Counting Down the Zeroes

And The Winner Is...The Year 2001 in Awards

2010-05-03T20:51:00.000+01:00

Well, that's it for 2001, almost. Joe Bowman of the brilliant Fin de cinema; a beautiful resource of the best on World, European and independent cinema, his impressive series 'The Decade List' continues unabated and goes down as a definite read for any self-respecting cinephile, wraps up the year with the obligatory round of back-slapping, self congratulating, love-fest that is the film awards. Joe supplies us with an exhaustive, cohesive list of the years biggest awards and winners and brings the curtain down on part 2 of our noughties retrospective for Counting Down The Zeroes. See you all in 2002. And the winner is...

Director Nanni Moretti, winner of the Palme D'or with The Son's Room

Cannes Film Festival, held 9-20 May 2001

Palme d'Or: La Stanza del figlio (The Son's Room) [d. Nanni Moretti]
Grand Prix: La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher) [d. Michael Haneke]
Best Director: (tie) David Lynch - Mulholland Drive; Joel Coen - The Man Who Wasn't There
Best Actor: Benoît Magimel - La Pianiste
Best Actress: Isabelle Huppert - La Pianiste [unanimously]
Best Screenplay: Danis Tanovic - No Man's Land
Technical Grand Prize: Tu Du-Che - Millennium Mambo
Camera d'Or: Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner [d. Zacharias Kunuk]

Venice Film Festival, held 29 August - 8 September 2002

Golden Lion: Monsoon Wedding [d. Mira Nair]
Grand Special Jury Prize: Hundstage (Dog Days) [d. Ulrich Seidl]
Best Actor: Luigi Lo Cascio - Luce dei miei occhi [Light of My Eyes]
Best Actress: Sandra Ceccarelli - Luce dei miei occhi
Career Golden Lion: Eric Rohmer

Toronto International Film Festival, held 6-15 September 2001

People's Choice Award: Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Amélie) [d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet]
Discovery Award: Chicken Rice War [d. Cheah Chee Kong]
Best Canadian Feature: Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner [d. Zacharias Kunuk]

Berlin International Film Festival, 7-18 February 2001

Golden Bear: Intimacy [d. Patrice Chéreau]
Best Director: Lin Cheng-sheng - Betelnut Beauty
Best Actor: Benicio Del Toro - Traffic
Best Actress: Kerry Fox - Intimacy
Jury Grand Prix: Beijing Bicycle [d. Wang Xiaoshuai]
Jury Prize: Italiensk for begyndere (Italian for Beginners) [d. Lone Scherfig]
Outstanding Artistic Achievement: You're the one (una historia de entonces) [d. Raúl Pérez Cubero]
Honorary Golden Bear: Kirk Douglas
Teddy (Feature): Hedwig and the Angry Inch [d. John Cameron Mitchell]
Teddy (Documentary): Trembling Before G-d [d. Sandi Simcha Dubowski]
Teddy (Jury Award): Forbidden Fruit [d. Sue Maluwa-Bruce, Beate Kunath]

Sundance Film Festival, held 18-28 January 2001

Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic): The Believer [d. Henry Bean]
Grand Jury Prize (Documentary): Southern Comfort [d. Kate Davis]
Director (Dramatic): John Cameron Mitchell - Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Director (Documentary): Stacy Peralta - Dogtown and Z-Boys
Special Jury Prize (Dramatic): In the Bedroom, for Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek
Special Jury Prize (Documentary): Children Underground [d. Edet Belzberg]
Cinematography (Dramatic): Giles Nuttgens - The Deep End
Cinematography (Documentary): Albert Maysles - LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton
Audience Award (Dramatic): Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Audience Award (Documentary): (tie) Dogtown and Z-Boys; Scout's Honor [d. Tom Shepard]
Audience Award (World Cinema): The Road Home [d. Zhang Yimou]

Academy Awards, held 24 March 2002

Best Picture: A Beautiful Mind [d. Ron Howard] Best Director: Ron Howard - A Beautiful Mind
Best Actor: Denzel Washington - Training Day
Best Actress: Halle Berry - Monster's Ball
Best Supporting Actor: Jim Broadbent - Iris
Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Connelly - A Beautiful Mind
Best Original Screenplay: Julian Fellowes - Gosford Park
Best Adapted Screenplay: Akiva Goldsman - A Beautiful Mind
Best Cinematography: Andrew Lesnie - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Best Documentary: Un coupable idéal (Murder on a Sunday Morning) [d. Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, Denis Poncet]
Best Foreign Film: No Man's Land [d. Danis Tanovic]
Animated Feature: Shrek [d. Aron Warner]
Honorary Award: Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford

BAFTAs, held 24 February 2002

Best Film: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [d. Peter Jackson]
Best Director: Ang Lee - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Best British Film: Billy Elliot [d. Stephen Daldry]
Best Actor: Russell Crowe - A Beautiful Mind
Best Actress: Judi Dench - Iris
Best Supporting Actor: Jim Broadbent - Moulin Rouge!
Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Connelly - A Beautiful Mind
Best Original Screenplay: Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet - Amélie
Best Adapted Screenplay: Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman, Roger S.H. Shulman - Shrek
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins - The Man Who Wasn't There
Film Not in the English Language: Amores perros [d. Alejandro González Iñárritu]

European Film Awards, held 1 December 2001

Best Film: Amélie [d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet]
Best Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet - Amélie
Best Actor: Ben Kingsley - Sexy Beast
Best Actress: Isabelle Huppert - La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher)
Best Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel - Amélie
Best Screenplay: Danis Tanovic - No Man's Land
Best Documentary: Black Box BRD [d. Andres Veiel]
Discovery: El Bola [d. Achero Mañas]
Screen International: Moulin Rouge! [d. Baz Luhrmann]
Audience Award (Actor): Colin Firth - Bridget Jones's Diary
Audience Award (Actress): Juliette Binoche - Chocolat
Audience Award (Director): Jean-Pierre Jeunet - Amélie
Life Achievement Award: Monty Python

Independent Spirit, held 23 March 2002

Best Feature: Memento [d. Christopher Nolan]
Best First Feature: In the Bedroom [d. Todd Field]
Best Director: Christopher Nolan - Memento
Best Male Lead: Tom Wilkinson - In the Bedroom
Best Female Lead: Sissy Spacek - In the Bedroom
Best Supporting Male: Steve Buscemi - Ghost World
Best Supporting Female: Carrie-Anne Moss - Memento
Best Debut Performance: Paul Dano - L.I.E.
Best Screenplay: Christopher Nolan - Memento
Best First Screenplay: Daniel Clowes, Terry Zwigoff - Ghost World
Best Cinematography: Peter Deming - Mulholland Drive
Best Documentary: Dogtown and Z-Boys [d. Stacy Peralta]
Best Foreign Film: Amélie [d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet]
Someone to Watch Award: Debra Eisenstadt - Daydream Believer

Golden Globes, held 20 January 2002

Picture (Drama): A Beautiful Mind [d. Ron Howard]
Picture (Comedy/Musical): Moulin Rouge! [d. Baz Luhrmann]
Director: Robert Altman - Gosford Park
Actor (D): Russell Crowe - A Beautiful Mind
Actress (D): Sissy Spacek - In the Bedroom
Actor (M/C): Nicole Kidman - Moulin Rouge!
Actress (M/C): Renée Zellweger - Nurse Betty
Supporting Actor: Jim Broadbent - Iris
Supporting Actress: Jennifer Connelly - A Beautiful Mind
Screenplay: Akiva Goldsman - A Beautiful Mind
Foreign Film: No Man's Land [d. Danis Tanovic]
Cecil B. DeMille Award: Harrison Ford

Césars Awards (France), held 2 March 2002

Best Film (Meilleur film): Amélie [d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet]
Best Director (Meilleur réalisateur): Jean-Pierre Jeunet - Amélie
Best Actor (Meilleur acteur): Michel Bouquet - Comment j'ai tué mon père (How I Killed My Father)
Best Actress (Meilleure actrice): Emmanuelle Devos - Sur mes lèvres (Read My Lips)
Best Supporting Actor (Meilleur acteur dans un second rôle): André Dussollier - La Chambre des officiers (Officer's Ward)
Best Supporting Actress (Meilleure actrice dans un second rôle): Annie Girardot - La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher)
Most Promising Actor (Meilleur espoir masculin): Robinson Stévenin - Mauvais genres (Transfixed)
Most Promising Actress (Meilleur espoir féminin): Rachida Brakni - Chaos
Best Screenplay (Meilleur scénario): Jacques Audiard, Tonino Benacquista - Sur mes lèvres
Best Cinematography (Meilleure photographie): Tetsuo Nagata - La Chambre des officiers
Best Foreign Film (Meilleur film étranger): Mulholland Drive [d. David Lynch]
Best First Film (Meilleur premier film): No Man's Land [d. Danis Tanovic]
Honorary Césars: Anouk Aimée, Jeremy Irons, Claude Rich

Goya Awards (Spain), held 2 February 2002

Best Film (Mejor Película): The Others [d: Alejandro Amenábar]
Best Director (Mejor Director): Alejandro Amenábar - The Others
Best New Director (Mejor Director Novel): Juan Carlos Fresnadillo - Intacto
Best Actor (Mejor Actor Principal): Eduard Fernández - Fausto 5,0
Best Actress (Mejor Actriz Principal): Pilar López de Ayala - Juana la Loca (Mad Love)
Best Supporting Actor (Mejor Actor de Reparto): Emilio Gutiérrez Caba - El cielo abierto
Best Supporting Actress (Mejor Actriz de Reparto): Rosa Maria Sardà - Sin vergüenza (No Shame)
Best New Actor (Mejor Actor Revelación): Leonardo Sbaraglia - Intacto
Best New Actress (Mejor Actriz Revelación): Paz Vega - Lucía y el sexo (Sex and Lucía)
Best Original Screenplay (Mejor Guión Original): Alejandro Amenábar - The Others
Best Adapted Screenplay (Mejor Guión Adaptado): Jorge Juan Martínez, Carlos Molinero, Clara Pérez Escrivá, Lola Salvador - Salvajes (Savages)
Best Spanish Language Foreign Film (Mejor Película Extranjera de Habla Hispana): La fuga [The Escape], Argentina [d: Eduardo Mignogna] Best European Film (Mejor Película Europea): Amèlie [d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet] Honorary Goya: Juan Antonio Bardem

Hong Kong Film Awards, held 21 April 2002

Best Film: Shaolin Soccer [d: Stephen Chow]
Best Director: Stephen Chow - Shaolin Soccer
Best Actor: Stephen Chow - Shaolin Soccer
Best Actress: Sylvia Chang - Forever and Ever
Best Supporting Actor: Wong Yut Fei - Shaolin Soccer
Best Supporting Actress: Karena Lam - July Rhapsody
Best New Performer: Karena Lam - July Rhapsody
Best Screenplay: Ivy Ho - July Rhapsody
Best Asian Film: Spirited Away, Japan [d. Hayao Miyazaki]

The Japanese Academy Awards, held 8 March 2002

Best Film: Spirited Away [d. Hayao Miyazaki]
Best Director: Isao Yukisada - Go
Best Actor: Yôsuke Kubozuka - Go
Best Actress: Keiko Kishi - Kah-chan
Best Supporting Actor: Tsutomu Yamazaki - Go
Best Supporting Actress: Kou Shibasaki - Go
Best Screenplay: Kankurô Kudô - Go
Best Foreign Film: Billy Elliot [d. Stephen Daldry]
Popularity Award: Platonic Sex [d. Masako Matsûra]
Lifetime Achievement: Hayao Miyazaki

Genie Awards (Canada), held 7 February 2002

Best Film: Atanarjuat [d. Zacharias Kunuk]
Best Director: Zacharias Kunuk - Atanarjuat
Best Actor: Brendan Fletcher - The Law of Enclosures
Best Actress: Elise Guilbault - La femme qui boit
Best Supporting Actor: Vincent Gale - Last Wedding
Best Supporting Actress: Molly Parker - Last Wedding
Best Screenplay: Paul Apak Angilirq - Atanarjuat
Claude Jutra Award: Zacharias Kunuk - Atanarjuat

Directors Guild of America, given 9 March 2002

Best Director (Narrative): Ron Howard - A Beautiful Mind
Best Director (Documentary): Chris Hegedus, Jehane Noujaim - Startup.com

Screen Actors Guild Awards, held 11 March

Outstanding Male Actor in a Leading Role: Russell Crowe - A Beautiful Mind Outstanding Female Actor in a Leading Role: Halle Berry - Monster's Ball Outstanding Male Actor in a Supporting Role: Ian McKellan - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Outstanding Female Actor in a Supporting Role: Helen Mirren - Gosford Park Outstanding Performance by the Cast of a Theatrical Motion Picture: Gosford Park, given to Eileen Atkins, Bob Balaban, Alan Bates, Charles Dance, Stephen Fry, Michael Gambon, Richard E. Grant, Tom Hollander, Derek Jacobi, Kelly Macdonald, Helen Mirren, Jeremy Northam, Clive Owen, Ryan Philippe, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Geraldine Somerville, Sophie Thompson, Emily Watson, James Wilby

Razzies

Worst Film: Freddy Got Fingered [d. Tom Green]
Worst Director: Tom Green - Freddy Got Fingered
Worst Actor: Tom Green - Freddy Got Fingered
Worst Actress: Mariah Carey - Glitter
Worst Supporting Actor: Charlton Heston - Cats & Dogs, Planet of the Apes, Town & Country
Worst Supporting Actress: Estella Warren - Planet of the Apes, Driven Worst Screenplay: Tom Green, Derek Harvie - Freddy Got Fingered
Worst Remake/Sequel: Planet of the Apes [d. Tim Burton]

The Year 2001: A Year In Review

2010-05-02T20:49:00.000+01:00

As the year 2001 comes to a close, we're once again joined by T.S of the formidable Screen Savour - a great blog, devoted to the world of cinema, where a passion and knowledge of the artform is on constant display with one superb post after another - and his continuing series, in which he reviews the year in film and lists 'ten of the best'. So, what we want to know is, has T.S got it right? Do you agree or disagree? Counting Down The Zeroes wants to hear from you, so why not give us your top ten and let the sparks fly.

Although I prefer to shy away from discussions about whether a particular year is a good one or a bad one for movies, I'll say straight up that I've always found 2001 to be a weird year for movies. I can remember being wowed by very little before September of that year, and then afterward there was that pervasive feeling of numbness for the remaining months. It's the only year of the decade that I've required copious amounts of time of revisiting and re-examining films with somewhat fresh eyes and to figure out what, if any, thematic relationship forms from my ten favorites. As far as I can tell, it's not much — perhaps some quirky selections here and there, and a general elusion (brought on by underwhelmed personal response) of a dissatisfying selection of mainstream American cinema.

And yet that's one of the curious aspects of 2001: critics on the whole tend to be an homogenous group, and looking back on the year produced a fractured evaluation. For A Beautiful Mind to win Best Picture at that year's Oscars seemed to say less about the quality of the film as it did about what felt like the normal thing to do: a popular actor, a previously uncrowned director, a tragic but redeeming biopic. I can imagine many Academy voter shrugging as if to say, Sounds good enough to me.

That fractured sense of critical assessment has produced a disproportionately large number of cult films from the year as well. Amores Perros, Donnie Darko, Memento, The Royal Tenenbaums, Waking Life (all on my list), and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Mulholland Drive, Amélie, Ghost World, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Sexy Beast have all produced an hermetically ravenous fan base; from what I understand from my own students, many of them still float around from dorm-room to dorm-room on college campuses. The act of elevating many of those films to a top-ten list at the end of 2001 seemed like digging into the underground and abandoning the mainstream; but yesterday's neglected films have become today's pop hits.

Like I said, a weird year indeed. It might be enough to prove that point by noting my favorite film of the year, In the Mood for Love, is considered by many to be a 2000 release. (At least as far as its official year is concerned; my system of eligible films is outlined below.) If you took that film out of my equation, I'd have a difficult time selecting a real #1.

So here are my selections for favorite films of 2001, ranked alphabetically. For all annual lists post-1998 (the year I began publishing reviews), my standard of eligibility has always been based on first-run theatrical release in the United States during the year. If you don't see something you might have expected, check back for 2002.

My favorites:

• Ali (d. Michael Mann, United States)

Michael Mann's Ali was knocked around a bit unfairly for telling the story of Muhammad Ali (nee Cassius Clay) in virtual long-shot instead of close-up, but I find something very thrilling and honest about the way the story of the legendary boxer weaves and floats around the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. Mann is a virtuosic director, most abundantly on display in the film's first heart-pounding thirty minutes and in the detail-oriented and beautifully rendered recreations of Ali's fights (without a doubt influenced by the genre-defining work of Michael Chapman and Martin Scorsese in Raging Bull). Will Smith is a powerhouse as Ali, and Jon Voight practically channels the soul of Howard Cossell. In a decade saturated by biopics, only the strong survive — and Ali's got it.

