The Introduction For The Second Annual Halloween 31 For 31: World Championship Edition

Last year for October I covered 31 films for all 31 days of the month or so forth. Realising how insane that was, I apologise if I cheat a little and prepare slightly for the second edition of this idea at the end of September as well as into the month proper. The good news is that it's the return of said Halloween blogathon covering any film or work that fits the mood of the month, even those that aren't horror films but hopefully most will so no one gets suspicious and calls shenanigans. It feels like a century has passed since the first one to be honest, but it was only last year. My tastes have modified definitely. With this year, I am continuing my obsession with films from around the world, making it a continental journey that, in compensation for not having a passport, can nonetheless be done in the cinematic image. I covered a lot of English language films last year too, and to be honest I do worry about this discrepancy in my viewing even though the English language films can be great too. Remember, before I start this year on the first day of October, that just because a film is from another country than yours, or mine, doesn't mean it's actually good. Hopefully there will be good films to compensate those that prove this point. It will be hopefully be varying. The main goal is to be as diverse as possible in countries, and if need be, I will even go as far as divide the United Kingdom up into Wales, Scotland etc. to emphasise the differing origins of the film, co-productions and all.

There will be repetitions of countries, but it will try to be as distinct in each choice as possible. Topic repetitions will be taken into account, and depending on my obsession with letting random choice affect the choices too, I could find myself with some fascinating comparisons from completely different locations across the globe. Like last year, there will be no restrictions, even beyond feature films hopefully, so that anything appropriate for the macabre season will be celebrated. The main goal is to show and celebrate the diversity of the world through the single medium of the motion picture, and far from just being an educational trip that sadly great non-English language films get lumped into, this will hopefully show the tentative boundaries between art house/entertainment, bad/good, high/low art, and at least suggest some recommendations for the readers and provide me with some great works, maybe even canonical gems. The creepy, the weird, the erotic, the silly, the disturbing, any of these emotions and more will hopefully be covered. Maybe even the one that makes me want to burn the DVD copy of a film, but that one I could live without. Even if tropes repeat themselves, the various interpretations will give a look at how different cultures depict those materials that linger in the dark of the mind of every person. Beyond that, we'll see what happens by the end of October itself and then I'll make a statement if I was right to consider any of these ideas.

August 2013

Best Films

1. Post Tenebras Lux (Carlos Reygadas, 2012/France-Germany-Mexico-Netherlands)

2. Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969/USA)

3. This Sporting Life (Lindsay Anderson, 1963/UK)

4. To The Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012/USA)

5. Vidas Secas (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1963/Brazil)

6. La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001/Argentina-France-Spain)

7. Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997/USA) [Rewatch]

8. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012/USA)

9. Le pont des Arts (Eugène Green, 2004/France)

10. Half A Man aka Un uomo a metà (Vittorio De Seta, 1966/France-Italy)

11. Scanners (David Cronenberg, 1981/Canada)

12. Noroît (Jacques Rivette, 1976/France)

13. Marquis de Sade’s Prosperities of Vice (Akio Jissoji, 1988/Japan)

14. The Tatami Galaxy (Masaaki Yuasa, 2010/Japan)

15. The Hour-Glass Sanatorium aka. Sanatorium pod klepsydra (Wojciech Has, 1973/Poland)

16. Turkish Delight (Paul Verhoeven, 1973/Netherlands) [Rewatch]

17. *Corpus Callosum (Michael Snow, 2002/Canada)

18. Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992/France-USA) [Rewatch]

19. Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller, 1963/USA) [Rewatch]

20. Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972/USA)

Other Memorable Works From The Month

The Music Lovers (Ken Russell, 1970/UK); Maniac (Franck Khalfoun, 2012/France-USA); Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980/USA); The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970/Italy-West Germany) [Rewatch]; Passion (Brian De Palma, 2012/France-Germany); Passe Ton Bac D’Abord aka. Graduate First (Maurice Pialat, 1979/France); I’m So Excited! aka. Los amantes pasajeros (Pedro Almodóvar, 2013/Spain); Impaled [From Destricted (2006]] (Larry Clark); Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas, 2005/Belgium-France-Germany-Mexico-Netherlands); Flaming Star (Don Siegel, 1960/USA); Iron Monkey (Woo-ping Yuen, 1993/Hong Kong); In Search of Famine (Mrinal Sen, 1980/India); House by the Cemetery (Lucio Fulci, 1981/Italy); Something Weird (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1967/USA); Top Spot (Tracey Emin, 2004/UK); Justine’s Hot Nights (Jean-Claude Roy, 1976/France); The Curse of Kazuo Umezu (Naoko Omi, 1990/Japan); The Number 23 (Joel Schumacher, 2007/Germany-USA); Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (Jeff Burr, 1990/USA)

