Like Anna Karina's Sweater

Cannes Preview: Old Boy

Probably the single most talked about film in Korea last year was Pak Chan-wook's controversial Old Boy. Based on a Japanese comic book of the same name, the film is a tale of revenge, as was Pak's last film, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. It stars Choi Min-shik, who was brilliant as painter Jang Seung-up in 2002's Chihwaseon. The story tells of a man who is kidnapped and held prisoner for reasons unknown. Fifteen years later, he is released on the street with a wallet full of cash, a cell phone, and a burning desire to figure out exactly what happened to him. Kyu Hun Kim (of koreanfilm.org) has the following to say about Choi Min-shik's performance: Choi Min-shik, looking like a mangled lion with a hyena-chomped black mane, gives the most electrifying performance of his career. His role runs the gamut from the Lee Marvin-like taciturn heroics of a seventies crime thriller to the spectacular implosion of a broken man, pitifully wailing and literally licking the shoes of his enemy, and everything in between. Wow! It's Filmbrain's guess that the reaction in Cannes will be heavily divided, as has been the case of late with controversial films -- this seems to be a love it or hate it film. The DVD (Region-3 only) will be available in early May, giving you a chance to see it before Quentin does. Pre-orders are being accepted here. Check out the trailer -- it looks very interesting. Links: Official Site, Trailer (700k streaming, or right-click to download -- well worth watching.)

News Filmbrain wished he hadn't read

Filmbrain's good friend at Out of Focus has been tracking signs of the coming apocalypse, and got as far as four. This is a strong candidate for number five. At the very least, it's enough to make this screenwriter bury his face in his hands while ordering another arsenic and soda.

The headline was bad enough:

"Remake of 'Porky's' in the works"

Then came the first paragraph:

TORONTO - Shock jock Howard Stern is set to produce a remake of Porky's, the 1982 gross-out comedy that is Canada's top-grossing English-language film. (Who knew Porky's was Canadian?)

An under-17 Filmbrain snuck into this in 1982 with friends, and even though he was deep in puberty he was already too much of an aesthete to find any pleasure in its low-brow humor. Filmbrain saw (and loved) Diva that same year, where he fell in love with Thuy An Luu.

Hasn't Porky's already been remade -- as every other teen-sex-comedy?

Hubert Selby, Jr 1928-2004

Brooklyn-born author Hubert Selby, Jr. passed away on Monday. He was 75. Filmbrain first read Last Exit to Brooklyn at the impressionable age of thirteen, which might have been a mistake. Then he read all of his other novels, finishing with his masterpiece, Requiem for a Dream, which opens with the unforgettable "Harry locked his mother in the closet". Filmbrain lives just a few blocks away from the events depicted in Last Exit to Brooklyn. But now Tralala, the whores, the thugs, the transvestites, and the dockworkers have been replaced by over-paid twenty-somethings who drive BMWs and are buying the dilapidated buildings that Selby once wrote so passionately about. (Sorry for the minor rant. Filmbrain really isn't bitter.) Two brave directors dared to tackle Selby's work and bring them to the big screen. While neither film can match the 'rawness' of the novels, they were both uncompromising visions by two unique artists. While Uli Edel's Last Exit to Brooklyn is not a perfect film, he at least made the right choice in casting Jennifer Jason Leigh as Tralala, a part she was born to play. Darren Aronofsky's take on Requiem for a Dream is an incredible feel-bad experience, and it comes close to the disturbing reaction that reading the novel brings. (Filmbrain still has a hard time watching the final fifteen minutes.) Both directors put Selby in their films -- who can forget him as the sinister prison guard screaming at Jared Leto and Marlon Wayans? Filmbrain found this quote from a 1999 interview with Selby: As I understand it, there are only two emotions a human being can experience, love or fear. And when you're in a state of love, you can't think of trying to get anything. You're incapable of thinking that way. You just seem to experience the perfection of creation and want to do what you can to make everyone comfortable - you just give away everything you have. (Hmmm...maybe the teacher in Donnie Darko really was on to something. . .) Selby had been working on an autobiographical novel, Seeds of Pain, Seeds of Love over the past few years. Filmbrain wonders if it deals with the issue from the above quote. With any luck, it will be published, even in unfinished form.

