hawaiifilmsociety

out with the old, in with the new!

2009-07-07T23:09:00.002-10:00

hi all,

Please check out the two links below, as i'll be posting on those blogs more consistently:

Department of Public Works

Jared Yamanuha

thanks!
keep reading, will post an essay on david lynch very soon!

in the meantime, if you haven't checked out the Department of Public Works's show at Borders Bookstore @ Ward Centre, check this video out:

Department of Public Works, Borders Show from Mike Orbito on Vimeo.

thanks~!
-jared

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS

2009-06-27T02:08:00.003-10:00

The Department of Public Works, a creative collective consisting of filmmakers, artists, designers, illustrators, writers and photographers, will be having their first show at Ward Borders Bookstore. Five members of the department--Evil Genius, Mike Lau, Jared Yamanuha (me), Kevin Blanchard and Raul Soria will be exhibiting work made "public" (get it?) for the first time, the majority of which is new, never before seen. The pieces will be displayed throughout the month of July, so after you're done leafing through the newest magazines and before you snag a coffee at Seattle's Best, check out what we've been up to for the past few months.

HOLY GHOST

2009-05-12T23:06:00.001-10:00

Saturday Shootaround from Mike Orbito on Vimeo.

TWEET!

2009-04-11T13:12:00.003-10:00

i posted some new links to new videos on my twitter:

twitter.com/jaredyamanuha

come tweet too!

-JRTY

Sunday

2009-03-01T19:02:00.002-10:00

Sunday Shootaround from Mike Orbito on Vimeo.

My friend Mike put this video together.
If you haven't yet seen Evil Genius dance, this is your one and only chance to see it in High Definition.

Happy Sunday!

ONWARD

2009-01-31T11:29:00.003-10:00

Greetings all,

Since my last 6-7 posts were strictly photo related, and, quite frankly, had nothing to do with movies, i thought i'd throw some words on this here blog. I haven't really been watching movies lately, so anything you would like to recommend would be great, as my interests keep hopscotching day by day. That said, i'm still a big movie fan, and the flicks that have surfaced in the past few years have convinced me that film still has enormous potential, although many critics have claimed otherwise. I'm working on putting together an essay on David Lynch's Inland Empire, as i believe it to be one of the groundbreaking works in the history of movies (yeah, i'm serious). It will be lofty, it will be pretentious, and yes, i will pontificate like i have never pontificated before. I will shock, i will proselytize, and i don't expect anyone to agree with me, but i can't shake the feeling that what Lynch has done will have tremendous impact on movies in general, and on indie productions in particular. It's a movie that has changed how i view movies (i now consider certain films to be art, whereas in the past i would not have made such a bold statement). That in and of itself warrants a post, i think. It will, most likely, be the last film post i ever write, so please check back in a bit.

Also, please note that i will be starting a new blog, which will go in a different direction, but will still contain the same solipsistic, pseudo-intellectual hackneyed writing and videos you have come to love over the past few years. Why read critics/experts when you can read the ramblings of some random dude?

I digress. Here is a list of my tentative favorite 9 movies. These films have blown my hair back, split my wig, snapped my neck, and wreaked general physical havoc and discomfort, but in a good way. To borrow the colloquial phraseology of a certain rapper, "this shit is fire, son!"

1. Eraserhead - David Lynch
2. Gertrud - Carl Dreyer
3. Down by Law - Jim Jarmusch
4. A Woman Under the Influence - John Cassavetes
5. Before Sunset - Richard Linklater
6. Stalker - Andrei Tarkovsky
7. Naked - Mike Leigh
8. I Was Born, But... - Yasujiro Ozu
9. F For Fake - Orson Welles

(these movies just came to my mind, but overall these are my favorite. check em out if you have some time.)

7

2008-12-21T14:22:00.004-10:00

6

2008-11-21T18:03:00.019-10:00

5

2008-11-08T20:45:00.001-10:00

4

2008-10-30T00:01:00.003-10:00

I’m A B-Boy Chillin’ In My B-Boy Stance

Hurry Up & Buy

Run On Sentences

”How Do You Spell Fellatio?”

The Dewey Decimal System Is Sublime

Meet Chris, The One Legged Pimp

Repackaged Trees

Catamaran

Mural @ The Contemporary Museum

Wallflower

A Colorful Bench

Feral Animal Or Hairy Human? You Be The Judge

Ho Bra!

Footsie

Eraserhead

Red/Yellow/Blue

”Let’s (Tree)Hug It Out, Bitch”

”Hey What’s Going On? Your Name Susan Or What?”

Soondubu @ So Gong Dong

Take Me To Your Leader

Wigwam

Juice/Drink

Harry Potter

Green Bananas

E Is For Eggplant

Blue Container

Alice-In-Chains

Weight Watchers

Deep In The Heart Of Darkness

Nice To Meat You

Viebrator aka Aunty Vie

Brown Paper Bag

3

2008-10-18T00:46:00.012-10:00

Blue Crane

Plastic Aquarium

Amy's Place

Metal Face

Seafood Pancake

Number Seven

Walled In

Doo Dad

His Holiness

Buddhist Statue

An Offering

Asahi Head

Temple Awnings

Reverse Shot

A Shadow

Muumuu Haven

Haleiwa Salad

Hawaiian Kitsch

This Way

Waialua Coffee

Three Times

Racist Electricity

Look Out(!)

Industrial Portal

Nike Blazers

Don’t Slam

La Chinoise

Pocket Calculator

Fucking Tired

Glazer’s Coffee

Retna MSK

2

2008-10-12T14:39:00.002-10:00

Matt Shops On Keeamoku

Busy Signal "Tic Toc"

2008-10-11T11:35:00.001-10:00

Lord have mercy = laudamercy = Busy Signal = FIRE.

1

2008-10-08T23:46:00.003-10:00

Rich's Fingers

Another Generic Long Exposure Night Shot

My Kid Could Paint That (2007). Directed by Amir Bar-Lev

2008-09-27T20:12:00.003-10:00

”Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”

Jean-Luc Godard

Orson Welles was one. So was Bobby Fischer. Add to this list the diminutive Marla Olmstead, a four year old painter whose work has rattled the foundations of the Modern Art World. Her paintings sell for thousands of dollars, but is she the child prodigy the art experts claim?

The story of this wunderkind begins in Binghamton, New York. The Olmsteads are a cookie-cutter family, Americana personified, the sort of faces you’d see plastered on cereal box covers. The only difference between the Olmsteads and, say, the family next door, is that their daughter is a painter of abstract art. As luck would have it, an art gallery owner serendipitously spots a Marla painting, and sees potential. He sets up an art show for the lilliputian master, and the media instantly sinks its teeth into the story, gnawing at the fresh meat hoisted in their faces.

The news of this four-year-old painter spreads like wildfire. Oprah, Conan O’Brien, The New York Times: the story is gold, and everyone wants a piece. The demand for her paintings rises exponentially, until a single news story throws a wrench in the money-making machine. 60 Minutes reports that Marla had help from her father; either, the experts say, he painted them himself, or had a hand in the creation of his daughter’s work. The demand dries up, the media turns against this girl, and the Olmsteads are chastised.

This is the precise moment in the documentary when the focus shifts from Marla to the filmmaker. Director Amir Bar-Lev turns the camera on himself, and the interviewer becomes the interviewee. He has questions, doubts, about the validity of this girl’s work. "Is it the father’s handiwork?", he seems to ask. What began as a simple documentary transforms into something much deeper, and Bar-Lev goes diving in murky waters where no filmmaker should be caught swimming.

Bar-Lev breaks the cardinal rule in filmmaking. He becomes too close to his subjects, his objectivity becomes muddled in his emotions, and he demands answers. The job of a filmmaker, in my opinion, is not to provide answers, but to simply pose questions. The minute Bar-Lev makes it his personal mission to find out whether or not this girl is the sole author of those paintings is the minute the documentary becomes propaganda. Triumph Of The Will it is not, but Frederick Wiseman would surely shake his head at this filmmaker’s intrusion of that sacred space in front of the camera.

“All art in some ways is a lie,” says Michael Kimmelman, Chief Art Critic at the New York Times, in his interview with Bar-Lev, and he’s right. In this film, which searches for truth, finds only lies, fraud, trickery. The only thing untainted and truthful in this movie is little Marla Olmstead.

Chromeo, Like...Seriously!

2008-09-14T14:30:00.007-10:00

In a world where the US spends $400M a day in Iraq, and our economy is in tatters, there are still a few things that bring enjoyment, happiness, and yes, even pure unadulterated bliss. As it happens, i came upon arguably the greatest discovery of the 21st century. It was, as George Costanza would say, like "discovering Plutonium on accident."

Click here to unearth your very own nugget of Plutonium.

I dare you to find a greater collaboration than Chromeo and Daryll Hall from Hall and Oates.

CSS Implores Party People Of The World to "Get Their Move On," Party People Respond With A Unanimous "Hellz Yeah!"

2008-09-04T22:45:00.006-10:00

Justice is the new Jesus

2008-09-02T19:16:00.004-10:00

found this on another blog. a snippet from the new Justice behind-the-scene's doc A Cross the Universe. All hail the new digital deities.

