Film, media and related arts - subjective contemplation and commentary with consideration of the intrinsic duality, interminable relevance and evolution of each.
Exhibition of original and contributed film, art, music and writings.
With occasional reflection on the perpetual absurdity/intrigue of life and society in general.
Showing posts with label Film Reviews/Writings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film Reviews/Writings. Show all posts
Like so many, I'm intrigued by Robert Eggers' young career and curiously anxious to see what comes next. I'm not even sure how much I like his films, or if I'm just utterly fascinated by them (I mean this as a compliment). He is highly original, skilled, and visionary as a filmmaker, unusually restrained
and refined for early career, and utterly confident in fulfilling his independent aspirations for each film. The Lighthouse is an exceptional piece of work, and unapologetically arthouse in form and function. His films push art cinema onto the mainstream screens. I'm not quite sure how he has gotten away with it, but I'm glad he has. Up to this point, with a little help from A24, he has been very good for independent cinema at large.
The Northman is no doubt a step toward larger budgets, hence higher commercial expectations from all the wrong people, and no more sweet indie home with A24 (this one is Focus Features Films).
This makes the film particularly interesting and relevant in the context of his filmography. So far it has garnered mixed and extreme responses from critics and audiences alike, which just adds to the mystique and lure for me.
Below the trailer is a link to an engaging and smart critical review with a perspective that I appreciate. I have seen The Northman but am intentionally withholding my response until a second screening - well, because I honestly don't know what I think yet, other than visually spectacular.
Striking photography throughout - by Greig Fraser.
A review of The Batman, by Richard Brody of the New Yorker. This is not a film critic that I regularly read, but tend to respect. In this case, it damn near parallels my thoughts and notes exact, and I don't have the energy or desire to write a review of my own.
"It’s cause for modest celebration that “The Batman” achieves, for much of its nearly three-hour running time, a baseline of artistry: it’s eminently sit-through-able. There’s a category of movie that used to be the Hollywood stock in trade, which a dear departed relative used to call “brain cleansers”—one kicks back, the time passes with some rooting interest, some excitement, some curiosity about what’s coming next. For its first two hours or so, “The Batman” largely fulfills the commitment to be engaging and clever; its deftly inventive director, Matt Reeves (who co-wrote the script with Peter Craig), conveys the impression of substance where it’s hardly to be found. The movie is good with an asterisk—an asterisk the size of the financial interests at stake in the franchise’s intellectual property. As free as Reeves may have been to make the film according to his lights, he displays an element of custodial, even fiduciary, responsibility. It may well win him favor with the studio, with the ticket-buying public, and with critics who calibrate their enthusiasm to box-office success, but it gets in the way of the kinds of transformative interpretations of the characters that would make the difference between a baseline movie and an authentically free and original one.
...The Batman describes his uneasy role as an avenger—indeed, he says, as vengeance itself—in a voice-over that holds out hope that the superhero will be endowed with at least an average level of subjectivity and mental activity. No such luck: that voice-over might as well be a part of the explanatory press notes for all the insight it offers into the protagonist’s thoughts."
This film is absolutely endearing. Directed by Mike Mills and integrating unique modes of production, aesthetics, and documentary-style inserts, it manages to maintain an intimacy tilting between unavoidable sadness and joyous hope, while never forgetting itself and never losing it's heart. Yes indeed, this one hit just right.
Ever since a little film called Thumbsucker popped up in the mid-2000's, I've been waiting to see just how good Mike Mills can be. Thumbsucker was an excellent little indie film, original and quirky, that to some degree got overlooked, though well received by many critics and festivals. Though it wasn't a film without missteps, it showed enormous hope for his future projects. Then I just lost track of him, and he didn't quite garner the attention that I expected... until now. The way I stated it to a close film ally and friend immediately after leaving the theater was, "Any critic that slams or disregards this film has no soul."
In large, C'mon C'mon is a film of raw honesty that serves as an ode to the intellect and awareness of young people, and the adults that so earnestly stumble, and at times transcend, to guide and raise them in this absurd world. It is shot in pristine black and white that rivals the visual likes of La Haine, and the cinematographer and production designer take full advantage. It's a beautiful film inside and out.
