rethink

Los Amantes del Circulo Polar

2009-10-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

A story of circular lives, with circular names, and a circular place.

watch it online at netflix

City of God

2009-10-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

The streets of the world's most notorious slum, Rio de Janeiro's "City of God," are a place where combat photographers fear to tread, police rarely go, and residents are lucky if they live to the age of 20. In the midst of the oppressive crime and violence, a frail and scared young boy will grow up to discover that he can view the harsh realities of his surroundings with a different eye: the eye of an artist. In the face of impossible odds, his brave ambition to become a professional photographer becomes a window into his world ... and ultimately his way out!

view the trailer

Das Leben der Anderen

2009-10-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.

view the trailer

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

2009-10-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

You might even begin reconsidering your relationship with the animal kingdom and questioning the distance you put between yourself and nonhuman species.
-- Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES

watch it online at Netflix

Fantastic Mr. Fox

2009-09-15T19:55:00.000-07:00

FANTASTIC MR. FOX is visionary director Wes Anderson’s first animated film, utilizing classic handmade stop motion techniques to tell the story of the best selling children’s book by Roald Dahl (author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach). The film features the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Wally Wolodarsky, Eric Anderson, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Jarvis Cocker Mr and Mrs Fox (Clooney and Streep) live an idyllic home life with their son Ash (Schwartzman) and visiting young nephew Kristopherson (Eric Anderson). But after 12 years, the bucolic existence proves too much for Mr Fox’s wild animal instincts. Soon he slips back into his old ways as a sneaky chicken thief and in doing so, endangers not only his beloved family, but the whole animal community. Trapped underground and with not enough food to go around, the animals band together to fight against the evil Farmers - Boggis, Bunce and Bean - who are determined to capture the audacious, fantastic Mr Fox at any cost.

Síðasti bærinn (2004)

2009-06-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

In a remote corner of Iceland, winter is coming on. An aging farmer named Hrafn is doing his last chores before leaving reluctantly with his wife Gróa for a retirement home in the city. Their daughter Lilja will be coming after the weekend to pick them up. She calls her parents, interrupting her dad's lunch. Her mother is napping. The stoic Hrafn wants to make his daughter won't come before Monday. What are these last chores?

watch the film below (look for the oscar)

> visit the film site

Joyeux Noël (2005)

2009-02-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This movie is inspired by a true story, which happened during World War I, at Christmas Eve 1914, in many different places of the battlefront.

In 1914, World War I, the bloodiest war ever at that time in human history, was well under way. However on Christmas Eve, numerous sections of the Western Front called an informal, and unauthorized, truce where the various front-line soldiers of the conflict peacefully met each other in No Man's Land to share a precious pause in the carnage with a fleeting brotherhood. This film dramatizes one such section as the French, Scottish and German sides partake in the unique event, even though they are aware that their superiors will not tolerate its occurrence.

watch the trailer

Le Scaphandre et le papillon (2007)

2009-02-11T17:07:00.001-08:00

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) is one of the most poetic films ever made and my personal favorite. Julian Schnabel's work focuses on the lives of other artists. As an fine artist himself he brings a unique sensibility to each project. He completed Basquiat in 1996 and Before Night Falls in 2000. Less is certainly more in this case.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a translation of the French memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon by journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby. It describes what his life was like after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition called locked-in syndrome. It also details what his life was before the stroke.

On December 8, 1995, Bauby, the editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his head and left eye. The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid, in July and August 1996.

A transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency-ordered alphabet (E, S, A, R, I, N, T, U, L, etc.), until Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. The book also chronicles everyday events for a person with locked-in syndrome. These events include playing at the beach with his family, getting a bath, and meeting visitors.

watch the trailer for the film

Låt den rätte komma in (2008)

2009-02-11T16:20:00.000-08:00

Spoiler alert, you should stop reading this review and watch this film without watching trailers. I highly recommend watching it alone in a dark theater but if you need company tell your guests to shut it! If you insist on watching a trailer before you go see a film you can visit the link below.

This film is about a fragile, anxiou boy, 12-year-old Oskar is regularly bullied by his stronger classmates but never strikes back. The lonely boy's wish for a friend seems to come true when he meets Eli, also 12, who moves in next door to him.

But Eli's arrival coincides with a series of gruesome deaths and attacks. Though Oskar realizes that she' a vimpire, his friendship with her is stronger than his fear...

Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson weaves friendship, rejection and loyalty into a disturbing, darkly atmospheric, yet unexpectedly tender tableau of adolescence. The feature is based on the best-selling novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which the U.K. press qualified as "reminiscent of Stephen King at his best."

watch the trailer, be sure to click on trailer and not clip

Man on Wire (2008)

2009-01-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

Philippe Petit captured the world's attention in 1974 when he successfully walked across a high wire between New York's Twin Towers. This documentary (nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar) explores the preparations that went into the stunt as well as the event and its aftermath. Obsessed with the towers even before they were fully constructed, Petit sneaked into the buildings several times to determine the equipment he needed to accomplish his daring feat.

watch the trailer for this amazing doc

Citizen Murdoch

2008-12-10T20:48:00.000-08:00

Citizen Kane lives! Rupert Murdoch and his conservative media machine make Randolph Hearst look like a fluffy kitten.

watch the video
read more

Bordwell vs. Elsaesser

2008-12-10T12:49:00.000-08:00

I'm Not There: Film as Poetry

2008-12-04T21:46:00.000-08:00

In my research for the film I came across a bunch of really great videos and other links so I thought I would share.

The Ten Most Incomprehensible Bob Dylan Interviews of All Time

Pat Garret & Billy the Kid trailer (cowboy Dylan)

Hearts of Fire trailer (campy Dylan)

Life Force: the strangest logline since Gummo

2008-12-02T19:51:00.000-08:00

Owen, son of Donal, a member of the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea is struck with the fatal laughing disease Kuru after having reluctantly consumed portions of his father during a traditional cannibalistic “life force” ceremony.

definitely stranger than fiction

Improv Everywhere

2008-12-02T18:04:00.000-08:00

Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 80 missions involving thousands of undercover agents. The group is based in New York City.

watch some of their missions

Before Sunrise: Precursor to Mumblecore?

2008-12-02T13:46:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite movies ever! No time bombs, no chase scenes, no end of the world apocalypse, just a portrait of what its like to fall in love. There are a few cuts but the film is almost entirely one long steady cam walk and talk. I wonder how many young filmmakers this film has influenced, specifically the "Slackavettes".

view a clip from the movie

Gummo: Wake Up & Smell the Bacon On the Wall

2008-12-01T18:42:00.000-08:00

I distinctly remember how powerful my first exposure to the work of Harmony Korine and Larry Clarks was with Kids. I felt like I had seen something radically new. I was left in shock and awe as to how something so intense and gritty could get produced and distributed. The potency of the explicit images of sex and drugs with actors at such a young age made for strange mixture of intrigue and disgust. The cinematography really stood out as this sort of non-flinching gaze, a portrait of what we as a society would rather choose to ignore of a uncivilized youth culture. The focus on the grotesque or the things that most of try to avoid is what connect Korine's work.

I was in New York a few years after this and got to see an exhibition of the Larry Clark's photography. It was every bit as explicit and the images had the same raw power. They had this sort of eerie resonance so that after leaving the gallery I couldn't shake them. This was the same sort of effect Kids and later Gummo would have on me. Clark deserves much of the credit for their work together. This is evident through looking at Clarks body of work prior to Korine and after understanding a bit of their history. I've read that Korine left his father, a documentary filmmaker, to live with his grandmother in NY. After a year of school/screenwriting, Korine dropped out and bumped into Clark in the skater scene. Clark had done a series of shockingly honest portraits of he and his friends in the eighties and had established his own style by this point. It's said that he approached Korine and asked him to wright the script for Kids and get his friends to play most of the parts. Korine and Clark eventually had a disagreement which ended their collaboration. Korine had a dry spell and there are reports that he was trying to team up with his friend David Blaine to make a movie that would consist of him going up to people and picking fights with them. Evidently he only lasted a few rounds and ended up in the hospital. This is just the tip of the iceberg into the strange world of Korine. To venture further into the rabbit hole have a look at the links at the bottom of this post.

Gummo doesn't seem so strange in the context of the filmmakers body of work. In fact, it is dense with interesting characters and situations, again very new to movie going audiences. This was Korine's intent. In an interview he said that he just wanted to make movies that he hadn't seen. He dreams up little moments, strange images and when he has enough he can make a movie.

