Mar 29, 2009

5th April 2009 ; Robert Altman's The Player

The Player
A Film by Robert Altman
Country : USA
Year : 1992
Runtime : 124 mins
5th April 2009 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Call: 94430 39630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/


Griffin Mill, the back-stabbing Hollywood studio exec brought to definitive life by Tim Robbins in The Player, gets antsy with writers who can't describe a movie in twenty-five words or less. It would be hard to describe Griffin Mill's job in terms that would make sense to anyone who has had to work for a living. He's a vice president at a movie studio, which pays him enormous sums of money to listen to people describe movies to him. When he hears a pitch he likes, he passes it along. He doesn't have the authority to give a "go" signal himself, and yet for those who beseech him to approve their screenplays, he has a terrifying negative authority. He can turn them down. Griffin starts getting anonymous postcards from a writer who says he is going to kill him. Griffin's crime: He said he would call the writer back, and he never did. 
Robert Altman's "The Player," which tells Griffin's story with a cold sardonic glee, is a movie about today's Hollywood -- hilarious and heartless in about equal measure, and often at the same time. It is about an industry that is run like an exclusive rich boy's school, where all the kids are spoiled and most of them have ended up here because nobody else could stand them. Griffin is not capable of making a movie, but if a movie is going to be made, it has to get past him first. 

This is material Altman knows from the inside and the outside. "The Player" is a rare commodity. It's brilliant and a guilty pleasure. A subtle damning of things Hollywood, Robert Altman's seriocomedy slices its target with a thousand, imperceptible razor cuts. The bleeding comes almost subliminally, the pain disguised by the movie's soothing, L. A.-poolside manner.
Altman and screenwriter Michael Tolkin (adapting his novel of the same name) have brought "The Player" as up to date as last week's People magazine. In this satire-cum-star parade, no less than 65 celebrities appear as themselves -- and they're just the supporting cast. We're talking Cher, Nick Nolte, Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Jeff Goldblum, Harry Belafonte, Andie MacDowell, Burt Reynolds, Lily Tomlin, Jack Lemmon . . .
There are several big others, but their appearances are part of the movie's endless bevy of surprises. Some are there for an instant. Others play larger parts. Everyone of them is making satirical light of themselves. This movie's the kamikaze version of "That's Entertainment."
Jean Lapine's camera gazes on the proceedings with the addled euphoria of someone who's been too long in the hot tub. This picturesque sterility is the movie's cutting edge -- an artistic, entertaining balm for the mediocrity it makes fun of. An ultimate irony presents itself: If this movie were pitched in the world it so handily satirizes, would it ever see the green light of production? Watch "The Player" and you'll get to find out.
(Source - Internet )


ROBERT ALTMAN

Robert Bernard Altman (20 February 1925 – 20 November 2006) was an American film director known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective.  


Until 1956, Altman directed 60 to 65 industrial short films, earning $250 a month while simultaneously getting the necessary training and experience. The Delinquents became his first feature film. Altman wrote the script in one week and filmed it with a budget of $63,000 on location in Kansas City in two weeks.

Altman then struggled for several years after quarreling with Jack Warner, the head of Warner Brothers , and it was during this time that he first formed his "anti-Hollywood" opinions and entered a new stage of filmmaking. 

In 1969 Altman directed MASH and it was a huge success, both with critics and at the box office. It was given the Grand Prix for the Best Film at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival. He followed it with other critical breakthroughs such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), Thieves Like Us (1974) and Nashville (1975), which made the distinctive, experimental "Altman style" well known.

As a director, Altman favored stories showing the interrelationships between several characters; he stated that he was more interested in character motivation than in intricate plots. As such, he tended to sketch out only a basic plot for the film, referring to the screenplay as a "blueprint" for action, and allowed his actors to improvise dialogue. This is one of the reasons Altman was known as an "actor's director", a reputation that helped him work with large casts of well-known actors.

