Esto es la pata de conejo de un conjuro para meter en la maleta. Budapest segun algunos es el far west. Y la navaja de Taramundi por si los majiares no son supersiticiosos. Todo es poco. Me sale estos dias atras en una conversacion La conjura de los necios. Tendre que releerlo. Me resisto a hacer reseñas de nada. Ya me he pasado cien pueblos con la pagina de pelis, suficiente para mis 15 minutos (aproximadamente) de tonteria. Bueno, pero la conjura viene a cuento como joya del pensamiento supersiticioso. Y además, cada vez me encuentro con mas Ignatius. Pero eso es otra historia.

Yendo al grano, que aparte de querer ser algo turista y mucho viajante, necesito la suerte de cara en Budapest: voy de manager de una segura medallista de la MEDIA MARATHON INTERNACIONAL DE BUDAPEST. Teresina tendra que correr los 21. 095 kilómetros, pero a mi me queda la peor parte. Mantenerla libre de alcohol y tabaco la vispera va a ser el decimotercer trabajo de Hercules. Ya estoy casi desfondada despues de haberla puesto a entrenar en condiciones todas estas semanas atras. Con la moda de etiquetar como enfermedad cualquier sufrimiento de la vida moderna, temo pasar por el sindrome de la madre de la Pantoja!!!! Lo que ya no dire es que sufro por el alelo 334. Con qué alegria algunos, teoriamente informadores, se han dedicado a repetir y dar pabulo a la patochada del gen de la infidelidad repitiendo sin ningun criterio de veracidad la terjiversacion del estudio del Insituto Karolinska. Si Wallum y cia. hablan de dificultades para relacionarse en los de la muestra, los otros deducen propension a las infidelidades. Estos iluminaos saltandose esa distancia, más que una marathon, le dan cien vueltas a Isinbayeva, y sin pertiga!!!

Voy a hacer la maleta... y el conjuro

I realize I've been a bit slack putting up any new posts... but that'll change in the next day or so.  See you all then!

10.- David Lynch - Sony - "The Third Place" (2001)

9.- Jonathan Glazer - Guiness - "Surfer" (1998)

8.- Wes Anderson - Amex - "My life, my card" (2006)

7.- David Fincher - Adidas - "Mechanical Legs" (2002)

6.- Ridley Scott - Apple - "1984" (1984)

5.- Terry Gilliam - Nike - "The Secret Tournamet" (2002)

4.- Michale Mann - Mercedez Benz - "Lucky Star" (2002)

3.- Michel Gondry - Smirnoff - "Smarienberg" (1998)

2.- Tony Scott - BMW - "Beat the Devil" (2002)

Y el Ganador es.....

1.- Spike Jonze - GAP - "Pardon Our Dust" (2005)

via: nerdorama.cl

"Selig sind die Vergesslichen, denn sie werden auch mit ihren Dummheiten fertig."

aus dem Film Vergiss mein nicht ! / Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Ein wunderbarer Film, klasse Drehbuch -> Charlie Kaufman, gute Regie -> Michel Gondry und den genialen -> Jim Carrey

Natürlich ist Vergiss mein nicht, ein typischen Kaufman und teilt die Zuschauer in Hate it or love it ! I love it..

Musik: Everybody's gotta learn sometime by Beck

(Vergiss mein nicht; 2004) Darsteller: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson Drehbuch: Charlie Kaufman Regie: Michel Gondry

The Michael Andrews-arranged, Gary Jules-sung version of Tears For Fears' song Mad World has a video!?! I just assumed Donnie Darko to be like a giant melancholic, supernatural video for the song, I never thought to look in the special features menu of the Director's Cut DVD. As it is, I have a bit of a fanboy flame for all things Darko (a flame which shall remain most decidedly sheltered from that blasphemous sequel), so I was pleasantly surprised to find this unique simplistic video. The creative lo-fi style made sense once I noticed it was directed by one of my faves, French director Michel Gondry.

Enjoy.

My question is, does sweding have to be completed at the production phase? Why not write your high-concept script with the swede already in mind. To me, this seems like a great approach to writing for web content, which often plays up the no-budgety feel to appeal to the DIY crowd.

