January Foreign Film Festival and World Cinema Series Links

Irène Jacob in Trois Couleurs: Rouge

I'll try and put up one of these link collection posts earlier in the month from here on out, but in the meantime here's a page where you can submit January foreign film reviews to either my Foreign Film Festival or Caroline's World Cinema Series.  While it'd be great if you could notify both of us whenever you have a film to add to the two lists, in all likelihood that won't be necessary since we'll probably be raiding each other's lists to make sure all reviews submitted for at least one of the events are accounted for on both anyway.  In any event, please let me know if you don't want your links added here for some reason.  Otherwise, I look forward to seeing which movies have caught your attention this month (note that I will probably list the movies alphabetically by title rather than by country since Caroline and I are defining "foreign film" status in slightly different ways for each event).  Cheers!

Comment and connectivity problems?  It's been brought to my attention that at least three readers have had problems viewing this blog and/or leaving comments here of late, and I've run into similar problem accessing the comments and links at times when using Internet Explorer as my browser.  Until this problem gets resolved, please consider using Firefox or another non-IE browser to view the blog.  I'll try to tweak some of the security settings for comments as well, but I'm very hesitant to do that since some anonymous spammers seem to have discovered the blog after several years of my own anonymity.  Sorry for any technical difficulties you might have encountered.  Edit 1/17: I've decided to disable the threaded comments until Blogger can resolve the problems with its IE interface.  Back to the drawing board, I guess, what a nuisance...

January Foreign Film Reviews

• Alamak...Toyol!  (dir. Ismail Bob Hasim, Malaysia, 2011; reviewer: Nekoneko)
• Bar "El Chino" (dir. Daniel Burak, Argentina, 2004; reviewer: me)
• Bicycle Thieves [Ladri de biciclette] (dir. Vittorio De Sica, Italy, 1948; reviewer: Séamus)
• Caramel [Sukkar banat] (dir. Nadine Labaki, Lebanon, 2007; reviewer: Caroline)
• Cell 211 [Celda 211] (dir. Daniel Monzón, Spain, 2009; reviewer: TBM)
• C'est la Vie [La Baule-les-Pins] (dir. Diane Kurys, France, 1990; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• Cuadecuc/Vampir (dir. Pere Portabella, Spain, 1970; reviewer: Obooki)
• Drive (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, USA, 2011; reviewer: Caroline)
• Everlasting Moments [Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick] (dir. Jan Troell, Sweden, 2008; reviewer: Caroline)
• The Fox Family [Gumiho gajok] (dir. Hyung-gon Lee, South Korea, 2006; reviewer: Obooki)
  

  • The Guard (dir. John Michael McDonagh, Ireland, 2011; reviewer: Sarah)
• Protektor (dir. Marek Najbrt, Czech Republic, 2009; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• Shaapit: The Cursed (dir. Vikram Bhatt, India, 2010; reviewer: Nekoneko)
• Shine, Shine, My Star [Gori, Gori, Moya Zvezda] (dir. Alexander Mitta, USSR, 1969; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• Sleepwalker 3D (dir. Oxide Pang, China, 2011; reviewer: Nekoneko)
• Soul Kitchen (dir. John Michael McDonagh, Germany, 2009; reviewer: Sarah)
• Szindbád (dir. Zoltán Huszárik, Hungary, 1971; reviewer: Dwight)
• Torpedo Bombers [Torpedonostsy] (dir. Semyon Aranovich, USSR, 1983; reviewer: Guy Savage)

Caravana de recuerdos Foreign Film Festival

Maggie Cheung in Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep

(France, 1996)

Since I hope to work in some occasional movie-related posting here again this year after giving up on that a while back, I thought I'd invite anybody who wants to join me for some movie talk to participate in the first ever Caravana de recuerdos Foreign Film Festival in 2012.  Participation is easy, and there are no stupid challenge rules to worry about since this isn't a challenge!  You merely a) watch and review one or more foreign films this year and then let me know about it so I can link to your post(s) in a monthly round-up; or b) ignore the invitation altogether.  Easy, right?  The fine print: For those who want to play along, a film's "foreign" status should be determined by comparing the director's country of origin or residence with your own country of origin or residence (i.e. no Jean-Pierre Melville flicks for the French or Tarantino flicks for Americans; Raúl Ruiz's outstanding Mistérios de Lisboa can count as either a Chilean or a French but not a Portuguese work based on where the director was born and lived).  The extra fine print: If any of you would like to "challenge" me to watch one particular film of your choosing at some point during the year, I'll watch it and blog about it as long as a) you're willing to do the same at some mutually agreeable time; and b) I can get a hold of it from my library or through some other source that won't break the bank.  This challenge film can be foreign or domestic (your choice) and is only being offered as a participation option--not without some trepidation--as a cinematic tip of the hat to Amateur Reader's infamous so-called "Scottish rules" as set down here.  In any event, thanks to both Caroline and Stu for helping me rethink my avoidance of movie reviews of late (whether they realized it or not).  Coming soon:  a post on a film from Argentina.

