bitdepth

The Work of Director Michel Gondry

I’ve liked just about everything that I’ve seen from Michel Gondry, from music videos for The Chemical Brothers and Bjork to the film Human Nature. While he’s brilliant at music videos, in Human Nature it felt a bit forced, but Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind was a great combination of his talents within a great script with what appears to be little studio manipulation. I’ve been watching the Directors Label DVD The Work of Director Michel Gondry and I’m amazed by the talent of the man. After watching many of the videos you begin to see patterns of repetition and common themes and everything is dreamlike. The most amazing video is Bjork‘s breathtaking Bachelorette which makes your head spin to watch it.
While the videos are great to watch, the neatest part of the DVD is the documentary about Gondry growing up and how and why he works in the way that he does. I’ve Been Twelve Forever takes you through his childhood and mind in an entertaining and visually exciting way that lets us behind the curtain of some of the visions that he has brought to the screen. It’s a lot more than a promo piece that consists of people talking about how wonderful it is to work with him and Gondry himself tries out a lot of different visual tricks to show how he’s thought about his life and the music videos and manages to keep coming back to the same themes in different visual styles. It’s a great DVD that I’ll be spending a lot more time with. It’s fun and inspirational.

April 26, 2004 bjork, directorslabel, documentary, michelgondry, music, video

Film Co-op Spring Social

Friday was a busy day for me. I started out the day with the last day of the term with a wave of assignments coming in to me that now need to be marked. Then my friend Errol and I drove up to Fredericton for the NB Filmmakers’ Co-op Spring Social. We didn’t tell anyone that we were coming, so it was a surprise when we showed up. It was a great night with many old friends that I hadn’t seen for years and lots of memories. The party had a wide range of members from over the years, from one of the founding members to some of the newest members. I started hanging around the co-op in the early 1980s, but at the party I saw my original membership application which was dated August 28, 1985! So while I worked on some things before I joined, I officially joined then. That’s still a long time! I hope that I will be able to be around the co-op a lot more this year to catch up more with the current members and to see the stories that they are telling.

April 25, 2004 errol, film, filmmaking, fredericton, me, nbfilmmakerscoop

The Office Series 2

Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais I’ve watched a bit of the second series of The Office and I’m still impressed with it. It’s brilliantly written and performed and it is perched on a knife edge between comedy and pathos. It’s almost a bit painful to watch and it’s interesting to see how the popularity of the show may have altered how the actors and writers approached it. The second series kicks off with a funny little bit to let you know that things are back, but then it throws a few curves as David Brent’s new boss shows up and things just don’t go well for Brent with jokes going awry. What’s great is that any sympathy for Brent is undermined by his telling of a racist joke and how he tries to explain it. The Office is part of an increasingly growing subgenre of comedy that is painful at times to watch as you become invested in the characters. Curb Your Enthusiasm works in the same space as well as Ken Finkleman’s The Newsroom and his much more biting More Tears. What they seem to have in common is strong writing and casts that pull off the documentary feel which heightens drama as well as the comedy. I’ve only watched the first episode of the second series, but I looked at the amazing video diary by co-writer/directors Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais as well as the outtakes. One thing that I think always shows on the screen is how good a time people are having working on a show. The best shows are fun to work on. It looks as if working on The Office would have been great fun. I’m looking forward to more from Gervais and Merchant.

April 21, 2004 comedy, curbyourenthusiasm, dvd, moretears, review, rickygervais, stephenmerchant, thenewsroom, theoffice, tv

Mr. Show Season 3 DVD

I really like Mr. Show and when it was aired in Canada on The Comedy Network I taped as many as I could. But there were some gaps, but now in the age of DVD it is getting easier to get an entire series in a boxed set. The show had a tough time as the fans who were able to find the show loved it, but the people higher up in the production chain didn’t understand it so it was bumped around time slots on HBO and then was cancelled after 4 seasons. I finally got around to buying the third season DVDs since I read on Bob and David’s site that they just recorded the commentary tracks for the fourth season DVDs which could be out any time in the next year. HBO has an odd pattern of releasing DVDs of series. Some things come out fairly regularly, but other things take a long, long time. The third season of Mr. Show continues the sketch comedy series that linked all the sketches together (as Monty Python did). It’s biting and relatively timeless in how the comedy grows out of characters and situations and not directly from the news of the day.

April 17, 2004 bobodenkirk, comedy, davidcross, dvd, montypython

Acting Fun

I was lucky enough to be asked to act in a student production yesterday. It wasn’t much of a part, but I loved it as it let me see a bunch of my students at work. It was great to see them shooting and working as professionals. They were calm and even seemed to be having fun. I haven’t spent a lot of time on a set in a long time, so it was neat to be around for that. Even though the day was long I felt the rush of shooting which kept me going long past the time I would have been asleep. It’s always neat to see how people work together to make something creative. A group of creative and talented people working together is wonderful to see and even more amazing to be able to be a small part of it. The other great thing was the food. Mmmmm! A crew needs good food and great food helps thing go much more smoothly. It will be neat to see how things turn out.

April 6, 2004 acting, filmmaking, me, screenarts

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Michel Gondry‘s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a low-key film that explores loss and memory. Shot in a hand-held and casual style, it hides a story told with an incredible visual sense. There is a seamless mixture of physical effects, camera tricks and digital effects so you just watch what is happening and get sucked into the story. But the film isn’t about the effects, but emotions and memories both good and bad. It’s all about memory and loss or as Tom Waits puts it in a song “the things you can’t remember” and “the things you can’t forget”. How do we remember and how do we relate to each other? What happened? How do things go from being amazing and wonderful and full of possibilities to something that we just want out of. If you could erase your memories, would you?
Apparently the idea originated from Gondry’s friend Pierre Bismuth who wondered what it would be like if you received a card in the mail telling you that you had been erased from someone’s memory. It served as the departure point for Charlie Kaufman who wrote the script for Gondry after he finished writing Adaptation. It’s territory that Kaufman has explored before, but never with the almost painfully realistic portrayal of a relationship’s birth, growth and death. Jim Carrey is restrained and Kate Winslet is goofy, but attractive in solid performances. The film didn’t blow me away instantly, but it’s one of those films that will stay with me and grow. The marketing in general has been low-key with a neat fake site for Lacuna, Inc. who will erase your memories and some great posters that brilliantly obscure the eyes of the stars.