Love having you nag at me. I come to this board many times during the day, but my topics
tend to fall a little flat here, and I really haven't seen many movies this month.

Did see a few in July, but I'll post them in this August thread.

Did get to King Arthur. I liked Clive Owens and some of his buddy knights, but overall,
I thought the movie was pretty weak. Put a leather strap over Knightly's chest, paint
her blue, hand her a bow, have her recover in 5 minutes from horrendous torture, and you have
the regal Guinevere? I don't think so. Scenery was nice. Zimmer really needs to
change his style. Nothing novel there.

Rented The Life Of David Gale, which was crucified by the critics, but I found it an affecting
movie. Gale is played by Kevin Spacey, and when the movie opens, he is on death row
for raping and killing Laura Linney. He and Laura used to organize protests against the
death penalty. Through flashbacks he tells his story, and it is full of twists, turns, and
surpises. Linney is amazing in the movie. I found myself entertained even if the
critics would brand me as brain-damaged.

Anyways Mom Joan and Graham, Tim here reporting for duty to deliver you the Thunderbirds review a few days late.

THUNDERBIRDS

Damn, re-remembering this is a bit tortuous...I've had a week to forget it. Anyway, lets begin.
I liked the animated main titles sequence which does use the Barry Gray main theme, but in an awful rendition of repeating certain bars that made it sound jarring to the ears, the "larger" orchestra sounds smaller than the budget set up Gray had to use (reminds one of the old adage "less is more"), I believe there was a music supervisor in the credits so this may not be Zimmer's fault?!

It starts Alan Tracy at school with the 'son' of Brains (eh? have I missed something) and loads of other college kids who obviously don't know that two members of the class are Thunderbirds offspring rushing to see a tv report on International Rescue, Alan is peeved because he really, so REALLY wants to be a Thunderbird but big daddy Jeff is making him graft at collage (Alan always was the one with the pissy pants!) After an eye catching rescue scene on an oil rig involving T-Birds 1 & 2 it then goes rapidly down hill from there, Jeff Tracy played by Bill Paxman and a bunch of guys who's names I don't care about playing Scott, Virgil, John etc are trapped in space after the sinister Hood, abley, if camply played by Ben Kingsley fires a missile that cripples TB-5. Step forward Alan Tracy, Brains kid and some rejects from "Spy Kids" to run around for the rest of the movie messing up the Hood's plans, the hoods henchmen are straight out of a direct to video Hulk Hogan film designed to give "comedy relief" .....okay, fast forward....Hood & pals use T-birds to break into bank of England, kids foil them daddy Jeff is finally proud of mike, pete....oh, sorry...ALAN, Hood and his campy gang are carted off by Police. I half expected Ben Kingsley to say "I'd have got away with it if it wasn't for you pesky kids"

The End.

More worst bits...

1. The guy who played Brains doing a very crap stutter and even crapper acting, at one point the Hood's eyes light up and he makes Brains do stuff he doesn't want to, Brains walks around like "a puppet on a string" (get it?, get it? ) laugh?...I could seer my eyes with chilli.

2. There was no sense of occasion when the T-birds took off, all done and dusted within seconds.

3. Lady Penelope's "Rolls Royce"?!...bollox

Some good points...

1. The design of the T - Birds, not too much tinkering with the original design, if it ain't broke... as they say.

2. There isn't anymore good points.

And finally....

Hans Zimmer's score? There seemed to be one or two good bits where my ears pricked up but on the whole it was unnoticeable and I didn't think "I must buy that!"....I may own it if someone gave me a copy or if I saw it in a junk shop for 50 pence.

So, you going to see THUNDERBIRDS?

This looked like it was all second-unit stuff. Definitely none of the cast was there, and I don't think Christopher Nolan was around, either. Apparently they're shooting here for three weeks, most of which seems to be for this chase scene.

This time I watched it with a friend of mine. He was pretty silent throughout it, so I wasn't sure what he thought. Then, when it was all over, he said: "It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen."

I couldn't agree more.

MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929)
Directed by Dziga Vertov
Cinematography by Mikhail Kaufman
Edited by Yelizaveta Svilova

Such a film is THE COMPANY, which would have been far more enjoyable if everything except the Joffrey Ballet's dance sequences were cut out. Malcolm McDowell (nice to see him in something that at least tries to be good) is smarmy and stuck-up, but you're never given much reason to like him or flat-out loathe him. Can Neve Campbell act? I don't know, there's very little for her to do. But she can sure dance - apparently the Joffrey Ballet even asked her to join after the filming was over. James Franco is fine, but his subplot would be completely extraneous if the main plot wasn't extraneous already. Some couples break up. Someone sprains an ankle. Neve meets a chef at a restaraunt. He cooks her some dinners. The company makes fun of Malcolm McDowell's character.

At least the dance sequences are still more than enough to make this film worth watching. They are expertly staged (I'd expect nothing less from the Joffrey) and really beautifully filmed. The rest is Altman on autopilot.

