tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80354347477867689602024-02-23T08:34:18.332+00:00Checking On My SausagesFilm Reviews, Essays, Videos and Miscellaneous ThoughtsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger132125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-44630024632762261342012-11-29T14:53:00.005+00:002012-12-29T11:49:47.494+00:00The State of Cinema Essay 2012<br />
Cinema used to connote a place and film a material. Now what makes a film is a philosophical or contextual issue, one of form and favour. The 'cinematic', due in part to the digital revolution which overthrew film's textures, is apparently concluding its metamorphosis into the televisual, raging with inadequate weapons, 3D and IMAX, against its invisibility.<br />
<br />
Cinema, or films, are exposed as never before. Technology has opened them up and made them available for all. It is easier than it ever has been to watch films and cheaper than ever to make them (<i>Bellflower</i> $17,000; <i>Quiet City</i> $2,000). All countries will produce all genres. This is an age of rumours, spoilers, YouTube, Netflix, torrents, cable pay-per-view, fan cuts, deleted scenes, directors' commentaries, internet forums, the crowd-sourced <i>Life in A Day</i>, <i>Star Wars : Uncut</i> and Paul Verhoeven's imminent <i>Trick'd</i>, an age in which we lurk behind the curtain, an age in which the studio-anointed artist's pedestal is being kicked from under him.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> Quiet City</i> (Aaron Katz, 2007)</span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">and </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Troll Hunter </i>(Andre Ovredal, 2010)</span></div>
<br />
Almost anyone can achieve a professional look, in part because the mainstream multiplex aesthetic is meeting low budget output halfway (shaky camera, unvarnished images, unstudied acting), challenging viewers to learn new definitions for amateurishness, or for good and bad.<br />
<br />
Found footage, or character-filmed movies, are eulogies to the average guy not only as star but as artist, wherein the director apes the unschooled observer and draws attention to the lens as never before. <br />
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The expert's trump card is skills not tools. He is a critic on his own shoulder, a sculptor chipping away at six hours of footage to achieve a gratifying two-hour hourglass shape. The difference between the best and the rest will increasingly be in the editing.<br />
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Ambiguous motivations, events and outcomes are proliferating out of a cycle of audience demand for co-authorship and artistic cowardice. As vision and personal craft retreat there is more space being left for us to step into. Writers and directors are less likely to serve a meal as provide the ingredients with their open-ended conclusions and loose threads implying that moments when we can be active participants have to be contrived and then prescribed : "now you can think...".<br />
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The audience, following a work from conception to delivery, are made aware of, and can criticise, every decision taken almost <i>as</i> it is taken and the temptation comes to see oneself as a better curator than the creator. The hands-on, pseudo-interactive, consumer is given everything he or she needs to ruin his own experience of a film, already aware of what is going to happen thanks to leaked scripts and synoptic trailers.<br />
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The rituals and spells of film-watching - the tickets, the popcorn and the darkened room or the magical family gathering around the flickering fire of the television set - are wearing off.<br />
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Fiction is beginning to fail. The apostles of Big Story, M Night Shyamalan (<i>Lady in the Water</i>, <i>The Happening</i>) or Richard Kelly (<i>Southland Tales</i>, <i>The Box</i>) for example, suffer disproportionate ridicule (for being 'ridiculous'). People do not "get into" film (and art across the spectrum) as they used to. They cannot treat it as if it were real, their disbelief almost too obese to suspend. This phenomena is seen most acutely in an arena where people would dance happily along the fourth wall, no matter how narrow it was - professional wrestling. Now a growing number of fans can think only of the mechanics and believe themselves intelligent when they shout at the uninitiated, in a shower of binary or a spray of pixels : "It's not real!"<br />
<br />
We are increasingly inculcated in an idea that all film is a representation of and response to our exact reality. No work is allowed to record reality without having an artistic approach and little can be artistic/fantastical without having a metaphorical, allegorical or political stance (is <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> conservative or liberal?). Characters lose agency and stories are uprooted. These perspectives hamstring fantasy and pour the poison of supposed agenda (something to be feared) into our ears.<br />
<br />
It is for all these reasons and many more that remain hidden that the 'Golden Age' of Cinema (especially
of pure barrelling narrative and entertainment) isn't a place in time
(i.e. the thirties) but a time in each person's life - childhood. When
we are young we believe unconditionally and questions of how and why
something is made are a still distant test of faith. <br />
<br />
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*<br />
<br />
<br />
Over the last years 'slow films', with longer static takes, fewer plot points and less physical action became more mainstream, the preserve of continental Europe no longer. As with ambiguous stories, this type of film purports to provide worlds less full of their own content, so to speak.<br />
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Such films tend to come with the cachet of being more contemplative or intellectual and, with this in mind, many directors appeared ready to brand their works with the conventional marks of art cinema (if there's less happening there must be more to think about) hoping a credulous and equally pretentious viewer would take the bait.<br />
<br />
Slow films, and so-called art films in general, are, by and large, easier to follow and understand than faster populist films. They can be appreciated by anyone. <br />
<br />
The finest examples of the past few years have been <i>Oxhide I</i> and <i>Oxhide II </i>(directed by Liu Jiayin and starring herself and her parents) and the <i>Paranormal Activity</i> series, which uses a pared down patient style (perfectly suited to horror) that, had it been used for a different type of film, may have been dismissed by the public. <br />
<br />
A precious few know how and why to use these styles and in so doing earn distinct labels of established, thought-through genre characteristics (if not principles) : Structuralism or Minimalism.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Podworka</i> (Sharon Lockhart, 2009) and <i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Somewhere</i> (Sofia Coppola, 2010)</span></div>
<br />
The best exponents happen to be women: Julia Leigh (<i>Sleeping Beauty</i>), Sofia Coppola (<i>Somewhere</i>), Kelly Reichardt (<i>Wendy and Lucy</i>, <i>Meek's Cutoff</i>), Sharon Lockhart (<i>Podworka</i>) and Chantal Akerman (<i>La-Bas</i>) to name but few. Special mention should be made of Benedikt Fliegauf (<i>Milky Way</i>), Hou Hsiao Hsien (<i>Cafe Lumiere</i>) and individual films in the Romanian New Wave (<i>Tuesday, After Christmas</i>; <i>Aurora</i>) They mollify the more inherently distant (often literally, in longer shots than the norm) feel of this naturally self-disciplined and rigorous mode of expression with intense scrutiny and slender elegance.<br />
<br />
Small changes in constants are fundamental dynamics of minimalism. Two, three, four hour long shots of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDNETgwyQSI" target="_blank">streets</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmPzbZVUp3g" target="_blank">ocean waves</a> (uploaded to YouTube) sit us down in places where we wouldn't normally spend so much time and, by putting a lens in between and a frame around, allow us to watch the world. This isn't minimalism or extreme minimalism; it's just filming and a (heartening) type of filming removed from the way art evolves its own real, stuck in cycles of fresh, mannered, cliched, then fresh again.<br />
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</div>
The whole point of filming is to record another place and to take people to it. The first thing cinema did was document when Lumiere filmed his own workers leaving the factory (beating <i>Scream</i> (still going strong with <i>Scream 4</i>) in the meta-stakes by over a hundred years). Presentation and beauty would quickly and inevitably follow (<i>Danse Sepertine</i>) accompanied by all the entanglements of meanings, intentions and maker / art / reality / viewer.<br />
<br />
Lav Diaz's <i>Death in the Land of Encantos</i> (2007) and Sion Sono's <i>Himizu</i> (2011) staged dramas in areas affected by real-life natural disasters (landslides in the Philippines and the tsunami in Japan), constructing raw but tempered polemic ground up through their characters and bearing great witness to the plight of peoples and nations. They are illustrated documents where fantasy is a ghost stalking the plains of the real. The opening and closing tracking shots in <i>Himizu</i> are showing the same devastation as in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH3gLfSTobo" target="_blank"><i>Ten Days After</i></a>.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Death in the Land of Encantos</i> (Lav Diaz, 2007)</span></div>
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Indeed trauma was the predominant colour of recent cinema. Structures of psychosis, delusion, loss of self and loss of reality hid its shades in kaleidoscopic puzzle narratives that would eventually shatter under the weight of the same truth : something terrible has happened. Have terrorist attacks, have nationwide catastrophes, have economic meltdowns, as the storms approaching the shore in <i>Take Shelter</i>, come home, in the cinema, to roost?<br />
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The search for meaning (<i>Knowing</i>, <i>Prometheus</i>, <i>Melancholia</i>, <i>4:44 Last Day on Earth</i>) may come amid apocalypse or may be answered <i>by</i> the apocalypse : there is nothing.<br />
<br />
Through the same prism, the increasingly popular mortification of Torture Porn (too many examples to mention) could be seen as catharsis via self-flagellation.<br />
<br />
The psychological and physical torment (where the sexual and the violent are melded and confused) of one individual, in viscerally thrilling and deadening games (the villain will often frame his actions the self-same way we frame our film-watching - as a bet in which morality has no stake), is trickling, as our systems demand stronger drugs, down the certificates and quite possibly onto the streets outside the theatre.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Saw VI</i> (Kevin Greutert, 2009) and</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>God Bless America</i> (Bobcat Goldthwait, 2011)</span></div>
<br />
Torture Porn goes together with the revival of extreme game shows (<i>Gamer</i>, <i>Death Race</i>, <i>The Hunger Games</i>, <i>Live!</i>) and the warping of (we are told) sensible people (horrified at the insensible world around them) into murderers (<i>Rampage</i>, <i>God Bless America</i> etc.).<br />
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These fantasies, which can offer a breathtaking buzz, rest on the sensitive tissue where criticism, truthful representation (horrible things should be shown horribly) and collaboration of and with reality meet, like blood vessels in a bruise. The issue of what we bring in to a film and what we take out, although its complexities can be overstated, has never been more knotted.<br />
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Frankly what it comes down to is what we are instinctively comfortable watching.<br />
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*<br />
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<br />
What of films for children, for whom our best must be reserved?<br />
<br />
There have been plenty of good children's films. They have entertained (<i>Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs</i>, <i>The Muppets</i>) and inspired (<i>Arrietty</i>). They have empathised with young people (the films of the Dardennes and Dorota Kedzierzawska, which do for children what the films of Mizoguchi and Naruse did for women) and encouraged them (<i>The Hole</i>, <i>From Up On Poppy Hill</i>). They have even ended war with awe, as in <i>The Last Airbender</i>. Films meant for older audiences have foregrounded selflessness and sacrifice : <i>The Matrix</i> films, <i>Prometheus</i> and <i>Sucker Punch</i>.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>From Up on Poppy Hill</i> (Goro Miyazaki, 2011) </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">and <i>Tomorrow Will Be Better</i> (Dorota Kedzierzawska, 2011) </span></div>
<br />
These tales show us that there are causes to fight for and things to achieve, a world we can sign our name to, and on. We are more and not less. In this regard Terrence Malick's <i>The Tree of Life</i> was a game-changer. It raised the bar for film as a visual form and as an exaltation of the human in stark contrast to the likes of <i>Martyrs</i> or <i>Final Destination</i>, which appeal (albeit effectively) to the reflexes and the flesh alone. A feast needs many tastes.<br />
<br />
The feeling persists, however, that children are being let down. The infantile has the upper hand with its array of sop and fart jokes. Too many children's films are schizophrenic, packed with adult references (like most films they are more 'self-aware' than they used to be) that appeal to the fathers and mothers who are accompanying them and that leave each watching a separate film rather than sharing in one.<br />
<br />
Fables and fairytales would always give children 'what they want' as well as something to learn, something adults (who are, after all,the makers and writers) thought that they needed. There was always risk and danger, edge and a taste of the grown-up world that awaits. Films for children shouldn't be childish.<br />
<br />
In a way film in the olden days, with its (self)censorship, wanted to show our best face. Now there is less shame. We are treading roughshod through the groves of childhood with muddy boots. We are churning out boring, unimaginative pacifiers with less meaning and less meaningfulness. The sprinkling of "F**k"s (because that's what they were) all over Wes Anderson's <i>The Fantastic Mr Fox</i> is depressingly symptomatic.<br />
<br />
The same multiplexes that across the globe are filled with the froth of fun but forgettable films (the same ones where you couldn't see <i>The Tree of Life</i> or Godard's <i>Film Socialisme</i>) upgrade to 3D whilst AD (Audio Description) and subtitles are still not available for all films (which a girl called Immy brought to the nation's attention on BBC's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/15931141" target="_blank">Newsround</a>). Why spend time, money and energies on the fripperies and leave a significant portion of the (potential) audience out in the cold altogether? Film isn't meant as a charity or a public service but it does have opportunities to make itself as good as it can as well as, quite rightly, as rich as it can.<br />
<br />
It is as if the development of children is being arrested in preparation for the silly sleaziness of modern (inverted commas) romantic (inverted commas) comedies and their so-called adult relationships. The most believable and interesting love stories aimed at teenagers are almost incidental to main plots (Peter and Gwen in <i>The Amazing Spider-Man</i>, Spock and Uhura in <i>Star Trek</i>).<br />
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Role models (accepting that these characters don't exist) in blockbuster films have all but disappeared from the screen. The strong leading men and women of old have been routinely replaced by blank-eyed waxworks with attitude, of which the focal switch from <i>Tron</i>'s smart/cool/manly Kevin Flynn to <i>Tron Legacy</i>'s smart-ass kidult Sam is characteristic. Before we would aspire to be like those on screen. Now, sadly, we simply aspire to be in their <i>position</i> – rich, devil-may-care, surrounded by busty babes. <br />
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Nostalgia talks : films used to have more bite, more verve, more maturity, didn't they? It is frankly useless pining for a bygone age (even if it was better) as it would only come back skew-whiff; silent film came back as <i>The Artist</i>, a zombie feasting directly on silent film flesh rather than what fuelled the classics of old : passion.<br />
<br />
<div class="western">
Passion. A story to tell. Make with your hands, tell with your heart. Not drag with a mouse. Not cut and paste templates. Not (just) insubstantial CGI but honest-to-goodness TLC. Who will replace Jean-Luc Godard, Bela Tarr and Jacques Rivette when they hang up their scissors? Whose idiosyncrasies will grace the landscape like Eric Rohmer's and Tony Scott's. The talent is out there; the problem as ever is promoting it to its rightful place...<br />
<br />
Alexandr Sokurov (<i>Faust</i>), the invigorating Sion Sono(<i>Land of Hope</i>), the genre-hopper Ang Lee (<i>Life of Pi</i>), Zack Snyder (<i>Man of Steel</i>), Lars Von Trier (<i>Nymphomaniac</i>), Aki Kaurismaki (<i>Le Havre</i>), Abbas Kiarostami (<i>Like Someone In Love</i>), Leos Carax (<i>Holy Motors</i>), David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola (<i>Twixt</i>) Michael Mann and Ti West (<i>The Innkeepers</i>). <br />
<br />
The most exciting prospect of the next few years will be how new directors and new writers take on the great inheritance, and playpen, <i>Star Wars</i>. It is a litmus test of a 21st Century industry. How personal, how different will they (be allowed to) be? Everyone has a unique style and a point of view and yet vast swathes of films appear as if imagined by the same mind.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Key developments of the last five years (from top):</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">George Lucas sells Lucasfilm to Disney; Liu Jiayin films</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Oxhide II</i>; <i>Paranormal Activity 3</i>; <i>The Tree of Life</i> </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-71667174801022793342012-11-18T19:59:00.000+00:002012-11-18T19:59:30.376+00:00Images Inspired by Paintings<br />
The art of painting has clearly inspired many a film-maker. Single shots have drawn on subjects common to painting for atmosphere or symbolism. Works have been recreated (Godard's <i>Passion</i>, Derek Jarman's <i>Caravaggio</i>, Raul Ruiz's <i>Klimt</i> etc.) or manipulated for humour or political capital. The lighting of scenes, their texture, the balance of the people and objects within the frame owe something, consciously or unconsciously, to the brushstrokes of artists who established a language of encoding and decoding emotion and abstract ideas.<br />
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But of course maybe they are merely inspired by the same thing that inspire great paintings : to be pleasing to the eye. In other words, beauty.<br />
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<br />
<i>From Top</i> :<br />
<br />
Lullaby (Nana Janelidze)<br />
Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov)<br />
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)<br />
Forever Mozart (Jean-Luc Godard)<br />
Viridiana (Luis Bunuel)<br />
War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk)<br />
El Sol del Membrillo (Victor Erice)<br />
Legend of Suram Fortress (Sergei Parajanov)<br />
Survival of the Dead (George Romero) <br />
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<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-52704519598083075902012-10-26T14:54:00.001+01:002012-11-03T13:19:42.131+00:00Miniature Worlds<i><br /></i>
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<i><br /></i>
<b><i>Sacrifice</i></b> - <i>"Which of you has done this?"</i> Abnormal, miraculous, beautiful and disturbing. His house is recreated small and he is therefore made big - a simple man who has made a pact with God to save the world through sacrifice. Which of you (Gods) has made it all?<br />
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<b><i>L'Eclisse</i></b> - She is bored, directionless and trapped. Sometimes the world feels too much for you and sometimes it is not enough; your head in the clouds with the skyscrapers.<br />
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<b><i>Citizen Kane</i></b> - The city over which your hulking loomed is now just a city of boxes and crates in which your possessions reside. What profiteth man...<br />
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<b><i>Superman Returns</i></b> - The world is your plaything. <i>"I Don't Want To Be A God I Just Wanna Bring Fire To The People"</i>. Lex is the new law.<br />
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<b><i>Enter the Void</i></b> - A glow-in-the-dark mini Tokyo. The miniature looks like the real thing and then the 'real' Tokyo is represented by the miniature remembered. Is he dead or is he exploring his own brain? He floats above and through the world but he is never really part of it.<br />
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<b><i>Robocop</i></b> - The delta city model of a model city; white. glorious. perfect. The virginal corporate vision is crushed by an innocent body in a hail of blood-drenched gunfire.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-26260311516558042612012-10-12T13:24:00.004+01:002012-10-29T11:46:49.046+00:00Holy Motors <br />
<i>(the) film is strange</i><br />
<br />
<br />
Oscar, dressed in a motion capture suit and toting a machine gun, steps onto a treadmill in front of a large screen projecting shape and colour of green, black, red and white. The treadmill rolls faster and faster as we move in closer and closer. He screams and fires his gun, running manically against an increasingly white background, resembling a jerky figure in a zoetrope viewed through a slit; the sight of one object, the illusion of one smooth movement, created from many images. <br />
<br />
He falls off the treadmill. The journey from the future of cinema back to its embryonic stages has exhausted him, as the hands of <i>Metropolis</i>' clock did Freder, flesh tortured by mechanics, the soul stretched like pizza dough over levers, racks and cogs.<br />
