Well, well, well…I uploaded the site yesterday (days confuse me because I have a crappy schedule) and I already have some changes in mind.

First, I found potential hosts (actually, two people have replied to a forum thread by me asking for a host, and I just have to choose one). This means, of course, that the site will MOVE AWAY FROM HERE! Celebration!

Second, I will change the file naming system. I already have finished, I think…I just need to make sure nothing’s broken. I think it will be better for SEO.

Third, I have no reason for saying third because there’s nothing else that comes to my mind.

I’m trying to do some revi

My sister rented the movie Caché, of which the title means “hidden”. Before I start this review, I find it important to learn my visitors, or remind them, of a few important points:

First of all, my favorite movies are not Hollywood blockbusters. I have watched and enjoyed several movies that have not been made in the United States, including several slow paced one. I enjoy several movies without a lot of actions. I liked, for example, Songs From The Second Floor, which is a very slow-paced movie that doesn’t really have a plot.

Secondly, I do not have a serious lack in cinematographic knowledge. I am currently studying cinema in university and have watched several movies that are considered as pioneers or major productions in the history of cinema. Including silents.

Thirdly, and most important, I will give you a small literature lesson. Writing—or telling orally—stories dates from a very long time ago. Just think of the Greeks, with authors like Homer or Euripides, whom were certainly not the first folks to think “Hey, let’s tell stories!” Anyway, the very basis of any story is that there is one entity, which will most often be human or have anthropomorphic characteristics, that has a purpose. Said purpose can be as simple as “living my own life without anything important coming in my way”. For a story to actually take place, there must be an entity that opposes this purpose, consciously or not. The entity can be a force of nature like the wind or rain, a human or other animal, a God, etc.

While surfing the IMDB, which is overflown with poor-quality critics and judgments, I read yet another reference to “American” cinema. I will however say “Hollywood(ian) cinema” for two reasons: 1) it allows me to avoid using the word “American” to speak of something limited to the USA and 2) it is more true, since not all movies that are made in the USA fit what people usually mistakenly refer to as “American movies”. David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino make movies in the USA, after all. Anyway, the comment said that people didn’t like the ending (or lack of) of Caché because they (or we) are used to Hollywood movies where the ending is clearly understandable and everything settles back. Now this constitutes a serious mistake. The methods employed to tell a story in movies isn’t entirely unique: it pulls several concepts from a much older tradition, that of literature and, even before, oral story telling. Way before the aforementioned Greeks, there were people who created myths. These myths already followed the basic structure of what we could call “classical narration”. At the beginning, there is an initial situation. “Entities” (let’s say characters) are inside a certain context. Then there comes an event that breaks this situation and often causes disorder. In order to bring order back, characters must commit a series of actions, each with consequences creating a new situation, that will lead to one final event (usually an action from the characters) which will bring a new stable situation. Said situation is not necessarily identical to the situation at the beginning and is not necessarily positive for the side which we could refer to as “good”.

This babbling leads me to say that claiming that the return to a stable situation is a characteristic that comes primarily from Hollywoodian cinema is complete ignorance. Disliking Caché is not. So on to the real topic.

Here beings the actual review. This movie is advertised as a thriller and actually does have the potential to become one. It starts with a couple who discovers a tape on which their house is filmed from the outside for a couple of hours. Throughout the movie, they will receive more of such tapes, usually wrapped in a sheet on which is what I will call a childish gore drawing.

The problem is thus not with the start. There is actually more than one problem. First of all, the rhythm is deeply painful. I can hear people say “but life can be very slow at times”. Yes, indeed, but I would expect that if I was going through one such thing as the characters, I would be a bit stressed and time wouldn’t stretch endlessly like two-inch thick cheese on a pizza. The movie is filled with endless shoots or shoots that are far too long without a reason. The director has been compared with Hitchcock by some people. I did a paper on Hitchcock recently (on which I got a good mark, thank you) and I remember very well that in an interview he said (translated into my own words) that to him rhythm is not necessarily showing 40 shoots a minute, but cutting when the shoot no longer has anything to say. This movie doesn’t seem to get it.

