Le Mot du Cinephiliaque

84th Academy Awards Nominations

2012-01-24T09:36:00.000-05:00

2012 Oscars Nominations

Of the two main categorizes (Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Achievment in Directing) some nominations are a bit of surprise to me. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for Best Motion Picture comes almost out of nowhere since I haven't read many rave reviews or reviews at all. On the plus side, a much deserving film The Tree of Life got a nomination as its director Terrence Malick.
The other films nominated are pretty much the ones that were mostly discussed by critics and specialists; The Artist, The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse.
The directors nominated are Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist),Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris), Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), Alexander Payne (The Descendants), Martin Scorsese (Hugo).

So, one of my New Year resolutions has been since two or three years to see all the films nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Of the last years I didn't get to see them all. Well, this year I will watch them all and post my predictions a few days before the ceremony.

What do you think of the 2012 Oscars nominations?

Shadow of A Doubt

2012-01-23T13:30:00.001-05:00

Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)

In this quest to view and review all the films mentioned in the book 1000 Movies You Must See Before You Die, there is a nice little club hosted by my good friend Squish over at Filmsquish, you can participate if you are interested or to just browse through the reviewed titles. This exercise made me discover some lesser known pictures and other films I wouldn't have been interested at the first time but I pushed myself into the viewing and the sometimes it had been very rewarding. However, since I've been working on many classic films list since around 2001-2002, lots of titles are second to multiple watches for me. Other titles hold the status of being personal favourites. Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt isn't less than a masterpiece and a personal favourite from Hitch's great filmography.

When traveler uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) comes to town (Anytown, USA) the Young Charlie (Teresa Wright) is more than excited, because she wants to know more about his voyages and the real life that he lives. However, since she is not a dumb girl, she discovers that uncle Charlie's has a dark past.

The story evolves around the duality (recurring Hitchcock theme) of the name Charlie and the opposites between both character. As if uncle Charlie is the bad side and Young Charlie is the good side. One example is the shoot when uncle Charlie's train arrives there's a giant black smoke that encaptures the locomotive as if the train came from hell. Cotten delivers a very subtle performance that helps Hitchcock's tension building around the principle of the criminal in the house with young Charlie and the fact that she discovers her uncle's secrets.

The technique and the mise en scène are the most important aspects of the film to notice when watching Shadow of a Doubt. It is also Hitch's creativity that pushes the boundaries of film making at this time and the brilliant cast that gives a more than notable ensemble performance.

Top Films of Federico Fellini by LMdC

2012-01-20T11:30:00.002-05:00

Today is Fellini's birthday, this director often called the "Maestro" has divided cinephiles from around the world with his dream-like "mise en scène" and his fabulous imagination. The recurring themes of childhood memories, at the beach endings, his neo-realist period, and the Cinecitta productions characterized Italian Cinema for many film buffs.
Without further ramblings here's the top films of Federico Fellini:

1. 8 1/2 (1963)
2. La dolce vita (1960)
3. Le notti di cabiria (1957)
4. La strada (1954)
5. Satyricon (1969)
6. I Vitelloni (1953)
7. The White Sheik (1951)
8. Amarcord (1973)
9. Casanova (1976)
10. Roma (1972)

I still need to see: Variety Lights (1950) Il Bidone (1955) Juliet of the Spirits (1965) Spirits of the Dead (1968) The Clowns (1971) Orchestra Rehearsal (1979) City of Women (1981) And the Ship Sails On (1984) Ginger and Fred (1986) Intervista (1987) The Voice of the Moon (1990)

Our Idiot Brother

2012-01-20T08:00:00.001-05:00

Our Idiot Brother (Jesse Peretz, 2011)
This indie production featuring Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks, Emily Mortimer, and many other could have been the regular stupid comedy about the stereotyped hippie with the eco-bragging about the respect of the earth and the many bold charicatures that comes with it. However, we discover another side of Paul Rudd's talent and an okay play that lives mainly because of the performances and the presences of its cast.

Rudd portrays the "idiot brother" who's been caught selling weed. When he goes out of jail for good behavior, his girlfriend and the farm he lives and works on doesn't want him anymore. The ex has already another boyfriend who lives on the farm with. However, the worst part is that the lady doesn't want him to get his dog (called Willie Nelson) back.

This movie stands out mainly for Paul Rudd's performance of subtility in this bland and naive hippie. Many situations could have fell into known territories because of their nature and our references. Nevertheless, the storyline helps Rudd to place his character in the perspective of the potential stupid or idiot without really being it as we could have thought. We see his interactions with his three sisters with each one he will eventually live with and bring a new perspective in all their lives. As you would guess this is the kind of indie that makes you feel good and that could be related in some way to The Kids Are Alright or Little Miss Sunshine as for the capable supporting cast and the interesting characters they have. Someone may say that those are a little too quirky but isn't the case for an Indie?

Our Idiot Brother is an interesting first offering from Peretz as the director and his interesting little story. This is a small movie that has a small effect but made with care.

The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films by They Shoot Pictures Don't They?

2012-01-19T10:59:00.000-05:00

NEW The 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films

The seventh edition of our 21st Century list is now online, and incorporates many of 2011's critics' ballots. Unsurprisingly, Terrence Malick's Tree of Life leads the 2011 bunch. View

Top films of Steven Spielberg by LMdC

2012-01-13T08:00:00.004-05:00

It was probably the first director name I ever noticed when I was a kid and it was way before I become a director worshiper. My relation with Spielberg has many highs and many lows. Let me explain myself here, I love his talent as a storyteller and his vision that makes us discover something fresh and original almost every time. The latest release of Tintin helped me to make peace with this widely acclaimed director that got on my nerves with his latest releases. The moralistic messages of his films and the lack of sensibility of some of his subjects and/or the hypocrisy of their treatment pissed me off.
However, when I look back at his better films I can not do anything but applause and remember myself how like his better work. Just hum the theme song for Indiana Jones and I will immediately have images of the hero for days. Who can't quote a line from Jaws? What is the only other (other than black and white even if they aren't colors 'cause they're black and white) color in Schindler's List?

I know it is a controversial list but it is my personal appreciation of Spielberg's oeuvre so far.

1. Jaws (1975)
2. Duel (1971)
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
5. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
6. Jurassic Park (1993)
7. Schindler's List (1993)
8. Catch Me If You Can (2002)
9. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
10. The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)
11. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
12. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
13. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
14. Minority Report (2002)
15. Munich (2005)
16. Hook (1991)
17. War of the Worlds (2005)
18. The Terminal (2004)
19. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Films I haven't seen: The Sugarland Express (1974) 1941 (1979) The Color Purple (1985) Empire of the Sun (1987) Always (1989) Amistad (1997) Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (2008) War Horse (2011) Lincoln (2012) Robopocalypse (2013)

Back to the Future

2012-01-12T08:00:00.061-05:00

Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)

Being born in the 1980's, 1983 to be exact, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) has always been one of my favourite childhood heroes. He rode a skateboard, been in the past and drove a DeLorean. The simple thought of time travel always inspired weird ideas of returning to Prehistoric Ages or Medieval Times. However, this Robert Zemeckis pictures targets the 1950's a time of "peace and security" for the middle class American. This era has been romanticized and brought back in fashion in the 1980's. It was then a nice opportunity to take the Marty McFly of 1985 and make him travel to the time where his parents met: the 1955. Well, in a strictly commercial point of view this family adventure targeted many generations and portrayed an era that represented the parents of the time and the teenagers.

It is in the same vein that John Hugues managed with much success to make many teenager films, by understanding their preoccupations and revitalizing the social values of the 1950's. His comedies, Christmas Vacation (written by Hugues and directed by Jeremiah Chechiak), for example, display a father figure that wants to revive the real Christmas family of his childhood, from what decade? The 1950's, yeah right!

The story of the family depicted in Back to the Future represents the perfect recipe to a success, the love story, the action, the stereotypes of the crazy scientist, the terrorists, etc. It was intended to be a classic at the time it was made. Nowadays, it is a cult classic for my generation and a personal nostalgic pleasure. I remember watching this movie with my father on Saturday nights everytime it was aired on TV. Sometimes we would rent the three films together and watch them in a triple bill evening with popcorn, cheese sticks and cola. As a part of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Blog Club I was thrilled to revisit this classic of my childhood. A must see.

News: Directors Guild chooses film award nominees

2012-01-11T11:00:00.001-05:00

(Reuters) - Filmmakers Woody Allen, David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, Alexander Payne and France's Michel Hazanavicius were nominated for Directors Guild film awards Monday -- a honor that is often a key indicator of Oscar success.
Hazanavicius, 44, scored his first Directors Guild of America (DGA) nomination for his black and white silent movie about old Hollywood, "The Artist," which has wowed critics since its premier at the Cannes film festival in May.

The French director joined U.S. veterans Scorsese and Allen, who were nominated for their work on 3D family film "Hugo" and comedy "Midnight in Paris," respectively.

Fincher scored his third DGA nomination for the U.S. version of Swedish writer Stieg Larsson's thriller "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," while Payne notched up his second nod for dysfunctional family drama "The Descendants" starring George Clooney.
The DGA has a strong track record of foreshadowing the eventual winner of the best director Oscar, and the Academy Award for best movie also goes to the winner of best director. Since 1948, there are only six occasions when the DGA award winner has not gone on to win the corresponding Academy Award.
The DGA hands out its award at ceremony in Los Angeles on Jan 28 in Hollywood, and it will be hosted this year by former "Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer. (Source)

With this news, I just can't say how much I am surprised to see that they already overpassed Terrence Malick as a contender for the Best Director award. It's a shame because his colossal work on The Tree of Life is worth at least for a strong nomination. It also announces that the Academy will omit his candidature for the precious statuette...

I will write it just once and I hope to never write those words anymore in front of an aberration like this but it is my reaction to this announcement: WHAT THE F--K! Don't get me wrong I am very happy for Allen, Scorsese, Fincher, Payne, and Hazanavicius it is all well deserved but the near-masterpiece of the year and its director doesn't even get mentioned?

Read my full review of The Tree of Life.

Links: Update of the 1000 Greatest Films at They Shoot Pictures Don't They?

2012-01-11T08:00:00.003-05:00

NEW The 1,000 Greatest Films

TSPDT's annual update of the 1,000 Greatest Films is now online. 49 changes to the list and for the first time Fritz Lang leads the way with 16 films. Please take a look for yourself!

My 12 (or so) Favourite Classic Films First Seen in 2011

2012-01-10T09:35:00.003-05:00

Quoting the words of one of the Film critics that inspired me to do this Blog, Kevyn Knox of The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World:

"Inspired by the always charming, always enjoyable and always cinematically knowledgeable (and always alliterative, nomenclaturally speaking) Self-Styled Siren, I send forth a list of my 25 favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011. Classic, of course, being any movie made prior to 1960. And in keeping with the Siren's choice of keeping the descriptions to a bare bones minimum (actually inspired in turn by Clara at Via Margutta 51...) So without further ado, here are my favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011."

Since I've seen fewer films than the latest years I've decided to make a list of 12 films instead of the 25 that my colleagues did on their own niches. To keep up with the format of this exercise I will be writing one-line presentation of each film and add the link to the full review of them on this blog.

1. To Have and To Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944)
Since one or two years I've been meaning to watch the entire films of the great Howard Hawks, this Bogart-Bacall flick is all about Hawksian comedy-thrill and probably one of the best films I've seen in 2011, it became a personal favourite rightaway. Full review.

2. Les yeux sans visage (Georges Franju, 1960) A filmmaker friend of mine talked to me many times about this masterpiece of French Cinema, as of today I don't understand why I've never watched this before, a frightening yet very human film. Full review.

3. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)Ray's freudian Western masterpiece with the amazing Joan Crawford, it redefined the classic Hollywoodian Western genre. Full review.

4. Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)A cult classic of bad guys, guns, girls, atomic disaster, and gritty fun. Full review.

5. Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1956)Hawks' underrated egyptian grand spectacle is all about excess and filmmaking extravaganza, one of Martin Scorsese's guilty pleasures. Full review.

6. To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)The Lubitsch touch and one of the many inspirations on Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, the last film by the beautiful Carole Lombard. Full review.

7. The Long Voyage Home (John Ford, 1940)
A war picture by of the most American filmmakers of all-time, John Ford, shot by Citizen Kane's cinematographer Gregg Toland. Full review

8. The Naked Jungle (Byron Haskins, 1952)A guilty pleasure of mine, the 1950's and 1960's films shot in jungles/studios are a subgenre I really for no reason love, Haskins an underrated director of Film Noir does a great job with a nice script full of subtext and symbolism. Full review.

9. Partie de campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936)Probably the most beautiful unfinished film of all time, Renoir's film is shot like a short story directed by an early Terrence Malick, full of visual poetry and humanity. Full review.

10. Mon oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958)Tati has kept the Silent comedy tricks alive with his M. Hulot, without really much words Tati manages to make us laugh out loud many times in his subtle but enjoyable comedy. Full review.

11. Madame de... (Max Ophüls, 1953)
Max Ophüls, what more can I say than it is one of the most beautiful films ever made from one of the best directors of all-time. Full review.

12. Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950)
The last installement of the Ford Calvalry trilogy, a freudian film starring the ultimate American father figure; JohnWayne. Full review.

Top films of Martin Scorsese by LMdC

2012-01-09T08:00:00.006-05:00

The living director I probably respect the most and the one that directed my all-time favorite movie, Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese's top film list is not an easy thing to do. With more than forty films, shorts, documentaries, concert films features, the career of this great director of 69 years old isn't even slowing down. With a film presently in theaters, Hugo, Scorsese's first 3D experience, and a biopic about Sinatra announced and another project titled Silence, the man sure wants to work. He could have only made films until the early 1980's and his place amongst the greats of the media would have been casted forever in stone.
After many problems in the 1970's and 1980's Scorsese directed his Last Temptation of Christ a controversial film that represented this tormented catholic's preoccupations. Even if I only saw more than the half of his filmography I think I've seen the major works of this amazing director. Here are the top films of Martin Scorsese by me:

1. Taxi Driver (1976)
2. Raging Bull (1980)
3. Goodfellas (1990)
4. The King of Comedy (1983)
5. Mean Streets (1973)
6. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
7. New York, New York (1977)
8. After Hours (1985)
9. Casino (1995)
10. The Departed (2006)
11. Shutter Island (2010)
12. The Last Waltz (1978)
13. The Key to Reserva (short) (2007)
14. I Call First (1967)
15. New York Stories (segment Life Lessons) (1989)
16. Gangs of New York (2002)
17. Shine A Light (2008)
18. Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
19. The Age of Innocence (1993)
20. The Aviator (2004)
21. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
22. The Color of Money (1986)
23. Boxcar Bertha (1972)
24. Cape Fear (1991)

I still need to see: Vesuvius VI (short) (1959) What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This? (short) (1963) The Big Shave (short) (1967) Street Scenes (1970) Italianamerican (1974) American Boy: A Profile: Steven Prince (1978) Mirror, Mirror (Amazing stories) (1986) Bad (video short) (1987) Made in Milan (1990) A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995) Kundun (1997) Il mio viaggio in Italia (1999) The Neighborhood (short) (2001) Feel Like Going Home (2003) The Lady by the Sea: The Statue of Liberty (2004) No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) A Letter to Elia (2010) Boardwalk Empire (2010) Public Speaking (2010) George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011) Hugo (2011)

Gangs of New York

2012-01-06T08:00:00.002-05:00

Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002)
Gangs of New York is the Martin Scorsese picture that Harvey Weinstein wanted to produce to win many Oscars and be the ultimate David O. Selznick. Weinstein wanted to produce the movie of a true Hollywood director and have full control over "his" director. The Miramax tycoon always thought he knew movies better than anyone else and he knew what the public wanted to see. Buying foreign films at low cost and cutting them to please American audiences was his bread and butter in the 1980's. In the 1990's, he decided that he would buy Independant American features and control the lenght and the content. He began producing with Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and slowly earned fame and recognition within his peers. However, ther a re few filmmakers that haven't been well acquainted with Weinstein because he is a man of control and a manipulative fellow. He'll always present himself like your best friend, buying your movie and making you a favor to distribute and promote it the way you wanted it to be.

Harvey Weinstein had a huge ego and even bigger ambitions, he wanted to be the next David O. Selznick. Selznick is the producer responsible for the famed adaptation of Gone With the Wind, the film that made the most profit in all film History when adjusted to current prices at the modern day Box Office the profit made by this film will never be equalled. Selznick had control over casting, directing, producing , designs, etc. Gone With the Wind is his movie and it was probably his greatest achievment. No wonder, ambition and money driven Harvey Weinstein was always thinking of the producer when he began tormenting Scorsese during the shooting, editing, mixing of Gangs of New York.

One thing Harvey forgot, Martin Scorsese is also a control freak and he needs his director cut and the complete control over his own work. The two hot-tempered men almost went into fights over Gangs of New York a film about the many confrontations that happened during the first decades of New York City. The violence of the making of the film is well reflected in the visual of the story. The personalisation of Bill the Butcher by Daniel Day-Lewis who already been in a slur against Harvey Weinstein at the time of My Left Foot can easily be described as the representation of the mighty producer.

There are many things that outlines in Gangs of New York, Leonardo DiCaprio that fails at bringing the Irish hero to life with the depth needed by the character. DiCaprio was far better in the Spielberg picture released the same day that portrays a famous counterfeit in Catch Me If You Can. The one note actress Cameron Diaz gives one of her worst performance and the sex scenes of the aforementioned actors is forced and uninspired. It is sad that the only character we dig for and believe is Bill the Butcher and John C. Reilly's Happy Jack Mulraney.

Moreover, the whole movie feels unScorsesian and the inspiration of his Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull doesn't seem to really appear here. It is clear that the energy wasted in the Weinstein-Scorsese battles is compromising the success of the story and the film. The 100-plus millions dollar production gives a somewhat well shot film that doesn't stand as one of the essential films of Scorsese's career. It is nonetheless, a worth seing picture that 10 years later hasn't really aged much but that is frustrating in the manner of the making because it could have been just a notch better and it would have been a much more celebrated movie. Gangs of New York is better than the average mediocrity of block buster but as a Martin Scorsese picture it lacks of spirit and disappoint someone who's looking for a great film.

Horrible Bosses

2012-01-05T08:00:00.002-05:00

Horrible Bosses (Seth Gordon, 2011)
Three normal or random guys (Charlie Day, Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis) work for bosses that they hate. One is a drug addict and a freak (Colin Farrell), the other loves power and thinks his wife constantly cheats on him (Kevin Spacey) and the last one but not the least is a sexual harrassment hotie (Jennifer Aniston). With this setup the three guys brag about how their bosses make their lives miserable until one drunken night they decide to finish with their misery and think about a plan to get rid of their bosses. They will meet a professionnal (Jamie Foxx) to do the job...

