Light, Color and Rhythm

During the Christmas days I saw some films among which was a historical drama, just some hundred years ago, which happened in a city... a beautiful city and beautiful places but not seen in the film. Why? Because the time was harsh and poor... Maybe there is a trend that favors dark shapeless cinematography without proper lighting and colors... Personally I think it is only mental poverty and laziness.

What about Middle Ages? Dark and deadly! And yet I do remember through years a film from the mid age that had light, gorgeous scenery, delicious colors and light that might be called heavenly! And it was of tragic and dramatic development. This film is 'Kristin Lavransdatter' (1995) and the cinematography is by Sven Nykvist (1922-2006). It must be nearly ten years since I have seen this film - several times - and I still remember vividly the jewel-like colors of clothes and textiles, the light in churches and monasteries, and on the streets! The candlelight had magic and the sun was sparkling in the air. Even the twilight in the dormitory had tones... It was a world seen through  real masters eyes.

As life and drama are colorful so should the pictures be - death and depression should be built in another way, so that the texture gets richer, not poorer. I know I am using the absence of color in the funeral scene in 'Chambers' but I intend the pictures still to be regal in their graphic forms and composure, and not dull and smudgy. And the black and white just emphasizes the pale shades of faces and some objects making them come out of the surrounding world. And it is not really black and white, no - it is color but the scenery is bw, and there is a spot of color every now and then, fx green or blue eyes, yellow flowers...

to be continued...

Chance Conversations: An Interview with Merce Cunningham and John Cage

Madison & Kohlhase: A Painting by Jacob van Loon

Nice...

Most romantic I ever seen

The Beginning - sketching love

Sketching Love - my first try in over 30 years! There is something of the making in the blog posts of June 2006, when we did the shooting. The footage shot in Helsinki was done on the 10th of June: we started early in the morning and drove 350 km to do the job. It was sunday and great sunny day and all went extremely well - we even got a parking place just by the park! And then back by the night...

I woke up at 5 am and went downstairs, and saw a lynx slowly hulking by the house. It was a large lynx, because I at first thought it a fawn of an elk, but it was a lynx. It made me joyous as I regarded it  a presage of good fortune.

I collected the others at the village - there were three: Saara, Jere and Jarno, all my students. Jarno did the shooting, Saara was  the female lead and Jere the male. With Jarno we had done some stuff before and he had been wielding the same size camera in the army so he had some experience. Saara had been modeling for me both on runway and for the camera so she too was quite used to it. Jere was a new guy, but as he was clever and curious I trusted him to clear the day - and the next days, too. I had not told them what it was they were required to do and they trusted me to know what I wanted. On the whole trust is the most important ingredient of a process like this - if there is no trust it won't hold  together. But we had it, the trust!

My idea for this film was to portray a feeling that kind of goes through time and places and is threatened by psychological  more than concrete.  As I was working with youngsters it was different than with more experienced people, had both pros and cons! The great pro was undoubtedly the eager curiosity of my companions and also their sincerity. The con was that extra load of work it put on my shoulders both as responsibility and as real doing like driving and so. But I had been waiting so long!

The feeling begins by chance as they do, and is allowed to take root and grow. Then come the doubts and nightmares created by former experience and disappointments. At the end hope is portrayed by blowing soap bubbles... The different phases are marked also by different colors - green in the beginning, trees and water, - then white, all painted white and white clothes, - and then appears black and red, the white drowns, and black wins the stage - just to deteriorate to rainbow colors of the bubbles at the end.

sketching love





Sketching Love was meant to be a glass of dry champagne or should I say mead because of their youth - coincidental, innocent and optimistic in a light aquarelle kind of way. I was not explaining or lecturing or preaching but just sketching with simple strokes... There is no tightly spun plot but just a feeling to carry on the film, with nothing extra to neither drag nor support. Mere light weight bones...

The film starts from the streets and walking people - the girl and the boy, light and dark. Both are walking alone and they end to the same place, a park, where he takes photos and she lays on the grass reading. The boy takes photos of things - the church, flowers and trees - not of the colorful people walking and residing in the park. Is he afraid of people or is it just a habit in a city not to pay attention to others?

I am rather proud of the scene where they meet: he steps on her! I am not good with situation comedy and this is quite top for me! So he takes another look and starts to take photos of her. And they also start talking. The first steps are taken and she even smiles while being photographed.

The ice cream... there is the garbage bin and the sound of traffic...  close-ups of her face... and the view opens to include the trees - the music begins, idyllic scene while they are chatting and laughing. We can not hear what they are talking but it must be funny!  And then they are on the bench kissing...

My cameraman took footage of treetops and I used them to change scene - clumsy maybe but so usual in finnish cinema! And I  think it is quite appropriate in this situation: the scene sifts to another location and another time, when he is waiting for her, doubting himself and the sincerity of his feelings. The waiting and then the steps when she is walking towards him, steady steps sounding from the concrete! And then the first conversation - the words and short sentences are like swords, like fighting! He is more matter-of-fact, but she accuses him of being stagnant. Finally he seems to take a protective stand! And the next scene via water - there is also the chain, symbolics!

Obviously it is morning in the next scene, a morning together after a night together - the smiles and atmosphere of intimacy makes it obvious that it was enjoyable. This is the white phase, state of innocence still prevailing, good will and pleasure. They are very close and realize how vulnerable it makes them - the conversation is fractal and leading anywhere. Both listen and feel their way - this time she is more aggressive: - What are you staring at! But agrees to let him take photos. The music is with flute and piano, the softer version.

The next scene starts with him talking to phone somewhere outside the picture frame: there is life outside this bubble! Them he views copies of old photos and reflects about women in them, and comes to a conclusion that he knows nothing, they are an enigma and life is impossible to control, - which of course is true, but should not depress him as it does! Still white and the angles of the camera support his feelings.

The same table but with a comic book and black clothes. And we still see it from up. Enter she in a red dress, and she looks at the photos laughing at the dragonfly mixed between pics of herself. She also looks at the photos of his female lineage identifying with them on general level. Then his phone rings and the situation resolves to laughter! Looking closer one can find some underlying meanings fx the comics are Bilal's and  that can open some lines of thinking connected with the dragonfly...

The dream, his dream of her wading in the water in white clothes - projection of his fear of losing her like he has lost his mother maybe... or does he think all women are self destructive? She obviously drowns in her whites to resurrect in black. Maybe he just realizes that the idyllic state wont last forever and the 'black' greyness of everyday life lies waiting... The waking is slow and thoughtful.

