Tuesday, 30 November 2010

King Kong
(1933)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.alleycatscratch.com/)

BLONDES ARE SCARCE AROUND HERE

A brilliant and easily the best of all monster pictures ever made because, at heart, it is a great romantic love story. The beauty and the beast myth is cleverly re-imagined and presented larger-than-life in the modern world; the emotional impact of the movie stemming from the fact that it is a tragedy of unrequited and unrequitable love. Where the story differs from the original is in the way it, in common with a great many Hollywood films - up to and including the present day (2010) - presents a story of intercultural love in the guise of interspecies attraction.

The blonde White woman is presented as the epitome of human beauty and White virtue who needs protecting from being affectively raped by a large gorilla; representing White supremacist ideas of Black sexuality. Whites are shown as needing to protect themselves from the alleged taint that any such sexual unions imply by first attempting to tame the beast and, when this fails, to destroy him. Presenting an analogous Black as a potential rapist of White women (as literally shown in Birth of a Nation) is clearly readable as an analogy to White attitudes toward miscegenation - especially in the United States of the time when in some states it was a criminal offense and/or extra-judicially punishable by lynching. Yet, despite this, the lure of forbidden sexual-relations captivates the White mind; hence, the immense popularity among Whites of this amazing picture; representing, as it does, Whites' simultaneous fear of and desire for Blacks.

And yet the feared "Beast" - so-called - is humanized, as few movie monsters are (& as few Blacks still are in Hollywood where the ban on miscegenation still holds sway), so that he becomes a character in his own right and not a mere ragbag of clever special effects (as in Jurassic Park or Alien). We empathize with his love for the White woman. and his (thwarted) sexuality - although violent - is somehow endearing, chivalrous, the stuff of great tragedy and understandable in human terms. The SFX still look good today in an age of CGI.

An unusual Hollywood attempt at showing Blacks as human rather than as the ravening beasts of the White supremacist imagination - in this it resembles Shakespeare's play Othello. To have presented such a story in literal terms would have meant box-office failure with a White audience as well as censorship problems with White censors. Here the beast is the romantic hero whose violence is subdued by love and whose grand passion becomes as big as he is himself.

The entire cast is excellent particularly Fay WRAY as the "scarce blonde": The perfect cinema ingenue. Bruce CABOT is fine as the square-jawed, Flash Gordon-type out to protect his mate from any simian interest, whose love for WRAY is compared and contrasted dramatically with that of Kong. His character also has the same problem as Kong; coming to terms with his true feelings for WRAY despite his deep-seated misogyny. While Robert ARMSTRONG is perfect as the alter ego of the director (Merian Cooper): The daredevil film director out to obtain film footage that 'no white man has ever seen before'.

Copyright © 2010 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Monday, 29 November 2010

Amour l’Après-Midi
[Chloe in the Afternoon;
Love in the Afternoon]
(1972)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.qnetwork.com/)

Movie dominated by the existence and very presence of the female sex. Here women are presented in all their glory and the sheer variety of them in this film cannot be beaten. All the women here are attractive in their own way because they realize that all men are really a little frightened of them and they know how to exploit this to their own psychological advantage. This is accepted by the men here as the price they have to pay for being the weaker sex.

A man can only know what a woman is thinking until the fate she has in store for you has come to pass. The seductress here presents the hero with the tempting moral dilemma of whether or not he should be unfaithful to his wife with her. The affect of being tempted by his own sexual fantasies is to bring him closer to his wife and a deeper appreciation of his love for her.

Mad Men
(2007–)

40%

(Image: http://www.imdb.com/)

Like Desperate Housewives, this drama series represents Whites pretending to look at their own culture in a knowing way while actually celebrating a culture that they simultaneously love and hate. As usual the characters here are semi-intelligent types whose only real goal in life is the tail-wagging-the-dog one of avoiding hard work and replacing it with an office career that is just as soul-destroying. Only high pay, endemic White supremacism and gynophobic sexual-promiscuity make their mediocrity tolerable – at least to themselves.

