Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.


Slumdog Millionaire pretty much killed my excitement about anything related to Danny Boyle, at least for a while. See how smug they make him sound with the whole "Academy Award winning" thing when for this movie I would've loved to have him mentioned as "the director of Trainspotting and Sunshine".
The movie itself makes me lazy but this poster is superb. The colors are terrific and the hourglass figure is so subtly paired with the tagline that you might miss it at first.


I have no idea what this movie will be about and I probably won't have any interest in watching it once I do.
But aren't these two just beautiful?

Excited for any of these? Do you too feel Oscar killed Danny Boyle's cool factor?

Traceless **½

Director: Grégoire Vigneron
Cast: Benoît Magimel, François-Xavier Demaison
Julie Gayet, Léa Seydoux, Jean-Marie Winling
Dominique Labourier, André Wilms, Stéphane De Groodt

On the eve of a big promotion successful businessman Étienne Meunier (Magimel) runs into childhood friend Patrick Chambon (Demaison). They have coffee and later meet for drinks while discussing the past and their plans for the future.
Étienne lets out a sceret he's never told anyone. Things go downhill from there.
Without revealing too much about the plot, it's almost common cinematic sense that people do not run into people they haven't seen in years just because. Things never go well afterward!
We see as Étienne's life begins to unravel as blackmail, murder and strange dreams begin to take over his existence.
Most of the film relies on its ability to combine thriller qualities with character development but truth be told the entire thing comes out more as pastiche than genre flick.
For one the characters never seem to be entirely truthful. They're like Hitchcockian creations trapped in a selfconscious Lynchian experiment.
Étienne for example seems to know that everything he's doing will turn out for the worst but keeps on doing things that go beyond reason (Magimel does a terrific job playing an asshole we can still root for despite our best knowledge).
Patrick on the other side comes off looking as someone despicable and annoying, in a way the director tries to study our reaction towards class systems as we come to dislike this man perhaps because unlike Étienne he never moved forward in life.
He's become a parasite of sorts who then tries to drag the successful Étienne down with him. Demaison's performance has shades of the creepy work Matt Damon provided in The Talented Mr. Ripley (in a key scene we even listen to Vivaldi's Stabat Mater which was used to great effect in Ripley). Yet we are forced to wonder what exactly defines success in these terms if not the American dream?
This notion becomes even more twisted when Étienne becomes paranoid about an American taking over his company and his job (the end of this subplot is hilarious).
Now and then Vigneron comes up with little quirks that make this movie shine but more often than not he lets the absurd conventions of it all push it towards the utterly preposterous.
Traceless might not always know what it's doing but when it does it well it makes us believe it might reach Crimes and Misdemeanors proportions.

High and Dry.

I have to confess that before writing this post I had never been able to make it through an entire viewing of Requiem for a Dream, not because I found it too bleak or gruesome or whatever (Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke are two of my favorite filmmakers...) but because I always felt it was entirely over hyped and to be honest not that good a movie.
Things haven't really changed in the nine years that have gone by after my first attempt to watch it, so don't think this will include a change of heart.
In fact I never got what the buzz about Darren Aronofsky was all about until I saw The Wrestler...but that's another story.

Given that I had to choose my favorite shot of the movie this time I had to look at it with a more critical eye and in doing so I realized that the thing that has always bothered me about this movie was how obvious everything is.
It's nothing but a morbid look at drugs disguised as a cautionary tale, Aronofsky's direction in fact is almost reactionary in the way he condemns and judges all his characters.
This was never more obvious to me than in the film's opening scene where we see Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn) lock herself in a closet when her son Harry (Jared Leto) arrives at her house.
At first we have no idea what's going on and assume he will beat her up.

She looks through the keyhole terrified as Harry bangs and throws a tantrum. Then we see what he's after; he's trying to pawn his mother's precious television set once again.
He's done it so many times before that she has chained it to the heater.
In this precise shot where through split screen we see the terrified woman looking at her son's behavior and his attempt to steal the chained TV, we have the essence of the entire movie.
Notice how beyond Sara and Harry there's someone else in the shot: the person looking at Sara.
In this case the camera serves as Aronofsky's eye as he lets us know that the movie to follow will be his look at how people who succumb to drugs are chained to addiction.
The use of the word "chained" is by no means a pun, given that Aronofsky's visual language, and well, the chain tied to the TV, make it clear what he's referring to.
Throughout the whole Requiem for a Dream we are reminded by the director of how monstrous this people can be, he wears his sensibility on his camera and the movie suffers greatly because of it.


