film and architecture section

film book: What is Cinema Volume I and II by Andre Bazin

2010-04-30T02:48:00.000-07:00

category: Film - books (Architecture and Film)
book index: 16

title: What is Cinema Volume I and II
writer: Andre Bazin
editor/translator: Hugh Gray, Dudley Andrew
publisher: University of California Press
published on: December 2004 Edition
ISBN: 0520242270
ISBN 0520242289
volume: Vol I-207 pages Vol II 226
size: 20 Mb, 28 Mb

reference: http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/cultures_languages/bazin1ocr.html
http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/cultures_languages/bazin2ocr.html

description and download:

André Bazin's What Is Cinema? (volumes I and II) have been classics of film studies for as long as they've been available and are considered the gold standard in the field of film criticism. Although Bazin made no films, his name has been one of the most important in French cinema since World War II. He was co-founder of the influential Cahiers du Cinéma, which under his leadership became one of the world's most distinguished publications. Championing the films of Jean Renoir (who contributed a short foreword to Volume I), Orson Welles, and Roberto Rossellini, he became the protégé of François Truffaut, who honors him touchingly in his forword to Volume II. This new edition includes graceful forewords to each volume by Bazin scholar and biographer Dudley Andrew, who reconsiders Bazin and his place in contemporary film study. The essays themselves are erudite but always accessible, intellectual, and stimulating. As Renoir puts it, the essays of Bazin "will survive even if the cinema does not."

review: "Although André Bazin died shortly before the onset of what we now regard as the modern cinema, our understanding of this cinema wouldn't be the same without him. He's also one of the most scrupulous humanists and polemicists we've had, on a par with George Orwell, and these essays map out the busy highways we're all still navigating."—Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic for the Chicago Reader

"What Is Cinema? remains an invaluable—and beautiful—landmark in film and media studies. In both my research and my classrooms I return to these essays again and again—not only for the richness of their arguments but also for their passionate belief that the cinema is a form of revelation vital to our lives."—Vivian Sobchak, Professor, Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, University of California, Los Angeles

André Bazin (1918–1958) was one of France's best-known and respected film critics, and mentor to such directors as Truffaut and Godard. Hugh Gray (translator, 1900–1981) was Professor of Film, Theater, Aesthetics, and Humanities at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Loyola Marymount University. Dudley Andrew is Professor of Film Studies and of Comparative Literature at Yale University. He is the author of André Bazin (1990) and Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film (1995).

Download:

volume I

PDF version

rapidshare link: http://rapidshare.com/files/252834417/0520242270_Bazin1.rar.html

depositfile link: http://depositfiles.com/files/mt2gz9v6g

uploading link: http://uploading.com/files/8G6GVYIO/0520242270%20Bazin1.rar.html

DJVU version

megaupload link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8MM9UTSH

uploading link: http://uploading.com/files/AVQZ0IAL/0520242270%20Bazin1%20DJVU.rar.html

depositfile link: http://depositfiles.com/files/3cqrhamsp

Volume II

PDF version

rapidshare link: http://rapidshare.com/files/252834714/0520242289_Bazin2.rar.html

depositfile link: http://depositfiles.com/files/wox4zxc2k

uploading link: http://uploading.com/files/5AIPPUE3/0520242289%20Bazin2.rar.html

DJVU version

megaupload link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=90NJRE91

uploading link: http://uploading.com/files/7NVPEKR1/0520242289%20Bazin2%20DJVU.rar.html

depositfile link: http://depositfiles.com/files/swf07m8j1

List of films related to architecture shown in Tropolism Film Series Summer 2007

2010-02-04T20:37:00.000-08:00

Tropolism Film Series
Film Series/screening run by tropolism.com
season 01
program time: Summer 2007

List and description
(click "read more" below)

(quoting directly from Tropolism.com as they announce the list)
(http://tropolism.com/archives/2007/05/tropolism-film-series-summer-2007.php#more)

[Editors note: For our inaugural Film Series, Summer 2007, we invited architect/cinephile Saharat Surattanont. Our only terms: the films must be interesting to architects, but have a common theme that is atypical of architectural film series. Enjoy.]

We often overlook the mundane in film.

Architecture film series tend to follow two basic trends: A monumental urban vision that reinforces “larger than life” characters or an “over stimulated” reality that symbolizes a confused and schizophrenic existence.

This film series examines non-contiguous spaces--inhabited by “dysfunctional” characters. Our protagonists never rise above their surroundings nor are they fully dwarfed by them. A more integrated and symbiotic relation develops between them and their world.

No grand conclusions can be drawn from these films. Mostly, time just passes. In the end, we’ve seen a fractured reality--reframed by those that are often ignored, dismissed or marginalized. All we can finally say is that we’ve shared their world and are reminded to acknowledge the spaces (and people) that are too often overlooked.

List:

Nuit et Jour (1991)- Chantal Akerman
• Julie has an affair by day and wanders through Paris at night.

Night on Earth (1992) – dir Jim Jarmusch
• Five moments in times, at night, in taxicabs in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki.

The End of Violence (1997) – dir Wim Wenders
• An L.A. story with meditations on violence, mass media, art, surveillance, and paranoia.

Avalon (2001) – dir Mamoru Oshii
• Ash, a virtual reality gamer, guides us through a monochromatic Warsaw that culminates in a vivid contemporary Poland.

Lilija 4-Ever (2002) – dir Lukas Moodysson
• Brutalist public housing in an impoverished Russian town defines Lilija’s world as she searches for an escape from her life of drugs, abuse and indifference.

Dirty Pretty Things (2003) – dir Stephen Frears
• The underbelly of London as seen through the eyes of the underpaid, overworked, and unnoticed inhabitants of the city.

Children of Men (2006) – dir Alfonso Cuaron
• A war torn London comprised of military zones, refugee camps and competing tribal factions.

Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) by Tom Tykwer, film and architecture appreciation

2009-12-18T11:19:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film

film index: 79

relationship with architecture:
the space and time sequencing of the film is important to study contemporary architecture, specially the multiple reality of the sequences destroys common notion of story telling.

study subject in:
"film+architecture" Course, Harvard Design School. (click HERE for syllabus)

film: Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt)
director: Tom Tykwer
writers: Tom Tykwer
production: Germany
release: 20 August 1998
playtime: 76 mins
visual: colour
Language: German, English, Japanese
Subtitles:
Genre: Puzzle
Cast: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu
size:

reference: www.foriegnmoviesddl.com, Taringa.net,

Description and download:

Lola rennt or Run Lola Run as we say it, is a German thriller written and directed by Tom Tykwer. This Film will contrast your emotions as it shows you how one little event in somebody's life can change there's, and other peoples lives forever. This rollercoaster ride of emotions will keep you gripped all the way through as it jumps from soft, dimly lit emotional scenes, to the completely contrasting scenes of running and constant action.

The music used in this film complements the scenes very well, when it's a slow scene our ears are graced with soft classical music like when Lola is falling to the ground in a slow motion shot. The complete opposite of this is used in the fast paced running scenes, as we get pounded by constant techno beats. I believe that the director has used techno to try and get us inside Lola's head as she is running and stressing about Manni and all the other events that happen throughout this amazing film.

Lola's Determination to save her boyfriend Manni is very well projected as she enters the bank that her father runs, and throughout the three different versions of the story uses different techniques to try and save him. This involvement with the characters and the three different storylines is very unique to this style of film. I think that the actors have delivered a very memorable and exciting performance which will leave viewers wanting to watch the film over and over again.

Throughout the film, Lola bumps into people, talks to them, or simply passes them by, and the sound of a camera flash warming up can be heard. Their resulting futures are then conveyed in a series of still frames. The futures are widely divergent from encounter to encounter. In one scenario, a woman whom Lola accidentally bumps into remains poor and kidnaps an unattended baby after her child was taken away by social workers. In another scenario the woman wins the lottery and becomes rich. In the third scenario, the woman experiences a religious conversion. The sound of the camera flash warming up is repeated a final time at the end of the film, when Lola smiles at Manni's question about what's in her bag.

imdb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130827/
wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_lola_run

screen cap:

Berlin, Symphony of a Great City by Walter Ruttman, film and architecture appreciation

2009-12-11T13:39:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film
film index: 78

film: Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Berlin, die Symphonie der Grossstadt)
director: Walter Ruttman
writers: Karl Freund, Carl Mayer, Walter Ruttmann
production: Germany
release: 23 September, 1927
playtime: 65 mins
visual: BnW
Language: silent
Subtitles:
Genre: documentary
Cast:
size:

reference: www.vo2ov.com, avaxhome.ws, www.archive.org

Description and download:

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (German: Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt), alternatively translated as Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis, a 1927 German silent film directed by Walter Ruttmann, and co-written by Carl Mayer and Karl Freund, is a prominent example of the city symphony genre. A musical score to accompany the film was written by Edmund Meisel. As a "city symphony" film, it portrays the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a kind of loose theme or impression of the city's daily life.

Other noted examples of the genre include Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand's 1921 film Manhatta, Dziga Vertov's 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera, Andre Sauvage's 1928 film Etudes sur Paris, and the 1929 Dutch film Regen directed by Mannus Franken and Joris Ivens.

This film represented a sort of break from Ruttmann's earlier "Absolute" films which were abstracts. Some of Vertov's earlier films have been cited as influential on Ruttmann's approach to this film, and it seems the filmmakers mutually inspired one another, as there exist many parallels between this film and the later Man with a Movie Camera.

The film displays the filmmaker's knowledge of Soviet montage theory. Some Socialist political sympathies, or identification with the underclass can be inferred from a few of the edits in the film, though critics have suggested that either Ruttmann avoided a strong position, or else he pursued his aesthetic interests to the extent that they diminished the potential for political content. Ruttmann's own description of the film suggests that his motives were predominantly aesthetic: "Since I began in the cinema, I had the idea of making something out of life, of creating a symphonic film out of the millions of energies that comprise the life of a big city."

this is a visual symphony in five movements celebrating the Berlin of 1927: the people, the place, the everyday details of life on the streets. Director Walter Ruttman, an experimental filmmaker, approached cinema in similar ways to his Russian contemporary Dziga Vertoz, mixing documentary, abstract, and expressionist modes for a nonnarrative style that captured the life of his countrymen. But where Vertov mixed his observations with examples of the communist dream in action, Ruttman re-creates documentary as, in his own words, "a melody of pictures." Within the loose structure of a day in the life of the city (with a prologue that travels from the country into the city on a barreling train), the film takes us from dawn to dusk, observing the silent city as it awakens with a bustle of activity, then the action builds and calms until the city settles back into sleep. But the city is as much the architecture, the streets, and the machinery of industry as it is people, and Ruttman weaves all these elements together to create a portrait in montage, the poetic document of a great European city captured in action. Held together by rhythm, movement, and theme, Ruttman creates a documentary that is both involving and beautiful to behold. The original score by Timothy Brock is lyrical and dramatically involving, complementing the mood and movement marvelously. Also included is the avant-garde short Opus 1, an abstract study in animated shapes and movement.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017668/
wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin:_Symphony_of_a_Great_City

screen cap:

sneak peak:

download:
tiny paste link
link bundle: 1

http://tinypaste.com/save.php?id=db4f8

link bundle: 2
DivX version
size: 467 mb

http://www.archive.org/download/BerlinSymphonyofaGreatCity/BERLIN.AVI

Torrent download:
link bundle: 3

http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/3463027/Walter_Ruttman_-_Berlin__Symphony_of_a_Great_City_(1927).3463027.TPB.torrent

film book: Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema by Allan Cameron

2009-12-04T11:50:00.000-08:00

category: Film - books (Architecture and Film)
book index: 15

title: Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema
writer: Allan Cameron
editor/translator:
publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
published on: 15/ 08/ 2008
ISBN: 0230210414
volume: 232 pages
size: 1.1 Mb

reference: avaxhome.ws

description and download:

This title combines, in a unique and innovative way, analytical approaches from literary narratology, film studies and new media studies.This title examines the recent cinematic trend of 'modular' narrative form, in which the temporal flow of the narrative is disrupted. It identifies and describes four different models of cinematic modular narrative. There is increasing academic interest in the topic of narrative complexity in film, illustrated by significant recent attention in journal articles, but this is the first monograph to study the phenomenon exclusively. It combines analytical approaches from literary narratology, film studies and new media studies. It includes analysis of a number of 'cult' films that are popular among film students both in the UK and the US e.g. Run Lola Run, 21 Grams, and Memento.Since the early 1990s there has been a trend towards narrative complexity within popular cinema. This book examines a number of contemporary films that play overtly with narrative structure, raising questions of chance and destiny, memory and history, simultaneity and the representation of time.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema

The Shape of Narrative Time: Subjective, Schismatic and Modular

Projecting the Future: Order, Chaos and Modularity

Navigating Memory: Temporal Anchoring and the Modular Subject

Articulating History: Archival Aesthetics and the National Narrative

Deciphering the Present: Simultaneity, Succession and Mediation

Coda: Playing Games with Cinema

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Download:

Uploading link
link: 1: http://uploading.com/files/35QL81HC/0230210414%20Modular%20Narratives.rar.html

megaupload link:
link: 2: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XYGUTZ53

film book: Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema by Warren Buckland

2009-12-04T11:41:00.000-08:00

category: Film - books (Architecture and Film)
book index: 14

title: Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema
writer: Warren Buckland
editor/translator:
publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
published on: 27th January, 2009
ISBN: 1405168625
volume: 256 pages
size: 3 Mb

reference: avaxhome.ws

description and download:

Drawing upon the expertise of film scholars from around the world, Puzzle Films investigates a number of films that sport complex storytelling--from Memento, Old Boy, and Run Lola Run, to the Infernal Affairs trilogy and In the Mood for Love.