The guitar joins the music in the next scene, candles and some sort of festive atmosphere. Both are dressed in black, glasses of wine, cigarette - but he is talking of the dream, telling her and she even jokes about his mom... It ends with close and warm hug, safe and alive.

'





















The final scene shows them blowing soap bubbles with deep red creeper growing on the wall in the background: it is autumn, the summer is gone and they are still together. There are children running after the bubbles - is that a promise? Maybe - who knows...  The music has grown darker but it is not threatening, just deeper - yes, a kind of happy ending, I think!


 And why did I do this? And with a bank loan? Well, I felt it was due to become real and there hardly was any other possibilities concerning the funding - now looking it at retrospect when I have for five years tried to get funding for writing the manuscript of my next movie I'm certainly happy I did that!  So slow and impossible it seems to be to get money to do something one has wanted to do for 35 years that I don't understand... Is it really so criminal to be an ambitious woman and to take risks?? Can't be... =D

The Beatles - And I Love Her

the beatles- girl

Flying and blood

Morningsky is a music video. There were pictures and there was music, and then they were put together - so both had different origins. I was flying with my eldest son on a little 2 seater Cessna in the beginning of september and took some footage above Helsinki and the coastline to west. It was a beautiful day and some is pretty tidy =D!

And later in the autumn we had a class in school making a video - Fucking virgin Maria! - and some of the girls wanted to make a scene with blood. Maybe they had seen the IT'S MY LIFE! done with Saara and thought it exiting. So I made up the scene of a girl and doll. It was made in the showers of school with some spot lights and 1/2 litres of blood. The dark girl in white has a big plastic bag under the nightgown and not even all the blood was used!

Towards the end  there are pictures of stone angels, that I have taken in the 70's at Hietaniemi graveyard in Helsinki. They came to mind while I was editing our little episode. And the graves are of soldiers that died in the beginning of 1900.  The flowing water and those silent old graves with a slight frost on them felt to be quite right in the end.

There is a sequence 'washroom: how it was made', that I did for the girls as a memento...



morningsky

Friends had a band...

Why beauty is boring?

The music is the same as in 'a moment' and the girl is the same - here she just is some five years older. We took some photos and she wanted to try something like dancing on the field and so... The shining object is moon - it shows very bright somehow, but moon it is! It was rather cold, just some centigrades above zero.

The name - I just find beauty boring, harmony distressing, just like grave disharmony, too. Just too much of something is, well, too much!



Why beauty is boring?



a moment

It started maybe so that I had some pictures and an idea, and he had some strips of music... os maybe he gave me the music and I got ideas  of pictures? Anyhow that was how this was born... 'Forever gone' - I think we all have an experience  when we realize that something is gone, passed and shall never be again, at least when someone dies. My eldest son came to me when he was nine and had a mandarine in his hand: Mom, see how this bit is perfect, all cells and juice and taste, and (he ate it) now it is gone and shall never be again! It was his perception!

Somehow this 'music video' mixes mystical elements to everyday, like the girl in the woods, and the black cat, and the fire, but the reason is just to play with pictures and meanings... white flower... And that is the way of all!

At that time - or rather before I had also been playing with photoshop and effects, and I used some pictures with numerous different colorings and other effects  - the staircase with the window in more and less color, with swans and without, and the eye changing coloring...



a moment

Old photos - little tales

Both of these short pieces are made of old photos and some music from my friend. The Old Shoemaker did work on Sniperstreet 1977 and I made a photo reportage of him then. Black and white negatives were still in my boxes and as I had some new photos of the same spot I thought 'why not?' Toivo Laakso was a remarkable old man, kind and so peaceful that surely he was worth a little memoir...

The quality of photos is not good but I think that in this kind of work it's not important, on the contrary: shining and glamorous pics would be pretty much out of place!



And the other one, a walk in Tallinna on a saturday morning 1998: me and the boys then 8 and 10 years. I had last visited Tallinna 1975 while working on Ilmatar for Matkayhtymä, travelling agency, that made so called 'vodka cruises', the ship was on international waters for 24 hours and the passengers could buy alcohol tax free. It was a horror story and the city of Tallinn was grey and miserable. 1998 everything had changed and Tallinn was a lively growing modern city with a lot happening everywhere!

Our walk took place in the old Tallinn, where repairs and restoring was done, and also new houses erected, I still had my film camera, Olympus OM-2, and shot maybe six or seven rolls of slides. In the original slides the quality is good, but as these are scanned with a kind of mirror prism... so and so, why to explain something everyone can see! Again I think it is the feeling, atmosphere, that is important, not the shine! It is an idyllic medieval town we see in pictures!





The Old Shoemaker 1977



Tallinna 1998 - old slides

How it was made: Remembrance

My eldest son was born 1978 and when he 2008 had 30th birthday I made this cavalcade of old photographs as a present to him. Cinematically there is nothing of importance in this nine minute piece, but the interest lies in the pictures and their history.

I got my first camera on my seventh birthday, I think, or maybe it was the christmas before - yes, so it must have been because the first pictures are of the snowy yard and garage! So I was just six. My father was a keen and exploring photographer, who in the 50's developed his own films and photos. I have hundreds, maybe thousands  of his negatives still in my keeping. So I started: ordinary pictures of friends on the yard or skiing, stray dogs fighting on the road, my little brother posing here and there... The camera was one of the first instamatics so I did not need an exposure meter. Actually I did use the camera a lot in different situations and got used to carry it with me. Yet there are no pictures of our houses or my grandparent's houses, which is regrettable. I did concentrate on people.

My first single lens reflex camera I bought in the beginning of 70's. I remember pondering the choice with my two years younger brother, agreeing and disagreeing, and finally he bought a Konica and I chose Olympus OM-1. My reasons were simple: it was smaller and lighter, had great optics and was not automatic. It had an inbuilt exposure meter but I chose the time and aperture. I did not like automatics as my brother did.

Actually I chose well. The pictures  my brother took during first years are as good as mine, but then they start to deteriorate - I think the lens did not function so well any more. And the same I discovered when a friend of mine scanned his slides together with mine - he had had a Pentax SLR in 70's and also his pics were not so sharp and clear as mine. Again I thanked the Zuiko lenses.

During the years I acquired two other similar bodies of OM-1 and several objectives with focal lengths ranging from 50 to 200. I did not like wide angle effects so I never got a shorter than 35 objective. And then I had a series of extension rings for close-ups of insects and plants. They were quite useful and the real macro-objectives were just far above my budgets.

