noon sermon, one year later

Human time goes by mercilessly and the story is always the same, Women never come to understand that Men at the beginning of an encounter never r e a l l y know what to do with them and with the desire that makes them climb up the walls. Males, defective as they are, fight their inner ape and confuse modernity with primordial instincts, not much of a help in Times of forced miscommunication and unmatched build-up of expectations. Occasionally, Men p r e t e n d to know what they 're doing when approaching Women, but in reality they are clueless, afraid, and bottom down intimidated by the intensity of the exposure despite any facade of self-confidence and acted-out nonchalance. A rather cheap show-off, which admittedly occasionally works, for the wrong reasons. How this simple and obvious factual information keeps eluding the Female brain to better adjust, handle the power bestowed upon Her and save the day from a faltering Man is another proof of a failed evolution process of the human kind doomed to waste itself in hollow childish power games and pretension. Amen.

Flame

BellX1 gave one of the most passionate concerts I've seen lately, in Bowery Ballroom in NYC bursting with energy.

Two full hours, just before St. Patrick's day, in a packed hall with plenty green lads, the second great band from Ireland after the Frames (or the third if you include U2, but they are a class of their own).

This is their most "disco" song, very different though every time I hear it from the record, or live...

This is another live version. The song is infectious. Enjoy.

Victor Erice

He makes movies in intervals that are unthinkable in our modern life's pace and furious rhythm:
Every ten years!

I admit I did not know about him until I visited the mesmerizing exhibition: "Kiariostami - Erice Correspondences" in Pompidou in Paris, where i came across glimpses of his work and some of his short films...

Despite his scarce filmmaking, he is considered by most critics and cinephils as one of the few Auteurs of modern cinema.


After seeing "The spirit of the Beehive" (Criterion Collection) I was thinking how lucky we are today that with the "help" of caring about something and keeping an open mind we can be exposed at will to spectacles/experiences which were a lot more difficult to find before.

The following short movie is a 10 minute piece called "Lifeline", shot in 2002 as a part of "Ten minutes older" a collaborating movie with 6 other directors doing their part.

I had a chance to see it in Pompidou, and it is simply wonderful. Enjoy.



From Senses of Cinema, an article on Erice.

The most interesting films of '07.

Delayed, but who is in a hurry anyway?
An opportunity to mark the movies that impressed me the most the year that has just gone by.
Some of them will endure the test of time...

According to this blog, the most interesting movies of 2007 are:

• "The Banishment" (Izgnanie), by Andrei Zvyagintsev (Russia): Simply a masterpiece. Astonishing from every aspect. In 10 years it will be among the canon films...
  

• "4 months, 3 weeks and 2 nights" (4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile), by Cristian Mungiu (Romania): Competes with the Banishment as the best film of the year, surely a proof of how one can shoot almost Perfection with very little money. Having only as a backgound the sick dictatorial regime of Ceausecu, it is a disturbing film that shrinks your stomach with painful dilemmas and strugles that young Otilia has to face despite her maturity and immense internal strength.A gem.
  

• "No Country for Old Men", by Ethan & Joel Cohen (USA). The strongest movie of the Cohen brothers for years. If american cinema was mainly like this, the States would be a lot more appealing to the world. Javier Bardem as the absolute destruction nemesis, a plague... The parallel story of the 'quiet force' that stems from Tommy Lee Jones balances the film in a magic way.
  

• "Once", by John Carney (Ireland). The music film of our generation. Unique, honest, the most feel good film that i saw this year with my endorphins shooting up the roof. There is no way you won't feel complete euphoria exiting the screening room.

• "Michael Clayton" by Tony Gilroy (USA). Once again, a great film on the absurdity and moral decline of the corporate kingdom, with Clooney in the most fitting role. His choices already a guarantee for the quality of the film...

• "Eastern Promises" by David Cronenberg (Canada, UK). Indeed, Cronenberg made a second excellent movie in a row! It's because he found his muse, Viggo Mortensen who is the reason this film is so good.
  