THE COMPANY (2003)
Directed by Robert Altman
Story by Neve Campbell & Barbara Turner
Screenplay by Barbara Turner
Cinematography by Andrew Dunn
Edited by Geraldine Peroni
Music by Van Dyke Parks
Starring Neve Campbell, Malcolm McDowell, James Franco and the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago

First, like Cassavetes, you can't just read the film as you might other Hollywood product, this one especially seems just slice-of-life: Neve wakes up, goes to work, goes to dance, deals with her Mom, deals with her boyfriends, and the film comes to a close. This is mosaic filmmaking where little bits of business accumulate to give an over all portrait of people and events. Of course, I like this approach while you probably thought it was unengaging. I can't deny there isn't "much" to it but what was there really worked for me probably for the very same reasons you reject it.

I mean I can see where some might be bored. A whole sequence is devoted to a guy setting up dinner with the girl coming in late and finding the guy asleep on her couch. She's touched and cuddles up to him. And it was beautiful. All the small touches--think of that shot where the 2nd boyfriend sees Neve for the first time while he's preparing food in the restaurant, he just notices her, looks at her, it's nothing really but a whole restaurant scene is built up just for that plot point--all of them seem like nothing on the surface but add up to something greater. But if you're looking for something more exciting in a movie go see THE BOURNE SUPREMACY because it has a 20 minute car chase at the end.

Altman still imposes a POV but not in a heavy-handed way. To sum his position up in THE COMPANY goes something like this. The company director is right or wrong in charge and favors those who do as he wants and who don't put their egos in the way. Over the course of time, most people make it, but some are eaten by the process.

Neve has setbacks--her boyfriend is messing around on her, her Mom thinks she should be more forceful in getting ahead in the ballet, she has work that bar job to pay the bills, she gets a role but has to play it in a storm, then she gets made fun of about it at the end of season roast, and she gets injured. But because she takes this stoically and doesn't impose herself on the director but is patient, she is different from her neurotic mom, she's looked on favorably by the director, she finds a new boyfriend, and rises above the harsher cards life can dish out.

She comes off looking much more stable than the prima donnas who can't learn new tricks, take orders, or who are pushing for star roles. And, although fate has a role to play, she isn't wiped out the way the one girl is in the middle of rehearsal, dancing one moment and sidelined by injury the next. Even that girl who may never dance again shows up in crutches and cast later on to watch. The people committed to art, to taking what life dishes out, and who contribute to the whole are the resilient ones who heal.

As for McDowell as the director, it was not only a great performance, but the character was wonderful. As a manager, he had to get across what he wanted, but at the same time, he would never fight directly with any one but always find a way to deflect or defuse things or leave it to others to solve, a real pro in a way, and watching how all that would operate was just another one of the highlights of the film. The film is practically a documentary that could be used for management training and one to get across to subordinates on how they should act as part of a group concern as well.

In fact, given Altman's politics, it was a surprise to see him do such a nod to corporate stratification. But being a director himself, I'm sure he has his ideas about those who help or hinder the process.

Neve was a ballet dancer in Canada before becoming an actress and she produced the film herself and it helped the film that the lead didn't need to be doubled for all the activity. As for acting, just go back and look at the scene where he picks up the guy playing pool, the way she positions herself, the way she looks and smiles.

And then if you like ballet there were a number of neat dance sequences to fill things out on top of it, the opening credits sequence perhaps the best.

**********

I've been watching so much film that I can't even begin to discuss it. This week in Ann Arbor, the German Film Institute is having their bi-annual seminar here and Profs from all over the US are attending. There is a week of rare Weimar Republic silents including Lang, Murnau, Dupont, Joe May, and Lubitsch films that are unavailable on vhs or dvd.

Today I watched Murnau's THE BURNING FIELD (Kino will bring this out on dvd next year). It was presummed lost but turned up in an insane asylum recently (the place showed films to patients and had a print). It's almost a dry run for SUNRISE and CITY GIRL in that the farmers and their rustic life are contrasted with city sophistication and all the more positive values belong to the country dwellers.

This week I also saw a print of OPIUM (1919) which had some wonderful hallucination sequences and an amazingly beautiful 35mm print of WARNING SHADOWS (1922).

WS is unique in that it's a silent film that has no intertitles, they get it all across visually with out any need to have dialogue. There are very neat things done with framing and mirrors and screens and puppet silhouettes and shadows. [Speaking of silhouettes, Lotte Reiniger's film THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED, if I didn't mention it before my departure, is just wonderful. Milestone issued it on dvd with its original score and it's one of the great animated films, really brings myth to motion.] The story isn't much but it isn't about the story as much as about the statement which is that the cinema is about dreams, that it can reveal the hidden passions of people and play out their potential dramas for them showing them the horrible consequences of unbridled action before its too late.

Rest assured that if I approached the films I watched as "Hollywood product" I would have passed on THE COMPANY altogether and rented 13 GOING ON 3O instead. I have far more respect and admiration for the medium than that. And I have far more respect and admiration for Robert Altman, which is what makes THE COMPANY disappointing for me.

Yes, it is minimalist, mosaic filmmaking, but what I saw gave me the impression that Altman either didn't know what the overall portrait was meant to be, or - and this is a much worse scenario - that he didn't care. An English teacher once told me he thought Walt Whitman was in a field throwing cow pies at the side of a barn just to see what would stick, and that's the same impression I got from THE COMPANY. The stuff that stuck might be great, but now you have to walk through all those cow pies to get to it.

