Sad Hill Cemetery

by Will Ross
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Great movie posters are really hard to come by. Few of them are very pleasing to look at, and even fewer really hold up as great works of art.

So imagine my surprise when I found out Poland's film posters regularly equal or surpass even the greatest films they advertise. They're works of stunning originality that conform to no set formulas. They are routinely gorgeous.

Apocalypse Now.

This is as excellent an introduction to Polish posters as any I can think of. Rather than selling a plot, premise, or genre, Polish posters tend to be purely expressionistic, using imagery from or inspired by the film to evoke mood. In this case, it perfectly encompasses the surrealistic madness and breakdown in the midst of violence at the dark heart of Apocalypse Now. Most brilliantly, there is no trace of Vietnam in the image; the only connection to war is the suggestion of spears in the lines. All too proper considering that the film's trip down the river is essentially a journey back in time, and a perfect summarization of the central character of Kurtz.

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High Noon.

In contrast to the surrealism of that last poster, here is High Noon's. The poster presents the film's uncommonly dark moral explorations in an old west setting with stunning irony: It mimics the covers of old west dime novels, yet the sheriff here stands in deliberate contrast to their romanticism and adventure. A very neat expression of the film's status as both an engrossing, accessible western and a depiction of the solitude of human courage and loyalty. Ingenius stuff.

Alien.

This is the first Polish poster I ever saw. The brilliance of it is just how little of the film is given away (Alien is a film well-served by surprise). The famous American "egg" poster is memorable in its own right, but it doesn't communicate the film's psychological and physical internal horror as intriguingly as this one does.

Aliens.

Not all of these posters are completely bizarro or unfamiliar, as the style seen in this piece, though uncommon, has been seen in American posters before. Its greatness, once again, is its suggestion of the film's antagonists as an internal threat, primordially linked to the protagonist, this time in the form of dark bubbles (blood cells?). They rise from her bosom, a detail in unison with the film's maternal themes. I love that these posters emphasize the themes and feelings of a film rather than their most sensational literal aspects!

Young Frankenstein.

Remarkably, posters for comedy films show no comparative lack of originality. Young Frankenstein is a parody of horror films, and this poster dispels any misconceptions about that seeming-dichotomy simply and beautifully, while promising a very funny and silly comedy.

The Empire Strikes Back.

Return of the Jedi.

These perfectly capture the dark science-fiction splendour and scope of the Star Wars films. I'm particularly fond of Return of the Jedi's, showing the destruction and rebirth of Darth Vader with unbelievable dramatic potency. Marvelous.

Citizen Kane.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you why this one is great. This is the best use of the film's iconic political campaign poster I've ever seen.

And in case you wanted evidence of a poster far surpassing its film...

Short Circuit 2.

I can't imagine a better portrayal of a kid-friendly sci-fi comedy: It embodies techno-mayhem family fun. It is manic, brilliantly colourful, filled with simple shapes, and amazingly fun to look at. I've seen Short Circuit 2, and it's nothing special, but this poster makes me want to see that movie!

The incredible thing is that I would by no means call these the best Polish posters I've seen: They were taken practically at random from whatever films came to my head or I was browsing past. Like I said, these posters are routinely ingenius, and though I've exclusively cited American films here, the same goes for films from all around the world. I can imagine walking around a Polish theater lobby as if it were an art gallery.

Why does this work in Poland but not here?

Some more great posters:

The posters seen here, and thousands more, can be found at www.polishposter.com. Enjoy!

By Devan Scott
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Americans don't care too much for beauty.
They'll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream.
They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beach.
Complain if they can't swim.

Remember the old wives’ tale about the boiling frog?

We probably should’ve realized it at just about the exact moment the Hummer H2 first took to the streets. 10 Miles to the gallon ought to have woken us up. That might have been the point when we should’ve collectively said “Whoa, wait a second.” Ah, well. 20/20 Hindsight, I suppose. Eight years and one spilled milkshake later, and we still haven’t realized it. The water’s boiling. We still deny it. The world keeps turning.

