About Chocolate Parfaits

A Clockwork Orange

It escapes my mind why I have not written about this movie earlier. In fact, I am nearly perfectly sure that I have started writing comments, but right now, it is absolutely unfindable.

The truth is that „A Clockwork Orange“ is one of those movies that is constantly on my mind (same for „Full Metal Jacket“ by the way). Both of them are easily my favorite Kubrick movies, before 2001 even. Aside from that, what can I say? It’s been awhile since I saw „A Clockwork Orange“, and I know that my thoughts about it were extremely chaotic. So my best guess would be that I have found myself incapable of writing this blog posting to the point of having forgotten it.

It’s pretty obvious that I find this film real horrorshow. There was this specific magical moment that turned the movie from something shocking via something random into a masterpiece for me: It was when the main character was spit into the face and smiled. In that moment, I thought that this smile was the deepest and most beautiful smile I have ever seen. Its ambiguity between evil and rebellious braveness, arrr. Starting from that point, the movie made perfect sense to me, and it fascinated me throughout its course.

It is sad, yet explicable why the movie is so immensely popular even today, especially among those who interpret it as a violence fest. There is so much more to the movie, and I love it for its controversy. As for myself, while I used to hate the main character when I watched the first 15 minutes of the film for the first time, I have come to root for him, I wanted him to triumph over the rotten society he is in and I loved the „one man against everybody“ topic.

Perhaps one of the reasons why „A Clockwork Orange“ is at least as epic and memorable as Lord of the Rings is the language employed by the characters. While Nadsat is far from being as beautiful as Elvish, it is easily recognizable that Burgess is a linguist who knows what he’s doing. As a fictional language, Nadsat is quite elaborated and it works. Plus, it sounds pretty cool, although I don’t think I will ever refer to my friends as droogs, let alone learn the language, heh. (I have always wanted to learn Elvish though.)

I find it satisfying how the movie ended on a rather open note, and I am a big fan of the original end of the book. I too think that it is perfectly realistic how the main character would ‚just naturally‘ decide to stop with his malicious actions and to build up a family and a real life.

All About Eve

There are quite a lot of genres you can apply to „All About Eve“: drama, comedy, tragedy. To me, the tragedy prevailed for some reason. Surely I was able to laugh and acknowledge how the film was full of extremely well-done jokes and deadpan witty commentaries, but for some reason, I could identify myself way too well with the tragic character of Bette Davis. I’m not even old, mind you. Her monologue sounded like it could have come right from my own mouth, although my situation is actually entirely different from hers, if I think about it. I could now go on ranting how I had to think about the movie a lot before I went to sleep, but that is ultimately not of importance.

What I think is important, however, was what a surprisingly good movie it was. I got to know about it the first time when I watched „All About My Mother“, in which Bette Davis looked like your generic bitch. Plus, I wasn’t particularily interested in the premise, I didn’t care about how some young girl enters the stage world with her intrigues. To be exact, I still don’t find that particular aspect of the movie interesting, I have found the character development in Margo and her friends much more noteable.
If one has to compare Bette Davis’s and Anne Baxter’s performance, I’d definitely lean towards the former. I even had the feeling that Anne Baxter didn’t even get that much screentime, but there was this one scene was fabulous. It was the one where she confronts Karen and turns from her apologizing face to her evil face. However, Bette Davis played her role with such energy and honesty, it was immensely believable and attractive in some ways. I believe it is not my personal bias towards the Margo Channing character but also Bette Davis’s energetic acting that made me get into that character so much. Ultimately, I think it was a good ending for her. Even though she „lost“ the battle, she has gained a purer and much more honest love than Eve Harrington could ever have. That is where the movie stops being tragic and where it left me with a pleasant feeling: You might want to say whatever you want, but a ‚normal‘ relationship as the root of happiness is not that far-fetched. I liked how Margo has attained happiness while Eve is only happy on the surface, but in fact bound to a man she doesn’t love and who blackmails her.

Since I knew the majority of the story of „All About Eve“ before watching the film, I can definitely say that this is a movie where it’s all about the execution and the performance of wonderful actors. In the audio commentary they said something along the lines of „Cukor befriended women, Mankiewicz fucked them.“ That is fairly interesting, and I think the movie is a great example of the topic of womanhood, and far from being the low bitchfest I have feared it to be 3 years ago.

Barking Dogs Never Bite

On the website for „Take Care of My Cat“, the author of the film said that Korea is a dog country, while cats are just as neglected as the main characters in the film. When I look at „Barking Dogs Never Bite“, this totally seems to be the case.

