Color Poster Triptych 03: backlit silhouettes in yellow and blue

There are quite a few visual similarities between these three posters to widely different movies: the old blue-yellow contrast in its simplest non-cliché form (blue sky, yellow writing), the diffused backlight, the silhouettes of characters wearing at least one yellow piece of clothing, the similar shapes of the two cars and the rooftop. The "landscape", however, is in a different color in each of them (gray, brown, green).

I like all three films quite a lot and recommend them.

Color Poster Triptych 02: Space Faces

The unifying elements here are the blue and red/purple as well as the head-on face illuminated by strong sidelights against a dark background. The colored light on the face and the "spots" connect posters 1 and 2, while in 2 and 3 a hand is involved and we see the circle-framed face through some object. All three suggest a character in a dreamlike outer or inner space/dimension.

The films: UNDER THE SKIN is a must-see for everyone interested in contemporary science-fiction, sound design or film music. THE NEON DEMON is a rather empty style exercise in Dario-Argento-colors and de-Palma-cinemascope about the empty superficiality of the L.A. model business. Or is it science fiction, too? Elle Fanning is intriguing as always. DOCTOR STRANGE is one of the few superhero flicks I enjoyed, mainly because of its mind-blowing kaleidoscopic special effects in 3D.

Color Poster Triptych 01

In an attempt to keep this blog up to date on a more regular basis for the next few months, I will post a series of "color poster triptychs" between the longer, more substantial articles. 

There are only two rules: 1) The three officially released posters (including re-release but not fan-made artwork) within one triptych have to be from different films. The same poster can be part of several triptychs. 2) Their juxtaposition should highlight some aspect of their color design (and composition, if possible). Comment or discussion of these aspects is not necessary but sometimes provided. Sometimes they highlight characteristics of a specific era, genre or target group, sometimes they open up a dialogue between vastly different subjects and storytelling traditions.

So today, enjoy and compare these three rainbows. It would have been easy to put this more similar WIZARD OF OZ video release poster in the middle, but the one from NO with only one head gives the triptych a bit more tension.

Click on the image for larger version

Since the size of actual movie posters is quite important to their impact, it would be fun to do something like this in real life some day. But in the meantime, let's have a look how this develops in digital form.

Video Essays: The Music of LA LA LAND in Context

Final moments of GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH (Chazelle, 2009)

Final moments of WHIPLASH (Chazelle, 2014)

Final moments of LA LA LAND (Chazelle, 2016)

For the last few weeks, Barry Jenkins' masterpiece MOONLIGHT and its inspirations from THREE TIMES (Hou, 2005) and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong, 2000) to KILLER OF SHEEP (1977) were heavily on my mind. And I urge anyone who still has not seen MOONLIGHT to give it a try (around here, it only just hit theaters, in the US it is already available on blu-ray and Netflix, so no excuses there)!

But now to the other greatly deserved - aside from the rather complex issues of whitewashing both L.A. and jazz-saving - awards season darling LA LA LAND, aspects of which I analyzed from mid-December to February: I have finally put together three clips for a soundtrack analysis in Swiss German magazine filmbulletin.ch. The German text (which you can find here) goes far beyond the aspects analyzed in the videos. But since LA LA LAND is still in theaters I have limited myself to officially available tracks and clips. 

I/III A Lovely Night 

The Music of LA LA LAND in Context I/III: A Lovely Night from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

Mia and Sebastian cross paths twice before they finally meet cute like Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (Donen/Kelly, 1952) at a pool party. Despite superficially despising each other, Seb walks Mia to her Toyota Prius. On their way through Griffith Park, Seb subtly segues into a singing about how nice this view at dusk would be if only they were "some other girl and guy" who could appreciate the moment together. After a few seconds, this turns out to be an homage to the mating ritual of Mark Sandrich's RKO musicals with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. The only difference being that when Astaire woos Rogers in their so-called "integrated" (i.e. off stage) musical numbers we accept them to be world class dancers (and suave singers) because we know about their meta personae. LA LA LAND on the other hand follows all the same moves while celebrating the "authentic" by keeping the protagonists' singing and dancing abilities within reach of what these characters (i.e. rehearsed and well-trained amateurs) would be able to do.

Nevertheless, "A Lovely Night" is the only swing induced song and in the "Summer Montage" version also serves as an ideal example of how Damien Chazelle stages jazz performances. In all his films, Chazelle depicts jazz as an extension of his male protagonist's mindset. And for nonverbal jazz dialogue scenes he likes to use the "jazz whip", a whip pan back and forth between musical dialogue partners.

II/III The Melancholy of Michel Legrand 

The Music of LA LA LAND in Context II/III: The Melancholy of Michel Legrand from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

Writer-director Damien Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz have repeatedly expressed their adoration for Jacques Demy's French new wave musicals LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG (1963) and LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT (1967). Apart from direct references to the overarching structure of PARAPLUIES and the opening dance sequence from DEMOISELLES, Hurwitz' music is very much influenced by Michel Legrand whose scores for Demy are impregnated with his trademark cheerful melancholy. Legrand usually builds his easy listening arrangements out of a tight jazz rhythm section with piano and vibes that is overlaid with a romantic orchestra, woodwind solos and sometimes a big band. In this second video I focus on some of the more straight forward influences on Hurwitz' music*. 

III/III Internal Monologue 

The Music of LA LA LAND in Context III/III: Interior Monologue from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

The deliberate artificiality of movie musicals allows for storytelling devices that go beyond dialogue scenes. Instead of voice-over monologuing, characters often sing about their innermost feelings and worries. One particular genre convention is the interior monologue after a protagonist has fallen in love. In WEST SIDE STORY, Tony belts out Maria's name in expectant ecstasy, for example. In many movie musicals, however, these songs feel like guarded introspective questions brought forth in a seamless transition from dialogue to song, often in a solitary or indifferent environment. By means of a clip from Stanley Donen's FUNNY FACE (1957, a film that LA LA LAND literally references in the epilogue) where Audrey Hepburn sings in her own natural voice - as opposed to the trained voice of Marni Nixon who dubbed all her singing in MY FAIR LADY (Cukor, 1964) - we see how Chazelle and Hurwitz adapt this musical staple into "It Happened at Dawn" (GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH, 2009) and "City of Stars". Despite the superficially obvious difference between Sebastian's "City of Stars" and Mia's "Someone in the Crowd" the two interior monologue songs share surprisingly similar structural elements. And considering the duet version of "City of Stars", both songs express a solitary as well as an exuberant collective version of the same interior feeling. 

* In my opinion, Hurwitz' personal style of arranging and orchestrating is also heavily influenced by Danny Troob's orchestrations of Alan Menken's 1990s Disney scores.

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).