Tag Archives: movies

Melancholia

Posted on by Bill Chance

I usually struggle when writing about film to find something useful to write about without giving too much of the movie away. I have stopped watching or reading film reviews (before I see a film) at all – they all take the surprise away. I want to be stunned, if possible.

No such problem with Melancholia – the movie itself tells you the ending in the first few minutes. The director has said he doesn’t want there to be any suspense. He wants everyone to know how the movie ends. It ends with the destruction of the earth.

Since I don’t read film reviews any more I had never heard of Melancholia, even though I have been a semi-fan of the controversial and provocative director Lars von Trier for many years. It came on cable with an irresistible summary – “A woman’s troubled relationship with her sister is complicated by the appearance of a mysterious planet on a collision course with earth.” How could anyone resist a film like that?

The movie is divided into two chapters – each one named after one of the sisters. The first is “Justine” – and it concerns the events surrounding Justine’s (played by Kirsten Dunst) wedding reception. It’s a fancy, expensive affair, paid for by her sister’s fabulously wealthy brother-in-law John (Keifer Sutherland), and put together by a strange wedding planner (Udo Keir – he keeps walking by with his hand in front of his face to keep from looking at the bride – she has ruined “his wedding”). There’s the incredibly bitter mother (Charlotte Rampling), the asshole boss (Stellan Skarsgård), and plenty of other colorful characters.

The driving force, however, is Justine’s depression. She is crippled by melancholia to the extent that she often can’t even move. Lars von Trier has said that the movie was inspired by his own bouts with depression which make it impossible for him to work. Justine tries to put on a happy face at her own wedding celebration and to appreciate her husband, but it’s all hopeless. She is doomed.

Kirsten Dunst gives an amazing performance of a woman destroyed by depression, drowning in sadness so deep it can’t be swept away. It is painful to watch, but feels true to life – she helps us understand how she feels and how hopeless it all is.

The second chapter is titled “Claire” and the focus shifts to Justine’s sister as the mysterious planet, ironically named Melancholia appears and skims by the earth. Claire is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, the daughter of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg – and has already had a long influential career in film, music, and fashion. As the doom earth is about to suffer become more and more obvious the roles of Claire and Justine become reversed.

The ultimate irony of Melancholia is that suffering from crippling depression makes you surprisingly equipped to deal with the end of the world.

So that’s the story of the film. Depressed woman finds out that reality is even worse than what she feared and then everybody dies.

Obviously, this isn’t a tale for everybody. At times it is maddeningly slow, and the lack of hope takes away the suspense that usually feeds a moviegoer’s hunger for entertainment. However, there is a strange beauty in doom, especially cinematic doom, and once the curtain comes down our little blue planet is still spinning out there. There really isn’t a giant killer planet lurking on the other side of the sun and we can take a little joy out of that.

I was surprisingly buoyed by Justine’s struggle (and Dunst’s performance) and her doom will, ultimately, be shared by us all – it’s only a matter of timing. She was able to muster up a little dignity at the end, and that might be enough.

 

What I learned this week,June 8, 2012

Posted on by Bill Chance

RIP Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 Is Still Misinterpreted. We, Not Government, Are Enslaving Ourselves

Ray Bradbury’s Power of Memory

Recommended reading from Ray Bradbury

Perhaps this is how he’d like to be remembered – F*ck Me Ray Bradbury (NSFW)

The Jar (part 1)

http://youtu.be/eq_owZI8Fx8

The Jar (part 2)

http://youtu.be/M3bsRlTVpCY

The Jar (part 3)

http://youtu.be/UlWEOoJXnCU

The Jar (part 4)

http://youtu.be/EppFOiJ-nqE

Contemporary Authors We Think We’ll Still Be Reading in 100 Years

A set of Flickr images use the Geotagging Database to show the locations of photographs in major cities… separated by locals vrs. tourists. Make sure you aren’t missing out.

Locals and Tourists… where people in Dallas are taking pictures.

The same thing… for a bunch of other cities. – with city names – Detail

The 100 best movie posters of the last 100 years.