• Amores Perros (d. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Mexico)

Chaotic yet graceful, breakneck yet arresting, the first feature film from Alejandro González Iñárritu is a hyperlink tale of three stories with their own angles on desperation, isolation, humanity, and the boundaries of love in Mexico City. There isn't a lot of new ground broken, at least as far as the formal elements are concerned, but there's a degree of control on the narrative and the production on the part of González Iñárritu that's noteworthy in its rarity and its simultaneous verve.

• Donnie Darko (d. Richard Kelly, United States)

Drawing inspiration from sources as varied as Robert Zemeckis to David Lynch, first-time director Richard Kelly concocted this bizarre, and for its time oddly relevant, psychological drama set against suburban satire and the coming-of-age of an angst-filled and medicated high school student (Jake Gyllenhaal). The film has become a sensation on DVD, even leading to a director's cut with about twenty extra minutes; but in its theatrical release, only weeks after 9/11, it stewed in the limbic margins of my mind, more so than Lynch's own Mulholland Drive. Kelly's script isn't airtight, and at times he seems to rely on flat characters that are present simply to make a metaphoric point, but there's no doubt in my mind he's produced an original work that's as rewarding as it is irresistible.

• In the Bedroom (d. Todd Field, United States)

Adapted from a short story by the brilliant writer Andre Dubus, In the Bedroom is the third and final film by a first-time director to come onto my top ten list for the year. Todd Field, an actor and photographer, helmed this story of domestic tragedy that socks you in the gut and, thanks to the fierce performances from all the major players, forces the pain to linger. It would be too much to reveal the story to the unacquainted, and much better for those who have not seen this film to do so soon. Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek inhabit grief in all its multitudes and complexities; both were nominated for Oscars, as was Field for the screen adaptation and the film itself for Best Picture. (A fifth nomination went to Marisa Tomei, for supporting actress.) Based on the nominees that year, if I'd had a vote, Wilkinson and Spacek would have each walked away with gold, and Field would have won his two categories.

• In the Mood for Love (d. Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong)

The best film of the year, and a top-five contender at this moment for best film of the decade, is Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love. What a knockout film this is: quiet, psychologically penetrating, heartbreaking, and so marvelously gorgeous. This is the nuanced and difficult story of two neighbors (Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai) in 1962 Hong Kong who discover their respective spouses are having an affair with each other, and the troubling psychological waters the neighbors encounter when they begin counseling each other to understand why and how this has happened — and eventually, perhaps most disturbingly, how it happens, down to the subtlest movements. The film's most impressive element, if such a singular aspect be identified as its best part, is the mesmerizing way Wong takes such a simple concept adapted from a short story and folds it back in on itself with repetition of style and theme (the cinematography and editing are formidable). Wong has spoken at length about the influence Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo had on the production, particularly the development of such a moody relationship, and it's without exaggeration that I say he does Hitchcock proud.

• Memento (d. Christopher Nolan, United States)

Memento is a gimmick, but in the able hands of director-writer Christopher Nolan, an entirely successful one. A detective story that unfolds forward and backward simultaneously due to its protagonist's haunting form of memory loss, we follow Leonard (Guy Pierce) reassembling the pieces of his life and seeking vengeance for a crime against a loved one. This is "meta-noir," as J. Hoberman called it, and as such it doesn't quite have the same shelf-life of other films; after one viewing, this thriller never plays the same way again (not so ironically, you might guess), but what it gives on that first viewing is masterful.

• Monsters, Inc. (d. Peter Docter, United States)

No studio has had a better decade than Pixar, and their first official entry into the 2000s, Monsters, Inc., sometimes gets lost among the few better films they've made. There's a lot to admire in this, the studio's fourth feature-film, from the satiric riff on the bottom-dollar 9-to-5 workweek to the inventive re-imagining of there's-a-monster-in-the-closet to the impeccable choice of voice-work (Billy Crystal and John Goodman as heroes, Steve Buscemi and James Coburn as villains). From a purely technical standpoint, I think Monsters, Inc., is an important film because I believe it's the first Pixar film that made a lot of people sit back and say whoa. The attention of detail in the computer animation was, for the first time, truly stupendous, from the textured pieces of wood in the closet doors to the million waving hairs in Sulley's coat as he's banished into the Himalayas. Not to mention, the little girl is about the most adorable child ever animated.

• Ocean's Eleven (d. Steven Soderbergh, United States)

To call Ocean's Eleven a guilty pleasure would give you the wrong idea. If I were ranking these, this would definitely be toward the bottom, no doubt, but I also don't believe there's anything inherently guilty about adoring a stylishly slick and sublime heist movie from the capable hands of Steven Soderbergh and presented by a cast that, gasp, genuinely appears to be having a good time. By scrapping basically everything about the campy '60s Rat Pack film and infusing it with nothing but fun craftsmanship, it's impossible for me to deny the joy forms a symbiotic relationship with at least this particular audience member.

• The Royal Tenenbaums (d. Wes Anderson, United States)

In The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson continues his stylistic signature first brought to acclaim in 1998's Rushmore; in that way, you can't really call what he's doing here fresh, but I think there's an argument to be made that Anderson's cinematic language feels more developed and mature in this twisted and funny film, one of the year's best comedies due to director's vision and the script co-written by him and Owen Wilson. As far as the director's filmography is concerned, at this point The Royal Tenenbaums is the Andersonian ideal: outsiders, prodigies, failures, and the intellectually tortured all under one roof, led by Gene Hackman in a splendid performance as the self-centered and ostracized Tenenbaum patriarch.

• Waking Life (d. Richard Linklater, United States)

The form here is interpolated rotoscoping — or, layering animation atop previously filmed material. The effect is often hallucinogenic and definitely dreamlike, two qualities that match the thematic material of Richard Linklater's cerebral Waking Life in sheer harmony. Essentially this rather remarkable and beautiful film is a series of conversations — poetic, philosophical, post-modern — that ask the sorts of questions with answers like nailed down Jell-O. Its saving grace is the way the film looks and feels against our eyes and brains; a backslide into pretension seems only millimeters away, but mercifully we never go there. Linklater is too talented for that, so he delivers an unbound, offbeat affirmation as only he can.

Honorable Mention:

A Beautiful Mind (d. Ron Howard); Black Hawk Down (d. Ridley Scott); The Circle (d. Jafar Panahi); The Gleaners and I (d. Agnès Varda); Gosford Park (d. Robert Altman); The Man Who Wasn't There (d. Joel & Ethan Coen); Mulholland Drive (d. David Lynch); Shrek (d. Andrew Adamson & Vicky Jenson); Under the Sand (d. François Ozon); Werckmeister Harmonies (d. Bela Tarr)

Care to agree, disagree? Have your own top ten for the year 2001? Counting Down the Zeroes wants to hear your opinion on the year 2001.

The Year 2001: Gosford Park (Robert Altman)

2010-04-27T15:45:00.001+01:00

Marking a return to form for the maverick filmmaker Robert Altman, the whodunnit homage, comedy of manners, Gosford Park took seven Oscar nominations in the year 2001, as well as nabbing a Golden Globe for the director himself. Set in 1930's England, with another, vast, emsembled cast at his disposal, he plays free and loose with this murder-mystery, dispelling the limitations of the genre and highlighting his own unique vision and master storytelling in the process. Stacia of She Blogged By Night; a fabulous blog that has rightly gained a nomination for best blog at this year's LAMMY's, questions the origins of this film and wonders 'why was it made' as she ponders whether it really is a great film or merely too limited to be 'the revelation that it should have been'.

Gosford Park isn't an immediately impressive film. When released, publicity called it an English murder mystery turned it upside down, made into something it never had been before. I knew the English manor house mystery genre well and was excited at the prospect of a new take on an old friend. After so much anticipation, I watched the film, and found myself frustrated and sad when the entire experience was flat and dull.

In the intervening years I'd decided it was a film I needed to view again. I was so sure I'd missed the big Something that "Gosford Park" had wowed everyone else with. But now I know that, for good or ill, that big Something was only a phantom.

There is no reason to go into depth regarding the plot of "Gosford Park". It's simply not important. All you need to know is that it's 1932, a group of rich people get together at an estate home for a weekend, they bring their servants, a murder happens, and we discover almost everyone has a secret. By the end of the film we understand the substance and the nature of many of the people who holidayed at Gosford Park that weekend.

"Gosford Park" is a solid film, immensely entertaining and gorgeous to look at. The location sets are stunning and the costuming is nearly perfect. The cast, of course, is one for the ages. Alan Bates was sheer perfection in a role that subtly held the entire film together. Emily Watson was also amazing, hitting the notes of this period piece perfectly. While the film was obviously intended to be an ensemble piece, Bates and Watson were the cornerstones and the film could not have succeeded without them.

Yet there were several false notes in the film. Ryan Phillippe's character was poorly realized, and frankly Phillippe didn't have the presence or talent to elevate or layer the role. The character of Isobel struck entirely the wrong tone; the unkempt hair and sullen expression were simplistic cliches straight out of high school theatre, unfortunate in a performance that required complexity. Every character in this film was regarded at a distance, which is a defining point of Altman's ensemble casts, but the characters of Mr Blonde and Mr Standish were so vague that it muddied the plot to an unnecessary degree. It didn't help that Mr Standish, from a distance, looked just like Mr Nesbitt. Great for the plot, terrible for the viewer.

Maybe it's these minor missteps that make me feel the film is flat, that there is some piece of the Altman puzzle that never lands in its proper place. It's borned from the insistence of Altman, writer Julian Fellows, and contemporary reviewers that "Gosford Park" did something to the standard English manor house murder mystery that had never been done before. Yet everyone says "Gosford Park" is "Upstairs, Downstairs" meets Agatha Christie, and it is. How do you reconcile these two facts? How can the film be a retread of decades-old formats and at the same time be unique?

The manor house murder mystery is a genre that has been alive and well for decades; it's a subgenre of the standard mystery, which emerged roughly 150 years ago. It's obvious that Altman knew all about the murder mystery genre. He cast a crew of actors -- most notably Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Derek Jacobi, Maggie Smith, Geraldine Somerville and Clive Owen -- who starred or featured in famous television murder mysteries. References to mysteries abound: Stephen Fry's Inspector Thompson is every befuddled, trenchcoated inspector rolled into one (and topped off with M. Hulot's pipe). Henry Denton is as Maigret as one can be without sharing the same name. The movie Weissman is making is a Charlie Chan film, and there are so many Agatha Christie references that the movie might as well have been written by her.

Further, the "Upstairs, Downstairs" aspect is acknowledged with the characters named Stockbridge, and with the casting of Eileen Atkins (Mrs. Croft), who co-created "Upstairs, Downstairs". Elements of other films, such as the aforementioned M Hulot and influences from Renoir's "The Rules of the Game", are used intentionally.

However, there are many things Altman himself said were done to specifically create a unique take on a murder mystery. For example, he layered the story with dozens of characters who are seen only for a moment here and there, with simultaneous dialogue and vague relationships with each other. That's his signature style, of course, and the film is hailed as being remarkable simply because it is a murder mystery in the inimitable Altman style. Altman also said that he wanted to show this story from the servant's point of view because it had not been done before. He also famously admitted that he added eight "fucks" to the dialogue to make sure it got an R rating and kids wouldn't come into the theatre to see it. Lastly, the real movie "Charlie Chan in London" was added as a plot point, and the real movie star Ivor Novello was added as a character.

All of these things circled in my head while I pondered at the why of "Gosford Park". Why was it made? And why did I need to know? No other movie has made me so curious as to how it sprang into existence. I couldn't reconcile Altman's obvious deep knowledge of the genre with the fact that the film was intended to be an exceptional, novel approach. I wanted to know why so many details about a real film and a real movie star were included, especially since some of the incidental bits mentioned about the film were patently untrue. A film buff would catch the references, but would also know some of those references were wrong. And how could Altman say that focusing on the servants had never been done before when he, at the same time, said he was influenced by "The Rules of the Game"?

I believe that Altman fell into the trap, the same trap every mystery movie director and writer has fallen into over the past 150 years, the one where they think they've created a story that no one has ever done before. Reinventing the mousetrap, setting the locked-door puzzle on its ear. I've seen it a million times before. When it comes to murder mysteries, the wheel is never reinvented, it's always just as round as when we started.

But I also think he was aware enough to know that a murder mystery buff is going to solve the crime immediately, that a film buff is going to catch his references, that a star-studded cast had been done before. Because of this, he tried to make the journey through the film the focus, not the solution to the crime. That's what all murder mysteries do nowadays. We don't watch Poirot because we want to find out who the murderer is, we want to see Hercule and Hastings banter with each other, we want to see the fabulous art deco buildings used for locations.

Ultimately, though, there were enough flaws to prevent "Gosford Park" from being the revelation it should have been. While Altman's famous simultaneous dialogue was impeccable, it simply didn't fit the story. The atmosphere of the film just didn't mix with the clever little nods to mystery cliches. The constantly-moving camerawork kept one on edge, but there was no release at the finale, and the viewer is left wondering why this tension was created in the first place.

"Gosford Park" may not be the staggeringly singular genre-bender it was hailed as, but it is a love letter to murder mysteries. A sumptuous setting and wardrobe, a cast that one has never seen before or since, a fun story line, and the joy everyone felt while working on the film was palpable. And that's more than enough.

The Year 2001: Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann)

2009-08-30T12:25:00.001+01:00

The final part to his 'red curtain' trilogy, following on from the international success of Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Romeo + Juliet (1996), Baz Luhrmann, not one to take subtle road when big, bold and brassy will do, takes it one step further with the stunning visual feast, fanatically edited and beautifully photographed, a throughly modern take on the musical, Moulin Rouge! Once again we're joined by Reel Whore, of Reel Whore, 'cinema's bitch', a great writer to boot, with posts full of acid barbs, in your face humour all marked with a unique and insightful look at the world of cinema, makes a case for this 'exhilarating' film and wonders why it was overlooked at the Academy Awards.

A recent advert for the DVD release of Slumdog Millionaire touts it as the best film of the decade. I couldn't help but laugh when I read this. Have people forgotten about Moulin Rouge!?

Slumdog Millionaire and Moulin Rouge! have similar roots; both projects' directors were inspired by Bollywood films. However, while Millionaire was the Academy darling this past year, winning eight of its ten nominations, Moulin Rouge! was widely snubbed, winning only Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction from its eight nominations. Baz Luhrmann (Romeo + Juliet) wasn't even nominated for Best Director! Could it be Rouge! is the inferior, less entertaining of the two?

I think not. The exclamation point in the title says it all; expect excitement. On the day I saw Moulin Rouge! in theaters, many audience members were not prepared. I know this because I watched at least four people leave before the Diamond Dogs began to can-can. When friends asked my opinion of Moulin Rouge!, I made it clear that it was awesome, but you had to give it at least fifteen minutes to adjust to the frantic pacing and wild cinematography.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, Moulin Rouge! is the tale of Christian (Ewan McGregor, Big Fish), a young British writer who moves to Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century to embrace the Bohemian lifestyle. Shortly after arriving, Christian meets the dwarf Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo, Spawn) who is developing a new play with his Bohemian friends for the Moulin Rouge's owner Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent, Gangs of New York). Christian and his mad writing skills are quickly accepted into the group and he is presented to the Rouge's star, Satine (Nicole Kidman, To Die For), to secure her favor for their play. Only problem is Satine mistakes Christian for the Rouge's potential financier, the Duke (Richard Roxburgh, Van Helsing). Ultimately Satine must seduce the Duke, while keeping her burgeoning romance with Christian a secret.

Once Christian and Lautrec meet, there is barely a moment's pause in the singing. Beginning with music from the Sound of Music flowing to the popular cover of Lady Marmalade and culminating in my favorite scene, a medley of love songs atop an Elephant's head, it's nearly forty-five minutes before the film returns to a standard story format. In Moulin Rouge! you find popular songs from artists such as David Bowie, Madonna and Nirvana in mash-ups against seemingly contrary songs, sampled as part of a larger medley, or used in their entirety to particularly comic effect. You might think the result would be irritating, but it's quite captivating. The music of Moulin Rouge! grabbed me in such a way that I snatched up the soundtrack the first chance I got and still give it a listen every couple of months. Until researching this post, I never knew they released a Volume Two. Needless to say, I will cop that tout de suite.

The rousing music is barely even the half of it. Colors jump off the screen. Deep reds, cool blues, neon greens and pale whites are so crisp they crackle. When the doors to the Moulin Rouge first open, a swirling, dizzying flurry of vibrant costumes and leering faces assaults the eyes; Luhrmann uses the visual overstimulation to mimic Christian's perspective on his virgin voyage to the cabaret.

If the music and imagery don't excite you, gazing upon Ewan McGregor will topple your defenses. His boyish smile and adamant belief in the love that he and Satine share is irresistible. You can feel McGregor giving it his all in every scene. Kidman is equally impressive. In fact, from Broadbent's boisterous showmanship to Leguizamo's absinthe-tinged lisp and Roxburgh's nasally tantrums, all the actors deliver scene after hilarious scene. Like Luhrmann's visuals, they can turn on a dime to deliver the most heart-wrenching and dismal moments, changing the playful nature of Rouge! into a rueful affair.

