Diary

Diary (2010) from Tim Hetherington on Vimeo.


Diary.  Short, mostly just imagery, shot by Tim Hetherington, a reporter killed in Libya.  Sad.

Love my Life

Love my Life  is a movie based on a manga about two lesbians.  It probably makes a cool comic, but the episodic nature of the story meant that the film didn't have any real focus or conflict.  There were a lot of scenes of happy lovers...not a good movie to watch when you're lonely :'(

The soundtrack by noodles is really great.

The movie ends in an epic lesbian makeout scene.

Mi Vida Loca

SAD GIRL

What the hell can you even say about Mi Vida Loca?

Not much really.  The movie is about gangs in Echo Park in Los Angeles....that place is pretty gentrified now, though.

Peep game.  Today on Deal Pulp there is a deal for MoviePosterShop.com: $10 for $20 + free shipping.  They have a pretty huge selection.  If only I had some extra funds....

What a coincidence.  Right after I watched Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, it was featured on Design*Sponge.  Peep the cool post.

huh.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is gonna play a beat cop in the upcoming Batman?!

Wait and see, I guess?!

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

Caught Cat on a Hot Tin Roof today.  SRY 2 SAY that I....didn't like it?  It was basically a bunch of people screaming at each other and talking their (uninteresting) problems out.  Maybe the play is better.
Also: Paul newman had a scary face dear god.

A Zed and Two Noughts

A friend told me to watch A Zed and Two Noughts a long time ago and I finally watched it.  I really enjoyed it because it reminded me of Seijun Suzuki's (my favorite director) surrealism (albeit with a more fleshed out story).  The twins' obsession with decay and rot was really interesting and made me wonder about director Peter Greenway's personal neuroses.  Oh, and I thought the music really made the movie work.

Interestingly enough, there is a dead cat decomposing near my block, I pass it daily when I go on walks...

Wendy and Lucy

Wendy and Lucy is one of those slow, deliberately filmed movies.  Michelle Williams looks pretty with this hairdo.  It was kind of interesting to me because I went on a long, ambling 5 month road trip so the "drifter" thing is familiar, but at the same time I wonder if I'd like this more if I understood the bond between people and their dogs...?

Father of the Bride (1950)

The original Father of the Bride is a touching father/daughter (a dynamic not often explored) movie.  I haven't seen the Steve Martin remake, so I can't really comment.  The film holds up pretty well in contemporary times, though...but man, that wedding dress sure doesn't.  How awful wedding dresses used to be, eh?  There was a cool nightmare sequence that was interesting.

The Stanford Theatre  showed this film as part of an Elizabeth Taylor retrospective (rest her soul).  She was so beautiful!  I'm gonna catch Cat on a Hot Tin Roof next week, too.

Adventureland

Adventureland covers what happens after the "teen movie" time period in one's life...the quarterlife crisis (popular topic on the blogosphere).  Since I'm in this sort of post-college crisis myself, Adventureland was relatable.  The characters were really sitcomesque, though.  Am I weird for thinking both Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart are cute?

The Perfect Score

lol @ ScarJo being in The Perfect Score.  She had cool hair, though.  I guess this movie isn't as bad as you'd think.  The plot revolves around a group of teens who conspire to steal the answers to the SAT.   A lot of the rhetoric about how standardized testing is bad really rings true, but the feel good Hollywood ending was kinda whack.    I also think it was kind of refreshing to see the Asian guy not play a model minority role.

READY TO WATCH SOME MOVIEZ.  Tickets from a deal from buywithme.com arrived in the mail.

movie posters

An interesting link on Thrillist today.  Cool movie posters from a one Viktor Hertz.  Check out the one for Point Break, haha.

#swag

rockin' my Hausu tee

trailers

Some interesting trailers that were shown before Jane Eyre.

Super corny voiceover, but this trailer is cut really well and it kinda looks interesting...I'll see how the reviews are.  I actually saw the trailer for Tree of Life somewhere before, forget when...

This looks like it could be somewhat boring, but I studied history in college & am still pretty interested in stories like The Conspirator.  I'm debating whether to see this in the theater or on DVD.

