Wong Kar-Wai, Wedding Planner

Tony Leung and Carina Lau are getting married after a 20-year relationship. So who better to plan such a grand occasion than the ultimate romantic:

"One of China's most famous star couples want their wedding to feel like a romantic movie. Tony Leung and Carina Lau have invited award-winning director Wong Kar-Wai to help them work out their wedding details".

But there's more! Ace production designer William Chang will also lend a hand:

"Art director William Chang, who took part in almost every film by Wong, has been invited to work with him again, the report says. Chang will be responsible for designing Lau's wedding gowns and ensuring that the wedding is "visually stunning.""

Will they make the wedding look like 60s Hong Kong? Will Carina Lau wear a variety of neck hugging cheongsams? The mind reels.

Who would you want to direct your wedding? I think I'd go with Jacques Demy.

Film Comment Selects: The Wedding Director, 13 Lakes, Ten Skies

The Wedding Director (2006)
Last year I was introduced to Marco Bellochio with two stateside releases, of My Mother's Smile (a.k.a. The Religion Hour) (2002) and Good Morning, Night (2003). I preferred the former, a conspiratorial look into the process of Catholic canonization, as Sergio Castellito skeptically confronts his mother's impending sainthood. A moody piece about airbrushing the fatal flaws of deceased loved ones, it created a suffocating atmosphere where cute school teachers are Catholic spies and the only man Castellito can trust is his half-crazed murderer of a brother. Good Morning, Night was a nuanced drama re-enacting the 1978 kidnapping and murder by the Red Brigades of Aldo Moro, president of Italy's center-left Christian-Democratic party.

The Wedding Director is decidedly a lesser accomplishment, although it has its pleasures. An absurdist comedy with shades of 8 1/2, it follows Castellito's famed film director after he runs off to Naples following an accusation of sexual molestation at an audition from one of his actresses. Once there, he stumbles his way into a job; that of filming the wedding of a princess, and a rather enigmatic one at that. She speaks in flirtatious whispers and coy glances before running off without explanation. It goes without saying that it's an arranged and unwanted marriage, and that Castellito falls rapturously in love.... The director is thrust into a florid melodrama of his own making, and the self-reflexive jokes come fast and obvious. The rest of the film becomes a descent into Castellito's and Bellochio's fanciful imagination, a variety of surreally comic vignettes strung together without really cohering, the quality of each varying wildly. One peak is the story of another director who fakes his own death in order to win a year-end award; another is the opening wedding sequence, where the bride's train becomes a death trap of snapped heels and bruised knees.

It's a failure, but a rather enchanting one.



13 Lakes (2004) and Ten Skies (2004)
James Benning's two avant-garde nature films hold as much tension and mystery as any mass market potboiler. The films consist of 13 and 10 ten-minute static takes of their respective subjects, with the sound recorded on site (although it is not necessarily synchronous). The images shift and shudder in unexpected ways, as the eye traces the exhaust from a microscopic jet plane or the subtle undulations of ice on Lake Superior. This is not to say one's attention is riveted throughout - they are made to let the mind wander - one can take them in leisurely or rigorously, but they always manage to arrest your gaze in the end. Anyway, you should read Michael Anderson on these, he's thought longer and deeper about these works. Here he is on 13 Lakes at Senses of Cinema, and on 10 Skies at Tativille.

A Termite Art Wedding

There comes a point every man's life when he sucks it up and gets married in a three minute ceremony officiated by an angry woman. For Rob Sweeney, today was that day.



Yes, that's right suckers, today was a very special day here at Termite Art. Today our little Rob became a man. Or he became a manchild who's now married. Either way, we were there to witness all the action. First there were manly handshakes all around because that's what real men like me and Rob do at times like these.



So why a wedding and why now of all times? Y'see Rob's lovely bride Andrea is from our beloved neighbors to the north. A bureaucratic thicket ensured that this wedding, something in the offing probably months from now, would instead be taking place today. At the office of the city clerk. In front of these people.



Poor bastard. By the way, I have been instructed by the bride and groom that under no uncertain terms am I to make a joke about green cards.



Hey, I didn't say anything. Talk to Gerard Depardieu.

Now, not surprisingly, I'd never been to this marriage center before. It is a fascinating place. There are signs EVERYWHERE.



I mean EVERYWHERE.



Can you imagine working in a place like this and someone tries to pay with a check? You know that happens like four times a day. Must drive them crazy. And what kind of place makes you pay for a marriage with a money order? Why not just the cold hard cash? "Yeah hun, we'll get married in a few minutes. Nah, I gotta stop by CVS first! No they don't take checks! No, no credit cards either!"

Oh and you can't smoke either. The city clerk is uptight, boy.



Anyway, the lovebirds were first in line to register for the assembly line of ceremonies this morning. But the actual weddings don't start until 9 AM, and we were very early. So...



...



There was one upside though. We were able to enjoy all the luxurious amenities that the clerk's office had to order.



Eventually we tired of waiting and I decided to take matters into my own hands.



