Curio: Custom Painted Film Stills

Alexa here with a bit of art for sale that Film Experience readers might find interesting. Artist Lara Duren likes to create custom paintings in order to, as she says, "keep the fragile light of inspiration from dying out." Her latest offering is a custom watercolor painting of a scene from your favorite film.  She charges $25 for a 5x7 and $50 for an 8x10. I like the sample images she's provided because they aren't entirely literal, screenshot-style paintings, and they have a nice dreamscape quality. So, if you are looking for a little frameable art that goes beyond the movie poster, and you want to help stir up Lara's muse, you can buy one here.

Stars... They're Just Like Us!

They also have to deal with obnoxious people walking backwards or stopping suddenly when everyone else is moving forwards!

This post is brought to you by Nathaniel's hatred of tourists in Times Square where he unfortunately found himself once this weekend. Tourists can magically transform a breezy 8 minute walk to a subway to a 35 minute nightmarish ordeal of erratic human movement. Turning 8 minutes to 35 is a feat as miraculous as feeding thousands with five loaves of bread ...only way less altruistic.

P.S. This amusing gif comes to us via my friend Matt's blog where he runs to Madonna's defense (as he do) about the gleeful takedowns of W.E. in Venice. Matt also shared an incredible video of previously unseen "Vogue" video footage. Lots of blooper-like stuff after the two minute mark. It's always so fun (though rarer than it used to be) to see Madonna laugh at herself / her surroundings.

Venice: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and "A Simple Life"

[Editor's Note: Here's Manolis, a Greek reader who is covering Venice for The Film Experience. If you can read Greek, visit Cinema News for more of his festival coverage.]

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY
The spy thriller was eagerly anticipated here in Venice and reaction was generally positive though some critics felt that something was missing. English is not my first language and with the heavy accents I did have a hard time following all of the twists of the intricate plot. But despite my difficult I was delighted that the film doesn’t underestimate your intelligence and demands your full attention throughout. The film's technical aspest are very impressive from sets to costumes to cinematography and Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) directs with stylish gusto, creating magnificent shots and frames. Though the spy movie genre doesn't generally promise the slow pacing that Alfredson chooses, it's an interesting approach. The performances follow this same tone, all of them toned down. The triumph of the ensemble cast is that you can feel that underneath the icy surface of the British mentality of the period, there is an array of emotions ready to explode. A simple gesture is, for these characters, far more important than a whole sentence. In fact, Gary Oldman only raises his voice once in the lead role of George Smiley in a wonderful monologue towards the end. Colin Firth and John Hurt are also very good as is Tom Hardy in a small but memorable role.  

The one thing I felt Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy lacked is a heart as it is a particularly cold experience. This not automatically a flaw for an intelligent espionage thriller but a small dose of warmth would have added to the whole a great deal considering that the film turns on loyalty, values and ideals. 

Andy Lau at the Venice premiere of A Simple LifeTAO JIE (A SIMPLE LIFE)
The second movie today was Tao Jie by Chinese filmmaker Ann Hui. The film takes place in Hong Kong and deals with the relationship between the thirtysomething Roger Lee (Andy Lau) and his elderly nanny Tao (Deannie Yip). The roles in this relationship are reversed when Tao gets seriously ill and can’t serve him anymore. It’s time for Roger Lee to rise to the occasion, learn to appreciate the things that he has taken granted and take care of this woman who was more than a mother to him all his life; she needs to know that someone will be there by her side in the last days.

A Simple Life has humor, pathos and sensitive performances and provides an interesting window for Westerners of the way the Chinese view their elders. The tender story has broad appeal but breaks no new ground and begins to drag towards the end.  Although comparisons to Yasujiro Ozu’s films would be unfair, they are inevitable and naturally not favorable for Hui’s film. 

True Blood 4.11 "Soul of Fire"

The penultimate episode of Season four played just like a Season Finale with nearly every storyline reaching conclusion. Or at least like one of those season finales that precedes a haunted stand-alone episode. I'm thinking of Buffy's Season 4 two-fer "Primeval" and "Restless" where all the story threads are sewn up but then the heroine begins to fray in mysterious ways.

Show me future."

