In the wide range of Asian cinema, one director seems to stand out from the rest, Takashi Miike. Miike has established himself as an autuer of extreme cinema throughout his short, but very prolific career. Although no two Miike films are exactly alike, most share three basic themes: family, bullying, chaos and order. Miike is a visionary director who's works have built him an army of cult fines worldwide through his boldness to take the viewer to a place where they dare think a director will go. Miike's unique filmmaking style has created a lot of controversy for him as well.
Miike's body of work spans many different genres from horror to comedy, from surreal to drama. No matter which genre the director works in, his stamp on the film can be seen through pristine and bold imagery that stays in the mind of the viewers. Takashi Miike is an auteur, no matter what type of film he is directing. Even before the press has a chance to write on the film there exists a mystique and an idea that daringly takes the viewer into a world where boundaries don’t exist.
One strong trait of Miike's work—his cinematic fingerprint one could say, is the way his films often attempt to break down surface level traditions and ideals that exist in Japanese society. With Audition, Miike tackled the subject of a middle-aged widow looking to replace his wife. The idea that marriage should not be based on love and admiration, rather convincingly was made into a mockery, which soon turned into a horror. With his film Visitor Q, Miike was to develop a film that would be a continuance on a series based on tales of love. What he developed instead was a spoof on Japanese reality TV that would show Japanese families as being ideally perfect. Many of his images were over the top and unforgettable, but instead of making a surface level film about family love, Miike went into the darkest area of his heart to display a message to the viewer that no matter how bad things get, family should always love one another. His touch on cinema makes it clear that he loves Japanese culture, but he sees it for what it is and to him true love and beauty often come from hate and ugliness.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Chris Bergeris-The first person to review Kevin Smith!...Aw damn someone already did it, oh well
So for this week's blog, focusing on directors, I chose to focus on Kevin Smith. Kevin Smith is sort of an insperation for independet movie makers. The guy goes to film school for like a year, gets a collaboration going, then comes back to his hometown and makes a film that cost about two hundred thousand dollars and just when he thinks he'll never be able to pay back the debt, his film gets into a film contest and makes it big. For me, Smith as a screenwriter/Director is the perfect combination. He's not one of those directors who doesn't even know what his script is about, he knows. He doesn't dwell in action, rather in dialouge. It's the characters that drive the plot, not the plot that drives the chracters. Sure, his humor is crude, and it's impossible to go a whole movie without a sex joke, but that's what people expect of him. I mean, after your first film has a scene where a girl admits to giving 37 blowjobs, really, where else can you go?
What lies beneath these jokes are the characters. For the most part, Clerks is the story of two friends who dream of doing something better but know (or some don't know) that it's almost never going to happen. Mallrats features a character who learns he has to grow up from being the comic collecting jerk to being a guy a girl really wants to be with. Chasing Amy features a character who has to try and overcome his love intrest's past in order to be with her. Dogma deals with a character trying to have faith when she already lost it. Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back...okay this movie is all jokes and the exception to the rule. But then Clerks II has the same characters from 12 years ago on the brink of a realization of what they've done with their lives and whether or not their friendship will survive. Smith doesn't hit these themes over the head, but he makes nods to them that they're easy to pick out. Another interesting thing with Smith is that he works with the same people on almost all of his movies. This allows his movies to have a certain feel to them. It also doesn't hurt that he has a team of actors that he can rely on to get the job done. It's also an interesting concept that his movies are all connected in some way or another.
Overall, Kevin Smith will never get the recognition he probably deserves. But he's one of the only guys in comedy (and no, Judd Apatow is not one of them) that can make you laugh and make you think at the same time.
What lies beneath these jokes are the characters. For the most part, Clerks is the story of two friends who dream of doing something better but know (or some don't know) that it's almost never going to happen. Mallrats features a character who learns he has to grow up from being the comic collecting jerk to being a guy a girl really wants to be with. Chasing Amy features a character who has to try and overcome his love intrest's past in order to be with her. Dogma deals with a character trying to have faith when she already lost it. Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back...okay this movie is all jokes and the exception to the rule. But then Clerks II has the same characters from 12 years ago on the brink of a realization of what they've done with their lives and whether or not their friendship will survive. Smith doesn't hit these themes over the head, but he makes nods to them that they're easy to pick out. Another interesting thing with Smith is that he works with the same people on almost all of his movies. This allows his movies to have a certain feel to them. It also doesn't hurt that he has a team of actors that he can rely on to get the job done. It's also an interesting concept that his movies are all connected in some way or another.
Overall, Kevin Smith will never get the recognition he probably deserves. But he's one of the only guys in comedy (and no, Judd Apatow is not one of them) that can make you laugh and make you think at the same time.
Darnell Brown - Auteur: Christopher "I am the greatest" Nolan
I chose Christopher Nolan for "Auteurism" week because he has a very interesting way of inserting his own vision and view points in his films. From his first film, "Following" to his box office smash hit, "The Dark Knight" Nolan has chose to do films on emotional obsessed protagonists and how their obsession not only effects them but the world and characters around them. Nolan chooses to do films that have emotional weight beyond what's written on the page. In a recent interview with...I forget who but Nolan actually said that he's considering not making a third Batman. Why you ask? I asked why. But after further examination, I understood his reasoning. Nolan is very interested in not just the process of making films but the reasoning behind making a film. He isn't interested in making films just for money. If there's not a compelling storyline for the next Batman film...than he won't make it...he says.
I think that goes to Nolan's style of movie making. He often collaborates with the same group of people namely his younger brother, Jonathan Nolan. From what I've been able to observe from Nolan's films and his progression as a film maker, he enjoys making films that don't have a clear cut protagonist and antagonist. He likes there to be questions left unanswered when you get up from your seat. He doesn't like a lot of special effects and most importantly, he believes audiences of today are smarter than Hollywood thinks we are. Who else could pitch the type of film Dark Knight was destined to become as a summer blockbuster. Nolan believed that just because it's summer, doesn't mean the movies have to be "dumber". (Sorry)
Nolan is one of our foremost, intelligent storytellers who respects the intellect of the audience. He is one of the only people that can blow shit up in your face and make you think at the same time. Don't you wish you could do that?
I think that goes to Nolan's style of movie making. He often collaborates with the same group of people namely his younger brother, Jonathan Nolan. From what I've been able to observe from Nolan's films and his progression as a film maker, he enjoys making films that don't have a clear cut protagonist and antagonist. He likes there to be questions left unanswered when you get up from your seat. He doesn't like a lot of special effects and most importantly, he believes audiences of today are smarter than Hollywood thinks we are. Who else could pitch the type of film Dark Knight was destined to become as a summer blockbuster. Nolan believed that just because it's summer, doesn't mean the movies have to be "dumber". (Sorry)
Nolan is one of our foremost, intelligent storytellers who respects the intellect of the audience. He is one of the only people that can blow shit up in your face and make you think at the same time. Don't you wish you could do that?
Auteur -- M. Night Shyamalan
Director: M. Night Shyamalan Films: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village, Signs
The idea of auteurism is one which is heavily debated in regards to popular directors and popular screenwriters. Men like Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese are directors whose films are recognizable by numerous factors; however, screenwriters like William Goldman have balked at the idea that the director should get all the credit for the vision of the film.
That's why I chose to highlight M. Night Shyamalan. He has directed every screenplay he's ever written except for the film Stuart Little. His style is unique by today's standards of film in that he doesn't go for the quick cut or the close up. His shots are long and lingering like an old black and white -- they are beautifully framed, especially when there are three characters in a scene (a frequent characteristic of his movies). He is very good at filming in a triangle and filling up the depth of field with both people and things so that your eye is always tricked into thinking the space on camera is very deep.
Shyamalan has a way of moving into close-ups from very far away; for example, in the film Unbreakable there is a scene between actors Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis. We begin with a long take in a long shot: the frame at first includes a bleeding body in the foreground with Jackson and Willis talking far off in the background; but because they mention the body, we see the body. It is important to the conversation for Willis's character's sake and Shyamalan is very subtle in the way he engages his audience in this shot.
Slowly, we begin to move in on them and before we know it, we're in a medium shot. Then, we're looking at both men's faces. It's incredible how he does it without interrupting intimate moments with a cut.
Another one of his noticeable film traits is the fact that he always gives one character a moment to breathe and react at the end of an emotionally or physically dramatic scene. He never just cuts away -- there's always that reaction.
And of course, one can't watch an M. Night Shyamalan film without wondering "What's the twist!?" because nearly every single one of his films has a shocker in it.
*SPOILERS*
-- The Sixth Sense saw one character's realization that they were actually a ghost throughout the entire film.
-- Unbreakable saw one character discovering that he has harbored super powers his whole life.
-- In Signs, it was the fact that the aliens were allergic to water. (Why they came to a planet that was 75-80% water, I will never know.)
-- The Village had it's elders posing as terrible monsters in order to keep it's citizens in check.
*END SPOILERS*
The difference between the fact that every film has a twist and an M. Night Shyamalan twist is the fact that we are to expect that our entire idea of the film we are watching is subject to change in a Shyamalan film. People go to see his movies and speculate on it the entire time. They've come to look for hidden clues (in The Sixth Sense it was the color red) and even regard his films with a suspicious eye. I know I do...
