The Dreamers

Tonight I watched the film The Dreamers. It's a film about three people in Paris in 1968, at the time that the street riots of that era were just beginning. Proving that yes, you do use stuff you learn in high school, I recalled that these riots were basically the start of the student protest movement, and they spread to the US creating the primary cultural image we hold of the 'The 60s,' as a time of protest, of peace and love and cultural revolution. This movie is concerned with all of this, focusing on love, sex and cinema.

The first chunk of the movie is primarily about cinema. Seeing the movie you get a sense of a time when cinema was a really crucial social force, setting the tone for what youth culture was. Today, it's not like that, at least not in the circles I run in. I love cinema and I do see it as something that can change the world, but other people don't. People perceive movies as commercial product and rarely view the most important films and even if they do, there's not really a strong film culture anymore. Even at Wesleyan, a place renowned for its film program, there's a layer of irony applied when assessing anything, and judging from this movie, that just wasn't true in the 60s. These people believed that cinema could change the world, and that's something I'd like to get back to. But, I suppose it's easy to say that things were better back then, I doubt if I was alive in 1968 I'd be on the cutting edge of the art cinema movement.

Anyway, regardless of its veracity, I loved the picture of cinema the beginning of this film paints. Matthew goes to the cinema and it's a transforming experience, he becomes connected to the forefront of French culture, and when the Cinemateque is shut down, he finds himself with two new friends, Theo and Isabelle. During the cinema shut down sequence, it was very cool to see Jean Pierre Leaud in a current cameo, as well as vintage footage of Godard and Truffaut.



The majority of the film is concerned with the boundary pushing sibling relationship of Theo and Isabelle. Matthew finds himself unsure how to deal with the two of them. I love their early interactions, when the three of them recreate classic movie moments, basically trying to live the life they see on screen. They all hold these really idealistic views of life and society and together create an isolated community, apart from the world.

The movie is one of the rare films to actually take the NC-17 rating and in this case, it's clearly earned. The film's sexuality goes far beyond what we'd see in most American movies, and the characters are almost constantly naked for the last third of the film. I think the movie to some extent loses focus during this chunk. On the one hand, I could say that the sex scenes don't really add anything to the plot, but from an aestethic standpoint, it's certainly not a pain to have to watch Eva Green naked in scene after scene. I can see what Bertolucci is trying to do with these scenes, and there is some interesting exploration of the relationship between Theo and Isabelle.



What we realize at the end of it is that the two of them have a relationship that transcends anything they can have with an outsider. In the really striking scene where Matthew is in Isabelle's bedroom and she has a breakdown hearing Theo have sex we understand the fact that they are connected, like siamese twins, and the wall between them is too painful. They need to be together. That scene is also notable for the extremely striking image of her recreating the Venus De Milo by standing with black gloves in a dark doorway.

I really like the end of the film, in which the twins finally leave Matthew when he refuses to go along with their 'revolutionary action.' What the movie is about is the disconnect between their rhetoric and their action. They talk big, about their support for Mao and belief in change, but even when that change is happening right outside, they spend all their time inside, oblivious to the outside world. At the end, Matthew finally disconnects from Theo, and figures that Isabelle will stay with him. However, that is not to be. The two of them go off together, leaving him in a crowd of rioters. Their month long dream together is over and Matthew is the one left out at the end.

This is a film that I thoroughly enjoyed watching, but will have to give another viewing to determine just how good it really is. It's easy to embrace their ideals and believe in this view of a cinema that can recreate society. I love the recreation of moments from New Wave movies, and visually, the film is absolutely beautiful. The score is top notch too, it's only the fact that the movie slightly loses its way during the middle. However, I think everything's basically redeemed by the ending and after it all, we've got a top notch movie, one made with passion and a vision of a world much more alive with potential than ours today.

Review Revue

Summer moves along and so does the watching of films. Lately, I've been watching mostly older films, mainly because I've seen almost all the recent films that I want to see. There's some foreign stuff that I still want to see, notably Takashi Miike's stuff, but I've covered most American films of the 90s and 00s. What this means is I've been going through older films, mostly stuff from the 70s. I try not to be one of these people who automatically condemns older films, but watching them, I usually don't get the emotional impact that I do from more recent films. I'm a big fan of new cinema techniques, and the sort of intense emotional cinema of people like Wong Kar-Wai and Gaspar Noe. In the 70s, art film seemed to exist largely as a reaction to the excessively emotional films of classical Hollywood, and it can sometimes seem cold. Recent films have done a good job of synthesizing the art and the emotion. What that means is that while I can respect and enjoy 70s films, I usually don't love them as much as recent films. There are exceptions, notably Kubrick's stuff, but on the whole, the point stands.

Luckily, next week New York is having an Asian Film Festival, and I'll be able to check out a couple of interesting films. I've got tickets for Seijun Suzuki's Princess Raccoon and Kim Ki-Duk's Samartian Girl. Suzuki is an eighty year old guy who made the brilliant Tokyo Drifter back in the 60s. I haven't seen any of his other films, but the trailer is really wacky and it looks like a film that'll be worth seeing. Kim Ki-Duk made The Isle, a really interesting, dark film, as well as Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring, a pretty cool, arty film. He's a challenging filmmaker.

Lately, I've been trying to support more arty movies with my filmgoing dollar. I feel like the reason Hollywood doesn't make more intelligent movies is because people never go see them in the theater. Look at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, by this point, virtually everyone I know has seen and loved the movie, but when it came out in the theater, the box office was anemic, while bad horror movies and mindless action stuff gets huge opening weekend grosses. So, even though Eternal is better liked and might make a lot on DVD, the studios see those opening weekend grosses and decide that those big budget films are what people want to see. So, if I can support Princess Raccoon and Samaritan Girl at the festival level, maybe it'll make it out to more theaters. I'm going to try to see Mysterious Skin while I'm in the city also, a film I've heard good things about.

More than anything else, I really would like to see contemporary Asian film getting more exposure. Why do studios insist on remaking movies instead of just challenging audiences with the original? Hero was a big success, largely because it had such a good advertising campaign and a wide release. If you give the same boost to Oldboy, you can make more money than if you do a remake.

The entire concept of remaking movies infuriates me because it completely misses the artistic point of film. A film is more than its story, every single shot and acting choice is a part of it, and a remake misses those smaller things. I'd rather see filmmakers be inspired by the challening, original work coming out Asia to make their own new films, instead of just being inspired to make bad copies of Asian films.

Anyway, some of the films I've seen recently are...

Mr. and Mrs. Smith - I saw this last week. This is a film where the press coverage brings so much baggage to the actual film, it's hard to separate the public image of the actors from the characters they're playing, which in this case actually helps the film. Obviously the two main characters are good looking people, and up through the resolution of their conflict, it's a pretty solid film. Pitt and Jolie have good chemistry and the script is light enough to keep things entertaining. However, the movie peaks about 40 minutes before the end, when the two Smiths fight and destroy their house. After that, there's a stretch of weak action scenes. The film just kept going after its character arcs were done.

One From the Heart - This is the film that Francis Ford Coppola did after Apocalypse Now. Apparently, at the time it was a notorious failure that went way over budget and essentially destroyed Coppola's dream of building a 'live cinema.' Not bringing this baggage to it, I was able to enjoy it, even though it's clearly a rather flawed film.

The most notable thing about the film is its look. The film is shot entirely on stage and it's gorgeous. The opening title sequence is probably the best part of the movie. The camera moves through the desert into Las Vegas, the sand forming abstract shapes as we snake through interesting structure. Throughout the film there's these wonderful neon lit scenes, as characters move through dreamlike environments. The lighting is very theatrical, with heavy blues and reds intruding on the scenes, most notably in the sequence Hank and the acrobat are going around the used car lot.



The film is backed by music by Tom Waits. I wasn't a huge fan of the music, but there's some good moments. The dance sequences are very 80s, as evidenced by the presence of a man in tight, neon purple tank top. But, I think the 80s has passed from dated to classic, so the sequences work.

What doesn't work about the film is the main story. We're not really given a reason to care about the main characters being together. Most of the film is spent on the couple split up, being tempted by other partners, and these other partners seem much more appropriate for them. The Raul Julia character seems much better for Frannie than Hank, and because I felt this way, the film uses its emotional drive. You have to want the characters to get back together, if you don't then it just doesn't work. But the visuals are so good, it's still a really enjoyable film. It doesn't deserve the reputation as a colossal failure.

Mean Streets - This is Martin Scorsese's first major work, and notably, his first film with Robert Deniro. Scorsese is a filmmaker whose films I usually respect more than I enjoy. I really liked The Aviator and Goodfellas, but other than that I haven't really fully enjoyed any of his other movies. Scorsese's movies usually draw on a traditional view of masculinity, this idea that characters have to be tough and emotionally closed. They're always protectors or warriors, and this film seems to establish the traditional Scorsese protagonist.

Harvey Keitel's Charlie is an up and coming mobster who has to look out for Deniro's Johnny Boy, who's something of a loose cannon, with huge debts all around town. Charlie has a lot of extistential crisis about what he's doing, but it doesn't really go anywhere. It's an enjoyable film to watch, but there's not that much of an emotional connection to the characters and that makes the ending rather underwhelming.

I feel like The Sopranos has made almost every other mob story irrelevant. What The Sopranos does is really examine the emotional motivations of its characters and bring their flaws to the surface. This film tries to do that, but you don't care about the characters enough to worry about their problems. The genius of The Sopranos is the fact that the characters are completely normal people, except for one thing, the fact that they're in the mob. The characters in Mean Streets don't feel like normal people.