Unites American ‘independent’ cinema, the European and International Art film, and certain modes of avant-garde filmmaking on the basis of their shared storytelling complexity

Draws upon the expertise of film scholars from North America, Britain, China, Poland, Holland, Italy, Greece, New Zealand, and Australia

Table of Contents

Introduction: Puzzle Plots
Warren Buckland

The Mind-Game Film
Thomas Elsaesser

Making Sense of Lost Highway
Warren Buckland

“Twist Blindness”: The Role of Primacy, Priming, Schemas, and Reconstructive Memory in a First-Time Viewing of The Sixth Sense
Daniel Barratt

Narrative Comprehension Made Difficult: Film Form and Mnemonic Devices in Memento
Stefano Ghislotti

“Frustrated Time” Narration: The Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman
Chris Dzialo

Backbeat and Overlap: Time, Place, and Character Subjectivity in Run Lola Run
Michael Wedel

Infernal Affairs and the Ethics of Complex Narrative
Allan Cameron and Sean Cubitt

Happy Together? Generic Hybridity in 2046 and In the Mood for Love
Gary Bettinson

Revitalizing the Thriller Genre: Lou Ye’s Suzhou River and Purple Butterfly
Yunda Eddie Feng

The Pragmatic Poetics of Hong Sangsoo’s The Day a Pig Fell into a Well
Marshall Deutelbaum

Looking for Access in Narrative Complexity. The New and the Old in Oldboy
Eleftheria Thanouli

Index

Download:

Rapidshare link
link: 1: http://rapidshare.com/files/291292776/1405168625_Puzzle_Films.rar

depositfile link:
link: 2: http://depositfiles.com/files/jmoo92ktk

memento by christopher nolan, film and architecture appreciation

2009-12-04T06:29:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film

film index: 77

relationship with architecture:
the space and time sequencing of the film is important to study contemporary architecture, specially the non linearity of the sequences and the structure/ non structure of the film

study subject in:
"film+architecture" Course, Harvard Design School. (click HERE for syllabus)

film: Memento

director: Christopher Nolan
writers: Short story: Jonathan Nolan, Screenplay: Christopher Nolan
production: USA
release: March 16, 2001
playtime: 113 mins
visual: colour
Language: English
Subtitles:
Genre: suspense
Cast: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
size: 800 mb

reference: avaxhome.ws, www.warezws.org, www.foriegnmoviesddl.com, Taringa.net,

Description and download:

Memento is a 2000 psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his younger brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori". It stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance fraud investigator searching for the man he believes raped and killed his wife during a burglary. Leonard has anterograde amnesia, which he developed as a result of the severe head trauma during the attack on his wife. This renders his brain unable to store new memories. To cope with his condition, he maintains a system of notes, photographs, and tattoos to record information about himself and others, including his wife's killer.

This feature is often used to show the distinction between plot and story. The film's events unfold in two separate, alternating narratives—one in color, and the other in black and white. The black and white sections are told in chronological order, showing Leonard conversing with an anonymous phone caller in a motel room. Leonard's investigation is depicted in color sequences that are in reverse chronological order. As each sequence begins, the spectator is unaware of the preceding events, just like Leonard giving the viewer a sense of Lenny's confusion.

At the start of the film (end of the story) we are shown that he has just killed Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) for the crime based on information provided by Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss). By the film's end, the two narratives converge in a single sequence that begins as black and white and transforms into color during the development of a polaroid picture, and we get to see the investigation and the events that lead up to the death of Teddy.

Memento premiered on September 5, 2000 at the Venice Film Festival to critical acclaim and received a similar response when it was released in theaters on December 15, 2000. Critics especially praised its unique, nonlinear narrative structure and themes of memory, perception, grief, self-deception, and revenge. The film was successful at the box office and received numerous accolades, including Academy Award nominations for Original Screenplay and Editing.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.c0m/title/tt0209144/
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_%28film%29

Screen caps:

The Special Edition DVD's menus are arranged as the following psychological tests. Highlighting certain objects will lead to special features.

sneak peak:

download:
rapidshare links
link bundle: 01
password: kyros15

http://rapidshare.com/files/249999819/meme.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/249999821/meme.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/249999826/meme.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250230000/meme.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250229997/meme.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250229994/meme.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250277386/meme.part7.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/250277385/meme.part8.rar

link bundle: 02

http://rapidshare.com/files/100628545/bbs.appleorz.com_20-_20memento.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/100628714/bbs.appleorz.com_20-_20memento.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/100733541/bbs.appleorz.com_20-_20memento.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/100629530/bbs.appleorz.com_20-_20memento.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/100629555/bbs.appleorz.com_20-_20memento.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/100807518/bbs.appleorz.com_20-_20memento.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/100629925/bbs.appleorz.com_20-_20memento.part7.rar

link bundle: 03
bigger size
4gb
Pass: www.nattawat.org

http://rapidshare.com/files/137407174/memento-bdrip-720p.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137409650/memento-bdrip-720p.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137415733/memento-bdrip-720p.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137418221/memento-bdrip-720p.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137424957/memento-bdrip-720p.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137427457/memento-bdrip-720p.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137583172/memento-bdrip-720p.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137437574/memento-bdrip-720p.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137583173/memento-bdrip-720p.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137596444/memento-bdrip-720p.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137596523/memento-bdrip-720p.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137609784/memento-bdrip-720p.part12.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137609861/memento-bdrip-720p.part13.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137621352/memento-bdrip-720p.part14.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137621439/memento-bdrip-720p.part15.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137632039/memento-bdrip-720p.part16.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137632112/memento-bdrip-720p.part17.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137640992/memento-bdrip-720p.part18.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137641036/memento-bdrip-720p.part19.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137649128/memento-bdrip-720p.part20.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137649165/memento-bdrip-720p.part21.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137657994/memento-bdrip-720p.part22.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137658110/memento-bdrip-720p.part23.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137669143/memento-bdrip-720p.part24.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137669190/memento-bdrip-720p.part25.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137680268/memento-bdrip-720p.part26.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137680263/memento-bdrip-720p.part27.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137695347/memento-bdrip-720p.part28.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137695388/memento-bdrip-720p.part29.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137714125/memento-bdrip-720p.part30.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137714575/memento-bdrip-720p.part31.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137733322/memento-bdrip-720p.part32.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137733936/memento-bdrip-720p.part33.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137755824/memento-bdrip-720p.part34.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137756055/memento-bdrip-720p.part35.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137777874/memento-bdrip-720p.part36.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137778017/memento-bdrip-720p.part37.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137798935/memento-bdrip-720p.part38.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137799064/memento-bdrip-720p.part39.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137812118/memento-bdrip-720p.part40.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137812201/memento-bdrip-720p.part41.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137824350/memento-bdrip-720p.part42.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137824459/memento-bdrip-720p.part43.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137836313/memento-bdrip-720p.part44.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137836447/memento-bdrip-720p.part45.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137847503/memento-bdrip-720p.part46.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/137847646/memento-bdrip-720p.part47.rar

link bundle: 04
2 gb file

http://rapidshare.com/files/300016646/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300017841/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300017843/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018488/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018494/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018016/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018021/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018077/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018079/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300017992/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300017997/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018124/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part12.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018126/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part13.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018053/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part14.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018056/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part15.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018268/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part16.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018271/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part17.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018395/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part18.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018401/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part19.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018388/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part20.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018394/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part21.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018321/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part22.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300018325/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part23.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/300017410/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part24.rar

Hotfile:
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365240/555f09b/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part01.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365443/7e2d24c/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part02.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365419/ea006b4/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part03.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365426/d569e64/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part04.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365433/4639c35/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part05.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365438/ef42c37/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part06.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365468/30d96cb/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part07.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365340/a4098e6/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part08.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365335/2d50d89/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part09.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365351/fcd73e3/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part10.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16365358/11754cc/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part11.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444876/38a6100/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part12.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444853/2ec9421/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part13.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444863/2bfb5f6/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part14.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444849/b174f64/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part15.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444871/6b8a7ee/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part16.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444928/9a29b01/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part17.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16445386/259e141/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part18.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444942/655bdc2/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part19.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444933/8834523/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part20.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444953/14ad366/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part21.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444964/1105edf/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part22.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444984/7d1a3a4/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part23.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/16444983/df34204/HD.Mem.x264.tom.part24.rar.html

The Killing by Stanley Kubrick, architecture and film appreciation

2009-12-04T05:42:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film

film index: 76

relationship with architecture:

study subject in:
"film+architecture" Course, Harvard Design School. (click HERE for syllabus)

film: The Killing (L'Ultime Razzia)

director: Stanley Kubrick
writers: Novel: Lionel White, Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick, Jim Thompson
production: USA
release: May 20, 1956
playtime: 83 mins
visual: BnW
Language: English
Subtitles:
Genre: Film Noir, Thriller
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor
size: 700 mb

reference: avaxhome.ws, www.warezws.org, www.foriegnmoviesddl.com, Taringa.net, felliniycia.blogspot.com,

Description and download:

Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) is a veteran criminal planning one last heist before settling down and marrying Fay (Coleen Gray). His plan is to rob the money-counting room of a racetrack of two million dollars during a featured race, and to do this he assembles a team consisting of a corrupt cop (Ted de Corsia); George Peatty (Elisha Cook Jr.), a betting window teller at the track to give access to the backroom; a sharpshooter (Timothy Carey) to shoot the favorite horse during the race, distracting the crowd; a wrestler (Kola Kwariani, born 1903, Republic of Georgia) to provide another distraction by provoking a fight at the track bar, and the bartender (Joe Sawyer).

After a successful heist, the robbers return to the apartment where they were to meet and wait for Johnny to show up with the money so they can divide it. Unfortunately, George's wife Sherry (Marie Windsor) has learned about the heist from her weak-willed husband, and she has told her boyfriend Val (Vince Edwards), who shows up at the apartment to rip them off. In the ensuing shootout, a badly wounded George is the sole survivor. He goes home and shoots Sherry before dying himself.

