New plans.
New destinations.
New living arrangements.
Classic Trailer Park Boys.
Going back to the show's roots, writers Mike Clattenburg and Mike O'Neill craft an hilarious instalment, with some of the series's best lines, and enough fresh material to keep things going for the foreseeable future.
Some of the absurdities that drive the narrative, notably how often the boys end up in jail, are playfully referred to, which adds a touch of the gritty galvanized real, a fablelike finesse, and a modest cheeky awareness.
At the same time, said absurdities pleasantly abound, the drive from Moncton to Montréal passing-by rather quickly, Bubbles (Mike Smith) having spent 2 years living under J-Roc's (Jonathan Torrens) porch, Julian's (John Paul Tremblay) latest money making scheme soaked and surgical, Lahey's (John Dunsworth) rampage, beyond anything seen before.
Touching moments subtly romanticize the film, Ricky (Robb Wells) breaking down as Bubbles considers moving to Kingston, the tear Randy (Patrick Roach) sheds for Lahey augmenting their torn troubled trust.
Bubbles's struggles hold the film together.
He's usually the level-headed moral knot tying things together, but he's fallen on tough times, and his friends don't know what to do, because he's the one who normally solves these kinds of problems.
Great plot device.
Dean Soltys's editing reminded me why I fell in love with the show over a decade ago, perfectly timed cocky commentaries acting like sharp snarky visceral strikes.
I wasn't sure if they'd be able to pull-off a road trip far to the West, but they do, and they do it so well.
Outrageous.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
Enemy
Well, if David Lynch is frustratingly not going to make films anymore, I suppose other directors may as well work within his domain, expanding its carnal lethally chipper metamorphosis to absolve instinctive claims, encouraging their characters to experimentally confront themselves as curative acts of regenerative p/haze, immersively diversifying degenerative converse sights, for the love of a beautiful woman, for the transience of a femme fatale.
Denis Villeneuve prospers.
Enemy is too stark for direct comparisons with Lynch's work, but penetrating transverse inveteracies still construct its obsessed will, a trembling fearful confrontation with an other, forsaken withdrawal, fey iron amplitudes.
Isabella Rossellini (Mother) inhabits.
Sarah Gadon (Helen) resembles Patricia Arquette.
A clandestine group internally promotes coveted exclusive performances.
Identity crises clarify.
Challenging co-existence.
The reality the protagonist cohorts ambiguously disdains its materialistic shell, swapping seductions for synergies, intimately, with standing.
A web based conjugal convection rallies Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) to the next internment, the closing credits befouling his rise, follow the sentient bread crumbs, to unlock a foresighted rendez-vous.
In plume.
Denis Villeneuve prospers.
Enemy is too stark for direct comparisons with Lynch's work, but penetrating transverse inveteracies still construct its obsessed will, a trembling fearful confrontation with an other, forsaken withdrawal, fey iron amplitudes.
Isabella Rossellini (Mother) inhabits.
Sarah Gadon (Helen) resembles Patricia Arquette.
A clandestine group internally promotes coveted exclusive performances.
Identity crises clarify.
Challenging co-existence.
The reality the protagonist cohorts ambiguously disdains its materialistic shell, swapping seductions for synergies, intimately, with standing.
A web based conjugal convection rallies Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) to the next internment, the closing credits befouling his rise, follow the sentient bread crumbs, to unlock a foresighted rendez-vous.
In plume.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Tom à la ferme (Tom at the Farm)
The importance of observing traditional checks and balances can be psychotically nurtured if oppressive horrific novelties ironically pasteurize love's volatile abandon.
To tenderly sympathize with incarnate cruelty is to harvest oneself a baleful dereliction.
A surprise can self-awarely compromise a narrative's prim and proper puerility if its imaginary facts have not been uniformly concentrated.
Awkward evasive perplexities.
Undisciplined counterstrikes, will be willfully punished even if their unexpected serenities instigate lasting calm.
Assuredly.