I developed the bw films myself using mainly Tri-x of Kodak and the similar product of AGFA. The film was sold in reels of 150 m and you could self wind it on smaller rolls - that was cheap! And I also made the pictures - mainly in different bathrooms of different apartments. It was quite messy and the photos had hairs and dust  on then  - but at least I did take them! I also used some film for slides, but as you could not make anything yourself it was more expensive and --- I did like the beautiful colors on the transparent material...

These pictures have been scanned from slides with a Nikon negative scanner - the friend with Pentax owns this scanner and together we have gone through a small amount of old slides scanning them and making some correction where correction are needed...  Yes indeed. In the seventies and beginning of eighties Fuji had a slide film, that had development included in the price of the roll: you just paid one time! And it was cheaper than Kodacrome or Ektacrome  or Agfa! And it had nice colors... I did use a lot of Agfa and those slides had kept well, preserved their colors! As had also Kodak's material. But that Fuji... somehow the green of those slides had turned to emerald - a turquoise green strikingly non-natural in pictures taken from green nature! And there were a lot of green in all my pics! So I had to correct the colors. Unfortunately changing that emerald affected also to other colors and so the correction in some slides works well and in some does not. Can't help - nothing is perfect! =D

Most of the photos have been taken with the Olympus, but some with varying little pocket instamatics that I used to carry in my bag. Always some camera with me! And some had really small negatives - one, I think had a nega sized 2x1 cm so not every frame is sharp and clear, but as the idea was to conway the feeling and atmosphere it is not so dangerous! I hope =D !

These photos have been taken on our rented summer home, a little old house made of timber! We stayed there of and on during summers from 1979 to 1985. It was a silent little place for exploring nature and dreaming, and I don't think he was bored even if there were no other children. He found so many ways to amuse himself and to play alone with simple things like branches and old rusty ovens...

So all these slides and negatives I brought to the final cut timeline and edited to Remembrance. I have always been very fond of cross-dissolving  and here I just let go! Smile and enjoy!




Remembrance

How It Was Made: Black River, Bleeding Heart

Behind small things there often are long stories... I was six in 1960 when my family moved north to Kemi, a little town by the northern shore of Gulf of Bothnia. My father, a B.Sc engineer,  was working as a process developing manager in the pulp factory. A year later I started school and we moved to the island where the factory was, Veitsiluoto. My school was on another island, Rytikari, where there were also shops and a library.

There I for the first time came to know different homes, different social classes and saw poverty and bitterness while visiting my classmates in their homes: poor farmers with a few cows, small houses with no central heating and toilet, workers lodgings - many small apartments in big buildings with no privacy. In the school we had latrines outside in long buildings by the beach - one side for girls and another for boys. And there were rats... But as I was a child I felt no prejudice or disgust or fear, just wonderful curiosity! And a kind of envy... because even though the families were poor and lived in lousy conditions there was warmth and a feeling of closeness that for me was completely strange. We had always had big houses and fine toilets and a car and everything, but no closeness.

Then came the time when some of my friends in school 'disappeared' and later came letters from Sweden with pictures of them wearing gorgeous dresses and earrings! Maybe the earrings were the greatest mark of the gap dividing us then: no-one in Rytikari or Veitsiluoto had earrings! I had ballet classes in Kemi and never dared to tell anyone. My mother went to draw naked models and once she told me that a brother of my best school friend was modeling there, a really beautiful boy. I never mentioned it to my friend.

There were also different areas, where the workers had their tenement houses - Petsamo, and we our big wooden villas, Aunus. Sometimes we had to run while passing Petsamo, because the bigger boys liked to beat us rich kids. There was hate and bitterness, even violence... but that is another story. The important was the poverty, people leaving for Sweden after better bread and the abandoned houses with sad dark windows.

Then 2004 I think it was - I had a funeral in Vaala, east of Kemi but fairly north too. I drove there on a summer morning and did not pay attention to the scenery because of my hurry. And then I drove back late in the night and as it was summer the sun remained near horizon and it was beautifully light. I stopped by the lake Oulunjärvi, wide like a sea, and the continued slowly south. Along the narrow and winding road there were small fields, endless marshes and bogs and those farmhouses with empty dark window. Big beautiful houses by little black and winding rivers... I felt the hairs raise in my back and a deep agony squeeze my heart. The memory came back like a flood! Many times I stopped the car and looked those houses and yards left long ago, houses that still stood with hanging windowsills and broken roofs...

In september I drove back with a former student and friend Eero, and we found the place I had kind of marked that night. There were three houses by the road, two on the other side and one on the other, all empty, and we chose one to take photographs of. The house was in fairly good condition, and it seemed that people had left like suddenly, leaving everything, furniture and lamps, everything, and no-one ever looked back. Of course I had spun a story of a boy who comes from Stockholm to see the home of his great grand parents, him being a third generation immigrant. Maybe dreaming of a forge there in the old house and a new life...  Well, that never became anything.

Then I did some screen tests with another friend, Hanna, on a very hot summer day. And again time passed... Then one day I felt a need to do something, anything and this idea of still pictures mixed with moving sequences came to my mind. And I did built a timeline in final cut of those photos and the test shoots. With yellow tulips... I tried to make it look like they were gazing each other through time and space maybe seeing something, maybe missing the other.  In this case it is the boy that wants to change things and the girl who wants to be tidy and static. The boy wants to wander to new realms and build his life there. The girl is in the grip of the moment and can't get scope. So she gets depressed and drowns herself. And the boy goes on.

So the timeline was ready - but I had no sound. Then I met some other former students of mine and they told they had a band and had made some pieces of music. Jari, the composer, played them to me and this one was exactly the same length as my picture line. Somehow it seemed like meant and when even the words seemed to fit I just placed the bit of music beneath the pictures and that was it!

The single pictures with faded surface in the beginning are another story: they are prints on silk paper glued to old planks with cellulose lack...

So I give you:

Black River, Bleeding Heart

thinking, motion and time in cinema

It is thinking  in four-dimensional time-space continuum - cinema - how your mind moves in the world. It is subjective - your thinking in your brains! Objective is imagination - define facts? Quite frankly I don't have any notion that something like objective even exists.  As a conversational term, perhaps, it is practical. Subjective, yes. The physical world exists so far as it has been established by science - the character of light, for example, is still not established, but we can manage with existing  practical knowledge. Time-space with feelings and thoughts - where the intensity of both can be measured by the scale of pictures - short intense close-up versus static large scenery. Movement and rhythm binding them together. 

