list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around The Age of Innocence 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_Age_of_Innocence/80478/default.aspx Title: The Age of Innocence
Year: 1993
Director: Martin Scorsese
Plot: In Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel, romance between an upper-class gentleman and an ostracized lady is doomed by 19th century New York society. Shortly after his engagement to blandly genteel May Welland (Winona Ryder), Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is reacquainted with May's scandalous cousin Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). As the head of an esteemed family, Archer initially uses his standing to try to rehabilitate Ellen's reputation, but he finds himself increasingly drawn to her disregard for the codes of New York manners. Bound by ingrained society mores and his peers' insinuations, Newland tries to dodge his growing passion by rushing his marriage to May, but he cannot keep himself from confessing his love to Ellen. Recognizing that Newland could never abandon his sense of honor and be happy, Ellen pushes Newland to May and leaves town. The marriage proceeds as dictated, but when Newland unexpectedly sees Ellen again, he yearns for the affair to come to fruition. However, he underestimates not only what May knows but also her ability to uphold the rules of propriety. Sumptuously shot by Michael Ballhaus, the film offers meticulously designed costumes and settings that evoke a culture as seductively beautiful in its surfaces as it is stifling in its rituals. Unspoken emotions are expressed through such details as yellow roses or a clipped cigar, a fade to red or a single camera move. Using Wharton's original prose to comment on the setting's hypocrisies, Joanne Woodward's voiceover narration suggests how much decisive power is buried beneath dainty femininity. The Age of Innocence received five Oscar nominations, including Best Supporting Actress for Ryder and Best Screenplay for Scorsese and Jay Cocks, and a win for Best Costumes. Although The Age of Innocence seemed like a departure from Scorsese's prior work, Newland is as much at the mercy of his circle's Byzantine structure (and his own conscience) as are Scorsese's more familiar mobsters; Newland's persecutors just wear white tie and tails. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 12
Number of Lists: 15
Number of blog posts: 6
Number of discussion threads: 1
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:02:25 GMTThe Age of Innocence1993Martin ScorseseIn <a href="/players/P___110533/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Martin Scorsese</a>'s adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1920 novel, romance between an upper-class gentleman and an ostracized lady is doomed by 19th century New York society. Shortly after his engagement to blandly genteel May Welland (<a href="/players/P____62446/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Winona Ryder</a>), Newland Archer (<a href="/players/P____17559/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Daniel Day-Lewis</a>) is reacquainted with May's scandalous cousin Ellen Olenska (<a href="/players/P____56469/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Michelle Pfeiffer</a>). As the head of an esteemed family, Archer initially uses his standing to try to rehabilitate Ellen's reputation, but he finds himself increasingly drawn to her disregard for the codes of New York manners. Bound by ingrained society mores and his peers' insinuations, Newland tries to dodge his growing passion by rushing his marriage to May, but he cannot keep himself from confessing his love to Ellen. Recognizing that Newland could never abandon his sense of honor and be happy, Ellen pushes Newland to May and leaves town. The marriage proceeds as dictated, but when Newland unexpectedly sees Ellen again, he yearns for the affair to come to fruition. However, he underestimates not only what May knows but also her ability to uphold the rules of propriety. Sumptuously shot by <a href="/players/P____80547/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Michael Ballhaus</a>, the film offers meticulously designed costumes and settings that evoke a culture as seductively beautiful in its surfaces as it is stifling in its rituals. Unspoken emotions are expressed through such details as yellow roses or a clipped cigar, a fade to red or a single camera move. Using Wharton's original prose to comment on the setting's hypocrisies, <a href="/players/P___117305/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Joanne Woodward</a>'s voiceover narration suggests how much decisive power is buried beneath dainty femininity. The Age of Innocence received five Oscar nominations, including Best Supporting Actress for Ryder and Best Screenplay for Scorsese and Jay Cocks, and a win for Best Costumes. Although The Age of Innocence seemed like a departure from Scorsese's prior work, Newland is as much at the mercy of his circle's Byzantine structure (and his own conscience) as are Scorsese's more familiar mobsters; Newland's persecutors just wear white tie and tails. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide12Tag Target (>10)15613http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/t14082kopqo.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/The_Age_of_Innocence/80478/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/pippin06/archive/2009/9/13/43891.aspx Post By: pippin06
Post To: Reel Thoughts
Post Date: 9/13/2009 8:00:26 PM
Body: What's an Oscar Flashback (tm)? Read here: Next on my Netflix queue was The Age of Innocence, for which Winona Ryder was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar; Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks were nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar; Dante Ferretti and Robert J. Franco were nominated for the Best Art Direction/Set Direction Oscar; Gabrielle Pescucci won the Best Costume Design Oscar; and Elmer Bernstein was nominated for the Best Original Score Oscar (film year, 1993; awarding year, 1994). The other nominees in these categories were: Best Supporting Actress The Piano - Anna Paquin (Winner) The Firm - Holly HunterFearless - Rosie PerezIn The Name of the Father - Emma Thompson Best Adapted Screenplay Schindler's List (Winner) In the Name of the FatherThe Remains of the DayShadowlands Best Art Direction/Set Direction Schindler's List (Winner) Addams Family ValuesOrlandoThe Remains of the Day Best Costume Design Schindler's ListOrlandoThe PianoThe Remains of the Day Best Original Score Schindler's List (Winner) The FirmThe FugitiveThe Remains of the Day This film represents the fifth of five Martin Scorsese films topping my Netflix queue, just in case you were keeping track. This film further begins a couplet of Oscar-nominated dramas based on classical literature and a string of nine Oscar-nominated dramas in general categories, for future reference. Yet again, my interest was piqued in The Age of Innocence because it’s a period drama based on a classic novel by Edith Wharton (which I haven’t read) and, therefore, another unusual experiment of Marty’s in his overall filmography. While the setting is Victorian New York City, the location Marty knows best, in the late nineteenth century, it’s also a study of the human condition in operation at the time, which emphasized subtlety, propriety, and etiquette, particularly amongst the aristocracy and particularly as it applied to women. Ultimately, however, the film includes some of the themes that Scorsese has incorporated in most to all of his films: what do humans, particularly men, do with tough choices, temptation, lust, passion, and the ensuing guilt and quest for redemption when sin or something like it is committed or flirted with by such characters. Thus, in many ways, this kind of story, which would seem so divergent from gangsters and guns, is kind of right up Marty’s alley, and the production values of this film prove that he seemed to take a shine to it as much as he would the mafia or any of his so-called usual subjects. In The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) has recently become engaged to May Welland (Winona Ryder), a member of another wealthy family and a sweet if naïve and shallow woman. While attending the opera, May reacquaints him with her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), who, Newland comes to find out, has flown from her wayward husband, the count, to return to New York and is requesting a divorce, something ladies of wealthy and genteel standing simply did not do at the time. As they were former childhood friends, Newland believes it is incumbent upon him to use his family’s good standing and connections to assuage Ellen’s deteriorating reputation. At the same time, Ellen is a modicum of individuality and a free spirit; she has scandalous thoughts and opinions that fly in the face of aristocratic traditions, and they excite Newland to the point of unadulterated lust. Thus, in order to stymie his burgeoning passion and keep within the social codes of well-bred manners and proper public behavior, Newland rushes to marry May, petitioning her matriarch grandmother to allow them to shorten their engagement. Soon after his pleas to May that the engagement be shortened, and May’s growing suspicion that Newland may be dallying with another woman, thus coming to her in a wave of guilt and causing her to deny his request, Newland finds that he cannot hold himself back any longer, and he confesses his love for Ellen. Though she may return his feelings, Ellen realizes that they can never be together because to deny May for her, in an act of volition that would only violate the traditions Newland finds himself an entrenched member in despite his yearning to walk on the wild side, would stifle Newland in a wholly different manner, so Ellen pushes him to May and leaves town. Newland and May marry, but when Newland later sees Ellen again, his longing for her becomes so all-powerful that he is willing to engage in the affair with her, even as he realizes that May and the rest of their wealthy friends may know more than he has hitherto believed. The Age of Innocence is a beautiful movie, in terms of its visual presence. Marty and his production team, from painstakingly detailed art direction, to beautifully rendered period costumes, to colorful and bright cinematography, to a rich and evocative score by Elmer Bernstein that very much recalls the time period being recreated, the film’s presentation as something to purely observe was as pretty as a painting. It was hard not to be drawn into such a vividly recalled world from a past long gone with the kind of layering that occurred between all technical aspects of the filmmaking, and the skill used in piecing together these layers is undeniable. Marty’s signature styles are also evident, from strategically placed camera wipes to frames that morph from one scene to another in a seamless fashion. He was able to match the subtlety of the themes being explored in the story with his own level of subdued bravado. I could tell Scorsese directed this film, even as it was a film that I never would have guessed was ultimately directed by him, and the result was a marvel. This film is certainly artistic and a wonderful addition to Scorsese's overall body of work. The performances were also very good. The best performance, I think, belonged to Winona Ryder, who was nominated for an Oscar for it. I say this because she infused a sweetness in May which made her character ultimately sympathetic, sad, and strong, even as she was painted to be weak, frail, and ignorant of the larger forces at work around her. Though Ryder has often overstated certain performances or been completely miscast or seemed to be Winona Ryder playing Winona Ryder all over again, none of those characteristics were noticeable here. Her performance was as subtle as the story being told, and I forgot that it was her most of the time. Day-Lewis and Pfeiffer also did well, but for them, I was less imperssed this time around, only because they have long-established track records. Day-Lewis has played many characters of widely different temperaments and motivations, so such a straight character with his smoldering, barely erupting passion did not seem like much of a stretch for him, and Pfeiffer has turned in performances of varied emotional range as well, though at times, I thought of Selena Kyle and Catwoman during this film as I watched her. Don’t ask me why. The film also seems to be a wonderful adaptation of the source material, because I was never left for wanting in terms of the progression and resolution of the tale. The problem is – the film was boring, in its own way, and I think it was boring because this type of story is better suited for being read from the actual novel than for watching on screen. The visual presence was lavish, the performances were great, the direction was great – but, at least for me, this is not the type of story that sits well for two hours of viewing, and I think that there is a general reaction toward this film, about it being boring, that can be correlated exactly to the fact that it’s better as literature than as film. Does this quality detract from the film? Well, in a way, because I don’t feel it’s the type of film that can stand the test of a time, even as it’s understandable that this film would be an Oscar darling, considering that Oscar loves a good period film. Of course, this really is a good period film – if you go in for this sort of thing, i.e. a study of subtlety, repression, and the other topics previously mentioned. In any event, it seems 1993 was a tough year for Oscar competition, considering that it was the year of Schindler's List and Philadelphia and a number of other films that have since settled more permanently into the public consciousness. These films also have a more timeless quality than this film, which plants two feet firmly into its lost-world days-of-yore period and may be less relatable overall than some of these other tales. In any event, the Age of Innocence is a thing of beauty in its way, though it may best be appreciated in small doses. Ultimately, I think the viewers who enjoy this film most will also be those who have a predisposition toward literature grounded in the Victorian era, which tend to explore similar themes and exhibit similar tones. I enjoyed watching this film for a while but ultimately lost interest in the story, because I tend to have little sympathy for the mores of so-called uppercrust society, and the human condition for the rich is only as compelling as the degree of connection that can be created from these wealthy characters to those who are not wealthy. It is as it is. So, in consideration of all of these considerations, I think the Age of Innocence should be awarded an 8 for being very good/having minor flaws (because it can't be perfectly entertaining if I can't relate to the film in any way). As to the test, it does not pass. Sometimes, a painting, like a film, is only worth one look-see, even if it's a very pretty thing to look at, indeed.
