October Roundup (is Late)

Decided to change it up for this one. Instead of film news and movie news, and the like. I decided to post a roundup of great videos I watched on the internet this month. It may slow loading time a bit, but it should be fairly enjoyable. Thanks for waiting

New video for Giorgio Tuma “And three parasol stars”. out on Elefant Records Video by Emanuele Kabu

A Humanoid robotic body developed by Kaist called ‘Hubo Humanoid’ has installed an animatronic head of Albert Einstein from a well known engineer David Hanson of Hanson Robotics. Those who fear the uncanny valley beware.

VIDEOGIOCO animation and concept by Donato Sansone

Trailer for the new documentary from the director of Helvetica.

Let’s Paint,Exercise,& Blend Drinks TV!

Chemical Brother’s Star Guitar music video by Michele Gondry

Trailer for a documentary about John Hughes

Trailer for a French cowboy film called Lucky Luke–they love cowboys over there. (the flash video player isn’t working for some reason, none-the-less, the link is visitable).
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There’s quite a bit more where that came from, but I imagine this already slowed the sites loading time way down. Enjoy.

Notes On Gattaca

The over-arching fact:
Your blood aint’ yours.

The cold stew inside:
A gift from above.

The footnote truth:
Your flesh is doors.

The real structure:
Dots made of strings.

The hope to be seen:
Threads rearranged.

The un-plastic path:
Just sex and move on.

The human excellence:
Their blood aint’ theirs.

The help of this future:
A science untook down.

The quick-came end:
Cheat and get your dream.

The hope done gained:
Alone, great views, and no oxygen at all.

Selected Film News — September 2009

I’m a week late, but here’s some news I enjoyed (selected from my del.icio.us feed, as usual), which is film related:

• There are a lot of interesting horror films coming out soon. Splice is one of them, you can see a sneak preview here. It looks truly strange. It comes out in November and it’s got Adrien Brody. Also, a film called Corpsey featured at this year’s DOCFEST, looks great.
• Best article on Twitch this month? Definitely, “Where are My Bleepy Crunchies.” A suggestion of the top five films integrated with electronic music. Number one is Pi, but I haven’t seen several of the others and they look superb.
• The new Fantastic Mr. Fox trailer gives the film just about as much “future of film” hype as I’ve heard about Avatar. Anyway, I think it looks sweet (a look at Wes Anderson behind the scenes in the previous link).
• Contenders for Best Picture of 2012, already? Yup.
• I saw two films this week in the theater: Jennifer’s Body, and Zombieland. Both really enjoyable, though I certainly favored the latter (which I’m biased toward because of the cameo [BR], which I won’t spoil in case you haven’t seen it yet, and the genre [I'm a big Zombie fan]). What I haven’t seen yet, and would really like to see is The Informant. Mainly due to, besides the good trailers and promotional materials, an episode of This American Life, that I’d strongly recommend.
• Herzog is hosting a series of lectures/seminars in L.A. about film making. I’d go, except it cost about $1500. It’s titled Herzog Rogue Film School. Speaking of Herzog, a reviewer at TIFF for Twitch has the first look at his collaboration with D Lynch.
• Thom Yorke went out of his way this past month to promote a film called The Age of Stupid. I’d link to the blog article from DeadAirSpace, but it doesn’t have permalinks…
• The villain has been selected for M Gondry’s rendition of The Green Hornet: Christopher Waltz. You may remember him from such great roles as, the best villain ever in Inglorious Basterds (this link is to Tarantino interviews which you may find interesting).
• Other Movies: Reviews for The Road look pretty favorable. Videocracy looks fascinating, though I bet it’s too late to have any useful analysis of the media publicity overhaul by the Obama Administration (could you imagine George Bush on Twitter?). Year of the Carnivore looks like a good indie romantic comedy. More info on Korine’s presumably-fucked-up-as-usual musical: Trash Humpers. The final trailer for [rec]2, hope it doesn’t “ruin the mythology” to quote Tarantino. Terry Gilliam’s got a film (Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus) that immediately makes me think of “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium”, but doesn’t co-star Natalie Portman, to my knowledge. Can’t find anything else about this film, but Я looks awesome (from the 15 seconds I’ve seen). Criterion collection releases a box set of Japanese Noir? You bet! And, they are re-making Plan 9, and I can’t understand why even in the slightest (wish they’d give up on the Barbarella re-make, too)
• One-liners from TIFF, Thanks Vulture.
• I discovered possibly the best food related film I’ve seen all year: Disappearing Manhattan from the always entertaining Anthony Bordain.
• The Best Cut in Cinema. Duh, from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In parallel, the greatest long takes in cinema history. Also, 100 years of Visual Effects (ignore the shitty music).
• Time Travel in popular Film and TV (Primer would be impossible to quantify on this map).