Then, there is the ending. I watched it on the TV that belongs to my sister (or her boyfriend, I don’t know), which is 19 inches and of a rather poor quality. So, no, I didn’t see the two bloody guys talking somewhere in the overloaded, wide angle. And even if I had, I would still be deeply frustrated. That’s not a bloody ending. You have set a story that has a certain suspense, that revolves entirely (or almost) around the idea of the tapes, who is making them and why. Not replying to any of these questions is extremely frustrating to the viewers. I know that some movies actually have as a purpose to frustrate visitors but in this case the message simply didn’t go through, neither for me, nor my sister, nor her boyfriend, and I believe we all have similar backgrounds in cinema watching.

Finally, the general feeling of the movie is snobish. Yes, snobish. Pseudo-intellectual stuff. Let’s make something that doesn’t really make sense and call it art. Or use random words from one of the characters’ quotes in order to pretend the movie makes sense (like “guilt”). I didn’t feel guilt in any of the characters. I felt anger only. I couldn’t understand their motivations. According to some people, Pierrot seems to be the one who sent the cassettes. Yes, alright, but why would he do it?

In brief, we have a poorly developed screenplay, that could have turned out great, characters we can’t understand well and an awfully slow pace. It’s not the slowness or the lack of ending or whatever that makes me hate this movie so much, it’s the combination of the three elements, that leads to complete frustration. There is nothing to compensate for some of the major lacks, because these three quintessential elements are treated awfully.

So, if you want a pleasant French movie, watch Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé (I am not here to be loved), which I also watched tonight.

Before I start this review, I must curse after myself. I was deleting the spam comments in moderation and I accidentally clicked on one of the links, which means they will get a referral from me. Smells like more spam will come through.

I went to the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales (National Library and Archives) before the holidays. I decided to verify what Tolkien books they might have and I discovered more of them than I could have dreamt of. Among said books, there was Tolkien: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, by David Day. I took it along with volumes 3 and 4 of The History of Middle Earth.

I was quite happy to be able to plunge back into Tolkien’s world. I find his works a bit…how to say? A bit racist, I guess, but I forgive him because he has imagined so many wonderful things. The encyclopedia is divided into various sections (Geography, Sociology, Biographies, etc.) containing several articles. As its title says, of course, it also contains several illustrations by several different people. While some are undeniably great, there are many which I simply don’t like. Some of them in particular are so overloaded with detail that my eye has great difficulties distinguishing elements from each other. The images of the Ents are so strangely drawn that they look like evil creatures.

As for the textual content, the main reason for which I chose this book, it actually makes me wonder why I even bothered borrowing a Tolkien encyclopedia, when I can freely access the Encyclopedia of Arda at all times. I could speak for hours of the greatness of this encyclopedia, but I guess this will go into another article. I can however not help making comparisons and I believe what truly makes me prefer the online one is the necessary lack of hyperlinks in the book. Of course, it’s a book and can therefore not have actual hyperlinks in the markup sense of the word.

The problem is that Tolkien invented many languages, each of which often gave its own name to places, races, etc., if not even more than one name, and also made use of English to refer to a lot of these places. For example, the Undying Lands is the English name of Aman, the land in which live the Valar. Most encyclopedias would put all information on the place in only one entry and would write in the other entry to refer yourself to the one that contains the info. This encyclopedia doesn’t and writes slightly different information on each entry, meaning you have to guess that you must refer yourself to the other article for more information.

On the plus side, though, I must mention the wonderful maps that are found at the beginning of the book, in the Geography section. they show how Arda (the world / the earth) has evolved since its creation, as well as various regions of the world in clear and colorful maps.

In brief, I do not recommend this book if you can access the web often enough to refer yourself to the Encyclopedia of Arda instead. The maps are surely accessible through other sources such as Middle Earth atlases.