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What’s the price of willful ignorance and unsustainable consumption? The Gulf of Mexico, of course! What else? It had to go at some point, naturally. Those freeloaders on the gulf coast had it coming. And now they’re asking the American government for handouts. How dare they complain when a private corporation spills 281,000,000 gallons of oil all over them? Naturally, blaming the private corporation is right out; it was just a little slip-up, after all. The great invisible hand of the free market and unchecked capitalism will come to the aid of the poor little oil-stained people. Pity the socialists.

A great many trees fell this year on Burke Mountain. In their place will be houses. Not town houses, no. That would be barbaric. Like Eagle Mountain and the rest of Port Coquitlam, it will be filled with houses of extravagant size surrounded by ample lots. Only the best for those with wealth. This means more space, naturally. More roads, of course. More cars, definitely. Many of them extremely large SUVs, no doubt. Probably about 48% of them, in fact. Spared no expense. If you can afford it, of course. Why would we want those uncultured lower-middle class folks defiling our barren wasteland of ivory McMansions? Or trees, for that matter.

Meanwhile, the question rings through my mind: “What’s the deal, guys?”

The CEO of British Petroleum took the stand at his congressional hearing earlier this week. Here was the man at the head of the private corporation responsible for the raping of the Gulf of Mexico about to answer for his company’s negligence. His apology was not to be; in fact, the opposite was. The words “It is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown” were uttered. Pity British Petroleum.

Once an economic system, now a moral code. Do what’s best for you, and you’ll be doing what’s best for society. Here is a company that merely did what's right, what's prudent: cut corners on fuel valve safety; reduced costs. So what if it resulted in the greatest environmental disaster of our time; our ideals remain uncompromised. The moral code of the free market remains untainted.

It's like what my painter friend Donald said to me
“Stick a fork in their ass and turn ‘em over, they're done.”


-Lou Reed

by Devan Scott and Will Ross.
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Freddy Got Fingered is a film in which a strange, demented man named Gord struggles to achieve his dream of creating an animated series. He lives with his parents, and his father constantly insults him as a lazy failure. While striving for his dream, Gord has a number of shocking and graphic misadventures and exacts brutal revenge on his father.

On April 20th, 2010, Devan Scott and Will Ross sat down to watch Freddy Got Fingered. Will for the second time, Devan for the first. These are their thoughts.

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Will

There is little original thought I can present on Freddy Got Fingered. Those who know anything about it know of its reputation as an unfunny, offensive film, but it’s more excruciating than its reputation. It’s a madhouse. A parade of miseries and surreal horrors. It could only make its subject matter sadder and more revolting by being presented as a comedy, which it is.

Unwitting though it may be, the film’s attempts at absurd, crude, and shock humour combine into a beastly depiction of indifference to human anguish. A child’s mouth is smashed by a baseball. We see a close up of his father caring for him as he weeps and bleeds, and we are expected to laugh. The image alone is unsettling and depressing enough, but all the more disturbing because we know that we are expected to laugh, and that the force behind the suffering finds it funny. It molests our concepts of sympathy and pain.

Tom Green’s character does many extraordinarily horrible things in this film, all to people who are shocked and often terrified of him. Green does not direct his actors poorly: Their fear and disgust are palpable. That he licks the bone jutting from the leg of his screaming friend is a crude and unfunny concept as it stands, but the injury is not comically depicted or warranted. What results is a film that stands for the purpose of mocking human torment and decency.

For most comedies, being unfunny is the biggest possible flaw. In the case of Freddy Got Fingered, being unfunny, poorly crafted, wrong-headed or mean-spirited are the minor issues, for they pale in comparison to its only lasting effect on us: The uncomfortable incredulity that such a perception of humanity exists.

-Will Ross

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Devan

I have seen many awful movies. Too many, really. All About Steve. Battlefield Earth. Pearl Harbor. From Justin to Kelly. Confessions of a Shopaholic. Manos: The Hands of Fate. And, yes, the entire Epic/Date/Disaster Movie series. So know that when I say not one of those films could have prepared me for the sheer excruciation and horror that engulfed me while watching Freddy Got Fingered, I mean it. Boy, do I ever mean it.

This is a film that purports to be a comedy. It’s about people, I think. One can never be sure. Most films are about people. I hesitate to call the beings that populate this film “people”, though. They walk, sure. They talk, sure. But to call them “people” would be to imply the human race consists entirely of retarded, soulless, barely cognizant man-children. Maybe in this way Freddy Got Fingered is some sort of grand commentary on the state of the human race. I doubt it. That would be giving the abomination too much credit.

