Wednesday, December 13, 2006

The Departed

All good things come to an end, and while I’m no sentimentalist, this notion was hammered home in a very personal and unavoidable fashion not long ago when Robert Altman passed from this world. Part of me felt a staggering blow when I first read of his death, while part of me was also shamed by my utter lack of experience in his catalogue (to date, I’ve only seen a handful of his works), as if that disallowed me to feel the same hurt being experienced across the film community. This, of course, is not the case, but is simply part of the many mixed and often irrational emotions that surface in the midst of such a shock.

I bring this up more to finally print some thoughts on the matter than as a justification for my other point in this post: A Film Odyssey is, at least in its current form, coming to an end. I’d grown unhappy with this blog and had been for some time, between the layout and the inconsistency of the contributions, and while Altman’s death isn’t the cause for my deciding to finalize things here, I couldn’t help but feel that the blog had died around the same time, for some time existing in a state of half-decomposed stupor.

My plan is to initiate a new blog, so it’s not like the new format – whatever it may be – will be that much different from this one. As much as things will change, they will stay the same equally. Many of my old reviews will be reposted (while those from The Stranger Song and Slant Magazine will remain linked), and newer contributions will hopefully be more regular. I still can’t promise anything – with senior year going full tilt and grad school on the horizon, there are more pressing matters on my schedule far more than I’d like them to be. However, if nothing else, A Film Odyssey taught me a great deal about time management, about craft, and about the appreciation process of art itself. I hope to channel my successes and failures into something more knowing, suitable, and long-lasting.

I’m still throwing around name ideas for the new location. Something specific yet universal, snazzy sounding, welcoming, and cinematically related – that’s a lot of criteria to accommodate. I’m considering “The Projection Booth,” “Lessons in Darkness,” or something that likens celluloid to a drug experience. Comments and suggestions are encouraged. Otherwise, this will be my last post, save for a link to the new location, once it exists. Hope to see you there.

UPDATE: The new blog is located here: The Projection Room. This isn't necassarily final, however (I'm still tossing around a name that, while very humorous, could be equally as alienating to potential readers). But for all who are interested, viola!

Posted by rob humanick at 1:17 PM | | Comments

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Come Back to the Five and Dime


With time such as it is at the moment, it would be impossible for me to satiate the outpouring of emotions I'm currently having in written form. But today is a dark day, and we've all lost someone very, very precious to us. Rest in piece, Robert.

Posted by rob humanick at 12:58 PM | | Comments

Gobble Gobble

Check below for two new mini-reviews, Brian De Palma's sexy Femme Fatale and the dead-on action flick District B13. Expect most new reviews to take on this kind of miniaturized format, which will allow me to put down my thoughts on almost - if not everything - I see, without becoming overwhelmed. Over the next few days, amidst doctor's appointments, Thanksgiving, and a screening of The Fountain somewhere amidst it all, I hope to cover a few more recent releases in similar format. If time allows, however, I'll indulge myself a bit more in Darren Aronofsky's ambitious sci-fi epic, which I've been eagerly awaiting for nearly three years at this point. Yes, it's a double standard, and no, I don't care.

Two new external reviews, one quite good, one amongt the worst of this (or any other) year. Guess which is which.

Slant Magazine: Let's Go to Prison
Stranger Song: Casino Royale

Posted by rob humanick at 4:48 AM | | Comments

Femme Fatale (2002)

Beginning with a so-obvious-it’s-not representation of a viewer in direct connection with the past via film noir, Brian De Palma’s Femme Fatale opens with a magnificently planned robbery that would serve as the centerpiece for many another film; what’s more, it treats this extended sequence as sprightly as a walk in the park, which only heightens the exuding euphoria as layers upon layers of clues, obstacles and miniature revelations reveal themselves with the utmost of ease. In similar fashion, Femme Fatale convinces us that there’s more going on that it’s characters are aware of, when the reality is that the film is always just about to pull the rug out from underneath us. Plot is almost besides the point here, and any such descriptions would threaten to unveil the film’s many wondrous deceptions, the success of which teeter on the thin ledge between the imaginative surrealism of cinema and the silent observations of the films obtusely self-conscious characters. Femme Fatale doesn’t seem as complex a puzzle as David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, this century’s other film-as-dream masterpiece, but all that changes when its multilayered realities begin to fold back on themselves with breathtaking precision, its deliberately understated views on chance, fate, and our own subconscious tendency to perform our way through life ultimately making them all the more poignant. Femme Fatale both embodies and reflects upon cinema’s tendency to obliterate, as well as build upon, our own dreams and desires.

