Miyazaki's Post-Retirement Work

The greatest animator of all time may have announced his retirement from feature films but his career as an all around artist still continues. Sources tell us that he is currently working on two projects right now. One is a samurai manga titled "teppo samurai" (translated in english, "Matchlock Samurai") and the other is a 10 minute short animation titled "Boro the Caterpillar" which will be the first of his career that'll be computer generated.

Ghibli fans, like myself, took Miyazaki's 2013 retirement very lightly, since the famed director is known for his unusual number of so-called "retirements". So far Miyazaki has retired a total of 5 times, even though I'm sure it will be 6 in two to three years. What I did absolutely buy from the announcement was the part where he mentioned that the time for hand-drawn animated films is over. Based on box office statistics in Japan, theirs absolutely no way an animation studio like Studio Ghibli can survive financially since CG animation has begun to slowly rise in popularity.

Here is an image for his upcoming manga, "Teppo Samurai"

Image Source: https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/fi3.jpg?w=580&h=339

Pierrot Le Fou Review

Pierrot Le Fou (1965)

Classic Movies

5/5

Image Source: http://www.janusfilms.com/pierrot/pierrotlefouposter.jpg

Some film enthusiasts point out that Jean Luc-Godard is what Pablo Picasso is to fine art and that “Pierrot Le Fou” is his cinematic cubism.  If you are familiar with “Bonnie and Clyde” but haven’t seen this French New Wave classic, you might be missing out on an even better hit-and-run movie about two criminals that fall in love on their way through the French countryside to the Mediterranean

Godard’s work helped challenge conventional cinema to help show that the possibilities in the filmic language are limitless. Like many other French films in the 60’s, “Pierrot Le Fou” served as influential ground work for the modern film. The powerful jump cuts, colored filters, and non-linear structure challenged auteurs to analyze and critique them for their own personal growth as filmmakers. We see many American films following Godard’s in the 60’s like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate” that are strikingly informed by the French New Wave style. “Pierrot Le Fou”, in particular, is  a summation of the French New Wave’s ideas, combining many of the themes we’ve seen in Godard’s past explorations: The feeling of contempt in “Contempt”, women’s desires in ”A Woman is a Woman”, and the sight that signifies identity and true love in “Breathless”.

Image Source: http://bennorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/pierrot-le-fou-scissors.jpg

Throughout Godard’s work, we see him explore the oppressive lifestyle of  his partner. Watching this close-up shot on Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina) holding a pair of scissors in front of the camera lens suggests of her fearlessness and strength.

Similar to “Contempt”, “Pierrot Le Fou” is one of Godard’s few Technicolor masterpieces of the 60’s. As a general rule, color serves as an extra layer to the visual arts, but it particularly helps Godard’s abstract, filmic language which is already difficult to analyze without it. This is why I believe his best work is in Technicolor; “Breathless”, is a black-and-white film that many consider to be Godard’s masterwork but I would argue that the black-and-white effect mostly restricts what Godard is truly capable of capturing on the screen given the pictorial extremes he reached for in “Contempt” and “Pierrot Le Fou”. Such convoluted and abstract storytelling in “Pierrot Le Fou” calls for thought-provoking visuals that challenge the narrative itself. 

One example of this challenge is a scene that he has Ferdinand Griffon (Jean‑Paul Belmondo) attending a party and the shots change colors every cut. Each color corresponds to the mood of Griffon’s conversations. Green is a color that symbolizes work, career, materialism, and money. Red is a color that symbolizes, re-birth, transformation, hatred and death, Blue is a color that symbolizes dreams, imagination, loneliness and sadness.

At the end of the scene, Griffon throws a piece of cake and the shot cuts to fireworks. He mentions "despair" and he associates Marianne Renoir with the word, foreshadowing the dark secret she reveals to him at the end of the movie. Pierrot Le Fou” is a visually stunning achievement that is often over-shadowed by the success of “Breathless” and “Contempt”. I do believe, however, that Godard is much more dynamic in color than he is in composition, and it is for this reason that “Pierrot Le Fou” and “Contempt” are my two personal favorites.

Favorite Reference in Pop Culture

Image Source: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1sBpz-32zEk/hqdefault.jpg

In Cowboy Bebop, there is an episode titled "Pierrot Le Fou" about a deadly robot whose name is also the title of the film. The episode shows off some of the best animation sequences in the series with its integration of CG and traditional animation. As with other 'Bebop' episodes, the robot doesn't draw any further reference to the film. The name is mostly used to strengthen the thematic nomenclature of the show.

