photo squarespace.com

Nightcrawler essentially looks at the darker side of desire, the shadows of the personal pyramid and what twisted conclusions models of management can bring. To be clear, I see no difference between Nightcrawler and Wolf of Wall Street. The difference between Scorsese and Dan Gilroy is the choice of metaphor and depth. One uses the conventions of the mobster film to portray the criminality present in the financial system, while the other sinks deeper into the damaged psyche of profit-making. With his repetition of TedX mantras of leadership, Louis Bloom often feels like the personification of an internal memo from JP Morgan. The lengths of his rhetoric and the way he cannot abandon this language highlight his traits as a psychopath and are the only genuinely creepy things he does(bar killing people that is). Furthermore, the choice of hair do, words, cars create a distance between him and the emotionally invested world around him. The only clue the movie gives about this is his desire to create a working business from his camerawork.

photo cbsnews1.com

Moving through the narrative, the way Nightcrawler conjures all social relationships is perfectly transparent towards models of economic domination. The business partnership, here shown as the attempted fraternity between two fellow night cameramen, ends in a classic tale of sabotage. The zero sum game has only one winner, and Gylenhaal’s eerily calm character understands this better than Bill Paxton’s character, Joe Loder. His only employee, Ricky, works as a clear reference to the exploitation of young workers for internships in what are ‘career altering’ perspectives, and ‘unique opportunities towards self-advancement’. He will meet his end on tape, recorded by his self-affirmed benevolent employer. Finally, Bloom’s relationship with his boss, the morning news program director is a variation of metaphors on power, from money, to sex, and finally violence.

photo cinemagia.ro

Jake Gylenhaal’s character merely wants to make more money, and he applies himself in a persuasive way towards this goal. This hollowness of spirit, with the human only in charge of his margin projection, is the founding element of his criminality and lack of empathy. His business model never includes sentimentality and is what makes him a killer. This cinematic monster is unique due to this capitalist inclination and might very well spark a new genre of economic thrillers. Given Nightcrawler’s fairly good run at the box office, I see no reason why it shouldn’t.

by Paul Dunca

Paul Dunca is a freelance saboteur looking for a change of pace. He writes reviews and opinion pieces to keep appearances and can be reached at various wishing wells around London.

The post Bored at Movies: Nighcrawler, or how Corporate America Is Out to Get You appeared first on INHALE MAG.

The latest Clint Eastwood has already garnered, only a few weeks into its release, more passionate commentary than all other major Oscar releases put together. Perhaps it is because this year’s ceremony will not feature any women or race milestone, or perhaps movies about quirky hotels or psychotic Hollywood stars turned stage actors are simply not controversial enough to stoke that sort of debate. The other argument is that it is because ‘American Sniper’ is simply too in your face Republican for the internet mainstream to accept. Watch the trailer and see for yourself.

Let’s take a step back and look at the men behind the film, both the creator and the subject. Clint Eastwood was last featured heavily in the media as he appeared at the Republican National Convention, speaking to an empty chair personifying Obama, or Bush, or the war in Afghanistan. No one really knows, but the fact that the old time Hollywood legend chose to lend his image not to the changing forces of the Obama campaign, but rather to the comically evil charade of the Republicans Party made it newsworthy enough to circle the web. Many jokes were made and questions of old age and mental fragility were asked. His next film was the perfect follow up: a biopic about the most prolific sniper in US military history, who served in the Iraq war. Chris Kyle wrote a book about himself, with facts which many have contested and won damages in court against. This is the basis for the movie.

photo cnn.com

American Sniper unashamedly presents the story of the ultimate patriot. The last scene of the film, real footage of Americans across the land waving flags as their hero was buried after being killed by a disturbed fellow veteran, is merely a prologue twisted to the will of the director. The film is essentially built around those images, proving something Grand Torino and Iwo Jima merely strived for: American patriotism, that form of exceptionalism now commonly referred to as ’Murica’ across the globe is real – People who join a war because the ‘terrorist want to steal our freedom’ exist, in overwhelming numbers actually. Marines truly believe they are saving the world from evil and weak-links live just enough to see their freedoms taken away from them. There is nothing profound in this, just the will of a superpower being imposed upon a world. The morality of the decision made by the leaders of the country are not judged at the ultra-local level, where normal citizens of the United States can only react defensively towards any outside threat. This is the space where Chris Kyle and American Sniper reside.

imgur.com

The large swath of criticism for the film comes from folks adamant that the film is bending the truth; that it’s using a cheap form of propaganda not seen since the Nazi regime.

photo genius.com

More-so, the inaccuracies conjure a version of the facts more closely aligned with the paranoid militarist version of Fox News rather than anything veritable. However this morally grounded criticism of the film, so deeply hinged on the viewers’ distaste of the Iraq War misses both the logic of fiction, as well as the reality of the character being portrayed.

However far-fetched it may seem, ‘The Legend’, here portrayed by a fairly impressive Bradley Cooper, is not manufactured propaganda character but a real person. The fact that the real Chris Kyle lied about how much he hated terrorist and how many outlandish things he did to protect America merely prove the film’s point. Undegraded by post-modernism, early twentieth century love of country exists well and true in Texas. Not just that, but every time an enemy comes along, be it a fictionalized child-drilling Islamist radical or not, he will rise to the occasion and prove a model for Hells Angels columns of cycles to form in his memory. That is the American Sniper, and the way Clint Eastwood captures it is brilliant in its awfully specific and manipulative way. Deal with it.

photo imgur.com

by Paul Dunca

Paul Dunca is a freelance saboteur looking for a change of pace. He writes reviews and opinion pieces to keep appearances and can be reached at various wishing wells around London.

The post Bored at Movies: American Sniper and the legitimacy of patriotism appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Chris Gude’s Mambo Cool, is a very personal, poetic and chromatic display of the faces (literally), postures, ramblings, dreams and dancing of the lowest level of the drug industry in Medellín, Columbia, “the black market of the black market”. While mambo and drugs seem to constitute life itself, folding one over the other like the beats of the same song with no end in sight, for Mauro, the protagonist of Hernán Rosselli’s film, drugs and music are a way of life, as natural as hanging out with friends and family and counterfeiting money. The drama here is very subdued, the film’s appeal stems from the mundanity, the technicality and the routine of the character’s illegal activities that are just a party of everyday life, from Rosselli’s (!) take on neorealism. At the opposite side, the homeless heroin addicts of Heaven Knows What (Ben & Joshua Safdie) inhabit an emotional world of extreme drama brought on by a way of life that is now living them, their social and physical survival and integrity – amidst suicide attempts, OD’s, infected wounds, psychiatric wards etc. – not even a result of endurance as in Mambo Cool, but of pure happenstance. The film makes a very interesting use of music, an abrasive blend o electronica and black metal that is entirely non-diegetic but somehow permeates the story both ways: as a resonance of the character’s emotional landscape and also as an enhancer of the audience own receptiveness to what happens in the story. While it is the most fiction like of the three, Heavens Knows What into reality in the flesh of lead character Arielle Holmes who is in fact playing herself based on her own (both lived and written) story.

Another interesting aspect is how these three movies relate to space and to the bigger community inside which the specific subculture develops and the way these specific spaces echo the intensity and drama of their life choices. Mambo Cool is a world in itself closed of from the reality of the bigger city, the background is almost always a small room, a dimly lit bar, the ruins of some forgotten building, and every character we see on screen is connected to that group. The larger community seems to have vanished and the feeling is that the space we see exists in a parallel reality. As a consequence there is no reference for what an alternative, normal, lifestyle could look like. The characters – while they are all non professional actors who are in fact living the mambo cool life – bring no emotional charge to the table, only their own surreal performances. As long as we can’t determine if these performances are scripted real life stories (if not drug induced delusions caught on camera) we are left to read their faces for sorrow, regrets, insanity or any other tragedies our mainstream, not mambo cool mindsets prompt us to look for.

Heaven Knows What presents a very fluid community – homeless people with an addiction to alcohol or drugs or both – that fills up a space organically: the streets of New York, and the occasional burger joint or public library, are claimed as territory through the sonic projection of an otherwise not so threatening visual presence. Their shouting, cursing and arguing create a homogenous and impregnable bubble inside the metropolis: they are autistic to the environment and, strangely enough, the environment seems little troubled by their presence (just to be clear, I’m not talking about the times in which the characters choose to step outside the immediate reality but when they are sober). Spaces are thus unknowingly conquered and abandoned without any meaningful contact between these people and the larger group.

photo filmlinc.com

In Mauro it is the exact opposite: while the protagonist is engaging in a life of crime, there are no real borders between him and the larger community. It is a sign of his social representativity, the tolerance of petty criminal activities inside the community as a means to improve one’s life, and a necessity of the nature of his activity, money laundering. While the owners of the shop and bars where Mauro changes his fake bills will no doubt resort to violence if they found out they had been cheated, those who catch on just say that it’s a fake bill and they can’t excepted (it’s not a coincidence that you never see a policeman or a police car in the film). Because of these strong community ties, Mauro’s rise and downfall are just ordinary life events, and him just another working guy who has lost (t)his opportunity to make it big: he still has his regular job, and his former partners (a young couple expecting a child) eventually forgive him and invite him for family dinners once more.

Andrei Sendrea

The post Mauro, Heaven Knows What and Mambo Cool: Three Films about Addiction Seen at the Viennale 2014 appeared first on INHALE MAG.

It all started quite climactic, with one of the strongest opening shots I’ve seen this year: a catholic priest in a confessional, the little window is drawn open to let in the light and the words of an unknown sinner “I first tasted seamen when I was seven years old”. The priest is given a week to live, his death sentence a punishment for all the bad things other of his kind have done. As with most amazing opening shots, Calvary is bound to disappoint, but only by comparison.

Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy is a rather shy and funny account of the irksomeness of S&M relationships. Leather bodices and high heels come along with lower back problems and cramped feet, and being tied and locked in a closed space is not so stimulating when your dominatrix lover is a deep sleeper and her snoring is louder than you can whisper the safe word. What is really fascinating is the exquisite rendition of textures and colors that hint to the other side of this love story, the one you don’t see (the recurring scene with the silk pairs of underwear hanging out to dry against the backdrop of the soft blue tiles of the bathroom is a reference point). On some conceptual level, this may well be Strickland’s own pleasure denying game with the audience, not necessarily the absence of any explicit sexuality but the permanent allusions to a more darker side of the game.

52 Tuesdays directed by Sophie Hyde is another film dealing with confusing sexuality, not only for the mainstream audience but also for the characters of the story: a lesbian mother that just started hormonal treatment to become a man, a teenage daughter experimenting with her own sexuality inside a love-friendship triangle with an older couple and their gay brother/ uncle with a small kid of his own. The film is a coming of age drama – for both female leading characters, while the man is obviously trying to never reach that age – but what really sticks with the viewer is the warmth and depth of their relationships and the feeling that this is what a family should be like (no, I’m not being ironic): teenagers being treated like adults and adults that are allowed to behave like teenagers.

Mambo Cool, Heaven Knows What and Mauro are three films built on a combination of drugs, music and deliberate blurring of the fiction/ documentary line, both on screen but also in the filmmaking process. Chris Gude’s stylized depiction of the “black market of the black market” of drug trade in Medellín, uses real life members of that community and surreal, highly staged décors and monologues to render the feeling of the mambo cool life. Arielle Holmes is in fact starring in her own heroin-and-love-on-the-streets-of-NYC biopic in Heaven Knows What, a story she wrote after a chance meeting with directors Ben & Joshua Safdie. For the neorealist slice of life story of Argentinian money counterfeiter Mauro, director Hernán Rosselli first major production investment was a real forger’s printing press (the film’s detailed depiction of the forging process will bring to mind William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A.).

Tommy Lee Jones pulls a premature friedkin in The Homesman and hangs his leading lady half way through the film, which still stands for courageous Hollywood storytelling even if he kills Hillary Swank’s character only to have his own take the lead.
As with every edition, the Austrian Film Museum had it’s own programme within the larger frame of the Viennale, a retrospective of John Ford comprising fifty of his films. I saw The Whole Town Laughed, the funniest film of the festival (Birdman running a distant second), and have this piece of drunken nonsensical wisdom to impart, from the mouth of the main character brilliantly played by Edward G. Robinson: “A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” With Sergeant Rutledge I was struck by Ford’s surgical use of humor and the ability to keep the comedic elements from diluting the drama and the higher social and political statement.

Striving for political commentary is something The Terror Live (Byeong-woo Kim) shouldn’t have done. The film starts off with a bang (literally, a bridge blows up) and a news anchor who is contacted by a terrorist and held hostage on live television until his demands are met. For the first half an hour the film lives up to it’s name: a one-man show real time newsroom thriller, brilliantly shot, edited and performed, that has the stakes rising higher and higher with not a moment of respite. As the plot unfolds, the increasing number of dots are getting harder and harder to connect and The Terror Live turns into an action blockbuster with one ridiculous conspiracy running under another, where all the rich people, politicians and television bosses have bribe written on their unsympathetic faces or/and are cynical bastards who don’t mind killing a few people for money, reelection, promotion or rating. To top it all, the finale ties all the loose ends together in a big flashy red bow screaming political ideas wrapped in poorly crafted artistic vehicle.

Loose ends are not a problem for courtroom drama The Blue Room, where Mathieu Amalric delivers a cryptic performance (both as film director and as lead man) that will keep the viewer puzzling over what exactly is he being charged with and who is it that he supposedly killed. Skilfully scripted and edited, the story builds up like a maze through temporally disjointed POV flashbacks and the ongoing investigation. Old pathways are abandoned and new ones emerge, connecting characters, locations, circumstantial evidence, motive, means and opportunity. But when the sentence is delivered, stating that the accused entered the labyrinth at this point, took this route and emerged on this side, the audience is faced with a procedural truth that doesn’t match the map. It is not a matter of right or wrong, but rather that the scales of justice are perfectly balanced. This is no cheap storytelling trick, some important piece of information withheld; the scales are full, the only thing that could tip them would be the accused’s flashback of his crime. But Amalric is not cheating here: either there is no such memory or his protagonist is refusing to remember, both variants equally possible and consistent the storytelling rules that the film has enforced throughout. This wouldn’t have been possible without Amalric’s finely tuned, zero-sum acting. He is in fact, delivering a performance of Schrödinger’s Cat paradox: he’s done it and he hasn’t done it at the same time, we’ll never know, because when the end credits start flowing, he’s still inside the maze.

And so am I, so I’ll just end here, with this image from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, directed by Ana Lily Amirpour: a sailor shirt, black pants and chador twisting in the wind Iranian vampire girl, is rolling on a skateboard through the middle of a dimly lit neo-noir empty street.

Andrei Sendrea

The post Why Viennale is the best film festival appeared first on INHALE MAG.

EN DUVA SATT PÅ EN GREN OCH FUNDERADE PÅ TILLVARON (A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE) – ROY ANDERSSON

Synopsis
Like modern times’ Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Sam and Jonathan, two travelling salesmen peddling novelty items, take us on a kaleidoscopic wandering through human destinies. A trip that shows us the beauty of single moments, the pettiness of others, the humor and tragedy that is in us, life’s grandeur as well as frailty of humanity.

SAVERIO COSTANZO – HUNGRY HEARTS
Synopsis
Jude is an American, Mina an Italian. They meet by chance in New York City. After a whirlwind romance, they get married and she becomes pregnant. A brand new life begins for both of them. Since the early months of pregnancy Mina is convinced that her child will be special; it is her mother instinct that tells her so. This child must be protected from all the pollution of the outside world and, to respect his nature, his purity must also be preserved. For the sake of his love for Mina, Jude plays along with her, until he reaches the point where he has to face a terrible truth: his son is not growing, and his life is in danger. Jude must act quickly. A covert battle of suspicions and resentments begins between Jude and Mina, leading to a desperate search for a solution in which everyone’s motive gets blurred.

photo hypesphere.com

PASOLINI – ABEL FERRARA
Synopsis
One day, one life. Rome, the night of November 2nd 1975, the great Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini is murdered. Pasolini is the symbol of an art that’s fighting against the power. His writings are scandalous, his films are persecuted by the censors, many people love him and many hate him. The day of his death, Pasolini spends his last hours with his beloved mother and later on with his dearest friends, and finally goes out into the night in his Alfa Romeo in search of adventure in the eternal city. Dawn, Pasolini is found dead on a beach in Ostia on the outskirts of the city. In a film dreamlike and visionary, a blend of reality and imagination, Abel Ferrara reconstructs the last day in the life of this great poet.

MANGLEHORN – DAVID GORDON GREEN
Synopsis
Reclusive small town locksmith Angelo Manglehorn has never quite recovered from losing the love of his life, Clara. Fixated on her memory, he feels closer to his beloved cat than the people around him and prefers to find comfort in his work and daily routine. Still, he forges on with his tenuous human connections, maintaining intermittent contact with his son, taking misplaced pride in a former protégé gone astray, and establishing a cautious friendship with a kindhearted woman from the local bank. As this solitary man approaches the possibility of new love, he finds himself at a crossroads between remaining consumed by the past and embracing the present. Manglehorn is a movingly humanistic portrait of a man rendered with unsentimental simplicity and idiosyncratic humor.

BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) [OPENING FILM] – ALEJANDRO GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU
Synopsis
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a black comedy that tells the story of an actor—famous for portraying an iconic superhero—as he struggles to mount a Broadway play. In the days leading up to opening night, he battles his ego and attempts to recover his family, his career, and himself.

THE LOOK OF SILENCE – JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER
Synopsis
Through Joshua Oppenheimer’s work filming perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered and the identity of the men who murdered him. The killers live just down the road, and have been in power ever since the genocide. The family’s youngest son, an optometrist, seeks to bring the past into focus, asking how he can raise his children in a society where survivors are terrorized into silence, and everybody is terrorized into treating the murderers as heroes. In search of answers, he decides to confront each of his brother’s killers. The killers still hold power, so these confrontations are dangerous. The killers respond with fear, anger, and naked threats. But he manages these encounters with dignity, asking hard questions about how the killers see what they did, how they live side-by-side with their victims, and how they think their victims see them. The Look of Silence does something virtually without precedent in cinema or in the aftermath of genocide: it documents survivors confronting their relatives’ murderers in the absence of any truth and reconciliation process, while the murderers remain in power.

LOIN DES HOMMES – DAVID OELHOFFEN
Synopsis
Algeria, 1954. While the rebellion rumbles in the valley, two very different men thrown together by a world in turmoil, are forced to flee together across the Atlas mountains. In the midst of an icy winter, Daru, the reclusive teacher, has to escort Mohamed, a villager accused of murder. Pursued by horsemen seeking summary justice and vengeful settlers, the two men decide to affront the unknown. Together, they fight to gain their freedom.

via labiennale.org

The post Venice Film Festival 2014 Must See appeared first on INHALE MAG.

MR. X: A VISION OF LEOS CARAX

(2014, Tessa Louise-Salomé) “Is Leos Carax your real name or an assumed one?” “It’s a real assumed name.” “What’s your opinion of Carax?” “I wish him courage…” – Godard. “He’s the most undefinable man I know.” – Juliette Binoche. Born Alexandre Dupont, Carax, despite having made only one film in the 21 years between Les Amants du Pont Neuf and Holy Motors, remains France’s flamboyant enfant terrible and the most romantic of filmmakers, creating in many ways, in himself, a second New Wave, adding to the legends of the artist maudit. Louise-Salomé’s documentary portrait features clips, outtakes, stills (with Carax voice-overs); interviews with Juliette Binoche, Michel Piccoli, and favorite actor/alter ego Denis Lavant, even Kylie Minogue; critics Kent Jones and Richard Brody; directors Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Harmony Korine; but even more, via her own startling use of camera and editing, the flavor of a Carax film itself.

photo filmforum.org

photo vimeo.com

via filmforum.org

The post MR. X: A VISION OF LEOS CARAX at Film Forum appeared first on INHALE MAG.

As it happens, Mood Indigo is perhaps Gondry’s most technologically intricate movie, stuffed with stop-motion effects and elaborate Rube Goldberg-style machines. Based on a seminal 1947 French novel L’Écume des jours (Froth on the Daydream, adapted as Foam on the Daze in the US), the film is a dreamy romantic comedy that follows a wealthy French dilettante, Colin (Romain Duris), as he woos a woman, Chloe (Audrey Tautou), who falls ill with a peculiar sickness: a flower growing inside her chest. I sat down with Gondry in New York to ask ask him about the film, his upcoming projects, and his relationship with technology old and new. Mild spoilers follow

Colin (Romain Duris) and Chloe (Audrey Tautou) take a ride in a cloud car in ‘Mood Indigo’ by Michel Gondry. (Drafthouse Films)

Aptly named after the freewheeling Duke Ellington composition, Michel Gondry’s latest film Mood Indigo is an adaptation of Boris Vian’s cult magic-realist novel L’Écume des Jours or Froth on the Daydream. “The big problem here is that Vian belongs to everyone,” says Gondry, who co-wrote the experimental film’s script. “I had to take it detail by detail, inventing lots of objects and using my imagination like a kind of controlled chaos.” Cut from the same cloth as his much-lauded hits Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep, the film tells the tale of a doomed romance between Chloé and Colin (played by Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris) set in an off-kilter world where Jesus flies around in a rocket ship. Giddy set pieces involving stop-motion go-karts and mechanical clouds betray Gondry’s usual signature preference for homespun special effects over CGI.

The surreal narrative of Mood Indigo flourishes as objects respond to the character’s behavior like a jazz ensemble: when grave illness strikes Chloé, her apartment starts to shrink and color film gives way to black and white melancholy. “I don’t see [people] age, but I see their photos growing youthful,” says Gondry, whose unfettered imagination saw him turn a bleach bottle into the Apollo space rocket as a child, and then apply the same idiosyncratic eye to music videos for acts such as Björk, White Strikes and, most recently, Metronomy.

Michel Gondry: Mood Indigo on Nowness.com

Set in a charmingly surreal Paris, Duris plays wealthy bachelor Colin, whose hobbies include developing his pianocktail (a cocktail-making piano) and devouring otherworldly dishes prepared by his trusty chef Nicolas (Omar Sy, The Untouchables, X-Men: Days Of The Future Past). When Colin learns that his best friend Chick (Gad Elmaleh, The Valet), a fellow acolyte of the philosopher Jean-Sol Partre, has a new American girlfriend, our lonely hero attends a friend’s party in hopes of falling in love himself. He soon meets Chloé (Tautou) and, before they know it, they’re dancing to Duke Ellington and plunging headfirst into a romance that Gondry rapturously depicts as only he can. Their whirlwind courtship is tested when an unusual illness plagues Chloe; a flower begins to grow in her lungs. To save her, Colin discovers the only cure is to surround Chloe with a never-ending supply of fresh flowers.

Mood Indigo was Nominated for three 2014 César Awards: Étienne Charry (Best Original Music), Florence Fontaine (Best Costume) and Stéphane Rozenbaum (Best Production Design) and also stars Charlotte Le Bon (Yves Saint Laurent, To Reach the Clouds) and Aïssa Maïga.

He collaborated with the production designer Stéphane Rozenbaum, who helped build the whimsical but handmade world of Mr. Gondry’s 2006 film, “The Science of Sleep.” “Mood Indigo” teems with curious inventions; one of the more intriguing ones is the “pianocktail,” a piano programmed to mix and dispense drinks. In one scene, Colin (Romain Duris) shows his friend Chick (Gad Elmaleh) how it works. Speaking recently by phone from Paris, Mr. Gondry and Mr. Rozenbaum explained how they came up with a more literal version of a piano bar.

Mood Indigo – Movie Stills

Mood Indigo – Movie Stills

Mood Indigo – Movie Stills

Mood Indigo – Movie Stills

Mood Indigo – Movie Stills

Mood Indigo – Movie Stills

Mood Indigo – Movie Stills

Mood Indigo – Movie Stills

At its most basic, the pianocktail creates drinks according to the music being played. Notes correspond with numbers above the keys. Those numbers connect to tubes that release spirits and other ingredients (ice, mint, a little bit of egg) into glasses. While the filmmakers didn’t build a completely functional cocktail-making piano, several parts had to be operable for the shoot. So the keys actually link to lights that flash when notes are played. “There is no CGI here,” Mr. Gondry said. “It was all done in camera with practical effects.” The front of the piano was carved open to expose the strings and make the instrument feel more like a scrappy invention. Mr. Rozenbaum and his team spent three months building the entire thing.

