Trailer of the Day

Which one do you prefer?

Maybe I would see this film. Maybe I'm willing.

Red Band Nightcrawler

I can't wait for this action film with insane Jake Gyllenhaal. If there is an actor I'm enjoying a lot over the past couple of years it's him.

(*side note - I wrote Jake Gyllenhaal the right way at first without looking...then I looked to make sure it was right...)

CITIZENFOUR

CITIZENFOUR has become my most anticipated film of the season; I think it is fair to say. Once again, I’ve been forgetting to share things with you, since my latest lack of posting.

Why - CITIZENFOUR is a great story in itself primarily because of the amount of work and detail that has been put throughout the process of making this documentary that is already extraordinary. I need to start with the director of this doc, Laura Poitras, who has been working on documentary for over the past several years, getting an Oscar nomination, working on War themes and eventually deciding to live in Berlin because of being so many times stopped by the security people around American airports.

As you can read while watching the trailer, ‘Edward Snowden documentary’. It’s about Edward Snowden, it is about the United Stated internal affairs and security system and lack of security and illegal security and surveillance and on and on and ultimately about United States’ society and Edward Snowden tells us that our privacy is being neglected, our internet freedom is being corrupted and ‘basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.’ Edward Snowden was the one that got both Laura Poitras and  Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill. He’s a smart conscious man and Laura Poitras is genius in deciding and making a really strong point in wanting to portray him in the documentary, which she eventually succeeded.

CITIZZENFOUR is one of those experiences that come along to wake us up about extremely poignant issues of the moment about our World society, and not just United States, because as so often, United States is the primary example of how not to do things…

Laura Poitras is a hero of mine.

Other interesting links-

Anne Thompson interview. 

This is really interesting about the security and extremely detailed arrangments throughout the making of CITIZENFOUR, here.

The NYFF Premiere here.

Laura Poitras The Badass.

The Best

We are the Best is one of my favorite films of the year.

We Are the Best

This film is the best for a few and obvious reasons. It’s honest, original, authentic and especially heartfelt. And so queer, I love this word to describe the film. Yes, there can be many films with these characteristics, so why and how this Swedish gem should stand out? Because it’s truly the best.

After Tiller

Heartbreaking, so poignant.

Amazing Amy

How could I not share this with you?

Gone Girl - Early Thoughts

A FEW  THOUGHTS ON GONE GIRL, THE FILM. Just as I come off the theater.

Gone Girl, the film, as the same as the book, is pure entertainment.

PURE.ENTERTAINMENT.

Pretty brilliant adaptation by Gillian Flynn. Amazing…oh just saying amazing gave me the chills…Solid, consistent and pretty neat storyline throughout. It just keeps building and building and getting better and better. The film, as a whole, just keeps getting better and better and better. Imagine a line just going up and up and up. As I said, pure entertainment. Speaking as a reader of the book, going through the storyline alone, it feels so well written, there are no holes. Every slice of history in the book she had to take is well done, it’s proper and tidy, because you don’t miss it at all, I don’t feel like the story needs it. From Desi’s mother and Nick’s dad, to other characters like the Housewives, and a younger journalist, to the way a few clues were cut out for the film, it all comes clean in the big screen because it’s in the details, everything matters. Like for instance, Amy’s parents. Starting with the casting, if you don’t feel creepy by those two then I don’t really understand you. If you don’t get the little detail in the way they refer to their daughter as the Amazing Amy, and the name of the site as “find amazing amy dot com”, like taking a chance to promote their own franchise while their daughter is missing… And the way she turns this story into a great satire of today’s society issues.

Just a quick parenthesis - I couldn’t stop talking about the film with my friend/film partner. We’ve both read the book, and now talking about detail by detail is so gratifying. These are the most gratifying films you know? Just for the cheer of the film experience is pretty much everything.

The beginning of the film – I wanted to talk about how David Fincher and Gillian Flynn make Amy Dunne so impenetrable. Like in the book, it starts with the questions – What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? Then Amy Dunne is presented to us through her voice over, basically. They meet for the first time, there’s the game talk that the first date requires…You see, coming from someone who read the book, it feels even greater, the idea of this ideal Amy. I don’t wanna use the word superficial, because it’s nothing to do with that, but rather someone you can’t really reach and touch, something universal and at the same time something on the surface. And that’s another well done thing in the storyline.

Who are you Amy? As you reach the middle of the film, your head starts to explode progressively.

There are great mother fucking brilliant sequences in this film, as I said in the beginning, they just keep getting better and better. For example – The Cool Girl sequence. Just wow! And the “Comeback”. I was cracking up in my seat, curled up and falling off my seat all at once.

Talking about the film adaptation – BEST MARKETING SHIT. If there was one thing I had in my mind from early on was the idea that the end of the film would be different from the book. Or something like that there would be some other different act. This was months ago. If this was on purpose or not, great fucking marketing. There is no such thing as bad publicity huh, you smart asses?!? I liked that too.

GO, THE OTHER TWIN, is the “Coolest” character from the film. It will probably be an audience favorite. (IT IS MY FAVORITE). And a great performance, now I would love to see her getting nominations for a supporting role; that would be brilliant and deserved. She’s the one “responsible” for the humanity source in the story. She’s probably THE ONE we relate to the most. It’s the best. Her expressions, her representation.

Talk about TWINS – Their storyline is so believably sweet and authentic and true. Talking from a twin point – Being a twin to some other twin, the connectivity is something utterly natural, not forced in any way; the way we connect, the way we relate to each other, is something that just happens and you don’t really need to say anything to understand what the other wants to say or what he’s thinking; Go has no choice but help his brother, she has no choice but believe in him, she has no choice but being by his side. She has no choice. It just is. It’s about that irreversible and natural way of connecting. But maybe it is also the way people who are intimate with other people connect, but I don’t really know.

Interesting curiosity (talking from a Gay stand point) – Go is also pretty gay. What’s so interesting here, is that, not only she brings humanity, she is at the same time quite a reserved person, you don’t get to get intimate with her and yet you understand her. Right at that moment, her life is her brother’s life. You see she lives by herself and if she has someone, you don’t really know. If she has boyfriends or girlfriends, you don’t really know. In the story, she seems to be the unfuckable, and yet, at to my gay stand point, she’s so damn fuckable.

THE CAST. It’s like every one of these people fit their roles to perfection. Rosamund Pike is as I was predicting, fiercely and obnoxiously hunting and chiling. Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, the dude basically. Go, the other twin, is probably you favorite character throughout this madness. Rhonda is thoughtful and feels like a real cop and not one from Law and Order, Amy’s parents are freaking distant and scary. And Tanner, the lawyer, another character people will love.

ROSAMUND PIKE – I kept thinking how wonderfully kind and lovely and innocent she was playing Jane in Pride and Prejudice. It really is a career turn. (It’s one of those cases where she is totally getting an Oscar nomination, totally not winning it.)

AMY, or Amazing Amy, represents a lot of things. She represents the way human beings communicate, represents the way human beings are forced and not forced by society norms, the way we sometimes perceive each other, the way we don’t really know each other, the way we understand and not understand and know what we really want, how we think…

The word Amazing is going to hurt for a while.

Gone Girl is exceptional.

Gone Girl is the reason why I live for films.

Gone Girl is a lot of things you can dig into…an endless debate.

It’s very likely that I’ll be in the theater again tomorrow.