Thief

Violent Streets / Suurkaupungin hait / Storstadshajar / Gatans lag (SE). US © 1981 United Artists Pictures. PC: Caan Productions / Michael Mann Company. P: Jerry Bruckheimer, Ronnie Caan. D+SC: Michael Mann - based on the novel The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar by Frank Hohimer [= John Seybold] (Chicago, 1975). DP: Donald E. Thorin. PD: Mel Bourne. FX: Russel Hessey. COST: Paul Cain, Dennis Fill. Makeup: Frank Griffin. Hair: Edie Panda, Kathe Swanson. M: Tangerine Dream. Mighty Joe Young Band. Special thanks: Willie Dixon. S: David M. Ronne. ED: Dov Hoenig. LOC: Chicago (Illinois), Los Angeles (California). CAST: James Caan (Frank), Tuesday Weld (Jessie), Willie Nelson (Okla), James Belushi (Barry), Robert Prosky (Leo), Tom Signorelli (Attaglia), Dennis Farina (Carl), John Santucci (Urizzi). 117 min. A vintage print (Violent Streets / Gatans lag) with Swedish subtitles by Kersti Landfeldt viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 21 May 2011

IMDb synopsis: "Becoming closer to his dream of leading a normal life, a professional safecracker agrees to do a job for the mafia, who have other plans for him."

Thief was Michael Mann's first cinema feature film, although already his tv movie The Jericho Mile was released theatrically for instance in Finland.

Based on the novel by an actual Chicago safecracker, John Seybold (1923-2005) who also acted as the technical advisor on the film's Chicago set with FBI warrants outstanding and who was later convicted to a long prison sentence according to English Wikipedia.

The cinema debut of actors James Belushi, Dennis Farina, William Petersen, and Robert Prosky. John Santucci was also a recently paroled thief and a technical advisor on Thief.

Michael Mann's official cinema debut film has stood the test of time.  It proceeds as the tragedy of Frank, a Chicago criminal with a long history of accumulating prison sentences. Frank is having success as a freelancing safecracker who runs a bar and a car dealership as fronts. But he is caught in the web of the Chicago mob led by Leo (Robert Prosky) and simultaneously blackmailed by corrupt policemen led by Urizzi (John Santucci). There is a final big caper in California, but Frank is double-crossed by Leo, and there is an ultimatum on Frank's family. There is a final showdown, not with a logical tragic outcome but a wish-fulfillment ending.

A great performance by James Caan, who can convey the desperation of the criminal, his sense of urgency of starting a normal life with Jessie (Tuesday Weld). There is a powerful blend of gravity and comedy in his big proposal scene at the cafeteria with Jessie, and at the adoption bureau, where Frank makes a complete fool of himself. Tuesday Weld is also good in her deglamorized yet genuinely attractive performance evoking her "twisted, ugly, empty" life with a drug dealer. Willie Nelson plays Frank's criminal mentor Okla, or David ("he taught me everything"). Jessie cannot have babies, but Leo helps them adopt one from the black market, and they name him David after the old mentor's death just after his release from prison.

The vintage print is intact, serviceable and with no colour fading but it looks like it was to begin with too many generations removed from the negative (mediocre, soft, with weak black levels).

Des hommes et des dieux / Of Gods and Men

Xavier Beauvois: Des hommes et des dieux / Of Gods and Men (FR 2010). Center: Lambert Wilson (Christian).

Jumalista ja ihmisistä / Gudar och människor. FR © 2010 Armada Films / Why Not Productions / France 3 Cinéma. P: Pascal Caucheteux, Étienne Comar. D: Xavier Beauvois. SC: Étienne Comar – dialogue adaptation: Xavier Beauvois. DP: Caroline Champetier – post-production numérique: Éclair. PD: Michel Barthélémy. Make-up: Pierre Olivier Persin. S: Loïc Prian. ED: Marie-Julie Maille. Casting: Brigitte Moidon. LOC: the monastery of Toumliline (Morocco). CAST: THE NINE MONKS: Lambert Wilson (Christian), Michael Lonsdale (Luc), Olivier Rabourdin (Christophe), Philippe Laudenbach (Célestin), Jacques Herlin (Amédée), Loïc Pichon (Jean-Pierre), Xavier Maly (Michel), Jean-Marie Frin (Paul), Olivier Perrier (Bruno). AND: Abdelhafid Metalsi (Nouredine), Sabrina Ouazani (Rabbia), Abdellah Moundy (Omar), Farid Larbi (Ali Fayattia), Adel Bencherif (le terroriste). 125 min. A Cinema Mondo release with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Liina Rajala / Joanna Erkkilä. 35 mm print viewed at Kino Engel 1, Helsinki, 21 May 2011

Technical specs (IMDb): Camera: Aaton Penelope, Zeiss Standard Lenses. Laboratory: Laboratoires Éclair, Paris, France. Film negative format: 35 mm (Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, Vision2 500T 5218) (2-perf). Cinematographic process: Digital Intermediate (master format), Techniscope (source format). Printed film format: 35 mm (anamorphic). Aspect ratio: 2.35:1.

IMDb synopsis: "Under threat by fundamentalist terrorists, a group of Trappist monks stationed with an impoverished Algerian community must decide whether to leave or stay." From the English Wikipedia synopsis: "It centers on the monastery of Tibhirine, where nine Trappist monks lived in harmony with the largely Muslim population of Algeria, until seven of them were kidnapped and assassinated in 1996 during the Algerian Civil War."

A strong religious film, a strong Christian film. Serving God means serving people, helping them even when the social structure has broken down, and there can be no safety from violent terrorists.

A turning-point is when the terrorists invade the monastery and Christian does not give up to a single one of their demands but shows respect to their religion. Another turning-point is when the monks say they are like birds but the villagers say no, they are the birds, and the monks are the branch that gives them some safety. A third turning-point is when the monks contemplate leaving the monastery for safety, but Christian states that they have already given up life when they have taken the oath.

A point of comparison would be John Ford's final film Seven Women (1966), about missionaries in China in 1935 attacked by a Mongolian warlord with his cut-throat gang.