I'm sorry, but Altman is capable of much, much better work. He's a gifted director who just seems to have sleepwalked his way through this shoot. If Robert Altman were Jerry Goldsmith, THE COMPANY would be his U.S. MARSHALS.

OK James, you can handle more than Hollywood product and you didn't like this one for legitimate reasons. You have points that I think I understand but I can't entirely agree with. Which is fine. I will admit that the film doesn't have much impact, that it kind of unfolds in front of you and keeps you at arm's length and that Altman has made films which aren't as distant. But I just watched 3 WOMEN last week and there too he wants you to stay distant and just observe events (at least up until the end where things boil over) and that's an approach that in no way hurts the film. THE COMPANY doesn't have as emotionally intense an ending as 3 WOMEN, it's not going for a sudden jump into the abyss but just a quiet moment of charm or a minor epiphany at the end. Altman isn't even telling us anything we didn't already know about the way of things--he's only confirming knowledge rather than revealing it and that's ok in this case.

Just because he's made "better" films like MASH and NASHVILLE and this doesn't compare with those doesn't mean he's sleepwalking through this one. It just didn't register with you whereas I think Altman accomplished what he set out to do and I wouldn't be defending the film if I didn't think otherwise.

I'm sorry, Lou, I didn't mean to give the impression I felt insulted. I was just trying to clarify my perspective, and I understand and respect your reasons for liking the film.

I wouldn't want anyone to write off watching the film either, but reading over my original post I realize that is exactly the message I was sending. So to clarify my position, regardless of my reaction to it THE COMPANY is a film that goes for something more personal than your wallet, and I wouldn't want to deprive someone else who might enjoy it the pleasure of watching it just because I didn't like it. I'll be more careful about those sorts of statements when I write in the future.

Lou, it's nice to have a passionate and thoughtful response like yours. Seriously. These threads have been pretty stagnant lately, even in the months where we got lots of input. I hope you still come back from time to time.

Today I watched a 35mm print of Fritz Lang's DAS WANDERNDE BILD (THE WANDERING EFFIGY) from 1920. Not as dark or fate-driven as later Lang titles. Most of it was shot outdoors in the mountains which, besides looking lovely on film, gave the film much less constrained space than is typically found in Lang's more tightly-controlled expressionist film spaces.

Really, this had more a kin in terms of look with Fanck's THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (yup, now on dvd from Kino) than it did the other Lang films made around it.

On a purely cinematic level I felt the film was rather unbalanced (hee hee), meaning in this case that somewhat too much footage is given over to lengthy (and heartbreaking) scenes of the plight of the mothers of soldiers killed in action. But at least Michael Moore himself doesn't intrude too heavily into those scenes, in fact I feel the film is at its best when just letting the soldiers speak for themselves, first gung-ho then disillusioned. Nevertheless, everything taken into consideration, I did feel that the film had made its point about twenty minutes from the end.

Ah, best truly cinematic moment - the opening credits, with all those shots of the politicians getting their make-up on for the TV. All dressed up and ready to "maquillar" the truth is the connotation that comes to mind.

Unfortunately, straight news should no longer be confused with what was once straight news since it too has become psy-ops, propaganda, and spin itself.

Second, Moore is taking facts that are solid and just doing analysis on them to come to some conclusions. There's no saying his conclusions are correct though many of his facts and images can't be ignored.

Bush comes off as an idiot but not entirely. He's sharp enough to open his fundraiser speech with that line about the elite have-mores being his base, he's smart enough to know that access means power, he's sitting there next to Jeb Bush on a plane telling the camera that Florida is already wrapped up, and he's surrounded by people who can handle what he doesn't.

The whole point about security before and after 9/11 that Moore makes is this: before 9/11, Bush didn't care, he was off vacationing. During 9/11, he didn't care and just sat in a classroom with no effect on his face. After 9/11, he still didn't care but used Homeland Security alerts to frighten the people to support him in his oil grabs in the name of national security and retaliation against the attack.

Moore's overall argument is this: The Bush's have been bankrolled by the Bin Laden family to the tune of 14 million dollars for years. Osama is behind the bombing. Bush attacks the Taliban in Afghanistan but waits enough time so Osama can escape. Once the Tailban are gone, Bush interests get to see a crucial oil pipeline go through the country. Senior administration officials are on record as saying that Iraq is not a threat to the US. Iraq nevertheless becomes the focus of the War on Terror. We needlessly invade and put a lot of guys in harm's way to die or suffer injuries for what seems to benefit war profiteers and not the nation as a whole.

If Moore's conclusions are a true picture of events then he's right to portray Bush as a scoundrel and we as a public are well-off to oust the villian from office this November.

If not, then you have to write him off as just another spin doctor trying to distort the truth through the media to get through a personal and political agenda.

To me however, Moore seems sincere and at times comes off as the liberal conscience of America. There are times when he is playing on emotions and being heavy-handed which might seem like putting his thumb on the scale. His approach is not without flaws. But since no one else is putting his view of things across to a general public, he's what we get, the good with the bad. Perhaps someone else will try their take using the same facts and footage to present a film of similar conclusions without the schmaltz. When they do, expect the Right to reject it as so much BS again anyway.

