#the cakemaker 2017

[k-wame]

He wanted to move there. To Berlin. He had someone there. He told me. And he wanted to leave me and Itai here and go to Berlin and make a new life. And he went to get a room in a hotel, and, uh, and then another car hit him on his way there.

The Cakemaker / Der Deutsche Kuchenmacher Feature Film | 2017 | Drama | Germany, Israel | dir. Ofir Raul Graizer

[captaincolossal]

I actually got a fair amount done today, but I feel like I didn't do anything. Just dicking around building a garden bed and unloading my car and running errands and whatever, ugh. The depressive summer brain fog is setting in, I guess.

On the other hand: it's queer cinema week!

The Cakemaker (2017)

That black forest cake looks delightful.

Apparently it was delightful.

[tctmp]

Drama  Romance

[filmbook21]

[chasingmadeleine]

The Cakemaker (Ofir Raul Graizer, 2017)

[actorsinunderwear]

Tamir Ben-Yehuda in The Cakemaker (2017)

[architectureforsuicides]

The Cakemaker (Ofir Raul Graizer, 2017) Monbijoubrücke / Monbijou Bridge Berlin (Germany) Bridge over the Spree river Type: arch bridge.

[lostgoonie1980]

10. O Confeiteiro (The Cakemaker, 2017), dir. Ofir Raul Graizer

[eachmostremembering]

Still (2013) by Daughter

The Cakemaker (2017) dir. Ofir Raul Graizer

Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way (2015) by Mary Oliver

[k-wame]

Thomas + Grieving in Oren's Red Swim Trunks Der Kuchenmacher (The Cakemaker) · 2017 · dir. Ofir Raul Graizer

[filmframesforlife]

The Cakemaker (2017)

[noframewasted]

THE CAKEMAKER (2017) - Ofir Raul Graizer

[magnificentmoose]

favorite media from 2018

books:

the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay by michael chabon

jewishness & comics & illusions & the most tender kiss on top of the empire state building in a lightning storm. please read this book!!

shades of magic trilogy by v. e. schwab

worth the hype, 10/10 would recommend (!!!) the systems of magic are rich & the world(s)building is so, so good.

the golem and the jinni by helene wecker

this book is extremely charming & paints a vivid portrait of late nineteenth century new york with a fantastical twist. 

deathless by catherynne m. valente

i’m rather late to the party with this one, but i grew up reading russian fairytales & this book was all sorts of nostalgia & awe.

on a sunbeam by tillie  walden

i read this in one breath & it was incredible !! found families in space, gorgeous art, & intertwining narratives. it’s good & gay, folks.

movies/tv:

babylon berlin (2017)

weimar germany! murder! this musical number! communist plots! 

the terror (2018)

i’ve watched this show twice & i’m still not completely over it. arctic exploration gone wrong, intricate rituals, & hubris: please watch !!

120 bpm (2017)

a bit of a gut punch & a really good examination of hiv/aids activism through the lens of act up-paris in the early 90′s.

the cakemaker (2017)

it was just me & four old jewish ladies in the theater when i watched this. cake, hidden identities, & a soundtrack that makes you weep.

museo (2018)

a heist movie set in 1970′s mexico with gael garcia bernal. g-d, i would die for this movie.

et cetera:

the orbiting human circus of the air

a fictional show broadcasting from the top of the eiffel tower !! all weird & charming & cozy. the equivalent of a hot drink & nice socks.

the penumbra podcast

featuring bi disaster detective juno steel of mars. listening to this in between classes & on buses has vastly improved my life.

[filhodalua]

The Cakemaker (2017).

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this week - 24

In The Cakemaker ( האופה מברלין‎) a lonely baker moves from Berlin to Jerusalem in order to bond with the widow and young son of his boyfriend, who had died in a car accident. 

A restrained, moving and subversive Israeli film about Identities - what a surprise!. 8+ / 10.

The only trope that annoyed me was the power of “Food” as magic.

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2 with Saoirse Ronan:

✳️✳️✳️ In The Lovely Bones, 14 year old Saoirse Ronan is being murdered (brutally, but off screen) by creepy neighbor Stanley Tucci. The first 30 minutes before the murder are bone-chillingly scary, but then it turns into a stupid, unnecessary metaphysical theoretical bullshit. Sad!

✳️✳️✳️ Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut.

Sensitive, quiet and empathetic, well-paced and beautifully acted. Re-watch.

Best film of the week!

✳️✳️✳️ Bonus: Saoirse Ronan's many accents

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In Daniel Clowes’s sad Ghost World, misfit teenage friends, Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch, prank dorky Steve Buscemi after they find a lonely heart ad he had placed.

Sweet and sensitive about adolescent angst and punk restlessness.

9/10.

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Unfortunately, Terry Zwigoff’s next film after Ghost World was Bad Santa, a terrible, unfunny crime story of a Charles Bukowski-type mall Santa with no redeeming characteristics who robs the stores where he works at the end of the season. 2/10

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“Mmm... Whale carcass...”

