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Cinema DVD

Call the bet!

{mosimage}Lucky You portrays the high stakes poker world, with Eric Bana and Robert Duvall in a twisted father and son relation.

{sidebar id=41} Since Rounders, it has been long time that the exciting world of poker is not deeply depicted in a film. Director Curtis Hanson (winner of an Academy Award for L.A. Confidential) puts the cards on the table with Lucky You, a wonderful and accurate description of the poker world and the gamblers. The scenario has been meticulously copied, with almost exact replicas of Bellagio casino and Binion´s Horseshoe, emblematic places to play poker.

Eric Bana as Huck Cheever shows film after film that apart from having a great physical presence in front of the camera (remember him in Troy, as Hector), he is also a great actor, for those who could have any doubt after seeing him in Spielberg’s Munich. The action is pretty much focused on him and his relation with his father and also poker professional player, incarnated by an always superb Robert Duvall (L.C. Cheever). Drew Barrymore appears sweet and fresh as usual; it is amazing how she can always look so youthful year after year. Robert Downey Jr. has a short but interesting intervention as Bana´s friend. His appearance nonetheless is pretty wasted. It would have been great to see him more often during the story.

Many of the professional players that are sitting on the poker tables are real ones, who were recruited to give advice and help planning the scenes. They are one of the strong points in the movie, since the most interesting feature of poker games usually is to analyze the individuals, and see their special looks and behaviour. Hanson has made one of the best poker films of the history, with a great balance between the curiosity and excitement that the poker game awakens and the deep analysis of human relations between the two main characters, Duvall and Bana. More than one will go to Internet to play a couple of games after watching this movie. Do not get much addicted!

Rating 4/5

Categories
Cinema Features

A helluva life

{mosimage}For the last couple of weeks I have
been hooked with the autobiography of the American writer and filmmaker
Samuel Fuller. It reads like a novel. A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking
was written just a couple of years before his death in 1997 and is an
exciting tale of a very exciting life – or it would be better to say of
four or five different lives in one.

Samuel
Fuller, born in 1912, is better known by his movies, but before going
behind the camera he was a screenwriter, a pulp novel author, a
volunteer in the 1st Infantry Division during World War II, a teenage
crime reporter and a copyboy for Hearst’s New York Journal American. Yes, in his eighties, by the time he started writing his autobiography, he had some good stories to tell.

The
first chapters are dedicated to Fuller’s devotion to journalism in the
1920s and 1930s. He was just a kid when he began working as a paperboy
and a copyboy, running up and down the legendary Park Row of New York,
delivering messages to Mr. Hearst’s kitchen. The author was in love
with newspapers and writing. It was the golden age of journalism and
the reader can easily recall the smell of the ink and the linotype
machine. Many years later in 1952, Fuller recreated and paid tribute to
the era in his movie Park Row, one of his most popular films.

In
his teenage years, Fuller dreamt of becoming a reporter and so he did
when he turned 17. He became a crime reporter, no less, going from
school to the morgue and the most dangerous suburbs. Samuel even had a
little encounter with Al Capone.

Like
Kerouac in the 1930s, the young journalist left New York and travelled
across America with his typewriter portraying the country and the
economic crisis. He started drawing cartoons, writing books and even
being a ghostwriter for a popular author, whose name Fuller promised
never to disclose in his life.

Despite
being a published author much earlier than a filmmaker, Samuel Fuller
is known for his movies. Just like many other filmmakers, he arrived in
Hollywood as a screenwriter. He wrote many unaccredited stories, but
soon he started thinking about filming too, but his plans were
interrupted by the war. The United States entered World War II and
Fuller decided to enlist in the infantry. He admits that he did it
because he wanted to cover the war from the front line, even when he
was offered a less risky position in the news department.

As
a soldier, Fuller had an outstanding role in the campaigns in North
Africa and Sicily, and he also participated in the Normandy invasion.
His wartime memories are vivid, realistic and raw, like his movies.
There is no room for useless metaphors or distractions. In his
recollection, war is not a time for heroes and soldiers had only two
options: being killed or going nuts. A blood taste prevails in his
writing.

The Big Red One
is probably Fuller’s most ambitious film. It was his lifetime project.
Made in 1980, it is an epic tale about his experiences during the war.
It features Lee Marvin, Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill and a group of
unknown young actors. It reconstructs the fears and the camaraderie of
the soldiers and the stories, and it is far more realistic than other
spectacular films, such as Saving Private Ryan.

Unfortunately,
producers cut the movie by 40 minutes, so at the time of its release it
didn’t have the impact it deserved and Fuller was unhappy with the
result. His first cut of the movie ran to four and a half hours. In
2004 the film was re-edited and reconstructed to be more faithful to
Fuller’s original vision. The new cut clocks in at 160-minutes and it’s
the version currently released on DVD.