**********

More from the German Silent Film Seminar:

E. A. Dupont's THE ANCIENT LAWS, a story similar to THE JAZZ SINGER, with a Rabbi's son wishing to become an actor. Well acted and directed and interesting in that the various communities the man moves through each have laws they follow. He leaves the orthodox community but finds the theater has its own rules and traditions to uphold. He becomes the toast of Vienna only to find his royal friends are bound by rules of propriety and etiquette themselves. One amazing thing about this film is that it offers a very sympathetic vision of jews, one you wouldn't necessarily associate with Germany between the wars.

The silent version of ARAUNE offers yet another amazing performance by Brigitte Helm. A geneticist mates a criminal and a prostitute and puts their child in a convent to see what the results will be. She grows up rather fearless, escapes the convent, joins the circus, ruins a number of men, finds out the truth about her upbringing and decides to destroy the geneticist which she does by making him fall for her and then by leaving him to, as the final title card reads, "isolation and insanity".

DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS is a surprising 1929 film with Conrad Veight as a homosexual violinist. Homosexuality is against the law and so someone who finds out about the violinist blackmails him. Eventually, he can stand to be blackmailed no more and has his blackmailed indicted for extortion. This outs him to the public however, and that means he too will have to undergo a short jail term. Meanwhile, it also means the end of his friendships and career. As a result, he takes poison. The final scene has a sexologist lecturing to a class that these are the tragic results of laws that should be changed.

If it seems surprising that a society like Weimar Germany could produce such works and then somehow turn Nazi, just look at our own society which should know better but can be just as fascist, imperialist, and intolerant as the Nazis were.

**********

I don't quite know what to make of Yoji Yamada films. They tend to be too conventional and lightweight for me, though they can look beautiful and be funny.

THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI is a rare period film for him. It follows suit with Yamada's themes--don't expect the harsh nihilism of other Japansese samurai directors like Kurosawa, Kobayashi, Gosho, or Okomoto. Yamada's films tend towards simplicity and the slightly didactic, the message being that you should sympathize with the poor and try to be polite, unselfish people.

Here the samurai is a reluctant hero with two cute daughters and a sense of honor that keeps him hard at work and willing to sacrifice instead of taking the easy way out. He doesn't want to fight but since the audience wants him to, he does.

Yamada succeeds best in portraying the people and the samurai village and its castle, it's more a character study with a few action scenes in between to keep people awake. It's charming though and celebrates the humanistic values of its hero.

Through some magic, this comes off much more palatable in this film than it sometimes does in other Yamada films and that's a plus.

I did find it interesting that both men while under pressure
examined the choices they had made in their lives.
Fox especially realized (only when faced with possible death)
he had not been moving forward in his life. He started to realize
the absurdity of talking about change but never taking
action to better his life.

Cruise was rather philosophic in his musings, kind of an
existential sociopath. Perhaps it is the dialogue that
elevated this above standard crime movies.

I didn't care for Mann's placement of techno rock and songs;
on the other hand, JNHoward's music towards the end was
rather heartfelt.

It looked dark. I'm not sure if that was the print or the filmmaker's original intent since a great deal of the film takes place at night.

Despite bits which seem unintentionally funny today, it was obviously meant to be a very dark and serious film which took on issues of ethical importance. It's similar to other 50s sci-fi conflicts in that atomic science creates the unwelcome situation but it's also science which is the only cure.

Science has a shift of heart here however. One scientist doesn't want Godzilla killed but studied. Another scientist doesn't want to release the weapon that could kill Godzilla because he knows governments will use it for destructive ends.

The first scientist, played by Takashi Shimura, is kind of a father figure to all Japan because of his appearing in that role in Kurosawa's IKIRU. The 2nd scientist is also a war veteran. Together they represent wartime Japan. But there's a young couple in the film that opposes them and they represent the future of post-war Japan.

Godzilla of course is radioactive and destroys Tokyo with an atomic fire breath which evokes memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (a woman in the film talks about surviving the Nagasaki blast and shots of wounded in the hospital resemble similar footage of bomb victims).

In a way, the film is against the scientists and the destructive war they created represented by Godzilla and for people like the survivor's family members who simply want to know the truth and live by even older traditions like the Kagura dance (note too that when the teenage island boy is orphaned by Godzilla, the couple "adopt" him).

What changes the Shimura scientist is actual sights of Godzilla's destructiveness. What changes the war vet scientist is a chorus of young girls singing a song in hope of peace, again they represent the future of Japan that atomic science must not be a threatening part of. Both scientists agree that humanity comes first before scientific study. The more dangerous of the 2 scientists, the one with the science that would continue the trend into the future, devises a plan to both stop Godzilla and the proliferation of the science that created him. He tells the young couple of Japan's future to be happy.

I'm not saying this isn't heavy-handed but it does provide depth to a franchise that would soon degenerate into a series of big time wrestling matches (though the message crops up again in G vs THE SMOG MONSTER and G2000).

**********

No surprise that you'd find me at THE CORPORATION, a scathing critique of business practices moderated by a Greek Chorus of Talking Heads the likes of Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Rifkin, Milton Friedman, and Howard Zinn.