The Best Pizza in the World

Blue Valentine

Posted on by Bill Chance

http://youtu.be/wQ2CqKMrcCM

All my life, movies have been very important to me. I have always enjoyed watching them, going to the theater, sitting there in the dark and waiting for the curtains to rise on a whole ‘nother world.

In this modern digital age, in this best of all possible worlds, we now have such access to film – at any time, in any place, we can watch anything we want. The entire world and history of cinema is available in forms that weren’t even imaginable only a decade ago.

But I don’t ever seem to have the time to sit down and watch anything.

The other evening, I had a lot to do. I had promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. But I was still sick, tired, and worn out… so I decided to go lay down, turn on the cable, and watch whatever came up.

What came up was Blue Valentine.

It was crackerjack.

It’s a character driven story of a young couple, played by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling. It jumps in time from the very beginning of their relationship to a point in time six years later when everything is on the rocks. They are both deeply flawed, working class people, who come from disastrously dysfunctional backgrounds and you can feel the fear and effort as they fight to raise themselves out of the doom that they have forseen.

Michelle Williams won a golden globe the other night… but I always think of her as the teenager in The Station Agent. She is a revelation in this movie – when she says she wants to be a doctor you wan to believe that is a possibility. Ryan Gosling is a wiry drunk with bad tattoos and a heart of gold. The transformation of the two from the scenes that represent the early stages of their relationship to the end is amazing – they seem to age a century in six years. Her face gets puffy and his gaunt, as the hope is slowly drained from their lives.

The movie was initially rated NC-17 – and there is a lot of rawness to the film, including the sex scenes. These have to be in the movie, though, the story is told through the sex as much as through the dialog.

After I watched it I wandered the web for a bit reading what other folks thought. The funny thing was how many people took sides – with one of the couple or the other. They couldn’t understand why the couple was having so much trouble making it work and were fishing around for someone to blame. Neither character had any idea how to behave and would, at any moment, make the wrong decision. They had no way to learn… other than to plow ahead as best as they could. There is a lot left unseen in the film, a lot must have gone down in the six years between… and the film treats us to the wreckage crashing down around the couple’s heads.

Both were decent people, inside. They are just like us.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers. The two timelines of the movie scream toward each other until we are witness to the final epiphany. Will the two lovers conquer all and march into the sunset arm and arm – damaged but hopeful? Or is all hope lost?

The characters are fatally flawed, but aren’t we all?

http://youtu.be/pIH6xzL0QBI

WordPress Blogs with entries tagged Blue Valentine:

Why So Blue?

Blue Valentine {My Thoughts}

Blue Valentine Review

Things the Chin Likes or maybe loves – this movie

Film: Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine

Scene: Blue Valentine – Motel Dance

My Very Own Blue Valentine 

Woman in the Dunes

Posted on by Bill Chance

When I was a child, I was always seeing, in small, sheltered areas of sand or loose dust, the cone-shaped depressions where ant lions lived. I was fascinated by these and looked them up in the encyclopedia (these were the decades long before the Internet – I can’t imagine how rich my childhood would have been had I access to that unlimited fount of useless knowledge) and learned of the insect hiding at the bottom of the self-constructed pit. These sand-traps had a strange fascination for me, I would seek them out and study their various sizes, locations, and patterns of distribution.

I never seem to see these anymore. I don’t know why?

For some reason, it was years before I ventured out to an ant lion pit with a simple sheet of typing paper and learned how easy it was to scoop up the sand and sift it off the paper in such a way as to expose the tiny, flat, gray, insect with the immense mandibles that hid at the bottom of the cone, waiting for unfortunate prey.

In looking for a movie to watch from the Criterion Collection I settled on, for no real reason, a strange Japanese work called Suna no Onna (literally “Sand Woman) – better known by its English name – Woman in the Dunes.

I had heard of this movie decades ago – but for the longest time, never was able to see it. You forget how hard it used to be… I’m talking before a thousand channels of cable television, before VHS even… to see obscure foreign films. You could read about them, and I did, but you could never actually see them.

I read the book, by Kōbō Abe, and wondered if the film followed it closely. Finally, about ten years ago, I was able to get a VHS copy at an avant-guard video store. I was very disappointed. The transfer was so bad all I could see was a blur. It really made no sense. I hoped the original was better than this horrible copy of a copy of a copy.

