•Stereo Sanctity•

Film Review: Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Fri, 10 May 2013 20:21:00 +0000

This review is featured in the May/June 2013 issue of Little White Lies. Journey to Italy is currently playing in a restored print throughout the US and UK.

Often credited as the first work of the modern cinematic age, Roberto Rossellini’s 1954 film Journey to Italy pivoted on a spirit of emotional and artistic restlessness. It’s a spirit that its director — and soon, his medium — would work toward reconciling with that of a society on the brink of technological and ideological revolution.

Like the characters it depicts, however, Rossellini’s masterpiece — playing in a restored print at London’s BFI Southbank — arrives at transcendence only by threatening a rupture in unity. Presented as a natural by-product of the neo-realist methodology Rossellini helped to coin, Journey to Italy is a film which treads this radical new path via a convergence of traditional melodrama, documentary-based intimacy and a streak of raw vulnerability prompted by the clandestine affair and eventual marriage of the film’s director and leading lady.

It stars Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders as Katherine and Alex Joyce, an English couple in the throes of matrimonial discord as they travel through Naples to complete a real estate transaction. Finding tragedy in the mundane, the film idly stirs buried emotions as these two face up to the implications of an eight-year relationship that may have been built on feelings as tenuous as its narrative framework.

Rossellini’s conceptual design remains patient, his camera operating at a remove, allowing the actors to find their characters in intuitive fashion (indeed, much of the film was improvised, a practice which Rossellini gravitated toward in the preceding years).

Upon arrival, as Katherine and Alex nonchalantly acknowledge their gathering malaise, the two seem fated for strife and possible separation. They outwardly persevere, adhering to social mores even as they subtly disparage one another: him by flirting with mutual female friends; her by recounting her liaison with a former lover; both by renouncing any lingering feelings for each other. Their decision seems to have been made, their journey a symbolic rather than galvanising gesture.

Rossellini illustrates Katherine and Alex’s individual attempts at mental and emotional reconciliation through disparate actions once they’ve physically removed themselves from each other’s company. George visits neighbouring cities, pursuing fleeting passions with a married woman before courting the possibility of paying for female accompaniment. Katherine, meanwhile, travels a more spiritual path, touring the volcanic countryside, desolate desert catacombs and, eventually, the ruins of Pompeii.

Accompanied by Alex to the latter locale at the behest of a local acquaintance, the experience of viewing entombed bodies and drawing conclusions about their past lives ultimately proves too much for Katherine, sending her careening between doubt and disdain.

Appropriately, Rossellini stages his final flourish as an awakening: as the couple attempt to navigate throngs of people enraptured in a religious procession, the interpersonal gravity — as well as the universal inconsequentiality — of their impending decision manifests as a kind of divine intervention. As it does throughout, the physical intercession of reality into the constructed drama of the film reflects a latent philosophical and aesthetic instinct in Rossellini. Put simply, in both narrative and cinematic terms, what we’ve witnessed is a miracle. [LWL]

Blu-ray Review: Sean Baker's Starlet [Music Box Films]

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Wed, 08 May 2013 03:55:00 +0000

Sean Baker's Starlet hinges on a plot concession so tantalizing to the viewer yet so detached from its main character's primary concerns that it almost plays like an afterthought. It wouldn't quite be accurate to label this bit of narrative disclosure a revelation (and certainly not a "spoiler," as no one in the film would ever consider such details worthy of much extraneous thought), but more simply an acknowledgment of a lingering but nonetheless vital piece of character contextualization. In a lesser script, or in the hands of a less intrepid filmmaker (Baker co-wrote, directed, and edited the film himself), Jane's (Dree Hemingway) actions would revolve around this most unique aspect of her everyday life. But Jane isn't defined by her lifestyle, and indeed Baker offers personal information only as these characters likely would themselves.

To put it bluntly, Jane is a porn star. Yet her association with the adult-entertainment industry is about the furthest thing from her or this film's mind at any given time. When we meet her in the film's opening scenes, she seems a typical young woman, casually waking up midday beside her dog Starlet (ostensibly the movie's namesake, though, like the film, it gathers varying connotations as it progresses), fretting to her friend and roommate, Melissa (Stella Maeve), over the look of her bedroom, and generally moving through her day half-put together and with an air of lax complacency about her. It isn't until 45 minutes into the film that we actually find out what line of work Jane, Melissa, and Melissa's boyfriend, Mikey (James Ransone), are engaged in, and even then a workplace confrontation over a paycheck seems reminiscent of many a disgruntled contractor. These girls could be actresses, models, spokeswomen, entertainment assistants; Jane certainly doesn't get hung up on such semantics.

Rather, Starlet's central storyline is much gentler, though from a moral standpoint, equally as thorny. When Jane buys an antique thermos from an aging widow, Sadie (85-year-old Besedka Johnson, in her first and last film role), only to discover $10,000 dollars cash inside, she unexpectedly arrives at an ethical crossroads: Does she return the money, or does she keep it under the assumption that Sadie doesn't need it and probably isn't aware of it anyway? From this simple premise, Baker sketches an unlikely tale of friendship, obligation, and personal and professional bonds that progresses naturally through skepticism, selfishness, dismay, and finally, reconciliation and revelation. As her relationship with Melissa deteriorates over the latter's increasingly erratic behavior, Jane's bond with Sadie only strengthens, as each unexpectedly inspires the other as they transition into new territories of emotional maturation. Sadie even turns out to be perhaps the film's most mysterious character, her pointed personal reveal in the film's final scene as surprising as Jane's professional sacrifices.

Even at this relatively early stage (this is just his fourth feature), it's clear that Baker is a confident visual storyteller. Besides withholding certain facets of Jane's lifestyle, he also allows the aforementioned final scene to play out wordlessly, his faith in his sun-drenched images, reaction-based editing patterns, and Manual's swelling downtempo ambient score proof enough of both a promising stylist and natural narrative voice. Meanwhile, many of the film's best moments play out between passages of dialogue, with glances, grins, and an endearing gaze (and not only those provided by Starlet) enough to shift character and audience sympathy. Sadie is a cold, bitter old lady when we meet her, while Jane is as naïve and selfish as one might expect from a 21-year-old. But each are provided instances of quiet reprieve from their respective dramas, where their true selves are in evidence and their genuine empathy for another woman—even one decade's her junior or senior—is palpably conveyed. Starlet is a film of small, humane gestures set within a world extreme displays of physicality. And yet what we're left with isn't images of exploitation or perversity, but ones of warmth and camaraderie. And in that sense, the film is one of the most unexpectedly moving love stories American cinema has given us in quite some time.

Image/Sound:
Like many filmmakers on the American independent circuit, Sean Baker shot Starlet in digital HD. As the format tends to do, it accentuates certain byproducts of location shooting while muting darker indoor hues. Baker's careful framing of each shot, however, renders such lens flares and flat interior spaces as quite intentional. There's depth to many of these images, and a certain beauty to their immediacy. This is a worthy visual document of the outskirts of Los Angeles County, and a seemingly effortless display of natural lighting and color-splashed composition. Sound, meanwhile, is offered in two DTS-HD forms: a 5.1 surround and a 2.0 stereo mix. Starlet is primarily driven by its dialogue and visuals, but Manual's score offers enough nuance and low-key resonance to warrant a surround viewing.

Extras:
Highlighting the package is an audio commentary by Baker alongside actors Dree Hemingway, Stella Maeve, James Ransone, Karren Karagulian, and various crew members, and a lengthy making-of documentary shot on location throughout the shoot and featuring all the principal cast and crew. Additionally, there are interviews with Hemingway and Besedka Johnson shot at SXSW, audition and rehearsal footage of both as they initially get into character, and a few short mini documentaries on various technical aspects of the film, including a behind-the-scenes look at how the crew went about shooting the film's provocative central sex scene.

Overall:
One of the best and most under-seen American indies of the last few years arrives in an impressive package from Music Box Films. [Slant]

Indiewire Feature: 'Doing bad for the greater good': Kevin Spacey, Beau Willimon and Co. Look Back at 'House of Cards' Season One

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Wed, 01 May 2013 04:24:00 +0000

On February 1st, Netflix changed the television industry. After struggling for the better part of a year to regain the trust of subscribers after an unexpected price increase and alteration to its delivery model, the streaming and distribution service took a risk on a new original series with potentially inflammatory political content. The show is "House of Cards," an American adaptation of a novel by Michael Dobbs which was previously the source of a hit miniseries across the Atlantic for the BBC. Showrunner Beau Willimon brought this tale of greed, corruption and disloyalty to small screens across the United States with acclaimed filmmaker David Fincher by his side as co-producer and creative director, with Netflix signing on for two seasons without a pilot.

The partnership has reportedly resulted in two million new subscribers for Netflix, more original series' in production and, most importantly, the validity of a new distribution model. With all 13 episodes of season one made available to stream instantly, "House of Cards" became the first TV show to forgo weekly broadcast scheduling and instead embrace a growing demand amongst audiences' with an interest in consuming shows at their own pace.

Two months later and the cast and crew are in the midst of shooting season two, and couldn't be happier or more proud of the show's quick success. Late last week at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Willimon and cast members Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, Kate Mara, Corey Stoll, Michael Kelly, Sakina Jaffrey and Kristen Connolly sat for a panel discussion about the origins of the series and how, despite the hot button issues the show presents, "House of Cards" is truly an ensemble piece with a particular focus on the nuances of acting. Here's are five highlights from the evening.

"House of Cards" may have originated from a novel, but its roots may go back even further.

"It really started with 'Richard III,'" Spacey explained, offering an analogy for the show's pointed indictment of corruption and innate human selfishness. Spacey, having played Richard III on stage the prior year, got early and unexpected experience with a character equally as ruthless as his Congressman Francis Underwood. "Working as Richard really helped me," he continued.

Not only were Richard III's ideals a point of reference, but the functionality of his stage performance and in particular the theater's narrative technique of directly addressing the audience informed Spacey's portrayal of a politician who'll stop at nothing to satisfy both his personal and professional urges. "I saw the glee of the audience becoming co-conspirators," he explained of the fourth wall-breaking expositions. "I started to understand that relationship."

"House of Cards" may have subject matter in common with shows we've seen before, but the approach is something altogether new.

"The West Wing," probably the most famous and popular political television show of all time, has been a point of reference for some. But "House of Cards" "is fundamentally different from ‘The West Wing,'" according to Willimon. "‘The West Wing' is what we hope government could be. ‘House of Cards' is probably closer to what it's actually like."

And their method of shooting--two episodes shot simultaneously with the same director--has further influenced the feel of the show and has separated "House of Cards" from those that came before. "We didn't want to do a pilot. We just wanted to tell a story," Spacey said. "I don't feel like I'm in episodic TV. I feel like I'm in a really long film." Actors Corey Stoll and Michael Kelly agreed, comparing the shooting method and unrestricted narrative of the show to "the golden age of film in ‘70s" and the experience akin to "shooting a little movie at a time."

Netflix's risk paid off for both the industry and the audience.

The rise of the mainstream movie industry in the ‘90s eventually devolved into a new millennium of tentpole films and effects-driven franchises. "It created a void," Spacey said. "No writer or director worth his salt wouldn't try and fill that void," he continued, noting the widespread move of American filmmakers from Hollywood to television. When asked about the risk and the resulting revenue that Netflix has accumulated because of the show's success, Sakina Jaffrey simply said that "Netflix is making money by saying, ‘Audiences are smart.'"

"The film and TV industry can learn the lesson that the music industry never learned," Spacey added. "You don't need to give the audience everything on a plate. The unspoken is powerful," he continued. Willimon agreed: "Netflix is always looking to shake things up." They've given audiences "viewer empowerment: a choice." But he was quick to reiterate that just because they decided to make every episode available instantly, that "doesn't necessitate binge watching" on the part of the audience. "They have the option."

Despite the pedigree of the producers behind the show, "House of Cards" is first and foremost an actor's piece.
Despite not being in attendance, director David Fincher's presence loomed large. "Fincher told me early on: Cast well and get the hell out of the way," Willimon recalled. Against the odds, all eventual cast members turned out to be both Willimon and Fincher's first choices. And the individual roles are vital. Spacey may be the face of the show, but he made it a point to thank Willimon for "writing incredible roles for women." And those roles, for Wright, Mara, Jaffrey, and Connolly, cover a wide range. Wright's Clare Underwood is tough but "respects anyone who gets the job done"--even Mara's Zoe Barnes, a journalist entangled in a morally compromising relationship with her husband.

Being a reporter "is just who she is," Mara explained. "That she's determined and motivated are the more important aspects of her to understand." Jaffrey, meanwhile, as a female Chief of Staff, takes particular pride in both her character and even the more questionable motives of those around her: "All the characters have the confidence of their own convictions." Connolly's Christina Gallagher, girlfriend of troubled Congressman Peter Russo, is, by contrast, extremely ethical but equally animated. "She's strong in her moral center, if less optimistic," she explained.

Christina's skepticism is fueled by the men she sees both thriving and collapsing around her. Kelly explains his and Spacey's characters' motivation thusly: "Doing bad for the greater good." Willimon added that, like President Lincoln before them, "they are doing unconstitutional things to save the constitution. Politics are inherently contradictory." "Francis is a version of extreme American individualism," Spacey said of his character.

Hoping to establish Underwood's demeanor straightaway, Willimon wrote the show's opening scene, in which Underwood kills a dog that has been hit by a car, only to receive some wary comments about the brutality of such an essentially merciful act. Ultimately, they went with opening as planned and Willimon got his movie star entrance out of Spacey while instantly outlining the show's thorny moral territory. "If you're not down with the dog getting killed in the first 20 seconds then this isn't the show for you," Willimon joked.