2046 Screening with Wong Kar-Wai

Yesterday I attended a screeing of 2046 with Wong Kar-Wai in attendance. I'd seen the movie two times before, but it was a completely different experience on the big screen. I'm not someone who usually makes a big deal about seeing a movie on 35mm in the theater, but this movie was a completely different experience in the theater than on DVD. I'd never seen a WKW movie theatrically before, and I'm not sure if all of them are like this, but it was almost too much, getting lost in this world that he built.

I've already written a whole lot about the film here, but it felt like a very different film theatrically. WKW's films always have very heavy atmosphere, and you can definitely catch that on the DVD, but in the theater, you get completely immersed in a different world. Because none of his films take place in the USA, they're all in sort of alien worlds, but 2046, with the future stuff, takes this to the extreme. In the Mood for Love is a move towards more traditional narrative, but 2046 takes this away, and is right up there with Fallen Angels as WKW's most abstract film. Most movies settle into a sort of routine, there may be a strange opening, but eventually, you get the idea of what's going on and the scenes all feel roughly the same. 2046 never does this, it constantly bounces between all sorts of events, musical montages, abstract images and the story within a story. The use of music is absoultely amazing, really enveloping you in this world. The scenes where Tony moves through the club with his entourage tell you everything you need to know in one image, and knowing what we know from ITMFL, we are aware of how unhappy he is.

Despite barely appearing in the movie, Maggie Cheung's Su-Lizhen dominates this film, no matter what he does, Tony can't escape her influence. Every action he takes goes back to his relationship with her in some way. People who say the change in character is inconsistent clearly miss the point of the movie, which is that as a result of losing his one true love, he has given up on love and decided to live a purely hedonistic lifestyle. Only when he sees something of Su-Lizhen in the women he meets does he give any serious thought to commitment, as in the relationship with Faye.

It's this sadness that makes Tony's character here much more sympathetic than Leslie Cheung in Days of Being Wild. Leslie seems to be cruel only because of his confusion about his paternity, but Tony has real deep wounds, and as a result, he is unable to reciprocate Bai-Ling's love for him, and in the process, he continues the cycle, and creates another person who is too scarred to love.

But, watching on the big screen what really gets you is just how beautiful the film is. The production design is phenomenal. Old Hollywood movies generally had a strong focus on being stylish, fantasies of what life could be if you were a star. WKW recaptures this fantasy element by making the coolest looking environments for his characters to move through and putting them all in incredibly stylish clothes. The future stuff is the best example of this, but the club scenes are also just saturated in beautiful design. This was one of the most immersive theatrical experiences I've ever had, the film completely pulled me in and let me get lost in its world.

I loved the film the first two times I saw it, but this viewing took things to another level. I would now place this as WKW's second best film, behind only Fallen Angels, and in a lot of ways, this is even stronger than that one. This is a film with an admittedly narrow audience, but if you've seen his other stuff, this is one of the most rewarding theatrical experiences you can ever have. I'll definitely be taking in a second theatrical viewing when the film is released here in August.

So, after that great screening, WKW came out to take some questions. I've read a whole lot about the film, so there wasn't that much new in the Q&A, but there was still some really good stuff. WKW was wearing his trademark sunglasses and pulled off the leather jacket despite it being pretty warm out. Most of the questions were actually continuity related, like whether this Tony Leung character is the same one from Days of Being Wild and whether Gong Li is the same character from 'The Hand.' Tony Leung is the same, and he went as far as to say that the last scene of 'Days' could actually take place during the scenes with Gong Li in 2046. That's why he made the character a gambler in this movie, to get a chance to do some of the material they would have originally done in the Days of Being Wild sequel. And, Gong Li is not the same character from The Hand, though they are connected in some way.

Strangely, he was pretty upbeat about his working relationship with Chris Doyle, I'd read that Doyle shot very little of 2046, but WKW made it seem like he shot the whole movie. Regardless, he claimed that he chose the framing, lighting and movement of the shots, though at times Doyle would ignore what WKW told him to do. I'm not sure if just went by quickly, but it seemed like he answered very few questions, and after the screening WKW wasn't around for one on one discussion. I guess I've been spoiled by my experience meeting Joss Whedon and Jean Pierre Jeunet, who was just hanging out in the lobby after his Q&A.

But still, it was really interesting to hear him speak. I liked how quick he was with his answers. Someone asked him if he was influenced by French film on 2046 and he just said "No." One word, straight to the point. Part of that may have been the language gap, but generally speaking, he seemed pretty solid conversing in English.

So, overall it was an excellent experience, I would have liked some one on one with WKW, but that was not to be, and he pretty much covered most of what I was wondering anyway. Sadly, no one asked him the obvious question about his next project, with Nicole Kidman. But, I'd assume there's not too much he could reveal that I haven't already read.

Six Feet Under: "Dancing for Me"

It's Monday and once again, there's a new episode of Six Feet Under. I know I said this last week, but it's so cool having a new episode to look forward to every week. I was so used to just having the whole series there, I never really considered what it would be like to watch just one episode a week. There are certainly advantages to the binge watch, namely the plots seem to move a lot faster, there's less impatience because you get the episodes so much faster. However, watching one a week makes each episode a bit more special, and it gives me a chance to look a bit deeper at what happens in each one. So, I'm fine with watching this way.

Anyway, onto the episode itself. The season premiere, while great, was largely an overture, setting up some general themes, but mainly playing off of what we already know about the characters. That, plus the novelty of having a new episode, made it a stronger viewing experience than this episode, which is stuck with the burden of having to set up in more detail the plot arcs for the season. That's not a knock on it though, it's still a great episode, and has me really curious about where things are going.

The most interesting storyline for me was Brenda's excursion into the free clinic. She's in a situation where she desperately wants to prove her mother wrong and break out of the image her mother has constructed for her. However, she just can't face what's at the free clinic. That gets to one of her main problems, she's putting herself in danger just to show up her mother, and it must have been very tough for her to get proven wrong, and have to get her mother to pull some strings for another internship. I really liked the way they had Brenda dressed in clearly expensive and stylish clothes, to make her stand out even more in the really grungy clinic.

I found the Nate storyline really interesting too, as we see the major contrast between Nate's life and where his friend ended up. As Nate said, he's been through a lot of shit and particuarly with his near death experience at the end of season two, he understands the transience of life. He's seen all the different ways things could have gone, and that's why he knows it's pointless to look back and try to recapture something that's gone. This is a stark contrast to his friend, who crosses into borderline pedophilia just to try to recapture the feeling of his youth. I really liked the way that scene was handled, because you can understand what the guy is talking about, while at the same time it's clearly crossing a line. He says that their days back in the high school was the best time of his life and that rings hollow to Nate. I think this plot showed just how well adjusted Nate is, and gave us an understanding of how he's been able to reconcile with all the bad stuff that's happened to him over the course of the series. That said, the best Nate moment was him and Brenda having sex and Maya jumping up and down imitating them, a really offbeat funny moment.



The David and Keith plot just sort of moves along. I really liked the awkward discussion with Claire about the eggs and the dream sequence was worth it for just how bizarre it was. That fake headed Claire was rather freaky and the music was great. The sequence goes beyond the sort of fantasy stuff we'd see in the early seasons, but I think it worked, even if only as a funny setpiece.

The Rico plot was solid this week as well, though his trying too hard was a bit tough to watch. I did like him telling Vanessa that Sharon died. It's clearly a bad thing to do, but in that moment you see him getting caught up in the story and he clearly feels this is a major breakthrough in how to deal with her.

The Ruth/George tension is already being brought to a boil, a bit earlier than I would have thought, but I guess that's better than dragging things out for too long. While everyone else on the show is looking to have kids, Ruth is desperately to be single or just happily married, without having to care for someone. She barely even contains her disdain for the situation she's in, and I'm not sure how that's going to make George feel.

The Claire/Billy stuff this week is mainly just a setup for whatever's going to happen next week, when he stops taking his pills, but it's still got good moments. What it comes down to is, to really be himself, Billy can't take the pills, those supress the artistic, unique side of him. Now, it might be better for him to live a normal life, as a teacher, something he's still good at, even though he struggles with everything else. However, the people around him have an image of Billy as this crazy artist, someone he's lost touch with. Billy's reminiscing with his friends is a nice parallel to Nate thinking about his own past. However, Nate is happy with who he's become, and Billy apparently isn't, or at least feels the need to validate his friends by being who he once was. So, the pills are flushed, and we'll see what happens from there.

Lot of stuff this week, and still, I always hate it when I see that final white fade out. That's the sign a series is working when you want the episode to just keep going.

Robert Altman's Short Cuts

A few years ago I saw the movie Magnolia and instantly loved it, repeat viewings only confirmed its genius, and it's found a place in my top 5 films of all time. In reading about the film, I frequently saw it called Altmanesque, particularly in reference to two of Robert Altman's films, Nashville and Short Cuts. So naturally, I was compelled to check out these films and see where Magnolia came from.

Last summer I saw Nashville, a 1975 film about a whole bunch of people who are in the title city for a country msuic event. Over the course of the film, we see a whole bunch of different stories, that are loosely connected, sometimes by shared characters and other times by just the appearance of one character in the background of another person's scene. So, it's a whole bunch of loosely connected events, which is similar to Magnolia.

After seeing this film, I sought out Short Cuts, which only came out on DVD recently, and saw that last night. Short Cuts was the culmination of Altman's resurgence iin the early 90s, a resurgence that began with The Player, a film I also watched this week. The Player was quite frankly a pretty bad movie. I think the novelty of an inside Hollywood comedy is gone following Larry Sanders, Curb Your Enthusiasm and countless other HBO series. And without that novelty, there just isn't much there. The score, despite being by Thomas Newman who wrote some great stuff for American Beauty, makes full use of dated synthesizer sounds, and the plot isn't particularly engaging. The only thing that still holds up is the film within a film, in which Bruce Willis rescues Julia Roberts from a gas chamber, followed by this dialogue.

