Anna Paquin, from my favorite scene in Spike Lee’s 25th Hour.

And the song that was playing at the club:

And it’s official. I love TRUE BLOOD on HBO.

Movies seen in 2008:

21 (2008): §§§§§ (5 on 10)

Pretty much by-the-numbers but reasonably entertaining fare based on true events about a group of MIT geniuses with their teacher-cum-mastermind taking over Las Vegas casinos bigtime by counting cards at blackjack table. The main character’s (a supergeek >< close to getting into Harvard Med School but desperately short of booty) intentions, dilemmas, motivations and actions are painted with stark black and white hues with cliche after cliche piled to give a familiar cosy lesson of growing up and realisation of the-stuff-what-really-matters-in-life, but all of it somewhat works and although you pinch your bum gone numb after a 2 hour morality lecture, it makes for good natured, harmless popcorn-cola entertainment. And yes, it made me refresh another card game. Which is sort of handy. So no love lost.

12 Monkeys (1995): §§§§§§§ (7 on 10)

Though jaded and uninspiring visually (which is rather surprising considering it comes from Terry Gilliam), this is another worthy addition to cerebral science fiction which sports a cracker of a script, applaudable performances from Willis and Pitt and such intelligent dialogue as very seldom heard in movies now. Great characterisation and idea-wise some great sequences. A prisoner of a now-surviving-in-underground-humans in future being sent back in time to find the virus that wiped it all and led to dominion of chief cities by animals has its moments. After time-travelling first to 1990 in an asylum where a panel of psychiatrists disbelieve him (obviously) and meeting a scientist’s insane son (an uproarious Pitt) to then going back to WW1 times only to get shot and then finally to 1996 with his now-ex-psychiatrist lady who slowly gets convinced its not really all going on in Willis’ head and he really is someone from future, its convoluted because it should be, not because it can be. Its a pity that her timing coincides with Willis’ believing he’s nothing but a goner, and all this saving the world thing is going on in his head; anyways it finally turns out they are unable to stop the inevitable disaster (Willis’ was having pre-visions of the climactic airport scene throughout and besides being a brave denouement resolution wise for the genre, it also lays to rest any incongruities that could have been brought about by the Butterfly Effect). In film’s own words, its a depiction of what’s known as “Cassandra complex” in which sometimes knowledge of the future comes with the impotence of not being able to avert it. But yea, the lackadaisical visuals (its similar to the more recent Children of Men in that it reconstructs a grimy apocalyptic future but with near-zilch slickness) meant it took me many fragmented viewings to get into this, but am glad I pressed on. It is a quality film. 

2 Days in Paris (2007): §§§§§§§§§ (9 on 10)

An exceedingly assured, poignant and honest slice-of-life love story about a middle aged couple (a young French woman and an American guy) and what transpires in their 2 day detour to Paris which happens to be the girl’s home city. The slow revelations about her past relationships through walks and wine parties with bizarrely eccentric guys and the overall openness about sex and intimacy topics in family and in the French land freaks out the hypochondriac guy no end. To say nothing of putting up with the verbal duels that the girl keeps on having with mum, minicab drivers, exes who are almost-paedophiles and a dad who scratches cars parked on pavements with his keys, bathrooms with moulds, condoms that are too small, and organic French grocery markets where skinned piglets and rabbit tongues are in the open. Its not any surprise he gets a bit freaked out and a little paranoid about the girl’s proximity to the guys around as the language barrier and a diametrically opposite way of everyday social protocol make things really tough.

But since, its a slice of life dramedy, the differences the couple have, the misunderstandings and all–they get resolved like they always do; when you have two people with a same world view, sense of humour, who’re all heart and who’re genuinely exasperated by the whole shabang of the “break-up”, it does come together in the end, or does it? Eternal Love or compromise in the end then?

There’s Delpy’s awesomely sincere monologue with all things that exasperate her-from the endless photo-clicking on night outs and sightseeing (is that jibe timely or what for us facebook addicts!) to when she confesses to the audience how there comes a point in time when you don’t want to start all over again, and how she’s still puzzled by how people can go from loving each other madly to nothing at all. Midway through, her difference of opinion with Jack about how she’s friends with her ex-es play on the same note, the neuroticism of this character resonated resoundingly with me. It is immensely sincere and as I said before, very assured a debut where the director has the audience by the collar and knows her characters inside out. Delpy’s totally adorable and so caring, so unpretentious and so unflinchingly French, your heart goes out to her despite all her eccentricities. The conversation romcom is  cute, keenly observed, and the lead characters are consistently spontaneous. The most interesting part is, even though you as a viewer hear Delpy’s monologue all the way through and the perspective totally switch to her in the final pivotal scene, it is as much an Adam Goldberg’s movie as besides everything else, it is a movie about cross-cultural relationships and unsubtitled, your identification to his viewpoint and the stuff that ticks him off as an English-speaking person is instant. Its a little gem of a movie, totally in line with Before Sunrise and Before Sunset about what its really like to be in a relationship. Atleast for me. 