July-December Foreign Film Festival and World Cinema Series Links

Adrián Caetano's Bolivia (2001)

Since I think I'll be taking a break from the blog sometime soon, I'll be combining all movie links for my Foreign Film Festival and Caroline's World Cinema Series here for the second half of the year.  While I'm at it, here are a couple of non-film related events I'd like to mention before I forget again: 1) Bellezza of Dolce Bellezza is holding her Japanese Literature Challenge 6 until January 2013.  I'll be reading at least two works for this: Haruki Murakami's Kafka en la orilla (see the rad cover below) + another title to be decided on later (leading candidates at the moment: Ryunosuke Akutagawa's Rashomon and Other Stories, Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and Soseki Natsume's Kokoro).  Good choices or could I do even better?  2) Dwight of A Common Reader will be hosting a readalong of Benito Pérez Galdós' 1887 Fortunata and Jacinta in October.  Although I'm really looking forward to this, I'm more than a little put out to discover that the Spanish editions of the novel are about twice the length of the Penguin translation for some reason.  WTF, man/hombre?

July Foreign Film Reviews

• Ashes and Diamonds (dir. Andrzej Wajda, Poland, 1958; reviewer: Dwight)
• Children of the Wind (dir. Fernando Merinero, Spain, 1995; reviewer: Obooki)
• Cría cuervos (dir. Carlos Saura, Spain, 1976; reviewer: Amanda)
• Cría cuervos (dir. Carlos Saura, Spain, 1976; reviewer: Jeremy)
• Cría cuervos (dir. Carlos Saura, Spain, 1976; reviewer: Richard)
• Cría cuervos (dir. Carlos Saura, Spain, 1976; reviewer: Séamus)
• Cría cuervos (dir. Carlos Saura, Spain, 1976; reviewer: Tara)
• La ciudad de los prodigios (dir. Mario Camus, Spain, 1999; reviewer: Dwight)

August Foreign Film Reviews

• Film (dir. Samuel Beckett, USA, 1965; reviewer: Dwight)
• Pornografia (dir. Jan Jakub Kolski, Poland, 2003; reviewer: Dwight)
• The Desert of the Tartars [Il deserto dei tartari] (dir. Valerio Zurlini, Italy, 1976; reviewer: Dwight)

Haruki Murakami's Kafka en la orilla (2002)

June Foreign Film Festival and World Cinema Series Links

Un chien andalou, 1929

(dir. by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí)

Thanks to all of you who have joined Caroline and me in her World Cinema Series and my Foreign Film Festival this year.  I hope you're all enjoying the movie talk!  For those who haven't yet participated but think you might might like to, please note that joining in on the fun couldn't be easier.  Just write-up a review of one or more foreign films that you've watched this month ("foreign" meaning the director's country of birth or residence is different from your own) and then send us the link(s) to your post(s) via comments form or e-mail.  I'll add the info below during the course of the month and Caroline will do the same over at her blog.

A Special Announcement

Stu of Winstonsdad's Blog and I will be hosting a "watchalong" of Carlos Saura's 1976 Spanish drama Cría cuervos on the weekend of Friday, July 6th thru Sunday, July 8th as part of the Spanish Lit Month festivities mentioned elsewhere.  The film is available as a Criterion Collection DVD and carried by Netflix here in the States and comes highly recommended by yours truly--though I hope you won't hold that against it!  Anyway, if you care to participate in the watchalong, just post your review of the film during the weekend in question and then let me know.  Group read-like discussions of the movie will take place at participating blogs  throughout that weekend.  Should be fun--hope you can join us.

June Foreign Film Reviews

• Manuela Sáenz (dir. Diego Rísquez, Venezuela, 2001; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier, Denmark, 2011; reviewer: Caroline)
• The Faithful River [Wierna rzeka] (dir. Tadeus Chmielewski , Poland, 1987; reviewer: Dwight)

February Foreign Film Festival and World Cinema Series Links

Wong Kar-wai

Thanks to everybody who's already contributed movie reviews to either my Foreign Film Festival or Caroline's World Cinema Series.  I'll try to finish updating January's list sometime this weekend since I've already fallen behind, but links to posts about foreign films watched or written about in February will be collected at this post here throughout the month.  Just leave a comment below or at Caroline's blog if you'd like to let us know about a film review of yours.  Cheers!