The madness associated with a cultural code's disavowed diversions creates sickeningly compelling bonds of trust in Xavier Dolan's brilliantly disturbing Tom à la ferme (Tom at the Farm), awestruck incredulous bereft terror, to submit, penalize, collapse, love's dedicated time honoured insurgencies, incomparably construct an orderly trespass.
There's no need to introduce his face firsthand, just driven concrete crazed malevolency.
Violently obscuring.
Before the resurrection of sound.
Editing by Xavier Dolan.
To tenderly sympathize with incarnate cruelty is to harvest oneself a baleful dereliction.
A surprise can self-awarely compromise a narrative's prim and proper puerility if its imaginary facts have not been uniformly concentrated.
Awkward evasive perplexities.
Undisciplined counterstrikes, will be willfully punished even if their unexpected serenities instigate lasting calm.
Assuredly.
The madness associated with a cultural code's disavowed diversions creates sickeningly compelling bonds of trust in Xavier Dolan's brilliantly disturbing Tom à la ferme (Tom at the Farm), awestruck incredulous bereft terror, to submit, penalize, collapse, love's dedicated time honoured insurgencies, incomparably construct an orderly trespass.
There's no need to introduce his face firsthand, just driven concrete crazed malevolency.
Violently obscuring.
Before the resurrection of sound.
Editing by Xavier Dolan.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Bears
Ebulliently emerging from their cavernous Winter's den, finding themselves scampering behind their ardent Mother, Sky, Scout and Amber, born atop an imposing majestic mountain, must quickly learn what it means to bear, to survive the threatening upcoming months, and ensure that they're fit for their next torpid slumber.
While trying to have a little fun along the way.
Imitating mom is well within their natural dexterities, but precisely duplicating her actions proves difficult, seeing how they may be having a better time revelling in their mischief, adorably exploring this and that, coming to terms with their brief bounding youth.
Sky does her best, nevertheless (Amber's more aware of the danger), teaching them the ancient ways of Alaskan grizzlykind, patient, observant, nurturing, ready to protect at all costs, doing everything she can, to stimulate their growth.
While food is scarce, tensions run high, and finding what would otherwise be a colossal seasonal feast, is fraught with competitive angst, those not possessing the requisite weight impounded, forced to keep searching, until Valhalla dawns.
Disneynature's Bears offers family friendly insights into the lives of young grizzlies, not without moments that may cause you to think not another Bambi, this is the harsh world of bears, beautifully euphemized, alluringly prohibitive.
The film's primary focus is, correct, bears, and it predominantly examines bearkind, which is both a strength and a weakness, clearly evidencing a variety of behaviours for curious audiences, while perhaps not focusing enough attention on surrounding flora and fauna.
I'm curious to know if the filmmakers had a plan for the Bambi scenario?
Mandatory viewing for jurisdictions considering hosting a Spring bear hunt.
How many Scouts and Ambers end up orphaned every year because of such hunts?
How many?
Narrated by John C. Reilly.
Hoping there's a sequel.
While trying to have a little fun along the way.
Imitating mom is well within their natural dexterities, but precisely duplicating her actions proves difficult, seeing how they may be having a better time revelling in their mischief, adorably exploring this and that, coming to terms with their brief bounding youth.
Sky does her best, nevertheless (Amber's more aware of the danger), teaching them the ancient ways of Alaskan grizzlykind, patient, observant, nurturing, ready to protect at all costs, doing everything she can, to stimulate their growth.
While food is scarce, tensions run high, and finding what would otherwise be a colossal seasonal feast, is fraught with competitive angst, those not possessing the requisite weight impounded, forced to keep searching, until Valhalla dawns.
Disneynature's Bears offers family friendly insights into the lives of young grizzlies, not without moments that may cause you to think not another Bambi, this is the harsh world of bears, beautifully euphemized, alluringly prohibitive.
