Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton

Alice in Wonderland is not a bad film, and is in fact rather good and fairly enjoyable but I expected more from Burton. What is a bit disappointing is that the film never transcends Wonderland and the odd assortment of creatures and behaviors.
There is a story that follows Alice and her adventures. The film is a sort of sequel to any previous events: Alice approaches her twentieth birthday; her father, a great businessman and explorer, has died some years prior, and she and her mother are on their way to a grand party thrown by aristocrats that Alice does not find funny at all. There are strict rules and regulations regarding her behavior at such events, but Alice’s mind often wanders off and becomes distracted. At a certain point of the
boring party Alice wanders off, following a white rabbit in a waistcoat. She soon finds herself tumbling down a rabbit hole, landing in a strange land that she recognizes as a dream.
There exist, in this land, a variety of odd fauna and animals: the white rabbit, a strange cat, a small but feisty mouse, and a bizarre gentleman who happens to be a hatter. As Alice learns more about this strange world she comes to realize there is a war between the bad Red Queen and the lovely White Queen.
There are a great deal of visual treats coming from the Red Queen’s castle: the Queen herself, with Helena Bonham Carter’s head gigantically grown up, steals every scene in which she appears.
I saw the movie in 3D, and while the format added some depth and moment of high attention, rarely stood out as being necessary. Perhaps the 2D version will be more impressive, with more vibrant colors and sharper contrast. If given a choice I would suggest the 2D version for an initial viewing.

The Bergamo Film Meeting, the 28^ edition

The 28^ Bergamo Film Meeting started the 6th of Match and will end Sunday the 14th, and in this edition too there was a huge review: more than 80 films in different sections, despite the difficult economical situation of those kind of festivals.
The director Angelo Signorelli wanted to describe the difficult situation and remembered that the festival itself was about to close.
Although the dramatic situation, the ideas were numerous and original.
This was a transitional festival, hoping that in the future the situation will change.
The quality of the BFM, as every year, is the cinema of the past, focusing in old and quality titles.
The most important was the one on the career of Jean Gabin, considered one of the great stars of French cinema: "A certain idea of France"(1936: The Lower Depths and 1973: L'Affaire Dominici).
The other retrospective will be "Light and Darkness: the Dark Lady", where the role of the dark lady will be studied trough 11 American titles of the 40s and the 50s: for example So Dark the Night (1946) of Joseph H.Lewis
Between the more actual exhibitions there was the "Looking close by", made by 22 documentaries; it's important to underline that the Bergamo's festival always gave a lot of attention to documentaries and not only to films.
In the end there was 7 recent films directed by young directors, showing the attention to the new generations.

"Up in the air": George Clooney as a modern Icarus

This is that sort of movie that I like to suggest if you want to spend 109 minutes laughing and thinking about your life at the same time.

The director is Jason Reitman, the same director of the successful Juno and Thanks for Smoking.Ryan Bingham (Clooney at his most charmingly insincere) is an executive whose job is flying round the U.S. to do the unpleasant job of 'career transition counselling': in other words, firing people. Ryan is great at his job and he spends most of his time flying and traveling to workplaces around the United States.

He adores the comfort of anonymity during his frequent travels. Ryan's personal goal for his life is to reach the incredible "ten million frequent flyer miles". While traveling, he meets another frequent flyer named Alex (Vera Farmiga) and they begin a casual relationship meeting each other in different places in the US.

His life changed drastically when he is called back to his company's offices in Omaha, where he finds out that an ambitious and young colleague named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrik) is studying a plan to cut of the "expenses" of the company: cut costs by having employees stay grounded and pilot the layoffs via webcam, a real nightmare for Ryan! But the real nigthmare for him will be travelling all around the US with Natalie, in fact their boss assigns him to take Natalie on his upcoming travels to show her what it's like working in that way.

The couple start to become friends and Natalie tries to understand Ryan's philosophy, but Ryan is happy to remain single forever and continue avoiding serious relationships. During their travels, Natalie finds that to fire people is not nice at all, and the experience of those fired is devastating.

During another trip, Natalie's boyfriend dumps her by text message, leaving her really shattered. Ryan and Alex decided to take her with them a tech-conference party at their hotel, to get fun and drink a lot! When Natalie talks to Ryan the next day about his refusal to consider a commitment to Alex in spite of their incredible compatibility as a couple, she becomes infuriated; she apologizes later, but after that they are both called back to the Head Office to begin using Natalie's remote-layoff program instead of firing people face-to-face.

Instead of returning to Omaha, Ryan invites Alex to come with him to his sister's wedding in northern Wisconsin, and she accepts. Ryan and Alex enjoy attending the wedding together, but afterward Ryan finds that he is once again alone as Alex departs back to resume her own life. After that Ryan decides to fly to Alex's home in Chicago to see her!

