I can't quite justify this as a father's day, Dads in Media post - it's more of an honor thy father and mother post. Or - a fortuitous opportunity to revisit one of the questions in SLIFR's Memorial Day Quiz: #32: "Name a favorite film and describe how it is illuminated and enriched by another favorite film." I had the chance to see Leo McCarey's Make Way For Tomorrow, and that inspired me to return to an all time favorite, Tokyo Story. The former is often suggested as a direct source for the latter - believable enough. This is not a finished essay - these are notes, comparing them, to draw out some of the specific concerns of each. If it matters - I won't pretend to avoid spoilers; after 50 and 70 years, I hope that's not too much a concern.
1) Seeing them together, it's notable that McCarey's film is a good deal harsher than Ozu's. Make Way for Tomorrow is one of the saddest movies ever made, and the story is quite a bit darker. The old couple in MWFT are forced out of their home - they have nowhere to go, they have to rely on their children. In Tokyo Story, the old couple is just visiting. They have a home to go back to - they are still independent. Not only that - in McCarey's film, the couple is separated - the film is about their forced separation. Not so much in Ozu - when they do separate, it's only for a night,and it's voluntary. (Though this obviously changes at the end of the film - though more later.) The tone is lighter too in the Ozu -and there are decent people - Noriko (Setsuko Hara's character) notably; Kyoko, the youngest daughter, also comes off pretty well. None of the kids redeems themselves in MWFT - strangers,and a shop keeper, treat the old couple well, do them a good turn or two, but the kids all fail.
2) On the other hand - Ozu is more complex and detailed in showing the social relationships in the family. Not only are some of the (extended) family members quite nice, but we see the problems between the old couple. McCarey presents them as happy together - deeply in love - never having any real doubts about one another, despite their failures. Ozu, however, shows a happy old couple that has not always been happy. The father used to be a drunkard, and probably abusive - indeed, the difference between his behavior when he drank and when he didn't might influence the way his children react to him. Shige and Koichi knew him when he was a mean drunk - he stopped drinking when Kyoko was born, and Noriko only knew him after she married Shoichi. In any case - in Ozus film, this is a couple who have hurt each other in the past, have hiurt their children - just as their children are hurting them now. If there is anything like that involved in the McCarey family, it's not in the film.
3) Tokyo Story is more socially and economically detailed. That isn't t say that money and class and all that aren't significant in the cCarey film - they are - but that Ozu digs into it deeper. I think this is a fairly important point - Ozu is usually not treated being particularly socially relevant, yet throughout his career he deals with the social and economic world with good deal of care. Tokyo Story contains a precise set of observations and analysis of the world - he addresses money and class in remarkably subtle and intelligent way. He's more subtle than McCarey - McCarey makes explicit points: about unemployment and foreclosure; about Anita giving bridge classes to maintain a certain standard of living (which is not enough to add another member tot he household - though that's because they are selfish) - as well as jokes, like the idea of old people having millions stashed away. But he doesn't really link it to the outside world. The links are obvious, in 1937 - they don't have to be spelled out... But Ozu, also not spelling things out, does weave the various strands together. The parent's expectations vs. the kids' lack of success; their stinginess, especially compared to Noriko's generosity and very noticeable poverty; the links between the conditions all of them live in and the conditions in Japan, 1953 - a period when Japan began to bounce back from the war, but did so very unevenly. Money was being made, but it wasn't being spread around very well. Those issues probably come out more clearly in Naruse's films, or Ichikawa's, or Kurosawa's contemporary films, but Ozu does a fine job of showing the contradiction. Here the contradictions are implied - in Good Morning, say, the contradictions - the expectations that people should live a certain way compared to the difficulty most people have living up to those expectations - are much clearer. But still - here, the war, the boom, the need to work to survive and get ahead, the ways people work - the social issues involved in what people do (shops in the home and so on) are all implied.
4) A point about awareness. It is interesting that McCarey gives the old couple a chance to take a shot at the kids - when they decide to ditch dinner with the kids, Bark tells Nelly what he thinks of them. The message gets through - they talk about it. It is interesting though that we don’t get to hear it. Compare this to Tokyo Story - where no one tells Shige and Keizo what they think of them - indeed, Noriko and the father remain solicitous to the end. But - Shichiki and Tome do discuss it, as do the three drunkards. (This is similar to Bark and Max talking.) And more importantly, perhaps - after the funeral, Kyoko lights into the rest of them. We hear it - but they don’t. In MWFT - they hear it - we don't. One thing both films have is the middle generation indulging in self-pity and guilt: oh, how awful we are! The end of the McCarey film does this rather neatly - the four of them sit around and say they knew what bastards they were, though it only hurts when Dad says it. And they go on - we really are monsters - but none of them does anything to stop it. None of them is going to raise a finger to change the way things are. They wallow in their misery, they let their self-recrimination take the place of any decent behavior. This is more pointed than the similar scenes in the Ozu film - but it’s there too. Shige wails about mom’s death; Keizo says what a bad son he was (Shige does too, of course) - neither of them lets it do more than fill them with the delight of self-pity.
5) Finally - going back to the first point. MWFT is, ultimately, about separation - the story is almost as much a variation on Love Affair, with it's tragically parted lovers (after an idyllic interlude), as about the generation canyon. It is also about the old couple's helplessness and dependency on their children, where Ozu’s is about the failures of the kids merely to be good enough. Circumstances do not force the couple apart - they have a home to return to. But as if in compensation for this - Tome dies. It's odd - this may be more final than the ending of MWFT, but it does not seem quite as dark. They stay together to the end, after all - though more, McCarey’s ending focuses on the human choices being made. The couple is not parted by anything absolute - they are parted by the selfishness of their children. They suffer directly through the meanness of their children. Ozu’s couple parts by death - something outside the range of human agency.
It's a different dynamic. Ozu is, in the end, less devastating than the McCarey film. Everything is more ambivalent, and the ambivalence is more explicit, closer to the surface - the fact that some of the younger people are nice, the lack of direct complicity by the children in the suffering of their parents, the more complicated relationship between the old people and so on. McCarey focuses the melodrama, the anguish - both by emphasizing the doomed love aspect of the story, and the responsibility the children bear for it. Ozu diffuses it - makes the film about life itself. Allows more time for the other failures of the kids - their mediocrity (present in McCarey, but somewhat underplayed - though interestingly, he plays it up in Bark’s case: he’s shown as a genial mediocrity himself), the broader generational themes, the connection of the generational issues to the specific circumstances of their lives. There is more a sense of flow in Ozu - which is typical of his work.
Indeed - it’s what marks him out: nothing ends in Ozu. I think this also connects him more to Capra than McCarey (a controversial statement I know...) McCarey’s films end - fairly definitively, even if the ending is a beginning (as it is in The Awful Truth.) Capra’s end, but they end on patently artificial notes. It's as though Capra were telling us: this is where we are going to stop; everyone is happy everything has worked out for these nice people. But if you have been watching this film, you know that every time things work out, something new comes along - don't be fooled into thinking this is different, just cause I'm ringing a lot of bells on the soundtrack.
Ozu dispenses almost entirely with the happy endings - indeed, with anything that could really count as an ending. The films end - definitively, but that's because he establishes himself as their maker so forcefully - he ends them formally - as here, with echoes of the opening of the film... But the story - the worlds - the things happening to the people in the film, are usually well on the way by the time he reaches the end of the film. This effect - of continuation, of constant change - is usually reinforced by the fact that soething in the story we have been told almost always foretells the things that will happen next. Even in as devastatingly sad a film as Late Spring - we have been told about the father's marriage, which started badly, was loveless and sad - but turned into something else - became happy. This film (Late Spring), crushing us with the separation of two people who love each other - already contains within it an image of the rest of their lives, where this pain will give way to something else. (A new set of pains, when the daughter has to marry off her children? Late Autumn?)
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Quick Hits on Friday
Lots going on, on the blogs:
For father's day, the Dads in Media Blogathon is up and running, at Strange Culture. Good stuff to be had.
The second month of the Film of the Month Club is underway. Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 film, The Golden Chance is on the menu for June - plenty of good stuff should be forthcoming over the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, outside blogs and movies, Tim Russert has died. I don't know what to say, other than extending condolences to his family. He's one of those public figures I read about every day, more or less, but might well not have been able to identify from a photograph. Teevision news is not something I take very seriously.
On happier news - I haven't done much blogging about the Celtics, and - strangely enough, have barely watched them since February (a habit I developed in their lean years that seems to have come back this year; I suspect the real answer is - once the baseball games start, basketball is just a distraction.) But they are one game away from a championship. Defense wins, especially if you can score too, and the Lakers do not seem to have the defense they need.... Though 1 game isn't a given at that level: ask the Indians.
And in the real world:
They were shooting a movie last week, on Mass Ave. Pedro Costa is right - shooting a movie is like an invasion: trucks up and down the road, wires everywhere traffic diverted.... This is the tail end, breaking down - still junk everywhere. I don't know what film they were shooting, but I doubt it will be very good. There's something creepy about shooting on location and turning the location into a sound stage - with all that crap, what else can they do? You move away from the artifice of the studio, but then recreate it on the street? Gah...
And, sort of finally - treated myself to a concert last night - Damon and Naomi at TT The Bears, with Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh opening. A fine time was had! I tested my camera - I'm curious about how it works in bad light: some digital cameras work very well - this one, I'm afraid, does not. At least, I haven't found the right setting. This is about as good as they get:
Though this one, of Espvall, gotten by monkeying around with the settings in the dark, looks very cool:
Anyway - enjoy the weekend, and I hope I make it back here with a father's day post before the weekend is out...
For father's day, the Dads in Media Blogathon is up and running, at Strange Culture. Good stuff to be had.
The second month of the Film of the Month Club is underway. Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 film, The Golden Chance is on the menu for June - plenty of good stuff should be forthcoming over the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, outside blogs and movies, Tim Russert has died. I don't know what to say, other than extending condolences to his family. He's one of those public figures I read about every day, more or less, but might well not have been able to identify from a photograph. Teevision news is not something I take very seriously.
On happier news - I haven't done much blogging about the Celtics, and - strangely enough, have barely watched them since February (a habit I developed in their lean years that seems to have come back this year; I suspect the real answer is - once the baseball games start, basketball is just a distraction.) But they are one game away from a championship. Defense wins, especially if you can score too, and the Lakers do not seem to have the defense they need.... Though 1 game isn't a given at that level: ask the Indians.
And in the real world:
They were shooting a movie last week, on Mass Ave. Pedro Costa is right - shooting a movie is like an invasion: trucks up and down the road, wires everywhere traffic diverted.... This is the tail end, breaking down - still junk everywhere. I don't know what film they were shooting, but I doubt it will be very good. There's something creepy about shooting on location and turning the location into a sound stage - with all that crap, what else can they do? You move away from the artifice of the studio, but then recreate it on the street? Gah...
And, sort of finally - treated myself to a concert last night - Damon and Naomi at TT The Bears, with Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh opening. A fine time was had! I tested my camera - I'm curious about how it works in bad light: some digital cameras work very well - this one, I'm afraid, does not. At least, I haven't found the right setting. This is about as good as they get:
Though this one, of Espvall, gotten by monkeying around with the settings in the dark, looks very cool:
Anyway - enjoy the weekend, and I hope I make it back here with a father's day post before the weekend is out...
Monday, June 09, 2008
Homework - 3 Weeks Late
Once again, from Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule - pop quiz! More like a freakin' final exam - that I'm weeks late on... It has gotten a bit ridiculous. It's time to post. Though even now, I'm probably going to have to skip a couple of the questions - the best ones, probably. Though I should maybe make a virtue of it - pin em on the wall, and when I have a good answer for them, it'll be another post! hooray! Anyway - with no further ado, because if I'm not careful, it'll be fourth of July already:
UPDATED (7/9): Dennis has posted selected answers: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3. A good way to kill a morning or two... I've also added links to my "promised" makeup work.
1) Best transition from movies to TV (actor, actress, producer/director, movie/show)
- This isn't easy - I don't watch much TV anymore - what I've seen in the last 20 years I've caught up with after the fact... since it should be someone I've actually seen - I'm tempted to say Fred MacMurray - a fine film career, and then a big TV career - though he's bland on TV. William Demerast then? though I'm tempted to go to something more basic - Edward Everett Horton, whose voice is utterly engrained in my head...
2) Living film director you most missing seeing on the cultural landscape regularly
- Not easy - one way to answer would be to lament the unavailability of films by people like Tsui Hark, Peter Chan, Zhang Yuan... but another - a director gone missing - Whit Stillman? I miss Alan Rudolph, too...
3) Eugene Pallette or Charles Coburn
- Coburn is probably a better actor, but Pallette is in too many films near and dear to my heart. And - he is a wonderful presence n all of them.
4) Fill in the blank: “I pray that no one ever turns _____________ into a movie.”
- Hard to say - maybe Calvin and Hobbes? though I suppose the right people could do it - right now though, I suspect it would end up looking like Garfield or something...
5) Jane Greer or Veronica Lake
- Gotta say Veronica Lake
6) What was the last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD? And why?
- This keeps changing, as I keep putting off posting it. The last couple weeks have been very rich: from Love Eterne (Shaw Brothers, Chinese opera, the first full blown opera film I have ever seen), to 14 Amazons (Shaw Brothers again, 14 Amazons plus Lilly Ko as the son of the family... to The Awful Truth - the HFA has been very good to me lately.
- DVD? - would be Modesty Blaise. Why? David Cairns. (And what I said about the HFA? It's not on their web site yet, but in July - the HFA is promising "The Complete Joseph Losey"....)
7) Name an actor you think should be a star
- I suppose one answer is that I think Louis Garrel will cross the Atlantic in a couple years, to be the French Gael Garcia Bernal; in this land - is Paul Dano a star yet?
