Benny's Video

Our next screening will Michael Haneke's Benny's Video.
More information here.

Fitzcarraldo

To celebrate our 30th Anniversary screening of Fitzcarraldo we have not one but two special pieces on Herzog's masterpiece. 

First up is an essay by Fred Aspbury who is fast becoming a regular Kino Klubb feature bringing the hi-brow to our unintellectual blog!

Herzog and the Fictional Documentary

By Fred Aspbury

This week Kino Klubb is showing Werner Herzog’s masterpiece Fitzcarraldo. And how lucky we are for it. It’s hard to know where to begin talking about how great this film is in its every aspect. Yet again Klaus Kinski is mesmerising in the title role and shows his great diversity in characterisations. This enterprising and ambitious dreamer is so far removed from the psychopathic megalomaniac of Aguirre, The Wrath of God; and yet more so from the mentally fragile soldier in Woyzeck. Yet themes unite these performances as they do these films. Regarding Kinski himself, and perhaps due to his own dubious mental health, all the characters written for him by Herzog tend to be on the cusp of madness. In the case of Fitzcarraldo, it is a more innocent insanity than the others – no one is murdered at least – but mad he is still (NB. This is not a treatise on madness, nor is it even a piece about the characters in this film and so there need not be a lengthy treatment of the definition or even reality of madness so calm yourselves Foulcauldians).

            The mental health of Kinski and his characters is not the issue I wish to discuss however. I wish to look at a different theme that permeates this films, and the majority of Herzog’s other works, both drama and documentary. Indeed, this is the rub: the relationship between these two kinds of film making that characterise the Herzog corpus. It is undeniable that in his later career, Herzog has cemented his name as an exceptional and interesting documentary film-maker. Films like Encounters at the Ends of the World; Grizzly Man; and Cave of Forgotten Dreams are a heady mix of authoritative if eccentric talking heads, beautifully prepared and filmed tracking shots and emotional comment from the director himself. They transcend the usually cold objectivity of the classic documentary – so deceptive in their attempt at offering their content free of interpretation – and give us just that, an interpretation as if the ‘real’ events are stories told by the German bard himself. Herzog is reminding us that the world is populated by people, and that events are experienced by those people and formed into a narrative just as fictional as any folk tale, and yet all the more real because of it.

            If the real events that feature in his documentaries are given a human face, then we can also say that the fictional stories of his earlier films are given a documentary feel. Indeed, it is hard at times to differentiate the two. Conscious of the problems of the clichéd categorisation of film-makers, we can say sous rature that Herzog is a minimalist. Music and even dialogue are sparse in his films. Music is often only present from sources within the scene itself, such as a radio in Stroszeck or the Gramophone in Fitzcarraldo. This suggests to us a minimum of post-production manipulation and thus offers us a hint of passivity and objectivity. Passivity is a key phrase here and it needs further comment. Many film-makers attempt to immerse us in the action and make us forget that we are watching a two-dimensional image. To achieve this a film-maker may use first-person camera shots (such as in The Blair Witch Project, discussed last month), or they may constantly shift the camera positions, an effect that makes us feel as if we are there, looking around, and serves to immerse us in the subjective confusion of a scene. The camera usually focuses on the important people, objects and events in a scene, ensuring that we are involved in every development considered central to the plot by the director. The end result is that the audience feels itself to be an active participant, despite the fact that it itself has made no decision on perspective or import.

            Herzog, as one sees in most if not all of his films, is a great fan of the wide, deep focus and often panoramic shot. The camera rarely moves other than perhaps to zoom in on a face here, or a tree there (often objects and people outside of the plot itself). These scenes are often silent save for the natural background sounds of a location. One is thus conscious of the fixed point of the camera, indeed of its very existence in that its presence is hardly hidden; as if it is referenced constantly and directly by some BBC camera crew like in an Attenborough documentary. Indeed, only the lead cast seem to attempt to ignore its presence. A great fan of using almost unbriefed extras Herzog seems to relish the fact that these Native Americans (in Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo) often look straight at the camera – taking me right back to the Nouvelle Vague films of the 1960s. Often these background characters have some front of camera dialogue. The scene which sticks out primarily is one in Aguirre in which a Peruvian slave is discussing his former status as a prince. He occasionally looks straight at the camera and also seems to speak directly to who I imagine to be Herzog, standing behind it. The bits seem to replace the talking heads of documentaries and, indeed, all we are missing is a name tag to shoot across the bottom of the screen.

