My Knees Burn At Night

Reviews "Sugar"


SUGAR
Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

2009 Appeared in the journal Sequences

Glory in the detour

In the enclosure of sport movies , Sugar stands handily, pushing the cloakroom platitudes and endless odes to the esprit de corps or neglected. The second feature film of the duo behind Half Nelson overestimated dare get out of what promised to be another simple uptake feat to earn a place in the sun of the professional leagues, a bold step for a genre to be telegraphed.

Land of all controversies, baseball has lost the nobility of his status as American national sport - but also Latino or Asian, should we still remember it - accumulating in recent cases of forfeiture, cheating and 'swelling wage. But if we are to believe his credo "It's not over until it's not over," the discipline rooted in the customs for over 150 years still has many stories before it, so that wondered how that Sugar has been able to remain unexplored in cinema long ago that American players Latin certainly constitute more than half of the troops working under the lights of American major league baseball stadiums for a long time.
Anna Boden and Ryan
Fleck, who had watched from the documentary Young Rebels (2005) the abundance of talent Hispanic - those of Cuban rappers in this case - were interested in the nursery Dominican, which had fueled the alignment Montreal Expos for several seasons, creating the character of Miguel 'Sugar' Santos out of the experiences of several teenagers with the hopes of leaving forever the shallows of San Pedro de Macoris, winning recruiters Major League Baseball (MLB) and thus belong to the American dream.

Santos, a young pitcher on the arm of steel, do not speak English and knows nothing of living in the United States, like most other Dominican prospects. Although we do understand quickly that his impeccable moral could lead to lucrative professional contracts from Uncle Sam, it is difficult to judge its ambitions intimate, introverted as this seems to stifle his passion under a rigid discipline training .

suite fails to clarify the little things being spotted by scouts the MLB then invited to join the camps of recruits in Arizona and Iowa, Santos does not fits in her foster family and in his new environment, yet ideal to hatch his talent. The last third of Sugar , it is difficult to prove without undermining the impact of the film, takes an unexpected tangent, in which Santos jeopardizes his career and let chance dictate his fate rather than statistics and championships. The authenticity of

Sugar is definitely his best asset, you can count on the expertise of the former Expos' Jose Rijo in front and behind the camera is in itself indicative of the seriousness of this company, away from fireworks most other films of the ball. Fleck and Boden also show some dramatic insight to forge links between the modest living conditions of the Dominicans and the humility of populating the rural Midwest, whose enthusiasm for baseball is matched only by their faith in Christian ideals .

The film does not shy clichés and abused by the candid moments of the main character to emphasize the cultural gap between Santos and his adopted home, as evidenced by the scenes of bickering interracial bigotry juvenile and the temptation of anabolic steroids, presumably in an effort to frame as wide as possible on the temptations and setbacks of adulation could contaminate the brightest hopes in the evolving physical and moral guidelines as strict as those of military schools.

Sugar is one of those cases where the solid play of actors and filmmakers will get out of the mysteries of a sort are sealed by the schematic characterization - even fatalistic - the characters and their environment. But taking advantage of the efficiency of the sociological literature and the popularity of a practice inseparable cement Community U.S., Boden and Fleck have been able to avoid the pitfalls of either pan-Hollywood independent film, which is to let the story dictate cultural hierarchies without ever challenging, original or not.


© 2009 Charles-Stéphane Roy

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Review "Sin Nombre"


INS NUMBER
Cary Fukunaga

2009 Appeared in the journal Sequences

The mare rails

Cary Fukunaga, who signed with Sin Nombre his first feature film, was born to Japanese and Swedish. His film is nevertheless a reality any other, that of illegal immigrants from Latin America, while addressing the issue by the band gang enjoying the exodus of capital to impose their rule along the Gulf of Mexico.

This could feed a whole movie in itself, in fact, are rife Mara Salvatrucha expanded along an axis including El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua, who erected a true Pan-American human trafficking cartel, open war with security forces and killings in all layers of society in Central America.

Like many other Latino filmmakers of his generation - to Like Alex Rivera ( Sleepdealer ), Fukunaga took advantage of the many development programs available in the United States against the directors of cultural communities Afro-American, Chicano, Native and Asian as those provided by Sundance Lab, before turning his camera to issues outside of Yankee territory.

What begins as another one of those violent and simplistic tales of the city turns into a manhunt credible and tragic way that few American independent filmmakers are able to do, at times recalling Maria Full of Grace of Joshua Marston. This is hardly surprising if the film was easily distinguished at Sundance last year, vowing with disembodied melancholy and occasional dark humor of many of the contemporary indies Fukunaga.

must see these trains can carry up to 700 passengers 'illegal' - impossible to miss as they are outside the cars - agglutinated pain and misery on the roof, even being whipped by the branches of trees around the track during their journey. The image is immediately striking, as the fatality in which most of they will be hit, while we repeat that only a handful of them manage to live through the Rio Grande.

