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Saw this through The Netflix Watch Instantly thing and was blown away. This is well worth watching again. The lo-fi effects are ingenious. The acting is a hoot. I love nearly everything about this. The story is great: Ice pirates. Time warps. Sword play. Awesome.

I'm a fan of Svankmajer, although he can be pretty freaky. What I love about this film in particular is how deeply the metaphor of the stage is exploited. Puppets, people, the city, the set.

A man is handing out flyers to the people coming out of the subway. The flyer is a map to a particular address. There is nothing more on it. One hapless character goes there and discovers the accouterment of an alchemist. He puts this on, as well as a fake beard and stage makeup. Tada, Faust. He is on the puppet stage. He takes of the clothing and cuts through the scenery and walks out through the back door out to the city. Yet he is still on the stage. In fact the story has become the inescapable element. The character can not free himself from the character. 

This is quite fascinating especially given the pervasiveness of the story of Faust, the classic "Be careful what you wish for" scenario. The Faust story belongs to no one author and Svankmajer draws freely from Goethe, Marlowe and some others, including the Opera by Gounod (which is playing here in Grand Rapids in May 2009.) The movie is not based on any one Faust, but all of them and then some. A myth to be retold and re-imagined but always recognizable.

How it ends hardly matters. Goethe lets Faust get to heaven. Svankmajer, well, you'll have to see for yourself. 

A good Svankmajer. A good Faust. My favorite Faust movie is still Faust (1926). 

This took me a while to process. It's long of course, has many technical challenges for the viewer, but I sort of knew the range of what to expect from Fassbinder and rode with it all just fine. Wow. This is an intense portrait of a strangely likable dupe. The acting is fantastic. Günter Lamprecht is amazing. There were technical complaints about the production, but I think Fassbinder got what he was after. I can't bring myself to say I loved it, although it affected me profoundly. The epilogue was mind blowing. The cascade of dream images succeeded in feeling appropriate and deeply revealing of the character's descent. Weird and disturbing, but true somehow.

A modernist tragedy is bitterer than the classic sort. The one is a culmination of a life's unfortunate meaning, resolving destiny with death. Franz's destiny is surely spent, but in our day and age a life devoid of meaning is still lived.

A pimp, a thief, a murderer, sure, but Franz is somehow a sympathetic character. I wanted him to find the happiness he seemed nearly capable of. Something is broken in him. The implication would seem to be some psychological disorder, perhaps a remnant from WWI. There are lots of avenues to rationalize him. I liked Franz. He creeped me out, but I liked him. And I liked Mieze too though she had some off things about her. They are both a little crazy in a way that makes them seem innocent of their lives. Unlike Reinhold who is irredeemable in my book. A bad man.

Living in a bad time increases the pressure towards an inhuman decay of society. But that does not excuse bad behavior, it just makes it all the harder to live up to. Germany in the twenties feels a little post-apocalyptic and some of those classic scenarios play out. Franz is the perpetual optimist, believing in the basic humanity of others until experience can break him of it. It's hard on the heart to watch it happen. 

There are so many great public domain videos on Google video.

 

So, I'm only two episodes into the series, but I feel compelled to wite about it already. I love Heimat. I am so glad that I have a lot of episodes ahead of me. The subtle characterisations, the dense and lovable characters, the people's history of a very traumatic time. Fascinating and important.

Stripped of all it's dumb story line and viewed just for the underwater cave photography, this is a beautiful movie. The characters are weak, blah blah blah. But man, those are real caves (except for the chambers with the fire and the ice and the blah blah blah). It is unfortunate that the underwater photography has to be couched in such silly trappings. I would gladly watch endless hours of the explorations.

That has everything to do with Wes Skiles who handled the underwater camera. His work here is completely amazing. If you want a good claustrophobic cave story, of course watch The Descent. It is a far better movie in nearly every way. But if you love caves, you have to check this out.

Krysar is a masterpiece of Czech stop-motion animation. It's a dark interpretation of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin done with an ingenious variety of carved wooden figures and rats, both live and artificial. The synopsis suggests that this is for children, but it includes the gang rape and murder of a maiden and various other brutalities. 