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Chauffeured around Paris, Oscar invests himself in various guises. He steps out of the door as an old lady beggar, a mischievous tramp, a hitman or a disgruntled father. Thus the zoetrope is metaphorical for Oscar's existence – many roles and many images in one - and, as with the zoetrope, his oneness is a trick or a mirage. He doesn't fully exist; except off-stage, possibly, in the back of that limousine.<br />
<br />
He is weary, lost perhaps, mourning maybe. There is something in him of the man in the old footage (by Etienne Jules Marey) that opens the film – naked, running to and fro like a rat in a maze. <br />
<br />
<i>”I who have been many men in vain want to be one and myself” </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>“Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one </i><br />
<br />
[<i>Everything and Nothing</i>, Jorge Luis Borges] - Introductory quote to <i>Holy Motors</i> press kit<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
We know by the folders of assignments waiting for him on the back seat and the man who comes to monitor his progress, that his role-playing constitutes a job. He is an actor. We know that he takes pride in it, in the importance and form of his acts (“la beaute du geste”) and we observe how he takes great care over his transformations. Oscar considers it to be a vocation, a higher duty. But is the geste only a gesture (now). Is it just momentum, the fading echo of a defunct lifestyle? <br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Oscar never faces the world as himself. He never faces it without a costume or without makeup, or without an adopted name. It is as if he doesn't want to be himself.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
It isn't possible to develop a theory of everything for a film as full of nuance and diverse trains of thought as <i>Holy Motors</i>, but you can approach it as M. Merde approaches the model Kay M, with esurient awe, and let its presence and perfume move around you.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
It is a lament. Has there been a tragedy? Has it driven him to an awful fate of ceaseless reincarnation? Has he thrown himself into a futureless role because, without a future, the past's grief cannot flourish, a history cannot be established and human bonds cannot be forged.<br />
<br />
Oscar as Le Mourant : “Nothing makes you feel more alive than to see others die”<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Oscar meets an old acquaintance, a similarly mysterious actor named Jean. She sings a song in which she wails : “we had a child”. Has a child of his really died? Is that child something else : cinema, happiness, one's own fragile life?<br />
<br />
The one role he plays whose emotions overflow back into the limousine, and the only one for which he drives a car (exerting a modicum of what you could call control) as opposed to being driven, is that of a father to a young teenage girl called Ang<span style="color: black;">è</span>le. She lies to him about a party and, returning to the limousine, he hurls his wig away in anger. He told her that her punishment was to be her. Oscar's is the same.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
He waits for her outside a party from which the lines “I can't get you out of my head”, “you're more than I dare to think about” and “won't you stay...forever and ever....and ever” (Kylie Minogue's <i>Can't Get You Out Of My Head</i>) loudly pulse. Having dropped her off, he watches her recede in the wing mirror. Was it a daughter that he lost?<br />
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*<br />
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There is always real within fiction. A photo taken by a character remains on that camera, a document of that person at that time. The river water which drenched Reverend Harry Powell must dry from Robert Mitchum's suit. And yet because there is real in unreal and unreal in real, this escape to art can never be an escape.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Roles leave marks on you. You carry them with you. Edith Scob, who plays Oscar's chauffeuse Celine, dons, at the end of her shift, the mask she wore as Christiane in Georges Franju's <i>Eyes Without A Face</i> over forty years before. The ghosts of French cinema are out there. <br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Is this a mere throwaway throwback (and not everything in a film must carry the same significance), an illustration of an idea, or something more personal to Celine? Is Celine's face/identity not restored (or under construction)? What is her story?<br />
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* <br />
<br />
The plaintive song which plays the last time we see Oscar, “Revivre” (G<span class="st">é</span>rard Manset), cries out of things unfinished, of points of no return, of diving into the cold liquid of groundhog days (“plonger dans le froid liquide des jours toujours les m<span class="st">ê</span>mes”), of finishing dreams and of feeling the sap rising within you (“sentir monter la sève”).<br />
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*<br />
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A lament about the death of cinema and the death of faith: People “don't believe what they are seeing” anymore, now that technology has made cameras invisible.<br />
<br />
People are becoming mere tools and materials from which other (inhuman) images are extrapolated. The motion capture session, essentially full body puppetry, is for the purpose of a (porno)graphic of devilish creatures cavorting. Which image is controlling the other?<br />
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*<br />
<br />
He meets Elise, another professional 'al fresco' actor. If all the world's a stage, could everyone be a player?<br />
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*<br />
<br />
<i>Holy Motors</i> could be autobiographical : it is dedicated, in its last moments, to Katia Golubeva, Mr. Carax's partner, who died the year before the film was released. Their daughter features in the film, probably as a little girl we see trapped, as if abandoned, behind a window. Oscar may be Monsieur Carax, a man throwing himself into the process of making art, to escape, to honour and to remember:<br />
<br />
LE(<b><i>OS CAR</i></b>)AX.<br />
<br />
Mrs Golubeva is buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery, which appears in the film on three occasions.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Oscar is filling holes in others' lives. He is meeting needs. The daughter in the car accepts this supposed imposter as her father. Does Oscar play the role regularly? Is her father only a character? If her father exists, Oscar is filling his absence. How sad...and how kind...<br />
<br />
Does Oscar play the role of M.Merde enough times to create the pile of money and jewels in his cave, or is he just standing in for him? For whose benefit does the outfit / disguise have to be so perfected?<br />
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*<br />
<br />
He is a sort of angel, then, in these 'holy', cars. Celine calls another holy motorist : "Ectoplasm on wheels". Are the drivers ghosts?<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Oscar kills the first role we see him play (the banker), and then the gangster Theo (another doppelganger), a role he may have played previously. This is a sort of suicide, self-defeating.<br />
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If they are not real people that he is mimicking, does he leave avatars in the world where they become independent flesh and blood?<br />
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Do characters take on a life of their own? <br />
<br />
Method, madness.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
The roles Oscar inhabits are raw, intensely transformative, quietly introspective and fearlessly demonstrative – they are Oscar-bait roles.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
M.Merde is an uninhibited taboo-breaker. He runs over graves, chomps on bouquets of flowers, kicks a blind man's cane from under him, licks a woman's armpit, kidnaps her, dresses her up in a burka (illegal to wear in public in France) and then lies naked in her lap, creating a pietà, which plays into the motif of a dead child – here Mary mourning Jesus.<br />
<br />
The scene featuring Merde and Kay is the only one that doesn't end with a return to the limousine. As she sings the man a lullaby it merely fades to black, proposing an especial significance to that pietà.<br />
<br />
Tellingly, M.Merde emerges into the light from beneath the cemetery (<span class="st">à</span> propos of Katia Golubeva), a glomerulus of instincts. He is out of control. What does grief look like?<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
With all this pain, and with such bafflement, the exuberant accordion interval is a palate cleanser, an energising balm.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Jean plays an air hostess called Eva Grace. When she takes off her hair and her coat, Eva is revealed. Her persona is underneath while Oscar's are ostensibly worn on top. Who is the character and who isn't? Can they be cleaved? Do the traces become indelible?<br />
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“Is it you?”, she asks. “I think so?” he says.<br />
<br />
“Are those your eyes?”<br />
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*<br />
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Jean sings, in gutted department store Samaritaine, with the body parts of mannequins sprinkled about the shop floor: “Who were we when we were who we were back then?” Simply transposing this into the present tense communicates their existential rootlessness : “Who are we when we are who we are...?” Did they meet as themselves long ago or as dual role players in each other's stories, much as Oscar and role-player Elise had enacted his deathbed scene as uncle and niece.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Because Oscar reveals so little of himself (if there is a himself) to us, we can take Jean as a mirror to Oscar. When they meet, he talks to her through a half-open car window (on stage to off), his face reflected in its surface. One could make a case for all the people he meets and all the people he inhabits being aspects of himself - a negative space that outlines his enigmatic shape.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Eva / Jean whispers “come...come closer” to an unseen or non-existent companion and then throws herself of the roof. Who dies? Are we the companion? Is the art alive without a watcher?<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Their limousines are magical. If Oscar can make it to the car alive, whether perforated by bullet holes or stab wounds, he will be miraculously healed to full (physical) health. Is he already dead?<br />
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*<br />
<br />
At day's end, when they are no longer monitored, the limousines worry about their imminent obsolescence. If they do cease to exist, that means there will be no role-players. Would there then be no difference between true and untrue? Would cinema, in a place of invisible cameras, have returned to the world?<br />
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*<br />
<br />
They and their cargo are quite possibly spiritually linked. One of the posters for <i>Holy Motors</i> features the silhouette of a man whose eyes are represented by the headlamps of a limousine. <br />
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*<br />
<br />
Is the man with a birthmark more than a director to Oscar's actor. Is he <i>the </i>director? The birthmark deflects (or merely delays) suspicions, given that he must be born of woman, that he is God.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Oscar's last appointment of the day involves being the father to a family of apes, which is another return to the past and to nature. The disco lights from Angèle's party are now echoed on the bedroom walls of his ape child.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Indignity haunts Oscar. He has no repose. Only the desert.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Despite the eternal repetition of Oscar's life, time is always at his back. He must be punctual. He tells Celine that they must laugh before midnight.<br />
<br />
A midnight deadline à la Cinderella, a girl who was magically allowed to play a role she'd always dreamt of. Twice we see a woman take off her shoes. First, the motion capture lady (with whom Oscar simulates sex) flicks off an invisible pair, and then Jean/Eva removes hers before her suicide. We are also shown an extended close up of M. Merde's dirty bare feet.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
There are fairytales fluttering at the lights. Oscar walks around a corner and vanishes.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Art is a form of philosophy. <i>Holy Motors</i> is a film of thoughts and of questions.<br />
<br />
There are many ways of approaching <i>Holy Motors</i> and many keys you can try. The room you finally enter into may not be more beautiful than the one you have left behind. Explanation can mitigate awe. It will never fully satisfy, but the process will.<br />
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<br />
The film is fascinating. The seemingly incongruent episodes work together, as if the film's soul is a 2 hour long note thrummed on a tuning fork and each job is another struck in the same key, distinct but complementary. <i>Holy Motors</i>, not for its hard content but for its explorable emotional and intellectual space, is a film that will last.<br />
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* * * * * <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-10020792084042062822012-09-28T13:59:00.001+01:002012-10-26T19:43:32.440+01:00Burning Bright (2010)<br />
Your mother has committed suicide. Your brother has autism. Your stepfather has robbed you of your inheritance, your future, your dreams of independence and all...to set up a safari ranch in your back yard. <br />
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You sit, stewing, angry, depressed, lost to a future as a handmaid to your brother's outbursts that to you, sad and exhausted, sucked of all vitality and hope, appear as the whims of a spoilt brat.<br />
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As caged animals gather outside, a hurricane approaches. The windows are being boarded up. You don't know that a horror film set is being...<br />
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...built around you.<br />
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Night falls and Kelly dreams of slipping out of bed with a pillow and smothering her brother. She awakes in a cold sweat on the roar of a wild animal, the manifestation of all her worries, her invisible adversaries, come together.<br />
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Up and about, dazed by guilt and slumber, she spots something at the bottom of the steps that halts her own. The nightmare. Hers isn't a run-of-the-mill disaster movie for a common-or-garden moral storm; no, for a fate as
pathetic as hers, the fallacy must be loftier and more elegant. Stalking the empty rooms and halls is her stepfather's prize attraction, now prize ally in opposing and ending his own sea of troubles: a tiger.<br />
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She discovers that even the door has been boarded up. There are no chinks of light, no bright lit exit sign. She drags Tom into a bare room, undecorated but for two standing lights, like those you might find on a TV or movie production. It is like she is off-set and the panic oscillates between the two implications of a space like this: "you're safe here" and "no script can help you".<br />
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From room to room they go, stalking safety. From a purely dramatic standpoint the siblings make a brilliant pair. She is tense, terrified, always thinking. He is emotionless and blank (his autism isn't played for sympathy) even in the face of a jungle predator roaming the downstairs loo.<br />
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It is exceedingly claustrophobic - the house is dark and the low hum of the hurricane buffeting against the boards is another layer of oppression.<br />
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Kelly seems ready to burst, eat up from the inside and always a step away from being eaten up from the outside. Room to manoeuvre narrows and the close shaves accumulate. They hide in a laundry chute (cleaning of stains, sins?), in a freezer (long-term preservation?), in a closet (secrets?), under a bed (over-reading?) but the tiger can jump, can burst through walls, can reach its claws into the tightest spaces.<br />
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All the while point of view shots are well used, the glass of the screen becoming the lens of our eye, ever close to being scratched and gouged.<br />
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The tiger isn't vindictive or sadistic or playful. It's a tiger. It does however have a piercing stare and a desire (it licks Kelly's sweat off the kitchen floor) for flesh. The situation is (obviously) contrived, the story off-the-wall, but the actions of the animal and the people are not. Kelly doesn't make silly decisions. This is a compelling story that has been well constructed.<br />
<br />
Eventually Kelly manages to escape but realises she cannot abandon her brother and that she must be the selfless mother he needs. <br />
<br />
As morning breaks the stepfather John arrives back with a sniper rifle, unscrews the boards and scopes for the tiger. The end is poetic justice and dinner is belatedly served.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Horror as salvation</i> : It is a way through for Kelly and Tom. They escape John. They escape the tiger too but, at the end of the film, it is still alive - problems persist but are ready to be faced, lived with and overcome. They are better off after than they were before.<br />
<br />
Both of them look out from the front steps of their home at the now-calm world. Tom looks for Kelly's hand with his and she happily takes it. <br />
<br />
The idea behind <i>Burning Bright</i> is simple and exciting, the concept outlandish and believable, the symbolism sharp, the emotional grip strong.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-42770763934486924422012-09-09T14:27:00.003+01:002012-09-18T08:25:31.559+01:00The Dark Knight Rises <br />
<i>contains<span style="color: red;"> spoilers</span></i><br />
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*<br />
<br />
Gothic, the romantic horrific, the dark powerful majestic. Today's
Batman and his Gotham aren't Gothic but Goth: listless, cynical and
unimaginative. <br />
<br />
Gotham used to be different, a black world of fear. Now Gotham looks like our world : we are black.<br />
<br />
Batman the superhero used to give you a frisson of fear-tinged excitement. Bruce the
man used to be an enigma, he used to be impressive.<br />
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* <br />
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The Dark Knight Rises, sometimes badly edited and wrongly accented, makes you realise how hard it is to make a film, especially one of such scope.<br />
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*<br />
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The film feels like a perfunctory ticking off of scenes, as if the film already exists in Christopher Nolan's mind and the filming process is book-keeping, information-sharing and joining the dots. <br />
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* <br />
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Bruce climbs out of imprisonment (a dark passage with a brilliant light at the exit) after abandoning the rope which is the umbilical cord still linking him to his mother and father and their deaths. It is also a rebirth out of himself.<br />
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*<br />
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Selina Kyle, curious and opinionated, a woman in an improvised dance with morality, is the most insightful (and interesting) of all. She sees Batman for what he is, sees people for what they are good or ill and, despite being a cat burglar and despite her disdain for the fat cat capitalists who "live so large" learns to see Communism for what it is :<br />
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Selina: "This used to be someone's house"<br />
Jen: "It's everyone's house now".<br />
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She has a strong mind and she is not afraid to change it.<br />
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<br />
*<br />
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Bane plays with the populace and buys their passivity by namechecking the latest fashionable grievances - rich people, corrupt institutions, hierarchies built on lies. He has no (at least easily ascribed) political position. He is power-hungry and murderous. He is a showman with a scary/playful voice. It's unsurprising that to defeat Bane the inspirational rabble-rouser you have to punch him in the mouth.<br />
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What marks Bane, Batman and Selina out is attitude. It is will. Batman and Bane's final fight on the steps of the city hall is devoid of trickery, theatricality, martial artistry. It is a brawl of pure rage and willpower. <br />
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* <br />
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Where are the normal people who would fall victim to Bane and Talia? The neutron bomb is the perfect refuge for the uncreative scriptwriter and film-maker because it is as impersonal as it gets.<br />
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The most heinous act of killing is the one that will move us the least.<br />
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* <br />
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A story of the poor and criminal underclass vs the rich and powerful may have worked better without Bane.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
The statue of Batman erected in
Wayne Manor makes no distinction between Bruce and the costume, between
man and symbol. They are of the same bronze. Is Wayne subsumed by Batman
for all eternity? Has the costume become Bruce's skin?<br />
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* <br />
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Batman and Catwoman are outcasts who humanise one
another by cancelling out their animal halves. The cat elopes with the
bat and Selina hightails it with Bruce.<br />
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In the end the bomb isn't a clean slate for Gotham but for Bruce and Selina.<br />
<br />
The climactic shot of Selina and Bruce in Florence recalls a paparazzi
shot, catching them having abandoned character, out of the world in
which they made their name. They look completely and utterly relaxed.
