My Blueberry Nightmares
Awful Awful Awful.
Beyond terrible.
This is going to be a quick and dirty post.
At 90 mins, the movie feels padded, what with half the movie shot at 48fps.
Kar Wai explores new lows in acting, exposition, storylessness, general wankery, and the ancient philosophy of keys and doors. Also, Jude Law douchebaggery is really explored.
Norah, don’t act. Ever. Again.
Jude Law should only act in movies where someone takes a nice oar to the backside of his head in the middle of the Mediterranean.
Accents up the wazoo. Brit Rachel Weisz phoning in a Cliff’s notes southern accent (that’s all drawl, without consistency or nuance) when she’s supposed to be from Memphis. I think I could see her dialect coach in the corner of the frame, reciting the lines and guiding the inunciation.
Same with Natalie. I will do anything for you love but I won’t do that!
Felt like she walked off the set of Closer, put on a cheap dime-store blond whig, and a generic southern accent (think she was shooting for one of the Carolinas; See comment above about Dialect coach), but it sounded like a caricature from MadTV.
When you’re not comfortable with a language, the least you can do is hire people that can speak well in that accent/dialect to make up for your shortcomings. If I decided to make a movie in Korean, and cast Jet Li as a sword wielding, soju swigging badass from WW1, I’m opening myself up to some serious flak.
I have not seen such bad writing and dialogues since Tarantino’s Death Proof. Kar Wai ignores all his strengths in creating those unspoken moments that he did so wonderfully in In The Mood For Love, Happy Together, and ChungKing. I thought Kar Wai was a good candidate to make an English language film in Hollywood because his movies rely so little on dialogue, and so much more on atmospherics, and a certain universality of emotion expressed through subtle gestures and bold colors.
The clincher that shows you how uncomfortable Wong must have been…the dreaded voice over telling me exactly what I’m seeing on screen, and telling me the character’s deepest expositionest emotions.
And guess what Wong, not everyone in the south eats fried chicken all the time. For someone known for his sensitivity in handling emotions and relationships, this film has the broadest of broad strokes.
No fucking sense of place. Whether you’re in Memphis, or Arizona, or Reno. I guess that should be expected when the whole movie is shot in diners, cafes and bars. Memphis has so much musical history and culture to it, but it comes across as some generic southern hick town. The only addition are the sounds of the tram rattling down the streets.
Fortunately for me, I snuck in to watch the breezy and delightful French farce Priceless, (with the ever so transcendent Audrey Tautou). I am now ready to forgive her chipmunkness in Amelie.
My only regret is that my money went to Blueberry, and I watched Priceless Phokat Mein. The best things in life are indeed free.
Watch Priceless to see how a romcom should play out. Well written and thoroughly entertaining. Every time I think French cinema is dead, they come out with a really good and/or entertaining movie. The last two times this happened to me was with Irreversible, and Sheitan.
This film is what the French do best. Have a movie about high class prostitution and class conflict completely devoid of sentimentality or judgement, and make it funny, heartwarming and romantic at the same time.
Viva La France.
Tags: English - Other, French, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Wong Kar Wai
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Dabba,
I could sense a distinct breathlessness that for me defined the tone of this point. Not a hurried tone, but a sense of breathlessness..
Maybe they shud use that attrib in movie voiceovers..
Oh No.. I guess Truffaut’s already walked that path in “Jules And Jim”
Viva la France, OF COURSE.
And it’s not only mivies that they do well. China’s Olympic pride had to run out fire in France… call that a coincidence, Dabba?
Hey dude, it wasn’t that bad…if u haven’t noticed he uses VO’s in most of his films…a lot of the times, to drive narration…a lot of people use it…he never uses conventional Hollywood type linear (or otherwise) narration techniques…that said, I agree it was probably his weakest effort…with the possible exception of Ashes of Time. Personally I agree with u, Norah Jones, needs some acting lessons, but the others weren’t bad…film is moody, great music, great visuals (borrowed from his earlier films…but thats because he was probably playing to a new audience…America) and the film seemed kind of forceful…but give me MBN to Saawriya, Race, OSO anyday.
@ sreehari,
haven’t seen jules & jim.
i was squirming in my seat during the movie. desperate for something to happen, and for people to stop spouting innermost feelings. it was like drowning in liquid oxygen, which may explain the breathlessness.
oxygen mujhe marne nahin degi or liquid mujhe jeene nahin degi.
@ joyjeet –
i’m completely ignorant about sports. what is this Olympic Fire and China reference that you speak of?
@ shiv –
yaar, i have already insulted Kar Wai here. please don’t chhedo namak to it by taking the name of his films in the same breath as race, OSO or Saawariya.
Norah Jones on her worst day is still better than Mahima (Pardes), Katrina or any of our other stars.
It’s been about 5 years since I last watched any of his films, so I don’t remember voiceovers in his films. Don’t remember if they were a stilted exposition fest, or perhgaps the subtitles and foreign language eased it out for me.
Ashes of Time was pretty bad, but it was well before he developed his aesthetic.
“Ashes of Time was pretty bad, but it was well before he developed his aesthetic.”
ahem..ahem…..with films like “as tears go by”, “days of being wild”, “chungking express” already released i guess he developed his aesthetic much before that….:)
I kinda liked Ashes of Time. Chris Doyle was fabulous in it.
@ Rick –
i stand corrected. i thought ashes of time was among his earliest films.
Note to the guy who edits comments-Is foul language in articles permitted ?
@ Vivek..It is a a very broader question…profanities are allowed until they are directed towards the author/commentor
Dabba
http://www.counterpunch.org/vernerey04102008.html
http://www.truthnews.net/daily/2008030291.htm
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2008/04/gallery_torchprotest
——
And this is what Joyjeet was talking about
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/07/oly.torchrelay/index.html