Our movie diet: it gets weird

 We are a seriously movie-mad family. I myself am a matchless source of useless movie trivia; my wife can predict the end of any film after watching it for 10 minutes. These radioactive superpowers have been passed on to our cinephile children.

We will watch just about anything, on the principle being that you can learn more from a flawed film than a good one. For instance, a few weeks ago we went to the last existing drive-in theater in region and caught the matchless TRIPLE-feature of “The Avengers,” “Dark Shadows,” and “The Hunger Games.” This bubblegum extravaganza was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Can we o.d., though, on too broad a palette of cinema? Here’s what we churned through two weekends ago:

THURSDAY

Blood of a Poet

Dir: Jean Cocteau

1930

I have my snob credentials updated regularly by periodically refreshing my memories of bizarre avant-garde work such as Cocteau’s Orphic trilogy, “L’Age d’Or,” etc. The kids loved Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast,” but were as stymied as I confess I still am by its meandering beauty.

Here, all of Cocteau’s visual tricks and subversive gestures are isolated from narrative, and they overlap and overcome each other in successive waves. Why does the artist have a mouth stuck on his hand? Why is there a cow with a map on it? Why do the figures slide on, float from, and snatch at the interiors? Just what the hell is going on here? About halfway through, I paused it and we moved on.

FRIDAY

“Silent” edit of initial Star Wars trilogy

Dir: ?

A friend of ours has a screen set up in his back yard, and holds a impromptu film festival out there every summer. His taste in films is impeccable, so when he announced a family-friendly feature, we dragged the little ones along.

I don’t know how this phenomenon got started. The idea of knocking George Lucas’ first trilogy of films into a two-hour version, scaling the screen back to the classic 1.35:1 ratio, decolorizing it, and adding intertitles has been used by a recent spate of amateur, online editors. (This was not the best-known Anachronisme version, which contains a tinny, period piano score, but a cut scored with the original film music.)

The concept is interesting; that it would work is not so surprising. Movies being a visual medium, any filmmaker would hope that his or her work could be reduced to its most basic components and still make sense and move forward. This project did, to the extent that a torrential rainstorm only prompted a refreshment break and not an abandonment of the screening.

Best thing about it? Absolutely zero Jar-Jar.

SATURDAY

Persian Series 1-5

Dir: Stan Brakhage

1999

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is located near 13^th and Canyon Streets in downtown Boulder. As we were visiting the weekly Farmers’ Market, we dashed into the museum to peek about. (Admission to the museum is free on Saturdays and Wednesdays from 4 to 8 p.m., a great promotional idea.)

We were lucky to see the show “Visual Rhythm,” which runs through September 9. It features the work of several film, video and techno artists, most prominently Stan Brakhage.

Brakhage, who taught at the University of Colorado and spent many years in the region, has always been a darling of the avant-garde . . . and someone whose work I couldn’t stand. However, his “Persian 1-5” finally reconciled me to his approach.

The film, projected large on the gallery wall, consists of 15 minutes of film in a loop. The film is hand-painted, and moves in hypnotic linear patterns that range from delicate, light washes of bright colors to heavy swathes of near-black. There is no soundtrack; the whirr and clack of the old-fashioned 16-millimeter projector that shows the film provides a small-scale industrial white-noise background that enhances the trance-like writhings on the gallery wall.

When I gave it a chance, it drew me in. Brakhage controls the rhythms of the revealed visuals in a very musical way, exciting unexpected responses and feelings, at least in myself. Its seemingly endless variety makes it a moving mandala, an action painting in action.

The film itself is on display, in a Rube Goldberg-style contraption. The film feeds from the vintage ELMO 16-CL projector back into an eight-foot-high white box with a cear Lucite backing. The film rests and rotates through 33 five-foot vertical loops, the starting and ending point of which is a single yellow square of splice that moves from top to bottom and left to right, over and again.

