Sounds Mag'

The other side of Fatih Akin

Paul Kirkness — 2008-04-26T09:49:57Z

Towards the end of September last year, I wrote an article about a documentary film that I particularly enjoyed - Crossing the Bridge. This film was filmed and edited by Fatih Akin, the son of Turkish migrants who moved to Hamburg. His documentary film-making was, I argued, particularly moving because, as he explored the streets of Istanbul with Alexander Hacke, one could not but get this feeling that the author was both ‘rediscovering' home as a Turk and ‘discovering' the marvels of a city like Istanbul as a German. Auf der anderen Seite (which translates in English as ‘On the other side') is a film about confused belongings, about unsettled identities... and thus, on top of being - quite simply - a beautiful film, it is also a further reflection on the schizophrenia of being uprooted and feeling lost in a global world.

I first came accross Fatih Akin through his Gegen Die Wand. This was a film-title in German yet the stories within the movie revolved around Turkish speaking minorities living in Germany. These fictional histories also told a lot of truth it seemed to me: why else would the director, a Turkish-German himself, choose to expose the everyday difficulties of living as a constant ‘foreigner' in Germany? These issues are pushed further in Auf der anderen Seite.

I wish I could sum up the film for the viewer. I wish I could, but I will not do so per se. I run the risk of giving away important parts of a beautiful story. Let it just be said here that the themes approached in Auf der anderen Seite are incredibly varied - from death to separation, from solitude to passion and love, from militancy to abandonment. It is clear, however, that the movie's strong point lies in its ability to take the spectator on a voyage, into a world between Germany and Turkey. Filming from Hamburg's brothels to the Black Sea regions of Turkey, Fatih Akin is a transnational film-maker.

The characters of this particular film further illustrate the feeling of ‘in-betweenness'. While, the old Ali eats fried fish and drinks raki in Germany, where he has presumably spent most of his life working as a ‘Gastarbeiter' (guest-worker), his son Nejat teaches German literature in university. When he the young man settles in Istanbul, it is to work in German bookshop. On the other hand, Yeter works as a prostitute to fund her daughters' studies in Turkey, where she sends money... Yet she is approached by Islamists from Milli Görüs - a Turkish Islamist organization - who threaten her if she does not abandon the profession. And so on...

There is no obsession from Fatih Akin's part to describe what it is to have multiple roots and divided personalities but he does so superbly. What is more, he has chosen actors that are convincing - often to the brink of tear jerking. His camera work is that of a master director and his way of filming Turkey - in particular Istanbul - are particular reflective of his love for the country and its peoples.

It is rare to be certain of the future of a director but Akin has consistently showed that he is capable of doing great things - sometimes with very little. He proves over and over again that he is a super director. Auf der anderen Seite is no exception.

Polo

No Country for Old Men - The return of the Coen brothers

Paul Kirkness — 2008-02-04T19:24:45Z

The Coen brothers are back. And this time with a dark and violent film...

Clearly, the Coen brothers have developed a great talent for moving from style to style. After the immensely successful The Big Lebowski which was released ten years ago, Ethan and Joel Coen must have realized they were standing before a wall. Indeed, how could they ever match the genius of such a crazy, hilarious and genius film? The truth is that, from The Hudsucker Proxy through Fargo to Lebowski, the brothers from Minneapolis had gone from sparkle of genius to fountains of brilliance.

Succeeding years, in my mind, were a slight disappointment - O Brother, Where Art Though? kept with the craziness and The Man Who Wasn't There played successfully with inspirations from the past but the sparkle had gone. Not to mention Intolerable Cruelty and the appalling Ladykillers remake which, starring Tom Hanks, only succeeds in begging the question: “Why???”.

Still, it has to be recognized that in the Coen family, nothing is ever the same again. They move with ease from one genre to another and they chose their actors well. So, when I heard that the brothers had joined forces again and that this time, they were experimenting with something more violent which would have Javier Bardem as a psycho, I was very tempted to run to the nearest movie theatre and to sit myself down to what would have to be interesting. And interesting is what it was... Intriguing, weird, violent, distressing is also what it was.

Anyone expecting comedy will leave the cinema shrieking and gasping for air because, more than anything else, this film is suffocating. Set on the border between Mexico and Texas, it narrates the story of a young man, played by Josh Brolin, who is the witness to a crime scene - Mexican drug dealers have shot themselves up in a failed deal. All but one Mexican are dead and the last man standing is alive but barely. When Brolin's character finds the money, he leaves the man in the desert, wounded and desperate for water. It is the guilt that he feels later that day that will parachute this Vietnam veteran into a dark world of gruesome murder, drug-money and transnational violence. All of this, along with the Coen brothers' talent for directing creates a general atmosphere which is leads us to pant along with the characters themselves as they wander through harsh sunshine and freezing nights...

Bardem's character is nasty - I mean, really nasty - and he fills the viewer with anguish at each appearance. He plays with human lives on the toss of a coin and uses a cattle killing device (a bolt pistol) to murder his victims... He contrasts neatly with the stiff Tommy Lee Jones, an honest and ageing sheriff who finds it hard to understand what is happening to the world around him. How can the violence have escalated so drastically? What is it linked to? All these questions, he asks himself and friends around him. Is this country, still a country for old men?

A very dark movie which will leave no-one untouched...

Polo

The sounds of Istanbul - Crossing the Bridge

Paul Kirkness — 2007-09-30T16:05:27Z

When Alexander Hacke, a German bass player, reaches the thriving city of Istanbul to find musicians who will help him to compose the music of Head On, he encounters the neo-psychedelic band Baba Zula. He is asked if he will play the bass for them when their own bassist leaves the band. Filmed by Fatih Akin, this documentary is about Hacke and his personal attempts at grasping the full richness of Istanbul's musical scene.

The beauty of Istanbul is renowned. Thousands of years of history have forged one of the most impressive cities of our world, with mosques, churches, temples... The sounds of Istanbul are a witness to its diversity. People arguing in the street in Turkish, English, Kurdish or French. The sounds of buses and cars. The call to prayer five times a day. Istanbul is a thriving city and this is particularly evident in the musical scene of this huge city.