Selina is unaware that she is being looked at. The feeling of freedom and contentment is lovely.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-36102535566535272822012-08-23T07:58:00.002+01:002012-08-23T07:58:19.258+01:00Sport is the Perfect Fiction<br />
Sport is the perfect fiction. We build the sets, we set the rules. We ensure that each play has a beginning a middle and an end. We guarantee that each story has triumph and tragedy.<br />
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And then it <i>writes itself</i>.<br />
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Sport toes the line between fact and fiction, self-contained and endlessly renewing.<br />
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The racers are voracious readers wanting to get to the end as quickly as possible, impatient characters wanting to learn their fate.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-2440557365778917082012-08-08T10:01:00.003+01:002012-08-09T07:45:19.937+01:00Warhol / Matisse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Face of a Woman (1948) - Poor Little Rich Girl (1965)<br />
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Portrait of L.N. Delekorskaya (1947) - Chelsea Girls (1966)</div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-36472909142416903512012-07-18T11:46:00.001+01:002012-07-18T19:08:01.535+01:00Film Olympics : Archery to Judo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Olympics, the thirtieth modern Games, start in less than a fortnight. The Olympics themselves have long been filmed as well as cinematically reenacted. What of those films in which Olympic feats and endeavours are achieved? Who are those characters who have tried out these sports, perhaps out of competition and outside of any rules, and succeeded to extraordinary effect?<br />
<br />
I am especially interested in characters performing / practising the sport's activity without participating in the actual sport itself. <br />
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In 21st Century cinema the ancient art of <b><i>Archery</i></b> may have been overwhelmed by louder and more devastating machinery, abandoning Artemis/Diana, William Tell and Robin Hood to another, quainter time.<br />
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And yet, out of the woods of old myth came first the bow-wielding elf Legolas in Peter Jackson's adaptations of the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> books, then the equally adept Paris in <i>Troy</i> (both played by Orlando Bloom).<br />
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In 2012, archery is relevant in new versions of old worlds or a future made old by apocalypse, as in <i>The Hunger Games</i>. Archery is cool in its own context, one could say, in the hands of Princess Merida, for example, in <i>Brave</i>'s Scottish highlands, or in fables such as <i>Snow White and the Huntsman</i>. The 10th Century, that's where it belongs. However, Marvel comic book character Hawkeye in <i>The Avengers</i>, a film very much set now, amongst the most explosive of powers and weaponry, has demonstrated that the archer is verily back in vogue.<br />
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Much like the lightsaber was more civilised than the blaster to Obi-Wan Kenobi, so the bow and arrow maintains an aura of honour. It is a tool of exquisite precision which seems to concentrate all the character's personality and energy into its form.<br />
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The disciplines of <b><i>Athletics</i></b> are the foundation of any action film: Captain <i>John Carter</i> doing the high (high) jump; Ethan Hunt long jumping over a hole in a bridge in <i>Mission Impossible 3</i>; pole vaulting over prison walls in <i>Naked Gun 33 1/3</i> or across deadly ground in <i>Tremors</i>; Mayans hurling javelins/spears at escapees in <i>Apocalypto</i>; the Man of Steel hammer-throwing a Kryptonian into the sky by his feet in <i>Superman II</i>; James Bond hurtling down the streets of London in <i>Skyfall</i>. Put in the effort, push yourself, run against fear and for desire, race against time and against fate.<br />
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I cannot say that <b><i>Badminton</i></b>, or anything like it, makes an appearance in too many films. <i>King</i>, an Indonesian film from 2009 about a boy who fulfills his dreams through badminton, is supposedly the only fiction film that revolves around the sport. Certainly there have been brief scenes of people (children especially) playing badminton or of improvised bats and shuttlecocks but none stick in the mind. <br />
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<b><i>Basketball</i></b> is ubiquitous in depictions of American life. This year high school student Peter Parker showed his (arachnid) powers/prowess on the court in <i>The Amazing Spider-Man</i>. The court is often the battleground for self-esteem and the weighing of social worth, issues of power flux that film is and always will be concerned with. The documentary <i>Hoop Dreams</i> gave us a glimpse of how basketball can be important in the same way in real life.<br />
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Have dreams been so finely balanced as in the moment when the clock has stopped and the ball is flying in slow motion towards the net?<br />
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If basketball has always been a part of Americana (cinematica), BMX bikes, or <b><i>Mountain Biking</i></b>, became something of a phenomenon in the 1980s. Every kid wanted one and every cool kid on the silver screen had one: <i>The Goonies</i>, <i>E.T.</i>.. There was even, in 1983, an Australian film about <i>BMX Bandits</i>. <i>Super 8</i>, an homage to the films of the Eighties, made sure to put its kids on bikes, cruising through small town suburban streets as they always did, criss-crossing from schools, to diners, to secret hideouts.<br />
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More recently mountain bikes are taken up the slopes where riders get lost or are slain by monsters. <br />
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To these characters, pushing for the first time at adulthood, the bikes represent freedom and escape. The same goes for <b><i>Cycling</i></b> in general, as seen in the Dardenne brothers' <i>Le Gamin Au Velo</i>, about a kid who is constantly on the move, running from disappointment towards a love and security always just over the horizon. The motorcycle offers a more dynamic, steroidal version of this feeling of unanchored power (<i>The Wild Ones</i>...).<br />
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As cycling often goes in tandem with the countryside, so <b><i>Canoeing</i></b> is the favoured mode of transport for characters in the back of beyond, slipping through the veins of the exotic, banked by forests and the sounds and calls therein; <i>Deliverance</i>, <i>Pocahontas</i>, <i>The New World</i>. Canoeing can be an adventure happening to you. It can also be an adventure that you have claimed, riding the rapids for recreation. You're a daredevil one inch away from having your pride bruised and your life taken. One minute you are laughing at nature's boasts, the next it is swallowing you whole.<br />
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It is very much the same story when it comes to <b><i>Diving</i></b>. You can dive in a pool decorated with babes just for the hell of it. You can dive to show off, or make a stand, like in Studio Ghibli's <i>From Up on Poppy Hill</i>. It's a show of courage. It's a last resort in <i>Apocalypto, The Fugitive</i> or <i>Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid</i> and a key ingredient in many a chase. A choice : face the enemy or risk it all.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The Exhilaration of Panic and Love : <i> </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid</i> and <i>From Up On Poppy Hill</i></span></div>
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A woman or a man standing on the edge of a bridge ready to jump is the start of many films - Dario Argento's <i>Trauma</i> and Patrice Leconte's <i>Girl on the Bridge</i> are just two. It is a turning point before we've even started our journey.<br />
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They want to end it all, like David in <i>A.I</i>., but in that act discover there is more to live for. A dive into the cool, deep waters when all seems lost leads to rebirth in <i>The Bourne Ultimatum</i> and <i>Femme Fatale </i>too.<i><br /></i><br />
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Like archery, <b><i>Equestrianism</i></b> and <b><i>Fencing</i></b> take place in, or are evocative of, a time before. They are practices wrapped up in concepts of uncomplicated and uncynical heroism (be it generals or renegades). As you are perched above, the horse's back becomes a muscular marble or steaming mahogany throne.<br />
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The amount of men and women who have ridden into battle, high-tailed it into the forest leaping over fallen trees, or galloped into the sunset cannot be counted. Again, cinematically, horse-riding is freedom. Romantic interest is piqued by a feisty lady at one with the beast, hair blowing in the wind, or by a man who has tamed and harnessed nature. Both sights provoke slack-jawed awe.<br />
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The riderless horse, a picture of abandonment and loneliness as well as of liberty and play, is an intensely dramatic image. <br />
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There is something oddball and old-style queer about fencing, or sword fighting undertaken in the fencing style. It is for those who like matters decided cleanly and in a dignified manner, to touch the point upon your adversary's chest as if it were an accusing finger; <i>The Princess Bride</i>, Errol Flynn's <i>The Adventures of Robin Hood</i>. <i> </i><br />
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In<i> </i>films It is likely the least dangerous of confrontations with a blade. In <i>Die Another Day</i>, the real danger comes when the foil, epee or sabre are swapped for a meaty sword that promises a pound of excised flesh.<br />
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<b><i>Football</i></b> is a fertile ground for storytelling, given its vast culture of professional, semi-professional, Sunday league and recreational play, of passion, of community and place, of the richest and the poorest, the West and the Orient united. It is like Basketball to Americans, only more so.<br />
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It lends itself to small tales of girl soccer teams, to tales of pluck (Mike Bassett, England Manager), of inspiration (<i>Bend it Like Beckham</i>) of those practically unhinged by its demands on the soul (<i>The Damned United</i>, <i>The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty</i>, <i>Fever Pitch</i>, sundry depictions of hooliganism).<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[Image from http://blogs.walkerart.org</span>]</div>
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If you discount the documentary which followed a master through the course of the game (<i>Zidane : A 21st Century Portrait)</i>, the professional game, it is fair to say, has never been satisfactorily depicted (see <i>Goal!</i>). It is impossible to replicate something that, to billions, is more dramatic than fiction could ever be. So something magical or historically momentous must be added - a fight for democracy and good itself against the Nazis in <i>Escape to Victory</i> or a literally super-powered battle in <i>Shaolin Soccer</i>. <br />
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But what of football in films that isn't football itself? What about <i>Crank 2</i>'s hero Chelios booting a severed head into a swimming pool. Good technique. <br />
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Films which feature<i> <b>Gymnastics</b></i>, prominently or at least in a meaningful way, are thin on the ground. In 1984 a TV movie was made about Romanian gymnastics legend Nadia Comaneci (entitled <i>Nadia</i>). In 2006 came <i>Stick It!</i> about a teenage gymnast who learns to positively channel her rebellious nature and <i>White Palms </i>(from the chalk gymnasts put on their hands for grip), a Hungarian film with a similar story arc, this time a troubled young man on the way to maturity.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS29gZ0jaqH-DYV-ZswoUQZm4gPRlHnth57-I-5PSX1SMNpqU5d_stOUxPPBImiSYbDKOwj1LONza3Q_lV2GGDidL9mc3MWdWApxgO3dDvzc4awxJdWY0uKue81wJXiKjEQhJHKAw_reez/s1600/GymnasticsMoloch.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="116" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS29gZ0jaqH-DYV-ZswoUQZm4gPRlHnth57-I-5PSX1SMNpqU5d_stOUxPPBImiSYbDKOwj1LONza3Q_lV2GGDidL9mc3MWdWApxgO3dDvzc4awxJdWY0uKue81wJXiKjEQhJHKAw_reez/s200/GymnasticsMoloch.png" width="200" /></a>The most haunting and beautiful moment of gymnastics outside the hall may very well appear at the beginning of Alexander Sokurov's biopic of Adolf Hitler, <i>Moloch</i>. In the Bavarian Alps, outside a vast holiday house / military complex shrouded in dense moonlit fog, a nude Eva Braun exercises on the precipice.<br />
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Chak de India (2007), about a women's team, seems to be the only major film about <b><i>Hockey</i></b>. Field hockey is a strictly female pursuit in the cinema, and certainly no-holds barred (<i>St.Trinian's</i> for both). Knee-shattering, ankle-scraping brutality seems to be hockey's calling card in films, and that's ignoring the damage an ice hockey stick can wreak in films like <i>City of Violence</i> and <i>Running Scared. </i><br />
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Away from the field<i> </i>this hard wood can be deadly (a shepherd's crook with which to batter lost sheep), a lifesaver for Lisa (Rachel McAdams) in <i>Red Eye</i>.<br />
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<i>Sanshiro Sugata</i> marked the directorial debut of Akira Kurosawa in 1943. As is often the case in fiction, the acquiring of skills and discipline in sport, here <b><i>Judo</i></b>, are a metaphor and catalyst for the taking on of the responsibilities and knowledge of adulthood. Therefore the development of a person is a matter of self-moulding, of achieving proficiencies and expertises.<br />
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Those proficiencies serve James Cagney (an actor famous for his portrayals of pugnacity and a black belt in Judo) well in a fight in <i>Blood on the Sun</i> (1945).<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Sanshiro Sugata</i> (Top),<i> Blood on the Sun</i> (Above)</span></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-42263620989108109212012-07-16T09:40:00.003+01:002012-07-16T15:27:07.868+01:00Prometheus<br />
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<br />
From the very moment <i>Alien</i> is evoked <i>Prometheus</i> is doomed, not because <i>Prometheus</i> might demystify the allure of its mother-offspring or be lost in its shadow but because its inheritance inhibits it, paralyses it and brings crashing down. Bathos. Anti-climax. Head tilted heavenward, eyes lashed to the ground. An android because of <i>Alien</i>. An axe because of <i>Alien</i>. A white shirt and panties because of <i>Alien</i>. This is nonsense. <br />
<br />
La pregunta de todos : 'Where are we from?' 'Why?' ends with the birth of a spindly creature (the least impressive one of all, despite evolving from the others) hissing unmenacingly. All our journeys, our existential tumult our hope our fear, the awesome void, laic sanctity, divine whim, expectant children are all for nought because all we are doing is meeting an old friend in a strange place.<br />
<br />
Small things have big beginnings. <br />
<br />
There is such potential in that opening sacrifice, the grandeur, the otherness. There is a frisson and a tremble ("They engineered <i>us</i>"). There is more potential here than in a hundred <i>Alien</i>s. It is always almost there.<br />
<br />
Parallels, yes, allusions. Black goo that creates and destroys: oil, Iraq, arrogance and hubris. That works and could have been explored. Feet-washing, miracle births, arms outstretched cross-like, 2,000 years, christological symbolism. A Greek fable in the name and sprinkled around works like a clever wink for a pat on the back.<br />
<br />
With little of its own grandness. <i>Prometheus</i> doesn't feel what it says in its sinews and in its heart. It is curiously empty. It lacks atmosphere. There is no time for things to sink in or their significance to be felt. It is one thing after another.<i> Prometheus</i> does have ideas, and complexities and 'themes' but what do they <i>do</i>? They don't flourish through the story or through the people. It knows the world but not itself.<br />
<br />
That which it does best is universal: parents and children, bonds of love given,
withheld, squandered, unresolved (life, death and sex). Cycles. What is
creation? What are we worth? Are we Gods? <br />
<br />
Even better, it has <i>thoughts</i>, though rare: <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Why do you think your people made me?"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"We made you 'cos we could"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?"</div>
<br />
Eventually all this gets lost.<br />
<br />
We want visions, art to give its answers and not more questions. It has that freedom and we give it that right but<i> Prometheus</i> is a timid shout.<br />
<br />
All that existential wonder and terror is flattened into fight or flight, aaaah into AARRGH!! Peril and not much more.<br />
<br />
<i>Prometheus</i> needs its own story. Why other mythologies? Why Greek , why Christian? Is this so we recognise it as myth, as something important? Abominable monsters and the cold gaze of Engineers ultimately point not upwards to the hands of Gods but down and back to us and what we already knew was not enough to know. We <i>have</i> the Bible, we <i>have</i> <i>Alien</i> and <i>Prometheus</i> stays in their shadow. <br />
<br />
Elizabeth is the light of the film, the through-line through the dull gloom, still looking for her God despite, longing for her father gone, wanting to bring life into the world and to understand it. She wants to embrace her instincts and feed her mind. She carries on to another planet, another adventure. She fulfills the imperatives of her faith in testing it. She has dreams and doubts and pains unlike the crew, the room-fillers. We don't believe in them.<br />
<br />
One would like to think she is like us.<br />
<br />
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<br />
We should decide : do we go with her now to find our maker, fair, foul or fate, or do we want a story about a story, a myth about myths, truths about truths? Do we want another <i>Alien</i>, a tuppenny fright, or do we want something different; bigger, better, bolder?<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-25121574616151819202012-07-03T12:51:00.002+01:002013-02-24T20:10:25.862+00:00White Dog (1982) Samuel Fuller<br />
One night driving home Julie knocks over a dog, a white German Shepherd. She takes it to the vet and then home. Over the coming weeks Julie learns that not only has the dog been trained to attack people but to attack black people, any time and any where, without discrimination.<br />
<br />
Black men were paid to hit it, you see, and hurt it until no reason to hate became <i>every</i> reason. <br />
<br />
The dog does not represent racist people (they represent themselves) but racism in pure form passed on and cultivated by individuals. That which was invisible behind the trainer's benign smile and gently proffered rattling tin of sweets reveals its terror in blood-stained fur and borne fangs.<br />
<br />
It is emotion and rage unfiltered by common decency or social constraints.<i> </i><br />
<br />
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<br />
If one were to take <i>White Dog</i>, both film and protagonist, as a comprehensive allegory/metaphor then it would prove incomplete and inadequate.<i> White Dog</i> is a picture about the evil of and seemingly intractable struggle against racism and in that regard it concentrates on nurture, the influence that others can have on us and, though not explicitly, how difficult it is to
diverge from those paths we have started down.<br />
<br />
Teaching, brainwashing, indoctrination, whatever name it wears. <br />
<br />
The absence here of a dramatised 'discussion' of innate racism (nature) suggests that it is either being rejected out of hand (a hopeful thought implying that there is a cycle that can be broken), something that positive nurture can unpick, or merely too thorny an issue to broach.<br />
<br />
<i>White Dog</i> emerges relatively unscathed from the minefield of
traps that come with territory of this kind : manipulation,
sensationalism, one-eyedness, or the potential for a
(hypocritical) black people v white people dynamic. <br />
<br />
Although
the film is of course (apart from being fiction, albeit fiction that reaches out and touches real nerves) about white people's attitudes to black people
abstracted through a dog, no additional race-based conflict is
intentionally set up by the film.
