THE BIG CITY (MAHANAGAR) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Newly RESTORED 35mm FILM PRINT during The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque AND in the STUNNING BRD & DVD from the visionary home entertainment label the CRITERION COLLECTION!!! See it on the BIG SCREEN, then BUY it to OWN FOREVER!!!

Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!

THE BIG CITY (MAHANAGAR) - RESTORED
35mm FILM PRINT @ #TiffBellLightbox
and on gorgeous BLU-RAY and DVD
from THE CRITERION COLLECTION!!!

Anil Chatterjee dolls up in Satyajit Ray's The Big City.
Directors who made art films in the 50s, 60s and 70s
understood that they had to cast:

GREAT ACTRESSES
who were also
MAJOR LEAGUE BABES!!!

Gorgeous new cover art by Marian Bantjes
for the extras-laden Criterion Blu-Ray.

The Big City [Mahanagar] (1963) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Madhabi Mukherjee, Anil Chatterjee,
Jaya Bhaduri, Haren Chatterjee, Sefalika Devi,
Prasenjit Sarkar, Haradhan Banerjee, Vicky Redwood

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Big City [Mahanagar] is such a great picture that even though it suffers somewhat from a rushed, unearned ending, its joys and virtues are many. Satyajit Ray delivers yet another masterpiece for the ages. This lovely amalgam of family drama and love story is once again another example of just how ahead of his time Ray was. The central character is female and she drives the entire engine of the story. Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee) is a young, hard-working housewife who toils with a face of happiness and tries to reserve any expressions of concern to herself. Though her husband Subrata (Anil Chatterjee) has a decent lower middle class job in the city as a loans officer at a bank, his financial obligations are almost ruinous. Not only is his salary supporting a wife, but also their little boy Pintu (Prasenjit Sarkar), Arati's still unmarried teenage sister and student Bani (Jaya Bhaduri), his father Priyogopal (Haren Chatterjee) and mother Sarojini (Sefalika Devi).

The family lives paycheque to paycheque and Arati is occasionally forced to borrow certain staples from the neighbours. Priyogopal is a former school teacher, now old, infirm and needing new prescription lenses so he can properly see his crossword puzzles. Bani feels guilt about going to school when she should be bringing in income (especially when she's chided that she won't need an education since she's a woman and will inevitably get married). Sarojini even feels like she and her husband are milestones around the neck of this young family. The pressures of poverty are considerable which, of course, brings considerable shame to Subrata.

Things take a positive turn when husband and wife decide that an extra income is needed and well within their grasp. After all, there are plenty of people to run the household, so it's not as if Arati can't take on another job.

Here the film springs into a joyous mode as Arati, for the first time in her life, leaves the confines of home and hearth to work as a door-to-door saleslady, hawking knitting machines along with a team of young woman. Arati discovers a new found independence, but in so doing, realizes she has a great gift for sales and it doesn't take long for her to earn a promotion as the head of the whole team. The money she starts bringing into the household is considerable.

Madhabi Mukherjee is such a stirring, stunning, sexy presence in this film. It's no wonder she was one of India's biggest and brightest stars, as well as being a favourite of Ray's (she starred in his wonderful Charulata). Her role demands wearing a variety of masks - some tried and true, but others all new. Mukherjee handles Arati's blossoming with steadily mounting subtlety and it's also no wonder her role was so appealing to her as an actress. Women, were so often second fiddles in Indian cinema, but not in Satyajit Ray's films and especially not in Mahanagar.

All is not sweetness, light and empowerment. Ray deftly handles the new burdens facing both Arati and her family. Her child misses her, Arati feels even more ashamed at how well his wife is doing in the business world and his father is appalled that his son would be such a weak man that he'd allow his wife to work. For his part, Priyogopal has always had a chip on his shoulder about slaving for years as a schoolteacher and now, in his august years, lives with no pension and under his son's roof. He's proud that all his former students went on to become such successful and rich professional men, but he also feels they owe him something, so he begins a campaign to track them all down and essentially beg money from them - money he feels they owe him.

On the work front, Arati is also faced with a huge challenge. Though her boss clearly values her, she's not too impressed with how he's been prejudicially treating one of the employees, an Anglo-Indian woman who is not only her friend, but the constant butt of the boss's disdain. Arati has some big decisions to make and one of them involves taking a huge stand against the injustices perpetrated by her boss.

The film is so stirring, funny, touching and tender that after having seen it a few times now, I'm still disappointed with the manner in which it resolves all of the conflicts so quickly. Ray has been so careful to take his time wending his way through the tale and yet in the most crucial moments, the storytelling seems to falter. What transpires makes complete narrative sense, but how he gets us there seems too pat and unearned.

And you know what? It doesn't matter. The movie is otherwise infused with such greatness that it still has stood the test of time as yet another Satyajit Ray masterpiece. He really was one of the best filmmakers of all time. We're so blessed he was able to make the films he wanted his way in an industry that was never too open to the kind of contemporary realities facing India that Ray explored so often and so well.

Mahanagar (The Big City) is presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 12, 2014 at 3:45pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". NOTE: THIS IS A RESTORED 35MM. This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

After you've seen this on a big screen, you'll absolutely kill to own the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. This is a film to cherish and Criterion has pulled out all the stops with the supplements. In addition to the all-new restored 2K digital film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, the disc includes a brand new interview with Madhabi Mukherjee, a terrific short doc/interview with Suranjan Ganguly entitled Satyajit Ray and the Modern Woman, The Coward, a wonderful 1965 short feature by Ray about modern female identity starring Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee, B.D. Darga's excellent 1974 short documentary Satyajit Ray, great English subtitles newly translated and the de rigour Criterion booklet that has an essay by scholar Chandak Sengoopta and a 1980s interview with Ray by the inimitable Andrew Robinson.

PIKOO (Pikoor Diary) & SADGATI ( The Deliverance) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Two Short Mid-Length Television Films by Satyajit Ray - The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque

Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!

The evil of castes in Sadgati (above),
the tragedy of infidelity in Pikoo (below).
Satyajit Ray used the medium of idiocy to transmit
work that tackled important themes that genuinely affected
and continue to affect the lives of people all over the world.

Two Short
Television Films
By Satyajit Ray

Pikoo [Pikoor Diary] (1980) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Arjun Guha Thakurta, Aparna Sen, Promod Ganguli, Victor Banerjee, Soven Lahiri

Sadgati [Deliverance] (1981) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Om Puri, Mohan Agashe, Gita Siddharth, Smita Patil, Richa Mishra

Review By
Greg Klymkiw

Prepare to be devastated. Satyajit Ray's in the house. Two short films he made for television during the 1980s and in glorious colour, no less (juxtaposing the lush, stunning compositions with the dark subject matter), are movies that pack enormous wallops from within their slender running times, a mere 28 minutes for Pikoo and a slightly longer mid-length running time at 52 minutes for Sadgati.

We're talking 80 minutes to be completely drained by Ray's staggering portraits of infidelity and India's foul, backwards caste system respectively. Both movies offer far more food for thought and dramatic punch than the vast majority of films made back then. As for now, most films do little more than offer ephemeral frissons for audiences too indoctrinated to realize they've being force-fed buckets of faecal matter by cash-grubbing, cynical nest-featherers. These two films are both monumental achievements and stand as a testament to their filmmaker, but also the visionary broadcasters who allowed Ray to make these stunning, short one-off dramas. There are certainly few, if any, contemporary broadcasters who'd allow this now and chances are, none of them know who Satyajit Ray was anyway and worse, wouldn't know great filmmaking even if it was represented by some meaty schwance slapping them in the face through a glory hole with a little sign dangling from said appendage that specifically indicated the content of the communion host they were about to receive down their greedy gullets.

Pikoo creates a slice of life in the acrimonious existence of an affluent family which results in a tragic event that should have been avoided, but given the social conditions a patriarchal society creates, it almost seems inevitable. Much of this tale is recounted through the eyes of a little boy, the title character. His love for his Mother and Grandfather are passionate and intense, though his feelings for his father seem almost non-existent. Ray provides a hint in the film's opening that the patriarch of this household is an uncommunicative, absent prig who spends more time preparing himself for a day at work than bothering to even acknowledge his sweet little boy. All poor Pikoo can get is a half-hearted wave from his Dad as the distracted breadwinner drives off to work.

Pikoo's mother affords the boy with love and attention, but even she is distracted. Firstly, she's more than a tad preoccupied by learning that her husband is aware of her infidelity. Strangely and just a bit selfishly, and in spite of the fact that she and her husband have argued all night (which we find out when Pikoo confides this to his ailing grandfather), the lonely Jezebel spends far too much time fretting that her lover (described to Pikoo as an interior decorator who must be addressed as "Uncle") will carve out time from his day to come over and deliver the vigorous poking she requires.

The story unravels with canny simplicity and leads to a horrendous moment of reckoning that affects everyone, but especially the innocent party in this whole sordid affair - a sweet little boy who is far too young to be aware of the sickening reality of his family's domestic strife and worst of all, having to make a discovery that will haunt him forever.

If Pikoo isn't enough to drag you through hot coals, Sadgati (aka Deliverance) will pretty much stuff you screaming into the flames dancing ever-so menacingly in a wood-burning stove. A tanner wishes to receive a blessing and advice on the most auspicious day to hold his daughter's wedding. The local Panditji (Hindu Brahmin Priest) is more than willing to oblige, but as the tanner is of the lowest social strata, our Man o' God cavalierly demands the father-in-law-to-be perform the most menial, back-breaking physical labour.

What occurs is one of the most harrowing and savage indictments of India's caste system imaginable. The Holy Man regards the Tanner with such contempt that his demands are tantamount to torture. He knows the poor guy recently suffered from a debilitating fever, yet he forces him to chop wood from a petrified log using only a dull, rusty axe. The task is impossible, but the Paditji takes an almost sadistic pleasure in both humiliating the man and forcing him to carry out the physically draining work in the hot sun, without food, drink or adequate rest. As the tanner goes about the business of sheer futility, the Panditji takes naps. Between naps, he barks out orders and insults.

The result of this act of psychopathic abuse is cruel and pointless. The aftermath is even more sickening. Ray uses colour in this film to its fullest juxtapositional effect. You will, I guarantee you, never forget the gorgeous sunset upon the rich dark countryside as a man's rotting corpse is dragged through the mud and unceremoniously dumped with utter disdain.

Pikoo and Sadgati are, once again, two more masterworks from Satyajit Ray. Whether he delivered feature drama, short works of fiction and even occasional documentary portraits, there are few filmmakers who have (or ever will) achieve the long string of greatness he delivered.

Pikoo & Sadgati are presented together at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 11, 2014 at 9:30pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:

AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK:

CHARULATA (The Lonely Wife) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque - See it on the BIG SCREEN then BUY the stunning Criterion Collection BLU-RAY 2-OWN-4-EVER!

Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!

Madhabi Mukherjee as Charulata:
Seeing the world through opera glasses.

…and don't forget to order
the stunning Criterion Collection
Blu-Ray of Charulata.

Illustration by Satyajit Ray himself

Charulata (1964) Dir. Satyajit Ray *****
Starring: Madhabi Mukherjee,
Sailen Mukherjee, Soumitra Chatterjee, Syamal Ghosal, Gitali Roy

There are many extraordinary things about Satyajit Ray's great melodrama Charulata, but first and foremost is the grey zone he so delicately explores in this adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore's short story "Nastanirh" (The Broken Nest). If anything, it's these shadings which contribute the most to the romantic and tragic elements of this deeply moving love triangle and Ray's touch here has never been more expertly applied with respect to this perspective. Collaborating with his favourite cinematographer Subrata Mitra and the superlative editor Dulal Dutta, Ray plays out the vast majority of the action within the expanse of a highly upscale Calcutta home, alternating between the vast, gorgeous emptiness of the setting and the emotional claustrophobia which infuses the space through the eyes of the film's title character (played by the babe-o-licious Madhabi Mukherjee). It is through the lenses of an ornate pair of opera glasses that Charu gets glimpses of the world outside the coldly beautiful interiors so expertly designed by art director Bansi Chandragupta.

In the late 19th century, India is still under British rule, but in Calcutta the Bengali culture is taking further steps to assert itself in spite of the colonial yoke and Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee) uses his upper class status to not roll over and feather his own nest, but to assert the notion of freedom. He does this by running a political newspaper from a corner of his palatial home and in spite of his friends and associates expressing concern that Bhupati could get into trouble with the authorities, he shrugs this off and maintains his belief that free speech is a paramount tenet of Britain and that he's doing nothing wrong. In a sense, he's right about this but his newspaper continues to suffer from low circulation and minimal ad revenue which keeps his attention too strongly upon business rather than his passion and vision to guide the paper creatively.

Bhupati is an honest, educated and intelligent man. He also prides himself upon being an extremely liberal and forward thinking member of his class. You would think this would make him a perfect husband for beautiful Charu. Her interest in the arts and culture, as well as her intelligence and literacy, is not at all lost on Bhupati and is the thing that makes him love her desperately. He's so enamoured with her brains (and considerable beauty), that he even encourages her to express herself artistically as a writer. Given the usual domestic patriarchy Ray has often explored in his films, this truly sounds like a marriage made in Heaven.

Here, however, are those damnable shades of grey. Bhupati is so obsessed with his newspaper that he seldom has time to be a friend, lover and equal life partner to the smart, sensitive Charu. More out of boredom, rather than anything else, she consumes herself with the deathly dull management of the household and apart from her occasional readings, she lives an incredibly lonely life, often spying activities in the outside world through her opera glasses.

Even this is not lost upon Bhupati. Within the context of an ages-old patriarchal culture, this sensitivity to her needs makes him a more-than-deserving recipient of canonization. Bhupati hits upon an amazing win-win (or so he thinks) situation. First of all, he summons Charu's big brother Umapada (Syamal Ghosal) and his wifey Manda (Gitali Roy) to come and live as family under their roof. Umapada has been looking for a good job and Bhupati puts his brother-in-law in charge of the day-to-day business operations of the paper. So far, so good. He assumes Manda will be excellent company for Charu. Wrong-O, Bhupati. Just because Manda is a woman and Charu is a woman, doesn't mean they're going to be good friends. As liberal as our want-to-be newspaper magnate is, he still carries the kind of patriarchal assumptions that offer no help at all. Manda is a catty, cheap and vulgar young lady with no interest in much of anything save for lolling about and/or playing stupid card games.

Luckily, Bhupati has also extended an open invitation to his young, educated, intelligent and sensitive cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee). He encourages Amal to spend time with Charu and coax her to work on her writing. This sounds pretty win-win, but goddamn those shades of grey. Amal and Charu are matched perfectly on both artistic and intellectual levels and they spend virtually every waking hour together discussing art, philosophy, literature and writing. They even undertake to write creatively on their own work and critique it for each other.

Seeing two young people fall in love because they're both smart and attracted to their respective minds is pretty damn sexy. Ray handles this courtship as slowly and carefully as it plays out. Every gaze, gesture and nuance has weight, but they're all exclamatory points on the creative and intellectual intercourse between the two. That said, it doesn't hurt that Charu is a babe and that Amal is a young, studly dreamboat. Good looks, however, are genuinely secondary, as is sexual magnetism - these things blossom from the mind melding. Besides, if looks played into it, Sailen Mukherjee as Buphati is no slouch in the looks department either.

Disaster and betrayal loom, of course, but they come with the force of a hurricane as one (for the audience) is from an expected source and - at least initially - the other is wholly unexpected (though in retrospect, not a surprise). While the film ultimately leads us to a place of redemption and forgiveness, once we get there, Ray doesn't cop out. As in life, he takes us to the precipice, but refuses to placate us or his characters. Instead, he piles on the chill of a freeze.

And make no mistake. This is Satyajit Ray we're talking about here. It's a deep, deep freeze.

And it's devastating.

Charulata is presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

See it on the big screen, then be sure to buy the outstanding Criterion Collection edition via the various Amazon links below. The Criterion Blu-Ray of Charulata is another treasure trove of delights that make the disc a must-buy and mega-keeper. Included is the stunning all-new restoration in a 2K digital film transfer, with my ever-favourite uncompressed monaural soundtrack. All new mini-docs featuring interviews with actors Madhabi Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee, Indian film scholar Moinak Biswas and Bengali cultural historian Supriya Chaudhuri are detailed and full of valuable supplementary insights. I always love Gideon Backmann audio interviews and Criterion includes a doozy with Ray himself. The new English subtitle translation is a marvel and definitely a step forward from the already fine translation in the 1990s Merchant Ivory Foundation restoration. The lovely booklet includes an excellent essay by Philip Kemp and a truly astounding interview with Ray by the inimitable Andrew Robinson.

JODY SHAPIRO: A GUY FOR ALL SEASONS - By Greg Klymkiw - Visionary Canuck Producer/Director Jody Shapiro Launches BURT'S BUZZ @ TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX (the year-round home for all of TIFF's activities, including the Toronto International Film Festival) & several American Cities via FilmBuff (in addition to exclusive USA access via iTunes). Shapiro's Documentary on the legendary Burt Shavitz of the world-famous "Burt's Bees" health products opens June 6 in the US and June 13 in Canada. Mr. Shapiro receives the full-on Klymkiw myth-making body massage in an all-new feature profile exclusive to the UK's coolest online film mag "ELECTRIC SHEEP - A DEVIANT VIEW OF CINEMA" as part of Klymkiw's ongoing Jesuit Relations-inspired column, the "COLONIAL REPORT ON CINEMA FROM THE DOMINION OF CANADA".

JODY SHAPIRO: A GUY FOR ALL SEASONS - By Greg Klymkiw - Visionary Canuck Producer/Director Jody Shapiro Launches BURT'S BUZZ at the majestic TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX (the year-round home for all of TIFF's activities, including the Toronto International Film Festival) & several American Cities (in addition to exclusive access via iTunes). Shapiro's Documentary on the legendary Burt Shavitz of the world-famous "Burt's Bees" health products opens June 6 in the USA and June 13 in Canada. Mr. Shapiro receives the full-on Klymkiw myth-making in an all-new feature profile exclusive to the UK's coolest online film mag "ELECTRIC SHEEP - A DEVIANT VIEW OF CINEMA", part of Klymkiw's ongoing Jesuit-Relations-inspired "COLONIAL REPORT ON CINEMA FROM THE DOMINION OF CANADA".

Burt Shavitz, visionary bee-keeper & public face of the insanely popular
"Burt's Bee's" health products is profiled by filmmaker Jody Shapiro in the
feature-length documentary BURT'S BUZZ, which following its June 6
theatrical/iTunes release in America, enjoys a Canadian Theatrical Premiere @ TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX (the year-round home for all of TIFF's activities, including the Toronto International Film Festival) on June 13, 2014.

JODY SHAPIRO: A GUY FOR ALL SEASONS by Greg Klymkiw

can be read in Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema

by accessing UK's coolest online film magazine HERE

JOURNEY

with Jody Shapiro into the very heart, soul and mind of Burt Shavitz

DISCOVER

the special bond twixt two men from two generations

who share one object of affection

LIVE

the humble beginnings of a nice Jewish Boy

in the neighbourhood of Mel Lastman's North York

EXPERIENCE

Shapiro's post-secondary adventures at York University
and his STRICT tutelage under Niv Fichman

ENJOY

an ALL-EXCLUSIVE Guy Maddin pitch
for a highly-charged erotic scene involving
Jody Shapiro

BASK

in the glory that IS Jody Shapiro as the likes of
STEVE GRAVESTOCK + ISABELLA ROSSELLINI + GAY MADDIN
extol the Great Man's considerable virtues

DELVE

into Shapiro's most intimate personal fantasy
involving culinary arts and wildlife

SHARE

a rare fantasy with two men among men

ALL THIS AND MORE WHEN YOU READ:

JODY SHAPIRO: A GUY FOR ALL SEASONS

BY GREG KLYMKIW at ELECTRIC SHEEP

at http://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/features/2014/06/05/jody-shapiro-a-guy-for-all-seasons/

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Toby Jones overshadows Berberian Pretensions

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
dir. Peter Strickland **1/2
Starring: Toby Jones
Review By Greg Klymkiw

Sound has been with movies almost from the beginning. Long before Al Jolson uttered the immortal words "You ain't heard nothin' yet" in 1927's The Jazz Singer, filmmakers experimented with having original scores composed for their films and even designing live foley and sound effects - all of which were achieved by full orchestras for some of the bigger releases in more established picture palaces. Once the "talkies" came, though, a whole new art and craft began to develop - not just synch sound recordists on set, but all the magicians in the sound studios who created effects, mixed and tweaked the sound and edited the sound.

In this day and age, sound has become, for better or worse (and depending on the film), the primary instigation for how, why, where and when to actually make picture cuts in genre pictures. Sadly, far too many contemporary directors that have absolutely no eye for creating decent action or suspense sequences, rely solely on sound to make up for their lack of talent. Or rather, they think they know precisely what they're doing and have their butts saved by editors as well as the low standards of audiences all afflicted with ADD.

One dreadful (and idiotically overrated) director after another (Christopher Nolan and JJ Abrams to name two especially egregious members of this ever-expanding club of dimwits), piece together a wide variety of badly composed, poorly conceived and mostly close shots, throw them into the post-production blender where picture editors must save the miserable footage by using sound as the driving force behind their cuts rather than propelling the image forward to hit dramatic beats. The moron directors think it's all about pace and creating suspense from cacophony when in actual fact, this style of shooting and cutting exhausts an audience to a point where watching the film has less to do with being able to follow a story as it is to be whacked repeatedly in the face.

We're bludgeoned and pummelled senselessly by sound and a whole whack of great artists and craftspeople in this field are turned into volume (of the amount AND level of audio variety) generators.

While, there are a number of great movies about movies, the only one that brilliantly and perfectly captures the art of sound men is still Brian DePalma's seminal thriller Blow Out which starred John Travolta as a movie sound recordist who tries to solve a mystery using the location sound he's recorded. (The Conversation counts as a great "sound" picture, but its focus is surveillance rather than the movies.)

Berberian Sound Studio could have been the best movie about sound in movies since DePalma's mournful thriller, but finally, it achieves that for about 30 of its 92 minutes until it starts spinning its wheels and diving into bargain basement Lynch-like surrealism and sledge hammer (albeit somewhat disingenuous) commentary on the effects of screen violence.

But, first, let's concentrate on the good.

Set during the heyday of Italian horror/suspense thrillers of the 70s, the picture tells the tale of Gilderoy (Toby Jones), a pathologically introspective sound man (which, ultimately, all great sound guys must be). He's as twee and British as Queen Elizabeth (but not quite as inbred) and he's taken a job presiding over the aural arts being applied in post-production to the latest blood-spattered giallo epic by Santini (Antonio Mancino), the reigning maestro of spaghetti horror.

At first, the film is a loving homage to the magnificent giallo genre and a great fish out of water tale. As Gilderoy works his sound magic on this ultra-violent and decidedly misogynistic gore-fest, things slowly and creepily build (not unlike the best Polanski) to a point where dream, reality and nightmare collide and eventually cross a line where we're experiencing a potential mental breakdown.

Alas, once the picture crosses over into this territory, tedium starts to set in. It's too bad. Toby Jones delivers a crackling good performance, whilst the production design and cinematography go above and beyond the call of duty in creating an atmosphere that seems like it was ripped out of the single greatest movie decade in the history of movies. But, as sure as Dario Argento is Italian, Gilderoy's mind starts to crack under the weight of the long hours, a xenophobic attitude (on both sides of the equation) and image after image of the most brutal violence against women.

What's a bit disappointing is that this is our expectation almost from the beginning and our hope, because the first half hour IS so cool and atmospheric (and a movie geek's wet dream), is that it will not veer into familiar territory. As such, the movie feels like a short film idea stretched out interminably over 90 minutes.

It was fun, however, being in a sound studio that bore all the familiar traces of what it was like to work with real film, mag stock and optical. No digital allowed, thanks! Weirdly, though, the most disappointing aspect next to the by-the-numbers surrealism is the fact that the movie SOUNDS like most movies today.

Oh, how I wish it all sounded like a great centre-speaker mono mix with that gentle hiss that can only emanate from optical and analog sound. If Berberian Sound Studio truly had the courage of its convictions - it should have adhered to every element of the period.

A good script might have worked wonders, also.

"Berberian Sound Studio" originally played during the Toronto International Film Festival's 2012 edition of the Vanguard series. It is currently in theatrical release via FilmsWeLike. In Toronto, it is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

PARADISE: LOVE - DVD review - Review By Greg Klymkiw - First in Seidl's Paradise Trilogy: Strand Releasing DVD Feel free to order any of the following Ulrich Seidl films by clicking on the Amazon.com links just below:

Paradise: Love (2012) *****t
dir. Ulrich Seidl
Starring:Margarethe Tiesel, Peter Kazungu

Review By Greg Klymkiw
"Never have I looked so directly into hell."
-Werner Herzog on Animal Love, by Ulrich Seidl

One almost imagines an off-screen Julie Andrews singing "These are a Few of My Favourite Things" as the lens of filmmaker Ulrich Seidl greedily drinks in globs of fleshy pink corpulence jiggling like mounds of jello, streaked with road maps of stretch marks boring through virtual mountain ranges of cellulite and grotesque cauliflower-like skin tags gripping desperately to spongy thighs like bats in a cave. But no, as the blonde blob adorned in a sun hat flip-flops onto the sunny airport tarmac of a Kenyan resort, surrounded by her equally porcine 40-50-something Austrian maidens, she is greeted with the happy voices of a welcoming party as they joyfully croon "Hakuna Matata." Once happily ensconced in the paradise of the resort, our jolly Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) ogles the rich, lithe, cocoa bodies of her male hosts, salivating with the same delightful desire she might express when gazing upon a platter of rich Viennese pastries, imagining the joy of stuffing them all down her expansive, greedy gullet.

That said, Teresa looks like someone's mother.

And indeed she is. She's left her nasty, blubbery smart-phone-obsessed daughter in the capable care of an aunt. Also behind her is the daily toil of caring for extremely mentally challenged adults. However, the loneliness permeating her single parent existence will soon be filled to overflowing. "Filled" is indeed the operative word here.

She will soon enter the pleasurable heart of darkness known as sex tourism and we know, within seconds, that we have plunged ourselves yet again into the wonderful world of Ulrich Seidl. As noted by director Werner Herzog upon seeing Seidl's early documentary Animal Love, we too are looking "directly into hell".

Seidl is no ordinary obsessive. He's an artist with one of the most unique voices in contemporary cinema. His early documentaries exposed things about humanity (and by extension, ourselves) that we all try to deny as being within us and the rest of the whole wide world. Where Seidl differs from traditional documentarians is his insistence upon shooting in long takes - expertly composed shots with exquisite lighting (or in some cases, starkly appropriate such as when his camera trained itself upon the aforementioned individuals who truly loved their animals - a lot!)

All this went several steps further, however, once Seidl switched gears in 2001 and began to apply his unique mise-en-scene and obsessions in the world of drama with what is inarguably still his greatest picture Dog Days.

Paradise: Love isn't too far behind in terms of its brilliance and impact. The tale of the aforementioned Teresa might prove far to unsettling for some, but like all Seidl, patience and perseverance with pay off.

Some accuse him of being little more than a cinematic equivalent to a freakshow impresario, but this is to remain myopic to what he's really up to. Seidl is indeed a humanist who seeks his quarry amongst the extremities of mankind (and most notably in the backyards of Austria).

With Paradise: Love, Seidl unflinchingly charts a woman's descent into satisfying her most basic sexual needs by exploiting those who are so poor they will do whatever they have to do in order to survive.

Teresa parades along the Kenyan beaches in outfits that accentuate her strudel and schnitzel induced corpulence. It's her fat face emblazoned with lustful wonder that ultimately betrays her slatternly desires. Surrounded by eager, young and almost criminally gorgeous Kenyan men who vie for her attention in the hope she'll buy a lot more than the trinkets they have on offer, Teresa eventually sets her sights on one young lad who, on every level, offers just what she wants.

And as Seidl's camera unflinchingly reveals, what some of these young lads have to offer is jaw-droppingly succulent. I dare even strictly heterosexual male viewers to not fantasize about dropping their own jaws to take in the stunning magnificence that dangles between the thighs of these heartbreakingly beautiful young men. With their smooth gentle voices, glisteningly ripped bodies and irrepressibly insistent promises of the love they will provide, it's not hard to believe that Teresa and her ilk might actually believe it is LOVE they are paying for, not sex.

As per usual in Seidl's dramas, the script is a springboard for the drama created in lengthy, intensive improvisations between professional actors and real people. This results in a number of especially harrowing moments. For all the genuine dark humour the movie generates, there are just as many sequences when Seidl's camera catches the eyes of the beautiful young men (who are indeed - in real life - dirt poor and who have provided their services to women like Teresa many times in their lives).

Their eyes betray desperation and terror. The performances of non-actors and actors alike are imbued with reality and poignancy - so much so that it eventually becomes impossible to laugh and you are, in turn, indelibly overwhelmed and saddened with the naked truth of the world we live in. Humanity is indeed at the top of the food chain, but as it devours its own with through-the-roof relish and frequency, one can only despair at where it will all lead us.

Seidl leaves us with a Kenyan folk music group performing "Hakuna Matata" which, in Swahili is literally translated into English as "There are no worries."

No worries, indeed.

"Paradise: Love" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2012 (TIFF 2012) and is currently available on DVD via Strand Releasing.

SPRING BREAKERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Babes in Bikinis, Babes with Guns, Babes with James Franco.

Babes in Bikinis. Babes with Guns. Babes with James Franco is lots of fun! Look at this shit! This is MY shit! These are my motherfucking GUNS! These are my NUNCHUCKS! All of MY shit! It's the AMERICAN Dream! MY dream!!!

Spring Breakers (2012) ****
Dir. Harmony Korine
Starring: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -
Ted Hughes, from his poem "Hawk Roosting"

Violence permeates every frame of Harmony (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy) Korine's savagely beautiful Spring Breakers and the overall effect of his film places us in an almost hypnotic state where sex, celebration, friendship and love - the very foundations of humanity - give way to acts of barbarism. Savagery and civilization are, by strict definition, polar opposites and yet one gets an overwhelming sense from the world Korine creates, that civilization without savagery is not possible and that furthermore, they're essentially one and the same.

There is, finally, little to distinguish us from animals. We are animals. Rational thought is what supposedly separates us, but the tone of Spring Breakers is haunting and almost elegiac. Though there is a slender narrative to carry us along, the film is ultimately a poetic, visceral and visually stunning representation of creatures driven by instinct and any actions which move beyond that - hence demonstrating some shred of individuality - are either swallowed up, overwhelmed or left behind as the pack mentality of human existence is what finally drives every action.

The movie follows four young women - Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine). They live in a grey, bleak, suffocating and stupefyingly insular dormitory in a tiny, nondescript college town. When we first meet them, they're consumed with the need to join the thousands upon thousands of students celebrating during Spring Break, the annual hedonistic ritual of ingesting libations, hallucinogens, having sex and engaging in all manner of naughty fun as they party hearty under the blazing Florida sun. Alas, they're short of money which, leads them to finance their vacation in ways none of them imagined ever doing. Or did they? It seems that below the layers of their supple, nubile flesh, they have dreams of escape, experience and searching for lives worth living - even if the living involves criminal activity - or at the extremities of their meagre existence, the threat of death to others or, for that matter, themselves.

They seek to defile and be defiled.

Enter: Alien (James Franco). He pulls the girls out of a sticky wicket and they, in turn, stick to him like flypaper. He's a raunchy half-time rapper who's built his own crime dynasty after leaving the fold of his mentor and former best friend, Gangsta Archie (Gucci Mane). It's a bitter rivalry, but there's time enough for old scores to be settled - Alien has debauchery on his mind. Luckily, for him, some - though not all of our young protagonists - are more than up to the challenge of mutually agreeable debasement.

A long night gets longer.

There will be blood and it will spill.

This is the fuckin' American dream. This is my fuckin' dream, y'all! All this sheeyit! Look at my sheeyit! I got... I got SHORTS! Every fuckin' color. I got designer T-shirts! I got gold bullets. Motherfuckin' VAM-pires. I got Escape! Calvin Klein Escape! Mix it up with Calvin Klein Be. Smell nice? I SMELL NICE! That ain't a fuckin' bed; that's a fuckin' art piece. My fuckin' spaceship! U.S.S. Enterprise on this shit. I go to different planets on this motherfucker! Look at my shit. Look at my shit! I got my blue Kool-Aid. I got my fuckin' NUN-CHUCKS. I got shurikens; I got different flavors. Look at that shit, I got sais. I got blades! Look at my sheeyit! This ain't nuttin', I got ROOMS of this shit! I got my dark tannin' oil... lay out by the pool, put on my dark tanning oil...I got machine guns... Look at this motherfucker here! Look at this motherfucker! Huh? Huh? A fucking army up in this shit!

From beginning to end, Korine paints a dreamy portrait of angst, ennui and celebration. The celebratory aspects of the film are captured with seemingly unending slow-motion shots of gorgeous and decidedly anonymous young men and women splashed with sunlight on sandy beaches parading their youth, sexuality and good cheer in various stages of undress - lithe, hard bodies with tanned flesh and splotches of colour that appear almost fluorescent.

There's a strange disconnect, though. Who are these college kids exposing themselves to - each other or the camera (which often feels like an observational character unto itself) or both? Are we experiencing a dream? If so, whose? Are these flash-forwards and/or what our heroines hope/imagine what spring break will be like? After all, they are indeed on these same beaches after scratching up enough bus fare to get to Florida. It's also where they admiringly spy the rapping Alien and he, in turn, locks his greedy eyes upon the girls.

Beneath the smiles and good cheer, the same listlessness Korine focuses upon during the early college dorm sequences seems almost to be the root of the celebratory activities. Everyone appears to be having fun because they're supposed to be having fun. Certainly, this is the feeling when Korine's camera prowls about Gangsta Archie's strip club at night - the dapples of sun are replaced with coloured footlights, stage lights, even fluorescent lights and the colours, while vibrant, seem muted through haze and grain.

Whether he's behind the wheel of his car as he cruises the streets or leaping crazily and boastfully within his beach-side home filled with cash, drugs and a huge arsenal of weapons or on a pier during a peaceful and overwhelmingly radiant sunset, James Franco betrays, ever-so subtly and brilliantly, flashes of genuine regret, dollops of blankness and occasional sparkles in his eyes that seem forced. His work in this film is, almost not surprisingly, astonishing. Whether Alien reveals pieces of his sad back story to the girls or when he goes face to face with his old friend and now rival Archie - we see bravado, to be sure, but we also strongly sense that he's donning a mask. When the film inevitably rushes into the literal explosions of violence that the movie's undercurrents hint at, both Korine and Franco are a director and actor at the very peak of their formidable gifts and power as film artists.

Korine's portrait of youth in a hedonistic environment feels less like a narrative since its genuine dramatic beats feel few and far between. Instead they progressively and increasingly seem like buoys on the water of a fluid-like work of visual poetry, thanks especially due to the stunning work of cinematographer Benoît Debie (Irreversible, The Runaways, Get The Gringo). There's aural poetry also, since Korine slathers his film with the evocative Cliff Martinez-Skrillex score which not so much drives, but permeates the entire film almost non-stop.

SELENA GOMEZ as Faith: "I'm tired of seeing the same thing. Everybody's so miserable here because they see the same things everyday, they wake up in the same bed, same houses, same depressing streetlights, one gas station, grass, it's not even green, it's brown. Everything is the same and everyone is just sad. I really don't want to end up like them. I just want to get out of here. There's more than just spring break. This is our chance to see something different."

Korine is also blessed with a first-rate cast. In addition to the aforementioned and mesmerizing James (can-this-guy-ever-do-wrong?) Franco, Spring Breakers must live and die by the quartet of young women whose story the film ultimately tells and they acquit themselves admirably. The wonderful teen pop singers and former Disney TV moppets Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens (Wizards of Waverly Place and High School Musical respectively) both offer bravura work in roles on opposite ends of the film's centre of morality and their work here is genuinely revelatory. Ashley Benson and Korine's real-life wife Rachel contribute solid work also.

Korine's writing and his direction of the actors yields, for me, his strongest work to date. In particular the film features several expressive monologues rendered by Alien and the girls - usually in the form of exclamatory rants (on Alien's part) and extremely sorrowful speeches by the girls as they leave voicemail messages for their respective family members' via pay phones and/or verbally convey during dialogue scenes where one voice dominates - expressing the hope to return to the simpler lives they've eschewed for ephemeral thrills.

There's a lot of fun and cool shit on the film's attractive surface, but below the flesh of its forbidden fruits, are the layers that run deep, embodying lives with little promise save for the guarantee of misspent youthful activity which might well be metamorphosized into that of those like Alien - men and women who get older, not wiser, and keep clutching to the straws of a party they never want to see end.

But end, it does. When it comes, one can only wonder who was, in this sad, empty world ever really standing tall enough to be left standing at all.

"Spring Breakers" played the Toronto International Film Festival 2012 and a theatrical release that included TIFF's Bell Lightbox. It's now available on an expertly transferred Blu-Ray and DVD combo pack with a solid selection of extras via VVS Films. The movie is a keeper and definitely worth owning.