mariachi originally came out no one believed that anyone could make a film for seven thousand dollars. It seemed insane. Then a couple of years later,  The Blair Witch Project comes out and doest the kind of box office business that Hollywood Films like Death to Smoochy wish they could have had. That witch changed EVERYthing.

There was a flood of movie made on no budgets at all and plenty of them got some attention. The problem was that a lot of them weren’t any good.

The problem with the “independent” film world is, that people max out their credit cards by trying to make films that look just as good as Hollywood movies, or have characters that have sellable character arcs. And redeemable social messages. Because when you make a movie in you’re early twenties you hope and pray that not only that someone will see, love and subsequently buy and distribute your movie. But that the people that do buy your movie at least have a reserved parking space at one of the major studios.

So,  to make a movie for seven thousand dollars, about a couple of engineers who build a time machine and become involved in a complex narrative cinematic riddle with no notable visual effects or recognizable actors) or for that matter actor’s with any previous experience), is just plain nutty.

This movie is as smart and as clever as anything that has come out of Hollywood for a long time. And it was made by an engineer who had no previous film experience. Who was literally self taught and who not only delivered a brilliant narrative film,  but also one that had a complete visual look and deceptively simple characters.

Primer is really a step into a direction of filmmaking that I think we should all embrace because aside from the production wonders. It is filled with amazing stuff. Usually when you watch sci-fi films there tends to be a lot of dumbing down of technical jargon. Primer embraces it. Because it doesn’t really matter what  the exact terms mean, because we are shown  those theories and put into practice. When we watch two mechanics work over a car and discuss the job to be done, it’s not so much what they’re saying  but what they’re doing. We tend to listen with half an ear.

Primer also deals with it’s audience in away that’s very different. When we first saw Remember The Matrix? That movie's ideas was hammered into our reads with scene after scene of exposition Because it’s really important for EVERYONE in the audience to stay with the movie in order for it to pay off at the end. It’s gotta be one of the first rules of screenwriting, don’t’ alienate you audience. But Primer doesn’t really seem to give a shit whether you’re with it or not. It’s on a path and it will not deviate from that path to explain theories of causality. For viewers that are unprepared that can be a very jarring experience. But it also results in a movie that is lean and free of the narrative fat that clogs up the pace of a lot of movies.

I think that Primer while not a date move definitely requires you to watch it with someone else if for no other reason than to see how they interpret the events in the movie.
I’ve shown the movie to a few people and their observations of the event seem to differ greatly.

By the end you’ll wonder if the Doc Brown really needed a DeLorean with a Flex Capacitor after all.

Primer official site

Add Primer to your Netflix Queue
Buy Primer on Amazon
Trade Primer on Peerfilx
Primer on imdb
Primer on Rotten Tomatoes

f you have seen this film or plan on seeing it, please let me know.

Wanna know what I"m watching? Add me to your Netflix Friends or just take a glance at my queue!

Gotta Suggetion for a Movie of the Day? Let me know!

The Virgin Suicides

From imdb:

In 1974, in Michigan, the lives of a group of teenage boys are affected by the suicide of five girls from the Lisbon family. Cecilia (13), Lux (14), Bonnie (15), Mary (16) and Therese (17) move with their Mathematics teacher father Mr. Lisbon and their possessive housewife mother Mrs. Lisbon to a calm suburb house. Their beauties attract the attention of a group of boys that meet in the house on the other side to watch the girls. When Cecilia commits suicide, the girls stay at home for a period, returning to school later. When the handsome football player Trip Fontaine seduces Lux and spends the night outside with her, Mrs. Lisbon locks the girls at home, leading them to commit massive suicide. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

After watching the new Spider-Man last week I found myself wondering, “How can anyone stand Kirsten Dunst?”

And that’s why I adore the Virgin Suicides. Sophia Coppola is the one responsible for creating this whole illusion that Dunst was someone to pine over, to obsess, and want. Because whenever she comes on screen you just sigh. She’s lovely, girly and most of all she’s a dream.

In fact most of the film is a dream. A kind of curly handwritten dream film with dissolves from flowers to cute boys and ponies. The movie is a gorgeous little flower, thorns and all.  The Virgin Suicides looks and feels like old photographs and Polaroid’s from a youth that we remember happening but in actuality never really did.

It’s like if the kids from Stand by Me had grown up a little. The kids obsess and over the tiniest of details. Coppola follows these obsessions to the max. You can tell how much she loves the wallpaper of the house and whose nail polish is chipped.

These girls exist in their own universe. They are fairy tales who want desperately to be real people.