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Memories - Ferraro
"Memories"
Autuer: Katsuhiro Otoma
2004
This week I've screened the works of "The Master of Animè" Katsuhiro and his film "Memories". Basically the theme of this movie, which is composed of 3 different tales, revovles around the motif of one's memory. For example, the first story "Magnetic Rose" an artificial intellegent android is programmed with the memories of a legendary opera singer named Eva. She uses them to create her home in the depths of space, and uses the memories of the protagonist, Heintz, agaisnt him by making him relive the moments of his young daughter's death.
Otoma also makes use of a doll theme. Near the beginning of "Magnetic Rose", a doll-like music box falls off the table and smashes. Later, in the end, the living-memory of Heintz's daughter falls over and smashes much like the doll did. Also, in the second story, one of the female characters grows a doll-like face when she falls unconcious and falls over.
The second story is called "Stink Bomb" and is pretty much a humorous version of "Akira", another work of Katsuhiro Otoma. The director goes with the same plot of a young man who is unwittingly infected by a strange disease and becomes a threat to society. The only way to save everyone is to destroy the "monster".
Otoro's films, like any other known director, has the same style of structure. His stories involve a thrilling event, usually a life or a society is in mortal danger, and either takes place in the future or the present given futuristic elements. But not only that, the style of animation is always similar to the next, smooth and high-octane.
Autuer: Katsuhiro Otoma
2004
This week I've screened the works of "The Master of Animè" Katsuhiro and his film "Memories". Basically the theme of this movie, which is composed of 3 different tales, revovles around the motif of one's memory. For example, the first story "Magnetic Rose" an artificial intellegent android is programmed with the memories of a legendary opera singer named Eva. She uses them to create her home in the depths of space, and uses the memories of the protagonist, Heintz, agaisnt him by making him relive the moments of his young daughter's death.
Otoma also makes use of a doll theme. Near the beginning of "Magnetic Rose", a doll-like music box falls off the table and smashes. Later, in the end, the living-memory of Heintz's daughter falls over and smashes much like the doll did. Also, in the second story, one of the female characters grows a doll-like face when she falls unconcious and falls over.
The second story is called "Stink Bomb" and is pretty much a humorous version of "Akira", another work of Katsuhiro Otoma. The director goes with the same plot of a young man who is unwittingly infected by a strange disease and becomes a threat to society. The only way to save everyone is to destroy the "monster".
Otoro's films, like any other known director, has the same style of structure. His stories involve a thrilling event, usually a life or a society is in mortal danger, and either takes place in the future or the present given futuristic elements. But not only that, the style of animation is always similar to the next, smooth and high-octane.
Sam Mendes
Movies: American Beauty, The Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road
The day that I saw American Beauty when i was 12 years old marks the beginning of my love for film. It was the first film where i didnt just walk away from it with a good feeling but rather a desire to find out who it was that created this quirky social study.
Sam Mendes takes a very personal angle on his projects. They always turn out to be a sort of character study, diving deep into personal problems rather than treating characters as pawns of a plot. One of the best examples of this was his adaptation of Anthony Swofford's Jarhead. From the look of the trailers that were released it looked like another war film, like black hawk down. Something loaded with action and very small characters trying to keep up with the fast pace. Rather, Mendes chose to tell the stories of these soldiers. The plot became secondary to his beautiful vision of the effects of a war in the dessert on these all american boys.
In the road to perdition he had to recreate the 1920's gangster film, but instead reinvented it. Most of the films in this genre rely on a beautiful setting with some big gun action and witty dialogue. Rather, Mendes chose a project about a gangster whose son witnesses one of his hits and is forced to go on the run with his son to protect him. This relationship of father son proved to be compelling enough that it could have occured in any era, but of course Mendes aimed to please and succeeded on all fronts. He used lots of long establishing takes to take the viewer through the area, and then close almost clostraphobic shots between father and son pulling the viewer deep into the relationship.
Mendes has a project coming up called Revolutionary road and i will definitely be one of the first in line to see it. He is a director with confidence is his vision and is not afraid to hide behind a camera. He puts his own twists on his projects almost always redefining and raising the bar.
The day that I saw American Beauty when i was 12 years old marks the beginning of my love for film. It was the first film where i didnt just walk away from it with a good feeling but rather a desire to find out who it was that created this quirky social study.
Sam Mendes takes a very personal angle on his projects. They always turn out to be a sort of character study, diving deep into personal problems rather than treating characters as pawns of a plot. One of the best examples of this was his adaptation of Anthony Swofford's Jarhead. From the look of the trailers that were released it looked like another war film, like black hawk down. Something loaded with action and very small characters trying to keep up with the fast pace. Rather, Mendes chose to tell the stories of these soldiers. The plot became secondary to his beautiful vision of the effects of a war in the dessert on these all american boys.
In the road to perdition he had to recreate the 1920's gangster film, but instead reinvented it. Most of the films in this genre rely on a beautiful setting with some big gun action and witty dialogue. Rather, Mendes chose a project about a gangster whose son witnesses one of his hits and is forced to go on the run with his son to protect him. This relationship of father son proved to be compelling enough that it could have occured in any era, but of course Mendes aimed to please and succeeded on all fronts. He used lots of long establishing takes to take the viewer through the area, and then close almost clostraphobic shots between father and son pulling the viewer deep into the relationship.
Mendes has a project coming up called Revolutionary road and i will definitely be one of the first in line to see it. He is a director with confidence is his vision and is not afraid to hide behind a camera. He puts his own twists on his projects almost always redefining and raising the bar.
Elyse Stefanowicz - Authorship - David Slade
When discussing film authorship, usually one would think to use a director that has made many movies and has been around a long time. But David Slade, a new director with only 3 movies under his belt (Do Geese See God? 2004, Hard Candy 2005, and 30 Days of Night 2006), has a totally unique shooting and directing style which is totally different from anything I've ever seen before.
The book gives several different meanings of an auteur but in part part it describes it as the director being able to create a well-made film and also someone who has a distinguishable personality. David Slade creates an entire new world in his films filled with suspense and creativity. The film Hard Candy is a chilling film that circles around a cast of four. Ellen Paige plays a 14-year-old girl who wants to catch an internet pedophile. She does horrible things to him without definitely knowing that he is a pedophile. Throughout the whole film the lines are blurred of who is wrong and who is right and even at the end the audience is left wondering who was right in the situation.
While watching the film I was immediately surprised by the shooting style. Most of the close-ups in the film are extremely tight framing and at times the audience doesn't even know what they are looking at. The shooting technique at first distracted me because I had never seen anything like it before. Close-ups yes, but that extreme of a close-up used over and over, no. The shots were beautiful however and had to be well thought out and positioned in order to come across as they should be. This is why I would consider David Slade an auteur. His shooting style is so recognizable and unique.
The book gives several different meanings of an auteur but in part part it describes it as the director being able to create a well-made film and also someone who has a distinguishable personality. David Slade creates an entire new world in his films filled with suspense and creativity. The film Hard Candy is a chilling film that circles around a cast of four. Ellen Paige plays a 14-year-old girl who wants to catch an internet pedophile. She does horrible things to him without definitely knowing that he is a pedophile. Throughout the whole film the lines are blurred of who is wrong and who is right and even at the end the audience is left wondering who was right in the situation.
While watching the film I was immediately surprised by the shooting style. Most of the close-ups in the film are extremely tight framing and at times the audience doesn't even know what they are looking at. The shooting technique at first distracted me because I had never seen anything like it before. Close-ups yes, but that extreme of a close-up used over and over, no. The shots were beautiful however and had to be well thought out and positioned in order to come across as they should be. This is why I would consider David Slade an auteur. His shooting style is so recognizable and unique.
Scorsese - Age of Innocence
Martin Scorsese
Particularly: Age of Innocence
1993
Age of Innocence began as a novel about a young man who is engaged to marry a woman he believes he loves until her cousin comes to town and stands against all social norms, quickly leading him to fall in love with this new and exciting woman.
This story was written by Edith Wharton during the 19th century and is told with a very neutral eye, not passing judgment on any of the characters or showing the author’s opinion. Scorsese could be guaranteed to take this film and give it the twists typical of his own style.
Scorsese took this film to a much darker, more sensual place than the original story. It added a level of sexuality that deepened the tension. He also increased the opulence, giving the story a grander feel than it previously contained. Scorsese made this film his own, helping to satisfy why his fans went to see many of his films even though the story was not his own.
When examining the themes and style of this film, it is far from the original intention of the story written by Edith Wharton. Edith never meant to criticize the society or to condemn it or its characters. She wanted the story to be blank for others to interpret.
Scorsese, however, was very clear with his message of hatred of social norms and upholding those who struggle against them whether they ultimately win or loose. He shows his strong opinions and elevates elements of the story to reach them. He truly made this film to match many of his other styles of filmmaking so that it truly feels like a Scorsese film in every way.
Particularly: Age of Innocence
1993
Age of Innocence began as a novel about a young man who is engaged to marry a woman he believes he loves until her cousin comes to town and stands against all social norms, quickly leading him to fall in love with this new and exciting woman.
This story was written by Edith Wharton during the 19th century and is told with a very neutral eye, not passing judgment on any of the characters or showing the author’s opinion. Scorsese could be guaranteed to take this film and give it the twists typical of his own style.