Unlike FAHRENHEIT 9/11 which is questioning the official version of current events, THE CORPORATION cuts to the very heart of capitalism in the range of its analysis. It covers current business behaviors but also discusses world history going back to the pre-industrial era.

There's a lot to take in and the film runs over two hours. It started with a fast-paced montage of brand names intercut with flash cuts of a shark swimming and the first thing I thought was "Oh my god, anything but this for 140 minutes." But, THE CORPORATION soon settles down into a compartmentalized series of sequences aimed at building its portrait.

To put the various fragments into a kind of sequential order (which isn't the order they're presented in in the film), the story told in THE CORPORATION begins in feudal times with the idea that although there were countries and fiefdoms, people both high and low considered the earth's resources as state property rather than private property. The first corporations were formed by state charter, a contract that said a business concern could form to do business along specific guidelines and that if they violated these guidelines the charter would be revoked. The guidelines usually meant causing no harm to others.

The idea of a state charter is weakened by the US 14th Amendment which grants individual status to corporations. Now a corporation can own property, own other businesses, etc. just as an individual might.

Since then corporations have tried to increasingly take all the resources on the planet and put them under private control. This not only extends to land, sea, and air but in the case of patented genes, to life itself.

However, if you consider the corporation as an individual and you follow business practices and compare these with the behaviors of an individual, psychologists will point out that the corporate individual harms others and feels no guilt over this, disobeys the law and when caught just considers the fines as a cost of doing business, that it is essentially a sociopathic psycho. So, if you or I did the same things corporations do on a large scale, we'd be put away in a padded cell, but corporations get to roam free.

No one elects them, fines don't stop them, globalization means they cannot be controlled by single countries, and corporate welfare and the practice of farming out externalities (i.e., if your business need to move goods, you have the government tax people to build roads which you use and this costs less than if you had to build them yourself) means we pay for their profits in more ways than just buying products.

If we don't like it, (i.e., if American businesses do business with our enemies like the Nazis which IBM, Coca-Cola, and Ford did) we can boycott them, but others with money who don't join in can support them, and ultimately, you have to buy something to live and when you do you support practices you abhor and increase the corporation's power to continue. One interview talked about the collusion between governments and business at many levels.

Interestingly, having just talked about this practice in relation to FSM at the Lou Redux topic, THE CORPORATION has an extended segment about a case involving reporters who found that Bovine Growth Hormone was dangerous and getting into most US milk. That the hormone made cows sick and that meant giving cows anti-biotics which also got into the milk. When they went to air the story, Monsanto, the corporation that developed the hormone threatened to pull its ads from all the network's stations which lead to the station changing the story and canning the reporters. The fact that this stuff is still in most milk isn't widely reported even now.

In a way none of this would matter so much if it weren't for increasing environmental damage to the biosphere which threatens all life on the planet. Synthetic chemicals and pollution are responsible for a huge increase in cancer among humans and the overall depletion of wildlife. Corporations are making life on earth unsustainable but as long as they make their money and enjoy their time now the future doesn't matter to them.

[There are times I get so fed up with things that I think the human race should just take everything we own and party it up until we die and leave nothing and no one behind--that's exactly what corporations are doing only the only people invited to the party are the select few while we'll all die in the end without having been allowed any of the good times.]

The film concludes with a chilling segment on Bolivia where the Bechtel corporation privatized the water and even had laws passed that made the collection of rainwater illegal. People in poor Bolivia had to pay one-third of their incomes to buy water and had to make serious trade-offs between water and other necessities. Finally they revolted and after serious rioting got the government to change its position.

[It would be nice if things could change for a change without a bunch of people facing down a row of police in riot gear firing tear gas and bullets.]

There were other segments about sweatshop workers and the like but you get the basic idea. And as I said there was a lot to cover and it didn't really allow for any balanced or pro-corporate point-of-view (although one corporate spokesman defended their business by saying they produce stuff while the Left only produces hot air), but if you lean towards absorbing their message anyway, there is a lot of information to consider and use to support your already Left-leaning view of things.

For film clips, text, neat anti-corporate links, and a better synopsis than the one I just provided, go to:

http://www.thecorporation.com/

There's no getting around that the film doesn't entirely work. Still, if it doesn't gel and come together as a whole, it does succeed in some of its bits, shots, scenes, and parts.

Obviously, it has a great score by John Dankworth.

Individual compositions and the overall look is fascinating: the island, the various cityscapes & apartments, the weird costumes, and the pop-art wallpapers. Then there is the wry and callous tone of it. And there are really great performances by Vitti, Stamp, Bogarde, and Andrews.

Vitti is just a mystic delight. After years of those dour Antonioni films, here she smiles, laughs, pouts, lures, etc. Bogarde too is playing up the camp as his refined villian Gay-briel, a man who thristing in the desert cries out for, "Champagne, Champagne" instead of for water.

It isn't pure Peter O'Donnell of course but a self-reflective spoof that makes fun of people who read the comics. It has 2 musical numbers and a magic act and a mime and the silliest force of Arab cavalry ever put on film so it can't be said to be tough or serious although real deaths abound in it. If you're looking for James Bond, all you'll find here is Jane Bland.

