Drifting Clouds Blog: "Nuts4R2 Reviews Michael Bonomo's Assassins"

Deadly Interview Assassins UK 2011 Directed by Michael Bonomo Available online now It’s always very flattering when a director gets in touch and asks you to take a look at his short film. I’ve had this kind of request a number of times now but I’m always filled with a lot of anxiety before I watch these things because... well... someone’s taken the trouble to ask for my opinion and they’ll probably want me to review it and... what if i don’t like it? So when director Michael Bonomo sent me a direct message on twitter about his short film Assassins, I had the usual mix of “well that’s really nice but what if it’s tosh?” feelings running through my head. This went on a little longer than usual because several, mostly stupid things, came up so it took me almost over a week to get around to checking this one out. Happily, I’m glad (and relieved) to report that Assassins is a beautifully tight, well made little movie and I’m glad that the director is looking into turning this one into a feature length film. The movie has only three actors in it but one of those is seen only in flashback... so it’s mostly a two hander in terms of the specific drama of the situation. It starts off with a chilling, nameless character played by a guy I’ve seen in two shorts now, Bill Oberst Jr, and he is waiting in his car for a first time assassin to finish his work. When he judges that enough time has passed for the man inside to have finished his job, he gets out of his car, enters the apartment and sits down with a glass of water... surprising the new assassin. Everything about Oberst Jr's character is meticulous and clean... which could also be used as poster-gal terms for the general tone of the movie-making on show in this one. Everything is very cleanly shot and designed and the action takes place in very utilitarian sets. Oberst Jrs character is very specific in everything he does, which includes wiping down all the surfaces where he could leave fingerprints as and when he does (yeah, right from the opening, the director is clueing you in to the professionalism of this character). Highlighting “surfaces” is also a tactic the frame design takes, in that there are some great close ups of specific surfaces contrasted against each other... a gun barrel on a toilet seat, a rack focus shot of the owner, an image of a door handle which is then juxtaposed with an image reflected in a mirror as Oberst Jr enters the victims apartment. It’s almost like the agenda here is to subconsciously concentrate the viewers mind on the fact that the world of the assassin is a world of surface details which need attending to... look after all those little details and the rest will fall into place. I’m not sure if this is what the director intended from this style of shooting but it’s certainly a nice touch if he did. Now I don’t want to give away too much about this little gem because I want you to discover it for yourself, but I will say that the weight of the drama on this one rests on the slow realisation of the would-be assassin (and the audience) that the two main characters are already playing out a relationship, which is kind of an interview process in actual fact, and that the whole thing is a set-up with Bill Oberst Jr's character being in something of a win/win situation. He is disappointed by his would-be protege but he is willing to let either one of two scenarios play out. Again, I’m not going to tell you what happens at the end but there is a certain darkness to the final half a minute or so of this movie which gives it a bit of “edge” where other movies with a similar concluding incident might lose out in the memorability stakes... that is to say, it’s not what happens at the end that is so dark... it’s the clumsiness and lack of professionalism associated with one of the characters in its execution which is what ensures it lingers in your memory a little once the credits have finished rolling. The film is mostly scoreless, which works okay to highlight the very deliberate world of the hired assassin I guess but I think it could have maybe done with a little more, subtle musical emphasis throughout... especially if it was as sturdy and interesting as the end credits music composed by somebody called Kristen Baum. Nice work! Okay, so that’s me done with this one, I think. I’d really be interested in seeing what this director will be up to in the future which, as it happens, looks like it’ll be a feature length version of this short... albeit with a slightly different plot line to the original version. This is where you readers come in! This film is only ten minutes long so if you’ve got just ten minutes of your life you can spare in the next day or so, you could do a lot worse than clicking on one of these two links below and taking a look at this short movie for yourself. This film needs to be seen and giving a watch won’t cost you anything except ten minutes (depending on your net connection). Then if you like what you see, you could do a lot worse than tweeting or emailing the link to somebody else you feel might appreciate this short film too. There’s even a donation button on the second link where you can actually make a real difference to these artists and help them kickstart fund the feature length version by making a small donation via PayPal. It’s all good stuff and I think more movies should be funded in this manner because I suspect it helps nurture a less compromised artistic vision when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of filming... which is what this short demonstrates amply. A less compromised artistic vision. Something we all strive for. But don’t take my word for it. Click on one of these two links and check out the movie for yourself. It’s only ten minutes long and it’s free... enjoy! http://www.indiegogo.com/Assassins To read more by Nuts4R2, please visit www.nuts4r2.blogspot.com

Drifting Clouds Blog: "FILM by Samuel Beckett, starring Buster Keaton - FULL FILM

Checkout the trailer for Eugene Green's wonderful film, The Portugese Nun

Fabulous minimal camerawork, a strange unfolding action, partly a film within a film, but there's so much more than meets the eye here, there's something going on we cannot see. The sort of film I thought they didn't make anymore.

The Great Acting Blog: "Rewarding & Enrichiching - Being An Individual Creative Artist"

Check out this clip, where Mickey, a businessman, verbally dismantles a competitor (contains rude words).

 

 In 2008, I wrote my first, and, as yet, my last one man play, called The Call. It was about a businessman, called Mickey, who, upon learning he has won a business award, decides to ring up a competitor, Tony, to boast, which in turn leads to a battle of dominance between them, over girls, cars and money. The way the play was structured however, the audience only hears Mickey's side of the conversation. The Call is about many things – it is about our need for contact while simultaneously remaining independent, or at least, feeling that we are independent: Mickey's only relationships are with Tony via the telephone, and with a blow up doll – the phone and the doll are both synthetic and controllable, it is within Mickey's control to terminate contact with Tony or the doll at any moment. But it's also about how the quest for social dominance leads to psychotic behaviour, especially when submission from others is not forthcoming.

 

At the time of the production, I was experimenting with the techniques of Michael Chekhov, an actor who had been frustrated by Stanislavki's plodding contraints at the Moscow Art Theatre. In response, Chekhov devised his own methodology, which stressed that the actor should use his imagination and the “fiery images” he saw there, and incorporate them into his performance. Creative Individuality was also an important component of his technique, as was the use of Iconic Gestures. Chekhov saw the actor as an individual creative artist, not as a director's tool, and his techniques lead to bold, thrilling performances, mystical and bravura. I had written the play with this kind of acting in mind, and the final text was very highly strung, any actor playing this part would need to reach way out of his comfort zone to fill this role, there can be no “just saying the lines”, and that's not to mention of course, the severe technical challenge of pretending to speak to someone on the phone, and doing so for the best part of an hour.

