Recuerdo que Jeanne Moreau se casó con William Friedkin pero nunca trabajó con él en una película.

Today was Best of the Fest day -- or "What prints are still in town?" day, to give it its informal name. But there was plenty of good stuff on, so I tooted over to Filmhouse, discovered that my press pass had officially expired, and shelled out some cash for movies for the first time in ten days.

WALL-E was first. I felt guilty about seeing something non-rare like this at a festival, but quite good about missing all the ads that will precede it when it goes on general release. I started to wonder if I was in a fragile emotional state as it went on, as I found myself having an exaggerated response to EVERYTHING. I spent much of the film close to tears. Then i decided that, no, I'm no more fragile than usual, it's just a deeply beautiful film.

It's kind of sweet also that Michael Crawford finds himself in one of the biggest films of the year, without actually doing anything (he appears in the clips from HELLO DOLLY, Wall-E's favourite/only video). Opening in space, with Crawford's voice ringing out, before descending towards a litter-strewn Earth upon with only North America is visible, Andrew Stanton's extended C.G.I. homageto Douglas Trumbull's SILENT RUNNING actually has a beautiful, live action, '70s long-lens, misty, smoggy look, like the titles of SOYLENT GREEN, for all its terrestrial scenes. Roger Deakins consulted on the virtual lighting, and expressed his astonishment in Edinburgh at the joy of position virtual lights in a virtual set and not having to worry about hiding them.

Did I like all the film equally? No, but things don't have to be perfect. Enough of this was. And it was interesting to see Fred Willard spoofing President Bush: "Stay the course!" This must make Bush the first U.S. president to have been slammed by Disney while in office, unless I'm forgetting something major.

Pixar's hit-rate is so high it could almost get monotonous. I seriously dig how they mainly avoided dialogue here and would suggest they get even braver and make an entirely wordless feature next.

*

I jumped from Filmhouse to the Cameo, grabbing a sandwich, and plunged into the art deco world of MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY, a '30s farce which fails as a comedy (for me) but which seemed to just about hang together as drama. The material is far from the level of Wodehouse, although the story is acceptable. The dialogue and situations fail to deliver the expected comedy (although the audience I was with laughed kindly a few times). Director Bharat Nalluri, from high-end Brit T.V., avoids overkill and restrains the visuals, but there's neither a refreshing, modern attitude nor any evocation of an old-fashioned film style. and the performances refuse to gel in a way that's kind of fascinating.

McDormand and Adams.

The extras -- several terribly over-eager perfs from background artistes, something you don't often see.

The stars -- well, there aren't any big ones, which ought to mean Nalluri had the pick of non-famous thespian talent at his disposal, with no commercial pressure, but it doesn't always work that way.

Frances McDormand -- a talented comedienne, as we've seen before, here she can only manage to generate a few warm smiles, and most of those are snatched solo. Whenever she has to interact with fellow performers, she's hampered by the unevenness of tone. Any scene with more than two co-stars leaves her torn between wildly different acting styles, since she's the only performer paying close attention to her fellows. But she makes an appealing Pettigrew and that sympathy holds the proceedings together at least somewhat.

Amy Adams -- plays the whole thing in a fake Marilyn Monroe voices which in 1939 had yet to be invented. Anachronistic and more than a little annoying. She's CONSISTENT, but her tropes get shopworn fast. There's talent there, but it lacks guidance.

Tom Payne -- another terribly self-conscious British prettyboy. I didn't like his HAIR -- was any man wearing it that long? He's ruinous to any scene of farce that requires timing. He has appeal, and may well become a decent actor, but asking him to do anything that requires precision is madness. He gets all the script's Bertie Wooster archaisms, as if all the movie requires is one character who talks '30s. He gets away with the "don't you know, what?" stuff better than anyone could reasonably be expected to when surrounded by non-period-specific speakers, so he deserves some credit for that.

Lee Pace -- from his first scene I thought he was a truly horrible actor. By the end I kind of liked him. Then I discover he's American, which I hadn't suspected. Suicidal of the filmmakers to have saddled themselves with yanks in Brit roles. They're already attempting farce, which rarely works on screen, and '30s screwball reconstruction, which generally dies like a dog (AT LONG LAST LOVE?) so they didn't need to kneecap themselves before even starting. What's odd about Pace is that although he seems awkward and out of place, he seems exactly like an awkward out-of-place Brit. He doesn't slot into place with the others because he's too naturalistically gawkish for the milieu. Interesting but wrong.

Ciáran Hinds -- really sweet. The only actor who can talk to one character and then to another without making himself or them seem like a stray alien. His perf is so low-key and gentle it almost disappears before you, but he's the one you remember.

Mark Strong -- he was the best thing in Polanski's (rather good) OLIVER TWIST, as the usually-deleted character Toby Crackit. Here he could actually get away with going more O.T.T. as he did there, but I don't blame him for holding it in, surrounded as he is by erratically varying styles and pitches. He makes a good cad though -- I need to check out some of his other work (SYRIANA, STARDUST).

Shirley Henderson -- is a very dangerous woman. Versatile to the point of omnipotence, she can produce effects beyond the range of any earth-creature. Being fallible like the rest of us, she's quite capable of making bad choices though, and playing them to the hilt so as to torpedo a whole movie, as in DOCTOR SLEEP. Here she does her Cruella-type villainess as if on helium, which is wildly impressive (if it were anyone else I'd assume she had computerized assistance, but NO, this is Shirley we're talking about) as a technical feat, slightly distracting much of the time, but serves as a possible clue as to how all the other roles could have been played -- with gusto, speed and sharp timing. Is this really so impossible today?

