Monday, August 09, 2010

reassemblage . heavy metal . family viewing . summer wars . touch of evil.

trinh t minha's still incredible 'reassemblage' takes the national geographic anthropological film and deconstructs it to place on the mat the expectations of the gaze and the performance of the subject as subject. the camera lingers on exposed breasts daring us to continue seeing, it pans is jerky motions and every cut slices any remnants of comfort we might settle into.

there are no apologies for the male gaze in the animated 'heavy metal'. like the music it is blatantly sexist and violent. an green globe spreads evil across the universe in episodes that each recall one hollywood genre film after another- from alien film to war film to sex film. actually all of it is really a sex film, especially when in the final episode when the very sexy saviour strips of her old clothes to wear the fetish leather and wields a sword.

family viewing was atom egoyan's 1980s take on north american obsessions with television and cameras. the film's narrative about a boy and his love for his grandmother- and the affair he has with his fathers misteress seems like an excuse to play with the images and image making as fetish, as fifteen minutes of fame, as memory keepers, as surveillance. little check-list like, and felt forced.

'summer wars' was a recent anime in which the cyberworld of oz is taken over by an evil virus making chaos across the world. parallel to this fantastical landscape is the real world where the battle is fought- a traditional japanese extended family in an idyllic home complete with kindly grandmother and eccentric uncles. terrific drawings.

from the first long take swooping across the border from mexico to the united states, 'touch of evil' does not let go. when a bomb goes off on the american side suspicions fly about who is responsible for the murder. charlton heston plays the mexican upstanding cop and orson welles the (possibly) corrupt american one. in the madness of the bordertowns, jurisdictions overlap and nationalism and racism are exaggerated. crazy light and shadow play and mad expressionist shots, great dialogue- i loved the film.

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