No doubt The Call has been an important step in my education, and is arguably one of the toughest roles I've played. At the time of rehearsals, I became neurotic about remembering my lines (not something I usually have a problem with), waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning, jumping out of bed, grabbing the script, and furiously going over them. I rehearsed doing the play in it's entirety scores of times – I was determined to walk on stage and give total commitment – and perhaps this determination went a little too far at times, leading to obsession. However, I often advocate on this blog, for actors to perceive themselves as individual creative artists, and not just employees, to forge their own destiny and not wait for someone to give them a break, and yeah sure this is hugely challenging, frightening even, and yes it can create pressure and the odd behaviour I have mentioned above, but isn't that the point? Isn't the actor's life about continually putting himself under pressure, then seeing how he deals with that pressure, and in the process, learning about himself, then carrying those lessons forward? This was certainly the case with The Call. It also happens to be a rewarding and enriching way to go about things.

 

I hope you enjoyed the clip.

Checkout this wonderful interview with Alain Delon, on Le Samourai

Drifting Clouds Blog: "Nuts4R2 Reviews Aaron Katz's Cold Weather"

Katz Pyjamas Cold Weather USA 2010 Directed by Aaron Katz Axiom Films Region 2 Warning: The spoiler here is that there really isn't able to be any spoilers! Wow! This is an absolutely amazing little film for lovers of leisurely paced cinema where not a lot really happens... and I mean that in the nicest way. This movie is a thing of beauty and I’m gonna tell everyone I know to take a look at it. Unassuming and quietly persistent, the film is, perhaps, a trifle hard done by if I conclude, as I just did, that nothing really does happen in it. That’s patently untrue... stuff does happen I guess... but as you’ll see as I review it, the stuff that happens, the little incidents that add character to the rich palette of personalities on screen, is all about the quiet weight of their gradual occurrences and is not about servicing a story. It does have a story... but it also doesn’t. I’m going to have to explain this a bit more aren’t I? Cold Weather tells the “story” of Doug, who has gone to stay with his seemingly friendless and hard working sister after he has dropped out, probably from lack of interest by the feel of it, from College where he was studying forensic science. He gets a job hauling heavy loads at an ice factory which astonishes his sister Gail, who already knows what slowly sinks into the audience as the film progresses, that Doug is a bit of a gentle genius and is kinda wasting himself. Doug makes friends with a work colleague and fellow ice lugger, Carlos, who starts to hang around with him and Gail and Doug’s ex-girlfriend Rachel, who turns up for a while. Doug is a fan of classic detective literature, especially Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and so he lends a collection of some of the stories to Carlos, who also starts to get into the adventures of the classic English detective. Carlos also starts to get into Rachel quite heavily, after taking her to a Star Trek convention. And then Rachel goes missing and the three friends - Doug, Gail and Carlos - find themselves involved in a real life adventure story. Shenanigans follow as our heroes try to find out where Rachel is, why she has gone missing and, after Rachel resurfaces, how they can best help her with the trouble she has gotten herself into. Except... that isn’t it at all. You see, the mystery story which seems to be the actual point of the movie just kinda stops half way through as the movie ends... which will probably leave a lot of people either confused or angry as most people will want to know what happens next. Actually though, the point at which the story is just dropped does actually leave it somewhere that you can draw some conclusion and partial closure from, if you so desire... although the way it is left does kind of set it up for what happens next... which turns out to be the roll of the credits actually. What’s happened here is the story is purely used to be something to hang on a series of small incidents to better develop the chemistry of the characters. It’s a movie about the way people are with each other and how they co-exist and make allowances for each other. Most of the little sequences do not serve the “story” in any way, shape or form, they just exist as a window to the foibles and whims of the characters. Sometimes this kind of film-making is accused of being indulgent but... well I’ve never really understood why that should be a criticism of art. In the case of Cold Weather, too, we’re talking about great art. Surely one wants the writer, director and performers to indulge themselves a little (or even a lot). The movie is the sum of the artists working on it... it doesn’t all have to be the “cause and effect” mode of “Hollywood storytelling” which seems to have, unfortunately, caught on over the years. This movie is better than that. Let me give you an example... Doug wants to be a private detective. When he’s deep into trying to solve the mystery, Doug decides to take up smoking like his literary hero Sherlock Holmes. So he goes to buy a pipe, eventually finding something in his “less than modest” price range. As Gail drives him home from the pipe shop, he realises that he’s not bought any tobacco. So they stop somewhere else and he gets some. This would be considered a pretty pointless moment by most cinema audiences and certainly is not a scene necessary to carrying forward any story. What it does do though, is lend further weight to the use of the pipe as a symbolic metaphor for the focussing of thought as opposed to the normal purpose a pipe is used for. This is a moment about character motivation... not story. And this film is full of those lovely little moments which add substance to the characters but which do not serve any real purpose other than that. And when Doug gets home and tries smoking the pipe, it doesn’t do much for him anyway... although Carlos seems to get into it a little later on in the film. Pointless but absolutely brilliant... now this is good movie making. The film is just totally amazing. The photography is truly beautiful and very clean and clearly defined. The colours used aren’t primary but they’re very interesting and not quite neutral palettes being used... the film is called Cold Weather, though, and some of the colour choices are in sympathy with this, I feel. It’s got a catchy, addictive and simplistic score by Keegan Dewitt which you’ll have going through your head for a while... and it’s just filled with beautiful little moments like those I’ve described above... it’s a film which is about people, not story. Sure, there is a story element involved, but that story is used to as a framework to purely explore elements of the characters in the story, in situations that might not usually come up, rather than as an end unto itself. Or, to put it another way, the characters are the story... and don’t serve any larger goal than that. If I was to compare this film to any other director working today I think I’d have to conclude that, dialogue style aside, the film is a close spiritual cousin to the movies of Hal Hartley... and to be honest I could think of no greater compliment than that, Hartley is my directing hero. Cold Weather, if you haven’t already guessed this by now, comes with one of my highest recommendations for movies. If you like the laid back and gentle style which has come to be associated with a lot of US Independent film then this movie is right up your alley. The characters will stay with you long after the movie has finished.