2 Days In Paris (2008). Directed by Julie Delpy

2008-08-25T21:56:00.001-10:00

Writer-Director-Star Julie Delpy’s 2 Days In Paris sounds like a not-so-clever pun on the salacious Hilton dilettante, but maybe that’s a good thing. If this movie title catches your eye at your local movie depot, granted you’re not perusing the bowels of Adult Emporium, it’s definitely worth a watch, especially if you’ve got a penchant for Parisian romantic-comedies. If Delpy’s film reminds you of Before Sunset, it’s unsurprising, seeing as how Delpy doubled as co-writer and actress in Linklater’s 80 minute French tryst.

An actress who has worked with Jean-Luc Godard, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Jim Jarmusch, Delpy has had the advantage of learning from some of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Her film is exuberant, her dialogue crisp and unexpected, as if each moment was carved out spontaneously. If this movie doffed its voiceovers, Delpy wouldn’t seem like such a neophyte, but that small quibble aside, it’s better than most directorial debuts.

Currently...

2008-08-19T22:42:00.009-10:00

For the past few months, I've been juggling these four books, constantly shifting them from my bookshelf to my table to my eyes, in the hope that I will become consumed by them. Although it has taken days, months even, it has happened. I'm obsessed by each author's writings, their passions, their stories. Each book is so amazing that such a ridiculous task of hopscotching from one to the next is less a task than a never-ending source of wonder, a merry-go-round of prosaic pleasure. The following is for your consideration:

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

The history books were wrong. Everything they told us in grade school, all the bullshit ingrained in our heads, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, yada yada, has been a sham. Howard Zinn overturns conventional thought, unveils the wool that has been draped over our eyes, not for the sake of setting fire to the establishment, but for the sake of those who have sacrificed their lives for this so called democracy. Quietly, nicely, he instructs us to view the dates in the books from the other side. Ever gotten bitch-slapped at a bar? Read this, and you'd wish you had.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.

Michael Chabon is, without a doubt, the most intelligent, articulate writer of his generation. His sentences sparkle, his prose tickles your tongue, so much so that giggling at the end of his overarching paragraphs becomes a much-anticipated ritual. I rarely smile, but reading Chabon's words, i can't help myself.

Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme.

The way I was taught, short stories had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Barthelme's rapscallion rhetoric circles this convention like a pack of vultures, tearing at the flesh of this antiquated notion. His stories are hyenas, packs of hysterical bastards laughing at the poor scavengers trying to inch their way into the rotting carcases of yesterday's ideas. Give it up, his prose seems to say, and no one, at least not in this century, can go toe to toe with his short stories. Try and you will fail.

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

My brother, the jerk, thought i should read this book. Stupidly, i got sucked in, and by the intro-manifesto, i was hooked, swirling witin his social-economic, political, ethical vortex. Fuck, i told myself. Could i turn vegetarian? Books, man, they really fuck with your head, give them up, just look at the world instead. But Pollan, goddamn you, you're right. You're slowly leading me over to the other side, where soy milk and tofu hold sway over beef carpaccio plates and phalanxes of amalgamated Chicken McNuggets. Peter Singer, you and your book are next. (can i really give up pho? That most tastiest of beef noodle dishes? i'm not sure vietnamese cows are cruelty-free, i've seen Apocalypse Now. [I know, I know, the film is supposed to take place in the bowels of Vietnam, but was actually filmed in the Phillipines, but seriously, a bovine getting hacked to death with machetes? WTF?)

HFS PARTY MIX!

2008-08-17T22:03:00.002-10:00

thought i'd put together a little party mix for everyone, hope you enjoy!

tracklisting:

01. the virgins – rich girls
02. dj schmolli – justice for billie jean (michael jackson vs. justice)
03. lcd soundsystem – daft punk is playing at my house
04. keedz – stand on the word
05. kayak – want you to be mine
06. prince language – yo son
07. lykke li – i’m good, i’m gone (black kids remix)
08. tetine – i go to the doctor! (css remix)
09. css – move (cut copy remix)
10. cassie – me and you (eli escobar remix)
11. steve aoki – kim, wet ‘n wild (featuring Mickey Avalon)
12. the juan maclean – happy house

download HERE!

Intergalactic Planetary

2008-08-17T16:53:00.008-10:00

Earth Girls Have More Fun. Photo by Mike Lau

Fashion designers don’t usually turn to outer space for inspiration. With its uninhabitable planets, its black holes, its vacuous nothingness, its seems like an unlikely reference point for someone creating outfits. This, however, wasn’t the case for local designer Leah Evans who, at the age of 23, crafted an entire line inspired by the celestial unknown.

Her collection, Earth Girls Have More Fun, premiered at Urban Pacific, a fashion event for burgeoning local designers hosted by Chinatown hot spot Next Door. Combining synthetic fabrics such as metallic lamè, patent vinyl and holographic spandex, Leah created an ethereal line for the interplanetary it girl.

“I wanted to make a fun futuristic line,” Leah says, “and I thought if there were girls on Venus or Jupiter going out for a night on the town, the Earth girls would be dressed better and would have way more fun than them!” Her fashion show was an astronomical hit, and her outfits, fit for spaceship soirées, have been featured in the Honolulu Advertiser, Smart Magazine, and DISfunkshion Magazine, among many others.

Unlike scores of fashion icons whose entire lives have been consumed by Singer sewing machines, Leah’s career as a designer seems to have materialized overnight. It all began, Leah says, with an intermediate fiber arts class at UH Manoa: “everything I was making in that class turned out to be wearable” Leah admits, “so I finally declared Apparel Product Design and Merchandising as my major.”

The first piece Leah created had the same playful whimsicality as her Earth Girls Have More Fun line. “It was a suspender dress with a long hemline” Leah recalls, “but was meant to be folded up to the hip area to form one big pocket, with hidden pockets within that pocket for my Moleskine book, a pen, and my cell phone.” Indeed, Leah’s creative brain was already at work, and mentioning this garment brings a smile to her face. “When I think of that dress, I get inspired all over again.”

So who inspires Leah Evans? The names Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Jeremy Scott, Christian Joy (for whom Evans is currently interning in New York), and Alexandre Herchcovitch quickly come to mind. “They are nuts,” she says. “I love nuts designers.”

Leah’s clothing may be inspired by these other-worldly designers, but her down-to-earth nature keeps her designing for women like herself. “I basically design for me,” Leah says, “and if other people like it, then that makes my day.”

Leah Evans apparel can be found at Queens Hawaii located in Kakaako and Brown Bear in San Francisco. For more information, visit her online at her myspace page, and soon at her eponymous website.

Leila Khaled, Hijacker (2006). Directed by Lina Makboul

2008-08-03T03:45:00.004-10:00

On August 29th, 1969, Leila Khaled made history when she took control of TWA Flight 840 and became the first woman to hijack an airplane. With two hand grenades taped to her waist, and a handgun tucked inside her unmentionables, not only did her terroristic act bring media attention to the plight of the Palestinians, but it inadvertently made her the poster child for terrorism.

The most infamous picture of Leila is one in which she is seen brandishing a Kalashnikov, looking off into the distance, with a brightly colored hajib draped over her head. It’s a drastically different portrait from the one painted in Lina Makboul’s documentary, which sheds light on a woman who has denounced terrorism as a viable form of protest.

The film itself isn’t extremely well done, but it’s interesting in that you rarely, if ever, see a pro-Palestinian movie. I was talking one day with a friend, who happens to be Jewish, and even she somewhat sympathizes with the Palestinian cause. But she brought up a good point: No one really supports the Palestinians, and if they do, it’s more of a political act against Israel than it is compassion for the Palestinian cause. So in that sense, it’s refreshing to see a film told from the voice of the Other.

"Mamma's Boy" by Chromeo

2008-07-27T01:15:00.002-10:00

Chromeo's newest video is the most refreshing music video i've seen in so long. it helps that the song is spectacular too. Couldn't find it on youtube, but you can watch it here.

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes (2008). Directed by Jon Ronson

2008-07-17T20:51:00.004-10:00

The late Stanley Kubrick has a lot of boxes. His estate in Hertfordshire, England, is consumed by them. Boxes, hundreds of them, are filled with material that has been labeled, categorized, codified in such a way as to make the Dewey Decimal System look rudimentary by comparison. The boxes contain research material for his films, like thousands of photographs of gates, toy and costume stores for Eyes Wide Shut. Others contain fan letters, each marked positive, negative, or crank (for crazy). His system is such that those fan letters written from Cleveland, OH, have been filed in a folder marked Cleveland, OH, and so on and so forth. The degree to which Kubrick has organized even what some would consider trifles is extraordinary, and borderline obsessive.

Jon Ronson has, in this documentary, decided to brave the vestiges of Kubrick's past in order to discover what made Kubrick Kubrick. He has succeeded, as long as we can accept that no man can ever be whittled down to a single word. But if there was one essential thing, like rosebud in Citizen Kane, that could come close to approximating Stanley Kubrick, even if only symbolically, Ronson has found it: A clean, perfectly designed, cardboard box.