Gummo holds that same power over its audience as Kids does. Long after they've left the theater they can't shake the story. There is the obvious shocking revulsion of certain parts of the story but I think its the layering of all these strange details that make the world seem so distinctly foreign. For all the films peculiarity it seems to be constructed by a number of classical techniques. The recurring motifs connect the seemingly disparate scenes. The gangster-like ritual of hunting for cats, the turf war, the struggle of children growing up without parents, trying to find their own identity and understand sexuality. There are a number of little moments in the film that I really like but there are also others that seem heavy handed, especially when the dialogue seems coached or forced. This is the case with the scene where Korine plays a character desperate for a black dwarfs affection. His persona and style don't seem to fit the rest of the characters that seem to have all been extras on the set of Deliverance. One of my favorite moments in class has been waiting for the collective puke noises of the audience during the bathroom scene. I was reading an article about Werner Herzog's first viewing of the film. I think his quote sums it up nicely, "When I saw a piece of fried bacon fixed to the bathroom wall in Gummo, it knocked me off my chair. [Korine's] a very clear voice of a generation of filmmakers that is taking a new position. It's not going to dominate world cinema, but so what?"

watch the clip: Harmony on Kids

Larry Clark (photographer/cinematographer)

view more Larry Clark Photographs

Harmony on Gummo

you have to read the comments on this post

Korine on Lonely Heart

Mumblecore

2008-12-01T17:27:00.000-08:00

What has been the ongoing relationship between so-called mumblecore filmmakers and SXSW?
The 2005 SXSW Film Festival brought this group of filmmakers to out attention. The filmmakers cleverly built up their own promoting by co-creating a half dozen promotional shorts that screened before every film at SXSW. They shot the miniatures in the same format as their naturalistic movies and shared the co-creator credit with all involved, a testament to the DIY tradition of doing more with less and avoiding the trappings hierarchy. Many of the directors were on tour together during the festival circuit and so began to collaborate while on the road.

Broadly speaking, what characteristics define mumblecore?
I have to say I like "Slackavettes" way better! But "Non-jerk Films" also has a nice ring to it. Alecia Van describes this group of filmmakers as approaching film as a naturalistic portait of life and love of artistic twenty-somethings made popular by DV and the internet. I equate the movement to the cinematic equivalent of the indie rock scene. Scrappy young artists who care more about personal storytelling then polish, with a tendency for the sentimental and sincere. Although not all the films share the same stylistic traits, they generally include: improvisation and naturalistic performance by non-actors, tiny budgets, elements of technology, and otherwise ordinary plots.There is also another relationship to indie rock in that the fans of both the music and the films in question are sought out like flea market treasures, little upolished hidden gems that few people know about "or could possibly appreciate." A kind of snobbery that I must admit to being a part of. I think I'm definitely in the Slackavette club.

What have been the most common charges against mumblecore?
Some see the films as a way for the directors to figure themselves out, like a long love letter never sent and object to self-absorbed storytelling. Some go as far as calling the films/filmmakers pretentious, snobby well-to-do white kids pining about their petty lives.

How has the internet affected the DIY distribution of mumblecore films?
Filmmakers say distribution deals aren't really needed. They frequently get offers from garage-basement distributors and in many cases sell the movies directly from their website. Web posting of short and tv series spread the word about their work and drive fans to buy their feature length work.

IFC Films picked up Hannah Takes the Stairs for “day-and-date” distribution. What does this mean?
IFC Films would release the film, opening at the IFC Center series theatrically and at the same time/date deliver it on home video/broadcast on IFC on Demand. Movies like Soderbergh's Bubble (2006) did well in this release format. It was a scheme devised to make the greatest use of the marketing efforts for films that weren't expected to do well at the box office. Many forecasters predict that web releases will correspond with the theater release in the near future following the standard set forth in music by Apple.

The work of Trevor Van Meter

2008-12-01T16:32:00.000-08:00

Trevor Van Meter is a fellow graduate from ECU who majored in illustration. He started out doing ecards in NY. He says that he locks himself in a dark room every single day and makes stuff on his computer. He is the co-owner, co-operator, & co-founder of Jamungo.   He has his own company called TVM Studio Inc.   For the past 4 years, he’s been working on web games, illustrations, and interactive design.

Check him out.

