The Prestidigitator

I stand here naked before you. Judge me, you bitch.

I can see how John Krasinski’s debut feature can come across as shallow and pretentious to some. It’s ambitious and slightly uneven but it’s also one of the most honest interpretations of the male psyche I’ve seen in a long time. The thing about cinema is that while it can convey emotions, it’s also severely limited by the director’s aesthetic. And that’s why this film works; because technically, it’s a lot like Before Sunset or even, Tape. Frames are sparse and apart from the characters, little else fills the screen.

Julianne Nicholson’s character, reeling from a breakup, decides to study the effect of the feminist movement on men, or so she says. She sets up interviews with various men and they open up about relationships, women and sex. Do men really know what today’s women want? The film is funny, repulsive and mostly, insightful. A friend of mine referred to it as ‘Vagina Monologues for Men – Penis Monologues’, which when you think about it, is quite accurate. One scene that really stood out was that of a college professor reflecting on 21 years of being married. After an awkward pause, he muses, “Is it shallow? Does it sound shallow? Or do you think the truth behind this kind of thing will always sound kind of shallow? Everybody’s real reasons?”

Granted, the film is an exercise in vanity and it does have an inherently convoluted logic but I loved it and intend on seeking out and reading more of David Wallace Foster’s works.

PS: Ben Gibbard, from Death Cab for Cutie appears in the film.

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror: F W Murnau (1922)

German Expressionism, it is said, rose not because of an artistic revival but because German film makers found it hard to compete with the extravagance of their Hollywood counterparts; so they resorted to symbolism and darker subtexts. F W Murnau’s Nosferatu was one of the earlier expressionist forays into film making and is widely considered a masterpiece. It is not the plot per se that strikes one, but the imagery; beautifully shot in black and white (well, they didn’t really have a choice there) and a genuinely creepy performance by Max Shreck as Count Orlock.

One of the primary reasons I watched the film was thanks to 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire, where Willem Dafoe plays a fictionalized version of Max Shreck. At 78 minutes, the film is quite easy to sit through and for a 1922 silent era film, quite entertaining too.

Say Anything: Cameron Crowe (1989)

If there’s one genre that’s well and truly dead, it’s the romantic comedy genre. What passes off as romance these days is mostly crammed with fart jokes and gratuitous sex. What happened to the days when the hero was an upright, optimistic and by and large ethical gentleman? Say Anything, Cameron Crowe’s (Jerry Maguire) 1989 directorial debut is a surprisingly smart, adequately mushy and thoroughly quotable gem. John Cusack plays (a younger version of a role he would play in High Fidelity) an extremely average, kickboxing enthusiast of a 19 year old grappling with career choices et al when he falls hook, line and sinker for the over achieving Ione Skye. I could say that it’s devoid of cliches but the fact is most later films in the genre have lifted something or the other from this one.

Cameron Crowe’s films have all had amazing soundtracks and this one’s no exception. Add to that a very likable couple, a great scene involving a boom box and some very memorable lines; almost as good as High Fidelity. Almost.

Nobody thinks it will work, do they?
No. You just described every great success story.

Links:

• Scene from Shadow of the Vampire
• Nosferatu: Entire film

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1060277/ 

Don’t believe the hype. Cloverfield is a terrible, nauseating and utterly pointless piece of cinema catering mostly to today’s attention deficit generation. No matter what they tell you, the camera work is not clever, it’s maddening.

Now that’s out of the way, it does have a couple of redeeming qualities (none of which redeem the film as a whole); the set design is tremendous, the ‘monster‘ itself is like nothing we’ve seen before and the theme that plays through the closing credits is brilliant. That’s about it.

3/10

16 dollars down the drain. Frick!

2007 has been a great year for cinema what with a number of films that managed to successfully combine both art house sensibilities and general appeal. Following is a list (in no particular order) of films I loved this last year.

Zodiac: David Fincher

Brilliantly photographed and very atmospheric. David Fincher redeems himself from Panic Room.

Ratatouille: Brad Bird

One of the best animated films ever. Amazing animation and a very very appealing story.

Sunshine: Danny Boyle

This was as close to a science fiction masterpiece as it gets and remains criminally underrated. The film had some brilliant visuals and a plot rife with moral and philosophical dillemas.

The Bourne Ultimatum: Paul Greengrass

Kinetic.

Michael Clayton: Tony Gilroy

Tom Wilkinson delivers one of his best performances in this brilliant morality tale. George Clooney plays an ethically conflicted attorney who grapples with truths about the firm he represents.

No Country For Old Men: Ethan Coen

I can’t say I’ve fully understood this film yet but I was blown away by Roger Deakins’s photography which induces a sense of claustrophobia in spite of the barren landscape and Javier Bardem’s chilling portrayal of Anton Chigurh who will go down in history as one of the greatest cinematic villains.