The film's primary focus is, correct, bears, and it predominantly examines bearkind, which is both a strength and a weakness, clearly evidencing a variety of behaviours for curious audiences, while perhaps not focusing enough attention on surrounding flora and fauna.
I'm curious to know if the filmmakers had a plan for the Bambi scenario?
Mandatory viewing for jurisdictions considering hosting a Spring bear hunt.
How many Scouts and Ambers end up orphaned every year because of such hunts?
How many?
Narrated by John C. Reilly.
Hoping there's a sequel.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
In/directly contextualizing striking pre-emptive phenomenons, Captain America: The Winter Soldier bravely condenses controversial polarities, from which it extracts a democratic essence, sentimentally sublime in its naiveté.
Perhaps beating Transcendence to the punch.
The issue of brilliant Nazi war criminals finding sanctuary in the United States after World War II is acknowledged, diabolical agents of HYDRA having nested themselves within S.H.I.E.L.D, whose limitless technological resources have given them free reign to menace.
They hope to take out millions of enemies in one extremely precise swoop, the ultimate pre-emptive strike, internationally derailing syndications of law and order, egregiously ignoring the global human factor.
The infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D partially vindicates Eric Snowden and Julian Assange as their methods are proactively defended by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson).
Radiantly representing today's youth.
The key to the relationship between these plot threads and the film's subconscious depiction of America's current identity lies in the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) himself, who has no identity, who was revived to serve HYDRA and serve HYDRA alone, the memory of who he once was having been shattered into oblivion.
He is recognized by Captain America (Chris Evans), however, who is also having identity issues, yet he remembers why America (and Canada) fought during the second World War, thereby earning the trust of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).
Like Thor: The Dark World, Winter Soldier struggles to find itself during its first 40 minutes or so, although in this case such disappointments fit perfectly.
It's important to remember that when great actors aren't performing at the top of their game, it's okay to ask them to do additional takes.
I don't know how you'd go about doing this.
Just don't go Godard on them (see Richard Brody's Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard).
What follows is a thrilling politicized retrocrazed rush, Steve Rodgers outshining Themistocles, another captivating Marvel film, oh what a world what a world.
Perhaps beating Transcendence to the punch.
The issue of brilliant Nazi war criminals finding sanctuary in the United States after World War II is acknowledged, diabolical agents of HYDRA having nested themselves within S.H.I.E.L.D, whose limitless technological resources have given them free reign to menace.
They hope to take out millions of enemies in one extremely precise swoop, the ultimate pre-emptive strike, internationally derailing syndications of law and order, egregiously ignoring the global human factor.
The infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D partially vindicates Eric Snowden and Julian Assange as their methods are proactively defended by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson).
Radiantly representing today's youth.
The key to the relationship between these plot threads and the film's subconscious depiction of America's current identity lies in the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) himself, who has no identity, who was revived to serve HYDRA and serve HYDRA alone, the memory of who he once was having been shattered into oblivion.
He is recognized by Captain America (Chris Evans), however, who is also having identity issues, yet he remembers why America (and Canada) fought during the second World War, thereby earning the trust of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).
Like Thor: The Dark World, Winter Soldier struggles to find itself during its first 40 minutes or so, although in this case such disappointments fit perfectly.
It's important to remember that when great actors aren't performing at the top of their game, it's okay to ask them to do additional takes.
I don't know how you'd go about doing this.
Just don't go Godard on them (see Richard Brody's Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard).
What follows is a thrilling politicized retrocrazed rush, Steve Rodgers outshining Themistocles, another captivating Marvel film, oh what a world what a world.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Dabba (The Lunchbox)
The hearty provision of delicious nourishment slowly melts Saajan's (Irrfan Khan) frozen exterior in Ritesh Batra's Dabba (The Lunchbox), Ila (Nimrat Kaur) enraptured as someone finally takes note, Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) benefitting from the frosty fallout.
As depicted in the film, Indian lunch delivery is a complicated procedure, providing employment for many, their services applauded by Harvard.