The presence of a SNL regular Jason Sudeikis, the funny and sometimes annoying high pitched voice Charlie Day (Going the Distance) and Arrested Development's Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) make the perfect trio of losers that plans the perfect crime to eliminate the nuisance at their jobs. This universal concept of hating our bosses might seem too simple but instead this is what makes this film work so well. The bosses portrayed by the capable actors aforementioned are so mean and over the line of sanity that it is almost justified to kill them.

A simple plot that gives an interesting variation on Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train with twisted humour and a great supporting cast. With Horrible Bosses we are far from The Tree of Life (aka the greatest film of 2011 on this blog) but the comedy is efficient and the situations are hilarious. A great film for a friday night with friends and a couple of beers.

One Day

2012-01-04T08:15:00.001-05:00

One Day (Lone Scherfig, 2011)

Adapted from the Best-seller of the same title, this romance that is expanding over twenty years told only on the 15 of july of each year from 1988 until 2011 is almost already castrated by its concept. Since I haven't read the original material this review is based only on the feature film.

The couple of Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturges was a promising setup to this awaited adaptation. The concept of the novel is transcribed by fifteen or so short films that represented each year the story is told. The films also represent the times and the evolution of this relationship. But as the pace the story goes the viewer doesn't really has the time to understand what is the link between the two leads and how they get to each other each year. The restriction of the concept, told the story by only one day per year retains too much information and lets to much blanks to fully capture what the author wants us to understand from its story.

Even if Hathaway and Sturges want to take the movie on their shoulders they carry two complex characters that a story won't properly unfold and that doesn't let the talent of the two young actors take the lead and perform. The lenght of the film, probably reduced by the studios and/or producers restraint the possibility to make this film work.

Afterall, the waste of talent and production cost, the short films reprensent the last decades with much precision but the story displayed is too thin to make this film work and be a real success.

Films watched in 2011

2011-12-31T08:00:00.060-05:00

96-3= 93 first times so far in 2011

Here you will find the films I've seen so far this year. Some critics claim to see 800 films per year. I planned to see 200 films I've never seen before in 2010. For 2011, I wanted to keep this number and to see more films from the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time list.

However, I've only watched less than a hundred films. Excuses are my wedding in August, our two week honeymoon in Hawaii, and my new job. In 2012, there won't be any excuses!

* = Seen in Theater
// = Not my first time

1. (02-01) 35 rhums (Claire Denis, 2008) France
2. (02-01) The Crazies (Breck Eisner, 2010) USA
3. (02-01) / Mary Poppins / (Robert Stevenson, 1964) USA
4. (05-01) *Black Swan* (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) USA
5. (06-01) Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995) USA
6. (07-01) Boogie Nights (P.T. Anderson, 1997) USA
7. (08-01) The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995) USA
8. (11-01) Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980) Italy
9. (18-01) Greenberg (Noah Baumbach, 2010) USA
10. (22-01) Green Zone (Paul Greengrass, 2010) USA
11. (22-01) *The Fighter* (David O. Russell, 2010) USA
12. (23-01) The Road (John Hillcoat, 2009) USA
13. (27-01) Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009) UK
14. (28-01) Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010) USA
15. (28-01) The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010) USA
16. (29-01) The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010) USA
17. (30-01) Lightning Over Water (Werner Herzog & Nicholas Ray, 1980) USA
18. (16-02) The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961) USA
19. (17-02) The Naked Jungle (Byron Haskins, 1954) USA
20. (18-02) Sur mes lèvres (Jacques Audiard, 2001) France
21. (19-02) The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, 2010) UK
22. (23-02) Brick (Rian Johnson, 2005) USA
23. (23-02) Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodovar, 2009) Spain
24. (27-02) Cassandra's Dream (Woody Allen, 2007) USA, UK
25. (28-02) A Single Man (Tom Ford, 2009) USA
26. (01-03) Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915) France
27. (01-03) L'ami de mon amie (Eric Rohmer, 1987) France
28. (01-03) Allemagne 90 neuf zéro (Jean-Luc Godard, 1991) France, Allemagne
29. (01-03) The Long Voyage Home (John Ford, 1940) USA
30. (02-03) Histoire(s) du cinema: Une histoire seule (Jean-Luc Godard, 1989) France
31. (02-03) Histoire(s) du cinema: Fatale beauté (Jean-Luc Godard, 1997) France
32. (02-03) The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927) UK
33. (02-03) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937) USA
34. (02-03) Che: Part One (Steven Soderbergh, 2008) USA
35. (02-03) Che: Part Two (Steven Soderbergh, 2008) USA
36. (07-03) Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog, 2006) USA
37. (08-03) The Host (Joon-Ho Bong, 2006) Korea
38. (08-03) Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008) Israel, France, Germany
39. (09-03) Me and Orson Welles (Richard Linklater, 2009) USA
40. (20-03) The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Terry Gilliam, 2009) Canada
41. (27-03) Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (Terry Jones, 1983) UK
42. (31-03) The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston, 1975) USA
43. (31-03) Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, 1980) USA
44. (02-04) Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007) UK
45. (03-04) eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999) Canada
46. (04-04) Top Secret! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, 1984) USA
47. (17-04) Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996) Canada
48. (24-04) /The Wedding Singer/ (Frank Coraci , 1998) USA
49. (01-05) /Easy Rider/ (Dennis Hopper, 1969) USA
50. (01-05) Made in U.S.A. (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966) France
51. (02-05) Une femme mariée (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964) France
52. (03-05) To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1941) USA
53. (03-05) The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, 2010) USA
54. (04-05) El secreto de sus ojos (2009) Brazil
55. (05-05) October (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1928) USSR
56. (07-06) Un prophète (Jacques Audiard, 2009) France
57. (08-06) Something Borrowed (2011) USA
58. (12-06) Definitely, Maybe (2008) USA
59. (13-06) The Hangover Part II (Todd Phillips, 2011) USA
60. (14-06) Easy A (Will Gluck, 2010) USA
61. (15-06) The Tree Of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011) USA
62. (19-06) Julie & Julia (Nora Ephron, 2009) USA
63. (20-06) Going the Distance (Nanette Burstein, 2010) USA
64. (05-08) Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971) USA
65. (25-09) Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011) USA
66. (29-09) The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971) USA
67. (02-10) Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1956) USA
68. (04-10) Madame de... (Max Ophüls, 1953) France
69. (04-10) Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955) USA
70. (13-10) Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) USA
71. (14-10) Malice in Lalaland (Lex Factor, 2010) USA
72. (18-10) Partie de campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936) France
73. (18-10) To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944) USA
74. (20-10) The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) Italy
75. (24-10) Les mistons (François Truffaut, 1957) France
76. (24-10) Antoine et Colette (François Truffaut, 1962) France
77. (27-10) Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993) USA
78. (03-11) L'année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961) France
79. (03-11) Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922) USA
80. (08-11) Les yeux sans visage (Georges Franju, 1960) France
81. (09-11) Le samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) France
82. (09-11) L'argent (Robert Bresson, 1983) France
83. (10-11) Cléo de 5à 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962) France
84. (10-11) Mon oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958) France
85. (30-11) Pauline à la plage (Eric Rohmer, 1983) France
86. (02-12) Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981) Germany
87. (11-12) Rose Hobart (George Melford , 1936) USA
88. (12-12) The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973) USA
89. (16-12) The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman, 1983) USA
90. (16-12) Anatomie de l'enfer (Catherine Breillat, 2004) France
91. (19-12) Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950) USA
92. (19-12) Friends With Benefits (Will Gluck, 2011) USA
93. (23-12) Crazy, Stupid Love. (Glenn Ficarra & John Requa, 2011) USA
94. (28-12) *The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn* (Steven Spielberg, 2011) USA, Belgium
95. (29-12) Horrible Bosses (Seth Gordon, 2011) USA
96. (29-12) One Day (Lone Scherfig, 2011) USA

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

2011-12-31T08:00:00.059-05:00

Crazy, Stupid, Love. (Glenn Ficarra & John Requa, 2011)

Lately I've been catching up on films of 2011 and I recently reviewed Friends With Benefits claiming that it probably wasn't the best comedy of the year, well Crazy, Stupid, Love. is a great containder for this category at the time I am writing those lines. Well, someone could say that I haven't seen much of the 2011 released, one would be damn right about it. I am still advancing that so far Crazy, Stupid, Love. is the best comedy of the year I've seen so far.

Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) is on the verge of a surprise divorce with his wife Emily (Julianne Moore) who just cheated on him with David Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon). But, one night playboy Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling) decides to take care of Cal and help him regain his pride, his image, and his wife. This simple story blends love, friendship, family, and lots of great comedy-filled moments with once again a superb cast of supporting actors; Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei, John Carroll Lynch, Analeigh Tipton, and Jonah Bobo. This ensemble cast gives you the feelgood approach of a indie film without even being too sweet or too bitter. A perfect balance of comedy, drama, and human interest.

Everyone who knows me a little knows that I'm a sucker for a good comedy made with a keen script and capable actors. Put Julianne Moore in there and the stoic faced Steve Carell and you have this superb light hearted film full of subtility and wonderful performances. A must see.

Friends With Benefits

2011-12-30T08:00:00.031-05:00

Friends With Benefits (Will Gluck, 2011)

From the director of the refreshing Easy A, Will Gluck directs a lesser but still entertaining film that revisits the clichés of the genre it fells into. Friends With Benefits, wants to dissect and remodel the romantic comedy in a way that wnats to be something like a When Harry Met Sally. Two adults (justin Timberlake and beautiful Mila Kunis) become friends and one day decide to have all the sex without strings attached and the complications that comes with relationships. Even if the story provokes some funny moments others are pretexts to situations of bedroom humour.

The plot wants to be fresh and original, like every movie should be, and in the first and second act it reaches the goal it needs to achieve to brings us somewhere a Hollywood film doesn't really goes. However, the third act goes directly into the cliché and into the path the story tried to avoid since its beginning. A stronger script and the extraction of some filler moments could have benefited (obvious, I know) the film and keep a better pace to the story.

The work of Gluck is interesting because of a regular cast that seems to be built around him; Patricia Clarkson, Emma Stone, etc. A thing that I really appreciated in Easy A was the supporting cast that was very efficient and the construction of an effective supporting characters that isn't written for a lone purpose. the presence of Woody Harrelson is also surprisingly funny.

Even if you are not into the best comedy of the year, Friends With Benefits assures you a good laugh and a nice time. Worth a look for the synergy of the two leads and their general beauty.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

2011-12-29T08:25:00.003-05:00

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (Steven Spielberg, 2011)

Since 1981, the year the first Indiana Jones was released, Steven Spielberg's hero has been reference to the little Belgian journalist. Spielberg who did not knew Tintin at the time bought the albums and was immediatly a fan of Hergé's creation. However, the late Hergé died in 1983 and his widow, Fanny Remi, made the succession of the name and the use of it very difficult. At first she sold to anyone who wanted to buy it. Food, markets, stickers, cards, anything you could imagine has been marketed. It ended with her new marriage with one of Hergé's biggest fan: Nick Rodwell. Rodwell decided that Tintin will no longer be a sellout and that the use of its image and name was gonna be restricted. It is one of the reasons why an adaptation of the albums has been retarded for a while.

Spielberg's adaptation has been announced in 2007, but the motion capture, proposed by Peter Jackson, wasn't Spielberg's first choice of treatment. It took two years to decide to use this technology that identifies the characters without using real actors and widely known faces. Tintin kept his secret with him, a round face short red hair, and a baby face. There is a lot of mytery around Tintin, is it his real name? Who are his parents? What is his religion? etc. Hergé kept Tintin's privacy like he kept his: secret.

The Spielberg adaption mixes three albums of the great belgian drawer; The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, and Rakham the Red's Treasure. The story is well rounded and the mix of the three plots blends really well with great respect to its author and the kind of plots and humor he liked to play on the audience. As a great fan of Tintin myself, I could recite the lines of the albums during the projection. Needless to say that I was already conquered with the openning credits! The most important thing to understand is the fact that the essence of Tintin is unaltered by Spielberg's taste of grand spectacle.

The lesser aspect of the story is the final act that develops quickly and in a too spectacular action film oriented approach than the actual source material. The pace of the ending clashes with the setting of the beginning of the story and the meticulous adaptation of the intrigue. However, Spielberg proves that he is a true fan of the author and gives a great hommage to the great work of the Belgian comic book master.

Best albums of 2011

2011-12-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

Even if this blog is film oriented I've decided this year to share a little more about my other interest: music. To me, genre doesn't matter as long as it is original and honest. However, like everybody I have favorite genres like Indie rock and Metal. Don't be surprised to see some opposites on this list. This is a Top 10 and I must admit I listened to way more new music in 2010. But still, 2011 was an interesting year in the indie scene. On the side of Metal I think it was decent but not exciting like last year with the late release of Enslaved's superb effort in Axioma Ethica Odini.

Those are albums worth mentionning but that don't deserved to be on my personal list.

Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committe Part Two

While being not so much a fan of Rap/Hip Hop I always go to the Beastie Boys wanting to renew with the Licensed To Ill, Check Your Head, Ill Communication, Paul's Boutique era that made me love them so much. Their latest effort is worth metionning because it has this return to their roots and to what I used to like about them. Even if they won't ever be like they were back then it is the kind of nostalgic album you have to listen here and there.

Amon Amarth - Surtur Rising

This established melodic Death Metal band never been my cup of tea. Amon Amarth's latest release sounds lie a return in form while being less melodic and a lot heavier. The themes of battles and Viking lifestyle are recurrent and even if it won't be the best Metal album of the year it is a honest yet strong effort from a band I would have passed if it wasn't from a friend of mine that pratically sold it to me.

Moonsorrow - Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maassa

This special mention is for the lenght of the title that is ridicoulously long. Seriously, I'm not into Viking Metal at all, but this brilliant effort of the masters of the genre is sure worth a listen. While being a little catchy the aggressivity of this album is nearer to Black Metal in it construction and also in the ambiances thorough the entire opus.

#10

The Strokes - Angles

Renewing with this nice Rock outfit was like candy to our ears. It hits the tenth place because Is This It is one of my favorite albums from the 2000's. With a more 80's revival sound than ever Angles might be for some fans a step apart from their original form but I still think that it is an album that has been overpassed pretty quickly and that we should revisit because it is more than worth it.

Primordial - Redemption At The Puritan's Hand

This Irish Black/Heavy Metal band that can't really be categorized because not being that Black or that Heavy sure brings you somewhere near Folk music without falling into the clichés the bands like Finntroll keep going to. Primordial is a superb band that masters its sound and keep every production at the top everytime. Redemption At The Puritan's Hand stands as strong as Primordial's music; an altar to excellence.

#8

Septic Flesh - The Great Mass

This outfit of Extreme Symphonic Metal, explores the boundaries of beauty and savagery in their music. Another great hit form these masters in a band that has more than twenty years of music in its career. They managed to make their own niche and have their own flavour. A band that has always been overlooked in my opinion.

Demonaz - March Of The Norse

The return of the cofounding member of Immortal, Demonaz has been long awaited since his mandatory departure from the aforementioned band due to severe tendinitis problems that obliged him to stop playing guitar at the pace Immortal was playing. More on the Heavy Metal side of darkness, Demonaz is never that far from the Black Metal roots he grew up forging with fellow Norwegians musicians. A good album that has a little nostalgic frosting but not too oversentimental.

Opeth - Heritage

Mikael Akerfelt is a fan of 1970's music and this album is dedicated to the greats that influenced him without copying or redoing the music of his fathers. An Opeth album without any screams or heavy parts. This is a record for fans of music, musicians, and an album made without any commercial compromize. Akerfelt proves that he has complete control on the destiny of his band and that even if he is known for his Progessive Death/Heavy Metal he can play the guitar and sing cleanly. Get it on vinyl if you want the perfect sound. Listen to some Camel to get you into this.

#5

Radiohead - The King Of Limbs

The great kings of Rock came back with this eight song album that separated critics and fans. Many thought that it was a lesser album that what we're used to. I just think that Radiohead wanted to try something here that hits sometimes and that it is not quite there other times. As a whole this is another Radiohead release that kind of grows on you as more a as you give it some listens.

M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming

I discovered M83 with the release of the snowboard movie The Art of Flight. This double album full of interesting textures mixing electro/pop/indie/rock doesn't really fall into the 80's revival wave but catches some of the 80's spirit in the depth of its music. This is my working music for a while now.

Foster The People - Torches

The success story of the year, Foster The People charms by its happy light-hearted music and its groving beats.An addictive record that I thought I'd get tired pretty quickly that instead stuck into my head for many listens to come. One of my favorite discovery of the year.

Mastodon - The Hunter

Mastodon has taken a more radio sounding attitude with The Hunter and the shorter songs and the ever growing exploration of styles without forgetting their roots makes this brilliant effort my second favorite album of the year. Probably the most inspiring Rock/Metal band of the last decade, since Remission, Mastodon managed to reinvent itself.

Bright Eyes - The People's Key

Without a doubt this album is far from being Oberst's best offering but I must admit that it was the album I listened the most in 2011. The blend of Indie/Pop/Melancholy charmed me and got me.

Albums I haven't listened that could have changed my mind: Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn Of Events, The Airbourne Toxic Event - All At Once, Blackfield - Welcome to my DNA, Cage The Elephant - Thank You Happy Birthday, etc.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

I wish you all a Happy Christmas full of joy and great times with your family and friends!

Let's hope Santa brought you many great presents (DVDs, books on Cinema, memorabilias, etc.) to pump you up!

I invite you to share in the comments what Santa has brought to you!

Merry Christmas!

- Michaël

Fanny and Alexander

2011-12-24T08:00:00.041-05:00

Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
When Bergman announced this film he also said to whoever wanted to hear that it was gonna be his final directing job. History told us that he made some movies after this 1982 picture. However, Fanny and Alexander seems like the perfect testament from one of the greatest, if not the greatest filmmaker of all time. The rich colours, the wonderful mise en scène and the panoramic framing of every scene is just perfect. Plus, it begins with a warm celebration of christmas in Sweden of the early 20th Century.

A family that looks like a lot like Bergman's description of his, an actor father that dies too young. His mother getting married with a strict pastor who hates children, and the use of every trick in the bag of Bergman. Well, this is Bergman's autobiographical picture where Alexander portrays the little Ingmar in his childhood when he discovered the theater and the first cinema-lanterns. One of the most famous stills from this film is the Alexander picture watching his little theater in the night of Christmas.

The plot is an amalgam of Bergman's childhood memories but also his influences in films with subtle references to Hamlet, which is the play his family rehearse and one time his mother calls him Hamlet when he can't stand his stepfather. The many spectral apparitions and the construction of the story reminds the great plays of Strindberg, one of Bergman's favourite playwriter. The film has this classic approach to drama and narrative while being a fresh Bergman film, original and unique.

