Oscar's Cinema Journal 2005

I rented these PAL discs from Nicheflix. I received an e-mail on 3/1 stating they had been mailed. They arrived, from Indiana, yesterday 3/8. If discs will take this long to reach me, it's probably not worth it to renew membership at $25 for 4 weeks, after the initial $25-for-6-weeks introductory offer.
*I get the impression that The Big Red One has a type of "gradual", "specialized circuit" distribution. I'll talk to the programmer at the Cosford Cinema, a likely venue for this film. They're showing some Sirk classics later this month, including the seldom seen Tarnished Angels.
*Have you seen Chant d'Amour?
*I'm very happy you watched Los Lunes Al Sol, another example of the excellent films coming out of Spain that deal with social issues: Mar Adentro (euthanasia), Cachorro (Gays raising children), Dame Tus Ojos (domestic violence), etc. I do get the impression that the subtitles fail to translate the brilliance of the script.
*You liked Japon much more. Does the region 1 dvd have the "making of" featurette and interview with Reygadas that are extras on the PAL disc I own?

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Originally posted by oscar jubis
I rented these PAL discs from Nicheflix. I received an e-mail on 3/1 stating they had been mailed. They arrived, from Indiana, yesterday 3/8. If discs will take this long to reach me, it's probably not worth it to renew membership at $25 for 4 weeks, after the initial $25-for-6-weeks introductory offer.

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That is one of the reasons why I left Nicheflix after a couple of months. Also, I eventually got sick of watching bad Korean films since most of the items at the top of my queue took a while to get to me, if at all. Overall it wasn't a satisfactory experience so I haven't mentioned the company very often.

Disappointing, eh? Let's see if I get to watch Melo and Mouchette before the 6 weeks are over. BTW, I responded to your question about Spring, Summer... on previous page. Wondering about your take on it.

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Originally posted by oscar jubis
*I get the impression that The Big Red One has a type of "gradual", "specialized circuit" distribution. I'll talk to the programmer at the Cosford Cinema, a likely venue for this film. They're showing some Sirk classics later this month, including the seldom seen Tarnished Angels.
*Have you seen Chant d'Amour?
*I'm very happy you watched Los Lunes Al Sol, another example of the excellent films coming out of Spain that deal with social issues: Mar Adentro (euthanasia), Cachorro (Gays raising children), Dame Tus Ojos (domestic violence), etc. I do get the impression that the subtitles fail to translate the brilliance of the script.
*You liked Japon much more. Does the region 1 dvd have *the "making of" featurette and interview with Reygadas that are extras on the PAL disc I own?

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Oscar: Responses to your questions and comments:

*I wish distribution plans were made more public -- assuming the distributors even know what they're doing in advance!

*No, I haven't seen Chant d'Amour. I'm not a fan of Jean Genet, though I loved Edmond White's wonderfully informative biography (http://www.edmundwhite.com/html/genet.htm), which explains all the background of, for example, Genet's early upbringing in Le Morvan.

*I'll watch for the other two Spanish social-issues films (have seen Mar Adentro).

*I didn't check to see if the NTSC Japón dvd contained the "making of" featurette or not, because I was in a hurry to return the Netflix dvd (I'm sharing a friend's Netflix, so I don't want to hold things up), but I think it may have done.

Apropos of the slowness of NicheFlix, Netflix has an especially fast turnnaround if you live in Northern California because the mailing and receiving point is close by in San Jose.

P.s. I sent you a personal email. Did you get it? If not I can resend it. Maybe that email address is dormant.