3:10 to Yuma (2007): §§§§§§§§§ (9.5 on 10)

Never in this lifetime would I have believed to like a Western so much, until I watched this one. Its an absolutely fantastic Western drama with a bewitching background score and supremo performances by Bale, Crowe and the whole ensemble. It works so well because its more of a character driven drama where a prisoner plays off his captors by more of his verbal acrobatics and smooth tongue than his christ-engraved pistol. He would probe where they stand, try to buy them off, and then in the final act, give in to the bond shared by a family-man-but-no-hero rancher and his eager-for-a-role-model elder son. Or does he? The final act absolutely seals it in my all time favourites, as Crowe performs with class, wit and totally tuned-in emotion. And no-one does the quiet suffering and pent-up angry male as Bale. Very interesting supporting characters too (Ben Foster in the career-defining sidekick role) , and just overall, a very mobile movie that doesn’t bore for a second (this whole trek to catch the 3:10 to Yuma really keeps things going and simmering). Fabulous morality play that totally redeemed Mangold as a director for me. Very enjoyable and not at all disposable. Compulsive viewing.

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days (Romanian) (2008): §§§§§§§§ (8.5 on 10)

I watched this one back in January with crappy subtitles and despite the fact that I was still absolutely able to tap into this story of two friends, one of whom is raring to have an abortion, in late 80s Romania, means somewhere someone got a lot of things right. And that someone is the director and the casting director who cast Anamaria-the girl who gives an absolutely winning performance as a wholly sacrificing friend who arranges and does everything for her friend’s abortion. The everyman heroism that her character has, and the values that it embodies-of friendship, trust, compassion, and most of all sacrifice at the cost of her own life is very heart-wrenching, and hits you much after the movie’s ended. Soon after her character is raped (to make up for the total sum of money for the abortionist), she has to hurry to her boyfriend’s mother’s birthday party, and there’s this one scene where she sits at the dining table with all the “educated” and classist elders who, like most elders invariably do, chide away her generation as being pampered, and how people from simple families don’t deserve allotments etc, and this girl’s stoic composure even as her eyes sway with frustration, anger and shock of what transpired barely an hour back, is a scene to behold. And then there’s the whole sequence with the abortionist itself, its a winningly written, directed and performed scene where the 2 hapless girls try to convince the abortionist they’ll pay the full dues for the abortion. Its probably one of the most tension filled, personal conversation I’ve seen, and the movie’s ability to capture the human pathos in so much honesty makes it worthy of all the accolades. The style is very minimalist and realistic and in noway does the extraneous setting of Romania intrudes overtly (except for every official’s callous attitude and obsession with IDs–both very Indian attitudes). But a very humane movie, all in all. A grim and unflinching watch!

Movies I saw in 2007 titled 0-9:

300 (2007): §§§§§§§§ (8 on 10)

What happens when you mate contemporary video-game production design with swords, shields, crowns, sandals, kings and wars? You have something as thrilling and as sensorily overwhelming as 300. Stylish to the core, bordering on homoeroticism and sporting a thumping score, the movie’s charm is in the combat scenes where every move of the choreographed action can be enjoyed in slow motion. Besides being ultrastylish, the two plus two storyline is equally compelling to watch for its simplicity and unambiguity, something of a rarity in these post-modern times. The preposterousness of the politics of the “committee of the wizened and the learned” who wouldn’t send backup to its courageous ruler simply because he’s taken 300 of the best human killing machines as the queen struggles to get her point across in that uproariously written speech has a deft contemporary sensibility about it and the delineation of black and white is so clear and powerful, it has your attention. Its filled with those old-school scenes of unambiguous emotions when courageous people are fighting in outworldly circumstances: like that somewhat cliched wail of a mighty old warrior who sees his son decapitated in plain sight–its wonderfully simple in its virtuosity. But perhaps more than anything else, its the no-holds-barred and fight-till-I-drop spirit of the brave Spartans that you take away long after the movie’s finished. Honour and valour never had such an unquestioning ode from the otherwise bloated, tired war movie genre where attention to detail usually detracts from the heart and core. Let’s thank Zack Snyder for making us all feel like we were holding shields and spears ourselves when it was only popcorn and coke. And Gerald Butler too, for making us believe in every syllable of “Hail Sparta!” 

25th Hour (2002): §§§§§§§§§ (9 on 10)

Simply put, this is Spike Lee at his best. The director turns even a seemingly turgid premise of a drug addict gone introspective on his last day of freedom before a seven year jail term into a story that’s so sincere and so humane, its spell-binding. Boasting of virtuoso performances from Edward Norton (watch him swear at everything that New York stands for in front of a mirror or pleading his best mates to pulp his face or the final 30 minutes as he drives away with his dad to the prison is the stuff great cinema’s made of), Barry Pepper, Brian Cox and Philip Seymour Hoffman, a background score that’s fresh and haunting and characterisations plus sequences so sincere and real, you can’t get them out of your head. Manipulativeness is replaced by languid geniality which might make the first half a tad difficult to get into, but stay put and if you are a sucker for nostalgia in real life, you’d be rooting for everyone and everything this movie stands for. The story arc is fantastic, you won’t be able to guess the next thing happening and you’d be surprised how honestly it captures a man’s desire for redemption and that “one more chance” in life. 

