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8 1/2

These surreal visuals! Claudia Cardinale! The italianness of the movie! The jazzy soundtrack! (I want it!) The overture to Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia! Oh God, only 8 minutes into it and I loved this movie already.

Ahhh, die Zuckerfee! I remember watching the beginning of “Stardust Memories” and was surprised that it was a direct reference and homage to the beginning of this film. These kinds of details: the music, the actors and especially the visuals are distracting me a little bit from the story, but that one is suprisingly lovely too.

Except for La Strada, Fellini’s movies are long, sometimes surreal portraits of life, society and people without a real plot. Unsurprisingly, this one is not too different from that even though it is centered around the main character and his struggles to make a movie. But the storyline is not all that obvious, which is where my surprise came from. Usually, Fellini’s later movies are a plain borefest for me even though there are aspects that I have liked, but why is it that I like this one so much? Is it the great actors? Is it the deep focus of a main character?

So I have seen two movies with Chiara Mastroianni now, and I am seeing my first one with Marcello Mastroianni. Wow, she really took after him, and not after Catherine Deneuve at all! They look exactly the same when they smile.

There is one thing I am really wondering about: The movie is supposed to be somewhat autobiographical and the women are playing an important role here. I also know that he married Giulietta Masina at age 23 and was with her until his death. “8 1/2” really makes me wonder about whether they had a relationship like Guido and Luisa here – just looking at Giulietta Masina’s face makes it impossible for me to believe.

Due to the non-existence of a plot and since I don’t really want to get into detail when it comes to the meaning of the film, I find it difficult to talk about more than directing craftmanship and the actors. The film deserves better, yet I don’t even feel all that pressured; considering the high acclaim of the film, I can just leave the analysis and dissecting to others. This movie definitely deserves this high acclaim in my opinion, and it was much less of a bore than some other Fellini’s. I recommend it… unter Vorbehalt. No plot is always a bad thing. Finally: why is this movie’s name 8 1/2 after all?

PS. The movies in the title are the ones from the Sight and Sound Critics list that I have yet to see.

New York, I love you

In many, many ways, I preferred Paris je t’aime. First of all, it was much less of an actor-fest but had some actually good directors who made nice pictures. And second, Paris je t’aime had some stories which were actually touching and whose stories were plain brilliant. Those were stories about love where you could actually feel something like love, where New York I love you is either funny or kitsch. Even the one I liked the most had its fault (that the dialogue was a little off), but the biggest mistake of the whole movie is that it did not end in a remotely powerful way as Paris je t’aime did. Especially since it had absolutely nothing to do with New York.

“Paris je t’aime” had 3 segments that I found absolutely brilliant and “New York I love you” had 2 that I would recommend. That is all, and the latter definitely fails.

The ones I liked:

(4) Yvan Attal – Ethan Hawke just as annoying and yet funny as ever
These pick-up lines were a lot of fun. I can’t believe Ethan Hawke but then again I have a feeling that no other actor could pull this off. Chris Cooper’s scene with Maggie Q. is love and brought a grin onto my face though. And the last part… oh my, I watched it a second time with the knowledge of its somewhat amusing end; it seems like the dialogue doesn’t work and suddenly feels fake. But even then, this segment wins by having a French director and by using a Radiohead song as ending.

(9) Fatih Akin – Shu Qi and the old painter
I like the close up shots of Shu Qi’s face very much, they looked very nice and the mise en scène of her huge mouth is lovely. The story was also surprisingly nice, with a simple, unpretentious approach. It just had one silly detail I really disliked: How the heck can it take so long to cut tree leaves? XD

(3) Shunji Iwai – Orlando Bloom as anime soundtrack composer.
Somehow I liked this reading Dostoevsky theme – light-hearted, slightly amusing, Orlando Bloom being less silly than usual – why not?

(5) Brett Ratner – Wheelchair girl in Central Park.
The idea is quite funny and so politically incorrect. But I liked it. And oh my God, Serena is in it! XD

(1) Jiang Wen – Hayden Christensen as a thief
It took me awhile to understand the beginning of the story; in fact, I had to go back to it, but still I would say that I enjoyed Jiang Wen’s directing for some reason. The story itself was nothing too special, but not all too bad either.

The ones I disliked:

(8) Natalie Portman – Black guy, white child
Woah, Natalie Portman’s directing debut. I wish she would restrain herself to acting in movies.

(10) Joshua Marston – A young and an old couple quarreling
I guess New York is not like Paris – for the Paris compilation, you mostly show romantic beginnings, with (I think) only one exception and even that one was very romantic. New York, I love you shows much more ‘older’ couples who have been together for a longer time, and I wish it would have used this potential some more. This is the guy who did “Maria Full of Grace”, how?