Posted by rob humanick at 4:44 AM | | Comments

District B13 (2004)

The French indie actioner District B13 serves as the much-needed cinematic antidote for this year’s atrocious Running Scared. While both films use CG enhancement and fancy camerawork to create an internal sense of hyper reality, the aesthetic of Wayne Kramer’s pathetically angst-ridden flop was not unlike rolling around in broken glass, while director Pierre Morel uses his barbarous stylistics to compliment the films rugged terrain; sight and sound meld, rather than clash, into a cohesive adrenal force. Opening with an visually intoxicating foot chase (that would be heavily mirrored – albeit in tasteful fashion – in Casino Royale), the film distills its genre components down to their bare essentials, finding time for genuine character moments amidst its mandatory fulfilling of narrative obligations, which are both sleek and without tedium. Less bombastic than the similarly to-the-point Ong-Bak, District B13 keeps its punches and bullets alive by grounding them in genuine moral issues and a kicker of political responsibility, which it incorporates as more than mere lip service. Taking place in 2010, one of the worst sections of Paris has been walled off and all but forgotten by the inept and cynical government; Leïto (David Belle), a criminal born inside the demonized district, is forever at odds with the overruling warlord Taha Bemamud (Bibi Naceri), whose gang members steal a government bomb that undercover cop Damien Tomaso (Cyril Raffaelli) is called in to defuse before it explodes, obliterating everything within the surrounding eight kilometers. Both smart and direct, District B13 is the kind of lean, mean action film most of America’s imposters only wish they could pull off.

Posted by rob humanick at 1:36 AM | | Comments

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Cheese is made from milk


Only David. I will see this film before the year lets out, so help me God. Even if the bus ticket to New York costs four times the actual ticket, I will see it.

Posted by rob humanick at 7:21 AM | | Comments

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Taking Care of Business

Time to play catch up, as the crush of the semester has prevented me from tending to things here at even the most minimal of levels. First things first: no more promises, except for that any and all contributions to be inconsistent. It seems that the moment I decide to go on a moderate hiatus, my online time opens up a bit more, and vice versa. Secondly, as another "official" declaration: Screenshot of the Day, as a specifically day to day entry, is no more. Unfortunately, the process became more tedious than expected, since, being unable to watch a movie every day, I quickly had to stretch myself in terms of remembering striking images (that were, in addition, in my DVD collection and ready to be captured). I'll post memorable shots when I have them, but once again, no promises.

One new review over at Slant Magazine, the pretty good and rather sublime J-pop flick Linda Linda Linda, now in limited release in New York. As expected, Ed just asked me to cover the henious looking Let's Go to Prison this weekend, so expect another linked review come Friday or Saturday. Should time allow over the next few days, I hope to put down some of my thoughts on some recent releases, including (roughly in order of my preference) Infamous, The Queen, The Prestige, Borat, and Babel.

Slant Magazine: Linda Linda Linda

In other news, Jim Emerson has been kind enough to link to me on his Scanners blog, and I imagine a good many of you reading this now are here thanks to him. A few posts down you will see my own intended effort at beginning a discussion not unlike his Opening Shots Project (to which I contributed an entry on Fight Club, which can be read here), this time centered around the importance (and examples of) the extended take. Some have contributed so far, and I encourage anyone will feelings on the topic to do the same (p.s. screenshots are darling as well, seeing as what I can provide is limited both by what is already in my collection and my next-to-nothing spending money for renting additional movies of choice). For now, I offer up two below, with accompanying descriptions and screenshots. Both are well known (again, limited DVD collection at my disposal), but are deservingly so, and worthy of the kind of analysis I'd like to foster more of.

I'm as of yet unsure as to what can exactly be called an "extended take"; instinct tells me one minute or more, but even so, I'm about to break that rule so as it is (my argument being that the nature of the scene may in effect make it seem longer than it actually is). So, if you're unsure as to whether or not something qualifies, submit it anyway (this includes sequences partially pieced together with CG work, such as Snake Eyes and War of the Worlds).

GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)

Call it mindless adherence to cinematic canon, laziness, or a lack of imagination, but my first contribution to this little project of mine is the famous Copocabana sequence from Scorsese's 1990 masterpiece. At just over three and one-half minutes, it screams of the kind of shot used by a showy director, but Martin seemingly always knows just what pieces are necassary to complete his plethora like cinematic constructions.

P.S. Spoilers ahead.


By this point in the film, the viewer is already very much accustomed to the luxuries afforded by Henry Hill's lifestyle, but this sequence represents his future wife Karen's first experience with its elite offerings. Money drives this world, and the sequence plays like a perpetual outpouring of extravagance that Karen very quicky gets drunk off of. Beginning outside the club on the street, the camera follows them as they pass through the crowd waiting outside, downstairs through a basement entrance, through a maze-like kitchen, and into the main dining hall, where a table is promptly brought out for them right at the front of the stage.


This initial descent into the criminal underworld is masked by the benefits it affords, a necassary point to bear in mind when considering just how much GoodFellas documents Karen's downfall as it does Henry's.