Even someone born and raised in the city will be surprised by the rich variety of musical styles present in Fatih Akin's documentary film. From the outset, we are introduced to incredible personalities, to people with more or less of a message. In a country which is regularly torn by politics, religion and the societal problems of some of its inhabitants, music is a powerful force.

The voice-overs are those of Alexander Hacke, who once was the bassist for the German experimental band Einstürzende Neubauten. However, what speaks the most for Akin is the musical sounds or indeed, the voices of those musicians who do the playing. From the crazy youngish members of Baba Zula and their self-titled 'oriental dub' to the hyper-famous Sezen Aksu, all are present here. From the high middle-class Replikas to the more working-class Nur Ceylan... From Istanbul's rock music scene with the amazing Duman, to Ceza's rapping and the more classical Selim Sesler, the musical diversity of the city is explored in amazing depth.

A particularly amazing moment is when the Kurdish singer Aynur Doğan gives a private performance to the film maker in a Turkish bath. Doğan's song is entitled 'Ehmedo' and, sung in Kurdish, it is amazingly heart-wrenching when it is understood that until not too long ago, it was forbidden for ethnic minorities and Kurds to sing in their own language. Sezen Aksu's ode to Istanbul in 'İstanbul Hatırası' is a magnificent musical moment. Aksu's voice is, as always, capable of extraordinary emotional power.

The most interesting aspect of this film for me is the fact that Fatih Akin, director of Gegen Die Wand (Head On) in 2004, is visiting Istanbul as an expatriate. Being German-Turkish himself, it becomes clear that Istanbul and Turkey are places which he feels the need to constantly (re)discover. In this masterpiece of a documentary he takes his audience through a journey of sound while, visually, the shaky camera reflects the mental state of someone who is deeply touched by what he sees.

Polo

The Steven Soderbergh touch...

arthur, Paul Kirkness — 2007-09-30T14:28:38Z

As Ocean's Thirteen was hitting the screens worldwide, we thought that the man behind the movie deserved one of our little general reviews. It is safe to say that Steven Soderbergh is one of the greatest American director's living today. He is the writer and director of such remarked films as Sex, Lies and Videotape and Out of Sight. But it is also him that we must thank for less renowned movies such as Schizopolis, Full Frontal or Kafka... Who are you Mr. Soderbergh ?

Steven was born in 1963 in Atlanta, Georgia, but his parents quickly moved to Baton Rouge, in Louisiana. It is there that he discovered film-making at the age of 15. At a time when most of his school friends were busy experimenting amazing new charm techniques on their female friends, Steven began shooting short films with second hand equipment. Sports, school and women were not really his forté... and so it was to be film-making. Amusingly enough, he claims to have been fairly poor at it at the time. And none of the results exist now for us to check that out.

When he reached the age of 23, the rock fan in him was to be rewarded. The band Yes asked him to come along and shoot a full length live performance of theirs. Steven Soderbergh was thrilled and went along with the project. In turn, at the end of 1986, he was awarded with a Grammy for the video that he had shot. Yes: 9012 Live was to be the beginning of a career which quickly strayed a little from rock and roll music. But all of the projects that Soderbergh worked on always had a little rock attitude in them.

Since the eighties, Stoberbergh has become something of a celebrity. He is the producer of over thirty movies. He has been the director of twenty of those films and his style, his touch, is highly valued world-wide. He is the central member of the small and exclusive gang of friends that include George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Sam Rockwell, Luis Guzman and Don Cheadle - among many others. But above all things, Steven Soderbergh is a genius creator and an artist.

The Yo-Yo years...

1989 was the year of the confirmation - out comes Sex, Lies and Videotape. This movie was highly acclaimed throughout the world. In it we find a strange mix of voyeurism and questioning about what it means to capture people's lives. This, Soderbergh does wonderfully in the film - and later, in every other film that he released under his name. To discuss the film without having outlined its artistic merits or the acting would almost appear sacrilegious. Indeed, James Spader appears as an extremely troubling bloke with a frightening honesty about him. And he is perfectly accompanied by a stunning Andie MacDowell. However, what one perceives immediately is the Soderbergh touch - the raw filming of the shots which could almost have been done in DV format; the lack of music and the uncomfortable silences... Sex, Lies and Videotape is nothing short of grand and deserves all the fantastic things that were said about it.

Two years later, Soderbergh decides to delve deeper into the artistic possibilities that the camera can allow. Kafka hits the world screens with Jeremy Irons interpreting the literary genius. The film is truly brilliant, with a pinch of Alfred Hitchcock and a spoonful of dark atmospheres. The fact that it is shot in black and white shows us to what extent Soderbergh can juggle with effects or the lack thereof. And the play between colour and black and white, which he does throughout the film, is particularly interesting.

As was the case with his next three movies - King of the Hill (1993), Underneath (1995) and Gray's Anatomy (1996) - the critics were not very enthusiastic about Kafka. But critics are easily disappointed after a master-piece. And Sex, Lies and Videotape left little space for fault...

Having complained bitterly that Steven Soderbergh was a one film man, a "has been" whose talents were nothing more than fluke, the media critics shut him off. And in doing so, they bypassed one of the director's wackiest and probably one of his most ingenious movies. We are talking about Schizopolis which came out the same year as Gray's Anatomy but made little or no noise at all. In it, Soderbergh directs himself and his then wife, Betsy Brantley. Together they are almost sane in the wacky world of characters like Elmo Oxygen or T. Azimuth Scwhitters... The first speaks an incredibly strange language and the second is a sort of feel-good doctor of the mind. Schizopolis was an experimental film in which Soderbergh lets loose his wildest ideas... Truly a must see for anyone who appreciates zany atmospheres and artistic madness.