Cannes Preview: Woman is the Future of Man

Filmbrain has mentioned this more than once, but he considers Hong Sang-soo to be one of the greatest directors working today. Each of his four features has been somewhat of a masterpiece, and tracing his development from his first feature (The Day a Pig Fell Into a Well) to his last (On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate) it is clear that he has become master of the "complicated psycho-sexual dynamics in male-female relationships" genre. His films are not romantic comedies, nor melodramas, but rather brutally honest portrayals of sex and desire, and the way men use these as replacements for things lacking in their own lives. The men in his films are not monsters, nor are the women portrayed as victims. The power of his films comes from how very real (read: flawed) his characters are. Filmbrain plans to write reviews of all four films sometime in the near future. On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate is Filmbrain's favorite film of the decade (so far) and he wonders if Hong will be able to top that with his latest film, Woman is the Future of Man, which is in competition at Cannes this year. The film appears to once again deal with the theme of complex relationships -- this time, two men decide to look for an old girlfriend that both had dated. That's all Filmbrain needs to know -- he is excited beyond words. There is a wonderfully designed official website, which includes two very interesting looking trailers. (The site is in Korean, but the trailers can be found by first entering the site from the main page, then clicking the second item in the menu bar, and then selecting Multimedia.) There are also pictures from the film, posters that can be dowloaded, and two games that Filmbrain finds a bit confusing -- something about picking the right women in the bar to talk to before your buddy gets back from the men's room. Go figure. Link: Woman is the Future of Man official site

Infernalest Affairs

It is with a heavy heart that Filmbrain must report his disappointment with the final film in the Infernal Affairs trilogy. No, it's not a complete mess, nor is it a particularly bad film, it's just that the final movement of the symphony gets a bit erratic. Then again, no matter how directors Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak approached it, the odds were against them. One need only look at the final chapter in The Godfather series as proof of how a trilogy can go wrong. What Infernal Affairs III shares with The Godfather: Part III is that it tries to accomplish too much in one film. The desire to tie up all loose ends while at the same time adding enough new material to keep it interesting is a difficult task. The introduction of new characters in a final chapter presents some difficulties -- how do you present enough information about them in a single film, and, more importantly, how to you get the audience interested while their focus is on the characters from the previous two films? In this regard, Infernal Affairs III succeeds where Coppola failed. The characters introduced in the final Godfather film served only as a means of showing the future of the Corleone family. They brought very little to the story of Michael and Kay, and were part of the reason the film is generally considered a failure. (Don't even get Filmbrain started on Andy Garcia and Sofia Coppola's performances!) The two new characters introduced in Infernal Affairs III are not simply filler, nor were they an afterthought -- they play a critical role in the wrapping-up of the story of Yan (Tony Leung) and Ming (Andy Lau).

