# 1) The Kid With a Bike
# 2) Oslo, August 31
Monday, July 23, 2012
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Instant Film Reviews
Netflix rating system: 1 = hated it, 2 = didn't like it, 3 = liked it, 4 = really liked it, 5 = loved it.
Melancholia, by Lars von Trier - 4/5.
Cons: weak on characterization, psychologically simplistic. There isn't much to the characters and we 'get' them pretty quickly, so what's the point of it all. Dialogue isn't that good, lacks realistic subtlety
Pros: beautiful. Realistic in other ways. I cared about the characters. Whatserface is a great actress. Not sure I cared for Kirsten Dunst, though, come to think of it. Still 4/5 because I don't really care about what's bad about a film, that much.
50/50, by Judd Apatow (not really, it's by the guy who directed The Wackness, apparently) - 3/5
Cons: Judd Apatow film - predictable, trite, an unconvincing romance
Pros: somewhat convincing friendship. Made me cry. I want to have chemotherapy buddies. Scene where main character realizes the hilarious absurdity of life and death, cracks up at a dead body.
Hot Tub Time Machine directed by one of the guys who wrote high fidelity, apparently - 3.5/5
Cons: What you'd expect. And, like all mainstream films, the ending is stupid and there's no real reason to watch the last 1/4 of the film. Actually a lot of it is bad, come to think of it.
Pros: better than you'd expect. AO Scott's article about this, The Ask, and Greenberg.
Melancholia, by Lars von Trier - 4/5.
Cons: weak on characterization, psychologically simplistic. There isn't much to the characters and we 'get' them pretty quickly, so what's the point of it all. Dialogue isn't that good, lacks realistic subtlety
Pros: beautiful. Realistic in other ways. I cared about the characters. Whatserface is a great actress. Not sure I cared for Kirsten Dunst, though, come to think of it. Still 4/5 because I don't really care about what's bad about a film, that much.
50/50, by Judd Apatow (not really, it's by the guy who directed The Wackness, apparently) - 3/5
Cons: Judd Apatow film - predictable, trite, an unconvincing romance
Pros: somewhat convincing friendship. Made me cry. I want to have chemotherapy buddies. Scene where main character realizes the hilarious absurdity of life and death, cracks up at a dead body.
Hot Tub Time Machine directed by one of the guys who wrote high fidelity, apparently - 3.5/5
Cons: What you'd expect. And, like all mainstream films, the ending is stupid and there's no real reason to watch the last 1/4 of the film. Actually a lot of it is bad, come to think of it.
Pros: better than you'd expect. AO Scott's article about this, The Ask, and Greenberg.
Monday, October 10, 2011
But what I should point out here is this -
1) The tone of the past couple entries reminds me surprisingly of my blog-writing-style in high school.
2) What is fantastic about both these films is that they are not predictable. I hate films, generally, because they tend to be so short that the cliche/original content ratio seems to always be too high. Some Judd Apatow films have their moments, but all of them spend a significant amount of screentime on cliche and beginnings and middles and rising actions and ends that you all see coming a mile away and has no particular interest or power. It would be so hard to make me care about someone running to an airport to stop a girl from going away. In principle, it is a very powerful idea. Can you imagine if this actually happened to someone you knew, and it wasn't a film cliche? It would be insane. You'd tell your kids and your grandkids. You'd narrate the moment when he went "fuck it" and ran through security, or whatever, to get to her (do they do that in movies?).
I really really liked Herzog's Bad Lieutenant. You honestly don't know where it's going, and it is so out of "left field" sometimes that it is a hilarious comedy.
Battle Royale, I think, was the first film I saw that really drove this message home. It's fun because it's about something insane and high-stakes and who dies and who lives is apparently determined sort of arbitrarily. More like a game show, really.
Or No Country. So much fun. (spoiler warning) I loved when 2/3 through the film Woody Harrelson's character is introduced, then is pretty much immediately killed off. It shocks. It jars you out of your comfortable position as a dude who knows what's going on, jars you into the film, maybe? Dare I say that arbitrariness has an effet de reel? And when you don't know what will happen you care about what will happen.
The connection between all these films is that they are not art. They are entertainment, and supremely good entertainment because they avoid cliche in the service of making films unpredictable, in the service of making them fun.
Corroboration corner:
" Is this shambolic maniac Herzog’s idea of an American hero? " -Karina Longworth
1) The tone of the past couple entries reminds me surprisingly of my blog-writing-style in high school.
2) What is fantastic about both these films is that they are not predictable. I hate films, generally, because they tend to be so short that the cliche/original content ratio seems to always be too high. Some Judd Apatow films have their moments, but all of them spend a significant amount of screentime on cliche and beginnings and middles and rising actions and ends that you all see coming a mile away and has no particular interest or power. It would be so hard to make me care about someone running to an airport to stop a girl from going away. In principle, it is a very powerful idea. Can you imagine if this actually happened to someone you knew, and it wasn't a film cliche? It would be insane. You'd tell your kids and your grandkids. You'd narrate the moment when he went "fuck it" and ran through security, or whatever, to get to her (do they do that in movies?).
I really really liked Herzog's Bad Lieutenant. You honestly don't know where it's going, and it is so out of "left field" sometimes that it is a hilarious comedy.
Battle Royale, I think, was the first film I saw that really drove this message home. It's fun because it's about something insane and high-stakes and who dies and who lives is apparently determined sort of arbitrarily. More like a game show, really.