            Space is short and I have no more in which to continue a comparison between Herzog’s documentaries and his dramas. Although I do have enough to conclude that they are practically the same. The dramas are filmed like documentaries and the latter like the former. Any story that has an emotional affect on us is surely as real as a historical event distant from our consciousness, and any historical event that is recorded is done so by a person with stories in mind. This is an introduction to Herzog’s corpus and I implore all of you new to his work to seek out more and enjoy as I do the message that facts are nothing more than stories and it is the people who count. I recommend that after this film you watch Stroszeck, which, with some talking head sociologist thrown in, could be an urban version of Tribe about the abandonment of the vulnerable and the inaccessibility of the American Dream. All Herzog’s films are consciously pieces of art and art can be both enjoyable and true, but rarely accurate in any representative sense and, as I concluded last time, I personally glory in the knowledge that what is shown is not ‘real’. Take a trip to a pub called the Grosvenor on Mansfield road. The TVs in there are gilt-framed like paintings. Ignore the pointless sport on the canvas but have a good old think about how perceptive such a move is, whether the publicans know it or not...

Next up our very own Richard May who designed the wonderful Kino Klubb logo. Richard was commissioned to design the sleeve for the Criterion release of Burden Of Dreams. 

We asked for an insight into the creative process, it seems that the cover was just as troubled as Fitzcarraldo's production!

Producing an ostensibly straight-forward wrap-around for the Criterion DVD release of Les Blank's Burden of Dreams proved to be the design equivalent of hauling a 320-ton steamship over a small mountain.

The best part of four weeks, moonlit hours inclusive, was spent producing versions, versions of versions, and versions of versions of versions for seemingly never-ending client review at the behest of a barely communicative art director who didn't so much send emails as grunt them.

All in addition to the original submission; now sadly lost, most likely disposed of in a fit of pique, but similar in style and execution to this.

It was, emphatically, one of those "This is a completely open brief" commissions that with hindsight is anything but; common sense and acquired wisdom dragged out back and chloroformed by the allure of future portfolio prestige.

What am I moaning about? If you do this thing full time it's par for the course. It certainly wasn't the first time but it was definitely one of the last. An underdeveloped ant couldn't have crawled through the narrow gap between the temptation to bin the high-res artwork at the very last minute (the deadline had been extended more than a few times) and the eventual common-sense decision to submit it. I got off my high horse because I needed the cheque.

The memory is a significant one for me because not long after I decided to call it a day, mentally and creatively burnt out from endless all-nighters; the Criterion gig was simply the proverbial final nail, although somehow quite apt. I despise my Burden of Dreams cover with a passion. It's disjointed, stiff, soulless, but what irks me most is that it could have been churned out by any number of cookie-cutter 'mixed media' illustrators of the day. I don't care how big headed this sounds, if the original brief had been "Please do something utterly shit and quite obviously creatively compromised" I could've whipped it up in a few hours and saved myself the hassle.

http://www.richiemay.com/

http://www.flickr.com/people/richardmayarchive/    

Drunk Critic- Guilty Pleasures 2

Batman And Robin (1997)

I write drunk notes on my phone all the time.
I have just come across 2 notes, 1 that is good and I will make into a future post called Bad Science the other is a drunk review of Batman And Robin which I vaguely remember watching a few months ago.
I can remember it hurt to watch but I also enjoyed it...Sadly I also remember going to see this film twice at the cinema.
I also went to see Event Horizon Twice around the same time!
Anyway there is no point me writing a proper review as this short incoherent mess pretty much sums it up.

Also I haven't changed any of this (apart from the spelling) and it contains a very sad drunken truth. See if you can spot it.

Dean Martin Is Batman
Deranged Logic
Drunk
Every Line is a pun
Comic Book
Colour
Insane
Camp
Fruity
90's Mess
If a 4 year old drew a picture of Batman
I Can't talk to my family
Genius

I think I might write some more drunken reviews, maybe you could find out a bit more about my life with every review?

The Suspirian Rainbow: Or, Why I love Technicolor

We have an extra special post today from guest writer Fred Aspbury to get you all in the mood for our screening of Dario Argento's Suspiria.