Outstanding music and exhilarating visuals presented by some of the most talented actors--you couldn't ask for anything more. Bollywood films are designed to give audiences their money's worth and Luhrmann does exactly that with Moulin Rouge!.

The Year 2001: Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)

2009-08-26T23:01:00.002+01:00

Ranked amongst his finest work, David Lynch's critically acclaimed neo-noir/mystery/psychological thriller/surrealist - whatever you want to label it, you would be hard pressed to find an equal in the year 2001 - had audiences totally puzzled but exhilarated with its nightmarish take on the Hollywood-on-Hollywood movie. Tony Dayoub of Cinema Viewfinder; his excellent film blog that manages to mix reviews and posts on world cinema, established classics, independent film and popular culture with relative ease, check out his latest, excellent Star Trek podcasts for a great example of his versatility, tracks the history of this marvellous film, which started life as a 'TV pilot for ABC' before transcending into 'one of the best films of the decade'.

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive began life as a TV pilot for ABC, the same network which aired Twin Peaks - Lynch's greatest mainstream success. It would be interesting to see how each show would fare in today's television landscape, one where serialized shows like Lost have succeeded, in part because ratings expectations are much lower and cable's serials lead the pack in competing for viewers' attention. In any case, the TV network was not ready for a mysterious drama set in Los Angeles where the central MacGuffin was two women's search for one's forgotten identity. So Lynch did something similar to what he did for the European theatrical release of the Twin Peaks pilot. He fashioned a lengthy ending, tying up the open-ended plotline, and got the rights to release the film theatrically.

Naomi Watts plays Betty, a stereotypical Midwestern woman who moves to Hollywood to become an actress. Naive and overeager, she is determined to prove herself in the corrupt industry town. Meanwhile, a woman receives a head injury in a car accident on Mulholland Drive. Dazed, she finds her way into the apartment that Betty is moving into.

Betty runs across the enigmatic accident victim in her very own shower, a woman struggling to remember her identity who starts calling herself Rita (Laura Elena Harring) after spotting a poster of Gilda in Betty's apartment.

Subplots and seemingly unrelated characters intrude on the central plot. No doubt these were to be coherent subplots on the prospective TV series. One such storyline involves rising movie director, Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), whose luck turns for the worse after being threatened by two heavies seeking to cast one Camilla Rhodes (Melissa George) as the star of his next picture. These plots would have continued and tied in to the main story had Mulholland Drive gone to series. Instead, Lynch uses them to fold the movie in on itself, tying Camilla and Adam to Rita in the film's climax, bringing up questions of identity and reality versus surreality, themes that recur often within Lynch's work, but are distilled here to their purest form.

One can almost see the invisible line that Lynch draws at the point where Mulholland Drive departs from its relatively conventional TV origins to the surreal realm in which he frequently wanders. It is about an hour and a half in when the movie metamorphoses from a neo-noir Nancy Drew to a haunting exploration of the obsessive ardor Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts again) feels for Camilla Rhodes (Laura Elena Harring again).

Diane awakes into a nightmare of a life, as if the first part of the film was a desperate dream formed by her fragile mind to put things right in her sad existence. Whereas Betty and Rita make love after bonding over the mystery of Rita's identity, Camilla rebuffs Diane, choosing director Adam instead. The promise Betty displayed as an actress in the first part has evaporated, with Adam giving the lead role in his film to Camilla rather than Diane.

Identities transmute into new ones. The real merges with the surreal in the most necessary way yet for a Lynch film. The director even finds moments to comment on the part he plays as a master of ceremonies in these proceedings, as evoked by the stage magician that helps usher in the tonal shift at the point of departure in the film.

Consciously or not, Lynch refers to other works of his including those that have yet to be: once, when he enlists Rebekah Del Rio to sing her version of Orbison's "Crying" (Blue Velvet's iconic scene where Dean Stockwell mimes to Orbison's "In Dreams"); once again, when the electrical surges of the magic show help to transmogrify Betty into Diane (Lost Highway, Twin Peaks); and finally, when the actress' descent into madness foreshadows the insanity of Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) in Inland Empire (2006).

Mulholland Drive is the apotheosis of Lynch's filmography, transcending its humble TV beginnings to become one of the best films of the decade.

The Year 2001: The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)

2009-08-19T21:33:00.001+01:00

At once richly ironic, blackly comic and daubed in pathos, The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson's star-studded packed indie hit, charts the life and times of a once gifted trio of siblings, deserted by their wayward father who returns to the family nucleus to make amends for transgressions past. A wry, knowing and beautifully shot film, Pat Piper of the formidable Lazy Eye Theatre; his irreverent, on the nose film blog, full of left-field insights on the workings of film and wickedly funny posts, takes a, typically, side glance at the wonder of this film by concentrating on 'the anti-hero of the year 2001', Royal Tenenbaum, in this brilliant piece for Counting Down The Zeroes.

When I originally saw The Royal Tenenbaums in the theater, I wouldn't say I was impressed by it. That's to say it didn't play to my expectations. I loved Rushmore for its eccentricities and for the strange camaraderie between Blume and Fischer. But truth to tell, Rushmore is easy to like. Its quirk plays to a larger audience. So I suppose I was expecting more of the same with The Royal Tenenbaums. At the time, I should have praised Wes Anderson for not digging into the same bag, but instead I criticized him for it.

Upon further viewings, I have come to love this film. I have said it before, and I will say it again - The Royal Tenenbaums is as close to a piece of art on film as I have ever seen. Every scene is perfectly framed. Every movement, perfectly choreographed. Every line, perfectly delivered. There are so many things to write about this film. I could do a weeks worth of material, but I'll spare you all from that. Ric at Film For The Soul has told me that for Counting Down The Zeros, I have carte blanche which may or may not be a good thing. So instead of writing a traditional review, I'm instead going to write about my favorite character of the film, Royal Tenenbuam.

Royal Tenenbaum is a piece of work. At one moment repulsive, the next touchingly sweet. Royal calls them as he sees them, and does so with the tact of a five year old. One can stand around and debate whether Royal is an asshole or simply just a son-of-a-bitch for hours. The evidence is certainly there. But then you'd miss the fact that he is the glue of the Tenenbaums. As dysfunctional as all of them are, they are less so when Royal is around.

After being separated from his wife and family for several years, Royal attempts to get back into the family fold by faking stomach cancer. It's a shrewd ploy, but it plays off the universal truth that crisis brings us together. Crisis makes us forgive and forget. But there's a lot of forgiving and forgetting to be done and Royal hasn't given himself much time.

One can always question Royals intentions. Does he still love Etheline? Does he even love his children? The story plays as if Royal is attempting to redeem himself. To ask forgiveness. His disease is fake, but Royal truly acts as if he has one last shot to make things right. Only times are different. The children are grown up and they are facing real-life problems. Richie's suicide. Chas' inability to deal with the death of his wife. Margot's attachment issues. Even Eli's drug addiction. But like all anti-heroes, Royal falls into each situation and rises to the occasion.

What makes Royal so amicable is that he's played by Gene Hackman. It's hard to imagine anyone else playing this character, which goes to show how perfect Hackman made it. Played by a lesser, this could have been a disaster. All asshole and no heart. There is a struggle within Royal of wanting to do bad, but trying to do good and Hackman always keeps a good balance without tipping one way or the other. Hackman does just enough to show that Royal is redeemable without going overboard. There's an exchange between Royal and Richie towards the end of the movie. When Royal tells him that this near death experience has given him a new lease on life, Richie reminds him that he's not dying. Royal's response to this is "but I'm going to live." It's a great line not only for its humor, but for the volumes it says about the character. And Hackman delivers it with a kind of glee that makes you love the character, even when he's bullshitting you. And there's another line around the same time. Royal says "the past six days have been the best six days of probably my whole life." The narrator then follows with "immediately after making this statement, Royal realized that it was true." Even without the narration, you believe Royal because Hackman's performance makes it true.

As much of a character as Royal might be, he's still a real person, facing real problems. Take away all his quirks, and he's just a guy looking for redemption. It's a universal message and what I think is interesting is the way Wes Anderson has spun it. There are those who believe that some things can never be mended. That if you let the problems go too long, the pain becomes too deep. Yet, the story of Royal and the Tenenbaums tells us that it's never too late. That love comes in many forms and that love is unconditional. And because of that even the worst characters are redeemable. Even Royal.

The Year 2001: Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson)

2009-08-18T20:26:00.000+01:00

There's no doubting the movie event of the year 2001, taking an extraordinary amount of time, talent and money to bring it to the screen, Peter Jackson's first chapter of the world renowned fantasy epic Lord of the Rings - all three parts were incidentally filmed back to back - The Fellowship of the Ring became a huge box-office success and upped the ante when it came to event cinema. Once again we're joined by the awesome J.D of Radiator Heaven, who we must congratulate for receiving a Lammy nomination for best reviewer, and no wonder considering this great submission to Counting Down The Zeroes, in which J.D marks this film as one of those rare things, a film 'that lives up to its mountains of hype'.

It was the film many thought would never happen and that languished in development hell for years, bouncing from studio to studio until New Line Cinema took a very big gamble with filmmaker Peter Jackson who, at that point in his career, was known for making slapsticky low budget horror films (Braindead) and had one art house hit (Heavenly Creatures). He wasn’t someone you would necessarily entrust millions upon millions of dollars on making a trilogy of fantasy films – not the most commercially successful genre (Willow, anyone?). Jackson was also tackling the much-beloved series of books by J.R.R. Tolkien, get it wrong and you’re going to have legions of very unhappy fans.

However, Jackson was a fan too and he had a vision, which, with the help of his co-screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, and army of collaborators, brought The Lord of the Rings vividly to life. The first film, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), was a massive critical and commercial success and would be followed by two even more successful sequels, The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003). Everyone has their favorite film of the trilogy and for me it’s the first one because it has an intimate feel rendered on an epic scale, if that makes any sense. In other words, The Fellowship of the Ring is about a small group of characters, the Fellowship, and the journey they undertake.

Jackson establishes this intimacy early on with Bilbo Baggins’ (Ian Holm) birthday celebration. The Special Extended Edition DVD version takes its time introducing the hobbits and their world. Jackson uses warm, inviting colors and folksy music to convey that the hobbits are friendly, down-to-earth people who live in a tight-knit community where everyone knows each other. Most importantly, we are introduced to Frodo (Elijah Wood), the hero of this epic tale. For it is he who Bilbo entrusts with the last remaining Ring that he must to take Mordor to destroy so that it doesn’t fall into the hands of the evil Sauron.

The Shire sequences also establish the dangerously seductive lure of the Ring, the origins of the quest and the creation of the Fellowship as led by the mighty wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen). Aside from Frodo, fellow hobbits Sam (Sean Astin), Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) join him on his journey. The group starts simply enough and over the course of the film others join their ranks, including Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), a human ranger, Legolas (Orlando Bloom), an elvan archer, Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), a grumpy dwarf, and Boromir (Sean Bean), a human fighter. At heart of the Fellowship (and really all three films) is the friendship between Frodo and Sam. It is Sam who looks out for Frodo and sticks with him for the entire quest.

There are all kinds of parallels, story structure-wise, between The Fellowship of the Ring and Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). The Tolkien books were an obvious influence on George Lucas’ films. The main characters from both films are plucked from obscurity, a remote rural environment to go on a dangerous quest and are mentored by an elderly wizard type. Hell, Han Solo and Aragorn are characters cut from the same cloth and are both given cool introductions to establish their respective badass reputations.

Jackson manages to get some career-best performances out of many cast members. Elijah Wood, Sean Astin and Orlando Bloom, in particular, have never done anything better since (or before for that matter, except maybe for Wood and his chilling turn in Sin City) and this film launched a series of very eclectic leading man roles for the always watchable Viggo Mortensen (it doesn’t get more diverse than disparate roles in Hidalgo and Eastern Promises). Both Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee give the film some serious class and loads of genre credibility. It is Wood and Astin that anchor this film and give its heart. The relationship between their two characters epitomizes most noble aspects of friendship and of the Fellowship. This only deepens in subsequent installments.

Once our heroes begin their journey, Jackson establishes a riveting urgency as they are pursued by the nightmarish ringwraiths and a vicious army of orcs. And yet this only strengthens the camaraderie among the hobbits and the rest of the Fellowship despite its dysfunction in the form of Boromir. However, when it matters and when faced with dangerous opponents, they work as a team as evident in the exciting and visceral battle against a monster in Balin’s Tomb and the even grittier battle against the orcs at the film’s climax.

Contrary to popular belief, Peter Jackson did not have a lifelong ambition to adapt Tolkien’s books into films. Producer Saul Zaentz owned the film rights for years and gave them to Jackson when he and Fran Walsh met with him and expressed their passion for the project. Zaentz sold the rights to Miramax who wanted to make only one film with Jackson. Disney was the financial backer but they didn’t believe in the project, refusing to give Miramax the money to make it. Harvey Weinstein, head of Miramax, gave Jackson three weeks to find someone else to make the film and in 1998, New Line agreed to make it into three films. Jackson originally proposed two films but it was New Line’s idea to make three.

In order to cut down on costs, Jackson decided to film all three films back-to-back over a grueling 274-day shooting schedule on location in remote areas of New Zealand in more than 100 locations with 20 major speaking roles and 20,000 extras. At the height or production, the film crew swelled to 1,300 people with seven units shooting multiple elements simultaneously. Jackson and company were at the mercy of New Zealand’s notoriously mercurial weather – unseasonal snowstorms and overnight flooding but in the end, the filmmakers accomplished what they set out to do and the proof is in the impressive final results.

The Fellowship of the Ring broke the opening day record for a December film on Wednesday, earning $18.2 million. It went on to make $314.7 million in North America and $555.9 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $870.7 million.

The Fellowship of the Ring received overwhelmingly positive notices from most of the major film critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Peter Jackson ... has made a work for, and of, our times. It will be embraced, I suspect, by many Tolkien fans and take on aspects of a cult. It is a candidate for many Oscars. It is an awesome production in its daring and breadth, and there are small touches that are just right.” USA Today also gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "this movie version of a beloved book should please devotees as well as the uninitiated." In his review for The New York Times, Elvis Mitchell wrote, "The playful spookiness of Mr. Jackson's direction provides a lively, light touch, a gesture that doesn't normally come to mind when Tolkien's name is mentioned." Entertainment Weekly magazine gave the film an "A" rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "The cast take to their roles with becoming modesty, certainly, but Jackson also makes it easy for them: His Fellowship flows, never lingering for the sake of admiring its own beauty ... Every detail of which engrossed me. I may have never turned a page of Tolkien, but I know enchantment when I see it." In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley praised the cast, in particular, "Mortensen, as Strider, is a revelation, not to mention downright gorgeous. And McKellen, carrying the burden of thousands of years' worth of the fight against evil, is positively Merlinesque." Finally, Time magazine's Richard Corliss praised Jackson's work: "His movie achieves what the best fairy tales do: the creation of an alternate world, plausible and persuasive, where the young — and not only the young — can lose themselves. And perhaps, in identifying with the little Hobbit that could, find their better selves.”

The Fellowship of the Ring is one of those rare films that live up to its mountains of hype. Jackson tells an engaging story and crams as much of the source material as possible into the film. Sure, certain characters and subplots have been cut-out but that is the nature of a feature film adaptation. Maybe some day someone can turn it into a mini-series so that everything can be included. Until then, we have Jackson’s magnificent films to enjoy.

The Year 2001: Waking Life (Richard Linklater)

2009-08-17T23:20:00.000+01:00

Definitely one of 2001's most innovative films, Richard Linklater's Waking Life, used live flesh and blood actors, edited and completed the film as per the norm and then, and this is the seller, stuck animated images, a sort of hi-tech tracing technique, over the footage, leaving a dreamy, trippy rotoscoped movie, the likes of which play tricks with your eyes and your head in equal measure. Shawn Braley of Deadpan, a great writer whose passion and knowledge of film belies his young age, takes on 'the risk taker' director and and hails a film that 'you wish you had more time with' in this brilliant submission to Counting Down The Zeroes.

“Dream is destiny”

So often are films made to entertain, whether it is for the broadest possible audience or for the smallest niche. So often are the first thoughts behind the filmmakers intent is what can entertain, and then what does it mean to the story. While I would argue that Richard Linklater isn’t one of cinema’s most innovative directors by any means, I would say he is a risk taker. He takes major risks by not giving in to formula, and making a film that is right for the story he is creating.

In 2001, With Waking Life; Richard Linklater, took his usual dialogue fused shtick, and mixed it with a fresh new style that adds a much needed element. He places us into the mind of a character simply named Main Character. He doesn’t need a name, because he is all of us. This character is in a perpetual state of dreaming, constantly waking up to find out later he has yet to truly quit dreaming.