"Every time I come here...every time, you two!"

Pop quiz: what kind of fruit to Henry and Karen sample while navigating the kitchen?


A point I want to make about both GoodFellas and extended takes on the whole lies, I believe, in the relationship between this and another, less acknowledge "extended" take in the same film (the second one being just over forty seconds in lenght, but more than harrowing enough in my book). It is my opinion that extended takes more readily lend themselves to having intoxicating, hypnotic, or alluring effects on the viewer, and Scorsese uses this to the narrative benefit both above - in showing Karen's first experience with the mob - and below, Karen's first experience with mob violence (and, similarly, our first chance to see Henry carry out an act of violence firsthand). Despite their dark undertones, their allure draws both her and the audience into their groove.

Having just learned of Karen's being molested by her longtime friend and neighbor, Henry, pistol packed in his waistline, marches furiously across her suburban street to the perpetrator's residence, with a look of singular intent and ferocious rage exploding just below the surface of his face.

Without a word, he mercilessly pistol whips the sex offender into submission. Is this Henry's first act of altruism in the film, or is it a suburban example of one man claiming his territory over another? Either way, we, the innocent bystanders, are now convinced beyond a doubt that Henry is fully assimilated into his chosen life of crime, as he surely no longer but an errand boy at the cab stand.


Just as the Copacabana sequence exhibits Karen's first sampling from this pool, this more subdued scene shows her first exciting glimpse into the violent side of her significant other (cemented by her declaration: "There are some women who would have gotten out of that situation the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn't. I've got to admit the truth, it turned me on").

Might I add that I also love this shot because it exhibits Liotta's trademark intensity, another fine example of which being the criminally underseen 2002 film Narc. Point in case:

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

(More spoilers ahead, and potentially offensive - albeit minor - nudity)

Carpenter's early horror masterwork is a prime example of cinema posing a point-of-view perspective onto the viewer, albeit with only bits and pieces of information revealed at a time. Actually, Halloween's first seven minutes are consumed by not one, but two incredible extended takes, with the initial opening credits zoom-in on an eerily carved pumpkin often getting shafted in comparison to young Michael's first murderous lurk, itself being nearly two minutes in length and just as subtly frightening as nearly anything else in the film. This sequence, however, would be nothing without the immortal Halloween theme playing over it, a prime example of the unity between image and sound afforded only by film.



Next comes the making of a legend. Beginning with a disembodied look at the outside of a seemingly typical residence from across the street, the camera glides towards it, skirting to the side to peer through a window, where a teenage girl and her boyfriend are making out in the living room.



When the two go upstairs and out of sight, the camera moves back out front to look at an upstairs window, a striking chord on the soundtrack accompanying the light within promptly going out. Prompted by this jealousy-inducing signifier of sex taking place, the camera races to the back of the house and, entering the back door, obtains a kitchen knife before awaiting the boyfriend's departure.



Creeping upstairs, a hand reaches outward for a clown mask on the floor, and puts it on. Entering the girl's bedroom, the camera - now partially obscured the mask being worn - acknowledges both the girl's nudity and the obviously messy sheets of her bed before unceremoniously stabbing her to death.






After her bloody body falls to the floor, the killer returns outside just as a car pulls up to the house. It's occupants, and man and woman of apparent parental status, remove the subject's mask. At that moment, the first cut reveals the perpetrator - a young boy, not ten years of age, his face so void of emotion that we wonder what kind of intent, if any, lie in the actions just committed. This is what makes Michael Myers such an unrivaled manifestation of evil - the lack of clear purpose, intent, or drive. The longing for his sister is suggestive enough, but do we ever glimpse enough to explain his future actions? No, and it is that lack of knowledge that makes him even more fearful (take that, Jason Vorhees!), not to mention that this young boy throws to the wind any preconceptions we might otherwise have about the root of evil.

Posted by rob humanick at 10:53 PM | | Comments

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

One down, two to go...


Or maybe vice-versa.

Posted by rob humanick at 12:01 AM | | Comments

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Screenshot of the Day

Posted by rob humanick at 11:57 PM | | Comments

Monday, November 06, 2006

Hiatus to Come

With classwork on the rise, it's time that I officially pronounce the lessened importance of this blog for the time being. Updates will still take place between the Screenshot of the Day entries and screening log updates, but otherwise expect only links to Slant Magazine assignments for any reading material for the time being (speaking of which, check below for a link to the excrutiating Santa Clause 3).

I would like to undertake a James Bond marathon in celebration of Casino Royale being released later this month, and while I'm not ruling it out, don't expect it to be consistent or immediate - I'll watch the films in order and as time allows (which means it could take several months to cover all twenty-some films, including the unofficial entries). Meanwhile, I'll maintain the Extended Shots discussion and provide my own thoughts from time to time, but I'm sure anyone can understand that there are things of elevated importance in my life right now. Thanks again to all my readers.