Lunch, potentially homemade, is cooked, picked-up, dropped-off at a central location, then distributed to hungry workers, as the day's labour approaches its extended period of rest.
In Ila's case, the lunch she prepares for her husband is delivered to the wrong person.
Curmudgeony Saajan revels in his good fortune even if his bouncy inquisitive replacement (he's retiring) Shaikh continuously annoys him with his enthusiastic go-getting.
Ila discovers that her husband isn't receiving his lunch and begins sending Saajan letters, the two slowly developing a fledgling romance thereafter, Saajan gently mending her broken heart.
Hesitantly yet tenderly unreeling, Dabba quotidianly explores the thoughts of two modest upstanding hard working subjects, their difficulties with the im/moral dimension of their love lettering, or the joys/hardships associated with transgressing cultural codes.
The film required something else to hold it together, and Shaikh's presence, youth contending with age, adds flavourful ingredients to its recipe, rounding out its amorous intentions with related thoughts concerning integrity, friendship, and saturated job markets.
Ila's relationship with her Auntie (Bharati Achrekar) achieves similar ends albeit from a domestic standpoint.
The lotus.
As depicted in the film, Indian lunch delivery is a complicated procedure, providing employment for many, their services applauded by Harvard.
Lunch, potentially homemade, is cooked, picked-up, dropped-off at a central location, then distributed to hungry workers, as the day's labour approaches its extended period of rest.
In Ila's case, the lunch she prepares for her husband is delivered to the wrong person.
Curmudgeony Saajan revels in his good fortune even if his bouncy inquisitive replacement (he's retiring) Shaikh continuously annoys him with his enthusiastic go-getting.
Ila discovers that her husband isn't receiving his lunch and begins sending Saajan letters, the two slowly developing a fledgling romance thereafter, Saajan gently mending her broken heart.
Hesitantly yet tenderly unreeling, Dabba quotidianly explores the thoughts of two modest upstanding hard working subjects, their difficulties with the im/moral dimension of their love lettering, or the joys/hardships associated with transgressing cultural codes.
The film required something else to hold it together, and Shaikh's presence, youth contending with age, adds flavourful ingredients to its recipe, rounding out its amorous intentions with related thoughts concerning integrity, friendship, and saturated job markets.
Ila's relationship with her Auntie (Bharati Achrekar) achieves similar ends albeit from a domestic standpoint.
The lotus.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Jodorowsky's Dune
A filmmaker possessing the highest possible artistic intentions, for whom film is a sub/conscious pyrotechnic visceral emulsion, wildly jettisoning extracted reified ideological peaks, capable of concretely delineating multilaterally deconstructive minutia, their testaments clasping your hands and mine, distinct explosive intraoperative trysts, persuasive incipient confounding strips, Alejandro Jodorowsky almost made Dune, and his crushing curtailment still resonates to this day.
The cast and crew he assembled would have possibly been the coolest ever.
That voice which obsesses about disabling degrees of practicality was non-existent, pure unabashed committed expansive insurgence, unconcerned with what actually takes place in the novel which he hadn't even read before embracing it as his next project, motivated by perceived interpretive fortuitous pacts, the universe having opened-up and provided him with chance integral reprieved constituents, like an intergalactic curvaceous onslaught, or the ultimate Proustian daydream.
The Blueberry.
Not that his dreams weren't practical, if anything, they represented the apotheosis of practicality, a spiritual conception of teamwork seeking superlative aesthetic collegial partnerships who were to be given hands-off inspirational direction, united in their pursuit of memorializing a trance, abstraction, attraction, refraction.
Jodorowsky's son Brontis trained intensively for 2 years with a martial arts master to prepare to play Paul Atreides.
Salvadore Dalí may have made 100,000 a minute to play Shaddam Corrino IV.
Orson Welles could have gorged himself ad infinitum.
I don't want to say too much about the film, it's better if you see Jodorowsky and companions explain it themselves, the Dan O'Bannon recording fitting perfectly.
