Film Flam

[Xooxe]

THIS


Favourite quote:
    A communal lavatory is as important to the army as a rifle. You weakened the defensive power of our fatherland. You were working in favour of western imperialism.

[Cain]

Less Disney, more Black Swan. Has anyone else watched it yet?

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2010/12/requiem-for-swan.html

Darren Aronofsky's black-swan ballet flick bears about as much resemblance to real ballet as Speed Racer to the Daytona 500, Tron to the inner workings of Microsoft Office. This alone isn't damning. There are plenty of sports dramas that get the details wrong but still manage to entertain. I'm lookin' at you, Rocky. Of course, in the hands of Sly Stallone, The Black Swan would've featured Natalie Portman as a plucky upstart from Scranton. Her mother was a short-order cook and her dad was a bowling ball. She wanted to be a Sugar Plum fairy in The Nutcracker, but instead she got cast as Clara's slipper. It doesn't matter. She meets the boy of her dreams, a television repairman named Enzio. They move to Seacacus and open a dance school. The end.

Instead, we are subjected to a load of hack-job, gussied-up torture porn by one of Hollywood's most egregious misogynists. Despite it's grand guignol drag, it is really a dowdy, ten-million-times-before-told tale of art and madness that proposes itself as a psychological thriller even though its psychology is about as insightful as the Saw franchise. Art is interesting, and the real physical rigor of ballet would make an appealingly concrete metaphor for the pain, repetition, dedication, commitment, and struggle behind great art and great performance. As a vehicle for trite mad scenes and a lot of bogus crap about how performers must immolate themselves in order to achieve transcendence, how genius is insanity, it falls, you'll pardon me, flat on its skinny ass. Maybe he should've a movie about a mad opera singer turning into a real Walkyrie, although, I don't know, I guess when you're dedicated to setting Natalie Portman writhing around with her hand in her panties or whatever the notion of some fleshy Brunhilde jumping into the orchestra pit loses some appeal.

It's certainly true that dancers' bodies are subject to brutal conditioning that would put the toughest guys in the NFL on the inactive list, and it's also true, although the extent is exaggerated, that female dancers in particular are prone to eating problems in the obsessive pursuit of physical perfection, and yet as compared to other performers and artists I have known, I find dancers to be generally the least nutso. A lot of them frankly have the zoned-out bliss of a yoga teacher. Well, fuck, a lot of them become yoga teachers, or they get a job selling subscriptions for the non-profit down the road. Like professional athletes, their careers are short; the human body hits its physical peak early, and that's simply that. It is a competitive business. Some people do flame out, unable to take the pressure or live up to their potential, but those who make it into a professional company, an elite company, are very often happy. They are, after all, living their dream.

This is what Aronofsky misses most and why his portait of an artist, even a crazy one, is so unconvincing and frankly boring. I presume that our friend Darren really likes making movies, even if raising money is a grind and production an administrative nightmare, a series of sleepless nights and too-long days eating lousy food and living in hotels. There is a joy in achievement after struggle. Yet not once do we see Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers enjoy herself. Nowhere are we permitted some brief glimpse of the joy of great performance. Oh, what, is she doing it because of her central-casting stage mother? Um, Darren, what's my motivation? You're crazy, Natalie. That's your motivation. Now, hold still while we apply this blood to your naked body. Look, even Peter Shaffer, a playwright with the emotional insight of a goldfish whose owner left a book of Freud case studies open on the credenza beside the tank, figured out that Doomed-Genius Composer© Mozart really fucking liked music, was transported by it, was an instrument of a sort of divinity, whose own soul resonated with the notes. Prima ballerina Natalie Portman is an instrument, all right, like a fleshlight. There is a scene meant, I don't know, to imply her burgeoning sexual seductiveness, in which an old perv masturbates through his pants while making kissy noises at her on the subway. Darren Aronofsky, that man is you.

Vincent Cassel is the Artistic Director (which Aronofsky has confused with a choreographer, which he has in turn confused for a stage director), and he spends the first half of the movie reading the program notes from the student matinee and the second half telling Natalie that she'll never be Odile unless she throws her vag all over the stage and "lets go." He is French, so needless to say he is a Lothario. "That was me seducing you when it should've been the other way around." Oh, brother. Fabio wasn't available? The whole thing reads like Nora Roberts adapted for the screen by John Carpenter. It's as gross as Japanese porno and dull as your daughter's dance recital.

[hooplala]

People who take Women and Gender Studies classes too seriously shouldn't attempt to write film critiques.  It's embarrassing.

[Suu]

Have you ever seen a pointe ballet dancer's foot and ankle?

[hooplala]

Nope.  Should I?

[Suu]

Nope.  Should I?

