August 31, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Dramas, Foreign
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The Edge of Heaven (Auf der Anderen Seite)
2007 (Germany / Turkey / Italy)
Director: Fatih Akin
Viewed: August 30, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print
With The Edge of Heaven, Turkish-German director Fatih Akin offers a mournful, penetrating exhale of affecting cinema, a Shakespearean tragedy for a modern, multi-cultural Europe. Two violent deaths haunt this film, looming calamities that Akin bluntly telegraphs with title cards. (There Will Be Blood, indeed.) Catastrophe awaits us, not to mention the poor souls that populate Akin’s Bremen and Istanbul, gritty landscapes of crumbling buildings and fragile humanity. In more ways than the survivors will comprehend, these deaths will emerge as transforming phenomena, their bright and black ripples reaching far-flung shores and lives. With six gently compelling characters and an exultant soundtrack, Akin has crafted a meditation on human connection more profound and emotionally persuasive than any recent convoluted ensemble behemoth. Despite its grim–at times bitterly bemused–sensibility, The Edge of Heaven is far from a morbid work. This is awestruck human spectacle at its most unexpected and redemptive, and one of the best films of 2008.
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August 25, 2008
Andrew
3-Minute Intros, Comedies
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Screened: August 22, 2008
Format: Laserdisc (Special Edition)
Selected By: Stephanie
It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely director of the archetype madcap ensemble comedy than Stanley Kramer. Coming out of Hell’s Kitchen with family roots deep in the film industry trenches, Kramer became a respected and award-showered producer capable of working within the studio system and on his own. Beginning in 1955, he moved on to directing his own features. He made a spate of acclaimed social issue dramas that reflected his own political sensibilities, including The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind, and Judgment at Nuremberg. Then, in 1963 Kramer set out to create a sprawling, zany comedy epic, the 70 mm, three-hour behemoth It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Fulfilling Hollywood’s contemporary taste for spectacle (the better to lure away television viewers), Mad World was assembled with a More Is More philosophy. This is evident in its enormous cast, its stunts, its plot, and its wild comedy blend of slapstick, puns, gentle satire, and outrageous sight gags. The film’s story is relatively simple—a dying confession leads to a greed-fueled race for buried treasure—but Mad World is really about grandiose wackiness, a vehicle to cram every recognizable 1960s comedic celebrity into the frame. Who cares that some of the cameos amount to Where’s Waldo reaction shots? The fact that the whole ridiculous enterprise still manages to be infectiously funny testifies to Kramer’s previously concealed talent for the genre.
Mad World’s marathon running time is a tale unto itself. The fabled 210-minute Cinerama premiere, complete with overture, intermission, and exit music and fictional police radio chatter to be piped into the theater restrooms, has unfortunately been lost. The film was such a hit that United Artists sliced it for the roadshow release to increase the number of times it could be screened in a day, then sliced it again for the general release, all without Kramer’s involvement. Decades later, the director was able to assist with the reconstruction of a 182-minute version for the Special Edition Laserdisc. Although some of the restored scenes are of poor quality, this remains the most complete version of the film ever produced, and is regarded as a cinematic treasure among film fans.
August 22, 2008
Andrew
Essays
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This post is a part of the Movies About Movies Blog-a-Thon, hosted by goatdogblog.
[Note: This essay contains spoilers. It assumes a basic familiarity with interpretive approaches to Mulholland Drive, particularly the “Classical” reading. See the Lost on Mulholland Drive clearinghouse and the vital Salon piece, “Everything You Were Afraid to Ask About Mulholland Drive”.]
Although Inland Empire comprises the most direct examination of movie-making (and -watching) in David Lynch’s filmography, Mulholland Drive has always struck me as offering a slier, more cutting indictment of Hollywood and the mythology that clings to it. One of the most intriguing demonstrations of this impulse is MD’s depiction–via an actress’ guilty fever dreams–of the studio film-making apparatus as a rotten entity riddled with conspiratorial forces. Within Diane Selwyn’s schizophrenic fantasy, strange men move to quash the ambitions of promising actors and rebellious directors, their motives hazy but always sinister. Wracked with despair over her own professional and personal failings, Diane gives a dread life to our collective paranoia about the film industry. The shadow Hollywood she summons is by all appearances occupied not with high art or even vulgar entertainment, but with control over messages, money, and especially lives.

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