God's Little Acre

God's Little Acre
Lord, make way for gold

the girlfriend experience

the girlfriend experience
chelsea's work

Trash Humpers

Trash Humpers
broken, faked, MADE

Sunday, November 13, 2016

The Woman Lying on the Gurney Going Left and then Going Right

I re -watched Jean-Daniel Pollet's MEDITERRANEE  (1963) last night.  It forces your gaze on images that dominate the frame with their singularity and silence.  Ancient ruins quietly stand before us. A pumpkin patch has depth of field, but no depth of narration.  There are paths the eyes must take, such as to the left (bird sphinx) , to the right (bird sphinx), down below (bull fight from up in the stands).  How can we describe the very act of not understanding what it is to see fully, how impossibly one ever sees head on?  Pollet's film excels at making kinesis out of the struggle for accurate memory, and how that struggle makes all sight and sound impossible.  Maybe it is more true to say that his film utilizes sound and vision to engage us in a sense of what it is like to forget.




Frames focus on: ancient pyramids, Egyptian or Grecian artifacts such as an idol of a Bird Sphinx, a traditional bullfight with matadors. We see through, we see around, a direct line of sight is obscured. The camera moves nearly around the pyramids, yet ultimately denying us the full 360 view.

The fact of what we see is inseparable from the histories that created it. The direction is backward, as underlined by the film's Voice Over. The images are illustrations of a search.
We investigate by trying to move around, yet time and again we end up staring at a powerless hollow idol, or (the bullfight) a murder without a beginning or an end.


Regardless of the repositioning of the frame, and of the movement of the objects inside of it, the answer spins around in our heads, not moving us anywhere. Our vision makes us think that we move, but all is "ancient...monotonous..." The voice over tracks our nowhere progress: "We are captured in this theatre."


Wednesday, February 10, 2016

BEST NEW FILMS I CAN REMEMBER SEEING IN 2015

1 PHOENIX   (D: Christian Petzold)


How to End a Movie


2 FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (D: Thomas Vinterberg)

Love Returns


3 SICARIO (D:  Denis Villeneuve)

Intense Dreamlike Reality


4 WHITE GOD (D:  Kornel Mundruczo)

Portrait of  Hagen

5 ROOM (D:  Lenny Abrahmson)

Taking Chances Pays Off

6 BY THE SEA (D:  Angelina Jolie) (tied with) + BROOKLYN (D:  John Crowley)

Compartmentalizing 



Falling in Love on Film


7 THE REVENANT (D:  Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu)

I Died a Thousand Times

8 TANGERINE (D: Sean Baker) (tied with) +  CAROL (D:  Todd Haynes)

Donut Time 24/7
Movie Ending Success; Composed but Longing

9 KNIGHT OF CUPS (D:  Terrence Malick)

Flawed Figure, Flawed Film;  Major Highs

10 JAMES WHITE (D:  JOSH MOND)

Lying

runner ups:
WELCOME TO NY
STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON
LOVE 3D
SAINT LAURENT


Friday, January 8, 2016

REPERTORY FILMGOING HIGHLIGHTS IN THE HIGH LIFE OF TWENTY FIFTEEN


TWIN PEAKS FIRE WALK WITH ME.  35mm.  Lincoln Center.  D: D Lynch.  TREMENDOUS EMOTION.

LOST HIGHWAY.  35mm  Lincoln Center. D: D Lynch.  PROBABLY 1 of  3 GREATEST  FILMS OF THE CENTURY
FINGERS.  35mm The Deuce at Nitehawk.  D: James Toback.  With a barely contained in his skin Harvey Keitel.


THE DUTCHESS OF LANGEAIS.  35mm  Lincoln Center .  D:  Rivette.  Major Rivette.


BLOOD AND LACE.  16mm Anthology.  Lustig presents.  D:  Philip S Gilbert. 
NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER.  35mm (the one). The Deuce at Nitehawk. D: Robert Butler. 

Image result for solo trans neil young film
SOLO TRANS.  Laserdic.  Cinefamily.  D: Neil Young/Shakey. Synthetic news, Real tunes.
          
RETURN TO OZ.  35mm Anthology.  Epically metallic fairy tales +  nightmares

DOOM GENERATION.  35mm. Anthology.  D: Araki.  Rose McGowan in mise en scene.


Image result for what's up doc barbra streisand
WHAT'S UP DOC? 35mm IB Tech.  New Bev.  BOGDANOVICH.



THE BLACKOUT.  digital. KGB. D: Ferrara.  With the best theyve ever been Modine... and Hopper.  Erasing the present + re-writing the past
THE PROFESSOR.  35mm, Lincoln Center. D: Zurlini.  With a bleary and blousy poet named Alain Delon.


