Un Post paresseux - Synecdoche, New York

Pourquoi réinventer la roue... surtout pour une fois que je suis totalement en accord avec un journaliste ?!?!?! Excellente critique de Synecdoche, New York, premier opus du scénariste Charlie Kaufman, mieux connu pour son scénario de Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999), sur Salon.com, disponible ici (en anglais, évidemment).

Assassination of a High School President - Divertissant pastiche postmoderne

Quoi de mieux qu'un petit film indie pour reprendre du service ici... C'est exactement le cas de Assassination of a High School President, pastiche très bien ficelé du classique par excellence en terme de polar postmoderne Chinatown, chef-d'oeuvre polanskien manipulant avec brio les règles et conventions du genre pour le réinventer sans déstabiliser ou dégoûter ses plus fervents puristes. Un minime bémol, que d'aucuns pourraient arguer impertinent, consiste en sa prédictibilité ; difficile à contourner lorsque dans le domaine du remake, toutefois, que ce soit parodie, satyre, pastiche ou remake pur et dur. Un must pour n'importe quel fan de Chinatown, en vérité... Avec en prime, un Bruce Willis particulièrement cinglant et cynique en directeur d'école vétéran de Desert Storm !!

Melting Pot

Ok, been out of it for a while now... Without going into the details of my disappearing from both my blogs and the virtual felt (see unexisting posts on Towers of Checks :P), let's just say I'm a guy in love and well, chick >>>> pretty much everything these days :P...

But still, I've been watching (or "watching" :o)) movies a bit, but didn't post anything about them in here... Will do now in a somewhat telegraphic style...

First of, and I'm still hoping to catch it again on the silver screen; then I'll write a real piece: WATCHMEN
Great adaptation imo. What's been modified was done with class and cinema in mind, which is perfect. Most probably a quote around 3.5~4.0. To be continued...

Then there was:
BORDELINE
Isabelle Blais ftw! Et Jean-Hughes (Anglade), qui m'a rappelé Killing Zoe avec ce rôle, pour aucune bonne raison semble-t-il (still trying to figure that one as a matter of fact)... ~4.5.

CONTRE TOUTE ESPERANCE
Hmmm un solide mélo, porté par ses acteurs, un peu comme c'est souvent le cas avec la cinématographie québécoise. Décent effort. ~5.2

SEX DRIVE - UNCENSORED
God that was dumb... American Pie meets Road Trip, without the savvy or the irony... Meh. Seth Green as a whimsical Hamish was a nice touch though. ~5.5

QUANTUM OF SOLACE
That new Bond is... weird, definitely. Doesn't even shag Olga... Seriously, wtf?!?! Still, the physical take they put on this revised 007 is somewhat nice, even though I do miss Q's gadgets. ~5.5

RELIGULOUS
Pretty funny, but not as deep as I would have liked... Still interesting to see an open-minded atheist confronting fundamentalists... That fscking Creationist Museum still tilts the shit out of me... Guess the fscking Flinstones were right on the money... lol! ~4.3

And I started Firefly, the series. Whoa! Space Western FTFW!!!!!

I think that covers everything... If not, well, too bad :P...

Watchmen Movie...

He [Alan Moore, ftr] probably won't be kicking himself for making that decision. Zack Snyder's adaptation is faithful to a fault, but it's true to the letter rather than the spirit of the book, collapsing the latter's dense, multi-layered storytelling into a relatively conventional - if bleak - Hollywood narrative.

Interesting quick piece from the New Scientist.

Zoe Bell For The Win!! And That Brubaker Is Not Too Shabby Either

Ed Brubaker's Angel Of Death freely available here. Each episode is about 7~10 minutes, and pretty darn well done.

Pride & Glory

Soft spot for Ed Norton (and yes, I admit it, for Farrell as well :S) + Soft spot for stories about brothers + Soft spot for stories about corruption = Decent entertainment. Gotta be in the mood though.

~5.0.

