Before we get to the lists, a personal note. (Skip to after the break if you want to skip this jibber jab). If the creation of lists has us reflect on the year past, it is hard to do so at this site without offering a bit of an explanation (and, perhaps, an apology) for our limited output in 2010. While our absence could be seen as an ‘alternative’ web site, surrounded by another year of underachieving Hollywood films, and quietly folding into cavernous, academic caves, there is more to it that has less to do with our ongoing interests in cinema and more to do with a major transition year for each of the writers you’ve come to know (or are stumbling upon) at this site. (I don’t intend to speak for Chuck or Brandon in the next paragraphs, but our attitude towards the site and movies in general is precisely the reason this site has continued for the past 3+ years and is revamping, so we hope, in 2011. Have to say, we’re off to a good start).
For brief, exclamatory, explanatory recognition: each of the writers at this site is currently working towards a PhD in some cinema and/or art-related field. Not that this actually gives us any more qualifications or anything, but it’s something I’m proud to tout nonetheless. In 2010, my major transition (which contributed to the lack of a site for much of the year) came in the form of leaving New York, Columbia, and Film Studies proper for Columbus, The Ohio State, and Art History. An exciting change, but one that had me in the middle of nowhere over the summer before situating in Columbus and trying to find ways to make it seem like it isn’t also nowhere. Thanks mainly to the Wexner Center, film culture, as it were, isn’t lost, but it took most of the last third of 2010 to re-find its place in myself. I wondered if the site should go the way of New York for me – a great memory that I cling to, but know I have to leave behind.
What I slowly remembered throughout my first quarter in Columbus, though, was why I started this site in the first place (and why I was determined - and thrilled - to find dedicated writing cohorts with whom the site would be built): without a level of engagement, critical thought, and reflection, cinema (and art) can become meaningless. Some people accept it as such, and I fear, when I stopped writing, that I began feeling that way too. But this site, from its inception, was not only invested, but demanded – and knew – there was more. Nearing the end of 2010, I realized the reason I missed the site was also the reason I felt distant from art – I was leaving behind a crucial part of the process. I don’t intend on doing so again. Part of that process relies on a community – whether in local cities, states, art houses, dollar theaters, film festivals, or Twitter where I had most of my favorite discussions about film this year; part of it relies on finding artists who create work to examine questions rather than play inane tricks and force-feed explanations and answers; and part of it relies on viewers who ask for more from artists and hope, no matter the kind of work, that they discover new worlds.
The best cinema in 2010 did just that. Very few of the best came from expected sources, but that may be precisely why they continue to stand out. In honor of the film whose name this website yoinked, we offer our individual lists of the 13 best films of the year. And, with a nod of gratitude, we wish all of our readers uniquely great cinema in 2011.
Brandon Colvin’s Top 13 of 2010
1. Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine)
2. Enter the Void (Gaspar Noe)
3. Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash & Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
4. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)
5. Dogtooth (Giorgios Lanthimos)
6. Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Refn)
7. Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)
8. Jackass 3D (Jeff Tremaine)
9. Alamar (Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio)
10. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy?)
11. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Edgar Wright)
12. Let Me In (Matt Reeves)
13. Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)
Best Director:
Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer
Best Lead Performance:
Aggeliki Papoulia - Dogtooth & Steve-O - Jackass 3D
James Hansen’s Top 13 of 2010
1. Ne Change Rien (Pedro Costa)
2. Dogtooth (Giorgios Lanthimos)
3. Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine)
4. Flooding With Love For The Kid (Zachary Oberzon)
5. Carlos [330-minute version] (Olivier Assayas)
6. Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)
7. Jackass 3D (Jeff Tremain)
8. Lourdes (Jessica Hausner)
9. Somewhere (Sofia Coppola)
10. How Do You Know? (James L. Brooks)
11. Everyone Else (Maren Ade)
12. Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash & Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
13. Our Beloved Month of August (Miguel Gomes)
Best Director:
Jessica Hausner - Lourdes
Best Lead Performance:
Sylvie Testud - Lourdes & Zachary Oberzan - Flooding With Love For The Kid
Best Supporting Performance:
Greta Gerwig - Greenberg & The Crying Cowboy- Sweetgrass
Best Unreleased Film:
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (duh)
Chuck Williamson’s Top 13 of 2010
1. Alamar (Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio)
2. Dogtooth (Giorgios Lanthimos)
3. Mother (Joon-ho Bong)
4. White Material (Claire Denis)
5. Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash & Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
6. Wild Grass (Alaina Resnais)
7. Carlos (Olivier Assayas)
8. I Love You Phillip Morris (Glenn Fearra & John Requa)
9. Burlesque (Steve Antin)
10. I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino)
11. Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine)
12. Somewhere (Sofia Coppola)
13. Enter The Void (Gaspar Noe)
Best Director:
Gaspar Noe - Enter the Void
Best Lead Performance:
Kim Hye-ja - Mother & Do-yeon Jeon - Secret Sunshine (tie) & Jim Carrey - I Love You Phillip Morris
Best Supporting Performance:
Olivia Williams - The Ghost Writer & Song Kang-ho - Secret Sunshine
Best Unreleased Film:
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives & Oki’s Movie
Continue reading...
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Out 1 Film Journal's Best of 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
An Interview with Harmony Korine on "Trash Humpers"
interview by James Hansen
After its fall premieres at the Toronto and New York Film Festivals, Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers is unearthed in New York City today at Cinema Village. I wrote about Trash Humpers in my NYFF dispatches where it was one of the highlights of the festival. Shot on lo-grade VHS in and around Nashville, where Korine is from, Trash Humpers jovially observes characters who walk around humping trash, tree branches, gates, and mailboxes. They laugh at kids who can't shoot a basketball, advise putting razor blades in apples, and smash light bulbs in empty parking lots. Trash Humpers is frightening, funny, and utterly fascinating. At the festival, I sat down with director Harmony Korine (who also portrays one of the Humpers) to talk about his approach to this curious object. We discuss his ideas, methods, and the beauty of exploding toilets.
James Hansen: When did you start working on Trash Humpers?
Harmony Korine: Yeah, it was pretty recently. I only started the movie four months ago [in May 2009]. It was shot and edited in right around a month. But I had been dreaming up this idea for close to a year. I always walk my dog through these back alleys by my house in Nashville, especially late at night. I would see all these trash bins that were all laid out with these dramatic overhead lamps and lights that would light up the sewers. The trash bins looked kind of human to me. They looked kind of like they had been mauled and molested and beaten. I don’t know, sometimes I just let my mind wander and I started to dream up these characters – these old people who just walk through these alley ways, peep into windows, hump trash, and do the most vile, disgusting deeds.
JH: And once you dreamed up the idea and came up with the images, what was your approach to actually putting it on video?
HK: I don’t know...I just started thinking it might be nice if this it could be not a movie in a traditional sense, but more like a found artifact or an unearthed object – something that was buried in a ditch or lost in some ladies attic. It was this home movie made by these kind of sadists. Once I figured that out and felt like I knew the movie would replicate a found VHS tape, it got very exciting.
JH: Was it difficult to find VHS cameras to record on these days?
HK: Yeah. It was difficult. But I also wanted to work with the lowest of the low, the worst 12 dollar VHS recorders. The hardest thing was just that the batteries were so terrible in those. We had to constantly be changing those.
JH: Was the use of VHS in any way a limitation? Or was it freeing in some ways? It sounds like it could have been a restraint, in some ways similar to the self-imposed Dogme limitations of Julien Donkey Boy, but I wonder if it really was a hindrance.
HK: No, it was really freeing. The only thing I needed to stay true to was it being a found VHS tape, so everything else didn’t matter. The aesthetics, the compositions, the lighting – none of that mattered. It was all just about documenting on this one machine and that very, very freeing. It became instantaneous.
JH: How was this approach of documenting, or creating an artifact, different from your approach to others things you’ve made in terms of making a film?
