Declarative desire dedicatedly persists after state sanctioned seclusion silences its volatile temerity.
Another, resigned yet combative, is enamoured.
The fate of a rebellious young adult becomes a decisive tangible consequent as the Stasi's invasive pressure deliberately dehumanizes.
A doctor, emphatically refuses, to be muzzled.
Carefully contextualizing different varieties of tension, while diagnosing risk with surgical precision, Christian Petzold's Barbara internally serenades freedom of expression, and externalizes a crisp courageous spiritualization.
An extensive reactive multilateral engagement furtively negotiates an honest state of affairs.
Its interconnected inextricable professional, personal, romantic, governmental and (inter)national relationships foment a forlorn fugitive firmament wherein influential forces collaborate and contend.
Interrogating what it means to pursue.
Attempting to have their voices heard.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
The Berlin File
Setting a new standard for fast-paced intricate multilayered action packed films covertly concerned with international relations, Seung-wan Ryoo's The Berlin File's depth frantically conceptualizes a practical competitive bellicose ideological maelstrom, wherein interpersonal integrity can trump engrained national antimonies, as the ambitious pretentions of a jealous privileged communist usurper stereoscopically attempt to remagnify its vortex.
Good communists and bad communists.
Respect for North Korea?
Deconstructive hypoallergenic hyper-reflexive expedition.
And a remarketable union.
The issue of trust gravitationally staggers through myriad ulterior transitional focal points until a specific set of exceptional checks and balances produces an ephemeral allegiance, an amicable diplomatic extract.
The film's tight chaotic suction implodes near the end as a protagonist and his principal enemy square off like traditional martial marionettes.
Still pretty cool.
Both of the main male communist characters can be thought of as members of North Korea's materialistic pantheon, but the bad one's father occupies a high ranking influential yet corrupt position in the country's militaristic elite.
The other is an extraordinary citizen whose unyielding belief and support have strengthened his iron constitution.
Whether or not he can continue to exercise his commitment to his country, even though an everlasting magical freedom guaranteeing surplus seems somewhat fantastical, not that one shouldn't attempt to realize aspects of it through parliamentary means, depends upon that country's commitment to him.
Hoping there's a sequel.
Sort of like the anti-Die Hard 5.
Good communists and bad communists.
Respect for North Korea?
Deconstructive hypoallergenic hyper-reflexive expedition.
And a remarketable union.
The issue of trust gravitationally staggers through myriad ulterior transitional focal points until a specific set of exceptional checks and balances produces an ephemeral allegiance, an amicable diplomatic extract.
The film's tight chaotic suction implodes near the end as a protagonist and his principal enemy square off like traditional martial marionettes.
Still pretty cool.
Both of the main male communist characters can be thought of as members of North Korea's materialistic pantheon, but the bad one's father occupies a high ranking influential yet corrupt position in the country's militaristic elite.
The other is an extraordinary citizen whose unyielding belief and support have strengthened his iron constitution.
Whether or not he can continue to exercise his commitment to his country, even though an everlasting magical freedom guaranteeing surplus seems somewhat fantastical, not that one shouldn't attempt to realize aspects of it through parliamentary means, depends upon that country's commitment to him.
Hoping there's a sequel.
Sort of like the anti-Die Hard 5.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
A Good Day to Die Hard
Ah, liked the other Die Hard films.
Even Die Hard 3.
Live Free or Die Hard was a big surprise, seeing how it was the franchise's 4th instalment and disseminated one of its best narratives.
Bearing this in mind, I was excited when I heard that A Good Day to Die Hard was being released, naively figuring that they would at least sustain Die Hard 4's momentum with another deep script packed with the expected explosive cast of supporting characters.
In other words, I completely forgot that this was Die Hard 5.
Bruce Willis still excels at playing John McClane. There weren't any moments where it seemed as if he had lost touch with the hands-on hardboiled lawperson whose gifts for instantaneously outwitting ingenious villains in the heat of the moment flexibly manifests an endearing contextual psychocorporeality.
But no single performance could have saved this film, with its brutal lines, shoddy editing, improbable scenarios (usually you try and set up an elaborate situation whose intricate details, improbable though they may be, at least cleverly conceal the improbability), and rather one-dimensional depiction of Russia.
The idea behind the script is solid. Send Mr. McClane to another country where he must contend with the wicked with the help of his son (Jai Courtney as Jack McClane) thereby quasi-globalizing his law enforcement instinct while strengthening his commitment to family.
The film's best moments see John and Jack airing their grievances while preparing for another round of improvisational hyperactivity, and its best line is "Tough to kill a McClane."
But Die Hard 5 can still be categorized with Rocky V and Star Trek V, more concerned with its image than the traditional kinetic synthesis of action, dialogue, stitch, and kitsch that produced it.
Remember the cold war? The creative forces behind Die Hard 5 sure do.
Ugh.
Even Die Hard 3.
Live Free or Die Hard was a big surprise, seeing how it was the franchise's 4th instalment and disseminated one of its best narratives.
Bearing this in mind, I was excited when I heard that A Good Day to Die Hard was being released, naively figuring that they would at least sustain Die Hard 4's momentum with another deep script packed with the expected explosive cast of supporting characters.
In other words, I completely forgot that this was Die Hard 5.
Bruce Willis still excels at playing John McClane. There weren't any moments where it seemed as if he had lost touch with the hands-on hardboiled lawperson whose gifts for instantaneously outwitting ingenious villains in the heat of the moment flexibly manifests an endearing contextual psychocorporeality.
But no single performance could have saved this film, with its brutal lines, shoddy editing, improbable scenarios (usually you try and set up an elaborate situation whose intricate details, improbable though they may be, at least cleverly conceal the improbability), and rather one-dimensional depiction of Russia.
The idea behind the script is solid. Send Mr. McClane to another country where he must contend with the wicked with the help of his son (Jai Courtney as Jack McClane) thereby quasi-globalizing his law enforcement instinct while strengthening his commitment to family.
The film's best moments see John and Jack airing their grievances while preparing for another round of improvisational hyperactivity, and its best line is "Tough to kill a McClane."
But Die Hard 5 can still be categorized with Rocky V and Star Trek V, more concerned with its image than the traditional kinetic synthesis of action, dialogue, stitch, and kitsch that produced it.
Remember the cold war? The creative forces behind Die Hard 5 sure do.
Ugh.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Identity Thief
Loved Planes, Trains & Automobiles growing up.
Arguably both John Candy and Steve Martin's best movie, it brought together two of Hollywood's leading comedic actors, set them up as a mismatched pair, simultaneously catered to bourgeois and working class sympathies, and used Thanksgiving to tie everything together.
By the end of the film, Neal Page (Martin) has been transformed from a cold representative of the bad bourgeoisie who have no social conscience to someone who will at least invite a lonely friend to his home for dinner.
Del Griffith (Candy) smiles, everyone's happy, the end.
26 years later, Seth Gordon's Identity Thief works within the same paradigm, but the cultural codes of the game have changed.
If we're to take the information provided in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story as solid indisputable fact, unions had generated stable, prosperous bourgeois lives for many working Americans until their strength was weakened by the Reagan administration and many of their jobs shipped elsewhere, some, in the interests of capitalism, to at least one communist country.
Theoretically, a significant proportion of the American population were no longer able to maintain their suburban lifestyles (in the same location over a long period of time) and found themselves individually competing for new jobs in a pop cultural system that vilified anything besides the undeniably exceptional.
Does this theory resonate throughout little old unsuspecting Identity Thief?
I don't know, but here's my take.
Lead character Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) is struggling to get by, working for a corporation who only values the contributions of upper management, living with his wife and two kids.
He's played his cards right but at the end of the month only has a little more than 14 dollars of potential savings to show for it.
And trouble's a brewin.'
Diana (Melissa McCarthy) makes her living stealing peoples identities and using them to finance her freewheelin' acquisitive lifestyle (Patterson seems like he's too smart to have fallen for her scam, but that's another matter).
She steals that of Mr. Patterson just as he launches a career as the vice-president of a new company.
Naturally he's pissed, and sets out for Florida to confront and bring her back to Denver, due to infrastructural peculiarities that prevent the Denver PD from working with their Floridian counterparts.
But he's not the only one in hot pursuit, for she's run afoul of others seeking vengeance who track and attempt to overcome Sandy and Diana after Sandy captures her.
By the end of the film, Sandy's developed a social conscience at least to the degree where he cares about one of the proletarian characters who ends up in jail.
Most of the proletarian characters (likely) end up in jail.
Thus, as good jobs become harder to find than they were in the 1980s, working American people find themselves resorting to a higher degree of criminal activity, much more violent than John Candy's family friendly shenanigans, corporate upper management remains influential and unaffected unless those whom they disregard can out-compete them in the marketplace (hopefully without becoming like them during the struggle), wherein which these competitors might lose everything, as some seem to have even though they had stable unionized jobs, which possibly faltered due to their lack of a coordinated multidisciplinary international network.
Among thousands of other rather complicated factors of which I'm unaware.
Identity Thief's script contains a broader array of consistent characters than Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Melissa McCarthy's performance is strong enough to indicate that she may be able to function as a 21st century John Candy, there are some funny scenes which utilize sleaze as everyone chases, tricks, slanders, and/or shoots at one another, which seems to be the comic style of our time, but it's not attached to a holiday, and is missing a substitute for Steve Martin.
Jason Bateman's good. I love his work. Bold to compete with Steve Martin. I wouldn't even be able to order coffee for an extra's stunt double.
Genesis Rodriguez (Marisol) is my favourite real world name ever.
No mention of the Broncos.
Arguably both John Candy and Steve Martin's best movie, it brought together two of Hollywood's leading comedic actors, set them up as a mismatched pair, simultaneously catered to bourgeois and working class sympathies, and used Thanksgiving to tie everything together.
By the end of the film, Neal Page (Martin) has been transformed from a cold representative of the bad bourgeoisie who have no social conscience to someone who will at least invite a lonely friend to his home for dinner.
Del Griffith (Candy) smiles, everyone's happy, the end.
26 years later, Seth Gordon's Identity Thief works within the same paradigm, but the cultural codes of the game have changed.
If we're to take the information provided in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story as solid indisputable fact, unions had generated stable, prosperous bourgeois lives for many working Americans until their strength was weakened by the Reagan administration and many of their jobs shipped elsewhere, some, in the interests of capitalism, to at least one communist country.
Theoretically, a significant proportion of the American population were no longer able to maintain their suburban lifestyles (in the same location over a long period of time) and found themselves individually competing for new jobs in a pop cultural system that vilified anything besides the undeniably exceptional.
Does this theory resonate throughout little old unsuspecting Identity Thief?
I don't know, but here's my take.
Lead character Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) is struggling to get by, working for a corporation who only values the contributions of upper management, living with his wife and two kids.
He's played his cards right but at the end of the month only has a little more than 14 dollars of potential savings to show for it.
And trouble's a brewin.'
Diana (Melissa McCarthy) makes her living stealing peoples identities and using them to finance her freewheelin' acquisitive lifestyle (Patterson seems like he's too smart to have fallen for her scam, but that's another matter).
She steals that of Mr. Patterson just as he launches a career as the vice-president of a new company.
Naturally he's pissed, and sets out for Florida to confront and bring her back to Denver, due to infrastructural peculiarities that prevent the Denver PD from working with their Floridian counterparts.
But he's not the only one in hot pursuit, for she's run afoul of others seeking vengeance who track and attempt to overcome Sandy and Diana after Sandy captures her.
By the end of the film, Sandy's developed a social conscience at least to the degree where he cares about one of the proletarian characters who ends up in jail.
Most of the proletarian characters (likely) end up in jail.
Thus, as good jobs become harder to find than they were in the 1980s, working American people find themselves resorting to a higher degree of criminal activity, much more violent than John Candy's family friendly shenanigans, corporate upper management remains influential and unaffected unless those whom they disregard can out-compete them in the marketplace (hopefully without becoming like them during the struggle), wherein which these competitors might lose everything, as some seem to have even though they had stable unionized jobs, which possibly faltered due to their lack of a coordinated multidisciplinary international network.
Among thousands of other rather complicated factors of which I'm unaware.
Identity Thief's script contains a broader array of consistent characters than Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Melissa McCarthy's performance is strong enough to indicate that she may be able to function as a 21st century John Candy, there are some funny scenes which utilize sleaze as everyone chases, tricks, slanders, and/or shoots at one another, which seems to be the comic style of our time, but it's not attached to a holiday, and is missing a substitute for Steve Martin.
Jason Bateman's good. I love his work. Bold to compete with Steve Martin. I wouldn't even be able to order coffee for an extra's stunt double.
Genesis Rodriguez (Marisol) is my favourite real world name ever.
No mention of the Broncos.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Le prix des mots
Engaging in speculation can be a risky business.
Julien Fréchette's Le prix des mots explores how engaging in what can be thought of as scholarly research can be risky as well, if you draw conclusions from your research that directly critique those who seem like enormously wealthy capitalistic players.
In Canada anyways.
Mining is big business in Canada.
When I look around my apartment and count the gadgets and appliances I frequently use that wouldn't exist without mining, and consider the social programs that can be supported through the extraction of minerals, as well as the jobs that can be consequently created, I don't see much of a problem with it, as I've stated before.
But said mining operations must proceed ethically in an environmentally and socially responsible manner so that tax payers aren't left cleaning up potentially irremediable pollution for generations to come, and the workers can enjoy a fruitful share of their profits.
According to this article, containing information from Canadian Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Scott Vaughan's final report after five years on the job, if there was currently an oil spill or nuclear accident within Canada, Canadian taxpayers would be exposed to huge financial risks.
According to this look at closure alternatives for Yukon's faro mine, moving the tailings could take between 10 to 20 years, and this article states that "with devolution, managing the cleanup of the mine became the responsibility of the Yukon government, while Ottawa is still obligated to pay the bills," although it doesn't mention whether or not Ottawa is exclusively paying for the cleanup with tax payers money (I think it's safe to speculate that this could partially be the case).
To speculate further, applying environmental regulations can also be a tricky business. Constant vigilance is possibly required. This requires chill lefties to adopt psychological dispositions that can be stereotypically associated with their right wing counterparts, although there are probably plenty of chill right wingers as well as a plethora of tenacious left wing professionals. The adoption of such dispositions will possibly lead to a conservative comedic backlash, and it's possibly easier for people to appear chill when they're sitting on boatloads of cash (that can possibly be used to conservatively prop up pop culture [people with money often don't do this and many are deserving of a sincere degree of respect due to how hard they work, their intelligence, the jobs they create, and their commitment to democratically ensuring that those jobs are available for years to come]).
Le prix des mots is about what I consider to be a courageous book, based upon what I've seen in the film, Alain Deneault's Noir Canada, and the problems Mr. Deneault and his publisher Écosociété encountered after its publication.
It was only published in French in Québec but ended up being prosecuted for libel in an Ontarian court afterwards.
Parts of Mr. Deneault's defence are presented in the film and it seemed to me like he was on trial for drawing logical conclusions from the articles he cited in his book.
Perhaps the language he used was too direct, but if everyone who draws logical conclusions from cited articles ended up being sued for libel, you would have to place written and verbal communication themselves on trial, as, according to my understanding of the phenomenons, that's what they do.
One could potentially interview/interrogate/subpoena everyone who ever wrote about/interpreted/criticized/discussed a specific printed entity, if they had the financial resources, until so much ambiguity was attached to every nuance that it would be impossible to make a clear point, the clear points people are often taught to make using the active voice in school, as if the active voice itself is reserved for the forces of capital.
If that clear point happens to be true and it's made in the defence of people who don't have vast financial resources by someone who also doesn't have vast financial resources, this could be (is?) a serious problem.
Écosociété confidently stood by Mr. Deneault throughout the proceedings.
His book is about the activities of some Canadian mining companies in Africa and how they (possibly) affected local populations.
Looking forward to picking up a copy.
Julien Fréchette's Le prix des mots explores how engaging in what can be thought of as scholarly research can be risky as well, if you draw conclusions from your research that directly critique those who seem like enormously wealthy capitalistic players.
In Canada anyways.
Mining is big business in Canada.
When I look around my apartment and count the gadgets and appliances I frequently use that wouldn't exist without mining, and consider the social programs that can be supported through the extraction of minerals, as well as the jobs that can be consequently created, I don't see much of a problem with it, as I've stated before.
But said mining operations must proceed ethically in an environmentally and socially responsible manner so that tax payers aren't left cleaning up potentially irremediable pollution for generations to come, and the workers can enjoy a fruitful share of their profits.
According to this article, containing information from Canadian Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Scott Vaughan's final report after five years on the job, if there was currently an oil spill or nuclear accident within Canada, Canadian taxpayers would be exposed to huge financial risks.
According to this look at closure alternatives for Yukon's faro mine, moving the tailings could take between 10 to 20 years, and this article states that "with devolution, managing the cleanup of the mine became the responsibility of the Yukon government, while Ottawa is still obligated to pay the bills," although it doesn't mention whether or not Ottawa is exclusively paying for the cleanup with tax payers money (I think it's safe to speculate that this could partially be the case).
