Like Anna Karina's Sweater

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 9, Week 8

If ever there was a film whose time has come, Robert Altman's Nashville is it. We've got our own Haven Hamilton in the White House, and all the President's men singing "It don't worry me." Back in '76, people would chide Altman for his cynicism. But how right he was. That's Christina Raines beneath the Noxzema, explaining to husband Allan Nicholls that they can't perform at the benefit concert because they are registered democrats. With the long weekend approaching (and rain in the forecast, at least on the east coast), why not spend 160 minutes with a true American masterpiece. This week -- still stuck in the 70s. Name the film, and for a bonus point, name either of the two actors pictured. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

The 2006 New York Korean Film Festival

Traditionally, the period between late August and Labor Day is a relatively quiet one for NYC film lovers. The megaplexes are busy squeezing what little life is left out of the summer blockbusters, while the cinephile crowd champs at the bit awaiting the arrival of the New York Film Festival. Yet there is one event that makes staying in NYC through the Labor Day weekend more than worthwhile — the New York Korean Film Festival. Back for its sixth year, the NYKFF is a great opportunity to catch an impressive selection of studio and independent features that will most likely never find distribution in the States. This year's festival also includes an added attraction — a four film mini-retrospective of director Lee Man-hee. Lee, one of the major figures from Korea's Golden Age of Cinema, was one of the few directors to create masterworks in nearly every genre possible. A true auteur, he directed fifty films in only fourteen years. His career would have gone on, had it not been for his untimely death at the age of 45 while editing his final film, A Way to Sampo. The four films offered focus on Lee's darker side — with stories of jealousy, infidelity, and murder — including his Hitchcockian The Devil's Stairway. I'll be writing about Lee's films in a separate post next week. The festival, which runs from 25 August - 3 September at the ImaginAsian, Anthology Film Archives, and BAM includes fourteen features and a handful of shorts. Here are my picks: This Charming Girl — Though I was disappointed with director Lee Yoon-ki's follow-up Love Talk, his debut from 2004 is still one of the strongest features to come out of Korea in the past few years. A low-key, nearly silent, psychological portrait of a female postal worker who lives an uneventful, isolated life, it's less about plot development than it is a detailed character study. This is the one film at the festival that should not be missed. Forbidden Quest — Kim Dae-woo, the screenwriter of Untold Scandal makes his directorial debut with another ribald tale set in the Chosun dynasty. Han Suk-kyu (the gum-chewing CIA agent from The President's Last Bang) plays an aristocrat who is lured into the lurid world of erotic fiction. Teaming up with an imperial officer who doubles as an artist, the two wind up creating the most successful erotic novel of the era. A unique look at the underbelly of a repressive society, Forbidden Quest succeeds thanks to a strong screenplay and stunning cinematography. Rules of Dating — Han Jae-rim's he said/she said take on the Korean rom-com is an unromantic romance that dares to look at the darker side of sex and relationships. Full review here.

