Stories from d+kaz
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I Am Legend
d+kaz &bull May 27, 2011
One of the more unexpected turnarounds in 2007 is director Francis Lawrence's sophomore effort, I Am Legend, after the almost unwatchable Constantine comic book adaptation. I Am Legend is also an adaptation (of a movie from a book, adapted several times already), also relies heavily on special effects, and also has a videogame structured narrative-but the surprise is that Lawrence's film, anchored by a moving,… Full Story »
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There Will Be Blood
d+kaz &bull May 27, 2011
Oil!. It was Andersons whimsical, lovely Punch-Drunk Love (2002) that left behind the directors admirable, but portentous megagoliath films Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999), and turned towards crafting mise-en-scene around a character, a world-view, a feeling, and not a smearingly glossy, over-broad narrative of grandiose linkage and showoffery. That most strange of Adam Sandler vehicles has as unifiedand off-kiltera film world as that of Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood: a style of cinema that finds its natural place as it becomes accustomed to the eccentricities of the most eccentric of characters. And Daniel Day-Lewis early 20th century… Full Story »
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Still Life
d+kaz &bull May 27, 2011
This film was seen at the Tribeca Film Festival, April 2007. With not a little irony Jia Zhangke staged the drama of his film The World amongst replicas of famous buildings from around the globe, and the contrast between the World Parks simulated setting and the neo-realism of Jia shooting his latest film Still Life around the actual Three Gorges Dam is stunning. It is a fresh, relieving change of course from the previous films overwrought, overburdened allegorical setting. With a plot staged much as an excuse simply for cinematographer Yu Lik-wai to photograph the region before it is submerged… Full Story »
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Short films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul
d+kaz &bull May 27, 2011
Anthology's series on the short films of Weerasethakul offers a great deal of insight into this amazing Thai director. One of the most striking, as well as experimental, elements of Weerasethakul's features is the way he can edit seemingly without logical connection from one scene to the next. This is not just about ellipsis in a drama, but more often results in subtle change in genre, in style, in audio-visual interest; in sum, Weerasethakul often completely changes his films with each edit. There is not necessarily a clear motivation or rationale between one movement of the film and another, but… Full Story »
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Silence Before Bach, The
d+kaz &bull May 27, 2011
Lucien Dekoster : Afinador de pianosChristian Brembeck : J.S. I could not possibly think of a more apt title for Pere Portabellas new film The Silence Before Bach. As idiosyncratic and inspired in its own approach to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach as was Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillets The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968), Portabellas title is inspired… Full Story »
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Wolfsbergen
d+kaz &bull May 27, 2011
This film was seen at the Film Comments Selects series, January 2008. Why is it so continually surprising when a film tells a story as old as time itself, but does so in such a way as to make the material really move us again? Nanouk Leopolds film Wolfsbergen is an excellent example. Konraad (Piet Kamerman), an elderly great-grandfather, writes to… Full Story »
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Before I Forget
d+kaz &bull May 27, 2011
Except for a terrible moment, waking up early in the morning retching, popping pills, pounding coffee, unable to write and very unhappy, the solitary life of 60-year old ex-gigolo Pierre (Jacques Nolot) seems misleadingly normal. While his days are made up of routine, much of his time is actually spent in the company of other aging gay men, complaining… Full Story »
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Alexandra
d+kaz &bull May 27, 2011
This film was seen at the 45th New York Film Festival, September 2007. Aleksandr Sokurov merges the focus of his trilogy of films on political power (such as The Sun) with those about the intensely chambered, loving intimacy between family members in Alexandra, a film about the eponymous grandmother (Galina Vishnevskaya) traveling to a Russian army base in contemporary Chechnya to visit her… Full Story »
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My Blueberry Nights
d+kaz &bull May 27, 2011
Wong Kar-wais My Blueberry Nights, his first film in English and set in America, is kind of costume jewelry. A refresher, deep-breath after the fractured convolution in production and final result of his last film, 2046, My Blueberry Nights has more than a passing resemblance to the early career break Wong took during the epic task of making Ashes of Timea little ditty called Chungking Express that made the directors name in the West. Small… Full Story »
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Flight of the Red Balloon
d+kaz &bull May 27, 2011
Hou Hsiao-hsien once again travels abroad after his 2005 film Cafe Lumiere, this time to France to pay homage to Albert Lamorisse's 1956 film The Red Balloon. The result, if one can imagine, is a film even more wisp-thin and delicate than Hou's comparatively rich Japanese story, which was a lovely dual-portrait of young people connecting with their past and present in an urban environment at once familiar (to them) and unfamiliar (to the filmmaker). Hou narrows the focus and elides almost any trace of a plot for Flight of the Red Balloon despite expanding the number of characters to… Full Story »