To speculate further, applying environmental regulations can also be a tricky business. Constant vigilance is possibly required. This requires chill lefties to adopt psychological dispositions that can be stereotypically associated with their right wing counterparts, although there are probably plenty of chill right wingers as well as a plethora of tenacious left wing professionals. The adoption of such dispositions will possibly lead to a conservative comedic backlash, and it's possibly easier for people to appear chill when they're sitting on boatloads of cash (that can possibly be used to conservatively prop up pop culture [people with money often don't do this and many are deserving of a sincere degree of respect due to how hard they work, their intelligence, the jobs they create, and their commitment to democratically ensuring that those jobs are available for years to come]).
Le prix des mots is about what I consider to be a courageous book, based upon what I've seen in the film, Alain Deneault's Noir Canada, and the problems Mr. Deneault and his publisher Écosociété encountered after its publication.
It was only published in French in Québec but ended up being prosecuted for libel in an Ontarian court afterwards.
Parts of Mr. Deneault's defence are presented in the film and it seemed to me like he was on trial for drawing logical conclusions from the articles he cited in his book.
Perhaps the language he used was too direct, but if everyone who draws logical conclusions from cited articles ended up being sued for libel, you would have to place written and verbal communication themselves on trial, as, according to my understanding of the phenomenons, that's what they do.
One could potentially interview/interrogate/subpoena everyone who ever wrote about/interpreted/criticized/discussed a specific printed entity, if they had the financial resources, until so much ambiguity was attached to every nuance that it would be impossible to make a clear point, the clear points people are often taught to make using the active voice in school, as if the active voice itself is reserved for the forces of capital.
If that clear point happens to be true and it's made in the defence of people who don't have vast financial resources by someone who also doesn't have vast financial resources, this could be (is?) a serious problem.
Écosociété confidently stood by Mr. Deneault throughout the proceedings.
His book is about the activities of some Canadian mining companies in Africa and how they (possibly) affected local populations.
Looking forward to picking up a copy.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Stand Up Guys
Went in blind to this one, lured by the cast, became worried after viewing a preview for Red 2, but then the laid-back unpretentious low-key credits and accompanying music brought upon feelings of relief, illuminated by Doc's (Christopher Walken) artwork, reminding me of those from Barfly and Pulp Fiction, for some unknown reason.
Was still worried that the film may be too status quo having been let down by similarly cast movies in the past, but wow, my worries faded quickly as I discovered that in the twilights of their careers, Christopher Walken, Al Pacino (Val), and Alan Arkin (Hirsch) were taking on grizzled rambunctious radioactive roles with hardly any inkling of sanitary preconditioning, they just thought it up and did it, ironically reincarnating the precocious spirit that likely lead to them becoming Hollywood mainstays in the first place.
Challenge. Acceptance. Realization.
That description applies more directly to Al Pacino who plays the most dynamic part but Walken and Arkin also get the job done.
The film explores a pyrotechnic variability while slowly excavating poignant distinct clarifications.
Hirsch's introduction escalates a seismic shift after which malfeasancient minerals are mercantilized.
It's funny.
Director Fisher Stevens knows how to make you laugh by encouraging specific nondescript awkward facial expressions or juxtaposing a hardened con with his choice of tasty treats.
Economic matters are classified while its joie de vivre is liquidated.
And family and friendship find frenzied filial refinements in the final moments.
Plus, these guys have a potent response for the coercive rapacious scum found in Kim Nguyen's Rebelle.
Volatile, chill, and collaborative.
On the record.
Was still worried that the film may be too status quo having been let down by similarly cast movies in the past, but wow, my worries faded quickly as I discovered that in the twilights of their careers, Christopher Walken, Al Pacino (Val), and Alan Arkin (Hirsch) were taking on grizzled rambunctious radioactive roles with hardly any inkling of sanitary preconditioning, they just thought it up and did it, ironically reincarnating the precocious spirit that likely lead to them becoming Hollywood mainstays in the first place.
Challenge. Acceptance. Realization.
That description applies more directly to Al Pacino who plays the most dynamic part but Walken and Arkin also get the job done.
The film explores a pyrotechnic variability while slowly excavating poignant distinct clarifications.
Hirsch's introduction escalates a seismic shift after which malfeasancient minerals are mercantilized.
It's funny.
Director Fisher Stevens knows how to make you laugh by encouraging specific nondescript awkward facial expressions or juxtaposing a hardened con with his choice of tasty treats.
Economic matters are classified while its joie de vivre is liquidated.
And family and friendship find frenzied filial refinements in the final moments.
Plus, these guys have a potent response for the coercive rapacious scum found in Kim Nguyen's Rebelle.
Volatile, chill, and collaborative.
On the record.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Rebelle (War Witch)
Calmly passing through a series of tumultuous events, Kim Nguyen's Rebelle (War Witch) follows Komona's (Rachel Mwanza) path as she's forced to serve as a child soldier.
Viciously separated from her family, she despondently acquiesces to her chaotic surroundings, inductively developing psychological survival strategies which enable her to tactically trudge through her wartorn environment.
The film placidly displays the bitter helpless wanton affects her predicament necessitates before accentuating their terror by transferring them to a supportive realm wherein their sublimation proves perplexing.
It's not emotive or sentimental, just a raw exemplification of debilitating dissonance which presents a reality the victims of organized violent insurgencies must endure.
Under the guise of their best interests.
How one suddenly returns to a constructive life after suffering under such hardships without occasionally expressing themselves with fits of irrepressible anger is beyond me.
Complete with contextual symbolic sabotage.
Viciously separated from her family, she despondently acquiesces to her chaotic surroundings, inductively developing psychological survival strategies which enable her to tactically trudge through her wartorn environment.
The film placidly displays the bitter helpless wanton affects her predicament necessitates before accentuating their terror by transferring them to a supportive realm wherein their sublimation proves perplexing.
It's not emotive or sentimental, just a raw exemplification of debilitating dissonance which presents a reality the victims of organized violent insurgencies must endure.
Under the guise of their best interests.
How one suddenly returns to a constructive life after suffering under such hardships without occasionally expressing themselves with fits of irrepressible anger is beyond me.
Complete with contextual symbolic sabotage.
Monday, February 4, 2013
En kongelig affære (A Royal Affair)
A gifted enlightened town doctor (Mads Mikkelsen as Johann Friedrich Struensee) fortuitously finds himself suddenly reshaping his country's (Denmark) feudal character in Nikolaj Arcel's En kongelig affære (A Royal Affair), relying heavily upon his lucid acumen to enact social democratic reforms.
But a misguided sense of permanency and an affectionate indiscretion result in his ignominious downfall.
King Christian VII (Mikkel Følsgaard) wants little to do with ruling and prefers to revel in unconditioned debauchery.
Doctor Struensee does little to disuade his ambition and the two strike up an amiable friendship, prominently acting for the good of the people.
As opportunity strikes, freedom materializes, yet its nascent state fails to consider history's quotidien counterbalance.
As dinner is served, a competitive course of cultural compositions is collusively seared, and the foundations of a revolving polemic picturesquely present themselves.
Too picturesquely perhaps.
One of En kongelig affære's principal problems is that there aren't any proactive plebeian representatives. A film boldly illustrating a crucial moment in Danish social democratic development should have likely included characters to whom said developments directly apply.
Instead they're stereotypically depicted as a mob.
It may have been too maudlin to include proactive plebeian reps but it also lacks a healthy contingent of subtle continuous economically disadvantaged background personnages which could have diversified its filmscape.
Obviously doing this continuously throughout a film is expensive and time consuming, and since En kongelig affære highlights the dangers of proceeding too quickly with social democratic reforms, perhaps this is an example of form working hand-in-hand with content.
The economic dangers are obviously real but so are the dangers of a right wing government that constantly pleads poverty (or creates an inexhaustible debt) when there is in fact of abundance of wealth, and the film examines a period which inaugurated social democratic reforms, not one where they already hold partial institutional prominence in some countries.
The King is at least cognizant of his faults and logically prefers friendship to fidelity considering his own predilections.
The film also concerns a love affair.
Don't know if I've ever seen a better example of the ridiculousness of the absolute application of ideology than when the Queen (Alicia Vikander [Denmark's Keira Knightley or Natalie Portman?]) is told to be more ladylike while giving birth.
Outstanding.
But a misguided sense of permanency and an affectionate indiscretion result in his ignominious downfall.
King Christian VII (Mikkel Følsgaard) wants little to do with ruling and prefers to revel in unconditioned debauchery.
Doctor Struensee does little to disuade his ambition and the two strike up an amiable friendship, prominently acting for the good of the people.
As opportunity strikes, freedom materializes, yet its nascent state fails to consider history's quotidien counterbalance.
As dinner is served, a competitive course of cultural compositions is collusively seared, and the foundations of a revolving polemic picturesquely present themselves.
Too picturesquely perhaps.
One of En kongelig affære's principal problems is that there aren't any proactive plebeian representatives. A film boldly illustrating a crucial moment in Danish social democratic development should have likely included characters to whom said developments directly apply.
Instead they're stereotypically depicted as a mob.
It may have been too maudlin to include proactive plebeian reps but it also lacks a healthy contingent of subtle continuous economically disadvantaged background personnages which could have diversified its filmscape.
Obviously doing this continuously throughout a film is expensive and time consuming, and since En kongelig affære highlights the dangers of proceeding too quickly with social democratic reforms, perhaps this is an example of form working hand-in-hand with content.
The economic dangers are obviously real but so are the dangers of a right wing government that constantly pleads poverty (or creates an inexhaustible debt) when there is in fact of abundance of wealth, and the film examines a period which inaugurated social democratic reforms, not one where they already hold partial institutional prominence in some countries.
The King is at least cognizant of his faults and logically prefers friendship to fidelity considering his own predilections.
The film also concerns a love affair.
Don't know if I've ever seen a better example of the ridiculousness of the absolute application of ideology than when the Queen (Alicia Vikander [Denmark's Keira Knightley or Natalie Portman?]) is told to be more ladylike while giving birth.
Outstanding.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Gangster Squad
Gangster Squad worked for me.
It unreels like a tight graphic novel, short critical scenes packing poignant particles of plot into pyrotechnic proclivities, action-packed definitive melodrama fetchingly refurbishing the forensics.
Films such as these often fall apart if the writer(s) hasn't taken the extra time to ensure that her or his lines often seamlessly synthesize the kitschy and the poetic, and Will Beall's script creatively accomplishes this task, no doubt with assistance from Paul Lieberman's novel, commercially perspiring the artistic.
Gangster Squad blows Not Fade Away and The Last Stand away.
The ending, while jurisprudently brandishing a brash scarred face, wasn't as electric as that from Iron Man 2, and the Squad's supporting members would have benefitted from more screen time (throughout).
They do receive plenty of screen time (throughout) and there are a bunch of supporting characters but it's more like Star Trek: The Original Series than Voyager or The Next Generation, frequently focused on leading persons.
If Django Unchained attaches a commercial dimension to the artistic, I would argue that Gangster Squad adds an artistic dimension to the commercial.
Both are hyperviolent but I likely wouldn't have noticed Gangster Squad's if it wasn't for Django Unchained.
If Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) and Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) were both running backs, it's tough to imagine who would pick up more yards per game.
Methinks Mr. O'Mara has the edge.
Straight up the gut.
Love how Ruben Fleischer's career is progressing.
Half way through I was hoping for some Gary Busey. Shook my head when I remembered that it co-stars Nick Nolte.
It unreels like a tight graphic novel, short critical scenes packing poignant particles of plot into pyrotechnic proclivities, action-packed definitive melodrama fetchingly refurbishing the forensics.
Films such as these often fall apart if the writer(s) hasn't taken the extra time to ensure that her or his lines often seamlessly synthesize the kitschy and the poetic, and Will Beall's script creatively accomplishes this task, no doubt with assistance from Paul Lieberman's novel, commercially perspiring the artistic.
Gangster Squad blows Not Fade Away and The Last Stand away.
The ending, while jurisprudently brandishing a brash scarred face, wasn't as electric as that from Iron Man 2, and the Squad's supporting members would have benefitted from more screen time (throughout).
They do receive plenty of screen time (throughout) and there are a bunch of supporting characters but it's more like Star Trek: The Original Series than Voyager or The Next Generation, frequently focused on leading persons.
If Django Unchained attaches a commercial dimension to the artistic, I would argue that Gangster Squad adds an artistic dimension to the commercial.
Both are hyperviolent but I likely wouldn't have noticed Gangster Squad's if it wasn't for Django Unchained.
If Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) and Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) were both running backs, it's tough to imagine who would pick up more yards per game.
Methinks Mr. O'Mara has the edge.
Straight up the gut.
Love how Ruben Fleischer's career is progressing.
Half way through I was hoping for some Gary Busey. Shook my head when I remembered that it co-stars Nick Nolte.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
The Last Stand
From what I can tell, the cast and crew of Jee-Woon Kim's The Last Stand had a great time making this film. It's permeated with a congenial sense of professional camaraderie no doubt galvanized by Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to the big screen.
I had a lot of fun watching it.
There's a scene where Luis Guzmán (Mike Figuerola) ballistically and kick-assedly asserts himself. The (former) Governator (Sheriff Ray Owens) squares off with villain Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) in hand-to-hand combat in the final moments. Johnny Knoxville's (Lewis Dinkum) eccentricities are serendipitously deputized.
And there's a cameo from film legend Harry Dean Stanton.
These components congeal to corporealize an active fast-paced frenetic yet shackled free-for-all, quaintly elevating the inclusive merits of a multicultural small town.
Fun. It's fun.
If it wasn't starring the aforementioned along with Forest Whitaker (Agent John Bannister) and Peter Stormare (Burrell) it may not have been so fun, however; it may have been painful to watch through to the end.
By had a great time making this film, I mean they didn't spend enough time on the script or even bothering to use standard editing procedures (the narrative flow is truncated and uneven [it doesn't seem to be using a truncated uneven narrative flow as a device, although I suppose when Cortez's crew arrives in Sheriff Owens's small town it does disrupt the pastoral harmony]).
The film is an interesting study of improbability nevertheless and in relation to its subject matter the myriad improbabilities do function as distinct complementary bemusements (I'm thinking mostly of the bumbling antics of Agent John Bannister's contingent. The film is meant to salute the strength and integrity of small towns so it makes sense that bureaucratic agencies with vast financial resources would bumble within, but the bumbling could have been handled differently).
It's possible that if it didn't have so much starpower The Last Stand would still be remembered as an oustandingly disorganized entertaining flop.
It might still be remembered this way, and it is fun, but I think fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger films deserve better outputs, a bit more time and care spent crafting the entire film, not just the action, especially at this stage in his career.
Thought Peter Stormare put in the best performance.
I had a lot of fun watching it.
There's a scene where Luis Guzmán (Mike Figuerola) ballistically and kick-assedly asserts himself. The (former) Governator (Sheriff Ray Owens) squares off with villain Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) in hand-to-hand combat in the final moments. Johnny Knoxville's (Lewis Dinkum) eccentricities are serendipitously deputized.
And there's a cameo from film legend Harry Dean Stanton.
These components congeal to corporealize an active fast-paced frenetic yet shackled free-for-all, quaintly elevating the inclusive merits of a multicultural small town.
Fun. It's fun.
If it wasn't starring the aforementioned along with Forest Whitaker (Agent John Bannister) and Peter Stormare (Burrell) it may not have been so fun, however; it may have been painful to watch through to the end.
By had a great time making this film, I mean they didn't spend enough time on the script or even bothering to use standard editing procedures (the narrative flow is truncated and uneven [it doesn't seem to be using a truncated uneven narrative flow as a device, although I suppose when Cortez's crew arrives in Sheriff Owens's small town it does disrupt the pastoral harmony]).
The film is an interesting study of improbability nevertheless and in relation to its subject matter the myriad improbabilities do function as distinct complementary bemusements (I'm thinking mostly of the bumbling antics of Agent John Bannister's contingent. The film is meant to salute the strength and integrity of small towns so it makes sense that bureaucratic agencies with vast financial resources would bumble within, but the bumbling could have been handled differently).
It's possible that if it didn't have so much starpower The Last Stand would still be remembered as an oustandingly disorganized entertaining flop.
It might still be remembered this way, and it is fun, but I think fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger films deserve better outputs, a bit more time and care spent crafting the entire film, not just the action, especially at this stage in his career.
Thought Peter Stormare put in the best performance.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Uncompromised unilateral implacable joy is wreathed within Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild's opening celebrations, as a small community of countercultural enthusiasts gather to revel in the gift of life.
Seen through the eyes of young Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), the festivities, and the rest of the film, transmit a youthful candour.
Qualified by directly applying extinct carnivorous didactic extracts to the forthcoming unreeling upheavals, as discoveries bearing no familiar points of tectonic reference, suddenly, present themselves.
And the resilient strength of her family and friends.