I've decided to try something different this time to make this a lot more interesting. Why try to explain your choices through words when they are a visual medium? Generally it's been a really solid month. That I can have twenty choices above in images, and plenty more in honourable mentions including a few (un-) guilty pleasures, shows a good amount about the quality of the films I saw. It was a month of delicacies from around the world and various places that, while they may have been a little disappointing in some cases (Indonesian fantasy martial arts film The Devil's Sword (1984)), they were still memorable. Even those like Chompa Toung (1974) that I viewed without any subtitles or knowledge of the language. Many films improved on rewatches such as Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963). Some because I have developed a different attitude to art now after the gap of a few years, making the American release version of Destricted (2006), a series of short films about pornography and sex with mostly fully explicit and real sexual acts, more interesting and rewarding. Gaspar Noé's entry for it was still terrible, but Larry Clark's Impaled grew in quality immensely. That I discovered there are two versions of the project for Britain and the States, with shorts uniquely on theirs as well as many crossovers, makes for an interesting comparison when I revisit the Brit release.

Some disappointments were found. I don't understand why Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl (2009) was seen as a good film at all; my first Manoel de Oliveira, I am still very interested in his work, but even if he was over a hundred years old when making this film, it wasn't good enough on this first viewing for any director of any age. Baadasssss! (2003), Mario Van Peeble's biographic depiction of his father creating Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971), sadly turned out to be another generic biography after anticipating seeing it for years. Meek's Cutoff (2010) is an empty film when there are so many legitimately great arthouse movies that are ignored, and I saw my first Mumblecore film in Hannah Takes The Stairs (2007). Joe Swanberg's film was not a great introduction to this sub-genre at all, and I don't want this to be the new face of independent American cinema unless there are Mumblecore films which are actually good out there in existence.

August was when I decided to start actually seeing films released this year globally and in my home country. They make their mark on the Top Twenty list of the month, and while you could argue I'm a little too excited to put some ahead of other, older films on there, they are a hopeful look at this decade coming up, especially as many of the inclusions fragment narrative into moments and moods while conveying a fleshed out story. Even the anime series The Tatami Galaxy shows this as it was only produced a few years ago and does the same thing in its own way. Even if the list is full of films that do this from decades ago too, there is a potentially great future of this attitude to cinema growing to compensate for a world that has gone through and out of post-modernism, where especially American (North and South) films wrestle with reality as if though the images onscreen were generated instantly as if through memory and the subconscious. Unfortunately there have been some bad films released this year. It was sad that Small Apartments (2012) by Jonas Åkerlund became a generic dramatic comedy considering its cast. But of more grievance for me is that I've really become disconnected from the opinions of quite most if not all film critics now, finding that quite a few critically praised films are not good at all and were a waste of their existence. Chan-wook Park's Stoker (2013), Cloud Atlas (2012), and Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects (2013) are all bad, pretentious films which are not that clever as they thought they were, and there are B-movies with similar ideas which are a lot more rewarding than them. They were all a misery to sit through in their own way - Stoker for causing me to worry Wook's films from his native country will turn out like it on rewatches, Cloud Atlas for having to sit there for two and a half hours bored, and Side Effects as a film that desperately needed Brian De Palma to have made it - and I'm angry about them all.

