Landings

I had the pleasure of seeing a number of outstanding films this past year.  These ten are my favorites.  They are all equally poetic, other-worldly, and thought-provoking.  


1. The Day He Arrives  - Hong Sang-Soo
2. This Is Not A Film - Jafar Panahi & Motjaba Mirtahmasb
3. Barbara - Christian Petzold
4. My Time In Anatolia - Nuri Bilge Ceylan
5. Amour - Michael Haneke
6. Tabu - Miguel Gomes
7. A Simple Life - Ann Hui
8. The Turin Horse - Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hranitzky
9. Holy Motors - Léos Carax
10. Damsels In Distress - Whit Stillman

Sight & Sound

This year marks the once-a-decade-since-1952 arrival of the BFI Sight & Sound Poll.  This year's edition is made up of 846 top ten lists from directors and critics around the world.  Ten would take too way too long, so here's my 20, alphabetically.


1. The BRD Trilogy (The Marriage Of Maria Braun, Lola, Veronika Voss) - Rainer Werner Fassbiner, 1979-82
2. Cléo De 5 À 7 - Agnès Varda, 1962
3. Copie Conforme - Abbas Kiarostami, 2010
4. Il Deserto Rosso - Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964
5. In The Mood For Love - Wong Kar-Wai, 2000
6. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles - Chantal Akerman, 1975
7. Lili Marleen - Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981
8. Lost In Translation - Sofia Coppola, 2003
9. Marie Antoinette - Sofia Coppola, 2006
10. Le Mépris - Jean-Luc Godard, 1963
11. My Dinner With Andre - Louis Malle, 1981
12. The Noriko Trilogy (Late Spring, Early Summer, Tokyo Story) - Yasujiro Ozu, 1949-53
13. Ordet - Carl Th. Dreyer, 1955
14. Pickpocket - Robert Bresson, 1959
15. A Time To Live, A Time To Die - Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1985
16. Trilogy Of Alienation (L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse) - Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960-1962
17. Tropical Malady - Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004
18. Werckmeister Harmonies - Béla Tarr, 2000
19. Yearning - Mikio Naruse, 1964
20. Yi Yi - Edward Yang, 2000

Stardust

This was a pretty easy list to make, since after seeing every single one of these, I immediately knew they would end up here. Throughout the year, each of these films have occupied my thoughts for days/weeks/months at a time, always speaking straight to my heart. In their own way, they all even seem to investigate life itself- its origins and destinations, its nature and rhythms, and its very meaning.


Favorite Films of The Past Year

1. Copie Conforme - Abbas Kiarostami
2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
3. Le Havre - Aki Kaurismäki
4. The Future - Miranda July
5. Beginners - Mike Mills
6. Melancholia - Lars Von Trier
7. The Tree Of Life - Terrence Malick
8. Film Socialisme - Jean-Luc Godard
9. The Skin I Live In - Pedro Almodóvar
10. Le Quattro Volte - Michelangelo Frammartino

Copie Conforme is a total knockout- Kiarostami and La Binoche just keep getting better and better in more ways than should even be possible. I could watch this forever.

Uncle Boonmee exists, as does the rest of Weerasethakul's cinema, on an entirely different and other plane than anything else I can think of. Thoroughly mystifying and truly magical.

Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre is certainly the most uplifting of the list- whimsically, old-fashionedly perfect.

The Future by Miranda July is a heartbreaking, reassuring, and insightfully honest understanding of daily life and the bigger picture. One of the most personally affecting films I have ever seen- our fears, hopes, dreams, disappointments.. they're all in there.

Beginners is brilliantly designed, truly felt, and original from the inside out. Mike Mills does so many things so well, and part of the beauty of this film is watching them all come together in one place.

If Melancholia is really how the world will end, I can't imagine better company than the career-best acting from both Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Aside from the perfectly nostalgic and true to growing up memories it evokes, I love The Tree Of Life for its scope of history, human life, the meaning of science and of God. Ambitious is an understatement. Malick still has a way with light that I will never understand.

Godard as Godard- always that much ahead of the rest of us, even decades later. If this really is his ending, I can't imagine a better way out.

Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In is peculiar, inspired, and always maintains a perfect level of overblown understatement.

Finally, Le Quattro Volte is a wordless film in a way that is completely unlike any I have ever seen. The mysteries this film unlocks more than make up for those it creates.

Golden Blue

Tara Subkoff is the only person in the world that can play Theresa Duncan.

Slow Cinema

"Filmmakers isolate time (as in the empty hallway shots in films by Yasujiro Ozu, images in which nothing appears to be happening); embody time (the “tirednesses and waitings” of Antonioni, as the philosopher Gilles Deleuze put it); make time stutter (the jump cuts in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless); slow it down (the long takes of Bela Tarr); and deconstruct it (as the avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs does). Without going too deeply down an academic rabbit hole let’s acknowledge that when we talk about ostensibly slow and boring films, the terms of debate extend beyond issues of entertainment.

Deleuze, for instance, distinguishes between pre-World War II cinema, in which time was subordinate to movement (the passage of time obscured through classical techniques like those of continuity editing), and postwar cinema, in which a direct vision of time emerges. In this new cinema — with its discontinuities, sense of interiority and seer-subjects — time appears “for itself,” becomes something movies confront even if their characters (and maybe we too) don’t know what it means. And so characters in L'Avventura wander around and forget that a woman has disappeared, and Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, stuck in her horror of a life turning tricks out of her dismal middle-class home, makes a meat loaf in real time we share. They are, as Deleuze puts it, “struck by something intolerable in the world, and confronted by something unthinkable in thought.” Sometimes a slow movie is just a slow movie, but sometimes it’s also a window onto the world." - M. DARGIS, 2011.

Here Sometimes

Melancholia

Here's the trailer for the forthcoming Lars Von Trier film, Melancholia, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kirsten Dunst. Somehow this looks impossibly even more beautiful than Antichrist.

Summer Hours

Between The Arclight, Netflix streaming, Amazon Video on Demand, those crazy 50% off Criterion Collection sales at Barnes & Noble, weekly trips to Amoeba, and having a DVD rental shop downstairs my loft, seeing movies has never been easier. This year I've managed to see a lot of great films, both old and new. Here are my favorites from 2010.

















1. Somewhere - SOFIA COPPOLA
There is so much space in this film, yet so much precision. Faded modernity Antonioni only hinted at. Silence has never sounded this good.
















2. Black Swan - DARREN ARONOFSKY
Natalie Portman is simply astonishing. I can't remember the last time I saw acting this good.














3. A Single Man - TOM FORD
Of course its impeccably designed- not one second out of place. But you wouldn't necessarily expect the emotional knockout at the end.
















4. I Am Love - LUCA GUADAGNINO
Vintage Janus, Italian-style. So rich, and so symphonic, the sort of film Cannes went bananas for in the '60s. It may sound tired, but they sure don't make 'em like this anymore.













5. The Kids Are All Right - LISA CHOLODENKO
Julianne Moore and Annette Bening are sensational. Free City is everywhere.

Love Like A Sunset

So it's no secret that I'm ridiculously excited to see Somewhere. It comes out on my birthday in a few weeks, but I am getting more impatient every day. Last night we walked into the Arclight to see if we could get tickets for Black Swan, and as soon as I walked in I remembered that there was an Academy screening for it (starting in ten minutes) including a Q&A with Sofia after the film. Of course I'm no Academy member and the tickets were gone. Still, seeing the poster up and people in line to actually see it was pretty exciting.

Today I downloaded the screenplay and it just furthers my belief that Sofia Coppola is untouchable. She is pure perfection in line with Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow. Below are some of my favorite parts, namely the ones that are very L.A. and further her dedication to geography and sense of place in cinema.

Driving past Sunset Plaza in harsh sunlight. People hang out
at cafes. A Tom Ford billboard looms overhead.

He looks out the window as they drive up La Cienega, passing
the Beverly Center at sunset.

Johnny pulls up at a nice house in Hancock Park, dropping
Cleo at home.