So maybe you should write the swede into your next short. Instead of writing about a spaceship, describe its cardboard exterior and the glimpse of your cat in the background. This would give more structure the "swede" since every element will be intentional rather than out of necessity. I certainly am going to give this a try.

And after all, didn't Gondry have to script those swedes in the first place?

BONUS - An example of a YouTube swede:

Il lavoro di Mike e Jerry viene apprezzato, tanto che la strampalata coppia decide di continuare con lo “sweding”: così i due definiscono l’attività di creare remake amatoriali. Lungo l’elenco dei film taroccati: “Il Re Leone”, “Robocop”, “2001 Odissea nello spazio”, “Rush Hour 2”, “King Kong”, “Men in Black” e “Carrie, lo sguardo di Satana”. Secondo il classico schema di Propp, a interrompere il momento idillico interverranno alcune complicazioni ma il lieto fine è assicurato.

Perché parlo di “Be Kind Rewind”? Beh, perché suggerisce come risolvere la querelle tra Rai e Lega Calcio in merito alla diffusione in chiaro degli highlights delle partite del campionato 2008/09. Come noto, l’offerta della Rai (Mediaset è poco interessata) è stata giudicata insufficiente, per cui domenica la storica trasmissione radiofonica “Tutto il calcio minuto per minuto” non andrà in onda per la prima volta dopo decenni e le immagini delle partite dovranno passare all’interno del Tg della sera per non più di 4 minuti… Come può il buon Massimo De Luca, Direttore di Rai Sport, evitare di passare alla storia come l’orco capace di privare gli italiani del piacere dei goal domenicali senza cedere al ricatto economico della Lega Calcio? Semplice, assoldando squadre di amatori che mettano in scena, con tutti i limiti del caso, le azioni più significative delle singole partite. Qualcosa di simile era stato proposto anche in una delle prime stagioni di “Quelli che il calcio”, con ex calciatori diretti dal coach/coreografo Gigi Maifredi. Perché non riprovare? Con i soldi risparmiati si potrebbero acquistare i diritti di alcuni sport cosiddetti minori, ma meritevoli di maggior attenzione… Caro Massimo, dimostri un po’ di coraggio e di ironia!

The Apprentice

Jag trodde Michel Gondrys Be Kind Rewind skulle vara någon slags Clerks där Jack Black och Mos Def springer runt i wellpapp och spelar in nya versioner av klassiska filmer. Istället kändes det lite mer som en Empire Records. Den lilla videobutiken med bara VHS som kämpar för sin överlevnad mot överheter som stora kedjor och politiker som vill röja upp i slummen. Inte för att det gjorde filmen dålig, jag blev bara förvånad. Ibland fantiserar men ihop vad en film ska handla om, och får något helt annat när man väl ser den.

Men varför måste Jack Black alltid sjunga och dansa i varenda film han är med i? Något sorts jävla ticks eller? Lägg av!

I noticed recently that only good music videos seem to be coming from Partizan. Really. I haven't found a bad one, and they have loads. For the ones that have never heard of Partizan before: Partizan is an international community of directors with offices in London, Los Angeles, New York and Paris.
Partizan began by making music videos, then grew and expanded in to commercials, short films, feature films, and more recently TV content and branded content.

Personal favorites:
Saam Farahmand: He is a really talented director. He directed Soulwax' tour documentary 'Part Of The Weekend Never Dies' (out on september 8 - go buy it, it's good). He did all the klaxons videos, the provoking video for Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler, and he did the video for The Bears Are Coming by Late Of The Pier.

Michel Gondry: Director of 'Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind', 'The Science Of Sleep' and 'Be Kind Rewind'. Awesome movies, all of them. Michel Gondry also loves youtube, as a way of viral marketing.
Videos you should check out:
Will it deblend
Sweded trailer of Be Kind Rewind (with Michel Gondry playing all the parts).
Michel Gondry Solves a Rubiks Cube with his Nose
Jack Black beats Michel Gondry with his rubiks cubes

Hoy, entre tantos otros recorridos y sin tener claro por qué, recordé unos clips de una banda llamada Tool, que haya en principios de los 90, una MTV Latinoamérica recién nacida, difundía con cierta frecuencia y que con German Covacevich ( otro de esos amigos que la marea del tiempo fue distanciando y la ambigua generosidad de Internet empieza a acercar ) disfrutabamos como los dos nenes que éramos, de 16 y 17 años, respectivamente.