I would be remiss to end comments without noting the performances. To no surprise, Joaquin Phoenix and Gaby Hoffmann gave invested, intimate performances while seeming effortless. Woody Norman could not have been better in a youthful performance for the times, because it just didn't seem like a performance at all.
I had the privilege, and I do mean privilege, of screening C'mom C'mon at the 34th Annual Virginia Film Festival in my sacred, intimate film fest context. Though there was some intensely quality competition in feature length narrative fiction, and admittedly a tough call for me, this film is indeed my favorite of the 2021 VAFF.
My One Line Review of The French Dispatch (because I just don't care enough to give it more):
That was the most skillfully made TERRIBLE film that I have possibly ever seen.
Just absolutely a terrible mumbled pretentious indulgent mess (woops, that was two lines.)
I saw some fantastic films at this year's VA Film Festival, possibly a couple that were truly great, and I'll be posting about many of them shortly. However, to my surprise, the Opening Night Film, Wes Anderson's "The French Dispatch," was definitely NOT one of them.
*I take no pleasure in critiquing a Wes Anderson film so harshly, as he has made a few that I adore, but I speak my truth and stand behind it.
No American filmmaker embraces Robert Bresson's innovative mode of cinema, both theoretically and artistically, more than Paul Shrader. He at times leans into near visual and stylistic replication while somehow maintaining earnest originality, no doubt due to his inimitable talents for screenwriting, original narrative concept and character. He delves the same deep seas of human suffering, redemption and existential contemplation that Bresson navigated, yet never seems a parody. He explores similar protagonists, utilizes minimalist visual strokes and seems to adhere to the sacred oath of obstructions, yet I would never argue Shrader anything less than an integral auteur of his own making. He has had a writers hand and a filmmakers voice in the new wave and evolution of contemporary American cinema as much as anyone of the era.
The review below takes an approach and tone worthy of the material, demonstrating a critical manner reminiscent of Bazin, particularly in considering the film within the context of Shrader's body of work and artistic nature. Shrader is apparently not slowing down or falling under the weight of age anymore than Bresson did. I could argue that this film coupled with First Reformed, his last directorial/writing effort, represent some of his finest accomplishments as an auteur. As someone that holds Bresson's films, Notes on the Cinematographer, and the Taxi Driver script as sacred precedents of filmmaking, may I say, extraordinary work, sir. I look forward to what comes next.
"For Schrader, French filmmaker Robert Bresson is the inexhaustible fount. He’s one of the three filmmakers treated in his thesis-turned-seminal-film-text Transcendental Style In Film: Dreyer, Ozu, Bresson and the one Schrader cribs from almost obsessively. (I’m not saying that like it’s a bad thing, honest.) Schrader calls “The Card Counter” one of his “a man sitting in a room” or “man at a table” films; that man originated with Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest.” That priest was a diarist, and his writings were reinforced with the words read aloud in voiceover. Schrader made Travis Bickle a diarist, and specified the same kind of voiceover, which “Taxi Driver” director Martin Scorsese buttressed with some visual cues out of Godard, who was well influenced by Bresson himself."
The venerable French journal Cahiers du Cinéma has posted its Top 10 movies of 2014, and though it's only available in print, a few kind souls have posted the list online. International release dates being what they are, it includes titles that, as far as American voting bodies are concerned, hail from both 2013 ("The Wind Rises") and 2015 ("Maps to the Stars"), and a few that don't have U.S. distribution — Alain Cavalier's "Paradise" hasn't even made a splash on the festival circuit. But put it up against the results of the Sight & Sound poll, and you can see international opinion beginning to coalesce around movies like "Goodbye to Language" and "Under the Skin," which might bolster their chances for future recognition.
