This is a fan-made music video setting Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou with The Pixies song “Wave of Mutilation.” Most fanvidders are busy with Harry Potter or Lost or some such, so it’s fun to find one working with Godard! And pretty well, too, though it definitely helps that the line “I drive my car into the ocean” happens to be extremely apropos. The video does spoil the ending of Pierrot le fou completely, just fyi. Also, this slowed-down version of the song? Way better than the regular version that kicks my ass in Rock Band.
David Bordwell has a whole chapter on Jean-Luc Godard in Narration in the Fiction Film; I almost returned the book to the library without reading it, but I’m so glad I didn’t. It’s great. And this quote is so right:
Those who dislike Godard’s films may well find the works’ resistance to large-scale coherence incredibly frustrating; those who admire the films have probably learned to savor a movie as a string of vivid, somewhat isolated effects.
I find myself more and more savoring films that are a string of vivid, somewhat isolated effects rather than devoted to large-scale coherence. Perhaps something to keep in mind when you decide whether to take or leave my recommendations. ;)
So my newest procrastination technique is watching videoblogs, like Mahalo Daily. Found this one, which is ostensibly about Veronica Belmont learning to speak French, but is really an imitation of New Wave techniques. The tracking shot at the end is obviously a recreation of the opening of Contempt (and the music is very Contempt-esque as well), and the gunshots over each title card is from Masculin Feminin, at least. New Wave fans, help me out? Are the other shots derived from specific New Wave films, too? Are they all Godard, or others? The shot focusing on the coffee cup actually reminded me more of Kieslowski’s Blue, but it could have other referents.
Today is Jean-Paul Belmondo’s birthday, so I wanted to post a clip of him. Except Youtube wouldn’t cooperate in giving me Belmondo-focused clips that I actually like, and I didn’t have time to make my own. What is with the horrible quality of EVERY Breathless clip on Youtube, incidentally? Anyway, this is Anna Karina singing to Belmondo in Pierrot le fou. (And those of you who have paid attention to my Godard ramblings can probably figure out that it’s no great strain on me to post something Karina-focused. I’m pretty much in love with her. Sorry, Belmondo, for co-opting your birthday a bit.)
Very little in the way of media consumption last month. I’d like to say that was because I was studying so hard, but really, it’s because of the new Xbox360. So I decided to include video games in the recap, too, since they’re currently taking up such a large chunk of my life. After the jump, reactions to The Darjeeling Limited, Pierrot le fou, The Sportswriter, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Call of Duty 2, and Guitar Hero II. I also haven’t forgotten that I owe Mark some original Xbox reviews/recommendations, if he still wants them–I’m having trouble figuring out what I should consider family friendly for your kids, Mark. What do you let them play?
And I have a new record for most movies seen in a month. Since I’ve been keeping track, that is. But no more, for school, television, and Xbox360 have stolen my movie-watching time, and October’s recap is going to be fairly thin. Which is good, because then I can get caught up on writing and posting them. After the jump, reactions to Death at a Funeral, Celine and Julie Go Boating, 3:10 to Yuma, Butterfield 8, Breakfast on Pluto, The Double Life of Veronique, Starter for 10, Alphaville, The Color Purple (book and film), The Brave One, Knocked Up, Talladega Nights, Eastern Promises, Two for the Road, A Mighty Wind, The Optimist’s Daughter, Atonement, and more.
Time off school in August meant non-required reading yay! For the record, a lawn chair by a lake in Minnesota is a good place to read in August. Especially after 100 degree heat in St. Louis and Texas. After the jump, reactions to The Shining, The African Queen, Hannah and Her Sisters, Becoming Jane, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Dancer in the Dark, Zodiac, INLAND EMPIRE, Stardust, Le petit soldat, The Thirteenth Tale, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, and more.
In an effort to get caught up on these recap posts, I did shorter write-ups on some of the films I didn’t care about as much (and I’m going to do the same thing for August, hoping to get it out by, you know, the end of September so I can, you know, do September’s). I intended there to be more shorter ones, but it turned out, I cared about a lot of the films this month. Ah well. If I give a quickie reaction to something you’d like to hear more about, let me know and I’ll do a more detailed writeup on it later. I doubt most people read all these anyway. Not that that’s why I write them; I write them so in ten years I can look back and see how stupid my reactions to thing were when I first saw them. ;)
After the jump, reactions to Happy Feet, Orlando (book and film), Vivre sa vie, The Fountain, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Three Colours Trilogy, Winter Light, Renaissance, Little Children, Sophie’s World, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and more.
If you follow the film blogosphere at all, you’ll have probably seen this, but if not, here you go. Dozens of film clips are edited together according to contentual and contextual shot similarity to the music “Complex City” by Oliver Nelson. It’s quite captivating. The film is by Jonathan Lapper, and originally appeared on his blog, Cinema Styles, which is always worth a read. The full list of films used, as well as the thinking that went into the editing choices, is here. I get tired just thinking about all the work he had to have put into capturing and editing this. Great work, Jonathan.
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