Images such as the one above may have been problematic and/or
provocative (leaving aside that provocation is a tango for two willing
partners) if the sometime fevered emotional pitch of the film had come
to cloud its cool, measured and fundamentally good disposition.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * </div>
<br />
Julie takes the dog to an animal training centre and is told that the dog must be put down. An attack dog we are led to believe can not be saved. One man at Noah's Ark, though, a maverick trainer called Keys, a black man, takes on the task on Julie's behalf. His belief that a racist dog can be untaught has come to obsess him, a mix of professional pride, personal suffering, passion and compassion. He has failed with other dogs. He wants to tear out that racist hate once and for all, and alter man's vicious ways through the dog's salvation, from effect back up to cause.<br />
<br />
<i>White Dog</i>, its gnashing despair, its espoir <span class="st"><i>é</i></span>clat<span class="st"><i>é</i></span>, its gritted tension of sharp teeth and soft meat has the power of a raging current so powerful that only rarely can the declamatory and essayistic underpinnings, the laudably apparent conviction poured into the work, come bobbing gauchely to the surface of the narrative:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
"That dog is sick!"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Then he should be cured!"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Darling, the people that made him sick made him permanently sick!"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Then they should be put to sleep, not the dog!"</div>
<br />
<br />
This argument between Julie and her boyfriend is, thankfully, an exception, though its stridency can be forgiven in part by Julie's earlier visit to the dog pound and its awful death chamber.<br />
<br />
Regardless, it is not enough to have ideas but to give them life. Here is life. Here is life that we can care about, the girl's pains, the trainer's sorrow, the dog's hair-trigger psychosis. In the end it feels as if the dog's fate is mankind's - can it resist hate in the loving embrace of its owner? At Noah's Ark, in an earth-like cage complete with lines of longitude and latitude, can we be saved, will all the sin be washed away in the great flood?<br />
<br />
Here is a microcosm:<br />
<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Microcosm : </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Fighting for Earth</span></div>
<br />
After all his training, Keys gives the dog a final test. Black skin exposed, dog unchained, the battle against racism is won. Julie hugs her panting, smiling dog. The camera begins to circle them triumphantly, spinning across Julie's face, around the back of her head, until we return to the dog, no longer Jekyll but Hyde (as the trainers learn to call him), a snarling red-eyed beast. The battle against hate is lost, against the pain of abuse. Julie's loving embrace lets slip the dog of war and he runs at the Ark's white owner, a picture of the man who first infected him with loathing.<br />
<br />
The sight of the dog in full flight, accompanied by Ennio Morricone's plaintive, terrifying music, is nothing less than tragic. The man is mauled.<br />
<br />
The dog is shot and lies in the sand, its face still contorted in a rending grimace. No solutions, no easy fix, no end in sight. All that is left is the mask, the mask that has become the face.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Violence deafens us to violence and its acts. Earlier, in Julie's clifftop flat, the dog could not hear an intruder attempt to rape her because of explosions detonating on the television.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Nurture can be that which we absorb unconsciously at a time when we have no choice in acquiescing or that which appeals to us instinctively and we
take on as our own with some manner of agency.<br />
<br />
Keys tells us that he didn't want to work in Anthropology, as his parents do, yet his life's work is remarkably similar - dusting for human fingerprints left on fur. We see, when Julie pays a visit to a black friend attacked by the dog, that she is clutching Francois Truffaut's book on Alfred Hitchcock (click on below image for a closer look).
Truffaut had long professed his admiration of Hitchcock's work and
acknowledged its impact on his own style.<br />
<br />
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<br />
These influences, these impacts, these marks : can they be ironed out like freshly raked sand, or do the wounds remain forever, to be salved but never to be healed.Try or give up, redeem or wipe out? Who is on the Ark and who is off?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
As I said before, <i>White Dog</i> should not be taken as a comprehensive manifesto on racism but a purposely narrow and squeezed cry of anguish, an appeal and yes, a rollicking story.<br />
<br />
I have written out (or will be about to write out) below some letters written in response to LIFE magazine's review of the book by Romain Gary on which Fuller's film was based. They provide a glimpse of real-life wrestles and a flavour of the complex and troublesome knot at the heart of racism and its depiction:<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>...Gary doggedly keeps trying to induce guilt...it's a phony, LIFE, and like so much of the racist garbage printed these days, it's completely negative, with neither constructive thought nor inspiration</i><br />
Colin G Male<br />
<br />
<i>Most of your readers will be surprised and shocked to read about the cruel misuse and tortured training of attack and guard dogs. The sad fact is that we and many animal shelters see daily evidence of White Dog and Black Dog - poor abused creatures ruined by man and so demented with fear and nervousness that our greatest service to them is prompt euthanasia</i><br />
<br />
Mrs Paul Kiernan, President, Washington Animal Rescue League<br />
<br />
<i>Some months ago I translated from Polish </i>Echoes of Treblinka<i>, a short story of Stefan Korbonski, a wartime underground leader in German occupied Poland. This story tells of a dog trained to kill inmates of a Nazi concentration camp. The dog, pride and joy of his master, SS Haupststurmfuehrer Hans Bauer, is retrained by a Jewish veterinarian (a camp inmate) during Bauer's absence and kills his master on his return. </i><br />
<br />
<i>We are capable of producing White Dogs in any circumstances. Whether it's "Alle Juden Raus!" or "Get them niggers!", the obscenity is the same</i><br />
<br />
Marta Erdman<br />
<br />
<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Julie approaches the dog pound's death chamber</span></div>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-29902797208690651012012-06-16T09:43:00.001+01:002012-06-18T09:34:27.110+01:00The Greatest Films Bandwagon Jump<br />
Over a year ago I counted down my <a href="http://checkingonmysausages.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Top%2050%20Films">fifty greatest films</a> of all time. My selection criteria paid no heed to critical canons or accolades, technological breakthroughs, historical influence or any opinion held or impact felt beyond my own experience with the flickering white skin called cinema. <br />
<br />
This year <i>Sight and Sound</i> again asked prestigious directors and critics for their top tens. It is very hard to jump on a bandwagon that has reached top speed which is just as well; why choke on somebody else's dust-cloud, anyway, when you kick up your own.<br />
<br />
So here is an updated list, this time in chronological order, of my greatest films ever made. I really don't know what use it has beyond, maybe, introducing people to films they don't know or encouraging them to re-watch something that may work a second time.<br />
<br />
With apologies to the 1930s...<br />
<br />
<br />
1922 Cinderella (Lotte Reiniger)<br />
1927 Sunrise<br />
1928 Lonesome<br />
1940 Rebecca<br />
1943 Day of Wrath<br />
1945 Roma Citta Aperta<br />
1946 The Postman Always Rings Twice<br />
1953 Gion Bayashi<br />
1955 Pather Panchali<br />
1956 The Searchers<br />
1957 Forty Guns<br />
1959 World of Apu<br />
1960 Innocent Sorcerers<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiDd1cI7J4qFtMN8hbGtf5dpH9i0mxlC3RUdtc4omkKdLnrmU5-6dVIyjXjPnCKVDQXG7rrFB4lNJDp_GSV60bl532ppZ5mjso5yZrFvfES5GQngstsfzEKfKAn27VBd0O6qr6ek-BSuKI/s1600/133700019424413102868_InnocentSorcerers02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiDd1cI7J4qFtMN8hbGtf5dpH9i0mxlC3RUdtc4omkKdLnrmU5-6dVIyjXjPnCKVDQXG7rrFB4lNJDp_GSV60bl532ppZ5mjso5yZrFvfES5GQngstsfzEKfKAn27VBd0O6qr6ek-BSuKI/s200/133700019424413102868_InnocentSorcerers02.jpg" width="200" /></a>1962 The Trial of Joan of Arc<br />
1962 L'Eclisse<br />
1963 The Birds<br />
1964 Woman in the Dunes<br />
1966 Au Hasard Balthazar<br />
1967 Playtime<br />
1970 Ucho<br />
1970 This Transient Life<br />
<br />
1971 King Lear (Kozintsev)<br />
1971 Szerelem<br />
1972 Hotel Monterey<br />
1973 The Exorcist<br />
1975 Mirror<br />
1977-2005 Star Wars<br />
1981 Le Pont du Nord<br />
1982 Fanny and Alexander<br />
1982 White Dog<br />
1982 Poltergeist<br />
1984 Once upon a time in America<br />
1985 Ran<br />
1986 Labyrinth<br />
1986 Aliens<br />
1988 My Neighbour Totoro<br />
1988 The Vanishing<br />
1988 Die Hard<br />
1988 The Naked Gun<br />
1989-90 Dekalog<br />
1992 Twin Peaks : Fire Walk With Me<br />
1993 Abraham Valley<br />
1993 Patlabor 2 The Movie<br />
1994 Chungking Express<br />
1994 Satantango<br />
1994 Crows (<span class="st"><span class="osl" style="color: black;">Dorota Kedzierzawska)</span></span><br />
1994 Jeanne la Pucelle<br />
1995 Whisper of the Heart<br />
1996 Freeway<br />
1996 Drifting Clouds (Kaurismaki)<br />
1998 Dark City<br />
1999 Rosetta<br />
1999 All About My Mother<br />
2000 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon<br />
2001 A.I.<br />
2001 Mulholland Drive<br />
2001 Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)<br />
2002 Demonlover<br />
2002 Dark Water (Hideo Nakata)<br />
2002 Liberte et Patrie (Jean-Luc Godard - short)<br />
2004 The Village<br />
2005 Three Times<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF5OwmiyKh6o-4lrGg-gQT442hT4CPBCqJkWvAvNlphB4TVV7pmPOi_2BdvcG389QIPzlgFKGr-nCjBW91w4uhf9_EMKe9S3UI1EFTxZkAsnMnIn-_EFHPJEqXIW4CXhB7MwT7sxQeeTqg/s1600/500full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF5OwmiyKh6o-4lrGg-gQT442hT4CPBCqJkWvAvNlphB4TVV7pmPOi_2BdvcG389QIPzlgFKGr-nCjBW91w4uhf9_EMKe9S3UI1EFTxZkAsnMnIn-_EFHPJEqXIW4CXhB7MwT7sxQeeTqg/s200/500full.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
2005 The Wayward Cloud<br />
2005 Oxhide<br />
2005 The New World<br />
2006 Southland Tales<br />
2006 Offside (Jafar Panahi)<br />
2007 Lust, Caution<br />
2007 The Romance of Astrea and Celadon<br />
2007 The Flight of the Red Balloon<br />
2007 The Bourne Ultimatum<br />
2008 Love Exposure<br />
2008 Shirin<br />
2009 Antichrist<br />
2010 Film Socialisme<br />
2011 Melancholia<br />
2011 Sucker Punch<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-54201471724171400552012-05-28T16:03:00.003+01:002012-05-29T17:55:03.843+01:00Unearthing Grief and Love in Super 8<br />
The word 'superate' means to rise above, to surpass, to overcome, to surmount and to get over.<i> Super 8</i> is a love story and a monster movie but fundamentally it is about a boy coming to terms with the death of his mother.<br />
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A hole has opened up in Joe's and his father's life and they are battling not to be sucked into it. Their fight against grief, which they keep hidden as deep down as where they are wounded, comes to the surface through the metaphor of war.<br />
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Joe is working on a film with friends. In one scene we see him playing a soldier. Later his Dad disguises himself in army uniform so that he can find out what they know about the alien rampaging across their town. The carnage caused by their unwelcome visitor - buildings trashed, cars overturned, tanks misfiring - is an image of an all-consuming grief so large that it begets a war zone.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Fighting - The Internal made External</span></div>
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At the end of the film, when Joe begins to come to terms with his mother's passing, the alien leaves (alien emotional presences for a young boy - grief, love etc. - form the backbone of the film) and takes the soldiers' guns with it. Both battles were joined and dissolved as one.<br />
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This battle that Joe is fighting within himself stands in the way of, and is eventually won with the help of, his friendship with Alice. This is beautifully visualised with the same war metaphor when, to let her climb into his bedroom, he has to remove a row of toy soldiers from his windowsill (and literally let his guard down).<br />
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Alice brings him both pleasure and pain. There is ample reason to believe that she reminds him of his mother, whether through her kindness, her aura, or simply by virtue of the emotions she stirs up within him. It is telling that when his father forbids him to see her Joe describes her character as motherly: "she's kind...she's nice to me".<br />
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In his mind, symbolised by her role as a zombie in their film, she represents life and death, a reanimation of interred suffering and love.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Above)</span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">Zombie Alice </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Death and Life</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Below)</span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">"Relive the Memories" - Talking to Alice on the phone</span></div>
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Being around her is awkward and not merely because he is unschooled in managing romantic sensations. Their burgeoning intimacy steals in to where he is sore. She makes him happy and sad all at once, guilty perhaps, vulnerable certainly.<br />
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Joe tells Alice how when his mother "really looked" at him "he knew that [he] was there...that [he] existed". When Joe is applying her makeup (with which brings out life and death) for the purpose of the film Alice mentions the accident that killed his mother. Joe asks her to close her eyes and tears begin to well up in his. He cannot stand her to "really look" at him in the same way and see inside. Love falls into grief and here Alice comes to stir it before it is ready to be awaken.<br />
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Alice, in the absence of his father's (a bereaved man busy dealing with the aftermath of the extraterrestrial breakout) comfort, protects Joe and heals him. We see this most clearly via the surrogate of Joe's model train.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Cradling Joe</span> </div>
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Train carriages come to stand for Joe himself. For the purpose of the film, Charles wants to blow up one of the model trains Joe has made and painstakingly decorated. Joe agrees but Alice encourages him to stand up to Charles. Alice, by intervening, is guarding Joe's heart and encouraging him to see that things can still have meaning.<br />
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He shows her one of his lovingly painted carriages - thanks to her he still values himself enough to share his soul, shyly proudly, with her.<br />
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The alien is released by a train crash that occurs at a moment of emotional crisis. Joe is watching Alice film a scene in which she declares her love for her character-husband. Joe places herself in his shoes, bewitched by this wonderful girl, and the ungainly euphoria hits him, literally, like a train. In a sense, then, Alice creates upheaval and kick-starts the slow assimilation and dissolution of undigested grief. The alien emerges from the wreckage.<br />
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As Joe watches, the creature bursts open an upturned carriage as if it is breaking out of him. The alien is grief, it is chaos, it is a catalyst, magnet and vector for sorrow. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The alien breaks free from the train</span></div>
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The alien is a restless ghost. It is hurt and angry, held hostage by the<i> army</i> and prevented from going home. She too is kept from going 'home' by the knowledge that Joe is not OK. It is a corpse that builds a subterranean realm beneath the cemetery where Joe's mother lays. Buried bodies, buried feelings. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Above) The image of the alien projected on Joe's face</span></div>
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The alien is Joe. In the denouement Joe looks into the alien's eyes,
"really looks", and tells it "bad things happen but you can still
live". Joe stands outside of himself and reassures his trembling heart.