This demystifying setup not only makes the material more approachable, but provides its own kind of visual fascination. The passages that play out so fleetingly in the projector’s light are displayed, unilluminated, waiting for the transformative moment to bring them to life, only to cycle back into readiness and potentiality.

Among the other interesting pieces in the show are “Le Region Decentralized,” a so-called “never-ending, self-playing video game” by Rick Silia; Kathy Dove’s “Gondla,” a pastel, pastoral collage; David Fodel and Paco Proano’s “Channel,” Sara Ludy’s “Body Wave,” a brooding landscape of shifting charcoal shapes married to ambient music; and Fernando Velasquez’ “Mindscape” series – a visual kaleidoscope/drumset with which the viewer can play.

SUNDAY

La Luna

Dir: Enrico Casarosa

2011

Brave

Dir: Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell

2012

Of course we had to go see “Brave”; our daughter is eight! Disney, although the curse of my early movie-going life (want to cry hysterically? Go see “Bambi”; want to pee your pants with fright? Check out the witch in “Snow White”) the company’s projects are much better these days at avoiding triggering trauma, and empowering girls as well.

Thrilling? No. Innovative? No. The kitsch of the opening short, “La Luna,” softens us up for an animated time-passer that seems to wander between themes until it reaches the ultimate dust-up, last-minute redemption and happy ending. Your mom's a bear.

We got home that night and I unspooled the end of “Blood of a Poet.” After four days of a smorgasbord of movies, it made no more sense than it had when I paused it. Yet it seemed to sit a little more comfortably in my visual cortex, piled on top of the other thousands of films that reside there.

Perhaps these layers will grow so deep and weighty that they will compress, and extrude some kind of pure insight that I can tap like an oil deposit. Or, maybe, the kids will write someday about how these choices traumatized them for life. What the heck. Next up: Stanley Donen’s “Bedazzled,” Claire Denis’ “White Material,” and . . . “Outland”?

So kids, if this all comes up in therapy later? Sue me.

BOOK REVIEW: "FilmCraft: Cinematography"

FilmCraft: Cinematography

By Mike Goodridge & Tim Grierson

Focal Press, 2012

What the hell is a d.p.?

That’s a director of photographer, or a cinematographer. One is given an Oscar each year for his or her efforts. Sounds impressive.

Yet, what do they do? Doesn’t the director make the film?

Most of the people who write about cinema don’t really know a damn thing about how it is done. Including me. I was very lucky, then, to get a chance to review “FilmCraft: Cinematography” recently.

This work is a perfect example of what I call the painless textbook – you enjoy yourself, and discover later that you know a lot more than you did before you read it. It’s an easy-to-read, fast-paced, compelling series of verbal self-portraits that explain the subject better than anything I’ve ever looked at – at that includes the excellent 1992 documentary “Voices of Light.”

The cinematographer, it turns out, occupies that space between the director and that which is to be recorded. They mediate the picture itself – not merely a film’s look, but its total presentation – what the camera sees, how it moves, how the performers relate to it.

Theoretically subordinate to the director and producer, the cinematographer must ensure that a story is told, and told convincingly. This means many times working with impossible budgets and deadlines, location restraints, and the whims of chaos. Somehow, all these must be transcended to at least gather enough visual evidence from which to assemble a movie.

Thankfully, authors Mike Goodridge and Tim Grierson avoid the prescriptive route entirely. We are not given a historical discussion, or a tedious technical exposition. (OK, there’s a glossary, but it’s in the back, and rightly so.) Instead, 16 artfully conducted, in-depth interviews, with the questions excised, with top-notch cinematographers with widely differing sets of experiences, temperaments and techniques dominate the book, including Vittorio Storaro (“Apocalypse Now”), Caleb Deschanel (“The Right Stuff”), and Barry Ackroyd (“The Hurt Locker”). These are punctuated by five “Legacy” profiles of landmarks figures in the discipline – James Wong Howe, Raoul Coutard, Jack Cardiff, Sven Nyquist and Freddie Young.