However, the most interesting aspect of this film is the warmth of the images and the atmosphere of joy and reverence from the entire cast. When you look at the Making Of from the wonderful Criterion set, there is a sense of happiness, joy from the shooting of the film and Bergman seems relieved to shot this film and tie the bow with this magnificent opus. He looks content at what he has done and the final film seems to make him proud of what he did not only as a director but as an artist.

As a Bergman enthusiast and a true lover of Christmas and the Holidays I think that the whole sequence depicting the night of Christmas, the meal, the music, the dancing, and the family fun that it represents reminded me of the memories of what this celebration used to be in my childhood. Like the celebration of Christmas depicted in the Claude Jutra film Mon oncle Antoine that represents how we celebrate Noël in my part of the world. Fanny and Alexander has been since the first time I saw it one of my Holiday favorite. A must see and a masterpiece.

Rio Grande

2011-12-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950)

Of the cavalry trilogy made by John Ford and John Wayne together, Rio Grande (the other two films being She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Fort Apache) might be the deepest in meanings and one of Ford's most beautiful black and white pictures.

Rio Grande depicts family values, social effort, and the common all-American priciples that a good old John Ford film should bring on the screen.

I usually admire Ford's Westerns and I really enjoyed the two other installements of this trilogy. However, there was something that just didn't do it for me with Rio Grande. I was probably not in the mood for this kind of movie when I watched it. I should get back to this one some time later and do a triple bill of the whole cavalry concept and a good review of the film. I apologized for this lack of consistency here.

450th post!

2011-12-22T08:00:00.028-05:00

New Milestone! 450th post on Le Mot du Cinephiliaque since August 2009. Since I started this blog it was going to be a place where I would discuss and rambled about Films, Cinema, directors, and everything related to it. Well, now it is mostly about movie reviews and a place where I can write some ideas on films I've been watching. It is also a growing passion in writing and disccusing films. Cinema has been my passion for more than a decade now but I've only started writing about it since two years or so. It brought me up to read more and more about the subject, directors, how to review a film, and how to make one also.

Now in December 2011 with more than 77 000 page views, almost 5000 page views per month lately I want to get more and more readers and especially more commenters. Because this is the comments, positive and negative, that motivates me to push myself and to try to write better reviews, watch films I've never seen and /or heard of.

This 450th post is just in time to almost conclude the year of 2011 a plenty one for me since I got married and that I now have a new job it lets me less time to watch and review films. I almost didn't went to the Theaters this year, and my movie watching time has been cut by half. But I don't want to spoil it because I have a post waiting to be published with my film diary of the year 2011.

Thank you all for reading my posts and for commenting rigorously!

The Seventh Seal

2011-12-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

The Seventh Seal aka Det sjunde inseglet (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

Of the many great films directed by Ingmar Bergman The Seventh Seal is one of the most outstanding and celebrated. For those who don’t know please believe me or treat yourselves with Persona, The Virgin Spring, Wild Strawberries, Shame, Fanny and Alexander, Saraband, Winter Light, Cries and Whispers, The Magician, The Silence, Scenes From A Marriage, well I’m not gonna list them all here but just stand far from The Touch which you can read about in the Simply the Worst event at Reverse Shot where they celebrate the worst film of many notable directors.
I remember the first time I read about this film; in medieval Sweden a knight comes back to Scandinavia after a Crusade and meets Death. He proposes to play a game of chess with Death to postpone his eventual journey in the after world. Meanwhile, the knight travels with a showman and his wife. If, like me at the time you haven't seen the film, the poster, any still, and do not know the actors it inspires to an interesting picture.

First, this plot always intrigued me so it was natural that I’d do anything to watch it. It was in October 2002 at the University on a VHS player on a 14 inches TV and crappy earphones. This context gave to the film a special glow of a rare gem to finally been watched and experienced. It was the first Ingmar Bergman film I’ve ever watched. Needless is to say that it was a revelation. A revelation of Scandinavian Cinema, a great master, a great actor Max Von Sydow, and a riveting filmography.

The importance of The Seventh Seal is more than preeminent in the medium, ranked in the Top 250 of IMDb by regular users (a rating system I definitely don’t understand) listed as the 53rd spot of They Shoot Pictures Don’t They?’s 1000 Greatest Films, #35 by critics of the Sight & Sound 2002 poll and #31 on the Directors side. It can go on and on but it was one of the first films to open the door to classic films and foreign films in my early stages of cinephilia.

About the film, in the 1950’s Bergman was directing at the Stockholm Theater during winter and with the same cast he was directing films. During the summer of 1957 Bergman not only directed The Seventh Seal but also his masterpiece Wild Strawberries. It was a great year for Bergman and Cinema too. Interesting fact, despite his widely known pretention, Bergman was somewhat modest about how he liked his films. But his film he likes the most is The Seventh Seal, he said that it is the one that works the best. However, this false modesty isn’t palpable when you watch carefully Bergman’s films, the characters of his contemporary films represent the bourgeoisie and their problems. In The Seventh Seal, the knight represents some kind of bourgeoisie that stands above the showman and the band that follows him. It is interesting to see that it is the responsibility of the knight to protect the lower classes that will however one day meet its end no matter from which class or cast he is from.

There is something about this period in the films of Bergman that transpire something raw or crude and it is in part because of the kind of cinematography made with clear crude lighting and few effects. It is almost as if Bergman liked to show bare human feelings without any useless artifices in natural context and environment. A simplicity in the complexity of his plots and understanding of the storytelling that Cinema requires. By today’s standards The Seventh Seal looks much like a classic almost academic film made by a theatre director. However, the themes and reconstitution of the time is perfect and I wouldn’t trade this film for any contemporary one. Please note: I will defend this statement hardly: The Seventh Seal is a Masterpiece.

The Right Stuff

2011-12-20T08:00:00.076-05:00

The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman, 1983)

Presenting the American Space program in its debuts, the first astronauts from the novel of famous author Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff is the celebration of the race with the Soviets to conquer space. Called the star war in the 1960's the film was in competition with Return of the Jedi in 1983 at the Box Office and at the Oscars. However, it was the year of Terms of Endearnment and this movie got all the major awards.

In 1983, Kaufman was a capable director having directed The White Dawn and the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers but he was mostly known for his writing credits on The Outlaw Josey Wales and Raiders of the Lost Ark. The ambitions of The Right Stuff are pretty clear when you immerse yourself into this all-American vehicule made to earn Oscars. It displays the Cold War climate of the time and reflects true American values of commitment to the banner and the cocky seven astronauts. With lesser known actors; Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, Fred Ward, and Barbara Hershey.

However the lack of personal approach and the running time are the two main problems of the film. Even if it's the first Kaufman film I ever saw and that I guess that his directing style is probably sober and "classic" I found his work on The Right Stuff uninspired and outdated for a film directed in 1983. It looked like a made for TV movie although I really liked the use of original footage in the launches of the many spaceships.

But, I was probably expecting too much, I though that a film that runs for three hours and fifteen minutes should at least hold us on the tip of our seat. To me it doens't did it. Worth a look.

Anatomie de l'enfer

2011-12-19T08:00:00.072-05:00

Anatomie de l'enfer aka Anatomy of Hell (Catherine Breillat, 2004)

A woman hires a homosexual to pass four nights with her and to watch her when and where no one can see her. This is the summary of this 77 minutes feature adaptation of Breillat's novel Pornocratie.

Shot like a short story, this unsettling at times disgusting film brings up the intercourses and antagonisms between men and women. While acting like the children in the flashback of childhood both characters have monologues about the differences and the antipodes of gender. While Breillat narrates the story, it is clear that her two leads are the representatives of her ideas and her conceptions of those gender.

I recently read somewhere, I think it was Marc Cassivi of La Presse, that it is almost impossible to fully adapt the graphic violence and sex of a written source into a television show or a movie. Well, in the case of Anatomie de l'enfer Breillat has crossed the boundaries and pushed them far away in the depiction of violence and pornographic images. I am fully behind the fact that censorship is a way to muzzle someone in the expression of himself. On the other hand, is it really helpful to the narrative and the storytelling of the film? In some cases maybe not but I think here and in Lars Von Trier's Antichrist for example I think that artist should be able to fully express themselves and use whatever images or ways to do it. Sure, someone will say that the line between pornography and art will become thinner and thinner but take the film Shortbus for example. I think it was a pretext to show nudity and sexual acts and call it Art. However, the plot was poor and the acting even worse. In Breillat's film, Siffredi plays a stoic character and he was probably cast because he can do nudity with his famous career in porn. Amira Casar is very good and her presence is almost hauting while being very human.

If you are to watch this film be sure to be mature and not easily disgusted by blood, erected penises, and lots of nudity.

Links: 2011 in movies

2011-12-18T21:10:00.008-05:00

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A friend of mine posted this on my Facebook wall. A great wrap up of the films of 2011. I think it influenced me, after I saw it I got out and rented some movies!

See ya tomorrow with regular reviews coming up!

AFI's Top ten movies of 2011

2011-12-16T13:45:00.000-05:00

AFI (Amercian Film Institute) has release its Top 10 of the best films of 2011. In my opinion there are many doubtful choices but since they are the "reference" I will try to understand those choices... Well, it's probably the most grossing pictures and the few artistic ones they couldn't pass over. Since I've only seen two of the ten listed I can't really comment but I think that many films don't deserve to even be mentioned in this category. Here's the link.

Here's the list:

AFI MOVIES OF THE YEAR:

BRIDESMAIDS (Paul Feig)
THE DESCENDANTS (Alexander Payne)
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (David Fincher)
THE HELP (Tate Taylor)
HUGO (Martin Scorsese)
J. EDGAR (Clint Eastwood)
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Woody Allen)
MONEYBALL (Benneth Miller)
THE TREE OF LIFE (Terrence Malick)
WAR HORSE (Steven Spielberg).

The Last Detail

2011-12-16T08:00:00.094-05:00

The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973)

The life and career of director Hal Ashby as been tainted by his temper and his much notorious drug addiction and his prematured death of a cancer in 1988. In the 1970's, the decade he did his strongest efforts Ashby wasn't recognized as one of the proeminent figure except for his modest but remarkable Harold and Maude. But almost a decade after his death film buffs dug back into his catalog of films to discover more than the aforementioned Harold and Maude but to find Coming Home, Being There, and The Last Detail. Mainly categoried as an actor's director he was far from the cinematic brilliance of Francis Ford Coppola or Terrence Malick in the 1970's. His cinematophy is natural and has more terra cota colours than the colourful films of this era. His technique is sober and the "mise en scène" reflects minimalism and efficiency. Maybe not as minimalist as John Cassavetes but in a more classic way. This is the plot that counts for a Hal Ashby picture, not the display of technique and experimentations. With The Last Detail, Ashby had a strong cast with a young Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, and Otis Young and the first appearance of Nancy Allen. Even if, I think Nicholson is like Johnny Depp, they always plays the same and the viewer never forgets he is in a film. Both have their mimics and just can't get out of them. However, I know this separates cinephiles some love them some hate them but I can stand Nicholson more than Depp.

Two marines, Buddovsky "Bad-Ass" (Jack Nicholson) and Mulone "Mule" (Otis Young) are ordered to take a young marine named Meadows (Randy Quaid) in a prison from the naval base of Norfolk to Portsmouth. Meadows is charged for theft, being a cleptomane he steals everything from everyone. But he is a young man who has almost nothing in life and that brings up the mercy of Buddovsky and Mulone. The two men also want to take some time to have some fun during the trip and they embark Meadows in their journey. At first, the guys are tough on Meadows but when they get to know him they befriend with him and feel the need to give him a little glimpse of the adult life before he enters into jail for seven years.

The setting of the film is simple but it is the development of the relationship between the three men and the humanity displayed by the guards of the prisoners that stands out and gives you this smile on your face. It is almost a feel good movie with strong consequences. The fact that the guys take care of the young man as if they initiate him to life before he is taken away from it is ironic at the same time. They present to him what life can offer to a honest man and then bring him to jail to think about his crime. The relationship and the interactions of the characters makes it interesting because Bad-Ass and Mule kind of life through Meadows their own relief and their own enjoyment of life.

Ashby's film delivers a deep humanist tale of justice and deed. The Last Detail represents a learning lesson to Meadows and also to the viewer who must understand the luck he has of being "free" from jail and/or the Army. It also wears the fights of its time by being a post-Vietnam flick where the Marines are considered as mobilized so they have to report to the Army and its administration just like Meadows who is sentenced to seven years of prison. It is a social critique and also an ironic tale from a capable director.

Scenes from a Marriage

2011-12-15T08:00:00.002-05:00

Scenes from a Marriage aka Scener ur ett äktenskap (Ingmar Bergman, 1973)

In my quest of seing the 1000 Greatest Films of the website They Shoot Pictures Don't They? I had the oppportunity to watch many films listed on this reference list. While in the process, that isn't done yet I'm only at number 509, I forgot or omit to write my impression of these films. Like many Bergman movies, Scenes from a Marriage was released Theatrically and also as a Mini-series. It is something often done in Sweden they did the same thing with Fanny and Alexander and the Millenium trilogy. As I am a man of Cinema I often only watch the Theatrical release. However, with Bergman's work I like to watch both. And it worth the rewatch sometimes because it explains some elements that were cut shorter in the Theatrical release. Note: I don't own the Criterion DVD of this release so if someone has an extra 60$ for whatever reason he/she can be my secret Santa...

Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson, two Bergman regulars portray a couple married for ten years. They are cited as a example of succesful marriage and they are sharing their experiences of their married life. The many ups and downs and everything that a couple can encounter during its life together. We follow the next ten years of their marriage.

Scenes from a Marriage is an autobiographical portrayal of Bergman's five marriages and many relationships. He had many extra-marital affairs and his couples had some struggles. Well, the artist that he is reflects a lot the patterns that celebs tend to live in their love relationships. The strenght of Scenes from a Marriage is how close we feel we are with the two lead characters. This is an intimate approach in the life of a couple. Into this film we have a feeling of being like a voyeur into their lives but also like being a part of their lives. We feel for these characters and as relationships are universal and timeless everyone feels like he or she understands or have lived some parts or many of what it is exposed. This is a meticulous and precise detail work on how men and women interact and live their marriage. Even if this is a situation different than yours it still interacts with our lives. A great film. Bergman shot a sequel thirty years later titled Saraband that has been widely acclaimed at the time of its release in 2003.

Cries and Whispers

2011-12-14T08:00:00.095-05:00

Cries and Whispers aka Viskningar och rop (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)

When someone thinks about the great Ingmar Bergman many will list his work from the mid-fifties to the late sixties (1957-1966) as his masterpiece period. This person couldn't be more wrong, this director's great work goes until Saraband in 2003. However true Bergman fans like Woody Allen list Cries and Whispers as his favorite film from the Swedish master. Allen is passionate about the man and he even tried successfully twice to do a Bergman film (Interiors and September). For a film lover Cries and Whispers isn't an easy film but such a deep and moving one. It is quite challenging for its viewer to immerse himself in Anna's vision of a dying woman she's taking care of.

On the turn of the 20th Century, Agnes is dying and her sisters come to visit her before her long journey into the other world. This familial reunion brings up many dormant situations between the sisters that are accentuated by the degrading state of Agnes. Her only devoted maid, Anna takes care for her and understands the woman more than her own family. The quarrels of the siblings and the heaviness of the situations is perfectly balanced with the outstanding cinematography of long time collaborator Sven Nykvist. The natural lighting and the crude almost fleshy colours give a superb look to the film. It is so beautiful that it doesn't even looks like the film was made forty years ago. Instead of being staged at perfection like a Dreyer film, Bergman's Cries and Whispers looks natural and classical at the same time. This is the work of artists, the frames are blissed like classical paintings displaying light, life, and beauty. While at the same time we struggle through Agnes' pain in her fight against cancer. However the beauty if the images and the originality of cinematographer Nykvist could have been the ultimate bravura of Cries and Whispers. Well it is not, it is the talented performances and the ensemble cast that surrounds Bergman that strikes the most. Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin, Kari Sylwan, and Erland Josephson are the great performers but it is Kari Sylwan as the maid Anna that demonstrates depth more than any other in this amazing work.

Finally, Cries and Whispers is one of the many gems that were made in the 1970's. A time where American movies gain in quality and that gave back to the directors the central place in moviemaking in Hollywood. Foreign films that used to be made by directors and controlled by themselves were less regarded when American directors made better films than they used to. However, Bergman, Herzog, and many more made wonderful films in these years. Cries and Whispers might not be as known as Persona or The Seventh Seal in the Bergman catalog it holds to the test of time and should be celebrated more than it is actually. At least it deserved a superb transfer on DVD by Criterion Collection.

Persona

2011-12-13T08:00:00.087-05:00

Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

Considering my eternal admiration towards the great master that is Ingmar Bergman, I've decided to treat myself with this review of his most experimental film: Persona. Frankly, my "fanophilia" isn't the main reason why I decided to review this extraordinary masterpiece, it is reaction to the entry of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Blog Club on December 22nd: The Seventh Seal. Don't worry, I'm not doing Persona instead of The Seventh Seal, the review is already written it is just waiting to be released on the day of the assignment. By the way, if anyone wants to join the club you are all welcome to! Follow the link aforementionned and write to my great friend Squish and he will be more than happy to include you into our active reviewers!

Most of Bergman's films don't feel contemporary, they have this unaged and unaltered by time touch. The Bergman touch, well few filmmakers had the gift to make such rich and strong films. But Bergman is one of the perfect examples, the settings and simple mise en scène lets the story and the emotions take all the space and the viewers' attention. What is more important is that the stories and feelings portrayed and displayed are more often than not universal even if it is a Swedish film about the bourgeoisie or medieval characters. Persona takes a step away from these patterns in many ways but it is this exception that's makes it a film even more interesting than most of the rest of his films. Clearly set in contemporary times, the 1960's with the news footage of the beginning of the film, we are set up in a world where everything is in complete change, mutation, morphosis, even in revolution. Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullman, two of the most beautiful women of the 1960's by the way, are in a cabin where Ullman portrays an actress who stopped talking on the stage and never did since. Bibi, is the nurse who's taknig care of Ullman, she represents innocence and the fact that she always talks about all and anything shows how shallow she is. On the contrary, Ullman who is pratically playing the mute watches and listens to her with contempt and severity while seing clearly through Bibi.