Doubt Boxing Actors

Very well-tailored melodrama. Very masterly relying on its great actors. Mister Philip Seymour Hoffman and Miss Meryl Streep in the leads do promise and deliver acting prowess, in something of a boxing match opposing two wonderful geniuses. But then, right in between the blows, you realize the thing that holds it all together for the jaded bastard you are (:P) is an Amy Adams perhaps underrated, very nuanced in her sensibility, and the perfect closing shot with that ever so touching swap between mentor and mentee.

Not much else to say though; must be 'cause I am a jaded bastard... I used to get shivers and goosebumps and all while watching such flicks. Now, I just go "oh, that's harsh". And then I wonder: "is it me, or is it the picture that's just not that touching?!?". Oh well...

~4.1.

Changeling - Eastwood's Feel-Good Movie?!?

A powerful story. Very powerful. With that affective 'true story' mention in the opening credits that always makes it all more human. Too human, perhaps, for the audience not to care, not to get trapped in the identification process. And yet it still feels just a tad like the cinematic, artistic exercise that it it. A bit cold. A little like Button for that matter. But Clint's a master now, and it works: a well-told story about a simple woman taking on the corrupt LAPD of the late '20s, despite and because of all its implied horrors endured and conquered by that woman, is definitely something to feel good about; maybe the coldness is just mine, me being a jaded bastard and all ;-).

~4.0.

The Punisher: Warzone

Correct. Divertissant. Mais peut-être simplement parce que je viens tout juste de me taper 2 arcs du "Punisseur" par Garth Ennis et Steve Dillon :). Ou parce que j'ai adoré Titus Pullo dans Rome :P! Reste que ça fait le travail... contrairement à l'autre version que j'ai vue, celle avec Tom Jane, dont je ne me souviens pratiquement pas, pour être parfaitement honnête :).

~5.0.

Numérique et en ligne, dites-vous ?!?!

Encore une fois, la vie et son sens de l'ironie... À moins que ce ne soit qu'une question de timing... Qu'importe, 2 petits comics numériques pas mal intéressants; drôles, simples mais entamant une réflexion passionnante sur les nouvelles formes possibles pour les comics offertes par cette fameuse 'aire numérique'. Guess I'll take a peek at this McCloud's take on it all (here).




about DIGITAL COMICS by ~Balak01 on deviantART


Part 2 (with a hilarious parody of a famous flick :P)


ABOUt about DIGITAL COMICS by ~Balak01 on deviantART

That's Fscking Great Work!!!

Saw this on Warren's site, so I'll simply link his post.
And to beef up their counters: Purchase Brothers.

And I definitely agree with Warren: if this is anywhere close to the truth, and I'm pretty sure it is, this is exactly what I've been babbling about to whoever would listen for the past, omfg, 10 years: the film industry's future bottleneck will mostly be distribution (read: making money), production itself being "democratized" by all those neat computerized gadgets (c'mon, take the bait... lol)... Ok, ok, I might not have been the steady babbler, but hey, I don't speak of cinematic technological ontologies and their impact on the narrative paradigm of fiction film (just shoot me, someone, please, shoot!) that constantly nor often... Well, not anymore anyway... And anyway, the simple point is: movies, like so many other things, might be tremendously modified by what I'll lazily call the "digital era". Shit, who can tell me with a straight face they are NOT yet modified by the "digital era"? Raise your hand if you watched a movie made prior to 2000 in the last, o say, six months? How'd it feel? Half-kidding, but still, half-kidding... And look, the industry has fallen again in the "we-need-to-invent-some-unique-thingy-to-save-our-faltering-business": 3D's back baby!! Funny how 3D happens to be the cornerstone of computer video games, and, well, personal home computers nowadays even...

Et je me suis (déjà) égaré... So much can be said on this, really... And I have managed to be somewhat all over the place :P!

The Day The Earth Stood Still

I guess I didn't hate it. Perhaps part of it is because I am such a sucker for sci-fi thingies... Still, I have the feeling this story could have been, could be so much more. Et ce même si (et peut-être même surtout parce que) j'adore le non-verbal et le non-dit, le pouvoir de suggestion de l'art en général, de tout art du cadre en particulier, et du cinéma en l'occurrence... Malgré cela et tout le reste, je maintiens une fascinante idée de voir cette histoire dans les mains d'un Dan Simmons... Oh wait, it's already been there :P... Check it out if you like sci-fi and haven't read it yet (I sooooo wish I were you, o hypothetical reader who could cherish this masterpiece for the very first time - damn, just thinking about it, I consider re-reading it again :D!!!). You owe it to yourself and the genre we so dearly and geekishly love. Seriously ;-).