By letting the subjects focus on concrete experiences rather than theory and eliminating the back-and-forth of conventional interview-writing, Goodridge and Grierson let the book take the shape of a long, relaxed and friendly conversation that gently grazes across the topics needed to understand the work involved. Surprisingly, a subject that seems intimidatingly complex is humanized. We learn how working relationships with directors are formed, how the cinematographer serves as the actors’ first and sometimes only audience, and just how improvisational much of a day’s work is, even when big stars and enormous budgets are concerned.

Despite their differences, all these interviewees have a few commonalities – desire for a strong story to serve. Ellen Kuras says, “There’s a big difference in making imagery – just doing the shot – and telling the story.” All of those who speak here recognize and respect the collaborative nature of cinema. And, all of them take pride in their ability to get the job done.

A key phrase, “writing with light,” surfaces here, and really clicks the reader’s brain over to the idea that every image in a film should be necessary, full of information, compelling.

There is some talk of aesthetics here, but the subjects speak primarily to problem solved and challenges overcome. There is a bit of forward-looking discussion, too, about the transitions in approach made necessary by digital shooting, small-screen presentation and 3D filmmaking.

The result is an honest, huts-and-bolts look at this craft that will serve as an excellent primer for the ignorant, a guidebook for the aspiring professional, and a source of insight and anecdote for everybody else. I can’t recommend “FilmCraft: Cinematography” highly enough!

Earlier ‘Hunger Games’: The bloodsport movie subgenre

"Battle Royale" -- is "Hunger Games" a ripoff?

Of course, I’m getting on the “Hunger Games” bandwagon. It’s the most highly pimped movie of the year, and so far reviews are by and large favorable. The adaptation of the first of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy of young-adult dystopian adventure looks as though it will be a hit, regardless of its inherent merit or its faithfulness to its source material.

Jennifer Lawrence in "The Hunger Games."

Collins has been given some guff for her book’s remarkable similarities to Koushun Takami’s 1999 novel “Battle Royale,” and the immensely popular film version directed by Kinju Fukasaku the following year. (The film, although it is one of the top-10 highest-grossing films in Japanese history, took 11 years to be distributed in the U.S., and is still largely unknown here.) Read Neda Ulaby’s NPR report on the controversy here.

But the tradition of a coerced hero or heroine forced to kill or be killed, especially in the context of providing vicarious thrills for onlookers, is as old as gladiatorial combat. The high-noon showdowns of the American Western are a variant, and many of the hundreds of pepla (Italian sword-and-sandal film epics of the period 1957-1965) give us oiled-up body-builder protagonists – Hercules, Maciste, Samson, Goliath, Ursus -- who must fight monsters, destroy entire armies, and dethrone despots.

The list of more specific precursors to “The Hunger Games” is surprisingly long. Most of these films are simply formulaic subgenre exercises, focusing on graphic violence and retribution. But the social commentary that enriches “Battle Royale” and “The Hunger Games” can be found in select examples, some of which we’ll dial through below.

The first and most important influence is the 1924 short story by Richard Connell, “The Most Dangerous Game” – required reading for most schoolchildren, and possibly the most anthologized short story of all time, save for the equally gruesome “The Lottery,” also a distinct influence on the genre.

In “Game,” a big-game hunter, Rainsford, falls overboard at sea and finds himself on an island dominated by a master hunter, Count Zaroff, who has grown bored hunting animals and now hunts men instead. Rainsford finds himself elected as the next prey. It doesn’t spoil the pleasure of reading it to know that evil is defeated in the end.

In fact, one of the great pleasures of the genre is the liberation that self-defense grants to the hero in these stories. Once it’s been established that he or she must act ruthlessly in order to survive, the audience members can completely give themselves over to the vicarious satisfaction of seeing rough justice done, without a whiff of guilt.