]]>Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:26 GMTpippin06Reel Thoughts9/13/2009 8:00:26 PM What's an Oscar Flashback (tm)? Read here: Next on my Netflix queue was The Age of Innocence, for which Winona Ryder was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar; Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks were nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar; Dante Ferretti and Robert J. Franco were nominated for the Best Art Direction/Set Direction Oscar; Gabrielle Pescucci won the Best Costume Design Oscar; and Elmer Bernstein was nominated for the Best Original Score Oscar (film year, 1993; awarding year, 1994). The other nominees in these categories were: Best Supporting Actress The Piano - Anna Paquin (Winner) The Firm - Holly HunterFearless - Rosie PerezIn The Name of the Father - Emma Thompson Best Adapted Screenplay Schindler's List (Winner) In the Name of the FatherThe Remains of the DayShadowlands Best Art Direction/Set Direction Schindler's List (Winner) Addams Family ValuesOrlandoThe Remains of the Day Best Costume Design Schindler's ListOrlandoThe PianoThe Remains of the Day Best Original Score Schindler's List (Winner) The FirmThe FugitiveThe Remains of the Day This film represents the fifth of five Martin Scorsese films topping my Netflix queue, just in case you were keeping track. This film further begins a couplet of Oscar-nominated dramas based on classical literature and a string of nine Oscar-nominated dramas in general categories, for future reference. Yet again, my interest was piqued in The Age of Innocence because it&rsquo;s a period drama based on a classic novel by Edith Wharton (which I haven&rsquo;t read) and, therefore, another unusual experiment of Marty&rsquo;s in his overall filmography. While the setting is Victorian New York City, the location Marty knows best, in the late nineteenth century, it&rsquo;s also a study of the human condition in operation at the time, which emphasized subtlety, propriety, and etiquette, particularly amongst the aristocracy and particularly as it applied to women. Ultimately, however, the film includes some of the themes that Scorsese has incorporated in most to all of his films: what do humans, particularly men, do with tough choices, temptation, lust, passion, and the ensuing guilt and quest for redemption when sin or something like it is committed or flirted with by such characters. Thus, in many ways, this kind of story, which would seem so divergent from gangsters and guns, is kind of right up Marty&rsquo;s alley, and the production values of this film prove that he seemed to take a shine to it as much as he would the mafia or any of his so-called usual subjects. In The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) has recently become engaged to May Welland (Winona Ryder), a member of another wealthy family and a sweet if na&iuml;ve and shallow woman. While attending the opera, May reacquaints him with her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), who, Newland comes to find out, has flown from her wayward husband, the count, to return to New York and is requesting a divorce, something ladies of wealthy and genteel standing simply did not do at the time. As they were former childhood friends, Newland believes it is incumbent upon him to use his family&rsquo;s good standing and connections to assuage Ellen&rsquo;s deteriorating reputation. At the same time, Ellen is a modicum of individuality and a free spirit; she has scandalous thoughts and opinions that fly in the face of aristocratic traditions, and they excite Newland to the point of unadulterated lust. Thus, in order to stymie his burgeoning passion and keep within the social codes of well-bred manners and proper public behavior, Newland rushes to marry May, petitioning her matriarch grandmother to allow them to shorten their engagement. Soon after his pleas to May that the engagement be shortened, and May&rsquo;s growing suspicion that Newland may be dallying with another woman, thus coming to her in a wave of guilt and causing her to deny his request, Newland finds that he cannot hold himself back any longer, and he confesses his love for Ellen. Though she may return his feelings, Ellen realizes that they can never be together because to deny May for her, in an act of volition that would only violate the traditions Newland finds himself an entrenched member in despite his yearning to walk on the wild side, would stifle Newland in a wholly different manner, so Ellen pushes him to May and leaves town. Newland and May marry, but when Newland later sees Ellen again, his longing for her becomes so all-powerful that he is willing to engage in the affair with her, even as he realizes that May and the rest of their wealthy friends may know more than he has hitherto believed. The Age of Innocence is a beautiful movie, in terms of its visual presence. Marty and his production team, from painstakingly detailed art direction, to beautifully rendered period costumes, to colorful and bright cinematography, to a rich and evocative score by Elmer Bernstein that very much recalls the time period being recreated, the film&rsquo;s presentation as something to purely observe was as pretty as a painting. It was hard not to be drawn into such a vividly recalled world from a past long gone with the kind of layering that occurred between all technical aspects of the filmmaking, and the skill used in piecing together these layers is undeniable. Marty&rsquo;s signature styles are also evident, from strategically placed camera wipes to frames that morph from one scene to another in a seamless fashion. He was able to match the subtlety of the themes being explored in the story with his own level of subdued bravado. I could tell Scorsese directed this film, even as it was a film that I never would have guessed was ultimately directed by him, and the result was a marvel. This film is certainly artistic and a wonderful addition to Scorsese's overall body of work. The performances were also very good. The best performance, I think, belonged to Winona Ryder, who was nominated for an Oscar for it. I say this because she infused a sweetness in May which made her character ultimately sympathetic, sad, and strong, even as she was painted to be weak, frail, and ignorant of the larger forces at work around her. Though Ryder has often overstated certain performances or been completely miscast or seemed to be Winona Ryder playing Winona Ryder all over again, none of those characteristics were noticeable here. Her performance was as subtle as the story being told, and I forgot that it was her most of the time. Day-Lewis and Pfeiffer also did well, but for them, I was less imperssed this time around, only because they have long-established track records. Day-Lewis has played many characters of widely different temperaments and motivations, so such a straight character with his smoldering, barely erupting passion did not seem like much of a stretch for him, and Pfeiffer has turned in performances of varied emotional range as well, though at times, I thought of Selena Kyle and Catwoman during this film as I watched her. Don&rsquo;t ask me why. The film also seems to be a wonderful adaptation of the source material, because I was never left for wanting in terms of the progression and resolution of the tale. The problem is &ndash; the film was boring, in its own way, and I think it was boring because this type of story is better suited for being read from the actual novel than for watching on screen. The visual presence was lavish, the performances were great, the direction was great &ndash; but, at least for me, this is not the type of story that sits well for two hours of viewing, and I think that there is a general reaction toward this film, about it being boring, that can be correlated exactly to the fact that it&rsquo;s better as literature than as film. Does this quality detract from the film? Well, in a way, because I don&rsquo;t feel it&rsquo;s the type of film that can stand the test of a time, even as it&rsquo;s understandable that this film would be an Oscar darling, considering that Oscar loves a good period film. Of course, this really is a good period film &ndash; if you go in for this sort of thing, i.e. a study of subtlety, repression, and the other topics previously mentioned. In any event, it seems 1993 was a tough year for Oscar competition, considering that it was the year of Schindler's List and Philadelphia and a number of other films that have since settled more permanently into the public consciousness. These films also have a more timeless quality than this film, which plants two feet firmly into its lost-world days-of-yore period and may be less relatable overall than some of these other tales. In any event, the Age of Innocence is a thing of beauty in its way, though it may best be appreciated in small doses. Ultimately, I think the viewers who enjoy this film most will also be those who have a predisposition toward literature grounded in the Victorian era, which tend to explore similar themes and exhibit similar tones. I enjoyed watching this film for a while but ultimately lost interest in the story, because I tend to have little sympathy for the mores of so-called uppercrust society, and the human condition for the rich is only as compelling as the degree of connection that can be created from these wealthy characters to those who are not wealthy. It is as it is. So, in consideration of all of these considerations, I think the Age of Innocence should be awarded an 8 for being very good/having minor flaws (because it can't be perfectly entertaining if I can't relate to the film in any way). As to the test, it does not pass. Sometimes, a painting, like a film, is only worth one look-see, even if it's a very pretty thing to look at, indeed. http://www.spout.com/groups/Heroines_in_Hollywood/Re_The_List/647/36440/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: filmgal81
Post To: Heroines in Hollywood
Post Date: 10/17/2008 11:02:25 AM
Body: The two films I'd like to discuss star Winona Ryder in two very different roles: The Age of Innocence and Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Age of Innocence deals with many themes of early 20th century life, but specifically of the suffocation of women at that time. May Welland ( Ryder) is supposed to be an innocent in comparison to her more brazen cousin Mme. Olenska (played by the ever beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer). What we learn, however, is that May knows more than she lets on about the nature of people and even surprises her husband Archer in the end by understanding the stifling he felt during their marriage. Despite her intellect, if she had let her husband in on her ideas might've saved their marriage, she felt tied to the conventions of the time-forced to mold herself ( and her husband) into a couple of that era, never breaking from convention. She so bought into this notion that she did not question convention at all or, as Archer said " there was no need trying to emancipate a wife who hadn't the dimmest notion she wasn't free." The new film The Duchess deals with similar themes of a woman's asphyxiation in a marriage. Winona in Dracula is almost like what men feared would happened to someone like May Welland if they did not keep them naive and out of touch with their sexuality. What if May decided to open up to Archer and actually have real relationship, beyond the politeness and formality? What if she feell down the rabbit hole and decided to meet his expectations? What this film represents is how afraid men were ( and in many cases, still are) of a woman's sexual awakening. Although the film ( and the novel) take place in a bygone era, how much have films really changed from portraying women as either the delicate virgin or the seductive, man-eating whore? I think the more films tackle life's gray area, the sticky, confusing parts, the more we'll see heroines that fall somewhere in the middle of those achetypes. [quote user="seely"] I'm hoping to get a list going here of 'essential' films featuriing women. In some way, these films should each create/portray some sort of archetype that somehow demonstrates an idea/stereotype/cultural standard for women. I'll start. I chose Kill Bill for the group picture because I feel that few films have shown so many different aspects and archetypes for women. The very fact that Uma Thurman's character is referred to as 'The Bride' is worthy of note in and of itself. Her character goes from sword-wielding-sexy-vixen to nuturing mother to vengeful kung-fu killer to mother bear to... well, you get the point. I'm not sure any other film hits so many cultural archetypes so clearly. Was there an intentional message in all of this? I'm not even really sure, however I feel that Kill Bill leaves the audience with a sense that women are deeper than the typical shallow one-sided portrayal that is so painfully common on the silver screen. I would actually be so bold as to submit this as a feminist film. [/quote]