The film brings many questions on the modern society and the many perceptions we have of our world. The title of the film Persona, resumes the central scene of the film that is doubled when the two main characters trade their personalities with a split screen imagined by Bergman himself. It looks like a reflection on the fact that when two people are almost isolated together that they kind of begin to look alike. There is also the effect of the character mix where each one gets more and more intertwined with the other one. It is kind of a reaction of their relationship that feels like the younger sister who's taking care of the oldest which should be the other way around. Whatever someone finds as the meaning of the film it is a psychological and philosophical charged film.

The major deception I have with this film it is its release on DVD, done by MGM in a Bergman Boxset that doesn't really live up to the quality of the films. I hope someday Criterion will acquire the rights to make a proper release of this amazing masterpiece.

Das Boot

2011-12-12T08:45:00.000-05:00

Das Boot aka The Boat (Wolfgan Petersen, 1981)

Before I start I want to make clear that this review is about the TV version of this feature that has been release in three different format: the Theatrical release, the Director's Cut aka TV version, and the mini-series. This viewing was a part of my quest to watch the entire list of the 1000 Greatest Films of the passionate folks at They Shoot Pictures Don't They? Das Boot being the 508th film I've seen from the list I am way ahead my goal to achieve my 500th film by the end of 2011. This adventure/War/Action/drama transgenre extravaganza from writer director Wolfgang Petersen a director who made more ordinary movies than he did great films managed to do an ok job with Das Boot. Since the film has its confortable spot on IMDb Top 250, a list I don't really give too much credit, still it gives the recognition of a popular film amongst film enthusiasts. I had more than one good reason to watch it. Anyway, it wasn't a film I wanted or had the urge to see. However, I recorded it on my DVR and it was time to give it a spin.

Introducing us to the crew of the u-boat by the exterior journalist as the witness of the inside of the litteral machine that is the works of this ship, was a classic yet efficient way to dip the audience into the core of the sets and society that represents the whole film. The kind of job that isn't related to mariners or army men makes it even more reliable to us while we enter this closed fauna. However, I think this technique is kind of bold and lacks in originality especially here, in a three hours film where anyway you get into the action and the suspense, no matter if you don't belong here no one belongs into a war!

At the same time I quite enjoyed lots of interesting aspects of the plot, the German side in the Second World War shot by Germans: I mean, how many German films were made about their side of the whole events and depicted their almost doomed ending in the last moments of the war? I can't relate to much either especially before 1981. Also I want to give credits to Petersen for having directed a very efficient film on the side of suspense, tension, and understanding of the moments of reclusion and bore these guys should have lived in the submarine. There's a claustrophobic kind of feeling when you are watching Das Boot as in the same time when the ship sinks into the depths of Ocean it almost feels like the comfort and safety of being inside the u-boat and not outside gives it a sense of maternal symbolism to the ship. Even if the whole crew is in the worst place it can possibly be I think that these are the greatest and most succesful moments depicted. The character development is at its best and the relationships between the men has this little thing that missed all along the rest of the film, urgency and enough time to let the moments fill the scene. It is almost as if the time stopped and the film took a step in quality.

After all the wait and the expectations about seing Das Boot I probably got my expectations too high or wasn't really interpelled by the story and its whole "dénouement", it kinda bored me and even if the aforementionned scenes were interesting I don't hink the entire movie is worth the time spent for the enjoyment or entertainment it brought to me. It reminded me of the Band of Brothers miniseries. It was all about entertainment, action, and few character developpment a piece of History brought back to life to fulfill the taste of distraction but no real approach or comment about war and the consequences of it all. It doesn't have to be moralist about it but at least present a coloured view and/or commentary. Worth a look.

Mea Culpa or the review that should have been

2011-12-07T15:59:00.000-05:00

As the final day of the Seven Days of Nouvelle vague I was supposed to review Jacques Rivette’s Céline et Julie vont en bateau aka Celine and Julie go Boating. But time got me and I wasn’t able to watch the film in entirely and afterwards to review it. It might seems a little disorganize to postpone this review but I didn’t wanted to write something I wasn’t fully satisfied about and watch a film in fragments. However, I swear to watch it entirely soon and to fully review it. I was very excited about this film that has a cult or a special glow around it being regarded by many as Rivette’s better work. It was his first film I’d seen, one of the many directors I hears and read much about without ever seeing one film!

This list of directors I’ve read lots about but haven’t seen even one film is a thing that I wanted to make for a long time now. But since I’ve seen some of those this year (Peter Bogdanovich, Agnes Varda, Georges Franju, Claire Denis, Joon-Ho Bong, Michael Winterbottom, Gillo Pontecorvo, John Cassavetes, Jean-Pierre Melville) I think it is time to put it down on paper and give it a serious try in 2012 to discover those holes in my cinephile knowledge. It goes like that: (no particular order just my inspiration)

Jacques Rivette
Claude Chabrol
Bela Tarr
King Vidor
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Raoul Walsh
Joseph Losey
Theo Angelopoulos
Claude Autant-Lara
Jules Dassin
Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Chantal Akerman
Glauber Rocha
Edward Yang
Mikio Naruse
Victor Erice
Michael Snow
Ritwik Ghatak
Nagisa Oshima
Jean Eustache
Claude Lanzmann
Sam Wood
Ermanno Olmi
Franscesco Rosi
Robert Mulligan
Ousmane Sembene
Shohei Imamura
Emir Kusturica
Luis Garcia Berlanga
Manoel de Oliviera
Charles Burnett
Jacques Becker
Robert Hamer
Sergei Parajanov
Well, many foreign film directors! Each year my goal is to see more films from a multitude of different countries and languages. Do you have any recommandations?

Seven Days of French New Wave Day 7

2011-12-07T06:00:00.001-05:00

Journal d'un curé de campagne

2011-12-06T15:00:00.000-05:00

Journal d'un curé de campagne aka Diary of A Country Priest (Robert Bresson, 1951)

A difficult film at first because of the thin thin story told and the lean and unappealing visual treatment of it all. However very influential to many spirituality tormented directors like Andrei Tarkovosky and Martin Scorsese. The lack of actual plot and the long silent reclusion of the almost anti-hero, the priest, his pain and arid living gives you this inspirationnal feeling that faith as to be a necessary suffering. Considered by critics and cinephiles as one of the quintessential films of the Art I personally don't feel like this is one of the greatest film of all time.
Even if I'm not very fond of Bresson's work I think that it is far from being his better contribution to the media. The spiritual depth talked about Journal is painful not only to the main character but also to the viewer who must endure and understand the emptiness of the life of this priest. The messianique figure that Bresson tries to paint here isn't quite up the act as he does with his way better Au hazard Balthazar displaying a donkey as the witness of the avidity and evil of humanity.
Compared to his spirituality tormented peers, Bresson lacks of technique and storytelling. Take Dreyer's Ordet for example, a blissfull masterpiece slow paced while being filled with tremendous technique and mastery. On the other hand, still within scandinavian cinema, Bergman displayed with his trilogy on the silence of God an outstanding comprehension of faith and spirituality. However, it might be Bresson's twisted and ambiguous approach to the whole that can not really be well discerned thorough the spiritual Cinema.

Last Year at Marienbad

2011-12-06T12:00:00.000-05:00

L'année dernière à Marienbad aka Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)

This post is a part of the Seven Days of the French New Wave going on this Blog. But since Resnais wasn't a "member" of the "vague" I have to categorize him as an outsider that often been mistaken as a French New Waver because he was French and the fact that his films were more written oriented. With Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais made one of the greatest masterpieces of Cinema. See Mediafilm's list of masterpieces.

The plot is a little hard to follow since the story is divided in time, sometimes we are in the present other times in the past and sometimes in the future or what the characters imagine will be their future. This facet of the structure of the story reminded me of the surrealist writing of The Discret Charm of the Bourgeoisie or even the deconstruction of memory of Malick's The Tree of Life. Resnais' adaptation is audacious because even with today's standards this is a fresh film and it is way more thoughful than Nolan's Inception that plays with memory and time without the Sci-fi effects and the spectacular imagery.

The atmosphere of Last Year at Marienbad probably influenced Kubrick on his The Shining, with the reclusion of the characters in this castle turned into a luxurious Hotel where the characters are walking like ghosts with deadpan faces and looking like they are disconnected with time and space. The memory and the presence of the characters is like if they always were a part of the Hotel and they are trapped in a continuum of time.

The beauty of the cinematography juxtaposed with the eerie and omnipresent music gives a mysterious yet thrilling vibe to the film. It makes me want to see more films of Alain Resnais since I deeply loved his Night and Fog while been disgusted by the atrocities it displayed and I've bored by his Hiroshima mon amour. Of Resnais great career, he still makes movies today, many films a yet to be reviewed here. Last year at Marienbad might be a difficult film to get into but since you past the uncommon structure of the story it is a masterpiece every film buff should at least watch one time in his/her life.

Seven Days of French New Wave Day 6

2011-12-06T06:00:00.002-05:00

Links!

Robert Bresson's films:

Les anges du péchéBonjour Tristesse

Les dames du bois de Boulogne

Bonjour Tristesse
Journal d'un curé de campagneOnly the Cinema

Bonjour Tristesse

Un condamné à mort s'est échappéOnly the Cinema

Bonjour Tristesse
PickpocketBonjour Tristesse
Le procès de Jeanne d'ArcBonjour Tristesse
Au hasard BalthazarBonjour Tristesse

MouchetteBonjour Tristesse

Une femme douceBonjour Tristesse
Quatre nuits d'un rêveurBonjour Tristesse

Lancelot du LacBonjour Tristesse

Le diable probablement

Bonjour Tristesse

L'argent

Bonjour Tristesse

Alain Resnais' films
Only the Cinema

Le chant du styrene

Hiroshima mon amour

Last Year at Marienbad

Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour

La guerre est finie

Je t'aime, je t'aime

Bonjour TristesseLes herbes folles

Seven Days of French New Wave Day 5

2011-12-05T06:00:00.003-05:00

Hey folks! Now it's time for Links and reference! This is the Claude Chabrol day of the fifth instalment of this series. Since I did not had the time to watch and fully review Chabrol's work I will guide you with the best reviews about his films.

First, let's all have a look at Thomas Duke of Cinema Gonzo's great review about one of Jean-Luc Godard's most unique film Week-End. After a computer crash and more than a year in the thinking this long awaited critic is out just in time to be a part of the Seven Days of French New Wave.

- On the West Coast, Bonjour Tristesse has reviewed Chabrol's Les cousins and Le beau Serge.

- Near St. Louis MI, John from The Droid You're Looking For! has put together a list of the 50 Greatest French Directors.

- One of the most read online film critic, Ed Howard has written many excellent reviews over at Only the Cinema about Chabrol's work. Chabrol index.

--> Feel free to link your own reviews in the Comments section and I'll be updating this list as they come!

Michaël

Truffaut Double Bill: Les mistons & Antoine et Colette

2011-12-04T12:00:00.000-05:00

Les mistons (François Truffaut, 1957)

François Truffaut’s first film, a brilliant homage to Jean Vigo’s Zéro de conduite about childhood, first and impossible love. The breezy approach, the smooth narration, the comic relief of the kids, the first moments of François Truffaut’s “mise en scène”, the sad denouement, and the bitter sweet conclusion of this short makes it a masterpiece of its own. Hugely overlooked because of the incomparable success of Les 400 coups, Truffaut’s Les mistons deserves way much praise than it actually received. Evoking his sensibility and his subtle humour, this 1957 short offers the critic’s first opportunity to make a film, the medium he is passionate about.

Antoine et Colette [segment of L’amour à vingt ans] (François Truffaut, 1962)

The first segment of L’amour à vingt ans, a film « porte-manteau » co-directed by Renzo Rossellini, Andrzej Wajda, Shinoda Imamura, and Marcel Ophüls, Antoine et Colette is a sequel to Les 400 coups (1959) and the prequel to Baisers volés (1968).

We are catching up with Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), now seventeen and out of a reform school. He is working at Phillips, making records and living like an adult in his apartment. Doinel has made for himself a solitary life with one friend. Shortly, he’ll meet Colette and quickly fall in love with her. However, Colette doesn’t return his advances and she considers him as only a friend. Doinel will be almost adopted by Colette’s parents and he’ll even move in an apartment facing theirs. Their relationship is almost like if it was a family recomposed. For Doinel, this is like the parents he never had and it gives him the opportunity to spend more time with Colette.

This short will give the rhythm to the rest of the Antoine Doinel cycle. This quirky character, naive at times and childish at other moments will have to face the adult life he always wanted to live. Meanwhile, all his life he’ll be acting like a child, the Doinel of Les 400 coups that wanted to be an adult as fast as possible will always have to struggle to understand the world of adults. Antoine et Colette is the perfect link between Les 400 coups and Baisers volés. The melancholy and sadness that the Doinel films own and the bitter sweet savoury touch of the situations will be one of the trademarks of Truffaut/Léaud.

Top films of François Truffaut by LMdC

2011-12-04T08:00:00.000-05:00

1. Jules et Jim (1961)
2. Les 400 coups (1959)
3. Baisers volés (1968)
4. La nuit américaine (1973)
5. Le dernier métro (1980)
6. Tirez sur le pianiste (1960)
7. Antoine et Colette (1962)
8. Les Mistons (1957)
7. Domicile conjugal (1970)
8. L’amour en fuite (1978)
9. Vivement Dimanche! (1983)
10. La peau douce (1964)
11. Les deux anglaises et le continent (1972)
12. L’homme qui aimait les femmes (1977)

I still need to see : Fahrenheit 451 (1967) The Bride Wore Black (1967) L’enfant sauvage (1969) La sirène du Mississippi (1969) L’histoire d’Adèle H (1975) Small Change (1976) La chambre verte (1978) La femme d’à côté (1981)

Seven Days of French New Wave Day 4

2011-12-04T06:00:00.001-05:00

Top films of Jean-Luc Godard by LMdC

2011-12-03T08:00:00.002-05:00

To celebrate JLG’s 81st birthday, I’ve decided to make my Top of all his films. Since he is a living legend and one of the most influential directors of all time this list is a work in progress because I haven’t seen all his films. His final film; Film socialisme is the conclusion of his colossal filmography. A proper review for this film will be posted here as soon as I watch it.

1. Pierrot le fou (1965)
2. À bout de souffle (1960)
3. Le mépris (1963)
4. Bande à part (1964)
5. Une femme est une femme (1961)
6. Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)
7. Week End (1967)
8. Masculin féminin (1966)
9. Vivre sa vie (1962)
10. Made in U.S.A (1966)
11. Allemagne 90 neuf zéro (1991)
12. Tout va bien (1972)
13. 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (1967)
14. Le petit soldat (1963)
15. Une femme mariée (1964)
16. Prénom Carmen (1983)
17. Passion (1982)
18. Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980)
19. Éloge de l’amour (2001)

I still need to see : Les Carabiniers (1963) La Chinoise (1967) Le Gai Savoir (1968) Un Film comme les autres (1968) Sympathy For the Devil (1968) Le Vent d'est (1969) Pravda (1970) [co-directed by Paul Burron & Jean-Henri Roger] British Sounds (1970) Lotte in Italia (1971) [co-directed by Jean-Pierre Gorin] Numero Deux (1975) Ici et ailleurs (1976) [co-directed by Jean-Pierre Gorin & Anne-Marie Miéville] France/tour/detour/deux/enfants (1977) [co-directed by Anne-Marie Miéville] Détective (1985) King Lear (1987) Puissance de la parole (1988) Hail Mary (1985) Nouvelle Vague (1990) Oh, Woe is Me (1993) JLG/JLG (1995) Je vous salue, Sarajevo (1993) Histoire(s) du cinéma (1998) Origin of the 21st Century (2000) Notre musique (2004) Film socialisme (2010)

Seven Days of French New Wave Day 3

2011-12-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

Pauline à la plage

2011-12-02T13:00:00.000-05:00

Pauline à la plage (Eric Rohmer, 1983)

Pauline, 15 years old, is going with her cousin Marion at Granville to spend the rest of her summer vacation at the Beach. This coming of age story is one of Rohmer’s most famous film. The fact that it depicts the summer vacation of two young women and especially the nakedness of the steamy body of Marion may have a certain attraction to the audience. However, Rohmer’s approach to adult relationships, their love affairs and sexual intercourses represents many of his favourite elements to work with in his most successful plots.

In the case of Pauline à la plage, Pauline is the witness of the many intercourses and visions of the adults about love and how they want it, perceive it, and deal with it. On one side you have the recently divorced Marion who cannot love her husband because she knows him too well and she needs to be burning of love. On the other side you have Pierre who’s deeply in love with Marion and who is her masculine reflection. He prefers to fall in love a person he knows and he can trust, a person who is familiar and reliable. Opposed to him Henri, Marion’s other pretendant and the one she will fall for is the representation of the libertine always ready to charm a new woman and be free of obligations and fidelity. Pauline will also have an adventure be she will learn more from the many intercourse between the adults around her. Rohmer represented the adults in their relationships like people who don’t know how to act and react to the confrontations and how they can hurt others and especially themselves. It seems like if everyone isn’t with the right person and how when on a vacation a person you don’t have anything in common can attract you just because it is something new or different. Well, we people go in vacation they want to be disoriented not only by the scenery or from their normal lives but also by the people that surrounds them. It is really clear that Marion is still looking for what she is and what she wants. At the same time, Pauline knows exactly what she wants.

I kind of liked the breezy feeling of the film and even if some scenes sound false the rhythm feels right. As Rohmer always did there are not a sparse scene or a useless technique used. Minimalist and simple are his films and it makes them efficient and easy to catch at the first glimpse.

Top films of Eric Rohmer by LMdC

2011-12-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

1. Ma nuit chez Maud (1969)
2. Die Marquise von O… (1976)
3. L’amour l’après-midi (1972)
4. Le genou de Claire (1970)
5. La collectionneuse (1967)
6. La boulangère de Monceau (1963)
7. La carrière de Suzanne (1963)
8. La femme de l’aviateur (1981)
9. L’ami de mon amie (1987)
10. Conte d’automne (1998)
11. Le rayon vert (1986)
12. Le signe du lion (1962)
13. Conte d’hiver (1992)
14. Conte de printemps (1990)
15. Conte d’été (1996)

I still need to see : Perceval (1978) Le beau mariage (1982) Pauline à la plage (1983) Full Moon in Paris (1984) L’arbre, le maire et la médiathèque (1993) Rendez-vous de Paris (1995) The Lady and the Duke (2001) Triple Agent (2003) La romance d’Astrée et Céladon (2006)

Seven Days of French New Wave Day 2

2011-12-02T06:00:00.001-05:00

Les parapluies de Cherbourg

2011-12-01T17:00:00.009-05:00

Les parapluies de Cherbourg aka The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1963)

Les parapluies de Cherbourg is the concretization of Demy’s childhood fantasy : to direct an entirely French musical. Brought into filmmaking by documentaries, Demy was the mellow part of the French New Wave. A member of the “left bank” because he lived on the left side of the river and because of his left approach on life, Jacques Demy made one of the first films of Catherine Deneuve and one of the most famous French film.

