Art & Film: Hopper/Malick

From the canvas to the cinema.

David Liu | 21 January 2012

House by the Railroad (Edward Hopper, 1925; oil on canvas)

Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)

The year is 1916. Bill, Abby and Linda ride the rails from Chicago to the Texas Panhandle, where they work as farmhands on the wheat harvest. Looming over the spacious fields, the farmer’s Victorian mansion evokes both grandeur and solitude. Like Hopper, Malick frames his edifice as an indelible yet impenetrable monument of American enterprise.

Notes on Evolution: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

David Liu | 31 December 2011

From Zodiac’s restless journalists and detectives to Seven’s ruthless killer, from Edward Norton’s white-collar waif in Fight Club to the troubled young entrepreneurs of The Social Network, the heroes and antiheroes of David Fincher’s films are forces of nature, obsessive and meticulous to a fault. Their hunger for progression and distaste for established norms reflect common psychological impulses connecting the director’s body of work.

It’s no stretch to say that Fincher revisits familiar territory with his latest The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The film begins by giving us snapshots of the physically scarred, emotionally neutered Lisbeth Salander, played brilliantly by Rooney Mara. As her relationship with journalist Mikael Blomkvist develops, Salander evolves into a fascinating contradiction — alternating between cool detachment and feral intensity, she comes to embody both spectrums of the “Fincherian” archetype.

The more of Fincher’s films we experience (and experience again), the more they seem to share the same dialectical universe. Every line of dialogue, gesture and expression springs from an unconsummated desire for fulfillment, fragments of colossal puzzles that straddle the divide between revelation and oblivion.

Hip-Hop & Film: Art of the Sample

Throughout the years, feature film scores have provided rich sources of cross-genre experimentation for hip-hop artists.

David Liu | 27 December 2011

Song: “Blueprint²” by Jay-Z 
Sample: “The Ecstasy of Gold” by Ennio Morricone
Film: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)

Producer Charlemagne preserves the grandeur of Morricone’s iconic opening piano riff and ensuing operatic sweep. (See also: samples by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony on their 2007 track “We Workin’” and by David Fincher for an NFL commercial starring LaDainian Tomlinson and Troy Polamalu.)

Song: “Burnt Offering“ by Blue Scholars
Sample: “Moon River” by Henry Mancini & Johnny Mercer
Film: Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961) 

The Seattle-based duo of Prometheus Brown and Sabzi are self-professed cinephiles, and their jazz-tinged re-interpretation of the Mancini classic resonates with cosmopolitan refinement.

Song: “RoboCop” by Kanye West 
Sample: “Kissing in the Rain” by Patrick Doyle
Film: Great Expectations (Alfonso Cuarón, 1998)

After skillfully juxtaposing string instruments with rap vocals on 2005’s “Gone,” West pushed the envelope further with this lush, angst-ridden arrangement of Doyle’s score.

Song: “It’s Mine” by Mobb Deep & Nas
Sample: “Tony’s Theme” by Giorgio Moroder
Film: Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983) 

Larger than life: Queensbridge’s most illustrious products join forces over a prominent instrumental tribute to one of cinema’s most celebrated underworld figures.

Song: “Dance with the Devil” by Immortal Technique
Sample: “(Where Do I Begin?) Love Story” by Francis Lai
Film: Love Story (Arthur Hiller, 1970) 

Drenched in irony, Technique’s 10-minute tale of a young would-be gang member’s vanishing illusions elevates its melancholy source material to unsettling heights.

Closing Shots: David Fincher

A collection of final shots from the works of David Fincher.

David Liu | 18 December 2011

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GREAT SCENES
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949) 

“That’s the order of human life and history: to expect such immediate happiness is a mistake. Happiness isn’t something you wait around for. It’s something you create yourself. Happiness comes only through effort.”

—

Born today (12 December): Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu (小津 安二郎), who, despite never marrying, captured gentle, profound portraits of families through the lens of marriage, death and generational differences in postwar Japan.

After a protracted battle with cancer, Ozu passed away in his hometown of Tokyo on his birthday in 1963. He was 60.

Ozu’s signature style — static visual compositions and austere, contemplative frames — has gone on to influence a generation of contemporary filmmakers, among them Jia Zhangke, Mike Leigh, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang and Wim Wenders, who once called Ozu his “only master.”

Age of Turbulence

Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins

David Liu | 9 December 2011

Call it a requiem for the Age of the Samurai — Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins opens with a disgraced man committing a public act of seppuku and ends with a lone samurai walking off-screen in the aftermath of a violent showdown, navigating his way through an irreversible swath of ruin.

Set in the turbulent years of 1840s Japan, the film begins by dividing its time between two narratives. We witness firsthand the repulsive sadism of Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki) and his ruthless determination to hold onto power in the waning years of the shogunate government, and then follow veteran samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) as he assembles a team of courageous men on a mission to assassinate Naritsugu. 

The parties converge in the form of a bravura battle sequence sustained over the film’s final 45 minutes, in which the samurai — relentless guardians of a dying way of life — clash in breathtaking fashion with Naritsugu’s corrupt legions. In its exquisite recreation of a lost world, Miike’s strongest picture to date attains poignant, magisterial dimensions.