Statler (right) & Waldorf

WALDORF: That was wonderful!
STATLER: Bravo!
WALDORF: I loved that!
STATLER: Ah, that was great!
WALDORF: Neh–it was pretty good.
STATLER: Well, it wasn’t bad…
WALDORF: There were parts of it that weren’t very good, though.
STATLER: It could’ve been a lot better.
WALDORF: I didn’t really like it.
STATLER: It was pretty terrible.
WALDORF: It was bad.
STATLER: It was awful!
STATLER & WALDORF: Terrible! Take ‘em away! Bah, BOO!!!

Don’t mistake this for another one of those Favorite Whatever exercises. There’s no room for such fluffy diversions on Negative Space! Instead, let’s get right down to the heart and soul of it: What, I ask you, are your cinematic erogenous zones?

In order to adequately answer this seemingly abstract question, I challenge you all to name five specific words that bind the movies that move you. Not the most influential ones, not the culturally correct examples, but the movies you keep coming back to, however flawed they may be. The kind of movies that remind you (and you alone) of why you love the medium in the first place.

A film that cannot be described by these five words might still be good – an indisputable classic even – but it wouldn’t shake you to the core. The question is: what does? What tickles your fancy? What makes your movie-loving heart throb? Now’s the time to show the world where you’re really coming from…

To give an indication of what I’m getting at, here are my Five Words, in no particular order:

1. RAPTURE
   I confess: I’m a romantic and an unflagging aesthete. I love the sense of being transcended by lyricism, beauty and the sublime.
2. GLOOM
   Rapture only becomes truly heartbreaking for me when it’s wallowed in gloom. The celebration of tragedy that forms the climax of Blow Out is probably my favorite cinematic moment. Call me a romantic nihilist.
3. SENSUALITY
   Just because cinema is too sensuous a medium to NOT have sex in the equation. Which probably makes me a sexist romantic nihilist.
4. IMAGINATION
   Fiction is my religion. As a proud subscriber to the Manifesto for the Imagination, I hold the power of poetic truth, myth, metaphor, magic realism and the speculative in high regard.
5. WONDER
   I have a special fondness for elements that are unlike anything I’ve seen/heard/felt before. True originality is hard to find, of course, but I’m always looking for a certain frisson (be it a camera angle, a line delivery, a facial or gestural expression, a visual effect, art direction, sound design, montage or narrative structure) that evokes a genuine sense of wonder in me.

Sure, that looks easy enough, doesn’t it? Just wait until you start your own list!

Rapture, gloom, sensuality, imagination, wonder:
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Your turn now. Mind you: Just five words. Not six, not fifty. I won’t be flexible about this! Avoid easy ways out (scratch VISUAL–every movie is visual!) or open doors (fundamental dramatic ingredients like CONFLICT). Give me something personal and precise that offers a good taste of your sensibilities, however unfashionable or bizarre. I assure you that, if you decide to have a go at it, the Five Words Challenge will make your next video rental choice a lot easier!

Click on the titles to watch the trailers:

• The Fountain
  I was lucky enough to be among the first to see two scenes of this eagerly awaited Darren Aranofsky film at the Cinema Expo in Amsterdam. Visionary stuff, dark and lyrical, with a strong emotional core. Absolutely my cup of tea!
• Zwartboek / Black Book
  I’m not sure what to think of Paul Verhoeven’s choice for Independence Day DP Karl Walter Lindenlaub, whose type of blockbuster gloss I’m not particularly fond of. Still, this smells like vintage European Verhoeven.
• The Black Dahlia
  Just look at it, dammit! Look at it! De Palma’s next masterpiece is just a kiss away.
• El Laberinto del Fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth
  Adult fairytale by 24Lies favorite Guillermo Del Toro, which seems like a gorgeous companion piece to his previous Spanish film, The Devil’s Backbone (2001).
• Sunshine
  Danny Boyle, the British director of Trainspotting (1996) and 28 Days Later (2002), does existential sci-fi? Oh yes… right now, please!
• Borat
  Sacha “Ali G” Baron Cohen in what promises to be the most politically incorrect comedy of the year. His (in-character) speech during the Cinema Expo almost killed me!
• The Science of Sleep
  French visionary genius Michel Gondry doesn’t seem to be holding back one bit with this playful romantic fantasy. Can’t wait!

Keep those Five Words coming, people! (See post below.)

While Dennis Cozzalio is taking a much deserved break from the blogosphere (eventhough the time stamps below his most recent posts remind us we should take such a statement with a grain of salt), I thought I’d steal his idea and show you some faces I love.

Johanna ter Steege

She would have played the lead character in Stanley Kubrick’s Holocaust drama The Aryan Papers, if that project hadn’t been abandoned just weeks before production. Ter Steege’s fragile Dutch beauty last graced the screen in Nanouk Leopold’s mesmerizing Guernsey (2005). Which A-list director will give this actress the role of her lifetime?

