Blank City (2011) (Wednesday, March 8, 2012) (158)

There are few subjects I like more for documentaries than New York in earlier eras. In Blank City, French director Celine Danhier, looks at the downtown art scene, particularly the culture of filmmakers, in the East Village in the late 1970s and early 1980s -- one of the worst eras in the recent history of New York City.

Following on the heels of the experimental art filmmakers such as Andy Warhol, Jonas Meekas, Jack Smith, Hollis Frampton and Michael Snow, a large group of drug- and alcohol-addled kids started shooting small movies with Super-8 cameras they borrowed, rented or stole. This is the same era and the same group of people who brought you bands like the Talking Heads, Blondie and the Ramones -- a very CBGB-based set who lived somewhere from Avenue C to Bowery and from Houston to 14th Street. The city was broke and dangerous and their films were weird and terrible and amazing.

Dozens of artists, actors and filmmakers from the era are interviewed with clips from many of their movies. Probably the most famous of those people are Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi and Deborah Harry. We see how the movement went from the so-called "No Wave" films, which were rather chaotic and improvised, frequently sexual and about the desolation that surrounded the filmmakers, to the "Cinema of Transgression" of Nick Zedd, Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch (don't worry - I don't know most of these people either), that was more hyper-political and in-your-face. We see how the movement died when the neighborhood started getting nicer again in the late '80s and some of the (better) directors (like Jarmusch and Susan Seidelman) moved on to bigger projects.

This is a really fun and interesting documentary about the very recent past that seems to have been buried as if it took place a century ago. There's a constant sense throughout that despite the fact that New York City was terrible in that era, it was also wonderful. As much as hipsters bitch about how nice and yuppified the city is now, even East Williamsburg is nicer than Alphabet City was then. We probably won't ever see another time when groups of artists could rent lofts to live in for $50 a month... and, sadly, we won't ever again see such an enormous and weird output of art

Stars: 3 of 4

Blackthorn (2011) (Wednesday, March 8, 2012) (159)

Mateo Gil's film Blackthorn is an interesting re-imagining of the end of the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid story. In it, Butch and Sundance don't die in the shootout in Bolivia depicted at the end of the George Roy Hill film, but survive and go off in other directions. We first meet James Blackthorn (Sam Shepard), an American horse rancher in the Bolivian wilderness. He is the man formerly known as Butch, now twenty-some years removed from his glory days. He has recently gotten word that Etta's son (by him or by Sundance... raindrops falling on my head and all...) is grown and living in San Francisco and decides to sell everything and move back to America to see him.

What transpires next is a classic Western story with a slightly more Bolivian twist. Blackthorn gets involved with a Spanish engineer who is working for a mining company that has gone under, but is still able to pay the gringo for saving his life. All things are not as they seem, as Blackthorn's own persona suggests, and we see in flashbacks the ultimate fates of Etta and Sundance, how Butch got to where he is today as well as clues to this engineer's story.

Screenwriter Miguel Barros does a clever job with the story here weaving together incidents from Butch's past to show why he does certain things in the present. Still, there is a bit too many flashbacks, leaving this film almost as much of a coda to the first film than a story in and of itself (the way The Color of Money has a story independent of The Hustler, for instance).

There are not enough words to describe how beautiful the cinematography by Juan Ruiz Anchia is and how it makes the natural world seem magical and supernatural. Yes, it's always easier to make gorgeous settings look amazing on film, but Anchia's use of lush colors and contrasting areas of light and dark, horizons and mountains, is still absolutely breathtaking. For long periods of the film Blackthorn and the engineer trek across a dessert salt flat, which transforms into an otherworldly snowy plane with an ominous blue-gray sky overhead. This all looks fabulous.

This is a good film, but I certainly wanted to like it more as there seems to be something missing spiritually or emotionally from it. Blackthorn seems like a bit too much of a straw man who is only background and past with almost nothing going on in the present. This generally works, because the back-story is so compelling and familiar, but it's not the most effective form of storytelling.

Sam Shepard is one of the most underrated actors ever, I feel (perhaps because of his achievements as a playwright), and he's wonderful here... I just feel like he does all he can with the rather weak role and still leaves us wanting more.

