About Chocolate Parfaits

M*A*S*H

This really is one of these must-see movies. In fact, I have been thinking about watching this for ages after everybody recommending it to me; it definitely was a good recommendation. However, just as it is the case for many comedies, there is not much to say about M*A*S*H. The type of humour made me think of “Adam’s Apples” a lot, and the topic made me think of “Jarhead”. The truth is, M*A*S*H is probably not comparable to any of these two, perhaps “Harold and Maude” would work the best: They are both movies from about the same time and with the same black humour, especially when it is about life and death.

So yeah, I guess my favourite character would be Hot Lips (hahaha!), and my favourite scenes were the guy who wanted to kill himself for being gay and the football play, although I realized yet again that I don’t know anything about football. That was the best ending the movie could have, and I totally understand how it had turned into a long, successful TV show – it works like a high school comedy, only in a different setting and with much better, original characters.

For awhile, I have been contemplating with myself if I should write “M*A*S*H” or “MASH”. The former makes me want t*o w*r*i*t*e l*i*k*e t*h*i*s…

I just wanted to start complaining how the movie isn’t all that Robert Altman-ish in my opinion until I read that his 14-year-old son wrote the lyrics to “Suicide is painless”. Oh goodness. XD

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

This should be enough to characterize the movie. Harr. Okay, seriously, I think that the majority of the media about “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” was about that kiss; and surely those kisses were nothing special. In fact, there was barely any sexual tension between the two of them and that guy, personally I didn’t feel anything. It was well done, it looked good, but it’s nothing like the tension between Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger or Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal. Or is it just because I prefer kissing men over women? There is no way.

These superficial things aside, I actually think that the movie was quite brilliant. Okay, it was not exactly funny (or at least to me, Match Point and especially Woody Allen’s older movies were much funnier), it also had some annoying characters (Vicky’s conservatism was quite horrid and I didn’t like how Cristina basically destroyed two people’s lives because “she didn’t know what she wanted”) and there was this narrator (aaaaah!). But, it has a very charming story, it actually felt more uplifting than depressing for me and it had some great actors, in the role of some very intriguing characters. Especially the guy felt like a very natural Don Juan to me. He might be an asshole who jumps from one woman to another, but it doesn’t feel like that: he’s always very open about his feelings, his relationships with others like his ex-wife and with all things considered, he actually cared for the women with everything he did.

Oh, and Doug… I think he could have had a little bit more depth as a character. It would have made much more sense if he had felt that something was wrong with Vicky (maybe he would even have misunderstood it for something else), or in return, he had betrayed her with somebody like, say, Cristina, haha. Of course he was a somewhat annoying character, but ultimately he also is a nice guy who is completely immersed into his world.
By the way, I’m pretty sure that most women who have married for money are unhappy for the rest of their lives, because they are missing passion and true love, or at least signs of it. And so I don’t really agree with the introduction of Vicky as a girl who wants stability over everything so as to never become unhappy.

I can’t believe Woody Allen didn’t know Penélope Cruz at all before watching “Volver”. Surely she was great in that movie, and the role he gave her was pretty good too, but what the heck? What about her relationship with Tom Cruise after doing “Vanilla Sky”? What about the movie it’s based on, “Abre los ojos”? What about “Blow”? “All about my mother”?!

My ranking of Woody Allen movies looks like this right now:
1. Match Point
2. Manhattan
3. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
4. Annie Hall
5. Scoop
6. Celebrity
Of course, Celebrity is much, much worse than the others. On a scale from 1 to 10, if Match Point is a 10, Manhattan, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Annie Hall are a 9, then Scoop is more like a 7 and Celebrity a 4.

La Strada

So, it’s been awhile since I have blogged, and I am now finally using the newest WordPress, version 2.7 to be exact. My my, everything has changed so much, it looks even more Web 2.0 than before. Not that I am complaining… In fact, blogging less recently makes me realize how much fun it is to do so!

Actually one can clearly think Fellini’s transition from his roots as neorealist director towards the surrealism he is famous for; even I can see this, who only has watched “Roma” from his later works and the beginning “Roma, città aperta”, the only italian neorealist movie I have ever encountered so far.
How should I put it? Well, the realism in the movie is pretty clear: The characters in themselves are extremely realistic, their tragic story is very similar to most other realistic movies and books and the movie barely has any special effects. However, I think that “La Strada” rather feels like a fairy tale, an “unfinished poem” as some critic said according to Wikipedia. If people describe the movie, they rather use the vocabulary of mythology and the unreal rather than praise how realistic the story is. In fact, “La Strada” doesn’t really reflect our world, it’s not about stating an example of average people’s lives but only seems to want to tell a story – and oh, how subtly emotional that story is.

