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400 x 60 = Infinite enjoyment
Sunday, April 28, 2019
A foreign fable washed in scarlet
Thursday, April 25, 2019
What took you by surprise about this film? What did you find memorable or resonant?
- It features lush, deep colors and serves as a visual feast, compliments of its stunning cinematography. Note that the filmmakers used the Technicolor process and the CinemaScope anamorphic lenses for ultra-widescreen.
- It is considered the first contemporary Chinese movie to be released commercially in America.
- Additionally, it’s the most important work to that date of The 'Fifth Generation'—a group of directors whose movies signify an especially creative period in the history of Chinese cinema, generally spanning the 1980s and early 1990s. Zhang Yimou is often regarded as the most gifted and important Fifth Generation director.
- Blogger Jonathan Wroot suggests that Zhang took risks with this film, possibly incurring the wrath of the Chinese government and censors by depicting a conservative slant on 1930s China; Wroot said it retains a left-wing message, but does so in a creative and artistic way that ran contrary to what many assumed about China—that it’s people suppress their emotions, passions and interests.
- The film also turned actress Gong Li into a big star in China and a muse for Zhang to recast in subsequent films.
- Legend and fable vs. harsh realism. The first half of the movie is told more like a parable or fable; consider how the urine in the wine seems like something you’d read in a Greek mythology story. The second half of the film almost plays out like Italian neo-realism in its brutal violence and ugly details.
- The primal pleasures of the physical and the flesh, and “a celebration of the carnal,” according to essayist David Neo. He contends that the movie is focused on basic biological urges, including drinking, eating, love-making, and expelling waste. Ponder how we see nude, dusty, sweat-drenched and even mud-caked bodies; a man urinating into vats of wine that, ironically, the people agree makes it taste better; men and women taking off or wearing skimpy clothing.
- “The scenes of the invocation of the wine god succinctly encapsulate the celebration of the carnal as the characters of the film overtly evoke the Nietzschean celebration of the Dionysian spirit. The semi-nude men displaying their raw masculinity get drunk in the worship of the wine god and chant,” wrote Neo.
- An introspective search for roots and a “questioning of the Chinese heritage,” Neo suggests. Think about how the story is narrated by the grandchild of the two main characters; this narrator isn’t certain who his ancestors are, how the sorghum came to flourish in the territory shown, and more.
- The strength and resilience of the Chinese people. Consider that the main conflict in the second act concerns the Japanese invasion of China in World War II and how the workers stand up against their oppressors.
- The power of people united, which is a strong Maoist/communist message.
- Yet, consider that, “by allowing the only avowedly Communist character to perish at the hands of the invading imperialists, Zhang also suggested that the workers resisted their tyranny through their own innate heroism, just as their own labour and ingenuity had revived the fortunes of the winery,” wrote reviewer David Parkinson.
- China’s emergence into the modern era and rejection of its old ways and regimes. The leprous winery owner is a stand-in for the corrupt Ching dynasty that fell in 1911.
- The color red represents a character unto itself in this film, perhaps symbolizing, as Parkinson wrote, “life and death, birth and renewal, and the physicality and humanity of the villagers” as well as standing for communism.
- Once Upon a Time in the West
- Ju Dou
- The Story of Qiu Ju
- Farewell My Concubine
- The Road Home
- The Flowers of War
- Purple Sunset
- Raise the Red Lantern
- To Live
- Hero
- House of Flying Daggers
- Curse of the Golden Flower
- Coming Home
- Shadow
Our podcast gets pulpy
Sunday, April 21, 2019
To listen to this episode, click the "play button" on the embedded streaming player below. Or, you can stream, download or subscribe to the Cineversary podcast using Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Anchor, Breaker, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Google Play Music, Overcast, Pocket Casts, PodBean, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn.
Learn more about the Cineversary podcast at tinyurl.com/cineversarypodcast, like us on Facebook at facebook.com/cineversarypodcast, and email show comments or suggestions to cineversegroup@gmail.com. Read more...
