Artwork by Akiko Stehrenberger from the Criterion booklet of Life During Wartime.

The cast of Life During Wartime (2010) from left to right:
Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens (Andy Kornbluth), Shirley Henderson (Joy Jordan), Michael Kenneth Williams (Allen), Ally Sheedy (Helen Jordan), Rich Pecci (Mark Wiener), Michael Lerner (Harvey Wiener), Allison Janney (Trish Jordan), Emma Hinz (Chloe Maplewood), Chris Marquette (Billy Maplewood), Ciarán Hinds (Bill Maplewood)

As I suspected about the new Criterion release of Life During Wartime (2011) back in May, Miss Stehrenberger has illustrated the whole gaggle of characters from the film.

Beautifully done!

The arrangement of the characters complements their relationships to each other so thoughtfully. All three of the Jordan sisters are separated from each other. Joy is torn between her husband and the ghost of her ex-boyfriend. Helen, the black sheep, who has abandoned her family, is ignored by everyone. Most dominant is Trish, positioned up front. With her steely gaze, she has a dynamic presence. Her vibrant, almost violently paint-slashed dress suggests that she has survived a battle.

Notice how both Joy and Trish’s daughter Chloe have their arms behind their backs. I find Chloe standing in front of her mother has the stance of a foot soldier. Joy and Chloe also share similar hairstyles, head shape and facial features. How ironic that Trish is on her way to raising little Joy all on her own. Remember when Chloe wondered if baby carrots feel pain? That’s the kind of thought “Sensitive Joy” might have had as a kid.

Fathers and sons are paired together on both Wiener and Maplewood fronts. The two Wieners assume the same pose. I’m going out on a limb, but I doubt Bill has his hands in his pockets like his son does. Of course, Bill is cast off to the far right. The only character in the group he talks to is his son. Andy is on the far left – he’s dead with only Joy as his last connection to the the world of the living… or is it just in her head?

Yes, Andy is still dead. Solondz just brings him back as a ghost to haunt his ex-girlfriend Joy. What luck Joy has!

At first glance, it appears that the designers at Criterion had their work on the DVD’s front cover handed to them. The final illustration and design of the original Life During Poster promotional poster by Akiko Stehrenberger was already at their high level of quality. All that was needed was to slap on that big C and set it to Screen. Before its theatrical release, I wrote about the process that the Life During Wartime movie poster went through to come to this.

That is until I found this on Akiko Stehrenberger’s bio:

Her illustrated poster, Life During Wartime, garnered press as well, which she recently adapted and illustrated the cast for the Criterion Collection DVD. She was deemed “Poster Girl” by Interview Magazine, and Creative Review published a 20 page zine of her illustrated movie poster work for their January 2011 Monograph series.

So Miss Stehrenberger has illustrated the whole cast? This could mean that either on the back cover (unlikely since Criterion’s designers are too savvy for that) or inside the booklet, we’ll get to see all of the caricatures envisioned by Stehrenberger. Much like how Daniel Clowes (writer and illustrator of Ghost World and Wilson) rendered these sensitive misfits for the original Happiness poster.

The cast of Happiness (1998) from left to right:
Cynthia Stevenson (Trish Maplewood), Camryn Manheim (Kristina), Jared Harris (Vlad), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Allen), Lara Flynn Boyle (Helen Jordan), Louise Lasser (Mona Jordan), Dylan Baker (Bill Maplewood), Jane Adams (Joy Jordan), Jon Lovitz (Andy Kornbluth), and Ben Gazzara (Lenny Jordan)

The cast of Life During Wartime (2010) from left to right:
Allison Janney (Trish Jordan), Michael Kenneth Williams (Allen), Shirley Henderson (Joy Jordan), Ciarán Hinds (Bill Maplewood), Ally Sheedy (Helen Jordan), Renée Taylor (Mona Jordan), Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens (Andy Kornbluth)

Had Solondz mixed and matched the cast, Life During Wartime would have looked something like this:

A still from Paul Dinello’s Strangers with Candy (2006).

Last August, an Interview with Todd Solondz conducted by the SF360 (San Francisco Film Society) goes a little into his collaboration with Daniel Clowes.

SF360: Your films are compared to graphic novels. Were they an inspiration for you?

Todd Solondz: No, I mean I learned about Dan Clowes’s work at some point. It may have been right after Happiness that I learned about Dan Clowes, but of course that was when I got him to do the poster. But I didn’t know him at the time.

SF360: Was there a shock of recognition when you saw his work?

Todd Solondz: Well, I think he’s great, I love him, and I got to meet him through this process. And I love Ghost World and Terry Zwigoff, all of that. They came to the screening last night. But I don’t know what inspired me—my life, watching TV eight hours a day when you’re eleven years old. It seems just a little affected or false to say it’s because I was reading Dickens and Proust or watching Truffaut and Godard, which I really didn’t learn about until much later.

The Original “Life During Wartime” Poster

The Criterion “Life During Wartime” DVD Cover

Back on March 16th, the good people at Criterion offered Todd Solondz fans an opportunity to ask him a question in a segment called Ask Todd, which is one of the DVD’s Special Features. I can’t believe I missed out on that one!

Criterion Disc Features

• New digital transfer, supervised and approved by director of photography Ed Lachman (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Ask Todd, an audio Q&A with director Todd Solondz in which he responds to viewers’ questions
• Making “Life During Wartime,” a new documentary featuring interviews with actors Shirley Henderson, Ciarán Hinds, Allison Janney, Michael Lerner, Paul Reubens, Ally Sheedy, and Michael Kenneth Williams, as well as on-set footage
• New interview with Ed Lachman
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Sterritt

Life During Wartime (Spine #574) will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD on July 26th.

This is very special considering that all of Solondz’s previous films have been released on bare-bones DVDs. Remember the so-called re-release of Happiness as a part of the Lion’s Gate Signature Series in 2003? All Lions Gate Films did was repackage the old Trimark/Vidmark DVD from 1999 with a new cover. Not only did the widescreen remain non-anamorphic, the main menu included the Trimark movie trailers of Slam (1998) and Another Day in Paradise (1998) complete with the Trimark logo… on a Lions Gate Films DVD. Ouch!

Again, that was back in 2003. Have you seen the latest DVD jacket for Happiness? It’s the same as the 1999 Trimark one, only the designer lost the high-res file and slapped on a fuzzy print-out of the Daniel Clowes illustration. It’s really disgusting. I swear, they must have found the first small GIF file on Google Images and blown it up without so much as a Bicubic Smoother. Very tacky, Lions Gate!

Ah! Much better!

“Life During Wartime” (2010) Trailer

“Happiness” (1998) Trailer

This is my best impression of a lamb.

Last Saturday, Cinelation was submitted as the #922 website in the Large Association of Movie Blogs (LAMB). Special thanks to Rachel, one of the site’s leading authors, who took my website into consideration and posted it.

The next day I was encouraged by Max Covill of Impassioned Cinema who found Cinelation through the LAMB. Judging from his output, the name for his website is very appropriate.

Of the livestock available, thank goodness the LAMB’s mascot is an adorable, fluffy one instead of grotesquely characterized variant.

Like this one:

“Must… drink… less… milk…”

Going back to lambs: While I was illustrating the picture above, I remembered a scene from Lindsay Anderson’s epic satire O Lucky Man! (1973) where the hero Michael Travis (Malcolm McDowell) makes a shocking discovery in a hospital ward.

Yes, that was the same name used by McDowell in his first starring role and collaboration with Mr. Anderson in If…. (1968). The character in If…. was rebooted from a revolution-minded student who goes postal in a strict English boarding school to an earnest coffee salesman who becomes disillusioned by the ways of the corporate world. If that wasn’t enough of a metamorphosis, Martin Scorsese got the name Travis from the McDowell character for his 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver. Credited for Original Idea, McDowell very loosely based O Lucky Man! on his past experiences before becoming an actor as a springboard for the script written by David Sherwin.

Here is the scene where Travis nervously lifts off the sheet from a twitching patient hidden underneath.

From “O Lucky Man” (1973):

For those of you who haven’t seen O Lucky Man! (1973), I urge you to find out what happens while watching the 183-minute film properly. If you decide to watch it anyway, the worse that will happen is you might be even more inclined to watch the whole thing.

And just what does Malcolm McDowell have against windows?

URL: http://www.cinelation.com/
Site Name: Cinelation
Categories: Reviews, News, Editorials, Humor, Horror, Classic Film, Lists, (other) Filmmakers, Film Critics
Rating: PG-13 (I should have written R in case one of my articles has more than one F-word)

What is the main focus of your site?
Filmmaking and my observations on the subject.

What are your blogging goals, personally and/or professionally? In other words, what, if anything, are you trying to get out your blog?
This blog is to reach a larger audience as a critic and a filmmaker in training. Hopefully this will give me more opportunities to share the love of my craft with others.

Do you prefer an interactive community for your blog or are you the teacher and your readers the students?
An interactive community.

How long have you been movie blogging for, and how frequent do you post updates to your site?
This blog has been active for over three years. I am currently getting back to updating my blog on a regular basis (3-4 postings a week) after extensive study on the subject.

Name up to three of your favorite movies (and no more).
Monsieur Hire (1989)
Days of Heaven (1979)
Le Fils (2003)

I could have easily made these lists:

There Will Be Blood (2007)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Gremlins (1984)

Man with a Movie Camera (Preferably with the Michael Nyman Score, 1929)
The Conversation (1974)
Lovely and Amazing (2002)

Talk Radio (1988)
The Red Shoes (1948)
Mischima (1985)

You get the idea.

How did you hear about the LAMB?
The Flick Filosopher (http://www.flickfilosopher.com/)
Thanks, Flick!

Any additional comments, or give yourself an interview question that’s not listed above.
My review for Synecdoche, New York (2008) got me selected to participate in a recorded discussion for the film’s DVD. I was fortunate to speak with Glenn Kenny and Karina Longworth.

I also have my LAMB button up and it’s there to stay.

It’s time to get to the bottom of this. Every time I play one of my DVDs for Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue (1988) series, I see the Facets Video logo: Six seconds that quickly fade in and out with fourteen movie clips a half-second each. Over the past seven years I have been able to identify four of them, which means I should be watching more films released by Facets prior to August 19, 2003.

I thought about getting in contact with Facets and asking them what these titles are, but what fun would that be for you cinephiles out there?

If you know which movies belong to any of these still images, write it in the comments and I’ll credit you along with the answer in this article.

1.

2.

3.

4.

This one baffles me most of all. Are these two film clips fading in and out simultaneously? OR are we looking at a clip from a single movie that has a static dissolve between the two shots? Is the Facets editor working on this montage really that sadistic? My mind is cluttered with thoughts like these.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

The Black-and-White 1959 Version

When The Price Is Dead Right

Nightfall. It is calmest before the storm as five hearses roll up the hillside carrying five fresh victims. Very much alive for now, they have all been invited by that eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) for his wife’s party… at the House on Haunted Hill. How he spoils her! To make the night more interesting (for himself), he has decreed that the guests will win $10,000 each if they last until morning locked inside the spooky mansion. They needn’t worry about losing by default of death since the money will then go to their next of kin. That Frederick… always thinking ahead.

The guests are strangers to each other as well as their host. More interesting that way. They include a typist and wallflower named Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), the confident pilot Lance Schroeder (Richard Long), the psychiatrist Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal), the columnist Ruth Bridgers (Julie Mitchum – Robert Mitchum’s sister!), and the owner of the house Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr.) who is visibly frightened beyond his wits. He goes on and on about their imminent doom by the housed evil. Why go in? They all need money, you see.

Just upstairs held up in her room forever freshening her face is Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), Frederick’s scheming wife. Annabelle insists that it was not he who married her, but she. She also makes no secret of the fact that she loves only his wealth and wants it all for herself. Actually, Annabelle is just wife #4, but what’s most alarming is that those last three wives are dead. Frederick knows of Annabelle’s infidelities and can’t prove them. They’re a perfect match because Annabelle is smart and can hold her own. Frederick would surely agree she is a worthy opponent. Oh, how they love implicating their petty torments on one another! It is their mutual hatred that makes their relationship so strong.

Seven people have already died in the house, which is entrenched in cobwebs and dust, lit by candlelight, and riddled with hidden passageways. It even has a torture chamber in the basement. A large trapdoor down below covers up a little pool of acid. The soundtrack is helped along with eerie wails and howls (*Wooo!*). Frederick gets the party going by reminding everyone they’re as isolated as Clarice Starling was at the old Lippman place. “There’s no electricity. No phone. No one within miles. So no way to call for help.” At least, there’s a great deal of booze.

Elisha Cook Jr. plays Watson as a man more shaken than all the liquor he devours. His face is frozen in perplexity and dread as he utters such lines as, “Only the ghosts in this house are glad we’re here.” Leaning towards madness, he picks up a knife concealed in an armrest and announces it was used by his relatives – the house’s last victims – with energy verging on panic. He remembers how pieces of their body parts were scattered “in places you wouldn’t think.” Like the fantastical murder case set in Sleepy Hollow, the heads have yet to be found. Cook Jr. is good in this role. After all, he had practice playing the little guy who “deserved something better,” according to Bogart’s Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1946).

As for the rest of the party guests, they’re more like dimmer switches. Nora, however, is a scream – and by that, I mean she’s a loud screamer. It’s probably why she’s at the serving end of everything mean and shocking that happens. She is the quintessential damsel-in-distress. No one believes her when she finds a severed head in her vanity case. Whenever He-man Lance hangs around her playing Protect-Her™, he’s never around when she’s in real danger. To add insult to gender, she is an unwitting pawn in a conspiracy to kill someone. Just give her a handgun. She’s jumpy.

Lance, I must confess, does the smartest thing a man stuck at an all-night shindig would do: Flirt with the cute brunette all night. From his back to upper lip, the doctor Dr. David Trent is a real stiff. Trent gives Ben “Bueller” Stine a run for his money on the Dull-O-Meter. Which begs the question why anyone would see anything in him. Ruth the famous columnist has her hands full of the whiskey glass more than her notepad and pen. Speaking of which, she is victim of that pesky blood dripping on her hands on more than one occasion. No wonder she always looks peeved.

Thankfully, the film doesn’t spend excessive time with those saps. Look at it this way; less of them means more Price. The best special effect in the whole film is Vincent Price. That Machiavellian scam! Ohmart cleverly plays Annabelle with brittle innocence and passive aggressiveness. Never raising her voice, her little smile hides gnashing teeth. It’s a challenge for Price to get on her nerves. Aiming the bottle of the bubbly at her head – a fitting metaphor to his tightly-capped masculinity about the explode – Frederick tells her, “It’d make a good headline: Playboy Kills Wife with Champagne Cork.”

Vincent Price uses the same soothing, insinuating tone and poise that Alfred Hitchcock would also master in his own introductions and movie trailers. Hitchcock was more deadpan, but just as calculating. They both relish gallows humour, so long as they get to deliver such lines in a dry manner with a phantom wink. “There’ll be food and drink and ghosts… and maybe even a few murders.” Price’s voice only lilts when he mentions the possibility of murder. He just can’t help but raise the corners of his lips into a mischievous smile. Price’s thin, villainous mustache curls at its own ends as if already in anticipation. Right after Frederick grabs hold of Annabelle’s golden curls Kirk Douglas-style and convinces her to come down and enjoy her party, Price breaks the fourth wall and looks right at us just as he says, “I wonder how it will end.”

With The Uninvited (1944) over a decade ago, House on Haunted Hill was one of the earliest films to set the mold for more haunted house movies to come with such varied results in style including The Innocents (1961), The Haunting (1963), most of the tales in Kwaidan (1964), Hausu (1977), Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), The Entity (1981), the first two Evil Dead movies by Sam Raimi, The Others (2001), and that terrific film House of the Devil (2009). A good argument could be made for the inclusion of Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955). House on Haunted Hill rests comfortably between that of the atmospheric silent picture by James Sibley Watson The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) – the very first of its kind – and its superb remake titled House of Usher (1960) by Roger Corman. Corman was a master at adapting horror stories by Edgar Allen Poe for the screen, which also starred Vincent Price.

When William Castle released his film theatrically, he relied on another of his promotional gimmicks to lure in audiences. Its movie trailers all announced the coming of “EMERGO!” How it worked was Castle placed an elaborate pulley system in some theaters that allowed a plastic skeleton to be flown over the audience during specific scenes. Even the skeleton got a credit playing “himself” at the end of the film. “EMERGO!” was nevertheless destined to be a one-hit wonder, but it worked and made Castle and his company a profit from their $200,000 budget. You can see the mentality at play behind the scenes when the Dr. David Trent character speculates that “a $50,000 party for only five people is a little steep, even for a millionaire.”

Alfred Hitchcock noted House on Haunted Hill’s successful return and opted to make his own low-budget horror movie — a little film called Psycho (1960). With the exception of a needless psychoanalytical explanation for the killer at the end, Psycho stands as one of the greatest American movies alongside other Hitchcock masterpieces Rear Window (1954) and his greatest one Vertigo (1958). As a fitting tribute of admiration to the Master of Suspense, Castle and his team went on to make their own Psycho – Homicidal (1961). It didn’t match Psycho’s greatness, but remains one of its better knock-offs.

Castle used his gimmicks to reward those who decided to attend his creepy features. He was a true showman who saw business as being able to just keep making more movies. This was the same man who sent a small charge of electricity to zap the movie patron’s seats in his film The Tingler (also released in 1959 and starring Price). There’s little doubt that the writer Robb White saw Castle as inspiration for the trickster Frederick. Joe Dante even made a tribute to Castle (Lawrence Woolsey premieres “MANT!”) in his lovely 1993 film Matinee, which you can read more about in my Scene to be Seen. Up the ladder of technical professionalism, Castle is a step above Ed Wood, but with the soles of Roger Corman’s feet stepping on his fingers. Like those two, the man just loved filmmaking. This is what separates Castle from the cheap, cynical hucksters of Hollywood these days.

To understand Castle the ringmaster better, consider the caretakers of the haunted house who have agreed to lock up the guests. They come in the form of a old, ghoulish couple. If they aren’t married to each other, they never will be. Their attempts to warn young Annabelle of the dangers are, to put it most kindly, ineffective. It is one of those attempts that inspires the movie’s best jump-in-your-seat scare. I witnessed a bunch of people freak out when it was screened recently. A pity it comes so soon. The scene makes little sense the more you think about it, but Castle wasn’t one to belabour such points. He got his scare and doesn’t care to analyze it. Plot hole, schmot hole! Most would consider this a weakness, but it would have been a greater one to put a brake on its narrative tracks.

Oddly enough, the movie is infamous for being a ghost story, but is really a caper revolving around a murder plot that is cloaked with supernatural elements. Like the end of a Scooby Doo cartoon, the paranormal monstrosities are revealed to be man-made creations. Before we can confirm the promise of other horrors to come, the movie ends by literally pushing us out of the house, closing the door in our face and laughing manically. Clocking in at 75 minutes, the ending could be seen as a premature one, but for Castle the main plot is over and the smoke is clearing. The 1959 film has done its job.

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

The “Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn” To Its Original

Still, one can’t help but imagine what would have happened had some real ghosts struck. How are the remaining characters going to escape alive? It just so happens that filmmaker William Malone and writer Dick Beebe were wondering exactly that. In 1999, they released their own adaptation of the William Castle film by the same name. It’s not so much a direct remake as an elaboration on what the seven people trapped in the House on Haunted Hill did where we left them. Much like picking up where we left off with Ash coming face to face with the POV of the Evil Force.

Panned by critics and dismissed largely by audiences, the 1999 film is actually pretty good in its own right. Its distributor Warner Bros. had dropped it into the Halloween time slot with a weak ad campaign. Even I was pleasantly surprised after reluctantly catching up with it on DVD ten years ago, thanks to a friend who lent it to me. The film’s weak performance was also due to Haunted House Fatigue, thanks to an early summer release of another haunted house remake. Dreamworks had taken on the 1963 Robert Wise film The Haunting with a bigger budget and a high profile cast including Lili Taylor, Liam Neeson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones — her character was introduced as bisexual and then that desperate stab at character development was instantly forgotten by its writers. Despite its terrific special effects, The Haunting was overlong (113 minutes!) and pretentious (“It’s about family!!!”). Malone’s House on Haunted Hill doesn’t make that mistake.

Like his predecessor, Malone is a film director who gives a damn about putting on a show. Grisly gore and updated details are to be expected. This time the stakes are raised to a million dollars for each who stay the night. What’s surprising is the visceral style and wit that is brought to the production. He elevates his material with some unique touches. Sequences as unexpected as the Price Amusements theme park (Inside a shaky 20-foot elevator: “Don’t worry! We have yet to lose a single customer!”) as well as the freaky horror fun-house ride inside the Saturation Chamber that was intended to snap insane patients back to reality — imagine a sane person being locked inside.

What’s more is that Geoffery Rush sinks his teeth grinning into the Vincent Price role, paying homage, channeling and making the insidious host his own. Like the original, his scenes with his spiteful wife played by Famke Janssen are the best parts. Most surprising and radical from the original is Price’s reaction towards his wife when things get very dire. Peter Gallagher is a far more charismatic doctor here, which make his motivations more believable. As the paranoid homeowner, Chris Kattan strikes just the right notes of comic relief while remaining true to his character. I especially like that he’s no fool. He knows the house is evil (“It has no morals… because it is a fucking house!”) and is not willing to stick around for a cool million. Pity about those reinforced steel doors locking down earlier than expected.

The cinematography is striking and the music by Don Davis is genuinely macabre. An establishing shot of the guests approaching the towering house along with the operatic score is not far behind the one where Belle cranes her neck up at the castle that holds her father. And the classical music playing as the guests enter the house is none other than Brahms’ Piano Quartet In G Monor, Opus 25, Excerpt – the same piece Monsieur Hulot listened to religiously in the Patrice Leconte masterpiece Monsieur Hire (1989/1990). And be sure to stay after the end credits for a look at what sweet hell awaits those who didn’t last the night. The 1999 remake has some pulse!

“House on Haunted Hill” (1999) Trailer

Seriously, the trailer doesn’t do the film justice.

“House on Haunted Hill” (1999) Main Title Sequence

The Curse of its Colorization!!!

Going back to the 1959 film, it behooves me to bring up something far more dreadful than the two movies combined could ever dish out. Colorization. Digitally painting colors over the original black-and-white print doesn’t work well. Colorized movies are just downright unpleasant. Ted Turner tried so hard to push it down our eye sockets back in the 1980s. He had it in for black-and-white. Joe Dante made fun of him for that in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) through Daniel Clamp (John Glover), a chipper Trump-like vulgarian with his steel office above the clouds.”Casablanca, now in full color, with a happier ending!”

This one time, J. Hoberman of the Village Voice wrote that “colorization is the perfect metaphor for the Reagan era — take the fifties and slap a shiny new coat of candy-coated spackle over it for easy digestion.”

Yet Legend Films, a movie studio that specializes in the process got the rights and did wrong by coloring House on Haunted Hill (1959). The DVD was released in 2005 and remains at large in consumer outlets. To their credit, they did include the original black-and-white version… tucked right into the Special Features. The original film is a Special Feature right along with the theatrical trailer and a slide show of the original press book. It couldn’t even share space with the colorized version in the DVD’s Main Menu. Shows how insecure the folks at Legend Films are about their colored one. A little over two dozen employees working there were responsible for its existence. They include Color Producers David Martin, Susan Olney, Barry Sandrew, and Creative Director Rosemary Horvath.

Barry Sandrew, the founder of Legend Films, went on the record that his company “does not plan to colorize titles that were shot in black-and-white for artistic purposes, unless the original creators of the works participated in the color design.” If it’s a question of artistic integrity, that would put Mr. Sandrew out of a job. By his creed, that severely limits whatever opportunities his company can exercise in colorization at all. Good. They’ve also done Reefer Madness (AKA Tell Your Children (“Pot Will Turn Them Insane”)) (1936), a hilarious historical oddity that has no effect in its value colorized or not.

Twenty-five years ago, Siskel & Ebert made an excellent case about the wrongheadedness of colorizing old black-and-white movies. The colorizing producers are not just reveling in bad taste, they are encouraging it. What’s worse is that they do not respect our intelligence. This will always be relevant the longer some people persist that they’ll never watch a movie made in black-and-white unless they can see some oranges, blues, and purples in there. The colorization process has left behind over a hundred victims including The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Casablanca (1942), and A Christmas Carol (1951).

There is purity in a black-and-white movie. The image is all about its visual values. Shadow and light. It is also a great novelty. So few of us get to experience seeing the world in black and white. It’s great to be able to do that!

Siskel & Ebert on the Horrors of Colorization (Part 1)

Siskel & Ebert on the Horrors of Colorization (Parts 2-4)

The total run time is 24 minutes.

It would be so bloody easy to make my point by just show you the hack job done onto George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). It too was released by Legend Films after being dragged through the process by Off Color Films, a perfect name for the company considering their work. The film was nabbed after the ownership rights of its original film company Image Ten Productions expired. The colorization is so awful that I don’t even have to show you the alternate black-and-white composites.

Grab your hurl bag and take deep breaths.

Echoing in my head are the whispery gasps of Brando’s Kurtz, “The horror! The horror!” This putrid vandalism is downright criminal! Looking at these tarnished stills, I feel in sync with Morticia Addams when she scolded Debbie “The Black Widow” Jelinsky about the unforgivable: “Pastels?”

Right there! Colorization SUCKS!

Case closed.

Regrettably, I do not take the easy route. To give colorization its best shot, I will size up Legend Films’ colorized print of House on Haunted Hill, which is more competent than previous paint-by-night shootings. Technically, it’s… better. This generosity is akin to slicing off a pound of my flesh. But that doesn’t make the colored version anything less than a spit in the eye of Castle and, most particularly, the director of photography Carl E. Guthrie. The quality of its technique stops short of its cheap purpose of being.

For these frame by frame comparisons, I captured each image by the millisecond from each of the colorized version as well as the restored black-and-white prints. The results wouldn’t have been accurate had I just desaturated the color out of the colorized picture and called it a day. No, it is never easy for me.

One more thing I have to mention before we start is that the Legend Films DVD of Night of the Living Dead does include a black-and-white version as a Special Feature, but the problem is they desaturated THEIR COLORIZED PRINT! into faux black-and-white. Never mind those splotchy grays, highlights don’t have a prayer of showing up now. They called it a day and just ruined Night of the Living Dead for everyone. If you’re lucky to find the Millenium Edition DVD produced by Elite, watch it to see the right blacks and whites.

What’s most scary is that the Legend Films DVD is the highest in circulation that the movie is available to the public. Anyone interested in one of the greatest horror movies of all time has a greater chance of seeing it for the first time splattered with that wretched colorization. The front cover reads, “The Classic is now in DEADLY COLOR!” Yes, it kills the movie.

At least those at the Legend switch found their conscience and released House on Haunted Hill in a remastered black-and-white print. I shouldn’t have to feel this way, it should just be done right, but I’m thankful for this. After a resounding sigh of relief, this brings us to…

The Elegance and Dread of an Equation

Nawal Marwan is dead. She is survived by her twin children Jeanne and Simon, both in their late twenties and living in Montreal. They sit before the notary Jean Lebel (Rémy Girard) who had employed Nawal (Lubna Azabal) as his secretary for years. He has always considered them all to be a part of his family. The room is still and unbearably quiet. As he reads Nawal’s final will and testament aloud, Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) are disturbed by their mother’s final request. She wants to be buried naked facing the ground without a headstone to identify her. Where did this self-loathing come from? Jeanne keeps her composure and listens. Simon goes berserk over how cold and insane their mother was. He will not respect her wishes.

Professionally bound to secrecy about Nawal’s mysterious past, Jean emphasizes how grave this situation is: “Childhood is a knife stuck in the back of your throat. It cannot be easily removed.” Nawal will only accept a dignified burial on the condition that Jeanne and Simon accomplish a mission to redeem her. Two sealed letters lie on the notary’s desk. One is addressed to their estranged father whom they’ve thought was dead. The other one is news, a long-lost brother who was named “Nihad of May”. Their task is to find and then deliver their letters to them. Simon refuses to participate. After some soul-searching, Jeanne sets off to discover what regrets her mother had kept silent.

We cross back and forth between the divide of Jeanne’s daunting search and Nawal’s past. It is striking how much the two women resemble one another. Their determination and resolve is matched by their ethereal, solemn beauty. Their paths are separated only by decades as Jeanne follows her mother’s footprints in Lebanon from the North to the horrors in the South. For every startling chapter that closes on Nawal’s life, Jeanne comes much closer to solving the mystery. The question of ever figuring it out turns into another one supplemented by a great reluctance akin to rolling over a rock to expose the maggots underneath.

Back in the 1970s, confined in her Christian village Der Om, Nawal is almost Jeanne’s age when she is about to run off with her Palestinian lover. She is pregnant with his child. That is until her bigoted family intervenes. Her grandmother accuses Nawal of cursing the family and her brothers are prepared to perform an honour killing. Close to giving birth, she arranges to deliver Nawal’s baby herself and give it away to an orphanage. Nawal will go to University in Palestine on the condition she never return home. One of the most excruciating moments in the film is of her grandmother tattooing the back of the screaming infant’s ankle in the shadows. Just before they are forcibly separated, Nawal promises her child before they are instantly separated that she will find him again.

Years later, right after the universities close due to the insurrection that will become the Lebanese Civil War (1975 – 1990), Nawal is bravely determined to return to the war-torn south to save her lost child. As a precaution, she wears a cross to keep her safe from the wrath of the intruding right-wing Nationalist Christian soldiers who are hellbent on slaughtering Palestinians, including children. They have images of the Virgin Mary and Child pasted to their semi-automatic weapons. From bombed-out cities and underground societies, Muslim Palestinian militants plot their attack strikes against Christian fascist leaders aligned with Israel. For Nawal, being schooled on peaceful ideologies can change a person wholly having experienced the heat of an inferno and the stink of corpses attracting flies.