It's obviously a strange film, but beyond that it's also perplexing. I just don't get it. I'm not sure what they're going for. Although there seems to be a basic cynicism towards just about everybody in the film, heroes, governments, and villians alike.
If there's more message in it, it's either subtle and over my head or is simply absent. And yet I presume that with Losey on board it shouldn't be shallow, should it?

In any case, the film has those compensating elements I mentioned before, so that if I committed myself to watching it, it's not without pleasures. Luck seems to be on Modesty's side. The nonchalant Stamp shows up to save the day again at one moment, but the real payoff, the real charm, is Vitti's response, a grateful and admiring smile with a hint of a kiss in it. Finding such moments in MODESTY BLAISE made it entirely worthwhile.

Yes, there were a few good lines of dialogue, a few neat bits of choreography, and good performances by old British vets like Julie Christie, Brian Cox, and Peter O'Toole especially, but nothing could save the film and all the good talent involved just seemed wasted.

The centerpiece of the entire film should've been the mano-a-mano between Achilles and Hector, but that came off as some bad chop socky moment. Every other battle scene was just the usual jumble of quick cutting and swish pans that makes things simply hard to follow instead of "frantic" and "exciting". Instead O'Toole gets the most intense moment of the film in a throwaway scene in the tent asking for proper funeral rites.

And now that we have seemless CGI effects, does every epic have to look like LOTR, with sweeping camera cranes over a vast plain of converging armies and war machines? The LOTR influence extends to having the same cast members feature in this film too (poor guys they're going to be wearing tights for the next 20 years).

Eric Bana is going to be the next James Bond? He couldn't look tough or elegant if he tried. Forget the tuxedo, stick to togas.

Horner's contribution as usual wasn't great. I don't know why they dumped the Yared original. Still, one cue, the fanfares announcing Paris and Helen's entry into Troy, stood out. I was indifferent to the rest of the score which either sat there or got in the way. But my real complaint was with the croaking woman's solo. Even if this was by the same Bulgarian woman that Bruno Coulais had used in WINGED MIGRATION, I wanted to strangle her dead 10 minutes into the movie.

And, ok, it isn't the Iliad but rather a Hollywood formula variation on it, but that didn't bother me so much. They could've explained the whole Achilles heel thing though.

It was properly fleshy for a pagan tale--with lots of naked or half-naked girls lying around and lots of intense kissing and obvious screwing going on inside the tents.

Achilles makes a few anti-war statements but sure seems eager to fight, maintain codes of honor, and establish his name through the ages. The women all seem to want their guys just to stay home and raise families but the men all seem to know that if they did this, the gals would think them cowards, and even if they didn't, other men would and so the guys couldn't live thinking that of themselves any way. So much for any anti-war statement.

**********

I also saw Satyajit Ray's DEVI (THE GODDESS) from 1960. There is a lot to say about the film, but I can't cover it all here. Basically though, it's about the clash of modernism and traditionalism in Bengali society.

The father does have the vision of his daughter-in-law as an incarnation of the mother goddess Kali. Does it reflect true religious revealation or his own unconscious sexual feelings toward his maternal-acting daughter-in-law? It doesn't matter as his position as the authority figure in both the house and the surrounding land imposes the vision on everyone and creates doubts even among those who know the vision is false.

The end result is like a bomb thrown into the family. The traditional and modern viewpoints simply cannot meld but must create fractures and breaks. And Ray has no solution however. Siding with the traditional viewpoint of either the Hindu father or his Christianized son will not avoid the basic tragedy of the situation. In a word, the family and by extention all of India is forked.

***

Looking at this and comparing it to the big mythic epic that TROY was supposed to be should've made the TROY gang ashamed to be alive let alone put their crap on a screen. I had a few perfunctory good things to say about TROY but now having seen HERO all I can say is I wish I could take them back.

These guys get this kind of film so right it's amazing. Now you might look at it and say that you've seen it before in other HK films and have been seeing this kind of thing in those films for 20 years or more and that this is nothing special. But you'd be wrong.

Ang Lee tried to do an HK-style film in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. It was a huge international hit but I never saw why. It had a few interesting characters and a few set pieces and visuals that worked but it seemed like the Chinese food I get at the carry out, made to order, following a formula, serviceable but nothing special.

I liked it better when another art director, Wong Kar-Wai, did his take on the HK martial arts film in ASHES OF TIME. It was hard to follow narratively, but tapped into the proper mythic & romantic spirit that is the soul of this kind of film.

Now another art director tries his take on the HK martial arts film and outdoes both of them. The usual suspects are here to help: Tan Dun, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Christopher Doyle, and Ching Sui-Tung. All of these guys worked on either CTHD and AOT.

But the soul and spirit, the myth of powerful people matching mental & physical strength with each other, the martial arts ability, the stunning visuals, even the wire work and CGI effects, all come together here as they didn't in either CTHD or AOT.

It's still Beef Fried Rice but cooked by the ultimate Iron Chef--it gives you what you want and transcends that to tell you what you need.

