Julianna Yau’s blog

I’m already waiting for Synecdoche, New York to be released on DVD, because I suspect it will take another two or three viewings for me to get the full impact.

My summary review after the second viewing is that Charlie Kaufman is absolutely brilliant.

I was right in my suspicion that there was significance to the clocks/time in the movie. The first ten or twenty minutes of the movie was an absolute delight to decipher, and I was relieved that Kaufman kept the same cinematic grammar consistent throughout the movie. The film demands your complete attention, and Kaufman’s use of props is comparable only to the Coen brothers‘ attention to detail.

As much as I’m glad I saw the movie again, I’m also glad I saw it two weeks ago for the first time. That experience was, and probably shall always be, unrivalled to any other I’ve had. The audience I “had” today was mediocre, at best. Two people crunching popcorn on either side of the theatre, three guys infront of me who only got the most obvious of the girlfriend jokes which aren’t even Kafumanesque, and about four other people who barely reacted audibly to the movie.

Oh, and about 10 minutes of the movie was interrupted by someone triggering the fire alarm in the building, the manager coming on the loudspeaker to announce that everything was okay, the alarms being triggered while they were being reset, a pre-recorded announcement informing us that we had to leave, and the manager coming back onto the loudspeaker to announce that everything was still okay.

The 20-minute pre-show from the first viewing seems to be unique to Cineplex Odeon. I saw the movie at AMC theatres today, and merely two or three previews were shown before the movie. The print, however, was of a lower quality than the one Cineplex Odeon had.

I did manage to get the name of the artist who painted the works of Adele Lack–Alex Kanevsky. A search with both their names resulted in many hits, but finding the connection without both names was fruitless (for me, anyway).

At some point, I’d love to have my own little retrospective “film festival”, with all of the Coen brothers’ films, followed by Kaufman’s.

I’m still twitching from the painful nauseating lesson I learned today from what shall be my third and last attendance at a Cinematheque Waterloo screening. Although I’m still happy to have supported them with the purchase of an annual membership, they are now well-known enough to be attracting just the type of person I don’t want to have in a cinema with me.

Compared with my near-religious experience while watching Synecdoche, New York, this brought back all my misanthropic feelings and contempt for the inconsiderateness of others. Tonight’s audience had everything but a ringing cell phone—people talking through the live introduction, people arriving late, people [loudly] discussing the film during the film, someone wrestling with a shopping bag for a full minute, someone dropping their keys, and, of course, me hushing whoever was within a 3-seat radius.

The film, Jules et Jim, was passable, but overly long at a mere 105 minutes. After the war sequence, François Truffaut flexed his directoral muscles, then was simply trying too hard to be impressive. I quickly found myself uninterested in the story and unenchanted (sic) by the barrage of perspective shots which had no connection to the narrative. Oh, but wait! French New Wave is not supposed to be about narrative, non? Like with Hitchcock, I’m wholly unimpressed by experimentation for the sake of experimentation (especially when it was laughable or too little, too late).

And, to audiences, I say:

• I paid to see the movie, not to hear your commentary on it.
• You don’t need to remark aloud to your friend that the woman was wearing a watch on her ankle. We all saw it. Because we weren’t trying to have a conversation with our friends during the movie.
• I don’t care that you like the music.
• A movie is not the appropriate time to teach your kid about ships.
• Please don’t try to get that last little drop of soda out of your drink. I can’t hear the machine guns over your slurping.
• If your phone rings, turn it off. Do not simply answer the phone after your friend calls you for the second time.
• A movie with fast cuts, explosions and a sold-out theatre is not an appropriate venue to take your screaming infant.
• Opening a plastic bag of food you smuggled into the theatre is not less conspicuous if you do it slowly.

And, in conclusion, thank God for Zip.ca. Amen.

I saw Syndecoche, New York today, and I don’t even know where to start with the review. To avoid this being a mess of randomness, I’ll attempt to write this chronologically.

