The Great Bazy

Visit The Film Experience where I discuss the sure to be controversial trailer for The Great Gatsby. Kanye and Fitzgerald! How dare he?

Sheet-y Saturday.

Anyone would've assumed that whenever talking of The Great Gatsby the first image that would come to mind would be that of well, Jay Gatsby. Leave it to the brilliant genius that is Baz Luhrmann to reveal that the focus of his attention will in fact be Daisy, played in his movie by the astonishing Carey Mulligan. Here's the thing, Carey has one of those faces that inspire awws and heart shaped gestures, however she has never felt like a true "woman" in the sense that her ethereal beauty rarely allows her to become a fully sexual being. The Carey we are presented in this poster though has a different pair of eyes (kudos to the makeup department as this will surely be yet another Baz beauty extravaganza) eyes that seem wiser. However the real question is why did Baz choose to hide Leo's unarguably more recognizable face?

Share your thoughts!

A Star.

Making me choose my favorite anything from Moulin Rouge! is akin to well making Sophie's Choice. Originally I intended to establish this and then get it out of the way by just being gutsy and picking a particular shot and owning up to it.

I couldn't.

You see, this film is still one of the seminal pieces of cinema that quite seriously define my life. What I'm going to do is of course cheat, I'll say what might be my favorite element of the film and then justify it by going with four shots of her...

Yes, what makes Moulin Rouge! absolutely spectacular to me (besides Ewan, Baz, the music, the sets, the clothes...ugh this is tough!) is Nicole Kidman.

Watching her first descend on a sparkly trapeze is witnessing purely magnetic star power!

The film not only showed us she could dance and sing, it also revealed her to be a magnificent entertainer. The camera loves her!

Ever noticed how during the entire film, Satine seems almost magnetic? Like every element in the movie is drawn towards her? This shot is a perfect example (looks almost scientific) of how the men in this case all flock to her.

But being able to have this kind of power is a double edged sword, for a star can easily become a black hole as well. Nicole's performance in Moulin Rouge! is the perfect balancing act of how to own a movie, while not tiring audiences of you.

Her ravishing beauty fills every shot she's in...

The cinematographer often seems to try and make his way around the props and costumes to find Kidman at her purest. This scene in particular is astonishingly well made given that we come to understand that Satine's world has become her cage. She was a fool to believe...

But then she never stops looking so magnificent. Part of the film's great appeal is its artifice, if Satine is dying of an STD, she should look like crap, yet Nicole looks great even when she breaks a tiny sweat. How the hell did Baz and Nicole get away with this Garbo-esque fakery, in this cynical time and age and made it sublime?

OK if I don't stop now, I'll end up making screencaps of every single frame in the movie and then post them in chronological order. Damn you Nathaniel for making me go through this!

This incoherent post was part of Nat's splendiferous Hit Me With Your Best Shot series.

15 Directors.

Mr. Paolo from Brown Okinawa Assault Incident decided to tag me in a meme and seems to have forgotten to tell me about it...
Most of you know I suck at memes because I never know what to say but this one is particularly interesting because lately I've been asked a lot who my favorite filmmakers are. I was going to eventually compile a list and Mr. Paolo just made my job easier by making me do one ASAP.
So without further ado, here are my fifteen favorite directors and my fave movie of theirs.

The Holy Trinity
Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire)
Francois Truffaut (The 400 Blows)
Federico Fellini (La Strada)

The Rest of the Best
Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious)
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Saló or the 120 Days of Sodom)
Pedro Almodóvar (Volver)
Woody Allen (Annie Hall)
Lars von Trier (Dogville)
Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon)
Catherine Breillat (Brief Crossing)
Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven)
Victor Fleming (Gone With the Wind)
Jane Campion (The Piano)
Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!)
Vincente Minnelli (Meet Me in St. Louis)

Are these who you expected? Any omission you think I made? Who are your fave fifteen?

The Ten Movies That Defined My Decade.

1. Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

A lot of things can change in the course of a decade.
My love for "Moulin Rouge!" has not.
To prove it, I will close the countdown by copying a post I wrote three years ago when I had a non-movie exclusive blog and had a countdown of movies that had influenced me.
The post has been copied in its original way, but I assure you that all the giddy, childish excitement remains the same.

"Simply put: ever since I saw it for the first time no other film released after, has filled me with so much hope and undeniably vibrant life as this.
Annie Lennox (and Madonna later) wisely proclaimed that "everybody is looking for something", I agree since I'm involved in a constant search for who knows what (happiness, love...who knows?), the thing is that this movie has put a big stop on my search for cinematic perfection.
It spoiled me!
Back in August 01, for a pricey ticket, I attended the premiere in Tegucigalpa.
I knew the songs by heart since it had spawned curiosity in me ever since it began appearing on Entertainment Weekly's seasonal previews (it did in summer 00, later in winter, until it was finally postponed for 01).
I remember going to its website as early as February 01 and the colorful imagery was something I wasn't used to. It screamed kitsch, yet contained a sad honesty that never allowed it to be selfconscious, it just "was".
I bought the soundtrack and fell in love with the medleys the writers aptly concocted from sources as varied as David Bowie, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, "The Sound of Music" and Hindi traditions.
Sitting in that dark theater room, before the film even began, I was already expecting the images would fulfill the intensity of the sounds.
I was putting a lot of pressure on it and luckily, it went over my expectations.
The minute I saw a red curtain and a tiny orchestra director appear on the screen I knew this was gonna be different.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, there's not much of an actual plot, or at least one we hadn't seen before: writer meets courtesan, courtesan sings "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", courtesan gets consumption, writer loses courtesan.
Everything about this film is in how its told. Merging MGM musicals with MTV like editing and more costumes and glitter than you can shake a stick at, "Moulin Rouge!" more than often overwhelms you.
There's too much going on at the same time and somehow it still is capable of ringing emotions.
I haven't met anyone who didn't have a strong reaction towards it.
Those of us who love it, are practically devoted to it.
For me it's a quasi religious experience, each time I watch it it feels like going to my "happy place" (even if it sounds ridiculous considering how sad the ending is) but the mere thought of this film fills me with glee and hope.
I worship Nicole Kidman's performance and think Ewan McGregor is so good he's given for granted, I look up to Baz Luhrmann hoping one day I might get as inspired as he was to make this.
This film often pops up in my head when I think of my "favorite film ever" even if I'm too much of a snob to say it's the best one ever made.
There are those who hate the film and one can't blame them.
My dad watched about an hour and said he felt like puking, my mom loved it and so did my grandma who I remember moved me by highlighting the fact that I bring love for film in my veins.
I saw it with her once and as 20th Century Fox's fanfare filled the theater with strendous power she gasped like a little kid, later the film uses the title song from "The Sound of Music", followed by the ubiquitous can-can song. She hummed them and said "Carlos would've loved this!".
Carlos was her brother, my grand uncle and a self professed film buff (he once saw 17 films in the theater in a week!) who passed away more than ten years ago and who I often think would be my favorite uncle nowadays.
I can not force people to like this movie, truth be told I don't even want to.
I just know that almost six years after I first saw it, no other thing on Earth has impressed me as much, touched me as much or filled me with the unadultered sense of wonder I imagine people had watching the first films made.
"Moulin Rouge!" takes the rules, bends them, reinvents them, makes some work, makes some fail, but always, like the bohemian values it praises, keeps faithful to itself.
How wonderful life is, now that "Moulin Rouge!" is in the world!"

-originally published 12/18/06.

I hope you have enjoyed this countdown as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you.
May the following decade be filled with more cinematic gems.

Mira Does Baz.

Watching Mira Nair's disappointing version of "Vanity Fair" I couldn't help but notice how much she drew from "Moulin Rouge!" towards the movie's end.

