The Chlotrudis Awards!

Came back from a weekend in Boston where I had the privilege of attending this year's Chlotrudis Awards! A fun time was had by all in an extremely casual but passionate celebration of film, and in finally giving some recognition to under rewarded movies from the past year. Winter's Bone was obviously the big winner of the night with 4 wins of its 8 nominations (Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Cinematography). Ryan Gosling tied with Philip Seymour Hoffman for Best Actor while Kim Hye-ja won for Best Actress for Mother, which also took Best Original Screenplay. Hopefully her Korean contemporary, Jeong-hee Yoon, will get the opportunity to be recognized next year for her sure-to-be overlooked work in Poetry. The supporting prizes went to Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech and the incomparable Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom.

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March Madness: Relevant Film Updates for this year

• Roman Polanski's Carnage is slated for release this year, a year earlier than previously expected. With the cast of Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly biting into juicy characters at Polanski's direction, this easily shoots up to one of my most awaited films of the year and possible Oscar player.
• Darren Aronofsky drops out of The Wolverine. His envisioning of the X-Men universe was one I was highly looking forward to, though not as much as the new Spider Man.
• Dave Karger, who once again proved his dominance this year as the premiere Oscar prognosticator by predicting The King's Speech all the way through — including when he was virtually the only one and mocked for doing so — senses that A Better Life will be a potential awards player at the end of the year for the film and lead actor Demián Bichir.
• Evidently, Jane Eyre is pretty good. Expect some token nominations for Costumes and Art Direction by next year.

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'Bal' (Honey)

The Turkish film Bal — in English, Honey — is infused with a quiet power. The film’s rich and hauntingly soulful imagery makes it nearly impossible to do the material justice in a single review. Bal is the third film of director Semih Kaplanoğlu’s Yusuf Trilogy, which is set in the isolated Turkish countryside and focused on the young Yusuf and his parents. Shy, soft-spoken and stammering, Yusuf barely speaks in more than simple whispers to his beekeeper father, farmer mother and classmates. As Yusuf’s father’s bees disappear, so do the beautiful plants of the lush Turkish countryside; and the consequential loss of honey leads to a loss of innocence for the characters. Subtitles become superfluous as the viewer is drawn into Yusuf’s gaze: His wide brown eyes take up so much of his tiny face, his lower lip is tucked into his upper lip, and his breath comes in heaves the more emotional he gets. Kaplanoğlu’s camera lets us feel this child’s yearning, jealousy, shame and happiness. And the emotions are transmitted in the purest form of cinema. The film is strongly reminiscent of Víctor Eric's The Spirit of the Beehive, not simply for the fact that both father figures in the film are beekeepers, nor for the symbolic significance of honey in each, but rather for both Erice's and Kaplanoğlu's proficient touch at capturing the poetry in the childhood gaze.  Each frame is composed with a painterly sensibility, the natural sunlight bringing out the vibrancy of every color with which Kaplanoğlu uses to most saliently evoke the most precise emotion at any given moment. Despite a deliberate pace, Bal a thing of beauty that should be considered nothing less than essential viewing when it opens on March 25th at the Village East Cinema. Read more!