Auch Zwerge Haben Kleine Angefangen (Even Dwarves Start Small)

Auch Zwerge Haben Kleine Angefangen {Even Dwarves Start Small} - (Herzog, 1969)

For once, the 48 inch height regulation at most commercial theme-parks instituted as a cut off for who is able to ride the most extreme rides, is thrown fervently to the wayside by director Werner Herzog. This charismatic giant in film history chooses to stand no taller or more prominent than the shortest of human dwarves, in his influential film Auch Zwerge Haben Kleine Angefangen (Even Dwarves Start Small.)

Herzog is famous for creating allegories for the broad human condition in his films manifested by figures or groups that are commonly rejected or disregarded as progressive to modern human development. In this film, however, instead of having to peruse the subtext of Herzog using a conspicuous category of non-human subjects, like those native cultures seen as "savage," varied social outcasts (artists) or examples of monstrous, blinded misanthropes (conquerors), Herzog hits the viewer right on the head with the "human handicap" he uses in his allegory. He uses, in fact, on of the very few groupings in society where a filmmaker can be solely reliant on the pure physical image of this group to establish both a sympathetic regard or perceptual discomfort, as well as an immediate dissociation from our understood standards of human evolution and progress.



Herzog makes high art out of our bad taste. He uses experience to make invisible the technical mastery of his work, enabling us first to capitalize on our well-learned judgmental nature and the human compulsion towards mockery at any and all forms of deformity, only to later shame us with the strength of his drawn parallels to the absurdities of human nature, overpowering our superficial instincts to laugh and taunt what is essentially only a physically miniaturized (not sociologically or mentally) diorama of our problematic human condition.

The dwarves create an empowered rebellion as is common in a layered society, but its effectiveness seems to falter under the lures of human nature's tendency towards acts of depravity and destruction.

If you treat them (the dwarves) as Herzogian allegorical representations of "us" (the larger dudes,) then sitting and watching the lot of them still unabashedly abusing and slaughtering animals (the poultry and livestock), tormenting the handicapped (the blind dwarves), striving to compete amongst one another (the bug comparisons, arranged marriages, and porn collections) and finally protesting and violently revolting against any form of control (firebombing Pepe and the assumed administrator of the compound) seems to be just your average study of human behaviour.

American Gangster

American Gangster {Ridley Scott, 2008}

I'm ace-in-the-hole sure this film has been chalked up in an insufferable amount of film criticism blogs. It's wet out of the womb, and so therefore, I'm going to let it grow into itself before I snip its umbilical cord or sever it's foreskin without its consent.

Still, though, I think it is appropriate to apply some first impressions, in order to compare them to my later opinions.

Pluses:

1) Russell Crowe. Typically great actor. Sort of unilateral. Not very Jewish. Not very good at faking a Jersey accent. Perfectly acceptable as a 2007 interpretation of Frank (Paco) in Serpico without the beatnik-vibe or the accusations of sexual deviancy.

2) Denzel Washington. Typically great actor. Sort of unilateral. Not usually a screen devil (though the opening shot of the film nullifies the extremes of his murderous actions for the remainder of the film, simply by surmounting them with the live cremation and execution of an anonymous victim right away.) Very very good at acting the role of a harlem-ite, as well as a noble man within the confines of poverty. Convincing as hell as any form of black activist, from the legitimate influence of Malcolm X, to the felonious impact of a corrupt drug czar or mob boss, just like Fred Williamson in Black Caesar.

3) Ridley Scott did good. Some of his shotwork was brilliant (directional parallels/ orchestrated composition i.e. the plane crossing behind several street markers). Chiwitel Ejiofor (Children Of Men) masks his anglo-speak exceptionally in playing the flashiest brother of co-protagonist Frank Lucas, just as Josh Brolin masks his tendency towards unintentional overacting exceptionally (see Hollow Man and the television series Into The West for reference) in his portrayal of the prick cop in the film who's' the most blatantly "on the take" (a la Serpico) from the criminal bankroll.

Minuses:

1) Hip-hop's big fat nose in this film is quite visible, especially the nose of America's modern hip-hop. This pitfall again seems acutely typical of the implicated 'trappings' that a white (in this case germanic) director faces in making a 'black' film that will inevitably draw a heavier 'black' audience. In an attempt to appease what is currently a ghetto-vitalized populous, the allowance of sluggish, cavorting, badly performed cameos by music media figures (like rapper T.I. [though, not really too shabby] and RZA (who cooly sports his poorly disguised Wu-Tang Clan tattoo no less than a foot away from the camera in one or two shots) drowns what credibility the filmmaker build up. These ego-insertions cripple the work as a strong piece that communicates skillfully among more diverse audiences.

The use of this tactic of "filling out the molds of a type of racial film," to me seems counterproductive. In an attempt at cinematic egalitarianism, why further ostracize, as well as distract more major audiences, by choosing instead to only appeal to an informed, select few attentive to your central subject's racial disposition? If Frank Lucas ever stuck out loudly as a "black man in the white man's world" it was certainly made the loudest in this film.

I guess because I'm more versed in civil rights than the prototypical moviegoer I can cast down these judgments more easily believing I am above the common viewer.

This does not, however, discard the fact that instrumental constructs that often strengthen racism, nationalism, and the West's lust for economic individuality and privatization, are further fortified by the modes and ethics of this film.

2) New York is ___________ this close to being dead as a setting. It is now ___ this much closer.

Conclusion:

If a stage rendition of Black Caesar played in a broadway double-up with a rendering of Serpico, then American Gangster would be appraised as a lousy film rendition of the broadway hit that featured a goody two-shoes cop running down a self-made black mafioso. The papers might say "the camera work and special effects were nice though."

Cinematic Excess

Cinematic Excess

(response again to an exam question asking what the role of "cinematic excess" is in modern cinema)

The atypical Hollywood narrative structure means to be as readable and stimulating as possible. We are all aware of this, and fall victim to it, switching off for a little more than an hour, behind our popcorn jacouzzi and our odd footing that cuts off toe circulation whilst we're wedged between the duplex soft-chair armrest zones. It is obvious then, in discussing the role of "Cinematic Excess" (in these well defined structural boundaries), that the two (convention and excess) are destined to conflict!!!!

(F***ING DUH).

(*ahem) With "Cinematic Excess," the plainly material and objective nature of all the elements of a film can be interpreted as "subjective," and makes it a very 'opinionated' argument whether or not a specific film falls victim to such awesomely intellectual critical categories (*cough*).