This approach provides the film a more promising prospect than the usual parade of the pitfalls of each small group. Some want to escape from inhumane conditions while others are looking towards the north to escape their crimes. But among these "unnamed" (free translation of the title of the film) also roam the future bosses ready to eliminate their relatives, hoping thus to earn the respect and especially the protection of the gang. This unsavory alternative is taken here by Smiley, aged only 12, who prefers to go among the tormentors of his best friend Willy, now a fugitive, despite her after liquidating the leader of that band during an ambush in which he participated.

The ubiquitous circle of violence of the film is crystallized in this whole crescendo parallel between the fall of the dolphin and the ascension of his young companion - nothing very subtle or unusual here - but the fact remains that this chronic misery outer border has a frisky performance and unglazed that could foreshadow the introduction. The natural interplay of actors, all non-professional, easily captures our attention by screwing this incredible journey and all that manhood thundering in the dust, blood, sweat and garbage on the way to the Promised Land.

Like many Latin films (and even American) gender, values and moral flexibility characters illico determines their destiny, so the ability to identify those who manage to set foot on American soil seriously undermines efforts to polish up the gender, sociological acuity to the key or not. Fukunaga no exception to this trend, which will nevertheless permit digging up his pass to the U.S. market easier than most characters in his film.

Still, Sin Nombre confirms the revival of young Mexican cinema both uninhibited and having assimilated all points codes Hollywood, especially showing a clear potential for exploitation in the Latino market in the United States. With the consolidation of the industry around the hip new horde composed by Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Guillermo Arriaga, Guillermo del Toro and Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal (both credited as executive producers Sin Nombre) popular cinema Felipe Calderón of the country seems to be doing better than ever, capitalizing on a demonstrated expertise and a renewed interest for significant social issues.

© 2009 Charles-Stéphane Roy

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Review "Tyson" by James Toback


TYSON
James Toback

2009 Appeared in the journal Sequences


A bully in the cables

Iron Mike, among manic manic ? Thus, many might consider the former boxer Mike Tyson before the release of curious documentary that signed his friend James Toback, during his own rehab. Embarrassment professional sports and is intimidating for anyone daring to approach them without caution, Tyson went into this business with the same candor that he was assigned throughout his public appearances, to engage with its legendary lisp a questionable enterprise, between the settlement of accounts (with journalists, his ex-wives, parasites having dispossessed of his fortune and the world of boxing in general) and repentance, self-aggrandizement and the recognition of his thirst for absolute (sexual and athletic, etc.).

After several years away, put away the bad boy - he has a half-dozen brats! - Back and front projectors that have flown past the peak of his popularity; Tyson, it must be remembered, was the only boxer with the exception of Muhammad Ali to fascinate the press and the general public who is interested Never ordinary to the sport. One who considered himself more as an 'entertainer' as a professional athlete was already used to exchange the ring for the sets, especially with Toback, but playing mostly his own role during appearances on TV shows such as Who's the Boss? at Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles and comedy Hangover .

life and career of Tyson were so publicized that this testimony does not bring new information or new insights on his exploits as his misdeeds. This unsuspected least, is this spirit that, failing to convey a coherent discourse, is able to feed and never falter a dizzying succession of essays on vanity, despair, rage, destroy 'his opponent rather than simply defeat him, and, like his flow, fear cruel to slow down, reflect or gloss too long on the significance of his actions, as if to stop, was to die.

Tyson never did stop, even if it means losing family, friends, money, respect, health, moral or right. This frightening fact, that goes beyond the simple moment of lucidity, nor excuse his errors, nor the relative honesty of achieving Toback, but is no less valid an excuse to say once and for all our fascination to these circus animals and dangerous megalomaniac, even long after they have been passed their last KO

© 2009 Charles-Stéphane Roy

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James Toback at the 52nd Festival of San Francisco


52nd Festival of San Francisco
James Toback and Tyson

2009 Appeared in the journal Sequences

turn, this combat sport

Born the same year as the output of Vertigo (1958) Alfred Hitchcock - incidentally shot near the Golden Gate, San Francisco and its film festival, the oldest in North America, submitted this year's Awards Kanbar screenwriting veteran James Toback, one of the few 'bums' paid Hollywood just as John Carpenter, Lech Kowalski or Monte Hellman. Toback has remembered the tortuous path that led it to make a documentary about Tyson's boxing's most controversial 20th century. Sequences was there. Stocky

as a trucker in the Midwest, Toback features the black head to toe, contrasting with his receding hairline and small size. Confessing his weakness for partygoers and cracked, the screenwriter of Bugsy and director Pick-up Artist is rare, however, and prefers the presence of stray cats in the posh neighborhoods of the Coast West.

