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Kada sam uzeo da gledam film WHEELS OF TERROR poznat još i kao MISFIT BRIGADE, očekivao sam da će to biti jedan od zanimljivih primera marginalnih filmova snimanih u SFRJ. U tome me je učvrstio i marginalni profil samog filma koji je prošao gotovo nezapaženo u vreme kada je izašao iako u njemu ima i poznatih glumaca, a i reditelj je relativno priznat.

Međutim, ono što sam dobio kao gledalac jeste jedan zaista odličan film koji zauzima važno mesto u filmografiji naslova koji se bave Drugim svetskim ratom. Gledao sam puno filmova o WW2, ali MISFIT BRIGADE je u to iskustvo uneo jako puno toga novog i dobrog.

Ovaj film je režirao ozbiljan reditelj Gordon Hessler. On je jedan od iskusnijih reditelja koji su sa televizije ušli u žanrovski film. Snimio je nekoliko vrlo efektnih filmova sa Vincent Priceom, niz zanimljivih trilera a karijeru je završio radeći borilačke filmove sa Sho Koshugijem.

WHEELS OF TERROR je snimao u punoj zrelosti, u svojoj 57. godini i u ovaj film je doneo veliko iskustvo koje se vidi na ekranu.

Film je pisao iskusan holivudski scenarista Nelson Gidding koji je posle dana u A-produkciji spao na saradnju sa Hesslerovom B-ekipu ali je i dalje donosio kvalitet po kome je bio poznat i u svojim high profile danima. Film je baziran na romanu Svena Hassela i mogao bi se definistai kao nemački DIRTY DOZEN.

Dakle, film govori o grupi nemačkih otpadnika na IStočnom forntu koji se nalaze u kaznenoj jedinici i dobijaju najteže zadatke, ali s druge strane i oni su vragolani tako da ne ostaju dužni svojim starešinama. U trenutku kada se Treći Rajh i kada u rat šalju čak i tinejdžere, ova skupina dobija samoubilačku misiju da uništi jednu železničku kompoziciju iza neprijateljskih linija.

U ovom filmu glavni junaci su Nemci. Iako je nacizam prikazan kao jedna zla i apsurdna ideologija, nemački junaci su otpadnici i prikazani su kao simpatični. U filmu oni ratuju sa Rusima koji nisu prikazani kao topovsko meso, imaju relativan karakter kao protivnici, ali sasvim je jasno da je ciljano da publika bude na strani ovih junaka, iako su Nemci.

Međutim, ono što je prva novina jeste da Nemce glume američki glumci na američkom akcentu tako da nema onih nekih fejk akcenata kojima se opisuje da nisu Amerikanci i to daje još dodatnu prisnost njihovim karakterima i smanjuje distancu sa publiku. Oliver Reed takođe glumi, i on igra na svom britanskom akcentu. Ovakav postupak se jako sreće. Naime, iako Nemci u američkim filmovima mahom igraju na engleskom obično imaju neki opterećujući akcenat. Ukoliko se već koristi ta konvencija onda je bolje da svaki glumac koristi svoj prirodni izgovor jer to zaista doprinosi spontanosti glume.

U filmu glumi i dosta naših glumaca i to iz jako dobrih generacija tako da recimo u samoj jedinici prominentnu ulogu imaju Slavko Štimac i Branko Vidaković. Oni glume na engleskom, dubbovani su, međutim u njihovoj mimici se ne oseća jezička barijera, oni se ponašaju kao da im je maternji jezik isti onaj kojim govore američki glumci. Zanimljivu rolu i najupečatljiviju u ovom kontigentu ima Andrija Maričić, a nešto manje zapažen u jedinici je i Boris Komnenić.

Naravno, američki glumci imaju noseće uloge, ali i naši sasvim dobro rade svoje zadatke i donose dosta kvaliteta. U manjim ulogama se mogu videti i tada još mladi Dragan Bjelogrlić, Goran Radaković, Milenko Zablaćanski, a Vladan Dujović je čak efektan kao SS podoficir.

Od naših glumaca zaista nisam očekivao ovakav kvalitet, a mislim da su mladi Bane Vidaković i Bule Goncić iskoristili maksimum od svojih fizionomija.

Pored tada već ocvalih zvezda David Carradinea i Olivera Reeda koji imaju sporedne uloge, glumačka podela je vrlo hip. Glavnu ulogu ima stara hipi ikona Bruce Davison, a tu su još i Jay O. Sanders i David Patrick Kelly. Ova podela je u suštini vrlo indie.

WHEELS OF TERROR donosi mnoštvo jako dobro realizovane akcije. Na početku filma postoji jedna od retkih tenkovskih bitaka privoljenih na celuloid. Moram priznati da je Hessler maestralno režirao ovu sekvencu, i do kraja filma postoje još dve sjajne akcione sekvence.

Hessler je u rediteljskom konceptu modernizovao pristup WW2 filmu. Umesto konvencionalne akcije koja je bila svojstvena za WW2 film sa junacima nasuprot hordi dezorijentisanih protivnika (nemam ništa protiv toga ali 1987. to jeste već passe), on pravi scene u kojima su svi učesnici bitke proaktivni, nema lakih rešenja, bitke uključuju dosta taktike i što se samog koncepta akcije tiče WHEELS OF TERROR je vrlo sofisticiran film.

Iako na planu tehničke opreme, WHEELS OF TERROR nije mnogo autentičniji od naših WW2 filmova, dakle ima tu dosta opreme JNA koja igra opremu Vermahta, ipak, film je mnogo autentičniji od italijanskih WW2 exploitationa. Partizanski film je bio veliko obeležje naše kinematografije i nesumnjivo je SFRJ bila pravo mesto za njihovo snimanje.

Međutim, narečena indie podela ima i dosta poptuno off the wall situacija koje igra. Naime, sa dezideoligovanim junacima, Hessler nudi jedan dosta relaksiraniji pogled na rat i pokazuje kako izgleda kada su junaci ratnog filma napaljeni otpadnici kojima je samo bitno da izvuku živu glavu i snađu se za neki seks i alkohol. Štaviše, film bi se mogao nazvati DUŠMANI.

I u pojedinim scenama glumci stvarno brilljiraju.

Prava je šteta što WHEELS OF TERROR nije mejdžor film i što ga još uvek niko istinski bitan na svetskom nivou nije revalorizovao. Ipak, mislim da je vreme na njegovoj strani.

Kad je reč o snimanju u SFRJ, dosta naših ljudi je radilo na ovom filmu. Vladislav Lašić je radio scenografiju koja je zaista odlična a još je važnije to što je DP bio Đorđe Nikolić, poznat i pod nadimkom Đoka Poltron koji je uradio fantastičan posao. Nikolić je što se mene tiće jedan od naših najvažnijih DPjeva, on je bio saradnik Ace Đorđevića na OTPISANIMA a to je zaista bio vrhunski poduhvat. Na neki način čovek se oseti ponosnim što je deo kontinuiteta naše kinematografije kada vidi da su ljudi odavde sporadično umeli da isporuče zaista vrhunske stvari.

WHEELS OF TERROR je film koji iskreno preporučujem, i to ne samo kao fiks dok očekujemo INGLORIOUS BASTARDS.

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"Die Hard" director John McTiernan will have a chance to withdraw his guilty plea in a Hollywood wiretapping case that got him sentenced to four months in federal prison.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered a new hearing on McTiernan's motion, which a judge rejected last year.

McTiernan, who is free on bail, pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about his association with disgraced private eye Anthony Pellicano.

Pellicano was convicted of bugging phones of celebrities and others to get information for his clients.

McTiernan, who has admitted he paid Pellicano to conduct an illegal wiretap, argued he had inadequate legal representation when he made the plea.

Mogo bi da mi taj Vilz ov teror spržiš nekom sledećom prilikom pošto sam u mladosti pročitao nekoliko Hasselovih romana, uključujući i ovaj (kod nas preveden kao Oklopnici Smrti) i to je onako, dopadljivo palpoidno omažiranje Remarku (pre svega) i Hemingveju (donekle). Nema preterane literarne kvalitete ali lepo se čita. A iz opisa filma deluje mi kao da bi mi i on prijao na sličan način.

Donosim ti sutra WHEELS OF TERROR. Na istom mixu imaćeš i TAKEN kao film koji zaslužuje punu pažnju i još ponešto.

Inače, WHEELS OF TERROR sam sinoć potražio u jednom dosta solidnom vodiču kroz ratne filmove Aluna Evansa, našao sam ga, i sasvim očekivano, bio je krajnje negližozno tretiran.

Republicans in biz feel stifled, bullied
Conservatives claim their politics can have consequences
By Paul Bond

Oct 19, 2008, 10:00 PM ET

Updated: Oct 20, 2008, 04:39 PM ET

Kelsey Grammer, left, and Victoria Jackson (Getty Images photos)

Related
Chetwynd: 'I stuck out like a sore thumb'
THR's Political Theater blog  
At a recent event for Republicans in Hollywood, an actress was asked whether she had ever worn her pro-Sarah Palin pin to an audition.

"You must be joking!" she said with a laugh, adding, "But I see Obama stuff all the time."

It's no secret that the entertainment industry is overwhelmingly liberal -- political donations this presidential cycle from the movie, TV and music industries recently were running about 86% Democrat versus 14% Republican. But being outnumbered is one thing, but being bullied by your liberal co-workers into keeping your opinions to yourself is quite another.

Is that what's going on? Yes, say many of the industry's conservatives. That's why secret organizations with such names as "SpeakEasy" and "The Sunday Night Club" spring up every so often. They're not conservative per se, they just let it be known that attendees of their gatherings may freely discuss politics without being chastised for not toeing the liberal line.

"Are you kidding me? Of course it's true," Kelsey Grammer said when asked whether the town is hostile to conservatives. "I wish Hollywood was a two-party town, but it's not."

Grammer said he knows of a makeup trailer that sported a sign warning Republicans to keep out and of U.S. war veterans who keep their backgrounds a secret from their Hollywood co-workers because they hear them belittle the military.

He even said that, earlier in his career, his job was threatened by a prominent sitcom director who demanded he donate money to Barbara Boxer's U.S. Senate campaign. To keep his job, he gave $10,000 to Boxer and the Democrats.

Nowadays, Grammer is a bankable actor who is unafraid to speak his mind. His advice to less established industry players, though, is to shut up about politics -- "unless you think the way you are supposed to think," and that means liberal.

Unlike Grammer, most Hollywood conservatives appear to be of the closeted variety. "I know every liberal at work and don't know any conservatives because they never speak up," a longtime executive at Warner Bros. said.

However, there are many who are trying to make Hollywood more accommodating to political diversity. Andrew Breitbart is one. At his Breitbart.com, he's launching a "Big Hollywood" blog with 40 industry conservatives tasked with -- among other things -- highlighting liberal intolerance.

"There's an undeniably vicious attitude against those who dissent," Breitbart said. "Hollywood is the most predictable place on the planet, not exclusively because of politics but because of narrow-mindedness."

Breitbart maintains that liberals have pushed conservatives too hard in Hollywood and that Americans have noticed. His intent is "to stop the bullying."

One "Big Hollywood" blogger is Andrew Klavan, an accomplished novelist-screenwriter who made a splash with a Wall Street Journal article comparing Batman and the "The Dark Knight" to President Bush and the war on terror.

"It's not easy being different," he said. "The liberals aren't all that liberal. We think they're wrong, but they think we're evil, and they behave like it."

Klavan said a producer, worried that Klavan's political reputation had become common knowledge, asked recently whether he could pitch something Klavan wrote but under an assumed name. Klavan declined.

"I don't want to be the Dalton Trumbo of the right," he said.

If you lean right, pitch to those who are sympathetic, or at least tolerant of conservative viewpoints, Klavan said. Mel Gibson, Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Surnow come to mind.

Klavan also said liberalism seeps into too much Hollywood content nowadays and offers as proof the several anti-Iraq war movies that have been boxoffice bombs.

"These aren't even movies about the war on terror," he said. "They're Vietnam War movies, made by people who sit around at Skybar discussing their pacifist world view."

TV also is too one-sided, he said. "They don't even make fun of Barack Obama," he noted. "How is that possible? The guy's hilarious."

Another "Big Hollywood" blogger is Evan Sayet, whose writing credits include "Win Ben Stein's Money" and "Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher."

Six years ago, while a staff writer for a popular talk show, Sayet said, "I was informed I could not write jokes about ebonics, global warming or any other cause coming from the left."

Nowadays, Sayet heads a conservative comedy troupe called Right to Laugh that performs at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood and similar clubs nationwide.

Even liberals acknowledge that they have an easier time than conservatives in Hollywood.

"The person who will get snickered at and picked on is the one wearing the McCain-Palin button," actor Eric Roberts said. "But that's OK. It's America. A free country. If you're going to stick your neck out, it's gonna get whacked."

"You just said liberals discriminate more than conservatives," interrupted his wife, Eliza, an actress and casting director.

But the couple maintain that taking any passionate political position -- right or left -- can be difficult. They recalled when Eric was a guest on "The O'Reilly Factor" and, after returning to the set of the TV show he was working on, a producer told him: "We're doing a TV show here. We don't need that kind of politicizing. Don't go public with your views."

He noted, though, that the admonition came from a like-minded liberal whose concern was for maintaining high ratings. Nevertheless, the experience had a cautioning effect on Roberts.

"I pick my battles now. If you support Sarah Palin, I'd walk away," he said. "I wouldn't chastise you, I'd feel sorry for you."

Beyond the various "secretive" organizations around town, there is the more obvious Hollywood Congress of Republicans. Headed by actor Mark Vafiades, HCR boasts 160 members who meet about nine times a year to socialize and hear from various right-leaning special guests.

At a recent HCR event, "Saturday Night Live" alumna Victoria Jackson, for example, joked that she's probably the only conservative Christian to have kissed both Sean Penn and Alec Baldwin. Then the comedian-gymnast stood on her head until the room agreed to vote for McCain-Palin, which didn't take long.

Although Obama fundraisers are legion in Hollywood and can draw hundreds of moguls, actors, musicians and professional athletes eager to spend time with the senator, McCain's few appearances have been more understated affairs.

The most recent event, in fact, didn't even draw the candidate or his running mate. Instead, spouses Cindy McCain and Todd Palin headlined while comedian Dennis Miller supplied the entertainment.

McCain and Palin don't spend much time in Hollywood -- even to raise money -- because they figure a Republican can't win California. But the party ignores the entertainment capital at its own peril.

"They didn't only write off California, they wrote off our culture," Breitbart said.

Pogledao sam NIJE KRAJ Vinka Brešana. Imao sam pomešana očekivanja jer mi ga je podjednak broj ljudi i pohvalio i pokudio. Moji krajnji utisci su negde između. Štaviše, više su na strani pozitivnog, samo zato što sam malo otupeo na sve one default mane koje dolaze ugrađene u filmove iz ovog regiona.

U tom smislu, gotovo da sam sve ono loše što uračunam u početku gotovo prestao da primećujem a time ovaj film obiluje. Pokušaću prvo da se fokusiram na loše kako bih kasnije priveo komentar kraju sa pozitivnim.  

Ono što nije dobro je prilično nejasan ključ stilizacije. Film evientno pokušava da bude stilizovan, međutim nikada do kraja nisu definisana pravila univerzuma u kome se sve događa. Film je naizmenično stilizovan kao strip a ima i realističnih momenata. Stilizaciju kostima i povremeno scenografije ne prati promena objektiva i to dovodi do prilične konfuzije, na koju sam ja, ruku na srce, navikao.

Isto važi i za nejasnu stilizaciju u scenariju. Kriminalni boss koji citra stihove je potpuno deplasiran u bilo kojoj stilizaciji.

Zatim, naravno, potreba da se u filmu pojave svi žanrovi, ispriča više priča od kojih su mnoge potpuno suvišne. Međutim, u rediteljskom smislu, Brešan podvlači taj paradoks time što neke nevažne cene režira bolje od ključnih. Tako recimo, završna scena sa snajperistima je zaista odlična, iako film nije akcioni triler a ima nekih melodramskih koje su tanke a ključne su za film.

Isto tako u tom nabacivanju raznih priča, film povremeno postaje konfuzan i gubi svoj narativni zamajac tako da ima situacija u kojima se priča ukopa i pokazuje kako je Brešanov omiljeni dramaturški metod digresja. Voice-overi, iako nude poneku dobru repliku su potpuno suvišni i moglo se bez njih.

Konačno, ceo subplot sa kancerom je redundantan pošto ne nosi nikakvu znakovitost a na kraju ne zaigra u punoj meri (već samo delimično) kao bestidno jeftin ali nesumnjivo efektan emotivni momenat.

