There is something a bit tiresome about Being Flynn (2012). I think it has to do with that venerable concept of well-developed, emotionally engaging characters. I am not sure if the book on which it is based is better, but it does have the better title: Another Bullshit Night is Suck City. So post-modern, angst-y and hipsterish. I still like Paul Dano though.
Trishna (2012) is enjoyable until the last 5 or 10 minutes when it fell into an ending it did not earn. Overall, I did like the movie. The introduction of the characters, the seduction, and the happiness was engaging and sensual. The last half was rushed and did not portray the desperation and humiliation that I think it wanted to. The cinematography is beautiful.
Your Sister's Sister (2011) is great. I wish I saw it earlier. There are some really funny moments surrounding some really emotional moments but never too light or too heavy. It is uncanny how much in that film Mark Duplass reminds me of my cousin - mannerisms, smile, drunken talk. I won't say anything else until John sees this (he's the only one interested, right?).
I had to watch Nobody Walks (2012) since I know that no one else in Film Club will support Lena Dunham. And, you know what? I'm glad that I did. It isn't a great movie but it is a serviceable indie drama with a good cast and fun sound editing.
Oh, I also re-watched all three seasons of Arrested Development over the last several weeks. Just an episode or two a night right before bed to ease the sting of the day.
Soon I'll post my most anticipated films for the rest of 2012 broken down by release date. I've just been incredibly preoccupied with stuff over the last month and half.
Hello fans, Jerzy here.
I recently watched Rowdy Rathore, my first non-YouTube clip, full-fledged Bollywood feature film. Aside from some delayed subtitles I was able to follow along in this crazy two movies in 1.
Ostensibly this movie is about Asisstant Deputy Superintendent of Police Vikram Rathore but due to some really fastpaced slapstick scene segues and plot twists, so bad they're good style, there is an hour and change of what Id call the prequel. There is a great amount of winking at the audience in the acting and that's not counting the famous sing and dance numbers. The color palettes for the dances were awesome and beautiful and the lyric translations quite amusing. Some scenes were more party in nature and Carnivalesque but don't let me finish this sentence without mentioning the main character proposes marriage in the first 10 minutes and the relatively sexy scenes are fiancée on fiancée only.
I recommend this movie to friends looking to dip their toe in Bollywood. For those with prior Bollywood chops; please let me know what else to watch. Enemies should reconsider watching it, my strongest rating.
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More recently I watched Land of Doom on the NWI. I have taken more animated shits than this main character's face. But if you're into the genre of the post-apocalyptic survivalist you should watch this ridiculous romp. There is an awesome scene where the chick who was just shooting bad guys turns around and shoots one single bullet at each building and makes them explode for no reason, just deal with it now my bullets explode buildings. It's Cheez Whiz Mad Max. All my enemies should watch this movie, my strongest rating.
Alright, since everyone else (Brandon, Tara, John, Jeffrey, Chris, Facebook Arthur) is doing it. Here's my Top Ten of All Time. Or, rather, my Personal Favorites of All Time. Probably predictable but these are the movies that I re-watch over and over. Here we go.
The New World (dir. Terrence Malick, 2005)
Lost in Translation (dir. Sofia Coppola, 2003)
Wendy and Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)
A.I. (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2001)
Candy (dir. Neil Armfield, 2006)
Bande à part (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)
Brief Encounter(dir. David Lean, 1945)
Before Sunrise/Before Sunset(dir. Richard Linklater, 1995/2004)
The Fountain (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2006)
Splendor in the Grass (dir. Elia Kazan, 1961)
Honorable Mention:
Pauline at the Beach (dir. Eric Rohmer, 1983)
Waking Life (dir. Richard Linklater, 2001)
Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier, 2011)
Jules et Jim (dir. Francious Trauffaut, 1962)
The Hustler (dir. Robert Rossen, 1961)
Mulholland Dr. (dir, David Lynch, 2001)
Looks like the 60's and the aughts were big for me.
1. Skidoo: Unreleased movie, Groucho Marx's last role as God, head of the Illuminati. Hippies save the day, A-list cast do acid and hallucinate throughout the movie and there are musical numbers interspersed...good ones.
2. John Carter: Gets points because we just landed another rover on Mars. Also any Riggins fans out there???
3. Wyatt Earp, Waterworld...Kevin Costner in general...many of his movies are awesome and panned.
4. Brazil: I doubt your Fylm Club credibility if you haven't seen this movie. Gilliam bitch..GILLIAM.
5. Death to Smoochy: FUCK YOU ALL. It was good.
6. Golden Compass: Solid movie! I hope they finish this series...I haven't read the book but it was a breath of fresh air....a cross between Disney and Game of thrones.