This wonderful tale of a beautiful romance is filled with lavish colours and entirely sang dialogues. At some point this ultimate effort of a total musical can get on the nerves of some viewers. I think it depends of the songs and the moments of the film. Moreover, I ain’t a great fan of musicals at the first place. I love The Red Shoes, Vincente Minnelli, Gene Kelly, and Stanley Donen musicals but it is at most what I can endure. A film like Moulin Rouge or Chicago was a total pain for my tastes. In the case of Demy’s film it is a question of mood, you have to be fully prepared to watch it and the quirky directing of Demy, the costumes, the sets, and many technical aspects can deeply bother someone with more subtle tastes and apprehensions. However, Les parapluies de Cherbourg was one of the most successful films of the French New Wave. The music by Michel Legrand has passed through time and still is a cultural reference for francophones like me.

The reference to Singin’ In The Rain is clear in the generic and Jacques Demy always presented his film like a ballet of umbrellas. Apart from being strongly influenced by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen his French touch comes from Jean Cocteau, Robert Bresson and Austrian born Max Ophüls.

One of the most important aspect of this film is the rigorous reality of the facts presented by Demy. The dates and the Algerian War, two constraints the New Wavers didn’t give much importance. They didn’t wanted to make films about politics or economics. It was one of the first French films to evoke this conflict.

Even with its great success with the critics and the moviegoers on both sides of the Atlantic, Les parapluies de Cherbourg is a film I consider to have aged badly. My favourite scene of the film is the final one at the gas station with the Christmas scenery that fits with the overly coloured palette of costumes and sets. A nice film but not a favourite of mine.

Cléo de 5 à 7

2011-12-01T12:00:00.005-05:00

Cléo de 5 à 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)

This post is part of the Seven days of the French New Wave event going on Le Mot du Cinephiliaque from December 1st to 7th 2011.

Agnès Varda, being one of the most famous filmmaker of the Nouvelle Vague and one of the few women to direct films in this era, is still shooting in the 2000's. Her first feature, La pointe courte might be the first film of the French New Wave. But her most widely known picture is Cléo de 5 à 7. Cléo (Corinne Marchand) is a pop singer waiting for the results of her last visit at the doctor. She might be having a cancer. We follow her struggle through the two long hours she has to wait to know the results.

This fable about the 1960's and the bland persona that the modern world and those frivolous years has brought to our society is well portrayed here. Cléo's character is very narcissic and her devotion to her beauty and her career is infectious. She'll even put on a record of one of her songs in a restaurant to watch people if they'll listen to the song playing. Her name, short for Cleopatra, says a lot about her, how she thinks she is a queen, how everyone should listen to her and be at her services. Hardly happy and never satisfied by anything, her mood swings all the time. Well, the wait of the result sure is stressing in some way but we easily guess that it's one of her trait of personality. The presence of Corinne Marchand is the focal point of the film and Varda's camera just has to swing and follow her around to deliver her beauty and undress the character in front of our eyes. Cléo is like an onion that you have to peel to discover the diamond within when she meets Antoine the first character she seems to really apreciate.
This is a true Nouvelle Vague classic and the style of Varda and her simple technique makes this one of the little gems of this era. Since, Cléo isn't as sympathetic has she'll become near the end of the film it is harder for the audience to fully immerge himself in the story of a whinny woman. However, the princess syndrome of stardom and instant popularity couldn't be more actual. Even if it isn't really scratched by the plot some elements makes us think about anyway. A great film to get into the French New Wave. Since it was my first Varda ever I'll have to catch up and see her earlier and later work to put this one in the perspective of her whole career.

Seven Days of French New Wave Day 1

2011-12-01T06:00:00.001-05:00

Launch of the Seven Days of French New Wave Dec. 1 to 7

2011-11-30T23:59:00.001-05:00

Starting on December 1st until the 7th, I will be presenting nine of the most important figures of the French New Wave. Alongside you'll have tops of their films and a review of a famous film or a more obscure offering. The schedule goes like that:

1. Agnès Varda & Jacques Demy
Since this is a Seven days event I wanted to catch up with the most important figures of the wave. That's why, like in their time, I united Varda with Demy, only to have a big start for this event and also because I don't like to split lovers apart.
Let's make it clear: Agnès Varda is Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy is Jacques Demy

2. Eric Rohmer One of the most subtle, interesting, and romantic of the the Nouvelle Vague, Rohmer stands as one of the most accomplished "auteurs" amongst his peers. A director I have seen more than the half of all his films and that I like more and more with the passage of time.

3. Jean-Luc Godard
Does the man needs an introduction? You'll see when you'll read about him and his films in my presentation. An intriguying character and one of the most frustrating to follow.

4. François Truffaut
Truffaut died too young and he was the first director of the French New Wave I really connected with. His bittersweer approach, Antoine Doinel, and his life will be discussed in my presentation of him.

5. Claude Chabrol
A director whom I' ve never seen any film ever. It will be very interesting to discover my first with this event.

6. Alain Resnais & Robert Bresson "The Outsiders"
Even if both of them never been a part of the Nouvelle Vague, their influence and their movies made prior and during the time of the French New Wave made them "the outsiders" of it. As the many figures that gravitated around the Nouvelle Vague I must not forgot to list Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri-Georges Clouzot, and many others.

7. Jacques Rivette
Idem to Chabrol, I am ashamed to say that I haven't seen one film of the great Jacques Rivette. A great opportunity for me to discover this legendary master.

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I will accept links to reviews or articles about the Nouvelle Vague and also about each and every "auteur". Feel free to contribute! I'm not displaying which film I will be reviewing for every director on the list to keep the surprise and also because I want you to send any reviews you want and not just about the films I will or won't review!

Send your contributions at michael dot parent at hotmail dot com

I hope to read your submissions and your comments!

Top films of Woody Allen by LMdC

2011-11-30T08:00:00.001-05:00

On the eve of Allen's 75th birthday, I've decided to honour the man with a Top of his films and a modest presentation of the second to best filmmaker of New York city, the first being the great Martin Scorsese. In the beginning of his career, Allen was a stand-up comedian with punched one-liners like no one. At thirty years old he starred in his first ever movie called What's New Pussycat? One year later he directed his first film What's Up Tiger Lily? The first seven films he made were straight up comedies bringing a fresh and unseen absurb approach to the genre. Sometimes on the surrealist side but always heavily accentuated by Allen's unkind humour. His first real recognition as a serious filmmaker was his first masterpiece Annie Hall in 1977. Allen won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay and was also nominated for Best Actor.
It was going to be the greatest period of Woody Allen's films; his most inspired and deep films were made after: from Manhattan to Bullets Over Broadway Allen seemed to reinvent himself and his silly comedies inspired by the Marx brothers were way behind. While being recognized by the critics and film lovers his films still separate the cinephiles. Some like me love his films and even the later ones, while the others just can't stand the acting and the "desinvolture" displayed here and there. Others say that his films are beautiful but that are so boring when others just say that he only made one good film and copy-paste this success to all the other ones...
However, few filmmakers can brag about the fact that they made 41 films in a career that spawned over 45 years with their own signature and create a buzz everytime their films is release. We always hear someone say " Maybe I'll check the new Allen I bet it's funny and/or interesting!".
Anyway, we the film lovers as a group, tend to look back at someone's better or worst shots and would always like to relive the discovery of one or the other everytime we enter the theater for a new offer from our directpr friends... My own Woody Allen nostalgia goes like that:

1. Manhattan (1979)
2. Annie Hall (1977)
3. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
4. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
5. Stardust Memories (1980)
6. Husbands and Wives (1992)
7. Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
8. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972)
9. Interiors (1978)
10. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
11. Bananas (1971)
12. Love and Death (1975)
13. Sleeper (1973)
14. Match Point (2005)
15. Scoop (2006)
16. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
17. Celebrity (1998)
18. Deconstructing Harry (1997)
19. Hollywood Ending (2002)
20. Melinda and Melinda (2004)
21. Cassandra’s Dream (2007)
22. Small Time Crooks (2000)
23. Anything Else (2003)

I still need to see: What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) Take the Money and Run (1969) A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) Zelig (1983) Broadway Danny Rose (1984) The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) Radio Days (1987) September (1987) Another Woman (1988) New York Stories (1989) Alice (1990) Shadows and Fog (1991) Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) Mighty Aphrodite (1995) Everyone Says I Love You (1996) Sweet and Lowdown (1999) Whatever Works (2009) You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010) Midnight In Paris (2011)

R.I.P. Ken Russell

2011-11-28T11:58:00.000-05:00

We will miss you!

Mon oncle

2011-11-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Mon oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958)

In this warm up through the month of November until the event of the Seven Days of French New Wave, countless French films will be explored to contextualize the French film industry of the time. This 1958 film from France, by one of the most anachronical director of all-time: Jacques Tati is a masterpiece amongst Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot aka Mr. Hulot's Holiday and Playtime. Playing with Silent comedy and slapstick gags, the crossover between Chaplin, Keaton, and cartoons could vaguely described this character.
Like its director, the character played by Tati himself, seems to come out of another time, he is a silent witness of the not always successful progress and constant changes in the society.
The success of a Tati film isn't palpable for everyone because it can easily bore someone out. The slow-pace action, the repetition of effects, and the not so obvious gags makes Mon oncle, and all his films, very difficult to appreciate for the modern day viewer's eye. However, if the audiences take the time to observe and appreciate the finesse and the subtle comedy that Tati's Mr. Hulot has to offer it will discover how it is well worth effort and moreover the concentration.
It is another important aspect that I learned with Tati, the concentration of the viewer should be at its maximum anytime because when you think that some scene doesn't matter this is exactly the moment when Tati will get you. I would love to see a film by this director about how the society has changed since the 1970's and I'm sure he would have made a film about everyone connected to his/her phone in a restaurant full of people texting and being isolated from each other while posting little non-sense sentences of Facebook or Twitter.
Mon oncle is by far my favorite film by Jacques Tati, a filmmaker that made not so many films but that worked so hard on each one of them that it is already a lot when you calculate the number of gags and the quality of them all. He was the last of a tradition lost probably forever because this kind of humor only makes laugh nostalgics and stubborn film buffs like me...

Eyes Withtout A Face

2011-11-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Les yeux sans visage aka Eyes Without A Face (Georges Franju, 1960)

Entering into Les yeux sans visage wasn't very hard because I heard so much good words about it that it was just a matter of time before I actually watched it. Released by Criterion Collectin it wears the seal of approval of many cinephiles including myself. Categorized as a Horror movie or some might say a foreign film, Georges Franju's most famous film is an amalgame of Frankenstein, moral dilemma, thriller, medical experiences, and beautiful imagery.

Way way ahead of its time Les yeux sans visage, takes you on terrains you wouldn't guessed for a film of the 1960's. A doctor who's daughter has lost her beautiful face because of his bad driving that caused an accident has swore to himself to get her a face so she'll be able to relive again and have a normal life. The doctor reprensents how science wants to control nature or the creatures of God. To find a new face for his daughter he must kidnap young women with his wife and take off the flesh of their face and put it on his daughter. The surgery and the special effects are well executed and the scene is actually very convincing. Even with her mask, Christiane, the daughter, has somekind of scary ghost like look of the same kind as the Phantom of the opera.

The moral issues and the treatment of the story gives goosebumps and the clean black and white give a Universal look to the film which helps a little to be a less frightened because if it was in colours I bet many scenes would have shocked people even more. Mixing classic elements of the genre and the ever evolving medical science, Les yeux sans visage is a must see. This is a great Horror movie, a classic and probably a masterpiece of execution and storytelling.

L'argent

2011-11-11T08:00:00.001-05:00

L'argent aka Money (Robert Bresson, 1983)

The final film of filmmaker Robert Bresson was shot when he was 82 years old and couldn't be fresher or more bressonian. While keeping his monotone dialogues, slow paced action of almost boring subjects the themes exploited by his story always bring deep meaning about society. This 1983 release couldn't be more actual, the 1980's were a period of great economic depression and the thought of making fast money by conterfeit or robbery might be something that occured in the mind of many twisted people. A lot like in the 1930's where the gangs like Dillinger's, Bonnie and Clyde, and all those famous robbers.

The case here, is on how fake money can alter and change the life of people and how ironic this trading of money touches everything we do in life. Well, if you are like me; I don't even have money with me anymore, I only carry my credit card or my debit card. Still, this is money and a materialist property. Based on Tolstoy's novel A Fake Coupon, L'argent demonstrates how malevolent and immoral money really is in our society. The themes of greed, corruption, class struggles, and criminality are all provoked by money and the materialist world we all lie in. The christian values of forgiveness, sharing, and charity are all flouted by the greed of the young criminal. I mention christian values because Bresson always exploited themes around the spirituality and the values it represents as another level of reading in his films. This is the focal point of the film and it leads to its final and tragic ending.

However, Bresson's films are so cold and unappealing that it is difficult to fully appreciate and love them, they are must sees and as a filmmaker he influenced a lot of directors of today; just take a look at the brothers Dardennes' films for example. Getting warmer for the Seven Days of the French New Wave in the first days of December...

Le samouraï

2011-11-09T12:00:00.002-05:00

Le samouraï aka The Godson (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

In my warm up for my upcoming Seven Days of French New Wave I wanted to catch up with the French filmmakers that made films during the Nouvelle Vague years that weren't a part of it or considered as New Wavers. Jean-Pierre Melville has been very influential on the "auteurs" of the French New Wave, with his neo-noirs starring impassive leading characters wearing trenchcoats and hats. Melville's presence in the wave was resented as the presence of a big brother for all the young directors like Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, etc. He even made a famous cameo in Godard's À bout de souffle.

Le samouraï is the first Melville film I've ever seen, the fact that he wasn't a part of the New Wave was probably one of the reasons why I didn't watched any of his films before. Well, now I know I should have looked up Melville before. This 1967 release is an instant classic, the slow paced action, the dead pan face of Alain Delon's Jef Costello the Samurai theming and the wonderful simple but efficient cinematography took me 30 seconds into the film to know I would fall in love with this film.

Having read the Bushido many years ago, when I first saw Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, I completely understood the main character and the title: Le samouraï (The samurai). With only one reference to the title in the openning of it, Jef Costello is literally a samurai, always dressed like if it was the most important day of his life, with a clean trench coat, a well worn hat, always clean shaven and even when he gets hurt he'll take care properly of himself and clean his wounds himself. His final mission was a suicidal one an aspect of the Bushido that is more than central is the fact that the samurai must die in a valiant way by his enemies or by a clean suicide.

The direct influence of Kurosawa's samurai film is palpable not only in the Bushido references but also in the framing of the film that doesn't mistake at all. There is also the influence from the contemporary theme films of Kurosawa; The Bad Sleep Well, High and Low, Stray Dog. The kind of story where the details are more than important and the construction of the plot is strongly mastered. I will be discovering more Melville films in the next weeks because this is a filmmaker that diserves my attention. He makes the kind of films I admire like Coppola's The Conversation, Pakula's All The President's Men, and Fincher's Zodiac. A must see!

Nanook of the North

2011-11-05T09:03:00.001-04:00

Nanook of the North (Robert J.Flaherty, 1922)

Having loved Flaherty's Louisiana Story, I got into Nanook of the North with some expectations of documentary style and realism. This Silent Film shot during one year in the great North of my country, Canada and even more specifically, the Province of Québec, has a very important anthropological value. It shows how those people pratically isolated from civilization lived in these extreme conditions.
However this is not absolutely a great film or the kind of feature you want to buy and watch repeatedly. It's the subject matter and how the techniques of documentaries have been developped within this film. It is more important to see this film as a piece of History, a witness of another time instead of a great film. It is clearly the birth of documentaries, even if Flaherty always had some kind of story structure behind his images, it is still a how to make documentaries.
It was a mandatory stop as a part of my journey through Mediafilm's Masterpieces list and They Shoot Pictures' 1000 Greatest Films.

Dazed and Confused

2011-11-01T08:24:00.000-04:00

Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993)

Of the many films I planned to watch from the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time list from They Shoot Pictures, Dazed and Confused was one of the most anticipated. I caught it on IFC and taped it on my DVR. Well, what a marvelous thing is this DVR, I acquired it late august and it gave me the gift of time! Simply because I can easily save several hours of television and movies and I don't have to tape it on VHS or be at the right moment in front of my TV!

Dazed and Confused is the kind of movie coming with a cult surrounding it. It tells, the final day of school of 1976 lived by freshmens and High Schoolers. Depicting a somewhat simpler time of our teenage years. Despite the time period, the occupations look the same and I remember having hang out with approximately the same kind of characters back then. The time of your first drunken evening, first love, the discovery of the possibilities of life and everything that surrounds drugs, alcohol, hanging out with friends, and partying. Dazed and Confused has a thin plot and luckily, Linklater (Slackers, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Waking Life, Me and Orson Welles, School of Rock) knows how to direct a film with no real tension but human interactions. He also understands teenage years and translate it in a way that brings us back to this time of our lives.

When I got into this film I did not knew how to perceived it, first because I tend not to like smoke head movies, since I haven't been one when I was at the High School but also because I don't really like them at all. In this case, there are many scenes of drug and alcohol abuse, but unlike Larry Clark's Kids or any pothead flick around it is a meditation of the effects of our actions as teenagers and the intercourses involved in this confusing time in a human's life. I think I may have liked this film even more than I actually expected. Recommended.

Cannibal Holocaust - Redux

2011-10-26T12:30:00.000-04:00

One, if not, the most controversial movie of all-time depicting some of the most disturbing scenes ever filmed in a fictional film, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust will be discussed here. I should mention that it was a challenge for me to enter in this infamous movie, because of the violence and the reputation of the film itself. I am not too inclined about exploitation films and I entirely disagree when a filmmaker uses animals and hurts them voluntarily (turtle scene, the pig scene). They are gratuitous and they don't bring anything interesting to the story or the “propos” of the whole thing.

Deodato's challenge was to make a fictional movie about a documentary that feels like the real making-of of a documentary. He succeeds in this aspect; the movie feels like if it was shot by two different teams. One in New York and the other one in Amazonian forest. Instead of presenting the shocking images all in one continuous chronological order, Deodato slowly brings us with the journey of the Professor Monroe to find the tapes of the documentary. The professor Monroe is one of the most important character in the movie, he represents science and also morale. He is the only character the viewer can actually identifies himself with. He has a lot of common sense but he also wants to understand the native tribes he encounters in his trip; a representation of our curiosity and interest in viewing the film. Prof. Monroe will oppose himself with force against the broadcasting of the disturbing images of the final journey of the journalist team. This is a great dilemma between what is presentable and politically correct and what the world should know. It is also a strong critique on the mass media presenting more and more shocking and disturbing images to attract the morbid interest of the viewers.