But something damatic happens! When she opens the door, it's apparent that she's a married woman with young children. He leaves without saying a word; she later tells him on the phone that her family is her real life and Ryan is simply an escape and that she thought for him was the same. On the flight home, the crew announces that Ryan has just crossed his ten million miles mark: he has reached his goal finally. The pilot comes out of the cockpit to meet Ryan, who confesses that meeting his goal is less exciting than he had imagined. Back in his office, Ryan calls the airline to transfer half a million miles each to his sister and brother-in-law so that they'll be able to fly around the world.

Ryan's boss comes in and tells Ryan that one of the employees he and Natalie fired has killed herself jumping from a bridge. In the aftermath, Natalie quits and the company sends Ryan back onto the road, putting the remote-layoff program on indefinite hold. Ryan writes a glowing letter of recommendation for Natalie that helps her get a new job in San Francisco. The movie ends with Ryan enters an airport and stares at the schedule of departures, dropping his compact suitcase on the floor.

At The Berlin Film Festival Bansky's Spray Cinema By Rita Di Santo

Bansky & Noah Baumabach

A spray can and a good wall is all Bansky needs to express his artistic vision of life. After the walls of London, New York, L.A. and Beijing, he has chosen the poetically apt Berlin for his first feature. “Exit Trough The Gift Shop” has Thierry; a French filmmaker as the protagonist. He is obsessed with filming, going everywhere with his camera.

This obsession to filming reality is born out of his mother’s death. Thierry uses film as a technique to keep people alive. Moreover, Thierry seeks to discover and capture the truth of the street artists’ world on film. He passionately attaches his electronic eyes to the streets artists one by one for eight years. This disorder extends to his secret dream to film the most powerful contemporary street artist –Bansky! In the end, Thierry’s obsession wins and he becomes Bansky best friend, thought it becomes clear that Thierry’s documentary will never end. Bansky turns the camera on the owner. Thierry’s obsession is confronted. Bansky encourages his friend to stop filming and to try to be a street artist. Without much experience, Thierry starts to produce and promote his work becoming so successful that he designs the lates album cover of Madonna. This appears the realization of suppressed artistic expression.
The movie is a mosaic of compiled material that is funny, insightful, fast and tight, that tells of the crazy world of streets art and how it has developed from being illegal, non profit, to one of the art world’s richest businesses. Bansky´s documentary shows his talent in cinema is right at the top with a refreshing sense of freedom and originality.


Secondly, the US academy award-nominated screenwriter/director Noah Baumbach brings a peak at the droll lives of the family “Greenberg”.

Roger Greenberg is a former LA musician and New Yorker carpenter looking for a meaning to life. He is house minding his brother’s (Phillip) L.A. house while Phillip, with his family, are in Vietnam on business. Roger has the telephone number of Florence, the Greenberg family’s a personal assistant. Roger is a man in a mid-life crises in the tradition of the American novels by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and John Updike. It is a different different look at L.A. as a remarkable and, unique place where people do actually live and raise families. Additionally, this movie is infused with a sense of melancholic Robert Altman and John Cassavetes in the loneliness of Roger and Florence though redeemed in their later burgeoning relationship.
by Rita Di Santo

Martin Scorsese's Noir Games at the Berlinale. By Rita Di Santo

Scorsese’s Noire Games Reaches the Top.

Martin Scorsese has chosen Berlin Film Festival as the platform to show his latest movie, “Shutter Island”, a tale of haunting mystery and psychological suspense that unfolds entirely on a remote island housing a hospital for the criminally insane. The movie is based on a novel by Denis Lahane. This is the same writer of “Mystic River” which becomes an award winning film directed by Clint Eastwood.
“Shutter Island” is set in the 1950s at the height of the cold war. US Marshal, Teddy Daniels, and his partner are investigating the disappearance of a very dangerous criminal patient at the sanatorium of Shutter Island. A strong hurricane is heating the island, and everything becomes frenetic and confused. Surrounded by probing psychiatrists and dangerously psychopathic patients, nothing is quite what it seems. Rumours, the foreboding dark and rain, heighten an ambience where everything is uncertain.

This magnetic atmosphere, frame after frame, brings out all the emotional points of the novel. Scorsese sets up a perfect atmosphere that encapsulates all the beauty of the noire movies from the forties and the fifties, and from Ray to the German expressionists. Long shadows, creepy sounds, and a great cast infuse the film with life. Flashbacks and hallucinations play with chronologic time and the elusive nature of moment-to-moment reality. Anxiety, paranoia, fear, all feelings well mixed, recalling the paranoia created from the ungraspable political situation of the cold war, touching the ghosts of the Great War and the Nazi madness. Different threads and layers of the story combine from the shadowy noir to boldface. Scorsese knows all too well the vocabulary of the cinema, and sets everything in a perfect place: the actors, the lights, the dialogue, the sounds. Very few directors can reach his deep understanding of cinema, non-complex, that combines great style with a climate of the time. Not quite par excellence but an adroit expose of the noir style with the tight compression to time eliciting anxiety and pressure on the audience.

