Goals.
Objectives.
Means.
The will to live.
Guy Trilby (Jason Bateman) must be crowned national spelling bee champion at age 40 in order for his unerring orthographical prowess to be forthrightly recognized, his youthful competitors and their parents somewhat infuriated by his choice, the drive to accelerate concocting regardless, asinine assiduity acrimoniously idealized, congruent considering, the rules of the game.
Friendship and romance are cumbersomely nuanced with playful degrees of sharp insouciant admissibility, jaded alcoholic weariness slowly transforming into infinitesimal merriment, as trashy transgressions legitimate their inclusivity.
Bad Words is a solid mix of pejorative eccentricity and misanthropic mirth.
The friendship between Guy and young Chaitanya Chopra (Rohan Chand) tenderly transitions the tempered tailspin.
Was going to use some of the challenging words from the film in this review but they're simply too much.
It's subtly hilarious when some of the irate parents can't hide how impressed they are with Guy.
Rollin' with the punches.
Spelt infinitesimal wrong while writing this out.
Loved the spelling bee antics.
Wonder if writer Andrew Dodge (great script), who at least justifies his use of the stubborn ass, ever saw the episode of Get a Life where Chris Peterson (Chris Elliott) discovers he's a genius after consuming toxic waste and then decides to win as many spelling bees as he can, episode 9, season 2, Chris' Brain Starts Working.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Pelican, Peter Doig
Sworn bisheltered forlorn perch
hazy sweltering converse
blurred indent, pan rain foresty
collection, first impressions, been
a rapidding announced slalom
albeit cradling contact strummed
transcontinental time-lapsed trance
snapshot sinewed, cathedralled chant.
hazy sweltering converse
blurred indent, pan rain foresty
collection, first impressions, been
a rapidding announced slalom
albeit cradling contact strummed
transcontinental time-lapsed trance
snapshot sinewed, cathedralled chant.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Maïna
Intertribal relations bellicosely deteriorate as a restless megalomaniac seeks control of his clan, the Nearly Wolves, the aftermath of his ambush of the Men of the Land of Ice leaving Maïna caught between Innu and Inuit worlds, wherein misunderstandings and revelations communally mingle, devastatingly enlightening in turn, chasing the wind, in the land without trees.
The unknown presents an invigorating sense of bewilderment as Maïna (Roseanne Supernault), daughter of the Nearly Wolves's Chief Mishtenapeu (Graham Greene), protecting young Nipki (Uapshkuss Thernish), must join a group of Inuit travellers on their voyage home, one of them, bold Natak (Ipellie Ootoova), known to Maïna through her dreams, a new language, new customs, new lands, viscerally vivifying, as she adventurously comes of age.
Natak and Maïna fall in love but challenges face their union as she acquaints her new neighbours with the traditions of the Innu.
At a critical moment, her continuing survival having been jeopardized, Nanook embodies the unknown's extreme malevolency, understanding and support being required to integratively overcome the hunger, and peacefully initiate the flowering of difference.
Maïna comprehensively blooms love's emotional omniscience, artfully blending the confrontational with the mesmerizing, navigating clasped distances, flourishingly mused.
Petulance and prejudice challenge its tumultuous tranquility, as Maïna demonstrates that she too can hunt, and Natak must balance divergence and docility.
Cinematography by Allen Smith.
The unknown presents an invigorating sense of bewilderment as Maïna (Roseanne Supernault), daughter of the Nearly Wolves's Chief Mishtenapeu (Graham Greene), protecting young Nipki (Uapshkuss Thernish), must join a group of Inuit travellers on their voyage home, one of them, bold Natak (Ipellie Ootoova), known to Maïna through her dreams, a new language, new customs, new lands, viscerally vivifying, as she adventurously comes of age.
Natak and Maïna fall in love but challenges face their union as she acquaints her new neighbours with the traditions of the Innu.
At a critical moment, her continuing survival having been jeopardized, Nanook embodies the unknown's extreme malevolency, understanding and support being required to integratively overcome the hunger, and peacefully initiate the flowering of difference.
Maïna comprehensively blooms love's emotional omniscience, artfully blending the confrontational with the mesmerizing, navigating clasped distances, flourishingly mused.
Petulance and prejudice challenge its tumultuous tranquility, as Maïna demonstrates that she too can hunt, and Natak must balance divergence and docility.
Cinematography by Allen Smith.
Monday, March 24, 2014
The Monuments Men
To enter a war zone with inadequate training and hardly any ground support with the goal of retrieving precious works of art from Nazi thugs, risking everything to return them to their rightful owners, this is how George Clooney's The Monuments Men proceeds, decadently daring and cluelessly clever, exoterically unreeling, with far too strong a sense of invincibility.
It's a great idea but it's difficult to treat Monuments Men like a serious war film.
War films need to be serious.
World War II's more of an afterthought than an omnipresence within and although the high spirits of the tangential team are endearing, in war films the war needs to be present in each and every nanoframe, every aspect scrutinizing the terror.
True, such films often include moments where the struggling combatants think of home or let loose for a while, but their despair still ominously flows.
Monuments Men sort of reverses this standard, the film occasionally focusing on the war while it seems like the combatants never left home, and, while it's noteworthy that the film doesn't play by the book, it falls flat throughout.
I applaud what it sets out to do however.
It's simple and easy to follow, providing a clear sensible message: great works of art chronicle and catalogue a people's historical and contemporary conditions, and any attempts to pilfer this aspect of a culture is universally unacceptable, to be resolutely fought against even if the impracticality of fighting against it directly during an actual war is daunting, that fight being artistic in its pursuits nevertheless.
By stating this message in terms that can be easily understood, Monuments Men will hopefully encourage many latent art lovers to cultivate their interests more actively.
One scene is commendable too, when James Granger (Matt Damon) returns a stolen painting to the house where it once belonged, even though the homeowners may never return, this scene defining a post-war rebuilding stage's genesis, highlighting how difficult it must be to know where to begin.
It passes by far too quickly.
Loved the Granger.
It's a great idea but it's difficult to treat Monuments Men like a serious war film.