Drifting Clouds Blog: "Nuts4R2 Reviews Aaron Katz's Cold Weather"

Katz Pyjamas Cold Weather USA 2010 Directed by Aaron Katz Axiom Films Region 2 Warning: The spoiler here is that there really isn't able to be any spoilers! Wow! This is an absolutely amazing little film for lovers of leisurely paced cinema where not a lot really happens... and I mean that in the nicest way. This movie is a thing of beauty and I’m gonna tell everyone I know to take a look at it. Unassuming and quietly persistent, the film is, perhaps, a trifle hard done by if I conclude, as I just did, that nothing really does happen in it. That’s patently untrue... stuff does happen I guess... but as you’ll see as I review it, the stuff that happens, the little incidents that add character to the rich palette of personalities on screen, is all about the quiet weight of their gradual occurrences and is not about servicing a story. It does have a story... but it also doesn’t. I’m going to have to explain this a bit more aren’t I? Cold Weather tells the “story” of Doug, who has gone to stay with his seemingly friendless and hard working sister after he has dropped out, probably from lack of interest by the feel of it, from College where he was studying forensic science. He gets a job hauling heavy loads at an ice factory which astonishes his sister Gail, who already knows what slowly sinks into the audience as the film progresses, that Doug is a bit of a gentle genius and is kinda wasting himself. Doug makes friends with a work colleague and fellow ice lugger, Carlos, who starts to hang around with him and Gail and Doug’s ex-girlfriend Rachel, who turns up for a while. Doug is a fan of classic detective literature, especially Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and so he lends a collection of some of the stories to Carlos, who also starts to get into the adventures of the classic English detective. Carlos also starts to get into Rachel quite heavily, after taking her to a Star Trek convention. And then Rachel goes missing and the three friends - Doug, Gail and Carlos - find themselves involved in a real life adventure story. Shenanigans follow as our heroes try to find out where Rachel is, why she has gone missing and, after Rachel resurfaces, how they can best help her with the trouble she has gotten herself into. Except... that isn’t it at all. You see, the mystery story which seems to be the actual point of the movie just kinda stops half way through as the movie ends... which will probably leave a lot of people either confused or angry as most people will want to know what happens next. Actually though, the point at which the story is just dropped does actually leave it somewhere that you can draw some conclusion and partial closure from, if you so desire... although the way it is left does kind of set it up for what happens next... which turns out to be the roll of the credits actually. What’s happened here is the story is purely used to be something to hang on a series of small incidents to better develop the chemistry of the characters. It’s a movie about the way people are with each other and how they co-exist and make allowances for each other. Most of the little sequences do not serve the “story” in any way, shape or form, they just exist as a window to the foibles and whims of the characters. Sometimes this kind of film-making is accused of being indulgent but... well I’ve never really understood why that should be a criticism of art. In the case of Cold Weather, too, we’re talking about great art. Surely one wants the writer, director and performers to indulge themselves a little (or even a lot). The movie is the sum of the artists working on it... it doesn’t all have to be the “cause and effect” mode of “Hollywood storytelling” which seems to have, unfortunately, caught on over the years. This movie is better than that. Let me give you an example... Doug wants to be a private detective. When he’s deep into trying to solve the mystery, Doug decides to take up smoking like his literary hero Sherlock Holmes. So he goes to buy a pipe, eventually finding something in his “less than modest” price range. As Gail drives him home from the pipe shop, he realises that he’s not bought any tobacco. So they stop somewhere else and he gets some. This would be considered a pretty pointless moment by most cinema audiences and certainly is not a scene necessary to carrying forward any story. What it does do though, is lend further weight to the use of the pipe as a symbolic metaphor for the focussing of thought as opposed to the normal purpose a pipe is used for. This is a moment about character motivation... not story. And this film is full of those lovely little moments which add substance to the characters but which do not serve any real purpose other than that. And when Doug gets home and tries smoking the pipe, it doesn’t do much for him anyway... although Carlos seems to get into it a little later on in the film. Pointless but absolutely brilliant... now this is good movie making. The film is just totally amazing. The photography is truly beautiful and very clean and clearly defined. The colours used aren’t primary but they’re very interesting and not quite neutral palettes being used... the film is called Cold Weather, though, and some of the colour choices are in sympathy with this, I feel. It’s got a catchy, addictive and simplistic score by Keegan Dewitt which you’ll have going through your head for a while... and it’s just filled with beautiful little moments like those I’ve described above... it’s a film which is about people, not story. Sure, there is a story element involved, but that story is used to as a framework to purely explore elements of the characters in the story, in situations that might not usually come up, rather than as an end unto itself. Or, to put it another way, the characters are the story... and don’t serve any larger goal than that. If I was to compare this film to any other director working today I think I’d have to conclude that, dialogue style aside, the film is a close spiritual cousin to the movies of Hal Hartley... and to be honest I could think of no greater compliment than that, Hartley is my directing hero. Cold Weather, if you haven’t already guessed this by now, comes with one of my highest recommendations for movies. If you like the laid back and gentle style which has come to be associated with a lot of US Independent film then this movie is right up your alley. The characters will stay with you long after the movie has finished.

Drifting Clouds Blog: "Nuts4R2 Reviews Aaron Katz's Cold Weather"