Or No Country. So much fun. (spoiler warning) I loved when 2/3 through the film Woody Harrelson's character is introduced, then is pretty much immediately killed off. It shocks. It jars you out of your comfortable position as a dude who knows what's going on, jars you into the film, maybe? Dare I say that arbitrariness has an effet de reel? And when you don't know what will happen you care about what will happen.
The connection between all these films is that they are not art. They are entertainment, and supremely good entertainment because they avoid cliche in the service of making films unpredictable, in the service of making them fun.
Corroboration corner:
" Is this shambolic maniac Herzog’s idea of an American hero? " -Karina Longworth
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Quik Film Reviews II - Kaboom
Kaboom (2010)
A film with a sense of fun as natural as Rubber's is clinical and contrived (I'm sorry I keep bad mouthing Rubber, I really liked it).
"Kaboom is Scooby-Doo with sex, drugs and tattooed hotties." - Karina Longworth
Constantly. It's Scooby-Doo if most of the show was about the characters having sex, in between which they hid between suits of armor and just ended up getting it on cause hey while you wait (not so many drugs, really). And it's about candy colors. It's about the joy of youth and about spooky conspiracies. The perfect film for Halloween, I think, or for Valentine's Day.
Balancing opinions corner:
"Araki doesn't quite have the social-networking thing down" - Karina Longworth
A film with a sense of fun as natural as Rubber's is clinical and contrived (I'm sorry I keep bad mouthing Rubber, I really liked it).
"Kaboom is Scooby-Doo with sex, drugs and tattooed hotties." - Karina Longworth
Constantly. It's Scooby-Doo if most of the show was about the characters having sex, in between which they hid between suits of armor and just ended up getting it on cause hey while you wait (not so many drugs, really). And it's about candy colors. It's about the joy of youth and about spooky conspiracies. The perfect film for Halloween, I think, or for Valentine's Day.
Balancing opinions corner:
"Araki doesn't quite have the social-networking thing down" - Karina Longworth
Quik Film Reviews, ed 1
Now's a good time to get this started again. If just as a form of procrastination. Now here's some reviews of some films that I probably all saw in the past year.
Rubber (2010): A French film, made by a French DJ, using only American actors speaking English. It takes place in the deserts of the Southwest. I'm not going to give away anything more because anything more would be a spoiler. Because unwrapping the present yourself is the fun. So just consider that I'm giving *you* the present, and you just gotta take my word for it and unwrap it without knowing what's inside but since I got it for you, you have to anyway.
Spoiler warning, so don't read any further, ok? - So I could understand if someone didn't like this film, you know? Because it does wear its self-satisfaction on its sleeve. You can just hear some French dude who thinks he's too hip for his own good laughing on the other end of the camera because he's crowning himself the tarantino of post-modern camp. But he's not. This is who he is. You just gotta feel camp, deep in your soul, and Tarantino does. And you gotta feel post-modern, like Wallace does in Westward (which, for the record, Wallace didn't like but I do). They [Wallace and Tarantino] love it [post-modern storytelling and camp, respectively] so hard it hurts them. But this guy . . . cocaine alone isn't enough to "feel it" bra.
So you'd be forgiven for not liking Rubber. But all that aside. I really liked it. How couldn't you? Camp is fun, post-modern is fun. It struck me as strangely a bit less funny than it should be, but it is really funny, too. Just watch the film. Why? No reason, nike.
Balanced opinion corner:
"An essay on storytelling and spectatorship within When Inanimate Objects Attack schlock, infused with the haunting aura and disillusionment of a post–Easy Rider road movie,Rubber is some kind of miracle." - Karina Longworth
Rubber (2010): A French film, made by a French DJ, using only American actors speaking English. It takes place in the deserts of the Southwest. I'm not going to give away anything more because anything more would be a spoiler. Because unwrapping the present yourself is the fun. So just consider that I'm giving *you* the present, and you just gotta take my word for it and unwrap it without knowing what's inside but since I got it for you, you have to anyway.
Spoiler warning, so don't read any further, ok? - So I could understand if someone didn't like this film, you know? Because it does wear its self-satisfaction on its sleeve. You can just hear some French dude who thinks he's too hip for his own good laughing on the other end of the camera because he's crowning himself the tarantino of post-modern camp. But he's not. This is who he is. You just gotta feel camp, deep in your soul, and Tarantino does. And you gotta feel post-modern, like Wallace does in Westward (which, for the record, Wallace didn't like but I do). They [Wallace and Tarantino] love it [post-modern storytelling and camp, respectively] so hard it hurts them. But this guy . . . cocaine alone isn't enough to "feel it" bra.
So you'd be forgiven for not liking Rubber. But all that aside. I really liked it. How couldn't you? Camp is fun, post-modern is fun. It struck me as strangely a bit less funny than it should be, but it is really funny, too. Just watch the film. Why? No reason, nike.
Balanced opinion corner:
"An essay on storytelling and spectatorship within When Inanimate Objects Attack schlock, infused with the haunting aura and disillusionment of a post–Easy Rider road movie,Rubber is some kind of miracle." - Karina Longworth
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Today, my roommates kept asking me why I had dinner "so early" at 7PM. I told them this was normal in the US, but for some reason this didn't satisfy them. It turned out they didn't understand why I was hungry so early in the day. Once, however, they heard that I hadn't had lunch, they thought this made a lot more sense.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The other day, I was walking just outside of town on the concrete bank of the Rhône river. I didn't think anyone would notice me from the highway ,which was on a higher elevation than me, and a little bit further from the river, but a trucker honked his horn and flashed me the "peace sign" as he sped by.
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