*Glad you asked, please resend e-mail. Thanks.
*Found out, no thanks to IMdb :) that Japon's NTSC disc contains same extras as the PAL disc. I was actually wrong in calling it a "making of" doc, it's actually Reygadas returning to the village where it was shot. He looks for everyone involved in the film and invites them to the first screening of the film al fresco on a nearby bkb court. Many there have never seen a movie. The doc captures the reactions of those watching the film.
*The director's new film, Battle For Heaven was invited to Venice but "governmental entities" (reports I found were a bit vague) prevented the film from traveling to Italy. Alfonso Cuaron was mighty pissed. The film takes place in Mexico City and depicts three major characters dealings with a corruption so prevalent it's no longer considered immoral. It's been normalized.
*Don't like Genet, uh? I've been wondering whether Chant(1950) is the first openly "homosexual film". It's not an easy term to define. I wouldn't characterize Dreyer's silent film Michael as a gay film for instance. Anger's short film Fireworks (1947) consists of sailors forcibly having sex with Mr. Anger and I read that the title refers to the erect penis. The commentators on the Genet disc made reference to it as perhaps the first.

I wouldn't say I don't like Genet, just that I'm not a fan. I never got into his books but as I said I read White's long biography --not Sartre's Saint Genet, though.

Interesting about Reygadas. He seems a courageous and original man. I hope people like Cuarón succeed in keeping him from being hushed up.

I sent you the email March 2 to your msn email address. Is it still good? I will send it again.

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Originally posted by oscar jubis
I can see how Ki Duk could have been inspired by Bodhi Dharma although perhaps tales about monks and their pupils isolated from the world in lush settings abound in Eastern folklore. The main difference would be the amount of narrative detail and specificity in Ki-duk's compared to the langurous, sketchy, mystical Bodhi Dharma.

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I'm glad to hear that, but I was almost sure that it must be very easy for a few to concoct this notion after witnessing a monk and a young boy. I mostly agree with the brief comments you've made. Although, I considered it even less ambiguous than you perhaps did. I saw a unique individual whose personal nature (or genetic make-up) prompted him to rebel against the ideologies he was growing up with. We also saw that he wasn't the most sober and articulate person either (the monk realized that from the very beginning) and he would've caused similar problems even if was living inside a Church or a Mosque or any other religious institution. Kim is a Christian himself so that probably drew some ire from the hard-core fundamentalists but the film ends up being pro-religious actually. If religion tied him (and us) from experiencing life with its ups and downs but when he was lost, it was faith that helped calm the burning fire inside him.

Originally posted by arsaib4
I saw a unique individual whose personal nature (or genetic make-up) prompted him to rebel against the ideologies he was growing up with.

This rebellion is taken to such extremes that he murders his wife. Part of the reason I saw the pupil as a representational character, as "everyman" is that: "the fact that the grownup acolyte is taken by three different actors means that all these experiences are universal" (Chris Knipp)
Ambiguity? What to make of the fact that sex or lust "cures" the teen girl but leads the pupil to murder? Rather novel, my experience is that it is the repression of the sexual instinct that's more likely to lead to aberrant, anti-social behavior. Was it Rosenbaum who referred to the auteur's sexual attitude as being priggish?

it was faith that helped calm the burning fire inside him.

Indeed. The ambivalence or ambiguity about religion's value comes from the fact that a Buddhist education couldn't keep him from becoming a murderer. Which leads me to conclude Kim Ki-duk has a deterministic/fatalistic view of human nature. (He was going to be a killer no matter what, because of his personal nature or genetic make-up).

Wednesday March 9th

Ahi Viene Martin Corona (1952) on dvd, rented from the public library, no english subs.
Watchable if unremarkable commercial film I rented because of 4 names:
Miguel Zacarias: Highly prolific writer/director/producer/mogul of Palestinian descent. One of the pillars of the Mexican film industry during its golden age.
Gabriel Figueroa: A great cinematographer. Mexico's best.
Pedro Infante: An iconic singer/actor. A Mexican site calls him "the most beloved human being in Mexican history".
Sarita Montiel: Extremely charismatic performer, successful in her native Spain, Mexico and Hollywood (Vera Cruz, Samuel Fuller's Run of the Arrow, Giant,etc.). Married Anthony Mann.