Almost
ten years after his death, Samuel Fuller remains a cult filmmaker. His
films were never blockbusters, they didn’t receive many awards or have
a high budget – he didn’t need them. Nowadays his work is praised by
contemporary directors like Martin Scorsese (who wrote the foreword of
the autobiography), Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino and, Finland’s
finest, Aki and Mika Kaurismäki, who, incidentally, counted upon the
participation of Fuller in a little role on a couple of his films.

Other
trivia for the Finnish reader is that Samuel Fuller was a guest at the
first edition of Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankylä in 1986. In
the center of the town, a street was renamed in his honour: Samuel
Fullerin katu (Samuel Fuller’s street).

Do
yourself a favour and watch Samuel Fuller’s films and, if you have the
time, read his autobiography. It is the tale of a genuine storyteller.

Categories
Cinema DVD

Fun on ice

{sidebar id=38}{mosimage}The new and hilarious comedy from Will Ferrell will not let his fans down. This time, he sets the ice rink on fire as the ultimate sex bomb on skates.

I must admit that I am getting more and more hooked with Will Ferrell’s movies. When it is about time to see comedies with not much farther aims than just spending a couple of hours relaxed and having some healthy good laughs, his movies are great. I liked a lot when I watched Talladega Nights for a second time and I enjoyed Anchorman too. In Blades of Glory, Ferrell, as the wild Chazz Michael Michaels (I really love that name!) is back together with Jon Heder (you may remember him from Napoleon Dynamite, one of the nicest surprises from 2004) and both work as a great duo of actors, everyone with a personality that frontally collides with the other. Their dialogues and interaction are hilarious with an excellent chemistry.

Special mention for the scriptwriters that were able to twist once more the comedy genre and take advantage of a sport that had not been enough exploded in the big screen, although some scandals in real life were pretty notorious, like the Nancy Kerrigan’s case (who, by the way, makes a cameo during the film, as many other real skaters).

A movie that knows perfectly how to take advantage of the jealousy and personal competitions that happen in real life, but at the same time resolves exquisitely the non-easy task of putting two heterosexual men skating together. For the detail lovers, you must know that both actors had to learn how to skate almost as professionals with many hard hours of training. Jon Heder broke one rib while shooting the film and the moment when he answers in perfect Japanese a question from a journalist comes from the real Japanese knowledge that he has, after having lived a couple of years in the Asian country while being a Mormon missionary.

If you do not like Will Ferrell’s previous films, forget to watch this DVD, since it goes pretty much in the same line. But if you enjoyed their special gestures and sketches, you will not feel disappointed with this movie.

Rating 4/5

Categories
Cinema DVD

Suden Vuosi

{mosimage}{sidebar id=37}One of the nicest surprise last year in the Finnish film industry was this Suden Vuosi (The year of the Wolf). Now available on DVD.

K rista Kosonen has become one of the biggest surprises of the Finnish cinema landscape during last years, not only for her undeniable beauty, but also for her good acting skills in films like Jade Soturi or this present Suden Vuosi.  She, as an epylepthic and talented young Literature student, is the backbone of Saarela´s movie, together with a very effective Kari Hesikanen as Mikko Groman, the University professor whose concentration on Baudelaires work and absence from taking care of family responsibilities is going to cause him more than one headache. 

Krista Kosonen looks perfect as the forbidden fruit, young, fresh, and with an excellent balance between shyness, naiveness and voluptuously. The spectator could hesitate about if the couple will work on screen at the beginning of the film, but they certainly do when the story advances.  The director goes for a very conservative treatment of the relation and the sex scenes, quite far from other Finnish sagas such as the three parts of Levottomat, for example, where frantic sex is present all over the action.I found a bit annoying the role and stridency of Aksa Korttila as Mikko´s sister, but Johanna Af Schulten is superb as the professor´s arrogant ex – wife. Looks like Finnish actresses have a special talent for those kind of roles, after a similar and also magnificient interpretation by Susanna Anteroinen as Hanna in the also pretty reccomendable Valkoinen Kaupunki.

The ending is a bit weak compared with the rest of the film, but all in all, Suden Vuosi was able to climb very high in the ranking of my favourite Finnish movies. Good photography, good script and excellent acting. A must see movie for those of you who want to know what is going on in the Finnish contemporary cinema nowadays.

Rating 4/5

Categories
Cinema DVD

Sunlight in your eyes

{sidebar id=34}Danny
Boyle is one of the most exciting
English directors during last decades, with fresh products like
Trainspotting or
28 Days Later
(and some other films that failed, like
the disappointing The Beach).
Now, with this Sunshine,
he has achieved a product that pays homage to some science fiction
classics, being the most obvious inspiration to be recognized:
2001: A Space Odissey.

