the fantastic flying books of mr. morris lessmore (2011): books can be your best friend

I'm sure every other art/animation blogger and their mum has blogged about 'The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore' (as well as an iPad app...) but when something showcases the love of carefree imagination and fantasy within literature, how can I not?  Hailing from the roots of Louisiana, William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg bring together inspiration from Hurricane Katrina, Wizard of Oz, Buster Keaton, and the love of books and literature. And the combination of it all is too precious to not love.

center stage (1992): oh, she may be weary

Ruan Lingyu (阮玲玉) 1910-1935

"As an artist, I hate to be maligned. Rumours are horrible in any age. It's still just as scary now. A movie star doesn't need to make her private life public. What an ordeal if the public twists the facts and turn white into black. When your private life spills into public domain, you feel you're being stripped of everything bit by bit. That's the most traumatic experience. So I fully understand how Ruan felt then." - Maggie Cheung.

Ruan Lingyu was one of China's first predominant actresses, thrived in Shanghai's silent cinema scene in the 30s, and at the tender age of 25, committed suicide. But her inner motivations, what she liked, what she disliked, her dreams, were all taken to the grave with her, leaving Maggie Cheung (and the team) a half tabula-rosa to embody and a story to flesh out on film. And Cheung's performance is something to behold: breathing life into Ruan Lingyu once more, whoever she was 80-something years ago, and the talent she had on camera. Stanley Kwon combines biopic aspects from dramatization to documentation to archival footage, to create not just a reflection, but also a study of a sensitive, long-gone actress and an equally sensitive, lone-gone era, filled with societal pressures and expectations that don't exactly go away even with time.

Other thoughts: Stunningly beautiful Maggie Cheung, Shanghai silent cinema needs more delving into, and slow, so very slow.

titles: beginners (2011)

When I first heard of the film, I mistook the title for, 'Beginnings.' Ever since, it's always been 'Beginnings' rather than 'Beginners': a good title for the start of 2012.

leningrad cowboys go america (1989): just wanna be a rockstar baby

Closing off 2011 with Leningrad Cowboys Go America--if not belated since I watched this before I went to England. Finnish director, Aki Kaurismäki introduces a bizarrely wonderful crossover between cold war Eastern European culture and western pop culture, in the form of fictitious band, The Leningrad Cowboys. With their obtusely exaggerated pompadours, ridiculous pointy shoes, ill-fitting suits, over-the-top oompah folk music turned to versatile blues-rock-country-ska-you-name-it-they-play-it scene; they were a great resurrection parody nod to the American rock o'roll scene of the fifties. They move to the US, following their shady manager in dreams of becoming as big as their pompadours, only to find out that Mexico is their destination for "their kind of music." Hopping from roadhouse to biker saloon, the film takes us on a surreal, quirky adventure through the US, through old-time rock o'roll and a droll sense of deadpan humor.

The Leningrad Cowboys were actually the Sleepy Sleepers in real life--that is until they became the Leningrad Cowboys after the movie took off.

the good, the bad and the ugly (1966): cowboys twirling them guns

What makes a western, a western:

• Deserts, never-ending stretch of deserts, and the one or two random saloon towns or adobe hut
• Bullets of sweat, grit, dust, and dirt, which can never be washed off even with an hour of scrubbing
• Guns, cannons, explosives
• Horses and horsebackriding
• Attire of tattered wide-rim hats, ponchos, cowboy boots with spurs, holsters, and the most important of all: a water pouch
• Buckets of money buried somewhere
• Twangy, dramatic soundtrack (an extra star if Ennio Morricone happens to be your soundtrack composer!)
• Fantastic intertitles
• Great character names
• Super close ups to insinuate first-person perspectives
• A pink sun umbrella (an extra star for frills)
• Bandit cowboys, sheriffs, and a very obvious villain
• Cigars and alcohol (you don't need food when you have these!)
• Clint Eastwood, squinting into the sun with his mouth in a perpetual grimace

That pretty much wraps up Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, which as the title implies, follows three men: a good-esque fellow named Blondie (Clint Eastwood), a very bad man named Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), and a particularly ugly one named Tuco (Eli Wallach). I especially loved seeing Tuco, twirling his pink sun umbrella with frills, and the way he enunciated, 'I'll killll youuuu!!" Also, it is always fantastic to see Eastwood do what he does best: squint, grimace, and chew on a cigar while shooting away in the endless desert.

Semi-related trivia: DJ erb made a great mashup of Ennio Morricone (Ecstasy of Gold) versus Naz (One Mic). It was the first mashup I was introduced to and it is still one of the greatest mashups I've ever heard.

the devil's backbone (2001): ghost story with soul

Guillermo Del Toro is undoubtedly one of my favourites in the film world--if Wong Kar-Wai appeals to me through his nostalgic romanticism (and HK of some time ago-the HK I wish to remember), then Del Toro appeals to me through his cinematic (and literary) exploration of imagination alongside reality (or reality alongside imagination), fantasy, and horror.