He blows it off. They pull up and park at a Mall in the
Valley.

They pull up to a small duplex on Fountain.

In the little hotel kitchen overlooking Sunset Blvd., Cleo
makes macaroni and cheese.

Johnny drives aimlessly through LA, down Mulholland.

Les Auteur Filles

Three of the world's greatest female filmmakers who have been on my mind a lot lately.

Somewhere In Venice

Congratulations to Sofia Coppola on winning the Golden Lion at the 67th Annual Venice Film Festival for her forthcoming feature, Somewhere. Starring Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning, Sofia describes her latest film as a "portrait of today's L.A."

Mirror Images

I love when films collide. You always wonder if it is just chance, or rather great minds thinking alike. Sometimes it is the image, but other times it is the feeling or theme that unites two seemingly different films. What got me thinking about this was a comparison I read about certain scenes of Lars Von Trier's Antichrist and the films of Tarkovsky (who that film was dedicated to).

Most of the images below share a visual, but also something more. For example, the shots of Ingrid Bergman and Ebru Ceylan are not all that similar upon first glance- yet the reason I included both were because their characters are both surrounded by historic ruins (Pompeii and Ishakpasa) while they were dealing with their own crumbling relationships. This idea was also echoed in Wong Kar-Wai's brilliant In The Mood For Love during the final scenes at Angkor Wat.

The images of Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall and Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman are hauntingly similar, even more so when you realize that both films deal with two women becoming one (or three, depending on how you look at it).

Jules Et Jim and Bande À Part. I don't like to repeat things on this blog, but in this case, how could I not? Total freedom and endless youth. It doesn't get any better than this.

The stills from La Dolce Vita and Lost In Translation are remarkable because of what we can't hear or understand: the disconnect, the unfinished, and the fact that both endings make you wonder how they really end.

I could keep analyzing these all day. If you've seen the films of the first two images below (Ordet & Stellet Licht), the similarities should be pretty obvious. If you haven't, I don't want to ruin what is one of the most remarkable sisterhoods in all of cinema.

Sources From Top To Bottom:

Ordet Vs. Stellet Licht
Francesco, Guillare Di Dio Vs. Ordet
Jungfrukällan Vs. Offret
Viaggio In Italia Vs. Iklimler
3 Women Vs. Persona
Offret Vs. Das Weisse Band
Jules Et Jim Vs. Bande À Part
La Dolce Vita Vs. Lost In Translation

The Auteurs

THE AUTEURS

Of the countless great directors this world has seen, these are quite simply the greatest. Without them, our world and my life would not be the same.























MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI






















JEAN-LUC GODARD

ABBAS KIAROSTAMI


















CARL TH. DREYER

















FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT

Somewhere

SOMEWHERE

More details of Sofia Coppola's fourth film, Somewhere, were announced recently- including the poster and trailer. The US release is set for December 22 (my birthday!). The trailer is gorgeous, showing Chateau Marmont in that beautiful hazy summer light in a way that only Sofia can. The music is by Phoenix and The Strokes. It goes without saying just how major this film is going to be.

A One And A Two

YI YI: A ONE AND A TWO...
Edward Yang
Taiwan, 2000

Of the many thoughts that have been running through my mind since re-watching this last night, the most prominent one is that of reflections. Edward Yang and cinematographer Wei-han Yang use surfaces, mirrors, windows, and reflections so beautifully here. The shot of Min-Min in the office at night is so gorgeous, but so complex that it takes you the whole scene to try to figure out everything you are seeing and how you are able to see all of these things at once. I don't think there has ever been a greater use of reflections. There are other shots like this, too. I remember one outside of a moving car's windows which reflects the buildings in such a fascinating way that you can't even tell which way you are looking at them. A shot outside of the apartment looking in through the window at Ting-Ting, framed perfectly. A shot in N.J.'s Tokyo hotel room that turns to the mirror to film him on the telephone and then slowly turns toward him directly to capture the same shot. Of course these are all technical things.. beautiful things. But I feel like there is a greater meaning to all of these shots.