Jane Eyre (2011)

 Social engagements, a bad SVU  watching habit and a self-mandated "read every day" rule have made it so I  am watching fewer movies than usual :'(  I did make it out to see Jane Eyre today, though.  I really need to read the novel.  I enjoyed the film a lot...I felt there was a femininity in how it was filmed that I really liked...the camera gaze would shift to blooming flowers in the trees, to something else, to the couple.  It was pretty.  It may have just been me, or the theater I was in, but some of the scenes filmed in the dark were really grainy?

the poster is cool

A Streetcar Named Desire

I think I really need to read the play (or see it) to really understand the finer details of A Streetcar Named Desire.  But man, isn't Marlon Brando great?

Today's deal on buywithme.com is 4 AMC silver tickets for $24.  Here's the math: that means $6/ticket.  Silver tickets are only good on movies that have already been out for 2 weeks, so this would be good for any blockbusters you might wanna see--I hate seeing popular movies when they first come out; too crowded/loud.  

You know I bought one!

The trailer for Potiche was played when I saw Heartbeats.  I'm pretty pumped up.  It's coming out next week~

Les Amours Imaginaires

I really liked Heartbeats, a film about a love triangle.  Marie ^ from the film  had such charming style.  This was the first French Canadian film I've seen, I believe.  Parts of it were a little too "hip people doing hip things" and by the third arty sex scene I was kinda over cello and close ups of body parts...but overall still really great.  Awesome soundtrack.  When I read that directer Xavier Dolan is only 22, I was shocked.  To have made something this good, so young~

poster is cool too.

Some cool tracks from the soundtrack:

The Philadelphia Story

Call me a player hater but, uh, The Philadelphia Story is a story that need not be told.  Dumb, capricious rich girl receives a bunch of unwarranted praise from a bunch of dudes who she all plays for fools.  Also, lol at how she straight up drove drunk in this.

霍元甲

Fearless  is kind of a random title probably chosen by marketing people.  In Chinese the film is just the guy's ^ name.  Beautifully filmed.  I kind of have a soft spot for martial arts movies.

Speed

I re-watched Speed  for some reasons.  Uh, yeah, what can I even say about this movie?


Apparently nothing.

Anyway, I remember when I was a kid seeing something on Entertainment Tonight or some similar such show about a lady who entered some kind of contest or raffle.  She was homeless, and she could pick between two prizes...a million dollars or the bus from Speed.


GUESS WHAT SHE CHOSE.

retail therapy.

I just ordered the House t-shirt from Criterion.

Footloose

Footloose isn't as bad as I remembered it.  It does drag as it goes on, though.  It was interesting to see young Sarah Jessica Parker...although at the end where the two dudes beat the other two dudes up, like really hardcore, and the girls are all like YEAH WOO HOO AWESOME...that was pretty terrible.  Like, do people really like seeing other people get the crap beat out of them? ...what?

Although, I must say that a prom with GLITTER RAIN would be awesome.

A lot of shots of feet being, uh, "footloose."  Not sure if they're were just trying to go with the flow on that one or if we had some foot fetish people on this crew.

It was the "special edition" DVD.  lol @ this movie having a "special edition."

Also, this movie is awesome for inspiring this:

Umshini Wam

OK, I read about Umshini Wam on the urbn blog.  Sad to say, but I really didn't like it (although I really love Korine's Gummo).  I guess this just wasn't funny.  Rolling around in wheelchairs and wearing pikachu/gloomy bear PJ suits is....stuff a teenager would find funny?  Something like that.  OH WELL.  If you want to see for yourself, it's on vbs.tv.

Emir

I really loved Emir in spite of the fact that musicals usually drive me crazy.  Maybe it's because I'm Filipino and so is this film.  I've been longing for a renaissance in Filipino cinema, but it seems to be a long way off... which is why I found this film so impressive, the production values and acting quality were quite good compared to most Filipino movies I've seen.

Filipinos have a flare for melodrama....I once saw a commercial for a Filipino TV show (it may have been a movie) that consisted of--I shit you not--a carousel turning in slow-mo, a guy running up to the carousel, looking around for somebody, not finding them, then a zoom in to the guy's face where a single tear rolls down his cheek.  It was 100% serious.  So yeah, Filipinos have a tendency to overdo the emotionality in cinema, and do what they call "OA" or "over acting."  The whole OA concept seems to just be a way of life...and we all know that corny overacting really lends itself to musicals, which is part of what really made Emir work, I think.

