Filed under: 2000's, Cameron James, Paramount / Scotia Bank, USA, Weaver Sigourney
James Cameron – Writer, Director, Producer
2009
Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, and a bunch of digital people
Also starring the general from Starship Troopers (playing the general from Starship Troopers) and that guy who was Phoebe’s boyfriend on Friends.
The reviews for this movie, at first glance, are very strong. However, it is slight of hand, a technological magic trick. The film is awful. The plot is a series of borrowed components from other films sandwiched in a giant, sad cliché.
What is basically comes down to is this (do not read if you have not seen film):
1st world industrialized men seek to relentlessly exploit perfect bio world and – here it comes – build an open pit mine directly under the ‘world tree’ that has a mystical ‘Gaia’ relationship to the chanting, singing, bow-and-arrow wielding indigenous people. Oh my goodness. But wait, you ask: where are the unicorns and the Chinese pandas? And it is true – Cameron did leave out these two essential components of a puerile bio-fantasy. There are no digital rainbows. There is however the obligatory white ‘rebel’ who becomes an aboriginal person and leads the battle against the evil colonial industrialized society. At the last minute, he drops his bow and arrow and switches back to machine guns and grenades, to make sure that the whole point of the ‘magical oneness of the Gaia planet being superior to destructive technology’ is completely undermined. It’s embarrassing to watch.
The digital effects look good. The forest scenes are beautiful , and the soft lighting effects are very nice. This is what has fooled our gullible movie-reviewing public. It’s easy to ignore the horrifically juvenile plot and concentrate on the advances in synthetic scene making. In part, this is negative praise. We’ve been inundated for so long with very poor looking CGI that good CGI is like a breathe of fresh air. However it is still just an effect. The visual appearance of The Fantastic Mr. Fox is at least as appealing, but Mr. Fox is wonderfully written, and could carry itself in any mode of representation. Avatar dies without the computer tricks. The film therefore leaves a strong visual impression, and this is its strength. It is unfortunate that it is insulting poor in so many other areas.
Avatar also tends to borrow pieces from other films (not necessarily good films or good pieces) and cobbles them together within the 3rd rate narrative. The military commander – a poorly exaggerated drill sergeant character – is lifted absolutely intact from Starship Troopers. It is the same actor, in the same roll. Starship troopers found some of it’s appeal in the fact that it was clearly intended as a sort of plastic parody of itself – it was supposed to be a bit corny. But Avatar is supposed to be a kind of mystical moral tale. This ridiculously one dimensional character shows the absolute banality of Cameron’s ‘moral’ position. Stealing a character from Starship Troopers and giving it less depth – now that is a cinematic achievement.
The robot exoskeleton that said military people use is a direct copy of the loading bay exoskeleton that Sigourney Weaver used in Aliens (which Cameron also directed). The Helicopter/airplanes are also a direct copy – I believe from the ‘thopers in Dune. One gets the impression that the hackneyed plot is well paired with a theatrical landscape that lacks an internal consistency of it’s own, and so is left to borrow components from previous films and graft them onto the Avatar plot, to help support it in it’s weakness.
It’s strange that the film allows itself to so easily far into such awful stereotypes. The Aliens are called ‘aboriginals’ instead of ‘inhabitants’ like any other star trek film would describe them. It must be because they are non-industrialized – like Africans, or Mayans, or Native North Americans prior to the white man’s invasion. It is, like all the individual characters, a one-dimensional typecast. Making them aliens just allowed Cameron to bundle up all aboriginal earth people into one giant one-with-nature stereotype, complete with a ‘tree of life’ and a mystical connective force joining all aboriginal people to their natural environment. The bad earth people have no such connection, but a few of the scientists are allowed to join the ‘good’ aboriginals’ when all the ‘bad’ earth people are sent packing. It’s a juvenile fantasy: the military men are bad and stupid, and send un-armoured infantrymen in against natives who are armed basically with poisoned arrows (great plan!). The political people are stupid and narrow-minded, interested only in profit. It makes George W Bush look like a master of international diplomacy, and 1990’s GM look like a environmentally conscious not-for-profit. The scientists give you a few moments of peace as there is some early indication that their work will provide a bridge between the Earths technocrats and the Alien Gaia life-force, but this too is obliterated as Cameron chooses the quicker, simpler-minded path of an invented mystical force of nature to compete with the already dead stereotype of the industrialized planet destroyer.
