Laniter attributes his occasional lapses into fury to a family history of drunkenness, though he himself is not a drinker. Therefore these episodes are never quite conveniently explained, though I suppose the whole point is todemonstrate the volatile human best the lurks just bellow the surface of all of us. Finally shot film, I love all the scenes in the engine car. Simon and Gabin are good, Julien Carette provides humane/comic counter point as Lainters friend and co-worker Pecqueux, while Renoir himself plays Cabuche, the man wrongly accused of Grandorins murder. Not as good as Grand Illusion or The Rules of the Game, but intriguing, evocative, and refreshing for its smaller scale. More then the characters or the plot it is Renoirs meditation on, and ability to evoke human weakness, and the sense of angst that permeates the end of the film that makes this work rise up and beyond its station (train joke). Great
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
La Bete Humaine (1938)
La Bete Humaine, or "The Human Beast", is a contemporized adaptation of the 1890 Emile Zola novel of the same name. Filmmaker Jean Renoir has commented that this movie was made as an excuse for him and star Jean Gabin to play with trains. Gabin is Jacques Lantier, a train conductor who is passionate about his work, and seems like a real good guy save for the occasional homicidal urge. On rare occasion Lantier will have an episode, he zones out and trys to kill the nearest person, though at the beginning of the film he's never actually gone all the way, who wants to bet that changes in the course of the movie? One night Lantier is returning from a visit to Pairs, by train as a passanger to his home in Le Havre. On the course of this journey a wealthy passinger is murdered, not by Lantier but by Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux) a station master back in Le Havre. Roubaud has forced his young wife Séverine (Simone Simon) to accompany him on this endeavour (the victim, Grandmorin, was Severines Godfather and former lover). Unlike in the book Lantier doesn't witness the murder, but he is easily able to deduce it. He keeps quite, even lies to the police, and uses this as leverage to get closer to the comely Severine, to whom he has taken a fancy. They actually fall in love, but because of Roubaud extreme jealousy(the cause of his killing Grandmorin) they know that the only way they can be together is for the husband to die. The couple plan on kiling Roubaud, but on the night of the intended murder Lantier backs out, he just can't do it, he's only up to killing when he's in one of his fits. Severine breaks the relationship off, Lantier is devastated, and a fit is most likely coming.
Laniter attributes his occasional lapses into fury to a family history of drunkenness, though he himself is not a drinker. Therefore these episodes are never quite conveniently explained, though I suppose the whole point is todemonstrate the volatile human best the lurks just bellow the surface of all of us. Finally shot film, I love all the scenes in the engine car. Simon and Gabin are good, Julien Carette provides humane/comic counter point as Lainters friend and co-worker Pecqueux, while Renoir himself plays Cabuche, the man wrongly accused of Grandorins murder. Not as good as Grand Illusion or The Rules of the Game, but intriguing, evocative, and refreshing for its smaller scale. More then the characters or the plot it is Renoirs meditation on, and ability to evoke human weakness, and the sense of angst that permeates the end of the film that makes this work rise up and beyond its station (train joke). Great
Laniter attributes his occasional lapses into fury to a family history of drunkenness, though he himself is not a drinker. Therefore these episodes are never quite conveniently explained, though I suppose the whole point is todemonstrate the volatile human best the lurks just bellow the surface of all of us. Finally shot film, I love all the scenes in the engine car. Simon and Gabin are good, Julien Carette provides humane/comic counter point as Lainters friend and co-worker Pecqueux, while Renoir himself plays Cabuche, the man wrongly accused of Grandorins murder. Not as good as Grand Illusion or The Rules of the Game, but intriguing, evocative, and refreshing for its smaller scale. More then the characters or the plot it is Renoirs meditation on, and ability to evoke human weakness, and the sense of angst that permeates the end of the film that makes this work rise up and beyond its station (train joke). Great
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Margie (1946), Atomic Cafe (1982), Il Divo (2008)
Margie
Sweet, charming little story about an awkward teenage girl named Margie ( the adorable Jeanne Crain) and the crush she has on her French teacher (Glenn Langan). Made just after the war the film is set during the 1927-1928 school year (premature Hoover posters cause small chronological gaff), and is very nostalgic for this simpler time. It's amazing to think how much changed in that 19 year period, and how quint the late 20's seemed to audiences by the mid-1940's, could you achieve that same effect today with a film set in 1993? Anyway this feels like it could have been a radio program, and is populated with lovable-type characters played the likes of Esther Dale, Hobart Cavanaugh, and Alan Young in his film debut. Really not much to the plot, which is part of its charm. Great payoff to the running Nicaragua gag. Good
Atomic Cafe
Documentary without a narrator consisting of a long string of clips from newsreels, army propaganda films, television interviews ect., which tell the ever escalating story of atomic obsession and paranoia in the United States from 1945 until roughly 1960 (the film never makes it to the Cuban Missile Crises). Punctuated with a surprising number of period songs with atomic or cold war themes, the film is a collage of sorts, but takes a largely chronological approach to its subject matter. From the intal tests in the American south west to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on to the H-bomb and the arms race with he Soviet Union, the film feels like its building to an inevitable nuclear confrontation, even though we know its not. The film ends with a depiction (again using only period footage) of what the start of a nuclear conflict with the Russians might have looked like. There is a surreal Lynchian quality to an apocalypse played out against Eisenhower era banality. An effective and evocative work. Good
Il Divo
Loosely translated 'Il Divo' is Italian for 'the Divine male perfomrer', and the il divo of this picture is Giulio Andreotti. Andreotti ruled as something of a God figure through much of the post-war period in Italy. Entering government service in the late 1940's Andreotti would hold countless government positions over a fifty year career, including three non-consecutive stints as Prime Minister, in 1991 he was named a senator for life (a position he still holds at the age of 93).
