Cinematic Concerns

... having someone over in your house as a guest.

You'll probably only understand it if you've directed something yourself.

A thought just occurred in my head not very long ago.

Maybe the reason I preferred the UK over the US (other than the possible theory that I've been in the UK for so much longer and hence am more used to it), is the fact that the UK is relatively small and is surrounded by water, which is sort of the same for Malaysia, while America is this huge ass pseudo-continent. Maybe.

Yeah, term 1 has ended, woohoo!

Went to school in the morning and it was windy. The signs all went horizontal (remember here the street signs are hanged over the middle of the road). It's cool, reminded me of my time in Concord College one October when strong winds pretty much messed up all the trees and strewn branches and leaves all over the campus.

Today there weren't any classes, just screenings of thesis films by the Jan '06 Class, who are graduating. I attended the last graduation and was sorely disappointed by the quality of the films I saw - some because of the lower-than-expected technical craft, virtually all of them because of their generic/pointless stories or subpar storytelling skills. I was downright disappointed - and this was right before our classes at the Los Angeles Film School began.

So I didn't bear much hope this time - I expected to be disappointed.

So it was a pleasant surprise to see that I actually liked a few of them, a few that I would actually want to watch again. Overall, this group seemed interested in cars, in people being killed in accidents (we must've seen like 7 or 8 cars crashing into people over the 3.5 hours of shorts). However, they also seemed to be at least somewhat adverse to conventional or cliches - they try their best to avoid it. Not to say the things they did are very original, just that they avoided stereotypes, and that actually goes a long way to making your short film look like quality stuff. It's in the details, not necessarily the big concepts.

The one I enjoyed the most is a 10 min short called Detour. It has no dialogue, just a very simple story played out with sound design and music. A story of two souls who met at an airport, feel an affinity for each other (one's wife had an affair, the other broke up with her boyfriend), felt so strongly for each other that they had sex in the toilet, then met up again when they landed - do they leave together? It's so poignant, because everything is conveyed visually and with music, and the music actually melds into the story, rather than dramatising something or accentuating a feeling. It became the feeling itself. It's done in this slightly dreamy, slo-mo feel ... and somehow they managed to shoot some of the scenes in a place, which probably means they spent some money on it. More significantly I noticed the sound design, which consists simply of removing all sound except for the background sound (the chatter of people at the airport, the drone of the plane engine, etc) playing softly. What it does is it concentrates the viewer's attention at what the characters are doing and 'hear' the characters' feelings. At the end of it I felt like I cared so much about the characters that I wanted to watch it again - rare is the short film that can do that to me.

The second one I liked is a black comedy called The Gulch. A man jogs in the park around Hollywood Hills, encounters a woman, who asks for his help to get her up to the cliff top ... and promptly jumps off the cliff. It was then that the man discovers that that cliff is a jumpers' point (complete with signposts showing the hours the clean-up crew would come to dispose of the broken bodies). So begins a battle (that plays out almost like angel and devil by the side of the deciding souls) to save the suicidal sods. I liked this coz the comedy worked and it was genuinely funny, it was played pretty straight, and they managed to throw in an irrelevant subplot (the man sees a woman jog past him and is attracted) and make it work without it feeling irrelevant, and the post-credits epilogue is still funny. Only thing is that the sound design isn't as accomplished - probably due to the fact that they are shooting on Hollywood Hills which is rather windy, as you can imagine.

The third one that I liked is called PIG. Another black comedy (almost descending into lame comedy ... except that it was funny), it also has some great ideas, like naming the three chapters after the letters p-i-g (which I didn't get until the end, bravo!). Basically, a group of four assassins are sent to assassinate ... what else, a pig. And this they do ... very successfully ... until they see their next case ... The short is directed very bombastically, with drums sounding like war drums, it's done in black and white, one of them goes over-the-top crazy trying to kill the pig, and the scenes are designed to ... make the audience laugh, though if this was a horror (purely by arrangement/editing and more coverage shots, it's possible) it would have horrified the audience. And of course, any movie that has pigs in it are funny - coz 'pig' is a funny word to pronounce and pigs are cute.

The rest of them ... well, some had some ideas, but none of them touch me the way the previous ideas did.

