f i l m j o u r n e y . o r g

For the past few weeks, I’ve been attending screenings and watching screeners from the Los Angeles Film Festival, and my summary of most of the eighteen films I’ve seen has been posted at MUBI today.

Also, the new issue of Film Comment is coming out, and it names me as two of the Top Film Criticism Sites on the web for Film Journey and Masters of Cinema, the latter less a news source now than a specialty DVD label, but in its unfunded, pre-Web 2.0 days, it was something I was proud to edit.

Paul Brunick’s article prefacing the list, which is cross-published (with comments) at Slant–rightly takes to task Gerald Peary’s simplistic documentary, For the Love of Movies, and Thomas Doherty’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, two recent examples of critical histories that wax nostalgic about print criticism while suggesting that web criticism is nothing more than its undisciplined, amateurish cousin.

Regarding Brunick’s generous profile of Film Journey, I’d like to make a couple of minor corrections. The screening notes incident occurred at CSUN, not UCLA (though I was vague about it at the time), and just for the record, I’ve been blogging for eight years rather than six.

In the spirit of dialogue, I’d also like to suggest that while I am indeed a huge fan of Manny Farber’s writing, if I have a “critical idol,” it would probably be André Bazin (whom I cite in my About page). I also think any description of Film Journey would be remiss if it didn’t mention primary contributor Robert Koehler, whose globetrotting festival reports have long enriched the website.

By Robert Koehler

(Click on thumbnails for larger pictures.)

The lobby of Downtown Independent, where the first New Media film festival played Friday through Sunday, June 11-13. The festival is one of the first to be located purely at Downtown Independent, 251 S. Main St., located on the west side of Main between 2nd and 3rd and the only independently run cinema in downtown Los Angeles.

As ImaginAsian, the venue struggled, but reconfigured as a home to a broad range of independent cinema wedged somewhere between a more commercial house like the Nuart and a microcinema like Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre, Downtown Independent has become a favored Los Angeles exhibition choice for alternative distribution entities such as Northwest Film Forum, which brought Lisandro Alonso’s Liverpool to Downtown Independent in early March. Just finishing a week run on June 10, Oliveira’s sublime 2009 miniature feature, Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl continued the century-old director’s incredible current streak, which continues with his new Cannes premiere, the sublime The Strange Case of Angelica.

DI will also serve as a key venue during the Los Angeles Film Festival starting this Friday. Essential viewing there during LAFF includes: Jaak Kilmi’s amusing and clever Cold War auto-doc, Disco & Atomic War (Fri June 18, 7:30p); the Larry Fessenden-produced Bitter Feast (Fri June 18, 9:45p, Sun June 20, 10p); Mads Brugger’s acclaimed “invasion” of North Korea, The Red Chapel (Sat June 19, 7:30p); Aaron Katz’ SXSW hit, Cold Weather (Sat June 19, 10p); and Amir Bar-Lev’s emotionally powerful look at the tragic murder/death of Arizona Cardinals star Pat Tillman, The Tillman Story (Sun June 20, 1:30p).

Beyond a spacious and pretty cool lobby, the DI has a terrific mid-sized auditorium, with a very good sound system (audibly on display during the Saturday projection of Double Take), ample stadium-style seating as well as standard rake seating near the good-sized screen. An upstairs balcony entrance leads to a back row that affords a great deal of privacy. Upcoming photos include the theater’s rooftop area, ideal for hanging before and after screenings, as well as views of various nooks and crannies in this distinctive downtown cinema space.

As promised, a view to the upstairs levels of Downtown Independent. These levels include an entry to the balcony, an office-meeting space, and access to the rooftop. Note that the predominant architectural style is Mid-Century Modern, the mode born and bred in Southern California and all too suitable for a Los Angeles cinema.

A kind of latticework view through the modernist railing from the stairs back to the Downtown Independent lobby….

Another view from the stairs of the DI, looking at both the lobby below and the meeting room above, ideal for (among other things) festival needs.