Scorsese took this film to a much darker, more sensual place than the original story. It added a level of sexuality that deepened the tension. He also increased the opulence, giving the story a grander feel than it previously contained. Scorsese made this film his own, helping to satisfy why his fans went to see many of his films even though the story was not his own.
When examining the themes and style of this film, it is far from the original intention of the story written by Edith Wharton. Edith never meant to criticize the society or to condemn it or its characters. She wanted the story to be blank for others to interpret.
Scorsese, however, was very clear with his message of hatred of social norms and upholding those who struggle against them whether they ultimately win or loose. He shows his strong opinions and elevates elements of the story to reach them. He truly made this film to match many of his other styles of filmmaking so that it truly feels like a Scorsese film in every way.
FELLINI by JOSH COHEN
It was just after the United States decided not to join the League of Nations that Federico Fellini was born. January 20, 1920 brought into the world a boy who would become the worlds most influential and revered filmmaker of his time.
Fellini always had a unique style to his directing, his scripts and his films altogether. His Films conjure a seamless mix of his own memories from his youth, with a mix of fantasy, desire, and dreams. His films such as La Strada, Le Notti di Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and ill Cassanova di Federico Fellini are all Oscar winning titles credited to his name. It’s important to note that Fellini was involved with the writing of his films as well. He would keep the script on him at all times, and have it memorized. As far as he was concerned the actors were all puppets and he was the only one who should know what exactly should be happening in the scene. He would make his crew create a moving sea that he wanted to look real as well as fake. He always liked to fake things, as he said in an interview, “ I am constantly reminded by my profession that I am a magician!”
Fellini always had a unique style to his directing, his scripts and his films altogether. His Films conjure a seamless mix of his own memories from his youth, with a mix of fantasy, desire, and dreams. His films such as La Strada, Le Notti di Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and ill Cassanova di Federico Fellini are all Oscar winning titles credited to his name. It’s important to note that Fellini was involved with the writing of his films as well. He would keep the script on him at all times, and have it memorized. As far as he was concerned the actors were all puppets and he was the only one who should know what exactly should be happening in the scene. He would make his crew create a moving sea that he wanted to look real as well as fake. He always liked to fake things, as he said in an interview, “ I am constantly reminded by my profession that I am a magician!”
K-Smizzy
Auteur: Kevin Smith
Films: So these II Clerks watched some Mallrats that were Chasing Amy and Dogma run into Jay and Silent Bob, who Struck Back because they didn't get to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno with Jersey Girl.
There honestly shouldn't be a person that doesn't throw a fist in the air to represent when I mention Kevin Smith. He's like the Da Vinci of movie-making, considering his talents extend from writing to directing to acting to... he's one of those powerhouse filmmakers that a lot of people probably aspire to be. This isn't to say that all of his films are perfect and loved by the world at large (i.e. Jersey Girl. What the hell, Kevin? What. The. Hell.), but he's garnered enough chops and respect to be taken as seriously as anybody with his style of sense of humor can be.
Trying to chronicle the awesomeness that is Kevin Smith is like trying to unsink the Titanic (horrible movie, by the way). But there's a certain style that comes with a Kevin Smith movie that can be spotted a mile away. Personally, it's the writing that draws me to a Kevin Smith film. The humor comes across in a way that's intelligently hilarious, even if the characters are stereotypical in their own way. Jay, for instance, is about as stupid as you can get... however, the way he's written brings him to life in a way that his catch phrases have become a staple in pop culture. Dante and Randal, a most excellent pair of conversationalists if I ever head some, manage to have hysterically intelligent conversations about some of the most inane and trivial topics. It all comes together in a style that is very much Kevin Smith.
Kevin's movies are shot in a style that I'm not even sure what it's called. But they always come across in a way that makes me feel like I'm right there with the guys and girls in the flick. It's almost like Kevin uses the camera as a character. But, not being a filmmaker myself, I couldn't careless about his shooting style. A much more signature move, so to speak, for Kevin is the fact that he recycles actors and characters through the majority of his movies. Of the "If It's Not Broken, Don't Fix It" generation, Kevin works with the same people all of the time because it just makes the whole process easier. People know what they're getting into, know where they've been and know each other. Definitely a key element in the success of Kevin's films.
If you don't like Kevin Smith, well, you fail. If you're like me and you love the Smithmeister, then give me a Snoogins and let's head to Hollywood to stop Yogi Bear from bein' made.
- Jason "What The @*&#@ Is The Internet?" Newbern
Films: So these II Clerks watched some Mallrats that were Chasing Amy and Dogma run into Jay and Silent Bob, who Struck Back because they didn't get to see Zack and Miri Make a Porno with Jersey Girl.
There honestly shouldn't be a person that doesn't throw a fist in the air to represent when I mention Kevin Smith. He's like the Da Vinci of movie-making, considering his talents extend from writing to directing to acting to... he's one of those powerhouse filmmakers that a lot of people probably aspire to be. This isn't to say that all of his films are perfect and loved by the world at large (i.e. Jersey Girl. What the hell, Kevin? What. The. Hell.), but he's garnered enough chops and respect to be taken as seriously as anybody with his style of sense of humor can be.
Trying to chronicle the awesomeness that is Kevin Smith is like trying to unsink the Titanic (horrible movie, by the way). But there's a certain style that comes with a Kevin Smith movie that can be spotted a mile away. Personally, it's the writing that draws me to a Kevin Smith film. The humor comes across in a way that's intelligently hilarious, even if the characters are stereotypical in their own way. Jay, for instance, is about as stupid as you can get... however, the way he's written brings him to life in a way that his catch phrases have become a staple in pop culture. Dante and Randal, a most excellent pair of conversationalists if I ever head some, manage to have hysterically intelligent conversations about some of the most inane and trivial topics. It all comes together in a style that is very much Kevin Smith.
Kevin's movies are shot in a style that I'm not even sure what it's called. But they always come across in a way that makes me feel like I'm right there with the guys and girls in the flick. It's almost like Kevin uses the camera as a character. But, not being a filmmaker myself, I couldn't careless about his shooting style. A much more signature move, so to speak, for Kevin is the fact that he recycles actors and characters through the majority of his movies. Of the "If It's Not Broken, Don't Fix It" generation, Kevin works with the same people all of the time because it just makes the whole process easier. People know what they're getting into, know where they've been and know each other. Definitely a key element in the success of Kevin's films.
If you don't like Kevin Smith, well, you fail. If you're like me and you love the Smithmeister, then give me a Snoogins and let's head to Hollywood to stop Yogi Bear from bein' made.
- Jason "What The @*&#@ Is The Internet?" Newbern
Justin Afifi - Paul Thomas Anderson
Films: Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson, often referred to as PTA, has become one of the most promising directors in a long while. After just five films PTA has already been nominated for numerous awards, including five Academy Awards for best picture, best director, and best screenplay. PTA was born in Studio City, California to Bonnie and Ernie Anderson, the latter of which was the voice of ABC. PTA attended several schools, including NYU which he dropped out of after only two weeks. His first sign of recognition came after entering his short film Coffee & Cigarettes into Sundance. After positive reviews PTA made his first film Hard Eight.
PTA's first big success was the film Boogie Nights, which followed the career of up and coming porn star Dirk Diggler and the lives of those around him. PTA established himself as a bright young star and received an immense amount of credit as it was one of the best reviewed films of the year. The film introduced the audience to PTA's skill behind the camera, including an opening long shot that runs several minutes long.
His second film, Magnolia, followed the lives of several people in a linked storyline. The film garnered mostly positive reviews and was again another Oscar nominated effort of PTA's. PTA further illustrated his skill with those same long shots and his expert story telling ability. The film started to draw comparisons to childhood idol Robert Altman and good friend Quentin Tarantino.
Punch Drunk Love was about a small business man and his relationship with a woman introduced to him by one of his seven sisters. The film starred Adam Sandler and would again receive favorable reviews, mostly for bringing out a real actor in the usually comic Sandler.
Career making performances weren't uncommon in Anderson's films as he has helped establish Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Adam Sandler, John C. Reily, Don Cheadle, and many more as capable actors. Not to mention resurrecting Burt Reynolds' career.
PTA's latest film There Will Be Blood saw Anderson make, what many call, an American epic. The film follows Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day Lewis, as he quests for oil through greed, religion, and whatever else it takes. The film was highly acclaimed and has launched PTA into one of the greatest working directors today. He also lead Day Lewis to an Oscar win. His use of scope and his ability to draw people into his story is often credited with his success as a filmmaker.
PTA has several trademarks, not all of them involving the camera. He usually has Jon Brion compose the score to his films, uses expertly shot long shots, fantastic ensemble casts, an amazing ability to tell stories, and a vision behind the camera that makes every film seem timeless.
Paul Thomas Anderson, often referred to as PTA, has become one of the most promising directors in a long while. After just five films PTA has already been nominated for numerous awards, including five Academy Awards for best picture, best director, and best screenplay. PTA was born in Studio City, California to Bonnie and Ernie Anderson, the latter of which was the voice of ABC. PTA attended several schools, including NYU which he dropped out of after only two weeks. His first sign of recognition came after entering his short film Coffee & Cigarettes into Sundance. After positive reviews PTA made his first film Hard Eight.
