Oscar's Cinema Journal 2005

Sat August 20th

James Stewart marathon on Turner Classic Movies. It's just as important to point out that three films below, not including the Capra film, were lensed by one of the greatest of Hollywood cinematographers: William Daniels. Greed was the first of a long list of distinguished films in which he worked.

Thunder Bay (USA, 1953)
Anthony Mann and James Stewart was one of the great partnerships in film history, but Thunder Bay is not great, not at the level of the five Westerns they made. The main reason is the story. Stewart and Dan Duryea play oilmen who manage to get an investor to finance the construction of an oil rig off the coast of a gulf town. The locals make a living fishing shrimp. The film minimizes environmental concerns in risible, dishonest fashion. I expected a happy ending, but this is too much, a joyously ecstatic ending in which every character's dream comes true. It's still Mann-Stewart-Daniels though, and it's fun to watch.

Night Passage (USA, 1957)
This was supposed to be the 6th Mann-Stewart western, after Winchester '73, Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, The Far Country and The Man from Laramie, but Mann bailed out at the last minute reportedly because he didn't like the script. Thankfully, the excellent cast and crew stayed because the script is not bad. It just lacks the moral ambiguities and behavioral ambivalence that characterize those awesome five Mann-Stewart-Daniels westerns. Shot in Colorado in Widescreen Technicolor.

You Can't Take it With You (USA, 1938)
This film resulted in Frank Capra's third Oscar for Best Director. It also won Best Picture. It's another anti-elitist, big business vs. the common man plot that Capra favored. It is also more sentimental and conformist than the source Pulitzer-winning play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It's funny and entertaining enough to recommend and the cast is uniformly good, but definitely not the best film of 1938.

The Shop Around the Corner (USA, 1940)
Ernst Lubitsch purchased the rights to a Hungarian stage play named Parfumerie about the relationships between the employees of a Budapest store. MGM agreed to finance it if Lubitsch'd agree to direct Ninotchka first, because Cukor had withdrawn from that film just as shooting was scheduled to commence. Lubitsch turned both films into gold. The Shop Around the Corner is a witty and visually splendid ensembler devoid of contrivance and cheap sentimentality. The arc of the relationship between the characters played by Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan is depicted with great attention to detail. The obvious chemistry between them certainly didn't hurt the picture. A Must See. Perhaps a masterpiece among witty, urbane, Hollywood romances.

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The three dvds together sell for $41.99 at deepdiscountdvd. Shipping included

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What a good deal!

Ain't it? Reliable too, but don't expect fast shipping for free. There's a shipping surcharge if you want that.

Sunday August 23rd

The Prefab People (Hungary, 1982) dvd
Unlike the miserable young couples in Tarr's first two films, the couple in his third feature cannot blame the state or society for their misery. The husband has a good job while the wife stays atheir (relatively) nice apartment with their two sons. They have psychological and relationship problems, not unlike couples in capitalist societies.
That's all I feel comfortable saying about The Prefab People. The reason is that the film is 102 minutes long but the dvd version released by Facets Video is advertised at a mere 80 minutes. In actuality, the timer on my dvd player marked 76 minutes and 16 seconds by the film's end. Conclusion: there are 22-26 minutes of the Prefab People missing from the version made available on dvd by Facets.

The Gang of Four (France, 1988) dvd
Perhaps the best, and decidedly the most challenging, of the five Jacques Rivette films I've seen in 2005 (Histoire de Marie et Julien, Va Savoir, Secret Defense, the short Le Coup du Berger).
Cecile, one of the four 20-something women sharing in a suburban home, is moving out, ostensibly to live with her boyfriend. Lucia, a girl from Portugal whose parents think she's studying science, will take Cecile's room. All five are students in Constance's theatre acting class. Rivette sets most of Gang of Four at the suburban home and the theatre, including long takes of the women rehearsing scenes by Marivaux and Euripedes. There's a mystery man who engineers to meet each woman separately using different aliases to extract information regarding Cecile and something she hid in the house. We become increasingly aware of something criminal and sinister involving Cecile's never-seen boyfriend but the details are purposefully obscured to implicate the viewer in the unease-verging-on-paranoia experienced by the gang. The film paints detailed, nuanced pictures of the four women, depicts the process of acquiring acting skills and how reality bleeds into performance, and sketches a vague, creepy mystery with some surprising turns. I'd have to re-watch Gang of Four to draw parallels between the scenes on stage and the rest, assuming they exist. Cast includes Bernadette Giraud, Laurence Cote, Fejria Deliba, Bulle Ogier, Ines de Medeiros, and Nathalie Richard. Like most Rivette films, Gang of Four is over 2 1/2 hours long and not meant for cut-to-the-chase types.

