Hornbull Reviews

The Blackout (2009)

Pretty mundane

[2/10 · 9 November 2009]

In a creature feature, the atmosphere and setting play part of the biggest role. The apartment building and the basement setting are pretty weak. The opening was kind if interesting, but once we got into the apartment itself, the movie went downhill pretty quickly. There are very few quality moments in this, and the fact of the matter is that the story, acting and overall attempt at horror with this movie was pretty thrown together.

The CGI didn't blend well with the live action footage, and the creatures themselves looked wooden and lifeless. The girls were good looking, but none of the characters were given even a modicum of development in order to care about their fates. The frenetic pace of the action was confusing, and there The only good things about The Blackout was the musical score which wasn't half bad, and a couple of the shots were quality. Overall, a PASS!

Hope and Glory (1987)

Jolly good Boorman; Quite right old' bean!

[8/10 · 23 October 2009]

Hope and Glory is an apt title for a movie about the injustices of war and the triumph of the human spirit.

Based on the childhood of John Boorman and his family's experiences during the German blitz of London, a young British boy watches his world change from the violence of war. Dateline 1939; Britain is forced into the European war by an advancing German Reich, things at home are expected to remain much the same no matter what the problems that Churchill announces over the radio. The novelty of your friends and neighbor's houses exploding around you, and the newness of your friends and neighbors surviving the war effort is all fodder for the imagination of a young child. The true beauty of this film is the humanity that emerges in difficult situations. When you suffer as a nation, your individual problems become those of your neighbors and vice versa. The horrors and wonders of war can never overcome the indomitable British spirit

As the story advances the piles of destroyed houses stack up, and the devastation becomes more and more a playground for the young children. Collecting shrapnel, amassing wartime rumors of 'Ze Germans,' and stealing as many shiny baubles they can collect, the children have built their own mini empire out of the rubble. Their sole purpose in the mountains of rock and ruin that used to be their suburban houses is "Total Destruction"; a game of ruining anything that hasn't already been upset by the constant rain of ordinance.

Proper British attitudes are being pushed to the wayside in the wake of the unknown. The father returns from training and notices a new found wildness to his son. The mother feels that "This war has put an end to decent things." as well as the rest of the nation echoes the father's view of a changing Britain. Holding onto the norms of living and managing the little things the way they've always done become almost impossible when the world itself won't let you. "I curse you, volt, watt and amp!" The grandfather declares, whilst viewing the power lines of progress. This film shines a light on the corner of the war that marked not only a turning point for humanity, but also a turning point for industry, capitalism and traditionalism.

Boorman's genius in this movie is when he is slipping in the adult moments. When Billy asks who pays for the Big Bertha shells flying across the English Channel, Uncle Max's reply is "We will, you will… the rest of our lives." The adult conversations that the children overhear give us a quality view of a historical moment. Billy watches from his roost at the top of the stairs as the familiar scenes from childhood are played out in front of a more sinister and nihilistic backdrop of war. Tipsy parents bidding their friends good evening becomes a tear filled moment of intense love and forlornness. A father brings a tin of jam home that becomes a debate on German policy. What would be a normal mother/daughter argument about boys and teenage love, turns into something a little direr when the response is "we could die any moment"

But always from the eyes of the young does the "slice of life" events unfold in Hope and Glory; National announcements are ignored because a doll's eyes won't close; A day at the beach surrounded by shrapnel; The daughter's passionate puppy-love story with a lonely Canadian corporal; The grandfather's recounting of his life's loves; The everyday occurrences that seem so mundane become vital to realizing the frailty of life and the bitterness of sacrificing your values in the face of a national crisis. Boorman captures the innocence that the Second World War stole from the world and shows us the lives that war steals are only accountable to the people that let them die.

Hostel (2005)

Sicker and Twisted version, NOT sicker OR more twisted

[6/10 · 4 May 2006]

I just watched the DVD and saw that there isn't ANYTHING different about this version versus the original version. It was billed as an UNRATED version, but there is NOTHING different about it. save yourself the agony of trying to figure out where it deviates from the original by bypassing it. I LOVED the movie in the theaters, but am sorely disappointed that i was scammed into buying this 'different' DVD. The movie itself was enjoyably tense, and the gore was enough to turn even the stoutest stomach. it was all in all a quality movie with subtle undercurrents of emotional vulnerability and a corporate world that buys and sells flesh for the taking. I wouldn't bash the movie if i could, but i am disappointed in the DVD. Guys it's NOT a bad thing to shoot your wad before the 'fifth anniversary' version or the 'Platinum' edition or the 'master gold leaf and free finger' version.

Sad Sad Sad

The Couple in the Cage (1993 Video)

Couple In The Cage - Dugan McShain

[9/10 · 14 February 2006]

Dugan McShain

Anthropological Film Comments on La Pareja Enjaulada (The Couple in the Cage)

A century ago people were more interesting exhibits than animals. If you had a native from some far off land, you could make a fortune peddling their freakishness around rural America and Europe; stopping in bars and taverns or at fairgrounds, just so that people could ogle your strange savage.