A Year of Film Recorded (September to September Top 5 Films 08-09)

There was many weeks where it was quite hard to choose between two films, to specify a favorite of the week (like the recent week where I watched District 9 and Inglorious Basterds). However, I always managed to pick one in the end, sometimes weeks later. And that’s the point. Sometimes movies, and TV shows, stick with you more than other. The reason is different for everyone. But one reason, of many, that I started recording the movies I’ve seen is to try and track what inspires me, what I learn, and what’s important to film for me.

So, I will pick my top 5 movies that I watched from the last year, and share why. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and maybe some of my selections will be naive, and certainly won’t please everyone–but that’s the best part of reflecting on yourself–your humanity.

And speaking of humanity, it should be noted that I set out with this recording hoping at first to watch a movie a day, or seven movies a week. I have counted, and I have failed. I think I’ve watched just about 300 movies this past year (That’s like an 82% if I were grading myself). I don’t think it’s to be frowned upon.

Without further Ado:

5. Blue Velvet

This is, for all intents and purposes, my favorite David Lynch movie. Often, I am taken by surprise by what Lynch is capable to communicating in films like Inland Empire and Mulholland Drive, but the more cohesive and accessible works of his I often find myself coming back to. It’s the subtitles of the normality he presents in this film that I find the most interesting. It should also be noted that I saw this film in Paris with Monica at the Cinémathèque Française. This surely affected my experience of the film; however, if that’s the only thing I gained from it, I think it’s still very important. The theater is crucial to the cinema experience.

The film is a private instigation, a neo-noir. It is based on Lynch’s childhood in Spokane Washington, his father worked for the Department of Agriculture. I recently was shown by a friend the moving scene where the woman dances on top of the car while the psychotic man creepily sings The Sandman to the main character Kyle MacLachlan (who is among the ranks of actors I feel are very underrated who Lynch uses often in his films [I'm pointing to Laura Dern, here]). Anyway, A lot more can be said about the movie, but really, it just made me want more. It was one of those films where when it ended, I felt like I wanted to remain friends with the characters, I felt lost in the world of Lumberton, and I’d like to go back.

4. [rec]

I know very little about this movie except that it’s a documentary style zombie film. And while Romero is pretty much washed up at this point (I mean, look at the last two films he’s offered to the genre), many other directors are taking zombies in awesome new directions. This is the perfect horror-mentary film. The frustration of the uncontrolled camera is way fun, and something that film soften try to use but fail (in my opinion at least). It was overly inspiring, I wish I could have seen it in the theater. Of course, where one movie succeeds, there are always more. [rec]2 has already premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, I think.

3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers – (56′ Version)

I’ve seen both the one from 78′ and the one from 56′. The one from 78′ is a classic, too. It also has Jeff Goldbloom and Leonard Nemoy in it, enough said. But I put the former on this list because of it’s historical value and content. I’ve read it’s an allegory for communism or the loss of autonomy in the Soviet state, but frankly I think it’s a perfect depiction of “the other” (at least from the American perspective, I think). I also may be slightly biased towards the situation within which I experienced the film, but I suppose that’s always part of it.

The bottom line is that this film isn’t as accessible simply because of it’s age. I’m trying to by humble here, I know most people probably have less interest in older movies, even if they’re “classics” (most of the time I don’t either). It’s just doesn’t have those little things we take for granted in contemporary cinema. Regardless, there’s something that’s pretty timeless about the film–and really captures the essence of the alien as a symbol in culture. Plus, it’s still pretty darn fun to watch, even with all the old fashioned stuff.

