Movies

By the way, I saw Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring on Teusday night (or Wednesday morning, if you prefer), and I was completely blown away. I think I must feel the same way people felt when walking out of the original Star Wars. I would describe the film as a sweeping epic, in the true sense of those words (before they were perverted by the use of critics describing the like of, say, Gladiator) and Peter Jackson should be honored for being able to capture the spirit of Tolkien’s work while, at the same time, not shutting out those who are not familiar with the books. This is perhaps one of the most ambitious efforts in film history, and Jackson actually manages to imbue the film with the depth and texture that it demands. From beginning to end, the film showcases the grand beauty of Middle Earth, with graceful vistas, immense landscapes of forbidding snow or rolling greenery, and sweeping shots of terrifying battles, but don’t let that fool you – Jackson was able to temper the pace and suspence of the film so that its scale does not detract from it. This is grand filmmaking, yes, but Jackson also focuses on the human side, letting his wonderful actors do their thing and also showing the details of Middle Earth’s history and architecture… This is an adventurous effort at its best, and its one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.

Star Wars Asciimation : Ok, so it turns out that the phrase “Some people have way too much time on their hands” is completely true. This guy has converted Star Wars into an ASCII animation. The whole movie (well, almost, he’s nearing the end) is presented with ASCII art. He also did a short Asciimation portraying the death of Jar-Jar and is working on a home made jet engine.

These haiku movie reviews are brilliant. [via Wisdom]

The Sixth Sense

Macaulay Culkin

eat your heart out. This is what

child acting’s about.

Filmmaker Stanely Kubrick is known for his brilliance, work ethic, genius, thinking outside the box, etc., but his sense of humor is rarely glimpsed. When he died in March of 1999, The New York Times published a collection of reminiscences by friends and enemies alike, compiled by film director and critic/historian Peter Bogdanovich. Its a touching tribute, and a few of the anicdotes that showcase Kubricks sense of humor caught my eye:

Matthew Modine (actor; lead role in “Full Metal Jacket”): One day I said: “I got a joke for you. … You’re dead.” He said, “It’s not funny.” I said: “Let me tell the joke. Steven Spielberg’s dead, too.” He said, “Steven’s dead, oh, that’s funny.” And I said: “You’re dead and you’re up in heaven and Steven Spielberg has just died and he’s being greeted at the gate by Gabriel and Gabriel says: ‘God’s really dug a lot of your movies and he wants to make sure that you’re comfortable. If there’s anything you need, you come to me, I’m your man.’ And Steven says, ‘Well, you know, I always wanted to meet Stanley Kubrick, do you think you could arrange that?’ And Gabriel looks at him and says: ‘You know, Steven, of all the things that you could ask for, why would you ask for that? You know that Stanley doesn’t take meetings.’ He says, ‘Well, you said that if there was anything I wanted.’ Gabriel says: ‘I’m really sorry. I can’t do that.’ So now he’s showing him around heaven and Steven sees this guy wearing an army jacket with a beard riding a bicycle. And Steven says to Gabriel: ‘Oh, my God, look, over there, that’s Stanley Kubrick. Couldn’t we just stop him and say hello?’ And Gabriel pulls Steven to the side and says, ‘That’s not Stanley Kubrick; that’s God — he just thinks he’s Stanley Kubrick.’ “Stanley liked that joke.

That’s a funny one, but this one is my favourite:

Jerry Lewis (actor-director-writer; edited a film at same studio Kubrick was editing “2001”): He’s in the cutting room and I’m watching this man investigate his work, and it was fascinating. He was intrigued with the fact that I did more than one thing. He was a very big fan of “hyphenates.” I think he would have loved to have written “2001” without Arthur Clarke. But he did have a high regard for people who directed their own material.

I was in my cutting room around 1 in the morning, and he strolls in smoking a cigarette and says, “Can I watch?” I said: “Yeah, you can watch. You wanna see a Jew go down? Stand there.” That was the night I coined the expression, “You cannot polish a turd.”

And then Kubrick looked at me and said, “You can if you freeze it.”

He was a genius. And he could kick Stephen Baldwin’s ass in Chess. [special thanks to riverrun of e2 fame for his writeup on the subject]

Some Thoughts on Clint Eastwood and Heidegger by Bruce Jay Friedman : I don’t much know what to make of this. I know I like it, and that it made me laugh a couple of times, but it also has some sort of wierd, deep quality to it. On the surface its a spastic and completely absurd article, but its actually quite complex. In fact, thats the point Friedman makes about Eastwood.

If you must know, I believe Clint Eastwood’s remote, alienated style is a goddammed metaphor for our time. Which is why I salute him�as a man, as an artist, as a professional (and I understand he’s an outrageous stickler for detail on the set, even though the net effect emerges as being casual), and as a complex human being.

