Le Pays des sourds, 1992
[In the Land of the Deaf]
Nicholas Philibert

• Can the deaf feel music ? How much does the sense of hearing define mental traits of rationality, logic and reason ? To what extent do the deaf attempt confirmity to the hearing world and to what extent do the hearing accommodate ?
• A moving and convincing portrait of society's misapprehension (and misconception) of the (often isolated, sometimes forcibly so) world of the deaf community.
• Philibert provides a compelling comparison between Jean-Claude Poulain, a brilliantly articulate (and addictively entertaining) deaf professor whose expression via French sign language is compared to a formalist 'oralism' teacher who develops speaking skills in children through repetitive exercises. ( A child playing the 'pacman' video game via modulated voice response is a memorable scene)
• The irony between painstaking attempts of the deaf to adapt to the hearing world, and the hearing world's facile efforts (and sometimes, facile tears) - readily manifested and often lacking sincerity or depth - is provocatively brought out.
• In the Q&A session, Philibert indicated that apart from making an effort to understand the world of deaf by being with them, filming for 9 months, he was drawn to the similarities between sign language and film. A scene well-articulated in sign language could well be an effective set of picture boards. A screenplay in sign language.

Film Watch

A Fei jing juen, 1991
[Days of Being Wild]
Wong Kar-Wai

• Spare compared to some of his later work like Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love in terms of colour, music and camera angles.
• Characters trying to transcend the mundane sorrow of their lives via their quest for acceptance.
• Utlimately unconvincing, almost catalectic. Perhaps blinded by love for the thematic strength of it's screenplay ?
• Nothing in Yuddy's character inspires chemistry (love, anger, hope, hatred, etc.) between him and the characters he interacts with (Yuddy & Su Lizhen, Yuddy & his adoptive mother, Yuddy & Tide).
• Attempt to create a melancholic atmosphere to depict characters' sense of incompletion with low lighting, rain and lack of colour contrast. But there is no intensity in the depicted melancholy, perhaps due to the colours used. Compare this to melancholy and longing beautifully realized in Kieslowski's La Double Vie de Veronique (sepia overlay) and Trois Couleurs: Bleu (blue imagery).
• Technique:
• Repeated scene of the slow moving, blue filtered landscape of the (Filipino ?) countryside.
• Interestingly, Tony Leung mysteriously appears in the last scene.

Mar adentro, 2004
[The Sea Inside]
Alejandro Amenábar

• Convincing premise and visuals, but a contrived resolution.
• Technique:
• Lyrical, fluid sequences depict Ramon's dreams. Extended, mobile aerial shot of the lush-green mountanious terrain, climaxing with a deliberate arrival at the sea shore.

The Bed You Sleep In, 1993
John Jost

• The contradictions between the striking, natural beauty of the almost desolate Oregon countryside with the desolate, depleted lives of it's inhabitants, interspersed with prolonged, disaffecting scenes in a lumber mill, creates an immense and persistent atmosphere of foreboding ill.
• Quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Every violation of the truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society". Parallelizes the transgression between father and daughter with the transgression between human society and the environment. A telling portrait of inherent contradictions in US society.
• Technique:
• Coloured (occasionally dis-coloured) still shot of Ray driving his car juxtaposed with high-contrast (over-exposed or bleached), almost black and white, mobile up-angle sequence of receeding trees and the sky (shot from a moving car) - such that edges of Ray's pale white face merge with the bleached sky.
• Conversation frame with two characters: tilted angle shot with one character in the mirror along with down-tilted-angle shot of the other character.
• Conversation frame with two characters: extreme closeup shot with one character to the left and the other behind to the right, at a distance. Focus shifts between characters midway the conversation.

Hwa yang nian hua, 2000
[In the Mood for Love]
Wong Kar-Wai

• Use of slow motion scenes juxtaposed with waltz music (by Michael Galasso) in the background.
• Intensely compelling portrait of claustrophobia, both external (crowded apartments and nosy neighbours) and internal (dread of failure of their illusory hope of the inviolability and invincibilty of thier marital relationships), using vivid contrast of bright colours. On the other hand, complete isolation of Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen during their direct encounters -- no other character is present when they meet, even in restaurants, signifies both their isolation from society and their shared attribute of loneliness.
• Reflection of the growing insignificance of the spouses in their prevaling lives using only the former's voices.
  
• Technique:
• Shot in episodic, fade-out, fade-in fragments which aids the (occasional) elliptical narration.
• Stylized camerawork:
• 2-way dialogues in Chow Mo-wan's office shot in uncommon angles (sideways and overhead)

Cinemarati critic Gabriel Shanks interviews critic Acquarello:

... I’m ...[making an]... argument ...[for]... how and why the film works, at least on a personal level. At the same time, I’m also trying to catalogue the films that I do find meaningful because it helps me remember the experience of them. So for me, the most efficient way to accomplish that is by dissecting the film and assembling the facts and detail observations in a kind of more clinical, scientific method application that removes the author’s personality from the equation. I think the approach also helps the readers to decide if it’s a film that will be meaningful for them as well, without insinuating your own personal filters too much into the reading. It’s certainly not a format that suits everyone, but neither is the subject matter.