Of course there are the other elements of visual image that also make difference in the meaning: horizon, verticals, color-scale etc. There is this phenomena of 'filmed theatre' - a still standing camera with a steady far-off view of everything is - - what? Abomination, pestering objective? At least it is not interesting. Yes, it is said that 'this way everything is in the picture, we give the audience a perfect  recording!' But everything so often is nothing... like a delicious meal all run through a food-processor: sure it has everything but who wants to eat it! 

Intellectual curiosity needs details and craving them is healthy. Close-ups and camera movements give details and underlinings.   Moving camera at the right place at the right time, brisk editing, different angles and quick rhythm are a tribute to the intelligence of the audience. And watching a movie is  dialogue with another intelligence. So it has always been. At least in my case. Not some mystical collective what-ever! Sometimes the other intelligence is an idiot and the film greatly disappointing, even disturbing ( in not-so-good-way) and destructive. That kind of a film is frightening - stupidity always is. By stupidity I mean hasty conclusions, judging, prejudice and pessimism, specially aggressive pessimism. Concrete example of such a  movie? What was it? A science fiction years ago - I remember the disbelief I felt watching it... with my boys who just told me I was nuts! 'Event Horizon' - yes, that was it! But it was not disturbing - just plain stupid. What I might find disturbing is something like 'Shutter Island' - both the book and the film, unbreakable circle of nightmares - the prospect is so pessimistic and depressing that it is not even human any more: there is no hope in it. And without hope there is only death. That is disturbing because death is the only way out. Hope gives a chance to change, evolve and develop, to escape - 'there is a crack in everything: that is how the light gets in...'  as Leonard Cohen puts it.

Ruffly put in a picture the basics are c. the background - scenery, cityscape or whatever you call it. A cityscape - what you choose of a city... A movie can happen on the streets, maybe some bar or cafe included. Still it can be a distinctively identifiable city like Paris or London or NY. Or even Helsinki. It is a very interesting aspect: the many faces... For example New York in '9 1/2'  (1986, Adrian Lyne )   and NY in 'Taxi driver'  (1976, Martin Scorsese ) or NY in 'Devil wears Prada'  (2006, David Frankel)...  Or the difference of London and Paris in Damage (1992, Louis Malle). Yes, the streets are always alive and give their original atmosphere to the life in these movies significantly by the way of how camera is used to choose. The idea of cityscape is one choice you make while planning a film. It can vary inside the film, too, from one district to another or day and night  giving different faces to it - endless choice of possibilities there!

Closer surroundings, more personal form the level b. in a picture - any picture: photograph or drawing or a movie.  The house, rooms, bars and cars - that personal circle of activity includes other people, too. The personalities of people, their habits and opinions, ideas and ways are the bulk of any cinema. Words are a very clumsy thing to tell about these things - a picture gives the whole tedious description in one view!  And it is more exact - at least to me - than any words ever can be. The meaning of a word sifts and changes - I don't understand them, but colors, perspective etc and the cultural meaning of things like houses, cars and clothes are more exact and as such more acceptable than words. Maybe it has also something to do with the fact that words are used to control and discipline, and as such they tend to be repelling. Yet to some, maybe most people the words are the way to 'break free', or music. To me it is the 'visual music' , the symphony of sifting visual meanings the camera picks and points!

A cinema can function without both of these layers - yes, it can happen in one room or a mountaintop, in a tank or a coffin, as we have witnessed. But  there has to be the layer a., the human touch:  what happens and to whom. That is the point in any work of art finally - that something happens in the picture and in the viewer! The frontline with raw feelings and relations, suffering and joy - that is the main target, it has to exist, it is the essence of drama. Here we get a close look inside the characters to understand or judge and here the picture chosen and the rhythm of different sized pictures is crucial. You can film a city or a scenery in one large shot - in  principle, in practice even that is boring - but human feelings need different approach. 

In the times before technic set some boundaries that now don't exist anymore and the possibilities to move the camera and edit the takes are practically limitless! The long continuous shots where nothing happens are in some rare cases quite enjoyable and necessary but mostly those are boring torture! Thinking needs quick rhythm and close-ups, not imprisonment! And camera tells the thinking: it looks where is necessary in order to find out, to keep on track.  Windows and reflexions  - cinema should be like playing with objects and meanings depicting something of a human being, or should I say that a person without windows and reflexions is a dead end...

A character includes the mental and the cultural by which I mean that the cultural is things like clothes, spectacles, books and laptops etc. The mental is different. It can be a persons ways, words, habits, thoughts and memories presented in different ways. Psyche - you see and yet you do not see: meanings sift and that is change - forward or backward, change anyway. Else depends of other definitions, metamorphosis, parallels, hyperbolas of thinking, the lighter the more enjoyable - but even that can be conveyed in many different ways. And you choose - you choose the area, limits: law and it's meaning, power and wielding it with consequences, cultural symbolism like the sartorialist wandering in a world of outer specifics - yes they all reflect a inner world, the mind.

Dynamics are the continuum with the time given to each piece developing to rhythm. Usually you build the rhythm so that things/thoughts familiar to you need less time, and those stranger need more time and definitions, angles - but not necessarily! Depends also of the amount: one strange thought or many, one that leads to  multiple ways or  one that leads to a dead-end or death - it depends! Again choices!

A person can be a drifter in a steady environment - a steady environment can be culturally old or it can be chaotic but continuous - the time continuum makes it steady. Yes, how is it possible to have chaotic and steady at the same time? Basic! Like the saying that 'you need not do anything in life except die someday!'  Well, if you don't die now you have to  live and do something! Choices again. A continuum of choices, life , cinema. Yes, and if you create order in those choices - so define order... again anything... 

It is a game, game of meanings, layers, colors, cultures, characters - kaleidoscope again, moving, sifting, changing... Smile: it is a consolation! I am small, light, a drifter, chameleon. Yet I have feelings and deeps no-one knows - endless flow... Don't be boring - everything becomes boring by repetition. Change is the key, the crack, the light. Rational binds everything in concrete and thinking is suffocated, imagination uprooted, play forbidden! Yet they are the only really important: denying them leads to depression and death! 

And it is art when you don't compromise: The close, the main concrete theme is emotionally strongest! Meaning of glances, contacts, feelings, restlessness, touch - visual symptoms of things you can not see... and by telling your story right everyone understands something...

layers of thoughts...