The
film is visually beautiful and shocking, with nice sequences like the
one when the captain and Capa go out of the
spacecraft to solve the problem with the protection panels. The
design inside inside and outside the craft is astonishing, once again
you can feel the impact of classic sci-fi movies all around the sets.
Boyle shows respect for all that previous influence and achieves
technically a very competent film. The actors` work is efficient,
with special mention to Chris Evans
as the down to earth man on board, Cliff
Curtis as the sun-lover doctor and
Hiroyuki Sanada
as the sacrificed captain. But the plot loses balance after the
encounter with the Icarus I and
the appearance of Captain Pinbacker. The film could have had much
more to offer just exploding the philosophical and ethical crashes of
the crew’s personalities, without having to resource to the typical
“monster” solution to endanger the mission. At the end, Boyle
just offers a bit of everything good from the science fiction’s
tradition, and much of nothing.

Categories
Cinema DVD

Redeeming the lust

They say that
everything is hotter there in the South of USA. It must be true for the
character played by Christina Ricci, Rae, since she cannot control the sexual
desire that turns her body, specially the part between here legs totally crazy,
due to abuses suffered from childhood. Samuel L. Jackson is the
God-fearing retired bluesman that will put effort, faith, patience and
understanding in curing and listening to this troubled woman.

{sidebar id=33}Both actors are
great in their roles, and with a lot of chemistry. It is not easy to play their
parts without falling in a misleading interpretation of their relation, but
they just know how to spice up things when needed, and cool them down to show
that what is really important all over the film is to transmit the feeling of a
real friendship.

Not that I am a
great fan of Justin Timberlake, but he does his part as the betrayed
husband while John Cothran Jr. is a good support and guaranteed fun when
sharing scenes with L. Jackson.

But the best of
the film is when L. Jackson plays the blues, with some electrifying scenes
while makes his guitar cries that matches greatly with the southern atmosphere
exhaled by the film.

Maybe it is not a
great comedy, and probably it is not to be taken seriously enough as a drama,
but Black Snake Moan gives a new nice approach to the relations between
black and white people, showing that there is some universal feelings that we
all share, starting for the pity, the love, the friendship and the
philanthropy. Let’s see when the time finally arrives for the taboo of love and
sexual relations featuring more interracial couples to be finally and openly
broken in the still very morally strict Hollywood
industry.

Rating: 4/5

Categories
At the cinema Cinema

Get On!!

{mosimage}Ganes, the long awaited and much advertised film about
one of the pioneering Finnish rock and roll bands, opens today. Eero Milonoff, Olavi Uusivirta and Jussi
Nikkilä bring the Hurriganes to
the silver screen on the second film directed by JP Siili. Get on and rock and roll all night long!

In the
seventies, Hurriganes became the most successful band in the history of Finnish
rock and roll, achieving popularity and recognition even outside of Finland.
Its original vinyl records are highly appreciated in the second hand market and
they cannot be found for less than 30 euro. Ganes,
the film, tells how the band reached the top from the neighbourhood of Pohjois
Haaga in Helsinki. But the film focuses mainly on Remu Aaltonen, drummer and founder of the Hurriganes, whose life at
the time was pretty peculiar and that includes learning to play drums in jail,
among other adventures. “This is something that we discover while writing the
film”, producer Aleksi Bardy
explains to FREE!, “In order to make a dramatic movie, it has to be also
personal. It cannot be equally and democratic on three persons. We had to
concentrate on one person. Remu is the most prominent of all the Hurriganes and
his life story is particular intriguing, with his difficult background”.

From this
point of view, there is a dramatic plot that makes the film interesting,
besides the musical context. Director JP Siili, who works with Bardy again
after his first film Hymypoika
(2003), admits that “it was very important to tell the story so it would be
attractive not only for fans of the Hurriganes, but also for those people who
have never heard about ‘Ganes’”.

The story
and the Hurriganes weren’t unknown to the director. Indeed, he was very
connected to the band. “I grew up in the same neighbourhood. My elder sister
went to the same class with Cisse,
the bass player”, Siili remembers.” I felt very interested in going back to
this time. And I was a fan too. The first record I taped for myself was Rock And Roll All Night Long.

{sidebar id=25}Siili worked
with Bardy again after both did the director’s first feature film in 2003, Hymypoika. Both acknowledge that it was
long project since the writer Antero Arjatsalo (Riisuttu Mies) started working on the script in 2001. According to
the producer, there was a lot of background documentation to work with and many
music rights to solve. Also there was a lot of work on the script and many
versions were written. “When I started working on the project, we still wrote
for 13 or 14 months. I start with version four or five and we finally shot version 14”,
the director explains. “One of the most difficult things was to find the
balance between a dramatic story and the real story of Hurriganes”.