8) Foxy Brown or Coffy
- No idea - Coffy I think, but I'm not sure. Haven't seen either one anywhere but on TV.
9) Favorite TV show still without its own DVD box set
- I don't know - I don't pay close enough attention to DVD releases to know what it and isn't available. Though I know that Max Headroom is not available, and that's one of the great shows of the 80s...
10) Jack Elam or Neville Brand
- not much hope here... I'll say Jack Elam, for no particular reason
11) What movies would top your list of movies you need to revisit, for whatever reason?
- Among older films - Kurosawa's The Idiot, which I saw on VHS many years back and didn't get much out of... Dreyer's Joan of Arc, just because it's been too long since I've seen it.... Rio Bravo, ditto.... more recently: The Ice Storm comes to mind... I need to rewatch some Cronenberg's - I might like them better. There are filmmakers I've seen once and want to see again - Olmi, Ichikawa, etc... And - RC reminds me - a couple Coen Brothers films - actually, about half of them, but especially The Man Who Wasn't There...
12) Zodiac or All the President’s Men
- Zodiac - for the way it looks, I think, though there's nothing wrong with how ATPM looks or Zodiac's story...
13) Using our best reviewer-speak, what is an “important” film comedy? And what is to you the most important film comedy of the last 35 years?
- "Important" is always trouble - I don't think I can answer that in any context... Rushmore is the best, for many many reasons - but important? setting Bill Murray on his latter day career path is a good reason - though that if so, maybe the answer should be Groundhog Day... I suppose another way to go might be to say, Evil Dead: besides giving Sam Raimi his career, it ushered in a kind of horror/comedy hybrid... etc. I don't know. I might come up with a better answer later - this is one I plan to hold on to and answer at length if I come up with something good.
14) Describe the ideal environment for watching a movie.
- Any good theater, really - with good seats, plenty of room to prop up the feet without poking anyone in the back - no one in front of you or behind you, but a decent crowd in the building, enough to react to things that need reactions. Clear view of the screen, no talkers, no one coming and going during the film, good screen good projection, good sound - it's not that unusual, really. I see a fair number of films that make the grade pretty well any given year - month, even. Those nice clean Shaw Brothers prints, a modest but enthusiastic crowd - what more could you ask, except maybe better seats...
15) Michelle Williams or Eva Mendes
- Williams sounds right. Sometimes, she seems in danger of turning into Renee Zellweger, but it hasn't happened yet.
16) What’s the worst movie title of all time?
- If translation counts - can anything beat Tough Beauty and the Sloppy Slop? In English - Lucky Number Slevin? I Heart Huckabees? Dumb and Dumberer? Ithere are probably worse,but that's enough to think about for now...
17) Best movie about teaching and/or learning
***- This is too good a question: I don't have a great answer - but I like the question too much to let go. It's kept me from posting these two weeks or so. I have to give up. I will cheat: Drunken Master! I'll say - or 36th Chamber of Shaolin. But I will keep this question around to answer when I have a good one.
18) Dracula (1931) or Horror of Dracula (1958)
- Dracula, easy
19) Why do you blog? Or if you don’t, why do you read blogs? (Thanks, Girish)
- I like the give and take, I like the conversations, and blogging is how people interact online these days. I have been playing around online for 15 odd years - Prodigy to AOL to message boards and Usenet, now blogging - it's what people do. I do think blogging is one of the best ways to have this conversation about film - it's flexible, easy to do, easily integrated into the broader community, allows you to do anything with it. I certainly hope it isn't replaced by crappy systems like Facebook or MySpace - those things give e the creeps...
20) Most memorable/disturbing death scene
- One that always bites me - the end of Tabu, when the boy reaches the priest's boat and the priest reaches out and cuts the rope he's hanging too, as casually and easily as that...
21) Jason Robards or Robert Shaw
- Which one? Robards, I guess, no matter which one...
22) A good candidate for Most Blasphemous Movie Ever
***- this is another one I can't answer, even after 2 weeks of thinking. Maybe Passion of the Christ? Anyway - another one I will try to return to in the future....
23) Rio Bravo or Red River
- Red River, I will say, though it might be just because I've seen it n a theater and not Rio Bravo.... [Add Rio Bravo to the films to revisit list, I guess.]
24) Werner Herzog is remaking Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage—that’s reality. Try to outdo reality by concocting a match-up of director and title for a really strange imaginary remake.
- I'm very glad this movie is happening. Not that I want to see it, but already, it has Abel Ferrera and Werner Herzog taking shots at each other like Coco Crisp and Carl Crawford. [That reference is already a week out of date! alas!] As for an equally absurd remake - the next two questions suggest a Judd Apatow remake of Max on Amour with Julia Roberts in the lead. Though I wish they didn't.
25) Bulle Ogier or Charlotte Rampling
- Charlotte Rampling. Oh yes.
26) In the Realm of the Senses— yes or no?
- Absolutely - great film.
27) Name a movie you think of as your own (Thanks, Jim!)
***- I should be able to answer this: I will come back to it. This is - like the others that I've skipped, a great question - it deserves an answer worth the time it's taking to think of one.
28) Winged Migration or Microcosmos
- Microcosmos, for no profound reason
29) Your favorite football game featured in a movie
- The easy answer is Horsefeathers - I'm not positive though. MASH, The Freshman, all have their merits...
30) Wendy Hiller or Deborah Kerr
- I'll say Kerr
31) Dirtiest secret you have that is related to the movies
- I don't know what to say to this.
32) Name a favorite film and describe how it is illuminated and enriched by another favorite film.
***- Another question that's too good to answer: this one, especially, is something I want to think about, turn over in my head, all by itself, until I have a good answer. If I don't complete wimp out, this quiz could give me half sumer's worth of blogging material... UPDATE: I answered this one! I was lucky enough to see Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow, and posted about its relationship to Tokyo Story.
33) It’s a Gift or Horsefeathers
- Horsefeathers - now if you asked about "You're Telling Me" that would get dicey...
34) Your best story about seeing a movie at a drive-in
- I don't know if I ever have, sadly enough
35) Victor Mature or Tyrone Power
- Power - I've been watching his films lately, after working through a bunch of Fairbanks and Flynn movis - neat stuff, though he's not in their league.
36) What does film criticism mean to you? Where do you think it’s headed?
- Where it's headed? I don't know - I imagine it will continue roughly as it is. Academic critics will keep rolling along, someone somewhere will be reviewing new releases every week, giving them stars and trying to steer the public toward better films - probably all of us, though, rather than trained professionals - either way - I am going to end with thought from yesterday, that last movie I ended up seeing, in fact: The Awful Truth. Which, as it happened, was shown with an introduction from Stanley Cavell, who wrote about it in Pursuits of Happiness. Two things came to mind - first, I was thinking about why Cavell is so good (for I think his film writing is among the very best there is): it's that he shows us things that are in the films, and in the world, that we might not have thought of. That's what critics should do - make us see things we didn't see - in the film, or in the world, related to the film. And the other - a reference to his description of what marriage is, what a good marriage is, what the comedies of remarriage show: a "deepening of the conversation." That is what criticism should be - a conversation about films, and about life, through films... This might be the answer to the "important comedies" question too - because this is what the contenders do. Rushmore - Groundhog Day - O Brother Where Art Thou - Life of Brian - Fallen Angels (the Kinoshiro half anyway) - White: they tell us about life, they give us life as conversation, and a way of talking about the world, of inventing ourselves and taking responsibility for ourselves in the world... So - if we keep talking about films, criticism should make it, in the end.
UPDATED (7/9): Dennis has posted selected answers: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3. A good way to kill a morning or two... I've also added links to my "promised" makeup work.
1) Best transition from movies to TV (actor, actress, producer/director, movie/show)
- This isn't easy - I don't watch much TV anymore - what I've seen in the last 20 years I've caught up with after the fact... since it should be someone I've actually seen - I'm tempted to say Fred MacMurray - a fine film career, and then a big TV career - though he's bland on TV. William Demerast then? though I'm tempted to go to something more basic - Edward Everett Horton, whose voice is utterly engrained in my head...
2) Living film director you most missing seeing on the cultural landscape regularly
- Not easy - one way to answer would be to lament the unavailability of films by people like Tsui Hark, Peter Chan, Zhang Yuan... but another - a director gone missing - Whit Stillman? I miss Alan Rudolph, too...
3) Eugene Pallette or Charles Coburn
- Coburn is probably a better actor, but Pallette is in too many films near and dear to my heart. And - he is a wonderful presence n all of them.
4) Fill in the blank: “I pray that no one ever turns _____________ into a movie.”
- Hard to say - maybe Calvin and Hobbes? though I suppose the right people could do it - right now though, I suspect it would end up looking like Garfield or something...
5) Jane Greer or Veronica Lake
- Gotta say Veronica Lake
6) What was the last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD? And why?
- This keeps changing, as I keep putting off posting it. The last couple weeks have been very rich: from Love Eterne (Shaw Brothers, Chinese opera, the first full blown opera film I have ever seen), to 14 Amazons (Shaw Brothers again, 14 Amazons plus Lilly Ko as the son of the family... to The Awful Truth - the HFA has been very good to me lately.
- DVD? - would be Modesty Blaise. Why? David Cairns. (And what I said about the HFA? It's not on their web site yet, but in July - the HFA is promising "The Complete Joseph Losey"....)
7) Name an actor you think should be a star
- I suppose one answer is that I think Louis Garrel will cross the Atlantic in a couple years, to be the French Gael Garcia Bernal; in this land - is Paul Dano a star yet?
8) Foxy Brown or Coffy
- No idea - Coffy I think, but I'm not sure. Haven't seen either one anywhere but on TV.
9) Favorite TV show still without its own DVD box set
- I don't know - I don't pay close enough attention to DVD releases to know what it and isn't available. Though I know that Max Headroom is not available, and that's one of the great shows of the 80s...
10) Jack Elam or Neville Brand
- not much hope here... I'll say Jack Elam, for no particular reason
11) What movies would top your list of movies you need to revisit, for whatever reason?
- Among older films - Kurosawa's The Idiot, which I saw on VHS many years back and didn't get much out of... Dreyer's Joan of Arc, just because it's been too long since I've seen it.... Rio Bravo, ditto.... more recently: The Ice Storm comes to mind... I need to rewatch some Cronenberg's - I might like them better. There are filmmakers I've seen once and want to see again - Olmi, Ichikawa, etc... And - RC reminds me - a couple Coen Brothers films - actually, about half of them, but especially The Man Who Wasn't There...
12) Zodiac or All the President’s Men
- Zodiac - for the way it looks, I think, though there's nothing wrong with how ATPM looks or Zodiac's story...
13) Using our best reviewer-speak, what is an “important” film comedy? And what is to you the most important film comedy of the last 35 years?
- "Important" is always trouble - I don't think I can answer that in any context... Rushmore is the best, for many many reasons - but important? setting Bill Murray on his latter day career path is a good reason - though that if so, maybe the answer should be Groundhog Day... I suppose another way to go might be to say, Evil Dead: besides giving Sam Raimi his career, it ushered in a kind of horror/comedy hybrid... etc. I don't know. I might come up with a better answer later - this is one I plan to hold on to and answer at length if I come up with something good.
14) Describe the ideal environment for watching a movie.
- Any good theater, really - with good seats, plenty of room to prop up the feet without poking anyone in the back - no one in front of you or behind you, but a decent crowd in the building, enough to react to things that need reactions. Clear view of the screen, no talkers, no one coming and going during the film, good screen good projection, good sound - it's not that unusual, really. I see a fair number of films that make the grade pretty well any given year - month, even. Those nice clean Shaw Brothers prints, a modest but enthusiastic crowd - what more could you ask, except maybe better seats...
15) Michelle Williams or Eva Mendes
- Williams sounds right. Sometimes, she seems in danger of turning into Renee Zellweger, but it hasn't happened yet.
16) What’s the worst movie title of all time?
- If translation counts - can anything beat Tough Beauty and the Sloppy Slop? In English - Lucky Number Slevin? I Heart Huckabees? Dumb and Dumberer? Ithere are probably worse,but that's enough to think about for now...
17) Best movie about teaching and/or learning
***- This is too good a question: I don't have a great answer - but I like the question too much to let go. It's kept me from posting these two weeks or so. I have to give up. I will cheat: Drunken Master! I'll say - or 36th Chamber of Shaolin. But I will keep this question around to answer when I have a good one.
18) Dracula (1931) or Horror of Dracula (1958)
- Dracula, easy
19) Why do you blog? Or if you don’t, why do you read blogs? (Thanks, Girish)
- I like the give and take, I like the conversations, and blogging is how people interact online these days. I have been playing around online for 15 odd years - Prodigy to AOL to message boards and Usenet, now blogging - it's what people do. I do think blogging is one of the best ways to have this conversation about film - it's flexible, easy to do, easily integrated into the broader community, allows you to do anything with it. I certainly hope it isn't replaced by crappy systems like Facebook or MySpace - those things give e the creeps...
20) Most memorable/disturbing death scene
- One that always bites me - the end of Tabu, when the boy reaches the priest's boat and the priest reaches out and cuts the rope he's hanging too, as casually and easily as that...
21) Jason Robards or Robert Shaw
- Which one? Robards, I guess, no matter which one...
22) A good candidate for Most Blasphemous Movie Ever
***- this is another one I can't answer, even after 2 weeks of thinking. Maybe Passion of the Christ? Anyway - another one I will try to return to in the future....
23) Rio Bravo or Red River
- Red River, I will say, though it might be just because I've seen it n a theater and not Rio Bravo.... [Add Rio Bravo to the films to revisit list, I guess.]
24) Werner Herzog is remaking Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage—that’s reality. Try to outdo reality by concocting a match-up of director and title for a really strange imaginary remake.
