Jun 11, 2017

Here's the teaser for my singing film.

 

Mar 14, 2017

I don't have a question, but this poster of Josh Gad will haunt me until my end of days.

 

Dec 29, 2016

Silence is pretty major. Though not without its flaws, which may be expected from a decades-in-the-making passion project, it's a challenging, nuanced work of considerable depth.

 

Dec 24, 2016

Merry Christmas guys

 

Aug 9, 2016

http://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2016/daily/54th-new-york-film-festival-main-slate-announced/

The main slate for the NYFF is preeety great.

 

Feb 20, 2016

@FilmAndWhisky I saw The Witch...It's not without its flaws, but I thought it was a solid, impressive debut.

The most intriguing narrative choice it makes is to eschew any ambiguity in the opening minutes. Through a few effectively surreal images, it confirms the supernatural and that there is indeed a witch lurking somewhere in the woods. Conventionally, for a story that critiques the irrational fear and paranoia of zealots, one would typically expect that the film would walk the line, at least for a short while, that those fears may perhaps be unjustified and only conjured in their imagination. The Witch opts instead to fully indulge in the supernatural while nonetheless still highlighting the hypocrisy and moral failings of religious extremists. There may be a witch in the woods, but the way the family turns on one another is still not justified by the real world presence of their most irrational fear.

However, for what's predominantly a slow-burn horror rooted in atmosphere, this approach can undercut some of the movie's effectiveness, as the film is not aided by the eeriness that comes with the unknown. Along these lines, with some of its obvious horror signifiers and ominous score, the film, especially in its first half, can feel like it's supposed to be scarier than it actually is.

With that said, director Robert Eggers displays considerable formal prowess from his use of natural light to his impeccable sound design (the sound of footsteps in the brush resonate with tension). While it may not always pay off, Eggers also exhibits admirable patience and restraint. This works best in an exceedingly well acted exorcism scene that's made all the more unsettling by just how grounded it is.

The clear crux of the film is in Thomasin's character, a young girl on the cusp of womanhood. There's much talk of original sin in the movie and, given her family's strict puritanical values, hers appears to be simply being a young girl. This is also contrasted with the very notion of a witch, itself an outgrowth of extreme fears of sex and femininity. When these worst fears are ultimately confirmed in the jarring imagery of its entertainingly over the top finale, it becomes for Thomasin a twisted form of liberation.

 

Dec 31, 2015

LOVED Andrew Haigh's 45 Years. Dope af.

Having seen Joy and The Hateful Eight, I just need to see The Revenant to complete the Winter 2015 Pompous a------ Director Trilogy.

 

Oct 22, 2015

I agree to an extent, and I used to hold the same opinion more strongly before. But after doing a Masters in Cinema Studies I didn't come to find deeper support for the objectivity of cinema as an art-form but deeper support for its inherent subjectivity. The 16 people in my cohort were undoubtedly better trained in cinema, having already taken cinema studies courses in their undergrads, and even assisting teaching undergrad classes then, but the disparity between opinions was MUCH greater between these 16 people than between myself and any supposedly ''untrained' person. It is the training in cinema that leads to a wider variety of opinions and debates.

After one has left the mainstream of Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Godfather one enters the academic world of Do the Right Thing, Touch of Evil, and Persona. In a master's class we spent an entire semester dissecting Touch of Evil from different points of view because of how debatable a single film is. In a class on film theory, we looked at short, experimental films which are clearly undervalued. Then you realize how much foreign, experimental, and contemporary world cinema is totally missing from the academic world. All this to say is that the deeper one gets into the rabbit hole the more varied their tastes becomes. The more they're able to question those original films that began their journey and which sit at the highest echelons of the supposed objective consensus of film-art. I'd rather hear an argument for why Spring Breakers or Showgirls is a masterpiece than hear another "Citizen Kane changed cinema forever and is therefore the goat".

