Showing posts tagged Film
I get emotional just looking at this frame. An absolutely swoonable shot from one of the best films I’ve seen in the last few years, The Time That Remains ( dir. Elia Suleiman). View high resolution

I get emotional just looking at this frame.

An absolutely swoonable shot from one of the best films I’ve seen in the last few years, The Time That Remains ( dir. Elia Suleiman).

(Source: warbabylon)

Some filmmaking advice from director Douglas Sirk…I agree completely. 

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Don’t you talk behind my…

What astounds me in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Red Desert (1964) is the duration of scenes and how he’s able to sustain tension (and my attention) within them.  Scenes are motivated not by a character’s wants or plot movement, but by the protagonist’s (Giuliana as played by Monica Vitti) gradual unraveling of her neuroses.  While she loses her sensibilities as a mother, wife, and woman, it’s as if we’re following a disease slowly take hold of her. 

In conjunction with her unraveling, are the sharp visual lines and color contrasts of the industrialized city Giuliana lives in.  Much is said of the fact that protagonists in Antonioni’s films suffer from the inability to adapt to the modern world and the decay of a certain type of morality, but I think this film takes things much further than that.  Giuliana is suffering from something deeper, something we’re not totally privy to as viewers, but we get a glimpse of it when she tells her son a story about a young girl. 

Red Desert was Antonioni’s first color film, and nearly every shot of the factory that Giuliana lives nearby illuminates the incredible contours, architectural shapes, and enormous man-made structures that make up this world.  To me, this setting is not incriminating as much as it is a canvas for her state of mind. 

I leave you with some shots of Monica Vitti’s back from Red Desert, because

1. Why not? It’s Monica Vitti (!!)

2. I first noticed this in L’Avventura, but Antonioni is obsessed with shots of her back, and Red Desert contains several of them. Enjoy.

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Tomorrow we find out what films will be a part of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.  Can’t wait.  Follow me on Twitter

Tomorrow we find out what films will be a part of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.  Can’t wait. 

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Spring Blanket

1. Affordable sunglasses. These are from Forever 21 and they’re more than reasonably priced. And if you lose sunglasses like me, you won’t feel as bad because these bad boys cost $5.

2. New publication of Bidoun magazine. My old roomie from Cairo is the senior editor and I’m continually impressed by the articles and layout.

3. Criterion edition of Red Desert (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni), his first color film, made in 1964. I’ve never seen this film before, so this is gonna get crazy. I might need to utilize #1 while viewing.

4. Watermelon salads. The one pictured in the photo is particularly great: just watermelon, basil, a drizzle of olive oil and some salt and pepper.

Hope your spring is warming up.

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Late Spring dir. Yasujiro Ozu (1949)

Ozu’s films always have so much more going on than is evident on a first viewing.  His stories are oriented around families and tight knit communities, and he writes dialogue that is centered on everyday tasks, chores, and neighborhood gossip.  Known for his stationary camera style, careful placement of details such as clothing, vases, and props, an Ozu shot is composed of elegant lines, vertical and horizontal planes, and painterly pops of color (when he shoots in color). 

The disorderliness of the two characters in Late Spring contrasts so dramatically with the organized nature of Ozu’s compositions.  It’s about a widowed father and his 27-year old daughter, Noriko, who live together but feel cultural expectations to separate and move apart.  Noriko has no desire to marry but is told that she is of the “marrying age,” while her father thinks he will hold Noriko back if she continues to live with him. 

As the film progresses, we see two people struggling not only with time, but with their changing roles as time passes.  And despite the fact that they are content in their routines and life together, they separate. 

I find myself going back to Ozu when I want to be reminded of how deceptively simple plots can be about so many things.  The last scene is emblematic of this and is heartwrenchingly gorgeous. You’ll never look at an apple peel the same way again.

