Like Anna Karina's Sweater

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 5 -- Week 8

First things first -- Filmbrain would like to apologize to the Dallas cinephiles who gather each Monday night at the Angelika -- the last minute departure plans came as a complete surprise, and he's sorry he didn't get the chance to meet all of you. Thanks again for all the kind emails, and the offers. Filmbrain was initially surprised at how many correct responses came in for last week's quiz -- but as many of you pointed out, Irreversible is one of those films that just burns itself into your brain. An upsetting, unsettling (not to mention seizure inducing) film that has the power to make you feel positively and unquestionably lousy. This week -- a tribute to the kind of room Filmbrain spent the last week in. In what film will you find this rather bland hotel? Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

Larsville

With the North American premiere of Manderlay just weeks away, Filmbrain thought he would revisit Dogville, which he did from the comfort of his Dallas Execu-Suite. The film was responsible for some of the fiercest critical dustups in many years, and if the word from Cannes is any indication, Manderlay is poised to set sparks flying once again between Lars' defenders and detractors. It's unfortunate that the American release of the Dogville DVD didn't contain any of the extras included on the Danish release, for nearly all of the 3+ hours of material is fascinating stuff, especially the hour-long documentary Dogville Confessions, directed by Sami Saif. Not your typical marketing fluff piece, this is an extremely up-close-and-personal look at the often tense conditions on the set of Dogville. Saif set up a wooden video confession booth on the set, and the stars were encouraged to record their own thoughts and feelings about working with Lars. Though none of them truly let loose, many of the confessions do reveal how difficult it is to work with the mad Danish genius. Most of the tension on the set seems to be between von Trier and Lauren Bacall, who clearly isn't used to working in this fashion. (Not to mention that he feels he "can't take a shit without her permission.") Lars clearly doesn't like actors all that much, and having to entertain (as he puts it), nearly twenty of them at one time is just too much for him. He hates the socialization and camaraderie that goes on, and nearly has a breakdown when trying to film the 4th of July picnic scene. On a day when Lars dismissed all but two of the actors, he is quoted as saying, "I think I just heard a lot of actors leaving. It was a wonderful sound." Saif had virtually unlimited access on the set, and his camera catches many of the uncomfortable confrontations between Lars and the actors, most notably Stellan Skarsgård and Paul Bettany, who is convinced that Idiots was a result of von Trier's first attempt at filming Dogville. A large press conference held in the middle of the shoot shows just how frazzled the entire cast had become, but it was worth it, judging by the finished product.

Also featured on the bonus disc: A handful of interviews with von Trier, including a few where he is thrown some pretty tough questions about his thoughts on America. A documentary from Danish television about Dogville at Cannes that has as much to say about the festival as it does the film. The Dogville Test: Early tests of key scenes shot with Danish actors - really interesting to see the scenes played with a Scandinavian heaviness, and the actors are quite good. A small feature on how they created the opening aerial shot of the town -- it took 152 cameras. Filmbrain can only wonder why none of these features landed on the US release. But if you're a fan of the film (and own a region-free DVD player), this release is a must-own -- it goes a long way in explaining what Lars von Trier intended with the film, as well as an opportunity to see his directorial methods.

Deep in the Hea(r)t of Texas

For reasons far to convoluted to get into (not to mention the risk to national security), Filmbrain is holed up in a hotel room in Dallas, TX. Dallas -- flat and hot. Really hot. Heat index of 112 degrees hot. The blast that hits you as you step outside is about as unpleasant as unpleasant can be. Not a great city for a cinephile. Fortunately, Filmbrain's Execu-Suite is equipped with a DVD player, so not all is lost. Plus, it will give him a chance to catch up on some reading. To wit -- The Early Film Criticism of Francois Truffaut is quite a remarkable read, for it reveals a younger, angrier, more passionate Truffaut, who lashes out at films and directors that he would later praise in his book The Films in My Life. (Most notably, John Ford.) Yet his most surprising dismissal can be found buried in his review of Val Guest's The Quartermass Xperiment, where he writes off English cinema as a whole: "Imagination is what English cinema most cruelly lacks; in the cinema of that country, where stars look like their queen, everything is grey and ineffective, slow-witted and arduously painstaking. The British cinema is made of dullness and reflects a submissive life-style, where enthusiasm, warmth, and zest are nipped in the bud. A film is a born loser just because it is English. Even a good script filmed by a good director and performed by good actors in England will most likely end up as a bad film. Why? This is the only mystery that English cinema has in store for us." Ouch. Now to seek out some lunch, Texas style.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 5 -- Week 7