The gang's all here

Soderbergh really became every Hollywood actor's dream director once he had launched the Out of Sight project. Featuring George Clooney (the beginning of a love-affair between the two men) and Jennifer Lopez (the first and last film they did together - is she really such a tough cookie on the set?), the film was released in 1998. Once again, we could hear the critics wailing. This was described as a mere little pop film launched by a strange director. How could someone who had attacked script-writing so sturdily now play with colour... How wrong these voices were. Had the critics even seen the film? Lopez was not famous then as she is now, hence one cannot assume that critics were reacting to her presence in the movie. So what made them so upset?

This is impossible for us to answer. Out of Sight is perfect in so many ways. Clooney and his acolyte the actor Ving Rhames are perfect in their roles as cool thieves with tender hearts. Non-criminal criminals in short. Don Cheadle and Isaiah Washington are extremely convincing as the opposite duo... nasty in every way. Returning to the film, one cannot but admire the filming, with its cuts, its rhythm and accelerations. All this happens on music by David Holmes which has now become a huge classic - and launched another love affair between the director and the DJ.

In order to continue our semi-chronological approach to Soderbergh, The Limey is probably one of most "indigestible" of the movies that he directed. A strong focus on its graphic was taken, the viewer can be easily put off by the cut'n'paste way of filming things that he took a liking to in Out of Sight. Here, the boundaries of the technique are pushed further yet. They come to define the style, sinking into our appreciation for Terence Stamp who is brilliantly directed on screen. It appears that, once again, ambiance is the key note to this film and the story will probably be quickly forgotten. The screen-shots and Terence Stamp's angry glaring blue eyes however, will not.

Like Jennifer Lopez, Terence Stamp never really made it into the “Soderbergh gang”. Julia Roberts, however, did in a way. He first directed her in Erin Brokovitch, a daring portrait of the woman who fought polluting multinationals to help the poorest and most endangered US citizens. Roberts doesn't shine through as being altogether that amazing in the role. However, in many scenes, the actress demonstrates a seemingly hidden talent for acting. She does show off a strong personality and an ability to let go on screen. All in all, if one excludes the positive message and the great performance by Albert Finney, the film is not one of Steven's master works. On the other hand, that very same year, Traffic was released.

We could discuss Traffic for paragraphs on end. It is a key point in Soderbergh's effect on the film industry. A truly unique piece is born, putting together a string of amazing performances on screen. The director re-casts two of his favourite actors: Guzman and Cheadle. And with them appear Michael Douglas and his wife Catherine Zeta Jones but also, and especially, Benicio del Torro. Attempting to make a list of the later works that were inspired by its story-telling techniques and visual proficiency would be a lost cause. The film is apparently 3 hours long but at no point does the viewer ever want it to end. The description of US drug-war policy is spectacular.

And there we have it. Soderbergh took a little over ten years to become the “confirmed” director that we know him to be. And in that space of time, he became acquainted with someone who would end up being a best friend, George Clooney. After Out of Sight, when one of the two came up with a project, the other would always come backing him up on production or assisting on direction. Clooney's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and his upcoming Syrianaare but two examples of Soderbergh helping out a friend. Clooney, on the other hand became the child prodigy actor and really helped in making Soderbergh what he is today.

Soderbergh makes it big

When Ocean's Eleven was released, it was even more obvious that a gang was formed for good - Clooney did the movie for free. Brad Pitt and Don Cheadle were paid a pittance... And this allowed for Steven Soderbergh to add to the style. Matt Damon and Julia Roberts as well as Elliott Gould - once seen in the cult-classic M.A.S.H. - all appeared in what can only be described as a rare reunion of acting talents. This was reiterated in the two sequels to this original cover-film (the first Ocean's Eleven was made in 1960 with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, amongst others). It is fascinating to see how tightly knit the little community of friends became. When the second in the series was announced, Damon stopped all other activities to concentrate on Ocean's Twelve. Even Bruce Willis, perhaps jealous of all this success, makes a amusing apparition.

Even though the year 2002 is very busy for Soderbergh, he still manages to franticly colaborate on other projects. It seems that the synergy with George Clooney in Out of Sight was meant to last. Clooney's brilliant first feature Confessions of a dangerous mind has our busy man as excutive producer. The collaborations only start to unfold.

In Solaris Clooney and Natascha McElhone are reunited in an adaptation of Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 classic, Solaryis. Both actors later claimed that the filming had been extremely intense with Soderbergh insisting on reaching perfection in every shot. Indeed, the task of adapting such a master-film must have been extremely challenging. Altogether, Soderbergh's efforts were not in vain. His version is swept with dream-like imagery and transports the viewer into a parallel world. Once again, Soderbergh exhibits his talent for non-conventional film making.

Released in the same year, Full Frontal is another one of Soderbergh's hilariously weird movies which attracted little attention from the media - Clooney wasn't in it. Could that be the reason?

Back to small(ish) productions

As a crack addict craving for his drug, Sodebergh still can't get enough. He might be competing with Mike Patton to be the busiest/most active artist on the plant. This year round, he's, once again, collaborating with Clooney on Unscripted.

Unscripted is an HBO series that pictures the daunting world of Hollywood in all is finesse. The project originates from Soderbergh and Clooney, and we really couldn't be disappointed. Indeed, series is an raising form artistic expression (yeah we know its been around for a while... but its getting good), and the challenge was tricky. Yet, this unusual series lives up to our expectations, definitely stands out of the plastic shaped panoply of such format. Soderbergh doesn't actually direct (except for the pilot), so Clooney and Grant Heslov do.

Soderbergh has been active elsewhere though. Eros is a project that he decided on making with Wong Kar Wai and Michelangelo Antonioni in 2004. Each of the three eminent directors have directed a segment in this analysis of love and sex. His part of the three is called “Equilibrium” with Robert Downey Jr and received little acclaim unfortunately. In 2005, he once again directed a minimalist film with Bubble, the analysis of small-town America when a murder is committed which links three people who work in a doll factory. Once again, the film is unnoticed and flops... Yet, it is extremely clever and highly entertaining.

What's next?