A view from the top of the stairs in the DI to the lobby area and the large Main Street lobby window. There’s a cafe atmosphere in the lobby when there’s a crowd, while street parking, especially on the weekends, isn’t too difficult. Besides, there are several lots nearby.

A view from the rooftop party area of the DI. Here, we’re looking north up Main toward 1st and 2nd, where you can catch dramatic vistas of old downtown (St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, the original home of the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese) and new…

Another view from the DI rooftop, here looking west to a great gaze of downtown’s forest of skyscrapers, with some of the older (and now preserved) Spring Street buildings in the foreground….

By Robert Koehler

Following the New Media Film Festival screening last night at Downtown Independent in downtown Los Angeles, festival programming director Noel Lawrence (center) moderates a very new media panel discussion on Johan Grimonprez’s fascinating film on Hitchcock, doubling, paranoia, the Cold War and catastrophe culture, Double Take. In the foreground to the right is co-editor Tyler Hubby, who discussed the process of working for five solid months with Grimonprez during his residency at the Hammer Museum, where they culled UCLA Film Archive footage of everything from episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, rare promotional footage of The Birds (which becomes the key filmic reference point, shot during the October Missile Crisis), Folger’s Coffee commercials, and a forest of Cold War and early Space Race newsreel footage (among other things).

Grimonprez was also on the panel and is actually in this photo….on the laptop on the left side. Currently in Basel (presumably for the art fair, though I couldn’t confirm this), Grimonprez spoke on Skype audio and mic’ed through the laptop. This proved fascinating and valuable, since his thoughtful and voluminous answers to questions from the panel and the audience became perhaps more coherent and digestible by being on audio. The effect was doing a panel discussion via radio, and it concentrated the mind.

This was especially useful in the case of Double Take, which my Cinema Scope colleague (in the best and longest interview in English with Grimonprez in the summer 2009 issue available here) Mark Peranson refers to as “a post-Internet film.” I asked Grimonprez to expand on this notion; he noted that the complex ways in which the film adapts fiction (two Borges stories inspired by Dostoevsky’s The Double and adapted by novelist Tom McCarthy), edits fact and history in a kind of “drama,” and how the central theme of Hitchcock encountering his double who wants to kill him is given a hall-of-mirrors treatment that has the rapid, fractured sensibility of what one experiences on the web.

This webby viewing experience also has its doubling, since Grimonprez deliberately simulates the viewing effect of watching TV with a remote control; Hubby noted that those Folger’s ads were inserted every ten minutes in the film to create the illusion of watching TV. In the film, TV is viewed as a weapon of control, both seductive and as a tool of technological dominance: Hitchcock himself understood this, ironically commenting on the medium as host of his own show, while the film gauges the growth in nuclear weapons, space exploration milestones and steps forward for (Western) TV. Double Take may be some kind of masterpiece of cinematic history storytelling, media analysis and the “in-between” film–in between fiction and non-fiction, between cinema and television, between journalism and music. This is a key to its vitality and importance, and why it’s a film that must be seen.

LACMA is halfway through its series devoted to cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, one of RKO’s prime cameramen in the 1940s and ’50s, and thus one of the key strategists behind the shadowy “noir” look in films such as Cat People (1942), The Seventh Victim (1943), Out of the Past (1947), and Clash by Night (1952). But for me, the big discovery has been Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), a movie that has managed to completely escape my notice over the years despite the fact that it’s sometimes credited as being the first American film noir.

I write “American,” because as James Naremore argues in his excellent book, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts, “film noir” was a 1930s French term applied to Popular Front movies such as Pépé le Moko (1936), Hôtel du Nord (1938), and Le jour se lève (1939) that was revived post-WWII when The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), Laura (1944), and Murder, My Sweet (1944) opened in Paris. Borde and Chaumeton’s seminal book, A Panorama of American Film Noir (1955) dates American films noirs from 1941, which is pretty much what I’ve always accepted, but Stranger on the Third Floor–released a year earlier–is unquestionably a fully-formed American noir.