- I'm very glad this movie is happening. Not that I want to see it, but already, it has Abel Ferrera and Werner Herzog taking shots at each other like Coco Crisp and Carl Crawford. [That reference is already a week out of date! alas!] As for an equally absurd remake - the next two questions suggest a Judd Apatow remake of Max on Amour with Julia Roberts in the lead. Though I wish they didn't.
25) Bulle Ogier or Charlotte Rampling
- Charlotte Rampling. Oh yes.
26) In the Realm of the Senses— yes or no?
- Absolutely - great film.
27) Name a movie you think of as your own (Thanks, Jim!)
***- I should be able to answer this: I will come back to it. This is - like the others that I've skipped, a great question - it deserves an answer worth the time it's taking to think of one.
28) Winged Migration or Microcosmos
- Microcosmos, for no profound reason
29) Your favorite football game featured in a movie
- The easy answer is Horsefeathers - I'm not positive though. MASH, The Freshman, all have their merits...
30) Wendy Hiller or Deborah Kerr
- I'll say Kerr
31) Dirtiest secret you have that is related to the movies
- I don't know what to say to this.
32) Name a favorite film and describe how it is illuminated and enriched by another favorite film.
***- Another question that's too good to answer: this one, especially, is something I want to think about, turn over in my head, all by itself, until I have a good answer. If I don't complete wimp out, this quiz could give me half sumer's worth of blogging material... UPDATE: I answered this one! I was lucky enough to see Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow, and posted about its relationship to Tokyo Story.
33) It’s a Gift or Horsefeathers
- Horsefeathers - now if you asked about "You're Telling Me" that would get dicey...
34) Your best story about seeing a movie at a drive-in
- I don't know if I ever have, sadly enough
35) Victor Mature or Tyrone Power
- Power - I've been watching his films lately, after working through a bunch of Fairbanks and Flynn movis - neat stuff, though he's not in their league.
36) What does film criticism mean to you? Where do you think it’s headed?
- Where it's headed? I don't know - I imagine it will continue roughly as it is. Academic critics will keep rolling along, someone somewhere will be reviewing new releases every week, giving them stars and trying to steer the public toward better films - probably all of us, though, rather than trained professionals - either way - I am going to end with thought from yesterday, that last movie I ended up seeing, in fact: The Awful Truth. Which, as it happened, was shown with an introduction from Stanley Cavell, who wrote about it in Pursuits of Happiness. Two things came to mind - first, I was thinking about why Cavell is so good (for I think his film writing is among the very best there is): it's that he shows us things that are in the films, and in the world, that we might not have thought of. That's what critics should do - make us see things we didn't see - in the film, or in the world, related to the film. And the other - a reference to his description of what marriage is, what a good marriage is, what the comedies of remarriage show: a "deepening of the conversation." That is what criticism should be - a conversation about films, and about life, through films... This might be the answer to the "important comedies" question too - because this is what the contenders do. Rushmore - Groundhog Day - O Brother Where Art Thou - Life of Brian - Fallen Angels (the Kinoshiro half anyway) - White: they tell us about life, they give us life as conversation, and a way of talking about the world, of inventing ourselves and taking responsibility for ourselves in the world... So - if we keep talking about films, criticism should make it, in the end.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Presidential Politics Noted
I thought I'd take a moment to at least comment on politics. I am very happy, and relieved, that Barack Obama has clinched the democratic party nomination for president. Relieved because I'm tired of watching democrats campaign against each other - it's time to get after John McCain. And while the campaign seemed to generate an awful lot of ugly and stupid identity politics down the stretch, it's hard not to be a bit thrilled at the fact that a Black man stands the best chance of being elected president in a few months. And if he hadn't won, a woman would have been nominated, and this year, like Obama, would have to be considered the favorite. The fact that the US has had one president in its history who was not a white protestant man is disgraceful. Hell, we're 20 years behind Pakistan!
Anyway: on the subject of presidential primaries, 40 years ago today, Robert Kennedy was shot. American history has not trended upwards from that point. Political history at least - Nixon to Reagan to Bush have taken the good parts of government out at the knees through the years, while pushing us toward authoritarianism and militarism. It would be nice to see that trend turned. Clinton tried, but did in in the teeth of nasty resistance, and with an annoying tendency to run to the middle... Now - the republicans have run the country into the ground, in ways pretty much anyone can see. And the trends of cultural history have fairly definitively gone against them, as they have been going for the last century of so... There is a chance here, the first in a while, probably, to do more than hold off the most appalling tendencies of the right - there is a chance to actually move the country forward. Do things every other rich country does - health care, decent train systems. Free college tuition! (Though it might be too much for many American's to grasp that getting people educated without burying them in debt might have benefits even to their employers....)
Anyway: on the subject of presidential primaries, 40 years ago today, Robert Kennedy was shot. American history has not trended upwards from that point. Political history at least - Nixon to Reagan to Bush have taken the good parts of government out at the knees through the years, while pushing us toward authoritarianism and militarism. It would be nice to see that trend turned. Clinton tried, but did in in the teeth of nasty resistance, and with an annoying tendency to run to the middle... Now - the republicans have run the country into the ground, in ways pretty much anyone can see. And the trends of cultural history have fairly definitively gone against them, as they have been going for the last century of so... There is a chance here, the first in a while, probably, to do more than hold off the most appalling tendencies of the right - there is a chance to actually move the country forward. Do things every other rich country does - health care, decent train systems. Free college tuition! (Though it might be too much for many American's to grasp that getting people educated without burying them in debt might have benefits even to their employers....)
Monday, June 02, 2008
Who do you Love?
I have to post this news: Bo Diddley has died. (Via Glenn Kenny.) Boy, but he made the world a better place.
UPDATE: and, a clip - live on TV, 1966:
UPDATE: and, a clip - live on TV, 1966:
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Authorship in Kazuo Hara's Films
[Cross Posted from the Film of the Month Club blog - added here for archival purposes.]
Thinking about The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On made me curious about Kazuo Hara's other films. Earlier this month I watched his two earlier films, Sayonara CP and Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, hoping to get a better idea of Hara as a filmmaker. I posted some notes on his style and themes at my blog - but now I'd like to address another characteristic of these films I put off from that post. This emerges, specifically, from some of Harrytuttle's comments here, that Okuzaki seems to be more important to the film than Hara. It's an interesting point - in fact, I think it is characteristic of Hara's approach.
His films are definitely about strong personalities: the poet and photographer in Sayonara CP, Miyuki Takeda in Extreme Private Eros, and Okuzaki, are all assertive individuals with their own agendas. But usually even documentaries about strong characters retain a fairly clear hierarchy of "authorship": the subjects (Bob Dylan or Mark Borchardt or the Crumbs) do their thing - the filmmakers (Pennebaker, Smith, Zwigoff) film it and shape it. The subject of the films may control their discourse - but the filmmakers retain control of the discourse of the film. But Hara cedes more control of the films to his subjects - he allows them to shape what is in the film, to comment on the film more directly. Okuzaki's crusade is a good example - along with his tendency to perform, to stage manage confrontations, to act violently (though always photogenically). And his control of what will be in the film - inviting Hara to film him killing Koshimizu is probably the extreme example, but there are others. Several posts and comments here have explored Okuzaki's "shtick", so I will concentrate a bit more on the earlier films.
In Sayonara CP, the Greenlawn group (an organization of cerebral palsy sufferers) has significant input into the film, shaping its content, and its purposes. When the film is endangered (the wife of one of the main characters, the poet, Hiroshi Yokota, demands he stop filming), the Greenlawn people are as adamant about continuing as Hara. (And a good deal more vocal - he just keeps shooting; they yell at Yokota, nearly get into fight with him.) Beyond this, both Yokota and the other main character, a photographer, are given extended scenes, and explain their ideas and hopes at length. Hara has spoken of his desire to show things that are hidden - the CP sufferers share this desire. The photographer says he began taking pictures because other people took pictures of him - "we can only be passive" he says - he wants to reverse that, to look, as well as be looked at. He implicates Hara in this - Hara was always photographing him, he says - now he wants to be the one with the camera. Yokota, the poet, has similar goals - to read his poetry in public, to make people look at him, listen to him, acknowledge him. He has a major speech at the end of the film - describing his hopes for the film, for a different kind of film, only to have those hopes shattered. He will always be helpless, he says - while Hara cuts between shots of Yokota sitting nude in the street and repeatedly trying and failing to stand. Whose idea was that? Hara's? Yokota's? Either way, it pits the image against the words in a way that, I think, that underlines the authority of the character in the film. Both of these men resist their appropriation by the film, at least by speaking about it directly.
Hara's second film, Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, contains perhaps the most extreme example of this shared authorship. The film is a portrait of Hara's ex-lover, Miyuki Takeda - an extraordinary woman in her own right. The first half of the film is fairly conventional, as far as the relationship between Hara and Takeda, as filmmaker and subject, go - he shoots her, she talks, goes about her business - but the film is basically his. But in the second half the relationship changes. He films her giving birth - but this was her idea. We heard her plans earlier - she wants to give birth completely alone, with no help from anyone: and wants Hara to film it. That is what happens. She has the baby, while Hara films and his current lover records the sound. This scene is hers by any standards - she plans it, does the work (to say the least), and Hara just records.... This also tends to recast her activity in the earlier scenes - Hara tagging along as she went through the Okinawa underworld, trying to help the women there. Only at the end do we learn what she was doing there: by the end, seeing her efforts to create a model community, we see her as a far more active character than before.
Now - I don't think this in any way diminishes Hara's contributions to the films, and I certainly don't think it makes them less interesting formally than other documentaries. On the contrary - I think it makes the tension between the subject of the documentary and the maker of the documentary more explicit. It plays into the broader issues of control and independence found in these films, and often into their themes of revelation and repression - as all these characters in many ways seek to say and show things that have been suppressed. In this they are partners with Hara - though as well, as a filmmaker, he is appropriating their words and their images for his own purposes. They often, fairly explicitly, try to take control of those words and images back. It makes for a fascinating interplay.
Thinking about The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On made me curious about Kazuo Hara's other films. Earlier this month I watched his two earlier films, Sayonara CP and Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, hoping to get a better idea of Hara as a filmmaker. I posted some notes on his style and themes at my blog - but now I'd like to address another characteristic of these films I put off from that post. This emerges, specifically, from some of Harrytuttle's comments here, that Okuzaki seems to be more important to the film than Hara. It's an interesting point - in fact, I think it is characteristic of Hara's approach.
His films are definitely about strong personalities: the poet and photographer in Sayonara CP, Miyuki Takeda in Extreme Private Eros, and Okuzaki, are all assertive individuals with their own agendas. But usually even documentaries about strong characters retain a fairly clear hierarchy of "authorship": the subjects (Bob Dylan or Mark Borchardt or the Crumbs) do their thing - the filmmakers (Pennebaker, Smith, Zwigoff) film it and shape it. The subject of the films may control their discourse - but the filmmakers retain control of the discourse of the film. But Hara cedes more control of the films to his subjects - he allows them to shape what is in the film, to comment on the film more directly. Okuzaki's crusade is a good example - along with his tendency to perform, to stage manage confrontations, to act violently (though always photogenically). And his control of what will be in the film - inviting Hara to film him killing Koshimizu is probably the extreme example, but there are others. Several posts and comments here have explored Okuzaki's "shtick", so I will concentrate a bit more on the earlier films.
In Sayonara CP, the Greenlawn group (an organization of cerebral palsy sufferers) has significant input into the film, shaping its content, and its purposes. When the film is endangered (the wife of one of the main characters, the poet, Hiroshi Yokota, demands he stop filming), the Greenlawn people are as adamant about continuing as Hara. (And a good deal more vocal - he just keeps shooting; they yell at Yokota, nearly get into fight with him.) Beyond this, both Yokota and the other main character, a photographer, are given extended scenes, and explain their ideas and hopes at length. Hara has spoken of his desire to show things that are hidden - the CP sufferers share this desire. The photographer says he began taking pictures because other people took pictures of him - "we can only be passive" he says - he wants to reverse that, to look, as well as be looked at. He implicates Hara in this - Hara was always photographing him, he says - now he wants to be the one with the camera. Yokota, the poet, has similar goals - to read his poetry in public, to make people look at him, listen to him, acknowledge him. He has a major speech at the end of the film - describing his hopes for the film, for a different kind of film, only to have those hopes shattered. He will always be helpless, he says - while Hara cuts between shots of Yokota sitting nude in the street and repeatedly trying and failing to stand. Whose idea was that? Hara's? Yokota's? Either way, it pits the image against the words in a way that, I think, that underlines the authority of the character in the film. Both of these men resist their appropriation by the film, at least by speaking about it directly.
Hara's second film, Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, contains perhaps the most extreme example of this shared authorship. The film is a portrait of Hara's ex-lover, Miyuki Takeda - an extraordinary woman in her own right. The first half of the film is fairly conventional, as far as the relationship between Hara and Takeda, as filmmaker and subject, go - he shoots her, she talks, goes about her business - but the film is basically his. But in the second half the relationship changes. He films her giving birth - but this was her idea. We heard her plans earlier - she wants to give birth completely alone, with no help from anyone: and wants Hara to film it. That is what happens. She has the baby, while Hara films and his current lover records the sound. This scene is hers by any standards - she plans it, does the work (to say the least), and Hara just records.... This also tends to recast her activity in the earlier scenes - Hara tagging along as she went through the Okinawa underworld, trying to help the women there. Only at the end do we learn what she was doing there: by the end, seeing her efforts to create a model community, we see her as a far more active character than before.