That said, most of my background in film-philosophy (philosophy bachelors) involves talking about the transformative potential of cinema, which requires a consistent pure aesthetic appreciation of the images between all viewers. In that way, the formal structure, such as a moving hand or a rack focus, becomes the mindful, immediate experience of the viewer, which corresponds exactly with all viewers. It is cinema as devotion, as meditation, as art. It's here that film transcends subjectivity. But this is merely in the immediate experience of sound and image, and after it has reached one's conscience it gets interpreted by one's unique thoughts and necessarily becomes a subjective output. Still, the immediate experience could have been identical. People further trained in having an aesthetic sensibility might be closer to having the same opinion, like a buddhist monk who has had more practice than your typical yoga patron. So, yes, I think practice and cinematic training are hugely important, but for kind of different reasons. I don't frankly care much about cinema as history or cinema as culture, but I know more people care about stories and identity than I do. I care about cinema as art, and not many of the objective greatest films could even be considered great art. @Vahn and others are looking for something different than you; their aesthetic sensibilities are different than you. And to be honest I side more so with his point of view, since my criteria for cinema has more to do with art than with a checklist of technical features/historic impacts/cultural relevance, etc.. But, to each their own.

 

Sep 6, 2015

Masterpiece alert: Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep

Looks and feels like an Italian neorealist film from the 1940s but instead of post-WWII Italy, the setting here is 1970s Watts, with an outer appearance that almost looks like it too may have been emerging from postwar rubble. The film is not plot driven in the least, but rather plays as a series of "slice-of-life", observational vignettes that effectively blur the line between reality and fiction. While the overall tone is somber and melancholic, the film manages moments throughout of tremendous warmth and humanity. Highly recommended.

 

Aug 25, 2015

 

Mar 24, 2015

Idris Elba to Replace Jamie Foxx In 'The Trap', Al Pacino, Robert Pattinson and James Franco also in final talks to join the cast

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/focus-landing-harmony-korines-trap-784032

Holy s---

 

Feb 13, 2015

I agree with everything Twan said.

The Editors Guild recently announced their list of the best edited films of all time, which you can find here.

I'd recommend the following films for the following reasons.

JFK (its use of historical footage; it's the first time I really understood the power of editing, even though I didn't even really like the film all that much).

Raging Bull (its incredible use of sound editing, which incorporates animal sounds as a way of emphasizing the animalistic nature of the fights, as well as its merging of the various time periods together).

Memento (still a great example of how a film can be assembled backwards, one that is also directly related to its narrative).

2001: A Space Odyssey (the cut of all cuts, a bone is thrown into the air and we cut onto a spaceship, and hundreds of thousands of years have passed).

Breathless (the birth of jump cuts, really, but the film does a great job showing us how those jump cuts can really provide the film with an incredible amount of energy and life; what would this film look and feel like without it?

Boyhood (a cut jumps us ahead a year, sure, but where and how that cut is introduced is everything).

Birdman (editing here helps achieve the feeling of an unbroken take; its cuts are hidden, like Rope, but when and where and how).

 

Feb 6, 2015

tree of life (dir. terrence malick)
spring breakers (dir. harmony korine)
mommy (dir. xavier dolan)
the turin horse (dir. bela tarr)
uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives (dir. apichatpong weerasethakul)
the master (dir. paul thomas anderson)
like someone in love (dir. abbas kiarostami)
post tenebras lux (dir. carlos reygadas)
stray dogs (dir. tsai ming-liang)
tabu (dir. miguel gomes)
before midnight (dir. richard linklater)
holy motors (dir. leos carax)
autrement, la molussie (dir. nicolas rey)
norte, the end of history (dir. lav diaz)
faust (aleksandr sokurov)
two years at sea (dir. ben rivers)
le havre (dir. aki kaurismaki)
house of tolerance (dir. betrand bonello)
museum hours (dir. jem cohen)
poetry (dir. lee chang-dong)
certified copy (dir. abbas kiarostami)
cosmopolis (dir. david cronenberg)

 

Jan 5, 2015

For f---s sake, if you're a PTA fan, listen to this: http://wtfpod.libsyn.com/episode-565-paul-thomas-anderson

 

Dec 28, 2014

This might seem a bit unpopular in here but:

I Just Saw The Guest, It's definitely a good option if you're looking for some action instead of a Tarkovskiy masterpiece. It's so entertaining that i couldn't care less about the flaws it had in the general story, not that it had a lot of flaws anyways. Considering the role, Dan Steven's acting was really good. 8/10

 

