Oscar's Cinema Journal 2005

Tue Nov 8th

My favorite dvd release of 2005 is "Avant Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s." A few weeks ago I watched Disc One. Today I watched Disc 2. The complete set comprises 25 films with a total duration of over 6 hours of breathtaking pure cinema. Watching these treasures one comes to the realization that most of the innovations found in commercial movies had its origins in purely experimental shorts that pushed the envelope when it came to narrative, conceptual and photographic advancements. Disc 2 highlights include two masterpieces by Jean Epstein, two outstanding city poems_Manhattan and Regen (Amsterdam during a rainstorm), a short Eisenstein shot in France, and an American parody of Surrealism. Lineup as follows:
ASSAULT (Metzner, Germany)
LA TEMPESTAIRE (Epstein, France)
LA GLACE A TROIS FACES (Epstein)
ROMANCE SENTIMENTALE (Eisenstein, France)
LA COQUILLE ET LE CLERGYMAN (Dulac, France)
REGEN (Joris Ivens, Netherlands)
H2O (Steiner, USA)
EVEN-AS YOU AND I (Barlow/Hay/Robbins, USA)
MANHATTAN (Strand, USA)
AUTUMN FIRE (Weinberg, USA)

Wed Nov 9th

NOAM CHOMSKY: Rebel Without a Pause (Canada, 2004) on dvd

The most recent of the four feature docs made about the MIT Prof/intellectual/political crusader. Title refers to a reference by U2's Bono regarding Chomsky's tireless activism. Editor and director Will Pascoe is content to interview Chomsky's wife and manager while capturing Chomsky during a tour of Canadian universities. Most of the material deals with the US war on terrorism, the invasion of Iraq and the manipulation of media by the power elites. Chomsky for President!

Wed Nov 9th (cont)

Mother India (India, 1957) on TCM
This Technicolor rural family saga is the indisputable national epic of India and the first Indian film to be nominated for an Oscar (won deservedly by Fellini's Nights of Cabiria). Mother India was directed by Mehboob Khan and stars the legendary Nargis as the embodiment of the Indian soil. The broadcast introduced the film as the Indian Gone With The Wind, but plotwise this is closer to Stella Dallas in its story of maternal sacrifice. Mother India is a mixture of Hollywood musical, neorealism, Soviet tractor opera, slapstick comedy and pop Hinduism (although the director is Muslim). Every aspect of the production is grand and so are the emotions it generates.

Thursday Nov 10th

Radio Bikini (USA, 1987) on TCM

Oscar nominee for Best Documentary directed by Richard Stone. It concerns the 1947 nuclear tests held by the US military in Bikini, one of the Marshall Islands in the south Pacific. Bikini happened to be inhabited and all its natives had to be permanently relocated. The biggest tragedy though was that the military exposed thousands of servicemen to high levels of radiation. They were kept ignorant of the risks involved. Radio Bikini consists of news footage plus two new interviews: a Bikini native, and a soldier framed from the waist up until the last interview segment. Then we witness his legs have been amputated and one of his hands is monstruously swollen.

Thursday Nov 10th (cont)

Where The Truth Lies (Canada/UK/USA, 2005) Regal SoBe

Atom Egoyan is one of my favorite directors. There isn't another working in English who has placed more often in my year end's Top 10s over the past 15 years than Egoyan (four times: Calendar, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, and Ararat). I met Egoyan in the 1980s, when his first two features (Speaking Parts, Family Viewing) came straight from Toronto for their American premieres at the Miami Film Festival. So that's my bias; this is an avowed fan's opinion of Where The Truth Lies. I consider Egoyan's genre move a lesser effort but you can count me among the film's defenders.

Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon play Vince and Lanny, a show biz duo modeled after Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. It's 1972 and they've been apart since 1957, when they were linked but not charged with the death of a young woman. Their last performance was a telethon in Miami Beach. Karen O'Connor, who survived polio and gave a testimony at that telethon, has now been hired by a major magazine to write a celebrity profile. Karen crosses the line, in several ways, while investigating the connection between the girl's death and the breakup between Vince and Lanny.

