Belated End of Year List 2016

I try to forget all the awful news of 2016 for a moment and focus solely on the films I have seen over the past year. This has probably been the first year (since I started to keep records of my cinema going habits) during which I have seen more films at home than in a theater, even if I am not counting the ones I watched on a computer screen for closer analysis. 

Most memorable cinema moments 

Nevertheless, there were some truly memorable cinema moments in 2016: two of them happened in June, when I visited my sister in London where we enjoyed TRUE ROMANCE (Scott, 1993) - which I had actually never seen before - in a rooftop cinema on the top of an abandoned multi-storey car park wrapped in blankets because of the ice-cold drizzle. And then I even got to see one of my all-time favorites VERTIGO (Hitchcock, 1958) in revelatory 70mm in the Prince Charles Cinema!

After studying Spielberg's first decade as a movie director in detail, I witnessed a truly collective emotion in an E.T. (1982) screening. While I still think that JAWS (1975) and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) are almost perfect masterpieces of entertainment filmmaking, the "shameless", childlike suburban fantasy of a positive poltergeist from outer space is the most (cornily) affecting and personal movie of Spielberg's whole career, even more so than CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (1977).

LA TORTUE ROUGE

Of all the new releases I have seen, LA TORTUE ROUGE by Michael Dudok de Wit moved me in a profound way animated films have not moved me in years. I also had a great time at the Annecy Animation Festival with the most memorable event, oddly, being not a screening but a work in progress presentation of MOANA by Ron Clements and John Musker. As they often say, you could not imagine a more enthusiastic audience than the one in Bonlieu theater. 

Music and Lyrics 

In the first half of 2016, in celebration of Erik Satie's 150thanniversary I wrote an article for filmbulletin about how Satie's most famous music is used in contemporary films. For the same magazine I also studied the film music of Howard Shore with a special focus on his collaboration with David Cronenberg.

And just before the year ended, I revisited some of my favorite movie musicals from TOP HAT (Sandrich, 1935) to SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (Donen/Kelly, 1952), A STAR IS BORN (Cukor, 1954) and LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT (Demy, 1967) in preparation for a lecture on Damien Chazelle's LA LA LAND. 

Wide angle cinemascope

location shooting / color scheme

colored lighting for dreamy states of mind

Favorite Films of 2016 (in alphabetical order)

• FINSTERES GLÜCK (Haupt, 2016): Visually coherent literary adaptation about a psychologist who tries to take care of a little boy who lost his family in a car accident. The rare Swiss feature that really moved me.
• FRANTZ (Ozon, 2016): Ambivalent characters, unreliables narrators, atmospheric black and white widescreen cinematography, suspense, emotional tension and an exceptionally strong leading actress. 
• I, DANIEL BLAKE (Loach, 2016): If Ken Loach is still decrying similar injustices after almost 40 years, then maybe the world (and not just the British health care system) has not advanced that much, after all. 
• LA LA LAND (Chazelle, 2016): a mesmerizing experience, Damien Chazelle creates an entirely contemporary love story by combining film making devices of the 1930s to 60s without getting lost in superficial references.
• LA TORTUE ROUGE (Dudok de Wit, 2016): so simple and archetypal, yet so deeply  philosophical and touching. Sublime.
• MA VIE DE COURGETTE (Barras, 2016): merely an hour long, but sweet, funny, touching and most of all authentically childlike.
• OUR LITTLE SISTER/UMIMACHI DIARY (Kore-eda, 2015): For the past few years, Kore-eda's latest family melodrama always made it on my favorites list.
• SUNSET SONG (Davies, 2015): an underrated (and in Switzerland undistributed) Terence Davies period picture of harsh beauty captured on high resolution celluloid (exteriors) and digital (interiors).
• TONI ERDMANN (Ade, 2016): a complex father-daughter relationship in a comedy with its own peculiar but extremely rewarding rhythm.
• VOR DER MORGENRÖTE (Schrader, 2016): a refreshingly static biopic that boldly focuses on a few separate moments in the life of writer Stefan Zweig.

FINSTERES GLÜCK

Animation 

In my book, 2016 was a strong year for animated features. While LA TORTUE ROUGE and MA VIE DE COURGETTE (MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI) were among my favorite films over all, I really enjoyed Sébastien Laudenbach's one man feature LA JEUNE FILLE SANS MAINS (THE GIRL WITHOUT HANDS, 2016) and Rémy Chayé's TOUT EN HAUT DU MONDE (2015).

Laika's overwhelming 3D stop motion feature KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS (Knight, 2016) got so many things right that I easily forgive the few wrongs (Matthew McConaughey's character, American idiosyncrasies among Japanese villagers). And within the same year, Disney Feature Animation released two interesting if not wholly convincing films both of which served as perfect examples for explaining specific film making devices (stereoscopic 3D in ZOOTOPIA, digital water in MOANA/VAIANA) in my introductions for children and families.

Watching short films from all over the world, I am delighted to discover that especially the works of young film makers and students demonstrate an overwhelmingly strong color sense. Even if you just look at a random sample of cartoonbrew's "artist of the day" posts (examples see below), this almost universal new "color consciousness" (to abuse Natalie Kalmus' Technicolor term) becomes obvious.