During their last supper the monks listen to the Black Swan theme from Tchaikovsky's The Swan Lake, a theme whose cinematic associations run from Bela Lugosi's Dracula to the current Darren Aronofsky movie.

Based on a true story, this is a film about courage as the strength of the spirit, without hate. It is also about the mutual respect between people of different religions.

Shot on 35 mm film by a talented cinematographer. In the [apparently 2K] digital intermediate no harm is done to the stone walls of the monastery and the close-ups of faces, but in the nature footage the juicy detail is lost.

Lars von Trier acting like a schmuck

Lars von Trier brought Melancholia to Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2011. Photo: Le Monde/AFP/François Guillot.

Kalle Kinnunen writes in his blog (in Finnish) about how Lars von Trier made a fool of himself in the Cannes Film Festival with his "ok, I'm a Nazi" remarks. I participated in his blog debate, and I copy my comments here.

The Cannes Film Festival was founded after the Second World War in an atmosphere of liberation and reconstruction. The Nazi occupation hit the French film community severely. Many top artists including Jean Renoir left the country. Harry Baur, one of France's best-loved actors, died after Gestapo torture. Charlotte Gainsbourg's father was among the ones in peril. Olivier Assayas's father was saved from the gas chamber thanks to going to exile in Chile and Argentine.

All "non-Aryans" were persecuted, including the Eastern European "slave people", not to speak about Africans. All left-wingers were harassed. Modern art was banned as "entartete Kunst".

The Danes behaved very well helping all Jews to Sweden, including Ulf Trier, Lars's family father. Lars's biological father Fritz Hartmann was no Nazi but a Resistance fighter in the Frit Danmark movement.

P.S. 22 May 2011. Of course everyone realizes that Trier does not mean what he said. The father who raised him was of Jewish heritage. His radical, anti-authoritarian views are profoundly non-Nazist. So is his modernist, avantgardistic, taboo-breaking film work. His blunder, however, is unfortunately not funny. In Hungary, for instance, neo-Nazis are threatening artists and Jews. Sadly, after the Holocaust Mein Kampf has been a bestseller in some Arab countries [CORRECTED 19 Jan 2012 and] Turkey.

P.S. 13 Aug 2011. Moira Sullivan writes on Lars von Trier's misogynia in Senses of the Cinema, Issue 59, 2011.

Taistelu Turusta / Battle for the City

Jouko Aaltonen: Taistelu Turusta / Battle for the City (FI 2011).

Kampen om Åbo
    FI 2011. PC: Illume Oy. P+D: Jouko Aaltonen. SC: Jouko Aaltonen, Rauno Lahtinen, Olli Vesala. DP: Pekka Aine. M: Markku Kopisto. S: Martti Turunen. ED: Tuula Mehtonen. 79 min. Distributed by Pirkanmaan Elokuvakeskus with Swedish subtitles by Maria Wirén-Malo. DCP 2K viewed at Kinopalatsi 4, Helsinki, 21 May 2011.

Interviewees include Benito Casagrande, Helena Soiri-Snellman, Pekka Pitkänen, Suvi Auvinen, Pekka Sivula, Knut Drake, Ilkka Kanerva, Martti Kuitunen, Tapio Jokinen, Elina Rantanen, Janna Rancken, Heli Astala, Pertti Paasio, Ensio Laine, Pekka Aalto, Annika Lapintie, Jukka Paaso, Armas Lahoniitty, Matti Ijäs, Eugen Parkatti, Osmo Kivivuori, Raimo Puolimatka, Kaarlo Lundmark, Toini Leinonen, Veikko Keto, Kari Malinen.

AA: Cases of demolishing old valuable buildings with "before and after" comparisons include the Bass House, the Nobel House, the Richter House, the Old University Building, The Phoenix House, the Julin City Block, and the Hamburger Börs. There is a sequence of the fall of the Vartiovuori Park. The final episode is about the saving of the Portsa Neighbourhood.

A special jubileum movie of Turku, European Capital of Culture in 2011.

The subject is the infamous "Turku Disease" of demolishing historical buildings, some of them dating to the 17th century, having survived the Turku fire of 1827. The demolition derby took mostly place from the late 1950s to the 1980s.

All political parties were involved, all financed by construction companies. This is not even a secret. The interviewees talk about it openly. The financial rewards were substantial. There were some special aspects, though, as the role of the Freemasons. And there was the ritual of the summer trek to the islands, where new members of the lobby (invariably men) were initiated by coating their balls with tar (you read right).

When the city museum compiled priority lists of valuable buildings to be saved, those buildings got top urgency in being demolished.

The film is based on the contrast of the story of corruption on the one hand and the story of resistance on the other. The contemporary squatters try to save buildings for sites of "autonomous culture". The main activist: "what is left if you are not an idealist?".

Compilation video look. New footage in low resolution, archival footage also copied in low resolution, sometimes from used prints. There are special animation effects in some photographs.

An effective and memorable documentary with a strong standpoint.

End credits beyond the jump break:

Elma & Liisa

Elma & Liisa. Pamela Tola, Pihla Viitala.

FI 2011. PC: Mutanen Enterprises Oy / Sherpa Agency. P: Artturi Mutanen, Pauli Waroma.
    D+SC+Casting +Costumes+Makeup+Props: Pamela Tola, Pihla Viitala. DP: Jean-Noël Mustonen. AD: Tommi Kortesniemi. S: Pietu Korhonen. ED: Antti Reikko.
    C: Pamela Tola, Pihla Viitala. With: Kasimir Baltzar, Aleksi Bardy, Elina Knihtilä, Tommi Korpela, Mikko Leppilampi, Rauha Puntti, Anneli Sauli, Juha Veijonen. 40 min.
    Distributed by Finnkino. No subtitles in the screening.
    DCP 2K viewed at Tennispalatsi 9, Helsinki, 20 May 2011.

The title is an homage to Thelma and Louise. The film also brings to mind Sedmikrásky / Daisies, Boys on the Side, and other "women on the road" movies. The basic premise of Y tu mamá también / And Your Mother Too is also parodied (the women claim occasionally that they are on their final journey with only months to live). Finnish points of reference might be Neitoperho / The Collector and Taulukauppiaat / The Painting Sellers. Elma ja Liisa is completely original, though.

