Mozart’s The Magic Flute; Wish You Were Here; HBO’s Behind the Candelabra and Ozu Festival at Monday Morning Diary (June 10)

Kenneth Branagh’s extraordinary opera film based on Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’

by Sam Juliano

June continues, leaving behind some torrential rains and some seasonal temperatures.  Graduations, proms and summer programs are on the horizon in area school districts, while in the private industry vacations are fast approaching.  While movie lovers can look ahead to high profile Cannes releases, a number of highly-regarded independent films are competing for attention with the commercial fodder, at a time when movie greatness is normally elusive.

The western countdown draws closer, though there are still about seven weeks left for prospective voters to finalize their Top 60 choices.  Eight (8) ballots have been submitted to this point according to Voting Tabulator Extraordinaire Angelo A. D’Arminio Jr. who again will be compiling the numbers in early August to determine the 60 films that will be receiving full essays by a host of writers, in assignments to be firmed up when the totals are sorted.

1994 – Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supp Actor, Supp Actress, Cinematography, Score, Short – RESULTS

by Allan Fish

Best Picture Sátántángó, Hungary (8 votes)

Best Director Krzysztof Kieslowski, Three Colours: Red (7 votes)

Best Actor Johnny Depp, Ed Wood (9 votes)

Best Actress Irène Jacob, Three Colours: Red (11 votes)

Best Supp Actor Samuel L.Jackson, Pulp Fiction & Martin Landau, Ed Wood (9 votes each, TIE!)

Best Supp Actress Faye Wong, Chungking Express (8 votes)

Best Cinematography Gabor Medvigy, Sátántángó & Piotr Sobocinski, Three Colours: Red (6 votes)

Best Score Zbigniew Preisner, Three Colours: Red (10 votes)

Best Short Bottle Rocket, US. Wes Anderson (3 votes)

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Passion – 1982, Jean-Luc Godard

 

by Allan Fish

continuing the Godard mini-series

(France 1982 88m) DVD1/2

Looking for real light

p  Catherine Lapoujade, Armand Babault, Martine Marignac  d  Jean-Luc Godard  w  Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Claude Carrière  ph  Raoul Coutard  ed  Jean-Luc Godard  art  Jean Bauer, Serge Marzoff  cos  Christian Gasc, Rosalie Varda

Isabelle Huppert (Isabelle), Jerzy Radziwilowicz (Jerzy), Michel Piccoli (Michel), Hanna Schygulla (Hanna), László Szabó (Lászlo), Patrick Bonnel (Patrick), Sophie Luchachevski (Sophie, script-girl), Myriem Roussel (Myriem), Magali Campos (Magali),

In his introduction to Godard’s film on the UK DVD, Colin MacCabe talks of how Passion grew out of a time in Godard’s life when he was given to the belief that it was “no longer the time for great masterpieces, but a time when everything will become a masterpiece.”  It’s a statement Andy Warhol might once have agreed with, the effective irrelevance of story, films where what happened on screen was sufficient for art.  So in Passion, the real, the staged and the merely observed merge and separate on impulse.

How to begin to describe it; first take the notion of a film being made within the film, directed by Polish director Jerzy and a film whose mission statement seems to be to capture the light effects of various western painted masterpieces.  Rubens and Delacroix are mentioned, while Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’ and Ingres’ Valpinçon Bather feature heavily.  Around them are spun three other central characters, or ciphers as may be more accurate.  Michel is a hotelier who houses the crew during the shoot.  Hanna is his wife, who loves director Jerzy and who Jerzy wants to be in his Rubens portion of the film.  Isabelle works in a nearly adjacent factory – also owned by Michel – and tries to start a strike seemingly mirroring the events of the Solidarity movement in Poland.

On Theaters: Much Ado About Nothing (2012)

by Jaime Grijalba.

Much Ado About Nothing (2012, Joss Whedon) Seen at Village Caballito, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

How do you follow up an act like the one performed in the Marvel produced film ‘The Avengers’ (2012) directed by the comic-book savy and fan-favorite director Joss Whedon? Well, most would say that a sequel would be nice, and that’s exactly what he’s making, ‘The Avengers 2′ (2015), but at this particular time the peculiarities of the making of the actual film by Whedon were put in doubt once Robert Downey Jr. questioned his involvement in another movie starring himself as the superhero Iron Man, Whedon has been quoted saying that with no Downey Jr., he would not make the sequel to one of the biggest box office hits of all time. Here’s when we understand the spirit and love that Whedon has for film (and television) in terms of how he will always put his own vision before any other thing, he would risk a huge paycheck and even a fee for not directing the film if he doesn’t have what he wants, and what he wants is Jr. in the role that made him one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood. It is now that you understand things like ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’ (2008), also directed by Whedon, a niche and small musical project that was unleashed for free onto the internet, being this a project that was made under the writer’s strike, something he made out of pure love (and his always impressive troupe that he is sorrounded by). In a similar fashion here we have the movie that opens this week in select theaters in USA: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ (2012) a project that no one asked for and that doesn’t come from the prospect of making money but because of a passion and a love to certain specific things: Shakespeare, performance, language and his actors that will follow him under any crazy project that he has in the future.