I think Gelsomina is a truly unique character in film, represented by a brilliant actress (who, of course, I have never heard of before). I love her facial expressions, her way of speaking (or rather, or not speaking) and especially the way she moves. She truly is “strangely beautiful” in some ways: She’s not sexy in any way, not smart, not even moe at all! Instead, she represents the beauty of innocence and child-like optimism like I have never seen before. In many ways, she’s quite similar to Lennie from “Of Mice and Men” (just thinking of the book makes me want to cry) and Myshkin from “The Idiot”, and I think she met her end in a similarly tragic way. However, as I have mentioned before, most her unhappiness stems from the faults of one (atrocious) person while Myshkin and Lennie have suffered under the intolerance of society in a much greater level. Compared to that, people have been surprisingly nice towards Gelsomina: It’s herself and Zampanò who did not truly want any help.

It’s also funny how I have read all the plot summaries of the Wikipedias (english, german and french) and saw how they differ greatly, but are all correct in some ways. I actually didn’t feel spoiled at all by reading them, because the summaries were so vague that they barely told you anything about what mattered to me – how Gelsomina met Il Matto, what her and Zampanò’s relationship really looked like, how she suffered under his skirt-hunting, how she tried to run away from him etc. etc.

All in all, this movie did actually not make me cry, but left me in awe for the delicate, subtle and absolutely brilliant storytelling. It makes Fellini one of these other directors that I want to see more of. This is my current list:
– La dolce vita
– 8 1/2
– Amarcord
– Variety Lights
– City of Women
– Juliet of the Spirits
– Satyricon
– Casanova
– Nights of Cabiria

Alphaville

Yeah, so I keep pushing things away from me when I find them difficult to do. Blogging “Alphaville” is probably the most difficult thing to do, especially since I think that it deserves more than just a few superficial comments. Now, Godard movies are mostly superficial in a very positive sense. Without going all too deep (and even Alphaville does not if you ask me), I find them extremely remarkable for their style. If there is one “style” of movie that I would have to call my favorite, then it definitely is the french Nouvelle Vague. I want Jean Seberg’s hairstyle, I want their 60s clothing, I want their enthusiasm for arthouse movies and ménages à trois. In many respects, “Alphaville” feels the same to me, and I guess I am not doing justice to Godard by thinking so. Simply put, I was unable to understand the movie.

Of course, everything somehow makes sense: It’s a dystopian world in which feelings are forbidden, the main character is a film-noir-trenchcoat-type Hollywood private detective parody, and Anna Karina is the key figure of the story. Even then, I would have expected much more; instead, it was showing an absurd storyline that – to me – makes no sense (wasn’t it actually supposed to be a very logical world?) Perhaps I am just used to dystopian fiction to be very, very clear and fluid – which this movie absolutely was not.

Stilistically, this is perhaps my personal favorite after “À bout de souffle”. The display of “E = mc2” was beautifully random and this screenshot makes me want a a coat like hers so incredibly much. Just like the linked posting says, I fully agree with the immense stylishness of her coat blended into these spiral stairs.

From the point of humour, I think Alphaville had quite a lot. The depiction of women as mere ‘service toys’ made me grin every time, and shooting through the tits of a double page in a porn magazine is quite an amusing rendition of Wilhelm Tell. These were all details that I have thoroughly enjoyed while watching the movie – and there only can be details, because I truly feel like I have not gotten the big picture. There should be more to it than “Private detective falls in love, destroys super computer with the power of love and poetry, and runs away with the woman”.

Years ago, I remember somebody saying that Godard’s movies were all artistical wanking except for “À bout de souffle” and “Le mépris”. This person did not tell me how high Godard’s level of art is. Did you ever know that Godard can be separated into “God” and the ARD? After watching the movie, I could not sleep and randomly thought of that. XD

On connaît la chanson

I think I have started blogging about this movie, and the difficulty of doing so threw me away so much that I have (yet again) accumulated a backlog – the backlog I am going to kill today, hoho!