]]>Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:02:25 GMTfilmgal81Heroines in Hollywood10/17/2008 11:02:25 AMThe two films I'd like to discuss star Winona Ryder in two very different roles: The Age of Innocence and Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Age of Innocence deals with many themes of early 20th century life, but specifically of the suffocation of women at that time. May Welland ( Ryder) is supposed to be an innocent in comparison to her more brazen cousin Mme. Olenska (played by the ever beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer). What we learn, however, is that May knows more than she lets on about the nature of people and even surprises her husband Archer in the end by understanding the stifling he felt during their marriage. Despite her intellect, if she had let her husband in on her ideas might've saved their marriage, she felt tied to the conventions of the time-forced to mold herself ( and her husband) into a couple of that era, never breaking from convention. She so bought into this notion that she did not question convention at all or, as Archer said " there was no need trying to emancipate a wife who hadn't the dimmest notion she wasn't free." The new film The Duchess deals with similar themes of a woman's asphyxiation in a marriage. Winona in Dracula is almost like what men feared would happened to someone like May Welland if they did not keep them naive and out of touch with their sexuality. What if May decided to open up to Archer and actually have real relationship, beyond the politeness and formality? What if she feell down the rabbit hole and decided to meet his expectations? What this film represents is how afraid men were ( and in many cases, still are) of a woman's sexual awakening. Although the film ( and the novel) take place in a bygone era, how much have films really changed from portraying women as either the delicate virgin or the seductive, man-eating whore? I think the more films tackle life's gray area, the sticky, confusing parts, the more we'll see heroines that fall somewhere in the middle of those achetypes. [quote user="seely"] I'm hoping to get a list going here of 'essential' films featuriing women. In some way, these films should each create/portray some sort of archetype that somehow demonstrates an idea/stereotype/cultural standard for women. I'll start. I chose Kill Bill for the group picture because I feel that few films have shown so many different aspects and archetypes for women. The very fact that Uma Thurman's character is referred to as 'The Bride' is worthy of note in and of itself. Her character goes from sword-wielding-sexy-vixen to nuturing mother to vengeful kung-fu killer to mother bear to... well, you get the point. I'm not sure any other film hits so many cultural archetypes so clearly. Was there an intentional message in all of this? I'm not even really sure, however I feel that Kill Bill leaves the audience with a sense that women are deeper than the typical shallow one-sided portrayal that is so painfully common on the silver screen. I would actually be so bold as to submit this as a feminist film. [/quote] http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/6/11/31136.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 6/11/2008 6:52:27 PM
Body: Spoiler Alert: If you want the ending of Summer Palace to be a surprise, read no further.After watching two hours and twenty minutes of cigarette smoking in yet another Asian movie (see also my comments on the subject in my review of Drifters), I finally bestirred myself long enough to fish up the following news bites:"Guiyang, China — Here's some exciting medical news from the Chinese government: Smoking is great for your health. Cigarettes, according to China's tobacco authorities, are an excellent way to prevent ulcers. They also reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, relieve schizophrenia, boost your brain cells, speed up your thinking, improve your reactions and increase your working efficiency." "With annual sales of 1.8 trillion cigarettes, the Chinese monopoly is responsible for almost one-third of all cigarettes smoked on the planet today. Two-thirds of Chinese men are smokers, and surveys show that as many as 90 per cent believe their habit has little effect on their health, or is good for them. Even in China's medical community, 60 per cent of male doctors are smokers. Few are aware of the studies forecasting that cigarettes will soon be responsible for one-third of all premature deaths among Chinese men."“There is no market more important to the tobacco industry and no nation posing more challenges to tobacco control than China. With 350 million smokers and 1 million tobacco-caused deaths annually, China is the biggest challenge in international tobacco control."Summer Palace begins with its heroine Yu Hong (Lei Huo) at home in her village. Her boyfriend doesn't have much to say to her, but he does urge her to try his imported cigarettes. Now I know why; he's concerned about her health.Anyway.As much as I admire and respect Pauline Kael's reviews, which appeared in the New Yorker for years, nevertheless, I began to take some of them with a grain of salt as she approached the end of her career, because I had the feeling that by then she had simply seen too many movies. She began to dismiss the familiar too quickly, or so it seemed to me, and began taking an interest in the unusual instead, whether the unusual in question merited her interest or not. I was thinking about this while watching Summer Palace because the film is a staring-off-into-space-athon and I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm in the same boat as Pauline - seen too many - at least as far as this type of dialog-eschewing personal-interaction film is concerned. Have I seen too many anguished protagonists gazing moodily into the middle distance to react to the heroine Yu Hong as director Ye Lou would have me react? What is Yu Hong thinking, up there on the screen? Which way will she jump? Why the pain? Is that the thousand-yard stare of a stunned brain I'm seeing, or a portal into her seething emotions? Can I apprehend and empathize with and finally appreciate her internal struggles or will I just shrug them off, always assuming that I can figure out what they are in the first place?In American movies these days, the strong silent type is typically a man with limited acting skills who ends up pulling and using a gun or otherwise kicking major ass after being pushed too far. The problem with the silent stare in a movie with intellectual pretensions like Summer Palace is that as the film wears on, the protagonist can literally do or say anything and we're obliged to take it and like it. Consistency cannot be an issue, since we can't know for sure what the character has been thinking. The consequent action is the result of deep thought, we presume, or mental instability, or, as they say, whatnot. Or perchance the character will do nothing in the end, just continue to stare.I watched an episode of The Wire just before watching Summer Palace.Dense dialog, dense narrative. Corruption in a city where in the final analysis nothing is going to change. Meanwhile, in Summer Palace, one billion people undergo a decade of profound and radical change as the regime gradually opens into an authoritarian economic system. Scant dialog, scant narrative. Ironic.And speaking of not talking to each other - during sex, Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo), Yu Hong's main squeeze in the movie, wears earphones. Call me old-fashioned!Non-dialog reaches new heights in a scene where the lovers are floating on a lake in a rowboat. This is one of those couples-in-a-boat-wordless-montage scenes, only this time, after stretching out interminably, the scene goes no-dialog time-lapse into the night with a full moon rising. Yu Hong will probably tell her diary that she and Zhou Wei were talking into the night, after watching Zhou Wei rest on his oars for eight hours, smoking. And then, back at the hotel after languishing in the boat, sex. And then, "Zhou Wei? I think we should break up." "Why?" "Because I can't leave you." This is the signal to us that whenever things seem to be going well in the movie, Yu Hong will turn away and step off the curb into traffic, metaphorically speaking. An example of the viewer not knowing what is coming, not being a mind reader.I believe that Yu Hong was still a frosh at this point. When I was a frosh, I had a couple of painful wordless dates but they didn't end with me wearing headphones. Or not wearing them, either.Waiting for the dialog in a film like Summer Palace is like reading a Henry James novel. He doles out the spoken words most sparingly - dialog was the crest of the wave, I think he said - but most of the time I was deep under water, longing for any sign of a set of quotation marks, on pages of solid print often missing even a paragraph break. I'm speaking of his late novels.If director Ye Lou were making Casablanca here instead of Summer Palace, Ingrid Bergman would step into Rick's Cafe with her husband, sit down at a table, and smoke and drink beer without speaking to Paul Henreid or anybody else, while Bogart stood at the back of the room, alternately staring at her and looking away, smoking, wordless. Their eyes would meet once. Later, at the end of the movie, after a clinch, Bogart would stare into her eyes and say "What next?" and Bergman would drag on her cigarette and look away, and he'd look away, and she'd look back but he wouldn't, and she'd reply, "What next?" Then she'd look at him looking away some more and then one or both of them would turn and walk away. Lights up.Lei Huo does a nice French inhale or two (or Irish waterfall, if you prefer) in the movie, while not talking, I'll give her that. And there is a scene in a car where she and Zhou Wei drive, with lots of staring. He stares ahead. She stares ahead. Then she stares at him while he stares ahead, and that was good, her staring at him. That scene had some juice, wordless or not. Plus, they were filmed dead-on from in front of the windshield with the car vibrating from its motion, the most realistic such scene that I can remember seeing. Director Ye Lou, a 43-year-old from Shanghai, graduated from the Beijing Film Academy as one of its "Sixth Generation" or "Urban Generation" group of directors (the Fifth Generation, growing up during the Cultural Revolution, was more familiar with the rural than the urban), which also includes, for example, Jia Zhangke (Platform, 2000), Xiaoshuai Wang (Drifters, 2003), and Zhang Yuan (Seventeen Years, 1999). There is a definite trend in many Chinese Sixth Generation movies to skate over narrative and dialog (see, for example, The Wayward Cloud). Obviously, I need to be in the mood for this.In Ye Lou's case, the lack of dialog seems to grow out of his philosophy of film."I want Lei Huo to be the character, not pretend to be the character. If she's just pretending, even if she's a very competent actor, she'll still harm the character, because the audience will just see her as a very good actor." Not so. That's why they're called actors.This reminds me of Olivier's reply to Hoffman, who was using The Method in Marathon Man to get into character and asked Olivier about the technique that he used to do the same. "Dear boy," Sir Lawrence replied. "It's called acting."Because to ensure that Lei Huo will "be the character," Ye Lou provides her with virtually no dialog - he can't presume, you see - and, unlike in a Mike Leigh film, she doesn't trouble herself to develop any herself. Which leaves us to divine what's going on in her noggin by the expression on her purposely expressionless face. Lei Huo says "the character is like me in real life. She's going to break my heart" but this doesn't help me, since I don't happen to know Lei Huo personally. She's a force though, with her nose often a little red.But. Having said all that. It's true that throughout the movie, once she gets to university, Yu Hong tells us what she is thinking by reading excerpts from her diary in voice-over. However, her thoughts as verbalized do not illuminate; they merely reiterate the non-look on her face. Viz, after meeting her one true love for the first time and dancing with him to "Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Backseat" (neither of them speaking, needless to say):"Had I not viewed my life in the light of the ideal, its mediocrity would have been unbearable. That's how I saw things when we met. You came into my life. You are my most refined friend. It's very simple. I knew the moment I saw you that we were standing on the same side of the world. And then we talked the whole night long. For all that, there are troubling aspects to our relationship which can't be reduced simply to pleasure or lack of it. I want to live more and more intensely. It's clear to me, nowhere more so than in our relationship, because there are times when I'm clearly imposing my will on you. If one takes desire lightly, action will be constricted. It was through love that I understood this. There's no getting around it. There are only illusions. Illusions. Those lethal things."This load is dropped on us at one go, intercut with tracking shots of Yu Hong and Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo), her new university lover, walking and gazing but not speaking. Perhaps they talked the night away and we never saw it, but more likely all the talking is being done directly into the diary. The message: the course of love never did run smooth. I think I can say with assurance that I never dated and danced and talked the night away with a girl who had these thoughts running through her mind.The dictum is "Show, don't tell." Here we have the opposite. The silence doesn't show and the voice-over diary reading tells constantly.Later from the diary, we get the likes of:"As soon as love touches you, life is knocked off balance.""True love can only appear at the most intense moments of anguish and suffering."Later one of Yu Hong's lovers says, "You're so simple. You're different from other women. You're simple and straightforward." He obviously did not get his hands on the diary.Of course, there are language and cultural issues here. In the absence of a gloss for the subtitles, this is where you pause the movie and turn to your spouse or significant other, if he or she happens to be from China, to solicit some cultural and linguistic input that might help you pick up on the nuances in those diary entries and in the dialog and action in general. Because these are our fundamental hints about what is going on in the minds of the characters and the hints are just enough but not more than enough to mute any surprise we might feel when, at the apparent height of their happiness, as they lie full-frontal (a Chinese first. Fifteen years ago, kissing was hardly allowed), staring up at the ceiling with the camera aimed down at them, Yu Hong suggests that Xhou Wei get circumcised. Why? he asks. (Xiaodong Guo speaks as quietly throughout this movie as anyone I can remember speaking on film without actually whispering.) Yu Hong replies, Because it would be less painful. Who told you that? he asks. My professor, she says. Why did he tell you that? Because, she says, we were making love. This puts an immediate damper on the couple's romantic outing. Yu Hong follows an old romantic convention and walks away from happiness whenever she chances to encounter it.Another quick scene that might benefit from a little cultural interpretation: Yu Hong is sitting in a public park next