Having completed Ocean's Thirteen, which was extremely successful and The Good German, which was much less successful (although Clooney was in it!) Soderbergh will not rest. Originally planned for 2007 is a documentary which he will direct about the story-teller, Spalding Gray. Gray committed suicide in January 2004. He was a true friend of Soderbergh's ever since the making of Gray's Anatomy. There, Spalding Gray had starred as himself and shown off his incredible story-telling capabilities. The two were very close and the documentary will definitely be a tribute to look out for. Finally, The Argentine (or Guerilla, the title is of yet unclear) will be a relection on the life of Ernesto 'Che' Guevarra and will reunite Benicio Del Toro with the esteemed direcor.

Will our readers please excuse the sometimes too chronological writing of this article. It is the only way of truly coming to grips with Soderbergh's genius. Indeed, it is extremely complicated to sum up in words a man who has shown himself capable of working in so many various ways with other people of great talent.

Now let us await the coming marvels of Steven Soderbergh!

The first in a bloody trilogy

Paul Kirkness — 2005-11-11T16:23:03Z

As children, it is easily enough that we succumb to the tricks of the playground magician. When he pulls out that rabbit from the hat, we do not ask ourselves how this happened, we look upon this as magic. As you grew older and started to understand the tricks, have you never profoundly wished that you could be blind to the conjuror's methods?

Now imagine that the fortune teller, the sorcerer's, the african “marabout” all really had some special powers... Imagine that you were wrong to stop believing in vampires, that shape-shifters exist and that people have the ability to live in shadow whilst remaining invisible... In short, imagine that you were wrong to have developed those adult visions on your fellow men and that amongst you, some people with special powers, positive and negative (indeed, it is not considered to be a positive trait of personality when you are driven to drink your best buddies' blood for survival...), are moving in and out of your life - this is the basic world of that Timur Bekmambetov takes us for a ride into with Nightwatch.

Nochdoi Dozor - the original title - is a trilogy... and in the same way that Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings were made in three parts, this is merely the first part of what really is a cunning (and cruel) way of movie-writing. The end of Nightwatch should certainly give you the desire for more.

The opening of this trilogy relates to the fulfilment of a prophecy: a young boy will one day be born and it shall be discovered that he is one of the “others”. But his own powers will be a lot more special than anyone else's... But here is the knack. You see, there are two sides in this story, the goodies (people of the Light) and the baddies (people of the Shadow) and each “other” has to pick a side when he is introduced to his abilities. Hence the plot: where will the young boy go? Dark or Light? Not terribly original, let's concede that.

However, there are many points which have made this movie appealing. The number of nasty monsters is one point - and they are very successfully freaky. But essentially, what makes Nochdoi Dozor so intriguing and so absorbing is it's breathtaking speed. The spectator will undoubtedly feel the tension and the stress that Bekmambetov wants us to experience. He wants out to feel that his world is a world of reality. He wants his viewers to go back to the age when vampires existed and wolves were under your bed waiting to grab at children. He introduces us to a world of many characters where all play parts that will take them through to the end of the trilogy. Bekmambetov places all the emphasis on reaction. And this is one of the more successfully achieved aspects of his first internationally distributed film.

Timur Bekmambetov

At the time when the movie came out, it was said that Fox Searchlight Entertainment is now boosting Russian movie-makers. The truth is that, coming from Russia are talented directors like Bekmambetov, people who have an aptitude for fantasy worlds and great ideas for what modern movie should be like. If one adds the fact that Bekmambetov usually works with very small budgets - often with results that would shame any Hollywood directors - we have a good investment... Well, at least they've thought it out too. But it is doubtful that Bekmambetov, an assertive director and a man of conviction, will change his attitude towards film-making... At least for Nightwatch.

Welcome to the Nightwatch trilogy. I think we'll all enjoy the ride.

Polo

Upcoming releases:

– Dvevnoi Dozor - 2006

– Nochnoi Dozor - 2007

George A. Romero's comeback

Paul Kirkness — 2005-09-26T19:23:00Z

1968... It was nearly fourty years ago that George A. Romero wrote and directed what is now considered to be a milestone in horror film history, the sinister and aptly named Night of the Living Dead. Ten years later came Dawn of the Dead, followed by Day of the Dead which were equally frightening... The Dead trilogy is now world renowned and has allowed for Romero to impose himself over the years as the master of horror and gore. Film buffs queue up for hours outside premières of his movies and when it was announced that he was working on Land of the Dead, they were queuing for a part as a zombie... So what of the master's new film?

It took a while for George Romero to get back to his roots and decide that he'd make another zombie flick. And late in 2002 he had everything ready to shoot a follow up to the Dead series: Land of the Dead. Immediately after the announcement that Romero was back at work, the horror freakoid papers set out to glorify the upcoming movie and began raising expectations on a world-wide level. As far as I have read there was indeed a small group of gore fanatics that travelled from around the world to the studios where Romero was going to film simply to become one of the many in the zombie flock. Interestingly enough, both Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, the autors of the brilliant spoof movie Shaun of the Dead, are amongst the cast of undead : you can even see them on the cover of the movie. Big Daddy is the big zombie in the middle and immediately on the left is Edgar Wright. Pegg is further on the right.

Anyway, here was a project that definitely got horror buffs - including me, some of my friends, young and old, goths and other weirdos - into a state of impatience. Romero had to be seriously under pressure as hoards of fans slumbered around waiting for the announcement of the release and a long overdue movie preview. And this isn't including the newest release of a contemporary release of his old Dawn of the Dead which had been particularly successful.

The cast was announced to be fairly cosmopolitan: Tasmanian Simon Baker, Colombian John Leguizamo and Italian Asia Argento (who have all had successful carreers in the States... granted) would starring side by side with Dennis Hopper. The plot too was announced: in a not too distant future, the zombies are everywhere and the humans live in a walled up city. The wealthy find a way to leave the chaos of the streets in which the poor's day to day lives are organized in trying to prevent zombies from breaking into the city for fresh food... And while crime hits the streets below, the rich settle into a humongous skyscraper.

