From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V6 #45 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Tuesday, February 21 2006 Volume 06 : Number 045 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] Hamlin on film [Dan Sallitt ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 23:26:52 -0500 From: Dan Sallitt Subject: [loud-fans] Hamlin on film Sorry I'm taking so long with my responses. > I wish to announce to the general public that Dan Sallitt, after God > knows how many years of trying, finally, recently(?) got his props > from IMDb. Sort of. They list one of his two movies. Maybe someday > they'll get around to the longer one. It just popped up one day. I certainly didn't put it there - I don't know who did. > Your take on NOBODY KNOWS? It had some interesting texture. I loved the actress who played the mom. I dunno, Kore-Eda eludes me sometimes: he seems ambitious and offbeat at first, and then I start feeling as if he's going after simple goals. >> Martel is certainly interesting, but somehow I always feel as if I >> need to take a shower after seeing her movies.... > > But seriously, is this take a shower in a TOOLBOX MURDERS grindhouse > marathon sense, or something else? I've never seen anything else by > her. Her earlier film, LA CIENAGA, is equally accomplished but has a rather unclean feeling. Everything seems crowded, humid: you feel as if you're going to step in something nasty at any moment. Martel certainly has an original style of composition. She says it's because she's nearsighted, and the world looks that way to her. After seeing THE HOLY GIRL, I wrote in my diary: "She has a talent for crowding her films with seeming irrelevancies, but she's into malevolence, stupidity, malfunction, discomfort, disgust for their own sake. She reminds me a little of Bigas Luna, even more of Verhoeven." >> 1. THE FORESAKEN LAND (Vimukthi Jayasundara, Sri Lanka/France) 2. >> THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (Cristi Puiu, Romania) 3. FORTY SHADES >> OF BLUE (Ira Sachs, USA) 4. THE CHILD (Dardennes Bros., >> Belgium/France) 5. A TALE OF CINEMA (Hong Sang-Soo, South Korea) 6. >> THE WAYWARD CLOUD (Tsai Ming-Liang, Taiwan) 7. C.R.A.Z.Y. >> (Jean-Marc Vallee, Canada) 8. SA-KWA (Yi-kwan Kang, South Korea) 9. >> BACKSTAGE (Emmanuelle Bercot, France) 10. YOU BET YOUR LIFE >> (Antonin Svoboda, Austria) > > My God, the view from Manhattan (well, I'm assuming you live in > Manhattan; hard to get to these on the Staten Island ferry). I moved to Brooklyn a year ago, not entirely voluntarily. But I saw a lot of that stuff at Toronto this year. > So, the endless BROWN BUNNY comparisons: apt, lazy, or otherwise? To THE WAYWARD CLOUD? They have nothing in common, other than that a penis goes in someone's mouth in both of them. > Care to give capsule descriptions on the above? Omigod, I'd be writing all night. Here's a compromise: I wrote about five or so of them in my Toronto article for Senses of Cinema: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/festivals/06/38/tiff2005.html And I wrote about FOETY SHADES OF BLUE for the Nashville Scene: http://www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/Arts/Film/2005/10/27/Brilliant_Blue/index.shtml > Any perspective on Solondz you can give me so I'll like his movies > better? I've tried, but I can't think of him in any function other > than freak show ringmaster Lots of people just think he's nasty, and I guess I can understand. I was slow coming to him. He can be snide, but I think he's genuinely open to the contradictions in people, and to the difficult aspects of human nature. I think he dares himself, as well as us, to push through the disgust and to keep being interested in these people. >> 8. JUNEBUG (Phil Morrison) 9. FUNNY HA HA (Andrew Bujalski) 10. ME >> AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (Miranda July) > > Again, any perspectives you can give, I'd appreciate. These are all films I like a little, not a lot. > I saw the first as a bloodless, predictable excursion around an > intriguing premise (except for the impromptu gospel song, which opens > a shaft of light on the husband's past in precisely a way the rest > doesn't) The impromptu hymn was awesome. I started out hostile to the film, and it has some simplistic and irritating stuff in it, but it has a nice sense of silence, and it gave me a feeling of the connections between people who come from the same place or who've just been running into each other every day for their whole lives. I think the direction was more mysterious than the script. > the second as a competent but plodding slice-of-life Back to my diary: "An odd film, both appealing and irritating. Cute girl, maddening improv technique that obliterates wit, a lack of progress and resolution that is intentional and probably a good thing. Basically, I liked it in spite of myself." > and the third as a bracing, insistent cojoining of quirky with cutesy > then both with gross (except for the part where the little kid > "talks" to his new friend over the computer using mostly cut'n'paste Again, I was hating this film at first - too much eccentricity and metaphor at the same time. But some surface plausibility eventually set in, and a few scenes started impressing me - the sadness seemed real. July gets a lot of points for keying in on the childish nature of sexuality, not a subject that you see treated every day. And the kids were great - the scene you mention was my favorite too. Whew. - Dan ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V6 #45 ******************************