Restraint candy colors in SCAVENGERS (Bennett/Huettner, 2016)

Kevin Phung

Jose Mendez

Mel Tow

Woonyoung Jung

Carrie Hobson

Anete Melece

(Re-)Discoveries

• ACE IN THE HOLE (Wilder, 1951): Masterpiece. If you only see one media satire in your life, it must be this one.
• JACKIE BROWN (Tarantino, 1997): Tarantino's most laid-back and straightforward character study reveals a great deal about how much his trademark dialogue writing is influenced by Elmore Leonard's prose.
• KISS ME DEADLY (Aldrich, 1955): Cinematic invention, quintessentially lush noir lighting and camera angles and "the great whatsit" as more than a mcguffin in this entertaining Mickey Spillane adaptation.
• KUROI AME (Imamura, 1989): Realist take on long term effects of the Hiroshima bomb, shot like a post-war picture with incredible music by Takemitsu Toru.
• PRIDE & PREJUDICE (Wright, 2005): Here, Joe Wright's long takes are unobtrusive and really the perfect device to tell the story of Jane Austen's Bennet girls brought to life by a stellar cast and Dario Marianelli's piano score.
• SHADOW OF A DOUBT (Hitchcock, 1943): Never mind the production code ending. This tight and funny suspense picture - one of Hitch's personal favorites - about a fascinating and ambivalent uncle-niece relationship grows on me every time I see it.
• SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (Park, 2002): Not everyone's cup of tea but a truly cinematic kick-off for Park Chan-wook's vengeance trilogy most famous for OLD BOY (2003).
• THE QUIET MAN (Ford, 1952): Thanks to the British "Masters of Cinema" blu-ray series I now own a pristine transfer of Ford's nostalgic Irish Technicolor picture.
• THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (Gessner, 1976): An unexpected discovery: What an entertainingly zeitgeisty and creepy little film by a Swiss director. Just think of Jody Foster from TAXI DRIVER meeting Martin Sheen in BADLANDS mode.
• WEST SIDE STORY (Robbins/Wise, 1961): As far as broadway adaptations with dubbed actors go this is still the benchmark. Upon seeing it again in a theater, I came to appreciate Robert Wise's contribution to a film of which I would have always preferred to see a complete Jerome Robbins version.

Amazing cinematography in ACE IN THE HOLE.

Widescreen staging in PRIDE & PREJUDICE

Technicolor location shooting in THE QUIET MAN

In 2017, I have already seen the stylish if slightly inflated Tom Ford thriller NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, Asghar Farhadi's latest humanistic thriller THE SALESMAN and another Billy Wilder masterpiece (STALAG 17, 1953). Now I am looking forward to the Swiss release of Martin Scorsese's SILENCE (2016) and especially to all those films that I hopefully will discover by chance. 

And maybe I even find the time to finish the video essays that I have started to put together in the last few months...

Note: I have also been busy on my companion blog film studies resources:

Two GIFs composed from the "Masters of Cinema" blu ray of ONIBABA (Shindo, 1964).

London Screenings

London must be a paradise for cinemaniacs. There are so many great films playing (in cinemas and on rooftops) every day that one gets easily overwhelmed. Being in England for only a few days, I nevertheless grabbed the opportunity to see two very different films that I highly recommend to anyone near the city for different reasons:

Every patron matters

Practically by chance and out of curiosity, I went to a very small, very independently produced first time feature called CHICKEN, simply because there was a Q&A by its London based director Joe Stephenson.

The film has already finished its festival circuit, where it drew the attention of audiences and people like Sir Ian McKellen, and is now practically self-distributed because its opening weekend got eclipsed by the latest X-MEN movie. So like in the good old days of independent movies, Stephenson books the film on a screening per screening basis around town and country, often with a Q&A, because he is a strong believer in the cinema experience as opposed to DVD/VOD.

Yasmin Paige

Scott Chambers and Joe Stephenson

CHICKEN is an adaptation of a play that feels so natural that you would not even think of its theater origins if you were not told. It might not have a high concept or even a star (well, Yasmin Paige should be well-known for her part in SUBMARINE, but that has not happened so far), but for a first time effort it is extremely focused and consistently gaining momentum. In fact, the film is completely built around Scott Chambers tour de force performance that really carries the small scale coming-of-age drama.

Besides, Joe Stephenson is a great interviewee. In the screening at the Prince Charles Cinema last Wednesday, he even managed to win the audience over without a proper interviewer. But what's more, try to catch a cinema screening because every single patron really matters to these filmmakers!

Next screening: Thursday, June 9, 9:00 pm, Genesis Cinema Whitechappel
Further screenings here.

Like most of us have never seen it before

And then there was VERTIGO. A film that anyone with an interest in cinematography, editing patterns, and especially color and music has to see at least once in a theater, and one of my all-time favorites. So why see it again in a place that offers culture and entertainment in abundance? Because the Prince Charles Cinema at Leicester Square is currently showing it in 70mm! Except for a few scratches and such (that were adverted up front) the print itself as well as the projection were perfect.

And it is true, you absolutely positively have to see it in 70mm, accept no substitutes! The characteristic Technicolor reds, greens, skin tones and deep blacks were there, and most of all: the rear-projections and special process shots looked awesome, i.e. much more invisible than on digital or 35mm versions. Besides, the PCC members are a great audience which adds a lot to the movie-going experience.

And if you are near London, make sure to check out their schedule. Who would want to miss out on a special screening of THE IRON GIANT - SIGNATURE EDITION followed by Hitchcock's THE BIRDS?

First Shots: YOJIMBO (1961)

In a recent post about the first shots of Leone's "Dollar" films I have hinted at his great indebtitude to YOJIMBO. As an addendum (and advertisement), here is the first shot of Kurosawa's great samurai farce.

