Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman is dead at 89. The Local calls his work immortal, as did many of his colleagues.

Until now I’ve been misremembering the title of one of his movies as Three Smiles of a Summer Night, a 1955 romantic comedy. I’d say that most of his works I’d seen were depressing and that Smiles was one of the few that wasn’t. But I couldn’t even remember the title properly, so perhaps I should keep that to myself.

Ingmar Bergman, director, film, death, dead

Scott Smith’s Imperfect Ten too slow for you? Take a look at Nash Edgerton’s Lucky over at Blue Tongue Films. What would you do in 4 minutes 25 seconds? How would you escape?

body in trunk, car chase, escape, film, lucky, nash edgerton, short film, trap, trapped, twist

The nice folks at Coudal Partners are hosting Scott Smith’s Imperfect Ten, “wherein one man breaks all ten commandments before breakfast.”

It’s Friday (March 10th, even), go watch.

10, adultery, cheat, coudal, covet, film, honor, idolatry, imperfect ten, lie, murder, sabbath, scott smith, sex, short film, steal, ten commandments, video, worship

We’ve all heard it before, but we just can’t get it out of our heads. Today’s movies make us feel dumb. Paulina Borsook joins the chorus and condemns contemporary cinema by praising movies of the 60s and 70s:

They were movies made for adults, even if they had been mainstream movies and/or nominally rated PG. They made presumptions about the intelligence of their audience, didn’t need things to be boldly spelled out, and they were predicated on the assumption that their audience was capable of making inferences. No semaphoring! No high-concept! Satire as opposed to scatology! Shades of gray in motive and character! Minimum numbers of car crashes! No fish out of water! No hilarious mixups!

Interestingly, she also found praise for The Interpreter:

The female characters didn’t simper, and didn’t seem like 30 going on 13 (hey, wasn’t there…). They were about themselves, subject rather than object.

The male characters had interior lives that made them seem human, creatures capable of emotional nuance.

So what else does she recommend? She’s made a list. Interestingly, all of this appears at GreenCine.com, a Netflix competitor I’d not heard of before it got a recommendation at O’Grady’s PowerPage.

netflix, greencine, dvd rental, paulina borsook, movie, movie criticism, film criticism, film, films, movies, old movies, good movies, criticism

This, from Chris Anderson: The Codex is a 20 episode series of machinimas made on Xboxes running Halo 2. The result caught the attention of his six- and eight-year-old children, and then him.

Machinimas are computer animated in real-time, using video games to create the environment, and human “puppeteers” to drive the action. The action is capture, edited, and voice-overs added. Because they remove many of the economic and technical barriers to film production, they hold the promise of emphasizing story and plot, and exposing talent among those who create them.

Good stories gain fans, and this is exactly what Anderson was remarking on:

[C]onsider this: My children’s favorite film was not made by Disney, but by a dozen Dallas teenagers playing a videogame in one of their parents’ basement. By Hollywood standards, the film cost essentially nothing to make and is free to download. It’s had 13m viewers so far. There is now a DVD and a soundtrack CD.

I’m downloading it now.

tags: animation, anti-hollywood, chris anderson, codex, computer animation, film, film production, halo, halo 2, hollywood, long tail, longtail, machinima, puppeteers, the codex, videogame, xbox

David Edelstein’s review of Werner Herzog’s documentary, Grizzly Man, describes Timothy Treadwell as

…a manic but lovable whack-job who doggedly filmed and obsessively idealized the bears that would ultimately eat him…

The film is made up largely of the bits of the hundreds of hours of video that Treadwell himself shot during his 14 years with the bears. Later, however, Edelstein — probably restraining laughter — calls Treadwell “histrionic” and a “drama-queen” (isn’t that sort of redundant?).

If my tone is insufficiently respectful, it’s only because Grizzly Man itself often plays like a Christopher Guest “mockumentary.”

Not all is to be mocked, however. It seems that all who’ve seen the movie ask the same question: “was Treadwell suicidal?” Edelstein does, then adds “was he bipolar?”

My quoting is probably unfair to Edelstein, who’s six graphs on the movie are a whole lot more balanced and documented than what is represented here. Still, he describes the film as:

an emotional roller-coaster ride. You don’t know whether to celebrate or mock, to laugh or weep.

Finally, Edelstein addresses the audio recording Treadwell mad of his own death:

Herzog shoots himself listening on headphones to the six minutes of screaming… He doesn’t share the tape with us and tells Treadwell’s ex-girlfriend to destroy it. You can respect the way Herzog handles that material and still roll your eyes at his theatrics. That’s very much true of the whole film—and its larger-than-life subject. Too bad he wasn’t larger than bears.