Pamela Tola and Pihla Viitala, two top young actresses of Finland, decided to make a movie and not to wait the three years it usually takes to convey things through the system. They just did it.

Elma ja Liisa might be a riposte to the "young man's odyssey" cycle of films that has been a staple of Finnish film production since the 1980s in the contemporary era, and since forever if we count the lumberjack sagas. The current example is Elokuu / August. Although the young woman is the active party and the young man is a sleepwalker, it is basically a traditional, patriarchal summer love story, where the summer romance is a part of the young gentleman's education.

Pamela Tola and Pihla Viitala's protagonists are wild and nihilistic women. A blonde and a brunette. They steal and rob and kill and speak about further killings. They harass hitch-hikers. They sell fake art at 2 E apiece for an "art happening for the depressed". One of them is a teacher taking a walk on the wild side. The other has had a baby in France, but now it's dead. There is no romance, no love.  It's about the road to nowhere.

There is a low definition video look in the movie.

It is dedicated to the memory of Rauha Puntti (1926–2010). I met Rauha Puntti a few years ago at Cinema Orion, when we screened Kultainen kynttilänjalka / The Golden Chandelier (1946). She told she was then the only survivor of that film's cast and crew.

P.S. 22 May 2011. The final impact of this movie two days after is that it is about profound depression.

Movie 2 (online 16 May 2011) with a tribute to Robin Wood

Movie. Issue 2. May, 2011.

Movie 2 (the legendary magazine reborn as a web publication, this issue online 16 May 2011) pays tribute to Robin Wood in the best possible way: by publishing seven previously uncollected articles by him.

"Psychanalyse de Psycho". Cahiers du Cinéma 113, Novembre 1960 - his first film essay - also re-translated into English!
"Attitudes in Advise and Consent". Movie, 4, November 1962.
"In Memoriam: Michael Reeves". Movie, 17, Winter 1969-1970.
"Sense of Dislocation". Times Educational Supplement, 23 March 1973 - Ultimo tango a Parigi (Bernardo Bertolucci).
"Signs and Motifs". Times Educational Supplement, 28 September 1973 - High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood).
"Moments of Release". Times Educational Supplement, 2 March 1973 - Viskningar och rop (Ingmar Bergman).
"Call Me Ishmael". Canadian Forum. November 1983 - Fanny och Alexander (Ingmar Bergman).

Movie's recommended links to Robin Wood obituaries:
http://filmstudiesforfree.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/crossing-the-wild-river-r-i-p-robin-wood-1931-2009/
To Robin Wood bibliography:
http://dkholm.typepad.com/cinemonkey/2010/04/robin-wood-bibliography-introduction.html

There is also a Fritz Lang dossier with Michael Walker's essay on the new reconstruction of Metropolis.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (exhibition catalogue)

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. May 4, 2011–July 31, 2011. Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, 2nd floor, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty [exhibition catalogue]. Andrew Bolton, with contributions by Susannah Frankel and Tim Blanks. Photography by Sølve Sundsbø. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011.

English Wikipedia: "Lee Alexander McQueen, CBE (17 March 1969 – 11 February 2010) was a British fashion designer and couturier best known for his in-depth knowledge of bespoke British tailoring, his tendency to juxtapose female strength and sensuality with fragility in his collections, as well as the emotional power and raw energy of his provocative fashion shows. He is also known for having worked as chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001 and for founding his own label under the name Alexander McQueen. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards (1996, 1997, 2001 and 2003), as well as the CFDA's International Designer of the Year award in 2003."

Laila came back from New York and brought this exhibition catalogue. The cover already is a moving image, a hologram close-up of Alexander McQueen's face transforming into a skull.

Reading the catalogue, cinematic associations emerge.

Federico Fellini's Roma, the ecclesiastical fashion show, not the modern innovations ("Short Cut to Paradise", Las Vegas style neon-lit habits), but the macabre visions with mummified corpses and skeletons.

Tim Burton.

Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, the lavish parties where joy has left the building.

Edgar Allan Poe's oft-filmed The Masque of the Red Death, the grand banquet in the seven rooms of Prince Prospero's abbey. After the uninvited guest's visit no one is left alive.

The Black Swan: Darren Aronofsky has perhaps been inspired by Alexander McQueen.

Reading further, it comes as no surprise that Tim Burton's work is revealed to be one of McQueen's inspirations. On the last spread there is even a list of McQueen's ten favourite films: Barry Lyndon; Death in Venice / Morte a Venezia; They Shoot Horses, Don't They?; Lady Sings the Blues; La Reine Margot [1994]; Paris, Texas; Picnic at Hanging Rock; Coppola's Dracula; The Hunger; and The Abyss.

Alfred Hitchcock was central to McQueen, and he liked to listen to Philip Glass's music from The Hours or Michael Nyman's music from The Piano. Explicit cinematic links in McQueen's collections include The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock), Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (the song title is from Mary Poppins but the style refers to Tim Burton), Sarabande (Barry Lyndon), and Plato's Atlantis (The Abyss). "The Color scheme of La Reine Margot was a constant", says Sarah Burton. Laila told that a memorable feature in the exhibition is a hologram of Kate Moss defying gravity. The accompanying music that still lingered in her mind was the theme from Schindler's List.

Collections displayed in the exhibition catalogue include The Dance of the Twisted Bull, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, Nihilism, No. 13, Plato's Atlantis, Dante, Joan, La Poupée, It's a Jungle Out There, Highland Rape, Banshee, What a Merry-Go-Round, Eclect Dissect, The Horn of Plenty, VOSS, Widows of Culloden, The Girl Who Lived in the Tree, Scanners, It's Only a Game, Eshu, Irere, Sarabande, The Hunger, Eye, La Dame bleue, Joan; In Memory of Elizabeth How, Salem 1692; Pantheon ad lucem, The Search for the Golden Fleece.

P.S. 17 May 2011. The cover of the book may be an homage to Psycho. This occurred to me reading Robin Wood's first film article (on Psycho). Towards the end of Psycho we see the famous image of Norman Bates superimposed with his mother's mummified skull. - Alexander McQueen, who said he "went straight from his mother's womb to the gay parade", committed suicide nine days after the death of his mother, a day before his mother's funeral.

