Five from a Favorite - A Lake (Philippe Grandrieux, 2008)

Cinematic Alphabet

Here is my contribution to the Cinematic Alphabet même that's been floating around lately. I ended up spending more time thinking about this than I had anticipated, and as my buddy Jake Cole mentioned in his recent post, for such a simple and meaningless game it was pretty agonizing trying to whittle the many, many options for most of the letters down to a sole choice. I have also abided by the rule of only selecting one movie per director, but even with that it pained me to have to leave off some of my favorite directors, names such as Jacques Tourneur, Douglas Sirk, Nicholas Ray, Howard Hawks, Yasujiro Ozu, Terrence Malick, Jean-Luc Godard, Powell/Pressburger, David Fincher, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean Renoir, Eric Rohmer, Josef von Sternberg and it goes on, people who have all made some of my very favorite movies, but for whatever reason didn't manage to find a spot on here.

As it stands I'm pleased with how the list shaped out, but it goes without saying that for many of these letters there could have been any one of many titles chosen. However, as of right now, these are my favorites - minus X, which was only filled in for the sake of completion.


A is for All the Vermeers in New York (Jon Jost, 1990)





B is for Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980)




C is for Cemetery Man (Michele Soavi, 1994)




D is for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)




E is for eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999)




F is for F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1975)




G is for Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995)




H is for Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)




I is for The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)




J is for Jacob's Ladder (Adrian Lyne, 1990)




K is for The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)




L is for Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls, 1948)




M is for Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)




N is for Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983)




O is for Out 1, noli me tangere (Jacques Rivette, 1971)




P is for Primer (Shane Carruth, 2004)




Q is for Quatermass and the Pit (Roy Ward Baker, 1967)




R is for Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, 1962)




S is for The Sun Shines Bright (John Ford, 1953)




T is for Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)




U is for Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)




V is for Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)




W is for White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)




X is for X-Men (Bryan Singer, 2000)




Y is for Y tu mamá también (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001)




Z is for Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)

Mamet & Objects

What makes David Mamet's best films - those being his con films, and namely House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner - so fascinating is the delicate balance he manages to maintain as a director between constructor and giddy spectator. Mamet has had a lifetime fascination with magic - or more appropriately, illusion (just see his casting of Ricky Jay in, well, pretty much everything he's ever done as evidence), and thus he views the world of cons less through a jaded, cynical lens than through that of a wide-eyed, intensely primal curiosity. Mamet's plots are surface-smooth, intricate clockwork constructs, and yet he is so much more interested in feeling out and exploring the nuances of these richly insulated facade worlds and the inhabitants created by illusion than he is in bare, cold mechanics. To Mamet, a good con is like a good magic trick, and just underneath the sting of deception lies a transient exhilaration. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that a great desire of Mamet's is to one day be taken for a giant ride.

Objects in particular take on an almost talismanic significance in Mamet's con worlds. Emphasis is often put on both their tactile presence and potential for mental provocation, and like with any magician performing a trick using trinkets, mini-mythologies are occasionally ascribed to them. They are never just there, rather they exist with gravity and function, and whether it's to advance plot or to reveal deeper truths or ambiguities about a character, their presence may dominate in any given scene. And the hands handling an object at any given time are often just as important as the object itself. We know everything we need to know about Campbell Scott's character in The Spanish Prisoner from the way he manages the multiple books of importance that pass through his possession, just as we also feel the dark liberation of Lindsay Crouse's psychiatrist merely from the way she fondles a gold lighter. Keep your eyes on the hands and objects in a Mamet film. They do the real talking.

Images - 4/6/11

I've been in a bit of a blogging funk of late, but hope to get back to my regular occasional posting sometime soon. In the meantime, here is the first of likely many posts to come simply displaying some images that have connected with me in my movie viewing lately:

When It Rains (Charles Burnett, 1995)

Man's Castle (Frank Borzage, 1933)

Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (Kenneth Anger, 1954)

Les Bas-fonds (Jean Renoir, 1936)

The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)

Halloween II (Rob Zombie, 2009)

Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950)

Five from a Favorite - Flesh and Fantasy (Julien Duvivier, 1943)

Minor but highly entertaining and mildly haunting, Julien Duvivier's Flesh and Fantasy was the director's follow-up to his previous successful anthology film Tales of Manhattan (1942). For Flesh, six stories are chopped to three, with the social commentary and comedic edge of Tales giving way to more horror and supernaturally slanted elements. The first story, starring Betty Field as an ugly duckling who has an encounter with a mysterious mask during Mardis Gras, takes place at a party completely flooded by streamers and rambunctiousness which sets the stage for some cat-and-mouse romantic games to play out, the entire thing having more than a hint of von Sternberg flavor. The second story, adapted from Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, stars Edward G. Robinson as a lawyer who becomes obsessed with a psychic's prediction that he's going to kill someone. Robinson has to my eyes rarely been better than he is here, ravaged with a cool and increasing paranoia on his way to complete madness, surrounded by a moody, shadowy, fog laden atmosphere of dread that often evokes the 40's chillers of Jacques Tourneur. The third story I can't quite connect to another director, but it stars Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Boyer, and involves tightrope walking and abstract premonitions. It's able to sustain a dreamy and dire vibe while conjuring up sequences of heightened tension through close-ups and eyelines (Siodmak?), and is purposefully vague in a pretty interesting way. While the whole thing doesn't quite stack up against Duvivier masterpieces such as Pépé le Moko, it is a personal favorite, and deserves at the very least a Region 1 release of ANY kind, something it's sadly been denied so far.