Amusingly, the White actors here are playing caricatures rather than flesh-and-blood characters; revealing the lack of genuine depth of this drama. And you find yourself amazed that any advertising person could ever believe that any true creativity was involved in their work. And that the lack of creativity here could possibly be the basis for the creative drama that this most definitely is not. The actors portray only their characters' personae and not their actual characters; how they appear on the outside, not who they are on the inside. This is not acting, it is mere self-conscious pretending – appropriately enough, the kind you find in a tv commercial!

The problem for the characters here (like that of the dramatists!) is to sell products people do not need; while creating the want for them - even if they are harmful to health, like nicotine. This proves the lack of genuine innovation in Western culture that leads to the need to constantly resell peplum as if it were "New and Improved". An odd drama that celebrates a time, a place and a still-existing set of attitudes that Whites refuse to drop in the present: Self-conscious knowingness as a substitute for insight or wisdom. It is easy to be rueful about the past since the time for useful knowingness is long past and, thus, less painful. It would have been a revelation if Whites had made a tv series about the present that would serve a useful political purpose rather than the one here of pretending how different Whites were then to what they are now. A drama about this simple fact would have been far more profound, far more enjoyable and far less prone to the commercial needs of its sponsors.

The quality of the acting is compromised by the lack of any genuine thematic content that could possibly reveal the essence of reality. In this, it is the advertising man's dream about how to dramatize reality rather than a proper dramatist's vision. One senses White culture as a kind of emptiness that dramas like this refuse to explore the rationale behind: A celebration of political and ethical superficiality and the inability to connect to objective reality. The other dramatic problem here is the implied belief that only White culture exists and, therefore, matters: White Men Behaving Badly; making it difficult to relate to the non-existent characters.

Our Cancer Year
(1994)

60%

(Image: http://www.amazon.com/)

Like most autobiographies, this falls into the classic trap of self-indulgence and of not knowing what to include or to exclude. This is both exacerbated and caused by a lack of thematic purpose in the telling.

Despite the first-person narrative, there is little insight into struggling with cancer and so we are confronted with un-empathetic characters who would much rather whine than confront their actual existential problems. The movie American Splendor handles the same couple with more humor, warmth and truth.

Fierce Creatures
(1997)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.virginmedia.com/)

Clever farce about asset-stripping businessmen who try to make the profit motive fit businesses not suited to it. As well as being about those for whom the word Enough has no definition when applied to their desire for an ever-increasing wealth that they could never spend in a hundred lifetimes.

This one reunites the perfect cast of A Fish Called Wanda for an even better sexual slapstick than the previous incarnation with more likeable characters and unimpeachable human values that regard animals as more than just the cost of their upkeep.

The difficult balancing-act of the silly premiss to make the point about the silliness of greed and that greed then being parodied always threatens to teeter into self-parody - but mostly doesn’t because the humor is so irresistible. Anyone who does not laugh at this is already dead.

Medallion
(2003)

60%

(Image: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/)

The usual impressive parkour-style stunts for which Jackie CHAN is justly famous do not make this anything more than merely average. The chemistry between the leading players is weak and so the comedy that relies on their sparring is similarly limited in affect.

Yet this movie has many great comic moments and the Buddhist reincarnation theme and plotting adds a necessary sense of mystery and magic that is otherwise lacking. Absurdly, important plot points were foolishly-removed in the editing so that you have to watch the Deleted Scenes - after watching the movie - to fully understand why certain events take place.

Mommie Dearest
(1981)

80%

(http://fascinationwithfear.blogspot.com)

Star is Born

Like many unwanted children who never find themselves as adults, the Joan Crawford presented here is a perfectionist who craves attention and, when she discovers that others do not need her attention, desperately tries to psychologically-destroy them in a battle of wills that only - ultimately - destroys any chance such people have for happiness.