A few minutes into this ‘comedy’ (even with scare quotes, I should state that this label means nothing in this context), Tom Green sees a horse. For no reason, he runs to it, yelling “I WANT TO TRY THE HORSEY”, and proceeds to stroke its penis. This is later repeated with an elephant. Afterwards, he comes across a dead caribou lying on the road, eviscerates it, and clothes himself in its bloody carcass. Later on, he forcibly delivers a baby against the mother’s will; when it appears to be stillborn, he bites off the umbilical cord and swings the blood-soaked baby around his head. Later still, a young boy runs into a plane’s propeller and dies; blood sprays everywhere.

Freddy Got Fingered expects you to laugh at these horrific events. Why? Simply because they’re shown. No further reason is given. My theory about Freddy being a commentary about the human condition aside, there is no message or greater purpose for any of what is exhibited here. It just is. This, I think, is the most unsettling thing about Freddy. It asks us to laugh at naked human misery and cruelty. That isn’t in itself special. There are many films, good and bad, that do ask us to that. But Tom Green’s opus is unique not only in the appalling degree to which it takes the misery and cruelty, but in being completely devoid of any point or rationale. Why is someone swinging a bloody fetus around his head? Because it’s funny. That is the logic behind Freddy Got Fingered.

Please, from the bottom of my heart, do not watch this movie. You will lead a richer life having not seen Freddy Got Fingered.

-Devan Scott.

(P.S. I still begrudge Will for telling me beforehand "You don't know what you're getting into" instead of "THIS FILM IS LITERALLY THE SPAWN OF SATAN PLEASE DON'T WATCH IT")

by Will Ross
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What makes William Blake a dead man? The easiest explanation for the titular moniker is that the bullet wound he incurs early in the film is a fatal one, and that he is bound to die from it soon. There are many other possible metaphysical interpretations, but I gravitate towards an unhappy one: That Blake does not die from his numerous wounds or ailments in the film because he is already dead. Not immortal, that implies endless life. He is the long dead poet William Blake, “Born to endless night”, an existence of miseries and slow, dark understandings.

The world of Dead Man is a journey into a hellish nothing. “Machine, that’s the end of the line”, says a madman on the train of the destination. He seems to know far more than we do. The scene ends with the shooting of buffalo. “Government says we killed a million of ‘em last year alone”. No further explanation. No ending. Just an impotent Blake in the midst of slaughter and inexplicable madness, then blackness.

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If we’re to subscribe to thinking of the Blake of Dead Man as actually being the poet William Blake, we must also accept that he is not as brilliant a poet as he once was (having no admitted memory of it), or perhaps has found no use for his brilliance. He substitutes his poetry of words with violence, his new “poetry”, but it does him no good. Blake cannot find a talent or a skill that gives him meaning or happiness. He cannot escape his own futility. He is dead, and if his character makes any progress, it is the same as the film’s title card: Messily assembled bones fragmenting and fading into nothingness.

Nothing comes of anything in Dead Man. Everyone, purposefully or not, destroys each other to no end. The only one who enjoys this is Nobody, a name that plays easily into symbolic punning, in this case hinting at the delight that cruel uncertainty takes in making men suffer in desperate oblivion. That Blake’s acceptance of this uncertainty does nothing to help him is no surprise, but it was no better than any of his other options. He is doomed and always has been.

In the end, Blake is cast out to sea on a boat. We still don’t see him “die”, because he is bound to an eternity of death: In the end, he may have grown more aware himself, or crazier, but either way he is just as paralyzed to assert his will on the events around him as ever, and his only companion is killed. A dead man can’t even enjoy the solitude of Nobody’s company.

The sea he approaches is empty and infinite, and he cannot move to control his passage through it. Neither comrade nor antagonist can affect him, nor can he affect them. He does not move into a white light or beyond the horizon, but slowly through deep, black waters that surround him and lay an endless path in all directions. The water is behind, before, beside, beneath, and even above: When he drifts away from Nobody, we can see that it’s raining, and the few rays of sunlight are far above his strata of being.