Katz Pyjamas Cold Weather USA 2010 Directed by Aaron Katz Axiom Films Region 2 Warning: The spoiler here is that there really isn't able to be any spoilers! Wow! This is an absolutely amazing little film for lovers of leisurely paced cinema where not a lot really happens... and I mean that in the nicest way. This movie is a thing of beauty and I’m gonna tell everyone I know to take a look at it. Unassuming and quietly persistent, the film is, perhaps, a trifle hard done by if I conclude, as I just did, that nothing really does happen in it. That’s patently untrue... stuff does happen I guess... but as you’ll see as I review it, the stuff that happens, the little incidents that add character to the rich palette of personalities on screen, is all about the quiet weight of their gradual occurrences and is not about servicing a story. It does have a story... but it also doesn’t. I’m going to have to explain this a bit more aren’t I? Cold Weather tells the “story” of Doug, who has gone to stay with his seemingly friendless and hard working sister after he has dropped out, probably from lack of interest by the feel of it, from College where he was studying forensic science. He gets a job hauling heavy loads at an ice factory which astonishes his sister Gail, who already knows what slowly sinks into the audience as the film progresses, that Doug is a bit of a gentle genius and is kinda wasting himself. Doug makes friends with a work colleague and fellow ice lugger, Carlos, who starts to hang around with him and Gail and Doug’s ex-girlfriend Rachel, who turns up for a while. Doug is a fan of classic detective literature, especially Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and so he lends a collection of some of the stories to Carlos, who also starts to get into the adventures of the classic English detective. Carlos also starts to get into Rachel quite heavily, after taking her to a Star Trek convention. And then Rachel goes missing and the three friends - Doug, Gail and Carlos - find themselves involved in a real life adventure story. Shenanigans follow as our heroes try to find out where Rachel is, why she has gone missing and, after Rachel resurfaces, how they can best help her with the trouble she has gotten herself into. Except... that isn’t it at all. You see, the mystery story which seems to be the actual point of the movie just kinda stops half way through as the movie ends... which will probably leave a lot of people either confused or angry as most people will want to know what happens next. Actually though, the point at which the story is just dropped does actually leave it somewhere that you can draw some conclusion and partial closure from, if you so desire... although the way it is left does kind of set it up for what happens next... which turns out to be the roll of the credits actually. What’s happened here is the story is purely used to be something to hang on a series of small incidents to better develop the chemistry of the characters. It’s a movie about the way people are with each other and how they co-exist and make allowances for each other. Most of the little sequences do not serve the “story” in any way, shape or form, they just exist as a window to the foibles and whims of the characters. Sometimes this kind of film-making is accused of being indulgent but... well I’ve never really understood why that should be a criticism of art. In the case of Cold Weather, too, we’re talking about great art. Surely one wants the writer, director and performers to indulge themselves a little (or even a lot). The movie is the sum of the artists working on it... it doesn’t all have to be the “cause and effect” mode of “Hollywood storytelling” which seems to have, unfortunately, caught on over the years. This movie is better than that. Let me give you an example... Doug wants to be a private detective. When he’s deep into trying to solve the mystery, Doug decides to take up smoking like his literary hero Sherlock Holmes. So he goes to buy a pipe, eventually finding something in his “less than modest” price range. As Gail drives him home from the pipe shop, he realises that he’s not bought any tobacco. So they stop somewhere else and he gets some. This would be considered a pretty pointless moment by most cinema audiences and certainly is not a scene necessary to carrying forward any story. What it does do though, is lend further weight to the use of the pipe as a symbolic metaphor for the focussing of thought as opposed to the normal purpose a pipe is used for. This is a moment about character motivation... not story. And this film is full of those lovely little moments which add substance to the characters but which do not serve any real purpose other than that. And when Doug gets home and tries smoking the pipe, it doesn’t do much for him anyway... although Carlos seems to get into it a little later on in the film. Pointless but absolutely brilliant... now this is good movie making. The film is just totally amazing. The photography is truly beautiful and very clean and clearly defined. The colours used aren’t primary but they’re very interesting and not quite neutral palettes being used... the film is called Cold Weather, though, and some of the colour choices are in sympathy with this, I feel. It’s got a catchy, addictive and simplistic score by Keegan Dewitt which you’ll have going through your head for a while... and it’s just filled with beautiful little moments like those I’ve described above... it’s a film which is about people, not story. Sure, there is a story element involved, but that story is used to as a framework to purely explore elements of the characters in the story, in situations that might not usually come up, rather than as an end unto itself. Or, to put it another way, the characters are the story... and don’t serve any larger goal than that. If I was to compare this film to any other director working today I think I’d have to conclude that, dialogue style aside, the film is a close spiritual cousin to the movies of Hal Hartley... and to be honest I could think of no greater compliment than that, Hartley is my directing hero. Cold Weather, if you haven’t already guessed this by now, comes with one of my highest recommendations for movies. If you like the laid back and gentle style which has come to be associated with a lot of US Independent film then this movie is right up your alley. The characters will stay with you long after the movie has finished.

Drifting Clouds Blog: "Nuts4R2 Reviews Aaron Katz's Cold Weather"

Superb, Joe Strummer's Music for Alex Cox's Walker

Nuts4R2 Reviews James Gunn's SUPER

Panel Vision Super US 2010 Directed by James Gunn G2 Pictures Region 2 Warning: There’s a couple of superpowered spoilers in here somewhere. Hmmmm... how to review a film like Super. Not too sure about where to begin on this one because, although it’s riding the wave of “real vigilante super heroes” movies in the wake of more prominent movies like Kick Ass... it’s also very different in both its intent and its tone. The movie is of interest because, although the main protagonist Frank D’Arbo, played by Rainn Wilson, decides to “shut up crime” and becomes The Crimson Bolt... he does so without any real knowledge of, or emotional investment in, the four colour heroes that might be expected to have inspired him in the first place. This dysfunctional character, though, has suffered from strange visions all his life and after he loses his wife to a drug dealer... his motivation is to get her back. This is filtered by an overtly and humorously extreme Christian superhero on television (played by Nathan Fillion, no less) whose messages of over zealous purity strike a chord with Frank and soon he is down to the local comic shop and seeking “superhero origin” advice and research material from the owner, Libby (played by Ellen Page). Libby does her best to point him to the right back issues and he returns, after his first failure at fighting crime, to check out non-super powered heroes and the weapons they use (Batman etc). He becomes The Crimson Bolt and his new weapon is a wrench with which he bops people over the head, usually leaving them half crippled or unconscious and covered in blood... And here’s the thing... Although the movie is very much played for laughs, it’s certainly a very black strand of humour and it’s also shot through with the hard question of whether masked vigilantes should be allowed to exist and what the consequences of using violence as a weapon against crime are. And, like the best movies of this kind, it certainly doesn’t pull any super powered punches in this department. Things start to escalate (or should that be descend) rather quickly when Libby figures out the true identity of The Crimson Bolt and begs Frank to be his sidekick. She eventually wears him down but it’s obvious she is sexually attracted to Frank (who has no interest in this and has a very violent body reaction when she, kind of, rapes him in a fit of lust) and also much more interest with the violent side of the costumed shenanigans as a revenge against the unjust as opposed to attempting to tackle the issue in a more level headed manner. In her first outing as The Crimson Bolt’s sidekick “Boltie”, for instance, she nearly kills someone because she suspects he’s the guy who keyed her friends car. We’re way out of sight of “the punishment fits the crime” here people! And that’s kinda the point. Frank is certainly no better. Seriously hospitalising a man and woman because they pushed into a cinema queue instead of going to the back and when “Boltie” saves his life by driving into a man and crushing his legs against a wall with her car (laughing in his face gleefully after the act), he immediately forgives her and they become a team once more. The violence is harsh, as is Frank’s bad moral judgement when he and Boltie go on their final mission together and he allows her to go with him. It’s then that he learns the responsibility and consequences of taking a teenage girl into the heat of battle with him... and in a way that he finds emotionally devastating, even as he rescues his wife (Liv Tyler) from the clutches of the evil drug dealer (Kevin Bacon) and his friends. By the end of the movie Frank is pretty much in the same boat he was somewhere soon after the start of the movie... except he now has a pet rabbit and a lot of “proud memory moments” as symbolised by the amount of sketches he’s covered his wall with. He goes unpunished by the law (and seems to have recovered from the amount of bullet hits he took during the course of his short-lived career as The Crimson Bolt) but at the same time you kinda feel that, while he’s probably not learnt much, he has at least rescued and liberated and truly saved the person he most loved in the world (although I don’t want to give away too much about how their relationship continues after that... please watch the movie) and there is a certain sense of redemption by the last few moments of the movie, even if that redemption cost more lives than it was possibly worth. Super is a film which asks us to consider issues. The film poses these kinds of questions about “at what point the self proclaimed good guy fighting for justice becomes far worse than the criminals he is trying to punish”, without trying to force feed us answers or buy into a certain morality. It’s job is just to ask these things and leave you something to ponder once the movie is done... not ram solutions down our throats. As such, I found Super to be a quite refreshing antidote to many of the bona-fide superhero movies which have played on our screens over the last ten years or so and would definitely point this one out, for the same kinds of audience who are attracted to that kind of product, to add to their viewing list. This one’s definitely worth a look. Read more by Nuts4R2 at http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk

Nuts4R2 Reviews James Gunn's SUPER

Panel Vision Super US 2010 Directed by James Gunn G2 Pictures Region 2 Warning: There’s a couple of superpowered spoilers in here somewhere. Hmmmm... how to review a film like Super. Not too sure about where to begin on this one because, although it’s riding the wave of “real vigilante super heroes” movies in the wake of more prominent movies like Kick Ass... it’s also very different in both its intent and its tone. The movie is of interest because, although the main protagonist Frank D’Arbo, played by Rainn Wilson, decides to “shut up crime” and becomes The Crimson Bolt... he does so without any real knowledge of, or emotional investment in, the four colour heroes that might be expected to have inspired him in the first place. This dysfunctional character, though, has suffered from strange visions all his life and after he loses his wife to a drug dealer... his motivation is to get her back. This is filtered by an overtly and humorously extreme Christian superhero on television (played by Nathan Fillion, no less) whose messages of over zealous purity strike a chord with Frank and soon he is down to the local comic shop and seeking “superhero origin” advice and research material from the owner, Libby (played by Ellen Page). Libby does her best to point him to the right back issues and he returns, after his first failure at fighting crime, to check out non-super powered heroes and the weapons they use (Batman etc). He becomes The Crimson Bolt and his new weapon is a wrench with which he bops people over the head, usually leaving them half crippled or unconscious and covered in blood... And here’s the thing... Although the movie is very much played for laughs, it’s certainly a very black strand of humour and it’s also shot through with the hard question of whether masked vigilantes should be allowed to exist and what the consequences of using violence as a weapon against crime are. And, like the best movies of this kind, it certainly doesn’t pull any super powered punches in this department. Things start to escalate (or should that be descend) rather quickly when Libby figures out the true identity of The Crimson Bolt and begs Frank to be his sidekick. She eventually wears him down but it’s obvious she is sexually attracted to Frank (who has no interest in this and has a very violent body reaction when she, kind of, rapes him in a fit of lust) and also much more interest with the violent side of the costumed shenanigans as a revenge against the unjust as opposed to attempting to tackle the issue in a more level headed manner. In her first outing as The Crimson Bolt’s sidekick “Boltie”, for instance, she nearly kills someone because she suspects he’s the guy who keyed her friends car. We’re way out of sight of “the punishment fits the crime” here people! And that’s kinda the point. Frank is certainly no better. Seriously hospitalising a man and woman because they pushed into a cinema queue instead of going to the back and when “Boltie” saves his life by driving into a man and crushing his legs against a wall with her car (laughing in his face gleefully after the act), he immediately forgives her and they become a team once more. The violence is harsh, as is Frank’s bad moral judgement when he and Boltie go on their final mission together and he allows her to go with him. It’s then that he learns the responsibility and consequences of taking a teenage girl into the heat of battle with him... and in a way that he finds emotionally devastating, even as he rescues his wife (Liv Tyler) from the clutches of the evil drug dealer (Kevin Bacon) and his friends. By the end of the movie Frank is pretty much in the same boat he was somewhere soon after the start of the movie... except he now has a pet rabbit and a lot of “proud memory moments” as symbolised by the amount of sketches he’s covered his wall with. He goes unpunished by the law (and seems to have recovered from the amount of bullet hits he took during the course of his short-lived career as The Crimson Bolt) but at the same time you kinda feel that, while he’s probably not learnt much, he has at least rescued and liberated and truly saved the person he most loved in the world (although I don’t want to give away too much about how their relationship continues after that... please watch the movie) and there is a certain sense of redemption by the last few moments of the movie, even if that redemption cost more lives than it was possibly worth. Super is a film which asks us to consider issues. The film poses these kinds of questions about “at what point the self proclaimed good guy fighting for justice becomes far worse than the criminals he is trying to punish”, without trying to force feed us answers or buy into a certain morality. It’s job is just to ask these things and leave you something to ponder once the movie is done... not ram solutions down our throats. As such, I found Super to be a quite refreshing antidote to many of the bona-fide superhero movies which have played on our screens over the last ten years or so and would definitely point this one out, for the same kinds of audience who are attracted to that kind of product, to add to their viewing list. This one’s definitely worth a look. Read more by Nuts4R2 at http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk

The Great Acting Blog: "Make Choices You Enjoy - John Malkovich In Colour Me Kubrick"

Malkovich is one of those American actors who is regarded as a real actor, which is to say, he actually can act, he's an artist, he's in it because he wants to be a great actor, or make a great contribution, he's certainly an actor who gives something a little bit extra, he's always provocative, always intense. He's also one of those actors for whom we feel that the calibre of material offered to him is rarely commensurate to his talent – Malkovich has never had a great run of performances in the way his compatriots from the generation preceding his did, namely Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro. But then perhaps Malkovich has never quite been the Hollywood star in the same way either. Infact, off the top of my head, it's difficult to really name any of his Hollywood films. However, his output in Europe seems to be more distinctive, where he has worked with Raoul Ruiz, Manoel de Olveira, Michelangelo Antonioni and Liliana Cavani. Malkovich though, is an actor of such strength, that he can take fairly mediocre material, and render it compelling. And Colour Me Kubrick is an example of this.