Faye DUNAWAY gives an unnerving performance as a profound neurotic who cannot empathize with others and so lives as an emotional autistic. The most telling moments come when her daughter copies her private behavior and she sees it as a paranoiac would: An attempt to belittle her rather than as simple childhood mimicry.

DUNAWAY brings home Crawford’s sense of others being a constant threat to her skewed sense of self-esteem by seeing her daughter as someone to compete with, who must be labeled imperfect because she does not provide the love for which she was adopted, in the first place. Her obsessive/compulsive nature focuses on dirt & cleaning; leaving her daughter to try and solve the psychiatric problems of the single parent, rather than the other way around.

Looking like The Joker in The Batman, DUNAWAY teeters on the verge of self-parody, by playing a woman obsessed with growing old, losing her looks and stalling in her career. She understands the power-complexes of those who think emotional blackmail is how relationships are made, because their entire emotional life is centered on themselves and their needs; giving them nothing to share with others. She wants her children to be her biggest fans and to offer her the self-respect she lacks.

You feel for the essential emptiness of her life as a film star but, when she starts taking out her frustrations on her kids, you quickly learn to dislike her intensely because she is an actress who never stops acting - even when the cameras stop rolling.

The only real problem here is that too much focus on the cause of the children’s pain - rather than the effect - blunts an otherwise highly-impressive narrative.

Ma Nuit chez Maud
[My Night at Maud’s;
My Night with Maud]
(1969)

40%

WEBSITE: Ma Nuit chez Maud (My Night at Maud

(Image: http://filmsdefrance.com/)

The problem with films that deal in ideas divorced from lived experience is that they can be as detached from reality as the movie. The academic sterility of debates about abstruse ideals like when Communism or when Catholicism strongly suggests a when Western desire to flee from real life in order to inhabit a non-existent world free from rational responsibilities - as the when bourgeois when Whites do here.

This film is about when Christian hope but, without analyzing the concept fully, this comes across as merely the expression of wishful thinking that the alleged moral certainties of both religion and atheism do nothing to dispel. The unexamined self-consciousness of the characters makes the film as light and as superficial as they are since there is no insight here. These people do not wish to ascertain reality but to argue among themselves outside of a reality they clearly disdain - despite the simple non-existence of any space outside of experience. Worse, this tendency is emphasized by a lack of original thinking since characters quote and cite but say little produced by their own minds rather than rely on their eidetic memories. The ennui and malaise on show here is the inevitable result of this kind of circular activity, since the pretense of depth is merely the avoidance of same.

My Name Is Khan
(2010)

80%

(Image: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/)

Excellent romantic comedy that crosses when Rain Man with when Beautiful Mind to good effect. when KAJOL and when Shah Rukh KHAN actually have the genuine chemistry to make the dodgy plotting unimportant as you are carried along by the sheer when Bollywood magic of the thing. They are also superb actors. For some reason when Hollywood can no longer make good old-fashioned movies like these that really make you feel good rather than simply pretending to.

The endemic racism of Indian caste-culture is well handled by having a when Muslim play the eponymous character (Khan with an epiglottal K) who himself is perfectly well aware of how unusual it is for him to have succeeded in a when Hindu culture. This sensibility he adroitly brings to the playing of the role. This is compared and contrasted with the when White supremacism of the Western world - especially regarding the aftermath of when 9/11 to show how difficult it is for a when Muslim to do well in the when West - especially with its fair-weather-friend culture, desire for collective punishment and closet resentment of foreigners.

The film's division of the world into good and bad people is to be welcomed and, while true, is somewhat politically naive and so deprives the movie of being as great as it could have been. Yet, it addresses political and personal issues that when White filmmakers shy away from.

Too long, emotionally-overwrought and melodramatic, in the best when Bollywood tradition, but a compelling entertainment nonetheless because of the worthwhile ideas it embraces.

Private Benjamin
(1980)

80%

(Image: http://chillymovieguide.com/)

Don’t call me stupid!

Clever, feminist attempt by Goldie HAWN to outdo Woody Allen and be taken seriously as an actress. The humor is still there but this is an incisive (albeit repetitive) attack on sexually-insecure and unreliable White males who treat women as chattel.