First she makes Reese Witherspoon perform in full Hindu garb a la Nicole Kidman in the "Hindi Sad Diamonds" number in the 2001 film.
Reese isn't as good a performer as Kidman, but she pulls it off like she always does: relying on pure charisma.

A few minutes later Gabriel Byrne confesses her love for Reese by uttering the words "the only thing of value in this life is to love and be loved".
If you're not humming "Nature Boy" ("Moulin Rouge!"'s trademark song) already there's something wrong with you...

And just a few scenes later James Purefoy discovers Reese in the middle of a not so decent situation and obviously his normal reaction is to tear her elaborate, expensive looking necklace from her neck and throw it away.
He then proceeds to dump her, not without first doing his best Rhett Butler impersonation.
Ah if the whole movie has been just half as brilliant as Luhrmann's we'd have been in business.

The Baz Strikes Back.

On one of his first interviews after the U.S release of "Australia", director Baz Luhrmann is taking on critics who not only dislike his film, but wonder why it was even made.
Not one to remain still, Luhrmann, who is arguably one of the most divisive filmmakers in history (all of his films are either love them or hate them experiences) has revealed his new project is an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby".
Insisting that it won't be another seven years before we see his name on the screen again, he invites people to eat from the grand banquet of cinema...and one can only love him for that.
Read the story here.

Australia ****

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman
David Wenham, Bryan Brown, David Gulpilil,
Jack Thompson, Ben Mendelsohn, Essie Davis, Brandon Walters

