SCREENING LOG - 7/31/2006-8/06/2006

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Miami Vice (2006, Michael Mann)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430357/
I think it's one of the smartest and tightest Hollywood summer films I've seen in a while (though I admit I don't see nearly as much as many of us do). I think it works very well regardless of whose name happens to be above the title, but to fit it within the trajectory of Mann's career makes it doubly fascinating.

It is not the same Michael Mann of ten years ago. That is, his themes and preoccupations and brooding macho existentialism is essentially still intact, but looking at what he has done since HEAT, it appears that he has almost completely reconfigured his aesthetic using new cinematographic techologies to give a fresh new approach to his material, as well as to Hollywood action movie conventions. It really is the opposite approach to the grandiose, extended (and somewhat bloated) HEAT, and for that reason I love it -- it's fast on its feet, which reflects the world inhabited by its characters, a world of fate-changing instances and fleeting moments, all of which are observed with an acute eye for detail.

I grant that fast filmmaking is the order of the day. But I seriously doubt that a Sena, Fuqua, Bay or whoever could even come close to touching the genuine -- albeit fragile and fleeting -- emotions that are uncovered in the course of this film. The emotions shared between Gong Li and Colin Farrell's characters are all the more poignant precisely because the world being depicted is so hollow and volatile. Gong gives the most moving performance in the picture, virtually through her eyes alone.

As for Farrell, this is the first time one of his performances ever touched me, something I never dreamt possible because I quite frankly detest him. Not even Terrence Malick could make him work for me. But Mann does because he keeps the atmosphere so cagey that it looks like Farrell and the rest of the cast barely have time to think, just to go on his wits from one scene to the next.

I unexpectedly found myself comparing THE NEW WORLD with MIAMI VICE - perhaps because of Farrell's presence, but more because both films explore the possibility of love between two irreconcilable worlds in collision. I find MIAMI VICE to be the more moving of the two because I find it less pretentious, because it seems on the surface to be so focused on moving the action and the story along that the love story and human issues accompanying it seem to creep from out of nowhere, but there's no mistaking how central a role they inhabit by the end. Compared to that, "the whole reason they go undercover" is secondary.

The film has been criticized for being shot on HD video which in some people's minds is unconditionally inferior to film. On the question of whether film or HD video is "better-looking", I honestly think this is purely subjective. Ten years from now, no make that five, the eyes of most viewers will become so accustomed to digital video that the look of celluloid will strike them as antiquated and . It's just whatever people happen to see more often that defines what they perceive as being "realistic". Now I happen to love both and appreciate their respective qualities. Perhaps it's because I'm predisposed to a documentary style aesthetic, but I really enjoyed the sense of immediacy that the sharp lines of video imaging provide. For me the glows of electronic consoles and nightclub lights shimmer with more effect when rendered digitally (if you want to see them done up in film, check out what Hou Hsiao-hsien and Mark Lee Ping-bin do in MILLENNIUM MAMBO or THREE TIMES). It actually does make it look more authentic and realistic (if not futuristic), and in its own way artistically realized, like everything is happening in a hyperreal moment, as opposed to the soft, composed-ness of film. And I think that kind of look and feel is completely appropriate to the kind of feeling Mann is out to capture here. Some of the footage of the climactic shootout felt like it had been filmed during a night raid in Iraq. Love it or hate it, this is the aesthetic that has emerged in this decade of digital imaging. This aesthetic has radically altered the state of the art in television, music video, documentary and low budget indie filmmaking, as well as post-production on pretty much every Hollywood film made in the last five years. Mann is taking it even further into big-budget Hollywood filmmaking, exploring how the look it affords him can capture the state of life he is concerned with. It really is a film of the moment, an achievement that, in retrospect, COLLATERAL had only hinted at. It is in my mind one of the major achievements I've seen so far this year.

I really wish I had the time to see this again, with digital projection. Whether you like it or not, digital filmmaking is the future, and Mann fronts the Hollywood vanguard with a film that looks and feels right for digital: fast and flashy, cagey and kinetic, with characters that seem to be perpetually battling the pressure drop of 21st century life, as listless as it is wireless. Surprisingly the film develops a soul halfway through - but don't blink or you might miss it.

Numero deux (1975, Jean-luc Godard)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073471/
TSPDT #880
A bit perverse to watch a a video copy of a film that films two video screens. Like TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, it deconstructs the life of a contemporary household. Godard's intro is ponderous but then we settle into some juicy, voyeuristic pleasure as the widescreen lens captures two video screens that dissect a three-generation household as they eat, sleep, have sex and talk. A very disturbing and provocative look at family roles and relationships across generational and gender gaps. Kind of like a prototype to CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS though it has a refreshing matter-of-factness to what it shows, as if it were all healthy. Some of these scenes (with child actors watching their onscreen parents copulating) couldn't be filmed in the US.
yes - with potential to go up -- would make a fascinating double feature with JEANNE DIELMAN.
yes

The Best Man (1964, Franklin J. Schaffner)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057883/
I dunno, it didn't really do that much for me. I guess I feel that Aaron Sorkin and THE WEST WING have stolen most of the thunder from whatever was fresh or provocative about this top level political drama about a presidential candidate weighing his options to go dirty against his biggest opponent. Henry Fonda is Henry Fonda (you can practically draw the beard he wore from YOUNG MR. LINCOLN 25 years before on his face and it's the same part) -- more impressive is Cliff Robertson as his opponent, who isn't afraid of using whatever tricks are at his disposal -- after all, "It's politics". He comes off as both respectably pragmatic and despicably ruthless.
mixed