Julia: What took you so long?
Bruce: Traffic was a bitch.

And then the credits, classic awful action movie line. But one good laugh does not a film make, and this film does not hold up.

However, Short Cuts does hold up, and doesn't seem particularly dated. Like Nashville and Magnolia, it chronicles a whole bunch of lives that occasionally overlap, but generally it's just people moving through the city, doing their own thing. There's a lot of characters, about twenty, and the film is 187 minutes, so you've got to be ready for a long sit.

The film has a great cast, to name just a few: Julianne Moore, Jack Lemmon, Tim Robbins, Peter Gallagher, Frances McDormand, Lili Taylor, Lily Tomlin and Robert Downey Jr. Most of them play fairly engaging characters, and it's a fun movie to watch for the level of acting alone.

I should preface what I'm about to say by saying that I really enjoyed the movie, I can respect the craft that went into it and would reccomend it to people. However, looking at this movie after seeing Magnolia, I can't help but see its flaws. PT Anderson drew a lot from Short Cuts, but he did so much more with the style than Altman did.

Altman sticks fairly strictly to the definitions of art cinema, the idea that you've got to avoid artificial conflict and strive for realism in the film, avoiding the excess emotion of classical Hollywood cinema. This technique was necessary in the 1950s when the New Wave came about because classical Hollywood cinema completely lacks any sort of emotion realism. However, in responding to those perceived excesses, many art films went to far in the opposite direction, to create films that just drift along, without any sort of emotional beats for the audience. That's my problem with Altman's work, he seems so committed to avoiding narrative artifice and over the top emotion that the film becomes sterile, you just watch the film as an observer, never becoming fully engaged in the characters' emotional existence.

This is quite different from Magnolia, which isn't particularly narrative driven, but still manages to engage you with the characters emotionally. That's largely because of the filmmaking. Altman's camera very rarely draws attention to itself, you're kept at a distance, strictly an observer. The only really emotional moments are those in which Annie Ross' singing is juxtaposed with other events. Those scenes are the highlight of the film, but even those can't reach the level of the "Wise Up" sequence in Magnolia, which is emotionally devestating.

PT Anderson fits in with a new group of art cinema people, who reembrace strong emotional involvement with the characters. Other people doing this are Gaspar Noe and Wong Kar-Wai, both of whom use all the film techniques at their disposal to make you feel. Altman, at least in what I've seen by him, has never created anything that touches the emotional intensity of those directors' films. I guess it's not his goal, but it makes it difficult to love his films. Sometimes it's good to embrace narrative mechanics if it allows the audience to get drawn into the film. Short Cuts leaves you at an almost awkward distance watching the emotional scenes, like you're spying on these people and shouldn't be there, whereas Magnolia makes you feel exactly what the characters are feeling.

Now, admittedly it's unfair to compare this film to one of my favorite films. Up against most films it's a masterpiece, but I demand more from my films than to just be above average. Obviously, Altman's films were essential to the creation of PT Anderson's stuff, so for that reason alone, he deserves respect, and the films themsevles are top notch too. It's just that he touches greatness and doesn't quite make it there, that's what's so frustrating. In his effort to avoid Hollywood cliches, he goes so far in the other direction that his films become a bit too sterile.

Summer So Far

Well, I've been off for nearly a month, and I've been pretty much in relax mode, but I do have some stuff going on. I made enough money working at the lab last semester that I've been able to take the month off and still maintain my lifestyle (as in buy a DVD every week or so), as well as the extravagence of social activities like seeing Revenge of the Sith three times and eating at the diner more than once.

I did do some jobs for LMC. I taped an infotainment DVD on haircutting that will get packaged with R*Own haircare products. It was a fairly entertaining shoot and I was paid for it, so that was good times. I hadn't shot anything in a while and it was good to be back behind the camera. I also taped the LMC awards, where we won 'Best Adult Drama' for Tabula Rasa. That adult refers to the age of the people making it, not the content of the film. I was a little disappointed I didn't get to do an acceptance speech, to thank my agent, publicist, personal assitant and of course, God, but alas, that was not to be.

I've also been going around for LMC putting up fliers for our workshop, which starts on July 5. I think the workshop may actually have been my favorite job I've had. I've done a lot of jobs where you do nothing, and this job was actual work, but it was fulfilling. What I did was teach three workshops, one on broadcast news, one on film and one on documentary to a bunch of 12-16 year olds, and at the end we had three pretty solid finished products. The film especially is really entertaining, I was surprised how well that came out, and I think the people had fun making it. To be paid a ton of money to make a movie is the goal of my life, so this is a start.

In coordination with LMC, Jordan and I are running a summer film series at the library here in Mamaroneck. I always like bringing new movies to people so I'm really excited about it, with any luck, some people will turn up and we'll have some solid discussions about the films. It's at the Mamaroneck library community room, by the Emelin, and these are the films we're showing.

June 30: 2001: A Space Odyssey
July 7: Infernal Affairs
July 14: Safe
July 21: Oldboy
July 28: Waking Life
August 4: Fallen Angels
August 11: American Beauty
August 18: Irreversible

They're some of my favorite films, and I think there's a lot of stuff in there that most people won't have seen. There's definitely awkward moment potential with Oldboy and Irreversible, but if others really enjoy it, the awkwardness will be worth it. I don't know who's going to turn up, hopefully some people will, and if not, it's just an excuse to have LMC's projector to watch movies I like.

Speaking of LMC's projector, I've been running a 'screening room' with it in my house for the past couple of weeks. I've been watching a whole bunch of movies, mostly older stuff, because I feel like I've seen most of the stuff I want to see from the 90s and 00s. There's still a few titles out there to discover, but most of the movies that people mention as quality from the era I've already covered, which means it's time to go backwards, and that's what I've been doing. Over this summer, I'm going to try to see all the 60s and 70s American classics that I haven't yet gotten to.

Six Feet Under: 'A Coat of White Primer'

It's been eight months since I last saw a new episode of Six Feet Under, on September 25, I wrote:

"I think in the next season, Nate and David might actually get some happiness, but Claire and Ruth seem to be ready to take over with the pain. It's pretty obvious that Claire is heading towards a drug problem, and considering this show's fairly liberal attitude towards drugs, it's going to be interesting to see how that's dealt with. If Claire actually gets together with Billy in a relationship, there's going to be some really weird family dynamics between Nate/Brenda and Claire/Billy. Whatever happens,
there should definitely be more Billy next season.

Geore is definitely more interesting than he was at the beginning of season four. I don't see good things in the future for him and Ruth. While the stripper plot got a bit ridiculous at times, I really like the way it turned out. Rico living at the house is a good idea, since it makes it easier to keep him integrated in the stories. And we'll have the opportunity to see him as a single guy, which is something we've never got before."

Well, to be honest, I barely remembered what happened at the end of season four, I forgot that Claire and Billy had gotten into a relationship, I didn't really remember David beating up the guy in the sushi shop, or the Rico moving in plot. Watching this episode, I saw him walking in behind Ruth and I was wondering why there was some guy just walking around the house.

Without going into spoilers, I'll just say that this was a really great season premiere. I viewed in this a different way than I had the other season premieres, because I watched the rest of the show in a binge run, with no breaks between the seasons. So, this season premiere actually had to bring me back into the world after a pretty long break, and in that respect it succeeded. It's not as stunning as the series' best episode, season three's premiere, "Perfect Circles," but it's a damn fine piece of television nonetheless. I've been watching Gilmore Girls over the past month or so, and while that's a pretty good, entertaining series, watching new Six Feet Under shows you just how good TV can be. This one episode had moments that were absoultely hilarious, and also moments that were incredibly sad, blended together in a way that recalls the best of Buffy, and even goes beyond that in terms of emotional impact.

Onto the specifics. The death of the week was pretty good, and I think it addresses an interesting question that does thematically tie in to what comes later in the episode. This woman finds actually telling the truth so liberating at first, but there's certain people who apparently can't handle the truth. So, the opening raises the issue of how open people can be, if you tell the truth all the time, you'll end up wounding those around you, but if you're too guarded, it's impossible to relate emotionally. This ties in to the stories of almost all the characters, each of whom are trying to guard things, and cannot be completely honest with each other.

The post death first scene was phenomenal. We see Nate's wedding video, Lisa and Nate so happy, the whole world ahead of them, and we assume that it's Nate watching the video, reflecting on what his life was then versus what it is now with Brenda. However, things are twisted and instead of Nate, it's Brenda watching the tape. She mocks it, but looking at the scene on the beach with Lisa, it's clear that she envies Lisa's purity. Brenda is someone who guards her emotional vulnerability by making jokes and rejects what she really wants because she refuses to be 'cliche.' This comes out in her discussion with Nate about how stupid she feels for wanting her 'dream wedding,' she can't allow herself to enjoy normal things, she has to be different, and Lisa was someone who could clearly unironically enjoy her wedding.

This is one of my favorite themes from the series, the fact that these characters define themselves with respect to what they percieve as boring, normal cliches. Claire and Brenda in particular are all about not doing the expected thing and trying to prove they are special by rejecting things that others embrace. This is best summed up in one of my favorite scenes in the whole series, from season two, when Nate and Brenda are breaking up. She tells him not to throw his ring at her because that would be "so fucking cliche," she's more concerned about preserving her self image as someone who's original and different than being present in the emotional moment. Then, when Nate does throw the ring, it cuts her even more because she has to recognize that she is the same as everyone else, and she no longer has Nate. The Claire art school arc in year three and four is all about this too, she has a disdain for the world, and considers herself above everything, but where does this lead her. "And that guy with the fucking boy scout jacket. I mean is that supposed to be ironic?"