Real life politicians have been not only supportive but surprised by the show's accuracy.

"That it's remarkably close," Spacey said when asked about the feedback he's received from members of government. In order to facilitate this accuracy, Spacey spent time with both the current and majority whip in an effort to research his character and the political lifestyle. "The fringes are being explored, content-wise," Stoll said. But as they shot the first season of the show during last year's Presidential election, and the cast and crew watched the daily news after shooting had wrapped, they began to see the parallels and potential of their own narrative.

After seeing some of the things that were transpiring in Washington, Spacey realized that "our storylines aren't that crazy!" Again referencing President Lincoln, Spacey reminded that history often repeats itself, that "in the end he did what he had to do to get a piece of legislature through." Spacey obviously doesn't condone the actions of his character, but he nonetheless remains optimistic about what these revelations might mean for our current administration. [Indiewire]

Film Review: Bertrand Bonello's House of Pleasures

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 02:30:00 +0000

I wrote this piece for Reverse Shot's 10th Anniversary 'Life of Film' Symposium, a celebration and selection of films we believe sum up the last ten years in cinema and might just point the way forward for the medium.

Days of Future Passed

Even a cursory glance at our post-millennial cinematic landscape should spark a mental catalogue of our most popular concerns—those of death, decay, and, in light of the medium’s escapist functionality, our total and utter apocalypse. Broadly speaking, these notions help drive, if not completely nurture, mainstream filmmaking. But the reverberations from these preoccupations can be felt across all strata of modern cinema. Budgets may have risen and our collective appetite for destruction may have nearly devoured itself whole, but we remain ever yearning and susceptible to the cinema’s grand displays of emotional terror and physical and psychological paralysis. Whether by choice or out of necessity, many of the world’s best filmmakers examine similar ills on a more intimate, less portentous scale than those in the typical Hollywood model. Bertrand Bonello’s 2011 masterpiece House of Pleasures was itself a minor-scale tremor sent echoing across the world film circuit, a vivid, audacious vision of the incremental degradation of the female spirit and a work, in its own way, as unsettling as anything our modern cataclysmic cinema has given us.

Set in France, within the florid confines of a turn-of-the-20th-century brothel, House of Pleasures bears solemn witness to a profession in the process of incremental upheaval, an age-old custom caught between eras, its methodology rooted firmly in the past as its future encroaches at a rate that makes this vocation feel all but unsustainable in its current form. Bonello sketches his chamber ensemble as a fluid, transitory subculture, as each woman uniquely braces for the inevitable progression of her established role. Hinging on the arrival of a fresh-faced, sixteen-year-old girl (Iliana Zabeth) at the L’Apollonide house of tolerance—an old-fashioned term notable for its contradictory allusions to both resistance and benevolence—the film grants an individualized look at the greater profession’s imminent turn away from deceptive opulence toward a more immediately salacious, dehumanizing utilitarianism. Operating via an antiquated propriety, L’Apollonide appears to have nonetheless thrived as an up-to-now self-sustained enterprise that Bonello arrives at in media res, reimagining the daily grind and routine transactions of these working women. “It hasn’t changed much here. It changes slowly,” the house’s madam (Noémie Lvovsky) admits in one of the film’s earliest scenes. She’s arguably the only character aware of her and her girls’ precarious position, their repression borne not of convenience but of responsibility, and by the end possibly the only one to psychologically endure its (de)evolution.

What’s particularly fascinating about Bonello’s approach to this material is the way he depicts the transient state of the environment, collapsing the temporal boundaries separating the historical, the modern, and the postmodern. This is a film of brave stylistic flourishes and disorienting sensory experience, even as it plays with classic techniques of montage, inter-title division, and subjective first-person reminiscence. Bonello’s detailed, period mise-en-scène further heightens the allure, allowing for liberal mobility between the theatrical, the novelistic, and the cinematic. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that Bonello, in an interview with Cinema Scope around the time of the film’s premiere, would cite both Quentin Tarantino and Hou Hsiao-hsien as influences. The former seems perhaps the more immediately unlikely of the two to have inspired Bonello’s creative process, though Tarantino has now spent his last handful of films also rewriting history—of both a cultural and cinematic nature—through his own idiosyncratic logic. Bonello’s presentation may be less crass, but the principles behind the approach ring in accord. (One should also mention an overlapping spirit of vengeance, which acts as a catalyst in both directors’ recent work; Bonello specifically references Death Proof as an inspiration).

It’s Hou’s Flowers of Shanghai, however, that stands as House of Pleasures’ most overt predecessor. Though a much more stately vision of an antiquated form of sexual companionship, Hou’s film, with its drifting, long-take cinematography, carefully modulated blocking, and undercurrents of malevolence, nonetheless plays as spiritual, aesthetic, and thematic guide for much of what Bonello attempts to expand upon with House of Pleasures. The meditative, fever dream sensuality of Flowers of Shanghai, however, is replaced here by a mournful, nightmarish carnality, a series of intimate encounters rendered as a passionless procession of fetish and confession, taken to near-psychedelic lengths by Bonello’s elliptical montage and anachronistic music cues. In the film’s show-stopping centerpiece, a laconic interlude is transformed into an apparitional waltz, the wayward souls of these women sent swaying across the ornate maison, futile to resistance, seemingly entranced by the brave diegetic use of the Moody Blues’s symphonic-rock classic “Nights in White Satin.” It’s an audacious authorial stroke, a mournful interstitial turned frighteningly palpable, the attendant impression of hallucinatory rapture boiling over in a manner both grave and white-hot to the senses.

“If we don’t burn, how will the night be lit?” one chillingly prophetic prostitute opines as the flames lightening the house’s winding corridors begin to wane and Bonello’s cyclical narrative reveals a far more distressing nature. This rhetorical question ushers in one last startling sequence, a sort of visual synopsis of the film’s thesis, as Bonello jumps from the horrific recollection of an earlier, violent act of misogyny to a shocking manifestation of previously implied sexual vengeance to a final, disorienting cut to modern day France, captured on digital video and shot roadside, vérité style, in stark contrast to the plush interiors of L’Apollonide. The only equivalent narrative and aesthetic jump in contemporary cinema that comes to mind is Abbas Kiarostami’s similar move to low-grade video for the epilogue to his Taste of Cherry. And just as Bonello’s greater stylistic schema nods toward Hou while wisely embellishing with personalized hues, so too does the narrative break seemingly gesture at Kiarostami by removing the viewer from the drama and dropping them into a present-day realism.

However, Bonello utilizes this jarring maneuver not to alleviate some of the oppressing finality of his parable, as Kiarostami had, but as a device to reiterate the recurring and eternal plight of his characters, as well as that of a profession that may have lost some of its luxuriousness as it’s moved further from the public eye, but nonetheless continues to paint its practitioners as social outcasts. Bonello both sanctifies and sacrifices these women while recognizing the conditions that have bred and nurtured such a habitual cycle of personal necessity and professional entrapment, and ultimately implicates a universal culture that superficially decries prostitution while nefariously indulging in its convenience. With House of Pleasures, Bonello designs an intoxicating artifice, managing to maintain a severity in judgment while looking to the past in hope (however futile) of rewriting the future of both a medium and an occupation, each prone to and sustained by destruction. [RS]

Fandor Feature: Scenes - Post Mortem

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 02:03:00 +0000

Considering its wide functionality, cinema is perhaps the most well equipped medium to relate the intangible feeling of transience. The essentially absolute weight of the moving image, coupled with the dynamic possibilities of its employment, has resulted in countless articulations of yearning, elegiac ephemerality. From Terrence Malick’s symphonic waltzes to Andrei Tarkovsky’s grand confrontations with mortality to Aleksandr Sokurov’s grave evocations of apparitional communion to even Wong Kar-wai’s hallucinatory displays of emotional paralysis, there has been no lack of near-cosmic demonstrations of modern film’s ability to reflect transitory states of existence.

Chilean director Pablo Larraín is certainly not at the level of experience or expression of the aforementioned masters, but in his short career has arguably accomplished something just as notable. Over his last three films, Larraín’s engagement with the spiritual devolution of his country’s people at the hands of former dictator Augusto Pinochet has found him utilizing various narrative frameworks through which to visualize a nation’s disenchantment. The period settings—and in the case of his latest, No, the actual historical backdrop—of these films has understandably precipitated a temporal logic on behalf of Larraín. It is in his careful consideration of both the effects of the Pinochet regime on the people of Chile and the volatile temperament of the era, however, where his unblinking realization of a culture in transition is most deeply felt.

Each of these film’s reflect the implications of Pinochet’s reign in their own unique way, but it’s the final scene of 2010’s Post Mortem, the second and most devastating film in Larraín’s loosely defined trilogy, that most directly realizes the sense of psychological impermanence with which the filmmaker appears to be wrestling. A static, six-minute shot of man systematically trapping the object his affection and her lover inside a small shelter by piling debris in front of its door doesn’t, at first blush, seem a likely conduit for such a provocative representation of a country in the throes of decline. It’s Larraín’s attention to the personal ramifications of the era’s political practices, along with the aesthetic establishment of mood and the narrative organization of his characters’ everyday lives—in this case, the obsession a lonely morgue assistant named Mario (Alfredo Castro) develops for a local cabaret dancer (Antonia Zegers)—that creates a natural tension which ultimately begs for a relief that the director suggests may never arrive.

Far be it for me to speak too definitively about process, not being a filmmaker myself, but the degree of difficulty in effectively conveying a sense of both pregnant anticipation and, soon thereafter, fleeting hope seems especially pronounced when working in such a starkly realistic milieu. Without reasonable need to utilize the aesthetic resources which can help facilitate similar sentiments in more fantastical or, at the very least, operatic films, Larraín is left to coax genuine sensation from simpler tools. In Tony Manero, the first of his Pinochet-era films, it was through the specter of John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever character, idolized and compartmentalized by Castro’s Raúl Peralta, another of Larraín’s lonely men, this time moonlighting as both a disco dancer and serial killer.

Meanwhile, for Post Mortem, Larraín creates his own city of living dead, a zombified population conducting day-to-day activities as if in drowned in hypnosis (Mario, already of ghostly visage, grows paler as the film proceeds). When the nascent political turmoil erupts in a series of bombings and protestations, Mario attempts to help his effected love interest by hiding her from further harm beneath a housing complex. The build-up is methodical, Larraín’s patient depiction of events a source of both intrigue and discomfort. (No, for its part, takes a less allegorical approach, detailing the campaign to rally support of the referendum which would lead to Pinochet’s removal from office).

Post Mortem’s final shot, then, comes not as relief but painful reconciliation, offering not closure but the advancing revelation that these characters—and, by extension, the Chilean people—are caught in an age of flux, unable to escape the collateral consequence of the era’s political upheaval. And after a couple minutes, as the realization sets in that this is more than likely the conclusion of the film—the tension by this point wound up like a knot—an unnerving sense of repose cuts the anxiety like a knife even as we sit knowing Mario is far from satisfied. For six minutes we’re caught in an intermediary moment for an entire country, trapped by Larraín’s widescreen composition—growing more suffocating by the second as Mario stacks junk across the frame—nowhere to go, held breathless until one final cut to black. [Fandor]

DVD Review: Eclipse Series 38 - Masaki Kobayashi Against the System [Criterion]

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 01:47:00 +0000

By the mid 1950s, the Shochiku Studio house style was well established. Built on the efforts of such icons as Yasujirō Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, as well as lesser-known masters like Mikio Naruse and Keisuke Kinoshita, Shochiku trafficked in intimate, humane storytelling, with a distinct thematic tendency toward the familial and inspirational. During the occupation, these types of films weren't only encouraged, but required by the Allied powers, which strictly regulated all facets of Japanese media and entertainment. It's understandable, then, that in the years following World War II, filmmakers would feel prompted, if not obligated, to confront the atrocities of the war and the effects it had on Japan's economic, corporate, and cultural strata, which would hit punishing lows before admirably rebounding over the second half of the 20th century.

Perhaps the most important director to emerge during this period was Masaki Kobayashi, an aspiring filmmaker who in 1941, upon entering the Shochiku fold as an apprentice, was drafted into the Japanese army. After five years of reluctant service, including time as a prisoner of war, Kobayashi returned incensed, motivated, and more importantly, ready to create. Yet Shochiku, of rather prestigious pedigree when compared to more liberal contemporary studios such as Nikkatsu and Daiei, both of which would distribute similarly penetrating works by Kon Ichikawa and Yasuzo Masamura during this same era, wasn't yet of equal critical mind to that of Kobayashi, whose passion nonetheless needed an outlet. Between an early run of assistant jobs and his own initial forays into mild-mannered studio assignments, however, Kobayashi was able to shoot The Thick-Walled Room, a fiery exposé about a camp of POWs awaiting trial as their superiors seemingly work in tandem with American officials to ensure their demise.

But in 1953, this was material that no studio could touch, and The Thick-Walled Room was held from release for three years. In a weird sort of symmetry, however, 1956 would prove to be an auspicious year for Kobayashi, as three films bearing his directorial signature would end up seeing release. I Will Buy You, Kobayashi's first great film, found the newly inspired director initiating a practice which would serve him well over the course of his career: By folding his critique into the fabric of less outwardly political material (whether, as in the case of I Will Buy You, the world of professional sports, or the fantastical or historical milieus of his later work), Kobayashi was able to construct equally incendiary films of more relatable substance as they dealt head-on with modern-day Japan. For its part, I Will Buy You utilizes a fairly simple story of a baseball scout attempting to sign a hotly tipped college prospect to detail the greed and moral corruption in a profession nominally geared toward entertainment. What results is a subtly dramatic, morally complex tale of loyalty that forgoes the conciliatory in favor of the tragic.

