The Limits of Control

I walked into a Sydney Film Festival screening of Jim Jarmusch’s latest cinematic offering on late Saturday evening. Starring Isaac de Bankole in the lead role of a lonely hitman, ‘the limits of control’ takes viewers back to the roots of Jarmusch’s classics such as Deadman and Ghost Dog. At times testing for the viewer, this slowly driven narrative centres around the concept of reality, and control. In a film where the lead character carries minimal dialolgue, we are compelled by his encounters with various intertwining characters that drop by with carefully thought out observations, each giving in to a different path of thought. Ultimately it becomes rather evident that this film is more about the journey then the destination, whereby the ends is only a means. Beautifully shot by Christopher Doyle, the film is like a hallucinogen waiting for the viewer to analyse something that’s not really there.

New form DSLR for motion picture?

I didn’t take much notice when Nikon then Canon released the first DSLR’s capable of shooting HD Video late last year. But recently more and more short films have started popping up with film like quality images and there now seems to be a growing trend amongst filmmakers who are taking advantage of the huge 16 x 24mm sensor chips found in the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D Mk II, consequently allowing anyone that shoots motion picture to produce a nice soft focus image with a very cinematic shallow depth of field. Here’s a short film I found titled ‘model/photographer’ which was shot on the Nikon D90 DSLR by filmmaker Zak Forsman of Sabi Pictures. He’s also shooting a feature on the same camera.

500 Days of Summer

It’s that time of the year in Sydney, when you start to freeze your ass off but you get to freeze your ass of in the knowing comfort that the Sydney Film Festival is right around the corner. It’s been about 5 years since I last attended a session at the film festival, back than it was suffice to line up on the night of the film to grab tickets, a lot has changed in the film circles since then and I have managed to miss out on tickets to the festival 5 years running – I just wasn’t convinced I had to pre purchase tickets days in advance until this year. With the festival period shrinking in size the organisers have managed to squeeze in quite a few films into the program this year. Tickets I managed to pre-purchase this year were ‘500 Days of Summer’ and the new film by Jim Jarmusch ‘The Limits of Control’, that’s about the extent of what I could grab before the tickets went dry, other notable films that were of interest included 2 Soderbergh films: ‘ Che ‘ and ‘The Girlfriend Experience’.

‘500 Days of Summer‘ – I came home last night convinced I should have given this film an extra half a star on the voting sheet (that would have made it 41/2 out 5 instead of the 4 I gave it…unfortunately the festival did not accommodate half points in the voting process…). It’s been a while since I’ve walked out of the cinema wanting to go right back in and watch it again. That’s the kind of affect the film had on me. Without giving away the major details of the film, (you’ll have to see it when it debuts in October in Sydney and July in the U.S) it’s about the cycle of falling in love, the joy, the pain, the joy, the sleepless nights, the hope, and finally the letting go of that hope. So your typical boy meets girl kinda scenario, except Dir. Marc Webb has been able to inject a stream of realism into the characters that lends itself to the side of playful comedy and gives in to the raw side of human emotion and interaction. The film is told in a non-linear narrative and moves forward and back from day 1 to day 480 to day 15 and so forth and I think this is where the flow of the film really strengthens the viewer’s connection to the characters and the story. If you think about it for a second, and reflect back on your own experiences in love they are rarely ever played back in your mind in a linear sequence, you tend to rush through to the pivotal moments of the relationship and then flash back to the beginnings to make sense of it all. In the end it never really makes sense, and these dramatic sequences of high’s and low’s just continue to make up small and big fragments of your life. The film doesn’t give us a happy or a sad ending, it gives us an ending to a chapter, period. There are many moments in this film to savour, and enough to play it back in your own mind in a non-linear sequence.

P.S The soundtrack is great too…a prerequisite of any good film…of course.