Contrary to journalistic convention, Naremore also argues there isn’t a very strong historic connection between German expressionism and film noir. But Pépé le Moko and Marcel Carné’s Popular Front films boasted German cinematographers Jules Kruger and Eugen Schüfftan, respectively; the latter was an UFA special effects guru who worked with Fritz Lang, and later as a cinematographer for Robert Siodmak and G.W. Pabst (though admittedly not on their most expressionist titles).

Stranger on the Third Floor was created by a Hungarian writer (Frank Partos), a Latvian director (Boris Ingster), and an Italian cinematographer (Musuraca), but it showcases a German heritage: Peter Lorre in fiendish makeup stars as a serial killer stalking the streets; shadowy, cramped rooms convey a clenching sense of Kammerspiel; and an expressionist dream sequence predates the graphic lighting in Citizen Kane the following year (both films share the same art director, Van Nest Polglase). A tribute page for the film offers an evocative selection of images.

There’s a psychological intensity to the movie that belies its awkward dramaturgy. (Nathanael West, who died in 1940, purportedly provided some ghost writing, but the screenplay is no literary achievement.) Though it begins with a witty play on mistaken identity–a man’s fiancee almost doesn’t recognize him after saving a seat for him–its story about a partial witness at a murder trial who suffers mounting self-doubt oscillates between earnest melodrama and absurd exaggeration. The trial features an absent-minded judge, a sleeping juror, and several comments about the inadequacy of the public defender: “I wouldn’t let him defend me if it was for stealing an apple,” groans one observer.

Steadily, the witness (John McGuire) questions not only the limits of his knowledge, but his own moral character; searching his memory for every offhand remark he ever made against a nagging and hypocritical neighbor, a series of flashbacks slide into a sweaty reverie as he imagines himself judged by his speech rather than his actions: “MURDER” proclaims newspapers in what must be 300-point type, and the sequence boasts a transfigured world with geometric shadows, echoing voices, and histrionic, leering faces.

Stranger on the Third Floor is a perfect example of a movie that likely would have been lost in the annals of film history if it wasn’t for the idea of “film noir” elevating and sustaining its reputation; hopefully the fact that it predates the official noir histories won’t diminish its appreciation, because its visual qualities are significant, showcasing Musuraca’s cinematography in its formative stages.

One of the freelancing hats I wear these days is graphic design for the California Institute of Technology’s award-winning Engineering & Science magazine, and its latest issue contains a really fascinating article on the Netflix Prize contest (2006-’09) that awarded a million dollars to the person/team who best improved the company’s algorithm for predicting its user ratings.

I’m sure most readers here have received their fair share of movie predictions from any number of websites, ranging from the accurate to the absurd. A few months ago, Amazon.com actually sent me this email: “As someone who has purchased or rated The Philadelphia Story, you might like to know that Furry Hamsters From Hell is now available.” This wasn’t a practical joke, it was a real attempt to persuade me to click on their website and spend $19.95. On the other hand it sometimes gets it right, like when it told me that based on my previous purchases, I might be interested in the upcoming Alamar (2009) from Film Movement.

“Recommend a Movie, Win a Million Bucks” (it’s a PDF) is written by Joseph Sill, an analytics consultant who spent “the better part of a year” competing with programmers around the world, hoping to discover the right statistical combination that would generate the most accurate predictions by July 26, 2009. The article is a fun–even suspenseful–and informative read, a crash course in machine learning rife with movie references.

Jafar Panahi, happy to be home. (Photo courtesy of the Twitter group FreeJafarPanahi.)

“I think Panahi’s refusal to cooperate with [the authorities] prolonged the case,” Jamsheed Akrami says in Godfrey Cheshire’s summary of events. “They just realized they couldn’t intimidate Panahi. I consider that to be a great moral victory for Panahi and people like him. We have a lot of them in Iran. But they are not as well known as Panahi, and are sadly paying much heavier prices.”