Attack of the Killer B's: posters

2008-07-14T08:14:00.006-10:00

Posters designed by Evil Genius for the Attack of the Killer B's series

Sidekicks (1992). Directed by Aaron Norris

2008-07-11T14:56:00.002-10:00

Chuck Norris has got to be one of the most underrated actors of all time. Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Robert DeNiro, Daniel Day Lewis: Please. Chuck Norris, son. Chuck is so subtle, so nuanced an actor, that for such a shitty script he will actually act like he’s shitty, you know what I mean? Genius. A must-see for any Walker, Texas Ranger fan.

Get Low

2008-07-10T13:44:00.003-10:00

Hawaii-raised, NYC-based DJ and producer Rob Low has a new blog up, and it's teeming with music, art, information, and, well, some damn fine writing. Look, Listen, Hear.

Layover, On The Shore

2008-07-09T13:35:00.006-10:00

These days, it seems that too many films about Hawaii are less about Hawaii than they are about "Hawaii," if you get my drift. For all of us who live here, we know what its like, we've seen and tasted and experienced life here first hand, and don't feel the need to see ourselves stereotyped, pigeonholed, and otherwise bastardized in the media. It's even worse for the Native Hawaiian population. Do we live in grass shacks, play ulumaika, craft tools by candlelight, clutch the dorsal fins of dolphins during oceanic flights of fancy? Maybe some of us do, but the majority of us probably do not.

Thankfully, there are people like Christopher Yogi, whose USC thesis film "Layover, On The Shore," will hopefully shed light on what it is truly like to live here, in Hawaii. Chris was a former classmate of mine at UH, and if anyone can represent Hawaii as it is, it's surely him.
The film is currently in production, and will be shooting here in Honolulu in August. For more information, please check out the website for the film:

www.layoverthefilm.com

Cinematograffiti

2008-07-06T00:44:00.003-10:00

Aloha Fixed, Evil Genius and Hawaii Film Society present a short hommage to cinema and graffiti as part of an ongoing collection of videos aimed at capturing the creative process of different artists in a variety of mediums. This is video #4. For more information, visit the following websites:

Alohafixed
Evil Genius
Mike Orbito

This video would not be possible without the help of the many talented, selfless individuals who took time out of their busy schedules to spend a friday afternoon with me and a bunch of paint. Here is a full list of credits:

Ryan, AlohaFixed, painter
Nigel, AlohaFixed, painter
Matt, EvilGenius, painter, canvas (re)construction, logistics
Jared, Hawaii Film Society, painter, editor, idea
Mike Orbito, The Room Productions, Cinematographer, camera 1
Rich Miguel, SevenTwelve, camera 2
Waialae Paseuth, canvas construction

Word.

The Greatest Rap Song Of All Time

2008-07-03T14:07:00.003-10:00

When hip-hop came into existence in the early seventies, who among the pioneers and legendary rappers could have predicted that an MC from Canada would use this beautiful musical form to speak ill of women? Surely there have been rappers who have erected controversial temples of misogyny in the musical landscape in the past. Think of Eazy-E, whose testicular demands in his song "Gimme That Nut" have more than outraged the feminist community, or the notorious 2 Live Crew, whose entire oeuvre is devoted to the denigration of women, specifically with songs like "Pop That Pussy," "The Fuck Shop," and the Kubrickian "Me So Horny."

As hateful, condemning, and sexually frustrated as these anthems are, none have come closer to portraying women as purely utilitarian agents of pleasure than Jon La Joie's "Show Me Your Genitals." La Joie eschews conventional methods used by the typical rapper to woo women (cars, money, and copious amounts of Cristal), and opts instead to use his penis as his weapon of choice. La Joie is not a misogynist but rather a realist, one who understands that the sugar-coated pleasantries involved with getting a woman into bed belie the true intention boiling in the loins of men.

La Joie is definitely on to something here. His blunt approach to the opposite sex is not sheltered within social niceties and convention, his mind not clouded by delusions of something as intangible as love. He wants what he wants, and who are we to deny him the female genitalia? Maybe in Hitler's Germany or in Mussolini's Italy such a thing would be impossible, but in Google's America, anything is possible.

The best mountain biking film ever produced.

2008-06-12T11:56:00.006-10:00

There's no doubt that the mountain bike video market is saturated with productions that sensationalize the sport. The Collective was one of the first films to go against that grain, and create films that push the boundaries while giving you that je nais se quoi that attracts and keeps you there in the first place. This is not a film about 101 Impossible Things To Do While Riding A Bike - but a film that makes you want to get out and just ride, in the way that makes you happiest.

Seasons is the 3rd installment from The Collective, and is making its Hawaii debut on Thursday, June 19 at 39 Hotel. Admission to the film is $10 a head, and all proceeds from the event go to K-VIBE, the bicycle nonprofit I volunteer at.

Iron Man (2008). Directed by Jon Favreau

2008-05-24T10:38:00.004-10:00

I’m not really into the whole Marvel movie thing, but Iron Man is a great movie, beyond the prototypical Average Joe-turned-superhuman entity, beyond the fluorescent spandex and other gaudy accoutrement. Its a movie with and without a message, and that's what makes it so interesting.

HML

2008-05-23T02:21:00.003-10:00

I had the honor of meeting the lovely ladies behind this outstanding magazine today. If you haven't already perused this quality mag at news stands and bookstores island-wide, please do. It's a cultural bible.

www.modernluxury.com

Strangers On A Train (1951). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

2008-05-06T16:29:00.005-10:00

I decided to watch this movie after high praise from one Matt Matthew, who insisted I watch this Hitchcock flick. Good choice, sir. But instead of detailing the intricacies of its plot, I feel its better for me to just talk about the one scene in this movie that blew me away. In terms of pure cinema, this is about as close as it comes, a scene so fitting for film that it would likely fail if it were operating in any other medium.

So here’s the lowdown:

Guy Haines, professional tennis player, meets Bruno Anthony, professional chillaxinist, on a train. Bruno proposes ‘the perfect murder’ to Guy, which involves switching victims. Bruno will kill Guy’s bespectacled hag of a wife, and in turn Guy will whack Bruno’s father. That way, there’s no motive involved, it’s untraceable. Sounds good, Guy says, in theory of course. Only Bruno takes this theoretical posit and puts it into action, offing Guy’s frumpy wife. Bruno tells Guy, I fulfilled my side, now it’s your turn. Guy thinks Bruno is seriously disturbed, and can’t believe he actually carried out the murder, and rejects the idea of killing Bruno’s father. Bruno begins to stalk Guy everywhere he goes, commingling with the latter’s friends. And this is where I can talk about one scene, THE scene.

Guy is about to take to the court for a tennis match. Sitting courtside, he scans the crowd, and suddenly locks eyes with someone sitting in the bleachers. The camera cuts from a shot of Guy to his point-of-view shot of the bleachers, in long shot. The frame is filled with the heads of tennis fans, their necks swaying in sync with the ensuing tennis match, left to right, left to right. All except one head is swaying, and the camera zooms in to reveal Bruno sitting there, a sinister smile on his face, staring straight at Guy.

This, to me, is pure cinema insofar as it wouldn’t really work well in any other medium. Think of the description I just wrote. The written word doesn’t really convey that well. Think of a still photograph. It would be impossible to capture this. Think of a poem…no good. Think of theatre, which could come close, but wouldn’t have the same impact because that impact would rely heavily on your location in the theater, as well as that of Bruno and Guy, and their respective locations to each other in the theater as well. Only cinema, the medium which is able to photograph subjects moving in real time, in a particular space, could capture an image with this resonance. Not only does the shot work visually, but it speaks of Bruno’s character: determined, psychotic, an individual who refuses to follow convention, rules, laws. It’s a marvelous shot that registers with terrifying beauty, and I’ll always remember this film by that scene.

Balls Of Fury (2007). Directed by Robert Ben Garant

2008-04-28T18:46:00.003-10:00

Maggie Q is the best thing to happen to the Asian-American community since the Wu-Tang Clan.

BMX Bandits (1983). Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith

2008-04-21T23:16:00.002-10:00

Three Reasons To Watch BMX Bandits:

1. If you're a completist, and desire to view the entire oeuvre of Nicole Kidman, your anal-retentiveness will forbid you from living another minute without watching this movie.

2. If you're a BMXer, you could do without seeing this movie, but then again, are you really a BMXer?, cause seriously, if you were, you would at least want to check it out, cause what if that time comes along, when you're cruising with your BMX buddies, and they happen to bring up BMX Bandits, after which they all claim to have seen it and applaud it, that is, everyone except you, and when one of them, the observant one, who noticed that you were awfully quiet during the whole BMX Bandits hoorah, asks you if you've seen it, you will have that moment of awkwardness before you admit that no, you haven't seen it, during which time your BMX buddies look at you with contempt, and shake their heads in dismay that they let someone such as yourself, a BMX dilettante, within the tight circle of devoted BMXers that they are. Do yourself a favor...skip that awkward moment and watch this movie.

3. If you're not a BMXer, this movie has absolutely nothing to do with BMXing.

Lewiss Kingg starts new blog, admits that the crumbs at the bottom of the Cheez-Its are "so worth my time"

2008-04-09T08:02:00.006-10:00

i just found out that my friend has a new blog up, aptly titled "PANDAPORN." Click HERE to see a must-see blog for beautiful, macabre, and above all sexy images drawn by Mr Lewiss Kingg. He's based out of New York and is an excellent photographer who you'll see published soon enough. He has a cat named Bijou.