A colorful and compelling directorial debut by Zhang Yimou
Stream of the crop
Friday, April 19, 2019
First, The Criterion Channel recently launched, offering around 1,000 movies within the carefully curated library of films Criterion offers on DVD and Blu-Ray, plus several other films not already in its collection. You can get a complimentary 14-day trial of the channel by clicking here.
Second, you can sign up for Kanopy, another streaming channel that works in conjunction with participating libraries to provide approximately 30,000 gratis and commercial-free movies, including recent Academy Award winners and nominees as well as classics, documentaries, Criterion Collection titles, and many other movies spread across different browsable categories. Click here to see if you are eligible for a free membership via your local library. Kanopy is one of those things that's almost too good to be true--check it out for yourself. Read more...
Passing Turing's test with flying colors
Thursday, April 18, 2019
If you enjoy films that force you to ask deep existential and philosophical questions--particularly queries that are topical and relevant in our increasingly technological current times--then you owe it to yourself to become immersed in "Ex Machina," quite the thought-provoking picture. Our CineVerse crowd engaged in a healthy discussion on said film last night. Here's a summary:
What did you find surprising, refreshing or unexpectedly different about this film?
- It falls into several subgenres; it plays as a horror film or thriller, a science-fiction movie, a cautionary tale morality play, and even somewhat as a film noir in how Ava functions as a kind of femme fatale who uses her wiles and charms to destroy men.
- It’s an extremely simple premise, setting, plot and cast. There really are only four characters shown. There’s relatively little “action,” and the special effects aren’t bombastic. Yet, despite these simplicities, the themes and questions the picture evokes are quite complex. Arguably, the most satisfying or intriguing element of this film is in trying to determine what each character’s designs or motives are. Who is testing who?
- Ex Machina is replete with Biblical nods and references. Ava sounds like Eve; Caleb and Nathan are both Old Testament names. Nathan’s built environment around her suggests a Garden of Eden of sorts, with Caleb serving as Adam, Eva representing Eve and Nathan a stand-in for God (a god who is “drunk” on power throughout much of the movie).
- What does being human mean? What makes artificial intelligence intelligent, and at what point can an artificial intelligence pass for a human being (based on the Turing test or otherwise)? And to what extent are human beings themselves programmed?
- The dangers of playing God and trying to create artificial life
- Taking and passing a test: Nathan is testing Caleb as well as Eva, Eva is testing Caleb, and Eva is also testing the viewer—think about how she’s trying to sway Caleb and the audience into thinking that she’s essentially human and female.
- Skeletons in the closet. We see inert figures of past robots hanging in Nathan’s closet, suggesting that he’s got plenty of dark secrets.
- What it takes for women to break free from men’s expectations and control of them and achieve true autonomy. Consider how Ava is an objectified “thing” that, ironically, uses how men think of women against them—Caleb sees her as a helpless prisoner and an attractive love interest; Eva exploits these feelings to help her escape. Arguably, she becomes an empowered real woman once she leaves Nathan’s prison—in the sense that she can blend in and pass for a human female. Also, recall the story Caleb tells her earlier about Mary in the black-and-white room who becomes human once she escapes from that room and enters the outer world.
- Blogger Robert Anderson wrote: “For the entirety of the movie Ava is genderless and not human. Her flirtations with Caleb are a tactical escape plan that involve the utilization of her assigned gender. It is only after her escape, during the film’s denouement that she becomes human and a woman. It is after Nathan’s death that she takes the skin from the other failed A.I. and constructs her feminine body. The driving forces that facilitate Ava’s escape are the male egos of Caleb and Nathan. Nathan’s estate is a small-scale patriarchy kingdom, with an entourage of robotic female slaves. Nathan has no intention of releasing Ava; even if she proves to have complete consciousness, he will never view her as anything more than a machine. This is Nathan’s downfall. By invalidating Ava’s status as a living consciousness, he is blinded to her ability to succeed in escaping his facility. He never suspects that she would be one step ahead of him…Why does Ava leave Caleb for dead in Nathan’s facility at the end of the movie? Perhaps just as Nathan would never validate her as a being with consciousness, Caleb will never validate Ava as an independent woman. In the post-escape world of Ex Machina, if Ava were to bring Caleb back to civilization with her, her escape would not be her own, it would be a product of Caleb’s ‘heroics.’”
