Five Favorite Films of 2011

Last week, the 2012 Oscar Nominations were released, with Martin Scorsese's Hugo winning 11 nominations & Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist with a close 10. It's interesting that these two have the most nominations, because these two are similar in themes. Many reviewers have said of both films that they are love letters to cinema, but isn't every film a love letter to cinema (as one reviewer said that Fast Five was a love letter to film). Even so, here is my short love letter to the films of 2011 that I found significant.

5. Poetry- Directed, produced, & written by Lee Chang-dong, Poetry follows Yang Mija (Yoon Jeong-hee), a grandmother who is searching for the beauty in life. Mija found out that she has Alzheimer's disease & her mental condition is expected to get much worse. On top of that, her grandson & his friends raped a schoolmate, which lead to her suicide. In order for the victim's family to keep quiet, the boys' parent must pay them off & money is something Mija doesn't have. Still, the poetry class she is taking causes Mija to look at the world differently & inspires her. Jeong-hee gives one of the best performances of the year in this film, which makes unexpected yet quiet turns in this sad & elegant film.

4. The Artist- This film has been making quite a stir because it is a modern-day silent film, but it is not just a gimmick. Director & writer Michel Hazanavicious wanted to transport the audience back to the day when silent films were dying & talkies started popping up. He does it with a story about a silent film star (Jean Dujardin) who loses everything when he isn't able to transition to the new Hollywood films. The film is charming, romantic & proves the old cliché that "silent films were never silent" & silent films aren't really dead.

3. Beginners- Inspired by his father, Mike Mills created a bittersweet film about an artist, Hal (Ewan McGregor), whose father, at the age of 85, declares that he is gay. Hal starts a relationship with a French actress (Mélanie Laurent), but their past relationships & the relationship of both their parents cause uneasiness with the new couple. The film is assembled with many interconnecting flashbacks that give greater depth to characters who are searching for what we're all looking for in life: happiness.

2. Melancholia- In this apocalyptic film, a Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is miserable on what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life. Her wedding turns out to be a complete failure thanks to family tensions & the bride's depression. Also, a rogue planet, Melancholia, is heading directly to Earth, threatening to destroy everything. Anyone who has seen a Lars Von Tier film knows that they are emotional, uncomfortable, & unique & this may be the clearest vision I have seen from the Danish filmmaker. It is a depressing film, but that's what you get from a film that is an allegory of depression.

1. Tree of Life- Tree of Life may be one of the most controversial films this last year, not because of its content, but because of its form. Sean Penn, who had a supporting role in the movie even said, "The screenplay is the most magnificent one that I've ever read but I couldn't find that emotion on the screen." What he's talking about is the film's jump cuts, the arbitrary lines spoken over astronomical visions & the soft plot center, which is what I loved about the film. It follows a boy, Jack (Hunter McCracken), who has a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). We view a year in the life of Jack & his family living in Texas during the 50's, yet we are also met with a 17-minute, creation of Earth sequence & juxtaposed together, we get a spiritual journey that is reminiscent of 8½ & 2001. I viewed Tree of Life as visual poetry that is meditative, epic, & enlightening.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Signal to Noise

Signal to Noise tells the story of a nameless film director who is dying of cancer. Struggling with the idea that he only has a couple of months left, the director debates over writing his final script; the script & the film that he has been wanting to make for years. He storyboards the magnum opus in his head & eventually writes the film, knowing that he won't see the finished product. In the end, he states that he feels better, not because his cancer has remitted, but because he came to terms with his immortality, because "the world is always ending for someone."


Neil Gaimen wrote Signal to Noise & the artwork was by Gaiman's frequent collaborator, Dave McKean. The novel doesn't really have a clear plot center; the story often goes in & out of the director's head as he plans out the film, which is about villagers in the year 999 a.d. who think that the world will end at the start of the new millennium. The narrative juxtaposes conversations the director has with those closest to him along with the narrative of the screenplay.

McKean's artwork is something to behold in this work. It is often a collage of painting, drawing, photographs & digital art & contains many visual metaphors that go along with the narrative. McKean, for the most part, keeps the panels, which breaks up the images. Each page is its own artwork, but the panels become a piece on their own.

Signal to Noise is heady, cerebral, & expressive. I think it is flawed of me to call it a narrative, but rather a reading of an emotion. It shouldn't be viewed as a graphic novel, but as graphic poetry, where you read it & consider the works possibilities.

The Origami Art of Brian Chan

I've discovered some fascinating origami figures from artist Brian Chan. These realistic insects shown below are all from one sheet of paper. Also, later this year, we're planning on having a origami exhibit involving origami from various artist & incorporating them with books from the JCBA, so start looking forward to that.

Flying Grasshopper

Mayfly

Design for the Mayfly

Dorcus Curvidens

Allomyrina Dichotoma

Locust

Water Strider 

The Ink Dial by Terrence Chouinard

I'm looking for some help, fellow JCBA fans. Terrence Chouinard is hoping to make an Ink Dial, a machine that will disperse ink for printers. No more eyeballing, guessing, or weighing when mixing & trying to get the color ink that you want. It would be a great invention for all our letterpress printers & book artists, but Chouinard is having trouble raising money for the machine. His goal of $35,000 is coming up next week, & he has less than $10,000. If you donate $35, you'll help out with this great project & you'll get a letterpress print out of it, too. Not to shabby.

