CIFF 2009 preview, part II

Euro Delight




My Only Sunshine (2009, Turkey, Reha Erdem)

My Only Sunshine has a beautiful visual language and is probably one of the best shot films of 2009. However, the film’s story is not as strong as that of Erdem’s previous feature, Times and Winds. Still, the stunning cinematography makes this film a treasure to cherish.

Link:Istanbul festival report.

Birdsong (2008, Spain, Albert Serra)

Serra’s leisurely paced film can either be a truly rewarding experience or a painful one. With high expectations from this feature, I let the gorgeous black and white images take over and went along for an absorbing ride. Once the absurdity of the character’s behavior became apparent, then watching them fumble their way through the desert was a humorous experience. It is essential to have the film in black and white because that allows one to pay attention to the characters and forget about the surroundings. This point is demonstrated by the documentary, Waiting for Sancho, where we get to see each locale in its original color and then can compare those shots to the black and white footage. If the film were not in black and white, then the rich colorful surroundings of Tenerife would have dwarfed the three main characters and the film would have lost its impact.

Can go Through Skin (2009, Holland, Esther Rots)

After a traumatic experience, Marieke leaves the city and moves to the country side to rebuild her life. But as per the title and the saying that some things can get under one’s skin, Marieke is unable to bury her past and alternates between fantasy and reality. The film leaves it up to the audience to decide what scenes are real and what are fabricated, although there are some clues as to which direction things are going. This is a stunning debut feature film by Esther Rots that lets the audience get inside the head of Marieke with a dazzling technical package (cinematography, editing) that contain tight close-ups of Marieke and objects directly in her line of sight, thereby giving us an idea of which objects trigger negative and fearful emotions in her. The sense of space that the camera uses is quite amazing and one can understand how Marieke’s environment is crushing her or when she is finally starting to breathe again.

Mid-August Lunch (2008, Italy, Gianni Di Gregorio)

Full credit to Gianni Di Gregorio for making such a delightful film about a topic that may not seem appealing on first glance (“middle aged man taking care of his mother”). Even more remarkable is the fact that Gianni Di Gregorio & producer Matteo Garrone’s previous venture was Gomorra (directed by Garrone and co-written by Di Gregorio). It seems that after working on a hard hitting gangster film, the best remedy for the duo was to pour their energy into this charming appetizing film which is likely to work up an appetite with the loving scenes of food preparation.

Sight & Sound’s interview with Gianni Di Gregorio.
Sight & Sound’s review of the film which gives away plot details.

Boy meets girl...but this is not a love story

500 Days of Summer (2009, USA, Mark Webb): 8/10

Love, Fate, Destiny. Words which are used quite a bit. Especially love. Many films claim to be a "love story" without ever understanding what love is. 500 Days of Summer doesn’t make that claim. In fact, the narrator at the film’s start makes it clear that "this is not a love story." So what is the film about then? Boy sees girl. Boy thinks he is in love with girl. Boy and Girl date. Girl still feels nothing. Boy is crushed, heart-broken. And then, only then, boy wakes up.

Some of the best "boy meets girl" tales are when a writer injects their personal experience into the mix. This is because valuable lessons are only learned when one is forced to look within for answers after a heart break. And sometimes, one needs time to understand what a coincidence means or what fate is really indicating. Sometimes meeting a person isn’t the end goal of fate, but that person is simply a marker which will ultimately point towards "the one". Such is the case in 500 Days of Summer.

And what comes after summer? Autumn, ofcourse!

CIFF 2009 preview, part I

The full line-up for CIFF is out. This year marks the 10th anniversary of CIFF and the line-up is the strongest ever. A new competition category this year is the Mavericks. All 10 films in this category should be noteworthy but I can only comment on the 4 gems that I have seen.

Be Calm and Count to Seven (2009, Iran, Ramtin Lavafipour)

This stunning debut film can take one’s breath away with its poetic beauty. The opening scenes feature fast boats landing on the beach, followed immediately by burqa covered women running and unloading the goods off the boats and disappearing into the mud houses. We only learn later on in the film what the contents of those bags are but both the contents and act of smuggling are minor details. The most important aspect of this film is observing the way of life on a tiny beautiful island in the Persian Gulf.