My Scary Girl — Like Rules of Dating, My Scary Girl is yet another clever twist on the Korean rom-com, with murder thrown into the mix. Dae-woo is a 30 year-old virgin who falls head over heels for his new neighbor Mi-na, an art student who never heard of Mondrian or Kandinsky, and who keeps something very peculiar in her kimchi freezer. Like the similarly titled My Sassy Girl, the film's success is due to its two lead actors. With his droopy eyes and sad-sack face, Park Yong-woo is perfect as the naive, timid, English lit professor who is too lost in love to see the truth about his homicidal girlfriend. As Mi-na, Choi Kang-hee is perfect in her seamless blend of sheepish innocent and knife-wielding murderess. Their on-screen chemistry and comic timing is wonderful, making My Scary Girl a perfect bit of silly fun. Murder Take One — A genuine surprise, Murder Take One finds director Jang Jin offering a unique spin on the standard policier. A woman is found stabbed to death in a hotel room, and an obvious suspect has been taken into custody. Jumping back and forth in time, the many twists, turns, and complications of the investigation are played out live on national television — its CSI turned into a reality show. A procedural that is darkly comic at times, the film grows increasingly absurd as the investigation is driven by audience reaction and the need for ratings. A combination of The Truman Show and The Usual Suspects, Murder Take One is an odd little film that includes a handful of great performances (especially from Shin Ha-kyun, star of Save the Green Planet), and a plot that continually leaves you guessing. This one has Hollywood remake written all over it, so see the original while you can. Grain in Ear and Shin Sung-il is Lost — I've yet to see either of these films, but the buzz on both from numerous film festivals has been impressive. Jane Shin's low-budget Shin Sung-il is Lost is set in a desolate Christian orphanage where children are brainwashed into believing that eating is a sin, and their only sustenance comes from "Choco Pies" that are consumed in private. A bleak satire that borders on the surreal, I've heard nothing but good things about this film ever since I missed it at the Berlinale in 2005. Grain in Ear, which has appeared at the Cannes, Pusan, and Rotterdam film festivals (to name but a few), tells of a Korean-Chinese single mother struggling to raise her son in rather dire circumstances. With long static shots and, as Adam Hartzell puts it, a "wonderfully slow pace," the film chronicles "the Sisyphean uphill climb of flat, false assumptions about who we are and can be and what we're capable of when all hope is lost." Sounds like my kind of film. Tickets for all films can be purchased online here.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 9, Week 7

A line of poetry written in a splash of blood. That's Ken Ogata answering a journalist's question ("Who would you like to be?") in Paul Schrader's wonderful but woefully neglected Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. (Dennis Cozzalio, be sure to thank your wife!) Yukio Mishima was one of the greatest authors of the 20th century (his Sea of Fertility tetralogy is a must-read), and fellow tortured soul Schrader was an ideal choice to direct this quasi-biopic of his life. It's just a shame the DVD release replaces the Roy Scheider narration with a generic sounding voice. Still, it's a film worth seeing if you haven't. Seeing that last week's quiz was quite a stumper for many of you (the most popular submission was The Manchurian Candidate), I'll throw in a relatively easy one. Who's the beauty behind the Noxzema? Name the actress and the film. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

Maybe Not the Last, But Certainly Not the Least

In the Oct 9, 1971 issue of The New Yorker, Pauline Kael reviewed a pair of cinematic lasts -- Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show and Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie. While her acclaim for Bogdanovich's Texas tale is legendary, I had never read her take on Hopper's infamous and troubled epic. With a spanking new 35mm print of the film arriving in New York City this weekend (running for one week at the Anthology Film Archives), I thought a few highlights from Madame Kael's review would be appropriate: Straight and lampoon blur: Is it a joke when Hopper turns into James Dean? I don't know, and I'm not sure he knows. Smashed together, the themes seem to form a gigantic classic paranoid fantasy, although that is clearly not what the director intended. ... This knockabout tragedy is not a vision of the chaos in the world -- not a Weekend, not a Shame, but a reflection of his own confusion. Hopper as Christ is maybe partly put-on, but only partly; Hopper doesn't seem to have a face anymore, only a profile, and he can't take the camera off it. The most embarrassing thing about his Christ bit is not that he has cast himself in the role but that he has so little visual interest in anyone else. ... One would have to be playing Judas to the public to advise anyone to go see The Last Movie. Hopper may have the makings of a movie (perhaps more than one), but he blew it in the editing room. If he was deliberate in not involving the audience, the audience that is not involved doesn't care whether he was deliberate or not. That there's method in the madness doesn't help. ... The one thing of value in the movie is Hopper's way of looking at countryside. But why are we in Peru? His message appears to be about the violence and evil caused by movies. (Movies?) But it would be hard to find a place with less evidence of corruption of movies than the Peru he shows us. The people of the Peruvian plains are probably as bored as the people in McMurtry's Texas, but they get few movies. There is a good subject in the effects of movies on remote cultures, but Hopper doesn't show the slightest interest in that subject; he's trying to be social critic without providing any specific social content. It's hysterical to blame the violence in the world on American movies. Hopper seems to have worked up a big head of steam about nothing; with all the horrors there are, he has cooked up fake ones. Ouch. Hardly a rave review. Still, Kael does go on to say she hopes this isn't Hopper's last movie, and worries about him becoming a scapegoat. While The Last Movie did signal the end of Universal's attempts at commodifying non-commercial cinema, it certainly wasn't the end for Hopper. Subsequent directorial efforts have degenerated into embarrassment (Chasers, anyone?), but directors like Lynch, Wenders, and Coppola (to name a few) helped create the acting legend he is today. It's been at least eighteen years since I've seen the film (on an awful looking second-generation VHS copy), and it may very well turn out that my fascination is little more than youthful folly, but I'm thrilled at the prospect of seeing it on the big screen, and you should be too. Regardless of what Pauline says, make an effort to catch this rarely screened 70s gem. At the very least you'll marvel at the fact that this was a studio release. Filmbrain, along with a small handful of other film bloggers will be at the 7:00 show on Saturday night. Hope to see you there.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 9, Week 6

