BEST MOVIES of 2018

[oscar jubis]

I watched "Burning" when it came out in the States and listed it at #12

What a great place to watch Kiarostami's 24 Frames. Was it a screening, or was it an installation where you can choose the order in which you view the frames?
I want to point out that not all vignettes are digital animations. There is one, for example, that is a process shot. There is a photograph of a group of 5 Iranians watching the Eiffel Tower from a fair distance with their backs to Kiarostami's photographic camera and he combined it with a cinematographic shot that shows people (including a woman wearing sunglasses who sings "Autumn Leaves" in French) walking in the foreground from left to right; the kind of "matte shot" that was common in Hollywood since the 1940s, and then later was perfected by means of "blue screen" technology.

[Chris Knipp]

I ranked BURNING higher but not everybody did!

24 FRAMES I think an installation with an exhibit devoted to Kiarostami. I believe it may have grown out of an exhibition at the museum in 2007 Correspondences with the Spaniard Victor Erdice or at least this French article implies so: https://revue24images.com/les-critiques/24-frames/

I see that of my my Wish I'd Seen list for the year I still have not seen
The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

[oscar jubis]

There is a consistency and developmental continuity in Kiarostami's filmography going all the way back to the 1970s. Take for example The Traveler (1974), about a boy who uses a photographic camera cunningly to make money to buy a ticket to the big football game and then falls asleep just before the game starts. You might remember that the last shot of 24 Frames features a person who falls asleep in front of a computer screen playing the last shot from William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives,Dana Andrews and Teresa Wright's romantic kiss.

His last film most closely remembers two of the frames from Five Dedicated to Ozu (2003), particularly the ones that feature a static camera revealing humans and ducks walking from left to right and having at least one of them turn around to stare at the camera.

Kiarostami often remarked that a very positive effect he was hoping to accomplish with his cinema is to make people fall asleep peacefully.

[Chris Knipp]

Great! Thanks.