Following our Main Character, we go from person to person learning about free will, existentialism, self destruction, lucid dreaming, God, each other, and so many other topics all relating back to our dreams. What’s truly fascinating about Waking Life is its lack of a structure. The film has a nice bookend quality to it, but we don’t have three acts, we have two acts. One where the character is unaware of this dream state, and another where he becomes aware of it.

It is my thought that without interest in the philosophical or intellectual pitter patter of this script, you cannot enjoy it. This is simply due to the fact that often times the viewer is watching other people talking. If what they say is of no interest, than in the end, you will probably gain nothing from Waking Life. I happened to find a lot of what is said very fulfilling. Not only does the narrative discuss moral and ethical problems that our society faces today, but it does so without trying to provide some sort of answer. It simply allows the character to come in contact with all of this information, which is what we do throughout our own lives, and within our dreams that information seems to fish around and come back at us in some way or another.

Waking Life’s rotoscope animation isn’t anything exciting to look at really. This film could have been made without it and still be captivating. What the technique adds to it is that dream-like layer that would be hard to attain with a simple real world transfer. It was an interesting way for Linklater to play out his dream concept on screen.

Waking Life is mostly related to Linklater’s 1991 film Slacker, with its lack of a narrative and joy of intellectual conversation. And while Slacker grabs that early 90’s generation wonderfully, especially that particular group of people in Austin, Texas, it doesn’t seem to add up to much in the end. Waking Life however leaves the viewer wanting more by the time the credits are rolling, not because it needed any more story, but due to the fact that these characters are so engaging, and we get so little time with each of them. It is pretty rare that every character you come into contact with in a movie you wish you had more time with, but Waking Life is able to capture that quality to perfection. Linklater seems to know this and enjoys giving us little glimpses so we always want more.

So much more could be discussed about the different conversations they have, but discussing those discussions would simply ruin the experience of what Waking Life is, a myriad of intellectual curiosity placed within this lucid dream state.

The Year 2001: Artificial Intelligence: A.I (Steven Speilberg)

2009-08-16T21:27:00.000+01:00

The infamous Kubrick/Speilberg hybrid, Artificial Intelligence, was initially greeted by something of a muted, almost disappointed, reception when released at the cinema in 2001, yet lately it's enjoying something of a reassessment and finally gaining some of the praise that fans believe is long overdue. Sam Juliano, of the equally infamous Wonders in the Dark; chapel to superlative defying film criticism, housing a host of wonderful writers that truly love and know their subject, please check out their attempt to list the greatest films of the decade, with help from you, the reader, ruminates over one of Speilberg's 'masterworks', a film 'of lasting and significant emotional resonance', and explains why it's his number one film of the year 2001.

The idea behind A.I. was originally conceived by Stanley Kubrick, who subsequently entrusted the proposed project to Steven Spielberg. When Kubrick died suddenly in 1999, his widow successfully persuaded Spielberg to assume complete artistic control of the film, including the direction. Set in a future time when progress in robotics poses a conceivable menace to the human species, David (Haley Joel Osment), a robotic boy, is the artificial life form who is capable of experiencing love. As a prototype, he is given to a couple whose real son is mired in what appears to be an irreversible coma. After a discordant initiation David and his mother bond, at which point the "real" son miraculously awakens from the coma, rejoins to the family, and tricks David into engaging in dangerous things. The father concludes that they must return the robotic boy to the manufacturer for destruction, but the mother arranges for his escape via abandonment. For the duration of the film David seeks to be reunited with his mother, and for a time is joined by "Gigolo Joe," a robot designed to function as a male prostitute. David becomes frozen I an the ocean, and millennia later--long after the extinction of the human species--robots of the future rescue him and allow him to reunite with his mother for one day that will last in his mind for eternity.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence, fueled by some profound philosophical themes and issues of motherhood, is arguably one of Spielberg's masterworks, and for this writer it ranks with Schindler's List, Empire of the Sun and E. T. on the short list of the director's greatest achievements in cinema. Like the other three, it is extraordinarily moving, and it paints yet again a piercingly provocative view of childhood and of the human condition, tinged with an overwhelming sense of sadness. The film is based on a short story by Brian Aldiss entitled "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," published in 1969, and it draws considerable influence from Disney's Pinocchio.

The setting is futuristic, and the narrative commences after a catastrophic global warming-induced flood that has ravaged the landscape and exacerbated population pressures. Couples are required to secure licenses to have children, and the technological advances have now reached the point where companies are producing mechanical humans that are veritable doppelgangers of the real children, even to the extent of expressing genuine affection. Children who are obedient and stay young forever is an ideal scenario for prospective parents. Of course the very concept that "human love" has been replaced by "machine love" serves as the ironic juxtaposition of a film that strives to portray hope, but instead in large measure presents a dire picture of family disintegration, and lost capacity to love. In effect, the film is made up of three distinct parts. In the first, David strives to assimilate in a human family, while in the second part we follow his adventures during his search, until finally in the third part, he confronts his dream. The first part is clearly the most psychological as it documents the struggle for affection. The second part above all showcases Spielberg's satire of American society in the context of David's discovery of the world around him, after he is stranded alone. David's abandonment suggests a 'saturation' of American consumer society where everything becomes disposable and interchangeable, once the trend is past.

The film's most omnipotent and wrenching scene may well be the aforementioned one where the mother abandons her son to the forest. To save him she had no alternative but to abandon him to survive on his own, as the father had threatened his dismantlement and destruction. The robotic boy's never-ending search for his mother of course mirrors the plethora of adopted, abandoned, lost and abused children in today's society who are enlisted in an eternal mission to find love, only to become entangled in harmful vices when it is unconsummated. Then there's a circus where robots are publicly sacrificed, reflecting a modern-day spectacle that's all the rage in America, where an ecstatic crowd contemplates gigantic robotic trucks that clash and are eventually destroyed. Gladiator, Kubrick's Spartacus and Spielberg's own Schindler's List are all recalled here.

In the film's final chapter David meets Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a superman whose only apparent goal is to satisfy women. Recalling the show Sex in the City, Joe seems to be a direct reference to the increasingly significant phenomenon of unmarried and independent women who do not need men to survive. He brings the child to the red city, a town of a thousand lights where vice reigns in what is an obvious transposition of Las Vegas.

Ultimately, as per chronicled in the utterly arresting sequence near the end, the earth becomes mired in a deep freeze, which is brought about by a planetary collapse of climate. The subsequent melting of the Arctic ice sheets and submersion of the coastal cities ends a two-thousand year freeze, which 'reactivates' David and his stored memories of a human civilization that has long ago disappeared, but his quest for his mother and human love endures with the advanced computer life forms that have replaced humanity--shapeless, sexless, emotionless, yet with a degree of compassion, as they assist David in realizing his goal. The short passage visualizing this fleeting moment is one of the most beautiful codas in all of American cinema since the advent of the new millennium. The conclusion of A.I. hasn't pleased a number of critics and moviegoers, but it's in keeping with the film's myriad themes, which also includes the nature of existence, the responsibility mankind has to the sentient beings that it creates, and the issues that arise when man's technical reach extends beyond his moral grasp.

The film again demonstrates Spielberg's gift with young children, as Haley Joel Osment, shifting seamlessly between a cold machine, a child in love and a dangerously obsessed creature. Francis O'Connor, who plays his mother, effectively conveys the ambivalence of her feelings, while Jude Law as the gigolo shines in his extroverted mode.

Spielberg alumni, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, composer John Williams and editor Michael Kahn all make major contributions to Spielberg's futuristic parable. Kaminski's elegiac canvasses are tinged with melancholy, and are perfectly accentuated by the bittersweet music. But it's a film that stays with you largely because of its philosophical themes, which in the end question the validity of eternal life, the fleeting nature of mortality and how the power of love can transcend centuries. It's a film of lasting and significant emotional resonance and it's my choice for the best movie of 2001.

The Year 2001: Hedwig and the Angry Itch (John Cameron Mitchell)

2009-08-15T22:31:00.000+01:00

Already with a huge cult following in tow, John Cameron Mitchell adapted his co-written off-Broadway hit, Hedwig and the Angry Itch, about a fictional rock & roll band, fronted by a transgendered singer, hailing from Communist Berlin with dreams of becoming American superstars, to high critical acclaim and picked up a host of awards for his efforts. Joseph Belanger of Black Sheep Reviews; his well established, phenomenal, blog with a vast archive of excellent reviews and host of the fabulous Mouton D'Or Awards, recalls his reaction to this highly original film of 2001, in this great submission ot Counting Down The Zeroes, and recalls how totally stunned he was by the whole affair.

I can still remember how I felt after seeing HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH for the first time. It was raining but the only reason I noticed that was because I was wet when I got home. I didn’t feel a thing while I walked outside; I was far too stunned. What had I just seen? I certainly couldn’t say that I had ever seen a rock opera about a transsexual singer/songwriter from East Berlin who had a botched sex change operation and who had immigrated to America only to have all of her music ripped off by a pretty little white boy. The only reassuring thing about this state was that I was fairly certain no one else could say they had seen that before either.

Well, plenty of people had seen the Off-Broadway hit but that is still a pretty paltry faction of people. Yes, HEDWIG got its humble beginnings in New York City. It was written by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask and the title character was performed by Mitchell himself. After the show concluded its run, Mitchell had bigger plans and bigger wigs in mind for both Hedwig and himself. He had never directed a film before but must have felt comfortable enough with this material to take that risk. The risk most certainly paid off and to watch Hedwig, you would never know he had never directed before. Mitchell took a play that was grand in scope but limited in size and eradicated any notion that it had to be contained on a stage. His direction of Hedwig goes from town to town following the former lover who stole all his songs while simultaneously moving back and forth between time and space to tell Hedwig’s incredible story. His performance of Hedwig earned him a Golden Globe nomination and to watch it, you cannot imagine anyone else filling those gigantic platforms.

Sure, it’s all a little jarring at first but then at ten minutes in, a song starts. An animation takes over the screen and tells the story of how love began. The song is called, “The Origin of Love” and the drawings are nothing more than stick figures shaking almost elegantly on parchment but it doesn’t matter. They capture exactly what the complex song is saying so simply. The song details how all of us were once connected with another. There were boys attached to other boys, girls with girls and even girls attached to other boys, if you can believe that. Until one day, the gods decided that too much fun was being had and split all of these perfect unions into halves that would then have to scour the world to find their counterparts. Before this moment, there was no need for love, to search for it, to crave it because it simply didn’t exist. Hedwig is not a man or a woman and certainly not whole. Her search is bold, empowered and unfailing … and will likely never be over.

I think its fair to say that there are still too few people who have seen anything like HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH and I think its fair to say, too few people ever will. Thanks to John Cameron Mitchell though, a select group of fortunate people can now fell a little more open minded and hopefully a little more whole.

The Year 2001: Lantana (Ray Lawrence)

2009-08-14T21:00:00.000+01:00

A huge hit in it's home country, winning 7 AFI Awards, and a slow-burning international arthouse hit, Ray Lawrence's adaptation of Andrew Bovell's play 'Speaking in Tongues', intertwining the fate of 4 couples as their seemingly different lives merge into one, featured on many a critics top 10 list at the end of 2001. Jeff Ignatius of Culture Snob, his superb site, with a great take on the world of film, hosting a superb mix of reviews and regular features, takes on this exceptional and 'quietly devastating' film in this brilliant submission to Counting Down The Zeroes.

Much to my surprise, I can find no reference to the nearly universal cinematic "wedding-ring rule": Any time a wedding ring is a prominent prop or visual motif in a movie, infidelity will be a central theme. The obverse: Any movie with infidelity as a central theme will feature the wedding ring as a prop or visual motif.

I could offer dozens of examples, but the best might be Lantana, which is obviously about sexual straying but has a greater interest in marriage overall, especially the underlying, intertwined issues of trust and honesty. Although it's nearly too blunt in its themes, the movie feels continuously right, nailing not only relationship dynamics but interred grief and pain. Throughout, it gets the tone, nuance, and scale of life correct.

And while it's cheap in the way it misdirects the audience, its methods are easy to justify, and it's an engaging mystery.

With nearly equal weight given to story and character and theme, and a genuine curiosity about even minor players; Lantana is exceptionally well-balanced. Emotions and reactions are properly proportional to their causes, and its events are appropriately major and dramatic in the context of the real world but downright subdued for a fiction. Adapted by Andrew Bovell from his play and directed by Ray Lawrence, Lantana is quietly devastating.

The narrative sounds convoluted, but it's actually elegantly austere. Detective Leon Zat (Anthony LaPaglia) is having an affair with Jane (Rachael Blake), who has recently split from her husband and has a simultaneously genial and strained relationship with the couple next door, Paula and the unemployed Nik. Leon's wife Sonja (Kerry Armstrong) suspects an affair and is seeing therapist Valerie (Barbara Hershey), whose daughter was murdered and who suspects that her husband, John (Geoffrey Rush), leads a secret life. And over all this hangs a dead body seen in the film's opening, as the camera looks deeply into the titular shrubs.

As Roger Ebert correctly summarized:

"We are reminded of the opening of Blue Velvet, which pushed into lawn grass to suggest dark places hidden just out of view. ... Ray Lawrence's film is like Robert Altman's Short Cuts or Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia in the way it shows the lives of strangers joined by unsuspected connections."

These are apt comparisons, but they're also instructive for their contrasts. Lanatana — which was named 2001's best movie by the Australia Film Institute — is tightly circumscribed and intimate compared to the sprawl of Short Cuts and Magnolia, and it lacks the apocalyptic punctuation of an earthquake or frogs. And put beside the transgressions of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Lantana looks downright mundane.

Actually, it is mundane, dealing with troubled suburban marriages and middle-aged angst and the hot action of a Latin dance class and (gasp!) a teenager smoking marijuana. Blue Velvet, Short Cuts, and Magnolia imply filmmaking rigor and excitement and danger, and Lawrence — who has made three features in a quarter centurty — certainly delivers the rigor.

As for the other two, Lantana is deliberately languid, and even more quotidian than it hints. A murder is just an accident, and the imagined connection between the distant John and the gently aggressive therapy client is indeed the product of an anxious mind.

The film sets up lurid scenarios for the audience and the characters, and then it delivers a truth that is utterly ordinary. But because it's so everyday real, it's actually more affecting. John's final confession to Leon is heartbreaking only because his decision was so commonplace and capricious. And it's surprising because we expected something more cinematic and dramatic. The audience is nearly disappointed that he wasn't buggering his wife's patient.

Yet the fact that John isn't cheating underscores that Lantana's interest in infidelity is primarily to access larger issues. The movie appeals to our prurient interests and then guides us to a different place.

The hide, hint, lead, and disabuse narrative strategy (Who is the dead woman, and how did she die? Is Geoffrey Rush having a gay affair? What did Nik do?) makes sense in one way, mimicking characters' suspicions. But that manipulation feels like a cheat — particularly in light of Lantana's themes — creating a tension between the film's means and ends.

And the movie doesn't much care about its women. It was written and directed by men, and its two male leads are ... complicated, but its women are largely interchangeable. The initial mystery, after all, is which of its three female leads will end up dead. Sonja and Valerie hit many of the same notes, questioning their marriages and husbands and looking perpetually uncertain in the world. Meanwhile, LaPaglia and Rush have meaty roles with characters full of ambiguity, and Lantana makes room for Jane's husband and Valerie's patient and Nik. While the film deals with marriage seemingly evenhandedly — neither Leon nor John is let off the hook for his shortcomings — it's clearly more interested in the male side of the equation, and clearly from the male perspective.

I cite these less as criticisms than problems, in the sense that they make Lantana appealingly knotty; it cannot be solved cleanly or easily, which makes the movie itself a mirror of its concerns.

The film is also, despite its careful construction, undoubtedly alive, particularly in seemingly tangential moments — but you should avoid the temptation to call them "small." There's the viscerally sickening collision of a jogging Leon with another man that spurs the expected reaction from the short-fuse cop that then gives way to a surprising tenderness. There's Nik's practical, sad desperation when the police come to question him and he needs somebody to watch his kids, and the only person available is the neighbor who ratted him out. Then there's Leon lying to John about whether he's ever cheated on his wife, as the audience comes to the realization that the cop might simply be incapable of telling the truth; he has no reason to fib here, nothing to protect, and yet ... .

These are hardly superfluous. Leon's accident paves the way for his own climactic emotional release, for example, and each scene supports the whole. You just need to figure out why it's important.

Which brings us to Lantana's oddest bit: the anger of Nik's wife Paula after Jane has tidied up her house while she was visiting her husband at the police station. Jane means it as an act of kindness — a favor. Yet Paula takes great offense.

And here the movie works subtly: Of the four marriages spotlighted in Lantana, the strongest and most honest belongs to Nik and Paula. They lack money and status, but they're up-front with each other and have earned the trust of their partner. Their house is a disaster, of course, but the appearance of order is pretty meaningless, as Leon and Sonja and John and Valerie can attest. Nik and Paula can live with the mess, because the foundation is solid.