This team of reporters thirsty for celebrity and money will do anything to get the images they want to show to the public of the civilized world. It represents this buzz of journalists that will kill themselves or others just to get the scoop or the most blood of some news or documentary. Cannibal Holocaust is a metaphor on journalists and on how they feed themselves on human misery and sensationalism.

The final image of the film when the camera moves from Professor Monroe to some buildings in the city represents one of the many metaphors of the movie: who is more civilized? the cannibals living in the "stone age" or the "civilized" living in stone buildings in "societies"? Well, the answer of the film states that in every "world" there are evil and good. The buildings and technical advances do not mean that we are better humans than the one still living in the jungle or the "stone age". The technology and the suits of the modern man doesn’t get him so distant from the jungle and the brutality of the human nature. Interesting films provoke the viewer to think and elaborate theories and ways to understand the story, the imagery, and the symbolism of a film. In Deodato’s film one can find all those things, besides being gory and gruesome Cannibal Holocaust has many qualities but sadly it is remembered as a minus opus because of the blood, guts, and flesh displayed.

Even with all the thinking that Cannibal Holocaust initiated for me, it was not a film I particularly loved, but its message is clear and maybe the methods are extreme, it still denounces abuses within it. I also believed that this is not a film for the faint of heart but in some way it's like a mandatory film to watch and to aware how the “civilized” society is hypocrite and how the mass medias are willing to do anything to attract wider audiences.

Announcement: Seven days of Nouvelle Vague

2011-10-25T12:30:00.000-04:00

Starting on December 1st until the 7th, I will be presenting nine of the most important figures of the French New Wave. Alongside you'll have tops of their films and a review of a famous film or a more obscure offering. The schedule goes like that:

1. Agnès Varda & Jacques DemySince this is a Seven days event I wanted to catch up with the most important figures of the wave. That's why, like in their time, I united Varda with Demy, only to have a big start for this event and also because I don't like to split lovers apart.
Let's make it clear: Agnès Varda is Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy is Jacques Demy

2. Eric Rohmer One of the most subtle, interesting, and romantic of the the Nouvelle Vague, Rohmer stands as one of the most accomplished "auteurs" amongst his peers. A director I have seen more than the half of all his films and that I like more and more with the passage of time.

3. Jean-Luc Godard
Does the man needs an introduction? You'll see when you'll read about him and his films in my presentation. An intriguying character and one of the most frustrating to follow.

4. François Truffaut
Truffaut died too young and he was the first director of the French New Wave I really connected with. His bittersweer approach, Antoine Doinel, and his life will be discussed in my presentation of him.

5. Claude ChabrolA director whom I' ve never seen any film ever. It will be very interesting to discover my first with this event.

6. Alain Resnais & Robert Bresson "The Outsiders"
Even if both of them never been a part of the Nouvelle Vague, their influence and their movies made prior and during the time of the French New Wave made them "the outsiders" of it. As the many figures that gravitated around the Nouvelle Vague I must not forgot to list Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri-Georges Clouzot, and many others.

7. Jacques Rivette
Idem to Chabrol, I am ashamed to say that I haven't seen one film of the great Jacques Rivette. A great opportunity for me to discover this legendary master.

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I will accept links to reviews or articles about the Nouvelle Vague and also about each and every "auteur". Feel free to contribute! I'm not displaying which film I will be reviewing for every director on the list to keep the surprise and also because I want you to send any reviews you want and not just about the films I will or won't review!

Send your contributions at michael dot parent at hotmail dot com

I hope to read your submissions and your comments!

Top films of Howard Hawks by LMdC

2011-10-22T08:00:00.002-04:00

1. Hatari! (1962)
2. Rio Bravo (1959)
3. To Have and Have Not (1944)
4. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
5. Scarface (1932)
6. His Girl Friday (1940)
7. The Big Sleep (1946)
8. Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
9. Monkey Business (1952)
10. El Dorado (1967)
11. Land of the Pharaohs (1955)
12. Red River (1948)
13. Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964)

I still need to see: Fig Leaves (1926) Fazil (1928) A Girl In Every Port (1928) The Dawn Patrol (1930) The Criminal Code (1931) The Crowd Roars (1932) Tiger Shark (1932) Today We Live (1933) Twentieth Century (1934) Barbary Coast (1935) Ceiling Zero (1935) Come and Get It (1936) The Road to Glory (1936) Sergeant York (1941) Ball of Fire (1941) Air Force (1943) A Song Is Born (1948) I Was A Male War Bride (1949) The Thing From Another World (1951) The Big Sky (1952) O. Henry’s Full House (1952) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) Red Line 7000 (1965) Rio Lobo (1970)

To Have and Have Not

2011-10-21T08:00:00.003-04:00

To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944)

Of the many great directors, Howard Hawks is one of the most respected alongside John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock. His career has been punctuated of highs and lows. His highs are so great that his films are undying classics. Navigating between the genres, the Westerns (Red River, Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Rio Lobo), the screwball comedy (His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby), Film Noir (The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not), Historical melodrama (The Land of the Pharaohs), Adventure (Hatari!) he always did what he wanted to do. Never a technical director, he is a storyteller and a great dialogue writer. His line, “You know how to whistle Steve? Just put your lips together and blow!” said by Lauren Bacall in To Have and to Have Not might be the sexiest line ever said on film. There’s also the presence of Bacall but we’ll get back on that later. Hawks is considered by many as the greatest director of all time; the French New Wave praised his films even Hatari!, that is underrated by lots of critics, François Truffaut saw the work of Hawks and compared the story of the film to the making of an actual movie. Nowadays, a guy named Quentin Tarantino is obsessed by Hawks and he gives a test to all his potential girlfriends: to watch Rio Bravo. If the girl doesn’t like the film she’s not girlfriend material! As of today’s standards it’s difficult to make a comparison of The Grey Fox with an actual director. First, Hawks was an artist and his films were made with big budgets, always over schedule. He was the highest paid director of his time because his films made good money. He had artistic freedom and he was also the producer of his films. It is almost impossible to think that something like this would be possible in a world where the few directors that are making interesting films in major studios have so much difficulties keeping their director’s cut. Well, just call me a nostalgic or a stubborn classic movie lover I will gladly wear those labels if it is to watch Howard Hawks pictures all day!

To Have and Have Not represents everything about Classic Cinema that we cherish; a beautiful leading actress, a great legend, subtext dialogues, laughs, and an intrigue. Or like another guy used to say; a girl and a gun, Jean-Luc Godard you’ve recognized him here.

The beautiful leading lady is Lauren Bacall, Marie or nicknamed Slim like Hawks’ wife at the time. An almost skinny lady with a deep voice and sexy facial expressions. At only nineteen years old, her screen test was the famous line aforementioned in this review. When Hawks saw her he decided to make her part bigger and use the love story between Bacall and Humphrey Bogart(they met on the set of To Have and Have Not) to add more scenes involving both of them. The chemistry of the two actors is passionate and makes the viewer almost like a voyeur that stares at one of the greatest love stories of Hollywood. The pairing of those two lovers has never been equalled and on screen it is reflected so blissfully that you feel jealous of Bogie.

In 1944, Bogart’s legend was made and his presence in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca could have made him an unforgettable star. To Have and Have Not changed his life because he met Bacall the woman he’ll marry and stay with until his death. Also because he achieves a level of performance that I think is the greatest of his entire career. Way much better than The African Queen that got him his only Oscar. His scenes with Walter Brennan are pure Hawksian Cinema, the two professionals united together and working as a team to attain their goal, the constant jokes about each other, the tradition of the Hawksian camaraderie where the two characters think they protect the other, the trade of money, bottles, cigarettes, matches, etc. They are all symbols of friendship in Hawks’ universe. Someone might notice that Slim(Bacall) and Steve(Bogart) trade many bottles, matches, and cigarettes. This is because in Hawks’ world, the leading female should be one of the boys and not just the hero’s love interest. She jokes with them and she is involved in the story.
To Have and to Have Not is not just a director’s film, this is an ensemble film with great performances, a great script by William Faulkner based on Ernest Hemingway's novel, the whole directed by Howard Hawks. On Hemingway's story, the author bet to Hawks that he couldn't be able to adapt his novel on the silver screen. Hawks, took almost the entire story out to make his own adaptation of Hemingway into a script and luckily it makes one great film. This is the sign of a director in full control of his story and narratives.As a classic film enthusiast I am more than ecstatic towards To Have and Have Not, it is one of the greatest films of the 1940’s. A must see.

The Battle of Algiers

2011-10-20T10:12:00.001-04:00

The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
Frankly, my dear readers I don’t give a damn about politics and I don’t naturally go to the films that matter about this subject. It was more a mandatory exercise than an actual act of lovemaking towards this renowned film. Even if it was crafted during the great years of the French New Wave and that it influenced Steven Soderbergh on his Che, I had to try three times to actually watch the entire thing. Enough about me and let's discuss the film now.

The chronicle that is the reconstitution of the events that leaded to the independence of Algeria is a solid example of a scientifically and historically documented work of fiction. Almost shot like a documentary and loaning the narratives of the genre, The Battle of Algiers witnesses the revolution of a country that had enough for over 130 years of French wardship. The objective point of view of the narration delivers a strong untainted message that this was a war, or should I say a guerrilla, that marked the world of the 1960’s in its politics and Cinema. The movements of protests of May 68 in France and in many places in the world were influenced by the techniques shown in The Battle of Algiers. A nation that has been occupied for more than a century that could get his freedom was more than inspiring to the young revolutionaries. Many cinephiles of the time recall that these people used to bring paper and pen to the presentations of The Battle of Algiers taking notes on how to start a revolution. The realism of the actions displayed and the natural acting of those non professional actors was a big factor that made this film so unique and powerful.

On a historical value, Pontecorvo directed a very rich depiction of events that occurred less than a decade before the film was shot. It has two historical ways to analyze this complexity. First, the subject is still hot and the memory of the witness and participants of these events is still fresh and uncompromised by the time and the nostalgia or the retreat. It is almost as if Pontecorvo got in the street and shot images while the events actually occurred. A lot like Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center made shortly after the sad events of September 9/11. In the case of The Battle of Algiers, it was clear that the side of the revolutionaries was the side of the heroes and that the Independence of Algeria was the ultimate ending to the film.

Nevertheless, this case of documenting a fresh event like this doesn’t let the test of time and the step back we normally would take to analyze and fully understand the effects of the events displayed. In both cases of The Battle of Algiers and World Trade Center, what counts is the demonstration of how the events occurred in a certain gaze. A great case of Historical study and step back would be the dual films of Clint Eastwood; Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima displaying the two opponents, the two sides, and how they were involved in History.
Meanwhile, The Battle of Algiers has a strong historical value even if it’s a fictional film displaying events in an Algerian “partisanery”. Take the time to discover the wonderful Blu-Ray treatment of the film by Criterion Collection, it is worth the look.

Top films of Jean Renoir by LMdC

2011-10-19T08:57:00.000-04:00

1. La règle du jeu (1939)
2. La grande illusion (1937)
3. The River (1951)
4. Le crime de Monsieur Lange (1936)
5. Une partie de campagne (1936)
6. Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932)
7. French Cancan (1955)
8. Toni (1935)

I still need to see : Whirlpool of Fate (1925) Nana (1926) Charleston parade (1927) The Little Match Girl (1928) La chienne (1931) La nuit du Carrefour (1932) Madame Bovary (1934) Les bas fonds (1936) La bête humaine (1938) La Marseillaise (1938) Swamp Water (1941) This Land Is Mine (1943) Diary of A Chambermaid (1945) The Southerner (1945) The Woman on the Beach (1947) The Golden Coach (1952) Paris Does Strange Things (1956) Picnic on the Grass (1959) The Testament of Dr. Cordelier (1959) The Elusive Corporal (1962) The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir (1969)

Une partie de campagne

2011-10-18T10:37:00.007-04:00

Une partie de campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936)
Like Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, Jean Renoir’s Cinema always hold a special place in my cinephile heart. His artistic vision from his father’s heritage is one thing. But Renoir’s storytelling is the greatest facet of his talent. Combining those elements and you have the favourite director of Welles and Bogdanovich. Even if you have just seen La règle du jeu or La grand illusion, you still have discovered two of the greatest masterpieces of all time. One of my personal favourite from Renoir is The River, shot in India and depicting an English family living in this “foreign’ country where tradition and exotism reigns. I always tend to admire a great director’s less famous work than his undisputed masterpieces. A great director can be observed when his lesser known work is still valuable and of high quality.

Jean Renoir’s Une partie de campagne is an unachieved masterpiece to be. With amazing imagery of romantic sensibility and many comedy elements this forty minute film feels like a fresh romantic comedy with a classic French tone. Adapted from Guy de Maupassant’s novel, Une partie de campagne depicts the innocence of young lovers, the essence of mature women, the egotism of men and their favourite sport, and the clash between urban and country life. The naive beginnings of the story slowly fells into the social study of Parisians coming to the country for a day and enjoying the simple pleasures of the rural people. While the men of the country enjoy the sophistication of the ladies of the city. The treatment of the story feels a lot like a tale about a secret love of two people distant from each other. The idyllic scenery and the amazing photography helps the viewer to appreciate the wonderful Sunday afternoon portrayed by Renoir. The brightness of the visual approach and the dramatic metaphor that the rain brought is more than a simple beautiful effect. This is the work of an artist and a storyteller in full mastery of the media.

We are lucky as cinephiles that Jean Renoir could have directed many films during his life. His career is dotted of wonderful films of cinematic bliss. Every self-respected film lover should discover Renoir’s oeuvre. It’s like a melomane who haven’t heard of The Beatles or if an Art lover doesn’t know Van Gogh, it is a shame! Renoir’s are a film reference that will never go out of style.

Coming soon! Laurel & Hardy: The Essential Collection

2011-10-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

I'm not used to present DVD releases on Le Mot du Cinephiliaque. However, since the wonderful folks at RHI Entertainment approached me for the first release of the Laurel & Hardy boxset in North America all packed in a collector's package with plenty of amazing exclusive interviews and discussions on the impact of these legendary duet.

Stan Laurel got into show business with Fred Karno’s vaudeville company as Charlie Chaplin’s understudy. He used to do imitations of Chaplin. On the other side, Oliver Hardy began singing at eight years old and his early career brought him into comedy. Laurel & Hardy met when they were working for comedy producer Hal Roach in the 1920’s. The famous duo was united for the first time on the silver screen in 1926 for the movie 45 minutes from Hollywood. Then, it only took them five years to get their first feature length starring roles in the success Pardon Us. From this point they starred in many successful production until the 1940’s. The Second World War was difficult for many silent films comedians that got into talkies and even being renowned and with a new contract with the 20th Century Fox, they had to struggle to get the full freedom of creation in these harder times.

Sadly, they retired from filmmaking in 1950. Behind them are numerous shorts and feature lengths worthy of thousands of laughs. Their contribution to Cinema was recognized by the Academy Awards in 1960 when Stan Laurel (Oliver Hardy died in 1957) received a special Oscar “for his creative pioneering in the field of Cinema comedy”. While working for Roach’s company, and like many other comedians of their time (Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to name a few), they were writing and directing almost all of the films they made together embodying the geniuses they represented.

The films of Laurel & Hardy needed to receive this crowning treatment to recognize their contribution to the comedy genre.
I can't say how thrilled I am about this release and I hope your are all too. This is the chance to discover the films of the funniest comedians ever, since Chaplin and Keaton.

Press release:

TIMELESS SOUND-ERA FILMS FROM THE LEGENDARY HAL ROACH LIBRARY DEBUT IN ONE EXTRAORDINARY DVD SET
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE U.S.

LAUREL & HARDY:

THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION

Digitally Remastered And Digitally Restored, Loaded With Over Two Hours Of Special Features, The Spectacular 10-Disc Set Arrives October 25
From RHI Entertainment And Vivendi Entertainment

UNIVERSAL CITY, CA – Celebrating the genius of the most beloved comedy team of all time, LAUREL & HARDY: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION debuts in a stunning 10-disc set on October 25, 2011 from RHI Entertainment and Vivendi Entertainment. With a comedic style that defined an era and created a legacy that is still celebrated today, 58 of Stan Laurel an Oliver Hardy’s talking shorts and feature films, produced under legendary movie mogul, Hal Roach, from 1929 through 1940, are now available for the first time in the U.S. all together in one magnificent collection.

Transferred in high definition for the first time and digitally enhanced for home viewing in the finest quality available to date, the set contains favorites that have been enjoyed for generations including Helpmates, Hog Wild, Another Fine Mess, Sons of the Desert, Way Out West, and the Academy Award^® winning* film The Music Box.

LAUREL & HARDY: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION comes housed in collectible, book-style packaging with an extensive, detailed film guide. The set also boasts over two hours of special features including exclusive, never-before-seen interviews with comedy legends Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Lewis, Tim Conway and more, who discuss the enduring impact and influence of Laurel and Hardy.

Additional features include commentaries by Laurel and Hardy aficionados, along with a virtual location map that allows viewers to take an interactive tour of the iconic places in and around Los Angeles where Laurel and Hardy filmed. Available for the suggested retail price of $99.98, LAUREL & HARDY: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION showcases some of the most cherished and hilarious films in cinema history and is a must-have for comedy fans and collectors everywhere.

BASICS

Price: $99.98

Street Date: October 25, 2011

Order Date: September 20, 2011

Catalog Number: RH3021

Language: English

Running time: 1941 minutes

Rating: NR

Top films of P.T. Anderson by LMdC

2011-10-14T08:00:00.001-04:00

Of the many young directors that made films in the last 15 years, Anderson is one of the few that has the talent and the mastery to make entertaining masterpieces. He is the perfect blend of the heritage of Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman as long as Erich von Stroheim and Orson Welles. There Will Be Blood stands as one of the greatest films of all time as it is now in my Top 10. His use of camera movement reminds of the greatest films of Jean Renoir and Max Ophüls. His next film, The Master will be in theatres in 2013, until then let’s take a look at his already rich filmography.
1. There Will Be Blood (2007)
2. Boogie Nights (1997)
3. Magnolia (1999)
4. Punch Drunk Love (2002)

I still need to see Hard Eight aka Sydney (1996)

New releases or Classics?

2011-10-13T08:00:00.002-04:00

As I was drifting through the films I watched this year, definitely a lot less than the year before, I was surprised to notice that I’ve only seen four films released in 2011! Of these four films one is more than worth noticing. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. The fact that I haven’t seen a lot of new releases is not that astonishing, the total number of films I’ll have seen in 2011 is probably a hundred less than in 2010. My ever growing appetite for Classic films is always significant year after year. Plus, my journey through They Shoot Pictures Don’t They’s 1000 Greatest Films is getting intoxicating. This list is dotted of classic and obscure films that are a delight for the cinephile that I am.