In 1976 the Italian section of Technicolor processing closed and was replaced by single-strip colour production. Two years later the British section closed; the last of the centres for Technicolor production in mainstream cinema. An age had passed, an age of gaudy greens and radiant reds. The writing, of course, had been on the wall for over twenty years, when single strip colour production became the norm in big budget productions. Yet many continued to use and love Technicolor thanks to the unique over emphasis it gave to primary colours.

                  When I think off Technicolor I think principally of three films: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938); Vertigo (1958); and Suspiria (1977). This last was the final major film to be made in Technicolor and thus represents the swan song of a process that had defined colour cinema since the Twenties.

                  We may ask, however, why Dario Argento chose Technicolor in the first place. As stated, single-strip processes had been widely used since the early Fifties and were much cheaper than the complex and light-hungry multi-strip process. Indeed, would Argento not want to use single-strip simply because it offered a more realistic, lifelike visual experience than the frankly garish acid-trip of its predecessor? My point is this: horror (chiefly horror that deals with elements that require huge compromises from the audience regarding suspension of disbelief, such as the occult) would be most effacious if it shows a world exactly like ours, with the horrifying elements sewn subtly into the fabric of that reality such that it is difficult for the audience to differentiate what exactly is or is not possible in the real world. Take, for example, probably the most talked about horror film of the last decade, The Blair Witch Project. The success of that film was to make the events depicted in it seem as real as possible. The handy-cam style, now so popularly aped, was relatively new and even the cameraman himself was a character in the plot. Never are we able to escape to the comfort of 3^rd person shots or the psychologically effective yet unrealistic bozom of music. Indeed, even the occult aspects of the story are never explicit (the witch may just be a serial killer) such that we are left with the impression that this could be real and could happen to me... pretty scary eh?

                  Yet I do not like The Blair Witch Project. I found it neither scary nor entertaining. This is not to belie the artistic merit and the achievement of this independent film in scaring and entertaining many. I myself, however, prefer Suspiria, a film which genuinely is scary and entertaining in an almost unparalleled way. Part of the reason for this is that very use of Technicolor; that failure to even attempt to produce a real world on the part of Argento. Granted, the nauseating overabundance of red and green is partially explained in the setting by stained-glass windows, but the colour bludgeoning occurs in external shots too and one is left with the distinct impression that these two colours, along with a purplish black, are the only colours in the world. Some films, such as the aforementioned Adventures of Robin Hood, are simply grateful to be in colour; the predominance of primaries simply serving to produce a slightly camper, more theatrical Sherwood Forest. Others, such as The Wizard of Oz and Vertigo, use the accidental effect to create a dreamlike atmosphere either adding to the magic in Oz or to the sickening dizziness of guilt in San Francisco. Like Argento, Hitchcock could have spurned Technicolor  (Psycho, released two years later, was in black and white) but decided that the blurry, psychedelic visuals allowed the audience to share the confusing, hyporeal and dizzying perception of Ferguson. In both Vertigo and Suspiria the look of the film unnerves us; we enter a world, not of clear lines and mirror images, not a spatial world, but a world of emotion, confusion and horror. It seems, particularly with Suspiria, that the idea is not to manifest a possible experience in our world, but to show a nightmare, in all its bile-producing gaudiness, that may enter our heads in the sleeping hours.

                                    The unnerving irrealism of the colour scheme is augmented by an odd soundtrack. Like many Italian films (which were by preference overdubbed even for Italian audiences) the dubbing is atrocious. The actors mime in English and yet it seems almost no effort has been made to sync the mouth shapes with the sound. I’m not saying this is deliberate - far from it as it seems to be a feature of many Italian films – but it does add to the disorienting dreamlike effect the film has. We may perhaps think here of David Lynch who has often un-synced soundtrack and video track in order to nauseate the audience (see Inland Empire, Twin Peaks, and Mulholland Drive among others).

                  Finally, the musical score. Written and performed mainly by the Italian Prog-Rock group Goblin. It is not a normal score, written specifically to force home the emotions the creators want us to feel. Indeed, it seems that in many scenes the music does not fit at all. Not that the music is not emotive, it simply serves to creep us out in a way that does not require its partnership with the screen visuals.

