So I dedicated myself to complete a kind of version of my albums of the season (which I still owe the persistent claim of Darius blogger) that reflects part of the library which I have been doing through the use of downloading movies from the web do anything that delays in the deep dissatisfaction that makes me watch movies on the small monitor of my PC. Luckily a couple of months ago I had a small surplus for which I could finally buy a cheap DVD player, and I was lucky and / or foresight to choose a model to read the format divx / avi format, much better than the rough vcd / mpg trout copies sold out there and found some amazing things on the web things that can burn to a CD single (or two) and see a reasonably large screen of my TV. But in fact the most interesting films of the web download is not on saving money (for me the value for money equation does not close in any way), but the oddities and delicacies that you are in it. This access, like when you found the mp3, let me things that I otherwise would have been virtually impossible as access to the entire filmography Kenneth Anger or a couple of dozen films of Takashi Miike . And the Web is a haven of fine people, with different rules and tastes, which is much easier to find the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky the mega-dick Titanic. A more just world.
selected ten of the films that got me and impressed me most (or re-impressed) in recent months, and that warmed me to write for different reasons. And at some point to write music back Darius, not inflate.
The Prince of Darkness (John Carpenter , 1987): I had seen this movie was a lot of years before seeing any work of Lucio Fulci , in whose style purists say that Carpenter was inspired. If so once again surpassed the original imitation and stating I'm a fan of Fulci. The Prince of Darkness is one of the best horror movies out there and with The Thing the best movie John Carpenter . It's amazing how effective it is, how well it works both as a simple horror film-making use just two or three loafers special effects, as well as in several other planes, building a climate of chilling beauty and apocalyptic fatalism never sadly no longer human, as the best stories of JG Ballard . Dreams / transmissions of the future where a sinister figure is out of the church as a faltering voice tries to tell what's going on, something more ominous infinitely sad, are those cinematic moments that override any discussion about whether the film of horror can be art. 
The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo , 2003): Yes, I confess, I got The Brown Bunny to see Chloe Sevigny it sucked to Vincent Gallo, I surrender. The truth is that it is a woman terribly attractive and the idea of \u200b\u200bseeing her make an explicit fellatio to someone, even if the Gallo-geek me out the voyeur in us all and installed next to the TV and Doritos bag . Sad but true . Now, I also autojustifiqué the issue with the fact that Gallo can be a pretty unbearable but is a talented guy and had a good chance that the film was much more than in such unseemly Sevigny oral trance.
And it is, is a beautiful film, sad, silent and a muted hipersensibildad in which his famous scene abruptly breaks mark, marking a change in the rate similar to those great films Werner Herzog's where nothing was happening until it was something that left knock-out. The Brown Bunny has some of that, and has some of the best Wenders, Antonioni's and perfect road movie that still no one came to film. It's one of those films are great because they fit all the harsh criticisms that have been made, delinquency, self-centeredness (Gallo, obviously), sensationalism, lack of originality, surprise exaggerated, but goes beyond these objections to force climate and passion, validating their existence. Even the famous blowjob scene (I love that Gallicism) is fully explicit and emotional but too uncomfortable to be really sensual, and a second look is already too sad to even see it as sex. He said "garbage" to The Brown Bunny everywhere, to me is a great movie alone.
The Legend of the Drunken Master ( Liu Chia-Liang, 1994): This is the vision of Jackie Chan on the historical figure of the legendary martial artist Wong Fei-Hong , a Chinese nationalist early twentieth century became one of the favorite figures of Chinese action films, giving rise to several series of films about his alleged adventures, including the brilliant Iron Monkey and Once Upon series to Time in China of Tsui Hark, starring Jet Li majestic. If this series Wong Fei-Hong is a prince, a philosopher warrior, in the version of the great Jackie Chan Wong Fei-Hong is ... Jackie Chan, and fart (its tactic of fighting is to take wine to acquire flexibility flickering of a drunk). There are a number of absurdities in this film in which Chan plays the forty Wong Fei-Hong teenage son of a businessman played by an actor ten years younger than the Chinese star and also a younger actress. Things never forgive in a Western movie (like the movie has little explicit anti-Western message), but they are minor objections in a Chan film because he knows that man will never play a character other than Jackie, this charming acrobat who always gets into trouble but never falls into the claws of hatred, and being half a world Jackie, myself included, will reach. This movie is so crazy that his final duel lasts twenty minutes to run, but you do not mind because it is seeing the biggest star in world cinema. 