February Foreign Film Reviews

• 13 Assassins [Jûsan-nin no shikaku] (dir. Takashi Miike, Japan, 2010; reviewer: Novroz)
• 100 Years of Adolph Hitler [100 Jahre Adolf Hitler: Die letzte Stunde im Führerbunker] (dir. Christoph Schlingensief, Germany, 1989; reviewer: Obooki)
• Amazing Grace (dir. Michael Apted, England, 2006; reviewer: Novroz)
• Animal Kingdom (dir. David Michôd, Australia, 2010; reviewer: TBM)
• A Story of Floating Weeds [Ukikusa monogatari] (dir. Yasujirô Ozu, Japan, 1934; reviewer: Dwight)
• At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul (dir. José Mojica Marins, Brazil, 1963; reviewer: Obooki)
• Just Another Love Story [Kærlighed på film] (dir. Ole Bornedal, Denmark, 2008; reviewer: Fiona)
• Klimt (dir. Raoul Ruiz, France, 2006; reviewer: Obooki)
• Kuroneko (dir. Kaneto Shindo, Japan, 1968; reviewer: Richard)
• Larks on a String [Skrivánci na niti] (dir. Jirí Menzel, Czechoslovakia, 1969; reviewer: Dwight)
• Lemon Tree (dir. Eran Riklis, Israel, 2008; reviewer: Caroline
• Let the Right One In [Låt den rätte komma in] (dir Thomas Alfredson, Sweden, 2008; reviewer: Novroz)
• When Father Was Away on Business (dir. Emir Kusturica, Yugoslavia, 1985; reviewer: Guy Savage)

March and April Movie Review Links

Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 Le Samouraï

 

Thanks to the kindness of Novroz of Polychrome Interest who was good enough to remind me recently that there's supposed to be a Foreign Film Festival or something going on at Caravana de recuerdos this year (note: I'm calling it the Foreign Film Festival again although participants may submit reviews from international or domestic movies as they see fit), I'll make every effort to contribute a movie post or two to the event this month after two-months of hardcore slacking on that front in February and March.  It'd of course be nice if anybody else would like to join us for some film chat in lieu of whining about how Amazon is contributing to the decline and fall of Western civilization by taking over Goodreads, but I'll leave that to you to vote your conscience so to speak.  In the meantime, here's one movie review link from Novroz from March with more links from others from March and April hopefully coming soon.

 

March and April Movie Reviews

• Detroit Metal City (dir. Toshio Lee; Japan, 2008; posted by Novroz)

March Foreign Film Festival and World Cinema Series Links + March/April/May Reading Starring Musil, Onetti, Pessoa and Proust

15 hours of Weimar degeneracy.  Who's buying the popcorn?

Some punk recalled my library copy of Berlin Alexanderplatz before I even had a chance to make it to the end of the fourth episode last month, but hopefully March will provide another opportunity for me to get through the remaining 10 hours of Fassbinder's opus and file a report on it for all you foreign film festival connoisseurs.  In the meantime, any/all links to movie posts for either this event or Caroline's World Cinema Series (both being held throughout the year) can be left here.  Note: Sorry, but I'm still running behind on rounding up links.

March Foreign Film Reviews

• Father and Son [Otets i syn] (dir. Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia, 2003; reviewer: TBM)
• Heima (dir. Dean DeBlois, Iceland, 2007; reviewer: Dwight)
• Life Is Beautiful [La vita è bella] (dir. Roberto Benigni, Italy, 1998; reviewer: Fiona)
• Love Is My Profession [En cas de malheur] (dir. Claude Autant-Lara, France, 1958; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• Mooladé (dir. Sembène Ousmane, Senegal, 2004; reviewer; Caroline)
• The Grandfather [El abuelo] (dir. José Luis Garci, Spain, 1988; reviewer: Dwight)
• The Road Home [Wo de fu quin mu quin] (dir.  Yimou Zhang, China 2001; reviewer: Fiona) 

Come on, you know you want to...

March Reading

I don't like talking about my longterm reading plans much anymore since I'm usually so lousy at following through on them,* but I'd like to put in a plug for the Fernando Pessoa Book of Disquiet readalong that Amateur Reader (Tom) will be hosting at Wuthering Expectations at the end of month.  I've been looking forward to reading this Portuguese classic for a long time now, and I expect that the group read experience will be a particularly fun one given that many of the same great readers who took a crack at Bolaño's The Savage Detectives with Rise and me during our January group read will be back in force for this one.  I'll also be reading Juan Carlos Onetti's La vida breve in the first part of the month and leisurely alternating Musil's The Man without Qualities and Proust's The Guermantes Way over the next three months--at 1,770 pages for the posthumous director's cut of Musil and 595 pages for the Proust, which I foolishly set aside last year despite enjoying it and will now plan to start again from scratch at the beginning, I see no need to rush through the 2,365 pages of modernist bliss that's anticipated.  *Note to Nicole: I'll try and get back to War and Peace right after Musil, I promise!  You still give one-year extensions, right?

April Foreign Film Festival and World Cinema Series Links

Robert Mitchum inspires a Clash song in The Night of the Hunter

You never know, but I might actually write about a movie this month for a change.  Until then, submissions for my Foreign Film Festival and/or Caroline's World Cinema Series can be reported here.