to a basketball court, waiting for her boyfriend to arrive. He's late. She's watching some young men play a pickup game. Her boyfriend rides up on his motorcycle, hops off, and apologizes for being late. Suddenly, an outcry. He's parked on the court or on a part of the street serving as the court. Immediately there is a struggle and he gets a shiner and scraped cheeks. The young woman joins in the fracas. The problem is, the conflict is instantaneous and obliquely shot, so that it is impossible to tell what's happening, exactly. The scene feels clunky and staged, which is strange considering that it follows several quiet and evocative scenes that open the movie. Surely this doesn't mean that Ye Lou doesn't have the chops to handle a little action, action as majorly simple as this? He obviously isn't a fan of Hong Kong movie brawls, but I'm thinking that I've missed some cultural nuance in the scene that might help account for its amateur feeling.And one more word about taciturn actors: we don't even get diary entries from Zhou Wei. He drives away from Yu Hong at the end of the movie without a word but with, we presume, extreme regret (though his face doesn't show it). Who knows why?Earlier, hanging out in Berlin because that is what the director did after he got out of school, separated now from Yu Hong, his true love, Zhou Wei sits next to a young Polish woman. The two are gazing out at a Berlin wasteland. One presumes, on the evidence of the movie so far, that they are casually intimate, perhaps lovers."What is Warsaw like?" Zhou Wei says.Pause for some gazing and brow-wrinkling by the girl."It's ok," she says. Mutual space-gazing."And Beijing?" she says back.Gazing in tandem. I like it that the man from China and the woman from Poland are conversing quietly in German. Xiaodong Guo continues to speaks in a too-cool quiet voice."It's ok," he says.I figured that that was going to be it for the scene but after another bit of gazing, she asks him if he has a girlfriend. He says that he does. We feel the painful significance of this terse reply. Where is she? the girl asks. Somber piano notes."Very far away," he says in German with a Beijing accent."In China?""Perhaps.""Where are we right now?" the girl asks. Zhou Wei exhales cigarette smoke. She says, "In Berlin?"What she means by this, I have no idea. The first time I watched the scene I rolled my eyes. By the fifth time I was liking it. At least they were saying something to each other, even if it didn't make any sense.The director wanted to make an organic movie that grew, as if alive, and that involved the actors. What are the implications of this for the movie's story? Is "organic" code here for "no plot," or "no narrative," or "juryrigged narrative arc"? The makers of Manda Bala, which I just reviewed, went on a five-year hunt for a story with limited success. Ye Lou didn't take that long, unless you count the fact that he's been thinking about this film since his graduation from film school in 1989. His struggle is evident, though, in the same way that Jason Kohn's was in Manda Bala - nurturing a hope that something will crop up. A failure of ability or imagination or no failure, but simply the constrictions on storytelling imposed by the original vision. The suicide in Summer Palace (wordless), and its wordless aftermath (serious staring off), and the abortion (wordless), and Yu Hong getting hit by a car, and some of the sex, and most of the rest of the staring-off-into-space in this film could have been eliminated, to the film's benefit, by replacing it all with a little sharp dialog. Having said that, the movie never dragged for me; the two hours and twenty minutes it ran felt like less."I don't want a construction, with a clear beginning, middle, and end," says the director. In his opinion, the story would naturally end with the events in Tiananmen Square in '89, which occur halfway through, but he must show the consequences of Chinese economic and political development with respect to the students during the ten years that follow. He wants his film to live and it appears that in his view, forcing it into the straightjacket of a story would kill it. "One of the challenges in the narrative is that the climax of the story is actually in the middle of the film and not at the end. But it wasn't possible for the story to end there. That moment had to be in the middle of the film." I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm oblivious to metaphor in film. To the extent that the lives of the students in the decade after Tiananmen stand in for the economic and political developments in the country, the film doesn't work for me. The director says that it's a melodrama, not a political statement; some commentators think that Western viewers will take the movie as a melodrama while Chinese viewers will react to the representation of China ten years ago. I got the melodrama and not so much the mood of that country in the 90s.Regardless of my issues about dialog and narrative, I have nothing but respect for Ye Lou as a maker of movies. He made Weekend Lover in 1995 and then Suzhou River without permission, in 2002. Suzhou River won prizes and was praised as "exhibiting the most eloquent and effortless command of the post-Wong Kar-wai pop idiom yet." The Chinese government then put him out of business for two years. Ye Lou takes his movies seriously. After making Purple Butterfly in 2003, he did Summer Palace and was hit with another suspension by the government in 2006, for five years this time, because he entered the movie at Canneswithout permission. A sacrifice like that requires us to take second and third looks at his filmmaking philosophy. As does the praise for Summer Palace from the likes of A.O. Scott and David Denby. "I'm just a director. I'm not a politician. I don't want to get into boring politics in my films. Many Chinese directors practice self-censorship because of the tight controls. But I think this is fatal. Directors must be free. So I say to everyone when we are working, 'Let's forget censorship.' That's why there are always so many troubles after the film. But while I am shooting, I am very happy... In my opinion, in its current condition, we still have a lot of problems. First and foremost, Chinese cinema still isn't free, either in terms of creativity, management, or regulations. If you can't express your opinions freely, you can't accurately judge the value of other people's words. We need to be able to express what we really think before we can judge the form or soundness of another expression." Summer Palace was withdrawn by the producers at Cannes after the Chinese government's reaction to its release.The movie had more film-making resources available to it than most Chinese films. Scenes were shot in six different cities, through four seasons, with rain, wind, and summer heat. (Do Asian movies do rain best? It can come down in buckets. Rashomon - now that was rain.) To make this romance about the youth of his generation, Ye Lou returned to the same dorm rooms he had lived in at university. If I returned to the dorm rooms that I lived in at Occidental and Tufts and dressed them to match the time that I was there, and then filmed moments of political, cultural, and physical awakening in them that matched my own, I expect that the results would resonate powerfully with me. Wow. But probably not with anybody else. Would this cloud my judgment around the dramatic and esthetic issues that arise while making a film? I know nothing about Beijing University and the Summer Palace next door to it, other than that the school's interior looks a lot like a hard-used middle school I used to know in the toughest neighborhood in Detroit.Similarly, after college the peregrinations of the students reflect the director's own post-graduate travels. Zhou Wei hies off to Germany (Ye Lou met his wife in Berlin), Dong Dong to the U.S., the others to large cities in south China. We see the wall in Berlin coming down, Gorby, Hong Kong reverting to china. But there are two hundred cities in China with a population over one million and I can't name three of them; the director's scheme of moving south city by city to indicate, metaphorically, the opening of Chinese economic policy in the 90s (it having always been easier to operate in China the farther south you went) was lost on me. Perhaps if these students had started in Detroit and headed down to St. Louis, and then Nashville, Texarkana, Santa Fe, and Venice Beach, and Italy instead of Germany, I might have registered more fully the zeitgeist presented in the movie. I was talking to a couple of young people the other day who are working in online data acquisition in Boston. They've been having the feeling lately, after a couple of years in private industry following a lifetime in school, of "This is it? This is what it means to finally be an adult?" Questions which anyone in this movie would understand. At university in Beijing in '89, everything seemed possible. The world could be changed. In the second half of Summer Palace, the former students learn that this feeling was an illusion, something that Yu Hong realized much sooner.The '90s were a time of confusion for many twenty-somethings in China. The characters in Summer Palace spend a lot of time acting confused. I take the point. There is old China here but there is also Coca Cola in the big red bottle on the ferry, and this is the first time I recall seeing a mainland China gas station. It wasn’t self-serve. Just off the freeway. Had a mini-mart. The thing about character confusion is that, in the absence of dialog, it can edge into boredom, aimlessness, and ennui, which can then translate into boredom for the viewer, especially if the viewer doesn't knit. It occurred to me to wonder at one point about the difference, if any, between the boredom of childhood, the boredom of adolescence, that of young adults, of parents, of the middle-aged, of seniors, and of pet dogs. And whether the boredom engendered by a bad action flick is the same as or different than the boredom caused by an art movie with a bad case of the longeures. These are questions to pursue in a later review, when a truly boring movie comes along.Mick LaSalle in his podcast the other day said that the key to an effective romantic sex scene (as opposed to the other types of sex scene) is to make sure that longing precedes it. This is a forte of current Chinese filmmakers. They tell love stories, with all the difficulties so often attendant to them, and they seem to specialize in longing. Consider the movies I've mentioned above, or any movie by Wong Kar-Wai, or Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or Brokeback Mountain. Summer Palace begins with an entry in Yu Hong's diary: "There is something that comes suddenly like a wind on a warm summer's evening. It takes you off guard and leaves you without peace. It follows you like a shadow and it's impossible to shake. I don't know what it is, so I can only call it love." Love blows in like a wind, and it's an ill wind that blows no good. With fifteen minutes left in the movie, Zhou Wei learns that Yu Hong is married. The longing on his part takes a final, major step up.You've got to look long and hard to find this kind of movie in the West. Romantic comedies, sexual-attraction movies, historical romances like The Age of Innocence from time to time, but modern longing and romance? Not so much. This is not to say that most of Yu Hong's sexual activity is meant to be romantic. Instead, she says in her diary, "It's only when we're making love that you realize that I'm gentle." She teaches a number of men that she's gentle by using this direct method. She has tried countless other ways but has chosen this special direct method as the most efficacious. I have a feelingthat the word "gentle" does not do justice to Yu Hong's original conception, but one way or another, it's all about her trying to be accepted as good and tender. Thinking back, I'm wondering if any of those women I knew were just trying to show me that they were gentle. Question: Does longing for one person make sex scenes with someone else work? Yu Hong, for example, while longing for Zhou Wei, finds love with Wu Gang (at least until "material poverty can only lead to resentment"). Hmm, now that I think of it, most of the sex in the movie involves longing for someone absent.Li Ti (the suicide) wouldn't allow anyone to love her for fear of hurting them. "Love is like a wound in the heart. When it heals, love disappears. Or never existed."Ye Lou calls Summer Palace a melodrama, not a historical study. Most of its two-and-a-half hours is spent examining love, watching young men and women in love, trying to explain love.Ye Lou: "Then love is like a leaf in the universe. if the universe were a tree, love would be a leaf on the tree. And we can glimpse at the shape of the universe by looking at just one leaf. So I can just depict the love. Once I've protrayed the love, I've portrayed the universe."Well, if I see an elm leaf, I can't tell you what the trunk of the tree looks like. Does Ye Lou succeed in explaining love, or are we simply peppered with notions?"Why was it that nothing he had said to me or done to me could prevent my heart from going out to him," Yu Hongs says. I never spotted Zhou Wei actually saying or doing anything in particular to her, so I take the question to actually be a statement. The director has said that love is uncontrollable, that is goes beyond events, that it can't be restrained, that we can't demand anything of it. We can't expect it to bring happiness, or marriage, or a long and happy life together. He says that emotional torment takes time, a lot of time, to resolve. For Ye Hong and Zhou Wei to come back together and stay together, the director says, would have taken them another decade of longing and would have taken him another hour of screen time. Now I don't feel so bad that they didn't get back together.So, a movie about love. What do I take away from it? If you're in love and you have sex repeatedly, it doesn't lead to boredom, as in real life, but to unhappy longing for your absent partner. Or vice versa. I hope the director has had better luck with love than his characters in Summer Place, because, in this movie, not to lower the tenor of the review, if love strikes, you're f**ked.