On another cinephile topic, there are those cult films that every time you discover one you unearth ten others! It’s the same thing when you become interested in a more obscure filmmaker like Ken Russell or Masaki Kobayashi!

Those are some reasons, or one might say excuses, that I use to justify my lack of 2011 releases viewings.

On the other hand, I’m in a place in my life where I want to save money to buy some nice little home with my wife. It may also explain why I didn’t spend that much money on film tickets this year. Take note that I was invited as a “critic” to the premiere of The Tree of Life... If you want me to review more new releases please feel free to give me complimentary entrances and Premiere tickets!

Anyhow, I think it reflects my true passion for Cinema and a part of my formation as a Historian, Classic films and History. This is probably why I prefer “older” films and in spite of more recent pictures.

It was supposed to be some kind of post about the greatest films of 2011 so far. Since, I’ve seen only four, yes four! I will try to catch at least some of the most well received.

Drive
Moneyball
Super 8
Cowboys vs. Aliens.
Melancholia
Uncle Boomee
Certified Copy
Rango
Meek’s Cutoff
A Dangerous Method
The Thing
Hugo
The Ides of March
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Rubber
Troll Hunter
Horrible Bosses
Crazy Stupid Love
Midnight In Paris
Source Code

I might be too positive and unable to attain this objective but at least I hope I’ll be able to catch half of these before the end of the year and produce a decent Top 10 of 2011...
Also, feel free to recommend any films of this year I forgot to mention in this concise list!

Update of my Fall 2011.. so far

2011-10-12T08:00:00.000-04:00

Earlier I announced the program of my Fall 2011, well, here is my update of it all and the links to the reviews of the lists watched.

Of the 41 films planned I've seen 7. So 34 to go!

~~1. Madame de… (Max Ophüls, 1954)~~
2. Battle of Algier (Gillo Pontecorvo, 196-)
3. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1927)
~~4. Husbands (John Casavetes, 1972)~~
5. The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963)
~~6. Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1953)~~
~~7. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)~~
8. Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959)
9. The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 19--)
10. Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
11. Le Corbeau (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 19--)
12. Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Cuaron, 2000)
13. Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, 2001)
14. Ali : Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 19--)
15. Les yeux sans visage (Georges Franju, 195-)
16. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway, 1989)
~~17. Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1956)~~
18. Colossus of Rhodes (Sergio Leone, 196-)
19. Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 196-)
20. Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille, 192-)
21. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1975)
22. Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1975)
23. Black Moon (Louis Malle, 1975)
~~24. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)~~
25. Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray, 195-)
26. They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)
27. The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray, 196-)
28. L’année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1958)
29. The Devils (Ken Russell, 197-)
30. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956)
31. ~~Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971)~~ Watched August 15
32. Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 19--)
33. I Walked with A Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 19--)
34. Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 19--)
35. The Haunting (Robert Wise, 19--)
36. Doctor Phibes Rises Again (Robert Fuest, 19--)
37. The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 19--)
38. Scream (Wes Craven, 1994)
39. A Christmas Story (Bob Clark, 1983)
40. 3 Godfathers (John Ford, 1948)
41. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Paul Schrader, 1983)

Johnny Guitar

2011-10-11T13:44:00.001-04:00

Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)

Defined as a cult classic, and often cited as one of the greatest films of one of the most recognized auteurs in the minds of the greats of the French New Wave, read here Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar stands as a superb and innovative Western. The directors you can look for when you are listing the best Western genre filmmakers are of course John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Anthony Mann. Often forgotten, is Nicholas Ray with his Freudian approach to the genre and a redefining “mise en scène”. The “classic” Western used to be a very macho thing and the women’s roles often were characterized by their simplicity and their somewhat absence. However, here in Johnny Guitar the presence of Joan Crawford as Vienna is central and essential.

The context in which the film was created was McCarthyism in the United States and the subtext of Johnny Guitar is all about how the mass perceives the outsiders and how those outsiders are excluded. The script, written by Ben Maddow but credited to Philipp Yordan, was the work of a man (Maddow) blacklisted at the time because of leftist involvement. As the true auteur, Ray was also an outcast all his life, with auto-destructive manners and strong rumours of his bisexuality, Johnny Guitar reads like one of the most personal films ever made. It involves the struggle of everyone between good and evil and how the characters cannot be all black or all white. They are portrayed as humans and nobody’s a hero or a complete antagonist devoid of feelings. The inner struggles of its creators are reflected in a controlled yet magnificent creation that is Johnny Guitar.

Despite its flaws, and yes it has some, I would like to cite my colleague Kevyn Knox that himself quoted François Truffaut “we don’t like those films even with their flaws, we like them for those flaws”. I would like to add to this the fact that as critics we always like to praise perfect films with great directing, amazing acting, superb editing etc. But as a cinephile I tend to prefer the lesser or not the masterpiece films of a director. In example, my favourite Howard Hawks picture is Hatari!. I know that this is far from being his Rio Bravo, His Girl Friday, or Bringing Up Baby, but I will prefer a great film to a flawless picture. This is why Johnny Guitar is often categorized as overrated by its detractors for its many flaws and lesser contribution to the seventh Art. However, since it’s my review and my rating I will mete Johnny Guitar a 5 star rating.

Kiss Me Deadly

2011-10-07T08:00:00.001-04:00

Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)

Mike Hammer is a tough guy, a self-centered hard ass who’s only listening to himself and working for his own benefit only. In the vein of the great portrayals of Humphrey Bogart and Robert Ryan, the character of Hammer is greater than nature. The Film Noir elements that surrounds him seem out of place and the mystery shouldn’t be unravelled contrary to the classic film approach.

Kiss Me Deadly is the metaphor of the nuclear menace that should have been stopped before the Cold War. Hammer’s quest is unhealthy and even if the bodies are pilling around him and even the many direct warnings didn’t stop him from doing the unthinkable. He works like the mind of a mad scientist who wants to destroy the world for his own fame. The story of Kiss Me Deadly could have been completely out of synch and overly stupid but the effective and capable mise en scène of Robert Aldrich goes a long way.

Robert Aldrich’s debut film is a one of a kind Film Noir with superb visuals, a strong script, and solid performances. The inventive camera angles give the appropriate twist to the story’s twisted plot. German expressionism has always been an influence on Film Noirs but the technique used in Kiss Me Deadly is above anything seen before. Furthermore, it’s interesting to notice that Aldrich’s film became such an appraised classic that the critics of the French New Wave censed as one of the great American films of its time and that directors like Quentin Tarantino reused some elements in his earlier films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction most notably.
One of the most important pattern in the Film Noir is the culture of the mystery. We need the tension from the journey to find the mystery. Just think of Chinatown or The Third Man without a final twist. In this case, the mystery is complete because the audience not only wants to discover the “something big and valuable” Mike Hammer is looking for but we want to know the motivations of the unsympathetic anti-hero that Hammer represents. His methods are unconventional and the viewer wants to find what motivates him to use them.
This cult film amongst cinephiles is a sure shot; I mean which film lover doesn’t like Film Noir? Plus, Aldrich’s oeuvre as underrated as it is should be revisited by many because it deserves better praise than it actually received. At least, Kiss Me Deadly received a great treatment by recently being released by the great folks of the Criterion Collection.

Top films of Max Ophüls by LMdC

2011-10-06T08:00:00.003-04:00

Max OPHÜLS

Even if I haven’t seen most of Max Ophüls brilliant filmography, I’ve decided to start a Top list of his films. The few films watched from his oeuvre deserved the exposure I’m giving them.

His lovely romantic films influenced from Stanley Kubrick (Ophüls was Stanley’s favourite director when he directed Paths of Glory) to Wes Anderson who lists Madame de... as his favourite film of the Criterion Collection. Since the last few years the great people of Criterion released brilliant copies of Ophüls’ brightest efforts.

Anyway, this is my personal appreciation of the films of this great director.

1. Lola Montès (1955)
2. Madame de... (1953)
3. La ronde (1950)
4. Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948)

Ophüls’ films I still need to see are: Liebelei (1932) La Signora di Tutti (1934) Le roman de Werther (1938) Sans lendemain (1939) De Mayerling à Sarajevo (1940) The Exile (1947) Caught (1949) The Reckless Moment (1949) Le plaisir (1951)

400th Post on Le Mot du Cinephiliaque

2011-10-05T12:30:00.000-04:00

Wow! It’s been more than two years since I started to ramble about movies on this modest but passion driven blog. At first, with only some reviews of theatrical releases I struggled to write in French and English at the same time. Later, I choose to only express my thoughts in the tongue of Shakespeare, which isn’t my mother tongue by the way. I know sometimes that my “propos” isn’t as clear as I wanted it to be or that some reviews may need to be rewritten or revised, but the soul is there and I think that I could maintain and elevate my writing with the years to come. This little hobby has become a passion and maybe an obsession.

In the beginnings, the comments were few and I had to fight through the jungle that is movie blogging to find my own niche and recurring readers.

But now, with other classic films/repertoire/foreign films enthusiasts I think I found many great bloggers to share my thoughts and comment on their own lairs.

As to this date I’ve decided to impose myself a number of goals to attain before the end of the year 2011. Here they are:
*Obtain my 50th follower.
*Post my 500th post
*Watch 150 films (total for 2011) I’ve never seen
*Improve my writing skills and my ability with HTML
*Post a comment on a new blog everyday

All of these goals will help me maintain the quality and the quantity of LMdC as a whole. Moreover, it will help me to be a perfect candidate for the Online Film Critics Society.

I’d like to thank everyone who comments and participate in this great adventure that is movie blogging with me and our community of bloggers!

See you next post!

Madame de

2011-10-04T16:09:00.000-04:00

Madame de (Max Ophüls, 1953)

Max Ophüls is the kind of director that could induce the greatest dose of romance without even being over the top. His film, Madame de sure demonstrates this in his remarkable mastery of perfect framing and camera movement. On every aspect Ophüls’ picture is the work of a genius, the story, the technical skills, the score, and the performances form a complete ensemble.

This is a magnificent demonstration of a well balanced masterpiece, everything has been concocted and shaped like a great work of art. The elliptic story, an Ophüls trademark, the multileveled dialogues and the subtle and graceful performances by Danielle Darrieux, Vittorio De Sica, and Charles Boyer complete the period drama that is Madame de. It is indeed appropriate to evoke the fact that this film is a piece of Art and not just another movie. The last two films of Max Ophüls; Madame de and Lola Montès are blissful demonstrations of perfection in the seventh Art. Medialfilm, a well respected institution that rates films since almost fifty years in the province of Québec placed it amongst the masterpieces of Cinema. Of the thousands of thousands films ever rated, only about 150 received this ultimate distinction.

Set in the late 19th Century, this drama tells the hypocrisy of the bourgeois milieu in French aristocracy. Even if many think that this period is not interesting, the film sure makes it enjoyable and amazing. Ophüls’ approach and his uncanny storytelling couldn’t be more well suited to illustrate the mystery around the countess Louise, aka Madame de, and her motivations. The story plays with the viewer so much that at some point we even get mixed up into the many lies that surrounds the lives of our three protagonists. Without being completely endearing the viewer is transposed in the story as if he were an omnipresent mute character that follows quietly the action. This involvement is represented by the sumptuous movements of the camera that captivates the audience into the plot.

Overall, Madame de is a strong cinematic achievement amongst the highly regarded career of Max Ophüls. The Switzerland born cineaste has made movies in America but offered the best of his oeuvre while in France during the 1950’s. It is hard to designate what is his greatest film but Madame de stands as easily in his Top 3. A masterpiece of good taste.

Land of The Pharaohs

2011-10-03T21:00:00.001-04:00

Land of The Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1955)

One of the many films listed as Martin Scorsese's guilty pleasures, and one of the lesser films of the great Howard Hawks, Land of The Pharaohs is an epic film set in Ancient Egypt. First, I must admit that I love Hawks' latest films from Hatari! to El Dorado. His color films have this lavishtone and feeling. Second, I'm a sucker for epic movies of the 1950's. For example, I loved Byron Haskins' The Naked Jungle. Even though if those films are considered as lesser works I just can't help it! I love those films!

Despite the many anachronisms, believe me I have a formation in History I will spare you the details, Land of The Pharaohs is a historical epic film. The grand spectacle depicting characters bigger and bolder than any other life is everything about decadence, gold, and opportunists. The overwhelming visual sets of epic proportions, the thousands of extras, the whole extravaganza of it all is the Hawksian facet of the too much. His following film was one of his greatest masterpieces, Rio Bravo, also a colored film but deeper and multilayered. Land of The Pharaohs was the only Cinemascope picture made by Hawks, and even if it feels like it is an experimentation in style, the film has these Hawksian dialogues and many sexual subtexts. It's also interesting to notice that he made a film set in Ancient Egypt times, a time where the women were well considered compared to many other times in History. It is a well known fact that Hawks was a man who loved women that stood up and could enter within the men's preoccupations. Princess Nellifer is the extension of this concept pushed on the other extreme.

Nonetheless, Land of The Pharaohs has a classic story even if Hawks inserted his own vision in the whole thing. The "auteur"'s touch is very present and as the critics of the French New Wave remarked, the Hawks presence is subtle but well felt.

The decadence of Hawks' extravaganza is more than worth a look and even if some elements may seem quirky, well it is, or cheesy, it is too, the picture is a lot of fun. A pure cinematic enjoyment full of visual beauty, read Joan Collins here, and a superb mise en scène. Its detractors must see the picture as a great entertainment piece of the sevneth art instead of the overachievement of a great director. It ain't Howard Hawks' greatest film and it is not one of his masterpieces but a very enjoyable film set in Ancient Egypt.

Husbands

2011-10-01T08:00:00.001-04:00

Husbands (John Cassavetes, 1970)

It’s been a while since I wanted to catch a John Cassavetes film and I choose Husbands first because it was one of the few I could put my hand on and second because it was starring the late Peter Falk that I miss a lot. Beforehand, I knew that it was going to be some sort of improvised acting without specific storylines.

The plot is about the loss of a friend in a group of four men that were friends since childhood and now in their adulthood they are having troubles dealing with their lost and their common lives. The many scenes of this film are long and make those moments like true moments. It is shot almost like if Cassavetes wanted to document the lives of men who have difficulties to handle the passage from boyhood to manhood. However, this “passage” isn’t a metamorphosis, it is more like the gain of maturity and the case of letting things go. For example, the passions you have while you are a teenager slowly fade away and those nights drinking and hanging with your friends are part of that “passage” to maturity and the evolution as men and adults. The average man will always have to struggle between his responsibilities and his envy to go back to his days of lust. Husbands demonstrates how these men with responsibilities are struggling to pass over their best friend’s death by trying to rememorized their time with him when they were partying and “free”. It resumes an old saying that goes like that: “Life sucks! You’re gonna love it!”.

In some way, this is a sad movie that feels true and also nostalgic because it is the mourning of a lost friend that starts it all. Husbands, is a study of the modern day man alienated by his work and the world of today. Even if sometimes the portrayals are overly exaggerated it’s the magic of the moment that counts when you are watching a Cassavetes’ picture. Moreover, it is the wonderful acting that does it all. The photography is pretty subtle and there is a certain restraint in the technique, its purpose: let the acting talk and carry the film. This is why the presence of Falk, Cassavetes, and Ben Gazzara is the center of Husbands and the major reason why this is a highly regarded picture.

This is a raw film that feels true and down to earth. It’s like watching something without a filter. Far from being a perfect film or a life changing picture, Husbands defines how men can be weak and how they’ll always have to face live and death.

Top films of Michael Mann by LMdC

2011-09-30T08:00:00.002-04:00

Michael MANN

Given the opportunity to make a top or a list of films is always something I jump on head first. Since Mann is the Director of the month at the LAMB I’ve decided to make a little late contribution of my own. This is a modest top since of the 10 films directed by Michael Mann, I’ve only seen 4. But, you know there’s always a but, it will be a great pretext to catch the six omissions listed below. As always comments are welcomed and I encourage you to make your own top and recommend me one of the films I haven’t seen from Mann.

1. Heat (1995)
2. Public Enemies (2009)
3. Miami Vice (2006)
4. Collateral (2004)

I still need to see Ali, The Insider, The Last of The Mohicans, Manhunter, The Keep, and Thief.

Top films of Cary Grant by LMdC

2011-09-29T21:16:00.000-04:00

I would like to take the time to celebrate one of the funniest actors of All-Time. His presence in Howard Hawks' screwball comedies, Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers, and in many various roles has left an indelibile mark. I've decided to contribute to the LAMB's acting school by making a list of my favorite performances by Grant.

1. To Catch A Thief
2. Bringing Up Baby
3. North By Northwest
4. His Girl Friday
5. Only Angels Have Wings
6. The Philadelphia Story
7. Notorious
8. Monkey Business
9. Suspicion

The Last Picture Show

2011-09-29T12:06:00.001-04:00

The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)

Peter Bogdanovich is the kind of director that eats and breaths Cinema. His encyclopaedic knowledge of films, directors, and the whole business is as impressive as Martin Scorsese’s. Bogdanovich made his name in the early 1960’s with reviews, books, interviews with the greats of the 1950’s and 1940’s. His series of interviews with Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Ford are references in the American Cinema. With just this work he could have been as important as Pauline Kael or Manny Farber. But, he always had the desire to pass behind the camera to write and direct his own films. However, the man never reached full success with the audiences and the critics. Judged severely by his peers and probably misunderstood the man had to direct TV movies, miniseries episodes and pay check jobs to survive in the studio controlled years of the 1980’s, a time where directors weren’t considered as apt as they were in the 1970’s. Although, this decade, the most prolific of Bogdanovich’s directorial career, is marked by the second Golden age of American Cinema. The Last Picture Show is clearly a film of that decade for many reasons while it contains many references of its director’s heritage.

The 1970’s was a time where the kids and teenagers of the 1950’s were becoming the legendary directors of today: Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Hal Ashby, Peter Bogdanovich, Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, and many more, The Last Picture Show is almost like if Bogdanovich wanted to represent the coming of age of this new generation of directors from boyhood to manhood with the characters his second film. The Last Picture Show is a pivotal film that is set in Texas, shot in a classic black and white that digest the lessons of Orson Welles and John Ford for its mise en scène of subtle camera placing at the height of the eyes and few camera movements. The visual aspect is very classical and reminds of the films of the 1950’s with a nostalgic but not too bold feeling. The Fordian theme of the community, the ensemble cast and the little town, and of course the many Ford films displayed (Wagonmaster and The Sands of Iwo Jima).