By Devan Scott
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When musician Neil Young and filmmaker Jonathan Demme last teamed up in 2005, the resulting concert film was the elegiac Heart of Gold, a contemplative, restrained ode to friendship and graceful aging that seemed to say ‘Maybe fading away isn’t so bad’. Trunk Show, their second collaboration, decisively says ‘Fuck that.’ In Heart of Gold, Neil Young was an artist at peace with himself, surrounded by friends and family, content to fade away with dignity. In Trunk Show, he’s a man raging against the dying of the light; determined, if not to burn out, then to fade away in the most spectacularly wild manner possible.

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Gracelessly bounding around the stage as if a man possessed by his instrument, Young tears into highly-distorted electric number after highly-distorted electric number, taking breaks only to treat the audience to the occasional mellow (but still somewhat tweaked) acoustic song. He isn’t pretty to watch, but that’s not the point, and neither is the film; shot on a combination of super 8mm film stock and HDV cameras, it’s as rough-around-the-edges as its subject.

Demme’s trademark long takes are still as evident as ever; a few songs are presented without a single cut, and several others with only one or two apparent edits. New, however, is the style in which the songs are filmed. Conventional camera angles are mostly done away with, and the majority of the show is shot handheld, with zooms taking us within what feels like inches of Young’s sweaty, craggy face. The often-erratic gaze of the handheld cameras greatly informs the feel of the film; that of a spontaneous, unhinged, almost thrown-together production.

It’s this feeling of anything-goes freedom that lends the film much of its immense charm. The usual constraints of a concert film are gone. No heed is given to order or flow; transitions between the myriad songs are even done away with, with one number often leading directly into another taken from an entirely different point in the actual show. Unlike lesser concert filmmakers, however, Demme’s carefully tailored the rather unique style of filmmaking here perfectly to the performance. Young’s spastic, frenzied stage presence is well-complemented by the more unorthodox stylistic decisions made here.

It helps that Young and his band are a joy to watch. At his age, Young is a small miracle of endurance and athleticism onstage, but not in the same way that The Rolling Stones are. His frantic movements around the stage don’t feel like those of a Jagger-esque older performer intending to ape his former self; he’s allowed his performances to age along with him, and every one of his sixty-four years can be felt. As a showman, he’s let himself become gloriously messy; he doesn’t perform his songs so much as he massacres them. Anyone expecting note-for-note renditions of the best of Neil Young is in for a shock: choruses are mixed up, solos are well-misplaced, and an entire verse of ‘Like a Hurricane’ is sung well away from the microphone, subtitles employed to pick up the slack. Young doesn’t try to avoid mistakes. He revels in him.

Regarding Trunk Show, Demme has said “if you’re not a Neil Young fan, don’t waste your time”. He’s right, in a sense. It’s an ugly movie with an ugly star playing not-all-that-pretty music. The majority of the songs performed are little-known, and the show’s centerpiece is a 21-minute feedback-drenched version of the obscure ‘No Hidden Path’. This is not an accessible movie by any measure of the word; if you’re not ready to sit through ninety minutes of rather odd sights and sounds, don’t bother. If, however, you like original and provocative filmmaking paired with great music and challenging performances, you need not be a Neil Young fan to enjoy Trunk Show.




And they say we're low-tech with 16mm.

by Will Ross
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Here's who should win (and, in some cases, who was overlooked for nomination) in this year's Oscar categories.

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Best Picture

Who Should Win: Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is the finest American film since There Will Be Blood, and would be the lowest grossing film to ever win best picture. That alone would be a great reality check for the Oscars, which tend to favour pictures that have earned hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Taut, suspenseful action and immaculate production make the film an exemplary character study. A Serious Man is too strange and inaccessible to the average moviegoer to even have a chance, but is also deserving of the award. Unfortunately, I fear that Avatar will take home the top honour simply for being the film that the most people saw. Still, I'll predict Hurt Locker for the hell of it. Well, the lowest grossing best picture winner ever - and one of the best choices the Academy has ever made.

Who should have been nominated: In the Loop, The White Ribbon, A Prophet, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox were all unfairly overlooked in favour of the far inferior Avatar, The Blind Side, An Education, and Precious.