YOJIMBO is photographed by Japan's greatest cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa and it certainly ranks among Kurosawa's strongest widescreen efforts. Although mostly obscured by white title characters, the single two and a half minute shot that opens the film draws us into the world of the samurai with no name (he only adopts "Sanjuro (thirty) Kuwabatake (mulberry field)" when he sees a mulberry field outside the window) so memorably played by Toshiro Mifune.

The shot opens on a mountain landscape that is largely obscured when Mifune enters the frame from the right. One could say that he blocks the camera's view and we only see his back for much of the shot. His standing in our way is a nice way of preparing us for a story that is entirely told from his point of view.

It is no secret that Kurosawa was inspired by American westerns, especially those by John Ford and George Stevens. So it comes as no surprise that Mifune is entering the frame in a similar way to the protagonist of SHANE (1953):

At about 12 seconds in, the samurai's mannerisms are introduced: he often arranges his shoulders and scratches his stubbled chin and unkempt hair. And even from behind we can tell that he keeps his hands under his clothes.

When he starts to walk to the left at 21 seconds, the camera follows his every move, keeping him tightly framed within the scope frame which in this film emphasizes narrowness instead of opening up the screen. We do not really see Mifune's face yet because it is still turned towards the mountains.

We follow the silhouette of his head until the camera pans down at 1:40 until we only see his feet and the ground he walks on (passing a few stone idols). 20 seconds later, a camera pan up his body ends up in a horizontal composition not unlike the first one with Mifune still walking until he reaches the visual center and is visible from head to toe. He then throws up a stick to figure out which way to go.

The last minute up until he picks up the stick are paraphrased by Leone in the first shot of FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964). Moreover, his unexpected opening of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) could be traced to the opening of the shot. In both cases we first see a distant mountain landscape. In both cases a character moves into the frame at very close range. Leone, however, makes sure that Al Mulloch's face is imprinted on our minds while Kurosawa draws the attention towards the character's behavioral pattern.

Screening Advertisement
On the 23rd of September I am introducing trigon-film's digitally restored print of YOJIMBO at the cinema Gotthard in Zug (Switzerland). The screening will be followed by a 20 minute lecture on how Sergio Leone transformed Kurosawa's masterpiece into his first catholic Italian western.

Mirror images: Mifune enters from the right (top) as Eastwood enters from the left (below).

There is certainly more to Leone's adaptation than re-arranged widescreen compositions.

Screening DR. STRANGELOVE

My favorite (if rather inaccurate) foreign poster.

Some films never seem to become outdated. Unfortunately - one might add considering the fact that what keeps DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) still fresh is the current revitalization of the policy of deterrence in some parts of the world. Fortunately however, even 50 years later the film itself remains compelling and dead-on.

I am currently preparing an introductory lecture focussing on dialogue and acting for a theatrical screening on June 13, 2013 in Zug (Switzerland). As usual, I cannot possibly incorporate every detail that I find into my lecture. So after a short summary of what I intend to center on, I will have a look at two rigid compositions that caught my eye.

Stanley Kubrick's third film about the absurdity of war and his last black and white picture was also the beginning of his trademark style of ambiguous narrators (just think of Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, 1971). While he exposed a seemingly omniscient third-person narrator as slightly unreliable in THE KILLING (1956) and a literary first-person narrator as delusional in LOLITA (1962) he not only opens DR. STRANGELOVE with a Brechtian news-reel narrator but presents us with three self-proclaimed first-person narrators who each impose their perspective on an isolated group of people.

Capt. Mandrake - Gen. Ripper - Dr. Strangelove - Maj. Kong - Gen. Turgidson - President Muffley

As embodied by Sterling Hayden, George C. Scott and Slim Pickens, these three characters are distinguished by contrasting voices and ways of speaking. The same goes for all the secondary characters played by Peter Sellers. In fact, it is the acting and Kubrick's dissection of military and diplomatic euphemisms that turns a dead serious thriller (Peter George's "Red Alert") into a biting satire. 

Disordered Communication and Framed Isolation
There are certain shots that fans and scholars have come to identify as Kubrickian: the low angle shot of a staring face, highly symmetrical long shots and the neverending tracking shot. A former photographer who often drove his DOP crazy or even operated the camera himself, Kubrick relied on meticulously composed images in almost every shot, though. This may be one of the reasons why his filmic worlds seem so inescapable and claustrophobic at times.

It is amazing in how many ways he is able to exploit Ken Adam's stylized James-Bond-type "war room" set, for example. When President Merkin Muffley talks to Premier Kissoff on the phone, a black bar in the background visually separates him from the Russian Ambassador, emphasizing the rift between the two and the film's major theme of communication between isolated spaces. Furthermore, this black bar looks like the splitscreen indicator common in movie and comic phone conversations. However, in this film, the phone seems to complicate communication - it separates the characters rather than bringing them closer together.

Ambassor and president in isolated spaces within the same frame.

SPOILER AHEAD: When General Jack D. Ripper tries to persuade RAF Capt. Lionel Mandrake of his fluoridation conspiracy theory, Ripper's head is narrowly framed by a doorframe. Soon after, we learn that this is the door to a bathroom in which Ripper's story finally comes to an end. And like arrows in a graphic representation, the guns at the wall all point to the characters' head like a visual reminder that their office is surrounded by attacking soldiers. But these guns may also foreshadow Ripper's bathroom scene.

