Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I **

Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes
Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltraine, Jim Broadbent
Michael Gambon, Brendan Gleeson, Rhys Ifans, John Hurt
Julie Walters, Imelda Staunton

Have you ever noticed how the trailers for the Harry Potter movies often make for much more exciting experiences than the films themselves?
Judging from what we were presented in the previews for this (the first part of two, in the series finale) this movie should've made us be on the edge all the time, gasping for air and having our jaws fall to the floor in amazement.
The truth is that the film feels like nothing else than a marketing ploy to extract every single penny from Potterites and those who accompany them to the cinema.
It's said that this film was meant to be as close to the book as it possibly could and perhaps that is why it fails to be engaging in a purely cinematic level.
The filmmakers seem to have forgotten that not everyone has read the books (or ever intends to) and besides recreating entire passages from J.K. Rowling's prose, they should also be creating something worthy of being transferred to the silver screen. Something that will feel magical for everyone who buys a ticket.
Instead we get almost three hours of Harry (Radcliffe), Ron (Grint) and Hermione (Watson) moping and setting up tents in lush forests where they hide from Lord Voldemort (Fiennes).
The kids are looking for the horcruxes they began looking for in the previous installment but now have to deal with the fact that the entire magical world is under Voldemort's rule.
Still there's not even a single moment when we feel these people are real and before you make some joke about Muggles keep in mind that these characters should be true to the world they inhabit.
This almost never happens, except of course with the mature actors but this movie belongs mostly to the children. Yates is often redundant (how many times can we see Ron feeling Potter envy in this series?) and while he concentrates on silly twists we never understand how is it that the kids have no protection against evil but still packed a different coat to wear during their escape.
The action sequences are limited and as usual character development is restricted to a few moments of big dialogues that often result more stilted than not (why are they wasting Carter's Bellatrix Lestrange so much? She has such potential!)
It's a shame that the film feels so stale when absolutely everything is so handsomely crafted. The cinematography by Eduardo Serra evokes ancient carvings and even when he tries too hard to emulate Andrew Lesnie's magnificent work in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Alexandre Desplat provides a sumptuous score that perfectly works with John Williams' already iconic theme.
When you come to think about it, this movie might be the exact opposite of The Two Towers, an introspective chapter that serves mostly to link plot turns. While Peter Jackson's movie managed to make the film a stand alone piece upon itself, Yates makes this Potter feel like waste the movie's almost three hours long and we find out what the deathly hallows are during the last fifteen! He even includes his own Gollum in the shape of Dobby (and sometimes even Ron) but fails to make any sort of emotional connection between what we're seeing and what we're supposed to be feeling.
Speaking in simple literary terms Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I is a luxurious hardcover version of a silly airport novel.

Style Sunday.

Am I the only who gets the impression that Natalie Portman is still a child on the red carpet? As beautiful and fantastic as she can get to be onscreen, she still lacks a little something when making public appearances.
She always looks overpowered by the clothes she wears and shows this by posing in a stilted manner, with her shoulders back on every picture she's in. There's an adorable awkwardness to her that make us realize she tries hard to fit into Hollywood, even if she would just prefer to let her work speak for itself.
With this in mind I found this ensemble utterly perfect, the dress is perfect (it's Christian Dior people!) but what's so unique is her Olympia Le-Tan book clutch.
She holds onto it like a girl who would prefer to be on a library than a gala and as such it's a deliciously subversive fashion statement.


Ah Eva Mendes, if only you were as interesting onscreen as you are on the red carpet you'd appear in this site more often. Her Peter Som dress to announce the Spirit Awards nominees is fresh, elegant and if it doesn't scream "indie", then not even Ellen Page playing Michelle Williams in a Gus van Sant movie would.

While Watching "Black Orpheus"...

...I was stunned at how Marcel Camus managed to make such an outstanding film with such basic concepts. I also am thinking that Brazilian music might be the music that has inspired the best films ever made (Talk to Her anyone?).


I loved how Camus was able to work his way around the Greek myth of Orpheus and did it in a way that was not only ingenious but practically natural.
See how he gets the actors dressed up in Greek-like costumes and simply uses the excuse of carnival to make them fit in.
The rest of his allegories work perfectly because there's a strange balance between what we can think of as the real world and the mythological world. It's as if on carnival, a portal to another dimension had opened and made it logical for various symbolic creatures and human beings to walk the streets together.


The film has an ongoing theme of windows that's simply remarkable. It might have something to do with the various layers the film contains and how we're seeing it through cultural, musical, racial etc. windows.


The idea of death in this film is terrifying and mystifying. Camus taps on a very primal state and makes us fascinated by death in the way Bergman and Allen have.


If this isn't the most amazing metaphor for Orpheus' descent towards hell then I don't know what is.
If you haven't seen this film, wait until you see who Cerberus is. Truly brilliant.

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.