7. Ecks v. Sever: Yeah. People suck sometimes.
8. Memento: Again...how can you not like this movie? Unless you've seen some earlier vehicle with this same schtick previously it really is well shot and very cool.
9. Arrested Development movie ** SPOILERS ** : It will be ok, people will love it but it's the same people who like BSG and all that kind of stuff which means we're like 1% of the population and it flops commercially until DVD sales revive it because Michael Cera does awesome extras with Will Arnett and Portia de Rossi has a nip slip.
10. New Zealand Movies: Underrated. All of them.
I have avoided posting about this film because I was a little embarrassed to have watched it and a little embarrassed to have liked it so much despite a serious cheese factor in many of the scenes. Jason Bellamy hits it with these paragraphs:
In what might be the low point of Polley's scripted explicitness, Daniel, who has already painted an interpretive split-bodied portrait of Margot that they analyze together lest the symbolism escape us ("Maybe half isn't living up to her full potential ..."), makes this observation: "You seem restless. Not just now. Like, in a permanent way." To which Margot responds with a profound, seemingly ready-made babysitting story that somehow or another gets here: "Sometimes a shaft of sunlight falls across the pavement in a certain way and I want to cry."
Yeesh. Even Terrence Malick would be embarrassed by the homespun poetry of that line. And yet, Michelle Williams is so genuine, so heartfelt that some of this stuff almost works.
What a talent she is! Over a relatively short career, Williams has played glamorous and shabby women, bubbly and depressed women, attention-grabbing and overlooked women, but Margot presents an interesting challenge precisely because Polley's screenplay often tries to do Williams' work for her. In response, Williams takes Polley's hyper-aware, melodramatic verse and funnels it through an exterior so modest that we never confuse Margot for a movie star, even though she talks like one. I'm not sure it's worth seeing the movie to see the performance, but the performance makes the movie watchable.
My prediction: Brandon, John, Jeffrey, and Chris find nothing redeemable in this film. Jason and Adrienne reservedly enjoy it. Lisa finds it right in her romantic indie wheelhouse. Jerzy watches for the Sarah Silverman and Michelle Williams full frontal and isn't disappointed.
This funny and unpredictable movie begins with a journey so interesting and endearing that we (the characters and the audience) do not realize that the path changed at some point along the way. Where the film starts feels so distant by the end. It is not about time travel, or a funny story about a guy who thinks he can time travel, or even about the mystery of whether he can or not. Hope and the importance of relationships are what really matter. The characters learn this and I think the audience does as well. The final 10 minutes and the somewhat ambiguous (but perfect and beautiful) ending left me shivering with excitement and smiling inside. All the whimsical strangeness, all the wondering and confusion, and all the laugh out loud moments that came before wrap up into something that is truly touching. I have been in a good mood since it ended.
Aubrey Plaza is beautiful in her early cynicism but radiant in her final hopefulness. Mark Duplass manages to be weird and slightly "off" while remaining intriguing and likable. The supporting cast of characters, specifically Jake Johnson and Karan Soni, grow within the story. Their journeys are different but parallel and they each achieve some sort of new understanding.
Safety Not Guaranteed is a small film with a big heart. Time travel turns out to be more about the places we have been and are going rather than finding the perfect destination. Who we meet, how we connect, and what we tell ourselves is important. The journey defines the endpoint. This film reminds us of that.
I haven't been watching much. Let's all go see Safety Not Guaranteed this week so I can change that.
Margaret (2011) - This film had lots of hype and most of it was deserved. The acting is great, the script is interesting, and the moral questions real. However, the film feels a bit disorganized. It does not pull together into the satisfying emotional punch that I think the director was looking to achieve. For this reason, it will not be cracking my top ten from last year.
Goon (2011) - How could I pass up a bloody comedy about a bouncer turned hockey enforcer - especially one featuring Alison Pill, Jerzy's close-eyed girl from The Newsroom? Not a great movie but still a fun time for any hockey fan.
The Woodmans (2010) - An interesting documentary about a family of artists on their daughter's suicide some 30 years ago. At moments touching, at others frustrating, mysterious, inspired. What does it mean to be an artist? Is there an emotional toll? The family would like (has) to this so.
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I picked up Brief Encounter and Six Moral Tales at the Criterion sale this week. Considering a return trip...
I re-watched Take Shelter today. It's in a really close fight with Melancholia for that #1 spot on my list.
I've been slowly re-watching Season 2 of Treme. I still maintain that it is the best show currently on TV. It also has the best opening credit sequence.
