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Sunday, July 11th, 2010
Det Perfekte Manneske (1967) by Jørgen Leth. It is the inspiration and raw materials for Lars von Trier's (and Leth's) 2003 film The 5 Obstructions. (I'm a little puzzled about the English; in von Trier's film the clips of Leth's film are in Danish, but that does sound like Leth's voice. Maybe he made two copies of it with the voiceover in Danish and English. I can't find the Danish on the web.)
posted afternoon of July 11th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, June 24th, 2010
I wanted to recommend this film, I don't have much to say about it besides that it is light-hearted and sentimental, and a lot of fun. It's Historias mÃnimas, an Argentine film (d. Carlos Sorin) with a couple of independent stories cleverly interwoven, three people making their way from Fitz Roy to San Julián. Trailer here. Breathtaking Patagonian landscapes and visuals in general.
posted evening of June 24th, 2010: Respond
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Monday, May third, 2010
The two principal characters of Distant are both, in distinct ways, very very unlikeable. That's kind of too bad because you spend (well, I spent) much of the movie sympathizing with them, seeing yourself reflected in Mahmut's lonely, arrogant voyeurism as much as in Yusuf's awkward, creepy incompetence. These characters are not individuals I want to identify with -- yet Ceylan seduced me into it...
posted evening of May third, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, May second, 2010
For the past few nights I have been watching Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant -- a movie I just found out about and which I'm finding immensely gratifying as a collection of images and sounds, and simultaneously difficult to grasp intellectually. Part of the problem is the smallness and lack of definition of the TV screen -- I keep pausing and rewinding to tease apart what's happening in the picture. For instance in the middle of the opening sequence, while Yusuf is looking for his brother, the shot switches to a woman leaving her building a few doors down -- the woman is small and blurry enough that I at first thought it was a shot of Yusuf from a new angle. Yusuf enters the shot in the foreground a few seconds later, clearing up that misperception -- but I think on a larger screen, there would have been no mistake to begin with.
 But the movie is also just extremely dense with information. Take the scene at the end of the opening sequence where Mahmut comes home and finds Yusuf asleep in the entryway of his building. In the previous shot, it was still morning and Yusuf was waiting outside for Mahmut to come home -- then a cut, it is suddenly dark, you see a silhouetted figure coming up the steps of the building and assume it is Yusuf still; not until he comes into the building and starting up the steps, flicks on the light, do you realize it's not -- and at that point, your attention is occupied by the stray cat mewing in the entryway, you don't pick up on what's going on until Mahmut comes back down the steps and sees Yusuf. Then (if you're me) you think Wait, how could I have not gotten that? How could Mahmut have not gotten that? (And Mahmut's line soon after this, apologizing for having forgotten Yusuf was coming, is also the first indication the viewer gets that this visit had been set up in advance. If Mahmut had picked up the phone when his mother called, would she have reminded him that Yusuf was coming?) This movie is really making me want to read Pamuk's Istanbul.
 Oh and one other thing -- the moment when Mahmut flicks on the light and you the viewer see Yusuf sleeping there -- or if you are distracted by the cat at that point, a couple of seconds later -- this moment contains the whole period of the afternoon and evening, leaves you to imagine what Yusuf has been doing this whole time. This is the information density I'm talking about above.
posted morning of May second, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
  I must thank Alicia Kennedy for alerting me to the existence of a BBC adaptation of White Teeth (2002), and to its availability at hulu.com. I watched the first episode this evening; it is just magnificently, ebulliently well done. Smith's strong narrative voice is missing, but the filmmakers (Julian Jarrold, director; Simon Burke, screenplay) have found their own distinctive, resonant approach to the story. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
posted evening of April 20th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, April 15th, 2010
 Werner Herzog's next film will be a documentary about the cave paintings at Chauvet-Pont-D'Arc. The Guardian's Film Blog has more information, plus some videos of him talking about the project. Also check out Roger Ebert's journal (IIUC Ebert is the videographer here), where he writes up a recent screening of Aguirre, the Wrath of God with Herzog and Bahrani, and mentions Plastic Bag.
posted afternoon of April 15th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, March 26th, 2010
 And that's when I first learned about the Vortex. They had chained themselves here on purpose, in order to preach about the Vortex. It was a world in the Pacific Ocean where a hundred million tons of us had gathered... They said there was no Maker; they said we were the Maker. They said in the Vortex, we were free. It was Paradise.