Control: Anton Corbijn

Perfect; the very moving and gut wrenching true story of Ian Curtis who battled epilepsy, rose to rock stardom, eventually gave into the trappings and finally committed suicide at 23. The black and white photography, brilliant soundtrack and wide angle scenes make this far superior to almost every other biopic.

Worthy mentions: Eastern Promises, Stardust, Waitress, Once, The Good Shepherd, Into The Wild

Yet to see: Juno, There Will Be Blood, Gone Baby Gone, I’m Not There

I’ve just spent the last nine hours watching 3 near perfect films, back to back; the cinephile in me couldn’t have asked for more.

Gegen die Wand (Head-On): Faith Akin (2004)

One of the best foreign films I’ve watched so far this year; a tale of self destruction, love and rage. Faith Akin’s brilliant Turkish/German venture is as brutal and cynical as they come. The story is of a suicidal young Turkish woman who marries a 40 something widower to escape from the clutches of her overbearing parents and slowly finds out that even freedom comes at a painful price. Great performances and a mind blowing soundtrack make this one hell of a gritty experience.

Eastern Promises: David Cronenberg (2007)

Disturbing, violent but oddly uplifting. His earlier work, A History of Violence was a film that I’ve often debated with people about. Cronenberg’s characters and their moral ambiguities are often accused of being artificial but I cannot disagree more. Like David Lynch, Cronenberg allows the viewer to piece the fragments of the story and characters themselves. Eastern Promises, while being less subtle still packs a much more powerful punch than AHoV in my opinion whilst still managing to entertain, in a sick twisted way of course.

Once: John Carney (2006)

This little Irish gem (filmed for less than 150K $) is the kind of film that reaffirms one’s faith in humanity and it’s ability to love. It’s impossible to remain unaffected by a film such as this. The characters are people you could come across in real life but what makes this more than an average love story is that music takes precedence over conversation. Whenever a film gets labeled as a love story, it’s natural to not expect much, but this story of an Irish musician and a Czech immigrant is unsentimental yet profoundly moving and perfectly executed.

“I’ve had a total recalibration of my mind, you know. I mean, it’s like, I’ve been banging my head against this 19th century type, um, what? Thought mode? Construct? Human construct? Well, the wall doesn’t exist. It’s not there, you know. I mean, they tell you, look for the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, there is no tunnel. There’s just no structure. The underlying order is chaos.”

-Slacker (1991)/Richard Linklater

It’s been two weeks since I came across this film and I still can’t get over the initial sense of exhilaration that followed my first viewing of what will most likely go down in history as a cult film. The film piqued my interest only because of the name Jerome Bixby attached to the title. So I sit down expecting nothing more than a shoddy treatment of a mildly intriguing premise. I was right about the treatment but the premise was far from just mildly intriguing.

John Oldman, a history professor holds an impromptu goodbye session along with a few of his colleagues who themselves are experts in the fields of archeology, anthropology, biology and Christian literature. He remains oddly secretive about reasons surrounding his sudden move but upon being prodded, he poses, what he calls a hypothetical question. What if a man from the upper paleolithic era continued to live till the present day?

What follows is the scholarly playfulness with the idea leading up to devastating realizations for everybody in the room. The film explores (at least tries to) reactions of people whose beliefs are challenged to extraordinary lengths. Discussions flit across anthropology, history, philosophy, death and religion. The conversations are highly stimulating although not overly intellectual. If I said anymore, I’d be giving away far too much. Think 12 Angry Men and a science fiction premise.

The film for most part doesn’t disappoint but sadly, there are flaws aplenty. Bad lighting, uninspired editing and a very conclusive ending. I would have preferred if the ending was more open ended allowing the viewer to make assumptions which would have made the experience a whole lot more interesting. But it’s unfair to nitpick here as it is quite obvious the film was shot on a shoestring budget.

Incidentally, the film is finding large audiences thanks to internet piracy. But like most films (Read Crash) that gain acclaim upon release, I have a feeling this film will become far too popular and  slowly audiences who loved the film initially will distance themselves from it. Anything too popular can never be cool can it?

The last time I was this excited about a conversation piece was when I watched the far superior Richard Linklater experiment, Tape.

http://www.manfromearth.com 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1094249/

Whatever happens in the end, I don’t wanna lose you as my friend.
I promise, I will never be your friend. No matter what. Ever.

I’ve been a huge Wes Anderson fan ever since I saw Rushmore back in college. His visual style is unlike that of any other director what with the use of a thousand props (most of which play no part in the story itself) and more notably, his fascination with blue hues. There are instances where his characters blend in with the environment and there are times when they stand out very vividly. His protagonists always seem a bit quirky and do not think or act in the way normal people do. Bottomline, his films never reflect reality but offer a more colorful and exaggerated version of the real world.

