2007: Can I take my hand off the snooze button?

"It's a cyclical thing. When they make one, everyone loves them. Different genres come around in succession. People always welcome the western. It's America's genre."

-Robert Duvall

Admittingly, I haven't done my part this year. I haven't seen Rescue Dawn, Ratatouille, Rescue Dawn, Paprika...you get the point. However, my apathy is much attributed much more to the anticipation of fall releases than assumed disappointment from the available features. Before I go off and ostracize myself I'm also content with playing the "catch-up" card with 2006 -- it turned out to be the best year of the new millennium. (It's humorous to note that two of the most widely-acclaimed films of the year, The Departed and A Prarie Home Companion, happen to be two of the worst films in the respective directors' oeuvre.) Fortunately, I think I've finally embarked upon the shores of 2007; my enthusiasm seems effectively honed after reading a few early reviews for No Country for Old Men and Paranoid Park -- it's all frightfully romantic! I've got a point here, although it's rather self-referential: "Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others." No? OK, well I haven't really an agenda here other than to supply slight validity for my giddiness, and there's nothing more noble that the truth, right?



1. Se Jie, Ang Lee






Spies? WWII? A universally lauded film visionary returning back to his roots? Tony Leung? It's like Hitchcock without the vehicular tendencies. In subsequent years we get two of the most expansive, humanistic directors--Ang Lee and Alfonso Cuaron--working in their home language, in environments that seem akin to that of which manifested both of their recognized masterpieces. In the wake of the same year Kar Wai Wong is putting out the "cross-over film", I'm inclined to think Lee's is going to be the better film for the reasoning not that I'm famously anti-Wong, but that Lee's film doesn't appear to be as observably self-parodied. Also, Joan Chen has more shows more naturalism in Zi yu feng bao than Natalie Portman has shown her entire career. Ah, so much for cheekiness.


2. Paranoid Park, Gus Van Sant







Kracaeur will continue to blush. And as if you're one of those that thinks realist cinema needs yet another reawakening then you have Paranoid Park, which looks like an apt return to the social environment/structures of Van Sant's zenith, Elepant. Long takes, austere artificiality, and questionable authorities it all looks to be rather intact with every glimpse of Paranoid Park. Conspicuously, Van Sant appears to be content with encroachment of auteur-ism. Fair enough, he deserves such a vicinity.


3. No Country for Old Men, The Coen Brothers






It's a complete shame that they didn't go for Blood Meridian, as well. Yes, I'm rather optimistic that Ridley Scott will return to form--whatever that means-- but the buzz around No Country for Old Men is just irrational. It all is rather fitting for those who've actually read the novel, it's drenched in a sporadically combustible post-modern tone that's got Coen written all over it, the whole thing is just so...cinematic. It's also an insanely expeditious: characters represent anachronistic archetypes, landscapes that drip with biblical embodiments. It's probably the most relevant film the Cohen brothers could ever make because few people can actually negotiate the conflicting realms of social observation and bellicose absurdity. I'll leave your opinions of the fervency of the cast up to common sense.


4. There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson







The trailer is simply fantastic sans the reminder that Paul Dano is actually a human being. If anybody commands the screen in a more theatric, gravitational fasion than Daniel Day-Lewis than please tell me. It also appears that Mr. Anderson has found himself away from the Scorsese backrent that he once was obliged to liquidate, and Robert Elswitt seeks to increasingly distinguish himself as one of the premiere cinematographers of our generation--which says a lot. Thing is, I'm not really expecting much out of this film except a really great time...and confirmation that the politics of the old West still demand significant pertinence. Texas government is a fascinating thing in that it still transcribes just how much traditional Republicanism governs society. There's much to be said about the proprietorship of the "cowboy mentality" and how the increased minority establishment has actually increasingly promoted such a mentality.



5. Le Voyage du ballon rouge, Hsiao-hsien Hou





It's been pretty hush-hush about this one. The original 1956 film is one of the most lauded examples of the properties of montage and austerity. You've got an international leading lady (Binoche) and a seemingly inspired deviation from the simplicity of the Le Balloon Rouge. So it's not really a remake but a previsioning? Or is it more of a celebration of the '56 Cannes winner? Either or it's Hou, and you know that means quality; the man is a genius when it comes to "pure cinema": parametric narration, lighting, long-takes, reflexive POV... He's capable of pretension when he's at his worst and capable of adamant devotion when at his most creatively self-secured. So far the basic plot is that Binoche, a puppeteer, teacher, and mother of two allows a Taiwanese baby sitter in to her home who ends up changing Binoche's close-minded perceptions of life by means of imagination (the balloon) and cultural intergration. A recipe for heavy-handedness or for poetry? We'll see.