We'll all be scouring the shelves of both video stores and our own living rooms for just the right movie for tonight's Halloween fesitivities. Though a year has rarely gone by where I don't watch Poltergeist, Don't Look Now, or Rosemary's Baby, and let's face it, if I don't watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown at least once, then I might as well skip Halloween and go straight onto that holiday with the cranberry sauce.

I'm thinking that this year, in addition to a Charlie Brown screening, and a highly probable glimpse of a personal fave, the Paul Lynde Halloween Special (a 1978 nugget, featuring the greatest disco performance of "That Old Black Magic" that Florence Henderson's probably ever done...), I think tonight's options may very well include a favorite I discovered last year....The Mario Bava short "The Drop of Water" from the Bava trilogy (of terror, though not starring Karen Black...sadly) Black Sabbath from 1963. The final of the 3, Bava's "Drop of Water," when I carelessly watched it last autumn alone at like 1 a.m., creeped me out pretty badly...a reworking of "The Tell Tale Heart," it's a perfect short horror film, spare dialogue, creepy ornate sets, reliant on sound effects and one heart-stoppingly memorable plastic face. It's so reminiscent of a recurring nightmare I had as a child, that it's unthinkable that I hadn't seen it at a very young age and had it buried in my subconscious for years. Primal, great.

If you're looking for communal gasps, nothing can top Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse , although the Japanese masterpiece, finally being released here before its sure to be woebegone American remake next year, is coming out AFTER Halloween...November 9th, I believe. Well, don't miss it when it's out, although it should have been priority number one tonight for all the uninitiated. The scariest ghost movie in many a moon, Pulse needs no introduction to most of our readers, but suffice it to say that its apocalytpic ghosts-on-the-internet concept is hardly as goofy as it sounds. Disquieting and unforgettable, see it before all the assholes start claiming "It's not that scary." It is.

Since Pulse has a couple weeks to go, there's always the Land of the Dead Directors' Cut, freshly out on DVD this week. Both underscrutinized and overanalyzed at once, Romero's 4th zombie movie was just a big fucking wrecking ball of a movie that refused to give into any moviemaking trends. Forget the social commentary tonight—dude, that zombie just pulled out that guy's heart through his MOUTH! Then, it could be a good time to get caught up on your Rob Zombie, finally catch The Wicker Man, take another look at Cujo, one of the best horrors of the 80s and with the completely awesome Dee Wallace, or grab that "Well, I was going to put my money toward groceries this week instead but...." Val Lewton Box Set. Happy Halloween everybody...and repeat with me: The Exorcist is kinda boring.

Movie-going out in the provinces sometimes has its benefits. Sure, we get new stuff 3-4 weeks after they hit the Big Apple—if at all in some cases—but with hometown critics only marginally worth paying attention to, it’s possible to walk into that odd title on a whim with almost no prior sense of the prevailing critical winds and come out pleasantly surprised as happened to me this weekend with Anand Tucker’s Shopgirl and the omnibus Three…Extremes. Conversely, a brief holding period for hotly anticipated works can often serve to pleasurably deepen anticipation and potentially skew reaction, especially when the majority of responses swing towards one end of the spectrum—the critical drubbing Atom Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies has taken since its Cannes premiere set me up to love it, but when confronted with the real thing…

So, Shopgirl, allegedly a romantic comedy, except it’s not terribly romantic, nor very funny, which, unless Tucker completely eviscerated the source material, seems completely by design. It’s awkward and self-conscious where I’d expected rom-com polish, cold where it seems like it should be warm, and vice versa down the line. I once harbored a rather unhealthy obsession with L.A. Story (also penned by Martin), and Shopgirl’s not unlike what that film would have felt like had it been framed as a dream that took place mostly in restaurants and bedrooms after dark. Martin’s probably the worst thing about it—playing a “symbolic logician,” he attempts character through constantly squinting, so thankfully Jason Schwartzman steps in to splendidly, manically balance a film that pivots on Danes’s delicate, strange performance. Still can’t decide if the whole thing’s a boy’s fantasy of a girl, a girl’s fantasy as imagined by a boy, or just, more benignly, a fantasy, but with a score so insistent and overly dramatic (like a dumbed-down Contempt--in a good way), a tone so thoroughly off (reminded me a bit of Deepa Mehta’s similarly off-putting Republic of Love), and a long, improbable cameo from Mark Kozelek…I couldn’t help but be engaged. Tucker’s set to direct the films of Philip Pullman’s fantastic His Dark Materials series, and somehow Shopgirl’s aesthetic gives me confidence he’s up to the challenge.