I'm usually a sucker for WWII stuff -- MRS MINIVER slays me and the novels of Patrick Hamilton lay about my heartstrings with rusty saw-blades, but this fest I've seen two flicks set around wartime, this and THE EDGE OF LOVE, and neither really got me at all.

*

Out of PETTIGREW, bagel across the road, then back into the Cameo for my third helping.

ELEGY is directed by Isabel Coixet, whose episode of PARIS JE T'AIME was quite enjoyed round our place. This movie seems to relate quite closely to it in plot terms, too. But I.C. needs to wean herself off the V.O., which doesn't add anything to this movie AT ALL.

Nicholas Meyer scripts. Remember him? As a novelist and film director he had a definite personality, tackling romps like TIME AFTER TIME (H.G. Wells chases Jack the Ripper in his time machine) and THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION (Sherlock Holmes teams up with Freud). He also managed to make a going concern out of the STAR TREK franchise, directing entries 2 and 6 (remember, the even-numbered TREKS are the good ones). In this movie he's adapting Philip Roth, and there's nothing to relate this to his earlier films -- but quite a lot to connect it to THE HUMAN STAIN, another Roth adaptation by Meyer.

Sir Ben Kingsley, who will always be Handhi Bendhi Gandhi to me, falls madly in bed with Penelope Cruz, whose breasts he declares, not unreasonably, to be the best in the world. A lot of this film revolves around those breasts, so it's a good job they were able to cast such a convincing pair. There is actually a surprising chemistry between the two stars. Sir Ben is on top form, managing to be real and surprising at the same time. Why hasn't he played Picasso? He has a big bald head and his torso, which he staunchly parades here, is a dead ringer.

Ben can't believe his luck with P. Cruz, which leads him to sabotage the relationship. Bad Sir Ben! It probably doesn't help that he's getting his romantic advice from Dennis Hopper. There might possibly be better people to listen to. What's Robert Blake up to these days?

"Do you know what a love letter is? It's a bullet from a fucking GUN."

So the beautiful Cruz missiles go out of his life, only to return with a tragic twist (ouch). The perfs are exquise, the situations adult and interesting, only the cinematic qualities descend to cliché. Walks on the  beach: the couple together, then, morosely, Bendhi alone. That bloody voice-over. I have nothing against V.O., but try taking it out and see what happens. My guess: nothing. Erik Satie on the soundtrack. I was just watching Welles' THE IMMORTAL STORY, as part of the Moreau retrospective, and thinking what a shame the Gymnopedies have been so overused since then, and here they come all over again.

Just before the festival a student asked me "What does 'cinematic' mean?" During the festival I heard various people debating it. Generally we agreed it was a tricky word with no set meaning. In ELEGY, Sir Bendhi quotes A.E. Houseman's line about not knowing what poetry is, but recognising it at once when he sees it.

ELEGY is well-acted, written, and photographed, but I don't recognise it as cinematic.

Soms durven we hier klagen over een gebrek aan cultureel waardige activiteiten maar dat ligt misschien wel aan onszelf omdat we hier zelden een museum binnenlopen. Met dank aan ons recentste en uitzonderlijke bezoek wisten we dan toch dat er een Michelangelo Antonioni retrospectieve zou komen. Die loopt nu en zorgt voor een soort van bevreemdende trip. Nooit geziene cinema.  La Notte (na 4 Antonioni's mijn voorlopige favoriet) overlaad je bij momenten met fashion-shoot achtige beelden die men nu qua stijl krampachtig tracht te imiteren in de wereld der dure publiciteit. Klasse. Prachtige cinematografie. Soms leeg en tezelfdertijd overladend. Met tergende conversaties, dodende stiltes, desolate locaties en een bijwijlen dreigende sfeer.  Theatraal maar overtuigend. Zo'n films maken ze helaas niet meer.

Nog tot en met 6 juli in het National Museum of Singapore. Allen daarheen! 

(op de foto: Monica Vitti (l) en Jeanne Moreau (r) in La Notte)

At the screening of Marguerite Duras' NATHALIE GRANGER yesterday, I had a different problem. It was noon, and I hadn't eaten that morning, and suddenly I found myself famished. The film is, on the surface, extremely uneventful, following Lucia Bosé and Jeanne Moreau as they float around Duras' house in capes, do housework, listen to the news, and talk on the phone (but not so much to each other, face to face). As with many "avant garde" films, one is able to think one's own thoughts, influenced by the film, rather than being completely wrapped up in an unfolding narrative and thinking only the movie's thoughts.

This led to an unusual viewing experience for me, since what I was thinking about desperately was food. How I would never go anywhere without a snack again. And how I would like to climb up on the screen like Buster Keaton in SHERLOCK JNR and eat the food on it. That apple is the size of a refrigerator! It's grey, this being a b&w film, but what the hell. People in b&w movies live on grey food and it doesn't seem to do them any harm. I guess the skin of the apple would be pretty thick, hard to break through, and the surface curves too gently for a person to bit into it. But I could throw my arms around the apples and smell it and maybe cut a piece off with a knife, if I could find one small enough to lift. Or wait until a longshot appears, and the apples are a more normal size.

A baguette the size of a couch! I could break through the crust and crawl inside, tearing at the soft flesh of the bread and cramming it into my mouth, entering the bread and curling up inside, protected by the brittle carapace of the crust and pillowed by fluffy loaf-matter.