Related: Alaskan Bear Attacks and Grizzly Man on IMDB.

alaska, bear, bear attack, bear attacks, bears, david edelstein, drama queen, emotional roller coaster, film, film review, grizzlies, grizzly, grizzly attack, grizzly bear, grizzly bears, grizzly man, grizzly people, histrionic, movie, movie review, msn, timothy treadwell, treadwell, werner herzog, wilderness

Within the last wild lands of North America dwells an animal that inspires respect and fear around the world. It is the grizzly bear, a living legend of the wilderness. Grizzlies can sprint thirty five plus miles an hour, smell carrion at nine or more miles, and drag a thousand-pund animal up steep mountains. The grizzly bear is one of a very few animals remaining on earth that can kill a human in physical combat. It can decapitate with a single swipe, or grotesquely disfigure a person in rapid order. Within the last wilderness areas where they dwell, they are the undisputed king of all beasts. I know this all very well. My name is Timothy Treadwell, and I live with the wild grizzly.

So begins Treadwell’s Among Grizzlies, released in 1997 after eight years of living with bears in western Alaska. Six years later, on October 5, 2003, Treadwell was killed in Katmai National Park’s Kaflia Bay — called “The Maze” because of the network of trails made by one of the densest populations of grizzlies in the world. An AP report from October 8th was the first nationwide news of Treadwell’s death, but it doesn’t benefit from the wealth of photos, video, and audio records he left behind. Lynn Rogers’ personal telling of the story includes details from the audio recording made during the bear attack in which he and his friend, Amie Huguenard perished.

Filmmaker Werner Herzog’s, Grizzly Man, a documentary of Treadwell’s work with the grizzlies, including rich use of Treadwell’s own video, opens in LA and NYC on August 12. Herzog appeared in interviews on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday and Fresh Air.

A previous story about Alaskan bear attacks remains among the most popular here. Though Herzog’s movie is sure to represent the rich complexity of the characters, I’m also sure it will touch the morbid interests of a few.

Update: vicarious Grizzly Man movie review.
alaska, bear, bear attack, bear attacks, bears, film, grizzlies, grizzly attack, grizzly bear, grizzly bears, grizzly man, grizzly people, katmai national park, obidos, timothy treadwell, treadwell, wilderness

I’ve been a fan of Zhang Yimou’s[1] films since, well, for a while now. But I’m also a huge kung fu fan — Jackie Chan especially — so House of Flying Daggers was quite a treat.

It’s not that I didn’t like Hero, or that Daggers was particularly funny. To the contrary, it’s tale of complex characters who don’t end well. That might be story enough, but every scene is richly photographed and styled — a hallmark of so many of Yimou’s films, but wonderfully so in Daggers.

Trivia: Viewers may be surprised to learn it was filmed in Ukraine, but the silver birch in so many of the forrest scenes is not native to China.

[1]: there is some debate about whether it’s “Zhang Yimou” or “Yimou Zhang” and I’m ashamed to say I don’t know enough to know better. I learned it as “Zhang Yimou,” and that’s how Wikipedia has it.

tags: film, hero, house of flying daggers, jackie chan, kung fu, movie, silver birch, ukrain, yimou zhang, zhang yimou

Steven Soderbergh has done a number of good films, but The Underneath isn’t among them. It’s interesting to see the director working out his moves, but more entertaining to see them in a more mature form, as in Out of Site.

Eh, I’m ready to give the guy a break. My real complaint has nothing to with this film. Instead, it’s about Kafka, one of his best works. It was released in 1991, and though they’ve still got a few VHS copies in a warehouse somewhere, it deserves a DVD release

tags: film, kafka, movie, steven soderbergh, the underneath

Phil Joanou’s Entropy isn’t available in the US on DVD, but I found it at Amazon UK. IMDB has this to say:

Stephen Dorff narrates this tale about how his life goes astray as his character attempts to strike a balance between the demands of directing his first film and the pressures of his new romance with a model. U2’s Bono plays a role in this film as both himself and Dorff’s character’s concience.

It’s better than it sounds, and it’s a shame it’s so hard to get in the US.

tags: bono, entropy, film, movie night, phil joanou, stephen dorff

The New York Times did a Netflix story. The Author, William Grimes, seemed to like it, but…

[My wife and I] each judge the other’s selections harshly. I scored a major victory with “Mon Oncle” by Jacques Tati, a director I once dismissed as tedious, annoying and far too French. He is now a god in our house. But I have had my back against the wall after “L’Atalante,” a film I had never seen but knew to be, by expert consensus, a towering masterpiece. Less than 10 minutes after the opening credits rolled, the atmosphere in the living room grew frosty. I lost control of the mouse for a week. At least I had the foresight to sneak off and watch “Russian Ark” on my own.