So I am illegal... Independence is illegal, has always been. Ever since Robin Hood and before - maybe that was how those heroes were created by the common conscience: a need to sanctify and make change, evolving desirable and wanted. 

And my company is not like other companies - a functional devise! What is it then? I just wanted a tool to work with... and some support! All my life I have been listening talk of the importance of support, both spiritual, economical and as an attitude. The idea is like a dream. In reality I have had no friends - my thinking has always been too dynamic and imaginative. No, that is not quite true, but just a few friends... Somehow i still have managed to do what I have wanted - get a pack, or children, that is, and create ideas to make concrete objects. Lonely road it has been, but I am not blaming anyone. As a poet (Leino?) has said 'no man is bad, just some are weaker than other'. That is a consolation of a kind.

I have frequently come across the term 'fair play'. It has an echo of  a meaning that seems worth striving for: justice. Justice itself is a concept not to be achieved because it is an abstraction and as such nonexistent outside thinking. The practical term is fair play.

Also my company is an abstraction - a concept without concrete. Very clean, legal and ideal. What makes it my company is that I have drafted it, thought out the ways to work and means to do it. The idea itself contains some random creativity, the hot spices of life! And the movement, rhythm, yes. The spasms in time: change and evolvement. The life behind the mask.

Some day it, I hope, shall be a concrete bunch of people, cameras and computers, that makes movies! Of what? Of people, living in moments of decision and choice, of suffering and  love. More lovely abstractions! But it is not so difficult. We all have an image of suffering and of love, of friends and of enemies, right? 

A city, or a house is just a shell: what happens is important! Yet the city can appear as a living, bubbling environment    (9 1/2) or a static postcard-like staging or scenery as so often happens. So how come? Maybe they just did not move the people or the camera - both affect!  And how it happens: people, kids, dogs, cats, light, cars - how they move, live, feel and function. BUT: they can be lively but if the camera is settled in one place and they are kind of 'on stage' it does not work! 

Same goes with the difference between interior and exterior. If exterior is a real place and inside the walls we are taken to a studio is can be sensed from the film and breaks the illusion! So ideal would be to film on real location, real houses and apartments - which creates another problem:  so many series and 'consumer movies' are made this way - how to make a difference? Again the camera, tracking and movements! It is essential to the feeling in the film! That you see out when you are in, that you are seen changing surroundings... 

There is something fundamentally true in the process of  education: like the formal... eh, what is it... I miss the term... you know, when someone has been to a school and at the end gets a paper that he/she has completed that education - yes, graduation! Is it an achievement or a restriction? This is a very important question, because to certain part of people it will be a road paved ready and leading straight to where? I don't know, because I belong to that other part of people who forget and go on with the attitude that each day the sun rises anew.  It doesn't mean you would not have memories or a past or a method - no, it only means that the power of that past is behind in that time gone by, not to be played again and again and again anew - that is conservatism and as such stagnant, preserving and imprisoning. And a method is measured by the existing ingredients, kind of... you can not stop giving birth because you are not in a hospital, no - you just have to do it! 

Life does not like stagnant forms - it likes function and flexibility! If a form is a vessel and function is water in it: water in a vessel is water but does it have any of the great characteristics of WATER like a spring or a river, rain or sea, fog or mist?  No, in a vessel we have some liquid, transparent and wet. But water - it is somewhere else...

11.6.2011

Pirates of the Caribbean 4

Saw it with those glasses in 3D in our top modern 'Old Cow House' cinema theatre last saturday eve. Didn't go on wednesday when they had the world premier because 'Game of Thrones' - three episodes - came from Canals and I wanted to see that, too. I have spectacles and the other glasses on top of them are inconvenient, but  not unbearable. They should have a model developed for spectacled customers.

The 3D was not so impressive as I had heard: swords strike straight out of the canvas and ships sail to the auditorium! No. It was quite usual and the only really titillating feature was how mist and smoke drifted out of the picture. Wonder how it would work in a snowstorm...

The movie was full of everything: different places, crowds of people in different groups, all happening in chaotic way... In the beginning - London - it was interesting. The audience with the king and Sparrows escape with finally landing on Judy Dench's bosom in a carriage got me laughing out loud. Sparrow meeting his father was even conversational, a slower  moment in between, but then it got to running and jumping... The dark interiors and steadily same kind of camera-work are not so interesting... With a quite expensive picture like this one might expect some ambition - other than 3D - in cinematography and lighting, but no - same movements and same cuts follow and give the same stuffy impression of everything. F ex by lighting the faces differently in different pictures due to fire or some explosion or just swinging lamp would give depth and insight to the characters... Now everything is up to make-up and clothes! And acting of course - but even that seems to be somehow monotonous and recurrent. And this is of Jack Sparrow and the girl Angelica, Penelope Cruz and Johnny Depp - one might expect nuances, not just large scale...

And then the fighting with swords in hand - they are not sword-fights, no. They are messy bits and pieces with no real choreography - and that is needed if a fight is supposed to work like a fight. It is the same as with space -  how do you perceive a space containing different rooms and floors? It is easy only when you know how to do it, otherwise it is just making a mess...

Well a deck of a ship is a deck of a ship. Blackbeard is a new character - with some strange powers -  and daughter Angelica. B needs the fountain of youth as do many others, too many. It might be interesting to follow one or two parties galloping to the fountain, but three... Everything is kind of rhythmless rampage from one complex surrounding to another - must have given work to many, really, if one tries to find good points!

Of course they find the fountain, all parties find it, and then there is fight and destruction and spectacular stuff... but sadly it is not interesting... except the old lighthouse...  There are the nicely made mermaids that have vicious appetite, and there is the pure, innocent priest, and the love between the priest and Syrena mermaid who'll cry of joy and thus provide the tear needed for the ritual...

I truly like Johnny Depp - he has an expressive face and a lot of energy. I like Penelope Cruz - she is passionate and soft at the same time. And Ian McShane is wonderfully exhilarating! But it is just too much...

I don't think I want to see the next Pirates.... neither normal nor 3D...

passing

I don't really like flying.   I like stenches and scents,  train stations and trains, places where people are forced to stay and wait.

All stations have the same smell: old cold piss and detergents. Before there also was the scent of diesel, metallic and strong, but no more. Electricity is kind of faceless. No character. Just some oil and vaseline.

And the voices, sounds, all of it: people, machines, echoes, pigeons. You sit there somewhere with a coffee and close your eyes. Somewhere. Anywhere. A woman laughing. Some boys heating each other. A fay man screaming and a child running away after a sparrow.  Everywhere, too, there are the birds inside the buildings, station halls.