Poor Atom, watching Where the Truth Lies is somewhat akin to listening to a later Beach Boy’s record like Love You: flashes of the great stuff, delight that everyone’s still standing, and a healthy dose of cringing embarrassment. Alison Lohman, who mostly worked in Matchstick Men is way out of her league here, though I can’t help but wonder if Egoyan isn’t projecting—he does after all sit the ingénue down for a highly “serious” chat with her “editors” a who’s-who of past Egoyan collaborators: Arsinee Khanjian, Gabrielle Rose, and Don McKellar (best fake moustache of the year). “Are you ready to handle this ‘big project’” they demand of her/him? Not quite, but it’s fun watching them both stumble around in the dark. When it hits—the vintage polio telethon, the arch Michael Dyanna score with its questioning oboe and nervous strings, Maury Chaykin as the most overdetermined gangster in film history—it feels like Egoyan’s found a way to bring his cold-calculations to bear on Hollywood glitz. When it doesn’t—the sex is rote and surely disappointed the five other dudes sitting by themselves in the house, Lohman, again, is not up to this (yet), and the narrative’s more convoluted than fascinatingly labyrinthine—well, it’s hard not to feel like we’re back in Ararat again…Still, I kinda love it, and we may look back and find that Egoyan’s pulled a fast one on us…even if THE FUCKING BUTLER did it.

If folks left Three…Extremes during Park Chan-wook’s middle segment “Cut” and came back for the Miike closer, they’d be in for a largely recommendable cinematic diptych. As it stands, that’s the one that seemed to garner the most positive response, so it seems the Reverseblog’s meager attempts to derail the Park bandwagon are going unnoticed. “Cut” is worthless, and proves all this revenge business a zero-sum game—his movies don’t exist beyond themselves except perhaps in a lingering waft of shammery that comes with each recollection of his intended-to-shock gorey exclamation points. Better instead to pay attention to a filmmaker like Fruit Chan, whose work is largely unknown in the U.S., and whose short “Dumplings” opens the film on a mildly queasy high. What’s “in the dumplings” is the question, but the answer’s kinda boring, and the finale seems dictated by the title of collection, but his use of music, camera placements, and handling of his performers suggest a talented filmmaker that we could use more of (his Public Toilet is pretty gonzo if you can find it…). And as for the Miike’s “The Box”…a surprisingly mild, yet creepy ghost story. It’s nice, not unlike what the folks behind Mirrormask would have made if they had brains, or a clue.

Now, many of us at Reverse Shot make no bones about our admiration for much of M. Night Shyamalan's cinema. And his rousing speech last night at ShowEast just further cements my own belief that his filmmaking strategies, classical Hollywood yet as visually enticing and precise as anyone working currently in the studios, are as essential as ever.

Lashing out against the Steven Soderbergh-backed HDNet-enhanced plan to even further shrink the window between theatrical distribution and home video DVD release by simultaneously releasing films in theaters, cable, and video stores, Shyamalan passionately argued for more traditional movie-watching methods. As reported in The Hollywood Reporter:

In an interview before his speech, Shyamalan said he planned to ask theater owners at ShowEast's Final Night Banquet and Award Ceremony "for zero tolerance on this -- to say, 'If you're gonna release a movie in another medium, then you're not going to get into our theaters' -- because at the end of the day, they hold all the cards."