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Conclusion: there are 22-26 minutes of the Prefab People missing from the version made available on dvd by Facets.

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Why do you think that would be?

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including long takes of the women rehearsing scenes by Marivaux and Euripedes.

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Sounds reminiscent of Va Savoir in varous ways.

*My guess is that the folks at Facets didn't realize that the source print of The Prefab People they transferred to dvd was "mutilated". It's also possible they made some type of a technical mistake. I know from three different sources that the original film length is 102 minutes.

*Although Va Savoir is significantly less daring and challenging than Gang of Four, there are strong similarities. Notice how both focus on a character obsessively searching for a lost object. In Va Savoir, it's spelled out from the beginning that the object is a lost text by 18th century playwright Goldini. It takes much longer for the viewer of Gang of Four to realize Thomas is looking for a key to a safe.
Va Savoir is also reminiscent of Gang of Four because of scenes in which characters are rehearsing or performing theatrical scenes. Often we learn something about the film's character from his/her performing a scene from a play. Moreover, it appears that the content of the play or the specific scene being rehearsed has a relation to the plot of the film itself. (How exactly the play-within-the-film and the film itself are related is never obvious or explicit).
Like I wrote, the "gang" is rehearsing Marivaux and Euripedes and Va Savoir's Camille and Ugo are rehearsing Pirandello's "As You Desire Me" . This is a trademark of Jacques Rivette that harks back to his first feature, Paris nous appartient, in which a lit student joins a troupe rehearsing Shakespeare's "Pericles" to investigate a mysterious death. In Spectre, there are two different groups performing plays by Aeschylus: "Prometheus Bound" and "Seven Against Thebes". In Celine and Julie Go Boating, there's a Victorian melodrama being performed inside the haunted house the titular characters visit separately. This inter-textuality, typical of Rivette and not limited to theatrical references, would be an interesting thesis subject.

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This inter-textuality, typical of Rivette and not limited to theatrical references, would be an interesting thesis subject.

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Almost too obvious, perhaps, but certainly something we as Rivette-watchers need to be aware of. As unfortunately happens quite often, my knowledge of this director doesn't include his entire œuvre or I'd probably have considered this point too obvious to note. The first paragraph of www.frenchculture.org's page on Rivette is as follows:

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Jacques Rivette is the first of the Cahiers du Cinéma critics to direct a feature, and at age 73 he is still making films that challenge our perception of cinema and life, and the intersection of the two. Rivette frequently uses a work of theatre at the heart of his films (from Shakespeare's Pericles in Paris Belongs to Us to Pirandello's As You Desire Me in Va Savoir, and a continuing theme in his work is the conflict between "fictional" theatre and "real" life. The subject matter is often the process of creation itself-often rehearsal or artmaking (as in La Belle noiseuse). Rivette's style is marked by his willingness to make use of improvisation and to experiment with structure. The result is films that are intelligent, unpredictable, and, as Dave Kehr wrote, "animated by a sense of play---of fantasy, freedom, and wonder." .

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The French Culture.com page on Rivette is here .

Good summary of Rivette's career and major themes.
What I had in mind was a detailed attempt to answer the question of the rationale behind the selection of the plays (and the specific scenes from those plays) in relation to the films' plots and characters. This would require a great deal of thought and analysis of both films and plays.
My study of Rivette continues with his version of Wuthering Heigths, probably Saturday or Sunday, along with more Chahine.

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What I had in mind was a detailed attempt to answer the question of the rationale behind the selection of the plays (and the specific scenes from those plays) in relation to the films' plots and characters. This would require a great deal of thought and analysis of both films and plays.

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It would, and that would be an obvious academic approach. That was all I meant, not that it was to be avoided -- though in general I'm not too fond of academic writing -- but that it was inevitable that this should be done and I'd be surprised if it hasn't begun already.

I'd rather hear you talk about it in your film class than read about it in some dry thesis.

Fair enough :)
Monday Aug. 24th

Mysterious Skin (USA, 2004)

I saw that, but have not thought of anything to say.

Tuesday August 25th

Intolerance (USA, 1916) dvd
It has been called "greatest of all time" and "still ahead of its time today" decades after it flopped at the box office. Intolerance, at 2 million 1916 dollars, it would be considered the most expensive film ever made, with its thousands of extras and its mamoth sets. No doubt, it's quite spectacular. Yet, what makes Intolerance one of the most ambitious movies ever made is D.W. Griffith daring to tell four thematically linked stories simultaneously, in parallel action: 1) the enmity between Belshazzar of Babylon and Cyrus the Persian with culminates with the fall of Babylon (the most awesome set ever built for a motion picture bar none), 2) A biblical story of the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus, 3) a story of the massacre of Protestants engineered by Catherine de Medici in 16th century France, and 4) a contemporary story based on the Ludlow Massacre of striking workers at a factory owned by John D. Rockefeller and the hanging of an innocent man.The film's subtitle is "Love's Struggle Through the Ages" and is linked by shots of a woman (Lillian Gish) rocking the cradle of civilization. As Intolerance progresses, Griffith cut more rapidly from story to story to emphasize the common elements between the stories. The final scenes evidence extremely fluid editing_from Cyrus' chariots racing to destroy Babylon to Catherine's troops about to massacre the Huguenots, to the condemned man walking to the gallows, long shot to long shot, closeup to closeup in a pounding rhythm. One of the most thrilling and devastating endings in the history of cinema.