War films need to be serious.
World War II's more of an afterthought than an omnipresence within and although the high spirits of the tangential team are endearing, in war films the war needs to be present in each and every nanoframe, every aspect scrutinizing the terror.
True, such films often include moments where the struggling combatants think of home or let loose for a while, but their despair still ominously flows.
Monuments Men sort of reverses this standard, the film occasionally focusing on the war while it seems like the combatants never left home, and, while it's noteworthy that the film doesn't play by the book, it falls flat throughout.
I applaud what it sets out to do however.
It's simple and easy to follow, providing a clear sensible message: great works of art chronicle and catalogue a people's historical and contemporary conditions, and any attempts to pilfer this aspect of a culture is universally unacceptable, to be resolutely fought against even if the impracticality of fighting against it directly during an actual war is daunting, that fight being artistic in its pursuits nevertheless.
By stating this message in terms that can be easily understood, Monuments Men will hopefully encourage many latent art lovers to cultivate their interests more actively.
One scene is commendable too, when James Granger (Matt Damon) returns a stolen painting to the house where it once belonged, even though the homeowners may never return, this scene defining a post-war rebuilding stage's genesis, highlighting how difficult it must be to know where to begin.
It passes by far too quickly.
Loved the Granger.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
House of Pictures (Carrera), Peter Doig
Ripen chords acoustic flurry
oceanic bluebird's worry
viewings pray-tell bleached and blazing
submarine symphonic phasings
stag belittled, the carefree thirst
wherefore the picks attune immersed
in sightings stretched across the sand
like windward whiskered sage bandstands.
oceanic bluebird's worry
viewings pray-tell bleached and blazing
submarine symphonic phasings
stag belittled, the carefree thirst
wherefore the picks attune immersed
in sightings stretched across the sand
like windward whiskered sage bandstands.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Kaze tachinu (The Wind Rises)
The dreams of a modest principled hard working youth patiently materialize in Hayao Miyazaki's Kaze tachinu (The Wind Rises), an animated account of a brilliant Japanese aeronautical engineer whose poetical mathematics helped remodel Japan's aviation industry.
The frame insulates a wise psychological stratagem for growing and changing during tumultuous times, within Jirȏ Horikoshi's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) mind, and provides him with the strength to go-with-the-flow as hardships, sicknesses, and political aggressions challenge his strong sense of self.
He grew up in the years leading up to World War II and had to helplessly sit back while his designs were co-opted by the military.
The film doesn't shy away from exploring technological testaments to militaristic miscues.
Horikoshi has to hide for a time as jingoistic agents grow suspicious of his activities.
This aspect of the film fades without receiving enough attention.
I'm supposing the pre-war years were quite oppressive as indicated by Horikoshi's attempts to converse with less fortunate citizens who are frightened by his humble offering of sponge cake.
Research and development processes and workplace pastimes are a recurring feature as his dreams become a reality through the application of diligent trials and errors.
Love fills-out the creative cure, as a respectful romance energizes his designs.
Kaze tachinu offers innocent industrious insights into a dedicated upright life of work and study whose successes and failures are stoically articulated.
Romance, rewards and retinues refine his tragic pursuit of innovation, his revered reveries, seek, search, discover; apply; install.
The frame insulates a wise psychological stratagem for growing and changing during tumultuous times, within Jirȏ Horikoshi's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) mind, and provides him with the strength to go-with-the-flow as hardships, sicknesses, and political aggressions challenge his strong sense of self.
He grew up in the years leading up to World War II and had to helplessly sit back while his designs were co-opted by the military.
The film doesn't shy away from exploring technological testaments to militaristic miscues.
Horikoshi has to hide for a time as jingoistic agents grow suspicious of his activities.
This aspect of the film fades without receiving enough attention.
I'm supposing the pre-war years were quite oppressive as indicated by Horikoshi's attempts to converse with less fortunate citizens who are frightened by his humble offering of sponge cake.
Research and development processes and workplace pastimes are a recurring feature as his dreams become a reality through the application of diligent trials and errors.
Love fills-out the creative cure, as a respectful romance energizes his designs.
Kaze tachinu offers innocent industrious insights into a dedicated upright life of work and study whose successes and failures are stoically articulated.
Romance, rewards and retinues refine his tragic pursuit of innovation, his revered reveries, seek, search, discover; apply; install.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Stay
The baby factor plays a crucial role in Stay's conceptual christening, the key sociological stitch practically tying the abstractions together.
Aging Dermot (Aidan Quinn) reacts none to supportively upon discovering that partner Abby (Taylor Schilling) is carrying his unborn child.
Content to live out his life quietly with minimal responsibility, the shock halts his settled steady stride.
He's a bit of an ass.
Abby leaves Ireland to visit her family in Montréal where her father (Michael Ironside as Frank) is thrilled by the news, yet troubled by her questions about her own mother, who left their family when she was 6.
Back in Ireland, Dermot strikes up acquaintances with a teenager who's skipping school to work and a single mom, their conversations causing him to reconsider his dismissive attitude regarding child rearing.
He also goes out of his way to irritate a fellow community member looking to sell a piece of property close to his own, disrupting his hopeful plans, even though he needs the money to save his struggling business.
He's a total ass.
Although his shenanigans do unearth a rare archaeological find.
The pints must flow.
Weathered and worldly, Abby and Dermot's relationship stubbornly and pensively communicates realistic fears concerning the introduction of youngsters, the upheaval of a stable set of solidifiers, the ground changing announcements of birth.
Communal and familial observations and traditions supply down-to-earth accidental supernatural provisions, fortune or fate?, interactive antecedents.
Aging Dermot (Aidan Quinn) reacts none to supportively upon discovering that partner Abby (Taylor Schilling) is carrying his unborn child.
Content to live out his life quietly with minimal responsibility, the shock halts his settled steady stride.
He's a bit of an ass.
Abby leaves Ireland to visit her family in Montréal where her father (Michael Ironside as Frank) is thrilled by the news, yet troubled by her questions about her own mother, who left their family when she was 6.