Hopefully you guys will get to see them - I will watch out for when it appears in YouTube or one of those sites.

I saw three movies today - woohoo! Haven't done that in a long time. It's coming to the end of term, and there are less classes, and where there are classes it's either short or the instructor has run out of things to teach. So, for today, we watched Little Miss Sunshine and Babel. I haven't watched Little Miss Sunshine before this, so it was nice to do so, and yeah, a little gem of a film - didn't disappoint despite the high expectations, which is quite an achievement indeed. The only minor complaint I have is that I wished it didn't end so quickly - the ending needed a bit more of a denouement. As for Babel, watching it a second time wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, because I know everything that will happen. I suppose the movie worked so well the first time because I just don't know what to expect. When you do a multi-storyline film, it's so much easier to hide the movie and prevent the audience from having a particular expectation when doing promo and trailers. It's also much harder to write, of course.

Now to Letters of Iwo Jima.


This is the eighteenth film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas.

I like the colour scheme they used in the film - bleached out colours so that it looks grey with a very slight tinge of blue (which is different from Saving Private Ryan ... but similar). The story mirrors Tae Guk Gi slightly, and Tae Guk Gi's mirrored Saving Private Ryan's.

The nice thing about this film is that it isn't bombastic. It does nothing that you don't expect it to do, but what it does it does pretty well. The characters are well drawn out, even though virtually none of the Japanese actors are famous names except for Ken Watanabe ... and if you watched Fearless you would recognise Shidou Nakamura.

The score, like any Eastwood film, consists of a single theme played over and over and over again, with nearly no variations in its arrangement. So it is lucky for the film that I do like the theme composed for it.

There's not much to say about the film, really, except that it's worth a watch. Malaysians should watch it too. Especially the younger brats who keep hearing the word Kempeitai in school but forgot what it meant. Suddenly it counts to know, here in this film.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Like It: 8/10
At What Point Did I First Look At My Watch: 55 mins
Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score

This is the seventeenth film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas. It is a free preview screening, the ticket for it which I found quite by chance sitting anonymously on the counter of a cafe I frequent. It disappointed me a little that the screening wasn't full (why? because it was literary and set in China?) ... though it did leave me space to put my bag on the seat next to me.

I quite like these literary films - films adapted from novels from before the world has seen global warfare. There is a certain sense of innocence to it - even when the stories dip into difficult or dark subjects like this one, the people of those times don't know something we do today.

As for W Somerset Maugham, my introduction to him is via The Lotus Eater, a short story we had to read during high school. The only reason I remembered The Lotus Eater is because I'm fascinated by the lifestyle of the loner - the choice the man had to make to live on the island of Capri, never working again - and also because I managed to find out the meaning of The Lotus Eater (hint: read The Odyssey). His writing style, I don't quite get though. It's something I've slowly grown used to. The way he writes seems to me to ramble - he seems to go on and on about insignificant events, but he describes them the way, well, as we would blog nowadays. They're interesting to the author, and he has a way with words (very British) - but for some reason, while I was partially engaged I couldn't figure out why he was telling me that. And then the story ends.

Some time ago, my father wanted me to read one of Maugham's most famous novel, The Razor's Edge. I remembered reading it, struggling through it, and then wondered why my dad wanted me to read it. I never asked him. Flash forwards some years later - I was in the middle of my Scottish Isles solo cycling trip. I arrived at this hotel, a sanctuary in the middle of nowhere, and although it was expensive - it was comfortable, almost like one of those old retreat houses the British would have in the past - I made the decision to stay for another day and do nothing. I ambled into the reading room and there was a shelf full of books. One of them was The Razor's Edge. So I picked up the book and skimmed through it.

This time, the book touched me. Mostly it was because the Larry Darrell character is the type of character I had always strived to be when I was young - pensive, smart, clearly doesn't need the approval of others, entirely confident, wise, insightful, and adventurous in a quiet manner. He does things without fanfare, he doesn't need to announce what he thinks, and the author doesn't always manage to coax Larry's thoughts out of him. At the same time Larry travelled, and I was travelling at the time ... and the mutual sense of being travellers ... Well, the book got to me a bit more, but not entirely. It's still very Maugham, the way the story was told. It rambles, this thing happens, then that happens, then this is what Maugham heard, and so on ... and then the end, when Maugham does a little summary of what he thought of it all.