In both of these shots, only one character looks at the other, there is no eye-contact. In the Ripper scene, Mandrake (left) is nervously messing around with a chewing gum, one of the few recurring props in the film that is not a communication device.

Morricone Bits And Pieces [UPDATED]

It's been some time since my last post and I didn't find time yet to write about any of those subjects I've had on my mind a few weeks ago.

After giving introductory lectures on Quentin Tarantino's DJANGO UNCHAINED and Sergio Leone's THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, I am currently preparing one for a screening of Clint Eastwood's THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (March 26, 2013).

So before this here becomes a ghost blog with tumbleweeds drifting by, I like to direct your attention to three clips (only one of which was part of my Leone introduction) about some themes and motifs of Ennio Morricone's music for the dollar trilogy (aka "man with no name" trilogy):

Deguello

"'For my first Western, I asked for a score which was like the deguello which Tiomkin used in Rio Bravo and The Alamo. It's an old Mexican funeral chant.' [...] But it didn't have the lineage Leone ascribed to it. The deguello was specially written and arranged by Tiomkin for Rio Bravo, as a dirge to Sheriff Chance (John Wayne) and his raggle-taggle team of deputies standing guard over the town jail.[...]
Morricone recalls: 'I had to say to Sergio, "Look, if you put that lament into the film, I won't have anything to do with it." So he said to me: "Okay, you compose the music but do it in such a way that a bit of your score sounds like the deguello." I didn't take very kindly to that either, so I took an old theme of mine, a lullaby that I'd written for a friend, [...]. Make no mistake, the theme was certainly far removed from the lament. What brought out a resemblance was its performance in a semi-gypsy style on the trumpet, with all the melismas - the flourishes played around single notes of the tune - which are characteristic of that style. But the theme itself was not, repeat not, the same thematic idea as the deguello.'" (Christopher Frayling: Sergio Leone - Something To Do With Death, 153f)

The following clip includes both Tiomkin's "Degüello" (literally a cut-throat song) from RIO BRAVO and Morricone's sound-alike arrangement of his theatre lullaby that became the main theme of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS:

Motifs
Sergio Leone liked to "complete" his characters with short musical motifs that more often than not sound like an ironic commentary on the action. While Morricone's music for all three dollar films was based on whistling as an expression of the loner's solitude, Clint Eastwood's motif in the first film was a short descendent line played by flute (00:00).

In the second film (00:20), his motif has developed into something reminiscent of a recorder and his bounty hunter father figure rival Lee Van Cleef's piercing glare is reflected in a jew's harp twang (that is sometimes substituted by the metallic sound of an electric guitar or a purely electronic sound).

In the third and final film (0:40), there is only one single motif for all three characters which are supposed to represent three aspects of a single person. That motif is based on a coyote's howl and imitated by different instruments for each character.

The short motifs are followed by a sample of how they are incorporated into the respective theme track:

Demanded Re-Use

"The piece, a Woody Guthrie song called 'Pastures of Plenty', was arranged by Morricone in 1962 for American tenor Peter Tevis, and released in Italy as an RCA single in 1962. [...] The chorus is identical to the Fistful of Dollars theme (barring the latter's incromprehensible lyric), as are the strange instrumental sounds. 'Leone wanted that exact arrangement with a melody put over it,' says Morricone. [...] Leone remembered, 'I was absolutely smitten. [...] That's what I want. Just get hold of someone who is good at whistling.' The man for the job was thirty-nine-year-old Alessandro Alessandroni [...]. So Alessandroni provided and prepared the choir, played the guitar and did the whistling." (Christopher Frayling: Sergio Leone - Something To Do With Death, 156f)

In the final clip you hear Morricone's original "Pastures of Plenty" arrangement (00:00) followed by the same arrangement featuring various instruments played and whistled by Alessandroni for A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (01:00). It's intresting that even Eastwood's iconic flute motif (see clip above) is already part of the Woody-Guthrie-arrangement.

As kind of a bonus I have added the beginning of Morricone's newly composed song "Ancora Qui" (02:00) from DJANGO UNCHAINED - which like the Leone films is based on cinematic myths rather than reality - that sounds like a slowed down reference to the repetitive guitar motif from A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS:

Bonus: The "Leone Close-Up" [UPDATE]
When people think of Sergio Leone, they think of the famous "Leone Close-Up" - a shot that fills the widescreen frame with only the eyes of an actor. Leone was able to induce his climactic confrontations in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY and ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST with an almost hallucinogenic quality through his use of extreme close-ups like the one below:

However, one of his heroes, the celebrated B-Western director Sam Fuller, had already experimented with such extreme close-ups in FORTY GUNS a few years earlier. Unfortunately, Fuller didn't seem to be to confident of this daring device and used the two shots (00:25) early on in the film and hardly to any effect that foreshadows Leone's confrontations:

German Summary / Deutsche Zusammenfassung [UPDATE]:

Deguello - Zusammenfassung auf Deutsch: 
Sergio Leone wollte für seinen ersten Western A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS ein Stück aus RIO BRAVO namens "degüello", das er für einen alten mexikanischen Beerdigungsgesang hielt. Es wurde jedoch von Dimitri Tiomkin extra für RIO BRAVO geschrieben und ist wörtlich übersetzt ein "Kehle-Durchschneide-Lied". 

Ennio Morricone weigerte sich, einfach ein Stück von jemand anderem zu kopieren und bearbeitete stattdessen ein Schlaflied, das er mal geschrieben hatte, und orchestrierte es für Mariachi-Trompete. Das Stück ist somit komplett anders, das Arrangement orientiert sich aber an Tiomkins "degüello".

