Raging Sun, Raging Sky

Raging Sun, Raging Sky(2009)
Dir;Julián Hernández
Country;Mexico

The power of desire has rarely been so ravishingly lensed as in "Raging Sun, Raging Sky," cult helmer Julian Hernandez's stunning ode to love and sex, which literally elevates both to mythological heights.

A passionate exploration of love, sex and destiny from acclaimed director Julián Hernández (Broken Sky), Raging Sun, Raging Sky, is a rich, transcendent film experience worthy of its great critical acclaim. Kieri and Ryo, two young, handsome Mexican men have an unquestioning love for each other; a love expressed through an intense sexual bond that gives meaning to both their lives. When Ryo is abducted, Kieri embarks a journey to reunite with his soul mate under the watchful eye of a female spirit. But the voyage is not an easy one and when Ryo escapes, a chain of events will test the lovers true devotion to each other. Raging Sun, Raging Sky is a visually stunning ode to the nude male form and power of desire.

I'm gonna explode

Voy a explotar (2008) aka I'm gonna explode
Dir:Gerardo Naranjo
Country: Mexico
4 wins & 2 nominations See more »

Voy a Explotar (I’m Gonna Explode) is the contemporary Mexican teenage Pierrot le Fou. It knows this, and it wants you to know it, and it doesn’t care if this makes you hate it on principle. The third feature by Gerardo Naranjo (director of Drama/Mex, co-writer and star of Azazel Jacobs‘ The GoodTimeskid), it’s the rare love letter to influence that’s infused with enough personal style and sentiment to transform the stolen into something thrilling and moving.

15 year-old Maru (Maria Deschamps) is a prep school bad girl with a mangy mane of hair and, apparently, a drinking problem. When spoiled little rich boy son of a right-wing politician Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago) gets kicked out of his school and transfers to Maru’s, he introduces himself via faking his own hanging at a talent show. The girl is instantly besotted. “He exists, but I also made him up,” she writes in a letter to a friend which doubles as internal monologue. “The best part is that he’s angry.” Roman is equally smitten, and soon the pair are scheming to run away together.

Or so they want their parents to think; really, they’re camped out in a tent on the roof of Roman’s father’s mansion. Maru’s hysterical mother and sister come over to the house to become part of the rescue effort––which, under the oversight of Roman’s distant dad, consists mainly of drinking tequila and waiting for clues to come to him. With a stolen cell phone, Roman calls daddy’s security detail with false leads to get the grown ups out of the house so that he and Maru can crawl downstairs and collect provisions. It’s only when the pair decide to finally leave home for real that their saga starts to hew to the traditional tropes of love-on-the-run.

Explotar is so blatantly indebted to Pierrot le Fou that it’s tempting to play Count the References –– here Maru clomps around singing “I don’t know what to do!” There the screen fills with her notebook-scrawled ephemera about romantic destiny! But Naranjo has made Maru more than the beautiful mystery that embodies the typical Godard woman. This girl is a loud-mouthed firecracker who vacillates between unguarded passion for Roman and brittle rejection of his advances. In cutting off her hair to become Roman’s “twin”, Maru reveals that her attraction to Roman is actually a kind of jealousy. Deluded as she is about most elements of the real world and grown-up life, she knows her power over Roman ends the moment she becomes a “put outer.” even if she puts out in the name of love, and there’s a resentment there. She’s the kind of realistically conflicted girl almost never seen on screen.

The sex scenes between the two teenagers are surprisingly sexy, not because of what you see but because there isn’t much to see at all. Though the nudity is borderline frank in that Euro, “teenage breasts=freedom” sort of way, it’s not overtly titillating so much as it’s recognizably real, from the nervous twitching leading up to it to the lack of assuredness that runs throughout. Maru and Roman’s romance is brittle and tentative at first, but then the floodgates open, at which point, with an almost fin de siecle spirit, it gushes.

The peak of Maru and Roman’s relationship coincides with the puncture of their invincibility. Once they cement that they are one another’s “perfect accomplice,” as Maru puts it, the time comes to pay the bill for their rebellion. This is the essence of teenage romance ––the first love will be the last love–– and thus, it’s something we’ve seen on screen before. What feels unique, and genuinely tragic, about Explode’s denouement is not that shit gets violent and people get hurt, but that Maru and Roman, like most kids, clearly never really wanted to get in trouble at all. Mouthy and lazy but ultimately uninterested in any kind of criminal nihilism that would take them too far away from the womb of parental-funded modern comforts, Maru and Roman went looking for a Ferris Bueller-style charmed but temporary time-out from mundane responsibility, and end up bumbling into Bonnie and Clyde. In these climes of quirky indie romantic lessons learned, the punishment of starry-eyed delusion feels not only refreshing, but almost like a corrective with political implications.