Charlotte et son Jules (1960)
Godard's 20-minute film was shot following Breathess. Stars Belmondo and Anne Colette. Recommended only to Godard completists. Included in a Korean import dvd I rented called "Their First Films" which collects shorts made by French New Wave directors. I'll comment later on some of them, including a great one from Resnais I want to watch again.

"Included in a Korean import dvd I rented called "Their First Films" which collects shorts made by French New Wave directors."

Some info on the DVD is available here.

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Originally posted by Oscar Jubis
The ambivalence or ambiguity about religion's value comes from the fact that a Buddhist education couldn't keep him from becoming a murderer. Which leads me to conclude Kim Ki-duk has a deterministic/fatalistic view of human nature. (He was going to be a killer no matter what, because of his personal nature or genetic make-up).

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I don't think you have to have any particular view of human nature to observe that religious training has not prevented people from killing other people. And religion can have value, for ritual, for art, for moments of serenity, for transcendent experiences of a higher power, for the social structure it provides, without saving mankind from violence. Kim's film is poetic and visual and you can make what you want of it. In my case, I was ultimately unmoved, despite the beautiful scenery. Those who are swept away by it, find different things. It's religio-mystical, but not didactic, or for that matter even clear.

Never heard the term "Godard completists" before. Definitely more polite than "diehard fans"!

Momma taught me to be polite :)

Thursday March 10th

Indeed, few of the shorts on the disc "Their First Films" are actal debuts. What they all have in common, besudes their being French, is that they were all produced by Pierre Braunberger for his Les Films De La Pleiade. Mr. Braunberger produced some of Truffaut and Godard's early features, as well as Godard's favorite French film of the 40s and 50s: Jean Rouch's Moi, Un Noir, an undeniable masterpiece of experimental cinema. I watched the other 7 shorts on the disc today. Godard's and Leconte's are really not very interesting. The other six are very enjoyable, and three are notable: Jacques Rivette's Le Coup du Berger (The Shepherd's Move), the one totally fictional film in this bunch, Melville's 24 Hours in the Life of a Clown, and Le Chant du Styrene, directed by the great Alain Resnais. It's an industrial film in reverse, from shiny plastic objects made to behave as if they are alive, all the way back to petroleum oil and coal. It had to be in color to accentuate the pigmentation process that plastic goes through, with a serio-comic narration full of cultural references. Industrial film as tone poem, featuring the camera movements familiar to fans of Last Year at Marienbad.

Do you think any of these were censored? I notice the site arsaib4 linked to for "Their First Films" (http://www.koreandvds.com/dvddetail.html?id=14474) has a warning: "Titles produced in Korea are subject to government censorship when it involves nudity and violence. Although the censorship has been lessened over the years, frontal nudity and extreme violence(although rare) are forbidden. Please be careful especially when purchasing erotic movies. When you are worried about censored and deleted scenes of graphic violence and frontal nudity, do not buy from our site." Funny they should say that because I've seen some recent Korean movies that were very violent.

Nouvelle Vague 'completists' would certainly want to see Le Coup du Berger because the cast includes Godard, Rivette, Truffaut, Chabrol, and Jean-Claude Brialy of Le Beau Serge, Elevator to the Gallows, The Lovers, Les Cousins, and many others.

No, I don't think any of these shorts are censored. I have bought hundreds of dvds from Asia, half of which I sold. The only one that was censored was Breillat's Romance (the male's frontal nudity was digitaly censored).
Brialy plays a married woman's lover in Le Coup du Berger. He gives her a nice fur coat and together they concoct a plan to get her to wear it without the husband objecting. The plan backfires in a very interesting way. Godard and the other directors are guests are a cocktail party where the scheme unravels.

Sounds fun.

I was only half serious in asking if anything was censored. I don't know if one could necessarily know though, if one hasn't seen the film before. They might just clip something out, no? The digital coverup is a giveaway. They do that in Japanese porn.