Point is, when you walk into this film, realise that. You're not gonna get the usual structure in the average feature film. You get told a story - you listen. You experience the images, the sound. The acting was good - Ed Norton as the stiff Englishman and Naomi Watts as the naive, bored wife. The way the story was built, the way they began to learn to love each other - all of that was well done, well told. I just wished the ending was more dramatic, and less predictable. That I could see the ending from early on isn't the problem, the problem is I spent the movie waiting for it to happen, and when it happened it was almost callously portrayed, without fanfare, without any rising action.

Still, I'd rather watch this film than, say Borat. Or Eragon.

I really like the performances here by Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. Their British accents were commendable - and for Norton, the Mandarin words he speaks are intelligible, good effort.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7.5/10
How Much I Like It: 7.5/10
At What Point Did I First Look At My Watch: 20 mins
Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Adapted Screenplay

This is the sixteenth film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas.

It is not a badly made film.

It is far from great however.

Certainly not Oscar material. They shouldn't have hyped it up - that hurt the movie.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 6/10
How Much I Like The Film: 6.5/10
At What Point Did I First Look At My Watch : 105 mins

I went back to watch Happy Feet, as I keep telling everyone around me I would. I still can't believe how indifferent everyone is to this film - it's tearing me up inside. The film is so gorgeous-looking, but that's the icing, not the cake itself, because the way the story is told just grabs me, not just engages me, but grabs me from the beginning to the end.

A lot of it has to do with the music. If you observe carefully the films I declare to be my favourite, they all share the same trait: they contain great, high-inducing, intensely emotional, painfully poignant, transporting film scores. I look back at such films as Gladiator, The Last Samurai, The Bourne Supremacy, Cinderella Man. And Happy Feet is no exception. John Powell is now top of the list of composers I'd like to work with, and just plain favourite film score composer. The guy has a style that, in ways that not even James Horner or Thomas Newman or Hans Zimmer can (though they come REALLY close), truly create such emotional worlds inside me, be it awe-inspiring heroism or intense sadness or extreme cynicism, and so on. The only problem is that I would need to write something really big, huge, blockbuster, in order to get him to work with me (if ever). Obviously because he is A-list now, but also because the music he composes demands no less.

One nice touch - this is as close as a cartoon will ever come to having Robin Williams slip in the words 'fuck off', except that he stopped at the 'f', and all adults will know and the kids won't, unless they live in a household that uses it constantly.

Also, only now did I notice that Mumble was moulting towards the end. I was wondering why he looked so different - now I know, the idea is that he moulted a bit later than the other penguins, also because it's easier for kids to identify which one's Mumble. Plus, he looks more loveable. Good job in making him moult halfway yet achieving a look that doesn't seem ugly.

Now, what tears me inside is that I feel like the only person who demands this film be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. In fact, according to IMDb.com, the film might not even win Best Animated Feature, even though I thought that was a foregone conclusion. Lots of people think Cars is the best animated film of the year. I feel desperately like I need to change the entire world's opinion, and because I can't do that I feel hopeless.

It's been a long time since a film did that to me.

The last time was Cinderella Man and to a lesser extent, War Of The Worlds. Before that, the biggest one ever, was Taken. People dare not talk to me when I'm in that mood. But that's another story.

Just saw P.S., which happens to also be another example of pairing - the film came out within a week of Birth, and both films involved reincarnation. P.S. wasn't properly promoted, whereas a Nicole Kidman picture like Birth will of course be better marketed ... point is, P.S. was barely seen by audiences.

But to me it's the better film.

I've been thinking these days - what kind of movie can I do? And I finally remembered - it's strange how I keep forgetting details about myself, how my self consistently remains a mystery to me. Anyway, the point is, I do not want to do horror or lame/slapstick comedy, which constitute 95% of the work produced by graduating film students, who will never see the light of Hollywood days.