On his way to the apartment, Johnny sees George staggering on the street, and knows that something is wrong. He puts the cash in an old used suitcase, and he and Fay go to the airport to get on a plane to leave town & dash; but when the bag falls off a cart on its way to be loaded on the plane, it opens up, and the money is blown all over the tarmac by the wind. Fay urges Johnny to make a run for it, but he refuses, stating that there is no use in trying to escape. The film ends with two officers coming to arrest him.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049406/
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing

Screen caps:

Sneak Peaks:

download:

rapidshare links
link bundle: 01

http://rapidshare.com/files/279509266/THE_KILLING.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/279535032/THE_KILLING.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/279565767/THE_KILLING.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/279596405/THE_KILLING.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/279621681/THE_KILLING.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/279647186/THE_KILLING.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/279668560/THE_KILLING.part7.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/279479528/THE_KILLING.part8.rar

link bundle: 02

http://rapidshare.com/files/139276342/CastaDeMalditos_by_EhGuacho.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139310071/CastaDeMalditos_by_EhGuacho.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139296920/CastaDeMalditos_by_EhGuacho.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/139263139/CastaDeMalditos_by_EhGuacho.part4.rar

link bundle: 03

link bundle: 04

Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam, film and architecture appreciation

2009-12-04T03:36:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film

film index: 75

relationship with architecture:

architecture has a metaphoric presence in telling the story line. Architect Lebbeus Woods has strong influence in one of the major scenes of the movie.

study subject in:
"film+architecture" Course, Harvard Design School. (click HERE for syllabus)

film: Twelve Monkeys (L'Armée des 12 Singes)

director: Terry Gilliam
writers: Screenplay: David Peoples, Janet Peoples, story inspired by: Chris Maker
production: USA
release: March 14, 1996
playtime: 130 mins
visual: colour
Language: English
Subtitles:
Genre: Sci fi
Cast: Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer
size: 401/171 mb

influenced by: La Jetée by Chris Marker (click to go to related page)

reference: avaxhome.ws, www.warezws.org, www.foriegnmoviesddl.com,

Description and download:

12 Monkeys is a 1995 science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam, inspired by the French short film La Jetée (1962), and starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Plummer. The film depicts the world in 2035 as devastated by disease, forcing the human population to live underground. Convict James Cole (Willis) "volunteers" for time travel duty to gather information in exchange for prison release. When he first arrives in the past, Cole is arrested and locked up in a psychiatric hospital, where he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly (Stowe), a psychiatrist, and Jeffrey Goines (Pitt), the insane son of a world-renowned virologist.

Gilliam undertook the same filmmaking style from his own Brazil (1985), including the art direction and cinematography (specifically using fresnel lenses). The interrogation room where Cole is being interviewed by the scientists was based on the work of Lebbeus Woods; these scenes were shot at three different power stations (two in Philadelphia and one in Baltimore). Gilliam intended to show Cole being interviewed through a multi-screen interrogation TV set because he felt the machinery evoked a "nightmarish intervention of technology. You try to see the faces on the screens in front of you, but the real faces and voices are down there and you have these tiny voices in your ear. To me that's the world we live in, the way we communicate these days, through technical devices that pretend to be about communication but may not be."

The art department made sure that the 2035 underground world would only use pre-1996 technology as a means to depict the bleak future. To create the majority of visual effects sequences, Gilliam awarded the shots to Peerless Camera, the London-based effects studio he founded in the late-1970s with visual effects supervisor Kent Houston (The Golden Compass, Casino Royale). Additional digital compositing was done by The Mill, while Cinesite worked on film scanning services.

imbd link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114746/
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_monkeys

screenshots:

Montage and Architecture: Sergei Eisenstein's article on film and architecture

2009-11-27T03:55:00.000-08:00

Title: Montage and Architecture

Writer: Sergei Eisenstein

date:

published in: (if anyone knows any information please let us know)

reference: cosmopista.files.wordpress.com

detail and download:

(to enlarge the font size click + zoom sign at the bottom of the scribd window)

Montage and Architecture by Eisenstein

Rope by Alfred Hitchcock, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-26T15:58:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film

film index: 74

relationship with architecture:

study subject in: "film+architecture" Course, Harvard Design School. (click HERE for syllabus)

film: Rope

director: Alfred Hitchcock

writers: Play:Patrick Hamilton, Adaptation:Hume Cronyn, Screenplay:Arthur Laurents, Ben Hecht (uncredited)

production: USA Warner Brothers Studios

release: 28 August, 1948

playtime: 81 min

visual:

Language: English

Subtitles:

Genre: Suspense

Cast: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier

size: 699 mb

reference: Taringa.com, Avaxhome.ws, skc339.blogspot.com, pasquish.blogspot.com, iloveclassics.blogspot.com, englishtips.org

Description and Download

An experimental film masquerading as a standard Hollywood thriller. The plot of Rope is simple and based on a successful stage play: two young men (John Dall and Farley Granger) commit murder, more or less as an intellectual exercise. They hide the body in their large apartment, then throw a dinner party. Will the body be discovered? Director Alfred Hitchcock, fascinated by the possibilities of the long-take style, decided to shoot this story as though it were happening in one long, uninterrupted shot. Since the camera can only hold one 10-minute reel at a time, Hitchcock had to be creative when it came time to change reels, disguising the switches as the camera passed behind someone's back or moved behind a lamp. In later years Hitchcock wrote off the approach as misguided, and Rope may not be one of Hitchcock's top movies, but it's still a nail-biter. They don't call him the Master of Suspense for nothing. James Stewart, as a suspicious professor, marks his first starring role for Hitchcock, a collaboration that would lead to the masterpieces Rear Window and Vertigo.

Overview: Applying their professor's theory, two classmates decide to murder their inferior and keep him in the apartment during a dinner party.

Acting: Impressive acting by James Stewart. Seems that this is the kind of role he's best suited for. Everyone in this is perfectly chosen for their roles, and the direction is superb.

Cinematography: 9 takes, 80 minutes. This is what's most interesting about this film. The reason that there were so MANY takes is because film reels could only hold about 10 minutes of film. Had they attempted more seamless takes, I would have been more impressed, but Rope has Russian Arc beat to death in my books. This is also Alfred Hitchcock's first colour film, and apparently whole takes were redone because he didn't like the colour of the sunset in the background. that, my friend, is dedication.

Script: The reference to Notorious is quite entertaining. Three people are chatting, talking about Cary Grant's last film, called "Something. You know with Ingrid Bergman?" I thought only Shakespeare could pull off plugging his other plays mid-story. In a way, this illustrates the essence of this film. Dialogue stays witty, poignant and conversational with a huge fat slab of holy-than-thou arrogance and a dash of hints and mystery. Of course you need that when your story's about people killing just to prove they can pull it off.

Plot: Witty. This is the story of a couple of guys who kill their classmate and put him in a trunk. The next few hours has these guys throwing a dinner party, with that very chest as centerpiece. The only regret I have is that I wish I hadn't seen Six Feet Under. You see, that show taught me early on what happens to a body after death, and I don't think a bunch of dinner guests would let slide a farting, leaking steamer trunk for hours upon hours... Baring that acceptable suspension of disbelief, a nice thrill-ride with a dramatic finish.

Mood: Perfectionism is nice, especially with such stories as the time a dolly ran over and crushed the foot of a crewman. Since the takes were so long, they wanted to make sure that they did it right the first time. The poor broken-footed man was gagged and dragged off, while the cameras kept rolling, and yes, they used that shot in final edit. With the drive of such talent to make sure it's done right, you won't be surprised to find how good a film this is. That real-time feel adds a nice element of immediacy.

imdb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0040746/
wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_%28film%29

screen caps:

film book: Sulpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses His Art, by Andrei Tarkovsky

2009-11-26T15:50:00.000-08:00

category: Film - books (Architecture and Film)
book index: 13

title: Sculpting in Time
writer: Andrei Tarkovsky
editor/translator: Kitty Hunter-Blair
publisher: Die Versiegelte Zeit Germany (original); University of Texas Press (English Version)
published on: 1986
ISBN: 0-292-77624-1
volume: 122 pages
size: 10 Mb

reference: filestube.com

description and download:

Sculpting In Time is a book by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky about art and cinema in general, and his own films in particular. It was originally published in 1986 in German shortly before the author's death, and published in English in 1987, translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair. The title refers to Tarkovsky's own name for his style of filmmaking.

The book's main statement about the nature of cinema is summarized in the statement, "The dominant, all-powerful factor of the film image is rhythm, expressing the course of time within the frame." Tarkovsky describes his own distaste for the growing popularity of rapid-cut editing and other devices that he believes to be contrary to the true artistic nature of the cinema.

The book also contains a fair amount of Tarkovsky's personal writings on his life and work, lectures and discussions during making of Andrei Rublyov with a film history student named Olga Surkova, who later became a professional critic and helped in writing of this book. The book has commentary on each of his 7 major feature films, and his complex relationship with the Soviet Union. The final chapter, a discussion of his film The Sacrifice, was dictated in the last weeks of his life.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter I: The beginning
Chapter II: Art—a yeaming for the ideal
Cllapter III: Imprinted time
Chapter IV: Cinema's destined role
Chapter V: The film image
      Time, rhythm and editing
      Scenario and shooting script
      The film's graphic realisation
      The film actor
Music and noises
   Chapter VI: The author in search of an audience
   Chapter VII: The artist's responsibility
   Chapter VIII: After Nostalgia
   Chapter IX: The Sacrifice
   Conclusion
   Notes
Download:

Rapidshare link
link: 1: http://rapidshare.com/files/237706549/Andrey.Tarkovsky.-.Sculpting.in.Time._2nd.edition_.1987_.pdf

Studio Ghibli imaginary architecture: Laputa: Castle in the Sky by Hayao Miyazaki, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-25T06:07:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film, Imaginary architectures of studio Ghibli
film index: 73 (Ghibli index 11)
relationship with architecture:
one of the most imaginative architectural spaces designed by Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki. the story evolves around the myth of a castle that floats and eventually it is both "flying" and "architecture" that prevails beyond their physical presence. miyazaki skillfyully handles architecture of the sky as well as architecture beneath earth. Overwhelming and a must see.

film: Laputa: Castle in the Sky (Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta)
director: Hayao Miyazaki
writers: Hayao Miyazaki
production: Japan, Studioin Ghibli
release: August 2, 1986
playtime: 126 min
visual: colour
Language: Japanese
Subtitles:
Genre: animation, fantasy

reference: raiden-rs.blogspot.com, avaxhome.ws, warezws.com

Description and Download:

Laputa: Castle in the Sky (Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta) (re-titled Castle in the Sky for release in the United States) is a 1986 film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It is the first film created and released by Studio Ghibli. Laputa: Castle in the Sky won the Animage Anime Grand Prix in 1986.

A young boy stumbles into a mysterious girl who floats down from the sky. This film is set in a Victorian era that might have been, influenced by the visions of writers such as Jules Verne. As Pazu, the apprentice of the engineer who maintains a mine's elevator machinery, carries his boss's dinner back to the mine, an unconscious pigtailed girl floats down from the sky into his arms. This girl, Sheeta, and her magical levitation-stone pendant hold the key to a mysterious, mythical sky-castle known as Laputa. Sheeta and Pazu must flee from both air-pirates, who seek the sky kingdom for its legendary treasure, and the army, led by a government agent with his own mysterious agenda for Laputa.

Laputa is credited by Colonel Muska with having been behind Biblical events and sacred Hindu legends — thus tying the world of Laputa to our Earth (and to western European civilisation) — as do the medieval castle architecture of parts of the fort on the ground; the Gothic and half-timbered buildings in the village near the fort; the British mining-town architecture, clothing, and even ground vehicles of Pazu's homeland; and the Victorian ambiance of the pirate ship.

The flying machines depicted in the opening scenes of the film are similar to Leonardo da Vinci's early drawings of a wooden helicopter.