I've already burnt out on catching up with films released in 2013 because of these films that get great reviews but are so insignificant when I've finally seen them. Bad dramas, genre films with pretensions to messages they don't reach at all, dull blockbusters, all overrated, enough to make me consider sticking to just films that I was excited about already when I first heard of them, and my usual wheelhouses like Japanese animation or cult films. That De Palma's own Passion and Pedro Almodóvar's I'm So Excited! (2013) have been dismissed, while these films were celebrated, is baffling when those two at least were solid and rewarding films regardless of their places in the directors' career. These dismissed films were far more rewarding and are the thing that stop me from tearing my hair out because they were good. And I am still viewing this year as great, despite this horrible realisation about how alienated my tastes are from what is usually championed, because the films I hoped for like Spring Breakers and Post Tenebras Lux were great. Because To The Wonder turned out to be incredible, regardless of the fact that it happens to be the one Terence Malick film that is dismissed as average, a baffling thing when I found the last two disinteresting and that a film like Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012) is praised instead. I have to wait until I deal with September new month to continue this issue, but the same issue happened this month too.

Worst film? Technically it's The Bay of Love and Sorrows (2002), a Canadian low budget drama, that I gave up watching in ten minutes and got rid of the DVD copy of. I will probably not be able to see it now because of this, such an obscure film it was, and I feel hesitant to put it here because I didn't watch it all. In fact I feel guilty because I believe I should see a film all the way through regardless of how bad it is. But I don't want to waste time with dull drama films now. I can withstand and see through bad horror films, bad anime, bad genre films, but drama is for me the area of cinema which has the most bad films within it, far more than any other, and I find myself with no reward in sitting in them like I can in even the most abominable of the others. I found myself feeling no rewarding in sitting through The Bay of Love and Sorrows for its full length. It's cruel, but from the beginning there felt like no worth to viewing it all. The worst film I did see the whole of is the remake of Evil Dead (2013). Its everything wrong with horror cinema of today. It tries to make the characters deeper but paradoxically they're shallower than the ones in the original film. There is no tension, just obvious, abrasive jump scares, and gore scenes without purpose to them, which is made worse when you compare it to effect scenes in a film like David Cronenberg's Scanners, which I caught up to finally, which have purposes and even symbolic ones. What was said to be a feminist horror film in the promise of it was a cop-out because said female protagonist was a possessed monster for most of the film, and there was nothing of worth to the whole thing. There are other films that are actually scary, and the only reason I could sit through one like this or the similarly pointless Texas Chainsaw remake is because I'm both a masochist and can withstand the pain. It makes me glad there were so many great films for the year as I would eventually snap if I only saw films like Evil Dead when that pain resistance finally broke down.

And that it got praised, along with the others I found dull or worse, was irritating. And eventually the realisation that I find a significant distance to my opinions came about, and that it was pointless to consider one right over another including my own. And then I thought about film culture, both cult and critical ones. Frankly I've started to find that, while my love for cinema is strengthening still, it comes with the price that I absolutely hate most of the fan and critical culture around it. I'm baffled by how high strung, paranoid and argumentative film criticism gets now; even if films are life enriching, the life and death argument between individuals over them is utterly comical, the least momentous debate you can have when existence and its purpose is of more concern. I've given up on most podcasts now because they're just tedious to sit through, not contributing anything actually thoughtful or even funny. This is more so when the old, no longer existing ones like Mondo Movie or The Hollywood Saloon, from the first years of podcasting I was lucky to catch, are still far and ahead superior when you re-listen to them. Even if I disagree with the tastes of their film viewing at times, the presentation and amusement show that they weren't just a bunch of film fans yacking for an hour or more, like most podcasts now are, but people you would want to go drinking with at a bar and talk about other subjects like politics or music as individuals. As I am trying to figure out my own life so I don't waste it, I no longer want to hang out in an area, whether it's real critics or film forums, that mostly consists of contradictory, backstabbing, pretentious and bitchy drama queens I've never actually met. I want to actually be a human being. Go ride on my bicycle, eat, talk to relatives, maybe fall in love, read and get to know the outside world outside the cinema screen. It just so happens that I will still read Sight & Sound magazine, do this blog, and watch two films a day, maybe only one or none at all that day because something of more importance has come about, I want to finish writing something, or there's a book near my bed I want to finish reading. And every film on this Top Twenty for the month, even to an extent films like Scanners and Pink Flamingos, is about this desire to know about the world and learn from it, or are made by directors obsessed with reality and just happen to filter it through their idiosyncratic viewpoints. Many of the directors had obsessions that required other forms than feature films to tackle them, like Paul Verhoeven with Christianity and John Waters with camp and his own inspirations.  Even in the film about film, like Jackie Brown, it's about characters in a narrative becoming human and enjoying life even in a scenario. I need to be more than just a form sulking in a cinema seat to be myself, and even if I don't need to go as far as eat actual dog shit on screen like Divine in Pink Flamingos to establish who I am, that kind of impulsive mentality will be a lot more healthier than joining the herd that send death threats to people because they hate the films they like.