...And I know it's cliché, but I'm still drawn to films about longing, and quite a few contemporary Asian filmmakers have turned this theme into an art form, most notably Tsai Ming-liang from Taiwan, Park Ki-yong from Korea, and Wong Kar-wai from Hong Kong.

Hai shang hua, 1998
[The Flowers of Shanghai]
Hou Hsiao-hsien

• Technique:
  
• Entirely filmed in the interior with low lighting:
• Subdued lighting on characters surrounded by opulence (costumes, architecture, etc.) depicts the dichotomy between their illusory life as entertainers (or their patrons) and the artificiality and fallacy behind their act. In a stunning form of visual dichotomy, one that uses the camera as a key dramatic element, the lighting functions as a transluscent veil that helps 'illuminate' the flower girls' internality (to the audience).
• Typical for Hou, filmed in extended takes that limits human actions and interactions to the business of day-to-day living.
  

La Mala Educación, 2004
[Bad Education]
Pedro Almodóvar



Quintessentially Almodóvar :

• Almodóvar has reached a level of visual refinement where he can be both bold and elegant (with carefully cultivated subtlety) at the same time.
  
• Life continues in his films in it's primal innocence - the bold, primal colours, the bold, primal characters and their bold, primal sense of humour.
• Overall construction is so sensual that it appeals to the senses like the lush sounds of some orchestra (as opposed to fertile/thriving/characterized by abundance/prosperous/plentiful)
• Full of ironical and whimsical double entendres.
• Surreal humor (having the intense irrational reality of a dream)
• Pulp narrative, usually complex like unusual interconnection between characters, films within a film etc. Very definition of 'pulp' in the truest sense of the word: lurid (shocking/melodramatic/sensational/causing revulsion) - subject matter with often shocking subjects portrayed as non-shocking.
  
• One is, still, not repulsed by the characters commiting lurid crimes. One doesn't see them as victims either, but accepts them as they are.
  

Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie, 1972
[The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie]
Luis Buñuel

• Compelling portrait of the hyprocrisy of the rich.
• Technique:
  
• Repeated scene of the guests walking on a deserted road in the desolate countryside depicts the quotidian drabness of their, almost regimented yet aimless, lives that is isolated from reality of the common masses.
  

Film Watch

Chong qing sen lin, 1994
[Chungking Express]
Wong Kar-Wai

• Chase sequences depicted using stroboscopic motion.
• Wong Kar-Wai's fascination with time, a charateristic he shares with Hou Hsiao-Hsein, creates an interest in duration as an essential element of film. Juxtaposition of accelerated surrounding 'life' with slow motion sequences of characters reflects their (contemplative) emotional state. Wong frequently uses music or dispassionate voice-over narration by characters (instead or along with time) to the same effect.
  

Film watch

Vivre sa vie, 1962
[My Life to Live]
Jean-Luc Godard

• Technique:
• Stylized camera angles:
• The credits show Anna Karina's face and profile.
• Conversation between Nana and Paul shot at an angle showing their backs with the characters seated at the same table at a distance reflecting the distance in their relationship.
• Silent film intertitles are sometimes used for Nana, much like the film she is moved by - Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc.
• Characters use windows overlooking streets/buildings as backdrop in many interior scenes. (Note particularly the 'interior-exterior' dialogue between Nana and Paul in front of the video overlooking the street in a video game parlour)
  
• Amazingly fluid camera movement as the bouyantly happy Nana dances around the snooker table. As critic Arquello points out "Godard's revolutionary camerawork serves as a cinematic extension of Nana's soul."

Stanford based Grade The News gave abysmal scores to bay area newssources, especially TV ones

Their grading criteria has 7 yardsticks that seem sensible:

1. NEWSWORTHINESS is based on two factors: 1) whether the story topicis "core" or "peripheral," and 2) whether the story is likely to havea direct and lasting (six months or more) informational impact on awide audience (at least 10,000 people).

2. CONTEXT measures the number of sources, and independent expertsources, in the day's top stories. An average of four regular sourcesor two experts merits an A.

3. EXPLANATION means big-picture reporting (about issues and thematictreatment of events) as opposed to episodic reporting (micro-view newsof isolated events that focus only on the event itself).

and others ...

It's cheaper and easier to fill a newspaper or newscast with reportsof seemingly random violence, fires, parades, reunions or evenfisticuffs between politicians than to treat a problem as an issue.All the sources necessary to harvest such a story are at the scene. Areporter can complete the story in several hours. And the drama or spectacle will draw readers or viewers across the region.

