I was inspired recently, reading Harry Knowles' reports of QT6, the latest installment of Quentin Tarantino's personal film festival. Tarantino collects prints and, at uneven intervals like every couple of years, brings some to Austin, Texas to show to devoted cinephiles. He emcees and gives energetic introductions to every movie, often including rambling trips through the encyclopaedia of film inside his brain, and always punctuated by tossing the microphone and letting it crash onto the stage. Each night of the festival has a theme, like Italian WWII or 80's horror or Sexploitation. A lot of what fascinated me is that very few of the films he shows are available on DVD, but there's always the possibility that one might become available because of Tarantino's influence, as seemed to happen with movies like Lady Snowblood that he name-checked as influences on Kill Bill. The chosen movies tend to run toward grindhouse rather than arthouse, and there's a fair amount of backlash (as usual) on the AICN posts to what seem like intentionally contrarian attitudes, like saying that the little-known Psycho II is better than the first one, or saying that Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho was better than the original, or championing obscure directors over canonized ones. But in reading Harry's reports it's hard not to be convinced that at least some of the movies being shown are true lost gems. The documentary Blue Water, White Death (described in the 'reports' link above) seems a likely candidate. Its casual treatment of sharks as man-eating monsters seems almost comically politically incorrect these days, but considering the footage served as a model for JAWS, it's gotta be pretty good. On second thought, I don't know why I said 'but' there. Comically politically incorrect stuff is awesome.

I immediately started thinking about how cool it would be to do something like this on my own, inviting friends over once a month or so for a movie night picked out from my collection. Of course I won't be coming up with such crazy films as Tarzoon, Shame of the Jungle--an obscene animated parody of Tarzan shown at QT6. All but a few of the titles I have are readily available, though there are plenty of web sites that sell more obscure stuff. Then again, in my friends I also probably have a less demanding audience, and one that would probably rather see a great movie that they've likely never seen, than one of questionable quality that they won't see anywhere else.

I'd already been thinking about buying a digital projector for audiovisual elements in my band's shows. This seemed like a perfect auxiliary justification. There's no doubt in my mind that creating a more immersive atmosphere, as is possible with a 6-foot wide image, makes for a better experience than one has with a TV. I tend to be a bit of a control freak when showing music or anything that I love to others, and I don't want them to miss a moment of what makes it great because of some distraction. It's quite possible to build a projector from parts, using an LCD screen, a set of lenses, and a very bright light bulb, and help from places like Lumenlab and the DIY Projector Company. After much deliberation I decided not to do that, for the following reasons. It only costs about 30% less than buying a commercial projector. A DIY projector is usually housed in a big MDF box, taking up a whole lot more space than a commercial one and not looking nearly as nice. And chances are my first-time DIY result would not be nearly as good or as reliable as a commercial one. I don't really want to still be tweaking it and affixing duct tape in various places when I'm trying to have a movie night. There are good reasons to go DIY that you'll find endlessly debated on the forums of those sites, but I think this time it'll be commercial for me. After much further deliberation I decided the model for me is the Infocus Screenplay 4805. There's no need to go into the myriad variables affecting that choice, but you can find plenty of discussion of them at another site, AVS Forums. The screen is another big question that I haven't entirely resolved yet. But I hope to have my first movie night within a month and a half or so.

[BTW - For other Netflix people--Not long after discovering QT Fest I went through the archives of the programs of all the previous festivals to see if any of the titles were available on Netflix. Naturally, it turned out other Netflix users had already created custom lists of the QT Fest movies available: here's one. I queued up Bullet Train, a Japanese precursor to Speed, and Hickey & Boggs, a gritty detective flick with Bill Cosby. By the way, if anyone is on Netflix and isn't my Netflix friend, let me know, and let's bee friends. I only have 2 friends right now, which makes their little quizzes about which friend likes which movie just a bit dull.]

from Netflix

The Defender

This rousing political thriller marks the directorial debut of action hero Dolph Lundgren, who also stars. Assigned to protect a high-ranking government official during a secret meeting with a terrorist, security expert Lance Rockford (Lundgren) and his elite team are ambushed. Amid the fiery maelstrom that ensues, Rockford's instincts, loyalties and beliefs are put to the ultimate test. Jerry Springer co-stars as the president.

From Netflix:

P3K: Pinocchio 3000

Malcolm McDowell and Howie Mandel lend their voices to this retelling of Pinocchio set in the futuristic city of Scamboville, where high-tech tinkerer Gepetto dreams of being a father. With help from cyberpenguin Spencer and holographic fairy Ciberina, Gepetto builds a robot son dubbed Pinocchio. True to the classic tale, the adventure takes off as the naive young automaton finds himself alone in the big city on the path to becoming a real boy.