76 Works Watched In March

10 Rewatched Works

66 New Works Seen

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Sources for images = 1. http://www.ahk.nl/uploads/pics/post_tenebras_lux_01.png / 2. http://chriscrespo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/MC.jpg / 3. http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c212/savagedudeguy/movies/This%20Sporting%20Life/1.jpg/ 4. http://www.lassothemovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/To-the-Wonder-2012-4.jpg / 5. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnu9-EsXeWmF381Za2Lj-QIkbGPNxLKRgxAGlJKUEPJXXpd2mX79LCjqUp2o2ysvj1mdhrz7zBUUW2XxRu4s72KQUyBBOfToPk9JzyMfQA0F_MNJ2iCIkRoA7FKZfmNpz5njoJ3Uo9WUE/s1600/vidas+secas.1.jpg / 6. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8VksdRfBfeyXlpLQEQJTTcM8zWjgmJCQdQwhiBuZBBjMkyA8zXatmxIMCPl870GLQAarPEDnpo4613gaUi4zWljb-kZtN_pHs6SByzFO_kIeHn62UE8EAkRiPf7jvqtstosfZ5Vk56Vc/s320/cienaga4.jpg / 7. http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/jackie-brown/w1280/jackie-brown.jpg / 8. http://style.mtv.com//wp-content/uploads/style/2013/01/spring-breakers-trailer-5.jpg / 9. http://medias.unifrance.org/medias/103/36/9319/format_page/le-pont-des-arts-natacha-regnier.jpg / 10. http://www.thecinetourist.net/uploads/7/0/9/9/7099213/104758_orig.jpg / 11. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN3hP8iAcMNKhpYorPGGmtOhZpHLy_fUtUoN3_H3E2PqVyBKyJx2ZxY8C71kc1EvCqeNyJNouKqQcUFGqTcsw2fAODcd0doWXZjiwr1urRxSUJNCO19SeJwigudltaA3FXTLoS3jCir-Nb/s400/scanners.jpg / 12. http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/noroit5.jpg / 13. http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/3331/akutoku2.jpg / 14. http://chinesecartoons.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/tatami.jpg / 15. http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4069/4612877447_cfdbf39888_o.png / 16- http://cdn-3.cinemaparadiso.co.uk/clp/271736-789-clp-720.jpg / 17- http://www.news.wisc.edu/newsphotos/images/Wfilmfest03_Corpus_Callosum.jpg / 18- http://www.dvdactive.com/images/reviews/screenshot/2011/4/basicinstinctbdcap1_original.jpg / 19- https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgftMPyFiCdMcdvb-fe5LjMhIxeTsMHQ0F-F2VENpNRPz9Y9U_7L9f9qsaPCUo4Dur2RY_9BzKhy6aV6saHtI3SietKFJ6tqyANi6_5A_wGlaH3qNlzwtoiJhXn7mRFxMLh8W-SAHnqfS8/s1600/shock1.jpg / 20 - http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llnevsnHkG1qbvv1io1_500.png

Fake Gucci, Rubber Shark (Bait (2012))