PTA's first big success was the film Boogie Nights, which followed the career of up and coming porn star Dirk Diggler and the lives of those around him. PTA established himself as a bright young star and received an immense amount of credit as it was one of the best reviewed films of the year. The film introduced the audience to PTA's skill behind the camera, including an opening long shot that runs several minutes long.
His second film, Magnolia, followed the lives of several people in a linked storyline. The film garnered mostly positive reviews and was again another Oscar nominated effort of PTA's. PTA further illustrated his skill with those same long shots and his expert story telling ability. The film started to draw comparisons to childhood idol Robert Altman and good friend Quentin Tarantino.
Punch Drunk Love was about a small business man and his relationship with a woman introduced to him by one of his seven sisters. The film starred Adam Sandler and would again receive favorable reviews, mostly for bringing out a real actor in the usually comic Sandler.
Career making performances weren't uncommon in Anderson's films as he has helped establish Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Adam Sandler, John C. Reily, Don Cheadle, and many more as capable actors. Not to mention resurrecting Burt Reynolds' career.
PTA's latest film There Will Be Blood saw Anderson make, what many call, an American epic. The film follows Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day Lewis, as he quests for oil through greed, religion, and whatever else it takes. The film was highly acclaimed and has launched PTA into one of the greatest working directors today. He also lead Day Lewis to an Oscar win. His use of scope and his ability to draw people into his story is often credited with his success as a filmmaker.
PTA has several trademarks, not all of them involving the camera. He usually has Jon Brion compose the score to his films, uses expertly shot long shots, fantastic ensemble casts, an amazing ability to tell stories, and a vision behind the camera that makes every film seem timeless.
Auteur: Baz Luhrmann - McGuirk
Auteur: Baz Luhrmann
Films: Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Moulin Rouge (2001), Australia (2008)
Baz Luhrmann is one of the most celebrated and underrated filmmakers of the time. Growing up in rural Australia surrounded by his parents who ran a ballroom dance competition and personal theater, created the world that would spark his creativity in later years. His most notable work being the "Red Curtain Trilogy" This was created by Luhrmann as a way to show and use audience participation in film.
Luhrmann's distinctive style is the use of bright vivid color schemes across his films as a way to liven up a sort of "lonely" situation. All films are looking to be woken up, and Luhrmann's trademark does that. He's also known for his fast-paced editing that occurs usually at the beginning of his films and slows down over time to single the difference between silliness/comedy to seriousness/tragedy.
He is created with "re-inventing" the musical and putting the passion for it back into today's Cinema with his most successful film to date, Moulin Rouge. His uniqueness has dubbed him an auteur of the time. While he hasn't made many films, he has made quality films that he puts his entire being into creating, and that shows a true auteur director.
Films: Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Moulin Rouge (2001), Australia (2008)
Baz Luhrmann is one of the most celebrated and underrated filmmakers of the time. Growing up in rural Australia surrounded by his parents who ran a ballroom dance competition and personal theater, created the world that would spark his creativity in later years. His most notable work being the "Red Curtain Trilogy" This was created by Luhrmann as a way to show and use audience participation in film.
Luhrmann's distinctive style is the use of bright vivid color schemes across his films as a way to liven up a sort of "lonely" situation. All films are looking to be woken up, and Luhrmann's trademark does that. He's also known for his fast-paced editing that occurs usually at the beginning of his films and slows down over time to single the difference between silliness/comedy to seriousness/tragedy.
He is created with "re-inventing" the musical and putting the passion for it back into today's Cinema with his most successful film to date, Moulin Rouge. His uniqueness has dubbed him an auteur of the time. While he hasn't made many films, he has made quality films that he puts his entire being into creating, and that shows a true auteur director.
Auteur: Quentin Tarantino by Amber S. Palmer - (9th Post
Auteur: Quentin Tarantino by Amber S. Palmer
Quentin Tarantino is defined as one of the most deceptively creative directors of his generation. This is a man who never stepped foot in film school, nor did he ever take time to learn the demanding three act structure but yet his films have reconstructed the face of film through a perspective that takes filmmaking to another level. These are a few of Tarantino’s groundbreaking films: Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, and From Dusk Till’ Dawn. In each of these films Tarantino created a world that is riddled with violence, impulsiveness, dark humor, fetishes, excessive profanity, and demented people. Some can say that Tarantino’s mind is along the lines of a pervert but maybe it’s him telling the stories of people who really fall into the category of human disgrace?
Tarantino’s smash hit, “Pulp Fiction”, was a crime drama told from the perspective of mobsters, thieves, and players. Basically a reflection of most people in the world and he engages the audience with clever, rich dialogue that claws on pop culture references and cinematic allusions. Tarantino named the illustrious film after hard-boiled detective crime novels and pulp magazines in the mid-20th century. He tells the stories not in a chronological way but in a way for the audience to understand the story. In Tarantino’s manner, the story doesn’t actually exist but it is given life through the dialogue in between random moments of action. His unconventional way of storytelling is illustrated as he introduces every sequence of his story with an introduction. For example, “The Gold Watch”, the name captures one’s attention because the curiosity of the gold watch captivates the viewer. Tarantino relies on using the technique as telling his films as if it was a novel. Tarantino’s highly styled writing and grandeur introductions to each sequence of his film are portrayed in his debut film.
“Reservoir Dogs”, details the story of the before and after of events of a jewelry heist going terribly wrong. The core of this film is primarily is the excessive violence that pumps in the blood of many of the characters. As Tarantino reveals more and more of the story, one by one characters begin drop like flies and one of the men proves to be a cop. The whole story revolves around the thieves hiding out in a warehouse and the end result is all of them dying. Tarantino accentuates not giving the typical happy ending or the most satisfying ending, which makes his films distinctive. Tarantino gives a coarse reality of when you break the law, you’re bound to pay. His films interpret an indirect moral message by showing the audience the consequences of negative actions. Another film that shows extreme repercussions is when the old saying goes; “Guilty by Association” is all about the company you keep.
“Jackie Brown”, is based on the novel “Rum Punch” by Elmore Leonard. Even though Tarantino made drastic changes to the story and characters, he still told a riveting story of a middle aged flight attendant (Jackie Brown) who’s asked to take down an arms smuggler, his girlfriend, and his ex-con bank robber friend. As true to form the film bleeds excessive profanity and brutal violence but most of it is off-screen. Tarantino paid homage to Blaxploitation films in Jackie Brown through the soundtrack and the main character being Pam Grier, a famous actress in Blaxploitation films. Tarantino leaves most things in his films ambiguous, just like it being unknown if Jackie really saw Ordell’s gun? Cliffhanger? You’d have to see the movie to see why Tarantino isn’t only prominent because of his unorthodox style of writing. The last but not least film of Tarantino’s concept of his overindulgence for violence, leaks into a little tale of vampires in the desert.
“From Dusk ‘Till Dawn”, this film was directed by Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino wrote it. Tarantino portrays one of the characters as a fugitive bank robber, along with his brother, Seth, played by George Clooney. Unsurprisingly, Tarantino’s character is a homicidal delusional, psychopath and in the opening scene Seth and Richie (Tarantino) holds up a liquor store, killing a clerk, cop, and an innocent bystander. After fleeing they kidnap a RV with a pastor, who questions his faith and his two teenagers. They kidnap them in order to cross the Mexican Border and they then arrive at a strip club dubbed affectionately, “Titty Twister”. Upon going in the bar it is revealed that everyone in the bar is vampires the only people left to live is Seth and the pastor’s daughter, Kate. Tarantino tells very simple stories yet the stories are riddled with tragedy, death, and insanity. Perhaps Tarantino believes some people share all these hidden travesties and the only way to convey a story is through extreme measures? No matter what is the reason behind the man beyond humanity’s madness lies an artist pouring his heart on a canvas of harsh realities and sadistic psyches.
Adaptation Review: Julie Angelicola
The Amityville Horror (2005)
Director: Andrew Douglas
This film was adapted from two different sources. It is a remake of the 1979 version of The Amityville Horror, which was originally adapted from the novel, The Amityville Horror: A True Story published in 1977. It is one of my favorite books of all time and after seeing both versions of the film I would say the book is worth getting your hands on our of all of them. The 2005 version of the film is very similar to the 1979 version except with obviously better special effects and a few added scenes and characters, such as the babysitter Lisa. Although there are three different sources, I am primarily comparing the book to the 2005 version. The film follows the story of the Lutz family who moves into a dream home that held a brutal 6 person murder of the DeFeo family a year before. The eldest son Ronnie DeFeo killed his parents and 4 siblings in their sleep with a shotgun. The Lutzs are haunted and last only 28 days in the house before moving out.
They both start off in a similar way, the Lutz family looking at their new dream house and eventually buying it despite the fact they are informed of the gruesome murders that took place in the house only one year prior. George finds an old alarm clock in the basement stuck on the time 3:15 am. We find out later this is the time the family was killed. The clock keeps flipping back to the time throughout the movie which is when a lot of the ‘bad’ things happen to the Lutzs. Things start out normal until the first odd thing to happen is when George, the father starts feeling unusually cold. Throughout the novel and film, George continues to add mass quantities of wood to the stove in the basement trying to heat the house although he is the only one freezing. The most common thread in both is that George slowly goes crazy, being haunted by the angry souls of the murder victims. He sees things, dead people hanging, silhouettes running through the hallways, and reoccurring dreams of the people being shot, sometimes morphing into himself shooting his own family.