The story has been adapted more and far less faithfully nearly two dozen times; the best version is the first --

The Most Dangerous Game

Dir: Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoendack

1932

The next major development in the idea came from Robert Sheckley, whose 1953 short story “Seventh Victim” became the Italian sci-fi film “The 10^th Victim” a dozen years later. Now the game of human hunter and hunted is big business, a globally popular entertainment that has proved so satisfying that it has effectively eliminated war. The antagonists, played by Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress, of course have conflicted feelings about each other, and the camp value is deliberately high.

The 10^th Victim

Dir: Elio Petri

1965

Peter Watkins is a radical film and television directors whose projects criticize the system in all its aspects – and specifically attacks the media’s complicity in preserving the status quo in the following two features:

The Gladiators

Dir: Peter Watkins

1969

Punishment Park

Dir: Peter Watkins

1971

Paul Bartel’s ludicrous “Death Race 2000,”based on Ib Melchior’s short story “The Racer,” definitely takes the low road . . . so to speak. Still, the dystopian theme and the idea of bloodsport as a nationally followed pastime is there. Brought to us by the inimitable Roger Corman! With David Carradine! And Sylvester Stallone!

Death Race 2000

Dir: Paul Bartel

1975

And the same year’s “Rollerball.” Ah, yes. Ridiculous – and one of my favorite guilty-pleasure movies ever. Rich people blow up the few remaining trees for fun, corporations control everything – and I cried when they killed Moonpie.

“Corporate society takes care of everything. And all it asks of anyone, all it's ever asked of anyone ever, is not to interfere with management decisions.”

Rollerball

Dir: Norman Jewison

1975

Another Sheckley story, “The Price of Peril,” written in 1958, eerily predicts reality shows. “Le prix du danger” is the first adaptation of it.

Le prix du danger

Dir: Yves Boisset

1982

Oh, dear. Stephen King’s take on the template became one of Arnold Schwarzengger’s worst films, including the worst death-puns in recorded history.

The Running Man

Dir: Paul Michael Glaser

1987

The most searing and pointed of these films, and the most successful to date, is “Battle Royale.” Its bleak vision of society, and its focus on the teenage victims of its contest, makes it almost impossible to think that Collins did not derive something from it.

Battle Royale

Dir: Kinju Fukasaku

2000

Another worthy mention is “Series7: The Contenders,” starring Brooke Smith, best known for her role as Buffalo Bill’s final, would-be victim in “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Series 7: The Contenders

Dir: Daniel Minahan

2001

In all these films, the central figures have to fight not only others, but an oppressive system that uses violence as entertainment. Maybe the question here is not whether Collins is a plagiarist, but why this very specific kind of fantasy is so prevalent in the zeitgeist. State-sanctioned killing, a rigged system, murder turned to righteous and even revolutionary ends, compulsive mass passive participation – and of course, the irony that the watchers of any of these given films is an echo of the complicit onlookers inside the films. Perhaps these movies are sketches for realities that haven’t been invented yet -- or are just an encoded revelation of how we live right now?

Other entries: a miscellany

Bloodsport

Dir: Newt Arnold

1988

Arena

Dir: Peter Manoogian

1989

Final Round

Dir: George Erschbamer

1993

Hard Target

Dir: John Woo

1993

Surviving the Game

Dir: Ernest R. Dickerson

1994

Slashers

Dir: Maurice Devereaux

2001

Reality Kills

Dir: Rafal Zielinski

2002

Subterano

Dir: Esben Storm

2002

Battle Royale II: Requiem

Dir: Kenta Fukasaku, Kinji Fukasaku

2003

El Nominado

Dir: Nacho Argiro, Gabriel Lopez

2004

Dot.kill

Dir: John Irvin

2005

K.Y.E.: Kill Your Enemy

Dir: Max Law

2007

The Condemned

Dir: Scott Wiper

2007

Senseless

Dir: Simon Hynd

2008

Gamer

Dir: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor

2009

The Tournament

Dir: Scott Mann

2009