If the character’s didn’t speak Farsi, then I would have placed this film to be shot in either Yemen or North Africa due to the setting in a fishing village by the ocean. In fact, the film reminded me most of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness because of the theme of characters waiting to cross the ocean to seek a better life. But this is a completely refreshing work that exudes life in every frame.

Everyone Else (2009, Germany, Maren Ade)

A fascinating look at how professional competition (architecture in the film's case) can put an already fragile relationship under more stress. The film has a slow start and at first it is not clear what the issues in the relationship are but gradually as we get to see more of the couple's behaviour, the problems become clearer and the film catches fire. But it is not an open inferno but a slow burn which eventually leads to an implosion and not an explosion. It is credit to Maren Ade that the film does not resort to melodrama but instead lets the body language of the actor's do most of the talking. The rawness and honesty of the couple’s relationship is unlike anything seen on film in the last decade.

Karaoke (2009, Malaysia, Chris Chong Chan Fui)

This beautifully shot film attains a level of beauty normally associated with the cinema of Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Plus, the film’s structure of two inter-related parts has shades of Tropical Malady. One segment of Karaoke appropriately takes place inside a Karaoke bar and the other is in the beautiful Malaysian country side where the Karaoke videos are shot. There are two memorable moments where the camera moves freely and one can truly breathe in the atmosphere. The first such free movement comes in the opening 15 minutes of the film as the camera shows the diverse ethnic make-up of Malaysia by listening in on snippets of conversations taking place at the different tables. The different ethnic groups in Malaysia (Malay, Chinese and Indian) don’t always get along and one can sense that distrust by the few observable moments at the film’s start. The second free movement takes place near the film’s end when the camera stops following a character and drifts into the jungle to show some truly mesmerizing sights.

Fish Eyes (2009, Korea/China, Zheng Wei)

Zheng Wei makes an impressive debut with this well shot film that does not burden the screen with needless dialogue. The minimalist style works to perfection here and this film is another example of the impressive Chinese films being made in the last few years. The film’s style evokes memories of another wonderful Chinese/Korean co-production, Grain in Ear, that showed at CIFF a few years ago.

Quinglorious Tartare

Inglourious Basterds (2009, USA/Germany/France, Quentin Tarantino)

A WWII fantasy comedic drama in 5 chapters.

Chapter One: "Once Upon a time...in Nazi occupied France.."

Beautiful French country side. A French farmer. A german solider. French dialogues, english subtitles. Glass of milk. “Bravo”. Language switches to english. Where are they hiding? Rat-a-tat. Gun shots. One girl is allowed to escape.

Haaaaa...haaaa..the laugh of evil.

Chapter Two: Inglourious Basterds

Gang of men. Killing is all they do. But since Eli Roth is playing one of the men doing the killing, there has to be an element which will fit nicely within Roth’s Hostel films.

Chapter Three: German night in Paris

This chapter is dedicated entirely to the cinephile. Talk of German directors and even the propaganda cinema that existed under the Nazis. And a brief lesson to spoon feed audiences about nitrate film.

Chapter Four: Operation Kino

Mike Myers makes a brief appearance and delivers his few dialogues with the same dramatic pause that Austin Powers would. And a film critic character is introduced. Hmm.

Tavern in Nadine. Laughter. Das Boot filled with beer. All merry. But the accent throws things off. The film critic comes to the rescue but the lying can’t go on for too long. Gunshots. Rat-a-tat.

Chapter Five:

Lady in Red. Cue music. Revenge. Burn. Bullets.

Before fade to black: "I think this just might be my masterpiece".

---

Majority of the critics and Tarantino’s fans will probably nod their heads in agreement at those words. For the few critics who disagree, well Tarantino lets us know what fate he would like a film critic to get as per the example in his movie. And if there are audience members who don’t agree with Tarantino’s gospel, the fans boys will take care of them, as I found out when I dared to suggest that Tarantino should have edited Kill Bill 2 a bit more. The angry abuse I got suggested his fans believe that every scene he shoots is the greatest and all the dialogue in his film drips with intelligence. There is no doubt that Tarantino can write great snappy dialogue and he knows how to shoot a scene, but that does not mean that every scene should be present in his movie especially if it does not contribute to the overall structure of the film. Why are writers, be it short story, novel or screenplay, asked to re-write and edit repeatedly? Because abstract or intelligent ideas may be great on their own but sometimes they don’t contribute anything to the overall work. If every director was allowed to have all their favourite scenes in a film, then each film would be longer than 3 hours. But Tarantino is allowed a greater degree of self-indulgence than other film-makers. The harsh opening lines of this review for The Fall by Ed Gonzalez come to mind as an example. Gonzalez blasted Tarsem for being self-indulgent. Yet whatever Tarsem did fit within the framework of his film’s structure but his usage of exotic locales & props were slammed for being selfish. Tarantino does not do locales but uses his dialogue as a canvas for his inner ideas. Gonzalez does not have such harsh words for Basterds but his opening line from The Fall's review could easily apply here as there are plenty of self-indulgent scenes in Basterds (and in all Tarantino movies for that matter) which don’t fit within the film's framework.