Some other similarities are the fact that the story takes place over the 28 days that the Lutz family survived living in the house. In both the book and film the young daughter Chelsea befriends the deceased little girl Jodi. She sees her ghost and ends up almost dying twice in an attempt to travel with Jodi to see her own dead father. A huge part in the novel is when swarms of flies are crowded around the windows of one upstairs room. This is much more pronounced in the novel versus the film, which only shows it once. In the book, blood seeps and eventually pours down from the walls, out of the faucets, the ceilings, everywhere. It is part nightmare part reality. This happens in the movie but turns into more of George’s visions than actuality.
In both stories, the wife Kathy seeks help from a reverend at a nearby church. He attempts to do a cleansing of the house but is attacked by the spirits and eventually falls very ill rendering him useless to the family. The phrase, “Katchem em’ & Kill em’ ” appears in both stories but is explored more in the film when Kathy goes to the library and researches the murders as well as her house’s history. She finds out that a man named Katchem brutally murdered over 20 Native Americans and threw them in the lake by the house as well as in the ground under their house’s basement. These killings led to the possessions of Ronnie DeFeo who killed his family in the house the year before. The film is more bloody and shows gruesome psychological scenes where the novel is more psychologically entangling and thrilling, giving details that are more disturbing than gory. Overall the characters have the same names and the basic story is the same because it is based off a true story that has caused controversy since the book first came out.
David Lynch as Auteur: Reviewed by Davis Rivera
In his ten feature films, numerous short films, advertisements, music videos, television shows, books, website, and roles as an actor and producer, David Lynch has emerged as one of the most important living auteurs in America. With a new Lynch film out in the theater, most people won’t have to decide which film to see. They will not read film reviews in newspapers, magazines, journals, or websites. Neither will they listen to their friends when they’re describing the return of Lynch’s ‘Rabbits’ segment in his newest feature. They aren’t going to see the film, no matter what critics or friends may say, because it features an obscure actor like Justin Theroux or Jack Nance. They are there lined up because they know that when you come to watch a David Lynch film, you will be seeing the work an established auteur. Lynch has reached a Fassbinder-like level where the word director is very seldom used when describing anything he’s involved with. Standing in line at the cinema, you will inevitably hear the echoing of, “not only does he write his screenplays, but he has been involved with every level of his films’ production at one point or another: sound design, editing, camera work, lighting, casting, special effects, music, everything!” His hands-on approach to every aspect of his films has helped to tie them all together with a common thread and provided tremendous girth to the awe surrounding his work ethic. Lynch is an example of how extreme auteurism can lead pass the so-called “director genre” and into realms of, not only expressing his distinctive vision to the world, but actually getting to live in it without actually being on camera.
David Lynch has created a style so inimitable that, unlike John Ford or Orson Welles who have each earned the right to an annoying adjective (Wellesian, Fordian) that is used to describe certain angles and characteristics of their work, he has created an entirely new genre that is cemented its place in cinematic history and, with a slew of burgeoning auteurs anxious to reach this status by appropriating his style (Michael Haneke, Eli Roth), will not fade into the darkness the way Hughesian did, unmissed and erased from the pantheon of filmic treasures. As the director of well over two-dozen films, both short and feature length, Lynch established all of the genre’s now familiar conventions. For example, arguably the most obvious technical element is cinematography. Lynch, whether attempting to create an unsettling mood or simply filming two people sitting in a diner, uses strange camera angles excessively. He will position the camera in an extreme long shot, usually in a far, overhead corner of the room; shoot the scene from under a table; or even through a crystal ball (as in his “The Wizard of Oz” tribute “Wild at Heart.”) He is splendidly very concerned with creating beautiful images and understanding the plenteous advantages of mise-en-scène. It’s important to note that Lynch was a prominent painter before he was a filmmaker, winning various prizes and attending college at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Lynch has always prefers preposterous images that evoke feeling to words that describe them. As a result, his cinematography can be viewed as a "moving picture."
Lynch’s most effective visual technique is probably his prevalent use of fadeouts and slow motion. They both contribute to the intangible, under-the-surface mood Lynch endeavors for. One of the more interesting and successful sequences is a flashback sequence in Lynch’s television show “Twin Peaks.” In the scene, the image of Mrs. Palmer running down the stairs under a ceiling fan was repeated many times in slow motion, a technique favored by many other avant-garde directors including Harmony Korine in his tour de force “No More Workhorse Blues.” However, in this case, the use of slow motion contributed a dream-like quality to the event, especially significant because it was right before she found out her daughter had been killed. Like his individual use of cinematography, Lynch’s frequent use of slow motion helps to create similar moods of dreamlike confusion, horror, or primal drives, all adding to his vision of his films being “moving pictures,” and giving the viewer an idea of what a floating Francis Bacon painting would have looked like, something that would surely satisfy Lynch, being an admirer of Bacon from an early age. An important addition to the list comprising the materials that make up the work of this distinctive auteur is his use of lighting techniques. Lynch, perhaps paying tribute to one of his heroes Franz Kafka, and the ending of his magnificent parable “Before the Law,” has an affinity for dark vs. light settings. Occasionally, this can resemble film noir techniques (as in “Blue Velvet” and “Lost Highway”), or it can suggest an obstinate world of darkness and chaos (“Eraserhead,” “Inland Empire,” “Industrial Symphony #1”), or, in what Lynch is probably most known for, it can hint at a seedy underbelly of an tranquil setting (“Blue Velvet,” “Twin Peaks,” “Fire Walk With Me”). Regardless of what the metaphor behind his use of lighting, the connoisseur of all things Lynch quickly gets accustomed to mysteriously shaped shadows, dark rooms, slats of sunshine, and strobe lights. One of the more interesting acolytes of Lynch, the Frenchman Gaspar Noe, recently contributed a segment to the collective work “Destricted,” attempting to utilize Lynch’s strobe light technique and one-up him by taking it to an unbearable level. The general consensus upon the films release, almost universally panned, is yet another testament to the ever-lasting power of Lynch’s stance as a master auteur.
Other examples pointing to the ubiquity of using a director to market a film are Lynch’s marketing scheme for promoting the release of his newest feature, 2006’s “Inland Empire.” Instead of going on television chat shows, radio shows, or going on a promotional tour, Lynch simply told the press that it was about “a woman in trouble” (which later went on to become the tagline for the film.) It is to Lynch’s credit that he was able to correctly sum up the entire three-hour film in four words and not have it turn out to be an exercise in torture like some of Rivette’s minor works. It is also to Lynch’s credit, and probably pleased the opponent of the auteur theory Kevin Cournoyer, that he eventually did go out and campaign, not for himself or the film directly, but for Laura Dern in the hopes that she would receive an Academy Award nomination for her outstanding work as Nikki Grace Król / Sue Blue. In the characteristically auteurist fashion of Lynch, he did this by campaigning in the streets of Los Angeles with a live cow. When the film was released on DVD in 2007, one could not escape noticing the larger-than-life words “DAVID LYNCH’S” centered at the top of the case, quite unlike his previous cases (and, especially, the cases of films he has produced such as Terry Zwigoff’s acclaimed documentary “Crumb”) where his name was in a much smaller print and either beneath the title or above the title but closer to the actual title and not separated in the manner usually reserved for names like Stallone or Deneuve. Seeing something like this at such a late period in an established auteur’s career is not an ego on parade. It simply shows how vastly respected Lynch is as an auteur, even reaching the commercial industry, that a mixed media filled three hour avant-garde film that was barely seen even in limited release can become a video success merely by putting a former Eagle Scout from Montana’s name at the top of the box.
It is written that the director’s cut solidifies the director as auteur, particularly commentary tracks where the director describes the film in detail. In this regard, it is worth noting that Lynch has never re-released any of his films labeled as a ‘director’s cut’ and has never recorded a commentary track either. Lynch needs neither of these things to clarify something he is already aware of and undoubtedly knows his fan base is very aware of. Though upon the DVD release of Lynch’s biggest hit “Mulholland Drive,” Lynch did object to having his film split into separate chapters, claiming that it “demystifies” the film. Without disputing the value of a director’s insight, this practice speaks to entertainment conglomerates’ ability continually to reap the financial benefit of the auteur as celebrity and brand name, now matter how many complaints they know this unusual practice will bring.
Coming back to the auteur approach providing the framework for locating consistent narrative patterns and determining their relationship to visual techniques, the narrative aspects of Lynch's works, including themes, characters, and situations, are all very similar. Case in point, Lynch is very taken with the theme of lightness/darkness or good/evil. A glaring example of this is the divided heart necklace Laura Palmer wears in “Twin Peaks.” Laura herself is a divided heart; she is a good person, was homecoming queen, and seems pure on the surface, but she is also into abnormal sexual practices, is addicted to cocaine, enjoys being a prostitute, and has slept with half the town (both sexes). A further lightness/darkness view of Laura Palmer can been seen when comparing Laura to her cousin Madeleine “Maddy” Ferguson. Maddy is an innocent and pure citizen, while Laura is not. Sheryl Lee plays the characters of Maddy and Laura, with the small difference that Laura is blonde and Maddy is a brunette. They can easily be seen as two sides to the same person. Lynch apparently liked that simple method of establishing duality so much that he used it again in “Lost Highway.” Patricia Arquette plays two roles: Renee, the raven-haired, jaded, adulterous wife of Fred Madison; and also Alice, the platinum blonde pornographic film star who begins a lurid affair with Fred's alter-ego, Pete. Each version of Arquette has strengths and flaws that the other character lacks; the two are polar opposites, yet nearly identical.