Lubna Azabal gives a shattering performance that should ensure her stardom for years to come. As Nawal Marwan, she transforms radically from a helpless youth to a strong, determined woman whose courage and humanity is thoroughly tested. There are times when she is downright scary. She is very convincing aging from her early twenties to late sixties. In the suicide-bomber drama Paradise Now (2005), Azabal was exceptional in a small, but crucial role as the daughter of a revered Palestine leader whose love may influence a young Arab not to commit murder-suicide for his beliefs. She has an undeniable screen presence. Just as commanding is the beautiful Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin as Jeanne who clearly inherited her perseverance and will to survive from her mother. So much of the film’s power relies on her being open and enduring what lies ahead and behind her.

Over the years, Villeneuve has consistently made movies where complex women drive the action to their own stories. That in itself is a worthy accomplishment most contemporary filmmakers can’t claim. He is also not one to avoid the more squeamish realities of being a woman. Denying them would be a condescension. In his breakout success Maelström (2000), a dark romantic drama narrated by a series of talking fish on the chopping block(!), the movie takes its stand introducing its young heroine Bibiane (Marie-Josée Croze) enduring an abortion. To the tune of Oliver’s Good Morning Starshine, Bibiane is all too ready to put her past behind her. Villeneuve cares about her and he dares the audience to do so too. For Incendies, the camera lingers close-up on a woman’s bloody hand clutching the calf of Nawal’s leg during childbirth.

Like Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, I have thought of Maelström as a near contender for Best Film in its year of release by half. The first half of Maelström is so enthralling as it follows a self-destructive woman’s downward spiral in sex, drugs, and dangerous relationships. Working without a net, Croze is riveting. Her Bibiane could stand comparison with Tilda Swinton’s Julia (2008). I have never forgotten one of Villeneuve’s many terrific visuals where a line of metal coat racks before coming into focus look for a second like fish bones. However, the second half loses its momentum for me with the introduction of a redeeming love interest. In its dark, quirky way Maelström remains essential viewing, but those first 45 minutes are a rush.

In a sea of movies where women’s roles are limited to fixtures of little consequence, it is exhilarating to watch Bibiane dig herself deeper and deeper. It is not “a negative depiction on an entire gender” as some sanctimonious PC idiots would call it. I call it liberation. Her character is truly free. It is when a character is expected to set “a good example” for the pretend-adults at home that the actor has been neutered. If Nick Nolte and Ben Stiller can have dramatic breakdowns, why not Marie-Josée Croze?

“Polytechnique” (2009) Trailer

It was in Villeneuve’s utterly devastating Polytechnique (2009) based on the Montreal Massacre, the first school shooting, where he called out all forms of misogyny ranging from reducing smart women to a “girls clean house” mentality from passive-aggressive professors to gynocide, its ugliest expression. In December 1989, twenty-five-year-old Marc Lépine (tellingly, the film could only muster calling him “the killer”) targeted and murdered fourteen young women because they were learning to become engineers and that offended him.

Again, Villeneuve introduces a woman preparing a sleek facade by shaving her legs under a shower head while studying for a test. This was Valérie (Karine Vanasse) who could not foresee that today’s class would consist of being cornered and gunned down with her friends. Miraculously, she lived. Polytechnique drew definite lines between the extremes of evil, good, and those who survived still enduring that nightmare. It was just that heroism – the need to live and love having faced unblinking malice – that made me break down in tears. It made my top ten that year.

In Incendies, Maxim Gaudette has a juicy role as the intense brother Simon. His character is truly heartfelt despite the anger that overwhelms him. He also gets to say the tackiest line of dialogue, which Simon must quickly apologize for. Those brave enough to watch Polytechnique will remember Gaudette who went through hell playing that same killer, standing on tables and shooting people trying to hide under them. As an actor, Gaudette proved a force to be reckoned with – playing on the most loathsome murderers in recent Canadian history on film and portraying him with deep, pathetic conviction. His work playing Simon in Incendies is just as expert and fearless.

Rémy Girard plays the notary as a segregate father figure. He exudes both support and caution to our heroes. Casting him is a good luck charm seeing as how he played the adulterous family man dying of cancer (“I voted for Medicare and I will accept the consequences!”) in the Denys Arcand masterpiece The Barbarian Invasions (2003), which won Canada the Best Foreign Film Academy Award. Several years later after that, it looks very likely that Incendies will win the real gold for Canada again in the upcoming Oscar telecast. The film also shares similarities in tone and astonishing revelations with last year’s rightful winner from Argentina, The Secret in their Eyes (2009) by Juan José Campanella.

Villeneuve tightly directs Incendies using evocative set pieces driven by dialogue as well as channeling his use of striking (and often wonderfully surreal) visuals in much subtler ways this time. He knew he had a great story to tell and wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. At one point, he identifies a fascist leader by comparing his portrait from propaganda posters on a wall outside to his face screen printed on a shirt worn by a terrorist. His wit is in check when he informs us of danger relying only on the beeps from a metal detector. A clever transition used for a flashback at a swimming pool is a nod to a similar shot from the Powell and Pressburger film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943).

There is a scene free of dialogue that involves ferocious swimming at night followed by a disquieting embrace. It is here where the heart of the film is not only strong, but vulnerable and shaken by a brush of death from long ago. No matter how far back it was, even at a time lost to memory, there is no buffer from that immediate chill. Delusions of safety are easily shattered.

From the very first shot and onwards, Villeneuve drives the film like the captain of a ship. The first sequence is unforgettable. A vast Middle Eastern landscape looks bleak under the harsh sunlight. We hold on this image as the beginning of Radiohead’s You and Whose Army softly scratches on the soundtrack. But the shot is moving; very slowly the exterior is closed out by the edges of a stone window ledge. Young boys dressed in rags hang their heads while standing in line. They are beaten. One child has a gash that comes down his cheek like a tear from his eye. The faceless adults are hardened, militant, and carry large guns.

The Radiohead song is like a rolling bridge, taking us to a place that looks familiar on television evening reports, but is otherworldly, lost to history and very real. “Come on, come on…” Hair falls softly on little feet. Hope dies here. We close in on one orphaned child in particular as his head is being shaven to the scalp. The man’s hands are gentle. The music thunders with dark piano keys. Off-screen, the singer wails “We ride tonight! We ride tonight!” For a very long time, the child glares at us, his eyes burning beneath his brows and never blink. Don’t you dare forget about me. This scene alone is worthy of confusing as a lost reel by Martin Scorsese.

Villeneuve gets terrific mileage off of that Radiohead song when he uses it again at the transformative midpoint in Nawal’s story. The film is so reserved that Grégoire Hetzel’s moody score sounds off in about twenty ear-strained minutes. Blocks of red type as large as those in a Richard Shepard film (The Matador, 2005) stamp the entire screen – my favourite out of the ominous titles reads DU SUD (translation: The South). For those new to Radiohead, their song Like Spinning Plates could be confused as a version of the previous song played backwards. It is most appropriate as it establishes the cruel confines of the Kfar Ryat penitentiary in Deressa – stirring strange, disorienting feelings.

Incendies is the new addition to a list of compelling movies made in the last few years about the Lebanon War. They include Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort (2007) set ten years after the war ended, as well as two more that explore its beginnings such as the rotoscope animated documentary Waltz with Bashir (2008) by Ari Folman, and last year’s terrific movie-in-a-tank Lebanon (2010) by Samuel Moaz.

The film is based on the play Scorched by Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wadji Mouawad whose literary inspirations are easy to figure out for those who’ve seen it. The new title Incendies gets the same idea across, which translates as “outbreaks of fire”. It is saved for the very end of the film with an image that is haunting for reasons that will surprise first-time viewers. Sometimes an entire lifetime can be seen as a very cruel joke.

Villeneuve’s adaptation is direct and thorough. Pieces of the central mystery are revealed within his relaxed control as a storyteller. He only lets us get ahead of the story when he decides it’s time. Like a magician, he distracts us into focusing on one thing while he does another right in the open. The mystery works mainly because every current struggle towards it so compelling. He plants the seeds in the narrative carefully. Consider an introduction to a Westernized math class that Jeanne attends. The professor begins, “Welcome to the world of pure mathematics and the realm of the solitude.” As he elaborates on what is to come, it is really Villeneuve speaking to us about the narrative, the journey full of challenges and twists before us. It is a given that Villeneuve uses cinema language throughout, but he also exercises the language of math to give form to the plot.

The whole movie is absorbing. Director Denis Villeneuve spends time building up all of these scenes for us to live in them for awhile. He holds his shots. When Simon and Jeanne argue outside a barren industrial street in Montreal, he moves his camera a little to the right at first by following them out of a building and then holds the shot still. They are filmed at a far distance. No cuts. No close-ups. Nothing unnecessary. We get all the emotion and drama from back here. Due to the way this scene is filmed, we also benefit from a startling rush of adrenaline thanks to a sudden outburst by Simon. Perhaps Villeneuve thought to do this scene from his vantage point watching the play on stage.

Villeneuve is so confident that a group of characters can search and gets lost in a resident alleyway; one character asks where they are going and the other admits that he doesn’t know. Lesser filmmakers construct their scenes at great expense as hazard zones that are loudly demolished at once. For instance, look at the scene where Jeanne inquires about her mother to a gathering of women from a Middle Eastern village. Just as Nawal is identified, the room changes from amicable to sudden hostility. Villeneuve holds the moment much longer than we’re used to. We, along with Jeanne, are not privy to what is being said in Lebanese – only the French dialogue is subtitled. It is this gradual, deliberate pacing that allows us to really be in that room on edge with Jeanne before she is finally told to leave.

A Clip from “Incendies”:

The way Villeneuve economizes these characters is truly inspired. Like the return of Mr. Bandy who owns the Bandy Tract, another character comes back for urgent reasons. This leads to a very intense scene of being blindfolded and escorted with armed goons to meet a retired warlord. Incendies not only has the feel an epic novel, but its modern-day tragedy carries the power worthy of a myth. The line between good and evil is definite, yet blurred around the inner edges. These characters perform strong gestures out of hate and love for very complex reasons, or in some cases because they were misinformed.

In what is destined to be long remembered by serious filmgoers, the intense scene on a bus taken hostage by the Christian militia commits a vicious twist on the well-good convention of a survivalist’s bluff to save more lives in the face of death. It is a well-known ploy from Oscar-winning films centering on the Holocaust from Schindler’s List (1993 – “HIM!”) to the 2007 short Toy Land. Despite quick thinking on Nawal’s part, she couldn’t have expected a little girl to do what’s only natural.

At the Vancouver Internation Film Festive last year, I passed up the opportunity to catch Incendies after watching Cristi Puiu’s Aurora (2010) and Julie Bertucelli’s The Tree (2010), which coincidentally was also scored by Grégoire Hetzel. So I caught a three-hour Romanian film by the maker of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005 – it could easily be improved by cutting out one half-hour from its slogging time) and I ended up missing the film that would win the festival’s Best Canadian Feature Film! Fiddle-sticks… I must admit I am actually relieved. I would have hated pitting Incendies against The Social Network, my top pick for 2010, not to mention Black Swan and The Ghost Writer.

We are truly privileged to have a film like Incendies. Watching the film a second time only made me sink deeper in my chair. My heart beat faster. There is no escape from Incendies. Now Villeneuve has without dispute secured his place as one of the most accomplished filmmakers working in Canada along with David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin, and Denys Arcand. It’s far too early in the year to make such an audacious prediction, but if Incendies is not the best film of 2011 then I can’t wait to see what else is in store.

“Incendies” US Trailer

“Incendies” Canadian Trailer

“Incendies” US Poster

“Incendies” Canadian (Red and White) Poster

I picked up a large copy of this poster in a free bin at the Park Theatre. It was torn at the bottom, but I think it adds to it.

UPDATE: February 27, 2011

Tonight at the Oscars, Incendies lost the Best Foreign Film award to Denmark’s In A Better World by Susanne Bier, director of Brothers (2004) and After the Wedding (2006). I have to reserve judgment until I see the film when it opens in March. However, if Incendies had to lose, I would have gotten a big kick had Greece’s audacious black tragic-comedy Dogtooth taken the prize.

UPDATE: March 10, 2011

The Genie Awards has called Incendies the Best Motion Picture of 2010. Denis Villeneuve picked up two awards for Best Direction and Screenplay. Lubna Azabal also deservedly won the Best Actress award for her astonishing portrayal of Nawal Marwan.

UPDATE: March 30, 2011

The first three chilling minutes of Incendies.

PDF of the Cinelation “Incendies” Review

In light of Roger Ebert’s latest inclusion of Sofia Coppola’s masterpiece Lost in Translation (2003) into his Great Movies archive, I have selected one of its best scenes with dialogue I hadn’t understood completely. Until now.

No, it is not the inaudible whisper before the movie’s end. I don’t ever want to know what Bob (Bill Murray) said to Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) before they parted ways. That is between them and it is none of my business.

The scene in question is the awkward taping of the “Suntory Time” commercial. Like Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt before him, Bob Harris is one of many American actors being paid big bucks for promoting a product strictly for Japanese television. Not knowing a word beyond “saki,” Bob is at the mercy of a hyperactive director (Yutaka Tadokoro) and his kookily incompetent interpreter (Akiko Takeshita). The director passionately delivers lengthy instructions while the interpreter summarizes. This is serious business, but their struggle to communicate is as funny as a misunderstanding between Abbott and Costello. They’re all floundering, but there is no condescension. The human comedy works because the characters are sincere. We really feel for them and laughter alleviates the tension.

I was intrigued to find out more about this tidbit that Ebert wrote about:

There is wonderful comedy in the film, involving the ad agency’s photo shoot for the Suntory Scotch commercial and Bob’s guest shot on the “Japanese Johnny Carson.” But Coppola remains firmly grounded in reality. The Japanese director seems to be spouting hysterical nonsense until you find a translation online and understand what he’s saying and why. He’s not without humor. The translator seems to be simplifying, but now we understand what she’s doing. There’s nothing implausible about the scene. Anyone who watches Japanese TV, even via YouTube, knows the TV show is straight from life. Notice the microscopic look Murray gives the camera to signal “just kidding.”

You can read his complete review here.

There’s a translation online! Why didn’t I think of Goggling it in the last seven years? I love this scene so much that it has become a infectious meme when I’m faced with either trying to explain something to someone or the other way around. My mind usually echoes Ms. Takeshita’s voice, “More… intensity!” The scene works just as well as any scene could without knowing what the Japanese are actually saying. However, discovering what they are saying is just as rewarding. A great deal of thought and wit went into their dialogue. Could we expect any less from Ms. Coppola? She is truly at the top of her game.

“Suntory Times” Scene with English Subtitles

What Else Was Lost in Translation?

Motoko Rich originally published the translated text on September 21, 2003 in the New York Times.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/fashion/21LOST.html)

DIRECTOR
(in Japanese to the interpreter)
The translation is very important, O.K.? The translation.

INTERPRETER
Yes, of course. I understand.

DIRECTOR
Mr. Bob-san. You are sitting quietly in your study. And then
there is a bottle of Suntory whiskey on top of the table. You
understand, right? With wholehearted feeling, slowly, look at the
camera, tenderly, and as if you are meeting old friends, say the
words. As if you are Bogie in “Casablanca,” saying, “Cheers to you
guys,” Suntory time!

INTERPRETER
He wants you to turn, look in camera. O.K.?

BOB
That’s all he said?

INTERPRETER
Yes, turn to camera.

BOB
Does he want me to, to turn from the right or turn from the left?

INTERPRETER
(in very formal Japanese to the director)
He has prepared and is ready. And he wants to know, when the
camera rolls, would you prefer that he turn to the left, or would
you prefer that he turn to the right? And that is the kind of thing
he would like to know, if you don’t mind.

DIRECTOR
(very brusquely, and in much more colloquial Japanese)
Either way is fine. That kind of thing doesn’t matter. We don’t have
time, Bob-san, O.K.? You need to hurry. Raise the tension. Look at the
camera. Slowly, with passion. It’s passion that we want. Do you
understand?

INTERPRETER
(In English, to Bob)
Right side. And, uh, with intensity.

BOB
Is that everything? It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that.

DIRECTOR

What you are talking about is not just whiskey, you know. Do
you understand? It’s like you are meeting old friends. Softly,
tenderly. Gently. Let your feelings boil up. Tension is important!
Don’t forget.

INTERPRETER
(in English, to Bob)
Like an old friend, and into the camera.

BOB
O.K.

DIRECTOR
You understand? You love whiskey. It’s Suntory time! O.K.?

BOB
O.K.

DIRECTOR
O.K.? O.K., let’s roll. Start.

BOB
For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.

DIRECTOR
Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut!
(Then in a very male form of Japanese, like a father speaking
to a wayward child)
Don’t try to fool me. Don’t pretend you don’t understand. Do you
even understand what we are trying to do? Suntory is very exclusive.
The sound of the words is important. It’s an expensive drink. This is
No. 1. Now do it again, and you have to feel that this is exclusive.
O.K.? This is not an everyday whiskey you know.

INTERPRETER
Could you do it slower and…?

DIRECTOR
With more ecstatic emotion.

INTERPRETER
More intensity.

DIRECTOR
(in English)
Suntory time! Roll.

BOB
For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.

DIRECTOR
Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut! God, I’m begging you!

In an interview, Ms. Coppola said she wrote the dialogue for the scene in English, and then it was translated into Japanese for Mr. Tadokoro. The scene, she said, came out of her own experience promoting her first feature film, “The Virgin Suicides,” in Japan. Whenever she would say something, she said, the interpreter would seemingly speak for much longer. “I would think that she was adding to what I was saying and getting carried away, so I wanted to have that in the scene.”

In the scene, Ms. Coppola said, Mr. Murray never did learn what the director was saying. “I like the fact that the American actors don’t really know what’s going on, just like the characters,” she said.

Frankly, it’s not clear that even if Bob-san had understood what the director said, it would have helped.

Ms. Coppola said she purposely gave the director “lame directions,” adding, “He wasn’t supposed to be the best director.”

Lost in Translation would be out of place on the Comedy shelf, however, the “Suntory Time” scene as well as more than a dozen got more giggles and belly laughs out of me than most of the official comedies released that year. (Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa (2003) was one of the few proud contenders.) It is a compliment that a film rich with humour due to its wise human observations doesn’t just stop there. Lost in Translation is an acute human drama and a mood piece. It’s so bittersweet that it stings. My heart wells up over the rare, delicate connection that Bob and Charlotte make in this time and place. They can never replicate that ever again. Thank God for that fire alarm…

“Lost in Translation” US Trailer

“Lost in Translation” Japanese Trailer

Sean Connery is pleased with Suntory Whiskey.

“Shaken, not stirred.”

More Films by Sofia Coppola:

“The Virgin Suicides” (1999) Trailer

“Marie Antoinette” (2006) US Teaser

“Marie Antoinette” (2006) US Trailer

“The Duchess” (2008) Trailer

I know it’s not a Sofia Coppola film. I just love that build up to Georgiana Cavendish!

“Somewhere” (2010) Trailer

Sofia Coppola fingerprints are unmistakeably hers. These are such poignant films…

Todd Solondz is one the most distinct filmmakers we have working today. Like watching one minute of a random movie by either Neil Labute or David Fincher without warning, you know it is by Solondz when you see one of his. My high anticipation for his new film Life During Wartime (2010), which premiered last year at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festive), is matched by seeing what its movie poster will look like — and for good reason. Over Solondz’s career from Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996) to Palindromes (2004), the posters of his films have been consistently inspired and in tune with each other. Their designs and illustrations(!) convey the sweet and sour qualities of his controversial themes, which engage and then subvert our expectations.  Whether it is Solondz’s direct influence or just what each different advertising company happens to come up with when facing his material, the results in style are remarkably alike.

Illustrated movie posters have been a dying breed for the past quarter of a century. Most of Todd Solondz’s films have kept that art on the respirator starting with Daniel Clowes’ take on Happiness (1998) and then what Kathryn Rathke ran with in Palindromes (2004). Life During Wartime (2010) continues down that illustration path – it’s very appropriate since Life is the sequel to Solondz’s Happiness – but not before some photographed design comps were made. Before unveiling the illustrated version, I will take you through how it evolved starting with the international poster made for the film.

“Life During Wartime” (2010) International Poster

Beginning last April on Todd Solondz’s unofficial website, an international poster was released featuring Dylan Riley Snyder. After ten years of Happiness (1998), the character who Synder plays is Timmy now at fourteen. His four-year-old counterpart in the original was played by Justin Elvin whose main priority in the previous film was his Tamagotchi. For such a minor character to be the focus of the poster (“Either Scooby is the focus or forget it!”), it looks like Timmy is going to have a lot more to do in Life During Wartime. It’s not surprising what with his upcoming Bar Mitzvah and the prison release of his “SERIAL RAPIST PERVERT” father Bill (Cirian Hindes takes on the role made immortal by Dylan Baker).

For a movie that is going to deal with pedophilia among other taboos, setting Timmy in a lovely field of flowers is terrifically disturbing. Especially that glazed look in his eyes. However, the execution of the design work looks like a hurried first draft that needs more improvement. Next up, it appears that the designers back in the US thought so too.

“Life During Wartime” (2010) US Poster

Where the first design reeked of amateurism, this version of the poster is much better. The typography of the title and its “film by” credit has been lovingly modeled by hand. Each letter has a life all its own. As a whole, it works harmoniously in this carefully thought-out composition. Isn’t it cool the way that cursive line in the word Life goes from the L down to the D in During and then up to complete the e? Brother, am I ever glad that they turned the film’s credits into one single block of text.

The photograph of the poster has also been rightfully reworked.  Starting with Timmy’s head, I’d just as soon believe that the first poster shrunk it. Even if that was the way Mr. Snyder’s photo was taken, his head looked wrong. My philosophy of design is that a wrong picture is best so long as it looks right. The head in the improved version has not only been made larger to push the “child” look, it has been colour corrected to amplify the boy’s “Gingerness” — Cartman would cry at this sight. His glazed eyes have also been blown up a bit and the irises are lighter.

To pull our attention to the pinks and oranges up top, the tulip Timmy is holding has been changed from red to white. His clothes have been ironed over to an impossible smooth. The green grass and hills have been softened and altered anew to look more pastoral and dreamlike. The yellow flowers have been replaced with smaller ones that don’t crowd the bottom of the poster. Even the sky is new with fluffier, whiter clouds that merge evenly with even fewer hints of light cyan.

With all of these improvements made, the poster is still straining towards that punch of immediate excellence. Thank our lucky stars that the last poster was used as a template for a complete realization.

“Life During Wartime” (2010) Poster by Akiko Stehrenberger

Perfect! This final poster (and most certainly the last one) was created by the design company called Mojo, which elected its in-house talent Akiko Stehrenberger to illustrate it. Last year, Stehrenberger was responsible for these sweet movie posters of (500) Days of Summer and A Serious Man — it’s too bad they were past up. For Life During Wartime, she broke out her acrylic paints and rendered one of most vividly creepy movie posters ever conceived.

The clouds are purposefully designed into a unified shape, which all create a hollow effect around Timmy. The flowers are all gone leaving a clean, green field. Those glassy eyes along with the few perfectly symmetrical freckles (his breast pockets and knees are also symmetrical!) and the shiny plasticity of his hair makes the young boy look like the product of a doll-maker. The only real humanness left of Timmy can be found is in those lush, plushy, moist, pink lips — EEEUUWWW!

Stehrenberger subtlety zeroes in on “ICK!” factor here. His limbs and clothing are rendered with a gradating shade that highlight in the middle to emphasize the three-dimensional cylinder forms. Despite how straight this illustrated Timmy standing compared to the photograph, Stehrenberger still kept that single wrinkle on the right side of his shirt. Perhaps it’s part of a pederast’s subconscious view to grab the wrinkle like a handle and pull his shirt up and off. Again, eeeEEEHHHUUWWW!

Bravo, Stehrenberger! Bravo!

The original title of the film was supposed to be Forgiveness, a single word that would have married nicely to Happiness. The next question isn’t why the title has been changed because the characters like us all are living in a time of war – officially with Iraq and unofficially with North Korea. Judging from the trailer, the twist Solondz is making with Life During Wartime is that these Floridians and Americans are carrying on quite comfortably with the Iraqi War all the way over there. Then again, their very lives have already made these poor souls casualties.

A picture from the film released last September as part of its publicity campaign shows Helen (the Lara Flynn Boyle role taken on Ally Sheedy) in front of a giant photograph depicting a tank in a third world country. I strongly suspect that that is the closest any of the Happiness characters will get to a war zone, unless Solondz goes all Alex in Wonderland (dir. Paul Mazursky, 1970) and brings the soldiers and firebombs to America in a character’s fantasy-trip. It wouldn’t be the first time Solondz brought us such a marijuana-induced fantasy like he did in Storytelling (2001) complete with a burning at the stake and the redhead of Conan O’Brien.

The real question from the title change is can forgiveness be possible for these characters. It seems that would be the major thing Bill would want after his release into the world.

The cast of Life During Wartime (2010) from left to right:
Allison Janney (Trish Jordan), Michael Kenneth Williams (Allen), Shirley Henderson (Joy Jordan), Ciarán Hinds (Bill Maplewood), Ally Sheedy (Helen Jordan), Renée Taylor (Mona Jordan), Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens (Andy Kornbluth)

“Life During Wartime” (2010) Trailer

It’s the same trailer as the UK trailer from March 31st.

“Happiness” (1998)

“Happiness” (1998) Poster by Daniel Clowes

Here Daniel Clowes renders the characters in Happiness (1998) as caricatures full of anxiety, suspicion, and anger. Yet part of Clowes’ personal style is to downplay their physical features as human and exactly proportioned. The strained emotions on their faces threatens to blow their faces up like they were compressed of bolts and flesh. They counterattack the bold-faced title that hangs above them out of reach.

The cast of Happiness (1998) from left to right:
Cynthia Stevenson (Trish Maplewood), Camryn Manheim (Kristina), Jared Harris (Vlad), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Allen), Lara Flynn Boyle (Helen Jordan), Louise Lasser (Mona Jordan), Dylan Baker (Bill Maplewood), Jane Adams (Joy Jordan), Jon Lovitz (Andy Kornbluth), and Ben Gazzara (Lenny Jordan)

Daniel Clowes Talks About His Happiness Poster:

Running Time: 2 minutes.

On Todd Solondz’s News Website, it turns out that Bill (Dylan Baker) was originally supposed to die at the end of Happiness:

If you missed Christine Vachon and David Edelstein’s auto-job-ography Shooting To Kill: How an Independent Producer Blasts Through the Barriers To Make Movies That Matter, here is the text referring to an alternate sequence in Happiness, in a chapter on special effects. It reveals the ultimate fate of Dylan Baker’s character that was never shown in the finished version: “(In Happiness, the character Bill was supposed to) open a package and get blown up. We debated ways of doing it – from moronically inexpensive (cut from the character opening the box to someone next door doing dishes and hearing a BOOM! while the camera shakes) to the Schwarzeneggerian (blow up a whole house). We also thought about blowing up a miniature. In the end, we built a fake front door on the house, blew it off its hinges, and pumped out a lot of black smoke. It cost about two thousand dollars.”

“Happiness” (1998) Trailer

“Palindromes” (2004)

Kathryn Rathke produced this brilliant poster (voted (#9/10) Best of the Decade by Adrian Curry of MUBI) for the ad agency Supermarket Studio. Rathke has produced a number of illustrations for Alice in Wonderland in a style that is loosely based on the Wonderland drawings of Sir John Tenniel, but is all her own. This transition was easy for the classical fairy-tale book style Rathke uses for the poster of Palindromes (2004). Everything in this watercolour picture from the calm, staring lamb to the lush greenery of the forest is serene and enchanting… except for the large black woman dresses like a thirteen-year-old.

The central figure of poster demands speculation. This is one of the eight representations of Aviva (Aviva><avivA), the main character who at the age of thirteen is determined to mother a child immediately no matter what. The purpose of this is to demonstrate how issues involving pre-teen pregnancy as well as the abortion debate are universal among women no matter their race, sex, class and age is. Sharon Wilkins (plays the incarnation of Aviva as a black woman in her thirties and does a really terrific job at playing a teenage girl. At that point in the film, Aviva wanders into a comfortable compound for children deformed at birth. It is run by the scary-cheerful Mama Sunshine (Debra Monk) who has outfitted the kids with stereo equipment to form a Christian Rock band called “The Sunshine Singers”. Aviva’s explanation for her parents whereabouts to Mama Sunshine is shockingly funny.

“The Sunshine Singers”

You might want to watch the movie first before you see these song numbers!

Aviva is also played by Jennifer Jason Leigh who was forty at the time.

Aviva talks with Mark:

Oy vey, Mark…

“Palindromes” (2004) Outlined Poster by Kathryn Rathke

“Palindromes” (2004) Full-Colour Poster by Kathryn Rathke

What Ebert & Roeper Said About It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtW_stHLcUc

“Palindromes” (2004) Trailer

Why is it so hard to find a decent Palindromes trailer?

Coming Up Next: “Storytelling” (2002) and “Welcome to the Dollhouse” (1996)!

At last I am pleased with the look of the site. Being a bloody perfectionist is a torture for me. Nothing ever feels truly done. My head whispers incessantly, “It is never enough.” What’s worse about internal complaints are the echoes. With a blast of relief, I can look at Cinelation and not squint over a detail too inane for most to notice. Actually, I am more than pleased with the result. It really does look wonderful now. The joy of being a bloody perfectionist!