HK: I think there are a lot of similarities in the other movies, but I think this is maybe one or two steps further in that direction. I think it was different because I was an active participant in the film. It was as much a character piece as anything technical. It was really just about becoming a Trash Humper.
JH: Along with this idea of a character piece, I’m curious as to how the location informs the characters. How did The South inform the characters and the movie itself? How much were you thinking about the distinct South-ness while you were making Trash Humpers?
HK: Yeah, that’s where I grew up, and, for the characters, as a kid, those types of voices and the things being said, the mannerisms were very familiar to me. A lot of it was like trying to close your eyes and tap into that place with the voices. Some of them are very horrible and some are very exciting. And the south, and I guess most of America in general, was to me, at least, as a kid... it seemed a lot more wild than it does now. Now, everything is starting to seem the same. In the south, it seemed more regional, more isolated, and more wild. There was something more susceptible to horror.
JH: And the idea of Southern horror is definitely something that has persisted throughout horror films. It seems pretty applicable to Trash Humpers.
HK: Yeah, you could almost make the argument that it’s a horror film just because it feels horrible. You know what I mean? I wanted to make a movie where the violence erupted more in the ambiance than anything else. You see most of the violence in this movie post-action. It’s more about the mood, the feel, the ambiance. That seems a lot freakier to me. And so, I guess you could call it a horror film because some of it feels horrible. I always try and make something that lingers and can’t be talked away. It has more to do with the emotion or the tone.
JH: Yeah, and it’s interesting that, despite this horror basis, Trash Humpers just as often verges into comedy. Perhaps that relates to the performances – I mean, you are humping trash, which, at least to me, is funny – so I wonder about the relationship this “horror film” has to comedy and performance.
HK: Yeah, I’m not sure. You could make that argument, maybe, that the first half is a comedy and then it turns into something else. I don’t really know. I don’t question it too much. A lot of times I’m not exactly sure about why or where it comes from. But it just feels like there’s a force pulling me in some direction.
JH: How did you get everyone else on board to perform? I know your wife is one of the Humpers.
HK: Yeah, my wife Rachel. She’s potentially a really terrific actress. I just asked her if she would be into making this movie, but she would have to hump a lot of trash. And she was up for it. The other guys are friends of mine and characters from around where I live.
JH: I’m curious about the real characters you always seem to find in your movies. I think that’s especially interesting with Trash Humpers here in terms of creating an artifact and recording real, strange people.
HK: Well, the Humpers kind of do their thing and then the movie is series of semi-vaudeville moments of where they go. All the want is a kind of entertainment, so they just knock on doors and find performers and people who tell jokes with no punch lines or play one-stringed guitars or do neck exercises and watch nine televisions. I think a lot of the people, the real people, you see are kind of their friends.
JH: And are they people you know? Or had you just heard about them?
HK: I know them all. That was the way the movie was made. We’d wake up under a bridge or something and go to their house and knock on their door. That’s pretty much how all of it happened.
JH: There’s a sense throughout the movie, and maybe celebration is the wrong word, but there’s a sort of romantic view of anarchy. I wonder if that’s a view you have or if it’s just something interesting that you wanted to explore.
HK: It’s funny because anarchy always reminds of me of high school and junior high. I had this very good friend – we used to call him ‘The Gregler’ – and he looked a lot like Count Chocula. He was a Jewish anarchist. He had read The Anarchist’s Cookbook. We were only 14 or 15, but he would do these amazing things. He would blow up toilets, but he would do it with these chemicals and stuff. He was obsessed with blowing up toilets and I always admired that. He never hurt people, but he was just really focused on destroying this one type of object over and over again. I mean, he must have destroyed millions of dollars of toilets. Coincidentally, he’s now a State Senator! Anyways, I would say I always thought there was something just as exciting in the act of building and creating than there was in destroying and burning. Vandalism could be considered a really high form of spiritual existence.
JH: Toward the end of Trash Humpers, you get a real sense of that when you’re driving around giving the monologue about the types of people. Clearly, it’s a view the Humpers believe in, but I’m curious as to whether it’s something in today’s culture that you think is worth aspiring to.