The overall framework of Basterds is a beautiful French language film garnished with a bit of German and Italian. Tarantino should get a lot of credit for keeping his film mostly non-english as that gives it a wonderful atmosphere. And his overindulgent dialogues are toned down a bit thanks to Christoph Waltz, who does a brilliant job in expressing Tarantino’s words and is a delight to watch. Unfortunately at times the French film is almost squeezed over by a Kill Bill style movie complete with dramatic soundtrack, bold yellow titles, colorful background introduction of some characters and quick cuts to spoon feed audiences or to add humour. Brad Pitt is fun to watch but I wish there was a way to have Pitt’s character included within the framework of the French film and not be pushed aside along with Eli Roth in an almost separate segment, even if that segment is not longer than 30 minutes. The counter argument is that if this second style movie didn’t exist, then Basterds would have had trouble in getting marketed to North American audiences; the weaker english language film is probably needed to support the superior French language film otherwise the overall movie might have ended up in art house theaters and not in multiplexes.

Rating: 7.5/10

Even though Kill Bill, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds are original movies, they are works which are completely aware of other film genres and movies. Part of the joy in watching these films is to see how they build up on past films and incorporate newer elements while remaining completely unique and fresh. It wouldn’t surprize me if Tarantino will put his unique imprint on another genre next. But I am waiting to see if Tarantino will go back and make a unique genre free film again, a film free of the past.

District 9: 1.8 million 'prawns' in a slum

District 9 (2009, South Africa/New Zealand, Neill Blomkamp): 10/10

District 9 is a rare thing -- an intelligent sci-fi alien film with plenty of political and social observations packaged as a fun summer movie.

Sci-fi aware

The film starts off with a voice-over explaining that an alien spaceship didn’t stop over New York City, but surprisingly came to a halt over Johannesburg. This is clearly a reference towards films like Independence Day or other Hollywood films which believe that aliens would somehow only stop over America.

The basis of some sci-fi movies in the past was that aliens were kept in Area 51 and government/military personnel used alien technology to develop weapons. District 9 also picks up on this idea and expands it to depict private military contractors wanting to harness the power of advanced alien weapons. Given the rise of private military contractors around the world, the film is properly updated.

Segregation, Refugees and border issues

The setting of the film in South Africa and the director’s interview has focused most of the attention on apartheid but District 9 achieves a lot more than that as it highlights the problem that refugees face in temporary camps when they cross a border. In the film, the alien population is forced to live in slums with substandard conditions, the same treatment that refugees who cross boundaries in Africa or Asia face. On top of that, the social hierarchy shown in the camps is modeled on real life people who take advantage of refugees living in camps.

Another interesting point is depicted by the character of the alien child born and raised in District 9. The alien child asks his father what their planet is like and wants to go home even though he has never seen his home planet. Scores of refugee children are born in camps far away from their home nations and hardly get a chance to ever return to their homeland. As a result, an entire generation (or two) of people have no concept of understanding their roots and have to depend on stories or the rare picture of their homeland (a hologram stands in for a photo in District 9).

The genesis of hatred and genocide

One key ingredient for genocide is when one group of people dehumanizes another group and considers the other group unworthy of living. In District 9 that concept is shown at face value as the tall, skinny and underfed aliens are the object of hatred of their neighbours. The sentiments of the people who live around District 9 indicates that if the South African government does not act to move the aliens, then something far more dangerous would likely take place.

Cruel humans

In a twist on the regular Hollywood alien film template, District 9 shows that if aliens did land on earth, then it would be humans who would do more harm to the aliens than the other way around. Given the messed up carnage that has taken place over the last few decades, it is entirely believable that humans would be far more evil when dealing with aliens. Once again, the film is appropriately updated.

