Cinephiliacs Continues

If you've been here and been under a rock, you may have missed my new podcast, The Cinephiliacs, in which I've interviewing the great cinephiles of our time. Check out episode one with Glenn Kenny (plus a discussion of Antonioni's Blow-Up), and just released, episode two with Matt Zoller Seitz (with his very convincing argument about the greatness of Born on the Fourth of July).

Screening Log: Time Travel Edition

            Oh dear, how far behind are we here? I don’t want to defend my lack of screening logs (we’re now three weeks behind), but as you may have noticed, it’s been a big couple weeks for LabuzaMovies, and now with a whole new project getting launched, I may have fallen off the boat for a bit. But we’re back, baby!

-Limelight, 1952. Directed by Charlie Chaplin. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-The Steel Helmet, 1951. Directed by Sam Fuller. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-The Life of Oharu, 1952. Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-The Earrings of Madame De…, 1953. Directed by Max Ophüls. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-Born on the Fourth of July, 1989. Directed by Oliver Stone. DVD.

-Margaret (Extended Edition), 2011. Directed by Kenneth Lonergan. DVD Projection at Landmark Sunshine.

-Daises, 1966. Directed by Věra Chytilová .35mm projection at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

-The Battle of Algiers, 1966. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-One from the Heart, 1982. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. 35mm projection at Museum of the Moving Image.

-Rear Window, 1954. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 35mm projection at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

-Play Misty for Me, 1971. Directed by Clint Eastwood. 35mm projection at Film Forum

-The Sugarland Express, 1974. Directed by Steven Spielberg. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-The Clock, 2011. Directed by Christian Marclay. Digital Projection at Lincoln Center.

Savages: Drug Problem

Savages

Directed By: Oliver Stone

Written By: Oliver Stone, Don Winslow, and Shane Salerno, based on a novel by Winslow

Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Blake Lively, Benicio Del Toro, John Travolta, Salma Hayek, Demian Bichir, and Emile Hirsch

Director of Photography: Dan Mindel, Editors: Joe Hutshing, Sturart Levy, and Alex Marquez, Production Designer: Tomas Voth, Original Music: Adam Peters

            Oliver Stone’s cinematic sensibilities are equivalent to a sledgehammer to the face—Subtlety is not his forte. His camera is constantly moving, changing shades of colors and hues, flashing between them, and his soundtrack filled with a mix of rock and roll as well as intense classical, all to pummel you into submission. When Stone goes off the rails, most notably in films like JFK and Nixon, it brings you into the paranoia and intensity of the characters he focuses on. When he pulls it back, even just a little bit, it reveals the shallowness of his filmmaking. Wall Street and Platoon have not aged well to say the least, and dear goodness let’s not remember World Trade Center, which turned 9/11 into a Lifetime movie.

            So perhaps we should be happy that in Savages, Stone has returned to the intense filmmaking that has made him an auteur (Would he be Expressive Esoterica or Strained Seriousness?). Or perhaps not. Based on a Don Winslow novel, Savages is a drug movie, which could be a good ol’ summer shoot-em-up if it wasn’t for Stone’s operatic sensibilities. It begins with a draining voiceover by Blake Lively, whose name is Ophelia but goes by the name O (The other Hamlet reference is all the dead bodies). She explains that she’s the lover of Chon and Ben, who provide Laguna Beach with the world’s finest marijuana (“The THC levels are 33%” they exclaim, which means nothing to this non-smoker). O uses a little of each for both—Chon (Taylor Kitsch) is the brawny, military man who has “wargasms,” while Ben (Aaron Johnson) is the hippie free spirit who wants to help the world with $10 laptops and solar panels when he’s not getting rich.