Innocently yet formidably dealing with while challenging her adventurous unpredictable shifting bohemian foundations, refusing to accept ill-considered permanent demarcations, imaginatively combatting fantastical realizations, and unyieldingly embracing the cycle of birth, death and regeneration, Hushpuppy inaugurates an icon for the free-spirited impoverished soul, and Beasts of the Southern Wild is a discursive feast for pensive humanistic diagnoses.
Beyond the state of nature.
Seen through the eyes of young Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), the festivities, and the rest of the film, transmit a youthful candour.
Qualified by directly applying extinct carnivorous didactic extracts to the forthcoming unreeling upheavals, as discoveries bearing no familiar points of tectonic reference, suddenly, present themselves.
And the resilient strength of her family and friends.
Innocently yet formidably dealing with while challenging her adventurous unpredictable shifting bohemian foundations, refusing to accept ill-considered permanent demarcations, imaginatively combatting fantastical realizations, and unyieldingly embracing the cycle of birth, death and regeneration, Hushpuppy inaugurates an icon for the free-spirited impoverished soul, and Beasts of the Southern Wild is a discursive feast for pensive humanistic diagnoses.
Beyond the state of nature.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Zero Dark Thirty
Accumulation. Asseveration. Evisceration.
Kathryn Bigelow's bureaucratically bitchin' tenaciously pitchin' Zero Dark Thirty nonpartisanly coordinates the clandestine predications of a resilient stalwart team.
In/directly lead by Maya (Jessica Chastain).
Militaristically maneuvering from the collection of data to the formulation of hypotheses to the execution of ideas, they uniformly act like the production of a covert thesis.
Perhaps this thesis asks, "can we successfully fabricate a concrete entertaining internationally provocative blueprint which periodically articulates anti-terrorist protocols which seem bona fide yet cleverly dissimulate each and every event that took place, apart from the lengthy ending, thereby functioning as overt espionage (and trumping Argo)?"
This question may be a bit much considering that what takes place seems to follow a logical asymmetrical pattern the fabric of which conceals/reveals both sides (as depicted in the film) regardless.
Nevertheless, even though its bravado is qualified by stats and potentialities, Zero Dark Thirty impresses practical unrelenting retributive necessities across its apolitical spectrum, collocating resourceful avatars with seductive sentiments, in a potent, charismatic, collection.
Kathryn Bigelow's bureaucratically bitchin' tenaciously pitchin' Zero Dark Thirty nonpartisanly coordinates the clandestine predications of a resilient stalwart team.
In/directly lead by Maya (Jessica Chastain).
Militaristically maneuvering from the collection of data to the formulation of hypotheses to the execution of ideas, they uniformly act like the production of a covert thesis.
Perhaps this thesis asks, "can we successfully fabricate a concrete entertaining internationally provocative blueprint which periodically articulates anti-terrorist protocols which seem bona fide yet cleverly dissimulate each and every event that took place, apart from the lengthy ending, thereby functioning as overt espionage (and trumping Argo)?"
This question may be a bit much considering that what takes place seems to follow a logical asymmetrical pattern the fabric of which conceals/reveals both sides (as depicted in the film) regardless.
Nevertheless, even though its bravado is qualified by stats and potentialities, Zero Dark Thirty impresses practical unrelenting retributive necessities across its apolitical spectrum, collocating resourceful avatars with seductive sentiments, in a potent, charismatic, collection.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Amour
As an elderly couple settles into their daily routine, a crass unnoticed paradigmatic indiscretion, delivered with the same engendered clarity that may have often been a past passionate progenitor of amicable conjugal rage, is adorned by the traditional romantic reversal of fortunes, but this time they're accompanied by a direct physiological collapse, which culminates in the paralysis of Anne's (Emmanuelle Riva) left side.
Emotions run deep within husband Georges's (Jean-Louis Trintignant) struggles to rationally contain his unceasing grief.
His wits remain voluble and he's brittlely yet staunchly prepared for the logical and humanistic impairments of respective relatives and infirmières.
Attempts to ascertain one's dignity resonate as appearances must be qualified by brash benevolent exceptions.
Stoically exemplifying the lifelong dedication of a loving married couple, examining the conversational results of a relationship existing without distinct verbal limits, Michael Haneke's Amour no longer seeks to loquaciously dominate, but simply to be, to reflect, to bask, semantically dishevelling the tenants of prediction with none of the bells and whistles often used to set such scenes.
Just raw quotidian patient enduring dependent classical shock.
Still feeling the affects three hours later.
Emotions run deep within husband Georges's (Jean-Louis Trintignant) struggles to rationally contain his unceasing grief.
His wits remain voluble and he's brittlely yet staunchly prepared for the logical and humanistic impairments of respective relatives and infirmières.
Attempts to ascertain one's dignity resonate as appearances must be qualified by brash benevolent exceptions.
Stoically exemplifying the lifelong dedication of a loving married couple, examining the conversational results of a relationship existing without distinct verbal limits, Michael Haneke's Amour no longer seeks to loquaciously dominate, but simply to be, to reflect, to bask, semantically dishevelling the tenants of prediction with none of the bells and whistles often used to set such scenes.
Just raw quotidian patient enduring dependent classical shock.
Still feeling the affects three hours later.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Promised Land
Similar to Django Unchained inasmuch as it doesn't hold anything back, Gus Van Sant's Promised Land provides a polemical analysis of fracking (shale gas exploration), giving ample fictionalized room for proponents and critics to have their say.
Set in a struggling small town, attendantly polarizing economic privilege and historical continuity, differing relationships with land, identity, community, the film persuasively establishes prominent competing practical ideological personalities, each competently nuancing myriad aspects of the debate.
It frankly and freely conceptualizes choice and accentuates the risks associated with maintaining principled stances in opposition to enormous reserves of capital.
And allows each individual viewer to determine their own verdict.
I like taking risks.
I'll go to a casino once a year willing to part with $200 dollars. If I lose it in twenty minutes it's quite difficult to stop playing.
But I do.
I'll try new cheeses, beers, tartares, films, expressions, novels, sauces, ideas, try and predict the outcome of playoff games . . .
But water supplies are not something I like to take risks with. They are critical features of communal environmental well being.
Profits generated from fracking do enable the construction of schools etc. while decreasing a nation's dependency on natural gas imports.
But the likely resultant carcinogenic contaminations will increase medical dependencies as well, thereby placing a further strain on the public purse.
You could get lucky and the procedure may not result in any harmful environmental side effects.
If you don't, you're completely screwed for generations.
The decision seems clear to me.
Set in a struggling small town, attendantly polarizing economic privilege and historical continuity, differing relationships with land, identity, community, the film persuasively establishes prominent competing practical ideological personalities, each competently nuancing myriad aspects of the debate.
It frankly and freely conceptualizes choice and accentuates the risks associated with maintaining principled stances in opposition to enormous reserves of capital.
And allows each individual viewer to determine their own verdict.
I like taking risks.
I'll go to a casino once a year willing to part with $200 dollars. If I lose it in twenty minutes it's quite difficult to stop playing.
But I do.
I'll try new cheeses, beers, tartares, films, expressions, novels, sauces, ideas, try and predict the outcome of playoff games . . .
But water supplies are not something I like to take risks with. They are critical features of communal environmental well being.
Profits generated from fracking do enable the construction of schools etc. while decreasing a nation's dependency on natural gas imports.
But the likely resultant carcinogenic contaminations will increase medical dependencies as well, thereby placing a further strain on the public purse.
You could get lucky and the procedure may not result in any harmful environmental side effects.
If you don't, you're completely screwed for generations.
The decision seems clear to me.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Not Fade Away
Youth for me is often characterized by spontaneity and conviction, tackling the unforeseen head-on, learning to personally adapt to shifting interrelated paradigms and opportunities, struggling to synthesize components of both the contemporary and historical real.
Not that careful planning doesn't also often play a strategic role, it's just that this aspect of youth is much less romantic, not to say that it isn't more durable, and more likely to win consistently when playing cards.
Tough to say which trajectory is more reckless.
And it's obviously relative too, the 27 year old seeming more youthful than someone in their 50s, etcetera, etcetera, wow.
David Chase's Not Fade Away concerns a number of youths and the rock and roll band they form during the '60s, as well as the familial and amorous relations of one of its members. Success is referred to within as the result of 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration, from a variety of socio-economic stances.
The question here is, according to this criteria, is Not Fade Away's exploration of youth a success, and if so, does it interrogate the reckless, planting a forest through the trees?
The dialogue also heavily favours the commercial side of art and it's this domain within which the film operates.
It's very calculated.
Throughout I kept thinking that this is the corporate packaged conception of what should be appealing to suburban youth without going so far as to plausibly alienate their parents, based on composite statistical data.
The only possible artistic moment (I should clarify what I mean by art in a book someday) occurs during a point where the film seems pointless, and you're thinking, good lord, corporate pointlessness, how 21st century!
But then the main couple critiques a film they're watching for its pointlessness, after which things become more bourgeois, and a more traditional plot takes shape.
Perhaps I'm too old to comprehend Not Fade Away's spontaneous conviction, but I am old enough to appreciate the skilful ways in which it condenses multidimensional intergenerational issues into a mildly entertaining fictional synopsis.
Still wasn't enough for me though, and if that 10% inspiration doesn't transmit at least the possibility of spontaneous artistic conviction to the rest of the text's perspiration, I can only state, that if packaged corporate youth is a success, with all its missionary incarnations mathematically corporealized, planned twenty years in advance (note that the Rolling Stones, whom I love, are still being used to classify youth 50 years later), and completely lacking spur of the moment improvisation, it's reckless, and therefore youthful, yet hopelessly banal (the wrong side of The Schwartz).
Gus Van Sant's Promised Land offers an escape from this predicament.
Not that this form is ever going to fade away.
Drank a busch tallboy while writing this.
Not that careful planning doesn't also often play a strategic role, it's just that this aspect of youth is much less romantic, not to say that it isn't more durable, and more likely to win consistently when playing cards.
Tough to say which trajectory is more reckless.
And it's obviously relative too, the 27 year old seeming more youthful than someone in their 50s, etcetera, etcetera, wow.
David Chase's Not Fade Away concerns a number of youths and the rock and roll band they form during the '60s, as well as the familial and amorous relations of one of its members. Success is referred to within as the result of 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration, from a variety of socio-economic stances.
The question here is, according to this criteria, is Not Fade Away's exploration of youth a success, and if so, does it interrogate the reckless, planting a forest through the trees?
The dialogue also heavily favours the commercial side of art and it's this domain within which the film operates.
It's very calculated.
Throughout I kept thinking that this is the corporate packaged conception of what should be appealing to suburban youth without going so far as to plausibly alienate their parents, based on composite statistical data.
The only possible artistic moment (I should clarify what I mean by art in a book someday) occurs during a point where the film seems pointless, and you're thinking, good lord, corporate pointlessness, how 21st century!
But then the main couple critiques a film they're watching for its pointlessness, after which things become more bourgeois, and a more traditional plot takes shape.
Perhaps I'm too old to comprehend Not Fade Away's spontaneous conviction, but I am old enough to appreciate the skilful ways in which it condenses multidimensional intergenerational issues into a mildly entertaining fictional synopsis.
Still wasn't enough for me though, and if that 10% inspiration doesn't transmit at least the possibility of spontaneous artistic conviction to the rest of the text's perspiration, I can only state, that if packaged corporate youth is a success, with all its missionary incarnations mathematically corporealized, planned twenty years in advance (note that the Rolling Stones, whom I love, are still being used to classify youth 50 years later), and completely lacking spur of the moment improvisation, it's reckless, and therefore youthful, yet hopelessly banal (the wrong side of The Schwartz).
Gus Van Sant's Promised Land offers an escape from this predicament.
Not that this form is ever going to fade away.
Drank a busch tallboy while writing this.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Les Misérables
And another film operating within an ethical economic matrix was released, whose focus is more generalized and critiques less gaudy, pursuing similar ends through divergent means, incorporating adherents of courage, wisdom, moderation and justice, religiously and managerially inundating the hardened prejudice of the absolute, with vibrant, comprehensive, itineraries, of conscience.
Also reducing a novel of considerable length to a lively cross-section, condensed further through the articulations of musical abbreviations, it, while lacking the artistic particularity of Anna Karenina, the meticulous style, still uses its harmonies to manufacture practical progressions, one of its most salient themes reminiscent of a concluding remark from Cloud Atlas.
The Master's logical mischievousness innkeeps, while Argo's spirit internally manifests.
Lengthy and full of purpose, Tom Hooper's Les Misérables chants out between two worlds, mercifully punishing criminal constabularies, while seeking to secure democratic law and order.
And another viewing of Lincoln.
Also reducing a novel of considerable length to a lively cross-section, condensed further through the articulations of musical abbreviations, it, while lacking the artistic particularity of Anna Karenina, the meticulous style, still uses its harmonies to manufacture practical progressions, one of its most salient themes reminiscent of a concluding remark from Cloud Atlas.
The Master's logical mischievousness innkeeps, while Argo's spirit internally manifests.
Lengthy and full of purpose, Tom Hooper's Les Misérables chants out between two worlds, mercifully punishing criminal constabularies, while seeking to secure democratic law and order.
And another viewing of Lincoln.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Django Unchained
Easy to write about this film it is not.
I heard Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) quoting Nietzsche during an episode of The Big Bang Theory the other night, and his point considered morality to be a barrier which prevents truly 'great' persons from attaining their full potential, since it requires that they conform to the standards adopted by common people. I tend not to see it that way myself. It seems to me that morality is often denied common people, depending on their financial circumstances, and, due to the significant economic advantages attained by the überwealthy, and the accompanying capitalistic social reverence, that morality is reserved for plutocrats and oligarchs, at least in terms of settling legal disputes (I don't know which thinker to attribute this idea to so I'm going with Leonard [Johnny Galecki]). There's a lot more to it than that, but this can obviously be frustrating and it's within this disenfranchised brutal frustrating ethical frame that Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained cataclysmically reacts, his undeniable parageneric ingenuity once again limitlessly unleashed, although not as consistently as it has been in the past.
The same incomparable skill for creating iconic heroes and villains is at work, and since nothing is held back, both sides accumulate plenty of critical ammunition, accentuated by his requisite offbeat sensational ludicrous treacherous altruistic asymmetrical logical arsenal, although some of the (crackpot) theories, phrenology for instance, could have possibly been left out altogether.
Giving a voice to such ugly historical phenomenons and making that voice extremely detestable causes the theories themselves to come across as reprehensibly as they should, and it's not like racist lunatics don't still blindly believe in them; and applying restraints to the exhibition of ideas is anti-democratic, although such ideas themselves are extremely anti-democratic and are still being virtuosically displayed.
It's a bit unsettling.
The resultant graphic constant death also unsettles while begging a comparison to several prominent cartoons which regularly use such devices.
Organized fighting and sports are obviously going to be violent and provide a necessary supervised outlet for such tendencies.
It's the constant graphic choreographed extended hopeless brutality that sets Django Unchained (and Archer and South Park) apart from these realities, offering a sadistic carnal sick ostentatious fantasy, for those who regularly act according to social conventions, yet often feel as if or are deprived of moral compensation.
I love Quentin Tarantino's films but it's tough to watch enslaved grown men fight to the death, then see another torn apart by dogs, and another almost undergo castration.
The film's lighthearted comedic dimension complicates things further.
I heard Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) quoting Nietzsche during an episode of The Big Bang Theory the other night, and his point considered morality to be a barrier which prevents truly 'great' persons from attaining their full potential, since it requires that they conform to the standards adopted by common people. I tend not to see it that way myself. It seems to me that morality is often denied common people, depending on their financial circumstances, and, due to the significant economic advantages attained by the überwealthy, and the accompanying capitalistic social reverence, that morality is reserved for plutocrats and oligarchs, at least in terms of settling legal disputes (I don't know which thinker to attribute this idea to so I'm going with Leonard [Johnny Galecki]). There's a lot more to it than that, but this can obviously be frustrating and it's within this disenfranchised brutal frustrating ethical frame that Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained cataclysmically reacts, his undeniable parageneric ingenuity once again limitlessly unleashed, although not as consistently as it has been in the past.
The same incomparable skill for creating iconic heroes and villains is at work, and since nothing is held back, both sides accumulate plenty of critical ammunition, accentuated by his requisite offbeat sensational ludicrous treacherous altruistic asymmetrical logical arsenal, although some of the (crackpot) theories, phrenology for instance, could have possibly been left out altogether.
Giving a voice to such ugly historical phenomenons and making that voice extremely detestable causes the theories themselves to come across as reprehensibly as they should, and it's not like racist lunatics don't still blindly believe in them; and applying restraints to the exhibition of ideas is anti-democratic, although such ideas themselves are extremely anti-democratic and are still being virtuosically displayed.
It's a bit unsettling.
The resultant graphic constant death also unsettles while begging a comparison to several prominent cartoons which regularly use such devices.
Organized fighting and sports are obviously going to be violent and provide a necessary supervised outlet for such tendencies.