A Divided Prom

A couple of weeks ago I received a tweet from a friend with the simple word ‘Wow’ attached next to a link to an article. The article in question was ‘ A Divided Prom’ published in the New York Times by Gillian Laub. It covered a simple enough event, a high school prom, but what made this coverage dramatically different to any other prom in the U.S or the world was the fact that in 2009 a high school in a little town in Georgia was still holding segregated prom’s. The white population of the graduating class of Montgomery County High held their prom on a Friday and the following night the black graduating students of the same class held their prom at the same venue. What was startling about the coverage besides the obvious racist sentiment that is blatantly shown in the school’s inability to hold a single prom or to prevent segregated prom’s from taking place, is the voice of the student’s.

Full coverage with voice excerpts and photos from the article

Grizzly Bear ‘Veckatimest’

Grizzly bear’s just released their new album ‘Veckatimest’ on warp records and I have to say it’s freakishly good. Here’s a clip of the band performing ‘2 weeks’ on Letterman.

Creative Sydney

As a part of the Vivid Festival in Sydney, Creative Sydney have been hosting film/TV events at the MCA. I dropped by on Friday night to observe ‘Behind The Screens’, a one hour Q&A with some local film+tv producers mainly discussing the challenges of working in a creative and collaborative environment. They showed some of their past works and recent projects, and got involved with some running commentary before their Q&A.

Sunday

I finally got around to visiting my granddad today, he’s been in a nursing home for a good few months now. Reaching a century, he’s still as tough as I remember him, sure he’s got a few more wrinkles on his face, but I was still staring at the same man that used to tell me stories about the Korean war, how he managed as a lieutenant to get through 1950-53 without having to pull his trigger, about working as a milk boy while studying at a prestigious university in Japan during the Japanese colonisation of Korea. Now that I think of it I was probably only about 5 when I pressed him about the war, a lot has come and gone since then, namely my naivety. But I’d still like to remember the story as is.

More photos from my visit here.

Cannes Festival 2009

There’s been plenty of spotlight on Lars Von Trier’s film in this years competition and his claim at the film’s press conference to be the “…best film director in the world”.

Here’s an extract of the interview (courtesy of Indiewire):

“I am the best film director in the world,” Lars Von Trier proclaimed provocatively today when pressed to defend his Cannes competition entry, a quote that will surely follow him for some time to come. Later during the discussion, another journalist returned to that statement, asking him to list other filmmakers he also likes.

“All the others are overrated, so that’s quite simple,” Von Trier quipped, stirring laughter from the room. “I just met Scorsese [at the hotel] and I think it’s quite easy for all of you educated people [to see] where most of these things come from.”

“This knowledge I have that I am the best director, I see it as true,” Von Trier continued, “I am sure other directors may feel the same, [but] maybe they dont say it,” he said, never raising his voice. “I am not sure I am. I just think I am.”

And now here are some of the other films debuting at Cannes this week:

Los abrazos rotos (Dir. Pedro Almodovar)

Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (Dir. Isabel Coixet)

Thirst (Dir. Park Chan Wook)

Taking Woodstock (Dir. Ang Lee)

Looking for Eric (Dir. Ken Loach)

Vengeance (Dir. Johnny To)

Flashback – ‘La Haine’ (1995)

Before Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz was known for ‘Crimson Rivers’ and ‘Gothika’ and before actor Vincent Cassel starred in ‘Irreversible’, ‘Brotherhood Of The Wold’, the two paired up on the 1995 french cult classic ‘La Haine’ (Hate). One of the grittiest films to come out of Europe, the story centres around three characters from the housing projects surrounding Paris. Kassovitz managed to capture the type of gritty realism that veteran arthouse film directors spend their whole career striving for. This film never seizes to amaze me. I’ve seen documentaries that come close but never a feature.

‘Shire Girls’

Spent most of the afternoon down at the shire, Gymea to be exact, hazlehurst community gallery to be more exact! My sister-in-law was curating her first show titled ’shire girls’, here’s an excerpt from the flyer:

“The exhibition explores the connection between environment and identity across a diverse range of traditional, contemporary, interactive and craft based mediums, and takes a witty look at the ‘Shire Girls’ tag.”

An old friend from my film school days, Emma Buckley (Dir. Papercut) also happened to have work in the exhibition – she had an interesting video art installation.