Eyes Wide Open

Eyes Wide Open(2009)

Director:Haim Tabakman

Country:Israel
Homosexuality in the Orthodox community is the subject of a very dark and disturbing Israeli film, Eyes Wide Open (Einaym Pkuhot) which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Aaron Fleishman (Zohar Shtrauss) is a father of 4 who takes over the family kosher butcher shop following the death of his father. Aarons observant world is turned upside down with the arrival of a young Yeshiva student Ezri (Ran Danker). When Aaron and Ezri begin spending time together, Aaron is quickly ostracized within the Orthodox community. Confronted by Rabbi Vaisben (Tzahi Grad), Aaron declares he was dead before meeting Ezri. We see how quickly social control turns violent and ugly in the Orthodox community when Ezri is forced to leave. Eyes Wide Open is set during a dark and wet winter in Jerusalem. Rain and the darkness of night are used as metaphors for the ritual of cleansing and the omnipresent pressure to conform in the Orthodox community. It has a strong cast and delivers a powerful message in a country divided by debates about the growing influence of the Orthodox Jewish community.

Changement d'adresse

Changement d'adresse (2006)
Director: Emmanuel Mouret
Country: France

Rating: 6,8/10 Runtime: 85 Language: french Country: France Color: color IMDb Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0759509/ Director: Emmanuel Mouret Cast: Emmanuel Mouret: David Frédérique Bel: Anne Fanny Valette: Julia Dany Brillant: Julien Ariane Ascaride: mère de Julia Description: A musician sharing an apartment, seems to fall in love for a student he gives private lessons to. His flatmate (a girl) thinks she's in love with one of the customer at the copyshop she manages. The love story of the student for the musician doesn't evolve as expected, ... ----- Sorry and warning people! The value of this movies is much in the dialogues and the wordplays. For instance in the first scene between David and Anne, the talk about his job, which is horn player, the french word for "horn" is "cor", and it's exactly the same phonetic than "corps" which means "body". He offers to show her his "cor" , etc. It's a finely carved little gem, that french speakers will appreciate for its originality even if they don't like the closed non-action, stage-like, kind of style. ----- A reasonably adequate (IMHO) review: http://filmsdefrance.com/FDF_Changement_d_adresse_2006_rev.html "Mouret surpasses himself not only in his direction (he is clearly a keen student of Eric Rohmer), but also in the quality of his screenplay, which subtly reveals an acute sensitivity for human relationships and an absolute genius for comic word play. The jokes are great (especially the double entendres, which are so sharp you can almost shave with them), but the characters are also well-drawn and totally believable. Much of the charm of the film lies in the understated acting performances of Mouret and his three co-stars, Frédérique Bel, Fanny Valette and Dany Brillant. It is a terrific ensemble which makes the most of Mouret’s great script, bringing not just a seemingly endless series of smiles and laughs, but also a sense of realism and genuine poignancy – albeit from beneath a thin veil of quirky naivety. Changement d’adresse is unquestionably one of the most satisfying French film comedies in recent years.

ദി ലൈഫ് ആന്‍ഡ്‌ പാഷന്‍ ഓഫ് ജീസസ് ക്രൈസ്റ്റ്

The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ(1903)

Directors:Lucien Nonguet, Ferdinand Zecca

Country:France
Decent telling of the story of Jesus from his birth up to the resurrection. This early French feature is full of wonderful imagination and the use of color is a real added bonus. The visual are all very nice and the set decoration is among the best I've seen in any silent film of its era. The biggest problem is that the feature runs just over 40-minutes and it seems like a bunch of short films edited together. There's really no consistent storytelling but instead just various segments from the Bible.

This is an interesting film in a few respects, if not necessarily a very good or entertaining one. It's an early filmed passion play and chronicle of the life of Jesus Christ and is of both religious and film history interest. It becomes more of curio because of its length and extravagance for a film made in the early 1900s. It seems to be the longest story film made to that date. There had been some actuality, or documentary, films already made that were longer, including some boxing matches and a series called 'Army Life' (1900) by R.W. Paul. Nevertheless, film subjects lasting near or longer than 40 minutes were rare until the 1910s.