April Foreign Film Reviews

• La Ronde (dir. Max Ophüls, France, 1950; reviewer: Dwight)
• La Zona (dir. Rodrigo Plá, Mexico, 2007; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• Little Dieter Needs to Fly (dir. Werner Herzog, Germany, 1998; reviewer: Séamus)
• Miss Bala (dir. Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico, 2011; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• My House in Umbria (dir. Richard Loncraine, England, 2003; reviewer: Caroline)
• The Blue Angel (dir. Josef von Sternberg, Germany, 1930; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• The Raid: Redemption [Serbuan Maut] (dir. Gareth Evans, Indonesia, 2011; reviewer: Novroz)
• The Rules of the Game [La Règle du jeu] (dir. Jean Renoir, France, 1939; reviewer: Richard)

May Foreign Film Festival and World Cinema Series Links

Klaus Kinski vs. Nature in Werner Herzog's 1972 Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Want to share a movie review for my Foreign Film Festival or Caroline's World Cinema Series in May?  Please let our unpaid interns know about your posts (or missed links from previous months in 2012) below.

May Foreign Film Reviews

• Berlin Alexanderplatz (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany, 1980; reviewer: Richard)
• Bolivar Is Me [Bolívar soy yo] (dir. Jorge Alí Triana, Colombia, 2002; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• Capricious Summer (dir. Jirí Menzel, Czechoslovakia, 1968; reviewer: Dwight)
• Happy Happy [Sykt lykkelig] (dir. Anne Sweistsky, Norway, 2010; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• In the Mood for Love [Fa yeung nin wa] (dir. Wong Kar-wai, China, 2000; reviewer: Fiona)
• Le Bonheur (dir. Agnès Varda, France, 1965; reviewer: Obooki)
• Rome Open City [Roma città aperta] (dir. Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 1945; reviewer: Richard)
• The City and the Dogs [La ciudad y los perros] (dir. Francisco J. Lombardi, Peru, 1985; reviewer: Guy Savage)
• The Conformist [Il conformista] (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy, 1970; reviewer: Séamus)
• The Doll [Lalka] (dir. Wojciech Jerzy Has, Poland, 1968; reviewer: Dwight)
• The Hour-Glass Sanatorium [Sanatorium pod klepsydra] (dir. Wojciech Jerzy Has, Poland, 1973; reviewer: Dwight)
• Woman in the Dunes [Sunna no onna] (dir. Teshigahara Hiroshi, Japan, 1964; reviewer: Rise)
• World on a Wire [Welt am Draht] (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany, 1973; reviewer: Obooki)

Orbis Terrarum Film Mini-Challenge

Calling all movie buffs!  As I mentioned not too long ago, I'll be hosting an international film challenge off and on this year as a spinoff from Bethany's Orbis Terrarum 2010 Reading Challenge.  While the tentative plan is to do this every other month throughout the length of the challenge (i.e. May, July, September, and November), here's all you need to know for May if you want to join in.

If you review any foreign films on your blog this month (be they new favorites or ones you just enjoyed trashing), send me a link to your post with the name of the film and the name of the director included somewhere.  Please note that a movie's "foreign" status will be determined both by where you live (no American movies for U.S. bloggers) and the director's place of birth (and not the setting): Krzysztof Kieslowski's great Three Colors trilogy, for example, while mostly set in and associated with France, counts as a Polish film for the challenge, while Rob Marshall's virtually unwatchable Memoirs of a Geisha, although set in Japan, rather embarrassingly counts as an American film!

I'll add the links to the bottom of this post as the month progresses, and then hopefully people will feel free to hop around from blog to blog reading about and/or discussing the films in question.  In the meantime, please be aware that you don't need to be a participant in the main Orbis Terrarum 2010 Challenge to hang out at this film festival.  In fact, we can start talking movies now if you want to share your memories of some of your all-time favorites.  At Bethany's suggestion, I'll list a handful of my many foreign film favorites here to get the ball rolling.  1) Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie (France, 2001).  2) Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (Hong Kong, 2000).  3) Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (Japan, 1963).  4)  Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (Italy, 1961).  5) Carlos Saura's Cría cuervos (Spain, 1976).  Any questions?  Let me know!

Richard, The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany, 2008)

Caravana de recuerdos Film Festival

Anna Karina in Godard's Vivre sa vie (1962)

