Change Your Image
French_Film_Blurred
19 yo male from BC, Canada
Some of My Favorite Films
(Chronological Order):
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Nosferatu (1922)
Metropolis (1927)
Sunrise (1927)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Un Chien Andalou (1928)
M (1931)
Rear Window (1954)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
The 400 Blows (1959)
Wild Strawberries (1959)
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Psycho (1960)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Week End (1967)
Belle de Jour (1967)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Chinatown (1974)
Nosferatu (1979)
Amelie (2001)
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Lost in Translation (2003)
C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)
My Favorite Bands/musicians
Adam and the Ants
Antony and the Johnsons
Aphex Twin
A Silver Mt. Zion
Autechre
Devendra Banhart
Bjork
Boards of Canada
David Bowie
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band
Leonard Cohen
Ornette Coleman
John Coltrane
The Cure
Current 93
Daft Punk
Miles Davis
Nick Drake
The Dresden Dolls
Bob Dylan
Brian Eno
Diamanda Galas
Godspeed You Black Emperor
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Billie Holiday
The Human League
Joy Division
Kraftwerk
Lightning Bolt
The Magnetic Fields
Manic Street Preachers
Melt Banana
Minutemen
My Bloody Valentine
Neutral Milk Hotel
New Order
New York Dolls
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nico
Pavement
Pet Shop Boys
Pixies
Plan B
The Pogues
The Police
Prince
Public Enemy
Public Image Ltd.
Pulp
Ramones
Lou Reed
The Replacements
The Residents
The Rolling Stones
Roxy Music
Sex Pistols
The Slits
Patti Smith
The Smiths
Sonic Youth
Squarepusher
The Streets
Sufjan Stevens
The Stooges
The Strokes
Suicide
Sunn O)))
Television
Tiny Tim
A Tribe Called Quest
Tunng
The Velvet Undergound
Venetian Snares
Rufus Wainwright
Tom Waits
Scott Walker
Weill & Brecht
The Who
Wire
John Zorn
My favorite filmmakers:
Pedro Almoldovar
Luis Bunuel
Ingmar Bergman
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Werner Herzog
Alfred Hitchcock
F.W. Murnau
Andrei Tarkovsky
Francois Truffaut
My favorite novels:
Brave New World
The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
The Stranger
The Trial
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Alice Through the Looking Glass
My Favorite Writers
Oscar Wilde
Marquis De Sade
William S. Burroughs
Allen Ginsberg
Sylvia Plath
Leonard Cohen
Franz Kafka
Jean-Paul Sartre
Albert Camus
Lewis Caroll
James Joyce
Arthur Rimbaud
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Kurt Vonnegut
Favourite Visual Artists:
Andy Warhol
Piet Mondrian
Joan Miro
Roy Lichtenstein
Willem de Kooning
Max Beckmann
Kurt Schwitters
Max Ernst
Percy Wyndham Lewis
Pablo Picasso
Frida Kahlo
Jenny Saville
Robert Motherwell
Eric Fischl
George Grosz
Ernst Kirchner
Amedeo Modigliani
Marcel Duchamp
Max Pechstein
Egon Schiele
Kasimir Malevich
Edvard Munch
and Dada and German Expressionism in general
Favourite Actors/Actresses
Humphrey Bogart
James Dean
Johnny Depp
Marlene Dietrich
Katharine Hepburn
Greta Garbo
Links:
http://www.myspace.com/i_have_forgiven_jesus - My Myspace
http://www.last.fm/user/fourty_blinks/ - My last.fm account
http://rateyourmusic.com/~fourty_blinks - My Rate Your Music account
Reviews
Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)
strange, intriguing and prescient
As with most of his work, but more so here, Godard's main accomplishment with Alphaville is taking from different established styles (sci-fi and film-noir in this case), adding his own easily recognizable style and philosophy, and making it into something completely original and quite bizarre. Brilliantly executed jump cuts, surreal flourishes (at one part Lemmy is captured by being told a joke so he's incapacitated by laughter), the use of film noir lighting techniques, gravely voiced philosophical voice-overs by the evil supercomputer Alpha 60, and use of flashes and beeps throughout the film, etc. all add up to creating a very unique mood. It also manages to spoof nearly everything that it references (film-noir, sci-fi, technology, Hollywood love, dystopian themes, spy movies) while still being serious in it's message and it's technique. There are essentially no special effects used and the set design is very similar to 60s Paris, conveying the sentiment that this bizzarro world where words and emotions are outlawed is not so far off from the modern world. The film begins with a voice over from Alpha 60 stating "sometimes reality is too complex for oral communication.", and that's the sentiment portrayed throughout the film. Words, emotions and expressions have been outlawed and the technological world is so pervasive that they don't seem even necessary. The world of Alphaville is quite incomprehensible, which Godard portrays through the use of film noir and sci-fi stylization, clever jump cuts, and strange happenings. Some detractors might say that this isn't exactly original and had been done, possibly better by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, but Alphaville manages to spoof that while at the same time expressing the same ideas in a new way, and the imitation could also be interpreted as a comment on the recyclable nature of the modern world. Altogether, one of Godard's most satisfying and cohesive films, and easily on par with his other highly regarded 60's films.
