Ladies and the Lens

I was chit chatting with a new friend about female directors and wanted to list some of my favorites from the past few years.

Celine Sciamma





Catherine Breillat








Marianna Palka





Andrea Arnold

Ms. Arnold has a new movie coming out called Fish Tank that made some people pee their pants with excitement at Cannes. You can also check out her short Wasp on Cinema 16 or the youtuberie.

District 13: Ultimatum

I can't fully recommend this movie since I haven't seen it, but the first film (with a shockingly different name, District B13, its hard to even make a connection between the two) was awe-fully fun to watch. The story eats away at itself half way through and the acting is on the weak side, which doesn't really matter since the film is in French and subtitled. The stunts are amazing (its a form of street gymnastics called parkour) and in most cases completely real. If you like action even a little try out District B13 before you waste any money on Ultimatum.

A Single Man

For You

A well made, poignant, little movie. Its not so little, since it stars Colin Firth with Julianne Moore trailing behind him, but it is a first film from a first time director. A Single Man is based on the book (same title) by Christopher Isherwood, and is considered to be a lynch pin in the canon of gay fiction. The story is short. It takes place in the mind of the main character George, which means the script couldn't function without a narrator resulting in minimal dialog and an overload of perfect images. Is it a Gucci ad? Yes. Is it good? Yes. You'll love the performance by Colin Firth and one scene in particular, between himself and Ms. Moore, that sums up the confusion between straight and gay partnerships. Its worth the watch. I recommend the theater—its too pretty to pass up.

For Me

I hate narrators (unless its Woody Allen or Julie Delpy), and flashbacks—there is no getting around this—are cheating. The script was so bare that Mr. Firth is positively forced to give an over the top performance. That said, this was a great first film from Tom Ford. (Think he'll do another?) I can't give him a pass just because this is his first foray, but it was strong and well made. Since the script was weak, the dialog was sparse. Thank you producers! With more time to look and think it added a level of thoughtfulness to A Single Man. The performances are good (some better than others), but the shining moments of this film will come from the conversations to follow. My main talking point has been that A Single Man captures a time when we knew gay men existed, but couldn't tell if it was the person sitting next to you on the bus, your neighbor, even your college professor. Its about a secret world that I was more than happy to have been given a peek of.

A Single Man Trailer

Anthony Lane Ponders Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke's new film The White Ribbon won the Palm d'Or this year at Cannes. Here is a snip from Anthony Lane's article about Mr. Haneke from the New Yorker.

"As a rough rule, cinema can be sundered into two halves: six-o'clock films and nine-o'clock films. Most movies are nine-o'clock affairs, and none the worse for it. You get home from work, grab something to eat, head to the theatre, and enjoy the show. And so to bed—alone or entwined, but, either way, with dreams whose sweetness will not be crumbled or soured by what you saw on screen. A six-o'clock movie requires more organization: prebooked tickets, a restaurant table, the right friends. You're going to need them, because if all runs according to plan you will spend the second half of the evening tossing the movie—the impact and the substance of it—back and forth. So "Persona" is a six-o'clock movie, though it wont leave you with much of an appetite. As is "The Deer Hunter," whereas "Platoon," for all its sound and fury, works fine for a nine-o'clock. "The Reader" is a nine-o'clock movie that thinks it's a six-o'clock. "Groundhog Day" is the opposite. And "The White Ribbon"? A six-o'clock movie, if I ever saw one." —Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

My favorite Haneke movie? The Piano Teacher. Everything else by him takes superhuman strength to watch.

The Piano Teacher Trailer

Shopping

Cinema Revolution, a local video rental shop in Minneapolis, went out of business last week. This was promptly followed by a liquidation sale (five dollar entry fee) on of all of their foreign, cult, and classic collections. My roommate and I woke up real early today to get there on time for the 9 am opening. In retrospect, I should have grabbed a coffee and brought my camera.

We arrived at 9:12 am. Already one man had a box with more than thirty DVDs inside (I imagine he made giant swiping motions with his arms upon entering the building). When my friend took a peek inside, with his eyes, not his hands, the man immediately reminded him that "those were his." He also had a printed list of what he was looking for the length of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In line, we were startled by the woman behind us when she asked if "we could please hold her place." She sprinted to the front, her trench coat flailing behind her. "Someone is looking in my box!" No one was.

I followed a man around for seven whole minutes before I worked up the courage to ask him if he would be willing to give up his copy of Head-On. He explained that he was Turkish, and hadn't seen it yet, but if I gave him my work address he would bring it to me (after he had watched it, of course). How reassuring.

I bought two movies:
- The American Friend
- Oldboy

I'll forever feel cheated because:
- That dude had never seen Head-On and got to it first
- As soon as I said out loud that I hadn't seen The Decalogue for sale, the person standing in front of us walked up to the counter, grabbed the box set, and bought it

Moral of the story: watch Cinemania.

Dead-Alive

For You

Don't kid yourself, this is a genre film. Directed by Peter Jackson, and released as Braindead (why rename it?), this movie is about a hilarious rat-monkey who bites and old woman, and her son who tries to cover the whole thing up. When people say its gross (pretty much the only word I'd ever heard sandwiched next to Dead-Alive), they mean its over the top ridiculous. I was imagining Saw II type gore, but its delightful, fun, and completely unbelievable. No nightmares.

For Me

Even watching alone, I laughed out loud and at one point just stood up I was so shocked by how far Peter Jackson was willing to go. I often rant about how stunted the Zombie genre is (completely enjoyable, but impossibly hard to escape the ending), and Dead-Alive really challenges this. Maybe because its more a horror-comedy movie than a zombie one, but its structure truly surprised and refreshed my wary mind. I also liked that the allegory being told was front and center. I'd rather not have a film take itself completely seriously while trying to convince the audience that the "meaning" was an accident. Ooops!

(Does anyone else remember seeing this at the rental store when they were twelve and having a seizure?)

Dead-Alive Trailer

Good Dick

For Us

This is my new developmentally inappropriate obsession — I haven't been able to watch any other movie for three days. All you need to know is that its a tale about a boy who is crushing hard on a girl. Original? Yes. Watch the trailer (it'll give you a good sense of who these people are), then forget you ever saw it. The characters aren't what you think, and even though the back stories are a teensy bit weak, this is Marianna Palka's first movie. That she directed, wrote, produced, and starred in. What a slacker.

PS Good Dick is being independently released (even on DVD), so if you like it, buy a copy right away from this site. Limited amounts.