But what does it all mean?

*Back after three days without electricity due to Katrina. Three most uncomfortable days, especially at night. Despite 9 deaths in South Florida, we were lucky she was a category 1-2 Hurricane when she passed by my neighborhood. My thoughts are with folks from the city of New Orleans. Good Luck.

*Back to cinema. The answer to Chris' question is the simple, obvious one. All Intolerance means is that human being lack of tolerance for others (their views, their rights, etc.) has been a constant cause of pain and suffering throughout history. No matter how much knowledge we gather, no matter how advanced our technology, we can't seem to learn how to reduce the pain and suffering we inflict on ourselves because of intolerance and greed. It's a simple idea but it's spectacularly and elaborately dramatized.

*I 'd like to highlight two wonderful performances by female actors I didn't mention: Mae Marsh, as a young woman whose husband is framed, jailed, and sentenced to death while her baby son is removed from her custody. An amazingly varied effective performance from an actress I had failed to recognize before. A totally different type of performance was delivered by Constance Talmadge in the Babylon episode as "The Mountain Girl", a buoyant, physical performance that would please fans of Errol Flynn. Talmadge was still in her teens when she appeared in Intolerance and had a prolific career until the end of the silent era.

Wed. August 26th

Leaves from Satan's Book (Denmark, 1921) dvd
Carl Theodor Dreyer was inspired to create this anthology film after watching Intolerance. He obviously didn't have a $2 million budget to build huge, monumentals sets. Dreyer opted not to attempt to revolutionize narrative structure so, unlike Griffith's film, each of his four stories comes to a conclusion before the start of the next one. As the title implies, what binds them is the fallen angel himself, as a doomed character that takes many guises in order to influence human behavior at four different historical stages. Satan adopts the guise of a pharisee who tempts Judas to betray Jesus in the first story. Then he is the Great Inquisitor in 16th century Seville pressuring a monk to oversee the horrific fate of the woman he secretly loves and her virtuous father. The third story takes us to 1793 Paris and revolves around a servant who is inducted into the Jacobins and breaks a promise he made to Marie Antoinette. The final story takes place during the Russo-Finnish war of 1918 and concerns the machinations of a Russian monk to condemn a rural family to death because of alleged collaboration with the White counter-revolutionaries. The film anticipates both the thematic concerns and stylistic idiosyncracies of Carl Theodor Dreyer (Ordet, Vampyr, Gertrude). The centrality of female victims within the narrative and the power of religious hypocrites to do evil in the name of God are highlighted. Dreyer's masterful use of closeups and impressionistic lighting were already quite evident in this picture.

Thanks for the further detail about how the theme plays out in Griffith's Intolerance.

Stay safe oscar.

Katrina is comin' in something fierce in Louisiana

You're welcome Chris.
Thanks Johann. The danger has passed. It was scary to hear the giant but shallow-rooted ficus trees characteristic of my neighborhood being toppled by Katrina's winds.

Friday August 26th

The Brothers Grimm (USA, 2005) at SoBe Regal
It's a Terry Gilliam film so don't expect character development or historical accuracy. It's hard to imagine any of these characters outside the confines of this movie's universe. You wouldn't be satisfied either if you're thirsty for a movie with social commentary or emotional impact (you'd be likely to find The Brothers Grimm either inconsequential or uninvolving). What Gilliam and screenwriter Ehren Krueger have created is a rollicking, inventive, comedic, period adventure jam-packed with arresting images, grotesque characters and horrible creatures, whimsical interludes, slapstick moments, and fantastic oddities. It's not unlike Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen although I prefer Grimm for the clever way it reimagines the origins of a dozen or so of Grimms' fairy tales, and the manner in which the plot links them in the film's final act. The controversial casting of Lena Headey, as mandated by the Weinstein Brothers, is The Brothers Grimm's obvious flaw. She seems to have wandered off both from a more conventional movie and from a more modern time period. Gilliam was right to complain. I wonder what his chosen Samantha Morton would have done with the role.