It's a period mystery with a psychosexual twist, based on a novel by Rupert Holmes. There are two voice-over narrators and an ever shifting point of view of events that apparently has not been to everyone's liking, with some critics referring to the narrative as muddled or incoherent. I found that it's precisely this emphasis on the subjectivity of truth that interested Egoyan and that's what his script emphasizes until everything comes into focus at the finale. Admittedly, a lurid one, with sexual content that gained the film an NC-17 rating by the Board and may turn off certain people.

Another popular criticism is the casting of Alison Lohman (Matchstick Men) as Karen. The 26 year old is finally cast as an adult after years of playing teenage characters, and many have found her less than believable. I found her breathy half-lisp and cute looks perfect for the role of an ingenue, a rookie hired because of her girlish obsession with his subjects and their presumed vulnerability to her attractiveness. Lohman is not playing a noirish femme fatale, or a seasoned, hard-nosed journalist as one could deduct from the comments of her critics.

Where the Truth Lies is undoubtedly less resonant than previous Egoyan films, the script includes a contrived element or two, and Firth sometimes forgets he's playing an American character. But it's a lush mystery that's fun to unravel, with a superb performance by Kevin Bacon. Kudos to Egoyan regular Mychael Danna for the Herrmann-esque music score.

Friday November 11th

Time of Favor (Israel, 2001) dvd

This debut feature by Joseph Cedar (Checkpoint) won 5 Israeli Academy awards. Both films by Cedar are set in West Bank Jewish settlements in which the existence of Palestinians goes entirely unacknowledged. Settlement policy is not an issue explicitly, but both films are critical of far-right Israelis and feature young women who find settlement life entirely unsatisfactory. Although marketed as a thriller, Time of Favor's first hour is a drama involving a Rabbi who runs a yeshiva and creates a rift between orthodox army soldiers and others who advocate more separation between religion and State. The Rabbi wants his rebellious daughter to marry his best Torah student, the nerdish Pini, but its hunky Menachen she wants. During the second hour, Pini concocts a ploy to exact revenge that involves the detonation of stolen explosives. Although the narrative is a bit muddled and the film requires a degree of knowledge of Israeli politics and geography to register with maximum impact, Time of Favor is well-acted and sufficiently engrossing to recommend.

Friday Nov 11 (cont.)

Del Olvido al No Me Acuerdo (Mexico, 1999) Cosford Cinema

The literal translation of the title is: From oblivion to "I don't remember". This free-form doc is the debut of Juan Carlos Rulfo, the son of famous poet and novelist Juan Rulfo. It received four Mexican Academy awards, Best First Film at Montreal, and Best Doc at San Francisco. One gets the impression that initially the director's aim was to make a film about his father by interviewing his contemporaries, now 70 and older. He ended up with a film about how the passage of time and senility erases memories once held dear. I understand how you may find the subject less than compelling, but the film's sound design and cinematography are so accomplished a meditative state of patient contemplation took over me. Translation in cinema is so mediocre I no longer bother to point it out, so it gives me great pleasure to report that the subs here evidence a superb translation of challenging material (poems, songs and dialogue).

Sat Nov 12th

The Wizard of Oz (USA, 1939) on TBS

The iconic second film based on the fantasy by L. Frank Baum (there was a silent version) was credited to director Victor Fleming but it was King Vidor who directed the Kansas scenes as well as other notables. Everything about it has already been said so I'll get personal. This 66 year old film is the one my 12 year old son has seen the most times. I am partly responsible for his love of certain movies (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Guys and Dolls, The Grave of the Fireflies, Bicycle Thief, etc). He discovered Oz on his own and he asked me to watch it with him.

Sat Nov 12th (cont.)

The Lady Eve (USA, 1941) dvd

For my money, Preston Sturges is the best writer of comedies in the history of cinema. This is one of his most popular films and its popularity is well-deserved. This story of the romance between a sophisticated con artist (Barbara Stanwyck) and a naive millionaire (Henry Fonda) seems inexhaustible in its ability to delight and amuse over repeated viewings. It's a work of tremendous complexity and resonance that can also be enjoyed at the most basic, surface level. The dvd features one of my favorite commentaries ever to be recorded, by film scholar Marian Keane, who deconstructs the film with fresh insight into its multiplicity of meanings. I've seen The Lady Eve thrice and will enjoy it many times hence.