No, ono što je pozitivno jeste da film NIJE KRAJ ima prilično zdrav odnos prema ratu. Samom genezom rata, ko je kriv i ko je u pravu se ne bavi. Čak se ne bavi ni time da li je rata trebalo da bude ili ne, da li je opravdan ili nije. Rat je tretiran kao činjenica, i film se bavi jednom pričom koja se tom prilikom odigrala.

S druge strane, film ima par sasvim poštenih momenata koji pokazuju kako nije lako biti Srbin u Hrvatskoj. Ne mogu da kažem kako je sad ovo neki naročito pregnantan film u ideološkom smislu, ali je u svojoj dezideologizovanosti negde sasvim u redu.

Drugo, poslednje je vreme došlo, to znamo, ali Hrvati su masovno počeli da prave "normalnije" i komunikativnije filmove od Srba, ma koliko to nečekivano zvučalo. Hrvati su ranije obično bili pretenciozniji, agresivniji a sada oni prave relaksirani vid filmova koji je bio svojstven našim rediteljima. NIJE KRAJ definitivno jeste nešto iz asortimana hipotetičkog Raše Andrića da je sazreo i odrastao. Kada pogledam ovaj film uz sve njegove mane, to jeste nešto što ima više smisla od Srdanove i Stefanove kvislinške kinematografije. Ovo je naravo tužna konstatacija, ali šta možemo, tako stvoje stvari. Nažalost, uprkos možda čak i plemenitom pokušaju da se naša kinematografija odmakne od lokalne estradne glume, ona ostaje neštonajbolje što naše glumište može da ponudi.

Čak ni Brešan ne može da odoli a da film malo ne zamasti Vojom Brajovićem i hrvatskim komičarima. Ali, to je sve u higijenskim okvirima, ako uzmemo u obzir šta se se sve viša po našim filmovima.

Iako, Herceg ima malo javorovine u svom pristupu, meni je on OK, pošto mi generalno imamo problem sa ovim tipom leading mana, i odavno nisam video u našem miljeu OK ulogu ovog tipa. Nada Šargin je odlična, čak na nekom nivou i fuckable što je za nju prava retkost, barem iz moje vizure Srbende i sirovine.

NIJE KRAJ je dakle gledjiv primer onog podnošljivijeg dela kinematografije nastale raspadom jugoslovenskog filma, ne kao geografske odrednice već kao generalnog estetskog koncepta, što ga svimanama otupelima na njegove nedostatke čini vrlo prijatnim i zanimljivim.

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W: A crude approach is not good for grasping much of anything
By David Walsh
22 October 2008

Directed by Oliver Stone, screenplay by Stanley Weiser

W. is veteran American director Oliver Stone's film about the life and career of President George W. Bush. It was shot and edited rapidly for release while Bush was still in office. The November 4 election was no doubt a consideration as well.

The film is a collection of episodes, broadly written and performed, following Bush from his student days at Yale to the disastrous turn that the Iraq war took for the US in 2003-2004. W. contains two time frames—the first treats Bush's earlier life impressionistically, offering glimpses of him over the course of several decades; the second, dealing with his first years in the White House, dwells at greater length on the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

The pivot of the film occurs in 1986, around the time of his 40th birthday, when Bush "sees the light" and becomes a reborn Christian. The film takes seriously the notion that he conquered his inner demons and made something of himself.

A theme throughout is Bush's conflict and rivalry with his father, George H. W. Bush, congressman, CIA director, vice president and, ultimately, president from 1989 to 1993. We first see the youthful Bush (Josh Brolin), 20 or so, when he's being hazed at a Yale University fraternity house. Later, Bush phones his father (James Cromwell)—now a congressman—from jail, and receives a warning that this had better be the last such incident.

Intercut with that material are scenes of the Bush White House, and in particular, the debate over a prospective war with Iraq following the events of September 2001. Vice President Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (Dennis Boutsikaris) are the most ardent advocates of an invasion, countering the skepticism and reluctance of Secretary of State Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright).

The young Bush carries on, from one escapade to another, eventually meeting his future wife, Laura (Elizabeth Banks), in 1977. Defeated in a run for Congress by a populist Democrat, Bush promises "never to be out-Texased again." In 1986, he moves to Washington, and experiences his conversion. A huckster evangelist, Earle Hudd (Stacy Keach), presides over Bush's change of heart.

Switching once again to the more recent past, Stone's film presents Cheney delivering a lecture on Iraqi and Iranian oil reserves, pointing to the region and the Straits of Hormuz in particular as the "chokepoint of civilization."

The film cuts back in time again, and we see Bush senior presiding over the Gulf War in 1991, making the decision, with which his son disagrees, not to march on Baghdad. George W. announces his plan to run for governor of Texas in 1994, much to his family's consternation.

In 1999, he tells his preacher-advisor, "God wants me to run for president." We jump to 2003 and the fraudulent claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the Hussein regime's efforts to get hold of "yellow cake" uranium ore from Niger. Finally, the invasion occurs and Bush announces "mission accomplished" in May. The fiasco then unfolds.

Oliver Stone has never been a subtle director. He perceives himself, it seems, as someone who strives to treat a given subject in broad strokes. Stone told an interviewer from GQ magazine that, like George W. Bush, he has the tendency not to want "to pay too much attention to details."

The director possesses a lively vulgarity, which he applies to glaringly public and intimate moments alike. Occasionally, this is effective and attractive; here, more often than not, however, it is not.

The references to Bush's fascination with baseball and his aspiration to become the professional sport's commissioner seem about right. He and the world might have been happier. A final scene, in which now-President Bush is unable to answer a simple question from a reporter, as to whether he had made any mistakes or done any soul-searching, is telling. These moments are exceptions.

Malice doesn't seem the clue to the problems in W. so much as great confusion, and ignorance of American social realities.

It is a fallacy to imagine that a crude approach can adequately grasp a crude subject. In general, a crude approach is not good for grasping much of anything. Because Bush is an extremely limited human being doesn't mean that his life and advancement are not bound up with complex questions, or even that his own psychology is an open book. Stone, unhappily, seems most at home with moments of drunkenness, backwardness, unconsciousness. He revels in and savors them.

Stone's and screenwriter Stanley Weiser's Bush is an eternal frat boy, living in the shadow of his father. He's essentially well-intentioned, if unevolved, amiable, but prone to angry outbursts, impulsive. Brolin does an effective impersonation of the public Bush, but it's not clear that we are much further in the direction of understanding the man who would become America's 43rd president.

The film catches largely at externals, in its look, feel and social perceptions. As always, a good deal of effort has gone into making certain that hairdos, clothes, automobiles and furniture correspond to the respective eras.

To explain Bush's trajectory, as W. does, largely on the basis of his unresolved conflict with his father begs the question. Many people have such battles, many, alas, also "find Jesus" at present, many leave off drinking—very, very few are elevated to the White House.

It's true that W. makes obligatory reference to other questions: the pursuit of Iraq's oil reserves, for example. In relation, however, to the significance of that issue and its consequences—1 million or more Iraqis killed, thousands of Americans dead and wounded, a country ruined, a region driven to the brink of a wider war—the scene is relatively perfunctory and formulaic. Cheney is filmed from a distance, and the moment is not likely to linger in the memory.

This isn't what Stone feels most deeply or what interests him, in the end. What's placed in the foreground, in almost perpetual, warts-and-all close-up, are Bush the younger's relations with his father and family. The sequences in the White House, the discussions of war and torture, are fairly flat and unevocative. The film gets its adrenaline pumping almost exclusively during the intra-family squabbles.

Neither element is entirely convincing, because a deeper grasp of the relation between Bush's personality, his family and the larger world of American politics social life eludes the director and screenwriter.

Stone framed his film to an interviewer from the Guardian in the following manner: "How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?" He continued: "He had tremendous personal problems, and I have to give him enormous credit—he did overcome them, through willpower. Whether he solved them is another issue, but he overcame certain states of mind."

This, to put it politely, is inadequate. To put its shallowness in context, one must consider Stone's background.

Born to privilege in a staunchly Republican family, and a fellow student of Bush's at Yale in the 1960s, Stone enlisted in the military and volunteered for combat in Vietnam. The experience shattered and changed him. To his credit, he translated that into two films hostile to US imperialism's intervention in Southeast Asia, Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989).

Vietnam and related events knocked Goldwater Republicanism out of Stone and propelled him toward the "counter-culture" and various strands of protest and liberalism, and hedonism, but it did not equip him with a coherent and profound understanding of American class society. This is not entirely his fault. The intellectual laziness and evasiveness of the New Left and the anti-war protest movement could not have provided such an insight, nor did they have any desire to.

Stone is something of a lost soul, alienated from his social and ideological roots, but never finding his way to a more substantial and politically informed opposition to American capitalism. He is congenitally all over the place; indeed, one might say, that is his life's vocation.

His comments about W. wander here and there, and few of them indicate any grasp of the questions involved in the effort to bring Bush's life accurately and meaningfully to the screen.

"It's not a political film," Stone told Maxim magazine, "but a Shakespearean one. It's a film about George W. rebelling against his father, doing better than his father, believing that he's stronger than his father, and outdoing his father...and it's about the colossal mistakes he made and the lies he told. In a way it's Oedipal. One can say he did kill the father because he did destroy the legacy, the name. It's a big thing with the Bushes."

In passing, the same interviewer can note that Stone "has little sympathy for Bush, who he says is responsible for tens of thousands of needless deaths abroad and the corrosion of civil liberties at home and the fortune of future generations squandered." The director, however, tells the interviewer from GQ that the film is "light," prompting the question, "Wait, are you saying this movie is a comedy?," to which Stone replies: "Well, it has to be done with an ebullience and a certain fun, because the guy is goofy. He's a goofball!"

The inconsistency and unseriousness are not Stone's alone, they are shared by a wide layer of pragmatic middle class iconoclasts and critics in the US, who lament this or that feature of American life, even warn histrionically about incipient "fascism," and then go about their daily business complacent as clams.

That George W. Bush is an empty vessel would not be disputed by many thinking people. But how, the filmmakers might have asked themselves, is it possible that American capitalism placed its fortunes in the hands of such a lowlife?

No serious reference is made to the ultra-right forces that pushed Bush forward, the same forces responsible for the Clinton sex scandal and impeachment drive. Stone, in a peculiar manner, takes the Bush "success story" at face value. No doubt Bush junior had his conscious or semiconscious motives, but what driving forces, as Marxists know to ask, stood behind those motives and by what social elements was he picked up?

A more plausible explanation than the time-worn Oedipal story is that Bush was merely a front man for more conscious and politically motivated forces, with a wide-ranging and reactionary agenda at home and abroad. Painted as amiable and down-to-earth by the media, partial to vague "values," supposedly conservative but "compassionate," with a well-known family name, Bush was directed toward the White House; he had relatively little to do with the matter. No doubt, if he had not stopped drinking and carousing, the opportunity would have been closed to him, but that is about the most one can say of his "overcoming" his "personal problems."

The deterioration in the political representatives of the ruling elite is a function, in the final analysis, of the decline in its fortunes and prospects. George W. Bush's ascension to prominence speaks to the terminal crisis of American capitalism. Now a cosmetic change may be necessary, but Bush was no accident: he represented accurately the dominant section of the US establishment—arrogant, shortsighted and criminal to the core.

Some of those same forces, chastened by the experience, are now endorsing Sen. Barack Obama in an effort to compensate for their sin.

Stone and Weiser sacrifice art and truth to narrow political concerns. Scandalously, they make no mention of Bush's presiding over 153 executions as governor of Texas, in one case mocking a woman's pleas for mercy. The deep sadism of the man is missing. Nor is the hijacking of the 2000 election treated. In both cases, no doubt scenarist and director sought to avoid "partisan" and "controversial" issues, which would have brought the right-wing media down on their heads. As a result of Stone's ideological blindness or, not to mince words, political cowardice, the full picture of the man and his period is not here.

Along the same lines, Stone portrays Bush the elder as a stern and honorable figure, when, in fact, he was (and is) a corrupt, greedy representative of the ruling elite, and as CIA director, up to his elbows in blood. The filmmakers also, in passing, canonize Colin Powell as a voice of moderation, entirely undeservedly. The chief diplomatic liar for the Bush administration and a war criminal in his own right, Powell developed public differences only after he saw that the Iraq war was going badly.

All in all, Stone and Weiser have no historical or sociological purchase on Bush. Such an understanding wouldn't preclude individual psychology; on the contrary, it would create the context in which those private relations would take on real, full-bodied life. That opportunity was not taken.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/bush-o22.shtml

Pogledao sam THE TERRORISTS Caspara Wredea, courtesy of Ginger.

Ovaj film sam gledao kao klinac na Vansovom originalu i bio mi je prilično konfuzan. sada kada ga gledam međutim, čini mi se da se radi o vrlo solidnom hostage trileru, svakako ne uz rame sa nekim klasicima tog podžanra, međutim, nesumnjivo upotrebljivom u današnjim uslovima. Kritika je bila brutalna prema ovom filmu, međutim, čini mi se da su se ogrešili.

THE TERRORISTS je poznat i pod naslvom RANSOM i govori o talačkoj kri6i u Norveškoj u koju su umešani britanski teroristi koji su oteli britanskog ambasadora.

Glavni rivali su dve zvezde Sean Connery kao šef norveških specijalnih jedinica i Ian McShane kao vođa britanskih terorista. I njihov rivalitet, ako uzmemo u obzir da su fizički zajedno samo u jednoj sceni odlično funkcioniše.

Scenario je pisao britanski veteran Paul Wheeler, nekadašnji operativac MI 6 i iako se ne radi o najinteligentnijem scenariju ikada napisanom, nimalo nije uvredljiv prema gledaocu. Wheeler je inače iskusan tip koji je napisao još barem dva meni draga filma SWASHBUCKLER sa Robert Shawom o gusarima na Jamajci i MEDALLION sa Jackie Chanom i Julian Sandsom.

Švedski snimatelj Sven Nykvist je odlično iskoristio noveške lokacije i dao je filmu autentičnost i poseban kvalitet. Caspar Wrede je reditelj rođen u Finskoj koji je pre ovoga sticao iskustvo u Britaniji. Iako je reč o marginalnom reditelju, malog opusa, ovaj film je snimio sasvim na nivou. Čini mi se da gledaoci mogu da se okrenu filmu RANSOM kada svi ključni naslovi ovog podžanra budu pogledani.

Štaviše, meni je ovaj film sasvim na nivou nekih izvikanijih reprezenata poput TAKING OF PELHAM 123.

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Prošlo je već neko vreme od premijere TROPIC THUNDERa Bena Stillera i dugo sam razmišljao o tom filmu. Međutim, sad je izašao THE HOUSE BUNNY Fred Wolfa i mislim da je vreme da na bazi ova dva laugh out loud naslova napišem zajednički komentar.

TROPIC THUINDER mi se dopao, bio mi je zabavan, u nekim segmentima je uspevao da transcendira svoje komediografske okove i bude čak i neka vrsta metafilma. Međutim, upravo u tim tačkama mi je postajao sporan. To je film u kome se ismeva akcioni film ali kada se glumci iz akcionog filma suoče sa ratom i njihova priča se na kraju pretvori u akcioni film. Stoga, mislim da je akcioni film pobedio komediju barem u ovom dvoboju koji je priredio Stiller. za razliku od HOT FUZZa koji se briljantno bavi svetom akcionog filma kroz poređenje realističnog mačo miljea i holivudskog filma gde se na kraju istina nalazi u primeni fima na stvarni život. TROPIC THUINDER je solidna komedija sa jednom višom ravni u kojoj svaki dolazak u tu višu ravan pokazuje jednu priličnu besciljnost.

Ko god je gledao Jeremy Pivena u seriji ENTOURAGE znaće koliko je besmislena persiflaža koju donosi Tom Cruise u ulozi razularenog mogula. Ko god je gledao HOT FUZZ, već je video kako se smisleno spajaju komdija i filmofilski pristup akciji. Ko god zna biografiju i filmove John Belushija i Chris Farleya videće koliko je slabićka uloga Jack Blacka kao debelog komičara džankija.

Stoga, najveći poraz TROPIC THUNDERa jeste u toj metafilmskoj ravni u kojoj je želeo da bude zapažen a najveća pobeda jeste u tome što je zabavn i vrlo dobro realizovan na jednom popcorn nivou.

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S druge strane, producent i glumac daleko relevantnijeg filma YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN, Adam sandler, predstavlja THE HOUSE BUNNY Freda Wolfa u kome Anna farris donosi jednu naizged nepretencioznu, gotovo banalnu komediju koja na kraju deluje mnogo deluje kaloričnije.