However, on the basic level, Cinematic Excess (that is, things that are labeled as such) usually rings loud and clear to the viewer or critic simply because it defies the structure most familiar to modern cinema (the Hollywood schtick, one would say).

It is clear, therefore, that like most "movements" or "rebellions" against a tradition or a strict coda, an ebb and floe soon will be produced that undulates between the two opposing points on the spectrum. Eventually, aligning with the cyclical nature of any political or hierarchical structure (which film in a lot of cases certainly represents,) that which is 'revolutionary' solely because of its counteraction of the 'evils of normalcy' within our typical parameters, tragically ceases to be revolutionary after a certain amount of overstudy and varying disagreements. The applicable revolutionary idea made pertinent to defying this societal structure is nevertheless inevitably adapted directly into the same system it initially rebelled against.

An "obtuse narrative structure"* (according to Roland Barthes) is a lengthy of saying the above. Usually, the 'obtuse' label marks that a film is the offspring of the fundaments beneath the above process (that is, the essentials of the typical Hollywood narrative.) Elements or structures that do no fit (such as rearranged chronology, unconventional composition, a spoken or textual approach to storytelling, or most commonly an extreme sense of style exuded from the filmmaker) or that are regarded as "Cinematic Excess" have slowly been transmogrified into working neo-tropes within the Hollywood labyrinth, which they previously riled against.

In a nutshell, what's different is so cool, that it becomes cool and marketable to seem 'different' and the entities that the "different" strive to segregate from themselves in turn absorb that 'angst' and 'nonconformist behaviour' into their condescending, subversive, capitalistic vocabulary.

Cache Opening

Cache [opening] (Michael Haneke, 2005)

(Also an edited 'exam response' to (basically) the question: "Please analyze the opening scene of Cache (Michael Haneke, 2005) and discuss how the director disregards a typical cinematic language and how he goes about doing so)

Oh those french. They sure do know how to shake things up. Putting an Austrian in charge, well that's a confidently guaranteed shake. Haneke trumps several key conventions in the language of cinema within Cache, namely his vague regard for the viewer in the film's transmission of information. The titling, first, runs over the establishing shot in a paperback novel reading direction, printed in a small and difficult font that makes the credits of this film nearly illegible, (aside from the word Cache, that is,) the first hint that Haneke does not want to spoon feed you his narrative.

His initial shots leave it severely unclear whom (out of the dozen or so persons who meander through the shot[s]) is the subject of the narrative. Then, instead of modern film's inherent use of sound to thread both form and structure to a piece, Haneke lets off-screen dialogue, both diegetic and extracted in post, to drive the images without driving the narrative along as well. This sound and image relationship creates an almost completely disjointed form of dialogue. The revelation of the viewer's involvement in a "surveillance" in the late opening is as obvious a shock value method as Haneke's apparent rebellious test of form.

What to me really separates Haneke's structure of the cinematic language from the conventional comes from his reign over sound and its contrast with the emptiness of certain images. To elaborate on that reign would be redundant of the above paragraphs, so read this piece as a recycle sign (in a loop) and the thesis will become easily evident.

Paisà

Rossellini's Paisà (1946)
as a film of "Memory"



(Notably shorter as it is an edited 'exam response' to the broad academic question: "Please analyze the opening scene of Roberto Rossellini's (episodical sextuplet) film Paisà (the newsreel segment) and discuss it, paying specific attention to its relation to André Bazin's idea of "realism" and also David McDougall's article "Transcultural Cinema: Films Of Memory"...)

In crafting his opening for this disguised fictional film, Rossellini employs historical reference as well as a reliance on photographic iconography (the highly recognizable image of the 'wartime newsreel') to achieve a notion of realism necessary in driving the action and thesis of his film. The opening footage automatically assigns a reconstructive "memory" that gives validity to the rest of the film, offering, quite bluntly, a purely visual or 'lexical' representation of memory that is quite direct. What is lacking is the expressionism or dialectic strategies of montage cinema, which Rossellini puts at bay, in favour of the "realism" that is well defined by Bazin.

David MacDougall, in his article on *Film as Memory, states that "films condense such multidimensional thinking into concrete imagery, stripping the representation of memory of much of its breadth and ambiguity." It then seems certainly that in Paisà, the opening 'Florence episode' evidently wields the heavy influence of memory in it's conventional, accessible mode (that is, one of journalistic hubris,) in order to smoothly meld an ambiguous psychological phenomenon with the clarity of representation modeled within Bazin's cookie-cutter of "realism." By simply streamlining conscious and subconscious human thought into an organized temporal progression, first with the 'reel,' and then with the film's clear and informative dialogue coupled with the historical accuracy of the mise-en-scene and the heightened drama of the music (par excellence), and even the occasional Rules Of The Game depth of field with simultaneous action detectible within the frame, Rossellini achieves his "easy influence" through the weak but successful use of his notably "easy opening."

*David MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema: Films of Memory

Salo - The 120 Days of Sodom

Salo - Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975

There is an inexorable truth revealed about the core of human nature and the psyche inherent in witnessing the exposure or humiliation of another human being. That truth is simply that the idea of the "human psyche" is really a complex electrical argument in our brain that defines what we each consider to be our own sense of "self".

The idea of "self-awareness" has been heavily disciplined throughout almost every society in history to be more than just simply 'aware' of one's own individual material worth. Rather, the efforts devoted to our own self-interest have become inseparable from our rationale; they have grown nearly instinctual. Thus, it is that (ironic) commonality in the highly individual vanity we find so fundamental to humanity that allows the use of humiliation as a mode of critique of man's ingrained sense of self. When our malleable sense of "self" is forced to interpret someone else's loss of "self" as it is stripped away in front of our eyes, the worst of human fear, our fear of losing our own "self-importance", throws us into an existential limbo. This argument between forces causes our sense of "self" to be momentarily defined by the simple strengths of the two extremes and how each contrasts.

This is typically a critique reserved mostly for the arts and other various mediums of creative expression. The artist, having to constantly lay bare at the feet of their peers their deepest of emotions, their innermost turmoils, and often even the frailty of their fragile physical form, this would seem to qualify artists as the most fitting as an examiner of the self, being stripped of that sense of self, and alternately the impact on self encountered by those forcing disgrace on another human. If they accept, the artist has a privileged chance to criticize most effectively those institutions and ideals that perpetuate acts of cruelty and humiliation in our society.