The film itself is a light, fluffy affair, loose in parts, piquant in others, and had the actor at the centre of the film been of anything less than Malkovich's standard, then Colour Me Kubrick would have been a very ordinary film indeed. But there Malkovich is, delivering perhaps one of the great underrated screen performances of recent years (this is certainly an example of an actor's work receiving less than due attention because it was done in an unfeted film – an actor cannot enjoy success unless the production he is working on, is successful as a whole – there's moral in there somewhere). Colour Me Kubrick is based on the true story of Alan Conway, who went around passing himself off as filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. It wasn't that Conway looked anything like Kubrick, he didn't, but he was able to get away with it because Kubrick's reclusiveness meant that few people were certain of what he looked like. And Malkovich goes to town as Conway, playing him as a cheap, camp, bedsitland, alcoholic – imagine one of those middle aged men wearing a brown mac and tatty old baseball cap with a cheap bottle of vodka in his pocket, and you've got him . Scene by scene, he wins the confidence of wannabe showbiz types by appealing to their vanity; he promises a young rock group work on his new film, and so they buy him drinks (“rich people don't carry cash”), and on another occasion, he beds a young costumer designer after promising to hook him up with his Hollywood connections, and on another, he agrees to invest in a swanky restaurant in order to save it from bankruptcy, offering to get his Hollywood legal team to “look over the figures”. Perhaps Conway's most audacious con, was of a light entertainer, who, in real life had been Joe Longthorne but was coded as Lee Pratt in the film. After attending a party at Pratt's house, Conway tells him he will help him crack Vegas, and the con starts in a scene where Malkovich delivers a great piece of bravura acting – waving his arms about, and speaking in a sort of unmodulated bellow: he informs Pratt that he will speak to “Moe Green in Vegas”, and, “Sheckie in New York”, and get the ball rolling. It is a sensational acting choice, hilarious, and disquietingly true, the film is worth watching if only for this scene. The net result however, is that he takes up residence in a luxury hotel, all at Pratt's expense of course.

The film is choc full of these wonderful little moments created by Malkovich. Playing a character who is himself acting, offers rich performance possibilities. It's true that Malkovich, now in his late 50s, is a master craftsman. He is innately compelling, with his intensity, intelligence, dry humour and unusual persona. His work is always precise, always simple, never adding unnecessary detail, but always striving to express the scene, and he makes it seem effortless in Colour Me Kubrick, as all great actors do. Essentially however, at the heart of this performance, is the fact that Malkovich is making acting choices he enjoys, choices which interest him, which touch off his imagination, and which ultimately energise him and fuel him through the scenes. The alternative to making enjoyable choices, is making choices we do not enjoy, and this typically happens when we act to please the director – whether that's to give the director what we think he wants in order to make him like us, or whether it's to shore up an insecure director by doing it his way (insecure directors typically talk too much, and want to control how the actor does the scene) – the irony is, most actors make choices in order to please others, which is why so much contemporary acting is joyless and stingy. Malkovich doesn't fall into that trap – and as a result, we the audience, are delighted by a performance which is properly energised, vivid, various, and, well, fun.

 

Make choices you enjoy.

 

To quote the great David Mamet; “You not only have a right to choose actions which are fun, you have a responsibility – that's your job as an actor”.

 

Check it out: trailer for Hal Hartley's monster movie, No Such Thing

Untitled

http://rumber.net/film/trailer-487-film-Pistol+Opera.html

LE HAVRE: True Cinema. Each shot hand crafted, selected & arranged to perfection. Trailer here.

Richie Abraham's Cinephile Notes on Rouzbeh Rashidi's "HE"

An Abstract End (HE) by Richie Abraham Redolent of their improvised, ostensibly meandering yet finely structured collaboration ‘Closure of Catharsis‘,  actor-director pair James Devereaux and Rouzbeh Rashidi’ s new feature ‘HE’ starts of with a man dressed like an astronaut sauntering through a corridor perhaps looking for something.  This exemplary oneiric  sequence is characteristic of the dreamlike imagery that abounds intermittently across its running time.  With regards to plot and narrative structure the auteur is far more generous this time; we encounter the protagonist who is contemplating suicide, an act  seemingly stemming out of some unexplained  absurdity of his existence.  This is a theme that has frequently been  explored by several auteurs  in albeit traditional  ways,  from Louis Malle’s bleak  investigation into the desperation of  clinical depression in ‘The Fire Within’ to Haneke’s virulent attack on bourgeois complacency in ‘The Seventh Continent’.  While every Bresson film yields itself to readings of death and redemption, he made atleast three explicit films on suicide  namely Mouchette, The Devil Probably and A Gentle Woman, each significantly in  contrast with the next. What Mr. Rashidi however offers us here, is a look at suicidal consciousness at the level of dreams rejecting every banal  device. This has been the defining characteristic of their earlier venture.  While large parts of  ’Closure of Catharsis‘  consisted of a tenuous improvised monologue by an actor with a mise-en-scene almost anti-Wellesian in its foreground background dynamics, the most gripping moments came when  vacillating images from a seemingly discordant video diary- of a Jonas Mekas kind suffused through it.  Those images form counterpoint to the sere  monologue which at times seems like an experiment in excess of the Cassavetesian or Rivettian nature. Like the introductory extended theatre improvisation that we encounter in Out1 ( which I positively assert  is extremely crucial to the entire film), the monologue inexorably sets up the crucial theme of the film, that being the subconscious mental-image. This study of the mental image in the case of a suicidal protagonist treads into territories that ordinary film makers can never encounter or create.  The interspersing of the monologue, the duologue and the dream like imagery help form a distrait mise-en-scene where in the character struggles between self revelation and disillusionment.  I am reminded of Kracauer and his essay on photography, especially his  emphasis  on the relationship between the photographic image and the mental-image. Among the images which a human being recollects , the ones that pervade across millions of potential snapshots that present themselves to the memory system, what qualifies  those selected  images to be representatives of the collective truths of certain periods?  Surely it has to do with the truth, the essence that has been liberated through suppressed  layers of consciousness or been forcefully  shunned out of it.  The memory image might fail to stand up to the technical precision of the photographic image which is concerned with the moment of the snapshot and the spatial coordinates presented to it  but it sure is omniscient across the vast temporal continuum that lies in memory.  This peremptory choice of memory cannot be obviated. Several of the images here convey the same omniscience that magically encapsulate the ‘history’of our protagonist (to borrow again from Kracauer). In one remarkable action-reaction sequence during the duologue , the camera captures the protagonist’s friend and the protagonist in his dream state alternately.  This has consolidated  the character with his mental-image, the present with the history. The chains of temporal context have been broken.  These images might certainly seem out of order, just as very often our mental-images have sought emancipation from the social context that inhibited them from innocent clear synthesis. Once this immurement ends, only  clarity remains and verity  shines through. Providing momentum to the plot so that the viewer is not disinterested unfortunately has since always been high on the film maker’s agenda. To achieve it lesser directors introduce plot twists, peripheral characters and irritating deus ex machinas, while certain conniving self proclaimed intellectuals resort to metaphysical contrivances that lack a trace of veracity. Rashidi achieves the same almost effortlessly through intelligent manipulation of sound and imagery. The titular character’s introductory monologue merely shows a noirish b/w face while we get glimpses of his condition. Later once the surreal imagery is incorporated regularly into the run time, the subsequent part of the monologue shows him in color but out of focus, a putative acceptance of the inherent disparity in seeing less despite seeing more. The background score works wonders when we encounter sharp bursts amid the somber attentuated ambience. Emotions and awareness are both heightened for the viewer,  as they ought to be for the character himself. Every single gesture becomes monumental. Nothing is insignificant. Incoherent stills of a couple and the absence of communication both physical and verbal between them, provide ground to what the monologue conveys. Another key purpose the inchoate imagery serves  to achieve is to develop an abstract framework of the character involved. Something that full blown specificity quite often falls short of accomplishing. The three aspects of the film ( the monologue , duologue and dream imagery ) give  us  fleeting insights into the life of the protagonist. This is very different from the bordering on legerdemain, post-modern brechtian V effect which godard and others strove to achieve. This abstraction is essential and it functions in a style completely in conflict with the post-modern approach.  The unabashed  distancing  is replaced by an  unabashed refusal to complete acquaintance. An Abstraction towards the mental image. This is the same abstraction that makes Ozu’s films universal  and independent in essence from the stringent political situation of his country  or Rohmer’s films  escape the french sensibility that seem to engulf them. In the great Indian film maker G Aravindan’s masterpiece ‘Esthappan‘ we see the titular character  lead a christ-like life balancing between fact  and fiction. The fiction  is created by the inhabitants of the fisherman town while the fiction in ‘HE‘  is predominantly created by the actor while he is absorbed in his monologue. Both  tales might not seem satisfactory for the spoon-fed hard-boiled  viewer but it is this breezy nature of the plot that helps  the receptive viewer coil right to the essence of both characters.  Esthappan is only seen as a free floating silhouette, yet is a fully developed mystical character and  by eschewing particulars and embracing the mental-image HE  manages to create a rich silhouette of an existential end, something hackneyed mainstream cinema can only achieve by obliterating  itself. Originally published at http://liberativecinema.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/an-abstract-end-he/#comments More about the film at www.hethefilm.tumblr.com