Mood Indigo – Official Poster

- via drafthousefilms.com and nytimes.com

The post Michel Gondry – His Latest Film On The Comedy Of Errors appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Roy Andersson takes his time. In 2000, he made international waves with “Songs From The Second Floor,” but it took seven more years for his next effort, “You, The Living,” to arrive. And now, another seven years has passed and he’s finally back and headed to Venice with “A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence.”

Holger Andersson and Nisse Vestblom are among the cast for the director’s latest, which the first images already reveal to be pretty visually striking. We’ll leave what he’s got coming to the official synopsis followed by his Note Of Intent: Like modern times’ Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Sam and Jonathan, two travelling salesmen peddling novelty items, take us on a kaleidoscopic wandering through human destinies. A trip that shows us the beauty of single moments, the pettiness of others, the humour and tragedy that is in us, life’s grandeur as well as frailty of humanity.

PHOTO: blogs.indiewire.com

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch consists of a bird’s panoramic view of the human condition, in which the bird not only reflects on human existence but also worries deeply about it, as I do myself. The pigeon is astonished that humans do not see an approaching apocalypse, though it is in man’s ability to avoid destroying the future for themselves. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch shows the looming apocalypse and offers the possibility to believe in our capacity to avoid it. Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence will compete for the Golden Lion at the 71st edition of  Venice Film Festival

PHOTO: blogs.indiewire.com

PHOTO: blogs.indiewire.com

PHOTO: blogs.indiewire.com

PHOTO: blogs.indiewire.com

“For me it is an honour to show my film in Venice, considering the fact that Italy has originated so many innovative and unforgettable masterpieces in the history of cinema, by such directors as Vittorio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, to name a few. In my opinion, De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves is still unsurpassed,” said Andersson.

PHOTO: blogs.indiewire.com

PHOTO: blogs.indiewire.com

The post A Pigeon Sat on A Branch Reflecting on Existence, directed by Roy Andersson appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Caixaforum is hosting this exhibition which started out at the MoMA New York. To celebrate the animation studio’s 25th anniversary, it takes a look at the company’s films through models, drawings, storyboards and digital installations.

photo thedaily.triitme.com

In 1986, few people had ever heard of computer animation. In just 25 years, Pixar has revolutionized the audiovisual industry with digital animation techniques that have turned the studio into a hit factory.

Since the premiere of ‘Toy Story’ (in 1995), the first feature-length computer animated film, Pixar Animation Studios has launched a long list of critically-acclaimed blockbusters such as ‘Up’ and ‘Cars’. These films have earned them 26 Oscars and seven Golden Globes, among other awards.

photo thedaily.triitme.com

photo thedaily.triitme.com

The keys to each of these hits are revealed in this show, which presents the characters, stories and fantasy worlds of their productions through storyboards, 3D sculptures, digital installations and models.

photo thedaily.triitme.com

photo thedaily.triitme.com

photo guias-viajar.com

via esmadrid.com

The post Pixar: 25 Years of Animation at CaixaForum Madrid appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Then, Pharrell Williams remixed this song for his friend Takashi Murakami 村上隆’s new video Jellyfish Eyes:

The post TAKASHI MURAKAMI : JELLYFISH EYES appeared first on INHALE MAG.

“Well. Hmm. I … God. That’s a teaser.” He stalls. “I want to be honest. It’s just hard to articulate. I need to scratch my chin about that one. Can we pick it up later?”

He clearly finds interviews akin to visiting the dentist. “But I want to stand behind the film,” he says. The thing is, Under the Skin does invite you to ponder its creator. It concerns an alien in Glasgow, preying – obliquely but chillingly – on single men. They co-operate because the alien is played by Scarlett Johansson, who is still Johansson even in a mangy fur coat and wig. There is footage from cameras hidden in the van in which she tirelessly cruises; elsewhere, visions of her black, amniotic alien realm. Many will loathe it – the premiere at the Venice film festival was met with boos. It will also blow minds, its punk experimentalism and raw sensuality making pretty much everything else seem hopelessly quaint. Masterpiece is the word.

This bold, flawed and admirably out-there adaptation of Michel Faber’s 2000 novel about an extraterrestrial stalker opens with a pinpoint of light that may be a distant twinkling star or an approaching headlight – it’s impossible to tell. From here we move, via kaleidoscopic invention, to an image of an eye; a constructed gaze, human on the outside, alien on the inside – inner space from outer space. With a brilliant blend of abstraction and precision, this sequence establishes a tension between the intergalactic and the earthly that underwrites the subsequent narrative; an eerie tale of a space traveller inhabiting human form, prowling the streets of Glasgow in search of raw flesh.

With such jarring elements clashing on screen, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Under the Skin has provoked both forceful boos and cheers, the heated antipathy of some viewers and critics apparently spurring the passionate devotion of others. Yet this is neither a misunderstood masterpiece nor a wanton misstep – rather it is a striking attempt to tell an exotic story in a down-to-earth environment that deserves praise for its singularity of vision, even as it runs the risk of ridicule. Glazer has joked that in an ideal world he’d make films that would only ever be viewed by a handful of close friends, and it’s to his credit that Under the Skin doesn’t make compromises to court a wider audience. On the contrary, it is the work of someone who is aiming for the heavens, but is unafraid to fall to Earth.

Ray Winstone as Gal, the retired crook on the Costa Brava, in Jonathan Glazer’s 2000 film Sexy Beast.

Jonathan Glazer

-info and visuals via The Guardian and IMDB

The post UNDER THE SKIN BY JONATHAN GLAZER : IN USA STARTING APRIL 4TH appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Daniel Clowes has seen his work adapted without permission
photo comicsalliance.com

Some might argue against this association with his low brow commercial career past, the point being that he is rejecting his celebrity persona. However, my main point is that he fits perfectly into the narrative of child-star–turned-rebel. While working with Lars von Trier is a notoriously transformative process, I doubt that it was the Danish director’s aura alone that explains LaBeouf’s behavior.

I had noticed The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman after a Hannibal series tour de force, and a more than delightful viewing of The Hunt, after which I was convinced that Mads Mikkelsen is incapable of being anything other than an amazing actor in any of his roles; a Norwegian Daniel Day Lewis if you will. With the conjunction of LaBeouf’s slightly baffling coverage, I decided to watch the film and perhaps notice the root of his anxiety and troubles in an indie production, where he, as an artist, could theoretically express himself more freely as a lead actor in a character driven movie.

photo puppymunch.tumblr.com

Given his recent performance piece in LA, called #iamsorry, where a crowd of mainly TMZ drawn fans lined up to sit in front of him for a few minutes as he supposedly apologized, I think I might extend the barrier of his work from the physical to the virtual, and propose a few things Shia Labeouf should be sorry about after watching the film.
1. He should be sorry for his acting inconsistency. While Charlie Countryman switches from grieving son to enamoured puppy to noir detective, the audience registers exactly zero changes in his character, and that is perhaps the most frustrating aspect about the film.
2. He should be sorry for rehashing all rom-com clichés that died once Jude Apatow got a bit serious about writing. From tired speeches about love, to single guitar cord soundtrack, the film excels at offering no original line of dialogue or film-making.
3. Shia should say sorry that he made a big deal about taking acid before filming a scene where Charlie Countryman is on LSD, only for the audience to see a minute’s worth of unconvincing moaning. Watch Enter the Void and take some acting lessons; perhaps then you can start comparing yourself to Sean Penn.
4. He should apologize for missing the opportunity to portray a vibrant Eastern European capital with anything other than soviet police state/interwar nostalgia stereotypes, and Eurotrip references.
5. As a personal note, I’d personally want LaBeouf to apologize for the worst English speaker trying to say something in Romanian scene that, as a Romanian abroad, I have ever seen.
I’d give an actual review of the film, but I see no use in pointing out flaws in paragraph form. Even Mikkelsen disappoints, and he’s the best thing to come out of the whole movie.

In the end, we might end up posing some serious questions about what celebrity culture does to the young stars that spend most of their childhood in the rainbow coloured spotlight of the Disney channel. When Selena Gomez stars in the most MTV-generation damning movie of all, directed by the all time American myth-destroyer Harmony Korine, and Miley Cyrus keeps wiping her make-up from all the tongue showing and pretend fornication acts, Shia LaBeouf actions seem more-so part of a trend, rather than a personal meltdown.

photo popdust.com

This is defined by a game of opposites that all these stars play, based on the idea that there can be no linearity between two stages in a career, no slow incursion into quality film-making or serious song-writing. Perhaps when you have so many Twitter followers telling you that you are perfect just the way you are, moving from one to another might gain tragic proportions in your mind. Maybe they were never supposed to be lauded as much to begin with, or maybe they just aren’t cut for real work. Whether we really want to or not, we will be watching closely.

by Paul Dunca

Paul Dunca is a freelance saboteur looking for a change of pace. He writes reviews and opinion pieces to keep appearances and can be reached at various wishing wells around London.

The post BORED AT MOVIES: WHY SHIA LaBEOUF #shoudbesorry appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Why a Wes?

He loves books and in them he finds inspiration.

He’s a bibliophile and his love expresses itself mildly, at first, with Bottle Rocket. Stefan Zweig,  a Viennese writer, is one those that most of us haven’t even heard of. It’s in works like his that Anderson finds his inspiration now. Zweig charts every fluctuation of inner turmoil, show a propulsive force of the narrative and always adds an ingenious twist in his fiction.

A style signature are the slow motion endings, where emotions soar while the music plays.

Tripadvisor does not list The Grand Hotel Budapest.

The pastel colored establishment is situated somewhere in the 1930s’ Mitteleuropa and it’s peopled by eccentrics and lunatics. The movie set is a closed-down department store in Germany’s most eastern town, at the border of Poland, but in the fictional republic of Zubrowka.

photo highsnobiety.com

A Wes theory: “If a film takes such a big chunk of life, the process should be enjoyable”

Both the cast and crew lived together, for the duration of the filming, in a small hotel in Gorlitz, Germany. That’s why shooting with Wes sounds like summer camp.

When nothing gets you going more than the promise of an impressive cast.

Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Tom Wilkinson.

photo totalfilm.com

Tilda- a magnum of the best champagne!

Tilda Swinton is known for her age defying looks. Wes Anderson always demanded of his very famous Hollywood stars to transform into characters out of their comfort zone. Tilda left her usual androgynous appearance to play the octogenarian blonde widow Madam D, who has been wooed by Ralph Fiennes as the famous concierge Gustave H. Her character’s steamer trunk and luggage are designed by Prada and already on display, in Berlin.

“I’ve done a bunch of movies. And it’s a  luxury to me that they’re all whatever I’ve wanted them to be.“

W. A

My reality is blurred by his vision when I watch a Wes Anderson movie. It almost has the effect of a dream wrapped in a mystery. Each of his frames is packed with props and enchant with a rich color palette, a balanced symmetry and unusually absorbing richness. This 45 year old film director, a Star Wars passionate who used to fantasize about eloping with a girl in his class, mystifies me with his characters that seem to be in detail-perfect dioramas, in a clockwork plot.

photo geektyrant.com

by Silva Helena Schmidt

Silva Helena Schmidt is a lively spirited young actress, currently working as a voice-over for a media channel. Devouring, and likewise devoured by, cinematography, soundtrack curator and a storyteller.

The post THERE IS SOMETHING WITTY ABOUT WES ANDERSON appeared first on INHALE MAG.

The Expo is also a dynamic platform for designers and creative businesses to showcase their wares and market themselves to the general public and industry buyers.

Since 2004 Design Indaba Expo has been held annually at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, with more than 35 000 people coming through the doors each year.

It has grown to become the biggest curated design event in the Southern Hemisphere and is the only platform that welcomes advertising, craft, decor, fashion, product design, industrial design, new media, publishing, visual art, jewellery design and graphic design, all under one roof.

Following its debut at the past Sundance Film Festival, catch the African premiere of Finding Fela – a portrait of Fela Kuti.
The film directed by Alex Gibney explores the life and music of this Nigerian multi-instrumentalist, musician and composer, Fela Kuti. Kuti is regarded as the pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre who used his music as a weapon, as a confrontational platform to expose issues of human rights and social justice.

Millions know their voices, but no one knows their names. In his compelling new film 20 Feet from Stardom, award-winning director Morgan Neville shines a spotlight on the untold true story of the backup singers behind some of the greatest musical legends of the 21st century. Triumphant and heart-breaking in equal measure, the film is both a tribute to the unsung voices who brought shape and style to popular music and a reflection on the conflicts, sacrifices and rewards of a career spent harmonising with others.

James Dewitt Yancey, more commonly known as DJ Dilla. Ever since his passing in February 2007, there has been month-long tributes to this legend held annually the world over. From Dilla Day Detroit in the US and weheartbeat’s Dilla Day in Johannesburg to The Basement in Sydney, Australia.

It is because of his pioneering contribution to the genre as a wordsmith, producer and multi-instrumentalist that people such as Cape Town-based beat-genius and creator of Button Bashers Cape Town, Luc Veermeer are able to apply themselves musically using Dilla taught techniques to move crowds.

Ceramic Factory has been making a wide range of items for hotels, game lodges, interior designers and retail spaces since 2012. Their covetable collections include pot plant holders, miniature animals and robots, crockery and wall hangings, all of which liven up any living space.

At Design Indaba Expo 2014, the factory is showcasing their Skull range. The collection is inspired by South African wildlife and comprises a variety of biltong bowls. Each piece features a small ceramic skull around which biltong is placed when serving.

photo designindaba.com

photo designindaba.com

via designindaba.com

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photo indiewire.com

Yves Saint Laurent
Jalil Lespert directs the first of two YSL biopics — this one starring Pierre Niney as the haute couture wunderkind and Guillaume Gallienne as his lover and business partner. Critics are already buzzing about Niney’s performance. The film will screen at the Berlin International Film Festival as a Panorama opener.

photo marieclaire.co.uk

The Monuments Men, directed by Geroge Clooney, featuring Damon, Murray, Cate Blanchett and Jean Dujardin among its cast, will screen out of competition Saturday, Feb. 8

photo standard.co.uk

Michel Gondry’s Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?, a documentary of his impressions from a series of talks with American linguist Noam Chomsky, is among the titles rounding out the Panorama Documentary section during the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival.

photo trailers.apple.com

Section organizers also said on Wednesday that the doc lineup would also include British entry 20,000 Days on Earth by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. Billed as a densely poetic portrait of Australian musician, author and actor Nick Cave, the movie will mark its European debut in Berlin after unspooling at Sundance.

photo 20000daysonearth.com

La belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast) stars Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux, who appeared in the Palme D’Or-winning lesbian love story Blue is the Warmest Colour. The French/German film will screen out of competition, but will be making its international premiere at the festival.

more at http://www.berlinale.de/en/HomePage.html

via hollywoodreporter.com, telegraph.co.uk

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Finding Fela
No individual better embodies African music of the 1970s and ’80s—and its pivotal role in postcolonial political activism—than Fela Kuti. After quickly taking his native Nigeria by storm, the pioneering musician’s confrontational Afrobeat sound soon spread throughout the continent and beyond, even as it made determined enemies of the repressive Nigerian military regime. As a result of continued persecution, increasingly unorthodox behavior, and, eventually, complications due to HIV, Kuti’s final years saw his musical output and influence wane.

photo blouinartinfo.com

A Most Wanted Man is based on le Carre’s 2008 novel of the same name and stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as some kind of crazy German spy hunting down some other spy (Grigoriy Dobrygin, giving off a kind of Tom Hardy vibe) who has escaped German intelligence’s grasp. Like most le Carre joints, there seem to be an incredible amount of characters (played by the likes of Robin Wright, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe and 2013 MVP Daniel Bruhl) and a whole bunch of shadowy espionage, perpetrated largely by dapper men in cleanly pressed suits.

The movie is directed by the wonderful Anton Corbijn, whose last film, the deeply under-appreciated “The American,” seemed at least partially inspired by le Carre (or the le Carre works that ran on British television).

photo news.moviefone.com

Camp X-Ray
A young woman joins the military to be part of something bigger than herself and her small-town roots. Instead, she ends up as a new guard at Guantanamo Bay, where her mission is far from black and white. Surrounded by hostile jihadists and aggressive squadmates, she strikes up an unusual friendship with one of the detainees. As two people on opposite sides of a war, they struggle to find their way through the ethical quagmire of Guantanamo Bay. In the process, they form an unlikely bond that changes them both.

Intricately constructed, Camp X-Ray is a case study in the power of performance. At still a young age, Kristen Stewart has long been much more than a movie star, and with this nuanced and internal performance, she continues to prove she has serious acting chops.

photo filmguide.sundance.org

Ernest and Celestine

“Mice and bears can never be friends” according to the rules in the charming world of Ernest and Celestine. Celestine is a young mouse in an underground land where cautionary tales of bears are told and all mice are destined to become dentists. But that doesn’t stop Celestine from dreaming of becoming an artist. After being assigned a mission above ground—the world of bears—Celestine meets Ernest, a big bear, clown, and musician who lives on the fringes of bear society. Ernest welcomes her into his home, flying in the face of the established order. But when they are discovered by forces above and below ground, their unique friendship is tested. Will the unlikely pair be able to overcome the long-standing divide between mice and bears?

photo filmguide.sundance.org

God Help the Girl

Eve is a catastrophe—low on self-esteem but high on fantasy, especially when it comes to music. Over the course of one Glasgow summer, she meets two similarly rootless souls: posh Cass and fastidious James, and together they form a group.

In God Help the Girl, first-time writer/director Stuart Murdoch creates a poignant coming-of-age story that doubles as an indie-pop musical. The project began as a suite of songs, written while Murdoch was in between records and tours as lead singer of Belle and Sebastian.

photo filmguide.sundance.org

Song One

For a while now, Franny has been in Morocco researching Bedouin tribes for her PhD in anthropology. The last time she spoke to her brother, Henry, they fought brutally over his decision to ditch college and become a musician. When a terrible accident puts Henry in a coma, Franny rushes home to New York. Desperately seeking clues to his recovery, she dips her toe into the Brooklyn music scene he inhabited, attending a concert by his singer/songwriter hero, James Forester. When James unexpectedly visits Henry’s hospital room, a spark kindles between Franny and this reticent stranger. In the vibrant coffeehouses and clubs they frequent, love and grief intermingle. Franny discovers a new appreciation for her family and the possibility of truly connecting with people, rather than living life solely as an observer.

photo filmguide.sundance.org

Wish I Was Here

Following his celebrated debut feature, Garden State, Zach Braff delivers a new postcard from the edge of existential crisis, this time playing a thirtysomething family man wrestling with a few minor hindrances—like his disapproving father, an elusive God, and yes, adult responsibility. Aidan Bloom is a pot-smoking actor whose last job, a dandruff commercial, was longer ago than he cares to admit. Pursuing his thespian dream has landed him and his wife in tough financial straits, so when his grumpy father can no longer pay for the kids to attend Jewish Yeshiva, Aidan opts for homeschooling. To the chagrin of his hyperdisciplined, religious daughter and the delight of his less-than-studious son, Aidan takes matters into his own imaginative hands, rather than sticking to the boring old traditional curriculum.

photo filmguide.sundance.org

A Portrait of Marina Abramović

This one-take, 3-D film majestically documents legendary performance artist Marina Abramović, capturing the breadth of space in infinite detail: the life of an artist, her keen sense of transition, a space’s decay, and the ripeness of rebirth.

photo filmguide.sundance.org

via  filmguide.sundance.org, blouinartinfo.com, news.moviefone.com.

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photo hollywoodreporter.com

More controversially, he connects the paintings through the fictitious story of a red-haired New York actress who leads the viewer through America’s wars and social history from 1931-63. The highly political dimension Deutsch adds to Hopper’s work risks enraging some and boring others. Yet if one allows the filmmaker the artistic license to experiment with a unique interdisciplinary art project, and to weave his own story around another artist’s ambience, Shirley opens up these 20th century American scenes to alternate interpretations. In any case, this feature-length film composed of nearly static tableaux vivants is earmarked for art museums, many of whose patrons are likely to find it beguiling.

photo screendaily.com

We first meet Shirley (Canadian-born dancer and choreographer Stephanie Cumming) aboard a train reading a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. The painting it re-creates is Hopper’s 1965 “Chair Car” and it introduces several motifs that Deutsch favors throughout the film: incredible colors, strong diagonals, bright lighting, huge empty windows promising a larger world outside the confines of one’s own life. The next scene is “Hotel Room” set in Paris in 1931, where our heroine contemplates her return to New York after a European holiday. Though the set ably captures the cramped atmosphere of the painting, in this case it is a less slavish imitation. The space is rationalized somewhat by shifting the window to another wall, and so on.

photo bieff.ro

Deutsch’s careful analysis of Hopper’s approach to his subjects contributes to the illusion of seeing a movie-size painting as much as the lighting and set design. Often, for instance, the fixed camera has a very voyeuristic feel in observing the girl in her underwear, much like the p.o.v. of a film audience. Not surprisingly (also given that Shirley is supposed to be a professional actress who has worked with groups like the Living Theater) a number of works refer directly to theater and the movies, like “New York Movie” in which we find Shirley “playing the role” (her words) of the bored blonde usherette. In “Intermission” she watches a romantic French movie. “Hotel Lobby” has her reading a Thornton Wilder play in New Haven being directed by Elia Kazan, in which she is to play the part of a maid. In a later tableau, she will be devastated by the news that Kazan has turned in Communist friends to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

photo demening.be

It’s a stretch to set Hopper’s dreamlike images, frozen between past and present, in a precise historical context, yet each is preceded by a radio newscaster reading the headlines. So pass the Depression, Mussolini and Hitler, the Cold War, Korea, JFK and Martin Luther King, all the way to Vietnam. Though Shirley herself remains timeless and unaging, her earnest interest in the social, political and cultural issues of the day reminds us she is a reflective New York intellectual riding the crest of avant-garde thought, however outdated some of her ideas may seem today. The curious time warp she lives in creates a strange sense of tension in the quiet film.
Looking like a mysterious cross between Julianne Moore and Jessica Chastain, Cumming uses her very expressive body and eyes to create the mood of each painting. As her silent boyfriend Steve, and later her boss in “Office at Night,” German thesp Christoph Bach is a ghostly presence without a line of dialogue.
Working seamlessly with the lighting and sets are the precisely colored backdrops of walls and floors by scenic artist Hanna Schimek and the sensuous costumes of Julia Cepp.

photo kgp.co.at

via hollywoodreporter.com

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Fraction is Eric Raynaud, a french electronic music producer and sound plastician currently living in Paris (France). After a 10 years carrier as an indie rock band leader, he ditched in his guitar and her pedal distortion while living in Boston (USA) for a laptop and his virtual tools then began kicking out the jams in 2005 under the name of FRACTION.

photo vimeo.com

“In the field of science and technology that built the Western world there are only machines which accelerates. Whoever invents a machine to slow down will be considered as an absurd man” Paul Virilio, 1991

Dromos is an allegory of the “Dromology concept” as developed by French philosopher and architect Paul Virilio so as to explore the meaning of today’s world. As he becomes aware of the essential part that Speed plays in the organization of our societies and territories, and of its ongoing acceleration, he predicts an “integral” accident.

When increasing the speed, you augment impatience.

Dromos – An immersive performance by Fraction & Maotik from fraction on Vimeo.

Dromos is a metaphoric AV Performance that takes its concept from the philosophical work of P. Virilo who is mostly known for founding the idea of Dromology (science of speed). Dromos invites audience to a criticism experience of the ’peed’ role that impacts all aspects of our daily lives. During 40mns, it focuses people attention on this essential factor that shapes our world. With its message, Dromos invites you to wonder about your relationship with progress. It’s an unconventional work with an original sensorial approach, placing the audience inside an immersive environment.

photo lescreatures.org

photo Caroline Hayeur

photo fractionmusic.com

photo vimeo.com

photo Sébastien Roy – Société des arts technologiques

photo youtube.com

photo pinterest.com

via lescreatures.org

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BIEFF is also the first event in Romania dedicated to promoting the border area between cinema and visual art, offering increased visibility to cutting edge visual artists, whose work is mainly accessible in museums and in the art gallery circuit and rarely on cinema screen. We do this because we believe this border area is an extremely rich, creatively nourishing territory, from where unique artistic voices have constantly emerged over the years, such as Peter Greenaway, David Lynch, Derek Jarman, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage etc.

BIEFF presents on one side an INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL SHORT FILM COMPETITION, consisting of some of the most intriguing and innovative visual experiments from the last few years, titles awarded and screened in prestigious festivals, museums and galleries all over the world, such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Centre Pompidou etc.