Prvo, na ideološkom nivou, THE HOUSE BUNNY je zreliji od TROPIC THUNDERa pošto svoju premisu shvata dublje. naime, zaplet o plejbojevoj zečici koja biva izbačena iz Mansiona, odlazi na koledž, postaje sorority mother i uči svoje outcast sestrice kako da budu ribe, mogla se završitikao priča o ružnom pačetu. međutim, HOUSE BUNNY donosi i situaciju u kojoj se junaci koji prolaze transformaciju u jednom trenutu polakome, postaja svoja suprotnost, i ne samo da moraju da transformišu već i istinski emancipuju.

Na metafilmskom planu, Anna Farris vrlo jasno kanališe Marilyn Monroe i sve opno po čemu je ona bila poznata. Onanaravno nikadaneće imati impact kao marilyn jer je ova bila autohtona ikona, ali zato jako dobro kapira u čemu je bila njena okrepljujuća snaga.

Wolf vrlo vešto realizuje film i HOUSE BUNNY e isto laugh out loud smešan film. da je karakterizacija outcast devojaka , govorio bih o remek-delu.

Ovako HOUSE BUNNY je značajan dodatak filmografiji frat filmova o sukobimakuća na kampusu koji sukao mehanizam zapleta postali vrlo bitna tekovina američke komedije.

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Reprizirao sam UNDISPUTED 2. LAST MAN STANDING Isaac Florentinea, courtesy of Ginger. Reč je o DTV sequelu koji je snimljen na osnovu jednog poluuspelog filma Waltera Hilla. Opskurnosti ovog naslova dodatno doprinosi to što je Hillov izvornik bio pokušaj da se u maniru ROCKYja i LONGEST YARDa tematizuje slučaj hapšenja Mike Tysona, dok je UNDISPUTED 2 tematizacija Tysonovog slučaja u maniru BLOOSPORTa. dakle, Hillov film je pokušavao da se osloni na Warner Bros melodramu iz tridesetih, a Isaac Florentine na izraelsko tumačenje exploitationa iz osamdesetih.

Glavni glumac je zamenjen u odnosu na prvi film. Tysonovu figuru je prvom igrao Ving Rhames, dok je u drugom igra Michael Jai White, glumac koji je uostalom igrao i samog Tysona u biopicu Ulija Edela. Ne znam da li sam ranije to već pominjao ali ja sam veliki fan Michael Jai Whita. Nažalost, on gotovo da nije dobio priliku da se dokaže kao punokrvna akciona zvezda. SPAWN jeste bio hit ali u njemu je White bio pod maskom. Potom, njegova uloga u KILL BILLu nije ušla u završen film, a to ga je takođe moglo reafirmisati. danas, White tavori između epizoda u A produkciji i DTV naslova.

Ako imamo u vidu da je Rhames svojevremeno trebalo da igra Sonny Listona, nesumnjivo je White bolji za Tysonovog lookalikea. isto tako, White ima neverovatne fizičke predispozicije i poznat je kao stručnjak za borilačke veštine tako da je izraelski specijalista za borilačke filmove Isaak Florentine imao sjajan potencijal u rukama.

I Florentine ga je iskoristio. Film je smešten u ruski zatvor gde korumpirana uprava, u dogovoru sa mafijom, organizujemborbe u mixed martial artsu. iako se White, u skladu sa duhom lika mahom drži boksa, vrlo kompetentno um ida šutne i da se po(h)rve.

nažalost, iako je Whiteov rival Scott Adkins takođe odlična faca i već sada je postao leading man u DTV akcijašima, očekivao sam da će se u ulozi ngativca Boyke pojaviti neko još monumentalniji i "sovjetskiji", kao što je to bio Šveđanin Dolph Lundgren u ROCKY IV. Scott Adkins je odlična faca ali nije dovoljan kontrast Whiteu.

Bugarski zatvor i krezavi statisti sasvim dobro dočaravaju imaginarni užas ruskih postkomunističkih kazamata a Florentine briljira u scenama borbe. Iako je nesumnjivo da ima wire fua u kickbox scenama, to ne smeta previše jer su sami White i Adkins dovoljno viscenarlni da stvari učine znojavim.

kao kompletan paket, naročito u segmentu tona, UNDISPUTD 2 nesumnjivo jeste DTV filmbez istinskog theatrical kapaciteta. Međutim, odlične tuče i besprizoran attitude ga čine legitimnim B-filmom pošto zaista jeste autentičan dodatak bioskopskom meniju i nudi niz stvari kojih odavno nema u bioskopima.

A o srpskom repu na soundtracku ovog fia možete čitati u novembarskom broju HUPERa.

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Inače, Lerneri su snimili pre ovoga vrlo sličan film sa Van Dammeom koji se zvao IN HELL, režirao ga je Ringo Lam i takođe je bio jako dobar.

Pogledao sam ponovo film HOOPER Hala Needhama, courtesy of Ginger.

Ako se uzme u obzir koliko je dekadentan bio njegovi potonji opus sa i bez Burta koji se iscrpljivao u lupanju kola, i u kome se gledalac zaista pitao kako je ovaj čovek uopšte došao do toga da snima filma, HOOPER je bio odgovor na to pitanje.

Poznat je moj soft spot za kaskadere, pa o njemu neću govoriti previše. U ovom filmu, koji je vrlo fikcionalan i u mnogo čemu proizvoljan, Needham se na površini bavi pitanjem tog surovog posla u kome se bukvalno telo ulaže u film, radni vek je kratak i pun rizika a poslodavci su neumereni u svojim vizijama. Needham ne daje jednostavne odgovore iako je na strani kaskadera. Međutim, kada u jednom trenutku producent kaže reditelju "It's just a movie" a ovaj upadne u tiradu kako je definicija "just a movie" apsolutno neprihvatljiva, koliko god to Needham karikirao, u toj raspravi ima nešto što prodire u samu srž infekcije zvane film.

Međutim, na razmeđi pšrvog i drugog plana, HOOPER je film o izumiranju stare vrste muškaraca i dolaska novih. Muškarci u needhamovom filmu su kaskaderi ali njegov film se odnosi na sve one kojima fizička snaga i spremnost donose zaposlenje. Burt Reynolds, u to vreme neprikosnovena box office zvezda, vrlo hrabro igra mačo muškarca koji je na kraju svog puta, čije telo više ne može da izdrži napor, i koga pristiskaju razne anksioznosti zbog toga.

Konačno, zgodno se potrefilo da je film o kaskaderima uvek vezan i za žanr vesterna, uostalom Yakima Canutt, granddaddy svih slavnih stuntmena je i počeo u vesternu, tako da Needham mudro integriše i puno goo ole boy elegije u svoju priču.

Gluma je vrlo lagana, na ivici totalne improvizacije, i u tome je savršeno. Ako imamo u vidu da je Needham došao u svet filma kao kaskader, neverovatno je visok nivo glume u ovom filmu i više liči na neki rad Roberta Altmana nego priučenog reditelja.

O akcionom spektaklu i kaskaderskim tačkama, ne treba trošiti reči. iako, naravnmo snimanje filma ne izgleda tako, Needham pravi odličnu paralelu između pogleda ispred i iza scene i stvara jedan fikcionalni hibrid snimanja filma koji deluje uverljivo iako je potpuno artificjelan.

Nažalost, Needham nikada nije dostigao slavu ovog klasika. međutim, HOOPER je dovoljno sjajan film da možemo smatrati kako Needhamov dolazak na film nije uzaludan.

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Hey there.

If you are at a loose end early on Halloween night, why not join me at the New Beverly Cinema for a double bill of SHAUN OF THE DEAD and my choice of Halloween film - RIKI OH: THE STORY OF RIKI.

The New Beverly have not only kindly chosen my film as the main feature, but let me pick the second half of the double bill. And what a second half...

I will also be showing the uncut version of my GRINDHOUSE trailer "DON'T" for the first time in the US.

As well as a whole mess of handpicked vintage trailers. Should be a hoot.

SHAUN OF THE DEAD & DON'T are at 7.30

and the amazing

RIKI OH : THE STORY OF RICKY is at 9.30

What could be more amazing than a film that names it protagonist twice in the title?

And what could be more Halloween-y than a ridiculously gory futuristic prison romp with a hero who can play the flute and punch through peoples heads?

I swear that if you haven't seen it before - it's a crazy film and a great one to see with a crowd.

If you need further prompting; please peruse the IMDB plot keywords for RIKI OH.

Plot keywords for :RIKI OH: THE STORY OF RICKY (1991)

Hook For Hand
Stabbed In The Eye
Exploding Body
Seppuku
Suicide
Taser
Glass Eye
Decapitation
Wetting Pants
Crow
Crushed To Death
Razor Blade
Vengeance
Severed Leg
Blinding
X Ray
Shower Room
Transformation
Stabbing
Extreme Gore
Crushed Head
Severed Arm
Opium
Intestines
Hand Through Head
Broken Finger
Skinned Alive
Grindhouse
Profanity
Disembowelment
Gore
Martial Arts
Prison
Splatter
Exploding Head
Black Comedy
Controversial
Torture
Animal Abuse
Buried Alive
Christ Allegory
Dismemberment
Hiding On Ceiling
Nail Through Hand
Murder
Mutilation
Megalomaniac
Social Commentary

If you were not sold by the time it got to 'Hand Through Head' on the list, then I do not know what to say.

See you Friday!

Sta ovo je kao licni poziv E.Wrighta + licne impresije o Rikiju !

Plot keywords for :RIKI OH: THE STORY OF RICKY (1991)

Hook For Hand
Stabbed In The Eye
Exploding Body
Seppuku
Suicide
Taser
Glass Eye
Decapitation
Wetting Pants
Crow
Crushed To Death
Razor Blade
Vengeance
Severed Leg
Blinding
X Ray
Shower Room
Transformation
Stabbing
Extreme Gore
Crushed Head
Severed Arm
Opium
Intestines
Hand Through Head
Broken Finger
Skinned Alive
Grindhouse
Profanity
Disembowelment
Gore
Martial Arts
Prison
Splatter
Exploding Head
Black Comedy
Controversial
Torture
Animal Abuse
Buried Alive
Christ Allegory
Dismemberment
Hiding On Ceiling
Nail Through Hand
Murder
Mutilation
Megalomaniac
Social Commentary

Danas sam ponovo pogledao GOSTE IZ GALAKSIJE Dušana Vukotića, courtesy of Ginger. Ovaj film sam gledao kao klinac i bio mi je cool ali mi je isto tako bio groovy na taj jedan istočnoevropski način što kao holivudofil nisam voleo. Međutim, gledan iiz ove vizure, GOSTI IZ GALAKSIJE je esencijalan film iz bogate kinematografske zaostavštine jedne zemlje koje više nema. Ako imamo na umu da je slabo bilo Sfa u SFRJ izuzev u samoj sraćenici države, GOSTI IZ GALAKSIJE začuđuju svojom zrelošću na konceptualnom planu.

Vukotić je osvojio oskara kao animator i to je svakako uvećavalo očekivanja od njegovih igranih filmova. Na neki način, Vukotić bi se mogao smatrati jugoslovenskim Brad Birdom, vrhunskim umetnikom animacije koji je ušao u svet igranog filma. Naravno, oskar je učinio da očekivanja od Vukotića budu ogromna. Međutim, u kinematografiji koja nije imala uspostavljen sistem vrednovanja žanrovskog filma, Vukotić ta velika očekivanja nije ispunio.

Samim tim, GOSTI IZ GALAKSIJE nije smatran za "pravi film" kakav su u tom trenutku radili "veliki momci" poput Lordana Zafranovića.

Ipak, GOSTI IZ GALAKSIJE je vrlo ozbiljan i zanimljiv film koji u sebi sabira niz žanrovskih težnji. Osnovna premisa o piscu koji snagom volje stvara pojave u stvarnosti, pa i same vanzemaljce, spada u domen psihološki fundiranog Sfa koji može imati i pulp i seriozno čitanje. U spoju sa junakovom vezanošću za artefakte žanrovskog pulpa, reklo bi se da je premisa tretirana u ravni omaža i pulpa tj. Na ničijoj zemlji između ovih krajnosti. Sama reakcija na dolazak vanzemaljaca je takođe na rezmeđi new age percepcije i pulpa dok je vrlo detaljna i interesantna gore scena sa monstrumom na razmeđi exploitationa i trasha.

Dakle, moglo bi se reći da je Vukotić u svoj film želeo da inkorporira sve, od Lema od Cormana. Na neki način, GOSTI IZ GALAKSIJE su preteča ŠEJTANOVOG RATNIKA na planu širine žanrovskog polaza ali fundamentalna razlika je u tome što je GOSTE radio reditelj na vrhuncu zrelosti dok je ŠEJTAN debitantski showcase. Međutim, s druge strane, histerična širina tretmana žanra pokazuje kako u kinematografiji sa nepostojećom žanrovskom tradicijom svaki žanrosvki pokušaj je na neki način debi, ako ne u biografskom a ono u zanatskom smislu.

Kad je reč o tehničkoj realizaciji, ja bih podelio GOSTE IZ GALAKSIJE na dva elementa. Mislim da je u domenu live action fotografije, Vukotić pokazao sve pozitivne strane koje jedan animator donosi u igrani film. Dakle, film je pažljivo raskadriran na sve potrebne pozicije kamere i kadriranje je vrlo pismeno. Scenario je dugo i pažljivo rađen. Iako se sa mnogim rešenjima može polemisati, vidi se da je to studiozno pisan tekst.

Drugi segment su efekti koji su rađeni u koprodukciji sa Česima. Ima nekih sjajnih stop-motion detalja, ima nekih dobro osmišljenih rešenja, ali efekti generalno nisu na nivou onoga što u tom trenutku radi A-produkcija. Međutim, treba imati na umu da ono što je Vukotić imao sa efektima u ovom filmu je mahom exploitation a da je film snimao u saradnji sa Česima koji su više specijalizovani za fantasy, bajke i sl.

Vukotić u pojedinim deonicama zaista postiže uzore poput romantičnih scena Frank Tashlina (scena ljubomore između devojke i androdkinje) ili anticipira Peter Jacksona (scena masakra na slavi).

GOSTI IZ GALAKSIJE je u svakom smislu jedan od najznačajnijih artefakata geek kulture ostvarenih kod nas i kao i ostatak našeg žanrovskog filma dosta dobro stari i kad su izvuče van kurentnog bioskopskog konteksta, dobija na značaju.

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Inače, monstruma je dizajnirao poznati češki reditelj Jan Svankmajer...

GOSTI IZ GALAKSIJE je na razmeđi ovoga i onoga, kao i onog trećeg i četvrtog, sav u tim razmeđama i razdeljcima, nit riba nit devojka, tako da se njegovi plusevi i minusevi na kraju uglavnom uzajamno poništavaju do proizvoda koji teži nuli.

smešno je ovaj film tretirati kao SF bilo koje provenijencije (ozbiljan, treš, palp, štagod) – ovo je, pre svega, DEČJI film – samo što su u njega sa tipično balkanskim eklekticizmom (balkanski melting-pot lonac!) natrpani i neki sisići i malo krvića (što, zapravo, nije daleko od nekih čeških serija za decu, i taj elemenat je sigurno njihov upliv u ovu koprodukciju).

smešno je i pominjati džexona u istoj rečenici s 'masakrom na slavi'; man in the suit monstrum nije sasvim nerespektabilan, pod uslovom da se gleda iz perspektive 6-godišnjeg dečaka koji još ne igra one horror igrice sa alienima i predatorima, npr.

film je naivan do bola i, u krajnjoj liniji, uvredljiv po žanr (SF) kome prilazi sa dobronamernim idiotizmom i suštinskim nerazumevanjem. iako formalno nije parodija, zapravo sopstvenu tematiku ismeva i svodi na tričavu, budalastu detinjariju. film se može posmatrati kao 'dokaz' prostodušnoj balkanskoj mimesis-addicted svetini da su ti što čitaju/gledaju/pišu fantastiku nekakvi šeprtljasti blesavi zaluđenici i majmuni.

film je petparački na svakom nivou, sem u smislu efekata, koji jedini odskaču i obitavaju negde na nivou solidnog B-muvija tog doba – zahvaljujući češkim majstorima iskusnim u tome sličnim igrarijama.

prizivanje grdnih imena, žanrova, naslova i neznamčega ne može da zaista uzdigne ovu detinjariju na mesto koje joj ne pripada, jer se radi o po svemu inferiornom delcu koje je, čak i kao film za decu, jedva snošljivo.

moja ocena je 2-/5

Ghoule, najlakše je uzeti jugoslovenski film i reći da je sranje. Potpuno je prirodno da je sranje. Zato je to naš film. Ali, povremeno je zanimljivo malo zagrebati po površini sasvim razumljive odbojnosti koju zanatski trapav film nosi i naći unutra nešto zanimljivo.