A following sequence of shots proves Aronofsky's judgment (or perhaps a slight attempt at some sense of humor) when we see Sara give Harry the keys to the TV lock.
She carries it in a chain (another one...) around her neck and when she gives it to Harry, for a minute we have the impression she's handing something sacred.
It's no coincidence that for a second the shiny balls of the chain remind us of rosary beads.


After all, addiction, is their religion.


This post is part of the Hit Me With Your Best Shot series, hosted by the fabulous and quite addictive, Nat of The Film Experience.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps *1/2

Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan
Eli Wallach, Frank Langella, John Buffalo Mailer, Susan Sarandon

Regardless of how many times you may have seen Splendor in the Grass, the moment when Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) learns about the Great Depression never fails to turn your heart upside down.
Such a moment was supposed to occur in the fractured Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, as it deals with recent economic disasters that have affected the world in unexpected ways. We expect it to come when we see Gordon Gekko (Douglas) being released from prison in late 2001 and we expect it to occur again when the movie jumps forward in time to the chaotic 2008.
However nothing really happens and we are left wondering exactly what was the point in making this film.
On the surface it's basically a remake of Wall Street. Gordon Gekko's time in jail nothing but a MacGuffin so that he can regain the prominence he had during his 80's peak.
He writes a book called Is Greed Good? and the masses flock to him like a messiah. Among the crowds is idealistic Jacob Moore (LaBeouf) a wide-eyed proprietary trader who admires Gekko and wishes to be like him. Essentially LaBeouf is playing Charlie Sheen.
Of course, this being the aughts and all, besides being one greedy little bastard he also has a thing for the environment and for his girlfriend Winnie (Mulligan), Gekko's estranged daughter who has gone all Elektra on him by becoming a leftist, money-hating, journalist.
To say that nothing much happens in this sequel would be an understatement given how most of the film consists of scenes where the young Jake and the old sharks (which besides Douglas include Brolin, Langella and a scene stealing Eli Wallach) discuss vengeance, power and money like characters straight out of Clash of the Titans.
Other than the awkwardness of the plot, we often wonder what drew Oliver Stone back to this themes. Throughout the movie his direction seems to be trying to find itself.
Part of him is so in love with Wall Street that he seems to think he invented the 80's. Winnie tells Jake "you're so Wall Street it makes me sick" referring to both the actual stock market and the movie which isn't as iconic as Stone wants to think.
Another part of him seems to feel proud about having predicted back in 1987 that the world's economy would just continue collapsing until we all approached doomsday; however, this part of him also feels guilty and like Jake tries to atone through innumerable mentions of what alternative energy can do for the planet.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps doesn't know whether to condemn or to glorify and its overlong running time makes us sit through what ultimately is an unnecessary debate.
The one thing that rarely fails is Douglas. Even if Stone tries hard to humanize him (Gekko says "I'm human" more than once) the actor tries his best to remind us that first and foremost Gordon Gekko was so effective because he wasn't human.
Precisely because of his larger-than-life greed it was that he became who he was and not for one minute should we expect him to be turned into a politically correct version of materialism.
This is best embodied in a pathetic end during which Stone once again puts Gekko in the wrong kind of spotlight and we're left wondering if he's making some sort of comment about how easily human beings give "bailouts" to those who have wronged us (which would've turned the film into a twisted, great satire) or if he's just turning Gordon into the Grinch.
It's safe to say that the idea of Gekko getting the last laugh is something 80's Stone would've made, what we end up with right now is a reminder that he doesn't make them like he used to.

Crush of the Week.

Besides Carey Mulligan I'm talking about that dress.
It's mind blowing!
Does anyone know who made it? It's completely the Versace Sarah Jessica wore in the second to last ep of Sex and the City. And with that tiny cardigan it's just oh divine!

Style Sunday.

Anne Hathaway truly is pushing the early sixties look lately. This Erdem watercolored sheath and pumps are straight out of a nuclear-scare era cocktail party.
As always that smile is more effective than diamonds.


Blake Lively is one of the most interesting dressers in the planet. Period.
This textured, complex Elie Saab dress is proof of that. With tulle, lace and even patterns, it makes one wonder how the hell did she pull it off with see through shoes.
This is one of the best looks she's ever had.

How do you feel about these? Are you watching the new season of Gossip Girl? If you ask me the way they're pushing fashion can only be compared to Sex and the City!
Fashiogasms abound!