Watch His Step!

Watching a great movie that clicks in all of the right places assures me that there is harmony in the universe. It is like marveling at a perfectly symmetrical design like the Eiffel Tower or a spider web. Life is really random chaos with no point. It is a relief that our human intellect stubbornly seeks and finds safety, reason and occasional serendipity in the face of an abyss. Without a sound mind, sanity is lost. To perform well, the struggle between genius and madness is universal. The endeavor of Philippe Petit is one of the most memorable…and balanced.

The documentary Man on Wire recounts a French tightrope walker’s obsession to tread while suspended between the void of the World Trade Center Towers 1,368 feet from the ground. That’s the height of 228 six-foot men. Having trained for most of his life to perform this feat, he masterminded a plot with an adventurous team of experts and thrill-seekers to infiltrate the towers’ rooftops to get the wire across them. The illegal operation was as dangerous and complex as a robbing a heavily guarded infrastructure like in Jules Dassin’s Rififi (1954) or, if you haven’t seen that one, Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 remake of Ocean’s Eleven. My only complaint about the break-in was that they didn’t pack a video camera to film the spectacle from such an awesome perspective view.

The scenes of the controversial incursion are narrated by the present interviewees while documented footage and dramatically staged footage bring us intimately to experience it. The black-and-white footage (always timeless) is integrated so well that documentary and the fictional realization become seamless. The director James Marsh has made an exceptional thriller and a visual poem about great dreamers whose vision threaten to capsize them unless they rise to act upon their desires.

This is a superb follow-up to Marsh’s 2006 directorial debut titled The King, a chilling docudrama about an estranged son (Gael Garcí­a Bernal) who goes to depraved lengths to integrate himself into the new family of his born-again father (William Hurt – “How does that feel?”). The King was between Julia Kwan’s Eve and the Firehorse and John Hillcoat’s The Proposition on my Best Films of 2006 list. This year, Marsh is almost neck-to-neck with magician/filmmaker Errol Morris who too has made another invaluable documentary called Standard Operating Procedure.

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Poor, poor Dubya. With only half-a-year of his presidency left, Oliver Stone has him in the cross hairs and is ready to fire October 29th.

Two months since we have gotten the all-type Bushism poster, now here is the trailers that have official hit.

“W” Trailer #1:

“W” Trailer #2:

Looks like we’re going to see Dubya as all too human here. Much like how Stone saw Nixon in his excellent 1995 feature as a tragic figure worthy of Hamlet.

Hamlet
A man may fish with the Bush that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that Bush.

Just don’t skimp on the flaws, Oliver!

Switching faces from tragedy to comedy, here is the new trailer for Mike Leigh’s upcoming Happy-Go-Lucky. This one is made for the North American audiences so be sure to take a shot of Insulin Glargine.

Now this trailer is just dying to make this bittersweet British comedy come across as a sweet-and-low Julia Roberts vehicle. A desperate attempt turning indie gold look like mainstream schmaltz. It has the banal Disneyesque-pop music cues, the kid-friendly editing wipes (swooshing sound effects are not optional), the garishly bubblegum-polished graphics, and the voice-over narration of Don LaFontaine in syrupy mode. Is Miramax really stooping this low for a Best Picture nom?

News Flash: a dozen years ago Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies (1996) got the coveted nomination, so have a little faith!

The international trailer that I wrote about 3 months ago is far superior and actually feels like it has the fingerprints of Mike Leigh on it.

The Real Happy-Go-Lucky Trailer

The sophisticated animated graphics with the cute and gritty edge – check! An editing aesthetic that does not condescend – check! The quirky yet somber soundtrack by Gary Yershon – check!

Question: Am I the only one waiting for the melancholy soundtracks of composer and Mike Leigh regular Andrew Dickson (High Hopes, 1988; Naked, 1993; All or Nothing, 2002; Vera Drake, 2004) to be released?

Happy-Go-Lucky will speak for itself (in limited release) on October 10th.

How Much Equality Is There Between Him and Her and Him?

Adolescence is a trial no matter what gender one is. The conflict can be so crippling that it damages and ultimately defines one as an adult. There have been many films, some good, about experiencing teenage angst and the need to break free or remain grounded. Either way can produce regret later in life. This film XXY has tread new ground by presenting a teenager whose entire identity, both internally and anatomically, is unusual to a majority of people. Funnily enough, the uniqueness of this case makes the experience all the more universal. The teenager is named Alex and is fifteen years old. Alex has a choice this summer that boggles one’s mind toward fantasy. The choice is whether Alex should resume the rest of life as male or female.

Alex is a hermaphrodite. Alex looks like a teenage girl but possesses the make-up of a boy that he/she has deluded with pills of estrogen. Alex is cared for by her parents Kraken (brilliantly played by Ricardo Darí­­n) and Suli (Valeria Bertuccelli) who live, for their child’s sake, in a wooden turquoise cabin near the seaside in Uruguay after moving from Argentina. Her father works as an oceanographer who possesses a protectiveness, even for the wounded sea turtles he studies. The key for observing this challenging and brave film is by possessing the empathy that Kraken has. He is quiet, smart, unobtrusive, and lashes out only when someone endangers his child. Rarely has a father been portrayed on film with such loveliness.

There is an astonishing sequence late at night where Kraken seeks out a frank older man who presents pictures of himself as a child — pictures of girl! Kraken listens calmly and curiously to the difficult experiences of this struggling hermaphrodite. He is so involved with understanding his “daughter” that he is simply removed from prejudice: “Making her afraid of her body is the worst thing you can do to a child”. This character was so easy for me to gravitate towards.

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