Ian Holm

He gave life to a Hobbit, but something tells me Ian Holm may not be the nicest guy in the world. And yet, there’s a beautiful sadness to his gentle face that makes me want to hug him and tell him everything’s going to be all right.

Elena Anaya

I was struck by lightning when I first layed eyes on this Spanish knockout in Julio Medem’s Lucía y el Sexo / Sex and Lucia (2001). Point out any man at all and this baby will seduce the poor schmuck within a second. There’s only so much us guys can take.

John Lithgow

Although his theatrical brand of acting is hardly naturalistic, this face nails every humanly conceivable emotional nuance to perfection. Lithgow reflects the child in all of us: looney, jealous, innocent, overjoyed, clueless, whiney or just plain mean.

Jennifer Connelly

Hers must be the most beautiful eyes in the world. Hold me, I’m drowning in them right now…

Luis Guzmán

Pretty he ain’t. And why would he be? Big grins appear whenever this guy turns up in a supporting role. Admit it: everybody loves Luis!

David Lynch

He’s got a face much like his movies: uncanny, uneven (in a good way), mysterious and oddly amusing.

It has become something of a family habit lately to watch YouTube cartoons before bedtime. On my vacation address in Denmark, after a little browsing under the key words “Tex Avery” (yes, I raise my children well), I bumped against this absolutely brilliant 3D-animated short. It’s splendid to look at, laugh-out-loud funny and my boys and me got a huge kick out of it when we played it with the volume cranked all the way up… but what is it? Can anyone tell me who made this? The YouTube title is Minuscule – The Ladybug, but it lacks any kind of credit.

The anticipation over the September 15 release of The Black Dahlia has sparked a wave of online interest in Brian De Palma. Apart from Slant’s much-welcome Auteur Fatale symposium, inspiring De Palma posts have popped up on the blogs of Zach Campbell, Jim Emerson, Peter Nellhaus, Girish Shambu, Eric, That Little Round-Headed Boy and Dennis Cozzalio. Consider this my contribution to what seems to have become another unofficial Blog-a-Thon.

If you look at Brian De Palma’s erratic filmography, shifting as it does between hit and flop, cult, mainstream and avant-garde, a returning stylistic pattern becomes evident. Not only do his films frequently contradict with each other, they each contain a multitude of antagonisms of their own. They’re at once moral and manipulative, compassionate and calculating, gorgeous and repellent, spellbinding and unsettling, sardonic and rhapsodic, gloomy and sublime. Looking at a De Palma film is entering a land of paradox. No wonder the man has always inspired controversy: De Palma’s entire oeuvre is the pinnacle of conflict.

His substance has always been in the form. Right there in that recurring paradox motif. De Palma has explained himself as an artist who works on moral outrage. Another typical De Palma axiom: no matter how immoral his movies may appear (his talent for infusing all things nasty with poetry is legendary), at the heart they are intricate tales of morality. From the revenge fantasies that make up Carrie and The Fury to the cathartic moment of forgiveness in Casualties of War; from the fruitless run for redemption at the close of Blow Out to the divine second chance given in Femme Fatale; from the sleazy adventures of an all-American housewife to the hooker with a heart of gold in Dressed to Kill–they’re all vivid representations of the dualism between the righteous and the crooked, the vulnerable and the obscene, of predestination versus willpower, of crime and punishment.

De Palma’s characteristic use of discordant style elements like the double, parallel action sequences, split screen and split-diopter shots, rear projection, reverse angles, clashing archetypes and symbolic inversions serve not to show off his directing skills, but are there to help the viewer see both sides of the moral coin and explore the effect of contrarian choices during similar opportunities. What better way to lay bare the mechanisms of fate, choice, power, obsession and betrayal than to let your audience experience the subjectivity of truth firsthand through multiple points of view, or to follow two people who are either polar opposites or a close match within the same storyline? If the similarity is obvious, the difference will be easier to detect. And it’s the difference that matters in a morality tale; the difference between fortune and tragedy, life and death, innocence and guilt, failure and success. Knowing that nuance is to know right from wrong, or to realize how hard it is to make that difference.

Despite the archetypes and schematic structures, De Palma never arrives at a black and white conclusion. He deceives expectation to reveal there is no such thing as a single truth, or that our perception of it is incomplete. Even when his doubles expose a yin/yang dynamic right from the beginning, he complicates matters by reversing roles halfway through the film (Rick Santoro and Kevin Dunne in Snake Eyes), juggling around with false identities (Gloria Revelle and Holly Body in Body Double, the face swapping in Mission: Impossible) or fusing his antagonists (Dr. Robert Elliott and Bobbi in Dressed to Kill, Carter and Cain in Raising Cain). This eloquent masquerade and constant shifting of perspective is what makes De Palma’s oeuvre so fascinatingly ambiguous. Ultimately, all his works share a uniquely personal vision on the duality of Man.