Cahiers du Cinéma's Top 10 Films of 2014 1. "L'il Quinquin" 2. "Goodbye to Language" 3. "Under the Skin" 4. "Maps to the Stars" 5. "The Wind Rises" 6. "Nymphomaniac" 7. "Mommy" 8. "Love Is Strange" 9. "Paradise" 10. "Our Sunhi"
Jeff Nichols is a rising independent filmmaker (something we don't hear enough of in recent years) based out of Austin, TX - our home town. His first feature film, Shotgun Stories, was shot in the true paradigm of early 90's independent cinema, sweat and tears and penniless scraping with a lot of gumption, and it is a truly impressive accomplishment as well as a thoughtful, cinematically intelligent, and all around excellent first feature. Take Shelter, Nichols' second feature (budgeted at quite a bit more than his first but still relatively minimal) has received accolades and awards throughout its festival run, including quite a bit of notoriety at Cannes. It is now set for an American release and it is receiving predominately rave reviews and positive response. This is certainly one of my top films of interest set for release, and not just for local loyalty - the possibility of honest, interesting storytelling with high cinematic awareness is very promising. I encourage all to look up the release dates in your city or area (September 30 in many places) and check this one out - I'm pretty sure it will be worth it. Below is a review by David Edelsten for NPR Movies.
Dark Skies: Jeff Nichols' haunting Take Shelter centers on an Ohio man (Michael Shannon, with Tova Stewart) plagued with nightmares about a coming apocalypse.
It's easy to giggle at the hero of Jeff Nichols' second feature, Take Shelter. Michael Shannon is Curtis, a crew chief for an Ohio sand-mining company who's ravaged by apocalyptic visions and nightmares. He's wiggy to start with and increasingly more unhinged, on a switchback track to madness that threatens to devastate his family. Curtis sees funnel clouds, locusts, even people staggering through the night like zombies. He knows it might all be in his head: His mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia at about the same age he is now. But in the end, he follows his dreams. He devotes his hours — and the family's little money — to enlarging the storm shelter in his backyard to prepare for whatever's coming.
Curtis is losing it big time — yet his anxieties mirror things in the air right now, from fear of unemployment and tenuous medical coverage to ever more floods and hurricanes. It's a movie for an era in which the Book of Revelation has made a comeback.
The danger in casting Shannon, with his haunted eyes and history playing demented characters in such films as Bug and Revolutionary Road, is that his latest unraveling might seem like déjà vu. But the actor is a truly anguished presence, and director Nichols makes sure what's eating Curtis is eating you, too. He breaks down scenes into images of destruction — not just obvious ones, like funnel clouds and spiderwebs of lightning across the Ohio fields, but chains and valves and shovels scoring the earth. In many scenes, Nichols and his cinematographer, Adam Stone, evoke the feeling of being inside a house staring out at a deluge — the kind of will-it-never-stop rain that makes even home sweet home seem like an emergency shelter.
Take Shelter would seem as obvious as its title if the early scenes weren't so tenderly directed. Curtis' tireless wife, Samantha, who sells homemade crafts at flea markets, is played by Jessica Chastain, a vivid actress who made a huge impression in Jolene, and who does marvelous work inThe Debt and even The Tree of Life, where's she playing a symbol. The couple have a deaf little girl, Hannah, played by Tova Stewart, who's in a lonely world of her own and has a quietly beseeching presence. When Curtis pens the family dog, Red, in the back after a bad dream and puts the money for his daughter's cochlear implant at risk by enlarging that shelter, Samantha finally turns on him.
"Explain that to me," she rages. "Please. Tell me something that helps me understand why you're being like this."
"There's nothing to explain," he says.
Take Shelter didn't come from nowhere. Jeff Nichols' doomsday view was on display in his 2007 movie, Shotgun Stories, which few people saw but I put on my 10-best list. That film, which also starred Shannon, took place in the South and centered on a tragic feud between two sets of half-brothers. It captured the connection between fatherlessness and the impulse to wreak vengeance like no American film I've seen.
Nichols' feelers are supernaturally acute, but I'm ambivalent about the end of Take Shelter. I found the movie scarier when it was vague, amorphous — a horror film without a literal monster. But this is still a terrific piece of work. Nichols has composed nothing less than a symphony of modern American bad vibes. (Recommended)
For more info and to listen to the story, follow the Link:NPR Movies
When was the last time you saw a movie you knew nothing about?