So, what can I say. I have been anticipating this film for quite awhile, but I couldn’t play region 3 DVDs for all the time. Now that I can, I am glad to have finally seen the film, although it’s probably the first film in quite awhile that I have had too high anticipations for. After „Take Care of My Cat“ was such a pleasant surprise of a high quality film, I might have expected something similar for „Barking Dogs Never Bite“. Now, my expectations were not entirely unfulfilled, it’s more that it took me awhile to get into the film.

At the beginning, we just saw this guy being a louse and living together with his horrible wife, along with other characters from the apartment complex who were even less likeable. It took a long time until the first meeting of the two main characters actually took place: And what a scene it was. I think I have started enjoying the film heavily starting the very point when Bae Doona started running. She really is the light of the movie and her so beautifully natural :3 face makes me want to smile as well. I think she has a great chemistry with the other main protagonist of the story, and the very last scene with the two of them together was splendid. It also made the main character more likeable, and I approve of that.

All in all, one needs to appreciate the randomness that comes with this movie at times, but when you got into that, this is quite a little gem of a movie despite all the silliness. I think I would even want to watch it again in a some years. Somehow I even am really glad about the happy end.

The General

After writing the blog post on „Shiri“, I have dreamed of a rather long and suspenseful story in which I was among a group of normal people who had to fight (for whatever reason) with a bunch of armed professional killers. Does that mean that I would have dreamed of androids if I went to sleep after writing the post on „Blade Runner“? Hrr hrr.

„The General“ is a nice movie to dream about. I think I have never dreamt of trains, and this film is perhaps the greatest train-loving film ever – after all, the title of the film is named after the train, its true main protagonist. (Or not?)

So I bought this DVD on a whim. I have seen quite a few Charlie Chaplin movies but no single Keaton except for a delightful short film (whose name I have forgotten, it was about Keaton being a newlywed husband building his new house and encountering many funny problems with it). The DVD said that „The General“ was Keaton’s most acclaimed film and since it was only 3 euros at the Zweitausendeins in Leipzig, I had to get it. (You never get DVDs that cheap on Amazon, „The General“ for instance is 8 euros there.)

Now, I have finally gotten the opportunity to watch it, and indeed it was a lot of fun. While I wasn’t a big fan of the story itself (Locomotive driver tries to impress his wife by saving her from evil yankees and becoming a war hero), the execution was extremely enjoyable and downright funny. It was less ha ha ha funny as Chaplin’s films and none of it was touchy (in fact, the female character was surprisingly stupid, although she was far from being your average damsel in distress). While Keaton really has a very sophisticated, strong and subtle humour, from what I can see, I understand why his movies are less memorable. Chaplin’s film have this little bit of emotion and cuteness that I am missing in „The General“. All in all, right now, I’d say it’s a tie for them, and I definitely need to see more.

Shiri

But this is probably going to be one of the nicest blog postings in quite awhile. I am not saying that “Shiri” is a bad movie, it’s just that it won’t be difficult to comment on the film without this nagging thought of not having portrayed it in the way I would like to.

Watching “Shiri” was indeed very relaxing, if it is even possible to watch a thriller with a relaxed mindset. Apart from some rather bloody scenes, this is quite a straight-forward storyline borrowing a lot from Hollywood James Bond-type thrillers and Hong Kong action movies. By the way, I am never going to understand why the violence scenes in Asian movies always have to be so incredibly explicit, I was eating lunch when the first scenes of the movie and those hacked off heads were rather ‘disappetizing’ to look at.
I can easily understand why “Shiri” was so popular, and I have enjoyed it myself a lot as well, especially since the love story of the main characters was actually very sweet. The end was just perfect, it was just tragic and bittersweet without any touch of kitsch. However, I think the film cannot compare with “JSA”, “Welcome to Dongmakgol” or even “The Host”. Those movies were still a few levels higher in terms of meaningfulness, sadness and humour. Plus, I simply could not understand why the two policemen were not able to see how the woman they looked for was the same person as the girlfriend. Dark lipstick is not enough to make you look completely different after all. What the heck. XD

Finally, I think that this is the first movie in quite awhile I am definitely not going to recommend. It is just “not that bad” and enjoyable for me (because I have a weakness for Korean movies), but I am most likely not going to see it again anytime soon.

Blade Runner

I am aware that this is the type of movie that I should rant endlessly about. This is merely a movie, but similar to A.I. and other science-fiction work, there is a large and fascinating world around it, and many questions revolving androids are raised. Perhaps the huge following of the movie is injustified, but I rather had the impression that the movie only had two hours to show things that have enough potential of filling up easily a 52-episodes TV show. The characters’ past, their relationships towards each other, their inner conflicts, a lot of these things could have gotten better treatment in my opinion. Perhaps I should have read the novel to kill my thirst for more background information, but this is not the point. It’s just rare that I see a movie where I think the time frame of a movie is too restricted to do justice to the story.