Back in Ireland, Dermot strikes up acquaintances with a teenager who's skipping school to work and a single mom, their conversations causing him to reconsider his dismissive attitude regarding child rearing.
He also goes out of his way to irritate a fellow community member looking to sell a piece of property close to his own, disrupting his hopeful plans, even though he needs the money to save his struggling business.
He's a total ass.
Although his shenanigans do unearth a rare archaeological find.
The pints must flow.
Weathered and worldly, Abby and Dermot's relationship stubbornly and pensively communicates realistic fears concerning the introduction of youngsters, the upheaval of a stable set of solidifiers, the ground changing announcements of birth.
Communal and familial observations and traditions supply down-to-earth accidental supernatural provisions, fortune or fate?, interactive antecedents.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Balcony (North Coast), Peter Doig
Basking silently within
a state of nature's wizened brim
stretched to comfortably support
an evening's parched fatigued cohorts,
in the densely packed enlivened
beastial beauty's hunger's striving
sense of stimulated symptoms
flickers, binds, nebulous rhythms,
lush lounging life regales the heat
with timewarped preachings from the street,
pastis prolonged and pluralizing,
chaotic joy is hypnotizing.
a state of nature's wizened brim
stretched to comfortably support
an evening's parched fatigued cohorts,
in the densely packed enlivened
beastial beauty's hunger's striving
sense of stimulated symptoms
flickers, binds, nebulous rhythms,
lush lounging life regales the heat
with timewarped preachings from the street,
pastis prolonged and pluralizing,
chaotic joy is hypnotizing.
Ping Pong, Peter Doig
It disappears into the woods,
opponents dash, retrieved, withstood,
enigmatic plushing paddlers,
transverse pyrodactic saddlers,
environments are mitigated,
49 black-blue-grey plated
bricks through which a point of view
kaleidoscopically renews
the jungle's prescient perspiration,
instinct throttled, merged migrations,
t(r)o/pics flush with fragrant sound
as the ball slowly rebounds,
attentive, then, for its return,
revolving shades, to play, to yearn,
apply far-sighted syntheses
and integrate the timeless breeze.
opponents dash, retrieved, withstood,
enigmatic plushing paddlers,
transverse pyrodactic saddlers,
environments are mitigated,
49 black-blue-grey plated
bricks through which a point of view
kaleidoscopically renews
the jungle's prescient perspiration,
instinct throttled, merged migrations,
t(r)o/pics flush with fragrant sound
as the ball slowly rebounds,
attentive, then, for its return,
revolving shades, to play, to yearn,
apply far-sighted syntheses
and integrate the timeless breeze.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Miraculum
Flight plans, guilt-ridden, felicitous, miserable, and emancipating flight plans, desperately intermingle differing degrees of shock, immersed in Daniel Grou's Miraculum, as risks deteriorate familial stabilities, and the concept of vice, is multifariously de/moralized.
Synoptic suffering.
A weary outcast attempts to make amends through profits earned from drug smuggling.
An affair crushes and/or enlivens the members of two elderly couples.
Distant addictive empty partners seek to rejuvenate their marriage.
A struggling Jehovah's Witness is tempted by secular advancements (blood transfusions).
The four stories downtroddenly unfurl within and without (like Babel or Tian zhu ding), lucidly pinpointing vectorized vertices, occasionally peaking ensemble, dedicating a despondent deconstructive density to open-minded conscientious plights, which resists clear and distinct binding generalizations, to materially matriculate the mundanely divine.
Although communal belonging is fluidly challenged as unforgiving bulwarks fortify their positions.
Wherein resistance is rather futile.
Miraculum isn't like pastis, milk, and honey, more like a caressing melancholic ideological tempest, compelling in its whirlwinds, tight, multifaceted, challenging.
Editing by Valérie Héroux.
Written by Gabriel Sabourin (Valérie Beaugrand-Champagne consulting).
It breathes difficult distinct tetralectics into profound ethical quotients, corrugating crisp conceptions of the beautiful, rationally masterminded, exacting, composed.
Keeping you focused at full attention.
Built to multilaterally stimulate.
Synoptic suffering.
A weary outcast attempts to make amends through profits earned from drug smuggling.
An affair crushes and/or enlivens the members of two elderly couples.
Distant addictive empty partners seek to rejuvenate their marriage.
A struggling Jehovah's Witness is tempted by secular advancements (blood transfusions).
The four stories downtroddenly unfurl within and without (like Babel or Tian zhu ding), lucidly pinpointing vectorized vertices, occasionally peaking ensemble, dedicating a despondent deconstructive density to open-minded conscientious plights, which resists clear and distinct binding generalizations, to materially matriculate the mundanely divine.
Although communal belonging is fluidly challenged as unforgiving bulwarks fortify their positions.
Wherein resistance is rather futile.
Miraculum isn't like pastis, milk, and honey, more like a caressing melancholic ideological tempest, compelling in its whirlwinds, tight, multifaceted, challenging.
Editing by Valérie Héroux.
Written by Gabriel Sabourin (Valérie Beaugrand-Champagne consulting).
It breathes difficult distinct tetralectics into profound ethical quotients, corrugating crisp conceptions of the beautiful, rationally masterminded, exacting, composed.
Keeping you focused at full attention.
Built to multilaterally stimulate.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
300: Rise of an Empire
I'm not sure if 300: Rise of an Empire is supposed to be taken seriously or rather should be treated as a healthy cerealized kitschtastic crack, its graphic epic historic amplitude hilted, jacked, and drawn, battle-ready and menacing in its entirety, strategically frothing, an implicated grind.
Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) and Artemisia's (Eva Green) nocturnal knockings knit like necromanced kerosene, enriching yet servicing quinoa, while Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) gracefully prances about like an impregnable prophesied faun, mystically captivating, ornate and commandeering.
There isn't really that much happening in the film besides battling and preparations for battling.
The majority of the battles taking place on water.