Pero siguiendo la línea de un pensamiendo hipervinculado y un recorrido siempre errático ( cada vez más ), el recuerdo de esos videos ( y por supuesto, su redisfrute en YouTube ) también trajo a mi mente otro video de aquel entonces que me había, literalmente, partido al medio la cabeza. El video eran unos cuatro minutos de plano secuencia donde un steady cam "flotaba" por un set desorganizado y algo onírico desafiando las leyes de la física. Vaya descripción que me salio, pero era así. Se trataba de Lucas with The Lid Off, de Lucas. Lo busqué en YouTube y no lo encontré, lo busqué en Google y apareció en YouTube, esas cosas que a veces ocurren. Pero también apareció en Daily Motion y ahí se escucha mejor.

[dailymotion id=k2PpfI3pmNlzI089O5&related=1]

Lo disfruté de punta a punta ( si en YouTube ) como en aquella época. Luego, leí la metadata que agregó el que subió el video: "The whole video was filmed with a steadycam, in one continuous shot...an unbelievably difficult task that only someone like Michel Gondry could pull off...". Stop. Rew. Rew. ¿Michel Gondry? ¿What?.

Ah, terrible sorpresa. El video, efectivamente, fue dirigido por Michel Gondry. Más aún, me fui volando a Wikipedia y me encontré con una lista interminable de videos que, también literalmente, me habían partido la cabeza en aquellos años:

Hyperballad - Björk (1996)
Like A Rolling Stone - The Rolling Stones (1995)
Isobel - Björk (1995)
Army of Me - Björk (1995)
High Head Blues - Black Crowes (1995)
Let Forever Be - The Chemical Brothers (1999)
Around The World - Daft Punk (1997)
Sugar Water - Cibo Matto (1996)

Todos estos video, entre otros, fueron dirigidos por Michel Gondry. ¿Qué podría agregar a esta lista de sucesos fatales y maravillosos? Nada. Mañana buscaré la manera de sentarme a ver alguna de las películas. Entre tanto, pido perdón a los que tanto insistieron. De alguna manera, lo han conseguido. Saludos.

Mañana, viernes 22 de agosto de 2008, Ediciones La cúpula publica la primera edición en castellano de Afortunada, por Gabrielle Bell. Es el primer cómic que se edita en España de esta autora mitad británica y estadounidense. Aparte de las dos historietas pertenecientes a la revista-antología MOME de Fantagraphics y cuyos números uno y dos (originales de 2005) se editaron el año pasado en La cúpula.

Ahí fue donde leí a Gabrielle por primera vez, en una pequeña historia titulada No siento nada, en la que uno de los personajes hacia referencia a ese famoso nudo que se pone en el pecho los días mas trágicos. Se preguntaba porqué se sentiría ahí si el corazón sólo bombea sangre y no tiene nada que ver con las emociones. Después corría a por un libro y citaba una de las mejores frases de William Faulkner. La historia era simplemente, cautivadora.

Por suerte, desde el extranjero me consiguieron un original de Lucky (Drawn & Quarterly, 2006) probablemente la novela gráfica más importante de la autora, gracias a la cual consiguó un premio Ignatz en 2003. La obra se compone de los tres minicomics que se publicaron originariamente por separado, más cuatro historietas extra.

Afortunada, además de ser la historia de una veinteañera camino de los treinta, residente en Brooklyn y que lucha por sobrevivir y convertirse en una artista respetada, es el diario de la autora. Y es que la idea surgió cuando a Bell se le ocurrió escoger un momento de cada día y convertirlo en una historieta. Es muy interesante ver como a medida que el tiempo avanza y las páginas pasan, la forma de narrar va evolucionando alejandose de los hechos reales y acercandose cada vez más a la ficción.

Obviamente, no he leído la traducción al español, pero os lo recomiendo igualmente porque aunque no aporte nada nuevo u original al mundo de estos dibujantes underground norteamericanos que airean su vida explicitamente y sin tapujos, a mí me gustó mucho. Tal vez por lo mismo por lo que me fascinan las historias de Sofia Coppola, porque aunque aparentemente no sucede nada, todos esos hechos cotidianos y banales van hilbanando la historia de una vida.