The much-awaited Terry Gilliam‘s ZERO THEOREM will be screened here, in the opening of the festival:

photo thezerotheorem-movie.com

Here are some of the films that will be screened:

Winner of a Special Jury Mention at Cannes 2013, 37º4 S speaks about growing-up and the illusions first love entails, as well as about the notion of home and uprooting. In a lyrical cinematographic style with documentary elements, the story is set on a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean, inhabited by only 270 people. Two of them, the teenagers Nick and Anne, have been together for as long as they can remember. But Anne has to leave now for boarding school in London, which shakes the boy’s entire world. Her decision makes his present time blend with beautiful memories of the past and questions without answer related to an uncertain future.

photo bieff.ro

World premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week 2013, the conceptual experiment BUTTER LAMP is an intriguing investigation on cultural identity issues. Starting from a practice still popular in China, at the border between fiction and documentary, the film witnesses a photo shoot, where a photographer takes family pictures of several Tibetans, including a large nomadic family, against landmark backgrounds: the Great Wall of China, Disneyland, Beijing’s Olympic Stadium, a Hawaiian beach etc. Cleverly exploring the visual relation between foreground and background, BUTTER LAMP gets a significant socio-political charge. It becomes a subtle commentary on the abusive assimilation of Tibetan culture by China and the Western world, the Tibetans being forced to fight from a peripheral position to preserve their identity.

DA VINCI is an exceptional, cinematic take on the amazing world of the modern operating theatre, in which the patient seems to have only a small part as all eyes are on the monitor. The final part of YURI ANCARANI’s trilogy is set in an operating theatre where a fabulous journey through the human body is undertaken by robot arms, with the surgeon at the joystick. Science fiction-like, it is reminiscent of Richard Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage. ANCARANI captures the whole operation with minute precision, beautifully lit, like a dazzling choreography, accompanied by an exciting soundtrack.

photo hotdocs.ca

A surrealist haute-couture fantasy, bearing the unmistakable signature of the director of ATTENBERG, THE CAPSULE is a fascinating allegorical exploration of the feminine mystery. Reminiscent of Jan Švankmajer, Pina Bausch and Maya Deren, the movie tells the story of a gothic matron and her seven young disciples, as they are initiated in the essence of femininity through a ritualistic danse macabre. An intelligent play on genre film conventions (horror, melodrama, fetish cinema), this seductive insight into feminine nature masterfully combines animation, choreography and live-action, in a thought-provoking dialogue between cinema, fashion and visual art.

photo yatzer.com

texts by Diana Mereoiu, Rotterdam Film Festival, via bieff.ro

The post BIEFF 2013 – THE EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL appeared first on INHALE MAG.

PFF took place last week, 23-27th October, and, once again, shocked the audience and mostly the non-German audience since we, the rest of Europeans still don’t understand an erotic performance at VMA, not to mention a festival of porn film.

photo indiewire.com

photo pornfilmfestivalberlin.de

Still, this edition was a little more “accesible to under-age people” if I can say it so. The explicit, hardcore or mainstream films have been presented to a smaller audience, since the majority of films were artistic, documentaries, experimental or films that we would have problems to define.

photo pornfilmfestivalberlin.de

In other words, Sasha Grey, this Alice in Wonderland of porn indistry is still among the few actresses who continue to prefer hardcore sex instead of artistic productions since she is no frigide. If there is Sasha Grey, then there is rope, whip, dirty talk and deep penetration.

photo stilinberlin.de

photo stilinberlin.com

photo pornfilmfestivalberlin.de

by Mike Scar

Mike Scar an urban teen blogger and creative dreamer, obsessed with cool stuff. He has plenty of creative thoughts and opinions concerning various topics that are waiting to be revealed. As far as concerns him, the term “cool” is a smogarboard of unconventional, sex, shocking, stylish and contemporary innovations.

Check his blog : www.room-services.com

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Blue is based on the graphic novel Le Bleu Est Une Couleur Chaude by Julie Maroh, and its main character is a 15-year-old disquieted beauty, exquisitely rendered by Exarchopoulos, who has an erotic awakening upon crossing paths with Emma (played by Seydoux in the film), a confident, cobalt-haired college student studying art. Their lust at first sight evolves and unravels throughout a highly nuanced three hours, punctuated not only by ample girl-on-girl action but by a violent confrontation involving a literal bitch slap.

Along with Jane Campion, Seydoux and Exarchopoulos are the only women to have ever received the prestigious festival award, an honor they shared in a three-way win with Kechiche, who has reputation for socio-political cinema. As it turns out, the film debuted just as gay-marriage legislation passed in France, though its leading ladies say they are less concerned with activism than they are with acting.

Having tangoed with Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris), and in blockbusters (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Robin Hood), Seydoux’s steady encroach on Hollywood continues apace with Wes Anderson’s upcoming The Grand Budapest Hôtel. She also has two French films on the horizon, starring opposite Vincent Cassel in a remake of Beauty and the Beast, and in Saint Laurent as late designer Yves’s longtime friend and muse Loulou de la Falaise. Exarchopoulos, meanwhile, is teaming up with Sara Forestier, another veteran Kechiche discovery, now making her directorial debut. Exarchopoulos will play a stutterer. But with her controversy-soaked breakout film now hitting theaters, she speaks freely on its pressure points—and her Blue co-star Seydoux doesn’t mince words either.

-via interviewmagazine.com

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Damien Hirst is no artist that plays with small exhibitions or small works. When he puts on a show, the dimensions are impressive. “Relics” – why that name? Is it an irony towards contemporary art? So, when does a contemporary work become old?

photo economist.com

“For the Love of God” is the main piece of the exhibition. No work that contains the word God in it was translated into Arabic. It’s quite an interesting topic and nudes are also not allowed for public viewing. This makes the exhibition even more interesting, because it Hirst is a controversial artist even for the Western world. Dead animals, nudes, diamonds – it’s a powerful mix that will surely remain in the focus of the public.

photo economist.com

photo economist.com

Of course, such an exhibition should produce a change in people’s perception, since it is a sign of the liberation of art and a proof of freedom of expression. Will this happen here? We will see this in time, after people visit this show. Anyhow, it is an important event on the art scene.

photo economist.com

photo economist.com

photo economist.com

photo economist.com

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photo laughingsquid.com

“Wes Anderson is one of the most influential voices from the past two decades of American cinema. A true auteur, Anderson is known for the visual artistry, inimitable tone, and idiosyncratic characterizations that make each of his films — ‘Bottle Rocket,’ ‘Rushmore,’ ‘The Royal Tenenbaums,’ ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,’ ‘The Darjeeling Limited,’Fantastic Mr. Fox,’ and ‘Moonrise Kingdom‘ — instantly recognizable as “Andersonian.” Previously unpublished photos, artwork, and ephemera complement a book-length conversation between Anderson and award-winning critic Matt Zoller Seitz. The interview and images are woven together in a meticulously designed book that captures the spirit of his films: melancholy and playful, wise and childish—and thoroughly original.”

photo laughingsquid.com

photo laughingsquid.com

photo laughingsquid.com

photo theworldsbestever.com

photo theworldsbestever.com

via laughingsquid.com

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Karolinksi is interested in telling a good story, rather than to work on specific areas. “To say something is a documentary or a narrative or a hybrid — what does that even mean? Fifty years ago, there were filmmakers making fascinating projects we’d call hybrids today. I just want to tell a good story.”

What if Punk was actually linked to motherhood? Here is the result:

photo vimeo.com

photo vimeo.com

photo vimeo.com

photo vimeo.com

photo showstudio.com

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Asghar Farhadi – the director who won the Golden Bear and the Oscar for best foreign film for excellent Nader and Simin : A Separation (2011 ), returns with a drama that brought the actress Bérénice Bejo a Cannes prize for interpretation. Le passé won the Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cannes and will represent Iran at the 2014 Oscars.

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It is a drama “complex and often brilliant, with intelligent interpretations and retained; it has a stylish mosaic details, unexpected twists, turns and revelations full of suspense,” according to The Guardian. Four years after their separation, the man comes to Tehran from Paris, at his French wife’s request to begin the formalities of divorce. During his short stay, he discovers that between his wife and daughter there is a tensed relationship. His efforts to diminish this conflict lead to the revealing of a secret from the past. Bérénice Bejo is joined by Tahar Rahim, Ali Mosaffa, Sabrina Ouazani or Valeria Cavalli.

Actor Bruce Dern, in Nebraska, the sixth American film director Alexander Payne, also impressed the judges and audience at Cannes. At the award ceremony in Cannes, the actor received the trophy for Best Actor for a part of old man who believes he won the jackpot in a lottery correspondence, and who wants to get to Nebraska in order to get the prize. The family is worried this is a sign of senility and they intend to take him to a shelter for old people, but one of his sons agrees to accompany him to Nebraska. Along the way , the old man forces him to stop for a few days in the city, where he finds the whole past.

photo telegraph.co.uk

Filmed in black and white, the film actors are both professionals as well as non-professional. It is, as noted Scott Foundas, film critic at  Variety , a sort of  “ode to small-town Midwestern life and the quixotic dreams of stubborn old men. ” Alexander Payne has directed About Schmidt (2002 ) with Jack Nicholson, Sideways (2004 ) and The Descendants (2011 ) with George Clooney.

A special event at Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest will be Polluting Paradise (Garbage in the Garden of Eden), a documentary project directed by Fatih Akin, projected at the Special Screenings section at the Cannes Film Festival last year. German director of Turkish origin is the multi-award-winning films, such as Gegen die Wand (Golden Bear at Berlin, 2004), The Edge of Heaven (Best Screenplay, Cannes 2007) or Soul Kitchen (2009).

For five years, Fatih Akin documented the battle of inhabitants from a village in Turkey, Camburnu, with the government after it decided that there will be installed a huge landfill. What chance have ordinary people everywhere, in the battle with the most powerful institutions of state? is the question of who started the documentary. The landfill has profoundly changed lives: from pollution and unbearable smell up the threat that nobody will buy products grown in the area.

via filmedefestival.ro

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photo camera-etc.be

Andreea: I wanted to start with your work. What is Camera-Etc.?

Jean-Luc: It’s an animation studio based in Liege, in French talking Belgium. We have to improve the cinematography culture in out French talking community. We have three important departments or ways to produce films. The first has an educational level- we are doing workshops with kids, with youngsters, with adults. Then we have a huge international side, we are building projects for cultural exchange between countries, mostly in Africa, but we are working in Asia, in South America, in Mexico, Cuba. And the third part consists of our own productions.

Andreea: How do these intercultural projects work?

Jean-Luc: We go there and try to make some exchanges. In Burkina Faso we are active for 10 years and we’ve built a team, we trained people there that are coming to Belgium as well. And then we are making some projects on the field with kids that we co-produce with local NGOs.

Andreea: How do these projects help the people involved?

Jean-Luc: It’s what we call audio-visual cooperation. Also, I don’t see why african people couldn’t have acces to the new technologies and there are a lot of trainings about the Internet and so on. We think animation is a very good tool to make some collective work, it’s very easy and also you have to use the power of animation, as means of symbolic and metaphoric. And it’s very important to us to respect the local culture, in term of graphic design, but also language.

Andreea: That’s beautiful – with the language as well, since you don’t force them to adapt to a different system.

Jean-Luc: Yes, and it differs a lot from these NGOs – they are thinking about didactic products and we try to impluse cinema products. The big difference is that in cinema we are touching people with emotions, not with a list of things to do. What we are trying to do is avoid giving a solution, but to raise some questions. We have to fight against what the NGOs like, since they like to tell people do this, don’t do this. And we say No, if you want to touch people, if you want to make the people think, you have to raise some questions.

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Andreea: Yes, but they probably have a programme and a direction.

Jean-Luc: Unfortunately, it’s the only way we can find some founds for these projects.

Andreea: Do you feel responsible for a community once you get there?

Jean-Luc: Of course, a major responsibility. This is our professional part of our projects and this is the biggest chance to be given grants by he Government all these years is to really work with a professional team, not only in terms of animation techniques, but the human part of the project. So the main point for us is to valorise the people that take part in the project. This is why we give the people involved, children as well, power.  We give them the chance to do something with the help of professionals.

Andreea: What is the main difference between film and animation?

Jean-Luc: The animation has a is symbolic and metaphorical power. In animation you have to synthetise, to reduce thinks to the essential.

Andreea: And how do you judge an animation? Cause there’s the technical part, the story…

Jean-Luc: That’s a very difficult question every element you talked about, we take care of. But finally, what makes the decision for me is the emotion. If there’s emotion in the film… You can have some films with very good technique, I have some good examples but I’m not allowed to tell you, but which are very bad in terms of story.

photo guimaraes2012.pt

Andreea: I saw some short film this edition that blew me away in terms of technique, that were so different ones from the others, I think in animation you can do so much, but which somehow lacked the story.

Jean-Luc: Yes, this is the main problem in the world and the production of films is so huge, there are made around 7000 feature films every year in Europe, I don’t know what Europe means here, but it’s a huge amount. There is a lack of story especially in animation, since the young film makers are more concerned about the technique, they want to do something well, they learn how to animate, so they are proud of their skills.

Andreea: Yes, but couldn’t they work with some scripwriters?

Jean-Luc: You are right. I’m organizing trainings for 20 years now around the world and it was always the demand on terms of technique. And nowadays I always start with storytelling and scriptwriters. It’s very important.

Andreea: How did this work out? Cause artist have their own ego.

Jean-Luc: You are perfectly right. One problem with some people is the ego.

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Andreea: And how do they work together? Do they have to connect in a way or…

Jean-Luc: The main point is to make people understand that, for me, animation is about a team, it’s a collective work. So, I don’t like the people who come to me and say “I made the film by myself.” This is the worst idea that students have, they think they can make the work thenselves, alone. So in our trainings we try to limit the distance between people since they have to work together. If they don’t, they leave the group.

Andreea: What do you think about this idea that animation is only for children?

Jean-Luc: This is something strange, since animation started at the sparks of cinema. Georges Méliès and all these guys didn’t do animation for kids. So, what I can say is that animation is a huge industry nowadays and what works better in this industry is family entertainment, unfortunately. I’m definitely not a fan of TV series of animation for kids.

photo safcakovec.com

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It does. McQueen’s films, photographs, and sculptures are challenging—in his video “Caribs’ Leap,” the men falling through the sky allude to the mass suicides in 17th-­century Grenada, and his installation Queen and Country, of postage-stamp portraits memorializing Britain’s Iraq-war fatalities, toured the U.K. and drove home the war’s devastation.

His two feature films, Hunger and Shame, both explore situations of captivity through brutally carnal performances and uncomfortable camerawork. In Hunger, about the IRA hunger strike protests, Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and his fellow prisoners have nothing left to protest with but their own bodies. “Sands transcended prison by not eating,” McQueen explains. “And Brandon [Fassbender’s sex-addicted character in Shame] puts himself into a kind of prison by engaging in repeated sexual acts.” They’re raw films, but there is a dignity given to the characters that makes one believe McQueen when he says, “I like people”—despite how much he tortures them onscreen.

The director Steve McQueen has found a way to constantly include the element of surprise in his work, both as an artist and as a filmmaker. It would be dismissive and reductive to say that he operates on pure instinct, but what he has done with his installations—such as his video pieces Bear (1993) and Five Easy Pieces (1995)—comments on the way that we inhabit space, and how subtly and insidiously shocking it is when our intimate spaces have been violated. He often seems surprised himself when he’s asked about the unrelenting power in his work. The three feature films he’s responsible for as director—Hunger (2008), Shame (2011), and his latest, an adaptation of Solomon Northup’s 1853 narrative Twelve Years a Slave, which is out this month—all explore the notion of having someone’s personal space invaded, and how the protagonists in each film deal with that issue.

Given how unflinching his productions have been, the 44-year-old McQueen is remarkably gentle and thoughtful—so much so that he will request a moment to consider a question, and turn it around in his head to get the shape and weight of it, before answering, occasionally with an excited rush of words in response. (And I’m hard-pressed to remember a conversation with him, be it an interview or a chat over tea, that hasn’t included a chuckling, “I hope that won’t stir up too much trouble …”) That has been my experience with him since we became acquainted a few years back, after the American release of Hunger. He has an insatiable desire to understand and to be understood; if his work stimulates conversation—demands it, really—then so much the better.

-read an interview via theinterviewmagazine.com and wmagazine.com

Photography SEBASTIAN KIM
Stylist MIGUEL ENAMORADO
STEVE McQUEEN IN NEW YORK, AUGUST 2013. ALL CLOTHING: McQUEEN’S OWN.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER IN HUNGER. PHOTO: REX USA/MOVIESTORE COLLECTION/REX.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER IN SHAME. PHOTO: ABBOTT GENSER

CAREY MULLIGAN IN SHAME. PHOTO: ABBOTT GENSER

STILL FROM 12 YEARS A SLAVE. CHIWETEL EJIOFOR (MIDDLE LEFT) AND QUIVENZHANÉ WALLIS (MIDDLE RIGHT). PHOTO: JAAP BUITENDIJK; CHIWETEL EJIOFOR AND MICHAEL FASSBENDER. PHOTO: FRANCIOS DUHAMEL

STILL FROM 12 YEARS A SLAVE. CHIWETEL EJIOFOR AND MICHAEL FASSBENDER. PHOTO: FRANCIOS DUHAMEL.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER IN HUNGER. PHOTO: REX USA/MOVIESTORE COLLECTION/REX

GROOMING PRODUCTS: DIOR HOMME, INCLUDING DERMO SYSTEM REGENERATING MOISTURIZING BALM. GROOMING: LAURA STIASSNI.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER IN SHAME. PHOTO: ABBOTT GENSER

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photo standbyformindcontrol.com

It would be hard to add anything new on the topic of Blanchett’s Oscar-deserving portrayal of an Upper East Side socialite turned manic depressive who moves to her sister’s house in San Francisco after her husband commits suicide while imprisoned for running a Ponzi scheme. There are few performances where you can distinctly feel an actor’s choice in developing a character. Faced with a role that is defined by a lack of sensibility, a constant denial of her actual situation, Blanchett chooses to repeat each mistaken premise that Jasmine embodies to the point of desperation. And that is what depression feels like in Blue Jasmine. A frustrating lack of perspective that creates a vicious cycle of impotence that drives one crazy. What would normally be a classic neurotic charming dialogue between Allen-esque New York hypochondriacs, in Blue Jasmine, turns into infuriating ramblings of an ungrateful sister.

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Her pill and empty mantra addiction are always self-serving and only deepen Jasmine’s manic state. As the title character’s guilt is slowly revealed, there is no empathy that the audience can project for her, only a sense of embarrassment. While there are elements of chance (a staple of Allen’s oeuvre) that alter Jasmine’s life course, they end up serving the same linear narrative. A chance encounter on the street or a lucky break in the dating game doesn’t lift Jasmine from her state of depression, and only highlights her practical inability to get past her tormented past, despite her repetition of the opposite.

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I’d ideally give a special mention to each small character, as Allen managed to get the best out of his entire cast, but one that truly deserves a special mention is Louis CK. As the 21st century’s comedian of the everyday, his cameo as a character embodying lack of sophistication is a nice touch to the story. Although presented as a gentleman towards Jasmine’s sister Ginger, he is a cynical cheater whose defining characteristic is his unmistakable blandness. He is opposed by Alec Baldwin’s now typecast character: the New York investment shark; an easy fit for Baldwin, especially as his character is released of all pretences of sentimentality. His final confession of being in love with an 18-year old French au-pair seems more like a crisis point from a man on the brick of disaster rather than a genuine confession. Ultimately though, they both buy their love and cheat on their lovers, so the difference lies more in Ginger’s ability to admit that her ‘settling for less’ is in fact a path to happiness.

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A mere 4 years ago, in Whatever Works, Woody Allen’s most stereotypical and self-congratulatory feature, Larry David’s character glances into the camera and joyfully serves the film with a tragi-comical ending that references the title. This gives the audience the impression that it is precisely because of our self-awareness, that we can enjoy the ever-deflating lifejackets that destiny throws in our troubled waters. In Blue Jasmine, there is no mention of this, and the only scenes of joy that we can see are Ginger’s cliché New York sightseeing tours, and her re-engagement to a man she so easily discarded once a gentleman courted her. Her story ends the same as the 2004 film, only now the audience is no longer smiling, as Chilli is objectively presented as a weaker choice. From this point of view, while the film definitely provides depth in terms of character complexity and stylistic details, its over-arching message about human happiness is that ‘ignorance is bliss’ and that we should all stop trying. It is somewhat ironic that this comes at a late point in Allen’s career, when he most certainly seems to be doing this.

photo aceshowbiz.com

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Fish & Cat won the Special Orizzonti Award for Innovative Content, an award that wasn’t even on the menu. The fact that the Venice jury felt they should somehow reward this film has two implications. The film is indeed something you don’t come across every day. At the same time, the award sort of labels the film and, labels are misleading. This is not that Iranian movie all in one take.

First of all, there is nothing Iranian about this movie, except for the talent of the cast and crew. The story could as well be set in any other part of the world. There is nothing wrong with cinema that has a local flavor, but credit should also be given to a director that eludes exoticism (always big with festival juries) for a more universally human approach.

photo hollywoodreporter.com

Secondly, being a one-take film it’s the least of its merits. Even if we reduce the film to this one technical aspect, Fish & Cat still stands apart from other such films. It is shot entirely outdoors,  using natural light, in rough mountainous forest terrain, in winter, and the story has the characters (which are not few) moving in all directions. The film looks and sounds impeccable except for a few quivers of the camera. Put into context these quivers should be regarded more like the signs (scars) of a great cinematic achievement rather than mistakes.

The greatest thing about this technical aspect however, is that is not gratuitous, it’s not showing off, it’s not just pretentious form filled with whatever story was available. The form is intricately intertwined with the theme of the film: time. The film flows in one single take because time flows in one single take. Unlike other films and other directors who profess their preference for long takes or even one take films as a way of framing reality, in Fish & Cat, real time does not equal diegetic time. In both cases time flows, just not in the same direction. Analyzing the film from the perspective of different time structures (that is, a structure defined by a set of characters that perform a set of actions in a certain order, and a location), the film looks like an illustration of the Gordian Knot. Just like a piece of string (or Rope, if we are to mention the first film that tried to do something similar to the one take film), the string of time in this film has a linear unidirectional flow in the beginning and in the end, but there’s no telling what that direction is. As with a piece of string, you can’t really say which end is the beginning.

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When watching a film we never question the beginning and the end, we never switch their places to see if it makes sense the other way around. There are films that choose to tell the story backwards, but there is always a clear time frame (past-present-future), cause and effect.

The confusion wouldn’t be at all obvious if it weren’t for the knot in the string, the body of the film that makes you question the beginning and the end. As with every knot in every string, a time knot means a time string that twists and flows back on itself – actions that cause other actions and so on, until some action causes the same action that started the whole chain of events. Only this time the camera has moved to another place, it’s somebody else`s point of view. Each point of view advances the plot, gives you a more clear understanding of the situation. Still, these puzzle pieces are so well designed that they fit perfectly with every other piece, and no single direction of causality (time flow) emerges, but a multitude.

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I mentioned the fact that the film was shot outdoors, using natural light. Sunlight can be a good indicator of the passing of time. The light in Fish & Cat is always the same, no indication of the the time of day, no indication of time. This small detail fits perfectly with the whole concept put forward by the movie and brings us to the most important merit of this film.

Shahram Mokri had a great concept, but he didn’t stop there. He found the perfect form for his concept, the one take film, but he didn’t stop there either. He chose the most difficult setting imaginable and he managed to keep the camera flowing while following characters up mountains, and even squeeze in a bird’s eye view in the ending.

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At any point in the making of this film, the director could have stopped pushing the limits, and it would have been enough to make this film memorable. To top it all, he chose to stay true to narrative cinema. There is an articulated, well written story in Cat and Fish, the film is not just an interesting cinematic exercise about time. What is that story? Seems appropriate to end this review with the words with which the director decided to open his film, based on a true story about a restaurant that served minced human flesh for food.

Fish & Cat (Mahi va Gorbeh), r. Shahram Mokri, 2013

by Andrei Șendrea

http://www.liternet.ro/autor/3761/Andrei-Sendrea.html

The post FISH & CAT – ORIZZONTI OFFICIAL SELECTION, 70th VENICE FILM FESTIVAL appeared first on INHALE MAG.