Hotel Chevalier is a 13 minute short film that acts as a prelude to the upcoming The Darjeeling Limited. This film was shown at a few film festivals and is now available through iTunes. It takes place at the eponymous hotel in Paris where Jack (Jason Schwartzman) receives a call from an old flame (Natalie Portman), saying she’ll soon meet him in his room. What follows is their awkward interaction that slowly leads to a romantic rekindling of sorts.

The song “Where Do You Go To” by Peter Sarstedt plays in the background with typical Wes Anderson dialogs aplenty. The sets are reminiscent of Anderson’s earlier films and the slow camera pans across the rooms as Natalie Portman moves across the room fiddling with various objects are brilliant.

I for one, loved the film and can’t wait for The Darjeeling Limited. Reviews be damned.

Consciousness is a terrible curse. I think, I feel, I suffer.

I woke up this morning with a strong urge to write a short piece on Charlie Kaufman; screenwriter extraordinaire. (This is a prelude, a practice exercise if you will for another essay on Kaufman I’ll be writing soon for…academic (sic) purposes.)

Charlie Kaufman for the uninitiated is the genius behind such gems as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. His stories all have immensely relatable characters going through bizarre situations that blur the lines between reality and fantasy.

No writer manages to capture my imagination like he does. His themes are both extremely poignant from an existential point of view as well as the metaphysical; the existence of the soul/conscience, the importance of the self, the meaning of love, life and the likes. Fortunately for Kaufman, his ideas have been perfectly brought alive to the screen by the directors he worked with namely Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze.

In spite of the fantastic nature of his plots, Kaufman’s characters are grounded in reality in a very literal way. For example, Being John Malkovich has the actor John Malkovich find out the people have been misusing a portal into his head. Adaptation is the story of a writer, Charlie Kaufman who has a hard time adapting a book into a film and so decides to adapt himself into the story. His stories deal with the subconscious (as seen in pivotal moments in Eternal Sunshine and Being John Malkovich), the importance of memory and the significance of events we witness as impressionable children. All his films seem to echo the thoughts of the character Craig Scwartz (from Being John Malkovich),

Do you know what a metaphysical can of worms this is?

What is so amazing about Kaufman is his ability to take risks with his characters and the medium which in essence contribute to the originality he’s been praised for. Apart from creating relatable but eccentric characters, Kaufman has an amazing control over structure which I for one consider to be his greatest strength. For example, Eternal Sunshine starts at the end and ends at the beginning. Sure, you’ve had stories like that but this technique proves imperative for Kaufman’s story. It wouldn’t have worked any other way.

No doubt he’s one of the finest writers today whose medium simply happens to be cinema. His ideas on the surface seem like a playful cerebral exercise but if you probe a little deeper through the tangled web of ego (mostly self loathing) and imagination, you find out that he ponders on some of the most important existential problems humanity has faced since time immemorial.

Sadly Kaufman lacks contemporaries today or at least writers of his ilk that I know of (except maybe for Vonnegut; and I’ve read very little Vonnegut) and hence it turns out to be difficult to quantify and compare the talent involved here. That may not be such a bad thing however.

[Note: Picture sourced from www.beingcharliekaufman.com]

http://imdb.com/title/tt0461946/

It’s like one day you have a decent set of friends and suddenly they all get exec jobs, get married, have kids and vanish…and your life is like that old science fiction movie…

I love films that probe alienation and disillusionment of people in their twenties; probably because it’s easier to relate to or maybe just because these films seem a bit more profound and poignant than the usual escapist fluff.

Everything’s Gone Green is a look at the toll capitalism has taken on young people working nine to five jobs and how the prospect of easy money can make them (us?) take morally questionable turns. Ryan (Paulo Costanza) gets fired from his job for writing poems about how much he hates his work and just as he’s clearing out, he gets a phone call from his parents saying they won the lottery. A series of comic vignettes ensue and Ryan begins to marvel at how many people around him are involved in some kind of scam or the other ranging from dodgy pyramid schemes to Marijuana harvesting.

Everyone’s in a scam or creating something nobody really needs to sell to people who’re too stupid to care or notice. Whatever happened to being just real? Why aren’t we content being just middle class?

Naturally, Ryan gets enticed by the prospect of making easy money and gets embroiled in a scam of another sort; selling winning lottery numbers to the Japanese mafia. And as in most cases, there is a girl (and a very pretty one at that; Steph Song) involved as well.

I really enjoyed the film in spite of it not having a plot per se or a satisfying conclusion. The character never attains that epiphany that is so common to films of this genre. The script is extremely witty and it does have a couple of tender moments; like people crowding to see a beached whale just to feel something. The editing is slick and for a small movie like this, the visuals are brilliant.

At the end of the day, this is a smart slacker comedy that may not quite attain a cult status, but is still very well worth watching. 8/10