jkhuysmans0
Joined Feb 2005
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jkhuysmans0's rating
"You shouldn't forget the importance of entertainment." In fact so important, so narcissistic is entertainment that you go ahead a blow a few million just to remake your Austrian obscurity of hyper violence shot for shot in English because really, "it's an American story." I take this to be more of Wim Wenders or Werner Hertzog maneuver, assuming Haneke for a more streamlined and antiseptic intellectual than the others, but whatever... I don't know, the quality of Americanness to the narrative implies an oversight and an error on the director's part. That error in point is the apparently unrealized "requirement" the first time around that Haneke should have used inferior, maginally Hollywood, English language actors to capture the true essence of this so called American story as opposed to employing German speaking European actors of superior talent.
Fact is, you shouldn't exactly believe all the hyperbole around this film, because the narrative is probably the least American in character than other films from this director. You're more likely to find Ralph Lauren style serial killers in Austria or on the shores of Lake Geneva (where the real money is at) than in Manhattan Beach, CA -especially these days, in this market, if you know where I'm headed with that statement (*see the American economy circa 1929*). Because US Americans rob banks before they return to their day jobs (at the bank) on Monday, and when they need drugs to ameliorate all the pain they feel, being an American, they stick their best friend for what turns out to be three dollars when it was potentially ten... right before they sell off their VCR to the local Pawn and Gun.
This is where Haneke falls down: the point of violence is not simply pointless sport at all in the good ole' USA because violent tactics are usually associated with the art of getting money not with people who already have it. Or at least violence is one way of going about it, and, as it turns out, an increasingly common way of expanding and building personal wealth particularly those with much to build upon, much of nothing that is.
Not to say, really, speaking of money, that American's don't enjoy cinematic projections of pointless violence as orchestrated and executed by European film directors adept at their craft as is Haneke. Indeed, there is a rich history of that scenario playing itself out in the history of entertainment theory; and lest we forget LA is the cinema's world stage. You wanna make world movies, take it to LA... That, as De Palma would have it, "violence is inherently cinematic," is reason enough to put one's investment dollars behind the remake of a relatively obscure ultra violent film especially if it's being remade for the benefit of the USA and in the lingua franca. Lesson: film-making is almost exclusively and specifically about making money.
So that's why... That's why they did it: For the money. Haneke's cinema violence is interesting, sure, it's lesson teaching, it's well directed, even philosophical but its violence doesn't cease to be violence. You can intellectualize it all you like; however, it remains that violence in film is a time-worn yet unmistakably proved commercial formula, while shunned and frowned upon in Europe and thriving always in the States, that plays off our lizard brain fears of the unknown sort of like Republican Politics. And, gee, by the way, I'll be darned, let me tell you, violent movies generate a lot of money, Batman. So every time you pop into the cinema with your gfriend, keep in mind, it's sort of like a Funny Game to separate you from what you're holding in you're pocket book. If a film was determined at some point that it couldn't do that, it wouldn't be film. And this includes "Art films" even, like Funny Games. (*Remember: Basically if you call a film an art film, it just means you were left behind. Avoid that.*)
Over all the lack of departure form the original is what makes this film so post-postmodernly interesting. Funny Games EL Redeaux is better lit than the first film, and you can discern pretty clearly the advances in film stock since the mid-nineties; take a close look at that last 400 Blows style freeze frame shot at the end of each movie and compare the two - the new film is better. Apart from that, folks, very few differences exist between the films. It's my stance that the performances in the Austrian version are better because the actors in that picture are better actors but that's just my stance... You should see both, though, just for fun.
Fact is, you shouldn't exactly believe all the hyperbole around this film, because the narrative is probably the least American in character than other films from this director. You're more likely to find Ralph Lauren style serial killers in Austria or on the shores of Lake Geneva (where the real money is at) than in Manhattan Beach, CA -especially these days, in this market, if you know where I'm headed with that statement (*see the American economy circa 1929*). Because US Americans rob banks before they return to their day jobs (at the bank) on Monday, and when they need drugs to ameliorate all the pain they feel, being an American, they stick their best friend for what turns out to be three dollars when it was potentially ten... right before they sell off their VCR to the local Pawn and Gun.
This is where Haneke falls down: the point of violence is not simply pointless sport at all in the good ole' USA because violent tactics are usually associated with the art of getting money not with people who already have it. Or at least violence is one way of going about it, and, as it turns out, an increasingly common way of expanding and building personal wealth particularly those with much to build upon, much of nothing that is.
Not to say, really, speaking of money, that American's don't enjoy cinematic projections of pointless violence as orchestrated and executed by European film directors adept at their craft as is Haneke. Indeed, there is a rich history of that scenario playing itself out in the history of entertainment theory; and lest we forget LA is the cinema's world stage. You wanna make world movies, take it to LA... That, as De Palma would have it, "violence is inherently cinematic," is reason enough to put one's investment dollars behind the remake of a relatively obscure ultra violent film especially if it's being remade for the benefit of the USA and in the lingua franca. Lesson: film-making is almost exclusively and specifically about making money.
