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A Prophet

There hasn’t been a film by Jacques Audiard that I haven’t liked, so there was a pretty good chance that the third film by him that I’d be seeing, A Prophet, would probably live up to expectations.

In the film Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lèvres), he constructed a clever noirish story about a woman who is almost deaf and has lip-reading skills. Beautifully shot and with a great central performance by Emmanuelle Devos, it’s intimate and surprising with a plot that twists and turns.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté) focusses on a man who must decide between a life of crime and his dream to become a concert pianist. With an electric performance by Romain Duris, it takes the unlikely combination of crime and music and builds another surprising story about fascinating characters.

With A Prophet, Audiard has another great cast with interesting characters, but this time it’s set mainly in a French prison and again it subverts expectations with a plot that is not completely predictable. We watch a young Arab man (brilliantly played by Tahar Rahim) who enters the prison system and negotiates his way through the complex world of gangs and alliances over a period of years. Bringing elements of magical realism into the story it combines the violent and brutal world of prison life with another layer that adds a poetry and beauty to the story.

On one level it’s the story of a man who gradually changes into someone else, but during the film it’s a constant series of small and beautiful revelations that combine into a compelling story. We’re taken on a journey with our hero (or anti-hero) as he faces challenges from those who judge him based on prejudice and the lessons that he learns along the way. It’s a story of friendship, loyalty and survival, beautifully shot and constructed.

December 11, 2010 2010, A Prophet, film, review

Pontypool

Bruce McDonald‘s debut feature was the indie road movie / comedy Roadkill which took a heroine through rural Ontario looking for a band and the tag line for that film was “Move or Die”. His latest indie thriller / horror film, Pontypool has the tag line of “Shut Up or Die”. Based on the novel, Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess, it’s cleverly reworks the framework of a group of people trapped by infected humans outside. Instead of zombies, the threat in Pontypool is posed by “Conversationalists”, who become infected through language.

With most of the film taking place within a radio station during the morning show, it slowly increases the creepiness and establishes the premise as we get to know the talk radio host Grant Mazzy (in a bravura performance by Stephen McHattie), the engineer Laurel (Georgina Reilly in a great feature debut), and radio producer Sydney Briar (in a complex performance by Lisa Houle). The only other character to appear on camera is a doctor (played by Hrant Alianak) who has a bit of an understanding of what is going on. Embracing the constraints of a lower budget and a single location, McDonald manages to squeeze out a story that twists and turns and kept me gripped all the way through end credits.

One of the things that I really loved about the film is that it is unapologetic in being set in Canada, and that context is actually critical to how the events unfold. The film, as with most of McDonald’s work, has a sly sense of humour that keeps things from getting too serious and there are nice references to earlier films too. Toning down the multipaned over-the-top approach of The Tracey Fragments with a desaturated, but crisp look there is a breathtaking and elegiac interlude within the film that moved it out of the B-movie neighbourhood where it could have happily stayed. As I left the film, it changed my perception of language and it felt strange to speak, which is quite an achievement.

March 28, 2009 adaptation, brucemcdonald, film, review, sf

Pierrot le Fou

At this point in my life I’ve seen most of Jean-Luc Godard‘s films and there is something to love in just about all of them, but I didn’t think that I’d be surprised yet again, but I was by Pierrot le fou. It takes the energy and joy of his “A bout de souffle” and adds brilliant, beautiful colour as well as a bigger budget and a more sophisticated array of equipment. The problem with Godard and a film like Pierrot le fou is that it makes it all look so casual, but with Godard directing and Raoul Coutard shooting, it’s a series of virtuoso shots that constantly seem to gleefully shout “watch this!” Released in France in 1965 it lovingly alludes to all of Godard’s earlier films and combines his sense of humour with his politics and love of cinema together in an almost perfect balance.
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June 9, 2008 annakarina, belmondo, film, godard, pierrotlefou, review

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

In the late 70s Harrison Ford was mainly Han Solo to me. He’d been in other films, but it just seemed as if that’s who’d he be. George Lucas was on a roll with a dark sequel to Star Wars in The Empire Strikes Back. Steven Spielberg seemed to be in a bit of slump after the big-budget 1941. But then the announcement came out about Raiders of the Lost Ark starring Ford with Lucas and Spielberg involved and I was 14 and very excited about it. I hadn’t seen the serials that were the inspiration, but I really wanted to see a fun summer movie. From the very start of Raiders of the Lost Ark I loved it.
Some people are a bit perplexed by the excitement and glee anticipating the new Indiana Jones film, and if you know the context, I think it’s a bit easier to understand. The first film came out before E.T., Ghostbusters, Time Bandits, and in the same summer as the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only with Roger Moore as Bond. Other summer movies from 1981 were Cannonball Run, Superman II, Stripes, Endless Love, Outland, and Escape from New York. Raiders of the Lost Ark managed to balance the excitement, the fun and the attitude that we were watching a film with a more old-fashioned style of filmmaking that relied on a lot of solid stunts and cinematography to tell a story. Continue…