Alarmist though he may be, Shyamalan really threw down the gauntlet: "If you tell audiences there's no difference between a theatrical experience and a DVD, then that's it, game's over, and that whole art form is going to go away slowly," And even: "The Sixth Sense' DVD bought my house. You know what? Take my house."

Surely the matter is more delicate than this, for it's possible that day-date releasing could get movies to places where they otherwise wouldn't be, which could help rebuild the art audience...BUT Shyamalan's point is strong, valid, and essential. Most maddening is that the first of these simultaneously released films, Soderbergh's atrocious Bubble (which means that you can see a bad movie on video, cable AND the theater all at once!) will undoubtedly win praise and indie cred from those who fall for its gimmick, while Shyamalan, upholding the qualities of aesthetic control and visual expression we should all be maintaining, is probably headed for future critical drubbings. Shyamalan's The Village demanded to be seen in the theater, for it is cinema. Bubble fuctions as a home movie might, and therefore its distribution makes more literal sense. As long as directors like Soderbergh abbreviate their art as a way of packaging it for a different medium, the possibilities for widescreen experts like Shyamalan ever dwindle.

Hopefully, it's all alarmist, but as we were when The Village came out, we're with you, Night.

It's here! The day has FINALLY come! Nearly a year since they started screening it for the press, and after months of me breathlessly waiting to see how they would recut and/or market the gosh-darned thing, Gore "My Film is Considerably Less Fun than a Frickin' Disneyland Ride that was Built in 1955" Verbinski's The Weather Man arrives in theaters. I really don't have much to say about the lopsided thing, except that it's not really deserving of much more than a general smirk. But just in case they took one year to release it to figure out how to deal with the "Camel-Toe" problem, I feel like the public should know...What I refer to is when Michael Caine's angrily teeth-gritting (natch), poorly American-accented (natch), old (natch) father to Nicolas Cage (huh?) disapproves of his fat granddaughter's wardrobe. "Do you know what they call her at school?" he scowls to Cage's downtrodden dad: "Camel-Toe!"

Cue a succession of shots...a montage if you will....of close-ups of young girls' crotches. Presumably to instruct us in the pleasures and problems of "Camel-Toes." Now, everyone likes a randy little tangent, but the daughter in question, guys, is....twelve? 13 at the oldest. So all I'm sayin' is, should the infamous (only in my mind and maybe the 3 other people in the screening with me on that crisp autumn 2004 afternoon...except Peter Travers probably) "Camel-Toe scene" be excised, remember it well, folks. Men make movies. They do, indeed.