Possibly the most influential film never made, transisting semantic transcendence.
Jodorowsky envisioned a groundbreaking universal consciousness expanding waking delirium.
Too much for one film alone, its manifold parts have arguably become greater than those initially conceived.
Still like aspects of David Lynch's version.
The cast and crew he assembled would have possibly been the coolest ever.
That voice which obsesses about disabling degrees of practicality was non-existent, pure unabashed committed expansive insurgence, unconcerned with what actually takes place in the novel which he hadn't even read before embracing it as his next project, motivated by perceived interpretive fortuitous pacts, the universe having opened-up and provided him with chance integral reprieved constituents, like an intergalactic curvaceous onslaught, or the ultimate Proustian daydream.
The Blueberry.
Not that his dreams weren't practical, if anything, they represented the apotheosis of practicality, a spiritual conception of teamwork seeking superlative aesthetic collegial partnerships who were to be given hands-off inspirational direction, united in their pursuit of memorializing a trance, abstraction, attraction, refraction.
Jodorowsky's son Brontis trained intensively for 2 years with a martial arts master to prepare to play Paul Atreides.
Salvadore Dalí may have made 100,000 a minute to play Shaddam Corrino IV.
Orson Welles could have gorged himself ad infinitum.
I don't want to say too much about the film, it's better if you see Jodorowsky and companions explain it themselves, the Dan O'Bannon recording fitting perfectly.
Possibly the most influential film never made, transisting semantic transcendence.
Jodorowsky envisioned a groundbreaking universal consciousness expanding waking delirium.
Too much for one film alone, its manifold parts have arguably become greater than those initially conceived.
Still like aspects of David Lynch's version.
Prince Arthur and Parc, Afternoon
The accordion's stardust seduces the breeze
with swirling synoptic enswooned melodies,
no brushing, no tables, no time for restraints,
amenable polished perfumed incantates,
coaxing the sun's dainty docile repose
like quaint alabaster mottling a rose
whose thorns say "we'll prick you, encourage the flood
to conceive Springtime's starlight like emblazoned buds."
Bursting.
with swirling synoptic enswooned melodies,
no brushing, no tables, no time for restraints,
amenable polished perfumed incantates,
coaxing the sun's dainty docile repose
like quaint alabaster mottling a rose
whose thorns say "we'll prick you, encourage the flood
to conceive Springtime's starlight like emblazoned buds."
Bursting.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Meetings with a Young Poet
A gifted writer's successful poetic publication emboldens his desire to meet his favourite author, Samuel Beckett (Stephen McHattie), and a letter is sent, a reply is crafted, the two meeting thereafter to see if they can keep collegial compatibility in check, incandescentally enacting a enduring competitive discussion throughout, which gradually foments a spry friendship.
A gifted performing artists seeks the rights to stage one of Beckett's plays, the rights belonging to the poet, hoping to modify an aspect which some consider prescribed, her illuminated life-force agilely advocating.
Their dialogues actively overcome an empty silence whose initial poetic flourish debilitatingly became a literal reality (his love of Beckett prevented him from writing for many years).
Meetings with a Young Poet troubled me.
At points its pretensions made me feel ill while at others I was humbly affected to the teardrop, like reading Mr. Dickens, or a poem lacking rhyme and/or rhythm which still vindicates delicate ethereal reminiscences, simultaneously jealous of Paul Susser's (Vincent Hoss-Desmarais) good fortune and cognizant of why Beckett recommended to run from Proust and Joyce, his obvious love for people and the lighter side of life crushing me like waxed ephemeral wicker, two sides of the haughty intellectualized niche contending, one bound to a forlorn pincushion, the other overflowing with grace.
Carole Thomas's (Maria de Medeiros) role, her constantly revitalized cascading flora, this presence generously transmitted to her subjects of desire, thereby simultaneously transferring to them what they need to reboot while obtaining her sought after intention, infuses the film with a bounding effervescence, every bubble's balance beneficially accrued.
Character driven.