Ambitious and darker yet, Black River would follow in the months soon after, and more accurately than any of Kobayashi's early films points toward the nascent Japanese New Wave which would stake an even more unruly stance at the dawn of the '60s with films by Koreyoshi Kurahara and Nagisa Oshima, among others. A volatile, emotionally turbulent portrait of lower-class life on the outskirts of U.S. military bases in the wake of the war, Black River teems with a barely contained energy that would come to mark the next decade in Japanese film. Starring Tatsuya Nakadai (Kobayashi's greatest muse, in his first role for the director) as Killer Joe, a mid-level yakuza as obsessed with overtaking a seedy apartment complex as he is causing a rift in the burgeoning love affair between a young student and his girlfriend, herself as enticed as she is skeptical of the suave, serpent-like Joe, the film creates a tense canvas of discomfort, operating by an internal logic all its own. With its deft balance of multiple intersecting story strands and a slow-simmering sense of squalor and unease, Black River plays like an antecedent to the works of New Wave rebels Shōhei Imamura and Seijun Suzuki, whose The Pornographers and Gate of Flesh, respectively, feel like natural descendants of Kobayashi's final film of '56.

It would be another six years before Kobayashi would return to such small-scale drama. In the years between Black River and 1962's brilliant morality play The Inheritance, Kobayashi devoted his energy to The Human Condition, a three-part, nine-hour war-time epic that would prove one of Eastern cinema's most substantial achievements. As overwhelming and impressive as every minute of The Human Condition is, however, there's certain charm to Kobayashi's more modestly mounted endeavors that was understandably lost in the expansion. Whether a retreat from such a massive undertaking or simply a brief return to his roots (tellingly, Kobayashi's next three films—Harakiri, Kwaidan, and Samurai Rebellion—would re-adopt such daunting proportions, resulting in his most financially successful period), The Inheritance plays like a refinement and reconciliation of the director's talents up to that point.

A severe indictment of material thirst and bourgeois entitlement, the film pits half a dozen characters (including Nakadai and Kurosawa regular Minoru Chiaki) in a game of deceit and one-upmanship over a dying businessman's inheritance. The lengths these characters go, and the moral roadblocks they must patently ignore, to simply extort additional funds from an estate they're all already partially entitled to anyway is both damning in its focus and uncomfortably universal in its application. That the most cunning of these participants turns out to be the most initially unassuming—and that her supposed identity is revealed in the very first scene of the film, establishing skepticism on the part of the viewer before the plot is even underway—feels like one last joke on the part of Kobayashi, whose own sly incriminations would continue to resonate as an essential facet of his work for the remainder of his career, though at never at such a personal, distressing register.

Image/Sound:
Packaged together in Criterion's 38th Eclipse box set, The Thick-Walled Room, I Will Buy You, Black River, and The Inheritance all make their debut on North American home video in traditional DVD format. Considering the sources and lack of a complete restoration, many of the four pictures' deficiencies, particularly the three 1956 releases, can be forgiven. The Thick-Walled Room survives in the weakest state, with multiple instances of scratches and inconsistent contrast. The quality gets better as we move along though. I Will Buy You is still muddy on occasion, exhibiting some wear and tear inherent to the print. Luckily, Black River makes a virtue of such imperfections, engulfing much of the action in nighttime exteriors and shadowy tenements. The Inheritance, meanwhile, looks predictably strong as it coincided with Masaki Kobayashi's assent to larger Scope productions. Sound fares about the same, progressively improving as technology and production values evolved over the years. All dialogue is upfront and clear with whatever outside aural elements clouding the mix a similarly natural byproduct of the materials at hand.

Extras:
As per Eclipse standards, there are no digital supplements to note. There are, however, typically informative and well-researched liner notes provided for each film by Michael Koresky.

Overall:
Masaki Kobayashi's sly incriminations would continue to resonate as an essential facet of his work for his entire career, though never at such a personal, distressing register as these four early films made for Shochiku Studios. [Slant]

DVD Review: Hong Sang-soo's In Another Country [Kino Lorber]

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:48:00 +0000

South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo's work is built on the concept of repetition. Yet within these constructs he's produced infinite variations on a very specific set of themes. Nearly all of his films feature a break (or breaks) in the narrative, after which either perspective pivots, characters undergo a change in interest or motivation, or the story itself begins a process of refraction wherein individual threads collapse into or are set into relief by each successive alternation. The episodic nature and modest aestheticism of his cinema has led many to reduce his output to a series of retreads and reassemblies of past successes, ignoring the fact that the main thematic concern of Hong's career has thus far hinged on this very preoccupation with personal inquisition, reminiscence, and reevaluation.

Last year's In Another Country was met with a similar sense of the expected, which, coming after a trio of some of his most complexly structured films (HaHaHa, Oki's Movie, The Day He Arrives), is somewhat understandable. After all, more than most of his work, In Another Country plays like a riff on familiar Hong tropes, a triptych narrative set against a beachside backdrop featuring recurring characters who drink, obsess, and confess a little too much as they search for emotional reconciliation. It also happens to be one of Hong's most effortless triumphs, a primary-colored comedy which nonchalantly dispenses hard truths, uncomfortable revelations, and spontaneous laughs.

Hong's 2006 film Woman on the Beach is set in a similar locale, emphasizes color to a corresponding degree, and features an assortment of characters who act on impulse (most often to their detriment), resulting in a quasi love-triangle narrative which In Another Country also employs in an array of configurations. Meanwhile, 2010's HaHaHa established a framework for his characters to recollect events from differing perspectives, a structuring technique which In Another Country references even as it simplifies the device. Here we have a young screenwriter notating different scenarios for a film starring a French woman traveling through Korea who unintentionally invites the gaze of a series of men who have more than a little trouble handling the emotional ramifications of their infatuation.

And here's where perhaps In Another Country's principal visual interest lies: in that of its star and cinematic cultural ambassador, Isabelle Huppert. She's present in nearly every frame of the film, and all three of her characters (a director, a divorcée, and an adulteress, all named Anne) are portrayed in a fashion that romanticizes her pedigree while casually neglecting her conscious role in each scenario's romantic entanglements. As one might expect from the various heritages of the ensemble, this is, by necessity, Hong's first film to be spoken primarily in English, though he exploits the second-language limitations of his actors to great comedic effect. Naturally, they all attempt to meet in the middle (English), yet their miscommunications quickly reveal the film's primary theme, that of linguistic nuance and the folly of interpersonal expression.

As each man inevitably falls for Anne's latent charms (first a married man with a pregnant wife, then an endearingly earnest lifeguard, then a filmmaker researching his next project, then another married man with a pregnant wife, all played by the same actors in a succession of variations on their own roles from preceding chapters), the film builds up a casual energy imbued with a lightness of touch, but an underlining sadness. This faint sense of discontent tends to emerge in moments of awkward exchange, such the lifeguard's continued attempts at wooing Anne, the married men who continually ignore their wives for the temporary pleasures of the exotic, or, most disarmingly, a monk who betrays the trust of a friend in an effort to ameliorate the discomfort of their visitor.

Hong continually sets up then undermines audience expectations in each situation, even at one point going so far as to present Anne's imaginary rendezvous as a real event so as to establish yet another layer of (meta-)awareness while emphasizing his medium's ability to more precisely communicate gradations in passion—and then to cheekily end the segment with the actual liaison anyway. To that end, if the mark of a great movie is the intangible sense that you could watch it forever, then In Another Country certainly fits, sets, and fulfills the criteria. And luckily, with Hong, more so than with any filmmaker of the modern era, we can get surprisingly close to actually experiencing this uniquely cinematic feeling.

Image/Sound:
Having been luckily enough to see In Another Country in 35mm, I can vouch for its status as Hong Sang-soo's most visually stimulating film to date, full of bright hues and carefully coordinated color schemes. It's unfortunate, then, that Kino Lorber has decided against offering the film on Blu-ray. As far as DVD transfers go, however, this is very solid, with acceptable contrast and noticeable grain. Colors pop to a satisfying degree and the picture is clean and devoid of any print damage. Sound, meanwhile, receives an unexpected (though mostly unnecessary) 5.1 mix. As any Hong devotee can tell you, there isn't much in the way of action in his films. Nevertheless, the mix is clear with dialogue pushed up front, while some of the beachside ambiance skirts the outside channels to pleasurable effect. Overall, this is a modest presentation of a modest film.

Extras:
None, which is a particular shame when considering this is the most widely seen film of Hong's career thus far.

Overall:
One of Hong Sang-soo's most effortless triumphs, a primary-colored comedy which nonchalantly dispenses hard truths, uncomfortable revelations, and spontaneous laughs. [Slant]

Record Review: Marnie Stern - The Chronicles of Marnia

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:40:00 +0000

History tells us that artists with an experimental lean tend to topple toward the middle over time, losing a once-unique edge in an effort to curb artistic stagnation or simply as a means of courting a wider listenership. At first blush, the career of Marnie Stern would seem to bear out this trajectory. The treble-voiced, finger-tapping, endearingly self-deprecating New York-based guitar hero has moved breathlessly across a trio of albums with nary a pause for traditional considerations such as melody or structure. That she’s gathered both in intermittent fits of inspiration over the years certainly speaks to her natural talent, yet both have, up to now, felt more like natural by-products of her process rather than premeditated goals. Which is more than fine: each of Stern’s records have provided more than their share of thrills and heart-stopping flourishes, and as a technician she may be the most naturally gifted guitar player of her generation. Nevertheless, she seemed to be exhausting her formula a bit on her 2011 self-titled album. The less defined, more freewheeling moments in her past work were easy to forgive for an artist still presumably finding her footing. But more recently these same feats of strength had begun to feel less like displays of unchecked passion and more like a crutch.

Which is what makes Stern’s amazingly titled new album The Chronicles of Marnia such a refreshing listen. Not so much a change of pace as a consolidation and careful re-allotment of her powers, Chronicles is unique in that it doesn’t represent a stylistic 180 or drastic overhaul of Stern’s sound, but instead finds her integrating her unique ingredients into fresh, streamlined concoctions. Working with Oneida drummer Kid Millions after years battling against the currents of torrential fury whipped up by Zach Hill (now of Death Grips infamy), Stern has finally found a running-mate rather than a foil. Granted, much of the excitement generated by the band’s prior set-up was a direct result of the tension spark by Stern’s guitar reacting unpredictably to Hill’s free-assault percussion. Millions may be more of a finesse player (though compared to Hill, nearly every drummer can sound dainty), but he’s far more equipped at harnessing a groove without sacrificing the momentum so essential to Stern’s headlong fury. What they’ve emerged with is Stern’s first collection of songs, ten carefully plotted tracks with an emphasis on craft and internal harmonization.

Lest one think Stern is following the path established by that of her many forebears, Chronicles is frontloaded with a handful of her most dizzying yet immediately satisfying tracks to date. In fact, the opening volley of songs might each be what one might refer to as—depending on how liberal your definition—jams. Opener “Year of the Glad” announces itself auspiciously, with Stern wordlessly yelping atop Millions’ galloping beat. “Everything’s starting now,” Stern chirps between successful attempts at turning monkey noises into a hook, and in less than four minutes she’s ran through a verse, a chorus, and a bridge without breaking much of sweat. Her guitar bends like taffy throughout “You Don’t Turn Down,” scurrying from colossal, power-chorded peaks through naked, strummed valleys, her lyrics about emotional congestion mirroring her and Millions’ dynamic gait. “Noonan” similarly trots with confidence as Stern sings, “Don’t you want to be somebody,” as if she’s now fully found her voice and is offering encouragement to those inspired by her fearless evolution. “Nothing is Easy” and “Immortals” are a closer approximation of what we’ve come to expect from Stern, mantra-like and slightly mannered, but with a continued air of the inspirational (“You don’t need a sledgehammer to walk in my shoes” goes the former; “I’ll come and find ya,” the latter).

The second half of the record sees the duo losing a bit of the momentum built up by the opening gambit. The title track promises a continuation of the chiseled, energetic outbursts of the proceeding side but instead has to play as a shot of adrenaline to last for the next fifteen minutes or so. “Still Moving” doesn’t quite live up to its title, loosening the grip on the more structured principles employed earlier, while “East Side Glory” finds Stern delivering her most conventional riff alongside a sing-song melody that (perhaps intentionally) lacks the conviction of her more demonstrative work. And then “Proof of Life” rumbles to life on the back of storm-gathering percussion and (…wait for it) concentrated piano chords. Thankfully Stern and Millions mostly come through on the drama, building to an emotional and musical climax by simply flashing rather than overextending their chops. Stern’s repeated request of “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon” on closer “Hell Yes,” then, works as both reestablishment and reminder of her most efficient gear: “All I’ve got is time,” Stern defiantly proclaims as her guitar careens alongside Millions’ advancing army of a beat. And hopefully with a little more, Stern and her new partner will learn to spread this restless spirit evenly across the length of a collaboration. [CMG]

Blu-ray Review: Luis Buñuel's Tristana [Cohen Media Group]

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 01:40:00 +0000

Director Luis Buñuel's first four films were made in three different countries. By the time he reached the peak of his international renown in the mid 1960s, he could rightly be considered the most cosmopolitan of art-house filmmakers. In fact, few directors embody the slightly indeterminate "world cinema" tag more than Buñuel. It's ironic, then, that this iconoclast of Spanish cinema produced only three films in his native country. All three of these disparate projects, however, would prove important. The first, Land Without Bread, evidenced Buñuel's initial move away from surrealism toward a more realist-based approach; the second, the landmark Viridiana, brought the director once and for all to the forefront of the international cinema circuit, a position he would only relinquish upon his death in 1983. But Buñuel made one last momentous return to Spain in 1970 with Tristana, a multi-national production starring a French ingénue and a veteran of Spanish theater and television.