This privilege is of course not devoid of any danger or risk. After all, another notion shared by modern man, is the almost instantaneous negative reaction to an artist's use of any graphic depictions of one person or a group of people being publicly defiled, tortured, or humiliated. Though this is subjective, generally using most forms of violence, exhibiting sexuality in all forms, or including any other vivid, gratuitous imagery in a work can discomfort or infuriate a public audience to the point of censorship, protest, and even violence. Sin, vice, or immorality layed out explicitly by the artist in a social critique is universally taught to be an invasive, unacceptable method of philosophical argument, contending that it cheapens its own assertion by relying on pure shock value.

Specifically in the realm of art, often times our learned initial objection to graphic elements rings true, primarily when an artist fails to fully develop a strong concept for a work's argument, or lacks the necessary expertise essential to executing that argument clearly. The work, without these factors, soon falters and therefore comes to use the crutch of hollow, graphic images in excess, in order to hold the work together.

However, when an artist is successful in the stripping bare of our inherent materiality, a highly skilled balance of the formal and technical structure of the work is needed to stand in contrast with a skilled control over utilizing graphic acts or elements to more wholly define the argument or critique, with a careful filtering

Within a puritanical state of civility, the medium of film is one of the most comprehensive ways of rendering visually the contradictions of these systems into a translatable thesis. Constructing a skilled portrait of humankind's most refined demeanor, wearing the cloak of virtuosity over a quieted closet lust, and obviously disguising the horrifying human compulsion towards violence with the thin veil of civility and control, plainly sets up these facades to be stripped, making the disparity between the two twice as impacting to witness, especially when skillfully captured on film.

Pasolini's Salo not only succeeds in fully exposing the victimized youth forced into shame and anguish depicted in his film, but the film also intentionally sheds the masquerade of refinement and the appearance of acculturation associated with the central, controlling party (baring both the male leaders of the Fascist regime, as well as the loose women accompanying them). This group of political officials is wielded by Pasolini as a capacious illustration of his hatred for the horrors and brutal crimes of the Fascist ideal as a whole.

Pasolini purposefully adorns the tyrants in the garb of the upper class. They wear smoking jackets, with top hats, fine suits, leather shoes and bow ties, even valuable and decadent ball gowns (and not just by the women mind you).

They all board, and coexist for the entire film inside of a large deserted estate, claimed by the fascist regime. There are massive, oak floored rooms, marble promenades, grandiose paintings, and a spotless great room with chairs for each man rowed like thrones. There is never a time in which any of these self-made kings or their harem are separated from their pageantry and posture. Even when they choose perform acts of torture and rape, acts so dirty and foul, they still wear the air of their gentrified society. This forces the viewer to identify the primary locus of the sickening evil they collectively exude, to be a purely internal force or nature, unable to hide even under their most shimmering baubles.



The fifteen boys and fifteen girls on the other hand, who are choked underneath the talons of these monstrous humans and their positions of power, undergo unspeakable atrocities. This power and atrocity are together what make this film a masterpiece in its critique of capitalism, total rule, and fascism. Pasolini exposes their atrocities in both his examination of the extreme corruption that comes with absolute power, and most candidly, the deep perversions so well masked in society that when set free by the limitless powers of violent law and total dictatorship, far exceed even the most solid viewer's tolerance and ability to easily endure a piece as graphic as this film.

Pasolini exhibits a masterful consciousness in structuring the work's four blocks to match the structure of his literary inspiration, The 120 days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. His prominent basis in literature and writing surprisingly gleams from under the grotesque dialogue, remaining poetic despite its central topics of the scatological, the depraved, the vulgar and the inhumane. His framing often sits wide and out, with high empty spaces similar to the scale and grace of architecture in a Rococo painting of a Basilica or perhaps a Salon. He lets you sit in the room nude with the rest of the slaves, also seating you in the thrones of the Duke and the other men, enacting a geographical sense of voyeurism.

Careful to remain heterogeneous, Pasolini also cuts from the wide shots to shots that come close in, (almost seeming claustrophobic), for the various times where we follow the groping and other individual travesties unabashedly performed on the slaves at any whim, in public, by the Fascist lords.
This same claustrophobia is what heightened the rancor I felt with each new scene showing one of the enslaved teens being taken into privacy. Watching the children being led off into rooms built off of the main "story" chamber, in order to relieve the men of whatever darkness in their loins broiled to the surface was what touted Pasolini's heavy message of total humiliation the strongest. All the kinds of aberration that man is actually capable of never stopped sounding off his hatred for the fascist regime like a towering gong, throughout the whole film.

I watched, as in various acts of fetishism, coprophagia (eating of feces), vulgarity, sadism, sexual disfigurement, gender bending, animalization, slavery, psychological manipulation, horrifying torture, and murder, Pasolini scarred the central message into me with the most extreme visuals I have ever forced myself to witness. As a viewer, I even felt physically brutalized by the actions of these satanic men, who murder their mothers, delight in eating excrement, and revel in being so vile and sexually parasitic. And yet, Pasolini is able to let me justify his unfeeling documentation of these atrocities, using to its limit the foundations of his cinematic structure, mise-en-scene, and quieted cinematographic style and movement.
I was ensnared, visually devouring the mutilation of those who were lost to the world, making me just as submissive to the sadomasochism of those villainous capitalists as that group of Italian teens became. This film accomplished a sort of artistic stigmata, (if you can believe it), in which the pain being projected forced onto one or many of the victims in the film sometimes would literally feel mirrored in your own body.

It is this that separates Pasolini's film from the crutch of shock value, or a failure in critique. Glory was absent from his agenda, unlike some other director with only the shock crutch holding their film aloft. Pasolini means to make the body into a commodity; a sheer veil that is disposable, not only in stripping his actors of their humanity, but in stripping the viewer as well. He wants to disrupt that inherent self-importance, and our instinctual sense of power as an individual, so that we understand that all that matters inside us is what is intangible. He defiles everyone and once they are bare, those who have been defiled, both the evil men and the victims, are nothing more than the spirit that drives them. I was humiliated after watching Salo, and I soon realized why Pasolini made this film. He made me humiliated so that I could understand what it was to feel humility.

Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (James Mangold, 1996)

This film flexes its muscles as a neo-hollywood memoir drama, with everything wrapped neatly with big bows on top and tags that read "Columbia Pictures". There's Those big inviting Angelina lips, Winona Ryder's mastery of the three carrot diet, The amorphous set of a mental institution, and the ace job of the overpaid, sixties-hairstyle and wardrobe experts. There's even a big old dose of Whoopee Goldberg packed in to this Oscar-army, filling out the triple star power triumvirate.

Oh my god, I forgot to mention the twist! Mangold breaks out of the mold with a wandering chronology and temporal dislocation to accent Ryder's intense psychological narration. She constantly keeps giving you that familiar "she's so poetic and unstable" inkling that LA Weekly always just eats up like mad (pun intended).

Ryder and Jolie unknowingly evoke the angst and conceit of my favorite form of entertainment, that of the modern beat-loving amateur teenage writers and sociopaths, with their standard private school educations, dysfunctional but affluent parents, and of course, the expected prevalence of a well acted, attention-seeking faux mental disorder (usually falling under what are considered today as "cool" syndromes like schizo-affective or manic depression diagnoses). We know these characters, and how inevitably the maladies that these liars choose are always those that only exhibit nonphysical symptoms, and can therefore only be assessed in the methods of abstract medicine, (through therapy or by examining behaviors).

In the credits as the film ends, it seems to have become clear to me that it is actually the film itself that suffers from a severe personality disorder. The piece throughout seems to work well, banking on most people's silent fascination with mental disorder and the routines of institutionalization. However, once the plot is revealed as being based on non-fiction, this deception becomes the one thing that ruins the films strength and effectiveness. The film's 'pathos' quickly is instead identified as 'bathos' despite its level of technical execution, simply due to its selective derangement of the film's source material.

Adapted from the novel by the same name, the only "girl" who seems to have been truly "interrupted" is the novel's author, Susanna Kaysen. The bestselling book which Kaysen wrote is, like the film, an autobiographical memoir. Thus her reaction to the film calling it "melodramatic drivel" would seem to denote a major gap in existence between the histrionic cinematic version and the factual accounts given in the book.

Most moviegoers would shrug blindly at this invisible travesty, as the character Winona depicts matches at least in a very general demeanor how Kaysen's battle with her disorder and the record of her experiences actually occurred. They ignore that the author's emotional words have been cheapened into a flashy, trite exploitation showcasing an irritating nervous breakdown, carelessly vamped up for the screen with one single paint coat of slick, canned cinematic dramaturgy.

Including myself in the minority of impassive viewers, what seems to have happened in the case of Girl, Interrupted is, quite conveniently, a situation quite well-mirrored by the films plot itself. In Girl Interrupted the literary work, a young writer suffers from a desire to use her creative work as a vehicle for escaping the throes of an oppressive system holding her by the ankles. This can only happen, however, if he or she can first find a way to create a turmoil or crisis that warrants the inspiration necessary to succeed.

The act of writing Girl Interrupted cinematically instead involved three writers: an established screenwriter, Anne Hamilton Phelan, the director, James Mangold and the playwright, Lisa Loomer, combined in stealing the central role. They collaboratively invented the drama and turmoil themselves by boldly inserting it into the writing even if it was fabricated. The group was similarly attempting to create their first Oscar-worthy vehicle in an effort to escape the trappings of the hollywood system holding their ankles. Unfortunately, they did this while completely ignoring the moral dilemma implicit in their decision to misrepresent the author's original work.

So, whereas Kaysen succeeds in escaping these chains of her literary anonymity by recounting her compelling story as it occurred, as well as learning to curb her disorder along the way, the film edit still remains trapped in the boiler plate factory of hollywood with its vicious traditions, simply by improving upon work that needed little improvement.

The threesome's final script is certainly what 'mangles' the essence of Kaysen's fantastic novel by foolishly 'looming' over the originality of her literary voice and her altruistic realism with overdone theatrics and catchy industry hooks. The film as a singular entity is entertaining and even powerful at times. Honestly, Winona, Whoopee and Angelina deserve every accolade they got for their performances, as they completed their jobs with the utmost emotion and expertise. But the sheer tenacity of the adaptation being heralded for falsifying someone's life-story after being entrusted with their personal work, is what makes me almost ready to be commited myself.

La Chinoise

La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard, 1976)

Godard's La Chinoise is a film surrounded by luck. It is his thirteenth narrative. If you're superstitious, this will be triggering your "triskaidekaphobia" (fear of the number 13). If you're a christian, you're thinking of the Epiphany, or the number of participants at the Last Supper (noting that Judas Iscariot, according to the bible, was the thirteenth seat at the table). If you're a overweight middle schooler being picked for dodge ball in Gym, you're holding back tears from being the extra one in line, chosen last, and sure to be the first one pegged once the game begins.

In my case, the way luck factors into my experience in attending La Chinoise is simply this: I am lucky that after seeing this film, I didn't slap a bystander on the street and enter into a hysterical fit out in the open on the corner of Bleecker Street near NYU. I was expecting to be frustrated, as La Chinoise was made during Godard's obnoxious transitional phase. I was expecting a political gab-fest. I was expecting Jean-Pierre Leaud. I was expecting big, interruptive block lettering in between every scene in pretentious half-sentences.

What I wasn't expecting was a cinematic test-tube baby, attempting to fertilize the phallic hollywood conformo-sperm with its round head of concrete narrative and its flapping, chronological, dramatic flagellum, with the natural antithesis disjunctive egg, wrapped in an esoteric membrane of jump cuts, shaking the petri-dish with its blatant mockery and rejection of narrative form. However, Godard delivered.

I sat, for a torturous two hours and twenty minutes in the most uncomfortable seats in history, the Film Forum theater chairs, staring at a 4:3 screen and trying to get my eyes to focus after a tiring transit across the city. We sat in the front row, so that we would be the first to receive the images, a la Bertolluci. In retrospect, the film was even worse up close in your face, and I ended up only being the first to receive a slipped vertebrae.

I have to remind myself that I have a heart, and give some credit where it is due. The restoration was gorgeous (see, positivity!) and Jean-Pierre Leaud always adds a little padding to even the most disappointing films. Godard's funny bone, as usual, irked out as much laughter as a bad toast by the best man at your good friends wedding (not a plentiful amount). Jean-Pierre stole most of the laughs purely with his body language, with a few chuckles also burgled by a series of upper-class urbanite pro-communist rhetoric recitals spouted by Anne Wiazemsky clad in an outfit reminiscent of Patty Hearst (sans automatic rifle, replaced instead with a toy rifle that folds to look like a stereo).