]]>Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:52:27 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog6/11/2008 6:52:27 PMSpoiler Alert: If you want the ending of Summer Palace to be a surprise, read no further.After watching two hours and twenty minutes of cigarette smoking in yet another Asian movie (see also my comments on the subject in my review of Drifters), I finally bestirred myself long enough to fish up the following news bites:"Guiyang, China &mdash; Here's some exciting medical news from the Chinese government: Smoking is great for your health. Cigarettes, according to China's tobacco authorities, are an excellent way to prevent ulcers. They also reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, relieve schizophrenia, boost your brain cells, speed up your thinking, improve your reactions and increase your working efficiency." "With annual sales of 1.8 trillion cigarettes, the Chinese monopoly is responsible for almost one-third of all cigarettes smoked on the planet today. Two-thirds of Chinese men are smokers, and surveys show that as many as 90 per cent believe their habit has little effect on their health, or is good for them. Even in China's medical community, 60 per cent of male doctors are smokers. Few are aware of the studies forecasting that cigarettes will soon be responsible for one-third of all premature deaths among Chinese men."&ldquo;There is no market more important to the tobacco industry and no nation posing more challenges to tobacco control than China. With 350 million smokers and 1 million tobacco-caused deaths annually, China is the biggest challenge in international tobacco control."Summer Palace begins with its heroine Yu Hong (Lei Huo) at home in her village. Her boyfriend doesn't have much to say to her, but he does urge her to try his imported cigarettes. Now I know why; he's concerned about her health.Anyway.As much as I admire and respect Pauline Kael's reviews, which appeared in the New Yorker for years, nevertheless, I began to take some of them with a grain of salt as she approached the end of her career, because I had the feeling that by then she had simply seen too many movies. She began to dismiss the familiar too quickly, or so it seemed to me, and began taking an interest in the unusual instead, whether the unusual in question merited her interest or not. I was thinking about this while watching Summer Palace because the film is a staring-off-into-space-athon and I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm in the same boat as Pauline - seen too many - at least as far as this type of dialog-eschewing personal-interaction film is concerned. Have I seen too many anguished protagonists gazing moodily into the middle distance to react to the heroine Yu Hong as director Ye Lou would have me react? What is Yu Hong thinking, up there on the screen? Which way will she jump? Why the pain? Is that the thousand-yard stare of a stunned brain I'm seeing, or a portal into her seething emotions? Can I apprehend and empathize with and finally appreciate her internal struggles or will I just shrug them off, always assuming that I can figure out what they are in the first place?In American movies these days, the strong silent type is typically a man with limited acting skills who ends up pulling and using a gun or otherwise kicking major ass after being pushed too far. The problem with the silent stare in a movie with intellectual pretensions like Summer Palace is that as the film wears on, the protagonist can literally do or say anything and we're obliged to take it and like it. Consistency cannot be an issue, since we can't know for sure what the character has been thinking. The consequent action is the result of deep thought, we presume, or mental instability, or, as they say, whatnot. Or perchance the character will do nothing in the end, just continue to stare.I watched an episode of The Wire just before watching Summer Palace.Dense dialog, dense narrative. Corruption in a city where in the final analysis nothing is going to change. Meanwhile, in Summer Palace, one billion people undergo a decade of profound and radical change as the regime gradually opens into an authoritarian economic system. Scant dialog, scant narrative. Ironic.And speaking of not talking to each other - during sex, Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo), Yu Hong's main squeeze in the movie, wears earphones. Call me old-fashioned!Non-dialog reaches new heights in a scene where the lovers are floating on a lake in a rowboat. This is one of those couples-in-a-boat-wordless-montage scenes, only this time, after stretching out interminably, the scene goes no-dialog time-lapse into the night with a full moon rising. Yu Hong will probably tell her diary that she and Zhou Wei were talking into the night, after watching Zhou Wei rest on his oars for eight hours, smoking. And then, back at the hotel after languishing in the boat, sex. And then, "Zhou Wei? I think we should break up." "Why?" "Because I can't leave you." This is the signal to us that whenever things seem to be going well in the movie, Yu Hong will turn away and step off the curb into traffic, metaphorically speaking. An example of the viewer not knowing what is coming, not being a mind reader.I believe that Yu Hong was still a frosh at this point. When I was a frosh, I had a couple of painful wordless dates but they didn't end with me wearing headphones. Or not wearing them, either.Waiting for the dialog in a film like Summer Palace is like reading a Henry James novel. He doles out the spoken words most sparingly - dialog was the crest of the wave, I think he said - but most of the time I was deep under water, longing for any sign of a set of quotation marks, on pages of solid print often missing even a paragraph break. I'm speaking of his late novels.If director Ye Lou were making Casablanca here instead of Summer Palace, Ingrid Bergman would step into Rick's Cafe with her husband, sit down at a table, and smoke and drink beer without speaking to Paul Henreid or anybody else, while Bogart stood at the back of the room, alternately staring at her and looking away, smoking, wordless. Their eyes would meet once. Later, at the end of the movie, after a clinch, Bogart would stare into her eyes and say "What next?" and Bergman would drag on her cigarette and look away, and he'd look away, and she'd look back but he wouldn't, and she'd reply, "What next?" Then she'd look at him looking away some more and then one or both of them would turn and walk away. Lights up.Lei Huo does a nice French inhale or two (or Irish waterfall, if you prefer) in the movie, while not talking, I'll give her that. And there is a scene in a car where she and Zhou Wei drive, with lots of staring. He stares ahead. She stares ahead. Then she stares at him while he stares ahead, and that was good, her staring at him. That scene had some juice, wordless or not. Plus, they were filmed dead-on from in front of the windshield with the car vibrating from its motion, the most realistic such scene that I can remember seeing. Director Ye Lou, a 43-year-old from Shanghai, graduated from the Beijing Film Academy as one of its "Sixth Generation" or "Urban Generation" group of directors (the Fifth Generation, growing up during the Cultural Revolution, was more familiar with the rural than the urban), which also includes, for example, Jia Zhangke (Platform, 2000), Xiaoshuai Wang (Drifters, 2003), and Zhang Yuan (Seventeen Years, 1999). There is a definite trend in many Chinese Sixth Generation movies to skate over narrative and dialog (see, for example, The Wayward Cloud). Obviously, I need to be in the mood for this.In Ye Lou's case, the lack of dialog seems to grow out of his philosophy of film."I want Lei Huo to be the character, not pretend to be the character. If she's just pretending, even if she's a very competent actor, she'll still harm the character, because the audience will just see her as a very good actor." Not so. That's why they're called actors.This reminds me of Olivier's reply to Hoffman, who was using The Method in Marathon Man to get into character and asked Olivier about the technique that he used to do the same. "Dear boy," Sir Lawrence replied. "It's called acting."Because to ensure that Lei Huo will "be the character," Ye Lou provides her with virtually no dialog - he can't presume, you see - and, unlike in a Mike Leigh film, she doesn't trouble herself to develop any herself. Which leaves us to divine what's going on in her noggin by the expression on her purposely expressionless face. Lei Huo says "the character is like me in real life. She's going to break my heart" but this doesn't help me, since I don't happen to know Lei Huo personally. She's a force though, with her nose often a little red.But. Having said all that. It's true that throughout the movie, once she gets to university, Yu Hong tells us what she is thinking by reading excerpts from her diary in voice-over. However, her thoughts as verbalized do not illuminate; they merely reiterate the non-look on her face. Viz, after meeting her one true love for the first time and dancing with him to "Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Backseat" (neither of them speaking, needless to say):"Had I not viewed my life in the light of the ideal, its mediocrity would have been unbearable. That's how I saw things when we met. You came into my life. You are my most refined friend. It's very simple. I knew the moment I saw you that we were standing on the same side of the world. And then we talked the whole night long. For all that, there are troubling aspects to our relationship which can't be reduced simply to pleasure or lack of it. I want to live more and more intensely. It's clear to me, nowhere more so than in our relationship, because there are times when I'm clearly imposing my will on you. If one takes desire lightly, action will be constricted. It was through love that I understood this. There's no getting around it. There are only illusions. Illusions. Those lethal things."This load is dropped on us at one go, intercut with tracking shots of Yu Hong and Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo), her new university lover, walking and gazing but not speaking. Perhaps they talked the night away and we never saw it, but more likely all the talking is being done directly into the diary. The message: the course of love never did run smooth. I think I can say with assurance that I never dated and danced and talked the night away with a girl who had these thoughts running through her mind.The dictum is "Show, don't tell." Here we have the opposite. The silence doesn't show and the voice-over diary reading tells constantly.Later from the diary, we get the likes of:"As soon as love touches you, life is knocked off balance.""True love can only appear at the most intense moments of anguish and suffering."Later one of Yu Hong's lovers says, "You're so simple. You're different from other women. You're simple and straightforward." He obviously did not get his hands on the diary.Of course, there are language and cultural issues here. In the absence of a gloss for the subtitles, this is where you pause the movie and turn to your spouse or significant other, if he or she happens to be from China, to solicit some cultural and linguistic input that might help you pick up on the nuances in those diary entries and in the dialog and action in general. Because these are our fundamental hints about what is going on in the minds of the characters and the hints are just enough but not more than enough to mute any surprise we might feel when, at the apparent height of their happiness, as they lie full-frontal (a Chinese first. Fifteen years ago, kissing was hardly allowed), staring up at the ceiling with the camera aimed down at them, Yu Hong suggests that Xhou Wei get circumcised. Why? he asks. (Xiaodong Guo speaks as quietly throughout this movie as anyone I can remember speaking on film without actually whispering.) Yu Hong replies, Because it would be less painful. Who told you that? he asks. My professor, she says. Why did he tell you that? Because, she says, we were making love. This puts an immediate damper on the couple's romantic outing. Yu Hong follows an old romantic convention and walks away from happiness whenever she chances to encounter it.Another quick scene that might benefit from a little cultural interpretation: Yu Hong is sitting in a public park next to a basketball court, waiting for her boyfriend to arrive. He's late. She's watching some young men play a pickup game. Her boyfriend rides up on his motorcycle, hops off, and apologizes for being late. Suddenly, an outcry. He's parked on the court or on a part of the street serving as the court. Immediately there is a struggle and he gets a shiner and scraped cheeks. The young woman joins in the fracas. The problem is, the conflict is instantaneous and obliquely shot, so that it is impossible to tell what's happening, exactly. The scene feels clunky and staged, which is strange considering that it follows several quiet and evocative scenes that open the movie. Surely this doesn't mean that Ye Lou doesn't have the chops to handle a little action, action as majorly simple as this? He obviously isn't a fan of Hong Kong movie brawls, but I'm thinking that I've missed some cultural nuance in the scene that might help account for its amateur feeling.And one more word about taciturn actors: we don't even get diary entries from Zhou Wei. He drives away from Yu Hong at the end of the movie without a word but with, we presume, extreme regret (though his face doesn't show it). Who knows why?Earlier, hanging out in Berlin because that is what the director did after he got out of school, separated now from Yu Hong, his true love, Zhou Wei sits next to a young Polish woman. The two are gazing out at a Berlin wasteland. One presumes, on the evidence of the movie so far, that they are casually intimate, perhaps lovers."What is Warsaw like?" Zhou Wei says.Pause for some gazing and brow-wrinkling by the girl."It's ok," she says. Mutual space-gazing."And Beijing?" she says back.Gazing in tandem. I like it that the man from China and the woman from Poland are conversing quietly in German. Xiaodong Guo continues to speaks in a too-cool quiet voice."It's ok," he says.I figured that that was going to be it for the scene but after another bit of gazing, she asks him if he has a girlfriend. He says that he does. We feel the painful significance of this terse reply. Where is she? the girl asks. Somber piano notes."Very far away," he says in German with a Beijing accent."In China?""Perhaps.""Where are we right now?" the girl asks. Zhou Wei exhales cigarette smoke. She says, "In Berlin?"What she means by this, I have no idea. The first time I watched the scene I rolled my eyes. By the fifth time I was liking it. At least they were saying something to each other, even if it didn't make any sense.The director wanted to make an organic movie that grew, as if alive, and that involved the actors. What are the implications of this for the movie's story? Is "organic" code here for "no plot," or "no narrative," or "juryrigged narrative arc"? The makers of Manda Bala, which I just reviewed, went on a five-year hunt for a story with limited success. Ye Lou didn't take that long, unless you count the fact that he's been thinking about this film since his graduation from film school in 1989. His struggle is evident, though, in the same way that Jason Kohn's was in Manda Bala - nurturing a hope that something will crop up. A failure of ability or imagination or no failure, but simply the constrictions on storytelling imposed by the original vision. The suicide in Summer Palace (wordless), and its wordless aftermath (serious staring off), and the abortion (wordless), and Yu Hong getting