So the house is a metaphor, and Jane has quite literally violated Paula's domestic space, and the wife in the movie's only good marriage won't tolerate it.

And that is precisely why it's a good marriage.

The Year 2001: Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair)

2009-08-14T10:06:00.001+01:00

Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the second Indian film ever to be given the accolade, Mira Nair's family drama centred around a very chaotic Indian wedding, charmed audiences and critics alike in the year 2001. Britt Parrot of Perhapses, a fantastic film site; check out Britt's Auteur Tennis, his attempt at broadening his 'self education in film history' by taking two directors from the same era, from different countries, contrasting their films over a series of essays which makes for riveting read, takes a look at a film that 'offers a deeper look in to issues facing an upper middle-class Indian family preparing for a traditional arranged marriage ceremony', in this great submission to Counting Down The Zeroes.

Any film with the word wedding in the title should be approached with caution, especially if the story is about a bride who loves someone else and rushes off to see him the night before her wedding. Fortunately, Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding is not that film. Instead, it offers a deeper look into issues facing an upper middle-class Indian family preparing for a traditional arranged marriage ceremony. The tone and focus of the film is made clear early in a scene between Lalit Verma (Naseeruddin Shah), the father of the bride, and P.K. Dubey (Vijay Raaz), the wedding planner. The father calls Dubey to find out what is going on with the elaborate but unfinished decorations. Dubey lies, telling him that he is on his way, stuck in a traffic jam, when he is actually on another job.

Once Dubey arrives at the house, along with a constant stream of relatives, he takes control, not only of the wedding preparations but also of the film. The father barks the orders but Dubey has been through these rituals too often and knows how to play uptight fathers to his advantage. As more and more relatives arrive (don’t try to keep them organized), Lalit clearly makes you aware of their importance. Particularly, his niece Ria holds a special place in his heart since her father (his brother) passed away.

Ria, however, is troubled by a older male guest at the wedding, a generous family friend who helped the Vermas during tough times and who is held in high esteem by Lalit. It doesn’t take long to understand why Ria is uncomfortable being near this guest nor why she pays particular attention to a young girl who receives the affections of him. It provides ongoing tension as the wedding draws near. A few other relationships develop but not much time is available to develop them. A relationship between two of the younger people does allow the set up of a missed opportunity and a woman who advises the young man that it is better to be a fallen warrior than to be a coward.

Make no mistake, however, this is primarily a love story. Dubey is all business until he is struck (literally) by Alice, the family’s servant. The scenes between Alice and Dubey comprise the essence of the film, even though they might have initially been conceived as a sub-plot or side story. No. They are the main story. They are the reason you want to keep watching the film and are happy at the end of the film. If the film wasn’t conceived with the Dubey/Alice story as its spine, then it was a mistake on the part of the filmmaker. Almost all the promotional material uses photos of the bride and groom, but marketing is usually in their own world.

While Dubey is initially a comical character, he provides the most depth as he grapples with his feelings for Alice, his responsibilities, and his need to satisfy his mother. Due to a misunderstanding with his workers accusing Alice of being a thief, she turns away from Dubey, thinking he is responsible. From that moment on, Dubey’s smile disappears and his animated nature is replaced by despair. His character goes through the most change. And while I didn’t log the screen time of each main character, he seems to occupy the most.

Ria, meanwhile, reaches a boiling point. She sees too much going on with her former abuser to let him continue his exploits. She confronts him and Lalit comes to mediate but is unable to help as Ria leaves. He looks for her the next day, telling her that the wedding cannot proceed without her. She is visibly angry and uncomfortable, however, when she has to sit in front of her male abuser during the wedding photos. Lalit notices but still does nothing.

While there are scenes of kissing/groping, first between the bride and her married lover and then between the bride and her hand-picked groom, the real passion exists between Dubey and Alice, whose only scene of affection is Dubey lightly kissing the forehead of Alice during their own makeshift wedding outside of the real wedding ceremony. The scenes of them together are the ones that stick with you after the film is over. The editing of the climatic (not in a sexual way) scene between Dubey and Alice, however, is a bit funky and out of sync. Every time the camera cuts back to Dubey, he seems to be looking down and then up again. It took away from an otherwise beautiful moment.

Did I forget to mention that there is a sub-plot about a bride who is in love with a married man, whom she goes to see on the night before her wedding? Not to worry. By the time of her wedding ceremony in the pouring rain, the Bollywood-style scenes of music and dancing will help you forget about them. You’ll be happy for Dubey and Alice and relieved that Lalit finally did the right thing, taking the risk to become a fallen warrior instead of a coward.

The Year 2001: Heist (David Mamet)

2009-08-13T21:50:00.001+01:00

Full of Mamet's patented dialogue (check out this post for some excellent examples), narration devices and swift, complicated plots, Heist, seen as one of the director/playwright's lesser films, still delivers in 'oh so' clever shenanigans and boasts a cast to whet the appetite of any casual movie viewer. Major Memet fan, Kevin Olson, and creator of the brilliant Hugo Staglitz Makes Movies; his love for film is simply infectious, check out this brilliant review of 'Le Circe Rouge' for a sample of the man's great talents, states a case for a film that 'becomes richer with each viewing' in this engrossing and simply brilliant submission to Counting Down The Zeroes.

Heist opens with a classic 1940’s black and white Warner Brothers symbol; setting the mood throughout that this is going to be a classic noir picture: haggard criminals who do "one last job", heists gone wrong, double crosses, double speak, brilliant actors who play bad guys that steal every scene they're in, and of course there's a femme fatale. Heist is also like those classic 1940's noir films in that it's heavy on attitude and style; it's a noir with filthy, wonderful Mamet language. David Mamet’s 2001 film is one of his least revered, and it’s understandable if you’re a Mamet veteran, than everything in Heist seems second rate compared to his much better films. However, I feel like Heist is one his most entertaining films: it has arguably his greatest cast spouting off some of his most hilarious dialogue (although State and Main gives this film good competition; and no I’m not counting Glengary Glen Ross because Mamet didn’t direct that.).

Heist is a typical Mamet film – a con on top of a con on top of a con, and I’ll be the first to admit that this is definitely his most convoluted thriller that definitely reminds the viewer of the better cons he’s pulled: House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner. If you’re well versed with Mamet and his con films, then nothing here will likely surprise you; and perhaps that’s where some of the backlash or laissez faire attitude comes from in regards to Heist. There’s still some fun “gotcha” moments that one expects from Mamet, and as always, the dialogue is hilariously irreverent, inane, nonsensical, and of course brilliant.

The story concerns Joe (played by Gene Hackman in on of his last truly great performances) a semi-retired criminal who seeks the good life because he’s been “burned” (caught on tape) after a recent jewel heist goes wrong. He’s accompanied by his team: Fran his wife (Mamet’s wife, and muse, Rebecca Pidgeon), Bobby (the always great-to-see Delroy Lindo), and Pinky (Mamet stalwart Ricky Jay). The group meets with Bergman (the invaluable Danny DeVito, who gives one of his best performances – the man was born to be in a Mamet film) and his nephew Jimmy (Sam Rockwell) to go for one last score: a Swiss airline is bringing in a ton of gold and they’re going to steal it.

And from there the typical Mamet plot conventions kick in. When they finally get to the big heist scene the plot is under a cloud of suspicion; a position that Mamet prefers the audience is in. The heist scene is wonderfully staged, but as is the standard with most Mamet films, you can never be quite sure if what you’re seeing is supposed to the real thing, or a magic trick, a clever ruse to fool the unsuspecting victims in the film. Therefore, some of the tension is subdued because Mamet veterans know that what you see is not what you get…so you’re constantly waiting for that “real moment” to happen. Still, it’s a damn fine heist scene (although my enthusiasm may be a tad tame since I just watched the greatest heist film ever made a few nights ago, Le Circe Rouge, so this pretty much pales in comparison to that film’s seminal, and masterful heist scene).

It’s no use trying to explain the intricacies (or contrivances) of a Mamet plot, so I think the best thing to do for the rest of the review is to give an example of why we all watch Mamet films in the first place: the insanely brilliant and nonsensical dialogue. Here are some of my favorite bits from the movie, enjoy:

Coffee Cart Man: Hey buddy. You forgot your change.
Joe Moore: [Takes the change] Makes the world go round.
Bobby Blane: What's that?
Joe Moore: Gold.
Bobby Blane: Some people say love.
Joe Moore: Well, they're right, too. It is love. Love of gold.

Fran Moore: Stay in the shadows.
Joe Moore: Hey, everybody's gonna be looking in the shadows.
Fran Moore: So where's the place to be?
Joe Moore: The place to be is in the sun

Bergman: “My nephew Jimmy Silk, yup, that’s who he is.”

Bobby: “You know why the chicken crossed the road, because the road crossed the chicken.”

Bergman: “Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money.”

Jimmy: So, is he going to be cool?
Pinky: My motherfucker is so cool, when he goes to bed, sheep count him.

Jimmy: No one can hear me.
Joe Moore: No one can hear what you don't say.
Jimmy: Hey, I'm as quiet as an ant pissing on cotton.
Joe Moore: I don't want you as quiet as an ant pissing on cotton. I want you as quiet as an ant not even thinking about pissing on cotton.

Pinky: It's a shame you know what, we didn't actually get to do the thing, the swiss job. It's a beautiful plan.
Joe Moore: Cute, huh?
Pinky: Cute as a pail full of kittens.

Pinky: Oh my, oh my. Go sell chocolates you Heidi-motherfuckers, go sell cukoo clocks, we got your gold!

Jimmy: How long has he been with that girl?
Pinky: What girl is that?
Jimmy: His wife.
Pinky: How long is a Chinaman's name?

Bobby Blane: Sometimes adrenaline gives people the shakes, some might think it's cowardice, so maybe you'd want to pray about it.
Jimmy: I'm not a religious man.
Bobby Blane: There's nothing wrong with prayer. We knew this firefighter, this trooper, who always caried a bible next to his heart. We used to mock him, but that bible stopped a bullet.
Jimmy: No shit.
Bobby Blane: Hand of God, that bible stopped a bullet, would of ruined that fucker's heart. And had he had another bible in front of his face, that man would be alive today.

Bergman: Where's the gold?
Joe Moore: In the heart of the pure.

Back to the film: The acting is great across the board here, and there’s no doubt that Danny DeVito was made to make a Mamet film. It’s too bad DeVito wasn’t around during the heyday of noir; he could have had a lucrative career playing the slimy crime boss. He has a great scene here where people start shooting each other and he wildly tells people to stop shooting because they can talk it out. It’s a hilarious scene that I can really only imagine someone like DeVito executing.

Gene Hackman is his usual great self, here, and really this film acts as a reminder of how much I miss seeing Hackman in films today. It’s too bad Hackman hasn’t really made anything since. He pulls off the beleaguered Joe really well, and he more than handles Mamet’s dialogue. It’s just a shame that this great actor retired with Welcome to Mooseport as his last film.

Despite all of the praise I’m throwing at this seemingly mediocre picture, it’s not as if I don’t understand the negative response towards the film. Perhaps the expectations were too high, though, and considering the last film he made of this ilk was the brilliant The Spanish Prisoner, I think it’s fair to say that some people haven’t given Heist a fair shake due to unfair comparisons.

I feel like this era of Mamet is one of his finest, and most underrated. In 2000 he made the fantastic comedy, State and Main, then followed up with this extremely enjoyable thriller, and then later came Spartan, a film I think is one of the most criminally underrated of the noughties (I know I’m probably alone in that camp, but I think the film is brilliant.).

Heist is a film that becomes clearer, not more ridiculous, upon second viewing, and that’s what I love about Mamet films – most films of this ilk worsen upon subsequent viewings because the holes in the plot become bigger, more noticeable; however, with Mamet’s con-game films, they become richer with each viewing.

The Year 2001: In The Bedroom (Todd Field)

2009-08-12T12:07:00.002+01:00

Dedicated to the short-story writer, Andre Dubus, his short story, Killings, providing the source material for which the screenplay is based, In The Bedroom was noted photographer Todd Field's directorial debut; this powerful, thought-provoking drama won praise, acclaim and notched up brilliant reviews when it was first released at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Joseph Campanella of the superb Cinema Fist; his appropriately named blog that packs a punch between the eyes and delivers biting, on the nose reviews and movie orientated opinions, warns the casual reader to avoid this post if you haven't seen this 'genre bending' great film, in this wonderful submission to Counting Down The Zeroes, as it's the kind of movie 'in which spoilers could ruin the whole experience'.

I didn't see IN THE BEDROOM when it first came out. In fact, I didn't see it until just a few months ago. I feel the need to tell you this for one main reason. If you have not seen this movie, or better yet, have not seen this movie and know absolutely zero about it, stopt reading this immediately. If you have Netflix you can watch it instantly. If you live near a video store, go rent it. Don't watch the trailer. Don't read the synopsis. Just go get the movie and watch it. This is the kind of film in which spoilers could ruin the whole experience. So if you haven't seen the film don't read this post. SPOILERS AHEAD....

The film starts with two lovers frolicking through the grass. Natalie (Marisa Tomei), a younger older woman, recently divorced with a kid and Frank (Nick Stahl), a young man, much younger than Natalie, who's about to head off to college. This setup could be the conflict of another film, but for the most part Frank's father and mother are okay with Natalie. Well, maybe not okay with it. But at least tolerant. This, along with the tension between Natalie and her ex-husband Richard (William Mapother) takes up most of the film's first act.

The reason this picture stands out to me is its pacing. It could have easily been turned into a Lifetime like thriller, but no. We spend time with the love affair in the beginning. We are allowed to think this isn't a movie about murder and revenge, but about young love. wouldn't think a film like this would rely so heavily on plot twists, and it doesn't, to an extent. The twists in this film are not there to surprise and shock you. They may do this, but it's not their single function. In most other movies, when there is a jarring change to the story or a character's arc, it's their simply to change the story or a character's arc. With the two major plot points in this film, namely the murder of Frank, there is a different feel. One of realism and sadness. When Frank is shot by Richard, I was truly taken aback. My hand came over my mouth. I couldn't believe it. (I know there is a lot of argument over this subject. Some people seem to think that it was totally obvious. I would disagree completely)

The largest chunk of this film is the aftermath of the murder and the toll it takes on Matt (Tom Wilkinson) and Ruth (Sissy Spacek), Frank's parents. After Frank dies, the two barely talk. They move about their house like zombies. Matt, ignoring the situation all together. Ruth let's it consume her entire life. To make matter's worse, Frank's killer got off on a technicality. He wanders about town like nothing happened. In one particular scene, Ruth notices him in a convenience store. He says hello to her like a friendly neighbor. I'm not Ruth, but at that moment, I'd like to think her stomach fell to the floor.

There is an unspoken tension between the Ruth and Matt that culminates in a yelling match in the kitchen. Both blame the other for the raising of their son and his subsequent death. Ruth blames Matt for letting the boy do anything he chooses, cheering him on with his love affair with an older woman, living vicariously through him. Matt blames Ruth for never letting the boy live his own life. During the fight a girl scout comes to their door. Matt buys some candy, walks back to his wife and they share a moment of mourning. This is the first time since Frank's death that they actually acknowledge their pain. Once again, this fight could have been the climax of another film, but no. IN THE BEDROOM still has more to offer and that's Matt and Ruth's quest for revenge.

The scenes building up to these final scenes are intense. We follow Matt as he looks to find someway to reverse the courts decision. Find someone that could counter Richard's story. But there isn't anybody. A guilty man has walked and there is nothing Frank's parents could legally do about it. In one of my favorite scenes, the lawyer tries to explain to Matt the reason for the courts decision. His voice is drowned out on the soundtrack and we get inserts of the lawyers, mouth, watch, etc... After Matt heard him say there was nothing they could do, he tuned him out. There courts had failed him.

We don't necessarily know Matt is going to murder Richard. Even when the gun is pulled in the empty parking lot. There are moments when you think Matt may actually be telling him the truth (that he's just making him leave town because his wife can't stand the sight of him) but as this one long, dark and devious plot unfolds, we understand that this is the end for Richard.

IN THE BEDROOM is one of the best examples of genre bending I can think of. It's a drama, romance and revenge film, packed into a beautifully photographed two hours. I haven't seen a movie that switches between modes so effortlessly. And that's what makes this a great film. It isn't just a romance. It isn't just sadness. It isn't just blood thirsty revenge. It's all of those and much more. That's life.

The Year 2001: Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)

2009-08-08T21:00:00.000+01:00

In 2001 a film came out that blew everyone away with it's mix of surrealism and downright weirdness; a sort sci-fi homage to the teen movies of the 80's, which made for sheer cult cinema criteria; a 6 foot rabbit called Frank - I rest my case. It's all the more bizarre for it being, 27 year old, director Richard Kelly's directorial debut and the fact that it bombed on initial release, only for interest, outside the US, the UK in particular, to resurrect a once dead film and then on to major success. Film Dr. of the impressive 'The Film Doctor', a teacher of cinema studies and video production, as well as a damn great writer to boot, has taught this film to his students time and time again, so he's exactly the man we need, in which to get to the bottom of this genre defying cult classic, in this wonderful submission to Counting Down The Zeroes.