You wouldn't believe how easy it is to marry people — thank you phony Internet ordainment!

After much shifting in our folding chairs, the moment was upon us. And once I fiddled with my camera enough to get it working...



You'll notice the newlyweds miming an exchange of rings like they're Marcel Marceau or something. Evidentally no rings...yet. No one can know they're married. Except, apparently, the readers of Termite Art which, as I understand it, is the whole of the internet.

Like I mentioned earlier, the actual weddings begin promptly at 9 AM. I looked at the clock on our way out the door.



For the time-telling impaired, that's three whole minutes. When they say marriages are a blur, I guess this is what they're talking about.

The judge was courteous but clearly bored and generally looked down on us like a bunch of children. Look, even adults can spill their Snapple cans in the chapel, okay lady? I started to get the feeling that she maybe regretted marrying our beloved Rob and Andrea. TOO BAD SISTER! ONCE DONE IT SHALL NOT BE UNDONE! And they got the paperwork to prove it suckas.



After the ceremony it was time for the reception of course.



The happy couple ritualistically devoured a jelly donut as a symbol of their committment to each other. I have pictures of that too but, frankly, the pictures are so graphic I dare not even post them for fear of inciting a sexual riot.

Seriously, though, it was a lot of fun, and if I can lower my typically impenetrable shield of snark for just a moment, I absolutely love these two people, and I'm very excited for both of them. Congrats and many happy years to both of them. Here's a few more parting pictures.

THIS BLOG WEDDING ALBUM ROCKED YO' SOCKS OFF FOOL!







Aw...

Babel (2006)

I'm gonna put myself out on a limb right now and say Babel is going to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Not because I like it, or because I think it's any good. But because it's exactly like Crash, and that won Best Picture and hell what worked before shall work again. I'd rank it fifth amongst the Oscar nominees (behind The Departed, The Queen, Letters From Iwo Jima, and Little Miss Sunshine in that order) and about one hundred and twentieth out of the one hundred and fifty or so movies released in 2006 I saw last year. But hey I don't get a vote.

Babel is a movie for people who want to feel bad at movies. Escapism is a common term when describing movies. People go to the movies to escape. Conversely, one goes to Babel to feel bad; to feel guilty about being happy or feeling love or trying to conduct your life as if it means something more than horror and sorrow. Babel is the opposite of escapism: it is miserism.

Note I said director Alejandro González Iñárritu wants us to feel bad; I don't think Iñárritu necessarily wants us to think about feeling bad or the horrific tragedies that befall just about every single character in the movie because if we did we'd probably realize how utterly full of shit the story is. There are four main stories: in the first two boys in Morocco horse around with their father's new rifle and shoot a bus; in the second, a Mexican nanny takes her charges from San Diego to her home south of the border for her son's wedding then loses them crossing back over the border; in the third, Cate Blanchett gets shot by the Moroccan kids, spends two hours bleeding in a Moroccan village while Brad Pitt yells at the rest of the tour group he's with; in the fourth, a deaf and mute teenager tries very hard to have sex with every male on the island of Japan. The first and third stories very obviously connect. The second story is connected because the two children in it are Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's (meaning that in one week Pitt's wife gets shot and his children get lost in the Mexican desert, meaning he has the worst week in history of the world, meaning somewhere Jennifer Aniston is smiling). The fourth story does not connect at all, except that the horny Japanese girl's father is a game hunter and he gave his rifle to his Moroccan tour guide as a token of appreciation, and that rifle is the one that shoots Cate Blanchett. In other words, the fourth story does not connect.

There isn't a single joke in the movie (then again, there isn't a single joke in Iñárritu's entire filmmography) and things are so unrelentingly grim that eventually it becomes hopeless to care about the characters because a)we know absolutely nothing about them beyond the fact that they are here to suffer for us and b)they're only going to suffer anyway regardless of how we feel. It becomes a good deal more interesting to actively root against the characters — man was I ever hoping those whiny kids lost in desert would stay lost.

Still, there is much to learn from the pervasive negativism prescribed by Iñárritu and co-writer Guillermo Arriaga (the pair have made better films than this, though they're all about this cheery). Here's a sampling of what Babel teaches us:

Don't guy a gun. Don't shoot a gun. Don't leave your children with a babysitter. Don't be a tourist. Don't go to your son's wedding. Don't go to Morocco. Don't live in Japan. Don't be deaf. Don't lie to the police. Don't not wear underwear. Don't stick your dentist's fingers in your bathing suit area. Don't have children. Don't drink alcohol. Don't go hunting and then give your rifle to your tour guide. Don't cross national borders without letters of permission. Don't be related or connected to Brad Pitt in any way. Don't get lost in the desert without a bright red sash you can fling about for maximum symbolic value. Don't present yourself naked to helpful police officers. And, seriously people, don't buy a gun and shoot it and shit. Just don't.

In other words, don't do anything. If you are the slightest bit agoraphobic: do not see this movie.

