About Chocolate Parfaits

This post is the direct continuation of my last entry. For some reason WordPress or the database are being inexplicably weird.

Le Batteur du Bolero by Patrice Leconte
I like the Bolero a lot, and so simply listening to the music would have been enough for me, and at some point I also understood what the film is about – ahahaha! I wouldn’t say it was funny – rather that the idea of just showing one person from the orchestra is very original, and watching this face trying to motivate himself to continue playing is simply great XD I definitely am the kind of person who needs motivation too, harr.

Charlotte, Veronique ou Tous les garcons s’appellent Patrick by Jean-Luc Godard
So the screenplay is by Éric Rohmer, huh XD This story is such a Godard really, it even plays in Paris (of course!), shows the Jardin de Luxembourg (why always this one? Why not the Parc George Brassens? XD) and is from 1957. Beautiful.
I’m so bad at classical music, this one was… Rondo alla ingharese quasi un capriccio (The rage over a lost penny) by Beethoven… I think? I love how the “Cahiers du Cinéma” are lying on the table and all those other little details of Godard-ism. This director is an institution and he seems to be doing everything to to establish that. I especially love his women who say they don’t smoke and then one second later light their cigarette. Whoever would do this, it would look stupid, but Godard makes it stylish. His women are stupid, but without being annoying; his men are assholes, but you immediately forgive them because their bad character is so classy.
I think I made a mistake with studying at the ESCP. In the end, an exchange year in Paris is only ‘true’ when you study at the Sorbonne, I suppose XD

Copy Shop by Virgil Wildrich
I know that Shii loves this short film, and I actually wonder why. It definitely is an original idea, very stylish, nicely directed and subtly funny in its own way, but no.1? Maybe because Wildrich is australian? (Ohohoho, I’m sorry.) I really appreciated the end though, it’s actually the perfect end for a short film *hrr*

Epilog by Tom Tykwer
Erm, the idea is great, the execution is great, the music and cinematography are marvelous, but the situation as well as dialogue unfortunately are generic like hell – every single line is so expected and therefore so boring. Oh well.

I need to watch these films with their audio commentary again XD In fact, I love audio commentary but never even watched a film with its audio commentary once except for “Hable con ella”. This is what the stressful society makes out of me, I suppose – we don’t have time for audio commentary and DVD extras, even though we want to buy the extras as well.

Oh, why is it that I have not watched this short film collection earlier? It’s brilliant, really, and it makes me realize that short films are perfect for my short attention span.

Bara Prata Lite by Lukas Moodysson
This is a really great start into the short story selection, wow. I now know why I like short stories so much. With just a few minutes, the atmosphere was captivating even though there actually was basically no atmosphere at all. It might sound weird but I fully understood the main character and found him awfully well portrayed. I think when I’m 80 and my husband dies before me, I’ll probably react the same way. The only thing that I did not like actually is this religious girl who did not seem fully convincing to me. I wonder why.

… And now WordPress refuses me to publish this posting if I write more than this. What the heck.

Ninotchka

What should I say, Greta Garbo is so marvelous! I have read that the whole film somewhat centers around her, and that definitely shows very clearly. Her change from the severe Nina into a laughing Ninotchka surely is brilliant, very natural and so full of funny scenes. I think the humour and especially the way the characters talk to each other really, really look a lot like Billy Wilder, and I feel like I am seeing a lot of the wit from “The Apartment” in it. I even consider watching this show in german again, after all, “The Apartment” won with phrases like “kubelikmäßig” and “prozentmäßig” *hihihi* The “kubelikmäßig” of this film, however, are Buljanoff, Iranoff and Kopalski: After you hear things like “I’m searching for Buljanoff, Iranoff and Kopalski” or “Have you seen Buljanoff, Iranoff and Kopalski” over and over, suddenly the expression “Buljanoff, Iranoff and Kopalski” sounds extremely funny – don’t ask me why, maybe this is silly of me. Of course it helps that hilarity ensues whenever they appear on screen.

I have been talking about how “The Science of Sleep” shows a realistic Paris, because it doesn’t put an emphasis of Paris. Now, this film doesn’t show anything about Paris at all, besides the all-time-cliché – the Eiffel Tower. It’s not all too surprising, the film indeed is full of clichés, which didn’t dampen my enjoyment of this film at all (if communist Russia wasn’t portrayed like that, it simply wouldn’t have bee as funny), but it kind of makes me wonder why people would get annoyed at korean films that give a bad image of americans if films like “Ninotchka” exists that clearly depicts a wrong Russia. Ultimately I’m in the camp of saying that all this does not matter at all as long as the film is good itself.