Apart from that, there really are myriads of information about the film. Imdb, fansites and Wikipedia have enough reading for you to spend five times as much time on the reading than on the film. I read about the different versions of the film, and find the differences rather striking, although the main story was not changed, of course. I find it rather meaningful that they made the white pigeon fly into a dark sky instead of a light one (at the very end of this post) in the final version. I’m not sure what I would prefer actually. Apart from these details, there are also a lot of essays about the film, its different versions and its impact on science fiction.

Style-wise, Blade Runner is not exactly aesthetic. The dark cyberpunk film noir mix in it is rather creepy, but stylish at the same time, and all in all, I think I actually like it for its unique and distinct characteristics. I loved J.F. Sebastian’s toys, and perhaps he is generally my favorite character, because he was the only one of all of them who acted out of some sort of humanity. In general, I felt I have seen the style many many times in newer works; it looked very Battle Angel Alita-ish to me at least. Of course one cannot deny this movie’s influence.

Blade Runner is yet another movie that was not popular at its time, both at the box office and among critics, but became a classic later. Vertigo, Donnie Darko, Citizen Kane, One Two Three, A Time to Live and a Time to Die – there seems to be a lot of these cult films that had this “inpopularity in its first run” problem. (What are movie critics worth anyways? Sometimes I wonder about that…) Sadly, I rarely stumble upon films that were met with enthusiasm among critics at their times, but are now basically forgotten.

This is yet another one of those titles that I have bought because I felt bad about never having seen this classic. It is deservedly one, and I am curious both about the book and about “A Scanner Darkly” now.

La Haine

When I read that gaguri (who is on a hiatus currently) said he liked the film, I felt a little guilty for having dropped the movie a long time ago and never trying to give it a second chance. The truth is that I couldn’t understand it. I watched it in French, and I had French subtitles to go with it, but I couldn’t get about 50% of those sentences. On top of that, due to the slightly episodic structure of the film, I couldn’t even understand what the conversation was about. So, until the day I finally got my hands on the German DVD of the film, I always kept the film in mind, in the category „films I feel guilty about not having seen them“. (Other movies that are in this category: „The Leopard“, „Vertigo“, „Yi Yi“, „Tystnaden“, „The Children’s Hour“, „Adaptation“, the list goes on and on…)

At the beginning, the film got my attention because it was one of the five recommended movies about Paris in its Lonely Planet (the other four being „À bout de souffle“, „Amélie“, „Last Tango in Paris“ and „Boy Meets Girl“). One year after the riots in the banlieues and without having seen the banlieues myself, I was very interested in the topic. It is only now that my experiences in Paris are over that I have finally seen the movie.

First of all, in many ways the movie is not about Paris, it is more about the antithesis of Paris. When we were in Paris, we saw the Paris of Haussmann, we saw all the touristy parts of Paris, and many of the unknown, even more beautiful parts. There are buildings within Paris that were modern and boring and we called them „banlieue-like“. The only times when I actually went to the banlieue was when I went to Montrouge to go to the Ed and when we went to St-Denis to see the Basilique. We then took the tram back into Paris and got quite a view on the silhouette of the northern banlieues. Now, it is very likely that we have seen the nicer areas, but at least in St-Denis, it struck us as how calm and lively people are. Everyone was on the streets, the shopping streets seemed to had quite a large range of customers – and you pretty much could not see one single caucasian. Thus, my own impression of Paris is entirely different than in „La Haine“, and even my small impression of the banlieues is different. However, I still believe that the movie shows a reality I have never bothered to see when I was in Paris myself.
It is saddening how the real Paris (which is Paris + its banlieue) seems to be so entirely different from the Paris we have seen. On the top of that: If nobody told me this is a 1995 movie, I would have thought that it came out recently. It’s shocking how the banlieues look exactly the same today as in the movie!