Look, I'm all for a filmmaker presenting the world in a harsh light, or portraying the dark, and horrible, and frustrating things about the world. I practically prefer it. I don't need escapism all the time. But I need something to break up the monotony.

I Was A Male War Bride (1949)

What a pleasure to find an old Hollywood movie whose primary conflict is the battle of its two leads to get laid. I don't mean it in the lovey-dovey romantic ideal sort of way, I mean I Was A War Bride is about the impossible logistics of two people knocking boots in the middle of an armed conflict. In 1949 this was certainly a cheeky topic. In 2006, it's downright scandalous.

Frenchman Henri (Cary Grant) and American Catherine (Ann Sheridan) work together on a mission, fall in love, and get married. But on their wedding night, just before magic time, Catherine is ordered to return to the United States. Not only do they lose their wedding night, they end up shacking up at a friend's where Henri has to sleep in the bathtub ("What an awful place for a faucet!" "Where?" "My back!"). Even worse, with Henri yet to get an American passport, there seems no way the two lovebirds can remain together. Ah but an obscure congressional law allows travel permits for war brides. "It says spouses, it doesn't mention sex," says the officer advising Henri and Catherine. "I'm convinced the American army doesn't believe in it!" replies Henri.

War Bride is basically a 105 minute emasculation session for poor Cary Grant, and, sincerely, there's no one I'd rather see in the role. The entire movie builds to the moment when Henri will have to stop saying he's a bride and start dressing like one, and it's still an enormous laugh when we see Grant in a horse hair wig and stockings.

The movie makes fun of sexism without ever becoming sexist itself. For 1949, it's practically progressive, since the scenes before the couple's marriage show Henri, rather than Catherine, to be the incompetent. She's the one who can drive a motorcycle, and it's she who finds their mission target, a black market dealer named (interestingly enough) Schindler. Grant's character even addresses the topic during an endless night spent searching for a place to sleep. He comes upon yet another women-only dormitory, and the guard outside apologetically denies him entry. "Have you ever noticed that women always get a place to sleep? I wonder why that is," Henri asks. The guard replies, "Well I suppose it's because they're the weaker sex." "I don't believe it. They're stronger," Henri says, "and do you know why? Because they get enough sleep, that's why."

I Was A Male War Bride is one of dozens of romantic comedies predicated on the tension that arises when the two leads can't figure out how to get together. These days, the devices employed to keep cinematic lovers apart are so forced they frustrate audiences instead of delighting them. War Bride is from different stock: Henri and Catherine's struggles are never less than completely organic and their heroic clinch in the film's final shot produces a sensation in the viewer that can only be described as orgasmic.

Will Ferrell's Funny Or Die Tour

My favorite celebrity jerk-off session was on the TV this week, but since Blades of Glory was snubbed in every category, I had to reluctantly pass on it this year. Instead, I chose to attend Will Ferrell's Funny Or Die tour at Radio City Music Hall, featuring three cherubic stand-ups and and Mr. Ferrell himself as the debonair MC. It soon became clear that I made the right decision.

The tour is sponsored by Ferrell's upcoming film Semi-Pro and the Funny Or Die website, a YouTube for comic sketches that often features Mr. Ferrell, John C. Reilly, and others of their merry band. This was the last stop on the 8 city tour, and every bit was well honed. With frequent co-writer and director Adam McKay as his announcer, Ferrell's entrance was teased with clips of his greatest work, including Old School, Talladega Nights, Unforgiven, and Platoon. The directors of the last two made curious decisions in having Farrell act in what looked like his own apartment, but his performance was stirring nonetheless. After defiantly entering the stage in a Patriots sweatshirt, he tore it off with the strength of Thor to reveal the Giants logo beneath. The crowd was agog. After a few pleasantries the Mortal Kombat theme song hit, and was Ferrell was soon fending off an array of ninjas with awe-inspiring athleticism. His balletic martial arts moves brought most of the crowd to tears, so powerful was their ascetic grace. Then, with absolute modesty, introduced the first comedian, Demetri Martin.

Martin: Heavily influenced by Steven Wright, but uses a guitar and visual aids to aid the deadpan. I can't remember many of the jokes, and to list them wouldn't capture their charm - it's all in the flat intonation.

Interim. Dark stage, lights go up to reveal Ferrell as one of those silver-painted street robot dancers. Is there a better name for them? Not sure. But, gyrating to Daft Punk's "Around the World", Ferrell made such questions seem meaningless. What are words in the face of such poetry? McKay disgustingly asked him to stop, and I wept. Then we received a few Oscar updates from gal-about-town Andrea Savage, who had earlier interviewed Javier Bardem (Fred Armisen) backstage. We discovered that John Travolta had won best actress for Hairspray, the cast of Falcon Crest was given an unnamed honor, and Carl Weathers had unconscionably been passed over. Such is life. Next stand-up: Nick Swardson.

Swardson: amiable foul-mouth that loves monkeys and old-people. Most memorable bit about a spider monkey in Las Vegas who would high five him for a dollar. He lost $300.