P.S. 18 May 2011. Laila told that the text accompanying the Kate Moss hologram was to the effect that it's about taking us to a journey with no return. I found the video online: Kate Moss is an angel who finally disappears in the galaxy, and the video ends with a big bang in infinity.  The video and Kate's dance evoke a favourite theme of the first films by Edison, Skladanowsky, and Lumière, the Serpentine Dance created by Loïe Fuller.- Kaj Kalin dubs the Kate Moss video a "holo(caust)gram".

Never Let Me Go

Ole luonani aina / Never Let Me Go. GB/US © 2010 TCF Hungary etc. PC: DNA Films / Film4. EX: Alex Garland, Kazuo Ishiguro. P: Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich. D: Mark Romanek. SC: Alex Garland - based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005, Finnish translation by Helene Bützow in Keltainen kirjasto / Tammi 2005). DP: Adam Kimmel. PD: Mark Digby. Cost: Rachael Fleming, Steven Noble. M: Rachel Portman. S: Glenn Freemantle. ED: Barney Pilling. LOC: Fife (Scotland), Bexhill-on-Sea (East Sussex), Clevedon, Weston (Somerset), Docking, Holkham Beach and Estate (Norfolk), Richmond (Surrey). CAST: Carey Mulligan (Kathy), Andrew Garfield (Tommy), Keira Knightley (Ruth), Charlotte Rampling (Miss Emily), Sally Hawkins (Miss Lucy). 106 min. Released in Finland by FS Film with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Suvi Jyrkilä / Carina Laurila. 35 mm print viewed at Maxim 1, Helsinki, 15 May 2011

Technical specifications (IMDb): Camera: Arricam LT, Zeiss and Angenieux Lenses; Arricam ST, Zeiss and Angenieux Lenses; Arriflex 235, Zeiss and Angenieux Lenses. Film negative format: 35 mm (Kodak Vision2 100T 5212, Vision2 200T 5217, Vision3 500T 5219, Vision2 Expression 500T 5229, Vision2 500T 5260). Cinematographic process: Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format), Super 35 (3-perf) (source format). Printed film format: 35 mm (anamorphic). Aspect ratio: 2.35:1.

Mark Romanek has been a top music video director since the 1980s, and he is one of the real artists on the scene. The Work of Director Mark Romanek (2005) is a dvd showcase of his short format work (I'm a happy owner although I have no dvd collection to speak of). I have now seen two of his feature films, One Hour Photo (2002) and Never Let Me Go. Static (1985) I haven't had the chance to see. Never Let Me Go is based on Kazuo Ishiguro's acclaimed psychological science fiction novel which I haven't read. It is a melancholy growing-up story of three young people who realize that they exist as a medical experiment. They are laboratory products destined to become organ donors for mortally ill patients. But this is just a backstory to a psychological tale of the three young people's relationships. It is evident from the start that this is an artistically ambitious picture, and my sympathies are with the talented artists who made the film. Unfortunately I found it impossible to connect with the resignation of the young protagonists.

Shot on 35 mm film, the movie has gone through the 2K digital mangle. The colour palette is melancholy brownish.

Source Code

Source Code / Source Code [Finnish / Swedish translations would be Lähdekoodi / Källkod]. US/FR © 2011 Vendôme International. P: Mark Gordon, Philippe Rousselet, Jordan Wynn. D: Duncan Jones (= Zowie Bowie). SC: Ben Ripley. DP: Don Burgess. PD: Barry Chusid. Visual Effects, Special Effects: huge staffs from Data Wranglers, Rodeo FX, Fly Studio, Oblique FX, Mr. X Inc, etc. Costumes: Renée April. Makeup: Kathy Kelso. Hair stylist: Michelle Côté. M: Chris Bacon. S: Tom Belfort, Branden Spencer. ED: Paul Hirsch. LOC: Chicago (Illinois); Montréal (Québec) posing as Chicago. Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor at the Millennium Park (Chicago). Starring Jake Gyllenhaal (Colter Stevens), Michelle Monaghan (Christina Waren), Vera Farmiga (Colleen Goodwin), Jeffrey Wright (Dr. Rutledge), Michael Arden (Derek Frost). 93 min. Released in Finland by Sandrew with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Anna-Leea Kahila / Carina Laurila. DCP 2K viewed at Tennispalatsi 6, Helsinki, 13 May 2011 (day of Finnish premiere).

Technical Specifications (IMDb): Cameras: Iconix Camera, Panavision Panaflex, Millennium XL2, Panavision Primo Lenses, Phantom HD Camera, Red One Camera, Panavision Primo Lenses. Film negative format: 35 mm (Kodak), Redcode RAW. Cinematographic process: Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format), Digital (source format) (some scenes), Redcode RAW (4K) (source format) (some scenes), Spherical (source format). Printed film format: 35 mm (Fuji Eterna-CP 3514DI), D-Cinema. Aspect ratio: 1.85:1.

IMDb synopsis: "An action thriller centered on a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train."

This original cyberthriller has been compared with Groundhog Day, Brazil, Lola rennt, Moon, Memento, The Butterfly Effect, Déjà vu, Vantage Point, and Inception. I would also add La Glâce à trois faces, Seconds, Przypadek / Blind Chance, Sliding Doors, and cyberpunk films including Blade Runner, Videodrome, The Terminator, Twelve Monkeys, The Matrix - and Avatar. Cyberthrillers are about inner reality being mingled with or replaced by computer code or virtual reality. Despite its many familiar connections Source Code represents a fresh approach to the cyberthriller genre.

The script by Ben Ripley is strong, directed by Duncan Jones with inspiration. I look forward to seeing Moon, Jones's first film, which went straight to dvd in Finland.

Source Code makes no scientific or logical sense. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan are the attractive leads, both in top form. (But I paused to think that for over 40 years now men have been sexual magnets in mainstream American films, and the women's role has been to look at them adoringly). I would see Source Code as a satire about disorientation in the modern world ("It's the new me". "How well did you know him?" "I'm a dumb luck kind of gal".)