If nothing else, this film should be watched and enjoyed for the amazing photography; it's a shame the story can't be as good.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Felaket Henry - Horrid Henry film izle

Felaket Henry - Horrid Henry (Türkçe Dublajdır.)
Filmin Yapım Yeri: İngiltere
Filmin Türü: Komedi
Filmin Yönetmeni: Nick Moore
Filmin Oyuncuları: Anjelica Huston,  Parminder Nagra,  Kimberley Walsh,  Richard E. Grant,  Noel Fielding,  Theo Stevenson,  Lloyd Howells,  Mathew Horne,  Prunella Scales
Filmin Senaristi: Lucinda Whiteley
Filmin Yapımcıları: Mike Watts,  Allan Niblo,  Caroline Levy,  Rupert Preston
Film Hakkında: Henry hiç derslerine çalışmayan haylaz bir çocuktur. Filmin ismindede anlaşılacağı üzere Felaket bir çocuktur. Filmi izleyerek komedinin tadına varacaksınız.
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Last Days Here (Tuesday, March 6, 2012) (24)

The documentary Last Days Here opens with an old man sitting on a shity couch lighting a crack pipe. "Did you see where that rock of crack fell?" he asks as he searches beneath the cushions for a bit more drugs. This is Bobby Liebling, the once and future lead man for the heavy metal band Pentagram -- the best hard rock band you've never heard of.

The film follows Liebling and his friend, manager and number-one fan Sean 'Pellet' Pelletier, who discovered the band several years ago and has been trying to get Bobby to make a new record or go on tour ever since. Bobby is a life-long drug addict (heroin, meth, crack ... you name it) and has some significant clinical paranoia (or something) that makes him think his skin is infected... which leads him to pick at it until he draws blood. He's also one of the great American heavy metal artists, bridging the space between Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols, as one person in the film put it.

Not only do we see the history of Pentagram - a band from suburban Washington, D.C. who could have made it had Bobby been easier to deal with in the early '70s - but we also see how Bobby's life is today. In his mid-50s, he lives in the basement (or "sub-basement") of his parents' suburban row house and he basically does nothing with his time aside from sleep and do drugs. His parents seem aloof to his situation and his Jewish mother hopes he'll find a nice woman to help him out. Good luck with that.

But his life does appear to turn around for a moment, as he gets hospitalized and clean and then connects with a fan (a really hot young fan!) for whom he moves to Philadelphia to be near. But, as with most addicts and young girls who fall in love with sick old men, things fall apart and Bobby seems to be on the brink of death yet again.

There is always an element to a movie like this where you worry as a viewer that you are taking part in the exploitation of such a man. It's hard to avoid that fact that he is deeply sick and damaged and the "objective film crew" seems to do nothing to help him (though in this case, directors Don Argott and Demian Fenton do seem to help, inasmuch as Bobby does get help from Pellet and others). It's not easy to sit and watch a man slowly burn his wick almost to the end (several times).

Bobby is tremendously charismatic, even in his drugged haze -- a bit reminiscent of Lemmy from Motorhead (and his documentary from last year). He has a magnetic personality, and seems to be a master of performance, which is clearly part of the problem for him. One could blame his parents or his friends (Pellet, specifically) for letting him get so bad, but ultimately it's clearly a hard situation for them too (his parents seem to wash their hands of him, and of the movie at some point).

This is the most recent in a rash of heavy metal documentaries, including Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Iron Maiden: Flight 666, Until the Light Takes Us and Lemmy, and this is a solid one. It's fun to learn about the detailed history of something that nobody knows and Bobby's contemporary drug story is interesting and sometimes tragic, without being too cutesy or precious. I'm pretty sure I'll never buy a Pentagram record in my life, but I'm glad I know more about them now.

Stars: 3 of 4

An Encounter with Simone Weil (Tuesday, March 6, 2012) (23)

Simone Weil was a less-than-totally-well-known French philosopher active mostly during the period between the two world wars. A consummate humanist, she struggled with the nature and scale of human suffering and wrote volumes and volumes of journals about it. She began as a Marxist, concerned with the rights of workers in French factories and moved on to other post-Communist concerns about people suffering under totalitarian organizations of any scale.

Raised as a secular Jew in an intellectual family, she became interested in the spiritual and mystical side of Christianity, as a way of understanding pain, suffering and exaltation. Ultimately Weil died in London in 1943, while working for the Free French Government, largely as a result of a near-starvation regime meant to symbolize a connection between herself and the people of France (Occupied and Vichy), who were not eating well.

