34th Hall of Fame

Take a look at the 1st post, I just linked your review. That's where I will link all of them as they are posted.

Perfect. Sounds good. I will now galavant to the first post and see what I need to watch next. Which apparently was not Gone with the Wind. Oops. I did rent At Play in the Fields of Our Lord on Apple TV and I have Goldeneye and Past Lives on their way to the library. I'm catching up!

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I destroyed the dastardly dairy dame! I made mad milk maid mulch!

I hate insomnia. Oh yeah. Last year I had four cases of it, and each time it lasted three months.

I've started Blue and I just wanted to say that the audio is probably as important as any other film I've seen. If you've got stereo headphones, surround sound, whatever, use it.

It's a funny thing - I usually head towards World Cinema for a refreshing break from big-budget blockbusters that offer little other than explosive and violent thrills, but sometimes a foreign director embraces the way it's done in Hollywood and I find myself feeling like I'm visiting Soel but eating at a regular Burger King (it's Hungry Jack's here in Australia - so as not to offend royalty I guess.) I know, I know, everyone will be quick to point out that the film which The Good, the Bad, the Weird is based on, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, was a Spaghetti Western, and as such a foreign film itself. But Kim Jee-woon's ode to that Sergio Leone classic owes a lot to action-packed blockbusters from America, raining fire and brimstone upon the characters (and the audience) while keeping everything moving so fast, so relentlessly, that it actually feels like we're furiously chasing our tails. Even Indiana Jones stops every once and a while so we can gather ourselves - and I doubt if even he could have lasted 139 minutes at full throttle in his prime like this without giving some in the audience a stroke. The Good, the Bad, the Weird does what it does quite well though, so while I'm not entirely sold on it's non-stop action approach it works about as well as it can in this specific film. Elsewhere, I find movies of this ilk often tiresome.

Luckily we have three well-drawn characters, all performed with panache. Park Chang-yi, the Bad (Lee Byung-hun) has been tasked with robbing a train and delivering the precious booty onboard, a map, to his benefactor who is hoping to steal it back after selling it. Yoon Tae-goo, the Weird (Song Kang-ho) is a bandit who just so happens to be raiding the same train, not knowing how precious an item it is he's about to steal. Chang-yi's mob surprise him when they make their move. Park Do-won, the Good (Jung Woo-sung) has been tasked with taking down Chang-yi so he can deliver the map to other interested parties and collect on the bounty that's being offered to him by officials. When Tae-goo escapes with the map the other two parties are soon in pursuit, and joined by a group of Manchurian bandits along with, eventually, the Japanese military juggernaut in a frantic race for this "treasure map" that might arguably lead to the riches hidden by the fading Qing dynasty, or else the key to Korean independence which the Japanese are desperate to beat freedom fighters to. In the end a trail of dead bodies, scorched earth and damaged property lead to a final confrontation between the good, the bad and the weird at the very point the map leads to.

Yes - I really liked the three main characters and the ability for Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun and Jung Woo-sung to pull off what in any other movie might have been a trio of one-dimensional cardboard cutouts. Song Kang-ho is a South Korean acting juggernaut and larger than life personality that always puts his own personal stamp on his characters - a full-faced, expressive force of nature who often plays impish, playful roles. That's what he gets here, in charge of the "Eli Wallach" part - the most fun of the three, with Tae-goo being a fast-talker with all of the best comedic lines in the film. I'd say Kang-ho might be the most recognizable South Korean actor alive today. Funnily enough, Lee Byung-hun's big breakthrough came opposite Song Kang-ho himself in Joint Security Area (a great film I recommend), so this is something of a reunion - as different as he is here as the scarred, evil Chang-yi who projects cool confidence and utter ruthlessness at all times. The king of cool though is Jung Woo-sung who, even though he looks so familiar, I don't think I've seen in anything else personally. A small irk is when Korean characters in Korea wear Western garb as if they've raided the wrong wardrobe - but if Park Do-won wants to be a cowboy, I guess that's his choice. Woo-sung oozes sex appeal and is the most swoon-worthy of our three competing characters.