Andreotti was a divisive figure, even within his own party the Christian Democrats. Pious, even fatalistic, he was non the less exceptionally cold and Machiavellian. If the anecdote is true were Mao told Nixon that they worked so well together because they were both evil, then Andreotti could well have been added as a third member to their club. Andreotti was indicted but never convicted of a vast ary of crimes, including the deaths of a disconcerting number of close associates, as well as members of the mafia and officials of the Vatican Bank. Toni Servillo plays Andreotti (under heavy makeup he looks kind of like Geoffrey Rush in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers) as essentially Richard the Third, heck the man even had a bit of a hunch back. The real Andreotti walked out of a screening of his bio-pic, and admittedly its hard to know what really happened, even watching the movie its hard to know what's really going on, the system of Italian government is so complicated and the alleged conspiracies so complex, but there is an exquisitely rendered sense of foreboding and menace throughout and its an effective, Godfather- like piece of work. The cinematography and eclectic score also add much to this movie. Great
Sweet, charming little story about an awkward teenage girl named Margie ( the adorable Jeanne Crain) and the crush she has on her French teacher (Glenn Langan). Made just after the war the film is set during the 1927-1928 school year (premature Hoover posters cause small chronological gaff), and is very nostalgic for this simpler time. It's amazing to think how much changed in that 19 year period, and how quint the late 20's seemed to audiences by the mid-1940's, could you achieve that same effect today with a film set in 1993? Anyway this feels like it could have been a radio program, and is populated with lovable-type characters played the likes of Esther Dale, Hobart Cavanaugh, and Alan Young in his film debut. Really not much to the plot, which is part of its charm. Great payoff to the running Nicaragua gag. Good
Atomic Cafe
Documentary without a narrator consisting of a long string of clips from newsreels, army propaganda films, television interviews ect., which tell the ever escalating story of atomic obsession and paranoia in the United States from 1945 until roughly 1960 (the film never makes it to the Cuban Missile Crises). Punctuated with a surprising number of period songs with atomic or cold war themes, the film is a collage of sorts, but takes a largely chronological approach to its subject matter. From the intal tests in the American south west to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on to the H-bomb and the arms race with he Soviet Union, the film feels like its building to an inevitable nuclear confrontation, even though we know its not. The film ends with a depiction (again using only period footage) of what the start of a nuclear conflict with the Russians might have looked like. There is a surreal Lynchian quality to an apocalypse played out against Eisenhower era banality. An effective and evocative work. Good
Il Divo
Loosely translated 'Il Divo' is Italian for 'the Divine male perfomrer', and the il divo of this picture is Giulio Andreotti. Andreotti ruled as something of a God figure through much of the post-war period in Italy. Entering government service in the late 1940's Andreotti would hold countless government positions over a fifty year career, including three non-consecutive stints as Prime Minister, in 1991 he was named a senator for life (a position he still holds at the age of 93).