Mislim da bi možda trebalo da osvežiš svoje sećanje na ovaj film. Retki su filmovi snimljeni u SFRJ koji te istinski mogu zadovljiti kao gledaoca. No, u kontekstu kriterijuma u kome se gleda naša kinematografija, i naša žanrovska produkcija, ovo je zaista zanimljiv naslov.

Upravo zbog golotinje i libidinalne ekonomije cele priče, ovaj film ne možemo posmatrati kao dečji. Mnogi odnosi u njemu uopšte nisu postavljeni kao za dečji film. Ne samo kada se narod skida u špilji nego i kad devojka zatekne pisca sa androidom. Uostalom likovi dece u filmu su demonski.

Štaviše, deca i igračke su osnovni generator problema za našeg junaka. On nalazi seksualni spokoj u odnosu sa robotizovanom ženom, upravo zato što nastavak kontakta sa Bibom znači brak (videli smo krvavu svadbu) i decu (videli smo odvratnu decu).

E sad, ovako depresivni tonovi su ostavljeni u pozadini kako bi film bio produkciono plauzibilan. Niko sigurno ne bi želeo ni u SFRJ ni u ČSSR da producira film o vanzemaljcima koji u stvari govori o čovekovom strahu od braka i prokreacije. Sasvim je logično da oni to smeste u fah dečjeg filma, bajke, exploitationa. Ali, ovaj film to evidentno nije.

Što se Jacksona tiče, razlika između njega i Vukotića je kako u godinama tako i po fokusu kada je o filmmakingu reč. Ipak, scena masakra na svadbi je sasvim na liniji onoga što će on kasnije raditi, naravno na mnogo višem nivou. Ali moraš imati na umu kontekst u kome je to Vukotić radio. Za film ovog žanra i produkcionih okvira, masakr na svadbi je više nego prijatno iznenađenje, a par smrti u toj sceni su zaista zabavne što se mene tiče (recimo tip kome nagazi na glavu je goofy).

U vreme kada je izašao ovaj film postojao je ALIEN, ali igara nije bilo ni na vidiku. Stoga sasvim je okej sudbina da ga se danas plaše mala deca (uostalom tajna uspeha dečjeg filma i jeste u naivnosti i neobaveštenosti publike) a da ga odrasli gledaju kao zanimljiv, u mnogim segmentima goofy deo žanrovske tradicije.

Uostalom goofiness u žanru je potpuno legitiman kvalitet. A ovaj film barem obiluje time ako već ne želiš da mu priznaš kvalitete.

nisam rekao da je 'sranje'.
rekao sam da je slab na svim nivoima sem efekata (koje su radili stranci).
scenario je neoprostivo naivan i svoje polazište (i ishodište) ima u onim trećerazrednim 'sf' pričicama kakve su svojevremeno objavljivale večernje novosti, ili enigmatski magazini (NE politikin zabavnik, koji je najčešće imao ozbiljne, dobre sf minijature) – znači, te najbanalnije 'joj, kad bi došli vanzemaljci u moj lajkovac' pričice.

ti strahovi od prokreacije i braka su tvoja projekcija - meni zabavna, ali za tumačenje konkretnog filma irelevantna i od spolja nametnuta.
više se tu zapravo radi o strahu od odrastanja, 'prihvatanja načela realnosti', i u tom smislu (pored nekih drugih) je ovo dečji film, jer gl. junak je detinjasti fantasta kome se posreći da doživi svoj lakobrijanski wishful thinking u stvarnosti i da najzad svima pokaže da je bio u pravu – 'oni su dobri!'

film je goofy zbog naivnosti, žanrovske neodlučnosti i preterane eklektičnosti scenarija (te stoga i neujednačenog tona, od romanse do saspensa preko fantazije do dečjeg filma, naučne fantastike, horora, splattera, groteske, satire... i šta sve ne) a ne zbog svesno i dosledno zauzete perspektive (a la night of the creeps, recimo), što ga u mojim očima čini znatno inferiornijim nego što si ga ti doživeo.

ja razumem i jugonostalgiju i dernek i sve, ali nemojmo preterivati, ovaj film, ovakakv kakav jeste, sasvim zasluženo je ostao fusnota u njenoj kinematografiji, jer je izvan njenih goofy okvira savršeno irelevantan.

gledao sam ga ponovo pre godinu-godinu i po, kurtezijom rommela (ima negde topik o G iz G, sa nekim extravagantnim naslovom u kome se pominju ni gosti ni galaxija), znači, dobro ga se sećam i stojim ti prav iza ovoga što rekoh.

Opet stojiš prav? Dokle više sa tim perverzijama?

Ono gde se slažem sa Ghoulom jeste da su jugoslovenski filmovi definitivno pravljeni za ljude koji imaju mašte...

Sinoć sam hteo da pogledam BURN AFTER READING. međutim, posle pet minuta sam shvatio da će mi biti potrebno previše energije kako bih ga svaladao te sam se latio Al Adamsonovog DEATH DIMENSIONa.

DEATH DIMENSION je opskuran exploitation film sa kraja sedamdesetih u kome igraju opiljci najvećih exploitation hitova te dekade. Glavnu ulogu igra Jim Kelly, crnac iz ENTER THE DRAGON, što se mene tiče, posle Jim Browna, najbolji blaxploitation glumac koji nažalost izuzev BLACK BELT JONESa nije uspeo da ima puno major naslova, zatim George Lazenby, jedan odličan Bond koji je nažalost snimio samo jedan film a posle otišao u Hong Kong da radi sa braćom Shaw, i konačno Harold Sakata, poznatiji kao Odd Job iz GOLDFINGERa, možda i najčuveniji henchman u seriji.

Kada se svemu tome doda da je film režirao Al Adamson (relativno skoro sam gledao i njegovu saradnju sa Kellyjem u filmu BLACK SAMURAI), reditelj sa dna exploitationkace, onda bi se moglo reći da je DEATH DIMENSION prijatno iznenađenje.

Sva akcija i zaplet su pali na Kellyjeva pleća, Lazenby je samo epizoda a čak se ni ne tuče sa Kellyjem već ga ubije Myron Bruce Le, jedan od bootleg dvojnika Bruce Leeja, s tim što je sama pogibija senzacionalna-Lazenby upada u bazen držeći se za strujni kabl.

S druge strane, bez šešira sa oštrim obodom Odd Job je samo još jedan rvač sa Havaja, tako da je njegova tuča sa Kellyjem prilično konvencionalna.

Međutim, pre toga Kelly ima sasvim dovoljno priika da pokaže svoje chop socky kvalitete a Adamson donosi dve začuđujuće spektakularne i sasvim solidne scene sa helikopterom i avionom.

U svakom slučaju, iako DEATH DIMENSION ne isporučuje clash između exploitation ikona koji se očekivao, stoji kao simpatična B-podukcija s kraja sedamdesetih.

* * / * * * *

Pošto su neki moji postovi na forumu Novi Kadrovi bili izvor neprijatnosti danas za priređivače ove knjige, ja ću ih pomeriti na ovaj forum, a nadam se da ih Boban neće brisati, pomerati na Deponiju i sl. pošto zaista nema nikakvog razloga za to.

Što se mog daljeg angažmana oko knjige Novi Kadrovi tiče, sastavio sam svoj lični plan u tri tačke koji ću danas izložiti Žiki K. a kasnije tokom dana ovde gde ga mogu pogledati svi oni koje zanima.

Obećavam da ni u tom planu neće biti ništa što će provocirati moderatora.

Post subject: Re: NOVI KADROVI (Clio, 2008)Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 9:43 am  



Joined: Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:36 am
Posts: 1083  Moram priznati da jučerašnju promociju knjige, uprkos naizgled vrlo prijatnoj auri celog događaja, smatrim jednim velikim porazom i početkom rata u kome nisu sve bitke izgubljene ali ih ima još mnogo pred nama.

Naime, imajući u vidu celokupnu finansijsku konstrukciju našeg poduhvata, smatram da je cena knjige od 1800 dinara neprihvatljiva, i to ne iskazujem kao svoj utisak nego kao poziv na akciju. Naime, meni je zaista neprihvatljivo da učestvujem u knjizi u kojoj smo svi zajedno svoj rad dali besplatno i u čije je štampanje platio neki NGO radi popularizacije jednog novog pogleda na film a da zatim ta knjiga nema popularnu cenu.

Cena od 1800 dinara je apsurdna. I Ghoul i Žika znaju da sam spreman da dam obscenu količinu novca za knjigu, naročito stručnu, međutim čak ni iz moje rasipničke vizure ovolika cena nema smisla. Naime, maltene toliko košta neka ozbiljna strana knjiga u kojoj je štampa bolja, a autori ne da su plaćeni nego od toga žive, ili štaviše od toga su se obogatili!

Idite na Amazon pa vidite kakve sve knjige možete naći za ove pare.

To što Hamović računa na neku publiku koja je spremna da izdvoji pare za ovakvu ediciju mene uopšte ne zanima. Mene zanima da ovu knjigu kupi što više ljudi, i to što više mladih ljudi, što više studenata, što više matoraca o kojima smo pisali.

Ja vam garantujem da ovu knjigu ne može da priušti Miki Stamenković ili žena Joce Rančića. Mene učešće u takvoj knjizi koju niko ne može da kupi zaista ne zanima i što se mene tiče, ukoliko se cena DRASTIČNO ne smanji, a kad kažem drastično, to i mislim, ja ne samo da neću potpisati ugovor sa Cliom, nego ću ih verovatno i tužiti što su mi objavili tekst bez ikakvog odobrenja.

Nadam se da još neko deli moju popizdelost ovakvim skandaloznim raspletom jedne plemenite ideje.

Post subject: Re: NOVI KADROVI (Clio, 2008)Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 1:52 pm  



Joined: Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:36 am
Posts: 1083  Okej, zaboravio sam da je Alenka umrla ali Miki je alive & kicking.  Ja bih voleo da Miki dobije ovu knjigu. Čak ću možda i dati 900 dinara da bih mu je dao, ali nekom živom i zdravom sigurno je neću ni preporučiti niti kupiti & pokloniti dok je ova cena.

Po meni je cena od 1000 dinara, za knjigu za koju nisu plaćeni ni honorari ni štampa, takođe previsoka. Ja mislm da je 500 dinara realna cena za knjigu koju su svi radili za dž plus štampa nije plaćena od izdavačevih para, i knjiga od 500 dinara je nešto što svi mogu da priušte. Ako tome dodamo ponižavajuću praksu da su autori dobili po jedan  autorski primerak a da određeni ograničeni broj mogu da kupe upola cene, dakle za 900 dinara  , mislim da je to sve zaista potpuno sumanuto. A šta ćemo kada tih ograničenih primeraka nestane. Hoćemo onda i mi kupovati, u najboljem slučaju sa 30% popusta?

Ghoul ima praksu sa malim izdavačima koji ti hornorar daju u obliku knjiga. Ja sam takođe sada za svoju zbirku drama (ne pokušavam da je poredim sa NOVIM KADROVIMA, nemojte me pogrešno shvatiti) umesto para dobio knjige. Okej, ja ih neću unovčavati, podeliću ih dragim ljudima, ali to je knjiga (po obimu dva i po puta manja od KAROVA) koja je odšampana u 400 primeraka (dakle manje od KADROVA a veći tiraž snižava cenu) i košta 300 dinara! I ja nisam dao nijedan dinar za njeno štampanje, dakle to je izdavač iz nekih svojih resursa finansirao.

I meni je zaista ta cena od 300 dinara imajući sve u vidu totalno okej. Ako tome dodamo da ako već nisam dobio pare, barem sam dobio autorske primerke, koji izdavača nešto koštaju, barem hipotetički, mislim da je to mnogo bolji deal od jednog primerka knjige koju ni sam ne možeš da priuštiš a koju si radio za dž.

Ovo sa NOVIM KADROVIMA me je zaista uznemirilo. Danas sam o tome razgovarao sa nekoliko ljudi. Svi su šokirani. Recimo, mrkoye, stari bibliofil, a o njegovom porodičnom poznavanju izdavačkog biznisa da ne govorimo, je potpuno zatečen ovim raspletom.

O mehanizmu jučerašnje promocija na koju smo mogli da dođemo, mada niko ne bi primetio da nas nema, i plaćanjem karata na ulazu da ne pričam.


Post subject: Re: NOVI KADROVI (Clio, 2008)Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 5:11 pm  



Joined: Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:36 am
Posts: 1083  Nova knjiga Rogera Eberta košta 18 fubnti u Engleskoj. E sad, nekako mi se čini da nju nije pomogla Pro Helvetia za štampu, da je Ebert ipak dobio neku crkavicu kao honorar i da je kvalitet izrade nešto bolji.

Što više mislim o ovoj aferi s knjigom sve sam razjareniji.

Evo i mog stava o slučaju sa Cliom. Dakle, danas je bio sastanak na kome Ghoul i Žika ništa nisu postigli.

Cena knjige je ostala obscena. Mogućnost da se kupi po umanjenoj ceni koja je takođe obscena je, u najmanju ruku, na nivou najopskurnijeg samizdata, odnosno, na promocijama knige bi se mogla kupiti za 1000 dinara, a u Cliu bi koštala 1280 dinara. Ako imamo u vidu da je Clio jedna kancelarija sa radnim vremenom, mislim da je bolje da smo prodavali knjigu, svako sa svoje gajbe, pošto ima 14 saradnika, dakle, imali bi 14 prodajnih centara. Uostalom, u knjižarama, po ceni od 1800 dinara, niko tu knjigu neće kupiti, dakle ona nema nikakve koristi od Cliove distribucije.

U tom smislu sam Žiki predložio dve opcije, od kojih su obe u suštini odbijene, koliko sam shvatio iz našeg današnjeg razgovora.

a) da se Hamoviću plati prelom i da se knjiga odnese drugom izdavaču kome bi cena knjige bila uslovljena ugovorom.

b) da se, pošto Hamović nije potpisao nikakav ugovor ni sa kim, knjiga sa svim svojim mirazom odnese drugom izdavaču kome bi cena bila uslovljena ugovorom.

Iduće sedmice bi ljudi iz Clia trebalo da se jave da nam ponude ugovore. Ja ću tom prilikom zakazati sastanak na koji ću otići sa svojim advokatom sa ciljem da se vansudski nagodim za kršenje svojih autorskih prava pošto je Clio objavio moj tekst bez ikakvog pismenog ili usmenog dogovora sa mnom.

Ukoliko se ne nagodimo, postoji tarifa po kojoj se ceni tekst i izlazimo na sud sa svim mogućim nus-efektima koje nosi takav potez.

Pošto na svu sreću imam dokaz kod kuće, čak i ako objavi ostatak tiraža bez mog teksta, Clio će biti tužen jer ja imam dokaz da je knjiga u određenom tiražu objavljena bez ugovora sa mnom.

Meni je u moralnom i ideološkom smislu potpuno neprihvatljivo da moj tekst bude objavljen u formi koja mu ne priliči, i da bude smešten u kontekst koji apsolutno nema nikakve veze sa duhom projekta u koji sam ja verovao. Upravo u tome leži razlog ovako burne reakcije. Znam da bi sasvim normalna reakcija bila da se prećuti, pređe preko svega, ponešto nauči za sledeći put i sl. Međutim, što se mene tiče, ja niti volim da se učim na svojim greškama niti mislim da sam u bilo čemu pogrešio. Clio je taj koji je pogrešio i tu grešku će sada da plati.

Moja vansudska nagodba sa Cliom ili trošenje para dobijenih na sudu će ići u pravcu toga da obezbedim neke primerke knjige NOVI KADROVI i da ih podelim besplatno onima za koje smatram da treba da je pročitaju.

Pogledao sam BURN AFTER READING Braće Coen.

Što se mene tiče, koliko god da neke njihove filmove volim, podjednako sam nezadovoljan skorašnjim outputom a BURN AFTER READINGsadrži neke paradigmatične nedostatke ove faze. Naime, BURN AFTER READING je, ako zanemarimo očiglednu visoku kompetenciju Braće Coen u zanatskom smislu i uticaj u Holivudu koji im je obezbedio vrhunske zvezde, na nivou nekog indie showcase filma kojim se predstavlja reditelj koga svakako na osnovu ovoga neću upamtiti, niti ću sa nestrpljenjem čekati njegov sledeći film.

Ovaj film je naprosto nezreo, na nivou scenarija je nezaokružen, u pojedinim aspektima čak i naivan u izvedbi, usled čega gubi svaku znakovitost, a na nivou farse je suviše sterilan i konvencionalan. Stoga, ja ne znam čak ni u grupu njihovih filmova ovaj spada. Svakako nije bioskopska komedija kao O BROTHER a nije ni neo noir kontemplacija kao FARGO, a ono što sigurno nije ni linija novotkrivenog patosa iz NO COUNTRY.

