Lambert & Huppert in "White Material"

"There can be only one..."

...01 / 01 / 11

How about that funky date today? Happy New Year.

The New Year couldn't come soon enough because I was informed yesterday that this blog had run out of storage space! The renovated site should be up in the next 36 hours to rescue us. I'll let you know.

Today's very special once in a hundred years date reminded me oof Highlander's Christopher Lambert.  On account of all the #1s.

"There can be only one!"

I assume this mnemonic moment was brought to me by Claire Denis's White Material which I was just watching the other day (in theaters and on IFC on demand) in which he plays Isabelle Huppert's ex-husband who -- I'm not sure if I got the details right because Denis always makes you work for them -- still lives on the African coffee plantation with her (and his new wife and his two wildly contrasted sons from both marriages).

It's crazy enough to live with your ex. When your ex is Isabelle Huppert (she's always trouble) and you're running a plantation in a region that's slipping into violent chaos and the French military are helicoptering out and dropping you survival kits on their way, you are totally off your gourd. Everyone in this movie is insane. But Huppert is contagious like that.

Lambert's presence is an extremely clever bit of casting since the international star already famously embodied everyone's favorite white-man-rules-Africa imperialist fantasy in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan Lord of the Apes. In White Material there is no fantasy unless you count the delirium one can sometimes experience when faced with Huppert's riveting confrontational opacity. You'd expect, given the plot, that her plantation owner Maria is a stubborn delusional but Huppert tilts her closer to the implacably deterministic. She isn't flaunting a death wish so much as a death expectation. Rebel forces and their child soldiers have had it with this "white material" on their land but Maria is staying put.  Disturbing movie.

"Manuel" (Nicholas Duvauchelle). Does he get his death wish from his mother?

I can't say I fully connected but I always love Denis's reliable command of atmosphere and I appreciated what Guy Lodge correctly described as "laudably complicated politics". I'm desperately awaiting Nick's full review because his twitter capsule

Agonized and fearless, eerily sympathetic, formally electric, like the last visions of someone being burned alive

...makes me love the movie more in retrospect than when I was watching it. That happens sometimes with the best of film criticism.

There Can Be Only Link

Today's Must Read: Big Media Vandalism "Inglourious Snatch" which is not simply about Tarantino's latest film but more expansively about "the structural integrity of the shot" and classical film technique. Thanks to the response post on Scanners for pointing me its way.

Pop Vox good piece on Keats and Brawne as portrayed in Bright Star
Filmbo's Chick Magnet has a great idea regarding film restorations for true movie lovers
In Contention chooses the best Best Picture winners. Let me count the ways I disagree with Kris's list... let's see one, two, three, four, five, six... Worth a look


The Big Picture We're entering the last quarter of the year. That means we'll soon see another Clint Eastwood picture. And that also means he's prepping his next picture. They both star Matt Damon
Guardian the rebirth of Colin Firth with A Single Man
Movies Kick Ass observes and learns from The Towering Inferno (fun!)
The Film Doctor on Diablo Cody's feminism, male-dominated film criticism and Jennifer's Body
My New Plaid Pants congratulations to JA for his contribution to Winq Magazine. Go, JA
IndieWire ah, lists. This one claims that critics and bloggers liked the Coen Bros A Serious Man best at TIFF, what's surprising is that Precious is all the way down at #6. Colin Firth takes the #1 lead performance for A Single Man and Mo'Nique tops the supporting ranks. Could they both win Oscars?

Finally, Film School Rejects conveys the news on the upcoming Highlander remake. I liked the movie when I was a teenager (I had a thing for Christopher Lambert at roughly the same time Diane Lane did though I got it over more quickly than she) but "there can be only one" is so laughable now that the movie has spawned so many sequels and spinoffs. This also reminds me of a great line about reality television from the Monkey See Emmy live blog which went like so: "I love how we've reached a point in the genre's evolution where the best way to get on a reality show is to have been on a reality show." It's not just that genre's evolution. It's entertainment, period.