Samantha Morton is always interesting and has great presence. She surely would have added something substantial, possibly anchored things well. I'd thought of seeing this this past weekend but went to the forgettable Red Eye and the unforgettable Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance instead. I tend to like plot-driven well organized stuff and found Munchausen a bit too disorgaized, but Gilliam is always worth watching, I'm quite sure. Damon and Ledger would be a draw for me, and though you neglect even to mention them(!) (aren't they the "stars"?) they're cute guys, but both have some acting cred, Ledger's somewhat newly coming on.

Damon and Ledger are fine in non-challenging roles, often playing "straight men" to characters played with broad gusto by Peter Stormare and Jonathan Price. Damon and Ledger are the definite box office magnets but the film is not performance-driven. The clever, not-immediately-apparent plot, the mise-en-scene, and the busy art direction are more prominent aspects. I grant you it's possible you'd find The Brothers Grimm a "bit disorganized", yet more fun than movies like Red Eye.

When I said Red Eye was "forgettable" I was not lying. I literally couldn't remember what it was. Two days later it had disappeared from my mind, even though I was thinking about it yesterday. I had to stop and think a while. Needless to say Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is not hard to bring to mind; one might like to forget some parts of it, but they're embedded there in the brain, like an icepick or a knife.

Let us not forget that Heath Ledger was involved in another period romp (actually Ned Kelly was not bad), I mean the playful and silly but entertaining A Knight's Tale, which also had an actor who has acquired considerable credibility since, Paul Bettany. But Ledger's character acting bent was best realized in Lords of Dogtown. I am very eager to see him in Brokeback Mountain, based on a powerful little E. Annie Proulx story published eight years ago in The New Yorker; this could be a stunner, with its succinctly bitter tale and somebody as good in the young man acting line as Jake Gyllanhaal to partner with, and as able a helmsmen as Ang Lee -- not to mention Larry McMurty doing the screenplay. But I don't know when it's coming out.

*Looking forward to Brokeback Mountain scheduled for wide release on Dec. 9th.
*I'm not a huge fan of movies like Sympathy but I was able to have a bit of fun with Oldboy and Takeshi Miike movies, however sick and disposable, so I'll probably end up watching Sympathy on disc.

Sat August 27th

Broken Flowers (USA, 2005) at SoBe Regal

I also watched the second half of The Skeleton Key which seemed less over-the-top and feeble-brained that typical for the genre. Hey, beats being home without A/C.

I don't want people to think that I am a "huge fan of movies like Sympathy" either, but the problem is your use of the phrase, "films like Sympathy," because the whole reason for watching Park Chan-wook is that there are not "films like" his -- he is quite original. You may link what he does to a genre, and in fact that's the natural approach and I wouldn't oppose it, I'd be a fool to, but there aren't other films like this revenge trilogy as far as I can tell after seeing 2/3 of it. So, what I'm saying is that this is why I want to watch Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (remember there are two Park Sympathies so you may need to type out the whole title): not because I am a "fan" of "films like" this, but because of the talent and originality displayed here. I frankly think your considering these " sick and disposable" shows a lack of perspective considering that within a western context murder-revenge tragedies go back to the Elizabethans. You might call them "sick and disposable" too, but they would include names like Shakespeare and Marlowe, and you'd be linking yourself not with sophisticated writers but religious nuts. To think they're some new kitsch invention to make money and harvest dollars strikes me as short-sighted. But I am not a fan of this genre, I am not watching Miike and I do not particularly go for Asian horror flicks. However Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure is superb; one must realize that genres are made to be transcended as all traditions are, and they must be, and they are, so long as talent exists.

The one thing I didn't expect to see on a site with such astute critics was to see all a directors work tarred with the same brush on the basis of one film.

Sympathy for Mr.Vengeance is nothing like Oldboy and even Miike has films of subtlety unlike say Ichi the Killer. Indeed the one thing that surprises people who've been hyped up for Audition is the incredibly subtle (in some peoples eyes boring) build up.

Please don't use this form of judgement or you may as well wear blinkers.

Cheers Trev.

Originally posted by trevor826
The one thing I didn't expect to see on a site with such astute critics was to see all a directors work tarred with the same brush on the basis of one film.

If you used to think of me as an "astute critic" on the basis of my posts or simply because I post frequently on this site, I appreciate the back-handed compliment. But I certainly don't introduce myself or think of myself as such. Just a guy who fell in love with cinema in the 60s and has turned watching films and learning about cinema into an obsession. It's only human to base expectations regarding Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance on the Park Chan-wook film I've seen (Oldboy). Perhaps it is unfair, as you suggest. But I'd like to clarify that it's my expectations re: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance that I've "tarred with the same brush...", not my opinion of it since I couldn't possibly have an opinion of a film I haven't watched.
Oldboy, which I did enjoy to an extent, evidenced an appreciation on the part of the director for "shock for its own sake". This is not something I value highly, although it's certainly not enough to "ruin" a film for me. It's entirely possible this tendency and others I detected in Oldboy have been toned down or excised, as you suggest when you write "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is nothing like Oldboy".