Im Beispiel hören Sie beide Stücke, wie sie im jeweiligen Film verwendet werden. 

Motive
Sergio Leone "vervollständigte" seine Figuren gern mit kurzen musikalischen Motiven, die das Geschehen ironisieren. Morricones Musik für alle drei Dollar-Filme basiert grundsätzlich auf einer gepfiffenen Melodie als Symbol für die Einsamkeit des Einzelgängers. Im ersten Film steht ein kurzes Flötenmotiv für die Figur von Clint Eastwood.

Im zweiten Film (00:20) hat es sich zu einem Blockflötenmotiv verändert, während der stechende Blick seines Rivalen Lee Van Cleef vom metallischen Klang der Maultrommel (und später E-Gitarre) begleitet wird.

Im dritten und letzten Film (00:40) verwendet Morricone ein einziges Motiv für alle drei Figuren, die Leone als drei Seiten einer einzigen Figur gesehen hat. Das Motiv basiert auf dem Heulen eines Kojoten und wird von den entsprechenden Instrumenten imitiert. Im Fall von Eli Wallach von der menschlichen Stimme, die Morricone immer gern als Musikinstrument eingesetzt hat.
Nach den Kurzmotiven folgt der jeweilige Titelsong, wo sie eingeflochten werden: 

Wiederverwertung in eigener Sache:
Morricone hatte 1962 für eine Folkplatte des Tenors Peter Tevis einen Woody Guthrie Song auf seine eigene Art arrangiert. Leone war so begeistert von der Instrumentierung, dass er genau dieses Arrangement für seinen Film wollte und Morricone daraufhin zur identischen Begleitung eine neue Melodie komponierte. Pfeifen, Gitarre und Chor stammen vom 39-jährigen Alessandro Alessandoni.

Dieser Clip enthält Morricones ursprüngliches Arrangement (00:00) gefolgt vom Titelstück von A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (01:00). Interessanterweise ist sogar Eastwoods Flötenmotiv bereits Teil des Woody-Guthrie-Arrangements. 

Bonus: Die Leone-Nahaufnahme
Ein Markenzeichen von Sergio Leone war, dass er mit der Breitwandkamera ganz nahe an die Gesichter der Schauspieler ging und dadurch auf der Grossleinwand seinen Konfrontationen eine fast halluzinogene Wirkung verlieh.

Doch schon der experimentierfreudige B-Western-Regisseur Sam Fuller probierte die Extreme Nahaufnahme auf die Augen ein paar Jahre vorher in FORTY GUNS. Allerdings blieb es bei zwei kurzen Einstellungen (00:25), und leider hat er sie so früh im Film eingesetzt und nie mehr aufgegriffen, dass sie völlig "verschenkt" wirken. Doch Leone war ein Fan von Fuller und hat diesen Film gekannt.

Miyazaki Screening

November 2012 seems to be Studio Ghibli time: While the GKids Studio Ghibli Retrospective is currently playing at the IFC Center in New York City and at the Lagoon Theater in Minneapolis I'm very happy to be able to present Howl's Moving Castle in the Cinema Gotthard in Zug, Switzerland!

Nov 27, 8:00 pm (movie in Japanese with German subtitles, introduction in German.)

In case you have never seen one of Japan's biggest blockbusters: according to A.O.Scott from the New York Times Howl's Moving Castle is "a fitting introduction to one of modern cinema's great enchanters."

Lupin III about to enter the fictitious European kingdom Cagliostro in The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)

My half-hour introduction will focus on Japanese depictions of romanticized Europe from Heidi (1974) to Howl's Moving Castle (2004), character metamorphosis as well as Miyazaki's ambivalent fascination with war machines and the age of steam in films with strong anti-war statements.

Flying Kayaks in an 1880s illustration by science fiction author Albert Robida...

...and Miyazaki's version in the fictitious European kingdom Ingary in Howl's Moving Castle.

Of course, one cannot talk about Howl's Moving Castle without bringing up Miyazaki's unique way of eliminating explanatory scenes and his increasing reliance on intuitional rather than realistic storytelling which results in fantasy worlds closer to those created by Federico Fellini than Jules Verne.

If you know any Ghibli fans living in central Switzerland, please pass this on to them! Given the general lack of audience in Ghibli screenings around here, I'm already having nightmares of speaking to an empty auditorium!

Please bear with me...

If you happen to live in Switzerland, you might be interested to know that on June 29 at 8.15pm there will be a special Taxi Driver screening of the digitally restored BluRay edition in the cinema Seehof in Zug. I’m also posting this because preparing my introduction to and lecture on this masterpiece is part of what kept me from writing lately. Martin Scorsese is one of my favorite directors and the 1970s are among my favorite historical periods in regard to American movies. 

Sony’s Taxi Driver restoration is probably the most faithful digital presentation of a New Hollywood movie so far and therefore highly recommended.

It’s been more than a month since my last post and honestly, I don’t really know when I’ll have the time to post something more substantial. Looking at my Google Analytics page I can’t help but notice that the daily traffic – that was steadily increasing until a few weeks ago – is now steadily dropping to about half of what it once was. I regret that especially since I was really pleased to discover that this blog has now more than 250 public followers. Thanks for reading my stuff!