80- Joe Jack Talcum- The Dead Milkmen "Punk Rock Girl"
79- Eddie Van Halen- Van Halen “Mean Streets”
78- Johnny Ramone- The Ramones "I Wanna be Sedated'
77-Slash- Guns n' Roses “November Rain”
76- Nancy Wilson- Heart "Barracuda"
75- Wayne Kramer- MC5 "Rocket Reducer No.62”
74- Lou Reed- The Velvet Undergound "Rock 'n' Roll"
73- Johnny Greenwood- Radiohead “Street Spirit”
72- Ace Frehley- Kiss "Love Gun"
71- John Echols- Love “No Matter What You Do”
70- Bob Mould- Husker Du "Reoccurring Dreams"
69- Scotty Moore- w/ Elvis Presley "Mystery Train"
68- Steve Diggle- The Buzzcocks "Lipstick"
67- Robert Quine- Richard Hell and the Voidoids “Downtown at Dawn”
66- Jonathan Richman "Pablo Picasso"
65- Eddie Van Halen- Van Halen “Eruption”
64- Rikk Agnew- The Adolescents "OC Life"
63- Eric Randall- Steely Dan "Reelin in the Years"
62- Doug Marsch- Built to Spill “Carry the Zero”
61- Billy Gibbons- ZZ Top "La Grange"
60- Kirk Hammett- Metallica “One”
59- Angus Young- AC/DC "If You Want Blood"
58- Johnny Marr- The Smiths “Shoplifters of the World”
57- Richie Blackmore- Rainbow “Catch the Rainbow”
56- Rick Neilsen- Cheap Trick "I Want You to Want Me"
55- J. Mascis- Dinosaur Jr. "What Else is New?"
54- Dean Parks- Steely Dan “Haitian Divorce”
53- Richie Blackmore- Deep Purple "Highway Star"
52- Robert Smith- The Cure “Untitled”
51- Edgar Froese- Tangerine Dreams "Ashes To Ashes
50- J. Spaceman- Spacemen 3 "Come Down Softly To My Soul"
49- George Harrison- The Beatles "Let it Be"
48- J. Mascis- Dinosaur Jr. “Get Me”
47- Doug Gillard- Guided by Voices “Tight Globes”
46- Tom Herman- Pere Ubu "Street Waves"
45- Robbie Robertson- w/ Bob Dylan "Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat"
44- Bob Mothersbaugh- Devo “Smart Patrol”
43- Mick Ronson- David Bowie "Ziggy Stardust"
42- Josh Homme- Queens of the Stone Age "You Got a Killer Scene There Man"
41- Neil Young- “Cowboy in the Sand”
40- Richie Castellano- Blue Oyster Cult “Godzilla”
39- Chris Bell “I Am the Cosmos”
38- Tommy Iommi- Black Sabbath “Children of the Grave”
37- Pete Laughner- Rocket from the Tombs "Ain't it Fun"
36- Richard Lloyd/ Tom Verlaine- Television “Marquee Moon”
35- Roy Wood- The Move "The Last Thing on my Mind"
34- Kim Thayl- Soundgarden “Black Hole Sun”
33- Duane Askalan- w/ Roky Erickson “A Cold Night for Alligators”
32- Dave Murray- Iron Maiden "The Clairvoyant"
31- Christopher Guest/ Nigel Tufnel- Spinal Tap "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You"
30- Mike Campbell- w/ Tom Petty “The Waiting”
29- Brian Howe- Yes “Starship Trooper”
28- Robert Fripp- w/ Brian Eno "Baby's on Fire"
27- Chris Brokaw- Come "Saints Around My Neck"
26- Adrian Belew- King Crimson "Elephant Talk"
25- Robert Quine- w/ Lou Reed “Waves of Fear”
24- Robert Quine- Richard Hell & the Voidoids “Kid with the Replaceable Head”
23- Poison Ivy- The Cramps "Human Fly"
22- Slash- Guns n' Roses “Sweet Child o' Mine”
21- Robbie Krieger- The Doors "Peace Frog"
20- Tommy Iommi- Black Sabbath "Symptoms of the Universe"
19- Marc Bolan- T.Rex "Ballrooms Of Mars"
18- Frank Zappa- “Sexual Harrassment in the Workplace”
17- Bembeya Diabaté "Sara 70"
16- Robert Quine- Richard Hell and the Voidoids "I'm Your Man"
15- Jim McGuinn- The Byrds “8 Miles High”
14- Lou Reed- The Velvet Underground “I Heard Her Call My Name”
13- Eric Clapton- Cream "I Feel Free"
12- Brian James- The Damned "Neat, Neat, Neat"
11- Keith Hudson "Michael Talbot Affair"
10- Marc Ribot- w/ Tom Waits “Clap Hands”
9- Brian May- Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody”
8- Brian May- Queen “Killer Queen”
7- Michael Schenker- "Doctor Doctor"
6- Paul Webb- Talk Talk "After the Flood"
5- James Williamson “Search and Destroy”
4- Jimi Hendrix "Machine Gun"
3- Duane Aslaksen- w/ Roky Erikson “I Think of Demons”
2- Prince "Let's Go Crazy"
1- Robert Fripp- w/ Brian Eno “St. Elmo's Fire”

Now, we don’t take this seriously, and we’re not hopping mad. And we’re not tickled pink. And we’re not even interested. But we are mildly amused by the fact that, as yahoo reports, the GR EATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME has again been chosen. As if cinema appreciation 101 needed more evidence of being completely in the thrall of little lost boys and stunted male geekdom, here comes another one of those wretched “British magazines” (you know, the big thick mounds of magazine like Empire, with the kablam (!) red font and kapow (!!) photo placement you pick up at Barnes and Noble and thumb through for literally six seconds before tossing it back with a disinterested sigh after realizing that literally nothing registered in front of your eyes) to tell us that the “GREATEST FILM EVER MADE” is none other than….Goodfellas?