This is not by accident that he became friends with boxer Mike Tyson in the mid-1980s before it accesses the glory and folly. Toback admit at the outset his gambling problems (his first feature film titled The Gambler incidentally), his frantic consumption of LSD and its legendary orgies alongside the equally legendary football player Jim Brown, he enlisted A few years later Fingers.

launched at Cannes in 2008, Tyson Toback back on center stage despite a television documentary process, some effect attempting to inculcate a spirituality hazardous to the boxer repeatedly jailed and a tendency to excuse his questionable behavior erratic in its operation and simplicity.

"I met Tyson when he was in his early twenties, in the early days of his training, was remembered Toback. I like going to the discovery of others, especially those who are not afraid to use various facets of their personality. LSD had allowed me to open up to other parts of my character, and thus I learned that my other "I" is, believe it or not, a black athlete. I am completely fascinated by them, both in football than basketball as a boxing ring. I also have a natural affection for the paranoid, the character played by James Caan in The Gambler belongs to this category, as Jim Brown. "

As such, Toback also recounted the genesis of Fingers, which he had written the script entirely in an airplane during a flight, and how he managed to convince Jim Brown to recreate the famous scene of sexual violence with two women drawn from his own adventures, which earned him a stay in addition to the penitentiary. The multiple links between Brown and Tyson are obvious.

"Jim Brown had shown us one and the other in 1985 when he was at United Artists called on the board Pick-up Artist (1987) to meet Robert Downey Jr., and it and I offered him a role 12 years later alongside Downey Jr. - who also came out of detox - in Black and White , during which Tyson says with conviction the difficulty to be searched completely in jail. This particular scene prompted me to devote while a movie about it. But as he has had his strange ways between the ring and the prison, the project was postponed several times. I had to leave his rehab in just five days in order to make the film, I did not take any risk and we shot a documentary at home and in the vicinity, then I completed the installation during a whole year. "

Some denounced Tyson filigree friendship between the filmmaker and his subject, but it is highly likely, however, that anyone would have had access to such confidences boxer yet recognized for its lack of inhibition. "You know, Werner Herzog was offered good money to Tyson that he indulges in his camera and then do a portrait of him, but Mike is loyal to his friends and refused friendship for me, knowing that it would derive no monetary benefit from my documentary, despite his honorary title of executive producer of the film, welcomed Toback.

The filmmaker admitted that apart from Tyson, he would have liked to make documentaries about Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Sugar Ray Robinson or Rocky Marciano, "proving that other boxers is a greater proportion of interesting people in boxing than in all other sports combined. "

© 2009 Charles-Stéphane Roy

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15 years of digital cinema


DIGITAL IMAGES
1995-2010 2009 Published in the journal
footage

one dogma to another

The digital revolution as it conceived in the 1990s with the advent of Mini DV cameras and his successors has kept its promises? Almost 15 after the bubble of the Dogme 95 siblings Danish director Lars von Trier, the pixels increasingly dominate the screens, yet the cinematic vocabulary still discovering the possibilities of the medium timidly.

The arrival of Panasonic's Genesis, but especially that of the famous RED One, with its 11.4 megapixel sensor and its ability to capture up to 60 frames per second - more than twice as high a high definition camcorder range, is the end of the genesis of digital cinema as we have tamed, despite the technical limitations of pre-HD formats, who married all the same trash aesthetics unique to the Clinton decade.

The documentary, which by its own budgetary constraints and formal framework for television, had long ago set the video as the standard of the genre, for better or worse. In fiction, apart from the use of video as an insert dramatic - from Jacques and November (1984) Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), reality seen through the lens of these mobile devices to the questionable was at the center of a few introductory works as the first trials of Thomas Vinterberg and Harmony Korine, the infamous Blair Witch Project (1999).

NOT RETURN THE FIELD
Speaking of the film by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, he had quite a presence of mind to attract the crowds with a budget of $ 22 000 suspected and a tall tale. The key to this unexpected success simply stayed within the limits of what the viewer stuck with the limits of sight of each camera, could see, hear and decode especially its environment. Ditto for the recent Picnic aka aka Hooked Pescuit Sportiv (2007) Adrian Sitaru, which pushes this process to the extreme, while the assembly does that alternating viewpoints of the three main characters , fueling the suspicion that they have with others, even imitating each eye straying action.