Štaviše, BURN AFTER READING je negde između FARGO i recimo INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, između indie mušičavosti i mejnstrim umivene komedije. Ipak, vreme ih je pregazilo i za to su sami krivi. Kada su producirali film BAD SANTA, nesvesno su snimili film koji ni sami ne mogu dadostignu a u komediju su uveli novitete koji njihov rad čine suvišnim.

Naprosto, Coenovi su do te mere uticali na mejnstrim i toliko su apsorbovani u glavno tkivo američkog filma da su se sami pretvorili u vlastite epigone.

A u voom konkretnom ostvarenju se oseća kako ni njihova vlastita podela više ne veruje u projekat. Clooney i pitt šmiraju kao nikada u karijeri, možda baš zato što im s jedne strane drago da rade sa Coenima a s druge, paradoksalno odavno nisu glumili u ovako banalnom filmu. Ma koliko to žalosno zvučalo za Coene ali i Pitt i Clooney regularno i vrlo često rade sa autorima koji su zapravo danas zajebaniji od njih.

Prošlo je vreme kada su zvezde dolazile kod Coena po edge. Štaviše, današnje zvezde poput Pitta i Clooneya sve manje i rade neku fluffy komercijalu, a i kad se radi komercijala rade sa respektabilnim rediteljima.

Stoga, naravno, kumovi američkog nezavisnog filma i ljudi koji su među zaslužnima što je došao u žižu interesovanja zaslužuju pun respekt, međutim čini se da upravo oni imaju najmanje koristi od revolucije koju su pokrenuli.

Štaviše, pozitivne promene koje su pokrenuli u Holivudu čine da su oni sami postali suvišni.

U takvom kontekstu njihov minoran film 8za razliku od ranijih) zaista nema kapacitet da na bilo koji način privuče ozbiljnije interesovanje.

* * 1/2 / * * * *

Here's something interesting.

Universal has decided to abandon those direct-to-video "American Pie" spin-off films in favour of making a third sequel to the original film – one that might possibly pick up on the whereabouts of now-married Jim and Michelle (Jason Biggs and Alyson Hannigan). Like the other three, it'll be released theatrically.

The success of the direct-to-video spin-off films ("American Pie : Band Camp", "American Pie : Naked Mile" and "American Pie : Beta House" – all featuring Eugene Levy) has Uni thinking it might be time to return the series to its roots – alas, it's back to Jim, Michelle, Finch, Stifler (though personally I doubt Seann William Scott will return) and whoever else can be roped back into the fruity follow-up.

One can only assume that this fourth direct sequel would centre on Jim and Michelle having kids – with token words of advice from the weird and wild father (Eugene Levy), of course – or the duo going through some kind of hiccup in their marriage? Then again, maybe they'll drop those characters and fix on one of the supporting characters, say Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) or even, Oz (Chris Klein), who didn't return for the last sequel?

Nobody's been roped into doing the film yet – but I can't imagine Jason Biggs would knock it back – but "American Pie 4" is said to be inching forward so expect to hear something officialish soon.

The first "American Pie", released in 1999, made nearly over $235 million dollars in its run.

The Hurt Locker explodes at TIFF
Katherine Monk ,  Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, September 11, 2008
TORONTO - From what we learn in Kathryn Bigelow's buzz movie The Hurt Locker, there are explosives - and there are detonators. One is capable of making a mega-bang, but not without the spark of the other.

The same could be said for Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal. Boal created a batch of dynamite when he wrote about his time in Iraq as an embedded reporter for Playboy Magazine, but it was Bigelow who brought the lethal power of his "boots on the ground" account to life.

A film that knocks the wind out of you with its stripped-down and highly visceral portrayal of everyday life among the specialized bomb squad units who risk life and limb diffusing improvised explosive devices, The Hurt Locker is ground zero in a blast radius of buzz since it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this week.


The shock wave continues to ripple through the assembled media, to the point where it's already being touted as an Oscar hopeful - not to mention the first bona fide success in a recent string of Iraq-themed flops.

Bigelow and Boal are taking the assault of attention in stride, but on this day, they look a little frayed as they sit in a dark restaurant ruminating on the two years it took to make the film.

Apparently, they're sick of people asking them about "the Iraq War movie curse."

They never thought about Lions for Lambs or Rendition or Redacted, let alone ponder the reasons why they all failed cinematically, dramatically and commercially.

"My only job was to bring Mark's incredible depiction to the screen with as little interference as possible," says Bigelow, the director of Near Dark, K- 19: The Widowmaker, and the Patrick Swayze-Keanu Reeves classic, Point Break.

"His rendition of everyday life was so detailed that I felt close to the material just from talking to him, and reading his work. What I really needed to be conscious of was finding a method by which to realize it - in the cleanest, and clearest translation possible (so as) to serve the audience, and give them this boots-on-the-ground experience.

"Sadly, this is an under-reported war," she says. "I think it was important for both of us to say, hey, look at this conflict. Look at the reality of what is happening in Iraq, and I have to say, one of the overwhelming comments we've received so far is that people say `I had no idea' - `I had no idea what it was like over there' - and as a filmmaker, that's what you're always hoping to achieve: You want to provide some sense of insight into what is happening in the world around you."

Because Boal and Bigelow began working together on the script, they developed a type of emotional and intellectual shorthand, which is visible right now as they glance over at each other, silently conferring on answers to each question.

"The one thing I kept telling the (creative team) was real, real, real. We brought the very best people on board . . . people who I knew could do it."

With Barry Ackroyd (The Wind That Shakes the Barley, United 93) behind the 16-millimetre cameras, and Lars von Trier's production designer, Karl Juliusson, creating the textures and overall look on location in Jordan, Bigelow was collaborating with people who understood the complex dynamic between authenticity and compelling drama.

"That was my biggest challenge," says Boal. "I discovered that plot and authenticity are inversely related, and that serving the needs of one can often deprive the other. It's really complicated . . . and that's why this movie could have been a disaster without Kathryn's direction."

Boal says Bigelow has the raw intelligence, the strength of vision and the understanding of both drama and authenticity to pull off the balancing act and make it all look easy.

"Watching Kathryn direct - she makes it look effortless," he says.

Bigelow is apparently allergic to flattery and begins to shift in her seat.

"It's really all a matter of what's on the page and being true to that," she says. "It was the strength of the script that got us to the point of getting financing."

"No," says Boal. "It was you being attached to the project that got the movie made."

Bigelow looks irritated at the kind words.

"Kathryn could shoot this glass and make it scary," says Boal, cradling an empty tumbler in his hand. "I'm serious. She can create tension in the frame, and that was so important because so much of what we're seeing could have felt static or cliche in the wrong hands. I mean, some of the biggest dramatic scenes involve a man sticking his hand in a pile of dirt. That's not easy to pull off."

Bigelow says suspense is all about establishing context, not improvising. She says the film had an epic quality built into it because war, at its very essence, presents life and death situations every single second.

"The events are so extraordinary and so perfectly delineated as it is, then add on top of that breakout performances from Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty, and my job was just staying out of everyone's way."

What's remarkable about The Hurt Locker is just how fresh it all feels, as if Bigelow reinvented the war-movie wheel from scratch for the YouTube generation. Central to this reinvention is the use of portable cameras, but also a recreation of the typical male war hero.

Bigelow visibly shivers at the very phrase "female filmmaker," but ask Boal if she gets the male experience and he sheepishly agrees.

"I'll say this . . . and don't get mad," he says, looking over at Bigelow. "I do think Kathryn understands men, and there are scenes I just wouldn't have written if she hadn't been the director. She's not afraid - but most of all, she's just really smart."

"She's fearless in her acceptance of complexity, and maybe that comes with not having to bear the burdens of masculinity,"Boal says, "but she's able to show a whole range of masculine responses where maybe a male director - and you're gonna hate me for saying this, Kathryn - but where a male director would have tunnel vision. Traditional male heroes are one-dimensional. Macho has a tendency to be so generic. Maybe it's because male directors are afraid to let the male secrets out of the bag, or maybe it's just because Kathryn is so smart and so perceptive, but she takes conventional subject matter and makes it unconventional."

Bigelow smiles for the first time since Boal started on the gender angle.

"It's true. My masculine identity was never threatened over the course of making this movie," she laughs. "I think it's easier to be objective when you have no dog in the fight."

The Hurt Locker was picked up by Summit Releasing for North American theatrical this week, making it one of the few deals inked here since the festival kicked off with Paul Gross's First World War movie Passchendaele. No date has been set, but given The Hurt Locker's positive word-of-mouth, Bigelow's name is bound to come up during awards season.

Pogledao sam Cinemaniji CITY OF EMBER Gila Kenana.

Puno sam očekivao od ovog filma. I moram priznati da mi je film dosta i pružio. Kenanov prethodni film MONSTER HOUSE je meni jedan od najdražih koje sam gledao u životu i to zaista jeste tough act to follow. Međutim, u CITY OF EMBER on polazi potpuno drugim putem, kako u tehničkom tako i u pripovedačkom smislu.

Dok je MONSTER HOUSE bio veseo spooky dečji animirani film, CITY OF EMBER je elegičan dečji igrani film. Taj live action momenat je naročito podvučen pošto Kenan insistira na fizičkom prisustvu scenografije u kadru. Naravno, u filmu ima digitalnih efekata, ali sve što može Kenan snima kao live action i u tom smislu CITY OF EMBER je potpuno suprotan MONSTER HOUSEu.

Naravno, Kenanovo vrlo precizno kadriranje, karakteristično za ljude koji dolaze iz sveta animacije je i ovde prisutno. Logično, nema onoliko divljanja sa kamerom kao u MONSTER HOUSE, ali što se pokreta kamere tiče, Kenan dovodi do ekstrema neke tekovine pre svega klasičnog Holivuda.

Njegov princip kadriranja u ovom filmu je više na tragu naslova kao što su LOGAN'S RUN nego Tony Scotta, s tim što je naravno sve modernizovano u skladu sa sadašnjim trenutkom. Kroz takav pristup materijalnosti scenografije i kostima i klasicističkom kadriranju, Kenan već na nivou fakture filma pokazuje kako je ovo jedna, hajde da kažem, ozbiljna priča, sa ozbiljnom poentom.

Svet u kome odrastaju mladi junaci je uzbudljiv, ali uopšte nije veseo i detinjast. Štaviše, klinci su pritisnuti tjeskobom kao u nekom Dickensovom romanu. U tom smislu, Kenan baš dickensovski stalno balansira između forme filma sa decom i filma za decu. Mislim da je upravo u toj serioznosti pristupa sakriven i razlog toga što je CITY OF EMBER potpuno krahirao na američkim blagajnama, što inače nije bilo prevelik premet analize jer je iste sedmice krahirao i BODY OF LIES što je zatim bilo predmet itekakve analize.

Slično kao i u MONSTER HOUSE, Kenan dakle snima film iz osamdesetih, s tim što u ovom konkretnom slučaju ne radi Amblin već neku vrstu ozbiljnijeg dečjeg filma, onog dečjeg filma koji roditelji malo moraju da nameću deci.

Glumci su sjajni. Devojčicu znamo iz ATONEMENTa, a i glavni momak (inema su im prekomplikovana da bih se sad setio kako e pišu) ima veliku karijeru pred sobom. Odabir dece glumaca je briljantan. Oni izgledaju baš kao ideal potrebnih klinaca za tu ulogu. I odlično igraju. U tom smislu, Kenan je zaista uspeo da in the flesh nađe likove koji su idealni, kao da ih je crtao.

Iza vrlo uzbudljive i zanimljive priče krije se ideološki momenat koji je u ovom trenutku u Americi sigurno bio primećen, i sigurno je opteretio film. Kenan naravno nije pokušavao da pobegne od ideološke implikacije, ali moguće je da je i taj segment malo iznervirao publiku. U bioskopima je W. i zaista im verovatno nije bilo potrebno da i u jednom dečjem filmu imaju politiku.

A ideološki koncept je sledeći, film je smešten u izoloani grad sagrađen kako bi sačuvao ljude od Apoaklipse (krajnje nedefinisane). Izlazak u okolinu je zabranjen. U jednom delu građanstva vlada praznoverje (slično televanđlistima) a obožavaju se Graditelji koji su napravili grad. Gradom vlada korumpirani i nekompetentni predsednik. Konačno, rok trajanja grada je 200 godina, što je direktna aluzija na srpsku državnost, dakako.

Dakle, film je ideološki vrlo pregnantan i to ne na način koji je ppularan u Americi i među family oriented publikom koja bi trebalo da ga gleda.

Prava je šteta što je Kenan sa ovim filmom izašao u tako nezgodnom trenutku, i što ovaj rad nije legitimisan velikim rezultatom na blagajnama, ali čini mi se da visok nivo ovog filma u svakom pogledu neće proći nezapaženo.

* * * * / * * * *

Exclusive Interview: 'City of Ember' Director Gil Kenan
Director Gil Kenan chats about creating his claustrophobic underground city, steampunk, sci-fi, and why he's only 85% nerd (maybe).

By Jenni Miller


Gil Kenan on the set of City of Ember
Courtesy of Fox Walden

Gil Kenan claims it's merely luck that got Robert Zemeckis interested in him fresh out of film school, but it was more than luck that won him an Oscar nomination for his first film, Monster House. Chances are he'll continue his so-called lucky streak with his new film, City of Ember, a movie that he describes as a "post-apocalyptic children's film." Based on the novel by Jeanne Duprau and adapted for the screen by Caroline Thompson, City of Ember is about an underground city whose inhabitants have long since forgotten why they haven't seen the sun in 200 years. A massive generator keeps their city alive, but it's slowly creaking to a halt and no one knows why. Messenger Lena Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan) and her best friend Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway) find a mysterious box and begin to unravel Ember's true story, and maybe, just maybe, they'll end up saving Ember — and the human race.

Premiere got a chance to speak with Gil Kenan about creating his claustrophobic underground city, steampunk, sci-fi, and why he's only 85% nerd (maybe).

So, how was Fantastic Fest?
I'm not gonna fall for that trap and say it was fantastic. I'll say it was very, very good. No, I had a great time. As is always the case with taking a film to a festival, at least in my, um, limited career, you don't actually get a chance to see other films in the festival, which is a real shame because there are a lot of films at this particular one that I really wanted to see, but I'm hoping to catch up with them on the next festival I go to, which seems to be almost the same line-up but just on a different continent.

What films did you want to see? And what's the next festival?

I wanted to see Let the Right One In, and The Good, The Bad, and The Weird. Those are the two I really wanted to see. Oh, and South of Heaven I wanted to see also. The festival I'm heading to is Sitges in Spain [Festival de Cine de Sitges].

Did you watch your movie with the audience at Fantastic Fest?
Well, this [was] a particularly surreal experience because I brought Bill Murray out for the screening, and so it was sort of... I wasn't really in a mood or any sort of condition to sit in the audience during the screening, but I did come in for sort of key moments. I would come into the auditorium, sit in the back for about 20 minutes, and then leave the theater and pace nervously.

And what did everyone's faces look like?
Well, they looked appropriate. I mean, it's difficult to know what someone's face is supposed to look like when they're watching a post-apocalyptic children's film... [laughs] There's no face chart I have to reference. But it seemed like the audience was appropriately involved in the film, and in fact, after it, I talked to a bunch of people who came up and shared their enthusiasm for the film.

Fantastic Fest is kind of a difference sort of fest just because it's in Austin and it's fanboys and girls.
It's really great, because you know, we sort of figured out what the distinction is. It's like every other film festival minus the cynicism. Like, people don't go into a theater looking to criticize something. They go in to enjoy a movie. And I think that's sort of what gives that particular festival its life. Of course, the film community in Austin is one of a kind, and Tim League and company really know how to put on a show, so you throw all that in the blender, and you end up with Fantastic Fest.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you started working on City of Ember even before Monster House.
Yeah, but only by a few weeks. I got involved with City of Ember and made a big pitch and a song and dance to get attached to it and to get Playtone to option the rights for it, and then a few weeks later I got a call that Robert Zemeckis had seen my short [film] and wanted to talk.

And it's all history from there, right?
[laughs]

It's kinda crazy to be under his wing and Spielberg's and all that.
Super crazy.

Especially as such a young director.
Yeah, no, it was completely overwhelmingly great. It's the sort of best-case scenario of going to film school. Or it's even the best case scenario, plus, and I honestly was just in the right place at the right time and it all kind of worked out. I try not to analyze it too much, because I'm afraid it will go away if I do so I just sort of look forward and I want to try to keep making as many as movies as I can before I disappear.


It's interesting that you mentioned Sim City, because I was going to ask you if you play video games. Some of the scenes really reminded me of the puzzle games I used to play.
Yeah, for sure. I grew up with all that stuff. I don't sit down and think about that as a story-telling mode but I think it's just part of who I am.

