list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around The Air I Breathe on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/The_Air_I_Breathe/325453/default.aspx Title: The Air I Breathe
Year: 2008
Director: Lee Jieho
Plot: Four stories, representing the emotional principles of Love, Pleasure, Sorrow and Happiness, come together in this episodic drama from first-time director Jieho Lee. A powerful crime boss, Fingers (Andy Garcia), subtly controls the destinies of four people whose circumstances have brought them to a crossroads in their lives. A quiet business executive (Forest Whitaker) is told an upcoming horse race has been rigged and bets everything he has on his belief the story is true. A noted pop singer (Sarah Michelle Gellar) discovers her career is hanging in the balance when she's forced to sever ties with her manager. A doctor (Kevin Bacon) must set aside a physician's traditional guidelines when circumstances demand he treat the woman he loves after a serious accident. And a criminal (Brendan Fraser) has a powerful vision of the future, but can't decide if his premonitions are to be trusted. The Air I Breathe received its world premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 4
Number of Lists: 7
Number of blog posts: 3
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:40:59 GMTThe Air I Breathe2008Lee JiehoFour stories, representing the emotional principles of Love, Pleasure, Sorrow and Happiness, come together in this episodic drama from first-time director Jieho Lee. A powerful crime boss, Fingers (<a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P___196022/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Andy Garcia</a>), subtly controls the destinies of four people whose circumstances have brought them to a crossroads in their lives. A quiet business executive (<a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P___116578/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Forest Whitaker</a>) is told an upcoming horse race has been rigged and bets everything he has on his belief the story is true. A noted pop singer (<a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P____26360/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Sarah Michelle Gellar</a>) discovers her career is hanging in the balance when she's forced to sever ties with her manager. A doctor (<a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P_____3164/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Kevin Bacon</a>) must set aside a physician's traditional guidelines when circumstances demand he treat the woman he loves after a serious accident. And a criminal (<a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P____24843/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Brendan Fraser</a>) has a powerful vision of the future, but can't decide if his premonitions are to be trusted. The Air I Breathe received its world premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide4Slightly Tagged (1-5)733http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s325453.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/The_Air_I_Breathe/325453/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/jj79/archive/2008/6/12/31193.aspx Post By: JJ79
Post To: JJ79 Blog
Post Date: 6/12/2008 8:21:18 PM
Body: The more I think about it, the more "The Air I Breathe" is the marriage of Oscar-winner "Crash" and the radio program "This American Life." From the former, we take individual stories and use each of the four main characters to impact someone else. They don´t know each other, generally speaking, while one through line connects them all: Andy Garcia´s Fingers. "This American Life" comes into play since each vignette is a meditation on a theme, a story we normally wouldn´t associate with that theme. For instance, we would generally think of Happiness as being in love, wealthy or healthy. Not so for the Forest Whitaker character. He wants out of his day to day monotony whatever the cost. Then there´s Pleasure, brilliantly played by Brendan Fraser. His ideal, similar to Happiness, isn´t independent wealth or status. It´s simply to not know what is coming next. While Sorrow´s (Sarah Michelle Gellar) story of a pop diva focuses on the a standard theme, it is Kevin Bacon´s Love who shows just how far a man can go for the emotion. Co-writers Jieho Lee and Bob DeRosa (Lee also directed) craft a personal narrative, interweaving each character into another vignette. That is the brilliance of "The Air I Breathe": it makes the audience pay attention to timelines, dialogue and background details in order to form the complete picture. To have Lee tell it in the commentary track, Pleasure, Happiness, Love and Sorrow are interconnected emotions, for to know one of them, you must know all of them. They make up the very essence of human beings. From them, all other emotions spring. With the talent in front of the camera and a director intent on a vision behind it, this film manages to never overstay its welcome, opting instead to leave us wanting more at the end. Each character in their own way is such a magnetic personality we can´t help but be drawn to them from the very first shot of their story. By design, the vignette´s begin with a glimpse at the finale, the idea of working to bring the ending back to the beginning in some way. In some respects, this technique could be construed as spoiling the climax, but I disagree. It is more about giving the audience a reason to pay attention, to show these people at-arguably-their worst and exploring how they got there. And just because the flashforwards appear to show the ending does not mean there isn´t anywhere for the film to take us afterward. No story ends on the opening shot, so to speak. Because this is an intensely narrative film, to talk about one vignette would mean spoiling all of them. Instead, we´ll talk generalities common to the film as a whole. As mentioned previously, the linchpin through