I admit that I have expected more somehow, because I love “To be or not to be” so much, but this film definitely is a must-see in the history of film, and if it’s just for Greta Garbo (who I have never seen in a film before!).

The Science of Sleep

I guess I have to say this first: I hate Charlotte Gainsbourg with a passion. I hated her in 21 Grams already where she negatively stood out, and here, she even plays the love interest! This is probably a very silly, personal thing, but ultimately it killed the whole film for me. Besides that, as expected, Gael García Bernal is pretty cute in this film, but doesn’t radiate as much as usual.

Enough of the complaining, actually the most influential and of the film is… Michel Gondry. Gondry is the best that could have happened to the film, but also the worst at the same time. All the aspects of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” are showing up in this film again: It’s so full of great ideas, creativity, little details and the stop-motion animation is just sweet beyond words – at the same time, it features the most awful characters and way too much pretentiousness for its own good. All those sequences between reality and dreams are a little bit too much for my tastes, the idiocy of the main character just hurt and the changes between weird french and the even weirder english felt extremely awkward to me. At least this story was more or less linear and clearer than “Eternal Sunshine”.

The end was so beautiful, I am glad that Stéphane finally realized her feelings for him. No matter whether they actually ended up together or not, it wrapped up everything quite nicely. Maybe leaving things open is another one of Gondry’s strong points.

Maybe I should also say a few words about the Paris in this film – in fact, this Paris is much less romantic and much more realistic than what you see in the long-gone Paris of “À bout de souffle” or the dreamy Paris of “Paris je t’aime”. The portrait of Paris actually is the only thing that is not overly pretentious in this film, it even seems like the director isn’t aware of this, haha.

Finally, for many reasons, it wasn’t really a pleasure to watch this film, and it was especially painful to write this review (don’t ask me why), but even then, I would recommend it – although I would not watch this film again, I think it was a worthwhile experience.

The Host

With 13,000,000 visitors in the cinemas (which is over 1/5 of South Korea’s population), “The Host” has lead to an incredible result, if you ask me. In my opinion, films reflect a country in a fascinating way, for example, “Tre metri sopra il cielo” was highly successful in Italy – and so unknown everywhere else that you can’t even find english subtitles for it on the internet. “The Host” is indeed very, very korean, especially its amazingly sympathetic humour.

Basically we have a funny, totally unpretentious, suspenseful “some nice losers fight against a monster” film that made me wonder where the incredible success came from. There is no deeper message, no love story, no really big name except for Song Kang-ho who is simply brilliant in this film. But despite that, or maybe because of that, the film basically has no faults – it never gets boring, it has great characters (every single one of them is simply adorable) and it has the amazing motto “stupidity makes the world go round”. The characters fail in such incredibly lovely way that you can’t help but keep rooting for them, and they are portrayed with the subtle korean humour that you probably can only appreciate when you are familiar with it.

Finally: Yes, as always, they are showing the americans in the worst way possible – they dumped the formaldehyde into the river, they treat our dear main characters like shit, and they caused all the uproar about the virus etc. etc., harr harr. But for those who don’t care about anti-american sentiments, I think “The Host” is exactly the right thing for a relaxed evening.

Heat

After all, she is no loli anymore! I still like her though, and for some reason, I think she is a lot like Anna Paquin, only that Anna Paquin is horribly under-appreciated (she was really bad in 25th Hour though).

I’m glad that I finally finished watching “Heat”, but I admit that it was more a chore than truly enjoyable. Parts of it is my own fault (I wasn’t able to watch this long movie in one go), parts of it is that this movie probably really is not exactly my type. I surely love gangster and policemen films (like Infernal Affairs), and I admit that both Al Pacino and Robert de Niro are absolutely brilliant, and I also think that this film was fairly multi-faceted for a really mainstream-y Hollywood film (well, they had quite a lot of time too, after all), but I just couldn’t get really into the whole film. What I liked the most were the café scene in which the main character confronted each other and the one in which Chris and Charlene see each other the last time, those were pretty intense, besides that, bleh?