From http://images.mymovies.net/images/film/cin/350x522/fid12864.jpg

Dir. Kimble Rendall

Unfortunately, the genre film of yesteryear, which upstarts like myself, far too young to have grown up with them, celebrate, are missing from now. For the most part you have two options. The first, with exceptions, is the blockbuster - B-movies made with too much money, don't use the budget to their advantage, and worse, have pretentions to being great art when they barely scrape together a few virtues. Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) rears its ugly head for me now for example - if there was ever was a film that needed to have been made in the seventies with less money available and someone like Roger Corman to kick its writing and presentation up the backside, it's that sort of film. Far from being a Grindhouse snob, at least some of the Hollywood films of yesterday, like Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), felt like they had more on their minds and a lush presentation even if the results are failed. On the opposite end, however, are those films that never take anything seriously. They're always ironic, they never take anything seriously, they're happy with their crappy special effects and laugh at them, try so hard to be cool, amused with how bad they are and/or cram as many references into the material they can instead of fixing the narrative plots. I.e. The Man With The Iron Fists (2012), The Asylum films like The Almighty Thor (2011), Troma's Terror Firma (1999), Machete (2010), and Sharktopus (2010), a film unfortunately presented by Roger Corman. Films which all belong to the same circle even if they're very different from each other. With these options, if it wasn't for the exceptions genre cinema would be screwed and doomed to become the plaything of churned out CGI alligators and snarky audiences. The most interesting films, in most cases, are those that dangerously veer to the pretentious but with real artistic value, are divisive, or from a non-English language country because, even as comedies, they take themselves seriously. They want to be good films, and even if they're in on the joke, or suffer from some dodgy effects, they are played completely straight. They are all sincere, a word lost in most cinema in general. I can gladly say that I can stick Bait in this category. I will confess to this being a legitimate candidate for a guilty pleasure of mine for the year, but it's a hell of a lot more entertaining legitimately than other movies.

From http://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/still/bait09.jpg

I will confess, moments in Bait, done seriously, caused me to giggle, but it's a film that knows how absurd it is, but unlike a Sharktopus, still makes the drama dramatic, the situation serious, and tries to be great even with its obvious flaws. If this was the sort of thing at the cinema more, or what straight-to-DVD meant unless better films were made, I would actually be a happier man knowing someone was actually having fun with their work than merely making a product. In an Australian coastal city, the characters of the film are set up together in a supermarket - a tragedy in the past, a father-daughter conflict, kinky sex in the underground car park, a robbery about to go wrong. Then a giant tidal wave hits the city. People are killed in the supermarket barring a few survivors, the building is mostly submerged underwater, and there's a great white shark or two stalking around the isle for cereals. The film is (mercifully) played as a serious story; even if it's a slight B-movie, where you know how it'll end, this conviction supports the story more and allows you to drop your hesitance and actually enjoy a film for once. It's acceptable and rewarding to empty your mind with Bait because it never dares to claim to be an important message film or insult your intelligence. No pretence that it never dares to try and actually aspire to. No insipid political message. No attempt to pander to liberal or conservative viewers. No attempt to pander to anti-authoritarian teenagers. Not trying to be high art without any sense of artistry or experimentation. Not being a jokey film like the films I've mentioned in the first paragraph. The violence, surprisingly gory for a film that fifteen years in Britain can buy and see, is never uncomfortably fetishistic like the remake of Pirahna (2010) becomes.  It's done sincerely with some budget to it.

From http://www.imfdb.org/images/thumb/9/92/Bait_g.jpg/600px-Bait_g.jpg

And yes, it's a film about sharks in a supermarket. Yes, this is the premise for a Z-movie let alone a B-movie. Yes it has a slight plot. Yes, when you see a CGI bird at the beginning, it shows the computer effects aren't the best. And yes its amusing how wooden one of the actors' lines are especially when they're all talking about how they will become shark food and being almost giddy about it. But it's made with quality for all its flaws, never slouching and is made with entertainment. It sets itself up quickly and the drama, while well worn, is interesting. It even includes a very sober moment, in the middle of a lurid and cliché presentation, that is actually effective. That I could suddenly chuckle or giggle at certain serious moments as well as the intentionally comedic parts is a positive for the film, amused that it followed into a moment or piece of dialogue often said in films before, but delighted by its prescience here rather than annoyed by it. That the film is structurally well made - bright, put together perfectly, able to prevent the flaws with the CGI from undermining it - makes it more rewarding because it was made with consideration. That I came to it with no expectations helped it, but it's great to see a completely un-jaded film that does what it sets out to do perfectly. It would be a minor film if there wasn't as many bad genre films in existence, but I wished films like this existed more. Those above the middling range that are merely good but have a fun or a craft to them that make them eventually memorable and virtuous for actually accomplishing something fully even if the goal is slight. With some of the awful genre films in existence, it's a lifesaver to be perfectly honest, and I wish the director can only go higher in quality from here. Considering some of the awful horror films released this year, this is one I was fully grateful for even if it'll never get into the Top Ten list.