The Wings of Eagles (1957, John Ford)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051198/
TSPDT #881
A remarkable true story about a Navy pilot who recovers from a life-threatening injury to become an accomplished screenwriter and naval commander. I don't know whether Ford's involvement in this film (he and John Wayne were close personal friends with the subject) is a liability or an asset. Perversely, because I've seen so many John Ford movies, I've reached a point where I find his loutish pathos endearingly familiar. Perhaps one could make a case for the poetic subtleties lying within his characters' brawls and bawls. He gets some really good moments of darkness and despair during Wayne's debilitation, and his use of shadows to stage his characters dramatically didn't leave him one year after THE SEARCHERS. Maureen O'Hara's characteristic spitfire and red hair are given pride of place and while she's not a terribly nuanced actress she's fun to watch, a second-tier, better looking Katharine Hepburn. The rest is mostly patriotic claptrap but all in all it's rousingly done.
yes

Hotel du nord (1938, Marcel Carne)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030252/
TSPDT #882
Probably my favorite of the Carne films I've seen, and worthy enough to make me want to revisit his more famous films that left me underwhelmed. The Parisian setting is both realistically gritty and romantically atmospheric. Louis Jouvet is amazing as a hardened ex-con who finds a spark inside himself when falling for Renee (Annabella), a young fallen woman recovering after almost being killed in a failed suicide pact. Jouvet, with his chiseled exterior and unexpected tenderness, is more of a prototype for Bogart than Jean Gabin or Charles Boyer. Adding a delightful layer of sauciness is Arletty as a floozy -- so earthy, so different from the ice queen in CHILDREN OF PARADISE.
YES (#4 for 1938 between HOLIDAY and YOU AND ME)

Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Federico Fellini)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059229/
TSPDT #883
Fellini's love letter to Giulietta Masina, and perhaps a way of making a female companion piece to 8 1/2 and/or sequel to NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, doing highly stylized loose collage of what his dreamy and affluent but often lonely wife might be like. It doesn't really go anywhere though (except in the kind of accumulating domestic despair that, following LA DOLCE VITA and 8 1/2 was becoming somewhat predictable for Fellini), and it lacks the ecstatic high points of CABIRIA. But oh, the colors!
yes

Thunderball (1965, Terence Young)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059800/
First off I have to say that, as much as I enjoy Bond movies for their glamour and sophistication, I carry a bit of ideological baggage that keeps me from fully enjoying them. I've heard the arguments back and forth about Bond and sexism, and as for myself I honestly feel that these films play in the realm of male chauvinist fantasy more than I'm totally comfortable with. On the other hand, I do like what Roger Ebert had to say about Sean Connery's Bond, how his eyes would undress a woman and yet tactfully dress them back up after his penetrating gaze had had its fill. But I'm also not a fan of how many of the Connery-era Bond films glamorized the Cold War, especially with the notion that it could be won through liberal capitalist excess, a seemingly unlimited arsenal of wealth, technology and sex. You really have to stand back and admire the brilliance of the concept, it was a perfect soft sell of Cold War capitalist ideology. And in many ways the decadence of these films mirrors the qualites that ultimately persuaded more people to Western capitalism in the long run. (The question these days is whether it's sexier than the promise of 40 virgins waiting for every suicide bomber in heaven).

I think this is one of the best Bond movies in terms of action -- not so much in the way of the elaborate stunt sequences as has been the case with most Bond films, but more in terms of the violence leaving more of an impact -- unlike the slick car chases or improbable stunts that hardly muss 007's hairdo, this one's got some really visceral fistfights that really pack a punch. Some of the deaths in this film are pretty traumatic -- like the guy whose underwater breathing gear gets cut off, I remember seeing that as a kid and having nightmares because of it. What's chilling about it is that we actually are made to linger on the death so that it sinks in. For that the violence and death feels more real than in other more cartoonish Bond movies.

Connery is awesome no doubt -- perhaps I take him for granted because I don't have anything new to say about him. As for the Bond girls, you get your choice between the mysterious neurotic brunette Domino (Claudine Auger) vs. the brazen, voluptuous Lucianna Paluzzi as Volpe, so Bond gets his taming of the shrew fantasy and damsel in distress fantasy in one movie.
yes

A Scanner Darkly (2006, Richard Linklater)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/
I haven't read Philip Dick's novel so can't comment on that angle. As a movie it is rather disorienting, and the characters aren't as compelling as one might want. But in a way that's a refreshing departure from drug movies that unintentionally or otherwise romanticize the thrills of drug use. Here it's either boring (lots of meandering drug-addled bull sessions leading nowhere) or ugly (guy almost chokes to death on a TV dinner). A lot of interesting ideas about drugs emerge, as a psychological debilitator that paradoxically opens a window to perceiving all the scary, alienating aspects of society, and as a microcosm of capitalism with its bottomless exploitation of its consumers. The animation is intriguing at times but also distancing. It's a cold film to be sure, but for one who's never warmed to Linklater's dystopian films, I find this one to be the richest and most accomplished.
yes

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