the production is Fingers, a pseudo-gangster running a seedy casino/betting house. It is Garcia´s performance, thoroughly evil yet devilishly upstanding, which gives the film a central villain, someone to root against instead of for. There is always an underlying fear the man could snap at any time…or snap moreso than he already has. Running the gamut from sadistic terrorizer to sympathetic uncle, other characters never know which Fingers is going to emerge, prompting the same fear in the audience and giving him unbridled power. The revelation here is Fraser, who gives his best performance since "Gods and Monsters." With his expressive eyes and near-defeated demeanor, Pleasure turns into the most sympathetic of the main characters. Despite being the money guy for Fingers and the violence necessary in his line of work, there´s never the feeling he truly enjoys roughing anyone up. And as Fraser lets down the gruff exterior, he´s able to portray-again, with relatively few words-a soul looking for something to turn his life around. Or, to be more exact, a way to find ultimate pleasure. Lee shoots the film in almost exclusive close ups, not allowing us to get a view of the world surrounding any of these characters. It is true there are long shots and background extras nearly all the time, but there is no wider world view to take into account. These people are going through personal turmoil; when that happens in real life, we tend to block out everything else, focusing in on our specific problem. Because of the subject matter and shooting style, "The Air I Breathe" almost feels claustrophobic, as if we can´t get away from the problems either. The style works for the narrative simply because it adds to the underlying meaning Lee and DeRosa are conveying. If I do find one fault with the film, it is the fourth act, Love. Intentionally happy and upbeat to the end, it feels as though it betrays the tone of the other three stanzas. Perhaps the idea is one of hope, that no matter how badly life goes, there is a silver lining to every cloud. Perhaps, even, it is an issue of placement. Love is the least connected of the four leads and it shows by taking us out of the world previously created and dropped into a new one. The nighttime events of Sorrow and Pleasure, coupled with the majority darkness of Happiness, serve to set a motif of sorts for the film: darkness. Love is filmed in the brightest day, with pure sunlight peering into every corner. (It does have an exquisite ending, though, and Sarah Michelle Gellar has never looked more beautiful, fluttering in the wind.) That may be the idea, that by allowing sunlight to shed light on all our issues, they don´t seem so bad or insurmountable as they did previously. That, no matter how dark the previous night, a new day will come and we are given the chance to start again. VIDEO: Presented in an anamorphic 2.40:1 ratio, "The Air I Breathe" is a solid transfer, considering the oft-repeated refrain in the commentary of "not enough money" and a 29 day shooting schedule. Blacks appear just a shade on the brown side while a fine layer of (intentional?) grain permeates every single scene. Colors are never completely muted, only toned down with the effect of making us feel the despair each character goes through. By design, no color pops off the screen while the transfer doesn´t pose any other problems. AUDIO: English 5.1 and 2.0 tracks are included, along with English and Spanish subtitles. I must admit to having a difficult time hearing a lot of the dialogue in the first three vignette´s, leading me to be unsure if the actor´s are speaking too low or if the audio mix was incorrectly put together. There are no major issues here, with the 2.0 track being slightly more forceful in the majority of the speakers while the 5.1 provides good occasional audio stimulation. EXTRAS: The crown jewel is an audio commentary with Lee, DeRosa, Director of Photography Walt Lloyd and Editor Robert Hoffman. It is a rich track, full of production stories, mishaps and full on plot explanations. The group rarely quiets down-in fact, I counted only two periods of appreciable silence. They tend to run out of conversation near the end, but it is to be expected. There is nothing but exuberant praise for the cast, crew and Mexico City location (doubling for Los Angeles). While the narrative is explained, Lee asks a rhetorical question in the finale when prodded for the meaning of the film. He never wanted to explain the vignette´s in gory detail; he simply wanted the audience to think about it means to them. Apply meaning to the emotions and characters from our own lives. The disc starts out with a group of trailers for "Numb" (1:47), "The Color of Freedom," (1:49), "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1:34) and "Che" (1:56). Additionally, this film´s trailer (2:29) is included in the Extras menu. Four deleted scenes are up next with none making a case for their inclusion in the final film. The first is a different beginning to the film, another is a new introduction to the character of Tony (Hirsch), an epilogue of sorts to the final vignette and a strange scene seemingly reliant on the flashback device to make sense. And just over two minutes of outtakes wrap up the section, mostly focusing on flubs and smaller mistakes. PARTING THOUGHTS: A non-involving final act can´t stand in the way of "The Air I Breathe," a movie woefully overlooked at the Oscars, considering it´s superior acting chops. Whitaker and Garcia are their usual dynamic selves while Bacon slips into his doctor role with the poise we´d expect. Delpy is never given anything meaningful to do, which is a shame, yet her snub is to the betterment of Hirsch, Gellar and Fraser. We know Hirsch is capable of great things (see "Into the Wild") so the acting surprises are really Gellar and Fraser. Luckily, they spend the majority of their screen time together, coalescing to form a beautiful pairing.