El Espinazo del Diablo--a kind of predecessor to his later-on big hit, Pan's Labyrinth, is also set against the Spanish Civil War in a Loyalist-run orphanage, housing the children of deceased Loyalists. It's a multifaceted story of a new boy who learns of a murdered child whose ghost continually haunts for revenge.  Their minds are impressionable with myths and fantasies and impose their imagination upon the world they live in--but are they merely conjured?   Then there are the adults--flawed protectors and one used-to-be-orphan-now-aggressor who will stop at nothing to steal gold from the orphanage. What makes the film enjoyably suspenseful is the constant reminder of tension: nuclear bomb in the orphanage, waging warfare, ghostly intervention, the muddy dirt and darkness, all pointing to some unavoidable doom cast upon them all. Imagery is beautiful--love the contrast of bright dusty yellow dessert and blue skies against shadowy dark tones of the night. The boys are as wonderful as they are terrible to each other--though charming and innocent despite their Lord of the Flies-attributes. In the end, the children depart from the world that, in its harsh and stark way, protected them against the 'real reality', which is much darker and more horrifying than the ghosts or the foes they confronted in their enclosed orphanage.

rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960): a milkshake of melodrama

I'm back to blogspot after a summer and a third of fall's worth of abandonment.  Was originally going to post my 1/4-review-3/4-screencaps-thing onto my livejournal but it got so out of hand with my other updates that I decided that it was time to return to 'joining forces with superman.'  Not that anyone knows this exists lol!

Finally watched Luschino Visconti's Rocco e i suoi fratell (1960)--out of guilt that it's been sitting on my hard drive since who knows when and my need for some attractive Alain Delon. Typical Visconti; long, melodramatic, theatrical, and long. Many describe it as neo-realist but the only aspect I find neorealistic in this film is the focus on a poor, migrant farming family from southern Italy, trying to make a living in the cold, aloof northern industrial city of Milan (the cinematography though is stunning--especially the touches of film noir lighting and the barren landscape of working class housing).  Beyond a family's struggle to survive, Visconti takes the audience through a multi-character study of three different individuals' descending path towards the act of 'selling their soul' as a 'sacrifice,' means of surviving, or sheer lust for power and recognition.  The human condition's susceptibility to jealousy and pettiness proves as dramatic approaches to consequential demise and further disintegration of a family.  Perhaps touching another (neorealist) social commentary, the film addresses the change in times, in mentality, especially in regards of traditional spiritually-inspired acts of sainthood versus reality-oriented pragmatism.

It's like a bittersweet frothy milkshake of a bit Rocky, a bit of Italian diaspora, lots of family drama, and yummy bits of Alain Delon... There's nothing more I can say about Delon...the fact I had to wean out so many screencaps of Delon CUs says it all.

Trivia: One of Visconti's lovers was Helmut Berger, who played Ludwig in the really, really long film called Ludwig with Romy Schneider, Delon's ex. Berger was also in De Sica's last film, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, in which I recall him being blonde, beautiful, and anemic.

la jetée (1962): thank you leslie

A film of photograph stills, a 60s post-apocalyptic, sci-fi trek through time traveling and mind psycho-wankery, directed by Chris Maker and edited together into a remarkable montage by Jean Ravel--truly an inspiration.

the king's speech (2010): american fascination with british monarchy

Merry Christmas!  Winter break has made an unexpected, upsetting turn but I am trying my best to march onwards, head up, face determined.  Today, the parentals and I decided to go watch Tom Hooper's historical drama of Queen Elizabeth II's dad, poor spazzy, temperamental king with a stuttering nature, played by the brilliant Colin Firth.  Alongside are the ever-shining Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Mother and Geoffrey Rush as snarky, unprofessional yet efficient, Australian speech defect therapist, Lionel Logue.  It was a nice escape into another period piece in which the weather outside matches the weather within the film on this holiday season.

blow up (1966): mom, I'm not taking hallucinogens promise

Michelangelo Antonioni is popularly known for his trilogy of L'Avventura, La Notte, and L'Eclisse, all which I watched but ended up passing out on (though, I managed to keep the eyelids open for Alain Delon in L'Eclisse).  Why I decided to give Blowup a try, beats me.  Antonioni takes us into the beautiful but lifeless world of mod fashion and art of "Swinging London" and succeeds in truly making a period piece that detaches itself firmly within the 60s.  It captures the views of blossoming preoccupation with post-modernism, existentialism and ideals of that time period very well: self-reference, loss of personal identity, emptiness of glamour, the repetition of the mundane, and the uncertainty and questioning of experience and purpose within life.  Blowup can alos serve as a bigger, more abstract metaphor for Antonioni's perception of filmmaking, the whole concept of dream versus reality and seeking objective truth and if it exists or not and so on. While it was beautifully and aesthetically shot, David Hemmings as a pretentious photographer manho, a tall, young, elegant but spazzy Vanessa Redgrave, and the rest of the cast...just not my type of people at all.