In the Spring of 2008, I began writing for a modest movie blog with only promises of being paid for all my work – once it became profitable. One year later, those promises turned more transparent as fewer e-mails about compensation were returned. This was after I went up and beyond to get their website promoted on the Synecdoche, New York DVD without so much as two nickles to rub together. I am a genuinely faithful man, but my patience went from creaking to dilapidation. This couldn’t be avoided any further. I would have to build my own website to house my reviews.

After a month of being saturated with HTML setups , CSS codes and WordPress, a rough version of Cinelation saw some light.

At the time, I felt some measure of pride between this versus no Cinelation at all. Soon enough, the dust from the battle of building something as foreign as WordPress began to settle. More and more, my artistic eye noticed the flaws. A variety of improvements were necessary for Cinelation to look genuinely unique and professional.

Then I experienced a terrible setback when I upgraded to WordPress 2.9. There was no turning back. My content had to be transported into a new version of MySQL5 on my server. All because MySQL4 could never love after WordPress 2.8. My server of choice (Cough! 1&1 Cough!) gave me a Catch-22: I could move only 10MB of files when I had 20 times more than that to input. They could do that themselves – easy(!), but they figured I could do it myself despite that I couldn’t. After a dozen lengthy calls to technical support, one had enough pity on me to do it with their computer in less than ten minutes. All good? That was child’s play!

Once my text and images were converted into the new MySQL database, my heart sank into my intestines. All of the glyphs and punctuation symbols in my written work had turned into unintelligible computer code. Every quote (“) was &#8220;. Every François Truffaut was Fran&#231;ois Truffaut. Every comma. Every dash. Every article. It was a dismal few weeks replacing replicating the text to its original form. I can’t emphasize the dull agony of alone inspecting the end of every sentence to make sure it was either a period or an ellipse.

The hurdle was behind me and it was back to tweaking Cinelation’s looks. I experimented on widgets, graphics and their placement on an exacting pixel by pixel regiment until the design agreed with me.

The most fun I had on here was making the new header image, a collage of faces from some of my most treasured films. A great deal of thought was put into the who following the whys. Each character carries more than just a few associations to encompass just a glimmer of the past century’s worth of film history. Much of which is very personal as it should be. There are 24 characters in total. Why 24? Because like the number 3, 24 is a magic number.

I keep beaming every time I look at this. In a word by Carrie White’s English instructor (Sydney Lassick), “Beeeauuuutifuul!” – minus the condescension.

Who is everyone up top? I will answer that in just a few days.

For now, here is the still from Patrice Leconte’s Monsieur Hire (1989/1990) that I had used for my first header. The beautiful Sandrine Bonnaire who plays Alice, the object of Monsieur Hire’s helpless and yearning voyeurism who has great deal going on in her own mind here. We go to the movies to watch characters who are usually oblivious to us. The best ones are usually lost in thought

Rest assured that Monsieur Hire is among the new header’s faces.

Illustration (27.8” x 39.4”)
Krotki Film O Milosci
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Illustrator/Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Illustration (27.8” x 39.4”)
Krotki Film O Milosci
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Illustrator/Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Design (27.8” x 39.4”)
Krotki Film O Milosci
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Illustration (27.8” x 39.4”)
Krotki Film O Zabijaniu
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Illustrator/Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Design (39.4” x 27.8”)
Krotki Film O Zabijaniu
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Illustration (11” x 17”)
Dekalog
The Decalogue (1988-90)
Designer: Unknown

Other Kieslowski Films:

Design (27.8” x 39.4”)
Amator
Camera Buff (1979)
Designer: Andrzej Krauze

Illustration (27.8” x 39.4”)
Bez Konca
No End (1984)
Illustrator/Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Illustration (27.8” x 39.4”)
Przypadek
Blind Chance (1987)
Illustrator/Designer: Unknown

I’m Lookin’ For A Fox!

Do you feel your greatest talents are being squandered? Like there is no demand for your gifts and all you can do is struggle with jobs you should never have had to perform? At the end of the day, your real work lingers in a foggy distance, incomplete. Time passes quickly. You feel drained, stuck in a hole underground, looking out to make your mark and redeem yourself. This is how Mr. Fox feels. In this disarmingly charming (and quotable) film by Wes Anderson, as the fable goes, Mr. Fox risks the lives of others to use his talent for stealing chickens.

For a couple of years (twelve fox years), Mr. Fox has been married to the love of his life, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) and father to their prepubescent son Ash (Jason Schwartzman). To do this, Mr. Fox swore never again to risk his life stealing food from the murderous farmers who rule the land. His modest income as an opinion columnist — another detail not of, yet worthy of Roald Dahl — doesn’t stop Mr. Fox’s ambitions of moving from his modest foxhole underground to live in a more upscale neighbourhood — a large, healthy tree. Because working for a newspaper lacks the thrill of chicken burglary, Mr. Fox jumps off the thieving wagon when he finds a new partner in crime in Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky), a soft-spoken, pudgy — but gutsy — little possum.

Cocksure Mr. Fox is forever young — cocky and sure of his invincibility — and takes everything for granted. While on a crime spree, he shows more interest in how the latest fox trap works than his own safety. Brimming with confidence, Mr. Fox tends to hog the spotlight. Watch him turn the attention back to him during a toast over a sumptuous banquet. Part of the fun is committing his forbidden theft under his wife’s nose and then watching her enjoy his catch.

He doesn’t give her powers of observation much credit as he stores his loot in plain sight — not to demean her on purpose, mind you — he’s just full of himself to the point of obliviousness. Mr. Fox shares a slyness — minus the malevolence — with Mr. Grinch. He’s so crooked that he could straighten a hill. Oh, and he loves calling his schemes “Master Plans”!

Anderson collaborates once again with writing partner Noah Baumbach after their most segregating work The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) on adapting the Roald Dahl novel Fantastic Mr. Fox. Their screenplay is stuffed with delightful quirks such as “a quick karate lesson.” Anderson and Baumbach incorporate many idiosyncrasies independent of Dahl’s prose, but are perfect to the author’s original vision, nevertheless. Surely Dahl could have invented the droll and convoluted outdoor game Whackbat.

As with all of Anderson’s films starting with Bottle Rocket (1996), his main characters are driven to break the law out of their naïve view of rebellion. They get a thrill out of playing adult, but must also face that being an adult is just a sad ordeal. Just because they’ve grown up doesn’t mean that they’re going to let their inner child down. As adults, they zealously follow their renegade dreams that are founded on that childhood peace made possible by Cops and Robbers. What a lark to commit a robbery!

Had Max Fisher from Rushmore (1998) built that aquarium institution over the baseball field, he’d have enjoyed the rush of getting away with it. Leads like Fisher and Royal Tenenbaum would be so disappointed if they couldn’t play “the robber”. And that’s exactly what it is — play! All of Anderson’s characters are simply playing wicked. For instance, the would-be burglars in Bottle Rocket are truly innocent — a realization that Luke Wilson’s Anthony comes to when it’s too late. Anyone who would want to play “the cop” would not get a Wes Anderson film.

Even the cunning Mr. Fox is an innocent. He intends no harm while indulging his greatest heist fantasies, except for the chickens. Seeing no need for further suffering, Mr. Fox makes a point of applying one fatal bite to the neck.

Mr. Fox’s vulnerable son Ash deeply resents his more talented and elegant cousin, Kristofferson whose athleticism wows everyone including Mr. Fox. Though, like most Wes Anderson characters, Kristofferson (Eric Anderson) takes little joy from his talents and accomplishments. He is worried about his ailing father and correctly feels snubbed by Ash. My favourite scene between the two takes place over their bunk beds. Poor Kristofferson cries himself to sleep and Ash reluctantly finds a quiet way to cheer him up. These two critters represent the filmmakers’ returning theme of brotherhood.

The farmers Walter Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Nathan Bunce (Hugo Guinness) and their malicious leader Franklin Bean (Michael Gambon) are all real grotesqueries. The casting of Gambon, who played the Thief in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1990) — one of cinema’s greatest villains, as Bean is truly inspired. He makes villainy sound so genteel and slithery. Bean then hatches a Master Plan of his own involving excavators, dynamite and an ominous title card “Chapter Six: The Shooting”. How much of a threat is Bean? Bean puts spite over his fashionable attire. Considering he’s in a Wes Anderson feature, that’s big time!

Overshadowing the wrath of the farmers is the disintegration of the Fox family. Both writers have each dealt with the subject of divorce. For Anderson, it was The Royal Tenebaums (2001). For Baumbach, The Squid and the Whale (2005). The coldest realization of this is when Mrs. Fox, a resolute but not unkind realist, tells her husband, “I do love you, but I should never have married you.” For Mr. Fox, losing his beloved wife is worse than death. At one point, he glibly refers to his next course of action as a suicide mission. The way he says this plays slyly like both comedy and as a coping mechanism. Anderson and Baumbach have an underhanded way of holding a grave scenario from an humorous and ironic distance that instills total sincerity.

Anderson frankly establishes his characters with an explicit personality, talents and hobbies. The flavouring of these characters is richer, for example, the fact that Boggis eats four meals of chicken every day makes him more slimy. As an exceptional landscape painter, Mrs. Fox is compelled to incorporate natural disasters on her otherwise calming canvases. Her mindset is that of a hopeful cynic — wishing the best, expecting the worst.

As the title character, George Clooney is relaxed, cool, and carries the wiliness of a prankster — the kind who plots for laughs, but would be shamed if anyone took offense. Meryl Streep, always in great form, makes the subtle nuances of Mrs. Fox sound easy. Her character glows effortlessly, but she despairs for her husband’s tomfoolery. Jason Schwartzman as Ash has an uncanny ability to be confrontational that wells up from deep insecurity to great comic effect. In fact, Schwartzman is very good at playing a twelve-year-old. Even when he spits rebelliously on the floor, he’s so cute. Listen to the deadpan sullenness when he says, “You’re disloyal.”

Bill Murray is very convincing as a Badger who works as an attorney and who has good reason to be angry with Mr. Fox. Owen Wilson deftly handles his one scene as Coach Skip, a badger who knows the rules of Whackbat by heart (the running joke is that everyone understands dense instructions instantaneously) and can say, “You’re improving” — meaning exactly that. Willem Dafoe plays The Rat, a lackey to Bean, who is not shy about his salacious feelings toward Mrs. Fox. All of the characters act low-key to a degree, but their attitude is a stark contrast to their life-and-death situation. Their deadpan dialogue is occasionally stamped with equally deadpan (Futura Bold) title overlays.

Most animated shows feature animals who act exactly as humans would. They walk on two legs instead of four. They dress, talk and live just like people do. All of the “animal” of the animals have been sucked right out except for physical appearance. Fantastic Mr. Fox deviates from this trend; allowing its mammals to struggle with their human and animal characteristics. The creatures lose their composure under either great duress or bouts of ravenousness and let loose, growling.

Then again, people lose themselves under those circumstances as well. From human nature to just plain nature, there is a delicate poignancy to these “wild animals” who go to such extreme lengths to be civilized. However, Fantastic Mr. Fox is just a few beats short of approaching the heartbreaking and needful dignity of the well-suited chimpanzee Cornelius from George Miller’s masterpiece Babe: Pig in the City (1998).

Along with this year’s stellar animated entertainments Coraline and Where the Wild Things Are, Fantastic Mr. Fox is by far an acquired taste. I consider these movies to be substantial magic. I like it so much more because I feel that the film and I are sharing a conspiracy. If it appealed to everyone, it wouldn’t feel so personal. As entertainment for children, these polarizing films will do much more to shape them into more interesting people. Because a film is more intense and adult, it can provide a stimulating work of imagination and intelligence for the young.

You don’t think I got this way watching only movies that cater to that loose and restrictive idea known as “appropriate for children,” do you? Kids enjoy a little danger. A fox that talks about a double standard in regard to his wife’s past is still a talking fox. Along with Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson is one of the few filmmakers who get the way a child thinks. In The Royal Tenenbaums, where do Margot and Richie as kids run away to? The Museum of Natural History, of course!

Composer Alexandre Desplat (The Queen (2006) and my personal favourite Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)) reinvents himself by embracing the Country genre with Spaghetti Western influences in a fresh, threatening and kooky manner. However, Desplat never condescends to the material and commands his score like it were an epic. He enlivens it with nervy touches such as prominent flutes, stringy plunks and twangs, and marching band drumming that all feel at home with a vintage Danny Elfman album. Occasional chimes and heavy drumbeats to signify dread also reminds me of Carter Burwell’s signature.

The use of Beach Boys songs Heroes and Villains and I Get Around also complement the bizarre soundtrack. This is the same Wes Anderson who played “You Are Forgiven” from The Who’s 9-minute A Quick One While He’s Away over Max and Mr. Blumes’ “This Means War” montage. The best in-joke is the use of the Nancy Adams song Love, which was written for Disney’s Robin Hood (1973) — another animated film starring a fox. Only Mr. and Mrs. Fox don’t inspire a gag reflex like the following sacrosanct scene by Disney.

“Love” from “Robin Hood” (1973)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Jf1P9wKIg

I don’t care if Robin Hood gave all his money to the poor, he’s still a cheap date. And those eyes…Ewwww!

The overall animation is a springy mixture of rawness and delight. There is something a little unkempt and rustic about the textures here. Imagine if Nick Park (Chicken Run, 2000) and Jan Svankmajer (Alice, 1988: a 5-minute oddity stretched out to 86-minute endurance test) were forced to work together. These animals are not cuddly in a generic sense, though they possess a matured cuteness. Their fur looks both prickly and soft. To touch them, you’d have to be very careful and delicate with them.

The fox’s figures are finer than one would imagine: more tall and slender. The naturalness of the animals also makes them more charming and sympathetic than a caricature would. When little Kristofferson is held upside down by his leg, he looks so pitiful and defenseless. Appropriately enough, it is the chilly humans that look grossly unapproachable. Having worked on Will Vinton films, the animation director Mark Gustafson has brought a great deal of that sickly, albeit fascinating influence into this film. Other liberties are taken to show bizarre and alternate take of characters’ most subconscious attitudes like the frightened face shown at full front and a literal glow on a character experiencing bliss.

Will Vinton’s “The Great Cognito” (1982)

Everything is so splendidly artificial. Some professional visual effects artists go to pains to be invisible; Fantastic Mr. Fox openly relishes the joy of being effects. The painted backdrops for the skies look just like painted backdrops because the illusion is only half the fun. Why go to the Uncanny Valley if you can look at an actual sky outside? The coveted apple cider in Bean’s basement is justly described as liquid gold. Just as clever are the small details like the Badger skull T-shirt worn by one of the toddlers.

It was only a matter of time before Anderson crossed over to animation. Animators have the luxury of transforming the space within the frame with the unrealistic specifics of a perfectionist. Thanks to cinematographer Tristan Oliver and production designer Nelson Lowry whose colour scheme is very Autumn, Anderson continues to make every composition adhere to an exacting and geometrical design founded on a grid. While watching the film, I felt the compulsion to start drawing up vertical and horizontal lines measured acutely across the screen.

Somehow, the compositions are so painstaking that they look rather peculiar. These aesthetics were fully formed in Rushmore and carried out from there. Within the landscape, a thin strip of space is usually reserved for a small train that passes by from a great distance. In a perfect world, wouldn’t all of our last names illuminate our properties so harmoniously? Since most of the action is framed from a distance worthy of a Buster Keaton feature — Keaton: “Tragedy is a close-up; comedy is a long shot.” — the filmmakers gleefully jar us with extreme close-ups of wide, frightened eyeballs and gnashing teeth.

Wes Anderson is one of the most romantic of filmmakers we have today. Mr. Fox is a model to those who respect an extravagant and genteel pride in oneself. It is for whoever swoons over wishing their wife well with the blow of a kiss followed by complimenting dinner last night as “exquisite”. You know who you are. How telling it is that the Tenenbaum Family Plot should be considered a character of equal value with the rest of the characters illustrated in their own chapters. Given the limited hours out of a day, it would be impossible for Max Fischer, despite failing his classes, to attend so many after school activities, clubs, and direct his extravagant plays. In Wes Anderson’s universe, Fischer can be as busy as he pleases.

For those who enjoy Anderson’s brevity and eccentricity, I say put on your favourite bandit hat and have fun staging a coup on the chicken coop.

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” Trailer 1:

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” Trailer 2:

UPDATE: January 13, 2010

Wes Anderson accepts National Board of Review (NBR) Award in stop-motion animation.

I’ve always wondered what Wes Anderson’s power animal is and now I know.

Two weeks ago, Chicago-based film reviewer codenamed Quint (real name: Jim Fyfe) from Ain’t It Cool News challenged graphic designers and film fanatics alike to participate in a contest: Make An Insane Movie Poster of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Quint being a great admirer of the new Werner Herzog film from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) – not to mention Jaws (1975)! – has had mixed feelings toward what its distributors First Look Studios and Polsky Films have done in the way of movie posters. First, they made an edgy poster that the MPAA threw its gavel down hard on for showing its title character pointing a gun at someone. Harvey Keitel, the original 1992 Bad Lieutenant from the 1992 Abel Ferrara film, amongst thousands of other trigger-itchy characters can point their gun at us gazers, but according to the MPAA we can’t handle anyone inside the poster being promised some bullets. Finally, First Look settled on a poster that looks like your generic rogue cop-seeks-killer thriller complete with two famous giant heads suspended over a landscape of dread and action.

Just like these ones!

The Official Poster from First Look Studios:

Nneyyeh! It’s not baaaad… This poster just doesn’t convey the baadasssss quality of a movie made by Herzog and Cage, those lovable madcaps. What we need is an advertisement that looks gritty and dangerous with a dirty 70s vibe to it.

Like this!

The Naughty Poster! Never to be seen again!

CAAAGGGE! NOOOooooooo! What are you DOING? Are you crazy? Point that gun at me! Not at someone you’re actually with! I can’t cope seeing this unless I’m in a movie theatre and you THREE are actually MOVING! What did Irma P. Hall ever do to you! Point the gun at ME! Just don’t shoot–

With the blessings of First Look Studios along with the original source art, I jumped at the chance to make my own dark and crazed movie poster for a very bad lieutenant. Before starting I would have loved to have seen the entire film, but the Vancouver theatrical release is on November 20th and the poster is due on the 9th. So my only point of reference now is the film’s trailer.

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” Trailer

My approach to the poster sans movie reminds me a little of what Ken Hartford chose to do according to Roger Ebert in his 1987 book Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook. Mr. Hartford, a cheerfully corrupt salesman of cheap exploitation movies like Assault of the Killer Bimbos (1988), made his business by producing eye-catching promotional posters and video covers without ever seeing the actual movies. He’d boast, “I sell movies by the pound!” Ebert described finding him in “…the Marché du Film, the marketplace… down at the very bottommost level, there are the nameless videos that are retailed from small booths in the basement of the Palais…” Like a vampire hiding from daylight, that is where you’ll find the most prosperous of Grindhouse movie-pushers.

Having watched the trailer, I had some ideas of what makes the Bad Lieutenant tick. What are the three things on this man’s mind? His back pain. Oh, that searing wear up and down his spin has got to be KILLING him! Which brings us to drugs. Hard drugs! Anything to stop the pain! Finally, those goddamn iguanas! Nobody but him can see them… But they’re there! They’re crawling all over the place! Just look! Where’s the gun!

The back pain is key. I decided on a X-ray layout. The spine was my focus. In fact, I often thought of the human spine as resembling the bone-makings of a snake — a reptilian tail. Well, we did descend from reptiles! Our bone structure has just evolved to cage itself with ribs. They must have been very insecure primordial descendants to want to imprison themselves safely. And by placing the skull of one of those friggin’ iguana heads on top of the spine, it looks like the creepy crawlie is slithering out of what was once human.

Two down, one to go. Cocaine! This wreck of a man needs it and more of it. He’ll die without it. He’ll die anyway. Quicker in fact! But it’s the only way to keep this killer and rapist functioning. Like feeding a fish, only by the nostrils. I had to turn this mad experiment of bone into a structure of white powder.

You didn’t ask, but here are some songs on the substance:

Cocaine by JJ Cale
Cocaine by Jackson Browne
Draggin’ The Line by Tommy James & The Shondells
Junkhead by Alice in Chains
Snowblind by Black Sabbath
White Lines by Grandmaster Flash
Powder by Yellowcard
What a Waster by The Libertines
Feel Good Hit of the Summer by Queens of the Stone Age
Morning Glory by Oasis
Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac
This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m on This Song
by System of a Down
Twist of Cain by Danzig
Night of the Living Baseheads by Public Enemy
Master of Puppets by Metallica
Save Me by Shinedown

None of the images supplied by the good folks at First Look Studio are of much use to me. I need me a particular face – a look on Nicolas Cage. Luckily I found just the right one at the celebrity entertainment site AceShowbiz.com. Just had to superimpose Cage’s anguished, exhausted face over the x-ray slide and make some of that delicious cocaine whiff up his nose. Now there’s a happy Bad Lieutenant!

Now my poster has been sent over to Quint with the header “His Soul’s Still Dancing” and my fingers are crossed! The contest and its prizes are not open to those living outside the US. Oh, well! It was fun designing the poster. It has kept my white-knuckled anticipation for Werner Herzog’s latest film to reach my movie theaters at bay. Seeing it next week will be reward enough.

Still, I would have loved to have won a Lena Herzog photography book signed by the man Werner Herzog.

No matter what anybody else does, this foreign import poster of director Abel Ferrara’s original Bad Lieutenant (1992) is one that is hard to beat. So is the movie – it’s a brutal masterpiece. I wonder if Nicolas Cage will be in a scene similar to what Keitel did. I know Cage and Herzog are crazy enough to do it.

“Bad Lieutenant” (1992) Trailer

“Assault of the Killer Bimbos” (1988) Trailer

How could I resist?

UPDATE: November 21, 2009

The time has come. The contestants have been tallied, fondled, and judged. And the winners are… I wasn’t amongst them. Check them out for yourselves.

Here is a collection of my favourites from the finalists:

Congratulations to those who were selected!

Why didn’t anybody else think of using the tagline “Don’t Forget Your Lucky Crack Pipe!”? It’s much better than “The Only Criminal He Can’t Catch Is Himself.” Technically, it looks like the corrupt cop already has. He just can’t let himself go.

The main font used on the poster is appropriately called Dirty Ego. The color is that of dried blood – something a Bad Lieutenant has to live with on a daily basis.

UPDATE: November 22, 2009

I just saw the film and thought it was awesome. I noticed over the main title sequence that the title of the movie was indeed “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”. I’m glad to feel so validated for using the “the” when it wasn’t required. Works much better as an introduction.

I don’t care what anyone else says, I love that whole “Port of Call New Orleans” bit.

Blossoming Out of Brutal Child Abuse

The odds are against Clarice “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe). How does she find the will to get up in the morning and go to school? It seems as though everyone is either punishing her or ignoring her. At 16, she is pregnant for the second time by her scumbag father. Her self-esteem is all but destroyed by her vicious mother (Mo’Nique). She is illiterate, but not stupid. As a poor African-American woman living in Harlem in 1987, her options are limited. If incest, racism, sexism and classism weren’t enough, Precious is also targeted for being obese. She can hardly bear to face anyone let alone speak in a guarded whisper. Her pain is so definite. Society and her parents have failed her, however, Precious is still holding on.

We never pity her because anyone would be devastated if struck with her afflictions. What fascinates me still is that Precious takes the time to brush her hair nicely and wears necklaces. She obviously has a fighting spirit. This is her rebuke to all who vilify her. It may be a small one, but it’s there. She is going to look her best, dammit. Her only other refuge is to fantasize. In a harrowing scene, she remembers how her father raped her in her bedroom one night. Her mother watches from behind the door frame with timidity and — oh dear God! — jealousy. It is so horrible that the ceiling cracks and in a faraway place, Precious walks up a red carpet to her own premiere looking gorgeous for the adulated crowd. Perhaps, I shouldn’t be so astonished to find Precious putting on such a brave front. People are notoriously stubborn to survive personal attacks.

The case of Precious is really about how deadly living in a toxic family is. It is also about how body image can ruin self-worth, which is a grave factor all by itself. However, the worst thing happening to Precious is the abuse she receives from her parents. An overweight and mentally-struggling person can still be happy with the support of loved ones. Precious is unloved and can only go so far alone.

Precious is told with the horror and uplifting tone of a fairy tale. Her father is never home, but his presence is always felt. He haunts Precious and her mother Mary, a woman whose insecurities have made her so twisted and self-loathing that she views her daughter as competition. She even treats her like a housekeeper, like Cinderella. It would just kill Mary to see Precious ahead of her own slothful level in life. She comes up with punishments like forcing Precious to eat copious amounts of burnt, fried food. Mary holds Precious hostage by keeping the girl’s firstborn hidden in the care of a relative. The name of Precious alone is such a irony to Mary that it deserves comparison in terms of sadism to Frollo naming the disfigured child he adopted Quasimodo — half-formed.

Precious’ life takes a radical turn after her high school principal encourages the pregnant teen to attend an adult GED program called “Each One Teach One”. Self-serving Mary forbids this and demands that Precious apply for welfare. Precious does both, sneaking to continue her education, and connects with two working women who become her saviors. One is a sunny teacher named Miss Rain (Paula Patton) who builds up Precious’ confidence and the other is Mrs. Weiss (Mariah Carey), a social worker who takes a vested interest in her. Learning to read and nearing the delivery of her pregnancy, Precious slowly begins to open herself up to people who could possibly help her. She also manages to form fragile friendships with her classmates.

Faithfully adapted by Geoffrey Fletcher, Precious was based on Push (1996), the only novel written by Sapphire. She was a highly regarded underground poet and writer who was no stranger to struggling for an education due to her family’s abandonment. Push uses its raw text (“I is ready. Ready for school. School gonna help me get out dis house.”) to convey Precious’ illiteracy from her point of view and demonstrates how she improves herself through her writing. Like Celie’s voice in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, this literary device is used effectively in the sparse titles in the film. From there, director Lee Daniels has crafted a very fine film. As producer of Monster’s Ball (2001) and The Woodsman (2004), Daniels makes Precious look more expensive than his tightly-budgeted independent film lets on. Daniels also shows his continued interest in portraying conflicted characters in a very humane way that does not shy away from the horror of their lives.

It is very astute the way Mary’s abuse toward Precious is depicted. Instead of spreading out the torture in little bits, we are confronted with the blunt, unforgiving force of Mary’s rage. As Precious stands frozen with fear and resignation at the top of the stairs, she absorbs a long and merciless monologue of obscene insults. Here’s a taste: “I should have aborted your ass!” A beating that follows is held off-screen where a fade to black settles the aftershock even further. Again, I am astonished Precious hasn’t killed herself after living with this monster for years. Perhaps she copes because this treatment is all she knows. When Precious is loved, she breaks.

There is one temptation that the filmmakers never succumb to and that is giving Precious a boyfriend. It’s so devastating that her father is the only guy to have touched her. This film is tough and expects the same of us as well. Whether Precious finds her prince is reserved for speculation into her unknown future. As a victim of incest, it’s a good question how she can ever trust another man to get close to her at all. The goal of this story is to see if Precious can achieve independence through her education. Perhaps the most heartbreaking observation Precious makes is, “Why should people who don’t know me are nicer to me than my mommy and daddy?” At least Precious has an opportunity to play matchmaker in a scene that ends with one of the funniest telephone hang-up I have seen besides in Ed Wood (1994).

For all of the truly dark places Precious ventures into, Daniels and Fletcher have the freedom and ingenuity to fill Precious’ journey with some great wit and warmth. Comic relief is such a bad word in stories like this, but it is used wisely here without diluting the seriousness. Laughter is a hell of a defense. Has there ever been a better scene of a mother tickling her baby? The welcome levity of the classroom scenes, those in a hospital as well as a surprising riff on Vittorio De Sica’s La Ciociara (1960) relieve us of Precious’ tragedies, but makes them even more wounding when the demons return.

The characters feel more extreme, but no one here is a caricature. They are founded on thoughtful motivation and detail. When asked to read aloud, Precious is completely vulnerable when perplexed by the letters. “They all look the same to me.” The character of Precious is such an approachable and sympathetic character to root for. This is one of the reasons mainstream audiences will gravitate toward Precious, a film whose horrific subject matter is usually reserved for more hardened moviegoers. No doubt the support that Oprah and Tyler Perry are giving Precious by signing as producers after it was made will expand the film’s limited release. Kind of ironic since Daniels’ family often bugs him why he doesn’t make popular movies like Perry’s Madea comedies.

Small details make the period convincing; for instance, watch out for a reference of a certain film about Charles Bukowski. Precious has the feel of a docudrama at times. The camera wavers a little and on rare occasions makes that jittery zoom-in to create a sense of spontaneity. Mostly images are fairly smooth or completely still. Some camera operators feel compelled to shake their camera as violently as though they were shaking the audience’s shoulders while screaming “This is REAL!” The cinematography by Andrew Dunn and Darren Lew avoids this tactic, opting for subtlety on the rough Harlem streets and the bare cubicles of the government agency. Interior spaces are given more theatrically to convey the drama. Inside the dingy apartment with Mary, black shadows scratches up the overly harsh oranges and yellow wallpaper like a tacky hellhole. The classroom where Ms. Rain teaches tends to glow coolly, like a lighthouse beacon.

The film penetrates our defenses and completely absorbs us. Because the circumstances are so dire, it would have been insulting to tone down the viciousness of Mary out of some pious sense of political correctness. I appreciate how fearless Daniels is in portraying Precious as a genuine victim of abuse as horrible and real as it is for the thousands of Preciouses living and suffering now. There are so many revelations among the performers. Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe is all the better for having no method or experience as an actor. Somehow, she accumulates great range with her powerhouse performance as a sad, defiant survivor. This fall, Precious joins Lone Scherfig’s An Education as another excellent film about a specific teenage girl’s coming of age.