The alien's cold horrific eyes part to reveal its eyes of no little warmth and light beneath. They have helped each other see.<br />
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It leaves. It takes parts of the town with which to create its spaceship; Joe's mother took a part of him with her. The last piece of the "model" the alien crafts (it is a model-maker just like Joe) is a locket Joe carries with him. Inside is a picture of him and his Mum when he was a baby. Joe hangs on to it as it is pulled upwards...and then he lets go.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Letting Go</span></div>
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The alien has let go, Joe has let go, and his mother has been allowed to go. Though he will never forget and the ache will never relent, a weight is lifted, the crushing bulk of grief.<br />
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Joe and Alice look up into the night sky, into heaven, and smile as it departs. Their fingers intertwine. Joe holds her hand softly where he would once grip his mother's image fiercely, jealously, desperately. Godsends, Alice and the creature both.<br />
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This wasn't just an alien or a monster but so much more - it was everything monstrous and everything alien. <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-60707302957379269092012-05-14T10:53:00.002+01:002012-05-15T16:29:43.217+01:00The New Cinema of Shattered Minds<br />
Delusions, split realities, multiple personalities; the erection and dismantling of psychosis, or something like it, is the most notable preoccupation in modern cinema.<br />
<br />
Trapped in a room, stuck in a cave, tortured by visions, something's amiss, all is askew, zombies, monsters, killers, they're after you. Our heroes and heroines are men and women in trouble. Or everything's OK...until the wallpaper begins to peel.<br />
<br />
The major questions in these films are 'what is happening?', 'what is real?' and even 'who am I?'. What is dream and what is reality in <i>Inception</i>? What is imagined in <i>The Ward</i>, <i>Bug</i> or <i>Take Shelter</i>? What is damaged? You, the world, or both?<br />
<br />
The intensification of disorientation and misinterpretation of experience reach awakening and we see, finally, how much was delusion. We understand that an illusion had been constructed, <i>Switchblade Romance</i>, <i>The Uninvited,</i> that falls when the fake expands to bursting or fades to natural end. We see the lies beneath the crises, twisted adventures. We see how visions of happiness were always only that - visions. <br />
<br />
The world was never out there but in <i>here</i>, in the mind. But what triggered delusion? The heart of all of these films, <i>1408</i>, <i>Triangle</i>, is <b>trauma</b>. Trauma that forces a break from reality. In mental collapse pain is moved to another level and manifest in horrific metaphor. Elsewhere involuntary 'coping mechanisms' kick in where a happier narrative, <i>Mulholland Drive</i>, <i>Dream House</i>, masks and abstracts suffering, a Bougereau painted on top of a Bacon.<br />
<br />
A dead daughter, a dead husband, a dead wife, guilt over murder, <i>Shutter Island</i>, <i>Mulholland Drive</i>, obsessive jealousy, loss and fear of loss, this trauma is a boomerang. These stories emanate from it (many of these films have a pre-delusion section in which we are obliquely 'told' what provokes it) and return to it. The tendency of the puzzle-story is that the completed jigsaw should reveal something terrible, even worse than what may have been suffered in the unreality. Yet that terrible, by its very human nature, in conjunction with the clarity of revelation, has an uplifting dolorous call - grief is love in death's grip.<br />
<br />
Trauma has its foot in the door preventing The End's storybook closure. Because these loves live forever so must trauma. Trauma distorts reality. The truth is impossible to accept. You become new people playing different or multiple roles (where they are effectively opposing themselves) in dumbly detached and remotely twinned realities. <br />
<br />
Stories are not going to save you (apart from in <i>Sucker Punch</i>, where stories are under partial conscious control) but they do, incidentally, help. Truth and understanding wait where they have led you, where they have finally failed.<br />
<br />
Three trends of 21st Century cinema that come together in the new cinema of the broken are the puzzle narrative, the twist and unresolved ambiguity. <br />
<br />
The puzzle narrative gained strength at the end of the last century with the success of <i>Memento</i> and <i>The Usual Suspects</i>. The revelatory twist that overturns what we have been led to believe achieved especial popularity, likewise at the end of the 1990s, on the back of <i>The Sixth Sense</i> and <i>Fight Club</i>. Ambiguity, <i>Martha Marcy May Marlene</i>, <i>Lost in Translation</i>, letting the audience write the last page, is a directorial tic still emerging. <br />
<br />
What brought these trends together, apart from the popularity of each? I don't know. Perhaps the traumatic events in the United States of America in 2001 have obliquely and subconsciously been depicted with the freshly forceful modes of storytelling to which they are peculiarly suited. Puzzles, twists and ambiguity lend themselves to confusion, paranoia, cruelty, sadness and cold brutish reality.<br />
<br />
There's no way out. It doesn't seem real. It's just like a film. Like a dream. <br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-30469826327931155052012-05-05T12:07:00.003+01:002012-05-05T13:15:02.344+01:00The Shining : Analysing an Image # 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Here Jack is smashing his way into the bathroom where Wendy cowers in fear</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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The wood-chopping man, the centuries-old strong and comforting figure of a husband and father is here turned against the family.<br />
<br />
The wife and mother screams. As she brings her hand up to her face her wedding ring is visible.<br />
<br />
From this acute angle across the door the axe seems so much bigger and the butcher (kitchen - female) knife Wendy holds so much smaller and inadequate seeming. This is a battle she appears incapable of winning.<br />
<br />
The colours are cold, stark and anaemic. They are dirty and off-white. The tiles tell us that this is a room where things are meant to be clean and made clean. Instead there are stains: literal, be it on the walls themselves, or figurative, on the sanctity of home and the sacrament of marriage.<br />
<br />
One briefly thinks of a more specific violation, rape, as the large axehead thrusts against and through the wood and, from this angle, 'into' her.<br />
<br />
Her face shows abject terror. She looks as if she is weeping, overwhelmed with sadness that it has come to this.<br />
<br />
With the axe in between us and her, she is made more helpless, separated from us. We are not able to intervene and are placed as if another victim hiding on the other side of the door.<br />
<br />
However, the camera's focus (and ours) remains more on her than on the horrific axe, whose intrusion is more other-worldly, more difficult to comprehend by being indistinct and blurred.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-4923670076187787682012-03-14T16:57:00.002+00:002012-03-15T16:21:25.599+00:00Movie Morality Debate Topics<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Here I bring the week of pieces on the morals of film to an end<i> </i>with a few thoughts<i> </i>for debate.<i><br /></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Playing Tricks </i></div>
<br />
What are the issues surrounding a film which pretends to be fiction and isn't or pretends to be real and is fictional or fake. Think of the ambiguous natures of Abbas Kiarostami's <i>Shirin</i>, of <i>Catfish</i> or <i>Exit through the Gift Shop</i>. Do we need to know whether a work of art is 'real' or 'unreal'? Is it our right? Are we being betrayed?<br />
<br />
Do we need to be more aware of how documentary film-making skews reality in conscious and unconscious ways? <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Special Editions, 3D, Directors Cuts....</i></div>
<br />
The rapid advancement of technology has facilitated the creation of many variations of the same work. Does greed play a part? Is our sense that only watching all the versions would represent a proper knowledge of the work being exploited?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Altering Films</i></div>
<br />
To what extent do we own or have a stake in films that we have seen? Think of <i>E.T.</i> and of <i>Star Wars</i>.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> Back from the Dead</i></div>
<br />
What are the moral implications of revivifying the image of dead actors and actresses?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Censorship </i></div>
<br />
What should be censored? Should we allow the worst things imaginable be screened, as long as what is filmed remains fictional/simulated? When, if ever, can the unchecked exercise of freedom be damaging?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Piracy</i></div>
<br />
Are the lines blurred, in a world of easier and easier access to media, between right and wrong? Do rights holders exert too much control?<i></i><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<i>Inspiration vs Theft </i></div>
<br />
Where does homage become plagiarism?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Moral Messages for Children</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Are films in general perpetuating the tyranny of groups and cliques? How are friendships, parental relationships, love stories and sexual relationships presented, coded and resolved? Are they imprinting the right things in children's minds? Are children's films coarser than they were? Do we need to be more careful in children's films where the audience may be more impressionable and the conscious filtering of fictional from real less sophisticated?</div>
<br />
How do we navigate the need of art to reflect the real and explore the unreal, to remember the world as we forget it? Should artists be encouraged to offer enlightenment?<br />
<br />
Most importantly, <i>how much of an impact do films really make on us?</i> How much (if we take modern film as one entity) of us as we are is on the screen? How much of us as we will be?<br />
<br />
I may pick up on a couple of these questions in the future.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjr4xEDC9oc9S63J3P2Zwj_ayduldnwpmVyNo2VdJscBmqwPalcoY7lTwvAH2M-ph0onB-tGoAaqrZE7A9Y6lguhA3jzwVxLikZ6939tBimvZpyjUQZ94WOkZnG35rIsZH6AtbWHQJMFWa/s1600/198073_211408098869932_157998120877597_824875_2862887_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjr4xEDC9oc9S63J3P2Zwj_ayduldnwpmVyNo2VdJscBmqwPalcoY7lTwvAH2M-ph0onB-tGoAaqrZE7A9Y6lguhA3jzwVxLikZ6939tBimvZpyjUQZ94WOkZnG35rIsZH6AtbWHQJMFWa/s320/198073_211408098869932_157998120877597_824875_2862887_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-66983072264712319052012-03-09T18:20:00.002+00:002012-10-25T06:23:20.514+01:00Dear Zachary [Morality Blogathon]<span style="color: white;">. </span><br />
As part of the Movie Morality Blogathon Jeff Pike over at the blog <i>PKCan'tExplain</i> has posted a review of <i>Dear Zachary</i>, a film he says "roots itself with ease and confidence inside the true-crime subgenre of
documentary filmmaking, where all talk sooner or later focuses
inevitably, and naturally enough, on 'evil' and 'justice'.":<br />
<br />
<a href="http://pkcantexplain.blogspot.com/2012/03/dear-zachary-2008.html">Dear Zachary at Can't Explain</a><br />
<br />
<i>"Because there's no justice here. Morality gets no purchase, and is
revealed for what it is: merely good ideas, not mandatory. One person
managed to successfully trample the system at large for a few
years—separate criminal justice systems in Canada and Pennsylvania—for
no more reason than that she wanted to, and along the way she
irrevocably destroyed multiple lives and sent many dozen more sprawling
in one way or another."</i><br />
<br />
Jeff's Martial Arts Centre is always open for writing and discussion on film and music.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-86117142634531854582012-03-06T19:30:00.001+00:002012-09-05T08:58:04.909+01:00On Torture Porn [Morality Blogathon]<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-size: small;">A
story is a story is a story.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Fiction
doesn't have to shed light on anything real or espouse any message yet we can fall into the trap of thinking that it is. We
think that what a film shows it condones because the director has
the power of Gods to intervene and make right. We think of a film as
presenting an enclosed view of a subject, a last word that relies on
no context. </span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
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</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
majority of films are first and foremost stories, visions of things
that just...happen and then... disappear. They are fantasies, inspired by but parallel to our world.</span>
</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
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</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">How
can we hold a fiction, and one example of fiction at that,
responsible for something that it was never intended to address and
how can we blame it for what we, in society as a whole, think and do?
</span>
</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">There
are always trends in art, be they stylistic or thematic. There have always been
films featuring physical and psychological torture (Wes Craven's 1972 <i>The Last House On The Left </i>is one ) but over the last few
years the numbers have swelled into a loose movement/ sub-genre. They
are more common, more insistent, more explicit. In <i>Saw</i>, <i>Hostel</i>,
<i>Martyrs</i>, <i>Cube</i>, <i>The Human Centipede</i>, <i>A Serbian Film</i> the human body and mind is subjected to prolonged pain and
degradation. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> </span> </div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The
umbrella term “Torture Porn”, meant generally as a pejorative,
was coined a few years ago. The “porn” of “torture porn” does not necessarily
have anything to do with sex or sexuality but rather the explicitness
of the material, referring to titillation and quick arousal of one
kind of another – here, through violence. </div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">A Serbian Film</span></i><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">A
section of these films do, however (by the very nature of their
rawness and their will to strip back niceties), have a sexual
connotation, be it direct, through nudity, the choice of nubile young
women and handsome studs for the main roles, or a pervasively teasing
tone.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">A
film doesn't have to have sex in it for it to touch upon sex. A
scantily clad woman. Sweat. Beauty lusted after, made dirty, ugly and
destroyed. The name “Torture Porn” puts violence and sex side by
side and in these films, violence and sex do go hand in hand;
violently sexual, sexually violent. They are presented as natural bedfellows.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Where
did this new wave come from? As with all art it came directly from
the success of the first films of this kind to touch shore. Artists and their patrons have to follow the money. </div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Why
is there money in it? Why do people enjoy these films?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">We
are offered the opportunity to visit hell and to come back into the
light alive, to be chopped up into little pieces and surface intact.