Por cierto, en el nuevo Paris je t'aime de Tokio (Tokyo, estrenada ya en Cannes) participa Michel Gondry con un corto basado en una historieta de Gabrielle, Cecil and Jordan in New York. Donde la protagonista se convierte en una silla. Gondry contó con Bell para la adaptación del guión, algo que desde aquí apreciamos.

Y para seguir arruinandonos, mañana también sale Pequeñas cosas: unas memoria fragmentadas, de otro de nuestros favoritos, Jeffrey Brown, después de la trilogía de las novias para hablarnos de otros temas de la vida. Porque no sólo de mujeres vive el hombre...

Regie: Michel Gondry

Gondry's Interpretation von "Star Guitar" wirkt erst einmal weniger spektakulär. So schien es mir in den ersten Sekunden. Dann kam der Moment der Erkenntnis. Die Musik der Chemical Brothers wird hier durch vorbeiziehende Gegenstände visualisiert. Dazu so gut geschnitten dass man die Schnitte nicht sieht. Perfekte Überblendungen und sich loopende Szenerien.

 

...paint piano.

I can't decide whether this idea is genius or stupid and pretentious . Michel Gondry has directed a number of Bjork's unarguably amazing music videos, and it is interesting to hear her compare his neurotic style to that of Woody Allen towards the end.

In this third part of our interview with Gabrielle Bell, we discuss the artist’s burgeoning solo career, years of anthology work, and the key differences between Lucky volumes one and two.

[Part One][Part Two]

You worked on a screenplay with Michel Gondry, recently. Is that the first time you’ve really separated your art from text?

Yeah. I think it’s harder to write screen, because in comics, I write things out in a storyboard kind of way.

You don’t storyboard your screenplays?

Well, I haven’t tried it yet. I’m really new at the screenwriting.

Can you talk about the projects that you’ve been working on, in that space?

Weeeeeell, let’s see. The screenplay for the short film that we did. Michel wrote most of it, and I wrote the ending. We sort of worked very closely on it. We threw out different ideas and went back and forth. And then I would go through it and try to clean out the awkward parts—sort of Americanize it, in a way, even though it’s a Japanese film. Then you have to go through the whole process of Japanesifying it [laughs]. And then I helped him to write another script. He wrote the whole thing, and then we went through it, line-by-line and talked about what worked and what didn’t, and what could be changed. We wrote that, but it’s still being reworked, again and again. The difference I guess is that, with comics, I’m the authority, but with this, someone else is the authority.

Is that your first real experience collaborating on a large scale?

Um, yeah. I don’t really like to collaborate that much [laughs]. I made an exception for Michel.

Was it difficult working with someone, especially when working on a pre-existing piece?

Sometimes it was difficult, and other times it was a great pleasure.

Did the difficulty lie in the inability to express your own voice in the work?

I guess the question of having it be a movie was the difficult part.

Creating something for other people to work with or just operating in a new medium?

Both. I guess it’s just really being out of my element, in movies. I know what works in comics, I don’t really know what works in film. In the first draft of the screenplay, I had people waterskiing in this brief dream sequence, and Michel said, “you can’t just write that in, do you know how expensive it is to have people waterskiing.” Or in another, I had someone playing a piano, which was a very big deal, bringing a piano into the room. In comics, you just draw a piano, or you just draw people waterskiing. In movies, you have to think about the physical possibilities. There are just so many logistics that I wasn’t quite familiar with. I’m a little more familiar with now.

It’s funny to hear that coming from Michel. I’d imagine that, on a whole, reading one of his scripts would be something of a logistical nightmare…

Yeah, but then there’s a lot of problem solving and a lot of hands-on approaches to things. He’s thinks about these things, beforehand.

Did you feel similarly out of your element when you first started working in comics?

Not really. Comics, especially alternative comics, have this sense that you can just invent your style as you go. I think I did feel a bit of pressure when I was starting to get noticed, and people started to give me feedback. There was a pressure to top myself that’s always there, but that’s a healthy pressure, I think.

Is there a big distinction in your mind, between the first and second volumes of Lucky?

Yeah, definitely. Volume One was sort of experimental. I was feeling things through.

