Celluloid

Lately, I feel like a beacon of film knowledge/news, etc. Between listening to two film podcasts (Filmspotting & IFC), averaging 5 films watched at home per week, checking Criterion and Electric Sheep websites on the occasion, and of course actually going to the theatre when I've got some cash, I realize that it may be necessary or perhaps even responsible to unload some of my movie-obsessed brain...

In Theatres

So I saw the new Indiana Jones film. It was inevitable. Having grown up watching the original trilogy, I already knew to tamper my expectations. That being said, I think the film is a mostly fun summer blockbuster extravanganza, but it had plenty of groan-inducing moments (I'm looking at you CG prairie dogs, swinging vines scene, wedding). I give it a C+ or 3/5...take your pick

(I did see the preview for The Dark Knight, and I have to admit that it looks pretty good..good enough for me to get interested in the last Batman movie to potentially catch up)

In Home (films I've watched in the last week)

Elevator to the Gallows (1958) Malle - I had already seen this movie once before, but had couldn't remember if I had, as I am apt to do. Once the film started, parts started coming back to me. A man kills his boss/lover's husband, teenagers go on a joyride, the police have a lot of murders to solve, all soundtracked by Miles Davis. 5/5

Ikiru (1952) Kurosawa - A story about a man who gets diagnosed with stomach cancer, essentially has six months to live, and realizes that he has lived an empty life. After a failed attempt to drink himself to death, he changes his strategy and instead decides to try and fit much joy and purpose into the time he has left. Sounds depressing and cliched, but actually works well. 4/5

Mona Lisa (1986) Jordan - Bob Hoskins stars in this film about a lower class dude who gets a job driving for a skinny, beautiful, classy black prostitute. She wants to rescue a friend that she knows from her past who shared the same pimp, but knows she cannot show her face for fear of retaliation from said pimp. Hoskins offers to find the friend and gets more involved with the underbelly of London than he would have liked. Cool scenes of 1980s London and Brighton. 4/5

Rififi (1955) Dassin - Essentially a heist movie, but the heist happens halfway through the movie (and it's a really impressive nearly silent 30 minutes). Things really get interesting after the burglary when a rival kidnaps one of the participant's young sons, and proceeds to mess with each of the people involved, except for the leader of the group (who is just too good to get captured). I love how the film starts to feel more chaotic as more shit in the plot gets more complicated (especially the car scene towards the end). 5/5

Scanners (1981) Cronenberg - Heads blow up! Epic mind battles! Humans vs. the machine (or science)! I think Cronenberg was best when he made out-of-control, not really believable campy, culty, B-movie craziness. I laughed a lot, and overall just really enjoyed seeing this movie for the first time. 4/5

Viridiana (1961) Bunuel - A young woman is about to enter a convent, when her aging uncle invites her to visit him one last time before she becomes cut off from the world. She goes reluctantly, and sure enough he begins plotting to mar her purity and innocence. Events occur and she decides to stay, but uses part of the land and the house as a commune-like setting to serve the homeless in the village. The homeless party in the mansion is pretty memorable. 4/5

the White Sheik (1952) Fellini - A newlywed couple goes to Rome for their honeymoon where they are supposed to meet up with the husband's relatives and meet the Pope. The new bride is quite young and obsessed with a character named the "White Sheik" whose headquarters happens to be down the street from their hotel. She goes to meet her idol and ends up travelling outside of Rome with the entire cast, on accident, and has no way of telling her new husband where she has disappeared to. An early Fellini that still captures some of the carnival feeling of his later films. 4/5

A Woman is a Woman (1961) Godard - I didn't actually watch this film last week, but close enough. I love Anna Karina in this silly, very poppy, very French film from Godard. Angela (Karina) really wants to have a baby, but her boyfriend doesn't want to so much. They fight a lot and he jokes that she should hook up with a mutual friend of theirs. Basically this film seems to be poking fun at the too-cute 1960s films about relationships, but is essentially one of those films. It's quirky and fun, and the striptease is pretty great. 5/5

In the News

Cannes just ended, and the two films that seem to be getting the most coverage are a 4 hour movie about Che Guevara by Soderbergh (while it's unlikely the final cut will be 4 hours, it would maybe do some good for the abundance of Che-T-shirt-wearing college students to sit through something like this just so they may actually know who the person on their shirt is..) and the directorial debut from the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York.

Jim Jarmusch is listed as having a movie in post production called The Limits of Control.