The conclusion that screenwriters Felix Chong and Siu Fai Mak present is emotionally powerful -- it directly refers to the original title of the films (Wu Jian Dao) which, according to a Buddhist sutra, is a hell where the suffering is endless and continuous. Somebody does indeed wind up there, though Filmbrain won't say whom. . . Where the film fails is in its structure and the excess amount of information presented. Infernal Affairs III is both a prequel and sequel to part one, with most of the events taking place between parts two and one. As a result, characters that died two films ago are suddenly alive and well. This on its own is not a problem, but the film's constant hopping back and forth in time gets tiresome. Couple this with the tidal wave of information that is revealed in its two hours, and you've got a film that doesn't give you much time to enjoy it, as you are constantly trying to work out who, what, where, when and why. Filmbrain watched all three films in the same week -- he can't begin to imagine what it would be like to see the films with a yearlong gap between parts one and three. Besides having to figure out who everybody is (and their respective allegiance and relationship to everybody else), nearly every scene contains some significant explanation (or twist) of events from the two prior films. The DVD contains an extended directors cut with approximately eleven additional minutes, making it somewhat easier to piece everything together. The good elements of the first two films are still here -- and perhaps even better than before. The performances are once again top notch, and both Leon Lai and Chen Daoming (as newly introduced characters Yeung and Shen) bring a lot to the already impressive list of talent. Kelly Chen, who had a small role in part one is back as Dr. Lee, and her significance is greater than previously imagined. Cinematographer (and co-director) Wai Keung Lau once again presents us with some very striking visuals. Along with the cool blue that dominates the first two films, a good portion of this one is filmed with a palette of rich golden browns and reds (see accompanying photos) which lends to its warmer, more human story. (Infernal Affairs III is less policier than it is a straight out drama.) It took Filmbrain several days of working out the intricate details before the power of the trilogy as a whole hit him. Its tragic ending may not seem like much after all that's come before it, but with some distance, its power to haunt is even greater. (A second viewing of the trilogy is in order.) Infernal Affairs III is still a very good film -- not as great as its predecessors, but still a satisfying conclusion to an extremely complex tale.

Quentin's tomb

Dear Quentin --

Saw you on Charlie Rose last night. Wow! You got the full hour! By my count, you spoke 6,487,926 words in just under sixty minutes. Impressive.

Hate to bring this up, but, hey, what are friends for?

tomb ('tüm): noun
1: an excavation in which a corpse is buried
2: a place of interment

tome ('tOm): noun
1: a volume forming part of a larger work
2: a large or scholarly book

I'm sure Charlie and the half-dozen people who were watching knew you meant tome when speaking about your Inglorious Bastards screenplay. And then when you said it again about the Kill Bill screenplay. Must have been the hot lights making you nervous. Don't sweat it, you looked cool nonetheless.

Anyway, can't wait for Kill Bill 3!

Your pal,

Filmbrain

Filmbrain longs for a Royale with cheese (or: whither Kill Bill?)