Andreotti was a divisive figure, even within his own party the Christian Democrats. Pious, even fatalistic, he was non the less exceptionally cold and Machiavellian. If the anecdote is true were Mao told Nixon that they worked so well together because they were both evil, then Andreotti could well have been added as a third member to their club. Andreotti was indicted but never convicted of a vast ary of crimes, including the deaths of a disconcerting number of close associates, as well as members of the mafia and officials of the Vatican Bank. Toni Servillo plays Andreotti (under heavy makeup he looks kind of like Geoffrey Rush in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers) as essentially Richard the Third, heck the man even had a bit of a hunch back. The real Andreotti walked out of a screening of his bio-pic, and admittedly its hard to know what really happened, even watching the movie its hard to know what's really going on, the system of Italian government is so complicated and the alleged conspiracies so complex, but there is an exquisitely rendered sense of foreboding and menace throughout and its an effective, Godfather- like piece of work. The cinematography and eclectic score also add much to this movie. Great
Thursday, March 8, 2012
The Artist (2011)
The first silent feature to win the Academy Award for Best Picture since the 1927 film Wings (though at the time the award was called Outstandng Feature), The Artist is an homage to that transitional period in Hollywood between silent and talking pictures. In fact most of the film is silent, with only two sequences featuring sound (save score), and only one with any dialogue. Jean Dujardin (this years upset win for best actor) plays George Valentin, a fictional movie star of the leading man variety, who at the beginning of the film is on the top of world and loving it. While leaving the primer of his newest film (amusingly an adventure story about Georgian resistance to Soviet domination), Valentin almost literally bumps into a young fan (Berenice Bejo, who has a beautiful silent-era type face). The two are photographed together with Bejo's Peppy Miller (great period style Hollywood name), briefly becoming the subject of media speculation (Who's That Girl?, screams Variety, over a photo of the two outside the premier), all of this to the consternation of Valentin's emotionally distant wife Doris (Penelope Ann Miller).
Peppy Miller of course is an aspiring actress, and when she shows up at Valentin's home studio (Kinograph Studios, another great period name) looking for extra work, George saves her from studio head Al Zimmer's (John Goodman) effort to have her kicked of the premises. She gets a small role in one of Valentin's films, and their chemistry and romantic attraction is clearly evident. Later Valentin, in an effort to provide guidance to the young would-be starlet, uses makeup to add a beauty mark to her face, giving her a signature look, the two reluctantly part ways.
Then the talkies come. Miller enjoys a quick rise to stardom, her looks, playfulness, and winning personality endearing her to audiences, and even to Al Zimmer who signs her. Valentin on the other hand refuses to make a talking a picture (I don't why, but he dose) and instead chooses to invest much of his own money in a epic about a pith helmeted jungle explorer (shades of Clara Bow's Call Her Savage). His movie of course is a flop, and then the stock market crashs wipping out most of Valentins remaining assets. His wife leaves him, and Valentin is forced to move into a small apartment and sell most of his personal belongings (secretly purchased by still love struck, and very much successful Peppy Miller).
Valentin turns to drink, reluctantly fires his faithful valet Clifton (James Cromwell), and is left alone with his also faithful dog and once frequent costar Uggie (a talented Terrier). In a drunken rage Valentin sets to fire his collection of his old films, he is saved from suffocation and flam by the aid of Uggie and a policeman. Peppy comes to Valentin's aid putting him up in her mansion to recover, but the prideful George stubbornly refuses her offer to get him another film role, and so sneaks out of the mansion on a mission to finish what the fire started. As Peppy rushes to his rescue it is only their love that can save him.
Basically this is A Star is Born, only with a happier ending. The limitations of the film are built into its very concept, if it doesn't tell you anything new (much of this subject matter was covered in Singing In the Rain, from which this film freely borrows), it's not suppose too. It's meant to invoke an earlier era, the tropes, style, and dare I say sincerity of a type of film made in the past. One of the things that I loved about the film was its use of 'faces', those distinctive looking character actors of another time are here evocked by there modern day counter parts, the likes of John Goodman, James Cromwell, Malcom McDowell, Beth Grant, and Ezra Buzzington, all that's missing is William H. Macey. The scene in the studio stairwell could well have come from King Vidor, or even Buster Keyton. The backlot city streets are just the type of backlot city streets to remiand you that you love backlot city streets The Artist is a supremely pleasant, warm, and nostalgic production. I don't know if it's truly the best picture of the year, but its surely one of its best cinematic experiences.
Great
Peppy Miller of course is an aspiring actress, and when she shows up at Valentin's home studio (Kinograph Studios, another great period name) looking for extra work, George saves her from studio head Al Zimmer's (John Goodman) effort to have her kicked of the premises. She gets a small role in one of Valentin's films, and their chemistry and romantic attraction is clearly evident. Later Valentin, in an effort to provide guidance to the young would-be starlet, uses makeup to add a beauty mark to her face, giving her a signature look, the two reluctantly part ways.
Then the talkies come. Miller enjoys a quick rise to stardom, her looks, playfulness, and winning personality endearing her to audiences, and even to Al Zimmer who signs her. Valentin on the other hand refuses to make a talking a picture (I don't why, but he dose) and instead chooses to invest much of his own money in a epic about a pith helmeted jungle explorer (shades of Clara Bow's Call Her Savage). His movie of course is a flop, and then the stock market crashs wipping out most of Valentins remaining assets. His wife leaves him, and Valentin is forced to move into a small apartment and sell most of his personal belongings (secretly purchased by still love struck, and very much successful Peppy Miller).