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Action resonates in the viewer’s mind when he or she sees the film…It doesn’t need an explanation. We’re not spending energy on developing some kind of explanation, detailing cause and effect. Things are born out of movement.”  - Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne I am having difficulty working on my script, so I’m writing a blog entry instead.  I cannot describe the shame that I carry as I try to do anything BUT the one thing I should be doing.  But I feel like many people can relate to this…no? I’m hoping that if I quote two of my favorite directors, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, their philosophy will somehow become mine as well.  If you know their films, every line of dialogue feels so natural to the characters, place, and conflicts.  I think of their writing as urgent, not only because their character conflicts are heavy with consequences, but urgent in the sense that what the characters say and do is in the spirit of who they really are. That’s what good screenwriting is to me.  The writer gets out of her way and thinks not about plot, but movement. Wish me luck. Follow me on Twitter View high resolution

Action resonates in the viewer’s mind when he or she sees the film…It doesn’t need an explanation. We’re not spending energy on developing some kind of explanation, detailing cause and effect. Things are born out of movement.”  - Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne

I am having difficulty working on my script, so I’m writing a blog entry instead.  I cannot describe the shame that I carry as I try to do anything BUT the one thing I should be doing.  But I feel like many people can relate to this…no?

I’m hoping that if I quote two of my favorite directors, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, their philosophy will somehow become mine as well.  If you know their films, every line of dialogue feels so natural to the characters, place, and conflicts.  I think of their writing as urgent, not only because their character conflicts are heavy with consequences, but urgent in the sense that what the characters say and do is in the spirit of who they really are. That’s what good screenwriting is to me.  The writer gets out of her way and thinks not about plot, but movement. Wish me luck.

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I’ve been thinking about transitions (unrelated to editing) and how I view the films that inspired me to study cinema and then eventually, attempt to make films.   Some of those films don’t last the test of multiple viewings and others feel like they need to be re-visited every year to see how I measure up to them.

I remember a time when I would study a film for so long, I couldn’t separate myself from it.  During college, I would go to the film library and watch films over and over again, hoping their genius might be absorbed if I viewed them enough times.  I guess what I feel nostalgic for is the time to dote.  As I get older, that ‘obsession’ time is no longer happening as much as I would like to.  I think that obsession (to a degree) is connected to daydreaming and being idle, and I’ve found that all three are connected in my creative process. 

It’s not that I appreciate films any less, but there seems to be less time to take in all of their facets and possibilities.  Or maybe my attention span is shortening and my tastes have become more set in stone :)  Either way, I want to make it a goal of mine to be more idle. 

I leave you with a photo of my new flats, which I have made the time to obsess over.  And a still from a film that has required a viewing EVERY year since the first time I saw it, Nights of Cabiria (dir. Federico Fellini).  A post on this film is to come.

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Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) dir. Agnes Varda

This is one of the films that I consider to be a bookmark in my film history.  There was my life before Cleo from 5 to 7 and there was life after this film; that’s how good it is.  The film chronicles Cleo, a French singer, as she waits to hear about her cancer diagnosis.  In the span of time (from 5 to 7) we follow Cleo as she rehearses with her pianist and songwriter, goes hat shopping (insanely amazingly beautiful camera work), rides in a cab, meets up with a friend, and then finally encounters a soldier who is on leave from fighting in the Algerian War. 

When people utter the words “French New Wave” this is the film (and filmmaker) that comes to mind. Agnes Varda plays with film language in ways that manage to feel buoyant yet grounded in something substantial and current.  Varda utilizes jump cuts, a film within a film (that features Godard and his then wife, Anna Karina), and has fun with diegetic and non-diegetic sounds.  All of this while Cleo waits for the diagnosis, a diagnosis which has less to do with cancer and more to do with a rumination on how we choose to live our lives, in the moments that we have them. Nothing is promised to Cleo as she sorts out how the world views her and how she views it; this film reminds me that all we have is time and the freedom that comes with knowing that’s all we have.

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How do I absorb this into my cellular structure?

“There are no ideal conditions for the making of a film, or rather, conditions are always ideal, since they are what definitively allows the film to be made as is. The illness of an actress, which makes it necessary to replace her, a refusal from the producer, an accident that holds up work – all these are not obstacles but elements in themselves, from which a film is made. What exists in the end takes over from what might have existed. It isn’t just that the unexpected is part of the journey; it is, in fact, the journey itself. The only thing that matters is the inner open-mindedness of the director. Making a film doesn’t mean trying to make reality fit in with preconceived ideas; it means being ready for anything that may happen.” – Fellini