The film follows Amelia ^ a Filipino girl from the middle of nowhere that goes overseas to be a maid.  The story kind of both pokes fun at/is a tribute to the "OFW" or "overseas Filipino worker."  The story actually follows Amelia until she is like middle aged...they used the same actress which works, I guess, with Asians because you can never really tell how old we are, anyway...

Some of the ballads really dragged but the dancey numbers were really fun.  Oh and, Filipino names are awesome.  Sup, Boyong?

I brought my mom with me to see the film because she actually grew up in the Philippines and speaks good Tagalog.  I really lucked out that this film showed right here in my hometown of San Jose during the SJ portion of the SFIAAFF.  Unfortunately, after this film, all the festival excitement that's been brewing lately is over!

California is a Place

I heard about the California is a Place film series while at the Short Attention Span Environmental Film Festival.  I went home and googled the project and found that they're all posted on the website, so I watched them all today!  They look great in Vimeo HD.  For some reason, though, none of them but Scrapertown  (my thoughts on that short are here) are on IMDB.

Uppercut was actually filmed right here in Silicon Valley.  It's a short about a bunch of computer engineer dudes from Google and whatnot that all have a "fight club."  It kinda makes me wonder how many other similar clubs there are out there.  A lot of the rhetoric where the guys were talking about how fighting "makes them feel alive" etc was kind of like l-o-l to me...but still interesting.

El Rey is a short about the Mariachi scene in Los Angeles.  The guy they interviewed, who is a trumpet player, is obviously very passionate about mariachi music.  It made me jealous that this guy had something in his life that he loved that much (ha-ha).  It seems kind of judgmental to say, but I personally don't really like mariachi music and I would always wonder things like "who the hell are the people who listen to this?" so it was interesting to actually see those people in the film.

Honey Pie  is a short about the guy who makes real dolls...kind of a topic I didn't know I was interested in until I saw it.  There is also a cool documentary that I can't for the life of me remember the name of....that I saw online..about the users of real dolls and that was super interesting too..

Cannonball is a short about dudes who skateboard in empty swimming pools in foreclosed houses in Fresno.  Uh, yeah...I don't know, I personally think skating in a pool sounds fun, but not so fun that I'd want to clean out a bunch of dirty abandoned pools?  I mean, isn't it fun to get some skateboarding variety rather than swimming in empty pool after empty pool?  OK, forget it, what do I know, anyway?

Big Vinny owned car dealerships. He was livin' large...until the economy tanked.  This was sad...I used to work at a car dealership that is now gone too, so it makes me think about that...oh, and how the world is ending cuz gas is FOUR DOLLARS A GALLON NOW OMG.

I couldn't find any pictures of Borderland, but it's about a few people who patrol the California/Mexico border.  The wall shown in the film is pretty crazy looking...I've driven all around the country but I'd never seen it.  I guess it's a part of California that you don't really ever drive to unless you live there.  When I was in Texas, I didn't see any wall like this...actually, I was struck by how the "border" was basically just wilderness...so uh anyway yeah this was interesting.




I really liked this series because I am a proud Californian myself..but really, anyone would enjoy them...and you can watch them all online so there's no excuse.

Short Attention Span Environmental Film Festival

I went out to the Short Attention Span Environmental Film Festival last night at the David Brower Center in Berkeley.  When I heard about the festival, I was debating whether or not to go but after all the fun I had seeing films at Cinequest and SFIAAFF, I decided to make the 45 minute drive up to Berkeley, and I'm glad I did!

The very first short was a sort of documentary/infomercial for a nonprofit group, and at first I was afraid that the whole festival was gonna be like that, but thankfully it wasn't.

Pigeon: Impossible was the first film.  I'm usually a hard sell when it comes to CG movies, but I thought this was actually cute and really well done.  But hey! You can watch the whole thing online here:

Hairytale was the next short.  I can't find any pictures online, but it was a documentary about a guy in the UK who used to own a hair salon and realized how much hair gets thrown into landfills...so then he dedicated his life to finding alternative uses for discarded hair and made...a hair chair.  Had a funny final line.

Salt (2009) was next, not to be confused with the Angelina Jolie movie of the same name.  This film followed photographer Murray Fredericks (check out his photography on the website, it's amazing!) on his journeys to literally the middle of nowhere in Australia.  He explained the concept that the place where he was going, he could see NOTHING anywhere on the horizon for 360 degrees.   CRAZY.  I had no idea places like that still existed anywhere in the world (other than the ocean).  It raised a lot of questions for me...   This film has a lot of breathtaking shots. As I understood it, Fredericks shot all the footage himself over several years and then later it was edited down into the film.  He had a really great eye for the shots, but I guess that makes sense because he's a photographer.  In the end, though, the film was a bit long for my tastes...I'd rather go see an exhibition of the photography.

