Shooting Down Pictures

Introductory comments with special guest Keith Uhlich of Zoom Online, The House Next Door, The Reeler and Slant. Warning – spoilers at the 2/3 mark – but the ending is a hoot:

Analyses of two sequences, once again with Keith:

screened Wednesday September 19 2007 on Criterion DVD in New York, NY

TSPDT rank #858 IMDb

Il Posto may go down in history as one of the most visually striking and quietly humorous depictions of modern office life, a more soft-spoken but no less satirical predecessor to the likes of “The Office” or Office Space.  But in following the steady progress of teenage Domenico (Sandro Panseri) through his application, admittance and orientation into a large bureaucratic company, writer-director Ermanno Olmi’s masterpiece unassumingly encompasses the broader social mechanisms that shape an individual’s values and desires, from the coveted front desk of the office floor to the fresh-faced girl (Loredana Detto) whose prospects of romance with Domenico are both introduced and achingly stalled by company circumstances.  Olmi’s modern landscape views of sterile offices and noisy construction sites draw comparison with similar settings by Antonioni, and both directors approach a metaphysical uncertainty over how to live in a world of shifting appearances and values.  While Antonioni’s scenarios typically arrive at a state of top-level existential confusion, Olmi demonstrates a proletarian concern for the problems of adjusting to the rules of modern life, whether it be taking competency tests, ingratiating older, established colleagues, or enduring the office holiday party from hell.

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Sorry to say I misprounounced George Sluizer’s name – it should be “Sly-zer” – but I spent hours more on this essay than I had done with any of the preceding ones.

screened Saturday September 15 2007 on Criterion DVD in Weehawken NJ

TSPDT rank #864 IMDb

George Sluizer’s thriller about a man’s obsessive search for his girlfriend after her mysterious disappearance during their vacation is often compared to Hitchcock’s disappearance thrillers (The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Lady Vanishes); a more apt comparison would be Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Wages of Fear, Les Diaboliques), with its cold, calculating fatalism and bitter twist ending. The film is most notable for its abrupt shifting of perspective from victim to villain, substituting the suspense concerning the kidnapper’s identity for mystery concerning his motive. This shift also betrays a greater fascination with the kidnapper’s methodical techniques, dramatized in painstaking detail, than with the supposed protagonist’s relatively under-realized search for his girlfriend. The hero’s coarse emotional displays are meant to contrast with the kidnapper’s meticulous composure, but it’s clear that Sluizer’s sympathies lie with the heartless criminal-cum-master planner/ project manager/ director, so much so that it undermines the potential doppelganger effect between these two men and their respectively destructive quests for knowledge at all costs. Eventually they meet, and the mystery of the girlfriend’s vanishing is revealed, leading to one of the most depressing endings in movie history. Though perhaps an unhappier ending – at least for Sluizer’s career – ensued when Sluizer later remade his own film in Hollywood with Kiefer Sutherland, Sandra Bullock as the kidnapped girlfriend (natch), Jeff Bridges sporting a German accent, and a revised happy ending that all but sealed its doom with critics that had seen the original.

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Andrew Tracy nails No Country For Old Men (Javier Bardem’s hair is turned up to 11 – ha!)

Brandon Soderberg, the only hip-hop blogger I read, on Killer of Sheep (”Burnett is also a killer of sheep, destroying the audience’s sheep-like gravitation towards simple answers and interpretations in regards to black movie-making.”)

Dana Stevens detects the stench of consumer feminism in Enchanted