• "Lust, Caution" (Se, Jie) by Ang Lee (China). A great Auteur of our times and gifted storryteller. I loved this film. The sensuality and the sensitivity of the major Asian directors belong to another class altogether.

• "Zidane, a 21st century portrait" by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Pareno (France). Elegy to Zidane shot in a way that was never done before. During a 90 minute soccer game, cameras from every angle film only Zidane in any situation or pose he is at. Even when the game is played elsewhere all the cameras are fixed on him. Unexpectedly sublime. Music by Mogwai. Of course he scores and gets a red card...

• "Before the Devil Knows, You're Dead", by Sydney Lumet (USA). 84 years old Lumet is able to shoot a movie of complex characters with such a clarity and brio that a 20 year old would be jealous of. Pure enjoyment on human decadence.
  

• "Atonement" by Joe Wright (UK). I went to see the film without expectations. It touched me cause the chemistry of McAvoy and Knightley is more than persuasive and the books of McEwan are always a tool for a great film.
  

• "12:08 East of Bucharest" by Corneliu Porumboiu (Romania). The belle epoque of the Romanian cinema. This IS Romanian New Wave. Wonderful black comedy.
  

• "Gucha! Distant Trumpet" (Guca!) by Dusan Milic (Serbia). The movie that Kusturica CANNOT make anymore for at least the last 10+ years. Balkan craze.
  

• "First Snow" by Mark Fergus (USA). Guy Pearce plays incredibly. The only slightly metaphysical film that did not annoy me, on the contrary i was haunted by it for days...
  

• "Red Road" by Andrea Arnold (Scotland). Debut of clear technical superiority shot atmospherically with the self-confidence of a veteran! Finally a female director in the list. Waiting for her next film!
  

• "After the wedding" (Εfter bryllupet) by Susanne Bier (Denmark). After watching it for the third time it somehow eased the stirring it caused. For movies like this I love Cinema dearly...

In the mood for love

Suddenly he remembered. It must have been the end of the year 2000. It was late in the afternoon, but already pitch black outside, the tall street lamps with their pale yellowish scant light were illuminating dimly. He remembered the foggy weather and the humidity piercing through his bones as they were walking arm in arm at the uneven cobblestone pavement with the sound of her heels creating a dull echo as it was reflecting to the surrounding buildings. They’ve just left the theater Urania a few steps behind them, Wong Kar Wai’s “In the mood for love” was showing back then…He remembered the silence while they both stared simultaneously at the film’s sign with its large black letters on a white neon background before they kept going their way… A couple of minutes later, just before reaching the city’s big tower clock which never missed to remind them their steady subtle decline, she asked him:

- “Shall we go and watch it? R. told me it’s a dream.”

- “I don’t know, I’m not in the mood for Chinese cinema” he answered, rather absent-minded, his thoughts racing elsewhere

It was left at this, in any way their cinephilia hadn’t reached the dimensions of a ritual just yet… They continued their evening walk towards Afium, their beloved cellar, sitting and drinking boiled wine with cinnamon, feel the warming breaths, as his warm fingertips from touching the hot cup barely came into contact with her long attractive proud neck…

Five years later, under the same winter weather, but at different coordinates, with longitudes and latitudes of this world dissonant as if pathologically drunk, it finds them in complete confusion, communication seeming impossible, cohabitation turning unbearable.

Walking outside the Amherst Theater, like two negatively charged atoms driving away each other, they unwittingly come across the poster of “2046”, Kar Wai's new film.

Somehow they both softened.

- “Are we gonna watch it together?”

- “I promise.”

A few days later, a sudden death. The only gift her father ever made to her. His death as an excuse of a foretold separation…

Useless exchange of letters follows:

- ....

- “I haven’t seen 2046 yet. I’ll wait for you.”