Well, the problem with this movie probably is that it made me realize that a movie can be too french for my taste. Just like “Va Savoir”, I ended up liking this movie by the end of it but it took me quite awhile to like it. Now, the main difference between this movie and “Va Savoir” is that “On connaît la chanson” did not make me laugh. Even more so, it was probably completely impossible for me to grasp this movie’s merits because I didn’t know one single of the songs that appeared in it. At the same time, however, I can totally see its merits. While the characters of the movie are deliberately horrible and quite funny in their own way, the actors are playing them brilliantly. Even more than in “Tanguy”, Sabine Azéma is at her best.
I also kind of liked the happy end which had quite a few redeeming factors: The evil guy was thrown out of the party, the other form quite cute couples.

It’s also not like the movie was not smart – most french movies seem to be after all. There is this one scene which I have found very brilliant. In a restaurant, one woman is dining with her female friend, pointing to the table of our main characters and whines about how much it depresses her to see happy couples. Then, the camera turns to the main characters who are – you guessed it – arguing. At the climax of their argument, Sabine Azéma points to the table of the two women and says: “I wish I had a female friend like that, so I could cry my heart out.” Harr harr.

More than anything, watching this movie means that I have finished another one of the “list”. Even though I liked this much more than “Providence”, I have absolutely no idea why these movies actually are on the list, and it seems I have found one director I actually dislike. O.o (Even then, I am mildly interested in “Smoking/No Smoking” – I love ‘what if’ stories after all.)

Trois Couleurs: Bleu

It’s been ages since I have seen Blanc and Rouge. Back then when they did a Kieslowski retrospective, I have missed out the first one, Bleu and only saw the other two. I am not sure whether it’s a good or a bad thing that there is such a great difference in time between Bleu and the other two, because I cannot help but relating Bleu to the other two nevertheless.

First of all, I actually feel incredibly happy to have finished watching the trilogy, because I’m a horrible completist (as mentioned in my silly posting on Rouge). If I ever decide to start something like this again (The Decalogue, oh god), I will be considering these aspects very carefully, and I will never get over the fact that Emolars is emo, because I want to see Wasington so much. >< Oh by the way, I also have not seen "Breaking the Waves" and don't miss it despite my love for "The Idiots" and "Dancer in the Dark", so perhaps I'm not that bad of a completist? I think I remember Shii saying that he considers Bleu the best of the three movies. Actually, I totally, totally agree with him: First, Bleu uses the color of a dark and intense, almost unnatural blue quite aggressively and it greatly contributes to the atmosphere in my opinion. It makes me want one of those silly, kitsch blue lampshades - and I usually hate these types of decorative home accessories with a passion. Second, the story of Bleu was simple, but executed in quite a beautiful way. I have watched the extra in which Kieslowski explains the rationale behind the scene with the piece of sugar dipped into the coffee - although I think that he's being a bit overly anal about the length of the scene, I think it was the best scene of the movie and shows what a great director he is in my book. Which brings me to my final point: I think that the pacing, the atmosphere and the whole execution of the movie was spectacular. I admit that I have found the main character to be a little bit too emo for my taste, but apart from this, I love how the story was build up and finally ended with a very hopeful touch. I especially liked how the main character supported her husband's maîtresse. All in all, Blanc is still my personal favorite. Julie Delpy in a love-hate-relationship is so absolutely priceless, even this movie could not compare. I have a weakness for how Kieslowski depicts passionate love (Decalogue 6 or "A short story about love" come to mind as well), but I'm not sure if anybody besides me has this particular taste. However, if I had to recommend one of the three, it'd definitely be Bleu, the most delicate, atmospheric and the same time the most straight-forward of all the Kieslowski movies I have seen so far. Just like Sam Mendes (as I have randomly discovered today), Kieslowski actually didn't produce all that much, but all of them have been very memorable for me. I absolutely want to see "La double vie de Véronique" and "Przypadek" (Blind Chance) too one day. By the way, I have realized again how incredibly bad my shelf organization actually is. For Blanc, there are 5 possibilities of where the DVD might be: under 3 for "3 Colors", under B for "Blanc", D for "Drei Farben", under T for "Trois Couleurs" or W for "Weiß". (At least the possibilities for the polish and the french title are the same.) So, what do you think where I have put it it to?

War and Peace

If it were not for this list, I honestly would never have watched this film, which I have found to be really, really outdated. While Tolstoy’s book is pure brilliancy and interesting even for today, the superficial characters and views on life made me facepalm quite a few times. Well, as the title says, I only have “The Children’s Hour” from the list to watch, but from my experience, I like Audrey Hepburn’s comedies much more so far. I would much rather watch “Funny Face”, “Charade” and “How to steal a million” before I go on watching “The Children’s Hour”, despite a surely brilliant Shirley MacLaine. Hm.

