Feb 5 – 11
Film(s) watched:
- Le Mans (1971)
- Bullitt (1968)
- Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
- The Terrorizers (1986)
- The Love Bug (1968)
Book(s) read:
- Up in the Air by Walter Kirn
Screenplay(s) read: none
Films:
Le Mans
Director Lee H. Katzin and Steve McQueen trusted that the inherent beauty of racing would be enough to captivate viewers of a feature length motion picture. They were right. Le Mans is shot like a documentary with minimal dialogue. We are immersed in the race and it’s fascinating. With so few scenes with dialogue, whenever a character speaks, the scene takes on added significance. The poignant scene where the female lead asks McQueen about why racers race gives meaning to all the racing in the entire film.
Bullitt
Unlike the scene with the female lead in Le Mans that elevates the film, the scene with the female lead in Bullitt brings the film down from excellent to just very good. The entire film is about this taciturn cop doing his job. This “girlfriend” subplot doesn’t really belong in the first place. The long scene where she tells him that she doesn’t understand his world is just too on-the-nose to work.
When you talk about Bullitt, you have to mention that famous car chase in San Francisco. And it’s a great chase.
Smokey and the Bandit
One of Burt Reynolds’ many “redneck” car movies. The plot is simple, almost simple minded, but the movie is actually quite entertaining. Jokes are of the low brow type, and some are funnier than intended. As Bandit puts it perfectly, “When you tell somebody something, it depends on what part of the United States you’re standin in, as to just how dumb you are.”
The Terrorizers - directed by Edward Yang
The most “urban” of the three Taiwanese New Wave directors (the other two are Hou Hsiao Hsien and Tsai Ming Liang), Edward Yang is strangely the least known outside of Asia. It’s a shame that only one of Edward Yang’s films is available on DVD in the U.S.. That film, Yi Yi (now available as a Criterion Collection DVD), is a masterpiece epic of everyday life small moments. In fact, most of Yang’s films are about everyday life small moments.
The Terrorizers has a complex, multi-thread, and fragmented narrative and it challenges the viewers to solve the puzzle. It is often (wrongly, I think) compared to Antoinoni’s Blow Up, mainly because each film has a photographer and a mysterious murder. When asked in an interview, Yang brushed aside that notion, and talked about his admiration for the works of Resnais and Pialat, which I actually see greater resemblance to Yang’s style.
The Love Bug
The Love Bug, the first in the Herbie franchise, is a moderately fun Disney movie for kids.
Book:
Up in the Air - a novel by Walter Kirn
Up in the Air, the movie, was one of my favorite films of 2009, and it is actually better than the book. Directed by Jason Reitman from a script by Reitman and Sheldon Turn, the film distills the best quality of the novel and adds subplots and details that actually strengthens the story and the character. Up in the Air, the novel, has a good first 100 pages or so but slowly loses steam.
Pick of the Week:
The Terrorizers – A close one. Le Mans is great but Edward Yang’s The Terrorizers is a masterpiece.
2010:
Total films watched: 43
Total books read: 1 – Yay! finally read a book!
Total screenplays read: 3
I just saw “Up in the Air” the movie this weekend. I was curious how the book was. Its rare that the movie version of a book is better than the book itself.
I think “Up in the Air” is one of the rare movies.
Did you like the movie?
The book is quite interesting in the beginning, but I think it loses focus and meanders after a while. It has a stream of consciousness narrative and it deals with some of the less interesting aspects of the character, like his drug taking. The movie, on the other hand, adds the protege subplot which better illustrates his career predicament and it has a clearer narrative on the Alex character. Since the movie is not a 1st person narrative, we actually have richer supporting characters. I also like the film’s ending better too. The book ends quite abruptly, but the film ending completes the character’s transformation and still has an openendedness to it.