The organizers of the worlds Colombian Exposition in Chicago set up one of these 'exotic creatures' exhibits. 100 years later and the practice can still draw a crowd. Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena locked themselves in a ten foot by ten foot gilded cage, and present themselves as a recently discovered tribe off the coast of Mexico. They were the inhabitants of a small Caribbean island, a "lost" isle.

The anthropology documentary that they made raises interesting questions and important issues about race and culture. It includes interviews with audience members from throughout the world who got a chance to see the strange creatures cavort for the low price of entry into their local museum. The couple had agreed to display themselves as people had been in the 19th and 20th centuries. Intercut with archival footage of humans displayed in cages and on leashes, perceived as freaks and curiosities.

The couple's discoveries of people's perceptions concern racial, ethnic, and Hispanic/Latino, identity in particular. "In this project the Coco Fusco and I did a parody of the great traveling "multicultural" exhibitions of principles of the 1900, revealing their inherent political contradictions, by means of the violent juxtaposition, although comedian, of true pre-Columbian and colonial art, with examples of tourist art and contemporary conceptual work."-(Guillermo Gómez-Peña: Text/Archive, Hemispheric Institute)

While the artists' intent was to create a satirical commentary on the notion of discovery, and colonization, they soon realized that many of their viewers actually believed the ruse. These 'modern' people all believed that the two were real and were actually long lost savages. "One is to articulate, to visualize and to anthropomorphism to the monsters that the same public projects when trying to include/understand or simply to enjoy another culture, in our case, the Mexican and the baffle plate."-(Guillermo Gómez-Peña: Text/Archive, Hemispheric Institute)

The record in the film about their interactions with audiences in four different countries exemplifies the fact that there is a long history of cross-cultural misunderstanding that still permeates our society today. Archival footage of the past ethnographic displays gives a historical dimension of truth to the otherwise almost laughable display. The couple in the cage is a powerful blend of comic fiction and a reflection on the morality of treating humans as exotic animals.

Americans have in the past couple of hundred years come to think of themselves as white; a category that they use to distinguish themselves apart from their own ethnic backgrounds and against racial 'others'. This significant other is used as a measuring stick on which we would like to measure ourselves.

The other is needed to proclaim us better, stronger, smarter and more importantly more cultured. And since the other is usually from a society that has little to do with our customs and practices it has typically been easy to judge ourselves as better than these people. Using morals, ethics and an inflated sense of importance that we have given to ourselves. In the film, the tourists are directed to take pictures, and to donate money to the savages in return for cultural dances, and other telltale 'odd' activities.

Some of the viewers were extremely confused, others; privy to the satire thought it an excellent way for people to realize what hundreds of years of colonization and cultural imperialism has done to societies the world over.

Surprisingly, more Europeans were fooled than any other nation. This may be because of a greater distance between Mexico and Europe, creating a larger gap of knowledge. Or possibly because the issue of multi-race varied background relations is more prevalent in Northern America. One girl interviewed wept openly in a display of sadness over the injustices visited on the peoples of the world in the name of entertainment and progress on the various people that the couple represented.

"It is in field work that the Anthropologist is perhaps like the playwrights he observes human behavior and looks for that which is significant either in itself or by comparison with other forms of behavior." -(pg.258 Picturing Culture Turnbull 1979:2 Ruby) It is satirical plays that hold a larger thrall over our life. We are not sure how to interpret a performance, so we prescribe certain traits to it to make it more homogeneous and help ourselves swallow it.

Satire like so many forms of comedy expresses freely the feelings which are too harsh or dangerous to acknowledge if the two stood there and ranted on about the injustices of the world they would never have had such a lasting impression on the audiences that observed them. Their performances therefore were designed to be subtler and seat themselves in institutes of higher learning.

There's was a message designed for "Everyman", it was designed for a crowd of people whom the actors knew could appreciate and dissect the message that they saw in an environment fit for proper discussion of a difference in cultures. Emphatically, the "Couple in the Cage" triumphs because of subtlety... not simply because they went after the brain's of their audience instead of their ears. But because the message they portray is one of hope.

Chronicle of a Summer (1961)

Dugan McShain - Chronicle of a Summer - or - Chronicle of film marketing in 1960's France

[14 February 2006]

Dugan McShain Anthropological Film Chronicle of a summer Chronique d'un été

Filmmaker Jean Rouch, in coordination with sociologist Edgar Morin, create a story out of seemingly random interviews and anecdotes. Together they create a piece that describes life in Paris circa 1961, they converse with their friends and associates about life, the current war in Algeria, and the mindset of the daily life of Parisians. Using the newly available 16mm camera they set out to do what no one had done before them: try and capture daily life and discuss it. They talk at length about politics, arguing on film, and discuss, both during the film and at the end when the filmmakers show their finished work to the participants and have them dissect it.

They give feedback, feelings and talk about the characters, describing what worked and didn't, what felt real and what seemed contrived. The people that they interview are across the board when looked at socioeconomically, intellectually, and racially, providing alternate views about the problems faced, the stories that they needed to tell to the camera and the trials that were associated with their lives.