I don't know if costs are cheaper in South Korea but Kim Jee-woon gets a lot of bang for his buck for a $10 million budget. When you consider that Bong Joon-ho's Okja cost five times as much to make, and that this movie runs nearly two-and-a-half bone-crushing, period vehicle destroying, set exploding, bullet spraying hours. The movie looks expensive anyway - Lee Mo-gae's smooth cinematography sometimes butting heads with storyboarded editing that confused audiences and critics at times. Western shootouts have an optimum speed, and when you have more than one character shooting it out against gangs it helps not to bang and crash through the scenery at too high a rate. I wasn't unduly lost - bad guys have always popped up at random in movies like this, and the fact that Tae-goo is being chased by so many disparate characters and groups doesn't really change the fact that the narrative is very, very simple and not hard to grasp - I find it hard to understand why Empire called it "tangled", but sometimes I think viewers are trying to see more than is actually there, and as such think they're missing something. Even a late "finger chopper" twist isn't enough throw keen-eyed viewers for a loop.

I can't help getting the feeling that The Good, the Bad, the Weird might be a truly great action/adventure movie - I take a glance at the trailer for a sense of recall and I have to admit I nearly swoon over the set-pieces. There's a sense of spiritual affinity with the very best the genre has to offer when it comes to the die hard, dusty, exhilarating chase - and the cinematography does emphasise the "cool" aspect like no other movie I've seen so far this year. I think there were an accumulation of small quibbles that prevented me from absolutely loving it - for example, the sound design didn't quite gel with my preference to treat action like this seriously and not get zany. There's a profusion of CGI birds that hang around after festooning the credits, and I really don't like any animals that are obviously computer generated - it's always a minus. Modernized Mexican style music feels a little incongruent in a South Korean film with the action taking place in the deserts of Manchuria, so I wasn't vibing with this movie's score either. But aside from all of that, this is one movie I feel like I'm going to be seeing again just for it's kinetic visuals and fun comedic sensibility.

Just to be clear - I watched the Korean version of this film (which apparently has a different ending to the international version) and without giving away the ending it's the latter director Kim Jee-woon wanted. The darker ending. Overall I don't think the movie was too violent despite the sheer amount of gunfire happening and the fact that there's a "finger chopper" side-plot - it's not an ugly movie. That's because this isn't serious stuff, it's sheer spectacle - a romp that's meant to exhilarate and wow when not amusing us. What I at first thought was going to be a through-and-through western kind of veered into action/comedy territory, and it would only have taken a small tweak or two to completely remove the western visage it has. I couldn't help feeling the aura of Raiders of the Lost Ark throughout, as much as that film has influenced all films of it's ilk. The Good, the Bad, the Weird comes on pretty hard and makes a few mistakes during it's all-out assault on our senses, but there's plenty in it that's fantastic and captures that hard-to-define spirit which defines our long-cherished love of cinematic adventure.

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Blue (Jarman, 1993)

Been waiting for this one to come up as I watched it a few weeks ago. I could see someone either being completely enthralled with this or completely turned off. It's literally a blue screen with the voice (voices?) of our main character with an attention to sound while he narrates his story (thoughts). This felt almost like a semi horror film, definitely not mainstream to say the least (not that there's anything wrong with that). One of my favorite first timers this year and strong contender for my ballot.

Sorry I've been absent, I've been on vacation and then was swamped with work when I got back. I'll try catching up this week

I did watch both Rocco's Brothers and At Play in the Fields of the Lord before I left, and they were just too depressing for me to enjoy them. They're both very well made, but they drained too much from me, emotionally, to watch them again. As such, I have a difficult time rating them.


Of The two, I felt Rocco's Brothers worked better as a cohesive story and tragedy. Although, I preferred Leila's Brothers, which was similar in ways.


At Play in the Fields of the Lord was about oppressed natives, but gave most of the dialog and attention to white characters. It just rubbed me the wrong way, sorry.