le petit soldat (1963): quotable quotes

Le Petit Soldat has the famous popular quote: "Photography is truth...and cinema is truth 24 times a second" but I was more taken with character Forestier's monologue post-torture scene, beginning with:

"Today, everyone hates the French. I'm very proud to be French. But I'm also against nationalism. One defends ideas, not territories. I love France because I love the films of du Bellay...and louis aragon. I love Germany because I love Beethoven. I don't love Barcelona because of Spain but I like Spain because Barcelona exists and America because I like their cars..." - Bruno Forestier

kung-fu hustle (2004): cantonese in shanghai?!

Partly due to seeing the trailer and assuming the whole thing was in Cantonese and mostly due to being lazy, I watched with no subtitles. So while the movie was comprehensible 85% Cantonese, the remaining 15% mostly went through my ears, brain department processed about 20% of that and shooed off the rest. As for the film itself, why would a Chinese director set his story in Shanghai but write most of his characters as speakers of Cantonese and those few who were Mandarin speakers, fluidly engage in conversation with each other?! As anyone who has been in mainland China knows, no one north of Guangzhou understands Cantonese and most of the general Chinese population pretty much perceives it as no more than a dialect.

But I digress, language hi-jinks aside: it was all in good, martial-arty, screaming your guts out fun. I enjoyed how no one in this movie was a particularly sympathetic character and were all flawed to an extent of almost-obnoxiousness.

My favourite shot in the whole movie; I just love the not-really-but-sort-of-parallelism in background and foreground.

REDLINE (2010): SONIC BOOOOOM

"This is hella bamf shit!!!" pretty much sums up the entirety of this AMAZING SPECTACLE OF VISUAL EYE-WONDER OF EPIC PROPORTIONS. And it's pretty much impossible to NOT write about this film without utilizing PERMANENT CAPS-LOCK KEY, abusing the shift + 1 key over and over, and lack of grammatical structure!!! REDLINE takes SPACE RACING to an entirely different DIMENSION of speed and utter anarchy! We're in some alternative universe, filled with creatures and mechanisms that would put the fastest bullet trains today to shame. These machines are made of fucking biceps, triceps, quadraceps and any muscle that could be possibly mechanized and turned into the toughest type of metallic metal enforcement EVER! They're not cars; they're not space jets; they're FIERCE BEASTS, armed with missiles and gadgets all ready to assist in a dirty win, guns that would make Saddam Hussein weep, engines that apparently go up to 35,000 horsepower and throttle your brains to a sobbing, dripping mess.....you might want to invest in some gas-protection-thick goggles to save your eyeballs and tearducts. Then there's the exterior terrorist dictatorship universe of Roboworld: biological weapon called FUNKY BOY, which is on another platform of obtuse militarism, and hyper-disengaging cannons (or something close to that), akin to atom bombs enhanced with intense laser guns to the 1000th power. Did I mention steroidal chemical substances that don't even exist but could probably just wipe out the face of our planet this day? Yeah, don't think the universe today can handle this much power. It was THE RIDE OF MY LIFE; possibly my favourite film of 2010 so far. EXPLOSIVE.

(FYI: Katsuhito Ishii (Kill Bill Vol.1) and Takeshi Koike (Animatrix) hand-animated this over the span of five years. You can find the summarization here to read about possible mentions of a plot.)


Too many caps? NEVER. But it's a way better justice to VIEW THE TRAILER HERE, a 1 minute glimpse into the 100 MINUTE EPIC FIREWORKS SHOW that is REDLINE.

le mépris (1963): nothing to do with odysseus...or does it?

Starring Brigitte Bardot, Jean Gabin, and Fritz Lang himself. What can I say, it was a little bit on the painful side, with obligatory annoying American producer in the way of "art", repetition of the same soundtrack clip every few minutes or so, Bardot's character being idiotic... But as usual, Godard doesn't fail to deliver; that Kodak chrome colour film really makes everything pop (which is probably why every scene, minus an interlude and a scene, was shot in daytime/sunlight).

The return to Godard-watching has resumed.

thirty days of sharing: day two

02. your favourite movie

It was a throw up between this, Chungking Express (1994) by Wong Kar-Wai, starring my favourite Tony Leung and The Legend of 1900 (1998) by Giuseppe Tornatore, starring my favourite Tim Roth (soundtrack by the brilliant Ennio Morricone). Le Samourai won, based on the fact that it is the film I refer to as one of my favorites the most.   Alain Delon, Jean-Pierre Melville, perfectionist hit-man, minimalist setting and theme dating back to hints of Japanese samourai traditions, I dig it all.

Wiki | IMDB