Probably not. Most of them can't keep going after as certain age. I gained a lot of respect for my annoying cousins' dancing after I saw the shit they put themselves through for the sake of being graceful. 16 year olds sitting around, getting their bloody feet unwrapped after a show and then iced is horrible. And then having to walk on crutches for a couple of days, and then doing it all over for "conditioning". Their teacher was basically telling me that if they all didn't break their ankles and some toes and let them heal for the shoes, they'd never be able to do it properly.

[Faust]

Less Disney, more Black Swan. Has anyone else watched it yet?

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2010/12/requiem-for-swan.html

Darren Aronofsky's black-swan ballet flick bears about as much resemblance to real ballet as Speed Racer to the Daytona 500, Tron to the inner workings of Microsoft Office. This alone isn't damning. There are plenty of sports dramas that get the details wrong but still manage to entertain. I'm lookin' at you, Rocky. Of course, in the hands of Sly Stallone, The Black Swan would've featured Natalie Portman as a plucky upstart from Scranton. Her mother was a short-order cook and her dad was a bowling ball. She wanted to be a Sugar Plum fairy in The Nutcracker, but instead she got cast as Clara's slipper. It doesn't matter. She meets the boy of her dreams, a television repairman named Enzio. They move to Seacacus and open a dance school. The end.

Instead, we are subjected to a load of hack-job, gussied-up torture porn by one of Hollywood's most egregious misogynists. Despite it's grand guignol drag, it is really a dowdy, ten-million-times-before-told tale of art and madness that proposes itself as a psychological thriller even though its psychology is about as insightful as the Saw franchise. Art is interesting, and the real physical rigor of ballet would make an appealingly concrete metaphor for the pain, repetition, dedication, commitment, and struggle behind great art and great performance. As a vehicle for trite mad scenes and a lot of bogus crap about how performers must immolate themselves in order to achieve transcendence, how genius is insanity, it falls, you'll pardon me, flat on its skinny ass. Maybe he should've a movie about a mad opera singer turning into a real Walkyrie, although, I don't know, I guess when you're dedicated to setting Natalie Portman writhing around with her hand in her panties or whatever the notion of some fleshy Brunhilde jumping into the orchestra pit loses some appeal.

It's certainly true that dancers' bodies are subject to brutal conditioning that would put the toughest guys in the NFL on the inactive list, and it's also true, although the extent is exaggerated, that female dancers in particular are prone to eating problems in the obsessive pursuit of physical perfection, and yet as compared to other performers and artists I have known, I find dancers to be generally the least nutso. A lot of them frankly have the zoned-out bliss of a yoga teacher. Well, fuck, a lot of them become yoga teachers, or they get a job selling subscriptions for the non-profit down the road. Like professional athletes, their careers are short; the human body hits its physical peak early, and that's simply that. It is a competitive business. Some people do flame out, unable to take the pressure or live up to their potential, but those who make it into a professional company, an elite company, are very often happy. They are, after all, living their dream.

This is what Aronofsky misses most and why his portait of an artist, even a crazy one, is so unconvincing and frankly boring. I presume that our friend Darren really likes making movies, even if raising money is a grind and production an administrative nightmare, a series of sleepless nights and too-long days eating lousy food and living in hotels. There is a joy in achievement after struggle. Yet not once do we see Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers enjoy herself. Nowhere are we permitted some brief glimpse of the joy of great performance. Oh, what, is she doing it because of her central-casting stage mother? Um, Darren, what's my motivation? You're crazy, Natalie. That's your motivation. Now, hold still while we apply this blood to your naked body. Look, even Peter Shaffer, a playwright with the emotional insight of a goldfish whose owner left a book of Freud case studies open on the credenza beside the tank, figured out that Doomed-Genius Composer© Mozart really fucking liked music, was transported by it, was an instrument of a sort of divinity, whose own soul resonated with the notes. Prima ballerina Natalie Portman is an instrument, all right, like a fleshlight. There is a scene meant, I don't know, to imply her burgeoning sexual seductiveness, in which an old perv masturbates through his pants while making kissy noises at her on the subway. Darren Aronofsky, that man is you.

Vincent Cassel is the Artistic Director (which Aronofsky has confused with a choreographer, which he has in turn confused for a stage director), and he spends the first half of the movie reading the program notes from the student matinee and the second half telling Natalie that she'll never be Odile unless she throws her vag all over the stage and "lets go." He is French, so needless to say he is a Lothario. "That was me seducing you when it should've been the other way around." Oh, brother. Fabio wasn't available? The whole thing reads like Nora Roberts adapted for the screen by John Carpenter. It's as gross as Japanese porno and dull as your daughter's dance recital.

Wow, how can someone miss the point so completely and write so many words about a film?

[Suu]

Meh, IOZ doesn't know his armpit from his asshole anyway.

[Cain]

I rather suspect he was trolling Aronofsky fanbois, which is in fact a noble calling, no matter how many points one must miss to do it.

[Faust]

I rather suspect he was trolling Aronofsky fanbois, which is in fact a noble calling, no matter how many points one must miss to do it.