That’s the fun of Netflix. Along with savage recriminations, my home now resonates with high-toned animated discussion of directors, cinematographers and camera angles. Once again I’m the moviegoer I was in college, when Bergman, Fellini and Truffaut were in full stride, and adventure was in the air, and bright-eyed cinéastes could sit through a film like “El Topo” and not demand their money back. It’s not available on Netflix, alas, but the Web site does propose an alternative, a compilation of “Ed Sullivan” shows featuring Topo Gigio. Close enough.

Interesting enough, but Netflix — and services yet to appear — are a sign of things to come: a world of entertainment shaped by the consumer, not by marketers.

Netflix executives say their edge over the competition is not their library but the way the library is presented to users, who are asked to rate the films they have seen. By sifting through the ratings, about 400 million of them at present, and analyzing buying patterns, a company program called CineMatch generates rental suggestions specific to each user.

“Lost in Translation will outperform most $300 million films for us, and that’s because of our ratings and recommendations,” said Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer for Netflix. “Monster will be huge for us, and that’s not because our subscribers are more sophisticated than the general moviegoing public, but because our merchandising system is much more specific.”

It will be a world of what you want, and only what you want, as clearly marked by your previous purchases and selections. You’ll never be upset by products that you don’t want, even if you didn’t know you didn’t want them, nor will you have to tolerate contrary opinions or debate.

tags: consumer interest, dvd, dvd rental, entertainment, film, films, movie, movies, netflix

Living Room Film Club, a Click Away
By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: March 19, 2004

It so happens that I have a perfectly valid excuse for watching “Hercules in the Haunted World.” The film, made in 1961, offered brief employment to a slab of beefcake named Reg Park, the British Steve Reeves, and at first glance it would seem to be a two-ton wheel of cheese. But somehow a genuine artist became attached to the project, a director named Mario Bava.

And who is Mario Bava? Why, the seminal influence on Dario Argento, the cult Italian horrormeister. One by one, his stylized, incredibly violent films found their way into my home in a blood-soaked festival organized by my wife, an Argento fan who cannot bring herself to watch the leisurely stabbing scenes that take up about half of every movie. We made our way through “Inferno,” “Deep Red,” “Suspiria” and “Tenebre.” Then it was on to Bava.

Thank you, Netflix.

Netflix, founded in 1998, is an online movie-rental company that could be described as the anti-Blockbuster. It deals only in DVD’s, and customers pay a flat monthly fee of $19.95 to rent an unlimited number of films with no late fees. The sole restriction is that subscribers may keep only three movies out at a time. (The company also offers more expensive five-film and eight-film plans.)

As each movie is returned in its self-addressed, prepaid envelope, Netflix sends out the next film on a list that the subscriber maintains online. Since the company has 23 regional distribution centers, most movies arrive the day after they are sent out. In theory a fanatic customer watching three films a day could go through several hundred DVD’s each year, whittling down the per-film rental cost to a dollar or less. In practice the average user watches about six movies a month.

I became one of Netflix’s nearly 1.8 million users several months ago, and I have never looked back. Overnight, life became much simpler. No longer did I have to make a mad dash to the video store, either to rent a film or to return it by the noon deadline. Late fees vanished and so did the check-out line. I cursed the endless hours spent prowling the aisles in search of misfiled films, or something — anything — to watch. Anything that is, except the dead-enders artfully arranged in the section labeled “staff favorites,” a euphemism for “films that no one will rent, ever.” Best of all, I succumbed to the pure pleasure of browsing endlessly through thousands of movies, making my selections with a click of the mouse and then seeing them slip through my mail slot, in their bright-red envelopes, just a few days later.

Netflix not only changed my routine, it also turned me into a different kind of movie watcher. Culturally, I am no longer the same person.

The flat-fee system elicits two responses: more frequent renting, and more adventurous renting. To justify the cost, you watch more films. But since four films per month averages out to the cost of four films at Blockbuster, every subsequent movie is, in a delusory sense, free, and therefore there is no risk. Why not roll the dice and order, say, “Russian Ark,” a bizarre Russian film, part audioguide and part costume drama, that pulls the viewer through the Hermitage Museum in a single, extended camera shot, skipping from century to century. It’s even more unwatchable than it sounds. But so what? I dropped it in the mailbox knowing that “Naked City” and “Adaptation” were on their way.

So far I have not been sent any damaged discs, and only one has gone astray after being mailed back. I filed a “missing in action” report on the Netflix Web site, and a day later, it either turned up, or Netflix wrote it off. In any case, it was no longer listed as being out.