SUICIDE LANDSCAPE.  16mm Lincoln Center  D: James Benning.  his one partially narrative /acted film was my biggest discovery of the year. Radical.  Tubular.

I'VE ALWAYS LOVED YOU.  35mm Technicolor.  MoMA.  D: Borzage.  This was nuts in the best way.

Image result for visit memories and confessions
VISIT OR MEMORIES AND CONFESSIONS. D: De Oliveira. 35mm. Lincoln Center.  Ghost house.


PURPLE RAIN.  35mm. Anthology.  He doesn't know how to act, but he loves her.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

UNDER THE SKIN (the film), Inside the Matrix-- NOTES -- FIGURES + TRACKS





UNDER THE SKIN is a collage of perspectives.
UNDER THE SKIN can be viewed on two distinct yet related tracks; as both a closed narrative and as a more abstracted series of elements; sounds, utterances, and the crossing of physical space.

The act of choosing a path, or a track, seems to be both denied and revealed, at once.
For the main figure of the film, as portrayed by Scarlet Johansson, the path is consistently followed blindly, or more clearly, without question or investigation. This instinctual motivation moves her graphically and sonically through the film.  That her path is so direct (at least in the film's first three quarters) is not coincendently at odds with the choices encountered (from the outset) by the viewer.
If one tracks the specific shots that make up the totality of UNDER THE SKIN, creating a feature length motion picture, one notices movement across the left side to the right side of the frame.  A viewer may step inside the directional instincts and patterns applied here,  to track figures' lines, circles and colors.  There are intersections of different figures' paths; one man may be tracked as he moves left to right; while she is being tracked moving right to left.  The intersections form points that unite in a matrix like system.
The sound design; also in points (sounding out letters) and more elongated gestures (sounding out combinations of vowels with consonants, not quite speech), similarly follows the collage aesthetic.

Any anxiety felt at the outset of UNDER THE SKIN must be attributed to worries about the limited access to information caused by brief shot duration.  Establishing shots and the establishing planet and plot exist in moments that are the briefest shot durations in the entire film.

The beginning.

The planet is an eye.

Her eye is a planet.

Title flash .  Black lettering; white background.
A rapid cut to water fall.  Cliffs, small lakes.
It's hills look like Scotland or Iceland; desolate.  Dreamed.

No answers should be found here.
(BLA/BLU) blue is the first color seen after black.
brown is seen on the iris.
when we see waterfall and the road through hills/mountains, we see the blue of night before we see (Y, O, R) dots of yellow orange and red later on, in a matrix of rows and grids when the motorcycle is singled out among cars.

(Y)Unearthly bright yellow is on the jacket of the motorcycle jacket.


She drives. frame follows movement going from right frame to left frame.
She is on an escalator entering a shopping center.  We follow.
She touches a furry jacket; (G, BR) grey and brown , she touches a pink top (P) , (BLA) black suede boots.

Next, a  series of shots of gradually briefer duration. They inform us  someone is applying makeup to someone else (both are women). we see a series of shots of women in cosmetic stores that have a woman employed by the cosmetic counter applying makeup to them.
the shots vary as follows:
a woman in the right side of frame has a woman in the left side of frame applying her blush.
then a different woman seated in the right side of frame has a woman behind makeup counter on left side of frame rubbing lotion on her arms.

Then a woman in right frame who has a woman standing over her in left frame applying eye makeup.
Fast cut to the same woman at a different angel; now she is in the left frame and the woman applying the eye makeup is viewed in the right.
Cut to a a couple seconds longer shot of a different woman in the right frame with a different woman standing in the left frame, leaning right with a mirror to show the woman her completed look.
cut to Her.
She is in the drivers seat again, in the right frame, (the wheel is in the left side of frame) applying coral (R) red lipstick that has a hint of pink like the clothing; the shade of the lipstick a bit deeper.
closer cut so now we see her mirror (compact) reflection of her putting on her lipstick in the left side of frame and a back view of her head in the right side.

Three short consecutive shots of men on the street moving left to right.

This is followed by a few more consecutive, paralleling (mirrored) set of shots of men on the street moving from right to left.
Most of them are seen 'crossing' within this movement, as in a street, or traffic.


She is seen driving, her van moving from right to left of frame.
A sharp cut as she stops; still.  The wheel is in the left half of frame; she is in the drivers seat filling the right half.  Outside her van window we follow her eyes and her thought; a man is seen in her window crossing right to left frame.
We now enter the interior section of the overall thematic movement of the film.  Interiority here is radial.

Lorna's Silence

Lorna's Silence
spirit interrupts

the girlfriend experience

the girlfriend experience
chelsea managing the business

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l'Interieur

l'Interieur
cutting through the walls