Archive for the ‘Blogs’ Category

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The Tracey Fragments - GreenCine Daily

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

GreenCine Daily - ”The first time I saw The Tracey Fragments, I felt as if I was seeing a revolution in film form, a new visual concept that made us process images in a fundamentally different way,” writes Dan Sallitt in the Auteurs’ Notebook. “And the second time I saw it, I realized that you could play the soundtrack in your living room and enjoy the film without ever looking at it. I wonder whether these seemingly contradictory impressions are related…. The Tracey Fragments is not the first film to use paneled images, but it’s the first feature-length narrative that I know of that relies on paneling as its basic method of visual communication, that dispenses with the safety net of the full-frame image.” And he offers “a partial, not terribly rigorous taxonomy of the effects I noted in Tracey.”

“Unlike the frustrating gimmickry of Mike Figgis’s Timecode and Hotel, [Bruce] McDonald’s bedazzling multi-frame experiment poeticizes and enhances an otherwise slender story (forgivable at only 77 minutes long), as planes of different sizes and shapes materialize - fading, sliding, distorting, and overlapping to convey the rage and anxiety of damaged adolescence,” writes Aaron Hillis in the Voice.

“Lukas Moodysson’s currently undistributed Container, too, is a schizophrenic movie about a schizophrenic protagonist,” notes Mark Asch in the L Magazine, “a scratchy black-and-white effort featuring multiple narratives seeping in and out of each other and a disjunctive voiceover - though unlike Container, which wormed its way inside personal trauma towards a warped sense of transcendence, there’s a sense, with Tracey, that director Bruce McDonald is using sensory overload and a some-assembly-required narrative to cover up for the fact that there’s not much of a there here.”… [Full Story]

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Check Out the First Official Production Photo from ‘Milk’ - Cinematical

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

Cinematical - I’m itching to see Milk. It’s not because of the cool initial production still above, which comes from Entertainment Weekly. It’s not because of Gus Van Sant, since he has disappointed me many times. It’s because of Sean Penn — but not because of fandom. He does so many heavy roles, and is so known for his seriousness, that it’s hard to remember sometimes that he is Jeff Spicoli. But now he’s also Harvey Milk.

Playing the first openly gay man to win an election in a major U.S. city, Penn has got to get happy, and as producer Dan Jinks explained to EW, he “is playing a guy who’s not at all like him, way beyond the sexuality of the character. Harvey was this guy who wants everybody to love him, and he loves everybody else. Sean just completely became that guy. It’s a real transformation.”

If he really hits this out of the ballpark, it’ll be a change to see a serious man get award cred for getting happy, rather than vice versa. Now if we could only get him in another Ridgemont sort of flick… [Full Story]

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Battle for Haditha - GreenCine Daily

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

GreenCine Daily - ”With Battle for Haditha, British documentarian Nick Broomfield brandishes his verité techniques for a fictional recreation of the November 2005 killing of 24 Iraqi civilians by US Marines,” writes Nick Schager at Cinematical. “Aspiring to be a modern Battle of Algiers, the film falls far short of that lofty goal, hawking standard-issue characterizations and leaden cause-effect analysis to humdrum effect.”

“Somewhat surprisingly, given how subjective his documentaries skew, Battle for Haditha isn’t a jeremiad against the war, the American administration or even the quick-triggered marines,” writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. “Even as he creates an almost unbearable level of tension in his film - mostly through deft parallel editing that draws the marines, the victims and the insurgents inexorably together - Mr Broomfield maintains a level of cool detachment throughout.”

“Veterans of Iraq War cinema might recognize some familiar elements - the heavy-metal machismo of Gunner Palace, the confessional testimonials of The War Tapes, the cri de coeur of Stop-Loss,” writes Anthony Kaufman in the Voice. “When the shit finally hits the fan, though, the results are more emotionally bruising than many of Haditha’s predecessors.”

“[E]ven when the dialogue is stilted, the acting and directing take the starch out of it,” writes David Edelstein in New York. “Battle for Haditha has some of the raw energy of Sam Fuller’s war pictures, which weren’t subtle but left you energized by their ambivalence (there was no good or evil). It’s a hell of a picture.”… [Full Story]

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XXY - GreenCine Daily

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

GreenCine Daily - I grew up in the era of the term “hermaphrodite,” which I now learn - via Lucía Puenzo’s mostly fascinating and deeply-felt movie XXY - is politically incorrect. The term used should be “intersex.” Until I was well into adulthood, I thought that hermaphrodites were more legendary than real. My movie experience of them came mostly from crass, sleazy and enormously entertaining films like Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To. (Aren’t most of Larry Cohen films crass, sleazy and enormously entertaining?)