Proving that as an auteur, Lynch is not simply an egomaniac who is too stubborn to admit that filmmaking is a collaborative enterprise, he has been more than happy to have some fun with self-portrayal. The character of Henry Spencer in “Eraserhead” is obviously Lynch himself. At the time he was creating the film, Lynch was living in Philadelphia and hated it. He also had inadvertently fathered a child and got married. In “Eraserhead,” Henry lives in a dirty, trash filled city (which hasn’t changed much in thirty-plus years) and is forced into marriage when his girlfriend gives birth to a deformed baby. There has even been speculation about whether Lynch made Henry's baby a freak because his own daughter (Jennifer Lynch, also a director) was born with clubbed feet. Jeffrey Beaumont, in “Blue Velvet,” is another faithful depiction of Lynch. As mentioned before, Lynch grew up in a logging town in Montana, much like "Lumberton, USA." Jeffrey, like Lynch, is a mannered, selfless person who discovers that he has a dark streak that would provide the Marquis de Sade with jealousy. Possibly the finest (and funniest) self-reference is the character of FBI Agent Gordon Cole from “Twin Peaks,” whom Lynch portrayed himself. Cole has an exaggerated version of Lynch's famous pompadour hairstyle, shouts constantly because he's virtually deaf (Lynch is considered a very loud-spoken person), and has a "code." In “Fire Walk With Me,” Cole delivers an agent's assignment through a woman named Lil, who performs a complicated little dance. The agent must scrutinize the meaning of Cole's code, just as viewers often have to scrutinize the meaning of Lynch's symbolism. Although considering a film as part of a director’s oeuvre may be useful to interpretation, it is important to remember that no one interpretation – even one based on the director – is definitive. Though I’d like to believe that this interpretation of David Lynch as today’s supreme auteur will be.
David Lynch has created a style so inimitable that, unlike John Ford or Orson Welles who have each earned the right to an annoying adjective (Wellesian, Fordian) that is used to describe certain angles and characteristics of their work, he has created an entirely new genre that is cemented its place in cinematic history and, with a slew of burgeoning auteurs anxious to reach this status by appropriating his style (Michael Haneke, Eli Roth), will not fade into the darkness the way Hughesian did, unmissed and erased from the pantheon of filmic treasures. As the director of well over two-dozen films, both short and feature length, Lynch established all of the genre’s now familiar conventions. For example, arguably the most obvious technical element is cinematography. Lynch, whether attempting to create an unsettling mood or simply filming two people sitting in a diner, uses strange camera angles excessively. He will position the camera in an extreme long shot, usually in a far, overhead corner of the room; shoot the scene from under a table; or even through a crystal ball (as in his “The Wizard of Oz” tribute “Wild at Heart.”) He is splendidly very concerned with creating beautiful images and understanding the plenteous advantages of mise-en-scène. It’s important to note that Lynch was a prominent painter before he was a filmmaker, winning various prizes and attending college at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Lynch has always prefers preposterous images that evoke feeling to words that describe them. As a result, his cinematography can be viewed as a "moving picture."
Lynch’s most effective visual technique is probably his prevalent use of fadeouts and slow motion. They both contribute to the intangible, under-the-surface mood Lynch endeavors for. One of the more interesting and successful sequences is a flashback sequence in Lynch’s television show “Twin Peaks.” In the scene, the image of Mrs. Palmer running down the stairs under a ceiling fan was repeated many times in slow motion, a technique favored by many other avant-garde directors including Harmony Korine in his tour de force “No More Workhorse Blues.” However, in this case, the use of slow motion contributed a dream-like quality to the event, especially significant because it was right before she found out her daughter had been killed. Like his individual use of cinematography, Lynch’s frequent use of slow motion helps to create similar moods of dreamlike confusion, horror, or primal drives, all adding to his vision of his films being “moving pictures,” and giving the viewer an idea of what a floating Francis Bacon painting would have looked like, something that would surely satisfy Lynch, being an admirer of Bacon from an early age. An important addition to the list comprising the materials that make up the work of this distinctive auteur is his use of lighting techniques. Lynch, perhaps paying tribute to one of his heroes Franz Kafka, and the ending of his magnificent parable “Before the Law,” has an affinity for dark vs. light settings. Occasionally, this can resemble film noir techniques (as in “Blue Velvet” and “Lost Highway”), or it can suggest an obstinate world of darkness and chaos (“Eraserhead,” “Inland Empire,” “Industrial Symphony #1”), or, in what Lynch is probably most known for, it can hint at a seedy underbelly of an tranquil setting (“Blue Velvet,” “Twin Peaks,” “Fire Walk With Me”). Regardless of what the metaphor behind his use of lighting, the connoisseur of all things Lynch quickly gets accustomed to mysteriously shaped shadows, dark rooms, slats of sunshine, and strobe lights. One of the more interesting acolytes of Lynch, the Frenchman Gaspar Noe, recently contributed a segment to the collective work “Destricted,” attempting to utilize Lynch’s strobe light technique and one-up him by taking it to an unbearable level. The general consensus upon the films release, almost universally panned, is yet another testament to the ever-lasting power of Lynch’s stance as a master auteur.
Other examples pointing to the ubiquity of using a director to market a film are Lynch’s marketing scheme for promoting the release of his newest feature, 2006’s “Inland Empire.” Instead of going on television chat shows, radio shows, or going on a promotional tour, Lynch simply told the press that it was about “a woman in trouble” (which later went on to become the tagline for the film.) It is to Lynch’s credit that he was able to correctly sum up the entire three-hour film in four words and not have it turn out to be an exercise in torture like some of Rivette’s minor works. It is also to Lynch’s credit, and probably pleased the opponent of the auteur theory Kevin Cournoyer, that he eventually did go out and campaign, not for himself or the film directly, but for Laura Dern in the hopes that she would receive an Academy Award nomination for her outstanding work as Nikki Grace Król / Sue Blue. In the characteristically auteurist fashion of Lynch, he did this by campaigning in the streets of Los Angeles with a live cow. When the film was released on DVD in 2007, one could not escape noticing the larger-than-life words “DAVID LYNCH’S” centered at the top of the case, quite unlike his previous cases (and, especially, the cases of films he has produced such as Terry Zwigoff’s acclaimed documentary “Crumb”) where his name was in a much smaller print and either beneath the title or above the title but closer to the actual title and not separated in the manner usually reserved for names like Stallone or Deneuve. Seeing something like this at such a late period in an established auteur’s career is not an ego on parade. It simply shows how vastly respected Lynch is as an auteur, even reaching the commercial industry, that a mixed media filled three hour avant-garde film that was barely seen even in limited release can become a video success merely by putting a former Eagle Scout from Montana’s name at the top of the box.
It is written that the director’s cut solidifies the director as auteur, particularly commentary tracks where the director describes the film in detail. In this regard, it is worth noting that Lynch has never re-released any of his films labeled as a ‘director’s cut’ and has never recorded a commentary track either. Lynch needs neither of these things to clarify something he is already aware of and undoubtedly knows his fan base is very aware of. Though upon the DVD release of Lynch’s biggest hit “Mulholland Drive,” Lynch did object to having his film split into separate chapters, claiming that it “demystifies” the film. Without disputing the value of a director’s insight, this practice speaks to entertainment conglomerates’ ability continually to reap the financial benefit of the auteur as celebrity and brand name, now matter how many complaints they know this unusual practice will bring.
Coming back to the auteur approach providing the framework for locating consistent narrative patterns and determining their relationship to visual techniques, the narrative aspects of Lynch's works, including themes, characters, and situations, are all very similar. Case in point, Lynch is very taken with the theme of lightness/darkness or good/evil. A glaring example of this is the divided heart necklace Laura Palmer wears in “Twin Peaks.” Laura herself is a divided heart; she is a good person, was homecoming queen, and seems pure on the surface, but she is also into abnormal sexual practices, is addicted to cocaine, enjoys being a prostitute, and has slept with half the town (both sexes). A further lightness/darkness view of Laura Palmer can been seen when comparing Laura to her cousin Madeleine “Maddy” Ferguson. Maddy is an innocent and pure citizen, while Laura is not. Sheryl Lee plays the characters of Maddy and Laura, with the small difference that Laura is blonde and Maddy is a brunette. They can easily be seen as two sides to the same person. Lynch apparently liked that simple method of establishing duality so much that he used it again in “Lost Highway.” Patricia Arquette plays two roles: Renee, the raven-haired, jaded, adulterous wife of Fred Madison; and also Alice, the platinum blonde pornographic film star who begins a lurid affair with Fred's alter-ego, Pete. Each version of Arquette has strengths and flaws that the other character lacks; the two are polar opposites, yet nearly identical.