I would agree that Park's "revenge trilogy " films are extremely violent, so he obviously enjoys working with violent material. Or is he just adept with such material, and energeticallly carrying a genre to its limits? Could it be you're just taking him too seriously? Anyway, "sake"=purpose=intention, so you can't say Park Chan-wook uses "shock for its own sake" unless you actually know his intentions. In the absence of that information applying the phrase to Park is subjective -- and pejorative - and putting it in quotation marks doesn't justify using it on him or any other director whose intentions you don't know. You can say he likes to work with violent material, you can't say that's his sole intention, to use such material to shock.. Violence is everywhere in real life and the movies and comes in many colors and in a movie or a book it has different meanings. I'd agree that the two Park revenge films I've seen are shockingly violent and sometimes disgusting, but that doesn't link them with shabby B-pictures because they're too well done, inventive, and technically accomplished to be looked on as schlock.

Trevor is right that the two, Oldboy and Mr. Vengeance, are quite different in their plot and general feeling, though you can feel Park's style and energy equally strongly in both. Obviously he was on some kind of a roll and that's why expectations for Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is dangerously high. Mr Vengeance was actually made before Oldboy. With its infamous "torture chamber" sequence Mr Vengeance is arguably gorier than Oldboy, not less. Whether the trilogy is a celebration of revenge or a demonstration of its ultimate futility remains to be seen -- and discussed. But you can forget about the idea that the "tendency" and the ominously unspecified "others" that you dislike in Park's Oldboy "have been toned down or excised," in Mr. Vengeance, especially since your phrasing implies a progression toward Mr. Vengeance, while in fact Oldboy was made later.

Otherwise I can only reiterate my previous post on why I have found interest in Park's movies but you can't say I'm a "h uge fan" of his. I was implying I pursue directors and not genres, and it's pretty obvious that Park is hugely talented, skillful, and quite original, but I didn't mean to imply I am avoiding Miike's films, just stating the fact that I'm not pursuing them.

Personally I'm far more concerned at how Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and indeed any following films from Park will suffer because of the world wide success of Oldboy.

Oldboy was a comic (manga) adaptation given the live action treatment just like many other films particularly in Japan and the US, Spiderman, Ichi the Killer, The Hulk, Fudoh, Sin City, Battle Royale etc etc.

The point is the previous films I have seen from Park, although commercial have covered topics that affect Korea, the North/South split - JSA and organ theft - Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. I think he's more likely now to just try and imitate the success of Oldboy and if you have seen his contribution to "Three Extremes" that looks exactly where he's heading.

The defining of yourselves as astute critics was meant as a compliment and certainly wasn't meant to be taken in any other way.

Cheers Trev.

*I was right to take it as a compliment then, however back-handed, and to have expressed my appreciation. Perhaps this is an appropriate time to reiterate my gratitude for your interest in Korean cinema and for making your related commentary available on this site (You seem to be the only member who's seen films by my favorite Korean director: Jin-ho Hur).

*Whether or not Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is similar to Oldboy or "nothing like" Oldboy I've decided to watch it and consequently post a comment, as I'm committed to do for every film I watch this year. Chris, of course applying the phrase "shock for its own sake" to Oldboy is subjective. It's an opinion and I stand by it. It's based on both presentation and content, not exclusive of a little scene involving an octopus ;)

Sunday August 28th

Stage Door (USA, 1937) dvd
Along with My Man Godfrey, this is the best-known film directed by Gregory La Cava. Stage Door received four Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. It's based on a play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, about aspiring actresses living in a midtown boarding house. It's full of quotable dialogue delivered by a wonderful cast that includes Katherine Hepburn, Ann Miller, Lucille Ball, Adolph Menjou and La Cava regular Ginger Rogers. Mordantly funny during its first hour with a rich collection of snappy wisecracks, then it becomes a heartfelt tribute to the acting profession. Its finale had an emotional impact on me I didn't expect, because the film is never predictable or manipulative. This is my favorite film from 1937's crop of Best Picture nominees. It's resolutely superior than eventual winner The Life of Emile Zola.

Hitch (USA, 2005) dvd
Sister's pick (she's staying with us until she gets electricity back in her house) but it turned out ok. Hollywood romantic comedy formula, predictable, but totally devoid of crassness and only mildly contrived. It's even somewhat wise about dating and relationships. Since I don't watch tv, the performance given by Kevin James (TV's The King of Queens) amounts to a revelation. It ain't easy to steal the spotlight from Will Smith in this genre.