“That is when the world will end”—the destructive revelations of Donnie Darko

I like to think movies, like any work of art, can have genuine prophetic power. Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) foresees a day in the future when all of the civilization’s energy runs out. The Mad Max vision of the future still seems pleasantly plausible, and zombie films may prefigure a time when the over-populated living, not the undead, take to the streets starving and resorting to cannibalism. This same prophetic, visionary quality is what makes Donnie Darko (2001) so compelling.

After an awkward period in 2001 when distributors didn’t know how to promote Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (Is it a John Hughes-esque suburban teen film, science fiction, a superhero film, or what?), the film had a limited release one month after 9/11. Talk about prophetic: the movie depicts a jet engine freakishly falling from the sky and nearly killing Darko in his bedroom, and then it gets released right after actual jets crash into the World Trade Center. Later, the director’s cut DVD version of the film became extremely popular, and now Darko enjoys cult status. Why does it succeed so well in capturing the imagination of its viewers?

For one thing, unlike most movies, Donnie Darko remains very much open to interpretation. Somewhat like Synechdoche, New York, Darko has many loose ends, and a highly ambiguous conclusion, but many of Donnie’s visions and actions gain coherency as the film goes on, giving both Donnie and the viewer a sense of fait accompli and deja vu. Just before midnight, a six-foot bunny rabbit named Frank guides the sleepwalking Donnie outside and tells him that the world will end in “28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.” Then, a jet engine falls out of nowhere into Donnie’s room. Frank has therefore saved Donnie’s life, and he goes on to speak to Donnie as a voice in his head. He tells Donnie to “Pay attention. You may miss something,” when Donnie watches a crappy “Lifeline exercise” video in gym class. Later, he guides Donnie to bust a water main in his school, thus flooding the building with sewage. And he persuades Donnie to set a man’s house on fire while his girlfriend Gretchen sleeps during a showing of The Evil Dead at the local movie theater. In his way, Donnie gets to act out the vengeful fantasies of his classmates, but at first he doesn’t know why he’s doing it, nor does he know what his visions of Frank mean.

On one level, the film suggests that Donnie’s erratic aggressive behavior is a symptom of his paranoid schizophrenia. On another level, Donnie may be a superhero, a “living receiver” Christ figure apocalyptic seer who learns time travel in 1988. Somehow, Kelly manages to keep both interpretations plausible, and he does it by allowing the viewer to partake in Darko’s visions, and therefore make the same connections as he does.

For instance, why does Donnie break open the water main? So he can become Gretchen Ross’s (Jena Malone’s) boyfriend, which gives him motivation to try to save her life later. Why does Donnie burn down Jim Cunningham’s house? So he can expose the motivational speaker as a pervert who owns a kiddie porn dungeon in his home. Thus does Kelly equate destruction with revelation and creation. Jake Gyllenhaal broods and looks tormented in his dweeby Opie t-shirt, but Donnie’s smarter than anyone else, and he takes pleasure in subverting the adult power structure when he can. Frank’s cosmic plan gives Donnie the freedom to revolt extravagantly, but there’s always the suggestion that reality may intrude on his whimsical behavior.

In terms of technique, Donnie Darko uses image patterns, music, parallel editing, and innovative casting brilliantly. The film is virtual storehouse of high-level cinematic references, so that the film-loving viewer can tease another level of allusion beyond the prophetic one. For instance, Kelly shows his love for Hitchcock by including a close variation on the staircase and chandelier of Notorious (not to mention the Duran Duran song “Notorious” that Sparkle Motion dances to). Kelly finds a way to reference the cellar and the knife-play of Psycho, and the high school bully likes to wield a large knife when he’s not mimicking Psycho’s high-pitched violins in class. Kelly also shows his love of The Graduate by having Donnie’s mother ask “Where do you go at night?” just as Ben’s mother does, and by casting Katherine Ross, of all people, to poignantly play Donnie’s shrink. To augment the creative casting of Drew Barrymore as the iconoclastic English teacher, Kelly inserts a visual nod to E.T. when the kids head out to Grandma Death’s cellar on their bicycles at night. The film is full of creative image patterns. Frank , a kind of Alice in Wonderland white rabbit guiding Donnie into his own rabbit hole, finds literary parallels in Richard Adams’ Watership Down, where one of the rabbits has prophetic visions of their warren getting wiped out. Kelly even finds ways to equate crappy camera technique with evil when he shows us Jim Cunningham’s cheesy motivational videotapes with ghastly testimonials about bedwetting and a boom microphone clearly in display in one scene.

Ultimately, Donnie Darko succeeds because it builts to such a strong emotional kick at the end in spite of all of the ambiguities of the film. Even though one cannot know fully what just happened, the movie still feels complete--a puzzle, yet an artistic whole. When Gretchen waves at Donnie’s mother, some communication has just taken place. Donnie Darko leaves it up to us to decipher why it works so well.

Suffice it to say that I’ve taken Donnie Darko apart multiple times, and I’m still finding patterns and mysteries in it. For instance, why does Cherita Chen keep appearing as a witness in a sitting position during key moments in the movie. Who is the fat guy looking on when Donnie wants to kiss Gretchen? (Kelly suggests that he’s an FAA official monitoring the family.) Why is Donnie smiling and laughing at the beginning and end of the film? Why is there a spiral on the jet engine, to perhaps suggest the circular return of that image of the end of the movie? What are we to make of all the theories built into Roberta Sparrow’s The Philosophy of Time Travel? Somehow, by mixing the Book of Revelations with Back to the Future, Kelly retrofitted the banal elements of a John Hughes teen comedy into a souped-up Delorean DMC-12 of a film, the ever-suggestive Donnie Darko.

Trailer

The Year 2001: Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (Zacharias Kunuk)

2009-08-08T11:44:00.000+01:00

New to Counting Down The Zeroes is Norma Desmond (you have to love the name) of the exquisite blog The Flick Chick; one of those reviewers in the blogsphere who continues to amaze me, not only with her regularity of posts, but also at the sheer quality of them, check out her great running feature on 'Great Last Scenes for a great example of her work, who for her first submission, takes on the first film ever to be written, directed and acted entirely in Inuktitut, Atanajurat (The Fast Runner).

“Evil came to us like Death. It just happened and we had to live with it.” If you were to break The Fast Runner down to a single principle it would that one, spoken during the opening moments of the film. In a small Inuit community during an unspecified time long in the past, evil infiltrates, turning people against each other, and they must learn to live side-by-side with it because the harsh conditions necessitate that they stay together. The Fast Runner tells a story that is in certain respects simple and familiar, but the way that it is told by director Zacharias Kunuk is entirely original, a viewing experience unlike any other.

After a brief prologue we come to the story proper which concerns Atanarjuat (Natar Ungalaaq), the fast runner of the title. Atanarjuat is involved in a rivalry with Oki (Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq), the son of the camp’s leader, Sauri (Eugene Ipkarnak), and they vie for the affections of Atuat (Sylvia Ivalu). Atuat was promised to Oki in childhood but now she and Atanarjuat are in love and so a compromise is reached, allowing Atanarjuat to fight for the right to marry her himself. Atanarjuat wins the competition – a fight in which he and Oki take turns hitting each other until one drops – but his happiness with Atuat will be short-lived.

During Atuat’s pregnancy, Atanarjuat goes away to hunt caribou and is talked into taking Puja (Lucy Tulugarjuk), Oki’s sister, along to help him since Atuat’s condition makes it impossible for her to undertake the journey. This will, of course, end badly. Atanarjuat makes Puja his second wife and things become tense within his household. Aside from the obvious issue of jealousy between the wives, there is also the fact that Puja is lazy and leaves all the work to Atuat and Uluriaq (Neeve Irngaut), who is married to Atanarjuat’s brother, Amaqjuaq (Pakak Innuksuk). All five, plus Atanarjuat and Atuat’s young son, live in the same tent, sleeping side-by-side. This will end badly. One morning Uluriaq wakes to find Amaqjuaq and Puja doing more than just sleeping and soon Puja is running back to her family – who are predisposed to disliking Atanarjuat - with a black eye courtesy of her husband. This will also end badly.

The story is based on Inuit legend, though liberties have been taken in order to flesh it, and its characters, out. The ending has also been changed somewhat as writer Paul Apark Angilirq - who died before being able to see his pet project make it to the screen – wanted the story’s message to be one of hope rather than bloodlust and revenge. As shaped by Angilirq and carried out by Kunuk (who is credited as one of the film’s additional writers), it unfolds slowly – too slowly, perhaps, during the first of its nearly three hour running time, though in its last 2/3rds the film seems to really find its rhythm and runs at a faster pace. It takes the time to really establish the sometimes complicated relationships between the characters, making the sense of community that is at the heart of the film really stand out. Though Atanarjuat is the hero of the story, it is the community itself – in all its shifting incarnations – that becomes the protagonist. The evil that occurs is not the injuries caused to one person by another, but the injury to the community caused by infighting, rivalry, and power plays. The evil is in putting individual desires ahead of the needs of the community.

The most talked about part of the film – deservedly so, given that it’s not the kind of thing you see in every movie – is Atanarjuat’s long run across the ice, naked and shoeless. It’s an extraordinary sequence which ends with his feet beat up and bloody, resulting in a long convalescence as he plots his revenge against Oki, who believes that his rival died during his flight. His endurance is astounding, though not unbelievable within the context of the larger story. Nothing about The Fast Runner feels unreal or unnatural; the sense of intimacy that Kunuk engenders draws you right into the action, so close that you almost forget that it’s a fiction film rather than a documentary. Several of the roles are played by non-actors and there is an emphasis throughout the story how the community lives and survives – how they build their homes, get and cook their food, their rituals, etc. – that further adds to the film’s intense sense of realism. It is so entirely different from any other film I’ve ever seen that the only thing I can really think to compare it to is Nanook of the North and that is, at best, a very shallow comparison. The Fast Runner is truly in a league all its own, a beautiful piece of work brought vigorously to life both in front of and behind the camera. It’s an unforgettable film.

The Year 2001: Brotherhood of the Wolf (Christophe Gans)

2009-08-07T13:30:00.000+01:00

Loosely based on a real-life series of killings dating back to 18th Century France, as well as integrating the infamous legend of the 'Beast of Gevaudan', Brotherhood of the Wolf takes on a mix of genres to produce a mish-mash costumed drama meets kung-fu, throws in a bit of horror and is delivered like an action movie. Once again we're joined by Reel Whore of the wonderful Reel Whore; in itself a great mish-mash of reviews, movie news and hilarious regular features, all delivered with the same hi-jinx and rapier wit that accentuate his style, who takes on this international hit of 2001 and believes 'as outlandish as it sounds' they somehow manage 'to pull it off superbly'.

It is said that the best tall tales germinate from a seed of truth. For Le Pacte des loups, a.k.a. Brotherhood of the Wolf, the truth began in the French countryside during the mid-eighteenth century. Over one hundred people were killed in attacks by beastly wolves. The legend of the Beast of Gévaudan is still shrouded in mystery to this day.

In Brotherhood, the mystery is revealed by the recollections of the Marquis d'Apcher as he pens his memoirs. He recalls the brutal killings and how the King dispatched Grégoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan), his taxidermist, to investigate the monster. Grégoire and his Iroquois companion, Mani (Mark Dacascos, Cradle 2 the Grave), quickly discover the beast is larger and more deadly than any normal wolf. As the search continues, Grégoire chases more than wolf tales, specifically the courtesan Sylvia (Monica Bellucci, Shoot 'Em Up) and the Count's daughter, Marianne de Morangias (Émilie Dequenne), which her creepy brother Jean-François (Vincent Cassel, Eastern Promises) is none too happy about. As repeated efforts by the local guard to hunt and kill the beast bear no fruit, Grégoire learns the beast's true nature is tied to a political coup.

Period pieces have never really been my cup of tea. How then would one propose to tell a story that is appealing to audiences not typically interested in stuffy clothing, fluffy wigs and verbose posturing? Start by brutally killing a busty damsel. If that doesn't hook them, toss in a savage from a faraway land; let's make him a Native American and, just for kicks, give him mad ninja skills. This savage and his civilized companion are the King's Green Berets compared to the Keystone Cops running around shooting at every shadow in the forest. Horror, action and comedy are covered, but if still unsatisfied, mix in a brothel of naked women and debauchery to lighten the mood even more. You do want to keep the story's tone dark, so it's best to add a pinch of conspiracy and intrigue, another reason to have us looking twice at every character.

Writer-director Christophe Gans (Silent Hill) and writer Stéphane Cabel manage to incorporate all of the above-and more- into Brotherhood. As outlandish as it sounds, they pull it off superbly. Beginning in bloodshed, Brotherhood quickly slips into a cadence, alternating between story exposition and spectacle about every ten minutes. Those spectacles range from bone crunching, hand-to-hand combat to the silky, heaving bosom of Monica Bellucci to peasants tossed about like chew toys by the Beast.

Through a combination of clever transitions and slow-motion, Gans makes Brotherhood a savory visual feast. The Beast, once revealed, is a bizarre and sinister creature that seems nigh unstoppable. Gans ensures audiences understand just how powerful the creature is through a complex battle with Grégoire, Mani and the Marquis (Jérémie Renier, In Bruges). Brotherhood's gruff sound effects drive home the weighty impact of the bullets and the jagged tearing of the blades in ever action sequence.

Gans takes similar care with the softer moments. Watching the camera glide over Bellucci's heart-shaped derriere as the scene subtly changes to the snow-covered hills of Gévaudan was one of my favorite moments, and not solely for a glimpse of bare Bellucci. Gans has a knack for crafting scenes that feel poetic even if the story isn't.

If you find the opportunity to watch it, I highly recommend doing so twice; once with subtitles and once dubbed. I normally prefer subtitles, but with so much action a second, dubbed viewing helps to appreciate the visual details. Being a film not in my native tongue, I hesitate to comment on the acting. Cassel steals every scene he's in, but from what I've seen of him, that is usually the case.

With all that happens in Brotherhood it's hard to imagine it feeling sluggish, but it does lag in parts. The slowness is a minor quibble about an otherwise exhilarating tale of legendary proportions. Thanks to Gans' flourishes, you forget that Brotherhood is little more than a monster movie.

The Year 2001: Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott)

2009-08-07T10:22:00.000+01:00

Based on Mark Bowden's account, and subsequent book, of the UN forces attempt to capture a Somali warlord (the battle of Mogadishu), resulting in 'the most intensive close combat Americans had engaged in since the Vietnam war', Black Hawk Down, directed by Ridley Scott, still on a high from the success of Gladiator a year before, neatly divided audiences in two on release, with those that loved it for it's intense depiction of war against those that derided it for, what they believed, to be 'staged racism'. Kevin Olson, of the awesome Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies, (check out his 'revisiting 1999' posts; a brilliant account of cinema at the end of the last decade), takes on this 'expertly crafted action film' and wishes more people thought of it 'when they speak of Scott’s triumphs as a director.'

Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down is one of the most meticulous and masterful renditions of the classic war film formula. After about 30 minutes of exposition Scott drops the viewer in the middle of a war zone swirling with dirt, mud, and blood. It’s an intense experience that had many critics in 2001 crying foul. They claimed that Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer turned the Somali soldiers into faceless killers – blurs of black across the screen carrying automatic rifles. I think that’s unfair, though, as the film was pretty much dead on arrival as any war-themed film released post September 11th (Black Hawk Down came out a mere three months after the attacks) was going to be scrutinized unfairly; viewed through a super-serious lens. Somewhere along the way war films got the stigma of having to be message movies – I don’t think Scott or Bruckheimer are going for any big grandiose message, here; however, what they do accomplish is a damn fine action film filled with brilliantly staged action scenes.

Scott wastes no time with exposition as text on the screen informs the viewer of the situation and the time and date. As for the soldiers – we’re introduced to the primary characters thought the usual war film clichés. Perhaps this is where some of the critics take issue with the film: using such a serious subject as a backdrop for what essentially is The Rock or any other number of gung-ho Bruckheimer action films. You have your nerdy tech guy who gets thrown into combat (Ewen McGregor), you have your new recruit who’s eager to see action (Orlando Bloom), the wacky wise-cracking soldier (Jeremy Piven) , the calm superior officer (Tom Sizemore), and the disillusioned realist (Eric Bana). All of these soldiers are led into battle by the man in charge of it all, Garrison (the always grizzled Sam Shepard) who looks upon the battle from a war room full of televisions and telephones like he’s the coach of a football team, watching film, ready to call the next play. Their plan is to drop into Somalia and capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord.

Needless to say things don’t go so well with the operation, and on one hellish afternoon a Black Hawk helicopter goes down and the hundred plus soldiers are stranded in the middle of no man’s land. This is where it is upon the viewer, and which lens they choose to don, that decides whether or not this is an unsympathetic look at that horrible 24+ hours in Somalia, or whether or not it’s a finely tuned, and expertly crafted action film. I tend to side with the latter group.