Filmbrain is a screenwriter (or, at least he wants to be when he grows up.) He considers screenplay writing an art; one that is dying, thanks to Robert McKee (and others) that have turned screenwriting into a manufactured paint-by-numbers affair. Filmbrain worships the era when dialog was king -- where every line uttered was pure poetry. One line of Clifford Odets or Ernest Lehman is better than 99% of most screenplays that are written today. (See Sweet Smell of Success if you think this untrue.) Filmbrain has never been able to make his mind up about Quentin Tarantino as a screenwriter. At first, he loved the sharp, witty, pop-culture laden mono- and dialogues. Then, he got fed up with it -- found it all a bit samey. It also started to become a bit formulaic -- there are these moments in all of his screenplays where the action stops dead and a character will go into some lengthy speech or explanation of some sort, only vaguely related to the situation at hand. When thinking of some of the better ones, it becomes clear that the man can write. Sure, his characters are all very one dimensional -- Quentin will never write a soul-searching monologue -- but these moments are interesting enough such that we don't mind everything grinding to a halt. Think of Christopher Walken telling the story of the watch in Pulp Fiction. It's quite clever, funny, and more importantly, original. It runs for two pages in the screenplay -- longer than most scenes in many films. It's only in the last few lines that we hear the "up his ass" line, and it's a nice payoff to the long story. Filmbrain was excited when he heard that Kill Bill Vol.2 was more talk than action. Vol.1's few dialog 'moments' were atrocious. O-Ren's (Lucy Liu) speech to the other Yakuza bosses was flat, wooden, and embarrassingly sophomoric. The exchanges between O-Ren and The Bride were too on-the-nose -- something not common in his films. That's not to say that Vol.1 was not highly enjoyable -- it was. It had a comic book-like sensibility that easily allowed us to suspend all belief and not question any absurdities (i.e., everybody carrying their own sword on the airplane.) Unfortunately, that lightness seems to have been removed from Vol.2. The Bride's self-reflexive recap speech that opens Vol.2 ("I went on what the movie advertisements referred to as a 'roaring rampage'. . .") is decent, bud sadly not a sign of things to come. The slow, deliberate pacing of almost every scene is wonderful, but in almost all of them the characters speak much but say little. Take the scene in the trailer between Budd (Michael Madsen) and Elle (Darryl Hannah). The little hook in the speech is the discussion of the two R's -- relief and regret. Not bad, but it goes nowhere. Think, if you will, of another Tarantino scene that plays out in a trailer -- the showdown between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper in True Romance. It's a perfectly constructed scene, and none of the exchanges between Madsen and Hannah come close to Walken's "I'm the Anti-Christ. You get me in a vendetta kind of mood, you will tell the angels in heaven that you had never seen pure evil so singularly personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you." Hopper's Sicilian/Moor history speech is a lovely payoff and great bit of verbal revenge -- something missing from every showdown speech in both Kill Bill films. The film continues in this manner -- scene after scene of dialog that goes nowhere. Great setups, with no payoff. (The one exception is the goldfish speech -- this is well thought out and quite relevant to The Bride's own story.) Then there is the one pop-culture speech, in which Bill (David Carradine) tells a story about Superman. Ahh....Filmbrain thought -- now Quentin is in comfortable territory. Yet this too dissolves into nothingness. To add insult to injury, Filmbrain found out that the Superman speech was cribbed from the forward of Jules Feiffer's book, The Great Comic Book Heroes. (Movie Poop Shoot has an excerpt from the Feiffer book.) Learning this, Filmbrain is now convinced that Tarantino has simply become lazy. The excitement about Kill Bill was all about shooting in China and Japan, working with several actors that he admired, and stealing from paying homage to Japanese, Hong Kong and Spaghetti Western films. The screenplay reads like an afterthought. Filmbrain is not sure what to make of Tarantino's proto-feminist world -- by the end of Vol.2 it's clear that men are never a serious challenge, threat, or problem for The Bride -- O-Ren, Elle, and Vernita are much bigger obstacles than Budd, Bill, Buck, The Crazy 88's, etc. Are the films meant to be some sort of statement or metaphor about motherhood and/or single parenting? Tarantino was raised fatherless, so perhaps that is the case. If you've seen Vol.1, naturally you will see the sequel. It's certainly entertaining enough, though it is akin to receiving a second rate entrée after such a promising appetizer.

In 2004, Quentin Tarantino will Kill Cannes

The press conference for the 57th Festival de Cannes was held today. Before getting to the official selection of films in competition, there was the customary prologue from the President of the jury -- who happens to be Quentin Tarantino this year. Some snippets: When it comes to memos, who could ever hope to come close to the skill of Otto Preminger? [Here Filmbrain's eye started to twitch.] The principles that the Board of Directors of the Festival de Cannes wished to see respected are as follows: a mouth-watering menu with an inventive cuisine that is neither too traditional nor too pretentious; a selection that is the most international in the world, open to all film genres and without forgetting the foremost among them - the film lover genre. . . [Here, the headache began.] Filmbrain has mixed feelings about Mr. QT being the President of the jury. One the one hand, he is indeed a lover of film. On the other hand, he has been extremely vocal throughout his career about his dislike and disdain for quiet, "arty" films. Maybe he'll ignore all the selections in competition and just give the Palme D'or to Mr. Majestyk. Then there is the jury makeup -- while Tsui Hark and Jerry Schatzberg are interesting choices, Kathleen Turner, Emmanuelle Beart, Edwidge Danticat, and Benoît Poelvoorde leave Filmbrain with a sense of unease. As to the films in competition -- there are only eighteen this year -- five or six less than usual, which makes it even more disturbing to announce that Shrek 2 is in the list. Let me repeat that -- Shrek 2 is being considered for a Palme D'or. Sigh. Some highlights of the films in competition: 2046, by Wong Kar Wai: A reuniting of Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung - need any more be said? Clean, by Olivier Assayas: Maggie Cheung and Béatrice Dalle -- need any more be said? Fahrenheit 911, by Michael Moore: Right on time for the elections. Woman is the Future of Man, by Hong Sang-soo: This is Filmbrain's current favorite director. He's made four films prior to this, each one a minor masterpiece. Old Boy, by Park Chan-wook: maybe this is Korean cinema's year at Cannes? Zivot Je Cudo, by Emir Kusterica Of the others, certainly the aforementioned Shrek 2, along with The Ladykillers (a remake in the competition?) and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (directed by Stephen "Predator 2" Hopkins) make Filmbrain wonder -- how and why? The complete list of films can be found here. Filmbrain is going to go out a limb here and make some predictions. Either 2046 or Woman is the Future of Man will win the Palme D'or, with Best Director going to either Wong Kar Wai or Hong Sang-soo. Check back on May 23rd to see if he was wrong. . .