It's the constant graphic choreographed extended hopeless brutality that sets Django Unchained (and Archer and South Park) apart from these realities, offering a sadistic carnal sick ostentatious fantasy, for those who regularly act according to social conventions, yet often feel as if or are deprived of moral compensation.
I love Quentin Tarantino's films but it's tough to watch enslaved grown men fight to the death, then see another torn apart by dogs, and another almost undergo castration.
The film's lighthearted comedic dimension complicates things further.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone)
A principled yet free-spirited man (Matthias Schoenaerts as Alain van Versch), pugnaciously rolling with the punches, salaciously catering to his senses, daunting, brave, unconcerned, and powerful, instinctively yet rationally proceeds within economic and familial domains, until the interventions of both an unexpected expedient consequence and the structural features of the natural world, resolutely challenge.
To break through the ice.
Hedonistic and domestic conceptions of commitment and responsibility transformatively engage in Jacques Audiard's De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone), as financial arraignments tender psychological grit, and individualistic risk conflicts with collective sustainability.
The crucial component, the displaced modifier, the missing link, is love.
The endurance of emotional pain is maximized in this regard as competing applications of fidelity, flourish.
Through sundry strategic applications.
*Kermode felt the love throughout 2012. Thanks to everyone who enjoys reading this blog. Those who don't too I suppose. All the best in 2013.
**Bears
To break through the ice.
Hedonistic and domestic conceptions of commitment and responsibility transformatively engage in Jacques Audiard's De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone), as financial arraignments tender psychological grit, and individualistic risk conflicts with collective sustainability.
The crucial component, the displaced modifier, the missing link, is love.
The endurance of emotional pain is maximized in this regard as competing applications of fidelity, flourish.
Through sundry strategic applications.
*Kermode felt the love throughout 2012. Thanks to everyone who enjoys reading this blog. Those who don't too I suppose. All the best in 2013.
**Bears
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Anna Karenina
Didn't expect to like Anna Karenina after viewing its terrible previews multiple times, but it's actually quite well done.
I usually shudder when classic novels of considerable length are reduced to a specific one-part generalized interpretative 'quintessential' crystallization, but, if I'm not mistaken, Tom Stoppard took this predicament into account when writing his screenplay, and, through sheer interdisciplinary brilliance, managed to pack more multilayered jaunty selective dramatic action into 30 seconds of his adaptation than you often see in a full 120-minute feature, perhaps pleasing devotees of the novel (which I haven't read but I did read War and Peace), while more importantly crafting a demanding entertaining brain teaser.
At least until the act of adultery is committed.
The film clearly demonstrates the oppressive nature of a patriarchal culture without hesitating to sanctify members of its elite while causing their betrayers to appear flippant yet justified.
In terms of love.
Lacking on the various stages is a prominent position for manifold markets from which working people can condition economic cultural amalgams (pulp fiction for instance) through which they can freely synthesize away.
It is perhaps symbolically suggested that the creation of a public sphere within which such operations perform an integral function would nurture a more level playing field for the matriarchically oriented, the optimal situation producing dynamics where both genders possess flexible agencies while reserving a place for the immutable non-authoritarian pink and blue.
Anna Karenina's first act is an accelerated literary cinematic conflagration whose intense inductive transformative flames generously invigorate deductive zodiacs.
Allusively aligned.
(Happy holidays!)
I usually shudder when classic novels of considerable length are reduced to a specific one-part generalized interpretative 'quintessential' crystallization, but, if I'm not mistaken, Tom Stoppard took this predicament into account when writing his screenplay, and, through sheer interdisciplinary brilliance, managed to pack more multilayered jaunty selective dramatic action into 30 seconds of his adaptation than you often see in a full 120-minute feature, perhaps pleasing devotees of the novel (which I haven't read but I did read War and Peace), while more importantly crafting a demanding entertaining brain teaser.
At least until the act of adultery is committed.
The film clearly demonstrates the oppressive nature of a patriarchal culture without hesitating to sanctify members of its elite while causing their betrayers to appear flippant yet justified.
In terms of love.
Lacking on the various stages is a prominent position for manifold markets from which working people can condition economic cultural amalgams (pulp fiction for instance) through which they can freely synthesize away.
It is perhaps symbolically suggested that the creation of a public sphere within which such operations perform an integral function would nurture a more level playing field for the matriarchically oriented, the optimal situation producing dynamics where both genders possess flexible agencies while reserving a place for the immutable non-authoritarian pink and blue.
Anna Karenina's first act is an accelerated literary cinematic conflagration whose intense inductive transformative flames generously invigorate deductive zodiacs.
Allusively aligned.
(Happy holidays!)
Monday, December 17, 2012
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Back to cinematic adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's world of fantasy.
Back to the shire.
Back to where, it all, began.
Whence an heroic team of dwarves accompanied by one wizard and one hobbit depart in search of adventure, eventually discovering arboreal displacements, upon which they regroup to fend off those who have tamed wanton fury, when the leader amongst them accepts the challenge of a daunting fiend, and his subsequent missteps are gallantly regrounded.
As unity intends.
If you liked The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I can't see why you wouldn't enjoy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The Goblin King (Barry Humphries) was a bit of a let down and the same frustrating sense of resigned naive invincible epic substantial critical unwavering exactitude permeates much of the dialogue/action (it's cheesy), but I liked following the troupe throughout their travels, was happy to see many familiar faces, loved Radagast's (Sylvester McCoy) bold rabbitsledding, and found Bilbo (Martin Freeman/Ian Holm) to be a metamorphic symbol of situational alertness.
As he takes up the cause.
Differing conceptions of etiquette acrobatically contend, if you're a fan of the old cartoon there's a playful intertextual dialogue (big fan), the domain of wizardry is environmentally piquanted, philology is advantageously crescented, and the legendary takes on a robust realistic candour.
Through questing.
And check this out. Wish I spoke Russian or that it contained French or English subtitles.
Back to the shire.
Back to where, it all, began.
Whence an heroic team of dwarves accompanied by one wizard and one hobbit depart in search of adventure, eventually discovering arboreal displacements, upon which they regroup to fend off those who have tamed wanton fury, when the leader amongst them accepts the challenge of a daunting fiend, and his subsequent missteps are gallantly regrounded.
As unity intends.
If you liked The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I can't see why you wouldn't enjoy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The Goblin King (Barry Humphries) was a bit of a let down and the same frustrating sense of resigned naive invincible epic substantial critical unwavering exactitude permeates much of the dialogue/action (it's cheesy), but I liked following the troupe throughout their travels, was happy to see many familiar faces, loved Radagast's (Sylvester McCoy) bold rabbitsledding, and found Bilbo (Martin Freeman/Ian Holm) to be a metamorphic symbol of situational alertness.
As he takes up the cause.
Differing conceptions of etiquette acrobatically contend, if you're a fan of the old cartoon there's a playful intertextual dialogue (big fan), the domain of wizardry is environmentally piquanted, philology is advantageously crescented, and the legendary takes on a robust realistic candour.
Through questing.
And check this out. Wish I spoke Russian or that it contained French or English subtitles.
Le Nord au cœur
Serge Giguère's Le Nord au cœur provides a concise synopsis of one man's passionate relationship with the Canadian North, Northern Québec in particular. Having spent his life working within and defending the North's diversity, Louis-Edmond Hamelin has been integral in establishing while deconstructing Northern semantic conceptions while working hand-in-hand with Northern Aboriginal peoples.
The sparsely populated Canadian North occupies the majority of Canada's landscape(s) and the traditions of its Aboriginal peoples, from Labrador to Yukon, can be differentiated by sundry distinct variables. Creating a terse one-dimensional definition to encapsulate the vibrant traditions of so many prominent cultures does a disservice to their integrity, and is akin to trying to attach a monosyllabic moniker to Sweden, Norway and Finland.
Louis-Edmond Hamelin's lifework takes this frame into account while striving to ensure that Canada's Aboriginal peoples have a substantial voice in regards to the ways in which their land is developed. Le Nord au cœur demonstrates how political initiatives continually apply invigorated euphemisms to Northern development strategies, transhistorically presented as the new, without first respectfully negotiating with the nations whom these initiatives will directly and perennially impact.
It also offers picturesque visual details of other multidimensional Northern nomenclatures which diversify the North's multiplicities further. Cool look at an openminded man's lifetime commitment to integrating voices which often (still) go unheard.
The sparsely populated Canadian North occupies the majority of Canada's landscape(s) and the traditions of its Aboriginal peoples, from Labrador to Yukon, can be differentiated by sundry distinct variables. Creating a terse one-dimensional definition to encapsulate the vibrant traditions of so many prominent cultures does a disservice to their integrity, and is akin to trying to attach a monosyllabic moniker to Sweden, Norway and Finland.
Louis-Edmond Hamelin's lifework takes this frame into account while striving to ensure that Canada's Aboriginal peoples have a substantial voice in regards to the ways in which their land is developed. Le Nord au cœur demonstrates how political initiatives continually apply invigorated euphemisms to Northern development strategies, transhistorically presented as the new, without first respectfully negotiating with the nations whom these initiatives will directly and perennially impact.
It also offers picturesque visual details of other multidimensional Northern nomenclatures which diversify the North's multiplicities further. Cool look at an openminded man's lifetime commitment to integrating voices which often (still) go unheard.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Thérèse Desqueyroux
And it is foretold that marriage will squander the limitless theorizations of an inquisitive maiden (Audrey Tautou as Thérèse Desqueyroux) as she attempts to redefine herself according to her husband's (Gilles Lellouche as Bernard Desqueyroux [France's Liam Neeson?]) rigid prejudice.
His prejudice and the specific roles to which it narrow-mindedly assigns meaning to every in/tangible subject/object it wields, has not incorporated the art of bilateral communication into its privileged perspective, forcing his wife to seek alternative methods of resoundingly breaking through.
The other side can be distinguished as vital but tradition and continuity prevent him from unclenching his patriarchal grip.
Oblivious and unreceptive to the simplest of his wife's unexpected ambitions, he remains ensconced in his paradigm dans les bras de Morphée.
Interring the process of subjective decay, transferring random natural acts to a domestic realm's uncharted vicissitudes, sinisterly challenging immutable contraceptions, and suggesting that related solutions exacerbate that to which their remedy is applied, in terms of the preservation of identity, Claude Miller's Thérèse Desqueyroux nocturnally invokes fluid conjugal taxonomies as a potential interpersonal strategy applicable to estranged partnerships.
Or simply states that some people shouldn't get married.
No they should not.
His prejudice and the specific roles to which it narrow-mindedly assigns meaning to every in/tangible subject/object it wields, has not incorporated the art of bilateral communication into its privileged perspective, forcing his wife to seek alternative methods of resoundingly breaking through.
The other side can be distinguished as vital but tradition and continuity prevent him from unclenching his patriarchal grip.
Oblivious and unreceptive to the simplest of his wife's unexpected ambitions, he remains ensconced in his paradigm dans les bras de Morphée.
Interring the process of subjective decay, transferring random natural acts to a domestic realm's uncharted vicissitudes, sinisterly challenging immutable contraceptions, and suggesting that related solutions exacerbate that to which their remedy is applied, in terms of the preservation of identity, Claude Miller's Thérèse Desqueyroux nocturnally invokes fluid conjugal taxonomies as a potential interpersonal strategy applicable to estranged partnerships.
Or simply states that some people shouldn't get married.
No they should not.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Ésimésac
If you like community focused films that celebrate the strength of tightly knit towns without hesitating to unabashedly and wholeheartedly melodramatize their conflicts, you'll likely enjoy Luc Picard's Émisésac.
If you like social democratic allegories which charmingly utilize the magically real to critically examine the affects of economic risks and their associated dreams primarily through the social interactions of an innocent, unworldly, inspirational protagonist, you should check Émisésac out.
If you like romantic resolutions that emphasize the human as opposed to the mathematical factors worked into strategic financial planning, Émisésac is for you.
And if you're looking for a film to inaugurate your cinematic holiday season, it's a total must.
Thoroughly enjoyed Émisésac's ample simplified multidimensional spirit, as well as its humble humanism.
Could have used some more multicultural material.
If you like social democratic allegories which charmingly utilize the magically real to critically examine the affects of economic risks and their associated dreams primarily through the social interactions of an innocent, unworldly, inspirational protagonist, you should check Émisésac out.
If you like romantic resolutions that emphasize the human as opposed to the mathematical factors worked into strategic financial planning, Émisésac is for you.
And if you're looking for a film to inaugurate your cinematic holiday season, it's a total must.
Thoroughly enjoyed Émisésac's ample simplified multidimensional spirit, as well as its humble humanism.
Could have used some more multicultural material.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
A Late Quartet
Love listening to the fiddle or violin.
Would be nice to sit back and listen to a couple of hours of violin or fiddle music with an ample supply of grapes and unpasteurized cheese plus a nice glass of red wine.
I don't know that much about classical music but I have a couple of favourite texts (Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Rachmaninoff's Symphony no. 2) and enjoy tuning into classical radio stations when I find myself moving from one place to another in an automobile. I usually find that there are moments within many works that induce compelling impressions and others that patiently/quizzically/reflectively/demonstratively/emotively set the scene. The relationship between these elements interpreted through my subjective pluralisis can create a narrative of sorts, a story, an idiom. The same thing happens when I listen to jazz or pop music, The Rolling Stones's Let it Bleed lodged in my memory as the first album to which I suddenly applied this universal transition.
That's obvious enough.
The structural elements within Yaron Zilberman's A Late Quartet resemble a classical piece of music, as can every film I suppose depending on the relative position of its viewer and their own transsemantic didactic verisimilitude.
The film humanizes the performance of classical music with a subtle piquant plasticity which is simultaneously confident, energetically atonal, and furtively self-critical, perhaps theorizing/applying a classical perception of the postmodern, except when it comes to the production of the music itself.
The daring contends with the quartet's format within and the consequent side affects necessitate an harmonious etherealization (in terms of its performance).
I was more concerned with Christopher Walken's (Peter Mitchell) internal posture. It's classic Christopher Walken. One scene precociously pastiches his role in Pulp Fiction and his lines are delivered with the same characteristic bright, perspicacious, concerned yet uncommitted comfortably chilling dexterity that has made him a cinematic icon.
But he's not playing a gangster and/or someone with underlying violent explosivities, steeping, ready to erupt.
He's probably had lots of roles where he doesn't play such characters in films I unfortunately haven't seen.
But in A Late Quartet he plays the friendly, wise, avuncular rock that collegially holds a prominent sophisticated classical music quartet together.
There's one scene where he's sitting back thinking about the death of his wife after some heated social interaction. There's no dialogue, but tears are produced, and, when it's situated within the context of the film, while bearing in mind his traditional roles, which A Late Quartet seems to be doing, it transforms the classical perception of his expressions into something equally affective yet much less threatening.
As if the goal is the reconceptualization of volatility.
His performance isn't the only one that stands out.
Original music by Angelo Badalamenti, cinematography by Frederick Elmes.
Would be nice to sit back and listen to a couple of hours of violin or fiddle music with an ample supply of grapes and unpasteurized cheese plus a nice glass of red wine.
I don't know that much about classical music but I have a couple of favourite texts (Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Rachmaninoff's Symphony no. 2) and enjoy tuning into classical radio stations when I find myself moving from one place to another in an automobile. I usually find that there are moments within many works that induce compelling impressions and others that patiently/quizzically/reflectively/demonstratively/emotively set the scene. The relationship between these elements interpreted through my subjective pluralisis can create a narrative of sorts, a story, an idiom. The same thing happens when I listen to jazz or pop music, The Rolling Stones's Let it Bleed lodged in my memory as the first album to which I suddenly applied this universal transition.
That's obvious enough.
The structural elements within Yaron Zilberman's A Late Quartet resemble a classical piece of music, as can every film I suppose depending on the relative position of its viewer and their own transsemantic didactic verisimilitude.
The film humanizes the performance of classical music with a subtle piquant plasticity which is simultaneously confident, energetically atonal, and furtively self-critical, perhaps theorizing/applying a classical perception of the postmodern, except when it comes to the production of the music itself.
The daring contends with the quartet's format within and the consequent side affects necessitate an harmonious etherealization (in terms of its performance).
I was more concerned with Christopher Walken's (Peter Mitchell) internal posture. It's classic Christopher Walken. One scene precociously pastiches his role in Pulp Fiction and his lines are delivered with the same characteristic bright, perspicacious, concerned yet uncommitted comfortably chilling dexterity that has made him a cinematic icon.
But he's not playing a gangster and/or someone with underlying violent explosivities, steeping, ready to erupt.
He's probably had lots of roles where he doesn't play such characters in films I unfortunately haven't seen.
But in A Late Quartet he plays the friendly, wise, avuncular rock that collegially holds a prominent sophisticated classical music quartet together.
There's one scene where he's sitting back thinking about the death of his wife after some heated social interaction. There's no dialogue, but tears are produced, and, when it's situated within the context of the film, while bearing in mind his traditional roles, which A Late Quartet seems to be doing, it transforms the classical perception of his expressions into something equally affective yet much less threatening.
As if the goal is the reconceptualization of volatility.