Something should also be said about the parents, James Woods especially gives a hilarious and heart-breakingly simple performance. He loves his family so much and doesn’t ever seem to have the words to protect his family from themselves. His character seems to want to be involved more in how the girls are raised. But, well, I don’t really know why he doesn’t get involved, it seems like it’s because of the times and it also feels like it’s because of the mother. Who seems to suffocate the girls with her fear.

The mother played by Kathleen Turner, who reminds me a lot of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,  is understandable in her paranoia. After all the world is full of predators and a mother (especially one of a recent suicide) is there to protect, and the things she does seem to be good natured and by the book. But…Well they just break your heart.

These girls fate is set out for them. They are loved so much by everyone around them that they are not allowed bloom.

Add The Virgin Suicides to your Queue
Buy the Virgin Suicides
Trade the Virgin Suicides on Peerflix
The Virgin Suicides on imdb
The Virgin Suicides on Rotten Tomatoes

If you have seen this film or plan on seeing it, please let me know.

Wanna know what I"m watching? Add me to your Netflix Friends or just take a glance at my queue!

Gotta Suggetion for a Movie of the Day? Let me know!

Tomorrow's Movie of the Day Clue:

"Sleeping in a storage shed is the key to time travel"

The Killer

From imdb:

In this bloody tale of loyalty and friendship, Chow Yun-Fat is Jeffrey, an assassin who wishes to leave the business so he can take care of Jennie, the beautiful lounge singer who he inadvertently blinded during a previous assignment. Danny Lee is the determined cop who will stop at nothing to bring him in, only he realizes that Jeffrey is no ordinary assassin, and wishes to help him in his quest. Only problem is that Jeffrey's employers refuse to pay him for his last job, money which is needed to restore Jennie's eyesight. Written by Vince at unigx.ubc.ca

Hey, remember when you used to watch action movies and laugh at the fact that the hero seemed to fire 30 shots without reloading? Tell the truth you kind of miss those days. (At least, a litte) Well that's where The Killer steps in to fill that hollow void in your life.

The movie that turned John Woo into an international sensation and subsequently developed his current household name status is the visual template for everything we know love about Woo. It's all here, the slow-motion, the ballet gunfights, the doves flying as our hero walks straight towards us, even the odd religious/spiritual undertones.

In fact the church scene in Face-Off (a masterpiece in a different way) plays out similarly to the one in The Killer. (Although the two lead's in Face-Off don't refer to each other playfully as Disney characters, that's no reason to shit on Face-Off.)

 But what makes The Killer a gem is it's made by a man shooting for the moon. This movie showed the promise of John Woo as the next...I dunno...brilliant action director. It's hard to think of someone to compare Woo to, because most of the immediate names that come to mind have been influenced by him. American action movies where ripping him off  before we even knew who he was.

What I loved about John Woo's films where that sure there was balls to the wall action. But it was action with a heart. As silly as that is. You can see that John Woo loves westerns. He loves film noir and he loves religious metaphor. His movies where a blend of Howard Hawks, Sam Peckinpah, and Martin Scorsese - with Chow Yun-Fat shooting  two .45's in slo-mo.

Now it seems that the Hollywood machine has crushed another artist in it's gigantic  machinations. John Woo has gone from making movies about honor, redemption, forgiveness,  to movies that star Ben Affleck. So until The Battle of Red Cliff comes out. Let's all sit reminisce about the good old days.

If you have seen this film or plan on seeing it, please let me know.

Wanna know what I"m watching? Add me to your Netflix Friends or just take a glance at my queue!

Style wars

from netflix 

This documentary, first broadcast on PBS in 1983, opened the world's eyes to the phenomenon taking over New York City. The urban landscape -- in particular, the ramshackle subway system -- had been transformed by graffiti artists who invented a new visual language to express themselves. Adding to the phenomenon, MCs, DJs and B-boys rocked the city with new sounds and moves, as street-corner break-dance battles turned into performance art.

I always think of this film as a perfect companion to Dogtown and Z-boys. Although this was made during the heyday of Graffiti culture and Z-boys came around as reminder to all of the glory days. They both have an energy to them that says a lot about the people involved.

It's great to watch Style Wars and think that these kids influenced people all over the world to express themselves through street art. What's also amazing is how unique and individualistic each Graffiti Writer is, they all have their own philosophies about what they do. And they are brought together by their love of their chosen medium.

Whenever I watch them meet up at the writers bench I think about the Surrealists all hanging out in Paris struggling to figure out a way to prove their art form to the world. Maybe it's just me but I feel that the work of these kids is every bit as valid if not more so. But, I'm no art critic.

What i do know is that this movie stands out as a shining example of curious filmmakers (on assignment from PBS) who without prejudice discover a "subculture" and respectfully portray them in away that would make the subjects proud.