Puenzo’s XXY is something else. It begins in media res, and, in fact, ends there, too. But, oh, in the middle of the middle, what people, events and feelings do we meet, witness and experience! Puenzo is simply terrific at guiding us into her characters’ emotional states - even though we don’t always know what is causing these states. But because this writer/director puts us so quickly and deeply into the feelings of her people, it is difficult not to respond with empathy, as we slowly learn what is going on, and why.

XXY is a co-production of Argentina, Spain and France. Set in a quiet Uruguayan coastal town where some locals fish while others try to halt illegal fishing, the movie involves two “outsider” families, as well as some of these locals. The late-adolescent children of the “townies” and outsiders are the main characters, and the central dilemma of the film involves one of the kids. The reaction of the others to her dilemma provokes what minimal action occurs over the very few days that the movie encompasses. Even so, XXY rivets.

In the central role of the young girl, Alex, Inés Efron is splendid - angry, impatient, alternately pleading then pushing away - and she is ably abetted by two fine young actors, Luciano Nobile and especially Martin Piroyansky as Alvaro. The adults are peripheral, but being adults, they do control things to a large extent, and their own needs and wavering feelings make for some rich, if frustrating, moments. Of the fine quartet of adult actors, Ricardo Darín (Nine Queens, Son of the Bride, The Aura) is the best-known on these shores, and he does a fine job portraying Alex’s confident, sad and infinitely caring dad. Her less confident but equally caring mom is given all the right mood swings by Valeria Bertucelli, while Carolina Pelleritti and Germán Palacios play the other set of parents whose son has his own problems - which are suddenly front and center due to his proximity to Alex… [Full Story]

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Son of Rambow - GreenCine Daily

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

GreenCine Daily - ”A likable, lightly sticky valentine to childhood, the 1980s and the dawning of movie love, Son of Rambow was written and directed by Garth Jennings and produced by Nick Goldsmith, the duo behind the underappreciated fantasy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. “Like that film, this one involves a snug community of oddballs and outcasts whose eccentricities, pluck and fundamental good cheer have long been durable staples of British screen comedy.”

“Mr Jennings starts out gangbusters, only to turn disappointingly unimaginative,” writes Nicolas Rapold in the New York Sun. “The second half of Son of Rambow has the feel of a hack sequel to the first half, losing a loony-but-credible touch for childhood and friendship in order to go through the motions (quirky though they may be) and wrap things up. Still, on the whole it’s better than most studio comedies.”

“[A]t its most likable, Son of Rambow evokes the rush of discovery that turns budding cinephiles into lifers—that delight in finding a film that seems to express or coalesce some inchoate yearning, including a yen to share,” writes Jim Ridley in the Voice.

“[T]his backward-looking pint-sized Ed Wood often sails by on the charms of its formula - it’s an appealingly rambunctious boy’s adventure in the guise of a paean to the artistic process (not the other way around),” writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE… [Full Story]

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Fugitive Pieces - GreenCine Daily

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

GreenCine Daily - ”Image, like identity, is always coming into focus throughout Fugitive Pieces,” writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant. “Conventionally shot but artfully cut, Jeremy Podeswa’s film, based on a novel by Anne Michaels, toggles back and forth in time, honing in on the nervous psychological headspace of its main character, Jakob Beer, who escapes from the clutches of the Nazis during WWII with the help of a Greek gentleman and grows up to become a great writer.”

In the New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis finds Podeswa “disinclined to dawdle, juggling three decades and as many countries with a sure hand and an eye for candy.”

“Podeswa hollows out the novel’s urgency in favor of a vaguely spiritual morbidity,” writes Ella Taylor in the Voice.

“Fugitive Pieces is a lush-looking film, and the changes Dillane goes through are touching and even uplifting - but those payoffs come late, and only after a lot of quiet, torturous soul-searching that doesn’t convey well onscreen,” writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. “There’s very little dynamic to the film.”… [Full Story]

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Joy Division in the UK - GreenCine Daily

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

GreenCine Daily - ”The deserved success of Anton Corbijn’s inspired biopic of Ian Curtis, the troubled lead singer of Joy Division who committed suicide in 1980, has in effect enabled a release for this engaging if sometimes blandly celebratory documentary by Grant Gee,” writes Peter Bradshaw, reviewing Joy Division for the Guardian.