After having seen the film, the metaphor is clear. Romero was in a mindset which was partially political - war between humans and zombies who now have minds, capable of learning and rebelling but most obviously the differences between the street and the skyscraper... Going into too much detail here would spoil some of the surprises that Romero has added to the film but references are mostly pretty obvious and one should have no problems decifering his view of current US policy.

The film as a whole is a success in as much as it does make an interesting political statement. I am, however, less convinced about the rest... The acting is not always up to scratch and Romero, in this movie, seems less inclined to get us all freaked out. There are many moments when the audience experiences the stress of the protagonists... but a lot of the dialogue is rather poor. This is not to say that a zombie picture should be judged on its dialogue. Rather, it seems that there was an attempt to make dialogue an integral part of Land of the Dead but a little too obviously. Hence, whole sections of the film are... a little silly and, to be honest, quite tedious to watch.

Having said this, it would now seem slightly sketchy to try and save Romero's fourth part of the Dead series. Well, I would nonetheless recommend you going to see the film if (a) you are a zombie flick aficionado, (b) you enjoy Romero's work and if (c) you think you should make your own mind up for yourself. I believe you shall find it entertaining and humourous at times. But don't expect THE horror film of the century... Just don't listen to too many critics.

Polo

Walter Salles - reaching for South American culture

arthur, Paul Kirkness — 2005-03-12T12:42:26Z

Soundsmag takes a quick glance at the man who contributed so greatly at re-launching Brazilian cinema on a worldwide level...

“I don't think we can say what the Latin American identity is, but I think we can try to look for it, and look for the reverberations from it.”

This could be described as Walter Salles' goal when he set out to enter the world of film-making. The Brazilian director really spearheaded the return of his countries movies on the international scene in the 1990's. Obviously, Salles was too young to have been part of the Cinema Novo of the 60's and 70's... But in the 80's he became a documentary film maker before starting on fiction in 1991 with his first film - Exposure, a fantastically crafted thriller.

However, the 1990's saw Brazil enter an enormous economic crisis, which hugely hindered Salles' cinematic output. He claims to have survived with what little he owned that he sold to feed his own. He also made documentaries on the state of the South American continent for European TV channels.

However, in 1995 he started working heartily on the now renowned Terra Estrangeira...

Terra Estrangeira

Terra Estrangeira starts off from the tragic events related to the economic crisis of the 1990's. It seems obvious that this period has become History for Walter Salles, as the amazing story of mixing cultures unfolds in Terra Estrangeira. The plot takes place in both Brazil and Portugal, and in an unprecedented way Salles offers the world an insight into how the two cultures twirl and mix together.

Terra Estrangeira

Paco is only a young boy, passionate about theatre, whose mother is one of the direct casualties of the humongous economic crash. Left with nothing, he feels the need to fulfill his late mother's dream : returning to her native land, Spain. He meets an excentric character, who is taken in by the boy's story and sends him on a courier mission to deliver a package to Portugal. From there Paco hopes to cross over to Spain. His journey unfolds as he meets Brazilian expatriates struggling in Portugal. And this is where we meet Alex who has left Brazil out of desperation - as is the case for many of these immigrants, he is barely surviving in Portugal.

The touching tale speaks very justly of roots and displacement in an ever globalizing world. The globalisation process that disposes of brazilians, uprooting them from their lands and their culture as the newly elected Fernando Color froze all national savings. Even in Portugal, Brazilians feel alienated and marginalized. Alex and Paco end up desperate, fleeing from similar unknowns.

The music of fado mixes with brazilian rhythms as destinies in both countries meet. Characters have an incredible beauty, expose their complexities. Filmed in black and white, the images are unpolished yet stand out by their authenticity.

With Terra Estrangeira, Salles makes a first beautiful mark on the world of cinema.

Central do Brazil

Josué and Dora - a beautiful friendship

Central do Brazil (Central Station) tells the tale of a young boy in search of his father in the chaos of modern time Brazil while he is courageously helped by a former school teacher named Dora who will lend her comforting wings to help him in his quest. She makes money writing letters for the illiterate people who pass through the main train station of Rio de Janeiro, and this is where she meets the young and recently orphaned Josué.

The film is a very touching look upon the social realities of Brazil, of the orphans it carries, of the exclusion that it allows for. Walter Salles manages to expose some of Brazil's fatal atrocities in a few glimpses along the romanticized storyline. A brief shot of police brutality barely interrupts the story and yet awakens and engages the viewer to some of the darkest sides of Brazil. Beneath the samba and the carnival lie other unspoken beauties and hardships. And Walter Salles has raised them to International cinematic scene with great skill.

Abril Despedacado

Abril Despadacado (Behind the Sun in English) takes a fresh and romanticized look at the old Brazilian traditions of the Nordeste. This far back region, in the north-east of Brazil as its name indicates, is pictured brilliantly in this movie. The plot revolves around one of the areas long-standing traditions: the open revenge cycle of killing between two rural families fighting for land. However, the film is but loosely based on these “honour killings” that one might have expected from Sicily

or Corsica but not South America. The central story around which the film gyrates tells the magnificent story of one young man (Rodrigo Santoro) who wishes to break away from tradition. Someone wishes to make peace with this generations-long cycle of death - a cycle caused by a disagreement on land between the Breves family and the Ferreiras.

As a director, Salles put most of his efforts on building up an almost poetical sentiment. Salles' artful approach allows the viewer to see rather than hear, to feel rather than be told what to feel. It is a valid comment to say of Abril Despedacado is at times slow and that the director spent perhaps too much time working on artwork and not enough on acting... But the general feeling one gets is, as much of the story unfolds and the characters are uncovered, that the spectator himself is the hunted. And, just for that, Salles remains a masterful artist.

Motorcycle Diaries

In the year 1952, two young Argentinian men set out on a long and arduous road trip. Starting off from the town of Buenos Aires, the two young men had clear objectives in mind : discover the continent of which they are a part of, Latin America. Their names : Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado. One of the names strikes the viewer as rather more recognised today.