Drunk.

2008-04-07T02:19:00.003-10:00

when most dudes get drunk, usually, this leads to one thing: stripbars. While i can't totally exempt myself from such salacious practices, i have a new vice, one which groups me with the likes of dorks the world over. I mean, who else, when completely shitfaced, goes on amazon.com, and orders books? what the fuck. more short stories to come, a graffiti piece to come, everything to come, so wait...patiently.

Run Children!

2008-03-08T23:18:00.000-10:00

What is the What (2006). A Novel by Dave Eggers

2008-03-02T14:16:00.002-10:00

Read this, please, Dave Eggers is amazing, one of the finest writers today, of that i'm certain, and his story, an autobiography slash novel, about a sudanese refugee's journey through sudan and ethiopia and kenya and then america, is heartbreaking, staggering, genius even.

C-FU unveils newest Akira trailer, grants Oedipus Rex the title of "World's First MILF Hunter"

2008-02-07T20:02:00.000-10:00

booyakasha!

Back and Forth Forever: Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), Directed by Miranda July.

2008-01-16T23:40:00.000-10:00

I like honest films. It’s difficult to qualify ‘honest’ sometimes, but it’s the feeling you get when someone expresses something in such a way that we can instantly relate. It’s so honest, it hurts to feel it, and trying to simply understand it is excruciating. Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know is one such film about love and acceptance, and oddly, there’s nothing here that even remotely smacks of the typical Hollywood-brand cheddar. Real love, according to July, has no pride, yet is proud; awkward, yet sure; and fearful, yet courageous. It’s a tightrope act of paradoxes – that to risk falling is its own success, and to risk nothing is the greatest failure of all.

Mikey and Nicky (1976). Directed by Elaine May

2008-01-09T00:05:00.000-10:00

Is it more than just coincidence that filmmaker John Cassavetes (A Woman Under The Influence, Love Streams) lies at the center of Elaine May’s character-driven drama Mikey and Nicky? Perhaps. But don’t let that persuade you that his own vision lies behind this wholly original misanthropic piece, 'cause Elaine May is not to be fucked with. Her filmmaking style may derive from Cassavetes, but her films couldn’t be further from the latter’s brand of movie-making.

A mob boss puts out a hit on one of his former employees, the scatterbrained Nicky (filmmaker John Cassavetes), who enlists the help of his purported friend Mikey (Peter Falk) to help him. The strange thing is, Mikey is in on the hit, and tags along with Nicky throughout the night, trying to coordinate the kill with a blundering hit man as they dart from bar to bar, from the cemetery where Nicky’s mother is buried to the house of a salacious female with whom Nicky tries to get into bed, from the frenetic metropolis to the peaceful suburb where the whole narrative contraption explodes.

Elaine May’s prickly, nihilistic Mikey and Nicky is a wake up call for all of those who believe female filmmakers are only fit to produce confectionery fluff.

Snuffed Animals (2007). Directed by Mike Altman

2007-12-30T23:03:00.001-10:00

Local filmmaker Mike Altman is, in my opinion, one of the best filmmakers in hawaii. This is an older short produced this year, thanks again to mike for allowing us to post if for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy.

Women Under the Influence

2007-12-24T03:54:00.000-10:00

For the month of january, the entire focus of our blog with be devoted to female filmmakers and films in which the main characters are women. This should be an interesting collection of pieces, seeing as how our staff consists of two males and a kurryballs. If you'd like to throw your opinion (or a quick review) our way, holler.

i is an other

2007-12-24T00:16:00.000-10:00

a short documentary on photographer mike lau, part of an ongoing collection of installations aimed at capturing the creative process of different artists in a variety of mediums. thanks to mike, leah, virgi, mars, ro, sean, shane and matt.

signing off...

2007-12-09T14:27:00.000-10:00

for the next 11 days, i won't have any sort of internet access aside from occasional patches at work, so there won't be any daily posting, sorry. i know that the two of you who read this blog are saddened, grieve-stricken, but i plan on getting a lot of reading and writing done in that period of time. until then.

No Country for Old Men (2007), Directed by the Coen Brothers.

2007-12-08T14:38:00.000-10:00

A man stumbles upon millions in cash in the desert, after a shootout leaves a dozen drug runners dead. A serial killer eludes capture, and in the wake of a string of random killings, discovers the desert scene - sans cash, but a sensor tied to a homing beacon hidden within the missing money. And a county sheriff, with senses keen to the crime scene, is hot on the trail.

Sounds like the latest blockbuster suspense thriller, don't it?

Rather, the Coen brothers' latest is reminscent of Cache, Chinatown, The Long Goodbye, and Memories of Murder - a twist on the old Hollywood formula that sets up a string of characters and interconnected events - but alas, the characters are not really connected, and the events are, at best, random. Like the previous mentioned, No Country for Old Men is less about the story as events unfold, and more about the characters: it speaks countless volumes of unspoken stories about their pasts, their cumulative experiences, and their personalities; and perhaps even stories not yet written. Maybe the Coens' most existentialist film yet, their characters paint a bleak world-view - that there often is no meaning to anything; no way to profile or predict the actions of a single man; no justice to ever be had; and the life and death of the 'hero' and 'villain' can be no more or no less important than the death of those that were found in the desert - a world-view which is far more sinister and sublime than any plot that may be contrived.

2007-12-07T01:06:00.001-10:00

"Cinema is death at work."

--Jean Cocteau

pre-production/production

2007-12-06T20:04:00.000-10:00

"I make the damnedest, most elaborately detailed plans you ever saw, and then I throw them all away. The plans aren't made in order to be realized, they're made in order to prepare me for improvisation. That way, an awful lot of thinking is behind me, and I'm ready for what the actors have to surprise me with. The camera has to serve the actors, not the actors the camera."

2007-12-05T00:50:00.000-10:00

"When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it."

--Michelangelo Antonioni

2007-12-04T22:35:00.000-10:00

"Dreams. Floating. I like free forms. Images flashing by have more weight than a coherent narrative. The movie theater to me is like a vehicle transporting the audience to uncharted territories. Sometimes it is beautiful to look and not think."

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

2007-12-03T22:48:00.000-10:00

"No work of art is truly naturalistic. Art is not real life, and has to be organized, designed, and distilled because it's dramatic. There is nothing accidental, it's all contrivance."

--Mike Leigh

2007-12-02T16:00:00.000-10:00

It seems to me that the moment you try to convince or demonstrate, you're bound to do something artistically simplistic."

--Louis Malle

2007-12-01T23:27:00.000-10:00

"My technique is the outcome of thinking for myself, of my own logic and approach; it is not borrowed from what others are doing."

--Charlie Chaplin

tv

2007-11-30T23:28:00.000-10:00

For some reason, I keep running into really good stuff on tv. Last night, Mark Mothersbaugh (DEVO, The Life Aquatic) was a guest programmer on Turner Classic Movies (quite possibly the last basic cable station ballsy enough to air entire films uninterrupted). I caught the beginning of Juliet of the Spirits and the tailend of Hot Rods to Hell, two of his selections. Tonight, Julian Schnabel, director of The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, discussed his film, his father and his approach to the material on Charlie Rose.

Zeser MSK

2007-11-29T18:47:00.001-10:00

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.

check out the seventh letter films website for high quality versions of all their films.

incomplete

2007-11-28T00:48:00.000-10:00

"All films are unfinished--except, possibly, those of Bresson."

--Raúl Ruiz

The Civil War (1990), Directed by Ken Burns.

2007-11-27T00:50:00.000-10:00

Between 1861 and 1865, Americans made war on each other, and killed each other, in great numbers, if only to become the kind of country that could no longer conceive how that was possible.

–Ken Burns

Any understanding of this nation, has to be based on an understanding of the Civil War; it defined us. The Revolution did what it did; our involvement in the European wars that began with the first World War did what it did; but the Civil War defined us as what we are, and it opened us to being what we became — good and bad things — and it is very necessary if you’re going to understand the American character in the 20th century to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the mid-nineteenth century. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a helluva crossroads.

–Shelby Foote, Writer

An ambiguous quote which Godard painted on the floor sprawling across his exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, entitled "Travel(s) in Utopia"

2007-11-27T00:28:00.000-10:00

"Spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom."

-Henri Bergson (1859-1941)

The Camera Is An Eye

2007-11-26T00:04:00.000-10:00

"Every machine is the spiritualization of an organism."

Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931)

2007-11-25T01:59:00.000-10:00

"My aim is to create unity between worlds that are usually apart. It is the duty of the police and immigration officers to create borders, and it is the duty of artists to lessen or eliminate them."

--Abbas Kiarostami

On Cinema...

2007-11-24T18:09:00.000-10:00

"For me, cinema is simply an original way to create a new universe."