These reflections in a way reflect what the characters are each going through in their lives. Reflections of thirty years ago, as in the case of N.J. and Sherry. Ting-Ting's reflections of the day her grandmother fell.. wondering if she had been the cause of it. Min-Min's reflections on her life after her realization that it only takes her a minute to tell her mother about her day. About how empty she feels her life is and always has been. Even Yang-Yang's reflections about half-truths and wondering why in life you can never get the full picture, or both sides of something.

The construction of this film is mind-blowing to me. Its length is certainly justified because it allows us to get to know the characters so well. We need this time to understand them.. to see them in different situations, to share their feelings. The way everything is tied together, the way it moves effortlessly from one scene to the next, with the sound often overlapping into the next scene. The pace of this film is so even and so measured. Never rushed, never too slow, but made from that most natural of all tempos: the rhythm of life.

Throughout the film I was reminded of two other directors who were presumably an influence on Yang: Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Yasujiro Ozu. Yi Yi especially reminded me of Hsiao-Hsien's A Time To Live And A Time To Die, which also used the structure of family saga to drag out those simple truths of life we are often too busy to notice. Both films also capture the true bittersweet nature of life.. sometimes happy, sometimes sad. Ozu pops up throughout in the form of pillow shots, but also in the general look and feel of Yi Yi. Everything is clean and uncluttered.. down to the music and the understated white font of the credits. There is a simple grace and poetic dignity to everything here and in every character, even in the face of heartbreak and death. Like Ozu's films, Yi Yi is calm, quiet, gently flowing, and steady.. always a tortoise, never a hare.

Once In A Lifetime

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

The other day I was catching up on Roger Ebert's always entertaining blog, when I came across something that I've been thinking about ever since. In the first of his Cannes updates, he wrote, "Fifty years ago, the Palme d'Or winner at Cannes was Fellini's La Dolce Vita. More every year I realize that it was the film of my lifetime."

There is something so haunting about these two sentences to me. But also something so dramatic, so stately, and so poetic. Aside from the way in which he said it, let's think for a minute about what he said. The film of my lifetime. This is what I have been thinking about off and on (a/k/a nonstop) ever since I read it.

What is the film of my lifetime? What is the film of yours?

I still don't have the answer. Maybe because there are many I haven't seen or because they haven't been made yet. Or maybe because I tend to change my mind so much about things like this (but who doesn't?). Or maybe because a lot of the films I would immediately want to list are not from my lifetime. I would want to say Last Year At Marienbad for its endless and inexplicable mysteries. Or A Time To Live And A Time To Die for being entirely flawless and showing us what life is really like. Or Fanny And Alexander because it is that one film that you want to jump straight through the screen and live inside of. Or One From The Heart (this blog's namesake), for its impossibly gigantic and unmatched neon sense of magic, romance, and big dreams. Or Red Desert for its sad factories, overt modernity, and industrial beauty. Or Ordet because there is nothing more pure in all of cinema.

But my lifetime?

There are certainly a handful of films that come to mind that excited me or changed me or made me forget about everything else. The more I think about it, I'm pretty sure Roger was not referring to his favorite film or even what he considers the greatest. I think what he means are those films that come along and leave their mark on you, that stay with you for hours, days, months.. even years after seeing them. Films on such a grand scale that do nothing short of take your breath away, make you forget who you are, or where you came from. Those that change everything: erasing the past, obscuring the present, and igniting the future. With that being said, here are ten that come to mind.. from my lifetime.

















ANTICHRIST, dir. Lars Von Trier, 2009
















สัตว์ประหลาด (TROPICAL MALADY), dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2002

















WERCKMEISTER HARMÓNIÁK, dir. Béla Tarr, 2000













ÜÇ MAYMUN, dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2008
















SHIRIN, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2008















YI YI: A ONE AND A TWO, dir. Edward Yang, 2000


















LOST IN TRANSLATION, dir. Sofia Coppola, 2003




















STELLET LICHT, dir. Carlos Reygadas, 2007

















طعم گيلاس (TASTE OF CHERRY), dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1997


















花樣年華 (IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE), dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 2000