| An interesting project... which needed an editor |
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| written by figtree |
February 4, 2005 - 5:21 PM PST |
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3 out of 3 members found this review helpful
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I generally agree that the results reached by these forty directors are of wildly uneven quality.
It also appears to be a consensus that the strongest entry is David Lynch's bizarre sci-fi collage, but I'd say closely followed by:
*) Zhang Yimou's nice reversal of the "old-fashioned" setting initially presented... and one of the few pieces with any sense of humor...
*) Helma Sanders' beautiful four-dimensional 'painting with light' which makes a virtue of the film stock's limited range of contrast...
*) Claude Lelouch's vertiginous kiss as camera technology evolves in the background.
I also found some of the simpler ones quite charming, including:
*) Jaco van Dormael's portrait of a kiss by a pair of special lovers,
*) Peter Greenaway's floating numbers of time
*) Wim Wenders' quiet and simple re-visitation of his angels
*) Jerry Schatzberg's snapshot of urban scavenging
and
*) Bigas Luna's portrait of a nude woman nursing in a field.
However, the vast majority of the pieces are dull, redundant [couldn't those guiding the project have communicated with each filmmaker about their intentions to avoid such frequent duplication?], pretentious, and worst of all humorless.
The worst offenders tend to be the most self-conscious pieces [which coincidentally have the most annoying soundtracks], including Spike Lee (leading candidate for most self-obsessed father of the year), Liv Ullman (hers is the least inspired of the dozen or so camera-filming-camera pieces), and Kiju Yoshida (who pompously announces he will demonstrate the impossibility of capturing an image on film).
In short, well worth a look, with some brilliant moments, especially for students of film and film history... but keep a grain of salt and your fast-forward button handy. |
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