#I love Catinca’s performance

[verkomy]

I think it’s time to rewatch the greatest movie of all time which is the fall (2006) by tarsem singh

[vhagarswattle]

i’ve been meaning to watch the fall and i finally did because you posted about it. thank you so much it was so excellent. beautiful looking and lee pace and the child actress were so incredibly endearing from the second they first interacted. may or may not have cried like a baby as well. love love loved it <3

Oh my god this is the sweetest message. I’m so glad you enjoyed it!!! It’s such a special film, between the insane production design (mostly practical!!!) and the story & performances…. Catinca is SO good, her performance really stood out to me the last time I watched. Those costumes! Eiko Ishioka is a genius and I mean that.

I’m really touched that my posting about it inspired you to watch it 🥹 in that article that the headline about going bankrupt is from, Tarsem said that the rights reverted him and there is a 4k version of it that he’s trying to get into production. I’m hoping that a high quality rerelease gets the movie the attention it deserved the first time around.

I REALLY really do wish criterion adds it to the collection because I do think it’s a film that warrants a ton of behind the scenes interviews and supplementary material. It’s special!

[the-rainbow-unicorn-reviews]

~The Fall (2006)

Directed by Tarsem Singh and written by Dan Gilroy, Nico Soultanakis and Tarsem Singh, this is an epic tale of a masked bandit, an Indian, an explosives expert, an escaped slave, Charles Darwin and his little companion, Wallace the monkey; in which they embark on a mission to kill the evil Governor Odious.

This movie stars Lee Pace and introduces us to a first time actress, Catinca Untaru, who's performance in this film was so sweet and and very funny at times. Her cheekiness is also something that shines through and really gives her character a relatability.

I quite enjoyed watching the development of her character, Alexandria, and honestly, she melts my heart.

As for Lee pace, I did enjoy his performance as well. His ability to bring characters to life will never cease to amaze me. Yes, I am a fan of his and knowing that this was only his fourth movie, was surprising to me because I couldn't tell. He was that good....at least in my eyes anyway.

All in all, if you are looking for a movie full of epic and artistic adventure, this would be a good one to watch; and if you are anything like me and love films that have stories within stories, again, this is a great one for you.

Personally, I give this movie 9 stars out of 10....No, I actually give it 10 stars out of 10 because of the sweet relationship that Roy and Alexandria develop during the duration of this film.

Hands down, awesome storyline!

===

[canmom]

post toku night impressions:

Immortals was, sadly, rather a mixed bag... on the face of it it’s hard to defend, but if you see it as doing a lot very consciously, you can find a more compelling reading (something I can credit to @lyravelocity who can certainly explicate it a lot better than me... but I will do my best!) It definitely felt like Singh was under orders to chase the coattails of 300 with a fair dash of LotR. the script revolved around reproductive anxieties - the baddie is obsessed with killing pregnant women and smashing peoples’ balls, many characters talk about ‘Hellenic’ children getting a future in a way that steers painfully close to the straight up reciting the Fourteen Words.

visually it’s a very strange grab-bag of motifs from across the “Western canon” - you have a Hellenic setting, a design sensibility that combines 60s ‘sword and sandal’ movie sets with Renaissance paintings and recent spectacle movies like indeed LotR and 300, the religious sentiments expressed by the characters have far more in common with Christian anxieties (why didn’t God help me? is he real?) than ancient Greek ones... and then there were plot elements that were narratively inexplicable, like the ocean being full of oil, but make a lot of sense to this reading. the villain likewise combines a bunch of War on Terror era fears: he’s against God the Greek gods, he wants to genocide us, he makes his army wear marks for Equality or something (although explicitly ‘human just like us’, they function in the film as just orcs); he’s so irrationally omnicidally hateful of life that to even think of negotiating is cowardice (and probably effeminate). so it overall starts to feel like rather a caricature of the modern imperial imaginary. yet the ‘reality’ of the Gods that we see portrays them in a pretty negative light: holding to a rather arbitrary non-intervention rule, and implicitly just jumped-up Titans, they appear near the end of the film only to pretty much all die in an orgy of violence that the film suggests will basically go on forever.