(Yet still, far too many of them make it through to the system, and, looking at it in economic terms, since there is such a huge supply of labour the wages have crashed to below monetary value. I'm serious. You see, if you want to start out at the bottom, which is almost always the case even if you do have contacts, you start off with no pay. At most you get gas money, plus you will be well fed - a film production rule that would surprise the layperson is that you never, ever, ever neglect feeding your crew: it is taken very seriously. So what do you get paid with? You get paid with more contacts, an opportunity for people to see your work and how you work, for people to know you. Here in Hollywood, that is currency.)

Okay, that was a long digression. Back to the point - the sort of movie I feel compelled to do under the constraints of a low budget is the fantasy genre. It is not the fantasy of Harry Potter or Lord Of The Rings; instead, I'm talking about films more like Frequency, Birth, Heart And Souls, 13 Going On 30. A friend suggested calling it the 'magical realism' genre. The characteristic of these type of films is that it involves normal, average people who are met with situations that clearly are physically illogical and thus, impossible, and yet it is happening - for better or for worse - and so they must deal with it. And often they deal with it as realistically as we can possibly imagine them do.

And I guess that attracts me because it combines the extraordinary with the ordinary ... or rather, it puts the extraordinary into our ordinary lives. Remember I said that I hate watching movies about the ordinary. I reasoned that that's because we already are living in ordinary reality. That's not what I go to movies for. I go to the movies to be flung away into another world, another life. Another life.

And so, for low budget films, these sort of movies are the ones that I love most to do, and certainly that I love most to watch. (I still remember the film Mannequin, where a mannequin comes alive and a man falls in love with her. I remember watching it on TV - this must have been in the 80s - and thinking about it for days afterwards, coz I really connected with the male lead. I think if I watch it again today I'll wonder how I ever came to like the film.)

And P.S. is a really well done film. It's well done because it doesn't follow the Hollywood conventions - in fact, it does what I would have done, to actually summon the Hollywood conventions on screen and then flay it and sink it right in front of the audience. For example, after Linney and Grace had a fight and Grace storms back into his apartment, the main gate closes and Linney can't get in, even if she wants to. Then we see a shadow - in Hollywood that will almost certainly be Grace coming out. Instead, it's a random guy coming out of the gate, and Linney smiles at him. It doesn't really add anything to the movie or the plot, so according to academic film theory that scene should be excised - but I love the film for little touches like that. Another one is when Linney repeats a line twice, for no reason other than rhyme, when in close-up - if that sounds like 'duh?', you kinda have to watch it to know what I'm talking about, and even then you might not.

I love the film also because of the dialogue. In film school they teach us not to be too obvious with the dialogue, to not be on-the-nose, to use subtext, etc. Here, the film does that wonderfully. Every line either reveals something more than what is said, or is the exact opposite of what is said. Or, it's very poetic without sounding lame - it really draws one into the film.

The performances were great throughout. They must have done something right with the script in the first place to attract the likes of Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden, Paul Rudd, Gabriel Byrne. Of course, Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden were both in Mystic River - this film is much better. Plus, those two get to play off each other, particularly in a scene where they quarrel (yet one isn't quite sure they are). Must have been fun for the actors to do this one.

I like this also because they allow time for each scene to run. Often Hollywood films focus on the mantra 'begin the scene as late as possible and leave as early as possible'. Here, they slowed the pacing down a little, yet not too much, and you get the sense of being able to really spend time with these characters, yet not getting bored with them like so many European and Asian films tend to do. As a result you get to feel all the anxiety Linney's character was feeling as she waits for Grace. They also allowed the sex scene to play out, without fanfare, without music, without eroticism ... it just lets the scene play out as it would in real life, and it's up to the audience to supply their emotions and anxiety about that scene.

And, gosh, Topher Grace. He is the only actor I can see today who can play the heart-tugging male romance lead. It's not because he has a sexy, erotic body figure. Instead, he does it through his eyes - that look he does. There is a slight danger of it becoming tired, but not yet. So far he's been in Win A Date With Tad Hamilton (which I really, really loved), this film and In Good Company, and he does that thing in all three films. I hope to see him in more stuff - I think it's great that not everyone's crazy over him yet. Don't want him to turn into an Orlando Bloom.