--Andrei Tarkovsky

Glory To The Filmmaker! (2007). Directed by Takeshi Kitano

2007-11-23T18:22:00.000-10:00

Making a film about the making of a film is tantamount to juggling chainsaws fifty feet in the air, tippy-toeing on a tightrope, while monitoring the audience’s attention, making sure their two hours are invested well. It’s double-duty, really, and almost suicidal considering the odds: not only are you directing the film-within-the-film, but you’re tasked to direct the film about the film-within-the-film, so it’s unimaginable that anyone with a modicum of self-preservation would brave this preposterous stunt.

Enter Takeshi Kitano, cinema’s most solipsistic director this side of Woody Allen, and his latest project, Glory To The Filmmaker!, a bricolage movie dedicated to—what else?—himself. Not since Charlie Kaufmann injected his own life into Adaptation has there been anything to rival the self-aggrandizing exploits of Kitano, whose egotistical projections manifest themselves in nearly every single frame of his newest film.

Kick-starting this freewheeling extravaganza is an anonymous narrator who laments Kitano’s decision to stop making gangster films, a choice the godly narrator predicts will hurl him into producing a string of empty, unsatisfying movies which will go terribly awry, and he’s right. Kitano can’t make up his mind about who he is as a director, and sets sail on directing a film from every conceivable genre, including an Ozu-esque family drama, a melodramatic love story, a period piece, a horror film and a samurai flick, all of which are soon aborted due to their illogical, purely formal nature, until Kitano (and the narrator) both settle on making a sci-fi picture called The Promised Land, an equally ridiculous movie riddled with eccentric caricatures and silly outbursts originating from out in left field, starring Kitano himself as the protagonist. So not only is Glory To The Filmmaker! a film about Kitano making various movies, it’s also a movie about him starring in his own movies, a sort of circular self-reflexivity that confounds any and all attempts for him to evaluate himself and his films. To top it off, there’s a rubber life-sized doll, an ersatz Kitano, painted in the same get-up as the director, a sort of physical and metaphoric double for Kitano, who stands in for him when things go south.

A wacky spectacle hemorrhaging wacky spectacles, Glory To The Filmmaker! is, truly, something else. In fact, it’s so much something else, it’s not even itself.

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (2003), Directed by Mitsuru Meike.

2007-11-22T11:06:00.000-10:00

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai makes the Pharcyde’s Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde look like a slow drive down the street. The first 5 minutes truly sets the tone for the movie; Sachiko getting the pounding of her life, in multiple positions, only to receive a cumshot that would make Peter North jealous. She’s a bit of a space cadet when she’s not lying on her back, but all that changes when a mix up of objects forces a Yakuza to put a bullet through her head. The strange thing is, the bullet doesn’t pass through cleanly, and instead, lodges in her frontal lobe. The result: a ridiculously heightened IQ, musings on the theory of relativity and Immanuel Kant, and an awareness that reveals a dark conspiracy brewing beneath the surface of a placid Japanese metropolis. But perhaps the operative word here is ridiculous – this movie never takes itself seriously – the sex is always great, and the flying dildos, well, you’ll just have to see it for yourself.

THE FLEAPIT REVIEW

2007-11-21T00:41:00.000-10:00

just found out my friend has an awesome horror blogspot called the Fleapit Review, please check it out HERE!

Who wears short shorts?

2007-11-20T23:58:00.001-10:00

Andrei Tarkovsky, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Tonino Guerra

It's probably a really bad movie.

2007-11-19T17:22:00.000-10:00

"I may be bad, but I feel GOOD." -Evil Sheila

Suspiria (1977). Directed by Dario Argento

2007-11-19T01:24:00.000-10:00

Dario Argento’s world, replete with garish wallpaper, geometric spaces and candy-colored interiors, has a sui generis quality similar to Stanley Kubrick or Raul Ruiz, so much so that it’s unimaginable how this Italian provocateur’s movies fail to secure a spot on any list of critical value. Suspiria, Argento’s eighth film, is a brutal masterpiece which simultaneously aestheticizes violence and expresses a strong aversion to such acts, creating an ideologically challenging viewing experience. Shot in bold colors and a wildly inventive manner, Suspiria peers in on a German dance academy whose faculty members are involved in some strange devilish occult, desperately offing their students in order to fuel their brand of witchcraft and continue their legacy. Accompanied by a haunting, off-kilter score by The Goblins, Suspiria is a multi-layered horror film worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with both The Shining and On Top Of The Whale.

Cocaine (2005). Directed by Angus Macqueen

2007-11-18T09:56:00.000-10:00

Following the trail of cocaine across South America, filmmaker Angus Macqueen pounds that final nail into the coffin of the Drug War by tracing the production, sale, and exportation of the drug into the global market in a three-part series for Channel 4. The film begins in Peru, with peasant farmers who harvest the coca leaves and other individuals who begin turning it into cocaine via hydrochloric acid. Tangentially included is a segment on the favelas of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, which, paradoxically, is perhaps the greatest of this series, focusing on one boy’s involvement with a favela gang’s drug deals. The finale, shot in Columbia, looks at the trafficking of the drug by paramilitaries and the futile attempts by the government to crush the nose-candy empire, which yields 8 billion dollars each year, an amount of money that has Columbian drug traffickers basically controlling the government.

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (1928). Directed by Carl Dreyer

2007-11-17T15:20:00.000-10:00

If there is a single film to which I can point and say, yes, this is the film that made me love films, it's Carl Dreyer's The Passion Of Joan Of Arc. Absolutely essential viewing.

Dark Days (2000), Directed by Marc Singer.

2007-11-16T15:10:00.000-10:00

In his seminal work, The Time Machine, HG Wells created a fictional race of human descendants called the Morlocks – mutants who lived underground for so long that they evolved into a species all their own. And given the unforgiving combination of bad luck and bad choices, the homeless might be our modern-day Morlocks; people who've sank so low they’re another species altogether.

Or that’s what we’d like to think, sometimes, before middle class guilt completely takes over.

With a filming and post production schedule that spanned years because of financial and technical roadblocks, Dark Days finally made it to release in 2000. Marc Singer, moved by the plight of the homeless in the dark tunnels beneath New York City, decided that he’d make a film to humanize his newfound friends – a portrayal of individuals caught in a circle so vicious they were unable to remove themselves from it, or see the bars of their prison.

Given the chance to make good after so much bad, they triumph or fall according to their own will; but ultimately they are still human - that deserve to be treated as such.

The White Sheik (1952). Directed by Federico Fellini

2007-11-15T00:26:00.000-10:00

Orson Welles: Fellini is essentially a small-town boy who's never really come to Rome. He's still dreaming about it. And we should all be very grateful for those dreams. In a way, he's still standing outside looking in through the gates. The force of La Dolce Vita comes from its provincial innocence. It's so totally invented.

Peter Bogdanovich: Maybe the "small-town" aspect is why I like I Vitelloni most of all his films.

Orson Welles: After The White Sheik, it's the best of all.

The World (2005). Directed by Jia Zhang-ke

2007-11-14T00:08:00.000-10:00

The characters who inhabit Jia Zhang-ke’s film The World are those dangling off the fringes of the greater tapestry comprising modern China, trying to figure out their identities in a city of surging socio-economic and cultural change. The World—that is, the eponymous Beijing theme park in which the film takes place—is haphazardly fashioned with replicas of the world's most famous monuments, although here the reconstructions are migetized, shrunken so that one may stroll along the coast of Manhattan, and, within seconds, stand next to Big Ben or the leaning tower of Pisa. The implications here are disturbing, and Jia uses the park—whose slogan is "See the world without ever leaving Beijing"—to craft an ominous portrait of the confused young men and women who work at this sinister Disneyland doppelgänger.

Tao (Zhao Tao) moves from the provinces to work at Beijing's World Park as a dancer, and her boyfriend Chen (Chen Taisheng), tags along, scoring a job as a security guard at the park. However, Chen (endowed with a new enterprising spirit in the big city) meets a young woman named Qun (Wang Yigun), a fashionista who makes fake outfits modeled on designer brands, and is soon juggling two women. Chen and Tao drift slowly apart, until the poetic conclusion that leaves the two inextricably connected, and a string of ...'s on the future of China.

Motorama (1991). Directed by Barry Shils

2007-11-13T00:50:00.000-10:00

For me, there are certain elements in a movie that make me realize that what I’m watching is of “B” quality. In the opening scene of Motorama, 10-year-old Gus (played by that kid Rusty, who played practical jokes on everyone in Full House, the son of that one lady whom Danny Tanner was trying to tap?) tinkers away in the garage, building. The voice-over is his father, telling his mother what a worthless wife she is, and about how he wants to strangle his kid. We sense the violence in his voice, and suddenly a slap. There’s a close up of Gus smashing his piggy bank, then a shot of him cashing the money at the bank, then driving down the highway in a mustang. Barry Shils has condensed into 4 shots what a first rate director would elaborate on in 40 minutes, because this seed would contain the most dramatic parts, this would be the motivating force driving Gus, this would give us reason to empathize with this tortured soul. But ultimately we don’t care, and watch as Gus is subjected to some brutal treatment, chasing a pipe dream of winning 500 million dollars in some gas station lottery game only to be bamboozled. The only thing that saves the movie is the cast of characters he meets: a motel owner-slash-squirrel wrangler played by Jack Nance (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet), a mentally disturbed bus boy played by Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and a bunch of other weirdos whose actions seem so random and inhumane it’s frightening.