Anyhow, that's what the film made me think of.

EXCEPT for the sudden burst of -- what? comedy? -- as a painfully young Gerard Depardieu shambles in, and attempts to sell the ladies a washing machine. The youthful Depardieu is always a startling sight for those who know the beefy lummox of today. That impossibly long, strange face, apparently assembled in armature form out of leg-bones, then covered in a translucent coating of unborn calf skin and decorated with a mop. Yet it speaks! And attempts to sell a Vedetta-Tabard washing machine. The ladies stare coolly at Mr. D., giving nothing back as he sweats and stutters his way through a prolonged, incoherent sales pitch. Finally, utterly defeated, he goes to look at their present washing machine. He staggers back, somehow EVEN MORE defeated. "It's a Vedetta-Tabard," he mutters, aghast at the cruelty.

It really has been a feast of the best cinema around. From the Jeanne Moreau retrospective (which led me to the most extreme cinema experience ever) to a wealth of documentary and features from all over the world.

As it's past midnight I'll refrain from banging on and let the film do the talking. The trailer below is for MAN ON WIRE (2008 ) which for me has been the zenith of breathtaking documentary. The rumour is that this film will be getting a release, if you notice it in a cinema near you, GO SEE IT. Normal service will be resumed in the next few days.

Well Film Club 50 is but a fading memory, but what japes were had. To recap:

A sighting of none other than Ian Ball, a spectre hanging over Film Club particularly in its Vauxhall/Stockwell heavy phase.

The smooth Howard Moon.

Take away espressos (I was awake all night in the end).

Crayfish in a martini glass. A girl's starter if ever I saw one.

And...

A disappointing film, particularly after a promising first 20 minutes that somehow made me actually angry. I thought it was going to be a seriousish inspiration to Je T'Aime John Wayne. What we got was milksops, mysogyny and moody mental Moreau. Boo, I say. Boo.

Anyway, I'll spare you my vitriol and possible spoilers and get right on to them scores.

Campbell 4

Emma 5

James 7

Kate 6

Lou 5

Nat 5

That makes an average of 5.3

Our track record of French movies has definitely taken a dip after this and Trois couleurs: rouge. It's time to wheel out the big guns if Truffaut can't get us going.

OK, so LA BAIE DES ANGES, Jacques Demy's second film, stars Jeanne Moreau and Claude Mann, but I was very taken with Conchita Parodi as the manageress of the Hotel Mimosa in Nice. With a perpetual but subtly-shifting expression of generalised disdain, she exists from the waist up behind a counter, dangling her plump hands in front of herself like drying squid, occasionally letting the fingertips descend to the counter-top as if to draw nutrients from it. This is her only film. A shame -- she should have CONQUERED CINEMA.

When I could wrest my vision away from the glorious sea monster, I began to realise that this is one of Moreau's very best performances. Her face is always a revelation, from moment to moment, and it functions just as well under the rather startling Jayne Mansfield hair she's been equipped with here. Jackie's perversity is perhaps more rounded and fully-examined than Catherine's in JULES ET JIM -- you can't shrug her off with a "women are mysterious" type homily.

Demy's filming helps enormously because his style evolves from one scene to the next, and he throws in surprising angles, often at the very start of scenes, moving closer than you'd expect in a 1963 film, and treating Moreau with the same gobsmacked attentiveness as the naive young hero. Claude Mann's protag is something of a twerp, objectively speaking, but he comes across as sweet and melancholy and irresistible thanks to Demy's surety of tone and gentle yet unflinching observation.

This is a gambling movie -- pair it with Karel Reisz and James Toback's grainy '70s grunge-wallow THE GAMBLER (very good indeed) for maximum contrast: James Caan never gets to wear a Pierre Cardin bustier. Demy, assisted by Michel Legrand's insistent, passionate score, serves up the world's least dynamic gambling montages: face / roulette wheel / face / face / roulette wheel, dissolving together while the music insists we get excited. And we do. The thrill of winning -- that unbelievable thing -- and the inevitability of losing, are terrifically evoked in Demy's script and in the performances.

At the end, our man abandons Jackie to the palatial lure of the casino and heads despondent for the bleary dawn. A rapturous and rather unheralded catharsis possesses Jackie and she runs to get him back, calling his name. Demy cuts to an empty frame showing only the mirrored pillars of the lobby, and Jackie flashes past in each of them, one after the other, a white blur, before arriving in person to ensnare the willing hero. Demy appears to want to believe in this reconciliation, but he's given us far too much information about Jackie's obsession to allow us to do the same. I found that schism fascinating. Demy seems to be forcing a happy ending upon us by arbitrarily calling "cut!" before the inevitable consequences of the story are played out. It's an intriguing kind of romanticism.

The film deserves to be considered among his very best.

So, before I head off for an actual meeting with an actual exec producer, some semi-baked thoughts on Bunuel's DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID, adapted from Octave Mirbeau's novel, which I re-saw as part of the Jeanne Moreau retrospective. Actually, I was arguably seeing it for the first time, since my V.H.S. experience was not wide-screen. Bunuel can't have made many 'Scope films, but he seems perfectly at home in the wide format. And is there anything more beautiful than black-and-white wide-screen? Maybe it's just the rarity, since wide-screen came into existence parallel with the dying days of black-and-white so there are relatively few films made in both (although THE BAT WHISPERS is an almost-unique 1930s wide-screen experiment, and the occasional film like THE ELEPHANT MAN has united monochrome and 'Scope).