Concerning the movie itself, I think that a lot of interesting points have been raised by these two reviews: The first one gives a lot of background information about the production history of the film besides analyzing the style of the film, and the second one sounds much more intellectual and gives an analysis of the storyline in a societal context. These reviews are thus highly recommended!
There were two things that struck me as particularily interesting:

The first one was how the making of the film was compared to the Nouvelle Vague in comparison to the two major movements of French film at that time: Adaptations of historical and „good“ literature, or movies that were mainly extremely good-looking style without substance. „La Haine“ was one of the first movies from the ‚new school‘, with unusual storytelling and cinematography, but especially with a daring, deeper meaning, a mirror of contemporary society. I also really appreciate how „La Haine“ – just like the Nouvelle Vague – was a counter movement in which the movies were actually rather low budget, they were filmed in the streets and with very few actors. Compared to Godard’s Nouvelle Vague films that come to mind (À bout de souffle, Bande à part, Pierrot le Fou, Une femme est une femme), I think that „La Haine“ has a rather similar structure: There is one single story, but separated into a multitude of little scenes of episodes that can stand rather independently from each other. You could easily take some scenes out of „La Haine“ and put them onto Youtube for other people’s enjoyment as you can do for „À bout de souffle“, for example.

Enough blabbering; all in all, I am really glad in retrospect that this buy was totally worth it. I am wondering what is on the second DVD of the special edition (I only got the single DVD version). Heh. Now, the only movie left from the Lonely Planet Paris is „Boy Meets Girl“, a film I probably never am going to see due to its complete lack anywhere in the market.

Take Care of My Cat

Now that I was finally able to watch Region 3 movies, I have picked the one title that I did not know anything about, but since it featured Bae Doo-Na, I absolutely had to see it. A slice of life with 4 girls, that made me think of „Linda Linda Linda“ a lot, but in fact, this one is completely different. This is more of a coming-of-age story than a slice of life, in which the four main characters have just graduated from high school and are thus starting to struggle through life. Except one of them, nobody has a decent job, and the one who has a job has quite a miserable one. Nevertheless, they are meeting up frequently and have quite a bit of fun together. Most of all, „Take care of my cat“ is a portrait of the life of five young women and their relationships to each other.

The greatest part of this movie is its realism. Very recently, I have watched an episode of the anime „Eden of the East“ when I realized that I didn’t like how society was portrayed in it. Something of it was wrong, somehow I really hated the scene in which a job-seeking girl got bullied by having soup dumped onto her skirt and how she cried afterwards. I couldn’t quite understand what I have found unrealistic about that scene until I saw this particular movie. Now, compare the character of Haejoo with Saki, the girl from „Eden of the East“. Haejoo is a girl with faults, she is vain, she never helps anybody, puts her career and success before her friends and her boyfriend; Saki, however, is vain in another way, she’s just clumsy and incapable, pretty much an eternal damsel in distress and extremely generic when it comes to anime characters. The way Saki is bullied is very direct and thus rather unusual in today’s society. Haejoo, however, is „just“ being called to make coffee, to do other random small secretary-type tasks without any importance or to go out eating with the rest of the crew, but none of them actually talk to her. That is subtle, realistic bullying, and that pretty much sums up what I liked about this film.

Nevertheless, the film did not come off as tragic, depressing or emo to me. In fact, you did get the impression that we are dealing with very normal and sometimes enjoyable lives here. This aspect is mostly incorporated by the twins, my favorite characters. It’s too bad that they were more some side characters and we didn’t get to know all that much about them, but they were still great. While everyone else is more emo than anything else, the two of them are always ready for a little joke. With that, they brightened up the film for me a whole lot.

With „Barking Dogs Never Bite“, I am going to see about every Bae Doo-Na film I can get my hands of, and this film made me enjoy her performances even more. She’s just so much fun to look at?

Finally, „Take care of my cat“ is an amazing little gem of cinema in my opinion. I find it recommendable, and it makes me wonder how many more movies are going to be overlooked, because they require too much cultural knowledge to access. As for myself, I have loved this film.

The Da Vinci Code

Or so I think. It’s been a long time since I have read the book, and the problem was that it took me quite awhile to get into the movie – the storyline is more than rushed, making it ultimately the most worthless movie I have seen in ages. Maybe it is because the films I have seen lately were all so outstandingly good, but I rather think that it’s simply because this particular film is just so bad. It’s so sad, because I really value Tom Hanks as an actor, and I quite like Audrey Tautou so far. Sadly, however, there is about zero chemistry between them, even though she looks so surprisingly good throughout the whole film. (I want her boring, clichéd hairstyle!)

Why would I expect anything from this movie, you ask? Why did I watch it in the first place? Well, sometimes big Hollywood film adaptations are actually quite enjoyable to watch. After all, quite a bit of people put quite a bit of money into it. But in this case, it failed to meet my personal taste, it seems. Why did I watch it in the first place? Well, it was on German TV right now, and somehow I felt like having one of these “watching a film at the end of the day” evenings. It’s so splendidly normal to do that somehow, haha.