I kind of liked that there was such am emphasis on the portrait of the main characters’ relationships in this film. After all, it’s a rare thing for gangster flicks, I suppose, where women are mainly treated as sexy sidekicks. Unfortunately, most of these relationships and these women annoyed the hell out of me: They were mostly one-dimensional and hysteric, the relationships utterly boring and had no good scenes à la “Short Cuts” where hysteric women were great.

Finally, I understand why people would like this film, and I think to some degree I liked it too, but I guess it was just not breathtaking. It’s the kind of film I can’t recommend, but also wouldn’t un-recommend if somebody wanted to see it.

PS. All in all, there are too many films in my life that I want in my own DVD collection, and too few that I have already procured. What a sad world… And now that everything becomes HD, I can only hope that ‘my’ DVDs would become cheaper one day.

PPS. The only other actress I find smart-looking besides Nathalie Portman is actually Julia Stiles (who has written this nice, somewhat pretentious Guardian article).

A few days ago, my mother found this list of films on hard copy that I thought long lost. You can find it here, and for convenience, I will type it up too:

• Wilder – Some like it hot (USA, 1959)
• Wilder – Avanti! (USA, 1972)
• Wilder – Irma la Douce (USA, 1963)
• Lubitsch – Ninotchka (USA, 1939)
• Lubitsch – To be or not to be (USA, 1942)
• Hawks – Bringing up Baby (Leoparden küsst man nicht)
• Jarmusch – Night on Earth (USA, 1991)
• Jarmusch – Mystery Train (USA, 1989)
• Resnais – On connaît la chanson
• Chatiliez – Tanguy
• Itami – Tampopo
• Crichton – A Fish Called Wanda
• Monty Python – The Meaning of Life
• Resnais – Providence
• Rivette – Va Savoir
• Truffaut – La Peau Douce (The Soft Skin)
• Godard – Le Mépris (Contempt)
• Chaplin – A King of New York
• Altman – A Wedding
• Altman – Short Cuts
• Ozu – Floating Weeds (Ukigusa/Abschied in der Dämmerung)
• Saks – Cactus Flower
• Welles – Citizen Kane
• Fellini – Roma
• Visconti – The Leopard
• Bertolucci – Last Tango in Paris

First of all, to my own surprise, I have only watched a part of these, now that 3 years have passed since I got the list. The ones I did not watch yet (but definitely plan to watch) are in bold, when I have time, I will also link to the reviews of the ones I have watched.
Back then, I didn’t know one single title of these films; today, I have quite a lot to say about these films. The first and most obvious is that my own list of ~30 must-see-titles are nearly entirely different from his, although I think that the majority of his choices are really good films and a large part of them classics. The only thing we both fully agree on is our fanboyism for Jim Wal-Jarmusch and “To be or not to be”. Besides that, I noticed how prefer “Jules et Jim” over “La Peau Douce” and “The Dreamers” over “Last Tango in Paris”, also “Life of Brian” over “The Meaning of Life”, “Gosford Park” over “Short Cuts” and “Coffee & Cigarettes” over “Mystery Train” (but those are nearly equally good). I also think that Wilder did many more better films than “Irma la Douce” and I doubt that “Roma” really is Fellini’s best film – ultimately, I agree with his directors, but I guess I just like different films. (It’s just like how he preferred the music video of Adema’s “The way you like it” over “Giving in” and Deftones’ “Bored” over “Around the fur” years ago.)

Then, statistically, I think he relies a lot on his favourite directors and I suppose these just are pretty much the only directors he has really got to know. Now, I have some directors I like too, but ultimately, I treat directors like music interprets – I have some favourites but I rarely worship them so much that I consume everything they did. There are quite a lot of directors I had to look up for my list, because I simply didn’t know them. But their respective films were simply breathtaking for me. I really am not interested in Richard Kelly’s other films, but Donnie Darko set a milestone for me.