Only a few dozen of you were able to recognize Godard's Cinemascope ("only good for funerals and snakes") masterpiece Le Mepris (Contempt) as the answer to last week's quiz. Somebody who did not guess it was Mr. Cinephiliac himself -- noted because just days prior, he sat on Filmbrain's sofa watching the very same film. Tsk tsk. Perhaps he was too distracted. (Speaking of Cinephiliac, he too has started a film quiz, so now you've got two opportunities each week to rack your brain.) Nobody was able to identify the actress pictured -- a shame, for Filmbrain was really curious to find out who it was that Godard cast as Penelope. The film has no credits (other than Godard's spoken lines at the beginning) and IMDB offers little more. If anybody should ever find out, please drop Filmbrain a line. This week - a film that's fun for the whole family. Well.....maybe not. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

George Fasel, 1938-2005

The news of George 'A Girl and a Gun' Fasel's passing came as quite a blow this past weekend. Obviously, none of us in the blogosphere knew of his battle with cancer, and the news was quite shocking.

A Girl and a Gun and Like Anna Karina's Sweater debuted (coincidentally) within weeks of each other, and it wasn't long before George wrote me to introduce himself. Besides the obvious mutual admiration for Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard, we soon learned that we had a similar taste in films, and began an email correspondence that lasted up until this month. My biggest regret is never having met him in person -- though we made plans on several occasions to meet either at Film Forum or BAM, we never managed to coordinate our schedules.

George was a real gentleman blogger, and though the discussions on his site were often confrontational, they were always civilized. Even when he was having a go at the critics, he remained incredibly dignified. As he told me via email "...better to puncture the critical credentials than to sling the mud. [...] If we can make them think harder, and be a little less lazy, then we're not wasting our time."

Then of course there were the reviews, which were fueled by George's lifelong passion for the cinema. He was equally enthusiastic about the classics as well as the new guard, and his unique take on every film made his posts a joy to read. His longer pieces, such as this one on Godard, were not only invaluable, but they were simply great reads as well.

I wrote George not long after that Godard post, and he told me a humorous story about his encounter with the master that I'd like to share, for I feel it captures the essence of the George we knew from the blog:

"Thanks for your generous words. He's a pain in the ass, no doubt. When I talked to him, thirty years ago, I asked him (re "Tout Va Bien") what it was like to co-direct a film. He said, dismissively, "It's like two people bringing up their child." I asked him if he'd ever been a parent. End of interview."

Farewell George. You will be missed.

Short Cuts - 18 August

Filmbrain has been in widescreen heaven lately. He finally took the plunge and entered the 16:9 plasma world, and couldn't be happier. Finally, all those anamorphic DVDs he owns can now be enjoyed as they were intended to be. It's been pure bliss -- films like Turning Gate, Lawrence of Arabia, and Contempt have never looked better. Paulie Walnuts said it best: "These flat screens, I tell ya. No glare. High definition. I was watching On the Waterfront down Sears. Karl Malden's nose hairs, they looked like fuckin' BX cable." Now it's off to watch In the Mood For Love again for the first time.

"In hard-boiled fiction by Chandler, Hammet, Mcvaine, and Hemingway, there clearly exists a kind of realism. When a homicide cop commented 'To me, summer is just a season when dead bodies rot faster; no more, no less,' he described a new genre that translates hard-boiled novels into films. When these films became comparatively less realistic for the sake of emphasizing the visual aspect, I was quite discontent. Adding cool finishing touches was just not me. Regardless of whether people agree with me or not, I believe that Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance contains a small amount of realism. It is, of course, the reality of one who considers the world a barren desert. A desert is originally a dry, cold place that is unfair, obscure, and totally unpredictable." Fascinating words from director Park Chan-wook. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance opens in New York and Los Angeles today. Ignore those that clearly didn't get it and check it out for yourself...Filmbrain would love to hear your thoughts.