2. Groundhogs Day

I forget and remember this film every year in a fantastic cycle. I absolutely love this film. And this year when I re-watched it, I remembered how much I love movies that really move you. I cry every single time he can’t save the homeless man’s life. It’s such a simple aspect of humanity, and after he tries unsuccessfully to commit suicide so many times, and within the lens of Phil’s experience, his death seems so resonant to me. I can think of other movies that did this to me this year, but this is also about a time travel. I have a fascination with time travel, and especially enjoy time travel movies (well science fiction in general), and this has a completely new take on it. It’s like a sci-dramedy.

1. Primer

So, this one has been probably my favorite film for a long time. Maybe I need to grow out of it, but I just can’t. It’s just so cool. It’s like they’ve taken time travel and every logic problem associated with it, and created this reality where it works. It’s complicated, and intertwined, and almost beyond recognition. It’s so easy to get lost, but the characters seem to as well, and the parts of them fall to the side while others keep going. It also was made on a ridiculously small budget (like 7,000$, even though that sounds ridiculous). Has the passion and stylistic control of a Kubrick film. The story of the film itself makes the monotony of everyday life somehow exciting again, relishing in the excitement of accidentally discoveries, and depicting the never-entirely-moral-or-logical ways in which humans move forward with science. It’s probably the most inspiring film I’ve ever seen.

Alright. So. Obviously this is just 5 movies. These are just movies out of hundreds that I enjoyed, and out of 54 favorites. I probably could have written about every 300 movies, and I already have replacements. Maybe I should have done a worst 5–that would be just have useful, if not more useful, in my own learning. Plus, these movies were pretty famous, I imagine most folks will have already seen this films. Well, I’ll keep that (5 worst from the year) idea on the back-burner. And, I hope you found this useful and interesting.

August 2009 Roundup

School starts back on Monday  here at IU, and my time for cinema will be pressed even further. Here, however, is some news I’ve gathered over the last month. This is what I thought was worth checking out.

• John Hughes died, and a wealth of information showed up on the internet in dedication to him. Molly Ringwald offers her memories, NYtimes had an interview right before his death on “The Brat Pack“, and then later offered a tribute to his style.
• Antichrist has leaked two months before it’s official release date. Torrent?
• So, what’s the difference between Widescreen and Fullscreen, well, everything. Here, directors talk about how pan and scan re-directs cinema.
• There’s a Barbarella re-make, and Vulture had a bit of news about it.
• Slate put together a fantastic taste of the many voices of Maryl Streep.
• Peter Jackson produced District 9, a film by Neill Blomkamp, which I’m sure you’ve already heard about. Check out this interesting article on the meaning of the film. PJ’s also got another film to be released soon called “The Lovely Bones,” the trailers out here. However, District 9 (apparently based on this short film), tied this week (for the first time on my weekly favorite movie section) with Inglorious Basterds. The final segment of this film is simply: dope. Anywho, check out Tarantino’s top 20 films of the last decade on youtube.
• Want to test your knowledge of cinema history? This quiz from NYTimes was really hard for me, hopefully you’ll do better. I particularly enjoyed the question regarding the difference between American film markets and foreign film markets (which I got right, notably).
• Other select news from “Twitch“: Full theatrical trailer for Astro Boy is out. I still want to see Ponyo. Also, the trailer for this crazy horror film came out: Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre. Plus, Absurda (David Lynch’s production studio), is putting out a Herzog film, and the trailer is up. Say What?
• Speaking of foreign directors, Haneke’s Palme D’Or winning film “The White Ribbon,” has a trailer out now, and it looks fairly historical, enough said.
• Finally, I Watched Idiocracy this week, and enjoyed it slightly more than last time, in perfect time for the release of the “Extract” trailer. Mike Judge, thanks, enjoyed you on Fresh Air while I was serving food at Scholars Inn this past week…

And speaking of public broadcasting, I’ll be working jib for the telethon that’s going on probably near forever, or until you all pay small increments of money so that I can keep my job and you get commercial free television. Donate?

Wekk

On a Wednesday I pronounced real accurate the middle and it’s qualms for some unheard tune, in all quotes, and with three characters.

On Thursday I heart the street for about an hour, where I saw this guy who looked like my best friends dad, and something went Click.

On Friday, I went to bed early and failed at that, living death for at least 6 hours and the otherwise negative feedback loop of a brain on itself.