And the announcements echo... You can just and just figure out the message, half guessing: departure of a train is due in...  People are rushing to the platform and others rush out of the train towards the station and taxis, underground and trams. Or just to get an ice cream from a kiosk.

Thousands of people. Every day. Each with a life, coming from somewhere and going somewhere, with a goal or just aimlessly wandering - amazing puzzle of life... never ending kaleidoscope...

Getting something done...

Abstract does not exist without concrete - or does it? Maybe it does but the concrete is the ultimate test: is it functional or not! Like a prototype: years and years of work and then - crashing difficulties because of some minor shit... but shit happens and if it doesn't I'll make it happen. Yeah, it is an old superstition, that if something is perfect it is also dead! So a crack, a flaw is essential, somehow it is always the way ahead to the next flaw. And you can't deny that flawless is also inhuman, not touching, dead...

No, that was not the subject... I always get carried to different direction by random thought... It is kind of fun because you'll never know where you'll end up... but it is also annoying because you won't get where you were bound to... so it is the effect of imagination to the world of reason. The reason being one big killer... but I'll get to that another time.

Love at first sight - huh...  Define love - I believe that desire can awaken at first sight. The first sight kind of builds a bridge between two people and there is a chance to go on. Some people can not look straight in the eye. So it is obvious that there is no next, or maybe with someone who has not noticed... Oh, I'm not going to that stray, no. The first sight in 'Fifth Night Moon' between Lore and Wawa is not crucial, no. It is just a chance to have another glance. The first sight is wondering: Wawa sees this western woman lightly dressed sitting on a bed with a laptop - I imagine that Lore has an orange coloured shirt and she sits with her legs crossed light falling from her left, morning light essentially, and Wawa standing in the opening of the door just stepping on but only just. He sees her first, the golden girl in flow of light.. and then she rises her gaze to see him, dark figure with soft and friendly eyes, sad eyes...

He goes on and the next time they meet is some time later in the same morning. Lore comes to the kitchen while Wawa is preparing his breakfast. She stands in the doorway and watches him. He touches everything with gentleness that attracts Lore. He takes an egg and feels its shape in his hand. And the structure of the surface. He breaks the egg and she feels something crush, like she was the egg. And she thinks how it would feel to accept his touch, to yield to it, to want it...  He does not know her thoughts but concentrates in cooking and just later on when they are eating and chatting he gets attracted at her way to smile very quickly and momentarily. Nothing lingering in it.... And he yarns to see it again.

So they both feel the attraction. To change it concrete is the next step. Huge step. And there the coincidence comes to rescue: the table is not so big and their feet happen to collide... It is confusing but nice. And the next touche is intentional - whatever it is... and so they are led, step by step, to her bed like they would be just two last people in the world.

La belle noiseuse, 1991

(236 min.)   dir Jaques Rivette with 

Michel Piccoli - Edouard Frenhofer

Jane Birkin - Liz

Emmanuelle Beart - Marianne

What is art? Cinema or painting? What is the artist doing when painting a picture or writing a book? How something becomes a masterpiece and something else not? For art there are many definitions, but maybe it after all could have something to do with some relative aspect of truth. Absolute truth as the artist has it purified. Fine slice with the TASTE. You know the thing: a street in a city and a warm night and you are not alone... for the rest of your life it is there: the scent of the street. sweat, lust... absolute moment, and that is what art is about - creating that absolute moment. Maybe it is like the absolute point zero - never achieved but nearing it.

Having seen part of this film some time ago it was a happy surprise to find it coming from Silver in the middle of an ordinary day - not so ordinary  any more. It is a long movie - almost four hours, and almost nothing happens, nothing concrete, just an old man painting and some people wandering around... and these four hours are gently building the journey to absolute, subtle nuances, moments, empty moments, hues of colours, simple and vanishing: was it there or was it not. and at the same time there is the cruelty that lies inside all true art. it is not human but absolute. 

They live in a country residence in France, Edouard Frenhofer, his wife Liz and Lis' daughter Magali. Liz stuffs birds and animals. Frenhofer is a painter, has really done something but now only portraits. Exquisite old house with stairs and rooms, windows and doors painted in faint shades of red, turqoise, ocre.   Not so much furniture. Yard with gnarled trees and atelier, lot of space and some large canvases. The slow camera wandering in rooms and corridores after people or with people, sweeping doors and windowpanes, locks and handles, paintings and drawings on the walls, and books...

In the nearby village there is a hotel and a young painter Nicolas and his girlfriend Marianne reside there. They are visiting Frenhofer and also an old friend Porbus is there. Frehno, Porbus and Nicolas are discussing art, and somehow the talk drifts to a painting Frenho once tried to paint but did not succeed: la belle noiseuse. Porbus asks if he might not try again - he would buy the painting at a suitable price. Frenhofer is doubting. The first time he did it with Liz but had not courage to go to the end - he loved Liz and finishing the painting would have killed the love. Maybe. Nicolas offers Marianne as a model, and yes, Frenho shall try.

The girl gets frantic: what is Nicolas to promise on her behalf! And they are leaving for Paris tomorrow! But in the morning she is there asking for Frenhofer very early. They go to the atelier, and he shuffles with bottles and brushes and pens, and then he makes some sketches with ink to an old sketchbook. Marianne is in positions that tire her and finally when Frenho is dissatisfied with everything she is disappointed. She says goodbye intending to leave to Paris, but Frenho says 'till the morning'.

And she is there in the morning, and they continue. Step by step Frenho moves to bigger papers and finally to canvas and oils. He twists and wrenches her naked body and limbs to strange and cruel positions achieving nothing to satisfy  him. Marianne gets cramps and he says that before it was a custom to tie a model to the wanted position so they could not move! 

The house and garden breath all around. At times Liz comes to see the work sitting on the steps in the atelier.She also tries to warn the girl of how tough it might get and that she might suffer. But the girl is self-confident and just shrugs. But Frenho is afraid. He knows how hard is the price he has to pay to get at the final point and is reluctant to pursue the goal. With his wife he first loved to paint her, then loved her too much to paint her and finally chose to paint portraits, i. e. gave up. And now Liz is hurt when Frenho paints over an old canvas with her face on it replacing the face with a behind.