La Chinoise – 1967, Jean-Luc Godard

 

by Allan Fish

the first in a series of pieces on the masterpieces of eternal enfant terrible Jean-Luc Godard.

(France 1967 96m) DVD1/2

Il faut confronter les idées vagues avec ses images claires

d/w  Jean-Luc Godard  ph  Raoul Coutard  ed  Agnès Guillemot, Delphine Desfons  m  Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, Michel Legrand (also Franz Schubert, Antonio Vivaldi)

Jean-Pierre Léaud (Guillaume), Anne Wiazemsky (Veronique), Juliet Berto (Yvonne), Michel Sémeniako (Henri), Lex de Brujin (Kirilov), Omar Diop (Omar), Francis Jeanson (Francis), Blandine Jeanson (Blandine), Eliane Giavagnoli,

La Chinoise, Godard’s first film with Anna Karina’s successor, Anne Wiazemsky, is a film that defies time more than any other.  It’s the film that prefigured and seemed to predict events of less than a year later in Paris, and caught the mood of revolutionary fever and fervour in the air.  But how to capture its essence?  What is La Chinoise in Godard’s career?  The film after Deux ou Trois…?  The film before Weekend?  The connections to both are clear enough.  Yet it’s also 1967, the era of Vietnam, Sergeant Pepper, Pompidou, and Warhol.  It’s his Chelsea Girls, and his ‘Remembrances of Times Past, Present and Future’, a play with acts, a poem with cantos, a symphony with movements.  And it’s his Hamlet, asked by Polonius what he’s reading, and replying “words.”

What is it about?  It’s about kids with pretensions to change the world from their microcosm of an apartment.  It’s about Marxism-Leninism.  It’s about prostitution, of bodies and of ideas.  It’s about Mao, Castro, Jim Hendrix and Descartes, and Sergeant Fury, Captain America and Batman.  It’s about the Lumières opposes to Méliès. It’s a schizophrenic argument a director has with himself. 

Frances Ha; The Kings of Summer and Love is All You Need on Monday Morning Diary (June 3)

Greta Gerwig gives an irresistible performance in the endearing comic fable “Frances Ha” while co-writing the humanist script with director Noah Baumbach, who finest film this is.

by Sam Juliano

Summer has crashed the springtime party with a promise to hang around for an extended stay.  As a result there is an acute need for indoor air conditioning, and some mosquito repellent for back yard barbecues.  The school season is winding down, and some die hards -like Yours Truly- are scanning the summer school lists.  This is the month for graduations, proms and retirement dinners, and a favorite time for the vacation season to launch.  It’s also a reminder that before you know it, autumn will be vying for some attention.

Manhattan’s Film Forum will be staging a 37 film strong Ozu Festival beginning Friday June 7th, and running through the 27th.  There a few double features for the price of one, and a few piano accompaniments for the silent features.  All films will be shown on 35 mm prints.  The Film Forum will also be featuring one week runs of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Rosemary’s Baby, The Servant and 12 Angry Men over the coming months.

Six voters have submitted western countdown ballots, as per information e mailed to me by Voting Tabulator Extraordinaire Angelo A. D’Arminio Jr.  Ballots of 60 films listed in order of preference will be accepted all the way up till August 1st.

1993 – Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supp Actor, Supp Actress, Cinematography, Score, Short – RESULTS

by Allan Fish

Best Picture Schindler’s List, US (10 votes)

Best Director Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List (9 votes)

Best Actor Anthony Hopkins, The Remains of the Day (9 votes)

Best Actress Juliette Binoche, Three Colours: Blue & Holly Hunter, The Piano (9 votes each, TIE!)

Best Supp Actor Ralph Fiennes, Schindler’s List (9 votes)

Best Supp Actress Anna Paquin, The Piano (11 votes)

Best Cinematography Janusz Kaminski, Schindler’s List (7 votes)

Best Score Zbigniew Preisner, Three Colours: Blue (8 votes)

Best Short The Wrong Trousers, UK, Nick Park (6 votes)

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