Although he’s really hit only one bona fide cinematic home run, director David Fincher has managed to become one of the few modern directors worthy of having his last name made into an adjective. “Fincheresque” has come to describe the dark, vivid, and lucid atmosphere that the filmmaker delicately applies to each of his projects. Although the much-maligned “Alien 3” fit into this category, it wouldn’t be until his aforementioned home run, “Se7en”, that people would not only notice, but they would never forget, thanks to his visual style. This success led to a three more notable films ranging from okay (“Panic Room”) to above average (“The Game”, “Fight Club”). Even when the storylines don’t quite hold water, (which is more often than it may seem,) the dark, brooding visual ambiance is what keeps audiences coming back, and keeps the legion of imitators scrambling to keep up.
Fincher is of a select group of current filmmakers whose latest project will get attention just because it’s his latest project. The question is, how much longer will he maintain his prestige status. His two prior films, “Fight Club” (1999) and “Panic Room” (2002) reveal a growing pre-occupation with unmotivated camera trickery and overuse of gimmicky CGI. The good news is, his latest, the modern historical serial killer tale “Zodiac”, eases up in those two departments. Not enough to save it, but it does ease up. Which brings us to the bad news: Fincher’s storytelling prowess seems to have completely deteriorated. “Zodiac”, clocking in at a whopping 158 minutes, may be the biggest, longest Hollywood snooze-fest since the theatrical run of Oliver Stone’s “Alexander”.
Continue Reading "Zodiac REVIEW"...
House of Sand, which I caught earlier this year at the San Francisco International, is currently in distribution and receiving favorable reviews. I strongly encourage folks to catch this sumptuous, stately film. The Landmark website has Andrucha Waddington’s Movienet essay on the photograph that inspired the film.
With customary skill, Dave Hudson has gathered together the critical response for the Greencine Daily. Hannah Eaves has, likewise, provided an interview with director Andrucha Waddington for Greencine’s coffers. Though I have previously posted my interview with director Andrucha Waddington, Dave inspired me to work up my notes from the Q&A following the film’s first festival screening.
Due to an unfortunate and somewhat clumsy shift to an available vacant space from the original house in which the film was screened—which had to be quickly vacated for the next film—Andrucha Waddington lost most of his audience, making attendance at his Q&A sparse. That didn’t interfere, however, with the discussion being informative and insightful.
Continue Reading "CASA DE AREIA / HOUSE OF SAND—2006 SFIFF Q&A With Andrucha Waddington"...
At the 2006 San Francisco International Film Festival, I caught up with Chilean director Alicia Scherson (Play) in the hospitality suite and she graciously granted me the following interview.
Continue Reading "San Fran Report—Interview with Alicia Scherson"...
During the San Francisco International Film Festival, I caught up with Carlos Bolado (director of Sólo Dios Sabe) in the hospitality suite and he graciously granted me the following interview.
Continue Reading "San Fran Report—Interview With Carlos Bolado"...
Introducing Sérgio Machado’s Cidade Baixa / Lower City, Alice Braga—niece of the radiant Sonia Braga—stated, “Sérgio always says when he introduces the film that he and Karim [Ainouz], the co-writer, they wanted to know who were the young people in Brazil nowadays and where they are and what they do. He chose to do Salvador because it’s where he was born. So he portrayed a love story.”
Returning to the podium for a Q&A after the screening, Alice made us laugh by admitting she was even more shy now that we had seen her naked! I certainly respected her bravery! Of course, if I looked that hot and that beautiful, I could afford to be brave!
Continue Reading "San Fran Report: Alice Braga’s Introduction and Q&A for Cidade Baixa (Lower City)"...
Alice (pronounced Alicia) Braga has the sweet distinction of having two films screening at this year’s festival: Sólo Dios Sabe and Lower City.
I caught up with Alice after a screening of Lower City. She was excitedly on her way to her first American baseball game but graciously granted me time for a brief interview.
Continue Reading "San Fran Report: Interview with Alice Braga"...
Here’s Michael Guillen with more excellent reporting from the San Francisco International Film Festival ... who knew Dean Devlin had a social conscience?
The opening night gala at the Regency with its Perhaps Love circus atmosphere was truly fun! I couldn’t resist my Skyy vodka martinis and you know what they say: one is too many and two is not enough! So I arrived at my interview at the W the following morning a little worse for wear but eager nonetheless to have a chat with Chris Paine, the director of Who Killed the Electric Car?, interviewee Chelsea Sexton, gas conservation expert Wally Rippel and executive producer Dean Devlin. Chelsea was overdue, having missed her flight from L.A., but was expected during my interview timeslot so we elected to start without her.
