Screening Log: Ignorance is Bliss Edition

            It’s a short screening log this week, but I’m excited to see Dan Sallitt’s The Unspeakable Act tonight at BAMcinemaFest (as long as my train back to NYC is on time). I briefly met Sallitt a month ago and I’ve considered him one of the most intelligent critics whenever I read it work. Here’s a piece he wrote on Julia Leigh’s The Sleeping Beauty, which is much more eloquent than mine. And here’s a nice Wall Street Journal profile on Sallitt, which also quotes my Personal Recommendation Machine^TM Bilge Ebiri.

-Blowup, 1966. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. DVD.

-Duck, You Sucker!, 1971. Directed by Sergio Leone. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-The Ruthless Four, 1968. Directed by Giorgio Capitani. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-Horrible Bosses, 2010. Directed by Seth Gordon. HBO.  

Brave: The Greatest Courage Is One of Love

Brave

Directed By: Michael Andrews and Brenda Chapman

Written By: Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Brenda Chapman, and Irene Mecchi, from a story by Chapman

Starring: (the voices of) Kelly MacDonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly, and Julie Walters.

Editor: Nicholas C. Smith, Original Music: Patrick Doyle

            For all its fantastic characters, inventive narratives, and ability to make me open tear ducts I wasn’t even aware I had, the most impressive part of the Pixar brand today for me is its seamless ability to truly design visual storytelling. No longer can we watch animation without thinking of the shot structure, editing patterns, and mise-en-scene like the ways we consider in films made without the aid of computers (which, of course, is very few these days). Especially in Pixar’s Brave, their latest film, I found myself constantly tracking the “camera placement,” for something that wasn’t even there. Pixar has continually pushed the mold of what animation can mean, it certainly shows off the company’s ability to use animation not as an end but as a medium, even if Brave isn’t as “groundbreaking” as the company’s previous entries.

            It’s tough when you are Pixar—so many of their films have literally pushed the bar, that when something as solid and well crafted as Brave comes along, the gut reaction is to attack it for not being the equivalent of the Sistine Chapel. What does come up slightly disappointing is that Brave, which has been highly publicized as the first Pixar film to feature a female protagonist, is the film’s rough edges.