60°International Berlin Film Festival. By Rita Di Santo. In Competition: Howl dir Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman & The Ghost Writer Dir Roman Polansky

"Howl" dir Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman

In competition, Howl is about Allen’ Ginsberg’s seminal work, and the
resulting obscenity trial involving the beat poet and his publishers. The
story is told primarily trough three interweaving threads: the trial; the poem
itself, animated by graphic novelist and Eric Drooker as a Beat Fantasia; and
re-enactments with the young Allen Ginsberg (James Franco). The conservatives
prosecuting Ralph McIntosh tries to prove that the work is obscene. Defence
witnesses are 50s intellectuals who speak to the poem’s cultural and artistic
merits. The conservative presiding judge is Clayton Horn, who delivers a
surprisingly impassioned decision. I’m an imagined interview with flashbacks,
the young Ginsberg muses on his own creative process and the personal struggle
and liberation he had to go through. It’s a fascinating journey inside the
mind of the artist. Colourful and vibrant, with a documentary integrity,
follow the path of the artist, and his struggle to find space in the
conservative climate of the time. James Franco gives a astonishing
performance, reviling the passionate artist mind. The directors Rob Epstein
and Jeffrey Friedman bring all their talented documentary experience into the
project. They create a great alchemy with black and with, colour and
animations. The cinema serves the poem in a perfect way.

The Ghost Writer Dir Roman Polansky
Tony Blair's appearance at the Iraq inquiry has been one of the most eagerly-
awaited political events of the last 10 years, and never the less has been the
most awaited political film at the Berlin film Festival Roman Polanski’s The
Ghost Writer. The movie is based on the novel The ghost written by best-
selling author Robert Harris, tells the story of a former British Prime
Minister Adam Lang, who is holed up on an island off American’s Eastern
seaboard , writing his memories. When his long-standing aide drowns, a
professional ghost writer is sent out to help him finish the book. Hanging
over Lang is the threat of a war crimes trial and a mysterious secret from his
past that threatens to jeopardize international relations. The movie is
infusing with incredible suspense, close to the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock,
a gay that gets plunged into a completely strange world, and every stepts
happens are completely logical. The film has fantastic energy and drive. At
time when the book was published many commenter interpret the novel as a
thinly veiled commentary on his former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the film
opens the universality of the themes. It’s about power, and the modern
politics. As Lang in the movie explain “ I went into politics not because I
loved an ideology but because I loved a woman. It a pignut analyses about
modern politic, the spettacolarzation of politics, the illusion of the media,
the lose of the ideology, the corruption system of an oligarchy sistem, an
élite which include: secret service and academics. Suspense in a perfect
structure, with irony and very good combination of cast.

60°International Berlin Film Festival by Rita Di Santo

For its sixtieth anniversary the International Berlin Film Festival opens with a Chinese movie and closes with a Japanese film marking clearly its cinematic geopolitical orientation.

The opening movie “Apart Together” is a bright and funny tale of a Chinese Civil War veteran from Taiwan who meets his childhood sweetheart again in Shangai. Director Wang Quan’an gives another gawk into the Chinese history, looking at the modern hotchpotch that is the People’s Republic of China on the Chinese mainland and the island republic of Taiwan (which China still considers a breakaway province).

The film is placed over fifty years after the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China on the Chinese mainland and the founding of the island Republic of Taiwan. For the first time a group of ex-soldiers of the Taiwanese People’s Party have the permission to go back to China and be reunited with family members in Shangai. Lui Yansheng is one of those soldiers who goes back to Shanghai to meet Qiao Yu’e and their son, who was born after Lui took flight. After fifty years, many thinks have changed. Qiao Yu’e has a family with an officer in the People’s Liberation Army: two daughters and grandchildren. Lui Yansheng arrival is joyfully welcomed by all the family members and by the local community. In the streets, the local band plays and a generous meal is served. In Shangai, Lui is considered a special guest by all. However, the jolly atmosphere changes when the real purpose for Lui’s visit becomes known. Qiao Yu’e is asked choose:a busy plot, where all the family members find space to expresses their different personalities or a impersonalized life with the trappimgs of modern Taiwan with a sense of community largely void.
The director uses photography to capture the atmosphere of the town ringed by old buildings, small streets with a lousy community life. Additionaly Quan’an indicates the passing of time by the move of Qiao Yu’e’s family into a modern building with cold interiors where the life of the community has vanished after just one year. Sentimentality and sanctimony about traditional ways are absent. This underpins the movie with a blunt reality. Notwithstanding, the film has plenty of romance and witty dialogue to carry it throught this exploration.