His performance isn't the only one that stands out.
Original music by Angelo Badalamenti, cinematography by Frederick Elmes.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Tabu
After sterilely establishing a set of sociological effects, wherein moments of personal literary expositions and devout religious expressions firmly respond to an extroverted eccentricity, capriciously gloating in the ether, following a solemn sentimental allegory, Miguel Gomes's Tabu imprioritizes their structural causes, by soberly elucidating their passionate progenitors.
Tabu's dimensions are difficult to define because it obliquely plays with narrative conventions with a jocose leavened degree of cohesive disparity, as if to say, "based upon certain doctrinalized expectations, there are specific aspects which we must include, even if throughout the process of their inclusion, we have found ways to romantically mistrust them."
I highly doubt they would have expressed themselves in such terms.
Sterile's the wrong word to be using. The film's anything but sterile. Yet it coyly employs a pervasive intermittently poppy sterility to slyly postulate its poetic position, as if it's trying to sustain sundry spontaneous combustions, like a ravenous crocodile.
By imprioritizing the structural causes, Tabu laments the ways in which events solidify points of view, as epitomized by Santa (Isabel Muñoz Cardoso) and Aurora's (Laura Soveral, Ana Moreira) relations, as Santa asserts herself.
Although I'm basing this point on a supposition drawn from a character's memory and then applied externally (by me) to a nondescript incidental circumstance (act II).
There's much more to it than that, if that even applies.
So worth seeing.
Tabu's dimensions are difficult to define because it obliquely plays with narrative conventions with a jocose leavened degree of cohesive disparity, as if to say, "based upon certain doctrinalized expectations, there are specific aspects which we must include, even if throughout the process of their inclusion, we have found ways to romantically mistrust them."
I highly doubt they would have expressed themselves in such terms.
Sterile's the wrong word to be using. The film's anything but sterile. Yet it coyly employs a pervasive intermittently poppy sterility to slyly postulate its poetic position, as if it's trying to sustain sundry spontaneous combustions, like a ravenous crocodile.
By imprioritizing the structural causes, Tabu laments the ways in which events solidify points of view, as epitomized by Santa (Isabel Muñoz Cardoso) and Aurora's (Laura Soveral, Ana Moreira) relations, as Santa asserts herself.
Although I'm basing this point on a supposition drawn from a character's memory and then applied externally (by me) to a nondescript incidental circumstance (act II).
There's much more to it than that, if that even applies.
So worth seeing.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Jab Tak Hai Jaan
Love, perpetually incapacitated, melodramatically presents itself as stubborn and unyielding, daring and resourceful, maddeningly fleeced, and explosively uncompromising, in Yash Chopra's Jab Tak Hai Jaan, where dedication is ir/reverently consummated, and real emotion, subsists in ironic flux.
Samar Anand's (Shah Rukh Khan) principles cause his nonchalant ingenuity to appear as if it's overcome with resignation, yet, while comparable to Bella Swan in terms of relationships, or in regards to narrative structure, he's clearly intently focused on achieving an interstellar overdrive, as his unrelenting perspicacity diffusively ameliorates.
His subjects of desire represent reserved bourgeois integrity and irrepressible public success.
As usual, I was more interested in the moments leading up to the initial affectionate declarations, after which, although things picked up again following the intermission, things become somewhat overzealous.
However, Mr. Chopra's ability to work bracingly and heartbreakingly within Jab Tak Hai Jaan's socio-religious cross-cultural overzealatanaiety, his unbridled full-throttle unconcerned pluck, did help me to appreciate his film, as he endearingly orchestrates.
Samar Anand's (Shah Rukh Khan) principles cause his nonchalant ingenuity to appear as if it's overcome with resignation, yet, while comparable to Bella Swan in terms of relationships, or in regards to narrative structure, he's clearly intently focused on achieving an interstellar overdrive, as his unrelenting perspicacity diffusively ameliorates.
His subjects of desire represent reserved bourgeois integrity and irrepressible public success.
As usual, I was more interested in the moments leading up to the initial affectionate declarations, after which, although things picked up again following the intermission, things become somewhat overzealous.
However, Mr. Chopra's ability to work bracingly and heartbreakingly within Jab Tak Hai Jaan's socio-religious cross-cultural overzealatanaiety, his unbridled full-throttle unconcerned pluck, did help me to appreciate his film, as he endearingly orchestrates.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Silver Linings Playbook
Adding two cups rehabilitation, a healthy dose of formal sanitization (some forms of behaviour are denominated sane, others are not, the film does a great job of levelling the forms by showing how their contents are socially inextricable), a dash of crisis, familial spices, and communal interstices, David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook cooks up a hearty robust sociopsychological feast, complete with ample servings of dancing, and football.
Could have used the Broncos instead of the Eagles and set the film in Denver but that's off topic.
Silver Linings Playbook is a believable, down to earth, well-scripted multilateral examination of mental illness, romantically busting through many of its stigmas (blame attached regardless of circumstances, . . . ) through the convivial art of cacophonic curtsies.
Honesty is the key.
Pat (Bradley Cooper) and Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) proceed honestly yet lack the clean record that often rationalizes honest offbeat conversations.
Thus, even though their dialogues make sense, it's the self-critical sense making, the acknowledgement of crucial beneficial curative aids, offensively and defensively extracted from their various social interactions, within which interconnected dialogues similarly affect their friends and family, thereby emphasizing without sentimentalizing intergenerational teamwork, that leads to a more gregarious playing field.
In regards to where honesty becomes destructively inappropriate, the film cleverly draws several lines.
Good companion film for Jeff, Who Lives at Home.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Life of Pi
A giant freakin' tiger.
An island of meerkats.
A fluorescent whale.
And a mischievous moon bear.
Members of the animal kingdom make up portions of Life of Pi's supporting cast and fill its fictionally fortuitous filmscape with a carnally introspective constabulary.
Indicative of spiritual tribunals.
Necessity being the lover of retention, and survival, romance's wherewithal, Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) makes the case for creative license, while providing a noteworthy response to Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now.
Pi's religious curiosity leads him from Hinduism to Christ to Allah and his individualistic embrace/mix of the three is openmindedly archetypal (substitutes welcome).
It's difficult to write about Life of Pi's most compelling point without ruining the film, but, as a film, for me, although I was disappointed that more time wasn't spent directly presenting the convincing case Yann Martel makes for the existence of zoos in the novel, its 'make or break' stretch takes place in the lifeboat, where Pi and Richard Parker negotiate a pact which keeps their cross-examinations afloat.
And it works. The stretch seductively elaborates upon while subtly advancing Patel's position, building up to a moving somewhat overdone transubstantive summit, celestially washing up on shore.
I'll have to wait to respond to the rest (I'm not convinced [and can't explain what I'm not convinced about]).
The moon bear doesn't have a big part.
There is a moon bear though.
And he or she looks mischievous.
An island of meerkats.
A fluorescent whale.
And a mischievous moon bear.
Members of the animal kingdom make up portions of Life of Pi's supporting cast and fill its fictionally fortuitous filmscape with a carnally introspective constabulary.
Indicative of spiritual tribunals.
Necessity being the lover of retention, and survival, romance's wherewithal, Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) makes the case for creative license, while providing a noteworthy response to Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now.
Pi's religious curiosity leads him from Hinduism to Christ to Allah and his individualistic embrace/mix of the three is openmindedly archetypal (substitutes welcome).
It's difficult to write about Life of Pi's most compelling point without ruining the film, but, as a film, for me, although I was disappointed that more time wasn't spent directly presenting the convincing case Yann Martel makes for the existence of zoos in the novel, its 'make or break' stretch takes place in the lifeboat, where Pi and Richard Parker negotiate a pact which keeps their cross-examinations afloat.
And it works. The stretch seductively elaborates upon while subtly advancing Patel's position, building up to a moving somewhat overdone transubstantive summit, celestially washing up on shore.
I'll have to wait to respond to the rest (I'm not convinced [and can't explain what I'm not convinced about]).
The moon bear doesn't have a big part.
There is a moon bear though.
And he or she looks mischievous.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Lincoln
Providing an in-depth warm yet demanding account of the overt and back room executive and legislative steps taken to both legally abolish slavery and end the American Civil War, even though the contemporaneous achievement of both goals seemed unattainable, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln avuncularly yet sternly examines a pivotal point in American history and the roles played by many of its leading persons.
It's very practicable.
It lays out the complicated dynamics of the Republican Party as it was structured with Abraham Lincoln at the helm during his 2nd term, and, while often employing an elevated vocabulary, patiently divides the party into collaboratively oppositional groups whose interests each need to be moderately assuaged.
Thus, differing internal ideological commitments and approaches to the same set of principles are coherently represented by sensible counterintuitive arguments.
Expediency and opportunism become necessary factors due to the inextricable contingencies of their political matrix.
I have no idea how closely the actions depicted in this film match generally agreed upon historical realities within prominent objective canonical yet malleable enclaves, but the film did remind me that back when I cared about trivia and avidly watched Jeopardy!, I could rarely knowingly answer its myriad American Civil War questions, and wanted to learn more about it.
Lincoln's (Daniel Day Lewis) exceptional gifts for finding applicable amusing pedagogical anecdotes capable of being pleasantly yet instructively presented to whomever his audience happened to be affably ties things together.
Trying to make the passage of an amendment into a dramatic film was a great idea.
Being able to vote for the people who pass such amendments is a right that was/is vehemently fought for.
If you're jaded about the results of your voting, which everyone is at some point, Spielberg's Lincoln does exemplify how difficult it can be to coordinate the passage of legislation, which will often (probably always) contain cumbersome particulars which are themselves the product of advanced democratic pluralities, who have progressed in varying degrees, over the centuries.
It's very practicable.
It lays out the complicated dynamics of the Republican Party as it was structured with Abraham Lincoln at the helm during his 2nd term, and, while often employing an elevated vocabulary, patiently divides the party into collaboratively oppositional groups whose interests each need to be moderately assuaged.
Thus, differing internal ideological commitments and approaches to the same set of principles are coherently represented by sensible counterintuitive arguments.
Expediency and opportunism become necessary factors due to the inextricable contingencies of their political matrix.
I have no idea how closely the actions depicted in this film match generally agreed upon historical realities within prominent objective canonical yet malleable enclaves, but the film did remind me that back when I cared about trivia and avidly watched Jeopardy!, I could rarely knowingly answer its myriad American Civil War questions, and wanted to learn more about it.
Lincoln's (Daniel Day Lewis) exceptional gifts for finding applicable amusing pedagogical anecdotes capable of being pleasantly yet instructively presented to whomever his audience happened to be affably ties things together.
Trying to make the passage of an amendment into a dramatic film was a great idea.
Being able to vote for the people who pass such amendments is a right that was/is vehemently fought for.
If you're jaded about the results of your voting, which everyone is at some point, Spielberg's Lincoln does exemplify how difficult it can be to coordinate the passage of legislation, which will often (probably always) contain cumbersome particulars which are themselves the product of advanced democratic pluralities, who have progressed in varying degrees, over the centuries.
Here Comes the Broom
In Frank Coraci's new comedy Here Comes the Broom, writers Kevin James, Allan Loeb, and Martin Solibakke seem to be asking the question, "can we unite the domains of high school music teaching and mixed martial arts fighting while wholesomely addressing issues of immigration, dating, professionalism, health care, small business ownership, altruistic risk, male bonding, conjugal relations, etc., in order to create a constructive interdisciplinary framework, overflowing with ebullient feelgoodery, that can function as a precursor to model communal action?"
If this is indeed the question that they at one point asked themselves, I can only respond by saying that, in my opinion, "there is a strong possibility."
The film's a lot of fun.
I've never even really been that into boxing or mixed martial arts fighting but Here Comes the Broom gave me a new found respect for both sports and I'll now be more receptive to viewing 'pugilistic' events in the future.
The film lays it on super thick but I liked its relatable trial-by-fire humbly rebellious we're-goin'-for-it-no-matter-what oddball pragmatism, which offers a welcome break from a lot of the sleaze that's out there.
It also focuses on how prominent integral arts programs can be screwed over by overemphasizing sports while focusing on the ways in which those very same programs are essential to the sports that are sometimes overemphasized.
And points out that even when people have difficulties passing tests, they still often have marketable skills that can be remarkably beneficial to their community.
Liked the synthesis.
All good.
If this is indeed the question that they at one point asked themselves, I can only respond by saying that, in my opinion, "there is a strong possibility."
The film's a lot of fun.
I've never even really been that into boxing or mixed martial arts fighting but Here Comes the Broom gave me a new found respect for both sports and I'll now be more receptive to viewing 'pugilistic' events in the future.
The film lays it on super thick but I liked its relatable trial-by-fire humbly rebellious we're-goin'-for-it-no-matter-what oddball pragmatism, which offers a welcome break from a lot of the sleaze that's out there.
It also focuses on how prominent integral arts programs can be screwed over by overemphasizing sports while focusing on the ways in which those very same programs are essential to the sports that are sometimes overemphasized.
And points out that even when people have difficulties passing tests, they still often have marketable skills that can be remarkably beneficial to their community.
Liked the synthesis.
All good.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Midnight's Children
At the stroke of midnight, as India's independence lights up the sky, several children are born.
An ironic twist of fate, whereby bohemian and bourgeois babies are switched at birth, in an act of amorous solidarity, simultaneously precipitates openminded and hegemonic serializations.
One possesses the remarkable gift of being able to use his mind to create a cerebral in/corporeal clandestine commons where all of Midnight's Children can meet and discuss various subjects.
One's overwrought jealousy upholsters a ballistic desire to dominate, within.
The others, playing by a more reasonable set of hospitable synchronizations, collegially, discern.
That's a rather truncated description of what takes place in Deepa Mehta's film; it's much more complicated than that, narratively deconstructing particular parental preconceptions, touching upon complex interconnected conjugal and familial (and pre- and post-colonial) provocations, illustrating the effects of 'practical' ideological implementations on individual constituencies from jingoistically fraternal (ugh) and resurgently romantic jetties, at a frantic pace, which generally focuses on one character's brittle innocence.
The depth of potential lying within the film's itinerant confluences suggests that Salman Rushdie's novel is worth picking up, and that militaristic conflicts prevent the cultivation of prolonged endearing chill relationships.
At first, I found the film's magically real cloak to be somewhat flippant in relation to the gravity of its historical trajectory, but it's actually this light, dreamy, bewildered and baffling ambience that transcends its unavoidable puritanical devices, evoking an abstract laissez-faire conspicuous caricature.
That isn't that concerned with absolutes.
Covering a lot of interdisciplinary ground while firmly resisting attempts at classification, Midnight's Children sacrifices elaboration for stylization to divine a potential mantra.
More fitting to its humanistic features.
An ironic twist of fate, whereby bohemian and bourgeois babies are switched at birth, in an act of amorous solidarity, simultaneously precipitates openminded and hegemonic serializations.
One possesses the remarkable gift of being able to use his mind to create a cerebral in/corporeal clandestine commons where all of Midnight's Children can meet and discuss various subjects.
One's overwrought jealousy upholsters a ballistic desire to dominate, within.
The others, playing by a more reasonable set of hospitable synchronizations, collegially, discern.
That's a rather truncated description of what takes place in Deepa Mehta's film; it's much more complicated than that, narratively deconstructing particular parental preconceptions, touching upon complex interconnected conjugal and familial (and pre- and post-colonial) provocations, illustrating the effects of 'practical' ideological implementations on individual constituencies from jingoistically fraternal (ugh) and resurgently romantic jetties, at a frantic pace, which generally focuses on one character's brittle innocence.
The depth of potential lying within the film's itinerant confluences suggests that Salman Rushdie's novel is worth picking up, and that militaristic conflicts prevent the cultivation of prolonged endearing chill relationships.
At first, I found the film's magically real cloak to be somewhat flippant in relation to the gravity of its historical trajectory, but it's actually this light, dreamy, bewildered and baffling ambience that transcends its unavoidable puritanical devices, evoking an abstract laissez-faire conspicuous caricature.
That isn't that concerned with absolutes.
Covering a lot of interdisciplinary ground while firmly resisting attempts at classification, Midnight's Children sacrifices elaboration for stylization to divine a potential mantra.
More fitting to its humanistic features.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Skyfall
Really enjoyed Skyfall.
It's a great James Bond film, perhaps ranking in the top 3, although I'd like to rewatch my favourites, Thunder Ball, You Only Live Twice, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, and Casino Royale, to be able to attach a more current and uniform critical perspective (more substance) to my claim. I should likely watch Skyfall again to justify this claim as well because I remember liking Die Another Day after my first viewing (no doubt due to my childhood love of the franchise) only to be seriously disappointed when I saw it again. Undaunted, Skyfall's not only a great James Bond film either, it's a great action spy movie, as opposed to a great intellectual spy flick like Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, and might also impress those who feel they're being dragged to a/nother silly James Bond extravaganza, although fans of the franchise will likely get more out of it.