The Ink Dial

Two-View Movie Review: The Triplets of Belleville

The Triplets of Belleville is a French animated film by Sylvain Chomet that follows a grandmother & her grandson, who has the dream of winning the Tour de France. During the race, a pair of blocky, suited men kidnaps the grandson. The grandmother & her dog follow the kidnappers all the way to Belleville, a grand metropolis at the other end of the ocean. In a unknown land, the pair get help from the Triplets of Belleville, an aged singing group from the 30's, now poor & left with eating frogs. They find out that the grandson was kidnapped by a mobster who created an underground gambling ring with bicyclists' endurance & life being bet on.

Chomet's film is highly artful & creative & he combined drawing & computer-imagery to created the very distinct & fluid nature of the characters. All the characters have their own physically tendencies & movements in which we get the characters' personalities from, since this is a dialogue free film. The characters talk in squeaks & squawks that are indiscernible, making this a universal film special for this global economy. That may be why it has become such a cult favorite. Anyone can pick it up & enjoy it. The film pokes fun of the French, by overly emphasizing their love of the Tour de France & frog legs, & America, by displaying the populous as being fat & loving hamburgers. It is also a worldwide hit probably because the film is funny, touching, & features some really great, stand-up-&-boogie music.

Center Paige: Direction of the Road

Direction of the Road is a favorite among JCBA fans & employees. Science fiction & fantasy writer Ursula Le Guin wrote the story & artist Aaron Johnson constructed the book, box & images. The book is made out of over-beaten homemade linen paper & bound together in a long stitch. The text is letterpress printed & paper leave are pasted on every page. The book is held in a portfolio box & on the inside of the box's cover is a woodcut image. On the inside of the spine of the box is a tube covered with reflective polymer.

The story follows the life of an oak tree that lives in a field by a road. It has solitary life by the road with the exception of the occasional squirrel or bird. The tree also has a job to fulfill. It must grow larger as things get closer to it & smaller as things get further away. The tree can even grow larger on one side & smaller on the other as things travel down the road & the tree can do it in its sleep. The tree gets use to people traveling on horses & wagons, but soon notices loud, horseless wagons more & more. One of these high-speed cars caused the oak to leap in front of the car, causing the tree to make the decision to kill the driver. The tree was not happy about the mortal decision it had to make, but the driver didn't follow the North-South rules of the road. The tree had to kill him, but it is not a job that oaks are made for.

The whole story not only takes an interesting perspective, that of a tree, but also the way the tree sees the world is interesting. The tree sees itself the way we would see a tree. The tree grows bigger & smaller, or the tree moves slowly or at sixty miles per hour, depending on your ride. We also see the changes in the tree's world that come from changes in ours. The air smells, birds that travel to the tree lessen, & the tree gains new jobs. It not only has to provide shade to travelers, homes to animals, but also kill those who don't follow the rules.

Aaron Johnson took the story's unique POV & incorporated it with book. For one, the over-beaten pages make a rustling noise, much like that of leaves blowing in the wind. The leaves pasted on the pages turn green to brown as the story goes on, conveying life transitioning to death. But the most surprising & creative aspect of the book is the woodcut inside the box, which looks like a warped image of indistinct lines surrounding a circle. If you place the reflective tube on the circle, you realize that the woodcut is actually a warped image of a tree that has to be viewed on the tube & details like birds & a man sitting under the tree become clear. It is an anamorphic image, anamorphic meaning "to transform" in Greek, & is an art form first experimented with by Leonardo di Vinci.


Everything about Direction of the Road, from the box to the story to the art to the paper, is to convey & reiterate Le Guin & Johnson's themes. That is why is a favorite here at the center & new audience members always get a kick out of this book.

Graphic Novel of the Month: In the Shadow of No Towers

"Waiting for that other shoe to drop!" That is the theme for Art Spiegelman's first page of In the Shadow of No Towers & ultimately the theme of the whole book, which is Spiegelman's graphic essay about the anxiety & paranoia that came about after the 9/11 attacks on the Two Towers.  When open, the book is too be read length-wise & is newspaper sized. The 10-page book starts from Spiegelman's thoughts on the attacks to the coming year filled with odd politics & fear-mongering. Spiegelman claimed he created the book to get over his post-traumatic stress disorder caused by being in New York City during that tragic time.

The pages contain many of the characters from Spiegelman's other books & he will often randomly turn into a mouse, much like his highly popular & highly acclaimed book Maus. The glowing, ghostly frames of the towers are incorporated throughout the book. At the end of the book is a number of old comic strips that Spiegleman helped get him through creating the book, including The Yellow Kid & Little Nemo in Slumberland. In the Shadow of No Towers is a fine example of an artist working through his inner & outer demons.