In Ramin Bahrani's magnificent documentary Plastic Bag, Werner Herzog appears in what is perhaps his first non-bio-degradable role, as a discarded plastic bag longing for the nirvana of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Plastic Bag is one in a series of 11 short speculative films from the first season of FUTURESTATES -- you can watch the others at their web site.
posted evening of March 26th, 2010: 2 responses
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Thursday, March 25th, 2010
There is a tricky bit of translation at the beginning of Woyzeck:
HAUPTMANN: Langsam, Woyzeck, langsam; eins nach dem andern! Er macht
mir ganz schwindlig. Was soll ich dann mit den 10 Minuten anfangen,
die Er heut zu früh fertig wird? Woyzeck, bedenk Er, Er hat noch seine
schönen dreißig Jahr zu leben, dreißig Jahr! Macht dreihundertsechzig
Monate! und Tage! Stunden! Minuten! Was will Er denn mit der
ungeheuren Zeit all anfangen? Teil Er sich ein, Woyzeck!
WOYZECK: Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.
H: Es wird mir ganz angst um die Welt, wenn ich an die
Ewigkeit denke. Beschäftigung, Woyzeck, Beschäftigung! Ewig: das ist
ewig, das ist ewig - das siehst du ein; nur ist es aber wieder nicht
ewig, und das ist ein Augenblick, ja ein Augenblick - Woyzeck, es
schaudert mich, wenn ich denke, daß sich die Welt in einem Tag
herumdreht. Was 'n Zeitverschwendung! Wo soll das hinaus? Woyzeck, ich
kann kein Mühlrad mehr sehen, oder ich werd melancholisch.
W: Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.
H: Woyzeck, Er sieht immer so verhetzt aus! Ein guter Mensch
tut das nicht, ein guter Mensch, der sein gutes Gewissen hat. - Red er
doch was Woyzeck! Was ist heut für Wetter?
W: Schlimm, Herr Hauptmann, schlimm: Wind!
H: Ich spür's schon. 's ist so was Geschwindes draußen: so ein
Wind macht mir den Effekt wie eine Maus. - [Pfiffig:] Ich glaub', wir
haben so was aus Süd-Nord?
W: Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.
H: Ha, ha ha! Süd-Nord! Ha, ha, ha! Oh, Er ist dumm, ganz
abscheulich dumm! - [Gerührt:] Woyzeck, Er ist ein guter Mensch
--aber-- [Mit Würde:] Woyzeck, Er hat keine Moral! Moral, das ist,
wenn man moralisch ist, versteht Er. Es ist ein gutes Wort. Er hat ein
Kind ohne den Segen der Kirche, wie unser hocherwürdiger Herr
Garnisionsprediger sagt - ohne den Segen der Kirche, es ist ist nicht
von mir.
W: Herr Hauptmann, der liebe Gott wird den armen Wurm nicht drum
ansehen, ob das Amen drüber gesagt ist, eh er gemacht wurde. Der Herr
sprach: Lasset die Kleinen zu mir kommen.
H: Was sagt Er da? Was ist das für eine kuriose Antwort? Er
macht mich ganz konfus mit seiner Antwort. Wenn ich sag': Er, so mein'
ich Ihn, Ihn -
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CAPTAIN: Slowly, Woyzeck, slowly; one thing at a time! You make me dizzy. What am I going to do with the 10 minutes that you'll save by the time you're done? Woyzeck, think of it, you've been alive a good thirty years already, thirty years! That's three hundred sixty Months! and Days! Hours! Minutes! What are you going to do with all that monstrous time? Pace yourself, Woyzeck!