Obviously,
to recreate such popular characters, casting was a very important aspect. “JP
Siili pointed out that he wanted the cast to perform the music themselves”,
says Bardy. “That’s why he looked for musicians who can act, like Olavi
Uusivirta or actors who can play like Jussi Nikkilä, who was the lead guitar of
band before becoming an actor. The question of who Remu would be was more
difficult. We found the right person in Eero Milonoff, who didn’t know how to
play or how to sing, so he was taught from zero. It is impressive how well he
learned and adapted to that role.” This way, the music that appears in the movie
is mostly re-recordings done by the actors.

However,
lead actor Eero Milonoff will not change his profession. “No, I won’t become a
rock star”, he says to FREE!. “Maybe it will become a hobby. I had never played
before. It was fun and difficult. I started playing with hand and doing basic
things, then playing with the band and rehearsing with them, which was very
helpful for me because both Olavi and Jussi are musicians”. To prepare his
role, Eero had first hand help from Remu Aaltonen himself. “I met him a lot. We
went through the script because he has a very particular style of speaking. That’s
very important for the role. I went to his place in Porvoo with the script and
a minidisc and I recorded how he spoke and we added those expressions to the script”.

Films about
musicians have gotten very popular in Hollywood with blockbusters like Ray or Walk The Line, so what a Finnish production can add to this
particular genre? According to Aleksi Bardy, Ganes has certain characteristics
that make it very Finnish. “It’s a very edgy movie. It has some Finnish characteristics
like guts, ‘sisu’. It is also a portrait of the time. It shows how Finland was before
rock and roll came. Ganes is very Finnish. It is not as polished as other
foreign films tend to be. But I think Walk The Line is a great film and in the process of making this film, we
follow many of the good things of it with great admiration”.

If you know
and like the Hurriganes, you will find this to be the perfect film. If you don’t
know them, this is a great opportunity to learn about one of the most important
moments in Finnish rock and roll. And in any case, you will see an intense
personal story, the one about a natural born rocker Remu Aaltonen.

Categories
Cinema Features

Love, Cinema and Anarchy

{mosimage}
Watch out if you walk around the Finnish capital on September 20th
– 30th! Riots of crazy cinema lovers are expected to take the most important
theatres and fight for the best seats to enjoy one more year one of the best
film festivals in Finland:
Rakkautta ja Anarkiaa (Love and Anarchy). 

And as the old proverb says, if you cannot beat them, join them. The
20th edition of the festival offers an overwhelming good quality of films for
all kind of tastes. Cinema from all over the world gathered by a team of
organizers who truly love the seventh art, giving you an opportunity to enjoy all
kind of products, from the last and new hot releases from Hollywood to some
exotic Asian and European films that otherwise would be almost impossible to
see in the big screen. And do not worry if your knowledge of foreign languages
does not allow you to understand fluently Japanese or Korean, because all the
films in the festival will have English subtitles. Since the catalogue of films
grows year after year, this time there will be six different cinemas in Helsinki featuring
screenings: Bio Rex, Maxin, Kinopalatsi,
Andorra, Koff
Screen Dubrovnik and Kino Engel. Cultural events or just sharing a drink with
other cinema lovers and participants in the festival will be held in Andorra.

The festival also counts with a very useful and accurate web page with texts
in Finnish and English where you can find information about all the venues,
screenings, schedules, most awaited films voted by the audience, etc. There you
can also buy in advance festival catalogues and tickets. All design around
R&A is exhaling a youthful and fresh touch with funny illustration and
pictures that try to transmit the real spirit that links to all the visitors:
the love for good cinema.

Since going to all the featured films must be an impossible task for
most of you, we offer here some hints about what the programme of Rakkautta ja
Anarkiaa can offer:

 

{sidebar id=20}This is England
(Great Britain, 2006. Director Shaun
Meadows)

An approach to the harsh reality of England during Thatcher’s government
through the eyes of Shaun, a bullied child that joins a group of skin-heads
trying to find attention, respect and comprehension after his father’s death in
Falkland war.  Great interpretations by
the child Thomas Turgoose and Stephen Graham as Combo.

Friday 21.9. 18:30  Kinopalatsi 7

Saturday 22.9. 16:30 
Kinopalatsi 8

Sunday 23.9. 21:00  Kinopalatsi 8

Monday 24.9. 18:30  Bio Rex 

 

Control
(Great Britain, 2007. Director Anton
Corbijn)

One of the most awaited films of the festival. Joy Division
became a cult band after its singer, Ian Curtis committed suicide in
1980. Dutchman director Corbijn, who is also known as a top rock
photographer, offers a monochromatic dark film based on the book Touching
from a Distance, the memories of Curtis’s 
widow Debbie, exploring as well the triangle of love and
relations with Curtis’s  Belgian lover Annik
Honoré.