Some of the architecture seen in the film was inspired by a Welsh mining town. Miyazaki first visited Wales in 1984 and witnessed the miners' strike firsthand. He returned to the country in 1986 to prepare for Laputa, which he said reflected his Welsh experience: "I was in Wales just after the miners' strike. I really admired the way the miners' unions fought to the very end for their jobs and communities, and I wanted to reflect the strength of those communities in my film." Miyazaki told The Guardian, "I admired those men, I admired the way they battled to save their way of life, just as the coal miners in Japan did. Many people of my generation see the miners as a symbol; a dying breed of fighting men. Now they are gone."

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092067/
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_in_the_Sky

Screen caps:

Studio Ghibli analysing urbanism: three films (Princess Mononoke, PomPoko, Kiki's Delivery Service) by Miyazaki and Takahat, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-24T20:01:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film, Imaginary architectures of studio Ghibli

film index: 70-72 (Ghibli index 08-10)

relationship with architecture:

A critical as well as mournful stare to the rapid urbanization of cities. in both Monoke and Pompoko, the gihibli view to urban cities have taken shape of metaphoric battle between nature and manmade. kiki's delivery service on the other hand is the opposite, celebrating the new urbanism through metaphors of wish, love and affection. all three film.. pure romanticism, and magic all around and reminds me of "Genius Loci" of Christian Norberg Schultz

film: Princess Mononoke, Pom Poko, Kiki's Delivery Service

details and Download:

film: Princess Mononoke (Mononoke-hime)

director: Hayayo Miyazaki

writers: Hayayo Miyazaki

production: Japan, Studioin Ghibli

release: July 12, 1997

playtime: 134 min

visual: colour

Language: Japanese

Subtitles:

Genre: animation, fantasy

reference: raiden-rs.blogspot.com, avaxhome.ws, warezws.com

Description and Download:

It is a period drama set specifically in the late Muromachi period of Japan but with numerous fantastic elements and concentrates on the struggle between the supernatural guardians of a forest and the humans who consume its resources as seen by the outsider Ashitaka. "Mononoke" is not a name, but a general term in the Japanese language for a spirit or monster.

Princess Mononoke is mostly hand-drawn, but incorporates some use of computer animation during five minutes of footage throughout the film. The computer animated parts are designed to blend in and support the traditional cel animation, and are mainly used in images consisting of a mixture of computer generated graphics and traditional drawing. A further 10 minutes uses digital paint, a technique used in all subsequent Studio Ghibli films. While most of the film is colored with traditional paint, delays towards the end of production forced the producers to install computers to make the set Japanese premiere date, which they successfully met.

Miyazaki personally checked each of the 144,000 cels in the film, and is estimated to have redrawn parts of 80,000 of them. This is the only film directed by him that does not feature a flying sequence, his well-known trademark.

Miyazaki did not want Ashitaka to be a typical hero:

Ashitaka is not a cheerful, worry-free boy. He is a melancholy boy who has a fate. I feel that I am that way myself, but until now, I have not made a film with such a character. Ashitaka was cursed for a very absurd reason. Sure, Ashitaka did something he should not have done - killing Tatari Gami. But there was enough reason to do so from the humans' viewpoint. Nevertheless, he received a deadly curse. I think that is similar to the lives of people today. I think this is a very absurd thing that is part of life itself.
—Hayao Miyazaki

He stated that Lady Eboshi was supposed to have a traumatic past, although it is not specifically mentioned in the film. She had a strong and secure personality, evident in the fact that she let Ashitaka move freely through the settlement unescorted, despite his unclear motives. She also almost never acknowledged the Emperor's authority in Irontown, a revolutionary view for the time, and displayed an atypical attitude for a woman of that era in that she wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice herself or those around her for her dreams.

When director Miyazaki was creating the Jigo character, he was unsure whether to make him a government spy, a ninja, a member of a religious group or "a very good guy." In the end he decided to give Jigo elements of all of the above groups.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119698/
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Mononoke

screen caps:

film: Pom Poko (Heisei Tanuki Gassen Pompoko)

director: Isao Takahata

writers: Isao Takahata

production: Japan, Studioin Ghibli

release: 1994

playtime: 119 min

visual: colour

Language: Japanese

Subtitles:

Genre: animation, fantasy

reference: raiden-rs.blogspot.com, avaxhome.ws, warezws.com

Description and Download:

s the human city development encroaches on the raccoon population's forest and meadow habitat, the raccoons find themselves faced with the very real possibility of extinction. In response, the raccoons engage in a desperate struggle to stop the construction and preserve their home.

Consistent with Japanese folklore, the Tanuki (Japanese raccoon dogs, Nyctereutes procyonoides) are portrayed as a highly sociable, mischievous species, able to use "illusion science" to transform into almost anything, but too fun-loving and too fond of tasty treats to be a real threat (unlike the kitsune and other shapeshifters). Visually, the Tanuki in this film are depicted in three ways at various times: as realistic animals, as anthropomorphic animals which occasionally wear clothes, and as cartoony figures based on the manga of Shigeru Sugiura (of whom Takahata is a great fan). They tend to assume their realistic form when in view of humans, their cartoony form when they are doing something outlandish or whimsical, and their anthropomorphic form at all other times.Prominent testicles are an integral part of Tanuki folklore, and they are shown and referred to throughout the movie, and also used frequently in their shapeshifting.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110008/
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pom_Poko

screen caps:

film: Kiki's Delivery Service (Majo no takkyûbin)
director: Hayayo Miyazaki
writers: Hayayo Miyazaki, Based on the book by Eiko Kadono
production: Japan, Studioin Ghibli
release: July 29, 1989
playtime: 102 min
visual: colour
Language: Japanese
Subtitles:
Genre: animation, fantasy

reference: raiden-rs.blogspot.com, avaxhome.ws, warezws.com

Description and Download:

This is the story of a young witch, named Kiki who is now thirteen years old. But she is still a little green and plenty headstrong, but also resourceful, imaginative, and determined. With her trusty wisp of a talking cat named Jiji by her side she's ready to take on the world, or at least the quaintly European seaside village she's chosen as her new home.

After "Totoro" was finished and released, Miyazaki took a closer look at Kiki’s Delivery Service. He started by writing a screenplay himself, and since Majo no Takkyūbin was based in a fictional country in northern Europe, he and the senior staff went to research landscapes and other elements of the setting. Their main stops were Stockholm, Adelaide, South Australia and the Swedish island of Gotland. The city's architecture also owes debts to Ireland, Paris and Tokyo's Ginza district.

The time setting for Kiki's Delivery Service was a subject for discussion among the movie's fans for some time: Kiki carries a transistor radio apparently of 1950s vintage, and some characters are seen watching black-and-white television sets, but the cars and some of the aircraft seem to be from an earlier period. Specifically, a plane resembling the Handley Page H.P.42 is seen during the opening credits, although all eight of the H.P.42 aircraft had been decommissioned or destroyed by 1941. The controversy was settled when Miyazaki said the story took place in the 1950s of an alternative universe in which both World Wars never took place.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097814/
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiki%27s_Delivery_Service

screen caps:

Studio Ghibli imaginary architecture: Tales from Earthsea by Goro Miyazaki, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-24T07:02:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film, Imaginary architectures of studio Ghibli
film index: 69 (Ghibli index 07)
relationship with architecture:
wonderful portrayal of medieval landscape, township and castles that match the story perfectly. Magical.

film: Tales from Earthsea (Gedo Senki, Ged's War Chronicles)
director: Goro Miyazaki
writers: Ursula K. Le Guin (novel), Gorō Miyazaki, Keiko Niwa
production: Japan, Studioin Ghibli
release: July 29, 2006
playtime: 116 min
visual: colour
Language: Japanese
Subtitles:
Genre: animation, fantasy

reference: raiden-rs.blogspot.com, avaxhome.ws, warezws.com

Description and Download:

This feature film from Studio Ghibli is the first anime film adaptation of any part of the Earthsea series. In the past, numerous directors have attempted to adapt the Earthsea cycle for film only to be refused by the author herself. Hayao Miyazaki had desired to create an anime version of the cycle, before he made Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. In 2003, after winning an Oscar for his film Spirited Away, he received approval but was busy directing Howl's Moving Castle. On behalf of Studio Ghibli, his son Gorō Miyazaki took charge of this film adaptation.

Something bizarre has come over the land. The kingdom is deteriorating. People are beginning to act strange... What's even more strange is that people are beginning to see dragons, which shouldn't enter the world of humans. Due to all these bizarre events, Ged, a wandering wizard, is investigating the cause. During his journey, he meets Prince Arren, a young distraught teenage boy. While Arren may look like a shy young teen, he has a severe dark side, which grants him strength, hatred, ruthlessness and has no mercy, especially when it comes to protecting Teru. For the witch Kumo this is a perfect opportunity. She can use the boy's "fears" against the very one who would help him, Ged.

a fantastic debut from Goro Miyazaki (son of Hayao Miyazaki) and a worthy addition to Ghibli's consistently brilliant catalog. It follows the prince Arren, as he runs from his kingdom and encounters a wizard named Ged. From here, he is drawn into a classic good versus evil battle. Goro Miyazaki's film bares a lot of similarities to his father's films, but lacks some of the whimsical nature that makes Hayao's movies so distinct. Tales from Earthsea is a more subdued film than films such as Spirited Away and Porco Rosso, and doesn't really hit the emotional or imaginative heights that Hayao Miyazaki's films do. But this isn't always a bad thing - It's simply Goro's style, and this element makes his film a more traditional, perhaps more sensible narrative. Goro has taken a somewhat conservative route with this film - visually and audibly it's classic Ghibli, full of lush environments and excellent animation. In terms of narrative, it carries classic Ghibli (particularly Miyazaki) hallmarks - epic battles of good and evil, cathartic journeys, and the hospitality and grace of ordinary people - but it also has more of a traditional narrative. Good and evil are, unlike many his father's films, clearly defined, and the events of the film lack the extravagance (and imagination) of Hayao's films. It's a wise move - rather than try to re-invent the wheel, Goro has made a wonderfully solid and cohesive film.

To simply compare Goro Miyazaki (and his film) to his father is unfair and sells a great movie short - he has obviously inherited a tremendous flair for storytelling, and with Ghibli's animation team behind him, has created a fantastic debut film.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0495596/
wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_Earthsea_%28film%29

screen caps:

Studio Ghibli imaginary architecture: Whisper of the Heart by Yoshifumi Kondo & Hayao Miyazaki, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-22T07:53:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film, Imaginary architectures of studio Ghibli

film index: 67 (Ghibli index 04)
relationship with architecture:
fantastic dramatization of real life township into characterization of the story. unique blend of imaginary and real life architecture. one of the most fascinating feature is the out of the world landscape with bizzare buildings that the main character built in her imagination.

film: Whisper of the Heart (Mimi wo Sumaseba)
director: Yoshifumi Kondo
writers: Hayao Miyazaki
production: Japan, Studio Ghibli
release: July 15, 1995
playtime: 111 min
visual: colour
Language: Japanese, English
Subtitles:
Genre: animation, fantasy

reference: warezws.com, raiden-rs.blogspot.com, avaxhome.ws, Taringa.com, movie.zing.vn/Movie

Description and Download:

Whisper of the Heart, known in Japan as Mimi wo Sumaseba (If You Listen Closely) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Aoi Hiiragi. In 1995, it was adapted into an anime feature film by Studio Ghibli. This was the first Japanese film to use the Dolby Digital sound format.

Shizuku lives a simple life, dominated by her love for stories and writing. One day she notices that all the library books she has have been previously checked out by the same person: 'Seiji Amasawa'. Curious as to who he is, Shizuku meets a boy her age whom she finds infuriating, but discovers to her shock that he is her 'Prince of Books'. As she grows closer to him, she realises that he merely read all those books to bring himself closer to her. The boy Seiji aspires to be a violin maker in Italy, and it is his dreams that make Shizuku realise that she has no clear path for her life. Knowing that her strength lies in writing, she tests her talents by writing a story about Baron, a cat statuette belonging to Seiji's grandfather.

This is the only movie to be directed by the late Yoshifumi Kondō, who died in 1998 of an aneurysm at the age of 47. Studio Ghibli had hoped that Kondō would become the successor to Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata.