I watched this last night. The music and the dialog were intense and moving. I could hear pain and anguish in the narrator's voice as he told his story. You could hear his suffering. There was a moment you heard other's in their suffering. His story was heartbreaking. It was a great experience.

I'm going to go out of sequence and watch Blue next. I'm probably going to just buy At Play in the Fields of the Lord for cheap and watch down the road.

That's cool.
I did do some reading and for phone users who can't get videos to play this might fix it:
https://www.fonedog.com/android-tool...o-android.html

That was a surprisingly heartwarming and well written movie! It got a bit sappy in places, and the villain was extremely stereotypical, but it had just the right amount of realistic complications. There were also lot of really good performances all around too.


I'm surprised that the movie was framed with Roary as the main character, rather than Jerry. Most movies would've done the opposite. I'm glad the creator realized that Roary's story of redemption was the stronger one.

On a personal note, I work with disabled people for a living, and I found their portrayal in the movie quite refreshing. They're normal people who laugh at themselves, have regular flaws, and act in very silly, human ways. They refuse to let their disabilities define them.

Now for the negative news. I don't consider Blue a movie.

I'm partway through it, and I'll gladly finish it. It's a beautiful examination of life, told by a man very close to death. It has a very haunting energy, with an amazing soundtrack.

But it's not a film. It's not even an experimental film. It's an audio book.

Blue

This wasn't very effective for me. There was no emotional connection with the narrator for me unfortunately. In fact, I believe a blue screen made it even harder to imagine what he was going through. It just seemed at times that words were being spewed out and it would have been better if it was emotions. Not that he probably would have been up for it but a documentary style type of film would have been much more effective for me. It's a very personalized feeling type of film, some won't care for it at all and some will connect with it highly. But it literally did nothing for me other than make me watch and see how much time was left. I also don't really consider it a film because it is, indeed more like an audio book.

Goldeneye and Past Lives are at the library ready for me to pick them up. Due to how Apple TV does their rentals, I will probably wait until Friday night to watch At Play in the Fields of Our Lord to make sure the rental doesn't expire. Hopefully we can get to the library in the next day or two. I plan to order I Confess tomorrow. Is it bad I nominated a film I hadn't watched? I suppose I could watch Blue on Kanopy this evening after the kiddos are in bed. I'll check and see what else is available where.

Omg I was thinking that something was familiar and it was Nights in White Satin lol

Blue (1993)
Director/writer: Derek Jarman





(Note. Blue has no traditional narrative plot to spoil. This is more of a commentary than a review. Still, it is best to experience it first for yourself before reading this, as I include several quotes, including the concluding lines.)

Early in this intensely personal work are passages such as this: “The blood of sensibility is blue. I consecrate myself to fìnd its most perfect expression.”

The voice is that of Derek Jarman, an artist known for his experimental and eclectic directorial work in film and music videos. Sometimes poetic, sometimes hallucinatory, sometimes glib. But always angry.

Jarman made this “perfect expression,” Blue, in his last months, dying of AIDS, reflecting a bit on life but mostly trying to convey what it is like to, well, be Derek Jarman, a man for whom seeing was like breathing, going blind, his world fading to blue.

To help you experience what the world is becoming for him, this work consists of a blank screen, never wavering a moment from a bright blue, with voices, mostly Jarman’s but with a few friends, echoing around in the void, punctuated with minimalistic sound effects and music.

At times, we feel we’re listening to a fractured narrative as Jarman insinuates blue into fanciful personal and historical accounts. Early he announces: “Blue transcends the solemn geography of human limits.” And later snatches of this theme waft by: “In the pandemonium of image I present you with the universal Blue. Blue an open door to soul.” Or: “The road to the city of Aqua Vitae is protected by a labyrinth built from crystals and mirrors …. Blue walks into the labyrinth ….” Blue figures in references to Marco Polo, and the Blue Bearded Reaper, and blue butterflies, blue delphinium flowers, blue blood, blue mountains. A torrent of blue.