In her film, An Encounter with Simone Weil, director Julia Haslett presents a fascinating biodoc about Weil, but from a very personal, almost avante-garde point of view. Haslett explains early on that her father suffered with mental illness through his life and committed suicide when she was 17; her brother, an academic also concerned with the history of suffering of blacks in America, deals with his own depression and thoughts of suicide.

The film is not a standard biodoc, however, but rather is more of a personal diary or collection of thoughts by Haslett, mostly about Weil, but also about suffering of people in her family and others. She is as much the subject of her doc as is Weil.

As the film moves along, we see the very typical still scans of photographs of Weil as well as copies of her hand-written journals and essays; Haslett interviews some of her family members who are still alive in France as well as contemporary philosophers, academics and researchers who are using her writings for their work.

The most daring element, though, is that Haslett has an actress playing Weil, has her study her writings and then interviews her. This is the very literal encounter with Simone Weil. As she is doing it, Haslett speaks about how she doesn't know exactly what she is going to get out of it. It's a very bold and interesting device -- to see if through the craft of acting, one might be able to unlock doors into a deeper meaning of the text. As a thought experiment this is a rather brilliant tool; I'm not sure it finds any specific success, although I appreciate the effort.

There is a real beauty to the way the film acts a bit like Haslett's journal, as she's researching Weil, who kept journals herself. I like the way Haslett tells Weil's full biography and gives a picture of her soul, and subtly shows her own emotional biography, as it relates to her father and brother. It's cut together really elegantly.

This is a very interesting, well made film that does more than just tell the story of a relatively unknown thinker. It is clear that this is a very personal film, which might lead to how good it is, but it also clear that Haslett is a daring filmmaker, interested in film form and structure as much as in narrative history. I always appreciate any film that breaks rules and pushes boundaries -- and this one does it very well.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Yalnız Adam - Solitary Man film izle

Yalnız Adam - Solitary Man (Türkçe Dublajdır.)
Filmin Yapım Yılı: 2009 
Filmin Yapım Yeri: ABD
Filmin Türü: Komedi - Dram
Filmin Süresi: 90 dk.
Filmin Yönetmeni: Brian Koppelman,  David Levien
Filmin Oyuncuları: Michael Douglas,  Susan Sarandon,  Danny DeVito,  Jesse Eisenberg,  Imogen Poots,  Mary-Louise Parker,  Jenna Fischer,  Olivia Thirlby,  Richard Schiff,  Ben Shenkman,  Anastasia Griffith,  Lila Urda,  Adam Pally,  Katherine Owens,  Stephanie Danielson,  James Thomas Bligh,  Jolynn Carpenter,  Ricky Garcia,  Arthur J. Nascarella,  James Colby,  Alex Kaluzhsky,  Jake Richard Siciliano
Filmin Senaristi: Brian Koppelman
Filmin Yapımcıları: Steven Soderbergh,  Paul Schiff
Filmin Konusu: Ben Kalmen yaşlılık sürecindedir ve aynı zamandada bir kalp hastadır. Galeri sahibi olan Ben, iyi işler başarmasına rağmen zaaflarına yenik düşer. Hastalığını öğrendiğinde de ipleri daha da salıverir. Kendinden küçük bayanlara ilgi duymakta ve iş hayatında da başarısız dönemlere girmektedir. Elindekileri yavaş yavaş kaybetmeye başlayacak olan Ben için, son bir şans doğar ve bunu değerlendirmeye çabalayacaktır.
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Selvi Boylum Al yazmalım(1977) HD İzle

Köylü kızı Asya ile kamyon şoförü İlyas birbirlerini severler. İşleri bozulan İlyas Asya’nın karşısına öyle çıkmak istemez ve bunalıma girerek Asya’yı terk eder. Sahipsiz kalan Asya’ya ve çocuğuna Cemşit adlı bir yol yapımcısı sahip çıkar. Yıllar sonra bir gün İlyas çıkagelir. Asya şimdi büyük aşkı ve kendisine zor gününde kucak açan Cemşit arasında bir tercih yapmak zorunda kalır.

Yönetmen : Atıf Yılmaz

Senaryo Yazarı : Ali Özgentürk

Tür : Dram , Duygusal