A Few Catches

There are a few snakes in this cinematic paradise. For one thing, Netflix cannot accommodate the moviegoer who needs instant gratification. If you simply have to see “Scarface” tonight, then only the video store can help you. Cable systems offer movies on demand, but the pickings tend to be slim. My metabolism doesn’t work that way. Browsing through a vast library and clicking as the mood strikes feels plenty spontaneous to me. You see it, you want it, you add it to your queue right then and there.

There are two other weaknesses in the Netflix system, one unavoidable, the other understandable. First, the company does not rent videocassettes, so its library does not include thousands of films, some of them obscure, but many of them recognized classics. Anyone hoping to binge on Barbara Stanwyck will have to do without “Ball of Fire.” Preston Sturges fans will look in vain for “Easy Living.” Even within the more limited universe of DVD, Netflix is not totally comprehensive. Its mainstream orientation has left an opening for GreenCine (pronounced GreenScene), an online rental company that specializes in art-house films, documentaries, Japanese anime and cult films. It does not have multiple distribution centers, but it does have “Cane Toads,” an Australian documentary about, not surprisingly, cane toads. I scanned the first 20 titles listed under “film noir” and found six films not offered by Netflix.

Wal-Mart, which entered the online DVD rental business last June, undercuts Netflix with a three-movie plan priced at $18.76 per month. Its library of about 12,000 titles passed the Dario Argento test with flying colors. Wal-Mart has 10 of his films, compared with five on Netflix. GreenCine, despite its alternative profile, offers only two Argento films, although it has two documentaries about the director.

Netflix, too, has its niche side. An innovative program called Netflix First makes a small number of independent films available exclusively to Netflix subscribers for a limited period. The program, which started with “Croupier,” has grown to include about 20 films.

Netflix executives say their edge over the competition is not their library but the way the library is presented to users, who are asked to rate the films they have seen. By sifting through the ratings, about 400 million of them at present, and analyzing buying patterns, a company program called CineMatch generates rental suggestions specific to each user.

Polishing the Profile

“`Lost in Translation’ will outperform most $300 million films for us, and that’s because of our ratings and recommendations,” said Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer for Netflix. “ `Monster’ will be huge for us, and that’s not because our subscribers are more sophisticated than the general moviegoing public, but because our merchandising system is much more specific.”

My experience of CineMatch makes me an agnostic. Right now my account page tells me that, based on my rentals and ratings, I might like to rent “Aguirre, Wrath of God,” “Stagecoach” or “The Vicar of Dibley.” I see the logic, and it is primitive. The “Stagecoach” recommendation reflects my rental of John Ford’s “Searchers,” just about the only western I’ve seen in my adult life, unless you count “Blazing Saddles.” CineMatch got lucky here. I found “The Searchers” riveting, and I put Howard Hawks’s “Red River” on my queue. “Stagecoach” is indeed a viable candidate. “The Vicar of Dibley,” a gentle and not very funny British comedy series, shows up because I rented two other British series, “Full Bottom” and “Thick as Thieves,” both of them a lot less funny even than “The Vicar of Dibley.” Three wrongs do not make a right.

In theory, as I generate more ratings, CineMatch will develop a more complex taste profile for me, but I’m doubtful. I think it will just get confused.

I don’t blame it. At the moment, a domestic battle rages for control of the Netflix queue, which can be revised and reshuffled at any time. It is disputed territory. My wife likes very fat films or very slow films. It’s either nonstop action, with a lot of gunplay, or painstaking, exquisitely nuanced psychological dramas, like the interminable “I Capture the Castle,” a British film about an eccentric family living in Wales in the 1930’s. My weakness is for pretentious foreign films. At the moment, I feel a creeping urge to rent “Andrei Rublev,” a three-hour film about a medieval Russian icon painter.

Frost Warning

We each judge the other’s selections harshly. I scored a major victory with “Mon Oncle” by Jacques Tati, a director I once dismissed as tedious, annoying and far too French. He is now a god in our house. But I have had my back against the wall after “L’Atalante,” a film I had never seen but knew to be, by expert consensus, a towering masterpiece. Less than 10 minutes after the opening credits rolled, the atmosphere in the living room grew frosty. I lost control of the mouse for a week. At least I had the foresight to sneak off and watch “Russian Ark” on my own.

That’s the fun of Netflix. Along with savage recriminations, my home now resonates with high-toned animated discussion of directors, cinematographers and camera angles. Once again I’m the moviegoer I was in college, when Bergman, Fellini and Truffaut were in full stride, and adventure was in the air, and bright-eyed cinÈastes could sit through a film like “El Topo” and not demand their money back. It’s not available on Netflix, alas, but the Web site does propose an alternative, a compilation of “Ed Sullivan” shows featuring Topo Gigio. Close enough.