
Traffik
There isn’t an honest moment in all 96 minutes of Traffik.
There isn’t an honest moment in all 96 minutes of Traffik.
It’s an unbridled display of enthusiasm. We’re laughing with her, not at her. If only the rest of the film had such complete confidence.
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Starring Dwayne Johnson and other giant creatures.
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Named after the David Cronenberg film, this is the blog of former RogerEbert.com editor Jim Emerson, where he has chronicled his enthusiasms and indulged his whims since 2005. Favorite subjects include evidence-based movie criticism, cinematic form and style, comedy, logical reasoning, language, journalism, technology, epistemology and fun. No topic is off-limits, but critical thinking is required.
Selznick, Rossellini & Fellini, by Rossellini & Maddin.
Brad Damaré of Ann Arbor, MI, was kind enough to point me to a marvelous YouTube post of the entire 16-minute 2005 collaboration between Guy Maddin ("The Saddest Music in the World") and Isabella Rossellini: "My Dad Is 100 Years Old" (in English, with Italian subtitles). In this personal tribute to Roberto Rossellini, the subject of recent retrospectives and the father of neorealism (and more), Isabella creates imaginary conversations between herself, her papa, producer David O. Selznick, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin and her mother, Ingrid Bergman -- with the actress/daughter playing all the parts. (My delight in her performances is only enhanced by Isabella's recent appearances as Alec Baldwin's volatile ex-wife on "30 Rock.")
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Through his daughter, papa Rossellini expounds on his contrarian theories of film -- not as dreams or distractions, manipulations or entertainments, but as works that engage the viewer's conscience. As is often the case on YouTube, the soundtrack slips out of synch partway through, but it's not all that distracting. In some ways it's perfectly appropriate (I wouldn't put it past Maddin to have come up with the effect deliberately), since Italian films were shot without sound (MOS) into the 1960s, with little attention to precisely matching looped dialogue to lip movements.
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A tribute to the late Oscar-winning filmmaker, Milos Forman.