As Paul Auster notes in his essay “Jim Jarmusch: Poet,” one of America’s finest indie film directors started out as an advocate of New York School poets on the editorial staff of the Columbia Review.  His films pay tribute to the language of Frank O’Hara or John Ashbery: an aesthetic of relaxed conversation populates Jarmusch’s screen; or, as Auster puts it, “Nothing happens, or so little in the way things traditionally happen in stories that we can almost say there is no story.”  Night on Earth is the prime example of this kind of film-making, and not surprisingly, the film that will most likely turn you into a Jarmusch addict.

The movie, originally titled “Los Angeles-New York-Paris-Rome-Helsinki,” is divided into five sections, each of which introduces a different taxi driver, a different fare, a different metropolis, and an extraordinary procession of events.  Starting at 7:07 pm, L.A. time, the movie jumps time zones to progress from an initial early evening cab ride through Beverly Hills, to a hungover morning in Helsinki.  Corky, Helmut, Driver #1—played by Isaach De Bankolé–, Driver #2—played the magnanimous Roberto Benigni–, and Mika are forced to engage with their respective customers as they patrol the world of Night on Earth.  The brief relationships created on screen between the five unlikely parties are often strange, sometimes tragic, but always touching.  My personal favorite, and the only segment based on an actual experience of the director’s, is the illustrious ride of Helmut and Yoyo.  Putting a former East German clown who can’t drive automatic and a Brooklyn “fresh”-fiend in a dilapidated cab is weird enough, but when Yoyo’s volcanic sister-in-law Angela takes the back seat, the fireworks truly begin.

Binding all the segments together, apart from a masterfully composed Tom Waits score, is the profound question of synchronicity: what’s going on at any given hour, all over the planet?  While the movie could be appraised simply as a series of vignettes, Jarmusch’s insurmountable ability to layer narrative with atmospheric, urban montage, supplies the movie with a sense of panorama.  Night on Earth is a small movie with a global consciousness, an indie movie with the scope of a five-hour epic.

I have one warning for the watcher: after you hear Roberto Benigni’s magnificent Charlie Parker impersonation and his adaptation of Dante, no cab driver will ever deserve your tip again.

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Tilt Shift photography is a method for simulating a shallow depth of field using special lenses that literally tilt and shift from the camera body. I’m compelled by these images and videos because when the optical illusion is convincing, they’re completely magical. Maybe it’s just about fooling yourself, because for me they’re all about the clarity and detail of an imagined miniature. But the effect is beautiful even if you’re not suckered in. In the videos at the bottom, “Harrowdown Hill” is amazing, if you haven’t already seen it, watch! The mixture of effects and animation with altered live footage is inspiring.

Read the rest of this entry »

Beat Takeshi is one of my favorite film-makers. I cycle through his works, giving each its turn as my favorite. In the number one position for now is “Hana-Bi” (aka “Fireworks” in the US). As a ‘97 film, the music is a bit dated, the clothing and the cars are dated, but both the story and the style are positively timeless. Bleak and beautiful, Takeshi’s characters crawl between incredible landscapes in silence and discomfort, finding the most touching moments of happiness in between beatings and yakuza dealings. Takano plays actor, director, writer, and editor, as well as supplying all the vibrant and colorful paintings shown in the film.

I am obligated to say more specifically what is special about Hana-Bi: As a modern film, it will naturally draw comparisons to Tarantino, but this is where Quentin got it. Long, long, long shots; anachronistic plot lines; and the perfect blend of violence, humor, and gentle emotions. Hana-Bi allows you perfect suspension of disbelief. Please find this movie, either by legal or non-legal means.

Coraline is a 2009 animated stop-motion 3-D fantasy film based on Neil Gaiman’s 2002 novella Coraline. It was produced by LAIKA and distributed by Focus Features. Written and Directed by Henry Selick, it was released widely in US theaters on February 6, 2009, after a world premiere at the Portland International Film Festival. It is rated PG by the MPAA for thematic elements, scary images, some language and suggestive humor.

I was a little skeptical before I watched Coraline. First off, it’s done by the same guy that made The Night Before Christmas – a cult hit that I never quite got into. Why? (and I know many of you love that movie).. because it made me uncomfortable.

Well, as is quite common when I am skeptical of things I have not fully immersed myself in, I was wrong about Henry Selick. Coraline is as genre bending  as The Night Before Christmas, the difference, I think, is that at the end of Coraline, I was moved. Selick has really out done himself. The character’s movements are complex, fluid and sophisticated – not stretchy or elastic like one can often find in Disney movies. He creates unique personalities for his characters with the body language of miniature puppets. It’s baffling.