Coming from a theatre background, Daniels approached his film from that perspective. To get these performances, instead of rehearsing, Daniels revealed his deepest fears and lusts, which left everyone raw and open. Having established trust, he directed in a fashion he calls “primal”, and he also admitted to speaking in tongues. No egos were allowed on the set. Not even makeup. Pop celebrities like Carey, Patton and Mo’Nique not only look authentic in this environment, but this method set their acting chops on high. As the social worker, Carey is very compelling. Patton too is able to do just as much from a warm place. Also deserving a nod is Lenny Kravitz as a very kind nurse. This reminds me of the casting for Tim Blake Nelson’s merciless masterpiece The Grey Zone (2002). What are David Arquette and Natasha Lyonne doing in a brutal Holocaust film? Oh right! They’re talented actors making good on roles that their mainstream celebrity sabotages their chances of actually getting in the first place.

For me, the standout is Mo’Nique because she goes down into the most bleak place as Mary Jones. Mary is one of the best contemporary villains because she is such a very credible monster. What makes Mary all the more despicable is that she plays ‘the good mom’ when her welfare officer visits. She knows how to act lovingly and how to say he right things. Her cruelty is not based on ignorance. She chooses to inflict her family with base and gruesome torture. Precious doesn’t dare spread her wings because her mother has the clippers ready.

It is incredibly unnerving when Mary holds Precious’ newborn baby with one hand and a smoldering cigarette in the other. She makes a chilling observation, “He has your father’s eyes.” The whole time I was thinking about that cigarette. What Mary does next is just as shocking. An encounter near the end of the film has Mary, Mrs. Weiss, and Precious in a verbal standoff that unleashes relentless power. Mary is pushed to explain the moment where she came to resent her daughter. Where it comes from reveals such utter and astonishing depths of self-loathing. If Precious has chance, then Mary is at once irreparably damaged and unforgivable.

At the 28th Vancouver International Film Festival, Lee Daniels was in attendance for a Q&A. Asked why he made the film, Daniels told us about a shocking sight he saw at twelve years old on a hot Saturday afternoon at 3 pm. Four houses up from where he lived, he and his mother knocked on the door. It opened. A five-year-old girl stood before them. Naked. Bleeding out of her genitals. Crying. “My momma’s gonna kill me!” Daniels had never seen fear in his mother’s eyes until that moment. He felt nausea and anger. Years later he read Push and those feelings and memories came flooding back. By making the film, Daniels wanted to heal himself as well as others.

“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Trailer

“Black Pearl” (1969) | The Checkmates

No Free Passes

One of the many things Lone Scherfig’s An Education gets right is show how wisdom comes suddenly. Take Jenny (Carey Mulligan, who is simply wonderful), a schoolgirl who at 16 is the brightest in her class, and fancies herself mature, sophisticated and wise. She actually does know a great deal and sometimes she is right on the money. Feeling restless and stuck in the straitlaced, lushly coloured town of Twickenham, London circa 1961, Jenny yearns for novelty and passion. This is two years before four guys from Liverpool would have turned her disillusionment on its head. For now, she sings along with her Juliette Greco LP (Sous Le Ciel De Paris) amongst other French singers in her bedroom. Those reminded of the Mario Lanza craze of Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) from Heavenly Creatures (1994) should take comfort that they are not alone. When she decides to allow herself to be courted by a 35-year-old named David (Peter Sarsgaard), know that David isn’t the only one with ulterior motives beneath the designs to woo. But she still has so much more to learn. For starters, to stay away from baddies like David.

Jenny studies vigorously in hope of going to Oxford where she can escape the mundanity of her middle class upbringing, “I’m going to talk to people who know lots and lots.” One rainy afternoon, she comes across David, who looks smart, is exceedingly charming, and drives a burgundy Bristol sports car. He offers her a ride. Eventually, she accepts. He looks harmless enough. What does David do for a living? “Property. A little art dealing. Selling this and that.” Where did he study? “I went to the University of Life. I didn’t get a good degree there.” Plus he’s Jewish, an exotic find as rare as well… Bristols! From there, Jenny is instantly smitten with this well-to-do gentleman and renegade. Jenny is so indifferent to her country and wants very much to enjoy France. To such a bored Brit, Jenny thrives to consume the cool French delights of cigarettes, Jazz and the French New Wave — Resnais, Goddard, Truffaut and Varda.

Her father Jack (Alfred Molina), a middle-class immigrant, has little sympathy for her appetites. He goes on about financial realities, forever dwelling on practicalities and studying. When Jenny considers taking a year off from school after graduating, her father asks, “What for?” This is a time where a woman’s education meant finding a suitor, not a career. Jenny is good at playing the cello, however, Jack dismisses that strength as something she’ll put aside in the working world. He is even more tough on the boys she brings home. Softening the blow is her mother Majorie (Cara Seymour) who has different ways of being both knowing and clueless as her husband. Understand that they are truly proud of their daughter and love her so. They just make the mistake of making her future sound like work when it ought to be celebrated. No wonder Jenny is attracted to David, he can open high end doors and afford her expensive things like idealism.

Prepared with gifts, David eventually visits Jenny’s parents. Dressed in a good suit, he boasts about his Oxford education and name drops C.S. Lewis (“We just…got along!”). Why, he even uses the “Jenny’s sister” line on her mother and it works! Jack is taken by David’s appearance and reveals so much by saying “You’re not the sort of person I’d be against.” Jack and Majorie assume the relationship is platonic — a good connection to getting Jenny into Oxford. The idea, so obvious in these contemporary times, that David intends to deflower their daughter isn’t given so much of a spark. They are very much as victimized as their daughter, who relied on their protection. Later, it isn’t question of how much older this man is to their underage daughter. It becomes a question of whether he can provide a better life for her. “That’s what you need. Someone on the make.” It isn’t simple enough to sigh, “Those Europeans!” However, Jenny knows that David wants sex. She’d like to have sex with him too. It’s like discovering a new power. She is sensible enough to know 16 is too young to give up her virginity. 17 sounds right to her.

Director Lone Scherfig has made a gem of a film — a throwback to classy Hollywood romances made half a century ago that turns subversive. This is the same Lone Scherfig who made a warm human comedy back in 2002 and titled it darkly Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself. To showcase the attention brought to the production, there is a small period detail in An Education that the invaluable AMC series Mad Men also uses, which is that in the 1960s all of the fruit is much smaller. You’ll notice it when David makes an unwholesome proposition to Jenny late one night in their hotel room. At this point, Jenny is more concerned about David’s baby talk (“You’re my Minnie Mouse!”). A good argument could be made that Jenny would have caught on sooner if she wasn’t so willing deceive herself as much as David is. It is human nature to want to be part of a con so long as the consequences can be ignored. Look at Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl (2002) where Anaïs (Anaïs Pingot) listens skeptically to Fernando and believes him anyway.

It is no wonder why audiences and critics are going gaga over newcomer Carey Mulligan. Her sublime performance in An Education announces that she is here to stay. Now everyone has been saying it so I will say it only once… Audrey Hepburn. Watching certain scenes, it is impossible not to recall Roman Holiday (1953) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), especially when Jenny is all dolled up like Holly Golightly. However, the best follow-up to Hepburn has been with us much longer than Miss Mulligan and that is Emily Mortimer.

I still feel that’s too small a box for Mulligan because she is very much her own woman. She is so convincing as a teenager in her mannerisms and using her petiteness for good measure that one almost forgets she is really twenty-four years old. Adult actors playing high school students are often unrealistic like when Anne Hathaway — who has proved truly accomplished in comedy and drama with last year’s Get Smart and Rachel Getting Married — played a gawky teen made over in The Princess Diaries (2001) as well as countless high school-centered sitcoms. Mulligan is completely in command as Jenny — engaging, funny, headstrong and worthy of our sympathy. Like Hathaway last year, it is a given that Carey Mulligan will be nominated as Best Actress.

Peter Sarsgaard, an American actor aptly affecting an European accent, has the challenge of making David attractive and charming in a way that makes observers nervous. This he accomplishes and then some. His character reminds me a little of Ewan McGregor’s Catcher Block from Down With Love (2003). The way he suggests “a spot of supper” is so swoon-worthy that he wins our admiration despite our misgivings. He’s so good at manipulation. This can’t end well, but at least the descent down is rather dreamy. For all of his dashing smiles, wit and bravado, he leaks out tiny drips of cowardice and sneakiness until everyone is up to their waists in deceit. As a villain we love to hate, his most insidious power is being so damned lovable at first.

David invites Jenny into his social circle that include his brother Danny (Dominic Cooper) and friend Helen (Rosamund Pike). They hit the clubs, art auctions and dog races. Helen, a socialite takes the most delight in making a show of Jenny’s pretensions: “Why would you say it in French?” Her insults are served with a ferocious smile. If Helen could, she’d drown the ocean if only to obliterate the clouds where Jenny’s head is. Danny keeps his opinions to himself and exchanges looks of worry with Helen. David is a hell of a chaperon though. He has the uncanny ability to find fun and invention on their excursions. What’s more, David genuinely enjoys Jenny’s company.

The screenplay is very sly. For instance, having Helen show what a snob she is only to reveal what her values really are. There are sneaky ways of revealing contradictions and hidden convictions. Another wise decision is to know when to use Graham (Matthew Beard), a nice boy Jenny’s age, and when to drop him. After inviting Jenny out, Graham is oblivious to the subtext when one of Jenny’s friends explains, “She doesn’t have time for boys!” Seeing Graham again in the last one-third would have muddied up the drama. The film parallels the winning charm of Jenny starstruck at the beginning of love as deceptions and foul undercurrents are slowly revealed. This isn’t some romp that is safely netted by dangers extending at most for a few months or a year. The stakes become extremely high because Jenny is in danger of ruining her life. Illusions of indestructibly come with a limit of years spent.

An Education was faithfully adapted for the screen by English novelist Nick Hornby on the short memoir of Lynn Barber, which you should definitely read. An excerpt from her book can be found at The Guardian’s The Observer.

“Simon took me to an Italian place in Marylebone and of course I was dazzled. I had never been to a proper restaurant before, only to tea rooms with my parents. I didn’t understand the menu, but I loved the big pepper grinders and the heavy cutlery, the crêpe suzettes and the champagne. I was also dazzled by Simon’s conversation. Again, I understood very little of it, partly because his accent was so strange, but also because it ranged across places and activities I could hardly imagine. My knowledge of the world was based on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Brontes, and none of them had a word to say about living on a kibbutz or making Molotov cocktails. I felt I had nothing to bring to the conversational feast and blushed when Simon urged me to tell him about my schoolfriends, my teachers, my prize-winning essays. I didn’t realise then that my being a schoolgirl was a large part of my attraction.”

This is Hornby’s second screenplay credit after the UK version of Fever Pitch. Hornby (High Fideilty (2000), About A Boy (2002)) is infamous for his tight, challenging comedies that center on young men trying to connect with women using or despite their vices. His works hold insights into human nature through a real confiding confidence. An Education isn’t so much of a stretch for Hornby because Jenny’s character is just as peculiar and hopeful as Will Freeman from About A Boy, a man who truly believes that every man is an island.

Nick Hornby is one of those enlightened few who know that writing for women is not a radical departure from writing for men. Predecessors like Paul Cox for A Woman’s Tale (1991), Stephen King for Dolores Claiborne (1995), and Mike Leigh for Happy Go-Lucky(2008) demonstrate this in spades. There is no adherence to stereotypes, nor lame generalizations that keep the sexes at odds with each other and late-night comics in business. Jenny is not merely written as “a girl” as transparently as so many screenwriters in Hollywood do. Jenny is a richly drawn character with qualities good and bad, who has the freedom to grow and screw up like everyone does. In fact, there are times when Jenny isdownright nasty. The fact that I have to point this out should be as ludicrous as singling out Kathryn Bigelow for directing men so naturally in The Hurt Locker (2008). We live a society where the female perspective is treated with condescension and shallowness.

An Education begins jovially with one of the very best main title sequences of the year — right there with Moon, 500 Days of Summer, Nightwatching and Watchmen — an animated sequence of silly doodles, educational diagrams and dance steps done in chalk to the punchy jazz beats of Floyd Cramer’s On The Rebound. A very telling title relating to Jenny comes from Beth Rowley’s song You’ve Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger. The filmmakers have a good sense of humour to include the theme from Percy Faith’s A Summer Place (1959). Paul Englishby’s romantic and wistful score, which is mainly based on flutes and strings, has good command of its subtlety and desire. The cinematography by John de Borman (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, 2008 — Englishby also scored that film) has a subtle flavour of Old Hollywood. Everything looks natural, albeit richer. The English town possesses hues made only possible by sunlight after a light shower.

A round of supporting roles do a deft job with their characters in a limited amount of time. Lucy Bevan deserves an exquisite bouquets of flowers for casting this film. Alfred Molina is very good as a controlling father who means well. His obsession with classism is appallingly hilarious. Listen to how he says, “What are you? A teddy boy!” Cara Seymore, who deserves to be the lead in her own film someday, has small gestures that go a long way — notice the way she purses her lips. Olivia Williams is quite effective as Miss Stubbs, an ever-concerned teacher who tries to steer Jenny to safety. Williams is almost unrecognizable here, it took me four of her scenes to make me realize that she was Miss Cross from Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998). Emma Thompson, one of the most welcome actresses, makes short and effective work of the resolved headmistress whose tactlessness could be confused as heartlessness. Sally Hawkins — so great in Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) — has one crucial scene that is the most heartbreaking.

An Education is almost a folly of an entertainment. It is a wonder to watch a balance of enchantment and scenes that are dead serious. The most lighthearted and optimistic of its kind. It is on the opposite side miles from the creepy Joyce Chopra film Smooth Talk (1985). That film focused on the cruel disillusionment of a 15-year-old (Laura Dern) at the hands of a loathsome predator named Arnold Friend (Treat Williams) who “smooth talks” — threatens — the girl to come out of her house to play. The short story by Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been that Smooth Talk was based on had a much bleaker ending than the film. You’ll see what I mean that things could have been a lot worse.

The description of an adult man going after a teenage girl should lead you think it can only go into dark territories. Most filmmakers would be lead to similar conclusions. An Education doesn’t just work as a conventional cautionary tale like Little Red Riding Hood or Karen Moncrieff’s excellent Blue Car (2002) where an English teacher (David Strathairn) methodically seduces a trouble teen (Agnes Bruckner). Like Jenny, her story is more clever than that. We get why she would go out with David. He seems too good to be true, which is a good reason to find out what he’s hiding. After all, it’s fun to go on an adventure, depending that no bones get broken. Hearts are another matter. It is almost inevitable with first loves. Jenny is strong enough to endure heartbreak and everything else she must face. The reason An Education is so great is because it thrives on that very strength.

“An Education” Trailer

“On The Rebound” by Chet Atkins & Floyd Cramer (1965)

One of the many upsides to living in a beautiful city like Vancouver (besides the freshest tap water this side of the Pacific Ocean) is that it holds one of the five biggest film festivals in North America. The Vancouver International Film Festival opens today. About 640 screenings of the 360 films to come from eighty countries will be shown over the next sixteen days (October 1 – October 16). That means we Vancouverites and visiting film buffs can see movies as far as award-winners at Cannes, Telluride (TIFF), et al. to those that will never get distribution here. Without the interference of a ratings board, anything goes. Along Granville Street, and from Seymore to Howe, the cinemas are our roller coasters, our bumper cars, our Tilt-A-Whirls. It’s a good comparison seeing as how the line-ups won’t be any different.

I am still disheartened that Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime (2009), a semi-sequel to his wonderful Happiness (1998), is not playing in the festival. After it played last month at Telluride to a very warm reception, Life During Wartime didn’t get distribution like so many others. Unless Solondz distributes it himself or keeps selling to those willing to take a risk (Hello Lions Gate Films!), it might be a long while to view. On the bright side, the Coen Brothers’ new film A Serious Man will have a Sunday morning sneak preview at the Park Theatre on October 11 before opening nationwide on October 16. The Coen film, unlike Telluride, will not be part of the VIFF. I am catching the Sunday screening so for me, it is part of the festival.

What I also find interesting is that Peter Greenaway’s lecture piece Rembrandt’s J’accuse (2008) is playing at VIFF, whereas its dramatic companion feature Nightwatching (2007), also by Greenaway, had a limited theatrical run in Vancouver last April. I am confident that Nightwatching will be among the very best films of my 2009 list. I initially thought that this release of Rembrandt’s J’accuse was flawed considering that both Nightwatching and Rembrandt’s J’accuse were available for purchase as a two-disc special edition two weeks prior. It just so happens that I had to send for the DVD set on Amazon because there were no copies available for purchase at HMV or Videomatica despite the original release date. No biggie. I just hope there is a bigger turn out for Rembrandt’s J’accuse than I saw for Nightwatching.

While scanning the film schedules for more screenings I could squeeze in between those I’ve ordered in advance, I noticed a number of film titles that are being recycled from past ones — even classics. Here are some trivial findings:

• Jean Luc Goddard’s Breathless (2009) | Yang Ik-Joon’s Breathless (2009)
• Luis César Amadori’s The Headless Woman (1947) | Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman (2008)
• Anne Fontaine’s How I Killed My Father (2001) | Xavier Dolan’s I Killed My Mother (2009) — Close enough.
• Albert Brooks’ Mother (1996) | Joon-ho Bong’s Mother (2009)
• Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955) | Ann Hui’s Night and Fog (2009)
• Rob Reiner’s North (1994) (Awful movie…) | Rune Denstad Langlo’s North (2009)
• Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929) | Yesim Ustaoglu’s Pandora’s Box (2009)

I’m kicking off the VIFF tonight with Lars von Trier’s controversial and ultra-violent new film Antichrist. Hopefully, the intensity of the experience will border on the likes of Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl (2001) and Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007). Not only do I anticipate massive walkouts, but sprints for the exit! I find it somewhat ironic considering that the first film I ever saw at a VIFF was The Five Obstructions (2003), which was directed by both Jørgen Leth and, yes, Lars von Trier. For an hour, I waited in line with my fellow film buffs. Feelings ran high, from eager anticipation to confusion – what would the latest Von Trier film be like?

The light rainfall eventually took mercy on my trusty newsboy hat, which I bought that very night — the rain poured hard an hour ago. I am amused by how easy it is to get into a conversation with a ticket holder either behind or ahead of you. We’re all here for the same reason. Suddenly a cute brunette got in line behind me and before I could get drunk on endorphins, she asked if this was the rush line. It wasn’t. I told her so, then watched her cross the street and that was that. As Pepe Le Pew would say, Le sigh.

The night sky slowly turned from black to a greenish gray and my mind began to play a David Shire score as radio listeners were calling in about the Zodiac killer. Occasionally, a homeless person would offer to sing for loose change. One man played the spoons, slapping them on his knee – now there’s a lost art. The time passed quickly as I read chapters four and five of Our Cancer Year by Harvey “American Splendor” Pekar and his wife Joyce Brabner.

As I sat in one of the stiff yet cushy seats courtesy of Empire Granville 7 Cinemas, I noticed the bumps and winkles of my winter jacket laid inside-out against my back. I had only two consolations. One: I was pushed forward from my seat, sitting at complete attention and my spine was so vertically straight that a Ghostbuster could slide down it. Two: Depending on how good the movie is, I would be oblivious to any discomfort.

Not that I need my jacket to tell me whether a movie is bad or not.

Every year, the VIFF and the agency TBWA\VANCOUVER have prepared a few new shorts to promote their sponsors and open each film. These spots have a weird and comical vibe to get the audience more relaxed for the (presumably radical) feature presentation. Here are 2009 editions:

Vancouver International Film Festival | “Disturbing”

Vancouver International Film Festival | “Subtitles”

My personal favourite.

Vancouver International Film Festival | “Sexuality”

I wished that this video was extended to show the obligatory sponsor logos (Visa, Rogers, etc.) to the sound of bedsprings and *YEE-ONN!*s.

Take a look at the “27th VIFF Openers” from last year.

I wonder out of the selected films I will see which ones will be my favourites from last year’s VIFF: Let the Right One In (2008), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Sita Sings the Blues (2008), and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). I also shudder at the thought of enduring another Paruthiveeran (2008) — one of these days I’m going to write a review on Ameer Sultan’s mess of a movie and risk boiling my blood pressure. On my agenda, I’m looking forward to Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman, and Lee Daniel’s Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire amongst others.

Viva VIFF!

Put Your Fibs Together and Blow!

People are usually very straightforward. While talking with someone, you have a good idea of what they’re thinking. And yes, it is very boring. That is why the title character Mark Whitacre as depicted in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! is cause for relief. The man has a two-track mind. His habitual expression is pleasant but blank. Just listening to his outrageous thoughts makes me wonder how exhausting it must be for him to keep a straight face. The thoughts — my God, the tangents! His brain must be covered with zigzag tracks. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to read the thoughts of others, if only for the entertainment factor. Then again, Mark Whitacre is a rare breed. Only such a character — emphasis on character — could inspire such a perceptive and infectious human comedy that hides under a corruption scandal thriller.

In the mid-1990s, Whitacre is a rising — beaming — star at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), an Illinois-based plant that processes corn into food ingredients and distributes them worldwide. He looks like a stereotypical businessman — a paunchy, rug-wearing, spectacled dweeb in a cheap suit. Why, he could just as soon sidle up to you with a grin that says “Say ‘Hi!’ to your family for me” or “I’ve got something really juicy to tell you!” Don’t get me started on his mustache. Listening to him talk about corn and the difference he makes in people’s lives, I can’t help but hear Jim McAllister self-congratulatory tone from Alexander Payne’s Election (1999) when he says, “The students knew it wasn’t just a job for me. I got involved!”

Things get serious at the plant when Whitacre uncovers product sabotage, corporate blackmailing and tapped phones. He’s a straight arrow who loves his family and takes his future very seriously. He wants so much to believe in the best of people. He was an orphan, you understand. One minute he’s fretting about his home phone being bugged, the next he goes on a tangent about something as random as Saskatchewan — it always makes sense in a Whitacre sort of way. His high school sweetheart-now wife Ginger (Melanie Lynskey), who clearly sees his worry, encourages Whitacre to come clean to the FBI. Special Agents Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) and Bob Herndon (Joel McHale) show up at Whitaker’s home never dreaming what their destinies hold. By the time Whitacre blows the whistle on some other illegalities his company is making, we’re off and running.

Why turn stoolie? He is doing very well at ADM – a horse stable for the kids is even being built across his mansion. The FBI takes Whitacre into their confidence, arranging tense situations where he wears a wire to exclusive meetings with his superiors. These scenes present the difficulty of obtaining what Harry Cole would call “a nice, fat recording.” At first, Whitacre has to be broken of his habit of narrating his every action into the wire like he was dictating for a sleuth novel. With the gleeful intensity of a Suzanne Stone, he goes about his business with strong sense of egomaniacal importance. Whitacre thinks “It’s just like a Crichton novel!” and he’s the hero of his story.

Whitacre is so ecstatic that he simply must show off his neat spy technology to his befuddled handyman. He goes back and forth between being gung-ho and then reasonably worried about his safety, not to mention his family’s. His boss has a funny idea about making “levity” out of a tense situation. The FBI corners Whitacre: You can’t volunteer and back out so easily. They hold his criminal immunity over his head whenever he doesn’t feel like playing anymore.

Like a juggler who can’t stop grabbing more plates, Whitacre then commits a stunning feat by revising his story again and again. As for keeping secrets, Whitacre is worse than a leaky faucet. He goes against good reason — and the FBI’s instructions — by blabbing to people he really shouldn’t be talking to. But because it’s Whitacre!, these jaw-dropping acts look like a method to his madness. For how long should we hold off slapping our palms to our foreheads? He’s a very likable dork. In a bad after-school special, Whitacre would have been a put-upon nerd who’d dream of becoming a millionaire and laughing. He is one smart cookie. Scary smart! On the other hand, he is so feckless that he is impervious to suspicion. But still, we worry that he’s flying too close to the flame. He just can’t stop while he’s ahead.

Matt Damon is one of our best and most versatile actors. He can jump from Anthony Minghella’s heavy drama The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) to Soderbergh’s less serious Ocean’s Eleven (2001) easily. Having gained thirty pounds to play Whitacre, this isn’t the first time Damon adjusted his weight for a role. In Courage Under Fire (1996), his first feature role, Damon lost forty pounds to play a soldier recovering from trauma and drug abuse. As Whitacre, Damon has the challenge of bordering happy-go-lucky zaniness on a bland facade. His interior monologues are delivered as though he were possessed. Out of so many of his fascinating brain spells, my favourite is his take on Polar Bears hunting for seals (“That’s a lot of thinking for a bear!”). The more I think of it, Damon’s Whitacre shares much more with Philip Seymore Hoffman’s Dan Mahowny, a compulsive gambler, in Richard Kwietniowski’s Owning Mahowny (2005) than appearance.

Playing Whitacre’s concerned wife Ginger, Lynskey keeps her adorability in check, which makes her very understanding character credible. It’s amazing how she has developed into such cherubic roles (most know her as Rose on the hit sitcom Two and a Half Men) since her feature debut in Peter Jackson’s best film Heavenly Creatures (1994) as a sullen teenager who plots her mother’s murder. Both Scott Bakula and Joel McHale each played their FBI agents with a subdued facetiousness that eventually leads to a tightly wound exasperation. However, Bakula is more expressive whereas McHale keeps his cards close to his vest. Also watch out for some surprise cameos at Whitacre’s hearing.

Based on the Kurt Eichenwald non-fiction exposé The Informant (2000), this film was adapted by Scott Z. Burns who also wrote The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), which also starred Damon in a film that operates in areas of grey. The absurdity of Mark Whitacre’s case didn’t escape director Steven Soderbergh when he read the book. The exclamation point added to the film’s title is a jovial and very ironic clue for what would otherwise be a boilerplate thriller about a whistle blower, the best example being Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999). Subtler is the topsy-turvy camera angle that introduces Whitacre’s SUV driving upside down into the targeted ADM.

This wacky quality is not surprising for anyone (who is anyone) who saw Soderbergh’s Schizopolis (1996), which began with Soderbergh coming onstage to inform us that this will be the greatest movie ever made and if you don’t get it, it’s your own fault — “Now I give you SCHIZOPOLIS!” Last year, Soderbergh made the four-hour roadhouse feature Che (2008), which chronicled Ernesto ‘Che‘ Guevara (Benicio Del Toro) from his victory in Cuba to his doom in Bolivia. With The Informant!, Soderbergh continues to follow an exhausting trek of an always elusive character. What is especially ingenious is how our understanding of Whitacre changes once his intentions are considered from another angle.

Maybe he doesn’t understand himself so well either.

The compositions of the shots always underscore the jokes without underlining them. Yet the shots, using colour filters and over-exposed location lights that threaten to bleed out so sharply, have a very high energy. They have Soderbergh’s smudge marks all over them — he also works as a cinematographer under the alias Peter Andrews. The images are at once self-conscious, off-balance, yet empowering. Damon’s short height is used wisely as he is framed against much taller men, kind of like Jodie Foster was as Clarice Starling, which is a very dramatic change from the Bourne movies. Each new city Whitacre goes to is introduced with sixties-inspired title cards that look more at home in a Quentin Tarantino film; my favourite establishes Tokyo. All of the retro interior design by Doug J. Meerdink work fitfully here. The inside of the corporate department look this side of Terry Gilliam — Soderbergh recalled seeing Brazil (1985) over a dozen times when it was released.

Another highlight is the zippy and very cunning score by Marvin Hamlisch. Because so much the film is played straight, the danceable score really sets it off the edge. Using an imposing array of rambunctious horns, kazoos, happy flutes, piano keys and a drum set. It gracefully goes from a pop espionage-type soundtrack a la James Bond that veers on parody and then surprises us with some disquieting horns and sad piano. Just imagine if Carter Burwell and Michael Giacchino had collaborated together. They perfectly complement the aggressively cheerful pathos and off-balanced mindset of Whitacre. These sounds could have come from a deranged cartoon elevator on uppers and downers. The most rousing on the soundtrack are titled “Sellout”. Interestingly enough, the scene with the polygraph switches gears to a Yee Haw-like western soundtrack that occasionally drips like acid.

Soderbergh (Out of Sight, 1998 and Bubble, 2006) is to America what Michael Winterbottom (Wonderland, 1998 and Tristram Shanty: A Cock and Bull Story, 2006) is to England. Never settling for one type of film, they explore a variety of genres and rarely repeat themselves. Like in 2000 when Soderbergh released his two films Erin Brockovich and Traffic in the same year, this year he made The Girlfriend Experience, which was very illuminating, as well as this one. Right along with this year’s In the Loop, a hot-blooded farce about the UK and US governments declaring war, The Informant! is skewers office politics just as successfully but with a much cooler poker.

Because most of the action takes place in the nineties, certain truths are not brought up, such as how corporations like ADM practiced overusing corn syrup in place of natural sugar, which resulted in an obesity outbreak on the American public in the coming years. Knowing what we know today, a slimy layer becomes visible across the film’s subject.

Given the economic climate and fury directed towards CEOs cackling their way to the bank, The Informant! is a very subversive and subtle film — not to mention hilarious — if wry dialogue and understated satire tickles you. It is also a strangely empathetic one as well. Getting us to relate to Whitacre is the most insidious blow. After spending so much time with Whitacre, I was still suspicious of him and wondered, “was that everything?” With Whitacre, it never is. You know that the guy with the mustache is always hiding something. Nevertheless, I imagine the real Mark Whitacre would eagerly take his family and friends to see The Informant!