A while ago I saw a movie on IFC a couple times called "Kicking and Screaming" (not the Will Ferrell one from last year). It was directed by Noah Baumbach, and was really really good. I was dismayed to find that it wasn't available on DVD. When I saw "The Squid and the Whale" I was buoyed by its excellence, thinking it portended well for his other films being noticed more. Sure enough, not only has the day come, but it's being released by the Criterion Collection! Evidently their unconditional love of Wes Anderson extends to his recent collaborator.

The only downside is that Criterion has a new logo that, so far, I don't much care for. It's a tilted 'C', and though I can see the motivation behind it--it's more of a symbol, and certainly more recognizable in small images than the previous skinny capital letters with the horizontal line. But those letters and that line had come to symbolize so much to me. This is just a letter 'C' that could be anything. On the other hand, they are also releasing all of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales.

Spoiler alert: talk of what happens in several recent films ahead.

Two screenwriting trends that have emerged in recent years have caught my attention. The first is the device in which, while at first glance the movie appears to tell a straightforward story, in fact part of the story was not 'true' in the movie's world. It was either made up or dreamed or fantasized by one of the characters. 'Figuring out' the movie then entails determining where this break between the movie's reality and the character's fantasy occurred, absent any of the usual cues like wavy lines or ethereal music, though sometimes with more subtle ones. The Usual Suspects, Mulholland Dr. and Swimming Pool could all be cited as examples. The funny thing about this technique is that only critically acclaimed movies seem to use it. I'm not aware of any crappy movies that had such a twist in them. Some are probably out there, but they're forgotten indies or B movies rather than Hollywood blockbusters.

The other trend is the ambiguous ending, which sometimes renders the entire plot ambiguous. In this case, there is usually evidence presented for multiple explanations of the action, but it seems to have been carefully balanced so that only each viewer's personal prejudices will lead them to conclude that one or another was what really happened. I hesitate to name examples for the reasons below, but the one I just watched that inspired this was Caché. I think The Minus Man also qualifies, or at least it wanted to.

There are two points to be made, and this thread illustrates both pretty well. First, these two techniques tend to dovetail. For many films that appear to divert from reality into a character's fantasy, the question can be asked, did they just imagine all that, or did it really happen? This is the case at least for Memento and Swimming Pool. And for any film with an ambiguous ending you can find at least one person arguing that some part of the movie was just imagined. The second is that the ambiguous ending is particularly devilish, because you never know for sure if it was meant to be ambiguous, or if there really is one true explanation, toward which one piece of evidence tips the scales. After all there are many films, such as The Usual Suspects and Primer, which might seem inexplicable on first viewing, but in fact have perfectly logical explanations. This always provokes arguments, and thus this is probably the easiest way to make a movie that "you'll be talking about for hours!" The director always refuses to say anything one way or the other. The question often comes up in these arguments of what makes it a better movie. Does it make a point about realism or anything else to have a truly ambiguous ending? Are some of the explanations just too mundane to be true? After a while I feel a bit embarrassed to be debating something that seems to have been constructed for the sole purpose of being debatable--though again, most of the movies that use this have plenty else going for them, and meaningful ideas that are not weakened one way or the other by the ending.

These videos from Buzz Image manage to be some of the clearest demonstrations and explanations I've seen of modern visual effects techniques, and they do it entirely without narration. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is delightful for any fans of that movie. Brokeback Mountain is a good example of effects that the viewer is not intended to notice. In this case I can't help being a bit jaded by the knowledge that some of the amazing natural beauty in the film was not so natural. This one also shows an example of shooting day for night--I never understood how that could end up looking right (according to Wikipedia it is rarely done these days). Raw footage from The Aviator shows the kind of performances that actors are often called upon to make today, like standing in front of a green screen in a sweatshirt and mimicking closely a few gestures and facial expressions from historical footage. The music and sound effects in all of the videos are very nicely done.

Some addenda to the last entry:

Via Kottke, articles in the Times and Slate about "Killer of Sheep", a student film made in 1977 by Charles Burnett that has received many accolades, such as being added to the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress, named one of the 100 essential films of all time by the National Society of Film Critics, and getting a MacArthur Foundation grant for Burnett, but has never been officially released because no distributor thought it could make more money than it would cost to secure the rights to the music used in the film. It ended up costing $150,000, but one song at the end of the film had to be replaced. Now it is finally being shown in theaters (at the IFC Center in New York) and will be released on DVD in the fall.