Thursday 20.9. 18:30 
Bio Rex

 

Aachi & Ssipak
(South Korea, 2006. Director Joe
Bum-Jim)

When a responsible person from the festival told me about an anime movie
focused on a gang that tries to control “Shit City” my reaction was like…”wow…I
must see this!”. But far from just curiosity, I found myself totally immersed
in one of the most entertaining, exciting and funny anime movies I have ever
seen. There is a tribute to action cinema history all around the script, from Mad
Max to Robocop, Akira, Indiana Jones… you name it! But the
final product is not just a simple remix of old clichés; it is an explosive,
sarcastic and clever movie that mixes the best of eastern and western animation
cinema traditions. You must not miss this one if you love anime!

Friday 28.9. 21:15  Andorra

Saturday 29.9. 16:30 
Bio Rex 

 

Persepolis
(France and USA, 2007.
Directors: Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi)

Teherán 1978. 8 years old girl Marjane dreams of changing the world, but
later she will discover that the Islamic Revolution did not bring all what she
expected. Persepolis
hits the screen based on the acclaimed comic saga with tones of irony by Marjane
Satrapi. Iranian government seems not to share the excitement of French
public about the movie, and officially protested against it during its
introduction in last Cannes Festival in France. Well known actresses as Catherine
Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni collaborated lending their voices to
the characters.

Sunday 23.9. 17:00  Bio Rex

 

Suely in the Sky
(Brasil, 2006. Director Karim
Ainouz)

Brasil is football and samba, but also hides a darker side of poverty
and difficult conditions for the population. Far from the stereotypical views
of Copacabana beach or from the extreme violence in the “favelas” shown in City
of God, Brasilian director Karim Ainouz takes us to a small
population where the shadow of prostitution hangs over Hermila, a young mother
whose idea for making a living and escape to a better life is to make an
auction among the men being the prize…to spend a night “in paradise” enjoying
her body. Drugs, alcohol and frantic sex for young people trying to find the
meaning of life in the middle of nowhere, but the film also shows a glimpse of
hope.

Friday 21.9. 21:00  Maxim 2

Sunday 23.9. 16:30  Maxim 1

Monday 24.9. 16:30  Kino Engel 1

Tuesday 25.9. 21:00  Kino Engel 2

 

Tales from Earthsea
(Japan, 2006. Director Goro
Miyazaki)

At present times when the topic of loss of balance in Earth is becoming
so hot (and not without real reasons to be worried…) Japanese director Goro
Miyazaki, son of worldwide famous anime director Hayao Miyazaki,
makes his debut in anime cinema with Tales from Earthsea, based overall
on the third book of the saga; a wonderful reflection about the fear of death,
the guilt, the friendship and the dark side of corruption and power. For those
who expect anxiously action here goes a warning: the philosophical dialogues
are the backbone of a film beautifully drawn.

Saturday 22.9. 18:30 
Bio Rex

 

I am a Cyborg but that's ok
(South Korea,
2006. Director: Chan-wook
Park)

South Korean director Chan-wook
Park has become one
of the favourites for the Western spectators after great hits like Sympathy
for Lady Vengeance or the ultra-violent and visually shocking Olboy.
But this time Park offers a different approach and a new register as a
director, far from his previous obsession about feelings like hate and
revenge,  with a love story settled into
a sanatorium. Tender feelings mixed with madness (and some action shooting
scenes “made in Park”) in a story that step by step that will make you feel
bounded to the sweetness of the two main characters (as a matter of fact the
male actor, Rain, is a real celebrity not only in Korea but in the whole Asia).
The personal vision of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest through the eyes
of Park will definitely not let you indifferent.

Saturday 22.9. 21:00 
Kinopalatsi 6
Sunday 23.9. 16:30 
Kinopalatsi 8
Tuesday 25.9. 22:30 
KesäKino Engel
Thursday 27.9. 21:00 
Bio Rex

 

Doghead (2006, Spain.
Director: Santi Amodeo)

Amodeo belongs to this generation of Spanish directors with a brilliant
present and even better future and international projection that keeps
reminding the spectators that there is life in Spanish cinema after Almodóvar
opened the doors to the exportation of national cinema abroad. The film’s main
character is a young teenager whose head works in a different frame than the
rest of the people. And what a better option that to have chosen for the role
to Juan José Ballesta, who shows film after film that is probably the
most talented young actor in Spain
nowadays. If not, take a look to his previous works in El Bola, Planta 4ª
or 7 Vírgenes.