“The Informant” Trailer

Here’s Looking at You, Kid.

At first sight, the couple walking and dining throughout Paris appear to be lovers. We are mistaken. Daniel, a trim and fortyish intellectual with a voice like Patrick Bauchau (The Rapture, 1991), is played by Jeremy Herman, the writer of Hardly Bear to Look at You (2009). Stella is a pretty performance artist in her early twenties, played by Anna Neil. A few years ago, Neil starred in a short film called The Yacht (2006), which was written and co-directed by Herman. The other director who also starred in The Yacht was Huck Melnick, who directed his first feature-length film, Hardly Bear to Look at You.

If you are enjoying the giddy sensation of your brain spinning, keep reading.

Daniel, an artist as well a connoisseur of fine food and wines, acts as a mentor to Stella. It’s questionable whether Stella realizes she is his muse — Sylvia to Daniel’s Marcello. Wandering the streets of Paris, he takes her out to restaurants and bars. Their relationship is one of flirtation, but never becomes one as intimate as in Guinevere (1999), though the Audrey Wells film took a more lacerating view of such a coupling. Daniel and Stella sleep in the same bed without sleeping with each other. Upon the description of this May-August romance, Daniel is surprisingly more sympathetic because Stella is never a victim and clearly has the upper hand here. Any advance made by him is either encouraged or vetoed. Director Melnick makes no judgment calls here, but I wish that Daniel had been scorched at least once. His feelings toward her are genuine, so why not challenge him?

He is utterly infatuated with her. The first two minutes of the film simply watches Stella sleeping in the morning light. Great concentration is made to the movement of her feathery collar as she inhales and exhales. Somehow, this does not feel perverse; it is a form of adoration in the sweetest sense. Known to savor the strong tartness of an olive, Daniel commits a silent declaration when he slides an olive into his pants pocket. More obvious is the shot of his jean-clad crotch after he has asked (read: directs) Stella to climb up three flights of stairs to ask her something. He admits to her that he has had sex with a number of women, including prostitutes. Stella claims to having had just a few lovers, but we suspect otherwise, considering how flirtatious and often she runs into other men she knew way back when. Sometimes she is cruel while feigning tactfulness. Being too close to Daniel’s perspective, his jealousy is infectious.

The subtext of sex and longing is sprinkled into their conversations. When playing with the word “genuflect”, Daniel suggests that it means going down on your knees. When he says that, is it merely as a form of prayer or is the suggestion of oral sex (on his part — meaning he wants to do the performing on her)? In a way, oral sex is a form of prayer in of itself. Pray or Prey? One waits while one waits for the other. It’s hard to say which body part of Stella’s in particular Daniel would worship. Perhaps like Marvell, Daniel would spend a hundred years on the eyes. Following the wistful proposition in To his Coy Mistress, it is a pity that living two hundred years is impossible. They play with words. Eventually, the “gen” of “Genuflect” turns to the French translation of Eric Rohmer’s Claire’s Knee (1970), Le Genou de Claire. That tangent of film recommendation was by Daniel, of course.

Back in London, Daniel confides in his male collaborators including Leon (Alex Claus) and Hank (Huck Melnick, who wears garish pink hats throughout). Like all friends who give advice on romance, they encourage him at first and then change their tune to “plenty of fish” after a week or two of inaction. Many times Daniel is told the obvious: giving your heart completely to a twenty-three-year-old is foolish. At one point during a round of Daniel’s rumination, a superimposition of him searching his irritated eye for a contact lenses is enlarged and examined in excruciating detail. Walking under a tunnel one night, Daniel finds the gumption to tell Stella about how amazing the universe is to have created her: “You literally make me see the world differently.” Her response to this isn’t encouraging. In a moment of weakness, while Daniel is walking a close friend and her child through a park, she sees his need, gives him a kiss, then a hug, and bids him good-bye. Looking into his eyes watching the mother and child go off, we remember that the path not taken always stings. Perhaps Daniel should meet up with Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) from Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer and exchange horror stories over coffee, but I don’t think Tom would go for it.

What makes Herman’s work so engrossing is his sincerity and honesty. There’s little doubt that this story comes from personal experience. His heart is wandering, searching for answers and he doesn’t care how vulnerable that makes him look on screen and in our minds. Herman and Neil make their characters credible by being free of vanity and making their rapport feel natural. The characters are so smart and witty that I wished their conversations were extended like My Dinner with Andre (1981). Sometimes it’s like a falling under a warm spell. The best scene is when they ponder about the difference between “room temperature” and “body temperature” over red wine and pheasant. Just as the record playing Mozart’s Church Sonata no. 8 ends, the subject switches to work. It’s no accident that when Daniel’s heart breaks, Stella moves her head aside and we see a large microphone on the top-right corner of the screen.

Melnick is greatly influenced here by the Dogma Movement, a manifesto founded by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg in the mid-1990s to achieve what they considered to be “pure cinema”. They insisted on rules such as filming with hand-held cameras only on location using only sound at the time of shooting. Forget about using filters! Within the confines of this style, the thin-skinned presentation is at best authentic and at worst unpolished. It doesn’t mesh well with my tastes. I consider the works of Michael Powell, François Truffaut, Patrice Leconte and Alfred Hitchcock, to name a few, as pure cinema. Though I prefer current independent films to be presented with more lustre and care like the ones by David Gordon Green (George Washington, 2000) and Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, 1999). Digital camcorders are a godsend for talented filmmakers who want to realize their visions outside of a studio. How good the final result is depends on treating camera less like a cocktail shaker. So far, Agnès Varda’s The Beaches of Agnès is the best shot film this year that uses digital camcorders.

However, Hardly Bear to Look at You comes fairly close to the best example of Dogma Movies (and also its first) set by the Danish film The Celebration (1998), a dark comedy of manners directed by Thomas Vinterberg. That film used its obstructions to discover exciting liberations in film language. There are quite a few times when Melnick does exactly that. There is a momentous shot that takes us from looking out a window over a snowy Parisian cityscape over to Daniel and Stella sitting in bed that is so quick that it’s like we’re peeling back the still frames like the pages of a book. Thankfully, we are safely distanced from the pretentious excesses of Harmonie Korine — I haven’t seen Mister Lonely (2007) yet, and I hope to like a Harmonie Korine film one day.

What I admire most is how upfront Melnick is with his jittery digital camera, bare production work and abrupt edits. Differing hues in a succession of shots hold continuity in contempt. Occasional spurts of half-heard conversations propel us to more substantial scenes. Sometimes the abruptness of the edits works and sometimes they are distracting. You can either handle it or not. There is no middle ground. It may skirt a little close to gimmickry, but Melnick should be commended as a calculating risk-taker. This is deliberate considering how much more graceful Melnick’s camera is in his short The Yacht. Most importantly, a purpose is behind this style. Like Herman’s story, there are no illusions of hipness and irony. Hardly Bear to Look at You is reminiscent of the work by Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise, 1994) and Jean-Luc Goddard (Pierrot Le Fou, 1965).

It isn’t safe to assume how close both Herman and Neil really are to Daniel and Stella’s relationship. How close are these alter egos to the performers off-screen? There is no doubt that their professional relationship is genuinely depicted here. The devices of Dogma are used to peer into the thirsty heart of an artist who earnestly believes that Stella (or Neil?) is his last chance at true love. To cope with his heartbreak, Daniel employs his art to tell this story. The reflections of the artist and the medium constantly remind us that we are watching a movie. Not in the sense that the artifice of the film is transparent, but that it exists as a film in a film. You can almost sense the celluloid racing through the projector is slowly peeling back to examine its backside.

We can always hear overlays of dialogue being inserted in shots, which is forgivable here, but a few times the use of natural location sound makes it difficult to hear what the characters are saying. For instance, the last few words of advice by Leon as he walks down the street are drowned out by traffic. One scene set in a real restaurant with a loud crowd, I found myself straining to hear Daniel and Stella’s dialogue. That’s too bad because it might have been interesting. I wished that Melnick had cheated those few times by committing a Dogma-No-No: dubbing their voices and controlling background noise. It’s amazing how naturalistic Ramin Bahrani (Chop Shop, 2008 and Goodbye Solo, 2009) makes his environments sound, yet he attains it by labouring in a sound studio.

Hardly Bear to Look at You is as playful as its title. It could have followed after “I Can”, but that personified directive is too afraid to peek outside. A smash cut from Daniel’s bereaved face to a yellow lemon growing outside is a coy simile met by sourness. Shots preparing the shoot of My Yacht (2006) at the Cannes Film Festival are cleverly integrated in the film. They showcase Stella in the role of Laura who dances on a large motorized petal dressed as a ballerina doll with a large, spinning key attached to her back. It takes Daniel some time to realize how this casting has ultimately imagined his object of desire into something as crude and lifeless as a toy. Stella claims that Audrey Hepburn is her role model, but she could have easily had said it was Mariel Hemingway. Perhaps Melnick and Herman felt that the game would have been given away too quick if either Daniel or Stella had cited Manhattan (1979). After all, Woody Allen has been playing in their backyard for the past few years.

Because the story resists a conventional conclusion and flirts with being a little open ended, we remain more invested than in most romantic comedies. The script is not on autopilot. The characters are so odd and liberated that anything could happen. While watching, the relationship seems doomed, but these people are a strange and funny lot. If Stella has no plans to make with Daniel, why is she still hanging around him? Daniel’s devastation possesses the spirit of Timothy Spall’s line of dialogue in Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing (2002): “I feel like a tree that’s got no water!” In one shot late at night, we linger on another man and woman making out against a building as Stella and Daniel walk right by. Over the last few minutes, when the film circles around itself in a whirling blend of its narrative and medium, ask yourself who is ultimately at the controls. If it’s not Melnick inside, is it Daniel? Stella? Both? More? Or is it just us?

You can watch The Yacht (29 mins.) here.

“Hardly Bear to Look at You” Trailer

Note: The watercolour paintings in Daniel’s apartment are by Tony Rothon.

Film Still from “It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

“Keep Ted Turner and his goddamned Crayolas away from my movies.”
— Orson Welles

Vandalized Black-and-White Films (141)

20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
30 Seconds over Tokyo (1944) (Turner Colorized Classic)
36 Hours (1965) (Turner Colorized Classic)
The Absent-Minded Professor (1961)
An Ache in Every Stake (1941)
Across the Pacific (1942) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Action in the North Atlantic (1943) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Africa Screams (1949)
Air Force (1943) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Babes in Toyland (1934)
Baby Burlesks (1931)
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
Back to Bataan (1945)
Bataan (1943) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Beer Barrel Polecats (1946)
Beyond Tomorrow (1940)
The Big Steal (1949)
Blue Steel (1934)
Bride of the Monster (1956)
Brideless Groom (1947)
Bright Eyes (1934)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Calling All Curs (1939)
Captain January (1936)
Captain Blood (1935)
Carnival of Souls (1962) (Legend Films)
Casablanca (1942) (Turner Colorized Classic)
The Chimp (1932)
A Christmas Carol (AKA Scrooge) (1951)
A Chump at Oxford (1940)
Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)
County Hospital (1932)
Dementia 13 (1963)
The Devil-Doll (1936)
Disorder in the Court (1936)
Dopey Dicks (1950)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)
The Fighting 69th (1940) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Fort Apache (1948)
Flying Tigers (1942)
Gaslight (1944)
The Giant Gila Monster (1959)
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)
The Great Rupert (1950)
Gunga Din (1939)
Helpmates (1932)
High Noon (1952)
High Sierra (1941)
Holiday Inn (1942) (Legend Films)
House on Haunted Hill (1959) (Legend Films)
I’ll Never Heil Again (1941)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
3 Versions:
1986 (Hal Roach Studios)
1989 (Republic Pictures)
2007 (Legend Films)
The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)
Jailhouse Rock (1957)
How I Unleashed World War II(1970)
The Killer Shrews (1959)
King Kong (1933)
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
The Last of the Mohicans (1936)
The Little Colonel (1935)
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
The Longest Day (1962)
The Lucky Texan (1934)
Malice in the Palace (1949)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Mark of Zorro (1940)
The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
Men in Black (1934)
Mighty Joe Young (1949)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Missile to the Moon (1958)
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Movie Movie (1978)
Mughal-E-Azam (The Greatest of the Mughals) (1960)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) (Turner Colorized Classic)
The Music Box (1932)
My Man Godfrey (1936)
Naya Daur (1957)
A Night at the Opera (1935)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
3 Versions:
1986 (Hal Roach Studios)
1997 (Anchor Bay Entertainment)
2004 (Legend Films and Off Color Films)
Ninotchka (1939)
No Census, No Feeling (1940)
Objective Burma (1945)
Only “Old Men” Are Going to Battle (1973)
(Grading Dimension Pictures)
The Outlaw (1943)
Phantom from Space (1953)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
The Phantom Planet (1961)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) (Legend Films)
Playing the Ponies (1937)
Pop Goes the Easel (1935)
Porky’s Railroad (1937)
Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Punch Drunks (1934)
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1932)
Reefer Madness (1936) (Legend Films)
Rio Grande (1950)
Room Service (1938)
Sagebrush Trail (1933)
Sands of Iwo Jima (1950)
San Francisco (1936)
Santa Fe Trail (1940)
Sami Swoi (1967)
The Sea Hawk (1940)
Sergeant York (1941) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973)
She (1935)
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1935)
Sing a Song of Six Pants (1947)
The Sitter Downers (1937)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
The Son of Kong (1933)
Stand Up and Cheer! (1934)
Susannah of the Mounties (1939)
Suspicion (1941)
Swing Parade of (1946 (1946)
Swiss Miss (1938)
Terror by Night (1946)
The Roaring Twenties (1939)
They Were Expendable (1945)
The Thing from Another World (AKA The Thing) (1951)
Things to Come (1936)
Topper (1937) (Hal Roach Studios)
Topper Returns (1938) (Hal Roach Studios)
The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Treasure Island (1934)
Violent is the Word for Curly (1938)
Waterloo Bridge (1940)
Way Out West (1937)
White Heat (1949)
White Zombie (1932)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
You Nazty Spy! (1940)
Your Cheatin’ Heart (1964)

Moon (dir. Duncan Jones)
Goodbye Solo (dir. Ramin Bahrani)
(500) Days of Summer (dir. Marc Webb)
Nightwatching (dir. Peter Greenaway)
The Hurt Locker (dir. Kathryn Bigelow)
Coraline (dir. Henry Selick)
Gomorrah (dir. Matteo Garrone)
Polytechnique (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
Revanche (dir. Götz Spielmann)
Up (dir. Pete Docter and Bob Peterson)
Tokyo Sonata (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Knowing (dir. Alex Proyas)
O’ Horten (dir. Bent Hamer)
Lymelife (As Seen at the TIFF 2008, dir. Derick Martini)
Drag Me To Hell (dir. Sam Raimi)
Watchmen (dir. Zack Snyder)

Renowned actress Natasha Richardson passed away this afternoon in Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Last Monday, she suffered a head injury in a skiing accident that took place at Quebec’s Mont Tremblant ski resort. She is survived by her husband Liam Neeson and their two children Michael and Daniel. After learning about the accident, Neeson left the set in Toronto filming Atom Egoyan’s Chloe (also starring Julianne Moore) to be with his wife. She was hospitalized Tuesday in Montreal’s Sacré-Coeur hospital and was flown privately to New York. Natasha was also joined in the hospital by her children, her sister Joely and their mother, Vanessa Redgrave. Her father, Tony Richardson died in 1991.

Natasha Richardson was a generous and talented woman from England. Trained at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, Richardson performed in a number of films, but was more committed to the stage. After starring in Gothic (1986) as Mary Shelly, director Paul Schrader cast her first major role in Patty Hearst (1988) as the title character who in 1974 was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and joined her captors’ cause. Richardson earned The London Evening Standard Award for Best Actress of 1990 for her performances in Volker Schlöndorff’s A Handmaid’s Tale and Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers.

In 1994, she met and later married Liam Neeson on the set of Nell, starring Jodie Foster and directed by Michael Apted (The Up Documentaries). She was also awarded Best Actress at the 1994 Karlovy Vary Festival for her work in John Irvin’s Widow’s Peak.

I initially saw Richardson in The Parent Trap (1998, a remake of the 1961 original) playing Elizabeth James, the lovely mother to the twin sisters. The movie is a blur, but I did remember that she made quite an impression. In that same year, she won Broadway’s 1998 Tony Award as Best Actress (Musical) for a revival of Cabaret.

The most recent films starring Richardson were Ethan Hawke’s Chelsea Walls (2001), David Mackenzie’s Asylum (2005), James Ivory’s The White Countess (2005) and Lajos Koltai’s Evening (2007). Her last film was Nick Moore’s Wild Child (2008). This December she was set to play Miss Julie on Broadway for The Roundabout Theatre. The production directed by David Leveaux is also starring Phillip Seymore Hoffman. I’m sorry for the loss Natasha Richardson has left in her family and her audience.

Jean from August Strindberg’s Miss Julie:

“Do you know how people in high life look from the under world? No … of course you don’t. They look like hawks and eagles whose backs one seldom sees, for they soar up above.”

Pinocchio (2-Disc 70th Anniversary Platinum Edition) (1940)

Pinocchio is arguably the best animated feature film that Walt Disney Studios initially released. This beautifully rendered animation directed by Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton S. Luske makes my heart go out to the immortal two-dimensional format. It’s true that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) directed by David Hand was a revolutionary pioneer of animated features, but Pinocchio easily trumps Snow White as a compelling narrative.

About the video quality on Blu-Ray, David Boulet from dvdfile.com writes:

With Pinocchio, every brush-stroke, the rich texture conveyed by the surface of the canvas or paper, the consistency of the watercolor wash, or the density of the pastel chalk, is all displayed with dazzling purity. The effect is like being absorbed into a moving picture full of life and infused with the spirit of the artisans that crafted it together. Such nuance, which was obscured by the added artifacts of multi-generation film-print production for its original audience now breathes a new life of clarity for high definition viewers today. I can’t complain. I don’t think that Walt or his artists would either.

The DVD has a number of extras including documentaries, deleted scenes, and an indispensable audio commentary by Leonard Maltin, Eric Goldberg and J.B. Kaufman.

What do I think is the best animated feature to come out of Disney? It is the only one to be nominated for the Academy Awards’ Best Picture: Beauty and the Beast (1990) Back when I was too young to attend more mature fare and movie tickets were sold at $4.75, my wonderful sister Michelle took me to see it fifteen times. I have never seen a single movie in a theater more than that since.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

In all of its glory, Synecdoche, New York was my favorite film of 2008. In the DVD included featurette Infectious Diseases in Cattle: Bloggers’ Round Table, I participated in a discussion about the merits of Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut with Karina Longworth  (SpoutBlog), Walter Chaw (Film Freak Central), Andrew Grant (Like Anna Karina’s Sweater), and Glenn Kenney (Some Came Running). I was very fortunate to be in this company. If you want to engage with some of the best in professional film criticism, look to these four class acts.

A special thank you to producer Caddie Hastings (The Grossmyth Company).

Let the Right One In (2008)

Let the Right One In should be the set standard for all filmmakers wanting to make a horror film. So many first timers think horror equals easy. The result — shelves beyond shelves of junk. If only the quality of the genre were as intimidating and enriching as this. My only qualm is outside of Tomas Alfredson’s excellent production: the proposed American remark by Matt Reeves, which could never match the original here. Again, nothing could.

The DVD includes fascinating scenes on the cutting room floor — I wish that the Eli & Oskar Interior Scene was kept in the feature — and an informative featurette that is over much too soon. However, if you don’t wish to be exposed to the technicalities that made the swimming pool scene possible, avoid that feature. Those with a healthy appetite for the filmmaking process are going to eat this up. I also love the holographic cover here. Subtle and creepy. The designer who labeled the disc with only Eli’s silhouette deserves a cigar.

The only drawback on the DVD is on Magnet’s and Magnolia Picture’s part: The subtitles on the DVD are different from those originally from the theatrical cut by Ingrid Eng. Worse, the changes have dumbed down the dialogue. For those of you who haven’t bought this movie yet, wait until a new line has put the correct “Theatrical” version on the market. Unfortunately, I am displeased that Magnet has no plans to set up an exchange system for those who bought the initially flawed DVD without warning. It shows a lack of respect for their customers.

Editor and DVD commentator Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits reports:

In other news today, you might recall that we recently reviewed Magnet’s Let the Right One In on Blu-ray Disc. Well, it’s just come to our attention that the DVD and Blu-ray versions have English subtitles that differ substantially from those of the theatrical art house presentation, in that much of the subtle nuance has been lost and many original lines of dialogue are untranslated entirely. Unfortunately, having only seen the film once in theaters, I wasn’t familiar enough with the translation to spot the differences. But Icons of Fright has posted some examples of just how different the subtitles are. We contacted Magnet directly on this issue this afternoon, and they were quick to respond as follows:

“We’ve been made aware that there are several fans that don’t like the version of the subtitles on the DVD/BR. We had an alternate translation that we went with. Obviously a lot of fans thought we should have stuck with the original theatrical version. We are listening to the fans feedback, and going forward we will be manufacturing the discs with the subtitles from the theatrical version.”

We asked Magnet some follow-up questions, specifically how people will be able to identify the new discs, when they’ll be available in stores and if there will be an exchange program for those who have the existing version. Here’s what they said:

“There are no exchanges. We are going to make an alternate version available however. For those that wish to purchase a version with the theatrical subtitles, it will be called out in the tech specs box at the back/bottom of the package where it will list SUBTITLES: ENGLISH (Theatrical), SPANISH.”

The no exchange thing is going to upset many that have already purchased the disc, and understandably so. We’re at least encouraged to see that the title is being corrected. We’ll let you know when the discs are available, and rest assured we’re letting Magnet know that an exchange program might be a wise idea…

Milk (2008)

Of the selected nominees for the Academy Award Best Picture, Milk is the strongest film that resonates after repeat viewing. Watching it again today, I was moved as much as I was on my first viewing. If Mickey Rourke’s work in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler (2008) had to be passed up, I’m glad Sean Penn got it for his amazing transformation into Harvey Milk. That’s exactly what it was — a transformation. In regards to Gus Van Sant, Milk is a close second to my favorite of the director’s filmography, To Die For (1995).

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

This picture is just wrong. Now people are going to think Happy-Go-Lucky is a romance. Happy-Go-Lucky is more than that, as is any film by Mike Leigh. From the perspective of schoolteacher Poppy Cross, finding love would be wonderful. But if there isn’t any love to find today, then surely there’s something else to be happy about. Not many films are that truthful.

For the DVD cover, this is a variation I whipped up of the illustrated poster of Happy-Go-Lucky would have been much better.

Alas, we live a world where ContentFilm took one of the best poster designs I’ve seen and did THAT to the DVD cover art of James Marsh’s The King (2006):

On the director’s commentary, Marsh complained that one of ContentFilm’s producers thought the good poster “belonged in an art museum, not in a video store.” This is the mentality that marginalizes the worth of cinema.

And don’t get me started about how the last two minutes of Bob Dylan’s song Cold Irons Bound over the end credits were cut out of the DVD. My two viewings of The King in theatres continued the haunting Dylan song after the credits had ended and the last two minutes of it played over a black screen. It was chilling and wonderful. Then some pipsqueak decided to fade out the song and stop The King as the end credits finished. Now you know why the theatrical cut on the IMDB is listed at 105 minutes whereas the DVD’s running time is 103 minutes. Oddly enough, the Tartan Video DVD release in the UK clocks in at 105 minutes supposedly.

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

What sold me here was how Kym, played by Anne Hathaway, blends in with a room full of recovering drug users. What makes Johnathan Demme’s demanding film Rachel Getting Married so rewarding is that Kym and her sister Rachel both have compelling reasons to be tended to by their loved ones these few days together. Kym has been to hell and back fighting her addiction and guilt. Rachel has been the “good one” and dammit this is her day! Rosemary DeWitt deserves as much credit as Anne Hathaway. They both complement one another as the most realized sisters I’ve seen since Nicole Holofcener’s Lovely and Amazing (2001). The dishwasher scene remains one of my favorites of 2008 because it is at once so exciting and then… I don’t want to ruin it for you.

A Grimm Girl Enters A Grim World…

When I say “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, what is the first name that comes to mind? Tim Burton. Burton invokes visions of dark whimsy, and promises tours into a world that is distinctly his own. From the visual style and original story based on Burton’s illustrated book to his entire filmography coined a word that solely attributes to the artist and his world — Burtonesque. Hell, his name is in the title: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. It takes a few more synapses in the brain to remember that Henry Selick was the film’s director. Selick made Jack Skellington come to life. Even the association of Burton as a producer blurs Selick’s accomplishment for his 1996 film James and the Giant Peach, based on the Roald Dahl novel. Finally, Burton is absent working on his adaptation of Alice in Wonderland due 2010. Selick is all alone here with the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Hugo Award winning novel.

Coraline is Selick’s baby.

11-year-old Coraline (Dakota Fanning) is an intelligent, waifish girl with dyed ink-blue hair. She has a bright, funky wardrobe including a loud, yellow raincoat and striped stockings. To her, the thought of attending a private school where she’d have to wear a grey uniform like everybody else is like opening her skull and smearing mud on her brains. Some may consider Coraline to be a little snot. She had my sympathies the second her face turned into a sour sneer. I could relate. I was easily peeved as a kid, and viewed authority skeptically. Most of my childhood felt like I was holding my breath, waiting for the smog to clear. I enjoyed my own pursuits, and had little interest in being “a good sport” about constantly being IT in games of Tag, among other childhood indignities. What gets Coraline through the day are her explorations outside on overcast afternoons, decorating with vibrant colours, and missing her friends after moving from Michigan into the deep woodlands.

Her precociousness clashes against the few eccentric denizens living in the rented levels of the Pink Palace Apartments. Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), a blue-skinned, potbellied Russian vaudevillian trains mice for his small circus on the top floor. In the basement, one stout Miss Spink (Jennifer Saunders) and one very buxom Miss Forcible (Dawn French) are retired acrobats whose personalities might remind those Pushing Daisies fans of The Darling Mermaid Darlings. The designs of these two old crones were likely inspired by the characters Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker in Selick’s James and the Giant Peach (1996). The two provide Coraline with handy tea-leaf readings and decades-old sweets. The odd boy next door named Wyborn (Robert Bailey Jr.) – “Why were you born?” – is a motor-mouth whose steady steam of chatter rivals his own dirt bike. The poor kid’s awkwardness is amplified by his hunchback and skewed head. Unfortunately for him, Coraline isn’t a very empathetic person — a universal trait shared amongst most children. He just gets on her nerves.

Coraline’s pale and harried parents are forever consumed by their laptops as they collaborate together on a gardening book…in separate rooms. The constant dismissal of their daughter’s pleas for attention provide little reprieve from her lumbering exploration of the grounds. Baggy-eyed Mother (Teri Hatcher) wears a neck brace and wears her daughter’s expectations out even more: “Dad cooks, I clean, and you stay out of the way!” Father (Mole-Man Expert John Hodgman), a gangly, laid back man contorts his head and long neck like a painful L while hunched over his monitor, hammering at the keyboard.

Frustrated by the dank malaise of her surroundings, Coraline happens upon a small door resembling the one in Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland and the Charlie Kaufman penned Being John Malkovich (1999). Once inside, she is lured into a vibrant portal seen only by her. At the opposite end is a mirrored version of her world right behind her shoulder that appears to be much improved upon. Here the gloom is exchanged with eye-popping magic. The garden outside miraculously sprouts with beautifully alien vegetation and flowers. Her neighbors are younger and mind-blowingly talented. The food is scrumptious. The house is spotless. Coraline encounters her substitute parents who introduce themselves as her “Other” Mother and Father. They are infectiously upbeat, generous, and fun. You can tell by their sunny smiles and the black buttons sewn into their eyes.

Night after night, Coraline visits this bizarro world and is seduced by her Other Mother’s gifts and attention. “Everything’s right in this world.” One of the “fixes” in this world is that the Other Wybie cannot speak. This revelation should chill your spine. Coraline is immediately pleased, but later asks the Other Wybie if it hurt. A smaller observation not commented on is just as troublesome: the Other Wybie doesn’t eat his cotton candy. Following the implacable nightmare logic of a genuine Grimm fairytale, Coraline gradually realizes with mounting horror what sinister truths lie behind the happy curtain. “They say even the proudest spirit can be broken…with love.”

The tension heightens through the cheerful deposition of the villains, which is more difficult to accomplish than discovering menace in very dark places. The brighter the picture, the darker the negative. This is reminiscent of the ominous tone in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and The Twilight Zone episode Number Twelve Looks Just Like You by Rod Serling. Good, sparse dialogue like “We don’t remember our names” hammers the nail in the heart swiftly.

Coraline, well-played by Fanning, is a fascinating heroine to root for because she feels so relatable and human. Had I watched this film as a kid, I would have had a crush on Coraline. It is a joy to behold her personality and tastes because she confirms how frustrating it feels to be a kid. She is divorced from the thousand carbon copies of kid characters foisted onto us by conservative adults as merely “good examples”. There comes a point when smart, empathetic kids have learned all the obvious lessons from the How to Lead a Good Life Manual such as looking both ways before crossing the street and understanding the damning consequences of emotional and physical hurt. After they have graduated this (otherwise known as Kindergarten) and left behind the narrow-minded, the bigoted, the crippling literate, the half-wits, and the sociopaths who ruin everything for the rest of us, their minds thirst for the wit of Mark Twain, the irony of Roald Dahl, and the dark fanaticism of Neil Gaiman.