That basically sums it up, and I think she has a conflict about her position outside society. It's quite similar to the story of Angela in American Beauty, who wanted more than anything else to be extraordinary, because to be normal would be the worst thing. I think this appeals to me so much because I have the same sort of conflicts, part of me just can't give in and enjoy these moments which are cliche, I have to do my own thing, even though it means missing out on potential fun. This is the sort of issue that doesn't seem like it would make for great drama, but on this show it does, and it's one of the complexities that distinguishes Six Feet Under from more pedestrian soap opera.

Anyway, the funniest scene in the episode is when the three Fisher siblings go out on the porch and decide to smoke a joint, only to get in a fight over who has the best weed. The high pitched weed speaking is hilarious, but the scene reveals the underlying conflict between them. Nate and David don't approve of Claire being with Billy, and they each see him as a ticking timebomb, who's going to end up hurting Claire.



Clearly Claire has these feelings too, as we see in her dream sequence, when she imagines Billy stabbing her in the neck, claiming that Brenda will always be his, and there's a lot of awkwardness in the conversation at the end of the episode, when Claire and Billy discuss the fact that the two pairs of siblings are dating. I think the Billy/Brenda relationship is the most interesting on the show, and pretty much anything surrounding the two of them is interesting, so setting up these clear conflicts should lead to some great stuff later in the season.

On TV shows, there are certain characters who make every scene they're in interesting, people like Spike on Buffy, and here, Billy is definitely one of those. He places everyone slightly on edge and makes for really odd dynamics. A show like this needs those jolts to the system to keep things from settling into predictability.

Speaking of jolts to the system, the Ruth/George plot is another really interesting story. Ruth clearly feels gypped by the fact that she married this guy, and after only a couple of years, she has to become his caretaker. She's defensive about the fact, as evidenced by the scene where she slaps Claire, a really effective, shocking moment. I loved the ECT scenes, really jarring due to the great filmmaking.

But, the episode is really about Nate and Brenda. The miscarriage scene is harrowing, and the pall it casts on the wedding scene makes for a really interesting tone. It's a combination of extreme sadness and what's supposed to be "the happiest day of her life." As I mentioned before, I love the Lisa scene. It gets to the core of Brenda, her struggle to reinvent herself after a rather sordid past. Can she really change, or is she being punished because of what she did on the first go around with Nate? I love the scene with her and Nate, where he consoles her. Peter Krause and Rachel Griffiths are amazing, and I'm really glad that they're back together, and apparently at the center of the series.



And at the end of the episode, we see Nate finally break down after being strong for so long. He told David that he wanted the baby for Brenda, but clearly he wanted the baby also, and the fact that Brenda has to abort their child causes him extreme pain. Once Brenda leaves the room, he can no longer keep up the facade, he breaks down and cries. He, like Ruth, is forced to play the stable caregiver, and sometimes, it's much easier to just break down.

It's so good to have new Six Feet Under again, I haven't been this excited about a show since Angel was airing every week. Monday is now the highlight of the week, and I can't wait to see where things go from here.

The Sopranos

I've been doing a rewatch of The Sopranos with my dad over the past month, so far we've seen through season three's University. The show is one of my all time favorites and was actually the first really great TV series I watched. I saw the first three seasons of The Sopranos about a year before I watched Twin Peaks, but I guess I considered The Sopranos an anomaly, and thought that most TV shows weren't like it. And now having seen a lot more great TV shows, I would still say that there's nothing like The Sopranos.

The thing I love about the show is the high level of moral ambiguity, the characters are all incredibly flawed, looking out for themselves most of the time. While something like Buffy or Angel did have ambiguous characters, they were all at heart good, fighting for something bigger than themselves, and most of the time they didn't disappoint you. I hate it when people claim that only depressing stuff is realistic, but in this case, the series is very realistic because of how flawed the characters are.

As the episode I watched yesterday, University, makes quite clear, all the characters have many sides. In the episode, Silvio, a character who is usually used as comic relief, beats up one of the women who works for him, a shock to the audience because we had gotten used to seeing him as a pretty nice guy. There's a great cut from him beating this stripper to him eating dinner with his wife, making jokes about how he zones out in front of the TV. It's that juxtaposition of the really ordinary parts of these peoples' lives with the mob stuff that makes the series so effective.

I think the series really effectively captures the reality of suburban life in America, and even if Tony was not in the mafia, I think the show could still work as a really interesting portrait of generational conflict and people searching for purpose. However, by adding in the mob element to the really ordinary stuff, it makes the show so much more interesting. It's quite similar to Buffy, in that by twisting reality just a little bit it makes ordinary life into something grand and operatic.

The show is constantly forcing the viewer to consider ethical questions, and we're frequently disappointed when one of the characters chooses to do something wrong or bad. In the best episodes, you're left in a moral vacuum, where neither choice feels right. One of the best examples of this is 'Employee of the Month,' in which Melfi is raped, only to have the rapist be set free because of a technicality. She is faced with the question of whether she should tell Tony about the rapist and have him 'punish' this guy. You really want her to get Tony to kill this guy, even though you know that society's rules tell us that we should not sanction punishment by death. In the end, she decides that just the knowledge that she could have him punished if she wanted to is enough and she decides not to ask Tony to help her.

Another example of messing around with audience feelings is seen in one of the series' greatest hours, 'D-Girl.' Other than 'Funhouse,' this is my favorite episode of the first two seasons. It's one of the funniest, particularly Christopher's interactions with Jon Favreau, and his constant insulting of Swingers, as well as d-girl Amy's hilarious Hollywood speak. But underneath that is the story of two people at a crossroads in their lives, namely Christopher and Pussy. Christopher journeys into a world he's not comfortable in as he tries to sell his film script to Favreau. He is put in a position of weakness, and over the course of the episode he gets rejected by Amy, someone he opened up to emotionally in a way he never does with Adrianna. Over the course of the episode, Christopher is able to view a world completely different from the mob, and sees a way out of the life. However, after being rejected by Amy, he loses this out, and has no choice but to return to the mob, a decision he makes in a really amazing scene of Christopher just sitting outside, realizing that if he goes back in, he'll never be able to leave mob life.

This is intercut with Pussy sobbing in the bathroom. Earlier in the episode, we saw Pussy attacking his wife and being very standoffish to her. She can't understand why he treats her so badly, and that treatment can't really be excused, but we can understand why he is doing that. The pressure of wearing a wire really gets to him, and distracts him from his home life. The final scenes with Pussy in this episode are phenomenal because they first have him talking to Anthony Jr, telling him how Tony was his best friend, stayed with his dying sister in the hospital, conveying how great a man is, but at the same time, he is wearing a wire, betraying Tony and letting the feds build a case against Tony, so he can go free. That drives him to the bathroom where he cries because he's stuck in a situation where he has no out, he can't save himself and Tony, and in putting Tony ahead of himself, he betrays the brotherhood that is supposed to tie crews together.

There are no villains here. The feds should be doing whatever they can to arrest Tony, and Pussy should take whatever out he can to avoid a thirty year prison sentence, but at the same time, to betray Tony is just awful. This all comes to a head in the second season finale, where Tony is forced to kill Pussy. It's a brutal scene, as we watch Tony, Paulie and Silvio kill Pussy, someone who was family to them, but they don't have a choice. They can't let him live without endangering themselves.

At the same time as we are made to love these mob characters, we occasionally are reminded of the deplorable means by which they make their living. The final montage of 'Funhouse' brings this to the fore, as the happy family party at the Soprano house is intercut with scenes that show us the effect of all the havok they've reeked, and the destruction they've left in their wake over the season. This is emphasized in a discussion in 'Bust Out' between Tony and David Scatino, where Tony says how consuming businesses like David is his "bread and butter," they make their living by destroying other peoples' lives. That's why Tony allowed David to borrow the money to get in the executive game, because he saw someone he could use, and his business sense superceded his responsibility as David's friend. The mob characters find people at their most desperate and take advantage of this desperation to make money for themselves. This movement between personal and professional is exemplified by the David storyline, comparing personal Tony, who jokes with David at college night to professional Tony who assaults David to ensure that he pays off his debt.

I love entertainment that challenges you and forces you to draw your own conclusions about the work's morality. Tony is a character who is at times despicable, but at other times really sweet and that's what makes the show so good. We want them to get out, to do good, but they never will. One of the most heartwrenching episodes is the end of season five, where we're led to believe that Christopher and Adrianna are going to run for it, leave Jersey and start a new life, but Christopher can't do that, and he lets Silvio kill Adrianna. You want to believe that things will go well, but in that world, we know that doing good isn't what matters, and it's a question of how these people can deal with the immorality of their actions.

70s Cinevisions: Velvet Goldmine and The Virgin Suicides

The 1970s are widely regarded as the best era of Hollywood cinema, an oasis of art and creativity before video and a culture of blockbusters, as well as expensive failures like Heaven's Gate doomed the auteur movement in Hollywood. This whole era is chronicled in the really interesting book, Easy Riders and Raging Bulls, a really fun read. However, while the era is gone, it lingers on in the memory of cinema, notably in two films I recently watched, Velvet Goldmine and The Virgin Suicides.

Velvet Goldmine is a film by Todd Haynes, the genius behind Far From Heaven, Safe and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, all films which I've reviewed previously here on the blog. All three of these films have a lot of depth, and, while they've all got great emotional beats, it's really the intellectual content that's most impressive. Goldmine is different in that it's much more about creating the atmosphere of a time and place rather than developing character or emotional lines. The film is about Brian Slade, a David Bowie analogue, and the 70s glam rock scene that sprung up around him. The framing device for the film is that a one time glam rocker goes back to investigate Brian Slade's mysterious disappearance from the public eye, and in the process brings back memories of his own experience with the scene.



