Jeepers, I love you.

In a film noir mood. Watched Scarlet Street by Fritz Lang. I'm going to venture to say that Lang is definitely my favorite noir director. I like his other genre films, such as Fury, but I feel that his storytelling skills are so strong in his noirs. For example, he is really amazing at creating the ill feeling that every person is secretly plotting against you. He renders the city in such a compelling way - the empty streets and mere rain can create a feeling that menace lurks around every corner.

I wonder if he is conscious of a combined motif that I have noticed in his films: femme fatales and windows. In Woman In the Window, which is one my favourites, the main character sees a beautiful painting of a woman in the window of a fancy art shop on 5th avenue. He becomes so obsessed with her that he is willing to do anything, but of course, her love is, unbeknownst to the eternally hopeless romantic dope Edward G. Robinson, unrequited. He becomes mentally paralyzed from reason and of course, death is the final cost. The same kind combo motif is present in Scarlet Street. Robinson again falls in love with a young, beautiful woman, who keeps her true lover hidden on the side. Robinson, a painter, is in love with her so madly that he forfeits his own fame and fortune for her; his paintings, under her name, are displayed in a fancy art shop and in the last sequence of the film, her "self-portrait" is given a nice single shot to reinforce that haunting image of the woman.

I also love the visual tricks he plays. For example:


"So you won't forget me."


"Goodnight, Kitty."



* cue bird like flute music *







"Would you like to see what I did today?"
"Yes, I'd like to."





"Where did you find a flower like that?"



"You mean you see this.."



"When you look at that?..."



Lang, in an almost Hitchockian way (or Hitchcock, in almost Langian ways!) uses props as a means to convey psychological or emotional states. Here, the flower is used to represent Robinson's rosy-colored world after having met Kitty. The flower, to him, radiates much more liveliness and color, than to others, who see it wilting and dying.


In another example:




"Say did you paint this?"
"Great scott no, that's not a painting, that's mud, done by a photographer."
"Who is it?"
"The, uh, late departed."
"Ooh, your wife's former husband.."
"..Detective Sergeant Higgens."



"..Oh my Higgens!"



"Say, that's a real medal isn't it?"
"Yeeah, Adele got it."
"Your wife?"
"Yeah, after he was drowned in the East River. Jumped in to save a woman. Neither body was found."


Not only do I love the progression of shots, from long to medium, but the medal in conjunction with the dialogue is a subtle tip off point that the Mr. Sergeant Higgens is not actually dead, and he will reappear later in the film.


Lang's visual symbolism is always rather obvious, but man does it make his movies really fun to watch!

The Elephant Man. David Lynch.

Watched The Elephant Man by David Lynch for the first time. You can definitely notice Lynch's directorial newness and his developing style. There were a few insert shots that came and went very awkwardly making transitions rather jarring. One scene would end and the next scene would begin very markedly independent from the last; didn't really seem to fit. The most memorable scene for me was when Merrick was officially granted admittance in the hospital and was later that night ambushed by the drunken crowds who had paid to see him. It was shot so well.














Notice how the scene opens with a long shot of Merrick all alone. It's such a sad moment as we see Merrick going through all the motions of "normal men" in society. The pleasure-seekers then invade the room, but they are not his friends. Throughout the scene, Lynch closes in on that nice open shot that began the scene by employing mostly close ups to create a sense of claustrophobia. The shots supplant the feeling of being in a whirlwind, dizziness, the lack of breath, the lack of control, stuffiness and utter entrapment. At the end of the scene, however, Lynch leaves us where we, and Merrick, started - all alone.

SOUP goes to the Guggenheim

"SOUP", a short film that my bf and I made has just been shortlisted by the Guggenheim Museum for their Creative Artists Biennial!! The jury, which includes Ryan McGinley, Laurie Anderson, Animal Collective, Darren Aronofsky, Takashi Murakami and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, will select their top choices to be presented at a special event at the Guggenheim on October 21. Watch it, "like" it, leave a comment, post it on your tumblrs/twitters/blogs, whatever!

summer books

what i hate about lists is that i'm never able to conform to them. the only book on my summer reading list that i managed to read was "Letters to a Young Poet" by Wilke. i am, however, in the process of reading "The Master and Margarita" though so not all is lost. otherwise, i went on a tangent and read kafka on the shore by murakami
and disgrace by J.M. coetzee.

on disgrace: i didn't really enjoy the beginning of the book; it seemed that the professor/student affair was written a bit slapdash and trite, or how a lovelorn person would imagine a professor/student affair to be. i also had an issue with the orneriness of each character and found myself kind of hating them because it was so difficult to understand where they were coming from. simplistically, it might have been a way to inform the reader of the hardiness of the times and landscape, but the point was lost, to me at least, in what seemed like unmotivated stubbornness. these issues aside, i liked what Coetzee accomplished in the rest - well, most - of the book. the situations in the countryside, especially the neighbor, were strange, awful, uncomfortably foreign - but expressed the characters in a way that wouldn't have been possible off the farm.