As Gus makes his way across a reinvented American landscape, the cities slowly become more terrifying—a sort of Apocalypse Now on asphalt—until he reaches Essex, a dark, gruesome state, where heroin addicts overdose, where the Pope (who, for some odd reason, is sitting roadside) is shot in cold blood, where the KKK conducts business as usual, where hookers drag John Does by the neck; it’s that sort of place that makes Beirut look like a cobble-stoned suburban utopia. Oddly enough, the city looks a lot like New Jersey. Weird.

Wild Style (1983). Directed by Charlie Ahearn

2007-11-12T00:09:00.000-10:00

Charlie Ahearn’s classic film Wild Style was that Great Leap Forward in 1983, when the streets and subways of New York were inundated with breakdancing, rap music, djing, and graffiti. The Cultural Revolution known as hip-hop was well underway, and Ahearn captured the spirit of the time in an almost documentary fashion, save for the arbitrary romance between two graffiti writers and the obligatory concert at the end. Nonetheless, Wild Style, along with Subway Art (Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant’s version of the Little Red Book), Beat Street and Style Wars, became the cultural catalysts which inspired a global transformation, something Mao Zedong only dreamed of achieving.

Some Came Running (1958). Directed by Vincente Minnelli

2007-11-11T00:35:00.000-10:00

"My Favorite Film. Period." --Richard Linklater

Vertical Ray Of The Sun (2000). Directed by Tran Anh Hung

2007-11-10T12:04:00.000-10:00

Vertical Ray of the Sun is your average family drama packaged in a formally challenging way. Four siblings, Lien (Tran Nu Yen-Khe), Khanh (Le Khanh), Suong (Nguyen Nhu Quynh), and Hai (Ngo Quang Hai) prepare a feast in remembrance of their deceased parents. Lien, the youngest of three sisters, lives with their younger brother Hai in an apartment that facilitates their ambiguous relationship which borders on incestuous. The older sisters, Khanh and Suong, are both married, the former to a writer struggling with his latest novel (and an affair), the latter to a photographer who leads a double life.

Typical as this may seem, Tran's method of approaching this material is anything but: he releases us into his narrative stream, afloat like yellow plastic ducks, allowing us to get carried away by rivulets of digression, and even invites us to get caught in rocky patches of incoherence. But Tran, responsible filmmaker that he is, scoops us up and returns us to his whimsical, undulating current. Although this may sound confusing (both my aquatic metaphor and what the director is doing), Tran anchors his entire film within Lien and Hai's apartment, a place to which the film returns every morning after the narrative progresses (or digresses, in some cases). This technique proves helpful, because it's very uncertain as to what Tran is up to half the time, so when he returns to the apartment as Lien and Hai wake up, it gives us a space with which we can associate and somehow sort out the narrative details which took place.

Some films challenge us to reconsider how we think about and understand movies, while others simply generate a cartoon bubble above our heads with a gigantic question mark inside. Vertical Ray of the Sun straddles this divide.

The Aerial (2007). Directed by Esteban Sapir

2007-11-08T23:46:00.000-10:00

Fixated on the aesthetics of comic books and silent films, Argentinian filmmaker Esteban Sapir excavates the fossilized remains of cinema’s past in order to erect his monumental hommage to motion pictures, The Aerial. The film’s premise is something out of a childen's fable: an entire city has lost their voices, victims of an evil boob-tube mogul who monopolizes the television industry. His control over their voices isn’t enough; he wants their words too. But a television employee discovers the evil plot, and works to counteract the master plan to enslave the denizens of the silent city. Sapir, a notable cinematographer turned writer-director, ransacks the classroom of David Lynch’s progeny, snatching their shoebox dioramas for inspiration and creates an absurdist paradise in the antiquated style of Guy Maddin. The entire film has this artificial quality of people posing for photographs, but that seems to be the modus operandi in The Aerial, which contains so much visual bric-a-brac and onomatopoeic words zigzagging around the screen it’s as if a calculated montage collage was the only way to bring this fantasy to life.

Linda Linda Linda (2005). Directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita

2007-11-07T00:02:00.000-10:00

Not another teen movie, Nobuhiro Yamashita’s brilliant, subdued high school musical-comedy Linda Linda Linda is something of an anomaly in a genre saturated with teenage angst and disillusioned youth. Three female band members find themselves singerless for their school’s rock festival until they pluck Son (Doona Bae), a Korean exchange student, at random and begin practice on their magnum opus, discovering their performance might need to be polished before the big day arrives. Shot in a series of long, uninterrupted takes, Director Yamashita manages to craft an honest depiction of teenie-boppery, in all its awkwardness and naivete, without resorting to stereotypes.

The Squid And The Whale (2005). Directed by Noah Baumbach

2007-11-06T00:11:00.000-10:00

It’s Brooklyn, 1986, and the nuclear family is in trouble. Jeff Bridges plays a struggling author and part-time professor whose marriage is spiraling into oblivion. He and his wife (played by Laura Linney) split and divvy up the kids, who respond to the separation in oddly different ways: the eldest son, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), sides with his pops, and feeds parasitically off his literary knowledge and shitty female advice, while the younger son sticks with his mom, tanks cans of beer, and begins to write his name on library books and lockers in a seminal fashion. The film inches its way into the emotional debris of a crumbling family, and director Noah Baumbach doesn't hesitate to invite the audience into the recesses of his own painful memories of childhood (the story is partly-autobiographical).

Stylistically, The Squid And The Whale comes closer to the aesthetic of John Cassavetes (Shadows, A Woman Under the Influence) than it does to Wes Anderson, who produced the film and also co-wrote The Life Aquatic with the director. Baumbach has strayed away from the polished, carefully crafted frame, and opted instead for an agitated handheld camera that adds to the intensity of domestic turmoil.

Baumbach makes more than a few allusions to movies, the most obvious of which are Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, and Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore. But this brings up an important question: do such films simply stroke the collective ego of cinephiles, whose level of respect for a film is dependent on the identification of such film quotes? Is the practice of pastiche merely an attempt for filmmakers to wink at movie buffs? Or is it possible the referential filmmaker, in his desire to woo the film savvy, has engaged in an act analogous to those committed by the likes of Hollywood, in their petty attempt to pat the audience on the back? Could it be the cinephile is gratified in the same way as the casual film goer?

The Wayward Cloud (2005). Directed by Tsai Ming-Liang

2007-11-05T01:44:00.000-10:00

The Wayward Cloud opens with a young, plump nurse lying on a bed, clutching a watermelon half between her thighs. A doctor (played here by Lee Kang Sheng) slides onto the mattress and begins his inspection. After subjecting the watermelon to a grisly fingerbagging, he proceeds to get busy, fornicating with the juicy fruit in question. It soon becomes obvious that Lee is a performer in porno flicks, and this is his latest role.

When he's not busy fucking fruit, Lee meanders around Taiwan, trying to stay cool amidst the devastating drought. He runs into a former flame (Chen Shiang-chyi) in a park, after which a relationship of sorts ensues. The remainder of the film is devoted to their attempt at a connection.

Although Tsai's films typically employ long takes and minimal dialogue, The Wayward Cloud is punctuated with bizarre musical scenes, most of which involve the protagonist in outlandish emsembles (one song-and-dance number places Lee in a giant cock costume as he's pursued by women brandishing plungers). Much like his earlier film The Hole, Tsai uses these interludes to comment on the characters, adding yet another dimension to the film's overall tone.

I'm not sure what to make of Tsai's latest, but it's a disturbing work, brilliant and disgusting at the same time.

Gymkata (1985). Directed by Robert Clouse

2007-11-04T14:42:00.000-10:00

“Ok, well, I’m a gymnastics champion, but I’m going to train to be a karate fighter in order to enter a fucked-up competition in some tiny Central Asian country where you fight for your life, so that when I win, I can ask the leader of that country for one request, which is to put a satellite there for the United States, and I realize that the U.S. doesn’t want to send its troops there cause it lacks finesse, so I’m gonna go and play ‘the game’, and oh, when I see gymnastic apparatus conveniently mounted in random places, I will spin around on them and kick dudes in the head, and looky here, the final phase of the competition is a village where the country sends its crazy people, and oh shit, there just so happens to be a gymnastic pommel horse in the middle of the town square, so all you psychos gather round me and hold on for one second while I prepare myself and spin around on this horse and kick you dudes in the head. Sounds good?”

Ploy (2007). Directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang

2007-11-03T20:15:00.000-10:00

Nothing if not an examination of spousal fidelity, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s latest film Ploy probes the rocky marriage between Daeng (Lalita Panyopas) and Wit (Pornwut Sarasin), two emotionally detached expats who journey back to Thailand to attend a funeral. Jetlagged, they hole up in a hotel room until Wit hits the bar for coffee and cigarettes, only to find himself engaging in conversation with Ploy (Apinya Sakuljaroensuk), a mysterious hipster waif awaiting her mother’s arrival in Bangkok. He invites her upstairs to freshen up, and so begins the film’s macabre machinations: a series of outlandish sequences, both dreamt and actualized, which test the couple’s marriage and force them to confront their worst nightmares. In a sense, this film is an Asian remake of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut festooned with Hitchcockian macguffins.