This reminded me of the stories about "Mad Hot Ballroom" and the trouble they had paying for music licensing. This article from the Times tells some of it, and also discusses "Tarnation," but I had been thinking of another story, which I now find here, though I don't remember where I originally read it. While they were filming, a young boy spontaneously shouted "everybody dance now!" without any of the melody or rhythm of the song. It would have cost $10,000 to include it in the movie, and they decided to cut the scene.

I was also reminded of that while watching an episode of American Idol (not exactly by choice). The controversial contestant Sanjaya had just finished 'singing' his song, "Bathwater" by No Doubt, and getting the judges feedback, and in the course of some banter started singing another No Doubt song. Ryan Seacrest instantly cut him off, saying, "No, don't sing it or we'll have to pay for it!"

A quick shout-out to the Criterion Contraption, where an aspiring screenwriter is watching and writing about every DVD released by the Collection. You can use the index to read each piece in order of spine number, and that's what I've been doing whenever I have a dull moment for the last few weeks. He started off a bit rough but quickly found his voice, offering great trivia and insights that are magnificently film-geeky without being annoying or esoteric. Sometimes even when he thinks the movie is bad he still makes me want to watch it.

I can relate a bit to the completism that inspires/plagues the author. There was my dictionary project, in which I read through a significant portion of the Oxford English Dictionary to pick out the collection of words that now appear as "Random Rare Word" on the home page of this site. And in college when M2 showed their entire library of videos in alphabetical order, I watched as much as I could and recorded on three videotapes the videos of the bands that I liked, many of which I had never seen before and had no other way of seeing. Unfortunately the quality of the VCR was pretty bad. Fortunately we now have Youtube and DVD collections.

On June 24th Maya and I attended an evening with Tatsuya Nakadai at Film Forum. Nakadai is one of Japan's premier film actors and, according to the presenters, the premier theater actor there. In the sixties and seventies he worked with most of the great Japanese directors, including Akira Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse, Masaki Kobayashi, and Hiroshi Teshigahara (probably half his films have been put out by the Criterion Collection). He was interviewed by Michael Jeck for a good two hours and change, through an interpreter. Clips were shown from each stage of his career and he told many stories in a deep, authoritative voice. He was funny and frequently self-deprecating. Some of the things he said:

• His first role, while he was still in film school, was a two-second walk-on in Seven Samurai. He is only onscreen momentarily, in one of several shots of people walking through a crowded town square. It took six hours to get the shot right. Kurosawa kept yelling at him for walking too much like a modern man, and not the way samurai walked when they had swords in their belts.
• In A Woman Ascends the Stairs, one scene calls for him to slap his co-star Hideko Takamine. After shooting it, she told him that he slapped better than he acted.
• In the climactic scene of Yojimbo, he and Toshiro Mifune stare each other down for an extended period from only a foot or so apart before drawing their swords and quickly ending the duel. They had each trained separately for this scene for months. Each of them had to draw their sword in a very particular way, and neither of them was told how the other would be drawing. They could only do the scene once because Kurosawa wanted their genuine surprise to be evident. When they shot it, the cartoonish stream of blood that shot out of a pipe against the loser's chest was so powerful that it nearly knocked the actor backward off his feet.
• When they filmed the sequence on the bullet train in High and Low, which included a lot of fast-paced dialogue, it would have cost them ten million yen, on the order of a hundred thousand dollars, if they needed to rent the train again for a second take.
• Nakadai was in a spaghetti western. He'd always liked westerns and thought it would be fun. The movie was written by Dario Argento. When he asked the director about the plausibility of a Japanese person in the old west, he said that Nakadai would be playing a half-Mexican half-Native American.
• Usually the swordfighting in chanbara films is done with bamboo swords that have foil tape affixed to them. But when filming Harakiri they used real swords because the director wanted them to have the proper weight. But as Nakadai said, "Even with bamboo you have to be careful, because the Japanese word for bamboo is takemitsu, but the composer's name was also takemitsu" (that would be the legendary Toru Takemitsu).
• Nakadai told of the filming a scene in Ran in which a castle burns down while Nakadai's character staggers around in a daze before slowly emerging. The castle was really burned down in the scene, and only Nakadai and the cameramen were inside. Kurosawa spoke to them in an earpiece to tell him when to start moving. He waited and waited for the signal, lying down inside a burning building, not knowing if something had gone wrong. Finally he heard it. He was very afraid that he would stumble, as once again (see a pattern here?) there would be no chance for a second take. Fortunately he carried it off, and the scene is incredibly intense--talk about self-control!

Before the event we had watched Harakiri, A Woman Ascends the Stairs and High and Low and they are all excellent in their own very different ways. I've also seen Sword of Doom and it's awesome as well. I still have a lot more to catch up on as Nakadai-san has had a truly amazing career.