Up to this point everything was fine. It seemed as though all the film was going to chalk up to be in essence was a silly little riff on how trite the "plight" of the activist middle-class youth forever trapped by their trusts and inheritances from becoming the full-fledged, card-carrying, patch-laden, jungle-hardened revolutionaries they so longed to be, complete with sex appeal and guaranteed peer idolization. I didn't think it would be too bad to sit back and compare how little the same psychosis still linger in the "revolutionary" youth of today, in fact, the colors were nice and the subtitles were big, I was set to just roll on through and cross another Godard off my sticky-pad list.

Then, the median point hits in the film. Godard begins at first to start cultivating a dramatic underpinning amongst the hectic group-think bottled up in the small apart where the majority of the film remains (which is an interesting exploration of space in a way, to give a bit more credit). Suddenly the dialogue becomes segmented, divided between the reminiscences of one of the flat mates talking about how the situation was too much for him, interspersed with inane arguments between the several housemates, complete with peaking audio that could skin a cat out of fright, as well as sentences that start to trickle into the surreal (which I would have been fine with had it not come so severely out of left field) with poetic linguistics fogging up any clarity Godard had established with the first half of his film.

The film ended with a suicide, a homicide (with two tries no less!) and a finale featuring the...er...older sister? of Anne Wiazemsky's character shuttling around the now abandoned flat, ending finally with her scolding their ridiculousness and their negligence in allowing the suicide to happen. Then there were some block letters and a nice Michel Legrand song in the credits to stop me from punching a hole in the wall. The Chinese are in China, not in France.

A Short Text About Awe

IN RESPONSE TO:
- A Short Film About Love (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988)
- A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988)


"A Short Text About Awe"

The Careful Conventions of Krzysztof Kieślowski

by H.P. Willis

It has always seemed to me that the majority of humanities most worthy literary greats have very frequently come to verify the importance of their work all in a similar way. Each building upon their predecessor, these titanic figures of print attain their dignitary status once, and only once they have been able to successfully stretch the bounds of their talent into several careful and congruous volumes. These types of laborious works in several installments most effectively demonstrate longevity, close analysis, a tireless work ethic, and if executed correctly, can wonderfully exhibit an author's capability to command attention at length from even the most skeptical reader.

The ability to successfully work in this difficult mode of textual relation known as "cycle" or "series" separates the lesser temporary ambitions of many from the lasting mastery of the epic and harmonious works of few.

This notion of "the more the effort, the more the reward" seems to remain a generally accepted measure of merit. Provided the content fully lives up to the toil of the conquest, a work will always receive an ample boost solely based on its length and effort. This mode of judgement obviously not only exists in literature, but in the common distinction among all other languages of expression between works of attempt and works of accomplishment; between the frailty of aspiration and the power of execution.

If the Cinema, still an infant art form mothered with such heavy influence and parallels in the very same classical writings, has produced any masters of worth to the medium, it is those with a firm grasp of narrative who in the eyes of the public have earned their place amongst the immortals. The ability to transmit a concept or argument with only the purity of visual constructs today seems to be secondary in importance to films offering an audience loaded images that are crutched by either the cheap exit of startling effects, or with the use of heavy handed or superficial dialogue.

Still, the cycle work or the "catalogue" remains the dominant means of proving one's caliber regardless of genre. In the least each director primarily aims to create a basic succession of works wherein the chosen content or visuals will hopefully be able to translate across each episode understandably. Where most fail is in assuming that the content they derive is strong enough to carry itself through several segments without being too easily spelled out before reaching the climax of their order.

The few directors whose creative contributions have warranted being called "masterworks" typically only yield one to two of these works celebrated as "gems of cinematic breadth" throughout their entire careers.

Krzysztof Kieślowski, Poland's premier auteur, therefore, is a true rarity in the short history of cinema. His gift has been made apparent in his famous prolificacy, creating his numerous bulk works of near perfection. A brilliant manipulator of alternation, each pack of films acts as a lexicon for his wholesale approach to cinema, as well as and index of the specifics of his artful direction for which he is lauded today.

In his lifetime, Kieslowski chose to transcend the "magnum opus" sought after by most filmmakers of the movements he was surrounded by. He worked instead on perfecting a body of gifted sequential panoramas of society and relationships, posing important questions about the human condition and the political climate of his surroundings as well as the greater population of the world. This pattern of intention is exhibited and studied most famously in works like The Decalogue and his Red, White, Blue trilogy.

Each collection's scale eclipses the common limits of the single feature, with a balance of both linear and disjunctive episodes arranged to more wholly capture the universal themes and intentions Kieslowski chooses to observe. The audience's intelligence (for once) is paid compliment, in that each film in Kieslowski's sweeping compositions, he means to challenge the viewer to draw several unspoken connections between each of his careful partitions. The viewer watching each vignette is gradually made aware of the greater significance in the combination of each of the series' parts. Kieslowski intends for this to be achieved through following the carefully threaded but often ambiguous argument or thesis that he rations out carefully between each section of the final work.

Kieslowski seems to have chosen carefully in his designating which of the two films out of his ten part series The Decalogue he wanted to expand further from their already epic original collection. He again chose to refrain from simply stretching short form into feature merely for the construction of an opus. Instead the two were expanded separately still as pieces of a larger whole, only meditated on a bit longer than the rest of the pieces in his ten piece suite.

Having before only seen the short within the series, I still find deep personal resonance in Kieslowski's communication even though its in short, television format. When viewed in solidarity as a more complete thought, Kieslowski's pieces still managed to maintain that resonance and yet pull it further with added detail, but again without exhausting the height of his narrative and cinematographic ability.

Both A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing accomplish an immaculate inspection of two difficult and controversial situations with a skillful composition that obviously denotes experience. Both employ the magic of glass and reflections, heavy psychological lighting achieved with filters and environmental light, a distinct attention to diegetic sound as well as marginal or fractionalized sound, and most noticeably a uniquely visual approach to character development and the establishment of power relationships, as opposed to the trend of simplistic expositional dialogue.