(7) Shekhar Kapur – Some horrible-looking high class hotel room and a sick server
The music, please! Ahhhh! How can they abuse such lovely opera sounds? I didn’t know the actors, although they weren’t bad; the setting looked horribly stuffy, the characters unlikeable. At least the film made some sort of attempt of dialogue about New York, but even that came off as horribly pretentious. Also where is the point of those mirror shots?

(6) Allen Hughes – Thinking and talking about sex
I have yet to see such a predictable short story ever in my life – shallow and predictable, and to top that, the directing is extremely cliché too. And the overly dramatic music! Ugh.

(2) Mira Nair – Natalie Portman without hair
Natalie Portman’s weird jewishness pisses me off. She takes it so seriously somehow? Perhaps I’m just too used to the likes of Billy Wilder and the Coen Brothers and Woody Allen that I am unable to appreciate. Nevertheless, this segment was annoying.

Also they are planning Shanghai I love you and Jerusalem I love you. How much can you milk a bad franchise like this? The cities they picked are also weird… I would have expected so many others to come first: Tokyo, London, Rome, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Seoul, Hongkong, San Francisco etc. etc.

Whatever works

Holy crap, the main character looks like a mix of Scarlet Johansson and Reese Witherspoon, except she’s sort of not as… sparkling? She dated Marilyn Manson at some point though, so she probably has a very interesting personality.

Hey, this film actually made me laugh out loud. For a silly reason though, I laughed when she says “Protons? Did I just say protons? I mean cretins!” Ahem. She makes disgusting grits too! <3 But really, Woody Allen’s jokes have become sillier and less intellectual/sophisticated. At the same time, I find the older Woody Allen surprisingly young, unpretentious and openly funny, which seems to be a great thing for itself.

The worst thing about the film is that it’s way too short. It’s amazingly funny, it has the best characters and the way they evolve is lovely. Bu the shortness of the film makes it impossible for you to really feel the growth of the characters, or emotionally connect to them in the way it was possible for Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

In the end, I don’t understand the mixed reviews for this movie. Sure, the story itself isn’t all too deep and usually I hate physical jokes and artists who think that quantum mechanics require the smartest minds in the world. But that Heisenberg joke made me laugh, and the film has some great characters aside from an engaging storyline. I enjoyed the movie a lot (and actually the physicist friend of mine recommended the film to me!)

Tirez sur le pianiste

I’m writing this blog post right now because I don’t want to stop listening to Explosions in the Sky, which I would have to if I started watching a movie now, ahahaha.

The German Wikipedia article says the film is 79 minutes long, the French says 85 and the English 92. Beautiful… And this Criterion version I have seen actually says 1:21 hours?

These two main characters don’t look very Nouvelle Vague at all. Charles Aznavour is not tall and attractive enough and Marie Dubois looks like a Hollywood character. However, they feel absolutely perfect for this movie. His sad face is hilarious and melancholic at the same time; and she is very nice – the good thing about women in film noirs is that they always feel somewhat strong and smart. I definitely prefer women like that.

Instead of a synopsis, the French Wikipedia article on the film has a surprisingly nice “synopsis”. Usually the French articles are completely worthless as they don’t typically say much, but this one includes a very nice-sounding interpretation of this film to be some sort of parody of ganster stories, where the gangsters are actually the most amusing and likeable characters in the story. It also postulates that the film is mostly about love – knowing Truffaut’s other movies, I perfectly agree. The depiction of different women is crucial here, and give so many insights to the main character.

They have an essay month for Truffaut’s films at Not coming to a theater near you and in its esprit, I have already cut my promise not to see a French movie for awhile. Then again, a Nouvelle Vague film by someone I know is relatively safe, and honestly I don’t feel like experimenting all too much lately. There are too many films I want to see after all. The review for Jules et Jim is nice in how it mentions that Catherine is actually honest, but the one for Shooting the Piano Player is even better.

Finally, I love how Marie Dubois, the actress of Léna is the one who is pantomiming “Tirez sur le pianiste” in “Une Femme est une femme”. Speaking of titles, I think that “shooting” fits the of the movie perfectly, because on the one hand, you can take shooting in its first meaning; on the other hand, it seem to mean “a portrait of a piano player” which is exactly the layer of the film underneath its gangster comedy/parody.

I am glad I have seen this film despite my late disappointment with French movies. I wonder how Truffaut’s other work are going to compare to his first three very, very young Nouvelle Vague-ish films.

Yi Yi

It’s been awhile since I planned to watch this movie, mainly because everybody told me it’s very slow. Maybe it is… but it never felt slow to me! In fact, this is the very first thing that I noticed, I found myself caring for everything that happened in the film, and really none of the scenes were all that long, weren’t they? It’s more like most of the scenes are showing seemingly uninteresting details of people’s lives, especially the dialogues where the little boy is involved. Yang Yang is always posing such delightfully smart questions! I love them very much – he’s like the best little boy character ever! It is true that over these 3 hours running time nothing much happens, but at the same time, every scene is filled with so many of these beautiful details that never bored me, not even a bit.

What I do not agree so much with is the cinematography, which seemed nothing out of the ordinary for me. Sure, there are some interesting details like the video games and the observation cameras, which are lovely ideas. But in comparison to that, I definitely favor Jia Zhangke’s absolutely stunning images, which blow you away with atmosphere at times. The greatness of this film rather lies in the way the characters are portrayed, and how down to earth this is all executed. There are no shocking sex stories, nothing openly socio-critical, nothing political at all. But instead of all that, the film has something much more precious for me: it says so much more about life than perhaps all movies of the 6th generation together. (Okay, I am exaggerating.)

It’s been awhile since I have seen a movie about ‘life’, and I am happy to have found another one. I wonder how I would feel about this movie when I re-watch it in a few years, and I feel this urge of discussing the film now. I wish we would have seen it at a PIFF!

There are some scenes that were somewhat annoying, but then, Ting Ting’s love story became so cute when she was on a date with her boyfriend! I find it wonderful how they are engaging in such an innocent conversation in the Bagels café. That scene alone makes the film worthwhile a watch! I think that movies make our lives into a thousand lives.

Maybe I am just an idiot, but the last 2 1/2 minutes made my slightly distant and nonchalant face covered with tears. It was just so cute and touching, oh my god. Note that this scene has no music, this is not “The Boat that Rocked” that uses music to generate your tears, it’s much much more genuine. I have a feeling that in a few years, I am going to cry myself through the whole film.

I hope my parents would watch this movie, with Chinese subtitles if necessary. Even though they are not Taiwanese, the only thing that really distinguishes these characters from Chinese people is… their ‘Taiwanese accent’.

PS. To choose a movie to watch among two, I often choose the shorter one. I just looked up how long “Whatever works” is and happily I saw that it was only 92 minutes. Then I looked for the other film I wanted to see, “Tirez sur le pianiste”, and it was 92 minutes as well! Ahhhh!

Un Coeur en Hiver

It doesn’t happen often but I was extremely impressed by this scene (and the next one in the playlist) posted on Youtube. Unfortunately, though, these are possibly the two only great scenes of the whole film. (They were very, very great though – I liked them so much that I didn’t skip over them while watching the film.)

Maybe I have to keep myself away from all these French movies that are not Nouvelle Vague. I used to like „8 Femmes“ very much, but seriously, nothing feels as amusing and meaningful as the Nouvelle Vague. I get the impression that French films have a certain pseudo-intellectual heaviness, even the ones that I have liked (such as „La Belle Noiseuse“). Sometimes they are absolutely insupportable like „Un Conte de Noel“, sometimes even pointless comedies such as „Les Chansons d’Amour“ have this heavy emoness. In comparison to that, the Nouvelle Vagues, even Resnais whom I sort of dislike, have this incredible lightness in their characters.

This also applies to the characters. As much as I love Emmanuelle Béart (and her lovely face), I can’t help but dislike her severe character in this movie. Nevertheless, she is the star of this movie and a delight to see. Considering her background, I am surprised that she is such an amazing actress; her eyes are even more expressive than Anna Karina’s.

Daniel Auteil ist absolutely perfect as shy boy and Dussollier… ah, he’s always the same. The problem with him is that he looks like a father figure (yay Tanguy) no matter how old he is. He just doesn’t really work as lover, and I should have mentioned this for „Mélo“ already. But, luckily he’s good enough as an actor to sort of make up for it. In fact, this movie is a worse „Mélo“ with completely different characters.
I can’t believe the main character could possibly say „I am sorry, I don’t love you“ and I feel completely cold.

Finally, the last reason why this movie probably didn’t do it for me is the fact that I didn’t enjoy its music, which unfortunately is also playing an immense role in it. I usually like Ravel, and I am all for expressive, complicated, slightly modern music, I would even say that expressionist music is my favorite… but the music of this film is exactly like the film itself: Too heavy to transport its emotions.