The Persians insist on invading Greece and go rather multitudinously about it, which necessitates constant inspirational speech making from Themistocles, a plain everyperson possessing ingenious gifts for fighting and strategizing, whose experiential wherewithal infuses his speeches with spry rallying rectitude, democracy under siege, his fellow citizens, pressurized and proverbed.
According to my tastes, many of the speeches fell flat, but since I realized that Themistocles's gifts were for warfare, not rhetoric, and his legend demanded that he set out to unite Greece, a soldier shepherding a synergy, I could forgive the fact that the words he chose didn't resonate with me, strictly focusing on their underlying message.
A relationship between father and son familializes both the preparations for and the acts of battling.
Heavy on the gore.
At several points it seems like the reasons for battling are secondary to the battling itself, blood spurting from hacked-off limbs the motif which occurs most often.
Which adds a mischievous quality to the design.
Which perhaps should be taken seriously.
Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton) and Artemisia's (Eva Green) nocturnal knockings knit like necromanced kerosene, enriching yet servicing quinoa, while Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) gracefully prances about like an impregnable prophesied faun, mystically captivating, ornate and commandeering.
There isn't really that much happening in the film besides battling and preparations for battling.
The majority of the battles taking place on water.
The Persians insist on invading Greece and go rather multitudinously about it, which necessitates constant inspirational speech making from Themistocles, a plain everyperson possessing ingenious gifts for fighting and strategizing, whose experiential wherewithal infuses his speeches with spry rallying rectitude, democracy under siege, his fellow citizens, pressurized and proverbed.
According to my tastes, many of the speeches fell flat, but since I realized that Themistocles's gifts were for warfare, not rhetoric, and his legend demanded that he set out to unite Greece, a soldier shepherding a synergy, I could forgive the fact that the words he chose didn't resonate with me, strictly focusing on their underlying message.
A relationship between father and son familializes both the preparations for and the acts of battling.
Heavy on the gore.
At several points it seems like the reasons for battling are secondary to the battling itself, blood spurting from hacked-off limbs the motif which occurs most often.
Which adds a mischievous quality to the design.
Which perhaps should be taken seriously.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Rimes pour revenants)
A systematically brutalized culture's subjugated displacements resiliently assert themselves in Jeff Barnaby's Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Rimes pour revenants), a hardboiled look at a Mi'kmaq reserve (Red Crow) oppressed by a cruel vindictive Indian Agent and laws requiring children to attend residential schools.
There's friendship, family, camaraderie, language, culture, belonging, humanity.
But the gang of authoritative thugs who govern the place still do everything they can to impoverish.
The film's violent.
It's fight-back or fuck-off as a might-is-right philosophy confronts resistance, ubiquitous altercations, outrageous regulations (no boats on the lake for starters).
Alia (Kawennahere Devery Jacobs) knows how to fight.
Left to be raised by her deadbeat uncle after her father was sent to prison and her mother committed suicide, she establishes a flourishing business which earns her enough cash to pay off the Indian Agent.
Thereby freeing her from the residential school.
But his abusive grip squeezes tighter and tighter, necessitating a potent counterstrike, sounding the call of the warrior.
Rhymes for Young Ghouls isn't shy.
It starkly lays out a ravaged set of institutionalized sterilizations while demonstrating how the victims remain elastically fertile.
Many of the characters are young and their tragic innocence exacerbates the tyranny.
Accentuates the acrimony.
While their communal bonds reify the transcendent life.
Love the analogous relationship between the wolf and the mushroom story and the bloodthirsty pursuit of capital.
There's friendship, family, camaraderie, language, culture, belonging, humanity.
But the gang of authoritative thugs who govern the place still do everything they can to impoverish.
The film's violent.
It's fight-back or fuck-off as a might-is-right philosophy confronts resistance, ubiquitous altercations, outrageous regulations (no boats on the lake for starters).
Alia (Kawennahere Devery Jacobs) knows how to fight.
Left to be raised by her deadbeat uncle after her father was sent to prison and her mother committed suicide, she establishes a flourishing business which earns her enough cash to pay off the Indian Agent.
Thereby freeing her from the residential school.
But his abusive grip squeezes tighter and tighter, necessitating a potent counterstrike, sounding the call of the warrior.
Rhymes for Young Ghouls isn't shy.
It starkly lays out a ravaged set of institutionalized sterilizations while demonstrating how the victims remain elastically fertile.
Many of the characters are young and their tragic innocence exacerbates the tyranny.
Accentuates the acrimony.
While their communal bonds reify the transcendent life.
Love the analogous relationship between the wolf and the mushroom story and the bloodthirsty pursuit of capital.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Stalingrad
Improbabilities abound in Fedor Bondarchuk's oddly sentimental Stalingrad, my first look at a Russian blockbuster, just as grandiosely sensational as their American counterparts, so it seems, dazzling and heartbreaking, modestly skewed.
The film concerns one of the Second World War's Battle of Stalingrad's myriad crazed territorial trespasses wherein the Russians possess a building the Germans covet, hoping to win it back, their opposing forces exchanging ample audacities.
A beautiful young Russian ingénue still lives in the building (Mariya Smolnikova as Katya) and 5 hardened comrades fall for her as the fighting intensifies.
The situation's dire and the soldiers are countering inestimable odds with neither supplies nor reinforcements.
Katya offers a fleeting escape from the surrounding horrors, reminding the men that they're fighting for a greater purpose, substituting radiance for perdition, dignity for misery.
Even if what I've read about Stalin's reign in the Soviet Union makes it sound like hell on Earth.
It's difficult to determine whether or not the film is simply celebrating the sacrifices of courageous persons thrust into an abyss whose maddening pressures necessitated the emergence of heroism, the overwhelmed and underfunded Russians forced to bravely ignite their internal flames (one of the best scenes depicts this), or if it's glorifying the war itself, the scene where two would-be lovers sit back and watch the artillery light up the night sky like a fascist/communist fireworks display functioning as a romantic yet too distracting display, although had I been in a similar situation I too would have likely watched in wonder.
Focusing on the inherently deadly and ruinous nature of the display rather than any secondary futuristic aesthetic qualifications no doubt.