My commentary hasn’t finished yet, by the looks of my log though,

Scenes that stood out for me: 4 most noteworthy:

1. Ed’s outburst in the bathroom mirror where he monologues away to his reflection how pissed he really is with everyone and everything that’s New York.

2. Then, the scene where Ed demands his friend Barry to make him ugly. The whole unflinching sequence right from he’s pulped by his friend, to the way he swaggers away into his girlfriend’s arms, l remember secretly sobbing through it all. Just thereafter, his dad Brian Cox telling him to drive away to prison while his girlfriend goes to the fridge for ice cubes-it felt REAL, so real I thought I was hallucinating.

3. Finally, his dad’s monologue of how Ed could just run away and start afresh (which is very interesting a tag-on because without it the movie would have been very visceral if a tad too depressing. With that monologue and Ed’s dream tagged on, the picture of hope painted towards the really emotionally heavy fag-end of the movie really turns up the mood and yes, the final shot of ed sleeping on his windscreen is open to interpretation (are they actually making a run? Is he dreaming?). Any which way, its an inspiring and deeply affecting movie (90% so because the characters are so lovingly sketched).. its almost like you become one with ed’s character towards the latter half (since he really is a good man) and you really don’t want him behind the bars and you’ve so enjoyed every moment on screen with him.

4. The random subplot of Hoffman’s character’s affair with a student, not only is a fab attention diverter and relief tactic, but also makes the whole movie filled with one more old-school home truth- a geeky friend who accompanies them to the bar, is the butt of most of their jokes but is the 1st one to shoulder his pulped friend on a shoulder, this movie really is just all heart. 

Loved the background score throughout (Spike’s got an achilles heel for Indian music–I like that, even though at times it sits awkwardly for me atleast, but overall, the experiment pays off where the score never intrudes/manipulates the viewer. And it is a film that’s going to shine brighter with a second viewing as u then for sure know what’s going to happen to Ed. Its his last day before he goes to prison (boy, the scene in the bar where he breaks down in front of his best mate is class), there’ll be nostalgia for 1st-time suckers of this movie like me, and boy its gonna be worth it. So looking forward to another watch.

Probably the best book adaptation I have seen and a resounding reminder that Spike Lee really knows his movies, his humour and his action. Class! 

13 Conversations about One Thing (2001): §§§§§§ (6 on 10)

A drifting, maudlin, multiple-stories-interjecting around a common theme movie that supposedly talks about happiness. Supposedly being the operative word. The soporific and sleep-inducing background score aside, it is a very organic and real movie with some really believable performances (Especially Alan Arkin who rocks as the boss who’s pissed at an employee with a perpetual smile on face…haha). Only problem being that it probably takes itself a little too seriously and there’s a slight stink of pretension in one of the story arcs of this girl who breaks into a moronic lecture about looking at the life’s bright side even in the face of cold unpredictability (she’s just been bumped by a car when she was walking down the road holding the ironed shirt of an architect she works for and even after the accident, she buys a new shirt and goes back to return it only to be confronted by the sod who suspects she’s stolen his watch).

And then there’s Matthew McCaunahey’s character who in his sanctimonious mode after winning a case is lecturing everyone how he’s worked it all out and he’s so lucky and more such blah blah to Arkin and then just when he thinks he rules the world he bumps a girl on the road. And his world falls apart as he hides his crime and his whole belief on how justice prevails in the world is shaken. Its reasonably well done.

The last story arc is about this professor who enters an affair with a fellow teacher but on the day when he gets to know that its going nowhere since the hubby’s found out, his rebuking a keen student sends the latter off the rooftop really amplifies how even the littlest things we do or say can have such an effect on another person’s state of mind. Actually I like this movie more as I write about it but then some movies are deceptive like that. Awesome on paper, mediocre on screen. Still, its a middlingly atmospheric movie with good performances that says nothing exceptionally new but for its believability begs one watch maybe.

28 Weeks Later (2007):§§§§§§§ (7 on 10) 

I had absolutely given up on zombie movies now. Until this movie. It managed to somewhat freak even a zombie-immunised soul like me with some nicely staged action sequences, good quality acting, exhaustingly different camera techniques to spook one out (the torchlight, the night camera, the tracker… hell every camera and lens kind is experimented with), its pretty ambitious, but really the storyline’s got zero credibility (oh stop the moaning I should!) and what spirals the whole movie off is two kids purposely doing a stupid thing (like they do in these horror flicks, it is such a regular thing, I should stop bemoaning its existence as well. Bah!). 

Scenes that rocked it: The helicopter-chopping-zombie scene, the chase sequence where the people are chased trapped in a volvo through increasingly smoke-infested london streets, then the scene where all the mortals are trapped in the parking lot and a zombie enters and starts off a snowball of biting each other… quickly thereafter the orders for military to eliminate everyone-zombie or not.

So yea, its a stretch, but the one time watch was quite entertaining and the attention to detail in creating a mood was laudable at times. And more than anything, it was good enough to be one of the few creditworthy sequels that lived up to the now-modern-cult-classic original (Boyle’s 28 Days Later), and I am waiting for the sequel in the making. Hail the big studios turning every little germ of an idea that gets their money back into a money-milking franchise of diminishing creative returns. I hope this one-in-the-making proves me wrong, although I highly doubt it.