Two posts a month should be manageable
The only saving grace at the moment are plugs by the likes of Michael J. Ruocco’s Animation Smears that are featured on cartoonbrew. So in order not to lose too many of you I try to establish a steadier posting rhythm, so to speak, that is still manageable during busier times. My plan is to come up with a new post twice a month starting in July.

I could do a lot of short industry and festival news posts inbetween just to keep the traffic going, but firstly I think that there are already more than enough information sites and secondly I don’t want the longer articles to be obscured by them. Instead I will stick to my practice of previewing animation events and plugging interesting sites once in a while without being able to do justice to all the interesting information I receive.

So I hope you understand that not reviewing a short film, website or festival announcement doesn’t mean that I didn’t like it. It’s just that there are other things on my mind, too, that consume my time. And – you might have guessed it – I’m a little obsessed with researching a lot before I dare to write about something.

Special sites for special posts
As you may have already seen, I have organized the most popular posts on special sites just below the header making it easier to directly access them. Hopefully, this will keep you interested during low tide.

2010 film review

Looking back on 2010 I could rant about the recent conversion to digital cinema, the decline of cinema attendance or how Inception didn’t quite turn out to be the event I was hoping thought it would be. But 2010 is also the year I caught up with the last two Wong Kar-Wai movies I hadn’t seen, a 70mm screening of Tati’s PlayTime (1967) as well as a bunch of great Woody Allen comedies. So next to the list of my ten favorite new releases of 2010 I dig into what has become a habit by now: that the films that made the biggest impression on me were old ones. 

As far as movies are concerned, 2011 couldn’t have started better. Right on New Year’s Day I saw Des hommes et des dieux, a French film about a group of Trappist monks executed in Algeria in 1996. It is one of several French films that transcend the usual dialogue-heavy “je t’aime… …moi non plus” attitude we associate with French drama.

Of 2010’s new releases there was no single outstanding film so I just list my ten favorite films in alphabetical order:

• Kûki ningyô/Air Doll (Kore-Eda, Japan 2009): As soft and light-weight as its wide-eyed sex-doll-come-to-life protagonist. With its musette score it plays like a Japanese version of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie, but less flashy, subtler and certainly more enigmatically philosophical.
• L’enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot (Bromberg/Medrea, France 2009): The thrilling tale of a movie that might have been, had it ever been completed. Romy Schneider with blue lips in a psychedelic phantasmagoria.
• Die Fremde/When we leave (Aladag, Germany 2010): the first of two thoughtful and subtle films about the tensions of modern women suffering from religious traditions. Formally and emotionally superior to Na Putu/On the path.
• Gainsbourg – vie héroïque (Sfar, France/USA 2010): A biopic that dares to leave blanks. What might have become a clumsy act of worship is transformed into a raw and at the same time polished piece of art by first time director Joann Sfar based on his own crudely drawn graphic novel.
• L’illusionniste (Chomet, UK/France 2010): Less zany than Chomet’s earlier Triplettes de Belleville but ultimately more beautiful, this out-dated Illusionist roaming around Scotland combines Jacques Tati’s slow building visual gags with the melancholia of a dying art form. This year’s only animated feature without action sequences.
• Nowhere Boy (Taylor-Wood, UK/Canada 2009): A polished period piece as decidedly British as they come. I have certainly seen better films in 2010 but this one will stay in my memory. After all, how could I resist a film about John Lennon’s youth, no matter how modest in scope?
• Precious (Daniels, USA 2009): An emotional bulldozer that hits all the right notes. Gabourey Sidibe proves that a great actress is able to avoid the victim-trap even with a character that has to endure an almost preposterous amount of adversities.
• Shutter Island (Scorsese, USA 2010): Scorsese even succeeds when reworking the 50s genre pictures he adores so much. Call it unfocused, even weak in comparison to his “auteur” projects, but it was one hell of a ride with a perfect soundtrack.
• A single man (Ford, USA 2009): Can a western director succeed in bringing Wong Kar-Wai's style to a literary adaptation? A few lapses aside, yes, if he is fashion designer Tom Ford.
• Winter’s Bone (Granik, USA 2010): Gut-wrenching, bone-chilling – this year’s Shotgun Stories, just stronger and from a female point of view. Lead actress Jennifer Lawrence is a natural.

What remains on the cutting floor
The Kids are all right, A serious man, and The Social Network almost made the list. Fantastic Mr. Fox is not included because I had to see it a second time to fully enjoy and appreciate it, so I went for Sylvain Chomet’s film instead. But why only one animated feature in a list of ten films? First of all, I wasn’t overwhelmed by any animated film this year like I was by Mary and Max, Ratatouille or Spirited Away in previous years.

The Toy Story 3 screening was ruined by several factors, so I can’t say much about that. Tangled was better than expected and far above last year’s The Princess and The Frog. The storytelling was floweing seamlessly, the zip-style animation was limited to a horse acting like a dog – which was surprisingly funny. All in all, it was a successful return to the tightly structured 90s features like Beauty and the Beast. The problem is that it’s just not the kind of picture I would want to see or the direction I would want a once inventive studio to take. Not that I have anything against fairy tales or screwball comedies along the lines of It Happened One Night. But frankly, I don’t need to see an average American teenager stumble through a set that looks like it was inspired by Disneyland, no matter how beautiful and impressive the animation – and believe me, it is impressive. Since they get the teenager characterization so right, why not do a story taking place in a real 2010 environment?