It's a trickier thing to accomplish than it might seem to be. After all, if a film comes from a director whose work you've ever seen, you know something about it. If it stars an actor you've ever seen or ever read about – someone with any kind of a reputation, good or bad – you know something about it. If you've seen a trailer or an ad on TV, of course, then you know a lot about it. If it's "from the people who brought you," or "the director of," you're specifically being told what to expect, even if falsely. More often than not, the biggest concern about a film before it's made available is that if you don't know anything about it, you won't go...
I saw a Venezuelan film called Hermano this weekend. Here's what I knew about it before I saw it: It was a drama, it had something to do with soccer and, in keeping with the title, it had something to do with brothers. That's it. That's it. Never heard of the director, Marcel Rasquin (it's his first film), never heard of or seen any of the actors ever before (they're quite new, too), didn't know whether it was tragic or uplifting or gritty or sunny or what. I knew it won awards at film festivals in Moscow and Havana, and ... that's all...
Everything you know something about when you go is, intentionally or unintentionally, coded. The director, the actor, the type of film, everything sends a message, even if it's not the most obvious one. One example: I watched Buried the other night, the claustrophobic thriller starring Ryan Reynolds, and one of the things I found myself musing on was Reynolds' decision to take a role where his looks would be as useless as possible. In a way, it detaches him from his reputation as a pretty boy. But the fact remains: He's Ryan Reynolds. I've seen him before, quite a lot, so knowing it's him means that coding is there for me, even when he's in the dark...
It's good now and then, though, to see something where, for you, there's absolutely no coding in it at all. Obviously, the marketing of a movie often sends unmistakable signals about where it's going and who the good and bad guys are before you ever get there. A story of a good and a bad brother, for instance, will tell you who's who in the commercials. Even if you don't get it from the commercials, there's a decent chance you'll get it from the casting. You'll get it from the way the two are shot from the opening sequence forward. You'll get it from the score.
When you don't know anything – what tradition the film is in, what its genre is, how it would be marketed, or who the target audience is – not only do you see that film differently, but you see other films differently, too. The lack of signals is palpable and initially unsettling because the experience is so rare, but like any negative space, it draws a kind of attention to itself. It made me think about the avalanche of coding attached to a movie like Moneyball: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Aaron Sorkin, baseball, Michael Lewis, Michael Lewis' book ... there are a hundred ways to be either with or against that film before you watch a frame of it...
There was a discussion after Hermano in which something remarkable happened: Multiple people in the room took the position that the film's ending either was "ambiguous" in a way I believe it wasn't, or, in some cases, took the fairly firm position that it ended in a way I believe it clearly didn't. One of them said, in fact, that he believed the film was of a particular genre, he felt films in that genre should end in a specific way, and therefore, he chose to believe that was the way Hermano ended, even though – again, in my opinion – he was unquestionablychanging the ending that was on the screen...
It was an enormously valuable experience, precisely because I can't say for sure who was right. (It was me, though.) (I'm just sure of it.) The movie was just out there, on its own, on the screen, no hints. No codes, no semaphore, no homages to anyone. Here's a movie; see what you think. It's an experience to try to have regularly, because it's really the only way to make sure you're still noticing everything you carry with you into the average multiplex picture.
By Roger Ebert on January 23, 2011 I received a letter that ends, as far as I am concerned, the discussion about 3D. It doesn't work with our brains and it never will.
The notion that we are asked to pay a premium to witness an inferior and inherently brain-confusing image is outrageous. The case is closed.
This letter is from Walter Murch, seen at left, the most respected film editor and sound designer in modern cinema. As an editor, he must be intimately expert with how an image interacts with the audience's eyes. He won an Academy Award in 1979 for his work on "Apocalypse Now," whose sound was a crucial aspect of its effect.
"Murch is widely acknowledged as the person who coined the term Sound Designer, and along with colleagues developed the current standard film sound format, the 5.1 channel array, helping to elevate the art and impact of film sound to a new level. "Apocalypse Now" was the first multi-channel film to be mixed using a computerized mixing board." He won two more Oscars for the editing and sound mixing of "The English Patient."
"He is perhaps the only film editor in history to have received Academy nominations for films edited on four different systems:
• "Julia" (1977) using upright Moviola
• "Apocalypse Now" (1979), "Ghost" (1990), and "The Godfather, Part III" (1990) using KEM flatbed
• "The English Patient" (1996) using Avid.