Oscar, having just checked on the search I notice you passed on seeing Vibrator by Ryuichi Hiroki. This is a shame as with your background I would like to have seen your analysis of the film, I think this would have been (as they say) right up your street.

Cheers Trev.

[trevor]

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Personally I'm far more concerned at how Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and indeed any following films from Park will suffer because of the world wide success of Oldboy.

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That's always a danger that people will be prejudiced or have skewed expectations, but as long as Park does strikingly original and technically impressive work, he will maintain a positive reputation.

[Oscar]

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Chris, of course applying the phrase "shock for its own sake" to Oldboy is subjective. It's an opinion and I stand by it. It's based on both presentation and content, not exclusive of a little scene involving an octopus.

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Taste is taste, but not all criticism is subjective. The more criticism is built up out of logical and factual statements the more it commands attention and respect. You yourself always try to make your remarks fair and judicious, as you well know, and your statements about violence and shock value in Park's Oldboy could be made in a more supportable, less subjective manner.

Trevor:
I've decided to watch Vibrator based on your recommendation. Like you say, it would be interesting to form an opinion about a film that has a protagonist that seems, based on my reading of its premise, to experience auditory hallucinations. Having worked extensively with people diagnosed with schizophrenia gives me a unique angle to approach the picture. It's a shame the film did not receive theatrical distribution or home video release here. Moreover, the dvd is "currently unavailable" at my import-disc rental outfit (nicheflix). It seems to have been stolen or damaged. I hope they buy a replacement copy so I can rent it.

Chris:
You know that it's my belief that by and large what we do here is attempt to present evidence to support inherently subjective opinions, and that one's response to a film is largely dependent on personality, experience, predilections, etc. I do strive to be fair and judicious, and I think I have a tendency to be moderate_if I rated films by stars I'd give the vast majority of theatrical releases two to three stars. Then again, I haven't begun to offer evidence that Oldboy practices "shock for its own sake". I'm sorry to say I arrived at that opinion after watching the film seven months ago and it'd be hard to recall the evidence I would need to present here. You've called "the two Park revenge films" you've seen "shockingly violent", which to me means you've qualified either the content or the presentation of that violence as "shocking". Have you concluded that there are important reasons why the violence or its presentation is "shocking"?

Monday Aug. 29th

Twentynine Palms (France, 2004) dvd

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Oscar Jubis:
Have you concluded that there are important reasons why the violence or its presentation is "shocking"?

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There are many answers to that. One of them is because it's very well done, fresh and original. If you're asking again about the director's intention which you think is "shock for its own sake," the answer is neither you nor I knows, but I simply think Park's on the evidence too accomplished a director to have no other purpose than that. Do you think if asked what his purpose is, he would say "shock for its own sake"? To know more, we need to look at interviews. Or maybe ask him in person. This may be possible when I'm at the NYFF and his Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is presented.

Here is an excerpt from one interview -- the best one I've found online -- by the http://=http://www.hollywoodreporter...ywood Reporter :

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THR: The theme of vengeance recurs in your films. Any particular reason?
Park: With the development of civilization and the rise in education levels, people have had to hide their rage, hate and grudges deep within them. But this does not mean that these emotions go away. As relationships become more and more intricate, the rage only grows more and more. While modern society is burdening the individual with a growing sense of rage, the outlets through which people can release their rage are becoming narrower. This is an unhealthy situation, and it's probably why art exists. In reality, however, the vengeances represented in my movies are not actual vengeances. They are merely the transferring of a guilty conscience. My films are stories of people who place the blame for their actions on others because they refuse to take on the blame themselves. Therefore, rather than movies purporting to be of revenge, it would be more accurate to see my films as ones stressing morality, with guilty consciences as the core subject matter. The constantly recurring theme is the guilty conscience. Because they are always conscious of and obsessed with their wrongdoings, which are committed because they are inherently unavoidable in life, my characters are fundamentally good people. The fact that people have to resort to another type of violence in order to subjugate their initial guilty consciences is the most basic quality of tragedy characteristic in my movies thus far.

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One might also comment that Park may be, or his films may be whatever his intention, presenting violence in a shocking way to cut through our numbness to violence created by the daily news and films and our own stunning indifference to the suffering of our fellow human beings. Because a director has serous intentions (and Park began as a philosophy student and someone passionate about aesthetics who was inspired by HItchcock to decide he must make films) doesn't mean you have to like his work, but it is a mistake to attribute base intentions to him or her because you respond negatively to what he or she does. It may be that the reprehensible parties are some members of Park's audience, not the filmmakers. You raise the issue everyone faces in considering the Park revenge movies: are they just designed to shock? And if so, are they reprehensible for that reason? But again, since the statement is framed with an implication of the director's intention ("designed to shock"--he is the designer, so it must be his intention), the answer must be, no, that isn't fair to him, he doesn't have that in mind. But you don't have to like what he's done. I am still asking myself. I was shocked, yes, but I was taken on an amazing ride and I felt like I was in very good hands, cinematically. So I came away from Oldboy not so much offended as amazed. I was more ground down by Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, but still aware of being in the presence of a consistent style and vision. We'll see how Sympathy for Lady Vengeance affects me.