Then: that perfectly coiffed adonis, Ron Burgundy, graced us with his presence, and he soon brought out the one man who could compete with him in the news hair game, Tom Brokaw. The two legendary journalists covered the hot-button issues: that crazy party in Lake Tahoe when Diane Sawyer was topless, whether Brokaw would smoke a vial of crack to save the President's life, etc. Things got testy when Burgundy revealed his book, The Greater Generation: the Story of the '69 Miracle Mets, but luckily things ended amicably.

Zack Galifinakis was unlucky enough to follow that blast of genius, but he acquitted himself superbly. Like Martin, he's heavily influenced by the great Steven Wright, presenting a number of deadpan one-liners ("One thing a woman never wants to hear whispered in her ear: 'I'm going to perform jihad on your vagina'"), and ending in a blaze of Little Orphan Annie Glory, complete with glitter and lip-synching to "Tomorrow".

Inevitably, it ended with Ferrell, with his Capezio dance pants tucked into his Uggs, leading the whole production in a rousing rendition of Alicia Keys' "No One". During the course of this Utopic tune Ferrell was refused a wedding engagement and kissed Woody Harrelson. All the torrid passions of life in one five minute performance. Sublime.

NYFF Roundup

Four Nights With Anna, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski

Creeping silently in low-lit dankness, Leon (Artur Steranko) slithers into Anna's apartment across the way, fastidiously painting her toenails as she's passed out on the bed. He's one of your normal crematorium employee types, a sullen, sensitive kind of guy who takes care of his grandmother and walks with a hunch, trying to disappear into himself. This is Jerzy Skolimowski's first return to filmmaking in 17 years, a strange obsessional object that's lovely to look at (if you're into wet industrial decay like I am) and builds into an emotional peak with flat champagne and cold meats as Leon stages a faux-wedding for his imaginary life. My only quibble is with the flashbacks, which add unnecessary psychologizing, lifting the veil too much from the film's foggy mystery.


Night and Day, directed by Hong Sang-soo

Funnier than Woman on the Beach, with a great sad-sack performance from Yeong-ho Kim. The most disturbing thing about the movie, as Glenn Kenny notes, are the colored plastic deli bags he's constantly carrying. What does he have in there?


The Headless Woman, directed by Lucrecia Martel

The picture to the left is a Diane Arbus photo from 1961, with the same title as the remarkable new film from Ms. Martel. Both film and photo could be retitled The Woman Who Wasn't There. A comfortable middle-class mother (Maria Onetto) runs over a dog, and she is later consumed with the fear that she also killed a child. Decentered from her daily life, she is isolated by Martel in shallow focus close-ups in the widescreen frame, her family haunting the edges, fuzzy spectres present mainly through the dense sound design. The accident occurred right before a major storm, and water keeps seeping into the frame, whether literally pouring down, or intimated in the cement discovered under her lawn, which used to hold a fountain. She slowly ebbs back into consciousness, only to discover that she no longer fits, so she dyes her hair.


Tokyo Sonata, Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

A sad movie and a great one. Salaryman Ryuhei gets canned after his job is outsourced to China. Struck dumb with fear, he keeps mum to his wife and hangs out with a witty fellow member of the downsized. A familiar device perhaps, but imbued with a gentleness that it is incredibly rare these days. His youngest son asks for piano lessons, his oldest wants to join the US Army. His wife, the luminous Kyoko Koizumi, tries to glue the shards of their lives together. She makes fresh doughnuts. The pain of lost dignity, economic stress, and plain old disappointment is expressed with such simplicity and understanding that I was an emotional wreck halfway through. The great Koji Yakusho shows up late to inject a touch of surrealism to the proceedings in a harried, head-smacking performance that thrusts the film towards greatness. He sets in motion a beautifully controlled sequence of parallel editing between the wife, the husband, and the youngest child that is filled with bittersweet yearning and choked laughter. Then a piano solo encapsulates why we keep on living despite all our stupidites. A sequence for me and for you.

Local Favorites

With the writers strike dragging on into its umpteenth month (I miss you Dirty Sexy Money!), I've turned more and more to my Netflix account to fill my evenings. And if you've ever browsed that website you know that it's a bottomless pit of weird quirks. Take for example, the fact that at the bottom of the home page, you can see a list of movies that are popular in your area. Not necessarily the most rented in New York City, but rather the films that "members in and around New York are currently renting much more than other Netflix members." I suppose the thinking in showing me these movies is that the enormous peer pressure of knowing that Manhattanites all around me are so obsessed with Paul Mazursky that I might cave and rent it too just to get a fleeting taste of the sense of community that post-modern urban living has deprived me of.

Currently, the top five in this category are:

1)Next Stop, Greenwich Village
2)The 39 Steps
3)Crossing Delancey
4)Barbarians at the Gate
5)The Panic in Needle Park

So you have four films set in New York, and one that's been turned into a critically acclaimed Broadway show. Fascinating and, I suppose, it makes some sense for people to be interested in stories set around them. Then again, shouldn't these people be out and actually living in New York City, instead of watching people pretend to on their televisions?