“A Touch of Sin”

Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s deeply bitter and subversive film takes a swing at a nation undergoing massive development while ignoring the consequences. Not for the faint at heart, the film bursts forth as a set of repressed emotions that cannot be contained any longer, and its disturbing vignettes, each one more violent than the next, will stick with you long after you exit the theater.

photo timgrierson.blogspot.com

“Stranger by the Lake”

A moody tale of a murder at a lakefront cruising spot, director Alain Guiraudie spins a deceptively simple story that contemplates the boundaries between lust and violence while, all the way up through its startling final shot, will shake you to your core.

photo filmschoolrejects.com

“When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism”

Romanian director Corneliu Proumboiu’s new film uses extremely long takes and a quiet intensity to meditate on the limits of cinema. Centering on a director who is having trouble finishing his most recent film, and keeping together his relationship with one of the film’s actresses, this is not for the viewer who is easily distracted. Stick with the film and its rigid formal structure, and you’ll walk away thinking differently about the possibilities of cinema.

photo indiewire.com

“Child of God”

Did you know that James Franco has a film at the festival this year? An adaptation of a novel byCormac McCarthy, this one is sure to shock viewers. Franco presents an unrelenting portrait of a maniac, complete with murder and necrophilia. It’s not the best film at the festival by a long shot, but Franco certainly has a unique vision and is unafraid to confront an audience.

photo wordandfilm.com

“Jealousy”

Some people complain that French director Philippe Garrel has been making the same film over and over again, for four decades. Those people are missing out on one of the greatest working filmmakers who, although he explores similar themes in all his films, captures emotional honesty better than anyone before or since.

photo cineuropa.org

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Let’s start by looking at the horrible habitat Earth has become in Elysium. The year is 2154 and humans are split in a two tier class system between citizens,with access to the lush tropical-resort-like Elysium station outside Earth’s atmosphere, and the rest. The first shot of the rotating Elyseum made me think of the opening scene in 2001: Space Odyssey, but it turns out that even 150 years into the future(fictional or otherwise) humanity has only managed to advance A.I.as far as recognizing irony and being more muscular. It’s been obvious for a while that future worlds will no longer be portrayed in a positive manner, but given that the film’s technical crew was mostly drawn from District 9, the fact that we’ve gone from ‘this is how a South African alien ghetto looks like’, to ‘this is how Earth looks like’ seemes a bit dramatic. The landscape is filled with Mad Max imagery, geek-communities living in underground shelters, neons flicking all around, planning the next horribly flawed attack on the establishment. The ‘opposition’s’ main goal is to smuggle people onto the Elysium station, where state of the art facilities can cure any disease, and they do this in the least strategic way possible(until Damon shows up). Also, the choice of music does not appear to have evolved past dubstep. This is truly sad.

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What this sets up is an allegorical space for a conversation on equity and politics that is reinforced by every character in the film, especially Matt Damon’s Max De La Costa. Firstly, he is Mexican. It is never explained or worked on, but we just know that he is, the film arbitrarily identifying the main character with the biggest immigrant population in current day America. As a person, Max is a cog in the system, trying to sort his life out after various stints in prison. He is thus part of the working class, assembling the robots that make up the police force that harasses him every day and break his arm on his way to work. On top of the fact that it’s a very bad metaphor, it also assumes that although there is highly superior technology, full automation is not something that has been introduced in the manufacturing process. The system thus operates on the logic of 19^th century capitalism, with ruthless businessmen apparently thinking that a worker’s life is less important than the assembly line being stopped for 5 seconds. This particular incident leads to Damon’s character being irradiated and triggering Max the hero character.

photo kurzweilai.net

Fortunately for the likely bored audience, Max the hero is somewhat unique in his drive for most of the movie. I would identify him with middle class America if anything. Namely, he finds himself in the situation that he needs to cure himself, and the only way to do that is to bring the entire system down. Although he ends up bringing along a sick child of a former lover with him, he obsessively repeats that he is doing all of it to stay alive, the perfect self-involved 21^st century man. But as those exact words are heard over and over again and mixed with images of suffering populations, the audience is supposed to realize that his striving for life is the call of all humanity that is stuck on Earth to be granted the right to live. This is why he sacrifices himself at the end and appears to forget everything his character said up to that point in the movie. Indeed, the middle-class American, underneath his ego-driven persona, is in fact a humanitarian that is willing to trade his precious life for the good of others. How noble.

photo cdn-static.denofgeek.com

In terms of negative characters, there is Jodie Foster as the commander in chief of Elysium’s defenses. Given her rhetoric and militarism that stands in contrast to the supposed ‘enlightened’ leaders of Elysium, she is either a critique on the Republican party’s war-mongering crowd of neocons, or a slight wink at Israel. It doesn’t stop here though, as this system is attacked right before Max’s crew get a chance to, by the rogue assassin Jodie Foster’s character employed on Earth, Kruger. He sports a ridiculous South-African accent and is likely to make even the most unassuming viewer think of apartheid. As cartoonish right-wing characters parade at the helm of Elysium, exposing structural flaws that could be spotted by an 8-year old, our heroes finally achieve victory and save the day. The hackers finally over-ride the Elysium system, the child is saved and drones are heading to Earth to provide assistance to the newly registered citizens. This finally wraps up what can be best seen as a 2 hour long advertisement for the Obamacare program, ardently supported by Hollywood figures, Matt Damon included.

photo bp.blogspot.com

I could of course not look at it like that, but then the film fails on every account of cinematic experience, mainly because it lazily drifts into familiar patterns of action movies that have long lost their appeal. Now, Elysium will always be:

‘Hey, remember when Matt Damon did that advertising campaign for Obama’s re-election?’

’Ow yeah, didn’t it come out like, a year too late though?’

‘Yeah, that was funny’.

photo hollywoodreporter.com

Next up, how Tom Cruise went from scientology nutter to Tea Party hero.

by Paul Dunca

Paul Dunca is a freelance saboteur looking for a change of pace. He writes reviews and opinion pieces to keep appearances and can be reached at various wishing wells around London.

The post BORED AT MOVIES – ELYSIUM AND POLITICS appeared first on INHALE MAG.

A gay related murder in an age when homosexuality is still incriminated, that’s enough to fill any director’s plate, but this case has a very particular posthumous attraction to it. Lucien Carr is the man who introduced Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac and both of them to William S. Burroughs and was an important figure in what would later became known as the Beat Generation.

photo geektyrant.com

A very dense subject indeed and the film has received criticism for it’s holistic approach, trying to tell too many stories  and ultimately failing to tell a single one. While the premise can not be denied (the capillary expansion into all aspects of the story: the murder, the Beat origins, Ginsberg`s coming of age sexually and creatively, Lucien Carr’s relationship with Kamerer), the outcome is a matter of how much is the viewer willing to let director John Krokidas get away with.

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While at some moments very well documented, the film seems to operate and twist real facts and characters into deliberate fiction, a romanticized view over the whole affair that becomes a sort of ritual sacrifice, a founding murder of the Beat movement. Every film based on “a true story” has to rely on some kind of creative license in order to fill in the gaps. This movie is special because the process seems to be flowing backwards: the gaps are not filled with fiction derived from the historical context but rather from what the Beat culture and it’s prophets came to be years after the incident. From this point of view, Kill Your Darlings, is in fact, a crash course in Beat ethos condensed in the time frame of a few months, when Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac were not the Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac that have made it through to the English literature manuals.

photo collider.com

photo collider.com

In the end, it comes down to the viewer and his ability to experience the Beat movement through the duality of this film. Had it been completely accurate from a historical point of view, the film wouldn’t have been entertaining, so upbeat. Had it been utter fiction, just some young guys having fun, planning a literary revolution, maybe even succeeding, the film would have lacked the incredible appeal of the actual Beat counterculture and it’s very recognizable darlings.

by Andrei Șendrea.

http://www.liternet.ro/autor/3761/Andrei-Sendrea.html

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In September 2012, he mounted a 4GoPano camera above his 17th Street studio and captured sunrise to sunset in the round. This footage will play on all 10 projectors, sped up to a half hour—the diurnal lifespan of Manhattan that Wilcox witnesses every day. Within that duration, six different personal films will successively play somewhere along the cityscape, each based on a distinct memory or idea triggered when looking in a particular direction from his studio windows. Some are historical, such as Wilcox’s meticulous model set of the top of the Empire State Building as a landing site for 1930s zeppelins; others are hagiographic, like the silver Mylar balloons that Andy Warhol hung from his Factory windows to welcome the pope in 1965. In every case, Wilcox’s films convey the emotional and psychological landscapes that settle over the spires and avenues of a city after having lived there so long—an invisible compass of past lives. Wilcox, who grew up in Seattle and moved to New York in 1983, is one of the rare artists working today who manages to merge fact with fiction, the highly personal with the historic. A haunting, low-lit poetry exudes from his film works in particular, whether his screens capture swans on tranquil water or the funeral of Marlene Dietrich.

Photography SEBASTIAN KIM
Stylist KEEGAN SINGH

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/

Casati Queen of the Night, 2008. Archival printed acetate, colored light gel, and gold foil on plexi glass, 28.88 x 22.88 in (73.4 x 58.1 cm). MP D-176

T. J. Wilcox (b. 1965), still from In the Air, 2013. Panoramic film installation: Super 8 film transferred to video and HD video, black-and-white and color, silent; 35 min., looped. Collection of the artist; courtesy Metro Pictures.

T.J. Wilcox’s “In the Air,” a panoramic film featuring New York, will be shown at the Whitney in the fall.

Whitney Museum of American Art

945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street

New York, NY 10021

(212) 570-3600

info@whitney.org

- via interviewmagazine.com

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Little by little we begin to see the cracks in the wall: the daughter is sneaking off to see her boyfriend, the father is an authoritarian figure and he clashes with his older son, his business is going bad and his beautiful wife is cheating on him. These invisible signs of decay of the home are mimicked by very material, almost imperceptible signs of decay in the house: real cracks in the wall and bits of paint peeling of the woodwork, details that fit so perfectly with the clean, austere, simple and luminous house.

photo medeasthefilm.com

At the same time they tell the age old story of “nothing lasts”, they remind the viewer that good things come in frames: always limited. The house was once new, freshly painted; their happiness was once real (the bathing scene is filmed, also captured in a frame). There are also the more ominous cracks in the ground, coming from the lack of rain. Everybody is waiting for the rain, the children even do a rain dance, and somehow you know that the rain is going to come and is going to come down hard, because there is a storm brewing inside this family.

photo medeasthefilm.com

Now, the real magic that should be noted here is this: the film manages to show these changes, both material and within the soul of the characters, in a very slow manner, with as little violence as possible. Violence in the broadest sense, violence as movement, as opposed to the stillness of a single moment in time, the stillness of something that is contained within a frame. Why is this magic? For two reasons. First reason is the very good cinematography, MEDEAS works perfectly as a visual poem (credit goes to cinematographer Chayse Irvin). Second, because you know something is happening, you can sense the members of the family growing apart, you can sense the static electricity building and you brace yourself for the storm; but at the same time, nothing really happens, that is to say, nothing in the classic narrative frame of cause and effect. And this is a great feat of cinematic artistry, coming from a debutant director, no less.

photo medeasthefilm.com

That is why the word poem seems to fit so well, because the understanding of the situation is more somatic than cerebral. At the same time, everything makes sense. You don’t see the actual storm (you do feel it), but the outcome matches the premise, the director just made a choice not to show the road between them. The rain falls softly on the windows of the family truck and once again, the camera lingers over the peaceful, happy faces of the members of this family. It might as well be put in a frame, like any other happy memory.

photo medeasthefilm.com

MEDEAS, r. Andrea Pallaoro, 2013

by Andrei Șendrea

http://www.liternet.ro/autor/3761/Andrei-Sendrea.html

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The film focuses on several key moments from the history of the group which was founded as a reaction to the re-election of  Vladimir Putin as president of Russia. Their strategy was to appear in different public spaces (subways, squares, luxury-stores) and to shock the public with their socio-political messages, namely to criticize  the excessive nationalism of Putin,  the capitalism, the authoritarian regime or to fight against a male view of the world.

photo emoviz.com

In 2012, feminist activists from Pussy Riot performed a concert inside the Christ the Savior Cathedral,  the holiest place from Moscow for any Orthodox  believer, space which symbolizes the union of church and state. They decided to perform at the altar in their usual way: wearing coloured balaclavas, tights and minidresses, screaming a punk prayer and waving their hands in the air. As a result of this agit-prop guerilla-performance, three members of this group were arrested.

Featuring  interviews (with the band members, with their families who support their daughters, with the pro and con protesters) with publicly available footage (courtroom footage, DIY videos of their rehearsals and performances, speeches of Putin or of church leaders), the documentary tells the story of these three members: Nadia, Masha and Katia. The filmmakers try to understand the real people behind the masks, they try to illustrate the  way in which their act (a 40-second punk prayer protest) became an event of national, even global importance  and to present the  absurd and injust trial they had. The girls were sentenced to two years in a women’s corrective labor colony where they are still today, except Katia, who was released on probation, following an appeal.

photo rapidmoviez.com

The purpose of this documentary is obviously a political one. Speaking about Pussy Riot  already implies depicting the background in which the scandal occurred, namely contemporary Russia. The two directors portray a conservative Russia, a system rotten from head to tail, with corrupt politicians who use the Orthodox church to maintain their authority and with a society that is not ready to understand the performance art activism. In this context, any protester who tries to break the status quo, to free the society from prejudicies and stereotypes is considered from the beginning a Bolshevik, a real demon.

photo saltypopcorn.com.au

The documentary (rewarded with a World Cinema Documentary Special Jury award for Punk Spirit at Sundance Film Festival and bought by HBO)  assume  a form of social criticism because it describes  various kinds of discrimination. The film directors are trying to avoid the dogmatism, so they chronicle the event in a dialectical manner, showing  the two sides of the scandal (the most intriguing exemple: the Russian Orthodox Church calls for a prayer meeting at the cathedral to protest against Pussy Riot).

Created just in six months, the documentary has the aspect of something improvised: it dramatizes the information we have already from the newspapers, but it doesn’t offer us a deeper understanding of the problem;  it deserves though to be seen, as an honorable document of a subject of such relevance.

by Andreea Andrei

Andreea Andrei studied Performing Arts (Arts du Spectacle) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. For the moment she is an independent researcher, interested in the critical potential of art and in the artistic power of criticism.

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Two hundred and eighty-eight features makes up the 2013 lineup (one less than last year), including new films from Ron Howard, Claire Denis, Kelly Reichardt, John Wells, Jean-Marc Vallée, Paul Haggis, Nicole Holofcener, Atom Egoyan, Errol Morris, Xavier Dolan, Jason Reitman, Ralph Fiennes, Paul Haggis, Richard Ayoade, David Gordon Green, Alfonso Cuarón, Frederick Wiseman, Brillante Mendoza, Jonathan Glazer, Ti West, Mark Cousins, Liza Johnson, Guillaume Canet, Hayao Miyazaki, Sean Durkin, James Franco, Johnnie To, Alex Gibney, John Turturro, Kevin Macdonald, and directorial debuts of “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner, as well as actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Keanu Reeves, Mike Myers and Jason Bateman.

Below is a list of all the titles, with descriptions provided by the festival. Click on each title for more information and critical reactions as they come in. The festival runs September 5-15, 2013.

Blood Ties Guillaume Canet, France/USA North American Premiere
New York, 1974. 50-year-old Chris has just been released on good behavior after spending several years in prison. Waiting for him reluctantly outside the prison gates is his younger brother, Frank, a cop with a bright future. Chris and Frank have always been different, yet blood ties are the ones that bind. Starring Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, Matthias Schoenaerts and James Caan.

The Fifth Estate Bill Condon, USA World Premiere
Triggering an age of high-stakes secrecy, explosive news leaks and the trafficking of classified information, WikiLeaks forever changed the game. This dramatic thriller based on real events reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st century’s most fiercely debated organization. The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. Soon, they are breaking more hard news than the world’s most legendary media organizations combined. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of modern time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society — and what are the costs of exposing them? The film also stars David Thewlis, Stanley Tucci, Laura Linney, Anthony Mackie and Dan Stevens.

Kill Your Darlings John Krokidas, USA International Premiere
Kill Your Darlings is the true story of friendship and murder that led to the birth of an entire generation. This is the previously untold story of murder that brought together a young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), and William Burroughs (Ben Foster) at Columbia University in 1944, providing the spark that would lead to their Beat Revolution. Also stars Dane DeHaan, Michael C. Hall, David Cross, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Elizabeth Olsen, Kyra Sedgwick and John Cullum.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom Justin Chadwick, South Africa World Premiere
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is based on South African President Nelson Mandela’s autobiography of the same name, which chronicles his early life, coming of age, education, and 27 years in prison before working to rebuild his country’s once-segregated society. Starring Idris Elba as Nelson Mandela, and Naomie Harris as Winnie Mandela.

Rush Ron Howard, United Kingdom/Germany International Premiere
Two-time Academy Award winner Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon) teams up once again with two-time Academy Award–nominated writer Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen) on Rush — a spectacular big-screen re-creation of the merciless 1970s rivalry between James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl). Also features Olivia Wilde, Alexandra Maria Lara and Pierfrancesco Favino.

via indiewire.com

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Hoshino commented on Sunday, September 1, that Miyazaki, 72, “wants to say goodbye to all of you,” but declined further questions. A press conference in Japan to be attended by Miyazaki is expected later this week.

photo tokyotimes.com

Only last week, Miyazaki revealed on Japanese TV show Osama no Brunch that he had given approval for Neon Genesis Evangelion director Hideaki Anno to create the sequel to Miyazaki’s breakthrough film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) — a signal that a time of transition was near.

The Wind Rises was the first feature film in five years by Miyazaki, who won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature with his fantasy film Spirited Away (2001). Though prolific in the 1980s, the time between his releases has been increasing in recent years, with a three year wait for Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and four years until Ponyo (2008).

The studio founded in 1985 by Miyazaki along with Isao Takahata, has already seen releases by four other directors apart from the founders. Yoshifumi Kondo’s Whisper of the Heart (1995) was the first not to be directed by Miyazaki or Takahata, but Kondo died soon after in 1998, which prompted Miyazaki to retire at the time, though he later returned to directing. A spinoff from that film, 2002’s The Cat Returns, was directed by Hiroyuki Morita for the studio.

Hiromasa Yonebayashi directed 2010’s The Secret World of Arrietty, based on English author Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, and is set to direct a follow-up to Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso (1992).

My Neighbor Totoro
photo fanpop.com

But the future of the studio may be in the hands of the Miyazaki family itself, as Miyazaki’s son Goro Miyazaki has already directed two films: the 2006 fantasy movie Tales from Earthsea, that received only a lukewarm reception, and the acclaimed wistful 2011 drama From Up on Poppy Hill.

Princess Mononoke
photo wallpaperpimper.com

Miyazaki’s works have found a global audience, dubbed into English with voice casts that have included Kirsten Dunst as Kiki in Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall and Billy Crystal for Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), and Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett, and Tina Fey in Ponyo (2008).

Ponyo
photo disney.wikia.com

Earlier this year, The Cinematheque in Vancouver, screened 16 of Studio Ghibli’s movies, including two that never received an official release in North America. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, a life-size Catbus from fan-favorite My Neighbor Totoro turned up at fashion mall LCX, to promote collectable character store Donguri Republic.

The art world too, has embraced the works of Miyazaki. Seoul Arts Center’s Hangaram Design Museum is  hosting the first ever exhibition of his layout sketches outside of Japan, in September this year.

The Wind Rises has become one of Miyazaki’s most controversial work, because it depicts airplane engineer Jiro Horikoshi, who developed planes that were used in World War II. Criticism from some quarters of the Korean media forced Miyazaki to explain his choice. Meanwhile, back home in Japan, the film was rebuked by the Japan Society for Tobacco Control, for its alleged promotion of smoking.

via blouinartinfo.com

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SOUNDS INTERESTING category

1.     Her

Director and writer: Spike Jonze

The director of such gems as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation. and Where the Wild Things Are is another one who likes to take things slowly.  After the looks of the trailer…

… it seems to be worth the waiting. The story of an introverted, heartbroken writer who falls in love with his intelligent operative system promises to be a thought provoking, bittersweet film, about human nature, about love and loneliness and the way we build things as projections of ourselves, utilising technology to fill the void we don’t know how to fill otherwise. Yes, I feel like I can tell how the entire movie is going to be after just seeing the trailer, but that doesn’t mean that I am any less impatient about watching the whole thing.

photo blogs.artinfo.com

2.     Inside Llewlyn Davis

Directors and writers: Ethan and Joel Coen

I don’t know why I’m not a fan of the Coen brothers. I greatly enjoy their films, I just don’t get extremely excited over them. With the exception of The Great Lebowski, perhaps. I love their style, their sense of humour, their beautifully imagined characters and I keep expecting to fall in love with them. Maybe it’s Inside Llewlyn Davis that will finally make that happen.

photo craigskinnerfilm.com

3.     Blue Jasmine

Director and writer: Woody Allen

The man is like a clock. It’s like he never suffers from writer’s block, like he has an endless bag of ideas and an inexhaustible energy to make them happen. His 2013 film is about an egotistical socialite facing a midlife crisis and looks very promising from the trailer.

Cate Blanchett is amazing (Mr. Allen has great taste in actresses) and I’m always happy to see Louis C.K. acting or talking or anything, so I can’t wait for this one to finally hit theatres, which is in a very short time.

4.     Venus in Fur

Director and writer: Roman Polanski, after a play by David Ives and a novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

About manipulation, sex and power, this is, just as Carnage, Polanski’s previous film, based on a play and filmed in a confined space. The director has a way of building tension that makes his movies almost unbearable to watch at times and I think this one won’t disappoint, either.

photo ropeofsilicon.com

5.     The Grandmaster

Director and writer: Wong Kar Wai, also writers Jingzhi Zou and Haofeng Xuefully

The story of Ip Man, the man who taught Bruce Lee martial arts, might not have interested me too much, were it not for the director of the lovely In The Mood For Love, which assures me that it is at least going to be a visual treat, and hopefully more than that.

6.     Nymphomaniac

Director and writer: Lars von Trier

I can’t help but expect von Trier’s films with a smirk on my face. I know it’s going to be dark and disturbing, but I also know it cannot be bad. A nymphomaniac recounts her erotic affairs. What more is there to say? I don’t even think anyone is even going to get offended by it, but I really hope they do. That way I can imagine this brilliant Danish troll devilishly chuckling to himself with sick satisfaction, already thinking of new ways to push the boundaries of what is appropriate and acceptable in modern cinema.

7.     Only Lovers Left Alive

Director and writer: Jim Jarmusch

He’s been a hipster since before it was cool and that says it all. I enjoyed some of his works, I detested others (not going to say which are which), but the fact that his last movie is about vampire love has to make one curious. I can only assume that immortality is just another way for him to talk about loneliness, which seems to be his theme of choice. This should be interesting.

8.     L’ecume des jours

Director: Michel Gondry, writer: Luc Bossi, after a novel by Boris Vian

From the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and La science des reves, this film promises to be as touching and beautifully surreal as his earlier works.

9.     The World’s End

Director and writer: Edgar Wright, also writer and star: Simon Pegg

The creative duo that is also behind such movies as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and the popular TV series Spaced guarantees a fun watch. If you really must know, their newest production is about five friends trying to finish a drinking marathon they failed at 20 years before, while fighting for the survival of the human race. Just go see it.

10.     Don Jon

Director and writer: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Before you roll your eyes and think this is here just because JGL is a good looking actor, I have to stop you and show you the trailer

Now, doesn’t that look interesting? They are having so much fun, how can you not want to see it? I, for one, am happy he decided to try his hand in directing, he seems like a smart guy and I hope he’ll turn out to be at least as good a director as Ben Affleck and George Clooney.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Behind the Candelabra

Director: Steven Soderberg, writer: Richard LaGravenese, after books by Scott Thorson and Alex Thorleifson

There’s already an article here about it:

http://inhalemag.com/behind-the-candelabra-palatial-kitsch/

Only God Forgives

Director and writer: Nicolas Winding Refn

Also reviwed here: http://inhalemag.com/only-god-forgives-beyond-neo-noir/

The Monuments Men

Director and writer: George Clooney, also writer: Grant Heslov, after books by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter

Speaking of actors turned directors, Clooney’s latest film looks very promising, despite looking like a mix between Ocean’s Eleven and Inglorious Basterds.

Trance

Director: Danny Boyle, writers: Joe Ahearne, John Hodge

About an art auctioneer who has become mixed up with a group of criminals, and who partners with a hypnotherapist in order to recover a lost painting.
http://inhalemag.com/trance-psychedelic-travel/

Nebraska

Director: Alexander Payne, writer: Bob Nelson

From the director of About Schmitd, Sideways and The Descendents, a movie about an aging man who makes a trip with his estranged son, in order to claim a million dollar prize.

photo awardsdaily.com

The Wolf of Wall Street

Director: Martin Scorsese, writer: Terence Winter, after a book by Jordan Belfort

Is this the film that finally gets Leonardo di Caprio his goddamn Oscar? We’ll see.