Vivre sa Vie

In the last days, I have been playing with the idea of watching this movie quite a lot, and finally I did so (pretty much 5 years after I got to know about it for the first time). Anna Karina is indeed the goddess of the Nouvelle Vague indeed, and this is the film about her and her relationship with Godard. More than Alphaville, even more than Pierrot le Fou, this film is all about Godard’s view of Anna Karina. Even if I didn’t know that they were in love, this is absolutely fascinating. Anna Karina’s Nana is the Anna Karenina of today.

All painters make studies of women; of their face, their movements and their lives. More than anything else, this film is a study like that. In all his films with Anna Karina, Godard seems to be studying her, but this one is the most obvious and to some degree also the most honest. „À bout de souffle“ might be his best movie, but this one is even more beautiful and with a hint of honest depth, especially in her dialogue with the unknown philosopher. Much more than „Le Mépris“ even, the film has so many citable lines and while there doesn’t seem to be an overarching storyline, everything seems to fit marvelously in this movie.

Another scene that stuck in my mind is Anna Karina’s dance. As always, her dances are somewhat weird, making it impossible to qualify her as a good dancer despite her somewhat cute style.

Compared to that, I was not too impressed by the famous Jeanne d’Arc scene. However, I am extremely interested in Dreyer’s „Passion of Joan of Arc“ now, because what they showed in „Vivre sa Vie“ completely drew me in by its intense atmosphere.

Nana’s short hairstyle is slightly un-Karina-ish, but the bangs are somewhat typical for her again and frame her face beautifully. I wish my bangs would look like that on me!

Despite all the character’s wonderfully clear French, I was unable to understand everything. That’s what I get for not wanting to watch non-French subtitles. I just read a wonderful synopsis of the film here. There are so many references and details in the film! It’s quite lovely; I wish such websites existed for all movies.

Personally, I am not entirely sure what to think about this film. I am in love with the distinct episodic style, but at the same time, it’s comparably less fun than Godard’s other films. In general, it is amusing to see that Godard’s best movies (the aforementioned „À bout de souffle“ and „Le Mépris“) actually are not with Anna Karina.

PS. Matthieu Kassovitz’s father is pretty cute!
PPS. Her name is Nana Kleinfrankenheim – why the heck is the German title „Die Geschichte der Nana S.“?

Nicht versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht

On a whim, I decided to watch this film without knowing much about it except that Gorp loves Straub/Huillet. This is weird enough because the truth is that politics and messages don’t really coincide all that well with art, which is why the most acclaimed films typically don’t have all that much politics (such as “La Règle du Jeu” or “2001”). And the seemingly very radical political stances Straub/Huillet are standing for typically don’t lead to significant art. Furthermore, I have never been a fan of Heinrich Böll who mostly stands for these utterly boring authors you have to read in high school.

But here, both Böll and Straub were a pleasant surprise. I am absolutely in love with the “citing instead of acting” concept. While I had a really, really hard time to find out what the whole story is about – the fact that the story was jumping around and I couldn’t recognize people’s faces didn’t help either – I enjoyed every single scene. In just 55 minutes, I have rarely seen such a concise style despite the confusion, and I am a big fan of the scene in the restaurant when Fähmer meets with Nettlinger (or not?) That dialogue is pure brilliance, and it makes you think. We are in the same lethargy as the Fähmel family, but then again, if I think about it, I don’t hate those systems, I ‘only’ despise them without any passion whatsoever.

By the way, I have my own personal little history of ‘not speaking up’ when I felt like I should have. I was 6 years old and that experience is probably going to have an impact on me forever. Today, the only thing I can do is not bow down in front of a statue of Mao and not to clap when people are clapping for soldiers at the airport.

Machorka-Muff

Brecht is utterly un-funny, and most of what was produced around the 47 stuck in my mind as incredibly boring too. I like political satire and the Jewish way of seeing even the worst things with a grain of salt, I was amazed when I read Chekhov’s satirical publications, and for me, there is nothing such as a satire that goes too far; there is only satire that is bad.

The story is nothing special, doesn’t go as deep as “Nicht versöhnt” and doesn’t raise so many questions. It was also much less ’emotional’ for me and ultimately feels like a less meaningful movie, but the subtle humour of the film totally made up for it. Just for that, I would totally watch the film again and I feel like with a second time I would discover even more of those subtle scenes that make me grin.

For some reason, I am absolutely fascinated with Straub and Huillet simply because I want to see whether that kind of directing with such a political agenda works. And I think they picked a wonderful character with Anna Magdalena Bach to make a film of; I imagine her to be one of the numerous women who probably would have had great careers today.