Now - I don't think this in any way diminishes Hara's contributions to the films, and I certainly don't think it makes them less interesting formally than other documentaries. On the contrary - I think it makes the tension between the subject of the documentary and the maker of the documentary more explicit. It plays into the broader issues of control and independence found in these films, and often into their themes of revelation and repression - as all these characters in many ways seek to say and show things that have been suppressed. In this they are partners with Hara - though as well, as a filmmaker, he is appropriating their words and their images for his own purposes. They often, fairly explicitly, try to take control of those words and images back. It makes for a fascinating interplay.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Observations on Style and Theme for Kazuo Hara
At the Film of the Month Club, the conversation about Kazuo Hara's The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is going apace. It is a rich and strange film, lending itself to a world of consideration - politics, history, Japanese society - the psychology of the protagonist, Kenzo Okuzaki - moral and ethical considerations, both for Okuzaki and the filmmakers - as well as being a fascinating piece of filmmaking. The conversation there so far has bent more toward the politcal, ethical, psychological elements of the film - I want to wrote about the formal elements of the film, and about Hara's style and themes as a filmmaker. I took a look at his earlier films as well, themselves quite extraordinary works: Sayonara CP is about a group of cerebral palsy sufferers; Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974about an Miyuki Takeda, Hara's ex-lover who has gone to Okinawa to try to help the bar girls there... These are some notes, some continuities among these films, and some of the devices used by Hara in The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On...
- Form and Style - the film follows a relatively common documentary form: Hara and crew follow their subject around, generally not interfering or overtly shaping the material. Hara doesn't add a lot of explanation - no voiceover, fairly minimal titles, and only a couple interviews of people other than Okuzaki to give context to the story. This is similar to his other films - even when there are more conventional interviews (as in Sayonara CP), they aren't presented as ways to fill in a broader kind of story - they are filmed and presented as monologues by the characters in the film. They don't provide context for the film's subject - they are the film's subject.
- Style - looking more closely at some of Hara's techniques: his preference for fly on the wall observation; his manipulation of sound and image (which is less radical in this film than the earlier ones - probably because he had enough budget to shoot real synch sound); his occasionally jarring use of text - these elements have thematic implications as well, that we will return to.
- Structure - in the interview cited by Girish, Hara mentions trying to show Okuzaki as an action hero. The film, in fact, is structured as a mystery - as a detective story. It is structured around a literal murder mystery - why were 2 private killed 23 days after the war ended in 1945? Who ordered them killed, who did the deed, and why? Okuzaki tracks down this mystery, interviewing all the surviving witnesses - but he does it like a detective - he doesn't just seek the truth about what happened 40 odd years before, he seeks to inflict justice in the present as well. (And yes, "inflict" seems to be the right word there.)
- Narration - while Hara does avoid conventional documentary construction - voiceover and explanations and background information and so on, he maintains a good deal of control over the narration of the film, the flow of information. The Emperor's Naked Army... begins with somewhat random seeming clips of Okuzaki - at a wedding, visiting the police, mounting a couple protests, visiting a man in the hospital - these scenes introduce him without explicitly stating who he is or what he is doing. But in fact, a good deal of information is revealed: we learn about his past, his records, from his own accounts (and eventually from Hara); we get some glimpses of his character, that might come clearer later (his remark that nations and families are walls between people - at a wedding! - should give us a hint as to his iconoclasm); we learn about his goals, his obsessions, and get some hints of his methods. Hara sets up later scenes: the first old comrade he meets is Yamada, in the hospital - who will also be the final, most significant encounter (shown) in the film.
- Themes - the dominant theme throughout Hara's work is one of revealing what is hidden - more than hidden, what is repressed. In the Iris interview, he mentions this, specifically about Sayonara CP - to show handicapped bodies because they are difficult to look at. "What I wanted to do with the film is show exactly what people did not want to see, to expose the hidden." Its a theme running throughout his films: in Extreme Private Eros, showing his private life and that of Takeda, as well as showing two explicit births; in The Emperor's Naked Army, he exposes the secrets - shameful, evil - from the war.
In fact, he goes beyond showing what is hidden. It's more that he explores the acts of revealing and hiding, and the mechanisms of repression. All three films contain moments that hide as well as show: obviously the things people don't want to tell, but also the people who resist being on film; acts of direct censorship and repression, and so on. So in Sayonara CP we see: the wife of the main character (Yokota, the poet) trying to stop the film, demanding that Hara stop filming in her home, which he ignores; police breaking up Yokota's poetry reading, calling it a freak show. In Extreme Private Eros: there is a similar scene - Takeda is distributing pamphlets to bar girls in Okinawa, with Hara filming - some men approach and the screen goes black and a title informs us that "Hara was assaulted by gangsters." It's similar to the end of Naked Army - where the trip to New Guinea yields nothing but a title saying the footage was confiscated by the Indonesian government. Even without elisions of this sort, the hiding/revealing dynamic appears: the quintessential example may be Takeda's birthing scene in Extreme Private Eros. Hara shoots the birth in one take - and presents the take in the film - even though the camera went out of focus early in the shot. He's showing something as intimate as it is possible to show - but showing it out of focus, blurred and ambiguous.
These scenes seem to me to come close to the core of Hara's ideas. They occur throughout his films - he emphasizes them, with titles explaining what's missing, or with a voiceover running over the out of focus shot of the birth of Tekeda's child - or just through their placement. They tend to come near the climax of the films, as when the police break up Yokota's poetry reading, at the end of the climax of the poem itself, for instance. They tend to come between moments of great power: in Sayonara CP, Hara draws out the moment hen Yokota reads his poem - the police arrive - and immediately after the scene, there is a shot of Yokota naked, in the middle of street, talking about his hopes for the film, and their let down. The end of Naked Army is similar - the emotional peak of the film is probably the long ocnfrontation between Okuzaki (and Oshima the anarchist) and Yamada - after this, comes the (invisible) trip to New Guinea and Okuzaki's attempted murder of Koshimizu's son. The latter especially, is the climax of the film - it's what the story has been building toward: the solution of the mystery (who killed the men and why? by that timem Koshimizu has emerged as the clear villain of the piece), and Okuzaki's imposition of justice (or vengeance.) And it happens offscreen, told in titles and an interview with Okuzaki's wife. Which is probably all the more appropriate given that Okuzaki's vengeance goes awry - he doesn't shoot the perpetrator of the old crimes - he shoots his son.
- Form and Style - the film follows a relatively common documentary form: Hara and crew follow their subject around, generally not interfering or overtly shaping the material. Hara doesn't add a lot of explanation - no voiceover, fairly minimal titles, and only a couple interviews of people other than Okuzaki to give context to the story. This is similar to his other films - even when there are more conventional interviews (as in Sayonara CP), they aren't presented as ways to fill in a broader kind of story - they are filmed and presented as monologues by the characters in the film. They don't provide context for the film's subject - they are the film's subject.
- Style - looking more closely at some of Hara's techniques: his preference for fly on the wall observation; his manipulation of sound and image (which is less radical in this film than the earlier ones - probably because he had enough budget to shoot real synch sound); his occasionally jarring use of text - these elements have thematic implications as well, that we will return to.
- Structure - in the interview cited by Girish, Hara mentions trying to show Okuzaki as an action hero. The film, in fact, is structured as a mystery - as a detective story. It is structured around a literal murder mystery - why were 2 private killed 23 days after the war ended in 1945? Who ordered them killed, who did the deed, and why? Okuzaki tracks down this mystery, interviewing all the surviving witnesses - but he does it like a detective - he doesn't just seek the truth about what happened 40 odd years before, he seeks to inflict justice in the present as well. (And yes, "inflict" seems to be the right word there.)
- Narration - while Hara does avoid conventional documentary construction - voiceover and explanations and background information and so on, he maintains a good deal of control over the narration of the film, the flow of information. The Emperor's Naked Army... begins with somewhat random seeming clips of Okuzaki - at a wedding, visiting the police, mounting a couple protests, visiting a man in the hospital - these scenes introduce him without explicitly stating who he is or what he is doing. But in fact, a good deal of information is revealed: we learn about his past, his records, from his own accounts (and eventually from Hara); we get some glimpses of his character, that might come clearer later (his remark that nations and families are walls between people - at a wedding! - should give us a hint as to his iconoclasm); we learn about his goals, his obsessions, and get some hints of his methods. Hara sets up later scenes: the first old comrade he meets is Yamada, in the hospital - who will also be the final, most significant encounter (shown) in the film.
- Themes - the dominant theme throughout Hara's work is one of revealing what is hidden - more than hidden, what is repressed. In the Iris interview, he mentions this, specifically about Sayonara CP - to show handicapped bodies because they are difficult to look at. "What I wanted to do with the film is show exactly what people did not want to see, to expose the hidden." Its a theme running throughout his films: in Extreme Private Eros, showing his private life and that of Takeda, as well as showing two explicit births; in The Emperor's Naked Army, he exposes the secrets - shameful, evil - from the war.
In fact, he goes beyond showing what is hidden. It's more that he explores the acts of revealing and hiding, and the mechanisms of repression. All three films contain moments that hide as well as show: obviously the things people don't want to tell, but also the people who resist being on film; acts of direct censorship and repression, and so on. So in Sayonara CP we see: the wife of the main character (Yokota, the poet) trying to stop the film, demanding that Hara stop filming in her home, which he ignores; police breaking up Yokota's poetry reading, calling it a freak show. In Extreme Private Eros: there is a similar scene - Takeda is distributing pamphlets to bar girls in Okinawa, with Hara filming - some men approach and the screen goes black and a title informs us that "Hara was assaulted by gangsters." It's similar to the end of Naked Army - where the trip to New Guinea yields nothing but a title saying the footage was confiscated by the Indonesian government. Even without elisions of this sort, the hiding/revealing dynamic appears: the quintessential example may be Takeda's birthing scene in Extreme Private Eros. Hara shoots the birth in one take - and presents the take in the film - even though the camera went out of focus early in the shot. He's showing something as intimate as it is possible to show - but showing it out of focus, blurred and ambiguous.
These scenes seem to me to come close to the core of Hara's ideas. They occur throughout his films - he emphasizes them, with titles explaining what's missing, or with a voiceover running over the out of focus shot of the birth of Tekeda's child - or just through their placement. They tend to come near the climax of the films, as when the police break up Yokota's poetry reading, at the end of the climax of the poem itself, for instance. They tend to come between moments of great power: in Sayonara CP, Hara draws out the moment hen Yokota reads his poem - the police arrive - and immediately after the scene, there is a shot of Yokota naked, in the middle of street, talking about his hopes for the film, and their let down. The end of Naked Army is similar - the emotional peak of the film is probably the long ocnfrontation between Okuzaki (and Oshima the anarchist) and Yamada - after this, comes the (invisible) trip to New Guinea and Okuzaki's attempted murder of Koshimizu's son. The latter especially, is the climax of the film - it's what the story has been building toward: the solution of the mystery (who killed the men and why? by that timem Koshimizu has emerged as the clear villain of the piece), and Okuzaki's imposition of justice (or vengeance.) And it happens offscreen, told in titles and an interview with Okuzaki's wife. Which is probably all the more appropriate given that Okuzaki's vengeance goes awry - he doesn't shoot the perpetrator of the old crimes - he shoots his son.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Production Design Screen Shots
As the Production Design blogathon approaches its end (though there's still tomorrow), I am moved to put up another post. As before - I am not sure I have much to say - so I will just post some pictures of things that caught my eye. I will start by noting two of the films I usually go to when I want to say something about the use of space and decor in films: Imamura's The Pornographers, with it's clutter and squalor:
and Billy Wilder's The Apartment, with its deep spaces and carefully arranged bric a brac:
Then - I was thinking about production design on a budget, as per Ed Wood - using the same lamp, say, in two different sets:
Meanwhile, rooting around my Ed Wood collection, I came upon this shot, which reminds us what even a hack can come up with once in a while (in fairness, Wood came up with more decent shots than he gets credit for - that's not where the problem lies, usually):
It also calls to mind another do it yourself film, though with a somewhat higher level of accomplishment - I will leave you then with some of the lamps in Inland Empire. And add - if you have the DVD, or have seen the Lynch One documentary that circulated last year - you might have noticed how much of the extra material is devoted to production design. Lynch building sets - building objects - choosing locations. The strong sense you get from the extras is of the pleasures of the physical work of building a film... so I think this is a good place to end my rather bland contributions to this project.
and Billy Wilder's The Apartment, with its deep spaces and carefully arranged bric a brac:
Then - I was thinking about production design on a budget, as per Ed Wood - using the same lamp, say, in two different sets:
Meanwhile, rooting around my Ed Wood collection, I came upon this shot, which reminds us what even a hack can come up with once in a while (in fairness, Wood came up with more decent shots than he gets credit for - that's not where the problem lies, usually):
It also calls to mind another do it yourself film, though with a somewhat higher level of accomplishment - I will leave you then with some of the lamps in Inland Empire. And add - if you have the DVD, or have seen the Lynch One documentary that circulated last year - you might have noticed how much of the extra material is devoted to production design. Lynch building sets - building objects - choosing locations. The strong sense you get from the extras is of the pleasures of the physical work of building a film... so I think this is a good place to end my rather bland contributions to this project.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Production Design Blogathon
...is upon us, at Jeremy Bushnell's Too Many Projects Film Club.
I don't know how much I can contribute to this - other than admiring the work done by production designers, I don't know enough to say much. I tend to subsume their work into the general design of the film, the cinematography and mise-en-scene, the use of space in the broader sense. But that is central to the art of film, and production design is where it starts...
But for now - whether I have anything to say or not, I can post some pictures. Starting with a few screen captures from the most eye-popping films I've seen in a while, Princess Raccoon. (You will probably want to click on these, to get something like a real idea of what they look like).
