Tag Archives: mise-en-scene

Die Another Day [2002)

CGI, like fake boobs, does not age well.  But let us back up to all of the ridiculous indoctrination which precedes the failed geekery of late in the film.  This James Bond movie has many reeducation moments, but they emanate not from the North Korean characters but rather the film’s shadow auteurs.  Let me demonstrate.

“North Korea bad.  England good.  England also known U.K.  [ooga booga]  America friend U.K.  North Korea torture.  America and U.K. not torture.  [ooga-booga]”

Yes, dear friends…Hollywood considers you a bunch of fucking chimps.  And when it comes to films with a lot of heavy weaponry, you can bet the transnational military-industrial complex had a large role to play in the production.

North Korea hacked Sony?  Gimme a fucking break!  That was a self-inflicted publicity stunt.  The only problem is the collusion of intelligence services which are always tasked with finding the next suitable enemy.  The CIA, MI6, NSA, and every other alphabet agency in the Anglo-American “five eyes” network have become nothing more than glorified traffic cops…fulfilling their ticket quotas.

Why will the new world order fail?  Because they do not employ the best artists.  Sure, there are forgery artists on staff of these intel agencies, but not the artists needed to fool the world.  There are no Charlie Chaplins, no Orson Welles, no Pablo Picassos, no Igor Stravinskys…  And so the global elite circuitously churn out these propaganda films which age as fast as Cheez Whiz or Silly String. They count on audiences being stupid…both uneducated and willfully stupid (in combination).

Lee Tamahori actually does a worse job directing than Michael Apted did in the last half of the previous Bond film, though sadly the mise-en-scène is almost indistinguishable.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system (yay! free speech), let’s talk about what is salvageable.  Zao.  Diamond acne.  That’s pretty good.

Torture in the opening credits.  Very innovative (and true to the spirit of the first Bond novel Casino Royale).  Bond’s dereliction of duty (if it can be called that) echoes the wonderful message of License To Kill (1989), yet what follows is mostly hackneyed storytelling.

Halle Berry’s emergence from the ocean like the reincarnation of Ursula Andress circa 1962 seems to bode well, but it is simply a rare moment of excellence in a sea of shite.

Further indoctrination follows in that Berry is supposedly an NSA agent.  In all my years reading about the NSA (from James Bamford to Wayne Madsen), never have I encountered even a hint of the kind of agent she is purported to be.  This leads me to believe that the whole purpose was to make No Such Agency seem cool and acceptable knowing that the PATRIOT Act was now letting them eavesdrop the shit out of your lives.  They knew such a steamroller approach would eventually result in public backlash.  And it did.  NSA agent…  Gimme a fucking break…

And then of course there’s the nice little mention of Sierra Leone.  We’d be revisiting that country as “liberators” from a biowarfare agent called ebola before too long.

Yes, I know, dear reader:  these sound like the thoughts of a raving lunatic.  I urge you to investigate…really investigate.  Investigate to the point you are scared…and then investigate some more.  Can you afford it?  We dispossessed of the earth have nothing to lose.

I could talk about Madonna’s bad acting.  Actually, I like Madonna.  It’s just horrible fucking directing.  To the director’s credit, the scene seems pressured from above…like a goddamned product placement.

Graves ice palace looks like a cross between the Sydney Opera House and a frozen McDonald’s.  What a pathetic piece of set design.

Conversely, kudos to the thinkers behind the hypersonic wedding ring.

But these fucking car chases…it’s like Top Gear.  What a load of uncinematic crap!

It’s a pity Rosamund Pike had such a bollocks role.

This is just atrocious filmmaking.

-PD

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The World is Not Enough [1999)

I was ready to proclaim this the fourth great Bond film…until Devil’s Breath.  Suddenly, the world turned on its head.  No, it wasn’t so much a clumsy bit of storytelling (though that would soon follow), but rather a defective disc.  Perhaps a defective computer.  Yes, my night turned into one big, giant, heaping ball (?) of excruciating film criticism.

Here’s what I found:  I am a sucker for a good story.  I must admit:  Michael Apted had me.  Guy’s got talent.  But the rigmarole entailed in finishing this viewing was epically taxing.

I downloaded at least five (5!) separate DVD player software packages.  I’m a cheapskate so, yes, they were all freebees.  I should start by saying that my go-to (Cyberlink PowerDVD) wouldn’t even read the disk.  That’s only about the third time such has ever happened, though one of the two others was recently.  Also, my Spotify account is on the fritz.

So I went through BS DVD Player (appropriately named), VLC Media Player (the best of the lot, but still…), Real Player (epically shite), GOM Media Player (complete waste), and UMPlayer.  This last one is worth noting because it was with this “tool” that I spent a good hour trying to get back to “Chapter” 14:  Devil’s Breath.  This particular player is so crap that I had to resort to watching the film at 32x normal speed.