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Who Should Win: Michael Stuhlbarg's turn as a nervous, deeply troubled physics professor in A Serious Man created one of the most unique family man characters ever put on film. Criminally, he was not even nominated. Of the nominees, Jeremy Renner's turn as an adrenaline junkie in The Hurt Locker and Colin Firth's calmly suicidal man grieving his lover's death in A Single Man would be welcome victories. Jeff Bridges will likely take home the award for his career achievement and his solid performance as Bad Blake in Crazy Heart. A good guess on my part. Bridges won.

Who Should Have Been Nominated: Actually, I consider Christoph Waltz's performance in Inglorious Basterds the best leading performance of the year, but he wasn't the one on the promotional posters for the film so he was relegated to supporting status. But that's another argument.

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Who Should Win: The leading actress field this year was a little disappointing, as most major artistic films drew on leading men rather than leading women. With that said, Carey Mulligan's great performance in the disappointing An Education is deserving of the award, but hasn't got a chance at the Oscar. Sandra Bullock's pedestrian turn in The Blind Side is the likely winner. I was right on.

Best Supporting Actor

Who Should Win: Christoph Waltz. He should win, and will win, no contest. And he did.

Best Supporting Actress

Who Should Win: Mo'Nique's performance as the protagonist's mother in Precious was one of the most monstrous villains in recent memory (for the purposes of the film, a little too monstrous). Anna Kendrick's performance as an ambitious but naïve young corporate visionary would be an equally welcome and deserving victory. And sure enough, Mo'Nique won.

Best Original Screenplay

Who Should Win: Inglourious Basterds or A Serious Man are equally deserving for their pitch-perfect cinematic structures. Basterds will take the award. The Hurt Locker won for its stupendous screenplay.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Who Should Win: In the Loop is one of the greatest political satires ever filmed and written. Though I question its "Adapted" status (only one or two characters remain from its parent series The Thick of It), it's the funniest film of 2009 and a scathing, intelligent indictment of careerist bureaucracy in politics. However, the wonderful but occasionally bloated screenplay for Up in the Air is a far likelier winner. But the winner was the competent but underwhelming screenplay for Precious.

Who Should Have Been Nominated: Wes Anderson's work on The Fantastic Mr. Fox is his best since The Royal Tenenbaums, and is easily better than Precious or An Education, which earned their nominations for their popular support.

Best Cinematography

Who Should Win: The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, and Das weiße Band are all marvelously shot films, and I can't choose one of the three as superior cinematography. I suspect, however, that the well-shot Avatar will win this for its sheer spectacle. It did.

Who Should Have Been Nominated: Roger Deakins' work on A Serious Man is some of his best, and since I consider him the greatest living cinematographer and he still has not won an Oscar, his exclusion from the race is a bitter disappointment.

Best Film Editing

Who Should Win: The Hurt Locker's editing made it the most suspenseful film of the year, and though I usually lament the film with the "most" editing (rather than the best) being the one that wins, in this case I'd be happy to see The Hurt Locker win. Inglourious Basterds is on a similar level, but Avatar has a good shot at winning this award for its excellent cutting. Hurt Locker was the winner!

Who Should Have Been Nominated: Un prophète's fast pace made its 2.5 hour running time pass by in a heartbeat, and made the six-year prison sentence and suspenseful confrontations pass by smoothly without ever dragging. Gripping editing from beginning to end.

Best Art Direction

Who Should Win: Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Gilliam, possibly the most consistently stunning director in terms of original art direction, still has yet to win an award in this category. Parnassus is fully deserving, but the more popular Avatar has a better shot for its ambitious, if not fully resolved or consistent, creation of a world. I was right on.

Best Original Score

Who Should Win: A Single Man is one of the worst snubs of the year. Its score is one of personal heartbreak and mourning, and it should not only have been nominated, but is by far the most deserving of the award. Of the remaining nominees, Up has the best score by Michael Giacchino, who also showed skill last year with the catchy fanfare score of Star Trek. Giacchino's star continued to rise with a victory.

Best Original Song

Who Should Win: Weary Kind. And it will. Because it's the best original song of 2009. A deserved win for The Weary Kind.

