Movies

We can see George Clooney and Sandra Bullock lost in orbit in the trailer of Gravity a sci-fi drama directed by Alfonso Cuarón, written by him in collaboration with his son Jonas Cuaron and fellow filmmaker Rodrigo Garcia. A confluence that could definitely an interesting report us so philosophical and metaphorical movie like Children of Men, but I feel that much more distressing.

In Gravity, Ryan Stone is a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, while Matt is a veteran astronaut Kowalsmy command of his last flight before retiring. During a routine out disaster strikes when their shuttle is destroyed, swept through a field of debris resulting from the explosion of an asteroid. Completely alone and out of control in the darkness, the deafening silence tells them they have lost any link to Earth ... and any possibility of rescue. When fear turns to panic, every gulp of air finishes with little oxygen is left. But the way home could involve extending through space frightening.

Admission Gravity: George Clooney and Sandra bullock lost in outer space appears first in Extracine .

Spanish cinema mourn again. Three months after serving 80 years, dies in Madrid an authentic Spanish cinema icon: Alfredo Landa. Goya of Honor in 2007, having won two Goyas for Best Actor for two splendid films of José Luis Rope, The Living Forest and The sow. It is also one of only two Spanish who have received the award for the best performance at the Festival de Cannes, the other being Francisco Rabal, and getting it both ex-aequo for their respective performances in the same film: The Holy Innocents, fabulous adaptation from the novel by Miguel Delibes directed by Mario Camus.

I have both on the Goya of Honor ... I owe to my profession has been the best of my life, what I appreciate most.

If in his long career include key titles in the history of Spanish cinema, as Robbery at three, The Executioner, television stories, Ninette and a lord of Murcia, the city is not for me, The river that leads or Tata mine, his name would appoint a Spanish comedy subgenre, the landismo, which proliferate in the last years of Franco. Gender worthless and outdated today to be held for further approval of the scheme by the more conservative section of Spanish cinema, represented by filmmakers like Peter Lazaba nothing memorable, José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, Mariano Ozores or Vicente Escrivá, but striking , peculiar and even comic titles like once a year does not hurt to be a hippy, Single and life mother, Cateto to port, not covet your neighbor's fifth hormone Although dressed in silk or Come to Germany, Pepe-east alluding particularly in these times of crisis. However, this great actor knew little note to go through the transition period engaging in committed projects such as The Bridge, directed by Juan Antonio Bardem, in which, indeed, took advantage of the cliché of the character of the seventies to criticize on Spanish society.

Among his most interesting collaborations include films with José María Forque, Almost a Gentleman and The they have to serve, with Luis García Berlanga in the heifer, and to José Luis Garci lucky star in films such as The Green Pastures, The crash and its aftermath , and absolutely dispensable as History of a kiss or Carousel c-1950. His last public appearances dating to 2008, when he received the award from the Union of Actors of Spain for his role in light of Sunday, the Gold Medal of the City of Madrid and the Prince of Viana Prize of Culture 2008 in his homeland, Pamplona . Since then never participate in any other film or project and would not have any public appearance. Joseph Sexton missed him when he received the Goya for best actor for The Old Man and be happy.

Admission Alfredo Landa dies: Farewell to a holy innocent first appears in Extracine .

It's hard to shoot a suicide. Not surprisingly, suicide is largely an absence, or the way to it, and if the visible is the essential feature of an image, then we will find serious difficulties in the frames introduce a vanishing point toward which the drama of the characters. To try to give an answer to this difficult crossroads comes Elena, the last film directed by Brazilian Petra Costa and presented at the festival Documenta Madrid 2013 , which takes suicide as a fundamental theme of the story.

Elena, the sister of Petra Costa, is a Brazilian who dreams big in the world of art, whether theater, film, dance or singing. Faced with insurmountable obstacles that are presented in the nineties Brazil, where it seems doomed to telenovelas as she herself says, decided to emigrate to New York, which idealizes as the city of opportunity. You will find further his grave as your springboard, it was impossible to succeed in the craft, will sink into a deep depression that will lead to isolation and, later, to his suicide (and not spoiler, as it appears in the synopsis itself film)

But Elena is not a film about suicide, but it's a movie about grief, as we continue the search that starts Petra footprints that his sister has left in the world. So, Petra is the director and, at the same time, the main character, who in their desire to reconstruct the last days of life of Elena, triggers the movie itself: it seems that the desire to suture a wound and overcome grief is the engine of the documentary . The author-character embarks on the search for the absence, and it uses two mechanisms: Camcorder footage shot with shared childhood with his sister, and his own camera, with which initiates a kind of road movie to symptoms and the remains of suicide. And Petra voiceover accompanies images constantly, through the story of the life of Elena and his quest, and whose content is the result of a series of interviews with all known in New York, which disappear to form part the discourse of the narrator-director-character.

By using a camcorder, which she shows to be shot in a mirror, absolutely determines the aesthetics of the film are defocused planes, and median of the image quality. But it fits perfectly in the ultra lyricism that permeates the whole story, as the post saves the limitations of the camera: Petra decorating, layout, all images omnipresent sound and color correction. The result is exacerbated lyricism, sometimes resembles an ad or video clip, and deleting all the naturalism that might emanate from a documentary at all times be felt a sense of artifice, extremely exquisite wrap that leaves savor the raw drama. To this we must add a voice too intense in his desire to poeticity. The result is beautiful, but it can sometimes seem tiresome: this review will depend on the viewer's particular taste, but satisfies me, above all, by the constant use of close-ups.