Since I did such a shitty job of hosting the Caravana de recuerdos Foreign Film Festival last year, I decided to host it again this year as a form of penance.  I gotta tell you, guilt is some serious motivation!  Seriously, though, my apologies to all those who attended the "party" and then wondered where the host had disappeared to during most of the second half of the year.  I promise to do better this year or to cancel the event next year.  In any event, for those interested in giving your failed host a second chance at the movie talk in 2013, please note the following major change to this year's series: all films, foreign and domestic, will now be fair game for participation purposes.  While I hope anybody who contributes movie reviews to the event will continue to concentrate on foreign films (and non-mainstream films in general), I decided to open things up since older movies and avant-garde flicks from any era are often just as "foreign" as foreign films regardless of their country of origin or year of release.  Other than that, though, participation remains pretty much the same.  There are two main ways to play along should you choose to: 1) You review a single movie or multiple movies at any point during the year and then let me know about your post(s) by comment or e-mail (my e-mail address can be found under my profile [perfil] info).  I'll do a monthly link round-up of all participants' movie reviews so that interested parties can visit your blog(s) and check out your movie posts.  2) If you like, you may also challenge me to watch and write about a movie of your choice at more or less the same time as you as part of a group read-like "watchalong."  Tom of Wuthering Expectations was the only person to take me up on this option last year, but the animated short he selected greatly pleased both him and me.  On a final note, I'm happy to report that our friend Caroline of Beauty Is a Sleeping Cat has announced that she'll be running her own World Cinema Series event for another year in 2013.  I'll post more details here when I have them, but until then I encourage any of you who are thinking of participating in the Caravana event to also participate in Caroline's (update: info on Caroline's World Cinema Series 2013 now available here).  Cheers!

January Movie Reviews

• Bolaño cercano (dir. Erik Haasnoot; Spain, 2008; posted by Richard)
• The 3 Penny Opera [Die Dreigroschenoper] (dir. G.W. Pabst; Germany, 1931; posted by Richard)
• Those Who Remain [Ceux qui restent] (dir. Anne Le Ny; France, 2007; posted by Guy Savage)
• Tristana [Tristana] (dir. Luis Buñuel; Spain, 1970; posted by Dwight)

Bar "El Chino"

Bar "El Chino" (2004 DVD)
Directed by Daniel Burak
Argentina, 2003
In Spanish with English subtitles

My Argentinophile tendencies notwithstanding,  I'm not sure I would have even wanted to see this movie had I been forced to rely on my own capsule summary for guidance and inspiration.  Good thing somebody else recommended the film to me first!  Martina, a 20-something TV editor, and Jorge, a 40-something independent filmmaker, serendipitously meet at the colorful Bar "El Chino" one night and shortly thereafter decide to combine forces on a low-budget documentary about the historic but down-at-the-heels neighborhood tango bar of the title.  A romantic relationship between the unlikely pair somewhat predictably ensues, only to be suddenly interrupted by Argentina's 2001 economic meltdown.  Is a job overseas worth giving up being happy at home? Whatever you make of the premise, I'm happy to note that this humble little slice of life is way more satisfying and soulful than it sounds.  Leads Jimena La Torre and Boy Olmi have a winning, believable chemistry as the tentative coworkers turned lovebirds, director Daniel Burak takes full advantage of the quasi-documentary nature of the film by including lots of low-fi audio and visual goodness spliced with interviews with fans and performers of the real-life Bar "El Chino," and the ramshackle neighborhood of Pompeya--about as far off the tourist Buenos Aires map as they come despite being one of the birthplaces of tango back in the days of Gardel--emerges as the cultural ground zero for a surprisingly affecting discussion about immigration and emigration, the past and modernity, and how we try and reconcile such forces through the arts.  Not at all the slight romantic comedy that I had feared--or at least it doesn't feel like such a thing when set to the strains of that mournful bandoneón.  (www.venevisionintl.com)

Jorge Eduardo Garcés ("El Chino")

holding court in front of his famous boliche

Movie Mania

After announcing a year-long "foreign film festival" in the previous post, I found out that Caroline of Beauty Is a Sleeping Cat is also offering her own World Cinema Series moviefest this year.  Please see Caroline's page here for details and please consider participating in both events throughout the year to get your full-on foreign film fix.

The Cameraman's Revenge

The Cameraman's Revenge [Mest' kinematograficheskogo operatora]
Directed by Wladyslaw Starewicz
Russia, 1912

While I've been a lame, absentee landlord of a host for the Caravana de recuerdos Foreign Film Festival for much of the year, Tom from Wuthering Expectations was kind enough to overlook that and challenged me to watch The Cameraman's Revenge with him as part of the "movie challenge" portion of the festivitivies.  Leave it to Tom, the only person audacious enough to challenge me to a watchalong all year, to select the best insect-acted silent film I've ever seen!  Mest' kinematograficheskogo operatora, as it was originally called at the time of its 1912 release barring an unnoticed typo or two from me, is a stupendous 12-minute stop-action animation feature which takes that hoariest of silent movie clichés--infidelity among insects--and turns it into a gripping arthropod revenge fantasy.  Mr. and Mrs. Beetle appear to have a perfect relationship at the outset.  At least, that is what it seems until Mr. Beetle takes his hard, manly exoskeleton and his Russian beetle pheromones and swaggers over to the Gay Dragonfly night club to meet his sultry young dragonfly lover.  Unfortunately for the two invertebrate lovebirds, an altercation between the beetle and a mysterious grasshopper will have grave consequences for the philandering husband; as the intertitle silently stresses, "Mr. Beetle should have guessed that the aggressive grasshopper was a movie cameraman."  To say anything more about the plot would do a disservice to my many readers and to the even more numerous anonymous spammers who often pose as my readers, so I'll merely draw your attention to a few non-story highlights from Starewicz's cautionary tale: 1) the insect cabaret scene is to die for; 2) the sequence where the grasshopper films Mr. Beetle wooing his dragonfly lover through a keyhole at the HOTEL d'AMOUR offers up a nice visual commentary on how the beetle has stolen the keys to his mistress' heart while foreshadowing a later revelation in a movie theater in which we learn that "the projectionist is none other than the vengeful cameraman"; 3) the insect love scenes, the stunts involving various kind of insect mayhem and grasshopper bicycle riding, and even the showy set piece where an artist insect paints a canvas with his long arthropod arms are all top notch on the wow, giggle, and combined wow-giggle meters.  A big high five to Tom for bringing this amusing and just generally delightful pre-Battleship Potemkin visual oddity to my grateful but undeserving attention.