Anyway, this whole concept of certain areas being more interested in particular movies fascinated me. The Netflix site lets you search different areas to find what is the most popular movie in each zip code in their database. Here, now, are the #1 movies in each of the following cities:

Baltimore, MD: Homicide: Season Six
Boise, ID: Out of the Blue: A Film About Life and Football at Boise State
Cedar Rapids, IA: Beer League
Chicago, IL: Expo: Magic of the White City
Cincinnati, OH: Last Man Standing
Dallas, TX: Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds
Denver, CO: Things to Do In Denver When You're Dead
Helena, MO: Montana Sky
Honolulu, HI: Samoan Wedding
Indianapolis, IN: Bambi
Lexington, KY: Jefferson in Paris (#2: Birth of a Nation)
Little Rock, AK: Paradise Lost
Los Angeles, CA: The Last Mogul
Madison, WI: Wisconsin Death Trip
Minneapolis, MN: Al Franken: God Spoke
Nashville, TN: Nashville
Orlando, FL: The Name of the Rose
Park City, UT: Clear and Present Danger

An Intensely Personal Top Five Movie Theaters List

In concert with the upscale dames at Scarlett Cinema, I'm proffering a mid-year top five list of my own idiosyncratic choosing....of my favorite movie theaters. Cleanliness, screen size, and Dolby-osity are not under consideration, the palaces below are only the murky spaces that have had the most impact on my fragile psyche, now in its 27th year.

1. North Park Theatre, 1428 Hertel Avenue, Buffalo, NY. (photo above)

Most importantly, there's the ticket booth. A smooth cylinder for one rocketed down into the middle of the lobby. Inhabited alternately by a pudgy smiler with a valiant combover or an elderly gent who seems nice enough. The bathroom's upstairs and to the left, with man-sized chinked urinals against the right wall (I think). I remember them being taller than normal, 6 ft. maybe. Or is it that I haven't visited in a few years and my impressionable childhood is telling tall tales? I need to go back and check. I saw Rear Window for the first time there, when the restoration was touring back in 2000 (I believe). Try to make out the painting on the ceiling. It's a challenge, covered as it is in years 88 years of sneezes. It looked like there were some angels. Maybe some horses. A sense of mystery, history, sweat. The concessions stand almost inside the theatre itself. My Mom told me there would be a restoration of the place soon. I think that was a decade ago. I want to go back as soon as possible, but I think I'll wait until Mamma Mia passes through.

2. Amherst Theatre, 3500 Main St., Buffalo, NY.

Sensing a pattern? Part of the Dipson chain of art-house theaters that also includes the North Park, the Amherst Theater is where I worked in both high-school and the first few summer years of college. Where the North Park is an old palace, the Amherst is a puny multiplex, with two munchkin theaters and one regular sized schmo. In any case it's beautiful: red velvet ropes and "real" buttered popcorn and red paislied carpet and generic candies. We didn't have Sour Patch Kids. We had Sour Gummie Bears, or something like that. Pathetic and delicious. All of my friends saw free movies and ate free popcorn. I tried to direct a gorgeous co-ed to the seat adjoining theirs for the big Royal Tenenbaums premiere, but no dice. Before I worked there, I had my first official date (Taxi Driver) which ended awkwardly. My Dad took me to see the Touch of Evil restoration (1999?) there, which kicked off my Welles obsession, and I forced him and my uncle to see In The Mood For Love when it opened. I felt cool, in the know. My boss was a delightful fuck-up who lent me some Tom Waits albums (Blue Valentine was one) and let us have Nerf wars during breaks. Then he got fired and I quit soon after. My Big Fat Greek Wedding played for what seemed like an entire year.

3. Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St., New York, NY

It smells sometimes. They haven't heard of sightlines. I've also seen more movies there than at any other theater in NYC combined. Double bills of rare noirs, rare musicals, rare everything. Oh, and one night I took a girl to see a show. Something called Hold That Co-Ed from 1938, part of the B-Musical series a year back. John Barrymore acts insane while running for the Senate, football is involved. I married the girl, we still go to Film Forum, it still smells.

4. Lecture Hall 6, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY

Behind the trees there, it's Lecture Hall 6. Uncomfortable plastic chairs all welded together so one person's seat adjustments annoys all. Every semester the Harpur Film Series commenced in this unpleasant room. Every Saturday it was something intriguing - the only place to catch international cinema for miles around. The local arthouse burnt down - the result of an ill-fated BYOB policy. I was initiated into the Dardennes with Rosetta, and floored by Godard's Eloge de l'Amour. (the former still wows, the latter, I'm not so sure).