An Aparna Sen-directed movie of which I really had heard about quite a lot. Underwhelming and ho-hum by the end of it all I have to say. So an old teacher in an old-age home has been estranged by her daughters (married and gone off abroad) and an erstwhile student who bumps into her takes advantage of her by using her home as a sod-pad tricking all the way through the poor lady into thinking that him and his partner really care for her. By the end of it, the couple move on to better pastures forgetting about the old lady (as it happens in life). I won’t deny that the issues handled here are real (the loneliness that envelopes the old age, of people moving on and the place of the spoken word in the contemporary sensibility) but somehow I wasn’t impressed by the Shakespearen style acting and the bookish dialogue. The dialogue and the acting’s very mannered, almost as if every actor’s learned the British and Scottish colloquialisms and figure of speeches the day before. I also thought the whole movie was ham-handed, patronising and manipulative, which is a surprise since its an arthouse classic; but it is what it is: too theatrical to touch me in any way.  

Moving on to the first alphabet now!

“Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends”

                  – Edward Norton

– 25^th Hour

Once again, the great John Flowers has created an amazing show for all you film and video guys out there! It’s called THAT POST SHOW and it has everything to do with FILM POST PRODUCTION. The first show features myself along with John Flowers and Mike Nichols and it’s about THE ART OF EDITING.

Give it a listen over at www.ThatPostShow.com and leave comments to let us know what you think!

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In my last post I listed down several requirements I have to accomplish next week. In this post I will now list down stuff I want to watch this sem break. Yay! (Most of the movies mentioned here came from the reviews of her eminence Jessica Zafra :D)

Movies

1. Woyzeck

“…an odd tragicomedy about a man who is harried until he breaks.” (Zafra, 2003)

2. Cobra Verde

…is a tale of a man who has a very weird career progression. (Zafra, 2003)

3. 25th Hour

Edward Norton is Monty Brogan, a heroin dealer sentenced to seven years to prison. As he spends his last day of being a free man, he says goodbye to the people closest to him. (Zafra, 2003)

4. Lola rennt (Run, Lola, Run)

The story follows a woman who needs to retrieve 100,000 Deutsche Mark in 20 minutes to save her boyfriend’s life (Wikipedia Entry).

5. Der Krieger und Die Kaiserin (The Princess and The Warrior)

It follows the life of Sissi, a psychiatric hospital nurse and Bodo, an anguished former soldier who lapses into criminality… (Wikipedia Entry)

Anime

1. Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo

The third anime adaptation of the novel Zero no Tsukaima

2. Rosario + Vampire (Thanks James!)

Tsukune Aono is a painfully average high school freshman who is unable to get into any private school, due to his disappointing test scores. The only school he is finally accepted into turns out to be a secret school for supernatural monsters (yōkai), who are disguised as humans. (Wikipedia Entry)

3. Gundam 00

The series is set in a futuristic Earth and centered around Celestial Being, a private paramilitary force and their efforts to rid the world of warand conflict with a series of unique and highly effective mobile suits known as “Gundams”. (Wikipedia Entry)

4. Lucky Star

Lucky Star’s story portrays the lives of several girls attending a Japanese high school named Ryōō with a very loose sense of humor. (Wikpedia Entry)

Books

1. Kissing in Manhattan (David Schikler)

“…is composed of eleven interwoven stories with recurring characters, many of whom inhabot the Premption, a gothic apartment buildiing with gargoyles overlooking the Hudson River” (Zafra, 2001).

Sample Story

2. Taliban (Ahmed Rashid)

“…a political history of Afghanistan that reads like a spy thriller and a horror novel but is more complex amd harrowing because it is all true” (Zafra, 2001)

3. Nobi (Fires on the Plain) (Shohei Ooka)

4. Man Overboard (Butch Dalisay)

Yeah, I AM GOING TO ENJOY MY SEMBREAK!

Only so many hours a day you can work without feeling like a piece of sun-dried cabbage by the end of it. But that’s the life of a New Yorker, I suppose - it’s all about hard work here. So what happens after spending years on the go? Finito?

Even after hours of being busy with all sorts of arrangements, deadlines and submissions, as well as sessions, meetings and hang-outs (alter ego problems!!) I still feel as though I haven’t made the most of the available 24 hours per any given day… “If only I had done more yesterday, I’d have been able to do even more today….” That’s my motto… but not a healthy one, I agree!

Having finished drafting the radio show for my program on Tuesday morning, I am officially done for the night… But oh wait, what about typing out the manuscript I drafted last night? Still haven’t done that… But when???

Not complaining, God forbid, never! What’s better than being hectically busy around the clock and barely finding the time to take a quick breather? Well, maybe a little catch-up with a friend online - the one across the ocean… Oh yes, that is always special, I agree. Yet, work is always there staring me in the eye whenever I turn around to cast a quick glance at what’s cooking on the desk!

May it always be that way… busy, busy bee!