He is also afraid of himself or for his self esteem, not only of his revelations. He is an old man and death of depression and final silence loom ahead. Liz also is worried because of the process, worried for both of them. The girl is soft and submissive, and doesn't understand what Frenho is after. She feels the painter to slow down and give up, and she provokes him, challenges him to go further, to seek more. She chooses her poses, but when Frenho tries to capture them she curls to a nut. Frenho is disappointed but they are going on. And finally Frenho has a canvas (that is never shown to us). Marianne asks if it is ready and he says that it is for her to decide. So she looks at the picture and runs away shaken and shuts herself in a lavatory.

At night Liz comes to see the painting. And she draws a cross on the backside. The next day Frenho asks Magali to help and they brick the painting in a wall so that no-one shall ever look at it. And Frenho paints another picture, quickly and with ease, a white and light blue nude. This painting is for Porbus.   

Marianne tells Liz that she understands now that there was real danger. This is the core, process fini. The soul of a woman delivered and  then destroyed. The Death. As Liz said in their nightly discussions he was barren... nothing left but death. 

Serene end with fruit and subtle conversations in the garden. And what is left is the memory of the sensitive camera slowly moving in the rooms and atelier and garden picking up lights and dusty colours, people moving like shadows in the midst... chasing other shadows... 

motto: noblesse oblige

I don't care about money - it comes and goes; I don't care about winning - everyone is worth the same...

 I just want to hit the target!

Three girl-movies, in a way...

Devil Wears Prada

Made some years ago and wonderfully cut - short 1-3 sec pictures, music rhythmically  dancing with visuals - small film about a girl, career and fashion. I  like fashion and I have been a girl, still am  in some ways. I'm a proud bitch and as such a bit different from this little woman. To be a proud bitch doesn't mean that I would not be thoughtful and considerate - I am, but submissive I'm not! And I serve only the truth, whatever that may be.

Female icons: high heels, make up, lacy underwear, clothes on the whole - a nice quick cut collage of pictures, yezzz. Characters:  Boss and the others,, rough cut. Then on close-ups there are the dedicated and ambitious Emily, the suave male editor Nigel,  whose ambition is for the magazine, and a punch of other staff and editors that remain shadow like stereotypes. And the private sector: Nate, cooking boyfriend, Lily, an old friend and Lily's boyfriend who knows about fashion more than the others together, This foursome has dinners with wine in cozy restaurants, and keeps the spirit up -  until Andy begins to stand on her own.

Andy gets the job by chance and keeps it by taking challenges and solving problems with admirable determination. Her original ambition was for serious journalism, and fashion is just a side step on her way, but she takes it seriously and listens to her surroundings, takes winks and hints and is developing. The circle of friends condemns her change and she breaks up with Nate, the boyfriend, - funny though that Nate can have his potatoes but Andy not her clothes. The movie seems to imply that potatoes have more in them than clothes but clothes and fabrics also have to be made, they too have processes and have deep knowledge behind each item. Their relationship is not under special scrutiny so it is hard to say how things have been, but they seem in many ways childish, for example Nate's birthday -  who above 15 years gets mad if someone misses a birth day party? Certainly Nate is not supporting Andy in her struggle. On the whole it seems to be meaning that Andy shall be as she has always been... make the safe choices and follow the path marked for her ages ago...

After Andy decides to part with Miranda (Boss) she demurely returns home, asks Nate to forgive her all...  Nate has got a new job in Boston but it is ok  for him to go - because of... I don't know what!

Now someone might say that loyalty to friends and loved ones is admirable and ambition is selfish. Might be but loyalty that asks for sacrifice from the other is too often just for women. When did you see a picture where a guy would give up everything for a woman? I don't seem to recall any such...

The visual appearance is lively, fresh and fascinating, and I like it a lot as well as the music. The clothes are partly great partly ordinary. Paris is lovely, NY is lively - and what else? Don't know...  Yes, Ann Hathaway is working well as Andy, delicate smiles and moods.

****  with  - for hierarchies and submissive thinking... but this is not a critic, no - this is just my subjective thoughts about this movie today - tomorrow might bring other thoughts...

Burlesque

'Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.The word derives from the Italian burlesco, which itself derives from the Italian burla – a joke, ridicule or mockery.

A later use of the term, particularly in the United States, refers to performances in a variety show format. These were popular from the 1860s to the 1940s, often in cabarets and clubs, as well as theatres, and featured bawdy comedy and female  striptease.  Some Hollywood films attempted to recreate the spirit of these performances from the 1930s to the 1960s. There has been a resurgence of interest in this format since the 1990s.(wikipedia)'

A-girl-and-career -story with straightforward and a bit old fashioned plot: bar waitress Ali/Christina runs from a rural hellhole in Iowa to LA with a bit of money and a lot of attitude. She tries to find a job - no luck, and walking streets in the evening sees a dark girl up a staircase in striped socks and fancy clothes smiling to her. A man comes to get the girl inside...  Burlesque Lounge says the sign. Ali enters this club of  funny dimensions: a small building hides quite a space... Entering the club she asks the man behind the counter if the place was a strip club...

In the stage Cher is performing with the dancers - these numbers containing singing and dancing are the best part of this not-so-cinematic movie. Both Cher and Christina Aguilera are good in their own ways and Cher's 'Last of me' song got Golden Globe 2011.  And Ali is hooked! She wants to dance on stage too and asks Tess/Cher, but Tess refuses outright. So Ali goes to the bar and takes a tray - she starts to serve. And she comes back the next night looking ever better...

Eventually Ali's hotel room is robbed and that leaves her without both lodging and money. She goes to the bar boy Jack and gets to sleep on his couch. Ali classified Jack as gay but he is not. He has a fiancee in NY and sharing apartment stays innocent. 

At Lounge B one of the dancers, Georgia, gets pregnant and a substitute is needed. Tess and Sean audition several dancers, and Ali comes and wants to be considered. She says she can do everything Tess wants to wich Tess's reply is that she has to convince, to take her place on stage. So Ali dances... and gets the job. 

In B the dancers dance and lip sync to the great singers singing in the background - Marilyn Monroe with 'Diamonds...' etc. Ali wants them to sing REALLY. And Tess laughs to her until... One night the star dancer Nikki is drunk and Tess relieves her in favor of Ali. Nikki is raging and cuts off the music in the middle of their dance. It is 'Tough Lover' and after a moments shrill silence Ali starts to sing and after a moment the band follows. It is a huge success! Tess is overwhelmed and starts to build a new show around Ali.