Saturday 22.9. 18:30 
Maxim 1

Sunday 23.9. 18:30  Maxim 2

Thursday 27.9. 16:30 
Kinopalatsi 8

Categories
Cinema DVD

A movie to reflect

{sidebar id=32}Guy Ritchie became one of my favorite (and
many others delighted fans`) directors after masterpieces like Lock, Stock
and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. But the higher you climb, the
hardest the fall is, and that exactly happened with his previous work: Swept
Away, a movie to forget, featuring his wife Madonna, which was smashed
without mercy by critic and public.  

So there was a lot of curiosity around his
new film, Revolver, to see if Ritchie would come back to his origins.
And the initial plot certainly reminds his earlier films: gangsters, action,
acid dialogues… He even eliminated the scenes where Madonna appeared trying to
avoid the “kiss of death” that his wife had given to the previous failed work.
But once you get immersed in the story, you can see that there is not much left
from the first successful films mentioned above if not for the repeated
appearance of his “fetish” actor: Jason Statham, perfect in his work as
usual.  Ray Liotta appears as
maybe the best of the whole film, in the role of a tanned and despotic mafia
boss that totally suits him.

Ritchie had warned that this time he wanted
to make a film for intelligent people… and alas that the movie is not easy to
follow! The timeline is broken successively, the thoughts, the real facts and
the imagination of the characters is often mixed, and you really have to pay
attention to catch the subtle angles of the story. This time the sharp
dialogues are not aimed at making you smile, but at making you reflect about
some philosophical questions. The chess game and strategies to win is a great
leitmotiv all over the movie, and looks like Ritchie wanted to create a chess
game also inside our minds. But at the end my feeling is that the product got “over
baked”. Ritchie wanted to play to be a director resembling Christopher
Nolan, David Fincher and himself at the same time, instead of just being
happy of showing his personal style, leading to the viewers and critics to be
still trying to decide if this is a masterpiece, or a piece of shit. Decide
yourselves, but my advice is that maybe watching the film for a second time can
help you understand it more (or maybe not). I still prefer the Guy Ritchie less
philosophical and more into purely entertainment.

Categories
Cinema DVD

The Number 23

{sidebar id=28}Jim Carrey continues struggling with his status of comedy
actor trying twisted roles where he can show that he is able to provoke more
than laughs from the spectators. Sometimes results are huge successes and great
interpretations like in The Truman Show (1998), Man on the Moon
(1999) or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and some other
times we have to resign with a weaker result as happens in this Joel
Schumacher’s The Number 23.

The first half of the film looks promising, with Carrey in the role of
Walter Sparrow, a normal and good citizen that gets hooked step by step and by
some mysterious circumstances to a book that keeps plenty of reminiscences with
is own life. But an initial plot that could have been turned by Schumacher into
an exciting and mysterious exploration of the human mind starts to feel predictable,
boring and dull from the moment when Sparrow’s family takes an active role in
helping with the investigation.

The product smells too much of Carrey needing once more to reaffirm
himself as a “serious” actor, repeating once more registers seen in previous
works. At this level most of the audience already knows about the good skills
of Mr Carrey, so he could try to focus on choosing a bit more solid scripts
that can offer more extra excitement during the last and final twist. Virginia
Madsen and Logar Lerman are just correct in their roles of wife and
son of Sparrow without any special brightness in their work, while Ronda
Mitra and Lynn Collins bring some fresh and needed sensuality to the
storyline.

Not a bad effort by Schumacher, but the film had all the ingredients
needed to be the main course of the menu, and finally lacked of some spices
that turned it into a normal appetizer.

Categories
Cinema DVD

Write for your rights

{sidebar id=29}In the world
where we live nowadays, full of intolerance, racism and hate that seems to grow
up without reason from every corner, films like Freedom Writers
are needed and received as a fresh breeze that brings some hope.
 

Based on the
book The Freedom Writers Diary that compiles the story of Erin Gruwell
and her pupils during her first years as teacher in a problematic and violent
high school in Los Angeles,
the film teaches that the first knowledge that the pupils must learn in the
classrooms is respect for the others. Hilary Swank is convincing as the
naïve but strong idealistic teacher, and Jack Dempsey plays his part as
forgotten husband who spends his lonely hours watching matches on TV.

The story,
which happens mostly inside the classrooms, has some really emotive moments
when the youngsters remember their relatives and friends fallen due to
violence, or when Gruwell make them face the story of Ana Frank and the
Nazi Holocaust.  Sometimes situations
cross the border of melodramatic and turn into ridiculous, with some dialogues
that we hardly expect to happen in a real classroom, but all in all, the film
is well enough balanced and achieves the goal of transmitting a message of
hope, understanding and equality for those viewers who want to listen to it.
For some of you, it can make you take a pencil again after a long time and
forget for some hours the personal computer on exchange of the familiar
notebook, or simply make you reflect for some minutes that the problems of your
neighbour are not so far from your own ones.

