Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Before we get to Rav’s reviews today, he’s got a brief message about interviews he’ll be doing later in the week. Listen up... this is your chance to ask questions directly. If you’ve got something worthwhile, Rav may be able to get you an answer.
Hey Harry and Moriarty,
I only have twenty minutes till DOM DURAKOV starts at the Palo Galilleo, so I'm going to keep this brief and post-pone my next report till I can get into the press room and have a clearer schedule. Earlier today I finally got off my ass and went interview scheduling.
Currently I have three scheduled and I would like to invite AICN readers to email me some questions for each to answer if you have a few on your minds that you would desperately liked answered.
Here’s the schedule:
Thursday is when I’m doing the KEN PARK interviews, and I will be talking to Larry Clark and Ed Lachman.
Earlier that day, I will be talking with Benno Furmann, star of THE PRINCESS AND THE WARRIOR, NACKT, and Brian Helgeland's new film THE SINEATER.
On Saturday comes the big interview. I will be talking to the man himself, Takeshi Kitano.
If you guys have ANY questions for these men that you are dying to have answered, SEND THEM NOW!!! :)
Now here’s Rav with a look at a whole bunch of films I wanna see. And although I’ve been busting Rav’s balls a little so far in my intros, he’s doing a good job over there. And I certainly envy him the films he’s seeing...
More of my shitty coverage!
Heya Moriarty,
If you are wondering why I havent really talked about any mediocre films at the festival, its because I am holding off on those for now and just focusing on the good movies I see. Press room time can be limited so I figure I’ll just save it for the things I love. Yesterday I saw a bunch of good movies, Claire Denis’s new film Vendredi Soir, perhaps the best foreign film of the year Dom Durakov, Todd Haynes new film Far From Heaven, and a little underwhelming Ripley’s Game. So I’ll just get on with it and cut to the reviews now!
I dont know what it is about Claire Denis’s films, they seem to take another side of the brain to watch and comprehend. I love them dont get me wrong here, but her same surrealistic style that makes her films wonderful for some can be quite offputting for most and thats not so bad as I can understand why someone would not want to sit and watch a film with very little dialogue at all. In fact the absence of dialogue throughout the films of hers that I have seen seem to keep the audience focused on the actions of the characters, and suceed in the ability to tell a story moreso through the eyes and actions of characters rather than just serving it up in dialogue for all the idiots to see. Vendredi Soir is the best film of hers that I have seen, and for the first half its one of the best damn traffic-jam movies I have ever seen. The film is set in Paris during a transportation workers strike that has left the city in basically a total deadlock, enough so that you can get out of your car walk around and you really wont have to worry about the need to move it. The radio urges drivers to pick up one of the many hitchhikers walking the street due to the strike. This is where the movie it is at its best, where we get to be in a traffic jam with Laure just spacing out staring at the back of another car listening to her music at a very high volume. Here the film is more like a disaster film focusing just on her everyone in the city is stuck here and just might wind up there all night. Eventually she picks up a hitchhiker and things begin to be a little more interesting as they get to know each other. Overall I don’t know what exactly to think of this film, there are many things I absolutely love about it, then there are a couple of fantasy moments that just dont altogether make sense. In the end I’d reccomend Vendredi Soir to anyone looking for a 90 minute ecscape into a world of car-jams and affairs, if just for her cinematography and score the film is worth a look.
Dom Durakov took me by suprise last night, it was my foreign film schedule stuffer so I really had no expectations at all for it as I had never heard of the film before today. The film displayed much promise, when already 30 seconds in the crowded 1700 seat theatre laughed their asses off at the opening credit that was not translated into italian or english, “Con La Particpacion De Bryan Adams,” there were two elderly english women behind me who just did not get the joke and asked “what the hell is so funny?!” and honestly I dont know why but Bryan Adams just has a sort of power or something that the sheer mention of his name can erupt a theatre in laughter. The film is about a group of mental hospital patients in a border hospital during the first chechen war. What makes this film wonderful is the group of crazed personalities in the hospital, I would go so far to say that I havent liked a group of mental patients this much since One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, the main character Janna is a beautiful young chechen girl who is convinced she is the girlfriend of one Bryan Adams Canadian Superstar, who will one day come and take her and her friends away from this place on a train and give her the most beuatiful hat she has ever seen. The supporting zany cast of characters includes a midget named Shorty, a man who has refused to take a backpack off his back for years, an overweight woman who thinks she knows she can solve the problems of the world, and an unseen group of violent patients. Janna is the star of the hospital, she’s a dancer and she is also known to be a beautiful accordian player, in a mental hospital these traits are equivalent to being an academy award winning actor. Problems come across the asylum, as Russian troops near, the doctors abandon the hospital leaving the patients to fend for themselves. A group of troops come across the asylum and begin to befriend the patients, Janna still sits and waits for her Canadian superstar to come and take her away from everything. God this movie is fucking beautiful, I love to think that a film about an insane woman obsessed with Bryan Adams exists, this fact brings so much joy into my heart. What makes it better is that Bryan Adams actually acts in the film as well! Throughout Janna’s dreams you dont just get a collage of Bryan Adams past videos, he’s actually there bringing joy to her heart throughout all of the hell happening at the hospital. Adams should stick to doing Russian cinema and stay away from Dreamworks animation till the day he dies. The film is shot beautifully in HD 24P, honestly the best non-effects-laden HDography to date. Also, Dom Durakov has probably the best gratuitous use of a helicopter crash since Demons. It might even be safe to call Dom Durakov this years No Man’s Land, but personally I prefer Dom Durakov. Andrej Koncalovskij has made the best war film of the year and quite possibly the best foreign film to grace cinemas this year. If this film is released near you go watch it, you will definately be satisfied.
Todd Haynes Far From Heaven was one of the films I was looking forward to most at this festival, and it seems like that was the consensus for everyone else as well as I was nearly unable to find a seat at its first press screening here. Haynes had made something wonderful with Far From Heaven, he has managed to make a film from the 50’s with everything from the titles to the transistions to the wonderful score by Elmer Bernstein. Ever see any of those fifties commercials with the perfect house wife using the brand new spoon thing that will change her life or the perfect 50’s children enjoying their brand new television, well in Far From Heaven Julianne Moore is that perfect fifties wife, the Magnatech family to be exact. A socially prominent fifties family, the Whitakers, the father Frank Whitaker is a successful lawyer, Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) is the perfect house-wife, she spends most of her time planning parties or just taking care of the kids, she also finds time to say “Hi” to those black people sometimes. If one didnt know better, they’d say the Whitakers are the perfect fifties family. Cathy Whitaker is starting to notice some secrets her husband is hiding that might change their marriage forever. Julianne Moore gives the best performance of her career, actually she doesnt feel like Julianne Moore most of the time more like one of those fifties mothers.
Possibly a best actress oscar nomination this year? Maybe. The transisitions, main-titles, score, and costumes succeed in selling this film as something not of this era. At times it is a great askew take at fifties life, and as it plays out is commentary on how society felt about homosexuality at the time. This is a great film, I cant recommend this film enough! Go see this film when it is released in October. Also it makes for a wonderful askew fifties hidden life double-feature with Auto-focus.
Well I am going to cut todays update short and do Ripleys Game later as it looks like I am beginning to run out of time. This weekened check back for more reviews of the films of the 59th Venice film festival, as well as those interviews I promised with Larry Clark, Ed Lachman, Benno Furmann, and Beat Takeshi.
Until next time,