Before he sent Jack Nicholson off in a Winnebago, or traveled to Sonoma with Paul Giamatti, Alexander Payne tackled the dog-eat-dog world of high school politics in Election, the brilliant comedy from 1999. Arguably Reese Witherspoon's best performance (well, at least as good as Freeway), it's become something of a comfort film – one of those films you just get stuck with when flipping through the dial. As for James Redfield, jock candidate Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) can be seen turning to The Celestine Prophecy for support – or at least as something to take a nap next to. As we enter the second half of the round, the quizzes will begin to get increasingly more difficult. This week – why did this man just say Elvis Presley? Name the actor and the film. Here's a hint – it's not an Asian film. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

Tragedy + Time = Popcorn

"It's more than a movie - it's a vivid reminder of the love, heroism, faith and patriotism that comprise the fabric of our country." — Brent Bozell, President of the conservative Media Research Center At the conclusion of Monday night's screening of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, I found myself the lone dissenter among the small group of film critics I was chatting with. While not overly enthusiastic about it, they all felt the film had its merits, and found it to be a well made and effectively moving drama. Their reaction left me questioning my own — was my utter disdain for the film purely a subjective response based on personal losses, grief, and suffering on that ill-fated day? Or is the film truly nothing more than a piece of patriotic propaganda that panders to the pro-family Christian right? Days later, I'm still at a loss in understanding exactly what purpose the film serves. That Stone exhibits restraint in telling the story of two men who survived beneath the rubble is hardly grounds for praise. This emphasis on what the film isn't takes away from what it is — an unabashedly sentimental procedural that wouldn't have found its way to the Hallmark Channel if it wasn't enveloped in the 9/11 tragedy. After the collapse of the towers, the film alternates between scenes of trapped police officers McLoughlin and Jimeno (Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena), and family members eagerly awaiting news. At this point we're left with the bog standard [people] trapped in [place] story, yet without any dramatic tension. With its pre-determined conclusion, I imagined Stone would try to capture what it felt like that day — not just for the family (which the film does, albeit poorly), but for all of us who were left transfixed and glued, zombie-like, to our televisions. But the collective experience is not to be found here, save for a single scene towards the end with Viola Davis as a mother hoping to locate her son, whose last encounter with him was an argument. A well-acted scene that offers only the briefest of glimpses into what many went through on that Tuesday. It was during this long middle section, where the men were discussing their wives, baby names, and Starsky and Hutch (in order to stay awake) that my mind drifted to the people who died that day, and of their family members who didn't receive a phone call with happy news. I thought how helpless I felt, and of the constant reminders that remained for the days and weeks that followed — the personal papers that littered the streets, the walls of 'Missing' photos, the hovering clouds of dust and smoke, and the unforgettable smell of burnt steel, plastic, and flesh. Yet nothing of the day lingers in the film, and the reunion picnic that closes the film (two years after the fact) makes it that much easier for us to leave the theater feeling chipper, and damn proud to be an American. While it is remarkable that anybody was found alive in that rubble (McLoughlin and Jimeno were 2 of only 20), I feel that there's something inherently irresponsible in narrowing the focus in order to create an uplifting, feel-good story. It's as if the film exists in a vacuum, and its refusal to acknowledge facts (both pre- and post-event) is not only naive, but also a bit dangerous. This kind of over-simplification is exactly how Bush & Co. would want you to remember that day. That it was simply an act of 'evil' carried out by individuals who hate our freedom. Is it any wonder that right-wing media outlets are praising the film, or that Paramount hired the same PR firm that brought us the Swift boat campaign against Kerry? Towards the end of the film, a voiceover tells us how people came together to help each other. Yet you wouldn't know it from this film, which reduces the search effort to the lone Connecticut businessman who got a haircut, went to church, threw on his fatigues, and headed to ground zero. Driven on by the lord, his final utterance in the film is about how "America will need some good men to avenge this." We then learn that he served two terms in Iraq, which some might read as a connection to 9/11, and thus legitimizing the war. In his Village Voice review, Jim Hoberman refers to the film as Stone's rehabilitation. After the failure of Alexander, one can see why he might try to curry favor with the American movie going audience, yet I can't help but feel he takes additional steps to win the hearts and minds of those who would normally avoid an Oliver Stone film. From the Brooks & Dunn song that Jimeno cranks on his car stereo (Dreamin' in red, white, and blue/Only in America/Where we dream as big as we want to), to the endless references to children and family, and of course the multiple appearances by Christ himself, this is, as Cal Thomas puts it, "one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see." Yay men, and Amen! Though I'm willing to admit to a heightened subjectivity when it comes to any film about September 11, Stone's film is little more than an overly sentimental cliché-laden bit of Hollywood manipulation. Waking up this morning to hear about a planned attack of US-bound airplanes only strengthens my belief that World Trade Center is exactly the film we don't need right now.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 9, Week 5