Enough blabbering, onto the review itself: Like movies about war always do, the topic of life and death has left quite a deep impression on me. I was really, really sad when the companion of Pierre died. From his views on life and his great care for the little dog, he definitely was the most sympathetic character and of course his death meant to be sad. In my case, it really touched me. T_T Just like this case, however, the movie uses extremely stereotypical characters and dialogue, it was quite a pain. In my opinion, 3 hours for “War and Peace” is just not enough. Just like how Anna Karenina and her husband change their minds about their divorce and relationship about three or four times throughout the book, although nothing new has really happened (Anna loves Vronsky and that’s it), Natasha Rostova has fallen in love with three men throughout the book – but that spans over 3000 pages and her feelings are aptly described. In the movie however, she falls in love with three men within 2 hours, and especially her switch from the Andre to Pierre was absolutely not explicable at all. In one scene, Andre dies, then you have quite a bunch of epic war scenes and immediately after those are over, she jumps into Pierre’s arms. Finito. Oh well, I suppose people don’t really care about that, and from the book, I think that Natasha and Pierre make quite a good couple, so all is well.

Apart from this, I am fully aware of how impressive the war scenes in the movie are for that time, but do I care about that? Most definitely not. What I liked the most about the movie was actually the final scene which consists in a citation of Tolstoy, saying that what is the most important is to love life itself, as loving life is loving God. I was so delighted to see that because that felt like so tolstoy-ish somehow, “love for life” seems to be the essence of all his works to me.

Finally, my current ranking looks like this:
1. Wait until dark
2. Roman Holiday
3. Sabrina
4. Love in the Afternoon
5. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
6. War and Peace
7. Two for the Road
8. My Fair Lady

So, while Ugh-bama has become the President 2.0, Milan Kundera is being tortured by his past and the students at my university are still lamenting about the crappiness of the school, I have nothing better to do than finally commenting on the last of the short films. After all, the world is bad, because WordPress has killed my post again. Well, at least a new start from scratch might make it possible for me to write a better posting, who knows?

Une femme de bien bonne humeur (Canada 2007, 10:37)
I must admit that I liked the style to a certain extent, especially the white eye-mask at the beginning of the movie looked pretty cute. However, as soon as she started dancing weirdly, and especially when her friends came and she gave them la bise with such enthusiasm, I realized that this story totally was not my style at all.

Le Secret de Salomon (France 2007, 19:00)
It took me quite awhile to write about this short film, because it feels like I should say a lot about it, but I just can’t. It’s one of these stories that was really, really good: Witty, original and a great end. Its greatness can’t even be described without spoilering too much of the story. Amazingly, it actually got an honourable mention in the competition, along with Careful with that Axe.

Fêlures (France 2008, 9:00)
The animation style makes it look somewhat canadian in my book, haha. But really, the tango scenes were pretty good-looking and fit perfectly into the frame of the splitted glass. However, the whole storyline around it and the plant-hugging was perhaps original, but not particuarily interesting for me.

Train Town (USA 2007, 15:00)
Oh oh, a political satire! This was really funny somehow, and so questionable, hehe. I must say that I kind of disliked both of them, given how exaggerated they were as characters, and so the resolution of the conflict between them left me a little unsatisfied. But even without an explosive confrontation it was quite a good black comedy.

Flashed (Scotland 2008, 4:52)
Oh, a scottish movie, heh. Since the photo box said “Automat”, somehow I automatically assumed that it was german, I wonder why!
Anyways, it’s a short story without much content, but the punchline was pretty nice. All in all, an enjoyable short film that felt more like 2 rather than 5 minutes.

High Hopes (Finland 2007, 13:50)
This film looked like it’s never going to end. It’s about two inventor parents wanting to educate their child to fly – what the heck. The whole thing looked very stylish (I have a certain weakness for the steampunk style after all), but that’s it. The story went from boring to infuriating.

Next Floor (Canada 2008, 11:34)
Another black comedy, huh. This one was much less political though, it only had one single premise: A bunch of gluttunous guests around a table filled with luxurious and heavy meals cracks through the floor because of the weight of what they consumed. This happens multiple times throughout the whole story.
I know that the film can be interpreted as very meaningful (people have no end at consuming things without considering anything else). It also is somewhat funny how the cleanly dressed waiters call “Next floor”, rush to run down one floor and continue to serve even more food. But I wasn’t really able to enjoy that cold atmosphere somehow, I just don’t like disgusting looking food?