- “There’s no need…”

Two years later, under the same winter weather, after the arrival of the first snow, he observes the white flakes becoming eventually an ugly mud, like it always happens. Watching things from a different angle, with the bells of the church’s clock across not only signifying our subtle waning through life but also the cure from a past that has long gone without return, he feels the need to be exposed to “the mood for love” that awaits for him stoically for some time already, circles are supposed to close, not all of them are vicious, as it is assumed.

“A memory, is it something you have, or something you lost?”

In the mood for love, by Wong Kar Wai.

But... in reality, only the last paragraph proved to be fictional.
He actually never stopped loving her.
One cannot find cure from his only true Love, however sentimental this may sound…

The Banishment, by Andrei Zvyagintsev

However you look at it, a masterpiece in a true sense.



"It is truly something to see; for among all the lives to be ruined it is a visual rhapsody, attentive to every nuance in the spectacular land and foliage around the family home, following the lives within as meticulously as it traces the dramatic changes in weather — from clear day to torrential showers — in one of the longest, most intricate and beautiful tracking shots in cinema."

Private screenings

Watching a film is essentially a solitary act.

It requires our full and exclusive engagement, the need to let ourselves be immersed into the director's mind translated into picture and the actor's expressions conveyed to us.

It never is a passive act, at all times it demands an interaction of our senses and sensibilities with a world created under an immense effort, for our eyes only...

With my eyes wide open, the time of the screening is a time of dedication, nothing short of this. To another world, another place, another person in time...
Of course it's all about the films that matter, but what are they?

Last wednesday night as I was preparing a talk for the following day my mind drifted to the film i was about to watch a few hours later, last show of the day.

Few films manage to bring such an anticipation. I've been silently waiting for this movie for a long time.

This feeling is not shared by most of my friends here and i don't blame them, one's passion is not usually another's.
One after the other found an excuse, but long ago, the decision to attend something i long for, is not affected by anybody else. I dont believe it should anyway...

"El Aura" is Argentinian, directed by Fabian Bielinsky, who was behind "Nine Queens" a few years ago. "El aura" remained loyal to its title and created a spreading aura only a few weeks after it was completed...
Despite advertising, word of mouth is still a reliable way of letting something be known and could even be more indicative of the real worth of it...
Already rave reviews were written during film festivals, the directing maturity of Bielinsky was praised, cinema that hypnotized most of the people who saw it.

And then! Biliensky at age of only 45, suddenly died in Brazil from a heart attack. His second film was his last, an irony considering the maturity of the movie, a grandmaster-to-be who will never become one...
"El aura" became sudenly a cult movie. The last word of an artist who obviously had a lot more to do and say. The insignificance of human existence that tries to grasp a piece of immortality from creating a work of art... Where vanity may actually serve well to the rest of us!

From a punishing cold outside, I arrive at the movie theater frozen and buy the ticket, holding it with my blue fingers.
I enter the screening room and the lights dim...
I am all alone.
For a minute I feel like i'm part of "Mullholland drive", in an instant an illusion would come out on a long dress from behind the red curtain and would break my heart with "Silencio"...

I sit in the middle and I am all alone. For a movie like this, only one person showed up!
A private screeening for a genuine cinephil should be a blessing.
It takes me time to get used to it. I feel thankful they show the film only for me! It probably costs them more than what i payed to get in!

From the first scene the stregth of the movie is unfolding full blown... It retains this hypnotizing rhythm through Ricardo Darin's penetrating eyes and rough face, everything seems to be in the right place...
I smile as if Bielinsky played a joke on me when the first dialogue is in hungarian! Out of all the languages!

I'm almost ecstatic when the movie ends, more so having my expectations fulfilled...
Going home I can't stop thinking that out of one million people, only one payed tribute to a cinema as valuable as a jewel, a cinematic approach just waiting for you to grasp it...

You only have to let yourself be immersed in it...Who does it these days anyway?...