It was during this chipmunk “exercise” that it finally hit me:  all James Bond films are the same.  [Yes, I am an idiot.]

And even though I knew Bond would get the girl (ok, maybe there’s the Lazenby exception), I was hooked like a fucking fish by Michael Apted.  In such a predicament, a further truth emerged:

this is the best propaganda money can buy.

So much noise about American Sniper…from people who have probably never seen Battleship Potemkin.  I’m sorry, dear critics, but you are disqualified.  I know it is snobbery, but you cannot judge a film’s place in history unless you have a more thorough grasp of the cinematic medium.  It’s not that hard.  Film is barely 100 years old.  If your frame of reference only stretches back 10 or 20 years, then I can hardly take you seriously.

And yet, I am the dupe.  I admit it.  I am just as susceptible to the grandeur of this propaganda as anyone.

Just what IS the message?

In most Bond films it is messy.  That’s what makes them watchable.  It is not a “hit-you-over-the-head” propaganda.  No.  It actually creeps up on you…like Fabian socialism.

Ah, now we are getting somewhere!

You see, every James Bond movie is a code.  I know that makes me sound like a Mel Gibson quack for saying so (and I am), but it’s true.  The World is Not Enough is no exception.

One thing is undeniable:  the premonitions of 9/11 are inescapable in this film.  But the critical question is:  where are these geopolitical signals coming from?

Azerbaijan.  Baku.  Caspian Sea.  A villain (Robert Carlyle) who’s the spitting image of Vladimir Putin.  Terrorism.  Post-Soviet states.  And to the film’s credit:  false flags.

Yes, Elektra blows up her own pipeline.  Remember The Pentagon!  A battle cry.  An employee emerges from the hole to the scent of cordite.  We know.  If you do not know, you should know:  battlefield damage assessment indicates missile.  One can feign innocence when one gratuitously attacks oneself.  No real damage.  Recently renovated.  Almost empty.  Cook the books.

Elektra even disfigures her own ear…to make it look like she was tortured.  I hear Richard Strauss.  Nazis.

But let us discuss why this is not a great film. It’s not Denise Richards’ fault that the dialogue sucks.  It’s not Pierce Brosnan.  He’s great!

No, things really start to go off-track when the film shifts to Kazakhstan.  Every cut, every edit, every segue is worse than the last.  The mise-en-scène becomes straight soap opera…and the dialog (whoa…the dialogue!).  There is a faux urban “hip” in the phraseology which speaks to just how dumb audiences had become by 1999 (or at least how dumb “Hollywood” presumed them to be).  It is both grating and ingratiating.

The beauty of early Bond films like Dr. No and From Russia With Love is that they are little more than B-movies.  There is as little pretense as there is budget. This was before the series had become completely hijacked as a vehicle for propaganda.  It’s just another case of Hollywood destroying what Hollywood subsumes.

From UA to MGM…more and more globalist…more and more “new world order.”  Yes, in case you were wondering:  that is in whose name the propaganda breathes…the devil’s breath.  This becomes a shabby mashup of Titanic and Leni Riefenstahl.

-PD

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Way of the Dragon [1972)

1770.  Beethoven.  Dragon.  If my math is correct.  I was born in the year of the dragon.  Hour of the dog.  For dragon, I will own eccentric.  For dog, sense of justice and lazy.  Bruce Lee was born in the year and hour of the dragon.

Strong.  Intestinal fortitude is usually used figuratively.  Early in this film we might be disoriented by the clumsy, blurred  mise-en-scène.  Indeed, this was Lee’s first and last completed directorial effort.  The beginning doesn’t bode well.  Just like his character, who accidentally orders five bowls of soup, Lee seems in over his head as an auteur.  As his character Tang Lung deals with a seeming case of the shits, the film moves (on the contrary) very slowly.  Not only do we wonder about the technical proficiency of the cinematographer, we experience a claustrophobic hyper-sensitivity to the passing of time.  Mercifully, this is offset by a cinematic tone which echoes Tati’s Playtime.

But the strength builds up.  The film, literally, comes into focus (albeit slowly).  Lee once again plays a similar character to those he delineated in The Big Boss and Fist of Fury.

You must put your hip into it, he says.  Yes.  This is the secret to power.  Leverage.  Chinese boxing.

We are made aware of Lee’s strength on several occasions when he flexes his taut physique.  Suffice it to say that there is nothing slight about the diminutive Lee.  One senses that every square inch of this man is power.  Strength.