Action...

There are some action sequences in the film but they are nicely integrated in the story and do not cause the film to halt for mindless 20 minutes of explosive situations. The finale action scene takes place in the same slums that the rest of the film is shot in thereby making the action scene an inevitable consequence of the forces brewing in the camps. Plus, the action scenes do not include any silly cuts to generate humour (like Spider Man 3 or even Dark Knight) but are completely focused on the task at hand.

Overall...

District 9 brilliantly proves that it is possible to make an intelligent action/sci-fi film without loud explosions or a brain dead script. If strong word of mouth enables the film to make more money, a sequel would follow. And the sequel will surely be called District 10.

Question: What happens when you put 1.8 million 'prawns' in a slum?

Answer: You get a brilliant film called District 9!!!

Just returned from the midnight screening of District 9 and I am very very impressed. Hollywood should take note on how to make a smart yet enjoyable movie. I hope this film does well than certain other Hollywood trash that has made oodles of cash this summer.

Will write more about the film in coming days but for now only one complaint about the movie's usage of subtitles. Whenever the black characters in District 9 speak perfectly audible english, their words are subtitled. Yet when the white characters speak English in a South African accent, then no subtitles. Although I have a feeling that this decision might be made by someone other than the director as I have seen similar usage in quite a few documentaries where there are subtitles when the non-white characters speak English.

Public Enemies

A Michael Mann film is always an event to look forward to but I was more keen to see how the Sony F23 HD camera would be used to depict a 1930’s gangster film, a genre that does not offer too much in the way of story variance. The story of Public Enemies is mostly atypical of the genre -- gangsters rob banks and split the loot to spend the cash on women and drinks while the cops hire their best to hunt the outlaws down. A love interest and strong opposing characters complete the story. But still, within a confined template there are plenty of moments where time stops and one can enjoy the scene for what it is. There is one amazing scene where the wanted criminal John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) audaciously walks into the police station department that is planning his arrest. The bright sunlight shines on his face which bears a confident smirk and he causally lowers his sunglasses to examine the evidence gathered against him and even has a word with a few policemen who are listening to the baseball game on the radio. The natural sunlight and pacing of the scene may be at odds with the rest of the film’s dark look but this scene highlights Dillinger’s confident personality and need for fame, be it from the police or even the media, as some other scenes attest with close-up of his eyes.

Overall, Mann’s style and usage of the camera prevents the film from being another run of the mill Hollywood gangster flick. There are some moments where the film is alive as the rich images flood the screen (example: in some scenes, the gunfire literally sets the screen on fire). The close-ups combined with the speed of the camera give a documentary feel and one forgets that Public Enemies is a 1933 period film.

In previous Mann films such as Miami Vice, Collateral and The Insider, there were plenty of ‘cool’ scenes with either a bluish or greenish tint. In Public Enemies there isn’t any such bluish tinting but instead natural sunlight or minimal lighting is used to light up most scenes. The police station scene would qualify as the patent Mann cool scene in Public Enemies. Plus, Diana Krall’s beautiful voice lends a jazzy touch to the film.

---

Next up: I am curious to see how the Red Digital Camera’s usage would make District 9 different from other alien films.

Drafting a journey in pictures...

Graphic novels are certainly being used in brilliant and fascinating ways nowadays. Case in point, The Photographer. This is an interesting mix of real photos (black and white with one color picture), comic-book art and excerpts from a diary to convey the true story of Didier Lefevre who traveled to Afghanistan in 1986 to follow Doctors Without Borders. Didier's photos are rich and beautiful. And reading his travelogue/non-fiction work in the form of a graphic novel complete with his photos makes for a very rewarding experience.

note: one of the best pictures in the collection (page 74) is not available on the website and features Didier capturing a raft just leaving shore with two passengers and a donkey as passengers.

To Show or not to Show, that is the film festival question.