visit TVM Studio

some of his earlier work

Trev in the layer tennis battle

2D Animation Final: Dada Experiment

2008-12-01T12:56:00.000-08:00

click to view

Warhol's Subtle Sadism

2008-11-25T21:00:00.000-08:00

The Pope of Greenwhich, aka Ondine, aka Robert Olivio
One of the most memorable sequences belongs to the queen with the Bronx bray, Ondine. He decided to be "the Pope of Greenwich Village," taking the "confession" of Warhol's alleged favorite, the brainless, shrieking, drug-drenched Ingrid Superstar. Ondine is a powerful presence here, eloquently expounding on his many duties as "the Pope" in one breath and screeching his hatred of the church in the other. In a hilarious extended dialogue, he accuses her of being a lesbian — "I've seen you at Page Three and a lot of other dyke joints!" — while she alternately denies and embraces the idea, as the mood strikes her. "You're a subspecies, my dear. You're not even a vegetable!" he screams. Inevitably, the pressure of 35 minutes of improv, even for the self-consumed Ondine, proves too much, and when another woman enters the scene and denounces him as a phony, Ondine verbally and physically assaults her. Ondine's demand that the camera be stopped after he loses control were met with a bland but incontestable denial by Warhol, whose decision to keep the camera running at all cost produces some disturbing effects. Throughout the film there are moments where his refusal to stop shooting, his encouragement of the stars' hunger for the spotlight at any cost, skirts the sadistic. Perhaps "skirt" is too tame; Warhol biographer Victor Bokris mentions that "To turn the pressure up, Andy and Paul [Morrissey] would plant rumors about unpleasant remarks someone had made about someone else."

read more

Ode to Film from Black and White

2008-11-18T18:33:00.000-08:00

Jack White channels Orson Welles channeling Citizen Kane channeling Randolph Hearst. Black Francis wishes he could be a debaser like Luis Buñuel.

The Union Forever - The White Stripes

It can't be love
for there is no true love
It can't be love
for there is no true love

Shure I'm C.F.K.
but you gotta love me
the cost no man can say
but you gotta love me

Well I'm sorry but I'm not
interested in gold mines,
oil wells,shipping or real estate
what would I liked to have been?
everything you hate

There is a man
a certain man
and for the poor you may be shure
that he'll do all he can
who is this one?
[who's favourite son?]
just by his action has the traction
magnets on the run
who likes to smoke?
enjoys a joke?
and wouldn't get a bit
upset if he were really broke?
with wealth and fame
he's still the same
I'll bet you five you're not alive
If you don't now his name

You said the union forever (x2)
You cried the union forever
but that was untrue girl
cause it can't be love

Debaser - The Pixies

got me a movie
i want you to know
slicing up eyeballs
i want you to know
girlie so groovy
i want you to know
don't know about you
but i am un chien andalusia
i am un chien andalusia
i am un chien andalusia
i am un chien andalusia
wanna grow
up to be
be a debaser, (debaser)
debaser, (debaser)
debaser, (debaser)
debaser, (debaser)
debaser, (debaser)
debaser, (debaser)

got me a movie
ha ha ha ho
slicing up eyeballs
ha ha ha ho
girlie so groovie
ha ha ha ho
don't know about you
but i am un chien andalusia
i am un chien andalusia
i am un chien andalusia
i am un chien andalusia

(debaser), debaser
(debaser), debaser
(debaser), debaser
(debaser), debaser
(debaser), debaser
(debaser), debaser

The End

2008-11-18T18:23:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Bryan for the link. view the flickr gallery

Brownsploitation

2008-11-18T13:52:00.000-08:00

bombay the hardway

Bombay the Hard Way plays like the soundtrack to some imaginary 1970s B-films with names like Shaft’s Bad-Ass Pilgrimage To India or Ganges Ghetto Payback. Featuring the music of Indian composers (and brothers) Anandji and Kalyanji Shah, who wrote and produced soundtracks for the so-called “Brownsploitation” films made in India’s “Bollywood” during the 60s and 70s, this saffron-funk project is the brain-child of Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, Bay Area producer / remixer of Dr. Octagon fame, with additional beats provided by the immensely talented DJ Shadow. The end product is a potent cross-pollination of Secret-Agent-Man guitar themes, Blaxploitation grooves, jazzy horn and flute riffs, hip-hop beats and loops, and traditional Indian instrumentation.

“I got no time to think / Cuz’ I need somebody to love / Yeah! / Baby, I love you so / But you can’t love me more / Why don’t you hold me closer / And I’ll give you more / Yeah!”

Throughout the album, there are fun snatches of dialogue lifted straight out of vintage “brownsploitation” films. These digressions add to the overall enjoyment, helping to make Bombay the Hard Way a classic party record for the new millennium.

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Wesley Willis's Joyrides

2008-11-13T21:54:00.000-08:00

A portrait of the self proclaimed rock ‘n’ roll star and “Chicago City Artist”, Wesley Willis.

Despite impossible odds, Chicago native, Wesley Willis became an underground rock icon, revered artist and hero to many before his untimely death in 2003. Through his force of personality and his artistic talents, Wesley’s music and art attracted people from all walks of life. This film follows the prolific artist on his journey from obscurity to fame.

watch clips from the documentary