Impressive points: Daniel Craig. He's become my favourite Bond and I love the ways in which he suavely handles himself with an unconcerned, explosive, gritty, incisive, everyperson's charm, more like a glacier bear than a bulldog, in my opinion. While the emotional displays made prominent in Casino Royale are limited to one brief lamentation, his character still receives more depth structurally as his personal history becomes integral to the plot.
Nice.
Origins. Skyfall sophisticatedly maintains a competent balance/conversation (overtly and covertly) between the old and the new throughout, set up by Bond's introduction to the new Quartermaster (Ben Whishaw), simultaneously seeming as if it's constantly, sigh, moving forward, while never leaving behind or disregarding its foundations. Thus, we have an unambiguously principle gay villain, who, being the villain, reflects certain conservative stereotypes, yet, through his first conversation with Bond, it becomes apparent that Bond himself is not adverse or may have had homosexual relations, an openly unprecedented development, which should not be underestimated.
The brutal lines from the previews that made me not want to see the film are actually alright when placed in context, writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and John Logan successfully finding a balance between hackneyed clichés and hardboiled wit, which isn't easy to do.
Rather than focusing on international politics, Skyfall situates much of its action in London, no doubt, the film, if, um, James Bond films are seen as a barometer of British socio-political attitudes of sorts, recognizes, ah, a certain, role, that Britain often didn't play so heroically in 20th century history (see Argo), which functions as a bit of cultural introspection that is both welcome, and appreciated.
Which brings me to the film's most notable scene, wherein Skyfall's various dynamics reach a quasiclimax which hopefully doesn't end there.
So, basically, M (Judi Dench) screws up royal by being in charge when a hard drive containing the names of every MI6 field agent (which never should have been created) is stolen. This leads to an internal review of her leadership which becomes public. Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), an ex-field agent who has taken on a sympathetic yet stubborn bureaucratic role (youth becomes age), diplomatically tones down the irate politician who castigates M during a public inquiry, which ends with M quoting Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Poetry in Bond?
Nice touch!
It doesn't actually end there (don't read if you're not looking for spoilers). It ends with Silva (Javier Bardem), the principal villain, breaking in and trying to kill M whom he blames for accidentally saving his life after he was captured and his hydrocyanide tooth failed to kill him (while ravaging his insides [he vengefully seeks to ravage MI6's insides in turn]).
Silva's prowess in MI6 was comparable to Bond's and M was willing to sacrifice both for the organization's sake.
Bond holds no grudge.
Ergo, as defined by M's rousing speech, which claims that in the age of the internet individuals are becoming a serious threat, thereby covertly supporting attempts to sturdily monitor and police individual interent activities, due to the secretive nature of her operations and the life threatening consequences of details potentially leaked during public inquiries (some governmental documents should remain secret), she's somewhat taken aback by the proceedings, which are applying a similar level of oversight to that which guided her decisions to sacrifice Bond and Silva, which are then interrupted by Silva's rampage.
Obviously the activities of agencies like MI6, due to their necessarily clandestine nature, need to remain generally secret, as long as other countries continue to maintain similar outlets. At the same time, if they operate entirely in secret there's no telling what sort of methods might be utilized, meaning a minimal degree of public scrutiny, though vexatious, within logical parameters, which must take various prickly contexts into consideration, makes sense.
Don't know if that's helpful.
I find the idea of (computer savvy) individuals being some of the greatest threats to the 21st century, however, somewhat misleading, for the following reasons.
It's kind of silly to begin with, scum like Hitler and Stalin being particularly deadly individuals long before the age of the internet, but that's a different kettle of fish.
Yes, computer savvy individuals can cause a lot of damage I'm sure. These exceptions can, I don't know, hack into banks, defence systems, etc. I know someone else has my IP address because I often receive a message on my computer screen that another computer using my IP address is operating on the same network. I don't know what to do about this besides get a new IP address and I don't want to bother because someone will just do it again.
It's annoying.
But if because of these exceptions, legislation is being introduced giving law enforcement agencies the power to monitor everyone's online activity, and the majority of everyone's activity is moving online, it's like law enforcement agencies are being given the power to monitor everyone's activities all the time. What stores they go to, what newspapers they read, and so on. It's kind of totalitarian in my opinion and is at risk of being 'naturalized' for future generations without much mature parliamentary debate in some countries. I mean, shouldn't you have to get a warrant to monitor someone's online activity? Doesn't that make sense?
And, as my computer keeps indicating, someone else has my IP address and is using it online. How would I be able to prove that I'm not that person in a court of law?
Cybercrime is similar to physical crime. If someone wants to rob a bank online, I suppose they hack in. If someone wants to rob a physical bank, I suppose they find a way to go about doing it. If you're worried about someone robbing a bank in the physical world, I suppose you get a warrant and follow them around town. If you're worried about someone robbing a bank online, I think you should have to do the same thing because the principle isn't that different, it's just an alternative environment.
Yes, a Silva may arise, but there will also be a James Bond to stop him or her.
Nevertheless, I did enjoy Skyfall and think it's a great film.
I hope my analysis hasn't been too offhand and that it hasn't engaged in too much puerile speculation.
(My favourite part is Q's scrabble mug.
I'd love to play him.
Would probably end up with multiple u's, c's, and v's at key moments, but, whatevs, I'd keep playing).
Oh, and I've been getting into film noir and hardboiled detective fiction again lately. A Bond film with the edge of a Dashiell Hammet, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, or Patricia Highsmith novel worked into what team Skyfall's already proved they have the creative energy to ameliorate would be amazing.
So amazing.
It's a great James Bond film, perhaps ranking in the top 3, although I'd like to rewatch my favourites, Thunder Ball, You Only Live Twice, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, and Casino Royale, to be able to attach a more current and uniform critical perspective (more substance) to my claim. I should likely watch Skyfall again to justify this claim as well because I remember liking Die Another Day after my first viewing (no doubt due to my childhood love of the franchise) only to be seriously disappointed when I saw it again. Undaunted, Skyfall's not only a great James Bond film either, it's a great action spy movie, as opposed to a great intellectual spy flick like Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, and might also impress those who feel they're being dragged to a/nother silly James Bond extravaganza, although fans of the franchise will likely get more out of it.
Impressive points: Daniel Craig. He's become my favourite Bond and I love the ways in which he suavely handles himself with an unconcerned, explosive, gritty, incisive, everyperson's charm, more like a glacier bear than a bulldog, in my opinion. While the emotional displays made prominent in Casino Royale are limited to one brief lamentation, his character still receives more depth structurally as his personal history becomes integral to the plot.
Nice.
Origins. Skyfall sophisticatedly maintains a competent balance/conversation (overtly and covertly) between the old and the new throughout, set up by Bond's introduction to the new Quartermaster (Ben Whishaw), simultaneously seeming as if it's constantly, sigh, moving forward, while never leaving behind or disregarding its foundations. Thus, we have an unambiguously principle gay villain, who, being the villain, reflects certain conservative stereotypes, yet, through his first conversation with Bond, it becomes apparent that Bond himself is not adverse or may have had homosexual relations, an openly unprecedented development, which should not be underestimated.
The brutal lines from the previews that made me not want to see the film are actually alright when placed in context, writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and John Logan successfully finding a balance between hackneyed clichés and hardboiled wit, which isn't easy to do.
Rather than focusing on international politics, Skyfall situates much of its action in London, no doubt, the film, if, um, James Bond films are seen as a barometer of British socio-political attitudes of sorts, recognizes, ah, a certain, role, that Britain often didn't play so heroically in 20th century history (see Argo), which functions as a bit of cultural introspection that is both welcome, and appreciated.
Which brings me to the film's most notable scene, wherein Skyfall's various dynamics reach a quasiclimax which hopefully doesn't end there.
So, basically, M (Judi Dench) screws up royal by being in charge when a hard drive containing the names of every MI6 field agent (which never should have been created) is stolen. This leads to an internal review of her leadership which becomes public. Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), an ex-field agent who has taken on a sympathetic yet stubborn bureaucratic role (youth becomes age), diplomatically tones down the irate politician who castigates M during a public inquiry, which ends with M quoting Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Poetry in Bond?
Nice touch!
It doesn't actually end there (don't read if you're not looking for spoilers). It ends with Silva (Javier Bardem), the principal villain, breaking in and trying to kill M whom he blames for accidentally saving his life after he was captured and his hydrocyanide tooth failed to kill him (while ravaging his insides [he vengefully seeks to ravage MI6's insides in turn]).
Silva's prowess in MI6 was comparable to Bond's and M was willing to sacrifice both for the organization's sake.
Bond holds no grudge.
Ergo, as defined by M's rousing speech, which claims that in the age of the internet individuals are becoming a serious threat, thereby covertly supporting attempts to sturdily monitor and police individual interent activities, due to the secretive nature of her operations and the life threatening consequences of details potentially leaked during public inquiries (some governmental documents should remain secret), she's somewhat taken aback by the proceedings, which are applying a similar level of oversight to that which guided her decisions to sacrifice Bond and Silva, which are then interrupted by Silva's rampage.
Obviously the activities of agencies like MI6, due to their necessarily clandestine nature, need to remain generally secret, as long as other countries continue to maintain similar outlets. At the same time, if they operate entirely in secret there's no telling what sort of methods might be utilized, meaning a minimal degree of public scrutiny, though vexatious, within logical parameters, which must take various prickly contexts into consideration, makes sense.
Don't know if that's helpful.
I find the idea of (computer savvy) individuals being some of the greatest threats to the 21st century, however, somewhat misleading, for the following reasons.
It's kind of silly to begin with, scum like Hitler and Stalin being particularly deadly individuals long before the age of the internet, but that's a different kettle of fish.
Yes, computer savvy individuals can cause a lot of damage I'm sure. These exceptions can, I don't know, hack into banks, defence systems, etc. I know someone else has my IP address because I often receive a message on my computer screen that another computer using my IP address is operating on the same network. I don't know what to do about this besides get a new IP address and I don't want to bother because someone will just do it again.
It's annoying.
But if because of these exceptions, legislation is being introduced giving law enforcement agencies the power to monitor everyone's online activity, and the majority of everyone's activity is moving online, it's like law enforcement agencies are being given the power to monitor everyone's activities all the time. What stores they go to, what newspapers they read, and so on. It's kind of totalitarian in my opinion and is at risk of being 'naturalized' for future generations without much mature parliamentary debate in some countries. I mean, shouldn't you have to get a warrant to monitor someone's online activity? Doesn't that make sense?
And, as my computer keeps indicating, someone else has my IP address and is using it online. How would I be able to prove that I'm not that person in a court of law?
Cybercrime is similar to physical crime. If someone wants to rob a bank online, I suppose they hack in. If someone wants to rob a physical bank, I suppose they find a way to go about doing it. If you're worried about someone robbing a bank in the physical world, I suppose you get a warrant and follow them around town. If you're worried about someone robbing a bank online, I think you should have to do the same thing because the principle isn't that different, it's just an alternative environment.
Yes, a Silva may arise, but there will also be a James Bond to stop him or her.
Nevertheless, I did enjoy Skyfall and think it's a great film.
I hope my analysis hasn't been too offhand and that it hasn't engaged in too much puerile speculation.
(My favourite part is Q's scrabble mug.
I'd love to play him.
Would probably end up with multiple u's, c's, and v's at key moments, but, whatevs, I'd keep playing).
Oh, and I've been getting into film noir and hardboiled detective fiction again lately. A Bond film with the edge of a Dashiell Hammet, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, or Patricia Highsmith novel worked into what team Skyfall's already proved they have the creative energy to ameliorate would be amazing.
So amazing.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Chinese Take-Away (Un cuento chino)
A random gravitational incongruity crushes a soaring romance after which one partner haplessly finds himself mired in a self-inflicted mimesis.
Thus Jun (Ignacio Huang) travels from China to Argentina in search of his uncle where he meets a frigid loner (Ricardo Darín as Roberto) by chance who is firmly set in his ways.
Jun doesn't speak any Spanish and Roberto dislikes house guests but the good samaritan Roberto keeps locked within persuades his finicky craftsmanship.
But as those with whom he must interact to find Jun's uncle ironically do not posses the same level of social reflexivity, things take a lightheartedly combative turn, until fate forecasts its fortuitous frequency.
Decisions made, gut garnished, ethos, codified.
But it's really not that cheesy, I mean, Sebastián Borensztein's Chinese Take-Away (Un cuento chino) does press the curds but if you're interested in seeing a heartwarmingly blunt piece of extroverted reticence, primarily focused on an eccentric small business owner's stubbornly withdrawn principled hardboiled tact, wherein fascists and communists alike take their comeuppances, it's fun to watch.
Sensitive, enumerative, obdurate, and tender, assuredly a go-to-option if dating and seeking to sneak in an alternative cross-cultural b/romantic comedy.
I'm assuming that's what people who date are trying to do.
Regardless of gender.
Thus Jun (Ignacio Huang) travels from China to Argentina in search of his uncle where he meets a frigid loner (Ricardo Darín as Roberto) by chance who is firmly set in his ways.
Jun doesn't speak any Spanish and Roberto dislikes house guests but the good samaritan Roberto keeps locked within persuades his finicky craftsmanship.
But as those with whom he must interact to find Jun's uncle ironically do not posses the same level of social reflexivity, things take a lightheartedly combative turn, until fate forecasts its fortuitous frequency.
Decisions made, gut garnished, ethos, codified.
But it's really not that cheesy, I mean, Sebastián Borensztein's Chinese Take-Away (Un cuento chino) does press the curds but if you're interested in seeing a heartwarmingly blunt piece of extroverted reticence, primarily focused on an eccentric small business owner's stubbornly withdrawn principled hardboiled tact, wherein fascists and communists alike take their comeuppances, it's fun to watch.
Sensitive, enumerative, obdurate, and tender, assuredly a go-to-option if dating and seeking to sneak in an alternative cross-cultural b/romantic comedy.
I'm assuming that's what people who date are trying to do.
Regardless of gender.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Argo
It should be noted that Ben Affleck's Argo takes bold steps to attach the responsibility for the hostile anti-American attitudes presented by some Iranian citizens displayed within to the political activities of American and British authorities of the 1950s, and that it is these same authorities who are in/directly responsible for the subsequent rise of madpersons like Ahmadinejad.
It should also be noted that this may not be the wisest time to be releasing a film which displays passionate anti-American feelings amongst those very same citizens, due to the potentially volatile dynamics of our current historical period, although, perhaps my reluctancy to endorse its timing could be a sign of my own hesitancy in regards to taking great risks, which Mr. Affleck, in creating this film at this particular time, has certainly done.
I myself believe that an incredible secret has been kept in Iran based upon my viewings of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Maryam Keshavarz's Circumstance, common sense, and a conversation I had six years ago in passing, that being that many, perhaps even a vast majority of Iranian citizens, don't care whether or not they develop an atomic weapon, have no wish to go to war with Israel, and simply want to peacefully work, live, laugh, love, and travel in a clean environment, like citizens in every other country, without having to be afraid all the time.
Yet I have no idea what you do when a lunatic like Ahmadinejad is in power (or George W. Bush for that matter) or how to go about diffusing the situation.
There are scurrilously ambitious people who seek power and consider everyone else to be like them. They employ reprehensible tactics to achieve this power, and, thinking everyone else to be like them, seek to prevent others who aren't like them from employing the same tactics to usurp them. This attitude is applied nationally and internationally. Seeing conspiracies everywhere and fearing violent reprisals, they conspire violently, thereby creating that which they feared in the first place, vaingloriously spreading misery.
Argo goes a long way to prevent the spread of misery in its best scene by cleverly intermingling different realities facing American and post-revolutionary Iranian citizens, a scene which shows the Americans laying the rhetorical groundwork to 'make' a fake movie while Iranians try to punish the American and British imposed Shah who butchered them for decades and managed to find sanctuary in the States afterwards, a scene which pulls its American audience into the Iranian situation, its frame reminding them to bear in mind that the events depicted took place in 1979, 33 years ago.
In one of Star Trek the Next Generation's best moments Worf (Michael Dorn) commends his son Alexander (James Sloyan/Brian Bonsall) for choosing the path of peace (Firstborn).
Yes, Worf highly honours the path of peace.
By creating a film which exoterically tackles an extremely important contemporary international political phenomenon with the goal of saving lives or preventing a war, which places the situation within a controversial militaristic, governmental, and individual historical context, Ben Affleck's created quite a film, its exoteric qualities capable of entertainingly reaching a wide audience, and perhaps having a lasting affect.
As if to say, if you thought there was anti-American sentiment flowing through Iran 33 years ago during a volatile time of historic change directly caused by the meddling of American and British authorities, imagine how much there will be if an actual war is started, for decades, centuries, to come.
It doesn't have to be like that.
Not at all.
It should also be noted that this may not be the wisest time to be releasing a film which displays passionate anti-American feelings amongst those very same citizens, due to the potentially volatile dynamics of our current historical period, although, perhaps my reluctancy to endorse its timing could be a sign of my own hesitancy in regards to taking great risks, which Mr. Affleck, in creating this film at this particular time, has certainly done.