The deadly and ruinous nature of the display isn't referred to, discipline is brutal as a Russian sailor is shot for presenting an alternative point of view, Stalin isn't mentioned with loathing, the best speech is reserved for the enemy German captain (Thomas Krechmann/Kretschmann)(it reminded me of Robert Graves's description of Julius Caesar's pre-battle motivations in I, Claudius), in short, the discourses of the Left are largely absent (one Russian soldier is reprimanded for using the word retarded and there's a conciliatory frame whose presence is dismissible), which I was hoping would not be the case in a film celebrating Commie heroes, even if I'm (now) aware that it was mass-produced in Putin's Russia.
It's not necessarily that improbabilities abound, but when I watch these films and think, "this is a life or death situation and that's what tricked you?", I tend to use words such as improbable to describe what happens.
A must if you want to see your first Russian blockbuster, even if it's one of the worst movies you'll ever see.
I was naively hoping it would be similar to Elem Klimov's Come and See (all I knew about the film going in was that it was called Stalingrad and made in Russia).
Here's hoping Putin doesn't become any more Hitleresque.
The film concerns one of the Second World War's Battle of Stalingrad's myriad crazed territorial trespasses wherein the Russians possess a building the Germans covet, hoping to win it back, their opposing forces exchanging ample audacities.
A beautiful young Russian ingénue still lives in the building (Mariya Smolnikova as Katya) and 5 hardened comrades fall for her as the fighting intensifies.
The situation's dire and the soldiers are countering inestimable odds with neither supplies nor reinforcements.
Katya offers a fleeting escape from the surrounding horrors, reminding the men that they're fighting for a greater purpose, substituting radiance for perdition, dignity for misery.
Even if what I've read about Stalin's reign in the Soviet Union makes it sound like hell on Earth.
It's difficult to determine whether or not the film is simply celebrating the sacrifices of courageous persons thrust into an abyss whose maddening pressures necessitated the emergence of heroism, the overwhelmed and underfunded Russians forced to bravely ignite their internal flames (one of the best scenes depicts this), or if it's glorifying the war itself, the scene where two would-be lovers sit back and watch the artillery light up the night sky like a fascist/communist fireworks display functioning as a romantic yet too distracting display, although had I been in a similar situation I too would have likely watched in wonder.
Focusing on the inherently deadly and ruinous nature of the display rather than any secondary futuristic aesthetic qualifications no doubt.
The deadly and ruinous nature of the display isn't referred to, discipline is brutal as a Russian sailor is shot for presenting an alternative point of view, Stalin isn't mentioned with loathing, the best speech is reserved for the enemy German captain (Thomas Krechmann/Kretschmann)(it reminded me of Robert Graves's description of Julius Caesar's pre-battle motivations in I, Claudius), in short, the discourses of the Left are largely absent (one Russian soldier is reprimanded for using the word retarded and there's a conciliatory frame whose presence is dismissible), which I was hoping would not be the case in a film celebrating Commie heroes, even if I'm (now) aware that it was mass-produced in Putin's Russia.
It's not necessarily that improbabilities abound, but when I watch these films and think, "this is a life or death situation and that's what tricked you?", I tend to use words such as improbable to describe what happens.
A must if you want to see your first Russian blockbuster, even if it's one of the worst movies you'll ever see.
I was naively hoping it would be similar to Elem Klimov's Come and See (all I knew about the film going in was that it was called Stalingrad and made in Russia).
Here's hoping Putin doesn't become any more Hitleresque.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Oscar Picks 2014
Actress in a Supporting Role: Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
Actor in a Supporting Role: Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael (Nebraska)
Film Editing: Alan Baumgarten, Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers (American Hustle)
Production Design: Catherine Martin, Karen Murphy (The Great Gatsby)
Animated Short Film: Room on the Broom (Max Lang, Jan Lachauer)
Live Action Short Film: Avant que de tout perdre (Xavier Legrand, Alexandre Gavras)
Visual Effects: Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, Eric Reynolds (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug)
Adapted Screenplay: John Ridley (12 Years a Slave)
Original Screenplay: Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell (American Hustle)
Actor in a Leading Role: Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Director: Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)
Picture: 12 Years a Slave (Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen, Anthony Katagas, producers)
Actor in a Supporting Role: Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael (Nebraska)
Film Editing: Alan Baumgarten, Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers (American Hustle)
Production Design: Catherine Martin, Karen Murphy (The Great Gatsby)
Animated Short Film: Room on the Broom (Max Lang, Jan Lachauer)
Live Action Short Film: Avant que de tout perdre (Xavier Legrand, Alexandre Gavras)
Visual Effects: Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, Eric Reynolds (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug)
Adapted Screenplay: John Ridley (12 Years a Slave)
Original Screenplay: Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell (American Hustle)
Actor in a Leading Role: Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Director: Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)
Picture: 12 Years a Slave (Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen, Anthony Katagas, producers)
Parallels
Chambers chisel, chime, and swing,
their interstices intent clinging
residential residues
resilient signs frolicked, imbued,
alongside frothing automatic
sizzling surges, right-back-at-it,
dams and levees, reserves, rekindling,
necromanced diurnal fringelings,
branches leafy, merging compacts,
bucolic sentiments left intact,
what flies beneath the tethered web
grizzling airtight bill'wing threads?
their interstices intent clinging
residential residues
resilient signs frolicked, imbued,
alongside frothing automatic
sizzling surges, right-back-at-it,
dams and levees, reserves, rekindling,
necromanced diurnal fringelings,
branches leafy, merging compacts,
bucolic sentiments left intact,
what flies beneath the tethered web
grizzling airtight bill'wing threads?
Thursday, February 27, 2014
RoboCop
Didn't think they should remake RoboCop, the original being one of the best action films I've seen, up there with Die Hard and Aliens, but they did, it exists, I obviously couldn't resist seeing it, and tried not to spend too much time comparing it to the original while watching, even though my efforts proved futile.
The first RoboCop's much more gritty, a different degree of debauched desperation. Pre-internet, its world is much more local, focusing on criminal thugs, corporate power struggles, and terrorized police forces more than international paradigms and their relationship to the United States, a raw frantic highly organized pedigree, wherein RoboCop's (Peter Weller) identity and family aren't primary to the structure of the narrative.