Meanwhile, the themes and the preoccupations of its characters are serious and the main theme of the film circles around their sexuality and how their lives evolve in this dying town. We clearly feel the European influence on Bogdanovich: Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Ingmar Bergman amongst many. The approach and the way the themes are exploited reminded me of the important films of the 1960’s of these remarkable directors.

Overall, The Last Picture Show is a smart film that brings you into known territories and then surprise you with its mature themes and its wonderful and touching story. The use of Howard Hawks’ Red River is pure genius. It gives a great emotional push for the film’s final moments. Every cinephile should watch this cinephile crafted film. And for the record, Cybill Shepherd: WOW!

Bridesmaids

2011-09-27T09:43:00.000-04:00

Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011)

First, don’t ever read the chosen critics lines on movie posters. Second, always learn to read a review and/or a critic until the end. Third, one liners are lame and even if it says “It’s the female version of The Hangover” or “The Best Comedy of the Year!” don’t listen to them and learn to read more than one review about a film. I do not pretend to possess the ultimate knowledge and no one should be neither.

Especially in the case of Bridesmaids, almost fully casted by current and former SNL players; Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, etc. It was a good cast and the idea, even if it sounds like a female The Hangover, well it is so not the case by the way, falls flat on many levels.

The weakness of the script is that it travels between absurd comedy, rom-com, existential drama, and bathroom jokes. It literally shoots on too many ducks at one time. Even if the target isn’t missed every time it is hard to follow the lead here because every scene is like a sketch and maybe it lacks of links or should had had a stronger director to hold the glue together... But, many situations are too long and the comedy slowly becomes a malaise for the viewer that tries to identifies with Wiig’s character that constantly fells deeper and deeper.

I wouldn’t say that this movie is “awful” as my compatriot Kevyn Knox noted in his capable review but I would say that it was quite a light comedy that even if the laughs aren’t as frequent as they should be, it wasn’t a torture either. However, I fully agree with Mr. Knox on the fact that producer Judd Apatow is wrongly recognized as the new guru of Hollywoodian comedies. The pedestrian humour and the bathroom jokes even if efficient, I really don’t understand the public sometimes, are simply bad taste and could be excised from the script. The greater laughs I’ve heard in a theatre were when I first saw The Great Dictator by Charles Chaplin circa 2002. It was clear honest laughs of clever humour about one of the most important moments in the History of humanity. I’m not comparing Bridesmaids with The Great Dictator but I am saying that to be funny a film doesn’t need to be vulgar or disgusting. A lesson Apatow must learn and apply in his movies.

Fall 2011

2011-09-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

This summer has been pretty busy for me and my girlfriend since we had our wedding on August 20. The many things we had to plan and the details of our honeymoon in Hawaii took us all the free time we usually have. On my side it’s my movie viewing time that I completely cut. First, because it took a lot of time to watch and review those films but also because when my mind isn’t free I have much more difficulties to get my attention focused and to fully appreciate what I am watching.

So I’ve decided to make a list of the films I’d like to see this Fall when I’ll get back from all the wedding and the honeymoon. You’ll notice that I put many Horror classics that I am really ashamed to haven’t seen yet (Halloween, The Innocents, The Haunting, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Les yeux sans visage, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and many others). Those will be a part of my month of October, which I like to imposed myself some Halloween themed films. Then, there are some Christmas oriented picks too to get me in the mood during December (A Christmas Story, 3 Godfathers, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence) but also many films set the Ancient times (Land of the Pharaohs, Cleopatra’s, Colossus of Rhodes) because during the holidays I like to watch this kind of films. This is the historian in me that needs those.

There is also many films that will help me attain one of my objectives of the year; to get to the half of the 1000 Greatest films of All time of They Shoot Pictures Don’t They.
There's also some Nicholas Ray films I urged myself to discover after those many years of wait... It also is justified with the new release of a bio about Ray.

Here’s the list:

1. Madame de… (Max Ophüls, 1954)

2. Battle of Algier (Gillo Pontecorvo, 196-)

3. Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1927)

4. Husbands (John Casavetes, 1972)

5. The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963)

6. Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1953)

7. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)

8. Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959)

9. The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 19--)

10. Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

11. Le Corbeau (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 19--)

12. Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Cuaron, 2000)

13. Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, 2001)

14. Ali : Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 19--)

15. Les yeux sans visage (Georges Franju, 195-)

16. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway, 1989)

17. Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 195-)

18. Colossus of Rhodes (Sergio Leone, 196-)

19. Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 196-)

20. Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille, 192-)

21. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1975)

22. Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1975)

23. Black Moon (Louis Malle, 1975)

24. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)

25. Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray, 195-)

26. They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)

27. The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray, 196-)

28. L’année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1958)

29. The Devils (Ken Russell, 197-)

30. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956)

31. ~~Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971)~~ Watched August 15

32. Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 19--)

33. I Walked with A Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 19--)

34. Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 19--)

35. The Haunting (Robert Wise, 19--)

36. Doctor Phibes Rises Again (Robert Fuest, 19--)

37. The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 19--)

38. Scream (Wes Craven, 1994)

39. A Christmas Story (Bob Clark, 1983)

40. 3 Godfathers (John Ford, 1948)

41. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Paul Schrader, 1983)

Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie

2011-09-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)

This is by far one of my favourite film of all time. Buñuel has always been a one of a kind director contributing with Salvador Dali on the surrealism with his Un chien andalou and L’Âge d’or, two masterpieces of moviemaking and dreamlike sequences that every self-respected cinephile should have seen. The symbolism of these instinctive films as so many levels of understanding and such depth that a simple essay on them isn’t enough to crack their codes.

Let’s get back to Le charme discrèt de la bourgeoisie made almost fifty years after Buñuel’s first films! What strikes you the most is how the surrealism that characterized his first films is still omnipresent but even more mastered than ever. Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie is the culmination of Buñuel’s work : the perfect surrealism film. The uses of symbolism and camera techniques is really subtle and Buñuel doesn’t need to slice the eye of a woman or get a cow in the bed of two lovers. The many situations of Le charme... are already overly enough and the closer to realism it gets the better it is. The dreamlike sequences that always feel like if you were in reality but finally you weren’t at all embarks the viewer on a trip with the bourgeois that are trying to get diner together and enjoy a nice evening.

This series of events is packed with humorous dialogues and situations. Just like Woody Allen, another admirer of Buñuel’s work, I feel that this kind of hybrid film where humour and reflection means entertainment and Cinema. It is a smart film where subtlety uncovers the hypocrisy, the fears, and the vices of the bourgeois characters populating the film. The uniqueness unity of Le charme... brings you in common places and then just when the viewer thinks he knows how the situation will turn out Buñuel gets a bunny out of his hat. This master has many tricks in his bag. You have to see the film to fully understand the reach of the whole thing.

In 1972, there were many big successes: The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance, What’s Up Doc?, The Getaway, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were to Afraid to Ask), but in my opinion Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie along with Aguirre: The Wrath of God was the greatest film of that year. Unfortunately other films mentioned earlier will always make shadows on Buñuel’s greatest achievement.

Important Announcement!

2011-09-20T14:18:00.000-04:00

If you liked the posts about the Snowboarding videos of this week you will be more than welcome to join Powder Lines, my new blog about Snowboarding videos and related things. Please join or bookmark it and contribute to this new community! Feel free to comment and share your thoughts. I will be linking videos, reviewing releases of the past and the new ones too! I let you with this amazing picture of my favourite rider of all-time: Peter Line.

Snowboarding series: Technical Difficulties

2011-09-20T08:00:00.001-04:00

Technical Difficulties (Mike McEntire, 1999)

More than a decade after the release of Technical Difficulties this Mack Dawg productions still holds the run pretty well. It was the film that pushed us to do more rails, go higher and try corked spins and flips. With the dream team that Forum snowboards (read Peter Line) put together: JP Walker, Jeremy Jones, Wille Yli-Luoma, Bjorn Leines, Joni Malmi, and Devun Walsh and the top riders of the time: Chad Otterstorm, Kevin Jones, Jason Brown, and many more Technical Difficulties had to surpass the success of its predecessors of the same production company: Decade. TD had to be even more progressive while presenting new tricks with an even greater approach. Well, for this blogger it hits its goal with great fashion. This is the snowboarding video I watch the most often. When I received it at Christmas of 1999, I remember that I used to watch it every time I’d go out and ride, which was every day at that time.

The cinematography looks like a skateboarding flick, a handheld camera by a rider following the rider doing his run. While other parts are shot from a stable point and zoomed. This is mostly for the rail sessions and the backcountry parts. Which by the way are a great amelioration from the videos shot in the early years of the 1990’s where the camera used to move quickly and in an amateurish way.

The parts by the riders are well balanced and the editing surely makes it dynamic and quite enjoyable. The variety and the quality of the soundtrack is so efficient that I even made myself a mixed tape of it. The best parts are from JP Walker, Peter Line, Kevin Jones, and the closing part: Devun Walsh. Why did I choose those guys? First, because every rider has a variety of tricks, many different terrains, and possess a fluidity in the execution of their parts. The riding displayed is progressive and does not only involve street or backcountry, it has the perfect mix of them all: a great balance between resort, big mountain, street. It doesn’t denature the sport and stays true to itself.

As I stated with my review of That’s It That’s All big budgeted by Red Bull, a film like Technical Difficulties did very well with a small budget. Even if expectations were very high from the previous film Decade.
Special mention
*Technical Difficulties was a turning point in the craft of making snowboarding movies. It set a new standard.*

Snowboarding series: That's It That's All

2011-09-19T14:36:00.003-04:00

That’s It That’s All (Curt Morgan, 2008)

With the release of the new feature by the BrainFarm films production, The Art of Flight, I wanted to get back and catch-up with their previous offer That’s It That’s All: this is a marvellous film to get pumped to. Well, this is the first of a series of Sports related media releases I will be reviewing on Le Mot du Cinephilaque. My major concern on this modest Blog is to talk about films. Snowboarding is a big part of my life since 15 years or so. The commercial vehicles that are the snowboarding movies took many looks during the latter years of this somewhat young sport. Directly related to its bigger brother Surfing, snowboarding followed some of the paths of the sport of The Beach Boys. Surfing was the first sport to actually shot videos of professional athletes and release them to promote their brands. Then skateboarding, another part of my life, followed and then snowboarding also did. The latter sport is an hybrid of surfing and skateboarding, the attitude of the sport and the fashion is way more influence by skaters than surfers but the three sports are interconnected and many athletes like Shaun White, Terje Haakonsen, Todd Richards, JP Walker, etc. Managed to master two or more of these sports. During the 1990’s snowboarding movies were handheld cameras by other riders who were filming each other and put it in segments with punk rock soundtracks. It gives an amateurish look to the whole package or as we call it in the milieu a Do It Yourself approach. A very counterculture underground vibe to it all. It came from skateboarding and punk rock. Slowly companies understood the strength of this almost free promotion.

In 1998, came something that helped commercialize and popularize the sport, for some people it represented the ultimate recognition for a sport for others it was the beginning of the end. The Winter Olympics, with the Halfpipe qualifications held by the FIS(ski federation) instead of the ISF(snowboarding federation). It represented to many times Halfpipe World champion Terje Haakonsen an insult to the sport, even if the Norwegian was the favourite to win the gold he boycotted the event in protest for that decision.

After the Olympics the sport never been the same, Shaun White two times Gold medal winner makes almost 10 million of dollars per year while guys like Peter Line, who practically wrote the book of freestyle snowboarding, had to sell Forum/Foursquare to Burton to survive.

Snowboarding has an incredible history and even if the sport is populated with major sponsors like Red Bull (the main sponsor of the BrainFarm films) it still is reserved to a small group of outcast in our society talking about jibs, pipes, boards, dudes, etc. This is a lifestyle and a passion.

The film, That’s It That’s All elevates how snowboarding films were made, almost entirely shot from helicopters from Red Bull, filled with National Geographic-like scenery of Backcountry Mountains, short commentaries by the featured riders this is more than just a juvenile DIY movie. The strength of it all is because it makes you want to go out and actually go snowboarding instead of the latter years where the video parts are filled with street rails and no actual Mountain riding. Street snowboarding is the combines the most spectacular aspect of skateboarding into snowboarding. But for most of the riders out there we don’t actually do rails all winter long. Most of the consumers of the sports are still going to resorts trying to kill it in the parks and last pipes. However, the greatest days of snowboarding I had in my life were the ones I went with some friends in a mountain with fresh snow and powder. We call it backcountry and this is the best you can get. That’s it that’s All concentrates the riding in those areas: New Zealand and Alaska.

Another interesting topic is the fact that they went to meet legends of the sport that retired from the big spots and continued to ride for themselves and the love of the sport. Bryan Iguchi, Terje Haakonsen, and Jeremy Jones are the legends in That’s It That’s All but the star of the film is Travis Rice the most versatile and complete athlete of this sport today. His style flows superbly and his bag of tricks is just unbelievable. The soundtrack is grandiose and fits the perfect images that populates the movie.

As I stated earlier this is the first of a series of reviews of Snowboarding films I will be watching to get me into the vibe for the beginning of the new season that is approaching. The Art of Flight the new feature from the makers of That’s It That’s All is the most awaited video since the brighter days of Mack Dawg Productions. I hope to see it soon since it is already available on iTunes.

Special Mention
*The greatest snowboarding film of all time*

Going the Distance

2011-09-19T10:23:00.003-04:00

Going the Distance (Nanette Burstein, 2010)

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long are around 30 years old and they both have had hard times at relationships. She, is finishing school and is an understudy in New York for the summer while in Autumn she’ll return to her big sister’s house to complete school. He, is a New York guy working for a record label he hates. His relationships always fell in the same pattern with every girl. But together they’re like the perfect couple. As Fall comes Drew returns to San Francisco to finish her grad. Their relationship will have to pass through the test of distance.

This light rom-com aims at the Y generation. Filled with a superb soundtrack of bands like Weezer, The Cure, and The Airborne Toxic Event. Going the Distance has modest goals and probably hits the target for what it’s supposed to be. A light but not life changing comedy. The denouement is predictable but like every Colombo, we how it’s gonna end, it’s how it gets there that is interesting. Well, even if passing by the clichés Going the Distance has this breezy light hearted spirit and a funny feeling. Not as good as (500) Days of Summer, Going the Distance fells into that category of films that are not too stupid or not overly melodramatic either so it can please the boys and the girls. The weakest points are the supporting roles that aren’t stiff enough and that could have some sort of Easy Aing. The stereotyped supporting cast just get onto your nerves and slows the whole story and its evolution. Far from being a study of characters it still has this hook that makes you want to finish the film even if you guessed the ending right. It is a movie worth a look with your girlfriend.

Duel

2011-09-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971)

This first film, made for TV, by one of the wealthiest director of its time, and maybe of all-time is a success of Hitchcockian grandeur. The story can be resumed to one line: a rep/seller on the road of California is menaced by a trucker until their ultimate showdown. As for Hitchcock’s The Birds not much is explained here except the fact that the menace is there and we are on the edge of our seat from the first moment until the generic. Do we really have to know why the birds attacked this little Californian town? No! It is the same here, the trucker is never seen and the tension rises gradually until the very end of this confrontation of the man versus the machine. The plot also revolves around the symbolism of the manhood of the two opposite forces. The little red Plymouth Valiant against the truck as a phallic representation of the two males. The impotent car against the powerful all-American truck. It also represents a rite of passage for Dennis Weaver’s character: his relationship with his wife is mentioned in a quick phone call where he demonstrates his inability to be a man, a real man. This event will make him face himself and be a stronger person.

However, the qualities of Duel mostly resides in its stylistic beauty and the mastery of its director. The simple plotline could have made this a poor TV-movie that could have been in the shelves and forgotten. Nonetheless, it was released in theatres and applauded. Made in thirteen days, Spielberg shows how he understood moviemaking and how he innovated with few resources. Nowadays, Spielberg has hundreds of millions of budgets and his films aren’t has great has they were in the 1970’s. The mise en scène of Duel deserves its place amongst the great films of its time. The way Spielberg places the viewer into the action, just like the master Hitchcock, is inspired and thoughtful.

As an admirer of Spielberg’s earlier work (Duel, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones original trilogy, even Jurassic Park I loved as a kid) and a detractor of his later work (War of the Worlds, Munich, The Terminal) it will always be a tormenting thing when thinking about the filmmaker himself. Nonetheless, Duel is an astounding start for the career of one of the most prosperous director of all-time.

Satyricon

2011-09-07T12:04:00.000-04:00

Fellini’s Satyricon (Federico Fellini, 1969)

The films of Federico Fellini always have been intriguing and mysterious because every first viewing of his films I feel like I’m entering in a different world than mine. Not only the imagery but also the narrative and the acting. It is always like the feeling of being in a dream-like universe. The first film from Fellini I saw was his Casanova with Donald Sutherland. It’s time for an anecdote: when I came back from my one month trip in Italy in 2006 my flight from Paris to Montréal had a special passenger: Mr. Donald Sutherland. The funniest thing about this little moment was that I knew who he was and I loved his presence in Casanova, Don’t Look Now, 1900, etc. But everyone was shouting this is Jack Bauer’s father! For Odin’s sake’s this man is a living legend don’t insult him by saying that he is the father of the flavour of the moment! Recognize the man at least!

I discovered many Fellini films before I started this blog, so this is why this is one of the first reviews about his work. Satyricon was the first film of Fellini I ever bought, the Antic Roman settings and the name of the movie (I am a fan of the band of the same name) were the two magnets that got me and my hard earned money. Opposed to many Italian and American peplums that tried to recreate with precise details the past, Fellini’s Satyricon is the perception of the Roman Empire by Fellini himself. This is his fantasy about this time and age. It may sound a little pompous but for the neophytes out there Federico or affectively Fefe had an incredible imagination and his creations are inimitable. This creativity is characterized by a childish approach to everything, many of his imagery is taken from his memories and his impressions as a kid on how he used to perceive and see life.

Far from being his most accessible work, Satyricon did not have standard narration neither does it have appealing characters. It looks like a freak show set in Ancient times. It is raw, bizarre, and beautiful at the same time. But like many unique films, this Fellini is a masterwork of cinematic brilliance and mise en scène. Even if it’s not considered as a major work from his oeuvre I still think that film has a special aura of greatness and weirdness. Moreover, Satyricon is a very personal film made by the genius vision of Federico Fellini.

Today Is Thy Day

2011-08-20T09:53:00.000-04:00

Just to say that today is my wedding day... So no blogging or whatsoever activity here!

Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding (Stanley Donen, 1951)

And from Monday August 22nd to Sunday September 4th I'll be away on my Honeymoon in Hawaii, I know! So don't send me hate messages if I don't comment here or on any other blogs... I'll be out surfin' and doing other stuff in this Heaven on Earth!

See you all!