“that’s you, that is” is basically what I think you can take this movie as saying. as ever it’s unclear because it’s a big budget Hollywood movie and if that is what it’s going for, it definitely flew over most peoples’ heads. you could definitely say I’m giving it too much credit.

anyway, I have no such reservations about The Fall. fantastic movie full of visual inventiveness, which does a really good job of taking on how a story borne out of pain (even if, in this case, rather pathetic possessive pain, but that too is part of the point) can take on a huge amount of meaning to the people who receive it. incredible costuming, and incredible use of all those locations. the dynamic between Lee Pace and child actor Catinca Untaru is really sweet and genuine - those tricks paid off fully. and the darker direction of the story is much better suited than the neat endings of the other two of his films I’ve seen.

i was really struck by how deliberately he uses the camera - in an era that emphasises handheld shots and massive swooping CGI camera moves, it did a lot to show what can be done with a very simple choreographed track or pan. I loved the way the rather unimaginative concepts of Roy’s story, lifted from the generic Western he was trying to perform in, were fleshed out into this incredibly rich Indian-with-Spanish-inflections setting in Alexandria’s mind. I can see why some people would take some of the filmmaking tricks, like the abundance of match cuts, as overindulgence, but honestly I love that shit and it was a really cool way to draw out the shapes in the settings.

ironically I have less to say about it because it all just worked, there’s nothing really to defend, I’d just be effusively listing elements of the movie that I liked. it’s very interesting that Roy is obviously not a great guy at all, but that doesn’t matter for the effect his story has on Alexandria, who carries it with her long after she leaves the hospital, and imagines Roy in every stuntman she sees. I hope that the stories I end up telling, when I manage to connect up the circuits to process the things I find difficult into fiction, can one day have a similar effect on people.

[lifewillflashby]

SUNNY VIBES — List

Películas bajo el Sol como antesala de lo que se nos acerca. Vacaciones y amores, playas y cuentos de hadas, folclore, tradición y algún que otro misterio es lo que encontrarás en esta lista. Todo bajo el calor, ¡prepárate para el verano!

Movies under the Sun as a prelude to what is coming. Holidays and love, beaches and fairy tales, folklore, tradition and odd mysteries is what you will find in this list. Everything under the sunlight, get ready for summer!

Call Me by Your Name (2017) — Luca Guadagnino

Diego: La historia de amor de Elio y Oliver respira verano. Este film podría estar fácilmente en numerosas listas por varios motivos ya que, a pesar de ser un tema tratado en cine anteriormente, respira originalidad y frescura a través de todo su metraje. En ocasiones, no es tan importante qué se hace, sino cómo se hace. En ¨Call me by your name¨ Luca Guadagnino hace alarde de una mano artesana sublime. En su metraje, hay perfección en cada plano, escena, silencio o mirada. Su dirección, junto con el alarde interpretativo y química entre Timothée Chalamet y Armie Hammer, nos deja ser espías de un amor veraniego como pocas veces vimos antes. Hay electricidad en pantalla y la sentimos asi como sentimos lo prohibido y el atractivo de probarlo. De extrema sensibilidad, merece estar en esta lista por sus planos constantes de naturaleza y quietud bajo el sol de un pueblo italiano, su río, sus baños al atardecer, su escasez de vestuario… En fín, película veraniega con una historia que traspasa la pantalla, sientes como tuya y se queda en ti para siempre. Elio y Oliver existen en el imaginario colectivo y siempre se quedarán en ese verano eterno en Italia…

Elio and Oliver’s love story breathes summer. This film could easily be in different lists for various reasons because even being a famous topic touched in movies before, it’s freshly approached along the whole film. Sometimes, it’s not that relevant what’s done but how it’s done. In “Call me by your name” Luca Guadagnino shows off his sublime artisan hand. In his film, there’s perfection in every shot, scene, silence or gaze. His directing together with the amazing performance and chemistry between Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer, allow us to be spys and voyeurs of a summer love sotry we barely seen before. There’s electricity in the screen we feel as we feel the forbidden and the rush of testing it. Of extreme sensibility, this film worths being in this list for its amazing and constant shots of nature and stillness under the sun of a small italian village, its river, their baths, the lack of clothes… Anyways, a summery movie with a story that pierces the screen, makes you feel it like your own and remains with you forever. Elio and Oliver exist in the collective imaginary construct and they will always stay in that everlasting summer in Italy...

The Beach (2000) — Danny Boyle

D: ¨The Beach¨ es uno de esos casos de película maltratada en su momento por la crítica y público por motivos ajenos a la calidad de la misma.. El excelente Danny Boyle venía de haber cambiado el cine británico con ¨Trainspotting¨ y su incursión en Hollywood con el rostro de Leonardo DiCaprio acaparando su cartel cosechó todas las expectativas posibles y, una vez más, Danny Boyle hizo lo que quiso con su adaptación de la novela de Alex Garland. De esta forma, viajamos con Richard, el personaje de DiCaprio, a Tailandia, donde  en busca de aventuras,  acaba sabiendo de una paradisiaca isla, apenas tocada por turistas donde un grupo de viajeros han establecido una especie de utopía hippy que rápidamente atrapa al personaje de DiCaprio. Aquí, Boyle nos regala una disección de esta utopía y las dos caras de la misma a la par que del ser humano. Muy interesante ver como el paraíso se puede convertir en el infierno, motivado por la complejidad del ser humano y todo lo que compone nuestra psique. Las tremendas actuaciones, giros de guión, la música de Moby y sus parajes nos envuelven y trasladan a este paraíso soleado, donde querríamos quedarnos para siempre… al menos durante la primera mitad de la película.

