Six films I could actually stand in 2006
Dec. 30th, 2006 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusBack in 1993 I was asked by Britain's leading cineaste magazine, Sight and Sound, to contribute to a series called Obsessions. You were supposed to say what films obsessed you, but I decided to go against the flow. "I've looked back over my life," I wrote, "and I can't say I've been obsessed by any film. I'm not sure I even like cinema very much". Why? "I have to keep vigilant against seduction by my political enemies. I also have very little fat on my bottom and find long sittings in cinemas an ordeal. I have a short attention span and hate naturalistic narrative."
Scraping around in a year of Click Opera to give you, today, a list of my favourite films of the year, I notice that things haven't changed that much. I still, basically, don't get on with cinema as an artform. It's, by and large, too long, too epic, too boring, too normative, too violent and emotionally manipulative, too expensive to make and distribute, too dependent on teamwork, too loud, with too much hype and stars who are just too incredibly dull. (Yes, Klaus Kinski is dead.)
But, somehow, I have been able to scrape together six significant cinematographic experiences this year. These are the six films I could actually stand -- and more than happily sit through -- in 2006.
I blogged about Funky Forest: First Contact, Katsuhito Ishii's follow-up to the charming Taste of Tea, on Click Opera before I'd seen it. Well, last night our friends Miya and Clemens sat us down on their sofa and, after feeding us some great food, showed us their Funky Forest DVD.
I can honestly say it's the best thing I've seen in years. I love the way it dispenses with any pretense at consistent, continuous narrative, instead adopting the remix or dub plate as its creative principle. (One scene even shows a DJ trying to make the perfect transition between two records; huge speakers plonked down on a beach feature in another.) Many of the characters from Ishii's previous films appear, but basically this is a string of brilliant, frequently hilarious cameos, each episode topped-and-tailed with graphics. It's a bit like watching an entire series of Monty Python shows, or a vastly more imaginative version of Japanese late-night comedy TV. (It even adopts the graphics-rich style of Japanese TV: there are inset reaction shots, video game graphics, intertitles, a frequent logo overlay saying "Funky Forest", and even an intermission half way through with a counting-down clock).
There are cinematic precursors for the film's relish for utter directorial freedom and narrative anarchism, though: Bunuel's "The Phantom of Liberty" springs to mind, or Godard's brilliantly arbitrary 1960s editing style, or Qui Est Vous Polly Magoo? for the way people break into dance at the slightest provocation, and the sheer visual flamboyance. Other parallels might be the sheer formal exuberance of the 18th century novel; here be animation, prosthetics, sci-fi, conceptual art (the scene where three kids "play" a forest like a musical instrument, or the Matthew Barney-like biological inventions), beautiful women, and some of the most inventive metaphorical euphemisms for sex you'll ever see.
Funky Forest is a film I've waited all my life to see -- a film that restores my faith not just in cinema, but in narrative itself. I can't wait to get cracking on my "Lives of the Composers" book now (my major project for 2007). Ishii has shown me that, with charm, you can do absolutely anything with a story. Including throwing it away and just busking. His confidence is inspiring and infectious. Who knows where he'll go from here, but, for me, for now, he's the world's best director.
My other films of the year are Drawing Restraint 9, The Brothers Quay's The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (much better than their previous live action feature, intensely atmospheric), Pilgrimage from Scattered Points, Luke Fowler's film on Cornelius Cardew, the Densha Otoko film (a great tear-jerker, fitting a classic boy-meets-girl story into the new context of the internet, with the web as the point where the individual meets the collective, the particular the universal. Here too, onscreen graphics were well used; the screen split into a mosaic of computer users, and at the end the neons of Shinjuku became a sort of text messaging system, one enormous collective "banzai" for an individual's success.)
My Newcomer of the Year award goes to Joji Koyama, whose 18 minute film (starring Hisae) From Nose to Mouth aired on Channel 4 on December 15th (admittedly at 3.40am). Joji's film has some of the same weird ostranenie as Funky Forest going on. There are odd computer games, bizarre machine translated emails, lots of Max/MSP sound dust, Hisae playing the recorder with her nose, learning competitive ice skating, and spilling milk from her mouth while cackling inexplicably. Again, oddly enough, Matthew Barney seems to have been a harbinger of a certain kind of contemporary cinema. The fresh ideas currently informing cinema came, not from outer space, but from the white cube. No, scratch that, they came from anywhere; television, video games, art, comedy... Some people were open enough to see it all, synthesize it, and put it all in a film. I think they just saved the medium.