Proud.  Nothing is like back home.  Hong Kong.  Rome doesn’t impress Lee.  On one occasion he seems to see things through the eyes of Respighi for a moment, but then makes a flippant comment about a grand fountain.  Tang Lung (Lee) would build over it.  Make money.

But this façade is at odds with the loyalty he shows to his newfound friends in Rome (themselves likewise expats from Hong Kong).

Direct.  Lee begins to direct.  There is a panache in all of his movements…like a lethal Chaplin.

Eccentric.  Can I buy a gun around here?  Yes?  Good.  I’ll whittle some bamboo darts instead.

He moves in squawking orbits.  Distractions.  Diversions.  Like Muhammad Ali with Tourette’s.

Show off.  More like a selective extrovert.  Beware of the quiet ones.  The humble ones.  When they reach their breaking points, God forbid they be the most genius asskickers on the planet.

Lee refrains until his adversaries ask for it.  Backed into a corner, he turns the tables…every time.

Arrogant.  Sometimes…  It takes a Chuck Norris to remind us that there are other masters in the world.  And if we beat them, we salute them.  But he who seeks not money shall have a superior core to the mercenary.  To protect is more powerful than to attack.

Violent.  Damn right!  You want violence?  You’re about to be dealt the quickest administrations of pain you’ve ever seen.  Calling Dr. Lee.  This is where shock and awe comes from.  And machinery/technology will never ascend to the glorious depths of human creativity.  Endurance is in the mind.

Brash.  Occasionally.  The big boss needs to learn.  The big boss hires his murders–his terrorism–his intimidation.  The big boss runs and hides when the fast bullets fly.  But once in awhile the masters of war find themselves in very uncomfortable circumstances.  The teacher does not love war.  The teacher masters war.  The teacher masters the passions of revenge.  Bruce Lee never distributes a disproportionate riposte.

Controlling.  Control.  First, control yourself.  Seek to master yourself.  Listen to your body.  Control what you can control…knowing that the world is chaos…an indeterminate harmony.  Then you will be ready to think on your feet.  You will be ready to invent and improvise like Thelonious Monk.

This is the way of the dragon.

-PD

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Made in U.S.A. [1966)

Primary colors.  Walt Disney with blood.  Bogart as a woman.  Bing!  Machine gun………———–.-.-.-.-.-.-.–.–.  No no no.

It’s like it never existed.  Why steal the plot from a pulp novel?  There is no plot.  Mise-en-scène translated as charade.  Bing!  Rat-a-tat-tata-a-a–a-a-a–a-a-a-!

We remember Robert Strange McNamara.  No no no.

Everything dies…baby that’s a fact.

No, it doesn’t matter the pop art.  It doesn’t matter the palette.

She wants to write a book about Oswald…and the 17 murdered after J.F.K.’s assassination.  The witnesses.  As reported in P—- ——.  Honk honk!  Zoooooom!  Swoosh!!!

Why pump the little guy full of lead when you can use a shoe?  Stiletto.  ^^^

The author, who is not the author (who is not the author [who is not the author]), is killed.

Stop making sense.

Anna Karina’s last movie with Godard.  They both live.  That’s it.  And so long to Marianne…captured for a moment in time.

She doesn’t fit the color scheme.  She is all pastel rose.  Ochre.  Light, watery hues.  She is a reflection.  She doesn’t fit.  Please:  take inventory of my bar.  One pop singer?  The song is singing the singer.

No.  It is much more likely that it never happened.  Remember:  use Ockham’s Razors for that manly-close shave!

Yes.  You’re trying to find out what I know without telling me what you know, eh?  Whaddaya know?  Dontcha know?

No, it was shown.  It is contradictory in such a short expanse.

All my lovers, backstage, hungry for men…about Sally and Annette.  The girls were willing.  A called honey.  B mercenaries.  So summer…virgin wife next door.  Sinner me, passion plaything.  Brother and sister (off limits).  Young, innocent campus doll killing time.  Strange McNamara.  361.  Strange killy hunter affair.  Lovers prowl sin.  Getaway face score the mourner outfit.  Pity the fugitive pigeon afterwards.  AH!!!

Here we are:  The Jugger!

No, nothing to do with that.

You want a real film review???

Better to talk of Florestan und Eusebius.  Fidelio.

OK.  We shall try again.

Take 2!!!  Quiet on the laptop!!!  (Quiet!)  Quiet please!! [Quiet everyone!]

Roll thoughts…and:  criticize!

Ok, yes…well…this is worse, but even better.  It’s not LOL starring Miley Cyrus.  Kevin Costner is not in the film.  It’s not American Pie:  Band Camp.  It’s not Wild Wild West with Will Smith.

There’s only two Dalmatians because the other 99 weren’t available. The Backstreet Boys did not make a cameo.

Yes, but there is an American flag burning.  Not in the film, you understand.