I myself believe that an incredible secret has been kept in Iran based upon my viewings of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Maryam Keshavarz's Circumstance, common sense, and a conversation I had six years ago in passing, that being that many, perhaps even a vast majority of Iranian citizens, don't care whether or not they develop an atomic weapon, have no wish to go to war with Israel, and simply want to peacefully work, live, laugh, love, and travel in a clean environment, like citizens in every other country, without having to be afraid all the time.
Yet I have no idea what you do when a lunatic like Ahmadinejad is in power (or George W. Bush for that matter) or how to go about diffusing the situation.
There are scurrilously ambitious people who seek power and consider everyone else to be like them. They employ reprehensible tactics to achieve this power, and, thinking everyone else to be like them, seek to prevent others who aren't like them from employing the same tactics to usurp them. This attitude is applied nationally and internationally. Seeing conspiracies everywhere and fearing violent reprisals, they conspire violently, thereby creating that which they feared in the first place, vaingloriously spreading misery.
Argo goes a long way to prevent the spread of misery in its best scene by cleverly intermingling different realities facing American and post-revolutionary Iranian citizens, a scene which shows the Americans laying the rhetorical groundwork to 'make' a fake movie while Iranians try to punish the American and British imposed Shah who butchered them for decades and managed to find sanctuary in the States afterwards, a scene which pulls its American audience into the Iranian situation, its frame reminding them to bear in mind that the events depicted took place in 1979, 33 years ago.
In one of Star Trek the Next Generation's best moments Worf (Michael Dorn) commends his son Alexander (James Sloyan/Brian Bonsall) for choosing the path of peace (Firstborn).
Yes, Worf highly honours the path of peace.
By creating a film which exoterically tackles an extremely important contemporary international political phenomenon with the goal of saving lives or preventing a war, which places the situation within a controversial militaristic, governmental, and individual historical context, Ben Affleck's created quite a film, its exoteric qualities capable of entertainingly reaching a wide audience, and perhaps having a lasting affect.
As if to say, if you thought there was anti-American sentiment flowing through Iran 33 years ago during a volatile time of historic change directly caused by the meddling of American and British authorities, imagine how much there will be if an actual war is started, for decades, centuries, to come.
It doesn't have to be like that.
Not at all.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Cloud Atlas
Reincarnating a diverse sense of individualistic multiplicity, wherein manifold acts see their transhistorical countenances ambiently 'serialized,' as circumstances determine varying degrees of personal expedients and collective commitments, the most powerful of which are preconditioned by love eternal, of the other, an ideal, Cloud Atlas draws poetic intertemporal parallels amongst 'distinct' narratives to progressively decentralize teleological discourses without sacrificing their forward thinking critical cores, thereby generating a hardwired interdisciplinary mutlivaliant transistor.
As history comes to life.
It's as if the process of taking forms with myriad malleable landscapes and inter'connected' representational layers and populating them with breathing socio-political contents is itself materially manifested, through a vivacious, ethical engagement.
It doesn't shy away from using science-fiction to situate the cannibalistic nature of shortsighted grossly counterproductive characterizations of workers as one-dimensional subservient automatons being sinisterly force fed their own collectively suicidal divisive tropes in the present, from suggesting that aesthetic realms beyond our current epistemological methods of comprehension can be artistically realized (through music), from attaching an everlasting quality to the bucolic/urban dialectic, from elevating humanistic strategies for combatting the pervasive influence of unfettered capital, or intimating the ways in which capital can profit from events which never had to take place.
At the same time, it's not that serious.
Didn't like the whole inevitability dimension, but still, there's enough diegetic material here to create/continue the development of its own subgenre and it reminded me of Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel, Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry.
And Keith David's characters have great responses to the role he played in Crash(2004).
As history comes to life.
It's as if the process of taking forms with myriad malleable landscapes and inter'connected' representational layers and populating them with breathing socio-political contents is itself materially manifested, through a vivacious, ethical engagement.
It doesn't shy away from using science-fiction to situate the cannibalistic nature of shortsighted grossly counterproductive characterizations of workers as one-dimensional subservient automatons being sinisterly force fed their own collectively suicidal divisive tropes in the present, from suggesting that aesthetic realms beyond our current epistemological methods of comprehension can be artistically realized (through music), from attaching an everlasting quality to the bucolic/urban dialectic, from elevating humanistic strategies for combatting the pervasive influence of unfettered capital, or intimating the ways in which capital can profit from events which never had to take place.
At the same time, it's not that serious.
Didn't like the whole inevitability dimension, but still, there's enough diegetic material here to create/continue the development of its own subgenre and it reminded me of Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel, Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry.
And Keith David's characters have great responses to the role he played in Crash(2004).
Sunday, October 28, 2012
The Master
His personality trailing behind, obliviously, inquisitively and contendedly basking in the wake, quietly lounging in his own residual perpetual motion, with a sun he fails to see warmly beating down on his inebriated candour, Freddie Quell's (Joaquin Phoenix) proclivities for the peculiar lead to transformative miscues while the narrative which he inhabits, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, derisively lambastes its own nostalgic attachment to film's longing for nostalgic attachments (through its initial choice of music).
Mr. Quell's sense of buoyancy has been quasi-permanently kept afloat due to his wartime experience, as has his creative knack for improvisationally concocting alcoholic beverages.
He also seeks partnership.
Fortunately, he stows away on a ship by chance which has been rented by a carefree spirit (Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd) and his followers, many of whom share his desire to circumvent sobriety.
They have taken things one step further, though, having devotedly conjured a flexible theoretical fundamental foundation, whose profits have secured a fantastic incorruptibility.
As these two tinkerers intersect, pseudoestablished faith-based charlatanism attempts to absorb obstinate itinerant (restrained, undirected, generally harmless) epicurean anarchy through a series of mind tricks, the confident modest inclusive yet principled performance expertly executed by Mr. Hoffman in their first obligatory interaction sophisticatedly counterbalanced by Joaquin Phoenix's focused resistant exactitude.
As Freddie is lured in, the film's structure attempts to grab hold of its audience's recalcitrance and transfer it deep within its hallucinatory consciousness, as if it's relying on the sheer conviction of its form alone, regardless of what form it takes, to transcribe potential transgressions of the post-modern through personal investments of hesitant, guilt-ridden trust, incipiently causing a cult to appear happy-go-lucky, and attempting to internally harness a distilled independent rationality.
The best American film I've seen so far this year.
Amy Adams puts in a great performance too.
Mr. Quell's sense of buoyancy has been quasi-permanently kept afloat due to his wartime experience, as has his creative knack for improvisationally concocting alcoholic beverages.
He also seeks partnership.
Fortunately, he stows away on a ship by chance which has been rented by a carefree spirit (Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd) and his followers, many of whom share his desire to circumvent sobriety.
They have taken things one step further, though, having devotedly conjured a flexible theoretical fundamental foundation, whose profits have secured a fantastic incorruptibility.
As these two tinkerers intersect, pseudoestablished faith-based charlatanism attempts to absorb obstinate itinerant (restrained, undirected, generally harmless) epicurean anarchy through a series of mind tricks, the confident modest inclusive yet principled performance expertly executed by Mr. Hoffman in their first obligatory interaction sophisticatedly counterbalanced by Joaquin Phoenix's focused resistant exactitude.
As Freddie is lured in, the film's structure attempts to grab hold of its audience's recalcitrance and transfer it deep within its hallucinatory consciousness, as if it's relying on the sheer conviction of its form alone, regardless of what form it takes, to transcribe potential transgressions of the post-modern through personal investments of hesitant, guilt-ridden trust, incipiently causing a cult to appear happy-go-lucky, and attempting to internally harness a distilled independent rationality.
The best American film I've seen so far this year.
Amy Adams puts in a great performance too.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Stories We Tell
Beguilingly intermingling the dubious and the customary, synthesizing various direct and interpretive recollections while modestly integrating her own position's anti-overarching take, Sarah Polley subtly (and accidentally?) mythologizes an incident from her family's past, to quaintly and indirectly interrogate memory, narrative construction, the facts, and urban legends, in a familial paragenealogical account of the origins of decentralized identity.
It's so 21st century National Film Board of Canada.*
Her investigation leads a principal participant to whimsically actualize that whose literary character was encouraged by his deceased spouse decades previously, this actualization 'stomping' through a gentle creek of sorts from which the additional commentaries reflexively break off and return (the format reminding me of Jacob Richmond's Ride the Cyclone).
(There are various loosely interoperational domains which possess their own consequent features whose rhetorical/technological/meteorological transmissions can coalesce to fabricate distinguished conceptions of value, which, when re/acting with the complementary/contradictory features of their fellow inter/national/regional/local/individual agents, and the constant imposition of random occurrences whose unforeseen interjections conduct concrete theoretical abstractions, before and after the fact, team-up to market sundry identities, who are nonetheless reliant upon historical events, and their consequent/subsequent interactions, themselves).
There's a sly intertextual reversal built into the film's flow as well.
Impressive.
*Kermode hasn't seen enough 21st century National Film Board of Canada films to be able to objectively make this claim, but couldn't resist due to the ways in which Stories We Tell reminded him of the many NFBC films he enjoyed watching during his youth. He also lives within the 21st century.
It's so 21st century National Film Board of Canada.*
Her investigation leads a principal participant to whimsically actualize that whose literary character was encouraged by his deceased spouse decades previously, this actualization 'stomping' through a gentle creek of sorts from which the additional commentaries reflexively break off and return (the format reminding me of Jacob Richmond's Ride the Cyclone).
(There are various loosely interoperational domains which possess their own consequent features whose rhetorical/technological/meteorological transmissions can coalesce to fabricate distinguished conceptions of value, which, when re/acting with the complementary/contradictory features of their fellow inter/national/regional/local/individual agents, and the constant imposition of random occurrences whose unforeseen interjections conduct concrete theoretical abstractions, before and after the fact, team-up to market sundry identities, who are nonetheless reliant upon historical events, and their consequent/subsequent interactions, themselves).
There's a sly intertextual reversal built into the film's flow as well.
Impressive.
*Kermode hasn't seen enough 21st century National Film Board of Canada films to be able to objectively make this claim, but couldn't resist due to the ways in which Stories We Tell reminded him of the many NFBC films he enjoyed watching during his youth. He also lives within the 21st century.
Francine
Diagnosing a particular psychodemocratic symptom by following the release of a shy free-spirited loner from prison, Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky's Francine correlates a general disenfranchised flair for self-imposed isolation with a personal tendency to spontaneously combust in a tight examination of a private experimental individual.
Francine (Melissa Leo) has no trouble finding work after her release and has the confidence and strength to go so far as to pick and choose among jobs (all of which relate to animals).
She does lose one due to her unique approach to customer relations, but she quickly bounces back, doesn't seem phased, and finds another position.
(After stealing a puppy).
She feels more at home with the animal world and as the film unreels the number of pets within her apartment steadily increases.
She meets people within her new community and loves to go out, whether its head-banging by the roadside or a visit to a local church; but after years of not fitting in (I'm assuming) doesn't encourage the growth of either friendships or relationships.
Or maybe she never liked spending extended periods of time with others; there isn't much backstory to go on so this is just speculation.
But she loves her pets and there's a great scene which festively superimposes a frenetic degree of freeform felicity upon a dysfunctionally operative domestic diorama, which looks like so much fun.
But she eventually goes too far publicly, and her actions, although relatively slight, when aligned with her criminal history, (likely) engender harsh penalties.
Chill film considering.
Francine (Melissa Leo) has no trouble finding work after her release and has the confidence and strength to go so far as to pick and choose among jobs (all of which relate to animals).
She does lose one due to her unique approach to customer relations, but she quickly bounces back, doesn't seem phased, and finds another position.
(After stealing a puppy).
She feels more at home with the animal world and as the film unreels the number of pets within her apartment steadily increases.
She meets people within her new community and loves to go out, whether its head-banging by the roadside or a visit to a local church; but after years of not fitting in (I'm assuming) doesn't encourage the growth of either friendships or relationships.
Or maybe she never liked spending extended periods of time with others; there isn't much backstory to go on so this is just speculation.
But she loves her pets and there's a great scene which festively superimposes a frenetic degree of freeform felicity upon a dysfunctionally operative domestic diorama, which looks like so much fun.
But she eventually goes too far publicly, and her actions, although relatively slight, when aligned with her criminal history, (likely) engender harsh penalties.
Chill film considering.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Mars et Avril
A rhythmic terrestrial interplanetary concordance collegially captivates audiences of the future in Martin Villeneuve's Mars et Avril, set in Montréal.
So nice, to watch, a science-fiction film, that humbly celebrates interdisciplinary artistic creation instead of some damn war culminating in an epic battle.
Crisp cosmic cerebral clarity: another, great film, made, in Québec.
The plot concerns the solidification of an abstract feminine image which is in turn corporealized as a musical instrument which a virtuoso performer then instantaneously masters live to the delight of his devoted listeners, thereby uniting inspiration, extraction, construction, distribution, and reception, in a harmonious synthesis of artistic production.
Yet as proof of a legend's historical longevity is ambitiously sought, an unknown factor, a representative of that which was sacrificed in order to sustain a radiant resurgent reverberation, threatens the unity of the whole, by accidentally silencing its voice, while ensuring the survival of its exhalations.
As the output destabilizes, so does the artist's basic distinction between interior and external reality, as if the film itself is unaware of a subtle intoxication, until the manufacturer finds a way to unite the process's conception and etherealization, directly binding two consciousnesses in their dreamwork, and generating un noveau monde.
Now that's science-fiction.
There was an odd moment for me in said dreamwork where I was wondering why the dreamworlds within films often closely mirror those established by alert spatio-temporal objectivities, which awakened a countermemory of David Lynch and Mark Frost's Red Room from Twin Peaks, when the scene suddenly changed to one invoking a comparison between it and said Red Room, with music reminiscent of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti's "Sycamore Trees."
That was weird.
The marsonautes infuse the artistic philosophical romance with a cheeky degree of comedy that rounds out the film's intellectual action.
Indeed.
So nice, to watch, a science-fiction film, that humbly celebrates interdisciplinary artistic creation instead of some damn war culminating in an epic battle.
Crisp cosmic cerebral clarity: another, great film, made, in Québec.
The plot concerns the solidification of an abstract feminine image which is in turn corporealized as a musical instrument which a virtuoso performer then instantaneously masters live to the delight of his devoted listeners, thereby uniting inspiration, extraction, construction, distribution, and reception, in a harmonious synthesis of artistic production.
Yet as proof of a legend's historical longevity is ambitiously sought, an unknown factor, a representative of that which was sacrificed in order to sustain a radiant resurgent reverberation, threatens the unity of the whole, by accidentally silencing its voice, while ensuring the survival of its exhalations.
As the output destabilizes, so does the artist's basic distinction between interior and external reality, as if the film itself is unaware of a subtle intoxication, until the manufacturer finds a way to unite the process's conception and etherealization, directly binding two consciousnesses in their dreamwork, and generating un noveau monde.
Now that's science-fiction.
There was an odd moment for me in said dreamwork where I was wondering why the dreamworlds within films often closely mirror those established by alert spatio-temporal objectivities, which awakened a countermemory of David Lynch and Mark Frost's Red Room from Twin Peaks, when the scene suddenly changed to one invoking a comparison between it and said Red Room, with music reminiscent of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti's "Sycamore Trees."
That was weird.
The marsonautes infuse the artistic philosophical romance with a cheeky degree of comedy that rounds out the film's intellectual action.
Indeed.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Faust
And within a mendicant, mountainous, microcosm, classically constructed, Gothically germinated, and residually realized, wherein one's affluent 21st century appetites atrophy while those of its citizens starve, he who possesses bountiful knowledge is tempted by a resplendent representative of an aspect which he fails to comprehend, his fabricated yet all-encompassing desire having been serpentinely syncopated, as a bear growls in the wilderness, in Alexander Sokurov's Faust's obstinate prolonged periodical remonstrance, whose resultant subjective reconstitution, climactically dislocates an historically sustained psychodeterminancy.
Through the art of manipulation.
Its traditional themes and monumental modalities are elaborately elucidated and sensuously entwined.
Competing rational classifications are cantankerously, sinisterly, and conditionally, collated.
Notwithstanding a little joy.
The world Sokurov creates arguably situates the contemporary depersonalized alienated televisual lack of collective agency within an impoverished feudal stasis to materialize an ahistorical fabric, but that may be a bit of a stretch.
For me, it also functions as a dramatic counterpart to Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings triology, the opening sequence having begged the comparison (not that Faust isn't fantastic and The Lord of the Rings undramatic).
And Faust (Johannes Zeiler), you fool, you had it in you all along.
Didn't you see "Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me?"
Through the art of manipulation.
Its traditional themes and monumental modalities are elaborately elucidated and sensuously entwined.
Competing rational classifications are cantankerously, sinisterly, and conditionally, collated.
Notwithstanding a little joy.
The world Sokurov creates arguably situates the contemporary depersonalized alienated televisual lack of collective agency within an impoverished feudal stasis to materialize an ahistorical fabric, but that may be a bit of a stretch.