Monty Brogan: Well, fuck you, too. Fuck me, fuck you, fuck this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job! Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores, stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35. Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English? Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin’ and dealin’ and schemin’. Go back where you fucking came from! Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds! Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for FUCKING LIFE! You think Bush and Cheney didn’t know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Worldcom! Fuck the Puerto Ricans. 20 to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin’ parade in the city. And don’t even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, ’cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their, Jason Giambi, Louisville slugger, baseball bats, trying to audition for the Sopranos. Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermes scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You’re not fooling anybody, sweetheart! Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don’t want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on! Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child’s pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you’re at it, fuck JC! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin’ Otisville, J! Fuck Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and backward-ass, cave-dwelling, fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass! Fuck Jacob Elinsky, whining malcontent. Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend’s ass. Fuck Naturelle Riviera, I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back, sold me up the river, fucking bitch. Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar sipping on club sodas, selling whisky to firemen, cheering the Bronx bombers. Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.
[pause]
Monty Brogan: No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all, and you threw it away, you dumb fuck!

Monty Brogan( Eduard Norton), 25th hour

Un film cu Edward Norton, în regia lui Spike Lee.
Monologul lui Monty, ‘Fuck you all’ (de fapt dialogul cu propria reflexie in oglindă):

Monty: Yeah, fuck you, too.
Monty’s Reflection: Fuck me? Fuck you! Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it.
Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back.
Fuck squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job!
Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores and stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. Slow the fuck down!
Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35.

Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English?
Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin’ and dealin’ and schemin’. Go back where you fucking came from!
Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds!
Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gecko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life! You think Bush and Cheney didn’t know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Imclone! Adelphia! Worldcom!
Fuck the Puerto Ricans. 20 to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin’ parade in the city. And don’t even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, because they make the Puerto Ricans look good.
Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, and their St. Anthony medallions. Swinging their, Jason Giambi, Louisville slugger, baseball bats, trying to audition for the Sopranos.
Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermés scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You’re not fooling anybody, sweetheart!
Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don’t want to play defense, they take fives steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on!
Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust!
Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child’s pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you’re at it, fuck JC! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin Otisville, Jay!
Fuck Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and backward-ass, cave-dwelling, fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fueled fire in hell. You towel headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal, Irish ass!
Fuck Jacob Elinski, whining malcontent.
Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery, my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend’s ass.
Fuck Naturel Rivera. I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back. Sold me up the river. Fucking bitch.
Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar. Sipping on club soda, selling whiskey to firemen and cheering the Bronx Bombers.
Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue. From the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park slope to the split levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it. Let the fires rage. Let it burn to fuckin ash then let the waters rise and submerge this whole, rat-infested place.
Monty: No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all and then you threw it away, you dumb fuck!

Your breathing starts to get heavy.  Your chest begins to pound.  Your stomach nauseates.  Your eyelids flutter up and down in vain attempts to halt the tears.

You can´t sit still.  You have nowhere to go.

Like an airplane on the tarmac, stalled in a holding pattern.  Like a woman at the end of a long line, waiting to use the bathroom.  Like an urgent phone call and you are put on hold.

You simply cannot wait any longer.

And yet your only recourse is to… wait.

Welcome to the 25^th hour.

Released: August 8th
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Trailer: Click here

The Film - Avery Allan Ludlow (played by Brian Cox), a Korean War vet with a tragic past, lives alone in a small town, where he runs the local hardware store. Av’s only companion is a 14 year-old ginger-haired dog, aptly named Red by Av’s late wife. One day, Av and Red are enjoying a placid outing at their favorite fishing spot when three boys and a shotgun come along. In an instant, Av’s lifelong friend is gone, the victim of a cruel, senseless act. Devastated, Av determines to find out who the boys are and why they did it. Helped by a local reporter (played by Kim Dickens), Av tries to expose the truth, but his efforts are ignored by authorities and mocked by the teenagers. The boys’ parents, a rich local businessman (played by Tom Sizemore) and, across town, a hardscrabble laborer (played by Robert Englund) and his wife (played by Amanda Plummer), are just as determined to keep Av down. But, faithful to the memory of his best friend, Av single-mindedly presses for justice-with or without the law on his side.

The Verdict - Initially I’m surprised. Despite the fact that the screenplay for Red has been written by the same writer of The Grudge and that it’s based on the best selling book by Jack Ketchmum, there seems to be a distinct cheapness about the film; that gives the impression that Red would be better off reincarnating itself as a small TV Series rather then an Indy feature, as you will be able to tell just from watching the trailer.

But regardless of my nitpickery; Red’s tale of vengeance, un-rest and blood soaked anguish really stands out against other films that carry similar stalker/vigilante type narratives; Hitcher, No Country For Old Men. Even more so with the perfectly cast Brian Cox; 25th Hour, portraying the victimized and mad justice seeking Avery Allan Ludlow, who is struggling to come to terms with the tragic and unprovoked loss of his only companion; his beloved dog Red, resulting in some grizzly repercussions for all those responsible.

Truly an emotional roller coaster of a journey, crawling through death,pain and revenge. Red is the full vendetta package. I highly recommend you check this one out, if not for the story then for Brian Cox’s flawless performances.

