The more I listen to it, the more I love it.
Don't ask me why. Though it might have a lot to do with the following:
Damon Albarn's voice
the music
the long instrumental piece of the title track at the end
Another album that appears high on my iPod list is At War with the Mystics from The Flaming Lips.
Last weekend, I had also indulged in playing all the Edgar W Froese albums I have got. In the end, I could not tell which is which, and I also lost track of their differences from music from other electronic artists or bands such as Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze... But I don't care any more if I remember which is which...
April 30, 2009
April 28, 2009
The lady with the dog
A film of former Soviet Union shot in 1960, the cinematography is one of the most artistic of all black and whites. The shades of water when the two protagonists were sitting on a bench by the sea, for example is an memorable one. But the most poignant and poetic is the scene when they meet in Moscow in a wintry day. While they were talking in a room, the camera follows the sound of music and cuts to outside the building where a man is playing flute under the starry night. As the camera is positioned at ground level near the player, the confined space between buildings forms a near V shape and it feels as though he is talking with the twinkling stars above the contained space. Visually the scene is rather dark and bare, leading our imagination to the stars and music which are the stars of that scene.
Inside, the heroine laments that they are like two birds being kept in separate cages. The above scene seems to confirm this in visual forms.
Inside, the heroine laments that they are like two birds being kept in separate cages. The above scene seems to confirm this in visual forms.
April 27, 2009
My blueberry nights
I was slightly disappointed by this film: it feels like a diluted version of his previous ones, such as Fallen Angels in its heavy use of night scenes, and Chungking Express, for the repeated sound of a passing train and the lyrics as a diegesis. I have expected something better from Jude Law, and more substantial from Natalie Portman who is brillant in Closer.
As most of his films, the characters are lacking depth and social dimensions. It is like a pop fiction that focuses only on 'now', 'this moment'. And probably due to the constant resort to the soundtrack, it reminds me of A Man and A Woman (1966) from the French director Claude Lelouch which some film critic comments is more like a MTV (born 15 years ahead of its time) than a film!
But does it really matter? After all, not all directors, even the 'greatest ones' have such an knack of how to engage the audience, a sense of rhythm, and are brilliant with improvisation. And maybe for that reason alone, we should give Wong and his gang the due credits.
As most of his films, the characters are lacking depth and social dimensions. It is like a pop fiction that focuses only on 'now', 'this moment'. And probably due to the constant resort to the soundtrack, it reminds me of A Man and A Woman (1966) from the French director Claude Lelouch which some film critic comments is more like a MTV (born 15 years ahead of its time) than a film!
But does it really matter? After all, not all directors, even the 'greatest ones' have such an knack of how to engage the audience, a sense of rhythm, and are brilliant with improvisation. And maybe for that reason alone, we should give Wong and his gang the due credits.
Jean Renoir
I watched two films by Jean Renoir last week: Toni (1934) and The Rules of the Game (1939). The latter, a flop at its first release, is considered to be the 'best' in cinema history, but to me while it is technically superior to his earlier works, I enjoyed Toni a lot better.
Made in 1934 on shoestring budget, Toni is a rough gem: rough both on the quality of images and the use of largely non-professional actors from the local areas; gem for it is a most delightful works with wonderful sense of rhythm, insightful depiction of human nature, and a great structure that signifies life has a pattern like season and nature. It is 'realistic' both for its use of the natural landscape resulted from location shooting, and for the rich texture of characters brought by the use of non-professional actors. And like some of his other great works of the same period, the characters are never black and white but feel as real as everyday life.
Toni, for its gritty realistic value and sense of poetry reminds me of his other two films that I love: A Day in the Country and The Grand Illusion. Both simple in structure but with great eyes on human nature, they are some of the cinematic greats. The performance in A Day in the Country by Sylvia Bataille is supremely subtle and unforgettable, with a soundtrack working like a brush in creating the mood of the film.
On a different note, Toni reminds me of the early works by a young Chinese director Jia Zhangke who, at the forefront of making gritty realistic films, was actually adopting many methods 'pioneered' by Renoir in his early career, such as working with friends and non-professional actors with strong local accents unintelligible to many, working on un-finished scripts and heavy reliance on improvisation, and location shooting. Different from Renoir though, Jia's insistence on portraying the lower class Chinese living in rural China comes both from his rebelion against the mainstream Chinese cinema and his own experience of growing up in one of the poorest regions in Western China, while Renoir's might have more to do with his artistic and intellectual interests and preference. Jia's early works (Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures) is in a sense a remake of Toni in Chinese contemporary rural context. He is yet to come up with anything as beautiful (and inspirational) as A Day in the Country, or as engaging as The Grand Illusion.
Made in 1934 on shoestring budget, Toni is a rough gem: rough both on the quality of images and the use of largely non-professional actors from the local areas; gem for it is a most delightful works with wonderful sense of rhythm, insightful depiction of human nature, and a great structure that signifies life has a pattern like season and nature. It is 'realistic' both for its use of the natural landscape resulted from location shooting, and for the rich texture of characters brought by the use of non-professional actors. And like some of his other great works of the same period, the characters are never black and white but feel as real as everyday life.