This film sacrifices good structure to being a catalogue of abuses that hit the nail right on the head. HAWN is excellent as the Jewish princess who struggles to wean herself from her dependency on men - from her father to various husbands and boyfriends and would-be boyfriends - to become an independent woman who needs no-one to tell her what she can with her body (clothes, hair & sexual partner) and her mind. Like drapetomania, much of the humor here comes from the men believing that such a desire for independence is both pathological and un-feminine. this one makes you think as well as laugh in being Orlando for the non-avant garde.

Private Parts
(1997)

80%

(Image: http://moviescreenshots.blogspot.co.uk/)

Public Parts

Attention-seeking is a neurotic characteristic of White culture and this comedy is no exception. It is, in fact, an analysis of a mediocrity who - like Woody ALLEN - makes his White sexual inadequacies the stuff of some pretty-riotous moments of pretty-inspired idiocy.

One you get over the anally-retentive nature of the humor, you find yourself enjoying the sheer silliness of it all - especially as the humor is as politically-incorrect as humor should be.

(Image: http://moviescreenshots.blogspot.co.uk/)

The wider problem here, however, is that Howard STERN cannot always tell when the personal is political - and when it is just personal. This is why so many find STERN obscene rather than an accurate barometer of a culture with too many skeletons in its closet; while also explaining the resulting hypocritical mind-set of the emotionally unspontaneous.

(Image: http://moviescreenshots.blogspot.co.uk/)

Return of the Pink Panther
(1975)

60%

(http://www.britishcinemagreats.com)

A ragbag of old jokes, cinematic in-jokes and cartoon-style sight gags that passes the time most agreeably. None of it really makes much sense as the film possesses a decided identity crisis in wavering between slick Hitchcockian (To Catch a Thief) movie thrills and outlandish slapstick.

Yet Peter SELLERS is an undeniably funny man - one of the best - almost as good as Jacques TATI. Herbert LOM’s characterization of an exasperated chief inspector slowly descending into madness at his inability to get rid of the stupidest gendarme in all of France. Not one of SELLERS’ best comedies but always worth a look.

Sunday, 28 November 2010

Revenge of the Pink Panther
(1978)

60%

(http://www.trailerfan.com)

Rita, Sue and Bob Too
(1986)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.guardian.co.uk/)

More concerned with technique than thematic content, this is a fun look at resilience in the face of UK poverty.

The plot amounts to little, but the characters are memorable and well-played by instinctive actors who understand the kinds of people who associate with one another more for something to do than because of shared values.

The ennui of provincial English life among Whites is well shown as the characters find relief either through sex or erotophobia. In this, both female sexuality and feminine bonding are fruitfully explored - especially in relation to the lack of masculine self-confidence of Rita and Sue’s coevals.

This movie compares favorably with The Craft.

Toy Story 3
(2010)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/)

Despite the fact that the human movement in CGI movies have yet to sufficiently resemble actual human movement, quality product like Toy Story series works well because they compensate by utilizing the best vocal talent available. They also cheat somewhat on their animation difficulties when compared to hand-drawn cartoons by largely using characters who possess hard bodies. This means that the characters are not required to move realistically since toys do not move in real life and so there is nothing to compare their movements with to determine their movements' accuracy. This means character can only be conveyed by the voice artists and not so much the animation - unlike the classic Disney period when Walt Disney was still alive. CGI will only truly come of age when the leading roles are given to humans rather than the easier-to-animate toys.

However, what amazes is that the quality of the first two movies is still present here. Essentially an action movie, this is humor-filled fun for everyone with its theme of knowing when to give up ones toys and move on emotionally.

Friday, 26 November 2010

PRICE OF WHITENESS:
Jews, Race, and American Identity
(2007)

80%

(Image: http://press.princeton.edu/)

Interesting book that further Whiteness by looking at what at first seems an odd form of White supremacism: That directed against other Whites - in this case Jews.