- A

Vurdering:

USA 2002 | Regi: Spike Lee | Spilletid: 135 min | IMDb

Det har aldri føltes bedre å innhalere en såkalt Spike Lee Joint. Virkning: en overstadig, deilig filmrus.

Dette er nemlig Spike Lees beste film til dags dato - filmskaperen som har gitt oss Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X og Clockers. Alle gode filmer, men nå har han overgått samtlige. 25th Hour har alt; et solid manus (basert på en roman av David Benioff), sjeldent utmerkede skuespillerprestasjoner, den ene praktfulle dialogen etter den andre, et henrivende musikalsk bidrag komponert av Terence Blanchard - og over dette er hver enkelt scene så nydelig regissert at jeg sliter med å finne de rette ordene. Jeg ble fengslet. Hva mer er det å si?

Jo, det er så mye at jeg knapt vet hvor jeg skal starte. Jeg starter med Spike Lee. I likhet med storheter som Martin Scorsese og Woody Allen, er også Lee hodestups forelsket og fascinert av New York. Og det er dette store eple av en by som er utgangspunkt for hans historier, så også her. Vi er i kjølevannet av 9/11. Det ulmer av følelser og patriotisme, men også usikkerhet og uvisshet. Det er et over normalt betent New York som er åsted for Spike Lees film. Byen ligger der som et bakteppe, og hovedpersonens uvisshet og kvaler står som symboler på noe større og viktigere. Lee har på en naturlig måte inkludert 9/11, det virker verken påklistret eller overflødig. Det er smått pompøst, litt sentimentalt, men ikke mer enn det bør og må være - og det føles helt riktig.

Historiens utgangspunktet er banalt nok: hva ville du gjort dersom du hadde 24 timer igjen å leve i frihet? Vi møter Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) som opplever nettopp dette. Om 24 timer skal han i fengsel for å tilbringe de syv neste årene der. Monty selger nemlig dop på fritiden, men ganske typisk blir han avslørt omtrent samtidig som han har bestemt seg for å slutte. Men hvem angav han og hvorfor?

Monty har mye han ønsker å fylle den siste dagen i frihet med. Han bestemmer seg for å oppsøke sin far (Brian Cox), samtidig som han forsøker å finne ut av hvem som faktisk angav han, han må finne ny eier til sin hund, tilbringe tid sammen med sine barndomsvenner (Philip Seymour Hoffman og Barry Pepper), mens det hele skal rundes av med en avskjedsfest arrangert av Montys overmenn i narkobransjen.

Spike Lee har det med å være ambisiøs (Summer of Sam, som kunne blitt et mesterverk, trynet mye på grunn av dette). Ambisiøst kaster han seg ut i de store fortellingene, drar inn mange karakterer og subplots, og når trådene skal samles, ligger det ofte noe ufullendt over helheten. Det gjør det kanskje også i 25th Hour, men samtidig overskygges det av den totale regi, fotografi og ikke minst skuespillet og dialogene. Dialogen mellom Pepper og Hoffman ved vinduet i Peppers luksusleilighet på Manhattan, mens kamera fokuserer på “ground zero”, er i min bok allerede en klassiker. Det samme gjelder Nortons “fuck you”-monolog foran speilet, der alt og alle i New York får gjennomgå, hvorpå han til slutt vender seg mot seg selv. Symbolikken er slående. Filmen har flere slike strålende enkeltscener, og når de blir bundet sammen gjennom stilsikker regi og solide skuespillere, blir resultatet rett ut: utsøkt.

Edward Norton befester sin posisjon som en av vår tids fremste skuespillere. Ellers gjør Barry Pepper sin livs rolle som kynisk finansmann. Philip Seymour Hoffman er som vanlig eminent, selv om han har gjort denne rollen et par ganger før. Glemmes må heller ikke Brian Cox som portretterer Montys far helt glitrende. Far/sønn-forholdet er noe av det bedre jeg har sett på lang tid. Anna Paquin er også fin i en mindre rolle.

25th Hour står igjen som en av de sterkeste amerikanske produksjonene fra 2002, selv om den kanskje ikke har fått akkurat den anerkjennelsen. Dette er mitt bidrag for å gjøre noe med det.

Ca sa reiau subiectul de ieri, iata un alt monolog provenit din revolta si care include multe cuvinte “ofensatoare”. Conditiile sunt aceleasi ca si ieri, cu mentiunea ca asta e o scena din filmul “25th Hour”, interpretata excelent de Edward Norton. Pe cand scena e solida asa, stand-alone, filmul merita fiecare secunda!

Try it!

P.S. Sper ca alecsutza a trecut cu bine de starea de spirit pe care-o reprezenta clipul de ieri… Poate pe-asta il vezi pan’la capat.

“That’s how I want to remember you.”

2002. Rated R. Directed by Spike Lee. Written by David Benioff. Starring Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin and Brian Cox.

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Sorry for the sporadic updating, I’m in the midst of finals and while I have time to write reviews, I haven’t had much time to watch anything. That I’ve put off watching this particular film is apropos, as I’ve been putting it off for years.