5. My Old Living Room, 203 Washington Hwy. Buffalo, NY.

Is this cheating? Probably. But it's more fun than writing about Lincoln Center. Anyway....just think of clutter. Unlabeled VHS tapes of Little League games and birthday parties abut my growing Turner Classic Movies library. Is that me striking out or von Sternberg's Shanghai Express? Hard to say, as each have their own romantic poetry - Dietrich's inscrutable face is certainly more ambiguous than my adolescent poutings, but not by much. L.A. Confidential was my first DVD. It looked great. I had my friends over to watch Ronin approximately 54 times. Eventually we broke it down shot-by-shot, Bordwell style, focusing on our much beloved "window scene", of DeNiro exhaling smoke while lowering a car window. Masculine posturing never looked so sharp!

2008 Top Ten: Alberto Zambenedetti

Alberto Zambenedetti is a Ph.D. Candidate in Italian Studies at NYU

And here it is, the top-ten everybody was eagerly waiting for. I compiled it following no other criteria than my personal taste and the fact that I have seen these movies in a theater in the course of the solar year 2008. And that they were not past or re-releases. Enjoy!

1. Gomorra / Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008)
To put it bluntly, Garrone’s adaptation of Roberto Saviano’s best-selling eponymous novel on the workings of organized crime in Italy’s Campania region is by far the best picture of 2008. The director had already displayed enormous talent and potential with a handful of interesting films over the course of the past ten years, but this time around he achieves true greatness. The multiple, intertwined plots depicting the relationship between low-life losers, small-time crooks and powerful villains are masterfully narrated with gripping hand-held, over-the-shoulder camerawork. An instant classic in Italy, for its perfect balance of style and content Gomorra is a virtually flawless masterpiece.

2. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007)
Incredibly witty and charming, My Winnipeg is the most personal (of course) and relatable of Maddin’s pictures. A journey at the heart and the hidden recesses of his frigid hometown, the film traces the never obvious threads of childhood memories and urban landscape, as if running a finger on a map made of buildings and the feelings attached to them. Delightfully funny and twisted, stylistically inventive and engrossing, My Winnipeg is my favorite of Maddin’s movies.

3. Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008)
After the charming but meandering The Science of Sleep, Gondry returns with a heartwarming homage to the craft of filmmaking that continues his exploration of low-tech visuals and dreamscapes, be that with eyes open or closed. Despite the paper-thin plot, or perhaps thanks to it, the duo Jack Black / Mos Def deliver some of the funniest and cleverest gags of 2008 while “sweding” classic movies and contemporary blockbusters. Gondry’s artful direction and idiosyncratic aesthetics, the endearing subject matter, and the comic qualities of the cast make for an intelligent and original crowd-pleaser.

4. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008)
Disfunctionaliy meets multiculturalism in this potentially sappy family drama, but Demme manages to avoid the pitfalls of stereotyping by delivering a very light-handed and engaging film. A cast in a state of grace supports his directorial musings over Jenny Lumet’s heartfelt script, anchoring his nimble camera (enamored with the color and music of a multiethnic wedding celebration) to multiple identity crises and breakdowns.

5. Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008)
This unapologetically over-the-top and artfully multi-layered blockbuster has something for everyone, including superhero skeptics and comic-book snobs. The storytelling is airtight, the jokes are funny, and the visual effects are convincing enough to make me look forward to the sequels. Favreau flirts ironically with all the clichés, he lets Robert Downey Jr.’s silver tongue dance gracefully over the most ridiculous lines, and ultimately delivers an early summer delight that can be enjoyed by viewers of all ages.

6. JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechri, 2008)
Aging, washed out and broke, the Belgian action hero makes a compelling comeback playing nothing less than his sorry self. Far from being an act of hopeless self-promotion, JCVD is a highly entertaining and reflexive tribute to the many who have been eaten by the machine, narrated through the politically incorrect gaze of beur cinéma. Interestingly devoid of martial art and combat scenes, the film takes an introspective turn in the midst of the action, with a protagonist quite literally lifted out of the narrative to deliver an eight-minute long monologue that is worth the price of the ticket itself. The best comeback of the year.

7. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
Nolan directs another installment of his über-dark take on the Batman, and audiences respond enthusiastically. The hype is such that it is almost impossible o watch the film without having inflated expectations, especially with regards to prematurely departed Heath Ledger’s performance. Nevertheless, despite the somewhat odd pacing and perhaps thanks to the unconventional narrative solutions, the film is exciting, engaging, and very entertaining. Let alone the fantastic visual effects, the brilliant acting, and the ageless appeal of the characters.

8. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008)
Golden Lion in Venice, The Wrestler is the second best film of the year featuring an aging, washed out movie-star after JCVD. A long-time Mickey Rourke fan, I never doubted his acting abilities, and I had trained myself to be content with his great cameos and brief appearances in the past ten years. And as much as I enjoyed reading about him in the tabloids, I have eagerly waited for his star to regain some luster. The film fits him like a glove, but so did Domino (Tony Scott, 2005) and Sin City (Miller, Rodriguez & Tarantino, 2005), pictures in which he unapologetically stole the scene from the respective leads. I see The Wrestler more as a coronation of a very uneven, yet fascinating career of a brilliant actor rather than a flimsy comeback.