]]>Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:21:18 GMTJJ79JJ79 Blog6/12/2008 8:21:18 PMThe more I think about it, the more "The Air I Breathe" is the marriage of Oscar-winner "Crash" and the radio program "This American Life." From the former, we take individual stories and use each of the four main characters to impact someone else. They don&acute;t know each other, generally speaking, while one through line connects them all: Andy Garcia&acute;s Fingers. "This American Life" comes into play since each vignette is a meditation on a theme, a story we normally wouldn&acute;t associate with that theme. For instance, we would generally think of Happiness as being in love, wealthy or healthy. Not so for the Forest Whitaker character. He wants out of his day to day monotony whatever the cost. Then there&acute;s Pleasure, brilliantly played by Brendan Fraser. His ideal, similar to Happiness, isn&acute;t independent wealth or status. It&acute;s simply to not know what is coming next. While Sorrow&acute;s (Sarah Michelle Gellar) story of a pop diva focuses on the a standard theme, it is Kevin Bacon&acute;s Love who shows just how far a man can go for the emotion. Co-writers Jieho Lee and Bob DeRosa (Lee also directed) craft a personal narrative, interweaving each character into another vignette. That is the brilliance of "The Air I Breathe": it makes the audience pay attention to timelines, dialogue and background details in order to form the complete picture. To have Lee tell it in the commentary track, Pleasure, Happiness, Love and Sorrow are interconnected emotions, for to know one of them, you must know all of them. They make up the very essence of human beings. From them, all other emotions spring. With the talent in front of the camera and a director intent on a vision behind it, this film manages to never overstay its welcome, opting instead to leave us wanting more at the end. Each character in their own way is such a magnetic personality we can&acute;t help but be drawn to them from the very first shot of their story. By design, the vignette&acute;s begin with a glimpse at the finale, the idea of working to bring the ending back to the beginning in some way. In some respects, this technique could be construed as spoiling the climax, but I disagree. It is more about giving the audience a reason to pay attention, to show these people at-arguably-their worst and exploring how they got there. And just because the flashforwards appear to show the ending does not mean there isn&acute;t anywhere for the film to take us afterward. No story ends on the opening shot, so to speak. Because this is an intensely narrative film, to talk about one vignette would mean spoiling all of them. Instead, we&acute;ll talk generalities common to the film as a whole. As mentioned previously, the linchpin through the production is Fingers, a pseudo-gangster running a seedy casino/betting house. It is Garcia&acute;s performance, thoroughly evil yet devilishly upstanding, which gives the film a central villain, someone to root against instead of for. There is always an underlying fear the man could snap at any time&hellip;or snap moreso than he already has. Running the gamut from sadistic terrorizer to sympathetic uncle, other characters never know which Fingers is going to emerge, prompting the same fear in the audience and giving him unbridled power. The revelation here is Fraser, who gives his best performance since "Gods and Monsters." With his expressive eyes and near-defeated demeanor, Pleasure turns into the most sympathetic of the main characters. Despite being the money guy for Fingers and the violence necessary in his line of work, there&acute;s never the feeling he truly enjoys roughing anyone up. And as Fraser lets down the gruff exterior, he&acute;s able to portray-again, with relatively few words-a soul looking for something to turn his life around. Or, to be more exact, a way to find ultimate pleasure. Lee shoots the film in almost exclusive close ups, not allowing us to get a view of the world surrounding any of these characters. It is true there are long shots and background extras nearly all the time, but there is no wider world view to take into account. These people are going through personal turmoil; when that happens in real life, we tend to block out everything else, focusing in on our specific problem. Because of the subject matter and shooting style, "The Air I Breathe" almost feels claustrophobic, as if we can&acute;t get away from the problems either. The style works for the narrative simply because it adds to the underlying meaning Lee and DeRosa are conveying. If I do find one fault with the film, it is the fourth act, Love. Intentionally happy and