In his final scene, Cameron has our converted earth hero give up his earth body forever and actually become an aboriginal in body. Before, he was ‘good’ only in spirit. Science gave him the simulacrum of aboriginality (that is the Avatar), but the mystical lifer force makes it happen for real. The story of biological determinism is complete.
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The short take is as follows:
It’s a story of biological determinism: the aboriginals are environmental and good, the white earth people destroy the environment and are bad. A bridge is attempted by the ‘good’ earth scientists, but that quickly is revealed as futile. The true solution is a magical force of nature which overcomes the evil white man. Oddly enough, it does this by reverting at the last minute to machine guns and grenades. It is helped when the aboriginals make a plea (in English) to the tree, which mystically sends all the forest animals to help in the counter-attack against the 23rd century armed fighting force. And – this is your 19th century colonial clincher – the good aboriginals defeat the bad white men when lead by a white man who has switched sides. The continuity flaw of the aboriginals allowing a representative of their known enemy to lead them against this enemy is solved by the film’s re-occurring crutch – mysticism (in this case, the seeds from the tree of life gravitate towards our hero as they fall from tree). The ‘Avatar’ itself is highest form of the ‘evil’ industrialized anti-environmental society: he looks like a member of the ‘good’ environmental pre-industrialized society, and through this comes to understand their moral and spiritual superiority. After a twenty minute moral struggle, he reverts to his spiritual pre-industrialized roots and turns against his forefathers. With the help of mystical world forces and some well placed explosives, he defeats his technocrat father and embraces his (alien) earth mother. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wins! The noble savage is victorious! Rasputin wins! Mysticism over technology! Science is given credit for good intention, even though it too is futile! The planet will save us, mankind, from the terrible evil of our enemy – ourselves!
Yes Mr. Cameron – your Academy Award awaits.
Filed under: 2000's, Anderson Wes, Clooney George, Murray Bill, Schwartzman Jason, Streep Meryl, USA, wilson Owen
Dir Wes Anderson
2009
voices – George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray
It is, as the name suggests, a fantastic film. The animation looks great, and the style of the animals is charming and alluring. The plot is great as well – although the ending is unsatisfactory. Anderson apparently worked on the last scenes to achieve the right balance between optimistic and pessimistic, but he missed the mark. However, the film is so very good that we will deign to forgive him.
Mr. Fox has all of George Clooney’s mature charm, in a younger body. And Meryl Streep, as Ms. Fox, gives you the maturity and clever dialogue of a Helen Mirran, again in a younger form. The boys – Anderson’s younger brother, and Schwartzman, are type-case, very well.
The plot, from a children’s story, is simple and made of visual mapping, which is Anderson’s forte. All the usual tricks of sectional diagram shots and front-elevation dialogue shots work of course perfectly with small animated puppets. The twist of human-voice-versus -animal-body makes for a few ferociously entertaining moments, like when fox and his lawyer, badger (Bill Murray) have a disagreement in the office which becomes heated. And the eating scenes are great. And none of that has anything to do with the plot, the writing, the direction (well shot, of course), or anything ’substantial’ having to do with the film. So it is a well executed Anderson film, meaning that there are a thousand free extra goodies thrown in across the film, a smorgasbord of visual tricks and clever dialogue. The foxes look wonderful. LN and I knew we would very much like this film, and we were not disappointed.
2009
Dir. Jason Reitman
St. George Clooney and Vera Farmiga
Now I don’t see a lot of first runs, but the review section in the ‘New Yorker’ magazine are so good that I feel I can rely on them to steer me away from inflicting too much pain on myself. Like I did when I said that ‘Krull’ was going to be an enjoyable film to watch (It was a Robert E. Howard story, for those who know who that is).
Up in the Air is very good. Clooney is perfect for the role, as it is low-key and direct. Vera Farmiga reminds me of a friend of mine. She is beautiful, 40ish, sharp as a whip and gets things done. She and Clooney are admirable. It is a film of three central characters who are high-performers. One assumes that the director or writer are high-performer types themselves, to know the type so well in the portrayals. It’s also an absurdly timely film – Clooney’s character travels around the country (USA) downsizing people on behalf of the firms they work for. However it would be am equally good movie at any time, regardless of this ‘temporal opportunism’.