A screening of the film The 10 Conditions of Love ran into some problems at the Melbourne film festival: Chinese government officials had demanded that Australia "immediately correct its wrongdoings" by canceling the screening and Ms. Kadeer’s visa. When those requests were ignored, the Chinese government threatened on Friday to sever Melbourne’s sister-city ties with the Chinese city of Tianjin. Seven Chinese-language films from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan were withdrawn, their directors saying the festival had become too politicized. But that was not all. Zhou Yu, a 24-year-old computer programmer from Nanjing, said he hacked into the festival’s Web site and defaced it with a Chinese flag to defend his country’s honor. "The government’s protests were useless," he said by e-mail. "It’s patriotic to use my own skills as a common citizen to fight back." Mr. Zhou said that while he had not seen "The 10 Conditions of Love," he believed the film was factually inaccurate. “This movie distorts history, confuses and poisons people’s minds and impacts national unity,” he said. His actions have drawn widespread praise from many Chinese, although there seems to be little room for divergent views on the matter. On Kaixin, a popular social-networking Web site here, a recent poll asked visitors to weigh in on Mr. Zhou’s actions but gave only two choices: "support" and "super support." Now, this guy had not seen the film but he felt justified in hacking into the festival site. And others who hacked into the site prevented access to all the other films showing at the festival. Clearly, none of those people have any idea into how much work goes into setting up a film festival. Reading this brought back some memories: 

In 2007, the Vancouver Film Festival was programmed to show Hu Jie's film Though I am Gone?. I had initially seen an entry for the film on VIFF's website but when I clicked on the film title, there was no info. I figured it was a typo and there was no such film. My belief was confirmed a few days later when the film disappeared from the festival's website and was not mentioned in the program. But I later learned that the film was indeed shown. Since I had originally seen the film title on the website, I know that the festival made sure there was no trace of the film to be found anywhere later on. Self censorship or induced censorship? or both? 

Getting a film to show at any film festival is never easy. There are many many hours of negotiations and programming that goes into getting a film to show. And even after the film is confirmed, further problems can arise due to prints not arriving on time or technical problems with the projector. I have had to get on stage to explain the technical difficulties with a film and have also refunded money to frustrated audience members due to a faulty projector. Neither was a fun task. But why would hackers care for any of this? So easy to bring a festival website down and ruin hours of volunteer work that people have done? But hey, who watches movies at film festivals anyhow? :) Don't critics debate the merit of film festivals every year? So if the government didn't protest, maybe this film would have shown at the Melbourne festival and disappeared. But now, this is news. Sort of. The bottom line is every film festival is always criticized every year, sometimes for the film it books and sometimes for the film it does not book. But no one dares to shout at a multiplex for continuing to show cinematic trash week in, week out. Hmmm..

Solving problems, one bomb at a time

The Hurt Locker (2008, USA, Kathryn Bigelow): 9.5/10

Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker isn’t a war movie even though it is set in a war zone. It is a film about problem solving, with the problems being either diffusing bombs or taking out enemy snipers. In fact, the best moments of the film are when the soldiers are shown in the middle of their problem solving exercises which require zen like concentration. The soldiers don’t have any time for pondering about the meaning of life or questioning the war’s motives or even to pause and stare at death head on; the dangerous situations require them to tune everything else out and only focus on the ticking bomb or enemy in the line of sight.

One of the film's best sequences takes place during a long and patiently shot sniper scene in the desert. The sequence shows how even a soldier’s breathing or heart beat could make him miss a long range target. Plus, the camera angles brilliantly show the scene from the sniper’s perspective and at no point does the camera switch over to a close up of the target. This technique allows one to get a sense of the difficulty in adjusting for the depth and range of the target and the concentration required. Normally, other films handle similar sniper scenes by first showing the good guys aiming for the enemy and then immediately having the next shot show a close up of the enemy being shot. As a result, one never gets a sense of the target’s range.

The Hurt Locker does incorporate other aspects of the soldier’s lives complete with macho games and punk rock music, things one has come to expect from films set in war zones. Thankfully the film does not waste too much time on the soldier’s drinking and whoring aspects which are supposed to take the edge off from the death defying tasks at hand. Not every thread is tied up in The Hurt Locker and that allows one to get a sense of the confusion and hazy information that the soldiers have to deal with, especially when the soldiers can’t speak the local language. There are some clues which allow the audience to identify some of the men who are observing and planning further bombings but overall, the film is not concerned with a typical Hollywood style happy ending where the enemy is rounded up at the end.

Easily one of the best films of the year and if this film is not nominated for a best feature in the 10 available slots at next year’s Academy awards, then there is something seriously wrong. I really doubt there are 10 better American movies than The Hurt Locker which are yet to be released in the next 4-5 months.