But both Granado and Guevara, these two middle class, white, southern Americans, played important parts in spreading and upholding the ideal of communismo in later stages of their lives.

The stage is set when, at the age of 23, Guevara is still a medical student. Granado, on the other hand, is a biochemist. Setting off on their long trip, they dream of booze, of girls, of adventure. But as the scenery shown to us by Salles diversifies, so too do the protagonist's perspectives. They encounter poverty and misery in all its shapes and forms - from the underpaid exploited miners, to the forgotten and excluded lepers. This evolution is perhaps the films most successful point - An emotionally bubbling take on two young men whose political and ethical stances are slowly, but ever so surely, forged into making the historical figure that we know of today.

Diarios de Motocicleta is perhaps one of Salles' most esthetical works to date - playing on colours and landscapes so as to take the viewer on the same trip through what he and the Che have in common, an attractive continent, but one in which inequality is still hugely predominant.

What follows...

The two projects Walter Salles is now working that we know of are Dark Water and a segment of Paris, Je t'Aime of which we talked in our "filmography" of Alejandro González Iñárritu. The latter film is one we are all waiting for with - let us be very clear - impatience!

We would like you to imagine directors like Michel Gondry, Jean-Luc Godard, Olivier Assayas, Inarritu, Isabel Coixet, the Coen Brothers and of course, Walter Salles... Basically twenty directors (21 if you count the two Coen brothers of course) - one for each of Paris' 20 "arrondissements" or districts. The film is expected to come out in the coming year... Impatience...

As for Dark Water, there is room for worry. Those of you who have seen the original 2002 version by Japanese director Hideo Nakata can quite understandably wonder what Salles is doing making yet another "americanized" version of a successful foreign film... Nakata already had his The Ring series blandly immitated by Gore Verbinsky. And one can only hope that Salles doesn't limit himself and his abilities in directing this fairly scary horror / suspense film. At least - and this is the two post-adolescent guys speaking - Jennifer Connelly has been chosen to take up the part of the mother... But we will all have to wait for the end of 2005 to find out whether she and Ariel Gade make a convincing interpretation of the mother and daughter who move into a mysterious apartment. Having Walter Salles as a director should certainly be of help to them...

Everything you wanted to know about Bush but couldn't find in the US Media

Christopher Montel — 2004-07-30T00:00:00Z

Michael Moore had an immediate taste of the effects the attacks on the World Trade Center Towers had on the american public scene, when he was asked at the last minute by his editors to take out some of the heat condensed on his then latest work, Stupid White Men, scheduled for release the same week. But asking Moore to step into line is giving him a new reason not to, its now a well-known fact. And its partly one of the reasons which eventually led to the release of Farenheit 9/11, to show the American electorate months before the Presidential elections in 2004 some useful footage it would never, ever, get on regular forms of mass media.

Farenheit 9/11 is more or less the making of of an awful flick; an unauthorized, non-edited version of the reality show of American Politics. After getting a reminder of the previous episodes, where W is caught talking about bugs, dogs and trailers, the film begins with off-stage excerpts of all the main protagonists preparing the set, turning on their microphones, or combing their hair, sometimes with their Spin Doctor's saliva, sometimes with their own.

Showing Wolvowitz drooling on his comb has drawn some criticism from the media such as Newsweek, but you can only imagine that Moore decided to include this moment to show that these Princes Elect also debase themselves in doing such a thing. In fact, that poor bastard Wolvowitz never looked as humane and sympathetic when you see him sketch that shaky smile with his hair full of saliva, implicitly asking the camera if he looks good enough for the public. You'd almost forgive the guy for all he's said and done.

But Moore is obviously not here to make these guys more likeable as we are now months from the 2004 Presidential elections, and certainly not to support the Democratic Party, which has proved once again how spineless its leadership and representatives could be. Either when they failed to support the demands made for investigation on the outrageous methods Governor Jed Bush and his cronies used to disenfranchise entire segments of the American citizenry- usually predominantly Black- to make sure the Democrats would not win the state of Florida, or at least raise questions on the invasion of Iraq.

With more than 100 million tickets sold in the US in the first two weeks after its release, has Farenheit 9/11 become a mass phenomenon of its own? Its a record for a documentary, but calling Farenheit 9/11 a documentary is almost as pertinent as calling Fox News a reliable source of information. The only difference is that Michael Moore never pretended to give anything more than a organized counter-attack against the mass intoxication the American public has suffered from since September 11th, 2001.

In other words, Moore decided not to add on to the more objective accounts of Georges W Bush's presidency- some of them quite excellent such as The World According to Bush by William Karel- but to fight poison with poison. Yet the logic behind Moore's pamphlet is a little more subtle than just taking an eye for an eye and revenge, however sweet, for mass indoctrination.

Moore mentions briefly the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, but after watching his movie you actually understand to what extent methods of protests have shifted from mass social demonstrations against the Vietnam War to a structured and carefully orchestrated- maybe too orchestrated- counter attack on the state of terror imposed by the Bush administration. In the 1960s anti-war protests caught the lens of the American media as a novel social phenomenon, almost an attraction, and for just a few years became a political force which managed to a certain extent to disrupt the sense of conformity the US state had tried to instill on the population to make it adhere to its own interests in mobilizing the country in the Vietnam war.

In this sense, even if they remain very different in nature, the invasion of Iraq can be seen to have been orchestrated at home with the same methods of indoctrination as the Vietnam war 40 years before. But the situation today cannot allow in any way a resurgence of these mass protests against the ruling puppeteers, or at the very best, 9/11 is still too recent in the collective memory of Americans as a whole to be properly assessed and understood by the population.