Proving that as an auteur, Lynch is not simply an egomaniac who is too stubborn to admit that filmmaking is a collaborative enterprise, he has been more than happy to have some fun with self-portrayal. The character of Henry Spencer in “Eraserhead” is obviously Lynch himself. At the time he was creating the film, Lynch was living in Philadelphia and hated it. He also had inadvertently fathered a child and got married. In “Eraserhead,” Henry lives in a dirty, trash filled city (which hasn’t changed much in thirty-plus years) and is forced into marriage when his girlfriend gives birth to a deformed baby. There has even been speculation about whether Lynch made Henry's baby a freak because his own daughter (Jennifer Lynch, also a director) was born with clubbed feet. Jeffrey Beaumont, in “Blue Velvet,” is another faithful depiction of Lynch. As mentioned before, Lynch grew up in a logging town in Montana, much like "Lumberton, USA." Jeffrey, like Lynch, is a mannered, selfless person who discovers that he has a dark streak that would provide the Marquis de Sade with jealousy. Possibly the finest (and funniest) self-reference is the character of FBI Agent Gordon Cole from “Twin Peaks,” whom Lynch portrayed himself. Cole has an exaggerated version of Lynch's famous pompadour hairstyle, shouts constantly because he's virtually deaf (Lynch is considered a very loud-spoken person), and has a "code." In “Fire Walk With Me,” Cole delivers an agent's assignment through a woman named Lil, who performs a complicated little dance. The agent must scrutinize the meaning of Cole's code, just as viewers often have to scrutinize the meaning of Lynch's symbolism. Although considering a film as part of a director’s oeuvre may be useful to interpretation, it is important to remember that no one interpretation – even one based on the director – is definitive. Though I’d like to believe that this interpretation of David Lynch as today’s supreme auteur will be.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Fargo (the Coen Brothers)- Isaac Richter
Two of the most peculiar working filmmakers who always do films together have to be Joel and Ethan Coen. The thing that I believe makes them auteurs is the fact that when you see a movie by the Coen Brothers, you know you're watching a movie by the Coen Brothers. Their films are dark. Either a very dark mood and atmosphere (Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country for Old Men) or outlandishly dark humor (Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading). The film I chose is the most successful combination of both I can think of. Because of the fact that we're addressing film authorship and directors, I'll have to compare this film to other works by the Coens (I've seen every one of their films, except for Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers).
Fargo is actually set in Minneapolis, Minnesotta (though the first scene of the film is set in Fargo, North Dakota), and it's about crooked and dimwitted car salesman Jerry Lundergaard (William H. Macy) who's having money problems and has a wealthy father-in-law, but he can't ask him directly out of pride, so he has a plan. He hires two guys, a quiet giant (Peter Stormare) and his funny-looking, loud-mouthed sidekick (Steve Buscemi) to kidnap his wife and put her up for an $80,000 ransom. The deal is that Jerry gets half that money, but the kidnapping goes wrong. Blood is shed and tracks are left behind, and so Sheriff Margie Gunderson (Frances McDormand) enters the scene and is hot on their tail.
This type of plot is very common for the Coens. They often go for stories about regular people going in way over their heads to come into some money or kill someone or take something they want, and then everything goes wrong. Other examples of this include Raising Arizona, in which an ex-con and his police wife, unable to have a child of their own, steal a baby from a man who has five of them, and it all goes wrong. In Blood Simple, a guy hires a hitman to kill his cheating wife, and that goes wrong. In No Country for Old Men, Llewelyn Moss runs into a drug deal gone wrong and finds a satchel full of money, which he guards with his life as he's chased across the state by someone who wants it. In Fargo, three men trying to come into some simple cash encounter some unexpected complications and are forced to surrender to fate, and Jerry's fate, as much as he wants to avoid it, is that he's going to get caught and arrested. We watch this character dodging calls from unsatisfied customers and trying to lie his way out of situations. He's not a smart man, so you know that sooner or later, the choices that he's made are going to catch up to him. He also made the mistake of trusting people only on the word of one of his excon employees. The Coen Brothers protagonists are usually men who lack some brains and do things wither out of despair or intuition, and as long as they're doing something they shouldn't be doing, they must surrender to the fate set in motion by their choice, which is either Death or imprisonment, and in some cases to simply surrender the object of desire.
Fargo also displays the Coens sense of humor and their colorful characters. A Coen Brothers trademark is to bring humor in the way their characters talk, or in some cases don't talk. In Fargo, the Coens use the Minnesotta accent for humor. Characters have a very peculiar way of saying "Yeah", which sounds more like "Yah", and they have the characters speaking it almost like a symphony. They also use humor in the way the characters are so polite to each other and avoid swearing (ex, Jerry constantly saying "Heck you mean?"). In The Big Lebowski, The Dude is characterized by his hippie speech, and in O Brother Where Art Thou?, George Clooney's character is characterized by his overly literary way of articulating.
Another trademark Coen Brothers character is the guy who won't shut up. In this film, h's played by Steve Buscemi, and in this film he's paired up with another trademark Coen character, and that's the guy who won't talk, played by Peter Stormare. Steve Buscemi also played a character who barely spoke in The Big Lebowski (though in that film, no one ever let him talk) and John Goodman is the character who wouldn't shut up.
In Fargo, there are two Coen regulars who are now almost associated with their names. Frances McDormand (the wife of Joel Coen) has been a regular in their films ever since Blood Simple, their very first film, and she plas a different type of character in every film she appears. In Fargo she's a loveable, optimistic police chief looking to solve a murder and trying to understand why anyone would do the horrible things she's seen (Tommy Lee Jones plays a more pessimistic version of this character in No Country for Old Men). For the Coens, she's already played the target of a hitman, a gym manager looking for plastic surgery, and a nosy, annoying friend to a childless police chief. The other actor is Steve Buscemi. There's a joke surrounding Buscemi's involvement with the Coens, and that is they usually kill him off in the movies he appears, and in every film, his remains become smaller. In this film, his body is put into a woodchipper. In other films, he's face has been burned off, andhe's been creamated after a heart attack.
I believe Fargo to be the Coen Brothers masterpiece, and as soon as you see it, you know this film was done by no one but Joel and Ethan, and like I said, that makes them auteurs. This theme of fate lurking over people who are chasing after something that is out o their hands and the inevitable consequences is ever present in this film. We know from the beginning that after kidnapping a woman, killing a police officer, and killing two people in a tipped-over car, there's no way the ransom is going to go as planned, especially if you keep killing people out of despair (including the father-in-law who is bringing the ransom money, and the guy at the toll booth of the parking lot you're doing the transaction in). Mix all of that with unique characters, carefully written and choreographed dialogue, and character actors who understand what the directors are trying to do, as well as the snowy backdrop of Minneapolis, and you have a Coen Brothers movie. A movie that is a comedy, a ransom movie, a crime drama, a film noir in some respects, a film that mixes so many genres that it's difficult to categorize.
Fargo is actually set in Minneapolis, Minnesotta (though the first scene of the film is set in Fargo, North Dakota), and it's about crooked and dimwitted car salesman Jerry Lundergaard (William H. Macy) who's having money problems and has a wealthy father-in-law, but he can't ask him directly out of pride, so he has a plan. He hires two guys, a quiet giant (Peter Stormare) and his funny-looking, loud-mouthed sidekick (Steve Buscemi) to kidnap his wife and put her up for an $80,000 ransom. The deal is that Jerry gets half that money, but the kidnapping goes wrong. Blood is shed and tracks are left behind, and so Sheriff Margie Gunderson (Frances McDormand) enters the scene and is hot on their tail.
This type of plot is very common for the Coens. They often go for stories about regular people going in way over their heads to come into some money or kill someone or take something they want, and then everything goes wrong. Other examples of this include Raising Arizona, in which an ex-con and his police wife, unable to have a child of their own, steal a baby from a man who has five of them, and it all goes wrong. In Blood Simple, a guy hires a hitman to kill his cheating wife, and that goes wrong. In No Country for Old Men, Llewelyn Moss runs into a drug deal gone wrong and finds a satchel full of money, which he guards with his life as he's chased across the state by someone who wants it. In Fargo, three men trying to come into some simple cash encounter some unexpected complications and are forced to surrender to fate, and Jerry's fate, as much as he wants to avoid it, is that he's going to get caught and arrested. We watch this character dodging calls from unsatisfied customers and trying to lie his way out of situations. He's not a smart man, so you know that sooner or later, the choices that he's made are going to catch up to him. He also made the mistake of trusting people only on the word of one of his excon employees. The Coen Brothers protagonists are usually men who lack some brains and do things wither out of despair or intuition, and as long as they're doing something they shouldn't be doing, they must surrender to the fate set in motion by their choice, which is either Death or imprisonment, and in some cases to simply surrender the object of desire.
Fargo also displays the Coens sense of humor and their colorful characters. A Coen Brothers trademark is to bring humor in the way their characters talk, or in some cases don't talk. In Fargo, the Coens use the Minnesotta accent for humor. Characters have a very peculiar way of saying "Yeah", which sounds more like "Yah", and they have the characters speaking it almost like a symphony. They also use humor in the way the characters are so polite to each other and avoid swearing (ex, Jerry constantly saying "Heck you mean?"). In The Big Lebowski, The Dude is characterized by his hippie speech, and in O Brother Where Art Thou?, George Clooney's character is characterized by his overly literary way of articulating.