There is a fairy-tale wish-fulfillment ending as Colter Stevens manages to create a parallel reality, to change the past. I would have preferred the freeze-frame ending. But certainly the encounter at Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate is a brilliant image for this movie.

The clean digital look serves this vision of the cyberspace perfectly.

P.S. 15 May 2011. My first instinct was to call Source Code cyberpunk, but there is no punk ambience of alienation and no vision of social breakdown (although themes of extreme alienation and Big Brother surveillance are central). Finally, Source Code is feelgood entertainment.

David Bordwell on academics vs. critics

Worth reading: David Bordwell's article "Never the Twain Shall Meet: Why can’t cinephiles and academics just get along?"
http://www.filmlinc.com/film-comment/article/never-the-twain-shall-meet

Latterday vampires

Outi Hakola writes about contemporary vampire movies in the Lähikuva [Close-Up] magazine of the Finnish film scholars, in its issue 1/2011, that has just come in the mail. She examines the phenomenon of the Twilight movies (US 2008, 2009, 2010, two more forthcoming), the True Blood tv series (US 2008- ), and the Vampire Diaries tv series (US 2009- ).

Outi Hakola observes that in contemporary vampire fiction the male vampire has become an identification object, and an ideal partner for the female lead. She refers to an impressive amount of current research in which this phenomenon has been examined.

Personally, as my knowledge of the horror genre lags largely a quarter of a century behind, I have been puzzled. Even the Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In I found incomprehensible. Hakola's remarkable essay confirms that a volte-face has taken place. The ultimate monster has become a love object.

The traditional vampire movies, including Coppola's Dracula and Interview with the Vampire, were clear about the evil of the monster. The vampire is the Devil, an incarnation of death, whose erotic fascination makes him even more dangerous. In more psychological terms, the vampire was a manifestation of the death instinct, the death drive, or a catalyst for them.

In social and historical terms, the modern vampire was a monster of Romanticism, which developed a counter-imagery to the rationalism of the Industrial Revolution. In the cinema, the early vampire figures seemed to reflect indirectly the fall of the European empires (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia), and post-WWII Hammer vampires seemed to reflect the fall of the British empire. Those decadent noblemen still radiated a power and a glory that, however, had no longer any foundation in reality. They were ghosts from a vanished world. Since the 1960s it has become difficult to make traditional vampire movies except in pastiche.

In agreement with Stephen King's reasoning in his excellent study Danse Macabre my angle to horror fiction has been that it gives us approaches to discuss the issues death and madness, those overwhelming issues that we cannot help confronting but that exceed the limits of our comprehension. Horror fiction may be serious or ridiculous, but the issues it deals with are among the greatest.

The traditional vampire is an incarnation of death, but is this the case with the contemporary vampire, as well? Life is a struggle, death is easy. Life is messy, death is cool. If the contemporary vampire is still an incarnation of the death drive, is American vampire fiction telling us to stop fighting, to succumb to it, to fall in love with the death instinct? To love death?

Elokuu / [August]

Augusti. FI © 2011 Bronson Club. EX: Jukka Helle, Markus Selin. P: Jesse Fryckman. D: Oskari Sipola. SC: Oskari Sipola - from an original idea by Harri Paananen - incorporating Shakespeare's sonnets 46 and 73. DP: Joonas Pulkkanen - Cameras: Canon 5D Mark II (B Camera), Canon 7D (second unit), Red One Camera - cinematographic process: digital - 2.35:1. PD: Heini Kervinen. Cost: Jenni Rousu. Makeup: Hanna Minkkinen. M: Joel Melasniemi. S: Karri Niinivaara. ED: Antti Reikko. LOC: Espoo, Helsinki, Joutsa, Jyväskylä, Kajaani, Kemijärvi, Kirkkonummi, Mäntyharju. CAST: Eppu Pastinen (Aku), Lina Turkama (Juli), Zagros Manuchar (Freda), Niina Koponen (Erika), Pihla Viitala (Johanna), Ilkka Heiskanen (father), Henrika Andersson (mother), Juha Lagström (Hannu), Markku Maalismaa (Risto), Heikki Ranta (Timppa), Timo Torikka (Eero), Matleena Kuusniemi (Sari), Jaana Joensuu (Sointu), Mika Kurvinen (Kalle). 111 min. Distributed by Nordisk Film. In Finnish with some Swedish with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Aretta Vähälä / Saliven Gustavsson, Shakespeare translations Aale Tynni / C.R. Nyblom. DCP 2K viewed at Tennispalatsi 4, Helsinki, 7 May 2011

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold" is one of the Shakespeare sonnets read to each other by the young summer lovers, perhaps surprisingly as it is about an old man reflecting on young love. Oskari Sipola has made his debut feature film about the first summer of the young man after the ylioppilastutkinto (matriculation examination after high school, necessary for starting academic studies in a university) and before military service. His pregnant girlfriend leaves for the summer to an Interrail trip via St. Petersburg. Aku (Eppu Pastinen) is like a sleepwalker, profoundly confused, and at a Midsummer party he gets stone drunk and wakes up at home with a strange girl, Juli (Lina Turkama). Nothing has happened because Aku has passed out. He gives her a lift home, but gets carried away to an all-summer road adventure with her with no destination, losing car, money, and telephone on the way. Aku is the son of a well-to-do family, and Juli says that his problem is that he does not realize with how big a silver spoon in his mouth he was born. The story structure is familiar, from Ingmar Bergman's summer love films for instance, and there is no problem with that, as it is a good structure. Another point of comparison is Something Wild with Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels. Oskari Sipola invests the movie with personal feeling and observation, and I predict that Elokuu will have lasting value at least in our country. I keep wondering what one should think about Aku's prim character, which is reinforced towards the end. And what about the wild ones, Aku's best friend Freda (Zagros Manuchar) and Lina who completely explodes Aku's regular life albeit just for the summer? All the grown-ups seem disenchanted.

The digital cinematography is clean, sharp and restrained. There is sometimes a subdued and low-contrast look. Not bad, but the feeling is digital. Warmth is difficult in 2K.

Océans

Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud: Océans (FR/CH/ES 2010). The Korean poster.