P.s. In your Twentynine Palms entry you overlooked the new thread for that specific film.

It's hard to discuss a film I remember so little about, so I have to stand by what I wrote after watching it last February. I know I liked it, I had fun watching it. But I seem to like it less than you, the Cannes jury, and most Imdb voters. The material you provide is valuable as clues to help interpret the film . We have to judge the film itself though, not the content or lucidity of the director's statements about it.

*I was aware of the new thread re Twentynine Palms. I chose to post in the older thread in which his whole career is discussed. My comments re Palms were written within the context of Dumont's filmography and his attempt to express philosophical views via cinema_ the topic of the opening post of "The Philosopher and the Genital Closeup". I'll go to the new thread and provide a link to my Palms review.

Tue. August 30th

Springtime in the Rockies (USA, 1942) on TCM
Betty Grable breaks up with dancing partner John Payne and goes to Canada to put on a show with an old admirer. Payne attempts to woo her back to him and Broadway. This Fox musical in Technicolor is good, but not exceptional. Cesar Romero and the amazing Carmen Miranda move it up a notch.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance appears to have rapidly vanished from Bay Area theaters. Despite opinions which I partly share that it has (as Brad Wescott of IndieWire put it) "richer commitment to character development and thematic complexity" than Oldboy, it hasn't appeared to possess the simple audience-grabbing qualities of the latter.

Trevor would also likely agree with that statement regarding Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. The manager at the Regal in South Beach told me it's scheduled to open there in the fall. I have it on my queue at Nicheflix but it's a popular title and they don't have many copies of anything (which is getting on my nerves but, to my knowledge, there's no alternative import-dvd rental outfit).

Wed. August 31st

The Same River Twice (USA, 2003) dvd
Documentary by director/producer/cinematographer/Harvard prof Rob Moss. It incorporates his 1978 short Riverdogs, about the last summer he spent as part of a commune of river guides in the Colorado (near the Grand Canyon), with footage of five of the "river dogs" taken between 1998 and 2002. The content concerns who they were then, and who are they now. The short was shot with 16 mm cameras and the new footage on DV. The "river dogs" spent most 70s summers living outdoors, in constant contact with nature, in a type of idyllic, democratic utopia until their late 20s-early 30s. Then and now is constantly juxtaposed. The most hardcore "riverdog", Jim, still maintains the same type of lifestyle while the other four started families and more conventional careers. Two became small town mayors, one is a novelist/radio host. All seem to have maintained a core set of progressive political values, particularly with regards to environmental protection. Moss films their lives and lets them speak to the camera but doesn't interview them. At 78 minutes, The Same River Twice is remarkably compact, and insightful regarding the passage from youth to middle age. Moss excells at a form of commentary that grows naturally out of the way scenes have been ordered and juxtaposed. The director commentary included on the dvd as an extra goes deep into this process and issues that arise when a filmmaker's subjects are his friends.

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The content concerns who they were then, and who are they now.

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Not in much detail at either end and hence less real "content" than your hype implies. Seeing this when it came out, I was far less enthusiastic. Same River Twice has its virtues; it is an excellent idea to begin with. But it comes off as being spotty in its followups and random in its methods. One of the main problems is that the material used as a basis is mostly nostalgia for bronzed naked bodies of young people. When the novelty of that wears off, you notice there's not much "covered" otherwise either: i.e., River Run footage has little dialogue, less information about the people and the followup itself is spotty -- only on some of the people, and without real investigatory process. Relying on the sporadic responses of the participants while watching the old footage is too passive and random a method to make for anything consistent and searching. Compare Michael Apted where you have real depth of followups on people through the use of quite simple but patient and systematic methods. The current onscreen presence of a towering documentary of investigatory work based on earlier nature footage -- Grizzly Man -- makes this river feel pretty shallow -- and another version of the kind of Disneyfied benign natural world Herzog has blasted apart forever. Michael Atkinson in his September 2003 review of the movie :

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[The Same River Twice] is a generous document of cultural passage, and not incidentally, the sexiest naturally nudist American movie since Murnau's Tabu. Moss, however, keeps himself out of the picture and neglects massive amounts of context that might've made Same River a stunner. How did they all meet? How long did their endless summer last? Who was Moss to these people? What were their relationships off the river? Moss barely interviews his friends, opting instead to simply observe them parent, work, and bashfully view the 20-year-old movie clips of themselves cavorting without a worry in the world. The film settles for the heartbreaking contrast between youthful vibrance and the remorseless, disappointed side of 40, remaining too polite to dig deeper.