Soul of Fire
Not that True Blood is Buffy's equal, I hasten to add. Nor could Sookie fray in mysterious ways since her dramas are always "who to sleep with?" related and never any deeper. Even her "what am I, exactly?" identity crisis resulted in no character growth or behavioural change. And anyway, the pre-credits twist (glorious!) punishes you for thinking things are sewn up and tidy. Did I just negate these first two paragraphs? Uhhh, damnit. May I glamour you and wipe them from your memory?

The penultimate episode begins with the great album cover ready shot of the four lead vampires in black leather ambush gear heading for Moon Goddess Emporium and we stay there for nearly all of the episode with all eyes on Marnie. She admits that she likes it that way... and so does Fiona Shaw, don't you know.

THERE'S MORE...

Click to read more ...

Belated Notes on "Crazy, Stupid, Love."

Christopher and a few other readers have been asking me for more detailed information about what I thought of Crazy, Stupid, Love. As daily readers know I was out of town when it opened and I ended up seeing it quite a bit after the fact which is not my preference, particularly not for a movie with so many actors I'm inordinately fond of. I saw it after the mixed reviews and after the hype had passed, which turns out to be the ideal time to see something that is relatively unassuming but so thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. 

Nothing about Crazy... reinvents or even reinvigorates the romantic comedy genre exactly but it's a great entry in the limited subgenre of the interlocking ensemble romances. You know the kind: teeming cast all with their individual romantic dramas and all of these short lovelorn stories end up connecting in coincidental ways, whether awkwardly forced, completely organic, or somewhere inbetween. Here we have the inbetween. But stack this up against recent movies of its ilk, and won't it look like a bonafide masterpiece?

Very little within Crazy... is entirely plausible but that's not always what we go to the movies for... and movies often thrive on exaggeration; They're shinier, funnier, prettier dramatizations of real life acted out by the shiniest funniest prettiest human specimens (i.e. movie stars). Usually in ensemble films the problem is that one storyline is much weaker than the others. Here, the high school students fill that slot but it's not so weak as to distract from the overall pleasure and Analeigh Tipton is kind of adorable. The best thing one can say for the screenplay aside from actually funny jokes (a new concept for romcoms!) is that the three tiers of romances: teenage, young adult, and middle age play out beautifully, respectively, as crazy naive (teenage hormones!), stupid sexy (yes Emma Stone & Gosling form a bond that's deeper than their physicality but that's the driving force getting them there), and in-love but weary (middle age and all the life experience / baggage that brings). You can argue that these stories are forcibly connected -- boy did I not see the central twist coming -- but I don't think you can argue that the thematic parallels aren't presented with something like nonjudgmental grace; movies that love their characters, flaws and all, are much easier to love that movies that condemn them.

Neither the direction (by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa) nor the screenplay (Dan Fogelman) ever hammer the parallels home for the sake of "SEE!" but it ends up reflecting beautifully on different timetables of love, both in regards to the actual age of lovers and the timetable of love itself, which almost has to start with the crazy / stupid before it ever gets to the lived in capital L love.

Much credit has to go to the actors for smoothing over the movie's overstuffed feeling. Everyone does fine work here -- this might be the most relaxed Julianne Moore has ever been in comic mode -- making the standard tropes and predictable trajectories within the three stories feel like exciting journeys (since the destination is never exactly in doubt). Crazy, Stupid, Love. is the kind of movie I can imagine people finding again as they're flipping channels on TV for years to come. Like "Oh yeah, this one is so cute!"... *watches the rest of it*. It's not without flaws. On first view maybe it's a little too self-consciously wacky (comic hijinx!) or dumb (shades of Hitch) but it's just going to end up beloved with repeat views. B+

Gosling's Growing Character Gallery

P.S. I actually saw Crazy Stupid, Love. shortly after seeing Ryan Gosling doing a very very different spin on the unreachable soul behind a cool mask in Drive and wow, is that a fascinating twin snapshot on star power and acting range. Both of his new performances are beauties but what's more fascinating is how perfectly composed and still both characters are when held up to those emotionally ragged messy portraits of love or drug addicts from Blue Valentine or Half Nelson, respectively. Michael Fassbender may well be Gosling's sole living rival for Future of the Movies or Best of His Generation titles. I can't wait to see them fight it out for the crown this decade. How about you?