upbeat to the end, it feels as though it betrays the tone of the other three stanzas. Perhaps the idea is one of hope, that no matter how badly life goes, there is a silver lining to every cloud. Perhaps, even, it is an issue of placement. Love is the least connected of the four leads and it shows by taking us out of the world previously created and dropped into a new one. The nighttime events of Sorrow and Pleasure, coupled with the majority darkness of Happiness, serve to set a motif of sorts for the film: darkness. Love is filmed in the brightest day, with pure sunlight peering into every corner. (It does have an exquisite ending, though, and Sarah Michelle Gellar has never looked more beautiful, fluttering in the wind.) That may be the idea, that by allowing sunlight to shed light on all our issues, they don&acute;t seem so bad or insurmountable as they did previously. That, no matter how dark the previous night, a new day will come and we are given the chance to start again. VIDEO: Presented in an anamorphic 2.40:1 ratio, "The Air I Breathe" is a solid transfer, considering the oft-repeated refrain in the commentary of "not enough money" and a 29 day shooting schedule. Blacks appear just a shade on the brown side while a fine layer of (intentional?) grain permeates every single scene. Colors are never completely muted, only toned down with the effect of making us feel the despair each character goes through. By design, no color pops off the screen while the transfer doesn&acute;t pose any other problems. AUDIO: English 5.1 and 2.0 tracks are included, along with English and Spanish subtitles. I must admit to having a difficult time hearing a lot of the dialogue in the first three vignette&acute;s, leading me to be unsure if the actor&acute;s are speaking too low or if the audio mix was incorrectly put together. There are no major issues here, with the 2.0 track being slightly more forceful in the majority of the speakers while the 5.1 provides good occasional audio stimulation. EXTRAS: The crown jewel is an audio commentary with Lee, DeRosa, Director of Photography Walt Lloyd and Editor Robert Hoffman. It is a rich track, full of production stories, mishaps and full on plot explanations. The group rarely quiets down-in fact, I counted only two periods of appreciable silence. They tend to run out of conversation near the end, but it is to be expected. There is nothing but exuberant praise for the cast, crew and Mexico City location (doubling for Los Angeles). While the narrative is explained, Lee asks a rhetorical question in the finale when prodded for the meaning of the film. He never wanted to explain the vignette&acute;s in gory detail; he simply wanted the audience to think about it means to them. Apply meaning to the emotions and characters from our own lives. The disc starts out with a group of trailers for "Numb" (1:47), "The Color of Freedom," (1:49), "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1:34) and "Che" (1:56). Additionally, this film&acute;s trailer (2:29) is included in the Extras menu. Four deleted scenes are up next with none making a case for their inclusion in the final film. The first is a different beginning to the film, another is a new introduction to the character of Tony (Hirsch), an epilogue of sorts to the final vignette and a strange scene seemingly reliant on the flashback device to make sense. And just over two minutes of outtakes wrap up the section, mostly focusing on flubs and smaller mistakes. PARTING THOUGHTS: A non-involving final act can&acute;t stand in the way of "The Air I Breathe," a movie woefully overlooked at the Oscars, considering it&acute;s superior acting chops. Whitaker and Garcia are their usual dynamic selves while Bacon slips into his doctor role with the poise we&acute;d expect. Delpy is never given anything meaningful to do, which is a shame, yet her snub is to the betterment of Hirsch, Gellar and Fraser. We know Hirsch is capable of great things (see "Into the Wild") so the acting surprises are really Gellar and Fraser. Luckily, they spend the majority of their screen time together, coalescing to form a beautiful pairing. http://www.spout.com/blogs/thereeler/archive/2007/5/1/7898.aspx Post By: TheReeler
Post To: The Reeler on Spout
Post Date: 5/1/2007 8:16:14 AM