Fans of Bruno Dumont (L'humanité, Twentynine Palms) will be pleased to read this article from Le Monde (in French) about his latest film, Flanders. From Filmbrain's lousy translation: The film is divided into three parts. An atmospheric prologue: existential languor and amorous rivalry between young people from the north of France. It becomes a film of war: the boys depart for an unidentified Eastern front and are plunged into the horrors of inhumanity. An epilogue: a survivor returns to his country, transformed by the abjection and tragic confrontation with his fiancée. Flanders is set to premiere either at the Berlin Film Festival in February or at Cannes in May. Will no doubt be one of the highlights of 2006.

The big news from the film-blogosphere this week was the launch of Cinephiliac, the blog of film critic (and three-time Filmbrain Screen Capture Quiz winner) Aaron Hillis. Writing about whatever he damn well pleases (as opposed to his professional role of protecting us from evil), his first two offerings are impressive looks at Brian De Palma's 1978 telekinetic melodrama, The Fury and Kusturica's far-too-neglected Arizona Dream. As he states in his introductory post, he encourages "even your crankiest of opinions", so do drop by and give him your two cents (as Filmbrain did). As an added bonus, there's a free MP3 each week, and his premiere offering is Holly Golightly's There is an End, from the Broken Flowers soundtrack. Oh...be sure not to miss Bruno Ganz's glowing wings....perhaps the greatest image rollover ever.

On a somewhat related note, the Blogs of Distinction list on the right has been updated with a handful of film blogs that have become part of Filmbrain's daily diet -- Flickhead, Girish, The Face Knife, Tribe's Movie Talk, 24 Lies Per Second, Reversing the Gaze, Strictly Film School, Motion Picture, It's Called, Looker, and The Dark of the Matinée. Click away...but make sure you have a lot of time to spare.

The 43rd New York Film Festival

The lineup for this year's New York Film Festival has been announced, and it looks like a stellar year, especially for fans of Asian cinema. Filmbrain is more than thrilled that Im Sang-soo's The President's Last Bang has made the cut. Already a favorite of 2005, its inclusion in the NYFF will hopefully result in a wider release later in the Fall (Kino is distributing it in the States). Don't miss this one! There are two other Korean films in the lineup -- Hong Sang-soo's A Tale of Cinema and the highly anticipated third film in Park Chan-wook's revenge trilogy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times, a triptych set in three time periods but with the same two leads (Shu Qi and Chang Chen) looks interesting (the middle section was shot silent), as does Mitsuo Yanagimachi's film-within-a-film, Who's Camus Anyway?. Both films generated a fair amount of buzz at Cannes, though at the moment neither has a US distributor. Best Director recipient at Cannes Michael Haneke is here with Caché, as is the Dardenne brothers' Palme d'Or winning L'Enfant. Filmbrain is also looking forward to Lars von Trier's Manderlay, Steven Soderbergh's 72 minute Bubble, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Capote, Philippe Garrel's Regular Lovers, and Cristi Puiu's ode to mortality, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. Some weeks ago the Film Society announced that the opening night film will be George Clooney's Edward R. Murrow film, Good Night, and Good Luck, and though they haven't announced which film in the lineup is slated for closing night, Filmbrain's guess is that it will be Noah Baumbach's The Squid and The Whale. [Update: Filmbrain guessed wrong. Haneke's Caché will be the closing night film.] If the main schedule lineup isn't enough, there are some exciting special screenings, including a new restoration of Antonioni's The Passenger, in what is being touted as Antonioni's preferred cut (wow!) There's also a forty-four film retrospective spanning the history of Shochiku Films, which will no doubt be full of goodies. It's going to be a busy few weeks! The festival runs from 23 September - 9 October. Tickets go on sale to the public on 11 September. The complete list of films can be found HERE.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 5 -- Week 6

If somebody came up to you and said he wanted to remake Chris Marker's La Jetée as a big-budget feature film, you'd think he was mad. If he then said he wanted to put Bruce Willis in it, you'd think he was certifiably insane. Well, perhaps Terry Gilliam is a bit of both, but somehow he pulled it off -- Twelve Monkeys may be flawed, but it's still a damn fine effort. The actress in the lobby of the Hitchcock Fest is Madeleine Stowe, doing a Kim Novack, but looking more like an Eva Marie Saint. This one stumped a fair amount of you, but many of the guesses (incl. Brian DePalma, John Waters) were inspired. This week -- there's not a frame of this film that doesn't instantly give away its identity, but this one might give you some pause. Name the film, and for a bonus point name the actress (though Filmbrain himself isn't sure what her name is -- some validation would be helpful!) Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