Interspersed with these poetic interludes are grimly clinical descriptions of his doctor visits, the choices for treatments he must endure, involving cocktails of antivirals that, at the time, could at best only agonizingly postpone the inevitable. He recounts the first symptoms of blindness and its ever-encroaching blue void. He seethes with righteous anger at how attitudes about AIDS remains mired in misconceptions, how prevention takes a back seat to treatment. A choice moment occurs when, in an almost mirthful tone, he recites a legal disclaimer regarding a treatment's potential side effects that is impossibly long and yet in its detail sounds completely plausible.

Taken in whole, does all this convey enough of the physical and emotional trauma he endured? Can we sympathize?

At times, his elegiac musings on blue – as a metaphor, or an actual presence, or, well, a color – are poetic and fascinating to listen to. But to my ear – and I realize I’m sounding petty – I too often hear something akin to a talented schoolboy who must write a thousand word essay but can’t quite come up with a meaningful throughline and so strings together some beautiful poetry, hoping to convince us he has found some original new insight: Blue!

Which is a shame. Because by contrast, Jarman is bitingly effective when he’s sharing straightforward observations such as this: “How are we perceived, if we are to be perceived at all? For the most part we are invisible. If the doors of Perception were cleansed, then everything would be seen as it is.” His blue musings mask rather than reveal. He holds too much back, about his career, about his friends, about himself. His anger over this fate he does not deserve is palpable and compellingly stated. But anger is not enough.

In particular, who are these names he repeats like a Chorus in a Greek tragedy: David, Howard, Graham, Terry, Paul? Friends, lovers, acquaintances … we can only guess. First just their names, but later a few fragments as we learn how they suffer and die one by one. But he tells us nothing about who they were, and, most important, who they were to him. So their passing doesn’t touch us as deeply as it might.

Even more urgently, he mentions time and again a man called H.B., someone obviously dear to him. But details? A few fragments, but mostly he tries to tell us he’s important rather than show us why. We get it – he was important. But it's all about Derek Jarman’s anger at the loss, with no meaningful insight into who he was losing. (Through extracurricular research you can discover this is his partner, Keith Collins.)

I hate it when reviewers try to outthink the artist, suggesting what would have been better. But as I reflected on the experience, I wondered … why the blue screen through the entirety of the film? Could it not, over the run time, start as blue and begun to fade so subtly that we don’t notice, until we’re also left in the dark, as he was, at the end? Something just a bit more … well, just more.

But in the end, I must acknowledge there were passages of compelling beauty throughout. In particular, his final words, reflecting on human endeavors in general and that particular presence in his life, H.B., are sad and touching and so beautifully wrought: “Our name will be forgotten. In time, no one will remember our work. Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud and be scattered like mist that is chased by the rays of the sun. For our time is the passing of a shadow, and our lives will run like sparks through the stubble. I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave.”

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Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain ... only straw. Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain? Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they? Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.

Blue -

The description of film as an empathy machine is one I agree with and that I've referenced a lot. This movie may be the purest example of it I've seen yet. Empathy is the primary sensation I had while hearing Jarman's commentary on living with AIDS, especially since I'm ashamed to say I was not aware of how much medication and how many visits to the doctor were required to treat the condition in the '90s until now. The sadness I felt was no less genuine, particularly whenever he discussed the fates of his many friends and former lovers, nor was my anger towards the powers that be whose neglect had a hand in putting Jarman into this state.

As for his musings on "Blue," besides being pure poetry, I found the insight into how victims of debilitation manage, philosophize and personify their ailments fascinating, and with the aid of the soundtrack, strangely beautiful. That leads to my thoughts about what may be the most famous aspect of this movie in that it's 75 minutes of blue screen. Since it's never not meaningful, I never lost interest or found it tedious; in fact, I would have been happy to hear even more of Jarman's thoughts than what we get. Besides, I was in such a contemplative state that some of what was in my mind's eye displayed on my TV. The entire project recalls a scene from another movie from the same year, Philadelphia, in which Tom Hanks' AIDS victim describes what is happening in a favorite aria to his lawyer. In other words, beyond my new understanding of and increased empathy for what Jarman and all other AIDS sufferers experience, I walked away from this movie with a renewed appreciation for existence.