The techniques used to make this film are masterful. The villagers are busily exploiting one another. The rats are inspired by these actions. The rats are very much the dark forces inside the people. The pied piper is a sort of angelic force come down to purge the village of it's greed and decadence. When eliminating the rats only leads to a continuance of the same exploitive behavior, the pied piper purges the village of its human rats as well. Sodom and Gamorrah.

If you appreciate the films of the Brothers Quay or Jan Svankmajer, then you should really check out Jiri Barta.

I watched this on the DVD Labyrinths of Darkness  which is a compilation of Jiri Barta's films. 

Jupiter's Wife is a very lo-fi movie. Michel Negroponte is the type of documentary filmmaker whose work is an extremely personal labor of love. He reminds me of  Doug Block.

The subject is a homeless woman living in central park. The pretense is that she is like Robin Williams in the Fisher King. The journey is to unravel what appears to be her psychosis. Negroponte does an excellent job of peering beneath the surface to see the woman inside her, led down the garden path by circumstances, left to fend for herself. A tough woman.

I never once felt like she couldn't handle her situation. Her fantasies were how she handled it. So they are necessary until (through Negroponte's intervention) her circumstance improves. She gets to unravel the physical traumas and psychological traumas to find she is just a strong woman in unfortunate conditions. A sort of Mother Courage.

The production is very primitive, but the story is captured. I admire what Negroponte has done here and am immensely gratified to have seen this film. A NetFlix on demand title.

Burden of Dreams is necessary. This is a story that needs a good telling and Les Blank was there to capture it. It was obvious to Herzog, who was willing to play Fitzcarraldo himself if necessary, that Fitzcarraldo is the director of an experience. Kinski and Bruno S. have both played Herzog stand-ins. It's always interesting to hear Herzog speak. He is sometimes wise, sometimes full of bluster. An authentic person always.

Here the pithy moment comes when Herzog pontificates about the transposition of dreams. He creates a dream on film hoping that it corresponds to the dream we are having. Despite his own vehement denial of Freud and introspection and deams themselves, he sees at the core of art this attempt to express a collective mythical experience. He imagines himself a sort of midwife fulfilling the dictates of something he refuses to look at. He is not the sort to really break it down for you in an interview. He is a man of action. A do-er.

Whatever you might think of Herzog (I see the tag MAD-MAN, which is one way to look at it I suppose), he has accomplished something great here. Purposefully challenging so as to capture himself the difficulty of the task. It's easy to conceive of Herzog as Fitzcarraldo. It is hardly worth talking about. Seeing the production shows just how seamless the experience is. 

The oft-mentioned Kinski blowups are downplayed in Burden of Dreams, but it is not hard to see the necessities of the role. Kinski must internalize Herzog while taking his direction. Kinski is Herzog is Fitzcarraldo. It is no surprise that they would conspire against one another. They are conspiring against themselves in the process. This is perhaps the central meta-story of the whole endeavor. Herzog is dragging Kinski up a mountain as well.

So what is it? What is the whole thing about? The burden of dreams is a telling title, but that just transposes Herzog for Fitzcarraldo. What was the whole exercise about? Herzog is trying to give us in images what he thinks is latent in us to begin with. This desire to surmount nature. The confrontation with the rawest force of nature, the jungle. All the fierce engine of life pitted against itself for the epic gesture. And the acknowledgement that it is only just a gesture. Man is dragging himself over a mountain. Forcing all his cultural baggage into the heart of nature. There is something absurd about the endeavor. Something skewed and a bit mad perhaps. And yet we do it all the time.

I am a big fan of Riding with Robots. I watch these images come in from all the various probes, filtered down for me by a worthy eye. We want to see the cataracts of death. We want to reach out with our steamships to inject ourselves into those inland rivers, to bridge those impossible gaps. We do transpose our dreams.

The kicker is that the Indians sacrifice the ship to the river. It is they who were always in control. These lions of men. It is they who are struggling to appease tyranical forces. In part this is about the loss of lions. Despite his absurdity, Fitzcarraldo is a lion as well. Perhaps he is no different than those native peoples. Perhaps Herzog is no different. And perhaps he is reaching out to the lions within us. To unleash us.