Starewicz at work with "the talent"

 

Tom's post

"The Cameraman's Revenge," a bug-infested animated film from a century ago

 

Archive.org's link to the film (dug up by Tom)

The Cameraman's Revenge

Kuroneko

Kuroneko [Yabu no naka no kuroneko] (The Criterion Collection DVD, 2011)
Directed by Kaneto Shindo
Japan, 1968
In Japanese with English subtitles

Although I'm probably not the best judge of ghost stories ever, I don't think I'm really going out on a limb by saying that Kuroneko [a/k/a Black Cat], a/k/a "a vintage Japanese ghost film not named Ugetsu," is both ridiculous and stylish at one and the same time.  In any event, it's easily the coolest looking movie I've seen in quite a while thanks to the collaboration between director Kaneto Shindo and cinematographer Kiyomi Kuroda.  Set near the Rashomon Gate in Kyoto in the Sengoku period, when roving bands of samurai terrorized the land, and shot in an exquisite black and white that reminds me a little bit of Dreyer's spectral Vampyr, the film follows the supernatural transformation of two peasant rape-and-murder victims who come back to life as black cats after death to take their revenge on samurai everywhere.  When the man who's the husband of the younger "catwoman" and the son of the older one returns after a three-year absence and seems to recognize the spirits of his missing loved ones, his newfound samurai status seriously complicates the longed-for family reunion--first, because he's been assigned to kill the samurai-killers or be killed himself; second, because they in turn have sworn a vow to feast on samurai blood until all samurai are dead; and third, because the brave Gintoki doesn't know whether the two specters are just ghosts or demons.  Even though the dialogue boasts its fair share of howlers and I didn't find the film's alleged feminist overtones quite as provocative as others seem to have done, Kuroneko's visual style is so artful and striking in composition that it more than makes up for its creaky narrative.  For example, multiple shots of people traveling through a bamboo grove at night, all the fog-shrouded scenes where humans and shapeshifters do battle, and--perhaps my favorite individual freezeframe candidate of all--the stunning image of a lone rider racing on horseback in front of a blazing, nearly full-screen, golden sun are all just awesome to behold.  Surrealistic, too: I mean, hey, what's that woman doing with a cat arm in her mouth?!?  (The Criterion Collection)

 Ghost or demon?

Kuroneko, watched in a spectacular Blu-Ray transfer from Criterion, is the first of what I hope will be at least two February picks for Caroline's World Cinema Series and my own Foreign Film Festival.  See other February movie reviews here.

The 3 Penny Opera

The 3 Penny Opera [Die Dreigroschenoper] (The Criterion Collection DVD, 2007)
Directed by G.W. Pabst
Germany, 1931
In German with optional English subtitles