As those shots show - it's a very stagy film. Frontal, artificial, performative, all the way through. Moving back and forth between opulence and sparseness, but always pushing the design forward, emphasizing the flatness, the sense of the world as a screen:
- the screen as a surface, on which to trace shapes and patterns:
- so that even the simplest, starkest shots can be just as extravagant as the full set pieces:
Though the full set pieces are pretty spectacular:
I don't know how much I can contribute to this - other than admiring the work done by production designers, I don't know enough to say much. I tend to subsume their work into the general design of the film, the cinematography and mise-en-scene, the use of space in the broader sense. But that is central to the art of film, and production design is where it starts...
But for now - whether I have anything to say or not, I can post some pictures. Starting with a few screen captures from the most eye-popping films I've seen in a while, Princess Raccoon. (You will probably want to click on these, to get something like a real idea of what they look like).
As those shots show - it's a very stagy film. Frontal, artificial, performative, all the way through. Moving back and forth between opulence and sparseness, but always pushing the design forward, emphasizing the flatness, the sense of the world as a screen:
- the screen as a surface, on which to trace shapes and patterns:
- so that even the simplest, starkest shots can be just as extravagant as the full set pieces:
Though the full set pieces are pretty spectacular:
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Quick Links
I don't have much to say here today - just a few links and such.
Start with a blogathon I somehow managed to miss - Indiana Jones! run by Ali Arikan.
And coming up beginning of next week - the Production Design blogathon at Too Many Projects Film Club... And Girish kicks off the Film of the Month Club's discussion of The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On.
Then - plenty more Whither Criticism?/Why Blog? type posts - Tucker - Culture Snob - and Andy Horbal does his part to make blogs and criticism work better together, by means of a custom search engine.
Meanwhile, the great cartoonist Will Elder has died - Quiet Bubble has an appreciation.
And, somewhat to my surprise, the movie that seems to be generating the most conversation on the blogs right now - Speed Racer. It's got Jim Emerson's attention - he's been circling it, rounding up other comments and looking into what it reveals about criticism... All the talk got me to go see it myself - and maybe more surprising than the amount of discussion is how much I liked it: what a great looking film! yeah -it's all surface, all motion, all craft - but damned if it isn't a treat. And not just to look at - the story may be tried and true, but it's done straight, with wit all through - the story-telling (jumping around in time and all) is both slick and effective and formally entertaining on its own... oddly enough - even the dialogue seems to be clever and well written... A treat, to my complete surprise.
And oh yeah - something's happening over in France. Greencine can explain.
Start with a blogathon I somehow managed to miss - Indiana Jones! run by Ali Arikan.
And coming up beginning of next week - the Production Design blogathon at Too Many Projects Film Club... And Girish kicks off the Film of the Month Club's discussion of The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On.
Then - plenty more Whither Criticism?/Why Blog? type posts - Tucker - Culture Snob - and Andy Horbal does his part to make blogs and criticism work better together, by means of a custom search engine.
Meanwhile, the great cartoonist Will Elder has died - Quiet Bubble has an appreciation.
And, somewhat to my surprise, the movie that seems to be generating the most conversation on the blogs right now - Speed Racer. It's got Jim Emerson's attention - he's been circling it, rounding up other comments and looking into what it reveals about criticism... All the talk got me to go see it myself - and maybe more surprising than the amount of discussion is how much I liked it: what a great looking film! yeah -it's all surface, all motion, all craft - but damned if it isn't a treat. And not just to look at - the story may be tried and true, but it's done straight, with wit all through - the story-telling (jumping around in time and all) is both slick and effective and formally entertaining on its own... oddly enough - even the dialogue seems to be clever and well written... A treat, to my complete surprise.
And oh yeah - something's happening over in France. Greencine can explain.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Blogs and Criticism
Another blogger weighing in on the role of criticism on the internet, on blogs, specifically - David Bordwell, no less. As one would hope, he takes the broad view, asking what criticism is and offering a description before moving into the specifics of blogging. Or more accurately - he asks what criticism does, what critics do: well - describe art - analyze art - interpret art - and evaluate art. And what forms does it take? reviews - critical essays - academic writing. And how do these functions and formats interact? And after exploring these questions, he returns to the web - what do we find on the web What could we use more of? Critical essays! That is - he notes that while the web tends to encourage and be dominated by shorter, evaluative pieces, it is also well suited to longer pieces. A good many exist - his site is a prime example, but he cites other examples - Jim Emerson, Senses of Cinema, Rouge - that use longer forms. There are others beside - Ted Pigeon, say; the Self-Styled Siren.
I'm all for it. I like longer pieces: I like posts that take a couple reads to go through. And I like that these kinds of essays on the web can use the internet's rather easy multimedia capabilities. Pictures, video, sound - as well as words - and interacting with words. (And sometimes without words. Or the words integrated into the pictures, as with Kevin Lee's video essays.)
But another thing I like about the web, that plays in the middle between the short, fast posts (reviews, news, gossip, links, little bits of nonsense like video clips or lists) and the (potential for) longer essay-like posts is its cumulative nature. And its collaborative nature, for for this purpose, collaboration is a form of accumulation. Take, for example, most of Girish's posts: he starts with a topic - a book, a film, a group of films, a topic like blogging - and sketches in some thoughts about it. Then opens the floor, basically: and the comments take the subject(s) and explore it (them), work through the possibilities. It becomes a group essay, in a way - trying on ideas, working through the various perspectives... Blogathons work like that as well - a bunch of people, pooling their ideas and information and arguments, creating a cloud of information about a subject...
But this can happen even without the collaboration. Take David Cairns' site - this week he's writing about Joseph Losey - a one man blogathon! The posts are longer than simple reviews or comments - but maybe not, individually, full on critical essays - but together, with their illustrations, and a video clip or two - they add up. (To something damned great...)
I think this is one of the genuine advantages of the web in general and blogging in particular: it allows you to work on things over time, to build an argument, to work toward an essay. Bordwell's crack about "idlers, hobbyists, obsessives, and retirees" isn't far off: blogging doesn't pay - we all have to pay the bills somehow, and if we aren't paid writers or academics, we have to find the time to write about films after we pay the rent. Which works against long, well researched, carefully reasoned work. But blogging, in particular, allows us to move toward more substantive work if we want to. It allows us to be part of the exploration of films - and it allows us to present ideas in pieces. Posts can act as notes for an essay that might pass muster in school or print - drafts of an essay... And at its best - these drafts are critiqued and considered by other people, who can build on them, react to them...
I'm all for it. I like longer pieces: I like posts that take a couple reads to go through. And I like that these kinds of essays on the web can use the internet's rather easy multimedia capabilities. Pictures, video, sound - as well as words - and interacting with words. (And sometimes without words. Or the words integrated into the pictures, as with Kevin Lee's video essays.)
But another thing I like about the web, that plays in the middle between the short, fast posts (reviews, news, gossip, links, little bits of nonsense like video clips or lists) and the (potential for) longer essay-like posts is its cumulative nature. And its collaborative nature, for for this purpose, collaboration is a form of accumulation. Take, for example, most of Girish's posts: he starts with a topic - a book, a film, a group of films, a topic like blogging - and sketches in some thoughts about it. Then opens the floor, basically: and the comments take the subject(s) and explore it (them), work through the possibilities. It becomes a group essay, in a way - trying on ideas, working through the various perspectives... Blogathons work like that as well - a bunch of people, pooling their ideas and information and arguments, creating a cloud of information about a subject...
But this can happen even without the collaboration. Take David Cairns' site - this week he's writing about Joseph Losey - a one man blogathon! The posts are longer than simple reviews or comments - but maybe not, individually, full on critical essays - but together, with their illustrations, and a video clip or two - they add up. (To something damned great...)
I think this is one of the genuine advantages of the web in general and blogging in particular: it allows you to work on things over time, to build an argument, to work toward an essay. Bordwell's crack about "idlers, hobbyists, obsessives, and retirees" isn't far off: blogging doesn't pay - we all have to pay the bills somehow, and if we aren't paid writers or academics, we have to find the time to write about films after we pay the rent. Which works against long, well researched, carefully reasoned work. But blogging, in particular, allows us to move toward more substantive work if we want to. It allows us to be part of the exploration of films - and it allows us to present ideas in pieces. Posts can act as notes for an essay that might pass muster in school or print - drafts of an essay... And at its best - these drafts are critiqued and considered by other people, who can build on them, react to them...
Sunday, May 11, 2008
After the Dance...
Though Marilyn Ferdinand's Dance Movie blogathon ended yesterday, I can't resist posting one last clip, having just seen this film this afternoon. I dont have much to sa about it - I will let the clip do the talking. Rita Moreno and George Chikiris, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins, bring you America.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Best of the 1990s (By Year)
You can probably blame Joseph B. for this - though I've been planning to do it for a while. Let's take the list-making business, back a decade: let's do the 1990s. I haven't revisited those films in any detail in a while - I'm seeing names I've completely forgotten - films that have been completely erased from any collective memory I'm aware of. An interesting process...
Top 25 of the Decade:
1. Rushmore - USA - Wes Anderson
2. Breaking the Waves - Denmark - Lars von Trier
3. Fallen Angels - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
4. Goodbye South, Goodbye - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
5. Satantango - Hungary - Bela Tarr
6. Flowers of Shanghai - Taiwan - Hou
7. Beijing Bastards - China - Zhang Yuan
8. White - France/Poland - Krystof Kieslowski
9. Through the Olive Trees - Iran - Abbas Kiarostami
10.Hapy Together - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
11. Once Upon a Time in China - Hong Kong - Tsui Hark
12. The Sweet Hereafter - Canada - Atom Egoyan
13. Naked - UK - Mike Leigh
14.A Moment of Innocence - Iran - Mohsen Makhmalbaf
15. Dead Man - USA - Jim Jarmusch
16. The River - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
17. Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould - Canada - Francois Girard
18. To Sleep With Anger - USA - Charles Burnett
19. The Puppetmaster - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
20. Slacker - USA - Richard Linklater
21. Cure - Japan - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
22. Pulp Fiction - USA - Quentin Tarantino
23. Swordsman II - Hong Kong - Ching Siu-tung/Raymond Lee (?)
24. Jeanne la Poucelle - France - Jacques Rivette
25. Groundhog Day - USA - Harold Ramis
1999:
1. Charisma - Japan - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
2. L'Humanite - France - Bruno Dumont
3. Rosetta - Belgium - Dardenne brothers
4. Lies - South Korea - Jang Sun-woo
5. Straight Story - US - David Lynch
6. American Movie - USA - Chris Smith & Sara Price
7. Audition - Japan - Takashi Miike
8. The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun - Senegal - Djibril Membety
9. Sicilia! - France - Straub & Huillet
10. Office Space - USA - Mike Judge
1998:
1. Rushmore - US - Wes Anderson
2. Flowers of Shanghai - Taiwan - Hou
3. Babe Pig in the City - US/Australia - George Mller
4. After Life - Japan - Kirokazu Kore-eda
5. The Big Lebowski -USA - Coen Brothers
6. The Silence - Iran - Mohsen Makhmalbaf
7. Henry Fool - USA - Hal Hartley
8. Tren de Sombres - Spain - Jose Luis Guerin
9. Freaksand Men - Russia - Alexei Balabanov
10. Expect the Unexpected - Hong Kong - Patrick Yau
1997:
1. Happy Together - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
2. The Sweet Hereafter - Canada - Atom Egoyan
3. The River - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
4. Cure - Japan - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
5. Xiao Wu - China - Jia Jiang-ke
6. Taste of Cherry - Iran - Abbas Kiarostami
7. Too Many Ways to be Number One - Hong Kong - Wai Ka-fei
8. Without Memory - Japan - Hirokazu Kore-eda
9. Kingdom II - Denmark - Lars Von Trier (mostly)
10. Ossos - Portugal - Pedro Costa
1996:
1. Breking the Waves - Denmark - Lars von Trier
2. Goodbye, South, Goodbye - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
3. Dead Man - USA - Jim Jarmusch
4. My Sex Life or How I Got into an Argument - France - Arnaud Desplechins
5. Portrait of a Lady - USA - Jane Campion
6. Fargo - USA - Coen brothers
7. Drifting Clouds - Finland - Aki Kaurismaki
8. The Delta - USA - Ira Sachs
9. A True Story - Iran - Abolfazi Jalili
10. Comrades Almost a Love Story - Hong Kong - Peter Chan
1995:
1. Fallen Angels - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
2. A Moment of Innocence - Iran - Mohsen Makhmalbaf
3. Good Man, Good Woman - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao-hsien
4. Gate of Heavenly Peace - USA - Carma Hinton & RichardGordon
5. Sons - China - Zhang Yuan
6. Hau/Bas/Fragile - France - Jacques Rvette
7. Crumb - USA - Terry Zqigoff
8. Forgotten Silver - New Zealand - Peter Jackson
9. Safe - USA - Todd Haynes
10. Red Cherry - China - Ye Ying
1994:
1. Satantango - Hungary - Bela Tarr
2. Through the live Trees - Iran - Abbas Kiarostami
3. white - France/Poland - Krystof Kieslowski
4. Pulp Fiction - USA - Tarantino
5. Jeanne la Poucell - France - Rivette
6. Viva L'Amour - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
7. Blue LKite - China - Tian Zhuang-zhuang
8. Cold Water - France - Olivier Assayas
9. Chungking Express- Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
10. The Kingdom Denmark - Lars von Trier
1993:
1. Beijing Bastards - China Zhang Yuan
2. Naked - UK - Mike Leigh
3. The Puppetmaster - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
4. Thirty-two Short films About Glen Gould - Canada - Francois Girard
5. Groundhog Day - USA - Harold Ramis
6. Short Cuts - USA - Robert Altman
7. The East is Red [Swordsman III] - Hong Kong - Ching Siu-tung & Raymond Lee
8. Nightmare before Christmas - USA - Henry Selick (not Tim Burton)
9. Lessons of Darkness - Germany - Werner Herzog
10. Abraham's Valley - Portugal - Manoel de Oliveira
1992:
1. One False Move USA - Carl Franklin
2. Careful - Canada - Guy Maddin
3. Actress - Hong Kong - Stanley Kwan
4. And Life Goes On - Iran - Abbas Kiarostami
5. Glengarry Glen Ross - USA - James Foley
6. Benny's Video - Austria - Michael Haneke
7. Autumn Moon - Hong Kong - Clara Law
8. Hard Boiled - Hong Kong - John Woo
9. Dragon Inn - Hong Kong - Raymond Lee (Ching Siu-tung in there somewhere)
10. My New Gun - Stacey Cochran [I wonder if this would hold up? I've seen it a couple times after it came out, though not in ages - no one else seems to remember it exists.]
