This was last night.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Show and Tell
I really liked National Treasure because it made anybody with an eighth grade history education and a penchant for word puzzles feel like a genius [and feel like you could land Helen of Troy]. National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets takes it one step further, giving every piece of information three times so nobody gets lost. Don't believe me? Take our initial look at the J Edgar Hoover Building. We're shown the building, expertly framed so that the sign that says "J. Edgar Hoover Building" takes up the left side of the screen. Then, at the bottom, for the six people in the theater who didn't notice, a caption pops up reading [you guessed it] "J. Edgar Hoover Building". Cut to the inside, where Harvey Keitel and everyone else in the building wears clothing with FBI in huge letters! It's like the motto for this one was No Movie-Goer Left Behind. Did lots of people have trouble following the first one? I don't understand. The number of times everyone described what we were being shown was really distracting.
The good news is that if you have a blind friend that really wants to go to the movies, you can take them to National Treasure 2 and they'll follow it just fine.
Also I'm still looking for an archivist that looks like Diane Kruger.
The good news is that if you have a blind friend that really wants to go to the movies, you can take them to National Treasure 2 and they'll follow it just fine.
Also I'm still looking for an archivist that looks like Diane Kruger.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
#9 - Once Upon a Time in the West
Once upon a time an Italian made the greatest western of all time. The thing that Once Upon a Time in the West understands better than any other western is that there's no need for realism in the genre. Instead it takes all the elements of the western and blends them all together into the ultimate combination. You get all the familiar archetypes: the loner seeking revenge, the crazy bandit with a heart of gold, the dangerous villain, and the woman who brings them all together. Claudia Cardinale even gets to be two western archetypes at the same time, being both a widow and a whore. [if only she could be a schoolteacher as well, she'd have everything covered!] Now put these characters in a fast-paced story where alliances change at every turn, and a double-cross is around every corner.
Next add music. Oh, the music! Ennio Morricone's music for Leone's films have become legendary for good reason. Even if you haven't seen a western you probably can hum the theme to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Now, instead of making one great iconic theme he made four, one for each character, each one unforgettable. I think 'operatic' is used far to often to describe the relation between Leone's films and Morricone's music. In this film I think the most accurate comparison is to dance, in the relation between music and movement.
The other element that makes this western seem larger than anything you've seen before is the cinematography. Like Leone's other westerns extreme close-ups dominate. It makes these characters who are already larger than life seem like giants. The combination between these close-ups and the music are almost too much, like the film is bursting at the seams. But the thing Once Upon a Time in the West has that the earlier films do not is scale. The first time you hear Jill's theme the camera follows her into the train station and moves up over the roof and as the music swells you see this large bustling western town. It's one of my favorite moments in all of cinema, the perfect blend of image, movement, and music. Once Upon a Time in the West is full of moments like these, and that's why it made the list.
See also: My other fave westerns- The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, Fistful of Dollars, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, Deadwood, The Wild Bunch
Next add music. Oh, the music! Ennio Morricone's music for Leone's films have become legendary for good reason. Even if you haven't seen a western you probably can hum the theme to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Now, instead of making one great iconic theme he made four, one for each character, each one unforgettable. I think 'operatic' is used far to often to describe the relation between Leone's films and Morricone's music. In this film I think the most accurate comparison is to dance, in the relation between music and movement.
The other element that makes this western seem larger than anything you've seen before is the cinematography. Like Leone's other westerns extreme close-ups dominate. It makes these characters who are already larger than life seem like giants. The combination between these close-ups and the music are almost too much, like the film is bursting at the seams. But the thing Once Upon a Time in the West has that the earlier films do not is scale. The first time you hear Jill's theme the camera follows her into the train station and moves up over the roof and as the music swells you see this large bustling western town. It's one of my favorite moments in all of cinema, the perfect blend of image, movement, and music. Once Upon a Time in the West is full of moments like these, and that's why it made the list.
See also: My other fave westerns- The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, Fistful of Dollars, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, Deadwood, The Wild Bunch
Saturday, January 5, 2008
#10 - Vernon, Florida
I'm going to be going backwards through my top ten of all time, rewatching the films and giving a bit of detail about why I chose them. If you want to know what I've been watching lately I've added a movie diary list on the right hand side of the page. I hope to update it with all the films I see this year, but we'll see how well I stick to it.