The film is really unique in that it isn't reliant on a traditional character or plot driven narrative. We get to know the characters, but the film story is told through mixed media, like music videos, news footage and dream sequences, with almost constant musical backing. So, we very rarely actually hear Brian speaking, and there's no attempt to explore his psychology or what drives him to dress glam. Instead, we just observe him putting on the show he put on for the world. I love this sort of filmmaking, which places a stress on music and visual rather than being strictly tied to the need to convey a narrative. You really get the feeling of the period, and understand why people were so drawn to the person. The film keeps you slightly separated from the character, which makes you relate more with Arthur, the audience point of view character, the fan of glam rock.

The music in the film is crucial, and I was a bit disappointed that there were no Bowie songs in the film. A quick bit of research reveals that Bowie did not approve of the script, and as a result, refused his songs. However, Haynes did a great job of assembling a soundtrack that sounds like Bowie's stuff and captures that 70s glam rock feeling, with assistance from many artists, including Thom Yorke of Radiohead. I hadn't heard the songs before, but I felt vaguely like I knew them, and that's probably what they were going for.



The film draws a lot from Citizen Kane, and is structured in the same way as that classic. There's a lot of little references to Kane, mostly the shots in the nightclub with Mandy and the guy in the wheelchair starting the story. I really liked the framing story, which actually provides most of the film's emotional impact. The story of Arthur might be an obvious one, but after watching an hour and a half of tribute to glam rock, to see him make the decision to go for it and become part of the scene is great. The framing device gives us the film's basic thesis, that glam rock was an escape from normality, and gave us a glimpse of a completely different, liberated world, a world that was destroyed with Reagan and the neocons in the 1980s. Brian Slade's reinvention is the proof of the fallen culture.



Visually, the film is extraordinary. The opening with a UFO flying through Victorian England is dazzling, and the reprise of the UFO with Curt and Brian later in the film is even better. I love the whitescreen video Brian does, as well as the concert sequences, particualrly the death of Glam Rock one.

The film draws a lot of its structure from Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Besides the obvious similarities in subject matter, the mixed media style is almost identical. This film even plays out one scene with Barbie dolls, referencing that film. Ironically, Superstar is more effective at creating characters you sympathize with, despite the characters being plastic dolls. However, Superstar is intended more as a melodrama, while Goldmine is a celebration of a scene, and a more upbeat film.

I could see why people would dislike this movie, admittedly it is more style than what would usually be considered substance, but in this case, the substance is the style. The whole point of the film is to replicate the excess of the glam rock scene, hence the excess of filmmaking. I think a film can succeed in just creating visual moments, the story is sometimes secondary, and that's why this film works. I would say it's actually the best of Todd's features, though Superstar is still the best he's done overall. This guy is one of the best filmmakers working today, and everything he's done is inventive, unique and challenging.

Switching gears to something rather different, I also rewatched Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides. It's one of the best debut films I've seen for someone who isn't coming into the business with experience in music videos or commercials. She crafts a completely coherent universe, full of melancholy. The film is about a group of teenage boys who are obsessed with the Lisbon sisters, five girls living in a very strict household.

The best thing about the film is its combination of visuals and music. The score is by Air, one of the best bands out there, their music is extremely moody, perfect for a film. Combined with the gorgeous shots of the town and Lux in the field, it creates an atmosphere and feeling that reaches the audience directly. The story could have been a fairly conventional teen film, it's in the filmmaking that this film is elevated to greatness. The film's score is primarily based around variations of "Playground Love," Air's best song. I'd love to see them do some more film scores, but to date, this is it.



The other musical choices are great as well. The "Magic Man" montage introducing Trip Fontaine sets off the best segment of the film. Trip's quest to woo Lux provides for some great moments, particularly the awkward TV watching scene, followed by the great kiss in the car. You can crack on Josh Hartnett all you want, but he's great in this film, making Trip simultaneously charming and clearly so self involved you wouldn't actually want to know him. The dance scene is great, and really the climax of the movie. I love the use of Styx's "Come Sail Away."

After that, the film sort of cools down, and just coasts out, but I don't mean that in a bad way. It lets you revel in the atmosphere, even though the plot doesn't develop that much. It's more about the boys (and by extension, the audience) viewing the girls and trying to understand them, rather than about the girls themselves. So, they've already become legends, and the suicide crystallizes this. The actual suicide scene doesn't seem as shocking as you might think it would be. Sofia doesn't film it in such a way that you should be surprised, it's just something that should happens and the film continues along in the odd kind of funk that has presided over the whole thing.

I love the closing minutes, with the gas mask party and final voiceovers about the girls' legend. The film doesn't really depend on any characters, despite some good performances, it's much more about a feeling, and in creating a feeling, the film is extremely successful. In her next film, Lost in Translation, Coppola again creates a really moody, not really narrative film, but that one has much stronger characters, and that's why I'd consider it a better movie. But, this is still a really great film, and between the two, I would say that Sofia has surpassed her father as a filmmaker already, and I can't wait to see her next, a film about Marie Antoinette.

The Rest of the Summer...

Now that the last Star Wars film has been released, the major thing I've been looking forward to for years now is gone. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some cool stuff coming up soon.

One week from today we've got the new season of Six Feet Under. It's been a while since I watched the show, I finished the fourth season back in September, but watching the trailer for the new season has me excited to see it. The people behind SFU make the most amazing trailers for the new seasons. The one for the fourth season was what made me watch the show in the first place. The trailer for this year was excellent as well, nicely showing the changes the characters have undergone over the course of the series, as they drive by past and future incarnations of themselves.



Judging from Yahoo's preview of the season, it looks like Billy is going to be playing a big part, which I'm happy about. Him and Brenda are my favorite characters on the show, and his interaction with the other characters always produces odd, uncomfortable moments. TV series need those characters that make people break out of their normal behavior patterns, because that's how deeper character traits are revealed.

This is the last season of Six Feet Under, and hopefully it'll be a satisfying ending. The past four seasons have been so great, I seriously doubt that Alan Ball and co. will screw things up, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what their final statement is.

I'm not really looking forward to any of the major movies coming out this summer. I'll definitely go see Batman Begins, War of the Worlds and some other stuff, but the slate is genuinely uninspiring. I guess it's more my changing film taste than a change in movie quality. Now, I look forward to the Holiday award movie season more than the summer blockbuster season. One film I do really want to see is Burton's Charlie and the Chocalate Factory. It looks like a return to the over the top visual style that has been on hold in his past two films. Plus, Johnny Depp is always entertaining.

Richard Linklater's Bad News Bears is another movie I do want to see, though I'm really not sure how good it will be. It seems to be along the lines of Bad Santa, which I did really like, but I don't really want to see a rehash of that. Plus, this one doesn't have Lauren "Fuck me Santa" Graham, who was essential to the success of the film. But it's Linklater, so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The other big summer release I'm most looking forward to is not even happening here, it's happening in Korea, where Chanwook Park's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance gets a release. Park is the master behind Oldboy and Lady Vengeance is the finale of his 'Vengeance Trilogy.' Oldboy's one of the most well made films I've seen, and I can't wait to see his next. Even though I didn't like JSA or Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance as much as Oldboy, his films are always interesting because Park has such a great eye. He composes shots that are always interesting to watch, that's his greatest strength as a filmmaker.



I'm not sure if it's just because we get their best stuff, but it seems like the films coming out of Asia are much more concerned with being visually interesting than American films. In American movies, the story and characters are definitely priority and the visual is an afterthought, while the directors there seem to be much more visually motivated. Both are important, but I find the Asian approach much more interesting to watch. A film like WKW's 2046 uses the medium so much better than the most critically acclaimed films here, things like Million Dollar Baby. That was a good story, but it's utterly uninteresting from a filmmaking standpoint.

A lot of people seem to equate style with showiness, and the idea is that it must inherently detract from the story, but that's not the case. In the best films, the stylistic choices are beautiful on their own and also enhance the viewer's enjoyment of the story. I would point to Irreversible, a film that is so technically dazzling and calls a lot of attention to its style, but all in the service of immersing you in the emotional beats of the story. Million Dollar Baby makes you feel for the characters, while Irreversible makes you feel what the characters are feeling, and that's a huge difference.

Artists I've Been Listening To...

First off, the North American trailer for Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 is now available here. It looks great, and really captures the feeling of the film. I suppose I'd be inherently partial to it because it focuses so much on the stuff from the future sections of the film, which I'd consider to be the best thing WKW has ever done.

The film drops on August 5, but I already have the DVD. However, I will be seeing it in the theater very soon. On June 15, Wong Kar-Wai is appearing and doing a Q&A at a screening of the film at Lincoln Center. I've never seen a WKW film in the theater, and 2046 is a really astonishing visual experience, so that alone is worth it, but it's also WKW live. I always like to meet film people and hear them talk about the process, especially if they are total storytellers. While Martin Scorsese may have made some great films, he doesn't usually make the stories himself, so you can't get a sense of his whole process, whereas with WKW or Joss, they do everything, and are a lot more interesting to talk to. In the past few years, I've met a lot of my idols, and this is another one to add to the list. I'd still really like to meet Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, though that's not likely to happen unless I make it over to the UK.

So, that should be very cool. Now I'm going to quickly go over some of the music I've been listening to lately because I've definitely been branching off in some different directions.

Electric Light Orchestra - I've been listening to a lot of the Electric Light Orchestra, a band from the 70s that is most famous for their songs "Mr. Blue Sky" and "Evil Woman." When I was very young I remember hearing "Evil Woman" on some Disney special, over a montage of their villains, but I could never remember what the song was. This was when I lived in my old house before 1990, I don't know how I could have remembered this for so long, but last year I heard the song in Mocon and it came back to me. The song had remained with me for 15 years, it's a great song, but even so I found that pretty strange.