The internet-era RoboCop deals with multiple big-picture issues. The ways in which multi-billion dollar companies agitate to infringe upon integral civil liberties. Maintaining a humanistic identity while constantly embracing eclectic electronic onslaughts. Media personalities and their institutionalized agendas. Scientific ethics, parenting, global politics, cyborgs.
Cyborgs don't really seem like far-fetched highly aggressive airy-fairy daydreams anymore.
There's a Fido-like script involving a cyborg possibly starring Matt Damon waiting to be written.
Co-starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Sally Hawkins.
Like Archer, I still fear cyborgs however, and as RoboCop (Joel Kinnaman) loses his identity in the new film, fears regarding consciousness altering technocrats are rebelliously voiced, their counterparts receiving plenty of airtime as well in the movie's dialectic (the sequel's set up well).
More polished than the original, lacking its wild conditioned sense of experimental zealotry, the relationship between the two films reflects the potential maturation of the original's fan base, much like the first three Terminator films, while making me think today's youth must be hyperactively aware (Michael Keaton's [Raymond Sellars] presence perfectly establishes this transition [casting by Diane Kerbel and Francine Maisler]).
Perhaps they didn't like it.
I did meet a youngster who enjoyed Star Trek Into Darkness however (co-starring Peter Weller).
The first RoboCop's much more gritty, a different degree of debauched desperation. Pre-internet, its world is much more local, focusing on criminal thugs, corporate power struggles, and terrorized police forces more than international paradigms and their relationship to the United States, a raw frantic highly organized pedigree, wherein RoboCop's (Peter Weller) identity and family aren't primary to the structure of the narrative.
The internet-era RoboCop deals with multiple big-picture issues. The ways in which multi-billion dollar companies agitate to infringe upon integral civil liberties. Maintaining a humanistic identity while constantly embracing eclectic electronic onslaughts. Media personalities and their institutionalized agendas. Scientific ethics, parenting, global politics, cyborgs.
Cyborgs don't really seem like far-fetched highly aggressive airy-fairy daydreams anymore.
There's a Fido-like script involving a cyborg possibly starring Matt Damon waiting to be written.
Co-starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Sally Hawkins.
Like Archer, I still fear cyborgs however, and as RoboCop (Joel Kinnaman) loses his identity in the new film, fears regarding consciousness altering technocrats are rebelliously voiced, their counterparts receiving plenty of airtime as well in the movie's dialectic (the sequel's set up well).
More polished than the original, lacking its wild conditioned sense of experimental zealotry, the relationship between the two films reflects the potential maturation of the original's fan base, much like the first three Terminator films, while making me think today's youth must be hyperactively aware (Michael Keaton's [Raymond Sellars] presence perfectly establishes this transition [casting by Diane Kerbel and Francine Maisler]).
Perhaps they didn't like it.
I did meet a youngster who enjoyed Star Trek Into Darkness however (co-starring Peter Weller).
Monday, February 24, 2014
Jimmy P.
Unidentified debilitating head trauma leads Blackfoot war veteran Jimmy Picard (Benicio Del Toro), his Blackfoot name meaning Everybody Talks About Him, to seek medical aid, which congenially yet professionally presents itself in the emergence of Georges Devereux (Mathieu Amalric).
Devereux's carefree ways have established himself a controversial reputation whose negative aspects are ignored by the Topeka Military Hospital's hiring committee.
His interests in Aboriginal cultures and easy going yet penetrating style endear him to Jimmy, whose living full-time at the hospital and has learned from experience to distrust people of European descent.
Jimmy's trauma runs deep, and the two establish a patient constructive healing dialogue which drives the film's therapeutic cerebral inclusivity, diagnosis didactic, arguably becoming friends.
There's still some patient/therapist distance structuring their relations, so whether or not a true friendship blossoms is up for debate.
While Devereux is devoid of prejudice, Jimmy still confronts varied systemic social dismissals.
The film convalescently analyzes and/or refers to dreams throughout, these practical surreal revelations serving to meritoriously mystify its compelling inductive rationality, extracting conversational results and applying them to the world at large, proactively deconstructing its habitually ethnocentric subconscious.
The fire in the pines.
Stigmatic catatonics.
Devereux's carefree ways have established himself a controversial reputation whose negative aspects are ignored by the Topeka Military Hospital's hiring committee.
His interests in Aboriginal cultures and easy going yet penetrating style endear him to Jimmy, whose living full-time at the hospital and has learned from experience to distrust people of European descent.
Jimmy's trauma runs deep, and the two establish a patient constructive healing dialogue which drives the film's therapeutic cerebral inclusivity, diagnosis didactic, arguably becoming friends.
There's still some patient/therapist distance structuring their relations, so whether or not a true friendship blossoms is up for debate.
While Devereux is devoid of prejudice, Jimmy still confronts varied systemic social dismissals.
The film convalescently analyzes and/or refers to dreams throughout, these practical surreal revelations serving to meritoriously mystify its compelling inductive rationality, extracting conversational results and applying them to the world at large, proactively deconstructing its habitually ethnocentric subconscious.
The fire in the pines.
Stigmatic catatonics.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Gloria
The world of post-divorce adult dating releases a sombre upbeat frustrated flow in Sebastián Lelio's Gloria, as risks are taken in her (Paulina García as Gloria) search for a partner, unleashing fresh currents of desire, tormented by encumbering egotistical eddies.
She ebbs.
She flows.
But deception and non-committal petulancies provoke circularities of their own, pinpointed purchased prolific paddlings, pensively oriented, destination, cued.
The film champions a vital sense of heightened self-appreciation in the face of unsolicited undeserved shame, staying afloat after having been cast adrift, eventually docking on a jaunty friendly shore.
Look at how she comports herself.
Brought back to life by the power of pop music, suppressing her instincts so she can still give it a shot.
Why not eh?
Beautifully bouncing back.
From stranger tides.
She ebbs.
She flows.