This is the nutshell. Of course there  is the trouble about money. Real estate agent wants to buy the club to tear it down and after many coincidences Ali manages to get an idea and solves the problem: Tess has to sell the air rights above the club to another builder and the club is saved. Also Jack and fiancee enter to an crash course and half of the big bed is suddenly free.  So Happy End!

Naive story, not much of characters... but the movie is entertaining and the dance-and-sing numbers are good in an innocent  way that makes one smile, and that is a lot. Also the way the space inside the club takes shape and changes is intriguing with different staging for each song - kind of theatre without intermissions! The back stage rooms with mirrors for make up and clothes rails build the atmosphere. And the man, who takes care of both Tess and the stage, Sean, is calm, sympathetic and gay - he'll find a caring relationship before the end...

Yes, entertaining, a bit theatrical, good singing, nice clothes, suitable shooting and lighting... No, it is not a great movie but still I like it! 

*** with + for the spirit!

Black Swan

Tchaikovsky's ballet  is a story of prince Siegfried and swans that turn to maidens in the night time. The prince finds the swans and falls in love with Odette, beautiful white swan. Odette tells him of the evil wizard Rothbart who did cast a spell on the girls. Only someone who shall love Odette forever can remove the curse. And Siegfried promises to save her...

Next evening in the ball Siegfried meets Rothbart's daughter Odile, who looks like Odette, and Siegfried is deceived: He asks Odile to marry him. Too late he seeks Odette, who forgives him but has to die. When Rothbart comes to the pond she throws herself in the water and Siegfried follows her to death. This act of love destroys Rothbart.

The double role of Odette/Odile, innocence and seduction, is a chance for a female dancer to show virtuosity: Odette as lyrical and Odile as temperamental with the famous 32 fouettèts, round and round on tip toe...

The movie Black Swan has as background  this ballet, but it is by no means a film about ballet, no. I might even say that it is a story a narcistic male tells of a woman's mind... it is suffocating and adolescent, and as such can only be a product of a male imagination. Maybe that is the way a male mind work, but they just don't have the courage to say so. Instead they do a projection... 

Apart this fundamental flaw Black Swan is an enjoyable movie. It is cinematic in sketching the environment and the characters. Camera flows carefree images and then again images restricted and full of angst. The light and colours in the rehearsal space are neutral and airy. The clothes have been designed by Rodarte and depict finely the young women in their intriguing simplicity. And Natalie Portman fairly deserved her Oscar as Nina, the neurotic and troubled girl. 

The main character Nina is to dance the double role of Odette/Odile as her first solo performance. She is young, very highly strung, brought up by an ambitious mother whose own career Nina's birth possibly broke. And Nina is a very good girl. The ballet company's choreographer and leader is Thomas Leroy, absorbingly played by Vincent Cassel, who tries to get some flame to Nina and her performance. The ex-prima ballerina succumbs under a car and portrays a warning example of a successful career when lying like a broken doll in her hospital bed.

Nina's trials to gain passion to her performance are booze, dope and lesbian fantasies... How does that sound? To me it reminds of boy's initial rites when trying to become a man. It is told that the first intercourse for a boy is mainly a rewarding experience meaning that getting an ejaculation is the main thing, but for a woman it is mainly a disappointment - for her it is only the first in a series of exploring experiences, which at some point may lead to the  mastery of orgastic relaxation.  So the story just doesn't sound plausible, it sounds unbelievable, like a broken plate.   Boys can be so brittle, but girls are made of tougher material. So it is a boy movie in decoy. 

The subject of Nina's lesbian fantasy is a new comer in the ballet company, Lily, who sketches as a bad girl and takes Nina out to a disco, offers dope and promotes free, confidential dancing. Thomas Leroy puts her as an example to Nina and maybe it is meaning that Nina by imagining Lily kind of pleases Thomas...? As well as the finale this part is very hazy and inexplicable. Also the delusions and hallucinations  of Nina are weird and inexplicable: is this the way a mind deteriorates? I have known some neurotics and schizophrenics, and somehow my idea is different - but that is just the point: Aronofsky is allowed to his view! And the whole movie is a respectable achievement. 

In the mother-daughter -relationship I don't want to interfere... she is far too old not to have rebelled...  Natalie Portman does an excellent job in  portraying the moods and feelings of this young woman without questioning them. I wonder what kind of ideas she may herself have had about this character - she has in her time gone through the same process as Nina in this fiction.

On the whole, as I already said,  an enjoyable cinematic experience, even if I disagree of the contents. And the music crowns the experience!

**** 

These three movies tell stories of girls - Burlesque is an old fashioned story with a modern attitude - Devil's attitude towards women is conservative in comparison. And the Swan is a fantasy. I wonder weather serious mental disorders are more common in male population than female? Is there a study about this? I know that women eat more medication but that is because they believe in symptoms and medication more than men, who use more drugs... 

Yes, I might have an opinion or at least something to say

About some movies, like I had of 'Unthinkable'. I would not call them critiques or reviews, no. I'd just say they are my personal thoughts and reflections of something I have seen. I'm not a critic, no, but a fellow artist, who has experienced something watching these random films... I'm not academic and my thinking and views are totally subjective mixing in my feelings and ideas in a probably quite anarchic way. My way. The only I can have...
There are movies I like, and then there are movies I consider weird like 'Never let me go' - the book was weird, too.  There are older movies and some new ones... During last two weeks I have seen again after years 'The English Patient' and 'Out of Africa', and did still like both. There are movies I have tried to look through, but not succeeded, like '127 hours', 'Buried' and 'Somewhere' - just can't find anything cinematographic in them...
And I don't like long, continuing shoots, no, even if most think them as 'very highly cinematic' as I don't like 'Citizen Kane'  even if I understand why it is promoted and held as the best in the world. I disagree: it is not much of a movie... Orson Welles was clever in a witty way, not in a passionate way, which might have produced better movies... in my opinion. I like sentimentality in movies more than cynicism - and being on the same level with the characters, not above them.

I might want to write about t hose two, and new ones, yes, 'Black Swan', because I did dance ballet as a girl and I don't like Aronofsky's way of thinking... and the same theme - young woman and her ambition - in 'Devil Wears Prada' and 'Burlesque', which I found exhilaratingly funny and sentimental. And yes, in a stupid and everyday way, but I still liked it!

And then the love of years, 'Constant Gardener' - I do so like it! It, too, is sentimental and people in it are very much in loss, but it is an extremely good movie in many ways. And there are others... many others...  Maybe some days if there is nothing else... thinking is so easy and fluent compared to writing - writing is like walking with sticks!