This is the fifteenth film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinemas. The fourteenth was actually a free screening and Q&A with the writer of the film World Trade Center, which I've already seen back in Malaysia but since it was free ... Anyway, Apocalypto also happens to be the third midnight screening I attended.

Now, this film will never be shown in Malaysia. First, it's the violence and nudity. Second, it's because Malaysians are (generally) unsophisticated and wouldn't enjoy the whole idea of immersing oneself into an ancient Mesoamerican culture. They'd just think of them as sakai and wonder why anyone would want to watch a movie like that.

Having said that, I have this to say - the movie's not violent enough. Okay, so it's gruesome, with the mano-a-mano scenes where one bashes the other's head in. But today's audience really is quite used to that, and Mel Gibson knows enough not to push the point - so in fact the sequence of the ransacking of the village was rather tame. You know people are being killed but you don't really see it and you don't hear a lot of bone-crunching sounds. Gibson pushes the violence where it counts - when it gets personal.

You see, people simplistically associate Gibson with violent movies. They think that what he really likes is to make violent movies. Idiots. Watch closely. The one consistent motif is the feeling of desired vengeance it arouses in the audience. Gibson is very good at setting up conflict between characters, but not just any conflict, it's one specific type of conflict - where the bully unreasonably heckles the protagonist and destroys his life around him so very completely, arousing the desire in the audience to want to reach in and choke the bully ... but ah, that's not what movies are supposed to do. Movies are for the protagonist to go through trials, gain his strength - and then launch into what is known as 'payback time'. That's what Gibson has always done in his movies and what he does best.

As for the whole Mayan civilisation thing, well it doesn't really involve too much of the Mayan (as in, the city dwellers) themselves. The thing is I love movies that are set in ancient times. Unfortunately those movies almost don't exist. They don't make them coz the public is too stupid to watch them. Or it's just that I'm weird and unique in a lonely sense, the same way that Alexander was lonely because no one understood him or his vision and ambitions. (I plugged in lonely coz so many people come up with the rebuke "everybody's weird", which is also saying that nobody's weird. Which defeats the point.) Which is why I'm glad Gibson went ahead to make this film, and in a forgotten/dying language as well - he is the only one with the money to do so (big fat money from The Passion Of The Christ, yeah!) and the interest in it as well. The only one. Other directors are hired to make movies like Troy or King Arthur.

However, in order to try and attract the public, one still has to make sure the story fits into the classic Western methods of storytelling - in academic terms, we're talking about character arc, three-act structure, conflict, inciting incident, etc ... all those things I've been learning in a Hollywood film school in the last month and a half. Apocalypto is structured the same way, and as a result I sometimes feel like what I'm watching is not authentic. Like the way the first sequence is played out, where the young tribal men joke with each other. It sounds too much like a sequence from any number of movies we watch where young males bond with each other. That's not to say it can't happen that way hundreds of years ago - it's just that when I think of the Mayans or Aztecs, my concept of them is entirely informed by pictures and prints on books and the internet, which is always about pottery, culture, ziggurats ...

... and sacrifice.

Now I'm getting to why I don't think the movie is violent enough. You see, I got really fascinated when watching a documentary/reading an article about the Aztecs (who are different from the Mayans, who are different from the Incans ... but how could you guys tell? I can't), about how they have this sacrificial ritual (annually?). They line up up to 20,000 prisoners captured from neighbouring villages, along the way up the largest ziggurat in the middle of the capital, with the entire population descending into trance as high priests rip out the hearts of the prisoners, drink their blood, and chop their heads off and fling it off the ziggurat, then the body as well. Now, when I imagined that scene, I imagined it with the ziggurat filled with blood from top to bottom, the blood slowly flooding the bottom of the ziggurat, moving through the feet of those closest to the ziggurat, the stench of the blood pouring from the bodies, the flop-flop sound of the bodies being flung off the ziggurat going down the stairs, the squeezing of the half-beating hearts to squish out the blood, the messiness of it all, and the entire population with their eyes going up into their heads. Anyways, archaelogists today try to explain the fall of the Aztecs by the fact that their thirst for prisoners for the sacrifice forced them to ravage village upon village which, understandably, causes undue resentment and eventually the neighbouring tribes co-operated with the impending conquistadors to bring down the Aztecs. But that's beside the point.