Do you still play video games?
Yeah, it's been difficult. I sort of can either play video games or make movies, so I'm about to start my third age of video game playing. [laughs] It's gonna begin in a few weeks.

And then of course you have all the movies made from video games....
[laughs] Right, right, right. Which is, you know, which is a bunch of nonsense, usually. But that's a whole other conversation.

Yeah, I mean, your movies really aren't like anything else out there right now. They're kids' movies, but they're not. They've very dark, which is interesting, you know, because if you look at something like WALL*E, it had the same sort of vibe where you're like, "Wow! Is that really for kids?!"
Right, right. Well, obviously, I'm really happy that there is a movement towards respecting kids and their depth of emotion and capacity for understanding stories that aren't just saccharine or slapstick. I think that kids are a lot smarter and a lot braver and more curious than we give them credit for in the movies that we generally put in front of them, and so I feel like any trend towards putting things in the theater that respect the intelligence of our audience is a step in the right direction.

Especially working with someone like Caroline Thompson, whose work I love, and sort of pushes that childlike darkness.
The reason I wanted to work with Caroline here is because so much of the film is about the relationship between light and dark. It's a dark world, but you know, there's a real brightness and a spark to the characters. Caroline does that better than anyone else in the world, I think.

Do you have a favorite movie of hers?
Obviously, Edward Scissorhands is a masterpiece, I think. It's difficult to go beyond that. I feel like I really love what she did in The Secret Garden. I thought that was a really beautifully told story. And I've pretty much read everything she's written over the years. She wrote an amazing script about Johnny Eck, you know one of the uh... [people in Tod Browning's movie] Freaks. And so, you know, I've just been a huge fan of her writing for years.

Are you guys gonna make that?
Oh, I don't know. I do definitely want to work with Caroline in the future, and we're talking about what that's going to be, but we haven't figured out yet. We just finished this one so, it's uh... Like I said, I need some time to play video games. [laughs]


Saoirse Ronan and Gil Kenan on the set of City of Ember
Courtesy of Fox Walden

You've already got two new things happening. You've got Junkers and Airman.
I got both of those, which is really awesome, and I'm gonna take like a few weeks, I think, before I dive into them, but Junkers is being written right now, and Airman I'm working on during my vacation.

So you're actually writing Junkers right now?
Yeah, yeah. Um, John Glenn, who's a writer, I brought in for Junkers. I wrote the story for Junkers, and John is gonna write the draft.

Wow, that's fast.
Well, when it comes, it comes very quickly, so it just sort of happened. And yeah, I can't talk about it too much because I'm superstitious, but it's, um, I'm really excited.

Are you excited to direct something you've written yourself?
Very much, yeah. I've now done a novel adaptation and, in a way, a script adaptation, and you know, I think it's gonna be really rewarding in a different way to do something that's a world and characters that are, you know, originally mine.

And Airman uses the same technology as The Polar Express, right?
And the same as Monster House as well.

City of Ember was scary in parts; it was claustrophobic. When I walked out of the theater, I was a little bit slack-jawed and like, "Thank God there's a sky."
[laughs] Look, I mean, the experience that I always was sort of after with this film was for the audience to leave the theater with some kind of a recognition of where we live. Place matters so much to me and to this film, you know, and awareness of what our home is, what home means, and what we need to value and take care of while it's still around. And so, you know, what you just said about the experience of walking out of the theater and feeling comforted that the sky was there is pretty much the exact [reaction] I'm going for. It's not about... You can get an entertaining time at the movies out of this film, but it wouldn't have been worth the time to go through all that work to just end up with a way to kill an hour and a half at a theater. It's also about getting Jeanne Duprau's core theme of the novel across, which is [that] we have finite resources.

So would you say there's a political and/or environmental subtext to the movie?
Well, one of the strengths of the novel actually is that it, in a way, it's like a subtext mirror on whatever time is watching it or reading it. She wrote it with a foot planted in the Cold War era [that] she grew up in, and for her it was, you know, sort of deeply imbued in nuclear annihilation, and you know, [a] kind of Soviet end-game scenario. To our time, I think, a political or ecological context is totally relevant for this film, but I kind of like the fact it's almost like every era has a different reason for building a City of Ember. And I think that's precisely why I didn't enumerate what the cause for the end of the world was, in the film.

For instance, the red capes the messengers wear reminded me of The Handmaid's Tale [by Margaret Atwood]. There are so many crazy, apocalyptic stories out there about "protecting" people like this. Technically, the target age for City of Ember could be any age, but are kids really gonna get it?
I think kids are gonna have questions. I don't know that they're going to fully grasp it, but you know, part of the goal is to have kids .... Kids need to be little agitators, right? We want them to be. We want them to be asking questions, and that's gonna lead to information and to conversations with parents, with friends, with teachers, and that's sort of the goal.

The steampunk aesthetic is pretty heavy in your movie, but it's also pretty huge right now in some subcultures. It seems also like a really cool coincidence, because I'm assuming that...
The world caught up with Ember, that's all. [laughs]


Gil Kenan on the set of City of Ember
Courtesy of Fox Walden

Yeah, it's been cooking in your brain for the past few years!
Yeah, the original sketches for this I made, I guess, almost five years ago now, and the film basically looks like the drawings. I was more inspired by sort of the classic era of science-fiction films, specifically Metropolis and even, to a certain extent, modern times — the idea of seeing the guts of big machines working. And a lot of the architecture in the film is also inspired by the era when we felt like we could collectively advance culture through design and machinery, and so steampunk as an aesthetic movement is basically drawing on the same references.

And that feeling of fun and whimsy but also, you know, a little bit of doom.
Yeah, yeah, it's nice to deconstruct these objects and machines that we've sort of taken for granted around us and put them back together again in new ways. In a way, we've abandoned the idea of moving forward in design; so much of what design is in the last five years or ten years is all about kind of stagnating and then drawing on influences from the past. So I think that steampunk in a way is a reaction where, well, if we're not gonna move forward, then we're gonna rip apart the past and put it back together again.

When you were a kid, did you take things apart?
Sure! Yeah, yeah. And I was a Lego maniac, too. A lot of that is, you know, city-building. [laughs] And like, uh, Sim City too.... It's like story isn't always just about human emotion and character arc; a lot of times story is driven by place and the story of place, and I think even as a kid for me that was always a real lure.

Monster House really pulled it off 'cause it was a kids' movie, and it was cute and cool and funky-looking, but some people thought The Polar Express was a little creepy.
I feel like with Monster House I sort of figured out a way to tell that story in a way that harnessed the most out of the technology, that where the technology followed story rather than technology informing what happens on screen. I feel like with Airman, I wouldn't be doing it this way if I didn't have something planned that was gonna push it even further in a kind of story and design-driven direction. I have something pretty exciting planned for Airman.

Do you like graphic novels too?
You know, I sort of missed out on that stuff. I grew up with Asterix, and somehow I sort of grew up in a semi-Belgian universe, even though I grew up in Receda [California]. [laughs] Somehow comic books and those things missed me. But I still hope to one day understand them.

I was curious 'cause video games and the comic books...
Usually, they go hand in hand.

They do!
I guess I made some choices as a kid.... You can't nerd out, like, 100%. [laughs] I tended to be, like, 85% nerd. Believe me, I made up for it in other ways.

Well, some of us like video games and comic books, but that's ok. That's fine.
Some of us are even bigger nerds than me, I guess.

It's true. Halloween's coming up. What are your favorite Halloween movies? I get the feeling that you're a little bit of a Halloween fan.
I really like, speaking of Caroline Thompson, The Nightmare Before Christmas, because I think it gives the holiday a mythology which it deserves. This is a really generic answer, but I love Halloween 3 because it has the best soundtrack of the line. I like my friend Michael Doherty's movie Trick 'R' Treat, which hopefully will get released one day. Douglas Pipes, who scored Monster House, also scored that film, and there's some really great stuff in it. I actually think it's going to be at Sitges this year.

I'm impressed by the Halloween 3 soundtrack reference.
It's so good. I don't think there was ever an official soundtrack, but [my friend] released a bootleg version for his friends and it's really outstanding.

That's interesting, because the soundtrack in City of Ember was really evocative.
Thanks. Again, it's just about treating it with the amount of seriousness it deserves. Like, we don't think of it as a kids' film when we're making it. I just know who my audience is, but we don't make creative choices based on that.


Bill Murray in City of Ember
Courtesy of Fox Walden

And obviously it's an amazing cast as well. There are Oscar nominees and winners out the wazoo.
[laughs] Yeah, I can't even get out of bed any more without some Academy Award nominee knockin' on the door or calling me on the phone begging to be in some movie. [laughs] No, it was just like crazy, crazy luck, again. These were the actors who needed to be in the movie, and somehow they wanted to be. I was really lucky. It was Caroline's script, really, that made the difference with most of them.

Don't sell yourself short.
No, I'm not. I'm really great [laughs], but when you go out to an actor, generally it's the script that makes them decide whether they'll have a conversation with the director or not, especially one who's only made a cartoon [laughs] and so it was really the script which kind of opened all the doors for me with the actors.

Are you interested in making dramas specifically targeted towards adults, or not even dramas, but just movies for adults?
Yeah, yeah. I have a few things, actually, cooking that are more, I guess, that deal with stories that don't... you know, at the end of the day, the thing that sort of binds the two movies I've made so far is that the protagonists have been youthful. I don't feel like the two movies have that much in common other than that place is important and the characters are young, but yeah, I've got a few films in my wish list that are adult-driven.

And would they be sci-fi or drama?
One's horror, not really horror, like drama-horror. [laughs] One is sci-fi. A couple are sci-fi. Yeah, I guess they sort of run the gamut.

So are you a big sci-fi fan?
Yeah, I'm sci-fi bananas!

Who are your favorite sci-fi authors?
I like Ursula K. Le Guin, and I like [Robert A.] Heinlein, and one of my favorite stories is this weird old Asimov story called "The Ugly Little Boy," about a kid who was plucked by a time shovel that — they figured out how, they couldn't move people through time, but they could bring back random samplings of space from our planet, from the past — so yeah, I'm a full-fledged nerd.

Posle uživanja u all-around kvalitetnom filmmakingu Gila Kenana, odlučio sam da potpuno promenim ritam i da se sasvim uvaljam u blato uz jedan double-bill Jean Claude Van Dammea.

Reč je o novoj Van Dammeovoj DTV fazi i pogledati dva takva filma za redom je specifično iskustvo. Naime, ja kao akcioni fan stalno kukam da je akcioni žanr na izisaju, samrti ili je već mrtav, zavisno od raspoloženja. Pre svega, sve je manje naslova koji uopšte dolaze do bioskopa a postoji i izvesna kriza kvaliteta koja se usled oskudice ne prepoznaje.

S druge strane, u DTV svetu ima dosta akcije, u njoj glume akcione zvezde, neke od njih su još uvek upotrebljive, sve je to OK, ali povremeno je zaista teško snaći se unutar tog univerzuma pošto je produkcija obimna, opusi reditelja se teško prate i parametri kvaliteta su krajnje sumnjivi.

Stoga, u tom haotičnom miljeu, utisak gledanja DTV filmova je dosta sličan utisku gledanja srpskog filma. Nekako ih tretiraš kao hendikepirane filmove, pokušavaš da apstrahujepš nedostatke i raduješ se svakom dobrom detalju.Kao pasioniranom ljubitelju srpskog filma, to mi nije strano ali mi je kao ljubitelju akcijaša malo teško da te kriterijume apliciram na svoj omiljeni žanr koji je u vreme svog procvata upravo bio karakterističan po tome što je nudio zaokružena trendseterska ostvarenja.

Isto tako, gledajući Van dammeove DTV naslove, čovek razmišlja o nekim stvarima koje mu ne bi pale na pamet. Recimo, pišući o ZONI MRTVIH napomenuo sam kako je prednost tog filma što je sniman u zemlji u kojoj DTV biznis još uvek nije uzeo maha tako da ljudi sa entuzijazmom i radoznalošću rade žanrovski film. U Bugarskoj i Rumuniji to očigledno više nije slučaj. Tamo se tome pristupa industrijski. U nekim stvarima su postigli visok nivo ali su s druge strane u nogim stvarima ušli u kalup i postali jednolični. Očigledno je nestalo entuzijazma i čak je i lokalna radna snaga shvatila na kojim su granama Van Damme, Seagal i Snipes.

U tom smislu, vidljive su nevolje u novom filmu SHEPHERD: BORDER PATROL Isaaca Florentinea, u kome Van Damme glumi njuorleanskog policajca premeštenog u Teksas. Bugarska zaista ne može da prođe kao Teksas. Uprkos tome što su napravili solidnu scenografiju koja fingira Teksas, postoje putokazi, granični prelazi i sve što treba, očigldno je da lokacije ne liče na Teksas kakav poznajemo iz filmova, da nebo nema tu boju, da se ponavljaju glumci koje znamo kao ruske mafijaše iz ranijih filmova i da ne liče na Meksikance.

Siguran sam da bi u situaciji da je to prvi film koji se radi u Bugarskoj, pokušali da urade novi casting, da ne zovu usual suspectse iz svakog Avi Lernerovog filma i da bi stvari išle bolje. Ovako tačno se oseća kako čak i lokalna istočnoevropska radna snaga ima neki svoj star sistem u DTV produkciji.

Sam film je dekadentan. Pogledao sam ga iz dekadentnih poriva da bih ispratio šta novo radi Isaac Florentine, reditelj koji je privukao pažnju sa UNDISPUTED 2. Čini se da Florenbtine napreduje na Avijevoj lestvici.

Međutim, u ovom filmu on mahom ponavlja spoj dosta rutinskih dijaloških scena i akcije koja je bazirana na ekstenzivnoj upotrebi slomoa, ubrzavanja, širokougaonih objektiva i solidnih koreografija JJ Perryja (koje se u izvesnoj meri već pomalo ponavljaju).

Međutim, ostatak filma je toliko neupečatljivo režiran da akcione situacije uglavnom previše stilski odudaraju, naročito zbog upotrebe različitih objektiva. To je inače problem koji ima Isaac Florentine.

Međutim, u ranijim borilačkim filmovima tonije bilo toliko očigledno, ali u naslovu koji ima i obiman zaplet i dosta akcije, to ume da bude nezgodno.

Negativca u filmu igra Scott Adkins. O njemu sam pisao povodom UNDISPUTED 2. Nesumnjivo je da ima leading man quality. Odlično izgleda i odlično se bije. Nažalost njegov završni fight sa Van dammeom nije ništa više od OK.

Scena po kojoj će film biti upamćen je set-piece sa autobusom, u vizuelnom i rediteljskom smislu.

U scenarističkom smslu, vrhunac je svakako situacija kada van damme završi u meksičkom zatvoru. Umesto kratke pasažne scene dobijamo situaciju u kojoj iako samo noći u zatvoru, Van Damme biva primoran da se bori na zatvorskom turniru koji organizuje korumpirani warden.   Ovakav detalj nema cenu.

U svakom slučaju, pre svega produkciono a ni rediteljski BORDER PATROL nije vrhunski DTV film.

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Drugi film na double billu je SECOND IN COMMAND Simon Fellowsa. Ovaj film je sniman u Rumuniji, i kao po pravilu, DTV sniman u Rumuniji je bolji od onog snimanog u Bugarskoj. Ne znam šta Death Wish kaže na to.

U svakom slučaju, Fellows je reditelj koji sa filmom BLESSED nije pretendovao na DTV već na indie horor uspeh a sa novim filmom MALICE IN WONDERLAND pokušava da se iz DTVa izvuče, tako da je samim tim za očekivati bilo da njegov film prevazilazi standarde DTV produkcije.

Film je slikao Doug Milsome, DP kojije radio Cimina u poznoj fazi, a što se mene tiče, najdraža mi je njegova fotka u IF LOOKS COULD KILL. On i fellows su išli tragom serije 24, dakle sa dosta pokreta kamere, švenkova, snimanjem sa više kamera, unošenjem pseudodokumentarnosti.

Fellows je time uspeo da postigne da SECOND IN COMMAND sporadično ima film look i zaliči na bioskopski film. Iako takav tip režije ne bi trebalo da pogoduje Van dammeovoj borilačkoj personi, Fellows je pronašao ključ u kome i Van Damme može u tom okruženju da odradi ono po čemu je poznat.

Kada se tome doda sasvim pristojan siege scenario koji maksimalno koristi smeštane pirče u Moldaviju, SECOND IN COMMAND postaje zaista jedan od najprijatnijih DTV filmova poslednjih godina.