9. Låt den rätte komma in / Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Before I saw this movie, I thought I had seen every possible variation on the theme. I was wrong. This Scandinavian tale of a frail 12-year old who falls for an eternally pubescent vampire is as charming as it is terrifying. Well digging into the psychological complexities of such a peculiar intrigue, Alfredson weaves into the narrative a series of very interesting visual and aural correlatives between the landscape and the emotional nuances of his characters, achieving greatness in a handful of truly moving and/or disturbing scenes. A small gem.

10. R-Rated Comedies (Various, 2008)
Despite my European origins, which qualify me immediately as indignant before any reference to the baser needs of our flesh, I must confess that I enjoy fart-jokes as much as the next guy, so I was pretty pleased with 2008’s truckload of R-Rated comedies. It was yet another great year for American humor and for bodily excretions. From Step Brothers to Zack and Miri Make a Porno, from Role Models to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I am not ashamed to write that I laughed hard, really hard, almost to the point of annoying the person in the seat next to mine. In other words, assimilation has taken its toll on my manners. Thank you, America.

Winter Evening in Gagry (1985)

One of the greatest pleasures in moviegoing is being surprised - and I was shocked by the quality of Winter Evening in Gagry, a Russian musical from 1985. In its own modest way, it's a descendent of The Band Wagon (1953), MGM's ode to spontaneous folk performance. Winter Evening tells the story of Alexei Beglov, former national tap-dancing star, reduced to working as dance coach for a garish modern production which attempts to tell the history of IBM through dance. It also has a giant flashing sphinx. This mirrors Fred Astaire's role in Band Wagon, when he was a former vaudeville star tapped to star in a lavish production of Faust complete with blazing pyrotechnics that almost blow him off stage. The main action involves a middle-aged circus employee who asks Alexei to teach him how to tap.

The film evades all expectations after this point - the circus performer (the hilariously tetchy Arkady Nasyrov) soon proves inept and Beglov begs off the job, although they form an uneasy friendship. What happens afterward is a remarkably subtle meditation on aging, as Beglov slowly gets more absorbed in his past after a local news show plays an old clip of one of his routines, and then claims that he is dead.

There are two major musical numbers - both resulting spontaneously from artists during their down time, freed from the restraints of the stage or the director's ego. The first number, the first scene in the film, shows Beglov in his prime, on a TV set filming the routine that the TV news show shows decades later. During a break in filming, Beglov bangs out a beat on the drums, and the musicians join in, as Beglov then twirls and taps with impressive dexterity across the stage. Cut to a shot of the technicians applauding, standing in for me, and then silence, as they have to shoot. The other number occurs after Beglov shows up at rehearsal of the modern production with sparkling apple juice in tow, celebrating his life after presumed death. He gets up to the mic and sings a traditional song, about a worm wanting a bee to pick him up and fly, as the leotarded dancers waltz. Then it stops, and work has to begin - this is exactly the way the numbers work in the Band Wagon, taking place off-stage as an expression of pure communal feeling.

The ending is a stunner - as Beglov lies in his hospital bed, reminiscing about the greatest night of his life, dancing for a half empty theater with his daughter (who earlier asked him not to attend her wedding). This beautiful duet between father and daughter - a dance of spontaneous feeling in a professional setting, is filled with love and bitter reality, it's a memory that Beglov wants to stand in for his whole life, and you can't blame him for it.

Discussing Premiere's List of the 50 Greatest Film Comedies Of All Time

I'm a little behind on my magazine reading; last month's Premiere ("The Comedy Issue" with Steve Carell on the cover) includes a list and because I, like every other American male between the ages of 18 and 35 is obsessed with any list of anything, here is an analysis. I invite you to play along — that's what the comments section is for!

(In keeping with Premiere, all lists are arranged alphabetically with no consideration to personal preferences)

Movies on the List I Have Seen
Safety Last (1923)
The General (1927)
Duck Soup (1933)
It Happened One Night (1934)
A Night at the Opera (1935)
The Awful Truth (1937)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
His Girl Friday (1940)
The Bank Dick (1940)
To Be Or Not To Be (1942)
Road to Morocco (1942)
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)
The Ladykillers (1955)
Some Like it Hot (1959)
The Apartment (1960)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
The Producers (1968)
M*A*S*H (1970)
Sleeper (1973)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Annie Hall (1977)
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
The Jerk (1979)
Airplane! (1980)
Caddyshack (1980)
My Favorite Year (1982)
Trading Places (1983)
National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
There's Something About Mary (1998)
Rushmore (1998)
Best in Show (2000)
Zoolander (2001)
Wedding Crashers (2005)
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

Movies From The List I Really Should Have Seen Already
The Gold Rush (1925)
My Man Godfrey (1936)
A Chump at Oxford (1940)
The Sunshine Boys (1975)

Movies From The List I Haven't Seen And Am In No Rush To See
Big Deal On Madonna Street (1958)
Heaven Can Wait (1978)
The In-Laws (1979)
Private Benjamin (1980)

Movie Even I Can't Believe I Haven't Seen
A Shot in the Dark (1964)