On Saturday, the fog roll nicely, and the drive up a lonely wonder. The avatar of the soul and other small realizations, and all at cost bad sales.

On Sunday, come home, something happened and come home. Blocks unfall, in other words, in other words. Come home, come home.

On Monday, three weeks gone fast not thought to gone at all at one point, if you know what I mean, and now the aware of aware comes next.

On Tuesday, a long week last, at long lost grind, surprise!

On Wednesday, “I Hate Wednesdays”, and other unshared dialogs.

July Roundup (first one)

I’m about 5 days late, but this is something new I’d like to try out. It’s a round-up of some of my favorite things I’ve found in the last month. Here’s the experiment:

• Pink Film – During the 50s film sexuality was just as repressed in Japan as in America. Their resulting product, the Pink Films, dominated cinema from the 60s through the 80s. It’s a fascinating blend of horror, softcore porn, and good old fashioned weird Japanese stuff. You can read more about it at Bright Lights Film Journal, check out a couple examples from a film festival, and/or you can download torrents for a couple example films.

• Rogue Learning Torrents - I’m surprised to find, on occasion, torrents that actually provide a large amount of educational material in one place. Unfortunately, all the good communities are invite only, and thus it’s nice to find free ones from time to time. I recently found this torrent, which is essentially a class worth of film on the Japanese New Wave. I’ll let you know how it is.
• Trailers and Upcoming Films and Reviews – Just wanted to note that District 9 is getting great reviews. The trailer for Fantastic Mr. Fox, aka. Wes Anderson’s favorite children’s story, came out. The trailer for Kubrik inspired In The Loop, was also just released. The Coen Brothers latest, “A Serious Man,” is reptative and promising. At Comic Con last month James Cameron showed up, and everyone forgot that he made Titanic to swoon over Avatar; meanwhile, Hayao Miyazaki made his interviewer friend from pixar gush in an embarassing but cute way–and all to push for Ponyo press. Moon didn’t see the rave reviews I was hoping for, but I still want to see it. And IFC releases another contrived top ## list, in this case 50, and regarding film trailers throughout history.
• Marvel has decided to explore anime with its heros. I think it suits them well, and that is tight. MadHouse, the animation studio responsible for the previously linked videos, are responsible for several Manga I enjoyed; namely, Trigun, and…er…Beyblade.
• Kodachrome died.
• And, were you curious about the end titles of Wall-E. The interview with their mastermind features this quote at it’s preface: “As time evolved so did the means of artistically replicating reality, from cave drawings…to engraving, to painting, to photography, and to its (thus far) most convincing form, cinema. In the task of duplicating reality cinema has surpassed all other forms of representation.” – From “André Bazin Revisited” – Donato Totaro

That’ll do it. I’m trying to keep it film related, and this is certainly not everything I saw, perhaps in the future I’ll expand it. Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Vocabulary (“Discs” F. 06//09)

The “No-Gilled Cat” spoke in General Trend
“Cloud Catcher” collapsed in “The Colors”.
Such is the nature of “The Every Curse”

“You Step”, List after list in a forgetful haze.
After “Yourself Presence”, no-less aware.
Words gel up to wonder, in “Nature”, theirs.

All this, gone fast, thanks to “Relative Subtle”.
Then “Meta-Score” passes, next sec. acrewed.
Into the “Now Piece” calm down is in store.

The General Trend

On wednesday, you do the hustle and write about your favorite color.
You had seen a man who looked like your old friends dad: a prophecy.
And the long dialog thus writ about the nature of the family curse.

And so, two weeks and no score later, you’re 200 pounds richer,
When the generalization after generalization made in the “General Trend”.
A realization outside of time and it’s lovely constraints, no less calm(ing)–

Or should be, and the meaning of “Male”, with “No Own” finance to blame.
Aaahhh yes, the inevitable “No Own,” see here to stay. Yes, see hear to stay.
And before one year pills pass to play, the change in long underway.

Avant-Garde (2)

Note: You will notice the speed and quantity of posts will, and has, drastically decreased over the last 2-3 months. It’ll probably be like this for awhile, but none-the-less I’ll continue to post stuff when I have the time and something strikes me.