Though I admit to liking this film very much, even going so far as often singing the praises of its rabid quasimodoed cousin, Casino, and though none of us need to or will take this latest pointless LIST even remotely seriously, looking down the rest of the risible titles mentioned on this yahoo wire hanger-on is disheartening all the same . Dredging up bad memories of the AFI Disaster of 1998, it’s just another example of moviedom being monopolized and compartmentalized as a male-centric medium. Nothing revelatory here, but think about this. On the AFI List, a bevy of boy’s-life adventures and romanticism: Lawrence of Arabia (#5), The Graduate (#7), Bridge on the River Kwai (#13), Star Wars (#15), The African Queen (#17!!!!!), Treasure of the Sierra Madre (#30), High Noon (#33)….etc. etc. The case could be made for any and via any ideological avenue, yet can anyone truly make the claim that On the Waterfront is that much more important politically than Imitation of Life? Does Manchurian Candidate truly have more to say about social codes than Letter from an Unknown Woman? And, of course, if we think about it, besides the obvious direct influence on American narrative modes, should Goodfellas time and again be considered seminal while Scorsese’s own spectacular Age of Innocence gets nary a mention anywhere? Perusing this new list is even more disheartening....Fight Club makes a conspicuous bow at number 4, a few slots ahead of Tokyo Story, the placement of which makes you realize that some critics actually were involved in the process...all the more shocking. Then there's the usual Lord of the Rings and Star Wars bullshit, soon to be seen on TNT "The New Classics."

Poll or survey, critics or audiences, the ongoing listmaking represents the sad truth about the frat-like groupthink of popularized cinephilia. It’s reflected in every major release…Clooney’s efficient boys’ club Good Night, and Good Luck is acclaimed beyond all reason while the simultaneously released, overwhelmingly emotional yet equally technically rigorous women’s pic Nine Lives gets some polite nods. It’s not simply that melodrama isn’t respected as a genre, but that imdb.com’s top 250 (where Shawshank Redemption is always perched at the top of the heap), AFI, and now this Goodfellas bronzing, wherever it may have come from, keep on co-opting film for the treehouse crowd. The occasional mention of Amelie, which you begrudgingly admitted had “cool shots….for a chick flick,” just doesn’t cut it, boys.

Thanks have to go to Armond for singling out Separate Lies, my new runner-up for “unwieldy, mid-size, unloved, unwatched movie of the year” (Polanski’s Oliver Twist is the sure category winner). I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie about infidelity between adults where those affected by it actually dealt with it like…adults (remember last year’s grotesquerie Closer?). The scenes between Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson (I love her so much I followed her to Metroland and am glad this didn’t slip by) following her revelation are shot through with a kind of wry, hesitant, tenderness in the face of possible redemption that astounds, at least until you’re leveled by her matter-of-fact declaration that she has not, and will not give up her lover (a wonderfully dissipated Rupert Everett). Are the refined qualities of Fellowes’s script an attempt to probe around the stiff upper lips of the British bourgeoisie, or does it merely seem that way because we’re unused to watching films populated by people who react in ways that we might as well? For the most part Wilkerson and Watson own this picture of domestic strife so thoroughly that Fellowes’s timidity with the camera (thanks for the crane up on the finale, Jules) and his backbend cramming of two plots (the other is a tawdry, fairly obvious murder thing) into 87 minutes is more than forgivable. Like Twist, this is a work made by someone not interested in leaving an overt signature on every frame, but rather in putting together a movie, something anyone who cares about film should make some time for.

For all of you living in Ireland/Europe - this promises to be a really interesting event:

DARKLIGHT SYMPOSIUM 2005

Darklight festival brings you the best in new digital art and cinema. Darklight 2005 is calling all developers and innovators in digital production to attend its symposium, exhibition and workshop event.