They are an adrenalising endurance test that pushes you to a
psychological and physical limit. They have a shuddering and
breathtaking intensity, a morbid sense of exaltation. We are reminded
of our carnal selves, infinitely vulnerable to infinite kinds of
wound. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">There
is a shivering buzz in seeing a film with the balls to show
outrageous things. 'Woah! Did they really do that?' </span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">We
like to be shocked. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Shock can be good. If it is uncomfortable and
gruesome it does not mean that it is morally 'wrong'. There can be an
imperative to shock. Shocking practices are best shown straight i.e.
shockingly. Extremes can bring hidden truths home by making them big and
visible. Where are we headed? What, in these awful, horrifying,
situations do we already recognise as dormant or active within us?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Perhaps Torture Porn reflects something in us, and in the
young people at whom these films are primarily aimed. Do we see
people as less than we did? Why are we less disgusted than we were?
Do young men and women exploit and use each other more and more? </span><span style="font-size: small;">Are we objects to be
captured? Are we not companions to be cherished? </span><span style="font-size: small;">This
poster for <i>Captivity</i> was quickly taken down after complaints:</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx7NovR1CGtKwvQcp03tG9DmaWmpZFQcIg6T7Ck20s_vRrtmVmhFkJm9vGcQa3LBN58P9FFJ7xHo05ckTrgbt0n8AXihIH2g-Wvd2rlzzzXJdKNNGwYLDuu86CRUoj5mjpnquo8K3fdod5/s1600/elisha-cuthbert-captivity-banned-billboard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx7NovR1CGtKwvQcp03tG9DmaWmpZFQcIg6T7Ck20s_vRrtmVmhFkJm9vGcQa3LBN58P9FFJ7xHo05ckTrgbt0n8AXihIH2g-Wvd2rlzzzXJdKNNGwYLDuu86CRUoj5mjpnquo8K3fdod5/s320/elisha-cuthbert-captivity-banned-billboard.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Why was it ever put up? It's odd and worrying. Is the mirror of film showing us what we look like?
Whether it's only fiction, a throwaway slice of entertainment, or not
is irrelevant; the point is that we would not have been entertained
by these films in such numbers let alone welcome them into the
mainstream with open arms.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;">* * *</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">As
I have said, one film may do little or nothing but put together, as a
group of films, they resonate louder.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">What
effect does Torture Porn have? Effect trumps whatever the intention
of the film-maker - whatever satirical bent, whatever redemptive
escape or emotional switcheroo. We can always say “it's just a
story”, and it is, but stories can still change us. Illusions with
good intentions can be problematic and damaging in the real world. We
can always say “they are adults” (and yes, the other part of the
audience may already think in demeaning ways) but a steady stream of
fiction presented in a 'realistic' fashion reinforces and normalises
attitudes and behaviours. That goes for anything, not just horror like this.</span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
most extreme behaviours won't be normalised but their repetition in films meant to represent a good night out could help to
shift one's moral fulcrum. They could aggravate a disregard or
buttress it with a sort of validation. Film has the cachet of a <i>cool</i>
art form. The worst,
over-the-top actions we see in “torture porn” have at their root
basic thoughts and feelings that emerge more commonly.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Do
we practise on our dolls?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">What
is worse is that torture in a few of these films is treated like a
game. The torturer is the self-appointed master and rule-maker. Games
of death. He does it with relish. In <i>Final Destination</i> fate
runs the game and delivers inventive death to squirming laughter.
It's just play-acting but these atrocities are framed in the same way
we frame our visits to the cinema and the same way we interact with
film. It's just a game, it's only play, it's a moral pass.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb7kunTBTg7-iBK0P2n5_BBV43-KDoC-tx39hVducl_DEkMQxQZ5TwoMx3TnyZA7vYY5YPe8eS0tXxuTZVqp4GtDAuzj5SQaXEB0XybemaF_cIdUfVErPAMd_ScgUiTtJyf3m3K3zyB5Ya/s1600/final-destination-5-007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb7kunTBTg7-iBK0P2n5_BBV43-KDoC-tx39hVducl_DEkMQxQZ5TwoMx3TnyZA7vYY5YPe8eS0tXxuTZVqp4GtDAuzj5SQaXEB0XybemaF_cIdUfVErPAMd_ScgUiTtJyf3m3K3zyB5Ya/s320/final-destination-5-007.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglujmgvwiSIlGdvf5P-_BNeFfLdDFplaDK1c2FMMHftEEtT0Yz3ajSLixzd_uHysZMO78jDcByBmah7GRccrCw-6lkkUV5Vrep5WdqRtYEpf5srV-mTFO0co0-S8y6esA-3c2UxIYXa3mI/s1600/cube-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglujmgvwiSIlGdvf5P-_BNeFfLdDFplaDK1c2FMMHftEEtT0Yz3ajSLixzd_uHysZMO78jDcByBmah7GRccrCw-6lkkUV5Vrep5WdqRtYEpf5srV-mTFO0co0-S8y6esA-3c2UxIYXa3mI/s320/cube-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Final Destination</i> and the puzzle-like torture chamber of <i>Cube</i></span></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
victims are cut off, tied up, isolated in stone rooms, abandoned
barns or dark motels. They are alienated from everything they know
and given what amounts to a taste of reality. Their complacencies and their habits are played with and rudely disabused. They
are made to feel more human. They are alive with raw nerves.
Intriguingly, there is oftentimes a complex, sneaky morality at work
in the minds of the torturers (or at least one used as an excuse for
barbarity) – you need to be woken up. You deserve it. You <i>need</i>
it. We the audience only fantasise about giving someone we don't
like, someone whose personality we can't stand, a slap. And here we
have it and guilt-free. What do we do with it now?</span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">We
place a lot of stock on the idea of which characters we identify
with, or are meant to identify with. Are we encouraged to identify
with a torturer or the victim? Do we like the charismatic killer who
dances as he slays? Do we care if a self-centred upstart teenage twit
is taught a lesson? The fact is we identify with everybody. People
are empathetic and therefore will always place themselves in the
shoes of others no matter how little sympathy they have for them and
no matter how the story is skewed in favour of one character.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Whatever
we see can enter into us and alter how we relate to the real world. It can pass beyond the nightmares of typical horror
(checking under the bed for maniac clowns after watching <i>Poltergeist</i>)
and take on a real form “out there”. Even those who abhor films
like these, who would love to see them censored, can be affected for
the worse which is precisely why they fight so strongly against it.
Powerful images stay. They are hard to shake.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I
exaggerate, perhaps. I scaremonger, but it would surprise me if this
constant mortification of flesh and <i>Monsters Inc.</i>-esque
scream-catching did not deaden us a bit.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">A
film cannot make us suspend our humanity. It can't make you enjoy
violence or be 'complicit' in it. But it can guide our humanity or
shut parts of it off for a couple of hours. As soon as we enter a
screening we are using different rules of engagement. Different moral
standards apply. We're perfectly behind a smart assassin like 'The
Bride' in <i>Kill Bill</i> in a way we wouldn't dream of being in
real life. She'd be a mass murderer. The issue is when that special
receptiveness unconsciously absorbs radical things which are then,
washed in that fictional varnish that hides immorality, taken out and
released in the real world.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
intensity of the suffering on show in Torture Porn is being gradually
dialled up as we become harder to shock. Shock turns into
desensitisation. Desensitisation, in films like these, would mean
boredom. Bored, we are unmoved by the agony. </span><span style="font-size: small;">Furthermore, with our reactions changing, Torture Porn, or elements of it, will find their
way into “children's” films i.e. certificate 15 and under. They have already.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Wmu2ENrfw6eE3jbAnpdnEI52C93u9_qEbRPs-7nTUFEbCzksZvAi-K6krC1OUVWya5_4izEqpK6AhlaZ4qWU_08nrc_3IWPECu5z_iUfHn4kL7ZEnltvqtV3OW1OjsB3JtWkHSW77dhF/s1600/hostel+II+still.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Wmu2ENrfw6eE3jbAnpdnEI52C93u9_qEbRPs-7nTUFEbCzksZvAi-K6krC1OUVWya5_4izEqpK6AhlaZ4qWU_08nrc_3IWPECu5z_iUfHn4kL7ZEnltvqtV3OW1OjsB3JtWkHSW77dhF/s320/hostel+II+still.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Hostel II : Images of War and Torture</i></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">On
the other hand, for those not desensitised, the torture and indignity
that they witness will become so unbearable that they will have to
switch off entirely, no longer able to place themselves in the
victim's shoes. Paradoxically, this means that the character is
objectified and any positive message about the evil we do, or
any political allegory, will be neutered. It's a Catch 22. The dilemma is about what you show and how much of it you show.</span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">These films can have a serious point, but any point in this genre could cut both
ways.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">These films are not point blank morally wrong but
I do wonder why they are made. Why do they think people want to
watch? Why, if it is a woman “tortured” is she always young and
always pretty? Why is it so
relentless? </span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">So,
what does this all say about where we are now? Where will we take
this art? Where will this art take us? Maybe none of it really matters and maybe stories are all they'll ever be.</span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-816621696997422112012-02-24T13:29:00.000+00:002012-02-25T10:35:50.183+00:00The Shining : Looking At One Image<span style="color: white;">a</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiccmhQPjtelLWmQwvtHhEsrWZCIiZktoDg4JtLGXcgkw1BivNnLKCBCabctUCCfC2gmryXHG17fqSHntzVKfsz9azMU5JLbQqMoFKTJfdYPP2_Lkv2pmKCl_SksXrO8cRvWZZ0vprxTi5l/s1600/5344907315_d166469c31_z.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiccmhQPjtelLWmQwvtHhEsrWZCIiZktoDg4JtLGXcgkw1BivNnLKCBCabctUCCfC2gmryXHG17fqSHntzVKfsz9azMU5JLbQqMoFKTJfdYPP2_Lkv2pmKCl_SksXrO8cRvWZZ0vprxTi5l/s400/5344907315_d166469c31_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
This is one of the last shots of Stanley Kubrick's <i>The Shining</i>. This is the (driven) mad father whose attempt to kill his family has been thwarted.<br />
<br />
The devil's hell has frozen over. <br />
<br />
He is frozen in an expression of inhuman rage. A pure emotion, a <i>state</i>.<br />
<br />
It is an uncanny and horrifying end to those uncanny and horrifying last days. It is pathetic and blood-curdling. Even though he is gone and seemingly no longer a threat, it is uncomfortable to look at him. He is a beast.<br />
<br />
It is humorous too. This is a cartoon villain like the ones with whom he is associated, and who he associates himself with, in the film - Wile E Coyote* or the Big Bad Wolf** - who are never able to catch their prey or satisfy their hungers.<br />
<br />
This is an extreme image of the frustrations of an artist paralysed by writer's block. <br />
<br />
<br />
His eyes are rolled up in death but also as if the awful flame of his ardours have been doused with refreshing cool - he almost looks ecstatic, his mouth slightly open (aaah!)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8J0mSgHxmmM9bQ9-YU25Eqs3MhhbTcE7SUl9KL1huf3J43q5_ChP9CMNrS3V-aRtNY46x2pt7qZi9V6hGz8BrkzcWL6P7xk0lADjteqv0GrmCbPCkXxaydjIXyZh3a7r_yscRWYTyHkX8/s1600/5344907315_d166469c31_zzoom.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8J0mSgHxmmM9bQ9-YU25Eqs3MhhbTcE7SUl9KL1huf3J43q5_ChP9CMNrS3V-aRtNY46x2pt7qZi9V6hGz8BrkzcWL6P7xk0lADjteqv0GrmCbPCkXxaydjIXyZh3a7r_yscRWYTyHkX8/s1600/5344907315_d166469c31_zzoom.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
He is stuck in the ground like a tombstone to himself, an epitaph of insanity written on his face. There is no need for anything beyond "here lies".<br />
<br />
Time is frozen. He is the so-called "caretaker" who has somehow been here before. He is being preserved. He is a tombstone to a type of man, perhaps.<br />
<br />
There is something monumental here, something larger than life. <br />
<br />
Will he come again; will he thaw? The danger is still alive. What is frozen implies life and movement before. Will he,<i> it</i>, move again when spring comes? The ground is angling downwards but it hasn't taken him all the way down into hell/the earth. <br />
<br />
<br />
* Earlier we saw Danny watching a <i>Road Runner</i> cartoon and we can hear the lyrics "the coyote's after you... when he catches you, you're through."<br />
<br />
** When he is standing outside the bathroom with an axe he takes on the role of the wolf "little pigs little pigs let me come in...then I'll huff and I'll puff".<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIVSf8TEbevWbQ0mU0w7hvFdeSNRBLwGH0GJ8fAalRsSjaAT2saVx6-gYqzVTpAKslM-YN9APaRdaiPCF_Dg8bE1f1hQWuhfoTFlB0jyfJWLYUQ3vkQkC4HZMpCef5-pOemmy5IEdds9gv/s1600/Screenshot-Road+Runer+03+-+Going+Going+Gosh+-+Mozilla+Firefox-1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIVSf8TEbevWbQ0mU0w7hvFdeSNRBLwGH0GJ8fAalRsSjaAT2saVx6-gYqzVTpAKslM-YN9APaRdaiPCF_Dg8bE1f1hQWuhfoTFlB0jyfJWLYUQ3vkQkC4HZMpCef5-pOemmy5IEdds9gv/s320/Screenshot-Road+Runer+03+-+Going+Going+Gosh+-+Mozilla+Firefox-1.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Wile E. Coyote</span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">cemented solid in <i>Going Going Gosh!</i>,<i> </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">a victim once again of his own trap<i><br />
</i></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-83370950475841385632012-02-06T14:54:00.001+00:002012-03-07T16:45:04.323+00:00Movie Morality Blogathon : 6 - 14 March<span style="color: white;">. </span><br />
Because I think it would be fun, I propose a stock-take of everything that has to do with <b>ethics</b> and <b>morality</b> in modern film.<br />
<br />
As long as it has a moral dimension you can write about whatever concerns you, interests you, gives you hope, no matter how big the pressing issue or how small the pet peeve. Hopefully this can get people thinking and create various debates.<br />
<br />
Once you have a piece ready you can leave a link to it in the comments section at the bottom of this post or send me the link by email at <i>srgfilmstuff@hotmail.co.uk</i>. Alternatively (if you don't have a blog, for example) you can send me the full piece and I can post it on the site in its entirety. <br />
<br />
Here are just a few of the subjects you could tackle:<br />
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The responsibility of film-makers towards us; our responsibility towards a film as viewers; relationships (sexual and otherwise); censorship; the ratings systems; normalising and glamourising; shock value; torture porn; where a film might be immoral or moral; the rating system; what is being shown to children; profanity; dealing with real historical events and people; piracy; what we do with old films and how the moral rules of engagement have changed over the decades...<br />
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<br />
The blogathon will run from the <b>6th</b> to the <b>14th</b> of <b>March</b>.<br />
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Thank you.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9idvPFGeogBnpsGFkuMoNCnIfVdJ4WSkuMerTtQQCvfRQK2-OGPw_7zRkvmWW5y4ZYFrvGCVRdlnTjhFenRojXuyi7AfvxpYfQa77GeeqDtGg3RtJ9Y_OZXD_XLLNF5Ly2t8vHVhU9qf1/s1600/Martyrs.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9idvPFGeogBnpsGFkuMoNCnIfVdJ4WSkuMerTtQQCvfRQK2-OGPw_7zRkvmWW5y4ZYFrvGCVRdlnTjhFenRojXuyi7AfvxpYfQa77GeeqDtGg3RtJ9Y_OZXD_XLLNF5Ly2t8vHVhU9qf1/s400/Martyrs.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-41698486944269876662012-01-25T09:22:00.000+00:002012-01-25T09:22:07.035+00:00Helicopters<div style="color: white;">an </div>Annoying little insect* hovering haughtily above. Spying on us, sniping at us.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlL0MG_YEEHBF-l8W-OmOH2orCZdwVOvfsle1yrh7rP2zfrhj-AqPrK6ypPxFukgjCRhjuRdGW8km3lqpUpYN48Y4-C5fOFCjvTvytSkHwbQbJKOuu6bOgEr1SUHBE8zyYi92BNciBn74s/s1600/helldie4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlL0MG_YEEHBF-l8W-OmOH2orCZdwVOvfsle1yrh7rP2zfrhj-AqPrK6ypPxFukgjCRhjuRdGW8km3lqpUpYN48Y4-C5fOFCjvTvytSkHwbQbJKOuu6bOgEr1SUHBE8zyYi92BNciBn74s/s320/helldie4.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Light it up like a firework and bring it down to earth.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEims6DTRSSPQJbPM7g81_9MIKUu9PLJ9Gz5j-ZZ086tYms0GSbViUpEPG9YU_fVhAZbwQ_lDPkMADaCgpVSbLoOGmR-_4OiloYE0zAekU1AxoBVmD4KtMy2r0jr_v6BlUz0qENL4GwPM3aU/s1600/helldie42.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEims6DTRSSPQJbPM7g81_9MIKUu9PLJ9Gz5j-ZZ086tYms0GSbViUpEPG9YU_fVhAZbwQ_lDPkMADaCgpVSbLoOGmR-_4OiloYE0zAekU1AxoBVmD4KtMy2r0jr_v6BlUz0qENL4GwPM3aU/s320/helldie42.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgexwyTdi3qkce-gCIdEtIjSIUdWEzmxe57_3EDI16h1wWqy_9qYJMTt7Bp-Uh1thjMEPRZ9Mqj69HfPmcBEokLnxnPdeCfWx1UQ5GHnm3L1sp6kIIUiAg2pMrg0698uC397ECFifgylZ6Y/s1600/helmiss.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgexwyTdi3qkce-gCIdEtIjSIUdWEzmxe57_3EDI16h1wWqy_9qYJMTt7Bp-Uh1thjMEPRZ9Mqj69HfPmcBEokLnxnPdeCfWx1UQ5GHnm3L1sp6kIIUiAg2pMrg0698uC397ECFifgylZ6Y/s320/helmiss.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