ΩCEANS [title on screen] / Oceans / Oceans. FR/CH/ES 2010 © 2009 Galatée Films / Pathé / France 2 Cinéma / France 3 Cinéma / Notro Films / JMH-TSR. EX: Jake Eberts, Don Hahn. P: Nicolas Mauvernay, Jacques Perrin.
    D: Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud. SC: Christophe Cheysson etc. DP: Simon Christidis, Luc Drion, Laurent Fleutot, Philippe Ros, Luciano Tovoli [13 DP's credited on screen]. S: Jérôme Wiciak. ED: Catherine Mauchain, Vincent Schmidt.
    104 min

Technical specification (IMDb): Camera: Arriflex 435, Zeiss Master Prime, Ultra Prime and Lightweight Zoom Lenses. Panavision Cameras and Lenses. Sony CineAlta HDC-F950, Zeiss DigiZoom Lenses. Sony CineAlta HDW-F900/3, Zeiss DigiZoom Lenses. – Laboratory: Arane, Paris, France. Source format: 35 mm (Kodak Vision2 50D 5201, Vision2 250D 5205, Vision2 100T 5212, Vision2 200T 5217, Vision2 500T 5218, Fuji Super F-64D 8522). Video (HDTV). – Cinematographic process: Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format) – HDCAM SR (1080p/24) (source format), Super 35 (also 3-perf). – Print format: 35 mm (anamorphic) (Kodak Vision 2383), D-Cinema – Aspect ratio: 2.35:1.

Released in Finland by Atlantic Film. DCP 2K with Finnish commentary read by Juhani Rajalin, translation by Håkan Mäkelä, Swedish subtitles by Catharina Kisch.
    DCP viewed at Kinopalatsi 8, Helsinki, 7 May 2011

AA: There is a sense of wonder in this magnificent documentary about the ocean, in the spirit of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his successors, realizing that our "Earth" is actually mostly an "Ocean". And the ocean is mostly a secret space which we are busy destroying.

Filmed on the seven seas, visiting all the continents - covered on film and digital - and conveying a sense of the richness of life-forms.

This is a great movie for children, teaching that the diversity of the species is a condition of our existence. Today we are living like there's no tomorrow. It is not too late to save life on earth from destruction, but there is not much time to waste.

(I prefer the singular for "ocean". Even walking by the shore of our little, tame Baltic Sea I am conscious that it is a part of the one global ocean. We cannot be proud, either, what we have done with the Baltic Sea.)

The 2K DCP looks fine. It is clean and sharp, but slightly clinical, unlike life.

Kohayagawa-ke no aki / The End of Summer

Yasujiro Ozu: 小早川家の秋 / Kohayagawa-ke no aki / The End of Summer (JP 1961).

小早川家の秋 / Perhetarina / En familjehistoria / [The Autumn of the Kohayakawa Family]. JP 1961. PC: Toho. P: Sanezumi Fujimoto, Masakatsu Kaneko. D: Yasujiro Ozu. SC: Kogo Noda, Ozu. DP (Agfacolor): Asakazu Nakai. AD: Tomoo Shimogawara. M: Toshiro Mayuzumi. ED: Koichi Iwashita. Cast: Ganjiro Nakamura (Manbei Kohayagawa), Setsuko Hara (Akiko), Yoko Tsukasa (Noriko), Michiyo Aratama (Fumiko), Keiji Kobayashi (Hisao), Chieko Naniwa (Tsune Sasaki). 103 min. A 1981 Diana-Filmi release print with Finnish / Swedish subtitles. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (50 Years Ago), 5 May 2011

Revisited Ozu's penultimate film; the colour print is intact and looks ok. For Ozu, an unusually complex family story about a widowed man with four daughters, three with his legal wife and one with his mistress. The husband of the second daughter runs the family business, a sake plant, facing modernization and corporate competition. The old man gone, the family business will probably also close. But the family itself is no simple and straightforward thing. The old man prefers to stay with his ex-mistress. Setsuko Hara as the oldest daughter is again a woman postponing the advances of a suitor, but this time they are both widowed with children. The character named Noriko, the youngest of the legal daughters, is now played by Yoko Tsukasa, and she is free to follow her heart to her loved one at Sapporo. There is a different look and sound to the film due to the fact that Ozu, the Shochiku house director, this time directed at Toho. The modernity of Osaka is displayed via neon signs at night. The family business is in the countryside outside Kyoto (Osaka and Kyoto are neighbours). The mistress's inn where the old man dies is in the old, traditional Kyoto. The story is humoristic, but in the end the death of the pater familias is faced with gravity. His smoke rises to the sky from the chimney of the crematorium. "Only the crows remain" (Donald Richie).

At Perniö High School

Visiting Perniö High School I gave two classes, one about working in the field of film culture generally, and another about the music video. Although I have stopped following music videos actively, I still find it an exciting phenomenon from the viewpoint of film culture, because it can give a short-cut to the avant-garde of the cinema.

Recorded sound and recorded images have profound parallels in their development. The father of the cinema, Thomas A. Edison, was also the inventor of the phonograph. His original vision was to make sound films, combining film with the phonogram, but mostly sound and image recordings went separate ways until the late 1920s.

Interestingly, in France, the Pathé brothers, Charles and Émile, also combined the interests of music and image recordings. Pathé-Frères had two divisions, of which the recorded sound division was bigger first. Charles Pathé started to produce films in 1902 and built the first global movie empire before the First World War.

Interestingly, great film directors usually fail with music videos, and great music video directors have a hard time with feature films. But there are exceptions: Aki Kaurismäki made great music short films with Leningrad Cowboys. David Fincher, who started with videos for Madonna, is one of the best film directors today (The Social Network). On Friday in Helsinki there is a premiere of Never Let Me Go directed by Mark Romanek, a top director of music videos (and commercials) (and even he has made videos for Madonna!).

I don't know if the bright students at Perniö High School benefited from my ramblings, but for me the encounter was stimulating. It also put things into perspective. When I wrote my book on the music video, Sähköiset unet ([Electric Dreams], designed by Ilppo Pohjola), they had not been born yet.

PS 6 May 2011. In the 1980s it was still relatively easy to spot creative, worthwhile music videos, but the current mainstream video rotation has been tediously banal for a long time. I fully expect there are now more good videos than ever, but they are harder to find.