Fitzcarraldo has not just the boat to drag, but Caruso, who is almost a character himself. Caruso, a lion as well. And thus the culture of western man. Caruso is the infection. The boat is the infection. The river is the blood stream of the earth. Fitzcarraldo and Caruso ride the ship into the cataracts of death. Behind the scenes, Herzog is there on the ship as well. As well as a camera. Herzog is dragging a camera over a mountain to show us what we are.

Here is where I learned that cinnabar is mercury(II) sulfide (HgS) and has very strange properties when heated. The red powder sort of violently burns away leaving a dollop of mercury. But if heat is continually applied, it turns back to red powder. 

I have the book that is the companion to this BBC series and was excited to find that the series is available, even on Netflix where I have been slowly making my way through them. I like Bronowski as a thinker. He loves the elegance of certain concepts. His enthusiasm for his subject is quite infectious . He has a decidedly modern viewpoint, not anti-religious, but with a little of the serious scientists pshaw.  

 I seem to recall that some of the filmmakers behind this went on to do Cosmos and some other series. I was quite impressed by the production. Given the time, it's is impressive to think this was done on film at so many locations. The cinematography can feel a little like talented film school artistry, but in general I appreciated the extra touches. The soundtrack is sometimes spectacularly dated, but in a substantive way. 

I miss this sort of expose of one man's thought. There should be more series like this. I suppose Hawking has had his few. You should see Bronowski showing these amazing computer graphics in a dank little basement, clearly envisioning some great 3D modeling technology that just was too far out of reach with 1974's best mainframe. Still, it must have been spectacularly difficult to pull off.

 

This was another recommendation from my friend Tom. Tom loves this movie. It has a lot going for it, Paul Newman, John Huston, John Milius. I'm afraid though that it felt like a bit of a mess. We were talking about John Milius, who has done such great things with the series Rome. What an intersting career. Scripting Conan the Barbarian, Apocalypse Now, etc. etc. Check out his listing. 

Judge Roy Bean made me think immediately of Robert Altman's  Buffalo Bill. This is the era of those sort of exploitive westerns. Then it hit me, this is Don Quixote as a western. Ah, sometimes unlocking that sort of reference defuses a film. Lily Langtry is the knight's courtly love. 

I didn't think this was surreal as the synopsis suggests. That seems like a bit of hand-wringing confusion. It's actually a pretty straight forward inversion of the heroic western hero. Judge Roy Bean is an anti-hero, a tall tale for an audience morally exhausted by spaghetti westerns.

Still, Victoria Principal is beautiful. Paul Newman is Paul Newman. It's a fun flick. It looks like they had a lot of fun with the bear.

But then, to think that just the year before Altman had done McCabe and Mrs. Miller which is a superior film in every way. I'm not disparaging this film. I liked it. But it light fare.

I love this script although the movie is oddly paced. It has some lovely photography, but the acting is flat (and not in a Hal Hartley way). It depends on the neutrality of voices to carry certain ambiguities along. There are many marvelously sophisticated inversions. The emotional setups are turned on their head. A satisfying exploration of the nature of consciousness. Intelligent Sci-Fi.

It's hard to review a film these days without talking about how you saw it. Well, I'm beta testing Joost and I must say, this first pass at internet tv is interesting. It has the pretty commercial fare you might expect, lots of commercials and top 40 music videos. But these things always have some piece of the long tail in their grips and sure enough, there are a few interesting movies for free in there. Paramount Pictures has a channel in there and The Little Prince is in there.

Cool. I've always wanted to see it. If I don't fall asleep, I'll sit here and watch it. It streams pretty well, with just a few hiccups. Looks like HP has something to do with it all. The video quality is fantastic, but it does stall now and again. I suspect it is interrupting itself loading a commercial (which are discrete and certainly no worse than the thing on tv. I'd say it's generally not so distracting. Otherwise, the experience is rather pleasant. 

