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Daniel Gomes
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Mirrormask (2005)
The final product is good ...
I was prepared to say that the movie sucks and that Dave McKean should grab his friend Neil Gaiman and go make some comics, because they don't now anything about movies. But the first minutes of it were enough to change my expectations. Put apart some small mistakes (that any not experienced director can make) Dave McKean shows great sense of direction, understanding of the mechanics of a movie and some editing abilities. Moreover, he uses surprisingly well the camera, with interesting movements and a impressive use of wide angle lenses, given a fantastic feel to the scenes without the necessity of special effects.
But then we get to the dream part of the movie. Here is the real history, the plot, and unfortunately it's weak, dealing with the same old concept of dark and light, and the same easy connections and turns of fantastic teenager movies. Some nice characters appear here. Some of them are recurrent in Neil Gaiman's universe and some are just funny adaptations of mythological ones, like the confused riddle effigy. Some good lines here too, like the Prime Minister wondering: "What if it was the chicken?". unfortunately, there's not yet the possibility of real direction of special effects. Nowadays I always get the feeling that when the graphic effects starts, the computers, or the programmers, are the ones in charge. The nice and interesting direction we see in the first minutes completely disappear in the dream land, and all Dave McKean is doing is coordinating and superposing special effects.
The final product is good though. The "design" is amazing and the visual is intriguing, and I have to say here that McKean is one of the best in his field. The plot suffers a little as I said before, but it also has good moments and the general idea go a long way. Isn't it really the mother's dream? About how her daughter would react to her passing? Finally, I have to say that the girl is cute, as cute as one can be wearing pj's and those rabbit shoes.
Baile Perfumado (1996)
The best film made in Brazil this decade
Baile Perfumado (Perfumed Ball) is a wonderful experimentation on cinema language, the way it works with the colors, the narrative and the mitology of one of the most interesting name in the brazilian history; it shows the creative that is miss in the arts of nowadays, and that was the essence of brazilian cinema. Baile Perfumado is the hope of a new stile of cinema in Brazil, of course there are order goods films made here in this decade, like Central do Brazil (Central Station), but nome of them shows the creation power of Baile Perfumado, the innovation that resembles us to the films of Glauber, Nelson Perreira, and other names of Cinema Novo.
La nuit américaine (1973)
fantastic portrait of cinema making
Light, camera, Truffaut in action. We are in Nice, we are making a movie! We are making a movie with one of the greatest genius of the seventh art, and one of the very few directors able to make a film about and with the rithymun of a cinema set. Day for Night, or La Nuit Américaine, is a fantastic portrait of cinema making, made for those who live the cinema, for the great directors, and for everybody that is part of the cinema world and that make it possible.