Why did you split them, initially?

I didn’t really draw the line. I stopped doing Lucky for a while, and then at one point, I just wanted to pick it up again.

So, initially you set out with the intention of ending the series at three issues?

Yeah—actually, I can’t really remember if I had it in my head that I just wanted three issues.

How large of a gap did you leave between the two volumes?

I guess it must have been a couple of years. I was working on stuff for different anthologies.

What prompted the decision to go off and work on those more dissonant pieces?

It wasn’t really a conscious decision. It was more that a lot of anthologies were asking me to do different stuff, and I could never refuse, because I never like being left out [laughs]. I did the Drawn & Quarterly Showcase and Kramer’s Ergot and Mome.

Is there a marked difference between that work and what goes into Lucky?

Well those are short fictional stories, for the most part. And if they were ever autobiographical, they were very removed. They were very fictionalized accounts that were very removed.

Removed in terms of the time that occurred between the events and your writing?

Yeah. Lucky’s more immediate. I think of it kind of like blogging.

[Concluded in Part Four].

--Brian Heater

2- Brilho Eterno de uma Mente sem Lembranças (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)Mais um Gondry fofo. E Mark Ruffalo dançando de cueca. Basta.

3- Harry Potter e o Prisioneiro de Azkaban (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)Ninguém antes ou depois fez mais pelo Harry Potter do que Alfonso Cuáron, depois daqueles dois primeiros filmes insuportáveis o homem me aparece com essa real obra prima infanto-juvenil, do tipo que não vejo desde os tempos que eu mesma era criança. Aposto que o Cuarón, como eu, queria o Michael Caine como Dumbledore, por isso no seu filme seguinte tascou lá o Caine maluco e cabeludo, afinal, minhas duas maiores frustações são Caine e Hugh Laurie por nunca terem entrado em quaisquer HPs.

4- Bem Me Quer, Mal Me Quer (Je t'aime... moi non plus: Artistes et critiques)Documentário feito por Maria de Medeiros que retrata o amor e ódio entre os críticos e cineastas, não é um primor em qualidade mas é um relato verdadeiramente interessante, está todo mundo lá: Cronenberg, Woody Allen, Almodóvar, Egoyan, Gitai, Kaurismäki, Wenders, Loach, até Caetano Veloso, Rubens Ewald Filho e o rei da Troma Lloyd Kaufman dão as caras. Mas de todos os relatos o que mais se mostrou amargurado para com seus "oponentes" foi o do Win Wenders afirmando que uma atriz sua já tentara se matar por causa de um crítico, clamando que não se importava em ser agredido, desde que deixassem seus atores em paz.

5- Má Educação (La Mala Educación)Um noir-gay hitchcockiano não é todo dia que se vê e Gael naquele vestido verde é qualquer coisa transcendental.

Real melhor filme do ano: Kill Bill Volume 2

My biggest criticism of the movie (and this is an especially negative quality, something no one has ever said about the previous Gondry films) is that it’s predictable. Sure, the concept is very original, but I mean that once the concept begins, the progression of the plot is formulaic.

The trailer (that everyone saw before the movie was released), wastes no time revealing the strange Gondrian “what” of this movie (for Eternal Sunshine, it was the memory-erasing procedure, and in Science of Sleep, it was the protagonist’s penchant to actually sleepwalk during his dreams, carrying out actions which he thought he only dreamt). The creative rub this time around is that Jack Black has become magnetized— we learn in the very first few moments of the trailer that he accidentally erases the video tapes at Mos Def’s rental store. Indeed, this is a kooky, surreal kind of plot device typical of Gondry. But the trailer goes on to show us the solution they find (filming amateur versions of the movies themselves) and even goes a step further and shows some punk-looking tough guys coming into the store, sliding back the amateur tape, saying, “That wasn’t bad. What else you got?” So we know from the trailer the entire three act story arc: the tapes get erased, Black and Def film home-made versions to replace them, and the townspeople actually like their homemade versions enough for the duo to begin filming a bunch of them. The preview paints an exciting, possibly terrific new movie that Christian Lander correctly mocked as a “white person’s wet dream.”