Tout de même, je vais probablement regarder l'original, et essayer de l 'apprécier (a certain comics shopkeeper might want my head if I don't :P), mais la trame narrative prise par The Day The Earth Stood Still me semble, at the end of the day, un tantinet surannée... ?!

~4.5.

Madagascar 2

lol, i guess... Pretty much "nuff said"... lol. Pretty funny catapult launch; those penguins are just hilarious :D.

~5.0.

Bangkok Dangerous

Not.That.Good. Me suis même presque endormi... Mais en y repensant aujourd'hui, je dois admettre que c'est une film que je voulais vraiment aimer... dunno how to explain... It has some stylish concerns; it takes on an interesting thematic, some very nice subplots... But all in all, it lacks what better flicks in that genre (read: Le Professionnel) had tons of; mastery and pacing... Still, almost tempted me to watch the original... Cause, yeah it is one of those "new-and-improved" 21st century remakes, ie done by the original filmmakers, with Hollywood money instead of the local pennies (think Funny Games, by Haneke... Mais à bien y songer, Vanilla Sky et The Departed tombent presque dans cette mouvance...). Here's a flick that could bave been great, but is instead barely passable.

"I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody."

~5.5.

Obamamania

Hail the Savior!!!
lol

I just like the looks of it, to be perfectly honest... Here's (one 0f) mine:


ObamiconMe
And a pretty funny fail: FAIL.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

I wish I were 15 years old again. Or better yet, around 16-17, when you're a senior, feeling the world spreading languishingly at your feet, nothing stopping you from, well, nothing really, even dreams and delusions... Anywho, that's the feeling Nick and Norah gives its audience., Well Yours Truly, at least ;-).

All in all, a decent, simple, straightforward teen flick/romantic comedy.

IMDB

~5.2.

Hummmm... Ironie, quand tu nous prend...

C'est drôle la vie parfois... Je me posais justement ce genre de questions la semaine dernière... J'ai été naguère jadis partisan et pseudo-apôtre du postmodernisme... And I just realized a couple days ago, it has been ten years since I kinda preached postmodernist babbles, and even then, it was already outdated, sorta. Sort of always been inherently outdated if you ask me, but you didn't ;-).

Anyway, sans même chercher (God bless intarwebs - ce qui joue exactement dans l'argumentaire de ces altermodernistes), je suis tombé sur une intéressante ébauche, je suppose...

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/altermodern/manifesto.shtm
http://newcurator.com/2009/02/altermodernism-a-primer/

transHUMAN or, Opening Up My Blogging Horizons

Ok, ok, I really believe it's time this blog gets a little broader. I love movies, but I also love reading and watching TV Shows and going to live shows, and so on, and I do have some things to say about those... sometimes... So here we go, this blog is now a true thoughts repository... Sort of a diary, basically...

First off the bat, Jonathan Hickman's transHUMAN.


That guy has an obvious storyteller's talent, and the greatest and simplest ideas, working its way towards complex issues, with a couple goodies for uber geeks such as yours truly. his first mini-series, The Nightly News, gave me shivers and reminded me of the impact Fight Club's premice had on me... I actually was waiting for some art work with the same order of magnitude. While closing TNN, and pondering it for days on end afterwards, I had to admit this was the work I'd been looking for, hoping for since Fight Club was released, which is to say about 10 years... Crazy.

Thereafter, of course, I became a huge fan of Hickman, but somewhat unfortunately, the guy is mostly just starting... So, once again, I had to wait. And wait I did... Until transHUMAN's trade finally hit the shelves, a week ago. Man o man, do Hickman, and his artist (JM Ringuet, great great "painter" style) deliver... It's deep while seemingly simple, it tackles one if not the issue of the 3rd millenium, it's smart and savvy and funny, and, bottom line, so well-written... Abso-fscking-lutely worth entering one of those smelly geeks den and subjects oneself to those inevitable crooked looks, and perhaps even a comments or three, to grab that book. Seriously. It's all part of the diegesis, really ;-).