Teri Hatcher does her best work playing Coraline’s Mother and her Other Mother. Her performance is so subtle in the way she doesn’t change her voice intrinsically, but changes the inflection to create two very different and specific personalities. We believe there are two different characters. Like Madam Mim, the Other Mother loves games. Notice how Coraline’s mother is consistently true to herself throughout, just because she is low-key doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her daughter any less. Less sophisticated filmmakers would have been insultingly obvious and made Mom smother Coraline with kisses and tearfully beg her forgiveness for not understanding her. Thank goodness she doesn’t.

The designs of the character models are sharper and more diagonal than the occasionally rounded renderings. Shane Prigmore, Shannon Tindle, Damon Bard are among the number of character designers whose invaluable contributions to Coraline are showcased by the dependably drawn.ca in their blogs The Art of Coraline. Also worth examination are the blogs The Coraline Production Art by Chris Turnham and The Marketing of Coraline.

The costume design of the Other Mother is ingeniously creepy, the outline behind her dress resembles the backside of a wasp’s tail. As her demeanor worsens, her physique transforms into that of an arachnid. Also, the attire of the “other” aged acrobatic sisters is very cheeky. The outlining of the characters faces, even the pointy shape of Coraline and her Mother’s nose are somehow endearing. The facial expressions are a joy to behold. The utterly eerie main title sequence — in the same tradition of David Fincher’s groundbreaking sequence in Se7en with the making of John Doe’s many exhausted notebooks — showing us the reformation of the Caroline doll aptly named “Little Me” owes a hand to the Brothers Quay. One shot makes the doll’s stuffing look like moldy guts. When Coraline hits DVD, the freeze frame button is going to be exhausted.

The Hallucinatory Hospital Scene in Julie Taymor’s Frida by the Brothers Quay | Music by Elliot Goldenthal

The Main Title Sequence of David Fincher’s Se7en.

The fluid stop-motion animation has a delightfully herky-jerky quality when characters and objects move slowly. Look at the way Coraline squints as she looks into the blue and violet velvety portal for the first time. You can practically count the frames of film as her eyelids move. Watch how a hundred keys appear to scuttle when they are jerked forward by the opening of the drawer they are in. Even the bouncing circus mice look as though they are duplicating when they jump in the center ring. These moments feel more deliberate by the craft of human hands, rather than having the sleek and shine of a CGI effect suck the soul out of them.

My problem with the animation of Corpse Bride (2005), directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, is that the slick perfection of its stop-motion made it look as though it was rendered on a computer. The little nicks of Coraline’s animation feel truly tactile. It twitches with the deliberate movements of a housefly. Selick and his animators are having a blast exploiting the tricks of the human eye, and the result is far more impressive. I look at Coraline and believe the sets and dolls were built, then meticulously photographed. The end credit sequence resembles the singular character interactions of the floating bunnies in Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, also released in 2005.

The sophisticated tracking of the camera along the beautifully designed small-scaled sets makes the feature feel more cinematic — particularly an early shot of the camera tilting from behind and then above a rock overlooking Caroline playing “water-winch” in the woods. It’s amazing how the production design of the expansive forest and stark hills looks as though there is actually more beyond the horizon. Occasionally, skeletal hand-shaped clouds crawl across the moon. The swirling background of a child’s desolate hell, inside a warped closet and no doors, is inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. Another nice touch is the “Shakespeare Festival” banner hanging in the town square.

The creepy music by French composer Bruno Coulais is worthy of note here. My favourite of Coulais’ past work is for Microcosmos: Le Peuple de L’herbe (1996), a documentary about insects (Lyrics: “Open Your Eyes Before You Die.”). Highlighting the harp and strings score is The Children’s Choir of Nice, whose voices manage to chill and tickle the bones. A ghostly voice belonging to the composer singing “dreaming…” on the soundtrack is particularly unnerving. Coulais playfully suggests that something wicked this way comes…closer. Listen for the subtle organ when the “other” parents put Coraline to bed. Certain instruments are reserved for specific characters, for instance Mr. Bobinsky is heavy with horns. The tracks “It Was Fantastic” and “Ghost Children” on the soundtrack best convey the film’s enveloping gloomy despair.

“Microcosmos” (1996) | Music by Bruno Coulais

Coraline is a rite of passage for kids coming of age to appreciate more extreme fare. All of the best films for children and adults alike are the ones willing to unsettle and even scare the kiddie-winks. Pinocchio (1940) is infamous for the frightening scene where the boys are transformed into donkeys, not to mention that hideous grin of The Coachman. The Great Mouse Detective (1986) has Ratagan’s lackey Fidget, a cackling bat with fangs, jump out of the shadows. In Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2002), I was really disturbed by the sight of Chihiro’s parents having transformed into heavy, unintelligible hogs with chewed food dripping down their chins. That’s one of the reasons why I adore that film so much. The Disney masterpiece Beauty and the Beast (1991) has the menacing Beast hidden in darkness, silently stalking Maurice who had entered the haunted castle in a desperate bid for shelter from the storm.

The colour restoration of the Beauty and the Beast DVD was unwisely brightened so the Beast’s features can be made out in the dark shadow. In order to correct the picture of Beauty and the Beast, I advise you to turn down the brightness of your television screen to make the Beast’s piercing blue eyes the only things you can see against the blackened figure. When Belle requests that the Beast come into the light, he should emerge from black shadows for a greater dramatic effect.

Is Coraline too intense for kids? Yes — just wait until you see what’s left of the “Other” Wybie! — but that shouldn’t stop them from seeing it. As a kid, the alarming experiences at the movies were more compelling than the fare deemed safer. Darker children’s films that initially frightened me would still command my attention and I would keep them just as close to my heart as I grew up. It is better to be scared than bored. Upon my second viewing of Coraline, I saw the matinée showing with a young mother and her four-year-old daughter. I occasionally observed the little girl’s reaction during the scary moments and guess what, she was leaning over the edge of her seat, fascinated. The only time she jumped was when the witch was hungrily reaching for Coraline. I think she’s going to treasure this film as she grows up.

Make no mistake, Coraline may well be the first mainstream animated horror film – but it’s a real horror film of substance! It’s a shame that it has taken this long. Hopefully the first R-rated animated horror film is at the outset. I share Brad Bird’s complaint that animation is considered by many as a genre unto itself and walled off from transcending other genres like Drama and Horror. Animation doesn’t just belong to the kids. Only the naïve and the inattentive think otherwise. Animation is a medium that can explore as far (maybe farther than) live-action can. It is a train, not a destination.

Coraline is closer in spirit and tone with the Oscar-nominated, five-minute 1991 classic The Sandman, directed by Paul Berry. While peering tensely at an innocent little boy trying to sleep, a cruel creature commits an act as God made nature “bloody in tooth and nail”. Keep in mind that the kids have to be fed at the end of the day. It is very disturbing and, consequently, one of my favorites.

Paul Berry’s “The Sandman” (1991)

For the past couple of years, the month of February has adapted a trend of releasing one great surprise amongst a mediocre batch of movies. These surprises achieve staying power, the films themselves range from near-to-complete masterpieces that were high up on my list of the best that given year. 2007, it was David Fincher’s Zodiac, an ingenious police investigation of the allusive San Francisco serial killer. In 2008, it was Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, a darkly comic drama about people who kill for a living. Though it isn’t as perfect as those last two; this year, it is Coraline.

“Coraline” Trailer

Before becoming the next best thing to the likes of film composer Danny Elfman, Shirley Walker made her mark as a conductor for a few renowned films such as Randa Haine’s Children of a Lesser God (1986) and Jonathan Kaplan’s The Accused (1988). Her greatness was matched by the production of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) as her first gig in Hollywood. On the Internet Movie Database, Walker is listed as a synthesizer musician in the film’s music department. The original music credit goes to its director (listed as Francis Coppola) and his father Carmine Coppola. Coppola’s wife, Eleanor, was too busy documenting its production with stunning material that would later become Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), written and directed by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper who also made the wonderful film, The Man From Elysian Fields (2001). Like Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982) and its accompanying documentary Burden of Dreams (1982), Hearts of Darkness presents the production as harrowing an experience as Apocalypse Now.

2008 was a year to be a fan of Batman; not only did The Dark Knight raise the bar of action pictures involving anti-heroes, but after over a dozen years of waiting, some of the exemplary score from Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995) was finally released on commercially sold CDs. This first volume is an accumulation of music by head composer Shirley Walker and collaborations by the equally good musicians Lolita Aitmanis and Michael McCuistion. Yes, I bought one of the three-thousand limited releases and it has a place of honor in my office. I investigated Shirley Walker’s 1979 case after reading this excerpt from the collectible booklet included with the soundtrack:

In the 1970′s, Walker began scoring industrial films and jingles while continuing to play as apianist with a variety of orchestras. With one of the Bay’s hotbeds of creativity being Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope Studios, Walker’s notoriety would see her join the musical team of the writer-director’s Apocalypse Now in 1979. Her synth playing was a major factor in helping Coppola’s father Carmine realize Apocalypse Now‘s acid rock groove, and Walker would re-team with Carmine that same year for The Black Stallion, charging to the rescue with additional music for the Coppola-produced family classic.

-Daniel Schweiger, a soundtrack editor for iFmagazine.com and Venice Magazine.

Exhibit A:

“You’re in the asshole of the world, Captain!”

My favorite twenty seconds of Apocalypse Now‘s entirety is comprised from 2:59 to 3:19 in the following Do Long Bridge sequence. Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) and his acid-tripping soldier Lance B. Johnson (Sam Bottoms) march across the wire-protruding, burnt-black terrain erupting with explosions of hellfire. From the center of a shooting post, descending lines of light bulbs stretch beyond the inky background and toward the frame panning horizontally to the right. Accompanying the commands, screams and growls on the soundtrack, the surrealistic music kicks in and drowns out the noise, effectively smothering it. The best way to describe the music would be like a carnival pavilion vomiting bile and severed elephant parts. If I died and heard this music, then I will know that I am really in Heaven. I love this music!

Exhibit B:

At this point of The Clock King episode, Batman is locked in a bank vault rigged to suck all of the oxygen from the room. Nearly unconscious, Batman’s point-of-view reveals a digital read-out box from a distance going in and out of focus as opposed to the steel door of the vault. Starting at 4:21 of episode track (not included on the CD…the next one, maybe?), listen for blaring synthesizers from 4:26 to 4:31. Sound familiar? The achieved effect of those nauseous sounds is identical to those used for the Apocalypse Now track. My conclusion is that Shirley Walker is directly responsible for why I regard that scene of Coppola’s film so highly.

Listening to those inspired, sinister tracks from Batman: The Animated Series always brings me back to my childhood. Where else has a theme for Batgirl (4:22 – 5:11) sounded so celebratory, bouncy, rousing and yet threatening? Okay, that is the music I want to hear before those illusory golden gates open before me. What other music makes the Joker (1:43 – 2:35) sound like a balance between lunacy and satanic hedonism? I refer to this soundtrack release as Volume One because there is a big demand for the rest out of the sixty-five episodes of the series. I want to listen to a pure orchestrate of virginal tracks from episodes ranging from Read My Lips, Mudslide, and Shadow of the Bat to House of Garden, Harlequinade, and BabyDoll. Oh, and I haven’t forgotten about the music from The New Batman Adventures (1997-1999), like Over The Edge, Growing Pains, and Mad Love. Surely, about a dozen more volumes isn’t out of the question. So far the first release is an excellent start on part of its producers to do justice to the late, great Shirley Walker.

UPDATE: April 2, 2009

Turns out it was Carlos Rodriguez who did The Clock King score. He was one of the invaluable composers along with Michael McCuistion and Lolita Ritmanis who worked with Shirley Walker as their mentor on the series. All three composers have each contributed music for a few whole episodes of their own. In Rodriguez’s case, they include Day of the Samurai, Avatar, The Clock King, Robin’s Rechoning Part I, and If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich? featuring the Riddler. You can listen to all of his isolated tracks, which Rodriguez was kind enough to load on his MySpace page. The four seconds of music that compelled me to write this article can be heard in between 4:26 – 4:30.

FYI: The minute-and-half of Batmobile music is from I’ve Got Batman in My Basement, which has a bad rep being the one time Batman needs saving from the Penguin by a couple of kids! For me, the episode is redeemable. The Penguin at one point drives a whirling slicer towards Batman’s face… when he’s comatose. “Ah! A treat with my egg! Sliced ham!” Yikes! And in front of the children no less.

When was the last time you saw a cartoon where the kids are in more danger and sky was a dark gray? We’ve seen countless shows like Johnny Quest where the kids play war and the sky is always a bright blue. At best, I’ve Got Batman in My Basement has a dark atmosphere aided by another fine Shirley Walker score. Walker was so good she could make a light premise sound much more menacing.

Memories: The Batman Promo for “The Clock King” (1992)

A Punishing Character Drama

One of the most painful moments in The Wrestler is when the doctor explains to Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke) after his heart attack that he must not exert himself. The aging, muscular man is devastated and cries out, “Doc! I’m a professional wrestler!” The key word there is professional. He takes it seriously. It defines him. Being stripped of his identity, Randy feels worthless. He has never thought about the long term. His lost years of celebrity, drug use and promiscuity left him devoid of anyone who really care about him. Now, Randy is finally going to feel the emotional punishment he has spent his life numbing by punishing himself in the ring.

Why do I love Randy “The Ram” Robinson? Because after sleeping in the back of his van, he has the good spirit to humour the kids knocking outside his window with some horseplay. Because he is a good sport when he choreographs a wrestling match involving a staple gun being used on him. Because he really does love Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), that sweet woman who works at the strip joint he often frequents. Because he is a good sport when he choreographs having a staple gun used on him during a match. Because when Randy picks out a jacket with the letter “S” for his justifiably resentful daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), he really thinks she’ll like it. Because Randy hates himself for screwing up the good things that come his way. I can’t hate a man who already hates himself so much.

Mickey Rourke plays this character as if he atoning for sins for which he cannot forgive himself. Watch how Rourke has Randy force himself to smile and not cry when Cassidy swills the rest of her beer down. Sizing up Rourke, Marisa Tomei as Cassidy stomachs so much pain here, whether she exposes her body and is passed over by customers or how she just can’t bear to watch Randy punish himself. Back in 2005, Rourke played a brutish lug named Marv in the comic-adaptation of Sin City. That character’s dialogue and scarred face were the stuff of pulp. Marv is an extension to Randy, a very sad avenger who nurses romantic fantasies. The closest Marv gets to a confession is when he confides his trouble with love. “I couldn’t even buy a woman… the way I look.” Mickey cut a big slab of himself off that meaty character and named him “The Ram”.

Rourke found his match with director Darren Aronofsky who has overseen some searingly painful depictions of human agony in films like Pi (1998) and Requiem for a Dream (2000). Here Aronofsky tones down his trademark visual kinetics and opts for a down-ground documentary aesthetic. The scene where Randy gets treated for each injury and we double back to the previous fight to see how he got it is a gutsy stroke of genius. We aren’t denied the groan-inducing flaws that have endured Randy, which have left him with no one to care for him. How ironic for such a great showman. The wrestling matches have been planned ahead, right down to the concealed razor blade Randy uses on himself to really bleed for his cheering audience.

The Wrestler is well photographed by Maryse Alberti whose camera finds interesting angles like that establishing shot outside the supermarket with a parking lot lamp at the right side that looks too close for comfort. The camera work is mostly hands-on, deprived of luxuries like tripods and cranes, we become ingrained in the sluggish velocity of Randy’s days. The wavering framing of Randy leaving the hospital in long shot is the most prominent example here. As a loving tribute, from the finger-smudged photographs to the retro font of the main title sequence expressing vintage 1980s sensibilities when Randy was in his prime. So long ago and impossible to let go off. Like gripped razor wire, it is embedded into flesh for good.

I am drawn to movies about people living close on the edge. As the song says, suicide is painless, but Randy isn’t afraid of all that pain. The Wrestler is a demanding and devastating experience.

“The Wrestler” Trailer

If I chose the nominees, none of that would have happened. Permit me to unlock this web page with the key of film obsession. Beyond it is another dimension- a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of liberties. You’re moving into a space of both shadow and substance, of crimes and misdemeanors. You’ve just crossed over into . . . the Beaubien Zone. In here, I am the sole voter of the 81st Annual Academy Awards. To make it more interesting, I will not recognize any of the existing nominees from that thing we’ll call reality, as much as it pains me to see the Best Supporting Actor category without the Michael Shannon nomination. Not only is the challenge more enticing, but it also works as a collection of those deserving – some even more – who were snubbed. Now this would have been a far more entertaining Oscar Night!

Best Picture

Synecdoche, New York (2008): Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Sidney Kimmel
In Bruges (2008): Graham Broadbent, Peter Czernin
The Dark Knight (2008): Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven, Emma Thomas
Revolutionary Road (2008): Bobby Cohen, Sam Mendes, Scott Rudin
Let the Right One In (2008): Carl Molinder, John Nordling
Special Mention: Wendy and Lucy (2008): Larry Fessenden, Neil Kopp, Anish Savjani

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Philip Seymour Hoffman for Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Brendon Gleeson for In Bruges (2008)
François Cluzet for Ne Le Dis à Personne (Tell No One) (2008)
Lee Pace for The Fall (2008)
Michael Shannon for Shotgun Stories (2008)

I was very tempted to also nominate Philippe Petit from Man on Wire for Best Actor. True, he is just playing himself, then again, he is always performing. Plus he does his own stunts!

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Kristen Scott Thomas for Il y a Longtemps Que Je T’Aime (I’ve Loved You So Long) (2008)
Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road (2008)
Inés Efron for XXY (2008)
Lina Leandersson for Let the Right One In (2008)
Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
Special Mention: Michelle Williams for Wendy and Lucy (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

Eddie Marsen for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
Bill Irwin for Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Aaron Eckhart for The Dark Knight (2008)
Wally Dalton for Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Ralph Finnes for In Bruges (2008)

We were spoiled by last year’s Oscar telecast. It didn’t feel that way at the time, but after going through the slough of nominations deemed safe by the Academy of Motion Pictures, a year where No Country For Old Men (2007) took home the big kahuna is looking more lustrous. Amidst the categories is a rigid formula of regularity that just strengthens my conspiracy that the Oscar voters are in cahoots with The Sandman. Some of nominees are deserving, but many of them have been preordained by the death of a thousand cuts that film pundits call Oscar Buzz.

Mind you, I’m writing this with a little tongue in cheek. If the few deserving nominees were absent from the categories, it would be disappointing despite how much news preordained the suspense out like a strangled balloon. Looking at the Best Actor nominees alone, four out of five great choices is not bad. Other categories are not as kind. This is the first out of two think-pieces about the 81st Annual Academy Award Nominations.

Best Picture

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008): Ceán Chaffin, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall
Frost|Nixon (2008): Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Eric Fellner
Milk (2008): Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks (they won for American Beauty in 1999)
The Reader (2008): Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Donna Gigliotti, Redmond Morris
Slumdog Millionaire (2008): Christian Colson

Out of all the nominees, my favorite is this year’s dark horse: Milk.

The wasp in the honeycomb hairdo this year is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. If those films represented a hand of cards in a poker game, then I would have dropped Benjamin Button faster than you can ask “Why in Hollywood is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button nominated for Best Picture?“

This year we lost two wonderful filmmakers who were also two of the four producers nominated for The Reader: Anthony Minghella (The Talented Mr. Ripley, 1999) and Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, 1982).

Taken as a whole, the best films released in 2008 tasted just as sweet as those in 2007 did. Looking at only the titles There Will Be Blood (dir. P.T. Anderson, 2007) and Synecdoche, New York (dir. Charlie Kaufman, 2008), I would be immensely cheered at the state of American cinema. However, there were a number of films scattered and tucked away in corners of the film distribution that saw almost 650 films released in 2008. My impression is that at least twenty to thirty films of a given year should be of great quality. Within those hundreds of films released, it is a pity that so few are wonderful. Still, who can quibble about a year where Charlie Kaufman, Christopher Nolan, Hsiao-hsien Hou, Mike Leigh, Kelly Reichardt, and some triumphant newcomers such as Lucí­a Puenzo and John McDonagh performed so well from either the open or the outset?

I saw a number of films that made their way to Vancouver. There are a few lingering titles that might have been included on this list if I saw them such as Steve McQueen’s Hunger, and Pere Portabella’s The Silence Before Bach. I missed those films shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival that year. My excuse was being bedridden with a cold; I missed out on so much that week. Unfortunately, Portabella refuses to release his film through circuits outside the mercy of unreliable theatrical distributions, which I am taking personally.

Making a list of the best films of the year generally affords the critic an opportunity to collect preferred films as an artist would apply to a collage. Which titles that carry particular visuals and ideas are arranged by the same intellectual deliberation crossed with the finesse of emotional intuition a painter applies a brushstroke. These recommendations could be read as a chef’s deliberate, however liberal feeling, succession of entrées like: starting with Potage à la Tortue, then Quail in Puff Pastry Shell with Foie Gras and Truffle Sauce, following by Cheese and Fresh Fruit, and finally Baba au Rhum avec les Figues — the prize to the movie I am referencing is the prize itself.

The films themselves are so different from one another — not including the given works of formulistic hacks — that measuring a film about a vampire versus a film about a hermaphrodite often appears as a defeatist’s approach. I look at this as a collection of films that made a lasting impression on me, and not as a system of rank. Just because Gus Van Sant’s Milk or Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married didn’t make the top ten does not mean I think any less of them. I love them dearly.

Without further ado, here are the movies that made me sit up a little straighter than usual this year.

1. Synecdoche, New York

No other film this year has given me so much to think about after each of my four viewings. Every time it ends, I swear that my heart skips a beat. While avidly discussing this film, I said that if I had one week to live then I would have to watch Synecdoche, New York one more time. My praise for a film rarely takes such an extremist stand, but the sentiment reflects what a profound work that would make the absolving into oblivion a little more comforting. Roger Ebert holds the incomparable Ingmar Berman film Cries and Whispers (1972) as one of his lights against the darkness: “I feel profoundly grateful to my life, which gives me so much.” My feelings for Synecdoche, New York match this very spirit.

Synecdoche, New York, a darkly comic, absurdist Rubic’s Cube puzzle of a film about human consciousness, yearnings, foils and disillusionment. Philip Seymore Hoffman played Caden Cotard, a theatre director and self-appointed analyst of the human condition. His studies are performed on productions of stage versus life, including his own verbatim. Haunted by the inescapable postulation of death, he is wrung out by an onslaught of ailments, cruel reminders of eventual decay (“I don’t feel well.”). Doomed romances and a fleeting timeline endanger Caden’s well-being and creativity.

The scope of his latest theatrical production outmatches what he is humanly capable of delivering. The set is so ridiculously large that it could only function as an artist’s idea of Heaven. In denial, Caden is trying to coach himself to good health as though his artistic search for truth will cure him. Or at least make him a little happier. Perhaps his success as an artist would have insured his longevity, a rebuke against having to die. The conclusions he faces are that dreams and desires fleshed out must soon rot away. Fifty years ago, Marcello Mastroianni could have assumed the role of Caden Cotard.

At the time I wrote my original review, I listed very provocative and unique films out of reflex and love. Having some distance to analyze my choices, I found certain similarities between Synecdoche, New York and the following: Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies, 2000 (its apocalyptism), Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, (its terrifying interpretation of what God (re: Caden the Director) might ask one to prove their faith), Bill Forsyth’s Housekeeping, 1987 (its sweetly-haunted look into the unknown against conventional norms) and Robert Altman’s Three Women (its switching of characters’ minds). Hell, even Peter Greenaway’s near-masterpiece A Zed and Two Noughts (its obsession with twinship and decay).

In times where compelling female roles are scarcely encouraged in Hollywood, Synecdoche, New York displays an intimidating showcase of accomplished actresses: Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Hope Davis, Michelle Williams, Diane Wiest and Jennifer Jason Leigh. They all succeed at making immediate impressions of their own.

This film offers so much invention, such as the house that is always on fire, but never burns down; don’t we all afford a lifestyle that isn’t good for us? One of the many extravagantly surreal and poignant scenes married so deftly is where Caden burrows deeper and deeper into the recesses of his ever-expanding, breathing metropolis sound stage. Within the enormity of the world, we retreat into the structures made possible by our imaginations.

The achieved layers of its story structure and comprehensibility are matched by the mind-expanding creations manifested from the ambitious and rewarding directorial debut by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004). A polarized reaction from critics didn’t encourage an auspicious turnabout this film deserved from audiences and the Academy. Synecdoche, New York will certainly gain a cult following when more people discover this masterpiece on DVD.

2. In Bruges

In Bruges started a trend following David Fincher’s Zodiac in 2007 that at least one movie released in February was going to be a masterpiece. In New York, I remember not being impressed by the vulgar trailer shown before There Will Be Blood (2007), which was my favorite film of that year. After hearing good word of mouth, I took a chance and was floored by the debut of writer-director John McDonagh. What surprised me most about this gutsy film was how elegant it was thanks to poignant soundtrack by Carter Burwell and the script’s contemplative pacing.

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson played two Irish assassins briefly banished to the purgatory on Earth: Bruges, Belgium. While keeping a low profile and doing some sightseeing, the two men have a crisis of conscious after a botched job that leads them into more trouble. The two struggle with their sense of selves, and reveal surprising pathos that their occupation would not allude to. I have more affection for flawed people who try so hard to play the hand they’re dealt with.

The film steers us fearlessly into very politically incorrect comedy (“They’re filming midgets!”) and maintains its devastating drama about guilt, loyalty and ethics. McDonagh achieves the sadist placement for embracing the film’s gallows humor and still recognizing its consequential tragedies. It is one thing to cross the line of good taste, but it is more difficult to be smart about it without apology. Farrell and Gleeson are assigned tough roles and accomplish them with great wit, pain and compassion.

The real villain of the piece is Harry Waters (played with gusto by Ralph Fiennes) who appears in the last third of the film. Carrying himself like a tall, satanic figure, Harry is fascinating as he reveals deep complications about himself and a warped sense of justice. One of the film’s highlights is a virtuoso five-minute take of Ken talking on the phone with Harry. Brendon Gleeson could afford a country with the double-take he makes after telling Harry, “He said, ‘I feel like I’m in a dream’”. The scene starts out funny (“That don’t mean he’s gone. Go check outside the door.”) and gracefully changes into something much dire.

The film is populated with actors who compliment this “fairytale place” including Clémence Poésy, Jordon Prendict, Jérémie Renier (from Le Enfant, 2005 — not to be confused with Jeremy Renner), Thekla Reuten, and Ciarán Hinds. This daring, uncompromised drama is at once plausible, and fantastical. These characters are forced into making hard choices and unthinkable actions and each of their personalities are carefully considered. Besides Synecdoche, New York, In Bruges was also the only film I saw four times in theatres. If I was asked what my favorite film of 2008 was, I would first warn in advance that I wasn’t carrying a bottle.

3. The Dark Knight

Last summer, waiting for this brainy blockbuster for me brought back memories of Christmas morning. Miraculously, the quality of the latest Batman film exceeded its hype and shamed its predecessors. Some have called it The Godfather (1971) to movies based on comic-book superheroes: At the point of the film’s running time it takes for Michael Corleone to bump off the Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey at the Louis Italian-American Restaurant, The Joker’s escape from the MCU is set in motion: “You have nothing to threaten me with!” The Dark Knight was the most stimulating and thought-provoking big-budget picture Hollywood has produced since Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003).

Christopher Nolan’s brilliant tour-de-force employed its graphic novel-influenced archetypes into a a dark Shakespearean tragedy. The exhilarating action scenes were motivated by characters that seemed more real and tangible than ever. It also helps that this story revolves around adults. Each member of the ensemble cast, including Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, et al. were given just enough screen time to do their roles justice. I still feel Aaron Eckhart deserves more credit for his work as District Attorney Harvey Dent, but the shadow that Heath Ledger casts here is so dark that it swallows the rest all up.

Batman is wily and almost as diabolical as The Joker: By appointing Dent as Gotham’s new protector, Batman could have finally folded his cape and cowl, and then woo Rachel back from Dent. “You know that day you once told me about when Gotham would no longer need Batman — it’s coming.” Two-Face would have appreciated the duality of that scheme. Consider the way Batman at one point says chillingly, “Beautiful, isn’t it?” as he presents a new gadget that surveys every citizen in Gotham. It is Lucious Fox, played by Morgan Freeman, who holds grave misgivings as the voice of reason against criminal acts cloaked in the well meaning vigilance of an extremist.

Here, the Joker’s heroes must have been Henri Poincaré and Stanley Milgram. The joy of Heath Ledger’s performance is the way he seems to take a second to think of what he’s going to say next and then make it sound more twisted. The Joker uses words like live insects being pushed into your ears. The only ones who use perfunctory cliché to communicate are the cops (ie. “Have a nice trip, see you next fall.” and “Lock and load”) The toothy criminal also dispenses some sound wisdom: “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” He is a great manipulator who can lie with a straight grin when he asks, “Do I look like a guy with a plan?” The way things have been working in The Joker’s favor, he’s a mastermind who would rival Nostradamus. The only one-on-one scene he has with Harvey Two-Face is deliciously wicked. It was like eating a bloody sirloin dipped in battery acid.

The ending of The Dark Knight was genuinely moving; finally leaving me with a deeper appreciation and impression of what Batman really stands for — a truly lonely crusader. I haven’t seen these characters portrayed so justly since becoming a fervent admirer of Batman: The Animated Series in my youth (Question: Who here has spotted the Paul Dini reference in the above paragraph?). This film was like a tonic. At one point, The Joker proves what a great compliment Batman and he are together. “We’re destined to do this forever.” If only!

