Life Interferes with Posting
Oct. 15th, 2007 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kateelliottI am having Life. Nothing serious, but just busy for scheduling reasons. Therefore I am offering up a link that speaks to artists, and a couple of brief film reviews.
I read this article about Michael Caine which I found both charming and rather wise in terms of advice for the artist (whatever kind of artist).
"Whenever anyone asks what my biggest talent is as an actor, I say 'survival.'"
"Success comes from doing, not waiting."
"Learn how to read a script," he says. "If you read the first 10 pages and the last 10 pages and nothing has happened to your character, you can be pretty sure nothing's going to happen to you in between."
The films:
Daughters of the Dust written, directed and produced by Julie Dash. Set in 1902 on a coastal island in the south, the film follows (in an impressionistic manner) a farewell picnic by a group of islanders, descendants of (and some survivors of) slavery, most of whom are pulling up roots and moving North.
This is an absolutely ravishingly beautiful film. It's also a nuanced film of great depth, depicting many competing strands of belief and outlook that threaten to unravel the clan as well as numerous details that are easy to miss but crucial to the setting both visually and culturally. The actors were evidently coached in the local regional dialect, which can be difficult to understand but which has such a distinctive rhythm that I suspect the film would have sounded wrong without it. I liked the score. My one complaint was that at times I found the script a little stagy; there were one too many declaimed monologues (for my taste anyway), and in two or three places I felt I was hearing words that had been written rather than words that would come naturally as speech. The window into a culture and setting that has been long ignored by our history classes is welcome. I know I already mentioned it, but the composition, detail, and color saturation of the visuals are stunning. Also, it focuses particularly on the women. Perhaps this is why I was the only one in the family who finished viewing it.
Yeelen, a film from Mali by Souleymane Cisse, tells the story of a young man who is being hunted down by his father, and how he must end the larger disruption being caused by the father's hatred. This is set in mythico-historical times. A good film, of particular interest because - hey - it was made in Mali so the story and the culture the story moves through is so very not what we're used to. The details of cultural interaction in particular really stand out. Strong performances, and I liked how magic is so thoroughly integrated into the story that despite having no special effects, as a viewer one completely believes in the magical aspect. Everyone watched this one all the way through - so full points for gripping storytelling.
The Host, a South Korean horror film that came out last year. Not particularly horrific (except when examining human society) and often quite funny, this is really a story of a dysfunctional family coming together to try to rescue the one member of the family everyone loves unreservedly. Oh, and it's also a film about hunger. It drags a little bit (but not much) in the middle, but everything comes together in the end, as it must. Also, we laughed and laughed at the portrayal of the American characters - there are just a few and they're all secondary, but the SoKorean filmmakers got in some telling jabs. Four thumbs up.
I read this article about Michael Caine which I found both charming and rather wise in terms of advice for the artist (whatever kind of artist).
"Whenever anyone asks what my biggest talent is as an actor, I say 'survival.'"
"Success comes from doing, not waiting."
"Learn how to read a script," he says. "If you read the first 10 pages and the last 10 pages and nothing has happened to your character, you can be pretty sure nothing's going to happen to you in between."
The films:
Daughters of the Dust written, directed and produced by Julie Dash. Set in 1902 on a coastal island in the south, the film follows (in an impressionistic manner) a farewell picnic by a group of islanders, descendants of (and some survivors of) slavery, most of whom are pulling up roots and moving North.
This is an absolutely ravishingly beautiful film. It's also a nuanced film of great depth, depicting many competing strands of belief and outlook that threaten to unravel the clan as well as numerous details that are easy to miss but crucial to the setting both visually and culturally. The actors were evidently coached in the local regional dialect, which can be difficult to understand but which has such a distinctive rhythm that I suspect the film would have sounded wrong without it. I liked the score. My one complaint was that at times I found the script a little stagy; there were one too many declaimed monologues (for my taste anyway), and in two or three places I felt I was hearing words that had been written rather than words that would come naturally as speech. The window into a culture and setting that has been long ignored by our history classes is welcome. I know I already mentioned it, but the composition, detail, and color saturation of the visuals are stunning. Also, it focuses particularly on the women. Perhaps this is why I was the only one in the family who finished viewing it.
Yeelen, a film from Mali by Souleymane Cisse, tells the story of a young man who is being hunted down by his father, and how he must end the larger disruption being caused by the father's hatred. This is set in mythico-historical times. A good film, of particular interest because - hey - it was made in Mali so the story and the culture the story moves through is so very not what we're used to. The details of cultural interaction in particular really stand out. Strong performances, and I liked how magic is so thoroughly integrated into the story that despite having no special effects, as a viewer one completely believes in the magical aspect. Everyone watched this one all the way through - so full points for gripping storytelling.
The Host, a South Korean horror film that came out last year. Not particularly horrific (except when examining human society) and often quite funny, this is really a story of a dysfunctional family coming together to try to rescue the one member of the family everyone loves unreservedly. Oh, and it's also a film about hunger. It drags a little bit (but not much) in the middle, but everything comes together in the end, as it must. Also, we laughed and laughed at the portrayal of the American characters - there are just a few and they're all secondary, but the SoKorean filmmakers got in some telling jabs. Four thumbs up.