Jazz and Go-Go

Whilst meandering in the .jp world, Filmbrain came across a website for a Japanese film called Take The A Train Someday. The story (from what Filmbrain could gather, with his rapidly diminishing Japanese) is about a bunch of characters that convene in this jazz bar, and reflect on life, love and choices made or not made. It's pretty clear that jazz seems to play a major role in the film. It stars veteran character actor Masahiko Tsugawa (best known in the states for his roles in A Taxing Woman and A Taxing Woman's Return) and co-stars Chiaki Kuriyama, who was last seen playing badass schoolgirl Go-Go Yubari in Kill Bill. Here she plays a cocktail waitress, and it looks as though she might get through this one without killing anybody. Judging by the trailer, the film looks like something Filmbrain would really love -- a cool, mature, little mood-piece that is completely character driven, with lots of incredibly well-dressed people sitting around the club, smoking, drinking bottle upon bottle of Ballentine's and digging the music, all while sorting out life's little complexities. This is probably a guarantee that it will never be shown in the states. Sigh. The music sounds great, and the group featured in the film is made up of several famous Japanese jazz musicians from the past and present. (Filmbrain doesn't know who the female vocalist is.) There is an interesting web page about the music in the film that can be found here (Japanese only). The film opened a few months ago, and the soundtrack CD is about to be released. If anybody has any more information about the film, please leave a comment here. (Filmbrain hasn't read any reviews of the film, and is wondering if it's any good.) Link: Trailer (8 Meg Quicktime file.)

Korean Cinema Rocks Cognac Film Festival!

Once again, a Korean film has dominated the awards at a French film festival. Bong Joon-Ho's Memories of Murder picked up four awards at the 22e Festival du Film Policier de Cognac. Besides taking home the Grand Prize, it also walked away with the Prix "Special Police", the Prix Premiere (awarded by the magazine of the same name), and the Prix Médiathèques. The jury award went to two films -- Johnny To's PTU and Wayne Kramer's The Cooler. Filmbrain was surprised to hear that Infernal Affairs, also in competition, walked away with nothing. In all fairness, this isn't one of France's more prestigious festivals. It should also be noted that the president of the jury was Roger Spottiswoode, the auteur that brought us such cinematic marvels as Turner & Hooch and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Still, I'm sure he and his fellow jury members (including "I-went-down-on-Beatrice-Dalle" Jean-Hughes Anglade and aging rock-star Johnny Hallyday) were more than qualified to judge les films policiers. Memories of Murder is a powerful film based on a series of unsolved rapes and murders that took place in Korea between 1986 and 1991, and the story still strikes an uncomfortable chord in many Koreans. That the film injects some humor into this otherwise disturbing tale is a very gutsy move, yet director Bong Joon-ho manages to pull it off. It stars Kim Sang-kyung, who was the lead in Hong Sang-soo's greater-than-brilliant On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate. Filmbrain has seen the film and will post his review later this week. Filmbrain was equally excited about Johnny To's PTU picking up an award, and his review of that film will be posted in the near future.