I was, to say the least disappointed with the final product that was shown. As I was watching the film there came a scene where the two filmmakers are discussing their participation and the feat that they had just accomplished with the finished film ready to be shown. It was a very intimate scene where it seemed as if both of the filmmakers were unaware that they were being filmed and as such proceeded to expound on the principles, and the theory of making an anthropological film.

It was half way through this conversation that I realized that they staged this discussion not as a candid frank debate but as a 'realistic end cap' to put on their film to add flair and realism. What seemed at first as a novel approach to film-making came off more as a clever marketing ploy, using the audience as a sounding board, and bringing the audience closer to the subject matter of the film through the use of intimacy.

The filmmakers opted for participation in the film instead of the typical vein of anonymity. Reflexivity is a device that is used to vary the distance from a subject, giving the idea that the filmmakers, the product and everything that goes along with it a unity in the production. This style is self-serving in that the filmmakers could be seen prompting the subjects and providing a direct line of questions that they could use to form a solid piece. In the court of law this is called 'leading the witness' in order to get the desired answers that you seek, as opposed to the answers that come naturally from a subject matter that is brought up.

Rouch gives specific questions that lend themselves to specific answers. "I would argue that most anthropologists implicitly believe content should so dominate form in scientific writing that the form and style of an ethnography appears to "naturally" flow out from the content." - (Ruby, Studies in the anthropology of Visual Communication, Pg 106,Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1975). In providing specific questions, they do not let the life naturally 'flow' but instead impede it at their own will destroying the illusion that they have created. These filmmakers seem almost like they wish to participate in the very spectacle they wish to show, and cannot distance themselves from the subjects for fear of losing notoriety.

Morin and Rouch are extremely open to their subjects, providing valuable insight into their minds, as well as the minds of the people whom they are interviewing. This certainly provides for honesty in front of the camera creating a cushion of comfort for the subjects so that the camera does not seem to interfere as much a simply record. In certain scenes it seemed as if we were an observer regarding these people with a cold unfeeling eye. The argument in the hallway for example. This does not lend itself to a self-conscious conversation.

There are moments in the film that do seem very contrived however. There is a scene of a woman walking through the streets of Paris along with her walking we hear her telling the story of her father's internment and her own in a Nazi death camp. This is obviously a scripted scene. It lends itself to disbelief when we see that she is walking, lost in thought. The technique of us hearing those thoughts is vital to this disbelief.

The film-making was excellent at times, as I said, giving the sensation of an omniscient- floating eyeball, observing the people at their daily lives. This feeling is ruined however when we are privy to the Rouch's and Morin's conversation on what they feel the outcome of the film represents. It creates a feeling of false voyeurism then, incompatible with the sensitive proximity that we have just watched. The scene in the theater when he shows the characters dissecting each other is especially grating as it lends it self even more to a Dali-esquire surrealism where the characters are watching themselves as we watch them.

The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003)

Another brilliant movie from Beat Takashi

[8 October 2004]

Kitano "Beat" Takashi is one of the finest actors and directors to come out of Japan since the glorious days of Kirosawa. As a director, he has imbued this historical drama with the love and care dedicated to few films. As an actor his understanding of tension and timing has evoked a brilliant piece of film. He is not overbearing with his emotions, his quiet humility and perseverance carry him through tests seemingly impossible.

The focus of this film is on two geishas trying to avenge the death of their family. They come across the blind swordsman Zatoichi and he agrees to help them on their quest to discover the depths of deception and greed that has haunted them throughout their hard life. Surrounding their quest is the shadowy world of the gangs that rule the small town. As Kurosawa did in Yojimbo; Takashi does in Zatoichi, turning this blind swordsman into a heroic representation of grace and human achievement under pressure.

The settings are vibrant and simple, the colors used express the lively life that seems to elude many of the common people that the movie focuses on. In true classic Japanese film tradition, the honor of the main character is beset by the corruption of officials and their lackeys. Kitano plays the role with a note of humor, he is laughing at the absurdity of the world and seems to barley be able to support the weight of knowing the extent of evil in the world. He is slow and quiet while talking, and vicious and lightning quick when angered. he never loses his temper, instead focusing his anger on those evil men that plague us all.

Several musical scenes call upon the rich history of music in the Japanese culture, as well as symbolically representing the full circle of life that the peasants and farmers follow. The peasants stomping the rice in the muddy field, the construction of a house and a huge lively dance number at the end convey life continuing and healing taking place. The editing is incredible and the characterization is vivid. The rain that he frequently uses to set the mood becomes a character all its own. The small roles and supporting characters of the film are not throw away roles, but vibrant lively studies into the surrounding cast that help make this movie into a valuable slice of life in old Japan.

Takashi Kitano uses the story of revenge to drive the main characters towards their inevitable final battle and focuses the poverty and opulence of old Japan like a laser cutting through the issues of humanity and culture to find truth. The tragedy you feel at the trials of this blind man and the fury that his enemies exact on the town's populous is a sword blade that you feel against your own neck. These problems are not foreign, they are the everyday problems of life, farming, humanity and people. Blind Swordsman Zatoichi at first seems like a simple story of swordplay, revenge and murder, but turns out to be about the very essence of what makes people bond together in society and roll the wheel of time ever onward.