It's like RASHOMON or THE LOCKET in that there are a ton of flashbacks and differing versions of events, each color coded with clothing and sets in white or red or yellow or green. There are so many fights and story variations, the same people killed off a dozen different ways, that it threatens to wear you out. But that's part of the scheme, not just to show you the gap between truth and legend, but to show you that the legend could be written many ways and each might be valid as myth and true to a certain spirit but that the ultimate one is the pacifist & sacrificial suicidal one it signs off on.

But the film is so martial, the fighting so quick and perfected, that its message to drop your sword probably is overshadowed by how great it is to see people who pick it up. That's the paradox of all stories denouncing conflicts solved by combat. I just watched another pacifist martial arts film, THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI, where the guy doesn't want to fight and his elder just answers "What is this nonsense?" The audience wants to see the guy pick up the sword.

The eternal inner sadness, turmoil, and tragedy of the warrior, a theme that surfaces again & again in Asian cinema, still gets across, it doesn't go over people's heads, but it's not what brings people into the theater.

Somehow, I hope this film does as well as CTHD, but the audience may be movied out on the HK thing and not receive this one as it really deserves. It's structure is different, there's no sword to locate, no master to avenge, no happy ending. Subsequently, it may not win at the box office. A shame if that's the case since this is one of the great HK-style films. A few shots or scenes into it and you might get just how extraordinary it is. I sure wish the guys who made TROY had watched it to see just how this kind of subject should be approached.

Before HERO there was a trailer for WIMBLETON. I can only talk based on what was in the trailer, but this is just the kind of film I despise. A loser meets a girl who inspires him and pushes him to become a winner as if becoming a winner is all that really matters or that a girl who insists on it in order to stick around is worth fu-cking. Yuck. These are the values of fascists.

Likewise, it seems ALEXANDER is going to be cast in the same mode. Colin Farrell, who will forever look like a frat boy jerk, seems totally miscast in tights besides.

Looking at TROY and footage from WIMBLETON and ALEXANDER only confirms for me again how totally soulless and off the mark Hollywood has become. Perhaps it always was this way and the only great films to come from America have been flukes, sneak ins, films where the genius got by the filters set up to block them. Why has our cinema got no soul, no understanding of what it is for people to deal with the issues of living both big and small?

The personages of HERO were big and mythic and human too. They have depth and you want to know them and their world. The actors in TROY were just pretty puppet people going through the motions listlessly so teenage girls looking for big muscles have something to drool over. ALEXANDER is going to be no better.

I'm for drooling over flesh too but only in films designed for that, in DVDs you play at home, ones you jack off to before you go to sleep. When I go to the theater I want another experience, another side to humanity, nothing so cheap & easy. I want either truthful realism or mythic romantic fantasy, but in either case, it must be relevant and "revealant", it should atleast try for meaning now & for all time.

Thank the gods for HERO and for its release on screens in the US (subtitled and not dubbed!!). Having seen it, I know all these others are just pretenders to the throne.

Last night I went to a midnight screening of Richard Elfman's FORBIDDEN ZONE at Chicago's beautiful Music Box Theatre. It's one of the most sublimely ridiculous films I've ever seen, featuring sets made almost entirely out of cardboard cut-outs, 30's/40's swing and jazz tunes, white actors in blackface, talking chickens, gratuitously topless women, the Kipper kids, a subversive parody of the famous "B-I-bickey-bye" scene from Violent is the Word for Curly, a character who without explanation suddenly becomes Swedish halfway through the movie, some Gilliam-esque animation, Danny Elfman playing Satan, and, of course, Herve Villechaize as King Fausto of the Sixth Dimension.

I'm really at a loss to try to explain this film in a way that makes any sense whatsoever, but I had a great time with it and I'll probably buy the new DVD if I ever have spending money again. Danny Elfman's soundtrack, performed by an early incarnation of Oingo Boingo, remains one of his zaniest. I always really liked the tender, sensitive Forbidden Zone love theme, but I'll be laughing forever now that I have to associate it with the image of Nick Nack pouncing on a woman thrice his size like a rabid dog on his last day before being neutered.

FORBIDDEN ZONE (1980)
Directed by Richard Elfman
Written by Richard Elfman, Matthew Bright, Nick James, Nick L. Martinson
Cinematography by Gregory Sandor
Music by Danny Elfman
Starring Herve Villechaize, Susan Tyrell, Marie-Pascale Elfman, Matthew Bright, Phil Gordon, and Danny Elfman

-------------------------------------

At the completely opposite end of the spectrum, I also watched Vittorio De Sica's UMBERTO D. I can't stress enough how refreshing it was. It's been a long time (by my standards) since I last sat down to watch a movie, and lately all I've been seeing at theaters are the likes of ALIEN VS. PREDATOR (stuck in a hopeless, boring void where it's neither good enough to be good nor bad enough to be good) and THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (competently made and with a wicked climactic car chase, but nothing to elevate it above the usual Hollywood fireworks). The summer generally doesn't turn out the kinds of films I get terribly excited about, so UMBERTO D. was something I was really, really craving, a story that touches on something much more significant through far simpler techniques than any Hollywood production is even capable of.