Dec 28, 2014

My mom and sister got me some great films for Christmas & my Birthday since they are a day apart.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (Criterion)
Sweet Smell of Success (Criterion)
Kiss me Deadly (Criterion)
The Naked City (Criterion)
Ace in the Hole (Criterion)
Dawn of The Planet of The Apes
Onibaba (Criterion)
True Detective (Bluray Set)
Fargo (Bluray set)
Rush
The Bus Stop
The Wrestler
Blue Velvet (not much of a fan, don't know why they got this for me)
Blade Runner (30th Anniversary Edition)
The Exorcist (Director's Cut)

I think that's it.. I'm too lazy to look..lol

 

Dec 20, 2014

I loooved Winter Sleep. I hadn't been anticipating this as much as some other films, but I was really blown away. Though it received strong reviews at Cannes and won the Palme d'Or, the film's buzz has been relatively quiet since then (unlike last year's Blue is the Warmest Color). It has made some appearances on these end of the year lists, but hasn't quite been a consistent presence. However, I'm definitely with those who rate it very highly.

An epic portrait of a prick with plenty to convey on class dynamics, Ceylan's film is an incredibly rich and nuanced character drama, novelistic in detail, with strong performances all around. Never does the film's runtime feel the least bit oppressive and while the numerous conversations that make up the core of the film often become hyper-articulate, Ceylan fills them with so many delicate touches throughout that the characters and their interactions always feel so fully alive. I'm a big fan overall

And though she looked so thoroughly depressed the whole film, Melisa Sozen

On another note, I thought it was pretty cool that, after watching a 3-hour plus conversational Turkish drama, my packed theater in New York was so into it that they all clapped as the credits rolled. @irbis

 

Dec 3, 2014

I have seen..

Stanley Kubrick (thirteen)
Atom Egoyan (thirteen, seeing his latest in a few weeks)
Xavier Dolan (five)
James Gray (five)
Darren Aronofsky (six)

I'm almost there..

Paul Thomas Anderson (missing one)
David Fincher (missing one)
Christopher Nolan (missing one)
Kelly Reichardt (missing one)
Wes Anderson (missing three)
Quentin Tarantino (missing three)
Steven Spielberg (missing six)
Woody Allen (missing eight)

This is also a great time to point out that @Twan would be proud of me. I went from having had seen none of David Lynch's films to having seen every one of his feature films (including both seasons of Twin Peaks)!

 

Mar 4, 2018

Roger Deakins finally got his Oscar on the 14th nomination. Our national nightmare is over.

 

Dec 15, 2017

This is an interesting topic, and when I went to UofT we did a conference on literally this subject (and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) played the theater.

I presented on Kieslowski's Decalogue, discussing its merits both as television and film. I can't remember the thesis well right now (and don't feel like reading) but I some of the aspects I looked at were use of opening titles (and overt refrains to previous images/thoughts), pacing (television with its cues for intermission), and editing style (television more bombastic).

I compared scenes from Decalogue V & VI with their film counterparts--Short Film about Love and Short Film about Killing. A major notice was that there is not much additional content in the films, but the scenes are significantly more drawn out. There is a sense of timing that is more 'filmic'. Fewer cuts, scenes blend together rather than having marked episodes between them.

But it's not about the length of time; instead it's the way time passes and how it holds space for delving deeper into a kind of art-space where one might encounter nothingness/eternity/loss of time, while television makes near constant reference to its own time structure--television episodes fit within a block of time after all, and they are cut in such a way as to best utilize that amount of time.

That said, people like Lynch give the 'film feel' to what would otherwise be strictly--and obviously--television. We're only talking about The Return as a movie because it feels different than tv; this feeling is an intuitive one, and is based on the director and his/her rhythm. The Return often has a film-mode rhythm. It also feels like television a lot of the time, though. Certain storylines such as the Dougie plot are more overtly televisual.

These days, a lot of what passes as film seems television like. Film has been informed by Televison practices. They've realized that we consume television more easily because its rhythm has a quicker tempo and we all have A.D.D. But by having quicker cuts, marked episodes, and constant recognition of the episodes time-structure, we don't have any space held for deeper thoughts.

Difference for me personally is that I will eat and watch tv, but I won't eat and watch film. Just doesn't seem right. I will eat during a modern blockbuster and won't during TP, though, so there's that...