After the truly hideous design the marketing team over at the Weinstein Co. had made for The King's Speech, it's refreshing to see they finally came up with something that's not only lovely but also brilliantly executed.
Colin Firth's lips look thinner than usual and very well represent the dilemma at the center of the plot, notice how the microphone coming from above actually seems to evoke something godly and how the entire thing is a version of Michelangelo's famous painting of God and Adam atop the Sistine Chapel.
I'm thinking that the Weisnteins redid their campaign because they must know what ugly posters can do to Oscar movies...


I have to confess when it comes to documentaries I'm the most unversed person alive. All I know is Michael Moore, some Errol Morris, Herzog (LOVE his docs!) and a slew of the preachy stuff that always win Oscars.
However I have never seen what some think of as the greatest documentary ever made: Shoah.
When it comes to it I tend to think like Annie Hall "four hours of suffering!" but seeing how it's getting a new release I'm wondering if I've truly been missing out on something great?
Have you all seen it, should I stop being lazy and rent it?

Also, kudos to my friend Andrew for spotting this.
He gets the honorary Sheet-y Saturday badge of honor.

Moore.

One could say almost every modern movie goddess has a classic counterpart. Julia has the blithe charm of Audrey, Cate all the technical mastery and command of Kate. Tilda's strange beauty and overpowering nature evokes Bette, while Charlize's classic aesthetics and harmless acting recall Grace. And if Sandra with all her likability is Doris, then Nicole is Garbo. Period.
I have tried to figure out who Julianne Moore would be and I have no idea.
All I can say about her is that she's completely unique. May she have a fantastic birthday today!

Jackass 3D ***

Director: Jeff Tremaine
Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Bam Margera, Ryan Dunn
Chris Pontius, Jason "Wee Man" Acuña, Preston Lacy
Ehren McGhehey, Dave England

On the surface Jackass 3D is an unabashed celebration of human stupidity and more often than not that surface is all it's got.
For the past ten years, Johnny Knoxville and his troupe of, well, jackasses, have proved that stupidity isn't the only thing more infinite than the universe but there are also innumerable ways in which a human being can harm himself.
Their antics which are two parts drunken frat boy, a million parts exhibitionists often have them find ingenious ways to beat the shit out of themselves, particularly if they can find a way to hurt their penises (one has to wonder how, after all those kicks, any of these men are still able to reproduce).
Just this movie has Steve-O taking a punch in the nuts (which makes him wonder out loud "why do I have to be Steve-O?"), another guy get kicked in the groin by a donkey (during a clever sketch called simply "Pin the Tail on the Donkey) and Chris Pontius tying his own member to a control remote helicopter or "helicockter" as they prefer to call it here.
Other of their favorite pastimes involve feces, animals with horns and snakes usually filtered through homoerotic behavior and a relentless need to push themselves harder.
Watching a man glue himself to a midget or another drink a cocktail made out of a fat man's sweat could be, and usually is, utterly disgusting but there is something that makes us look.
Despite the revolting nature of almost every minute of film in Jackass 3D we find ourselves enthralled, hypnotized even by the constant displays of decadence and insanity.
The film taps into our innermost voyeur, one that needs to satiate his every guilty pleasure because the truth is that Jackass embodies what the movies were created for originally; for us to see things out of our wildest dreams or kinkiest thoughts, to experience things on the screen that we otherwise would never be able to know about.
This time around the 3D adds to the film because we feel closer to the action, it's not like audiences are dying to feel vomit or poop near them but truth be told, when Knoxville throws a bucketful of dildos at us we are experiencing the same kind of thing that we go to the summer blockbusters for.
The film of course never implies it's being some sort of postmodernist take on pleasure fulfillment, these men know they are the class clowns and as such try hard to make us laugh. They achieve this brilliantly on several occasions (the aforementioned donkey sequence is one of them and there's a man with anal talents you'd have to see to believe) and even when they fail the camaraderie between the men makes for some interesting observations on male behavior. See how Steve-O confesses he's terrified of bungee jumping yet has never had any trouble stapling things to his body or jumping off roofs in the nude. There are several moments in between sketches where the camera seems to capture these men at their most introspective, as if these stunts were ways for them to exorcise their own demons.
A scene involving a pit and snaked induces us, and one of the guys, to the kind of fear most horror flicks would love to achieve and yet these moments go by so fast and sometimes unnoticed that you might end up feeling guilty for watching this and enjoying yourself so much, instead of doing something more "productive".
The truth is that for all its celebration of stupidity and irrational behavior, Jackass 3D leads us to the interesting realization that we have become a culture that enjoys watching others in pain the difference is that we have conditioned ourselves to process it in different ways according to our preconceptions and biases.
If we saw a man on the news trying to calm down a ram by playing an instrument at him we probably would hear comments about how he's making a biological study, when we see it on Jackass we laugh our asses off when said man gets beaten by the ram.
For all of their silly energy and gremlin like behavior these men allow us to see a part of our world we fail to identify with, a part that we have learned to compartmentalize in order to suit our superegos...if only we can see past all the shit.

"Eighty percent of success is showing up."

...and boy are we glad he did.
Happy birthday to the Woodsman! May he live forever.
And will someone please release You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger here ASAP?