La Curiosa Conquista del Ampere (Mexico 2008, 11:00)
By the time they showed this short film, it was around 1 am, so I’m glad that I have seen it a second time in the MEX 01 program. To save the last two films which I didn’t really like, the very last film would have needed to be a blast like “Le Secret de Salomon” which unfortunately it wasn’t. So I might have judged the sad ending of the story a bit too harshly. It was quite a good film, really.

Finally, even though there are some films I really feel an urge to see (“War and Peace”, “Three Colours Blue”) and there are some others I have lying around (“The Magnificent Ambersons”, “Rome Open City”, “On connaît la chanson”), these marathons of movies somehow made me want to stop watching movies for awhile. I need something different… I am actually craving for some intellectual challenges and felt really happy when I saw that the next homework assignment was online, hahaha. Now I have something productive for tomorrow to do, yay!

Berlin Shortfilm Festival: MEX 04 “Before Fame and Fortune”

Both mexican programs were shown three times at the festival, and while we saw MEX 01 at 10pm pressed into a tiny, yet completely full theater, the program I will be talking about now was at 3pm in a very large room, but about 90% empty. I doubt this was MEX 01 was slightly better, because the difference wasn’t that large.

De Tripas Corazon
Gael García Bernal is so incredibly cute! Since this program was about early works by people who have become famous, I have crossed my fingers and hoped that they would present some good early works. Well, it seems they did. Surely this film wasn’t a masterpiece in any way, but it was overshined by Monsieur García’s incredibly adorable performance. Ah!

La suerte de la fea.. a la bonita no le importa
Pamela Anderson as a fairy! Ahaha. Losing weight truly is a universally female problem, and this one. By the way, I absolutely love how the assumed Pamela is never shown with her face – I guess it really is difficult to get a lookalike, especially in Mexico. Apart from this detail that you can’t really blame the filmmakers for, it was quite a hilarious short film.

El Octavo Día
This film was so bad that I nearly forgot about it. More than that, I nearly fell asleep during it, it was just that bad. The animation was crap, the whole story utterly boring and on top of that, the character design was downright ugly and creepy. Oh goodness.

Sístole, Diastole
Salma Hayek is such a great nun, especially with those glasses, my my! They made me think of Antonio Banderas in this Almodóvar movie a lot – he wore the most ridiculous spectacles as well. Family comedies really are the best, and this one is no exception. I felt so sorry for the one brother though, heh.
Considering that Salma Hayek didn’t really have a large role in the film, but was shown in the first scene with her name prominently displayed in the opening credits, I wonder if she has been famous in Mexico before her international breakout.

Rogelio
The punchline of the story was pure brilliancy. While I usually am not the type of person who ‘loves her life’, I was totally able to feel the spirit of the story – and I think I would want to come back to move around in the world after death too, especially since you don’t need anything. What a paradise it would be. *hrr*

Me La Debes
How incredibly… sexual! The only thing that I have been missing in this story is a homosexual couple, Diego Luna x Gael García Bernal style. Apart from that, it was quite a rollercaster ride of a family comedy. Perhaps family comedies just are the best, especially since my own family is so incredibly boring, healthy and un-perverted somehow. Or is it just in comparison to the exaggerated comedic characters?
Speaking of Diego L. x Gael G. B., I want to see “Y tu mamá también” again. I have been this multiple times during the two mexican programs actually.

The Powder Keg
Ah ah, Inarritu, my hesitations about whether I should like you are just like my hesitations about how to write your name. (González? Inarritu? González Inarritu is too long though. And how is this damn name spelled anyways?)
This film feels exactly like all his other movies, and I wonder how I like that. At least I must say that I was very, very surprised to see Clive Owen in this short film – his performance outshined the whole short film in my opinion, especially the “I’m going to discuss all the moral conflicts and identity problems a war photographer could possibly have in one tiny monologue” scene, heh. It came off so incredibly unrealistic, he should have made a full-length feature about the topic to do it justice.

Apart from the three people mentioned in the title of this post, I actually knew nobody, especially not the other directors. Perhaps this is a really bad sign, and perhaps this also has kept me up from really appreciating these short films, but ultimately I