As in much of Buñuel's preceding work, the film's ingredients don't immediately appear compatible. Yet by this point in his career he was a master of balancing divergent elements. And indeed Tristana would prove to be one of Buñuel's most visually uniform, thematically and stylistically streamlined efforts to date. But if his aesthetic and authorial control over the production translated rather seamlessly, it was in stark contrast to his lead characters, a pair of contradictory, at-once sympathetic and deplorable would-be lovers as tragically dependent on one another as they are helplessly constrained by their vain attempts at emotional and physical independence. In the title role, Catherine Deneuve undergoes a transformation, both physically and psychologically, of near-unparalleled complexity. Fernando Rey, meanwhile, as the totalitarian Don Lope, evolves in less demonstrative fashion, yet is doubly hypocritical, a weak soul with a brutish façade who preys on a young girl's naïveté with grave consequence.

As the film opens, we're met with a calming air of grace as Tristana dutifully attends to the needs of a group of disabled school kids, her life of even greater servitude hinted at straight away before we eventually learn of her debt to Don Lope, who, as her guardian, has brought this wide-eyed young lady into his life of bourgeois comfort. What transpires is a meticulous game of psycho-sexual cat and mouse across the cramped streets of Toledo and among the far more constricting confines of Don Lope's house. Even from early on Tristana envisions the man's death; the recurring image of his severed head swung pendulum-like from a church bell is a genuinely unsettling manifestation of her inner turmoil. And yet Don Lope seems to have her best interests in mind as he offers advice and provides for her every need. What happens behind closed doors is another matter, however, and it's through Buñuel's delicate handling of his subject that not only does Don Lope remain tolerable, but even identifiable at times.

Don Lope's penance is certainly paid by film's end, though by that point the roles have been almost imperceptibly reversed, leaving Tristana not only as an antagonist, but something of a vigilante as well. As complacency sets in following her escape from Don Lope's possession (her secret, stale lover, played by Franco Nero, is as noticeably offensive to her sensibilities as her devious caretaker once was), a tumor materializes to push her toward rock bottom, seemingly taking her leg as sacrifice for the vengeance she hopes to enact on her former keeper. But her return feels as inevitable as Don Lope's demise, the intertwining of their fates ordained even as their motives blur and begin to take the narrative far from its intimate origins. That Buñuel is able to accomplish this through only a handful of stylistic gestures speaks to both his foresight and execution, a game of interpersonal chess taken to tragic ends without so much as leaving a small-town setting or introducing many peripheral characters.

If Buñuel indeed proscribed to Pascal's notion of extremities eventually coinciding, as Budd Wilkins suggested in his recent review of That Obscure Object of Desire, then Tristana may be the most of devastating example of the theory. Both Tristana and Don Lope are strong characters, though rarely at the same time. In fact, they seem to thrive on the other's weaknesses, keeping each other alive and motivated until one realizes the innate potential of their inner passion and usurps the willpower of the other. It's not a particularly hopeful message, but it's a fundamental truth we as viewers should hope to confront and conquer early on in our personal maturation, and hopefully not at the expense of another person. Thus, if Buñuel's widespread output doesn't attest to art's continued ability to transcend borders, then these concepts certainly do.

Image/Sound:
Cohen Media Group's Tristana Blu-ray marks not only the debut of the film in high definition, but on Region 1 digital video. The import DVDs were themselves nothing special, but this 1080p upgrade (sourced from the same transfer that provided Criterion with their laserdisc back in the 1990s) tightens the picture considerably, accentuating the earthy color palette, balancing contrast while heightening black levels. There's even a thin layer of grain and some noticeable depth present, all preserved in the original 1.60:1 aspect ratio. Audio, meanwhile, is presented in a more than adequate lossless DTS track. There's very little in the way of demonstrative sound in Tristana, but there are subtle effects, particularly during the dream sequences, which the track handles well enough. Both the original Spanish and English dubs are presented, with voices audible and upfront and with no undue noise to note. The limitations of the source may ultimately curb the A/V potential of this release, but compared to what, if anything, you may have previously seen on home video, this is a marked improvement.

Extras:
Extras are slim but essential. The highlight is a feature-length audio commentary by Catherine Deneuve and critic Kent Jones. It plays more like a Q&A session with Deneuve than an in-depth analysis of the film, but it offers plenty of anecdotal entertainment with a bit of contextual information emerging as a natural by-product of the conversation. On the more critical end of the spectrum is a 30-minute interview/visual essay on the film with Luis Buñuel scholar Peter William Evans. He deconstructs themes, visual cues, and the film's relation to the director's prior work, making a pretty strong case for the film as one of Buñuel's most significant achievements. In addition to the requisite trailers, there's also a brief alternate ending included, which was originally used in the European version of the film; it's a little less elliptical, but no less bleak than the international ending. Finally, there's an insightful booklet appended to the package, featuring a new essay by critic Richard Porton, an excerpt from Raymond Durgnat's Luis Buñuel, and entries from Deneuve's diary kept during production. All in all, it's a worthy helping of material for a film not often considered in the same thorough manner as Buñuel's more popular works.

Overall:
Luis Buñuel made one last momentous return to Spain in 1970 with Tristana, a multi-national production starring a French ingénue and a veteran of Spanish theater and television that would prove to be one of his most scathing, personal works. [Slant]

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 01:30:00 +0000

I wrote this brief description of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom for the Cinefamily repertory theater, who are hosting a 35mm midnight screening of the film on April 24rd, 2013.

Arguably the original arthouse video nasty, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom—the Italian iconoclast’s final film, and infamous transposition of the Marquis de Sade’s “School of Libertinism” texts—brought a career of sexual, religious, and political provocation full circle. Structured as a visceral four-part rite of passage through Dante’s Circles of Hell, the film depicts in unflinching detail the systematic sexual torture and mental abuse perpetrated on a group of teenagers kidnapped by libertine fascists in the wake of the Mussolini regime. Igniting the ire of government officials and Italian Social Republic extortionists before the film had even wrapped, Pasolini’s impassioned portrayal of rape, sadism, sodomy, and murder would, along with his ties to Communism, eventually lead to his murder in the months leading up to the film’s premiere. Whether seen as an allegory of Nazi Germany, a ritual of spiritual agnosticism or a blatant authorial affront, Salò remains a nightmarish vision of inhumanity, and a midnight movie of grave allure and enduring implication. [Cinefamily]

Fandor Feature: Scenes - The Strange Case of Angelica

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:54:00 +0000

The cinema of Manoel de Oliveira is one of perspective. Not from the vantage of the 104-year-old centenarian himself—though that’s an inevitable thematic by-product for a filmmaker whose career dates back to the silent era—but that of his camera and, by extension, his characters who gaze at, through, or in discrepancy with Oliveira’s frame. His late work in particular has taken his typically strategic approach to directional composition to uniquely playful ends, suggesting at once a much younger artist and one who has accumulated decades of narrative and stylistic skill. At any given point in these films the viewer may be placed inside the protagonist’s head—via either voiceover, flashback, or point-of-view set-ups—spatially removed from the action to observe objectively from a static position, or put in direct eye contact with a given character, which often leads to further inquiries regarding omniscience or simply the role we play in completing said portrayal.

Oliveira’s 2010 film, The Strange Case of Angelica, is a particularly fascinating study in visual schematics, as it continually proposes familiar devices for representational engagement only to subvert the typical function of these aesthetic constructions. Befitting its fantastical milieu, Oliveira’s fable, concerning the plight of an emotionally wayward photographer named Isaac (Ricardo Trêpa) who’s commissioned to capture the radiant visage of the young Angelica (Pilar López de Ayala) who has passed away under mysterious circumstances, engages with an entire spectrum of antiquated, classical and modernist cinematic resources. At various instances Isaac can be seen gazing purposefully through the eye of his camera (both at Angelica, who seems to smile at him as he frames his shots, and a group of laborers tilling the nearby countryside), yearningly out the window of his rented flat, or passionately into an indeterminate emotional—possibly physical—space just off camera.

Oliveira instills doubt in the viewer’s response to these episodes just as he does in Isaac by eliding definitive proof of their occurrence—or, more specifically, the consequence of their occurrence as Isaac appears to experience them on screen. About halfway through the film Isaac encounters the most perplexing of all his visions as he awakens from his sleep to find Angelica’s glowing silhouette before him in life-like form. As he’s spent the entirety of the film up to this point yearning for Angelica through the frozen beauty of his photographs, the moment is met for both him and the viewer as a magical realization of his innermost desire. Instinctively embracing Angelica, the two ascend from Isaac’s balcony as the digital photography subtly de-saturates and the pair are left to float across the horizon bathed in radiant, oceanic black-and-white. Audio is likewise discarded and before long it’s apparent that what is transpiring is reconciliation both for Isaac, whose emotional and mental obsession meet physical manifestation head-on, and for Oliveira, whose roots as a silent cinema practitioner flower forth in spiritual accord with his seasoned, formalist sensibility.

The purposefully antiquated techniques Oliveira utilizes during this sequence are part and parcel of the world he’s created. Isaac works with an vintage camera, the tools of the hillside laborers he documents equally outdated (“Old fashioned work interests me,” he justifies), while the apartment where he resides is bereft of most modern conveniences (early on in the film he’s seen fiddling with an antique radio) at the same time that the language spoken amongst the townsfolk tends toward the arch and unfashionable. In lieu of Oliveira’s modernist methodology, the influence of one time contemporaries Fritz Lang and Georges Méliès manifest in its stead. The latter proves a particularly apt touchstone, as Oliveira’s crude visuals—aerial wire rigging, rear-screen projection, matte drawings (or, at the very least, computer generated approximations of these effects)—feel as if they’ve been inspired by Méliès’s many impossible voyages and proverbial trips to the moon. This is not the first time Oliveira has referenced his cinematic heritage—the makeshift backdrops and absurdist nightmare designs of The Satin Slipper and The Cannibals, to name but two examples, point toward a bygone era of hand-crafted filmmaking—but in many ways this feels like the purest expression of this legacy.

And yet another look at how Oliveira frames this sequence throws the implications of Isaac’s experience into sharp relief. Isaac eventually awakens from his night flight with Angelica as if from a dream; so lucid, in fact, that he wonders aloud, “Could I have been to that place of absolute love I’ve heard about?” As we have witnessed life-like mannerisms from a seemingly inanimate Angelica in prior scenes, we’re inclined to accept her appearance as depicted, even in a form resembling a ghost. But then Isaac never stops questioning his visions even as he continues to pursue a likely futile goal, suggesting that we should perhaps be equally skeptical such occurrences. As the scene opens and Isaac rises from his slumber, he approaches a wardrobe at the foot of his bed, staring at an angle into a mirror which appears to be inviting him to open his subconscious. If this is indeed a dream, where does it begin? And if not, are Isaac’s illusions limited to solely to his purview?

In the film’s final shot, we see a presumed-dead Isaac arise yet again from unconsciousness at the second appearance of Angelica on his balcony, a bedside doctor seemingly in position to notice this intersection of the mortal and the spectral. But he’s struck by an involuntary blow from Isaac, his glasses falling to the floor, thus impeding not only his chance at glimpsing this phenomenon but the viewer’s opportunity at contextual reassurance as well. Real or imagined Isaac and Angelica will live on together in eternity, Oliveira seems to be implying, our emotional correspondence shaped by his refusal to offer concrete designations between life and death, fantasy and reality. Like Isaac, he’s left us in the throes of ambiguity, our innate understanding of these events the only honest viewpoint from which to proceed forth from this strange case of resurrection and release. [Fandor]

Indiewire Feature: How to Make the Transition from Indie Film to TV: 5 Things We Learned From Our Panel With the NYTVF

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 21:51:00 +0000

Over the past few years, television's begun to challenge film as the preeminent outlet for American storytelling, the breadth of interest and means of distribution at an all-time high for a medium that can no longer be looked at as of inferior artistic merit. While mainstream film is driven far more by a focus on box office receipts than quality, the small screen has quietly matched (and in some cases usurped) Hollywood as a vehicle for both widespread popularity and artistic dignity. And as industry interest in and funding for mid-budget films wanes, TV has become an ever more attractive place for independent filmmakers looking to work with more resources and to have a platform to which millions of homes across the country have easy access.

In a panel discussion last night in Los Angeles presented by Indiewire and the New York Television Festival, speakers from diverse corners of the entertainment industry gathered to discuss the changing tide of the TV industry, and how in many cases indie filmmakers have looked to cable and network platforms to realize projects that might otherwise languish in cinematic purgatory. The panelists were Susie Fitzgerald, AMC's SVP of scripted programming; Ray McKinnon, the creator/executive producer of Sundance Channel's upcoming drama "Rectify"; and Tom Young, a scripted TV agent at CAA. Indiewire's Dana Harris served as the moderator. Here's what we learned:

New developments in distribution have leveled the playing field.

All three of the panels participants agreed that thanks to advancements in distribution, including the proliferation of cable networks, the increasing value of original series and the rise of year-round programming, even the most provocative or niche concept can now potentially find a home. “No matter how crazy the idea, there’s someone out there that will hear it,” Young said encouragingly.

McKinnon himself had faith in this prospect while writing “Rectify,” believing that after the success of shows like “Mad Men,” that “someone might be open this type of storytelling,” wherein, figuratively speaking, “nothing happens.” And Fitzgerald admitted to AMC's similar interest in more edgy programming compared to that of the major networks. Young, however, offered some worthwhile perspective later in the evening, conceding to the fact that these programs also only appeal to very specific demographics--what he called “the New York and L.A audiences"--while there’s an entire Middle American audience "who still loves 'NCIS.'"

Television can offer different, expanded modes of storytelling.