Scraping around in a year of Click Opera to give you, today, a list of my favourite films of the year, I notice that things haven't changed that much. I still, basically, don't get on with cinema as an artform. It's, by and large, too long, too epic, too boring, too normative, too violent and emotionally manipulative, too expensive to make and distribute, too dependent on teamwork, too loud, with too much hype and stars who are just too incredibly dull. (Yes, Klaus Kinski is dead.)
But, somehow, I have been able to scrape together six significant cinematographic experiences this year. These are the six films I could actually stand -- and more than happily sit through -- in 2006.
I blogged about Funky Forest: First Contact, Katsuhito Ishii's follow-up to the charming Taste of Tea, on Click Opera before I'd seen it. Well, last night our friends Miya and Clemens sat us down on their sofa and, after feeding us some great food, showed us their Funky Forest DVD.I can honestly say it's the best thing I've seen in years. I love the way it dispenses with any pretense at consistent, continuous narrative, instead adopting the remix or dub plate as its creative principle. (One scene even shows a DJ trying to make the perfect transition between two records; huge speakers plonked down on a beach feature in another.) Many of the characters from Ishii's previous films appear, but basically this is a string of brilliant, frequently hilarious cameos, each episode topped-and-tailed with graphics. It's a bit like watching an entire series of Monty Python shows, or a vastly more imaginative version of Japanese late-night comedy TV. (It even adopts the graphics-rich style of Japanese TV: there are inset reaction shots, video game graphics, intertitles, a frequent logo overlay saying "Funky Forest", and even an intermission half way through with a counting-down clock).
There are cinematic precursors for the film's relish for utter directorial freedom and narrative anarchism, though: Bunuel's "The Phantom of Liberty" springs to mind, or Godard's brilliantly arbitrary 1960s editing style, or Qui Est Vous Polly Magoo? for the way people break into dance at the slightest provocation, and the sheer visual flamboyance. Other parallels might be the sheer formal exuberance of the 18th century novel; here be animation, prosthetics, sci-fi, conceptual art (the scene where three kids "play" a forest like a musical instrument, or the Matthew Barney-like biological inventions), beautiful women, and some of the most inventive metaphorical euphemisms for sex you'll ever see.
Funky Forest is a film I've waited all my life to see -- a film that restores my faith not just in cinema, but in narrative itself. I can't wait to get cracking on my "Lives of the Composers" book now (my major project for 2007). Ishii has shown me that, with charm, you can do absolutely anything with a story. Including throwing it away and just busking. His confidence is inspiring and infectious. Who knows where he'll go from here, but, for me, for now, he's the world's best director.
My other films of the year are Drawing Restraint 9, The Brothers Quay's The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (much better than their previous live action feature, intensely atmospheric), Pilgrimage from Scattered Points, Luke Fowler's film on Cornelius Cardew, the Densha Otoko film (a great tear-jerker, fitting a classic boy-meets-girl story into the new context of the internet, with the web as the point where the individual meets the collective, the particular the universal. Here too, onscreen graphics were well used; the screen split into a mosaic of computer users, and at the end the neons of Shinjuku became a sort of text messaging system, one enormous collective "banzai" for an individual's success.)
My Newcomer of the Year award goes to Joji Koyama, whose 18 minute film (starring Hisae) From Nose to Mouth aired on Channel 4 on December 15th (admittedly at 3.40am). Joji's film has some of the same weird ostranenie as Funky Forest going on. There are odd computer games, bizarre machine translated emails, lots of Max/MSP sound dust, Hisae playing the recorder with her nose, learning competitive ice skating, and spilling milk from her mouth while cackling inexplicably. Again, oddly enough, Matthew Barney seems to have been a harbinger of a certain kind of contemporary cinema. The fresh ideas currently informing cinema came, not from outer space, but from the white cube. No, scratch that, they came from anywhere; television, video games, art, comedy... Some people were open enough to see it all, synthesize it, and put it all in a film. I think they just saved the medium.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 02:14 pm (UTC)hisae and silvia are fantastic on the ice
thanks nick for your cinema list
what's your take on theatre? enough for a top 5?