October 27th: Workshop (€40) at The Digital Hub Learning Studio, 10-13 Thomas St. Dublin 8.
October 28th: Symposium (FREE) at The Digital Exchange, Crane Street, Dublin 8.

DARKLIGHT SYMPOSIUM
28th OCTOBER: Key speakers and panel discussion ***FREE***

This forum promises to give us the answers to the increasing litany of questions on our rights and abilities as the employers of new power found in creative common licensing, citizen journalism, podcasting, blogging, ad-hoc networks, alternative broadcasting technologies, and new markets for wireless content/culture.

Darklight will engage internationally renowned key speakers, and host two panel discussions combining the collective knowledge of experts.

BOOKING: Please register to attend at: www.darklight.ie

Places are limited so please register early!

MAKING MOVIES FOR THE SMALL SCREEN
27th OCTOBER: Workshop €40

As part of this year’s Darklight Symposium we are running a three hour workshop on creating moving image content for the small and mobile screen.
Booking information at: www.darklight.ie

NOKIA/DARKLIGHT POCKET FESTIVAL
28th OCTOBER

Darklight Symposium is also host to Ireland’s first Darklight Pocket Festival, an exciting showcase of the finalist entries in the Nokia/Darklight mobile cinema competition supplying a moveable feast of digital film and animation to your mobile phone. To view the finalists go to www.nokia.ie available from 13th of October.

After party & awards ceremony at 4 Dame Lane, Friday 28th, music by DECAL

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance was a pretty impressive pulp drama that nevertheless stayed within its own generic boundaries; its delusions of grandeur never seemed to get the better of it. Things starting taking a change for the worse with Oldboy, yet the formal dazzle and narrative ingenuity of the whole thing made me overlook what was at its essence both a pathetic little-boy fantasy and a 14-year-old’s school project rendition of Oedipus (with “literary” referents like incest and tongue-slicing, who needs character shades or emotional plausibility?). Yet the third in his woebegone vengeance trilogy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, seems to have unveiled this butt-naked emperor for the opportunistic drama queen that he is.

So, four more from the Mikio Naruse retrospective for me this past weekend--Floating Clouds (1955), Flowing (1956), Sound of the Mountain (1954), and Yearning (1964). Given that ideas of stasis and entrapment figure both in his narratives and in his aesthetic, I’m not sure if I’ve really come any closer to any sort of prescription for why Naruse’s been relatively unknown here, except perhaps to say that the extra evidence has offered more proof of a decidedly downbeat (if often bittersweet) worldview. Watching this additional four was not unlike the time I spent with definitely minor Fassbinder like Rio das Muertes, Nora Helmer, or Pioneers of Ingolstadt--none of these works really taught me anything necessarily new (though the Naruse films are far greater than these) but rather deepened my appreciation for their creator’s talents.

Walked out of masterpiece Floating Clouds and caught this snatch of conversation: “It was okay….but it was a little melodramatic…not sweet like that Chinese seamstress movie.” Well, duh, melodrama is Naruse’s stock and trade—and if you aren’t ready to take these stories on those terms, then you’re out of luck and will miss out on the sublime, tragic incredulity of the finale to Yearning (choice comment overheard: “That was the worst ending I could have possibly imagined”), or the way he builds a formless, static movie like Flowing to a stunningly emotional close with an Isuzu Yamada shamisen performance. Hideko Takamine owns Floating Clouds and Yearning (and last week's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs)--someone should zero in on the Takamine/Naruse works someday and just tour those, even though Naruse is unformly great with women (see the greatest hits cast of six or so in Flowing). Easiest of all to love perhaps is Sound of the Mountain (based on the Yasunari Kawabata book) with Ozu favorite Setsuko Hara coping with her indifferent husband by forming a close, complicated (platonic) relationship with her kindly father-in-law. It definitely doesn’t end the way Ozu would have finished it (think Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice), but remains no less wondrous.