Must be, but unless things have changed a lot in the last couple of years that is still only a set of about ten people.

[Cuddlefish]

Yeah, I stopped reading when he compared it to Saw.

And, frankly, I don't give a crap what y'all think, Aronofski has a near perfect record, compared to other working directors.

Sure, some of Black Swan was a little exaggerated, or at times unreaistic (*gasp* an unrealistic movie?), and sure, this movie may not compare to some pieces of classic cinema, but let's compare it to, say, Michael Bay (who won't just give up and die already) or someone like Scorcese, who was brilliant, but tapered out and settled so much into his particuar style, that you can predict the shots as they're coming. Similar to TimBurton, who's Edward Scissor Hands and Beetlejuice were fucking great, but then he did Nightmare Before Christmas, and every movie he's made since has been a rehash of everything he's done prior. And DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON M. NIGHT SHAMYLAN! I swear to god, if I had aids, I'd bite my lip and spit in that guiys mouth.

Thing is, Aronofski has done VASTLY different styles and genres (compare The Fountain with, say, Requiem for a Dream), which seems to be something that most modern directors shy away from,as they try so hard to develop thier own "flavor" or style, instead of letting the movie itself dictate its own flavor or style (Yes, believe it or not, the movie KNOWS what it wants to be. We get bad movies when directors IGNORE what a movie wants to be [Bay] and when directors exaggerate or draw attention to one particular bit of what makes the movie good, instead of just letting it be what it is [Burton]).

Regardless, I have to say I'm a bit worried about his next movie, whatever it may be, because it seems that he's gone almost full circle with Black Swan (stylisticaly) which is an indicator that he will start "plateau-ing," himsef, which I'm sure is sort of unavoidable.

Like it or not, my original point is: Black Swan was better than any Disney movie ever. Plus, Disney hates women. And Jews. And Children, so, fuck you Baloo.

[Faust]

The fountain will always be my favourite DA file, but you are right, he hasn't put a foot wrong yet.
Both the wrestler and black swan overlap thematically to the point that the films feel like a duo.

[Eater of Clowns]

Aronofsky is talented, and I thoroughly enjoy his work, but he really isn't all that varied.  FictionPuss has a point the last time we discussed Aronofsky.  Basically the guy just makes the audience suffer, throwing shitpile after torturous shitpile at protagonists.  My first impression after seeing The Wrestler was that it was a really great movie - to see precisely once.  Anything further than that is just an exercise in sadomasochism.

Now in his quest to obliterate all hope from our lives, he has very beautiful and poignant moments in every movie.  For that, I can't hate him.

As far as indie directors though, I don't think he has the ability of, say, Danny Boyle.

This has been a slow movie year for me.  I haven't been to the theater since Inception, and I really want to check out Black Swan, True Grit, 127 Hours, and Social Network.

[Faust]

Aronofsky is talented, and I thoroughly enjoy his work, but he really isn't all that varied.  FictionPuss has a point the last time we discussed Aronofsky.  Basically the guy just makes the audience suffer, throwing shitpile after torturous shitpile at protagonists.  My first impression after seeing The Wrestler was that it was a really great movie - to see precisely once.  Anything further than that is just an exercise in sadomasochism.

Now in his quest to obliterate all hope from our lives, he has very beautiful and poignant moments in every movie.  For that, I can't hate him.

As far as indie directors though, I don't think he has the ability of, say, Danny Boyle.

This has been a slow movie year for me.  I haven't been to the theater since Inception, and I really want to check out Black Swan, True Grit, 127 Hours, and Social Network.

I wouldn't agree with that, at least not for the fountain. There is a strong current of sorrow through it but very little of his physical torture style. The only film of his that I'd find masochistic to watch again would be Requiem for a dream.

[Triple Zero]

So I saw "Green Hornet" this weekend. I'm not really familiar with the comic superhero, but I wonder, is the premise of the original series as well that the Hornet is a bumbling fool without any powers or skills, while his sidekick does all the work and is the only of the two that actually has a superpower (being "bullet time", matrix style kung-fu fighting)?

While the film was absolutely ridiculous, it was entertaining.

It also reminded me again that I should really avoid 3D films as long as they cost €3 extra. It just doesn't really add anything, IMO. Human vision uses very many different cues for depth perception, and most of those are already provided by regular "2D" screen projection. "3D" films only add stereopsis, which isn't all that important when you're not actually using it for anything, such as hand-eye coordination. The end result? After about half an hour I hardly notice I'm watching a 3D film anymore, unless I pay special attention to the effects.

Additionally, since most 3D films are English, they got subtitles, which are always projected at the same depth, slightly in front of the screen, regardless of whether they partially occlude an object that actually sticks out further into the room. And even if they don't, they help emphasize the fact that you're looking at a screen (even if you'd guess it's a few feet closer than it actually is).

I might give it one more try for some nice 3D animated kids film, if I can go to the matinee which is probably dubbed in Dutch.