Curse of the Golden Flower Review

Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)

Classic Movies

5/5

Image Source: http://www.movieartarena.com/imgs/cotgfdvd.jpg

Following his two martial-art epics, “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers”, Yimou stretched the boundaries of line and color once more with his third epic, “Curse of the Golden Flower” (2006). The topic of tyranny is obviously familiar territory for Yimou; another murderous emperor, another rebellious hero, another devious conspiracy, and another ambiguous moral at the end that is as intellectually sophisticated as Hero’s. In addition to the Hero-like sets and intense action sequences, Yimou has increased the number of subjects in the frame with computer-generated armies to surpass his previous attempts in depicting the massive military prowess of ancient China. Given the pictorial extremes of advanced special effects in the west, one would not expect a Hong Kong production to rival those of contemporary Hollywood blockbusters. Yimou was well aware of his international competition and absence of his “Hero” cinematographer Christopher Doyle; “Curse of the Golden Flower” sufficiently distracts the viewers eye with its matching, lavish production design and expensive costumes. The dark and depressing plot is masked with saturated primary colors, so preternaturally vivid, that it causes the viewer to first focus on the world he’s created and the characters second. Rather than focusing on the emotional identification with each character, it instead emanates from our respect for the astounding amount of time and imagination that has gone into the sets, costumes, and action sequences.

Image Source: http://media-cacheec0.pinimg.com/236x/8c/cd/82/8ccd8206c56e7c4da431ad636527fbad.jpg

A variety of screenshots shows the dynamism of close-ups on the empress (Gong Li)

The various aspects of eating and drinking, including the preparation and consumption of meals are shown with a forthright enthusiasm throughout Yimou’s work. Food and drinks are provided by one group of workers to another group within in the dwelling, as well as the means of bonding between the woman and the man. In this case, the empress has been required to drink a medicinal tea every two hours.  Without her knowing, the tea was secretly supplemented by the emperor’s command, with a poisonous mushroom that will eventually kill her. The Empress' response is to fight back: she executes a plan of revenge to take place during the Chong Yang Festival, a celebration of family, ancestry, and escape from evil fortune.

Hero Review

Hero (2002)

Classic Movies

5/5

Since his debut in 1987 with “Red Sorghum” Yimou has made more controlled films about intimate oppressions but never one as large as “Hero”, the most expensive film in the history of Chinese cinema, a forthright attempt to surpass Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," a wuxia film that transcended the genre and would become the influence for most contemporary wuxia films following its release in 2000. Similar to ‘Crouching Tiger’, the sets, costumes and special effects are of astonishing beauty. Compared to his other films which center on characters of humble social status in twentieth century China, Hero is set in ancient China during the Warring States period. The film’s title “Hero” declares that this is a story about an exceptional warrior who symbolizes the virtues of ancient China’s expansive developments.

The story actually differs greatly from what is documented. No other protagonist in the film is a real figure in historical records except for King of Qin—as a powerful leader, his political wisdom may well be reflected by the color blue, which often symbolizes profundity.

We truly encounter Yimou’s signature color in the fight between Moon and Flying Snow. The environment consists of falling leaves of yellow hue until Moon shouts “It was foolish what you did.” She collapses and the yellow leaves transitions to red, symbolizing a significant change in the story. Red is something we have encountered before, especially in Yimou’s  earlier work and it has become a defining element in this particular scene.

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Image Source: http://evanerichards.com/wp-content/gallery/hero_sd/hero12.jpg

The last shot of the fight between Moon and Flying Snow

What makes the kinetic aesthetics  so striking is, in part, the dynamism of its lines: the intense interplay between vertical and horizontal that shapes Yimou’s disposition of power. This dynamism of line manages to convey the sense that authority is both preordained and precariously mobile, as the relationship between the king and his anonymous vassals.  I compare this technique to that of the great Japanese aueteur Akira Kurosawa, whose films are strikingly informed by his paintings. Late in his career, Kurosawa transitioned into color with his most memorable color film, “Ran” (1985). In this film, he uses a similar color pallete seen in “Hero” to distinguish each army and define who they are.

 Hero (2002)

Ran (1984)

Comparison to Kurosawa’s “Ran” proves the similar palette of colors used to distinguish the armies. Both films are very large in technical scale.

Image Source: http://photos1.blogger.com/img/119/3426/640/hero02.jpg

At the end of “Hero”, there is a subtitle that tells us that the king had accomplished the unification of China: In 221 B.C., the King of Qin unified China and became the first emperor in Chinese history. After the warfare came to an end, he ordered the Great Wall constructed to protect his subjects from being harassed by Northern tribes. The rising sun, similar to the sun in “Red Sorghum”, clearly announces the beginning of a new era—the founding of the Chinese empire, a triumph over the chaos of the past. But the camera instantly moves away from the sun; the promising moment does not last long. With this camera movement, the image of the Great Wall symbolically projects China’s history on the screen. For most in carefully reviewing the history of China since her unification by the first emperor—we must recognize that such incongruity indeed marks almost its entire history. While Zhang’s previous works focus on examining the history of China over the past century or so, “Hero” is a period action film, greatly widening our vision of history.[1] The revelation of the film is the frustration that lies in the failure to find a real hero.

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[1] Zhang, Jia-xuan,  Hero, Film Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4

Raise the Red Lantern Review

Raise the Red Lantern (1991) 

Classic Movies

5/5

“Raise the Red Lantern,” directed by Zhang Yimou, is a 1991 historical drama film set in 1920’s China, years before the Chinese civil war (1927-1950). Songlian is a 19 year old woman who just left her family after her father’s passing and decides to marry into the aristocratic Chen family.