                  In short, what we have with Suspiria, is a film that makes no attempt to be real, to scare us about what may happen to us on our next night-time jaunt through Munich. It is an aggressive concoction of incompatible and unrealistic colours and sounds that have us squirming with almost unbearable nausea before the plot even produces a witch or two. The Blair Witch Project makes us think ‘this is so real, maybe this will happen when I go into the woods;’ but nothing so rational, so explicit happens with Suspiria. We experience a feeling, difficult to define at first, not horror but... discomfort. And I don’t mean discomfort such as we experience when we watch torture porn films like Saw; when we say ‘ooh, a scalpel in the eye looks painful, that would hurt if someone did it to me’. The Suspirian discomfort is in the stomach, in the limbs, it haunts you entirely because it has no discernable cause. Not until you attempt, as I have done here, to separate the sound and image of the film, reducing their efficacy. Yet even so, such analyses are easy when you aren’t watching it; when the nightmare begins.  The Blair Witch Project may leave us too afraid to go camping in the woods but Suspiria, rather than making us reluctant to take up ballet, renders us afraid to go to sleep.

Happy Days Are Here Again

The Boy Friend (1971)

Isn't Ken Russell amazing.
No other director has that power to surprise, I love the way he walked the fine line between sophistication and vulgar pantomime.
I watched The Boy Friend again last night and I think its a wonderful film.
Its even more wonderful as Ken released The Devils in the same year.
I can't comprehend how much talent Ken Russell had.
I can't imagine a (British) director now releasing such diverse films as these in the same year.
The film is a real revelation its charming and magical. And charming isn't usually the first word that I think of when I think of Ken's work.
Its Ken Russell's loving homage to 30's Hollywood musicals and I really don't understand why its not that well known, Its not even available in this country on DVD!
It features a fantastic ensemble cast including some Russell regulars.
Twiggy blew me away.
She gives a magical performance.
She plays Polly as an awkward young innocent and really shines.
Its hard not to fall in love with her.
She can sing and is an amazing dancer and comes across very well.
I have never been that keen of Twiggy before but this performance has really changed my opinion of her.
She even gets to sing "All I Do Is Dream Of You" from Singing In The Rain.

Ken avoids some of the over the top parts of his usual work and manages to mostly avoid the grotesque. But certainly finds humor and can be quite silly in places but that where the charm lies.
Ken often has the camera far from his cast as if we are in the theatre audience watching from there perspective.
He intercuts this with some kinetic camera moves that really involve you into the excellent dance pieces. The tap routines are stunning.

The set designs and costumes are faultless, you will want to wear tap shoes,dress in 30's glamour,wear a massive fur coat,have a pencil moustache/beauty spot and cover your living room in mirrors and pearls...maybe just me!
It really is such a pleasure to watch such a beautifuly designed film, shot with real attention to detail.
You will constantly have the internal monolougue "Wow, that looks beautiful".

Where Ken really shines are in his fantastic Busby Berkley inspired dance set pieces.


They are fun, light hearted, dazzling, spectacular, loving and technically brilliant.
Lots of refelective higly polished surfaces add to the illusion.

My favorite set piece has to be the dance routine on a giant gramophone with spinning record.

I actually think this may be one of his finest films, Its certainly his most accessible work. One to watch with your mum without the fear of seeing Roger Daltrey's monster penis!
Its the kind of film that will find a home in your heart.
It also has an intermission too, I am such a sucker for films with intermissions.



I am in love with this film...might even try some Tap Dancing.

Suspiria

We are showing Suspiria on the 16th February...If you live in Nottingham you should come.
This months dress code is Black Mass.
More info here.

Federico Mancosu - Suspiria - The Boyfriend and Film Kunst Bar.

I have written about Federico Mancosu before but while researching Suspiria which will be our next Kino Klubb screening (16th Feb) I came across this wonderful poster. I love the minimalism of his work and how he doesn't always use an obvious image for his posters. But anyone familiar with the film will know instantly what its from.

Here is more of his work, I recomend that you visit his site here.

Great stuff.

Just got back from Berlin and was very tempted by this poster of The Boyfriend which I found in a Polish film posters shop...The €280 price tag put me off a bit though.

I shall write about The Boyfriend soon as I have fallen in love with it, Managed to get hold of a 16:9 print from the US as the naughty BBC showed a cropped version!

Also if you find yourself in Berlin I can highly recommend a trip to Film Kunst Bar a wonderful bar that has 10,000 DVDs, wonderful beer, bunk beds, a secret toilet, a Der Wolpertinger and very informed staff. The Chap I talked to highly recommended a film I haven't heard called Little Fugitive. Wonderful place...Find it here.