This will be the first in another ongoing feature, movies that one or more of my friends considers a favorite, and that I haven’t seen despite their recommendation. I’m going to keep it to movies that have been generally well-received but little-seen so if you’re in the same boat as me, I’ll let you know if it’s worth seeing.

Today’s entry, Spike Lee’s 2002 drama 25th Hour is a story with a great hook with a couple of good scenes and good performances but muddled by needless subplots and Lee’s insistence on letting everyone know he’s directing. The story centers on Monty Brogan (Norton), a man convicted of trafficking heroin and his last day of freedom before reporting to serve a 7-year sentence in prison.

He spends the day wandering the city, still reeling from the 9/11 attacks, soaking it in before he has to leave. His crime lord boss has organized a going-away party at an exclusive club, where Monty takes his girlfriend Naturel (Dawson) and his two best friends, teacher Jacob (Hoffman) and bond trader Francis (Pepper) for one last night out.

This is a terrific idea for a story, as the audience immediately feels pulled into the situation with Monty, and I couldn’t help but think about what I would do if I were in his shoes. It’s a variation on the “one day to live” situation because while Monty’s life as he knows it is about to end, he will get out of prison eventually. But for now he has to take comfort in the small moments of having a last beer with his best friends, or a last embrace from his girlfriend. Because of how personal the story can be, the best scenes in the film are the quieter ones where Monty shares a moment with his loved ones, including a very affecting scene with his father, played by the always-great Brian Cox.

As opposed to his subdued work in the underrated 2006 heist flick Inside Man, Lee fills this movie with a lot of awkward editing — both intentional and just plain sloppy, and odd camera angles and all the unnecessary stylistic bullshit just distracts from the story. There’s an overlong scene partway through where Norton’s character rants in front of a mirror, a scene that felt forced, out of place and completely took me out of the movie. It’s clear Lee was going for a memorable, trademark scene, but it simply does not work.

The story structure also takes away from the story — rather than letting the action take us through the day, Lee inserts flashbacks throughout which detract from the main plot. The flashback that opens the film is a good scene that takes on more importance as the story unfolds, but the rest of the flashback scenes lack any suspense and should have been left out. We don’t need to see exactly how Monty met Naturel or exactly how he got busted — the characters can talk about that in the present. There’s also an extended sequence towards the end that could have been left out.

How much of the problem lies with Lee as opposed to Benioff’s script (based on his own novel) is tough to tell, as apparently the movie is very faithful to the source material. Unfortunately, that includes a fair amount of awkward and stilted dialogue in addition to the overall problems with the plot. Perhaps the most egregious offense is a pointless subplot with an overmatched Anna Paquin playing a jailbait temptation to Hoffman’s high school teacher. It brings nothing to the table. This is a story that should have been completely focused on Norton’s character and his last day, but there are too many distractions.

Norton gives a solid performance but Monty is not as defined as I would have liked him to be. We never get enough of an idea of why he fell into the criminal lifestyle and part of that is the lack of focus on his character. Apparently Tobey Maguire (who produced) was originally going to star, but Norton is a much, much better choice. Both Pepper & Hoffman are perfectly cast and Dawson gives a surprisingly good performance. Former defensive tackle Tony Siragusa shows up with a bad Russian accent, which was pretty random.

25th Hour should have been a subdued story of a man coming to grips with his past actions in the subdued world of post-9/11 New York, but unfortunately that’s not what it is. The potential is there, and if the film had been more focused on Norton and perhaps a little more sparse and contemplative it would have been a success for me. As it stands, it was a disappointment.

Grade: C+

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I’m about to head off to study for my Comparative Directors final, but I had to post this picture from Burn After Reading aka the next Coen Brothers movie aka the movie that reunites the Ocean’s 11 hotness and bromance of Brad and George. I am soooo excited to see this!

The rest of the new pics are here: http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/04/29/new-photos-coen-brothers-burn-after-reading/

And in honor of my final Comparative Directors lecture, here is an extremely hot picture of Edward Norton from 25th Hour which is the movie we watched tonight. It was a lot of fun learning about Scorsese, Allen, and Lee, and a perfect cinema studies class to end my college career with.

David Benioff is probably best known for his work as a screenplay writer (25th Hour, Stay, Troy [yes, that one's not to his honour], The Kite Runner and the upcoming Wolverine). But 25th Hour is actually based upon a novel written by him and that’s what I read. [He's not at all known for his looks but he should be... see.]

The novel is rather short and a quick read. The film is rather literal in it’s making (I think, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it), I like that. I read it in German and the translation is very good. There wasn’t even one time that I thought “god dammit, where’s the editor?”.

To get a glimpse of the style you can have a look at K.’s.

I like his characters and the book made me cry. (I didn’t expect that, as I knew the ending. Obviously, that didn’t matter.)  

I would like Benioff to write another novel. I would definitely read it.

UPDATE (Feb. 14): Prodigy granted a one-week extension to start sentence

Laura Checkway over at the Village Voice has a piece on Prodigy’s preparation for the big-house. Cell Block P is going away for three and a half years and you can get the full story here.