Checkout this wonderfully absurd scene from Alex Cox's Three Businessmen

The Great Acting Blog: "Actor As Artist - Makiko Esumi In Hirokazu Koreeda's Maborosi"

http://www.hot-idol.com/tag/esumi-makiko I was completely stunned this week when I saw an astonishing masterpiece by Japanese auteur, Hirokazu Koreeda, called Maborosi. The film centres on Yumiko and Tamio,a couple who seem to live in a quiet marital happiness, until tragedy strikes when Tamio inexplicably takes his own life. For sure, Maborosi is not the first film to deal with this subject, however, no other film deals with it in the way Maborosi does. Shot with a quiet formalism, using largely static, frontal master shots, Maborosi does not attempt to explain away Tamio’s death, there is no expository trail for Yumiko to follow in order to come to terms with her loss. Instead, the film barely makes any attempt to find the reasons for suicide at all, instead, it focusses on Yumiko’s efforts to get on with her life. And herein lies the miracle of Maborosi; that although it does not deal with Tamio’s death explicitly (until near the end, when in extreme long shot Yumiko confesses she doesn’t understand why Tamio did it), infact, most of the film contains scenes of Yumiko getting on with, and enjoying, her life, we always sense that the burden of Tamio’s death is with her. Much of this is done through the reminiscence of objects which Yumiko and Tamio shared, such as a bicycle or a string of beads, and through the lighting. However, at the centre of it all, is a heartbreaking performance by Makiko Esumi as Yumiko. When I say heartbreaking, I don’t mean that Esumi was trying to be heartbraking – that is what we see in so much English language acting these days: actors lining up to pour out their hearts, crocodile tears streaming down their faces in order to get noticed, endlessly balling their eyes out; “oh look how sensitive I am, look how I feel”, the truth is, this actor feels nothing other than the pangs of their own vanity – no, Esumi is heartbreaking because of her absence of tears, because of her restraint, because of her grace in the face of adversity. These days, in British culture at least, we have enthroned our feelings, as though whatever we feel at any moment is the only thing that matters, and that just letting it all hang loose is oh so brave – but it’s not brave, it’s cowardly, and not only is it cowardly, it’s tedious, meaningless, selfish, and createsliars as we compete to be the “most emotional”. Esumi, through her minimalism, reminds us that the emotion is supposed to take place in the audience and not in the actor. There is one moment, during a visit to Tamio’s old work place, where she turns and looks, it is a moment of such terrible sorrow, and yet Esumi’s face is blank, she barely moves, and there is no music to cue us in emotionally. Essentially, we the audience, project our own pain onto Esumi, and, in the process, we are cleansed (if only temporarily). Esumi’s minimalism matches that of filmmaker Koreeda’s for sure, Maborosi is one of those rare examples of when an actor’s aesthetic has integrated perfectly with the director’s, and an astonishing whole is created as a result. I can only think Koreeda handpicked Esumi for this particular film. Esumi is also a model, and although it’s difficult to say how much her model experience has impacted her acting, we may speculate that because of her modelling she is more used to being passive, as model’s are objectified, which makes her a natural for a role like Yumiko, whereas acting is traditionally about subjectivity and taking action. I should think though, her reserved expression is something which lies in her nature to a certain extent, and not something she grafted onto the performance.