“The Beach” is one of those cases of a movie beaten up by the press and the public when it was released for reasons beyond its quality. The excellent Danny Boyle was coming from changing british cinema with “Trainspotting” and his incursion in Hollywood with Leonardo DiCaprio’s face taking over the poster created all possible expectations and once again, Danny Boyle did what he wanted with the adaptation of Alex Garland’s novel. This way, we travel with Richard, the character played by DiCaprio to Thailand looking for adventures, where he ends up hearing of a heavenly island, barely touched by tourists where a group of travellers established a hippy utopia that quickly haunts DiCaprio’s character. Here, Boyle delivers a dissection of this heaven and its two faces as well as the complexities of the human mind. It’s really interesting to see how this paradise can easily turn into hell, motivated by human nature. The great performances, plot twists, Moby’s music and its beautiful settings involve us and take us to this sunny paradise where we would stay forever… or at least during the first half of the movie.

Spring (2014) — Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead

D: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead son dos directores estadounidenses que tienen una clara pasión por el cine de terror o de corte fantástico. Su trabajo ha sido por el momento muy interesante con ¨Spring¨ siendo hasta el momento su mejor obra . ¨Spring¨ es soleada y tiene un aura veraniega en gran parte debido a que transcurre principalmente en un pueblo italiano, donde Evan, un joven norteamericano, viaja para aclarar su mente. Allí acabará conociendo una chica, Louise que es mucho más interesante de lo que parece en un principio. ¨Spring¨ es tan fantástica como original. No creo haber visto nunca película igual y por este motivo, entre otros, siempre ha tenido un lugar especial en mi memoria. Merecería estar en diversas listas por su mezcla de géneros tan bien equilibrada. No obstante, su mejor cualidad es su inteligente guión y lo bien dibujados que están sus personajes. Las situaciones que vive Evan al llegar a Italia y la facilidad para empatizar con él, su viaje y sus emociones son lo que nos hace quedarnos y seguirle, su historia de amor la que nos emociona y su originalidad narrativa y mezcla de géneros la que la hace difícil de olvidar.

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are two american movie directors with a clear inclination and passion towards horror and fantastic genres. Their works had been really interesting so far, with “Spring” being their best work yet. “Spring” is really sunny and has a summery vibe all the way caused mainly by its setting, taking place in an italian village where Evan, a northamerican young man, travels to clear his mind and will end up meeting an attractive woman, Louise, who’s much more interesting than it seems at first. “Spring” is as fantastic as original. I don’t think I’ve ever watched such a movie like this one and for this reason, among others, it always had a special place in my memory. It would be worthed it being in numerous lists for its mix of really well balanced genres. Nevertheless, its best quality is its intelligent script and how well portrayed their characters are. The situations lived by Evan in the movie when he gets to Italy and the easiness to empathize with him, his trips and his emotions are what makes us stay and follow him through the movie. His love story is what move us and its original narrative and mix of genres what makes it difficult to forget.

—

The Fall (2006) — Tarsem Singh

Adrián: Esta joya de producción India fue dirigida por Tarsem Singh durante 4 años y en 28 países diferentes. Es una historia épica llena de fantasía que me habría encantado escuchar siendo niño, aunque en eso me convertí cuando la vi por primera vez. Destacaría las interpretaciones de Lee Pace y Catinca Untaru, los dos protagonistas, quienes consiguen darle una intriga increíble a la película. Pero no puedo dejar de hablar de los paisajes... La ambientación y fotografía, dominada por escenas bajo el sol abrasador de Oriente Medio, muestran un espectáculo audiovisual a la altura de lo exótico de la cinta. Una espectacular y entretenida película que hará las delicias de nuestro niño interior, que nos hará viajar a los confines de nuestra imaginación.

This Indian production is a hidden jewel directed by Tarsem Singh for 4 years and in 28 different countries. It is an epic story full of fantasy that I would have loved hearing as a child, and yet that's what I became when I first saw it. I would highlight Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru’s acting, the two protagonists, who manage to give an incredible intrigue to the film. But I must talk about the landscapes... The setting and cinematography, dominated by scenes under the scorching sun of the Middle East, present us an audiovisual spectacle at the height of the film’s exoticness. A truly entertaining film that will delight our inner child, that will make us travel to the limits of our imagination.