From http://i.imgur.com/YHdfC.jpg

Z Is For...Z (1969)

From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WkKZJVG5wTk/TTqiPz7c0NI/AAAAAAAC-is/rvcOhqcJ_So/s1600/Z-poster-4.jpg

Dir. Costa-Gavras

The final film for this series. Hopefully you, the reader have gotten a lot from this. It has been a long, difficult project to complete; to write about these films required some thought and possibly more consideration than some that I have covered on my blog or Videotape Swapshop. The following choice befits the series, a reminder that this type of cinema also deals with the upfront, actual reality of the world it was made in and made to tackle. Its a reminder, as the film depicts the political turmoil of Greece in the early Sixties through hints, that the ability to have free speech is a tenuous one, that it can easily be lost. Art like the films I've covered could be lost. As much as I joked about this series being an antidote from Hollywood blockbusters at the introduction of the series, there are constant grim reminders that this kind of uncensored thoughts can be suffocated. It is not just war and political strife that can cause this, but also compliance and complicity, not just conservative but also liberal complicity, numbing of culture and a watering down of entertainment and art in favour of the insipid. The lack of courage, the lack of balls to be blunter, the lack of courage to be controversial, to take the easy way out. These films I have covered, even the ones made in the mainstream business of cinema, are not creations of pleasing the widest audience possible. They're not shrieking violets. They haven't been made to tick off checklists. They're not be made to please the troubling mindset of most cinema viewers now that it should be the equivalent of message porn, to make you concerned for the world only for a brief amount of time, like a perverse high from one's guilt, only to be able to push it to the side and not learn from it at all. Even something like The Holy Mountain (1974), embraced by cult audiences, is spiked with a mentality that, in the film, mocks the potential compliance of the supposed radicals, manufactured art, disco-shotguns and all. 

Films I considered rewatching for the series included Angel's Egg (1985), Begotten (1990), Un Chien Andalou (1929), Herostratus (1967), Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997), and On the Silver Globe (1988). I recommend them all to you to see after those that were covered. I may review them all some day too. Films I wished to see for the first time for the series included Dandy Dust (1998), Mind Game (2004), Midori (1992), Pola X (1999) and X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963). I hope to still see them even if its not now.

Until then, I will be able to take a rest. Coming up in October is the next Halloween series. I will see you all then.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/14697/z-is-for-z-1969-director-costa-gavras/

From http://magazine.ufmalmo.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/z21.jpg

Y Is For...You, The Living (2007)

From http://www.videostoreonline.it/portale/upload_pc/film/12630.jpg

Dir. Roy Andersson

Now its time for some tragic absurdity. When the elevator's full before you get to it, the road is jammed with traffic, and your dinner party trick not only fails but will be something you completely regret afterwards. I'm still waiting for Andersson's next film A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014?), the film to close off the absurdist trilogy that started in 2000, but rewatching You, The Living showed how rewarding it was itself.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/16078/y-is-for-you-the-living-2007-director-roy-andersson/

From http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews39
/you%20the%20living/you%20the%20living%20PDVD_015.jpg

Mini-Review: The Claim (2000)

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyjvRYQU0emV2DEggh2jlfLGF9E17NSAsho5kWUaNY_QdXlDVEfta_mxUJ3QQxGoriZxZQcFbsD9ROJaQvXmPgT6lTRIC4OI8kY_ocu7gTe6zDCHF6KwyVc26OH7CAelCkR4aadSOsCOI/s320/The+Claim.jpg

Dir. Michael Winterbottom

Set in the 19th century American frontier, The Claim is set in a small pioneer town when members of a railway company, including Wes Bentley, enter to negotiate the building of a railway. Interacting with the townsfolk including the head Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan), conflict slowly starts to take place alongside various domestic issues, Dillon's past coming to haunt him when the chance to rekindle his love for the wife he sold (Nastassja Kinski) becomes possible but with the baggage of memories. The promise of the film is the possibility of all the actors within it being onscreen - Mullan, Kinski, even Milla Jovovich in a drastically different type of role - plus the fact that its setting is one of a community of different nationalists (Chinese, Irish, Scandinavian etc) suggesting the potential for a really complex film on the nature of these pioneer towns in the New American. The Claim however is just dull. Its everything I hate about modern cinema even if this is now a decade old or more.