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo , 1966): I have much to say about this marvel, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, and that got me I could just to see it for the umpteenth time. But the remarkable thing is the situation Borges of influence and change the reading given by post-context, I mean, this was the first time I saw The Battle of Algiers after the attacks on the Twin Towers and after War on Terror. It is known that this was the head of the film Montoneros, who saw her as who goes to church. When he was re-released after the dictatorship, critics found something that had not been seen at the time and that the young revolutionaries had Peronist obvious: that the film, who takes sides more clearly by the FLN is extremely criticism of revolutionary movements and their ruthless violence. Now, in 2006, somehow becomes The Battle of Algiers to be run to the left and somehow the story of the day, it becomes obvious symbol and metaphor for something that is happening 40 years after its release. I walk around the web, I realize that many people felt the same and there are many re-examining this film in black and white (on the screen, never in his ethics) to see what light can bring on terror a ruthless struggle between civilizations. I can not imagine what more evidence could be provided on the power of this amazing film. 
The piano teacher (Michael Haneke , 2001): I'm no Michael Haneke partial nor do I care it is, the point is something special, even though he had a great distrust of this film I smelled a priori as one of those products arty Europeans, with a little sex, a bit of high culture and a little mystery, winning lots of awards at festivals and sleep more effectively than a bottle of Rohypnol . Pure prejudice and nothing of what I had seen Haneke seemed to suggest that, but I trust my prejudices and so did not go to see it in the cinema when the brand new (well, the truth is that in those months was my free pass expired and I never went to the movies). In a way The piano teacher is a self-erotic arty European film, but in the same way Hero is a movie of kung fu in China, and indeed glacial tone that Haneke describes the disturbed mind Professor eliminates up to the potential evil of the film, making it another thing and one thing that is cruel and human at the time. In a way the whole movie is like an extension of the famous dinner scene bourgeois on Buñuel toilets, but no jokes here, only horror and repulsion. The performance of Isabelle Hupert is at least virtuous. 
Kiki's Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki , 1989): Three years ago I saw Spirited Away and literally changed my life, or at least my conception of cinema. It was the first film of Miyazaki Hideo he saw and although I knew that critics had considered a good movie I did not expect to find a movie as big, so enormous in its mystery, its sense of adventure and wonder. I was simply amazed. Recently I saw her and the effect was almost the same. Kiki's Delivery Service is a film minor in comparison and luminous films, Miyazaki, free of violence or conflict of good and evil. But despite this light is a strange melancholy that hovers over the film without being able to put your finger on, can be mood swings of the witch, it may be impossible beauty of their flight may be just the humanity of his characters and balance of the story, but there is something poignant that it is never explicit on this story. As these frequencies so severe that one can not hear but feel in the stomach (two days after writing this review I'm talking to a drummer pointed beard on another Miyazaki film and he says: " hit me and I do not know where ").
Tell me if you want to fuck, but seeing Kiki ... I found myself tearing two or three times, beaten, one who knows where the humanity of a witch tangible drawn.
Theremin, An Electronic Odyssey ( Steven M. Martin, 1994): For lovers of modern music history Leon Theremin is an epic, for fans of the documentary is Part of opportunity, good taste and perfect big issue that can be achieved, and for those who love documentaries about music is a perfect combination. Steven M. Martin had a good material in advance to work on, had the extraordinary historical person of Leon Theremin, a blend of mad scientist, artistic genius, aesthetic ideologue, secret agent man generally odd. Only tell your story and describe the amazing device that he invented (known theremin, the instrument is played without touch) reach, but Martin got the testimony and talent Clara Rockmore, a former pupil / Theremin, and music lover so virtuous it is able to play Bach pieces in that instrument, and also obtained other evidence such as fascinating Robert Moog and Brian Wilson. When you can not seem to get better, himself appears L. Theremin, ancianísimo and charming on screen, and the film manages to gather and film Rockmore Theremin and a re-encounter a piece of reality is as moving as it can be a record. Theremin shortly after he died, making the documentary in a graceful farewell to a great man. It may be next to the sad End of the Century, the film with better timing history, but in addition to this circumstantial luck is a wonderful story of giant sensitive individuals who should have a square with his name on each people more than 300 inhabitants.