Two press conferences concluded the NYFF's four-week-long press screening marathon: Patrice Chereau and Pascal Greggory spoke about Gabrielle, and Michael Haneke about Cache. Both directors make films in French, and between their recent films they'd cast four of the finest actors in the world, not to mention France. They also were modest and affable in the face of an ever-incoherent line of questioning. But along the way, they spoke about film in ways that can best be described as diametrically opposed.

Just when you thought it was safe to....I don't know....live or something, here comes that irascible babbling scamp with less tact than Dubya at a rose garden press conference; and he's back to show us what's what about humor, war, love, and bodies being torn to shreds by explosives. Yuk yuk yuk.

Three Reverse Shotters e-mail round table on this season's most challenging box office disappointment (and God no, it's not the "tone poem" critic-porn Keane):

Sean McAvoy: So what'd you think of Oliver Twistee aka The Tenant 2: Resurrection? I was lucid for at least 93% of it, but you may have noticed me dozing off at points towards the end. I loved Fagin's last scene, as we leave him crying from the cell. Heartbreaking. You can't fault the production design, mise-en-scene, whatever, for perfectly capturing that mythologized Dickens England with its red-faced jowly pompous asses and rat-infested alleys. Perhaps it's a little too perfect, like Amelie's Paris or Chocolat's wherever the fuck -- so production-designed down to the last frilly tea coozy that there's no room to think.

I can't say for sure if this is appropriate as a "sneak preview" considering that Jean-Paul Civeyrac's Through the Forest, with its scant but weighty 65 minutes, will unlikely receive any sort of proper theatrical release, but I felt the film was worth a first mention here as it was somewhat of a highlight at this year's NYFF. Especially coming after a fresh heaping pile of bombast both politically retarded (Manderlay) and ideologically suspect (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, and more on that piece of excrement later when my stomach can muster the strength), Civeyrac's film seemed an expert modulation in atmosphere and ambiguity. Okay, so I admit it...nothing new here. And I haven't seen anything else by this slight-framed, curly-haired Frenchman, so I cannot say for sure whether it is continuing a career trajectory or proves a divergence for him.