The basic problems for Jews in the United States lie in assimilating into the Black/White dichotomy of White supremacists; while experiencing many of the negative affects of White supremacism themselves. This led to an empathy for African Americans that kept Jews permanently seen as threats by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).

It correctly states that Whiteness studies practitioners tend to gloss over the White shame and guilt associated with White supremacism and stress the unearned privileges of White supremacism - but neglects those who adopt that very issue as a central plank of their argument (eg, White Like Me).

London River
(2009)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.altfg.com/)

Superb film about White supremacism, grief, cultural change and the affects of terrorism on ordinary people.

Brenda BLETHYN and Sotigui KOUYATÉ make a particularly fine screen couple and their growing friendship follows the arc of the story as they come to realize that they have the same fate. The director Rachid Bouchareb fashions a beguiling and emotionally-affecting drama from such a slight premiss that you wonder why other filmmakers cannot do so. Like I've Loved You So Long, we get a very clear sense of the emotional turmoil going on under the characters' skin because the actors know how to reveal this without histrionics and with empathetic camera work.

There is nothing to dislike here.

Nana
[The Maid]
(2009)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/)

Not as thematically-resonant as Dogtooth, Funny Games or Zona this is simply an anecdote that never rises to the level of a serious look at the human condition. The central character is unlikeable and we never really get to know her apart from the fact that she has no life of her own and emotionally-parasites off of others. The relationships between the characters do not really work or come alive and so we are left to wonder what all this really adds up to - apart from a detailed look at the trajectory of one woman's nervous breakdown. Simply too under-written to be taken seriously yet its theme of a humanitarian solution for people who cannot accept love is appealing - as is the sympathetic treatment and centrality of female lives.

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

L'Année Dernière à Marienbad
[Last Year in Marienbad]
(1961)

80%

(Image: http://www.thefashionspot.com/)

The review below is better than any I could write so I quote part of it.

I think everyone should see this film. I don't know why. I have seen it numerous times. No, I have never seen it. Yes, I saw it last year! No, last year I did not see it. Yes, I saw it here, with me. Wait, I'm alone. Who am I talking to?

(Quote: http://www.imdb.com/user/ur2515148/comments)

Monday, 22 November 2010

Revealing Whiteness
(2006)

RATING:	40%
FORMAT:	Book

(Image: http://www.amazon.com/)

This is the usual White liberal woolly-headed nonsense that attempts to evade the very issue it raises. Talking about White supremacism as an unconscious habit exculpates those who indulge in it as not guilty of an inherent evil. Yet everyone possesses habits - good or bad - and is perfectly well aware of them.

This book does not explain what an unconscious habit is and simply posits its existence without evidence. This non-argument leads to the very White solipsism that White supremacism is; namely, the prioritized attempt to gain unearned privileges without having to openly acknowledge that this is taking place. Proof of this comes from the guilt and shame White supremacists express when outed - as do pedophiles when they are found out. Such expressions would never take place if the habits were unconscious, since there would then be nothing to be guilty and ashamed about.

By being academically-dry the book sounds like a profound investigation into the White psyche. Yet, it goes up its own White fundament because the author cannot escape her own childhood indoctrination into White privilege; admitting the latter, but not the former. She correctly criticizes color-blind, multi-cultural and diversity politics for being racist because they all assume Whites lack an ethnicity and are therefore the neutral benchmark for others, yet remains mired in her own Whiteness. After all, a White physically-uncomfortable in the presence of a Black person is completely aware of this and only claims otherwise to escape detection - as any successful criminal would.

This book falls into the same solipsistic trap that all racists fall into in never explaining the origins of White supremacism from which to deduce its resolution. Since, historically Whites have not always been institutionally racist; it is - in theory - a small matter to dismantle White supremacism. The issue here is really that Whites do not wish to dismantle such supremacism and, do not wish to admit that they do not wish to, and do not wish to admit - like all welfare dependents and junkies - that they are actually addicted to racism, since they materially benefit from it. Whites will cling to anything that defines them - as racism does - since it pretends Whites are superior and, in the absence of any genuine source of self-respect, White culture will remain supremacist. Even a mentally-ill person is aware that they are mentally-ill; their problem is that they choose not to know why. Claiming the existence of an unconscious aspect to human lives simply allows bad people to claim they did not know what they were doing and, therefore, allows them to effectively to get away with it.