The good news is that I actually liked large parts of a Dreamworks feature: Hadn’t it been for the tedious action scenes, How to train your dragon could have been a masterpiece. I’m sure, the core relationship between the boy and his dragon would have been strong enough to carry the whole film. The other thing I liked was the fact that the final battle had a lasting effect on the boy. Why these films always resort to a scene where the hero is assumed to be dead remains a mystery to me, though.

Expanding the back catalogue
When I wrote about Italian cinema last year, I wouldn’t have thought that a year later I’d write about the same subject again. Then the musical Nine made me wish to see Otto e mezzo (1963) again. Not only was my wish granted, I was even given the opportunity of presenting it in a public screening. While the Fellini are part of the cinema italiano I've known for a long time – the director driven art house branch beginning with Rosselini and Neorealismo and ending with Antonioni, Visconti and Bertolucci – Scorsese opened my eyes for the vital tradition of purely entertaining screen comedies of the 50s, 60s and early 70s by directors like Dino Risi and Ettore Scola. Last summer, I finally saw some of these films and I’ve become addicted to them ever since.

After seeing Otto e mezzo several times, Marcello Mastroianni was already my new favorite actor. But I only discovered his immense range of expressions in films like Dramma della gelosia (Scola, 1970) or Divorzio all’italiana (Germi, 1961), two gems I’d watch again anytime.

Another great discovery of 2010 was Swedish director Jan Troell, especially his monumental two-part emigrant saga Utvandrarna (1971) and Nybyggarna (1972) about a poor family who leaves Sweden to settle down in Minnesota. Doing his own (hand) camera work, Troell achieves a level of realism that transcends even Terrence Malick’s similar undertaking in The New World (2005). I don’t think I have ever seen such an intimate saga completely devoid of sentimentality or any insight into the characters inner life. The slowly paced experience takes a little less than seven hours but is worth every minute. Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann act like forces of nature in their struggle against the harsh realities of a farmer's life.

The Secret of Kells in New York and festival previews

Once in a while I get e-mails from animation festival promoters asking me to post previews and entry deadlines on my blog. Rooftop Films, to pick just one example, have many a New York City event I’d want readers to know about. As much as I appreciate being informed of animation events however, most often I’m too slow or do not have time to write other posts than the ones I’m already working on. I apologize for that. In addition, I try to keep the industry and festival news to a minimum as there are better informed sites around the internet.

Every now and then, like right now, posting festival previews just fits into the schedule. So, without further ado:

• New York based Rooftop Films among other things is showing independent movies in outdoor locations. TODAY (July 14th, 2010) they are screening The Secret of Kells (Tomm Moore/Nora Twomey, 2009) in the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City!
  
  Although my expectations were a bit too high, this Irish Cartoon Saloon feature is certainly worth seeing, especially since admission is FREE. Details can be found here.
  
  On Thursday, July 15th, Rooftop has a joint birthday party with other New York City independent cinema organisations indieWIRE and Snag Films.

• The New York Television Festival 2010 will be held Sept 20-25 in New York City. It has been described as the industry’s first recognized festival for independent television. The deadline for the “Independent Pilot Competition” has already passed by, but there seems to be a lot to see at the festival itself. Check it out here.

• In Autumn 2010 (there doesn’t seem to be a precise date yet) the 5th International Fest of Contemporary animation & media-art LINOLEUM will take place in Moscow (Russia).
  
  Submission deadline for animated films is August 30th, 2010. According to the press release ‘the works are accepted without any strict thematic limitation, but under the common title “Full Recovery” ‘. The films (created no earlier than 2009 and not previously shown in Russia) are to be sent in on DVD, not length limits.
  
  For more information, click here (and then click on “ENGLISH” upper left corner).

• The Canadian Quickdraw Animation Society is organizing the GIRAF (Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival): Independent Animation Festival in Calgary, Nov 3-7, 2010.
  
  GIRAF is specialized in independent animation, "with a focus on experimental and self-produced animated film. GIRAF plays an essential role in the promotion, education and appreciation of independent animation from around the world, exposing hungry local audiences to the best animated content from at home and abroad.
  
  Submission deadline for films August 2nd, 2010.

Allegro Non Troppo on the Big Screen

If you're living in the area of Zurich, Switzerland, don't miss this event:

Bruno Bozzetto's Fantasia parody Allegro Non Troppo will be screened twice this December:

Monday, 07.12.2009 at 6:15pm and
Saturday 12.12.2009 at 3pm

at the Filmpodium in Zürich.

Annecy 2009

This year’s festival didn’t have as many great events as last year’s, but the short film competition, which to me is the heart of such a festival, was quite strong. In other words: despite the lack of fresh air in the auditorium and an overkill of short films, I didn’t fall asleep as often as in previous years during these programs. Overall the shorts were highly entertaining, with some inflated platitudes and even less really thoughtful pieces. Though I liked a lot of the films, I couldn’t name one outstanding favorite. Despite that, I was quite surprised about some of the short film awards as they were predictable but not justified in my opinion (Man in the blue Gordini, Slavar) or simply puzzling (Please Say Something).

As Serge Bromberg, Annecy’s artistic director, said in his introduction speech: the audience is the most important ingredient in any successful festival. Seeing any movie in the packed Grande Salle du Bonlieu is an indescribable experience. The crowd seems to be so willing to embrace whatever is put in front of them that even mediocre films are greeted like major events. The traditional pre-show ritual consisting of throwing paper planes to the screen, a clap-along trailer and a different Gobélin intro for each day never fails to bring down the house already before the main attraction starts.