In a Hollywood film, Umberto would be Sean William Scott's curmedgeonly grandfather who spends every family dinner lashing out at Jews and won't move out of his beat-up old house even if he's drenched by torrential rain every night.

But Umberto is angry because he is sad, alone and afraid. He has no family left. We are never told whether they have died, broken contact with him, or if he simply never had any children or nieces or nephews. All he really has to hold onto at this point in his life is the shabby apartment he's lived in for 20 years and his dog, Flag; and the apartment is soon to be taken away from him. The whole film is essentially Umberto's search both for a way to live and a reason to live, the former elusive because he has no money, the latter because like so many elderly he outlived his usefulness and got swept under the carpet of society where he can be forgotten until he corrodes into nonexistence.

Soon it becomes clear that his relationship with Flag is what really keeps him going. The relationship between man and dog is about as simple as it gets, and the scenes between the two of them are as moving as any I've ever seen. Even the scene in which he makes Flag beg for him---probably the dog's "cutest" moment---somehow manages to get past the cutesiness of the image and slide into real sympathy.

And then there's the scene where Flag has run off and Umberto goes to search for him at the pound. I've seen countless movies where the little dog is reunited with its owner and they all tend to run together. I really can't figure out what it is that sets this scene apart from those, but somehow it transcends them. Even Alessandro Cicognini's score, while weepy, retains its dignity. I can only venture to guess that by this point we've become so in love with Umberto and so convinced by Carlo Battisti's performance that he really loves this dog that the scene feels genuine, where usually owner-and-dog reunions feel cheap and forced.

All in all, it was extremely uplifting both because the film was so good and because I so desperately needed it at the time. Between the beautiful simplicity of UMBERTO D. and the utter insanity of FORBIDDEN ZONE, I feel cinematically rejuvenated.

UMBERTO D. (1952)
Directed by Vittorio De Sica
Written by Cesare Zavattini
Cinematography by Aldo Graziati
Music by Alessandro Cicognini
Starring Carlo Battisti and Maria-Pia Casilio

------------------------------------

Lou, the estimates coming in show that HERO took the #1 spot at the box office on Friday, which is extremely encouraging. Of course, the #2 slot went to ANACONDAS: HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID, but I guess that comes with the August territory.

Anyway, your passionate response to it only makes me even more hungry to see it. I'll definitely be catching that and GARDEN STATE some time this week.

Kirk
NP - Fahrenheit 451 (Herrmann)

I haven't seen UMBERTO D. in a while but remember it fondly. I love how the dog reacts when the old man wants to off him and himself at the end. There is a family of sorts in the film: the old man, the young couple, the child/dog, but it's breaking down and no one is taking care of each other. I also love those bits that Andre Bazin loved, the girl with that huge tray in her hands opening the door with her foot and just seeing people do the dishes at the sink which is surprisingly as cinematic as cars that crash and explode.

HERO opened well but that's partly because there isn't much else out and all the films have been around for a few weeks. I'm hearing backlash now, people who consider it overrated by those like me who have praised it.

I do have to admit that it is caught up in its surface beauty: colors, flowing drapery, gimmicks like the flickering candles, the dripping rain, combatants flicking drops of water at each other, the swirling leaves, the vistas. It threatens to look overripe like a Thomas Kincade painting but I think it avoids looking too sweet to watch. There are a number of variations on the basic story as the lies and theories and counterstories are detailed but they are all entertaining and told clearly enough so you don't get lost and wonder what's up or down.

It's a film that fakes depth to a certain extent but I love how they do it. The two combatants think through their battle and see it in their minds. Then when you think they'll fight it out in reality, the one guy simply makes the final continuing move of the mental fight and that's that. During another battle, faces are superimposed over the image, the fight becomes personal, mental again. If you're expecting the real depth of self-disclosure though you need to see a different film.

One thing which seperates HERO from the pack is that these are people who have and fight over values. The Hollywood cliche is They killed my family so now I must get revenge. Yawn. Yuck.

These guys fight over politics and love but what that means is that they fight over how people are meant to live. And like THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN it's a film where the love between characters and their ideals is so strong that they are willing to kill or die, to really die, just to teach the people they care about a lesson that might make them stronger. And here the lesson is that warriors need to transcend warfare, that the larger vision supercedes the horror of the means to get there (which I don't always agree with as a philosophy but which the filmmakers seem to).

That this story kisses the rear of Chinese nationalism is a con not a pro in my book but you can abstract the concept or set it in the past as this film does and not be too bothered by it. It doesn't matter almost what the people fight for, that's a MacGuffin, it's what the fight brings out of them that's the real joy of watching the film.

I just finished watching all 6 episodes of Ingmar Bergman's TV series SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. There's a lot to say about the series but I'll just provide a thumbnail sketch. It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant: full of great acting, characters you can relate to personally, who say things you've always thought about life yourself, and who make even deeper observations and insights about things than you have. For Bergman, it was very funny almost like Noel Coward or Lubitsch in places, especially the way the couple use all their lovers who are just forced to come & go, but it also has its harsh side with tough truths which cannot be avoided.

And its mostly just two people talking in a room. It's emotional, not clinical, not analytical, not objective, and yet it dissects this marriage beat by beat into the confusing mass of torture and bliss that it is.