i have never quite liked classic italian cinema — fellini, visconti, rossellini, de sica, you name ’em. i don’t think there’s a lot of people in italy who like them, but i may be generalizing what is the case in my family and the people of my region (italy is an extremely diverse country, to an extent that is probably hard for americans to comprehend). hollywood movies have always worked better in italy than italian movies. my mother, an educated woman, will simply not watch italian movies, however well done, inspiring, or american-like they are. she will barely watch any non-american movie, period. i suspect she may not be alone. Continue reading the leopard
Author: gio
Friends with Money
This is intensely personal.
Friends with Money is the first film I have seen in the theatre since the end of February. Since the janitors’ strike started (and gloriously ended) at the University of Miami, I have thought about nothing but winning this fight and teaching my classes. I have spent more time than in my entire American life hanging out with people whose lives are so different from mine – mainly from the point of view of class. That this should have been my first class-mingling experience is not something I’m either proud or ashamed of. I have learned a long time ago that this society is much more segregated than it believes itself to be, and not only in terms of race. Living in L.A., San Luis Obispo, and Miami has certainly not helped, but the reality I’ve been confronted with over and over again since coming to the US is that you don’t hang out with people of other classes – not easily, that is, and not comfortably. Please forgive me if I generalize an experience which is necessarily very limited. As I said, I have lived only in three cities that are very socially segregated, and I have hung out exclusively (alas) with academics. Continue reading Friends with Money
The Five Obstructions (2003)
this film is credited to jorgen leth as a director, but if you watch it you’ll be hard pressed not to think it is in fact directed by lars von trier. this is, of course, on the assumption that the two men are not acting, and the documentary-like parts of the film where they are talking to each other are bone fide, unscripted recordings of their frank conversations. this is definitely how they are presented, and the aesthetic of dogma supports the belief that there shouldn’t be any manipulations there, any plays on the viewer. Continue reading The Five Obstructions (2003)
Yes!
just saw sally potter’s Yes and i’m fairly blown away. i’m surprised no one has posted on it yet (though the ever reliable jeff mentioned it in an earlier post!). this is my first sally potter, so i won’t be able to put it in perspective, but what a film! it is decidedly striking, for one, that she should have chosen to have the whole damn thing in rhymed iambic pentameters, and that she wrote every damn word herself. since the delivery is not as crisp as if it had been on stage, and since a fair number of the actors have regional or foreign accents, i assume potter knew we would not be able to get everything. but the two leads, joan allen and simon abkarian, do a pretty splendid job of portraying their characters’ emotions, so whatever you miss in the diction comes through in the body language. Continue reading Yes!
it’s a boy!
it’s official: oscar is a boy. unlike hurricanes, who now get the gender-neutral treatment, oscar remains firmly and solidly a member of the male sex. this is an extremely fast comment, which probably is unfair given it is the first comment on the oscar nominations! so please, pace arnab, feel free to open a whole new thread about the nominations and all that. all’s i want to say is that, as i scrolled down my screen to read who got nominated for what, i realized none of the actresses is a) in any of the best pictures, b) directed by one of the best directors, (with one exception) c) acting with one of the best actors or even d) acting with one of the best supporting actors! and i haven’t even heard of two of the movies in which best actresses are nominated!!!
this is the year of boy movies, for sure.
match point
critics seem to be crazy about match point: check out the rave reviews. unfortunately, i don’t have enough knowledge of woody allen’s work to be able see this film in the context of his career, nor a special fondness for the guy.
i have no idea what he was trying to do in match point. if the idea is that life is 10% talent and 90% luck, er, okay. if the idea is that scarlett johansson and jonathan rhys meyers are gorgeous, i’m with you, woody, though i have to say you have always creeped me out, and scarlett is TWENTY, for fuckssakes!
i don’t know, dude. affairs are hard to get out of, the high life is hard to throw to the winds, passion leads us to dark places, and babies have a nasty way of popping up if you fuck enough. thing is, none of this interests me very much. or maybe it’s just the way you present it, woody. Continue reading match point
quirky little things
i just saw two amazing little films on DVD, both from the Land of Quirk. One is Dirty Filthy Love, the other is Me and You and Everyone We Know. Dirty Filthy Love is neither dirty nor filthy, though it is about love. what it is really about, though, is serious OCD coupled with serious tourette’s syndrome. the story is about mahk (mark, really, but it’s a british movie), a promising young architect who, in his thirties, experiences such a worsening of his OCD and tourette’s that his wife leaves him and he is laid off from his job in a trendy firm. one little absurdity of this made-for-tv film is that no one — his wife, his best mate, his doctor — is able to diagnose mark’s rather textbook tourette’s. two facts about tourette’s: it is possible for it to get really bad when one is in one’s thirties (i learned this from the fact that no one amongst the various sufferers on imdb.com pointed this out as unlikely), and it is only a small minority of tourette’s sufferers who are compelled to swear. Continue reading quirky little things
real quickie on The Family Stone
this is not a movie worthy of discussion in a serious, intelligent forum such as this, so i’ll just say that a) we went to see it because there was absolutely nothing in south miami to see except munich, and simon wouldn’t see munich (don’t ask) and b) it is really not that funny for a christmas comedy. but i want to point out that rachel macadams, who was in the totally kick-ass and superbly paced red eye, is great. her comic talent belies her good-girl looks. i also want to register that i’m sick and tired of mothers dying of (breast) cancer. i do realize that fathers’ dying wouldn’t get the same tear-jerking effect (why don’t people love their fathers as much as they do their mothers?), but LET WOMEN LIVE, for goodnessakes! anyway, i spent most of the movie trying to figure out the birth order of the stone siblings and i can honestly say that i think i’ve got it down.
capote
last night i saw capote, because neither simon nor our friend jennie wanted to see brokeback mountain (don’t ask). i enjoyed the movie while it was going, though i was a bit weary during the last third. but simon and jennie talked me out of liking it in about 15 minutes of conversation after the movie’s end. here is our collective thought on capote:
philip seymour hoffman is a great actor who handles his first major (or first, period) lead role with great aplomb and artistry. he is actually magnificent. i guess the director knew hoffman was his best asset, because every other shot is a close-up of his smooth, babyish, pink face. i actually find him quite fetching, so i didn’t Continue reading capote
of gay actors, indian actors, and pride and prejudice
this is my first post, and i’m sure i’m already going all wrong about it. but since arnab forced me to use the password “italysucks” for my first login, i’m trying to mess up his site as much as i can.
i have nothing to say on gay actors, but i thought i’d bring the debate that’s being conducted under michael’s post on steven spielberg to a location where people can find it (why do i know that suddenly no one will have absolutely anything more to say on the subject?).
i would like, though, to say something more on the topic of identity specific actors. the first thing i want to say is screw current theories of performance. the second thing i want to say is that, as reynolds says, it matters very little whether actors can represent characters whose identity is racially/ethnically different from their own (i’m intentionally leaving out class and sexuality — and gender doesn’t seem to be a problem nowadays!), when foreign actors and actors of color have a hard time getting jobs in high-paying hollywood. Continue reading of gay actors, indian actors, and pride and prejudice