"...Friend and confident, Harmony Korine said of him at the 2009 Cannes film festival "I love him. He's a mess of views - he believes in God, but he hates God. He hates religion. He hates believing so he calls himself an atheist - but he attends Church sometimes. [...] I don't think even he knows what he believes, and that's what I like. That ambiguity runs through all of his films if you know where to look" "
Someone quoted this on Reddit recently. I PM'd him to find the source and was told it was originally from a French cinema magazine but was re-printed in Lars von Trier (World Directors) by Jack Stevenson. He is going to screenshot the page for me sometime next week. What a nice Internet stranger.
John - I watched Community on Hulu or on TV over the last three years. The DVDs tend to show up pretty cheap from time to time. So, I might pick them up. Or I might download them. In either case, I will be sure you get to see it if you really want to do so.
I missed Jeffrey talking about The Bakery Girl of Monceau. How did that happen? Anyway, I like the sentence of his that John quoted. Bakery Girl is great, maybe not my favorite Moral Tale, but I understand why you both say that.
I know that I owe Film Club a Rohmer post (though probably only John really cares). I will do one. Soon. It is hard because his movies are so full of character, conversation, digression. Though the two artists are quite different, this is the same problem I have when talking about Michael Ondaatje (mentioned a few posts previously). It is hard to find a good beginning and impossible to encompass everything. I feel like we should all be sitting in a cafe drinking coffee late into the night when we talk about Rohmer. This is a bad excuse, I know, but it's all I have to offer right now.
Haywire was fun for about 30 minutes. The whole thing felt a little thin and tired. I'll wait to see what Brandon writes about it. I like Soderbergh but this one isn't that great.
TV Club.
The Game of Thrones adaptation is just as good, if not better, than the books. Maybe if I approached it from the other direction - as a reader first - I'd feel differently. I am anxious to see what Jerzy says once he watches the show.
Of course, I am only halfway through the first book as of now. Other books have been distracting me lately. But I feel like the adaptation is so good that I am not really gaining anything new from the book. Story, plot, and character development are the big things and I already got that from the show. Who else in FC has read the books and watched the show?
Hockey Club.
The Kings won the Stanley Cup last night. They were the lowest seeded team going into the playoffs this year and pulled off an amazing upset going 16-4 against four of the best teams in the league. Now I can devote more time to watching movies.
The captain of the Kings, Dustin Brown, grew up in Ithaca. I played on a few teams with him when we were younger. He used to score 4 or 5 goals a game.
For your enjoyment, here is Wil Wheaton freaking out when the Kings win.
I just finished catching up on Season 3 of Community. It is so great to watch a sitcom that is funny, smart, weird, has a ton of heart, and that rewards continual viewing. The characters grew and changed in huge ways over the three seasons. There are inside jokes hidden all over the place. All the special episodes are hilarious and well done. And, most importantly, taken as a whole the show has an overarching narrative on the benefits of positivity and friendship.
Community has a great and genuinely funny cast of actors. They bring a lot to the show and have the distinction of being the only actors whom I follow on Twitter. However, Community is Dan Harmon. He is the creator, showrunner, and producer. Or, he was until a few weeks ago when he announced on his Tumblr that NBC is cutting their ties to him. He still remains attached in title only (apparently something written into his contract to protect his rights as a creator) as a "executive consulting something or other," which basically means that he will not have any involvement in Season 4 or beyond.
There is going to be a Season 4. I probably won't watch it. I will just have to be happy with the three excellent seasons Harmon already created.
I know that I probably can't convince anyone else to watch it, but you really should. Don't just grab a random episode. Start from the beginning and give it time to build.
Over the past three months I have immersed myself in the works of Michael Ondaatje. His words mesmerize and flow through me like no other author I have read. At turns achingly beautiful, haunting, and hallucinatory, Ondaatje's prose meanders through time and gives us real human characters - flawed, chaotic, wonderful, and true.
As of a few hours ago, I finally have a copy of The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film on its way to my house. It is the culmination of a two year conversation between Walter Murch and Michael Ondaatje that began on the set of The English Patient. Amazon assures me that this book is "a mine of wonderful, surprising observations and information about editing, writing and literature, music and sound, the I-Ching, dreams, art and history."
For those of you unfamiliar with Ondaatje, I would highly recommend his work. Personally, my favorite work of prose by him is Divisadero, but I'm not sure you could go wrong with any of his stuff. His newest, Cat's Table, might be the most "accessible." And if you really want a treat, check out this conversation he had with John Berger in 2004.
Also, I have not actually seen The English Patient. Ondaatje is only a recent discovery of mine and I am not sure I want to muddy the waters quite yet by watching a film adaptation of one of his books. Has anyone seen it? Can I get some thoughts?
Just to be clear, my failure to watch all of Julien Donkey-Boy should not be taken as a condemnation of the film. In fact, maybe it should be read as the opposite?