The Man From London (2007). Directed by Bela Tarr

2007-11-03T19:55:00.000-10:00

Never have I seen so many people walk out of a theatre as the night The Man From London made its U.S. premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival. Was the film that bad? Of course not. It was a hypnotic film that wasn’t neatly packed and condensed within the conventions of a typical film, a unique experience different than the one offered at perhaps every other movie at the festival. Was it boring? Yes—that is, if you’re used to hyperactive montage and hurry-the-fuck-up-and-get-
to-the-point type narration prevalent in most films, then Bela Tarr’s latest atmospheric piece would bug the shit out of you.

But for myself and a few others, the experience—because that’s what Bela Tarr’s films are—was an unforgettable one. The film begins with Maloin, a train station operator, who watches a crime taking place on some anonymous harbor. There’s a struggle, a murder, and a bag of money, which Maloin fishes out of the water and takes home. Soon, there’s a mysterious man by the name of Brown stalking him. Maloin learns that the money he stole off the pier was intended for a payoff, which Mr. Brown is blamed for taking. At the center of this questionable crime is a famous inspector from London, who is apparently a collector for some shady, corrupt organization. The money is returned, but not before Mr. Brown and Maloin encounter each other for a chilling climax that leaves much to the imagination.

What makes The Man From London so fascinating is the novel way in which the material is presented to the viewer. The film opens up with an incredibly slow and deliberate pan up the side of a boat, until it arrives on deck, where the money will be tossed overboard to another man across the harbor. The camera eventually creeps into Maloin’s watchtower, and the viewer enters Maloin’s perspective, seeing what he sees: the entire crime unfolding. Later in the film, the same gradual pan up the side of the boat is repeated, along with the entrance into Maloin’s tower. However this time, the inspector is on board the ship, attempting to recreate the crime as it happened the night before: he apes the crime by tossing a floatation device over the side, and it lands in the exact same place as the suitcase of money. The inspector makes his way down to the tiny concrete landing, and begins to search the landscape for possible vantage points of the crime. The camera is still located within Maloin’s watchtower, and both he and the viewer are watching as the inspector finally spots the tower. It’s an ingeniously staged scene, considering that it is one take, and it’s powerful impact comes from the film’s refusal to make it entertaining: it’s frightening to watch, because the viewer is in the same position as Maloin, and both are terrified at the discovery made by the inspector.

Another noteworthy scene is when Maloin trudges to the shack where Mr. Brown is hiding. The camera follows him from behind as he walks, but when he gets to the shack, unhooks the lock and goes inside, the camera stays outside. A few minutes pass, and Maloin emerges, visibly shaken. The viewer is left in a bewildered state because Tarr has refused him/her access into this important plot point, which might help to explain what the fuck is going on. But somehow this scene is more frightening and terrifying due to the fact that the viewer isn’t allowed inside. Just as Tarantino pulls his camera out of the chapel in Kill Bill Vol. 2 before the massacre occurs, Tarr withholds the camera from entering this space, teasing the viewer and making him/her create their own version of the scene in his/her head. Both scenes create an anticipation in the narrative, both reject displays of violence, and both deny the viewer what they most want.

So is Tarr some sort of Hungarian equivalent to Tarantino? Not by a long shot. Tarr shoots entire scenes often in one take, with elaborate panning that encompasses many characters and which is interesting to watch because the viewer never knows when he will reveal more plot points. Tarr is all about atmosphere: the way a scene feels is exactly how life there seems: slow, borderline boring, and unimportant. Somehow Tarr has managed to find a visual form that perfectly matches his content, an achievement many filmmakers never accomplish. You could say that The Man From London is not everyone’s cup of Earl Grey, but for those who want something different out of movies, this is the visionary filmmaker to watch for.

No End In Sight (2007). Directed by Charles Ferguson

2007-11-03T16:31:00.000-10:00

Charles Ferguson’s No End In Sight begins at the end. With major combat operations completed in 2003, he traces the timeline of post-war Iraq, the reconstruction efforts and, more specifically, why after four years we’re still there. There’s no sugar-coating here: Ferguson argues against the dictatorial fashion in which Rumsfield made decisions and why on earth all expert opinion was ignored.

In a nutshell, since democracy was not brought to the Iraqi people after Saddam was ousted, they became disenchanted by the notion of it, and instead turned to religious fundamentalism and powerful figures such as Muqtada al-Sadr, along with various other sectarian militias within Iraq as a way of supporting their families and finding some solace within the anarchy of Baghdad. It’s not surprising either: Ferguson’s documentary assembles the complicated jigsaw puzzle of post-war Iraq, one filled with missing pieces discarded by the Bush Administration, as well as odd shaped pieces which mutated due to the foreign policies established by the Pentagon. The result is that No End In Sight appears to be an ominous, abstracted image of Iraq, filled with huge areas of black space, and image far from the one which policy-makers thought they were creating.

Last Action Hero (1993). Directed by John McTiernan

2007-11-03T10:54:00.000-10:00

Containing equal parts Godardian self-reflexivity and generic hollywood cliché, Last Action Hero is a contradiction in movie-making: both a vehicle for Schwarzenegger and a critique of action films.

Snot-nosed movie freak Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) finds himself transcending time and space when he pierces through a movie screen—via a magic movie ticket—and pops up in Jack Slater IV, a fast paced action movie, the hero of which is the eponymous cop (played by Schrwarzenegger) who discovers that his world is just a movie. “To be or not to be,” murmurs Slater, as Danny imagines him in the role of Hamlet. This scene is a perfect summation of both the film and the film-within-the-film, as Slater’s entire world is thrown into question.

Coincidentally, Jack Slater is Robert Murdoch in Dark City insofar as they both discover that they don’t exist, that they lead fictional lives fabricated by authors, that their raison d'être is to please an audience. But this conceit, which suggests that people are real only if their actions are motivated by their own free will, doesn’t entertain the idea that when someone, fictional or otherwise, commits an act, it is real to them, real enough to be considered reality. When the fictional Slater sees his fictional son thrown off a fictional rooftop, it’s real, the act itself is palpable enough to him that he’s emotionally stirred, and if that’s not reality then what is?

Maniac Cop 2 (1990). Directed by William Lustig

2007-10-30T20:55:00.000-10:00

If God got plastered one night, went to a strip bar, then stumbled back to his crib and watched some wack-ass cop movie, he’d be all like, “Yo, what the fuck is this shit? Cops thinking they ME and shit, trying to judge fools, serving justice. Fuck that!” Then, after vomiting up an entire brewery, he’d smoke a joint and think until he’d brainstormed a flick about a disfigured ex-cop, framed by other officers, coming back to life, going beserk and killing a whole army of cops. Then, he’d team this crazy bastard up with a serial killer who liked to off strippers, and he’d be all like “Hells yeah, this is some next level shit….Hey Jesus, tell Muhammad and Abraham to read this!” They would be on the jock for sure.

Dark City (1998). Directed by Alex Proyas

2007-10-29T22:38:00.000-10:00

John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakens in a pool of water, freezing. He races out of the bathroom when the phone rings. The menacing voice purring on the other side is Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), who informs him that his memory has been erased, part of an experiment gone awry. People are after him, the doctor says, and he must leave. His eyes lock on a corpse, a dead prostitute, sprawled across the floor. Terrified, he flees. The good doctor phones Murdoch’s wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and informs her about her husband’s situation. Meanwhile, Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) arrives at the hotel and examines the body, another mutilated hooker sliced up by a serial killer, one whom he now suspects is John Murdoch.

Murdoch circles the city, bewildered, in search of his identity only to be attacked by a race of pale-faced mutants who want him for his ability to mimick their own psychokinetic powers, which he discovers they use to reconfigure the city, its architecture, its people and their memories, in order to discover the nature of the human soul and obtain it.

Regardless of how absurd the film plot sounds, it works, if only because director Alex Proyas (I, Robot, The Crow) has managed to find a perfect fusion between science fiction and film noir, using both genres as a launching pad for the surprising humanity at the core of the movie, which elevates this from a cockamamie mashup to an existential ballad.

The Ice Pirates (1984). Directed by Stewart Raffill

2007-10-28T23:14:00.000-10:00

When ice becomes the most valuable resource in the galaxy, Jason (Robert Ulrich) and his band of space pirates will do anything to acquire the precious batu-esque commodity, even if it means boarding Templar ships and risking the penalty of castration. While plundering the cargo aboard a spacecraft, Jason discovers Princess Karina (Mary Crosby), in a sort of Michael Jackson-like hyperbaric chamber, and kidnaps her along with frozen slabs of water. She’s intent on discovering the whereabouts of her father, who went missing while in search of the seventh world, a folkloric planet rumored to be covered with water. Along the way, their quest for the aquatic grail comes under attack when a bounty is put out on their heads, forcing them to duke it out with some extremely tacky looking aliens whose costumes seem stolen from the set of Star Wars and Coming to America. Still, Director Stewart Raffill conducts one hilarious cheeseball comedy, with cinematic nods to both Caddyshack and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Helvetica (2007), Directed by Gary Hustwit.