I always enjoy this film up until the ending, but this time I was determined to get something positive from the ending as well. I failed. I always get sucked into seeing the film as a detective thriller, which it definitely functions as from the time of the murder onwards -- a country house detective thriller, in fact. Of course, the real point is the satirical dissection of French society, and this is terrifically enjoyable. Bunuel's houseful are all enjoyably strange, and while many people wouldn't regard the film as surreal at all, there are aberrant moments like the secret chemistry lab belonging to the mistress of the house, where she presumably "minces among bad vats and jeroboams, spinneys of murdering herbs, and prepares to compound [...] a venomous porridge" for her husband. Michel Piccoli (with hair! on his head!) is the husband, a pitch-perfect portrait of baffled idiot virility, a surging pillar of testosterone reduced to the infantile by his hormonal geyser.

Moreau is part bitch-goddess, part warm and humane heroine, depending on who she's dealing with. She seems to live by a version of Raymond Durgnat's Proletarian Ten Commandments -- "Thou shalt not strive too hard, or jump through more hoops than you have to. Thou shalt not offer to take another person’s place, or help out unless you’re not paid to do it ... blood transfusions aren’t paid for. Thou shalt not expect good treatment. Thou shalt always look for the catch, for what the other person gets out of it. Thou shalt contemplate defeat, but not change yourself to avoid it. Thou must become accustomed to always being out-talked and made to look a fool and put in the wrong ... but Thou shall not be moved ... Oh, and don’t be downhearted." And she becomes the detective heroine, which is exciting.

Except -- and I can't really call this a spoiler, but look away if you're worried -- she doesn't catch the killer. The film seems explicitly to identify him at the moment the crime is committed, but since the horrific act itself is literally unshowable, his guilt isn't 100% certain. At a certain point, one begins to doubt if Moreau has set her sights on the right man, and a conventional thriller would have allowed us to jump ahead and suspect Piccoli, only to produce a third, surprise suspect as the guilty party, someone we had dismissed. This being Bunuel, I would then expect some turnaround that leaves the guilty unpunished and the innocent "getting it in the neck", to use Joe Orton's description. The ending we get produces no such twists, allowing a happy ending for the killer but transferring the political subtext from the background, where it has been simmering away very effectively, to the foreground, where it seems rather crude and programmatic. The crash of thunder at the end seems particularly unfortunate, especially as Bunuel's mastery of surprising sound juxtapositions has been very much in evidence: a screeching flock of unseen schoolchildren, a loud passing train where no train can be seen, and sounds that recur, linking apparently unconnected scenes.

I thought of Bunuel and Carriere's script for THE MONK, eventually filmed by other hands, which likewise avoids the ending dictated by genre but is actually less startling than the "conventional" punishment meted out in Matthew Lewis' gloriously excessive Gothic novel. Maybe it's possible to be too clever with these things. I guess the all-round happiness of the ending -- with the fascists on the march -- comes closest to THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ, which has an absurdly upbeat ending I'm very fond of.

If Jean-Claude Carriere's script-work with Bunuel, on their first collaboration, doesn't quite satisfy me, his performance as the village priest is hysterical. I wanted more of him. I wanted him to have his own series of films, dispensing awful, cynical advise to his parishioners in exchange for funds for repairing the church roof. He seems about to advise the mistress of the house on how to satisfy her husband without the painful and abhorrent business of penetration, when the alarm is raised and he's reduced to uselessly attempting to kick down an oaken door ("Damn it!") -- the lady's father has dropped dead in his locked bedroom while fetishizing a pair of patent-leather shoes, demonstrating that John Carradine's advice to his sons -- "Never do anything you wouldn't be caught dead doing" -- is not always so easy to follow.

When a character says "I've got my reasons," I was of course reminded of Renoir. So I must watch his version of DIARY, which stars Paulette Goddard and is knocking about the house somewhere. Otherwise this is like a kinky GOSFORD PARK -- no bad thing.

"It's Losey's film maudit," explained David Wingrove to a skeptic after the film fest screening of EVE (1962). "It'll have to get in line!" I said. If I'd set it within an hour of David's statement this might have qualified as repartee. Anyhow, I do think the film is probably more highly regarded than BOOM and SECRET CEREMONY, though both of those have devoted sexy weird admirers.

"A cheap, tawdry melodrama," is how Jeanne Moreau described the producers' cut, in which the notorious Hakim Brothers sheared about an hour off the film's running time. Given that the film is adapted from a James Hadley Chase novel, I bet that's exactly what they were hoping for. Given that the piece is replete with adultery, fraud, lavish parties, gambling, the movie biz, suicide, and Jeanne Moreau savaging Stanley Baker with a whip, if it attains the status of cheap, tawdry and melodramatic, shouldn't we regard that as a sign of success?

"Not conceited, just accurate," is how Stanley Baker assesses his high opinion of his ability to please women. It's such a dazzling display of sexual arrogance that, coupled with his frequent appearances in a dinner jacket, I found myself imagining Baker as James Bond. Sex, crime, exotic locations, sadism, drinking and gambling, it's all there. EVE's wild Michel Legrand jazz score is even more dynamic than the Bond theme. With the scenes in Venice, the specific Bond story would be CASINO ROYALE, the one where 007 is bested by a woman.