Although our modern commercial market thrives on various types of voyeurism, the sexual taboo of the "Peeping Tom" (or in this case the polish variation "Tomek") is still not endorsed by most of the general population. Outwardly it seems the majority of the film students discussing this piece last week claimed to find no personal connection to the protagonist in Love, or the subject matter at hand. Most admitted instinctively finding Tomek's behavior reproachable, and said they found it difficult to change their perspective after their initial impression of Tomek as well as the film's premise was established.

In reality I'm sure a good number of those same people publicly discrediting scopophilia have in some way or another dealt with the very same issue, or one similar. To claim naiveté in all matters sexual has become the Puritan's monument left for moral impact upon the psychological history of this and several other countries. Its sad to hear such shame in people, especially in the arts.

It has been my understanding that Kieslowski enacts a unique personal communication in his audiences choosing to abandon the interpersonal in favor of a silent exclusivity. Although it seems he intends the opposite, wanting for the human relationship to become more accessible even in the often dire or troubling circumstances his characters are placed within. One of his few faults may be his uncanny ability to create a psychological interior for each central character with the control he exhibits in detailing their internal lives and private nuances.

Like fellow master, Robert Bresson, Kieslowski highlights only the necessary elements (personal possessions, eating habits, tics or quirks) in each character's introduction. He carefully features each element visually, so directly that without a letter of dialogue he assures that his audience will properly assign close to the appropriate level of sympathy to each of the personalities he profiles.

Yet Kieslowski is mindfully inclusive, unlike Bresson, of the marginal, unessential details closely neighboring the elements he chooses to emphasize. Kieslowski specifically seems aware that the chaos provided by these devalued particulars is what normally fills completely the leftover spaces in real life. He gives weight to the unimportant in order to sate the gaps of empty fiction inherent in film's sterile dramatization. This sounds impossible, for a filmmaker to both highlight directly what he chooses, while leaving all of the other scraps and minutia in the visual conversation. Still, using frame and light to the height of their efficiency, Kieslowski can let the camera watch the important with the most direct priority while never neglecting to underscore the unimportant.

His success in exploring the nature of each primary character unintentionally distances many of the characters he has interact in an effort to support human communication and interrelationship. This problem seems only to have been resolved slightly in the Red, White, Blue trio. In each, throughout the first quarter or half of the film, it is clear that we are expected to distinctly identify with the cerebral depth and subconscious nature of the three troubled women, Julie, the composer's widow, Karol, the immigrant, and Valentine, the despondent student, who at the beginning of each plot seem likely to remain the central focus of our attention and sympathy as the films progress.

Each of the three films somehow defeats this idea of the expected singularity of character by first invalidating the innocence of each girl when one or several outside characters interrupts their psychosomatic empathy
by calling them out in some fashion about their inconsistencies or faults. Then Kieslowski enters simultaneously the psyche of one of the secondary characters while still vaguely continuing his earlier observation of the central woman in each film.

In Red, his final film, the main examination of the film ends up having little to do with the girl we've been following, aside from her importance to the climax shared by all three films (a ferry sinking with characters from each of the trilogy's episodes aboard.) The focus gently shifts away from the girl's mental state, as she suddenly is made to act more as a catalyst or, rather, a pivot attaching two external characters who seem to have very little in common. Finally she brings them together without intending to, enabling the two men to discover their similarities and eventually develop a strong fraternal relationship (the theme so unexpectedly imparted by the film.) These three films are unique in their clear cut departures between focal characters abruptly in each episode.

This is not to say that A Short Film About Love or A Short Film About Killing in any way evade human connectivity. Both most certainly address relationships from a dualistic viewpoint, showing the situation from both the perspective of the predatory as well as the perspective of the prey. Both act as separate political commentary on two debated aspects of modern human existence. The films employ a psychological context not easily achieved in films addressing ruthless murder or voyeurism.

Like the rest of The Decalogue, Kieslowski is able to use the sociopolitical backdrop of economic depression within a communist state to heighten the cravings and dependencies of his subjects, weaving a complex membrane intended to rouse his audience into both an open discussion of external global conditions as well as an amazing internal conference about quality of life.

Tomek is unabashed of his anonymous terrorizing of Magda, not once cowering from being called out to reveal himself and admit his obsessions, a trait uncommon among fetishists. Jasek seems to not understand or even regard self control, human decency, or the value of human life, until faced with the violent theft of his own existence, and it is soon apparent that there is a backwards sort of innocence in his callous incomprehension of his actions.

Kieslowski has effectively created a rarity in his portrayal of two deviants who, to the audience, may actually appear innocent for momentary glimpses, or even longer. In fact, the typically empowered male predatory degenerate who we are used to seeing control a disturbing sexual or emotional latitude in films both become the casualty of their own passions when Tomek's forthcoming nature reverses the scenario in Magda's favor and Jasek desperately explains his upbringing to the young lawyer.

Kieslowski consumes us in the distress between these two characters in each film, both of whom we sympathize with, choosing not to thoughtlessly exclude either side of the emotional spectrum at play in either film. Another oblique approach Kieslowski engages with Tomek's story is the inclusion of "love" in a piece which, disregarding the title, gives the first impression of a more animalistic study of unwanted exploitation.

The intimacy of Kieslowski's filmmaking exemplified in his attention within both films to a careful intellectually disturbing tone and a calm realism in his violence and sexual tension lends perfectly to a very layered discussion of loneliness, compulsion, and a loss of innocence in both elongated chapters of The Decalogue.

The controversy of each film Kieslowski produces rings to me as not provocative enough in a commercial sense to market as a bankable shock commodity, especially in an America with a deep hatred for subtitles. I still remain reverent of Kieslowski's filmmaking, even his solitary pieces like The Double Life of Veronique. Like the volumes of Dostoevsky, of Chaucer, of Styron, of Salinger, or even the loose encyclopedic legend of Kerouac, Kieslowski's silent wisdom is most evident in his ability to so carefully control a length of time that would seem impossible to most to keep so sensible or collected, while never sacrificing his speculative nature, imaginative content, or any of his dynamic approaches to shooting, framing, lighting, and the power of clarity no film maker should ever think to abandon.

Since my first attempt at soaking in The Decalogue, and after reading for a greater understanding about his handling the span of an epic like the Decalogue in his autobiography Kieslowski on Kieslowski, the only effective word I can use to advertise how his films have affected me and influenced me is the word "awe" returning from the title of this paper. Awe simply because his films are both incredibly disturbing and incredibly beautiful in tandem without a stitch in the middle for you to notice the gap. Awe at a filmmaker who can effortlessly move ideologies and questions that few people dare to address without having to reach for the hysterical or the pacifistic in order to translate both his qualms and his satisfactions about life and humanity with such ease. Awe at a filmmaker who can make films that remain just as classic as the words of any classic book.

