Aug
Fear of Contagion
by Adam in Movies
Contagion
I haven’t liked every film Steven Soderbergh has released but I will always admit he is good at what he does. He is probably the most successful indie director working in Hollywood today. Somehow he still manages to bring that small crew sensibility to any film he’s working on. The huge amount of A-List talent he manages to pull in, even for bit parts, is a testament to how good a director he is.
His latest foray is called ‘Contagion’ and that is pretty much the story in a nutshell. It is the only type of horror film that I could see Soderbergh making. A horror that is based all to close to reality with people in really horrible situations. I recall some interesting interviews when he remade ‘Solaris’ which was completely against his common directorial choices. He chose the movie because it wasn’t so much about the science fiction as it was about human nature. In the case of ‘Solaris’ it was human frailty in the face of devastation. The same theme seems to run rampant in ‘Contagion’ but at a much larger scale. What happens to the world when an incurable disease hits the air? How do people react? How does it affect a government and the surrounding medical industry?
One may recall that this film sounds like ‘Outbreak’. Soderbergh’s version takes it a step further and removes itself from many of the melodramatic mistakes its predecessor made, and I liked ‘Outbreak’. This film takes no mercy on its main characters and has no last minutes miracles to save their lives. People die without dramatic interludes. There is human drama but it focuses more on human reactions to how a deadly disease on a worldwide scale might affect people from various walks of life. Also how the medical industry might try to make a profit off of something so horrible.
There is a very large cast of characters and we follow from all over the world. They hunt the disease, its host and the method from which it spread. While the film’s tagline calls itself an action thriller, there is no real action in the sense of Michael Bay. Its thrills manifest themselves in the way a disease could spread so easily in our modern society. Thanks to the unnerving soundtrack and a superb cast of actors, you may find yourself with many more bottles of Purell after watching this film.
Jul
When Seeing the Devil
by Adam in Movies
I Saw the Devil
A few years ago a friend and I were talking about the postmortem effects of watching Chan-wook Park’s ‘Oldboy‘. We came to the conclusion that it felt almost necessary to take a shower afterwards. This is by no means a negative review of this film. Dare I say it is one of the greatest films ever concieved. I think that it speaks to the power of the film. When a movie leaves a viewer physically ill, in love, or with a happy sense of euphoria the filmmaker has done his job. ‘Oldboy’ was an entrance ticket to the wonderful world of pulp Korean cinema. For a long time I thought the likes of Fruit Chan and Takashi Miike were the bees knees of twisted asian cinema. Truth be told, the Koreans hold their own.
‘I Saw the Devil‘ has a bit of fun with the concept of revenge. It starts with the heinous murder of a secret agent’s fiance. We meet the killer quickly and the secret agents finds him even quicker. In essence the movie should be over as the secret agent can get swift revenge to heal his ailing soul. Quite the opposite. He beats the craps out of the killer then leaves him a wad of money, egging him on to keep killing. So begins a psychological game of chase. The secret agents begins to cross the very lines that separate him from the killer. Both are willing to go to extreme ends but they share one vast difference which I often overlooked: motive. The secret agent has no more righteous a motive than revenge, but the killer has none or so it would seem. The idea of killing a killer is much too simple, too easy. So the devilish task is to find out what breaks man with no soul. Fascinating, violent, pretty damn entertaining.
Its a bloody film, no doubt, but again I cannot stress more that films like this and ‘Oldboy’ hold so much more than the American splatterfests that seem to be invading our screen space for cheap thrills. I keep watching Korean cinema because I am looking for the next great film that gets under your skin. There are murders but they hold more presence than just slicing a person up. Look beyond the blood and you will two very fascinating characters. The title is misleading in that you should be wondering which character actually believes he is seeing his own devil.
Jul
Venus in Fur – Teaser
by Adam in Filmmaking, Work
I received a very cool opportunity to work with DC’s Studio Theatre just recently. They were looking to do more advertising for their plays using all the wonderful marketing tools that the web provides. In this case they were hoping to do a movie like teaser for their upcoming play called ‘Venus in Fur’. DC is a town built on documentary and news filmmaking so the chance to do something a bit more narrative in nature was something I couldn’t pass up. Plus it gave me the opportunity to work with some new digital camera gear, namely the Panasonic AF-1oo and a collection of 35mm Nikon prime lenses. The depth of the field and color in every shot was phenomenal. I work regularly with Sony’s EX-1, which is very compact and produces lovely images, but to do anything with a bit more artistic flare can be difficult. Being able to switch out lenses based on what I was trying to compose in a shot is something I will greatly miss when I return to my fixed lens war horse.
Jul
In Which Rutger Hauer Discovers His Second Amendment Rights
by Adam in Movies
Hobo With A Shotgun
It takes a special kind of person to make the film ‘Hobo with a Shotgun‘ and I am happy to say I got to listen to director Jason Eisner talk about his film over a Skype Q&A. Sure I had a mounting list of questions for him about what in God’s name was running through his head when he made this film, but I was quickly enlightened. During the audio only Q&A, there was a loud collection of sounds eminating from the director’s end of the skype call. He was watching ‘Babe 2: Pig in the City’. The imaginary dots were connected and I suddenly knew so much about this director and his film.
‘Hobo’ might as well have jumped from the textbook pages of 70′s grindhouse cinema. It is an exploitation film, and very much a tribute to that expressive time in film history. It was made for a particular type of audience and it delivers exactly what it promises. Much like its title, there are no subtleties or need for deep thought and contemplation. Should one character be armed with a lawnmower and another a gun, exploitative logic would assume that some one is going to lose an arm or have their head explode in a rather excessive way. If my memory serves me I think they actually showed both scenarios with a loving touch only a horror fanatic could provide.
The color processing throughout the film is over-saturated and full of unnatural neons. Almost every shot is with a wide angle and I could feel the sickening vertigo as the titular hero arrives in a town he should never have stopped in. ‘Hobo’ starts off as nod to those peculiar 70′s films featuring a stranger getting off a train. Rutgar Hauer arrives in town with nothing but the cloths on his back. He is trying to start his life again believing that by some how obtaining a pawn shop lawn mower, it will give him back some sense of humanity. It is by far one of the stranger MacGuffins I’ve seen in a film and one that of course becomes a weapon later on. He quickly discovers that this strange town on the wrong side of the tracks is run by a ruthless crime guy named ‘The Drake’ (honestly they never really explain what he is so he is just a crime guy). To add to his menace he is also shadowed by his equally ruthless sons dressed as Tom Cruise rejects from ‘Risky Business’. They basically own the town, raping as they please and killing people in some surprisingly clever ways. As far as the story, the tagline and title pretty much sum it up in a nice little package.
While it appears that I am giving this film a positive review, that is not the full story. I put myself in the shoes of a cult film fanatic and hope that this peculiar slice of celluloid will find its home on a circuit of midnight film screenings. Given enough booze, drugs and good company this is a film that will make you laugh and shout silly things at the screen.
The director told us that Rutgar Hauer was always his first choice of actor. Some how a script made its way to Hauer and against his agent’s wishes, he took the role. There are more than a few moments where I cannot help but wonder if the actors said their lines and spent the next few days wondering what the hell they had just spoken to the camera. My suspicion is that Hauer knows the secret to watching movies; quietly love the bad ones so you know when you have seen a good one.