So that's why... That's why they did it: For the money. Haneke's cinema violence is interesting, sure, it's lesson teaching, it's well directed, even philosophical but its violence doesn't cease to be violence. You can intellectualize it all you like; however, it remains that violence in film is a time-worn yet unmistakably proved commercial formula, while shunned and frowned upon in Europe and thriving always in the States, that plays off our lizard brain fears of the unknown sort of like Republican Politics. And, gee, by the way, I'll be darned, let me tell you, violent movies generate a lot of money, Batman. So every time you pop into the cinema with your gfriend, keep in mind, it's sort of like a Funny Game to separate you from what you're holding in you're pocket book. If a film was determined at some point that it couldn't do that, it wouldn't be film. And this includes "Art films" even, like Funny Games. (*Remember: Basically if you call a film an art film, it just means you were left behind. Avoid that.*)
Over all the lack of departure form the original is what makes this film so post-postmodernly interesting. Funny Games EL Redeaux is better lit than the first film, and you can discern pretty clearly the advances in film stock since the mid-nineties; take a close look at that last 400 Blows style freeze frame shot at the end of each movie and compare the two - the new film is better. Apart from that, folks, very few differences exist between the films. It's my stance that the performances in the Austrian version are better because the actors in that picture are better actors but that's just my stance... You should see both, though, just for fun.
Whoa, this pre-MPAA film ratings system film, Mondo Cane, must have been quite a surprise to Gram and Gramps when they walked you in. The movie opens with a powerful sequence in which a wheezing and gnashing dog is dragged down a line of other not dissimilarly vicious dogs, twisting and snapping, before it's thrown in among them, behind the gate of a dusty and dirt-packed kennel, on the other side and the fence there, only to be assaulted and attacked by the entire gang of dogs that is. Then, moving on to another interesting human to animal interaction scene, we're shown a set of New Guinea tribal elders ceremonially blunting a field of wild boars, each to a convulsive death, with a tree trunk that was fashioned into a dull point.
What's of most notable interest here in this trend-setter of a picture is not the xenophobic representations (don't let the tag line fool you, these are representations) of our world citizens indigenous to the African and Asian contents no, you get greater depth of story in Porno Holocaust which is an exclusive treatment on the topic of nuclear contamination- but rather the Otherization of the Los Angeles Hollywood American figure. For instance why in the world did comedic actor Jerry Lee Lewis honor his dead pet with a five-thousand dollar tombstone made of pure granite? And Zanuck, he and his clan did that too Oh, just how easy it is, kids, in San Bernardino with all the violent machinery of the automobile graveyard to pack your Packard into a cube and ship it overseas to be made into some other "much smaller car."
Making a pseudo-documentary about death and sex in series hyper-exoticized locations, while essentially meaningless, is just one Italian way of breaking the bank. Regardless, I'm quite looking forward to seeing Mondo Topless, because it has to be firm that one question didn't fail to pass the innocent lips of a San Francisco strip club on-looker and patron: "What the hell are those Italians doing here with those movie cameras?" Yo!
What's of most notable interest here in this trend-setter of a picture is not the xenophobic representations (don't let the tag line fool you, these are representations) of our world citizens indigenous to the African and Asian contents no, you get greater depth of story in Porno Holocaust which is an exclusive treatment on the topic of nuclear contamination- but rather the Otherization of the Los Angeles Hollywood American figure. For instance why in the world did comedic actor Jerry Lee Lewis honor his dead pet with a five-thousand dollar tombstone made of pure granite? And Zanuck, he and his clan did that too Oh, just how easy it is, kids, in San Bernardino with all the violent machinery of the automobile graveyard to pack your Packard into a cube and ship it overseas to be made into some other "much smaller car."
Making a pseudo-documentary about death and sex in series hyper-exoticized locations, while essentially meaningless, is just one Italian way of breaking the bank. Regardless, I'm quite looking forward to seeing Mondo Topless, because it has to be firm that one question didn't fail to pass the innocent lips of a San Francisco strip club on-looker and patron: "What the hell are those Italians doing here with those movie cameras?" Yo!
"Well, I usually take short lengths of film and pore over them, or pour into them. Dig into them. So it's mining. And I'm looking for things that literally you just don't see when it zips by at 24 frames per second, normal sound speed. Film is a relation of frame to frame to frame, and I am also declaring relations of one frame with another frame. I want to see what can be done between those two frames and then, maybe frame A and frame B, and then frame B frame C. Okay? It definitely is a dig. What I'm after, of course, is vital, interesting, amusing, crazy-making stuff." -Ken Jacobs
This is a new visual take on some very old (Thomas Edison) filmic material. Few examples like it exist, if any at all, in the NetFlix catalog. The only other place you'll find entertainments such as this one is at a major museum of modern art.
It's unfortunate, but at this phase in time, New York Fishmarket Ghetto communicates specifically and expressly to an elite viewer and, having it there, on NetFlix, throws the film itself into a state of disorientation while it is distributed as an anomalous cultural artifact in a non-elite venue, thus slaking its traditional place in the web of relations we call the world.
Interpretations are useless, however, I urge the curious viewer not familiar with the work and goals of Ken Jacobs to have a confrontation New York Gehtto Fishmarket 1903 and take some its valuable lessons with him next time he is settling in with a classical realist narrative film. Excellent. (But not for epileptics).
This is a new visual take on some very old (Thomas Edison) filmic material. Few examples like it exist, if any at all, in the NetFlix catalog. The only other place you'll find entertainments such as this one is at a major museum of modern art.
It's unfortunate, but at this phase in time, New York Fishmarket Ghetto communicates specifically and expressly to an elite viewer and, having it there, on NetFlix, throws the film itself into a state of disorientation while it is distributed as an anomalous cultural artifact in a non-elite venue, thus slaking its traditional place in the web of relations we call the world.
Interpretations are useless, however, I urge the curious viewer not familiar with the work and goals of Ken Jacobs to have a confrontation New York Gehtto Fishmarket 1903 and take some its valuable lessons with him next time he is settling in with a classical realist narrative film. Excellent. (But not for epileptics).