The fantastical backgrounds in the fantasy sequences of the movie were created by Japanese surrealist painter Naohisa Inoue and were directed by Miyazaki. The wood engraving of the imprisoned musician was created by Miyazaki's son Keisuke Miyazaki, a professional wood artist. Japanese musical duo Chage and Aska's short music video, titled "On Your Mark", by Studio Ghibli was released along with this film. Miyazaki wrote the screenplay and drew up the storyboards used in the film, along with acting as the general producer. The film's art direction was headed by Satoshi Kuroda, and the music was headed by Yūji Nomi.

Sequel/ prequel: the movie has a sequel with the story of the Cat Figurine, The Baron. the movie is named "The Cat Returns".

imdb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113824/
wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_of_the_heart

screen caps:

http://rapidshare.com/files/78505675/woth.avi.001
http://rapidshare.com/files/78672632/woth.avi.002
http://rapidshare.com/files/78681800/woth.avi.003
http://rapidshare.com/files/78910638/woth.avi.004
http://rapidshare.com/files/79103096/woth.avi.005
http://rapidshare.com/files/79127358/woth.avi.006
http://rapidshare.com/files/79139832/woth.avi.007
http://rapidshare.com/files/79149727/woth.avi.008

imaginary animated architecture: Dragon Hunters by Arthur Qwak, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-20T19:17:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film, Imaginary animated architecture

film index: 66
relationship with architecture:
imaginary spatial landscape of floating masses and buildings. the architecture used here are mostly following Gothic tradition but the visual beauty of the landscape and the breaking away dynamism of the masses surely will inspire any architect to rethink.

film: Dragon Hunters
director: Guillaume Ivernel, Arthur Qwak
writers: Frédéric Engel-Lenoir, Arthur Qwak
production: France
release: March 19, 2008
playtime: 80 min
visual: colour
Language: French, English
Subtitles:
Genre: animation

reference: warezws.com, avaxhome.ws, Taringa.com, totally-free-movie-download.blogspot.com

Description and Download:

Dragon Hunters is a fantastic tale telling the adventures of two dragon hunters: the world has become a vast conglomerate of islands of varying size and shape. This babbling universe is mainly peopled with ruthless rogues, surly peasants and illiterate, petty lords Their main concerns revolve around two fundamental rules : Eat and don't get eaten. For this new world has become infested with a terrible plague: omnipresent, monstrously famished, mutant creatures, are wreaking havoc. They are known as : THE DRAGONS GWIZDO and LIAN-CHU are two dragon hunters, but are a long way from being among the best. Their only real talents: the size of the hulking brute with the heart of gold, Lian-Chu, and Gwizdo's talent for scams of all and any shape or form. Their sole ambition: to buy a little farm where they can chill out and raise mussels, a creature that is a lot less unpleasant and difficult to hunt down than dragons. A few islands away rises the fortress of Lord Arnold. Arnold has a problem: he's living in terror at the thought of the return of World Eater, that horrible dragon that returns every thirty seasons to spread terror and destruction. Nobody has been able to conquer him. In fact nobody's ever returned alive to spread the news of how the fight went. Zoe, the grand-niece of the lord, has decided to take matters in hand, and has met Gwizdo and Lian-Chu. Persuaded that she has found the heroes of her dreams, she is going to drag them into the maddest of adventures.

imdb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944834/
wikpedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Hunters_%28film%29

screen caps:

Studio Ghibli Imaginary architecture: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-20T18:26:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film, Imaginary architectures of studio Ghibli

film index: 65 (Ghibli index 03)

relationship with architecture:

imaginary spatial quality of a distant world, landscape and architecture. instigates 3d understanding of a space. analytical.

film: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika)

director: Hayao Miyazaki

writers: Hayao Miyazaki

production: Japan, Studioin Ghibli (originally Topcraft)

release: March 4, 1984

playtime: 116 min

visual: colour

Language: Japanese, English

Subtitles:

Genre: animation

reference: rapid.org, raiden-rs.blogspot.com, avaxhome.ws, Taringa.com,

Description and Download:

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika) is a 1984 post-apocalyptic Japanese animated film, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, based on his manga of the same name. The film has environmentalist undertones and was presented by the World Wide Fund for Nature when it was released in 1984. While created before Studio Ghibli was founded, the film is considered to be the beginning of the studio, and is often included as part of the Studio's works.

In the far future, a thousand years after a nuclear war left the Earth as a nuclear holocaust. The Valley of the Wind, a small kingdom ruled by King Jil struggles for survival as the community tries to defend the Valley from gigantic Ohm creatures and toxic plants that live beyond the Valley in the Sea of Decay, whilst Jil's daughter and heiress to the throne, Princess Nausicaa tries to understand and feels it is wrong to destroy the toxic jungle. The Valley is attacked by the Tolmekian people who plan to destroy the Sea of Decay by using the greatest warriors that started the holocaust. After Nausicaa is taken prisoner, Nausicca escapes and goes beneath the Sea of Decay where she discovers the toxic plants are not poisoning the air and are purifying the world by draining the air of radiation and toxins. With everything at stake, Nausicaa unites with the Ohms and set out to the Valley and foil the Tolmekians plan of unleashing the Great Warrior which will start another holocaust.

imdb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087544/
wikpedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausica%C3%A4_of_the_Valley_of_the_Wind_%28film%29

screen caps:

Studio Ghibli imaginary architecture: Howl's Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-19T07:09:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film, Imaginary architectures of studio Ghibli

film index: 64 (Ghibli index 02)

relationship with architecture:

Beautiful and enigmatic design of an imaginary castle as well as reproduction of existing architectures to accomodate the dreamlike reality of the animated realm. spirituality of the spaces is one of the major strength of Miyazaki

film: Howl's Moving Castle

director: Hayao Miyazaki

writers: Hayao Miyazaki

production: Japan, Studioin Ghibli

release: November 20, 2004

playtime: 120 min

visual: colour

Language: Japanese, English

Subtitles:

Genre: animation

reference: raiden-rs.blogspot.com, avaxhome.ws, Taringa.com,

Description and Download:

A plain young hatter named Sophie has her life changed when an evil witch transforms her into an old woman. Unable to face her family in such a condition, Sophie runs away in search of a way to become young again. Along the way, Sophie helps a turnip headed scarecrow, who repays her by leading her to the moving castle owned by the dreaded wizard Howl. There she befriends Howl's apprentice Markl, Howl's fire demon Calcifer, and eventually, Howl himself. Sophie then becomes the castle's cleaning lady in an effort to not only find the solution to her problem but to save Howl from his own terrible secrets as well.

As is typically the case with Miyazaki films, the greatest enjoyment comes from experiencing the various set pieces rather than absorbing the entire storyline. Howl's Moving Castle contains its share of breathtaking moments (such as Sophie's flight from the witch and Calcifer's transformation of the castle).

Howl owns a moving castle -a magnificent, Gilliam-esque castle that strides across the country on chickenlegs, one part pirate ship, one part dinosaur, and one part fortified village.When Sophie - unrecognisable in her old lady shell - goes to work for Howl ashousekeeper, the break-the-spell plot veers towards a budding love story, andboth eventually slip away to reveal the film's true nature: it's a pure,what-the-hell slice of manga fantasy.

Screen caps:

Studio Ghibli imaginary architecture: Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film, Imaginary architectures of studio Ghibli

film index: 63
relationship with architecture:
imaginary as well as reproduction of existing architectures to accomodate the dreamlike reality of the animated realm. spirituality of the spaces

film: Spirited away
director: Hayao Miyazaki
writers: Hayao Miyazaki
production: Japan, Studioin Ghibli
release: July 27, 2001
playtime: 125 min
visual: colour
Language: Japanese, English
Subtitles:
Genre: animation

reference: raiden-rs.blogspot.com, www.foriegnmoviesddl.com, Taringa.com,

Description and Download:

Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi/ Sen and Chihiro's Spiriting Away) is a 2001 Japanese animated film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film views a sullen ten-year-old girl in the middle of her family's move to a new town (presumably the countryside) and her adventures in a world of spirits and monsters.

The major themes of Spirited Away center on the protagonist Chihiro and her liminal journey through the realm of the bathhouse of the gods. A spoiled child forced into the fantastic world, Chihiro becomes completely separated from everything she has known and must find her way back to reality. Chihiro’s experience in the alternate world, frequently compared to Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, represents her passage from childhood to adulthood. The archetypal entrance into another world clearly demarcates Chihiro’s status as one in-between. In her transition between child and adult, Chihiro stands outside these societal boundaries, a situation mirrored by the supernatural setting outside reality. The use of the word kamikakushi (literally "hidden by gods") within the Japanese title, and its associated folklore, reinforce this liminal passage: "Kamikakushi is a verdict of ‘social death’ in this world, and coming back to this world from Kamikakushi meant ‘social resurrection.’"Upon gaining employment at the bathhouse, Yubaba’s seizure of Chihiro’s true name, a common theme in folklore, symbolically kills the child Chihiro. Having lost her childhood identity, Chihiro cannot return to reality by the way she came; she can only move forward into adulthood. The following trials and obstacles Chihiro must overcome become the challenges and lessons common in rites-of-passage and the monomyth format. In her attempt to regain her self, her "continuity with her past," Chihiro must forge a new identity.

Beneath the surface coming-of-age trope, Spirited Away contains critical commentary on modern Japanese society concerning generational conflicts, the struggle with dissolving traditional culture and customs within a global society, and environmental pollution. Chihiro, as a representation of the liminal shōjo, "may be seen as a metaphor for the Japanese society which, over the last decade, seems to be increasingly in limbo, drifting uneasily away from the values and ideological framework of the immediate postwar era." Just as Chihiro seeks her past identity, Japan, in its anxiety over the economic downturn occurring during the release of Spirited Away in 2001, sought to reconnect to past values.In interview, Miyazaki has commented on this nostalgic element for an old Japan.Initially, Chihiro travels past the abandoned fairground, a symbol for Japan’s burst "bubble economy," and her parents' credit-card-fuelled gluttony and transformation into pigs, to reach the fantasy world replete with Japanese culture and fable in the amalgam of the bathhouse.

However, the "bathhouse of the spirits has its own ambivalence, and its own darkness…. Miyazaki is not so simple-minded as to locate a perfect vision in the past or the spiritual." Many of the employees are rude and discriminating to Chihiro, and the corruption of avarice has incorporated itself into the "bricolage" of the bathhouse as a place of "excess and greed" as well, as depicted in the initial appearance of the No-Face. In stark contrast to the "archetypal approaches to cultural recovery such as recognition, proper identification, spiritual cleansing, and sacrifice," embodied in Chihiro’s journey and transformation, the constant background presence of the ambiguity of the bathhouse reminds the audience that reality is not so simple: "the bathhouse’s simultaneous incorporation of the carnivalesque and the chaotic suggests that the threats to the collectivity are not simply outside ones." The environmental asides concerning the trash deforming the River God and Haku’s plight over the loss of his river to apartment complexes further indicate that the sources of pollution within the bathhouse, a place of ritual purity, come from within the Japanese society.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245429/
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirited_away

screencaps:

Lord of the Rings Trilogy by Peter Jackson, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-18T17:58:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film

film index: 60-62

relationship with architecture:

grandure architecture of the imaginary Middle Earth. The places and the palaces that are designed to portray the character of the countries or persons of the story are also at the same time shows strong homage to the landscape around. combines both beauty and mystcism.

study subject in:

film: Lord of the Rings Trilogy

director: Peter Jackson

writers: Novel: J. R. R. Tolkien, Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Stephen Sinclair (2nd film only)

production: USA, New Zealand

release: 2001,2002,2003

playtime: 558 min

visual: colour

Language: English

Subtitles:

Genre: Adventure

reference: www.foriegnmoviesddl.com, Avaxhome.ws, Taringa.com, warezws.com

Details and Download:

The Lord of the Rings film trilogy consists of three live action fantasy epic films: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003). The trilogy is based on the three-volume book The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Set in the fictional world of Middle-earth, the three films follow the hobbit Frodo Baggins as he and a Fellowship embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring, and thus ensure the destruction of its maker, the Dark Lord Sauron. The Fellowship becomes divided and Frodo continues the quest together with his loyal companion Sam and the treacherous Gollum. Meanwhile, the wizard Gandalf and Aragorn, heir in exile to the throne of Gondor, unite and rally the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, who are ultimately victorious in the War of the Ring.