I've set myself a hell of a task in describing Vernon, Florida, let alone explaining how a 55 minute collection of strange people in a small town talking into the camera is my favorite documentary of all time. Errol Morris wanted to make a documentary about Vernon because he got wind that people there were intentionally disfiguring themselves to collect insurance money. Unfortunately when he arrived he soon figured out that people aren't really comfortable recounting the details of how they defrauded insurance companies on film. Undeterred, he began to interview the locals and collected a group of strange interviews. The result is to me far more interesting than a documentary about insurance fraud. A turkey hunter tells us about his experiences on the hunt. A policeman tells the tale of how he was shot at one night. Three old men argue about the best way to shoot yourself with a shotgun. A couple shows off a mysterious jar of sand that they claim is expanding at an alarming rate. Faulkner couldn't make this stuff up.
Errol Morris is one of our most respected and acclaimed documentary filmmakers, and he is indisputably a master of the form. But an issue I have with him is the amount of control he imposes on his latest films. He always seems to find amazing stories, but he is obsessed currently with putting a subject in a room with his two-camera system [the interrotron] and having that person look you in the eye and tell you his/her story. And his most recent films are certainly powerful and entertaining, but I prefer the spontaneity of Vernon, Florida and his first film, Gates of Heaven. In Vernon we get to see these people in the context of the place where they live. There's a bit of the genius of Walker Evans' photography in this film. Evans realized that people will give you a great deal of information about themselves if you allow them to pose for a picture, and there's an element of that in the way we see these people 'performing' for the camera in the film.
There are also some lovely little contrasts in the film. My favorite consists of a pair of scenes where a man who is seemingly building his own church by hand tells a story of how God answers his prayers for very practical things, contrasted by the next scene where a pastor of a huge church gives a sermon about the amount of times Paul uses the word therefore in the book of Romans. It also has some absolutely gorgeous camerawork, capturing the strange beauty of a tiny town. The whole film seems like a beautiful, miraculous accident.
See also: My other favorite documentaries-- Anything else by Morris, The Sorrow and the Pity, The Last Waltz, Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Burden of Dreams, The Five Obstructions, Grizzly Man, Don't Look Back, and No Direction Home.
I've set myself a hell of a task in describing Vernon, Florida, let alone explaining how a 55 minute collection of strange people in a small town talking into the camera is my favorite documentary of all time. Errol Morris wanted to make a documentary about Vernon because he got wind that people there were intentionally disfiguring themselves to collect insurance money. Unfortunately when he arrived he soon figured out that people aren't really comfortable recounting the details of how they defrauded insurance companies on film. Undeterred, he began to interview the locals and collected a group of strange interviews. The result is to me far more interesting than a documentary about insurance fraud. A turkey hunter tells us about his experiences on the hunt. A policeman tells the tale of how he was shot at one night. Three old men argue about the best way to shoot yourself with a shotgun. A couple shows off a mysterious jar of sand that they claim is expanding at an alarming rate. Faulkner couldn't make this stuff up.
Errol Morris is one of our most respected and acclaimed documentary filmmakers, and he is indisputably a master of the form. But an issue I have with him is the amount of control he imposes on his latest films. He always seems to find amazing stories, but he is obsessed currently with putting a subject in a room with his two-camera system [the interrotron] and having that person look you in the eye and tell you his/her story. And his most recent films are certainly powerful and entertaining, but I prefer the spontaneity of Vernon, Florida and his first film, Gates of Heaven. In Vernon we get to see these people in the context of the place where they live. There's a bit of the genius of Walker Evans' photography in this film. Evans realized that people will give you a great deal of information about themselves if you allow them to pose for a picture, and there's an element of that in the way we see these people 'performing' for the camera in the film.
There are also some lovely little contrasts in the film. My favorite consists of a pair of scenes where a man who is seemingly building his own church by hand tells a story of how God answers his prayers for very practical things, contrasted by the next scene where a pastor of a huge church gives a sermon about the amount of times Paul uses the word therefore in the book of Romans. It also has some absolutely gorgeous camerawork, capturing the strange beauty of a tiny town. The whole film seems like a beautiful, miraculous accident.
See also: My other favorite documentaries-- Anything else by Morris, The Sorrow and the Pity, The Last Waltz, Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Burden of Dreams, The Five Obstructions, Grizzly Man, Don't Look Back, and No Direction Home.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Because I promised
1) Chungking Express
2) Magnolia
3) Chinatown
4) Solaris (1972)
5) Annie Hall
6) Seven Samurai
7) Bringing Up Baby
8) Viridiana
9) Once Upon a Time in the West
10) Vernon, Florida
2) Magnolia
3) Chinatown
4) Solaris (1972)
5) Annie Hall
6) Seven Samurai
7) Bringing Up Baby
8) Viridiana
9) Once Upon a Time in the West
10) Vernon, Florida
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