My Most Important Year in Film

I was sitting behind the computer the other day, dumping footage into Adobe Premiere, completely bored out of my mind and I started thinking…what was the most important year in film for me? By that I mean: What year contained the most movies, the instances that affected me the most…what year impacted me the most in terms of film?

And in this instance I don’t mean quality. As I am sure, you are all going to destroy most of the reasoning behind why most of the films I point out have affected me, but it’s a question I hope most of you address in the comments, and as we’re all of different ages, I’m interested to see what years are chosen.

So, to start, My Most Important Year in Film was…(drumroll please)…1989.

New Takeshi Kitano trailer for Outrage triggers memories…

Please, guys, don’t be angry with me, but I honestly feel this trailer deserves a post of its own.

I remember very well the first time I saw a Takeshi Kitano movie. I was walking through, I believe, the Ikebukuro section of Tokyo with my then-wife Yumiko. (I can picture the train station and the buildings around it, and I’m pretty sure it was that section, but time is…to say the least…rough on memory.)

We walked past a movie theater and I saw a poster with three men, Kitano in front and this wacky font saying BROTHER in English. I was instantly intrigued and I turned to my wife and said: ”Hey…isn’t that that guy who…” She somehow always knew what I was going to ask and she glanced at the poster and said: “Yup.”

Review: Avatar or Please bring back the ’90′s Cameron, when he made good movies

Let’s be completely clear on something here: Avatar misses on just about every level. Yes, you will believe, (especially at the end, when Avatar and human meet in a pretty effective embrace and the real and the cg blend seamlessly into a remarkably affecting scene), yes, James Cameron is a master of his craft and he’s been given a rather amazing toybox to play in, but oh, boy…is it ruined on a bloated, epic slog through the ‘Eden’ of Pandora, a beautiful, fully-realized world ruined, yes, ruined by not only the gimmick that is 3D but especially by the glasses you’re forced to wear, glasses that all but ruin the movie-going experience set before you.

Major Directors’ Early Works Vol. 1: Quentin Tarantino

So I thought I would try something new here and do a series of posts on the early, early works of directors I admire and who I think have made major contributions to the medium of filmmaking.

For the inaugural post I thought I would shed light on a really early work of a major Hollywood director, Quentin Tarantino.

From the YouTube Synopsis by username World2008rain:

“My Best Friend’s Birthday (1987) is an unfinished black and white independent film by Craig Hamann and Quentin Tarantino, while they were working at the now shuttered Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California. The project started in 1984, when Hamann wrote a short 30-40 page script about a young man who continually tries to do something nice for his friend’s birthday, only to have his efforts backfire. Tarantino became attached to the project as co-writer and director, and he and Hamann expanded the short script into an 80 page script. On an estimated budget of $5,000, they shot the film on 16mm over the course of the next four years. Hamann and Tarantino starred in the film, along with several video store and acting class buddies, and worked on the crew, which included fellow Video Archives employees Rand Vossler and Roger Avary. The film is the most overtly comic that Tarantino has made. Tarantino himself referred to it as like a “Jerry Lewis movie”. The original cut was about 70 minutes long but due to a fire only 36 minutes of the film survived. The 36 minute cut has been shown at several film festivals. It has never been officially released.”

A few thoughts:

1.) Listen closely in the first part and you’ll hear the name of a familiar radio station.

2.) The man who comes out of the bathroom in part 2 is, apparently, one of the police with the German Shepherd in the bathroom in Reservoir Dogs.

3.) Starting at 4:50 of the second part there is a rather ambitious and pretty brilliant shot that is one take and involves no cuts and what I can only assume is a dolly or some sort of rig that allowed him to get the shot he got. An early hint that this man really knew what he was doing. Awesome.

4.) Funny. There’s a reference to Aldo Raine in part 3 at the 5:00 minute mark.

5.) What was the whole subplot with the African-American? Big question mark.

6.) Part 3 has a great what seems like a 360-degree pan of a bedroom and the posters on the walls glancing over the woman on the bed and ending on Tarantino at the 9:08 mark.