1991:
1. Once Upon a Time in China - Hong Kong - Tsui Hark
2. Slacker - USA - Richard Linklater
3. Swordsman II - Hong Kong - Ching Siu-tung (at least)
4. Days of Being Wild - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
5. Belle Noiseuse - France - Rivette
6. Rebels of a Neon God - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
7. Life of the Dead - France - Arnaud Desplechins
8. Reservoir Dogs - USA - Taratino
9. Bullet in the Head - Hong Kong - John Woo
10. Europa Europa - Agnieska Holland
1990: [I find back here I am guessing about a lot of these films: it's been a long time since I have seen them. The 80s and early 90s are something of a dead zone for me...]
1. To Sleep With Anger - USA - Charles Burnett
2. Goodfellas - USA - Scorsese
3. Match Factory Girl - Finland - Kaurismaki
4. Life is Sweet - UK - Mike Leigh
5. Swordsman - Hong Kong - IMDB credits 5 directors: King Hu, Ann Hui, Andrew Kam, Tsui Hark and Ching Siu-tung. I don't think that is a complete list...
6. Superstar - USA - Todd Haynes
7. Sure Fire - USA - Jon Jost
8. Metropolitan - USA - Whit Stillman
9. Trust - USA - Hal Hartley
10. Vincent and Theo - USA - Robert Altman
Top 25 of the Decade:
1. Rushmore - USA - Wes Anderson
2. Breaking the Waves - Denmark - Lars von Trier
3. Fallen Angels - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
4. Goodbye South, Goodbye - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
5. Satantango - Hungary - Bela Tarr
6. Flowers of Shanghai - Taiwan - Hou
7. Beijing Bastards - China - Zhang Yuan
8. White - France/Poland - Krystof Kieslowski
9. Through the Olive Trees - Iran - Abbas Kiarostami
10.Hapy Together - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
11. Once Upon a Time in China - Hong Kong - Tsui Hark
12. The Sweet Hereafter - Canada - Atom Egoyan
13. Naked - UK - Mike Leigh
14.A Moment of Innocence - Iran - Mohsen Makhmalbaf
15. Dead Man - USA - Jim Jarmusch
16. The River - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
17. Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould - Canada - Francois Girard
18. To Sleep With Anger - USA - Charles Burnett
19. The Puppetmaster - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
20. Slacker - USA - Richard Linklater
21. Cure - Japan - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
22. Pulp Fiction - USA - Quentin Tarantino
23. Swordsman II - Hong Kong - Ching Siu-tung/Raymond Lee (?)
24. Jeanne la Poucelle - France - Jacques Rivette
25. Groundhog Day - USA - Harold Ramis
1999:
1. Charisma - Japan - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
2. L'Humanite - France - Bruno Dumont
3. Rosetta - Belgium - Dardenne brothers
4. Lies - South Korea - Jang Sun-woo
5. Straight Story - US - David Lynch
6. American Movie - USA - Chris Smith & Sara Price
7. Audition - Japan - Takashi Miike
8. The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun - Senegal - Djibril Membety
9. Sicilia! - France - Straub & Huillet
10. Office Space - USA - Mike Judge
1998:
1. Rushmore - US - Wes Anderson
2. Flowers of Shanghai - Taiwan - Hou
3. Babe Pig in the City - US/Australia - George Mller
4. After Life - Japan - Kirokazu Kore-eda
5. The Big Lebowski -USA - Coen Brothers
6. The Silence - Iran - Mohsen Makhmalbaf
7. Henry Fool - USA - Hal Hartley
8. Tren de Sombres - Spain - Jose Luis Guerin
9. Freaksand Men - Russia - Alexei Balabanov
10. Expect the Unexpected - Hong Kong - Patrick Yau
1997:
1. Happy Together - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
2. The Sweet Hereafter - Canada - Atom Egoyan
3. The River - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
4. Cure - Japan - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
5. Xiao Wu - China - Jia Jiang-ke
6. Taste of Cherry - Iran - Abbas Kiarostami
7. Too Many Ways to be Number One - Hong Kong - Wai Ka-fei
8. Without Memory - Japan - Hirokazu Kore-eda
9. Kingdom II - Denmark - Lars Von Trier (mostly)
10. Ossos - Portugal - Pedro Costa
1996:
1. Breking the Waves - Denmark - Lars von Trier
2. Goodbye, South, Goodbye - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
3. Dead Man - USA - Jim Jarmusch
4. My Sex Life or How I Got into an Argument - France - Arnaud Desplechins
5. Portrait of a Lady - USA - Jane Campion
6. Fargo - USA - Coen brothers
7. Drifting Clouds - Finland - Aki Kaurismaki
8. The Delta - USA - Ira Sachs
9. A True Story - Iran - Abolfazi Jalili
10. Comrades Almost a Love Story - Hong Kong - Peter Chan
1995:
1. Fallen Angels - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
2. A Moment of Innocence - Iran - Mohsen Makhmalbaf
3. Good Man, Good Woman - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao-hsien
4. Gate of Heavenly Peace - USA - Carma Hinton & RichardGordon
5. Sons - China - Zhang Yuan
6. Hau/Bas/Fragile - France - Jacques Rvette
7. Crumb - USA - Terry Zqigoff
8. Forgotten Silver - New Zealand - Peter Jackson
9. Safe - USA - Todd Haynes
10. Red Cherry - China - Ye Ying
1994:
1. Satantango - Hungary - Bela Tarr
2. Through the live Trees - Iran - Abbas Kiarostami
3. white - France/Poland - Krystof Kieslowski
4. Pulp Fiction - USA - Tarantino
5. Jeanne la Poucell - France - Rivette
6. Viva L'Amour - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
7. Blue LKite - China - Tian Zhuang-zhuang
8. Cold Water - France - Olivier Assayas
9. Chungking Express- Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
10. The Kingdom Denmark - Lars von Trier
1993:
1. Beijing Bastards - China Zhang Yuan
2. Naked - UK - Mike Leigh
3. The Puppetmaster - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
4. Thirty-two Short films About Glen Gould - Canada - Francois Girard
5. Groundhog Day - USA - Harold Ramis
6. Short Cuts - USA - Robert Altman
7. The East is Red [Swordsman III] - Hong Kong - Ching Siu-tung & Raymond Lee
8. Nightmare before Christmas - USA - Henry Selick (not Tim Burton)
9. Lessons of Darkness - Germany - Werner Herzog
10. Abraham's Valley - Portugal - Manoel de Oliveira
1992:
1. One False Move USA - Carl Franklin
2. Careful - Canada - Guy Maddin
3. Actress - Hong Kong - Stanley Kwan
4. And Life Goes On - Iran - Abbas Kiarostami
5. Glengarry Glen Ross - USA - James Foley
6. Benny's Video - Austria - Michael Haneke
7. Autumn Moon - Hong Kong - Clara Law
8. Hard Boiled - Hong Kong - John Woo
9. Dragon Inn - Hong Kong - Raymond Lee (Ching Siu-tung in there somewhere)
10. My New Gun - Stacey Cochran [I wonder if this would hold up? I've seen it a couple times after it came out, though not in ages - no one else seems to remember it exists.]
1991:
1. Once Upon a Time in China - Hong Kong - Tsui Hark
2. Slacker - USA - Richard Linklater
3. Swordsman II - Hong Kong - Ching Siu-tung (at least)
4. Days of Being Wild - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
5. Belle Noiseuse - France - Rivette
6. Rebels of a Neon God - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
7. Life of the Dead - France - Arnaud Desplechins
8. Reservoir Dogs - USA - Taratino
9. Bullet in the Head - Hong Kong - John Woo
10. Europa Europa - Agnieska Holland
1990: [I find back here I am guessing about a lot of these films: it's been a long time since I have seen them. The 80s and early 90s are something of a dead zone for me...]
1. To Sleep With Anger - USA - Charles Burnett
2. Goodfellas - USA - Scorsese
3. Match Factory Girl - Finland - Kaurismaki
4. Life is Sweet - UK - Mike Leigh
5. Swordsman - Hong Kong - IMDB credits 5 directors: King Hu, Ann Hui, Andrew Kam, Tsui Hark and Ching Siu-tung. I don't think that is a complete list...
6. Superstar - USA - Todd Haynes
7. Sure Fire - USA - Jon Jost
8. Metropolitan - USA - Whit Stillman
9. Trust - USA - Hal Hartley
10. Vincent and Theo - USA - Robert Altman
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Best of the 2000s Revised
Here's another list I posted last year, and the year before that - turning into a tradition. There's probably some point in it, as we near the end of the decade, and prepare for the stock taking that usually accompanies the change in the tens digit... First, something new - the overall top 25 of the 2000s:
1. Inland Empire - USA - David Lynch
2. Yi Yi - Taiwan - Edward Yang
3. Vanda's Room - Portugal - Pedro Costa
4. Kings and Queen - France - Arnaud Desplechins
5. 2046 - China - Wong Kar-wei
6. Death of Mr. Lazarescu - Romania - Christi Puiu
7. Colossal Youth - Portugal - Pedro Costa
8. L'Intrus - France - Claire Denis
9. O Brother Where Art Thou? - US - Coen Brothers
10. Los Angeles Plays Itself - USA - Thom Anderson
11. Mulholland Drive USA - Lynch
12. Secret Sunshine - South Korea - Lee Chang dong
13. Goodbye, Dragon Inn - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
14. The Son - Belgium - Dardennes Brothers
15. Platform - Chain - Jia Jiang-ke
16. House of Flying Daggers - China - Zhang Yimou
17. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance - South Korea - Park Chan-wook
18. Memories of Murder - South Korea - Bong Joon-ho
19. There Will Be Blood - USA - Paul Thomas Anderson
20. Ichi the Killer - Japan - Takashi Miike
21. Regular Lovers - France - Philippe Garrel
22. Syndromes and a Century - Thailand - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
23. En Construccion - Spain - Jose Luis Guerin
24. Songs from the Second Floor - Sweden - Roy Anderson
25. Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors - South Korea - Hong Sang-soo
And by Years, revised with 2007 added, and new films noted. This may not actually align with the lists above - there is a limit to my nerdishness, believe it or not. And all of it is approximate enough,a nd context sensitive enough....
2007:
1. Secret Sunshine - South Korea - Lee Chang-dong
2. There Will be Blood - US - Paul Thomas Anderson
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days - Romania - Christian Mungiu
4. The Flight of the Red Balloon - Taiwan/France - Hou Hsiao Hsien
5. Zodiac - US - David Fincher
6. California Dreamin' (Endless) - Romania - Christian Remescu
7. No Country for Old Men - US - Coen Brothers
8. In the City of Sylvia - Spain - Jose Luis Guerin
9. Darjeeling Limited - US - Wes Anderson
10. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - US - Andrew Domenik
2006:
1. Inland Empire - US - David Lynch
2. Colossal Youth - Portugal - Pedro Costa
3. *Syndromes and a Century - Thailand - Apichatpong Weerasethakul - new add, saw it last year.
4. The Woman on the Beach - South Korea - Hong Sang-soo
5. *Still Life - China - Jia Jiang ke - another new one: saw it this year
6. *Brand Upon the Brain - Canada - Guy Maddin - another new one
7. Children of Men - UK - Alfonso Cauron
8. *I Don't Want to Sleep Alone - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang - and another one
9. *Triad Election - China - Johnny To - also new
10. Honor de Cavelaria - Spain - Albert Serra
2005:
1. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu - Romania - Christi Puiu
2. Regular Lovers - France - Philippe Garrel
3. The Squid and the Whale - USA - Noah Baumbach
4. Three Times - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
5. Grizzly Man - US - Werner Herzog
6. L'Enfant - Belgium - Luc & Jean Pierre Dardennes
7. Cache - France/Austria - Michael Haneke
8. The President's Last Bang - South Korea - Im Sang-soo
9. *Magic Mirror - Portugal - Manoel de Oliveira - just saw this this year
10. Mutual Appreciation - US - Andrew Bujalski
2004:
1. Kings and Queen - France - Arnaud Desplechins
2. 2046 - China - Wong Kar-wei
3. L'Intrus - France - Claire Denis
4. The House of Flying Daggers - China - Zhang Yimou
5. The World - China - Jia Jiang-ke
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - US - Michel Gondry
7. Nobody Knows - Japan - Kore-eda Hirokazu
8. Innocence - France - Lucille Hadzihalilovic
9. The Holy Girl - Argentina - Lucrecia Martel
10. Clean - France - Olivier Assayas
2003:
1. Los Angeles Plays Itself - USA - Thom Anderson
2. Goodbye Dragon Inn - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
3. Memories of Murder - South Korea - Bong Joon-ho
4. Doppelganger - Japan - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
5. Dracula, Pages from a Virgin's Diary - Canada - Guy Maddin
6. Cafe Lumiere - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
7. Elephant - USA - Gus Van Sant
8. Gerry - USA - Gus Van Sant
9. Blind Shaft - China - Li Yang
10. Crimson Gold - Iran - Jafar Panahi
2002:
1. The Son - Belgium - Luc & Jean Pierre Dardennes
2. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance - South Korea - Park Chan wook
3. Man Without a Past - Finland - Aki Kaurismaki
4. The Pianist - USA - Roman Polanski
5. *Blissfully Yours - Thailand - Apitchipong Weerasthukal - just saw this one this year
6. Unknown Pleasures - China - Jia Jiang Ke
7. Millenium Mambo - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
8. Devils on the Doorstep - China - Jiang Wen
9. Springtime in a Small Town - China - Tian Zhuang Zhuang
10. Talk to Her - Spain - Pedro Almodovar
2001:
1. Mulholland Drive - USA - David Lynch
2. Ichi the Killer - Japan - Takashi Miike
3. *En Construccion - Spain - Jose Luis Guerin - recently seen
4. Donnie Darko - USA - Richard Kelly
5. Va Savoir - France - Jacques Rivette
6. The Royal Tenenbaums - USA - Wes Anderson
7. Distance - Japan - Hirokazu Kore-eda
8. Pistol Opera - Japan - Seijun Suzuki
9. Waking Life - USA - Richard Linklater
10. Pulse - Japan - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
2000:
1. Yi Yi - Taiwan - Edward Yang
2. *Vanda's Room - Portugal - Pedro Costa - a great one, saw it last fall
3. O Brother Where Art Thou - USA - Joel and Ethan Coen - this film has been rising pretty steadily ever since I saw it. Last year, heard Stanley Cavell give a talk about it, complete with questions and answers... it seems light, but it contains multitudes.