I look forward to evaluating the Democracy player soon and seeing what it affords as well.

My first impression suggests that Joost is on to something and is likely to be a really cool thing if everyone plays nice. 

What can I say. Some movies you have to review in the heat of it to catch any of the excitement the movie generated. But this one cooled off quick. In retrospect, movies always tend to feel a little overly technical, like a magic trick that won't stand a second viewing. 

I know very well that I enjoyed watching this film, but it fails to sustain my interest further down the road. It was fun while it lasted I guess.

I wanted to see it because I like game movies. Movies like Cube or Croupier. I don't mind a little blood. Especially in black and white. Blood shocks me more in black and white if it's done well. So this feels like an academic rehash of Hong Kong action cranked to ten and given an infusion of Beckett and Tarentino. The results come off a little stiff and bleak. It's emotional arc seemed a little overly predictable and yet not entirely convincing.

I say I liked it because it was hard to get this kind of story wrong. We all know the rules, so we can kick back and see what happens. Memento did this well. Lars Von Trier does this well. 

The director is clearly talented, but needs to loosen up and let it roll a bit more. It's well shot and spotless technically. They know what they are doing. For that I give them 4 stars. 

The best part about Blue Sunshine is the creepy interview with the director on the DVD. Hard lessons of the Hollywood grist mill. What weird careers some people have had.

I can't react to this as a piece of filmmaking. It's too immediate. I'm still trying to formulate my thoughts, but how I feel right now, this moment, is humiliated.

I got up, went outside to my backyard behind my house. My car is in the garage. My life is here around me. My son is playing World of Warcraft, enjoying the last of his Summer before school starts. My 15 year old son. 

When this war began, my son was 11. My thoughts were for him most of all from the very start. From the moment those planes crashed in 2001. He was 9 then. Now he's in high school, going through a powerful apathy phase. Where will he be in his life in 3 years? What dreams will he have?

What will the world be like in 3 years?  

This documentary tries to decipher the events that led to the chaos that is Iraq today. It's trying to show how Rumsfeld and cronies plotted a debacle. Like many people, it makes me want to scream THOSE FUCKING IDIOTS! 

In what possible way was this whole mess a good idea?

Gosh, I have to stop myself, because my rage accomplishes nothing. I am better informed now about the thing I've been trying to block out so I can live my life, pursue my art, do my thing. I have a good job. I have good friends. We talk about the war sometimes but it always ends like this: THOSE FUCKING IDIOTS!

I can't express anything with it. My rage is my only defence from that deeper, more paralyzing feeling: humiliation. 

My car, my house, my wife, my son. This life we live is so deeply American whether we think of it that way or not. We are Americans. My father fought in Vietnam and did what he was told and will take his burdens to the grave believing that he had protected me and this way of life. My grandfather was proud to serve in WWII against his own grandfather's country. 

This is something we do. I'm from a family of soldiers. We have that thing in us that lets us go there and do that if we have to and live with the consequences, like so many others.

I find it humiliating to think that those soldiers in Iraq are caught in such a mess, hoping they are defending me and my way of life.

It's messy and it sucks, but I can accept that wars need to happen now and again and be grateful to those soldiers who choose to make themselves the vehicles of it.

I feel humiliated that poor leadership and bravado and piss poor management are ruining the chance for those soldiers to console themselves with the fruit of their sacrifices.

I see hatred at work in the world. I see new hatreds being born and nothing can bend these hard, cruel forces but the kind of organization and leadership that many of those interviewed in this film tried to offer. 

This documentary doesn't get an answer to the question of why these choices were made. The finger is pointed quite well. The chain of faulty decisions that created the situation are spelled out pretty clearly. A lot of high up people fucked up real bad. 

I have nothing good to say about all this. All the best advice in the world can't seem to salvage this situation. The UN advisors who died are an even further humiliation. I'm no armchair general. I wish none of this had ever happened, but then there are too many heads in the sand already.

I don't want to talk about the war. But there you have it. My son will be 18 in three years and I hope that he has his head on straight and knows what he wants more than I did when I was 18.  I fear for him. I want to offer him the same protection my father offered me. But how?