HK: Sure. I mean, it’s difficult for me to say. I don’t really know how I feel about that. But I think there’s some truth to what he says in that speech though.
JH: At one point, a friend of the Humpers [Chris Gantry] reads a poem off a sheet of paper. Was any more of this scripted beforehand?
HK: No. There were ideas and things that I felt we needed to achieve maybe. But we were so focused on this idea of it being a found object. In some ways, it was like once everyone became the character and once we had the camera and once we were walking through these alleyways, there was no real right or wrong. It just became what it was. Like a home movie. It means everything and nothing. It just is what it is. It’s about documenting something and making sense of it or not making sense of it.
JH: I wonder about some of the repetitive chants and songs in the movie too, like the “Three Little Devils” song. I didn’t recognize that song specifically, but a lot of it felt like it was part of a creepy children’s fairy tale.
HK: There are some of those audio threads in the movie and that’s one of them. There’s also that breathing, the maniacal laughter, and then the “Three Little Devils” song. It’s actually a very old folk song. The song that’s sung in the movie is just a bastardized version of it.
JH: After all the chaos in the movie, I think the ending provides an interesting counterpoint to much of what we see when the Humpers get an actual baby. We see several fake babies or dolls in early parts of the movie – the kid who beats the doll with the hammer, for example – but, in the end, we feel this pretty genuine moment with the real baby and the Humpers. It gives them a little bit of a dual role, similar to your other movies where we find a relationship between the real world and something else (Julien’s schizophrenia, the stage personas in Mister Lonely). Can you talk a little about that final sequence.
HK: It was a hard sequence to film. You had to be very sensitive, obviously. I felt like it needed to be heartfelt and honest, but at the same time stay true to the intent of the Trash Humpers. I guess it’s kind of open ended what happens with the baby. But there’s something slightly loving about it. But also something a little sinister.
JH: And a final question: how can we all be Trash Humpers for Halloween? Any plans for commerce of the masks or anything?
HK: (laughs) That’s not a bad idea. I’ve got to make some money somehow!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
NYFF 2009: Trashing Concepts/Conceptual Trash - [online text reviews of four films, two of which the writer of the text loves]
This third dispatch from the New York Film Festival features reviews of one highly anticipated work (any work from Rivette at a site named after a film of his is a major event), two works that I was cautiously looking forward to (Pedro Costa's Ne Change Rien and Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers), and one work that I knew absolutely nothing about (Raya Martin's Independencia). I've already previewed my response to Trash Humpers, which comes at the end of this post complete with a defensive tangent that I probably shouldn't publish, but that I left anyways as a way of working out my own thoughts and ideas about the work and about how we should write about films in general. I meant to post this third dispatch sooner, and now am falling behind in my attempt to write about everything I see, especially with a busy last week of screenings this week. I'll attempt to persevere with good content. This post, above all others, seems to have contrarian written all over it, considering the other responses I have read to a couple of these films. Nevertheless, I stand by my rankings and unexpected love (well, one was unexpected) of these controversial works. There's nothing quite like the challenge of writing about a work you really care about (much less two in one post!) while also being genuine and not aggressively overwriting for the sake of your excitement. Lets see how well I did...