Höstsonaten (1978)
"he played badly but beautifully"
It's not usually considered among Bergman's masterpieces, but Autumn Sonata is easily on par with the other four Bergman's I've had the pleasure of viewing. In theme, mood, structure, etc, it's most closely similar to Cries and Whispers, but trades the crushing misery of that film for a more melancholic "autumnal" sadness. Like Cries and Whispers, this is a heartrending painting of a film, utilizing reds and browns to evoke a mood of reflective sadness. It focuses more on character interrelations and human emotions then is usual for Bergman, with less symbolism and existential truths than his other, more famous works, but still rings painfully true.
The structure is quite simple, a mother (Charlotte, played perfectly by Ingmar Bergman in her only Bergman role) comes to visit her daughter (Eva, played by Liv Ullman) after seven years, and they spend a few days at the house with Liv Ullman's husband and mentally handicapped sister. Most of the film takes place in the house and is almost completely dialogue driven. It seems sort of like an after-life, reflecting upon the drama of the past, which we only see through short palely coloured flashbacks, seeming distant and unchangeable. Mother and daughter slowly confront their past, at first avoiding it and stepping around conflict, but it eventually builds up to one long, cathartic scene, in which they both let fly all their hatred and resentment at each other. After that, they part and we see shots of each of them in their respective environments, finally out of the claustrophobic environment of the house. The film ends with a letter from daughter to mother, expressing a seemingly unattainable hope that they can reconcile, forget the past, and finally show affection for one another.
The main subject here is the intense relationship between mother and daughter, how pain is handed back and forth between the two. Charlotte wanted love from her child, but through this want only managed to give pain and resentment. Eva, distanced from her mother, wanted only affection, but she could only watch from a distance and hand the same pain back. It's expressed best at the end of the most intense, cathartic scene in Eva's words:
"A mother and a daughter. What a terrible combination of feelings and confusion and destruction. Everything is possible and done in the name of love and solicitude. The mother's injuries are to be handed down to the daughter, the mother's failures are to be paid for by the daughter, the mother's happiness is to be the daughter's unhappiness. It's as if the umbilical cord had never been cut."
Part of Bergman's genius is how he can be so incredibly intimate with these characters and their problems, yet still express such universal truths.
After the exhausting venting of emotions, we cut to Helena, Eva's handicapped sister and Charlotte's daughter, writhing around in bed, mirroring the inner emotional turmoil of the two main characters, and then Charlotte lays down speaks of her cold, unfeeling childhood, confirming the chain of misery that we have already seen expressed between her and her daughter. The scene fades out with Charlotte softly asking Eva for help and Helena crying out for her mother, a perfect expression of both the unbearable but unchangeable pain, and the vague hope for reconciliation.
However, the film is not all pain and suffering. It ends on a ambiguous, yet slightly positive note, and throughout the film we see an expression of the hope that pain can come to be accepted and an appreciation of the melancholic beauty of life. At one point, Charlotte, talking of a past memory of her ex-lover drunkenly playing piano, says "he played badly but beautifully", a perfect metaphor for Charlotte and Eva's drunken stumbling through their own emotions and troubled past, and the beauty of man's weaknesses in general. The whole film is drenched not in a mood of immanent misery, but in one of calm, reflective sorrow. The pain is all in the past and the characters attempt to deal with it. At one point Eva expresses, "To me, man is a tremendous creation, an inconceivable thought. In man is everything, from the highest to the lowest. ...There are no limits, neither to thoughts, nor to feelings. It's anxiety that sets the limits." Here we have the summation of the film, and even Bergman's work in general. The universe is a beautiful, endlessly complex thing, but unfortunately we cannot understand it, being trapped in our human limits created by angst and anxiety. What truly makes him a genius though, is his ability to express this longing so articulately using the most intimate relations of these characters. Autumn Sonata is a heartrending testament to both the cruelty of life and the incomprehensible beauty of it, and yet another cinematic masterpiece by one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
Begotten (1989)
Interesting and original, but a bit too much art-house masturbation.
Even though it doesn't really matter to the film, this is a Creation myth. God (a convulsing, bloody figure in a chair) cuts his organs out with a straight razor and dies in His own filth. Mother Earth rises from his corpse and impregnates herself with his seed, giving birth to Man. It is, however highly unlikely for you to figure any of this out without reading a synopsis first, and it's not especially important to the film that you do, as it's more a surrealistic art-house imagery thing, all in inky, processed black and white. A sick, bleak atmosphere is created with the stark photography and minimal sounds (mostly water dripping, groans, scrapes, etc.) but each scene goes on a bit too long and so does the film as a whole. This could've been great as a short film, and the God killing himself scene was excellent and extremely creepy, especially being the first thing you see, but it's hard to be patient when it goes on for so long and you don't even know what you're seeing for much of the time.
Still, a good film for the original style, images, atmosphere and content.