4. Let the Right One In

Let the Right One In is a vampire movie that is as sophisticated and thoughtful a horror film as you are likely to find. This film, like so few can, redeems the horror genre. It joins the ranks of great vampire films like Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987), both the 1922 (dir. F.W. Murnau) and 1979 (dir. Werner Herzog) versions of Nosferatu, and its cunning companion Shadow of the Vampire (2000) by E. Elias Merhige. Let the Right One In is the real thing. Here, vampires burn when touched by sunlight — they do not sparkle.

New to the neighborhood, Eli encounters Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) one night and she grows protective of him. They form a fragile friendship that could also be described as deathless. They are both tortured souls. Eli (Lina Leandersson) is a young vampire who looks like a girl, but should check out the Lucïa Puenzo film listed below. Poor Oskar is cruelly tortured by school bullies and seems destined in the opinion of others to grow up dysfunctional. Eli encourages him to fight back. This tale of revenge is tackled in shades of gray — very dark grays — that makes its moralistic point-of-view more compelling than usual. In a scene where Oskar does fight back, observe how it acknowledges the gruesomeness of his action and its sobering victory.

Director Tomas Alfredson takes this material seriously. The characters are fleshed out and they respond to a variety of supernatural events as real people would. The richly adapted screenplay by John Ajvide Lindquist was based on his book. Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema is an asset using carefully planned single takes where the compositions are accomplished and essential.

There is no reason to wait for American version in 2010 because the original cannot be improved upon.

5. Man on Wire

The only complaint I have about this victorious documentary was outside of the filmmaker’s control. Why (Oh why!) didn’t anyone bring a film camera up to the roof of the World Trade Center on the morning of August 7, 1974? A wonderful fool (and I mean that in the best way because I love him) named Philippe Petit had dedicated his life to art of walking on a wire. Petit is a little wicked, but not mean, because how else can I approach a mind that envisions a tightrope between the two towers before they are even built! I wished there were more generous madcaps like Petit out there. I am aware there are Jackass shows out there, yet they lack the romanticism. Petit would die for his greatest stunt. He even admits that his death was eminent that morning. Perhaps the man is not of this world; he survives on oxytocin, never mind oxygen for his Elevation intake.

While cheering on Petit and his band of rogues from France as they infiltrate the top of the heavily guarded Twin Towers, the thought of a much more innocent time is captured. These ingenious criminals’ goal is to entertain and inspire the less adventurous to dream, or at least be in awe. Throughout Philippe Petit’s death-defying exploits, I could hear the faraway voice of Peter Falk reminding me, “He doesn’t fall off the Sydney Harbour Bridge at this time…”.

Leading up to the vertigo-inducing wire walk, white-knuckle suspense can still be felt even as Petit, older and agile, fills us in on the details (“Hide and seek!”). Perhaps it works the way we cringe at the memory of a personal disaster averted just in time; for example, I always freeze when I remember how I nearly knocked over (and saved) a six-thousand dollar painting one of my teachers had on display.

Apart from the stunningly realized black-and-white recreations and captured footage married so well together by director James Marsh, Man on Wire has an intimidating score by J. Ralph and poignant tracks by Pascal Rogé. Yes, My Dinner with Andre (1981) fans, that is the 3 Gymnopédies: Gymnopédie No. 1 that accompanied Wally on his taxi ride. That’s not all. This film is packed with music from the locomotive, baroque film scores of Michael Nyman! The first time I saw Man on Wire, I swore that that could not be Fish Beach from Drowning by Numbers (1988) playing, and Reader, it was.

Included on the DVD, the 2005 animated short The Man Who Walked between the Towers depicts Petit more soundly to a fanciful figure in a fairy tale as opposed to a mortal man of flesh and blood performing acts that would petrify others. To this day, no one has ever walked across a wire above 1,368 feet from the ground.

6. Happy-Go-Lucky

What a lovely film this is. Sally Hawkings gives a winning performance as an elementary schoolteacher named Poppy, a character so unique, witty and complex. Our good luck that this is a character-driven piece. Poppy is so lively that where she goes (re: where she takes the story) is always compelling. Happy-Go-Lucky is a great comedy because it is a deeper and unafraid of acknowledging the scary complications life is ripe with. The driving lesson scenes, for example, involving Scott (Eddie Marsen), an irate instructor and a perfect foil to goodhearted Poppy, alternate between hilarity and suspense. Sally Hawkings and Eddie Marsen are brilliant together, even when the reality of such personalities will lead to later scenes that are sad, even inevitable.

The love British director Mike Leigh has for Poppy is so obvious. Just look at the scene where Poppy gets her back fixed in a chiropractor’s office. She wears only her jewelry, underwear and fishnet stockings. There is nothing lewd about it. She is so comfortable that she cracks jokes and laughs. It is a beautiful moment. I felt refreshed watching this film. Mike Leigh gives shape and exercises his cinematic aesthetics to display his performers excellently on the screen. Using his theatrical sensibilities, after all the rehearsals, he is still a filmmaker throughout the rest of the day.

7. XXY

XXY was a very frank and mature story about a teenage hermaphrodite named Alex. Inés Efron deserves praise for bringing strength and vulnerability to her androgynous character’s body and soul. Because Alex’s puberty is just about over, she has to make a choice which hormone will dominate, and adapt her body to it. Man or Woman? Imagine having the choice of deciding which gender you’ll be for the rest of your life. Then again, being teenager is hard enough as it is.

Set in Uruguay, Alex is protected by her parents on a reserved beach front where the wood is painted turquioise, black shadows and white sand are the dominate textures. Bringing new meaning to that hoary cliché, “I was never the same after that summer”, Alex forms a bond with a teenage boy named Alvaro (Martí­n Piroyansky) accompanied by his visiting family who don’t know about Alex’s secret. The relationship between the teens is one of the most sincere and significant that I have seen in film.

Argentine director Lucí­a Puenzo takes these characters through very troubled waters and manages to maintain sensitivity in scenes most audiences will consider shocking. XXY is the first feature film to break the taboo of portraying hermaphrodites. Puenzo said “I was surprised to see there are almost no stories on this subject, there’s a strange cultural silence over it.” Her screenplay was based on the short story Cinismo by Sergio Bizzio.

Kraken (Ricardo Darí­­n), the father of Alex, is attentive, protective and loving toward his child. Usually, the father in such a story is unreasonable and prejudiced because it is a reliable source of conflict. Here, that prejudice is reserved for another father figure in the story. One of the strongest scenes shows Kraken confronting an adult man who used to be a hermaphrodite. They sit in the kitchen, and Kraken listens with great care and openness. Here is a good man who exercises tolerance with astonishing grace. It is very touching when he remembers his first thought when he first saw Alex when he/she was a baby.

I was worried by the misinformation of Amazon and other retail sites citing that the Region 1 DVD of XXY is presented in a pan-and-scan full-frame format. The careful compositions by cinematographer Natasha Braier in its original 1.85 : 1 widescreen aspect ratio deserve better than that. Film Movement, the American distributor of XXY contacted me back and confirmed,”XXY is in widescreen.” Class act.

8. Milk

A brave pioneer like Harvey Milk, the first gay politician to be elected in an American state in the late 1970s, deserves as astonishing an account as Milk. Sean Penn in the title role was so unserved in his warmth that it was a revelation for the long-proven thespian. Actors James Franco, Emile Hirsch), Allison Pill and Diego Luna were uniformly excellent. In a film rich with romance and comedy, the story of Harvey Milk was grim and alarming as he fought for gay rights when homosexuals were routinely murdered on the sidewalk, even in San Francisco. Milk’s great heart was set against those horrible injustices, which resonates just as much with today’s continuing battle with Prop 8 versus Prop 6 thirty years ago. Some progress has been made thanks to Milk, but there is still a long way to go before it gets better.

Has it really been twenty years since Gus Van Sant made Drugstore Cowboy (1989)? The exhilarating filmmaking by Van Sant here is born from a heedless energy and abandon more suited to a youthful talent. One of the best visuals I saw this year involved the close-up of a disposed whistle that reflected a murder scene. The element that brought great dread was the aforementioned assassination of Milk by his confrontational political colleague Dan White (played well by Josh Brolin). The build-up to this reminded me of a similar one in one of my favorite films Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio (1988) that was written and starred the incomparable Eric Bogosian. Some footage from the Rob Epstein documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) was wisely, though seldom, used with the recreated scenes that achieved genuine emotion. Between this and Standard Operating Procedure, composer Danny Elfman has had a really good year.

9. The Fall

In one of the most grand gestures a filmmaker can do, visionary writer-director Tarsem put all of his finances toward a film of his that big studios were too timid to touch. The men behind the big desks just couldn’t fathom marketing a movie involving the dreams of a six-year-old. The Fall deserves placement along with another one-of-a-kind titled Playtime (1967), which broke the bank of its director Jacques Tati. I tend to root for filmmakers who strive for a personal vision all their own. The ones who don’t compromise their own needs. Filmmakers like Tarsem possess a romanticism that make their work invigorating. Otherwise, it is so boring to watch a film made by people who depend solely on “audience expectations”.

Lee Pace (Pushing Daisies) plays Roy Walker, a crippled movie stuntman turned suicidal because he has exhausted all of his love for an undeserving woman and has nothing left for himself. Wallowing in his hospital bed, a coy little girl with a broken arm named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) befriends him. Roy enjoys her company and seizes his next suicide attempt by persuading her for “medicine” in exchange for telling her a story about “The Masked Bandit”. Alexandria’s imagination illuminates and embellishes a fantastical landscape as extraordinary as the one in the Guillermo del Toro masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).

The drama centers on these two personalities torn over a make-belief world and sense of self. Their outlook on life is like a feud between the creator and his listener. While exploring the depths and beauty of their human imagination, the reality is dire because Alexandria, so innocent she can’t fully comprehend, that she is trying to save Roy. Roy is truly tragic if he can dream so well and still hate himself. Drowning in depressing, Roy is willing to shatter a vulnerable, little girl to his misanthropic vision by killing her heroes.

Here is one of the most heartbreaking exchanges between the two.

“Why are you killing everyone?”
“It’s my story!”
“It’s my story too…”

Using ingenious scheduling, Tarsem filmed the illusory landscapes in over two dozen countries in South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The use of his special effects afforded me the opportunity to write about The Authenticity of Light™ in my original review. Also welcome is the use of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, II. Allegretto. The Main Title Sequence is especially memorable. Four years in the making, The Fall stands out as a bold victory in the alter of cinema for its generous artistry.

10. Wendy and Lucy

Wendy and Lucy is a story of a Girl-and-her-Dog where sentiment is guarded and hard-earned. Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain, 2005) is almost unrecognizable here as runaway Wendy who is stuck in a desolate town in Oregon on her way to Alaska. Her dog Lucy is her best friend and the last remnant that connects her with some semblance of her old life. Writer and director Kelly Reichardt ruthlessly shows how an otherwise “worthy” member of society (she has a car) can be stripped to the bone of an unmarked drifter by one bad break too many. Accompanied by an award-worthy score by Will Oldham, Wendy and Lucy is a touchstone of the head-above-water American Independent Film Movement.

11. Tell No One

While skinny-dipping one night, Alexandre Beck (François Cluzet) chases his wife, Margot (Marie-Josée Croze) across the dock and is knocked unconscious. He wakes up in a hospital and is informed that Margot was murdered. Eight years later, Alexandre is still coping with his loss. It hasn’t been proven, but authorities still consider him their prime suspect. Then one day, Alexandre receives an e-mail… from Margot. I’ll stop right here because you deserve to see this one cold.

Here is a movie made with the discipline of a great film noir from the 1940’s; Out of the Past (1947) comes to mind. The premise would have appealed to Alfred Hitchcock who most favoured The Innocent Man Wrongly Accused theme. The whole plot entangles together with such a lean, ferocious finesse by writer-director Guillaume Canet based on the Harlan Coben novel. Like a knife, the story twists and turns using ingenuity that borders on diabolical. Worthy of David Mamet’s best work (ex. House of Games, 1987), the many revelations are handled with the deftness of a magician.

I haven’t seen an action-thriller this smart and riveting since Andrew Davis’ The Fugitive (1993). One of the highlights of this production is an extended foot chase on a freeway. The film is peopled with class acts like Kristin Scott Thomas, André Dussollier, Marina Hands, Jean Rochefort, François Berlé and, and Olivier Marchal. Mikaela Fisher is a stand out as a henchwoman with the endurance of the Terminator. By the end, no loose ends are hanging. It is bewildering to have followed a plot that is so tight that the screenplay must have been strangled nearly to death.

Incredibly, Tell No One took almost two years to be released in North America since its premiere at the French Film Festival. I agree that what happens in this movie should be kept a secret, but that is getting ridiculous. The best review of this exceptional thriller for those who have not seen it yet consist of three words: See it now.

A Dozen Special Mentions:

1. Revolutionary Road (dir. Sam Mendes)
2. Chop Shop (dir. Ramin Bahrani)
3. The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky)
4. The Edge of Heaven (dir. Fatih Akin)
5. My Winnipeg (dir. Guy Maddin)
6. Standard Operating Procedure (dir. Errol Morris)
7. Ballast (dir. Lance Hammer)
8. Shotgun Stories (dir. Jeff Nichols)
9. Doubt (dir. John Patrick Shanley)
10. The Class (dir. Philippe Claudel)
11. Encounters at the End of the World (dir. Werner Herzog)
12. Sita Sings the Blues (dir. Nina Paley)

May 3, 2010:

2008 (revised)

Synecdoche, New York (dir. Charlie Kaufman)
In Bruges (dir. John McDonagh)
The Dark Knight (dir. Christopher Nolan)
Milk | Paranoid Park (dir. Gus Van Sant)
Man on Wire (dir. James Marsh)
The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky)
My Winnipeg (dir. Guy Maddin)
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (dir. Kurt Kuenne)
Transsiberian (dir. Brad Anderson)
Happy-Go-Lucky (dir. Mike Leigh)
Revolutionary Road (dir. Sam Mendes)
Tell No One (dir. Guillaume Canet)
XXY (dir. Lucí­a Puenzo)
The Edge of Heaven (dir. Fatih Akin)
Shotgun Stories (dir. Jeff Nichols)
A Christmas Tale (dir. Arnaud Desplechin)
Frost/Nixon (dir. Ron Howard)
The Class (dir. Philippe Claudel)
Silent Light (dir. Carlos Reygadas)
Standard Operating Procedure (dir. Errol Morris)
Chop Shop (dir. Ramin Bahrani)
Maria Larsson’s Everlasting Moments (dir. Jan Troell)
Doubt (dir. John Patrick Shanley)
Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt)
The Fall (dir. Tarsem)
Rachel Getting Married (dir. Jonathan Demme)
Ballast (dir. Lance Hammer)
Encounters at the End of the World (dir. Werner Herzog)
The Secret of the Grain (aka Couscous) (dir. Abdellatif Kechiche)
Wall•E (dir. Andrew Stanton)
Sita Sings the Blues (dir. Nina Paley)
The Visitor (dir. Thomas McCarthy)
Trouble the Water (dir. Carl Deal and Tia Lessin)
Che (dir. Steven Sodenbergh)
Kung-Fu Panda (dir. Mark Osborne and John Stevenson)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (dir. Mark Herman)
Frozen River (dir. Courtney Hunt)
I’ve Loved You So Long (dir. Philippe Claudel)
Burn After Reading (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
W. (dir. Oliver Stone)
Iron Man (dir. Jon Favreau)
Definitely, Maybe (dir. Adam Brooks)
Elegy (dir. Isabel Coixet)
Lakeview Terrace (dir. Neil Labute)
Gran Torino | Changeling (dir. Clint Eastwood)
Redbelt (dir. David Mamet)
Tropic Thunder (dir. Ben Stiller)
Slumdog Millionaire (dir. Danny Boyle)
Waltz with Bashir (dir. Ari Folman)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (dir. Woody Allen)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (dir. Nicholas Stoller)
The Flight of the Red Balloon (dir. Hsiao-hsien Hou)
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (dir. Marina Zenovich)
Henry Poole Is Here (dir. Mark Pellington)
Momma’s Man (dir. Azazel Jacobs)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (dir. Guillermo del Toro)
Shine a Light (dir. Martin Scorsese)
Zach and Miri Make a Porno (dir. Kevin Smith)
The Secret Life of Bees (dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood)
$9.99 (dir. Tatia Rosenthal)
Troubled Water (dir. Erik Poppe)
The Reader (dir. Stephen Daldry)

Vote for Harvey Milk (1930 – 1978)

The passing of Proposition 8 across the United States two weeks ago adds more urgency to the new Gus Van Sant film Milk. It is a red alarm crying out against the continued and criminal persecution of homosexuals. Denying the civil rights of an individual to legally marry a person of their choice is cruel. For decades, sanctimonious hypocrites have relentlessly imposed their prejudice on homosexuals, forcing them to live in the margins of society. Homophobia has always puzzled and irritated me. When I was seven, before I was aware of gays and lesbians, I casually wondered if there were men who loved men and women who loved women. Later I found out my musing was correct – and like looking up at the sky to see birds were flying up there — I was cheered by the prospect. As a level-headed straight man, I support and empathize with good people like Harvey Milk.

Gus Van Sant has made the most compelling biopic since Bennett Miller’s Capote (2005) – a close second is David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007) about Robert Graysmith’s obsessive investigation for an infamous serial killer. All of these films avoid the wearisome narrative trap that checks off the birth, the childhood a la Taylor Hackford’s Ray (2004). Close attention is paid to set us in this very specific time and place from 1970 to 1978 in Castro, San Francisco. For anyone unfamiliar with Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), the film reveals in its first few minutes that the man was assassinated in the late 1970s along with Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber). The film seamlessly combines documented footage from the 1970s into the staged fiction with success much like Mary Harron’s The Notorious Bettie Page (2006). Even Milk, the first openly gay man elected in government as a city supervisor, realized his imminent death was soon approaching. Late one night, he recites his memoirs on a tape recorder in his kitchen. We come back to Milk and his mike throughout his story; his words illuminate events after the fact like an angel reminiscing until he has to stop.

Forty-year-old Harvey Milk, a closeted gay man working like a cog for a corporation, was dissatisfied with his life. Upon a chance encounter on the steps of a New York subway, Milk coyly picks up a thirtyish sweet-faced hippie named Scott Smith (James Franco, very good here). The two men light up as they fall comfortably in love. It is a great pleasure to watch their warm and attentive romance – these people are happy together. Eventually they immigrate to San Francisco where they still face open hostility and are not welcomed in stores. As a Goldwater Republican, Milk becomes vocal over homosexuals’ civil rights and initially reasons that it is against the free market for businesses to refuse service to a legal consumer just because they’re gay. For years, the police have rounded up, beaten, and sometimes murdered homosexuals for being seen in bars or simply strolling on sidewalks. There is an amazing visual of a blood-spotted metal whistle (gay people wore them as a precaution at night in case they were ambushed by thugs) lying on the road and its reflection shows us a dead man on a gurney being rolled away while Milk argues to no avail with a discontented cop at the site. Strange how something so incidental illustrates a bigger picture.

Milk is determined to take back the Castro neighborhood as a safe haven and work up to the nation state by state. Inside Milk’s modest camera store is substituted for his electorate office peopled with idealistic gays like Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), Anne Kronenberg (Allison Pill) and Dick Pabich (Joseph Cross) acting as Milk’s campaign staff. Scott plays the feminine role in their relationship; he vacates Harvey’s campaign staff from their apartment so he can serve his man dinner. Upon both my viewings in a movie theatre, Milk’s response after trying the spaghetti has always gotten the biggest laugh.

After Milk gets his first death threat while running for office, he glibly tells Scott that his death could win him “the sympathy vote.” One of his most vocal enemies came in the form of Anita Bryant, a wholesome-looking singer/celebrity who plugged Florida orange juice and spread hatred against the gay movement by masking it as Christian values. She even states that the Jews and Muslims are going to hell, but that doesn’t get much screen time. After years of campaigning, defeats, sacrificing, rallies and networking, Milk became the first openly gay politician to be elected into government: “Now that’s something to fear — a gay man with power!”

While Bryant’s hatemongering escalates, a sleazy conservative state legislator John Briggs (Denis O’Hare) joins her by sponsoring California Prop 6, a bill that would ban gays, lesbians and gay rights supporters from working in public schools. To discourage the threat of homosexuality by making it more socially unacceptable, Briggs argues weakly that it is to protect children from molestation. Milk (along with political activist Sally Gearhart, who is absent from the film) pops Briggs’s argument with statistics that heterosexual males are usually found out to be child molesters: “So you’re saying the state’s population is equal to the percentage of child molestation.” Then Briggs buries his case by admitting that child molestation cannot be prevented, “…so let’s cut our odds down! Let’s take out the homosexual group (5% of the state’s population) and keep the heterosexual group (95%)!” It is no surprise when they debate in Orange County, Brigg’s turf, that the audience members boo Milk’s brilliant counterattacks that turn Briggs into a sore loser. For audiences today, the battle over Prop 8 today will mirror the one over Prop 6 that took place thirty years ago.

The Mini-Musical “Prop 8″

The Greatest Unifier Is Greed

Milk sees how a segregated group of people suffer the most when hiding from public eye. One of these is of Jack Lira (Diego Luna), a Mexican American involved with Milk for a time, is so neurotically insecure in their relationship partly because his options both geographically and politically have been so limited. Lira hinges on desperation and does not have room socially to tend his own emotional well-being. Milk, alas, tries to convince Lira that he is loved.

Another strong demonstration of how claustrophobic the times were: When Milk gets a phone call one night from a sobbing young man from Minnesota considering suicide. He tells Milk that his parents want to admit him to a hospital tomorrow to “get (him) fixed.” Milk tries to convince the youth that there is nothing wrong with him, God does not hate him, and that he should get away to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, anywhere. The next establishing shot of the young man (it’s not what you’re thinking) is heartbreaking.

There is even consideration for how willing Milk himself was to come out of the closet at his age while he was encouraging younger people to do so and risk standing with their family and friends. Again, the way to fight prejudice is to familiarize homosexuality with people they know. Standing out and being recognized is the saving grace that can change ignorant prejudice to open-mindedness — or at least tolerance. “Never use the elevator!” Harvey tells Cleve on the steps of City Hall, “You make such a grand entrance by taking these stairs!”

The most fascinating case study is of Dan White (Josh Brolin), a city supervisor who gambles political standing by attempting an alliance with Milk, which is tempered by his conservative upbringing and beliefs. Milk and his staff quietly speculate that White, a husband and father, might be a closeted homosexual. White argues with Milk about the sanctity of marriage, yet gladly invites Milk to his son’s christening – later his wife questions them about how “appropriate” it is to discuss homosexuality in a church. Tense scenes of Milk versus White are usually composed with an abundance of space surrounding the two overhead within the frame. At one point over professional jealousy, White belittles Milk’s crusade as an issue. On two different levels – politically and personally – Milk fiercely tries to overturn White’s accusation as being a matter of life and death. Josh Brolin, having an excellent year with this and his riveting lead performance in Oliver Stone’s W., does a commendable job playing White as conflicted, oblivious and unsettled by his own nature. There are layers revealed of White that Brolin rightfully downplays because his character lacks introspection and the willingness to look at himself more closely.

Curious how after the main title sequence, its credits are in small, meek and sans serif font, showing documented footage of gay men in bars being harassed by photographers and policemen. One patron, hiding his face with his hand, eventually throws his drink at camera’s lens. Another shot shows policemen forcing homosexuals into the back of a paddy wagon until there is no room to move. Just as Milk is about remember the past eight years, a title card blows up the screen reading “milk” in heavy white font (either Calvert or Memphis) on black. I think the second showing of the film’s title was done to change the overall tone between Milk then and Milk NOW, larger than life.

At one point, Van Sant blows up many of Milk’s campaign posters across the screen against vibrant colour with typeset so authentic you could smell the ink off the silk-screen press. Much later, a shocking moment is shown a little more warped by a framed curved mirror imaging violence from a distance. A recent collaborator of Van Sant’s is director of photography Harris Savides (Zodiac – David Fincher, 2007 – also shot in San Francisco) who soaks the images with an immediate grainy, brightness. Van Sant takes liberties with inspired camera angles when recreating scenes in the Rob Epstein documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (1984 – it was narrated by Harvey Fierstein, a gay, gravelly-voiced actor famous for The Torch Song Trilogy, 1988) such as when Harvey triumphantly rides on top of a convertible in a parade and where Milk and Briggs debate in a school gymnasium. Even small touches like the zoom-in on Dan White’s televised political running-bid make the film feel a little younger in spirit. Milk’s later recollections over the phone to Scott of an opera called Tosca may remind viewers of the best scene in Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia (1993) where the Tom Hanks character Andrew Beckett explains his enthusiasm for his favorite Maria Callas operetta Madeleine.

In the Danny Elfman score, there are occasionally off-kilter guitar strings that provide tension against the soulful saxophones and violins (Yes, I own the soundtrack). On the track Gay Rights Now, there is a soaring, almost angry melody that makes me sit up a little straighter. When Anita Bryant is introduced, Elfman’s score sounds very much like Suzie’s Theme from To Die For (1995 – my personal favorite of all the Gus Van Sant films and one of 1990′s very best) with its loony cheer and chilly choir singers. Van Sant uses damning footage of Anita Bryant to play herself, a tactic used recently by filmmaker George Clooney with U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy in Good Night, and Good Luck (2005).

For Sean Penn, one of the most accomplished American actors working today, this is one of his most accomplished performances. Penn hasn’t been this on target since he played real-life thwarted terrorist Samuel J. Bicke, an insecure, emotionally-turbulent, divorced American salesman who attempted to hijack an airplane to crash into the White House, in Niels Mueller’s The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004). Famous for his darker, angrier roles (Tim Robbins’ stellar Dead Man Walking, 1995), this attentive and happier one is a revelation that harkens back to his sensitivity from Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown (1999). In Bicke, Penn portrayed excruciating agony within a soft, breaking shell. Here in Milk, Penn thrives with generosity, rage and joy as a rebellious spirit with the courage to uphold a watershed against bigotry. Those two roles are polar opposites, yet Penn excels at fearlessly embodying them with honesty. Like Philip Seymore Hoffman’s versatile turn as Truman Capote, Penn captures the essence of Harvey Milk without relying on an imitation of an earlier performance. Showcasing the wise casting and thoughtful performances before the end credits, archival footage presents first the actors and then their real life counterparts from the The Times of Harvey Milk, the people surrounding Milk, detailing what happened to them. With perhaps a little more stress on the voice than needed, Penn’s Milk comes scarily close to the real thing.

Funny story: After Penn kissed Franco for the first time, he called his first wife Madonna to tell her the kiss reminded him of her. What does that mean, Doctor Freud? I guess we’ll never know.

In the Epstein documentary, White was actually more intolerant of gay rights and gave speeches in that vein inside Orange County churches that the Van Sant film doesn’t show – the director just wants to keep the conflict between Milk and White at a personal level. Much of the documentary after Milk’s assassination focuses on White’s trial which was presided by a jury of White’s actual (read: white, heterosexual) peers because the court felt that inviting a homosexual into the jury box would be biased. Wait till you hear about the Twinkie Defense™! White’s recorded testimony over the day of the shooting is pathetic: “(Milk) just kind of smirked at me. ‘Too bad.’ I just got all flushed and hot and I shot him.” The jury really did weep for White and pardoned him with five years in prison for murdering two civil servants of the state. Sometimes, good things happen to bad people.

Eventually it struck me how much I missed Harvey Milk in the documentary. Van Sant keeps Milk on screen in his film for as long as he can. The limited time he uses afterward is to mourn. For a film that sounds grim and serious, Van Sant counters Milk with so much enthusiasm and comedy that his ultimate fate is even more tragic. One of the most astonishing pieces of footage is reserved near the end of the film to show how many people Milk had spoken for. You could almost hear Milk, like a phantom voice, calling aloud “My name is Harvey Milk and I am here to recruit you!” With Milk gone, he would have been seventy-eight years old today, those same people were more free to continue the revolution of making their own voices heard. They became an army of hope.

Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comment” from MSNBC Countdown

“Milk” Trailer

The Life Stages of Caden Cotard

Oh God, I feel alone. I feel so utterly alone having connected and clicked with a film that many people will reject. This being the directorial debut of the incomparable screenwriter Charlie Kaufmann: Sï-nêk’dõ-kë, Nyöo Yáwrk. For me, Synecdoche, New York is a tough sell — an unconventional film that I treasure where recommendation demands caution. It’s where I stand with Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996), Bill Forsyth’s Housekeeping (1987) and Robert Altman’s Three Women (1977). These films fly in the face of all the formulaic and commercial creeds of how a movie should work and gives pause for how many ways it could work best. A first impression might grimace, conclude “it’s weird” and close the investigation — that’s their right; however, Synecdoche, New York deserves better and an appreciative audience. The film works, not despite, but because of its extraordinary structure and function being mysterious, opaque, labyrinthine, yet emotional, accessible, and fully-formed.

What I love most about Charlie Kaufman’s exercises in the celluloid medium is how they exceed expectations throughout his most unorthodox and dizzying narratives. Throughout, there is apt teasing and suspense over where this story could go when driven by such a visionary. By the end, I feel as if he has exhausted every possibility from his premises with an attentive heart. Such as when the pitiable Craig Schwartz whose puppets of himself and Maxine, a distant female co-worker, kiss for the first time in Being John Malkovich (1999). Or when Joel Barish frantically races away from his evaporating memories with his ex-girlfriend Clementine at hand, trying to save her in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Or how about when in Adaptation (2002), New Yorker writer Susan Orlean is struck by the awesome poetry of John Laroche, a toothless orchid thief, musing about the “little dance” between wasps and orchids — “How, when you spot your flower, you can’t let anything get in your way.”