Werner Herzog is remaking Bad Lieutenant. I am concerned because Nicolas Cage appears to be replacing Harvey Keitel...until then, his latest documentary Encounters at the End of the World should be released on DVD sometime soon. It's about Antartica and will hopefully include Herzog narrating some outrageously melodramatic monologue over incredibly beautiful landscape shots.

When adaptations go right

No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, were undoubtedly two of the best films to come out last year, and arguably in the last few years. Interestingly enough, both of these films are based at least in part on novels. This isn't an unusual occurence at all in the film industry, but what is unusual is how much better the films are than their literary counterparts.

Normally, adaption of a popular or appreciated novel seems like a good idea because obviously something about the story, or characters, or tone etc., was strong enough to attract readers in the first place. That attraction could translate to a connection with film audiences. The movie could just visually shows us a version of what we were picturing in our heads anyway. However, many readers who watch the film versions of their beloved books are invariably disappointed. Plot has to be cut down due to time restraints, we aren't usually exposed to characters' inner monologues or even get to know them as well, and even sometimes, producers/directors decide to change plotlines or endings to make the story more "accessible." I would have to agree that the majority of the time, the film will never be as good as the book...but maybe things are changing?

No Country For Old Men is based on a fairly mediocre book by Cormac McCarthy. (You can read my GoodReads review here) In this case, the film keeps the tone and themes from the book, and actually for the most part, stays fairly true to the story. However, the book just doesn't make for a very satisfying read, but does adapt nicely to the Coen Brothers' vision. The main departure happens by eliminating a character and a small side story involving a teenage girl that Moss picks up while she's hitchhiking, but very explicitly never evolves into anything sexual. The purpose of her existence in the novel is unclear, other than to place doubt in the mind of Moss' wife regarding his fidelity. Her almost complete absence in the film is welcome and I believe only make the film stronger and easier to follow.

While I wouldn't say the McCarthy novel was bad per se, I cannot refrain from assigning that description to Oil!, the Upton Sinclair novel that There Will Be Blood is loosely based on. (Once again, GoodReads review here) In this case, PT Anderson keeps very little from the original story. The characters that even make it on the screen have different names, temperaments, and agendas. Daniel Plainview is an infinitely more interesting and complex character than his inspiration, J. Arnold Ross. Ross is basically good at finding oil, loves his son, and pays off government and city officials when he needs to get something done. He is far from obsessed or borderline evil or even descending into his own downward spiral, and consequently one doesn't find much to react to in the book. Also, the book is told through the eyes of Ross' son J. Arnold Ross Jr., aka "Bunny." Bunny is already a teenager at the outset of the story, compared to the young boy "H.W." in the film. There is no tragedy to befall the young oil protege, other than his own conscience...yawn. Eli Sunday used to be Eli Watkins. He still leads a questionable church, but almost no interaction with the big oil man, and certainly no form of confrontation...Where the film succeeds in questioning both capitalism and religion, the book utterly fails. It doesn't really try to tackle much in the way of religious corruption, but goes completely overboard on attacking capitalism, transforming the novel into a 550 page debate between capitalism, socialism, and communism. At its core, I even agree with what Sinclair is getting at, but I couldn't have been more bored with his literary methods. On the other hand, I had no problem sitting through PT Anderson's 2 and 1/2 hour loose interpretation of a similar theme.

Maybe what these successful films of last season show us, is that in order to make a good film adaptation of a novel, perhaps the original material should be a little sub-par...giving the film the opportunity to rescue whatever may have been of value...

Binh Danh

Typically, I find "political art" or art addressing topical issues to comes across as fairly boring. Binh Danh, a Vietnamese-American artist definitely operates in the realm of political art, but I did enjoy his images when I first saw them at a photography exhibit in San Diego several months ago. Mainly, I find the aesthetic of his works pleasing and fairly unique. Danh uses a process called chlorophyll printing (essentially harnessing photosynthesis) that involves taking a green leaf and placing a negative over it between two sheets of glass and letting the leaf bake in the sun for weeks at a time. A successful printing is then coated in resin. The result is often an eerie image imprinted on the leaf and bares a similar likeness to early photography processes such as daguerrotypes. The images usually depict scenes from the Vietnam War, but also just portray simple Vietnamese people. Danh uses leaves to emphasize an interconnectedness with the natural world and to stress fragility and vulnerability of life.