Anyway, I grabbed the song and some of their other stuff, but only started listening to the albums recently. I've been listening to a lot of A New World Record and Out of the Blue, both great albums, though I prefer Record. Electric Light Orchestra is an ancestor of a lot of the current artists I love most. Perhaps the best description of the band I could give would be a combination of Daft Punk and The Polyphonic Spree, probably my two favorite current artists, so ELO is understandably a favorite of mine. From Daft Punk they drew a synth based, quasi-dance sound, with frequent use of vocoder, the Electric part. From The Spree they draw the frequent use of big orchestration, with a ton of different instruments at work, the orchestra part. On their best songs, they rock hard, while sounding unlike any other band around.

Their most bizarre song is "Mission," about some aliens who come to earth. It's all over the place, and has the sort of over the top hyperbole that only 70s rock can provide. If you recall "Stonehenge" from Spinal Tap, this is the sort of song that was parodying. Definitely worth checking out. Other standout tracks are the really rocking "Do Ya" and "Livin' Thing," as well as the more subdued "Summer and Lightning" and "Turn to Stone."

Annie - Annie is a relatively new artist, who has put out just one album, Anniemal, which actually hasn't even been released here. Said album is awesome, an amazing pop confection, where pretty much every song is catchy, solid listening. She hails from Iceland, and has more electronic based production than your average album made here. I love the electronic stuff found in much of Europop, and this is one of the best examples of it. Her voice isn't that great, but woven into the music, it's phenomenal.

Her best song is "Heartbeat," which uses a pounding drum over the chorus to simulate her heartbeat as she gets to know someone over the course of a night. I love driving repeated riffs in a song, and the hearbeat drumming just propels the song forward. I think pop has gotten a bad name, and the perception is that albums that sound like this are just "commercial," while darker, less instantly accessible albums must be more artistically relevant. However, music is ultimately about sound, and this album just sounds great all the way through, perfectly constructed pop.

Belle and Sebastian - I really liked their soundtrack for the movie Storytelling and I finally caught up with their albums. So far, I've heard If you're Feeling Sinister and The Boy with the Arab Strap. I really like their sound, it's got a lot of varied instruments and similar to The Smiths, an interesting mix of heavy subject matter and light music. It's really pleasant sounding music, with a bit of 60s flavor. Their best tracks are "Stars of Track and Field" and "Like Dylan in the Movies."

Rachael Yamagata - She's another fairly new artist, with only one album to her credit, Happenstance, and it's a great album. Yamagata reminds me a bit of Aimee Mann in that she is a singer/songwriter, but places a lot of emphasis on the backing tracks and overall production. Too many singer/songwriters focus only on the lyrics, but her tracks are fully realized songs. She rocks pretty hard, and has a great range of darker stuff, like "Under My Skin," and light, poppy tunes, like "1963."

She does a great job of writing lyrics that sound good when sung. "Be Be Your Love" has a great chorus that might not read well, but sounds great in the context of the song. Similarly, "I'm loving you like it's 1963" paints a picture of the world the song is trying to evoke and sounds great as a chorus. While I do love Aimee Mann, her songs are rather similar, while these have great variety, both in terms of music and in terms of theme and atmosphere they are trying to evoke.

Review Revue

Being break, I've been watching a bunch of films.On March break, I watched a string of absoultely phenomenal films. I loved practically everything I watched. On this break, I have not been so lucky, I've seen some good films, but everything I've watched has its flaws.

subUrbia
This is the only Richard Linklater film I had not seen, largely because it has not been released on DVD. However, the library had the VHS, so I broke one of my major rules and watched a pan and scan presentation of the film. Despite those bad viewing conditions, I was pleasantly surprised by this film, and feel like it's a major piece of the Linklater canon. Linklater's films are notoriously talky, so it's appropriate that he should adapt a play.

The film touches on a lot of classic Linklater themes, chronicling the existence of a group of high school friends, who still live in the town where they grew up, even as they long for something better. It's quite similar to Slacker in that everyone talks big, but always ends up just talking, never doing. The film resonated for me because I am in a similar situation as the characters are, and even though I am going to college, that doesn't change the fact that I'm basically just hanging around.



These people are contrasted with their high school friend, Pony, who has made it big with his band, and is touring. They first sort of skirt around the issue of his success, but eventually it comes to the surface and the other characters are forced to confront their own lack of progress when they see how much Pony has done. Linklater is the master of talky films, and he gets great performances from his cast here, and keeps things interesting despite the fact that not that much happens in the film. I think it does a good job of capturing real life dynamics between friends and people who are drifting away. I'd imagine Linklater felt a lot of what Pony did when he returned home as a successful filmmaker. I feel like Linklater has a better handle on what my generation and the people slightly older than me are going through, and his films reflect the reality of our lives.

Miller's Crossing
I also watched the Coens' Miller's Crossing. Now, this is a film that has been quite acclaimed, with some people calling it their best. I don't know, but I just didn't like this film. I didn't feel the inventiveness and energy that is present in the Coens' other films, and it reminded me a lot of Richard Linkler's really weak Newton Boys. Both films seem to use a period setting as an excuse for not doing anything else interesting visually or with the narrative. This film was just a series of extended dialogue scenes as we moved through a whole bunch of double crosses that don't really lead anywhere. I didn't like the lead character, Tom, and tommy guns and fedoras alone cannot save a film. I really feel like I missed something with this film, because I don't understand how it could be so acclaimed. Perhaps in a few years, I'll give it another look, but for now, it goes in the bad column.

The Last Temptation of Christ
This is a film I've been wanting to see for a while, ever since I saw the X-Files episode, Amor Fati. This was an episode written by David Duchovny as an homage to Last Temptation, and it's arguably the best episode of the series, as well as one of the most interesting symbolic narratives I've ever seen. It took me five years , and two library checkouts to finally see the film, and it was a bit of a letdown after all that. The idea behind the film is to show Jesus' human side, his weakness and temptation, but the central piece, a fantasy sequence in which he marries Mary Magdalene is a very small piece of the film.



The vast majority of it is a fairly standard Jesus biography. I know that story so it wasn't too exciting to see all those scenes acted out again. I know about the water into wine, I know about Lazarus, and that stuff takes the focus away the film's core. The movie is too long, at 163 minutes. At least 20 minutes could have been cut out without hurting the story. And, the fantasy sequence is too short, that's the core of the film, but it comes about almost as an afterthought. I guess the X-Files episode might have skewed my expectations, but I feel like that episode used the premise a lot better than the film did.



That said, the film looks great, and really places you in a different world. Scorsese always makes good looking films, and this is no exception. Willam Defoe is great as Christ, but Harvey Keitel just doesn't work in this movie. He seems to be from New York not Jeruselam and his performance punctures the illusion of this world.

Spartacus
I've been going through Stanley Kubrick's film, seeing the ones I've missed, and last night I arrived at Spartacus. This was another long film, at 3 hours, 16 minutes. Watching this film was sort of strange. I was never particularly emotionally engaged with it. Classic Hollywood films were designed to minimize the evidence of the filmmaking, editing and camera movement were not supposed to draw attention to themselves. However, I feel like this also prevents the filmmakers from using these tools to draw you into the story and put you in the headspace of the characters. Now, Kubrick was never someone known for the high emotional content of his films, though I would dispute that in a few cases. However, this film adheres to classical Hollywood norms and as a result you're firmly put in the observer category, and never really engage with the characters.



That said, I was never bored by the film over its really long run time. Watching Miller's Crossing, I found myself checking the watch a number of times, but here I was just going through it, enjoying the film, but not loving it. I find it difficult to analyze most of Kubrick's pre-Strangelove stuff because he seems so tied to classical Hollywood convention, his films lack the personal input that's evident in his later films. Basically everything after Strangelove is either a great film, or a film that aims very high and doesn't quite make it, but is still essential viewing. But his early stuff doesn't particularly stand out from your typical classical Hollywood film. The one scene in this film that seemed different was the really bizarre snails and oyster scene, where an old man propositions Antoninus, asking him if he eats snails, oysters or both, with 'eating snails' a clear reference to gay sex. The scene seems out of place, but is also really entertaining, so I'm glad it's there.



The film remined me a bit of Revenge of the Sith, the Roman political machinations were a clear inspiration on the narrative of Star Wars. Also, the acting style really is quite similar to that of the prequels, which is what Lucas said. As much as I love those movies, this acting style is not the best. The characters are not emotionally engaged with the material here, and the ridiculous love scenes here are such a contrast to the astonishing emotional subtlety of something like Barry Lyndon. There truly was a revolution in 70s Hollywood, and I'm really glad it happened, because movies like this are good, but not great. And, the acting in Sith is so much better than the awful line delivery here. So, even if he is modeling things on the classical Hollywood style, Lucas is doing a much better job than they were. This film did fulfill the classical Hollywood doctrine of making an accessible entertaining film, but unfortunately sometimes the bigger the audience you target, the less personal the film is.

Breaking the Waves
So, today I went from the compromised populism of Spartacus to the extremely personal, challening filmmaking of Lars Von Trier. Von Trier is a filmmaker I had mixed feelings on going in. I loved Dogville, it's one of the most creative and rewarding films I've ever seen. However, I really disliked Dancer in the Dark, which seemed like an exercise in cruelty.