The Bling Ring

Director and writer: Sofia Coppola, after an article by Nancy Jo Sales

About a group of teenagers who rob celebrities’ homes.

NOT FEATURE FILM BUT I DON’T CARE

How and Why

Writer and director: Charlie Kaufman

A comedy series from a brilliant man, it could have been a wedding video of his favourite pet and it would still be one of my 2013 highlights.

photo indiewire.com

Louis C.K.: Oh, My God!

Writer, director, star: Louis C. K.

An HBO special from a great comedian, here’s a glimpse:

QED

It looks like a good year, I think. I’m sure there are other films that are not on the list, feel free to say which ones in the comments.

by Alexa Băcanu

Alexa Băcanu is a private investigator and awesome mercenary. Interests: everything (except Math and most people). She doesn’t write anywhere else (no one other than us would let her) except in her diary and on public bathroom walls.

The post 13 REASONS WHY 2013 IS A GOOD YEAR FOR CINEMA – PART 2 appeared first on INHALE MAG.

HALLELUJA! category

1.     The Wind Rises

Director and writer: Hayao Miyazaki

Oh, blessed be the gods of film!  Why, oh why, Mr. Miyazaki, can’t you follow Woody Allen’s example and make a movie a year? I sometimes go again along the list of films he wrote or directed, hoping against hope that there’s one which has escaped my eye the previous hundred times I’ve done that. Unfortunately, I have the eyes of an eagle. But not in 2013, no, sir. In 2013, I can bask in the exquisite feelings that precede and follow the release of a much awaited movie. That great anticipation, the thrills of seeing the trailer, the careful planning of the perfect place, mood, friends to see this film in, on, with.

photo vulture.com

Hayao Miyazaki is a well known Japanese animator, co-creator of Studio Ghibli, an animation studio Westerners refer to as Japan’s Disney, because of its great success. But Ghibli is no Disney. As much as I love the latter’s films, it’s impossible not to see the huge company behind everything, the polls and social studies that obviously play a big part in constructing a story to the liking of millions. I see no such background in Ghibli movies. They are not afraid to break the rules, to forget about a happy ending, or an uncomplicated plot, or about the necessary love story, or about the presumed patience span of its public. They trust their viewers with the intelligence and emotional maturity to understand and appreciate a complex narrative, heavy themes such as war and ecology, or anything unfamiliar, for that matter.

photo blogs.indiewire.com

Returning to Miyazaki – obviously all of the above apply to him, but no matter how wonderful Ghibli’s films usually are, the ones he himself authors are remarkably superior and some of the loveliest, most meaningful and imaginative works of art I have ever seen.

That is why the news that this movie

is out in 2013 caused me such uncool fangirl giddiness.

Keeping with one of his dearest motifs – flight – Miyazaki decides to tell the story of Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of a fighter airplane which served in World War II and has apparently managed to upset pretty much everyone in Japan. Which is not to say the film is not popular with the general public, who has flocked to see it in movie theatres. I, for one, can’t wait to do the same, or, if (as it’s to be expected) nobody is going to distribute it in my country, put my trust in good old Internet to see it.

 2.     The Zero Theorem

Director Terry Gilliam, writer Pat Rushin

Gilliam is great. He is weird, funny, dark, absurd, playful, philosophical, inquisitive, fantastical. He’s always surprising and never boring.  He’s instantly recognizable, still he doesn’t repeat himself.

It’s always refreshing to see a director who’s not afraid to play. The fact that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is his most realistic film says a lot, I think, about just how much he likes playing with fantasy. Most of his films happen in two parallel universes: the “real” one and the “dream” one. In Fear and Loathing, the dream parts are the drug-induced sequences, in The Fisher King, they’re the visions of a madman, in Brazil they’re the main character’s dreams of freedom, and so on. This serves to show just how much value Gilliam places on imagination and the power of the human mind.

photo plus.google.com

These seem to be the main guidelines of The Zero Theorem, too, as it tells the story of a computer genius working on a formula for the meaning of life. Just think of how zany of a subject that sounds like. Of course no major studio would want anything to do with it. And thank those gods of film for that, too. At least we know that nobody pressured him into doing anything he didn’t want to do, we know the great actors in it got involved out of love for the story and the director and not for some monetary reward. It sounds snobbish, I know, but this is how great films (great anything, for that matter) happen.

“The whole point of cinema is to be surprised all the time” Gilliam said in an interview and that pretty much sums up his entire body of work. He rejects playing along with the public’s expectations in the same way Miyazaki does and the world of cinema is a happier place due to that. Which is not to say his films aren’t some of the most entertaining I have ever seen.

photo hotnewsgator.com

 3.     The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet

Director and writer Jean-Pierre Jeunet, also writer Guillaume Laurant, after a novel by Reif Larsen

I’m really not trying to be politically correct in any way, but apparently my most anticipated films this year come from people from three different continents. Like the previous two men on this list, Jeunet possesses a unique style, exquisite imagination and some noticeable obsessions. He also likes to take his time between films.

photo eyeforfilm.co.uk

One common trait of all his pieces of work is their innocence (yes, even Alien: Resurrection, shut up), as if everything’s seen through the eyes of a child. A child who is both a playful dreamer and a dark and cruel soul, combination which I believe is the essence of innocence. I don’t know how the man has managed to preserve this way of looking at things, but I’m grateful he did. His films are so perfectly balanced between light and darkness that they never become too sugary or too depressing, although they have more than enough elements to become both. Another common trait in his work is Dominique Pinon, this guy:

photo hotflick.net

The only thing I can say against him is that he declined the offer to direct a Harry Potter movie and I’m finding that pretty hard to forgive, given that he could have made it so much better than how it finally turned out. Oh, well…

The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet is his second English language movie (after Alien), but be not afraid, Pinon is still a member of the cast. It tells the story of a talented twelve year old cartographer who runs away from home and travels across country via a freight train, in order to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute. I expect it to be as positive and charming as it sounds.

To be continued…

by Alexa Băcanu

Alexa Băcanu is a private investigator and awesome mercenary. Interests: everything (except Math and most people). She doesn’t write anywhere else (no one other than us would let her) except in her diary and on public bathroom walls.

The post 13 REASONS WHY 2013 IS A GOOD YEAR FOR CINEMA appeared first on INHALE MAG.

After years in documentary filmmaking (a powerful example is Animal Love, a documentary about the strong relationships between people and their pets), the director has turned to fiction, making films like Dog Days (2001) and Import ̸ Export (2007). Even if he says that he is not interested in portraying reality and that his work is “very artificial, strongly dependent on carefully constructed imagery”, the mixture of documentary and fiction techniques is widely used in his filmography.  He blends authentic details with staged ones, professional actors with amateurs, a structured dialogue with an improvised one.

photo spiegel.de

The three films of Paradise Trilogy: Paradise: Love (2012), Paradise: Faith (2012) and Paradise: Hope (2013) are released separately so they can be watched separately. This boschian triptych continues his previous work, focusing on desperate lonely contemporary women. Satirically titled Paradise Trilogy, the films show with a cruelty à la Haneke the  ruinous ways in which the characters are struggling and failing to conquer the Happiness, through Christian values like love, faith and hope.

photo spiegel.de

In the first part, Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel), an obese 50-year-old lonely woman,  leaves her teenage obese daughter Melanie (the central character of later Paradise: Hope) in the care of her sister and goes for a solitary vacation in Kenya. This exotic destination is the pretext for Seidl to explore themes like sexual tourism, colonial relations, exploitation and women’s liberation. Following the advice of a friend she meets there, Teresa starts to hook up african beach boys (taxi drivers, vendors) just to satisfy her lack of love and her sexual desires, in exchange of money. But soon we figure out that the exploitation is mutual (while the white women treat the local boys as commodities, the kenyans, on their turn, take advantage of the money of the European women), and that the pursuit of love is futile and tormenting.

photo spiegel.de

The second part portrays the intimate life of a middle-aged fanatic woman: Anna-Maria (Maria Hofstätter), the sister of Teresa from Paradise:Love is a medical technician, who devotes her free time to  missionary work and religious rituals. More precisely, she walks on the streets of Vienna, from door to door, carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary to bring people (mostly immigrants) to the right path, to Christianity. At home, she flagellates herself or plays religious songs on her electronic keyboard.  Everything changes when her disabled Muslim husband appears home, unexpectedly, after two years of absence. Anna-Maria turns to be not so compassionate with her husband as Jesus would demand, treating him  in an offensive way.

photo spiegel.de

She completely ignores him, she forbids things to him, she refuses to have sex.  Instead, she gives in all her love to Jesus, sublimating her erotic desire (in a provocative scene, because of which Seidl was accused of blasphemy, Anna-Maria is masturbating herself with a huge crucifix).  The husband replies in an aggressive way, so the conflict between them is getting worse, occasion for Seidl to refer to the aggravation of the war between Christianity and Islam.

photo spiegel.de

We said that the work of Seidl has the air of a grotesque realism, in a bakhtinian sense. He is interested in the human body as it is dominated by the primare needs, in the human body treated as an object. He uses exaggerated, grandiose grotesque images and grotesque situations (sexual orgies, sadomasochism, profanation) to explore degradation and depravation. Despite the fact that he is oftenly accused of cynism, misanthropism or pessimism, Ulrich Seidl manages to keep a humanist regard toward his characters generally put in embarrassing situations and to induct a form of empathy for the viewers.

photo spiegel.de

by Andreea Andrei

Andreea Andrei studied Performing Arts (Arts du Spectacle) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. For the moment she is an independent researcher, interested in the critical potential of art and in the artistic power of criticism.

The post THE GROTESQUE PARADISE OF ULRICH SEIDL appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Jenny Jokela is an animator and illustrator born in Helsinki and working in London. What is interesting is the way in which she combines two areas which rarely are put together, but as you can see below they not only work but underline each other even more. What is punk? Jokela’s interpretation is a little different:

As for other projects, here is one we liked a lot, in collaboration with Alvar Magazine. It has that dreamy touch, beautiful image and what is most important is the fact that it gives you a clear line of Alvar’s direction and interests.

The second winning project is Charlene Bagcal‘s project, which is dark and very daring. Again, what Nick Knight chose is a little different from what you’d expect, and this is why his selection becomes interesting. After years have passed, Punk is seen in a new way and, therefore, the term is open to interpretation.

http://youtu.be/-xklHNxzsgo

photo charleybee.tumblr.com

Of course this only makes you want to see more from the artist. Apparently, the film below, Dreamland for Dresslab was accepted in La Jolla Fashion Film Festival and up for a nomination at another festival, the International Fashion Film awards. We’ll probably here more about Charlene Bagcal, because the artist already has a position in the fashion film industry that makes her stand out. Her works are surrealist and daring and she questions themes like power, fragility and sexuality.

photo charlenebagcal.com

So, I thought I should see what the dictionary mentions about this term. The Merriam-Webster states it’s 1. prostitute (archaic), 2.  a young inexperienced person : beginner, novice; especially : a young man,a usually petty gangster, hoodlum, or ruffian, a young man used as a homosexual partner especially in a prison 3. a punk rock musician, one who affects punk style and so on. The word was first used in 1596. And I liked a lot the definition given by the Urban Dictionary (urbandictionary.com):

“A guy walks up to me and asks ‘What’s Punk?’. So I kick over a garbage can and say ‘That’s punk!’. So he kicks over the garbage can and says ‘That’s Punk?’, and I say ‘No that’s trendy!

So, what is punk?

photo charlenebagcal.com

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Léos Carax was born in France. He began his career as a film critic and short-film director before making his feature-length debut at age 23 with Boy Meets Girl (84), which marked the first of his collaborations with actor Denis Lavant. His other films includeMauvais Sang (86), Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (88), Pola X (99), a segment in the anthology film Tokyo! (08), and Holy Motors (12).

Boy Meets Girl

Leos Carax’s first feature was acclaimed as the greatest debut in French cinema since Godard’s Breathless.

photo tiff.net

Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood)

A petty hustler (Denis Lavant) is rooked into a robbery scheme by a suave gangster (Michel Piccoli) and his beautiful young mistress (Juliette Binoche) in Leos Carax’s offbeat, madly cinephilic thriller.

Set in a Paris plunged into a permanent heat wave by an approaching comet, Carax’s controversial thriller focuses on Alex (Denis Lavant), a petty hustler and ex-con, who is pressed by a veteran gangster (Michel Piccoli, suavely malevolent in a peroxide skull cut) into committing a heist to steal the antidote to a deadly virus which is spread by “making love to those you don’t love.” Alex falls for the crime boss’ mistress Anna (Juliette Binoche, made up to evoke Louise Brooks), who lives in a glass house. A rival gang led by a vicious American dowager (Carroll Brooks) lurks in the shadows, also intent upon securing the precious serum. Jean-Yves Escoffier outdoes his cinematography in Boy Meets Girl with a dazzling array of geometric and surrealist compositions, while Carax proves his contention that Mauvais sangis “a film that loves cinema but not the cinema of today” by filling it with images from and homages to favourite films (especially Godard’s Alphaville, screening on July 11). But the film’s undisputed centrepiece is Alex’s acrobatic dance down a city street to David Bowie’s “Modern Love,” as the careening camera follows deliriously in his wild wake. “Carax’s masterpiece” (Senses of Cinema); “the cult film of its generation” (Chuck Stephens, Film Comment).

photo tiff.net

Holy Motors

Exhilarating in its ceaseless invention, the crazily lovable Holy Motors follows the mostly nocturnal sorties of the chameleonic businessman Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant, naturellement), who is ferried through a dreamlike Paris in a stretch limousine by chic chauffeur Céline (Edith Scob). In a series of strange encounters, each more thrilling and mysterious than the last, Oscar takes on a series of radically different identities — an old bag lady, a solicitous turned abusive father, an obsessed assassin, an acrobatic motion-capture model, and a freakish, flame-haired, finger-chewing creature spewed from the sewers — to what purpose, other than the audience’s delighted pleasure, we can never be certain. Among the peculiar personae who turn up are an amusingly imperturbable Eva Mendes, a sinister Michel Piccoli, and a pixieish Kylie Minogue, outfitted with a Jean Seberg bob and singing her heart out. And just when the anarchic invention seems ready to run out, Holy Motors ends on a grace note which answers the question from last year’s other limo-launched hallucination — David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis — as to where all the limos go at night. “One of the ten best of the year…. It’s a gift for moviegoers to have this much freedom, and exhilarating…. It’s cinema reloaded” (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times).

photo tiff.net

Les Amants du Pont-Neuf

Released in North America as The Lovers on the Bridge almost a decade after its infamous making — the film’s frequently delayed shoot, bloated budget, and technical problems earning it a reputation as the Heaven’s Gate of French cinema — the amazing Les amants du Pont-Neuf must be seen on the big screen to savour all its mad Caraxian extravagance. Two young homeless people — Alex (Denis Lavant), a semi-autistic drunk who makes his living as a fire eater, and Michèle (Juliette Binoche), an embittered painter going blind — meet on the Pont-Neuf and fall into an amour fou. (Isn’t all love crazy in Carax?) Drawing on everything from the romantic fatalism of forties French cinema to the gaudy excess of Hollywood musicals, Les amants tops each spectacular setpiece with an even showier one, culminating in the sequence in which the lovers commandeer a police boat on Bastille Day and go on a water-skiing spree down the Seine as fireworks explode around them — “a consummate moment of romantic delirium” (Dave Kehr,The New York Times). “A movie that explodes in your head for days after you see it … I’m telling myself to see the movie again before I begin mentioning it in the same sentence as Breathless and Celine and Julie Go Boating as a landmark of French cinema. But there it is” (Robert Horton, Film Comment).

photo tiff.net

Pola X

Love has rarely seemed more doomed than in Carax’s modern update of one of his favourite novels, Herman Melville’sPierre: or, The Ambiguities. Written in a state of “morbid excitement,” the nineteenth-century novel ideally suited Carax’s already extreme vision of fated amour. Upper-class novelist Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu) lives in a Normandy villa with his clinging mama (Catherine Deneuve, Oedipal and elegant) and his charming fiancée (Delphine Chuillot). Shadowing his sunny existence is a dark, wraithlike woman (Katerina Golubeva), who turns out to be his half-sister from one of his father’s infidelities. Shattered by the revelation and his growing desire for his ghostly sibling — consummated in a scene of convulsively graphic sex — Pierre accompanies her to Paris to live in penury so that his next novel might finally reflect “the truth.” Eerily prophetic — the film features a motorcycle accident and a suicide which respectively portend the real-life ends of its two ill-destined stars, both tortured souls who died long before their time — Pola X is also Carax’s most operatic, personal, and passionate film. “At once breathtaking and ridiculous[ — ]and it’s the tension between these two extremes, as well as Carax’s own intoxicating style, that makes it essential viewing” (Manohla Dargis, L.A. Weekly).

photo tiff.net

via tiff.net

The post LÉOS CARAX – A RETROSPECTIVE AT TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL appeared first on INHALE MAG.

For magazines, the short video format is proving to be a potent means of exploring the online terrain and connecting with viewers on a visceral level. But the best fashion films are those conceived and created by fashion houses. Increasingly imaginative, they’re being used in place of look books — those dreary catalog-like manuals sent to press outlets for “pulling” samples — while at the same time reaching otherwise unreachable Millennials.

photo blouinartinfo.com

Here, four recent blends of fashion and film…

Laura and Kate Mulleavy, designers of the California-based label Rodarte, have long played with video. Avowed fans of obscure films and Japanese horror flicks, the sisters have once again enlisted director Todd Cole to craft a lengthy, elaborate fashion film worthy of a Hollywood premiere. Coles’s sci-fi vision, “This Must Be the Only Future,” comes in at a whopping 12 minutes — and it stars Elijah Wood! Although, before its debut on The Creators Project any day now, only this teaser is available…

photo facebook.com/thecreatorsproject

Prada, too, is pushing the boundaries of the fashion film. Made in connection with OMA, the design and architecture founded by Rem Koolhaas, the Italian house has released their “concept video” for the fall 2013 season. Not intended for a particular audience, the experimental video merges animation and narrative in highly creative ways…

photo trendland.com

Prada’s little sister label, Miu Miu, has also been creating fashion films — with surprisingly adult themes. The latest in its Women’s Tales series, The Door explores the strength and depth of female bonds. Directed by Ava DuVernay, the first African-American woman to win the Best Director Prize at Sundance Film Festival, it stars Gabrielle Union and Alfre Woodard…

photo rollingstone.com

As part of his fall 2013 campaign, men’s designer and still-new Dior couturier Raf Simons collaborated with longtime friends Willy Vanderperre (director) and Olivier Rizzo (stylist). This video, shot in a park in their hometown of Antwerp, Belgium, continues Simons’s ongoing study of the young man in the city…

photo thefader.com

via blouinartinfo.com

The post FASHION FILMS PUSH THE BOUNDARIES appeared first on INHALE MAG.

photo maastricht.gezien.nl

The Act of Killing is one of those good movies you wished you hadn’t seen. Not because of the obvious horrors they unravel but because of the special way they make you connect with the people involved and the reality of what happened to them. The way in which they magnify your perspective (directorial vision is crucial for this part) and show you that what you perceived to be black and white is actually a suffocating murky gray. I remember only one other movie that managed to stir inside me the same kind of uneasy feeling, the feeling that, while the movie was no doubt a masterpiece, I would have been better off not seeing it, that in the end, as tribal people used to fear, the camera (by what it showed me) had managed to steal away some piece of my soul. That other movie was called Grizzly Man and, while researching for this review, I wasn’t too surprised to find out that Werner Herzog, the director of Grizzly Man, was one of the producers of The Act of Killing.

photo filmcomment.com

            In both movies, the reason for this uneasiness is the special nature of the rapport between documentary and reality, and the powerful way in which cinema, as these two examples prove, can transform fiction into something very real. In the case of The Act of Killing, this kind of disturbing transformation is best understood by drawing a parallel to method acting. A method actor aims at creating in himself (the actor not the character) the feelings and inner life of the character he is about to play. Imagine now, that an executioner is asked to play the part of an executioner, and not just any executioner, but of himself! Let your imagination go even further, as director Joshua Oppenheimer has, and set-up this acting exercise in a twisted moral universe, in which the executioner has not been punished but declared a national hero and thus, has no reason (neither guilt nor shame, nor any social pressure from his peers) to adapt his acting to what he genuinely perceives, or at least formally accepts, as right and wrong. From this point on, what you see is not only acting and re-enactment, but also, the reality of killing.

photo theverge.com

Take the scene of the burning of the village for instance. As they are getting ready to film, a veteran of the 1965-1966 massacres chats with his friends, talking about how he used to rape “communist” women back in the days when they were the law. As a spectator, naturally you are outraged. But the real chills come later on, when after the re-enactment of the burning of the village and the murder of its inhabitants, Oppenheimer masterfully sets the camera on the same old executioner. We see him from a distance,  through a curtain of fire, smoke and hot air. He is now resting in a chaise longue, smoking a cigarette and laying back after a tiring day of filming. And then it sinks in. That image is a double folded reality: that is a man smoking a cigarette after a tiring day of rape and murder. Of course you know that it didn’t happen, not now, but forty years ago, that is exactly what that man would have done. Because he is an executioner and not an actor, because his feelings and inner life are not of an actor playing an executioner, but of an executioner playing himself.

            Plato comes to mind with his determination to banish imitative poetry (theater and cinema would qualify as such poetry in modern times) from his perfect city. The Greek philosopher argues that bad people tend to imitate bad actions and bad people and that, on viewing such an imitation, the spectator will he himself become bad. Therefore, imitative poetry should only limit itself to the imitation of good people performing good actions. By switching perspectives, what it comes to is this: bad people who have themselves done the bad actions they are imitating, are not imitating, but are doing. Take away those two seconds, the murderer resting, gazing through the fire he had started, and edit them on real live footage of an actual Indonesian massacre. The result is not real in the common sense of time-space continuity but, on a metaphysical level, one could argue that the two reels edited together are as closely connected as cause and effect can be.

photo vimeo.com

Another example of this kind of chilling reality coming to life through fiction, is the scene in which we see Anwar Congo under a table, strangling an imaginary communist lying on top of the table. We don’t see the man, he is obviously not there, the wire is not tied around somebody’s neck. But forty years ago there was somebody on that table. And the skill and effort Anwar puts in this imaginary murder is the exact image of what would have happened during the massacres. Anwar himself realizes that when predicting the success of the movie: “there has never been a movie where people get strangled, except in fiction, but that’s different, because I did it in real life.”

photo australianfilmreview.files.wordpress.com

But the high standard for this kind of disturbing cinema, that comes at you with the same intensity as reality does, is not set by the murderers. Early on in the movie, during a script meeting between the old gangsters, a middle aged man reveals himself as the stepson of one of the communist murdered in the massacres (though not by the hand of anyone shown in the film). How he got there is unclear, he is never credited, but Oppenheimer admits that he found out about the massacres when interviewing the relatives of the victims for his Globalization Tapes project. The man tells them his story in gruesome detail but assuring them that he is not judging in any way, he just wants to be sincere about it. Bearing this in mind, we see the same man delivering an amazing performance as one of the victims, being interrogated by the executioners. We also see the man playing one of the victims in the burning village scene, and then happily shaking the hands of the paramilitary after the shooting. In another scene, we see him yelling furiously “Cut his throat!” to the demon of Anwar`s nightmares. A victim playing a victim and the murderers playing the murderers. It doesn’t get any more real than this, and to top it all, the man gives such a powerful performance that he would qualify for an Oscar nomination and a psychiatric evaluation at the same time. Or maybe this is exactly that: therapy through art, the victim and the murderer, accepting what happened to them by going through the rituals of murder, through the act of killing.

photo slantmagazine.com

On the surface, this film could best be described as a making-off documenting Anwar`s attempt at re-enacting his murders in various film genres: gangster, western and musical, all with a distinct Indonesian flavor and a (good) taste for grotesque (his sidekick, Hernan, plays the fatty love interest in many of these featurettes), black humor, that sometimes spills outside the frame of the movie within the movie, and all out surrealism. The scope of the film however is much more profound, and beneath all the surreal elements that the imagination of the old executioner conjures, what truly matters in this movie, are the real elements. At the same level of depth with that uneasy feeling I have talked about (that comes from knowing, that on some level, this is all very real), the camera seems to work in an opposite direction for Anwar Congo, not taking away a piece of his soul, but on the contrary, making his soul visible, for his mind and reason to deal with.

photo whatculture.com/

An important part of the movie is made up of screening sessions and in the last one of these screening sessions, director Joshua Oppenheimer pushes Anwar on what seems to be, a tearful acceptance of his past. To the spectator, Anwar`s repentance seems more a fear of bad karma coming his way. From a cinematic point of view, you’d want more, you’d expect his coming to terms to be more emotional, more powerful, not a result of the fact the the director confronts him. You want him to convince you that he has found his moral compass, that he truly repents so you don’t have to feel guilty. Guilty about getting to like this guy, this gentle grandpa who teaches his nephews not to harm little ducks, this funny old man who dresses like a pimp with a fashion degree, this Nelson Mandela look-alike and Sidney Poitier wannabe, this cinema gangster, this murderer. You want to be sure, you want the murky gray to turn black and white again. In fact, you crave for fiction (there is no such thing as a pure documentary, it is always someone’s point of view), for an auctorial intervention that would edit some sort of moral meaning in this ending. But then you realize that this is exactly what this kind of cinema is aiming at: an emotional vertigo of reality that doesn’t let you have the easy way out, once seen you just have to check it as something that happened, something real, not something that makes sense.

by Andrei Șendrea.

http://www.liternet.ro/autor/3761/Andrei-Sendrea.html

The post THE ACT OF KILLING – ACTION IS DOING appeared first on INHALE MAG.