Jackson began storyboarding the trilogy with Christian Rivers in August 1997 and assigned his crew to begin designing Middle-earth at the same time. Jackson hired long-time collaborator Richard Taylor to lead Weta Workshop on five major design elements: armour, weapons, prosthetics/make-up, creatures, and miniatures. In November 1997, famed Tolkien illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe joined the project. Most of the imagery in the films is based on their various illustrations. Grant Major, production designer was charged with the task of converting Lee and Howe's designs into architecture, creating models of the sets, whilst Dan Hennah worked as art director, scouting locations and organizing the building of sets.

Jackson's vision of Middle-earth was described as being "Ray Harryhausen meets David Lean" by Randy Cook. Jackson wanted a gritty realism and historical regard for the fantasy, and attempted to make the world rational and believable. For example, the New Zealand Army helped build Hobbiton months before filming began so the plants could really grow. Creatures were designed to be biologically believable, such as the enormous wings of the fell beast to help it fly. In total, 48,000 pieces of armour, 500 bows, and 10,000 arrows were created by Weta Workshop. They also created many prosthetics, such as 1,800 pairs of Hobbit feet for the lead actors, as well as many ears, noses, and heads for the cast, and around 19,000 costumes were woven and aged. Every prop was specially designed by the Art Department, taking the different scales into account.

The design of the trilogy began in August 1997 with the storyboarding, and in November 1997,famed Tolkien illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe joined the project. Up until then, concept artists had primarily been influenced by Dungeons and Dragons in their designs. Jackson himself wanted a gritty realism and historical regard for the fantasy. Some of their famous images of Bag End, Orthanc, Helm's Deep, the Black Gate, and John Howe's Gandalf and the Balrog made it into the film. The last one inspired the opening of The Two Towers. Jackson sometimes replicated some shots from famous Tolkien illustrations as a nod to fans.

Lee worked on designs for architecture, the first being Helm's Deep, as well as the Elven realms, Moria, Edoras, and Minas Tirith, and although Howe primarily designed armour and the forces of evil (see below), he contributed with Bag End, Minas Morgul, Cirith Ungol and the Barad-dûr. Lee also applied a personal touch by painted imagery in Rivendell, such as the one of Isildur removing the One Ring from Sauron, as well as tapestries in Edoras. There are real life influences to Middle-earth: Rivendell is "a cross between a Japanese Temple and Frank Lloyd Wright", and Minas Tirith takes influence from Mont-St-Michel, St Michael's Mount and Palatine Chapel in Aachen. The City of the Dead takes after Petra, Jordan, and the Grey Havens were inspired by the paintings of J. M. W. Turner.

Grant Major was charged with the task of converting Lee and Howe's designs into architecture, creating models of the sets, whilst Dan Hennah worked as art director, scouting locations and organizing the building of sets. The army often helped out too, building Hobbiton almost a year before filming to give the impression of real growth and age, and moved 5000 cubic metres of earth, and creating roads to the Edoras location during six months of building, although there was some controversy over their pay. Sometimes sets would be reshaped: the caverns of Isengard became Shelob's Lair, and Helm's Deep became a Minas Tirith backlot. Sets would also occasionally employ forced perspective to save budget too. Despite a large amount of safety involved, there were still fires on a Rohirrim village location and the Morgul Road set, and Alan Lee fell off a Lothlórien miniature. Also, during Bilbo's speech, the polystyrene birthday cake with 111 candles was actually on fire, but everyone kept acting while some of the crew tried to put it out. A similar instance of things occurring that weren't in the script was Ian McKellen knocking his head painfully on a beam inside Bag End, but he kept acting through it.

Architectures to watch:
Hobbiton
Helms Deep
Isengard
castle of the Rohirim
Rivendel
Gondor

Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_film_trilogy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_design_of_The_Lord_of_the_Rings_film_trilogy

Details:

Film: The Fellowship of the Ring
release: Dec 19, 2001
playtime: 178 min
Cast: Elijah Wood,Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Sean Bean, Ian Holm, Andy Serkis
size: 694 mb
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.c0m/title/tt0120737/
WIki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_Fellowship_of_the_Ring

Film: The Two Towers

release: Dec 17, 2002
playtime: 179 min
Cast: Elijah Wood,Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Sean Bean, Andy Serkis, Bernard Hill
size: 694 mb
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.c0m/title/tt0167261/
WIki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_Two_Towers

Film: The Return of the King

release: Dec 16, 2003
playtime: 200 min
Cast: Elijah Wood,Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Sean Bean, Andy Serkis, Bernard Hill
size: 694 mb
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.c0m/title/tt0167260/
WIki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_Return_of_the_King

Amores perros by Alejandro González Iñárritu, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-17T07:25:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film

film index: 59
relationship with architecture: thematic characterization of the storytelling resemblance strng existance of architecture
study subject in: "film+architecture" Course, Harvard Design School. (click HERE for syllabus)

film: Amores perros
director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
writers: Guillermo Arriaga
production: Mexico
release: 14 May, 2000
playtime: 153 min
visual:
Language: Spanish
Subtitles:
Genre: anthology
Cast: Emilio Echevarría, Gael García Bernal, Goya Toledo, Álvaro Guerrero, Vanessa Bauche, Jorge Salinas, Adriana Barraza, Gustavo Sánchez Parra
size: 694 mb

reference: www.foriegnmoviesddl.com, www.divxturka.net, Taringa.com, www.thefilmjournal.com

Description and download:

Amores perros is a 2000 Mexican film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. It is an anthology film containing three distinct stories which are connected by a car accident in Mexico City. Each of the three tales is also a reflection on the cruelty of humans toward animals and each other, showing how they may live dark or even hideous lives.

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Amores Perros juxtaposes three independent tales, which converge in a kaleidoscopic auto accident. The first deals with the incestuous love between an adolescent, Octavio (Gael García Bernal), and his sister-in-law Susana (Vanessa Bauche). The second is about an editor, Daniel (Álvaro Guerrero), who abandons his family to live with Valeria (Goya Toledo), a model that eventually has her leg amputated. The last tale focuses on an ex-terrorist and professional killer, "El Chivo" (Emilio Echevarría), who tries to recover the love of his daughter. Since González Iñárritu relies on the Aristotelian notion of characterization, he does not develop the inner life of the agents nor does he individuate them as Proust might. Nonetheless their choices reveal shocking personalities. Most of their attributes radiate from their actions, not their inner essences. It is as if they were points destined to move erratically along a plane until they meet a crack in the surface (the crash) or an edge (murderous brothers meet). The result is a Picasso-like architecture.

(to read more about the description and relation to architecture scroll down at the bottom)

imdb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245712/
wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amores_perros

screen caps:

Sneak peak:

download:

rapidshare links
link bundle: 1
Password: lovermanUK

http://rapidshare.com/files/53574917/agiAP00-1.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53581470/agiAP00-1.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53587945/agiAP00-1.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53594576/agiAP00-1.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53601627/agiAP00-1.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53608453/agiAP00-1.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53615572/agiAP00-1.part7.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53615891/agiAP00-1.part8.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53674759/agiAP00-2.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53679829/agiAP00-2.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53684662/agiAP00-2.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53689140/agiAP00-2.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53693675/agiAP00-2.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53698372/agiAP00-2.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/53702795/agiAP00-2.part7.rar

megaupload link:
link bundle:2

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6LL98JRA

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6E2R57TI
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JWVDR2II
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JWVDR2II
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PQ3634WZ
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=C8C3UHTI
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SE17F9SI
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CI8KRU0V

megaupload link:
link bundle: 2

CD1
http://d01.megashares.com/?d01=92c4c2a

CD2
http://d01.megashares.com/?d01=0177342

(continuation of the text:)

reference: http://www.thefilmjournal.com/issue9/amoresperros.html

Amores Perros : A Tragic Weltanschauung
By Liliana Wendorff & J. Thomas Morley

Liliana Wendorff's interests are broad. She is interested in Hispanic cultures and literatures, especially as promulgated by new forms, such as film. Liliana received her Ph.D. in Spanish-American Literature in 1995 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Thesis: La aventura de escribir: Parodia y metaficción en La tía Julia y el escribidor de Mario Vargas Llosa).

J. Thomas Morley's main interest lies in epistemology. Tom received his Ph.D.
in Philosophy in 1986 from the University of Tennessee (Thesis: Picturing and Thinking in Seeing: Adverbial Theories of Perception).

Aristotle postulated the possibility of a drama without characters. According to The Philosopher, action should be the ground and source of the individual characters: "Without action the tragedy would not arise, but it might arise without characters" (13). Henry James held that the fictional character, "Homo fictus", should be equal to action: "Character in any sense that we can get at it, is action, and action is plot" (22). Such action-induced characterization frames the tragedy Amores Perros. In this work, we explore the Weltanschauung of the protagonists of Amores Perros, who are trapped in different nexuses of contemporary Mexican society.

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Amores Perros juxtaposes three independent tales, which converge in a kaleidoscopic auto accident. The first deals with the incestuous love between an adolescent, Octavio (Gael García Bernal), and his sister-in-law Susana (Vanessa Bauche). The second is about an editor, Daniel (Álvaro Guerrero), who abandons his family to live with Valeria (Goya Toledo), a model that eventually has her leg amputated. The last tale focuses on an ex-terrorist and professional killer, "El Chivo" (Emilio Echevarría), who tries to recover the love of his daughter. Since González Iñárritu relies on the Aristotelian notion of characterization, he does not develop the inner life of the agents nor does he individuate them as Proust might. Nonetheless their choices reveal shocking personalities. Most of their attributes radiate from their actions, not their inner essences. It is as if they were points destined to move erratically along a plane until they meet a crack in the surface (the crash) or an edge (murderous brothers meet). The result is a Picasso-like architecture.

Melodramatic elements--infidelity, secrets, love triangles, prohibited sexual desire and violence--abound in Amores Perros. But while typically in a melodrama there are two antithetic figures: the protagonist who personifies the good, and the antagonist who personifies the evil, in Amores Perros all the Homines Ficti are antiheroes. In addition, they are very superficial characters. They inflict pain on one another without an apparent motive, even self-interest. Schadenfreude is their only pleasure. All have feet of clay-vices expected by current aesthetic sensibilities. Told separately, the tales of Amores Perros resemble modern soap operas. Intrigues and antiheroes abound and the reality reflected represents the extremes of life.

The egoism of the characters of Amores Perros blinds them to opportunities to change. Instead of emphasizing human complexity, the director centers on the plots, which generate the characters (defined by how they are ensnared). Contradictory motivations which generally reinforce the characters as dramatic figures, and make them more convincing, recognizable, and definable must be inferred. The observer must project meaning to recover any familiar sense of agency.

Román Gubern defines the characters of a fictional narrative as:

… un conjunto de atributos que se deducen de un sujeto en el transcurso de una narración. Estos signos son el resultado de la construcción mental previa de un autor, que el lector hace también suya, en el curso de su lectura, pues el sistema simbólico del texto desemboca en un logomorfismo que otorga vida imaginaria al personaje, al hacer que el lector proyecte un haz de motivaciones psicológicas coherentes sobre su constructo literario. (9)

… a set of attributes that are drawn from a subject in the course of a narration. These signs are the result of a previous mental construction of an author, that the reader also appropriates, through reading, because the symbolic system of the text leads into a logomorphism that grants imaginary life to the character, by making the reader project a bundle of coherent psychological motivations over his literary construct. (My translation)

The primary language of the "symbolic system" is that of surface features. The protagonists of Amores Perros appear on the screen characterized by their physical appearance, behavior and gestures, almost never by their thoughts. For that reason, it is difficult for the audience to understand their psychological motivations just by what is seen on the screen (which is, after all, a surface). The director dictates what his fictional creations are and do, in order to erect a sturcture of feelings expressed in the vulgar language of actions. Reciprocally, these beings are responsible for their actions, but their freewill is conditioned by their vices. It is as if God had planted the seed and they, because of their weaknesses and circumstances, always chose to act badly. Agents, caught like loose molecules constrained by elemental forces to movement along a plane, delude themselves into believing they can escape. This architecture of flat surfaces may be observed front to back or in reverse much like a viewing of a house. Effects may precede causes.

