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SCREENING LOG
-10/04-10/10, 2004
Back to 2004 Index
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001, Shohei Imamura)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289054/
yes
The Wages of Fear (1953, Henri-Georges Clouzot)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046268/
The beginning was dull. Once they got on the road things
got more interesting, and there were a few genuinely gripping
setpieces. But the ending was crap, Clouzot's nihilistic misanthropy
at its most obvious. I much much prefer LE CORBEAU and QUAI
DES ORFEVRES to his more famous films, WAGES and DIABOLIQUES.
mixed
Paris qui dort / The Crazy Ray (1925, Rene Clair)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015214/
YES (#3 for 1925 between THE FRESHMAN and BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN)
Sous les toits de Paris / Under the Roofs of Paris (1930,
Rene Clair)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021409/
yes (#9 for 1930 between I FLUNKED, BUT... and BLOOD OF A
POET)
thanks to salmau for recommending:
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933, Mervyn LeRoy)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024069/
YES (#8 for 1933 between 42ND STREET and WOMAN OF TOKYO)
Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932, Jean Renoir)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022718/
YES (#7 for 1932 between FREAKS and I AM A FUGITIVE FROM
A CHAIN GANG)
42nd Street (1933, Lloyd Bacon)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024034/
YES (#7 for 1933 between DUCK SOUP and GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933)
Fixed Bayonets (1951, Samuel Fuller)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043540/
yes (#6 for 1951 between AN AMERICAN IN PARIS and TALES OF
HOFFMAN)
Judex - Episodes 1-4 (1916, Louis Feuillade)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0006886/
yes so far
Zero for Conduct (1933, Jean Vigo)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024803/
At the expense of sounding like Chairman Mao, it struck me
as reactionary and juvenile. Of course that was kind of the
point, but I didn't find the originality bracing enough to
merit applauding the manic choreography of these brats. The
one moment that really made me stand up and notice was the
illustration becoming animated on the notebook. But I think
Bunuel's early films like ANDALOU, L'AGE D'OR or LAS HURDES
are more radical and innovative. The thing is, the same day
I also watched 44 minutes of REVENGE OF THE NERDS on Comedy
Central and I honestly got more out of it than from Vigo's
much-ballyhooed testosterone tantrum. mixed
Deserter (1933, Vsevolod Pudovkin)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023939/
YES (#4 for 1933 between LAS HURDES and KING KONG)
From the New York Film Festival:
Tarnation (2004, Jonathan Caouette)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390538/
Years from now, people may not consider the most influential
documentary of 2004 to be FAHRENHEIT 9/11, at least not in
terms of waking people up to how movies can be made. On that
score, TARNATION will probably inspire as many people as Michael
Moore to take up their digital video cameras and fire up their
iMacs to make their masterpiece. We have truly come to the
point where the individual's dream of writing the Great American
Novel has been supplanted by the making of Great American
Movies; the barrier to making great cinema is no longer a
matter of economics or equipment, but of inspiration.
32-year-old first-time feature director Caouette's inspiration
was 20 years of f-ed up family life, which he devotedly captured
with hours upon hours of home video ever since the age of
11, and edited on his iMac (at a reported initial cost of
$218, though this figure is somewhat misleading) to create
what must be the Home Movie From Hell. Caouette's mother was
needlessly administered shock treatment by her abusive parents
when she was a child, leaving her slightly brain-damaged and
later proved her unfit to raise Caouette. Caouette's experimentation
with drugs before he reached puberty also left him psychologically
damaged; he claims that his mind occasionally detaches itself
from his body so that he experiences his own life as an outsider.
This mindstate is evoked by the film's deranged use of cheap
special effects found on the consumer-level editing software
iMovie, distorting, saturating and recolorizing his footage
as if he were taking a flamethrower to his memories. This
creative use of cheesy-yet-frightening effects to reflect
of his traumatized childhood mental state makes the home movie
aesthetic a force to be reckoned with.
This film is certain to be a landmark in the history of documentary
filmmaking, if not all filmmaking. And yet I have my reservations.
After a certain point it isn't clear whether Caouette is sublimating
his horrifying childhood into a brilliant cinematic tone poem
to the messy nightmare of growing up, or if he is exploiting
this nightmare for the sake of notoriety, as if he were the
star of his own reality show of misery scored to a hip soundtrack.
By the time Caouette has reached adulthood, moved out to New
York and is still obsessively chronicling his everyday details,
you wonder if we've descended into Morgan Spurlock territory,
because it's clear that Caouette has now reached a point in
his life where he can think more critically and insightfully
about his family travails, but instead he continues to drag
his camera through the muck and sensationalize his mother's
misery after she overdoses on lithium at the hands of his
neglectful grandfather. This leads to an on-camera confrontation
between Caouette and his grandfather with the camera functioning
more like a weapon for intimidation than a tool for discovery.
It seems that the immediacy that gives these films their distinctive
impact is also the same thing that keeps their makers from
being more thoughtful and self-critical in how they're treating
their material. The act of filmmaking no longer clarifies
but obfuscates the truth -- a hazardous reality of the video
age that CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS articulated more soberingly.
But these problems shouldn't so much point out the flaws
of this incredible film as they should make us realize a new
set of challenges in a new era in filmmaking, one that I find
incredibly exciting and inspiring, and one that this film
epitomizes vividly. Whether or not one considers TARNATION
to be one of the best films of 2004, it is certainly one of
the most important.yes (#7 for 2004 IMDb new releases between
TROPICAL MALADY and FAHRENHEIT 9/11) (#14 for new films seen
in 2004 between 15 and FAHRENHEIT 9/11)
House of Flying Daggers (2004, Zhang Yimou)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0385004/
Zhang Yimou continues his foray into the martial arts genre
with Asian megastars Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhang
Ziyi comprisng an ill-fated yet drool-worthy romantic triangle
caught in the political intrigues of Tang Dynasty China. Much
more conventional than the high-concept kung fu of HERO, the
film boasts a more fluid storyline and greater intimacy with
the characters, as they each work through a difficult web
of loyalties and passions. Multiple double-crossings and chaste
sex scenes (I love how Zhang Ziyi covers her breasts with
her arms while in the throes of carnal pleasure; chalk that
one up to the Chinese censors!) are interspersed with intricately
choreographed, state-of-the art kung-fu that manages to breathe
new life into all the CGI gimcrackery that THE MATRIX Trilogy
had all but exhausted. Stunningly crafted though at times
borderline academic in its insistence on the picturesque,
the film really gets interesting in a brutal showdown between
Lau and Kaneshiro (the former fighting with a dagger plunged
in his back), a downright psychotic fight sequence uncharacteristic
of Zhang that approaches the violently self-destructive lunacy
of Chang Cheh, not to mention King Vidor's DUEL IN THE SUN.
Zhang revisits themes from his previous two films: renunciation
and heroic sacrifice (HERO), as well as false appearances,
deceptions and blindness (HAPPY TIMES), though the relevance
of the material to the real world is not so much abstruse
(as is usually the case with him) as insubstantial -- blanketed
in a snowy romantic fatalism, the ending neither moves nor
lingers. yes (#13 for 2004 IMDb new releases between JAMES'
JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM and COLLATERAL) (#30 for new films seen
in 2004 between SPRINGTIME IN A SMALL TOWN and END OF THE
CENTURY: THE STORY OF THE RAMONES)
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