Sunday Special*

Here is my first attempt at an "experimental film."
A few words about it: In New York, the word "park" has two definitions in stark contrast to one another. Parking garages are musty, exorbitantly priced, overly ubiquitous and thoroughly disagreeable. Parks, on the other hand, are clean, free to the public, unfortunately sparse, and thoroughly agreeable. One Sunday, I set out to investigate this word's bearing in my neighborhood. Here are my findings.

Film Review: My Blueberry Nights

A previous version of this review appeared in the Horace Mann Record Vol. 105 Issue 30 (May 16, 2008).

It’s not quite summer yet; we haven’t yet been inundated by movies. Although there have been some excellent films so far this year (4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days and U2 3D come to mind), as well as a fair share of disappointments (e.g. Be Kind Rewind), one film stands out.

My Blueberry Nights, which opened in New York a few weeks ago, is Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai’s first English-language film. It’s a road movie starring Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, and pop singer Norah Jones in her onscreen debut. Although in terms of plot the film is not particularly interesting, stylistically it’s no less captivating than the past films of Wong Kar Wai, who is known for ineffably gorgeous visuals. His films tend to be about outsiders and their idiosyncratic approaches to urban life. His inimitable style defies verbal description: just about every filmmaker in the world cowered in jealousy upon his or her first exposure to a Wong Kar Wai film.

Norah Jones plays Elizabeth, something of a vagabond who returns to a SoHo café night after night to see if a lost love has returned. In the process she connects with the café owner, Jeremy (Jude Law). Finally giving up, she sets out on a self-searching road trip across America. In Memphis, she takes multiple waitress jobs and gets entangled in a conflict between Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz) and Arnie (David Strathairn), a cop who descends to alcoholism to distract himself from the reality that his wife Sue Lynne wants to divorce him. In Las Vegas, she encounters Leslie (Natalie Portman), a luckless gambler. They briefly become gambling and traveling companions.

Central to the film is the possibility (or impossibility) of rejuvenation, of overcoming addiction, old habits, and old versions of oneself. In the way that Arnie doesn’t stop drinking, Elizabeth doesn't change much on her odyssey. What she has accomplished, however, is what Wong Kar Wai has described as traversing a distance that, though physically very long, is tiny. Despite how far away she was from Jeremy (Jude Law), the closeness of the bond they formed over their nights of eating leftover blueberry pie hasn’t changed by the time she returns to New York.

Wong Kar Wai may have made quite the journey to the U.S., but, like his characters, he has emerged unfazed: he is very much the same filmmaker he was at home in Hong Kong. Known for his striking ability to evoke the mood of his locations, he makes a great effort here to give the film an authentic feel. He admits that he strongly wanted to make an all-American film; he didn't want it to be from a foreign perspective. Consequently, My Blueberry Nights may feel too low on substance and high on style, even for Wong’s standards. On the other hand, Wong has constructed here some of the most interesting and convincing relationships in his oeuvre to date. Finally being able to see this film nearly a year after its premiere at Cannes, I was joyous. It's like comfort food: easy to take in, but, even if isn't haute cuisine, soul-satisfying.

Un Parisien à New York

I made this short film in June 2007 at SOCAPA (the School of Cinema and Performing Arts).
Looking back on it, I like to think of it as an exercise in irony. Enjoy!

The Independent Spirit Awards

In honor of the 24th Annual Spirit Awards, which will air on Feb. 21, here is an article I wrote this same time last year about being a voter for the premiere independent film awards:

A few months ago, I became a member of IFP, Independent Film Project, which is a non-profit organization for budding filmmakers. I signed up knowing that I’d be invited to tons of preview screenings and I’d get a subscription to Filmmaker magazine. A week or two after going to the IFP screening of Juno (where I was lucky enough to meet screenwriter Diablo Cody a week or two before she became a media obsession), I found out that IFP membership includes voting privileges for the Independent Spirit Awards. Naturally, I was thrilled: these are the Oscars of low-budget movies!

A lot of the movies I wound up having to see, however, were not Oscar material, to say the least. The five nominees for the John Cassavetes Award, for the best film made with less than $500,000, were admirable, but to a large extent boring. Although some of the nominees may not be at the top of your Netflix queue- overlooked titles like Broken English or Interview, for example- many are truly great films, every bit as strong as mainstream films made over the Spirit’s budget cap, $20,000,000. This year, as has been the trend for at least a decade, the Oscars nominations have reflected quality in independent filmmaking. This year, Spirit Awards favorites The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Juno each earned four Oscar nominations, while The Savages grabbed two. In past years, there is even more crossover between the two awards shows, which air on consecutive nights. Two years ago, seven films nominated at the Indie Spirits were also nominated at the Oscars; remarkably enough, four of these- Crash, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck., and Capote- were nominated for Best Picture!

Regrettably, the Oscars didn’t give the indie films enough attention this year. While some might say that Oscar favorites such as Atonement and No Country for Old Men are pseudo-indie, as they were produced by the quasi-independent “specialty divisions” of major studios, their budgets were too high to qualify for the Spirit Awards.

Thanks to the Spirit Award screenings I was invited to, I got to see several of the films that critics loved, but, due to their lack of distribution (they were shown in film festivals but never came to U.S. theaters), were not able to build awards momentum. Paranoid Park, the latest from the divisive Portlander Gus Van Sant, boasts surprisingly strong direction and not-so-surprisingly beautiful cinematography from Christopher Doyle, an Australian famous for his collaborations with Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai. The film is adapted from the Blake Nelson novel of the same name about a skater kid who is ravaged by guilt and disillusionment after becoming entangled in a murder case. The film works well because Van Sant has an extraordinary understanding of younger people; while his work is inconsistent, his examinations of adolescence (e.g. Elephant) always turn out well.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, another film I got to see for the Spirit Awards, is powerful for similar reasons. Breakthrough director Cristian Mungiu modeled his visual storytelling on the way his characters were feeling. If they were nervous, the camera would twitch and meander; if they were claustrophobic, the audience would feel so, too, as a result of the expertly composed shots. The relentlessly gripping film tells the bleak story of two girls, Otilia and Gabita, who needs an abortion. Their attempt to cirumvent the anti-abortion law in 1987 Communist Romania has grim consequences. Winner of the Palme D’Or, the top prize at Cannes, 4 Months… is a must see for anyone interested in contemporary world cinema. That it was snubbed completely at the Oscars is shameful.

So what’s next on the IFP calendar? Not much until after the Awards, which air on IFC on Saturday, Feb 23. By the way, I highly recommend signing up for IFP membership (http://ifp.org/nav/membership.php). You don’t have to work in the film industry: a large number of the members are simply film fans. The screenings held throughout the year are a great way to learn more about the process of filmmaking, since there is almost always an actor, writer, producer, or director present to answer questions. See you at the movies!

Inaugural Post

After having made a variety of jumbled attempts at putting my film work online, I've decided to try to combine the various articles I've written and films I've made into one central location, a "greatest hits" of sorts. Welcome to "Pomp and Cinema," circumstance not included.