By Robert Koehler

(Click on the thumbnails for larger pictures.)

Apichatpong approximately 72 hours before he won the Palme d’Or. He had just arrived in Cannes from turmoil in Bangkok, as a group of us greeted him at the Princess Stephanie Hotel (also home to the premiere screenings of films in the Quinzaine). He presented his producers (and partners in the UK-based Illumination Films) with gifts of electric mosquito swatters, which are featured in an amusing nighttime scene in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. At this point during the festival, nobody had inflated expectations that Uncle Boonmee would win, though given the generally tepid reception which much of the Competition lineup had received up until this point, the chances of a win for the most daring film appeared better than ever….

Apichatpong arrives in Cannes (literally just off the airport shuttle), and greeted by Simon Field, former International Film Festival Rotterdam director and now producer extraordinaire of artists such as Joe in Illumination Films, his partnership with Keith Griffiths–whom I caught up with at the Cannes train station that morning after the Palme win, and who felt ad if he were floating on clouds (which may be a viable locale for Joe’s next film). Field and Griffiths, along with fellow Uncle Boonmee producers Michael Weber (of The Match Factory in Germany) and Luis Minarro (of Eddie Saeta in Spain) were relieved that Apichatpong had arrived. Until he did, amidst the turmoil and political violence afflicting Thailand, and various bureaucratic screw-ups, there had been real concern that Apichatpong wouldn’t make it to Cannes. It was the first of two very happy endings for one of the world’s greatest working filmmakers….

Apichatpong at his official Cannes press conference, describing the personal difficulties he experienced trying to get to Cannes from Thailand, and the relief he felt being at the festival….

Oliver Laxe, flat-out the discovery of this year’s Cannes, with his free-spirited and sublime You Are All Captains in the Quinzaine. Here, he’s enjoying his Fipresci prize for best film in the Quinzaine and Semaine at the awards ceremony at Plage du Palme…

Woo Ming Jin, very pleased in the Princess Stephanie Theatre after a successful premiere screening of his fine, neorealist film in the Quinzaine, The Tiget Factory.

And here’s Woo Ming Jin again, a bit more relaxed a day or so before the premiere….

Abbas Kiarostami (all together people, accent on the third syllable!) at his official Cannes TV interview for Certified Copy, which won best actress for Juliette Binoche. The Iranian director had made strong protests against the continued imprisonment of fellow director Jafar Panahi, who declared a hunger strike during the festival….

And no gallery would be complete with director Monte Hellman, whom I had chatted with on the first night of Cannes and then ran into in Heathrow Airport, en route back to The States. During Cannes, word slipped out that Hellman’s hotly anticipated Road to Nowhere will premiere in Venice…..

By Robert Koehler

You would have to go back to either 1999–when the Dardennes won for Rosetta–or 1997–when Abbas Kiarostami won for Taste of Cherry in a tie with Imamura Shohei for The Eel and when Tim Burton was a member of the jury–to find a Palme d’Or winner quite as satisfying and unconventional as tonight’s prize for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s endlessly inventive, mystical and funny Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

Going in, there were plenty of concerns about a jury comprised of such wildly disparate personalities as Tim Burton, Victor Erice, Alberto Barbera, Benicio Del Toro and Kate Beckinsale. But when the dust cleared, this turned out to be one of the most intelligent and independent-minded juries in recent Cannes history. As had been widely expected, the prizes were spread around among several Competition titles, with three films scoring the top film prizes for Jury (Mahamet-Saleh Haroun’s richly deserving win for A Screaming Man), Grand (Xavier Beauvois’ majestic Of Gods and Men) and Palme (Apichatpong).

By the time the Beauvois was announced for the Grand Prize, the sense became overwhelming that Apichatpong would win the day, since most of the attending filmmakers had already won something. Kiarostami won via the official festival poster gal Juliette Binoche’s deserving best actress prize for Certified Copy (though I would have thought that Yun Junghee for his phenomenal lead performance in Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry would have warranted at least a tie). The tie instead went to the actors, with Javier Bardem’s sweaty portrayal of a dying man in Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu’s Biutiful and Elio Germano in Daniele Luchetti’s La nostra vita, widely perceived as the evening’s most curious prize.