Fitzgerald noted that TV, even at its most traditional, offers a “different way to tell a story.” Yet while that’s true in regard to its serialized nature, it's also, as McKinnon mentioned, of a complementary mindset to that of the movies. “The way stories are being told is similar to ‘70s filmmaking,” offered McKinnon by way of an example from Peter Bogdanovich’s early ‘70s watershed “The Last Picture Show.” He later mentioned how the episodic nature of television allows the writer a certain freedom that his days as an indie filmmaker couldn’t afford because of traditional durational expectations. “A film is an hour and 45 minutes or two hours,” but for a show like “Rectify,” which he had been “thinking about for 10 years,” TV provided an opportunity to develop story and character over a far greater time span. He compared television to literature, acknowledging that what we’re watching are “not so much episodes as chapters.” It’s perhaps these characteristics that led Young to proclaim that television is “no longer the red-headed step child” of the arts.

Television production is both liberating and a new challenge for artists arriving from film.

In what may have been the night’s most enlightening anecdote, Fitzgerald revealed that Frank Darabont’s original treatment for “The Walking Dead”--which Young noted was passed on by every major network, including NBC, twice--was problematic for AMC in a way that she hinted at earlier when describing their artistic M.O. Darabont’s pilot script basically moved from “action scene to action scene,” with little time for character development.

Sensing potential at the core of the concept, Fitzgerald had Darabont watch the entirety of “Breaking Bad” up to that point, encouraging him to heed the pace and attention to character relationships, something that would prove vital to the eventual success of “The Walking Dead." “It’s a huge mindset shift,” she continued. “The character needs to drive the story.” McKinnon agreed before expounding on the idea: “It’s a bigger machine than indie filmmaking--it’s more complicated,” he stated, noting the many behind-the-scenes channels that comprise a television enterprise. So while McKinnon has been granted more money that he ever was as an indie filmmaker, he has nevertheless had to adapt to a new model of TV production.

Viewing habits and binge-watching continue to have an impact on how television is made.

The new Netflix original series “House of Cards” was an inevitable talking point as the discussion moved toward the future of TV consumption. All agreed that home viewing DVD marathons have triggered a compulsive attitude in viewers. “It’s like crack. It’s binge-watching,” Young stated bluntly while observing how “24” was the first show to make use of its own narrative construction as an advantage in the marketplace, prompting communal viewing parties as interactive, extracurricular entertainments all their own. He credits Netflix and “House of Cards” for building on the model and “setting a new benchmark” by not only making an entire season available at one time, but by recruiting big name Hollywood figures like David Fincher and Kevin Spacey to entice curious viewers to take a gamble on an unknown viewing arrangement between distributor and audience.

Yes, television is a writers' medium.

One of the main points of emphasis when talking about the differences between film and TV production was the latter’s emphasis on writing. While the director tends to lend the authorial stamp to filmmaking, both Fitzgerald and Young singled out the writers as the driving creative forces behind TV. “The writer really is king,” Fitzgerald stated, while Young, as an example of the divide between the two modes of creation, cited the scene in “Adaptation” where Nicolas Cage’s screenwriter character arrives on set only to promptly be told to “go stand over there.” He then mentioned how this consistency is maintained, by employing less writers on more shows, which of course led many aspiring writers in the audience to ask questions about the best strategies to success in the industry.

Fitzgerald offered simple, straightforward advice: “Worry about your story first. Don’t try to tailor your script to the network,” remarking on how many scripts she’s had to read that are set in the 1960s or featured zombies simply because AMC airs both “Mad Men” and “The Walking Dead.” By way of experience--“Rectify” heard its share of “no thank you’s” on its way to finally being picked up--McKinnon offered encouragement: “Whether they buy it or not, they’ll respond to it. It’s a marathon.” Riffing on that idea, Young brought the evening to a close with one final bit of advice, one which could double as an analogy for TV's ascent to the forefront of the entertainment industry in recent years: “It’s not the military where you go up in rank every year. You can leapfrog people." [Indiewire]

Record Review: Pissed Jeans - Honeys

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 21:29:00 +0000

Matt Korvette may be skeptical of a majority of humanity, but rest assured he questions and second-guesses himself just that much more. In a recent interview with Pitchfork, the frontman for the Allentown, Pennsylvania noise-rock provocateurs Pissed Jeans outlined his contradictory persona rather humorously: “It’s easy to be this raging guy from up high, shooting thunderbolts down at everyone…But I’m right there thumbing through the organic bananas, too, wondering how I got here.” Then again: “If I jump in the audience and start spitting everywhere, I will be the 10,000th frontman to do that…But if I really call someone out and wish cancer upon them…that might make people’s ears perk up a little bit more.” So yeah, Pissed Jeans are a quintessential punk band: volatile, self-conscious, ethically conflicted. But what’s helped these guys standout over the last half-decade-plus is the way they’ve pitted these impulses against one another, allowing them to careen and combust alongside their even gnarlier post-hardcore afterbirth.

Honeys, the fourth and most streamlined record from Pissed Jeans to date, not only brings these concerns to the forefront, but all but forces one to consider the implications of each successive indictment. Again, Korvette takes aim at everyone and everything, including himself, but it’s important to note the self-deprecating humor which streaks the best of this material. In the past, these narratives have covered a narrow if universal spectrum of issues: ice cream, hair loss, massages, scrap-booking, sexual contrition. On Honeys, the subjects are more substantial, while Korvette reigns in some of his more unhinged vocal idiosyncrasies, deploying a series of vivid, tangible screeds with an emphasis on both personal and situational storytelling. “I swear it’s not you, it’s me,” Korvette explains on “Vain in Costume,” utilizing one of the most clichéd cop-outs; but in this case you want to believe him as he writhes in discomfort amidst the band’s headlong pummel. Elsewhere, on “Male Gaze,” he confesses, “I’m not innocent / I’m guilty,” another fairly hackneyed phrase. And yet considering the topic (the masculine tendency to objectify women), not to mention the context (the band’s place within such a testosterone fueled scene), it’s a noble admission and evidence of Korvette’s growing maturity as a songwriter.

Honeys also represents a tightening of Pissed Jeans’ instrumental attack. While this is still far from accessible alt-rock, these songs are noticeably focused and single-minded in approach. Hope for Men (2007), the band’s first widely heard album and first for Sub Pop, alternated between lacerating feedback scrawls and slow-drip audio collages, the latter what many might consider the aural equivalent of water torture. But I’d argue that Pissed Jeans were always at least partially about confrontation and provocation (see that band name, for one), and save for The Seer (2012), there may not have been a more visceral rock record released in the last five years. The follow-up, King of Jeans (2009), which now sounds transitional if still appropriately punishing, abandoned the experiments but lost steam after an incredible opening gambit of songs. So Honeys “fixes” these two problems, relegating Hope for Men’s sonic affronts to a brief segue (“Something About Mrs. Johnson”) while curbing some of the back-end sprawl of King of Jeans. Instead, Honeys maintains a pretty even keel throughout, which for these guys is a still rather furious assault. Which is to say Honeys will probably make your head bang at a steady clip rather than induce whiplash.

But what they’ve sacrificed in unpredictability and a certain dynamism they’ve more than compensated for in anecdotal imagination. This is the first Pissed Jeans record where Korvette really feels like the creative impetus behind the band’s personality. Which isn’t to say that the band isn’t there at any given moment to push Korvette kicking and screaming into conflict with his angst. “You’re Different (In Person),” a scathing and darkly comic portrait of emotional (mis)communication in the era of social media, pivots on a sharply escalating Duane Denison-like riff before revving toward the finish line on the back of serrated power-chords and Korvette’s exasperated enunciation. “Cafeteria Food” takes the opposite approach as the band falls into a churning, methodical tempo while Korvette details the aforementioned desire for a co-worker’s cancer diagnosis. And then there’s “Loubs,” Korvette and the band’s one concession to their more wanton instincts, protracting vowels (“I’m happ-aay as a claa-yum”) and vamping on a blues scale like Mark Arm fronting early-‘90s Royal Trux.

With that being said, the best tracks here tend to be the chiseled, sawed-offed punk barrages—appropriate, as this is Pissed Jeans’s most beefed-up production to date. Opener “Bathroom Laughter” continues the band’s streak of incredible, palate-cleansing introductions, as Sean McGuiness flails wild-armed all over his kit while Korvette seethes, spits, and screams, exorcising any last vestiges of youthful comeuppance he failed to dispense on King of Jeans. “Vain in Costume” gallops fleet footed on a heaving riff, mirroring Korvette’s vocal cadence in a weird sort of anti-melody, even as discernible words are few and far between. By contrast, Korvette’s thoughts are efficiently deduced and delivered on “Health Plan,” the record’s crazed climax and most lyrically and musically primitive moment. There’s apparently no fine print to consult in Korvette’s personalized HMO plan (“You want to know my secret / I stay away from doctors,” goes the fantastically blunt chorus), and if the band is likewise leaving anything to imagination, they sure as hell aren’t letting on. Before you know it, these guys are in, out, and have sodomized your dog, and you’re left with nothing more than a bewildered look of nervous pleasure plastered across your face. After all, for Pissed Jeans nothing is more political than the personal, and Honeys, more so than any of their albums thus far, provides similar moments of dumbfound enlightenment in the least pretentious, most considerate way possible for a band of everydudes with more on their minds bucking the system. [CMG]

Record Review: Grouper - The Man Who Died In His Boat

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:00:00 +0000

As listeners we’ve become so accustomed to the constant influx of new music that we can often times lose focus of the contextual consequence intrinsic to the development of individual artists. In this day and age, once we’ve heard something new, it’s now instantly and irretrievably old. And even if it’s of a certain objective merit, our collective instinct to deify progression can cloud qualitative perspective. Truth is, artists across all mediums tend to work in fits of inspiration, developing periods of rewarding artistic impulse alongside works of misplaced ambition or potentially compromised integrity. Glimpsed from a broader view, however, are those same eras, once curious or underwhelming as individual experiences, revealed simply as periods of transition for the more dedicated practitioners.

Grouper’s Liz Harris seems to be emerging from a similar stretch of creative stasis. It’s been nearly two years since the release of her last album, the structurally ambitious double-album AIA : Alien Observer/Dream Loss, an evocative document, which, for all its enveloping grandeur, felt a little diffuse and intangible as an actual listening experience. Standout moments certainly emerged from its cloudy canopy of guitar sustain, analog drone and precarious amplifier ambiance, but even at thirteen tracks and almost 80 minutes in length, it played as a mostly reconciliatory effort for Harris, particularly coming off her mesmerizing 2008 breakthrough, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill.

It remains to be seen where Harris takes the Grouper aesthetic in coming years, but the Dead Deer era–which also birthed a wonderful collaborative split with Roy Montgomery–has held up remarkably well in the interim. So much so that we now have The Man Who Died in His Boat, a collection of material Harris recorded alongside Dead Deer that for whatever reason never made it onto a proper release. In a sense it feels like a more appropriate follow-up to Dead Deer than AIA, bridging as it does the acoustic-séance vibe of the former while teasing out the brooding tension of the latter. To her considerable credit, however, Man Who Died never comes across as a slapdash compendium of outtakes or half-formed ideas. This is an impressive standalone effort in its own right, and further proof that Harris remains one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary experimental music.

And it’s that voice which buoys Harris’s best music. I’d say at this point Harris is slightly more suited to the (for lack of a better word) dream pop side of the stylistic spectrum than the full-on ambient/drone excursions which make up the majority of AIA. With that being said, her music truly excels when she braids the two approaches into a single experience, as she expertly does across Man Who Died’s carefully curated song cycle. After a brief swell of introductory drone, Harris’s angelic, near-wordless vocals surface atop a cyclical acoustic chord progression immediately reminiscent of Dead Deer, and as “Vital” continues to gather weight from its own inertia, it develops an melancholy dimension appropriate to Harris’s conceptualization of not only this collection, but of the Grouper project in total.

These songs may have been inspired in part by an experience from Harris’s childhood wherein she and her father stumbled upon a deserted boat whose captain disappeared under mysterious circumstances, but this music is less nostalgic than it is elegiac. “Cloud in Places”–one of Harris’s best and most immediate songs to date–laces a breathy vocal melody amidst rudimentary strumming, the sense of yearning created through its uneasy harmony as suitable to soundtrack a moment of emotional acquiescence as an In Memoriam tribute. Harris gets considerable mileage out of her narrow instrumental set-up, her ability to coax tangible feeling from analog elements a trait of considerable talent. Even the record’s brief forays into mostly atmospheric terrain evidence a touch of heightened aural sensitivity. “Difference (Voices)” layers radiant reverberations atop a swollen drone, while Harris distends her vocals across the surface of the track, blanketing the piece without sacrificing its wintery chill. “Vanishing Point”, meanwhile, pierces its backdrop of tape hiss with sonar-sounding tones, intricately detailing what is essentially an interlude.

It’s Harris’ attention to detail that has thus far helped this late-aughts era of Grouper productivity standout amidst not only her catalogue but also that of her contemporaries. But what’s nice about The Man Who Died in His Boat is that it works just as well as a companion piece to Dead Deer as it does as its own statement of purpose. Plus, it affirms that Dead Deer wasn’t an anomaly amongst a discography that leans toward the ephemeral. A moment of clarity, perhaps, but a moment of such sustained inspiration that one can’t help but believe that another may soon be set to materialize. [SC]

Record Review: Ducktails - The Flower Lane

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:09:00 +0000

There comes a time in the evolution of any worthwhile guitar-pop group when a conscious decision is made to abandon the charmingly lax approach to songwriting and recording that most young bands adopt and instead develop a unique, concrete artistic personality. It’s what many critics refer to as an artist’s “voice,” and on evidence of The Flower Lane, Matt Mondanile has finally found his. As frontman for New Jersey janglers Ducktails, Mondanile has spent roughly a half-decade wafting through hazy, heavy-lidded, narcoticized pop, only singular in as much as he recorded and played most of it on his own between time with other gigs. In both sound and ambition, the music of Ducktails has, up to now, felt of a piece with that of Mondanile’s full-time band, Real Estate, to which his subtle guitar playing has lent such an indelible grace over the years. But with The Flower Lane, Mondanile and Ducktails have fully come into their own—and in the context of such a detached, seemingly apathetic scene it’s one of the more welcome surprises in a while.