Von Trier's films are all revisionist melodramas, updating the idea of the suffering female hero. That's the one thing all his films, that I've seen at least, have in common, and in this film, there is a lot of suffering. The primary thing that made me like Dogville over Dancer was the fact that in Dancer in the Dark, we just watch a series of awful things happen to the main character and there's no variation, it's just a series of awful events. Dogville uses a similar narrative structure, but at the end, upends the idea of the suffering heroine, and allows her to get revenge for what she's gone through. That revenge is so powerful because we're conflicted. What she's doing is wrong, but after so many awful things happened to her, can we really let this town off the hook? Also, Grace was very smart, while Bjork in Dancer was borderline retarded.



Bess, the lead in this film, also treads on that border, she's mentally unstable. However, I think the characters in this film are much truer than those in Dancer. Bess' actions are motivated, we understand what she's doing, but she's laboring under the false belief that what she's doing can save her husband. It's a pretty harrowing film, and Bess' final fate is not easy to watch.

The style of the film is really intersting. Von Trier uses a constantly roving handheld camera, a style I happen to love, as well as a lot of jump cuts. He's clearly someone who was made for digital filmmaking, though I belive this was shot on film, it's got a grain that makes it look like most digital films. I really like the chapter headings, placid nature scenes with 60s and 70s rock music playing in the background. They're a nice contrast from the handheld, dogme world of the film. Von Trier uses no score, all the music is source.

The last scene has me a bit confused. I think Von Trier intended to show that Bess had made it to heaven, but I guess it's something to ponder. It's a good looking shot whatever the meaning was.

Ultimately the film sort of bothers me because of the level of suffering Bess goes through. The entire narrative is just bad stuff happening to her, and there's not that catharsis that Dogville offers. However, she is more relatable than the Bjork character, so this film falls somewhere in between the other two Von Trier films. Von Trier, like Gaspar Noe, makes films that challenge you, and I'm really glad I watched this movie, even though I do have a lot of issues with it.

Well, there you have it, next on the to watch list are La Dolce Vita, Velvet Goldmine, Three Kings, The Killing and A Fistful of Dollars.

Doves Live and Turning 20

In addition to seeing Star Wars on May 19, I also went to a Doves concert. Doves are one of my favorite bands, their second album, The Last Broadcast is in my top ten albums all time, and their recent album, Some Cities, is excellent as well. They fall in roughly the same genre as Coldplay, but are much better, a bit dancier and a bit more rock.

Anyway, their concert Thursday was excellent. They opened with Pounding, my favorite song of theirs, and it rocked pretty hard. Other highlights were 'Here It Comes,' 'Words,' 'Black and White Town,' and the concert closer, 'There Goes the Fear.' The crowd wasn't that into it at first, but as time passed, they got more into it. It's always cool to see a band you really know in concert, because you can appreciate the songs a lot more. I really liked the variations they did, extending some solo instrumental parts and such.



I always like when bands mess around with the songs live, we already know the songs, and there should be some variation. I saw Aimee Mann last year, and it was a fun concert, but she was so close to the recording, there was no sense of discovery. When the crowd is really into it, it's fine to stick close to the recording, but generally speaking, it's good to mix things up. So, I would have liked a bit more variation, but as it was, Doves put on an excellent show.

So, it was quite a birthday. I think such a great Star Wars movie was really the best gift I could have received. That was the film I'd wanted to see since I was very young, and a huge part of my life now has resolution. I'm really happy to see that the film has been so well regarded by the general public because if you didn't like this movie, you're pretty much not going to like any Star Wars film.

And with that I'm now twenty. I guess that's a big change, the decade change over is always huge, but I think thirty is a bigger change, especially the way society is going now. Twenty is still young, especially because I'm in college, two years from now is going to be a much bigger change. This change is all mental, peoples' perception of me. When I was younger, I thought change was just happen, you'd get older and all the things that older people have would just come to you, but it's not that way, any change that you want, you have to work for. Another year passing doesn't mean anything unless you make it mean something.

Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Well, at midnight on May 19, I finally saw the last Star Wars movie. I saw it again earlier today, so I feel like I've finally been able to process the film enough to write about it. There's going to be spoilers below, so beware.

This wasn't a perfect film, but watching the final scene, I knew that it was right, that things ended the way they should, and the ground was properly paved for the original trilogy. I'd spent a lot of time speculating about how the prequel trilogy would end, and I imagined that it would be with Obi-Wan dropping Luke off with the Lars, and going off into the desert, and that's pretty much how it happened, but the scene itself was gorgeous, and I loved the recall of Luke standing outside watching the two suns setting. It's all cycles, and that moment was the perfect bridge between what had come before and what would come after. The other two films had moments that felt very Star Wars, but this was a Star Wars film through and through.

I had a strange feeling watching the movie, because I had a vague idea of everything that would happen, but to actually see it enacted was strange, I've speculated so much about how certain things would transpire, to finally see them happen was overwhelming. The big moments in the film lived up to the mental image I had created over so many years of anticipation. Obi-Wan defeating Anakin, the emperor taking power, Padme giving birth, it all lived up to my mental image.

The major drive behind this film is Anakin's conflict about his place within the jedi. He always seems an outsider among the Jedi because of his strong emotions. Unlike the other Jedi, he has not been training since birth, he has personal attachments, and these attachments are what cause him problems. The other Jedi would have no need for the powers that Palpatine could give him, because they would have no one that they need to protect. However, Anakin came to the Jedi late, and has attachments, specifically to his mother and Padme. Because of what happened to his mother in AotC, he is extremely protective of Padme, and it is his fear of losing her that drives him to Palpatine.

The thing I liked most about the film was the sheer scope of the events. This is an entire galaxy in trouble, and both the individual lives and the life of the republic are at stake. The best films gnerally revolve around the biggest moments in the character's lives, and these are definitely the most important moments for pretty much every character. And this importance is reflected in the dazzling visuals. The film is gorgeous, and the effects are better integrated into the narrative than in any of the previous prequels.

There's so many great moments, it's difficult to single out stuff. Pretty much everything after "Order 66" is phenomenal, and stuff that I've been waiting to see for a long time. There's an incredible feeling of hopelessness hanging over everything that happens, notably in the Yoda/Emperor fight. Yoda has been built up as such a legend and to see him struggling and ultimately get defeated is harrowing. Respect has to be given to the effects team behind Yoda, because he's utterly convincing, and you really feel for him, particularly as he falls from the senate and climbs out through some tunnels.

Some of the best stuff in the film is the parallels with the original trilogy. The opening sequence gives us the best portrait of the Obi-Wan/Anakin relationship, but also a great revisit of the Emperor/Vader/Luke confrontation in Jedi. The set is designed to resemble it and seeing Anakin give into his anger and kill Dooku lets us know that things are not destined to go well. That fight is also revisited when Mace Windu battles the emperor and we see Anakin save the Emperor, instead of Luke as he does in Jedi.

I think one of the major problems with the film is that there's no clear moment where Anakin goes dark, it just sort of happens. I'm not sure if that was intentional, it does make a point about evil, he doesn't all of a sudden say, "I'm evil," it's just that he keeps having to do more and more morally questionable things in pursuit of his goal.

The whole story is motivated by the fact that everyone around him treats Anakin like a child, except for Palpatine. No one will listen to his fears, Yoda basically says, death is a part of life, so don't worry about it. Palpatine sees his concerns and reaches out to help him, and that's why he ultimately sides with Palpatine over the Jedi. I think through the whole trilogy, he feels constrained by authority, that's his major problem with Jedi, they restrict him from expressing his emotions. Padme stops him from going public with her impending pregnancy. And he sees the senate as something constricting the republic from moving forward. I think a major part of the reason he goes with Palpatine is because he sees it as the best way forward to power. He hopes to lead, with Padme, and give her the chance to do what she wants as a leader. So, when she rejects his outreach, he sees it as Obi-Wan's influence and frustrated, lashes out at her.

One of the best things about the film is the way Lucas makes it so tragic. I think people have been waiting the whole time to see the Jedi fall, but when we finally get there, it's really sad. The montage of Jedi death is really affecting and you get such a sense of betrayal. Similarly, when the Darth Vader suit finally appears, it isn't so much a birth as it is a death. I'd been waiting for the suit for three films, and when it finally appeared, I didn't want him to go in it. It was a sad moment, not cool, and that's an accomplishment.

I love the cutting between the rebirth of Vader and the death of Padme. One of the most interesting things was the scene in which the Emperor tells Vader that he killed Padme. This is why Vader doesn't look for his kids in A New Hope, and it makes things even more tragic. Seeing this, Anakin cannot go back, he has nothing left, and has to embrace the empire, and that's a sad moment. The Emperor has manipulated him all along, told him what he wanted to hear, and at the end, Anakin has no one left, except for him. Ian McDiarmid was great in this movie, particularly in the scene where he tells the story of Darth Plagus.

The other acting was hit or miss. I thought Hayden Christensen was great in pretty much every scene except those with Natalie Portman. Ewan McGregor was excellent and Yoda was phenomenal as well. It was mainly just Natalie who didn't work. I don't know if it's just that she didn't engage with the material, but she was not very good. There's also some issues with the dialogue.

However, I'd rather have a film with these flaws that aims so high than something that doesn't even try. The sheer visual and thematic scope of the film exceeds nearly every other film ever made. So much happens, and it's so emotionally deep, that what the film does overwhelms what it doesn't. Watching the final scene, I felt like the story really was complete, and that's what this film had to do.

George Lucas said that he made the prequel trilogy to show the Star Wars saga is actually the tragedy of Darth Vader, and with this film, he has succeeded in doing that. Anakin never seems evil, he's just misguided and manipulated by everyone around him, and the one person who actually treats him as a person is actually the biggest manipulator of all.

And, it makes the conclusion of the saga even stronger. What Luke does is merge the emotion driven fighting of the Sith with the inherent good of the Jedi. The Jedi in this era are so remove from emotion, they are unable to deal with real world problems. Having been told to ignore his emotions for so long, Anakin can't deal with his problems in this film. At the end of Jedi, Luke draws on his emotions, and Anakin does too. It's his love for Luke that compels him to throw the Emperor into the reactor. The new Jedi will not ignore their emotions, but draw their strength from them, and in that way, Anakin has brought balance to the force.