With all of my beginning of the year filler pieces now out of the way and a flotilla of future mini-book and movie review posts now the only thing visible on the blogging horizon, I'm happy to embark upon the non-comment generating part of the year (i.e. the rest of 2013) with a few words dedicated to G.W. Pabst's eccentric early talkie and occasional musical The 3 Penny Opera.  I sure know how to pick the crowd-pleasers, eh?  Adapted from the 1928 Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill play of the same name that unexpectedly wowed Weimar theater-going audiences back in the day, the movie version of The 3 Penny Opera is a hugely entertaining audiovisual spectacle that zeros in on the criminal escapades of London dandy/thug/trollop fancier Mackie Messer (a/k/a Mack the Knife) as he, aided and abetted by his fetching young wife Polly Peachum and accompanied by Weill's cabaret soundtrack to his life, rises from being a common criminal to become a much more respectable sort of crook: the owner of a bank.  In Pabst's comedic retelling of Brecht's anti-capitalist "opera," there are a number of deliberate provocations that prefigure the subversive anti-bourgeoisie satire of vintage Buñuel.  In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that the film has a satirical mean streak in that regard.  A significant portion of the plot, for example, has to do with the ill will between Polly's parents and Mackie brought about by the latter's seduction of the Peachum family's tender young daughter.  Yet when we first meet Jonathan Jeremias Peachum, self-proclaimed as "the poorest man in London" but known as the beggar king for holding a monopoly on the issuing of panhandling licenses for which he leeches 50% of the weekly take off of all his clients, he silences a complaint about his extortionate licensing fees from one man by pointing to a Gospel quote from Luke painted on his wall: "Give, and though shalt be given."  Three mannequins in full dummy beggar attire and a number of prop crutches visually frame this mocking use of the biblical injunction.  Later in the film, while attempting to rally an army of the poor and the pseudo-poor to interrupt a public ceremony involving the Queen, the beggar king brags about how he will manage to "wring a few pence out of your poverty" by playing on the pity of the "rich noblemen" and--by extension--the viewing public at large: "For I've shown that the rich of this world have no qualms about causing misery but can't bear the sight of it!"  In spite of its message associating capitalism with criminality and widespread corruption at all levels of society, The 3 Penny Opera seems as dedicated to amusing its audience as provoking it.  It does this through snicker-worthy lowlife humor (Polly: "In Winchester you seduced two sisters, both of them minors."  Mackie: "They told me they were over 30."  Polly: "Both of them together."), and it also does it through the narrator-like street singer who sings songs about the characters while they stand in the audience listening to him and also introduces scenes by addressing the moviegoing audience to boot:  "Ladies and gentlemen," he begins in English at one point before breaking into German for what follows, "you've seen Mackie's bold and restless nature.  I'll now show you how, through a loving wife's cleverness, things take a turn that even you wouldn't expect."  The next scene, typical of all that's great about the film other than the cabaret music that I've barely even touched on, had me laughing out loud, and it's just too good to not share with you here.  Polly: "Gentlemen of the board...one can rob a  bank or one can..."  Interrupting her, a burglar turned board member: "Use a bank to rob others!"  Polly: "Tread the path of a respectable and law-abiding business...as my papa used to say to me.  'Polly,' he always said, 'Who'd be so stupid as to be a burglar these days when we've got laws?'"  Genius.

Mackie (Rudolf Forster) and Polly (Carola Neher)

This post on The 3 Penny Opera is my first submission for this year's Caravana de recuerdos Film Festival and Beauty Is a Sleeping Cat's World Cinema Series 2013.  As I said in my intro post the other day, I hope others will consider contributing their own movie reviews to both events.  Until then, other great Pabst films I recommend include Diary of a Lost Girl [Tagebuch einer Verlorenen] and Pandora's Box [Die Büchse der Pandora], both from 1929.

Rome Open City

Rome Open City [Roma città aperta] (The Criterion Collection DVD, 2009)
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Italy, 1945
In Italian and German with English subtitles

As excited as I once was to watch Italian neorealism standard-bearers Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1948) in quick succession, I should note that the first and most famous title in Criterion's nifty Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy box set is so dated and/or otherwise flawed as a narrative that it took me three separate attempts to push past the 45-minute mark in the film.  As luck would have it, at least the third time was the charm.  Shot on location in the then just recently-liberated Rome while the waning moments of WWII still raged on elsewhere in the devastated country, Rome Open City's fictionalized storyline regarding Italian resistance to the nine months of German occupation of the Eternal City ultimately won me over with its unequivocally visceral you-are-there look and passion.  Its strengths are numerous: the documentary-like "realism" conveyed by the bombed-out cityscapes and scenes of the poor mobbing bakeries for bread; charismatic performances by Aldo Fabrizi and Marcello Pagliero as the neighborhood priest and fugitive Communist military leader whose paths cross and fates meet as a result of their resistance activities against the Nazis and the Italian fascists; a bold thematic confrontation with the barbarity of torture and the death of innocents that must have traumatized contemporary filmgoers still raw from the ravages of the war.  Its weaknesses, unfortunately, are also fairly numerous: a melodramatic score that undermines the relative simplicity of other aspects of the filmmaking; the miscasting of Anna Magnani as a meek, clingy bride-to-be (anyone who's seen the actress in Mamma Roma will know that she has way too strong a personality for that meek act to be pulled off!); the weird bourgeois morality message hinted at by the fact that two of the film's most reprehensible characters, a mincing Gestapo chief and his drug-dealing lesbian informant, are based on lurid sexual orientation stereotypes.  Despite its flaws, what helped make Rome Open City a winner for me for its entertainment value and not just for its history lesson was its unmistakable raw power.  The Gestapo chief to Don Pietro, referring to the imminent torture of the priest's "subversive" and "atheist" associate: "You Italians, no matter your party, have a weakness for rhetoric.  But I'm sure we'll come to an agreement before dawn."  The priest: "He won't talk."  Why?  "I'll pray for him."  Although there's no easy way to resolve such a scene given man's known capacity for evil, the look in Don Pietro's eyes--valiant face to face with the enemy but apparently contrite that prayer is all he has to offer to his acquaintance--suggests that Rossellini probably wasn't interested in looking for one.  (The Criterion Collection)

An iconic scene from Rome Open City

Rome Open City was (re)viewed with my Foreign Film Festival and Caroline's World Cinema Series in mind.  For a write-up on another Italian neorealist classic, please see Séamus' take on Vittorio De Sica's 1948 Bicycle Thieves [Ladri de biciclette] here.