If this creative (no pun intended) flowering sounds similar to the leap achieved by Real Estate and their breakthrough record Days (2011), well, the comparison, at least from a progressive standpoint, isn’t far off the mark. But whereas Days streamlined the Real Estate sound into something approaching liquid pop—not an ounce of fat or misplaced note—then The Flower Lane is like its more playful, cosmopolitan cousin. Surely some of the credit is due to Mondanile’s more democratic approach to recording. Enlisting the talents of fellow New Jersey power-pop weirdos Big Troubles as his full-time backing band, Mondanile has effectively refined and expanded upon his once-modest sound, producing an effortlessly broad outline of contemporary nostalgi-pop with enough natural charisma to once and for all announce Ducktails as its own concern apart from their artistic genealogy.

Setting the enterprising tone is opener “Ivy Covered House,” which segues seamlessly not from prior outing Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics (2011), but from Days itself, rippling forth with Mondanile’s instantly recognizable and soothing guitar tone, building a see-saw rhythm alongside a hypnotizing melody that sits weightless amid the band’s breezy sway. The title track follows in much the same fashion, refining the melodic focus Mondanile has only intermittently courted in the past before inevitably leaning on instrumental effects or atmospheric genre signifiers. Instead here we get “Under Cover,” six minutes of the most shamelessly fantastic (sax solo!) and infectious songwriting Mondanile has ever attempted. Atop a cascading synth line and the band’s dexterous, near-danceable rhythm, Mondanile maps out what for these guys must be the platonic ideal of ‘80s dance-pop: buoyant, wide-eyed, mellifluous, and above all else, earnest.

The remainder of The Flower Lane continues in this sprightly vein: “Planet Phrom” is a cover of a lo-fi 1989 Peter Gutteridge tune, scraping away the hiss and indecipherability of the original to highlight the surrealistic bent of the lyrics (“I’ll pass the stars that shine / Making love with my alien wife,” goes the chorus); “Sedan Magic” recruits Madeline Follin of Cults to handle an unexpectedly soulful chorus, contrasting nicely with Mondanile’s laconic, uninflected verses; and “Letter of Intent,” another male-female duet and an apt analogy for the record itself, layers echoing keys over hollow drums and phased guitars while Jessa Farkas calmly intones the verses and Mondanile seduces suavely on the chorus, bringing to mind the Sea and Cake’s Sam Prekop. But what’s especially satisfying about The Flower Lane is that none of these new flourishes or guest spots or genre experiments come off as insincere or passive. Every song, for better or worse, is constructed with its own identity in mind, and if nothing else, Mondanile commits to each and every one of these attempts at distinction. It’s not a perfect record (quite a few beats off from being a great one even), but it’s undoubtedly promising, particularly for a band that could have easily continued to cruise in the slow lane as opposed to the florid, aromatic open road they’ve chosen. [CMG]

Blu-ray Review: Keisuke Kinoshita's The Ballad of Narayama [Criterion]

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:40:00 +0000

Folklore, in its many written and verbal articulations, has played a consistently vital role in the development of modern Japan. Everything from architecture to music to the visual arts to the traditions of the family unit itself have roots in the traditional storytelling and myth-making practices of the ancient Orient. Even Buddhism maintains a unique relationship with customary cultural lore. Eastern cinema, for its part, has had a particularly rich and storied history of marrying the sensibilities of the screen with that of the indigenous texts and tales of Japanese antiquity. Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kaneto Shindo, Masaki Kobayashi—pretty much any filmmaker who's worked in the jidaigeki genre has had at their disposal generations of fantastical fables to inspire or integrate into their narratives.

Though less celebrated, key among these practitioners is Keisuke Kinoshita, whose 1958 morality play, The Ballad of Narayama, takes one of Japan's most chronicled cultural tools, Kabuki theater, as a stylistic blueprint to interpret both a work of literary renown and a legend of ancestral import. And yet for all its solemn reverence (both spiritually and socially), it's one of the era's most radical experiments. Shot exclusively on soundstages, save for one brief final scene, the film consolidates two distinct mediums, theater and cinema, into an analysis of both aesthetic functionality and affinity. By not masking his chosen conceptual conceit (and indeed, by heightening it), Kinoshita is free to explore the formulations and possibilities of both modes of presentation.

Based on a novel by Shichirô Fukazawa (who, in turn, was inspired by the purported practice of ubasute, whereby the elderly, upon reaching 70 years of age, are carried up a mountain by their young and left to die as a sacrifice to the gods), The Ballad of Narayama presents a narrative, in contrast to its visual strategy, of streamlined austerity and acute inquiry into the risk inherent to responsibility. As the aging Orin (Kinuyo Tanaka) nears her divine destiny, she's seems all but unconcerned with her fate, instead busying herself with the logistics of her journey and the nuptials of her son, Tatsuhei (Teiji Takahashi), whom she marries off to local village girl as one last dutiful undertaking before carrying out her ultimate obligation.

Seemingly everyone has investment in Orin's fortune: Tatsuhei and his new wife, Tama, struggle to accept her lot; Orin's grandson, Kesakichi (Seiji Kurasaki), and his girlfriend, Matsu (Junko Takada), can barely hide their enthusiasm, singing songs of her impending demise with other villagers; while Mata (Ryutaro Tatsumi), an elderly townsman also awaiting his trip to Narayama, seeks solace with Orin, who unfortunately cannot ameliorate his troubled psyche. When the fateful day arrives, and Orin and Mata are each asked to embrace their final burden, she remains as she always has, calm, almost zen-like, while he's forcibly tied up and dragged to his judgment. Their fates remain the same, the currents of cultural too much for either to stave off, but their manners of acceptance leave lasting consequence on their children that Kinoshita refuses to pacify for either character or audience.

Bathed in hallucinogenic primaries and exaggerated motifs and staged as a panorama of shifting landscapes and temporal vistas, the film creates dynamically mobile divisions between actor and environment. Abandoning any semblance of reality, Kinoshita playfully constructs a unsettling daydream of pink skies and graven pastures; at one point, the screen bleeds complete red, while at another, a somber processional between Orin, Tatsuhei, and the villages elders glows green as if emblazoned by radioactive ember. But Kinoshita doesn't exploit this visual artifice, eliciting neither histrionic performances nor undue melodrama. Kinoshita respects the source material and conventions of the culture he's depicting so much, in fact, that the film plays more like a cinematic elegy than cosmetic theater. When the film cuts in its final scene to actual location footage, it isn't jarring so much as relieving, a chance to exhale after an exhausting journey.

In 1983, Japanese new wave icon Shohei Imamura would also bring The Ballad of Narayama to the screen, in the process finally familiarizing the West with this parable of familial sacrifice and morality. As expected based on his sensibility, Imamura's retelling is less lyrical, more severe, but just as unforgettable. The fact that the various cinematic interpretations of the Narayama saga are welcome—the emotional breadth of the pilgrimage, the ethical tumult of the characters, and the allegorical nature of the tradition each providing avenues for ample narrative experimentation—rather than redundant is a fitting reflection of the fable's lineage itself, ably enduring as artistic artifacts worthy of being passed down to future generations of cinephiles.

Image/Sound:
Criterion debuts The Ballad of Narayama for Region 1 buyers in a 2k digital transfer of the vivid print restoration which premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, accentuating Keisuke Kinoshita's watercolor palette and shape-shifting lighting schematics. Shadows are rich and black, contrasting nicely with the eye-popping colors, which are sharp and appropriately bold. I don't see a lot of grain, but whatever's lost in texture is more than made up for in clarity. Audio, meanwhile, is presented in a linear PCM rendering, and is clear and balanced. The film's copious use of music is also handled well, the various Japanese string instruments placed upfront, allowing the score to (no pun intended) carry the film's near-wordless denouement toward closure, as intended.

Extras:
Save for a vintage trailer and teaser, there are unfortunately no digital supplements offered, unusual for a debuting Criterion title. The entire package is typically well designed, however, including the accompanying booklet, which features an essay on the film by critic Philip Kemp.

Overall:
Keisuke Kinoshita's 1958 restaging of a harrowing Japanese folk tradition is at once stylistically theatrical and emotionally authentic, and an artistic artifact worthy of being passed down to future generations of cinephiles. [Slant]

Tony Richardson's Mademoiselle

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:12:00 +0000

I wrote this brief description of Tony Richardson's Mademoiselle for the Cinefamily repertory theater, who are screening a 35mm print of the film on February 23rd, 2013, at 7pm.

Full-time school teacher, part-time practitioner of the finer points of arson, the title character of Tony Richardson’s perversely pleasurable 1966 mad-woman mystery Mademoiselle is one of the era’s most complex feminist creations. When a series of “natural disasters” begin to plague an idyllic French village, the affected townspeople immediately accuse an immigrant Italian laborer of the crimes. Unbeknownst to all, however, is the ambiguous motivations of a local elementary teacher pushed to psychosexual extremes by thwarted desire and lustful impulse. As the mentally unstable Mademoiselle, legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau (in one of her best and most underseen roles) is at once mysterious and malicious, proceeding stoically but with an unstoppable, unexplained passion. Equal parts brooding, Bergman-like biblical allegory and prickly, Polanski-like pulp parable, Mademoiselle is a stunningly shot, psychologically provocative work from the subversive European cinema renaissance of the 1960s. [Cinefamily]

Blu-ray Review - John Ford's The Quiet Man

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:04:00 +0000

John Ford has been so fully assimilated into the American cinematic mythos that his Irish heritage often times goes unacknowledged. Born John Martin Feeney to first-generation Irish parents in 1894, the man who would soon come to be synonymous to audiences by the very strong, American surname of Ford, spent the majority of his early Hollywood career building up goodwill by turning out studio product in an effort to realize more personal, nominally biographical projects with less immediate commercial prospects. After getting two closely held ventures off the ground quickly in the mid-'30s (The Informer, The Plough and the Stars), it would be quite some time until Ford was able to realize his next true passion project, an adaptation of a short story by Maurice Walsh entitled The Quiet Man.

Optioned in 1936 after the success of The Informer, The Quiet Man would take 16 years to finally come to fruition. And yet the wait would prove beneficial to the filmmaker, who, coming off a string of some of his most beloved westerns (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Wagon Master, Rio Grande), had, amid the gunplay, matured into a filmmaker of uncommon grace and romantic depth. He'd also built up a stable of actors with roots as far back as The Informer that would be essential to preserving the story's cultural nuance. Save for John Wayne, who by this time was an icon as well as a package deal with Ford, the entirety of the top-billed cast, in addition to many of the supporting players and even extras, were of Irish descent. And in a move uncommon for the time, the exterior action of The Quiet Man would be filmed on location in Ireland, the first Hollywood production to travel to the Emerald Isle.

Starring Wayne as Sean Thornton, an Irish-American boxer in exile from the States after accidentally killing an opponent in the ring, The Quiet Man found Ford refining many of the thematic preoccupations that had interested him over the last decade-plus, including man's attempted reconciliation with a violent past and the attendant pursuit of love in the face of societal and personal opposition. Returning to his hometown of Innisfree in hopes of reclaiming the family farm of his youth, Thornton quickly finds individual struggles—tied partially to his assimilated American demeanor meeting his ancestry head-on—transformed into high domestic dramas of both a romantic and masculine nature. When Mary Kate Danagher (a luminous Maureen O'Hara) refuses Thornton's advances, her brother, Squire Will Danagher (a hulking Victor McLaglen), takes it as a personal vendetta to remove Thornton from the land he promises to once again call home.

Filmed in Technicolor, The Quiet Man is simply a triumph of color-coordinated compositional strategy and Academy-ratio lensing. The barren, panoramic vistas Ford had turned into a visual signature over the prior decades are here transposed to the lush countryside expanse of his ancestor's homeland, all rolling hills and majestic skylines (if Ford hadn't brought Richard Llewelyn 1939 novel to the screen 12 years earlier, I'd ventured to say a more appropriate title for The Quiet Man may very well have been How Green Was My Valley). Ford shoots in his typically epic yet intimate scale, alternating between wide-shot action (shot on location) and close-up encounters (mostly filmed on set in Hollywood), with his actors pitted against one another in tight frames, sparking off their physical proximity as often as they dance casually around each other in verbal sparring matches. As Mary Kate begins to entertain Thornton’s romantic passes, eventually falling for his conflicted charms, Ford loosens his grip on the drama, allowing the comedic undercurrent which had only sporadically surfaced to finally subvert the characters' passionate drives. The film's infamous climax stages a lengthy, hilariously overblown fist fight between Wayne and McLagen, softening the gravity of the drama while enlivening the romantic spirit of Thornton's quest.

Ford would continue on his own, subtler quest of injecting intimate gestures into his work for the remainder of his career. Some of his best, most personal films were yet to come, with such wide-ranging features as The Sun Shines Bright, The Searchers, and 7 Women all effectively working aspects of his own character into their classical frameworks. It's in that handful of films that dealt directly with his cultural lineage, however, that Ford the man can be seen (and felt) most clearly. These aren't necessarily his most advanced moral or aesthetic analyses, but they're earnest, revealing entertainments made by a man of almost effortless storytelling brio. The Quiet Man remains one of the purest distillations of this charismatic filmmaker's diverse artistic nature.