Slant Magazine: The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause

Posted by rob humanick at 10:23 AM | | Comments

Screenshot of the Day

Posted by rob humanick at 10:17 AM | | Comments

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Screenshot of the Day

Posted by rob humanick at 9:55 PM | | Comments

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Screenshot of the Day

Posted by rob humanick at 12:49 AM | | Comments

Friday, November 03, 2006

Screenshot of the Day

Posted by rob humanick at 12:48 AM | | Comments

Thursday, November 02, 2006

A Survey & Discussion - Extended Takes

Cinema is truth at twenty-four frames a second. Every edit is a lie.
- Jean-Luc Godard
An examination of this quote will, in itself, reveal much about the nature and power of the moving image as an art form and how it affects us. "Truth," from this perspective, is something without the question of illusion. Yet what Godard fails to mention here is that artists often use lies to tell the truth, the concept of editing being unique to film and not so easily dismissed purely as a potential means of hiding something from the audience. Film - by its very nature - hides whatever is outside the frame, the camera being the tool that both limits what we see but also sheds what we do see in new lighting. What matters is what the filmmaker chooses to put before his camera, and most of the time the edit is absolutely inherent to its life force. Sure, like any tool in any medium, it can be overused or employed as a crutch, but the right cut at the right moment can be as invigorating as the perfect zoom, pan, or extended take. Could Dark City even exist without its nerve-racking visual rhythms? And where would we be without Sir Lawrence's simple extinguishing of a match that instantly reveals a breathtaking sunrise over the desert?

Yet there's also something inherently and undeniably breathtaking about the extended take. Visual trickery being far from a bad thing, it is nonetheless more convincing and immediately real when the audience can see the progression of events without interruption, as if they are the ones there. In order to highlight this from my own personal experiences, recall an early scene, if you will, from The Sixth Sense. Haley Joel Osmond's character Cole is odds with his mother, who cannot believe his supernatural claims ("I see dead people."). While Cole is eating breakfast, she leaves the kitchen to gather some laundry - the camera never moving away from her path or cutting to a different take - and after but a few moments out of the room, she returns to find the entire quarter disheveled: plates and silverware strewn about, and every cabinet door open, but with Cole still sitting as if he'd never moved. I was well aware of just how quickly the off-screen crewmembers must have scrambled into the room to make such a mess, but more immediately, I was unnerved by the reality of the situation. There was no way one little boy could have done so much damage (and quietly, at that) in those few seconds -- I had seen it all with my own eyes, without interruption.

In reality, The Sixth Sense (just an okay film in my book) is far from a great example of the extended take, this particular case somewhat lending itself to the often shallow gimmicks Shyamalan employs (at a prepubescent age, however, it left quite an impression). Just because an extended take took incredible planning to pull off by no means makes it a great aesthetic achievement, and that's part what I'm trying to create a discussion on. Here at "A Film Odyssey," one of my chief concerns and interests is the manner in which images affect us at a basic level. After a recent viewing of GoodFellas (which I've seen no less than a dozen times), I was again struck by the famous tracking shot that follows Henry and Karen from the street and through the internal maze of the night club. It's not just the fact that the camera remains fixated on these two people for minutes at a time, but what it communicates about how they relate to each other and how they exist in the world around them.

Perhaps calling this a survey is too limiting, although I do ask that anyone interested in contributing nominate via comment their favorite extended take (as an example, however, I will not make my ultimate choice of nomination until near the closing of the polls, as their is much I can and plan on learning between now and then). However, I also want this to be a place were people can come and present lesser-known examples for the enlightenment of everyone else - those that are perhaps less famous than the sequences of Touch of Evil or The Passenger, but just as enthralling. My goal is to keep this up for one month (perhaps longer, depending on the reception), and come December we can look back on the dialogue that took place and examine what ultimately surfaced in the end. Anyone who cares to describe the effect a particular shot had on them, how it works, etc., can e-mail me and I will feature it in a post all its own, hopefully with screenshots to aid in the examination.

I'll acknowledge my inspiration from Jim Emerson's Opening Shots Project right off the bat, as well as No More Marriages! poll of the Best American Film of the last 25 Years (I didn't fully realize how those efforts subtly influenced my own thought processes until about two sentences ago). The many contributions featured at Jim's Scanners blog helped immensely in widening my own understanding of the immediate and lasting effect of a film's opening shot, and it is a knowledge that has positively affected everything I've watched since. Here, I hope to dive deep into another organ within the intricate innards of cinema, emerging perhaps a bit messy, but ultimately more knowledgeable and appreciative of that which I love. I hope the experience can be a collective effort.

Posted by rob humanick at 12:41 AM | | Comments

Screenshot of the Day

Posted by rob humanick at 12:20 AM | | Comments