Had Black Hawk Down been released prior to September 11th than I don’t think half of the critics are as harsh on the film as they were. Visually this is a stunning film – as is the case with most of Scott’s work – drenched in the blues that Scott loves to paint with. There’s also that kind of hyper-kinetic warfare footage that seemed fresh at the time. What makes it age well is the meticulous way Scott and his production designer Arthur Max have recreated the logistics of the gun battles. Every action sequence feels legitimate; an authentic way of being “in the moment”, instead of making the viewer sick with the usual herky-jerky camera tricks.

I can see where the detractors come from, though, as the Somali’s are relegated to nothing more than the 'faceless enemy'. However, the American soldiers are made unidentifiable, too, and I think that’s on purpose by Scott. Much like the recent HBO series "Generation Kill", these soldiers are known by last names, but really, when they are draped in camouflage and spout the same clichés they’ve heard from war films, they all become the same person. Perhaps this is what it’s like in a war?

What the film succeeds at is something that Scott has always had a handle on: visual poetry. Scott’s films have always been light on dialogue as a means for conveying emotions and heavy on the visual poetry; Black Hawk Down is no different. In fact, it’s the film that, at the time, I wish he would have been recognized for instead of the so-so and ultimately drab and boring 2000 Gladiator. Black Hawk Down is a more tightly wrought exercise of the action genre and trumps anything that Scott was praised for in Gladiator. It’s just a shame that not many people think of this film when they speak of Scott’s triumphs as a director.

Sure this isn’t the thrilling action film and morally challenging genre piece that David O. Russell’s Three Kings was, but then again not many war films are that good. Ken Nolan, working from the source material of Mark Bowden’s book, inevitably omitted some of the back story of the Somalia troops found in the book. There just isn’t the same space on screen that there is on the printed page to explain things away and fill in the blanks – Scott and Bruckheimer wanted to make an action film, so they axed some of the stuff that made the book so popular, but they created an intense war film that remains one of the truly great crafted action films of the 2000’s.

As a pure action, gung-ho-filmmaking-style type of war film Black Hawk Down is unparalleled: it has the patience, attention to detail, and the nuances -- in addition to the exhilarating and intense action sequences -- rarely found in this particular subgenre. I don’t think Scott or Bruckheimer were trying to win any sociological points, here, but what they do (big action) they do extremely well. It’s not a great film, but it’s an entertaining war film, expertly crafted; and that’s not something that should be looked down upon. I look forward to the day when we can stop thinking of war films as super-serious exercises, and filmmakers can feel comfortable making unapologetic, gung-ho war films like The Dirty Dozen or The Delta Force (this summer’s Inglorious Basterds is going to be in that vein, I have a feeling) without worrying about critics taking it down a peg for not being a politically correct social statement.

The Year 2001: Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer)

2009-07-31T21:00:00.000+01:00

Who can forget Ben Kingsley's ferocious turn in Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast? The man that played Ghandi, the waif like figure of non-violent protest, comes up with one of the most iconic psychopaths ever to grace the screen in Glazer's directorial debut, about an ex-gangster trying to escape his past in sunny Spain but his past comes a knocking. Once again we're graced by the presence of Edward Copeland, from Edward Copeland on Film; home to a bastion of fabulous writers tackling the best of cinema, tv and popular culture, with this wonderful appreciation for Counting Down The Zeroes, in which he praises Kingsley as 'one of the most fearsome screen creations ever summoned'.

Don Logans of the world, prepare: Anyone who meets you for the first time after seeing Sexy Beast will likely look upon you with a sense of unease. Ben Kingsley gets the blame for this, because the Don Logan he creates in Sexy Beast takes his place alongside some of the most fearsome screen creations ever summoned.

While Kingsley steals the picture, Ray Winstone stars. Winstone plays Gal, a retired British thief who has abandoned his life of crime for a cushy life in a Spanish villa with his ex-porn star wife Deedee (Amanda Redman).

One night at dinner, they learn from their friends Aitch and Jackie (Cavan Kendall and Julianne White) that Logan is en route to lure Gal back to London for a heist. The sheer mention of Don Logan's name freezes the four in their tracks and with good reason. Logan is pure violence with a thick English accent. Gal is still determined to stay retired, but Logan doesn't plan to take no for an answer.

While the film is interesting throughout, it's when Kingsley takes charge of the screen that Sexy Beast comes to life. His ferocious performance will astonish anyone who thinks of the Oscar winner only as Gandhi. Even his stillness sends shivers down one's spine. His scenes are funny and frightening at the same time, making Don seem like a calmer version of Joe Pesci's GoodFellas character.

The movie turns out to be an odd hybrid of crime drama, dark comedy and terse conversation reminiscent of playwright Harold Pinter. While Kingsley is the standout, he's not the only actor giving a great performance. In addition to Winstone, Redman, Kendall and White, there is a wonderful performance by Ian McShane as a London kingpin who is as cool as Logan is fiery.

First-time director Jonathan Glazer keeps the film moving, though it does suffer when Kingsley isn't on the screen. However, Don Logan's presence reverberates even when he's not there in person and makes Sexy Beast worth a look.

The Year 2001: Secret Ballot (Babak Payami)

2009-07-31T08:29:00.000+01:00

Originally posted on 4th November 2008, American election day, Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on films, etc, her supreme blog where she's just wrapping her great reports on Ebertfest; including meeting the man himself, wondered if maybe people where getting, just a little bit, carried away with the idea of change in this brilliant appreciation of Babak Payami's comedic satire, Secret Ballot. In this great submission to Counting Down The Zeroes, Marilyn points to a film that 'shows us the beauty and limitations of democracy' and how, in order to keep oneself in perspective, during this moment of American history, 'Secret Ballot is must-viewing after the election'.

It’s Election Day in the United States, a day that has been hyped across the country and around the world as either the beginning of Hope and Change or the continuation of Bad Old Bushism. If Barack Obama is elected president, it will certainly be an historic moment for the African-American community, but

Having your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground is always the prudent thing to do, especially in a representative democracy, and especially in one as large and diverse as the United States. An object lesson in the wisdom of this advice can be found in Secret Ballot, a film that premiered just a year after the Election Dysfunction of 2000 that shows us the beauty and limitations of democracy in a gently satiric way.

The film opens on a visually stunning image of an airplane flying during the rising of the sun. A box emerges from the plane’s open cargo doors, its white parachute flapping and then filling with air, making perhaps a very intentional parallel with the “miracle” from which cargo cults arose. The box floats like an angel down to a barren land on the edge of an ocean, touching exactly where it was intended to land—at an army patrol site. In this remote island location, the site contains little more than the two infantrymen who work in shifts, taking turns sleeping in the bottom half of a bunk bed and sharing one gun to use as they patrol for smugglers working among the islands.

The night-shift soldier pries open the box and reads an enclosed letter. He then wakes his comrade (Cyrus Abidi) and tells him that it is Election Day in Iran and that he will be escorting an agent around the island collecting votes from its inhabitants. Then, the night-shift soldier prepares for a good day’s sleep. The idea that anyone could sleep out in the open in a desert during the day is only the first absurdity of life on the island. We’ll encounter more as the day goes on.

About half an hour later, a boat pulls up to the small dock at the soldiers’ post, and a woman alights. In contrast to the pillowy white parachute that delivered the box, she is a whirlwind wrapped in a black chador that billows in the strong ocean breeze and the wake of her own energetic movement. She is the election agent (Nassim Abdi), and the soldier refuses to escort a woman around. “I’m in charge here,” retorts the agent as she eagerly goes through the contents of the box. She shows the soldier the written orders he has to follow and then spreads out the map of the areas they need to reach. Off they go, the soldier grumbling all the way.

The first person they see is a man who is running along the road. The soldier is sure he’s a smuggler and is quick to put his hand to his rifle. The agent says he’s a voter and must feel free from intimidation. She orders the soldier to catch up with him. When they pull in front of him, the soldier demands to know why he was running. “Is running a crime?” the man asks defensively. Of course not, the agent says and goes into her election day rap; the man wishes to vote, but not with the soldier hanging around. “I want my vote to be secret,” which the agent assures him is his right. The absurdity of chasing a voter has a familiar ring to any voter who has ever been pandered to or identified as part of a crucial voting block.

The rather menacing next scene shows a large truck chasing after the agent and soldier. The truck stops, and a man emerges; he has brought voters from another island to cast their ballots. One by one, women in colorful but very severe chadors, some with masks that hide their faces from prying male eyes, climb out of the back of the truck. The truck driver orders the soldier away, saying their husbands would not like them “consorting” with a strange man. “What about you?” the soldier retorts. “They know me.” The women swarm the agent as she explains the process. When one of the women produces her ID, the agent rejects her for being under the legal voting age of 16. One of the other women says “She can marry at 12. Why can’t she vote?” Stumped, the agent pauses and then just repeats, “I’m sorry. It’s not allowed.”

So far, voting is going smoothly. The soldier still can’t see the importance of voting, thinking that you can get much more done with a gun than a ballot box. Unswayed, the agent confidently answers all of the soldier’s objections, saying that when people vote, it helps their government improve things. She’ll be singing a different tune when she starts running into roadblocks.

The agent’s quest for votes takes her to the beach, where fishermen are mending their nets. Although they come from another country, they tell the soldier that there are Iranians on the boat from which they came. The next hilarious scene shows the soldier rowing the agent out to the boat. From a distance, we see the men on board line up and a power boat buzz by.

Cut to the agent and soldier back on the road. They have a passenger, a young woman who was trying to run off with a foreigner who was arrested as a smuggler. The soldier, his Iranian manhood offended, says, “Maybe they can make a law so our women can’t go off and marry foreigners!” The agent counters, “Maybe they’ll make a law that lets a woman marry whom she likes.” In a small gesture I didn’t see coming, the young woman tries to give the agent her ID while they are driving so she can vote. “Not here,” the agent says. “We’ll do it when we get you home.” “They won’t let me vote there,” the young woman says. Sure enough, the women in the compound will not vote without the consent of their men, who are at a funeral in a cemetery that no women—not even the widow—can enter. These feminist concerns are laced throughout the film, though it isn’t heavy-handed and is usually emphasized unpolemically through actions.

Another stop for the moving polling place is a compound run by Granny Baghoo. The agent’s knocks on doors remain unanswered, perhaps on Granny Baghoo’s orders. A peddler sitting outside the compound agrees to show the agent his ID if she buys something; so dedicated is she that she agrees, essentially, to buy his vote. When she chooses a doll, he produces his ID. “You’re not Iranian. You can’t vote,” she complains. “All I said is that I would show you my ID.” Things continue on this way in the compound until she finally finds a man and starts her rap on the importance of voting. He keeps shaking his head at all her arguments. Finally, he spits out, “I don’t speak Farsi.” The agent returns to the jeep. “They don’t need to vote,” the agent says, much to the soldier’s surprise. “Granny Baghoo has a government all her own.”

The soldier and the agent finally come to a real and metaphorical crossroads when he stops the jeep as her deadline for returning to the post to catch her boat approaches. “Why have you stopped?” the agent asks impatiently. “The light is red,” he says and points to a stoplight in the middle of nowhere. This scene, I learned, is a lampoon on Imam Khomeni’s edict forbidding drivers from blowing through stoplights, an action taken to curb the horrible driving habits of Iranians. Obviously, this order makes no sense in a place with maybe a dozen cars all told, yet the soldier obeys the law the agent has been singing the praises of all during their journey. In her panic to see that the votes she collected are not invalidated because she missed the boat, the agent gets out of the car and screams that the law doesn’t matter in a place like this, in a desert with no real streets or traffic. The absurdity of the light even being there and the contradictory concerns of the agent are comments on how out of touch the central government can be with the needs of all its citizens, a fact that has been voiced over and over again by the voters the agent tries unsuccessfully to persuade to exercise their franchise. In the end, both the agent and the soldier will understand more than they did when the day began.

It would be easy to see the soldier and the agent—both unnamed—as props in a political system the director uses to make his points. But the script is so smart in weaving its messages into believable encounters, conversations, and wry situations that it never feels forced. It is such a pleasure to learn something valuable while being extremely entertained.

It’s rather interesting how many male Iranian filmmakers have made or collaborated on films sympathetic to the plight of women in their country, for example, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Jafar Pahani, Kambuzia Partovi, and Babak Payami in this, his directing debut. Even more startling is the fact that Iranian women, such as Samira Makhmalbaf and Rakhshān Bani E'temād, have come to prominence as directors working today. Payami mines the rich vein of contradiction in Iranian society, observing the repressiveness of religious dogma contrasted against the promise of a democratic voting process promoted, not surprisingly, by a female election agent. Nonetheless, the failures of the feminist movement, the most prominent example of a social issue this film addresses, serve to remind the agent and others who believe the government will solve all their problems that they need to take action on diverse fronts.

To keep this moment in American history in perspective, the delightful and wise Secret Ballot is must-viewing after the election.

The Year 2001: Suriyothai (Chatrichalerm Yukol )

2009-07-30T10:27:00.000+01:00

At the time, Chatrichalerm Yukol's ambitious historical epic, set in 1548, retelling the story of Queen Suriyothai, one of Thailand's foremost heroines, was by far the most expensive film ever to be produced in Thailand. Financed by Royalty, Queen Sirikit herself backed the film and methodically researched to appear as accurate as possible, Suriyothai so dominated the Thai box-office, that not only did it obliterate the previous record, held by Titanic, it held back Hollywood's summer blockbusters by some months. Peter Nellhaus of the fantastic Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee; whose insight in Asian cinema is simply second to none, gives praise to a film that 'has everything one would want in an epic' in this brilliant submission to Counting Down The Zeroes.

An edited version of Prince Chatrichalerm Yukol’s Suriyothai was released in the United States, supervised by Francis Ford Coppola. Prince Chartri and Coppola knew each other from the early Sixties at U.C.L.A. While Prince Chatri majored in geology, film making was his minor subject. Prior to directing his own films, Prince Chatri worked as an assistant to Merian C. Cooper. As a documentary filmmaker, Cooper had shot Chang in Thailand through the cooperation of Prince Chatri’s grandfather. Prince Chatri is unique among film directors in that he is a member of the Thai royal family. What makes Suriyothai interesting is that it marked a shift in both subject matter and the size of Prince Chatri’s films.

Previously, Prince Chatri’s twenty-three films made since 1971 were largely self-financed, with budgets in the range of $500,000. A good number of the films addressed social issues such as prostitution, AIDS, the treatment of tribal minorities in Thailand, and government corruption. Even as a member of the royal family, several of Prince Chatri’s films faced censorship by the military government that was in place at the time, either because of issues addressed or because of the frankness in the presentation, in keeping with the changes in Hollywood that followed the ratings implemented in 1968. By the time Prince Chatri had made his 1998 film, Klong, there was a major change in Thai cinema.

Nonzee Nimibutr’s Dang Bireley and the Young Gangsters announced that a new generation of Thai filmmakers were on the scene, not only making films for Thai audiences, but also making films that were attracting international attention. Nonzee was soon followed by Wisit Sasanatieng and Pen-Ek Ratanaruang. Through the sponsorship of the royal family, Prince Chatri made the first of his epic films about historical Thailand. At a budget of almost six million dollars, Suriyothai was at the time the most expensive Thai film ever made. Once might also interpret Prince Chatri’s making of a national epic as his break from his past, although following Suriyothai, he made one more smaller film, a remake of his 1975 film, Last Love.

The storyline to Suriyothai is more than enough for at least three Shakespeare plays, notably Macbeth, Richard III and Henry V. Taking place in the 16th Century, the story is about feuding kingdoms, questionable ascensions to the throne, relatives plotting against each other, and a consort who plots her way to be queen. Suriyothai is a princess who loves one prince, but in the name of keeping peace among ruling families, marries another prince. She also dons armor in defense of the kingdom. For most Thais, the story is familiar. For non-Thais, there may be some confusion, especially as some of the characters change their names in keeping with their new positions in their respective royal households.

In spite of the scale of Suriyothai, the film has some elements that tie it with Prince Chatri’s other films. A common theme is the question about what it means to be Thai. There is also the protagonist who works on behalf of other people, often at great personal risk, for what they see as a greater good. Prince Chatri also has had female characters at the center of his films. In this regard, Suriyothai is somewhat similar to Prince Chatri’s 1986 film, Somsee, about a young woman who fights corporate interests on behalf of the residents of a slum area scheduled to be razed. One could say that the motivation behind the socially concerned films, as well as the later films, Suriyothai and King Naresuan, about benevolent rulers who united the Thai kingdom, is a sense of noblesse oblige. What may also motivate Prince Chatri is recognition of the fragility of Thailand where the only factor keeping various political and religious factions from a total descent into chaos is a common respect for the aging King, even though his powers are limited.