The most interesting films were clearly in the feature category. There may not have been such a breath of fresh air like Sita sings the Blues, but of the nine features I have seen, my favorite four have been stop motion films, that - with the exception of Coraline - didn’t follow genre conventions even though they succeeded in telling emotionally engaging stories. There seems to be a general assumption that animated features, even so-called daring ones like Wall-E and Up, have to follow the American blockbuster formula, no matter what content or target audience. This may be economically justified because of the high costs of big studio animation and thus the need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of all audience groups. But what bothers me most is that this development isn’t even questioned by top critics like Todd McCarthy. If it’s animation it has to follow the action film pattern. And although most of the big studio features have more in common with live-action blockbuster than cartoons, their problems and inconsistencies are overlooked as long as what is on the screen looks like a labor of love.

Well, Australia of all countries has proven this assumption wrong. Emotional payoff can be gracefully achieved without villains and the mandatory chase/action sequence near the end of the movie. In fact, 9.99$ and Mary and Max demonstrate that animated features can tackle subjects and styles more common to independent art house movies and still make you laugh and cry (in the case of Mary and Max).

9.99$ as most of you already know by now is a “large city film” focused on characters rather than story. Its episodic structure is based on short stories by Etgar Keret with intersecting characters. In short, Tatia Rosenthal’s 9.99$ is a film about real people struggling to break out of their mediocrity. It can be argued that this is something far better suited to live-action and that there are already many films that fit the pattern. It is the kind of film Robert Altman, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu and in Australia Ray Lawrence (Lantana, Jindabyne) have become associated with. For the first half hour I wondered why they made a puppet film out of it, even though the moody sets and lighting had a lot going for them. The puppets still looked somehow stilted and awkward at times, but the voice acting carried a lot of the performance (that’s saying a lot, considering that I usually believe that voice actors are terribly overrated). But the more fantastical elements of the story - it does include a recurring angel and talking chairs - blended in more naturally this way than they would have with real actors. After all, I never grow tired of seeing how ordinary people cope with life’s adversities and I can’t recall having seen it in an animated feature recently. (On a side note: why Monsters vs. Aliens was shown in competition but 9.99$ wasn’t, remains a mystery to me).

But for me (and the jury) the real winner was Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max telling the story of unlikely pen pals Mary Daisy Dinkle, an 8 year old Australian, and 44 year old autistic Max Jerry Horovitz from New York. Premise and unappealing character design may look very similar to Elliot’s long short Harvey Krumpet, but execution and storytelling are light years ahead of it. It has everything, gags, brilliant music, smooth animation, zany subtleties and most of all heart. Real heart, never sentimental, but deeply touching, you cannot watch this movie without a lump in your throat. And yes, it cost only about 8 million Australian dollars.
Apart from some small parts by Toni Collette, Philipp Seymour Hoffmann and some others, most of the film is carried by a wonderful narrator. Although the subject matter is clearly adult, it doesn’t have to rely on offensive imagery.

I was a little afraid of the new Wallace and Gromit adventure, because I feared that Nick Park may have lost his touch with those most beloved characters. No need to worry, though. While the formula is showing, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The W&G shorts have always depended on atmospheric tongue-in-cheek storytelling where the spectator and silent Gromit are ahead of Wallace. They may talk a little more this time, but my favourite scenes are still the ones where we see Gromit’s thought process through a minimum of animation. The dog has once again saved the day.

And then there was Lost and Found by Philipp Hunt, a real gem. I had to sit through a heap of unbearable TV episodes and specials just to see this story about friendship, and it was worth every minute. What Mary and Max is to adult animation, Lost and Found is to the family audience. It’s hard to believe that such a heart warming film has been given the green light in a environment. Come to think of it, Lost and Found was the only 3D animation I’ve liked in the whole festival.

And there was the other 3D, a.k.a TruD, RealD, stereoscopic vision etc. There have been stereoscopic projections before in Annecy, but this year, 3D took center stage with four movies released that way. I have managed to see all of those in the Grande Salle except for the Nightmare Before Christmas which I have already seen in 3D. While it worked very well for Coraline, which by the way is the first film I can’t imagine in any other format, Monsters vs. Aliens was less impressive and The Battle for Terra was outright terrible (nice message, bad execution), also due to projection errors. The two computer animated features showcased all the deficiencies of digital projection. It’s a pity that all my prejudices against this projection technology were cemented.

The last screening I attended was the Saturday morning “carte blanche” for Jean-Pierre Jeunet which was in his own words more like a “carte grise” (a grey card rather than a white card), because he chose most of the films from a list the festival suggested to him. As a fan of his films I was curious about his personal favorites. The program was solid (nice to see Harvey Krumpet in the context of Mary and Max) but without surprises: nothing unexpected, mostly evergreens that tended towards the dark and quirky as one could expect from the director of films like La Cité des Enfants Perdus / The City of Lost Children (1995).

I asked myself what films I would select if I had to compile a roadshow reel of shorts from a certain festival. Not all of the following shorts are among the most important, some are just plain fun, because I believe that you have to have those very short, funny films as buffers between the heavier ones.

1. Retouches (5:13)
2. Western Spaghetti (1:45)
3. El Empleo (6:19)
4. Runaway (8:40)
5. The Additional Capabilites of the Snout (5:15)
6. Mei Ling (15:36)
7. Tiny Legs of Fire (1:30)
8. The Cat Piano (8:28)
9. Muto (7:00)
10. Syötti (4:32)
11. Birth (11:45)
12. Codswallop (3:40)
13. The Tale of Little Puppetboy (18:35)