The Oldboy Effect

Just as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction gave rise to a slew of PoMo indie action-comedies with characters dropping pop-culture references every four minutes, there are now South Korean directors doing their damnedest to duplicate what Park Chan-wook did last year with Oldboy, the powerful, stylish neo-noir that appealed both to art house crowds (it won the Grand Prix at Cannes) as well as the average moviegoer. The first contender is A Bittersweet Life, a film that very badly wants to be deemed "this year's Oldboy". The success of Oldboy cannot be reduced to a single element. It's that rarest of things -- a film where everything falls perfectly into place -- the acting, writing, directing, design, music, etc. Kim Ji-woon, no stranger himself to highly-stylized production design (the wonderful The Quiet Family and the pretty-good A Tale of Two Sisters) tries a bit too hard to inject some of that Park Chan-wook magic into A Bittersweet Life, but no visual or audible trickery can hide the fact that the film is little more than a well made but tiresomely familiar violent gangster flick. Lee Byung-hun plays Sun-woo, an impeccably dressed gangster who appreciates the finer things in life, yet is an emotional shut-in. Fitted in an expensive tailor-made suit, he can calmly enjoy a delicate chocolate soufflé and moments later dish out a beating to some young thugs who are disrespecting the bar in the hotel he manages. A dedicated servant to Boss Kang, Sun-woo finds himself in the somewhat hackneyed position of being charged with looking after his boss's young mistress, Hee-soo (Shin Min-a), with orders to kill her if she is unfaithful. Though the "falling for the boss's girl" device has been around since Josef von Sternberg's Underworld (1927), Kim does manage to put a somewhat unique spin on it, but it's not enough to elevate the film from standard gangster-noir fare. The emotionally closeted gangster who discovers he has a heart after all is itself a character we've seen countless times before, and there's nothing particularly original or interesting about Sun-woo to make us care all that much -- there's hardly a trace of complexity about him. The violent scenes (of which there are many) strive to outdo themselves in creativity, and Kim seems interested in coming up with new and unique ways to kill a man (including the scraping of a head against a concrete wall). Sun-woo is virtually unstoppable -- whether a knife in the gut or a bullet in the head, they're all merely flesh wounds for our tragic hero. Unfortunately, the scenes that find Sun-woo battling a mob of thugs are lacking the comic (or even absurd) nature of the epic hammer fight scene in Oldboy (not to mention the stunning choreography), and what we are left with is a generic one-against-the-multitude fight scene. The Oldboy influence on A Bittersweet Life is undeniable. Besides a few common cast members, Kim hired Ryu Seong-hie, the art director on Oldboy to act as production designer, and though there are some sequences that are reminiscent of Park's film, the overall look of A Bittersweet Life lacks the exaggerated sense of unreality Ryu created for Oldboy. In fact, the level of detail found in Kim's earlier films (think of the house in A Tale of Two Sisters) just isn't present here. The soundtrack, at times, takes its cue from Oldboy, including a sweeping waltz that plays during the film's climactic moment. (Though unlike Oldboy, the waltz isn't an integral part of the story.) Then there is the strangest link of all between the two -- the nemesis in both films wears a floppy Gilligan hat. Go figure. A Bittersweet Life isn't a bad film at all, but it does pour on the drama a bit thick. Sun-woo just isn't an interesting enough character, yet the film attempts to evoke a sense of pathos. Whereas the tragedy in Oldboy was almost operatic, Sun-woo is more a victim of circumstance, rather than an individual cast into a hell of his own making. Though repeated viewings have revealed some details missed the first time round, A Bittersweet Life still leaves Filmbrain feeling cold -- there's simply nothing to latch on to.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 5 -- Week 5

Filmbrain's favorite film of 2004, and one that seems to have made an impression on many of you (judging by the record number of submissions last week), opens with a lizard climbing the wall of Tadanobu Asano's spotless Bangkok apartment -- of course this is Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Last Life in the Universe. This week -- a 24 hour Hitchcock fest? Who would say no to that? In which film will you find this dream theater? And who's the blond in the doorway? Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!