And it was a wet dream for any fans of Gondry’s first two movies. But then, sure enough, the movie’s plot turns out to be the very arc laid out in the trailer. There really aren’t any big surprises from what you already know going in, though I suppose defenders of this movie could argue that the big twist is when lawyers show up to destroy the tapes for copyright infringement. I guess it’s true that you don’t see that coming, but it certainly isn’t an “exciting twist.” If anything, the destruction of the tapes actually leads one to wonder what the point of it all was; Black and Def make the tapes, everyone loves them, and then the tapes are destroyed. Sure, there’s a whole campy, uplifting rally in which all the people of Passaic unite and become friends, but that doesn’t redeem the movie. If anything, that sappy, neatly tied-up ending detracts from the creative, exciting, fascinating beginning of the story. Ending the movie on such a sappy, clichéd note undermines the entire Gondry oeuvre.

As one amateur reviewer put it at Rotten Tomatoes (on which the movie has a 67% fresh rating—not too shabby, but underwhelming for a Gondry film): “The premise of Be Kind Rewind is pure Michel Gondry. The end result is anything but.” That’s my gripe in a nutshell. The zany Gondrian twist—Black’s magnetic powers—is put to rest halfway through when Black accidentally downs a whole bottle of Advil that inexplicably cures his magnetism. From then on out, it develops in exactly the way one would expect of, say, a nice, friendly Olsen twins movie. Everything goes well, with a few bumps in the road, and ultimately the characters succeed in saving the day. The movie ends in smiles. It doesn’t work for a filmmaker who is capable of (and has given us in the past) so much more. That “so much more” includes both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which everyone seems to love, and the far more underrated Science of Sleep. The former is a favorite among college students as well as critical, discerning adults, and not just thanks to breakout performances like a serious Jim Carrey, an out-of-control Kate Winslet, a charming, shy Mark Ruffalo or a repellent, slimy Elijah Wood. All of them are great (plus Tom Wilkinson who is always, and I mean always incredible), but it’s the concept and the filming that shines. Scenes in which Jim Carrey re-experiences past memories and finds himself still vulnerable to childhood emotions are both fascinating and moving. Plus, the story toys with perceptions of chronology and reality. When the film ends with scenes of Joel and Clementine running around on the beach in winter, it isn’t a conventional happy ending, because these may be scenes from an earlier point in time, before they erased each other.

In The Science of Sleep, Gondry’s ambition pays off and he manages to effectively capture the experience of our wackiest, most tripped-out dreams. When scenes begin, we can never be quite sure whether Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal, who forcefully draws us in as he often can) is awake or asleep. In addition, the love story (because that’s what the film is) develops slowly and awkwardly. The courting between Stephane and Stephanie is odd and quirky—Stephanie is well aware that Stephane actually began by liking her friend, and the two of them muddle through whimsical art projects together in a limbo state between friends with shared interests and mutually enthralled lovers. Even by the end of the movie, it is still unclear whether they will end up together; Stephane falls asleep on Stephanie’s bed, even after she has tried to kick him out, and in his sleep he dreams of them riding a horse together. Much like after Eternal Sunshine, we leave the movie feeling engaged, entertained, but also uncertain as to the conclusion of the characters and their dilemma. This, clearly, is real life, and we recognize that somehow Gondry has delivered a message of realism while depicting the story in completely surreal ways. As A.O. Scott correctly puts it in his 2006 review:

“The Science of Sleep,” for all its blithe disregard of the laws of physics, film grammar and narrative coherence, strikes me as perfectly realistic, as authentic a slice of life as I’ve encountered on screen in quite some time.

This is Gondry’s mastery: blending the surreal and the authentic. And both films leave us wanting to see more of the central couples, Joel and Clementine or Stephane and Stephanie, respectively.

But this is not true of Be Kind. By the time the movie ends, you’ve had quite enough of Jerry and Mike, and there’s no need to go back, nor is their any mystery as to their future, since everything has been wrapped up with a nice bow.