WOYZECK: Yes sir, Captain sir. C: I get scared for the world when I think about eternity. Pay attention, Woyzeck! Forever: that's forever, that's forever -- you understand; but it's also not forever at all, it's just the blink of an eye -- Woyzeck, it frightens me, when I think of how the world goes around in a day. What a waste of time! What's going to come of that? Woyzeck, I can't even look at a mill-wheel any longer, without becoming melancholy. W: Yes indeed, Captain. C: Woyzeck, you always have such a hunted look! A good man wouldn't look that way, a good man with a clean conscience. -- But speak up, Woyzeck! How is the weather today? W: Bad, sir, bad: wind! C: I can feel it already. There's something blowing out there, such a wind sounds like a mouse to me. -- [whistles] I believe it's a South-North wind we have? W: Yes sir, Captain sir. C: Ha, ha, ha! South-North! Ha, ha, ha! Oh, you're a dummy, such a shameful dummy! - [turns] Woyzeck, you're a good man -- but -- [grandiose] Woyzeck, you have no morality! Morality, I mean like when somebody is moral, you understand. It's a good word. You have a child without the blessing of the Church, as our estimable chaplain says -- without the blessing of the Church, it's not just me saying that.
W: Captain sir, blessed God won't hold it against the little thing, whether somebody said Amen over it before it was made... The good lord said: Let the little children come unto me.
C: What are you saying there? What kind of a weird answer is that? You're confusing me with your answers. When I say "You", I'm talking about you, you... |
(From the script of Büchner's play, but the screenplay for Herzog's film seems to adhere pretty closely, at least in this portion of the film.) Two things: I did not know that capitalized Er could be used for formal address in the way that Sie is -- I reckon that must be an archaic or regional usage or Frau Rose would have told us in German class. (grin) It makes sense... The Captain's final line sounds much better in German than in (my) English, I think. And also, I can't communicate (or really, quite understand) the captain's slip into informal "du" in the middle of his second speech.The captain's soliloquies here are very clearly staged -- Dan Schneider presents that as a shortcoming of the movie; but it seems pretty charming to me.
posted evening of March 25th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, March 18th, 2010
 At the beginning of every episode of Heimat: eine deutsche Chronik, before the titles (every episode so far, excluding the first -- I'm watching the fifth now) there is a short piece of narration in English while the camera pans over a set of old photographs of the characters in Schabbach. This was kind of jarring to me at first -- it is not explained, the narrator still has not been identified. The only character who has emigrated to the U.S. is Paul, and the narrator refers to Paul in the third person... Looking at the screenplay I see the narrator identified as Glasisch, who (I believe) is still in Schabbach at the present moment, 1938 or so. This is (assuming I haven't missed some key bit of exposition) a pretty complex piece of plotting -- the viewer knows Glasisch as a character, and knows the narrator as a Schabbacher who has emigrated, but does not know they are the same. Presumably that will be revealed at some point.
 Update: At the beginning of episode 8, the narrator says "The war memorial was unveiled in 1920. I was there -- there I am, that's me!" as he points to a picture of Glasisch.
posted evening of March 18th, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, March 14th, 2010
I went to see Alice in Wonderland with Sylvia this afternoon. (That is to say, "Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in 3-D"...) I was kind of expecting not to like it, based on a general inbred aversion to commercializing the classics and on a negative review I had read in the NY Times; but it won me over, mostly. Burton really succeeded in completely imagining the world of the movie, with gorgeous photography and animation; the world of Carroll's books was present but Burton was not tied in to imitating it, and there was a reason given in the screenplay for why this was so -- the world of the books was assumed as part of the background of the world of the movie. (I also really enjoyed the use of 3-D in this film, maybe moreso than any other 3-D movie I've been to so far.) I had a hard time getting fully inside the movie, but I'm blaming my own blinders for that rather than the director's vision -- I set out trying to find fault, and spent too much of my time internally carping about how it was not that way in the book, instead of letting myself go. (And to be sure, the adaptation of the elements of Carroll's plot to a Narnia-style battle between forces of good and evil is heavy-handed, there's no getting around that -- part of the letting myself go that I did intermittently was laughing at the sillyness of this, so that I could get into it.) Sylvia was not doing this kind of nit-picking, and she paid it what seems to me like the ultimate compliment on our way out of the theater, that you could really tell Burton had read the book before he made the movie.
posted afternoon of March 14th, 2010: Respond
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