In Synecdoche, New York, our hero tries to find meaning in his very existence by resurrecting an evolving metropolis in a gigantic sound-stage where a flock of birds fly off many miles down the structure. The seminal replica of Manhattan is a theatre set for an untitled play about its director and all of the people in his life. Since the play reflects life, so the play must reflect itself like a microcosm that expands, refracts, grows and deepens. It is a comic-tragic, universal illustration of a life that tries to manage its surrounding citizens in roles (wife, daughter, mistress, 2nd wife, etc.) the participant tries to contain. Of course, everyone else is the lead in their own story, so management of the play of one’s life becomes discombobulated.

Enter the world of theatre director Caden Cotard played with great nerve and without vanity by Philip Seymore Hoffman. At age forty, he is burdened with anxiety, bad health, failed relationships, and occasionally distracted by lofty goals that feed his great ego which barely hides his low self-esteem. Like an addict, he mercilessly prods, analyzes and compresses his failures; denying himself a much wanted recovery by purging himself deeper into a sea of emotional toxin. What hurts most is that he tries so hard to preserve what little he has left. While a doctor sews stitches into his forehead after a freak accident with an exploding sink faucet, Caden sheepishly remarks, “I’d rather there not be a scar.”

Ailments arrive and roost inside him at an alarming rate. Every checkup by one doctor leads to the discovery of another problem (“My pupils don’t work.”) and the recommendation of another doctor for it. Caden’s body with its cramps, bleeding gums, oozing pustules, and strange bumps consistently fails him with a vengeance. If his body were a temple, the city council would demolish it in favor of clearing the real estate for a shiny high-rise. A man this sick cannot be happy and cannot really live. But for all his flaws and succumbs to temptations, he keeps trying.

Life at home is just as damaging. Meet Adele, his wife, a moody and exacting painter who paints on canvases so small that she and her patrons require magnifying goggles to make out the beautifully rendered figures. Her proposed all-night task of packaging her work for her Berlin exhibition is a gut-buster. Catherine Keener (again opposite Hoffman in Bennett Miller’s Capote back in 2005) makes such a strong impression as Adele with her stringy hair, a tattooed breast, and a haggard complexion verging on desperation that her absence later is deeply felt. The character is richer because Keener manages to exude compassion and comfort within what a lesser actress would make one-note and abrasive. It makes sense why these two flawed and ambitious people would have tried to make a life together with their four-year-old daughter Olive (Sadie Goldstein).

Just about everyone is sick here. Adele coughs a lot, even in voice-over when a letter by hers is read. She ignores Olive’s frightened insistence that her feces is a strange colour. Caden and Adele’s flaky, stone-faced couples counselor Dr. Madeleine Gravis, played by scene-stealer Hope Davis (American Splendor, 2003 — Is Harvey Pekar around here?) — her feet are raw with angry red and white blisters irritated by her sleek, black high stilettos — even this leggy blonde is flawed. Deliberate attention is paid to the deterioration of the human body weathered by age and disease. Vulnerably and mortality is emphasized with the perplexing passage of time; months, even years pass within minutes. Going from the bathroom on September down the stairs to the kitchen; suddenly it’s October. Where did the time go? What happened with my life? Has it really been six months? Six years! Conversations with the Cotard family feel rushed, overlapping dialogue, even precious moments with Olive feel short-lived instead of cherished. Fasten your safety belt — this film will give you whiplash.

Madeleine commits the obvious scam that all best-selling shrinks must, bringing to mind Richard Dreyfuss’ Dr. Leo Marvin in What About Bob? (1991). It doesn’t help that Adele dismisses Caden as an artist since he works with previously adapted material, while overlooking his radical realization of the play Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In an instant, Caden has lost his family abroad, romances sparks from the advances of Hazel (Samantha Morton, Morvern Callar (2002)), a 30-something buxom box-office girl to his young leading actress Claire (Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy (2008)), and Adele’s manipulative friend Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Last Exit To Brooklyn (1990)) has sensationally corrupted Olive, and Caden wins the MacArthur Genius Grant along with surmountable freedom, financial security and infinite time pursue his most ambitious work of art! Such a grant would be evidence enough to place this film in the fantasy genre.

Then Caden’s next project gets personal.

Synecdoche, New York knows what it is to be so painfully conscious, so agonizingly aware of your circumstances that you feel belittled and judged; objectivity just gives you a better view of your own bad performance. There is something creepy, an almost sickly undercurrent throughout the film. Kaufman resists explaining away the strange materializations (eg. the fire house) and warped timeline as the result of Caden’s mentally unstable reinterpretation of the world. What Kaufman is suggesting is even scarier and more immediate than placing his story in the safety zone of “it was all a dream”. Yes, every surreal and miraculous thing that is happening before us on the screen is reality. If our perception is illusory and concrete, then it is possible for the real world to be represented with the weight barren in a dream, but nightmarish in its network of logic.

Yes, Caden can be self-absorbed (Claire is the one who figures out Hazel’s situation for him) and pretentious. Just look at Hazel’s expression as she awkward sips her drink while Caden talks about his play where “we are all in the same primordial bloodstream” (I’m paraphrasing here, I’ve only seen this movie once*). Everywhere he goes, he sees himself in advertisements, and as a character in a deranged cartoon Olive is watching. From a first-person account, doesn’t everything seem to be informing us — (read: ME!) — only more directly? Caden does not always do the right thing, but he is aware of his failures and genuinely regrets his mistakes.

A flawed protagonist is required as a launching pad for those who must identify with, but not idolize the subject. This is from someone who made self-deprecation look like fun in Adaptation: “Charlie Kaufman! Fat! Bald! Repulsive! Old! Sits at a Hollywood restaurant with Valerie Thomas!” Caden finds out later that Adele “wants joyous and healthy people (in her life)” in a way that is impersonal and devastating. Only a shallow, empty vessel trying to pass as a human being could dismiss Caden’s feelings — I’m looking at you, Ben Lyons! Appearing on the gutted remains of At The Movies, Lyons smiles like a greasy used car salesman when he calls Caden “The most pathetic individual to ever exist!” Has Ben Lyons ever left his bubble?

During a lunch outside with Hazel, one of the few times Caden is serene, she feeds him lines to woo her. He enjoys taking her dictation; playing his character instead of being himself. This scene foreshadows near the end of the film where Caden takes direction by the sound of a woman’s voice. Here, too, he is also serene. Kaufman again delivers a variety of role plays, bizarre transformations and comic scenarios including bravado turns by Tom Noonan (Snow Angels, 2008) as a sad-eyed stalker who is hired to play his stalkee and Dianne Weist (Edward Scissorhands, 1990) as an actress who plays the only character Caden has never met (translation: a fictitious person) and vice versa. There is a brilliant inside joke by casting Emily Watson (Hilary and Jackie, 1998), as arresting as ever, to play Tammy — the stage version of Morton’s Hazel. One time Samantha Morton auditioned for a role and the director complimented her performance in… Hilary and Jackie. Awkward.

Double entendres sparkle throughout the crisscrossing storylines. Caden is asked at one point by Madeleine “Why did you kill yourself?” Caden asks her to repeat the question and she asks “Why would you kill yourself?” Two versions of her question refer to two instances with technically different characters in a real place and the same place set in Caden’s warehouse. This scenario is like a decoder device that can be applied to a variety of loosely connected scenes that reveal greater understanding to the characters’ pathos. Caden’s relationship with Sammy, the faux Caden, emphasizes how competing with others for the heart of another is as bad as competing with oneself. Throughout the film, Caden’s worst enemy is really himself, whereas the older he gets, the lonelier and less significant he feels.

Women surround and sometimes dominate Caden who, in a very tender scene, admits to Tammy in private that he secretly wanted to be a woman: “Maybe I’d have been good at it.” We hear a little Kaufman himself inserting sparse commentary through his characters, particularly when Claire talks about the thrill of “working with so many strong, female actresses” in a play. Caden attempts to form a bond with the flirtatious Hazel to rebound from his failed marriage (“Can you help me forget my troubles?”). In the middle of sex, Caden breaks down and tries to let Hazel down gently and then the camera focuses solely on Hazel — from Caden’s pain to hers. In fact, Hazel may be the only character who has screen time where Caden is absent.

Observe how unsentimental Kaufman is about his characters without politically correct conceits of gender; while Caden is suffering from PAS (Parental Alienation Syndrome), he psychically wrestles Marie down to the ground after being refused to see his daughter. From a sweet kid to adulthood, the case of Olive demonstrates how truthfully harsh circumstances can get for people outside the bubbled, idealistic depiction of children. Two later encounters between a much older Caden and his adult daughter are searingly painful to watch.

Coal-black social satire peels Caden’s materialistic and art-minded facade apart. In a toy store, having gotten indispensable information from Olive’s evolving diary that her favourite colour is pink, Caden purchases a large pink box with an illustration of a human nose that is titled “nose”. In the real world (re: every other movie that is not Synecdoche, New York), Caden is buying his daughter a Barbie House™. Kaufman consistently strips the layers of recognition and conventionality to expose the absurdness of everyday truisms. It is worth noting how Hazel’s answering machine never changes, which encapsulates her young self despite how the passing years have aged her. One particular phone call Caden makes to Hazel is awfully poignant.

The same twisted and delicious logic of Kaufman is on display here like the way in Adaptation, a screenwriter’s life is threatened at gunpoint by the very characters he rewrote and corrupted to make his script more commercial. For almost the past decade, Charlie Kaufmann’s scripts have turned into some of my most treasured experiences in a movie theatre. I was with Being John Malkovich every step of the way: “What happens to a man who goes down his own portal?” “We’ll see!” That directorial debut of Spike Jonze — who also played the fourth leg of a table called Three Kings that year — was a near-perfect comic-tragedy.

“Being John Malkovich” Trailer

Ministry of Information Scene from “Brazil”

The music used in the Being John Malkovich (and the WALL-E) trailer(s) is from the 1984 Terry Gilliam film Brazil; the track entitled The Office is by Michael Kamen. Come to think of it, Kaufman’s direction is rather Gilliamish AND Tatiesque (eg. Playtime, 1967). Synecdoche, New York is compacted with strange objects and idiosyncratic details — that pink Christmas present of Olive’s was not an accident — it’s memorable. The set design alone of the city spectacle with the indomitable blimp flying overhead inside the warehouse is a Terry Gilliam wet dream. The score for Synecdoche, New York by composer Jon Brion is high-strung and whimsical with occasional alien notes. There are some playful musical cues of angst near the beginning that pay homage to Brion’s edgy track Hands and Feet (instruments included xylophone, hammers and duct tape) from P.T. Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love (2002). Here We Go, a musical number by Brion for Punch Drunk Love is in the same vein as the sleepy piano ballad Little Person sung by jazz vocalist Deanna Storey. It was also written by Mr. Kaufman. What a smoky and poignant song.

“Little Person” Sung by Deanna Storey

From Little Person:
Somewhere, maybe someday,
Maybe somewhere far away,
I’ll meet a second little person,
And we’ll go out and play.

There are visual clues throughout Synecdoche, New York, one of the most crucial shows us a digital read-out of 7:44 in the beginning of the film and a brick wall with spray painted clock-hands pointing to 7:45. Life is so fleeting that it could very well pass within a minute. We can’t trust our eyes, but feelings are another matter. Again, the best way to exercise this film is to take everything at face value. Synecdoche, New York shows us that the unexamined life is not worth living, but that a life worth living means enduring a great deal of pain. Because the grim subject matter is approached with an open and searing heart and a great sense of humor, the film is not depressing. I felt exhilaration and joy over the ambition, scope and warm intentions against the dying gray light.

Caden’s greatest sin is he has taken his life for granted. Proof is constantly before him — his decaying body and his deteriorating relationships with other people. The key line of dialogue early on is “I don’t feel well” and by the end, he won’t feel anything at all. Despite the realization of Caden’s extravagant metropolis stage, which is like a director’s Heaven, living in a world where everyone is constantly looking at (and like) each other, they are forever reflecting themselves. By leaps of artistic pursuit and/or madness, Caden as well as his actors can assume the role of someone else — the irony being that they are still their own selves and there is no escape from that. For better or for worse, death is being relieved of yourself.

*After a second viewing, I confirmed that Caden actually told Hazel “We’re all in the same water. Soaking in our very menstrual blood and nocturnal emissions.”

December 24, 2008:

“Harold Pinter won the Pulitzer. No, wait — he died.”

“Synecdoche, New York” Trailer

This is the best movie poster I’ve seen for the film. It’s cool how those cursed notes on the table resemble the windows of the city.

No! This not another merger-bastardization of the Ridley Scott/James Cameron enterprise. It’s a CGI feature from Dreamworks that comes in ATOMOVISION! – correction – INTRU3D! Sigh, 3D is so overrated.

It is directed by Dreamworks devotees Rob Letterman (Shark Tale, 2004) and Conrad “Gingerbread Man” Vernon (Shrek 2, 2004).

Watching this reminds me of a Brad Bird feature that was “Bold! Dramatic! Heroic!” Let’s just hope Monsters VS Aliens isn’t another hobo suit. Another denominator is that the score sounds like a low-rent Beetlejuice score.

However, any movie that features a United States President that looks and sounds like Stephen Colbert has my vote — “Hail To The Cheese!”

Others lending their voices are Seth Rogen (Zach and Miri Make A Porno, 2008) , Paul Rudd (The Shape of Things, 2003), Hugh Laurie (House M.D. was in Spice World, 1997) and Reese Witherspoon (Freeway, 1996) as Susan the Fifty-Five Foot Woman — insert Shrinking Lover quip from Pedro Almodóvar’s Talk To Her (2002) here.

It oozes into theaters March 27, 2009.

Rare, Bloody and Heartening

First, I would like to single out a scene that is pivotal to the overall success of Let the Right One In. Oskar, a twelve-year-old Swedish boy (Kåre Hedebrant), whose parents are separated, is visiting his father (Henrik Dahl) over the weekend. Late in the night, the two are having a blast playing tic-tac-toe. They are interrupted by a visitor whose presence subtly changes the course for the rest of the evening. The last grim exchange between the father and son expresses so much hurt and understanding about the how and why. It doesn’t need to be explained. It is simply felt. This scene sounds like it belongs in a serious drama. It is, but Let the Right One In is also a vampire movie – as sophisticated and thoughtful a horror film as you are likely to find.

This film, like so few can, redeems the horror genre. So many cynical filmmakers belittle their horror films because they don’t believe the genre is worthy. You can browse shelves of horror titles and find only one success out of thirty failures. Thankfully, Let the Right One In joins the ranks of great vampire films like Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987), both of the 1922 (dir. F.W. Murnau) and 1979 (dir. Werner Herzog) versions of Nosferatu, and its cunning companion Shadow of the Vampire (2000) by E. Elias Merhige. Let the Right One In is the real thing. Set in Sweden – 1982, it uses vampire logic in an environment as cold, cruel and recognizable to our own. There are moments of invention such as what happens when a vampire trespasses property where an invitation has not been given. Here, vampires get burned when touched by sunlight – they don’t (*shudder*) sparkle.

Living next door to Oskar is Eli (Lina Leandersson), a young vampire who looks like a twelve-year-old girl, but it is more complicated than that. There is an alarming shot of her behind a door that’s ajar — you know the one. She is sheltered by an older deviant (Per Ragner) who appears to be under a spell as he fetches her blood from victims he kills and drains. She would have been better off sending the Ice Truck Killer to perform this task. Upon further reflection, this character may be a possible outlook into the future of what Oskar will become when he reaches adulthood.

Eli encounters Oskar one night and she grows protective of him. They form a fragile friendship that could also be described as eternal. No matter how high the body count mounts, Eli remains sympathetic because she cares for Oskar and her cursed hunger is blameless. They are both tortured souls.

Poor Oskar is quiet and misunderstood. In class, a policeman asks the kids why a killer would use a peculiar method in a murder case. Oskar volunteers a clever, albeit logical answer that would have invited the policeman to propose that Oskar study to become a sleuth because there is a desk waiting at Homicide with his name on it. Instead, the policeman humiliates Oskar by insinuating that a brainy kid not intimidated by dark subject matter is a would-be felon who should be monitored carefully. Oskar sheepishly explains that he reads a lot. The policeman grills him, demanding, “What kinds of books?” Oskar repeats himself, “I read a lot.” No wonder smart kids keep quiet.

It is no surprise that Oskar is targeted by bullies at school who know what little they do can scar. What they do later is much worse. Feeling alienated, Oskar is compelled to stab a tree with his knife (“Squeal!”) because he can’t punish his tormentors. Eli encourages him to fight back. What is most refreshing is how revenge is handled here and where it goes. Shades of gray, mostly dark, dominates the film’s moralistic point-of-view. One day, when Oskar is threatened of being pushed into a frozen lake, he does fight back. The way this scene is handled acknowledged how horrible violence can be, but knows in its heart how liberating it can be to inflict violence on a figure of hatred.

Director Tomas Alfredson takes this material seriously. The characters are fleshed out and they respond to a variety of supernatural events as real people would. The richly adapted screenplay by John Ajvide Lindquist was based on his book. This successful case is as familiar as Sam Raimi’s best feature A Simple Plan (1998), which was scripted by its author Scott B. Smith. Great care is taken to tell this story precisely while treasuring its foreboding atmosphere. There are occasional moments of levity to relieve the heavy grimness by relying on quirks and an appreciation for human nature. Some tense scenes become morbidly funny with the inclusion of a dog in one scene and many cats in another.

Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema has fashioned a number of well-composed shots that are bleak, accomplished and essential. Some night scenes taken during snowfall have the purity of black-and-white films. The pictures manage to be vibrant as well as desaturated of obtrusive colours found in warm flesh tones. Here the heavy strings of blood look as black as oil. There is one particular establishing shot of gray, distant buildings layering over one another like a collage. There are so many windows that it is a joy to see one opened by Oskar, distorting the vocal point. Many other compositions are so symmetrical that they convey a scary power.

Tomas Alfredson is a superb and assured filmmaker because he takes the time to choose one great shot and keep it at length. Films with long shots have the ability to endure as the viewer explores the spaces and makes discoveries. The shot of Eli climbing a fourteen-foot tree is particularly ingenious because it gives us an impression – an idea – instead of weakening the act with unnecessary special effects that merely show us. Graphic violence is rarely used, but it makes an impression when it is shown. For example, there is a disfigurement that would make Two-Face blush. Alfredson exercises commendable restraint like with one long shot that shows the luring of a man and his murder from a distance. Instead of scaring the audience with loud music after a moment of silence, the film frightens on a deeper level. I can’t imagine another filmmaker doing a better job here.

Let the Right One In is so impeccably made that any attempt at a remake would be criminal. There is talk of Matt Reeves Americanizing Alfredson’s masterpiece for a 2010 release. What’s the point? Making these characters speak in English would only diminish the strange effect of listening to the Swedish language. Hearing “Are you a vampire?” in English sounds kind of funny. A foreign track is more surreal and reverent for this material. Reeves was the director of the overrated Cloverfield (2008) where the end credits sequence scored by Michael Giacchino was the only enjoyable part, but that was me. The chances are slim that this will reflect the case of Insomnia where Christopher Nolan made a stronger remake in 2002 from the 1997 Swedish film by Erik Skjoldbjærg. We’ll see.

Let the Right One In is a terrific vampire film and we don’t have wait for it. Come right on in…

“Let The Right One In” Trailer

Wake Up and Smell the— *COUGH!* 286 (R) | 252 (D)

On the night before the 2004 presidential election, Michael Moore spoke with ferocity and vigor at the final round of his five-week Slacker Uprising tour across the country and visiting sixty cities. Despite being outnumbered by an enthusiastic crowd of Kerry supporters, many Bush pushers chanted “4 more years” voluminously. It was like a bad omen of things to come. New Orleans citizens abandoned for days in the Katrina flood. Nearly 4200 US soldiers dead in Iraq. Thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens tortured and killed. A damning deficit and a broken economy. You know the drill. What’s done is done. Four years after, we have another roll of the dice.

Some remember Bush’s second win back in 2004, his first legitimate one, and wondered if we’d still be alive next year. R.E.M.: “It’s The End of the World As We Know It”. It felt something like that. From the beginning of 2003, I discovered Michael Moore through his stinging documentary/political thesis Bowling For Columbine, which won the Academy Award. I sympathized with Moore’s views and followed up on his work. At the time I worked on tiling roofs, I remember after reading Dude, Where’s My Country? over the weekend in its entirety, I missed out on a Michael Moore signing at the same Chapters (the Canadian version of Borders) the day after I bought the book. The next year, I had seen all of his films, TV shows – TV Nation and The Awful Truth – and read all his books including the elusive copy Adventures in a TV Nation. Having followed Moore’s exploits closely, visiting his website weekly, watching Slacker Uprising now was like catching up with an old sitcom I was all too familiar with.

Moore has made an imprint in movie history by making his Slacker Uprising available for free on the Internet for North Americans. The point of this exercise is to energize the American public to turn out their own votes, electing the Democratic nominee in a landslide, thus keep the Republicans at bay while we clean up the mess they’ve made. That’s all Moore cares about now. With my headphones on in front of my Mac computer, I was bobbing my head to the beat of the guitar-raging montages of Moore traveling from state to state and being greeted by thousands of attendants cheering their throats dry. If I went the extra 136 miles, then I could have attended this “concert film” with an American audience sans the National Guard Join The Army promos. It just isn’t the same in Canada.

The film begins with a mournful rendition of When Johnny Goes Marching Home as clips of the Best of Kerry vs. Bush Campaign carries on. That same ominous diddy was used throughout the virtuoso Fort Knox robbery sequence in Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995). The two independent scenes still carry an undertone of thievery. There are also some hilarious faux television spots that satirize the Republican’s sleazy Swift Boat Veterans Attacks on Kerry (“He was only shot three times!”) Moore takes aim at the Bush administration and so-called liberal-media, taking them to task for not informing us about lies that led to invading Iraq back in 2003. I was also reminded of a complaint by independent filmmaker giant John Sayles that everything exposed by Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) should have been done on the evening news.

At Moore’s sold-out shows, sometimes he has a celebrity guest like Eddie Vedder, Monkey Bowl, Steve Earle and Tom Morello perform a patriotic and activist song for the audience. This is also the first film to finish up with a stand-up routine by Rosanne Barr, a comic with acidic wit here. The Right claims they God Almighty on their side, but the Left has a greater power, Viggo Mortensen. My personal favourite is Joan Baez who sings Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia, which brings back memories of her heart-stopping performance of Swing Low, Sweet Chariotin another documented concert that cried for peace, Woodstock (1970).

When approached by fans, Moore even has the class to deny buxom woman’s request to autograph her chest – an item I pray no one ever considers putting on Ebay. Things really pick up when American soldiers speak out against their president and his war. There are echoes from Fahrenheit 9/11: “(These Soldiers) gave their lives so we can be free. Will they ever trust us again?” A solemn tribute is made when Moore visits Fort Kent State in Ohio where the national guard opened fire and killed four out of many protesting students against the Vietnam War on May 1970.

There is a stirring episode that was also the subject of Kristian Fraga’s Anytown, USA when the state of Utah was involved in a political censorship battle over whether Moore could give his speech in a college. Pro-Bushians speak out against Moore, at times displaying staggering ignorance: “I think he’s a communist!” Considering that Bush and Co. supported the Wall Street Bail-Out just last month, Lenon and Marx must be so proud of them. Moore counterattacks young Republicans in favor of liberating the Iraqis by asking why they don’t volunteer for a war they are so passionate about: “You’d rather let poor people fight that war!”

Make what you will of Michael Moore: Truth Seeker. Muckraker. Anti-Christ. Why so many people not in the richest one-percent of the country up chuck such venom when encountered by Moore is a sad commentary. They scapegoat the filmmaker in the baseball cap who voices outrage over the continued exploitation of the poor. After all the feces the Right-Wing have been flinging at Moore, can you blame him for including so many testimonials from people around the country who treasure the big guy. Sure, he can be a showboat who soaks in the love. Here we are in 2008 and this time Moore doesn’t have to hand out clean underwear and microwavable noodles to get would-be voters’ attention turned toward exercising their own democracy.

Slacker Uprising may not be Oscar worthy like Moore’s call-out for free health care for all United States citizens, Sicko (2007). I may be steered otherwise when I see Barack Obama get sworn in as President of the Unted States next January.

Michael Moore’s Modest Proposals to Barack Obama

Can you question his sincerity after watching this?

Joan Baez Sings “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”

From the Michael Wadleigh documentary Woodstock (1970).

UPDATE:

Barack Obama won the presidency tonight! Congratulations to all who voted.

Compelling Take on a Girl and Her Dog

Quietly, slowly and efficiently, writer and director Kelly Reichardt observes Wendy (Michelle Williams), a young runaway disenchanted with her life back home and who is dangerously close to becoming a drifter. Invisible to those around her, she is accompanied by Lucy, her golden retriever. She also wants to find work in Alaska. Wise choice: the fish canneries do pay well. The two sleep in her car. Her budget is really tight. Now her car won’t start. Over the next few days, she is stranded in a nearly desolate Portland, Oregon town where she curtly explains to strangers: “I’m just passing through.” With many miles left to go and too far away to go back, Wendy is determined to stick to her plan.

In a wonderful shot early one morning, Wendy lugs out a nearly empty extra-large bag of dog food out of her car to fill Lucy’s bowl near a suburban curb. Under an overcast sky, the shot stays with Wendy and then she leaves the frame. From a low-angle, we observe a line of modestly kept homes at a distance. There is someone sitting in one of the porches looking back at us. Who is this person? Is this important to the plot? Where’s the movie star? This is a waste of money! The studio notes would have been endless had this not been an independent production outside the studio system. Wendy does come back into the frame. The means of losing her momentarily demonstrates just how easily she could slip right through the cracks and never be seen again.

Michelle Williams is a chameleon — she shreds all semblance of her earlier, more glamourous roles. All that’s left is Wendy, fresh-scrubbed, a haircut from home and eternally clad in plaid shirts and faded jeans. Is this really Jen from Dawson’s Creek? Now, Wendy is distraught and apologizes to her dog for the few crumbs she able to offer. Then she goes to the supermarket a few blocks down. When currency-conscious Wendy decides to steal a few items from the store, I was really touched by what she left behind in the store.

Now, I would like to single out the score by Will Oldman, who also plays Icky, the free spirit by the bonfire, as well as the aged hippie Kurt in Reichardt’s previous Old Joy (2006). The most minimalist music here is also the most haunting. It consists of Wendy humming to herself a few bars of prolonged, wistful notes. What most people fail to recognize are a few omnipresent tones from a flute that play between the empty breaks. This score is like the zither music played by Anton Karas in Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949). It’s simple, impressionable and the most economical due to Michelle William’s unforced vocal chords. Every time I hear it, my eyes sting a little. I know how lonely it can get when a few carefully placed hums can make one appreciate the poignancy of it all.

The cinematography by Sam Levy uses shadows and open space to present the chilly beclouded surroundings. Reichart joins forces with Mike Burchett in the editing department; they maintain the essence of their shots without imposing unnecessary cuts to impose their self-importance.

The most corrupt of the people Wendy encounters is Andy (John Robinson), a beefy teenager employed as a stocking clerk who catches her shoplifting. He goes too far manhandling her back into the supermarket, making her cry out, “You’re hurting my arm!”

His self-entitlement is sickening when he exposes Wendy as a thief to his manager behind the desk. Andy wears a cross around his neck that is so large and gold that it stops being a sign of his faith and only functions as bling. Continuing his tirade of black-and-white naiveté, a student of extremism, he just about bullies his boss into siccing the cops on Wendy: “We have a no tolerance policy on shoplifters!” Wendy, however, is concerned about Lucy tied to the bike rack outside. Here we get a crucial piece of dialogue by the sanctimonious Andy: “If a person can’t afford dog food, they shouldn’t have a dog.” So poor people don’t deserve the love of one of God’s noblest, least judgmental of creatures? That’s Andy the Christian, ladies and gentlemen. Wendy and Andy do meet again later in a scene that is so probable that’s it’s a wonder that it was written. The way Andy goes back home is priceless. It’s perfect.

Wendy is like the American descendant of that doomed, aimless drifter Mona Bergeron (Sandrine Bonnaire) in Agnès Varda’s Vagabond (1985). The beginning of Vagabond established that Mona (is that even her real name?) died anonymously of hypothermia in a ditch while the rest of the film recoils from reflections and recollections of strangers she met on her travels. Many of the people Wendy came into contact with would surely hold limited impressions of her like we would of Wendy and everyone else we come into contact with.

The act of forging relationships through happenstance, no matter how intimate they are, is crippled by how we can never truly know another person other than ourselves. Both of the 1972 Tarkovsky and the 2002 Soderbergh versions (the Soderbergh one even more so) makes this case successfully: The hallucination of the alive Rheya, the dead wife of Chris Kelvin (George Clooney), is suicidal because that’s what he thought she was. What Wendy will have to endure after the last few slides of rolling celluloid, we are not permitted to see.

Without forced contrivance, all Reichardt wants from us is to share the concern and care she has for her title character. We pick up little information along the way such as a phone call back home that tells us just enough. I suspect that some audience members won’t be sympathetic to Wendy; a similar case study determining an individual’s degree of empathy measured by my patented Kathy Nicolo Litmus Test. The title character played by Jennifer Connelly in House of Sand and Fog (2005) was a struggling, insecure Alcoholics Anonymous member who met devastating consequences for making trivial mistakes. Some people I have come across just loathe Kathy Nicolo whereas I am levelheaded in my heart: for the grace of God, go I. Yes, Wendy should not have shoplifted dog food that one morning but she did not deserve to lose her one companion. Yes, Kathy Nicolo should have opened her mail but she did not deserve to lose her home.