2007-10-28T00:16:00.000-10:00

It is rare that something so ubiquitous can escape close scrutiny. Yet such is the case with the typeface Helvetica, whose usage is so widespread by designers and non-designers alike that it has evoked feelings of love, hate, reverence, and ambivalence. Documentary filmmaker Gary Hustwit takes a bold stab at this typeface’s design, history, and its impact as a cultural phenomenon; a phenomenon that is so extraordinary, its very presence is hidden from plain view to most.

The Gumball Rally (1976). Directed by Charles Bail

2007-10-27T17:52:00.000-10:00

2,900 miles. New York City To Long Beach, CA. A hand-selected group of car nuts barrel across America’s highways in a secret illegal race christened the Gumball Rally, the sole prize being hailed the winner among their consortium of vehicular mavens and, of course, a kitschy gumball dispenser trophy. However their cross-country trek is constantly disrupted by Lieutenant Roscoe (Norman Burton), an absent-minded doofus who attempts to thrwart their westward journey, to no avail. With a collection of bizarre rides and weirdo drivers, The Gumball Rally hinges on its characters and their obsession with crossing the finish line first. Starring Gary Busey and some other people.

Underground (1995). Directed by Emir Kusturica

2007-10-26T22:56:00.000-10:00

Emir Kusturica’s strikingly original war comedy Underground finds Marko (Miki Manojlovic) and Petar (Lazar Ristovski) spearheading the resistance against the Nazis during the German invasion of Yugoslavia. When Petar is nearly blown to smithereens, he retreats to an underground fortress in order to convalesce and instructs Marko to carry on the resistance above ground. Meanwhile the war ends, but Marko, the exploitative faux-war profiteer, doesn’t inform Petar, who has been manufacturing weapons deep within the earth under the assumption that the war has never ended. Years later, Petar escapes from Plato’s cave, convinced that the war is still going on when he stumbles onto the set of a WWII film.

The Red Balloon (1956). Directed by Albert Lamorisse

2007-10-24T02:05:00.000-10:00

On his way to school, a young boy discovers a red balloon tangled around a street light, scales the lamp post and retrieves it, only to find himself the subject of scrutiny from everyone around him. The other schoolchildren scratch the sky, trying desperately to grasp the balloon, which teases them, just out of arm’s reach. Alone, the boy and the balloon play hide-and-seek, wandering the narrow corridors tucked between the massive buildings until a pack of irate brats steal the balloon and hurl rocks at it until it pops. Director Albert Lamorisse somehow makes this story work without dialogue, and the ending, in some weird way, is both lyrical and logical.

Hot Blood (1956). Directed by Nicholas Ray

2007-10-23T23:34:00.000-10:00

In Hot Blood, Nicholas Ray’s melodramatic quasi-musical pinpointed on a small band of Gypsies, Stephano Turino (Cornell Wilde) finds himself smack dab in the middle of a conundrum: His brother Marco (Luther Adler) wants him to take over as leader of the tribe, while he fancies himself a dancing machine-for-hire. Unbeknownst to Stephano, Marco has arranged a bride for him, the ravishing firecracker Xeno (Jamie Russell). When Stephano meets his bride-to-be, he refuses to tie the knot, informing her that he’ll marry whom he pleases. Xeno tells him that she was planning on hightailing it out of the ceremony anyway, with the cash Marco paid for her in hand, and soon the two plot to sabotage the wedding. But when the moment of truth arrives, Xeno doesn’t go through with the ruse, and Stephano finds himself trapped in a marrriage to a woman he doesn’t love. Despite being destroyed by an ending which seems slapped on to satiate audiences, Hot Blood is still a Nicholas Ray picture, albeit one caught between the jaws of the grisly studio system.

Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1975). Directed by Thom Anderson

2007-10-22T18:50:00.000-10:00

Setting the record straight on the anachronism that is film history, Thom Anderson’s essayistic documentary Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer sheds light on the man who invented cinema before cinema was invented.

Muybridge, a landscape photographer turned zoopraxographer (the worlds first and only), considered himself a scientist whose objective was to capture animal movements using photographs in order to show the movement of the muscles. With a series of sequential pictures of horses running, he stumbled on the most important art form of the 20th century, presenting his photos on a zoopraxoscope as motion pictures nearly two decades before the invention of the movie camera.

However the most fascinating aspect about Muybridge is not that he shot the first film close-ups, or that his refusal to add additional lighting or make-up to his “models” resembled the innovations of Italian Neorealism in the 1940’s, or that his photographs of women commencing in their quotidian activities mirrored the structuralist films made by Chantal Akerman in the 1970’s, or that he developed a method of shooting that looked oddly like Hollywood’s formulaic style popularized in the 1930’s (pictured below),

or that he was on the cusp of realizing film as a narrative form years before Melies; what’s fascinating is that Muybridge was the first director in the history of movies. Indeed, mis-en-scene begins here, with Muybridge reconstructing events and actions (such as a man walking and tipping his hat to an imaginary passerby) instead of capturing them, documentary-style, as they occurred.

Sadly, Anderson explains that because Muybridge used 24 separate cameras to capture motion onto glass plates, his status as the inventor of cinema is refuted by film historians, who state that modern cinema began with a single camera—the cinematograph—and flexable roll film. Anderson agrees, yet offers a clarification: Muybridge’s body of work transformed photographic stills into cinema, which, in its essence, is able to reconstruct the illusion of human motion. Without Muybridge, Anderson muses, perhaps cinema would not exist.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006),Directed by Guillermo del Toro.

2007-10-22T09:23:00.000-10:00

"Beautiful, violent, magical and sad...."

Sad, yes. Violent, yes. Beautiful and Magical? Hardly. Don't get me wrong, it's not a terrible film. As an idea, it had potential - but this is one of those tragic cases of great concept, and bad execution. And for a movie that's labeled as Horror/Fantasy it is anything but.

I absolutely love movies that blur the line between reality and fantasy; those of this genre that do it well have an eerieness accentuated only by the perceived danger and mystery of the unknown. Alien is a fantastic example of this - and although Stan Winston's alien is terrifyingly real - it is less a showcase of his work and more about amplifying the horror and suspense within the viewer's mind. In fact, we never even see the alien completely until the end, but by then, you've had the crap scared out of you at least a dozen times.

Pan's, by contrast, reveals too much too early.

The real horror here is the frequent and unapologetic use of gratuitous violence and gore. The viewer is left to wonder: what's the point? Does the movie lose or gain anything by it? It's a bit like watching There's Something About Mary — the opening scene where Stiller gets his nuts caught in the zipper is a scene horrifying for any male. By the end of the movie, we've seen cum hanging off his ear, a fishhook stuck in his lip, old, shriveled, sunburned titties, and it doesn't even phase us anymore. Is there really any value to shock value? Especially when all the viewer does is spectate, cringe, and then become jaded to it. When we don't participate in the emotions, we don't connect with the characters. Sad things happen, but we don't care.

For all the hype surrounding this film, I was disappointed. Especially for a movie rated as high as 8.5/10 on IMDB. It could have been way better.

Stars

2007-10-17T10:55:00.001-10:00

So Jared's got us started on playlists. Anyone who knows me knows that although I like a lot of different music, I rarely get enthusiastic about the history of it. Music documentaries, with few exceptions, can't hold my attention for long. So without further ado, here's a playlist to get you started on wherever it is you're trying to go.

"Early Mornin' Tony" Felt
"Better than Already" The Folk Implosion
"Break Fool" Rah Digga
"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" Daft Punk
"Low Horizon" Jussi Matti-Salmela (Elwood)
"When" Evening Primrose (Stephen Sondheim)
"Space Cowboy" Jamiroquai
"Queen of Apology" The Sounds
"Little You and I" Jason Mraz
"Baby" Ashanti
"Get a Move On" Mr. Scruff
"Roll On Up" Hilltop Hoods
"Don't Panic" Coldplay
"Acidjazzed Evening" Tempest
"Summer Madness" Kool and the Gang
"I'll Fly Away" Moulin Rouge
"Stars" Les Miserables
"Evenstar" The Two Towers Soundtrack (LOTR)
"Farewell Red Army" Lei Qiang
"You're Not Ready & Reprise" Once More, with Feeling (Buffy)

On the Playlist

2007-10-16T00:39:00.000-10:00

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery"
--James Joyce

Way, way out in Left Field. Since i haven't been posting anything recently, i thought i'd just post up a playlist of what i've been listening to in the past few days. Post yours too!

"Mexican" Babe Ruth
"Slip and Do It" Betty Wright
"Real Big" Big Tymers
"Michael A Grammar" Broadcast
"Don't Shake My Tree" Joanne Gayles
"If I Ever Feel Better" Phoenix
"What's Happening Brother" Marvin Gaye
"Shimmy Shimmy Ya" Ol' Dirty Bastard
"Stop On By (LeoZero Remix)" The Popular Peoples Front
"Paradise" Sade
"Dinah" Thelonious Monk
"Love In Itself" Depeche Mode
"Yo Son" Prince Language
"Transmission" Joy Division
"Lets Call It Off (Girl Talk Remix)" Peter Bjorn and John
"Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" The Smiths
"Neverland" The Knife
"Crying" Roy Orbison