Altman made films that no other filmmaker and/or studio would. In 1975, Altman made Nashville, for which he was, awarded Best Director by the Cannes Film Festival, BAFTA, and the New York Film Critics Circle. After the success of his next film  The Player, Altman directed 1993's Short Cuts, an ambitious adaptation of several short stories by Raymond Carver, and won  the Golden Lion at the 1993 Venice International Film Festival and earned another Oscar nomination for Best Director. In 1998, Altman made The Gingerbread Man, and in 1999 Cookie's Fortune, another critical success.In 2001, Altman's film Gosford Park gained a spot on many critics' lists of the ten best films of that year. 

Altman's vision of society and film-making has been influenced by his leftist politics.Altman was one of several famous people (along with individuals as Noam Chomsky and Susan Sarandon) who signed the Not In My Name declaration opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq.Altman died on November 20, 2006 at age 81.

Mar 17, 2009

22nd March 2009 ; Documentaries on Art


Documentaries on Art
22nd March 2009 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital auditorium
Call :9443039630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/
What was it like to be an artist in centuries past? What makes a painting or an artist 'great'? Tim Marlow presents this fascinating introduction to the works of the Old Masters as displayed in museums, churches, and palaces throughout Europe. Tim Marlow takes a fresh look at the most important artworks of some of the greatest artists in history. Both intelligent and informative, the series aims to provide an uncomplicated and accessible analysis of the works and artists.

This is Konangal’s second segment on documentaries on art. Lat month Simon Schama took us through a breathtaking tour of the works of post renaissance masters Bernini and Caravaggio. We began that screening with Tim Marlow’s presentation of the pre renaissance master Giotto.

This week we will be screening documentaries about the life and works of two masters  Bruegel of Netherlands and Michelangelo of Italy. 

Michelangelo (1475-1564)

1

An introduction to Michelangelo
Presented by Tim Marlow 
Runtime :24 min
Works featured in this program include David (1501-04, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence), Frescoes, Sistine Chapel, (1508-12, Vatican, Rome), Bacchus (1496-97, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence), Pieta (1499, St. Peter's, Vatican, Rome), Dying and Rebellious Slaves (1513-16, Louvre, Paris) and The Last Judgement, (1534-41, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome ).
2

Michelangelo Drawings -Closer to the Master
Runtime: 40 min
A joint BBC/British Museum production about the drawings of Michelangelo and the way that they illuminate his life, his artistic development, his religion and his inner torments. The film is presented Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, and is filmed on location in Florence and in the Sistine Chapel. 

Michelangelo's drawings are some of the greatest of all time. Fragile survivals from over 500 years ago, they can be studied and admired as things of great technical skill and enormous beauty, but they show us something else as well: they show us Michelangelo thinking. Michelangelo would have felt exposed seeing us look at his drawings. And that's what makes them exciting: they give us a thrilling insight into how this genius sculptor, architect and painter worked: they bring us closer to the master. From pen studies made when he was in his early twenties to the visionary crucifixion scenes carried out six decades later, shortly before his death, this film illuminates the high points of Michelangelo's career. 

3

The Private Life of a Masterpiece- Michelangelo’s David
Runtime 48 Min
It is one of art's most noted pieces, but it took failures by two sculptors before Michelangelo Buonarroti completed the work in the early 16th century. This documentary reveals the techniques Michelangelo used to re-create the human body so accurately on such a vast scale, and how contrasting interpretations view it as a symbol of either military might or of freedom.

Bruegel 
c. 1525 – September 9, 1569


An introduction to Bruegel 
Presented by Tim Marlow 
Runtime :24 min

Pieter Bruegel  (c. 1525 – September 9, 1569) was a Netherlandish Renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes. 

Bruegel specialized in landscapes populated by peasants. He is often credited as being the first Western painter to paint landscapes for their own sake, rather than as a backdrop for history painting. Attention to the life and manners of peasants was rare in the arts in Brueghel's time. His earthy, unsentimental but vivid depiction of the rituals of village life—including agriculture, hunts, meals, festivals, dances, and games—are unique windows on a vanished folk culture and a prime source of iconographic evidence about both physical and social aspects of 16th century life.