A TV special he taped in the summer of 1977 epitomized this era as it featured his hopelessly naive Foreign Man character, a sincere interview with Kaufman’s childhood idol Howdy Doody, and a step-by-step tutorial on how to make chocolate milk. The showcase ended with a sing-along to a song called “This Friendly World”.

Due to its unabashedly offbeat nature (is he kidding? is he serious? what is he?) that special was shelved and would not air until two years later, after Kaufman had gained more fame with his role on “Taxi”. But by then, in the summer of ’79, the performer had, as one TV critic put it, “turned.” He had started wrestling women onstage because he loved wrestling and its ridiculous theater. He also found the activity quite arousing and, according to Bill Zehme’s definitive biography Lost in the Funhouse, it was a good way for Kaufman to break the ice with girls he wanted to have sex with after the show. Not very innocent.

photo andykaufman.jvlnet.com

He also invented a new character, Tony Clifton, who was the exact opposite of his lovable Foreign Man– a Vegas-style lout in a bad toupee, tumbling gut, and hideous moustache. Clifton was pure id, a reaction against Kaufman’s kid-friendly former self. Looking back, that period between ’77 and ’79 was especially pivotal for Kaufman– it’s also the timeframe when he taped 82 hours of audio from his everyday life onto his newly purchased microcassette recorder. A keenly edited version of those tapes make up the 48 minutes of Andy and His Grandmother, a comedy album that is, fittingly, unlike any other.

The inspiration behind Kaufman’s home recordings may be a man that his confidant and co-conspirator Bob Zmuda calls Mr. X (due to fear of retribution) in his book Andy Kaufman Revealed!. Zmuda worked for this apparently psychotic Hollywood screenwriter who would get himself into dangerous or outlandish real-life situations– like insulting a mob boss’ mother at her birthday dinner– record them on audiotape, and then use those recordings as catalysts for his writing. Such mixing of fact and fiction was catnip for Kaufman, whose life often seemed like a series of pranks and put-ons. So Andy and His Grandmother– compiled by veteran comedy writer/producer Vernon Chatman (“Louie”, “South Park”, “The Chris Rock Show”) and documentarian Rodney Ascher (the Shining-obsessed Room 237)– isn’t merely a recording of Kaufman’s stand-up performances, but rather recordings of real-life conversations that would plant creative seeds in his eccentric mind. Considering that many of the record’s most memorable moments document wildly heated phone calls, it can seem likeAndy and His Grandmother is more similar to a Jerky Boys album than comedy classics by Steve Martin or Bill Cosby.

photo avclub.com

Because, by-and-large, this is a record of provocation. It’s also probably one of the most clear-eyed accounts of the “real” Andy Kaufman in existence, a serious feat considering his notoriously slippery relationship with what most of us call reality. The candidness here can be startling, even by 2013 standards. A track called “Slice of Life” has Kaufman talking to one of the many women he bedded while on tour in the late 70s. “We just screwed and here’s the afterward conversation,” he announces, before continuing: “It didn’t look to me like you were enjoying it that much.” But this isn’t laugh-out-loud funny. It’s unflinching. He asks her, “What happens if you got a baby?” to which the unnamed woman responds, “I’ll hop a plane to Toronto and get a little abortion.” Naturally, she asks for him to turn off the tape (there’s an entire track here devoted to the voices of people requesting– often in an incensed tone– for Kaufman to “shut that off”) but he’s adamant: “Why is it that nobody understands that the kind of conversations that nobody wants me to tape are the kind of conversations that should be taped?” It’s the sort of philosophy that runs through the work of many great comedians, from Woody Allen to Louis C.K., laid perfectly bare, without the filter of a camera lens, script, or stand-up routine.

photo nedhepburn.tumblr.com

Later on, a series of phone calls show up in which Kaufman diabolically riles up a woman who doesn’t appreciate her feelings being used as some sort of meta comedy exercise. “You are fucked up!” she screams. “I WANT THOSE FUCKING TAPES!” The call is followed by Zmuda and Kaufman plotting how they could release the contentious conversations with this one tremendously angry woman as an album. “The concept would be funny because it’s real, but it would be dramatic at the same time,” Kaufman says, before excitedly suggesting to Zmuda, “Wouldn’t it be great if she killed me and you have the tapes?” It’s uncomfortable comedy, the kind that Kaufman would perfect with Tony Clifton and his inter-gender wrestling career. And these talks with various women accentuate the more problematic sides of his personality, the parts that were addicted to prostitutes and womanizing. “He hated that he needed to be with women,” says friend Wendy Polland in Lost in the Funhouse, “because he didn’t like the mind games they played with him. Which I guess was sort of ironic, wasn’t it?” Andy and His Grandmother shows him fighting back against these women, and it can sound as compelling as a car crash.

photo momaps1.tumblr.com

But it’s not all unusually cringe-worthy. There are moments when Kaufman’s more lighthearted, ’77-era persona shows up, like when he takes his grandmother out for a car ride and tries to convince her that a radar is guiding the vehicle (though that track cannily jump-cuts to a confrontation with a traffic cop who threatens to “knock the shit” out of a belligerent Kaufman). And all that phone yelling toward the end of the album is foreshadowed by another phone bit, “Andy Can Talk to Animals”, where Kaufman gets into a shouting match with what sounds like a squealing pig: “Yeah, whaddya want? Say it fast.” [pig squeal] “I had to change my fucking clothes so I can go out and have a good time and you just made me miss my appointment, so fuck you!” It’s funnier than the real arguments– likely due to the absurdity and lack of actual consequence– but as Kaufman progressed through the late 70s, coaxing laughs from his audience became less and less of an imperative.

photo whenyouputitthatway.wordpress.com

At one point during the album, a wronged woman lashes out at Kaufman in a particularly discombobulated– but not inaccurate– manner: “You think that I really don’t know when you goof on me, and you think that I really don’t know, and really I know, and you know that I really know, but you say I don’t know.” These are the mental hoops this one-of-a-kind performance artist would force people to go through on a regular basis, whether onstage or in front of his tiny personal recorder. It’s why he still resonates and fascinates in our world of meta-this and post-that, why anyone would care about a collection of cobbled together personal recordings from an enigma who’s been dead for nearly three decades. Based on Andy and His Grandmother, Kaufman comes off like an asshole, a hopelessly naive loser, a crazy person, a hothead, a hopelessly sweet grandma’s boy, a sexually confused teenager, and a manipulative monster. In other words, he comes off like Andy Kaufman.

via pitchfork.com

The post ANDY KAUFMAN – A COMEDY ALBUM appeared first on INHALE MAG.

photo cinemasalem.com

The story follows a family of drug smugglers that own a boxing arena searching for the killer of one of their brothers. All the ingredients are present for the film to be viewed as a neo-noir representation of the Bangkok crime scene and the classic cinematic artifices are all employed in this sense. Firstly, the black and white colour scheme is replaced by variations on red and blue which dominate the screen throughout the movie. The city is mired in darkness and narrow streets that form a maze for the characters, with the diegetic sound mainly used for punctuated footsteps, creating a sense of expectancy and heightened tension.

photo imgur.com

Also formally within the noir genre is the femme fatale character Crystal, the evil blonde mother that seeks to push Julian (Ryan Gossling) into murdering his brother’s killer. She is opposed by the classic ‘good girl’ Mai, who tries to reduce and replace the influence of the mother. The moral ambivalence of the characters is often emphasized with the use of shadows, with both Julian and Chang moving in and out of dark spaces.  These two stand in opposition, emanating energy on the screen with full body shots that are linked to crescendos in the soundtrack. Julian’s role as a leader in his family group is matched by Chang (The Angel of vengeance), who is a spiritual leader of the police department, with a god-like persona that is adored by his colleagues. In classic noir tradition, the film ultimately looks at the main character’s struggle to reconcile good and bad and achieve spiritual unity.

photo i.imgur.com

Given that this is a movie that breaks the East-West divide, it is also interesting to look at the way the differences between characters follow those lines. In this respect, a clash between kitsch and cliché is neatly presented in Only God Forgives and the play between appearance and essence is important in reading this aspect. While Bangkok is filled with Chinese lanterns and cheap colourful spaces, all Thai characters present a strong sense of morality and family values. From the prostitute’s father who kills his daughter’s assassin, to the hit-man whose only concern is his son’s well-being, a sense of right and wrong permeates.  Outside of whorehouses with art-deco interiors and Greek sculptures, there appears to be a singular understanding of ethics that is enforced by Chang.

photo i.imgur.com

On the other hand, Julian’s family is characteristic of a dysfunctional modern ‘unit’. With a dead father, a child abusing brother and a manipulative, perhaps incestual mother, their moral bankruptcy is evident in the mother’s dialogue, which jumps between vulgar and neurotic. These themes are all portrayed in very straightforward psychoanalytical narrative sequences that reek of ‘white’ insecurity and oppose the clean aesthetics of the mother’s hotel room. This clash between cultures offers Julian a space to go through a transformative journey that ends with his purification.

photo i2.cdnds.net

The last point and the unifying theory for the unfolding of the film appear with the dedication of the film to Alexander Jodorovsky. Firstly, we can look into the ways Refn borrows from the Chilean’s director supra-realist style to explain much of the performance of the characters. We also see the use of sound as a primary source of cinematic experience (tip!:close your eyes when Chang asks the girls to do so and see the results). More importantly however is Jodorovsky’s writing and experience as a tarot reader and his method of psychomagic. The technique relies on the psycho-genealogy (psychoanalysis that takes the family tree as the key aspect of therapy) of the subject that is targeted and then healed, based on the patient’s subjective superstitious beliefs. Under this lens, violence is the purifying agent, and Chang is the healer. Gossling’s character acknowledges Chang’s morality and pardons his brother’s killer after hearing what the Angel of Vengeance made him do. This sets up a spiritual link between the two main characters from the beginning, and Chang goes on to gradually kill all the negative elements in Julian’s life. Furthermore, Julian’s willingness to fight is in fact his preferred choice of superstition(that of archetypal male behaviour), his only means of communication, and the scene is followed by his salvation, as he stops his mother’s assassin from killing Chang’s daughter.

photo media2.firstshowing.net

As Julian slowly moves closer to the Angel of Vengeance, he finds himself searching for the purification that his brand of justice offers, and finally accepts his punishment. While the Ryan Gosling school of deadpan acting might see a fall in applicants, Only God Forgives cannot be judged singularly on those standards (on which it mainly fails). Meant to be released soon after Valhalla Rising, it follows Refn’s thread of non-social violence explored through characters placed outside classic understandings of morality and offers a distinct tale of man’s resolution with his violent self.

by Paul Dunca

Paul Dunca is a freelance saboteur looking for a change of pace. He writes reviews and opinion pieces to keep appearances and can be reached at various wishing wells around London.

The post ONLY GOD FORGIVES – BEYOND NEO-NOIR appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Synecdoche New York

written and directed by Charlie Kaufman

starring Philip Seymour Hoffman

This is my favourite film in the whole world. I hesitated about putting it in the list, because it’s just so wonderfully complex and simple at the same time, so unique and hard to compare with anything else, that I didn’t think I could possibly find a food to do it justice. And I was right, I didn’t. Keep reading.

photo aceshowbiz.com

The film

It’s the story of a theatre director who gets a funding of as much money as he needs to create his magnum opus. The man is socially awkward, hypochondriac, and generally unlikable, as all great artists are (at least for Kaufman, apparently, remember his previous movies, the artist is never cool). His dream is to make something great, as great as life itself, and that’s where the problems start. You see, as his life keeps changing and expanding, trapped between his ever present feeling that he’s dying and the ever growing sets of his performance, the artist finds himself incapable of completing what he had in mind. It’s complicated. If you haven’t seen it yet, go do that immediately, then come back and tell me how you would have summarized that better.

photo learninthecloud.wordpress.com

The dish

This is the tricky part. I’m going to slightly break the rules here, given they are my rules and nobody cares anyway, and say the only thing suited is a combination of alcohol and cigarettes. Not exactly food, but they still go in your mouth, so just be grateful I’m keeping it civil. Allow me to explain.

We start it off with the drink, and not just any drink, but the mother of all that’s pure and clean and metaphysically painful about alcohol: vodka. That will make them shiver in disgust, then almost at once feel a kind of inner warmth, bringing with it the promise of great things to come. They don’t know yet whether they like it or not, but their interest is, in any case, awoken, like a sleepy dragon from the distant jingle of a gold necklace.

photo rt.com

The drinks need to keep coming at a steady pace, for a couple of hours, until our trusting client has gone through almost all stages of drunkenness. First they laugh, poor bastards, unaware of what’s next. Then they are overwhelmed with the desire to go on the dance floor and get jiggy with it (is that still a cool thing to say?). Afterwards they should discover a sense of human connection with everyone around them, a love for their fellow man, as imperfect as they may be. As a simple precaution, it’s important that during this stage they are kept at a safe distance from people they might find attractive (that is, everyone), as they will be very willing to see what’s all the fuss about that make love, not war thing everyone keeps talking about. NOW is the time to give them that pack of cigarettes they were craving all night, but that you sadistically refused to take down from the upper shelf.

photo media.theiapolis.com

It will taste something like Monte Cristo’s first breath of air as a free man. Like the blood of a virgin for a starving vampire. It will be wonderful and disgusting and wrong. And each cancerous breath of delicious smoke will make them think, suddenly aware of what they’re doing, tragically incapable of stopping. Soon, all that previous love will turn to: everyone I love, including myself, are going to die. We are going to totally die, before we even do what we dreamed of doing when we were young and innocent and happy, and we’re going to be alone and sad and oh, God, why don’t you exist? Then they cry. They always cry, as they realize how they’re trapped in their own destiny, which they themselves are creating, unaware of how tragic and pathetic it all looks like from the outside.

photo billblog.blogspot.com

And, should they dream of maybe one day becoming chefs themselves, they will shed one extra tear at the realisation that, not only will they never be able to create the chef-d’oeuvre they’ve been dreaming of, as it is impossible to do so, but they won’t even match you and your devilishly combined dish. Or they will just puke and hate everything you carefully constructed for them, because they can’t hold their liquor, so they’re not prepared yet. Give them some time to grow and try again.

Read part one here:

http://inhalemag.com/six-more-or-less-delicious-films-and-their-food-equivalents/

Read part two here:

http://inhalemag.com/six-more-or-less-delicious-films-and-their-food-equivalents-2/

by Alexa Băcanu

Alexa Băcanu is a private investigator and awesome mercenary. Interests: everything (except Math and most people). She doesn’t write anywhere else (no one other than us would let her) except in her diary and on public bathroom walls.

The post SIX MORE OR LESS DELICIOUS FILMS AND THEIR FOOD EQUIVALENTS – PART 3 appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Discussing such a truly engrossing and complex film like Ben Wheatley’s 17^th century English Civil War supernatural drama, A field in England, is a difficult task. That statement alone only offers slight indications of the cinematic feast that the British director prepared with his latest instalment. With layers of symbolism and powerful aesthetics wrapped around a story dealing with the occult and the mystical, the movie captivates through its resilience to conventional interpretations of cinema.Torn by conflict, the space inhabited by the characters is restricted to war and religion.This makes any reading of the film rely on power relations and allegory.

photo imgur.com/tUXWpmr.png

The plot follows four deserters who meet on the battlefield and decide to leave together in order to escape capture. Whitehead is a noble’s servant in search of a former disciple of his master that stole alchemy books, later shown as O’Neil. He is the main character of the story, and the plot mainly revolves around his development. A pious man with fear of God, he transforms by acquiring self-consciousness, as he abandons the rigours of his teachings to battle O’Neil’s evil ways. Complementing him is Trower, a thief whose rotten character extends to his physical health(‘Am I turning into a frog?’’Tis the one complaint you do not suffer from.’).

photo static.squarespace.com

Trower drinks and swears and formally repeats that he is his own man, setting up the main theme of Whitehead’s development but also ironically pointing to his capture by O’Neil and his servant. Another supporting role is Friend (Trower ‘names’ him as such), a cheerful Essex peasant who sees life as an obstacle course between divine punishments. Hejokes, smiles and is fascinated with hands and handcrafted tools, pointing to a purity of the simple man that takes life as it is. He is also the only one to break the violence-religion barrier, with a song that correlates both to Trower’s salvation and to Whitehead’s awakening. Lastly there isO’Neill, who is revealed to be Cutler’s master and the reason the latter suggested to the other three to go towards the alehouse, who is an alchemist seeking treasures to pay off debts. He wishes to use Whitehead’s conjuration powers to find these and is aware of the main character’s real strength.

photo theskinny.co.uk

The four men initially head towards an alehouse as a marching band without a leader. Their first collective action is pulling a rope that leads them to O’Neil, when their purpose is revealed(the henchman, the treasure-seeker and the two workers). At this point, Whitehead is only a coward, unaware of the world or his self, as O’Neil points out. He enslaves Whitehead and forces him to look for a treasure site, also making him break his fast and drink wine.

photo bbci.co.uk

As Neil’s plan progresses and Trower and Friend dig deeper for the treasure, Whitehead becomes more inward looking. His vision of a foreign planet crushing the earth bears a resemblance to an iris, the world looking into the character. This, along with the runes with unknown writings that he coughs out, isone of the visual metaphors that point to Whitehead’s inability to know himself and his true power. Finally, Friend’s song triggers his catharsis, as he embraces the evil that O’Neil represents in order to foil his plan. Blindly ingesting mushrooms as he is chased around the field, a visual play on identity between the two opposing characters occurs. Finally, the revelation of the digging spot as a burial ground that holds mystical powers confirms Whitehead’s transformation and true form, of a charlatan and a killer with great power.

photo eastendfilmfestival.com

The visual style stands out through the choice of black and white instead of colour. The bleakness of the imagine favours a strong use of sound in telling the story, with hard-hitting, psychedelic drums and repetitive guitar samples(think Wender’sKings of the Road or Refn’sValhalla Rising) that punctuate and enforce the narrative. Walking through plains and meadows, the audience never sees any structure or sign of civilization, creating a sense that the characters journey through a stateless land. The role of mise-en-scene is further enhanced by tableaux that the characters create at the beginning of each ‘chapter’ through stand-still poses.

photo imgur.com

As the story reaches its climax, with the 10 minute hallucination scene that the main character experiences, the sense of paranoia and loss of control is enforced by stroboscopic sequences, kaleidoscope effects and higher frame rate. These film-making elements are normative rather descriptive, as the experience of the characters trickles into the visual style of the film.

Ben Whitley covers the film with numerous artifices that capture the attention of the audience, creating a unique sensory experience outside of classic formulas and worthy of the alchemy theme of the film. In the end, A field in England is a single-standing tale of emancipation and unleashing of human potential, as the protagonist takes on the role of the coward, the faithful, the slave and finally the master. ‘I shall pray for more legs and hands to better appreciate the wonders that play out beneath us.’ Whitehead’s ultimate desire to know and feel more reveals a very humane message in A field in England, perhaps fitting for an English Civil War film.

Paul Dunca is a freelance saboteur looking for a change of pace. He writes reviews and opinion pieces to keep appearances and can be reached at various wishing wells around London.

The post MUSHROOMS AND ALCHEMISTS ON A FIELD IN ENGLAND appeared first on INHALE MAG.

photo londoncitynights.com

First of all, let’s define the terms. It’s gay, not homosexual. Gay comes with the double meaning: sexual orientation but also a mindset. And, from this semantic mixture, come the visible, mainstream manifestations of gay culture, for this is a gay film made for a straight public. In this sense, everything is gay in Behind the Candelabra, starting with the sets, costumes, glasses, wigs, jewelry, champagne and, of course, candelabra, down to the animated things – dogs, men and boys (waxed toyboys and houseboys dressed in ridiculously tight clothes, swimming in diamond laced trunks or showing off their white g-string marks). Palatial kitsch is the concept, as defined by Liberace himself (played by Michael Douglas), a concept best embodied by the golden slippers he wears. Palatial kitsch is opulence so opulent that it goes beyond judgments of good or bad taste and simply demands to be admired. The film must be seen as a classic Vegas show, a show that Soderbergh with his antecedents (the setting and the opulence of the cast in the Ocean’s series) controls very well.

photo guardian.co.uk

Palatial kitsch is, at the same time, the core concept around which Soderbergh builds his film and the high standard set for the level of gay in the movie: but for the visual description of sex, where the film doesn`t go too far, everything else is taken to the extreme. The way the charcters act, dress and talk,  their inner life and their outward appearance, are meant to illustrate, again and again, an universe so gay that it becomes irrelevant whether what happens is real or not. Therefore, it’s irrelevant whether Liberace really was a „fruity Dracula” as described in one American review (the film is not to be seen as a biopic) or whether the film is accurate concerning the socio-cultural representations of gay people, if Matt Damon’s character is a convincing gay or if he is simply a straight actor trying to be gay by using more or less known stereotypes, and by relying heavily on feminine posture and gestures. Also, those that expect a film supporting the gay community or a film that is serious and well-documented concerning the problems of sexual orientation will be disappointed.

photo justjared.com

This thematic-visual-stylistic concept is referenced in every aspect of the film, delivering on occasion some very remarkable feats of cinematic mastery. From the first shot, as the logo of the producer, HBO, is formed out of stroboscopic colored lines dancing to a disco beat, right up to the end credits, with the successive pictures of the toy pianos that accompany the hand-written names of the cast and crew. From the diegetic beginning of the film, a young man so obviously gay (Scott) being picked up by an equally gay man in a gay bar and later introduced to a third man which is the definition of gay, until Liberace’s tragic death from AIDS related complications, a disease initially connected with the sexual promiscuity within the gay community. Soderbergh even succeeds in using frame composition and camera angle to underline his concept as seen in one close-up of Scott, shot between the legs of the houseboy, who is just explaining to Scott his sexual toy status. In another scene Soderbergh really shows his skill when it comes to cinema, that is, telling a story with the help of images, framing and editing. Scott is talking to a friend about how Liberace wants him to undergo plastic surgery . „Won`t it be weird looking in the mirror and not recognizing myself?” we hear him say as the camera pans out showing Scott in his back yard along with his three expensive cars, telling us that Scott is no longer himself anyway, he is whatever his old rich lover wants him to be.

photo loveisspeed.blogspot.com

One must also take note of the great acting performances of the entire cast, and particulary those of the two leading men. Michael Douglas as Liberace, is such a successful combination of decrepitude, sexuality and devilishness that he manages to cause the audience a panick attack and mad laughter at the same time, as in the scene where we see him staring lewdly at his naked young lover,  a wrinkled satyr, with false hair and false teeth next to an Adonis. Also, Rob Lowe delivers a brilliant performance as Jack Startz, the plastic surgeon, a merit he shares with Soderbergh who had the vision to model the character as if he were the result of a bad LSD trip.

photo celebuzz.com

Getting back to the point made at the beginning of this review, Behind the Candelabra must be seen as a classic Vegas show, a larger than life show where the fireworks and lights are more important than the artistic part, a show that looks as if directed by Mr. Showmanship himself if he would have had the courage to come out of the closet or, better said, from behind the candelabra.

Behind the Candelabra (2013, r. Steven Soderbergh)

by Andrei Șendrea.

http://www.liternet.ro/autor/3761/Andrei-Sendrea.html

The post BEHIND THE CANDELABRA: PALATIAL KITSCH appeared first on INHALE MAG.