Toni, for its gritty realistic value and sense of poetry reminds me of his other two films that I love: A Day in the Country and The Grand Illusion. Both simple in structure but with great eyes on human nature, they are some of the cinematic greats. The performance in A Day in the Country by Sylvia Bataille is supremely subtle and unforgettable, with a soundtrack working like a brush in creating the mood of the film.
On a different note, Toni reminds me of the early works by a young Chinese director Jia Zhangke who, at the forefront of making gritty realistic films, was actually adopting many methods 'pioneered' by Renoir in his early career, such as working with friends and non-professional actors with strong local accents unintelligible to many, working on un-finished scripts and heavy reliance on improvisation, and location shooting. Different from Renoir though, Jia's insistence on portraying the lower class Chinese living in rural China comes both from his rebelion against the mainstream Chinese cinema and his own experience of growing up in one of the poorest regions in Western China, while Renoir's might have more to do with his artistic and intellectual interests and preference. Jia's early works (Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures) is in a sense a remake of Toni in Chinese contemporary rural context. He is yet to come up with anything as beautiful (and inspirational) as A Day in the Country, or as engaging as The Grand Illusion.
April 21, 2009
Tess
I watched Tess for the first time soon after its first release. I was rather looking forward to it but after sitting through 172 minutes I was bored and disappointed. Sure the highly praised cinematography is impressive but the film as a whole is lacking in the gripping power I had anticipated from a director who had directed some of my favourites such as Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown. It is probably not the 'fault' of the story per se. An recent adaptation of The Woodlanders deals with similar tragedy owed to steep social gaps and conflicts and yet it is most touching with great performance from Rufus Sewell, who plays the wronged lover.
I suspect that its meritocracy has a lot to do with the performance from the leading lady Nastassja Kinski who though pretty does not carry the weight of a great tragedy. Rather her beauty seems to be too dominating an element and more than often been turned into a clothes rack of the costumes department. The same goes with a number of scenes where the art directors were getting an upper hand of the film. The scene where Tess and her family were evicted from the family home and had to resort to camping in the rough outside 'our church' is a case in point. It was such a showpiece of art design and great photography that it feels more like a bohemian family camping in style rather than a fatal tragedy that would force Tess to return in disgrace to her raper.
That said, my disappointment might well be rooted in other things, such as the hype surrounding it at its first release.
I suspect that its meritocracy has a lot to do with the performance from the leading lady Nastassja Kinski who though pretty does not carry the weight of a great tragedy. Rather her beauty seems to be too dominating an element and more than often been turned into a clothes rack of the costumes department. The same goes with a number of scenes where the art directors were getting an upper hand of the film. The scene where Tess and her family were evicted from the family home and had to resort to camping in the rough outside 'our church' is a case in point. It was such a showpiece of art design and great photography that it feels more like a bohemian family camping in style rather than a fatal tragedy that would force Tess to return in disgrace to her raper.
That said, my disappointment might well be rooted in other things, such as the hype surrounding it at its first release.
Question time
I am reading Norwegian Wood by a Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and many a time I caught myself wondering why I was still holding the book. I have never been to Japan and I have only talked with one or two Japanese neighbours, yet I found the characters lifeless and surreal, the story rather trivial and the translation even worse (or should it be the other way round?).
The opening, though sentimental, is enticing enough for me to carry on reading but the conversations between characters - which are used to carry the story through - fail to reflect the differences of age, gender, culture and characters. The protagonist - who is 19 turning 20 feels almost like an middle age salary man who has experienced all and rather disillusioned. Sometimes I thought this novel was more like a bad taste porn movie than a real piece of 'literature' that seems to have gained such a popularity with its home audience.
I have no idea why I would think the characters surreal. Is it because most of my recent 'knowledge' about Japan has mainly come from watching works of Yasujiro Ozu and to a less extent those by his contemporaries before the 1960s?
When I searched on the net to find out more about the novel, I was dismayed to find that it is now being made into a film by a Vietnamese French director... I wonder what I have missed in the book that is so great for a director whose debut was The Scent of Green Papaya.
The opening, though sentimental, is enticing enough for me to carry on reading but the conversations between characters - which are used to carry the story through - fail to reflect the differences of age, gender, culture and characters. The protagonist - who is 19 turning 20 feels almost like an middle age salary man who has experienced all and rather disillusioned. Sometimes I thought this novel was more like a bad taste porn movie than a real piece of 'literature' that seems to have gained such a popularity with its home audience.
I have no idea why I would think the characters surreal. Is it because most of my recent 'knowledge' about Japan has mainly come from watching works of Yasujiro Ozu and to a less extent those by his contemporaries before the 1960s?
When I searched on the net to find out more about the novel, I was dismayed to find that it is now being made into a film by a Vietnamese French director... I wonder what I have missed in the book that is so great for a director whose debut was The Scent of Green Papaya.
Coal miner's daughter
I came across a newly digitalised Coal Miner's Daughter. Although I had technically watched it, I grabbed it from the shelf with a rather mixed feeling.