“Money’s worthless, real power is people/Real strength is in the street where everybody’s equal,” Prodigy raps. “Fuck jewelry, fuck rims, let’s spend on our protection.” It’s the first Saturday in January, three days before Johnson is scheduled to begin a three-and-a-half-year prison term for illegal possession of firearms in New York. “It’s just a regular day shooting a video,” he insists, after noting the filthy condition of this prison, which has been non-operational since 2002. “But at the same time, it’s definitely on my mind, like, ‘Damn, I’m about be in one of these motherfuckers.’ I think about it for a minute, and then I snap right out of it.” excerpt from “Prodigy’s 25th Hour”

I can’t decide if the ending was brilliant or a failure. I might have to watch it again… it’s a great movie, no doubt.

Jay-Z - Ignorant Shit (No DJ)

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Raccoon and I reconvened our film club on Thursday. We watched Spike Lee’s 25th Hour.

In thinking about the film I found myself wanting to call it elegiac but hopeful. Coming shortly after 9/11, the film is saturated with visuals invoking the absence of the two towers and construction at Ground Zero. At one point several workers in protective gear are shown hoeing what for all practical purposes appears to be a crater on the moon. This is Spike Lee’s New York, after the tragedy. A qualified tragedy, because Spike Lee has Francis discourse while looking at the the workers on ground zero about profiting from other’s pain. The towers, as symbol of American capitalism, were a sign of just such profiting. On a small, allegorical scale, Monty’s drug dealing profits from the pain of the people he services.

Hope is what happens when Monty can identify with other people, a little boy on the bus, the various ethnic communities in New York, after he is beaten up so that he’ll be less pretty in jail (see Raccoon on the repetition of the male rape motif). Monty’s face is to be taken as indicative of the gaping wound at Ground Zero. At the end of the film, his father narrates an imaginary journey westward toward a new beginning, rather than Monty’s going to jail. In every frame of this journey Lee presents a flag or some combination of red, white, and blue. The symbolism is heavy handed and, at least for this non-patriotic viewer, strangely moving. “It’s a beautiful country” Monty’s father intones, as they drive through rural America toward Monty’s New Canaan. The hope is that in time Monty will be able to be rejoined by Naturelle, his girlfriend, and they’ll have a prosperous multiethnic family that resembles, and is, American. By extension, Spike Lee suggests that after the trauma, America, like Monty, might rejoin the world, having learned something about the suffering of others on 9/11.

That America did not, need hardly be written. I kept asking myself, for what is 25th Hour an elegy? Not the prelapsarian United States. No, the elegiac quality is something I bring to the film. It is my mourning for what we as a country, what our “elected” leaders, did not do: embrace the world. I’m not talking about a flaccid liberal embrace. I’m talking about general strike until we straighten shit out. No more profit.

We learned nothing. Naomi Klein has an article about what she calls “disaster capitalism and the new economy of catastrophe” in the October Harpers. She suggests that whereas instability in the past was assumed to be bad for markets, on the contrary it is now a tremendous growth industry. Firms like Blackwater, Fluor, Shaw, Bechtel, KBR, and CH2M Hill provide security and services in Iraq and New Orleans for those who can afford them in absence of a government that provides those basic services: security, electricity, water. Thus traumatized places are divided into red and green zones. In the red zones the damned pursue their dieing. The green zones are protected oases for the few. Every time infrastructure fails, private companies, with private priorities, are called to sort it out.

Private firms become a government within a government when the federal government turns over many of its basic functions to contractors. FEMA, Klien points out, hired contractors to hire contractors in New Orleans. The result is that you have tax dollars going to these firms as though they were the government, but none of the accountability. These firms, unlike many corporations that like to hedge their bets, direct 70-90 percent of their political donations to the republican party. The party of small government. The party for whom armeggeden is the just deserts of those who cannot pay, as Klein also suggests, to escape it. Catastrophes are a growth industry. So too is privatized government. The result is simple: fascism.

So my mourning is for the lost opportunity in Spike Lee’s visual metaphor. We took, if you’ll forgive the expression, the road already taken and went to Blackwater’s jail. Lee knows that there is no guarantee we were going to behave differently. He ends with a shot of Monty’s bruised face, and the ambiguous decision which way to go, prison or out there–in that beautiful beyond. We chose the camps.

This is an awesome awesome movie. The movie starts with … wait a second, why am I writing all this horseshit anyway? I mean movies? Why the fuck am I writing about stupid movies? No reason whatsoever. So it’s gonna stop.

I’m gonna spend more time trying to improve my concentration skills rather than spending time with unnecessary bullshit. Yes, this was a decision I took after watching 25th Hour. That movie is so good. The silent moment after Frank beats Monty is just priceless. Please do make movies like this it’s what movies should look like. The movies like SIX The Mark Unleashed should just fucking die. Those Jesus freaks annoy me to no end. No offence please, I’m not trying to say shameful things to a religious leader. What I’m trying to say is when some people believe something so much so that and trying to convince people who do know the truth about things, it annoys them to no end. So you might be a Christian, I don’t have a problem with that. Please don’t try to improvise your pseudo intellectual Jesus idealism on me. Thanks.