The problem for me with it became immediate when it tries to depict a "reality" of what the west at the time was like - worn faces, Jovovich with little makeup on, dirt, cramped environments, cussing and sex - but undermines it completely with a glossy film style that presumes to be realistic but chops its plans down by the knees, made worse because so many films repeat this style to death exactly. Soft lighting. Pointless amounts of editing for a single conversation. Orchestral string score that sounds like so many others.  Its drama that is supposed to be serious and sober, but without any sense of real meaning and depth to it. It could have been about the industrialisation of the frontier, the tensions between the immigrants, and what would have to be sacrificed, conflict between a senior and a young upstart, love and death. But its hollow. It takes thirty minutes or so to establish a beginning to its main ideas, and it cannot decide if it's a character piece or a drama. There's nothing vaguely entertaining let alone intriguing about The Claim, continuing the problem with many realistic historical films in that they feel like cinematic taxidermy onscreen. It's so deathly serious without any real moment that grabs your attention; the closest is when a whole house is moved over a mountain, which should have been longer a scene, could have been a whole feature film by itself and likely more interesting. It's worse when great actors like Peter Mullan are trying their hardest in something that strives for pretence but is not touching anything actually interesting. By its end its supposed to become incredibly emotional, but its signposting of this through its obvious musical cues and pauses for dramatic effect feel contrived and overused. Classic, more fictional westerns from the fifties or so are far more interesting in how they try to tackle serious issues like race, gender or family relations, their lack of pretence and their glamour allow them to pull you into them with characters who stand out greater. Their clear, quick narratives, and short lengths, allow them to emphasis the issues clearly through the briefness of the material. The Claim never allows its narrative to stand out because it goes for bad drama and tedious structure choices, far too long at two hours and confusing sluggishness for being profound. The unfortunate thing is that there are many films in this art film area of cinema that are just as bad for this reason, my heckles slowly growing to the point they are a nuisance and my hopes drop if a movie strays into these habits just in their beginning. It feels like it misses the complete point of its existence when something like Flaming Star (1960) with Elvis Presley manages to be far more interesting in its themes alongside its Don Siegel-directed western content. Its attention seeking through a form of laziness, not willing to entertain like those classic films, not willing to truly push to grab the human heart of the viewer, and it seethes that it's not just a film like The Claim that suffers from this, but so many other works in cinema including ones celebrated for this problem that justifiably chastised for it.

From http://www.cinemotions.com/data/films/0004/30/2/photo-Redemption-The-Claim-2000-4.jpg

X is For...Xala (1975)

From http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lutx3rgz7H1qzb9ano1_500.jpg

Dir: Ousmane Sembene

Nearing the end of this series. The only thing that cause a problem with continuing this next year is finding films for all twenty six letters of the alphabet again. Xala, while very much a satire too, is something a little different for me to cover as being more of a dramatic film, but its great to include it and expand the range of films and countries I've covered a little further.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/16002/x-is-for-xala-1975-director-ousmane-sembene/

From http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/xala-doctor.png

W Is For…Wax, Or The Discovery Of Television Among The Bees (1991)

From http://sharetv.org/images/posters/wax_or_the_discovery_of_television_among_the_bees_1992.jpg

Dir: David Blair

I will openly admit my gratefulness for the internet. The director of this film has, thankfully, released a hypertext version of this film on his own site, but the original feature film version of Wax... is difficult to find. I confess I am grateful for the internet for making it possible for me to view and review this film, hoping that one day a version is released more commercially for more people to be able to see it. Its the kind of film you want to discover and talk about on a film blog, and even if its a small review, I hope this encourages more people to go out and track it down. Maybe if enough people are interested Wax... could get a great reappraisal from attention like this.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/15720/w-is-for-wax-or-the-discovery-of-television-among-the-bees-%E2%80%93-1991-director-david-blair/

From http://b.vimeocdn.com/ts/123/541/12354136_640.jpg

Mini-Review: Carnival of Souls (1998)

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Dirs. Adam Grossman (and Ian Kessner)