Taxi Driver soundtrack

Bernard Herrmann – Taxi Driver – Original Soundtrack Recording (US 1976). Genre: Jazz, Funk / Soul, Non-Music, Stage & Screen. Style: Soundtrack, Jazz-Funk, Dialogue. Photo and caption from: Discogs: Taxi Driver.

Yesterday morning I had the chance to sample the opening scenes of Taxi Driver in 2K and 4K. Since then the prelude of Taxi Driver, composed by Bernard Herrmann, has been playing on my inner soundtrack.

On the soundtrack album the Theme from Taxi Driver is the name of the jazzy-bluesy theme played by an alto saxophone.

But for me the true main theme is the one introduced in the prelude, with variations during the film, and building to a shattering climax in the finale. With radical minimalism, it consists of two chords only, played with magnificent intensity, with a heavy emphasis on dark brass and powerful percussion instruments. Crescendo, diminuendo. Crescendo, diminuendo. There is not much in the way of melody. It's all about orchestration. Although Herrmann was not the conductor, the soundtrack sounds like him. The tempo is slow. It is the sound of the ocean, not calm, not stormy, but with infinite power.

Herrmann was a versatile talent. He was the composer of two all-time top ten films, Citizen Kane and Vertigo. He created darkly romantic neo-Wagnerian music to Vertigo and delightfully fantastic fandangos to adventure films such as the Sinbad films and North by Northwest. He loved to experiment, for instance with the theremin in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Psycho, played by strings only, is minimalist in inspiration. Herrmann was a sound consultant to The Birds, a film without music.

Herrmann's best score is in my opinion On Dangerous Ground. There he established his "deranged mode", which was continued in Psycho and Cape Fear. Also the effectively contrasting "adventure mode", vigorous and relaxed, started in it. The main themes of Taxi Driver are brilliant conclusions to the "deranged" and "adventure" continua in Herrmann's work. Herrmann died the night after he had finished his work for Taxi Driver.

Taxi Driver in 2K and 4K (2011 viewings)

Martin Scorsese: Taxi Driver (US 1976) with Robert De Niro (Travis Bickle).

Kino Tulio, Helsinki, 29 April 2011. Just had a chance to compare Taxi Driver in 2K and 4K (the opening scenes). First, watching the 2K at the nearest possible distance, I thought this is so good that I couldn't tell the difference from 4K. But then the same images in 4K looked even much better, with a richer, finer and juicier touch. Of course, both DCP's are based on a brilliant restoration and post-production at Sony Pictures.

P.S. 17 June, 2011 at Porttikoski Falls (Sodankylä) I congratulated Michael Chapman for the wonderful 4K restoration, and he confirmed that he is happy with it. Especially regarding the terrible condition of the original 1970s Eastmancolor negatives.

Taxi Driver 4K

Kino Tulio, Helsinki, 27 April 2011. Taxi Driver on 4K looks excellent. I sampled it long enough to appreciate the fine definition of light in this top digital restoration from Sony Columbia. Technically and artistically it looks brilliant.

Finland during the Cold War

Renny Harlin: Born American / Jäätävä polte (FI 1985).

Easter Sunday starts beautifully in Helsinki, and I find Financial Times Weekend in the nearest seven-eleven store, the K-Market Pietarinkatu. Because today is holiday the boss himself, Mr. Mikko Länsiluoto, is taking the shift. The tall boss goes by the nickname "Little Mikko" with a similar sense of humour as "Little John" in the legend of Robin Hood.

In the morning sun at Café Ursula I find the article on Finland by Tony Barber, FT's specialist writer on international affairs, called "Frustrated True Finns feed Europe's very own Tea Party". The article is intelligent and Tony Barber seems to understand a lot of what is going on here. Many of us have lost with the globalization, and many blame it on the EU. These are real concerns that need to be faced seriously, not populistically.

To Mr. Barber's analysis I would like to add that the Perussuomalaiset (True Finns) party was founded in 1995 to directly to continue the activity of a previous populist party, Suomen Maaseudun Puolue (The Finnish Rural Party) (SMP), founded in 1959. Timo Soini, the chairman of the True Finns, was also a veteran of the SMP, led by the charismatic Veikko Vennamo. Vennamo was and Soini is a top orator with a great sense of humour admired also by those who oppose their views.

A famous slogan of the SMP was "For the Forgotten People". Tony Barber comments on "Finland's rapid modernization after the end of the cold war", but the most rapid modernization took place already in the 1960s when agrarian Finland turned into an urban Finland. The SMP tapped into the reality of those who were forgotten in that devastating structural change. Now the True Finns have won by a landslide much bigger than SMP ever did. But it is impossible to handle globalization with provincialization.

Digressing from the True Finns phenomenon Tony Barber discusses the Finnish condition during the Cold War reverting to the term "Finlandisation" claiming that it was "taboo, for instance, for politicians, bureaucrats, and the media to criticise Soviet policies. Books and films considered to be anti-Soviet were removed from circulation".

Certainly that is a partial truth, but during the Cold War it was always evident to everybody that Finland was a Western liberal capitalist society, and President Urho Kekkonen even said that even if the rest of the world would turn socialist Finland would stay capitalist. There was a surface liturgy of slogans that were exchanged, but on all sides it was known what was really thought.

The media was predominantly anti-Communist and anti-Soviet, and also in the neutral Finnish Broadcasting Company events like the crushing of the Prague Spring were memorably reported.

The most devastating anti-Soviet influence was the reality of the USSR itself. On the popular conducted tours to the USSR there were no Potyomkin villages in Eastern Karelia. Even a child could see at once the disastrous condition there and realize how incomparably better the condition was this side of the border in Western Karelia.

The most terrible treatment from the USSR was suffered by Finnish Communists. During the Great Terror of the 1930s Stalin got almost all of them (some 20.000) murdered in Eastern Karelia. Stalin had as many Finnish Reds killed as the Whites after the 1918 war. The best = the worst anti-Soviet jokes were famously told by Finnish Communists.