hit by a car, and some of the sex, and most of the rest of the staring-off-into-space in this film could have been eliminated, to the film's benefit, by replacing it all with a little sharp dialog. Having said that, the movie never dragged for me; the two hours and twenty minutes it ran felt like less."I don't want a construction, with a clear beginning, middle, and end," says the director. In his opinion, the story would naturally end with the events in Tiananmen Square in '89, which occur halfway through, but he must show the consequences of Chinese economic and political development with respect to the students during the ten years that follow. He wants his film to live and it appears that in his view, forcing it into the straightjacket of a story would kill it. "One of the challenges in the narrative is that the climax of the story is actually in the middle of the film and not at the end. But it wasn't possible for the story to end there. That moment had to be in the middle of the film." I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm oblivious to metaphor in film. To the extent that the lives of the students in the decade after Tiananmen stand in for the economic and political developments in the country, the film doesn't work for me. The director says that it's a melodrama, not a political statement; some commentators think that Western viewers will take the movie as a melodrama while Chinese viewers will react to the representation of China ten years ago. I got the melodrama and not so much the mood of that country in the 90s.Regardless of my issues about dialog and narrative, I have nothing but respect for Ye Lou as a maker of movies. He made Weekend Lover in 1995 and then Suzhou River without permission, in 2002. Suzhou River won prizes and was praised as "exhibiting the most eloquent and effortless command of the post-Wong Kar-wai pop idiom yet." The Chinese government then put him out of business for two years. Ye Lou takes his movies seriously. After making Purple Butterfly in 2003, he did Summer Palace and was hit with another suspension by the government in 2006, for five years this time, because he entered the movie at Canneswithout permission. A sacrifice like that requires us to take second and third looks at his filmmaking philosophy. As does the praise for Summer Palace from the likes of A.O. Scott and David Denby. "I'm just a director. I'm not a politician. I don't want to get into boring politics in my films. Many Chinese directors practice self-censorship because of the tight controls. But I think this is fatal. Directors must be free. So I say to everyone when we are working, 'Let's forget censorship.' That's why there are always so many troubles after the film. But while I am shooting, I am very happy... In my opinion, in its current condition, we still have a lot of problems. First and foremost, Chinese cinema still isn't free, either in terms of creativity, management, or regulations. If you can't express your opinions freely, you can't accurately judge the value of other people's words. We need to be able to express what we really think before we can judge the form or soundness of another expression." Summer Palace was withdrawn by the producers at Cannes after the Chinese government's reaction to its release.The movie had more film-making resources available to it than most Chinese films. Scenes were shot in six different cities, through four seasons, with rain, wind, and summer heat. (Do Asian movies do rain best? It can come down in buckets. Rashomon - now that was rain.) To make this romance about the youth of his generation, Ye Lou returned to the same dorm rooms he had lived in at university. If I returned to the dorm rooms that I lived in at Occidental and Tufts and dressed them to match the time that I was there, and then filmed moments of political, cultural, and physical awakening in them that matched my own, I expect that the results would resonate powerfully with me. Wow. But probably not with anybody else. Would this cloud my judgment around the dramatic and esthetic issues that arise while making a film? I know nothing about Beijing University and the Summer Palace next door to it, other than that the school's interior looks a lot like a hard-used middle school I used to know in the toughest neighborhood in Detroit.Similarly, after college the peregrinations of the students reflect the director's own post-graduate travels. Zhou Wei hies off to Germany (Ye Lou met his wife in Berlin), Dong Dong to the U.S., the others to large cities in south China. We see the wall in Berlin coming down, Gorby, Hong Kong reverting to china. But there are two hundred cities in China with a population over one million and I can't name three of them; the director's scheme of moving south city by city to indicate, metaphorically, the opening of Chinese economic policy in the 90s (it having always been easier to operate in China the farther south you went) was lost on me. Perhaps if these students had started in Detroit and headed down to St. Louis, and then Nashville, Texarkana, Santa Fe, and Venice Beach, and Italy instead of Germany, I might have registered more fully the zeitgeist presented in the movie. I was talking to a couple of young people the other day who are working in online data acquisition in Boston. They've been having the feeling lately, after a couple of years in private industry following a lifetime in school, of "This is it? This is what it means to finally be an adult?" Questions which anyone in this movie would understand. At university in Beijing in '89, everything seemed possible. The world could be changed. In the second half of Summer Palace, the former students learn that this feeling was an illusion, something that Yu Hong realized much sooner.The '90s were a time of confusion for many twenty-somethings in China. The characters in Summer Palace spend a lot of time acting confused. I take the point. There is old China here but there is also Coca Cola in the big red bottle on the ferry, and this is the first time I recall seeing a mainland China gas station. It wasn&rsquo;t self-serve. Just off the freeway. Had a mini-mart. The thing about character confusion is that, in the absence of dialog, it can edge into boredom, aimlessness, and ennui, which can then translate into boredom for the viewer, especially if the viewer doesn't knit. It occurred to me to wonder at one point about the difference, if any, between the boredom of childhood, the boredom of adolescence, that of young adults, of parents, of the middle-aged, of seniors, and of pet dogs. And whether the boredom engendered by a bad action flick is the same as or different than the boredom caused by an art movie with a bad case of the longeures. These are questions to pursue in a later review, when a truly boring movie comes along.Mick LaSalle in his podcast the other day said that the key to an effective romantic sex scene (as opposed to the other types of sex scene) is to make sure that longing precedes it. This is a forte of current Chinese filmmakers. They tell love stories, with all the difficulties so often attendant to them, and they seem to specialize in longing. Consider the movies I've mentioned above, or any movie by Wong Kar-Wai, or Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or Brokeback Mountain. Summer Palace begins with an entry in Yu Hong's diary: "There is something that comes suddenly like a wind on a warm summer's evening. It takes you off guard and leaves you without peace. It follows you like a shadow and it's impossible to shake. I don't know what it is, so I can only call it love." Love blows in like a wind, and it's an ill wind that blows no good. With fifteen minutes left in the movie, Zhou Wei learns that Yu Hong is married. The longing on his part takes a final, major step up.You've got to look long and hard to find this kind of movie in the West. Romantic comedies, sexual-attraction movies, historical romances like The Age of Innocence from time to time, but modern longing and romance? Not so much. This is not to say that most of Yu Hong's sexual activity is meant to be romantic. Instead, she says in her diary, "It's only when we're making love that you realize that I'm gentle." She teaches a number of men that she's gentle by using this direct method. She has tried countless other ways but has chosen this special direct method as the most efficacious. I have a feelingthat the word "gentle" does not do justice to Yu Hong's original conception, but one way or another, it's all about her trying to be accepted as good and tender. Thinking back, I'm wondering if any of those women I knew were just trying to show me that they were gentle. Question: Does longing for one person make sex scenes with someone else work? Yu Hong, for example, while longing for Zhou Wei, finds love with Wu Gang (at least until "material poverty can only lead to resentment"). Hmm, now that I think of it, most of the sex in the movie involves longing for someone absent.Li Ti (the suicide) wouldn't allow anyone to love her for fear of hurting them. "Love is like a wound in the heart. When it heals, love disappears. Or never existed."Ye Lou calls Summer Palace a melodrama, not a historical study. Most of its two-and-a-half hours is spent examining love, watching young men and women in love, trying to explain love.Ye Lou: "Then love is like a leaf in the universe. if the universe were a tree, love would be a leaf on the tree. And we can glimpse at the shape of the universe by looking at just one leaf. So I can just depict the love. Once I've protrayed the love, I've portrayed the universe."Well, if I see an elm leaf, I can't tell you what the trunk of the tree looks like. Does Ye Lou succeed in explaining love, or are we simply peppered with notions?"Why was it that nothing he had said to me or done to me could prevent my heart from going out to him," Yu Hongs says. I never spotted Zhou Wei actually saying or doing anything in particular to her, so I take the question to actually be a statement. The director has said that love is uncontrollable, that is goes beyond events, that it can't be restrained, that we can't demand anything of it. We can't expect it to bring happiness, or marriage, or a long and happy life together. He says that emotional torment takes time, a lot of time, to resolve. For Ye Hong and Zhou Wei to come back together and stay together, the director says, would have taken them another decade of longing and would have taken him another hour of screen time. Now I don't feel so bad that they didn't get back together.So, a movie about love. What do I take away from it? If you're in love and you have sex repeatedly, it doesn't lead to boredom, as in real life, but to unhappy longing for your absent partner. Or vice versa. I hope the director has had better luck with love than his characters in Summer Place, because, in this movie, not to lower the tenor of the review, if love strikes, you're f**ked. http://www.spout.com/blogs/cinemarian/archive/2008/5/12/28586.aspx Post By: CinemaRian
Post To: CinemaRian Blog
Post Date: 5/12/2008 11:27:43 AM
Body: Despite the fact that I am often told that I have poor attention span, I had no problem getting caught up in Martin Scorsese's almost unbearably beautiful costume drama The Age of Innocence. I know that a lot of people find this film boring, but I wasn't among them, being drawn into a world that used to exist but is now gone forever. It might be surprising to find Scorsese adapting a novel that would seem more appropriate for Merchant/Ivory than a filmmaker known for gangster films, but the movie has so many Scorsese trademarks- long, showy camera moves, voiceover narration revealing the character's innermost thoughts, and a man caught between social ambitions and his inner desires. Based on the classic novel by Edith Wharton (which I have never read) the movie begins in the 1870's as New York attorney and aristocrat Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is engaged to marry the young and beautiful socialite May (Winona Ryder). They seem to genuinely love each other and are set for domestic happiness, but Newland is asked to try to stop a May's cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfieffer) from getting a divorce, which at that point was scandalous. Ellen either doesn't know or care about the rule of high society and Newland is fascinated by this, developing a nearly unbearable attraction for her. Scorsese shows a world that has nearly limitless aesthetic beauty, and then shows how living in this word has a high price- a loss of anything approaching self direction or choice in life. We often think that poor people are locked into a state of living from birth, but there is not much choice for these people either, and despite beauty it's probably less fun. The director and the actors also do a brilliant job of letting us know what the characters are thinking, because they are usually unable to say what is actually in their head at any time. Another great aspect of the film is that it avoids the temptation of making the Winona Ryder into a bitch. May is shallow, but she is also a kind and affectionate person, so Newland's choice is even more difficult. May is a bad partner for Newland, but she is not a bad person, and is the most truly innocent person the movie. But the movie is more than a condemnation of a rigid social code. It shows some of the great things that could happen if you played by that code- money, the chance to travel, respect. It would be perfect if you were lucky enough to be able to marry someone you actually loved. This may be a difficult film, but it's a great one. The Age of Innocence (1993)
]]>Mon, 12 May 2008 15:27:43 GMTCinemaRianCinemaRian Blog5/12/2008 11:27:43 AMDespite the fact that I am often told that I have poor attention span, I had no problem getting caught up in Martin Scorsese's almost unbearably beautiful costume drama The Age of Innocence. I know that a lot of people find this film boring, but I wasn't among them, being drawn into a world that used to exist but is now gone forever. It might be surprising to find Scorsese adapting a novel that would seem more appropriate for Merchant/Ivory than a filmmaker known for gangster films, but the movie has so many Scorsese trademarks- long, showy camera moves, voiceover narration revealing the character's innermost thoughts, and a man caught between social ambitions and his inner desires. Based on the classic novel by Edith Wharton (which I have never read) the movie begins in the 1870's as New York attorney and aristocrat Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is engaged to marry the young and beautiful socialite May (Winona Ryder). They seem to genuinely love each other and are set for domestic happiness, but Newland is asked to try to stop a May's cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfieffer) from getting a divorce, which at that point was scandalous. Ellen either doesn't know or care about the rule of high society and Newland is fascinated by this, developing a nearly unbearable attraction for her. Scorsese shows a world that has nearly limitless aesthetic beauty, and then shows how living in this word has a high price- a loss of anything approaching self direction or choice in life. We often think that poor people are locked into a state of living from birth, but there is not much choice for these people either, and despite beauty it's probably less fun. The director and the actors also do a brilliant job of letting us know what the characters are thinking, because they are usually unable to say what is actually in their head at any time. Another great aspect of the film is that it avoids the temptation of making the Winona Ryder into a bitch. May is shallow, but she is also a kind and affectionate person, so Newland's choice is even more difficult. May is a bad partner for Newland, but she is not a bad person, and is the most truly innocent person the movie. But the movie is more than a condemnation of a rigid social code. It shows some of the great things that could happen if you played by that code- money, the chance to travel, respect. It would be perfect if you were lucky enough to be able to marry someone you actually loved. This may be a difficult film, but it's a great one. The Age of Innocence (1993) http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/3/3/25819.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 3/3/2008 3:00:42 PM