But deception and non-committal petulancies provoke circularities of their own, pinpointed purchased prolific paddlings, pensively oriented, destination, cued.
The film champions a vital sense of heightened self-appreciation in the face of unsolicited undeserved shame, staying afloat after having been cast adrift, eventually docking on a jaunty friendly shore.
Look at how she comports herself.
Brought back to life by the power of pop music, suppressing her instincts so she can still give it a shot.
Why not eh?
Beautifully bouncing back.
From stranger tides.
Devil's Knot
Seemingly criminal investigative buffoonery is exactingly exposed yet authoritatively dismissed in Atom Egoyan's Devil's Knot, the lives of three teens dependent on said revelations, the law more concerned with either fabricating or submitting to superstition.
The evidence which Egoyan vets cannot lucidly resolve resulting legal tensions.
Dedicated altruistic private investigator Ron Lax (Colin Firth) resolutely prowls to defend, analyzing the facts exhaustively and judiciously, earning trust where none has ever been granted, proceeding directly, from a sense of justice.
But his team is held back by insurmountable time constraints and predetermined sentences, foregone conclusions belittlingly arresting, narcoleptic networks, propagandized anew.
The film harrowingly spawns a persisted enveloping remittance, a sublime sense of optimism institutionally dismayed, helplessness, the beautiful, the dissolute, the scapegoating of difference, a purloined procedural penitentiary.
Nothing can be proven.
Fights against overwhelming odds.
The knot represents the ways in which authorities sometimes outlaw/vilify/demonize a bohemian perspective then rely on their sanctified laurels while using the strategies of that perspective to illegitimately act.
It happens in the film anyways.
And in Foucault.
Oddly, I've been wondering recently if there's ever been a documentary film made about duty counsels and/or legal aids.
Appropriately timed thought even if Lax isn't a lawyer.
I've noticed a negative stereotype associated with the work legal aids perform which a solid documentary film and accompanying book could help destabilize.
Something like Duty Counselled.
Or something else.
The evidence which Egoyan vets cannot lucidly resolve resulting legal tensions.
Dedicated altruistic private investigator Ron Lax (Colin Firth) resolutely prowls to defend, analyzing the facts exhaustively and judiciously, earning trust where none has ever been granted, proceeding directly, from a sense of justice.
But his team is held back by insurmountable time constraints and predetermined sentences, foregone conclusions belittlingly arresting, narcoleptic networks, propagandized anew.
The film harrowingly spawns a persisted enveloping remittance, a sublime sense of optimism institutionally dismayed, helplessness, the beautiful, the dissolute, the scapegoating of difference, a purloined procedural penitentiary.
Nothing can be proven.
Fights against overwhelming odds.
The knot represents the ways in which authorities sometimes outlaw/vilify/demonize a bohemian perspective then rely on their sanctified laurels while using the strategies of that perspective to illegitimately act.
It happens in the film anyways.
And in Foucault.
Oddly, I've been wondering recently if there's ever been a documentary film made about duty counsels and/or legal aids.
Appropriately timed thought even if Lax isn't a lawyer.
I've noticed a negative stereotype associated with the work legal aids perform which a solid documentary film and accompanying book could help destabilize.
Something like Duty Counselled.
Or something else.
Monday, February 17, 2014
La Grande Bellezza
Intricate spiralling ornately orchestrated unconcerned lavish spectacular ornamentations lushly yet temperately adorn La Grande Bellezza's sensuous immersions, crystalline socially interactive penetrating steps daring the bold to convivially counter, impeccable introductory multilayered intensities, celebrating for the urge of heights, shear polished expressive intertextual presence, the slightest movement, calm overwhelming culturally accumulated propensities, days within months within years within decades within millennia, to actively exist within contemporary a/temporalities, to discuss, persuade, to pressure, the hubris, the risk, the meticulous structure, deconstructing the meticulous by agilely removing any sense of the contritely overbearing, genius and beauty united in harmony, its form/s finessing the flaneur, complete distinct exploratory vignettes lacking borders or delineations, smooth seductive sequential synergies, emotive yet provocative, the mention of Proust, if ever there was a film that made me momentarily feel the same way I do while reading Proust, it's Paolo Sorrentino's La Grande Bellezza; I thought this was an impossibility; flourishing forbearance, imparted, gentle.
Cinematography by Luca Bigazzi.
Idea, conversation, melody.
Jep Gambardella's (Toni Servillo) introduction is the best introduction of a character I've ever seen.
See this one in theatres.
Like 12 Years a Slave, it demands multiple viewings.
Par excellence.
Cinematography by Luca Bigazzi.
Idea, conversation, melody.
Jep Gambardella's (Toni Servillo) introduction is the best introduction of a character I've ever seen.
See this one in theatres.
Like 12 Years a Slave, it demands multiple viewings.
Par excellence.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Saving Mr. Banks
Artistic visions begrudgingly meet, in a story whose timelines derail the discreet, innocent childlike paternal love, textually flexed, romantically shoved into glittery glistening bedazzled shapes, affably born through divergent tastes, differing cultural curtailed conceptions, tenacious tempests, animate tensions, the question of ownership reputedly trusts the picture's polarity's pulsating thrush to sustains which wisely and playfully stray into micro and macro cosmetic brays, the genuine article exists in flashbacks, tragic addiction, familial shellacs, heartbreaking integrity guides P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson), a commitment unwavering forthrightly flatters, a confident stubborn unyielding resolve which Disney (Tom Hanks) respects, having been there installed, yet he's also a father taking care of the kids, a promise was made, indentured votives, but trifles and mercantile paraphernalia, can't loosen the grip of Ms. Travers's regalias, her steady inflexible inspiring song, betwixt the mercurial commercial throng.
Saving Mr. Banks presents a fun lively look at creative expression, uniting two revered works from different domains while managing to apply its own historical take on the narrative's competing geneses.
A poignant picturesque blush of the abrasive, empathetic yet covetous, principled, and cherished.
Saving Mr. Banks presents a fun lively look at creative expression, uniting two revered works from different domains while managing to apply its own historical take on the narrative's competing geneses.