The late nineties in my mind seemed to have an obsession with evil clowns and ringmasters, circuses and carnivals places you'd likely encounter something nasty rather than just throwing up on the rollercoaster. I remember an arcade game I sadly never got to play, the scrolling shooter CarnEvil (1998). KISS had their reunion album based on a "Psycho Circus", and at some point the Insane Clown Posse became a legitimate cult born from the Juggalo consciousness. Baring in mind Carnival of Souls is about pretty serious subject matter, which I don't want to trivialise, you have to wonder if some people had really bad experiences about carnival rides and some really slimy clowns working in the circus back then. Technically, this is a remake of the 1962 cult film of the same name. Both are drastically different aside from the type of ending they share, and I need to see the original film again. Wes Craven is immensely varying for me, (possibly?) described as having the trajectory of a narcoleptic on a trampoline in terms of his films high and low qualities, made worse by the fact that I don't like The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977) or Scream (1996), so having him merely presenting this film has no interest. The only real draw of this film is remaking the original in the form that, from its DVD cover, it looks like you're getting Hellraiser, late nineties-style, mixed with a heavy metal mentality. Said cover doesn't really suggest what Carnival of Souls actually is.

Alex Grant (Bobbie Phillips) has been traumatised since childhood by the murder of her mother by child molester and carnival worker Louis Seagram (Larry Miller). An encounter with him when she grows up into an adult leads to a series of disorientating events where reality is completely disjointed for her. Chronology and place is liable to switch, and she believes Louis is stalking her despite the fact he may no longer exist. A carnival, near the bar her late mother owned and she kept onto, proves to be an ominous site and she occasionally sees horrifying, fleshy demons that no one else could see. The film is bad. Tired and bored. It's the perfect example of how a "mindbender" film, which un-anchors chronology, place and perception, is done badly and sloppily. Someone can argue a film like David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (2006) is pretentious, but its design in distorting the concept of reality is still a masterpiece in craftsmanship. The best films in terms of design, placing the actual content to the side for another debate, are those which usually greatly divide audiences, where you are as lost as the protagonist and feel every sensation in terms of the distortion. The shifts in time in Carnival of Souls are laboured, trying to keep the viewer on their toes but with no sense of forcing you to be in the protagonist's shoes. It's like a generic blueprint, or a crude drawing with obvious flaws, being compared to a perfect illustration which weaves every part together. When it tries to include scares into its narrative as well, it feels pathetic and signposted, knowing the scare will happen, and that its actually not scary despite the prosthetics, making it lame instead. It's cheap jump scares with abrupt pop-ups by fleshy demons, and the actually story never goes anywhere as well. With this tone to the film throughout its narrative, it really starts to test one's patience.

Visually it looks flat, flat in a way of a TV movie which doesn't take any interest in the visual quality of the material as its being depicted onscreen, especially one that was originally designed to go to the cinema. On a positive note it also points to the fact that the last years of the nineties, which I thought could still be contemporary, are very much of their era, not in that they've dated badly, but that aesthetically even 1999 feels like a different decade. Looking back at it, even at moments of cringe worthy pop culture, is inherently fascinating even with a film like this that is very limited in its locations and narrative. However that does not defend how bland the film actually looks. Bland is the perfect way to describe it all baring some early computer effects. Bland is the perfect way to describe the entire film. The story, despite its serious content, never grabs you and when the ending comes about it has no effect. The result is completely unemotional, and with its carnival aesthetic it squanders it for bad drama and riffing on the demons of Hellraiser pointlessly. It presents nothing interesting and is completely forgettable, a scrap of an idea that drastically needed a great amount of craft on it to make it work. It needed to be at least a cheesy film about creepy clowns and where even the candy floss is suspicious, not something that tries to be extremely serious but is so unknowing about the level of quality needed to make it work.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-39vjnjTq3D4/Tv0ipNzxxVI/
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V Is For...Vixen! (1968)

From http://www.impdb.org/images/e/ee/Vixen1.jpg

Dir. Russ Meyer

My third ever Russ Meyer film, and he is very much his own entirely unique director. It was great to cover something like this in the series because an idiosyncratic director, even if they made exploitation films, could be unconventional and confrontational even where revealing in the nudity.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/15741/v-is-for-vixen-1969-director-russ-meyer/

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtMgIiCoeFHMFbGF2Y0csrgDp397_3PgqbSljdxRmVTqN05ovxfGqkrX68Af8x96QVDzhRi3esupTUjMWYzZDqlvbZ8Vn11N7xVRQHtmEhox5loqMnEGdvq-hoUeHOcQXftdtmi18t9p3P/s400/vixen.jpg