'... if you're reading this, take my advice, put the comic down and step away from the shelf - because it's not everyday that you get smarter from not reading a book.'

- Dr. Anton Rebere

'Congratulations, you're forever stuck in neutral, manmeat. We'll be replacing you soon.'

Tarped... Battlestar Galactica

Sometimes, I just tarp myself into a tv show that's not that worth it. Done that with, lets see now, Dark Angel must have been the first one... Then, something like 24, post-season 1, then Stargate: Atlantis... Probably some other, unmentionable ones, such as the O.C.. Yeah. No comments please. lol.

Latest addition to this list is Battlestar Galactica, a somewhat decent Sci-Fi Channel remake of the old 70s series. As is often the case with that kinda show, the plot is ok, but pretty thin, the tentive mythos is lame, lazy and soft, much of the effects are pretty bad and the whole thing requires a hell of a lot of suspension of disbelief. But, I am what I am, a geek sooooo fond of SF it's bordering on the unhealthy. So, I have to at least take a look at those amped up tv shows. And what better moment than this television no man's land of late (all my favorites are either done or on hiatus 'til Super Bowl XLIII's history) to take quick peeks at these shows. And there I got tarped, by the smallest of things, as is often the case with me :P... It must be during the first ep, really, that we see the fame whiteboard with a single 5-digit number handwritten there: 51 thousand-and-change survivors of the human race left in the entire universe. Now, the show can be lame and utterly stupid at times (Starbuck finds a dead Cylon ship, climbs aboard by digging a hole in the hull then patching with her coat... And she reaches deep space like that?? Yeah, that makes sense for sure...), but that kinda of postulate just grabs me whole... It gets to me, and I end up identifiying... Even though the subplots sometimes have bullet holes so wide in them you could probably fit the whole solar system...

Oh, still, they do manage to satisfy this unconditional Dune fanboy to some extent: the Cylon, the Machine Enemy, having developed a 'humanoid' breeding program, use human women in the very same way the Bene Tleilax do in Dune... Oh yeah, you got that right, they have their very own equivalent of axlotl tanks :|. And we see them... Though in a very sanitized fashion if you ask me... It is still quite intuitively repulsive...

Still, now I feel tarped as I can't let go of the show without seeing it to the end... Nerf me.

Milk... An Actors Flick...

Sean Penn Sean Penn Sean Penn Sean Penn Sean Penn Sean Penn Sean Penn Sean Fscking Penn! Nuff said.

I was utterly convinced Mickey had it locked for Best Actor, but now I must say I'll wait 'til I've seen every flick, cause Mister Sean Penn is, once again, awesome playing Harvey Milk. And of course great actors tend to lift everyone else's performance. But, James Franco, little whiny Harry Osbourne :P, deserves a special mention, bringing a silent, dignified emotional depth to the whole Harvey Milk Project. And all that great acting is brilliantly filmed, Van Sant's style not imposing itself upon his movie, receding rather in a subtle canvas masterfully carved, amazingly shot and cunningly edited. Very good flick: entertaining, educating, touching, inhabiting...

Note: ~3.3.

Benjamin Button...

Benjamin Button (le film, pas le mec :P) habite l'esprit... That one last shot of Button, very very weird with all its twisted semiotics, feels still burned onto my retinae... But I must admit I still have a hard time figuring how much I liked the flick. For numerous reasons, the least of which is I expected to love it, mainly because I have a huge soft spot for David Fincher AND Brad, and their common endeavours (ok ok, I'm talking Fight Club here, obviously)... There's also the mere fact that I have watched a couple of great movies lately, and find myself unable, almost, to determine which one's the best at the moment; guess my cinematic criticism skills are a tad rusty ;-).

I have a feeling I could write an entire piece on that one last shot of Button, though...