Mar 8, 2009

15th March 2009 ; Wajda's DANTON


DANTON
A film by Andrzej  Wajda
Country : France
French with English sub titles
Runtime : 136 min
15th March 2009  ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Call 94430 39630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/

The two poles of the French Revolution were the passionate idealism of the republic and the utter finality of the guillotine. Andrzej  Wajda opens with the prescient image of Danton, eyeing up the execution device and then throws us into the key events with which he concluded his life. George Jacques Danton was the French revolutionary leader who eventually found himself at odds with one time ally Maximilien Robespierre. 

It’s this relationship which Wajda focuses on most fully, thereby pitching Danton as a kind of battle between the two. On one side we have Robespierre (here played by Polish actor Wojciech Pszoniak), the man of the Revolution; on the other Danton, the man of the people. And so the film bounces back and forth between them as their rivalry is divulged and their hatred for/fear of each other is revealed. Danton is essentially a political thriller made up, as it is, from back room whispers and clandestine meetings, each of which tightens the screws a little further as Danton progresses ever closer to his death. Indeed, as we move from his return to his execution, via his imprisonment and trial, the intensity grows just as it would in any given example of the genre.
Danton is played by Gerard Depardieu, that large, proletarian French actor who is so useful in roles where high-flown emotions need some sort of grounding. Robespierre is played by a Polish actor, Wojciech Pszoniak, as a self-obsessed hypochondriac whose political strategy seems largely determined by his need to make his headaches go away. 
Wajda's camera moves through 18th century Paris with complete familiarity. He fills the city with the poor, with street people, with crooks and prostitutes and inflamed rabble, and there is always the sense of those crowds pressing outside as the senate meets. And then he shows Danton and Robespierre, each perfectly aware of the other's motives and of the possibility of the guillotine, conducting an intellectual duel. The scene of the great confrontation between the two of them is so well acted and directed that, for the first time in any movie about the French Revolution, one is  listening to people and not speeches.
(Source : Internet)
Andrzej Wajda

Andrzej Wajda (born March 6, 1926 in Suwałki) is a Polish film director. Laureate of an honorary Oscar, he is one of the most prominent members of the Polish Film School.

A major figure of world and Eastern European cinema after World War II, Wajda has made his reputation as a sensitive and uncompromising chronicler of his country's political and social evolution. The son of a Polish cavalry officer who was killed by the Soviets in 1940, Wajda fought in the Home Army against the Germans when he was still a teenager. After the war, he studied to be a painter at Kraków's Academy of Fine Arts before entering the Łódź Film School.

On the heels of his apprenticeship to director Aleksander Ford, Wajda was given the opportunity to direct his own film. With A Generation (1955), the first-time director poured out his disillusionment over jingoism, using as his alter ego a young, James Dean-style antihero played by Zbigniew Cybulski.Wajda went on to make two more increasingly accomplished films, which further developed the antiwar theme of A Generation: Kanal (1956) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958), also starring Cybulski.

Wajda was more interested in works of allegory and symbolism, and certain symbols (such as setting fire to a glass of liquor, representing the flame of youthful idealism that was extinguished by the war) recur often in his films Wajda's later devotion to Poland's burgeoning Solidarity movement was manifested in Man of Marble (1976) and Man of Iron (1981), with Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa appearing as himself in the latter film. The director's involvement in this movement would prompt the Polish government to force Wajda's production company out of business. In 1983 he directed Danton , a film set in 1794 (Year Two) dealing with the Post-Revolutionary Terror. The film carries sharp parallels with the Post-Revolutionary period in Russia as well as with fascist Germany.

At the 2000 Academy Awards, Wajda was presented with an honorary Oscar for his numerous contributions to cinema; he subsequently donated the award to Kraków's Jagiellonian University. In February 2006, Wajda received an honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the Berlin International Film Festival. Wajda , well past his 80th year, is still making films .