Jokes such as: "One morning at the Lenin Mausoleum it was discovered that Lenin had disappeared. The KGB was assigned to investigate. After a thorough research they found on the wall a writing in invisible ink: 'Comrades! Last night a took a stroll around the city. I have now retreated to the underground. Comrades! We need to start everything from scratch."

There were a lot of anti-Soviet books available in Finnish and in foreign languages without difficulty in bookstores and libraries. As a schoolboy in the 1960s I read classics of Koestler, Orwell and Solzhenitsyn, as well as Finnish anti-Soviet books such as the best-selling works by Arvo Tuominen. The books of Alexander Solzhenitsyn were published by the Tammi publishing house with the exception of The Gulag Archipelago, self-censored by Tammi and published in Finnish by Kustannuspiste (and the first volume in Finnish by the Swedish Wahlström & Widstrand) with great success. It was the most prominently displayed book in the city of Tampere where I then lived.

The end of the Cold War in Finland did not mean that we got access to some new information that we did not have before. But it meant the end of pretense. It is good to be able to say consistently what one thinks, without double-speak! It was a period of liberation from Cold War propaganda from both sides. Honest discussion of Finnish history of 1917-1945 became possible after the Cold War.

The least popular films were Soviet propaganda films, whose true impact was, however, to function as unintentional anti-Soviet propaganda. It was relatively hard to see them, as it was also to see non-propagandistic films from Eastern Europe. The Western hegemony was strong. The film societies tried to correct the balance for those that belonged to them.

On cinema there was real political censorship in Finland. Cinema was the only media regulated by legal preventive censorship. Certain Cold War films from the West and the East were banned, but the most important films were distributed, such as Animal Farm, Dr. Zhivago, the James Bond films, and L'Aveu (The Confession) by Costa-Gavras. The last instance of political censorship being considered for a movie was in the year 1985 when Renny Harlin's Born American was first banned, then released. It was already the age of glasnost. The Cold War period in the Finnish media ended then, not first in 1991. The Cold War cinema censorship in Finland was a cat-and-mouse game where the USSR played the role of the sorry cat. When Ninotchka and One Two Three were banned, the laugh was on Moscow.

Truman Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany's (a novella)

Truman Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany's : a short novel and three stories ("House of Flowers", "A Diamond Guitar", "A Christmas Memory"). First edition cover. Hardback and paperback. Random House, 28 Oct 1958. In autumn 1943, the narrator befriends Holly Golightly, a New York café society girl. To Capote, Golightly is not a prostitute but "an American geisha". Photo from: Wikipedia / Between the Covers.

US 1958. Read in a Penguin Editions copy: London: Penguin Books, 2011.

Having read Breakfast at Tiffany's a couple of times in the Finnish translation by Inkeri Hämäläinen (Helsinki: Tammi, 1967) I now read for the first time in English the work that stirred Norman Mailer to call Truman Capote "the most perfect writer of my generation".

I'm back from under the jacarandas of Pretoria to face the still naked trees of springtime Helsinki. Spring is late. Unto Hämäläinen, a top journalist at the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, reports that last Sunday he was still cross-country skiing at Paloheinä in the northern section of the Helsinki Central Park.

Finland is reeling from the shock of last Sunday's election, where the populist Perussuomalaiset (True Finns) party won by a landslide. On the planes from Johannesburg via Amsterdam to Helsinki I read alarmed articles and columns in the international press with titles such as "Finnished?" The True Finns' victory may jeopardize the EU financial aid to Portugal - and the status of the Euro currency - and the future of the European Union. How stupid can we get?

The Compass (Kompassi) café by the popular Kaivopuisto seaside walk has opened. Three days ago I visited the new Mattolaituri Café not far away; it is easy to predict that that place will also be a success. It is named by the most famous seaside carpet-washing platform of the country (matto = carpet, laituri = platform).

The Compass is a favourite of the motorcyclists, as there is ample parking space for them. A few years ago hundreds of them gathered there to watch the Night of the Fireworks. The motorcyclists have been riding here for two weeks now, but I heard that today is the first really nice day for them as the temperature is above ten grades Centigrade.

Truman Capote is a writer's writer. His prose is terse but vivid, constantly on the move, with a sense of purpose. Capote mastered both fiction and non-fiction, and there is a sense of poetry in his art of crystallization and creating memorable images. Much of it is lost in Finnish translation.

Set in the 1940s, Breakfast at Tiffany's is based on real-life models and experiences. The novella touches me also because I have known a Holly Golightly or two. In 1955, Capote met Marilyn Monroe, who had left Hollywood and moved to New York. Capote's "conversational portrait" of their encounter in his anthology Music for Chameleons in 1975 is one of the best pieces on Marilyn. Marilyn was Capote's candidate to portray Holly Golightly, but Lee Strasberg advised her against it.

Both Truman Capote and Audrey Hepburn thought that Audrey was an impossible candidate to portray Holly Golightly in Blake Edwards' exceptionally successful film adaptation. The movie does not make sense, and I'm amazed that intelligent women consider Breakfast at Tiffany's their personal favourite film. I suspect the same women would probably vote for a ban of prostitution. Does Holly Golightly belong in their opinion with Manon Lescaut, Marguerite Gautier, and Madame Butterfly, or with Pretty Woman? And maybe the profound contradiction is the secret to the extraordinary success of Breakfast at Tiffany's the movie?

In the advertising copy Breakfast at Tiffany's the movie is marketed as "a romantic comedy", and the misrepresentation now seeps back to Capote's book. On the book cover they call it "the most romantic story ever written" It's an anti-romantic story with no love interest. But it's a tender and unforgettable portrait of a bright café society girl who may be deeply mad. Or maybe just young and crazy.

In the Finnish-language Parnasso literary magazine (1/2011) Martti Anhava has published a magisterial essay "The Art of Finishing On Time" about how writers finish their careers. Capote belonged to the ones who experienced a creative crisis. In the preface to Music for Chameleons he says that most writers like to overwrite but that he himself prefers to underwrite. "Simple, clear as a country creek. But I felt my writing was becoming too dense". 

Music for Chameleons remained Capote's last published book in his lifetime. In the last sentence of its preface he writes: "Meanwhile, I'm here alone in my dark madness, all by myself with my deck of cards - and, of course, the whip God gave me".