Continue reading “Analyzing the list that started my passion for films 3 years ago”

Ed Wood/Plan 9 from Outer Space

… but I’m definitely going to watch “Edward Scissorhands” and “Nightmare before Christmas”. I think my favourite Tim Burton films until now look like this:
1. Corpse Bride
2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
3. Ed Wood
4. Big Fish
5. Sleepy Hollow

Sometimes I wonder why Tim Burton is not more acclaimed among critics: he has his unique and very personal style and is immensely popular both with artists (deviantArt kids, that is) and movie fans. But I have never seen a major critic say something good about him, or his films appear in any movie list (except for Ed Wood, of all of them.) It’s a shame, really. I think “Ed Wood” is a good example of a well done biopic that managed to portray the protagonist as a fascinating human. Of course, I immediately researched Ed Wood’s life and found how accurate everything in the movie is – after all, without having researched it, I would have thought that everything is fiction because it just sounds way too, too unbelievable. I mean, what the heck, angora pullovers? XD
Considering that the characters truly are weird and that there isn’t really a suspenseful storyline, let alone a ‘conclusion’, it’s not surprising that “Ed Wood” wasn’t a success at the box office. It definitely is a movie for Ed Wood fans – or people who potentially could become Ed Wood fans, like me. The thought that such a weird person with such an unusual life has existed is quite exciting for me, and it makes me want to know more about him and actually see these horrid movies.

Finally, I actually have nothing to say about Plan 9 except that I think it was a really good idea to watch it after Ed Wood – with all these little details that you can recognize in both films. I fully accept Ed Wood’s work as cult trash that is so incredibly bad that it becomes incredibly good – but I find myself unable to watch such films. (I did not like the first episode of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi after all, but now, I feel like you can see some influence from Plan 9 in it *hrr*)

Manhattan

It’s been over half a year since I watched “Manhattan” and today, I actually managed to have mistaken it for Annie Hall. This is even more surprising because the reason why I never blogged about the film was that it made a huge impression on me. After watching “Match Point” and “Scoop”, I was really curious about Woody Allen’s older films (I don’t count “Everything you wanted to know about sex” and the horrid “Celebrity” as representative films for Woody Allen) – and I ended up being speechless in front of its hilarity and greatness. Unfortunately, I most likely have forgotten a majority of my first impressions, but whatever. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing that I can now only write about the things that were ultimately memorable for me.

Obviously I should write something about this film’s humour, but I suppose it is basically impossible to do so. Woody Allen’s humour is so unique that it is impossible to call it american (like Billy Wilder) or british (like Monty Python) or whatever. If anything, I’d call it sex-centered, but I think ultimately relationships are the center of everything which made it so incredibly good for me. As I mentioned before, I am a blind fan of relationship-driven stories (like “Closer” or “Brokeback Mountain”), and in Manhattan, the dramatic relationships are coupled with the greatest, humorous characters. Allen’s portrait of his neurotic self is probably one of the best I have ever seen.
Oh, my favourite scene most probably is the one in which Yale’s wife blames Isaac for having made Yale and Mary meet each other. Ahahahaha! Just beautiful.

A serious aspect of the story that I liked a lot was the portrait of Tracy and her relationship to Isaac. This old geezer didn’t deserve her, oh god, but ultimately I think it was very sweet and interesting of Woody Allen to depict a relationship with such an age difference. Tracy clearly is the most serious and mature character of all of them – and she is the one who gets looked down the most at the same time. I am glad that a good actress was playing her and that she is the person who rounded off the end of the film so nicely.

I need to watch “Manhattan” again. And I really have to watch Annie Hall.

Nobody Knows

“Only” three films are on my blogging backlog now, and since I really hate backlogs, I decided to ‘finish them off’. Let’s start with the easiest one: The highly acclaimed “Nobody Knows”. I have heard about the film before and actually also read what it is going to be about beforehand, so I wasn’t expecting much. It seems like it’s been awhile since I have seen a slow-paced artsy asian film like this – and it also seems that I have not gotten over my sensitivity towards slow pace that are supposed to build up atmosphere but ultimately only make me want to sleep. Sometimes, a focus on details, or the scenery, or seemingly unnecessary elements can be very intense, but to me, “Nobody Knows” is an example of waste of time. Finally, I did the most horrible thing – I skipped through parts of the story and watched the end.

From what I did see, however, is that the second part of the film is much better than the first: I found the mother horribly annoying, especially with the attitude and the most atrocious voice I have ever heard from an actress – of course you are supposed to dislike the mother, but for me, she was a detriment to the film’s beauty (and it was beautiful indeed). After she disappeared from the screen, the main character finally becomes more interesting, especially since I found Akira’s actor to be quite brilliant. But I failed to feel sympathy for the characters (despite their great acting) and so I suppose it was impossible for me to enjoy the film due to the slow pace and the lack of emotional connection.

By the way, it was very funny to see that I was unable to read the hiragana of the japanese title – but I immediately recognized that the english title was simply a translation when the title was read out loud for me. How silly.