4. Platform - China - Jia Jiang Ke
5. Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors - South Korea - Hong Sang-soo
6. Songs from the Second Floor - Sweden - Roy Andersson
7. *Peppermint Candy - South Korea - Lee Chang Dong - just saw it last weekend: very impressive
8. The Circle - Iran - Jafar Panahi
9. Eureka - Japan - Shinji Aoyama
10. In the Mood for Love - China - Wong Kar-wei
And there it is. If I get ambitious, I might try this for the 90s next.
1. Inland Empire - USA - David Lynch
2. Yi Yi - Taiwan - Edward Yang
3. Vanda's Room - Portugal - Pedro Costa
4. Kings and Queen - France - Arnaud Desplechins
5. 2046 - China - Wong Kar-wei
6. Death of Mr. Lazarescu - Romania - Christi Puiu
7. Colossal Youth - Portugal - Pedro Costa
8. L'Intrus - France - Claire Denis
9. O Brother Where Art Thou? - US - Coen Brothers
10. Los Angeles Plays Itself - USA - Thom Anderson
11. Mulholland Drive USA - Lynch
12. Secret Sunshine - South Korea - Lee Chang dong
13. Goodbye, Dragon Inn - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
14. The Son - Belgium - Dardennes Brothers
15. Platform - Chain - Jia Jiang-ke
16. House of Flying Daggers - China - Zhang Yimou
17. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance - South Korea - Park Chan-wook
18. Memories of Murder - South Korea - Bong Joon-ho
19. There Will Be Blood - USA - Paul Thomas Anderson
20. Ichi the Killer - Japan - Takashi Miike
21. Regular Lovers - France - Philippe Garrel
22. Syndromes and a Century - Thailand - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
23. En Construccion - Spain - Jose Luis Guerin
24. Songs from the Second Floor - Sweden - Roy Anderson
25. Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors - South Korea - Hong Sang-soo
And by Years, revised with 2007 added, and new films noted. This may not actually align with the lists above - there is a limit to my nerdishness, believe it or not. And all of it is approximate enough,a nd context sensitive enough....
2007:
1. Secret Sunshine - South Korea - Lee Chang-dong
2. There Will be Blood - US - Paul Thomas Anderson
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days - Romania - Christian Mungiu
4. The Flight of the Red Balloon - Taiwan/France - Hou Hsiao Hsien
5. Zodiac - US - David Fincher
6. California Dreamin' (Endless) - Romania - Christian Remescu
7. No Country for Old Men - US - Coen Brothers
8. In the City of Sylvia - Spain - Jose Luis Guerin
9. Darjeeling Limited - US - Wes Anderson
10. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - US - Andrew Domenik
2006:
1. Inland Empire - US - David Lynch
2. Colossal Youth - Portugal - Pedro Costa
3. *Syndromes and a Century - Thailand - Apichatpong Weerasethakul - new add, saw it last year.
4. The Woman on the Beach - South Korea - Hong Sang-soo
5. *Still Life - China - Jia Jiang ke - another new one: saw it this year
6. *Brand Upon the Brain - Canada - Guy Maddin - another new one
7. Children of Men - UK - Alfonso Cauron
8. *I Don't Want to Sleep Alone - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang - and another one
9. *Triad Election - China - Johnny To - also new
10. Honor de Cavelaria - Spain - Albert Serra
2005:
1. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu - Romania - Christi Puiu
2. Regular Lovers - France - Philippe Garrel
3. The Squid and the Whale - USA - Noah Baumbach
4. Three Times - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
5. Grizzly Man - US - Werner Herzog
6. L'Enfant - Belgium - Luc & Jean Pierre Dardennes
7. Cache - France/Austria - Michael Haneke
8. The President's Last Bang - South Korea - Im Sang-soo
9. *Magic Mirror - Portugal - Manoel de Oliveira - just saw this this year
10. Mutual Appreciation - US - Andrew Bujalski
2004:
1. Kings and Queen - France - Arnaud Desplechins
2. 2046 - China - Wong Kar-wei
3. L'Intrus - France - Claire Denis
4. The House of Flying Daggers - China - Zhang Yimou
5. The World - China - Jia Jiang-ke
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - US - Michel Gondry
7. Nobody Knows - Japan - Kore-eda Hirokazu
8. Innocence - France - Lucille Hadzihalilovic
9. The Holy Girl - Argentina - Lucrecia Martel
10. Clean - France - Olivier Assayas
2003:
1. Los Angeles Plays Itself - USA - Thom Anderson
2. Goodbye Dragon Inn - Taiwan - Tsai Ming-liang
3. Memories of Murder - South Korea - Bong Joon-ho
4. Doppelganger - Japan - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
5. Dracula, Pages from a Virgin's Diary - Canada - Guy Maddin
6. Cafe Lumiere - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
7. Elephant - USA - Gus Van Sant
8. Gerry - USA - Gus Van Sant
9. Blind Shaft - China - Li Yang
10. Crimson Gold - Iran - Jafar Panahi
2002:
1. The Son - Belgium - Luc & Jean Pierre Dardennes
2. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance - South Korea - Park Chan wook
3. Man Without a Past - Finland - Aki Kaurismaki
4. The Pianist - USA - Roman Polanski
5. *Blissfully Yours - Thailand - Apitchipong Weerasthukal - just saw this one this year
6. Unknown Pleasures - China - Jia Jiang Ke
7. Millenium Mambo - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
8. Devils on the Doorstep - China - Jiang Wen
9. Springtime in a Small Town - China - Tian Zhuang Zhuang
10. Talk to Her - Spain - Pedro Almodovar
2001:
1. Mulholland Drive - USA - David Lynch
2. Ichi the Killer - Japan - Takashi Miike
3. *En Construccion - Spain - Jose Luis Guerin - recently seen
4. Donnie Darko - USA - Richard Kelly
5. Va Savoir - France - Jacques Rivette
6. The Royal Tenenbaums - USA - Wes Anderson
7. Distance - Japan - Hirokazu Kore-eda
8. Pistol Opera - Japan - Seijun Suzuki
9. Waking Life - USA - Richard Linklater
10. Pulse - Japan - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
2000:
1. Yi Yi - Taiwan - Edward Yang
2. *Vanda's Room - Portugal - Pedro Costa - a great one, saw it last fall
3. O Brother Where Art Thou - USA - Joel and Ethan Coen - this film has been rising pretty steadily ever since I saw it. Last year, heard Stanley Cavell give a talk about it, complete with questions and answers... it seems light, but it contains multitudes.
4. Platform - China - Jia Jiang Ke
5. Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors - South Korea - Hong Sang-soo
6. Songs from the Second Floor - Sweden - Roy Andersson
7. *Peppermint Candy - South Korea - Lee Chang Dong - just saw it last weekend: very impressive
8. The Circle - Iran - Jafar Panahi
9. Eureka - Japan - Shinji Aoyama
10. In the Mood for Love - China - Wong Kar-wei
And there it is. If I get ambitious, I might try this for the 90s next.
Decades - Revised
I posted this last year: this is revision. No huge changes, but plenty of tweaks here and there - including some plain cheating in the 50s and 60s so it's not just the Godard and Imamura greatest hits...
2000s:
1. Inland Empire - USA - David Lynch
2. Yi Yi - Taiwan - Edward Yang
3. Vanda's Room - Portugal - Pedro Costa
4. Kings and Queen - France - Arnaud Desplechins
5. 2046 - China - Wong Kar-wei
6. Death of Mr. Lazarescu - Romania - Christi Puiu
7. Colossal Youth - Portugal - Pedro Costa
8. L'Intrus - France - Claire Denis
9. O Brother Where Art Thou? - US - Coen Brothers
10. Los Angeles Plays Itself - USA - Thom Anderson
1990s: [nothing new - reflection of what I've seen this year, I guess]
1. Rushmore - USA - Wes Anderson
2. Breaking the Waves - Denmark/UK - Lars Van Trier
3. Goodbye, South, Goodbye - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
4. Satantango - Hungary - Bela Tarr
5. Fallen Angels - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
6. Flowers of Shanghai - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
7. Beijing Bastards - PRC - Zhang Yuan
8. Through the Olive Trees - Iran - Abbas Kiarostami
9. Happy Together - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
10. White - France/Poland - Krysztof Kieslowski
1980s:
1. City of Sadness - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
2. Blue Velvet - USA - David Lynch
3. Fitzcarraldo - Germany - Werner Herzog
4. The Elephant Man - USA - David Lynch
5. Do the Right Thing - USA - Spike Lee
6. Peking Opera Blues - Hong Kong - Tsui Hark
7. Brazil - UK/USA - Terry Gilliam
8. Blind Chance - Poland - Krysztof Kieslowski
9. Full Metal Jacket - USA - Stanley Kubrick
10. Blade Runner- USA - Ridley Scott [yet another rerelease, and it's back up here again]
1970s: [no real changes: a strong decade, of films I've seen many times...]
1.McCabe and Mrs Miller - USA - Robert Altman
2. Aguirre Wrath of God - Germany - Werner Herzog
3. A Woman Under the Influence - USA - John Cassavetes
4. Nashville - USA - Altman
5. Celine and Julie Go Boating - France - Jacques Rivette
6. Mystery of Kasper Hauser (Every Man for Himself and God Against All) - Germany - Werner Herzog
7. Killer of Sheep - USA - Charles Burnett
8. Killing of a Chinese Bookie - USA - John Cassavetes
9. The Long Goodbye - USA - Altman
10. Camera Buff - Poland - Krysztof Kieslowski
1960s: [the 50s and 60s are impossible to rank fairly. And Godard and Imamura especially hog the spots on these lists. So they get one each, though I'll list all the films that would make it on their own, roughly inthe order or preference.]
1. Vivre Sa Vie/Pierrot Le Fou/Alphaville/Breathless/Two or Three Things I Know About Her/etc. - France - Jean Luc Godard
2. The Pornographers/Insect Woman/Pigs and Battleships/A Man Vanishes/Intentions of Murder - Japan - Shohei Imamura
3. Gospel According to Matthew - Italy - Pier Paolo Pasolini
4. High and Low - Japan - Akira Kurosawa
5. Playtime - France - Jacques Tati
6. The Sun's Burial - Japan - Nagisa Oshima
7. Doctor Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - US - Stanley Kubrick
8. Mouchette- France - Robert Breson
9. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs - Japan - Michio Naruse
10. A Touch of Zen - Hong Kong - King Hu
1950s: [Same story here: one per director again, with possible multiples noted.]
1. Early Summer/Tokyo Story - Japan - Yasujiro Ozu
2. Vertigo/Rear Window - USA - Alfred Hitchcock
3. Seven Samurai - Japan - Akira Kurosawa
4. Ugetsu Monogatari/Life of Oharu/Sansho the Bailiff - Japan - Kenji Mizoguchi
5. Touch of Evil - USA - Orson Welles
6. Pather Panchali - India - Satyajit Ray
7. The Searchers - USA - John Ford
8. Late Chrysanthemums - Japan - Mikio Naruse
9. Rebel Without a Cause - US - Nicholas Ray
10. Imitation of Life - US - Douglas Sirk
1940s:
1. It's a Wonderful Life - USA - Frank Capra
2. The Maltese Falcon - USA - John Huston
3. Late Spring - Japan - Yasujiro Ozu
4. His Girl Friday - USA - Howard Hawks
5. Ivan the Terrible - USSR - Sergei Eisenstein
6. The Big Sleep - USA - Howard Hawks
7. Fort Apache - USA - John Ford
8. Citizen Kane - USA - Orson Welles
9. Germany Year Zero - Italy - Roberto Rosselini
10. Stray Dog - Japan - Akira Kurosawa
1930s: [Again with the one per director]
1. M - Germany - Fritz Lang
2. Rules of the Game/Crimes of M. Lange - France - Jean Renoir
3. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - USA - Frank Capra
4. Duck Soup - USA - Leo McCarey
5. I Was Born But.../Passing Fancy/Inn in Tokyo - Japan - Yasujiro Ozu
6. Bride of Frankenstein/Frankenstein - USA - James Whale
7. Osaka Elegy - Japan - Kenji Mizoguchi
8. Love Me Tonight - USA - Reuben Mamoulian
9. Wife! Be Like a Rose! - Japan - Michio Naruse
10. Blue Angel - Germany - Joseph von Sternberg
1920s: [nothing new - haven't seen that many real old films since last year. Bunch of Douglas Fairbanks, mostly, all excellent but not top 10 quite.]