Ummm…  That guy from Ray…Jamie Foxx.  He is also not in this.  Lara Croft:  Tomb Raider?  I don’t know.

Yes, ok.  We like Clint Eastwood.  John Waters for New Balance.

Oh!  OK, yes:  the staged photo of the situation room…where they are “watching” “Osama bin Laden” get killed…but they’re actually not watching anything at all.  Right.  Getting warmer.  LOL.

Hot Tub…Time Machine…2?

Chuck Norris Planet of the Apes Wizard of Oz.  Patrick Swayze and Obama.  eBay.  G.I. Joe and Yoda.  Getting warmer.  Warmer.  Burning.

Liz Taylor G.I. Blues Ron Howard with wrinkles.  Colder.  South Pole.

Chaplin porn Kodak.  What would Nixon do?  Warmer.  The Hobbit Bud Light Black Dynamite Smurfs miniskirts rock and roll?

That may be as close as you ever get.  The static cling of foreign intrigue.  View Master red MGM lion Technicolor beef sirloin top butt.

-PD

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Daydream Nation [2010)

This film had a lot to live up to by bearing the same name as Sonic Youth’s best album.  I was afraid I would either hate it or love it.  Turns out, my experience with it was much more on the positive end of the spectrum.  The viewer “in on” the title might be, like I was, reassured a bit early upon learning that one character is named Thurston (in honor of Thurston Moore, guitarist/vocalist with previously mentioned band).  This film is a nice try…and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

Around the time of Godard’s film Le Gai savoir (1969), its auteur started to ideate the concept of “essay” in a particularly French way by having his characters go back to a sort of year zero (which, ironically, never occurred in Western calendar chronology).  The etymology of essay (from French essayer) can be described as “to try” or “to attempt.”  It was really even earlier that Godard started to feel this need to “start from the beginning” in order to express ANYTHING true AT ALL…around the time of 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (1967).

In Daydream Nation we know ostensibly little about Caroline Wexler (Kat Dennings) until she makes explicit late in the movie to let us in on her true personality.  But that’s not really accurate.  The film betrays the script.  It is little wonder then that Godard at age 83 himself no longer uses a script (i.e. Adieu au langage).  “The script can only be written after the film is finished,” he said recently in an interview.  And he even means after editing!

But let’s be clear:  the script under consideration is excellent.  References to Atom Egoyan and the Algonquin Round Table don’t hurt!  Yet, these deft drops of name are merely the spice to what is genuinely a well-written piece of drama.

And let’s be even more clear:  director Michael Goldbach did an excellent, excellent job.  I just feel that his best filmmaking might be ahead of him.  That is not at all a bad thing.  Were there no indications of greatness herein, there would be little upon which to base a future hope.

The Lolita element to this film is not entirely believable…at least not at first.  Something about the mise-en-scène (young adult comedy/drama genre conventions) prevents us from believing that Kat Dennings is really that perversely Machiavellian.  The Monica Lewinsky element, while funny, is frankly ludicrous.  Yet, here the script betrays itself.  We know much more about Caroline Wexler early on than she seems to think we know.  This brings into question the form (literary/dramatic) of the work as well as the tired narrator cliché which has become ubiquitous in its present from since American Beauty.  This enters into the arena of “nice try”…because I am thoroughly convinced that Michael Goldberg can do better.

Josh Lucas does a nice job of going from eliciting our sympathy to creeping us the fuck out.  It is in the latter that director Goldberg excels at casting aspersion on this character’s innocence in the serial killings which are plaguing our film’s small town.  There is an elegance in the thrilling suspense which nicely pays back in homage any debt it might owe to Hitchcock.

Ted Whittall plays Caroline’s icy father.  Poor Thurston, the slacker suitor, can’t even get a foot in the door (literally).  It takes the wonderful Andie MacDowell as Thurston’s mother to break down Mr. Wexler’s curt, cynical exterior.

Reece Thompson really blooms into a strong presence over the course of the movie.  Even as an actor, he seems hopeless early on, but his contribution to this film should not at all be overlooked.

The true star, however, is Kat Dennings.  She deserved to be in a film where she gets to romp around to Sonic Youth.  Her acting is up to the task of sharing an editing table with Lou Reed’s “Lady Day” from his best album Berlin (1973).  An ambulance can only go so fast, but the text message generation (SMS=save my soul, says JLG) can put its highest hopes in this young actress from Bryn Mawr, PA because she is already as timeless as Neil Young’s “Expecting To Fly.”  Writers, director, and actress prove themselves worthy of that Buffalo Springfield song which all but wraps up this film as it ascends to a final high.  After all this doom and gloom, I’m ready to see Kat on the beach.  She deserves it.

-PD

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