Scrapertown is a documentary short from a series about California called California is a Place (I will definitely be watching these later).  It follows a group of kids in East Oakland who are part of the 'scraper bike movement', where people fix up their bikes with interesting paint, decor and decorate the spokes.  The bikes are pretty cool.  The organizers of the festival told us that they were gonna try to get a kid from the film to come speak at the festival, but he didn't show.  Boo!

The Crab Revolution , was an awesome, adorable French animated short.  I loved it!  French just seemed to be the perfect language for this story.  Or maybe the voice actor was just really good?  Watch here:

I didn't see Fat Tire Fury on IMDB.  It's basically footage of a mountain...bike...unicycler.  The ultimate rush??

I couldn't find any suitable pictures of Living Lightly.....chronicles of a farming cult with a scythe (yes, scythe) fetish.  I don't mean player hate here but uh...yeah.

A few photos of the evening:

cool kinetic sculpture at the Brower Center. I wish this were video!

 DEEP FRIED PIZZA at Sumo Grub--not a bad spot to grab a bite after a late showing in Berkeley as they are open late.  They have tons of deep fried desserts...for the heart attack in you

our friend KJ wore awesome bright gold shoes.

Jodorowsky Posters

So, there is a really interesting post over at 50 Watts (a really cool design blog) featuring contemporary Jodorowsky posters from Poland.  Peep game, it's way cool.


For more Polish posters.

Fish Tank

Hooray for women directors.   The overall mood of Fish Tank is TENSE.  Like, really tense.  For me anyway. I kept waiting for crazy shit to happen.  It was kind of...hard for me to watch, especially alone without anyone to share the emotions with.

It was really interesting that this film wasn't in widescreen...a lot of people on IMDB weren't feelin' it, but I didn't mind.

Fish Tank is good. Like, really good. It follows troubled teen Mia in a slum somewhere in the UK.  She likes to dance.  etc etc.  It was one of the few films I've seen lately that made me actually want to see what people were saying about it, so I went to see what the chatter was like on the IMDB board (even though the boards on IMDB are populated by trolls and morons).  There were some people comparing it to An Education, and I totally agree.  Fish Tank is a good An Education.

Lincoln Lawyer groupon

So, today on Groupon they have tickets to The Lincoln Lawyer for $7.  UH, LOL?  Does anybody else find this kind of hilarious for some reason?  Still..not a bad price if you were planning on seeing it anyway. I considered purchasing the groupon after seeing that the film is doing OK on Rotten Tomatoes...but really, I'm not much of a Matthew McConaughey fan.  If anything I guess I'll see it on Netflix...but the deal is out there for those who want it!

Ladri di Biciclette

Bicycle Thieves.  Is pretty sad.  A down on his luck guy chasing all over Rome trying to find his stole bike.  All before the bike gets stolen in the beginning of the movie you know it's going to be stolen and you have all this anxiety about it as an audience member.

This may be a blaspheme, but I think a loose remake in modern day NYC might be kinda cool.

Another blaspheme, but I also did find this kinda slow.  I don't much care for older Italian cinema (SHOOT ME), I guess I don't "get" it.  I do watch it anyway, though.

The subtitles on the netflix streaming version of this suck.

The French Connection

The French Connection is basically a movie about a couple of cops who tail these drug dealers around NYC or as the boss dude in the film puts it, they "go all around town jerking off" (paraphrase)...and yet it is so much more than that.  There is something really interesting about the camera work in The French Connection, like how they filmed a hat in the back of a car or a girls feet peddling a bicycle.  There is also  a very subtle humor in the film that I really liked.  My favorite scene was them tearing the car apart looking for drugs.  Somehow, that was really fascinating.  Oh! And the "Tailing Frog 1" scene was funny, too.

PS. More pictures of Chickenproof at SFIAFF have come to light.  Here is me, director of Chubby Can Kill my homie Kevin Ung & my homie Kathleen at  the Chickenproof screening @ New People. Yep, great pose from me, eh?  That's what I look like.  I am the most photogenic person on the PLANET.

