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Les amants du Pont-Neuf (1991)
fairytale
After Leos Carax's 1986 film Mauvais Sang (come on Miramax release it!) Juliette Binoche begged her then lover and director to never film her as a Madonna again, and so the seeds for Les Amants du Pont Neuf were sown. Mauvais Sang features a luminous and fetishist Juliette Binoche as a mask like presence, with no physicality. This was carried thorough to the wonderful The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but Carax exploded the image in his film. The story is simple, two down and outs meet fall in love, yet despite the harsh realities of life, and love, on the streets they live out an exciting and romantic (in all the senses of the word) existence. This movie is relevant for its amazing visual and tour de force performances. Binoche is simply standout, she seems to live the role, something she later admitted deeply disturbed her. The film is fabulously directed from the grainy opening sequence to the amazing fireworks scene and the exhilarating conclusion. The film is littered with cinematic allusions from Truffaut Les Quatre cents Coups, to L'Atlante. In terms of context the film is amazing because it juxtaposes harsh realities, the opening sequence and fairytale like fantasy. We are led to question what is actually real, from Binoche apparently committing murder to the street littered with gigantic litter. In the end Les Amants du Pont Neuf is a film which needs multiple viewing and some explaining or knowledge of French New Wave cinema to be wholly comprehended, yet it is certainly accessible for the majority of casual cinema goers! The film, as I always predicted, is only now beginning to get the recognition it truly deserves. Binoche has avoided this type of movie since, although Michael Hanekes wonderful Code Unknown, though on a smaller and more subjued canvas, has many similarities. Roll on the US release of that one too. And Miramax, its about time you began releasing this type of movie on DVD, you're beginning to lag behind the other companies such as Fox Lorber and Criterion!
A torinói ló (2011)
Love
Ornamented with elements of Bresson's Balthazaar, Tarkovsky's Nostalghia and The Sacrifice, Bergman's The Seventh Seal, and Beckett's Waiting for Godot, this almost unbearably beautiful film stands as Tarr's simplest and most enigmatic. Here, the wind is music and Tarr's familiar film score from Mihály Víg becomes a kind of sweet pain killer. Deadly serious, but not without great suspense, The Turin Horse opens a window to the decay of a world that knew better days. The mother is gone, the other horse has died (or maybe was stolen), the father's right arm that built this magnificent stone barn and house has expired, the bird cage is empty. And it is sad, this last film from Bela Tarr. It's like death: mine, yours, the world's, the cinema's. Without light, how can those images be projected? But, what are the daughter and father watching but a movie? Theirs is a kind of patience, but like the great Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa said, it is perhaps a patience without wisdom, without clarity in which, after time, people crack. Perhaps the characters are caught in a net of forbearance. Does the camera eye free us? Are we then able to transform forbearance into intelligent patience? Should we watch ourselves watching movies? And at the end, is the light of our minds enough? Thank you, Bela Tarr, for sharing your vision of life with us.
The Rock-afire Explosion (2008)
it's a pretty marvelous celebration of passion and fun
Pizza for me has always been synonymous with fun. Nowadays, it's pizza and beer. Thenadays, it was pizza and weird fu%k*n' animatronic creatures singing songs, making jokes and scaring the crap out of all the wimpy kids. And I know I'm not alone on this. For those of us fortunate enough to be children in the 80s, we had Showbiz Pizza restaurants spread throughout the country, stocked with all of the latest videogames and an animatronic band called The Rock-afire Explosion. The 80s were a long time ago godam%it but filmmaker Brett Whitcomb has reached back in time and brought forward a chunk of our past that has helped reignite interest in this band that would play the perfect soundtrack for pizza munching. A trailer for the documentary "The Rock-afire Explosion" hit YouTube a little while back and has had people talking all over the Web. And just recently the film has hit the festival circuit. So does it live up to its hype? If you remember and love The Rock-afire Explosion from your youth, then, yes.
This documentary cuts back and forth between two stories, or rather, it cuts back and forth between two periods of time in the life of The Rock-afire Explosion. Yes, there is a ton of vintage footage for nostalgia freaks to drool over, accompanied by interview footage of Rock-afire creator Aaron Fechter who lays down the history of this animatronic band. But then we also see where Rock-afire is at today and it's not the cheeriest of pictures as we see that Fechter was driven out of business and his creation made nearly extinct, however, the light at the end of the tunnel is a group of lifelong fans who still devote themselves to the Rock-afire Explosion, including one such fan Chris Thrash who saved up a load of cash to purchase his own complete Rock-afire Explosion show which he operates at this home, often for lucky families who bring their children to bask in the wonder. And watching these kids freak out, it's all too apparent that The Rock-afire still has that magic. Thrash is also the one that videotaped his band's performances playing to more modern music and posted his clips to YouTube. It's these clips that really rekindled interest in The Rock-afire.
We learn a great deal about our pizza parlor heroes, as well as the people that created them and the people that are doing their best to keep them alive. All in all, it's a pretty marvelous celebration of passion and fun, especially if you love docs about obsessive fans. Obsessive people have been the cornerstone of some great okay, highly amusing documentary film-making. This film adds to that heap of fun.
by Eric Campos of Film Threat