It must be 1984 when I first watched it - during the what must be the first American Film Festival in China. Hungry for anything different and from the English speaking world, we - myself and some of my roommates decided to skip a Chinese class and cycled to the nearest cinema located in a heavy machine factory, now the site of private housing. Five films were on show and that afternoon, it was a double billing for Star War and Coal Miner's Daughter. Star War was too much of a fantasy boy film for me with aliens and strange gadgets flying around the enigmatic universe, and it was the latter that kept me confused for a long time. We were used to the idea that film is supreme and should be didactic. We had never been exposed anything so 'complicated', gritty and realistic. Furthermore, the bedroom scene in her first night, rough and crude, was too suggestive for an eighteen year old raised in a society where sex was a taboo. The impression that the leading actress was not the typical glamorous 'beauty' also puzzled us with little exposure to the outside world. I could not remember what we talked about after the films but surely nobody remembered her much.
That afternoon was memorable - also because it was the first time we took advantage of the freedom that came with being a university student now free from the incessant demand of scoring high marks to get into a good university. The thrill to skip a class was remarkable without realising that some among us had to pay high price for it. At that Chinese class with over 100 students, students were asked to submit an essay at the end of the two hour session. The absentees were penalised twice - for being absent and for not submitting the essay. At the end of the term, I had a 'failure' for one of the assignments never submitted and a pass in Chinese - which disqualified me from being entered a 'Three Distinguished Student' selection (Distinguished in moral, academic study and physical education), the first 'black mark' since I was in Primary four!
The funny thing was ever since then, it didn't seem to matter how 'bad' I scored in all subjects and I had since decided to throw myself into what took my fancy the most - namely, classical music which I listened to whenever I could in the dorm while my roommates were listening to English tapes to improve their listening comprehension; and literature - which I devoured when I was supposed to going over the essays in the textbook.
In those days, I didn't really know the name of the actors except for those highly profiled by the Chinese Popular Cinema, sold millions of copies back in the 1980s. It was not until the last few years when I came across films like Three Women, Bedlands and In the Bedroom that the Sissy Spacek was registered in my brain. Her freckle face - which was a big turn-off for both boys and girls in Chinese culture failed to inspire me to check out who she was when I had to select and show fresh students scenes from Carrie to help them to analyse and write an essay on it. Neither had the film appealed to me and I had never managed to see the symbolic meanings in depicting a teenage girl that way. I was not impressed.
But I have become quite a fan of hers ever since Three Women, and sometimes I wonder if she had a more conventional beauty or glamour, would her stardom be higher, and the eighteen year old me more impressed by her performance in Coal Miner's Daughter.
It must be 1984 when I first watched it - during the what must be the first American Film Festival in China. Hungry for anything different and from the English speaking world, we - myself and some of my roommates decided to skip a Chinese class and cycled to the nearest cinema located in a heavy machine factory, now the site of private housing. Five films were on show and that afternoon, it was a double billing for Star War and Coal Miner's Daughter. Star War was too much of a fantasy boy film for me with aliens and strange gadgets flying around the enigmatic universe, and it was the latter that kept me confused for a long time. We were used to the idea that film is supreme and should be didactic. We had never been exposed anything so 'complicated', gritty and realistic. Furthermore, the bedroom scene in her first night, rough and crude, was too suggestive for an eighteen year old raised in a society where sex was a taboo. The impression that the leading actress was not the typical glamorous 'beauty' also puzzled us with little exposure to the outside world. I could not remember what we talked about after the films but surely nobody remembered her much.
That afternoon was memorable - also because it was the first time we took advantage of the freedom that came with being a university student now free from the incessant demand of scoring high marks to get into a good university. The thrill to skip a class was remarkable without realising that some among us had to pay high price for it. At that Chinese class with over 100 students, students were asked to submit an essay at the end of the two hour session. The absentees were penalised twice - for being absent and for not submitting the essay. At the end of the term, I had a 'failure' for one of the assignments never submitted and a pass in Chinese - which disqualified me from being entered a 'Three Distinguished Student' selection (Distinguished in moral, academic study and physical education), the first 'black mark' since I was in Primary four!
The funny thing was ever since then, it didn't seem to matter how 'bad' I scored in all subjects and I had since decided to throw myself into what took my fancy the most - namely, classical music which I listened to whenever I could in the dorm while my roommates were listening to English tapes to improve their listening comprehension; and literature - which I devoured when I was supposed to going over the essays in the textbook.
In those days, I didn't really know the name of the actors except for those highly profiled by the Chinese Popular Cinema, sold millions of copies back in the 1980s. It was not until the last few years when I came across films like Three Women, Bedlands and In the Bedroom that the Sissy Spacek was registered in my brain. Her freckle face - which was a big turn-off for both boys and girls in Chinese culture failed to inspire me to check out who she was when I had to select and show fresh students scenes from Carrie to help them to analyse and write an essay on it. Neither had the film appealed to me and I had never managed to see the symbolic meanings in depicting a teenage girl that way. I was not impressed.
But I have become quite a fan of hers ever since Three Women, and sometimes I wonder if she had a more conventional beauty or glamour, would her stardom be higher, and the eighteen year old me more impressed by her performance in Coal Miner's Daughter.
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