Another trademark Coen Brothers character is the guy who won't shut up. In this film, h's played by Steve Buscemi, and in this film he's paired up with another trademark Coen character, and that's the guy who won't talk, played by Peter Stormare. Steve Buscemi also played a character who barely spoke in The Big Lebowski (though in that film, no one ever let him talk) and John Goodman is the character who wouldn't shut up.
In Fargo, there are two Coen regulars who are now almost associated with their names. Frances McDormand (the wife of Joel Coen) has been a regular in their films ever since Blood Simple, their very first film, and she plas a different type of character in every film she appears. In Fargo she's a loveable, optimistic police chief looking to solve a murder and trying to understand why anyone would do the horrible things she's seen (Tommy Lee Jones plays a more pessimistic version of this character in No Country for Old Men). For the Coens, she's already played the target of a hitman, a gym manager looking for plastic surgery, and a nosy, annoying friend to a childless police chief. The other actor is Steve Buscemi. There's a joke surrounding Buscemi's involvement with the Coens, and that is they usually kill him off in the movies he appears, and in every film, his remains become smaller. In this film, his body is put into a woodchipper. In other films, he's face has been burned off, andhe's been creamated after a heart attack.
I believe Fargo to be the Coen Brothers masterpiece, and as soon as you see it, you know this film was done by no one but Joel and Ethan, and like I said, that makes them auteurs. This theme of fate lurking over people who are chasing after something that is out o their hands and the inevitable consequences is ever present in this film. We know from the beginning that after kidnapping a woman, killing a police officer, and killing two people in a tipped-over car, there's no way the ransom is going to go as planned, especially if you keep killing people out of despair (including the father-in-law who is bringing the ransom money, and the guy at the toll booth of the parking lot you're doing the transaction in). Mix all of that with unique characters, carefully written and choreographed dialogue, and character actors who understand what the directors are trying to do, as well as the snowy backdrop of Minneapolis, and you have a Coen Brothers movie. A movie that is a comedy, a ransom movie, a crime drama, a film noir in some respects, a film that mixes so many genres that it's difficult to categorize.
Jose Saca – Visitor Q (Ninth Post)
Visitor Q is a made-for-TV Japanese film directed by Takashi Miike and released in 2001.
Visitor Q was shot in two weeks on digital video, and it shows. The film has a graininess that becomes a strong trait, primarily because for over eighty minutes the viewer follows and looks at the life of an imploding family in a voyeuristic fashion. Cuts from one scene to the next are few in between. Miike definitely wanted to embrace the “hidden camera” aesthetic of reality based television and verite films, where the camera merely acts like a fly on the wall.
Miike is also known for his prolific output. In 2001 alone, the director completed Visitor Q, Ichi the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris, and the Outlaw Souls, among many other projects.
This post, however, will concentrate solely on Visitor Q, and how it serves as an example of Miike as an auteur. It will focus on characteristics, themes, and characters commonly found in Miike films to assert the latter director’s place as a contemporary auteur.
The main characters in many Miike films are usually men with clear flaws that border on exaggeration. Visitor Q continues this trend. The film is about a television producer who gets the idea to do a reality TV show on his own family life. This premise is of interest to the producer because his family life is falling apart. For instance, the film starts with the father of the family having sex with his daughter, who is a prostitute. In a darkly comedic twist, the father climaxes way before his daughter in an extended and bizarre sex scene. The daughter’s playful jibes at her old man are hilarious, especially as the film segues into her chanting of “early bird… early bird…” with the same character, now casually dressed and sitting in a waiting room, early in the morning. It’s this bizarre juxtaposition of phrases, images, themes, and motivations that are apparent when watching and carefully scrutinizing a Miike film.
In the abovementioned scene, the man waits for an unspecified person or thing. Typical of Miike, the audience is treated to an inventive long shot that plays around with background and foreground relationships. The father, small yet focused within the center of the frame, is not aware that a young man, visible to the viewer but not to him, stands outside waiting loitering in the street. The young man, whom I’ll call “the stranger” since he’s not given a name throughout the entire film, comes closer to the frame and, out of the blue, smacks the father in the head with a huge rock. The “rock to the head” will be a motif in the film, clearly a send up of the moments of epiphany characters experience in mainstream films that, in a way, hit the viewer over the head with the message of CHANGE.
Miike furthers this point by quickly cutting from the first blow to the head to the title screen as it pumps techno music and welcomes you to the out of the ordinary filmic world he has created for the viewer.
The film introduces the characters of the mother, the younger son, and a female co-producer the father works with.
The mother moonlights a as a career woman when in fact she also prostitutes herself to older, creepier men and uses the money to buy drugs (I’d say heroin, but the film is not specific, except for showing the mother inject the contents onto her thigh). The mother withstands the verbal and physical abuse of her young son, who is a student in his middle teens. The son is bullied by a group of classmates, and, though not explicitly stated, vents his frustrations out on his mother. The humiliation the son is endures is especially painful. In one key scene, he is forced to defecate in a field while the bullies look on laughing. Miike indeed looks to shock, but he also looks to spark a reaction from the viewer. The latter point is only further once the camera pans to the right and shows the father, the stranger, and the female television producer looking at the humiliation of the producer’s son. The producer has the stranger tape his son’s humiliation because it makes good television.
A scene like the abovementioned begs the viewer to question what is right and wrong. It is also challenges what the viewer’s perception of a protagonist. In most mainstream films, the protagonist is the person the audience roots for, or at least sympathizes with. Miike, ever the sore thumb, does away with the typical protagonist/antagonist storyline and gives the audience a morally bankrupt family. The audience perception of character is challenged throughout the film with scenes like the abovementioned or even in the climactic death of the bullies, a scene and point I’ll get to later.
Miike’s films are known to have bizarre, almost vague morals to them. For instance, the stranger does not provide any clear moments where he gives the family realizations that the life they’re leading is wrong. He hits the father in the head with a rock twice and makes the mother lactate in a most bizarre fashion. Miike, one may argue, is satirizing the moments of epiphany provided by films in general. Those moments where the protagonist realizes the life he or she leads is wrong. Miike, in this film especially, does not provide any clear realization or explanation as to how or why the characters in the family start working together and, by film’s end, change for the better.
Miike’s films are known for their ambiguous endings. Visitor Q ends with the son and father of the family sucking milk out of the mother’s breasts while the daughter, arriving home after receiving her own “rock to the head epiphany,” goes over to the mother, gets on her knees, and prepares to also suck from her mother’s teat. Miike’s shocking images and occurrences combine unorthodox methods of storytelling and experimentation in filmic form combined with old-fashioned morals. By film’s end, the viewer has been treated to incest, sexual abuse, and even Miike’s trademark stylized violence in the the death of the young bullies at the hands of the mother and father, who work as a team in killing off their sons’ aggressors by murdering them with sharp objects. Rather than dwell on the horridness of this violence, Miike presents the scene in as an exaggerated comical interlude, as if the scene itself were separate from the film for those few seconds when it takes place. The scene is presented in the film like a comedy sketch on hyper drive that combines dark humor with Kabuki Theater (the facial expression on the father’s face as he saws the off the head of the head bully is worth the rental price alone).
In many of his films, like Audition, Dead or Alive, and this one, Miike expresses the importance of family. Visitor Q explores this by showing the viewer the morally bankrupt deeds of a television producer and how they indirectly attribute to the near implosion of his family. Indeed, Miike lays out the clues for the audience to investigate. The daughter is a prostitute, but her father and mother are not there to intervene. Heck, the father even pays her for a quickie. The mother, the most likable and humble character in the film, is abused and humiliated by her own son, yet let it continue throughout most of the film. A bit after the first half of the movie, the mother finally stands up for herself. In typical Miike fashion, rather than having the semblance of an emotionally invested scene, the mother shows her change by throwing a knife at her son’s face while the latter verbally berates her. The son dodges the knife, but the message becomes clear. He cannot continue doing this to his mother anymore.
The most difficult characters to sympathize with, and to understand their changes, are the son and the father.
Miike is also known for her absurdist comedy that borders on satire. Visitor Q satirizes reality television and the need to always find a marketable and interesting subject to exploit for ratings. No more is this apparent than in the scene where the television producer, having coffee with his female co-worker, pitches the idea to have his own family as the subject of a documentary show. The scene is both hilarious in its ludicrous premise, yet sad once we see the hopeless reaction given by the female producer. Her rejecting the father and telling him to get help is also something worth taking note.
Miike’s image as a controversial shock-director is used to market his films. A review of Dead or Alive compared the film to Tarentino on overdrive (not the exact quote, but the message is the same). Indeed, of all the Japanese directors to have made a ripple in the American market, Miike still stands as one of the most popular, primarily because he always seems to challenge his audience’s expectations and their perspective on what’s right ad wrong. I challenge anyone to google Miike’s name and NOT find typical words such as “controversial”, “shocking”, “disturbing”, or even a clichéd phrase like “insane genius.” Miike is all of the above and more. He is a filmmaker who does not conform to style, genre, or any other convention found in Cinema Arts textbooks.
John Hess Article
Hi All,
Here is the link to the John Hess article (as noted in your syllabus) that I want you to read.
John Hess: Film and Ideology
Here is the link to the John Hess article (as noted in your syllabus) that I want you to read.
John Hess: Film and Ideology
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