The confusion in this book lies in the distinction between overt and covert racism - not conscious and unconscious. Whites have simply shifted the basis for White supremacy from de jure oppression to de facto oppression, with Whites creating a metaphorical freemasonry of signs and symbols for communicating their racism to others without it being so obvious that it becomes legally actionable. A White is not much threatened by White supremacism in the material world. It is only in the realm of conscience that Whites experience anything deeply about racism - not to benefit non-Whites, but to assuage guilt (much as this book tries to do). The White claim that racism can be unconscious is a claim that only a White can sustain because their lives are not in danger; making the issue, for them, little more than an abstraction.

The solution to White supremacism is for Whites to admit their culture racist. But that would leave them open to attack and devastate the benefits to them of racism; and who cuts the throat of the goose laying them golden eggs? Who bites the hand feeding them? As always with Whites, racism can so easily become an intellectual game - divorced from reality - when for Blacks it is always a matter of life and death.

Sunday, 21 November 2010

Lola Rennt
(1998)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(www.mirocine.net)

[Run Lola Run]

Amusing and exhilarating pop video-style rumination on luck, destiny and freewill that concludes that all these things can be manipulated in our favor because of the human desire for love as well as love itself. Not very profound but wonderfully entertaining.

This is a movie more concerned with plotting, technical wizardry and ideas rather than characterization; hence, its short running time that leaves little space for character development.

(www.premiere.fr)

Sexy Beast
(2000)

60%

(Image: http://www.imdb.com/)

An unconvincing redemptive love story that, with the exception of when Ben KINGSLEY, is indifferently acted and written. The direction is stylish but the style tells us little about the characters nor their motivations. This is a genre piece pretending to be an art movie pretending to be a genre piece. It would be better to simply have a story and get on with telling it rather than waste our time trying to make the package acceptable when you suspect the content is not.

This could have been a thorough-going analysis of what happens to those who lack love in their lives because they will not accept their true nature - in this case, homosexuality - and the psychotic conflicts this creates within oneself. But, it is not because the characters are far too thin and lightweight: There is no real understanding of the unethical mind.

Skeletons
(2010)

60%

(Image: http://www.thenewcurrent.com/)

It is as if Laurel & Hardy had made an existential comedy about memory and the pain they bring when held as grudges rather than as learning experiences. Add to that the science-fiction underpinnings and we have here a truly eccentric, not to say endearing, movie hybrid.

The difficulty of living with the unresolved memories of others is as hard as ones own. Here people keep secrets from others to make themselves more attractively-perfect; never wanting to realize that this creates an impenetrable barrier between themselves and others - as revealed here. Those excavating for the eponymous skeletons-in-the-closets here must have none of their own otherwise their scientific objectivity is compromised: The main theme here. And yet scientific objectivity is difficult to achieve in reality and does not make for much of a life.

The humor is low key but never rises much above the sarcastic self-contempt of most of the characters. Paprika STEEN is particularly fine as an eccentrically-likable housewife.

Essentially a time-travel movie that avoids trying to fix the past by changing it but fixing the present by facing the past. All the losers here literally lost something important to them and its loss has made their present stand still until they can come to terms with the loss and move out of the limbo of trying to live in the past. It is never good to let sleeping dogs lie. Not as resonant nor as amusing as Being John Malkovich.

StreetDance
(2010)

80%

(Image: http://www.imdb.com/)

As usual with musicals, one expects the plot and story-line to be thin and somewhat incredible - this is no exception. However, the music and dance is very impressive and that is the point of what we see here.