Body: Forest Whitaker and friend in Jieho Lee's The Air I Breathe By Eric Kohn A horrifying revelation about mediocrity hit me upon realizing the similarities between Tribeca’s obligatory star-studded faux indie The Air I Breathe and Paul Haggis’ detestable Crash: People actually like it. Stories that play loosely with human tragedy and toy with contrivances of fate and coincidence attract unwarranted praise like flypaper. It doesn’t hurt that both movies are populated with droves of pretty faces (all of them in anguish), and probably not a coincidence that they share Brendan Fraser (he seems to get increasingly goofy when he tries to play it straight). Among the other familiar names: Forest Whitaker, Kevin Bacon, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Andy Garcia. All talented performers in their own right, they do their best with the lackluster material, and it’s not entirely bad, just awkwardly redundant until its final nosedive in the last five minutes. The basic premise finds several characters bereft of hope in a world of crime and desperation. Their individual experiences unfold as short acts categorized by their emotional wavelength (happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love), which intersect in various gasp-inducing ways, but the gimmick gets repeated so many times that audiences could probably use some extra oxygen. First-time director Jieho Lee doesn’t lack for postmodern influences, sporting the in-your-face ensemble storytelling reminiscent of Magnolia and every gangster cliché this side of Tony Soprano (Garcia does his best Al Pacino as the dangerous crime boss Fingers; Frasier’s his deadpan prophetic hit man). And the first segment, starring Whitaker as a lonely stock broker whose gambling indulgence destroys his life, playfully combines terse drama and humor in a nice blend of narrative finesse. Appropriately enough, Whitaker’s character lands the script’s finest line: “Sometimes, being totally fucked is a liberating experience.” True, but not in this case. Large cast projects like The Air I Breathe primarily suffer from too much ambition. Human suffering tends to find a better vessel in intimate settings, with a smaller scope and balanced attention to the characters who deserve our sympathy. You’ll find that in The Cake Eaters, accomplished actress Mary Stuart Masterson’s affecting debut. Shot in the quiet beauty of the Catskills, the movie centers on the subtle conflicts of two families whose fates become intertwined by the nature of their affectionate country bumpkin perspective. Aging butcher Easy (Bruce Dern) loses his wife to illness before the story begins. His youngest son, Beagle (Aaron Stanford of Pyro fame), serves food in the school cafeteria, and his estranged hipster brother Guy (Jayce Bartok, also the screenwriter) shows up from a lengthy exile in the city when his hopes of becoming a rock star get shot to sunshine. Using an appreciably minimal pace, Masterson unites the characters under the shared experiences of relationships, the most ambitious being Beagle’s burgeoning attraction to sprightly neighborhood high schooler Georgia (Kristen Stewart), whose debilitating muscular illness doesn’t hinder her irresistible grin and sexual prowess. Masterson has a real knack for framing two characters within a particular situation in order to reflect their psychological connection. That’s the assistance needed to understand genuine conflict; unlike the approach in The Air I Breathe, we’re not getting the message stuffed down our throats. That being said, Cake Eaters delivers its message in waves of blatant overstatements compared to the absurdist French romp Avida. Wielding a loony approach that suggests Fargo through the lens of David Lynch by way of Edgar Allen Poe, this fish-out-of-water entry amid Tribeca’s primarily mainstream selections offers an eccentric’s delight. A couple of shoddy and deformed kidnappers snatch the porky wife of a billionaire in the hopes of attaining some quick cash. Through several inexplicable circumstances, she turns them into her slaves; the plot churns along in virtual nonsense for the duration of the running time. But I’m a sucker for surrealism, so I can attest: It’s good nonsense. Directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern (whose similarly stylized Aaltra played at Tribeca two years ago) shoot in grainy black and white reminiscent of Eraserhead, and the final image recreates a Dali painting without delving too deeply into the meaning of the work. Sitting through the incessant abnormalities of Avida reminded me of watching the classic Dali/Bunuel team-up Un Chien Andalou. The joys of getting lost in dreamy subconscious expression never loses its base appeal. Another enduring entertainment that I can attach to experiences of my youth: Video games. Although I’m not old enough to remember the saga of Donkey Kong champs chronicled in the amusing documentary The King of Kong, anyone who grew up in the Nintendo generation owes to debt to these obsessive pioneers. Seth Gordon’s lighthearted feature was the big purchase this past year at Slamdance. These thumb-twiddling veterans made big