What knavery is this to deny us explosion by cutting away before the deed is done (<i>I Am Legend</i>) or worse leave a crumpled heap of metal, dry and unexploded?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixCONhZn3sIMgpW0DxaVMbX2mSTBmliLnGB8DSGXMqLSa71_UrNs9KLyUkjLQJQviq7nogNpPXx37j2VVLsrZGKUPvW46yhb207dKAwr77kjBsgPlYzr1p7r8DI8fQW2cNyrVkQamyH1A6/s1600/helhul2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixCONhZn3sIMgpW0DxaVMbX2mSTBmliLnGB8DSGXMqLSa71_UrNs9KLyUkjLQJQviq7nogNpPXx37j2VVLsrZGKUPvW46yhb207dKAwr77kjBsgPlYzr1p7r8DI8fQW2cNyrVkQamyH1A6/s320/helhul2.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<i>If you want a picture of the future of cinema, imagine a helicopter exploding - forever.</i><br />
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Its eye is shining...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb651L7SoPngwxjVxddxn9wdgZbHDCu7QcrsNw0ciW7DnvTH7nC8SEOgb_lLmWTYkMjZ66lmxJ2kqD6LuMsPC_-x6FPYjyXsGGzTH4w4tSbtvEqf0WjekGp2baUxCphU2LPAcz00J4_LgK/s1600/hellight.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb651L7SoPngwxjVxddxn9wdgZbHDCu7QcrsNw0ciW7DnvTH7nC8SEOgb_lLmWTYkMjZ66lmxJ2kqD6LuMsPC_-x6FPYjyXsGGzTH4w4tSbtvEqf0WjekGp2baUxCphU2LPAcz00J4_LgK/s320/hellight.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
...is it here for good or ill. Is it here to take us away from this hell...?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCfDcPuOCpnJ4YdunNptxCOuB3AtIbIVgZrulDkJVx6xWndAWm7f6kzOogS07aSzGJ6ImkZH7g76ajrh1TS1UUO3kJVnZaZWLIKWohhOdlCdId6y8dTsERzRj0TfIcPPA_PynL2ZuWbQbU/s1600/helclover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCfDcPuOCpnJ4YdunNptxCOuB3AtIbIVgZrulDkJVx6xWndAWm7f6kzOogS07aSzGJ6ImkZH7g76ajrh1TS1UUO3kJVnZaZWLIKWohhOdlCdId6y8dTsERzRj0TfIcPPA_PynL2ZuWbQbU/s320/helclover.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
...and we ascend vulnerable, hanging as if by a string.<br />
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A helicopter can be devil, a swarm of death from above, or, in the same guise, angel - mercy and salvation on its whirring wings.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wBnUPQpZIe4RCObu7aDTrxbJLZ_y_Rff-_iWVlzT-IdxPW_JNcunAthIl3ST7Ag-gsl6Id2k68CqVPr7c8SWdgR7Mn9uJhes80slhuNxtUExrw3WkQYxfFa_mrkFJ2wsTyTC5KEtmWVJ/s1600/helapoc3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wBnUPQpZIe4RCObu7aDTrxbJLZ_y_Rff-_iWVlzT-IdxPW_JNcunAthIl3ST7Ag-gsl6Id2k68CqVPr7c8SWdgR7Mn9uJhes80slhuNxtUExrw3WkQYxfFa_mrkFJ2wsTyTC5KEtmWVJ/s320/helapoc3.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBDkQm-JFMn8W4WUqsWex-mB_FzgC43snnniq_3eQqKzXYRpNVida6oj91BS8wE_SGgF7Ih94wRq3KDKNSvbnRc__N6TgF4PakJLgVHQW3ra6EpDCXIo2mkNtLLJlu6V6dRxm0drMuA22M/s1600/helapocbaby2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBDkQm-JFMn8W4WUqsWex-mB_FzgC43snnniq_3eQqKzXYRpNVida6oj91BS8wE_SGgF7Ih94wRq3KDKNSvbnRc__N6TgF4PakJLgVHQW3ra6EpDCXIo2mkNtLLJlu6V6dRxm0drMuA22M/s320/helapocbaby2.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Maybe it is just a mystery...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4b0_UbM934-hol2z9sdXQBwycYBCCe-9cHDgcl0UplUbqZdwQ4dZO1I9PMNKadrJ09F2kyX4UAF3pNhyowv8OIUI0ad_QKyxzDoJn0chC3lQjqB-xasw4aSU4lCPD6LcQfZwgiqEQcR4L/s1600/3957989365_85ccbc62df_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4b0_UbM934-hol2z9sdXQBwycYBCCe-9cHDgcl0UplUbqZdwQ4dZO1I9PMNKadrJ09F2kyX4UAF3pNhyowv8OIUI0ad_QKyxzDoJn0chC3lQjqB-xasw4aSU4lCPD6LcQfZwgiqEQcR4L/s320/3957989365_85ccbc62df_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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*A helicopter being looked upon like an insect is an image brilliantly used in the first (later pulled) trailer for <i>Spider-man</i>, when it is caught like a fly in a web that spans the gap between the twin towers of the World Trade Center :<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT5oVdJiWOUZ8UKU3RJyAk0EAXinCvm-hQYcvfPHYg4n6MiPJDsL0A6vuXf10DHql30p7mmKUo5rhRD9Rav0wcH54GQ4sryp1PEBqBsZDiJTnV1-_iZ70BaImQoevupehoEoz-Fg2qF4cQ/s1600/spiderman+towers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT5oVdJiWOUZ8UKU3RJyAk0EAXinCvm-hQYcvfPHYg4n6MiPJDsL0A6vuXf10DHql30p7mmKUo5rhRD9Rav0wcH54GQ4sryp1PEBqBsZDiJTnV1-_iZ70BaImQoevupehoEoz-Fg2qF4cQ/s320/spiderman+towers.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-723963586539474472012-01-09T12:35:00.002+00:002012-02-25T14:27:29.103+00:00Remakes : Why not?<div style="color: white;">
a </div>
Nothing seems to raise the hackles like the news that a film is being remade, with the idea more likely to be scorned if it is a remake of an old American classic or a rushed reboot of a modern gem of foreign cinema.<br />
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<i>The Thing</i>, the second remake, after John Carpenter's <i>The Thing</i>, of <i>The Thing From Another World</i> from 1951, has just been released and David Fincher's remake/adaptation of the Swedish film/book <i>The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo</i> followed a few weeks ago. There are plenty more in the pipeline too, such as South Korean Park Chan Wook's <i>Oldboy</i> in the hands of Spike Lee and Japanese manga/anime staple <i>Akira</i> given over to Jaume Collet-Serra. Soon we will discover who will walk in the footsteps of Paul Muni and Al Pacino to play <i>Scarface</i>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNtbCLGisrNjzjX5N4Vf-ZpuS3QDFYEdk5uwlUThO2b26m3aut_9CBOL-sFjJXjbD8QUoPpko37HVu3NcasZ-E2PqndXEqx54aPTTMSX_ysRjNfBo5270k3XDUL1OxQydbQ-O1kQxtclQA/s1600/girlwith1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNtbCLGisrNjzjX5N4Vf-ZpuS3QDFYEdk5uwlUThO2b26m3aut_9CBOL-sFjJXjbD8QUoPpko37HVu3NcasZ-E2PqndXEqx54aPTTMSX_ysRjNfBo5270k3XDUL1OxQydbQ-O1kQxtclQA/s400/girlwith1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Why not just watch or promote the original? Whither originality? Is it knocked down in the pursuit of a fast buck?<br />
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Why might films be remade?<br />
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Perhaps the original has a formula proven to be successful. A good idea is a good idea. Take something strong and economically viable and repeat. Take something cult and roll it out. A name, a brand could represent the closest to a sure thing. <br />
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Films might be remade for love of the original - to be part, in retrospect, of the process of the object of one's affection, to be responsible for the extension and curation of its life. On the other hand it could be dissatisfaction with the original that drives the project - the ideas were sound but the execution could be improved upon.<br />
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Although we tend to poo-poo the idea, different countries do have different sensibilities. Remaking a film in your own language whilst paying attention to cultural nuances will engage more people. Either way, with a new director, actors, director of photography, landscape, language etc nothing could possibly remain the same.<br />
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Likewise, we adapt ourselves as receivers of signals depending on who we know is sending it. Would<i> Exorcist II</i>, feverish and outlandish as it is, be beloved if it were an Italian horror film? Would its oddness, borderline amateurishness, be more easily enjoyed and admired? I hazard to guess 'yes'.<br />
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Subtitles, which distract attention from the image and which turn the aural into visual, change the nature of the film more than we might acknowledge. What is written, even with an aural and acted accompaniment, is experienced quite apart to the same thing heard, responding uniquely to their unique forms and the conventional ways of interacting that appear to govern them. <br />
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Was Wong Kar Wai's first English language film, <i>My Blueberry Nights</i>, his least successful critically because his poeticism doesn't work in quite the same way coming out of people's mouths (frankly artificial) as opposed to written and underscoring the action with gobbets of charming romanticism? Does the brilliance in his chinese-language films become soppy and inauthentic in the simple step from those white letters (accompanied by a musical, purely emotion-infused vocal murmuring) to the aural plane? What is said tends to have more responsibility to realism and functionality.<br />
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Furthermore, and paying no heed to the snobs, there are those who find it hard to watch subtitled films and it is obvious why.<br />
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Remakes (or adaptations from one media to another for that matter) offer fascinating insights into story making and story telling. They make you think about how something is put together, about structure, about characterisation, about technique, cause and effect. These are vital educational tools for the young and old - how has Martin Scorsese transposed <br />
<i>The Invention of Hugo Cabret</i> to the screen in <i>Hugo</i>? How has Middle Earth changed through Peter Jackson's lens? What is happening to the frameworks of <i>Rio Bravo</i> as it transmogrifies through <i>Assault on Precinct 13</i> and the French film <i>Nid de Guepes</i>? How has <i>Therese Raquin</i>, in tone and pungent odour, been transformed into 21st Century South Korean vampire story <i>Thirst</i>?<br />
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Remakes, comparisons, allow us to think about the <i>soul</i> of the thing. To think about the craft of art. Riffs and versions on the same idea - <i>Infernal Affairs</i> and <i>The Departed</i>. <i>[Rec]</i> and <i>Quarantine</i>. Not dispiriting. An exciting opportunity.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYqG25CVubwt67ZF97htJIAL7wFfr_apOl6VAUFco13gMbxbVQZqwo6XNqSuTlzs8Rt-yGfPjp2O67SamCnAa_3PKL5pSE3rflyCqlGY_dco3mn9drLQJwVgvsvuNQK4RYVkWAS-_wNBWL/s1600/rec.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYqG25CVubwt67ZF97htJIAL7wFfr_apOl6VAUFco13gMbxbVQZqwo6XNqSuTlzs8Rt-yGfPjp2O67SamCnAa_3PKL5pSE3rflyCqlGY_dco3mn9drLQJwVgvsvuNQK4RYVkWAS-_wNBWL/s200/rec.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>[Rec]</i> and <i>Quarantine</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTmRwMLc4-y-5Y2JXwb4FiObmcRM6YJqsNiXGXsHJybq-oAQMXtvz-miYxgvH1iL0WPHseyh94EaxvKBHe_524DPMSGNsEdJ6Mis9xzI2dsbMcWCxZ-4xtzi8l4ZP6tco3ZU4A6IYYs499/s1600/quarantine2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTmRwMLc4-y-5Y2JXwb4FiObmcRM6YJqsNiXGXsHJybq-oAQMXtvz-miYxgvH1iL0WPHseyh94EaxvKBHe_524DPMSGNsEdJ6Mis9xzI2dsbMcWCxZ-4xtzi8l4ZP6tco3ZU4A6IYYs499/s200/quarantine2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Once a film has been remade and we have two passes over basically the same material, a <b>HYPOTHETICAL ORIGINAL</b> is born - a ghost but with a form. The hypothetical original exists in our mind even without a remake but a remake brings it into focus. What it is is not so much what the versions share but what they appear to be responding and commenting on. The two films are in fact both versions of this hypothetical original.<br />
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The original isn't the be all and end all, its own mausoleum. It is <i>living.</i> Why do Directors remake their own films? Hideo Nakata remade <i>The Ring</i> in America. Likewise Takashi Shimizu and <i>The Grudge</i>. Yasujiro Ozu remade the black and white <i>A Story of Floating Weeds</i> as the technicolour <i>Floating Weeds</i>, Michael Haneke, <i>Funny Games</i>. Leo McCarey's <i>Love Affair</i> was indeed <i>An Affair to Remember</i>. Alfred Hitchcock's<i> The Man Who Knew Too Much</i> knew it twice, and Cecil B DeMille adapted the play <i>The Squaw Man</i> on three occasions, in 1914, 1918 and 1931.<br />
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They want to get closer to the perfection in their heads. They want to take advantage of new technologies. The original is not the original. It is in the mind and out there like a mist. They want another opportunity to revisit the same people and places and make right. Art lets you come back and remould, albeit with new clay.<br />
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Even though Alfred Hitchcock himself remade his own films and adapted a vast amount of short stories and novels, Gus Van Sant's remake of Hitchcock's <i>Psycho</i> was greeted by outrage. Is Van Sant's film redundant because it is almost a carbon copy? Far from it. It is redundant because it is <i>not</i> a carbon copy (in terms of shots). If it were it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experiment in which variables could be studied and where the magic of film would be shown to reside between the shots and without their confines.<br />
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What is a sequel if not a species of remake?<br />
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Do remakes hold back American cinema? Are they made to bury the originality of non-hollywood cinema? Are they supermarkets stocking products you can purchase in delicatessens and selling them cheaper?<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYDiVvBtuJdNM2fTAXDTufSxGYFVS31VTvXp5NEWOWHKlgOcuWuLfYQ2lFG9xwZN55NetWMc8K1icraA2BOjh-MqY3__UIYVl1aJJbzpUzYuonmrd3NTA6IJc-XJ97RY5gJRrBOdNo8G3P/s1600/the-thing-2011-20110714022250157.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYDiVvBtuJdNM2fTAXDTufSxGYFVS31VTvXp5NEWOWHKlgOcuWuLfYQ2lFG9xwZN55NetWMc8K1icraA2BOjh-MqY3__UIYVl1aJJbzpUzYuonmrd3NTA6IJc-XJ97RY5gJRrBOdNo8G3P/s400/the-thing-2011-20110714022250157.jpg" width="400" /></a> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Thing</i> (2011)</span></div>
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Is it vandalism?<br />
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Does it do the original works a disservice? Does it alter the brand even if the original remains untouched? Does it replace the original in the public's mind and if so, would people only be aware of the original because of the remake?<br />
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Why are commerce and money dirty words? Art has always revolved, and needed to revolve, around money as a facilitator and a spur. All artists should be penniless, destitute martyrs (warming their hands over their authentic inner voice) in their lifetimes and enjoy fame and fortune from the grave. <br />
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When we think 'remake' do we actually think that the films are re-made as if something that was sacred is now sinned against and reanimated as a zombie, abhorrent to behold? No two films could ever be the same. Swapping Peter Lorre for James Stewart, or Tony Leung for Leonardo Di Caprio, brings an entirely different colour to a character. A remake will always be worthwhile. The present doesn't change the past. A remake does no trampling and means no disrespect. <br />
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We accept countless incarnations of plays because there is no original performance, and endless repetitions of classical music written before the era of recorded sound.<br />
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Film is obviously a special case, but perhaps we could try to forget what remakes might mean and enjoy them for what they are - to use something of the approach we take when it comes to the fertile cross-germination of high art when we think of film, an art that, although it may give us pleasure, we are awfully quick to bring low.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-67610214881174093432011-12-09T08:20:00.023+00:002012-03-26T14:35:30.191+01:00Sucker Punch - Film of the Year 2011<i>Sucker Punch</i> is the story of the abuse of women, domestic and institutional historical and modern. It is the story of five girls/young women, and one in particular - Baby Doll, an orphan.<br />
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She has been placed in a mental hospital (framed by her step-father for the death of her sister) in which she is destined to receive a lobotomy. As she is about to be operated on, she finds it within herself to move to a new reality - a brothel. Here she is being prepared to have sexual intercourse with a man called the High Roller. In preparation for this meeting, Baby Doll is told that she must learn to dance.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNZmO-WQHRw3cZPKjKIIEH0Z_4XqbHErez7F3Egchsnroy8wcx9ikXBuL1UQO2BMqE3lvp_tRl3USc6d_ATBfiLWdfar4I9sQ5EQrelN-F_A1ZcuT5LW82k8wK07UrrLX0DFgeyl8d3m_H/s1600/sp18.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNZmO-WQHRw3cZPKjKIIEH0Z_4XqbHErez7F3Egchsnroy8wcx9ikXBuL1UQO2BMqE3lvp_tRl3USc6d_ATBfiLWdfar4I9sQ5EQrelN-F_A1ZcuT5LW82k8wK07UrrLX0DFgeyl8d3m_H/s400/sp18.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Her dancing transfixes the men in her presence, which hypnotism her new-found friends (also present in the brothel reality) take advantage of to acquire five items that she believes will help them escape. Just as the men are distracted, so are we, for we do not see her dance but are instead led into a splendidly exciting third reality - where the girls fight battles with samurai monsters, zombie nazis and fire-breathing dragons (traditionally male arenas) - through which we see those quests played out.<br />
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Here the girls adapt the costumes of exploitation, cutting their outfits into attractive uniforms for battle against it, draining them of associations of filth and breathing soul into body, turning revulsion into revelry and an adventure of freedom. Within seconds I did not see exposed flesh and live toys to be fondled - I only saw <i>them</i>. We revel in them and with them (and of course there is nothing wrong with finding women attractive or with lust).<br />