Luca, the newest Pixar feature, (which is like “Coco but on the Italian Riviera”...), and which is like “Call me by your name”, but without the gay stuff. First feature from the director of La Luna, and pretty much a Vespa product placement.

I like the posters from the old film classics (Roman Holiday, Bicycle Thief) that can be briefly glimpsed on the town’s walls!

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2 with Kristen Stewart:

✳️✳️✳️ American Ultra: A goofy underground comix disguised as an action movie where the hero is a loser stoner who loves his stoner girlfriend. Sweet and over the top. With Huell Babineaux in a colorful sweater in a small role.

Terrific end titles done in Mike’s "Apollo Ape" drawing style.

I wrote about it here, giving it “3 Funyons”.

(Re-watch)

✳️✳️✳️ Personal Shopper starts suggestively with two interesting stories, one of lovely Stewart as a shopper for a super model celebrity who eventually gets murdered, and another of her being a medium who communicates with ghosts. But in the last 30 minutes, she is trying to connect with her dead twin brother, and the whole plot falls apart and ends ‘nowhere’ (literally in a random room in Oman).

It is shot in romantic Paris with a small side connection to Hilda of Klimt (who was also a spiritualist), so it was very appealing to the eye.

Even though it was uneven, I’ll look for other films by prolific French director Olivier Assayas.

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The Bothersome Man is a weird Norwegian film about a man who suddenly finds himself in a cold, “perfect” city - but without children or any emotions - and his attempts to escape from there. He is first dropped off - dressed like ‘Paris, Texas’s Harry Dean Stanton - in front of a deserted gas station in the middle of nowhere. It’s a dystopian story without explanations or much direction. 4/10.

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Icarus - Amateur cyclist Bryan Fogel’s 2017 investigation into illegal doping in international sport, and his discovery of a massive Russian conspiracy of cheating and cover up. I wonder how he first got the director of Russia's national anti-doping laboratory to help him cheat.

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✳️✳️✳️ “Man just wants to forget the bad stuff, and believe in the made-up good stuff. It's easier that way.”

Kurosawa classic 1950′s Rashōmon - I didn’t remember how low budget and simple it was: There are only three settings in the film: Rashōmon gate, the woods, and the courtyard. The black and White filming is symbolic of light and darkness, good and evil. Part of the score is Ravel’s Boléro.

(The Internet Archive copy is haltingly bad, but the only one I could find).

✳️✳️✳️ Sheila Marie Orfano explains The Rashomon effect, where individuals give significantly different but equally believable accounts of the same event.

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Kurzgesagt’s short film A Minute by Minute Account of the Day the Dinosaurs Died.

The YouTube channel of Kurzgesagt in general is one of the best.

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In the new Fatherhood, Kevin Hart’s wife dies a day after she gives birth, and he stays to raise his daughter by himself. I wanted to like it more but there wasn’t much there.

Also, the newborn baby was a bit too old. 3/10

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Errol Morris’s horrifying Standard Operating Procedure shows that we only know about Bush’s war crimes at Abu Ghraib because they were photographed. “American values” never change.

(This copy is pretty grainy)

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On the waterfront - Young Brando’s first Oscar performance was truly riveting.

“... It wasn't him, Charley, it was you. Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room... I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley..” 

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In 2018, before he did ‘‘Another Round", Thomas Vinterberg must have bought a big house in the country, so he had to direct Kursk, about the Russian nuclear submarine that sunk and couldn’t be saved.

Conventional and boring. But I can’t imagine how this story could be told in any interesting way. 

With Lars Brygmann (in a ”normal” person role) and a cameo by Max Von Sydow.

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Another unforgettable Max Von Sydow role, as “Joubert”, in my all-time favorite film, Sydney Pollack’s best, Three Days of the Condor.

“...It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift...”

The perfect thriller which I’ve seen at least 12-15 times, and will probably see again and again. Dave Grusin’s score is superb. It’s also one of the most Christmasy movies I know. 

10/10

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2 scars:

✳️✳️✳️ The original Pre-Production Code, Howard Hawks Scarface, inspired by Al Capone, and the archetype of the gangster film. “This picture is an indictment of gang rule in America and of the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and our liberty”. I never realized that there was some comedy and (lovely!) cabaret singing in it.

✳️✳️✳️ Oliver Stone’s 1983 Scarface, with Hector Salamanca as “Alberto” and Harris Yulin as Mel Bernstein!

40 years later, it’s just a bit too long - could use a little trim.

You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, "That's the bad guy."

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A short YT clip of clips from Kubrick’s films, from FilmoteCanet Cinema which has hundreds more.

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Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, with Gene Wilder as the doctor who falls in love with an Armenian sheep, Burt Reynolds and Lynn Redgrave. In hindsight, not as lecherous as remembered, but very 1972.

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Throw-back to the art project:

Lady Bird Adora.

Daniel Clowes Adora.

La Luna Adora.

Three Days of the Condor Adora.

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(My complete movie list is here)

[ytsmt]

The Cakemaker (2017) [YTS.MT] https://yts.mt/movie/the-cakemaker-2017