If those fucking idiots have left us with no end in sight, then he fledges into an increasingly dangerous world. I wish I could make it safe for him. I wish there were an end in sight. I wish different things had happened.

I'm glad for my way of life, this privledge of raising a family, writing these words on this sweet laptop in my air conditioned attic. Having electricity whenever I want. Clean water. Not being kidnapped in the night. You know, America.

I feel for this actress. She's giving her all to this character. Her plight is unfortunate, a tyranical mother-in-law, the strange culture shock of 1970's suburban France. It reminds me of a Thomas Hardy story, where historical forces seem to have created an untenable situation. An excellent premise.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn't seem to know what it wants to accomplish. The actress cries, dances, veins pulse in her forehead. She is giving her all. The director can't seem to elevate the subject enough for her pathos. Her humiliations are sometimes countered with outragous actions on her part. She assults the annoying neighbor. She is slowly being liberated by talk radio. Charming details.

It has a Brazil ending though, which is a hard thing to earn. Her predicament is convincing, although the existentialism seems out of place as she doesn't strike me as an existential character. She never stops wanting the pleasures of her Algerian home, her mother, her ritual life. She wants to resolve these cultural disparities, but the fantasy world that seems to be a resolution of sorts, albeit a desperate one, resolves nothing.

She has gone mad perhaps. She dreams a life that resolves in her favor, which is impossible given the circumstances. In that sense, it feels as extreme a possibility as her situation is to begin with.

This could have all played out well. I'm not sure why it failed for me. It's a delicate narrative device. I might have yawned at the wrong moment and last the emotional thread or maybe I was just not engaged enough with her after watching her be abused for so long. She convinced me in a heartbeat of her homesick longing. Everything else paled as a result.

Here's my confession. I'm a sucker for all things Moroccan. I came to love Morocco via the stories of Paul Bowles. I once spilled a cup of coffee on the Paul Bowles shelf in a bookstore and got them all cheap, cheap. I love Paul Bowles. Herzog should do a Paul Bowles story.

 I love Moroccan music, especially the music of the Gnawa. I saw Hassan Hakmoun, one of it's finest touring practitioners (in my opinion) tear it up with some jazz musicians in Detroit last weekend. It was frikkin awesome. 

 I'm not so much a fan of Burroughs' Morocco. I like stories about Aicha Kandisha, the succubus who lures unwary men to their demise in her bed. The men who become enslaved to her and work her will. It is very interesting to me to suppose a culture steeped in magic.

 I think the Morocco I dream of is perhaps still there. It is beneath everything the West can scrubbed off that scrap of desert. 

 I wanted to see this right off and I'm glad I did. Although, i have to say, it risks the category of boring overly intellectual French cinema that prides itself on a kind of snobbery. I think it dodges that critique though some clever acting and clever directing. 

If you follow the story straight out, it sounds like Pretty Woman. It plays like Shakespeare for the most part, with lots of clever banter among minor characters, lots of storming huffs and dramatic entrances. The comedy of errors though revolves around mistaken cultural assumptions.

These two people cannot seem to understand one another because their assumptions are all wrong. Either one is pure and virginal or one is lewd and vulgar. Sometimes roles are reversed. 

This is very interesting to me. A rich French man having a dalliance with the Moroccan maid. And yet, it is not her he wants. He wants his own desire awoken. 

Ultimately I found the ending unsatisfying, but I think that was intentional. This is a tale of desire after all and desires are best left unfulfilled. I think of Un Coeur en Hiver (1992) or Eric Rohmer.

The last movie I saw that packed such an unsettling bit of emotion into so calm a facade, was Caché. It's not like the French hold exclusive rights on it though. Todd Solondz for example. You know, really butchering emotional drama like Happiness. The quiet burners everybody learned from Bergman (R.I.P.) 

I enjoyed this movie for all the movie's it reminded me of. It made me feel a nostalgia for French cinema. I feel like I've been missing out on what is going on over there. It made me want to see Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring.

I recall liking the director's Ponette. A very cute movie about a cute kid.