Lee’s prize for screenplay is a sign of a jury that thought through its choices; the most impressive aspect of Poetry is Lee’s fascinating, densely layered and structured screenplay, comparable in every way to Secret Sunshine and a further indication that Lee’s years as a novelist inform his approach as a film storyteller.

Although he was heard to wisecrack with his bouncy cast of New Burlesque performers, “I didn’t know I was a director!,” Mathieu Almaric’s best director win for Tournée was a good way of giving something to one of French cinema’s hottest names. But Apichatpong’s Palme d’Or brings renewed meaning to the purpose of a prize which has increasingly been identified with establishment cinema, and in one dramatic stroke, a smart jury with nerve transforms it like one of Apichatpong’s jungle creatures into a whole new animal. Whatever anyone thought of the Competition going in, none of that matters now. A great film has gotten its due, and now, instead of gazing back, the Palme is looking forward.

By Robert Koehler

Less than an hour before the announcement of the Palme and other prizes, rumors are swirling over possible winners based on sightings of who’s in Cannes….and who’s not.

In the latter category, count Mike Leigh, which makes Another Year unlikely to win any prizes. Based on who has returned or stayed in Cannes, look to the following as strong contenders for awards: Apichatpong for his masterpiece on Monkey Ghosts, catfish, rookie monks who can see themselves and the infinite recyclings of life, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (pictured above); Xavier Beauvois for the widely admired drama about Cistercian monks caught in the midst of an Islamist terror campaign, Of Gods and Men; Mahamet-Saleh Haroun for A Screaming Man; Lee Chang-dong for his exquisite drama of a grandmother in the midst of a complex life crisis, Poetry; Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai for Chongqing Blues; Javier Bardem for best actor for his physically and emotionally grueling performance as a dying man in Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu’s Biutiful; and Cannes poster gal Juliette Binoche for best actress in Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy.

A running parlor game all week has been who and what jury president Tim Burton might go for in a competition slate that frequently disappointed and underplayed somewhat deflated expectations. I felt from the start that it was a strategic error to not include Manoel de Oliveira’s The Strange Case of Angelica in the competition, based on its gorgeous black-and-white fantasy sequences if for nothing else–beyond the film’s sheer majesty and power, and Oliveira’s magnificently sustained sequences teetering on the edge between black comedy, pathos and reverie. (Claire Denis was so enthusiastic about Oliveira’s Un Certain Regard contender during the UCR awards announcement last night that many expected it as a lead-in to a prize; instead, it went to Hong Sang-soo for his genial Ha Ha Ha.)

If, as now seems possible, Apichatpong wins the Palme d’Or, it will certainly rank as one of the most daring and notable choices by a Cannes jury since David Cronenberg’s 1999 jury selected the Dardennes Brothers’ Rosetta, and will be wildly applauded by the growing pro-Joe contingent still here in Cannes. On the other hand, there will be considerable satisfaction if Beauvois wins for his superbly rendered and classically staged drama which seemed to my eyes to be as much under the sway of Jean Renoir as any French film in recent years. Well, we’re 30 minutes away from the start of the awards, so, we’ll see soon….

Robert Koehler submitted his favorite titles to Fotogramas‘ Manu Yáñez:

Competition:
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Poetry
Des Hommes et des dieux

Out of Competition:
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu
Carlos (based on viewing the first 100 minutes)

Special Screenings:
Chantrapas

Un Certain Regard:
The Strange Case of Angelica
Tuesday, After Christmas
Aurora
I Wish I Knew
Film Socialisme

Quinzaine:
Le Quattro Volte
Todos vós sodes capitáns

Semaine:
Belle épine
Rubber

ACID:
Cuchillo de Palo / 108