Even if one were to set aside historical concerns, Suriyothai has almost everything one would want in an epic. Visually equalling Hollywood at a fraction of the cost, there are sword fights, explosions, beheadings, sex, poisonings, heads on spears, partial nudity, blood, elaborate costumes, hundreds of soldiers, and lots of elephants. Given a larger budget, there are several extensive traveling shots of soldiers marching, or courtiers in palaces. While I had seen the edited version theatrically, the version reviewed for this piece is the three hour version that played in Thailand which is available as a Thai DVD. There is little about Chatrichalerm Yukol in English at this time. Prince Chatri has gone on record as stating that the film was made to give Thai people a greater sense of their own history. Considering when Suriyothai was made, one might also want to consider the film an expression of a royal family and a filmmaker who want to reaffirm their relevance during a time of constant change.

The Year 2001: The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke)

2009-07-26T22:47:00.002+01:00

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, as well as notching up best actor and actresses awards for Benoit Magimel and Isabelle Huppert, The Piano Teacher, Michael Haneke's psycho-drama adapted from Nobel Prize winning author Elfriede Jelinek's book of the same name, pretty much shocked all that saw it during the year 2001. Joe Bowman of the sublime Fin de cinema; whose on-going one man attempt to chronicle the noughties, in the Decade List, continues to amaze me, not only at the sheer volume of work but at his startling continuity, bows down to the majesty of Huppert, in 'her finest hour', and to Haneke for a film of 'remarkable restraint' in this great submission to Counting Down The Zeroes.

Rattle-your-ass-to-the-fucking-ground performances don't happen often, and when they do, they usually come from French actresses (though I can extend that to Swedish and/or German ones). Isabelle Huppert gives performances like that with nearly every film she graces, but none of them will probably ever reach the magnitude of her work in The Piano Teacher, Michael Haneke's masterful adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek's novel. It could be suggested that her performance as Erika Kohut, the title character who pretty much defies the use of a simple apposition, is what keeps The Piano Teacher afloat, as the delicate nature of the material could have descended into hideous comedy if placed in lesser hands. However, the film's triumphs are a result of both Huppert and Haneke, who employs remarkable restraint as he places the greatest trust in his actor. It's actually surprising how un-explicit The Piano Teacher is when returning to it, as its emotional violence carries a weight that exceeds the consecrated brutality of the so-called New French Extremity "movement" (see Trouble Every Day and Fat Girl), but Haneke has always operated in that way.

The restraint Haneke shows may have been the only way to make Jelinek's novel work on the screen, but this also allows for his camera to find something much more haunting than the display of physical violence in Huppert's face. On numerous occasions, he holds his gaze upon hers, sometimes in jump-cuts, other times in viscously long takes. It may come as some relief that the purpose of these shots aren't to understand or interpret Erika's thoughts. Haneke is never concerned with sympathy. Instead, the relationship between the camera and Erika provides the understanding of what those thoughts are doing to her. In all of the scenes that proceed Erika's bathroom meeting with Walter (Benoît Magimel), which marks her turning point, her placement within the frame, usually medium close-up dead-centered, maintains her control of the surroundings. Almost always, these shots fixate on more than just thinking; they show Erika assessing her situation and planning in order to maintain that control.

Once Erika has lost that which is so important to her, the shots take on a much different meaning. No longer is she planning; she's anticipating. Once the letter of her sexual requests has entered Walter's possession, she has given away her control. Even if the requests weren't of a masochistic nature, the transfer of control renders her a slave, for she knows no middle ground. As Walter reads the letter in her bedroom, her mental process relies solely on someone else's response. There is a progression to this change, which begins the moment she accepts Walter's kiss in the bathroom. In this scene, she disappears for the first time, both inside and outside of the frame. Once the embrace is initiated, Huppert's tiny frame literally vanishes behind Magimel's comparatively broad physique. As the scene goes on, she disappears again when fellating Walter, placing him in the camera's focal point. Erika's gravitational placement also indicates the beginning stages of her descent. Walter gets Erika to fall to her knees. She quickly returns to her feet, but as the film advances, it becomes evident that Erika's moments of weakness all occur when she's on her back, whether it be on the floor of a locker room or her foyer with Walter or in bed with her suffocating mother (Annie Girardot). In the bathroom scene, she's still able to exert a projected austerity, that which has kept her on top until this point, but this vanishes once she's handed Walter the letter.

As Walter half-heartedly attempts to adhere to her requests, he's placed in the position he thinks he's striving for, partially for the success of his pursuits, which Erika always suspects as his musical undertakings implore the same gain, and partially because he's a man. "You should know what you can and cannot do to a man," he tells Erika after she refuses to let him ejaculate, as if the fact that he has a penis is his innate leverage. He gets Erika on the ground twice afterward, the first in her desperate attempt to normalize the relationship in the locker room, the second when he fucks her by force in her apartment. The latter results in the second-to-last time the camera holds on Erika's gaze. She processes what has just happened and again she's left without a plan. At the recital that follows and closes the film, Erika comes to her greatest understanding. Walter has confirmed her early suspicions; his fallacious greeting at the recital proves what Erika's always known about him and men in general: that he'd leave once he got what he really wanted. His want is to conquer, both on physical and mental levels.

As we see Erika's face for the last time, which is bruised and torn apart, something that's subtly concealed as she prepares for the recital, she returns to the same gaze she would hold before giving Walter the letter. By plunging the knife in her chest, a moment that's incredibly unsettling, we discover this isn't an act of desperation or dejection, but the means in which for Erika to re-assert control. Though it's only implied, suicide doesn't serve as an act of hopelessness but of power. She again retains control of her situation and, most importantly, of herself, surmounting any damage caused by Walter in his abuse of her willing vulnerability. It is, perhaps, the ultimate control, and Erika understands that it is the only way to retain it. When the film descends into its most devastating moments, The Piano Teacher becomes all the more dangerous because it's sadomasochistic play without a safe word. Though Erika ultimately comes out on top, it's through her last resort.

Haneke very finely inserts his obsession with the media when Erika's ideas of men begin to personify the ludicrous sitcom her mother watches earlier in the film where a nurse suggests her patient thinks women are inferior to men. He never allows this to take precedence as it has in nearly all of his other works, from The Seventh Continent [Der Siebente Kontinent] to Caché, so it's a bit surprising that the film in which his artistic obsessions exist in the background would be his greatest triumph. Elements of Erika can be found in many of Huppert's prior and subsequent performances. She had previously worked from Jelinek's writing in Werner Schroeter's Malina, which Jelinek adapted from Ingeborg Bachmann's novel, and is currently set to star alongside Tilda Swinton and Udo Kier in Ulrike Ottinger's Die Blutgräfin, which Jelinek co-wrote. It's also worth noting that her role in François Ozon's 8 Women [8 femmes] is almost a parody of Erika. However, it's pretty hard to argue with the notion that The Piano Teacher is her finest hour, and perhaps even the finest single piece of acting we've seen all decade.

My Top Ten: 2000 - Kevyn Knox, The Cinematheque

2009-07-23T21:00:00.001+01:00

Joining our Top Ten party is Kevyn Knox of the almighty 'The Cinematheque', a man who isn't a stranger to the whole top ten process, check out his amazing 'The Top 10 Project', a simple and brilliant idea in which 'Critics, Historians, Theoreticians, Filmmakers, Professors et cetera' are asked to name their Top 10 films of all time, anyone can submit their list, which now runs at just under 200 entrants, and then tallys the results to collate an ultimate top 10. Any sucker for film lists (and let's admit it, there aren't many cinephiles out there who can resist a list) will have to check out this definitive and addictive project.

1. In the Mood For Love (Wong Kar-wai)
2. Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr)
3. Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier)
4. Yi Yi (Edward Yang)
5. Amores perros (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
6. Memento (Christopher Nolan)
7. Requiem For A Dream (Darren Aronofsky)
8. The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola)
9. Our Lady of the Assassins (Barbet Schroeder)
10. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Joel Coen)

1st special mention: The Heart of the World (Guy Madden) - only six minutes long but the history of cinema is packed in those six minutes.

2nd special mention: The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami) - technically a 1999 release but I felt I needed to include such a powerful film as this.

Hon. Mentions (in no particular order): Traffic (Soderbergh), Esther Kahn (Arnaud Desplechin), Code Unknown (Haneke), The House of Mirth (Terence Davies), The Widow of St. Pierre (LeConte), Time Code (Mike Figges), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee), Melena (Tornatore), Nine Queens (Bielinsky), The Circle (Panahi), Murderous Maids (Denis), Little Otik (Svankmajer), Dr. T and the Women (Altman), Bamboozled (Spike Lee), Uzamaki (Higuchinsky), The Day I Became a Woman (Marzieh Meshkini), Under The Sand + Water Drops on Burning Rocks (both Francois Ozon), Brother (Kitano), The King is Alive (Levring), Suzhou River (Lou Ye), Jesus' Son (MacLean), Best in Show (Guest) and Wonder Boys (Hanson).

Okay, so it's actually a Top 36, but who's counting?

The Year 2001: Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)

2009-07-23T11:15:00.001+01:00

It took almost two years for the US, and the rest of the world, to catch on to Spirited Away, originally released in 2001, it wasn't until 2003 that this wonderful animation, by the incredible animation director Hayao Muyazaki, finally made ripples across the pond. Tommy Salami of the fantastically named, Pluck You, Too!, a lively, brilliant blog dedicated to the weird and wonderful world of movies (as well as some superb, and hunger inducing, posts on his favourite food joints), reviews 'one of the great animated films', in this sublime, and his first, submission, for Counting Down The Zeroes.

One more thing to thank Pixar for is helping get Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli some respect in the States. I've been a fan since I saw Nausicaa presented at a science fiction convention in the early '90s; back then was only available on a bootleg VHS with subtitles created by American fans who learned Japanese. Later I saw Princess Mononoke at an Asian Cultural Center in Minneapolis, dubbed for American release. So I thought it was wonderful when in 2003 he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature with Spirited Away.

Princess Mononoke was the general American public's introduction to Miyazaki, and it is practically an action film, with a war between nature and a village of gunmakers; it's an easy sell. Spirited Away is a disturbing fairy tale about a young girl kidnapped and enslaved by a witch. Instead of an action film we get an Alice in Wonderland set in a strange fairy tale world sprung from Miyazaki's imagination, melding all sorts of folklore.

It is the tale of Chihiro, a young girl who is moving to a new town with her parents. She is angry at leaving home, and sits petulantly in the back of the car. Her father takes a deep forest road, and they come upon an abandoned amusement park. As they explore, her parents find a room laden with delicious food, and begin eating ravenously. Chihiro senses that something is off, and does not eat; she comes upon a boy named Haku, who warns her to leave with her parents, but it is too late. Her parents have begun turning into pigs, and there is no return. They have entered the land of spirits, and cannot escape.

Rather disturbing, isn't it? No more than a fairy tale, and that's what this is. Chihiro follows Haku, who wants to protect her, but soon she is in the thrall of the witch Yubaba, a wizened old woman of bizarre proportions. Her parents are soon in Yubaba's pigsty and Chihiro must find a way to free them and escape; her only choice is to work for the witch, at her bath house, where all the spirits come to get clean. From there on, we follow the naive yet plucky Chihiro as she works off her debt in the spirit world, making friends and learning the secrets of Haku and Yubaba.

The world is one of mystery and wonder, rooted in mundane work life. Another worker named Lin takes her under her wing- she's one of the few humans there- and teaches her the ropes. They toil together scrubbing the baths, which are visited by frog men, dragons and "stink spirits." Some are the spirits of rivers and trees, in other guises; others are pure mystery, such as a cloaked, silent figure in Noh mask who seems a little too friendly and generous. Chihiro learns that Haku is also bound to Yubaba, and hopes to free him as well someday.

The story is slowly paced, but there is always something fantastic going on. The characters are full and believable, whether they are witches or drudges. And as always, the beautiful animation of Studio Ghibli is the backdrop. We see oriental dragons have dogfights in the sky against swarms of paper birds cutting them to ribbons; a spidery man with a dozen gangly limbs operating a coal furnace fed by a tiny army of dust motes; and parades of all kinds of spirits and fantastic creatures as they walk across the bridge to town.

The world has the same grip that the creations of Jim Henson and Terry Gilliam, and it's not all fun and games. Yubaba takes Chihiro's name as collateral, and renames her "Sen," as it capturing her soul. A ravenous spirit begins luring the bath house workers with gold nuggets and swallowing them whole. And Yubaba's minions include a trio of bouncing, grunting, bearded disembodied heads and a beastly enormous baby she dotes over. We get a real sense of danger for little Sen, no matter how resourceful she is.

Spirited Away is more than a coming of age folk tale about a spoiled child forced to grow up in a strange world. In part, the bath house is a token from old Japanese culture, "the good old days." In 2001 when this was made, Japan was undergoing its own economic crisis, and a yearning for the simplicity of old abounded. The familiar Miyazaki nods to nature are subtle, but there; we see a polluted river spirit fly free, once it is freed of the garbage weighing it down. The punishment for the gluttonous parents is obvious; we have grown fat and need to tighten our belts. So in some ways, it is just as poignant for America now as it was for Japan eight years ago.

But lessons aside, this is a great story; at just over two hours, it never drags or feels indulgent. It envelops you, like a good fantasy should. There are mistakes and redemption; people of compassion and greed, selfish vampires, gluttons and the reward of earnest hard work, pride in doing the right thing, and forgiveness for trespasses. We dive deep into a strange yet familiar world, and meet fantastic and interesting characters. We even see someone eat a dried lizard, who makes it look so tasty you wish you could have a nibble.

Spirited Away is the perfect marriage of the more energetic Princess Mononoke and the children's fairy tale of My Neighbor Totoro, that can be enjoyed by everybody. And while Ghibli has made better films- Grave of the Fireflies and Only Yesterday are truly great movies- this is a favorite, and one of the great animated films. You can watch it subtitled, or with the excellent English dub that was released by Disney in 2003. When you see the wonder of WALL-E, know that it stands on Chihiro's little shoulders.

Disney's Trailer for the film.

The Year 2001: The Devil's Backbone (Guillermo del Toro)

2009-07-22T21:36:00.001+01:00

Before the international acclaim of Pan's Labyrinth, before the box-office success of the Hellboy franchise, Guillermo released 'The Devil's Backbone', a chilling supernatural tale - often dubbed by del Toro as the spiritual predecessor to Pan's Labyrinth - set against the backdrop of the Spanish civil war within the compounds of a remote orphanage. Rick Olson, of the fabulous Coosa Creek Cinema; where passion and knowledge of cinema, especially the films of Jean Renoir, make him a definitive resource for any aspiring cinephile, takes pleasure in this 'well constructed film', in this great submission to Counting Down The Zeroes, and wonders what the future holds for this talented director.

We see the ghost in the opening scene of Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone. There’s no slow reveal, no build-up, no ratcheting-up of suspense. And it liberates us to pay attention, and pay attention we should. As in any good opening sequence, del Toro tells us all we need to know about what’s going to come. The pleasure, in this and any well-constructed film, is figuring out how it all relates, how it all comes together.

It takes place in the waning years of the Spanish Civil War. Franco’s forces are winning and they’re rooting out the leftist sympathizers, two of whom run the orphanage where The Devil’s Backbone is set. The story follows Carlos (Fernando Tielve), a boy whose father was killed in the resistance, as he arrives and attempts to fit in at the orphanage. Dark doings have occurred in the past, and soon they impinge upon Carlos’ everyday life, as the ghost — called “the one who sighs” by the orphans — seems to have chosen the boy for a special task.

This is not John Wayne

The film is solidly constructed from a script by del Toro, Antonio Trashorras, and David Muñoz. It relies little on tricks and tropes of the horror trade, although there are a few scares. Instead, it builds suspense smoothly, fitting the pieces gradually together until everything comes together satisfactorily. del Toro’s style here is smooth and unobtrusive — although he moves the camera fluidly, he seems to know when to keep it still as well. The locations near Madrid give a “western” feel to the proceedings; it reminds me particularly of Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, both filmed partially in Spain. Of course, the fact that del Toro busily quotes from a variety of oaters (see above) doesn’t hurt at all.

Marisa Paredes, Eduardo Noriega and Federico Luppi give strong performances as the three adults whose interrelationships determine everyone’s fate. del Toro appears to have a light touch with the child actors; he gets performances out of them that ring true, especially Tielve and Íñigo Garcés as the boy who knows the orphanage’s dark secret. Unlike in much of Hollywood’s product, del Toro’s child characters suffer real pain and loss. Knowing that his young characters can be placed in true jeopardy lends a sense of veritas and emotional gravity to the drama.

Judging from his output, del Toro seems to have kind of a schizoid quality about him. There’s Popcorn Guillermo, whose Hellboy movies are fast paced and rollicking, model comic book adaptations bent on nothing more than a good time. But there’s also Auteur Guillermo, director of dark, adult genre fare such as Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. Given that he’s slated to helm The Hobbit and its unnamed companion piece, I wonder: which one will show up?