Black, especially, is an unappealing presence. He plays the same character he created in High Fidelity, perfected in School of Rock, and then reprised in Envy. At this point, it’s stale. I hear he’s different and likeable in The Holiday and that his voice works extremely well for the surprisingly well-reviewed Kung Fu Panda, but I’ve seen neither one. In Be Kind, his character (and I acknowledge it could be the character, not Black himself, that you’ll resent) is a misery. He erupts rudely at strangers, nags and cajoles the mild-mannered Mike into joining him for ridiculous, criminal adventures, and all of this before he even becomes magnetized and brain-addled. The situation was a lot like the friendship in Superbad; the Jonah Hill character was such a whiny little bitch, such a fun-killing Debbie Downer, that it impaired my enjoyment of the movie and also made me wonder why the straight-arrow character (in that case, Michael Cera, here it’s Mos Def) couldn’t manage to find a less lame best friend.

Meanwhile, Mos Def and Danny Glover do fine; they’re pretty harmless. And Alma (previously under-the-radar Melonie Diaz) is adorable, though also rather irrelevant. A mini-arc in which she could become a love interest for either of the two guys (both start to like her) is briefly explored and then abandoned altogether, which is jarring. One scene even involves a face-to-face discussion between her and Mike about whether he has a crush on her. The moment ends with an almost-kiss (interrupted by, who else, Jerry) so that when the movie ends without ever re-investigating it, we actually feel like there must have been a scene in which she does kiss one of them, but the director cut it absentmindedly.

In addition, the entire setting is grossly implausible. As Owen Gleiberman writes in his EW review (which, unlike A.O. Scott’s raving praise, generally shares my reaction; he gives the film a B), Gondry turns the town of Passaic, NJ into “a touristic Retroland and hobby camp.” The real Passaic is an industrial city of smog and busy commuters, but the Passaic that Mike and Jerry have the pleasure of inhabiting feels more like the set of Toy Story. Local residents seem completely happy to look for exciting movies at a place that has maybe forty videos total, and only in VHS. It’s a pipe dream; the movie, from what I can tell, is supposed to take place now, in 2008. And yet, in today’s America there is nowhere—save perhaps tiny towns of 2,000 people in Nebraska—that a videocassette-only rental store could survive and do business.

Still, it’s not my intention just to trash the movie. The childish setting of friendly, smiling locals and Black’s bothersome performance are only minor problems. It is really only in comparison to his dazzling previous outings that this movie fails. On its own, there are still moments of pure delight. Many of these come from lines that are innocently funny (even in the Apatovian-dominated world of comedy, Gondry does a good job with ‘funny’ that doesn’t need to be raunchy), such as when Jerry and Mike are filming The Lion King using giant cardboard puppets, and Jerry demands that Alma say (as Scar): “I will piss on the bones of your ancestors!” There are also tenderly funny moments between Mike and his mentor Mr. Fletcher (Glover) such as when Fletcher writes a message backwards on the window (“Keep Jerry Out”) and Mike can’t seem to understand, presuming the sign says “Peek Yrrej Tuo” and thus at first concluding that Mr. Fletcher is illiterate.

In addition, there is a small bit of the patchy, amateur-esque animation that was so charming in Science of Sleep. A scene in which Jerry pees in the street while magnetized shows a river of urine flowing along, forcefully pulling objects such as soda cans and even a carburetor into its yellow river. The objects are sucked toward the gutter in jerky, cutesy little movements, as if they are living things crawling slowly toward the curb of their own volition. It’s the same style of filming that was used to illustrate Stephane’s wildly inventive dreams.

Additionally, the movie continually gives us brief scenes of old-fashioned, 1930s-era black-and-white film stock in which Mike is dressed up as the local jazz legend Fats Waller. It seems inexplicable (where are these clips coming from?) until the locals finally agree to make a documentary about Fats, and we realize that the clips are from the movie, and that Mike must end up playing the part of his storied Jazz hero. When they show these clips again, we view them in a new, more loving light and we feel a soft spot for Mike and his naïve worship of this symbolic local icon.

Finally, there are bits of their amateur filmmaking which are completely genius, and show us Gondry’s brilliant, inventive imagination. When the boys film Men in Black, they cleverly paste Matchbox cars onto a giant cardboard cylinder and then revolve it in the bottom of the camera’s field of vision in order to perform the illusion that Mike and Jerry are driving in the car upside down, above all the other traffic. Similarly, when doing Rush Hour 2, they need Jerry to be hanging from a flagpole off the side of the building, dangling hundreds of feet up from the street, so they have him stand on the ground and hold a pole above his head, then film it at such an angle that the stunt looks authentic. These little tricks of camera work are ingenious and entertaining.