Image/Sound:
The Quiet Man makes the jump to Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films and they've done right by cinematographers Winton C. Hoch and Archie Stout's Technicolor triumph. Newly remastered in high-definition from the original negative, this single-layered transfer does an exceptional job translating the film's deep, bold color scheme. Blues, greens, and especially reds are warmly represented, creating an immersive picture with balanced contrast, hints of depth, and even a thin layer of grain helping to create a heavy, filmic look. Sound, meanwhile, is presented in a modest mono track, but dialogue is clear while instances of music are nicely separated and upfront in the mix. Both audio and video are a sizable step up from Artisan's original, outdated DVD.

Extras:
Olive has secured a place in a small sect of cinephile hearts the last couple years as they've debuted many overlooked classics in both DVD and Blu-ray form. Yet they've never really supplemented these works with bonus material of any particular merit. So it's nice to see the inclusion of a 30-minute, 1992 making-of documentary with this presentation of The Quiet Man. Hosted by Leonard Maltin and featuring interviews with John Wayne's son and daughter, as well as Victor McLaghen's son, Andrew, the doc relays some anecdotes and production details, lending at least some contextual information for this very personal film. Also included is a nicely illustrated and annotated booklet featuring a lengthy except on The Quiet Man from Joseph McBride's Ford biography, Searching for John Ford. Hopefully we'll continue to see Olive put this kind of effort into their releases from here on out.

Overall:
John Ford would fight against the currents of Hollywood to realize 1952's The Quiet Man, arguably his most personal work and one of the purest distillations of this charismatic personality's diverse artistic nature. [Slant]

DVD/Blu-ray Review: Sokurov: Early Masterworks [Cinema Guild]

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 07:58:00 +0000

The films of Aleksandr Sokurov hold true to the classical representation of the cinema as a primarily visual medium. For over 30 years, the Russian experimentalist has drifted effortlessly between fiction, nonfiction, and documentary narratives, often blurring the lines between these varying modes of presentation, but in each instance has betrayed an unparalleled commitment to the aesthetics of iconography. In the 2008 documentary Questions About Cinema, Sokurov posits that, "Even a single word said on screen becomes an image." And that theory is certainly reinforced in the man's work. Take nearly any individual image from any of his films, regardless of context, from The Second Circle to Mother and Son to Russian Ark, and what you're left with an exquisitely constructed, delicately captured moment of artistic synergy, one vivid yet intangible enough to instill a fleeting sense of mystery, terror, or romance in the viewer.

One could say, then, that Sokurov is less formalist than impressionist, and in that sense his list of influences, which seemingly reference everyone and everything except that which is related to the cinema, register at once as spiritual foundation and aesthetic inspiration. If Andrei Tarkovsky, the one name critics consistently reach for in an effort to align Sokurov with some sort of spiritual cinematic predecessor, was said to be "sculpting in time," then Sokurov, for his part, is painting in even more temporal brushstrokes. "The surface of the screen and that of the canvas are one and the same," Sokurov once said, and the man's work has indeed felt preternaturally attuned to processes traditionally attributed to that of non-cinematic visual stylists, particularly the work of mid-millennium renaissance painters. Yet despite the archaic allegiances, Sokurov's films never feel grounded in a bygone era, instead freely floating between periods both past and present, real and imagined, refusing to settle or be interpreted solely through lineage.

Sokurov has gradually constructed more concrete historical frameworks around his films (his "Tetralogy of Power" representing the peak of this methodology thus far), but from the beginning he's utilized works of literary and historical import as prisms through which to reflect on the transient nature of our collective existence. In fact, three of his best early works take as inspiration major literary touchstones. Save and Protect, Stone, and Whispering Pages—three of the five features Sokurov made between 1989 and 1994—all have roots in academia to varying degrees, but unlike later biographical interpretations such as Moloch or The Sun, these works divorce character from their respective source material, allowing the films to work beyond contextual constraints and register on a more ingrained, emotional level. The result is a grave procession of some the most bracing and unforgettable visual dioramas of Sokurov's career.

Save and Protect, ostensibly an adaptation of Madame Bovary, takes Gustave Flaubert's sexually autonomous protagonist and a succession of her encounters and conquests and abandons much of the novel's remaining narrative in favor of a more existential portrait of a woman in search of her true self. Unlike much of Sokurov's work from the period, Save and Protect is a comparatively dynamic, plot-oriented affair, with dialogue working alongside the washed-out color palette, gathering a notable forward momentum. As such, it plays as a precursor of sorts to Sokurov's latest film, Faust, with its barrage of feverish exposition, bridging a gap between these two periods in a manner many may not have predicted as he has mostly worked in more meditative modes in the years since. As suggested by the above quotation, as well as intimated by his liberal delineation between fiction and documentary forms of filmmaking, Sokurov seems to treat dialogue (and, by extension, narrative) as another shade in his aesthetic palette, adding, subtracting, even disregarding, as befits his current project/portrait.

Stone and Whispering Pages, meanwhile, represent the darker, more abstract result of Sokurov's meditations on mortality, and stand as two of his most beguiling works. The former, a haunted tour of Anton Chekhov's house guided by a young caretaker and the ghost of the modernist Russian writer and dramatist himself, is a near-wordless rumination on our cyclical physical essence, and an enrapturing vision of our finite bodies as vessels to keep the soul alive, even in death. The latter, a thematic transposition of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment narrative, treats existence as no less impermanent, but imparts less hope for the fate of the spirit. The characters in these two films wander among the landscape like—and in some cases, as—apparitions, ruminating on humanity and our futile attempts at spiritual connection. The distended, disorienting compositional strategies employed on each only further emphasize the sense of impermanence to which these characters have long resigned.

And that's where Tarkovsky and Sokurov diverge most sharply: Both express awe in the face of the physical world, but where his predecessor reconciled fate with that of the unforeseen and the miraculous (see the denouement of Stalker or the resurrections in Mirror and The Sacrifice), Sokurov's cinema braces for the inevitable, often times eulogizing the past, but never suggesting anecdotal reality as any less dire than that of our own. Sokurov's cinema is open to experience, but mostly plays on memory and dreams and the fine line separating the two. His work is malleable and not easily outlined, but is unmistakably alive, a living, breathing visual manifestation of our inner reality and one therefore specific to individual experience. But Sokurov himself is quick to counteract concrete interpretation, continuing in the aforementioned interview that, "Image isn't analyzable. It can't be understood. You can only feel it." Feeling certainly permeates every frame of Sokurov's films, and the heightened, palpable, overwhelming sensations inspired by his best work—to which Save and Protect, Stone, and Whispering Pages undoubtedly belong—continue to transcend artistic boundaries.

Image/Sound:
We often take film preservation for granted, particularly for works of a recent vintage. But it's something to keep in mind while exploring the Sokurov: Early Masterworks collection. Cinema Guild makes it a point to note how precarious the condition of the original materials comprising their new set truly are: The prints for Save and Protect and Stone were rather shamefully neglected, and it shows in the rough shape in which they survive. Scratches and damage marks persist, and contrast tends to flicker, particularly in the darker passages of Stone. It would likely take a full-scale digital restoration to even potentially curb some of the celluloid's inherent imperfections—something that films of such niche appeal probably won't be receiving anytime soon. In their current presentation, both are watchable and, honestly, kind of beautiful in their imperfection, not unlike the artistic artifacts Aleksandr Sokurov pays tribute to in the films themselves.

The original print of Whispering Pages, meanwhile, was reportedly "completely unusable." In fact, if not for a 35mm negative recently located in Germany we may never have seen this film make its way into the digital realm at all. To that end, I can confidently state—judging, at least, from the bootleg of the film that I've made due with for years—that this presentation of Whispering Pages is one of the more revelatory home-viewing experiences I can remember. Believe it or not, I had no knowledge that the film was originally shot in a combination of both color and black-and-white stock, so dark, muddy, and near-indiscernible were its images in bootleg form. This new Blu-ray—the only film in the set, presumably based on the condition of the existing material, to receive the 1080p treatment (it's also included in DVD format on a third disc)—features a straight, un-restored transfer. But the negative survives in nice enough shape to warrant significant praise for Cinema Guild's curatorial effort of this little-seen masterpiece.

Sound quality is more or less consistent with each film's respective look. Much of the dialogue in Save and Protect and Stone is muddy and low in the mix, difficult to hear at times, particularly with Sokurov's classical music cues competing with ambient noise amid a shallow sound field. Each of these Dolby 2.0 mixes (in Russian with removable subtitles) play about as well as possible considering the source. Whispering Pages again fares better than its counterparts with the capacity for high-definition audio. The DTS-HD Master Audio track (mislabeled on the box as another Dolby mix) adeptly handles Sokurov's busy mix, with its low ambience, non-diagetic field recordings, and classical recordings all humming evocatively in the middle distance. Dialogue, when present, is pushed more to the forefront than in the other films, resulting in a pleasing overall aural experience. It should go without saying that simply having these films at our disposal is this set's biggest blessing for hardcore cinephiles, regardless of A/V limitations.

Extras:
Extras are a stacked mix of various Sokurov shorts and documentaries, interviews, and audio material. The highlight of supplements, however, is critic and curator James Quandt's extraordinarily detailed and informative audio commentary for Stone. Quandt digs into themes, compositional strategies, and contextual information, as well as the film's place within the greater Sokurov canon. It's an essential companion piece to a mysterious, under-discussed film. The three documentaries directed by Sokurov, which include Soviet Elegy, An Example of Intonation, and Diary of St. Petersburg, come from roughly the same period as the features and deal with the political and cinematic figures Boris Yeltsin and Grigori Koztinsev, respectively. Elsewhere, Sokurov further anticipates his later obsessions with dictatorships with the 1979 short, Sonata for Hilter, also included. Rounding out the extras is a 30-minute BBC audio program dedicated to a discussion of Anton Chekhov's house, the setting for Stone, and Questions About Cinema, the hour-long documentary interview with Sokurov which provided many of the above quotations.

Overall:
This handsome, expertly curated collection rescues from certain fate three of Russian master Aleksandr Sokurov's greatest films. Along with an impressive array of documentaries, shorts, and an invaluable audio commentary, this is essential viewing for anyone interested in the continued vitality and preservation of film. [Slant]

DVD Review: Eclipse Series 37 - When Horror Came to Shochiku [Criterion]

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 07:42:00 +0000

The iconic, radioactive sea-beast Godzilla had such a seismic impact, both literally and figuratively, on Western culture's perception of the horror movie that it can be far too easy to overlook the industry-altering effect that Ishiro Honda's 1954 namesake disaster classic had within the borders of Japan's then-burgeoning cinematic landscape. Almost overnight, a country primarily known for the genre-leaning jidaigecki work of Akira Kurosawa and Sadao Yamanaka, as well as the working-class shomingeki parables of Mikio Naruse and Yasujiro Ozu, was transformed into a conglomerate assembly line churning out sequels, spin-offs, rip-offs, and cash-ins, all angling on a market with a seemingly insatiable appetite for destruction. This was particularly fertile territory in the wake of World War II and the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings, as audiences yearned for escape from everyday domestic issues, perhaps even utilizing the liberation as an exorcism of sorts. Not even Shochiku, the studio identified most readily with quotidian concerns, was impervious to the fiscal temptation, parlaying some of the goodwill built on by the work of such stalwarts as Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi into a brief but indelible run of late-'60s future-shock curiosities.

It's important to note the period in which these films were made. As mentioned, mainstream audiences were seeking release, but the decade extending from the mid-'60s onward was, in general, one of transition for a Japanese film industry concluding its golden age. The old guard were just that: Ozu and Mizoguchi were dead; Kurosawa had hit rock-bottom following Red Beard; Kon Ichikawa and Masaki Kobayashi were wrapping their last major works; and a new wave of ideological young filmmakers such as Nagisa Oshima, Shohei Imamura, and Hiroshi Teshighara were tapping into a well spring of disillusionment on the art-house circuit. It makes a certain sense, then, that general audiences would gravitate toward the frightful and fantastical—and, moreover, it's symptomatic of a trend that has afflicted the cinematic output of most major countries. For better or worse, none have completely rebounded, but in most cases there's a playfully innocent streak running through each nascent scene's formative output. Japan's just happen to be wildly creative and audacious, at once vivid and surreal, illogical and supremely dumb.

Shochiku would only produce four films in this vein over a two-year period, but there's enough makeshift innovation, thematic gall, and whacked-out imagery to sustain an entire subgenre. Kazui Nihonmatsu's 1967 monster-mash The X from Outer Space was both the studio's first foray into horror and their most patently ridiculous flirtation with genre trappings. To their credit, Shochiku would utilize their next three features to tap into other forms of cultural paranoia, but the debt The X from Outer Space owes to Godzilla is glaring and not the least bit reverent—which is, of course, from where the film derives most of its charm. When an interracial space crew—whites, blacks, and Asians populate all these films, each seemingly ripe for racial subversion at any given moment—returns from a voyage to Mars to study a sample of spores they've gathered off their shuttle, they accidentally unleash their experiment on Earth's environment, triggering the awakening of a mongoloid dino-chicken hybrid set to wage war on an unknowing populace. Shoestring effects, goofy dialogue, and cardboard acting quickly ensue, like a Ray Harryhausen flick reimagined by a crew of anxious amateurs left alone with toy box full of miniatures and rubber body suits.

