Archive - August, 2008
On Brakhage
“Working in the early 1960s with wide strips of cellophane packing tape, Brakhage captured fleeting things — among them, blades of grass, pieces of flower petals, dust, dirt and the diaphanous, decapitated wings from insects. His process revolved around using the tape to produce a series of facsimile filmstrips: wider than the elegant Super-8 that was his hallmark medium (Mothlight, a mere three minutes in length, was actually shot on 16mm) but long and geometric: they’re a suite of attenuated rectangular portraits. The idea of using adhesive tape as a photographic medium (which is effectively what it is, capturing something in time on a single surface) represents the kind of visual simplicity — indeed, the sheer brilliance — of one man’s indefatigable effort to visualize an idea. It is, in a word, astonishing.”
Defining the Redux
The word “redux” is Latin meaning “brought back”. In cinema this has come to mean a reworking of a previously released film, as in the case of Francis Ford Coppola’s 2001 “Apocalypse Now Redux”. By creating a “redux” of a film, the director is in essence overwriting the original version, the new cut becoming the definitive cut. It is moreover a second chance to get it right, regardless of whether or not your audience agrees.
This is, of course, different than a “Director’s Cut” which is the way that a film would have been made if the director had been granted final cut privileges. Seems simple enough until you consider that Ridley Scott released the Director’s Cut of Blade Runner ten years after the original release and then, in 2006 released Blade Runner: The Final Cut (to be fair, the 1992 Director’s Cut of the film was completed in a rush and without Scott’s full attention and therefore didn’t technically fit the criteria. There are, in fact, 7 different versions of Blade Runner in existence).
A redux is apparently also different from what George Lucas did in 2004 to the original 3 Star Wars movies. That treatment, which more or less brought the CGI effects up to par with their more recent prequels, was simply termed a “re-release” even though Lucasfilm would go on to state that the the 2004 Special Edition was now the “canonical” version of the original trilogy.
And so, with all that said, this October, Wong Kar Wai will be releasing “Ashes in Time Redux”, his “re-envisioning” of his critically acclaimed 1994 martial arts epic. So why has Kar Wai decided that his film needed to be “brought back”? From what I’ve read in the fan forums there are hardly any deleted scenes added to this new cut. Indeed, the run time is actually shorter now. The most noticeable difference is the reordering of certain scenes which makes the story tighter, more coherent. As Lee Marshall from Screen Daily states:
The first surprise about Wong Kar-wai’s revamped, re-edited and rescored version of his 1994 cult wuxia classic Ashes Of Time is just how little has been changed. The second is how much these minor tweaks still have helped clarify the Hong Kong auteur’s interpretation of Louis Cha’s historical fantasy novel The Eagle-Shooting Hero, confirming that his most poetic, experimental film belongs not in the curiosity cabinet but on the big screen.
From the looks of the trailer, the film looks to be nothing short of spectacular and in line with the other epic battle styled movies that seem to pervade today’s mainstream cinema. So perhaps “bringing back” a film has as much to do with timing as it does with how you cut it.
Beggars to Exiles
Currently showing at the San Francisco Art Exchange is Beggars to Exiles: The Photography of Michael Cooper and Dominique Tarle, that documents the Rolling Stones between 1967 and 1971, a period during which the band singlehandedly defined the archetype of the rock n roll star –the fashion, the drug busts, the groupies, the villa in the south of France — for all who followed.
Though somewhat of a pain to navigate, the online version of the exhibit is quite comprehensive and includes such insights as:
To record “Exile on Main Street” Keith Richards rented Villa Nellcôte, the “Gestapo headquarters during the Second World War,” complete with swastikas on the floor vents. The basic band for these sessions is believed to have consisted of Richards, Bobby Keys, Mick Taylor, Charlie Watts, Jimmy Miller, and Jagger when he was available. Bassist Bill Wyman did not like the ambiance of the Richards’ villa and sat out many of the French sessions.
Brilliant.
Britain seen from the skies above
Trailer for a new BBC series that uses satellite tracking and computer imaging to map the “unseen ballet of Britain”.