For me, it also functions as a dramatic counterpart to Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings triology, the opening sequence having begged the comparison (not that Faust isn't fantastic and The Lord of the Rings undramatic).
And Faust (Johannes Zeiler), you fool, you had it in you all along.
Didn't you see "Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me?"
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Bonsái
A bond, an extended period of growth, a felicitous fortuitous frequency, historically resonating.
Julio (Diego Noguera) accidentally finds love in Christián Jiménez's Bonsái and its particularized peculiar panoramic proclivities produce a prepositional poignancy.
Subjective logical adaptations to seemingly immutable biological fascinations harness the everlasting.
The simulation of a tangible incorporeality as well as the fabrication of the authentic necessitate themselves when related artistic proliferations are suddenly materialized, due to the verisimilitude encapsulating a missed opportunity.
Beginnings and canonical literary liaisons foundationally reappear.
Melancholic longing permeates each aspect as Julio's amorous recapitulations attempt to revitalize a long lost cohesive fragility.
Or the reification of a dream.
Didn't even know In Search of Lost Time played a role in this film prior to choosing to see it.
Julio (Diego Noguera) accidentally finds love in Christián Jiménez's Bonsái and its particularized peculiar panoramic proclivities produce a prepositional poignancy.
Subjective logical adaptations to seemingly immutable biological fascinations harness the everlasting.
The simulation of a tangible incorporeality as well as the fabrication of the authentic necessitate themselves when related artistic proliferations are suddenly materialized, due to the verisimilitude encapsulating a missed opportunity.
Beginnings and canonical literary liaisons foundationally reappear.
Melancholic longing permeates each aspect as Julio's amorous recapitulations attempt to revitalize a long lost cohesive fragility.
Or the reification of a dream.
Didn't even know In Search of Lost Time played a role in this film prior to choosing to see it.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Looper
Casually steeping the intertextual typography for a poppy paranoid streetwise technovernacular, real horrorshowlike, frenetically interspersing euphoric and trepidatious tremors, bumptiously, offhandedly, and rupturously stimulating abbreviations, while synthesizing an intertemporal suicidal personalized universal, Rian Johnson's Looper ruggedly relies on standard fictionally scientific reflexivities, without deflating their zeppelinesque thermocline, to romanticize a gritty, graphic, gregarious shock, while autosuggesting, an intransitive perpetuity.
As the crow flies.
One loop sees a job well done, followed by a carefree binge, a requisite regression, and vindication through love.
In the other, to sustain and avenge said vindication, a monstrous methodology metastasizes.
Either way the outcome is inevitable.
But a third way does present itself, nurtured by a split-second revelation based upon the prior knowledge of a definitive causeway the agency of which is too much to precondition.
So, rather than embracing what seems like predetermination, the agent spontaneously disorients his 'historical' trek.
Stretching through the void.
As the crow flies.
One loop sees a job well done, followed by a carefree binge, a requisite regression, and vindication through love.
In the other, to sustain and avenge said vindication, a monstrous methodology metastasizes.
Either way the outcome is inevitable.
But a third way does present itself, nurtured by a split-second revelation based upon the prior knowledge of a definitive causeway the agency of which is too much to precondition.
So, rather than embracing what seems like predetermination, the agent spontaneously disorients his 'historical' trek.
Stretching through the void.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Trouble with the Curve
Trouble with the Curve.
Trouble with the Curve is a nice story. It situates a complicated familial dynamic within a competitive professional atmosphere which is adorned with collegial and asinine interactions that polarize the continuum established between youth and age.
Relationships and ethnocentric tendencies are examined as well, and after an explanation is provided, the resultant synergies mobilize the disenfranchised.
And the multidimensional nature of experiential competencies collaboratively contends with electronically generated statistics to offer an holistic approach to the practice of forecasting.
It's presented in an easy-to-follow and understand format, potentially photosynthesizing a modest kernel of truth.
All of these things, are good.
Clint Eastwood's character could have been more diversely differentiated from that whom he played in Gran Torino however.
Not that I don't love the old curmudgeon, but not enough time has elapsed between the two films.
And it's tough to find shelter from the narrative's after-school-special-like style, which, while cultivating a strong inclusive yet combative framework, lacks the creative virtuosities needed to motivate a wide-ranging reception.
Not that it's trying to do that.
Trouble with the Curve is a nice story. It situates a complicated familial dynamic within a competitive professional atmosphere which is adorned with collegial and asinine interactions that polarize the continuum established between youth and age.
Relationships and ethnocentric tendencies are examined as well, and after an explanation is provided, the resultant synergies mobilize the disenfranchised.
And the multidimensional nature of experiential competencies collaboratively contends with electronically generated statistics to offer an holistic approach to the practice of forecasting.
It's presented in an easy-to-follow and understand format, potentially photosynthesizing a modest kernel of truth.
All of these things, are good.
Clint Eastwood's character could have been more diversely differentiated from that whom he played in Gran Torino however.
Not that I don't love the old curmudgeon, but not enough time has elapsed between the two films.
And it's tough to find shelter from the narrative's after-school-special-like style, which, while cultivating a strong inclusive yet combative framework, lacks the creative virtuosities needed to motivate a wide-ranging reception.
Not that it's trying to do that.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Remember being disappointed when Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was released in 2003. I liked it when I eventually rented it, but still couldn't shake that "I wish they'd just left it alone" feeling, which had inspired my initial hesitation.
Watched it again a couple of times last weekend and was seriously impressed. It's arguably better than T2 although it depends upon what time in your life you view it/them.
T2 was great when I was a kid (it's still good [I also watched it last weekend]). The apocalypse is averted, the future remains open, and things can reattain a level of relative normalcy if the trauma can be creatively dissimulated.
Solid sci-fi, convincing absurdity, collaborative outlook, intact.
T3 represents a sequel which strategically follows a similar pattern to its predecessor(s), revisiting familiar scenes and situations in order to socialize on the franchise's precedents, while reimagining them with enough mutated historical ingenuity to subtly transmit an evolutionary code.
Without screwing things up.
Such revisitations are done at great risk for if the scenarios fail to entrance, the predecessor/s quickly begin/s to appear more appealing.
T3's resolution is somewhat less innocent, however (it's much less innocent), which, for those of us who saw T2 when they were 12 and T3 many years later, while still remaining in possession of the firm environmentally friendly conscious T2 shyly promotes, fictionally nurtures a degree of realistic despondency, brought about by an increasingly monolithic technocratic agency's dismissal of environmental concerns (the environmental movement, from what I remember, was stronger in Canada in 1991), by directly working its principle audience's growth into the script, bizarrely taking into account different trends and fashions, while harshly yet romantically preparing them for the post-symbolic (notably when John [Nick Stahl] resignedly yet affirmably utters a cliché when he's flying to Crystal Peak with Catherine Brewster [Claire Danes]).
Hence, within T3, a pagan dimension in touch with the eternal timeline and its intertemporal distortions (whether or not these distortions should be viewed as part of the eternal timeline is up for debate but the evidence provided by T3 suggests they should not) intervenes and ensures that two somewhat unwilling individuals are given a fighting chance to subvert an inevitable machinismo (to continue to fight for a more collaborative playing field against forces possessing incontrovertible resource rich 'class-oriented' biases)(the timeline is reconstituted to the best possible version nature can provide after which its 'unwitting' agents must generally fend for themselves).
And who has returned with updated loveable psychological subroutines? None other than the converted patriarchal killing machine who saw the light (was reprogrammed) and began using his organic metallurgic abilities to protect humanistic interests instead (himself). Much of what his counterpart from T2 learned flows within but now that Mr. Connor's older and realizes what he's up against, his counterarguments to that created by his significant other's interpretation of his childhood memories occasionally lack his youthful antagonistic conviction.
After surviving the intermediary years, he comes to understand the T-101's (Arnold Schwarzenegger) no-nonsense methods.
Mechanically, T-101's primary adversary is a younger more flexible model, but even though he's an older design, this doesn't mean he can't compete.
In regards to the dialogue established by the changing feminine gender paradigms culturalized by the gap between these two sequels, in T2 the only strong female character with knowledge that would make a significant historical difference is locked-up in a mental institution; in T3 the feminine is split, one character representing independent unyielding destructive technocratic oppression, the other, bourgeois stability transformed (consequently) into a fierce warrioress.
In regards to identity, as far as John and Catherine Brewster go, and ignoring the acute crisis the T-101 must face, T3 seems to be suggesting that if you're unclassified or professional (notably in the "you're not exactly my 'type' either" exchange), and if democratic institutions become so diluted that their impact no longer bears any teeth, or a well-funded psychological campaign produces a wide-ranging cynicism regarding their effects even when they're still capable of bearing fruit, you'll both be stuck necessarily contending with an entrenched systemic opponent who had been modestly brought to heel after the Second World War.
Try and think about what Barack Obama would have been able to do then.
Which seems to be T3's prescient message, which could explain the lacklustre reviews it received during the George W. Bush Era. I don't know. But it takes the risk of bombing due to the ways in which it relies so heavily on T2's format and manages to ironically cultivate greener pastures to the contrary, which is a sign of bold writing, and great filmmaking (directed by Jonathan Mostow, screenplay by Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato).
And the Dr. Silverman (Earl Boen) scene is priceless. I'll watch it again just to see that alone.
There's more humour within too, notably the ways in which the 'asocial' terminators affect those they meet, my favourite line being "and, the coffin," subtly reflecting the difficulties the eccentric encounter on a regular basis.
Oh, and considering how much revenue Judgement Day generated, it's hard to believe that it took 12 years for them to release Rise of the Machines.
Watched it again a couple of times last weekend and was seriously impressed. It's arguably better than T2 although it depends upon what time in your life you view it/them.
T2 was great when I was a kid (it's still good [I also watched it last weekend]). The apocalypse is averted, the future remains open, and things can reattain a level of relative normalcy if the trauma can be creatively dissimulated.
Solid sci-fi, convincing absurdity, collaborative outlook, intact.
T3 represents a sequel which strategically follows a similar pattern to its predecessor(s), revisiting familiar scenes and situations in order to socialize on the franchise's precedents, while reimagining them with enough mutated historical ingenuity to subtly transmit an evolutionary code.
Without screwing things up.
Such revisitations are done at great risk for if the scenarios fail to entrance, the predecessor/s quickly begin/s to appear more appealing.
T3's resolution is somewhat less innocent, however (it's much less innocent), which, for those of us who saw T2 when they were 12 and T3 many years later, while still remaining in possession of the firm environmentally friendly conscious T2 shyly promotes, fictionally nurtures a degree of realistic despondency, brought about by an increasingly monolithic technocratic agency's dismissal of environmental concerns (the environmental movement, from what I remember, was stronger in Canada in 1991), by directly working its principle audience's growth into the script, bizarrely taking into account different trends and fashions, while harshly yet romantically preparing them for the post-symbolic (notably when John [Nick Stahl] resignedly yet affirmably utters a cliché when he's flying to Crystal Peak with Catherine Brewster [Claire Danes]).
Hence, within T3, a pagan dimension in touch with the eternal timeline and its intertemporal distortions (whether or not these distortions should be viewed as part of the eternal timeline is up for debate but the evidence provided by T3 suggests they should not) intervenes and ensures that two somewhat unwilling individuals are given a fighting chance to subvert an inevitable machinismo (to continue to fight for a more collaborative playing field against forces possessing incontrovertible resource rich 'class-oriented' biases)(the timeline is reconstituted to the best possible version nature can provide after which its 'unwitting' agents must generally fend for themselves).
And who has returned with updated loveable psychological subroutines? None other than the converted patriarchal killing machine who saw the light (was reprogrammed) and began using his organic metallurgic abilities to protect humanistic interests instead (himself). Much of what his counterpart from T2 learned flows within but now that Mr. Connor's older and realizes what he's up against, his counterarguments to that created by his significant other's interpretation of his childhood memories occasionally lack his youthful antagonistic conviction.
After surviving the intermediary years, he comes to understand the T-101's (Arnold Schwarzenegger) no-nonsense methods.
Mechanically, T-101's primary adversary is a younger more flexible model, but even though he's an older design, this doesn't mean he can't compete.
In regards to the dialogue established by the changing feminine gender paradigms culturalized by the gap between these two sequels, in T2 the only strong female character with knowledge that would make a significant historical difference is locked-up in a mental institution; in T3 the feminine is split, one character representing independent unyielding destructive technocratic oppression, the other, bourgeois stability transformed (consequently) into a fierce warrioress.
In regards to identity, as far as John and Catherine Brewster go, and ignoring the acute crisis the T-101 must face, T3 seems to be suggesting that if you're unclassified or professional (notably in the "you're not exactly my 'type' either" exchange), and if democratic institutions become so diluted that their impact no longer bears any teeth, or a well-funded psychological campaign produces a wide-ranging cynicism regarding their effects even when they're still capable of bearing fruit, you'll both be stuck necessarily contending with an entrenched systemic opponent who had been modestly brought to heel after the Second World War.
Try and think about what Barack Obama would have been able to do then.
Which seems to be T3's prescient message, which could explain the lacklustre reviews it received during the George W. Bush Era. I don't know. But it takes the risk of bombing due to the ways in which it relies so heavily on T2's format and manages to ironically cultivate greener pastures to the contrary, which is a sign of bold writing, and great filmmaking (directed by Jonathan Mostow, screenplay by Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato).
And the Dr. Silverman (Earl Boen) scene is priceless. I'll watch it again just to see that alone.
There's more humour within too, notably the ways in which the 'asocial' terminators affect those they meet, my favourite line being "and, the coffin," subtly reflecting the difficulties the eccentric encounter on a regular basis.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Bullhead
Symptomatically and jaggedly pluralizing the personal psychological affects of a sudden all-encompassing disillusionment, while intricately stratifying a diverse bombastic barrage, literally interjecting his film with bellicose doses of testosterone, Michaël R. Roskam takes Bullhead and cacophonically synthesizes a man with his husbandry, as he tries whatever he can to surreptitiously distend.
An event. A transformation. Perseverance. Sublimation. Shock. Disintegration.
The wind in the willows.
Or the cyclone in the spruces in this instance. Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts) is one volatile powder keg lacking the deflammatory passions which may have softened the blow.
But apart from scintillatingly nocturnalizing a tragic character study, Bullhead complacently, cerebrally, and chaotically economizes its 'subject matter,' potently intensifying a somewhat underrepresented particular submergence, while using it to indirectly comment upon Belgian social interactions.
If Mr. Vanmarsenille represents the local, then the local is diversified, then regionalized (the regional possessing a nationalistic nuance), and then subjectively traumatized, historicized, and atemporalized, while the film retains a selective degree of objectivity (which dissipates near the end), the catalyst of said trauma triumvirately functioning within the local, regional, and national domains, with romantic, familial, comic and veterinary issues exhaustively adorning its multiplicity.
Mr. Roskam knows how to get things done (screenplay by Michaël R. Roskam).
It offers a potential counterpoint to Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, one film focused primarily on a individual's parenting struggles within an environment theoretically dominated by the personal, the other's less subject-centric caricature working within one hypothetically attempting to produce a less hostile bilateral congregation, both lamenting static subjective growth.
Stress. They're both, full, of stress.
I recommend Bullhead for lovers of multidimensional cinema but be prepared cause it's rather dark.
I kind of think of it as a stubborn grouchy emasculated subdued rowdy intellectual action film to which you must pay strict attention.
Calamitizing the maintenance of an ideal.
Which blindly obscures what's beautiful.
An event. A transformation. Perseverance. Sublimation. Shock. Disintegration.
The wind in the willows.
Or the cyclone in the spruces in this instance. Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts) is one volatile powder keg lacking the deflammatory passions which may have softened the blow.
But apart from scintillatingly nocturnalizing a tragic character study, Bullhead complacently, cerebrally, and chaotically economizes its 'subject matter,' potently intensifying a somewhat underrepresented particular submergence, while using it to indirectly comment upon Belgian social interactions.
If Mr. Vanmarsenille represents the local, then the local is diversified, then regionalized (the regional possessing a nationalistic nuance), and then subjectively traumatized, historicized, and atemporalized, while the film retains a selective degree of objectivity (which dissipates near the end), the catalyst of said trauma triumvirately functioning within the local, regional, and national domains, with romantic, familial, comic and veterinary issues exhaustively adorning its multiplicity.
Mr. Roskam knows how to get things done (screenplay by Michaël R. Roskam).
It offers a potential counterpoint to Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, one film focused primarily on a individual's parenting struggles within an environment theoretically dominated by the personal, the other's less subject-centric caricature working within one hypothetically attempting to produce a less hostile bilateral congregation, both lamenting static subjective growth.
Stress. They're both, full, of stress.
I recommend Bullhead for lovers of multidimensional cinema but be prepared cause it's rather dark.
I kind of think of it as a stubborn grouchy emasculated subdued rowdy intellectual action film to which you must pay strict attention.
Calamitizing the maintenance of an ideal.
Which blindly obscures what's beautiful.
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