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January 29, 2006
Flowers of Shanghai, DVD, 1/22/06
Has anyone else seen this?
I read a review of this in the Village Voice years ago, so I finally decided to rent it. It's all long scenes with few edits. I'm pretty sure the shortest scene lasts 4 minutes. It takes place entirely indoors and, if I'm not mistaken, it's all source lighting.
In the first scene, the men are gambling and telling stories about some prostitutes in a brothel in 1930s China. At first, the women say nothing. The host tells a story about a prostitute named Crimson who beats up another because her only client has gone to see her. Then, the host mentions that the prostitute and her client have been together a long time. By Tony Leung's and his companion's expressions, we finally figure out that this story is about them. They say nothing and then leave the room as the party continues while one of the "flowers" defends Crimson's actions. This goes on for another 3 or 4 minutes before we see where they have gone. Our star finally says two words about 12 minutes into the movie. He finally converses with his concumbine about 5 minutes after that.
The movie continues in this style. The camera stays mostly rooted in the middle of rooms and sometimes pans left or right. There are no over-the-shoulder shots so we can see people's expressions as they talk. Sometimes, candles or opium pipes obscure the actors' faces. Some of the most important action takes place inbetween scenes.
Yet, it all works. The slow narrative gives the film its deliberate pacing and its concern with Confucian moral appearances. This might be the director to adapt a great version of "The Age of Innocence" because the art direction looks almost anthropological in detail. We spend so much time watching people live without reference to the outside world that the whole enterprise seems hermetically sealed. It feels like a hothouse that no one really escapes. It's beautiful, slow, drugged and doomed.
Posted by deaconmf at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2006
Aziz Ansari is a bad ass!
Per his request:
www.azizisbored.com
Posted by deaconmf at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2006
Vocabulary question #1
Does anyone use "rather" anymore?
Posted by deaconmf at 12:02 PM | Comments (7)
January 23, 2006
Some movies
1. Three Slave Boys has some very hot guys in it, but unless you're looking for softcore gay porn, it's just not worth watching.
2. Kontroll makes Communist subway systems look like the most amazing movie sets ever.
3. Ran is still the great Shakespearean adaptation on film. Strangely, the whole movie wouldn't be tragic if it had ended just before Saburo dies. The villians are routed, the good guys win the battle and father and son are reunited. I keep wondering which ending is really tacked on.
4. Gates of Heaven still looks rather amazing. It's also more about the business of pet cemetaries than I remembered. Does anyone know where the closed pet cemetary was? The shot in the movie looks so familiar. I think it's somewhere in Los Altos.
Posted by deaconmf at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2006
Brokeback Mountain
I saw this almost 2 weeks ago and I'm still not all that excited by that movie.
I think it's mostly because the scenery looked so expensive. It looked so good that they would have ended up sodomizing sheep or a gopher hole if they hadn't done each other.
Do we need another movie of tragic gay lovers? I don't know, but this simple story didn't need to look quite this expensive. Still, Heath Ledger does a great job with Ennis. He actually manages to be expressive while remaining quite minimal.
I'm not going to fault the movie for aiming for the mainstream, nor is it wrong to be tragic (because the story was written that way), but I just wish the love story seemed more compelling, because the two men never seem all that affectionate after that explosive kiss that Ennis's wife sees. They just seem disappointed. And where's the hope in that?
Posted by deaconmf at 10:40 AM | Comments (2)