The point is, I actually imagined the ziggurat sacrificial scenes, and thought, wow, if I could make a movie like that ... no one would watch it. People would be too pussy to watch it. Heck, I'm scaring myself - it's a really scary sight.

You don't get that in Apocalypto. No. Apocalypto is a movie designed for 21st century audiences - it's too barbaric to stage it as bloody as that, plus people might not believe it. Some might even have thought that Gibson did that purely for violence's sake. The sacrificial sequence in the movie is still scary. It's just that I'm the only person in the world who thought he didn't go far enough. So there.

Now, to the characters - wow, they set it up pretty well. The actor who played the main character, Jaguar Paw (which I'm sure sounds a whole lot better and a whole lot less contrived in the language they speak), is surprisingly charismatic. Even though it's almost entirely a physical role, in the beginning we see him as this pensive person, the only one who goes into his mind, and it takes his father and his wife to call him back. In effect he's the modern hero - one who is physically adept as well as mentally agile. As for the rest of the characters, it's kinda hard for them to screw it up, since it's pretty on-the-nose - they're either trying their very best to kill someone, or trying their very best to survive. Such are the times in (what is apparently) 15th century Central America.

Visually - wow. I'm guessing that is hi-def. Thing is, the whole movie is shot with the Nat Geo look - for the film students, what we have here is pretty deep depth of field. It took a while to get used to it. At any case it is a beautiful film to look at. The costume design and make-up departments deserve kudos as well, they were so well done that it suggests a certain level of complexity in the social structures, plus incredibly detailed textures on the men's bodies.

Now, because this is a Mel Gibson film it still requires suspension of disbelief. Some of the scenes are a little over-the-top - not too much, just a little. But I enjoyed it.

Just this. Please, do yourself a favour. Don't go watch this film when you're in the mood for something more like The Queen, and then come out of the cinema saying the film sucks. Assholes.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 8/10
How Much I Like The Film: 8/10
At What Point Did I First Look At My Watch: 15 mins
Oscar Noms That It Deserves: Best Actor (Rudy Youngblood), Best Costume Design, Best Make-Up

For the record, I'm giving the best actor nomination to the newbie in the sense that I don't give a damn about old men like Peter O'Toole, however well people say he acted in Venus. The newbie really sold the character and made him compelling ... sort of the same reasons why Russell Crowe was nominated (and eventually won) for his role in Gladiator.

Also, a number of reviewers mentioned that they raised their eyebrows at the twist-from-left-field that occurs at the end of the movie. I did raise my eyebrows too, and it threw me off for a while ... but, what the heck, it's not like most of the public will find that to be an incongruity.

This is the thirteenth film I saw at the Hollywood Arclight Cinema.

I can't believe I spent a grand total of 39 bucks to watch this film 1.5 times.

Anyway, it didn't hit me as hard as The Last Samurai did. This film has other purposes, however - it's like an environmental message movie, the movie is there for purposes other than entertainment. It seeks to combine entertainment with a message that will hopefully move the audience to do something (or, in this case, to not do something). As a matter of fact, the film addresses two issues - blood diamonds and child soldiers.

Mention Sierra Leone and people will think of ... that Western director. Ah, what's his name ...

Sergio Leone, you dick.

Just like how so many of my American friends have no idea where to place Malaysia. One guy who's sure he knows where it is ... in fact identified Northern Thailand as Malaysia.

But no, it is an African nation. To us, one African nation is just the same as the other. If we can do better we realise that northern Africa is kinda different from western Africa, that central Africa is mysterious, and that Lesotho is completely enclosed within South Africa ... but otherwise it's simply that country with lots of violence and bloodshed, war, cannibals, some resources but mostly poor like Hell, etc etc.

The story is set there.

Go watch it.

All the actors are good in it.

Except I was wondering why did they plant Jimi Mistry and Michael Sheen in it for such a short duration of the movie. It doesn't help that Sheen just played Blair in The Queen.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7.5/10
How Much I Like The Film: 7/10
At What Point Did I First Look At My Watch: 15 mins