Control

Control (Anton Corbijn, 2007)

The first sentence of this review couldn't be anything other than "this film was absolutely the best film I have seen in over a year and is strongly jockeying for a slot in my all time favorites." Shedding away my established obsession with the film's topic, the band Joy Division and the tumultuous life and untimely suicide of the band's front-man, Ian Curtis, as well as my feverish, fan-boy tachycardia at the slightest mention of the film's wizard of a director, Netherlander Anton Corbijn, I would most assuredly be matched in my enthusiasm for this film had I simply been seeing it without knowing the slightest thing about it.

Biopics seem to have been growing into themselves over the past several years, with each character-study piece being released and directed in a variety diverse modes and formats. This has allowed the biopic as a genus to artfully avoid any major commonalities that would render this newborn "genre" too stale or easily identifiable. The black and white brilliance of Control strengthens this individuality of style, by engaging the genius of Anton Corbijn's photographic fashion of filmmaking with both brilliant acting and a compelling emotional fall-from-grace story (case in point: at the end of the film, I cried really hard, along with most of the theater at the Film Forum; even the snottiest of NYU kitsch mongers was bawling; it was that serious).

The familiarity of Corbijn's distinctive composition and use of ridiculously deep contrast and de-saturation fits this film and its subject matter like a glove. Corbijn, (very seldom recognized despite the success of his work) is responsible for directing some of the most iconic 1980's black and white music videos of his era, many of which are still are played on today's music television. Corbijn worked closely with Curtis and Joy Division from very early on, volunteering as their official photographer. He then later moved on to make dozens of music videos for many renowned music groups, such as Depeche Mode, Echo and The Bunnymen, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, and most famously his prolific work with the band U2). Many shots in Control were big on the same empty framing and use of lots of negative space, as well as an affinity for hard edges and settings with little ornamentation, all traits that are often associated with his music videos.

Sparsity reigned with triumph throughout the work. Scenes were driven by the majesty of performance for the most part. The backgrounds, conversely, were designed to amplify through minimalism the alienation and tight-lipped poverty of the British countryside during the sixties and seventies.

This design was followed closely, unless, that is, Corbijn awarded that an object was intended to reflect a psychological preoccupation or a physical frailty, in which case lo-fi, hand-made elements, or daily items of the working-class were made to represent their users through association. For example, Corbijn includes the homemade leather journals used by Curtis for writing Joy Division's lyrics, noting that it was this writing that clearly detached Curtis from his quite, antisocial persona.

Curtis also appears with common, boring, or unattractive objects in the film, chosen to better introduce the restless existence of living within the suffocating atmosphere of 1970's rural-gone-industrial Great Britain. We see that Curtis travels several times in the film, with his mysterious look and simple wardrobe, always carrying a large, solid-color royal military rucksack with one long strap hung over his shoulder as he walks. The hulking bag works repeatedly at painting him to be some sort of returning hero fresh from battle, each time lugging it casually as he walks up the lane to his home after a long tour, at least four times throughout the film.

Sam Riley, who played the lead singer of a band called The Fall in another film that briefly studied Joy Division, Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, manages to manifest perfectly not only the pale, sullen severity of Ian Curtis' physical demeanor, but even the spirit of his music. Riley actually performs with his own voice along with the surviving members of Joy Division, recording a near perfect live rendition of Curtis' songs for the film's several concert sequences.

Riley being a spitting image only lends slightly to the actor's talent and ability in reifying the troubled singer's overbearing need for release. Corbijn and Riley obviously put a massive amount of effort into a realistic performance. Samantha Morton, playing Curtis' wife Deborah (who produced the film, and wrote the biography it is based upon) delivers a heart wrenching role as the rejected spouse who falls victim to the temper of a tortured genius, as well as the infidelity of a husband who is also a touring musician. Using the same subtlety and minimalism in her performance, she dramatically achieves the same notions that Corbijn emits with his spotless cinematographic mode.

The actors playing the remaining three in the band (who later formed New Order) are somewhat diminished characters, but they still hit the appropriate emotional tones each time they are brought forward within the narrative. Toby Kebbell cast as the mouthy manager Rob Gretton splices in the necessary lightness in this heavy piece, winning the audience with his verbose insults and seedy quick-talking negotiation tactics. It seems as though, miraculously, anyone who occupied the frame at any time during the film was most certainly highly trained in the art of convincing performance. At no point did I ever drop out of the realm of the film because I recognized anyone's problematic acting.

Curtis in his life suffered from advanced epilepsy, causing him to have seizures off stage, and on stage, during which witnesses of these events claim that he would incorporate the writhing and spastic movements of his fits into his sporadic dancing style. The film chronicles his realization, adaptation, medication and frustration in dealing with this disease, ultimately a factor in his choice to end his own life.

The finale, where Curtis hangs himself in his own kitchen, is too loaded to describe. You have to see for yourself, because that scene, shot-for-shot, trumps all suicides I've ever seen portrayed in films, for a thousand reasons.

Corbijn achieves a Herculean task in aptly recounting the life of such a complex iconic figure in modern music. Control is the first biopic I have seen to extend past the novelty of physical resemblance or "a good impression," as this film almost burglarizes history. This piece penetrates the restlessness of Curtis' byzantine soul, his dark and poetic philosophy, his thick literary perspectives, paradoxical ideologies, and even the confused anger and unpredictability of his neurological distress. Anton Corbijn hasn't made just a biopic, he's made a worthy memorial.

Vagabond

Vagabond (Agnes Varda, 1985)

Being left out in the cold is the role of a vagabond, a transient, a bum. It is not the role, however, of a viewer or critic, which is exactly what Vagabond does both unintentionally, and yet with total intention at the same time. It is fitting that both the title Vagabond as well as the release title in France, Sans toit ni loi (meaning "without roof or law") immediately conjure the distinct image of a despotic transient, trapped in an existence where the rules neither apply nor provide any order to the unforgiving world around said individual.