I don't watch many horror movies because my mind likes to play tricks on me afterwards. This also applies to emotionally or mentally draining films, which is what I'd classify JDB after watching about 45 minutes of it. Maybe I was just in a bad place at the time and perhaps I'd understand the edification that John sees in it were I able to push through. But I didn't. That doesn't mean I never will.
You may eventually notice that I will never see certain films in the theater or with other people. I invest too much and sometimes I need to break during a film or have a long post-viewing refractory period. This is why I watched Melancholia and Take Shelter alone at home. This is why I ignored John's tweet about Sound of My Voice. Of course, many of these movies end at the top of my lists every year.
As for Korine, I saw Kids and Gummo during high school with some friends. But we watched them more for their strangeness than anything else. I don't really think that I understood anything about them at the time. I guess I'm still not sure I do.I thought that I had seen JDB too, but realized when I started it that I had not.
CR5FC discussion is the ONLY thing that I miss about Facebook. So, as you've probably noticed, I created a new account just for our group there. I am not going to get email notifications, add any friends besides our group, or start customizing stuff. But I will participate in the group discussions and continue to "like" everything that Jason says.
Alright, let's get back on track here. Jeffrey and Brandon have been keeping the blogs alive for us - even if they just keep talking about Funny Games.
I'll have a post about Rohmer's Six Moral Tales as soon as I finish them all. In the meantime, here are some responses to all the stuff that has been written lately. **For those of you skimming this post, the first time a mention a new movie I'll put it in bold.
TV Club first.
Season 3 and 4 of The Wire were my favorite. Yes, it's an excellent police procedural (though as seasons progress it moves away from that) and drug procedural, but in my mind it is really a show about America, culture, and the all the things we do not usually talk about.
After you finish all 5 seasons of The Wire, check out Bill Moyers interview with David Simon. Moyers says, "What Edward Gibbon was to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, or Charles Dickens to the smokey, mean streets of Victorian London, David Simon is to America today."
CAN SOMEONE ELSE PLEASE WATCH TREME NOW?!?!?!?
I broke down and bought the first mothersucking Game of Thrones book. This season is just sooooo good that I can only imagine how addicting the books are. It was only $6 at Target and is sitting on my desk calling to me. I will start it after the season finale on Sunday.
Jeffrey, the Battle of Blackwater episode was awesome - the best hour I've ever spent watching a battle. It had action, tension, and great big and small moments. It was also my dad's first experience watching the show and he loved it.
Film Club.
I will probably not see The Innkeepers. If it was on NWI, I might give it a chance since it prompted Jeffrey to reference The Poetics of Space. But horror isn't usually my thing and it is not easily available.
Interlude.
Jeffrey, have you read House of Leaves? I know that it is contemporary and experimental, but it is also heavily influenced by Bachelard's work. It is one of those books that I can go back to once a year and still find new things to think about. Read it with an open mind, read it with an eye to form, read it with a sneer towards academia. Read it. Oh, and read it while listening to Poe's album, Haunted. It is very much a companion piece (you can google all the connections later).
Film Club.
I have a download of Oslo, August 31 but I have not watched it yet. Brandon's review of it interested me enough to at least go that far. I'll report back.
Waking Life bored Jason? WTF, dude? I watched that movie on a monthly basis my first year of college. It is a little unbearable for me now but for reasons other than boredom. I will forgive this faux pas since you called Slacker "a little tedious" and then gave it a 4 star rating.
Primer is another film that I watched a lot during college. I loved the whole tone of the film and how hard it made me think. It has been a few years since I have seen it; so, maybe I'll watch it again and see if I can still follow. I used to double-feature Primer with A Man from Earth. Those were fun nights.
I gave Julien Donkey-Boy back to John only half-watched. It was too unsettling. I know how that sounds, I should have pushed through. Give me time.
Martha Marcy May Marlene still resonates for me. It is a really interesting movie to look at. Olsen is perfect, complex, adorable. The film says a lot about the layers of emotional and psychological impact people can exert over others.
John and I are in agreement about District 9. I saw it before Film Club, but John wrote about it. I'll just copy what he said because I am basically in agreement with him.
I’d heard all of the positive buzz about the film, but I was still expecting to dislike it because of the pseudo-doc gimmick. I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did, but, like I said, I ended up not caring in the end. After I did get sucked in and start enjoying it all, I was eventually let down by the film’s devolution into bad action movie moments (“I’ll never leave you, buddy”) combined with instances of over-the-top gore and an incredibly excessive dropping of f-bombs. These elements aren’t bad in themselves, but their use seemed jarring here and at odds with the established offbeat tone.
If you want to see the MUCH better sci-fi film of 2009, watch Moon. It is original, thought-provoking, and features the silky sweet voice of Kevin Spacey.
I really enjoyed Page One. David Carr is awesome, not insane.
If I were to watch a movie called A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell, there better be lots of sex. And it better be weird.