"All women, six to sixty,"he remarks later, explaining to his rich wife-to-be (the beautiful Lisi) his tendency to stray. That seems like the kind of statement most of us would have to follow with "I mean, er, that didn't come out right, uh..." but Baker lets it stand. It's a movie that boldly jettisons conventional notions of audience sympathy -- Baker and Moreau are both fascinating monsters, and while Lisi is theoretically sympathetic, there isn't enough of her in the film for that to matter and anyway her character pales next to the arrogant yet insecure Baker and the heartless Moreau.

When James Villiers' agent-turned-wife wonders about only getting ten per cent of a man, he retorts happily, "That's all there is." Certainly her gaydar must be faulty for her to have stumbled into such a love match. Everything that comes out of the great Villiers' mouth in this film is pure gold. He's the comedy relief amid the angst and humiliation, the one character who is never fazed by anything. But let's get this straight -- Stanley Baker has written a book about a lusty Welsh coal miner? And they got JAMES VILLIERS to write the screenplay? With a part for VIRNA LISI? I'm having trouble picturing the resulting movie, which wisely the filmmakers withhold from us. Although I guess the result might have looked a little like EVE.

"I wonder if they'll bump into Marcello and Anita from LA DOLCE VITA," whispered David, as Stanley and Jeanne roamed Rome after dark. Later, Stan rides a funeral barge on the Venetian Grand Canal and I wondered if he'd pass Julie Christie going the other way. Perhaps because the cities are so ancient, the film seems unusually haunted by other movies, past and present. Also by guest stars -- Peggy Guggenheim, Vittorio De Sica and Losey himself waft by.

"Moreau at her most forcefully, ferally seductive -- her frequent disrobings, dramatic departures and solitary sulks, all appropriately backed by a repeated Billie Holliday motif," says Edinburgh Film Fest director Hannah McGill in the programme, and it's true. We can tell she's fickle because she has one cat for her Rome apartment and another in Venice. Shocking. Some -- but certainly not all -- of La Moreau's unmotivated cruelty may be down to the film being so hacked about. This "definitive restoration" is still missing some scenes described by Losey, so it's actually NOBODY'S preferred cut, just the longest version anybody's been able to assemble, with occasional burnt-in subtitles in Swedish or Finnish attesting to the print's scattered origins.

"God made Adam from a woman's rib," sings Tony Middleton on the soundtrack, lyrics written by Losey with screenwriter Evan Jones (MODESTY BLAISE). This may just be Losey's jazziest movie of all, what with the incessant Billie Holliday refrain (the people in this film may be rich, but they apparently only own the same two records each). I'm starting to wonder if a sloey movie can truly EXIST without jazz. It certainly seems like a factor whose importance has been underrated in his work.

"It's a failed art movie," says John Waters of BOOM, and when an art movie fails, it fails by failing to be art. Is EVE art? Is this shot art? --

It's beautiful, it made me gasp and grin, and it's also rather crude and vulgar, particularly in a film named after the lady in the Masaccio on the left. Can art be lurid and overripe? Can a cheap, tawdry melodrama be art? I sure hope so.

EVE was screened in Edinburgh International Film Festival's Jeanne Moreau retrospective.

merci http://17millions.canalblog.com/

Vous êtes nombreuses et nombreux à venir écouter Jeanne Moreau sur cette page - mais vous pouvez faire mieux encore c'est de participer de façon solidaire à la lutte : les femmes maliennes par exemple, ont besoin de vous dans le 11ème !!!!
http://pushs.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/greve-des-femmes-maliennes-sans-papiers-de-lentreprise-ma-net/

dimanche 29 Juin ...
tiens et ça qui vient de sortir : soutenir RESF deveint un acte terroriste :
”
Politique de la répression et répression politique: RESF, une mouvance terroriste ?

Reçu, un communiqué du syndicat de la magistrature en date du 26 juin et intitulé “La direction des affaires criminelles voit des terroristes partout“.

Son objet est une circulaire portant sur “la multiplication d’actions violentes commises sur différents points du territoire national susceptibles d’être attribuées à la mouvance anarcho-autonome” (c’est nous qui soulignons).

En réalité apparaissent être en premier lieu concernés les mouvements de protestation et d’opposition au traitement des “sans papiers”, avec RESF en première ligne. Citons de nouveau: “c’est aussi à l’occasion de manifestations de soutien à des prisonniers ou d’étrangers en situation irrégulière que ses membres s’expriment, parfois avec violence.”

D’où la demande suivante de la chancellerie: “Ainsi les parquets porteront une attention particulière à tout faite similaire, notamment afin d’en informer dans les plus brefs délais la section anti-terroriste du parquet de Paris pour apprécier de manière concertée l’opportunité d’un dessaisissement à son profit” ce qui revient, selon le syndicat de la magistrature à “permettre une extension quasi illimitée d’une législation d’exception“.”
lire la suite ici
http://onlesait.blog.lemonde.fr/2008/06/27/politique-du-fichage-et-fichage-politique-resf-une-mouvance-terroriste/

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Wednesday morning I bussed up to Edinburgh Filmhouse for the official launch of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It was nice seeing some old friends, like Scottish Screen's Becky Lloyd, whose new baby tried to gum my finger off, Mary Gordon, Shona Thomson, Kristin Loeer, Robert Glassford -- and then there was the festival programme as well.

The Jeanne Moreau retrospective includes most of the things I'd want it to, although not her Lillian Gish documetary, and there's been no mention of Moreau attending. It'd be be a shame if that doesn't happen. I'm particularly keen to see Joseph Losey's EVA on the big screen, and Demy's LA BAIE DES ANGES. Duras' NATHALIE GRANGER is one of the more obscure films screening, which I should be sure and catch.