So the movie is not a stinker, by any stretch. It’s fun and cute. It has delightful moments of creativity and playful banter. But there are so many things it fails at, and thanks to a campy, optimistic ending I hesitate to recommend it to any big Gondry fans, since they will be expecting from him something so much more than “cute."

2- Wood & Stock: Sexo, Orégano e Rock'n'RollQuem tinha aquelas Chiclete com Banana amareladas sabe do peso de um filme como esse. Sabe como é, primeira Rê Bordosa a gente nunca esquece, a minha foi a morta.

3- Sonhando Acordado (La Science des Rêves)É um filme fofo. Tudo é fofo nesse filme, Gondry, Gael, Gainsbourg, o cenário, a trilha sonora, tudo fofo. Diz-se à boca miúda que as únicas pessoas que gostam desse filme são as que se identificam com a personagem de Gael, eu me identifico. Ame ou odeie.

4- O Homem Duplo (A Scanner Darkly)Gosto do Linklater, gosto do estilo de animação dele que na prática cai como uma luva na teoria de Phillip K. Dick. Um tipo de adaptação que caiu bem nas mais distintas perspectivas.

5- O Cheiro do RaloTípico filme que te ganha só com a atuação do ator principal, no caso Selton Mello, mas de brinde ainda leva um texto incrível e perícia cinematográfica dentre as melhores vistas não só naquele ano, mas de toda essa década.

Real melhor filme do ano: Cartas de Iwo Jima (Letters from Iwo Jima)

On le savait déjà Michel Gondry est un grand cinéaste du bidouillage et du bordel organisé. C'est un gamin de 12 ans surdoué qui oscille entre la tendresse et la désillusion. Autant dire immédiatement que je lui voue un culte, non pas que je veuille lui resembler comme une midinette qui veut à tout prix la copie conforme de son idole mais plutôt parce que l'apport de Gondry au cinéma est quelque qui me va droit au coeur par son audace et son originalité. Souvent critiqué car il vient du monde du clip vidéo, il parvient à donner quelque chose de rafraichissant dont le cinéma a énormément besoin. En fait Gondry c'est mon prozac, en moins dangeureux.

Be kind rewind est un film éminemment généreux et décomplexé. Dans un clip bordelique, les délires les plus fantasques sont permis. Jack Black et Mos Def forment un duo de cinéma redoutable. Jack Black, dont on sent que son personnage l'a énormément inspiré, nous propose un numéro guignolesque attachant et hillarant. La maladresse du jeu de Mos Def ne porte pas préjudice au film, au contraire ça en devient un atout magistrale car Be kind rewind est une lettre d'amour au cinéma amateur, au cinéma qui prend des risques et qui s'éclate.

Ce nouveau film est aussi un constat du monde actuel, du temps qui passe et qui en écrase le passé. La désillusion, thème cher à Michel Gondry, est irrémediablement attaché à la nostalgie de l'enfance. Le réalisateur continue de tisser dans sa toile sombre le fil blanc qui le rattache à la force imaginatrice de son enfance. C'est le refus immature et bouleversant d'adultes qui ne veulent devenir des personnes grisées par les années qui passent.
C'est aussi un message venant du coeur aux jeunes réalisateurs en herbe effrayés par la machine du cinéma. Cette volonté de ne pas se conformer et de mettre en avant nos qualités comme nos défauts et de créer. Naïf et en même temps intelligent, ce film parle du cinéma avec humour. J'ai rarement été plié en deux au cinéma, merci Gondry!

Soyez sympas, rembobinez.

]]> http://superstarski.wordpress.com/?p=284 Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:03:34 +0000 superstarski http://superstarski.wordpress.com/?p=284 I am a big fan of both MICHEL GONDRY and JACK BLACK,
and this film just fulfill my crave - "BE KIND REWIND".
As always, i'm impress with his imagination and creativity.
The film is about a small video rental shop in a small town,
that has lost all data and they have to remake the film themselves.
Far-fetched! the shop become more popular and people keep
asking them to sweded more and more.
see trailer below :

You can also sweded yourself in the official web
http://www.bekindmovie.com/

 
Myself in Dumb and Dumber..
:)