Now, the film succeeds in the visual version of suicide: reflections on the descent into hell of Petra are indeed hopeless and conmocionan. A suicide have touched throughout the whole movie, because we never get a picture of the adult Elena, Elena can only access the images girl camcorder and, therefore, is veiled from our view pre physique Death. Also, search planes usually flat neck, following the mother through the streets of New York, but cornering her body to one end of the composition, while the other end is a vanishing point, a blurred image, abstract that is, the pure absence.

The excessive lyricism diluted when it reaches the climax, the event around which the film revolves around the suicide, which is represented by two very well assembled resources: first, by reading the leaves a farewell letter to the world , a word that, as the last written by Virginia Woolf, can not fail to impress. And then collapses with image files and police reports about his death, where all the drama is reduced to one fact: in the pages describing the length of her hair, color of eyes, height and weight, as a number without life. But more shocking is the final sentence:

The heart weighs 300 grams.

But the continuity of the plot after the climax of the autolysis is what drives the story drift. And the documentary is to continue beyond the disappearance of the character towards which the entire search implies, above all, an abrupt change of tone, but beyond that, it is very difficult to reinvent the narrative after reaching a absolute culmination: the farewell letter from Elena. So take an hour after documentary, it mutates, it changes character and pretension: Petra who now takes over and stands in the center of the image, and is no reconstruction of the last days of Elena the subject of the film, but the desire to Petra to follow the footsteps of her sister, trying to avoid the risk of depression.

So, Petra, it was more a character drive the story, but never the center of the image, centrifugal motion moves from the margins to the core. But his story is, and, in contrast to the daily tragedy of his sister, so that this exercise to be located in the center of the plane is a certain self-centeredness and lack of interest. Thus, the film is only saved by the use of symbolism, in a succession of dead Ofelias colorful, and involve the overlap of two speeches: the suicide of his sister and, secondly, the new path in the theater started by Petra.

Admission Elena: follow the traces left a suicide appears first in Extracine .

In 2008, the Chinese city of Sichuan suffered an earthquake which killed more than 20,000 people and caused the almost complete destruction of the entire city. The following days were continuing tremors that destroyed the few ruins that were held, and a month later there was a flood that violently punished the survivors, leaving a trail of mud and debris unsustainable. And the documentary Fallen City, led by Chinese Qi Zhao, and presented at the last Sundance Film Festival and the Documenta Madrid 2013 , intended to represent the film image in the drama that lived its inhabitants, fleeing figures and focusing on the individual in the internal history of the catastrophe defined by Unamuno.

Now the main problem is its ease Fallen City to fall into the tear: in presenting the drama, aims to make every little pain history catharsis for the viewer, and accompanies their testimonies with insistent piano music, which rumbles every time you want to convert an image into a tragedy. Interviews with the victims, all residents of the city who have lost one or more family members are produced from a chair that is surrounded by other empty chairs, trying to build a symbolism of absence bursting by its simplicity. And above all things Fallen City highlights the lack of distance in the portrait of the drama, as the camera does not respect privacy, sneaks into their homes (or what remains of them) with little reservation, unlike trips to foreign households in the magnificent the other day .

In addition, the style of filming is always between the film and the story, and sometimes it seems that we are witnessing a weekly space extremely long (without detracting from the program), rather than a movie. And in the middle of the testimonies, archival footage interspersed that seem to add some curiosity and, at once, impose a visual reference of the tragedy, eliminating the ability to evoke the cinema: I think it's much more respectful not to offer raw images of the disaster, letting the viewer manufacture your mental image of the event (which inevitably always occurs). And is that the stories are, already, too hard, and need not decorate them with devices to generate more impact.

Seen this way, it seems more prudent to flee the room to continue viewing. But is that the construction of Fallen City is ultimately, smarter than it seems at first, and is that the film is constructed as a kind of diptych, and is the second half which gives some light to the documentary genre and noted for its originality. A second part which is a deconstruction of all filmed until Ecuador, and works as an earthquake on the speeches he had built until then.

And the second half of the film focuses on the reconstruction of the city, or rather, in the construction of a new city, with modern buildings that emerge from nowhere in just one year, for residents to rebuild their lives . And still the little stories that had opened dramatic tragedy, and pour in the new context: the Renaissance. And this is where the drama falls apart to make way for the criticism of Fallen City politics and, in general, to a picaresque portrait of the human being to survive.

Because, first, the director portrays subtle irony and official speeches praising the government's role in rebuilding the city. Thus, films cast on housing show extolling the character of give authorities, with a parade, a band and the choice of the lucky ones with balls that seem drawn from the draw of the lotto. And while government discourses emanating from state television, the spaces where the television is located showing the deep ruin that found the population.

By contrast, the picaresque born among the population. And while both the ancient city is converted into a museum in the streets because fences are installed to prevent contact with the debris directly, looking for minimal security and hire City guides exhibiting the "tourists of the human tragedies "as if it were a tourist attraction. And most interesting is the twist of one of his characters: a woman who had lost her entire family except his mother was hired as a local administrator, and in the drawing of the houses, decided to cheat and keep four homes, but was caught and introduced in jail.

Thus the critique of political Fallen City becomes ontological, noting that corruption capacity of man in extreme situations, and the manager even stated that the fault is not his, but the charge. Thus, a plaintive documentary removes the veil and, on impulse lively, accomplished dismantle their own bases to attack the Chinese regime and the man himself, in a review of multiple edges Fallen City.

The entrance Fallen City: an earthquake that destroys cities and speeches listed first in Extracine .