The Great Acting Blog: "Actor As Artist - Makiko Esumi In Hirokazu Koreeda's Maborosi"

http://www.hot-idol.com/tag/esumi-makiko I was completely stunned this week when I saw an astonishing masterpiece by Japanese auteur, Hirokazu Koreeda, called Maborosi. The film centres on Yumiko and Tamio,a couple who seem to live in a quiet marital happiness, until tragedy strikes when Tamio inexplicably takes his own life. For sure, Maborosi is not the first film to deal with this subject, however, no other film deals with it in the way Maborosi does. Shot with a quiet formalism, using largely static, frontal master shots, Maborosi does not attempt to explain away Tamio’s death, there is no expository trail for Yumiko to follow in order to come to terms with her loss. Instead, the film barely makes any attempt to find the reasons for suicide at all, instead, it focusses on Yumiko’s efforts to get on with her life. And herein lies the miracle of Maborosi; that although it does not deal with Tamio’s death explicitly (until near the end, when in extreme long shot Yumiko confesses she doesn’t understand why Tamio did it), infact, most of the film contains scenes of Yumiko getting on with, and enjoying, her life, we always sense that the burden of Tamio’s death is with her. Much of this is done through the reminiscence of objects which Yumiko and Tamio shared, such as a bicycle or a string of beads, and through the lighting. However, at the centre of it all, is a heartbreaking performance by Makiko Esumi as Yumiko. When I say heartbreaking, I don’t mean that Esumi was trying to be heartbraking – that is what we see in so much English language acting these days: actors lining up to pour out their hearts, crocodile tears streaming down their faces in order to get noticed, endlessly balling their eyes out; “oh look how sensitive I am, look how I feel”, the truth is, this actor feels nothing other than the pangs of their own vanity – no, Esumi is heartbreaking because of her absence of tears, because of her restraint, because of her grace in the face of adversity. These days, in British culture at least, we have enthroned our feelings, as though whatever we feel at any moment is the only thing that matters, and that just letting it all hang loose is oh so brave – but it’s not brave, it’s cowardly, and not only is it cowardly, it’s tedious, meaningless, selfish, and createsliars as we compete to be the “most emotional”. Esumi, through her minimalism, reminds us that the emotion is supposed to take place in the audience and not in the actor. There is one moment, during a visit to Tamio’s old work place, where she turns and looks, it is a moment of such terrible sorrow, and yet Esumi’s face is blank, she barely moves, and there is no music to cue us in emotionally. Essentially, we the audience, project our own pain onto Esumi, and, in the process, we are cleansed (if only temporarily). Esumi’s minimalism matches that of filmmaker Koreeda’s for sure, Maborosi is one of those rare examples of when an actor’s aesthetic has integrated perfectly with the director’s, and an astonishing whole is created as a result. I can only think Koreeda handpicked Esumi for this particular film. Esumi is also a model, and although it’s difficult to say how much her model experience has impacted her acting, we may speculate that because of her modelling she is more used to being passive, as model’s are objectified, which makes her a natural for a role like Yumiko, whereas acting is traditionally about subjectivity and taking action. I should think though, her reserved expression is something which lies in her nature to a certain extent, and not something she grafted onto the performance.

Check out this clip from a rehearsal for my 2008 one man play, The Call.

Check out the trailer for Hirokazu Koreda's masterpiece, Maborosi

Great scene from Claire Denis' I Can't Sleep (1994)

Trailer for Claire Denis' I Can't Sleep

http://www.videodetective.com/movies/i-cant-sleep/798193

Trailer for Claire Denis' I Can't Sleep

http://www.videodetective.com/movies/i-cant-sleep/798193

Trailer for Claire Denis' I Can't Sleep

http://www.videodetective.com/movies/i-cant-sleep/798193

The Great Acting Blog: "A Response To Otar Iosseliani's Comments On Actors' Aura"

 

“I cant stand intimate scenes in cinema....because every human being has an aura which is hard to penetrate. Professional actors imagine that it's part of their job to allow the director or other actors to penetrate their aura and enter into a totally unnatural contact with somebody they don't know.
Which is also why I consider it completely shameless to have very tight close-ups of people because the so-called “actor” cannot hide who he is, he's too close to us and he becomes distanced from the character. He becomes an actual person, an individual with all his considerations. And I have no desire to have an actual person on-screen. I want it to be a character, always a character.” - Otar Iosseliani.

I don't agree with much of what Iosseliani says here, especially about close-ups, because, for me, close-ups are not necessarily intimate. However, what did pique me, were his comments about “aura” and character. It's worth pointing out to those unfamiliar with Iosseliani's work, that typically he uses “non-actors” in his films, whose general lack of technique creates an awkwardness, and this awkwardness demarcates the performance, thus the character is always present.*  Further, the “non-actor” is usually more inhibited than the experienced actor, and is therefore less apt to “show”.

But what does Iosseliani mean when he speaks of “aura”? Well, aura, in my view, means diginity – people with an aura, act with the dignity, it's their dignity which gives them an aura. And dignity is about self-control, self-respect, acting with conviction, and behaving honourably (Chishu Ryu immediately springs to mind). The character is always present if the actor remains true to the  aesthetic integrity of the work at hand, which is to say; committing fully to the actions called forth by the scene, and excluding everything else. Whenever an actor supplies an emotion which has not been organically produced by his attempts to do the action of the scene, such as when those people with a knack for making themselves  cry decide to turn on the waterworks for no other reason than that they can, the aesthetic integrity of the piece is violated, the illusion is shattered,  suddenly the audience become aware of the actor exposing himself, and the dignity of not only the actor, but of the audience and the whole dramatic interchange, is lost (typically, in a desparate scramble for self-respect, this exposure manifests itself as admiration for the actor's technique by the audience, and for the actor's part, he speaks about the moment as “liberating”, and, “a breakthrough”).

The intent to remain true to the aesthetic integrity of the scene, is not the same as the intent to expose oneself. All this stuff about actors “going further” or “making themselves vulnerable”, points to a gross misunderstanding of what acting actually is, and is part of the trend in our wider culture to just let it all hang loose. In the end however, this transparency leads to trivial acting: because in letting us see everything, the actor expresses nothing. Great acting requires discipline and restraint, precision and control, artistic choices are made, only that which is essential is offered. A truthful performance, that is, one where the actor is true to the work and to himself, is always dignified, always mysterious, and, to use Iosseliani's language, never penetrates the aura of the actor. And, for the actor, the character does not exist other than as a reference for analysis, but by only sticking to the actions of the scene and cutting away everything else, the actor's performance becomes hi-definition, deliberate, and as a result it would seem, as Iosseliani would have it, as though the character is always present – the actor is ignoring those parts of himself which are not required for the scene, certainly his quotidian troubles have been left behind. This is also how the actor may reveal the truth of his own personality, while at the same time, maintaining the essential mystery of himself.

Drifting Clouds Blog: Poster Art for Otar Iosseliani's Farewell, Home Sweet Home

Wonderfully funny and absurd film, looks great too.

 

"With a career-driven mother in the middle of a heated affair with a colleague and an agoraphobic father whose only pleasure is toy trains, a young man named Nicholas (Nico Tarielashvili) sets out to explore life beyond his peculiar but privileged circle. Eschewing his family’s wealth, Nic takes a menial job washing dishes in a restaurant, where he sets his romantic sights on a waitress who spurns him for the company of another."