It’s beautifully shot. There are a couple very good simple camera scenes, and with the number of airports and planes, there is ample opportunity. The soundtrack is sparse and very well done. The dialogue is far above normal, in terms of quality and pace. It really is clever, but does not suffer from the disease of people producing enormously clever statements that do not suit their character or age. It’s really well done. The people being fired give the film an added dynamic – the coolness of our engaging protagonists is offset very well by the sad warmth of the moments we see of people losing their jobs. A great script, well shot, and superbly cast.
Chabrol, Claude (master of suspense)
Merci Pour le Chocolat
(Nightcap)
2000, France/Switzerland, colour w/ subtitles
Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc
Cinematheque, Nov 07th 2005, late film, by myself. Sent out a invite at last minute to Adrienne, Nathan and Guilia, but none showed.
A great film – Chabrol loses nothing, but perhaps has become – more subtle?
This review gives away the whole plot.
The heiress of a Swiss chocolate company remarried her ex husband, a piano teacher, now established in his fame. She id Mika Muller.
It is crossing of two families – a beautiful young girl, who looks like Liv Taylor, is a piano player who was, for a moment, mistakenly switched in the hospital for the Pianist’s son, when the child was being presented to the father. (The Pianist’s son by a former wife, now deceased from a car accident, and Mika’s prior close friend). There is something mysterious here, it causes tension, which is explained through he revelation that the daughter is born from artificial insemination – her father was sterile (not impotent). Thus when blood tests were used to ensure that the children were switched back correctly the mother had obscured the tests, as it was kept from the daughter that the man who raised her was not her biological father.
In any case the crux comes in that this sharp eyed girl, staying at the house for a few days to study with the pianist, sees the wife, Mika, spill the evening liquid chocolate on purpose. Something is afoot! Perhaps – a young girl’s imagination? Or perhaps more.
The girl’s boyfriend works for her mother- a forensic scientist. The spilled chocolate is on her sweater, and is analyzed, and contains – a drug! And the Pianist can only sleep when he takes a drug. And the girl is staying at the house – the same house that the Pianist’s first wife was staying at, the night she dies, as they were friends and always stayed there when the Pianist and his wife were in Switzerland. And that night the wife had to drive out for the sleeping pills, and first had her customary drink of cognac, and than crashed, and died. Her system was full of alcohol and the sleeping drug – which she never ever took! The mystery has never been settled.
But the Pianist feels something afoot. It is all too the same, too disturbing. The beautiful young girl is like his dead wife, staying as well at the house, going out to purchase the drug late, like his dead wife – because Mika ‘forgot’. And Mike also – poured the coffee (the maid, it seems, suddenly to her fortune had the night off”.
“You are washing the cups!” says the Pianist.
“Why are you washing the cups?” – “What have you done!”
“What do you mean. I am washing the cups because…”
“You washed the cups that night too!”
And it is all true. It is reconstructed. And the young girl is getting sleepy at the wheel, and crashes the car, with the son beside her. But they are OK. The Pianist gets the call. “Are they dead?” asks Mika. “No”, he says, “you were unlucky this time.” He is not angry, but now he knows all, and Mika admits it. “I am nothing” she says – not artist, not drivin. “But you have helped me so much” the Pianist says – a humane and thoughtful man. “Yes, always others. I say ‘I love you’ but I do not love. Everything for me is so calculated.”
So we have our brilliant and subtle psychological model. She is obsessed with the possession of her husband. The attraction of her friend, his wife, was unbearable, as is the connection to the young girl. She is fond of his son, who is likewise directionless. She destroys the wife, and it seems is keeping the son drugged regularly. Perhaps she preserves his lack of ambition in this way. They must be like her, or belong to her.
But – and here is the interesting part – she is not really evil as some would think of it. She is pathetically evil, tragic and flawed. She is calculating but not in intention — only in action! Quite a model, quite a film.
The Informant!
2009
Dir. Steven Soderbergh
Starring Matt Damon
Who could not like this film? Especially since it is based on truth?
The quirky display put on my Damon is entirely believable, and so the production of a ‘psychological model’ is carried off very well. The main character is telling the FBI about international price-fixing at his company, but he has nothing to gain from it, so it would seem, except satisfaction for his compulsion to talk and to produce the image of a yet more elaborate truth. And each moment, when you think you have been over-filled with truth – he brings you something new, until you cannot tell where the truth ends and the lies begin.
