Season 3 of Homeland just as great as Season 2

Season 3 of Homeland absolutely picks up with 2 left off and is every bit as gripping as the first two seasons - a rarity among series that often deflate as they move beyond the initial plot lines - and the first disc, with 4 episodes, has very helpful "previously on" sections at the head of each episode (on the other hand, these discs, from Fox 21, are horribly designed and require you to sit through endless previous each time you re-open). A couple of the great things about Season 3: most of all the incredible Claire Danes with the most expressive face on film or television, clearly at the center once again, suffering from her bipolar disorder, off her meds, blamed as the consort of Brodie who is suspected (even by us, perhaps) as the one who bombed CIA headquarter, and thrown "under the bus" by Saul (Mandy Patinkin), now acting head of the CIA - she knows or believes that they want her out of the picture because she knows too much and that they will no doubt kill her and make it look like a suicide of a mentally ill person; she goes to the press but her behavior is so frantic and bizarre that nobody is likely to believe her rant that the CIA is out to get her - sounds like classic paranoia (some may recall the very funny take on similar dilemma in the old Jerry Lewis movie The Big Mouth). As she's held against her will in a psychiatric hospital, we see Brody (in episode 3) held by some thugs in a cell-like housing complex in Venezuela - not completely clear yet who they are or why they're holding him except that he, like Danes/Kerry knows too much. Brody's daughter, Dana, runs off with a boyfriend in a plot element that seems increasingly peripheral except that she is emerging as a terrific young actress - perhaps the Claire Danes of her generation. Tremendously interesting plot twist in episode 4 that I won't divulge. Altogether a great series - two oddities, though. So funny to see not only Patinkin but alongside him F Murray Abraham as the two honchos running the CIA: who knew it was an agency run by a couple of aging Jewish tummlers? Second, Brody's sudden appearance in Caracas (he'd fled north to Montreal, last we saw) and his temporary escape into a nearby mosque (!) seems so odd - a relic from the original Israeli series when no doubt the Brody character escaped to Lebanon or Jordan: couldn't they have made a more credible plot element here? Third, some of the CIA agents and actions seem almost absurdly competent - impossible to reconcile with an agency that didn't even recognize the terrorist in its midst.

Lights, camera, silence: About as far as the silent film could go - Pandora's Box

Obviously silent movies are not for everyone and even for those willing to go there you generally have a period of adjustment to a completely different cinematic grammar and narrative pace. I've watched G W Pabst's Pandora's Box over the past few days, and it did take me a day or two to begin appreciate the beauty and originality of this 1929 film. I watched it with the pretentious and overly academic commentary on (Criterion edition), which is pretty easy to do w/ a silent, even on first viewing. Eventually, just tried to focus on the film and not the commentary, though did learn a bit about the background - based on a Wedekind play which later became a Berg opera (Lulu), the film focuses on a sexually promiscuous and alluring - to both genders - young woman, Lulu, who over a span of a few years marries a doctor, arouses his intense jealousy, shoots him (accidentally? it's not so clear) to death after a quarrel, is tried and convicted but escapes in the post-verdict mayhem, runs off with her son-in-law (also in love with her, as is the father-like wizened figure who also pimps her), escapes by train, is blackmailed by a scoundrel who recognizes her from news photos, hides out on an offshore gambling ship, escapes arrest there heads off with son-in-law and pimp by rowboat for London, where they live in a garret, she works as a prostitute, and is killed by a client - Jack the Ripper. Quite the melodrama! A few outstanding elements: first of all the great Louise Brooks in the title role is completely glowing and lively; Pabst obviously wanted an American actress who brings her particular verve to this Germanic production; second, the acting across the board - possibly the best and most naturally acted silent of them all, with none of the stagey, eye-popping posing that characterizes the genre; 3rd, beautiful cinematography, especially some of the soft-focus shots of Brooks and the final foggy sequences in London darkness, 4th, the minimalism, the whole story told in images, with very few intertitles over the 2+ hours; 5th incredibly imaginative and well-crafted scenes, complex even by contemporary standards, such as the backstage during the variety show, the crowded train corridor with a lot going on shot in very tight quarters, the Salvation Army scene in London, spooky and haunted: the Salvation Army girl to Jack the Ripper: Can I help you, brother? Not a film for all, but a great example showing how far silents could go toward true cinematic interior drama.

A taut, exciting, surprising espionage movie and a documentary I could not finish

The Norwegian film Two Lives by Georg Maas is a terrific spy drama that is unfortunately destined for obscurity because it's in Norwegian and awash in arcana of post-War European politics and features no well-known actors except for Liv Ullman in a secondary role. Too bad - once you figure out the overall political background for this film - Norwegian people were extremely intolerant of the women who consorted with occupying Nazi soldiers and removed their children and sent them to Germany; years later, the East German government used some of these Norwegian-German children as strained spies infiltrated into Norway (and elsewhere) - this, apparently, all true - and the movie is also apparently loosely based on an actual unsolved murder connected with this espionage. In any event, the plot is intriguing and tight, keeps you guessing but eventually supplies all the answers, along with many surprises, twists, and emotionally taut scenes. Great pace, some fine acting, lots of moral ambiguity - as well as some real pure evil; unlike so many other spy films this one not awash and bluster nor in excessive violence and mayhem - no superheroes, just a seemingly ordinary family holding lots of mystery and living on the edge of danger without being aware of that. Maas makes us feel sorry not only for the poor duped family members - notably the well-meaning but utterly deceived husband Bjarte - but also for the perpetrator. I won't give away any more - definitely worth watching, and perhaps someone will try to remake this in English for wider distribution, and I hope they don't ruin it in doing so. Fat chance.

By the way also watched or tried to watch the documentary Manakamana, which is billed as a movie that follows pilgrims in Nepal as they travel to a mountainous shrine; it's a documentary of the sort that I admire - no commentary, no interviews, no added soundtrack - just the camera capturing the incidents as they unfold before it (Sweetgrass is a perfect example) - but in this case: first, we watch a long take, camera steady no editing, of an old man and presumably his grandson riding an aerial lift up a mountainside - no dialog at all - it's quite a breathtaking journey, scary and beautiful. Then we watch a young woman on the same journey. About 20 minutes gone now. As a 3rd journey started, I flashed ahead on the movie and saw that the entire movies is the same aerial lift repeated 15 or 20 times. OK, perhaps each is an interesting document in itself - but is this worth an whole movie? I thought we would actual follow some of these people, learn a little about them and about the pilgrimage, something. Maybe this could play on an endless loop somewhere and people could enjoy moments of it as they pass by the screen or monitor, but it's certainly not designed for anyone to watch it straight through - at least not me, babe. 

Gauranteed that you will learn something from Particle Fever

Whether you know anything about particle physics or not, still worth seeing the Levinson documentary Particle Fever, which follows over about 5 years the development of the CERN collidor in Switzerland and the eventual confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson particle, believed to the the particle that enables the other particles to come together and form atoms, molecules, and in fact the entire physical world of our universe. By following about 5 main characters - three physics theorists and two experimentalists, the ones who confirm the theories, or not - Levinson makes this arcane material very clear to the lay audience - lots of good graphics and illustrations, some quite witty, and a strong sense of each of the main narrators, who are obviously each great teachers and communicators and thoroughly engrossed in their subject. We get a sense of how vast the experiment is in a way that none of the news accounts quite captured, and of the stakes of the experiment: in confirming the existence of Higgs boson, the physicists also get information as to whether our universe is unique but surrounded by an infinite # of other universes or whether the rules of physics are consistent across the entire universe, and that the universe is one. We see how much is at stake on a personal level for each of these physicists, especially the older ones who may learn from the results that their life of theorizing has taken them down a dead end. As one boldly puts it: Moving from one great failure to another is form of success. Levinson deserves credit for even seeing that there was potentially great material here - it will remind you, to a degree, of movies and documentaries about the space program, with large teams of scientists gathered tensely waiting for outcomes; though the film breaks no new cinematic ground - and I wish he had foregone the annoying soundtrack and let the natural sounds speak for themselves - he made great choices in his main characters and conveyed really complex material in simple forms, terms, and images.

The strengths and weakneses of La Terra Trema

Visconti's 1948 La Terra Trema feels very dated but still has its intriguing narrative power and is worth watching, despite its length (2+ hours) and poor image quality, grainy and jumpy b/w (the CD we were watching stopped dead in final minutes, but by then we had the picture): story of a family of fishermen in Sicily that, led by brother Ntoni, who'd seen a bit of the world or at least of Italy during Army service, refuses to sell their catch on the cheap to the local fish merchants, gets a loan and buys their own boat, and bucks the system - with the hope of inspiring all the other fishermen in the village to join them and get a fair price for their catch. Everything goes wrong, however, and the family ends up ostracized and impoverished. It's a long melodrama, with a clear and vibrant leftist message that, unfortunately, Visconti hammers home with all the subtlety of a blow to the forehead, Again and again the characters - all played by actual fishermen and workers from the small village - utter their thoughts in set pieces with a kind of charming awkwardness. Godard later picked up this technique for his later, didactic films. The film is worth watching, though, for its documentary account of the impoverished lives in postwar rural Italy: we really see every aspect of the lives of the fishermen and their families, from the crowded housing conditions, the dire poverty - clothes and caps rent with rips and holes and only rarely a pair of shoes - the constant battle against the cold, the wet, and the dangerous sea. Visconti brings us right into the lives of his characters; their lack of professional polish becomes the great strength of the film - we know that these are real people, whose struggle will go on long after the film is completed. If only it were shorter and more compact - Visconti should have trusted his audience more, just as he trusted his cast and crew.

Great idea for a documentary - but the arc of the story flat-lines

Gaston Solnicki has a good idea for a documentary and I greatly admire his stylistic and narrative integrity but that the end of the day I think is film Papirosen just doesn't work - perhaps two shapeless, perhaps too opaque, but I could just never make sense of it, and, when the pieces started coming together toward the end, I had to wonder whether the destination was worth the journey. We've seen many great family documentaries in recent years - thinking of Finding the Friedmans, Dear Zachary, that one set in Long Island in which the children learn about their parents' various affairs and crushes, Stories We Tell - each with its own rules of narration, and among them Solnicki's is the most pure: unlike the others there are no voice-overs, no interviews, no re-enacments, the entire documentary is built of contemporary film of family members, living in Argentina (there seems to be a segment of a visit to the U.S., but Solnicki never gives us any context or grounding) and toward the end visiting Poland, from which the family fled after WW II, mixed with some archival family footage, on what seems to be grainy Super 8 transposed to video. There are a few marvelous scenes that it's hard to believe any filmmaker could capture and I suspect Solnicki was able to do so because he shot so much footage over so long a period of time that his family "learned" to ignore his shooting: father disciplining the young boy Mateo for calling him a liar, the family gathered with some English-speaking refugees and remembering the old country and its songs (including the title song, which they translate as "cigarettes" - perhaps it was a brand of cigarette? - but what a poor and obscure title for this film), arguments about one of the women's addiction to shopping, the father - main character - trying to persuade his elderly mother to start living off her savings rather than off contributions from her children (i.e.,him); this father is the main character, but we don't really begin to focus on him till well into the film and I didn't feel I got a clear sense of how his childhood and his family history as refugees shaped him - no great family secrets revealed, either - we just, in the end, see the father as a cranky, moody, 70-year-old man who has a soft spot for and is very tender with his young grandchild. If ever a movie needed more of a narrative arc, it's this one.