Body: Star Wars may have the most famous opening title sequence in film history, but in terms of influence it’s got nothing on the work of Saul Bass. He’s the brilliant graphic designer who gave us the animated credits for Hitchcock’s Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho and Scorsese’s Casino, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence and Goodfellas and most of Otto Preminger’s work, including Exodus, Anatomy of a Murder and The Man With the Golden Arm. You’ve also seen his work at the beginning of West Side Story and Alien and Big and The Seven Year Itch and Spartacus. But what if he had designed the opening credits to Star Wars? Well, it might have looked something like this video, which was created for a school project. Interesting, yes. Creative, yes. Entertaining, yes. Memorable, no. It just goes to show how significant some credit sequences can be, because this is hardly appropriate for George Lucas’ film. And I don’t just mean because the music is all wrong. If this student wanted to go with a jazz score for the titles, he should have gone with a jazz cover of the Star Wars theme. And if he wanted something more upbeat, he could have used a jazz cover of the Cantina Band song (both covers can be heard on this album). If I was this guy’s professor, I’d give him a B+, mostly for effort and the fact that I love the lazer blasts and the zoom in on the Death Star at the end. For the A, though, he’d need to resubmit with something more suitable than a Buddy Rich soundtrack. [via Fraktastic] Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:00:42 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com3/3/2008 3:00:42 PM Star Wars may have the most famous opening title sequence in film history, but in terms of influence it’s got nothing on the work of Saul Bass. He’s the brilliant graphic designer who gave us the animated credits for Hitchcock’s Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho and Scorsese’s Casino, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence and Goodfellas and most of Otto Preminger’s work, including Exodus, Anatomy of a Murder and The Man With the Golden Arm. You’ve also seen his work at the beginning of West Side Story and Alien and Big and The Seven Year Itch and Spartacus. But what if he had designed the opening credits to Star Wars? Well, it might have looked something like this video, which was created for a school project. Interesting, yes. Creative, yes. Entertaining, yes. Memorable, no. It just goes to show how significant some credit sequences can be, because this is hardly appropriate for George Lucas’ film. And I don’t just mean because the music is all wrong. If this student wanted to go with a jazz score for the titles, he should have gone with a jazz cover of the Star Wars theme. And if he wanted something more upbeat, he could have used a jazz cover of the Cantina Band song (both covers can be heard on this album). If I was this guy’s professor, I’d give him a B+, mostly for effort and the fact that I love the lazer blasts and the zoom in on the Death Star at the end. For the A, though, he’d need to resubmit with something more suitable than a Buddy Rich soundtrack. [via Fraktastic] Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/marymcilwain/archive/2007/7/13/13847.aspx Post By: marymcilwain
Post To: Dollar Video Curator
Post Date: 7/13/2007 4:00:21 PM
Body: The polite society of nobility may seem an endless parade of teas, whispers, nods and dueling; boring, predictable. But in the glamorous world of the rich, cinched and nasty, they fuck others over as well as the rest of us more poorly dressed saps. Whereas the least fortunate of us end up perhaps in county lock-up, a pauper’s grave, or serving on jury duty, the wrong steps of an upper-class naughty-kin, could end perhaps in public shame at the Opera, or as the butt of everyone’s social “No-No” joke. The horror! But hey, punishment is all relative. Watch The Lifestyles of the Rich and Opulent implode for your entertainment in:The Age of Innocence, Barry Lyndon, Dangerous LiaisonsThe Age of Innocence Our hero Newland Archer is fucked from the second he lays eyes on the Countess Olenska, his betrothed’s slutty older cousin, who is world-weary and lookin’ for some action. The two become close when Newland advises her on her bad marriage, encouraging her to not get divorced, because all she would gain is “her freedom.” Meanwhile, Newland’s marriage to sweet little cousin May, all sugar and propriety on the outside and absolute demon on the inside, is imminent, and the next thing you know, the pair is off touring Europe on honeymoon while Newland’s bitter realization sets in. Upon their return, and unable to take the longing anymore, the Countess announces her decision to quit New York for Europe. May weaves a tangled and sticky web of societal propriety indeed, hosting the ultimate “Fuck-You-Get-Out-Of-My-Life” going away party, intended to keep Newland and the Countess apart forever. In this world of fine manners, a handshake might as well be a hand job, and a shared glance? Well, that is akin to a knock-down, dirty, screw in an alley behind a dumpster. Newland and the Countess are kept apart, unable to relay their undying love, and the Countess is shipped off the next day. But by the end of the party, Newland has decided to leave May and follow the Countess to Europe, but May has one final card to play, the classic, “Whoops, I’m pregnant!” Duty, honor, society and resolve to live a love-less life of boredom win out, and Newland, proper fucked indeed, accepts his fate. Barry Lyndon Redmond Barry (Lyndon) is an ambitious son-of-a-bitch. Born a poor Irish lad, he is determined to become a British Noble. How to do that you ask? Barry properly fucks over everyone who comes across his life from the very beginning, starting with his cousin, whose marriage he attempts to destroy out of jealousy. He then changes allegiance during the 7 year war, joins up with androgynous weirdo Chevalier de Balibari to royally screw royalty out of money at cheated card games, later continuing on to screw over his new wife the Countess Lyndon and her son by driving them into poverty and misery whilst screwing his way through a jungle of ladies-of-the-night, and culminating in the killing his own kid when a horse he bought him bucks him off.Along the way, Barry ruins the lives of many others that cross his path; the gay army general that he outs, the Prussians who employ him as a spy, anyone who doesn’t pay up their gambling debt, and his wife’s long-time religious confidant who he allows his mother to fire after some 20-odd years. Not to mention that he, awesomely, is not too proud to engage in an all-out, roll around on the ground in front of the company fist-fight with his stepson. Hey, whatever means satisfy the ends. But it is Lyndon who is properly fucked in the end. When he duels with Lord Burlingdon, his stepson who is now all grown up and has a serious bone to pick with dear ol’ stepdad, he gets shot in the leg. The life of Barry Lyndon ends with his leg’s amputation, and his expulsion from his wife’s home, broke and broken. He is sent home to live with mommy. Ouch.Dangerous Liaisons The reserved hush-toned society of 18th Century French Nobility is a world of parlors, teas, polite conversations and gentlemanly hand kisses. Or so you would expect, but up the curving, ornate staircase and behind those opulent, mirrored doorways, lay a world of some serious proper fucking, in the most literal sense of the word. The cruelty of the rich and bored is a force to be reckoned with in any era, but Glenn Close and John Malkovich put our own Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and K-Fed to shame. The name of the game is who fucked who, how, when, where, and how often. Our Malko is the toy of Glenn Close, a lady of some serious non-scruples, who sends him off to corrupt the girl promised to a former lover. Malko has no problems with this at all, instructing her in the ways of the love game, eventually knocking her up, and turning her into a whore of most glorious proportions. Meanwhile, Glenny is out seducing a fine young lad, and Malko turns his eyes to the ever hard-to-get Michelle Pfeiffer. Upon ruination of all parties, and when Malko gets mad a Glenny for not given up the golden ‘poon, the two next set out to destroy each other. A duel, a stab, a confession and a few revealing letters later, Malko is dead and Glenny shunned by society. Props to the properly fucked, all around. Conclusion: You are your own worst enemy. Originally posted on:Dollar Video Curator
]]>Fri, 13 Jul 2007 20:00:21 GMTmarymcilwainDollar Video Curator7/13/2007 4:00:21 PMThe polite society of nobility may seem an endless parade of teas, whispers, nods and dueling; boring, predictable. But in the glamorous world of the rich, cinched and nasty, they fuck others over as well as the rest of us more poorly dressed saps. Whereas the least fortunate of us end up perhaps in county lock-up, a pauper’s grave, or serving on jury duty, the wrong steps of an upper-class naughty-kin, could end perhaps in public shame at the Opera, or as the butt of everyone’s social “No-No” joke. The horror! But hey, punishment is all relative. Watch The Lifestyles of the Rich and Opulent implode for your entertainment in:The Age of Innocence, Barry Lyndon, Dangerous LiaisonsThe Age of Innocence Our hero Newland Archer is fucked from the second he lays eyes on the Countess Olenska, his betrothed’s slutty older cousin, who is world-weary and lookin’ for some action. The two become close when Newland advises her on her bad marriage, encouraging her to not get divorced, because all she would gain is “her freedom.” Meanwhile, Newland’s marriage to sweet little cousin May, all sugar and propriety on the outside and absolute demon on the inside, is imminent, and the next thing you know, the pair is off touring Europe on honeymoon while Newland’s bitter realization sets in. Upon their return, and unable to take the longing anymore, the Countess announces her decision to quit New York for Europe. May weaves a tangled and sticky web of societal propriety indeed, hosting the ultimate “Fuck-You-Get-Out-Of-My-Life” going away party, intended to keep Newland and the Countess apart forever. In this world of fine manners, a handshake might as well be a hand job, and a shared glance? Well, that is akin to a knock-down, dirty, screw in an alley behind a dumpster. Newland and the Countess are kept apart, unable to relay their undying love, and the Countess is shipped off the next day. But by the end of the party, Newland has decided to leave May and follow the Countess to Europe, but May has one final card to play, the classic, “Whoops, I’m pregnant!” Duty, honor, society and resolve to live a love-less life of boredom win out, and Newland, proper fucked indeed, accepts his fate. Barry Lyndon Redmond Barry (Lyndon) is an ambitious son-of-a-bitch. Born a poor Irish lad, he is determined to become a British Noble. How to do that you ask? Barry properly fucks over everyone who comes across his life from the very beginning, starting with his cousin, whose marriage he attempts to destroy out of jealousy. He then changes allegiance during the 7 year war, joins up with androgynous weirdo Chevalier de Balibari to royally screw royalty out of money at cheated card games, later continuing on to screw over his new wife the Countess Lyndon and her son by driving them into poverty and misery whilst screwing his way through a jungle of ladies-of-the-night, and culminating in the killing his own kid when a horse he bought him bucks him off.Along the way, Barry ruins the lives of many others that cross his path; the gay army general that he outs, the Prussians who employ him as a spy, anyone who doesn’t pay up their gambling debt, and his wife’s long-time religious confidant who he allows his mother to fire after some 20-odd years. Not to mention that he, awesomely, is not too proud to engage in an all-out, roll around on the ground in front of the company fist-fight with his stepson. Hey, whatever means satisfy the ends. But it is Lyndon who is properly fucked in the end. When he duels with Lord Burlingdon, his stepson who is now all grown up and has a serious bone to pick with dear ol’ stepdad, he gets shot in the leg. The life of Barry Lyndon ends with his leg’s amputation, and his expulsion from his wife’s home, broke and broken. He is sent home to live with mommy. Ouch.Dangerous Liaisons The reserved hush-toned society of 18th Century French Nobility is a world of parlors, teas, polite conversations and gentlemanly hand kisses. Or so you would expect, but up the curving, ornate staircase and behind those opulent, mirrored doorways, lay a world of some serious proper fucking, in the most literal sense of the word. The cruelty of the rich and bored is a force to be reckoned with in any era, but Glenn Close and John Malkovich put our own Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and K-Fed to shame. The name of the game is who fucked who, how, when, where, and how often. Our Malko is the toy of Glenn Close, a lady of some serious non-scruples, who sends him off to corrupt the girl promised to a former lover. Malko has no problems with this at all, instructing her in the ways of the love game, eventually knocking her up, and turning her into a whore of most glorious proportions. Meanwhile, Glenny is out seducing a fine young lad, and Malko turns his eyes to the ever hard-to-get Michelle Pfeiffer. Upon ruination of all parties, and when Malko gets mad a Glenny for not given up the golden ‘poon, the two next set out to destroy each other. A duel, a stab, a confession and a few revealing letters later, Malko is dead and Glenny shunned by society. Props to the properly fucked, all around. Conclusion: You are your own worst enemy. Originally posted on:Dollar Video Curator http://www.spout.com/blogs/marymcilwain/archive/2007/7/3/12939.aspx Post By: marymcilwain
Post To: Dollar Video Curator
Post Date: 7/3/2007 1:57:00 PM