Firstly, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the cinema. Before seeing The Dark Knight and the Cinematheque Waterloo screenings in the past few months, I had been boycotting the movie-going experience for over four years—a boycott I only broke to see the X-Men and Pirates of the Caribbean movies. After sitting through movies at The Princess Cinema in Waterloo and the Kingston Canadian Film Festival where the movie-goers insisted on discussing the movie while watching the movie, and seeing more mainstream movies like Mystic River, Master and Commander and Tears of the Sun (all of which were horrible, by the way) where people insisted on answering cell phones and slurping their drinks, I badly needed a break from seeing movies with the public.

So, the 20 minute “pre-show” of commercials was a tiresome surprise. With the amount of money they must be making from the sale of ads, I’m upset that ticket prices are still as high as they are. I did, however, get to enjoy a hearty laugh at Stella Artois‘ attempt at making their “beer” seem like something worth drinking.

The movie was absolutely amazing. I do wonder whether people who aren’t familiar with Kaufman’s work would get the full effect of it. His world is unique, but entirely consistent, and Synecdoche, New York was an extremely fine presentation of it. I’m both relived that his direction lived up to my expectations (hopes?) and that he has finally been able to direct one of his own screenplays so I can see exactly what he had intended.

Synecdoche, New York had the fuller version of the world we started to see in Being John Malkovich but, more surprisingly, seems to be a refined version of the themes in Michel Gondry‘s video of Bjork‘s Bachellorette. The absurd humour in the movie was in keeping with what Kaufman did in Adaptation, and the actors did a fantastic job with maintaining the understated delivery required for it to be “Kaufmanesque”.

What we saw on the tv, books and magazines of the main character were obviously created by Kaufman, much like what he did in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. And what has been driving me mad is I forgot the name of the artist who painted the work by the character Adele Lack. The artist had been properly credited at the end of the movie, but Kafuman has once again been able to fabricate a character into real life, and the internet has once again failed me for finding what I need.

The casting was perfect. Philip Seymour Hoffman continues to amaze me, and I’m glad Catherine Keener was able to do another Kaufman movie. (IMDB doesn’t give a unique link for joint venture searches, so you’ll have to do it yourself if you’re that curious.)

I will be trying to see the movie again before it disapears from the cinema. Although it was worth the four-year wait, I missed the significance of the clocks/time in the movie (please, don’t tell me what it is—I want to find it for myself) and want to capture the artist’s name. The thought of waiting at least another year for the DVD release is maddening. And although the circumstances are entirely different, a part of me is terrified I’ll relive what happened when I missed the Cremaster Cycle when it was at the Guggenheim.

I was trying to figure out whether the Buffy Summers profile on Plurk is official (she requested to add me as a friend), and came across the non-DRM, webcast version of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog via Whedonesque, an unofficial blog for Joss Whedon.

A little over a week ago, a friend suggested that I watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, pitching it as a pet project of Joss Whedon’s. Deciding to watch it was a struggle for me, with pros and cons all over the place. In retrospect, I probably over-thought the decision:

• Although I’m not a fan of the premise (or particularly interested in the storyline) of Buffy, I must grudgingly admit that I did find the writing to be witty in the few episodes I’ve been made to watch.
• I hate loathe musicals, but Neil Patrick Harris’s insane level of coolness promised to negate that.
• My primary operating system is OpenSUSE, but I kept Windows so I could still access things that aren’t available for Linux.

So, out of curiosity and boredom, I decided to pay the mere $6 for 43 minutes of entertainment, and it was worth it. Harris plays Dr. Horrible wonderfully, and it was nice to be able to enjoy Whedon’s writing without the supernatural (yes, I somewhat hypocritically make allowances for the world of superheros and supervillans).