After having been banned from Cannes film festival because of some comments he made, the controversial director was in fact welcomed to submit this year his latest film. Unfortunately, it wasn’t ready. But people already talked about it, which keeps a constant interest on him and the upcoming film. In fact, they have a very good way of advertising Nymphomaniac (I just assumed that everybody already knows the title, because you rarely hear a title as strong as this one), since once in a while they upload on the film site either a photo or a short clip. And this is the first that was shown to the public:

photo guardian.co.uk/

Maybe the public expected something else from a film called Nymphomaniac. But when you hear a cutting-edge actor la Shia LaBeouf (he took LSD in order to get in character for The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman) says that

“There’s a disclaimer at the top of the script that basically says we’re doing it for real. Everything that is illegal, we’ll shoot in blurred images. Other than that, everything is happening … Von Trier is dangerous,” he added. “He scares me.” then you know that there must be something with this film and this film director.

photo fastcocreate.com

Above, the promotional poster of the film. You can see Uma Thurman, Shia LaBeouf laying on the ground, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Christian Slater  near the bucket with what appears to be milk or soap, all being filmed with the phone by Lars von Trier.

And here is the first thing you see when entering the site.

photo www.nymphomaniacthemovie.com

If you check the film’s site you can see the names of the eight chapters of the film. For the first one, The Compleat Angler, they released a trailer. And there is an introduction to it, to present a little the context:

“How does an ordinary bag of chocolate sweets become a symbol of sexual victory?

As Joe and her experienced friend B embark on a train trip, they bet on how many men they can seduce on the ride.

The grand prize is a delicious bag of chocolate sweets, and it soon becomes clear to Joe that in order to win, she needs to lure the prey into biting the hook like a skilled fisherman.”

More about the film here: http://www.nymphomaniacthemovie.com/

The post NYMPHOMANIAC: THE TEASER appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Want to join Inhale Mag? Become a contributor. Our call is now open. We are waiting for articles on the local art scene in your city. We have no country limit, no age limit, no subject limit: we are ready to Inhale.

Join the Inhale community!

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Comrade Kim Goes Flying

One of the most intriguing films at the festival is “Comrade Kim Goes Flying,” a British-Belgian-North Korean co-production making its New York premiere. The film, “in which a beautiful coalminer inveigles her way into becoming a circus trapeze artist,” was shot in North Korea, and has reportedly been widely successful there — although it’s impossible to get accurate box-office numbers. Some have criticized the film for sugarcoating a murderous regime, but the filmmakers are insisting the film is far from propaganda.

Screens Friday, July 5, 2:30 p.m. at the Walter Reade Theater

photo blouinartinfo.com

Drug War

Forget Scorsese: If there is one true master of the crime film, it’s prolific Chinese auteur Johnnie To. “Drug War,” his 2012 film making its New York premiere at the festival, is a brutal, cold assault, the story of a police chief who partners with a criminal fresh out of jail to take down a drug ring. The film, the director’s first in Mainland China (which has strict censorship rules concerning cinema), works as a critique of the country that is sure to satisfy fans of To’s substantial body of work.

Screens Friday, July 5, 6:15 p.m. at the Walter Reade Theater

photo blouinartinfo.com

The Fridge

Filipino director Rico Maria Ilarde’s appliance-horror film stars Andi Eigenmann as Tina, a girl who, after the mysterious death of her parents, returns to the Philippines following a stint in the U.S. and discovers that the refrigerator in her home eats people. Yes, you read that correctly. The film is a semi-follow-up to “Pridyider,” a chapter in iconic Filipino horror-anthology “Shake, Rattle & Roll,” about a murderous fridge that lures women into its trap.

Screens Friday, July 5, 11:59 p.m. at the Beale Theater; and Wednesday, July 10, 3:30 p.m. at the Walter Reade Theater

photo blouinartinfo.com

Taiwan Black Movies

Hou Chi-jan’s documentary unearths a forgotten period of Taiwanese cinema, pre-new wave, consisting of low-budget exploitation films that the government later decried and held up as an example for how not to make movies. While working a menial job at the Taipei Film Archives, director Hou discovered a few forgotten tapes, and the film follows his journey of bringing these films back to the public. The festival will screen the documentary along with a few “black movies,” including “The Lady Avenger” and “Never Too Late to Repent (a.k.a. The First Error Step).”

Screens Saturday July 6, 1:00 p.m. at the Walter Reade Theater

photo blouinartinfo.com

Bad Film

Maybe the craziest looking film at the festival, it’s hard to beat the description: “150+ hours of a post-apocalyptic GLBT gangster saga shot on raw Hi-8 video, set on the eve of the impending Hong Kong handover.” The film, featuring a cast of thousands, has been cut down and shaped, but still sounds out of control. Director Sion Sono is a controversial figure who, according to festival notes, once showed up to the Japan Society in New York drunk and ranting about Quentin Tarantino, and was the figurehead of Tokyo GAGAGA, “a 2000 member-strong guerrilla performance art collective.” The film is making its North American premiere, and is certainly not to be missed.

Screens Friday July 12, 6:00 p.m. at Japan Society

photo blouinartinfo.com

via blouinartinfo.com

The post 5 FILMS TO SEE THIS WEEK-END STRAIGHT FROM NY ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL appeared first on INHALE MAG.

photo blog.tiff.ro

When you see that a film director like Xavier Dolan being a master of stories, dialogue and camera, you might have a bit of a shock of the maturity Dolan is capable of at only 24 years old. After J’ai tué ma mère (2009) and Les amours imaginaires (2010), the Canadian filmmaker goes to another level with Laurence Anyways. The story: boy meets girl, they fall in love, then he admits he always wanted to be a woman and that he is now sure he wants to make a sex change. And the rollercoaster begins. The film is an intellectual parade: little hints of what will come (there is a scene where she goes to the supermarket to buy sugar and there is on the background a child crying and you snap understanding what this means), discussions about writers and concepts (he is a teacher).

photo tellafairytale.files.wordpress.com

Although this might not be for everyone since it has that arty touch, it is visually powerful and there is also the stunning actors’ performance (Suzanne Clément and Melvil Poupaud) and one of the best soundtracks. During the film, a spectator said “I fear that Xavier Dolan will die soon. All that talent in one person is not a good thing.” Hopefully, we will see him growing, because he surely has much to say.

A Hijacking is a powerful drama about the four months Somali pirates spent on a Danish cargo ship along with the crew, waiting for the money to be delivered. And as if the tension wasn’t enough already, the CEO of the company wants to negotiate directly, which is risky, since there is the psychological pressure of him personally knowing the crew.

photo totallydublin.ie

Even though they never let their guns down, the Somali pirates party with the Danish crew. The director Tobias Lindholm creates here a nail-biting tensioned situation. As times goes by the crew is more miserable, the Somali loose temper easily and they are all hoping to go home as fast as possible. What makes the film powerful is the multiple perspectives from which the spectator can see the hijacking: there are the hostages, the Somali pirates, the CEO, the crew’s families.

And, not to say anymore, even though you’ll appreciate this European film, in the end you might find yourself hoping it would end happily like an American film, with no deaths and the heroes going home.

One of the controversial documentaries that were presented in TIFF is The Act of Killing. This terrifying documentary that shocked the audience since its first screening is directed by Joshua Oppenheimer who follows the “gangster” (as he likes to call himself) Anwar Congo, an Indonesian that took part in the massacre of around 100.000 people during the Indonesian killings (1965-1968). Oppenheimer makes Anwar and his colleagues re-enact the murders and talk about them. Therefore, the camera is not only a simple observer, but the tool that makes them confess and see what victims must have felt.

Anwar’s openness towards his murders makes the film feel anything but real. If at the beginning the killers want to create this image of gangsters and very cool people who had just a little different job, they end up breaking down.

photo childofklang.files.wordpress.com

The post WE WERE HERE – TRANSILVANIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL appeared first on INHALE MAG.

photo snapiwatches.wordpress.com

The philosophical ideas behind the science-fiction works with a concept of personal identity and with concepts like being human, the conscience and artificial intelligence, moral implications of a meeting with extra-terrestrial beings and transforming the future with the evolution of science and technology. What is common to all dystopias is the presence of a character coming from another medium, of restoration and emancipation. This character can be the human condition in what we might call post-humanity.

photo digiplexdest.blogspot.com

Oblivion is another dystopian, post-apocalypse, cyberpunk SF which fits perfectly in this category through story, themes, motives, character, image and atmosphere. Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), the main character, is tormented from the beginning of the film by his memories that haunt his dreams. He asks himself whether they are real, if the memories define or not his identity. Still, he knows that his memory was erased after the war where the Earth was protected by invaders. He is skeptic and filled with uncertainties.

photo twitchfilm.com

The action takes place on Earth, in a post-apocalypse medium after the entire planet was destroyed by nuclear bombs. This is the medium where we find Jack whose mission is to take care of the remaining resources of the planet and to repair the drones (independent weapons). He lives in a tower, which is very typical for SF films, all made of windows. Gadgets are everywhere; it’s minimalist, but luxuriant.

photo rogerebert.com

The film explores a very common idea in SF films: the human life can be recreated by scientists or can be manipulated by extra-terrestrial beings with superior scientific powers. The memory is very important here, as well as feelings and desires. Jack has a human body, but his memories have been erased. His obsessive flash-backs and his decision come from an emotional stubbornness. He doesn’t follow the rules and like this he finds out who is in charge of the new society and who he is.

photo oblivionmovie.com

The survival and reproduction instinct are very well underlined: the NY hat, the book he “saves” in the middle of the fight, the flower he finds. There is a very touchy moment when he finds a hidden house with a windmill.

There are some moments where clichés are present. The moment when he remembers that the woman he saved in a fight is his wife, some lines seem very superficial:

“Are we gonna die?” the wife asks;

“No.” says Jack. (after several seconds) ”Maybe!”

The message is not far from all the messages of a SF: machinery is not a person’s best friend, they can turn against you and your feelings are basic to the human nature. And we shouldn’t forget that Oblivion is produced by Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy), and he turns the image and special effects in a powerful weapon.

by Diana Vasile

Diana Vasile studies Audio-Video Communication at the National University of Theatre and Film. She likes writing since she was little (when she was 10 she wrote the sequel of Harry Potter, since she longed for it). The passion for film appeared when she was a teenager and melted into writing scripts. She is an autodidact in her spare time, but she loves parties, driving her car, cooking, cleaning and watching TV series.

The post OBLIVION – A S.F. WITH A ROMANTIC TOUCH appeared first on INHALE MAG.

The film starts in a funny note, alert with a short advice on how to be sure a painting will not be stolen during an auction. Simon (James McAvoy) is our guide and the main character. The camera comes close to a Rembrandt painting, but not as much as Peter Greenaway did in Rembrandt J’accuse (where the director proves his theory on a possible murder in Night Watch and on the way all the characters were involved too look innocent).

Goya -Witches in the Air
photo wikipaintings.org

Then comes the moment when Simon must apply what he learned. Franck (Vincent Cassel) and his team want to steal a Goya – Witches in the Air – during the auction. Simon takes the control and tries to take the painting in a safe place, but his actions make us believe that, in fact, a painting is worth more than a human’s life.

photo simonmernagh.files.wordpress.com

Yes, Simon plays the hero in front of Franck and gets a wound on his head. This is where the films starts. We are introduced in his delirium through subjective shots and the director has the freedom to play with the story’s time and space, with colorful and shiny textures (walls, windows), mirrors and reflections. The images get you in trance from story to story, but mainly in the story where the main character wants to find out the truth about himself.

photo cdn.wegotthiscovered.com

Simon’s amnesia annoys Franck’s expectations who cannot conceive losing the painting. Therefore, he searches Simon’s house and car, he tortures him in a classic way (he takes Simon’s nails) but nothing comes out and he has the idea to take Simon to Elisabeth, a hypnotist. This is the moment when it all becomes interesting because the writer tries to insert some questions related for a future situation. Before having sex with Elisabeth, Simon finds a book with nudes – here comes the answer to Why Goya? Simon believes that he painted perfection. But Goya is also known for his painting where the reality combines with elements from a dream.

photo guardian.co.uk

Trance is a mixture of narrative structures, an anachronic and circular formula: you see again and again the first shots of the film because, in fact, the initial story is not the real one, but the next one might be and so on. Trance is the Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind meets Memento: a character suffering from amnesia and who discovers that he had the possibility to forget the loved one. Still, the stories are difficult to watch and the jokes are old. The strong areas are the hypnotic image and the actors.

photo www.filmoa.com

by Diana Vasile

Diana Vasile studies Audio-Video Communication at the National University of Theatre and Film. She likes writing since she was little (when she was 10 she wrote the sequel of Harry Potter, since she longed for it). The passion for film appeared when she was a teenager and melted into writing scripts. She is an autodidact in her spare time, but she loves parties, driving her car, cooking, cleaning and watching TV series.

The post TRANCE – PSYCHEDELIC TRAVEL appeared first on INHALE MAG.

I don’t know if there is some filmophile chef out there who thought about naming dishes after films he enjoyed, so I’m going to go ahead and presume there is at least one such person, and to him I say: Bonjour (because, of course, he’s French), forget about all that Bande à part roast and the Une femme est une femme mousse and let’s concentrate on something a bit more recent and less snobby. Here are, for your free use, kind monsieur or madame, six films inspired more or less delicious dishes. You’re welcome.

3. Atlas Cloud

The film

It’s a bold try, really. I wish more film makers would take their job so seriously and try to be as innovative as the Wachowskis. That way, even when the result isn’t quite what it should be, you still find yourself rooting for them. At least they tried something different.

This film consists of several interconnected stories, happening a long time apart from each other and can be seen as some sort of anamnesis, the tracing of a soul (several, in this case) through different embodiments, until it reaches salvation. This is a really interesting philosophical issue, and maybe it would have worked in a series, definitely in a book, however, in Cloud Atlas it’s the separate stories that you’re more interested in.  Be it a dystopic Sci-Fi about clone slavery, a 70s thriller following a conspiration theory or a 19^th century story about the friendship between an attorney and an African slave, each segment is well thought and craftily put together in a way that manages to connect them all, if only with a thin line.

photo collider.com

The dish

Before starting preparing this dish, take a vacation. Don’t just call in sick for a day or two, because that won’t suffice. Just take a bloody vacation (Yes, I’m using a British “bad word” because it sounds cool, it’s not like you have to resume to American slang if English is not your first language, shut up. Also, I apologize for this really long aside, you can just reread the beginning of the sentence and skip this nonsense.), you’ll need it. Because it’s going to take an awfully long time to do this properly.

First of all, you need to sit down and think. I mean, really think, try to open up your mind to the mysteries of the universe, try to put some kind of order in this mess of a world we’re living in. After about a week and a half you should reach the conclusion that there is no such order, so just crawl out of your chair and do what you always do in times of despair: open the fridge. Take out everything inside, place all the items gently on your kitchen table and look at them. What do they all have in common? Well, peas and salad are both green. Great! We’re already progressing. What else? Corn flour (I won’t ask why you keep corn flour in the fridge, although it’s a bit weird) is made of corn… which kinda looks like peas. Wonderful! You need to dry up the corn before making corn flour, just like you need to do with grapes in order to have raisins. You know what else you can make with grapes? Grape cake. Who likes cake? Children, just like those baby squids in the freezer (except for the human or alive part, isn’t that a funny thing, we are all so alike). And what else could have become some kind of baby? Eggs. What used to be a baby, before getting really fat and dying horribly? Sausages! Amazing, so everything in the universe IS related!

photo www.razvang.ro

Now you just NEED to share this jolly piece of news with everyone you know, so invite them over for dinner in about three weeks’ time. Why three weeks, you ask? Oh, silly newcomer to the realm of fine cuisine. It’s not like you just throw it all in a pot and stir. No, no, no. You have to take all the 17,000 peas and wash them separately, then dry them with a towel made of butterfly wings. You have to cut every piece of salad milimetrically, so that each and every one is the perfect size for a fork to stab and roll around itself precisely one and a half times. Find out what Joan Collins is taking and inject that into the squids, so that they look more lively. We’re not playing here. I think you know what I mean, just be extra careful with every part of this recipe. THEN put everything in a pot and stir. There you go, Cloud Atlas Stew, everybody!

photo www.bbc.co.uk

Your costumers will be utterly flabbergasted. Their reactions will never bore you, because they will all be as individually unique as snowflakes. Some will enjoy the grape cake, others the peas, some will advise you to maybe make a different dish from every separate ingredient, most will feel frustrated that they didn’t actually get to enjoy any of them, given there was so little of each. A couple of people will even understand your point about the universe being connected and all.

But mainly, this one is mostly for you, for your inner growth and self image – you know you worked hard to produce a well thought, not cheap (it takes a lot of money to get eternal youth juice for those squids), barely comprehensible dish, which will stay with you forever. That’s more than we can say about the people eating it – it will go straight through them, if you catch my drift. It’s unfortunate, I know, because you’re a talented chef. Just keep it simpler next time, ok?

Here is a list of characters and stories:

Infographic
photo geektyrant.com

Here is the trailer:

Read part one here:

http://inhalemag.com/six-more-or-less-delicious-films-and-their-food-equivalents/

by Alexa Băcanu

Alexa Băcanu is a private investigator and awesome mercenary. Interests: everything (except Math and most people). She doesn’t write anywhere else (no one other than us would let her) except in her diary and on public bathroom walls.

The post SIX MORE OR LESS DELICIOUS FILMS AND THEIR FOOD EQUIVALENTS – PART 2 appeared first on INHALE MAG.

“Mike Mitchell is an artist in Los Angeles. He has a wife Lauren, one normal cat, one cross-eyed cat, one blind cat, and a dog who isn’t normal, but does have great vision. He thinks high fives are pretty cool and he likes to spend as much time writing bio’s as it took to read this.” – that is the description you can find on his official website, www.sirmikeofmitchell.com.

But what exactly does this Mike Mitchell do that he manages to make an impression any place in this world he displays his works?

 Well, Mitchell is one of the most popular artists out there today. He first gained national attention with his “I’m With Coco” poster for Conan O’Brien (which went viral on the internet) and has continued to do beautiful work putting a unique spin on popular culture. Last year, his Just Like Us exhibit at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles started a collectors craze and now he is back for his second show. This one takes popular, and some not-so-popular, movie characters and provides them each with a detailed, classy portrait.

I’m With Coco Poster

At 21 he headed to Chicago for art school, which was fairly life altering. After that he lived in Madison, WI for 18 months working at Raven Software, then moved to Los Angeles in 2008 for a job at a small video game studio, and shortly after got into the iam8bit exhibit, which was a huge deal for him as an artist. By the time this show arrived, he had quit his salary job („which was sucking the life out of me” – he mentions) and began to really concentrate on gallery shows and freelance.

 Regarding this MONDO Gallery show, he explained that he had always enjoyed doing portraits, and had done a few similar ones over the years. It was definitely a departure from the bulk of what he had been doing recently, which was mostly done to take a bit of a break from painting. The itch to do something a little more ambitious and work-intensive was starting to build, plus he felt like mixing it up a bit, and was able to accomplish that over the past 5 months.

 But why these certain characters? Well, he tried to pick characters that are more under appreciated in pop culture art. It is important to him that this show feels fresh and unique, and believes his choices are helping to achieve that. The movies he chose from span all genres, but the unifying theme are characters that made a strong impression on him, regardless of their screen time. There are a few characters that aren’t even in their respected movies for more than 5 minutes, but they are a big reason to watch those movies. Sadly, he still has quite a long list of characters that he wasn’t able to get to.

Bill-
Poster Title: “WOOPSY DAISY!”
Size: 12×16″
Edition Size: 70

The exhibit of the above works will end March 25th, at the Mondo Gallery, in Austin Texas.

The post FILM CHARACTERS RE-DESIGNED BY MIKE MITCHELL’S IMAGINATION appeared first on INHALE MAG.

photo papermag.com

First time director Adam Leone drew inspiration from genre classics, like Larry Clark’s Kids (1995)  or Little Fugitive (1953). Firstly, the visual style of portraying the metropolis as an indifferent mass of bodies where daring youths appear to dominate the city, is clearly reminiscent of Kids. While Harmony Korine’s scriptwriting debut is code for uncompromising visuals and narrative violence, it is from Little Fugitive that Gimme the Loot takes its tone. Yes, the parents are missing, and the two main characters are robbed(twice!), walk around bare-foot and are double-crossed every step of the way, but they are still kids. They are still defined by that sort of unadulterated, free-willing pursuit of happiness that allows them to shrug off any hardship. And while many things go wrong as they trail the city looking for graffiti stardom, in the end it seems like just an ordinary 24 hours. All that remains is the playground attraction between Sofia and Malcolm that make them such a good on-screen pair.

hollywoodreporter.com

There are a lot of other things that work well for Gimme the Loot. As any good New York movie, it has impressive and original great location shooting that embeds the audience in the urban environment and feels real. However, unlike a Spike Lee or Woody Allen feature, Leone does not seek to define the city within a narrow narrative viewpoint, but rather reveal it in its totality. Moving from Upper East Side condos to Queens rooftops and Bronx projects, while flowing through parks and busy streets, it fills the screen with an authentic New York aesthetic without politicizing the image.

photo 24.media.tumblr.com

This uninhibited, no-label type of directing further applies to the story. Much like The Little Fugitive, the movie does not have a contrived sense of right or wrong that ends the story, no moralistic view that it forces upon its audience. Every character seems like a natural element of the city, from the arrogant, educated Ginnie, a charming hipster seemingly cut from a Vampire Weekend album cover, to the couple’s partner in crime Rico, who obsessively repeats that he does everything to feed his family or Lenny, the dealer boss with a Cornell degree and a passion for golf. All of them in the end reveal themselves as endearing characters. They carry the essence of individualism/ exceptionalism that is so prevalent in the film and make Gimme the Loot such a feel-good flick. All this points to the film being a slice of life in the big city for 24 hours, filmed from an impartial vantage point.

photo images.zap2it.com

The central metaphor of conquering ‘the big apple’ is obvious and applies throughout the movie. Malcolm and Sofia are two parts of the same self-sufficient unit(it should be noted that there are no tweets, Iphones or vlogs involved). Alone, New York will crush them, but together, their energy can overcome any hardship.

photo content8.flixster.com

Here is the trailer:

By Paul Dunca

Paul Dunca is a freelance saboteur looking for a change of pace. He writes reviews and opinion pieces to keep appearances and can be reached at various wishing wells around London.

The post LET’S BOMB THE BIG APPLE! – WARMTH AND MISCHIEF IN GIMME THE LOOT appeared first on INHALE MAG.

I don’t know if there is some filmophile chef out there who thought about naming dishes after films he enjoyed, so I’m going to go ahead and presume there is at least one such person, and to him I say: Bonjour (because, of course, he’s French), forget about all that Bande à part roast and the Une femme est une femme mousse and let’s concentrate on something a bit more recent and less snobby. Here are, for your free use, kind monsieur or madame, six films inspired more or less delicious dishes. You’re welcome.

1. Grave of the Fireflies

The film

This 1988 Japanese animation accounts the story of two siblings struggling to survive on their own during WWII, after they lose their mother in one of the bombings that destroys their home. With no news from their soldier father and with an aunt who, in a great imitation of Cinderella’s stepmother, unwillingly offers them shelter, the two improvise a „home” on the outskirts of the village and try to make ends meet until the end of the war. Being that this is an animation, one would imagine, as it is learned from the almighty Disney, that everything will be ok, the father will come back home with his arms full of sweets and rice and he’ll punish the evil aunt by stabbing her with his ship (kids do love a good bloody revenge) and everyone will live happily ever after. Right? Right?!

Spoilers ahead

Grave of the Fireflies
photo missnati.deviantart.com

No. They both die. Take that, dewy eyed children everywhere! The end.

The more or less delicious dish

In order to replicate this heartbreaking story for the taste buds, we need a beautiful looking soup, creamy and rich, such as is needed to draw children and childish adults close, before slapping the childhood right out of them with the harsh realities of life. The animation of this movie is truly beautiful, so our dish needs to be good looking, too.

The main ingredient of our recipe is the Wasabi sauce. Aside from providing the lovely green colour of the soup, it will also make you cry from minute 1 until the very end, which is a must if we want to stay true to the movie-inspiration. Even more, this miracle ingredient will make sure that you will be haunted by this soup for days to come, as it is sure to have some painful effects on your whole digestive system.

For the finishing touch, drop in there a few sweet dumplings – just to provide for a much needed relief from all the horror. You will see that this only increases the shock of having to return to the hot sea of pain the few sweet patches of hope seem to be drowning in.

Voila! The Grave of the fireflies hot soup, or, as I like to call it, Staring in the face of sorrow.