And so there we have it – a film with so much truth, and so many lies, that it outdoes everything else produced this year in sheer quantity of entertainment. And – it’s based on a true story.
Interviews with the real culprit can be found on this American Life:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1317
Viewed at a first run theatre, the Varsity, with LN and company. We all enjoyed. 2009_09.
Chabrol
2007
Cinematheque, Aug 2007.
Late Chabrol, and highly developed, as expected. The death as we expect from the late films is less gory, and more startling and effective. And – there is a whole story surrounding it. The music is by, I assume, his son, and written by the daughter.
The characters are wealthy, and drift – they do not live by principle, but on passion. I’m not quite sure what it was ‘about’. The characters are of varying ages, so we can see the passions spread across the demographics. However I don’t think that’s the point. It was perhaps about love, as the characters show a fidelity to love independent of puritan physical proofs; even when they hate each other for what they have done, the characters do not flinch in standing by the strongest emotion of the heart. It’s admirable, even when the actions of the actual characters are not.
The characters are beautifully cast, and the camera work, with great mise-en-scene and great depth of field close-ups, is superb. In all, it’s so well crafted, and retains Chabrols slightly twisted, but certainly engaging and penetrating view.
The old goat still has it.
Filed under: 2000's
Well, I gave it a try. But the new Star Trek (2009) is not a good film. The direction was not good, and the writing was just plain horrible. Some of the CGI laden panoramic scenes looked pretty good.
Filed under: 2000's, Canadian, Cinematheque, Pilon, Benoit, Quebec, Ungalaaq, Natar
The Necessities of Life
dir Benoît Pilon
wri Bernard Émond
starring NATAR UNGALAAQ, also from the Fast Runner
2008
Cinematheque top 10 of 2008
seen Feb 2009 – with Pilon and Natar at the opening, to speak.
Ticket given to me by the lovely Michelle, who was going to Montreal to see her newborn nephew. What a foolish girl, to give up such a ticket, for a mere child.
Well, what can we say? The 8.2 is easily deserved. Bravo! Based on the true stories of a Tuberculous epidemic in the Canadian North in the 1950’s. Natar plays Tiivii, who is shipped south (literally) to be cured in Quebec city, but has no one there to speak his language. They bring a boy who does, later. The film has only a moment in Iqaluit (or rather outside of, on the tundra above the tree line). Natar’s face is wonderfully expressive, and the script and story are very simple, and very, very good. It is well shot, with good establishing shots, and again, good simple close-ups with heavy depth of field, always done unobtrusively.
The talk afterward was equally good. The straightforward and sophisticated answers from Pilon contrasted and mingled well with the sometimes abstracted and always entertaining replies from Natar. He said the film made him feel proud of being Canadian. When they asked for the first question or comment, Natar turned to the host and said, “I thought it was good”. However mostly he was quiet, and referred to Pilon.
Now not many times will I write this in a review: Go see this film! But I am sorry to say, you will not enjoy it as much as I did.
Filed under: 2000's, Bourdon, Luc, Bujold, Geneviève, Canadian, Cinematheque
from Canada’s Top Ten film review (2008 films, viewed Feb 2009)
at Cinematheque
Dir. Luc Bourdon, who was there to open the film and give a short talk, and Q and A, afterwards.
Canada, 2008
With spot appearances by
Geneviève Bujold Bujold (very, very young – I wonder which film?), Igor Stravinsky, Oscar Peterson, and Paul Anka. Hmmm.
IMDB 8.0
Now it’s Canadian, it’s about lovely Montreal, and it’s a nice film. So one must be careful not to dislike it because it gets treated like something exceptional, given an IMDB 8.0/10 (!), makes the top ten, and all the blog reviews are ecsatatic. But really now – it’s found footage of Montreal from the NFB, pretty much all from the 50’s and 60’s, and it’s beautifully edited with really good sound. The sound is more exceptional when Bourdon explains that’s it is all original – just as it seemed. HHe/they added no footage, altered no colors, and only used sounds from existing Montreal footage as well. So for all of that, it’s great.
But let’s get down to brass tacks. It is by definition somewhat of a marginal film – a very good marginal film – but there is of course no plot to speak of, no acting, and it is a little boring to watch. It is an excellent boring movie! But stuill, let’s be honest and say it’s a bunch of old footage put together very skillfully. It’s not a giant work of art. But it’s good.