Le Mépris (1963) — Jean-Luc Godard

A: “Le Mépris” nos muestra la grieta que se abre en la relación de una pareja, somos testigos de las terribles consecuencias que tiene el más simple arañazo si no es reparado y esto nos ayuda a entender lo importante que es la comunicación sincera. Godard conjuga esta historia con metacine, pues todo gira en torno al encargo que recibe Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) para participar en la próxima película del director alemán Fritz Lang (que se interpreta a sí mismo). Aquí entran en juego las sunny vibes: el set de rodaje se ubica en la isla italiana Capri, un entorno idílico del Mar Mediterráneo con un clima soleado perfecto. Asistimos a este fatal malentendido como un miembro más del equipo de producción gracias a la dirección de Godard, que nos muestra un paraje de lo más veraniego. Es difícil olvidar la magistral banda sonora de Georges Delerue, la belleza del entorno, la sensual y dolida mirada de Camille (Brigitte Bardot) o los paseos de Paul bajo el sol.

"Le Mépris" shows us the crack that opens in the relationship of a couple, we witness the terrible consequences of the simplest scratch if it’s not repaired, helping us to understand how important sincere communication is. Godard combines this story with metacinema, since everything revolves around the commission that Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) receives to participate in the next film by the german director Fritz Lang (who plays himself). Here the sunny vibes come into play: the film’s location is the italian island of Capri, an idyllic setting in the Mediterranean Sea with perfect sunny weather. We attended this fatal misunderstanding as one more member of the production team thanks to the direction of Godard, who shows us a most summery setting. It is difficult to forget the masterful soundtrack of Georges Delerue, the beauty of the surroundings, the sensual and hurt gaze of Camille (Brigitte Bardot) or Paul's walks under the sun.

Midsommar (2019) — Ari Aster

A: A pesar de quitarnos las ganas de un festival europeo folclórico a medida que el metraje avanza, Ari Aster logra ambientar su película bajo un sol persistente. Por todos es bien conocido que la oscuridad es un elemento a tener muy en cuenta en el género de terror, y aun sin serlo es un recurso muy utilizado para provocar sensaciones de angustia, miedo o incertidumbre. En “Midsommar” no es así, en esta película sentimos todo y más sin necesidad de perdernos detalles por falta de luz. En este ambiente veraniego y de apariencia calmada no nos perderemos ni un solo detalle, incluso se nos auguran acontecimientos antes de verlos en pantalla. La puesta en escena de Aster es magistral en este aspecto, dándonos a conocer los entresijos de su película y haciendo evidente lo que puede suceder nos retorcemos en la butaca. Gran terror psicológico, no apto para estómagos sensibles, que nos hará viajar a una remota aldea de Suecia durante el solsticio de verano.

Despite taking away the desire for a European folk festival as the movie goes on, Ari Aster manages to set his film in the lingering sun. It is well known that darkness is an element to be taken into account in the horror genre, even in any other genre it is a widely used resource to provoke feelings of anguish, fear or uncertainty. In “Midsommar” it’s not like that, in this film we feel everything and more without missing details due to lack of light. In this summery and calm-looking environment we won’t miss a single detail, events are predicted before we see them on screen. The staging of Aster is masterful in this regard, making us aware of the ins and outs of his film and making evident what can happen, we writhe in our seat. Great psychological terror, not suitable for sensitive stomachs, that will make us travel to a remote village in Sweden during the summer solstice.

Pájaros de verano (2018) — Ciro Guerra & Cristina Gallego

A: Incursión en la cultura colombiana de producción sublime. “Pájaros de verano” es una película que puede tener varias lecturas. Ambientada en los años 70′ muestra el inicio del narcotráfico y cómo una familia indígena del desierto de Guajira hace frente a esta situación. Con la creciente demanda de droga el dinero llega a una familia que se enfrenta por primera vez a la ambición de poder desmedida que los billetes encienden en las personas. Una lectura sobre el orígen del desarrollo moderno y su impacto en las culturas antiguas. Con una fotografía espectacular y un ritmo pausado, contenido, me recuerda a un Nicolas Winding Refn que intercambia los neones y estilo pop por la crudeza de la tradición. Es tan lenta y violenta como soleada, así que pónganse mucha crema.

Sublime production as an incursion into the colombian culture. "Pájaros de verano" is a film that can have several readings. Set in the 70s, it shows the beginning of drug trafficking and how an indigenous family from the Guajira desert copes with this situation. With the growing demand for drugs, the money reaches a family that is facing for the first time the ambition of excessive power that bills ignite in people. A reading on the origin of modern development and its impact on ancient cultures. With a spectacular cinematography and a contained rhythm, it reminds me of a Nicolas Winding Refn exchanging neon and pop style for the harshness of the tradition. It is as slow and violent as it is sunny, so have plenty sunscreen.