The only horrible part was that the show is only [currently and legitimately] available in Apple’s DRM-protected m4v format. This means the $6 is more of a long-term rental fee than an outright purchase. Considering the price of a DVD or a rental from a brick-and-mortar store, it’s not a bad rate…but still leaves a bitter aftertaste.

Contrary to what some might think, I’m not a supporter of DRM. Although I support the right to use it as part of a business model, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I have yet to finish reading Wired Shut, but the chapter “Speed Bump” poses a solid argument against using architectural and technological measures to correct for social behaviour.

My personal opinion is that the use of Technical Protection Measures by individual creators in an attempt to protect their work is misguided and will be more detrimental (in terms of cost and promotional opportunities) than they are lead to believe. What is needed aren’t more barriers to the enjoyment of creative works, but educating people on the real cost of production and the value of a work. The situation, although more ignored, is more clear-cut for visual and media artists, who usually work alone or in small groups.

In the traditional model used by many visual artists, they bear the cost of creating their work and generate income from a variety of sources, including (but not limited to) grants (which are, in Canada, taxable income), teaching, exhibition fees (paid by galleries when the work is for display and not sale), second and third jobs, and the occassional sale. When work is sold through a gallery, the gallery typically takes 50% of the sale price to cover their overhead (rent, staff salaries, etc). In Canada, there is no legislated resale right which would help boost the income of artists when their growing careers increase the value of past work in the resale market.

When I run this information past my non-artist friends, they’re often shocked, particularly at the fact that a gallery gets a commission which is much higher than commissions in other industries. Suddenly, being an artist isn’t so glamorous, and “sticking it to the man” isn’t so chic.

Gleb Sidorkin has written for Tisch Film Review the article I’ve been wanting to write on this blog about Matthew Barney’s model for generating income from film. Unlike most “indie” film-makers (I use the term loosely — Barney is more of a multimedia artist than a “traditional indie film-maker”), Barney does not seek mass distribution of his work. In fact, most people are probably out of luck if they have missed The Cremaster Cycle or Drawing Restraint while they were “on tour”. It wasn’t until last summer when Anthology Film Archives in New York was screening Cremaster 2 as part of a Norman Mailer event that I was no longer one of the many Barney fans who had not actually seen any of his work. Sidorkin’s article is very thorough and insightful, and provides part of the answer to my burning question: what about visual artists?

Michael Geist points to an article in The Star by Peter Howell which quotes a spokesperson for Heritage Minister Josée Verner as indicating that “Canadian Heritage has not received an application for a production containing criminal content”.

This is great news, but doesn’t make people’s concerns a simple case of “legal absurdity”. The proposed wording in C-10 uses the phrase “public policy“, and does not speak specifically to issues of criminal content. Again, the concern is not the isolated inclusion of the phrase “public policy”, but its existence alongside Charles McVety’s lobbying “to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other offensive content”.

Despite the fact that the opposition motion to Bill C-10 was voted down in response to the Senate Liberals’ intent to block the Income Tax Act from being used as a censorship enabler, the Banking Committee resumes study of Bill C-10 amidst public concerns about censorship.

CARFAC Ontario has published their press release on C-10, as well as a form letter which can be used to send to members of parliament. The Toronto International Film Festival Group has also published a press release on C-10. The Facebook group Keep your censoring hands off of Canadian film and TV! No to Bill C-10! has 29,360 members as of the writing of this post.

• Sam Trosow brings some disappointing news about an unsuccessful request to amend C-10
• Lawrence from Northworthy is keeping tabs on the news development
• Geist also likens the public C-10 response to that of the new copyright legislation, and reminds us that it’s about tax credits (this post has been hidden in my sea of email since Tuesday). The main difference between C-10 and the upcoming copyright legislation is we can actually see what’s in C-10.

Lawrence at Northworthy and Sam Trosow have been busy with digging deeper into C-10 today. Lawrence looks at the history behind C-10 and the supposed consultation which happened with the film industry. Sam Trosow finds some interesting snippets from Question Period on C-10.