The contrast between White middle-class art's passionlessness and poor Black street culture's anger and verve is well-pointed. And so is the fact that ballet is good at telling stories that street dance does not do so well. The idea here is to create a hybrid form between the two - about as likely as a tabloid newspaper with broadsheet content. But the idea of rescuing classical arts from its tendency toward formalism inherent anachronism has its heart in all the right places, despite the fact that such need grant funding precisely because they are so out of date that they render themselves decidedly non-commercial.

The acting is weaker than in Fame and West Side Story which weakens the love storytelling - but the sheer talent on show here is undeniable as the sheer joy of life.

Time That Remains
(2009)

80%

(http://www.sensesofcinema.com)

[Temps Qu'il Reste]

Smart anti-Zionist movie demonstrating that great universal of human nature: That you become what you hate. Despite millennia of Jewish persecution, the founding of the State of Israel necessitated the suppression of Palestine.

Teaching practice in Palestinian-Israeli schools is shown as little more than political and sexual propaganda designed to brainwash Arabs that the United States is neither colonialist nor imperialist in its support for an economically-unviable state like Israel with apartheid-like internal politics.

Like the Maquis in occupied France, the Palestinians fight back in any way they can while simultaneously either contemplating suicide rather than a life under colonial occupation or collaboration. The psychological impact of such choices are deftly and subtly portrayed in this deadpan and ironically-comic agitprop. The dilution and dissipation of much of Arab culture and values in favor of Christmas, karaoke and disco dancing.

The only real problem here is a lack of characterization since the performers here act more as mouthpieces for political positions rather than fully-fledged characters. Nevertheless, it largely manages to avoid didactic polemicism and is an interesting companion-piece to the recent לבנון‎ and ואלס עם באשיר.

Friday, 19 November 2010

Parapluies de Cherbourg
[Umbrellas of Cherbourg]
(1964)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://alamodest.com)

Summary: Passionate romance.

Amazing how such a slight and inconsequential story of infatuation could turn into such a profound meditation on the human condition and the desire to procreate, but here it is: A bone fide masterpiece.

The performances are all perfect and the continual music, by the gifted Michel Legrand, perfectly complements the emotional ups and downs of the fully-realized main characters.

The enchanted fairy-tale atmosphere and lucid colors are oddly-complemented by telling a realistic story (single motherhood & marrying-for-love or money); the familiar brilliantly-complementing the recitative delivery of the dialogue - rendered as if they were song lyrics. No-one here bursts into song since they are already singing throughout - unlike a conventional Hollywood musical.

The film reflects the fact that one cannot live in the past and yet we are constantly surrounded by things that remind us of the very thing we cannot live in. Here it is a daughter of one man being raised as if she were the daughter of another.

This is an exceptional example of a total film that never lets its grip of you relent until the very end - the kind of effect Baz Luhrmann failed to achieve in Moulin Rouge or Michael Powell (far more successfully) in The Red Shoes.

There is nothing here to dislike especially because of the realistic ending that is simultaneously sad and uplifting. A stunning example of the art cinema can be when it fulfills its own potential for greatness.

4.3.2.1
(2010)

40%

(Image: http://www.freshwap.net/)

A cross between Snatch and The Craft (with shades of Rashomon & Clerks), this is frenetic without being particularly original.

The variable quality of the performers and the performances do not help, neither does the dialogue that does not sound like real people talking - but like how we would like them to. The characters struggle to breathe free within the limitations of a contrived, deterministic and repetitive script with a decided lack of thematic content. Proof that Western males cannot write female roles.

Führerprinzip:

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.

(1913-60), French-Algerian writer & philosopher. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt: New York: Vintage Books, (1984; page 182.)

Pages:

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

BLONDES ARE SCARCE AROUND HERE

Monday, 29 November 2010

Star is Born

Public Parts

Sunday, 28 November 2010

Friday, 26 November 2010

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

Monday, 22 November 2010

Sunday, 21 November 2010

[Run Lola Run]

[Temps Qu'il Reste]

Friday, 19 November 2010

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