Note: I will catch it again pretty soon I guess, and will then be able to give my note, but it's probably going to end up in the vicinity of a 3.

Edit:
Okay, I just love Salon.com's reviews, even though I do not always agree with them; part of the fun ;-). Concerning Button, I think Zacharek stroke right where it counts with her piece. Anyway, it epitomizes my gut feeling while watching it, as well as when pondering about it afterwards...

Aaaaaaahhhhh...

Greatest.Local.News.Evar.

NFB Rulez

Max Payne... Remembering Lev Kuleshov

Je serai bref. Enfin, j'essaierai :P. Je serai bref surtout parce que ce billet semble condamné aux oubliettes avant longtemps si je ne fais rien. Et, comme c'est souvent le cas avec ces disparus dont on efface le brouillon après des mois conservés en archive, au cas où, j'ai quelque chose à dire. Il me semble.

{Brièveté}. Tout ce que Max Payne m'a suscité comme réflexion, outre la panoplie de souvenirs d'une époque étrange durant laquelle j'écumais (!) entre cinéma et informatique, me tapant au passage le fameux jeu vidéo Max Payne (serious good game, although I do wonder how well it might have aged... Then again, I ain't no gamer no more... might have never been... Still, that game was just pure entertainment!), la seule réflexion donc, fût le souvenir de mon passage, obligé mais non moins marquant, par les théoriciens russes du cinéma des premiers temps. {Brièveté...} Right right right. Je ne sais plus qui de Lev Kouleshov, Sergei Eisenstein ou Vsevolod Poudovkin a réfléchi la chose en premier, mais je vais y aller avec Lev, ma première idée, qui, on le sait, est toujours la meilleure. Lev Kouleshov. Final answer. {Brièveté...} Lev, donc, relatait l'anecdote d'une expérience aux résultats fascinants (on parle quand même des années '10 ici) : visionnant les rushes de la performance inouïe d'une ballerine de renommée internationale, Lev ne parvint jamais à comprendre pourquoi il ne ressentait pas du tout le même émoi que lorsqu'il avait assisté à la même performance, lors de la captation, ou même lors des nombreux spectacles auxquels il avait lui-même assisté. Après de nombreux essais, dont certains de rabouttage... {BRIÈVETÉ} ... Ok ok. Pour demeurer dans la brièveté, disons simplement que ces Russes détenaient cette capacité un peu folle d'extrapoler et d'inférer énormement de choses et de sens à partir de la plus simple révélation, ou proposition même, et utilisèrent ce talent pour, entre autre chose, théoriser passablement le montage cinématographique (je m'égare, déjà...) ET, plus important pour mon propos que, malgré les apparences, je n'ai guère oublié ni abandonné, légitimer, par le montage, l'art du cinéma pour en faire le 7e!!! Oui oui, en gros cette anecdote amena notre cinéaste-théoricien à stipuler que, si la reproduction filmique d'une performance, si divine et touchante et belle et parfaite soit-elle, ne reproduit pas, justement, les mêmes effets que la représentation comme telle, c'est parce que la simple capture, pour fins d'archivage presque, d'une telle performance sur support celluloïd ne capte pas, justement, les effets de ladite performance. Bon, je ne peux y résister, et ce ne serait pas complet, disons : pour les curieux (tous issus de mon imaginaire (collectif?), j'en conviens), le montage est en fait le corrélaire de cette assomption (j'ignore pourquoi, je déteste le terme axiome, que, étrangement, je viens de re-rencontrer); puisque la simple capture passive d'une performance ou d'un spectacle ou d'un évènement, fictif ou réel (là, je pense que j'infère moi-même, fort de mon vingt-et-unième-sièclisme pédant et réfléchi) ne peut jamais reproduire exactement ce qu'il capte, les affects surtout, le cinéma se doit de déconstruire la capture pour la reconstruire afin de recréer ces affects, la remonter en film, bref. Évidemment, j'extrapole légèrement et vulgarise brutalement, mais bon, c'est pas mal ça, et de toute façon, qui me lira ?