Categories
Cinema DVD

Teenage criminals

{sidebar id=31}After
watching this film, my first feeling was of annoyance. I was feeling
quite angry at the point that the main core of the events (although
modified for the film) had really happened in real life years ago.
That made me reflect how stupid the human being can be when we see a
tragedy coming on and we do nothing to solve it, thinking that others
will make us the favour to erase the problems.


In any case, the
feeling of annoyance also made me realized that the acting skills of
the young actors had been pretty good, since they had reached the
point of making me hate them during the last scenes. I must say that
I have never been a great fan of Justin Timberlake, but I must
admit that here he is probably the best of the whole film: A
character that can be sweet, naïve, stupid and cruel at the same
time. Alpha Dog features young guys playing to be big fishes into the
crime world surrounded by an environment of luxury, parties, pretty
girls and drugs. Maybe the atmosphere is a bit exaggerated, but it
adds a good touch of decadence to the action.

Ben
Foster as the histrionic older brother of the kidnapped child has
some brilliant moments, although sometimes he suffers of overacting,
like in the scene when answering the telephone call that turns to be
stupidly unmeasured. Saving the distances, during some moments he
could remind you of Edward Norton in American History X.
Bruce Willis is correct in his small role, but Sharon Stone
is not in her most brilliant movie. The part where he appears
interviewed at the end of the film disguised as a fat woman does not
make much sense with the rest of the plot, and does not add anything
to the film. The last minutes could have been perfectly erased, but
Casavettes wants to stretch the storytelling too much, and that
makes the film to lose power after the climax. Not a bad reflection
about the MTV American way of living, where owning in a big villa and
playing to be the hardest gangster seems to be the coolest ultimate
feature to gain respect in a group of friends, but the film in
general turns to be a bit too much artificial.

Categories
Cinema DVD

300

{sidebar id=26}I read in an
interview made to Brad Pitt years ago, after having acted in Troy, that
he had to work his ass hard to look as fit as Aquiles since the guy was the
best warrior in all the history. Then imagine the best gang of warriors of all
the history, 300 men whose only purpose was to fight and die in the battlefield
and your mind can go with no difficulty directly to the festival of biceps,
six-packs and flesh shown in 300. Many have complained about the
excessive cult to the perfection of the bodies exhibited all around the film,
but for me the explanation is quite much simple: they look fit because those
warriors had to be fit.

 

Although the
film is not as bright and revolutionary as Sin City,
director Zack Snyder accomplishes a more than decent job here,
considering the extreme difficulties when facing an adaptation of this kind. At
least the main point of the story is clear; Spartans are a warrior society so
the backbone of the films is the battles. There is a lot of blood spilt and
some artistic slow motion footage that brings fight scenes into a new level of
plasticity. But the bellicosity of the film makes otherwise boring the scenes
when the action slow downs as the political plot inside the walls of Sparta and
the continuous narration in voice over turns to be annoying and excessive. Gerard
Butler plays a convincing role as Leonidas, carrying a look that oscillates
between anger and madness that suits the historical character perfectly, and Lena
Headey as Queen Gorgo, plays effectively her role being sensual and
beautiful but also a firm and strong Spartan woman (nothing to do with the
ridiculous role of Angelina Jolie in Alexander).

It seems
that Iranians are quite busy lately filling complains about western films
(recently it happened also with the adaptation of the comic Persépolis
by Marjane Satrapi) since some sectors do not seem much happy about the
treatment given to their nation. In any case, do not look here for veracity or
historical accuracy because the main goal of 300 is to entertain. And
the mission is accomplished.

Categories
Cinema Features

Open source European animation

{mosimage}

Elephants and
animation films seem to be extremely linked in the past recent times. Just last
year, Norwegian director Christopher Nielsen surprised us with the irreverent
and not much political correct film Free Jimmy, and now, Dumbo’s
colleagues are again represented in the title of this European new short film: Elephants
Dream, just released a few months ago, developed by the minds of the
Blender Foundation and the Orange Open Movie Project settled in Amsterdam,
Holland.


As director, you can find the Syrian Bassam Kurdali, but the crew
that made the film possible is just a melting pot of nationalities from such
different places as Germany,
Austria,
Holland or Finland itself.
Globalization serving the noble purpose of creating animation!

But this time, do not expect to find another lovely huge animal wandering
around the screen. The short film take us into a surrealistic universe, dark
and oppressive, with machines that look like animals (or animals that look like
machines), monsters and platforms that move up and down this post-apocalyptic
landscape, just like extracted from a Salvador Dali's bad dream. In the
middle of all this, we find the two human main characters: Emo and Proog. While
the younger one fights against a world that is strange and unknown for him, the
other tries to make him understand how wonderful it is. You can find quite many
references to other films all over the action, maybe being one of the clearest
ones while they are crossing the invisible precipice
{sidebar id=12}(Does the third part of Indiana
Jones ring a bell to anyone…?), but farther than just a moral or
philosophical analysis of what is happening there between the characters, the
main virtue of the film is the originality in its conception and accessibility.
Elephants Dream is the world’s first open movie made entirely with open
source graphics software and with all production files freely available to use
however you please, under a Creative Commons license. As well, a German company
launched a DVD about the film that happens to be the first European film
released with the format HD DVD.