DO IT YOURSELF
The budding filmmakers, ignored by public funding or established producers, were quick to bypass the laborious minutes of video to create a situation that continues today. Let's ignore list laborious and inevitable omissions, but still include memory El Mariachi by Robert Rodriguez (1992), Clerks . (1994) Kevin Smith Visitor Q (2001) by Takashi Miike, and, next door to us, Jimmywork (2004) Simon Sauvé Happiness is a sad song (2004) François Delisle Daytona the collective Amerika Orkestra, Our Private Lives (2007) or Denis Côté Cedar leaning (2007) Rafael Ouellet. Shot in small teams, often with non-existent budgets, these films exceed the threshold of the underground and often reflect more serious and daring films that called subsidized, but that did not stop him from attending international festivals, they themselves eager for new images.

RULE OF 'I'
The video was used just as much self-centered of all stripes, because nothing is more personal than a good camera back to himself. Tarnation (2003) Jonathan Caouette is an eloquent example, the patchwork pan-film technology since the age of 8 years, the film is based on an uncontrolled amount of personal material to prove the elusive personality of the director, an approach similar to that borrowed equally in perturbative Capturing the Friedmans by Andrew Jarecki (confuses justice with the key), released the same year as incidentally Tarnation, Grizzly Man and (2005) Werner Herzog mythomania bonus.

THE REAL AND THE RATE
The use of video in fiction has perfected, in a less experimental, two kinds suspects and often puerile, the 'Documenter' and the documentary experience. Indeed, what better than a good dose of handheld camera to detect the most unexpected humor in a consensual style almost indistinguishable from the small screen. Again, America is an authority on the genre, courtesy of pseudo-journalistic antics of Michael Moore, especially since Fahrenheit 9 / 11 (2004), the exploits of scatological Jackass: The Movie (2002) Jeff Tremaine American Dream reviewed by My Date with Drew (2004) by Jon Gunn, Brian Herzlinger, Brett Winn, and investigations of zany Religulous (2008) by Larry Charles, who also created Borat (2006).

TIME FOUND
No more shooting periods restricted limits uptake because of the length of the coils and the prohibitionist cost of the film, while the pixel gave back to the filmmakers the luxury of filming when they see fit, with Plans for a term that was unimaginable just a few years ago. Alexander Sokurov has understood very well with Russian Ark (2002), considered rightly as the first masterpiece of the digital cinema plan 99 minutes earned him the title of first feature film that did not require assembly, almost heresy in the land of Vertov and Eisenstein. Beyond its strict performance, the film took the opportunity of filming without film - the battery life of the camera is from here to push the new obstacle - to offer a unique experience of continuity plans, more importantly, a happy amalgam of eras according parts of the Hermitage.

Wang was able to turn to film between 1999 and 2001 the slow disintegration of a Chinese industrial sector declined in the triptych form In the West Rail (2003), a documentary work totaling more than 9 hours. The director has recently doubled the lead with The Journey of Crude Oil (2008), a film installation of more than 14 hours, although his original intention was to produce a work of 70 hours! Ever closer to the cinema and contemporary art, his compatriot Yang Fudong has imitated, in fiction at least, with the anthology of five features Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest (2003-2007), who valued Venice and Sundance, were designed to be viewed in order or disorder.

IMAGES STOLEN
It should not overlook the contribution of digital video in the politicization of images, the equation between technology, light, almost clandestine, and a particular international context - see the incalculable number of films demonizing George W. Bush. This is how Michael Moore was able to shoot scenes intrusive or downright unbeknownst to his interlocutors, or, in a more highly commendable goal, Hugo Latulippe and François Prévost were able to capture the unofficial quest Kalsang Dolma to let his countrymen to speak freely before the camera, a gesture highly objectionable, about the Chinese occupation in Tibetan territory in What Remains of Us (2004). Others, like Lou Ye ( Spring Fever, 2009) were able to deal openly with homosexuality in the open Communist stronghold, and even more startling still, note the side of the operation of the perch Nile around Lake Victoria in the documentary horror Darwin's Nightmare (2004) by Austrian Huber Sauper. BIG PLANS


Digital cinema sees now broad, and rightly, that are already popping a new skill in Hollywood, of Attack of the Clones (2002) by George Lucas and Spy Kids 2 Robert Rodriguez - the first blockbuster shot in HD, until next Avatar (2009) by James Cameron, who will integrate the experience of high-definition gaming and stereoscopic (3D), and renewed life IMAX format since it reformats the guns to U.S. screens giants. Remains whether the debate will continue as the digital revolution or simply a matter of resolution ...

© 2009 Charles-Stéphane Roy