Naročita poslastica je što negativca igra Hrvat Velibor Topić koji živi & radi u Engleskoj, a znamo ga po ulozi Vijalija u Milićevom filmu ŽIVI I MRTVI. Topić je i u ovom filmu odlična faca.

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slazem se!
DTV sniman u Rumuniji je mnogo bolji nego sniman u Bugarskoj...
deluje ozbiljnije, skuplje i zaista moze da lici na bioskopski film...
Bugarski nikad to ne mogu!

A Second in Command je stvarno dobar DTV film. I mene je prijatno iznenadio!

(Vidim da si usled moje neazurnosti vec nabavio i pogledao i Undisputed 2 i Second in command!! sorry... Daj da ti narezem nesto drugo, da me prodje griza savesti)

Nema nikakvih problema što se rezanja tiče, i gazda Ginger gaji dosta dobrog grindhousea i DTVa!

Drago mi je što se slažeš za diferencijaciju između bugarskih i rumunskih DTV produkcija. Retko ko primećuje te finese. Za Bugare i njihovu krizu sam čuo još od Srđana kada je za Avija pripremao WAR INC. To je bila Avijeva produkcija ali je sam film više bio art house i ekipa u Bugarskoj uopšte nije umela da se snađe sa zahtevima koji nisu klišetizirani za neki Seagalov projekat.

Vukotićeva AKCIJA STADION je nesumnjivo jedan od najzanimljivijih filmova snimljenih o Drugom svetskom ratu u SFRJ.

Ono po črmu se ovaj film izdvaja jeste pre svega Vukotićeva izvrsna vizuelna kultura. Ovaj film je vrhunski kadriran, sa vrlo preciznim vizuelnim konceptom, pokretima kamere i montažnim sklopovima koji pokazuju da je film brižljivo planiran i da je Vukotić jako dobro razumeo gramatiku savremenog filma. AKCIJA STADION je jedan od naših malobrojnih filmova koji su zaista vrhunski kadrirani i praktično je na nivou američkog filma na tom planu.

Vukotić i unutar samih scena uspeva da pruži zanimljiva mizanscenska rešenja. Primer su scene kada mlade ustaše vežbaju gađanje na živim ljudima ili sjajna, napeta scena kada mladim partizanima ne uspeva eksperiment kada prave bombe za spaljivanje stadiona.

I sama završna scena je maestralna kada se uzme u obzir kada & gde je snimana. U poslednje vreme riot scene su zasitile publiku, a ova uopšte nije monotona i u sebi ima sjajnu energiju, u koreografiji kretanja masa, pokreta kamere i montaže.

Drugi značajan segment filma je tretman nacizma. Scenario za film je pisao čuveni Slavko Goldstein, jedan od najvećih čuvara sećanja na Holokaust u Hrvatskoj. Goldstein je prethodno sarađivao sa Žikom Mitrovićem, i imao je dosta izleta na film, ako uzmemo u obzir da mu film nije izvorna vokacija.

Goldstein prvo zaista uspeva da iskaže svu monstruoznost ustaškog rasističkog projekta i njegove razmere. U jednom segmentu, on i Vukotić zaista uspevaju da naprave niz spooky scena koje svakako kultminiraju scenom upada u kuću u silovanja mlade majke. Međutim, s druge strane, Goldstein ne zanemaruje ni rasnu teoriju, deo ekipe koja se istinski ložila na to, ali ni socijalni, odnosno ekonomski momenat vezan za uzimanje jevrejske i srpske imovine, odnosno dolaska rustikalaca iz Hercegovine.

Konačno, Goldstein vrlo dobro beleži i negližozan, čankolizački odnos zagrebačke gospode prema ustašama.

U tom smislu, AKCIJA STADION, iako je reč o filmu koji se bavi vrlo konkretnim gestom otpora u ustaškom Zagrebu 1941. godine, dosta pažnje polaže u genezu nacizma i ustaštva. U ovom filmu, naravno, nema sumnje ko je negativac, niti ima ambivalencije, ali ti junaci su vrlo jasno definisani i nikako nisu amorfni kao u mnogim drugim WW2 filmovima kod nas.

Ono gde Vukotić nešto slabije kontroliše priču jeste generalna izgradnja karaktera. Iako film ima vrlo precizan pripovedački zamajac i profilisanog glavnog junaka, polaz priče je pomalo disperzivan i mnogi likovi imaju svoje arije. Ne može se reći da je film digresivan, štaviše vrlo je fokusiran, ali je naprosto raspored likova korz scene mogao biti konvencionalniji.

AKCIJA STADION je jedan od vrhunskih jugoslovenskih filmova koji zaslužuje punu pažnju.

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Pogledao sam DANGEROUS PARKING Peter Howitta. Reč je o autorskom, vrlo ličnom, i krajnje atipičnom naslovu za Howitta koji je pored glumačke karijere snimao krajnje mainstream naslove poput SLIDING DOORS, JOHNNY ENGLISH ili LAWS OF ATTRACTION.

DANGEROUS PARKING je film u kome sam Howitt igra glavnu ulogu reditelja koji pokušava da pronađe spokoj, usput se lečeći od alkoholizma i droge. Film je pun autobiografskih elemenata s tim što oni nemaju veze sa Howittom kao rediteljem. Naime, glavni junak je arty reditelj, zvezda britanskog filma, neko sličan recimo Terry Gilliamu. A Howitt to svakako nije. Biografski elemnti su preuzeti od Simon Brownea, preminulog pisca knjige na osnovu knjige po kojoj je film snimljen.

Howitt je upečatljiv u glavnoj ulozi i činjenica da reditelj i glumi glavnu ulogu u jednom rediteljski vrlo zahtevnom filmu jeste vrlo zanimljiva. U glumačkom smislu Howitt uspeva da donese svežinu koju verovatno neki poznatni glumac ne bi mogao. Još je zabavnije to što Howitt nema nikakav problem ni da se skine ako treba i ponaša se kao najposlušniji glumac.

U tom smislu, ako bi DANGEROUS PARKING došao u konkurenciju za neke nagrade, Howitt možda i ponajviše zaslužuje nagradu za glumu.

Što se oistaka glumačke ekipe tiče, Saffron Burrows je kao i uvek upečatljiva i ubedljiva kao i Sean Pertwee u ulozi Howittovog najboljeg druga. Svakako da bi efekat Howittove uloge bio manji da je imao slabije partnere.

Kad je reč o scenarističkom konceptu, Howitt je vrlo zanimljivo prelomio jednu vrlo jednostavnu priču, mešajući vremenske tokove kako bi prikrio jednostavnost i banalnost priče. To je vešto urađeno u smislu držanja pažnje publike ali se na kraju razaznaje osnovni problem priče koji se ne može prikrivati zauvek veštinom pripovedanja. Međutim, Howitt je u tehničkom smislu učinio sve što je mogao.

Ono što je osnovni emotivni problem u recepciji ovog filma jeste to što glavni junak ni u jednom trenutku istinski ne postaje srećan tako da samim tim njegov slom nosi manji emotivni odjek.

Na planu inscenacije, nikada nije bilo sporno da Howitt zna posao. Film je rađen u kolažnom, energičnom ključu na tragu već pomenutog Gilliama. Solidnu fotografiju u filmu pruža naše gore list Zoran Veljković koji je kod nas snimio samo jedan dugometražni film i to zlosrećnog DZIGU VERTOVA Bate Petrovića. Ipak, u Engleskoj je došao do ovog prilično ozbiljnog projekta.

Ne znam kojim putem će ići Howittova karijera posle ovog filma ali činjenica je da britanski reditelji posle malo rada u holivudskom mainstreamu dobijaju potrebu da snime lični parabiografski film o rediteljima.

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Pogledao sam QUANTUM OF SOLACE Marca Forstera. Reći da je ovo novi Bond film je krajnje upitno. Tehnički, da, ovo jeste novi film o Bondu, ali suštinski revampovan, bornizovan i bauerizovan Bond više nema previše veze sa onim po čemu je Bond bio poznat. Nije problem samo u tome što više nema catchphraseova, gadgeta i glamura, nije problem ni u tome što je sve postalo previše realistično, problem je naprosto u tome što se Bond više nimalo ne zabavlja radeći to što radi.

Naravno, serija o agentu 007 je imala slične devijacije, setimo se filma LICENSE TO KILL Johna Glena, koji ja volim ali koji je nesumnjivo nastao pod optrerećujućim uticajem MIAMI VICEa. Ali, kako su se i junaci u izvornom MIAMI VICE dobro zabavljao tako se i Bond tada dobro zabavljao. Međutim, u Mannovom filmu MIAMI VICE junaci se nimalo nisu zabavljali. Sve je bilo smrtno ozbiljno, a priča je tek povremeno tome davala za pravo.

U novom Bondu se glavni junak više uopšte ne zabavlja. Šarm je nestao. Bond je postao kao Bauer i Bourne, mašina koja juri da se sveti, muči i ubija. Čak ni njegovi odnosi sa ženama u ovom filmu nemaju puno veze sa ranijim. Ovaj Bond ih ne odvodi u krevet što je šarmantan nego zato što je nezgodan i neprijatan, iako ruku na srce, odvodi ih u krevet zapravo samo zato što je to konvencija serijala. Ovakvom liku u suštini ne bi trebalo da bude do seksa i zavođenje britanske špijunke u Boliviji je potpuno van karaktera, ako ćemo realno.

Dakle, Bond više nije ono što je bio. E sad, naravno, ovo su dani nasilnog uozbiljavanja, pogledajmo strip ekranizacije. Nije neočekivano da i Bond dobije takvo čitanje. Međutim, ma koliko to ne funkcionisalo u DARK KNIGHTu, Bruce Wayne se u nekom trenutku ipak obuče u čoveka-šišmiša, dok u Bondu takvog povratka na staro nema.

Prvo, akcija je potpuno drugačija nego što je bila u ranijim filmovima. U CASINO ROYALE svi pamte onaj dosta slab rip-off parkoura koji je tada bio flavopr of the month. Već se tada osetilo da je odlazak Vica Armstronga iz ekipe doveo do toga da Bond izgubi svoj akcioni identitet. Vic je bio napravio svoje remek-delo u DIE ANOTHER DAY i možda i jeste bio trenutak da ga zameni neko nov, ali CASIONO ROYALE je bio epigonski film sa krajnje neopredeljenim konceptom akcije.

QUANTUM OF SOLACE u tom smislu barem ima koherentan koncept. Secong unit su radili Simon Crane i Dan Bradley, američki eksperti koji stoje iza raznih recentnih akcionih hitova. Crane je nominalno Britanac, ali njegov rad je kvintesencijalno američki. Bradley je stekao slavu radeći MATRIX i BOURNEa.

I njihov akcioni koncept se ovde vidi. To je dakle dosta shaky cama, dosta pseudo-realističnostio u borbi, kapoere u hand-to-hand combatu, trešenja kamere u trenutka kada neko padne ili bude udaren. Ja ne mogu da kažem da to u ovom filmu ne radi posao. Ima nekoliko sjajnih scena. Ali, one nisu u Bondovom duhu. U njima nema uživanja, preterivanja, šarma, duhovitosti. Ne, to je odmah hvatanja za gušu.

Štaviše u ovom filmu Bond gotovo da ni nema neki relativno šarmantan susret sa negativcem. Postoji jedna scena, sve ostalo je ćutanje i tuče i pretnje i maltretiranje.

Naravno, to su sve elementi koji su meni dragi ali nisu nešto po čemu se Bond izdvojio svih ovih godina. Ja sam prvi koji će uživati u takvom filmu i poznat je moj hype za naslove kao što su BOURNE SUPREMACY ili TAKEN i u QUANTUM OF SOLACE sam uživao u pojedinim deonicama, ali to nije bio Bond.

Marc Forster s druge strane je classy izvikani reditelj koji se potrudio da od QUANTUMa napravi naročit artefakt. Iako je potpuno omašio u uvodnoj sekvenci gde je umesto tradicionalnog spektakularnog, duhovitog otvaranja stavio jednu krajnje generic auto poteru, u kasnijim scenama zaista pokazuje kako pokušava da od novog Bonda napravi work of art. Naravno takva transformacija forme se jedino može definisati kao kič, ali ovaj Bond je solidan kič. Forster pomalo podseća na reditelje emisija o kulturi na RTSu koji u kadar stave neku vazu kako bi se znalo da je to emisija o umetnosti. Tako i Forster, svaku lokaciju gazi do maksimuma, da se ne zaboravi gde se film dešava, atipično miksuje ton sa čestim dugim periodima, paralelno montira tuču i operu, a zvuk je iz opere, i tako, Forster se kao stari kičlija raspojasao ovde.

Forsterov pristup dopunjen doprinosima Bradleya i Cranea odovodi do toga da se QUANTUM ne može osporiti kao loš film. Ne, film kao film je vrlo dobro urađen.

Iako je za scenario koji je ponovo radio CASINO tim jasno da pati od te raspojasane MUNICH i BOURNE ULTIMATUM strukture u kojoj se mnogo priča kad se priča i ćuti se kad se radi, i onda sve deluje nekako kvalitetnije nego što jeste jer se ozbiljno priča i ćutke radi (što nikada nije bio Bondov modu operandi), nesumnjivo je da je velika pažnja uložena u scenario.

O pažnji svedoče neke lepe simetrije u sudbinama likova, koje sada ne bih spoilovao i nesumnjiv topicality filma. U situaciji kada je u Boliviji Moralesov režim, film tematizuje pokušaj puča protivu aktuelne neimenovane vlade u kome učestvuje CIA, dok s druge strane opskurna organizacija koju predvodi Francuz ima zli plan vezan za komunalne službe te zemlje (plot negativca u QUANTUMu je jedan od pitomijih i liči kao na jednu od manjih optužbi između Mlađana Dinkića i Velimira Ilića) a to je jasna aluzija na argentinski fijasko posle privatizacije vodovoda.

Dakle, scenario je precizan i vrlo topical a topicality u tom dnevnopolitičkom smislu takođe nije osobenost Bonda iako 007 nije ni bežao od aktuelnosti.

Omaž GOLDFINGERu sa curom ubijenom crnim zlatom i Ken Adamovim setovima u završnici su odlični. Ipak, Bondov povratak na Walther PPK je apsurdan, imajući u vidu da je već u Brosnanovim filmovima promenio lično oružje. Nositi PPK danas je kao da se nosi Luger, drugo taj pištolj je kompromitovan još u vreme onog incidenta sa kraljičinim obezbeđenjem. Meni je simptično da vidim PPK u akciji ali on je u suštini zaista nešto što je dozvoljeno menjati.

Nažalost, izmenjene su neke mnogo važnije stvari koje su dovele do toga da Bond u priličnoj meri izgubi svoj identitet. No, s druge strane, ljubitelji akcije su dobili jedan solidan naslov koji nudi dosta radosti.

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Kakva tuga. Ne znam uopšte da li ću ovo gledati. Kad oću dobru akciju onda pogledam dobru akciju, ali dođavola kad oću Bonda onda oću BONDA!!!  

Sve je u redu, pa ni "Mr. No" nije obilovao humorom. To je došlo kasnije. Bondu treba vremena (par filmova) da shvati da je neuništiv, i kad to shvati steći će i smisao za humor.

Nije pitanje humora kao takvog. U DR NO ga nije bilo, ni u meni možda najdražem HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE ga nije bilo. Ali, bilo je šarma. Ovde nema šarma. Ovo je kao da Dirty Harryja zamene oni tipovi iz MAGNUM FORCE koji rade isto što i on, samo na loš način.

Da, DR, a ne MR  

Pretpostavljam da je to zbog 9/11. Nema više šale, neprijatelji nisu imaginarni. Zapravo jesu, ali ne i za potrebe propagande. Ali imam blagi utisak da će se Bond opustiti u sledećim filmovima. Prvo će on biti ozbiljan, ali će situacije postajati apsurdnije, a onda će se i on prepustiti talasima zabavljačke industrije.

QuoteDa, DR, a ne MR

Da, da, nije magistar nego doktor  

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3976/through_the_glasses_darkly

Culture > October 29, 2008
Through the Glasses Darkly
What if the between-the-lines Republican message (don't be afraid, there will be no real change) is the true illusion?
By Slavoj Zizek
Today, even the strongest advocates of diminishing the excessive role of Washington accept the necessity of a state intervention that is sublime in its unimaginable quantity.Tags    election 2008 republicans Share   Digg del.icio.us Reddit Newsvine When the hero of John Carpenter's 1988 They Live puts on a pair of weird sunglasses that he has stumbled upon in an abandoned church, he notices a billboard that once invited us to a Hawaii beach holiday now simply displays the words:

"MARRY AND REPRODUCE." Ad copy on another billboard — this one for a new color TV — says, "DON'T THINK, CONSUME!"

The glasses, then, function as a device for the critique of ideology. In other words, they enable him to see the real message lying beneath the glossy, colorful surface.