There's certainly a lot of love for Paulette Goddard, judging by the number of wonderful comments submitted along with your guesses for last week's quiz. However, about 50% of you identified the capture as coming from Chaplin's Modern Times, when in fact it is from The Great Dictator. (The Mel Gibson reference was a poor attempt at a clue.) We'll jump ahead nearly half a century for this week's quiz. Name the film, and for a bonus point, tell me how New Age guru James Redfield factors into it. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

Emperor Tomato Ketchup

[The following essay, my submission for the Avant-garde blog-a-thon, is a reworking/abridgement of an article I wrote several years ago on the films of Shuji Terayama for the magazine Cashiers du Cinemart.] A group of pre-pubescent children clad in military uniforms rebel against their parents and begin hunting adults. A choir of schoolgirls strips while singing 'when I grow up to be a whore'. A young man struggles in vain to break through his cousin's chastity belt. These are but a sampling of images culled from the mind of revolutionary poet, playwright, and filmmaker Shuji Terayama. Virtually unknown in this country (the exception being 1981's Fruits of Passion, an uncharacteristically mainstream bit of erotica with Klaus Kinski), Terayama was a major figure in the heady wave of Japanese experimental cinema in the 1970s. Born in 1936, Terayama spent a good portion of his formative years in hospital being treated for nephritis (the disease that would ultimately kill him). It was there that he began writing Tanka poetry, while at the same time developing a voracious appetite for books. His most significant discovery was the French surrealists, particularly Lautréamont, whose Les Chants de Maldoror was to have a tremendous and lasting impact on his art (including a short film adaptation of the poetic novel in 1977). Though he continued to write poetry, he soon took to composing novels, essays, plays, and screenplays.