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Berlin Alexanderplatz (The Criterion Collection DVD, 2007)
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
West Germany, 1980
In German with English subtitles

Although I couldn't tell you if Rainer Werner Fassbinder really put the "germ" in New German Cinema, I wouldn't bet against it either.  An immensely entertaining and occasionally pretty fucked-up fifteen and a half hour made-for-TV adaptation of Alfred Döblin's 1929 modernist classic--here remastered and presented "in 13 parts & an epilogue" in a superior sepia print than was supposedly originally seen in Cold War living rooms back in the day--the willfully confrontational Berlin Alexanderplatz doggedly follows in the footsteps of oafish, not quite right in the head protagonist Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht in a bravura performance) as he attempts to go straight after being released from prison for the "accidental" beating death of his prostitute girlfriend Ida four years earlier.  That some things just aren't meant to work out for the character will become clear early on with chapter titles like "The Punishment Begins" and "A Hammer Blow to the Head Can Injure the Soul,"  but romantic types just might be tempted to hold out hope for the guy whenever old love Eva (a spot-on Hanna Schygulla) and fetching new love Mieze (Barbara Sukowa, ditto) appear onscreen to try to protect their Franz from true evil in the form of "best friend" Reinhold Hoffman (a preternaturally sinister Gottfried John).  However, as Fassbinder tells Döblin's story, Biberkopf's on again/off again struggles to avoid returning to a life of crime only serve as a launch pad for some even more unsettling reflections on crime and destiny on a metaphysical plane.  Is the childlike but violent Biberkopf being tested by God or Satan?  Are his Job-like troubles all caused by his poor life choices or is it just impossible for a man to "live in a human skin" in the Weimar Berlin of 1928-1929?  Are God and Satan actually one and the same?  Who or what is "The Serpent in the Soul of the Serpent" in the Freienwalde forest?  Whatever you make of Berlin Alexanderplatz's metaphysical concerns, one of the things that kept my eyes glued to the screen throughout Fassbinder's bleak but unexpectedly fascinating underworld epic was that many of his storytelling choices were as entirely unpredictable as his mercurial main character.  An intrusive narrator (Fassbinder in a chillingly omniscient voiceover) frequently extends warnings to the characters, intones passages from the Old Testament, and recites grim catastrophe statistics from the newspapers at key moments, for example, alternating these pronouncements with soundless passages where text from Döblin's novel appears on silent movie intertitle cards.  Visually, the film also offers deliberate provocations like the grainy slaughterhouse scene where man's fate is compared to that of cattle and another scene or two--mayhaps more amusing to this viewer--that pay homage to Weimar degeneracy with Biberkopf's visits to a Berlin brothel district where the Whore of Babylon is on sale to connoisseurs of human flesh looking for something different in the fetish department.  Not for everybody and certainly not for book blogger squares but good, clean transgressive fun for anyone that can appreciate a rewrite of Ecclesiastes for a redemption story set in just pre-Nazi late 1920s Berlin: "And I turned and saw the injustice of everything that took place beneath the sun."  (The Criterion Collection)

Fassbinder on the set

Berlin Alexanderplatz, my first Fassbinder ever if I'm not mistaken, is my German entry for the Foreign Film Festival and Caroline's World Cinema Series events.  Mini-series over, the Döblin novel is now underway.

Romanian Film Festival

12:08 East of Bucharest (2007 DVD)
Directed by Corneliu Porumboiu

Romania, 2006

In Romanian with English and Spanish subtitles

I probably know less about Romanian cinema than I could fit on a Post-It note, but I really enjoyed this mordant black comedy from first-time feature film director Corneliu Porumboiu. As the movie unfolds, a provincial televison show commemorates the 16th anniversary of Nicolae Ceausescu's fall from power by asking two locals, an alcoholic teacher and a septuagenarian Santa, what they did on the fateful day in question: was there or was there not a revolution in the town similar to the one that forced Ceausescu to flee Bucharest in a helicopter? While the answers poke fun at the holes in the characters' memories as well as at the concept of journalistic integrity itself, some of them also question whether there was really any revolution at all. From there, it is just a short hop, skip and a jump to asking if life has actually improved since the dictator was executed, a question that Porumboiu touches on but slyly evades answering. Bleak? Kind of. But a lyrical sequence of snow falling near the end of the movie is worthy of Kieslowski. (http://www.tartanvideousa.com/)