Third time unlucky...

About 4 years ago, Imtiaz Ali’s Socha Na Tha was a breath of fresh air in the over recycled Bollywood love story arena. While Socha Na Tha was a love triangle, it really stood apart from other such films in two ways -- firstly, by exploring the friendship aspect that precedes some relationships and secondly by showcasing how Indian marriages are really a union of two families. In Socha Na Tha one guy’s indecision about a girl throws three families in disarray and stress. The dialogues and characters were wonderfully etched out and avoided the stereotypes that most Bollywood films resort to.

And then came along Jab We Met in 2007.

I originally passed up on the film figuring it to be another love story. But after constant urging by family and friends, I gave in and was rewarded with a wonderful film. Kareena Kapoor’s acting and the witty dialogues livened up the film and made Jab We Met one of the best Bollywood films of 2007.

I hardly watch a film more than once but I enjoyed both Socha Na Tha & Jab We Met so much that I have seen each film atleast 3-4 times. So my expectations were a bit raised about Imtiaz Ali’s third feature Love Aaj Kal.

Since I had delayed seeing his first two films by a few months, I decided to tackle Love Aaj Kal right on opening night (July 31) just in case the third feature was on par with his previous efforts.

Unfortunately, Love Aaj Kal was a painful experience to endure and turned out to be two wasted hours. The film is about a guy’s indecision (Jai played by Saif Ali Khan) about marrying a girl (Meera played by Deepika Padukone) but unlike in Socha Na Tha, the guy does not have a second girl to make things difficult but has his career and life standing in the way. The story has some merit but it is executed very poorly. A few moments in the film do give a glimpse on how this could have been a better work but everything is treated in the lazy manner that plagues most Bollywood films -- careers are treated as excuses to shoot scenes in scenic locales, pointless songs crop up for no reason, technically poor framed shots which focus on un-necessary details thereby distracting from the principle focal points, etc.

It is clear that Love Aaj Kal has a bigger budget than Imtiaz Ali’s two previous efforts which were shot entirely in India -- Love Aaj Kal ventures to London & San Francisco besides having some moments in Calcutta and Delhi. And it appears that the bigger budget has come with the usual bad trademarks of Bollywood films shot abroad. I can only hope that Imtiaz Ali sets his next film in India and focuses more on the screenplay rather than flashy locales.

5 years on...

pic: MikeHewitt/GettyImages, soccernet

If Kolo Toure is indeed on his way out from Arsenal, then that would mean that the last remaining starter of the "invincibles" team would be gone.

The 2003/04 Arsenal team: Lehmann, Lauren, Campbell, Keown, Toure, Cole, Cygan, Parlour, Edu, Vieira, Gilberto, Ljungberg, Pires, Henry, Bergkamp, Reyes, Kanu, Wiltord

Ofcourse, majority of the core 2003/04 team were dispatched in less than 3 years. In the 5 years since 2004, Arsenal have gone from being the best team in Europe to an average team in England. And after Gilberto and Lehmann left in the summer of 2008, Kolo became the sole surviving member from that great team (note: Clichy was a sub in the 03/04 season). Now, admittedly Kolo was not the same player as he once was but there was always the hope that if the going got tough, Kolo could have gathered the young guns around the fire and told them stories about the glory days.

On another note, I started this blog just over 5 years ago, just 5 days before Arsenal achieved history by going through their 38 game season unbeaten. How time flies....

Martel vs Alonso

The first leg: Los Muertos vs La ciénaga

I first read about a comparison between the two Argentine film-makers Lisandro Alonso and Lucrecia Martel in 2008 when their new works were doing the rounds in the film festival circuit. It seemed that some people preferred the style of one over the other. My only familiarity with either director was restricted to just one film, Alonso’s Los Muertos and Martel’s La ciénaga (The Swamp). One film is not enough to draw a conclusion. But if I had to give a view based on a solitary work, I would easily give the nod to Alonso. Los Muertos was poetry in motion. A beautiful film where the camera had full freedom to roam about and as a result, the audience could breathe and soak in the environment. Whereas, Martel’s The Swamp was cramped up in familial settings and only started to come to life near the end.