Body: The polite society of nobility may seem an endless parade of teas, whispers, nods and dueling; boring, predictable. But in the glamorous world of the rich, cinched and nasty, they fuck others over as well as the rest of us more poorly dressed saps. Whereas the least fortunate of us end up perhaps in county lock-up, a pauper’s grave, or serving on jury duty, the wrong steps of an upper-class naughty-kin, could end perhaps in public shame at the Opera, or as the butt of everyone’s social “No-No” joke. The horror! But hey, punishment is all relative. Watch The Lifestyles of the Rich and Opulent implode for your entertainment in:The Age of Innocence, Barry Lyndon, Dangerous LiaisonsThe Age of Innocence Our hero Newland Archer is fucked from the second he lays eyes on the Countess Olenska, his betrothed’s slutty older cousin, who is world-weary and lookin’ for some action. The two become close when Newland advises her on her bad marriage, encouraging her to not get divorced, because all she would gain is “her freedom.” Meanwhile, Newland’s marriage to sweet little cousin May, all sugar and propriety on the outside and absolute demon on the inside, is imminent, and the next thing you know, the pair is off touring Europe on honeymoon while Newland’s bitter realization sets in. Upon their return, and unable to take the longing anymore, the Countess announces her decision to quit New York for Europe. May weaves a tangled and sticky web of societal propriety indeed, hosting the ultimate “Fuck-You-Get-Out-Of-My-Life” going away party, intended to keep Newland and the Countess apart forever. In this world of fine manners, a handshake might as well be a hand job, and a shared glance? Well, that is akin to a knock-down, dirty, screw in an alley behind a dumpster. Newland and the Countess are kept apart, unable to relay their undying love, and the Countess is shipped off the next day. But by the end of the party, Newland has decided to leave May and follow the Countess to Europe, but May has one final card to play, the classic, “Whoops, I’m pregnant!” Duty, honor, society and resolve to live a love-less life of boredom win out, and Newland, proper fucked indeed, accepts his fate. Barry Lyndon Redmond Barry (Lyndon) is an ambitious son-of-a-bitch. Born a poor Irish lad, he is determined to become a British Noble. How to do that you ask? Barry properly fucks over everyone who comes across his life from the very beginning, starting with his cousin, whose marriage he attempts to destroy out of jealousy. He then changes allegiance during the 7 year war, joins up with androgynous weirdo Chevalier de Balibari to royally screw royalty out of money at cheated card games, later continuing on to screw over his new wife the Countess Lyndon and her son by driving them into poverty and misery whilst screwing his way through a jungle of ladies-of-the-night, and culminating in the killing his own kid when a horse he bought him bucks him off.Along the way, Barry ruins the lives of many others that cross his path; the gay army general that he outs, the Prussians who employ him as a spy, anyone who doesn’t pay up their gambling debt, and his wife’s long-time religious confidant who he allows his mother to fire after some 20-odd years. Not to mention that he, awesomely, is not too proud to engage in an all-out, roll around on the ground in front of the company fist-fight with his stepson. Hey, whatever means satisfy the ends. But it is Lyndon who is properly fucked in the end. When he duels with Lord Burlingdon, his stepson who is now all grown up and has a serious bone to pick with dear ol’ stepdad, he gets shot in the leg. The life of Barry Lyndon ends with his leg’s amputation, and his expulsion from his wife’s home, broke and broken. He is sent home to live with mommy. Ouch.Dangerous Liaisons The reserved hush-toned society of 18th Century French Nobility is a world of parlors, teas, polite conversations and gentlemanly hand kisses. Or so you would expect, but up the curving, ornate staircase and behind those opulent, mirrored doorways, lay a world of some serious proper fucking, in the most literal sense of the word. The cruelty of the rich and bored is a force to be reckoned with in any era, but Glenn Close and John Malkovich put our own Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and K-Fed to shame. The name of the game is who fucked who, how, when, where, and how often. Our Malko is the toy of Glenn Close, a lady of some serious non-scruples, who sends him off to corrupt the girl promised to a former lover. Malko has no problems with this at all, instructing her in the ways of the love game, eventually knocking her up, and turning her into a whore of most glorious proportions. Meanwhile, Glenny is out seducing a fine young lad, and Malko turns his eyes to the ever hard-to-get Michelle Pfeiffer. Upon ruination of all parties, and when Malko gets mad a Glenny for not given up the golden ‘poon, the two next set out to destroy each other. A duel, a stab, a confession and a few revealing letters later, Malko is dead and Glenny shunned by society. Props to the properly fucked, all around. Conclusion: You are your own worst enemy. Originally posted on:Dollar Video Curator
]]>Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:57:00 GMTmarymcilwainDollar Video Curator7/3/2007 1:57:00 PMThe polite society of nobility may seem an endless parade of teas, whispers, nods and dueling; boring, predictable. But in the glamorous world of the rich, cinched and nasty, they fuck others over as well as the rest of us more poorly dressed saps. Whereas the least fortunate of us end up perhaps in county lock-up, a pauper&rsquo;s grave, or serving on jury duty, the wrong steps of an upper-class naughty-kin, could end perhaps in public shame at the Opera, or as the butt of everyone&rsquo;s social &ldquo;No-No&rdquo; joke. The horror! But hey, punishment is all relative. Watch The Lifestyles of the Rich and Opulent implode for your entertainment in:The Age of Innocence, Barry Lyndon, Dangerous LiaisonsThe Age of Innocence Our hero Newland Archer is fucked from the second he lays eyes on the Countess Olenska, his betrothed&rsquo;s slutty older cousin, who is world-weary and lookin&rsquo; for some action. The two become close when Newland advises her on her bad marriage, encouraging her to not get divorced, because all she would gain is &ldquo;her freedom.&rdquo; Meanwhile, Newland&rsquo;s marriage to sweet little cousin May, all sugar and propriety on the outside and absolute demon on the inside, is imminent, and the next thing you know, the pair is off touring Europe on honeymoon while Newland&rsquo;s bitter realization sets in. Upon their return, and unable to take the longing anymore, the Countess announces her decision to quit New York for Europe. May weaves a tangled and sticky web of societal propriety indeed, hosting the ultimate &ldquo;Fuck-You-Get-Out-Of-My-Life&rdquo; going away party, intended to keep Newland and the Countess apart forever. In this world of fine manners, a handshake might as well be a hand job, and a shared glance? Well, that is akin to a knock-down, dirty, screw in an alley behind a dumpster. Newland and the Countess are kept apart, unable to relay their undying love, and the Countess is shipped off the next day. But by the end of the party, Newland has decided to leave May and follow the Countess to Europe, but May has one final card to play, the classic, &ldquo;Whoops, I&rsquo;m pregnant!&rdquo; Duty, honor, society and resolve to live a love-less life of boredom win out, and Newland, proper fucked indeed, accepts his fate. Barry Lyndon Redmond Barry (Lyndon) is an ambitious son-of-a-bitch. Born a poor Irish lad, he is determined to become a British Noble. How to do that you ask? Barry properly fucks over everyone who comes across his life from the very beginning, starting with his cousin, whose marriage he attempts to destroy out of jealousy. He then changes allegiance during the 7 year war, joins up with androgynous weirdo Chevalier de Balibari to royally screw royalty out of money at cheated card games, later continuing on to screw over his new wife the Countess Lyndon and her son by driving them into poverty and misery whilst screwing his way through a jungle of ladies-of-the-night, and culminating in the killing his own kid when a horse he bought him bucks him off.Along the way, Barry ruins the lives of many others that cross his path; the gay army general that he outs, the Prussians who employ him as a spy, anyone who doesn&rsquo;t pay up their gambling debt, and his wife&rsquo;s long-time religious confidant who he allows his mother to fire after some 20-odd years. Not to mention that he, awesomely, is not too proud to engage in an all-out, roll around on the ground in front of the company fist-fight with his stepson. Hey, whatever means satisfy the ends. But it is Lyndon who is properly fucked in the end. When he duels with Lord Burlingdon, his stepson who is now all grown up and has a serious bone to pick with dear ol&rsquo; stepdad, he gets shot in the leg. The life of Barry Lyndon ends with his leg&rsquo;s amputation, and his expulsion from his wife&rsquo;s home, broke and broken. He is sent home to live with mommy. Ouch.Dangerous Liaisons The reserved hush-toned society of 18th Century French Nobility is a world of parlors, teas, polite conversations and gentlemanly hand kisses. Or so you would expect, but up the curving, ornate staircase and behind those opulent, mirrored doorways, lay a world of some serious proper fucking, in the most literal sense of the word. The cruelty of the rich and bored is a force to be reckoned with in any era, but Glenn Close and John Malkovich put our own Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and K-Fed to shame. The name of the game is who fucked who, how, when, where, and how often. Our Malko is the toy of Glenn Close, a lady of some serious non-scruples, who sends him off to corrupt the girl promised to a former lover. Malko has no problems with this at all, instructing her in the ways of the love game, eventually knocking her up, and turning her into a whore of most glorious proportions. Meanwhile, Glenny is out seducing a fine young lad, and Malko turns his eyes to the ever hard-to-get Michelle Pfeiffer. Upon ruination of all parties, and when Malko gets mad a Glenny for not given up the golden &lsquo;poon, the two next set out to destroy each other. A duel, a stab, a confession and a few revealing letters later, Malko is dead and Glenny shunned by society. Props to the properly fucked, all around. Conclusion: You are your own worst enemy. Originally posted on:Dollar Video Curator http://www.spout.com/blogs/hairylime/archive/2007/3/20/6403.aspx Post By: HairyLime
Post To: HairyLime Blog
Post Date: 3/20/2007 9:56:00 AM
Body: Moved from one Scorcese oddity the other night (The Color of Money), to another yesterday evening with this period piece. You can still see what drew him to the material - New York of the 1870s, betrayals and intrigue - almost a gentrified version of Goodfellas, where instead of getting 'wacked' you become a social outcast, excluded from invitations, gossiped about in smoking rooms, if you dare cross the line of honor and expected behavior. The opening 'ballroom' scene even reminded me a bit of the 'barroom introduction scene' in Goodfellas where the camera insinuates itself among the guests giving you little snippets of information about various characters.Newland (Daniel Day-Lewis) is such a wishy washy character to be put in the role of doomed lover, he secretly disapproves of the stiff conformity of his peers, yet never dares break from it completely, he longs for forbidden romance, yet can barely bring himself to make even the slightest moves towards obtaining it. The movie is beautiful to look at, quite often emulating the painting styles of the day, most of the women look like Sargent paintings, there are some interesting filmic devices throughout, the 'dark sillouettes' that creep in occassionally to isolate bits of important action or dialog, interesting fades to pure color - and is paced in such a way as to seem like a product of a generation completely out of pace with our own (which may make for tedious viewing for some). Everyone in the movie is so stiff, cautious and careful of appearances, it is a wonder that the storyline moves forward at all.
]]>Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:56:00 GMTHairyLimeHairyLime Blog3/20/2007 9:56:00 AMMoved from one Scorcese oddity the other night (The Color of Money), to another yesterday evening with this period piece. You can still see what drew him to the material - New York of the 1870s, betrayals and intrigue - almost a gentrified version of Goodfellas, where instead of getting &#39;wacked&#39; you become a social outcast, excluded from invitations, gossiped about in smoking rooms, if you dare cross the line of honor and expected behavior. The opening &#39;ballroom&#39; scene even reminded me a bit of the &#39;barroom introduction scene&#39; in Goodfellas where the camera insinuates itself among the guests giving you little snippets of information about various characters.Newland (Daniel Day-Lewis) is such a wishy washy character to be put in the role of doomed lover, he secretly disapproves of the stiff conformity of his peers, yet never dares break from it completely, he longs for forbidden romance, yet can barely bring himself to make even the slightest moves towards obtaining it. The movie is beautiful to look at, quite often emulating the painting styles of the day, most of the women look like Sargent paintings, there are some interesting filmic devices throughout, the &#39;dark sillouettes&#39; that creep in occassionally to isolate bits of important action or dialog, interesting fades to pure color - and is paced in such a way as to seem like a product of a generation completely out of pace with our own (which may make for tedious viewing for some). Everyone in the movie is so stiff, cautious and careful of appearances, it is a wonder that the storyline moves forward at all. http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/love/MemberTagFilms.aspxlove
Number of films tagged: 12478

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]]>Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:28:29 GMT124783381480Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/romance/MemberTagFilms.aspxromance
Number of films tagged: 7163

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]]>Sun, 20 Dec 2009 01:16:35 GMT71631691005Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/movie/MemberTagFilms.aspxmovie
Number of films tagged: 364

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]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:35:41 GMT65782190Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/lovetriangle/MemberTagFilms.aspxlovetriangle
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]]>Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:12:01 GMT29023875Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/lawyer/MemberTagFilms.aspxlawyer
Number of films tagged: 1764

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]]>Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:55:09 GMT17643582Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/passion/MemberTagFilms.aspxpassion
Number of films tagged: 326

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Number of times used: 48

]]>Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:13:05 GMT3262748Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/new-york/MemberTagFilms.aspxnew-york
Number of films tagged: 87

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]]>Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:25:46 GMT872698Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/adaptation/MemberTagFilms.aspxadaptation
Number of films tagged: 126

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]]>Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:17:59 GMT12625137Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/society/MemberTagFilms.aspxsociety
Number of films tagged: 424

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]]>Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:37:21 GMT4242342Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/extramaritalaffair/MemberTagFilms.aspxextramaritalaffair
Number of films tagged: 3121

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Number of films tagged: 375

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]]>Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:51:11 GMT3751340Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/attraction/MemberTagFilms.aspxattraction
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Number of films tagged: 32

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]]>Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:52:23 GMT321034Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/upperclass/MemberTagFilms.aspxupperclass
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