The article is an excerpt from Friedman’s book Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos and was originally published in Harpers in 1976. Friedman sounds like an interesting fellow. I shall have to check out some more of his work…

Kubrick’s Lost Doomsday Scenario : A “suitcase nuclear bomb” being detonated by a “potential enemy” in Washington, DC in a sneak attack? Film director Stanley Kubrick suggested just such a scenario in 1994.�What seemed wildly implausible before September 11th�like a subplot from the director’s apocalyptic classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb�no longer seems so far-fetched. Kubrick’s politically-charged essay, which The New York Times refused to publish in 1994, warned of the potential of nuclear attack caused by “accident, miscalculation or madness.”

In a nuclear crisis, tens of millions of lives would depend on communications. We’ve been given some information about the “hot-line” but the nuclear powers should be much more open about the details. Like so many other things that are secret and never used, sloppiness, complacency and lack of imagination tend to take over.

At first, it seems counter-intuitive to be open about the details of your nuclear arsenal, but, in the words of Dr. Strangelove, “the whole point of the doomsday machine is lost . . . if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world, ay?!”

Another Strangelove quote: “Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack!” The scary thing about our current war on terrorism is that the conventional wisdom present in these quotes might not really apply. They’ve certainly proved that they have no fear of attacking us, its just a matter of whether or not they’d go nuclear…

The City of Lost Children:

Set in and around an eerie, oddly futuristic yet late 19th-century waterfront (it’s a setting seemingly inspired by Samuel Beckett and Fritz Lang), the film follows a hulking but pea-brained circus strongman (Perlman) known only as “One” who is on a desperate search to find his ward, Little Brother, who was abducted by a freakish, quasi-religious group of cyclopes. Along the way, he joins forces with a group of street urchins who steal for a Fagin-esque Siamese twin. The search ultimately leads to a sea-platform/laboratory where Krank, the genetically created orphan of a mad scientist, lords over his siblings (including six identical twins, a female dwarf and a talking brain in a box) and conducts diabolical dream experiments.

If you can read that and not want to see this movie, my hat is off to you, good sir. The City of Lost Children is actually an intriguing modern fairy tale with a seamless visual style, good acting and some interesting special effects. This description comes from TLA Video’s Film and Video Guide and believe it or not, it does the movie justice. By the way, TLA is a wonderful, wonderful little store (actually 6 stores). If you are ever in the Philadephia area and need to rent something offbeat or hard to find, check them out. They’ve never let me down.

There’s No Such Thing as a Bad Movie. “While the title of this piece mentions movies, it really applies to any medium of expression. Artworks are not good or bad. They simply are what they are, and you have a personal, subjective reaction when exposed to them.” The author makes some interesting points, many of which parallel my views on criticism. However, I also think there is a certain degree of objectivity one can achieve when reviewing a film; ironically, this is achieved through subjectivity. Much like the Reflexive school of documentary filmmaking, a critic exposes their own bias, thus making the reader aware of the review’s subjective nature. This makes it easier for a reader to judge whether or not they will like the movie. After all, as the author points out, disliking a film doesn’t necessarily make it an invalid experience. Still, it is a subjective process, but keeping that in mind helps a lot (after all, is it even possible to be completely objective?). Regardless, I think I may be revisiting some of my reviews in the future…

The Man Who Knew Too Much About Jar Jar, a videofilm by Chris Mich : Directing and starring in the feature is Chris Mich (director of another good short, Bathroom Boardroom) alongside Josh Taback (writer for The Simpsons). The film is a bit slow at first, but it moves towards an unexpected, unforgettable and moving climax (make sure you watch the whole thing!) An avid Star Wars fan irritates his friend with excessive knowledge and love of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. Drastic measures are taken to silence him. A hilarious and brilliant homage to both Star Wars and Francis Ford Coppola, this videofilm illustrates some of the points in the below post (namely, the poor conditions under which it must be viewed: a tiny, realplayer screen).

Beyond Miramax by Jesse Walker : Due to the ease with which one can now edit their own videos, the boundaries between the home movie and the independent film have blurred.

Many articles have been written about one sort of indie-film success story: the “young,” “scrappy” “maverick” whose Internet short or ultra-low-budget tape gets viewed by the right Hollywood exec, allowing the fresh-faced filmmaker to vault over those barriers and land a job assembling dream-widgets. This is not such a piece. This is about the moviemakers who don�t want Hollywood jobs, or at least don�t want them on Hollywood terms — about people trying to find ways around the distribution bottleneck, and the audiences that are tentatively coalescing around them.

Not suprisingly, the internet contains a vibrant virtual community of filmmakers and a horde of online movies. The most successful filmmakers are pornographers, but if alternative cinema consisted only of porn, it wouldn�t be worth writing about. Some net flicks even star well-known actors or are helmed by well-known directors. (Tim Burton, for example, has made a series of online animated shorts called Stainboy.) There are also a huge volume of fan communities devoted to Star Wars, Doctor Who, and other movies and TV series that put out spoofs, sequels, and tributes (not to mention infamous edits). The biggest problem with these internet films is the quality of the picture and the conditions under which it must be viewed (a tiny screen within a screen, huge bandwith requirements, etc…) Other available avenues are equally problematic, but these filmmakers have little or no interest in reaching a mass market, so its limited distribution isn’t as big a deal…