Tag Archives: images

Images of the Week – White Hunter Black Heart

Written by . Posted on July 15, 2011. Filed under Images of the Week. Tagged , , , , . No comments.

From Clint Eastwood’s White Hunter Black Heart. A producer and a monkey wrestle over a script in the heart of Africa prior to the shooting of The African Queen, as director John Huston (played by Eastwood) looks on and laughs.

(un?)finished cinema.

Written by . Posted on July 13, 2011. Filed under Essays. Tagged , , , , . No comments.

The closed cinematic world of Christopher Nolan folding into a box.

Set in stone like math equations a la the Coen bros.

The antidote: Kiarostami’s unfinished cinema. The image is yours to complete…

…The viewer holds the key.

Nolan, guard of a safe wherein all images are sealed and protected from the viewer. There is no negotiating with the lock, to which there is no key. A finished cinema.

———————–

“…A cinema of such precise predetermination that the movies are in essence over before you even sit down to watch them.” –Daniel Kasman, MUBI.com (on the Coen bros.)

Images of the Week – Woman on a Beach

Written by . Posted on June 3, 2011. Filed under Images of the Week. Tagged , , , . No comments.

From Hong Sang-soo’s Woman on a Beach. No one’s films are better at revealing the flaws of thoughtful, nice men when it comes to relationships (so much for the glorification of the “sensitive guy”). Here we see a man sketching out his logic, for his lover, on paper.

Images of the Week – Starship Troopers + Osama Bin Laden Destroyed

Written by . Posted on May 16, 2011. Filed under Images of the Week. Tagged , , , , , , . No comments.

From Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers. At the end of the film, the army captures the enemy “Brain Bug”. Psychic Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris) reads the alien’s mind and declares that “it’s afraid!”. Elated, the surrounding troops all cheer.

Photographs taken in front of the White House after the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed.

The cover of “OK! USA” magazine, following Bin Laden’s death.

Transient Freedom in Miami Vice

Written by . Posted on May 11, 2011. Filed under Essays. Tagged , , , , , , . 1 Comment.

In Michael Mann’s cinema, his men are existentially bound to their professions. They long for freedom, but are caught in a paradox, as escaping their work would cause the meaning they’ve imposed into their lives to collapse. Often, his protagonists are shown looking off into a distance, most commonly an ocean, an image of this desired freedom. Women are also established as key to the characters’ lives, acting as ballast to the men, and offering a source of spiritual haven.

–

In Miami Vice, drug dealer Jose Yero (John Ortiz) looks on as undercover cop Crockett (Colin Farrell) speeds off in a boat with Isabella (Gong Li). Mann’s protagonist is able to escape into the image of freedom, as another character can only watch with envy.

What follows is the most ecstatic image of freedom in the filmmaker’s oeuvre. The ocean + the woman.

Later, as Crockett and Isabella dance, enjoying the freedom they offer each other, Jose again looks on with envy, and begins to cry.

At the end of the film, Crockett succeeds in offering Isabella freedom from their world of work, but for himself, and for the male characters in Mann’s cinema, such freedom remains transient.

–