[wikipedia] - [imdb]

On 35mm at the Piedmont Cinema with Lucía and Ben on 29 June, 2008, at 21:55.

The story of Mongol is interesting (and I was lucky enough to come into the film with no knowledge of the legends of Genghis Khan), although I got a little bored of the mystical aspects of the film (it wouldn’t have been too out of place for one of the characters to say “he is the one!”). Tadanobu Asano is very much his usual self, with his stoic Mongol leader-type characteristics rolled out a little bit to fit him into the character. I don’t know Mongolian, but it didn’t sound quite right coming out of his mouth. I’m quite impressed that he managed to pull it off, however. Khulan Chuluun, playing Temüdjin’s wife Börte, is beautiful and charismatic and she managed to steal the show from him a little bit. The fighting scenes were nice, although in the larger battle scene I felt at times as though I was watching a real-time strategy game played out in front of me. The beautiful landscapes of Inner Mongolia were captivating and I can’t imagine anyone writing about this film without mentioning them. How on earth did the characters find each other? As a whole, the film wasn’t particularly memorable, but many of the little details really caught me while I was watching it. Anyways, I’m done.

[wikipedia] - [imdb]

On DVD at home with Lucía on 25 June 2008 around 23:00.

Juzo Itami likes to make movies about self-improvement. About learning how to do something right, and about staying on the straight and narrow despite what obstacles you might find thrown at you. While much more focused than Tampopo, Supermarket Woman felt like a bit of an unwelcome refinement of his form. This not to say that I disliked the film, it’s just that where Tampopo was rough, experimental, meandering, and even educational, Supermarket Woman felt slick, formulaic, underdeveloped, and didactic. We never really came to know any of the main characters, or even really to get a good feel for them. All the background characters were mere caricatures and even the main characters were just more sophisticated caricatures.

The main story of Tampopo is not itself terribly interesting. What is interesting are the little side plots the characters get into, and even more so the little mini-stories that pull the film in this way and that. In fact, the ending of Tampopo makes me quite sad every time, because I know that the film is over and there are no more little stories to tell. Despite all of this, the entire film manages to be quite focused on a single theme: food. Aside from a short fist fight (and probably the best I’ve seen on film) and a redecorating job, the film never departs from the topic of food-making and food-eating. Supermarket Woman really suffers from being so similar to Tampopo that comparison is completely unavoidable. While a fine film in its own right (it is funny, Nobuko Miyamoto is as magnetic in her middle age as she ever was, the lessons are interesting and possibly even useful, and the dissection of the business of supermarkets is itself fascinating), it is inferior in every way to Tampopo.

[wikipedia] - [imdb] - [Sunny]

On 35mm at the Kabuki with Lucía, Ben, and Roberto on 24 June 2008 at 21:45.

Even though I haven’t seen enough of Rohmer’s films to make the assertion myself, the comparison between this and Rohmer’s works seems apt. A lot of talking, walking around, emotional manipulation, emotional transformation, and yet very little actually happens, and the entire world is pretty much left on the sidelines so we can better contemplate the relationships. I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of this sort of film, and this one seemed a bit overlong, and yet I could see myself watching this film again and even looking forward to the next Hong Sang-soo film I see. Because in its own way, the film is quite nicely done. We see nice parallels between the beginning of the film where the Director Kim puts his friend’s girl on a pedestal (one that she is quite willing to be on) and at the center of a love triangle (if the three participants in a love triangle are its corners, how can one of the participants be at its center?), and the second half of the film where Director Kim finds himself at the center of a love triangle, ultimately undone by the entangling threads of his own machinations and manipulations which are amplified by his refusal to really let anyone into his own heart or admit his own mistakes.

Interesting how Tae-woo Kim seems to be jettisoned from the film and all but forgotten by the characters once he effectively emasculates himself out of his own jealousy and spitefulness (presumably the fact that he’s trying—and failing—to cheat on his wife plays a part in this). Also interesting is Choi Sun-hee’s obsession with Mun-suk as she tries to unravel what it is about Mun-suk that fascinates Director Kim and what it is about herself that reminds Director Kim of Mun-suk.

There were some odd parts of the film—such as the abrupt appearance of the sushi waiter as the dangerous motorcyclist on the beach—that felt as though they would have been better off left on the cutting room floor.