A givaway too, in the talk, was Boudon explaining that they purposefully used pre-political footage (not about the uprisings to free Quebec) and non-famous films – unknown films – to keep that particular quality that it has. But that does not quite gel with the Paul Anka, Peterson and especially the Stravinsky, which Bourdon says is actually from Toronto. (It’s Stravinsky conducting and speaking, in instrucvtive terms, to his orchestra). Now I agree that the Stravinsky part is great, and as Bourson says, ‘film is lies’… I like all that. But it does show a little how the film needed some spicing up. Found footage may be the darling of a quickly aging avant-garde set, but one can try over and over again to explain how it’s art and how fascinating it is, but it’s never going to be a Rembrandt. That’s why you have to explain it – it lacks the intrinsic narrative on it’s own.
Very likeable fellow, that Bourdon. And the editing was seemless. the sound was great. It all had an authentic charm. Good for a chilly night in February. Perfect sort of film to have a nice down-to-earth film-maker do a talk about afterwards – no posing about it’s ‘radical’ structure, or some such nonsense. And it seemed a lot like Montreal, here is our less civilized Toronto.
Oh – and the scenes with a so young Bujold were very nice to look at. one must admit more Montreal then Paul Anka. And it shows that a little bit of fame – dispite the claim to be aiming for anonymous films – can add to this sort of portrait. Because after all, she’s so lovely to look at, who would want to leave her out, famous or not? Certainly not, if she were not. Ah ha, the internet says the film was Le temps des amours, by Hubert Aquin.
dir. Eric Rohmer
France, 2002
See also: Claire’s knee, 1970
IMDB 6.8
Viewed at Carleton Cinemas July/Aug 2002, on a date, finally, with Stephanie Swatkow, first date after meeting at Jamie’s party. Drinks first at the Courtyard hotel and later on a lovely patio on Yonge St. Kissed by the trees outside subway station further north, sent her home by taxi.
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A period film about the French revolution. Over 2 hours, subtitles. Effective use of computer generated graphics in a way to make them tasteful and unrecognizable. Colored etchings from the time period are shown on screen and then begin to move, starting the scene. Long-distance “mise-en-scene” is established with these moving plates, interspersed between the regular scenes and dialogue.
As Stephanie said, “I’ve never seen the French revolution from the side of the aristocracy.”
And thank goodness that is the approach (i.e. no bleeding hearts). A young woman is being hidden by her friend from the revolutionists, who search the house daily and run madcap through the streets, in a terror. Hiding between mattresses, and a plot I cannot remember. Like the other Rohmer film I saw, too much relies on dialogue, and it is slow (and very long), but very good. Stephanie liked it which was impressive, with the subtitles, small theater and dry content.
—-
Having written all of the above a while ago, I’d like to say a little more about the film. First of all, it’s 2002. It could be from 1971. Or 1959. Except that it attempted, and succeeded marvously at, an integration of computer CGI graphics into a beautifully shot film – into a period historical film, no less. More wonderful, he did so by having ink and watercolor drawings open the scenes, and then ahving them ‘come to life’ and turn into moving, live actiors, in a quick transition. This means that the CGI was being used to fuse the ’scene-set-up’ – the mise-en-scene – with the regular flow of the film. We’re so used to seeing how CGI is over-extended, so that the ability to have an entirely synthetic (and impossible) camera angles ends up overwhelming any gain from the CGI. In addition, it makes the CGI so blindingly synthetic that it ruins continuity. So continuity with regular film is lost, and mise-en-scene is pretty much abolished through the use of absurd close-ups, impossible camera angles, and the general mayham of the ‘camera without a cameraman’.
But Rohmer – uses the CGI to bridge the ’scene set’ (the watercolour) to the flow of action. Therefore the CGI becomes the enabler of mise-en-scene. He’s not only used CGI well, and made it look nice, but also made it into the very device which enables that valuable artistic element which – apparently – CGI has been destroying for all these years. It turns out it was not the CGI, but the directors, or the lack thereof. One need only glance at Lucas’ digital additions to Star Wars to see how CGI can be used to utterly demolish established camera work procedured (particularly in the cantina band sequence). Then one can luxuriate back in the Rohmer film, marvel again that it was filmed in 2002, and go home happy.
****
BBC says “distilled from Grace Elliott’s autobiographical account ‘Ma Vie Sous La Révolution’.”