I keep thinking, "the best way for me to watch Blue is with my eyes closed." Then I think of the irony. How can I watch something with my eyes closed? I always come to the conclusion that it's not meant to be the way we experience Blue. I should be looking at the blue screen. But my mind craves stimulation, visual stimulation - and it's weak in that it's so easily distracted when being forced to focus on an unchanging sea of blue. That's why I close my eyes. To focus on the words I'm hearing - to fully focus on them. I close them again, and then again I'm thinking, "this is not the way we're meant to experience Blue." I wish I were in a darkened cinema, but I wonder if I'd still be tempted to close my eyes - if the blueness isn't somehow more confronting than I'm willing to admit it is. That the way the blueness is connected with Derek Jarman's experience of AIDS isn't simply so relentlessly there and inescapable that I want to look away as if I'm watching some kind of visual horror. That if I close my eyes, there's always the comforting thought that I can open them again, and that when I do there'll be something wonderful to look at other than a vast, infinite sea of blue.

When troubled, my mind turns to humour. Could I claim to have missed half of the movie because I had my eyes closed? When I looked Blue up I wanted to see a "cinematographer" credit, and hear that there was a three week shooting schedule where every night the crew would gather to watch dailies consisting of that same shade of IKB (International Klein Blue) blue. That there were editors who actually stitched together shots of the exact same colour. If this was going to be so avant-garde in such a manner, why not? Once again, I remember what this film is all about and I feel deeply ashamed of myself - it's a self-protection mechanism, but when other people do the same thing I feel deeply aggrieved and contemptuous of them, like a hypocrite. To be clear - this film isn't a source of fun and laughter for me at all. My focus during it became so narrow that I felt Jarman's autobiographical narration as if I were living it, and that's such a huge challenge because it's often painful to listen to. Even the most inspirational lines of poetry in it are heavy with bittersweet, sad feelings that have a tender aura.

Does Blue sound different than your average, everyday movie, or does it just sound different to me because I can't connect the sound to something visual? There were sounds in this film so different to what I'm used to hearing that I literally went outside because I thought someone was messing around in my yard - and I'm serious when I say that I felt Derek Jarman's blindness. I felt somewhat dislocated from the world I'm used to living in, with everything I heard being so distinct and noticeable. Everything sounds like it's coming from a void. It might just be the fact that there's no real need for Foley artists or any kind of background hum, with everything we hear having a very specific, definite meaning. Still, for the most part this has been recorded in a manner that differs from most movies by the sound of it. Really nice to see that Brian Eno was involved with the music side of matters, adding more to the atmospheric soundscape inside the mind of Derek Jarman. It's a lot more than just a man telling his story - we experience as much as we listen.

I don't think Blue is a film I can rate, or compare with any other film out there. It's an experience, and it's a work of art and a testament. It's deeply affecting and an experience which differs a tremendous amount from any ordinary movie. It's a vivid experiential mindscape that sets it's tone with a single colour, and burrows our focus deep inside a man living out his days with an incurable disease - suffering from blindness and pain. There's poetry and crude humour in equal measures - the full human experience, and always that wall of blue. In fact, the colour itself becomes a character in Derek Jarman's procession of thoughts, and this reminds me to open my eyes to at least focus on the screen for a while, even though I find it impossible to gaze at it for 79 minutes. I realise that those suffering from vision impairment don't have a choice like I do, and of course I feel grateful when face to face with a work of art like Blue, which cuts through all artifice and speaks directly to it's audience from within a sea of that tranquil, blue sky-like ambience. It has such a soft, cool and yet sad feel to it - stretching out forever.

No rating.