dirtystylus

Criterion Goes Blu

Great news. I guess it’s time to sell my old copy of Chungking Express.

Blade Runner

I haven’t seen Blade Runner in years, probably not since the days of renting it on Betamax tape in Manila. So it was a very pleasurable experience to watch it on a giant screen during its limited re-release at the Ziegfeld. It looked amazing — the hype over its restoration is fully warranted. I wasn’t familiar enough with the movie to pick out the other digital nips and tucks that Ridley Scott made.

Obviously there’s stuff in the movie that hasn’t aged well — the synth-heavy score is too obtrusive, and the 80’s-era shoulder pads stick out (literally). I was also struck by how slowly it moves in general. Some of that is due to very real pacing issues I have with the movie, but I also think a large part is due to the fact that recent sci-fi is very studiously kinetic.

There’s constant debate over whether Deckard is supposed to be a replicant. Ridley Scott asserts that Deckard is, although the only way I can see that working is if you speculate that they created him to clean up the replicant mess, knowing that he’d have a finite lifespan to begin with. I think it’s more interesting if he is human, because otherwise you lose the contrast between Deckard’s sleepwalking through life and Roy Batty’s desperation to live.

What can’t be debated is the sheer visual power of the movie. It was interesting watching it knowing that so many of the visual cues have become cliches — the constant rain, the gritty metropolis on ethnic overload — yet somehow being awed by it anyway. Hopefully the turnout for the LA and NY re-release means that other cities will get limited runs as well; people deserve a shot to see this on the big screen.

I Am…Iron Man!

The new Iron Man teaser went up last night — I have to say that despite the goatee on Robert Downey, Jr.’s mug I’m cautiously excited for this one. Perhaps it’s the fact that the Favs is directing. Or maybe blind hope that the string of lackluster comic-book movies (X-Men 3, Spidey 3) can be balanced by this one. As for the trailer, the first bit plays a lot like the recent ‘Lord of War’, with the amoral arms dealer spouting over-the-top paeans to firepower. The stuff that comes afterwards looks very cool, though. I wonder if they can get Ghostface on the soundtrack.

M:I:3

Or, “Alias: The Remix”, as we’ve taken to calling it at home. Apparently we’re not the only ones who think so. I finally got around to watching this last night, and it was a lot of fun. It still doesn’t trump the first one by De Palma, but at least it washes away the bad taste from John Woo’s shameless “Notorious” ripoff.

I know JJ Abrams had his whole “Alias” crew with him (script, set design, music, editing) so it’s not surprising that for better or worse it was like seeing an episode of that show on ‘roids. A bit like comfort food, if you will - the torture fetish, the computer nerd covertly breaking protocol, the mistrust between the field agents and their superiors - it’s all there, and it allowed me to slip into the rhythm of the movie. I would only get pulled out by meta-observations:

“Are we going to cut to a ‘48 hours earlier’ title card?”
“JJ Abrams finally turned Felicity into a spy. Wasn’t that the joke on how Alias was born?”
“Why has Tom Cruise’s acting calcified into a variation on that steely grimace?”
“What is going on with Billy Crudup’s hair?”
“Hey - it’s Laurence Fishburne! He’s married to Anna Espinosa.”
“Ah, Philip Seymour Hoffman. It’s the ‘Magnolia’ reunion!”

Speaking of Philip Seymour Hoffman, it’s nice that he gets to chew it up a bit here, without having to feel like another Oscar depends on it. I was worried that I wouldn’t buy him playing the heavy, but it worked.

I’m also still trying to figure out how I missed Carla Gallo from “Undeclared” - her name was in the credits, but where did she appear?

Cavite

Official site. Saw this at a benefit screening last night. I came away very impressed, if a little woozy - the shaky-cam made me feel like I was watching a Paul Greengrass movie. The plot is minimal - it involves a kidnapping and blackmail, set against the slums of Cavite.

For a zero-budget indie it was very well put together. Ian Gamazon and Neill dela Llana (co-writers and directors) shot the hell out of it, and the editing was on point. What got me were the little spaces in between, though - there’s one point where the camera cuts away from the lead character and just follows a kid as he walks through the city, while the subtitles at the bottom carry you through what’s happening in the main plot. It’s things like that which separate film from other mediums - the ability to have this visual information breaking from what you’re hearing (or reading) and still have it all make sense.