Jesus has been a popular subject throughout film history, perhaps nevermore so than in the beginning of its history. Before this film, quite a few passion plays had already been filmed. Moreover, these films were generally longer and more elaborate than were other subjects. In 1897, when the cinema was barely more than a year old and when nearly every film was one shot-scene and under a minute in length, a Frenchman named Léar filmed a passion play of 12 scenes, which received popular distribution in Britain and the US, as well as in France. George Hatot's 'La Vie et la Passion de Jésus-Christ' (1897/1898), produced by the Lumiére Company, had 13 tableaux. An American passion play, featuring Horitz villagers, was supposedly even grander and longer. Shortly thereafter, 'The Passion Play of Oberammergau' (1898), which probably didn't have much of anything to do with the plays performed in the village of Oberammergau, contained over 20 scenes. Sigmund Lubin also made a passion play claiming, but lacking, authenticity to the Oberammergau performances. With a lecturer and magic lantern slides, these films would provide as long an entertainment as does the modern feature-length film. In 1899, Alice Guy made 'La Vie de Christ' in 11 tableaux for Gaumont, and again, in 1906, made a passion play of, reportedly, 25 scenes. Pathé, in fact, had made a film on Christ before this picture; their 1900 release consisted of 16 scenes. They, too, would go on to make another one after this, in 1907.

According to film historian Richard Abel ("The Ciné Goes to Town"), there were a few versions of this film sold to exhibitors, and exhibitors may have had the option to purchase individual scenes and may have further edited various passion plays together (these were common practices back then, when exhibitors retained much editorial control over films). Abel says Pathé filmed this over three different periods; others say this production lasted from 1902 to 1905. Actors and styles changed during shootings. The version available from Image Entertainment seems to be complete, if not more than (with the title of 'Passion and Death of Christ'). Abel says the longest version was 32 tableaux. Yet, I counted 35 tableaux separated by title cards and 46 total shots in the version from Image Entertainment.

In the beginning of the history of cinema as an international business, Georges Méliès was the most popular and innovative filmmaker, and, consequently, his films were the most often imitated. Supposedly, this film avoided any reference to prior theatrical productions, says Abel. Upon a second viewing of this film, however, I noticed that this Pathé production, like so many other Pathé films, significantly copies the féeries/fairy films of Méliès. This is especially evident in the soft, fanciful set designs, and the device of female angels guiding characters and events being a variation of the female fairies in Méliès’ fantasy pictures. Additionally, the use of stop-substitutions and superimpositions for trick effects, moving props, and dissolves between scenes and trick effects were trademarks of Méliès adopted religiously by Pathé. The use in this film of many actors or extras to fill and decorate some scenes, which often serve no narrative purpose or biblical fidelity, was also done in Méliès' féeries. This imitation of Méliès' films makes this passion play stand out from the drab, realist set designs that seemed to have been used in other such early passion plays and the location shooting used in later films such as 'From the Manger to the Cross' (1912) and the Christus films made in Italy. They're also in stark contrast to the more realist painted sets used by Ferdinand Zecca, the co-director of 'The Life and Passion of Christ' and Pathé's studio manager for a time, in 'Historie d’une crime' (1901).

Most of the technique and style in 'The Life and Passion of Christ' is common of film-making in the beginning, but there are some notable exceptions. Not many prints from this period exist with tinting, which doesn't seem to have been a prevalent practice yet ('Scrooge; or Marley's Ghost' (1901) is another early example). It's also an early example of Pathé's patented stencil colouring, and their use of bold, red lettering and the rooster logo in the title cards. Pans are used often, including in the Nativity scene, where a pan and tinting changes move the scene between the indoor action of the nativity and the outdoor action of the approaching wise men and gang. Another example of three scenes in one via panning is the Mount of Olives/Kiss of Judas tableaux, where the camera follows Jesus into and out of the woodlands. I haven't seen this kind of extensive panning anywhere else in story films this early in film history (extensive panning was widely done by actuality filmmakers). The use of a window to show outside action is another example of early alternatives to scene dissection (of which there is very little here or in most early films). There's also a match-on-action shot in The Holy Family at Nazareth tableaux, and two medium insert shots later in the film, which are rather unexpected departures from the film's mostly fixed camera, head-on long shot framing tableaux style. I certainly recommend this for those interested in the history of Christianity and cinema.