Movies Whose Exclusion Upsets Me Deeply
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Ghostbusters (1984)
The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad! (1988)
Clerks (1994)
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Movie That Would Have Surely Been Included If The List Was Released Just One Week Later
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

A Scene From Ball of Fire (1941)

Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) sits at a table with his peers and roommates, a group of amiable old scientists. It is a bachelor party of sorts. Potts is to marry Sugarpuss (Barbara Stanwyck) over the weekend. They all start yelling banal advice until one shouts them down, one Prof. Oddly (Richard Haydn)- the only one who has been married before. He tells the story of his honeymoon, he took her to the Catskills so she could paint, he was amazed at the bold way in which he kissed the palm of her hand every night. He pulls out a lock of her hair from his pocket. He remembers a tune. One of the friends starts humming it. He tells him to sing. He does. The rest of the group picks it up, with Potts looking on. The song is "Genevieve", about remembering her. It is a lilting melody. She died 24 years earlier. The widow stands up, thanks the group, and leaves, and tells them to continue. He is moved beyond words, happy to simply remember her palm - it is not a mournful scene - but absolutely joyful, which is what makes it extraordinary. A ringing affirmation of life. Of a life long past.

The scene moves organically, motivated by the impending wedding and Potts' uncertainty - due to his lack of experience with women. The widow's experience is tied to Potts' gracefully. As he shows the lock of hair, he remembers how it once shined, chiming with Potts' first encounter with Sugarpuss, as he's stunned by her hair as she poses under a window.

Then Stanwyck's eyes blaze in shadow as Cooper unburdens his feelings of sexlove to whom he thinks is Oddly. This declaration, which modesty would shackle him from doing to her in person seals their fate as she jumps out of shadow for furtive kisses. A series of events spurred by a decades old love revitalized in song.

Which is why we need popular music. And love. And Howard Hawks. And hair. And palms.

Let's Get Nuts

I've attached numbers to things I enjoy:
1. The New World; The Intruder (tie)
3. The Best of Youth
4. Kings and Queen
5. The World
6. Oliver Twist
7. Innocence
8. Tropical Malady
9. Good Night, And Good Luck
10. My Mother's Smile

Others that gave me great pleasure were Munich; Cache; Cafe Lumiere; 2046; The White Diamond; Assault on Precinct 13; Good Morning, Night; Wedding Crashers; Turtles Can Fly; Keane; The Weeping Meadow

Unreleased: The Sun, Three Times, Tomorrow We Move (DVD), Clean, The Ister [the first four would have been in the top ten]

Comments!

The New World. It's beautiful. One needs more than that but it's a good start. Continuing Malick's obsession of contrasting a passive eternalized nature with the scrambling inhumanity of man, it particularizes what in The Thin Red Line was collective, and offers a way out. TRL's (I think it'll catch on) polyvocal voiceover was a choir of disbelief at our finitude as the trees sat there not giving a shit. In The New World we're given only three voices, parceled out one at a time, sketching full individuals in the midst of societal breakdown, until the society fades away and the personal relationships take center stage. Which is what people are pissy about - not getting their full self-righteous rage on about European exploiters. But Malick is a humanist, not a cultural studies nob, he's claiming it's possible to transcend culture, to find truth outside of it, instead of falling back on ideas of relativity (while not denying the culture's formative effects). And there's love. A film that shows that love doesn't start until the swooning ends, that the love-in-separation joint Western culture's been smoking since before Romeo And Juliet is basically BS. Q'orianka Kilcher's radiant, Christian Bale is solid as oak, and Colin Farrell isn't that bad. Really. Plus Malick's cutting it down for national release, so it will be 1/5 less ponderous.

The Intruder. Also beautiful. Also a good start. Images are the thing here. Hands in sand, streamers in sky, heart in snow. All mournful, the body is decaying and there's not a goddamn thing Michel Subor can do about it, despite all his desperation. The new heart is a stranger to him, opening him up to all sorts of unconscious invaders, over the border, into his home, into his head. Escape to paradise won't help, he'll die just like Gauguin, and take his son with him. Also - Best Score of the Year.

Oliver Twist is ugly, which is beautiful in its own way. Dirt seeps through the walls, through the pores, into the speech, until Oliver finds a home with the extraordinary Ben Kingsley, traipsing his skeletal frame around his sodden flat like Nosferatu at a Gwen Stefani concert. Polanski knows how to frame, how to cut. Narrative flows by and you don't notice it, characters fill the space, all personalized, all identifiably human - except for the caricatured owners of the orphanage - looming ogres of decadence who made me laugh. Most Overlooked film of the year.

Action is its own reward. Thank you to: Assault On Precinct 13 and The Cave for unpretentious action sequences that kept people in frame and that proved once again that modesty is the best policy.

Best Blockbuster of the Year: The least modest film of the year was Mr. and Mrs. Smith, agog at it's own star-ness, it winked til it hurt and had the hottest non-sex scene of the year as Pitt and Jolie decimated their designer kitchen with aroused aplomb.