Grave of the Fireflies
photo www.badhaven.com

Here is the trailer:

2. The Cabin in the Woods

The film

It starts as just another horror movie, with the introduction of the characters who we all know are going to die horribly during the next 90 minutes, while we enjoy every second of their demise. Then, everything changes in an extremely unexpected way, which is the best thing that could happen to this sort of movie. I’m not going to say more, because, for those who haven’t seen it, it’s better to know as little as possible about it, and for those who have seen it, I’m sure they still remember it. Why? Because it’s like a pleasurable slap in the face, even for people who are not into that sort of thing.  You go prepared for some good old gore and you get so much more, like if you got all the presents from Christmas and your birthday on the day you celebrate six months since you’ve stopped looking at cat videos on the internet.

The Cabin in the Woods
Photo nardio.net

Without giving anything away (although, seriously, you should have seen it by now, even if you don’t like horror movies, just like you should see Star Wars even if you’re not into Sci-Fi), I can make a chart of the emotions an average spectator(which I consider myself to be) will go through:

1. Complete relaxation: a great part of the fun is guessing the order in which the characters are going to die. Of course, we’re probably going to get stuck with the most boring of them, the nice girl. At least the annoying blonde is a goner.
2. Puzzlement: there are some scenes that don’t really make sense and you can’t figure out the connection between the two segments.
3. Ok, so you start to understand a bit, but not enough, and alternate between feelings of excitement that it’s finally beginning (the action, that is) and frustration that nobody explains you what’s going on, thus ending the annoyance of trying to think and make assumptions.
4. The movie’s humour softens your exasperation: if it doesn’t take itself seriously, why should you?
5. A bit sad that your favourite character just died.
6. To hell with this!
7. You love where this is going.
8. Complete satisfaction. Now you need to light a cigarette.

The Cabin in the Woods
photo www.moviedeskback.com

The more or less delicious dish

This food needs to be tasty and weird. So in order to achieve that, we need to combine one of the cheapest ingredients, if we can even call it that, and one of the most expensive: I give you the whimsical and allusive Popcorn and Caviar.

It is important that there’s more popcorn at the top and more caviar at the bottom, so that the excitement grows gradually. Your costumer will be like “whaaat?” Or, should he be more of the well bred type, he’ll say something close to ”This makes me think about popcorn in a whole new light. It is, if you like, a postmodern approach to popcorn, where one is forced to contemplate the mechanics at work in the making of this apparently simple food, while being served with a reflection of ourselves as popcorn consumers or makers, all this while enjoying the strangest combination of delicious food.”

Merçi beaucoup, will then say your costumer, while looking at you as if you were some long estranged dear friend. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the magic of Cabin in the Woods Caviar Popcorn.

Here is the trailer:

http://youtu.be/7ENUBUdFswM

Coming next: Cloud Atlas and In the Mood for Love.

by Alexa Băcanu

Alexa Băcanu is a private investigator and awesome mercenary. Interests: everything (except Math and most people). She doesn’t write anywhere else (no one other than us would let her) except in her diary and on public bathroom walls.

The post SIX MORE OR LESS DELICIOUS FILMS AND THEIR FOOD EQUIVALENTS appeared first on INHALE MAG.

whatculture.com
Film poster

The film concentrates on Lucas’ story. Lucas is a caretaker in a small Danish town who is accused of pedophilia. The script comes with some objective and interesting ideas like the little joke that Klara’s brother makes about the iPad and the fact that Lucas is used to walk with the girl ignoring a kiss she gives him as if she was playing. These ideas come from an objectivity that the director’s cinema-verite deals with.

Photo www.bonjourtristesse.net

Vinterberg is not taking any sides as if he were playing a chess game, but, still, Lucas is disadvantaged and he has only one support- his son, Marcus. His allies are people whose mentality is that of calm persons.

On the other side there is the girl, her family (her father is Lucas’ best friend), Lucas’ lifelong friends, Lucas’ girlfriend and the entire city.

photo http://www.bfi.org.uk
Klara and the teacher

Fights take place, people accuse each other, others are rejected – these are all scenes that look as if taken from action movies. Vinterberg is subtle with each scene. When Marcus goes to ask Klara’s family explanations, he enters in a conflict with other friends that were in the house. Mad, he wants to hit a tall solid guy and has to jump in order to reach the man’s cheek. The humor remains in the back of the scene, since it is quickly erased by the reactions the characters have.

photo www.filmofilia.com
Lucas and his best friend, Klara’s father

Another example is the scene where Lucas is beaten by the employees of a supermarket where he used to shop. He is kicked out but he comes back to hit the butcher that first hit him. Vinterberg, therefore, erases anything that would look like a mainstream action film -  the motivation is that Lucas only wanted his bag with the shopping he made, and this is a resort for him to protect his manhood: he is a man that can fight back.

photo entertainmentmaven.files.wordpress.com
Lucas and his son, Marcus

Although you might have seen him in other films and you might know how talented he is, Mads Mikkelsen is a revelation here as a man who struggles with an apparently eternal guilt. In Jagten we have a confirmation of his talent to interpret different characters. He went to Hollywood and took part in several projects, but changed nothing when it comes to his qualities and the richness of his facial expression.

Jagten has several beautiful images, like the final scene when Lucas is aware that the fake guilt will follow him everywhere. Another scene is the one with the first snow where Klara is in close up shows a little hope after we have seen the girl’s brother with the eyes in tears where he became aware that he is, in fact, the one to blame.

by Bogdan Drumea

Bogdan Drumea tries very hard to become a scriptwriter and when he has the time he writes film reviews and reviews about metal concerts and albums. He tries to maintain his imagination vivid due to horror films, fantasy films, BD and video games.

The post THE HUMAN HUNT appeared first on INHALE MAG.

http://madrideducacion.es
Blancanieves young

The director’s motivation for a silent film Blancanieves is strong: the script deals with bullfighters in Sevilla of the 20s. The director chose this Grimm tale to underline the aspect of folklore: the famous bullfighter Antonio Villalta (paralyzed after an accident in the ring) has a daughter with his wife who dies when giving birth. The girl gets in the care of her step-mother who, in the end, commands that the girl should be killed.

“The ranger” drowns her, but she is saved by a bullfighter dwarf who keeps her in a caravan, together with the other dwarfs. Blancanieves (they give her this name, since she suffers from amnesia) jumps in the ring to protect one of the dwarfs that was attacked by a bull. She does it instinctively, since she learnt how to do it from her father.

http://blancaniev.es
Blancanieves and the dwarfs

The dwarfs are impressed, the public is impressed so they become a group. The moment they get in the ring in Sevilla a man recognizes her and her memories come back. We see here in a montage with very alert flashbacks that she must continue what she started: she is Carmen, the daughter of the famous bullfighter (we can look at her as Bizet’s Carmen). The mirror is a magazine where the step-mother finds out about the fight and plans the poisoned apple.

http://blancaniev.es
The caravan where Blancanieves lives with the dwarfs

Any narration has at its base the elements that help constitute a fairytale, even if they are under a different shape. The fairytale, through its nature, can bring the stories  a feeling of universality, each story can easily be transposed in a different vision. Blancanieves respects very carefully all the important moments (the absence, the interdiction, trespassing the interdiction, finding the villain, his evil intentions etc.) only changing the ending: the princess bites the poisoned apple but she doesn’t respond to any kiss, but ends up as a doll in a morbid circus show.

static.cinemagia.ro

Spain’s culture can be met in many parts of the world due to its colonies, therefore elements like toreo, the music and the flamenco dancers, with all the cante, toque, baile and palmas, the Spanish carnival couldn’t be absent. The director puts all of these elements altogether with well-known images of the White Snow: pricking the finger, the mirror, the key-hole as well as elements and characters that are emblematic for the story.

The steady shots are very common for the silent films, the use of super impression (special effects used at the beginning of cinema), the close ups and extremely close ups with large reactions are all marks of the first decades of film history. There is a grotesque-romantic vision of the film which is easily underlined by a music that fits very well.

Blancanieves reminds the audience of childhood, it is in a way very close to Pan’s Labyrinth (2006, Guillermo del Toro), only before the war.

And here is the trailer

by Diana Vasile

Diana Vasile studies Audio-Video Communication at the National University of Theatre and Film. She likes writing since she was little (when she was 10 she wrote the sequel of Harry Potter, since she longed for it). The passion for film appeared when she was a teenager and melted into writing scripts. She is an autodidact in her spare time, but she loves parties, driving her car, cooking, cleaning and watching TV series.

The post BLANCANIEVES- WHITESNOW FIGHTS THE VEAL appeared first on INHALE MAG.

www.konbini.com
Pulp Fiction

Dancing Plague of 1518  is the name of this series which provokes good memories in your brain. We feel like re-entering genius films like Pulp Fiction , but also in Napoleon Dynamite (“VOTE FOR PEDRO !”), Little Miss Sunshine, as well as Seinfeld.

www.konbini.com
Napoleon Dynamite

The name of the project comes from a strange historical event that took place in France in 1518. This year a woman named Frau Toffea danced in the streets of Strasbourg for several days and rapidly other people joined her.

www.konbini.com
Little Miss Sunshine

http://vimeo.com/28248093

After days and days of dancing a large number of persons taking part in this flash mob medieval died of heart. This phenomenon would be named “maniacal dancing”.

www.konbini.com
Seinfeld- Elaine’s Dance

www.konbini.com
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

via www.konbini.com

The post DANCE STEPS THAT MARKED THE POP CULTURE appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Conveying an organic type of storytelling, struggling to challenge the concept of senses in cinema, “Postcards from the Zoo”, seems an eclectic collection of noetic moods, magic atmosphere and lyrical realism.

The film portrays Lana, a 5-years-old girl, who was abandoned by her father in a Jakartian zoo. Poetically provoking, the film follows her youth, her choices, her inner challenges and her first steps beyond the zoo, towards a new set of values, aims and feelings.

Slowly, the genuinely abstract portrait turns into a spiritual essay about love and belonging, into a soft journey into adulthood, revealing hidden identities and aiming to discover the world as a playground, although sometimes it can become an alienating playground.

“Postcards from the zoo” is the second feature-length film directed by Edwin and had it’s official World Premiere at the Berlinale 2012.

Postcards From The Zoo – Film Still

We interviewed Edwin about the cinematic wonders he explored when conceiving the film and we were simply mesmerized by his inner drives as a young filmmaker and by his honest, thought-provoking answers.

Ioana Mischie: „Postcards from the Zoo” seems a touching visual origami, redefining inner roots, challenges, barriers, becoming slowly an eclectic path towards rediscovery. However, it is extremely hard to position or define „Postcards from the Zoo” as a genre and this is what gives to it a much deeper authenticity. What inspired you to tell this story?

Edwin: At first, I wanted to express the feeling of longing for something, and it developed into a story about the journey home. Perhaps when we are longing for something, at the very bottom of it, is the longing to feel at home, or to know what home is, but you must go through many things before you really come to that understanding, before you accept and respect that feeling.  Another thing I was interested in touch, the absence of touching, the longing to be touched, which I feel is a basic human need.

Postcards From The Zoo – Film Still

Ioana: The script was developed in numerous high-quality development ateliers- Sundance, Torino Film Lab, Cinemart, Cannes Atelier. How long was the process of bringing the idea to a final draft? How important and effective is script development nowadays and how much did the story line change, while going through this process?

Edwin: It took about a year since the first draft that I made for Torino. All the experiences were valuable for me, especially because I don’t usually write a conventional format script. There were many elements that changed along the way, but I can say that at the end, the film did not depart very far from the original idea.

Ioana: I have read recently „About Looking” by John Berger and I unconsciously connected this book with your film. „Postcards from the Zoo” is a good icon and self-reflexion on human beings, for the way we conceive our societies, our conventions, our patterns, our aims, but it is also an organic essay exploring looking, touching, longing. What motivated you to choose this sensorial approach in cinema, which is extremely hard to convey?

Edwin: It was only my personal curiosity, a challenge I’m interested in. I think that cinema has the power to directly provoke our sensory experience.

Ioana: You portray Lana -  a little girl who grew up with her father in the wilderness of a zoo and we follow her path as a visual enchanting diary film. The magic of the film is hightened when Lana meets a handsome magician. You seem to portray their love as a fragile playground. There is a very intriguing type of romance, a relation based on intuition, and „beyond”-ness.  How did you build the relationship between them and why did you choose this certain mysterious interaction, the contrast between the two?

Edwin: I think we all know this attraction to the unknown, we can be so attracted to what we don’t know. The trigger for the attraction can be anything, but as a whole, what draws us is the mystery. Sometimes the person we are attracted to is just a proxy, for another world that we want to visit, a place  or state of mind where we want to take ourselves.

Postcards From The Zoo – Film Still

Ioana: In „Postcards from the Zoo”, Lana (played by Ladya Cheryl) builds a whole universe of emotions, driving the journey forward, raising spiritual stakes. It’s your fifth collaboration with Ladya Cheryl, how did you two meet and develop this professional relation in time?

Edwin: I really enjoy working with a cast and crew that is like family, that has developed experiences with me over time, I think that it contributes to the film itself.

Ioana: You seem to redefine home, not as a place, but as a state of mind, as a feeling. What is home, for you as the conceiver of this filmic universe?

Edwin: Exactly,home is a state of mind, a feeling. For me, first of all, home is making films, and home is my wife and son, wherever we may be in the world.

Ioana: The visual storytelling is mesmerizing, playing with details of rain, faces, gestures. You make an entire visual collage of memories, dreams and magic realism that makes the spectator feel he witnesses a contemporary fairytale. How did you conceive the visual side of the story? Did you work with carefully-sketched moodboards or rather with improvisation on set (if so, please give us an example)?

Edwin: No, I didn’t use any mood-boards, but I tried my best to convey to the cast and crew, illustrating with words and inviting them to think about the feelings I wanted to show.

Postcards From The Zoo – Film Still

Ioana: The scene with the rain invading the skin of an elephant is probably one of the most expressive raining scenes in the recent cinema. How did you conceive and make that specific scene?

Edwin: With every film I’ve made, there is usually a strong image that appears in my head even before the script is written. With Postcards from the Zoo, it was that image, the rain on the dusty skin of an elephant.

Ioana: How did you shoot the night images, obtaining the soft dark tint?

Edwin: Because we couldn’t shoot at night, we overcame that by shooting day for night, which may give a dark impression in some images.

Postcards From The Zoo – Film Still

Ioana: There is an eclectic type of storytelling, yet a very touching one, built on visual moods. What is your own personal approach on storytelling and what do you find most challenging when telling a story? Do you usually start from a certain character, from a certain image or rather with a place or a certain situation or dramatic structure?

Edwin: Yes, I certainly always start with a strong image and a feeling, before the story develops. I think this is why images are the basis of my storytelling, rather than dialog or characters.

Ioana: The dreamlike settings and movements are without any doubt a creative tag of the film. You declared in an interview „reality is the raw material for the dream”, but how would you define a dream?

Edwin: A dream is experienced in a state of unconsciousness, and it is usually doesn’t arrive in a linear or logical form. It is a montage that doesn’t seem related logically, yet feels so strong when you wake up, and eventually can reveal so many truths, if you choose to think about it. When I say reality is the raw material, I am only repeating theories I believe, that dreams come from our own thoughts and actions, not from the heavens above.

Ioana: Although it has a deep personal touch, „Postcards from the Zoo” for me seems also a story of our times in this socio-political sense. Could  the zoo be perceived, in a wider sense, as a set of conventions, just as capitalism is nowadays?

Edwin: It could be understood that way, if the audience wants to. In the film, we offered some definitions and terms related to the zoo, that can be applied to many other places or things.  I myself thought of the zoo as an embodiment of longing and loneliness, among others, but it can still be a home for many.  But I would love for the audience to have other interpretations.

Postcards From The Zoo – Official Illustration by Diela Maharanie

Ioana: Your film is invaded by myths, by symbols and traces. Sometimes I have the feeling that the zoo is the only central character. Is the zoo an axis mundi, a place for rebuiding ourselves or rather a system that has to be revitalised, redefined , revolutionized?

Edwin: It could easily be both, and this is the confusion that exists in my country right now. There is a sense of helplessness to the current conditions, but also a strong spirit and sense of belonging and loyalty and hope. A zoo is a forced habitat, not a natural habitat, and the animals survive there in their own way, it is their own reality that they accept and live in, although some can reject it and finally die.

Ioana: How did you build this relation between the characters and the animals and how much time did the shooting take?

Edwin: The leading actress (Ladya Cheryl) spent 6 months working at the zoo with some of the caretakers. I also went there with her frequently. Of course, this put her at ease with the environment and the community of people and community of animals. The whole shooting took about 1 month.

Postcards From The Zoo – Film Still

Ioana: Because the film has a very personal touch, how did your Indonesian background influence you when making this film?

Edwin: I think that a lot of things in the film is very Indonesian, whether it is physical things or conceptual and viewpoint.

Conceptually, for example, I spoke of the parallel between the zoo and our country.  That is just one example, and there are many more illustrations. I realize now, in my films I tend to express what bothers me about my country and what I find is beautiful in the chaos and survival. I think it is part of my love for my country.

As for physical details, you can see some distinctly Jakarta images that I love to show, like the noodle wagon where the cowboy and Lana have a meal, and the activities in the zoo—it’s one of very few green outdoor public spaces in Jakarta, so it becomes like a huge park where everything happens. The dialog between the cowboy and the cigarette vendor, is also a Jakarta way of life.

Ioana: What motivated you at first to start fimmaking and what would be your sincere advice for the even younger emerging filmmakers and film-lovers in order to pursue a career in filmmaking?

Edwin: I was so excited to know there is a film school in my country, I had no idea people could go to school for filmmaking. I moved to Jakarta to go to film school. If I had any advice for other filmmakers, it would be a reminder not advice: never stop watching films, in cinemas.

Postcards From The Zoo – Film Still

Ioana: Where do you search for inspiration when making films and what films from the history of cinema do you feel connected with?

Edwin: I love the first days of film, Melies & Lumiere brothers… I always go back and think about what cinema meant to people in those times: Magic! Dreams!

Ioana: We are living a very controversed and chaotic cinematic era. Amateur films become an „esthetique” for some filmmakers. Youtube, Vimeo promote shorts and the audience starts to be more and more addicted to this fast-paced type of visuals, while your cinematic language is peaceful and patient, revealing characters, details.  How do you think cinema will evolve in the next years, taking into consideration the oddisey of the new technologies? And what is your position in this „fast food, fast thought, fast love” (as Pierre Bourdieu used to call it) environment?

Edwin: Maybe at first I felt cynical about all of the instant this and that, but something good will fight back and emerge out of it, I’m sure. Out of every condition, rebels and survivors are born, and produce things beyond the present reality. Who knows what the reaction to all this technology will be, I’m sure it’s out there already, waiting to be found.

Ioana: The film as a whole is a co-production of three countries – Indonesia, Germany and China. How did you manage to work in this international crew and how hard is to co-produce, instead of national producing?

Edwin: The co-production in this film was for distribution and marketing, and I think that it has amazing advantages of exposure possibilities compared to national production. Today, with the internet, I think that there are no obstacles in communication.

Postcards From The Zoo – Film Still

Ioana: What are your upcoming projects as a director and what would you like to explore through cinematic language in the next months?

Edwin: I just finished shooting a short film commissioned by the Jeonju Digital Project, it is about two strangers who meet when they are searching for stories on an island. In this film, I explored the ocean, something that I have always had a strong reaction to. So you will see a lot of images of the sea and how it touches people.

In the future, I am writing something, which I hope can also be made into a film. The theme Is colonialism and erotica.

Ioana Mischie is a hyper-active noetic storyteller, enrolled in the last year of the Screenwriting MA program, at UNATC. Her portfolio is an eclectic apprentissage of filmmaking, creative writing and envisioning the world as a neo-creative playground.

The post INHALE! INTERVIEW – EDWIN, THE DIRECTOR OF “POSTCARDS FROM THE ZOO” appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Prolific Japanese artist Takashi Murakami recently launched his latest exhibition, Arhat at Los Angeles’s Blum & Poe – coinciding with the world premier of his first live-action feature film, Jellyfish Eyes. 

Melding together a myriad of styles, the exhibition brings together the common juxtaposition seen in his work — East meets West, historical with the contemporary — while also dabbling with various methodologies and abstract narratives.

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Takashi Murakami, Arhat at Blum & Poe Gallery

Murakami’s longstanding interest with Japanese nihonga painting and animation is evident, often infused with a stark sense of peculiarity, sometimes completely at odds with the original art form. Hence Arhat – which in Sanskrit translates to “a being who has achieved a state of enlightenment” — on the one hand conjures recognizable imagery, yet it also allows passage foreign lands where obsolete Buddhist monks confront decay and death with demonic monsters.

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Takashi Murakami, Arhat at Blum&Poe Gallery

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Takashi Murakami, Arhat at Blum & Poe Gallery

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Takashi Murakami

Murakami’s versatility is on show too; with bright installations from his Flowers & Skulls collection offering an optimistic counterpoint in another room. Elsewhere, mounted sculptures and a series of painted self-portraits populate the show room, showing the artist’s diverse mastery of content and culture. Arhat will run from April 13 to May 25, make sure you drop by if you’re in town.

Murakami talking about paintings, sculptures and Jellyfish Eyes

Jellyfish Eyes Trailer

Blum & Poe
Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
2727 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034

via hypebeast.com

The post TAKASHI MURAKAMI “ARHAT” EXHIBITION RECAP @ BLUM & POE appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Director/writer: Alison Klayman

The film starts up strongly, with cats and wise words: ”Out of the 40 cats, one knows how to open doors. Where did this intelligence come from? All the other cats watch us opening the door. And I was thinking, if I had not met this cat [...], I wouldn’t have known that cats can open doors.”

Provided you came to this movie completely unaware of who Ai Weiwei was (and even then, you probably would have figured out that this talk about cats and doors is probably some sort of metaphor), you must have realized what the whole speech was aiming at. The question in our minds: are you that cat, Ai Weiwei? was to be answered in the following hour and a half of thrilling documentary, ably directed by first time documentarist Alison Klayman.

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Shortly put, Weiwei is a Chinese artist and social activist. That wouldn’t be a problem in the Western world, but turns out to be quite a perilous occupation in communist (though seemingly increasingly democratic) China.

The movie paints a realistic picture of this overweight man who greatly enjoys eating and casually mocks his own love of food, who has a loving wife of many years, on which he cheated with a younger girl, with whom he has a child that he actually asked her not to keep, a man who does not blink during his mother’s breakdown from fear that his ways will get him into trouble and who stubbornly refuses to meet with some admirers who “see him as a teacher”. He is anything but perfect and the movie is not afraid to show him fully. He is also, however, an innovative artist, a maker of incredibly profound conceptual art, deeply rooted in social issues, and a courageous and honest man.

http://www.giantrobot.com, The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds
Tate Modern

He is the second generation of strong-willed, free-minded (and mouthed) artists in his family, and by the looks of it, this could very well pass on to his young son, too. His father suffered greatly during the rise of the communist regime, despite his similar political views, for the crime of being an intellectual. Ai, educated in New York, the heart of the country that its inhabitants refer to as “the land of the free”, experienced this entirely different way of life, and the effects were deep: “once you’ve tasted freedom, it stays in your heart and no one can take it”.

With freedom now forever in his heart, he returns home and makes use of it as few of his countrymen dare to. Whenever he sees something he considers to be wrong, he speaks out, reaching out to people through the Internet (something he talks about with the highest regard, with bewilderment even: this kind of easiness in sending your message to thousands at the same time is for certain a thing of wonder). He tried it at first with a blog, but they shut that down. So he turned to Twitter. 140 characters or less, sometimes a photo, and the fight goes on. Like in a game of chess, he says, he makes a move, the government makes a move.

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He is just one man, but there are thousands inspired by his message, he is an international star and China wouldn’t risk exposing itself as a merciless autocracy if they just disposed of him as they have done with other, less known, free speakers. On the other hand, his obnoxious disclosures and comments about the government’s lack of transparency, about its abuses and suppressing of free speech doesn’t help with its public image either. One man has driven the power into a corner and that is probably the most important thing about Ai Weiwei. He has shown the importance of an individual inside a society built on the exact opposite of individuality. He has opened a door for the other cats to see that it is indeed possible, that doors are there to be opened and it is in their power to do it.

by Alexa Băcanu

Alexa Băcanu is a private investigator and awesome mercenary. Interests: everything (except Math and most people). She doesn’t write anywhere else (no one other than us would let her) except in her diary and on public bathroom walls.

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