The Death of Mr Lazarescu

The Death of Mr Lazarescu(2005)

Dir:Cristi Puiu
Country:Romania
23 wins & 6 nominations See more »

Mr. Lazarescu, a 63 year old lonely man feels sick and calls the ambulance.When it arrives the doctor decides he should take him to the hospital but once there they decide to send him to another hospital and then yet another... As the night unfolds and they can't find a hospital for Mr. Lazarescu, his health starts to deteriorate fast.
The film received more than 20 awards, among wich:

* 2005 Cannes Film Festival - Un Certain Regard Award
* 2005 Chicago International Film Festival - Silver Hugo Special Jury Prize
* 2005 Reykjavik International Film Festival - Discovery of the Year Award
* 2005 Copenhagen International Film Festival - Grand Prix du Jury

It also received nominations for Best Director and Best Screenwriter at the 2005 European Film Awards, and for Best Foreign Film at the 2006 Independent Spirit Awards.

സെര്ടിഫൈയിഡ് കോപ്പി

Certified Copy(2010)
Dir:Abbas Kiarostami
Country;iran

In Tuscany to promote his latest book, a middle-aged English writer meets a French woman who leads him to the village of Lucignano.

Euro intellectual recession-time story? I recommend Copie Conforme because of and in spite of the difficulty in watching it. The difficulty resides in the multiple layers involved in the relationship of the two protagonists, not to speak of the three languages that they both speak in various circumstances. The more the the action evolves, the less we seem to understand the real nature of their relationship. What we do know is that those two have a problem of communication. It is this struggle of seduction/rejection, with setbacks and all that make it worth watching. Atmosphere and the man-woman tension is what keeps it going. The filming is impeccable, with lovely scenes of Tuscany, excellent camera, and the great work on surrounding noises, which I believe replaces any music at all. The acting is also very fine, with Binoche deservedly getting a major Cannes Film Festival award.

If you have seen Under The Olive Tree, Kiarostami's master piece from 1994, you might find Certified Copy to be the continuation 25 years later on a different continent. Here he left Iran for Western Europe because Binoche could not have done this in Iran. A twisted, touching, thoughtful relationship story that plays with what is a copy and what is an original, what is reality and what is imagination. Beautifully filmed and Binoche is at her best. The many languages spoken between the protagonists - none from Iran - just confirmed for me the many levels of a relationship, the confusion and misunderstandings you are confronted with, no matter where you are. Definitely worth seeing and talking about with intelligent friends.

റിപെന്റന്‍സ്

Repentance(1984)
Dir:Tengia Abuladze
country;Georgia


The day after the fumeral of Varlam Aravidze, the mayor of a small Georgian town, his corpse turns up in his son's garden and is secretly reburied. But the corpse keeps returning, and the police eventually capture a local woman accusing her of digging it up. She says that Varlam should never be laid to rest, as when he was alive he was responsible for a Stalin-like reign of terror that led to the disappearance of many of her friends...

അന്റോണിയ

Antonia(2006)
Dir:Tata Amaral
Country;Brazil

Determined to escape their poverty-stricken lives, four talented young women living on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil, form an all-female rap group but find their road to success is riddled with sexism, racism, and violence. One by one, they succumb to their grim realities...until they discover that out of struggle come strength, and out of strength, the courage to continue on. Written by Echo Bridge Home Entertainment (IMDB).

ലിസ്റ്റ ഡി എസ്പെര

Lista de Espera aka The Waiting List(2000)
Dir:Juan Carlos Tabío
Country:Cuba
3 wins & 3 nominations See more »

Saturday's discovery was a little gem of a film, a bright and breezy romance from Cuba called The Waiting List. Directed by Juan Carlos Tabio, based on a story by Arturo Arango, The Waiting List takes place at a bus station in the middle of Cuba and is filled with characters waiting to go somewhere else. It is a true ensemble character-driven film pulled off with a solid script and firmly keeled direction.

Many of the actors were seen before in Tabio's Strawberries and Chocolate but the characters who congregate at the bus station are unique. In the center are the young lovers played by Vladimir Cruz (an Antonio Bandaras look-alike, but more vulnerable) and Thaimi Alvarino, and they are surrounded by the blind man who isn't, the mother who hedges her bets on everything down to naming her son Vladimir Jesus, the gruff station manager and the ticket seller who sees nothing ironic in 16 people getting off and only one seat now being available, or the comment that follows every announcement of each delay: "Thank you for choosing us for your transportation needs." Needless to say there is no transportation, at least not at this bus station, and as it changes from a run-down stop over to a Rousseau-inspired feast for the eyes through imagination and team work, the best and worst is brought out in each of the characters.