Pour en revenir à Max Doulleure (don't ask), hé bien, l'adaption filmique m'a rappelé Lev, ou Sergeï ou Vsevo dans son atelier, se repassant sans cesse les prises de vue de la ballerine, boucle éternelle d'incompréhension tant théorique qu'émotive. Le film m'a fait imaginer cette scène parce que, en simple, il ne parvient jamais à s'élever au niveau de son aïeul, le jeu vidéo classique à l'esthétique envoûtante et au scénario presque parfait... pour un jeu vidéo. Le résultat reste fade. Plat. Vraiment très, très plat. Meh. Et pourtant, je suis, prétendument, un fanboy de Marky Mark. Et dire que je suis un fan d'adaptations reste un euphémisme, tandis que soulever que j'ai adoré ce jeu, le rejouant même, ce que je n'ai que vraiment très rarement fait dans ma vie, constituerait probablement un dévoiement en bonne et due forme puisque je ne peux aucunement juger Max une réussite d’adaptation... Et j'en ai apprécié, des adaptations de comics, en passant :P... Dommage (pas vraiment) pour (name dropping in 3...2...1) Brian Wood, excellent auteur-graphiste de, comment ils disent déjà, romans graphiques (check him out, seriously. If you have ever gone "I love this city" while in NYC, check him out ;-)), qui a probablement contribuer à la création de ce jeu mythique.

Note (pour m'avoir rappeler mes premiers théoriciens, il se mérite une note < 6, mais, soyez prévenus ;-)): ~5.7.

Owning Mahowny - How many?

Another case of getting "plot committed", even though I have been wanting to see that flick ever since I started playing poker :P. Been told a couple times that it was a must see "if I like movies and poker"... and cannot for the life of me help myself saying "People insist on calling it luck", lol.

The flick has nothing, NOTHING to do with poker... It's all about this compulsive pathological fish of a gambler, who uses his position as an account manager in a Canadian bank to pull a 10-million dollar fraud, pissing it all away in Atlantic City. Pretty decent drama flirting just enough with the expected cliches, held up by a Philip Seymour Hoffman who simply cannot seem to misinterpret any role he takes on. Oh, and John Hurt, in a Machiavellian casino manager... Priceless.

Note: ~4.2.

"Cause I'm plot committed"

Yeah. That does happen. More frequently when you have channels like IFC and such :P... Latest flick to tarp me that way was Employee of the Month, with *drumrolls*: Dane Cooke and Jessica Fscking Simpson... Wtf?!?!? It's official, I suck.

Note: ~5.5.

Slumdog Millonaire

Don't you just love those flicks where you're constantly going "It's gonna unfold this way... No, no, no, that way... They can't do that, can they?!?!?", and so on? I do. I really really do. This is what movies are all about for me, actually.

Une preuve par quatre que l'identification s'est enclenchée, en quelque sorte... Que l'histoire accroche... Démonstration effective du fameux modèle perception-cognition-révision-(re)perception-(re)cognition-révision, en fait (cf. David Bordwell... Grosso modo, ce modèle soutient que le spectateur d'un film participe d'une actvité perceptivo-cognitive somme toute très similaire à la résolution d'une égnigme, d'une charade, d'un problème, d'un jeu, etc.. La spectature devient donc participative... Pierre d'achoppement de mon rapport au cinéma, cette hypothèse théorique m'a souvent confronté à l'entendement général stipulant que le visionnement d'un film reste une activité passive... Ignorance is bliss, I guess, lol. (Meaning, people simply do not realize they are very very active, both psychologically AND physically (emotions ARE physical) while watching a movie; they just do whatever's necessary unconsciously, especially when "plot-committed", ie "in the movie"... Thing is, we've really been born and bred with audio-visual manifestations all around us 24/7, granting us "innate movie reflexes", so to speak).

Bon, je me suis égaré. Suffira de dire que Slumdog Millionaire, le dernier Danny Boyle (he of Trainspotting fame ;-)), tombe joyeusement dans cette catégorie de films, probablement par son éclectisme bollywood. Divertissant, engageant, bien ficellé, écrit et exécuté... Et des accents plutôt sympathiques, comme celui de l'animateur-vedette, dont la prononciation du mot "millionaire" en anglais m'a vraiment bien fait rire...