Second Leg: The Headless Woman vs Liverpool

So how would the second round fare? The first 10 minutes of Martel’s The Headless Woman are beautiful but that changes shortly because the main character Veronica is not meant to be adored. This is emphasized by Martel's decision to only focus the camera on Veronica’s face most of the time, even when other people are talking. At other times, the camera is focusing on her side profile or is just behind her shoulder giving us her line of sight. This is done on purpose to show that from Veronica's perspective the people around her not worthy of attention

This is a brilliant stroke from Martel as she wants the audience to experience the sense of dizziness and detachment that Veronica undergoes as a result of an accident early on the film. In addition, her film highlights the class difference in Argentine society as Veronica is well off and treats the constant supply of servants and caregivers around her without much thought. On occasions, the camera blurs out the view of these other characters trying to emphasize that these people are invisible to Veronica.

Overall, The Headless Woman is a much more dynamic and large scale work than The Swamp.

Unfortunately, I can't reach a final decision in the Martel vs Alonso match-up because I am still waiting to see Alonso’s Liverpool. Although if his film is as good as Los Muertos, then for me, Alonso would easily be the winner.

Seeking happiness...

The miserable_man_with_a_troubled_life has certainly provided great fodder for cinema over the decades. Yet, most films don’t try to focus too much on the troubled man’s depressive tendencies for it might make for some strained viewing. Usually, directors add a comedic element or even infuse their work with a hopeful feeling to allow the audience to believe that a new dawn will start in the troubled man’s life.

Even though James Gray’s Two Lovers gives some hope that the troubled main character (Leonard played by Joaquin Phoenix) will finally find happiness, he certainly does not cut any corners in illustrating Leonard's inner struggles.

The film starts off on a low point in Leonard's life and very quickly we learn that his life has had many such low moments because of his parent’s constant worry.

His parents want him to be happy, just any parent would. So they try to fix him with up a girl.

As a result of such an arranged dinner meeting, Leonard meets Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), a sweet charming woman. Sandra is the warm hearted compassionate woman that a guy should marry. But the problem is most men think like Leonard and don’t instantly fall for the Sandra types in their life but instead chase the glittering Michelle lookalikes (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). The audience knows immediately which woman is right for Leonard and which isn’t. But we are given a front row seat to the inner turmoil and anguish that Leonard has to undergo before he can finally come to that decision on his own.


Two Lovers has the same dimly lit atmosphere that Gray’s first feature, Little Odessa, had. That grayish atmosphere works quite well here as it mirrors Leonard’s mood which isn’t too uplifting. One can sense the invisible cloud of misery that hangs over his head constantly, even when he puts on a smile. Joaquin Phoenix has done an amazing job in conveying the inner feelings of Leonard via his expressions -- his face speaks volumes and accordingly the film can afford moments of silence to allow those feelings to be sensed. The screenplay also includes many moments of intimate conversations rarely found amid the modern Hollywood noise. For example, the late night conversation Leonard has with Michelle (who is also his neighbour across the apartment complex) via his cell phone is truly refreshing and is light years away from feeling like scripted cinema.

Awards for everyone..

It was only a matter of time. For year's the Academy Awards had been falsely maintaining a perception that it gave awards to relevant films. But deep down, it truly longed to only award films will popular mass appeal; it longed to nominate films which made millions at the box-office. And with the recent decision that 10 films will be up for a best film nomination, the mask of deception can finally be ripped out. This decision will make sure that a popular film such as The Dark Knight will never be left out of the nominations in the future.

The big studios can point out to more people watching the award show when films such as Titanic and Lord of the Rings were nominated and won. Yah. Power to the people!

I can almost certainly bet that even with 10 slots, Wendy and Lucy, the best American film made in 2008, would never get nominated. Why? Because it ain't a big studio blockbuster.

The Academy Awards can now finally take its place alongside the Filmfare Awards in Bollywood as being completely meaningless. In fact, in the future the Academy Awards might go the full way of the Filmfare Awards and start creating new awards every year (best villain, best comedic role, best newcomer) to ensure every single big blockbuster film gets nominated and wins. Atleast the Filmfare Awards didn't disguise the fact that they gave awards to only popular films. This is why they created a category called "Critics award" for best film, best story and best acting, to differentiate the regular best film award which was only meant for the most popular film.

Is making millions every year not enough for the big studios? Apparently not. They need the extra gratification to their egos with an award in their hands. "Vanity is my favourite sin" -- who knew Al Pacino's dialogue from The Devil's Advocate was about the Hollywood studio heads?