It is. The Criterion Collection edition they are streaming from Hulu+ is crisp and clear. Because of this, the black and white visuals of moving sand are awe-inspiring.

The story is a simple one. An entomologist, scouring a remote seaside area looking for the key beetle that will get his name immortalized into the entomology texts, and simply trying to escape the city for a awhile, is tricked into getting himself lowered by rope ladder into a deep well in the sand. At the bottom is a recently widowed woman (she lost her husband and daughter to a sand cave-in) who needs help it the nightly task of shoveling the sand out of her home.

The rope ladder is pulled up and he is trapped.

The movie is a long one, slow moving, and concentrates on the man’s slow realization of the hopelessness of his situation, of his eventual resignation to his fate, and on the complex evolving relationship between him and the woman. She has trapped him, but she was trapped herself, and really didn’t have any choice. She is terrified that he will leave.

I was young when I read the book. I didn’t realize how universal the man’s fate was. We’re all stuck in that well of sand and all we can do is shovel as fast and as hard as we can.

Ant Lion Pits

The Criterion Collection

Posted on by Bill Chance

I don’t know about any of you, but over the past year I have become less and less happy with the selection that Netflix has streaming online. More and more, I have been going over to Hulu+ which I began paying for a while back. I bought Hulu+ for the television shows. I have been so busy it has been almost impossible for me to sit down and watch an entire film, so I have been diving into the shallow pedestrian seas of TeeVee – both current and classic. Hulu has always been a good place for that. Hulu, however, doesn’t have the best interface in the world and I have been having trouble finding what I wanted.

So a month or so ago I sat down and did some work figuring out the site structure and how to find what I want. While doing this I discovered a staggering fact.

Hulu+, starting in February of 2011 started streaming the entire Criterion Collection of movies online. The entire collection.

More

More

More

So what? – you must be asking. What the hell is that? Criterion Collection? Who cares?

Criterion is a company that is dedicated to putting the best films of international cinema onto digital media (DVD, Blu-Ray, Streaming) and doing an amazingly bang-up job of it. Their catalog is up to somewhere around eight hundred films now, with more every day.

If you know me, having access to something like this, from my roku box on the television, to my laptop computers (Hulu+, unlike Netflix, will even work on Linux), to our Kindle Fire…. well, that’s like dumping a big ol’ pile of Heroin in my lap.

Where to start? Well, first off, I found the Criterion Selections after stumbling across a film, I’m embarrassed to say, I’ve been looking for for a while – In the Realm of the Senses. This Japanese film, banned in Japan, has a notorious reputation of being nothing more than high class pornography, with a horrendous, vile, and violent conclusion.

After actually watching the thing, I can report honestly, that the reputation is well earned. So, on to the next film.

What next? I have seen a lot of these over the decades and want to watch them again – but there are a lot that I have never seen… and a few I’ve never even heard of.

I can watch these great classic movies while I’m riding my exercise bicycle. Wait, let me get my list of New Year’s Resolutions out….

Here’s a list from Paste Magazine of ten recommended films, this looks good:

  • The Kid (1921)
  • George Washington (2000)
  • The Seven Samurai (1954)
  • La Jetée (1962) (source material for 12 Monkees)
  • Jules and Jim (1962)
  • The Blob (1958)
  • The 400 Blows (1959)
  • Wild Strawberries (1957)
  • M (1931)
  • The Vanishing (1988)

I’ve seen all but two of these… but it is a worthy list.

Here’s a recommendation for:

  • Knife in the Water (1962)
  • Lord of the Flies (1963)
  • Ratcatcher (1999)

This guy is blogging his way through the whole thing. So is this guy… and this guy too, and this guy.

So many films, so little time.

Any suggestions, please leave a comment.

What I learned this week, December 16, 2011 (short film and video edition)

Posted on by Bill Chance

I knew these two brothers, Lance and Dan Hubp, in high school, in Panama

While I’m posting short films… most of y’all have seen this one before – it’s a little film a friend of Nick and Lee did a few years ago. That’s Lee driving, and the kids’ Mustang. Of course the key to the whole thing is the subtle acting ability of the “Gas Station Attendant.”