Agnes Varda seems to be working without any set of cinematic or conceptual laws at all, regardless of whether these laws appear helpful or hindering. In her disorderliness, Varda sadly leaves her ideals and intentions neglectfully exposed to the harsh elements, with no roof to house her aesthetics or ideologies, providing nothing to protect them from the almost certain thunderstorm of criticism looming directly above this film. She has unfortunately refused to use any form of readable exposition or minimally translated revelation to move the elements along, however they are ordered, within her film. She appears to be striving in vain for a difficult form of artistry at the excessive risk of dismantling both her film's worth and understandability.

Vagabond slips hard onto its side while struggling so valiantly to strap on the boots of Robert Bresson and his removal of significant events in a narrative. Varda apparently believes her profundity can only blossom out of a dogged reliance on pure imagery and silent expressions to drive her artwork (which is a highly valid argument that I normally would jump to agree with.) However, her belief in the power of image gradually loses its efficacy through her mostly poor execution and redundancy of form. As more and more the film's progression crutches its content on a dissembled chronology meant to add the "wow-factor" to the content, the emptiness of this story leads, as the title implies, to no place of shelter.

Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire) steadily tows the viewer in so many different visual directions that without Varda somehow cushioning this classical model of alternative narrative with any subtext, emotion, or even the slightest object of sympathy for the audience to identify with, one begins to wait impatiently for the film to end. Manipulating the temporal elements of the film usually spices up a bland piece of writing, but combining the cut and dry narrative with quasi-documentarian camera work and a disjunctive plot progression, after a point, becomes not only obnoxious and overdone, but it makes Varda seem flashy and condescending, a notion one never wants to project to a critical gathering.

Beautifully shot, Bonnaire at least provides, (as petty as this sounds), some form of eye candy. Also, the setting luckily does not always remain so aggravatingly static (the vineyards were nice) and therefore Varda nabs some points out of the visuals she hangs on to so hard. However, aside from what Bonnaire is able to irk out with her facial muscles every now and again, and a couple of nice choices in framing and shooting hour and location, Vagabond ultimately succeeded in making me feel cinematically homeless.

Maybe if the film's public defense was that the intention of the film was to actually displease the audience beyond the common problem of attention span, by literally creating the anger and dejection within the viewer of the common vagrant, I would have significantly more praise for Vagabond's structure and direction.

Instead, this film's meandering becomes more and more intolerable with each step. The accidental Hubris of the director wears the skin in one's heel like a bleeding blister, soon exhausting itself quite thoroughly to a point of sheer delirium in both its reception by the audience, as well as its actual production. A quaint, realist attempt at intellectual expanse, this piece tragically goes no deeper than the road it treads, ultimately collapsing only to freeze to death in the cruel, well traveled ditch of anti-chronology and failed insight.

Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet

I like to imagine that if Bobby Vinton, the crooner who's rendition of the song Blue Velvet so eloquently ties down the structure of David Lynch's masterpiece by the same name, were to sit today in a small, lush home theater and screen this film to himself in solitude, he would soon realize how unexpectedly his song translates into the world of rape, murder, and masochism.

Upon viewing Blue Velvet for a third time, I find myself less at the helm of the investigation at hand, and more able to behold the intensity of the heavy, tenebrous psychodrama that Lynch so aptly cloaks with the guise of a discernible thriller.

On first viewing, Lynch leads your nose to snooping with his trademark mystery wandering as though it actually has an end, embellished by his penchant for americana as well as elements of autobiography. His misleading build-up throughout the first half to three quarters is not meant to sucker in mass audiences (although this is often a laughable side-effect) but rather to establish an organized, logical world with which his baroque violence may later be compared.

In this style, the denouement's abrupt turn towards the cryptic still succeeds in allowing Lynch the freedom of real expression and time to cater to his obsessions (disfigurement, depravity, and hallucinatory episodes to name a few) without alienating his audience. He does not tire a less savvy crowd of viewers with the immediate onset of his artistic presence in the film, allowing instead a gradual comfort to accumulate wherein only moments of discomfort allude to the baroque fourth act of the film. It is the trickery of his seemingly purposeless narrative that lends the interference necessary for Blue Velvet's success in using diversion to communicate concept.

Jeffrey Beaumont mirrors the pet-shop naiveté of the virgin audience, trying to make sense of all the out of place and somewhat gruesome interruptions that seem to be appearing out of nowhere within the easily reproducible working-class landscape surrounding him. On this go around, however, I purposefully removed myself from the comfort zone of MacLachlan's impeccable comb-over to better observe the loose threads Lynch leaves sticking up out of the carpeting, unraveling each bit of evidence Lynch loosens intentionally to its shocking source.

The masculinity sought after by Jeffrey's Heineken lust works as a notion to be dwarfed by Frank Booth's rampant drug and booze virility. The somber severity on the faces of several of the men (namely Frank Booth) during Dorothy's performance at the Slow Club works to hint at an unstable male interaction that later snowballs into sadomasochism and forcing Jeffrey to strip at knifepoint. The over-pacifistic tone of Sandy's father when discussing the severed ear Jeffrey discovers rings softly of hushed control covering some internal mania, whispering some sort of connection between the figures of authority and the criminal conspiracy Lynch unveils suddenly towards the end of the film.

It is in these bread crumb trails that the mastery of Lynch's hand as an auteur is most strikingly beautiful, weaving an accessible neo-noir artifice with dozens of his obvious rations of absurdity. Lynch does so in such a calculated way that even as conspicuous and jarring as these moments appear, the audience still happily digests enough of Lynch's spoon-fed madness to send them fat and happy over the edge just as the plot deviates towards Blue Velvet's feast of lunacy and vicious hallucination served as the final entree of the film.

Lynch's talent for distraction and irrational attention allow his ambitious ideas and images, his intricacy in all aspects of design (mise-en-scene), his sense of language and sound and their powerful flexibility, and his reverence for human nature, human sexuality, and primal instinct, to seep into his governable viewers typically with little to no resistance. Unaware for most of the film of the cardinal directives Lynch is portraying, things usually seen by common society as difficult are discussed amidst the film's totality because Lynch is willing to be patient with sharing his theorems and ideologies, showing a respect for his viewers that is mindful of the individual appetite for new thought held by each different member of his audience.

Introduction

Hello inter-world

I have a bunch of these blog things.

This one's strictly for film reviews/essays.

If you're reading this you probably got linked from my site or elsewhere

Or you have a really strong google search and you're stalking me.

Stop it.

-H.P. Willis