OMG BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

Drag me to Hell

Drag me to Hell was OK.  I'm not really a huge Sam Raimi fan, although I did enjoy the first of The Evil Dead.  The ending for Drag me to Hell was kind of...bleak.  I kind of thought angry gypsy lady was like, awful.  YOU WON'T GIVE ME A FREE PASS WELL DIE...!  Uh, what?

Also, am I weird for thinking Justin Long is kinda hot?

Pink Floyd the Wall

Amidst all the excitement lately I made it to a midnight showing of Pink Floyd the Wall at Camera 3. I probably won't make it out to another midnight movie until Rock 'n' Roll High School in July.  I'd never seen The Wall, but I am familiar with Pink Floyd's music in a cursory way.  I actually think Dark Side of the Moon is a better album, but what can you do?

I thought the animated sequences were really great.  You can really tell that animation director Gerald Scarfe worked in political cartoons....the animation from the film had the same sort of drippy, evil looking feel that political cartoons get.

The whole concept is kind of overwrought, but I think that anyone who's ever felt really sad can get understand what Roger Waters is trying to get at... "The Wall" as a metaphor seems almost too easy, but at the same time you can't think of anything more apt.  It's something insurmountable, uniform, soulless...it is the problem, but we're all a part of it.  And blah, blah blah.

Cinequest 2011

WELL, Cinequest is over once again!  A friend was gonna hook me up with a pass to encore day, but they weren't really showing the programs I wanted to see.  Boo!  I missed The Dead and Madly in Love and, of course, the showing of Nosferatu (1922).  I really regret that one the most. It's one of my favorite films of all time and I really should've made time for it!  Well, for the Cinequest events/films I did attend...it was real.

Chickenproof

On Friday I headed out with a couple of friends to the Chickenproof shorts program at the SFIAAFF to see my friend Kevin Ung's short, Chubby Can Kill.  The program was at New People, a sort of gallery-cum-cafe-cum-shop-cum-cinema in San Francisco.  I'd been before, it's a cool spot, but I'd never had the chance to see anything at the Viz Cinema (they show Japanese films!) prior to this event.  I hope to catch more in the coming months.

The theme of the night as I interpreted it seemed to be unlikely heroes and surprise endings.  

cool poster

Masala Mama was the first film; a funny little comic book themed short.

Next up was Junko's Shamisen.  This was filmed with an interesting mix of live action, stop motion and animation...it looked really cool.  The story was a sort of Japanese fairy tale (not sure if it's a real one).  It was a kind of a cool Japanese/Canadian vibe with parts in English and Japanese.  This one showed at SXSW too!

Hang in There was a stop motion using paper dolls...it looks a lot cooler in motion than it does in the above picture.  It was cute/disturbing...I think this was a music video, I can't find it on IMDB!  

For some reason I couldn't find Gophers in Space on IMDB, either.  At first I was like "eh" about this, but the surprise ending was funny enough to win me over.  It feels like something that probably started as a joke between friends and became a movie.

Amazonia was another CG short.  It was cute and entertaining and it's clear that a lot of work, heart, and soul went into this short!

To Wander in Pandemonium  was cool in spite of the slightly overwrought title.  This was one of the two most professional looking films screened that night.  I discovered during the Q&A that the director, Edward Kim , went to UCLA (my alma matter, although I did not study film).  COOL~?

The Godmother was a sort of action-comedy-parody-homage to both The Godfather and Jersey Shore (from what I could tell).  This was a USC thesis film...they always say that film students at USC get a lot of money to work with, and it really showed with this film, I think.  It looked really professional and I enjoyed it. We actually had a chance to converse with the director and the producer after the screening and they were both really cool.

Finally, my friend's film Chubby Can Kill was the last film screened.  It's about a fat guy ^ who decides to take control of shit, etc.  It was funny and I really liked the color palette in the scenes in the video shop.  I thought the acting was all quite good too and that "Chubby" did particularly well/was funny.  It wouldn't have worked out without him, I don't think!  I was really glad to finally see my friend's film!  It's crazy to think that we all pretty much grew up together.

Some shots of New People--

my camera sucks. this is my friend Tammy, who was kind enough to drive...but my camera made her the same color as the orange walls ^^;

the theater interior is pretty snazzy with light decorations.  a bit much for a theater, but still cool.

Q&A after the screenings.

cool chandelier detail.