A gifted performing artists seeks the rights to stage one of Beckett's plays, the rights belonging to the poet, hoping to modify an aspect which some consider prescribed, her illuminated life-force agilely advocating.
Their dialogues actively overcome an empty silence whose initial poetic flourish debilitatingly became a literal reality (his love of Beckett prevented him from writing for many years).
Meetings with a Young Poet troubled me.
At points its pretensions made me feel ill while at others I was humbly affected to the teardrop, like reading Mr. Dickens, or a poem lacking rhyme and/or rhythm which still vindicates delicate ethereal reminiscences, simultaneously jealous of Paul Susser's (Vincent Hoss-Desmarais) good fortune and cognizant of why Beckett recommended to run from Proust and Joyce, his obvious love for people and the lighter side of life crushing me like waxed ephemeral wicker, two sides of the haughty intellectualized niche contending, one bound to a forlorn pincushion, the other overflowing with grace.
Carole Thomas's (Maria de Medeiros) role, her constantly revitalized cascading flora, this presence generously transmitted to her subjects of desire, thereby simultaneously transferring to them what they need to reboot while obtaining her sought after intention, infuses the film with a bounding effervescence, every bubble's balance beneficially accrued.
Character driven.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Turnstyle Tourniquet
Giant puddles jump-jump
locked-up chats disent harumph!
Slippin'-slidin' au matin
toque removal glad hand
stationed bystanding laze
sun spotted brisk glaze
onwards rushing forth
hesitantly the morphed
locked-up fertile entwined
torpid azure designs
nascent textile procedure
adjoined to the meter's
attuned crescent stance
overflowing with chanced
cerebral spied sprees
slowly thawing at ease.
locked-up chats disent harumph!
Slippin'-slidin' au matin
toque removal glad hand
stationed bystanding laze
sun spotted brisk glaze
onwards rushing forth
hesitantly the morphed
locked-up fertile entwined
torpid azure designs
nascent textile procedure
adjoined to the meter's
attuned crescent stance
overflowing with chanced
cerebral spied sprees
slowly thawing at ease.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
The Grand Budapest Hotel
One of the most well-written/presented films I've seen, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel eclectically and photogenically entices his audiences to cerebrally strap themselves in, inexhaustibly affixing literary liaisons to his rambunctious gentleman's club, scriptual guardrails, amphetamines, and incisors distilled then disseminated, meticulously tidy and neat, lead character and director functioning as one, the details, the details, the details, affluence aplombed, in a duty-bound celestial amazement.
To serve is to rectify.
Young love, friendship, greed devotion admiration jealousy deflection prison-breaks swathed in a flame forsworn to its adversaries.
Retreat.
Contours convened on a swollen strap eased into vertical environed retinal eschews.
Pause.
Consented entrapping pursuant cavalcades.
Mentors and mendicants flossed in the grip.
Critical high-level catered expenditures.
Horizons harassed and danubed.
Treachery, intransigence, vertigo.
Withstanding any attempts to halt its progression, The Grand Budapest Hotel epitomizes g(u)ilded prestige, hostages lacking ransom, taste without snobbery.
Envisioned, exercised, and executed, I hesitate to say, it's my favourite Wes Anderson film yet.
To serve is to rectify.
Young love, friendship, greed devotion admiration jealousy deflection prison-breaks swathed in a flame forsworn to its adversaries.
Retreat.
Contours convened on a swollen strap eased into vertical environed retinal eschews.
Pause.
Consented entrapping pursuant cavalcades.
Mentors and mendicants flossed in the grip.
Critical high-level catered expenditures.
Horizons harassed and danubed.
Treachery, intransigence, vertigo.
Withstanding any attempts to halt its progression, The Grand Budapest Hotel epitomizes g(u)ilded prestige, hostages lacking ransom, taste without snobbery.
Envisioned, exercised, and executed, I hesitate to say, it's my favourite Wes Anderson film yet.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Bad Words
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.
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.
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.
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