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. Maybe Moss should redo the film with his DVD commentary -- which has made the film itself seem to you more thorough than it actually was -- edited into the 2003 doc itself along with additional footage where he tracks down more of the people and asks some more questions of the ones he had at hand -- and answers the ones Atkinson gives, which I'm surprised didn't seem to bother you (they did me, and that's why I quote him, in the absence of a review of my own). "Remarkably compact" is one way of putting it. I would say remarkably lightweight. Which is all good for camping, but not so great for a documentary which is chiefly valuable for how much information it provides.

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Originally posted by oscar jubis
Sunday August 14th
36 Quai des Orfevres (France, 2004) import dvd
"Policier" by cop-turned-director Olivier Marchal, inspired by real life events. The retiring police chief (Andre Dussolier) challenges the heads of two police departments to break the case of a gang that specializes in armored truck robberies. The rivalry between Vrinks (Daniel Auteil) and Klein (Gerard Depardieu), which goes beyond the professional into the personal realm, becomes the focus of the film. A plot contrivance or two fail to derail this solid genre flick. 36 Quai pays homage to the tradition of French crime movies, for instance, by naming a key character after Belmondo's protagonist in Melville's Le Doulos. Besides that, 36 Quai could've been made in Hollywood or Hong Kong which, given the genre, is a compliment.

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Hey, I actually find the show very excellent!
Go watch for the well paced "thriller" and "violence". Although it is rather plot driven, the ENTIRE cast carried their roles very well. The show is rather mainstream, but worth my time ...

*hengcs, I agree that this "policier" is mainstream, plot-driven and well-acted (not that any role except Auteil's is challenging). Not "excellent" for me, but a solid entry into the genre.

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Not in much detail at either end and hence less real "content" than your hype implies.

My "hype" is my OPINION and it's as valid as yours or anybody else's opinion.

it comes off as being spotty in its followups and random in its methods.

The method is closer to cinema-verite, certainly investigative journalism. It's the approach championed in America by the great Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, Welfare, Public Housing). Like Wiseman, Moss doesn't ask questions, he simply follows the subject and shoots. The director's personality and point of view is expressed entirely through the organizational structure/editing of the material. It's a less directive approach that allows the viewer the freedom to make connections and interpretations.

Compare Michael Apted where you have real depth of followups on people through the use of quite simple but patient and systematic methods.

Apted's approach is different, with a voice-over practically dictating what to think and feel (it has a definite opinion about the material presented, although not an agenda like something by Michael Moore). I do appreciate how Apted's approach makes it possible to provide socio-political context to the material. Perhaps Apted's longer time range calls for a more directive methodology.

Maybe Moss should redo the film with his DVD commentary edited into the 2003 doc itself along with additional footage where he tracks down more of the people and asks some more questions of the ones he had at hand

Moss, like Wiseman and other "cinema verite" directors, is not interested in asking any questions. He structured the material and edited it in order to make the passage from youth to middle age the topic of his film. The key to the work is what one concludes about a scene as influenced by the scene that precedes it and the scene that follows it. It's in the juxtaposition of the material. There's no doubt that Moss could have adopted other issues as his focus but this "passage" is a valid, compelling subject. I was moved and inspired by The Same River Twice. I am very impressed with the results, yet I wouldn't go as far as calling it "a stunner" or a masterpiece.
I'll grant you this much, to end on a positive note. I agree with you that (parts of) the dvd commentary would enrich the film itself. I do wish Moss had incorporated himself as part of the doc's subject because of his closeness to the "riverdogs"_he was one of them after all. What I have in mind is the way Ross McElwee incorporates his feelings and thoughts into documentaries like Bright Leaves and Sherman's March.

Oscar, I'm sorry to have used the word "hype". I see now that that sounds provocative. I only meant that in your words you were seeking to recommend the film. But, a poor choice of words, indeed! My apologies. I'm glad that you agree that the very ho-hum Same River Twice at least is not "a stunner" or "a masterpiece"! It certainly is not! I'm surprised that it "moved" and "inspired" you -- but now doubt there are ways that you relate to it that I do not! That is always possible. To call it "cinéma vérité" seems a bit of a stretch, but I see your point. Nonetheless I think Moss could have provided more information, without intruding, since, as you also admit, he was a part of the group, so the detachment was rather arificial, and perhaps not even the right approach. -- and I suspect that you are coming around to this point of view just a bit. Contrast the material at hand, the powerful Grizzly Man: Herzog certainly was not one of Treadwell's entourage, and yet he injects himself into the film. Why? To be honest about what he is doing, and because he can provide more information that way. And he does---provide more information that way, that is.