When Terayama was twenty-one, he wrote and produced a radio play (Adult Hunting) that was presented in the form of an emergency news broadcast (à la Orson Welles' riff on War of the Worlds). The broadcast claimed that a revolution was taking place, and young children were rising up to claim Tokyo as theirs. This theme would later be reworked into one of his earliest films, Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1970). With its cryptic title (more commonly recognized as the name of a Stereolab album), Emperor Tomato Ketchup is one of Terayama's most challenging and controversial works. Lacking a conventional narrative, the film's rough, often over-exposed imagery at times resembles a home movie gone horribly wrong. Set in a Japan where children have mysteriously gained control, its revolutionary gaze is as much sexual as it is political. Some of the rules that the young dictators establish include: Adults who upset children, use physical strength, or are too protective will have their civil status removed Adults who steal our snacks, who deprive us from freedom of speech or sex, or who try to impose their prejudice in matters of education will be given the death penalty In the name of God, all children will enjoy their freedoms: freedom of conspiracy, freedom of treason, freedom to practice sodomy, and the freedom to use the bible as toilet paper. Terayama has referred to Emperor Tomato Ketchup as a joke, but not a comedy. Japan at this time was caught up in a wave of protests; the renewal of the Japan-US Security Treaty, the corporate dominance of Osaka Expo 70, the Vietnam War, and corruption at the universities drew students to the streets by the thousands. Is the film a parody of these protests, or rather an exaggerated representation of the public's worst nightmare — i.e., what if the revolutionaries won? But what of the film's sexual politics? Here we find the earliest example of a major theme that will recur through nearly all his films — the oedipal nature of a mother-son relationship tied to the boy's sexual initiation by an older, more experienced woman. It is in Emperor Tomato Ketchup that this idea is (literally and figuratively) at its most explicit. A young boy brandishing a rifle makes sexual advances on a nude woman. "I seduce my mommy and I become my daddy" appears as an inter-title on the screen. Later in the film, a boy is the sexual partner of three women whom Amos Vogel describes as "magical…yet protectively maternal."

Emperor Tomato Ketchup isn't an easy film to watch. Its lo-fi realism and non-diegetic soundtrack only aid in enhancing the already taboo nature of the film — as if we've just discovered a 16mm roll of film buried in an attic that we're not meant to be watching. The children in the film appear to be having fun with the mayhem, but that doesn't reduce the chilling effect of seeing them play ping-pong over a bound and gagged nude woman, dragging a charred corpse through the streets, or cutting off the head of a chicken. The sex in the film is uncomfortably graphic, and it has prompted some to (unjustly) cry child pornography. There's nothing stimulating about Terayama's negative utopia, and the exploration of taboos, including incest and childhood sexuality, can be found in nearly all of Terayama's works. As revolutionary objects, these early films were intentionally provocative. If, as it has been suggested, the function of the avant-garde is to disturb the established order and to "keep culture moving in the midst of ideological confusion and violence" (Clement Greenberg, Partisan Review, 1939), then this is very much in keeping with Terayama's ideals, though he was less interested in bringing about change in the art world than he was the real one. Terayama has cited an oedipal crisis as a key factor in the problems besetting Japan. At the same time, he was interested in a sexual revolution where women would take the active role in heterosexual relations. As film scholar Steven Clark puts it, "women should stop marrying ugly balding men with secure jobs for their money." By taking younger lovers, they will in effect breed such men out of existence, leaving a world where youth reigns supreme. An exaggerated form of this idea is at the core of Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Equal parts anarchy and poetry, Emperor Tomato Ketchup is Terayama using the cinematic canvas to create a work that is revolutionary in both form and spirit.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 9, Week 4

Knotted polka-dotted, twisted beaded braided, powdered, flowered and confettied, bangled, tangled, spangled and spaghettied! Made one year after his other Vietnam movie, John Savage sung his way into your heart as Claude Hooper Bukowski (who pretends he's Fellini and Antonioni and also his countryman Roman Polanski) in Milos Forman's take on Ragni and Rado's Hair. This was probably my favorite film in 1979, and I must have seen it a dozen times in the theater. A sucker for musicals, how could I but not love it? (I'm also in the film — along with several thousand other New Yorkers — in the final scene shot in Central Park.) I honestly believed it was an easy one — yet the most popular submission was Midnight Cowboy. I guess Hair hasn't stood the test of time with many, which is a shame. It's really not a bad film at all, with a pretty solid cast — Savage, Treat Williams, Beverly D'Angelo, and....yes, Nicholas Ray as 'The General'. For this week's quiz — a classic. I just wonder how Mel feels about it? Name the actress and the film. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!