Behind the Green Door (The Mitchell Bros ., 1972): This was the first hardcore porn movie that had a commercial distribution in the U.S. outside the circuit entirely pornographic and is one of the few examples of the time when some merchants of porn porn tried to generate some did not feel too guilty to viewers, giving some excuse to indulge art of seeing people fucks left and right. Behind the Green Door is undoubtedly a porn film from the cinematic point of view has little beyond a series of sexual activity by young starring Marilyn Chambers -a woman so fascinating that David Cronenberg the recruit, with excellent results, to star in porn Rabid nothing - who is kidnapped and subjected to resist-not much-a a series of mysterious intercourse in a theater. Filmed acts more or less originality and some modicum psychedelic (ejaculation is a solarized and passed through various color filters that any band should be used as a background for a concert). There is not much, but mysteriously enough. Beyond seventies charm and historical anecdotes, there is in any way more remarkable things in Behind the Green Door. First, the good humor and even innocence that permeates the film, in which there is virtually nothing of the usual sleaze in the current or porn 80's and a lot of shameless hedonism of the era, second has a rate messed up where creativity seems to have been more important than leaving clear spaces and extended to the delight of valijeros. But above all, there is a scene-no-no sex on a balcony of a hotel that is a marvel. Two men are talking in this terrace, among a number of empty tables and one is telling a story to another, almost unintelligible by the ups and downs in the volume environment. Marilyn Chambers suddenly appears, beautiful, dressed in winter (the sky is completely gray) and a wool cap, and sits on a nearby table next to the railing, facing the lake, and a beer. The men are talking loudly, ignoring the girl, who every so often tempted, perhaps because they say the rates, perhaps for the simple fact of being filmed, and overlooks the lake. In the soundtrack bursts COLOSSAL country melody, one of those bands sound simple and beautiful of the 70-before the appearance of the indistinct fool of Danny Elfman (if anyone crosses him, kill him on my part) - that interrupts the conversation and mixed with it. The combination of melancholy and angelic beauty of the Chambers (who minutes later we see skewered like a chicken and we know it, which gives a particularly morbid thing), the seemingly amusing conversation of two loafers, terrace empty, the gray sky and creates a sublime music of those scenes that, well, it is impossible to know if the Mitchell brothers filmed it as a filling or to learn to focus, but I'm sure 9 out of 10 independent directors cut off part of body to make a scene.
Fudoh: the next generation ( Takashi Miike, 1996): This is not even remotely one of the most disturbing films of Takashi Miike and definitely can not be put at the height of the great Audition or Visitor Q evil, not even the degree of delirium of Dead or Alive amazing or outrageous gore of Ichi the Killer , being rather one of its archetypal stories and criminal yakuza, with much violence and some resources to cuete watched a little more. But it is one of the best stories Miike pace and has some features as dazzling as shocking (filicidal father's persistence, the unlikely hermaphrodite, the blowgun vaginal), and in some ways is like a gateway perfect for Miike's work, a type of fashion that is no less brilliant and it's absolutely incredible that you can make four movies like this in one year. There is something very tarantinesco in Fudoh , much more than in other Miike films, which can be good or bad. For me is good. The scene where one of his bodyguards used by the aforementioned vaginal blowgun is forgetting that the first day of your period is, as it were, different. 
Tears of Kali ( Andreas Marschall, 2004): This is a small discovery, at least for purists of the genre cathartic and brave the horror. Tears of Kali is a low-budget German film which bite the bullet and part of a cosmology completely different from the usual horror film, Hinduism and new age, to achieve results at times genuinely frightening. Although the Germans generally ( Ittenbach , Schnaar , people with Buttgereit ) often try to scare and impact in the most explicit possible Andreas Marschall choose a diametrically opposite way and hidden as much as possible of the facts, eyesores and crime to offer a film full of secrets, almost hermetic, in which the intuition of the happens is much more chilling than it looks on screen (despite some very creative touches of gore-a girl who cut the eyelids with scissors, for example, excellently managed and notoriously hard). The production is, as mentioned, the most inexpensive and sometimes abused dialogues rather to illustrate situations, but this small collection of horror stories featuring very unusual demons is one of those rare gems that will brighten up your day any gorehound. Yes, there are many horror films in this selection. What can we do if we have difficulty identifying with anything else.
0 comments:
Post a Comment