7.) The commenters say a lot of this script was recycled or re-purposed for True Romance. Would have to watch the two together to say with any certainty.

8.) A strong use of music is present in this film.

Give your thoughts. Would be interested to know what you all think.

Be careful, there is quite a bit of objectionable material herein. You have been forewarned.

Pontypool: A review

Ahhhh, Pontypool.

There are some brilliant choices and touches of flair in this unique take on a time-warn genre. However, those brilliant choices and touches, for me, sadly, didn’t live up to the idea of what I thought this film would deliver, especially given it’s high festival marks.

First, I will say that, as independent films go, this is a crackerjack of conceit and execution. Confine your characters to one place, put them in a tense situation, heighten the tension and suspense by never showing the horrors we keep hearing (save for one really well done scene) and let us watch a great actor at work and we’ll be riveted for the time it takes to finish the story.

Bravo to the filmmakers and writer for showing us just enough of these characters to make them believable and to make us care and then good job to the director for stepping back and simply letting the camera wash over the made-for-film face of the lead actor, Stephen McHattie. Why hadn’t I known about this Canadian actor sooner? My loss, because he is simply amazing.

I don’t like to give away any of the story in my reviews. Suffice to say, it takes one simple click and not much typing to figure out what you need to know and I, for one, love to go into a movie I know nothing about knowing nothing.

That said, something has inflicted the people of Pontypool with a deadly virus that turns them into the type of Zombie you’ve never witnessed before. The conceit is handled brilliantly and it’s a shame the filmmakers didn’t have more money to explore the idea a bit further than they did.

A few things I didnt understand:

1. The characters’ complete inability to simply not speak. Why not just write things down? (They eventually do, but, come on. You see the horror first-hand. SHUT UP!)

2. The way characters simply appear, sometimes nearly out-of-nowhere.

3. Please, please, please do a remake and show more of what happens in the run-up to the virus destroying its host. This is something we’ve never seen before and it’s really a great idea. Make the doctor(who was a great character) more of the movie so we can see more of what’s happening.

Things I LOVED:

1. The lead actor and his character. Eric Bogosian and Talk Radio pale in the light of this genius.

2. The young woman and her turn. She was great, had a good backstory and then…she loses it. Sad and scary and tense and very-well-handled. (If slightly not handled fully enough).

3. The humor and the pathos mixed together. This guy is sad and finished with life. But they still laugh, they still cry and he still thumbs his nose at the man. Brilliant.

4. The entire last third. The movie goes from tense to awesome to funny to crackerjack zombie flick. Thank you.

If it seems I liked this movie more than I let on, I did. I’m just not sure where to put the ending and what the writer was trying to say. I felt it took something away from the horror of it and made it…dare I say…political. Confused me somewhat and would have liked a different reason for what ultimately happened.

Definitely worth a watch!

Ahhhh…Pontypool.

The Dark Knight: The First Modern Comic Book Movie Masterpiece…

…as horror film.

Make no mistake, this is an unmitigated genre masterpiece elevated stratospherically by one simply…staggering performance.

The Dark Knight is not for kids. But then, that is where it so unequivocally and brazenly succeeds. Comic books, by nature, are raw. There is no ratings system and the lot of them are violent, malicious, misogynistic and vicious. Even most mainstream titles are now such adult fare that it staggers the mind that six-year-olds might actually read them.

And somehow…Christopher Nolan not only knows this…he gets it. He understands what beats at the heart of all “graphic novels”, and what propels the fantastic worlds these books create: in a word, TERROR.

Terror has always driven the most tense dramatic works…from the best movies to plays to books, (I know, Slim, drama isn’t books) nothing has shaped horror movies quite as well as Terror.

An open letter to James Cameron

Dear Mr. James Cameron,

I see through various and varied internet outlets that you have a new movie coming out in 2009. Some small movie named Avatar? That news is cause for rejoicing, no doubt, but the only thing I can seem to think about whenever I hear or read that news is: WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!