Valentin turns to drink, reluctantly fires his faithful valet Clifton (James Cromwell), and is left alone with his also faithful dog and once frequent costar Uggie (a talented Terrier). In a drunken rage Valentin sets to fire his collection of his old films, he is saved from suffocation and flam by the aid of Uggie and a policeman. Peppy comes to Valentin's aid putting him up in her mansion to recover, but the prideful George stubbornly refuses her offer to get him another film role, and so sneaks out of the mansion on a mission to finish what the fire started. As Peppy rushes to his rescue it is only their love that can save him.
Basically this is A Star is Born, only with a happier ending. The limitations of the film are built into its very concept, if it doesn't tell you anything new (much of this subject matter was covered in Singing In the Rain, from which this film freely borrows), it's not suppose too. It's meant to invoke an earlier era, the tropes, style, and dare I say sincerity of a type of film made in the past. One of the things that I loved about the film was its use of 'faces', those distinctive looking character actors of another time are here evocked by there modern day counter parts, the likes of John Goodman, James Cromwell, Malcom McDowell, Beth Grant, and Ezra Buzzington, all that's missing is William H. Macey. The scene in the studio stairwell could well have come from King Vidor, or even Buster Keyton. The backlot city streets are just the type of backlot city streets to remiand you that you love backlot city streets The Artist is a supremely pleasant, warm, and nostalgic production. I don't know if it's truly the best picture of the year, but its surely one of its best cinematic experiences.
Great
The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)
In 1994 a team of scientists in the Ardeche region of south-eastern France discovered a previously unknown cave, one which proved to contain the oldest known paintings in existence. Wisely French cultural authorities chose to seal off the cave to prevent unauthorized access and further contamination. With the exception of two full time security guards the only people permitted into the cave are scientists of various disciplines who wish to study its geological, anthropological, artistic and other areas of scientific interest. It was not until a couple of years ago that a professional film crew was allowed inside to document what has become known as the Chauvet Cave. That film crew belonged to the celebrated film maker Werner Herzog, and what they captured is truly amazing.
Ages ago the principal entry way into the cave collapsed, thus preserving the interior much as it would have appeared 10,000 plus years ago. Scientists have discovered no human remains in the cave, though bones from a variety of ancient animals are found in abundance. It appears that no human beings actually lived in the cave full time, but rather that it was used for ceremonial purposes and was considered a sacred space. The variety and large number of paintings inside are testament to the caves long usage for artistic and presumably ceremonial expression, some of the paintings have been dated back as much as 32,000 years with subsequent paintings added over the course of ensuing millennia. Area wildlife, including now extinct woolly rhinos are depicted, as are mammoths, bears, horses and other creatures, human depictions are absent save for the presence of palm prints and one anthropramorph. The rang of styles, and sophistication of the artwork is impressive, the people who drew in these caves have every right to the designation of artist, their work is both skilled and evocative.
The term 'sacred space' is wholly appropriate for the cave, there is a sense of solemness and aw there, it is like a cathedral, a feeling that is only added too by the films often choral soundtrack. Director Herzog adds his signature poetic and raptures narration, and interviews with various scientists and researchers provide the historic context. This documentary was actually filmed in 3D which would have made it all the more impressive to view in a theater, but even without that added effect the visuals are magnificent, and the whole experience reverent and spiritual in nature. The Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a unique and meaningfull experience, film making of an almost wholly different type, and something that will stick with you, perhaps forever.
Great
Ages ago the principal entry way into the cave collapsed, thus preserving the interior much as it would have appeared 10,000 plus years ago. Scientists have discovered no human remains in the cave, though bones from a variety of ancient animals are found in abundance. It appears that no human beings actually lived in the cave full time, but rather that it was used for ceremonial purposes and was considered a sacred space. The variety and large number of paintings inside are testament to the caves long usage for artistic and presumably ceremonial expression, some of the paintings have been dated back as much as 32,000 years with subsequent paintings added over the course of ensuing millennia. Area wildlife, including now extinct woolly rhinos are depicted, as are mammoths, bears, horses and other creatures, human depictions are absent save for the presence of palm prints and one anthropramorph. The rang of styles, and sophistication of the artwork is impressive, the people who drew in these caves have every right to the designation of artist, their work is both skilled and evocative.
The term 'sacred space' is wholly appropriate for the cave, there is a sense of solemness and aw there, it is like a cathedral, a feeling that is only added too by the films often choral soundtrack. Director Herzog adds his signature poetic and raptures narration, and interviews with various scientists and researchers provide the historic context. This documentary was actually filmed in 3D which would have made it all the more impressive to view in a theater, but even without that added effect the visuals are magnificent, and the whole experience reverent and spiritual in nature. The Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a unique and meaningfull experience, film making of an almost wholly different type, and something that will stick with you, perhaps forever.
Great
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