Around A Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette, France) - Maybe this just feels slight from the get go because of the running time. Clocking in at 84 minutes, the shortest film in Rivette’s oeuvre by half an hour, Around A Small Mountain sets a mystifying stage, this time quite literally, by centering on a sparsely attended circus. Following a wordless exchange, an Italian gentleman, Vittorio, befriends a carnie and subsequently spends his time wandering the premises, meeting more eccentrics, and discovering long hidden secrets of the circus many of which revolve around an infamous trick gone awry. At times dry, if not outright stale, Around A Small Mountain has the all the elements of Rivette’s strongest work, but, in the concise brevity of this tale which could have headed in various directions, it gets a bit of a short shrift. From the overlapping mysteries to the numerous rehearsals, Rivette chooses not to dwell on subjects or moments longer than needed. This refuses the world of characters, so often the lifeblood of ecstatic energy present in Rivette’s films, the chance to pivot, rotate, and revolve around each other. The world seems more isolated, the figures more singular, and the mysteries less interesting. Maybe its just the marathon movie fan, but I would have loved to spend another hour or two really getting lost in the fascinating world that Rivette establishes. My criticism is perhaps harsher than Around A Small Mountain deserves. It really is a perfectly fine film with interesting characters, an odd location, plenty of hidden mysteries, and a unique assemblage of theater, cinema, and performance (read: everything you want from Rivette), but I can’t help but think this could have been a lot more. B- 
Independencia (Raya Martin, Philippines) - If last year’s inclusion of Brillante Mendoza’s Serbis at NYFF introduced New York to an uprising in Filipino cinema, Independencia displays the wildly different kinds of work being done right now. Independencia was one of two films Martin, age 25, had at this years Cannes Film Festival where the Best Director prize was won by fellow countrymen Mendoza for his controversial film Kinatay. With Independencia, Martin shows some real promise, even while the film never completely works. Set in the Filipino jungle in 1943, a family awaits the arrival of American troops into their country. A bit obviously, the family waits for most of the film until a massive storm finally comes and sends the characters in different directions. Martin, above all else, does what he can to achieve the look of a 1940s Hollywood film, complete with beautifully hand drawn sets that give Independencia a remarkable look while creating an undercurrent of the American invasion of Filipino culture. Still, this concept only goes so far, as the flowing cinematography overwhelms this small amount of dramatic tension given to the actual plot in the first two-thirds of the film. The storm sequence is rather tremendous and won me over for Independencia as a whole. Wonderfully executed, Independencia ends with the mood and attitude it needed to sustain throughout. Though its not a complete success, its shows some real complex thinking from Martin about his films and should help in turning Martin’s idea around on him by finally bringing a larger Filipino presence to the US film scene. B-
Ne Change Rien (Pedro Costa, Portugal)- Apparently most people hate this. It drew the smallest crowd of any press screening I’ve been to throughout the festival (partially because of the canceled press conference with Mr. Costa, I assume) and still managed to have the largest number of people walk out. I imagine this has something to do with the labeling of Ne Change Rien as a music doc for French actress/singer Jeanne Balibar. Certainly its a somewhat accurate description – you do, in fact, listen to Balibar rehearse and perform for the entirety of the documentary – yet it lacks in identifying Ne Change Rien as perhaps the most experimental feature at NYFF. Costa’s is able to transition his long take form, introduced to New York audiences in 2007 with a retrospective and the presence of his short Rabbit Hunters at NYFF, into Ne Change Rien with almost alarming effect. With no narration and no interviews, Ne Change Rien shows Balibar in never-ending rehearsals, looping the same chords, the same notes, the same sections of songs over and over searching for perfection in every nuance of the voice. Using two or three different pieces throughout the film, from a strange Gainsebourg-esque rock number to an Offenbach opera, Balibar’s face is shown in shafts of light as she ceaselessly counts, thinks, and ponders every detail of her performance. Ne Change Rien, shot digitally with high contrast black-and-white, shows the dancing of the light across Balibar’s face as she sways through the frame in isolation. Drenched together in more muted tones of white and gray during collaborative sequences, an equally important story of the reflection of light, creating profound nuance in black blacks, light blacks, mid grays, light grays, and bright whites as the very process of creation and perfection shimmers across the screen. Costa’s engagement with Balibar’s quest for perfection is found in the smallest of details. The long takes give ample time for the mind to soak in every bit of the soundtrack while becoming enamored with each subtle shift in Balibar’s voice and the light as the performers directly influence the way the camera records Balibar and, subsequently, the way we see the film. This may sound like a small feat, but make no mistake: Ne Change Rien is a major accomplishment. A-
Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine, USA)- Unearthed from a hidden ditch somewhere in Tennessee, Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers serves as an artifact from a unknown culture of deformed villains – a hybrid of The Hills Have Eyes and the laughing baby. The humpers exist in a world not so unlike our own, yet one where they have free reign of the ditches, parking lots, and backyards of whomever they choose. Acting partly as perverted peeping Toms and deranged lunatics, Trash Humpers acts as a piece of found footage in which the humpers run around hysterically cackling and chanting as they break TVs, smash lights and concrete blocks in the middle of abandoned parking lots, and find a host of unforgettable friends: a kid who smashes baby dolls with a hammer, a homophobic comic who tells jokes with no punch lines, and a man who plays a one-stringed guitar and sings songs about his oh-so-large penis. Yes, Trash Humpers is essentially a celebration of anarchy. Very funny but at times quite haunting, Korine has described Trash Humpers as a kind of horror movie, perhaps of the American Dream being flushed down the toilet. But how then, amidst the nonsensical cackling and hysterical, neverending chants (“Make it, make it! Don’t fake it!) and recitations (“Three little devils jumped ovvvverrrr the waaaaallll...”) is Trash Humpers so genuine, so heartfelt, and so damned inspired? Korine’s connection and return to the South seems pertinent, as this return home has also returned him to non-commercial practices and more of an exploration of images and ideas, which is where Korine’s films have been most comfortable in the past. But where each of his past features has seemed overstretched by their strangest elements, Trash Humpers, despite, or maybe because of, its [purposefully] haphazard construction, is undoubtedly Korine’s most complete work yet. The ending sequence, at once bizarre and strangely moving, is the final punch card for the way Trash Humpers works through its characters and finds an open ended space for the humpers to go on...and maybe in a different way. Chaos reigns? Maybe not.
And now a tangent: While several critics have questioned Korine’s effort, calling the deck stacked and the concept of creating an artifact as one in which you can’t fail, these criticisms seem largely unfounded to me – not only because I can cite one film in the festival that has the same central concept and is less successful, but mainly because, frankly, that its just a flat out stupid criticism. If critics actually attempt to meet films on the films own terms (which I’m not exclusively advocating, mind you), then a success is a success and a failure is a failure based on the work, not on what you read or what someone else said about it. Whether success means accomplishment is a different matter completely, but I find it hard to suggest that a work with a concept that is achieved is a fraud, a fake, a sham, or anything else. Moreover, it becomes the same criticism of contemporary art (where Korine’s work may more comfortably lay as a kind of performance piece) in that “my kid could paint that” or “its just a shark in a tank.” These questions might purvey through Trash Humpers to certain viewers, but, if we’re wanting to play the Artist card, then who is that did create it, that did ask the question, and that did make you think about all this to begin with. So go conceptual works, and so goes Trash Humpers. I suppose its just going to work for some people and won’t work for others, but to suggest something as a failure because you don’t think the effect is difficult to achieve is fundamentally flawed. Last year, I remember many critics (not sure if they are the same ones who have excoriated Trash Humpers) suggested after Manohla Dargis’s negative review of The Reader that Holocaust films should be judged differently because of the subject matter. most everyone disagreed with that at the time, but now it seems its being flipped back over when convenient to attack someone for creating an admittedly lo-fi thing that “might not even be a movie” (so says Korine). I wouldn’t be so worked up, I suppose, if I hadn’t so bought into Trash Humpers and been impacted by what it captures and how genuine it is while doing it. (It is the only movie I bothered seeing twice, and almost a third time, fearing it may not be coming to a theater near anyone anytime soon). I’ve gone on a huge, largely unnecessary tangent here, so I’ll avoid going on another about why I might connect to Trash Humpers on another level – lets just say it has something to do with also being from the South, also shooting shitty looking movies on VHS in high school, and finding many of the voices and events of Trash Humpers not only funny but frighteningly familiar. If you’re still reading at this point, congratulations! You made it! And, in case I hadn’t mentioned it, Trash Humpers is without a doubt one of the best new works in the festival. A-
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Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Harmony Korine's "Trash Humpers" Trailer?
Not exactly sure what this is, but here is...umm...something from the NYFF (and Toronto) selection.
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