“What with 24 Hour Party People, Control and Chris Rodley’s BBC4 Factory Records survey, you might think the story of England’s most influential post-punk band was already covered,” writes Trevor Johnston for Time Out. “But you’d be wrong. Although the three surviving members tell it their way, this is not your usual cut-and-paste rock-doc but a visionary piece of filmmaking in its own right, shaped around an insightful muso-socio-geography.”

But for Robert Hanks, writing in the Independent), “Gee’s treatment is more than a little pretentious - you’re left with the impression that their echoey post-punk melancholia was the most important thing to happen to Manchester, and quite possibly Western civilisation, since the Industrial Revolution.”

“The tale that unfolds is, we’re told, not just the story of a pop group but also the story of a city,” writes Wendy Ide in the London Times… [Full Story]

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Mister Lonely - GreenCine Daily

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

GreenCine Daily - ”As a filmmaker, [Harmony] Korine - who made an instant sensation 13 years ago as the teenage author of the Kids screenplay, and earned the undying enmity of the entertainment press with his subsequent Andy Kaufman-esque mindfuck antics - combines an installation artist’s eye with a Catskills comic’s affection for the threadbare fringes of showbiz,” writes Jim Ridley in the Voice. “Co-written with his brother Avi, Mister Lonely is startlingly straightforward compared to his earlier work. But, like that work, it stands or falls on each single, self-contained scene. And it falls, often…. But letting a movie keep its intimations of chaos… sometimes yields moments of wonder.”

“Mister Lonely reveals that the punk abrasiveness of Korine’s youth has been replaced by a lyrical self-pity - the apparent upshot of a decade on the skids,” writes New York’s David Edelstein. “I’m glad he has pulled himself together, but the film is pretty ramshackle, full of obvious group improvisations that fail to spark and an overdose of bathos.”

“While the film falls short in comparison to his other films, Korine remains one of the most innovative and surprising new voices in American cinema,” writes Jeremiah Kipp in Slant. “As a champion for the beautiful and the strange, I’ll take bottom-shelf Korine over just about anything else currently playing in theaters.”

“What to make of it all?” asks Premiere’s Glenn Kenny. “Hard to say. Just to take in the fact that its soundtrack is made up of music by both J Spaceman and Sun City Girls is to understand that this is a picture that’s divided against itself in a way that’s perhaps too hermetic to be comprehended.”… [Full Story]

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Then She Found Me. - GreenCine Daily

Friday, April 25th, 2008

GreenCine Daily - ”Then She Found Me, a serious comedy, is more impressive for what it refuses to do than for its modest accomplishment,” writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. “The directorial debut of Helen Hunt, who plays April Epner, an anxious 39-year-old kindergarten teacher in New York City, it has all the ingredients of a slick, commercial farce, which it emphatically is not.”

“A movie about a woman in her late 30s who is desperate to have a baby is a hard sell in the male teen-oriented movie environment of today, or so the story goes in nearly every mainstream media outlet, including this one,” notes the Los Angeles Times’ Carina Chocano. “[D]efying all laws of probability and presumed palatability, this week offers up two such movies - one a bright, broad comedy starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and another a narrower, flintier movie starring Helen Hunt and Bette Midler. Despite the appearance of Midler, Then She Found Me treats the subject more dramatically, likening the desire to have a child to hunger, thirst or the urge to relieve oneself - all three longings that will make anyone cranky, Hunt especially. The problem isn’t so much the character of April as it is the way Hunt plays her - a little too whiny, a little too angry to be very sympathetic.”

“Hunt and Midler are both underrated actresses, and though their conviction is obvious, their characters’ propensity to blather is neither unique nor justified, simply psychotic - a transparent attempt on the filmmakers’ parts to make this melodrama about motherhood and surrogacy seem less conventional and unspectacular than it really is,” writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant.

“It’s a romantic comedy, it’s a mother-daughter drama, and most importantly, it’s an unpretentious, gentle, moving film,” writes Marcy Dermansky… [Full Story]

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Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts - GreenCine Daily

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

GreenCine Daily - ”Shot over 18 months, Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts follows the influential modern composer Philip Glass through a little more than a year in his life with a casual honesty and deftly shifting distance that flatter the viewer by not kowtowing to its subject.” Bruce Bennett talks with director Scott Hicks for the New York Sun.

“Glass’s status as one of America’s most venerated and mocked highbrows matches gracefully with his peripatetic cultural and spiritual life; he may not define himself exclusively as a Buddhist, but his frequent self-targeted laughter and robust playfulness at physical-meditation sessions are so clearly engrained, not affected, that he often seems like a jolly, music-consumed monk,” writes Bill Weber in Slant… [Full Story]

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