• "Cold Mountain" (2003) using Final Cut Pro on an off-the shelf PowerMac G4.
Now read what Walter Murch says about 3D:
Hello Roger,
I read your review of "Green Hornet" and though I haven't seen the film, I agree with your comments about 3D.
The 3D image is dark, as you mentioned (about a camera stop darker) and small. Somehow the glasses "gather in" the image -- even on a huge Imax screen -- and make it seem half the scope of the same image when looked at without the glasses.
I edited one 3D film back in the 1980's -- "Captain Eo" -- and also noticed that horizontal movement will strobe much sooner in 3D than it does in 2D. This was true then, and it is still true now. It has something to do with the amount of brain power dedicated to studying the edges of things. The more conscious we are of edges, the earlier strobing kicks in.
The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the "convergence/focus" issue. A couple of the other issues -- darkness and "smallness" -- are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.
But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.
If we look at the salt shaker on the table, close to us, we focus at six feet and our eyeballs converge (tilt in) at six feet. Imagine the base of a triangle between your eyes and the apex of the triangle resting on the thing you are looking at. But then look out the window and you focus at sixty feet and converge also at sixty feet. That imaginary triangle has now "opened up" so that your lines of sight are almost -- almost -- parallel to each other.
We can do this. 3D films would not work if we couldn't. But it is like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, difficult. So the "CPU" of our perceptual brain has to work extra hard, which is why after 20 minutes or so many people get headaches. They are doing something that 600 million years of evolution never prepared them for. This is a deep problem, which no amount of technical tweaking can fix. Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images.
Consequently, the editing of 3D films cannot be as rapid as for 2D films, because of this shifting of convergence: it takes a number of milliseconds for the brain/eye to "get" what the space of each shot is and adjust.
And lastly, the question of immersion. 3D films remind the audience that they are in a certain "perspective" relationship to the image. It is almost a Brechtian trick. Whereas if the film story has really gripped an audience they are "in" the picture in a kind of dreamlike "spaceless" space. So a good story will give you more dimensionality than you can ever cope with.
So: dark, small, stroby, headache inducing, alienating. And expensive. The question is: how long will it take people to realize and get fed up?
All best wishes,
Walter Murch
Walter Murch is also author of a preeminent guide to film editing theory - In the Blink of an Eye(with a foreward by Francis Ford Coppola). In lecture style (and a relatively short read), he offers seemingly simple conceptual guidance that proves as invaluable wisdom to the film editor as well as all filmmakers. I highly recommend the book to anyone aspiring to understand the essence of filmmaking.
DJ Haza with more "Frustrated Ramblings Of An Aspiring Filmmaker"...
3D seems to be the next big thing in cinematic leaps forward, but is it really all it’s cracked up to be? Bullets seemingly fly past your head, explosions leap off the screen and the film world surrounds you in three different dimensions. Or so we are led to believe. Is 3D the eye-watering future of cinema or a cinematic gimmick that just makes your eyes water?
There have been some real big endorsements of 3D in film with James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) smashing all box office records and Martin Scorsese telling The Guardian of his admiration for 3D. The Oscar-winning Mr. Scorsese told Mark Kermode, “I always liked 3D. I mean we are sitting here in 3D. We are in 3D. We see 3D. So why not?” Scorsese has just finished shooting his most recent project, Hugo Cabret, which unusually for him is a family friendly film and his first shot in 3D. Scorsese has stated that it has allowed him to “rethink cinema” and has “liberated” his filmmaking. He continues by assuring film fans that he hasn’t resorted to using the new technology as a “gimmick”. Only time will tell.
James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) is hailed by some as the pinnacle of 3D after its huge success at box office’s worldwide. Some even say it redefined cinema and dawned a new age of 3D filmmaking. However, the story was appalling in my opinion and no matter how much CGI, 3D or other effects were thrown at me I was bored. Five minutes in I had lost all faith in the film and it was never reinstated. My eyes grew sore, my patience thin and I wanted the film to end as soon as possible. To this day this is my only real 3D cinematic experience and I couldn’t care if it was my last...