May 24, 2008 film, history, review

The Myths of Innovation

With his second book, The Myths of Innovation, Scott Berkun takes a different approach to the subject. With The Art of Project Management, he provides a detailed and very useful guidebook to navigating the difficult world of managing people and projects. The Myths of Innovation is built (quite logically) around a series of relatively common myths about innovations and innovators. While I thought that I knew about the myths, the power of the story often remains even when you know that it’s not true and Berkun manages to puncture the myths, while explaining the appeal. We all love a story about the bold lone inventor who had a brilliant idea that changed the world, but we don’t like hearing about the failed inventions or the team of people who painstakingly followed the many dead-ends in the development of the product. Berkun shows how our love of a good story can make us miss what is important in creating anything. You need hard work, a willingness to follow your instincts, determination and being able to keep working even though many of your ideas will fail or will not be accepted.

The book is well-organized and entertaining with an extensive and annotated bibliography that can keep you reading for years. The concepts are covered clearly and extensive web links throughout the book allow you to find a broader context online as a springboard for more exploration. Berkun also drew on the experiences of innovators that he talked with and via a survey. While the book is casual and fun, it has a solid foundation based on research and experience. You can read it from front to back as I did, or jump around without getting lost. It’s also a book that will be good to revisit for relevant stories and perspective as the challenge of trying something new starts to bog you down.

While much of the book debunks myths, it’s also encouraging as the underlying message is that dedication and working together with people is essential for innovation to take place. It’s the combination of all of the right factors that allows things to succeed and not merit or genius or luck. It’s a call to action against complacency and conventional wisdom and it will hopefully get people to become more aware of what they are doing and the possibilities and opportunities that often exist in front of you if you’re willing to see them.

The book boldly concludes by asking if innovation is inherently good, which made me think a lot about how our views of what we do and what we use evolve. I no longer use a pda, but a combination of tools that include a laptop, a cell phone, the web, and notebooks and pens. Progress and innovation doesn’t mean more tiny devices or new things, but the innovative use of what is appropriate and what works.

July 4, 2007 books, business, innovation, myths, people, review, scottberkun, technology

Brick

Brendan: I won’t waste your time: you don’t know me.
Laura: I know everyone, and I have all the time in the world.

Film noir is an inferred genre, born out of the combination of French film criticism and pulp detective novels. The films considered to be classic film noir (from about 1941-1958) were never made as film noir, but as thrillers with low budgets and european directors. The conventions of film noir emerged from the constraints and sensibilities of post-war America with an existential dread casting dark shadows over it all. It’s a purely cinematic genre that draws you in with stories of passion, lust, greed and murder.
With film noir as an inspiration, several generations of filmmakers have either copied or modified the genre to tell their stories. Some of my favourite noir-inspired films come from Joel and Ethan Coen, who have used the ideas, themes and looks in many of their films, but most notably in Blood Simple (revisionist noir), Millers Crossing (classic noir), The Big Lebowski (parodic noir), and The Man Who Wasn’t There (revisionist in content, but classic in style).
Great films come from a love of cinema and a respect and admiration for the craft of making a film. It was a pleasant surprise when I found out that the path that led Rian Johnson to write his film Brick began with Millers Crossing. What elevates Millers Crossing (and Brick) above an exercise or homage is the respect and love for the source material. It’s simultaneously serious and a bit funny, just like the best noir. Millers Crossing is probably my favourite film and it’s one of those films that is perfect with not a frame out of place. A well-crafted film is a joy to watch again and again as you can get a bit more out of it every time.
Johnson went back to the novels of Dashiell Hammett and started the journey back to “Brick” there. He changed the seedy underworld of Hammett to the similarly closed and somewhat strange world of high school. Both have the sense of doom and existential dread and both are filled with competing interests that force you to make choices. It’s filled with wonderful shooting, performances, sound design, editing and dialogue. The plot is twisted and hard to keep up with, but the pacing of the film gives you chances to breathe with more visual or sonic breaks.
The language is stylized and follows the classic noir conventions and it works very well. Maybe a new frontier to explore in film is language, speech and dialogue. Sally Potter‘s iambic pentameter in Yes raised what could have been melodrama into something more. Rian Johnson’s Brick similarly uses a peculiar way of speaking to merge noir and teen drama into something more than an homage. The best films come from those who love cinema and want to share that love by telling a story through images and sound. Johnson finds the heart of noir and lovingly shares that world with us, making it new again.

May 1, 2006 brick, film, filmnoir, review, rianjohnson

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