Filmenthusiast2000: Lord of War is getting really good IN MY MIND.
clarencecarter: I have to give credit to a movie that completely shucks pretense and stops giving us reasons to like its main character. unlike really fatuous shammery like Thank You For Smoking.
Filmenthusiast2000: I love Nic Cage when he plays dead (spiritually) like this--Windtalkers is another example; one of the most stand-offish, resolutely unlikable central performances I�ve ever seen in a cineplex movie.
clarencecarter: I like that this starts him off as likable and then strips it slowly away. You can rationalize the gun-running for a bit: oh, he's doing it to get out of Brighton, or he's doing it to get the girl. When in reality he's just doing it because he's good at it. How awfully banal is that?
Filmenthusiast2000: The Brighton material is pretty weak though, as is the movie in general when it comes to detail work. I kept thinking about Walsch's The Roaring Twenties, a film which exists on a similarly broad, historically-specific canvas, but which sells itself with detail work: the domestic scenes between Cagney and central casting "best pal" Frank McHugh, the late night ride home on the LIRR...
Filmenthusiast2000: I think Lord of War hurts from the lack of any equivalent scenes... The Brighton stuff is all borscht and synagogue; it doesn't feel like anyone involved had set foot in the neighborhood before the shoot.
clarencecarter: The Liberia stuff is the same: near parodic, and definitely a set.
Filmenthusiast2000: I'm sure if I had even the vaguest grasp of world affairs, I'd find a lot to laugh at in this movie.
clarencecarter: it certainly works better as an idea for a movie than an actual movie (like Gattaca), but I still left the theatre pretty bummed, even if there's nothing in it I couldn't get from dailykos.com or dating a crunchy girl.
clarencecarter: maybe its just the sheer implausibility of it's existence (a) in commercial theatres and (b) among the top grossers of the past few weeks
Filmenthusiast2000: I joked that pretty soon all the Puerto Rican kids on the street are going to be wearing shirts featuring Yuri Orlov instead of instead of Tony Montana.
clarencecarter: maybe he'll make inroads with the orthodox kids
Filmenthusiast2000: I watched one of my favorite movies, also set in Brighton Beach, Little Odessa right after this--they make a nice macrocosmic/microcosmic double feature.
clarencecarter: I watched it right after History of Violence.
clarencecarter: which is a much better movie, but also a good double bill
clarencecarter: I think the focus on Africa really makes Lord a nice antidote to the relatively placid Hotel Rwanda
Filmenthusiast2000: I also liked the bravura bullet assembly-line opening, which makes a nice antidote to the relatively placid Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
clarencecarter: well put.
Filmenthusiast2000: And I'd be remiss not to note that Leto and Cage are supposed to age TWENTY YEARS in the course of the movie, despite no apparent ravages of time...
clarencecarter: conscious aesthetic strategy, or did Niccols blow the make-up budget on AK-47s?
Filmenthusiast2000: Oh, and Ethan Hawke plays a ATF agent with the great, paperback-thriller worthy name "Jack Valentine!"
clarencecarter: the more I think about the specifics, everyone in the film not named Nicolas Cage is handled pretty poorly. (Leto�s ok) You'd think the African warlord and son stepped out of a Bruce Willis vehicle.
filmenthusiast2000: Yeah, if I have to stop and take it apart, everything would seem to suggest that Lord of War is a pretty "meh" piece of work, but it's never less than watchable... and I'm a sucker for oversized American history lessons delivered with gangster flick platitudes.
clarencecarter: In an ideal world, I'd say its giving audience members "lots to chew on," but I'd guess it's blowing right by most because of that watchability--oh, its not really a serious flick.
Filmenthusiast2000: But it's got a concluding audience address (hello, Brecht!)... And it's "based on true events"... And Jeff Buckley!
Filmenthusiast2000: I seem to be making fun, but it'll probably make my top ten.
clarencecarter: It'll be in my Top 20 for sure.
Filmenthusiast2000: Moody Nic Cage is like crack to me.

There�s a certain level of stature obscurity affords a filmmaker if the plaudits are coming from the right places, but I went into the Mikio Naruse�s retrospective that began this weekend at the Harvard Film Archive without any real skepticism and came out believing the program manager�s claim that the Naruse program will be �the premiere retrospective event of the fall.�

Out of the four, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), Mother (1952), A Tale of Archers at the Sanjusangendo (1945), and The Song Lantern (1943), I�d only call the first an unqualified masterpiece (it�s central performance given by Hideko Takamine is the stuff of gushing hyperbole), each is certainly more than worthy, and the four together sparked a few ideas as to perhaps why Naruse�s work has been relatively unseen outside Japan. While Kurosawa�s appeal for American audiences has been rehashed endlessly, I�ve only seen a few stand up and take on the notion that Ozu is �the most Japanese of Japanese filmmakers� (most notably Jonathan Rosenbaum).

With only four of Naruse�s films under my belt it�s hard to make any sort of authoritative judgment, but when stacked against Ozu, they seem remarkably less accessible, precisely because they focus so specifically on Japanese cultural traditions (Noh performance, specifics of the Samurai code, lantern singers, the role of the bar hostess and architecture of her staff) without effort to explain their intricacies to an audience who wouldn�t necessarily have prior knowledge. Coupled with the fantastically complex performances that seem intimately bound up and circumscribed by social codes that most will be scrambling to fully digest renders these films a little harder to access than something like a Tokyo Story or An Autumn Afternoon, even if Ozu�s favored performance style and formal strategies are initially more off-putting.

That said, I came into The Song Lantern with little knowledge of Noh theatre besides the very basics, and damn if I wasn�t chilled to the core by young Isuzu Yamada�s (14 years later, she�d stun again with her turn as Lady MacBeth in Kurosawa�s Throne of Blood) Noh dance that closes the film. Eight more are showing this weekend, so we�ll see what those bring