Around the time when I got back to Bloomington I noticed a friend of mine had a copy of Last Year at Marienbad (torrent) lying around and I happened to notice it. During the class I took, the section involving Alain Resnais (the director/auteur of Marienbad) was in the “ambiguity” section. Ambiguity is something that I’ve always been fascinated by, and that’s the subject of this avant-garde film post.

I tend to use the word ambiguity poorly, and too often, particularly in situations where I’m really trying to communicate that something vague. So to try and avoid that, I’ve looked up the definition (on Wikipedia, no less):

Ambiguity is different from vagueness, which arises when the boundaries of meaning are indistinct. Ambiguity is context-dependent: the same linguistic item (be it a word, phrase, or sentence) may be ambiguous in one context and unambiguous in another context. A sentence may be ambiguous due to different ways of parsing the same sequence of words.

[and later...]

Pictures or photographs may also be ambiguous at the semantic level: the visual image is unambiguous, but the meaning and narrative may be ambiguous: is a certain facial expression one of excitement or fear, for instance?

So, it’s not the lack of meaning in material presented, it’s at least two apparent but indeterminate and in-distinguished meanings. A lot of things can be made ambiguous, but some things are more truly ambiguous than others. Marienbad is one of those especially ambiguous films that gets special note for its achievements as such–that, and the film is also incredibly beautiful and meticulously shot. Check out a sample here:

As I mentioned in my first avant-garde post, my instructor Jinhee Choi authored an article analyzing the cognitive value of these films. I wondered what one might gain from watching a particularly ambiguous film like Marienbad, and what other ones might apply to the category of cognitive benefit. Well, I find it fascinating the way the film manages to keep you engaged, testing your ability to keep track of the meaning of any particular scene for reference later when attempting to understand the film as a whole. The difference with these films, maybe, is that they don’t offer a resolve–where as Hollywood films that have capitalized on maintaining elements of ambiguity (like maybe Memento, Identity, the Sixth Sense, or otherwise) have a big reveal. The experience I gain from these is sort of a debugging for the analytical part of my brain that re-organizes information to try and make sense of it as a whole.

In parallel, I’ve been trying to read a book by Douglas Hofstadter: Godel, Escher, Bach, which is really dense, and it’ll take me a long time to get through, no doubt. But, it looks at a pattern that tend to find it’s way into all kinds of things, and therefore is an easy book to reference on many occasions (probably why it got a Pulitzer prize in the 80’s when it was published). The book looks at how “self-reference and formal rules allow systems to create meaning from meaningless elements”. I mention this because it seems to me like the value of this movie comes from its ability to encourage audiences to do just that–create meaning from meaningless elements.

Interestingly (recursively) one film scholar’s take on the film is  based on a science fiction story from the 40’s. In it a person ship-wreaked on an island finds anachronistically dressed people acting lively, but strangely. He finds out that they are copies of friends made by an inventor (hence the name of the story “The Invention of Morel”) designed to act in their likeness, and whom are on constant repeat. The film can be seen in this guise. The characters take on the simulacrum of whomever the original people were.

Perhaps you can see why I tied in the recursive ideas explored in G.E.B. Regardless, I hope this has been an insightful and useful start to looking at ambiguous avant-garde film. Unfortunately, this isn’t quite like the previous post, where I can post just a few ambiguous film makers–because it spans a great deal of cinema history, and many different types of films are ambiguous. In the class I took, we were able to choose this topic as a topic for our paper, and three films were associated with it. So I’ll note the other two films and filmmakers:

• Week End (1967) by Jean-Luc-Godard (torrent)
  
  This film features lots of inter-titles, strange dialoges and mis-matched audio among other things that help to create an ambiguous reality within which the story of the film takes place. It’s a black comedy, so you might get a laugh or two in there if you’re not too washed away in the confusing plotline.
• Fireworks (1947) by Kenneth Anger (torrent)
  
  Part of a uniquely weird early American underground, Kenneth Anger explores sexual identity in this film. He made the film when he was just 17, it’s a short watch, and the payoff if pretty good at the end with a poetic use of a firework.

Enjoy. Oh, one more thing. I saw on Kottke the other daym, a post about Marienbad regarding the game that the characters played in the film (Nim). Check out the post here if you’re interested.