Despite these degress of randomness, the film manifests a fatalistic worldview. The shower scene, when Ramiro beats Octavio up, after Octavio gives him a head butt as if he were in a boxing match without a referee, is only one example of the chaos and violence that permeate Mexican society. All of the characters are vicious, no matter what their position in the social hierarchy is. Even the model, whose "vices" are masked by beauty and makeup, tramples on others in the professional field, because the business of modeling is just as ferocious as the dogfights. Each one of the vices of the characters provokes a disaster in this Machiavellian universe. Nevertheless, the director is a moralist. Dante's Inferno similarly situates the inflicted, each according to his sins: narcissistic pride, avarice, lust and incest. Punishments await like "pishtacos". The spectator soon learns to predict what is going to happen after each action. The brotherly rivalry exemplified twice over by the dogfighters Octavio and Ramiro, and the murderous Gustavo and his stepbrother Luis, leaves little doubt that retribution is forthcoming. In the Aristotelian dynamic adopted by the director, wickedness necessarily requires a reprimand. The protagonists, then, stay subjected to a complicated mechanism of alienation that converts them into slaves.

The screenwriter, Guillermo Arriaga, utilized the title "Amores perros" because he wanted to show "un amor mordaz, devorador, intenso, temible, que estuviera al borde del abismo" (viii) (a corrosive, devouring, intense, feared love that would be at the border of the abyss [my translation]). Furthermore, his use of the word "perros" in the title seems to be intentional. The dogs, emblems of faithfulness, are as important as the persons in the plot development. As James Borman notes, dogs are "prizes of consolation for the losers in love's lottery" (91). But they are more than booty for the bereft. Each has a character located on the passive-aggressive continuum. In Cofi, a black Rottweiler, we have a well-developed instinct and loyalty. He represents the paradigm of the masculine: he is brave, strong, aggressive and damaging. Cofi contrasts with Richie, the small white Maltese who exemplifies the stereotype of the feminine. Richie is loyal, has little intelligence and utilizes his cuteness to manipulate and achieve his objectives. These dogs also provide a dual reality that "leads into a logomorphism that grants [another layer of] imaginary life to the character" (Gubern 9) by way of canine metaphors present in the film. Sometimes the dogs are like twins of the protagonists-Richie and Valeria; Octavio and Cofi, El Chivo and Cofi. In other instances their actions mimick those of other characters-Valeria and Richie--underlining their instinctive behavior. The comparisons between dogs and people suggest a Hobbesian world in which: "The life of man in a state of nature is vile, nasty, brutish and short". A fundamental difference between dogs and people, that underlines human primitiveness, is that dogs are ruled by instinct and do not have laws, while people have social contracts. In the human realm of Amores Perros the social contract is honoured in the breach.

Character transmogrification also has its dual in the canine realm. When Cofi is introduced for the first time he is just a pet. He is neither adorable nor admirable. When he is made to fight with other dogs Cofi executes his job with aggressiveness, an inherent aspect of his nature. Cofis is divided between two brothers: Ramiro, who is his owner, and Octavio, who cares for and utilizes him in the fights. Motivated perhaps by jeaulosy and avarice, the brothers fight instinctively and bestially-the same way as the dogs do-to establish their primacy. Octavio gets aroused when his brother makes love to Susana. Like Cofi, a docile housedog who becomes a fighting dog, Octavio gets transformed from a harmless youth into an assassin.

Octavio is a handsome sixteen year-old dreamer bedeviled by a desire to escape the slums of Mexico City with his sister-in-law, Susana. The archetypal love triangle of romantic novels laced with soap opera adultery and violence is made explicit. One natural interpretation could be that the romantic interest of Octavio emerges partly from a personal vendetta against his brother Ramiro, who, with their mother's support, has replaced him as paterfamilias. Octavio searches for an identity within his home and for a place in society. The channels for psychological and emotional development that society offers him are scarce if not nonexistent. Octavio lives in an oppressive and loveless environment. He does not have a father, his mother is distant and his model is his older brother, a thief and a criminal who hates him. His attempts to become a leader within the family lack support. Octavio is a youth who lacks a clear sense of self, incapable of establishing significant interpersonal relationships. Within the family he has a low social status due to his age. He needs to prove his maturity, starting with making a living. But his "mature" acts consist in having an affair with his sister-in-law and in easily falling into the underworld of dogfights, because it is the only one that affords him the opportunity of escaping his environment and of winning Susana for himself. His actions function as a distancing stratagem designed to alert us about his naïveté.

From the point of view of personal development, Octavio's actions represent regression more than progress. He not only does not become self-sufficient but rather loses everything: his only brother, his friend, his lover, his family and his dog. All his attitudes and plans are programmed for failure since the beginning. There is no indication that he has the resources needed to carry them out. Susana never assures him that she is going to leave with him and in the end, demonstrating a marianista attitude, she opts for staying with her husband, even though he abuses her. From treating her with tenderness initially, Octavio starts pressuring her to have sexual relations. His love evolves into unbridled passion once he starts contributing to the support of his sister-in-law and his nephew. Even at the end, after his own accident and the death of his brother, Octavio continues pursuing his plan to escape with Susana. She tells him sarcastically, professing a deterministic ideology: "Si quieres hacer reír a Dios, cuéntale tus planes" (If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans [my translation]). The disparity between Octavio's plans and his frustrated romantic relationship creates an irony that contributes to the effectiveness of the plot and accentuates its melodramatic content. Octavio is defined as a character by his wild violent actions. It is as if he were a maniac that constantly repeats the same thing, as if he found pleasure in hitting himself rhythmically against the wall. It is difficult to sympathize with him because he loses his quixotic innocence by transgressing many social norms--commiting incest with his sister-in-law, ordering that some thugs beat his brother up, and knifing his rival.

Strong connections to the canine realm are also evident in the tale of the professor. In it, dogs constitute an invisible hand known as "petting the dog", utilized normally by the screenwriters to subliminally influence our opinion of the character.1 At the beginning it is easier to sympathize with the dogs than with El Chivo, but, when this man who does not seem to love anyone reveals a weakness for the dogs, his image softens and the audience starts sympathizing with him. When Cofi instinctively kills his other dogs to exercise his territorial power, El Chivo becomes possessed with a reflexive vengeance. Cofi is spared. El Chivo contains himself when he realizes suddenly that he himself is an assassin just like the dog. From that moment on, El Chivo is going to try to mend his ways. It is difficult to digest this happy ending á la Hollywood and to accept that from one moment to another El Chivo will change radically, because one does not know his motivations. There are no indications that he likes killing or that he does it for money. Nevertheless, it is his occupation. He seems to be satisfied living anonymously and in squalor. As a professor he could express himself in a different way and live a better life, but he is not interested. Instead he lives violently. Deborah Shaw interprets the inclination of the Chivo for commiting violent acts as a manifestation of his ire against the society that incarcerated him, made him lose his family and obligated him to abandon his political ideals (58), but revenge is an emotion and the professor is dead emotionally. He kills without passion, automatically; for him, killing is an occupation like any other.

The professor evokes memories of the Zapatistas and Abimael Guzmán, the former leader of the Peruvian terrorist group "Shining Path", who assassinated and bombed for their ideals. Abimael attempted to change Peruvian society. El Chivo abandoned his family to transform Mexican society. Both were dogmatic and inflexible. El Chivo becomes a paid assassin for none other than Mexican government officials. He wanders through the streets of the Mexican capital and he lives "okupando"2 (as a squatter) a dilapidated apartment with three dogs. His nickname "El Chivo", male goat, in Christian mythology represents Satan, lust, voluptuosity and masculine fertility (de Vries, 218).3 His nickname--simplest level of characterization--animalizes him and serves as a mask to hide his complex personality from both the audience and the other protagonists, and at the same time it establishes the Manichean image that is going to follow him throughout the film.

El Chivo utilizes the dogs as substitutes for people, transferring his love to them. His excessive devotion toward the animals is logomorphically, albeit quixotically, combined with his misanthropic attitudes. He is like Adolf Hitler and other prominent Nazis, who also established close relationships with dogs. El Chivo, partly because he was jailed for a long time, has lost the ability to establish or maintain close connections with people. He can observe or participate in the saddest situations without getting emotionally involved. It is as if he were anesthetized. He does not show remorse even when he kills. Ironically, he derives no get pleasure from the suffering of others. Nothing moves him. His personal experiences have disillusioned him. He feels like a victim of his ideals and he knows that he has lost something that he cannot recover.

Isolated and insensitive individuals can benefit from the company of animals--constant sources of consolation, affection and inconditional support during periods of crisis (James Serpell124). Cofi, whom the professor re-baptizes Blackie, functions as a therapeutic agent by becoming his companion of adventures. Like Sancho and Don Quijote, the professor and the dog also invert their roles of master and servant when, in a symbolic scene, Cofi exhibits more wisdom and humanity than his putative owner, by letting him see the "light" about his true identity.

None of the characters of Amores Perros, including El Chivo, evinces compassion. The professor steals, kills and prefers animals to people. Throughout the film, El Chivo has several epiphanies that tempt him to abandon his evil ways. Simply seen, it is as if his spirit would be purified by going through different trials. When El Chivo incinerates his dogs-which Blackie has ravaged-redemption seems eminent. The Christian leitmotiv also becomes evident when, metaphorically, from the darkness of "transgression" he takes a step toward the light of "purity". El Chivo had imposed blindness on himself, by refusing to wear his glasses. He was afraid to discover himself by confronting his past. Doing it would have dismantled all his convictions. By putting the glasses on again, El Chivo has to walk toward the light that he has tried to avoid for many years. This symbolic action barely excuses the character's despicable behavior, because one can speculate that living in darkness does not allow him to realize his grave transgressions and, at the same time, it opens a window of opportunity for him to obtain salvation. Unlike Teiresias-the old blind prophet priest of Thebes, who could "see" better than anyone else the will of the gods-El Chivo's self-imposed blindness does not make him wiser.

Furthermore, the supposed "clarity" that he now achieves is stained by his feelings of self-pity. One does not sense a guilty conscience or a cathartic effect. He wants to correct his actions and apologize to his daughter, but when he realizes that his ideology guided him on the road to perdition, he feels sorry for himself. He agonizes about how to silence the voice of his conscience without losing much in the process. His epiphanies leave him in a cynical position4 that is to recognize that the world is bad. Since he cannot change it, El Chivo, then, takes the easiest road, which is to get away from this vile world with Cofi and with his booty. His escape encapsulates a hero's redemption only if the shards of his past can somehow be made whole. But the audience cannot be given a comedy since it has no inkling of the inner conatus of the professor's soul. El Chivo remains a windowless monad. Clues to his subjective turn are dropped like red herrings. In a scene reminiscent of Cain vis-à-vis Cain, he leaves the two brothers ready to kill themselves. Furthermore, the scene takes place in a Biblical desert half barren and half black on the outskirts of Mexico. According to Paul Julian Smith, this symbolic and sacrificial landscape, from which the father perhaps will return purified to reunite with his daughter, suggests an open endedness (57). No closure can be expected.