When you are camping indoors, be careful about the bears.

http://youtu.be/qiQj0o8BOYw

Yes, of course, this is from Ghost World

I have been a fan of Lana del Rey for a long time. Here’s her new video.

What I learned this week, November 4, 2011

Posted on by Bill Chance

Maybe I should take this list and try to get through it  before I die (probably right before). So far, before reading the article, I’ve been to five (that I can remember).

The 15 Spots for the Best Drunk Food In New Orleans

I’m sorry…. but this is simply too stoopid to pass up:

Something has exploded in a spectacular fashion on Uranus

Sometimes I look ahead and read a book because there is a movie coming out at some future date made from the book. Thus it is with Hunter Thompson’s The Rum Diary.

I enjoyed the book more than it deserved. That whole Caribbean Ex-Pat wasting away in Margaritaville, almost getting killed by the government dictator’s thugs thing is very attractive to me. Probably better read (and written about) than lived.

The movie is out now and it looks good. At least to me.

It is interesting that this is the second time Johnny Depp has played Hunter S. Thompson in a film. I always thought that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was unfilmable… and the film proved me right. This one should be very different.

Here’s Why No One Reads Your Blog

  • You’re Boring
  • You’re a Waffler
  • You’re not a Controversialist

How Blogging Taught Me to Be a Writer

  • Discipline: writing on a schedule
  • Discipline: writing even when you don’t feel like writing
  • First drafts don’t have to be perfect
  • In fact, it’s okay to write first drafts that are so bad they end up in the trash
  • I’ve learned to hone in on the details and connections in daily life so I can write about them
  • I know how crucial it is to let a piece rest
  • I’ve also learned that sometimes good enough has to be good enough
  • A career in writing involves mandatory, non-writing activity
  • Sometimes a blog post launches into the internet … and nobody cares
  • The best part: every one of the above lessons has carried over into other forms of writing

The Debt (2007)

Posted on by Bill Chance

I saw the trailers for the new movie “The Debt” and wanted to see it. After I saw this review, I really wanted to see it:

http://youtu.be/KG-RH_f0Obc

The movie has Helen Mirren in it, so it has to be good.

…. Movie Trivia Question…. What movie does Helen Miren’s character (one of my favorites) say, “Anall Nathrach – Uthvas Bethuud -Dothiel Tienve,” or something like that? (who knows how that is spelled?) If you don’t know the answer to this one, shame on you.

The only problem is that I don’t get to the theater much anymore – we’ll see what I can do.

But, in the meantime, Peggy found out that there is an earlier version of “The Debt” – It is an Israeli production done in 2007. I wanted to see it, see it before I go to the recent one.

So I checked Netflix… no luck. Not in the libraries… not even on Amazon… the disk doesn’t seem to be available in a North American version (though that will probably change soon, with the remake out).

So, when you can’t get something anywhere else… you go to the getting place. I did, and I got it. Had to go back for the subtitles.

If the remake is half as good as the original, it is a great movie. A movie that makes you think… and a tense little thriller to boot.

I’m not sure how faithful the remake is to the Israeli original – but from the trailers it looks pretty darn faithful. The scar on Helen Mirren’s face is more pronounced than in the original (I like the subtlety here, actually) but it’s in the same spot.

I wonder if the actual method of capturing the Nazi (I’m not giving anything away here) in the remake is the same as the original? It’s… umm… original and very harrowing. I don’t know if they will have the courage to put a scene like that in a mainstream Hollywood production. I’ll have to see….

Ooops. I just rewatched the review above carefully. It is the same. What do you know. This truly is the best of all possible worlds.

So you go see it… the original or the new one… whatever. Think about it.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Posted on by Bill Chance

I have been on a quest for nice writing spots around the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex.

Saturday afternoon, I pounded out some paragraphs at White Rock Coffee on Northwest Highway, one of my favorite locations, but began to suffer from caffeine overdose and hunger, so I headed West.

My destination was the newish Whole Foods at Northwest and Highway 75. This neighborhood is an old stomping ground for me, but it has changed completely in the last few decades. Five years ago, we headed down early one morning to watch them implode a giant glass office building from the parking lot of the NorthPark shopping center across the highway. I have seen some implosions in my day, but the sight of the mirrored glass rippling from the shockwaves in the dawn’s early light before tumbling down in a cloud of dust and glass shards was something to behold.