Many Americans understood better and earlier than the rest of the world what the attacks on the Twin Towers truly meant for the American population- state-orchestrated hysteria, the infringement of individual and civic rights and a sacro-saint excuse for neo-conservatives in Washington to hijack US foreign policy for their own interests. At the time of the Vietnam war, the shift in the opinion of the ”silent majority”, in Nixon's words, from passive support to restlessness, is due mainly to the shift of the US media in the late 60s. However, today the US mainstream media is in many ways responsible for the fact that ”President” Georges W Bush was able to spend four years at the White House without fear of impeachment.

Why is it for example that the only Americans who were aware of the fact that Bush was not able to do the traditional walk down Pennsylvania Avenue on his way to the White House were the few thousand who went to Washington to pelt eggs and tomatoes on his Limousine, to protest the Coup d'Etat? The cameras of all the main News networks were there, yet all decided not to show this incredibly evocative footage, which testified how Bush's allies had managed to steal the elections and place him on the Presidential throne.

Its only by watching Moore's Farenheit 9/11 that the majority of the US public could properly inform itself on what federal politics have truly been about for the past few years. There are of course many fine productions which deal more objectively with the subject, and which for that matter respect more the art of documentary film-making, but let's face it : who in the US would go and see them except a handful of over-educated upper-middle class urban "liberals"? (The word itself "liberal", as "Cammunist" half a century ago, is enough today to send somebody to the burning stake).

Moore had a choice between mass information, which would attract more people and thus serve the purpose of this pamphlet, and a more refined and elitist angle. He chose, as he has been doing since Roger and Me, the first option. Even for the staunchest supporters of America's highly mediatized dissenting activist, its a sad state of affairs if the bulk of the citizenry of the ”World's oldest democracy” in Colin Powell's words needs this very biased, extremely sarcastic piece of counter-propaganda to be properly informed on the true state of domestic and foreign affairs in the United States.

Alejandro González Iñárritu

arthur — 2004-07-27T00:31:26Z

As his second film is released and adored, we already feel like writing a "complete works" review. We have been blessed with a sort of faith... and we want to spread it.

Alejandro González Iñárritu has to this date only directed two full features : "Amores Perros" and "21 grams". His other contribution to the film industry are one of the BMW shorts (if you don't know what they are, look them up) and one of the shorts in "11'09''01 - September 11" a project that brought together a number of talented directors on a theme based collection of 11 minute shorts.

To begin with, this director made his name through being the mexican guy who'd made a really amazing film: Amores Perros. It was getting a lot of coverage, a lot of people were talking about it, there was some sort of controversy around the violence portrayed... missing this hype was not an option (although some times it's much better to ignore hype...). So we got our asses down to the cinema and became witnesses to the phenomenon, now WE were raving about it. Sure enough, the film was violent. It included scenes of murder, graphic dog fights, sex, drugs, and latino rock'n'roll.

Amores Perros is admirably well cut, with not a single frame letting you evade the frantic rhythm. The film is neatly cut out in three life paths which cross each other in tragic ways, this crossing not being a central focus but a means to link these profoundly touching stories.

The expression of the similarities between physical violence and psychological violence is perfect. The three parts of the film are -or should be seen as- equally violent in hugely different ways. Never before has such a extreme link been portrayed with such pitch. To be able to put psychological and emotional violence on the same level as graphic violence is a large criticism of our society's approach to images. Relating the off-frame misery, questions the recuring show'n'tell, shock-as-much-as-you-can, voyeuristic, tip-of-the-iceberg attitude that fills our visual medias worldwide.

Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu is particularly skilled at using photography as a complete art in his films. Absorbing his films is like going to the pictures and going to art gallery exhibiting fantastic photography. Very much color coded as the brilliant "Traffic" by Sodenberg, the subtelty of his moods includes the spectator is his inquisite worlds.

It's easy for us to say now, the actors are promising, talented and make us forget they are actors (being the ultimate performance...). In particular Gael García Bernal (la Mala educación, Y tu mamá también) on most movie magazine covers these days... His admirable directing of these young talents later bought his way into working with some actors whose talent was already acquired.

Amores Perros ("Love's a bitch" / "Amour chiennes") is an unmisseable masterpiece, the kind that should convert your likings in cinema to a hobby or a passion.

The BMW short that he directed is rather striking. It definitelly stands out of the pack (among others : Ang Lee, John Woo, Tony Scott, etc.). Although some might argue that these are "long commercials" or "short filmercials", they still captivate us beyond the "buy our cars" message. And, in some sense, his work in this context seems to evade the most this concept. Elements of it are found in the fact that there is a gruesome dark portrayal of a distant reality : colombia's drug gangs. Blood all over the back seat of a BMW SUV doesn't exactly encourage people to buy their cars.

The photography and moods are bit like a badly shaved beard, dark and scruffy with great complexity. The rhythm is mastered with skill. Alejandro approches this short as student in film and scores an A+.

Admitedly, we really love Clive Owen (actor of main character in all these BWM films) because he is just so cool.

Alejandro's contribution to the "11'09''01 - September 11" project, is rather misterious, deceiving and yet we can't help to see energy and strength in this short piece. There are not many images in this short, simply archive images of people jumping off of the building, the towers falling. These are very short in a long stroke of a black image. Sound is the only guide in this darkness. We'd want to express our boredom, our deception, quickly say it's not any good but are unable. There are strong unspoken elements that we cannot deny in this minimalist piece.

How could our expectations be any higher knowing that a film was directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, with Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, and produced by http://www.focusfeatures.com/? (One day we'll do a dossier about this generally excellent production company...). So after months of waiting (litterally) for it. It was released to our immense emotion. I will not weight my exaggerative words.

The movie revolves asynchronously around three main characters played brilliantly by Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro and Noami Watts. I won't bother to associate the two first with the movies they played in, but can mention that we discovered Noami Watts in "Mulholland Drive" by David Lynch. This crew is absolutelly amazingly directed and individually talented. From this film onwards when I think of del Toro I see his impressive figure as a ex-con reborn Christian in a pass which he takes as a challenge by God.

