THE TRIP

To coincide with Carrie Love's and Joshua Martin's review of the film on the podcast, I asked one of my funnier cohorts and cinephile Rob Muggee to write up a review of Michael Winterbottom's The Trip.

Full disclosure, I was drunk while watching The Trip. This likely heightened the experience of this already fully enjoyable film though considering it is essentially a synthesized version of the BBC television series of the same name in which stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play fictionionalized versions of themselves as they travel through the North of England and stay at various inns and eat at various high rated restaurants. That at least is the aspect of the film they push; a fictionalized Travel Channel reality show with a fourth wall. If I'm going to be looking at seared scallops on a screen, it's practically a reflex to wash down my salivation with $5 pinot noir.

Albeit the foody parts having their charm, luckily that's only one small aspect of the film. The film/series is actually a follow up to Michael Winterbottom's previous effort, A Cock and Bull Story, which follows both Coogan and Brydon playing the same fictionalized versions of themselves and presumably not talking about food. I haven't seen it, so, that's what we're going to go with as long as you're reading this.

As the film unravels we learn about the separate lives of Coogan and Brydon and witness how it effects their relationship with each other. It's clear to the audience that there is a great amount of chemistry between the two, that they have many similar interests and tastes, and they both are able to entertain each other in a way that is so brilliant that it transcends the need to make you feel as you're a part of it as seems the case with most films, but Coogan hates Brydon. Throughout the film we see Coogan calling his girlfriend, Misha, as he climbs mountains and walks into desolate fields searching for a connection and yelling to be heard, while Brydon contacts his wife from bed and speaks in a warm tone as they giggle about him touching himself. We also witness dreams of Coogan as he is told he's about to be famous and a fan refers to him as a character he played on TV years prior that he is unable to move beyond in his career. Meanwhile, Brydon delights in falling into impressions he's been doing his whole career and is thrilled to serenade an elder woman into letting them into the Corelidge museum by performing his "small man trapped in a box" routine. The only women Coogan serenades are the various hotel maidens he talks into his bed. The women that whom once leave his bed instigate the aforementioned nightmares.

Basically, it's an odd couple scenario. And it fucking works. There are moments where you may feel like you're missing something, as with anything that starts off at 4 and a half hours and is cut down to two, but overall the film has a pleasant flow with many laughs and a brilliant ending. If only Hollywood films like Stupid, Crazy, Love could take a hint from endings like this. Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, you should have ended it when Steve Carell was walking away after the fight in the back yard. Fuck you.

CINEMATIC CINEMA: FAT GIRL

Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl is one of my favorite films by possibly the best director working today. There is a such a precision to Breillat's filmmaking, everything is taken into account, the layers there are mesmerizing. The film, a polemical and overwrought cogitation on the complexities of patriarchal socialization, holds back no punches. I could go into 3rd and 4th wave (was just informed this was a thing (is the ultra-post modernist feminism found solely on the internet)) feminist examinations, but I feel that wouldn't do the film justice. Being that, I feel a formalist critique of her films is always needed because her craft-her cinematography, mise en cine-strengthens what she is saying. 

The shot below is towards the end of the film. Traveling from a bourgeois complacency on their vacation back to the bourgeois compancency of their normal lives, they go from the gray desolate vacation to night. Yet, during this scene, on the verge of their deaths, there is a vibrancy not seen anywhere else in the film. Is great that she lit this large landscape at night. Uniquely beaming light in the middle of the plane. It adds a futurist feel in a shot minutes before an abrupt violent shift.

This shot speaks for itself, as beautiful as any painting.

The muted color scheme through out the film adds to the alienation. Through out muted colors can be found on the characters, sometime them wearing the same colors. Also, the father in the film and the boyfriend of Anais' sister look exactly the same. There is a suggestion then that everyone is connected.

This shot below is after the vacation, the upper class family is sitting at a table at a rest stop. This is after a blow up around the sexual endeavors of the sister on the right. The mother over-reacts, suggests extreme measures, but then calls the French pigs for leaving a mess. This being transposed amongst the nature in the background.