1. The General - USA - Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman
2. Nosferatu - Germany - FW Murnau
3.The Gold Rush - USA - Charles Chaplin
4. Our Hospitality - USA - Buster Keaton and John G Blystone
5. Man With the Movie Camera - USSR - Dziga Vertov
6. Earth - USSR - Aleksander Dovzhenko
7. Battleship Potemkin - USSR - Sergei Eisenstein
8. Sherlock Jr. - USA - Buster Keaton
9. October - USSR - Eisenstein
10. Greed - USA - Erich Von Stroheim
Pre-1920s:
1. Birth of a Nation - USA - DW Griffith
2. Les Vampires - Louis Feuillade
3. Broken Blossoms - USA - Griffith
4. The Tramp - USA - Charlie Chaplin
5. Intolerance - USA - Griffith
6. Regeneration - USA - Raoul Walsh
7. True Heart Susie - USA - Griffith
8. South - UK - Frank Hurley [this is the footage shot on the Shackleton expedition]
9. Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - Germany - Robert Weine
10. The Champion - USA - Chaplin
2000s:
1. Inland Empire - USA - David Lynch
2. Yi Yi - Taiwan - Edward Yang
3. Vanda's Room - Portugal - Pedro Costa
4. Kings and Queen - France - Arnaud Desplechins
5. 2046 - China - Wong Kar-wei
6. Death of Mr. Lazarescu - Romania - Christi Puiu
7. Colossal Youth - Portugal - Pedro Costa
8. L'Intrus - France - Claire Denis
9. O Brother Where Art Thou? - US - Coen Brothers
10. Los Angeles Plays Itself - USA - Thom Anderson
1990s: [nothing new - reflection of what I've seen this year, I guess]
1. Rushmore - USA - Wes Anderson
2. Breaking the Waves - Denmark/UK - Lars Van Trier
3. Goodbye, South, Goodbye - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
4. Satantango - Hungary - Bela Tarr
5. Fallen Angels - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
6. Flowers of Shanghai - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
7. Beijing Bastards - PRC - Zhang Yuan
8. Through the Olive Trees - Iran - Abbas Kiarostami
9. Happy Together - Hong Kong - Wong Kar-wei
10. White - France/Poland - Krysztof Kieslowski
1980s:
1. City of Sadness - Taiwan - Hou Hsiao Hsien
2. Blue Velvet - USA - David Lynch
3. Fitzcarraldo - Germany - Werner Herzog
4. The Elephant Man - USA - David Lynch
5. Do the Right Thing - USA - Spike Lee
6. Peking Opera Blues - Hong Kong - Tsui Hark
7. Brazil - UK/USA - Terry Gilliam
8. Blind Chance - Poland - Krysztof Kieslowski
9. Full Metal Jacket - USA - Stanley Kubrick
10. Blade Runner- USA - Ridley Scott [yet another rerelease, and it's back up here again]
1970s: [no real changes: a strong decade, of films I've seen many times...]
1.McCabe and Mrs Miller - USA - Robert Altman
2. Aguirre Wrath of God - Germany - Werner Herzog
3. A Woman Under the Influence - USA - John Cassavetes
4. Nashville - USA - Altman
5. Celine and Julie Go Boating - France - Jacques Rivette
6. Mystery of Kasper Hauser (Every Man for Himself and God Against All) - Germany - Werner Herzog
7. Killer of Sheep - USA - Charles Burnett
8. Killing of a Chinese Bookie - USA - John Cassavetes
9. The Long Goodbye - USA - Altman
10. Camera Buff - Poland - Krysztof Kieslowski
1960s: [the 50s and 60s are impossible to rank fairly. And Godard and Imamura especially hog the spots on these lists. So they get one each, though I'll list all the films that would make it on their own, roughly inthe order or preference.]
1. Vivre Sa Vie/Pierrot Le Fou/Alphaville/Breathless/Two or Three Things I Know About Her/etc. - France - Jean Luc Godard
2. The Pornographers/Insect Woman/Pigs and Battleships/A Man Vanishes/Intentions of Murder - Japan - Shohei Imamura
3. Gospel According to Matthew - Italy - Pier Paolo Pasolini
4. High and Low - Japan - Akira Kurosawa
5. Playtime - France - Jacques Tati
6. The Sun's Burial - Japan - Nagisa Oshima
7. Doctor Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - US - Stanley Kubrick
8. Mouchette- France - Robert Breson
9. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs - Japan - Michio Naruse
10. A Touch of Zen - Hong Kong - King Hu
1950s: [Same story here: one per director again, with possible multiples noted.]
1. Early Summer/Tokyo Story - Japan - Yasujiro Ozu
2. Vertigo/Rear Window - USA - Alfred Hitchcock
3. Seven Samurai - Japan - Akira Kurosawa
4. Ugetsu Monogatari/Life of Oharu/Sansho the Bailiff - Japan - Kenji Mizoguchi
5. Touch of Evil - USA - Orson Welles
6. Pather Panchali - India - Satyajit Ray
7. The Searchers - USA - John Ford
8. Late Chrysanthemums - Japan - Mikio Naruse
9. Rebel Without a Cause - US - Nicholas Ray
10. Imitation of Life - US - Douglas Sirk
1940s:
1. It's a Wonderful Life - USA - Frank Capra
2. The Maltese Falcon - USA - John Huston
3. Late Spring - Japan - Yasujiro Ozu
4. His Girl Friday - USA - Howard Hawks
5. Ivan the Terrible - USSR - Sergei Eisenstein
6. The Big Sleep - USA - Howard Hawks
7. Fort Apache - USA - John Ford
8. Citizen Kane - USA - Orson Welles
9. Germany Year Zero - Italy - Roberto Rosselini
10. Stray Dog - Japan - Akira Kurosawa
1930s: [Again with the one per director]
1. M - Germany - Fritz Lang
2. Rules of the Game/Crimes of M. Lange - France - Jean Renoir
3. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - USA - Frank Capra
4. Duck Soup - USA - Leo McCarey
5. I Was Born But.../Passing Fancy/Inn in Tokyo - Japan - Yasujiro Ozu
6. Bride of Frankenstein/Frankenstein - USA - James Whale
7. Osaka Elegy - Japan - Kenji Mizoguchi
8. Love Me Tonight - USA - Reuben Mamoulian
9. Wife! Be Like a Rose! - Japan - Michio Naruse
10. Blue Angel - Germany - Joseph von Sternberg
1920s: [nothing new - haven't seen that many real old films since last year. Bunch of Douglas Fairbanks, mostly, all excellent but not top 10 quite.]
1. The General - USA - Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman
2. Nosferatu - Germany - FW Murnau
3.The Gold Rush - USA - Charles Chaplin
4. Our Hospitality - USA - Buster Keaton and John G Blystone
5. Man With the Movie Camera - USSR - Dziga Vertov
6. Earth - USSR - Aleksander Dovzhenko
7. Battleship Potemkin - USSR - Sergei Eisenstein
8. Sherlock Jr. - USA - Buster Keaton
9. October - USSR - Eisenstein
10. Greed - USA - Erich Von Stroheim
Pre-1920s:
1. Birth of a Nation - USA - DW Griffith
2. Les Vampires - Louis Feuillade
3. Broken Blossoms - USA - Griffith
4. The Tramp - USA - Charlie Chaplin
5. Intolerance - USA - Griffith
6. Regeneration - USA - Raoul Walsh
7. True Heart Susie - USA - Griffith
8. South - UK - Frank Hurley [this is the footage shot on the Shackleton expedition]
9. Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - Germany - Robert Weine
10. The Champion - USA - Chaplin
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Best of 2007 - Better Represented
Like last year, I am going to revisit the previous year's best of list, now that a better sample of the world's films have made it to town. (Though there are plenty more to come: I notice that the 2006 film I singled out last year - Jia Jiang-ke's Still Life - only made it here in the last couple months, this year...) The list I made in January (here) has been significantly augmented... I don't obsess over lists and ranks like I used to - but it's fun and to go back, think about what I thought about films, think about what's held up and so on; see which filmmakers have risen in my estimation, who's built on promise, etc.... Like last year, I may take also rework some older lists in the next week or so. List-o-phobes may need to look away....
But here it is - best of 2007, from 1/3 of the way into 2008.
1. Secret Sunshine - South Korea - Lee Chang-dong
2. There Will be Blood - US - Paul Thomas Anderson
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days - Romania - Christian Mungiu
4. The Flight of the Red Balloon - Taiwan/France - Hou Hsiao Hsien
5. Zodiac - US - David Fincher
6. California Dreamin' (Endless) - Romania - Christian Remescu
7. No Country for Old Men - US - Coen Brothers
8. In the City of Sylvia - Spain - Jose Luis Guerin
9. Darjeeling Limited - US - Wes Anderson
10. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - US - Andrew Domenik
11. Some Photos from the City of Sylvia - Spain - Guerin
12. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - France - Julian Schnabel
13. Don't Touch the Axe - France - Jacques Rivette
14. Paranoid Park - US - Gus Van Sant
15. Persepolis - France - Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Parronaud
16. Away From Her - Canada - Sarah Polley
17. Married Life - US - Ira Sachs
18. Michael Clayton - US - Tony Gilroy
19. Grindhouse - US - Quinten Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez
20. Eastern Promises - Canada - David Cronenberg
21. Taxi to the Dark Side - USA - Alex Gibney
22. Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street - US - Tim Burton
23. Vanaja - India - Rajnesh Domalpalli
24. Witnesses - France - Andre Techine
25. Bourne Ultimatum - US - Paul Greengrass
(Quick reference: my January 1 top 10:
1. California Dreamin' (Endless)
2. No Country for Old Men
3. Zodiac
4. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
5. Darjeeling Limited
6. Eastern Promises
7. Away From Her
8. Grindhouse
9. Margot at the Wedding
10. Vanaja
But here it is - best of 2007, from 1/3 of the way into 2008.
1. Secret Sunshine - South Korea - Lee Chang-dong
2. There Will be Blood - US - Paul Thomas Anderson
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days - Romania - Christian Mungiu
4. The Flight of the Red Balloon - Taiwan/France - Hou Hsiao Hsien
5. Zodiac - US - David Fincher
6. California Dreamin' (Endless) - Romania - Christian Remescu
7. No Country for Old Men - US - Coen Brothers
8. In the City of Sylvia - Spain - Jose Luis Guerin
9. Darjeeling Limited - US - Wes Anderson
10. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - US - Andrew Domenik
11. Some Photos from the City of Sylvia - Spain - Guerin
12. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - France - Julian Schnabel
13. Don't Touch the Axe - France - Jacques Rivette
14. Paranoid Park - US - Gus Van Sant
15. Persepolis - France - Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Parronaud
16. Away From Her - Canada - Sarah Polley
17. Married Life - US - Ira Sachs
18. Michael Clayton - US - Tony Gilroy
19. Grindhouse - US - Quinten Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez
20. Eastern Promises - Canada - David Cronenberg
21. Taxi to the Dark Side - USA - Alex Gibney
22. Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street - US - Tim Burton
23. Vanaja - India - Rajnesh Domalpalli
24. Witnesses - France - Andre Techine
25. Bourne Ultimatum - US - Paul Greengrass
(Quick reference: my January 1 top 10:
1. California Dreamin' (Endless)
2. No Country for Old Men
3. Zodiac
4. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
5. Darjeeling Limited
6. Eastern Promises
7. Away From Her
8. Grindhouse
9. Margot at the Wedding
10. Vanaja
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Blogathons, Lists and Coming Attractions
A couple quick blogathonic notes, and some links this Sunday night:
Ferdy on Film's Invitation to the Dance blogathon is underway. I suppose this is an excuse to post a link to my Busby Berkeley notes from a couple years ago, though I hope I can come up with some more. This should certainly bring some fine reading...
And coming up later this month, Jeremy Bushnell will host a Production Design blogathon, which looks like a very interesting project. A chance to post more Princess Raccoon screen captures anyway.
Also:
Don't forget the Film of the Month Club - Pacze Moj posts links to access May's movie, The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On. I confess to having one of Netflix's copies at this moment, but will return it as soon as possible...
And the Self-Styled Siren takes on Joseph Breen, via Thomas Doherty's biography.
And so on. Hopefully this week I will manage to write up some more reactions to Secret Sunshine, and Lee Chang-dong's films; I'm thinking as well it might be time for a more definitive version of my Best of 2007 list. 1/3 of the way through the new year - a reasonable number of last year's films have made it to Boston, so the list is something closer to fair. We'll see.
Ferdy on Film's Invitation to the Dance blogathon is underway. I suppose this is an excuse to post a link to my Busby Berkeley notes from a couple years ago, though I hope I can come up with some more. This should certainly bring some fine reading...
And coming up later this month, Jeremy Bushnell will host a Production Design blogathon, which looks like a very interesting project. A chance to post more Princess Raccoon screen captures anyway.
Also:
Don't forget the Film of the Month Club - Pacze Moj posts links to access May's movie, The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On. I confess to having one of Netflix's copies at this moment, but will return it as soon as possible...
And the Self-Styled Siren takes on Joseph Breen, via Thomas Doherty's biography.
And so on. Hopefully this week I will manage to write up some more reactions to Secret Sunshine, and Lee Chang-dong's films; I'm thinking as well it might be time for a more definitive version of my Best of 2007 list. 1/3 of the way through the new year - a reasonable number of last year's films have made it to Boston, so the list is something closer to fair. We'll see.
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