Implosion

The implosion of North Park Three

And now, like a concrete Phoenix, a massive tony development has risen from the rubble. There are a series of condominium towers surrounding a vast expanse of parking garage. There is retail scattered across the pavement on a couple levels – with the huge Whole Foods grocery store at the center.

I knew they would have wifi and something to eat, so I headed there to get a salad and tea (eleven dollars) and sit out front, enjoy the colors of the crepuscular sky over the sea of parked cars.

But on the way there, I drove behind another one of my favorite old stomping grounds, the big Northwest Highway Half-Price books. I don’t go there as much since I started reading so much on my Kindle – but it is still a great monument to bibliophilia. As I passed behind, I saw a huge section of the parking lot coned off with a large semicircular inflatable something rising up. One side of the thing was pure white and very reflective. It didn’t take much thinking to figure out what it was.

I had read that they were showing free movies in the parking lot this summer, and today must be one of the days. I checked in at Whole Foods and surfed over to the Half-Price website and found that, sure enough, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe would be showing at eight forty-five.

The timing was perfect. I finished my food, finished my writing, and moseyed across Greenville just as the movie was beginning.

I had seen it before and wasn’t a huge fan, but the price was right. Like everyone that has had kids in soccer, I carry a variety of folding chairs in my trunk, so I was prepared. There was a crowd there, not a huge crowd, but more than a few. Looking around I was the only person that actually went to the film alone.

LWW

Oh, the kids were so cute....

It was hot, but not too hot. The city put out a lot of noise, but the organisers had a powerful sound system, so we could hear the movie. Every now and then a headlight would illuminate the screen, but it went away soon enough.

I was able to get into the movie. Always up for some Tilda Swinton.

The Ice Queen

Tilda Swinton wasn't as cool as she was in Orlando, but she was the best thing in the movie.

I had a good time. Unfortunately, this is the last movie of the year on the schedule, but I bet they will do it again next summer. I think I’ll be there.

Lisa Picard is Famous

Posted on by Bill Chance
Lisa Picard is Famous

A scene from Lisa Picard is Famous. She is calling in sick because she has a callback for an Advil Commercial. She is all about the method acting.

A long time ago I walked by the television and saw a bit of a movie that caught my eye. It was a mockumentary, done by Griffin Dunne (I always think of him as the actor that ruined  After Hours) about a struggling wannabe actress named Lisa Picard. The film was Lisa Picard is Famous and I always wanted to see the rest of it.

Today it came around in my Netflix little read envelope. I wasn’t in the mood for a lighthearted romp, but I didn’t have anything else to do so I watched it.

It has its interesting points – mostly concerning the Helsenberg Uncertainty Prinicple and how it relates to documentary film-making – also how uncomfortable and awkward famous actors can look when walking through poorly-thought-out cameo appearances. Don’t ask to borrow Sandra Bullock‘s cell phone when you’re at the post office, by the way.

I did like Lisa Picard’s first big break – a starring role in a controversial racy Wheat Chex commercial. This brought out the usual Pornographic Cereal protesters and a lot of welcome publicity but in the end, the only result was a rash of unofficial websites with her head poorly photoshopped onto naked bodies and an unfortunately narrow typecasting into sexy breakfast scenes.

Most of the film was a series of embarrassing failures while her gay friend reached a comparative level of success with his excruciatingly earnest off-off-broadway one-man tighty-whitey show.

I guess what I’m saying is that the film as a whole did not have the charm of the random little snippet. I suppose that is true for a lot of one-joke mockumentary films – it’s hard to maintain the attitude for the whole shebang. Especially if the amps don’t go up to eleven.

I’m also getting a little exhausted with films proclaiming how difficult the life of an actor is. Try being a chemist sometime. Your margin for error is a lot lower and you don’t get to go to any parties.

All in all though, it wasn’t a total loss. Watching the end credits, I discovered the key grip was named Radium Cheung – what a great name! I have to write that one down and use it on a character sometime.