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Thanks for the identification. I like to caption the stills and so this is invaluable. Good luck with your work.
Actually I've read that the film has a site that gives plot explanations. It's debatable about whether they matter anyway.
Thanks again. I look forward to further feedback.
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY opened in US theaters today. The reviews are generally excellent. It would be one of my recommendations to anybody from the NYFF.
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ARNAUD DESPLECHIN'S A CHRISTMAS TALE REVIEWED.
More tonally controlled than Desplechin's last, and only superficially conventional in its Yuletide familial format, this is again a complex and highly original drama of reunions, conflicts, and revelations that's a glorious feast of all that the director does best. At the center of it, Catherine Deneuve and Matthieu Amalric, with Anne Cosigny, Melvil Poupaud, Chiara Mastroianni, Emmanuelle Devos and others in important roles.
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A FESTIVAL SUMMING-UP...
...is coming in the NYFF Festival Coverage thread.
Top ratings will likely go to:
THE CLASS (CANTET)
HUNGER (MCQUEEN)
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY (LEIGH)
High praise to most of the French films and some of the Spanish-language ones.
Disappointments definitely include:
CHE (SODERBERGH)
GOMORRAH (GARRONE)
NIGHT AND DAY (HONG)
Best-avoided titles:
BULLET IN THE HEAD (ROSALES)
CHOUGA (OMIRBAEV)
THE NORTHERN LAND (BOTELHO)
I'll also put up linked indexes of all the titles reviewed.
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I watched Changeling and I hope everyone else who posts here checks it out. Eastwood is one of our best Hollywood directors and his latest exhibits all the virtues of solid, mainstream Hollywood storytelling and production values. That's the overriding thought I had walking out of the theater after watching it. It has an epic quality to it, an earnestness, a sense of conviction about what it's bringing into the open. I like it less than Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, which made my year-end Top 10s. I think it compares well with Flags of Our Fathers and Mystic River. It's gonna be a sad day when Eastwood stops making movies.
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Clint is a remarkable individual, very much in good form as was obvious when we saw and heard him answer our questions at Lincoln Center a month ago after the press screening. He has certainly not stopped making movies and he has two coming. This one is indeed well made in many ways and in view of the level of current offerings is certainly a must see for any fan of mainstream American filmmaking. But it's not quite satisfiying; it's Clint's least good of late--though comparison with Flags of Our Fathers may be apt, I found the latter more involving. The Changeling story is rather extraordinary--as lurid as any of James Ellroy's, but in essence true. I found the insane asylum segment reminiscent of Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor. Angelina unfortunately is shrill and tense. As others in the press have commented, the best thing about Changeling is the period flavor, particularly in the street scenes, with the street cars and automobiles lovingly assembled.
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The psych ward scenes reminded me most of Frances (1982) with Jessica Lange as actress Frances Farmer, a role for which she received an Oscar nomination.
I'm looking forward to Clint's other 2008 release.
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That too, but the other two are more period and lurid, as I recall. Clint stars in the next one.
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*I'm not sure what you mean by "the other two". I think you mean L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia. Shock Corridor is perhaps "lurid" but, of course, not a period film. It's set in in the present (1963) and it exposes both psychiatric institutions and American society in general. I didn't find it as wrenching as the psych ward scenes in both Frances (set in the 1940s) and Changeling. Perhaps the first Hollywood film to bring into the open the horrors of psychiatric institutionalization was The Snake Pit (1948). It's a very good film with a superb performance by Olivia de Havilland.
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Interesting that Leigh sees Happy-Go-Lucky as "his answer to his branding as a miserabilist". He coul;d have simply brought up Topsy-Turvy or reminded those branding him of the optimistic and uplifting worldview of Life is Sweet and Secrets and Lies. Anyway, I'm not nearly as impressed by the new film as I am by the abovementioned and most other films by England's greatest director.
Half the time I found Poppy incredibly irritating. Her pestering of the library clerk in the opening sequence borders on abuse. She can't seem to understand some people want to be left alone. Her insistence on wearing boots with spiky heels when learning to drive a car with manual transmission is highly inconsiderate; a clear danger to the safety of others sharing the road. I bought into her reaction to having her bike stolen but not into her ability to learn to drive so quickly, given her attitude and said boots. The character borrows tics from protagonists of other Leigh films, mostly Katrin Cartlidge's Hannah of Career Girls. As far as the combination of comedy and pathos that seems to be Leigh's aim, I find that some of his earlier films, Grown Ups comes to mind, more seamless; more successful in general. With regards to the thread involving Poppy and Scott, I'd say the deck is a bit too stacked for it to satisfy as either comedy and drama.
I'm not denying Happy-Go-Lucky is a good film. I think you've certainly brought up most of what makes it enjoyable. Bear in mind that my comments attempt to justify why I didn't enjoy the film as much or think as highly of it as most who've written about it. This film is getting outrageously positive reviews. I do recognize the film has its share of attributes and it deserves to be seen.
Last edited by oscar jubis; 11-12-2008 at 05:43 PM.