Cote mediafilmesque : ~3.2.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Ok Ok, I was all emotional and all sold to the flick... And then I read this piece and, while I do agree it is mostly a nail-scratching melodrama of a flick, milking stereotypes and the o so ever pure childhood naivite, along with the blackest of black historical events of Humankind in a somewhat unscrupulous mannner, I disagree that it is vulgar and narrowminded... To me, it just... works... Might be because yours truly does have a weak spot for holocaust and WWII stories, and their emphasis on the importance of memory and remembrance, never forgetting those horrors (goosebumps just writing that, actually :P)... And for that matter, the last shot of BitSP is AWESOME. Just A-W-E-S-O-M-E. The lockerroom where Jews stripped down just before getting in the showers, with all those "striped pajamas" hanging all around the empty room, the camera ever so slowly zooming out from the door, almost still echoing with the shouts and the cries of the doomed men, women and children, and finally stopping with the door right in the middle of the frame, to proceed with the proverbial fade to black, but ever so slowly, making sure to leave that indelible mark both in our consciousness AND our collective psyche...

Sure, the flick does require a suspension of disbelief based on cinematic conventions, mostly because it IS a british studio film, and its Oscar contender most assuredly. Thus, everyone does speak with that brit actors accent bordering on pedantry... Sure, a couple of those money shots are cliches (the black smoke rising from the ovens... If I haven't seen this image a zillion times, I have NEVER seen it), but it still does work, especially because of that children's point of view... And the pacing of the whole thing is near pitch perfect, gambling on coming in hard and leaving us high'n dry very very quickly. All in all, I am not even sure the flick would not fall into a pathetic boredom fest of pathos were it not for that editing feat, actually...

It is still a very nice movie to catch...
Note (à la mediafilm 1 to 7, 1 being masterpiece, 7 being a bomb): ~4.3

Choke - Palahniuk Strikes Back

Choke had the release of something of an indie flick. Chuck Palahniuk, author of the book (and of a bunch of other great late-American subversive novels, such as Fight Club, Diary or Snuff), is, on the other hand, one of the most prominent and front runner for latest literary talents in the US, stacking best sellers after best sellers, each of them getting raving reviews from critics as well. Yet, he is still somewhat considered an indie writer... Must be cause he's sooooo counter-cultural I suppose...

In any case, an adaptation by one of those actors always playing sidekicks or villains (and of course, with a forgettable name :P...)... Standard adaptation, good to great acting performances (those actors-turned-director mostly do great directing jobs... It's the rest that falls often short); solid translation towards the silver screen, but not inventive at all, really... And some of the edition choices might not have been the best; completely eluding the ending might not have been the greatest of ideas since the last 15 minutes of the flick do seem pretty eclectic...

All in all, the book before, and if you like it, the movie on a bleak autumn Friday evening, I guess :).

Note: ~4.4.

The Wrestler & La décadence du rêve américain

Avec le nouvelle année revient la résolution, annuelle depuis maintenant bientôt 10 ans, de tenir le journal des films que je vois durant l'année... Ma meilleure performance remonte bien sûr à ma 1ère année en Etudes cinématographiques, mais bon, depuis j'ai découvert les outils de blogging :P... So here's another shot...

First flick of '09 was Aronofksy's The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei. Wow. Seriously. I tend to have very high expectations for such films, especially when everyone's raving about it, critics and fans alike... And, I mean, an Aronofsky flick about a washed out professional wrestler, really?!?!?

Well turns out it is fscking GREAT! The guy knows how to write stories man, and how to trigger emotional affects... His stuff's always a tad cliche but also soooo powerful, with the way he directs his actors, among all the film techniques he does master, that we have to forgive him his tendency towards archetypes :).

All in all, another great flick by the dude who gave us Pi and Requiem for a Dream. And he's supposed to direct the next remake of... Robocop... This got me curious, I must admit.

Note (à la mediafilm 1 to 7, 1 being masterpiece, 7 being a bomb): ~3.4.