There is a striking scene between the master and fourth mistress and he says “Light the lanterns. They will be the symbol of longevity.” A hoarse and cold sound the lanterns give off as they are lit, builds upon the weight and tension of the inward suffering that Songlian and the other women feel. Red lanterns are the symbol of auspiciousness and raised in front of the houses during festivals even today. The use of red lanterns is informational the film suggests that the social and ethical corruption exists in some red lantern districts and also the households of the rich. The hammering rhythms heard in the film are typical in massage or other parts of the body; it was done on the feet for sexual desire and pleasure.

The strongest two cuts in this film is when Yan'er is punished. Songlian gets irritated and throws the lanterns outside on the ground in front of the servant. She says “lets stay with the tradition.” The scene cuts to the lanterns caught on fire and Yan’er watches in shock as they burn. The scene cuts a third time and the lanterns are reduced to ash. Yan'er becomes ill and eventually dies at the hospital she is sent to soon after.

A long close-up shot transitioning to a farther away shot of Yan’er

Image Source: http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2012/5/1/hit-me-with-your-best-shot-raise-the-red-lantern.html

Yimou uses serene camera movements to pictorialize and externalize the young girl’s subjectivity. The symmetrical and stately compositions with the number of lanterns and dynamic lines seen in 1920’s architecture further indicates the tedious, unchanging, and oppressive lifestyle for a woman living in a feudal society dominated by men.

The intimacy in this film is not the kind we’re familiar of in western arthouse cinema. Yimou does not reveal any physical intimacy between the man and mistress; instead, the preliminary motifs such as, lit lanterns and foot massages suggest the erotic pleasures that are associated with it. The absence of sexual intimacy evokes pleasure with an emptiness, causing us to question when these women are satisfied or the moments after, when they reveal their dissatisfaction with the aristocratic lifestyle.

Contempt Review

Contempt (1963)

Classic Movies

5/5

     Your probably more familiar with movies that sexually exploit women for the purpose of increasing the fan service and attracting the male gaze for the sole, erotic pleasure of seeing her backside. There was, however, one film that challenged this and that movie was called “Contempt”, a film directed by the legendary French New Wave filmmaker Jean- Luc Godard. 

     The story is about a male writer rising to fame in the film industry by working alongside his idol Fritz Lang on the production of Homer’s "Odyssey". One way of viewing “Contempt” is to compare the relationship between the director Paul and his wife Camille to the Greek hero Odysseus and his wife Penelope. Odysseus has to return from his long journey and fight the suitors that stand in his way of his beloved Penelope. Similarly, Penelope and Camille are both disappointed in their aloof partners and it is isn't long before that feeling changes into contempt.

     In Contempt, the sexually frustrated male must find a way to maintain a stable life by balancing his sexuality and creativity. Godard casts Brigitte Bardot, the sex symbol of the 60’s in France, to challenge us if the same type of sexual exploitation that the male gaze is attracted to is either a good or bad influence on the creative, cultural imagination of the international filmmaker. 

     The most intriguing part of “Contempt” lies in the central conflict: the control that the male gaze has over women in the film industry, and how men are entitled to an authoritative position which dictates all how women should be depicted on screen. This, unfortunately, results in targeting men with movies that degrade and humiliate women.

     A scene that comments on the industry is when director Fritz Lang, film producer Prokosche, Paul and Camille are sitting in the screening room and they are watching the rough shots of the Odyssey from pre-production that show Greek statues in place of the actors. The Greek statues might present the case that it wasn’t the Gods who created men but it was men’s creation of the Gods that represents their power of entitlement and control over sexualizing women since antiquity. In all of it’s convolution this really is a beautiful  scene but I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of it and there is still so much more beneath its exterior. 

     As the movie progresses, we see Fritz Lang growing more and more resentful towards Prokosche and his changes to the script. He makes a comment about his job position, “the producer is like a dictator that makes all the decisions you can’t object to.”  What makes this scene interesting is that Lang is a famous German director that was famous for his silent films in the 30’s prior to World War II. Some famous titles of his include “Metropolis”, “M” and “Nosferatu”. The American producer is completely oblivious of Lang's experience working under the Nazi's in the 30's and how this changed after World War II.

     Referring back to that scene  of the screening room---as Prokosche is about to hand him a check after the screening, Lang says: “Back in the day, the Nazi’s use to take out a pistol for a check.” I felt that this conversation between an American and German filmmaker not only reflects on how far we’ve come in our relations with Germany since the second World War, but also in that Germany is no longer enslaved to producing movies for other people based on strict political demands by the victims at war.

Suicide Squad Comic-Con Trailer

Been listening to the awesome remix of "I Started a Joke" from the Suicide Squad Trailer. Conventions have an awesome tradition of talented fans coming together and remixing their favorite songs and completely taking the original to a whole new level.

Harley Quinn finally gets her first-ever theatrically released film. Watching Robbie in the Harley Quinn costume makes me feel even more contempt for "The Dark Knight Rises". You can only go so far with brawny male villains with testosterone-laden voices. Introducing a female villain that's a little more psychotic than Catwoman is just what Batman fans are craving for.