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Since we've had so much discussion of HAPPY-GO-LUCKY and CHANGELING here, and they're both in theatrical release, I've opened threads for both of them and transferred our discussion to them there, separated up according to the film. My new replies to your interesting remarks about both films are over there.
Links to the two threads:
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
CHANGELING
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 11-12-2008 at 10:03 PM.
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SEPTEMBER ARTICLE IN "NY PRESS' CRITIQUES THE FESTIVAL
There's usually an article or two at NYFF time critiquing this particular festival as an institution. I meant to refer Filmleaf readers to this year's Been to the NYFilm Festival? Didn't Think So by Simon Abrams and published in The New York Press of September 24, 2008. Abrams finds the venue stodgy, not entirely without reason (FSLC daytime offerings do get an older crowd). I don't know if the venue and the Society are as off-putting to young filmgoeers as he thinks. You will find bloggers and ragged T-shirts and jeans at the press screenings, but the Film Society of Lincoln Center certainly isn't the cutting edge spot for film in New York City; he got that right.
Anyway, this article includes quotes from Phililp Lopate and Richard Pena with a historical background survey. And it offers hope in the new green and Film Comments Selects series and the revamped and enlarged facilities that are coming shortly. And he acknowledges that for the industry and press, the NYFF is a splendid event.
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By all appearances, the NYFF continues to be what it's been doing well since 1963: a showcase for the "best" from Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, etc. When you charge $16 and show films in a space that sits over 2,000 or 1,660 (the new space), you cannot take chances. You cannot piss off too many people by showing something truly fringe or avant garde under those circumstances. That's what the sidebars are for.
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Don't you think that in general the audience for "art film" is older? that many young people eventually grow into people that appreciate "art film" when they reach a certain age? There are always some teens and young adults who love chanllenging, "art films" but they will always be the minority. My professors at UM have discussed this problem with me. It's a big issue at film studies programs. The kids dig The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Psycho, and Breathless but get bored by Vivre Sa Vie, Last Year at Marienbad, Ozu, and just about any silent film.
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Yes, doubtless the audience for "art" films is older. I don't know. The point was just to give a good example of this kind of article complaining about the NYFF that appears more or less every year in a NYC paper around festival time. Sometimes the NYTimes is also critical. As Abrams notes, the FSLC has some series that are more adventurous. The nature of the NYFF, however, its selectivity, makes it less likely to take chances.
Tribeca is different. So are other festivals. The FSLC is kind of conservative. Nonetheless you are basically right. But I found this article worth connecting Filmleaf readers. To give the youth point of view.
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FSLC and NYFF changes: Dennis Lim
Readers of NYFF coverage may be interested in changes in the FSLC staff and NYFF selection committee. This press release came during the past week:
Dennis Lim joins New York Film Festival
Selection Committee
NEW YORK—The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that film critic and editor Dennis Lim will join the New York Film Festival’s selection committee following The Film Society’s Richard Peña and critics Scott Foundas, J. Hoberman and newest member Melissa Anderson in choosing the approximately twenty plus features that will make up the 2009 slate.
"Dennis is one of the most original voices in film criticism," remarks Peña, program director at The Film Society and NYFF selection committee chairman. "Comfortable with an exceedingly wide range of films, he brings fresh and often surprising points of view to his writing on cinema that challenges traditional orthodoxies."
Dennis Lim is the editor of Moving Image Source, the online publication of the Museum of the Moving Image. He writes frequently for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and was a film critic at The Village Voice from 1998 to 2006, as well as its film editor from 2000 to 2006. He is a member of the National Society of Film Critics, and he teaches in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University.
"The New York Film Festival has held a special place in local and global film culture for decades" says Lim. "It’s been an event of enormous significance to me as a film lover and a film journalist, and I’m truly honored to be on the selection committee."
He replaces Kent Jones, who, until recently, was The Film Society’s associate director of programming and a member of the Festival’s selection committee.
There has been a shakeup (the term used in a NYTimes article two weeks ago) sincehe appontment of Mara Manus to head the Film Society. Some have not been rehired, and some have left. These include Jeanne Burney, the press director since the departure of Graham Leggett to direct the San Frencaico Film Society and festival. And others are leaving, perhaps 25% of the staff. Definitely many are ot happy with Manus' reputation for an "aloof", "corporate," bottom-line oriented approach (she comes from six years of directing New York's Public Theater). However, the arrival of Dennis Lim seems a positive sign.
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I watched Tokyo Sonata and was relieved to find that your review mentions the film's "uncertainty of tone". I hope I'm quoting that bit correctly. You obviously like the film more than I do but I'm glad that you point out some of its deficiencies or limitations. It is a good review. I wish Kurosawa would stick to what he does best and leave topics like this to others, like Kore-eda for instance. Tokyo Sonata needed to either go deeper and more seriously into drama the way Cantet's masterpiece Time Out does, or become the dark and wild satire it sometimes threatens to become. By the way, I am still trying to figure out why the wife would stay married to a guy that doesn't seem to know how to show a modicum of affection.
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