waves in the early 1980s following a profile in Life magazine, and while several of them have moved on to more lucrative pursuits, none seems to have lost their love of the game. Intriguingly enough, the complicated Sundance entry Chasing Ghosts deals with the same group of characters and offers a superior glimpse into their private lives, but Kong nails the idiosyncrasies of their hobby. Hardly the humble sorts, they’re not out to change the whole world -- only their own. (Here in New York, you’d be apt to follow up a screening with a visit to Williamsburg’s Barcade to see what the fuss is about.) For true sense for how activism can define a career, check out the nifty biographical documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, a detailed exploration of the motives and achievements of folk music’s raison d’etre. Seeger’s ability to inspire generations of banjo players -- and embolden the concept of artistic means of provoking social change -- carries a constantly touching hook. Director Jim Brown gives us equal parts of history, particularly Seeger’s perserverance in the face of censorship for his communist affiliations, and the singer’s personal philosophies, which he expounds upon from his woodsy home in upstate New York. The honesty of Seeger’s vision makes the MTV years affect on popular music look crass and hopeless, of course, but that’s no major eye-opener. On the topic of crass and hopeless, I’ll say only this about the mercilessly stupid horror romp Rise: Blood Hunter: It stars Lucy Liu as a vengeful killer of the undead, and she miraculously retains all the sexy energy and femme fatality of her magnificent turn in Kill Bill. The movie, however, suffers from excruciating dialogue and numbingly predictable scare tactics. What the hell is this doing at a film festival? Some air isn’t worth a single breath. Discuss these and other Tribeca titles at Spout: The Air I Breathe The Cake Eaters Avida The King of Kong Pete Seeger: The Power of Song Rise: Blood Hunter Syndicated Feed From:The Reeler
]]>Tue, 01 May 2007 12:16:14 GMTTheReelerThe Reeler on Spout5/1/2007 8:16:14 AMForest Whitaker and friend in Jieho Lee's The Air I Breathe By Eric Kohn A horrifying revelation about mediocrity hit me upon realizing the similarities between Tribeca’s obligatory star-studded faux indie The Air I Breathe and Paul Haggis’ detestable Crash: People actually like it. Stories that play loosely with human tragedy and toy with contrivances of fate and coincidence attract unwarranted praise like flypaper. It doesn’t hurt that both movies are populated with droves of pretty faces (all of them in anguish), and probably not a coincidence that they share Brendan Fraser (he seems to get increasingly goofy when he tries to play it straight). Among the other familiar names: Forest Whitaker, Kevin Bacon, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Andy Garcia. All talented performers in their own right, they do their best with the lackluster material, and it’s not entirely bad, just awkwardly redundant until its final nosedive in the last five minutes. The basic premise finds several characters bereft of hope in a world of crime and desperation. Their individual experiences unfold as short acts categorized by their emotional wavelength (happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love), which intersect in various gasp-inducing ways, but the gimmick gets repeated so many times that audiences could probably use some extra oxygen. First-time director Jieho Lee doesn’t lack for postmodern influences, sporting the in-your-face ensemble storytelling reminiscent of Magnolia and every gangster cliché this side of Tony Soprano (Garcia does his best Al Pacino as the dangerous crime boss Fingers; Frasier’s his deadpan prophetic hit man). And the first segment, starring Whitaker as a lonely stock broker whose gambling indulgence destroys his life, playfully combines terse drama and humor in a nice blend of narrative finesse. Appropriately enough, Whitaker’s character lands the script’s finest line: “Sometimes, being totally fucked is a liberating experience.” True, but not in this case. Large cast projects like The Air I Breathe primarily suffer from too much ambition. Human suffering tends to find a better vessel in intimate settings, with a smaller scope and balanced attention to the characters who deserve our sympathy. You’ll find that in The Cake Eaters, accomplished actress Mary Stuart Masterson’s affecting debut. Shot in the quiet beauty of the Catskills, the movie centers on the subtle conflicts of two families whose fates become intertwined by the nature of their affectionate country bumpkin perspective. Aging butcher Easy (Bruce Dern) loses his wife to