- The “blurred line between human life and its imitations,” per Atlantic reviewer David Sims
- The “uneasiness regarding social interaction,” Sims continued, “and the inherent fears everyone has…about whether someone else really likes you or if they’re just faking it.”
- Sims asks, “Is Ava showing interest in Caleb because she’s designed to behave like a human, or is she simply trying to manipulate him into granting her freedom? And even if it’s the latter, doesn’t that kind of survival instinct make her, in a way, human?”
- Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
- Bram Stoker’s Dracula (both works feature a young man invited to a castle inhabited by a strange loner)
- Metropolis
- The Island of Doctor Moreau
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Silent Running
- Blade Runner
- A.I. Artificial Intelligence
- Her
Variety on tap in May and June
Admit it--you're dying to learn what's on the docket at CineVerse over the next 2 months. Well, good news: The May-June 2019 CineVerse schedule is live and ready for viewing. To see it in full, click here.
Read more...
Android sex appeal
Sunday, April 14, 2019
The plane truth
Friday, April 12, 2019
What did you find memorable, unexpected or distinctive about this film?
- Despite its long runtime, it isn’t a soup-to-nuts comprehensive biography of Charles Lindbergh, who actually had some controversial politics (he admired the Nazi party and was decorated with a Service Cross of the German Eagle by Hermann Goering in the 1930s). This biopic doesn’t cover his youth or introduction to aviation, or even what happens immediately after his historic flight.
- There are very few characters in the film. Like “Castaway” starring Tom Hanks, this picture would rest heavily on the shoulders of one actor, James Stewart, who appears by himself throughout most of the film.
- Stewart pushed hard to be cast in this role, even though he was 47 and Lindbergh was 25 at the time of the flight. But Stewart is one of the greatest actors in film history, and he served as an Air Force pilot during World War II, flying combat missions and being promoted to Brigadier General years after the war.
- This is a very different kind of movie for director Billy Wilder, better known for his sexy comedies and films noir. This movie is not comedic or sexy or witty in that unique Wilder way, and it lacks a crunchy and deep cast of characters like many of his other films. It’s unlike virtually every other picture he ever did.
- Ponder, as well, the challenges the filmmakers faced here, especially keeping the audience interested in such a static, claustrophobic environment: much of what we see occurs in a tiny cockpit occupied by one man. H ow do you tell this story cinematically? By presenting lots of spectacular aerial footage, by giving Stewart something to play against and talk to (a fly), by introducing threats and dangers, and by changing camera angles and alternating shots inside and outside the plane.
- Consider that the picture had to meet with Lindbergh’s approval; he had several scenes cut that would have added colorful details and fleshed out his character more.
- For example, according to DVD Savant reviewer Glenn Erickson: “The movie was meant to begin at the Flight Line at Edwards California, where the assembled Air Force Brass and test pilots heard a "This is Your Life" tribute to old "Lucky Lindy". The flashbacks would all come from this platform, with either Lindbergh telling his story or one of the generals doing it for him. After Lindy lands in Paris and stands staring at his plane, the movie would return to Edwards Air Force Base for a spectacular finish, a fly-by of planes representing the entire history of aviation, until the sky is pierced by the military jets of 1957.”
- The risks and rewards of being a pioneer or trailblazer
- Determination, grit and courage in the face of dangerous odds
- The loneliness that sometimes plagues those with elite skills
- Other films that “The Spirit of St. Louis” brings to mind
- The Right Stuff
- Amelia and Amelia Earhart
- The Flying Irishman
- Double Indemnity
- The Lost Weekend
- Sunset Boulevard
- Ace in the Hole
- Stalag 17
- Sabrina
- The 7 Year Itch
- Witness for the Prosecution
- Some Like it Hot
- The Apartment
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