The model's tale also leaves one hanging. This tale may also be viewed from the canine standpoint. Richie, unlike Cofi, is a lap dog, as beautiful and delicate as his owner. Richie is Valeria's constant companion, and emphasizes her refinement. He is exactly like the mascot one could expect of a woman with the physique and temperament of the pampered. Richie and his owner are a mere illustration, a saccharine portrait of profound love between a person and her mascot. Both live in the princely, domesticated world of the Mexican bourgeois, which contrasts with the nasty world of the other protagonists who constantly fight and rebel against poverty. Richie is not ferocious like Cofi, nor does he show to have developed instincts or sagacity. Even the tricks that Valeria has taught him are performed unconvincingly. When his toy ball falls in the hole of the floor of the apartment, Richie runs to fetch it, but cannot find his way out. His helplessness is like a brooch for Valeria.

Valeria is a model valued for her great physical beauty. The accident alters her life completely: she loses her job, her relationship with her lover deteriorates rapidly and she loses a leg. From being a beautiful, educated and delicate woman, she becomes a barking bitch, just like Richie. She insults and shouts at Daniel uncontrollably. She feels helpless and claustrophobic in the apartment where she is convalescing. Her situation is like Richie's, who, also helpless and claustrophobic, is trapped under the floor and is being attacked by rats. For Shaw, this parallelism suggests that the couple, even with their fortune and status, cannot escape the cruel reality of the City of Mexico (63). But this social commentary extensively simplifies the film. The tale has a more biting psychological hermeneutic, an internal interplay of submerged interpretations visible only through the surface reflections. The metaphor of the rats can represent several levels of discord: 1) the doubts of Daniel and his family's dismemberment; 2) "bites" in the model's career; and 3) the fight between Valeria and Daniel, among others.

Like the other protagonists in the film, Valeria's character remains static. Some critics (Shaw among them) hold that one does not know what identity Valeria will adopt now that she can no longer be a model. Others argue that she does not overcome her misfortune. Richard Schlickel holds that the model "cannot endure the pain, loneliness and loss that follow the accident" (78). Her superficial world finally crumbles when her leg is amputated. Losing her beauty and becoming disabled represents a loss of all that is meaningful to her. She is her worst adversary. Valeria is as empty inside as the empty advertisement of "Enchant" located in front of her apartment. González Iñárritu places a heavy load on this character. Valeria, who is afraid to be left alone-physically and emotionally, loses the utopia of hope and remains trapped in her misfortune, in her beauty, in her talent and in the apartment. She no longer enjoys praise from anyone and what she needs most is peace, but instead she must continue enduring an intolerable and insurmountable situation. Valeria lacks family support and has lost her lucrative job. Smith points out that the loss of her image represents social death for the model: the empty advertisement where her image was displayed before is now available but she is not (48).

In Valeria's lover, Daniel, development of character cannot be appreciated either. He does not sympathize with the dog, but rather tolerates it because of Valeria. When he finally rescues Richie from under the floor he seems to connect with him, but in fact he feels sorry for himself, and all he does is to project his own feelings on the dog. Since his affair with Valeria did not have the outcome he had planned, the father that abandoned his home for a young, beautiful woman now looks for refuge in it. At the beginning, Valeria represented "arm candy" to him. Valeria is to Daniel what Richie is for Valeria, a simple decoration. Daniel felt proud of possessing her. He enjoyed the adoration and recognition of the public and the sexual love.

Merely being perceived as a Casanova, even when one is not, is as effective as being a real Casanova. When Daniel suddenly finds himself deprived of his precious and appreciated gift, his image changes drastically. Instead, he feels trapped now that the beauty of his lover eludes him and his relationship has become suffocating. He himself is the culprit of his dilemma: to stay or not to stay with Valeria. He has abandoned his wife and his daughters for this beautiful woman, but the price now seems to him to be too high. There are indications that he wants to go back to his home because he starts calling his wife on the telephone.

Amores Perros has been interpreted predominantly in social terms, as an allegory of the moral deterioration of Mexican society. Amores Perros does depict a sort of civil war in a beautiful city, with horrific places, where the violence is endemic and where human relations are corrosive and wicked. In fact, the film contains intentional realism on the part of the director, who utilized real characters from the neighborhood where the dogfights were filmed.6 For David Ansen and Devin Gordon, Amores Perros presents "a dark, brutal vision of urban life that sticks to your skin like soot" (62). Saying that the characters, emblems of modern Mexico, are revealed mostly through their actions constitutes a more acerbic commentary. Amores Perros is built with planes that intersect at different points. All the protagonists are superficial, and their inner lives are developed by action. Within their surface they can act freely, but they really cannot transcend. González Iñárritu manipulates his characters in order to achieve the perfect architecture in his film.

Many critics have suggested the existence of a message of redemption in the film. Arriaga, for example, writes that the characters "discover themselves and realize that pain is the road toward hope" (ix).7 Nevertheless, though the accident modifies their existence, there is no evidence that the characters develop. Rather, they spit self-pity into closed cocoons of the silk of the self. Egoists all have an Achilles heel. The vain and narcissistic Valeria, in order to have a comfortable life, puts all her eggs in one basket, and it does not take much to break the basket of beauty. Similarly, the professor, instead of confronting his situation, opts for escaping the society that, in his point of view, betrayed him. Amores Perros is a slice vignette of social realism blended with a shot of social Darwinism. The mechanics of Amores Perros suggest a stronger interpretation. Heroic elements of character (made base) are captured by action instead of inner moral struggle. The playing field-the plot-is a deterministic chessboard.

Notes

1. Hewitt explains that "petting the dog", in addition to softening the personality of a character, can be utilized with an opposite intention, to underline wickedness, as in the case of Cruella de Ville in 101 Dalmatians.

2. "Okupa", in Spanish argot, means "squatter" in English. The term is commonly used in Spain.

3. Another meaning of "chivo", that suggests manicheism and coincides with the good and bad aspects of the professor's personality, is that, together with the fish, the "chivo" forms part of the tenth zodiacal sign Capricorn. This duality "alludes to the double tendency of life toward the abyss (water) and the altitudes (mountains)", explains Cirlot (125).

4. The word cynic derives from the Greek word for "dog" (de Vries 140).

5. Deborah Shaw has observed three failed paternal models in the film: 1) the paternal absence in Octavio's family; 2) the father who abandons his family in Daniel's story; and 3) the father who initially abandoned his family and now attempts to recover the love of his daughter, in the figure of the professor. She argues that paternal absence can be interpreted as a metaphor of the State, since Amores Perros reflects a corrupt society without effective government (60).

6. The director and his film crew were assaulted by drugged adolescents when they were scouting Mexico City for places in which to film. The adolescents stole all their equipment and eventually negotiated with the filmmakers to be able to film in the same place where they were robbed, in exchange for protection. Several real characters of that neighborhood appear in the film, particularly in the dogfighting scenes.

7. René Rodríguez, Richard Schickel, Paul Julian Smith and Susan Dever agree that there is a message of redemption, but David William Foster warns that although the film suggests hope, it does not spare any effort in demonstrating how redemption should be negotiated in a context of overwhelming probabilities (159).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bibliography

Amores perros. Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu. Perf. Gael García Bernal, Vanessa Bauche, Goya Toledo, Álvaro Guerrero, and Emilio Echevarría. Altavista, 2000.
Ansen, David and Gordon, Devin. "With the Ferocity of Dogs." Newsweek 16 Apr. 2001, Atlantic Edition: 62.
Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Kenneth Telford. Chicago: Gateway, 1961.
Arriaga Jordán, Guillermo. Amores perros. London: Faber and Faber, 2001.
Bowman, James. "Feminist Fatales." The American Spectator June 2001: 89-91.
Cirlot, J.E. Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Philosophical Library, 1971.
De Vries, Ad. Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery. London: North-Holland, 1974.
Dever, Susan. Celluloid Nationalism and Other Melodramas. From Post-Revolutionary Mexico to fin de siglo Mexamérica. Albany: State U of New York P, 2003.
Foster, David William. Mexico City in Contemporary Mexican Cinema. Austin: U of Texas P, 2002.
Gubern, Román. Máscaras de la ficción. Barcelona: Anagrama, 2002.
Hewitt, Chris. "Screenwriter's old trick: petting the dog." The News & Observer 21 Aug. 2003: 6E.
James, Henry. "Anthony Trollope." Theory of Fiction: Henry James. Ed. James E. Miller. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1972.
Rodríguez, René. "Amores Perros Explores the Animal Element." Hispanic Apr. 2001: 95.
Ryan, Desmond. "Amores perros." The Philadelphia Inquirer Online 11 Apr. 2001.
Schickel, Richard. "A Bite As Tough As Its Bark." Time 16 Apr. 2001: 78.
Serpell, James. In the Company of Animals. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
Shaw, Deborah. Contemporary Cinema of Latin America. NY, London: Continuum, 2003.
Smith, Paul Julian. Amores perros. London: British Film Institute, 2003.

Waxwork by Paul Leni, architecture and film appreciation

2009-11-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

category: Architecture and Film
film index: 59
relationship with architecture: expressionist symbolization of horror architecture
study subject in: The waterloo University syllabus (click HERE for syllabus)

film: Waxwork
director: Paul Leni
writers: Henrik Galeen
production: Germany
release: May13, 1973
playtime: 63 mins
visual: BnW
Language: silent
Subtitles:
Genre: Fantasy, horror
Cast: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Emil Jannings, William Dieterle, Georg John
size: 769 mb

reference: tesla.liketelevision.com ,thepiratebay.org, www.onlytorrents.com,

Description and download:

Waxworks (original title: Das Wachsfigurenkabinett) is an 1924 fantasy/horror silent film directed by Paul Leni. The film is about a writer who accepts a job from a waxworks proprietor to write a series of stories about the exhibits of Caliph of Baghdad (Emil Jannings), Ivan the Terrible (Conrad Veidt) and Jack the Ripper (Werner Krauss) in the museum in order to boost business.

Although Waxworks is often credited as a horror film, it is an anthology film that goes through various genre's including a fantasy adventure, a historical ilm, and a horror film through its various episodes.

Although Leni is credited with full direction, Leo Birinski is said to have actually directed the actors. Leni was mostly responsible for the settings with the assistance of Fritz Maurischat.

'Waxworks' is an early example in film history of a movie that's clearly in homage to another film--in this case, 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' (1920). The expressionistic stylization in the film is obviously influenced by 'Caligari,' and a few references to that film reinforces that, beginning with the title. The literal translation of 'Das Wachsfigurenkabinett' is 'The Wax Figures Cabinet'--the keyword being "cabinet." Additionally, the frame narrative is purposefully set at a carnival, although a more dimensional one than the stage setting in 'Caligari.'The narrative structure is closer to Fritz Lang's 'Destiny' (1921), with the framing of three odd stories. 'Waxworks' has the clever device of a writer of the inner stories in the framing story. And, the three biggest stars of Weimer Germany (Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss) play the historical villains and waxworks come alive in the inner stories. For the three inner stories, a different expressionistic technique dominates, each relating to and enhancing their respective themes. In the Harus al Raschid narrative featuring Jannings, it's the sets--Paul Leni's foray--with oddly shaped architecture more akin to 'Caligari' than Baghdad. Especially nice is the staircase set. Rather than the horrific, surreal abstraction of 'Caligari,' however, the sets are delightfully peculiar, as is Jannings and the silly story.

Low-key lighting dominates the Ivan the Terrible episode featuring a darkly paranoid Veidt, and the multiple exposure kaleidoscope imagery places Krauss' stalking serial killer everywhere.

Imdb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014586/
wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waxworks_%28film%29

screencaps:

sneak peaks:

the film can be seen totally online through the 9 part you tube videos. you can individually download those movies and stitch them together using any movie editing software. the 9 parts are given below sequencially. the quality is not that good. but i guess it is what is available as the movie is quite lost in time.

part 1:

part 2:

part 3:

part 4:

part 5:

part 6:

part 7:

part 8:

part 9:

download:

yet to find any rapidshare or any such links. if anyone has any links please send us, we will be very oblized. we have few torrents link though

link 1: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/3246444/Waxworks_(Das_Wachsfigurenkabinett)_-_Paul_Leni_-_German_Silent.3246444.TPB.torrent