illness before the story begins. His youngest son, Beagle (Aaron Stanford of Pyro fame), serves food in the school cafeteria, and his estranged hipster brother Guy (Jayce Bartok, also the screenwriter) shows up from a lengthy exile in the city when his hopes of becoming a rock star get shot to sunshine. Using an appreciably minimal pace, Masterson unites the characters under the shared experiences of relationships, the most ambitious being Beagle’s burgeoning attraction to sprightly neighborhood high schooler Georgia (Kristen Stewart), whose debilitating muscular illness doesn’t hinder her irresistible grin and sexual prowess. Masterson has a real knack for framing two characters within a particular situation in order to reflect their psychological connection. That’s the assistance needed to understand genuine conflict; unlike the approach in The Air I Breathe, we’re not getting the message stuffed down our throats. That being said, Cake Eaters delivers its message in waves of blatant overstatements compared to the absurdist French romp Avida. Wielding a loony approach that suggests Fargo through the lens of David Lynch by way of Edgar Allen Poe, this fish-out-of-water entry amid Tribeca’s primarily mainstream selections offers an eccentric’s delight. A couple of shoddy and deformed kidnappers snatch the porky wife of a billionaire in the hopes of attaining some quick cash. Through several inexplicable circumstances, she turns them into her slaves; the plot churns along in virtual nonsense for the duration of the running time. But I’m a sucker for surrealism, so I can attest: It’s good nonsense. Directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern (whose similarly stylized Aaltra played at Tribeca two years ago) shoot in grainy black and white reminiscent of Eraserhead, and the final image recreates a Dali painting without delving too deeply into the meaning of the work. Sitting through the incessant abnormalities of Avida reminded me of watching the classic Dali/Bunuel team-up Un Chien Andalou. The joys of getting lost in dreamy subconscious expression never loses its base appeal. Another enduring entertainment that I can attach to experiences of my youth: Video games. Although I’m not old enough to remember the saga of Donkey Kong champs chronicled in the amusing documentary The King of Kong, anyone who grew up in the Nintendo generation owes to debt to these obsessive pioneers. Seth Gordon’s lighthearted feature was the big purchase this past year at Slamdance. These thumb-twiddling veterans made big waves in the early 1980s following a profile in Life magazine, and while several of them have moved on to more lucrative pursuits, none seems to have lost their love of the game. Intriguingly enough, the complicated Sundance entry Chasing Ghosts deals with the same group of characters and offers a superior glimpse into their private lives, but Kong nails the idiosyncrasies of their hobby. Hardly the humble sorts, they’re not out to change the whole world -- only their own. (Here in New York, you’d be apt to follow up a screening with a visit to Williamsburg’s Barcade to see what the fuss is about.) For true sense for how activism can define a career, check out the nifty biographical documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, a detailed exploration of the motives and achievements of folk music’s raison d’etre. Seeger’s ability to inspire generations of banjo players -- and embolden the concept of artistic means of provoking social change -- carries a constantly touching hook. Director Jim Brown gives us equal parts of history, particularly Seeger’s perserverance in the face of censorship for his communist affiliations, and the singer’s personal philosophies, which he expounds upon from his woodsy home in upstate New York. The honesty of Seeger’s vision makes the MTV years affect on popular music look crass and hopeless, of course, but that’s no major eye-opener. On the topic of crass and hopeless, I’ll say only this about the mercilessly stupid horror romp Rise: Blood Hunter: It stars Lucy Liu as a vengeful killer of the undead, and she miraculously retains all the sexy energy and femme fatality of her magnificent turn in Kill Bill. The movie, however, suffers from excruciating dialogue and numbingly predictable scare tactics. What the hell is this doing at a film festival? Some air isn’t worth a single breath. Discuss these and other Tribeca titles at Spout: The Air I Breathe The Cake Eaters Avida The King of Kong Pete Seeger: The Power of Song Rise: Blood Hunter Syndicated Feed From:The Reeler http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/singer/MemberTagFilms.aspxsinger
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