Most of the above was taken from my essay The Shape of Substance: Brian De Palma and the Function of Form, which can be described as a passionate defense of cinematic visual style, culminating in a fictional trial of Style vs. Substance, with Brian De Palma as the defendant and the late Stanley Kubrick as a surprise witness. You can read it at 24LiesASecond.

While you’re there, check out these other De Palma related articles:
Objects of Appalling Beauty: An Appreciation of Brian De Palma by Mike Crowley
Casualties of Genre, Difference, and Vision: Casualties of War by Jim Moran
The Plausibles: The Problems of Make-Believe in the Age of Reason by yours truly

Somebody came up with an answer to my question about a brilliant piece of animation found on YouTube. No one less than Amid Amidi, the animation Oracle writing for the consistently eye-opening blog Cartoon Brew, found out about the people behind the scenes of Minuscule.

Amid writes:

Turns out that MINUSCULE is a TV pilot co-created by Hélène Giraud (production design) and Thomas Szabo (direction). The show has been picked up and they’re currently creating 78 dialogue-less 6-minute shorts chronicling the adventures of the entire insect kingdom. The production company is France’s Futurikon and the series is slated to air in the US on Disney Channel.

There is justice in the world after all! Can’t wait to see the other 77 shorts. Thank you, Amid!

The far future. Humanity faces the dawn of an intergalactic war as Earth is invaded by a giant fleet of evil mutants. A Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey plans a pulse of energy that will decimate the invaders, but may kill off the human race along with it. His trusted companion, possibly the only person who could put an end to the unfolding cosmic tragedy, is stranded oceans of time away. Twenty minutes to Armageddon… and the fucking screen goes to black.

I have a problem. A big one. Last weekend, the last episode of the new Doctor Who series (starring Christopher Eccleston as the 9th Doctor) was aired on Dutch television. I made sure to program my DVD-recorder in order not to miss it, and now it turns out that only half of the episode has been recorded. Apparently, the hard drive was full! My eight-year-old son Rasmus, who’s become a die-hard Whovian over the course of a single season, is not amused. I don’t blame him–I nearly can’t get over it myself.

I’ve never been a Trekkie, I’ve just about lost all interest in that famous galaxy far, far away, but there’s no way I can resist the Whoniverse! Doctor Who is swiftly becoming a new obsession of mine. It’s gotten to the point that I ordered a pack of Doctor Who Top Trump cards over the Internet, along with two fully illustrated guides documenting every foe, robot, alien and monster the Doctor has ever encountered. How did it come to this?

As a young kid, the classic BBC series with Tom Baker freaked me out. The electronic theme music was enough to chill me to the bone (I still think it outdoes Mission: Impossible in terms of contagiousness), let alone the eerie planetary landscapes and baddies made out of egg cartons. Back then, I was unaware of the Doctor’s rich history in television and I soon lost track of the British sci-fi phenomenon altogether (mind you, we’re talking about the longest running sci-fi series ever, with 23 seasons shown from 1963 all the way through to 2006). But the new series, produced by Russel T Davies, has finally shown me the Righteous Path…

So what hooked me? In spite of some pretty cool creature designs and CGI-effects, the production value of the new Doctor Who is still nothing to write home about, and the quality of the individual episodes is far from consistent. What really got me excited, though, is the the unexpected depths of its profound silliness, the amazing flexibility of the Doctor’s quirky universe and the speculative audacity of his mind-bending escapades. This series, much like its protagonist, doesn’t avoid uncharted territories. It embraces change and finds shades of grey in the most black-and-white of concepts.

Take the Doctor’s most notorious nemesis: the Dalek. Simply put, the Daleks are the most ruthless race in all creation. Indeed, you can’t get any more black-and-white than that, but here it comes: While they appear to be armoured robots, their casing is in fact the survival chamber for a hideously mutated alien life form. Mutated how? By one thousand years of exposure to chemical and biological warfare, for starters… Followed by a little tweaking courtesy of the crippled alien scientist Davros, who morphed what was left of his species into lethal creatures in travel machines, devoid of any emotion save hate–without pity, compassion or remorse. The implanted Dalek survival tactic is simple yet effective: Exterminate all life forms other than your own.

Watching the episode Dalek, I started out chuckling over the title character’s ridiculously impractical pepper pot design, before being completely caught up in the suspense of the story. By the end, the poor lonely creature trapped inside its tank-like mechanical cage, lost in its own destructive thinking pattern, had almost driven me to tears. Quite a feat! This is the kind of nuanced imaginative fiction that you’d love to see handled on a Hollywood budget, but seldom will.

For an impression of the first new series, check out the YouTube clip below. (In the UK, David Tennant as the 10th Doctor has already picked up where Eccleston left off.) To see two ultraviolent reenactments by my two boys and me, click here and here. I know: I’m beyond redemption…