The style then, which initially put me off Selick, is what makes this movie so excellent. It’s a piece created by someone who has preserved the fervor, the nightmare and the surreal delight of the wild child imagination while pushing it even further into thicker chromatic jungles — one knows that an artistic genius made this movie and one feels it through and through. It’s an amazingly textured movie. The nuances of feeling on top of the surrealism is subtle and granular; the control over tone that Selick has, which I assumed would be lost in a form as technical as stop motion, is something I have never seen before.

That being said, I have a horrible knack for making things more serious than they are. This movie is delightful. They plant tulips and it makes you want to cry. It may seem childish, in places, or at first glance, but it’s as authentic as some of the best films out there. Rent it, own it, recommend it.

Ottilie introduced me to director Jean-Luc Godard quite a few months ago and while I wasn’t won over at first, it was Bande a Part that really did it for me. A great classic French film, if your into that kinda thing – I’m sure its easy to find as a torrent (Godard is quite revered).

Bande à part (IPA: /bɑ̃ːd a paʁ/) is a 1964 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It is released as Band of Outsiders in North America; its French title derives from the phrase faire bande à part, which means “to do something apart from the group.”

from Wikipedia

Here’s one of my favourite scenes in cinema:

UbuWeb is a free independent resource of sound, text, and video files dating from 1516 to contemporary. They have hundreds of gigabytes of material. In sound alone, I’ve found Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Guy Debord, ee cummings, William Carlos Williams and more, mostly recorded by the authors themselves.

What makes this site stand out for me is how they have de-commodified the art. Everything about the site is free: they don’t accept donations, they don’t sell merchandise, they don’t advertise themselves, and they don’t sell advertising space. The archive is upheld entirely by volunteers, and web space is either given by universities or purchased cheaply. As long as a work is out of print, they upload without permission, and encourage their audience to do likewise.

UbuWeb is primarily an archive for the “outsiders,” obscure, and hard to find work that might not make it into the popular sphere. Find Patti Smith’s poetry, David Cronenberg’s opinions on Andy Warhol, Brian Eno’s video paintings, and bizarre personal ads’s taken from New York bulletin boards. This is a reminder of everything that is art, and a good place to get lost.

http://www.ubu.com/

The movie “Waking Life” is unbelievable and totally deserving of a post all to itself, which I will likely get around to sometime later. For now though, I want to focus on one of my favorite soundtracks. Composed and preformed by the Tosca Tango Orchestra, the music moves through phases of brilliance and aching delinquency more smoothly than a savant in a swimming pool. Listen and enjoy.

( album )

Let me just start with the music of this film. From the movies I’ve seen — from the movies I’ve loved — out of Sweden, most of the music has been the same level of excellence throughout — each note of it falls so lightly, so damn mournfully — it’s ice, it’s snow, it’s groping desperately in the mist — but at the same time it’s euphony — its tears of absolute rapture at the end of a tragedy when the snow falls lightly on the corpses of the slain and your disgust, your ambiguity, your irony is transfixed and transformed into mourning for the beloved dead.

Christ. Anyway. You can tell that if I get so worked up about the damn music of a film that I ought to get worked up about the film itself. It’s true. The film is Let the Right One In – “a Swedish vampire flick” (or so I called it before I watched it). No point telling you what its about. It presents an infinitely complex web of social and moral ambiguities: violence, murder, rape, pedophilia are all crystallized by affection, by love and it leaves you.. in an empty train, the windows flung open, traveling as fast as you can, as far as you can, away from home.

Please dont watch a trailer on YouTube, let the violence come without warning, without suspect. It needs to come like love. To be clear, this film is not perfect, it is not an archetype, but it is very good. Watch it.

Let the Right One In (Swedish: Låt den rätte komma in) is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson. It is based on the novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. It tells the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a vampire in Blackeberg, a suburb to Stockholm.

from Wikipedia

I have no explanation for why I like this so much. There’s just something so under-pronounced about it, so literal.

I would like to weigh in here, on what I think or feel about this movie. But, I think, in my vehemence, I would obscure it completely. It’s a documentary of images, of images you have to see. I have no metaphors or crystalline adjectives, they would be uncalled for. Instead, I’ll present some of these images, and a trailer. Please see the film — download it, rent it, as soon as possible.

Please know that this movie isn’t about making you feel bad. It’s reality served on a very humane platter.