But such reporting leaves us mostly afraid, sad or perhaps feelinglucky to have avoided harm -- not informed of causes, effects andpossible solutions. Reporting violence episodically cultivates a sensethat nothing can be done.

Film Watch

Notre Musique, 2004
Jean-Luc Godard

Film Watch

Der Handler der vier Jahreszeiten, 1972
[The Merchant of Four Seasons]
Rainer Werner Fassbinder

• Technique:
• Reflection of uneasy relations using continuous, extended, panning shot of Hans having dinner with his family, with his sister at the head of the table - appearing literally and metaphorically out of the norm.
  

Film Watch:

In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden, 1978
[In a Year of 13 Moons]
Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Critic Arquello:

Fassbinder's familiar imagery of framing characters through rectangular passageways (particularly vestibules and doorways) that underscore their isolation is further magnified in the idiosyncratically hermetic image of Elvira traversing the corridor of a near vacant office building in search of Saintz that reinforces her profound, inescapable isolation. It is this image of the "outsider among outsiders" - a theme similarly explored in Fassbinder's earlier film 'Fox and His Friends' - that invariably underpins the desperate, inarticulable tragedy of the film: the systematic disembodiment of humanity and suppression of personal identity in the desolate reality of primal survival, pleasure seeking, material gain, and unthinking conformity.

Film Watch

Nan guo zai jian nan guo [Goodbye South Goodbye]
Taiwan

Critic Arquello:

Hou encapsulates the fluidity of movement as a visual metaphor for the escapism and drug induced haze of the aimless protagonists. Through the characters' repeated pursuit of oblivion, Hou captures the transience and generational disconnection of contemporary Taiwanese from their traditional and cultural past.

Nigel Andrews reviews I ♥ Huckabees :

Every artist is allowed a failure or two. The writer-director David O. Russell uses up his entire allowance with I ♥ Huckabees. A laboriously zany plot about two "existential detectives" sucks up half a dozen themes - environmentalism, protest politics, capitalism, religion, space, time - while spitting out fluff, paperclips and carpet tacks like a bad vacuum cleaner on a bad day.

Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster and Three Kings made us believe that Russell was infallible, a pope of antic comedy who delivered knee-slapping encyclicals about America at play, work, love, war. His style, all riffs and rubato, coaxed new rhythms from actors whose range we thought we knew (Ben Stiller, George Clooney). But even zaniness needs discipline. Laisser-faire comic brainstorming leaves a messed-about landscape, with audiences crowding up the evacuation route to saner states.

Gaspar Noe , who directed the controversial Irreversible, in an interview:

(The film begins at the end and works its way back to the beginning, presenting scenes in reverse chronological order.)

The camera spins like a drunk fighting to keep his balance, a discordant soundtrack assaults the ears, stroboscopic lights flash. It is difficult to follow what is happening, though there is an overwhelming air of violence. "My aim was to make you feel out of your minds," explains Noe. He succeeds.

Irreversible continues to backtrack, to a bland love story, but rarely has blandness seemed so welcome.

While viewers will no doubt continue to walk out, Noe maintains there are others for whom the film becomes an "obsession", continually returning to it, looking for something new.

Dialogue was improvised and Noe insists (though I did not notice) that at one point Cassel says his name is Vincent, though his character is called Marcus.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf will shoot his next film India:

"My film will have nothing in common with popular Indian cinema," he says.

[Popular Indian cinema], he feels, does not reflect reality. "It showcases an imaginary, sanitised world meant for enjoyment, not introspection," says Makhmalbaf.

"I have visited India several times, but my understanding of the land comes primarily from Mahatma Gandhi's writings and Satyajit Ray's films," says the director, who also runs a project for Afghan refugees in Iran, a school for aspiring filmmakers and a production outfit.

Makhmalbaf is particularly impressed with India's thriving democracy.

"Iran has a lot to learn from this country," he says.

"India's democracy recognises and accommodates a multiplicity of cultures, languages, religions and views. In Iran, we have only one language, one religion and one power system."

His faith in Gandhian non-violence emerged rather late in life.

"Today I am a citizen of the world. When I think of Mahatma Gandhi, I feel I belong to India as much as I do to Iran," he says.

Makhmalbaf does not, however, expect any trouble with censors in India. "I love India far too much to ever project it in a negative light," he says.

Film Watch

Macario
Mexico, 1958
This Day of the Dead fable blends traditional folktale with Buñuelian social satire as it follows a luckless woodcutter's struggles against God, Satan, Death, and that deadliest of all beasts, the State.

Nazarín
Mexico, 1958
Gabriel Figueroa's cinematography lends stark beauty to an unforgiving landscape in this Buñuel classic about a priest whose Christlike charity is his undoing. “Marks Buñuel's creative peak in his Mexican period.”—Village Voice