A Short and Last Blog Post

I did enjoy the last film, La Noire de, we watched for the class; directed by Ousmane Sembene, the "Father of African film." I still don't feel the film entirely convinced me that this woman had no other option but suicide though. It never tried to explain what would happen if she just left, but this may just be because It would've been more clear to the audience at the time and location of the film, so c'est la vie... or maybe such is death (don't know the french for that). This point, though, is why I enjoyed an earlier effort by Sembene, Borom Sarret, much more. It's a short film of around 2o minutes about a wagon driver; I loved how the film just showed another day on the job and how easily it can take a turn for the worse. It puts the poverty of the city right in your face and it also contains, like La Noire de, extensive use of voice-over. Check it out sometime.

Soma

Here's the short film I wrote/directed/edited for my final project in the class if you want to check it out online.

Hiroshima mon GODZILLAAAA!!!

It was stated in the Caruth text we read, which was in regards to Hiroshima mon amour, that instead of making a documentary about the bombing of Hiroshima, Alain Resnais chose to shoot a film of fiction. Caruth goes on to say (and I'm paraphrasing) that she thought a more powerful truth was achieved by doing this; by shooting something close but indirect in its telling. Which brings me to Godzilla. More than just a potential monster cash-cow, Godzilla is an awesome answer to nuclear bombing and testing. Taken from Wikepedia: The opening scene of the Bingo Maru being obliterated by Godzilla's first attack and later scenes of survivors of other attacks being found with radiation burns, were inspired by the U.S. testing of a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. A real Japanese fishing ship, the Lucky Dragon 5, was overwhelmed when the U.S. Castle Bravo nuclear test had a yield of 15 megatons rather than the planned 6 megatons. Military personnel, island natives and several Lucky Dragon 5 crew members, persons believed to be in a zone of safety, suffered from radiation sickness and at least one died six months later. This created widespread fear of uncontrolled and unpredictable nuclear weapons, which the film makers symbolized with Gojira. The actual event played a major role in drawing attention to the hazards of nuclear fallout, and concerns were widespread about radioactively contaminated fish affecting the Japanese food supply.Godzilla's climactic attack on Tokyo was meant to exemplify a rolling nuclear attack, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only much more slowly. Honda had plotted it this way, having been shocked by the real devastation of those cities.

So while these nuclear warnings can be read from the English version, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, (which has cut scenes of more direct nuclear references and added footage of American actor Raymond Burr) the Japanese version, Gojira, is where the power of responsible film-making is really at.... Well, as responsible as a man in a lizard suit with radioactive breath who has the ability to spawn multiple cheesy sequels can get, that is.

Original Japanese trailer Link. May need to copy/paste:

http://youtu.be/eSk-i1UFJWA

The horrible sequel where Godzilla gets a son. So so bad.

The Ascent of Apocalypse Now

For my final paper, I researched the soldier's psyche and how it was represented in the two films of Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. I had, originally, chosen The Ascent, simply, because I love the film and because it does a fantastic job of showing Russian warfare in WWII; After re-watching it for this paper, I was pleasantly surprised by the other connections it had to Apocalypse Now. While the ascent in Shepitko's film is hopeful, I liked the idea of an ascent into madness that Coppola's film showcases. I use "ascend" instead of "descend" because there is a truth discovered at the end of the film that is only revealed to the soldiers because of their madness; and also because of the more literal use of them travelling up-river into madness. There is also some great ties to religious undertones in both films. We have a Christ/martyr role in The Ascent and a taking over the role of god by killing a god in Apocalypse Now. Anyways, I totally recommend Shepitko's film; it's really awesome and I'll provide you with a clip below; it's in Russian with no subtitles, but the visual power is what is at the forefront here.

Track-o-rama

I've only seen a few French New Wave films; those being Truffaut's 400 blows and Godard's Breathless and Contempt. From what I have seen, however, a sense of reveling in cinematic technique is observed. And while there can be some amazing things conveyed with the cut, I've always been fascinated with the tracking shot. It just reeks of directorial hard-work and, I feel, can be a true testament to an actor's skill. I love the tracking shot at the beginning of Contempt where it sways from right to left when the producer is met for the first time. Good stuff. So I thought I'd share some of my favorite tracking shots from two films separated pretty far, both temporally and geographically.

Orson Welles' Touch of Evil

and John Woo's Hard Boiled
http://youtu.be/CTCymujrkMg

Blade Runner Is For Fake

I remember there being talk about whether we should care or not for the Replicants, in class. Some brought up the "ghost in the machine" idea and another questioned whether a "soul" could exist anyplace but inside a human being. After seeing Orson Welles' F For Fake (aka F Is For Fake aka F Is For Fakes; I'm still not sure what the correct English title is) a couple of weeks before re-viewing Blade Runner, I started to see the Replicants in a new light; a light based in a theory put forth by F For Fake. It, basically, talks about the artistic merit of a forgery; when we see the fake and find it beautiful on first sighting why do we hate it when we find out the truth behind it? Is it because we feel our experience wasn't true? We feel cheated now?... Why should our initial reaction be tainted though? Is it not still as beautiful as when we first spotted it? Did we only like it because of the original painter? And what if we find it to be better than the original? I feel like all of these questions are just as viable to the Replicants as they they are to paintings. Anyway, it's a good and strange movie which I recommend checking out.

Blade Runner/BTAS

Yessss, I believe it's now time for the "Matthew Reagan catch-up blog posts for lit/film class" hour......... (Probably going to take me longer than an actual hour) Let's start light: In the film, Blade Runner, there is the character of J.F. Sebastian, a genius designer who works for the Tyrell Corporation and also suffers from progeria. Now I brought this up in class a long time ago and I thought I would expand for this is kind of my nerd area of expertise. I am, of course, referring to the character of Karl Rossum from Batman: The Animated Series or BTAS. Rossum is a total wink of the eye to the character of Sebastian; He is a creator of robots and advanced toys and is even voiced by the same actor who played Sebastian, William Sanderson. (a fantastic actor that plays dopey better than the best. See him in Deadwood for a prime example) Even more fascinating than this clever inclusion of the character is the selection of the name Rossum. This goes back to the play from 1921, R.U.R. or Rossum's Universal Robots. Wikipedia provides a fascinating read about it; the best part being where the word Robot actually originated from this play. Awesome! check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.

Video of the BTAS character: