KAILI BLUES / LU BIAN YE CAN (2015)

Now in his mid-30s, Chinese writer/director Bi Gan is a representative of a new wave of Chinese filmmakers coming after the so-called Fifth and Sixth Generation.  The number designating how removed they are from the establishment of Communist China.  (No one’s thought of calling them the Seventh?)  KAILI, now a decade old, serving as Bi’s international calling card, even though, for non Chinese, it can be frustratingly opaque.  (Nearly typed ‘inscrutable,’ but the term, like the use of ‘Oriental’ as a race designation, has been retired from polite conversation.)  A rural roadtrip film, it moves as much thru time & memory as kilometers, very loosely organized by two half-brothers and the Search for Weiwei, son of one/nephew to the other.*  The true father a jailbird with little contact; the uncle more involved before ‘selling’ the boy, now grown and lost.  The uncle takes the lead and we follow as he starts to look for Weiwei on a journey employing a slippery timeline not nailed down for us.  Instead, we (or rather the uncle) randomly meet new people along the way who delineate the society of this back country for us; climaxing in a small town where Bi employs a long (and I mean long) continuous tracking shot to take us around the corners and thru stairways, gateways, inner courtyards and secluded passageways of the small town.  An impressive feat that turns the village into a maze as complicated as the whiff of a storyline allows it to be.  Almost post-narrative in design, the film is worth the confusion.  Later work from Bi may be a pleasure to connect with, but in general, I was more intrigued than carried away.

SCEWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Wei Wei, of course, the name of an internationally famous, Chinese censored, artist.  Whether the name of the son was chosen to reflect this isn’t specified.

21 DAYS TOGETHER (1940)

Even considering mental health issues and stage tours with husband Laurence Olivier, it’s still surprising that Vivien Leigh, as big a screen star as you could be after GONE WITH THE WIND/’39, had only nine more feature films over the next twenty-five years.  And most of them forgotten.  This one, released between GWTW and her personal fave WATERLOO BRIDGE/’41, though actually shot in 1937*, one of the more forgotten.  And that’s in spite of co-starring husband-to-be Olivier, popular Leslie Banks and Graham Greene adapting John Galsworthy’s moral dilemma novel.  Let’s stick most of the blame on director/co-writer Basil Dean, more stage manager/theatre actor than movie man.  His second to last try at film direction has a choppy/stop-start quality to it.  And Czech cinematographer Jan Stallich (later a Soviet Block lenser) has little interest (or ability?) in helping Leigh sparkle or Olivier seem a bit less callow.  These two lovers confronted by a husband who vanished three years ago.  He’s there to blackmail them, pulls out a knife and is accidentally killed in a scuffle.  What to do?  Olivier, scapegrace kid brother of barrister Banks, is strongly advised by him to cover up the crime and leave the country, even though it was self-defense and accidental.  Banks desperate to limit any scandal as he’s up for a High Court Judgeship.  But Olivier refuses to let an innocent man take the blame and Banks has to keep him from doing the right thing.  Not a bad set up though Galsworthy has a twist you’ll see coming that lets everyone (even himself) off the hook.  A miss as a film, but also something that shouldn’t be missed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Note this was filmed two years before director William Wyler, according to a chastened Olivier, ‘taught’ him how to act for the screen while making WUTHERING HEIGHTS/’39.  It shows.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/05/wuthering-heights-1939.html

STRAIGHT SHOOTING (1917)

With only five two-reelers under his belt, novice director John (‘Jack’) Ford, and regular lead Harry Carey, got carried away on the sixth, shooting enough footage for a five-reel feature.  Naturally, Universal execs ordered it trimmed down to the contracted short, only stopped by Universal head Carl Laemmle who recognized a bargain.*  A rare survivor from Ford’s pre-FOX silent output, it’s a find that lives up to your hopes.  And, if less than mature Ford, it still displays an astonishment in Ford style, technique and themes, present & accounted for in this Homesteaders vs. Cattlemen Oater.  With heavy D.W. Griffith influence (lead gal Molly Malone like a brunette Mae Marsh and a big ride-to-the-rescue finish), but Ford’s use of landscape & framing already his own.  (Those backlit door-framed shots might be out of THE SEARCHERS/’56.)  The story is a lot like George Stevens’ SHANE/’53 (tropes already familiar in 1917?), but with Carey’s character a combination of Alan Ladd’s ‘good’ badman and Jack Palance’s ‘bad’ badman.  It takes a pivotal on-screen murder of a young homesteader to shame him.  Carey not only changing sides, but in a riveting shoot-out, taking down his drinking pal, the killer.  How to explain Ford’s filmmaking confidence?  How lucky to have it survive.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In silent days, a reel of film could run longer than the modern standard of ten minutes depending on the cameraman’s cranking speed.  You could get almost 15 minutes if you were as slow as D.W. Griffith’s Billy Bitzer.  Hence, Ford, with forgotten cinematographer George Scott and the great Ben Reynolds (later Erich von Stroheim’s go-to lenser) gets over an hour out of five reels.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   *Avoid lousy subfusc Public Domain downloads.  Click the link to see a proper restoration.  This EUREKA! Edition Comes with a more recent Ford find, HELL BENT.  (not seen here)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=darotFrBNFM

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025)

Best of the recent Animation-to-Live-Action remakes?  We’ve missed (or rather avoided) too many for any definitive pronouncement.  In general, they usually coin big cash, but leave little long-term impact compared to the originals.  But director Dean DeBlois, co-director of the full-animated feature in 2010, makes lots of smart moves; he even made this one for a bit less.  Plus, whatever money was spent is all up on the screen.  Though so much is CGI, calling it Live Action is less truth-in-advertizing than convenient nomenclature.  DeBlois starts smart, gliding toward the small Viking island where man and dragon fight for survival, in a shot that might be CGI, but looks like old-school scale-model work: a doll house village on a terrarium landscape.  It sets the whole film up with a tone of believable unreality, welcome to artifice, fantasy and tall tales.  This particular tale remains largely unchanged: Young Viking-in-training Hiccup happens upon a wounded beast, nurses it back to health (with a prosthetic tail ‘jib’ he fashions) and comes to realize  that dragons are just as afraid of human Vikings as Vikings are of flying, fire-breathing beasts.  But how to convince the town, especially warrior Dad Gerard Butler (repeating from 2010), of possible peaceful coexistence?  Much of this: CGI special effects, character arcs, Hiccup’s demonstrating his control over the beasts at Viking School are perfectly handled.  Yet ultimately, that’s not what makes the film work.  And there are problems too; an animated 300 pound Viking and a live action 300 pound Viking make very different impressions.  At times you think they’ve cloned John Goodman to play half the male adults.  (Too bad they didn’t, Goodman would have pulled it off.)  Nico Parker no better as the natural female warrior-in-training who warms to Hiccup and his new ‘pet.’  (Though nice to see a heroine with the old-fashioned face structure of Depression-Era madonna Sylvia Sidney.)  No, forget what they get right or wrong, what ultimately makes this one work is Master Mason Thames as Hiccup, the most overwhelmingly empathetic/sympathetic/winning juvenile lead seen on screen in decades.  (Since Michael J. Fox/BACK TO THE FUTURE/’85?  Or, closer to the mark, Matthew Broderick in LADYHAWKE/’85.)  Now if only someone could do a Director’s Cut that trimmed the overextended finale . . . and make a sequel a good bit better than the animated HTTYD2.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above - LADYHAWKE or BACK TO THE FUTURE.  OR: Compare with the animated original and its unfortunate sequel.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-to-train-your-dragon-2010.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-to-train-your-dragon-2-2014.html