Inaritu plays with the timeline with the same ease as with his approach to color and film grain. The three converging stories are split up in a number of short sequences which build an amazing puzzle of storytelling. We hadn't seen such skill with showing us the past, the future and what we believe to be the present since the brilliant Memento by Christopher Nolan. We are brought into his world by a series of disjoint out of focus pieces of a jigsaw that falls into place with grace and emotion. Snippets of the future raise our attention and expectancies, further our understanding of causes and consequences. Déjà-vus are created as we return to crucial scenes to complete the vision or find another perspectives.

In 21 grams, the music revolves around a recuring theme which is rather repetetive, yet every time it reaches our ears, it touches us deeper and deeper. Like a magician or an expert charmer Alejandro González Iñárritu reaches out to our humanity, no cheap thrills allowed.

The emotional content could, at the hands of many other directors, fall into classic pitfalls of pompous tear provoking tales , but Inaritu finds all the subtlety to caress our inner self, our attempts to understand others people's lives and tragedies. A true masterpiece often ligthtly criticized.

Alejandro is currently working on a project that is spiking up expectency in the soundsmag headquater's corridors : "Paris, je t'aime". It is a project that will get together 20 directors to each film an 'arrondissement' (district) of Paris and yet build a coherent narrative stroke by assembling these shorts. We are hoping the best for this project, with directors such as Ethan Cohen, Tim Roth, Jean-Luc Godard, we are hoping not to be disappointed.

He is yet another director for whom we will have to follow every move, hoping and fearing about his next work of art...

Kill Bill, Part 1

Christopher Montel — 2003-12-01T00:00:00Z

Remember Fox Force Five, the unsuccessful TV show pilot Mia Wallace talks about in Pulp Fiction? Well, Uma Thurman is back in this new Tarantino release, not as a police chick expert in knives, but a katana-slashing killing machine seeking revenge on ex-colleagues of an organisation of female assassins.

Uma Thurman is only known in this first installment as "The Bride", and her real name is not revealed. Its not that important anyway, since she is better known by the people she is hunting down on both sides of the Pacific ocean as "The Black Mamba", the deadliest of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.

The film starts four years back, with The Bride getting an unexpected visit from her colleagues, her boss Bill (David Carradine) and his brother Budd (Michael Madsen) at her wedding ceremony. The Bride gets beaten nearly to death by her former squad, sees her ceremony end in bloodshed, and finally gets a bullet in the head after telling former lover Bill that he is the father of her pregnant girl. But those who betrayed her made the fatal mistake of not making sure the Black Mamba was dead and buried.

Black Mamba awakes from a coma in a hospital room four years later, to discover that she has lost her baby. The storyline in this movie is full of suspense, but as in all Tarantino movies it consists of flashbacks and ellipses. The end as well is intentionally obvious: a kind of Tarantino way to answer the problem of having the good assassin live till her promise for revenge is fulfilled. You know Uma Thurman is going to get every single one of them until a still unknown climax, and that's the point. Its not second-degree, its a Tarantino-degree movie. And it makes you want to see the second part even more.

The photography is brilliant. A perfect format for Kill Bill would indeed be a comic or manga, and I'm sure we'll see a few of those coming out pretty soon. After the first half-hour, those who could not take the constant outflows of blood pouring on the screen had all gone. Those who stayed watched till the end the Tarantino approach on the Art of kung fu movies and manga culture. Kill Bill is different from most films of the same category, in that it manages both to parody and to celebrate the genre.

Tarantino switched from Pulp comics to Manga and anime, but in this fourth movie he has perfected his film-making techniques and explored new ones. The chapter about O Ren Ishii's childhood (Lucy Liu) is entirely in anime produced in Japan, and includes all that could not be shown on film. The graphic and moral violence (tons of blood, pedophilia, etc.) are exaggerated, as it is part of manga storylines. The result is that the extreme violence of the movie is done more intelligibly than gratitiously, and is therefore not unbearable to watch.

Kill Bill has not yet been released in Japan, China and Asia, but the film was made probably with a special mention to its future audience there. After all, Japan in particular is a country where manga magazines thick as a telephone book and printed on rough pulp paper, circulate in the tens of millions every week. Most characters are Japanese and Asian. The title itself, Kill Bill, sounds like a typical manga, and gives an excellent Japanese phonetic Kirubiru.

Women killers is a whole movie genre in Japan, the famous yakuza no jousei movies of gangster ladies avenging their loved ones. Some characters are direct stereotypes of manga and anime icons, like the degenerate and sadistic schoolgirl Go-go Yubari, (played brilliantly by Kuriyama Chiriaki), a cross-section of shoujo girl comics and Sadako in The Ring (The original version, not the pathetic USA remake).

I wasn't always totally convinced by Uma Thurman's acting in movies like Gattaca, but in both Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, her performance matches perfectly her characters. Lucy Liu is excellent as a gorgeously psychopathic assassin- also head of the Tokyo yakuza council. Its a shame though that this actress is not given a wider range of characters other than this usual profile. Still, her "sinister black eyes" as The RZA puts it never cease to steal away the attention of the audience.

In all Tarantino movies, music does a lot more than just accompany the action, it structures the way Tarantino wants us to watch his movies. And the Soundtrack must be heard for its own sake. In fact, the music was chosen by The RZA and Tarantino to encompass not only anime or kung fu movie soundtracks, but also spaghetti western movie melodies, such as Luis Bacalov's the Grand Duel, which sounds as if it was taken directly from an Ennio Morricone tune.

Both Far West and Samurai movies have always inspired each other a lot (Seven Samurai/ Seven Mercenaries, or Sergio Leone's remake of Kurosawa's Youjimbo, A Fistful of Dollars). But only Tarantino could have been ever able to bring Morricone, funky anime and samurai movie music together and make it sound so good, even when he takes the soundtrack of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in the trailer for the second installment.

Mixing elements of Asian and American popular culture, like the multiracial assassination squad, Chicks with Swords, yakuza and underground gangster movie themes, was a job for Tarantino. Most movies of the same kind are often really bad, but you forget that soon after watching Kill Bill. Part II in April 2004.