New films from John Maybury, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris (who's attending), Gillian Armstrong, Andrei Konchalovsky, Bill Plympton, Ole Bornedal, Bernard Rose, Terence Davies, Cedric Klapisch, Wayne Wang, Lucky McKee, Shane Meadows, Olivier Assayas, Brad Anderson, plus shorts and lots of films from people I never heard of. I'm going to try and see as many as I can.

Two people from my circle, or intersecting circles -- Martin Radich, whom I know, and Chris Waitt, whom I haven't met, also have features showing.

And there's Pixar's WALL-E, and a FEARS OF THE DARK (pictured), a French animation created by Charles Burns (who illustrated the cover of the issue of The Believer I'm in!), which looks rather beautiful.

Appearances by cinematographers Brian Tufano, Christopher Doyle, Seamus McGarvey, Roger Deakins, and actor Brian Cox and stop-motion monster legend Ray Harryhausen (THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS). Fiona squealed in excitement at the thought of the last-named, even though we've seen him interviewed in person before.

On that very special occasion, Ray H produced a few of his miniature creations (the skeleton came in a little coffin), and suddenly every child in the cinema was down in front of the auditorium to be close to them. I think we may have been amongst them.

It's Orson Welles' birthday! I guess it's safe to mention since he's already dead, and the CURSE OF SHADOWPLAY cannot harm him.

Anyway, whatever bad juju may be associated with me, Welles' VOODOO CURSE probably outranks it. (A Brazilian witch doctor jinxed Welles' film project IT'S ALL TRUE by plunging a dagger through the screenplay, decorated with a black feather. With Welles, the impossible stories turn out to be true, it's the plausible ones you must watch out for.)

"I don't want any description of me to be accurate. I want it to be flattering. I don't think people who have to sing for their supper ever like to be described truthfully -- not in print anyway."

Orson Welles -- thin, young and alive.

It has been TOO LONG since I actually watched a Welles film through. I'm hoping that the Edinburgh Film Festival's Jeanne Moreau season will feature some or all of her work with O.W. I haven't seen THE IMMORTAL STORY or CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT on the big screen, ever. And I love THE TRIAL more than even most hardcore Wellesians. The programme is launched tomorrow, so I'll be able to tell you for sure then.

Agora, cante junto:

Tu ris, tu mens trop
Tu pleures, tu meurs trop
Tu as le tropique
Dans le sang et sur la peau
Geme de loucura e de torpor
Já é madrugada
Acorda, acorda, acorda, acorda, acorda

Mata-me de rir
Fala-me de amor
Songes et mensonges
Sei de longe e sei de cor
Geme de prazer e de pavor
Já é madrugada
Acorda, acorda, acorda, acorda, acorda

Vem molhar meu colo
Vou te consolar
Vem, mulato mole
Dançar dans mes bras
Vem, moleque me dizer
Onde é que está
Ton soleil, ta braise

Quem me enfeitiçou
O mar, marée, bateau
Tu as le parfum
De la cachaça e de suor
Geme de preguiça e de calor
Já é madrugada
Acorda, acorda, acorda, acorda, acorda

Agora, o próprio Chico explica

As a big-shot gentleman of the press at Edinburgh Film Festival, which I'll be blogging about in June, I've started to receive press releases detailing the pleasures in store: the Shirley Clarke and Jeanne Moreau retrospectives, and now a new strand called Under the Radar which, as the name suggests, will concentrate on those feature films of quality teetering on the brink of neglect due to their odd natures, unusual points of origins, or lack of mammoth publicity budgets.

I thought I should probably try and recycle some of these press releases as articles, since isn't that what professional journalists do?

"From the UK, CRACK WILLOW receives its World Premiere, and is directed by local Edinburgh College of Art graduate Martin Radich. A previous EIFF Best Short Film laureate, Radich makes his feature debut with this shocking and highly original interpretation of the psychological effects of social decay."

That doesn't necessarily sound like something that would entice me out of the warm summer rain, but Martin is an old friend. While I never actually taught him that I recall, he graduated from E.C.A. during the time when I've been teaching. I well remember his documentary IN MEMORY OF DOROTHY BENNETT, in which a father and son are shown going about their domestic lives, making an extra cup of tea for their deceased wife/mother, and doing everything for each other that she used to do for them: the father washes the adult son's hair, the son prepares the father's insulin injection, etc. It sounds like it could easily be just a psychological freakshow, but it's presented with great sympathy and solemnity.

Martin is a talented cinematographer as well as a unique director, and I'm eager to see what he's cooked up. But if he PATS MY AMPLE STOMACH again, as he tends to do each time we meet, I may have to break every leg in his body.

La fille ne parle que de sexe, que de ses déboires horizontaux, verticaux et autres frasques hormonales. Les hommes n'y comprennent rien, n'arrivent à rien. Ah si seulement elle trouvait l'Homme avec un grand H.
Mais elle désespère et se lamente en passant sa langue de trois mètres de long sur ses dents aussi avenantes que des lames de couteaux de cuisine.
J'ai un peu la trouille là.
Puis viens le tour de la vieille peau.Gueule de pute en retraite corps de vieux crapaud. Pustules suintantes sur peau luisante. Elle gratte quelques unes de ses croûtes avec nonchalance avant de les grignoter comme elle boufferait des chips.
Nauséeux.
Elle sait tout sur tout, et surtout sur les hommes et plus encore.
Un plus que je ne veux pas connaître.
Non, non, n'insiste pas avec ta gueule de Jeanne Moreau, je ne veux rien savoir.
Puis viens le tour des femmes criquets.
Ce n'est pas une, mais quinze femmes au corps de criquets et aux têtes de blondes peroxydées qui me font face. Quatre centimètres de long chacune tout au plus, en ligne sur la table vernie. Elles parlent, non elles chantent. Elles m'évoquent et me louent les charmes de la polygamie en choeur, sur des airs des années cinquante.
Wap doo wap.
Dans un ensemble parfaitement réglé, elles me lancent baisers et clins d'oeil.