I’m not sure that the film felt believable in any way, or that I was really able to fully enter into the characters the way I wanted to, but I certainly felt that Hong Sang-soo did a great job of exploring certain elemental characteristics of the way people interact, fool each other, and fool themselves.

On DVD with Lucía at home on 20 June 2008, quite late at night. We paused three quarters of the way through the film and continued the next night.

Not a whole lot to say about the film. One gets a sense of what people probably thought San Francisco was like at the time. Clark Gable is as sleazy as ever (he’s always fun to watch). It will be interesting to see Brad Bird’s take on the earthquake whenever that film comes out.

On DVD at home with Lucía on 23 June 2008 at around 22:30.

Manipulative? Maybe, but not in a way I really minded. You can certainly see the principles of neorealism sounding strong in this film, and in some ways I liked this better than Bicycle Thieves even if it was a little less polished and little more centered on its principle characters. Luciano De Ambrosis, the child actor that played Pricò, is nothing short of amazing, carrying the emotional weight of the film as effectively as Doinel in Le 400 coups. The story itself felt a little unusual (the tragic father, the guilt-ridden but easily seduced and unforgivable mother), but it was even stranger to see the whole thing from the child’s eyes.

On DVD with Lucía at home on 22 June 2008, fairly late at night.

An early femme fatale. Barbara Stanwyck is in peak form as the man-destroying seductress Lily Powers, hell-bent in making her way to the top (quite literally). Once there (and really, it takes her now time at all to get there), she becomes rather bored, and then the film is sort of downhill from there. Her longtime companion and servant Chico definitely adds something to the film as a fairly aloof and detached and somehow essential witness to Lily Powers’ transformation and social ascent.

On DVD with Lucía at home on 20 June 2008 pretty late in the evening.

A little rough around the edges, this gritty thriller has the visual flair, attention to detail, and rather bizarre acting I’ve come to expect from Jules Dassin. I haven’t really loved any of the Dassin films I’ve seen thus far (except maybe Celui qui doit mourir, but just a little), yet each of his films has been interesting and memorable.

The main character was a bit tough to watch. He was somehow too stupid to live and too arrogant to feel sorry for, and yet most of the characters surrounding him were riveting. While the story itself didn’t hold terribly much interest for me, there is so much going on in the background, and in the relationships between characters, and with the emotions, that I was never bored during the film. It was interesting to see the background story of getting the lucrative first crop of apples to market, of the corrupt fruit dealer whom the other dealers feared and despised and for whom no scam was too dirty, and of the opportunistic veteran driver and his stubborn refusal to split his bounty in exchange for help from the younger drivers who were following him like vultures waiting for his truck to break down (earlier, he had jilted them of the opportunity to share the job). Also interesting was the moral line that one of the younger drivers would cross and the other one would not, splitting up their partnership.

I enjoyed seeing the San Francisco of the 40s. It has changed so much, and yet it still looks familiar.

The apples rolling down the hill…

Started on 15 June 2008.

It’s nice to be reading more these days.

Unfortunately Philip K. Dick’s style isn’t sitting as well with me this time as it did with Do Androids Dream…, but I’ll keep plowing through it and see if I can find myself more engaged with the novel by the time I get to page 100.

Finished on 15 June 2008.

While it’s certainly easy to see why this would be considered such an important book, I didn’t get much out of it. It was fairly uneven and quite repetitive, and at times it felt pedantic. It was a bit of a slog in parts, but the crushing, nihilistic ending made it seem worthwhile.

In some ways Nineteen Eighty-Four reminded me of Ayn Rand’s Anthem, but the latter was more focussed on collectivism while Orwell’s work seems more like a hopeless vision of the inevitable resting place of humanity when someone finally figures out how to bring the cycles of history to a halt.

On DLP(?) at AMC Bay Street 16 with Lucía, Aman, Arvinder, Margarita, Rashpal, and Ruchi on 13 June 2008 at 21:45.
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Kung Fu Panda was definitely entertaining, even if the animation was fairly uninspiring (the trailer for WALL•E, which preceded the film, made the animation for Kung Fu Panda seem positively primitive) and any thoughts about a larger point of the film only left me confused. The fighting scenes were plentiful, not too short, and nicely done, and the dialogue was, well… clearly the filmmakers have seen a lot of kung fu films.

I liked the old turtle.