Continue Reading "SFIFF Report: Michael Guillen Interviews The Team Behind “Who Killed The Electric Car?”"...
Michael Guillen reports ...
The U.S. premiere of Fernando Solanas’ The Dignity of the Nobodies is being presented at 2006 SFIFF in association with the United Nations Association Film Festival and Global Exchange. The second in a projected series of four documentaries dealing with the plight of Argentina, The Dignity of the Nobodies is—as Miguel Pendás pens for the program catalog—"activist cinema at its best: passionate, informative and uncompromising.” Pendás concludes: “The film’s power and immediacy make it feel like a hopeful forecast of things to come.”
Imagine! A documentary that testifies to hope!! The Dignity of the Nobodies has arrived on these bleak shores none too soon.
Michael Guillen reports ...
As Julio Cortazar is one of my favorite South American writers, Antonio Machado remains my favorite Spanish poet. One of my favorite poems of his reads:
The eye you see is not
An eye because you see it.
It is eye because it sees you.
In gist, this is the lesson any documentarian must learn when they turn their camera onto the world, the selfsame lesson that Lourdes (Bárbara Lennie) has to learn, arriving in the small Basque hill town of Obaba equipped with a videocamera, intending to satisfy a school video assignment by recording the history of this small community. And Lourdes learns her lesson: you can’t catch fish without getting wet.
Michael Guillen reports ...
As I mentioned in my write-up on En la Cama (In Bed), Jorge Morales’ FIPRESCI report from the 2005 Havana Film Festival includes a deconstruction of the so-called Nuevo Cine Chileno, and culls out that what’s actually being discussed are three distinct Chilean features making the festival rounds at the same time: Matías Bize (In Bed / En la cama), Alicia Scherson (Play), and Sebastián Campos (The Sacred Family / La sagrada familia).
Michael Guillen reports ...
Inbetween the festival program capsule previews that woo a filmgoer to attend a film and the critical print reviews that warn a filmgoer to abandon all hope before entering a moviehouse or to rage against the light while leaving, lies some modicum of personal truth that can only be experienced while in the process of watching the movie. That’s when I enjoy movies the best: before the images become saddled with description or riddled full of interpretations or decisively executed by criticism. Armed with pandering previews and ranting reviews, I sit in the dark and hope to suspend my disbelief. And if I’m lucky, that’s exactly what happens. I accept that “frenzy on the wall” as representational of something real—at the least!—but, hopefully, the taint of representation will be so skillfully minimized by a director that I will hasten to claim a cinematic experience as truly my own experience.
Michael Guillen reports ...
By comparison to Perhaps Love, the film-within-a-film love story in Giuseppe Piccioni’s La Vita Che Vorrei (The Life I Want) seems downright old-fashioned, yet all the more engaging for it. Even the love theme from Laura is layered into it, lending the film an old romance movie feel as it gestures to the film’s female protagonist, aspiring actress Laura, played by Sandra Ceccarelli. La Vita Che Vorrei (The Life I Want) is a tasteful setting for Ceccarelli’s jewel of a performance. Talk about a camera loving an actor’s face!! She strikes me as the Italian counterpart to Liv Tyler (via her self-amused smile) and Allison Janney (via her mature sensuality).
Michael Guillen reports ...
Whether through intention or coincidence, the two press screenings this last Thursday—Peter Ho-Sun Chan’s Perhaps Love and Giuseppe Piccioni’s La Vita Che Vorrei (The Life I Want)—were both love stories structured as films within a film. As meditations on a theme, they enhanced each other, though they were styles apart.
Michael Guillen reports from San Francisco ...
I’m so glad that Ruby Rich acknowledges the optimistic heart of Ward Serrill’s The Heart of the Game. “It’s being described as a hoop dreams for girls, but I don’t think that’s fair to it. …It’s not just about basketball and the individual experience of poverty. It’s much more about the intense pressure of gender socialization and the amazing display of what happens when you begin to undo it.”
Though the San Francisco International Film Festival doesn’t begin rolling for another few days we’ve got a man inside and he’s hard at work hitting advance screenings and putting together his thoughts on what’s worthwhile and what’s not. Big thanks to Michael Guillen for his in depth coverage, which you will also find on his own site, The Evening Class.
Jay Weissberg’s Variety review states Eden misses its mark even as Weissberg concedes that it won the Lions Award and the Tiscali Audience Award at its world premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival earlier this year. Two awards and nearly 10,000 Euros: Who to believe?
Even German director and writer Michael Hofmann stated in an interview after his win, “I truly love my film, but I worried it might be a bit on the long side. Though no matter how often I watched it, that love remained. Some of the people I screened it to in Germany had some criticism, so I started to have some doubts too. But the audience decides. That’s the magic of cinema.”