C'est en sueur que je me réveille, Long Balek Silver se bidonne assis au pied de mon lit.
Je me prends un café serré, m'allume une clope.
Le soleil se lève sur les toits de Paris.
Des éclats de cuivre sur le zinc.
Je me dis que la journée s'annonce plutôt pas mal et me demande quand j'aurais droit à des rêves normaux.
J'ai du naître avec jonction improbable dans les neurones pour faire des rêves pareils.
A moins que je ne sois le fruit d'une expérience d'un obstétricien dément qui m'a glissé une capsule de LSD à diffusion lente quelque part dans la cervelle.
Aujourd'hui je décide de mépriser les obstétriciens sous le soleil de printemps.
Et le speed dating aussi.

Identifying natural images from human brain activity 

"A challenging goal in neuroscience is to be able to read out, or decode, mental content from brain activity. ... We show that these receptive-field models make it possible to identify, from a large set of completely novel natural images, which specific image was seen by an observer. Identification is not a mere consequence of the retinotopic organization of visual areas; simpler receptive-field models that describe only spatial tuning yield much poorer identification performance. Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone."

When i started to read the article i've remembered immediately the Wim Wender's movie "Until the end of the world". Wonderful poetical movie, great soundtrack, one the best of 90s.  Wenders made a movie 1991, 4 years after Sky over Berlin (which mesmerized me) an FarAway So Close(1993), which is sequel of Sky over Berlin. Until the End of the World is a beautiful love story within ScFi drama but far more than that. It's a road movie, it's changing so many continents with beautiful scenery, traveling around and observations above the world, shows futuristic vision of Tokyo, San Francisco, Paris,...

But beyond that is vision of future and personal travel within, folded into drama of son (Sam Farber, Trevor McPhee , played by William Hurt) who wants to give back his blind mother (Edith,played by Jeanne Moreau) possibility to see their closest family once again. Device (camera) which allows this was invented by his scientific father' who worked for government which wants device back. Son is hiding in front of them and due to that travels around the world , meets the girl (Claire played by Solveig Dommartin) who has left the husband to follows him, husband (Gene, played by Sam Neill ) follows her... So much symbolism in this movie. No wonder why the rough director's cut was 20h and original one 8h (source imdb)

Film ends in Australia (Aboriginal concept of dreamtime), where his mother and father live hidden in cave and experiment further how to record their own dreams, memories and watched them lately . What becomes obsession. Escape into dreams, into memories. And finally disillusion of illusions. 

So according to article above, 17 years after Wenders's ScFi movie of watching memories and dreams , dreams might come true.  And his vison of future of comunication as well.

I like Wenders cos he is so no ordinary in so many senses, he is so poetical visually and lyrically. He said: "Sex and violence was never really my cup of tea; I was always more into sax and violins."

Standing outside the courthouse
In the rain
Seemed like a lost soul
From the chapel of dreams
With a handful of images
Faces of children
Phases of the moon
One little thing you get wrong
Changes the dimensions
Streets, swept memory
Diffused and lost
Like a prayer in the sun

Sometimes you can't tell
Whether you're waking up
Or going to sleep
Spiralling
Unnumbered streets

All the games cannot be yours
All the sights, the treasures of the eye
Does the divided soul remain the same?
No equation to explain
Destiny's hand
Moved, by love
Drawn by the whispering shadows
Into the mathematics
Of our desire

Baseado em romance de Jean Genet, o filme póstumo do diretor Rainer Werner Fassbinder desagradará ao público mais conservador: extremamente fetichista(vide TIm of Finland), esteticamente plástico e com interpretações melodramaticamente robóticas. Às vezes até muito tosco(figurinos e cenários bizarros), mas é um filme muito importante para uma discussão seguindo a linha da queer theory envolvendo identidade, questões de poder foucaultianas(que pleonasmo!.P), etc. Estou até a pensar em levar o filme para meu futuro artigo final da especialização. Tipo assim, acho o Genet uma bee muito homofóbica, neah? Jeanne Moreau é a única mulher no filme e sua personagem é tão desolada cantando aqueles versos do Oscar Wilde. Destaco mesmo o excesso de fetichismo, voltei a pensar demais naquila depois do filme... Aim Nono! .PPP

Deutschland 1982

Buch und Regie: Rainer Werner Fassbinder (nach „Querelle de Brest“ von Jean Genet)