Some months ago, we had an exclusive interview in FREE! Magazine
with the young creators of Star Wreck, Samuli Torssonen and Timo
Vuorensola. They made possible, after seven years of huge effort and
limited resources, the creation of an open source movie, freely available in
Internet, that would quickly become the most ever watched Finnish movie of the history.
The success was so big that Universal launched an extended version in DVD with
many extra features. Finland is represented as well in Elephants Dream with Bastian
Salmela as one of the lead actors and Toni Alatalo as technical
director, so once more we find a clear example of the good health that the
European animation market (and particularly the Finnish one) is enjoying when
exploring the new possibilities of open source movies. Will this become an
extended trend and the big companies will pay extra attention to those products
that show success in the free Internet market? Time will tell, but there is no
question that breaking projects like this Elephants Dream put on the
table new alternatives of accessing and distributing free films made with high
quality. 

http://www.elephantsdream.org

http://www.blender.org

 

Categories
Cinema Interviews

Watching the sound

{mosimage}Once again,
the reputed Finnish filmmaker Mika Kaurismäki focuses on music with the
documentary Sonic Mirror. Guided by legendary jazz drummer Billy Cobham,
Kaurismäki’s camera travels to different parts of the world to present music as
one universal language. From Espoo to the kids in the streets of Brazil to an
community of autistic people in Switzerland to the primal music in Nigeria,
Sonic Mirror is a vibrant trip where there is rhythm is the only language. The
film premieres in Finland this Sunday as part of Espoo Ciné festival and Mika speaks to FREE! about it.

{sidebar id=10}What is Sonic Mirror for you?

It’s an
attempt to demonstrate that rhythm is one of the main things in human life. It
is something that unites all of us. It does not matter where you are. It’s a
universal language.

Billy Cobham, a drummer who played in Miles
Davis’ Bitches Brew and with John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu
Orchestra, is the central figure of the film, but Sonic Mirror is nothing
similar to biography.

We decided
from the beginning that we didn’t want to make a portrait of Billy. That would
have been too easy and obvious even for him. We wanted to do something
different. Billy Cobham is the central figure, but Sonic Mirror is not just a
portrait of him. That would be a completely different thing because he’s
involved in so many activities. We wanted to make a film about rhythm and
education.

How did you translate rhythm into the language of
cinema?

Cinema is
also rhythm. I think music and cinema are very close. In both of them there’s
nothing concrete. Everything comes from imagination. It is hard to think of a
movie without music. Even silent movies had music.

You worked on this movie without a previously
written screenplay. Like in music you had to improvise. How was the experience?

In the
beginning the only idea I had is that music and rhythm are a universal
language. In many occasions, like with the autistic people, we didn’t know what was going to come out of it. It was an experiment. It was impossible to
write a screenplay. You can't tell beforehand how autistic people react to music.
It was the same thing in Brazil. I shot in different stages. In one year, I
shot during five or six different periods. I shot a bit and then thought what to do
next. I was writing the film with my camera.

Did you change much during those stages while
the film was in production?

I changed
some things. For example, I didn’t use anything of some shooting session. It’s
not because it was bad or I wasn’t happy, but somehow when I found the right
line between the autistic, the poor street kids in Brazil and the Nigeria
scenes, everything was in place. That shows how the music is born in its tribal
mode. It’s like the heartbeat. Then there was no room for many things I shot
before, but I will make some other products with it, some dvd or something
else.

It was
during editing When the film really took shape. We had around 200 hours of
material so the editing was very challenging. When I think back to that moment,
I realize that we got most of the final film in the first cut, but then we
changed the order of some things. It was very complicated, indeed. It was like
writing the script after shooting.

What are the plans for the material that is not
included in the documentary?

We filmed
much. We have a lot of material about Billy Cobham’s life. There will be
something about it. Also we want to release the Cobham’s concert at April Jazz
with the UMO Jazz Orchestra. It will be a DVD of the complete show and maybe
some extra material like interviews, making of and more.

Do you have any plans for the future?

After
making three music documentaries, I’m planning some fiction. I’m writing the
script now and I will do it in Finnish and I will shoot in Finland.


Sonic Mirror at Espoo Ciné – Sunday 26.6 at 19.15 in Louhisali, Tapiola. More information and tickets:
www.espoocine.fi