A poignant picturesque blush of the abrasive, empathetic yet covetous, principled, and cherished.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Whitewash
Bland mundane blunt verisimilitudes cordially plow absurd fail-safes in Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais's campy Whitewash.
It's not that it's bland.
The characters and situations are somewhat bland but the ways in which they mitigate predetermined discourses of the sympathetic hyperstylizes their cerebral forthcomings.
A down-to-earth puzzling routine pervasively co-opts its miscalculated immersions but Bruce's (Thomas Haden Church) struggle to legitimize his poorly executed attempts to avoid the truth apply a lively coat of untarnished wherewithal.
During his discussions with Paul (Marc Labrèche), and others, he tries not to be blunt, but lacks the finely tuned verbal veneers necessary to convivially cloak his to-the-point observations, although he doesn't have many alternatives when interacting with Paul, whose death may not even be as accidental as it appears.
He remains cordial while hiding-out in the wilderness but guilt and fear infiltrate his interactions, causing him to appear awkward and creepy, loneliness, indulgence, bad luck.
He has to pick up supplies from time to time.
He drives a snow removal machine.
The more I think about it, the film seems less and less absurd, as if it's trying to trick you into thinking it's absurd by exfoliating the unexceptional.
Which makes for some constructive camp.
The previews were pleasantly misleading.
I've wanted to see this since I heard Thomas Haden Church was being paired-up with Marc Labrèche.
Brilliant.
Casting by Margery Simkin.
If you're thinking, this winter's been long and harsh, go see this film.
Not only is it worth seeing, it's perfect for a long harsh winter's February.
On par with Premier Amour and Vic + Flo ont vu un ours.
It's not that it's bland.
The characters and situations are somewhat bland but the ways in which they mitigate predetermined discourses of the sympathetic hyperstylizes their cerebral forthcomings.
A down-to-earth puzzling routine pervasively co-opts its miscalculated immersions but Bruce's (Thomas Haden Church) struggle to legitimize his poorly executed attempts to avoid the truth apply a lively coat of untarnished wherewithal.
During his discussions with Paul (Marc Labrèche), and others, he tries not to be blunt, but lacks the finely tuned verbal veneers necessary to convivially cloak his to-the-point observations, although he doesn't have many alternatives when interacting with Paul, whose death may not even be as accidental as it appears.
He remains cordial while hiding-out in the wilderness but guilt and fear infiltrate his interactions, causing him to appear awkward and creepy, loneliness, indulgence, bad luck.
He has to pick up supplies from time to time.
He drives a snow removal machine.
The more I think about it, the film seems less and less absurd, as if it's trying to trick you into thinking it's absurd by exfoliating the unexceptional.
Which makes for some constructive camp.
The previews were pleasantly misleading.
I've wanted to see this since I heard Thomas Haden Church was being paired-up with Marc Labrèche.
Brilliant.
Casting by Margery Simkin.
If you're thinking, this winter's been long and harsh, go see this film.
Not only is it worth seeing, it's perfect for a long harsh winter's February.
On par with Premier Amour and Vic + Flo ont vu un ours.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Thought John Elway (and John Fox) spoke admirably well about the Broncos defeat in Super Bowl XLVIII at this press conference.
Thanks for reminding me about the Broncos's outstanding 2013 season and how much fun it was watching them compose the best offence the NFL has ever seen.
I followed a lot of the games on my phone and 99% of the time the results were stellar.
That's Denver Broncos football.
And the 2014 season is only 7 months away.
Thanks for reminding me about the Broncos's outstanding 2013 season and how much fun it was watching them compose the best offence the NFL has ever seen.
I followed a lot of the games on my phone and 99% of the time the results were stellar.
That's Denver Broncos football.
And the 2014 season is only 7 months away.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Monumental shifting shocks born on the strings of unexplored imaginary rifts, celestial seasoning, rhizomatic reveries, driven by the emergence of an affective resonance, accelerated paramount experiential zeitgeists, their heights represented by the pursuit of the elusive snow leopard within the Himalayas, upon which Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) meets the legendary Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn), whose carefree incomparable precision counters Ted Hendricks's (Adam Scott) callous downsizing, impromptu communal exercise, a spirited abounding break.
This is more than just a journey of discovery.
It's a sudden apprehensive full-throttle embarkation, synthesizing the subjective, the romantic, the practical, and the abstract in a hesitantly audacious leap of faith in oneself, the amorous tenacious logic of risk, a quasi-archivist in search of a lost record, love, adventure.
The excursion assists in the development of his eHarmony profile.
Individualistic styles contrast corporate bottom-lines through the art of naturalistic photographic bewilderment, patiently awaiting the arrival of a highly sought after enigmatic boon, having meticulously yet not fastidiously set-up the shot, while remaining somewhat aloof, interruptions noted but welcome, the evidence secondary to the ensconcement, a mature modest chime hallowing the apprenticeship of bliss.
And freedom.
For a windswept mellow-set Béla Flecked rougir.
Loved the discussion of Bowie's Space Oddity.
This is more than just a journey of discovery.
It's a sudden apprehensive full-throttle embarkation, synthesizing the subjective, the romantic, the practical, and the abstract in a hesitantly audacious leap of faith in oneself, the amorous tenacious logic of risk, a quasi-archivist in search of a lost record, love, adventure.
The excursion assists in the development of his eHarmony profile.
Individualistic styles contrast corporate bottom-lines through the art of naturalistic photographic bewilderment, patiently awaiting the arrival of a highly sought after enigmatic boon, having meticulously yet not fastidiously set-up the shot, while remaining somewhat aloof, interruptions noted but welcome, the evidence secondary to the ensconcement, a mature modest chime hallowing the apprenticeship of bliss.
And freedom.
For a windswept mellow-set Béla Flecked rougir.
Loved the discussion of Bowie's Space Oddity.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Super Bowl Pick
Haven't been this excited about the Super Bowl in a long time. Best offense versus best defence. Northern climate. Formidable factors. Picking the Broncos. Can't wait for the game.
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