Always happy to have insightful support on one of my paramount (pardon the pun) vexations with contemporary cinema. Indeed, Cameron is a gray-haired techie with an elementary mind for story (to say the least) and a 4 yr old's egocentric sense of self. He has never, by any stretch or assertion, aspired to artistic innovation or thematic wisdom (except perhaps in his own mind's eye). Yet, his cause for 3D imagery and video game ascetic has universally captivated the studio interests - and giving lobotomized children a warhead, calling it a toy, and asking them to be creative with it is never a good idea. As for Scorsese, Burton, and other self-aware filmmakers embracing the new notion of three dimensions in cinema, i am bewildered and a bit saddened. The illusion has always been there, by the way (an integral function of cinematic artistry) - the new 3D simply puts your creative mind to rest with less participation and honest stimulation. That's right, Cameron and the studios are assuming the audience (YOU and ME) stupid and inadequate to play a participatory role in the cinematic experience, and, as of yet, they have not been proven wrong by the masses. Thanks to DJ Haza andFlickeringmythfor the "Frustrated Ramblings." I feel your pain.
It seems that the film critics' circle, with their universal applause and praise for recent blockbuster spectacles like Avatar and Inception, have tuned into some Joseph Campbell-esque collective consciousness that the rest of the thinking, film-viewing population are not privy to. I presume that they have fallen victim to the debilitating, enchanting, hypnotizing charms of those suave studios and big (but shameless) marketing schemes. So sad, especially for self-proclaimed professionals and experts (funny). I simply can't believe how little dissension there was among the ranks of popular critics in regard to these two films. Even the more seemingly credible, or definitively "indy", critical reviews were soft and approving. Avatar is decidedly some of the worst cinematic dribble that I have suffered through in years (it would have been an average story had it been written for submission to a junior high literary magazine), and Inception, though one hell of a spectacle (and relatively interesting concept), was an average movie at best - with grueling expository dialogue and a formula story line with no original character development. And yet, the critics (even Village Voice, NY Times, Ebert, and the likes - shame on you) universally praised these forgettable, unchallenging films. Where is the young rebellious Ebert of old that stood up against popular opinion and hailed the cinematic excellence of Bonnie and Clyde - risking career and credibility? We need dissension.
Following is the only honest review of Inception that I have read - bravo.
REVIEW: Is Inception This Year’s Masterpiece? Dream On
If the career of Christopher Nolan is any indication, we’ve entered an era in which movies can no longer be great. They can only be awesome, which isn’t nearly the same thing.
In Inception, Nolan does the impossible, the unthinkable, the stupendous: He folds a mirror version of Paris back upon itself; he stages a fight sequence in a gravity-free hotel room; he sends a train plowing through a busy city street. Whatever you can dream, Nolan does it in Inception. Then he nestles those little dreams into even bigger dreams, and those bigger dreams into gargantuan dreams, going on into infinity, cubed. He stretches the boundaries of filmmaking so that it’s, like, not even filmmaking anymore, it’s just pure “OMG I gotta text myBFF right now” sensation.
Wouldn’t it have been easier just to make a movie?
But that urgent simplicity, that directness of focus, is beyond Nolan: Everything he does is forced and overthought, and Inception, far from being his ticket into hall-of-fame greatness, is a very expensive-looking, elephantine film whose myriad so-called complexities — of both the emotional and intellectual sort — add up to a kind of ADD tedium. This may be a movie about dreams, but there’s nothing dreamlike or evocative about it: Nolan doesn’t build or sustain a mood; all he does is twist the plot, under, over, and back upon itself, relying on Hans Zimmer’s sonic boom of a score to remind us when we should be excited or anxious or moved. It’s less directing than directing traffic.
Alright, as I promised to revisit it, here is the full scoop on The Human Centipede according to Roger Ebert (by the way, he optioned out of giving it a star rating - he didn't give it 0 stars, just withheld the rating - interesting). I think this pretty much covers it. Upon reading this review, my interests and curiosity remain peaked and my stomach uneasy.