,,ant
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 02:21 pm (UTC)best short film of the year that hasn't begun yet
Date: 2006-12-30 02:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 03:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 04:09 pm (UTC)I'd love to see From Nose to Mouth.
Behind the Scenes
Date: 2006-12-30 04:59 pm (UTC)Here's a YouTube insight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d1zc2uBNGA
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 05:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 05:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 05:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 05:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 05:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 05:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 06:01 pm (UTC)I wouldn't see the new Bond movie if you paid me, because I know I would turn into a fuming tower of black bile within minutes, and want to join some kind of guerilla movement dedicated to the overthrow of the entire film industry and anyone who speaks English.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 06:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 06:21 pm (UTC)His films seemed messy and arbitrary mainly because he wasn't following the rules of cinema. Rules that hadn't changed much since D.W. Griffith.
And Brecht was a huge influence. Yes. Characters addressing the camera/audience etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 06:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 07:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 07:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 07:29 pm (UTC)Gene Siskel dubbed it "that herky jerky editing style".
Siskel at the time though was refering to Richard Lester's A Hard Days Night" one of the earliest imitators of The New Wave...umm...style.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 07:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 08:11 pm (UTC)"To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body. Both go together, they can't be separated."
JLG
I concede.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 09:21 pm (UTC)I suppose I'm particularly intrigued as to what you think of the films of Kurosawa, as many of his films -The Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Sanjuro particularly come to mind- were influenced by Western and specifically American cinema.
Regards
Thomas Scott.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 09:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 10:10 pm (UTC)I quite like Kurosawa's early (French and Russian literature-inspired) films, and his very late ones, like the sentimental "Dreams". Not so keen on all the samurai blood in between.
I'm a big late Ozu fan, also early Oshima.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 10:15 pm (UTC)mixu62
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 10:18 pm (UTC)As a cosmopoitan sort of guy, aren't you worried that most of the folk commenting on here are immature American or (at best) British college kids?
mixu62 (media studies, virgin)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 10:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 10:59 pm (UTC)I think there is much more to his samurai films than blood and swordplay and his mid period also includes some wonderful non-samurai films such as 'High And Low', 'The Bad Sleep Well' and 'I Live In Fear'.
Whilst living in Toronto last year I got a chance to see a season of the films of Mikio Naruse's films many of which I enjoyed, perhaps you have seen some yourself...
Thomas.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 11:05 pm (UTC)Thomas .S.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 11:25 pm (UTC)Here's an Angstreich interview I found
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0423/p13s01-almo.html
FrF
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-30 11:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 12:07 am (UTC)mixu62
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 12:09 am (UTC)mixu62
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 12:10 am (UTC)mixu62
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 02:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 03:07 am (UTC)"It's often struck me that with its photographic realism, its lingering attention to surface, its fetishistic concern for the details of clothes and flesh, cinema's true vocation has always been pornography."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 03:15 am (UTC)This explains the eating frenzy in cinemas.
I LOVE YOU
Date: 2006-12-31 03:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 04:38 am (UTC)akira kurosawa only became famous and kind of popular in japan in the last ten years.
the star wars plot is basically based on kurosawa's hidden fortress.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 10:44 am (UTC)Shame about the video
Date: 2006-12-31 12:06 pm (UTC)However, there's one medium that seems to trump all the rest in terms of sheer worthlessness, and that's the music video. A good music video is so rare that, when it does happen, it's almost as if there are no terms of reference in which to comprehend or evaluate it. Anyway, I was very taken with this music video recently:
sex films
Date: 2006-12-31 03:00 pm (UTC)that is how i read the headline. - so the article comes as a little disappointing - the discussion much less.
so my wish for 2007:
your list of six sex films.
have a great 2007.
cheers from madrid
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 04:21 pm (UTC)(I kept intrigued about what you said in your conference about Mizayake's picture)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-31 05:49 pm (UTC)Re: Shame about the video
Date: 2006-12-31 07:43 pm (UTC)Re: Shame about the video
Date: 2006-12-31 08:54 pm (UTC)Well that one's saved to favourites.
Happy New Year.
Re: Shame about the video
Date: 2006-12-31 09:14 pm (UTC)A lovely new year to you and everyone else (unless someone objects to the concept of "years," that is).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-01 10:30 am (UTC)Happy New Years