What would we see if we were to observe the Republican presidential campaign through such glasses?The first thing would be a long series of contradictions and inconsistencies:

• Their call to reach across party lines — while waging the cultural war politics of "us" against "them."

• Their warning that the candidates' family life should be off limits — while parading their families on stage.

• Their promises of change — while offering the same old programs (lower taxes and less social welfare, a belligerent foreign policy, etc.).

• Their pledge to reduce state spending — while incessantly praising President Reagan. (Recall Reagan's answer to those who worried about the exploding debt: "It is big enough to take care of itself.")

• Their accusations that Democrats privilege style over substance — which they deliver at perfectly staged media events.

The next thing we would see is that these and other inconsistencies are not a weakness, but a source of strength for the Republican message. Republican strategists masterfully exploit the flaws of liberalism: Its patronizing "concern" for the poor that is combined with a thinly disguised indifference toward — if not outright contempt for — blue-collar workers, and its politically correct feminism that is usually combined with an underlying mistrust of women in power. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was a hit on both counts, parading both her working-class husband and her femininity.

The earlier generations of women politicians (Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and even, up to a point, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton) were what can be referred to as "phallic" women. They acted as "iron ladies" who imitated and tried to outdo male authority, to be "more men than men themselves."

Writing in Le Point, a French weekly, Jacques-Alain Miller, a follower of the late French philospher Jacques Lacan, pointed out that Palin, on the contrary, proudly displays her femininity and motherhood. She has a "castrating" effect on her male opponents, not by being more manly than them, but by sarcastically downgrading the puffed-up male authority. According to Miller, Palin instinctively knows that male "phallic" authority is a posture, a semblance to be exploited and mocked. Recall how she mocked Sen. Barack Obama's work as a community organizer.

Palin provides a "post-feminist" femininity without complexity, uniting the features of mother, prim teacher (glasses, hair in a bun), public figure and, implicitly, sex object, proudly displaying the "first dude" as a phallic toy. The message is that she doesn't lack anything — and, to add insult to injury, it was a Republican woman who realized this left-liberal dream. It is as if she simply is what left-liberal feminists want to be. No wonder the Palin effect is one of false liberation: "Drill, baby, drill!" Feminism and family values! Big corporations and blue collars!

So, back to Carpenter's They Live. To get the true Republican message, one should take into account not only what is said but what is implied.

Where we hear the message of populist frustration over Washington gridlock and corruption, the glasses would show a condoning of the public's refusal to understand: "We allow you NOT to understand — so have fun, vent your frustration! We will take care of business. We have enough behind-the-scenes experts who can fix things. In a way, it's better for you not to know." (Recall Vice President Dick Cheney's hints at the dark side of power, as he successfully orchestrated an expansion of presidential executive power.)

And where the message is the promise of change, the glasses would show something like this: "Don't worry, there will be no real change, we just want to change some small things to make sure that nothing will really change." The rhetoric of change, of troubling Washington's stagnant waters, is a permanent Republican staple. (Recall former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich's populist anti-Washington rise to power in 1994.)

Let us not be naïve here: Republican voters know there will be no real change. They know the same substance will go on with changes in style. This is part of the deal.

Four years ago, Sen. John Kerry lost because he was President Bush with a human face. Today, Sen. John McCain is Bush with a lipsticked face. It's a rhetorical lipstick of "No bullshit!" When Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt, author of the bestselling On Bullshit, was asked which U.S. politician breaks out of the predominant bullshitting, he named McCain — and thereby tragi-comically missed a key point. Talking straight, displaying no-bullshit honesty, can be the cleverest form of bullshitting, a mere populist pose.

What if, however, the between-the-lines Republican message (don't be afraid, there will be no real change) is the true illusion, not the secret truth? What if there really will be a change? Or, to paraphrase the Marx brothers: McCain and Palin look like they want a change and talk like they want a change — but this shouldn't deceive us, they might very well accomplish a change!

Perhaps this is the true danger, since it would be change in the direction of "Country first!" and of "Drill, baby, drill!"

Luckily, as an electoral blessing in disguise, a sobering thing happened to remind us where we really live: in the reality of global capitalism. The state is planning emergency measures to spend hundreds of billions of dollars — if not $1 trillion — to repair the consequences of the financial crisis caused by free-market speculations.

The lesson is clear: The market and state are not opposed. Indeed, strong state interventions are needed to keep markets balanced.

The initial Republican reaction to the financial meltdown was a desperate attempt to reduce it to a minor misfortune that could easily be healed by a proper dose of the old Republican medicine (a proper respect for market mechanisms, etc.). In short, the Republicans' between-the-lines message was this: We allow you to continue to dream.

However, all the political posturing of lower state spending became irrelevant after this sudden brush with the real. Today, even the strongest advocates of diminishing the excessive role of Washington accept the necessity for a state intervention that is sublime in its almost unimaginable quantity. Confronted with this sublime grandeur, all the "no bullshit" bravado was reduced to a confused mumble. Where, today, are McCain's steely resolve and Palin's sarcasm?

But was the financial meltdown really the awakening from a dream? It depends on how the meltdown will be perceived by the general public. In other words, which interpretation will win? Which "story" about it will predominate?

When the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field of "discursive" ideological competition opens up. In Germany in the late '20s, Adolf Hitler won the competition for the narrative that explained to Germans the reasons for the crisis of the Weimar Republic and the way out of it. (His plot was the Jewish plot.) In France in 1940, Marshall Petain's narrative, that France lost because of the Jewish influence and democratic degeneration, won in explaining the reasons for the French defeat.

Consequently, the main task of the ruling ideology is to impose a narrative that will not put the blame for the meltdown onto the global capitalist system as such, but on, say, lax legal regulations and the corruption of big financial institutions. Against this tendency, we should insist on the key question: which "flaw" of the system as such opens up the possibility for — and continuous outbreaks of — such crises and collapses?

The first thing to bear in mind is that the origin of the crisis is a "benevolent" one. After the dot-com bubble exploded in the first years of the new millennium, the decision across party lines was to facilitate real estate investments to keep the economy growing and prevent recession. Today's meltdown is the price paid for the United States avoiding a prolonged recession five years ago.

The danger is that the predominant narrative of the meltdown will be the one that, instead of waking us from a dream, will enable us to continue to dream. And it is here that we should start to worry — not only about the economic consequences of the meltdown, but also about the obvious temptation to reinvigorate the "war on terror" and U.S. interventionism in order to keep the economy running.

Slavoj Žižek, a philosopher and psychoanalyst, is a senior researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, in Essen, Germany. He is the author of, among many other books, The Fragile Absolute and Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?

Inace, ocajan prevod ovoga ima na NSPM, ovde...

http://www.nspm.rs/savremeni-svet/pogled-kroz-carobne-naocari.html

Pogledao sam rimejk BANGKOK DANGEROUS Braće Pang. Sećam se koliku je senzaciju napravio njihov originalni film na FESTu, a isto tako vidim da je rimejk denunciran kao nešto najgore ikada snimljeno. Takav ishod zvuči logično ako se imaju na umu nepovoljna iskustva sa rimejkovima azijskih klasika. Međutim, možda baš zbog izrazito negativne predrasude koju sam imao, meni rimejk uopšte nije loš.

Doduše, ja sam mnogo očekivao od Pangovih, onomad u vreme tog FESTa, i original mi nije bio ništa naročito. U tom spoju izneverenih očekivanja onomad i očekivanja najgoreg sada, ja mislim da su Braća Pang napravila vrlo dostojanstven rimejk vlastitog filma.

Štaviše, ako se izuzme sasvim legitimno integrisan Nic Cage u bankoški milje, rimejk apsolutno ima atmosferu tajlčandksog filma. Štaviše, jezička barijera između stranca u gradu i domaćih je apsolutno realistična. Svi lokalni junaci su titlovani.

Kad je o akciji reč, ja sam sucker za Aziju čak i kad se rimejkuje. Ja sam čak fan i REPLACEMENT KILLERSa. Braća Pang međutim nikada nisu bili John Woo. Oni su u akciji uvek bili skloniji arty rešenjima, i tako je manje više i u ovom filmu. Ako neko očekuje tipičan azijski hitman film sa obiljem akcije, u BANGKOKu će ga relativno dobiti. Akcionih i suspense situacija ima, ali ovo nije Tsui Hark vć je aposlutno na liniji Braće Pang, sa dosta elipsi i fokusiranjem na specifične detalje unutar akcione scene. Ipak, pravi saldokusci su nagrađeni sofisticiranijom hard-R akcijom koja između ostalog uključuje amputaciju ruke i kidanje čoveka na dva dela.

U smislu pristupa akciji, Braća Pang su ostali na svojoj liniji, digli su svoj Third World cinema koncept na holivudski nivo ali nisu još uvek poklekli pred holivudskom konvencijom. I u ovom filmu to funkcioniše, i Cageu čak omogućuje da što se mene tiče ubroji još jedan krajnje atipičan i solidan žanrovski film u svoj skor.

Kad je o melodrami reč, ona je hipertrofirana, sirkovska, i to svakako može da smeta. Međutim, ni za to nije kriv Holivud. Štaviše,. Holivud bi verovatno zatomio tu melodramu koja u ovom filmu jeste bestidna i opet je apsoluno na liniji azijskog hitman filma. Koliko je KILLER patetičan, toliko je patetičan i BANGKOK DANGEROUS. Dakle, jako je patetičan. Ali, meni je i to OK, to je stvar sa kojom se računa, i koja je kako rekoh bliža originalnom miljeu nego što je krivica rimejka.

Cage je u filmu potpuno okružen tajlandskim glumcima tako da se ovaj film može čitati i kao holivudski film sniman na Tajlandu ali i kao tajlandski film sa američkim glumcem, i to uklapanje dveju kinematografija je sjajno urađeno tako da niko tu ne odskače.

Kada se sumira položaj ovog filma u širem žanrovskom kontekstu, sasvim je jasno da je reč o naslovu koji je po svom konceptu danas poprilično deplasiran jer se HK histerija završila, štaviše Holivud je sažvakao i ispljunuo nazad u Kinu najveće tamošnje reditelje, a što se hitman žanra tiče, publika sada traži nešto drugo. Međutim, sam film za to nije kriv i ja mislim da će vremenom, kada izgubi auru filma kome je zapalo da ga svi opljunu, biti rehabilitovan.

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http://www.citymagazine.rs/blog/?p=132

Kroz maglu se sećam da si negde na forumu pričao o filmu Višnja na Tašmajdanu, ali mi search ne nalazi taj topic.

Imaš li predstavu šta se dogodilo sa glumcem Gojkom Drulovićem? Na netu sam našao samo fakt da mu je to jedini film.

Gojko Drulović nije bio glumac već naturščik. On je preminuo pre nekoliko godina, inače bio je poslovni čovek, radio je u nekom našem predstavništvu u Njujorku, čini mi se.

Hvala na infou.
Ja sam u svojoj glavi iskonstruisao da je poginuo nedugo posle Visnje i to nesto uzasno tragicno. Cak sam ga nasao u nekom spisku palih boraca Srbije, a da ne pricamo kako postoji i osnovna skola sa tim imenom.

Pogledao sam THE COTTAGE Paul Andrew Williamsa. Sticajem bizarnih okolnosti pogledao sam i njegov prethodni, inače potpuno različit film LONDON TO BRIGHTON koji je u suštini bio socijalna drama sa tragovima nekog spooknessa pe svega u liku mistifikovanog gangstera pedofila.

Međutim, dok je LONDON TO BRIGHTON u najboljem slučaju bio jedan polovičan film, THE COTTAGE je bestidan oportuni promašaj u kome je Williams pokušao da spoji slasher i krimi komediju u ruralnim okolnostima na jedan ne samo kompilatorski način, čak bi se moglo reći plagijatorski način, već kroz upotrebu postupka koji je kao takav već potpuno potrošen.

Aproprijacija detalja sama po sebi nije problem ali nekritičko rabljenje postupka koji je previše puta viđen zaista nije put do uspeha. A uspeh je jedino što zanima Williamsa sa ovim filmom, a što je najtragičnije, neka vrsta statusa mu nije izmakla u žanrovskim krugovima što je zaista žalosno.

Indie upliv u žanr je uspevao da produkuje razno smeće, no ipak neverovatno je da nešto ovakvo dobije bilo čije preporuke.

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Edgar Ramirez joins another battle
To star as the "anti-James Bond" Olivier Assayas' feature
By Leslie Simmons

Nov 10, 2008, 12:00 AM ET

Edgar Ramirez (Getty Images photo)

Edgar Ramirez is continuing his revolutionary ways.

The "Che" actor will star in French director Olivier Assayas' "Ilich: Story of Carlos."

Ramirez will tackle four to five languages for the complex role as the real life "anti-James Bond" who worked for radical Palestinians and groups in Syria, Libya, Iraq and communist Romania.

Film en Stock, Canal Plus and Egoli Tossell are producing the project, which will be released as a feature as well as a three-part TV series.

The film centers on the true story of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan-born leftist revolutionary nicknamed Carlos and later Jackal who famously raided the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, Austria, in 1975.

"Story of Carlos" is the reminiscences of the revolutionary, who was manipulated by the secret services of Arabian and eastern countries and founded a worldwide terrorist organization. He ended up ridiculed and alone in exile in Sudan before being picked up by French police. Sanchez is serving a life sentence in France.

Assayas said Ramirez was the right fit for the role because the actor hails from the same place as Sanchez and the two share similarities in build, fluency in many languages and their awareness of complex international politics.

Ramirez was, Assayas said, "the obvious choice to portray the most complex and controversial character to emerge from the revolutionary struggles of our time."

Production is set to begin in January. It will shoot in numerous locations, including France, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Lebanon, Yemen and possibly Sudan.

Ramirez next plays Ciro Redondo, a member of Fidel Castro's rebel army, in Steven Soderbergh's biopic "Che." Other credits include "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "Domino."

He's repped by Endeavor, manager Jill Littman and attorney Bob Wallerstein.

Pogledao sam Philippe Harelovu ekranizaciju Houellebecqovog romana EXTENSION DU DOMAINE DE LA LUTTE.

Hm, moram priznati da sam ja jedva pogledao ovaj film za tri dana. Forma sa toliko upliva naratora, i to čak dva naratora, jednog u liku generalnog pripovedača i drugog u liku glavnog junaka, sama po sebi nije ni nezanimljiva niti strana evropskom art-filmu, ali teško funkcioniše u filmu koji traje 115 minuta.

Uostalom, ima dosta baš francuskih filmova koje volimo a kod kojih je omniprezentan naratore, setimo se recimo ranih radova Gaspara Noea, ali tu se radilo o filmovima koji su najduže trajali sat i po. Film od skoro dva sata teško da može da funkcioniše u toj formi.

Ukoliko se apstrahuje to što je skoro nepodnošljiv za gledanje, ovaj naslov je paradoksalno meni kao filmofilu dostojan poštovanja pošto stoji kao jedan dosledno napravljen artefakt. Sve ono kako zamišljamo francuski art film maltene postoji u ovom filmu. Ponekad mi se učini kao da je ovo Tarantinov film u kome pokušava da ispuni konvencije francuskog art filma.

I na tom nivou artefakta, ovaj film u meni budi neku vrstu perverznog poštovanja. Ne mogu da kažem da bih ga opet rado gledao ali ga nesumnjivo izuzetno poštujem jer je uspeo da na jednom mestu ostvari sve strahove koje imam od francuskog art filma.

Jedina vrlina francuskog art filma koju u sebi nosi to je relativno dobra ilustracija atmosfere. Kome je to dovoljno možda može da uživa u ovom filmu, meni nije.

Kad je reč o poređenju romana i filma neću da se upuštam u to. Ja sam drugačije zamišljao likove i stuacije, ne samo konkretno nego i u konotativnom smislu, no Harel ima legitimno pravo na svoju viziu, naročito jer je i sam pisac učestvovao u radu na scenariju.

Što se samog sadržaja tiče, Houellebecq je težak za ekranizaciju zbog toga što njegovi romani imaju priču i naizgled su podatni za ekranizaciju, međutim njihova snaga nije u priči već u nadgradnji priče kroz niz antidramskih detalja. Isto tako, on je jedan od retkih evropskih pisaca čiji je maltene kompletan opus ekranizovan a da za te filmove niko ni ne zna jer su minorni. Očigledno je da njegov opus snažno privlači filmaše.

U Harelovom slučaju, reditelj je pokušao da očuva Houellebecqovu nadgradnju priče kroz napadne voiceovere, pa je u tom smislu meni ovo ipak doslednije od nemačkog filma ELEMENTARLICHEN ili kako se već zove.

No, zaista film treba gledati na svoju odgovornost.

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