The Star Wars saga is the greatest story ever told in film. Nothing else ever attempted can match the scale or thematic depth of this series, or the entertainment value. These films show what cinema can do, they inspired a generation of filmmakers, they inspired me and they will inspire many more people in the future.

The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones

Yesterday, I rewatched the first two Star Wars films, in preparation for seeing the final Star Wars movie tonight. As I said yesterday, I've been waiting for this film for a long time. While I was very excited about the other prequels, this is the one that really matters, this is the story they were designed to tell. Those two are basically groundwork for Revenge of the Sith, and that probably explains why they were cracked on so much. There's also the fact that they're flawed films. But, it's a six film story, so to really understand the first two films, you need to see everything, which means that I can't completely appreciate them yet.

Just in assesing the prequel trilogy generally, I would call both films flawed masterpieces. While the films are far from perfect, they aim so high and have such massive scope, in terms of themes and character arcs, these films are doing more than any other popular entertainment made in recent years. That's why I have a problem with people completely dismissing the films, I'd rather see a film that aims so high and doesn't quite make it than a film that plays it safe and doesn't even have anything more going on that what is on the surface. These films are completley unique, and for that alone, they deserve respect. So, while they can be viewed simply as action blockbusters, there's also a lot of intersting stuff going on beneath the surface, much like in Batman Returns, a film that people do not consider the depths of, because they are not used to heavy thematic development in their popular entertaiment.

My favorite thing about the prequels is Palpatine's arc. It's something that's generally below the surface, and very easy to miss if you focus on the action and other things that are going on. Basically everything that's happened so far is the result of what Palpatine has done. The reason that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan end up on Naboo in TPM is because Palpatine has manipulated the Trade Federation into setting up the blockade. The genius of Palpatine's plan is that he can't lose. He creates the problems in the Republic, in the guise of Darth Sidious, and as a result of these problems, he gains power in the senate. The most important event in Episode I is when Amidala agrees to make a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum, which allows Palpatine to take power.

At the end of Episode I, there's a big celebration and we hear joyous music, but this music cue is actually a speeded up version of the Emperor's theme from Return of the Jedi. This is appropriate because the only person who's really won as a result of what happened in the film is Palpatine. He gets more power, and the credit for breaking up the blockade on his home planet.

In Episode II, his plan has evolved, and he has now created not a temporary distraction, like that on Naboo, but a galactic wide problem, the separatist movement. He has Dooku start this movement, as an excuse to get the Senate to vote for the creation of a 'Grand Army of the Republic.' This army will become the stormtroopers that serve the Empire in the original trilogy. There's something really foreboding about seeing Yoda fly in with an army that looks so close to the stormtroopers in the original film. So, at the end of the film, Palpatine 'reluctantly' oversees the creation of this army, an army that was created to fight a menace that he in fact was responsible for. It's a genius plan, because he can't lose. The more the seperatists win, the more power he can take, 'in defense of freedom,' and when they defeat the seperatists, he gets the prestige of having won a major war, which will lead to more public approval for his role in government. So, the 'phantom menace' of the title is in fact Palpatine, who has been manipulating everything from the beginning, and probably will continue to do so in III.

Watching it this time, I think I got a lot more of what Lucas was trying to do with the relationship between Anakin and Padme in Attack of the Clones. The film was widely criticized for the awkwardness of the romantic moments, but I think that was appropriate. This is a guy who's been living with the jedi for ten years, and has never been put in a romantic context, he's just been carrying the memory of Padme around with him for all those years. So, when he finally does meet her again, he doesn't know what do, and brings out a whole bunch of cheesy lines, because he doesn't know how else to behave around her, he can't find a way to express his feelings, so he brings out classic lines like the sand one that don't sound good to us, but are the only way he would know how to behave.

Which brings up the question, why does Padme go with this guy who clearly has a slightly unhealthy obsession with her? This is something I hope III will address, since it's sort of unclear. If I had to guess, it would be that he is the only person who's approached her as a person, not as a queen/senator. Like Anakin, she lives a life that doesn't allow for romance, which means that it would have a sort of forbidden air, and I guess she's attracted to that. I don't think their relationship is ever meant to be healthy or even romantic really, Anakin is someone who is used to being able to do what he wants, and if he wants to be with her, he will.

Anakin gets this attitude from the first father figure in his life, Qui-Gon Jin. In TPM, you see him going along, using his force powers to get whatever he wants from people. He doesn't care about the council, he just does what he wants, and always seems to end up getting his way. When he winds up wtih Obi-Wan, I get the sense that it's almost a stepfather relationship, like Qui-Gon is his real father, and Obi-Wan is just filling it, and that's part of why Anakin resents him so much. Parent issues are at the core of the whole series, and for Anakin, a lot of it has to do with idealizing his mother. What happens to him as a result of his mother's death is not really addressed in II, and I'd imagine it'll figure heavily in III.
That said, while there's so much great stuff in these films, it's not like there aren't flaws. The first 40 minutes or so of Phantom Menace are pretty weak, and Jar Jar just doesn't work there. He's fine once you get to Tatooine, but when it's just him and the two Jedi, it's not good. Similarly, the people do behave in a strange way. It's not realistic, and certain people seem to have trouble with performing in these films. I think Christopher Lee and Ewan McGregor are great, but Natalie Portman just doesn't work in the film. I love her in other stuff, but this is not her finest hour. Watching it this time, I really got Hayden Christensen's performance, and I can understand what he was doing. Samuel L. Jackson is another person who really seems to get what's going on here, and is great.

I think a bigger problem is that the action scenes here don't have the strong emotional drive of the original trilogy. While they are huge and cool, nothing can match the emotional intensity of either of the Luke/Vader fights, I'm hoping this'll change in the next episode. I think part of it is that there aren't pauses. In those fights, the stops are as important as the action itself, and by holding things off, it makes the action that there is so much more intense. While thousands of people fighting may look cool, I'd much rather see two people I care about fighting, the stakes are so much higher, as exemplified by the end of House of Flying Daggers. Also, particularly at the end of Clones, there's two many scenes that seem to be about showing off effects, with no character stakes.

So, I'm really psyched for Revenge of the Sith. The best way to see a Star Wars movie is at a screening full of fans who have been waiting for this for as long as I have. The Episode II midnight showing might be the best moviegoing experience I've ever had, but it could very well be topped tonight. In twelve hours, I will have seen Episode III.

Counting down to Revenge of the Sith

Well, I'm not 34 hours away from the start of Revenge of the Sith. I've been very pleased by the advance reviews. The New York Times called it better than the original Star Wars, and general consesus seems to be that it's the third best film of the saga.

Now, it annoys me that people crack on Return of the Jedi so much. If you can get past the ewoks, which aren't great, but also aren't that bad, you've got the best space battle ever put on film. The assault on the death star is absoultely awe inspiring. To think that all those things in the frame are models, it's a huge leap from the already excellent battle in Episode IV. And Jedi also has the best lightsaber duel of the series. The emotional tension in the Luke/Vader/Emperor scenes is huge, culminating in the great scene when Luke chops off Vader's hand. The score in those scenes is the best in the trilogy, and visually it's gorgeous.

So, don't hate on Jedi. That said, I'm glad to see that people like the new film more than it. While I like the prequels more than most people, I recognize their flaws, and I feel like this film is going to be the one that feels the most Star Wars. It's been such a long wait, it's almost hard to believe that I'll actually be seeing the movie in two days.

House of Flying Daggers

I watched House of Flying Daggers a few days ago and was extremely impressed by it. House is by Zhang Yimou, the director of Hero, as well as other non-martial arts films like The Road Home and To Live, both of which I watched back in March. I'd heard a lot of mixed opinions on House, some people said it was much better than Hero, while others said it wasn't very good. I think it's a much better film than Hero, and that's saying something because I loved Hero.

Visually, Hero probably is stronger than House, but that's not to say that House isn't a gorgeous film. The scenes in the woods are so densely atmospheric, as are the scenes in the wheat field. I love the scene towards the end where Jin and Mei are lying in a field and the blue and green of their costumes stands out so much. The final scenes, in the snow, are also great looking.



However, what makes this film so great is the emotional content. Jin and Mei's journey through the countryside is really sweet, and does a great job of getting you emotionally attached to the characters. Then, everything falls apart once Leo turns up. I love the fact that there's no villain here. She loves Jin, even though logically she should be with Leo. But, the whole point of the film is, love isn't logical, and that's why she can't go with Leo. The end of the film is tough, but it's how it should end. In the society they live in, it's just not plausible for Jin and Mei to live a free life.

The acting in the film is top notch all around. Zhang Ziyi is great here, fully pulling off the blind act, and later in the film too. She makes you believe that she really is deeply in love with this guy, even though they've only known each other for three hours. The scene where Jin places a flower in her hair is some of the best visual acting I've seen. In this film, she acts mainly with her face, it doesn't matter what she's saying, her face tells you everything you really need to know.



Takeshi Kaneshiro is great here too. He was so brilliant in Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels, and here, he does a great job playing the 'Han Solo' role of the lovable scoundrel. In the moment when he turns back to go after her, you can see the way the events of the film have changed him. Andy Lau is solid too, making you sympathize with the character even as you're hating everything he's doing.

This is an impeccably made film. The visuals and sound, particularly the music, are all fabulous, but it's all in service of the story's emotional beats. The final images are haunting, and really evidence of Zhang Yimou's power as a filmmaker. Next from him, I want to seek out Raise the Red Lantern.