jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Photo sharing site Flickr added video uploads last week, and some users are up in arms. I think the video player integrates well, quality is great, and the restrictions — clips can’t be longer than 90 seconds — appeal to me. After all, every single muckfilm I ever uploaded to YouTube could have been improved by more rigorous trimming. Here are a few soothing/dull trial vids we shot this weekend. More to come!

Since I’m behind the curve on most items in this Konsum roundup, the soundtrack for today’s post is provided by Talking Heads, performing “The Great Curve” in Rome in 1980. You can download a DVD of the entire show from Dimeadozen.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
As apparently the last critic in New York City to see the freshly Academy-snubbed 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, I don’t have much to add to the universal acclaim the film has garnered — only this: if you take a look at the Rotten Tomatoes page, you’ll see adjectives like “excruciating,” “harrowing,” “wearing,” “wrenching,” “bleak,” and “unblinking.” All of those fit, but it seems to me the terminology applied to blockbusters like The Bourne Ultimatum isn’t inappropriate, either: 4 Months is also an edge-of-your seat thriller.
4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile. Cristian Mungiu, 2007. ****

Woman on the Beach
My favorite at NYFF06 — at least until INLAND EMPIRE showed up — is currently playing at Film Forum. Reason enough to take another look. Lo and behold, it’s still a wonderful film. J. Hoberman.
Haebyonui yoin. Hong Sang-soo, 2006. ****

The Duchess of Langeais
An About.com review of Rivette’s Balzac adaptation starring Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu is forthcoming.
Ne touchez pas la hache. Jacques Rivette, 2007. ****

The Wire, Season 1
Yes, we’re ridiculously far behind, so I can barely participate in the conversation at this point. Anybody who’s been following this blog knows that I’m a sucker for structure, and The Wire’s intricate plot lines left my head spinning. Looking forward to catching up with the remaining four seasons, like, this weekend. ****

30 Rock
I love every single character on Tina Fey’s show, from Alec Baldwin’s head of TV and microwave programming to nutso Tracy Morgan and Kenneth the Page, and I haven’t seen a TV show that delivers as many smart laughs per minute since the first season of Arrested Development. 30 Rock makes me happy. ****

Californication
Thoroughly enjoyable HBO series about a sex-and-booze addicted writer (David Duchovny) who is still in love with his ex-wife (Natascha McElhone), and whose novel God Hates Us All was adapted into the “Tom and Katie” vehicle Crazy Little Thing Called Love. ***

At a screening for Sunshine last month, Danny Boyle confessed that he felt directing romance was not his strength. After seeing his late-nineties bestseller adaptation The Beach, it’s easy to conclude that he’s on to something with that self-assessment. How else do you explain that when Leonardo DiCaprio and Virginie Ledoyen are having edenic sex on a remote Thai island, the most memorable thing about it is the Moby soundtrack?

In all fairness, Alex Garland’s tale of a utopian beach community run by an overprotective Tilda Swinton was hokum to begin with. At the time The Beach came out, I was living in my own tropical paradise of sorts, and like most things, it’s neither that good nor that bad. The Beach oversells its utopia at first, just to turn around and sell it out for the thriller finish, when sharks and evil pot farmers create trouble in paradise. But what kind of utopia doesn’t have a library or a movie theater, anyway?

The Beach. Danny Boyle, 2000. **

In 1985, Charlotte Gainsbourg (Lemming, The Science of Sleep) was just thirteen and cute as a button. L’Effrontée is only her third movie, and she owns it. The French vacation coming-of-age tale is a venerable subgenre (we’re fans of Girls Can’t Swim and Pauline at the Beach but not Fat Girl)–and this is a very fine addition. Charlotte plays the motherless daughter of a handyman who can’t afford to go out of town. Stranded, she enters the world of a perfect piano prodigy (Clothilde Baudon) while a creepy sailor twice her age (Jean-Philippe Écoffey) tries to buy her beer and her sickly friend Lulu (Julie Glenn) gets sicker. Like in many French films (Safe Conduct always comes to mind), drama is implied without having to be carried to some over-the-top climax. L’Effrontee is a lovely evocation of how much it can stink to be a teenager.

L’effrontée. Claude Miller, 1985. ****

After the jump, Europop madness, Serge Gainsbourg vs. Whitney Houston, and Jane Birkin singing Di Doo Dah.

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You gotta love the web 2.0 revolution: even more ways for people to share their boring vacation videos around! This one is especially dull; I just set up the camera and went for a swim. I was going to call it Wavelength but then I changed my mind. Playa Bonita was shot here: [Google Maps] - [Google Earth]. There’ll be photos and a much more elaborate video project as soon as I can find the time.

[tags]dominican republic, beach, vacation, video, jurgen, youtube, muckfilm, dr, palm trees, ocean[/tags]