Remember the days when films were advertised as “movie shows” and studio productions boasted “having it all”?
Days when movie stars were photographed in beautiful, glossy light that made them look otherworldly? Days when there were “movie stars” to begin with. Well, those days are back, at least during the running time of Baz Luhrmann’s spectacular “Australia”.
After a seven year hiatus, the visionary auteur, who seems to have a thing for neglected movie genres and styles, takes on yet another cause: the reinvention of the historical epic.
Nicole Kidman plays Lady Sarah Ashley, a British aristocrat who travels to Australia looking for her husband in 1939.
After reaching the wild continent she meets one of her husband’s workers, a mysterious, tough man who everyone calls the Drover (Jackman). Once they reach “Far Away Downs”, her husband’s farm, which lies deep in the outback, she discovers he’s been murdered (no gasps here considering one should only use common sense to know that Jackman and Kidman will obviously become romantically involved in a film where they have top billing).
She also finds her estate is being tampered with by the greedy Neil Fletcher (Wenham) who is in league with the competitor cattle baron, King Carney (Brown).
Sarah first wonders what would’ve made her husband fight so much for something that to her seems an unnecessary risk, until she meets Nullah (Walters) a “creamie” (half aboriginal, half white) child who becomes suddenly orphaned and is being searched for by the authorities to be placed under government “care”.
Lady Ashley takes a liking for Nullah and this newfound knowledge of the vast injustices in the land inspires her to finish her husband’s work and, along with the reluctant Drover, deliver almost two thousand cows cross country to Darwin and stop Carney’s enterprise.
Lurhmann’s ambitious plot, combines the WWII background and the country’s racist history with the intention of encompassing everything the nation is about.
Paying homage to classics of the genre, the first part of the film feels like “The Sundowners” meets “Giant” going by way of “The African Queen” as the characters face danger and adventure in the form of cattle stampedes, wild sandstorms, fires and even a bit of aboriginal magic by the way of Nullah’s grandfather, tribe elder King George (Gulpilil).
There isn’t a single frame in “Australia” that doesn’t demand to be seen, Mandy Walker’s luscious cinematography (reminiscent of “Out of Africa”) is both in love and in awe of the country it captures.
Her camera sometimes feels as if it’s about to burst open trying to take everything in at once. In smaller moments, aided by CGI, the look is straight out of a Technicolor newsreel with vintage postcard strokes.
The whole cast is great, even if they know for a fact that they are not the main event. Kidman at first has a hard time fitting into the slight camp the film kicks off with, but soon enough (and after looking more beautiful than ever while covered in sweat and dirt) the usually cold actress radiates a sense of maternal warmth she’d never conveyed before.
She may be no Vivien Leigh, but unlike the other members of the ensemble, her performance is the one that doesn’t rely on any reference to become what it is.
Jackman, looking impossibly handsome, evokes Indiana Jones, Clint Eastwood and Cary Grant! He effortlessly moves between these personas and balancing the crass and the class, while flexing his muscles and romancing Kidman, is not something easy to pull off.
Wenham is as vicious as the bad guys in “Shane”, the incomparable Jacek Koman steals every moment he’s onscreen and Mendelsohn as the stern Captain Dutton provides the film with an unexpected sense of calm.
The find here is of course Walters, who it seems escapes every child actor cliché to deliver a beautiful performance of someone trapped between two worlds.
His narration helps hint that the film is perhaps a symbolic coming-of-age tale of the country where it takes place, which through the years has been marginalized (just consider how it was founded…) and become object of jokes (Baz has a ball playing with Aussie clichés to convey a sense of farce).
Working on this film Baz had the intention of creating his country’s very own “Gone With the Wind” and like the 1939 American epic (cinematic year which highly influenced this film) it acknowledges the racist roots both countries were built upon, but does so without losing hope for the future.
Fascinated by aboriginal mysticism, there are various customs revealed throughout the film, one of them being that once a person dies you can not say their name again; theory that is able to keep the memory while looking forward, in the same way Baz looks at his country.
Not as extravagantly stylized as his “Red Curtain Trilogy” (although some elements can be rightly called trademarks), this project gives the director the chance to broaden his storytelling horizons.
Because “Australia” is first and foremost about the art of storytelling. One of the aboriginal traditions portrayed in the film is that of passing along knowledge through stories.
Borrowing elements, and to a degree the structure, of Victor Fleming’s “The Wizard of Oz”, Luhrmann’s desire is that his country will also be part of history.
During one of the film’s greatest moments, Nullah asks Lady Ashley to sing, after bursting into a self-conscious version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, the boy giggles as he affirms that she is a funny singer, but the song is just too good.
The same goes for the director; if “Australia” feels overwhelming it’s because it is, but instead of being referred to as an undertaking, which implies burdens, Baz makes it feel like a love song that simply can not be contained.
Grabbing plot twists, characters and situations as varied as the country itself, “Australia” is a sort of imperfectly perfect masterpiece. It wants to be everything at once, but is at its best when it just lets go.
Nowadays when the musical score rises and the characters are put in unfathomable situations the audience will simply role their eyes and giggle, here we are swept off our feet.
It’s not every day that you feel your heart will come out of your chest when a movie reaches its climax. With “Australia” Baz Luhrmann has proved that he is the real wizard of Oz.

Before the Day is Over...

It's time to say thanks for:
- The productive time in Miami movie wise.
- Cobb's Cine Bistro: I don't know if it was that great Margarita, the kind staff, those oh so comfy seats, or perhaps the fresh taste of every single pop corn (I'm not kidding, every single piece was perfection and I'm not even a pop corn person) that made this perhaps the best theater going experience of my life.
Then again perhaps it was "Australia"...
- Debra Winger and Rosemarie DeWitt in "Rachel Getting Married".
- Baz Luhrmann in Charlie Rose.
- Baz Luhrmann loving "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" just as much as I do.
- Baz Luhrmann himself!
- Cheap DVDs.
- WALL-E.
- The little girls in "I've Loved You So Long".

...and here's hoping the plane going home doesn't show "What Happens in Vegas" again.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Doubt Under.

The U.S. site for "Australia" is up and running (Click on the picture to visit it).
It asks you to click on "zones" that don't make much sense, but boy do they have pretty images to see!
Made me worry that the film is going to result in some sort of beautiful disaster.