Kamera: Xaver Schwarzenberger

Musik: Peer Raben

Darsteller: Brad Davies, Jeanne Morau, Franco Nero

Der frühe und unerwartete Tod von Rainer Werner Fassbinder hatte seinem letzten Film ein besonderes Gewicht verliehen – ein vielleicht zu großes, mystifizierendes. Ähnlich war es vor vielen Jahren Pasolinis „Salo“ ergangen, der schnell zum ‚Testament‘ erklärt wurde. Was immer auch „Querelle“ für den Regisseur persönlich bedeutete, eines seiner Grundthemen wird in diesem letzten Werk auffällig konzentriert, wie unter einem Brennglas dargestellt: die Unmöglichkeit der Liebe, die ihre einzige Erfüllung in der Nichterfüllung findet. In der Figur des Matrosen Querelle hat Jean Genet früh die extreme Ausprägung eines Fassbinder-Heroen vorgezeichnet. Fast unvermeidlich nahm sich der Regisseur dieses Stoffes an, der so sehr sein eigener war. Die völlige Umkehrung der konventionellen Wertordnung wird bei Genet zu einem bestürzenden Streifzug durch die verborgenen Gewölbe menschlicher Existenz, wo Verrat, Betrug und Mord mit quasi religiöser Andacht zelebriert und zu neuen Tugenden erhoben werden. Genets Kosmos ist spiegelverkehrt, doch die Strukturen sind vor und in dem Spiegel die gleichen. Die feinen Verästelungen des Unbewussten und Verdrängten werden mitleidlos vor die Scheinwerfer Genets Kunstwelt gezogen, die Personen erscheinen als hilflose und einsame Marionetten ihrer Sehnsüchte. Dementsprechend hat Fassbinder darauf verzichtet, die Handlung in einer realen Umgebung anzusiedeln. Die Kulissen, die sein Architekt Rolf Zehetbauer für ihn entwarf, erinnern an unscharfe Traumbilder. Versatzstücke der Phantasie – ein Eindruck, der durch die außergewöhnliche Farbgebung unterstrichen wird. Das grell orange oder violette Licht taucht die Szenerie in eine unwirklich surreale Atmosphäre.

In der Schilderung sexueller Akte, vornehmlich unter Männern, bleibt der Film weit hinter der Drastik des Romans zurück, eine Rücksichtnahme, die wohl weniger auf künstlerischen Erwägungen beruht, als auf der Frage nach der Konsumierbarkeit eines solchen Stoffes.

Wie zu allen Filmen, bei denen Fassbinder Regie führte, schrieb Peer Raben auch zu „Querelle“ die Musik, von der vor allem die von Jeanne Morau treffend interpretierten Chansons (nach Texten Oscar Wildes) sowie teilweise aufdringlichen „Sphärenklänge“ im Ohr bleiben, über deren Qualität zu streiten wäre.

L'actrice Jeanne Moreau, qui à 80 ans a reçu un « super César d'honneur » pour une carrière de 60 ans, riche de plus de 100 films, a profité de la scène du Châtelet pour dire son inquiétude à l'égard « de mesures gouvernementales qui risquent d'affaiblir » le cinéma français.

Elle a pointé la baisse des subventions publiques redoutée par les cinémas indépendants, contre laquelle quelque 200 salles art et essai ont protesté vendredi soir en baissant le rideau. Jeanne Moreau a aussi dénoncé les « attaques » de « groupes puissants qui reprochent une concurrence déloyale » à des petites salles, faisant référence à plusieurs actions juridiques intentées par UGC - parfois rejoint par MK2.

'MADEMOISELLE was the most beautiful black-and-white film I have ever, ever seen. It was staggering. [...] It's black-and-white 'scope and they were using different stocks which had different flare factors and different qualities of the way the blacks and greys played for each scene. You were choosing stock to make something look great. It was very experimental and it was quite wonderful and it is not a distinguished film.'

~ Richard Lester talking to Steven Soderbergh about Tony Richardson and Jean Genet's MADEMOISELLE.

I was inclined to agree with the above after my first viewing -- that was a fuzzy VHS pan-and-scan but the film was still clearly gorgeous. Now I've seen the DVD I think the film IS distinguished. It's a study in the psychopathology of evil (feminine and masculine varieties) and almost stands as a companion to Clouzot's LE CORBEAU -- except it's defiantly NOT a thriller. In both films a sleepy French village is decimated by random, insane attacks (poison pen letters in the Clouzot, arson, flooding and poisoning in the Richardson). In both films the mob seeks convenient scapegoats based on passion and prejudice rather than reasoning.

But the textures and sounds of Richardson's films are wholly unique. The late David Watkin's photography is seductive and icy and erotic and oneiric. Jeanne Moreau's mesmeric performance is placed under a microscope, and the Panavision lenses practically drool over the man she lusts after. Kevin Connor's sound montage replaces music score with the chirrups and lowings of rural life, creating a strange, floaty time-scape almost wholly devoid of narrative tension but lambent with unfocused menace and desire.

The peculiar psychopathology uncovered through a somewhat somnambular narrative and a long flashback sequence is positively Ballardian -- a series of mental associations formed at a moment of passionate intensity have set Moreau's schoolmarm on a path of destruction, assuaging her sexual frustration with meaningless acts of cruelty (for which she must put on her high heels and make-up). It's verging on misogyny, though I'm sure we can think of numerous films where male characters act in an equally vicious fashion due to thwarted desire.

Watkin and Richardson delight in cramming their characters into the farthest corners of the frame.

'MADEMOISELLE was ludicrous, made worse by the fact that Franju had been deprived of the chance of filming Genet's original with Anouk Aimée.' ~ David Thomson.

While admitting that the prospect of a Franju version is enticing, unless Richardson actually stepped in and squashed that production, I can't see he's to blame for making his own version. And I find the film rather alluring, and certainly not ludicrous -- although it's utterly devoid of humour, which can certainly be risky. 

No humour, no music, so I SHOULDN'T like this film, and the fact that I do must be highly significant.