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What is ugly is made beautiful, just as the tomb of a moth secretly becomes the womb of a butterfly. What may tempt some is acknowledged, laid in front of us and then remodelled. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-HQ6H48f5XYwNcUeFFPW822kK3qD30n6eelWwi94aneS-VR4u9k6E6p_4P4xSiy0pY9oinI9MGZdTvW7lATeAQkq_H4QVrf5FrRvObMH4cK_5Hxjftm_4ytk39SbAfDc6fSAibq_hejNJ/s1600/sp14.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-HQ6H48f5XYwNcUeFFPW822kK3qD30n6eelWwi94aneS-VR4u9k6E6p_4P4xSiy0pY9oinI9MGZdTvW7lATeAQkq_H4QVrf5FrRvObMH4cK_5Hxjftm_4ytk39SbAfDc6fSAibq_hejNJ/s400/sp14.png" width="400" /></a></div>
What is more, there is no hatred, no vindictiveness, no revenge. Baby Doll's abusive step-father quickly disappears from the stage. No-one is hounded, humiliated or 'made to pay'. The girls show mercy throughout. Only inner strength and self-respect count. This is not about women versus men but right versus wrong and humanity versus inhumanity. Calling for a reductive label to be put on a film (feminist, chauvinist, degrading or empowering?) pretzel-twists all nuance, delicacy, and personal responsibility and morality out of the equation.<br />
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All that matters is that we <i>care</i>. And I did. <br />
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<i>Sucker Punch</i> speaks the right language. It places us both in the girls' shoes, pained, uplifted and inspired, and in those of their oppressors. <i>Sucker Punch</i> lives in the midst of what it criticises (the type of person, the type of film).<br />
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Are we to be distracted from what is really happening in the brothel, what is really happening in the hospital? Will we allow, like those men in the dark, our soul to be stolen from under our nose, bewitched by these loud noises, these propulsive songs and intense gyrations? These abstractions are used to divert us, to make the story palatable, to turn barren, po-faced lecture (many films about abuse tastefully leave our possible complicity and the gradations of exploitation to one side) into apt demonstration and to mirror the closed doors and drawn curtains behind which awful acts are perpetrated. <br />
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There are risks to giving medicine with sugar (to having one's cake and eating it) as some will taste only the sickly sweet and relish the boobs (albeit there are no lascivious or gratuitous shots whatsoever), the lipstick smears and the ejaculatory gunfire. For them the film may be encouragement for 'objectification' or 'mindlessness'. Many critics and viewers have indeed seen the film itself, rather than its situation, as degrading and misogynistic. <br />
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What do you see?<br />
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Each action is code for another on a different layer, each object has a counterpart elsewhere on a second and third map. Sucker Punch is strong and dark with metaphor, its structure brilliantly interwoven with its message. These are not the tangential puzzles found in <i>Mulholland Drive</i> or <i>Inception</i>. Rather they drive to the very heart of the narrative. There is no obfuscation.<br />
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We are exhilarated and moved by camaraderie and solidarity and sacrifice. We are saddened and perturbed as the meaning of what we see is exposed by its echoes. <i>Sucker Punch</i> is massively enjoyable and increasingly hard to watch for what's at stake.<br />
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When do these stories begin to break through the screen?<br />
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What do the dances in the brothel mean in the hospital - do they stand for therapy or for rape? Does sex with the high roller in the brothel mean a lobotomy in the hospital? There is no easy way out. The realities are not dreams or escapes, but vivid and tangible expressions, paths to clawing back a little independence, dignity and happiness. This is non-escapist entertainment that, cleverly and (I believe) necessarily, looks and sounds like escapist entertainment.<br />
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<i>Sucker Punch</i> promotes the significance and power of love, of the mind, of stories, of film, of allegory, and of physical intimacy.<br />
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Are we perverts for pulling these curtains back? Or are we exposing something true and rotten? <br />
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Fun, intelligent and emotionally powerful. The finest film of the year.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-88511340699845618182011-11-19T15:39:00.006+00:002012-01-16T15:52:56.841+00:00Film and Musicality : The Importance of Tempo, Rhythm, Length and Timing<div style="color: white;">f </div>Why we like or dislike a film may rarely be in step with our conscious rationale of why. <br />
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Art is an odd spell and few of us know which of its words make us fall into a slumber and which snap us back to reality. The tiniest things can make all the difference - even a pink sweater instead of red...<br />
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We talk about liking the plot, the ideas, the look, the atmosphere, the music, the characters, the acting and all the combinations of the above. It is easier to quantify, understand and communicate these bigger and more obvious components of a film, and much harder to pin down the smaller parts that give each film its unique fingerprint.<br />
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We must struggle, too, with the idea that films may be made out of different components but that they categorically do not work on us in that way. These components cannot be fully separated once they have been put together.<br />
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One of the elements least (consciously) acknowledged when we look over our experience of a film is what we could call the work's 'musicality'. Yes, we may talk about a film being too long or too short, or about it moving too slowly or too quickly, but little else besides.<br />
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So what are we discussing when it comes to tempo, rhythm, length and timing?<br />
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<b>Shot length / Placement of Cut </b><br />
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Is the shot too short or too long? In a film that sets its heartbeat at 40 a shot that lasts for a few minutes may be perfect. One such is a mesmerising journey on a train at the beginning of <i>Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks</i>.<br />
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One shouldn't underestimate the difference that a fraction of a second can make. Intrigue can flip to boredom at a moment's notice.<br />
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Is the movement of the camera or movement within the frame demanding a cut? Is the action inappropriately truncated? Has an emotional arc, or a developing ambience been betrayed?<br />
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<b>Scene length</b><br />
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Is the scene too short or too long? There will come a point where a scene will outstay its welcome or, on the other hand, stop when we wish it hadn't. This may only be felt as a barely perceptible twinge.<br />
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<b>The pace/build of action and plot progression</b><br />
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Is the story being served properly? Is it being allowed to breathe the right air? Is it ahead of itself or behind? Is too much said too early or too late? Is there enough in the film to sustain the time given to it?<br />
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What is the mix of quickness and slowness? Is it too programmatic, episodic or set to one particular rhythm?<br />
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<b>Time spent on each part of the story or each geographical location</b><br />
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Is too much emphasis placed on certain plot strands?<br />
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<i>Let the Right One In</i>, having established the core of the story as the relationship between the two youngsters and courted our interest with its flourishing, wastes a surfeit of time on Eli's quest for blood.<br />
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<b>Timing of reactions to actions / Timing of Edits</b><br />
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We must bear in mind that actors aren't actually 'reacting' to what is news to the characters.<br />
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Let us take <i>Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</i> as an example. On multiple occasions people act and react a split second too early or too late, whether through the fault of the acting or of the editing. We are instinctively alarmed by the unnatural.<br />
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These are only brief thoughts, a polite pointing in the direction of something camouflaged. The right thing at the right time can produce magic; the right thing at the wrong time, discordance; wrong thing at the wrong time, ruin.<br />
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All of these elements form part of an overarching mother rhythm and length. Have we spent enough time extracting the juice of the story - exploring implications, feeling emotions, sensing surroundings...? <br />
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It is a mistake to think of a film as having one body with one unchanging rhythm. It changes itself and it changes as we change in response. It is constantly adapting itself to serve the story. You cannot think of a film as being in four-four time or six-eight. <br />
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This is not pro the metrics of cinema, which are intriguing as tools to map cinema's mechanical evolution, but of limited use in explaining our idiosyncratic thoughts or sensations. Such-and-such a technique can never guarantee such-and-such an effect. We can say that something made us feel in a certain way but there are no universal conclusions to be drawn.<br />
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It is for each of us to feel and, in any way we can, explain our individual responses. <br />
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It is useful, nevertheless, to be aware of what may have an influence on the viewer. We should try and engage with the musical in film, that which flits between the scientific, the personal and the philosophical<br />
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This musical nature will make or break a film in spite, often, of everything else within it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8035434747786768960.post-15845701491136294242011-11-09T16:58:00.003+00:002012-01-23T17:04:04.384+00:00Forest of the Hanged (Pӑdurea Spânzuraţilor)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPO_JYHBlD_5Q9OHhEQG-BTOLmgF5WxDt7UNCeNq-naqai84p3xWtQeEs8cTv7hkW-0zC-5HzjwWmG65ctohjomNXAgI6_Js_MTOMeyGpm1iTODSB53ElhHxFq0WNGnzPkHcN6DGmSCQ2m/s1600/pad5.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPO_JYHBlD_5Q9OHhEQG-BTOLmgF5WxDt7UNCeNq-naqai84p3xWtQeEs8cTv7hkW-0zC-5HzjwWmG65ctohjomNXAgI6_Js_MTOMeyGpm1iTODSB53ElhHxFq0WNGnzPkHcN6DGmSCQ2m/s400/pad5.png" width="400" /></a></div><i>Forest of the Hanged</i> opens on a dusty road. Hundreds of soldiers are marching. Suddenly one of them turns around and looks at us. Conscience, a challenge. He has turned against the tide and looked us in the eye, humanising in an instant the whole machine of war.<br />
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This 1964 Romanian film is an adaptation of a novel written in 1922 by Liviu Rebreanu. The novel was inspired by the fate of the writer's brother Emil, a soldier who was executed during the First World War for attempted desertion from the Austro-Hungarian army<br />
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In the story Emil is Apostol Bologa, a sub-lieutenant. We first meet him as he attends the hanging of a deserter; the look in the dying man's eyes as he swings from the noose will come to haunt Apostol, a man who prides himself on his acute sense of duty.<br />
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The Austro-Hungarian Army comprises many different nationalities. This means that, across Europe, from Italy to Russia to Romania, men are being asked to fight against their own people. The General is aware of these temptations and complications. Loyalties are tested : friends asked to condemn friends, countrymen to kill countrymen. The man we saw hanged, Svoboda, was a Czech trying to cross to the Czech side. Now Apostol, a Romanian, has been transferred to the Romanian front. <br />
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What will Apostol choose, death for betrayal on one hand or <i>moral</i> death on the other? <br />
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Eventually, disgusted by the senseless carnage of war and by his part in the fate of his own kind, Apostol takes a stand and refuses to take part in the show trial of twelve Romanian farmers. <br />
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In the midst of his turmoil he had found love with a Romanian girl Ilona, the only purity still sparkling in the quagmire. Nonetheless, unable to live with himself, he chooses to die with his soul untouched : he is caught crossing to the Romanian side, an act for which he will pay with his life. <br />
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Apostol is taken off in a cart to be hanged. He is taken away smiling. They ride under the trees, from whose leafless branches hang dozens of men like strange fruit. Here is the forest of the hanged:<br />
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<i>Forest of the Hanged</i>, directed by Liviu Ciulei, is an especially evocative film. The characters not only debate their philosophical dilemmas but live them with every fibre of their beings. The world they inhabit is a dirty one in all senses of the word. It is hard to get out of the mud and find your way from darkness to light.<br />
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The black and white photography is wonderful and runs deep with rich shades. Two examples : the carriage surrounded by a wall of old shoes in which Apostol's friend Muller has made a home is a fantastical creation. Even in a black and white film it looks golden; the beautiful embraces that Apostol and Ilona share are bathed in a stunningly clear, virginal, light. Images such as these recall those of Andrei Tarkovsky's <i>Ivan's Childhood</i>. Both films place particular emphasis on quality and tone of light.<br />
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In the opening scenes of the film the camera seems too near to, or too far from, the action as if trying to get its bearings. Throughout the film it glides (for example into and out of mirrors - symbolic of reflection and introspection) but also turns violently or even swoons...sometimes the director will leave a part of the image deliberately out of focus. What, I think, helps make<i> Forest of the Hanged</i> so involving is that the film has both rawness and elegance to it; visualising our worse and better natures.<br />
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We also come to find subtle religious allusions. The film makes an apostle of Emil by calling him Apostol. Furthermore, why, we may ask ourselves, are there <i>twelve</i> Romanian insubordinates?<br />
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Apostol, though, is no saint. He values some lives (Romanian), above others. Muller, on the other hand, finds all killing wrong and teases Apostol, who wants to be transferred away from his quandary to Italy, with biting sarcasm : “On the Italian front there are no brothers....only here there are brothers”. <br />
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With so much degradation and death around them, and when suffering reduces us to our basic, naked, human characteristics (those we all share), such discrimination on the basis of nationality suddenly seems ludicrous. <br />
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The film puts this across in quite brilliant fashion. At one point Apostol is asked to act as interpreter for three Romanian prisoners. All the characters in the film speak in Romanian. However, none of them, apart from Apostol (a Romanian), can understand the Romanian characters. In this way the director underlines the idea that the differences between sides and the reasons for lack of understanding (or indeed for war itself) might as well be imaginary (or at least are intentionally exaggerated). The distinctions between nations are confused and blurred again: Muller is heard musing to himself “Mozart...a great composer”, to which his companion responds: “Ah, one of your Germans”. <br />
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With Apostol's fate secured, Ilona comes to bring him his last meal. All dressed in black, she prepares the little table as if it were an altar or a grave. She is honouring and mourning him. They look at each other without saying a word and eat. What caring and dignity...<br />
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A soldier stands watch over them. He says that she begged him to let her see Apostol. He gave in. “We are people, aren't we?”, he explains. What beauty...<br />
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It is easy to see why <i>Forest of the Hanged</i> is considered one of Romanian Cinema's greatest achievements gained international renown in 1965 when Liviu Ciulei won the best director prize at Cannes.<br />
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