I have particular interest in (and have studied extensively as well as written on) a fringe contemporary movement in French Cinema referenced as the Cinema du Corps. The term was coined by Dr. Tim Palmer (University of North Carolina Wilmington), the leading scholar on the movement. I have had the privilege of studying under Dr. Palmer (also one of those rare born-to-teach professors - the one that makes every class an intellectual joy). A common critique of the Cinema du Corps filmmakers (Marina de Van, Gaspar Noe, Bruno Dumont, etc.) is an accusation of "shock cinema" due to the direct and stark manner in which they explore physicality. It is argued that the imagery is propelled by the desire to shock alone with too little value or subtext to justify the extremity of the imagery (Noe being the only one to embrace and own this critique proudly). I have commonly and adamantly argued against this surface assessment of the movement by the more traditional guard of film academia - and actually find it to be amongst the more groundbreaking/intriguing modern cinemas. I also embraced recent cult horror film, Dead Girl, which received similar critical accusations (I had the privilege of screening this film at a festival, followed by a Q&A with the young filmmakers - only 20 people or so were left by the end - the others walked out too disturbed - it was an exceptional festival experience). However, in reading the reviews of The Human Centipede (not directly associated with the cinema du corps movement in film, yet garnering the same critical tag of "shock cinema"), I have to admit, while leaving my mind as open as possible, it will take quite a bit for this film to shed the gratuitous "shock" tag - if it even cares too.
It's not death itself that's so bad. It's what you might have to go through to get there. No horror film I've seen inflicts more terrible things on its victims than “The Human Centipede.” You would have to be very brave to choose this ordeal over simply being murdered. Maybe you'd need to also be insane.
I'm about to describe what happens to the film's victims. This will be a spoiler. I don't care, because (1) the details are common knowledge in horror film circles, and (2) if you don't know, you may be grateful to be warned. This is a movie I don't think I should be coy about.
OK. Dr. Heiter is a mad scientist. He was once a respected surgeon, but has now retreated to his luxurious home in the German forest, which contains an operating room in the basement. His skin has a sickly pallor, his hair is dyed black, his speech reminds us of a standard Nazi, and he gnashes his teeth. He is filled with hatred and vile perversion...
Heiter plans to surgically join his victims by sewing together their mouths and anuses, all in a row, so the food goes in at the front and comes out at the rear. They will move on their hands and knees like an insect. You don't want to be part of the Human Centipede at all, but you most certainly don't want to be in the middle. Why does he want to commit this atrocity? He is insane, as I've already explained. (follow the link for the entire review and watch the trailer below).
I've been a bit slack with updates from Cannes (silly me, I've been busy with never-ending post on my own torturous film project) - while much of cinematic interest has unfolded at this years festival. I will certainly be visiting a few films and topics from Cannes Film Festival 2010 in upcoming postings (Jean Luc Godard's Film Socialismeis of particular interest). It seems that the jury morphed into a reflection of its president, Tim Burton, in selecting an unexpected Thai film for the Palme d'Or - a fantastical piece that delves into cultural myth and afterlife otherworldliness (perhaps with less macabre than Burton's films - maybe due to relative cultural differences in popular perceptions of death) - and the first Thai film to receive the top honor. For a complete report of the awards, follow the embedded link to the official Cannes website, or you can read more from the NY Times article below:
CANNES, France — On Sunday evening the 63rdCannes Film Festivalcame to a shocking, exhilarating close with the Palme d’Or going to “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” from the Thai filmmakerApichatpong Weerasethakul. Surely the only Palme winner to feature sex between a princess and a thrashing catfish, “Boonmee” is a fantastical tale about a dying man whose past lives — and ghostly relatives — enraptured some critics while turning others off. The speculation that it might appeal to the jury president,Tim Burton, along with some of his more discerning fellow jury members, proved true.
On accepting the award Mr. Weerasethakul (who goes by Joe) said in English that “this is like another world for me,” and noted that “Uncle Boonmee” is the first Thai film to win the Palme. “I would really like to kiss all of you,” he said to the jury, telling Mr. Burton that he liked his hairstyle. Mr. Weerasethakul thanked “all the spirits and ghosts in Thailand,” who made it “possible for me to be here.”
There have been some real big endorsements of 3D in film with James Cameron’s 