Mar 4, 2009

8th March 2009 ; Sidney Lumet's NETWORK

NETWORK
A film by Sydney Lumet
Written by Paddy Chayefsky
Year ; 1976
Runtime : 121 min
English with English sub titles
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/
Call 9443039630

Thirty three years ago, this movie would have seemed like a fantasy; now it's barely ahead of the facts.


"Network" will shake you up. Paddy Chayefsky's absurdly plausible and outrageously provocative original script concerns media running amok. Faye Dunaway and William Holden, each in two of their finest performances, plus Peter Finch and Robert Duvall star in this superbly cast and handsomely produced Howard Gottfried production. Sidney Lumet's direction is outstanding. The Metro picture, released by United Artists, is a potent commercial blend of artful tirade, visual excitement and sociological horror.
The movie caused a sensation in 1976.and stirred up much debate about the decaying values of television. Seen a quarter-century later, it is like prophecy. When Chayefsky created Howard Beale, could he have imagined Jerry Springer, Howard Stern and the World Wrestling Federation ?

The movie has been described as "outrageous satire" (Leonard Maltin) and "messianic farce" (Pauline Kael), and it is both, and more. What is fascinating about Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning screenplay is how smoothly it shifts its gears. The scenes involving Beale and the revolutionary "liberation army" are cheerfully over the top. The scenes involving Diana and Max are quiet, tense, convincing drama. The action at the network executive level aims for behind-the-scenes realism; we may doubt that a Howard Beale could get on the air, but we have no doubt the idea would be discussed as the movie suggests. And then Chayefsky and the director, Sidney Lumet, edge the backstage network material over into satire, too--but subtly, so that in the final late-night meeting where the executives decide what to do about Howard Beale, we have entered the madhouse without noticing.

But then there are scenes in the movie that are absolutely chilling. We watch Peter Finch cracking up on the air, and we remind ourselves that this isn't satire, it was a style as long ago as Jack Paar. We can believe that audiences would tune in to a news program that's half happy talk and half freak show, because audiences are tuning in to programs like that. We can believe in the movie's "Ecumenical Liberation Army" because nothing along those lines will amaze us after Patty Hearst. And we can believe that the Faye Dunaway character could be totally cut off from her emotional and sexual roots, could be fanatically obsessed with her job, because jobs as competitive as hers almost require that. Thirty three years ago, this movie would have seemed like a fantasy; now it's barely ahead of the facts.


Sidney Lumet


Sidney Lumet is nevertheless a master of cinema. Known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors--and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York--Lumet has made over 40 movies, often emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. He often tells intelligent, complex stories. His politics are somewhat left-leaning and he often treats socially relevant themes in his films.

As social criticism, Sidney Lumet addresses throughout his long career on numerous issues related to American society - on corrupt police (Serpico, 1973, The Prince of New York, 1981 and in the Night Falls on Manhattan (1997)), on television (A Dog Day Afternoon, 1975 ), on Justice ( Twelve Angry Men In 1957, The Verdict, 1982 ) on MacCarthyism (Daniel, 1983), on alcoholism (Lendemain From Crime, 1986) and on racism (Counter-survey, 1990).

Born on June 25, 1924, in Philadelphia, the son of actor Baruch Lumet and dancer Eugenia Wermus Lumet, he made his stage debut at age four at the Yiddish Art Theater in New York. He played many roles on Broadway in the 1930s (such as "Dead End"), and his acting debut in films came in One Third of a Nation (1939). In 1947 he started an off-Broadway acting troupe that included such future stars as Yul Brynner and Eli Wallach, and other former members of Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio who had become unsatisfied with Strasberg's concepts.

Lumet made his stage directing debut in 1955. He made his feature film directing debut with the critical and financial hit 12 Angry Men (1957), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay, and is justly regarded as one of the most auspicious directorial debuts in film history.

Lumet has made over 40 movies, which earned nearly 50 Oscar nominations. In 1993 he received the D.W. Griffith Award of theDirectors Guild of America and in 2005 a well-deserved Honorary Academy Award.