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.