This shot suggests further a descent, psycho-analytic perhaps, into nature. "Animal" or ellusions to people being animals being a common word used through out the film. 

The film is out on criterion now or could be found at Netflix, Facets, etc., see it! I only made some connections, via a couple shots, to a film that has so many layers and is such a tour-de-force of cinematics that this is just a catalyst to what should be a continued discussion. Watch the thing and add to the analysis.

ONLINE PROGRAMMING

 While in Hollywood last spring, I was informed that the lost revenues from piracy weren't the studios main fear-as they want us to think so they can break derive more surplus labor values from those working in the industry-but actually it was the fact Netflix and now Hulu were changing the media landscape once again by offering original programming.

The film industry was effected by television, but ultimately made major profits via cable operations, home video, etc., but it seems less able to deal with the advent of straight-to-internet productions. Such has already been occurring though for film, many filmmakers can make some coin by hashing out a deal with Netflix (or now possibly Hulu) to stream their films.

Film's collectivity has inherently dwindled since the pre-television age. Most of the cinema I have ever seen was due to Blockbuster (out of business), Westcoast Video (out of business), and TLA (a local Philadelphia movie rental operation that has shut down more than half of its stores). These stores though didn't have the capabilities to have the swath of cinema sites like Netflix and Facets (a must have online rental service for cinephiles) have. Yet, these sites even pail in comparassion to the access torrenting has brought cinematic militants, but one cannot always find the same quality cinema you can get even from a DVD with some titles. Yet, you can get films that Facets doesn't even have, but ultimately the interlacing found with most DVD's beats even the highest quality torrent.

After going to movies multiple days a week out in Hollywood, I found a major appreciation for the theater experience. Films shot on 35mm, obviously should be seen in that medium. Then bathing in the luminescence of the screen with fellow cinephiles, at excellent theaters like Tarantino's New Beverly, MOMA-LA, The Cinefamily, etc., was a much more rewarding experience than watching something alone in my mother's basement. Still, even at classic films, there wasn't a full crowd even in the global epicenter of cinema. Even there some outfit, like Shooting Wall, was needed to connect cinephiles and strengthen their cinephila. What I'm getting at though is we're in a new age, one where we must embrace the immense distributional options by the internet, but re-strategize our exhibition-collective methods to not let cinematic obsession die.

READING GROUP

LOCATION: The Last Drop 1300 Pine St. Philadelphia, PA 19107
TIME/DATE: Friday August 26th 5:30pm-7pm

As part of our strategy to continue the cultivation of an army of cinematic militants, we will have our first Shooting Wall Reading Group of Towards A Third Cinema By Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino.

A important piece in film theory, it has defined many of our modern ideas of art film and/or political cinema. It lead to many filmmakers taking the text's battle cry to heart, Godard being a major example. This document has largely been the property of academics, now it will be brought to the public. Its strengths acknowledged, its weaknesses highlighted.

A message board thread has been created to mobilize ourselves towards the meeting, the theoretical onslaught commences now.


And if any of you were wondering, expect issue #3 of film theory print zine out in September! If you haven't seen issues #1 or #2, you can check them out here.

WOODY ALLEN DOCUMENTARY

"Exploring the ultimate “independent filmmaker’s” writing habits, casting, directing, and relationship with his actors, Weide traveled with Allen from the London set of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger — a major coup “considering Woody has never allowed so much as an EPK [Electronic Press Kit] crew on his sets,” claims Weide — to the Cannes premiere of Midnight in Paris this May."

Unknown to us at Shooting Wall, this documentary entitled Seriously Funny – The Comic Art of Woody Allen (Sunday, November 20 from 9-11 p.m & Monday, November 21 from 9-10:30 p.m.) should be a important piece of auteurial theory for diehard cinema adherents.

Woody Allen's recent, Midnight In Paris, was a excellent contribution to the master director's canon, and very much recommended. What are you favorite Allen films?

Please answer at our message board. Cinephiles, we're looking forward to your response.