Best Achievement in Sound Mixing

Who Should Win: The Hurt Locker had the best sound mixing of the year, mixing the dialogue, war zone chaos and excellent score without a flaw, but Avatar's also marvelous mix is the favourite. A surprising upset from The Hurt Locker!

Best Achievement in Sound Editing

Who Should Win: Avatar's sound editing is some of the most complete and immersive in years, but The Hurt Locker is equally impressive. Still, I bet on Avatar taking it home. Two sound awards for The Hurt Locker!

Best Visual Effects

Who Should Win: Avatar. Bet the house. No one is going to argue with this. No one did.

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year

Who Should Win: The Fantastic Mr. Fox was one of the most original and intelligent animated films I've ever seen, but Up is the lock, and only slightly behind it in quality. Up was the Winner.

Best Foreign Language Film

Who Should Win: Though I slightly preferred Un prophète, which is in my opinion the greatest gangster saga since Goodfellas, either it or the likely winner Das weiße Band deserve the award. An upset - El Secreto de sus ojos.

Unfortunately, I slacked on my viewings of documentary and short films this year, and I haven't seen most of the films nominated for makeup or costume design, meaning I can't offer any reliable opinions on them.

by Will Ross
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I've been thinking a lot about A Serious Man lately. So, I decided to write a little about it and the Coens' other great exploration of indefinable mysteries, Barton Fink.

Barton Fink is trapped in a film that bears his name, but no trace of his philosophies: Eliminating bourgeois fantasy from theater and cinema; Championing the thoughts and plights of the common man. “The poetry of the streets”. Yet the Coen brothers have sadistically placed him squarely in a film whose thesis makes a fool of him. What could be more insulting to a tenet of realism than to find himself the lead role in a story of caricatures; of people who couldn’t possibly exist outside a movie?

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Determining what is real and what is only inside Barton Fink’s mind is impossible, and rightly so: The world of the physical and the world of the imagined have no dividing line here. Barton is dedicated to dramatizing the life of the mind; the Coens show the life and the mind. Any interpretation of Barton Fink is bound to be a personal one, but to me, the picture convincingly portrays the journey into madness from the character’s personal perspective. We aren’t sure what is real and what is imagined, but we are sure that it’s not all real, even if we’re pretty sure things started out real… or did they?

Because Barton Fink plays so fluidly with actuality, interpretations are always subject to questioning and any reaction is inevitably cyclical. I’m convinced that this is because finding personal identification with the Coens’ films is usually a mobius strip. The duo are not content simply to pose questions, but to link one moral mystery to another, and another, and another. By trying to answer question x, you must answer question y, which can only be answered by knowing answer z, which is dependent on the solution to question x. One might say the answers only lead to more questions, but the Coens phrase their themes and mental meandering so tightly that in their films the questions are the answers.

This makes Barton Fink an exquisite companion film to A Serious Man, which is solely concerned with Physics Professor Larry Gopnik's search for rational answers to life's dilemmas and challenges. All those around him seem to find comfort and success in life without ever making concerted efforts to rationally understand. Larry's tragic flaw is not that he is spineless, but that he thirsts to know what is right, and in not knowing he feels paralyzed to act. He is confronted by a man whose son has failed his class and attempted to bribe him for a passing grade, and threatened with a defamation lawsuit. What follows is one of the great circular dialogues of cinema, as Larry is denied a consistent lie.

“If it were defamation, there would have to be someone I was defaming him to ... All right, let's keep it simple. I could pretend the money never appeared. That's not defaming anyone.”
“Yes, and passing grade.”
“Passing grade?”
“Yes.”
“Or you'll sue me?”
“Yes, for taking money.”
“So he did leave the money?”
“This is defamation!”
“It doesn't make sense! Either he left the money or he didn't.”
“Please, accept the mystery.”

Earlier, he is approached by the failing student after a lesson on the Uncertainty Principle, which includes the Schrödinger's cat demonstration, the student argues that he deserves to pass because though he cannot do the math, he understands the underlying concepts of what they are learning. "I understand the cat, he says." "Even I don't understand the cat," Larry replies, "It's the math that makes it work." Barton's love of the concrete, the real, is not far removed from this attitude. But their worlds seem to conspire to surround them with chaos.

I'll talk more about why I stopped blogging for three months, why I'm back, and where I want to go with it in the future in a later post.