Still no internet access at home because of H. Wilma, thus six days and about 10 films behind in my journal posting. Trying to catch up from my brother's home.

Sunday Nov 13th

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (USA, 2004) dvd

This film co-written and directed by Niels Muller opened in NY and L.A. on 12/29/04 in the hopes that Sean Penn would get an Oscar nom. When it opened here in early Feb. I was busy with daily MIFF press screenings, so I missed it. Otherwise I wouldn't miss a film starring the talented Mr. Penn. He didn't get that nomination but he is excellent, as usual. The film is a period character study and not more than that. It's based on one Sam Byck, who concocted a harebrained ploy to kill Nixon. Loosely based that is, with the name changed here to Bicke. He shares some traits with Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, including his strict morality, social ineptness, and descent into madness. But Bicke is significantly less competent as a moral-crusader-turned-violent and he is never shown in a heroic light. Bicke's valid points about the ills of society are shortshifted by "the director's inability to invest his film with significance" (Dargis,NY Times). The Assassination of Richard Nixon is well-directed and shot, and there's Penn's fabulous acting, but its ambition is limited to portraiture.

Sunday Nov 13th (cont)

Nine Lives (USA, 2005) at Regal SoBe

This film written and directed by Colombian Rodrigo Garcia (Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her) won the Golden Leopard and Best Actress at Locarno (Tsai and Storaro in the jury). It consists of nine vignettes, shot as continuous long takes, each named after an L.A. woman. Secondary characters in some vignettes appear as protagonists in others. It's done casually and organically unless the forced, overly coincidental connections between characters in Crash, the other 2005 L.A.-ensemble film. Nine Lives is less agenda-driven, more expansive in its preoccupations, and infinitely less manipulative. The vignettes accrue significance and impact, to some extent. I wouldn't go as far in praising the film as the NY Times' Stephen Holden_who stated these scenes are "the cinematic equivalent of a collection of Chekhov short stories", but Nine Lives is very good. I took particular pleasure in the performances, with those by Elpidia Carrillo, Kathy Baker, and Robin Wright Penn as personal faves.

Mon Nov 14th

Two or Three Things I Know About Her (France, 1967) import dvd

Supposedly inspired by The Big Sleep, but you couldn't glean that from watching this film about life in the new suburbs being built in the Parisian outskirts and the women who live there. Like many if not all Godard films, it becomes mostly about his state of mind. Two experimental features: the intermittent, semi-audible voice-over by Godard, and the fact that he was shooting it simultaneously with Made in USA "as if a musician were to conduct two orchestras at once, each playing a different symphony" (JLG).
Marina Vlady plays a housewife who does a little hooking on the side to maintain a certain standard of living. The message is that EVERYONE in modern, capitalist society has to prostitute oneself to survive. Visually the point is repeatedly made that advertisements and slogans have taken over culture, and that the suburban environment is ugly and anti-human. The "her" of the title applies more to Paris, as suggested by Godard in his voice-over, than to Miss Vlady.

Tuesday Nov 15th

It's Not You, It's Me (Argentina, 2004) Beach Cinematheque

Screening sponsored by the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival of this debut by young director Juan Taratuto, co-written by Taratuto and his wife Cecilia Dopazo. It's a comedy of break-up and healing. Maria and Javier get married to facilitate their move to Miami, after living together for 2 years. She travels first while he stays behind to sell their apartment and finish his job. He's ready to join Maria when she calls to break it up. The rest of the film concerns his getting over it and, eventually, his search for a new love.The film is quite dependent on the actorly skills of Diego Peretti and he is exceptional, particularly in his ability to modulate the performance to create laughs without histrionics while conveying the pain and disorientation Javier experiences. This is genre-filmmaking with a familiar plot, yet it's fun to sit through because the comedic situations are reasonably realistic and the protagonist is charming and likable.

There was a thread on The Assassination of Richard Nixon that I started long ago

http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/show...+richard+nixon

but I guess you just keep this thread for your own personal entertainment. It's beginning to look increasingly solipcistic, though it gets attention, it gets hits.

Check your spelling on solipcistic, Chris. :)