The following year would see the release of three divergent films of more original impulse. The first, the wonderfully titled Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, begins with the hijacking and crash-landing of a commercial aircraft, but proceeds to abandon its topical origins as the surviving crew and passengers confront an alien life force that abducts unsuspecting human vessels, transforming them into sexually suggestive, split-cranium zombies attempting to overrun the earth. Director Hajime Sato seems to have grander themes on his mind that his chosen mode of presentation will allow for, but his success at crafting sheer entertainment isn't to be dismissed. Hiroshi Matsuno's The Living Skeleton, on the other hand, fully realizes its director's visual and thematic ambitions, representing the peak of Shochiku's dalliance with horror conventions. A chilling and genuinely unnerving black-and-white update of the bygone kaidan tradition, the film features undead siamese sisters taking revenge on the men who've done them wrong in lives both past and present. With its atmospheric cinematography, vengeance-fueled narrative, and intimations of feminism, The Living Skeleton can stand alongside, and would make a perfect double feature with, Kaneto Shindo's J-horror feline classic Kuroneko.

Across all of these films, women—and in particular, white women—are portrayed in equal measure as sly, evil, and of ulterior motive. Ao female cadet provides enough distraction to nearly wipe out an entire planet in The X from Outer Space, but it was in Nihonmatsu's next film fr Shochiku, the appropriately harrowing Genocide, where the fairer sex would come under the most direct indictment. Insects may play the fatal antagonist of the film, like a more literal take on Imamura's allegorical environmental conceits, but it's an American female—horribly dubbed in Japanese, of course—who's pulling strings behind the scenes. A multi-tiered narrative that Nihonmatsu handles with considerably more skill than his prior Shochiku effort, the film flits from relationship melodrama to wartime fable to hallucinogenic head trip with little sign of stress. Genre films don't often cover as much ground stylistically or thematically as Genocide, let alone get more bleak (the film ultimately hinges on the potential detonation of a hydrogen bomb and the single mother that may have to single-handedly repopulate a country), but as the last horror film Shochiku would produce, it's suitably ambitious and apocalyptic in its finality.

Image/Sound:
Considering their makeshift, handcrafted origins, the four Shochiku horror oddities comprising Criterion's new Eclipse set translate in satisfyingly watchable form. The X from Outer Space does suffer from an interlaced transfer and a picture-boxed presentation, but on the whole, these campy digressions wear their inherent imperfections proudly. The colors schemes on Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell and Genocide are deep, varied, and bold, while the black-and-white cinematography of The Living Skeleton is wonderfully evocative and richly rendered. Original mono mixes are presented for each film, all easily audible, while an English dub is included for The X from Outer Space, only adding to the film's base pleasures. Their individual sources probably preclude any sort of high-definition rendering in the future, but the A/V quality of this set mostly satisfies, begging for very little in terms of additional specs.

Extras:
As per Eclipse standards, there's nothing in the way of digital supplements presented here. Providing some much need contextual information, however, is critic Chuck Stephens, who provides liner notes for all four films, including a four-page insert on The X from Outer Space, outlining Shochiku's place within this era of high-camp horror.

Overall:
In the wake of Godzilla, not even Shochiku, a studio known for more quotidian concerns, was impervious to the fiscal temptation afforded by mainstream audiences seeking relief from everyday concerns. The four films the studio would produce over a two-year period in the late '60s would prove wildly creative and audacious, at once vivid and surreal, illogical and supremely dumb. [Slant]

Yearbook (Film): 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 02:50:00 +0000

• 2010 - 2019 •
• 2010 • 2011 • 2012 • 2013 • 2014 •
• 2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 •

• 4:44 Last Day on Earth / Abel Ferrara
• Almayer’s Folly / Chantal Akerman
• Attenberg / Athina Rachel Tsangari
• Cosmopolis / David Cronenberg
• The Day He Arrives / Hong Sangsoo
• The Deep Blue Sea / Terence Davies
• Holy Motors / Léos Carax
• The Kid with a Bike / Jean Pierre & Luc Dardenne
• The Master / Paul Thomas Anderson
• Neighboring Sounds / Kleber Mendonça Filho
• Once Upon a Time in Anatolia / Nuri Bilge Ceylan
• Tabu / Miguel Gomes
• This is Not a Film / Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
• The Turin Horse / Béla Tarr
• Two Years at Sea / Ben Rivers

Yearbook (Music): 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 02:50:00 +0000

• 2010 - 2019 •
• 2010 • 2011 • 2012 • 2013 • 2014 •
• 2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 •

• Actress / R.I.P.
• Beach House / Bloom
• Chromatics / Kill for Love
• Cloud Nothings / Attack on Memory
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor / ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!
• Grimes / Visions
• Laurel Halo / Quarantine
• Julia Holter / Ekstasis
• Japandroids / Celebration Rock
• The Men / Open Your Heart
• Spiritualized / Sweet Heart Sweet Light
• Andy Stott / Luxury Problems
• Swans / The Seer
• John Talabot / ƒIN
• Scott Walker / Bish Bosch

Index: Year-End 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 21:48:00 +0000

I've contributed to many year-end list, polls, and features recently--for both film and music. So many, in fact, that I myself am having trouble keeping up. What you'll find below, then, is a simple index with descriptions and the appropriate link to consult each piece. Some are still still pending as the calender year is set to turn, but continue to check back as I update the links as the remaining features go live over the next week or so.

Film:
• Indiewire 2012 Year-End Critics Poll: [Personal Ballot] ~ [Complete Survey]
• Reverse Shot's Best of 2012:Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (#9) [Link]
• InReviewOnline's Top 20 Films of 2012: This is Not a Film (#6) [Link]
• DVDBeaver's DVD and Blu-Ray of the Year 2012: [Personal Ballot] ~ [Complete Survey]

Music:
• CokeMachineGlow's Top 50 Albums 2012: The Walkmen (#43); Dustin Wong (#34); Laurel Halo (#28); Chromatics (#16) [Link] ~ [Staff Lists] ~ [Ghost Hardware Award for Best Use of Burial Drums]
• Village Voice Pazz + Jop 2012 [Personal Ballot] ~ [Complete Poll]
• PopMatters's 75 Best Songs of 2012: Spiritualized - "Song Long You Pretty Thing" (#40) [Link]
• PopMatters's 75 Best Albums of 2012: Julia Holter (#46); Andy Stott (#28); Godspeed You! Black Emperor (#16) [Link]
• PopMatters's 20 Best Reissues of 2012: Donnie & Joe Emerson (#20): [Link]
• Spectrum Culture's top 25 Songs of 2012: Bob Mould - "The Descent" (#5) [Link]
• Spectrum Culture's Top 25 Albums of 2012: Japandroids (#19) [Link]

DVDBeaver DVD and Blu-ray of the Year 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 16:21:00 +0000

The good folks at DVDBeaver have tallied the votes for this year's DVD and Blu-ray of the Year poll, to which I've contributed for the second straight year. Unlike years past, however, they've unfortunately opted against publishing the individual lists submitted by each contributor. But as this has been a particularly great year for digital home video, I thought I'd share my personal ballot, as many essential discs, for one reason or another, are not as widely recognized in the results as other more prominent releases. So below you'll find my top ten selections for both the best DVDs and Blu-Rays of the past 12 months, complete with region breakdowns and contextual information. And be sure to check out the complete poll over at DVDBeaver.

Top 10 SD-DVD Releases of 2012
1. Sokurov: Early Masterworks (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1989 – 1994) Cinema Guild; R1
2. Driver x4: The Lost and Found Films of Sara Driver (Sara Driver, 1981 – 1994) New Video Group; R1
3. Eclipse Series 34: Jean Gremillon During the Occupation (Jean Gremillon, 1941 – 1944) Criterion; R1
4. Casa De Lava (Pedro Costa, 1994) Second Run; R0 PAL
5. Jean-Luc Godard: Politique (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967 – 2010) Gaumont; R2
6. Eclipse Series 31: Three Popular Films by Jean-Pierre Gorin (Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1980 – 1992) Criterion; R1
7. Casting a Glance / RR (James Benning, 2007) Austrian Film Museum; R0 PAL
8. Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave (Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Evald Schorm, 1966 – 1969) Criterion; R1
9. Confidence (István Szabó, 1980) Second Run; R0 PAL
10. California Trilogy (James Benning, 1999 – 2001) Austrian Film Museum; R0 PAL

Top 10 Blu-ray Releases of 2012
1. A Hollis Frampton Odyssey (Hollis Frampton, 1966 – 1979) Criterion; RA
2. The Mizoguchi Collection (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936 – 1946) Artificial Eye; RB
3. Trilogy of Life (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971 – 1974) Criterion; RA
4. Gate of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953) Eureka / Masters of Cinema; RB
5. Lonesome (Paul Fejos, 1928) Criterion; RA
6. Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang, 1924) Eureka / Masters of Cinema; RB
7. Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948) Olive Films; RA
8. We Can’t Go Home Again (Nicholas Ray, 1976) Oscilloscope Laboratories; RA
9. On the Bowery – The Films of Lionel Rogosin, Vol. 1 (Lionel Rogosin, 1956 – 1964) Milestone; ALL
10. Ro.Go.Pa.G (Ugo Gregoretti, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roberto Rossellini, 1963) Eureka / Masters of Cinema; RB

Rants and Raves Section
Best Commentary Track: James Quandt, Stone (from Sokurov: Early Masterworks [Aleksandr Sokurov, 1990 – 1994] Cinema Guild; R1)

Record Review: The Evens - The Odds

noreply@blogger.com (Stereo Sanctity) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 23:56:00 +0000

When Ian MacKaye talks, people listen. See the countless music documentary spots, interview snippets turned SEO bait, and, when the former Minor Threat and Fugazi frontman deems appropriate, his eternally ideologic and politically passionate artistic output. It’s been six years since the Evens—the doggedly elemental duo of MacKaye and his wife and drummer Amy Farina—last released an album, while it’s now been over ten since the last Fugazi record. And it’s been even longer since MacKaye sounded engaged, even peripherally, with current indie trends. But god bless him for it: this is why we listen so intently when he steps to the mic or in front of a camera, because he doesn’t suffer fools, and when he opens his mouth it’s as if your wisest uncle has returned from sabbatical to drop hard knowledge on a family adrift from their spiritual roots, perspective altered by a media-saturated culture encouraged to keep their mouths shut and wallets open.

So why spend money on this dude’s music, then? Honestly, with the day and age we live in, you don’t even have to, and many won’t. But it’s just this type of moral consideration that MacKaye advocates while still somehow giving voice to both the consumer and the artist in equal measure. MacKaye’s relationship with his audience is just that, a reciprocal dialogue between parties on both sides of a divide, one that he has essentially spent the last thirty years navigating, though over time he’s located a generous middle ground where one can sustain the other on equally fulfilling terms. If the resulting music wasn’t so worthwhile, it would be more difficult to defend the rhetoric, but the Evens have proven to be a satisfying last-career outlet for MacKaye, obviously lacking the youthful antagonism of his straight edge youth, as well the righteous post-hardcore revolution of Fugazi, but a nonetheless pointed and pure vehicle for an increasingly rare sense of artistic zeal.

In that sense, The Odds, MacKaye and Farina’s follow-up to 2006’s Get Evens (who said these two don’t have a sense of humor?), falls perfectly in line with prior Evens recordings. They obviously aren’t out to turn music on its head; MacKaye still plays undistorted baritone guitar in the fitfully darting and pivoting style he’s employed since the Fugazi days, while Farina skips deliberately between meters, regressing into loose grooves as often as she computes math-y snare and tom equations. Their music is almost purely rhythmic, stripped of all extraneous studio trickery or instrumentation, lending all three elements—guitar, drums, vox—an immediacy that would have trouble translating through additional textures. Their interplay has grown so intuitive over the years that the impassioned words can actually take a back seat to the arrangements—on occasion. At one point late in “Sooner or Later,” MacKaye and Farina cede to their slowly mounting groove so seamlessly that I’m consistently well into the following track, “Wonder Why,” before I not only realize that this is a new song, but also essentially a four-minute instrumental coda closing out the first side of the record.

But those words are still what this music hinges on. At this point MacKaye and Farina are splitting vocal duties fairly, um, evenly, and the contrast between his weathered bark and her more soulful emoting creates a dynamic equally as fascinating as their instrumental dexterity. It’s when they come together in harmony, however, that their music leaves the greatest impression. Opener “King of Kings” is led by Farina, but MacKaye buttresses her as the vocals jump at the end of certain bars, while their repeated refrain of “Jails in search of prisoners” at the close of the following track, “Wanted Criminals,” is lent a certain universality in the midst of such a pointed indictment. A similar effect is achieved on standout track “Warble Factor,” as the duo digs into lower registers to turn the simultaneously clever and critical line, “Look at those ants go / Look at those ants go / I think those ants know.” Only on “Competing with the Till” is their vocal enterprising unable to save the blunt and fairly awkward missive. Like a nervier rendition of Fugazi’s “Returning the Screw,” the track moves between a sparse narrative outlining the injustices perpetrated on the group by ignorant club owners and a twisting chorus that turns the title phrase into an easy potshot. Far better is the central metaphor of “Architects Sleep,” which keeps its targets ambiguous enough for the listener to actually read into lyrics like “There were cracks from the beginning / They used paper to cover them up.”

Yet in an era when far too few artists speak up for anything, let alone artistic sanctity, the Ian MacKaye dogma can’t help but feel refreshing, if still a bit exclusive. But at this point MacKaye is probably done gaining new fans. The Evens are for the lifers, those of us who throw our hands up in disgust at the frivolity of the indie-rock hype cycle and the corporate-backed outlets who fund and promote such hollow, self-serving music. “I’ve seen this scene before,” Farina and MacKaye sing resolutely on “Sooner or Later,” and in that moment of quiet testimony another hard truth is suggested, that maybe things aren’t all that different than they used to be after all. [CMG]