A song from my other favorite album of 2010, Corinne Bailey Rae’s The Sea.

There was a lot of great music released in 2010 (much of which was overlooked by the Grammys). I appreciated The Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, gave The National’s High Violet quite a few spins, and was in awe of the songwriting on display in Corinne Bailey Rae’s The Sea. But if I ask myself what album moved me the most, what got under my skin in a way nothing else could, the answer is, without a doubt, Jónsi’s Go. I love Sigur Rós as much as the next guy, but don’t assume that Go is just another Sigur Rós album. In fact, it’s strikingly different. There is more structure to the songs, it’s more melodic, and there are actual lyrics (mostly in English). With kitchen-sink drums beating full blast and Jonsi singing, “We should all be, oh, alive”, I dare you not to get chills.

Jonsi, Go

Corinne Bailey Rae, The Sea

Arcade Fire, The Suburbs

The Weepies, Be My Thrill

Teitur, Let the Dog Drive Home

Brandon Flowers, Flamingo

Broadcast 2000, Broadcast 2000

Hammock, Chasing After Shadows…Living With the Ghosts

Janelle Monáe, The Archandroid: Suites II and III

Laura Veirs, July Flame

John Mark McMillan, The Medicine

Mt. Desolation, Mt. Desolation

Peter Gabriel, Scratch My Back

Audrey Assad, The House You’re Building

The National, High Violet

The Daylights, The Daylights

I’m trying to catch up on movies, as I’ve been a little busy making my own (After, in theaters fall 2011, tell everyone you know). Last night I finally got around to seeing Black Swan.

I’ve been an avid Aronofsky fan since his debut film Pi back in 1998. With its gritty, surreal black and white cinematography, it blew my fifteen year old mind wide open. It certainly made me appreciate math in a new way, and I even convinced my algebra teacher to show it in class. I considered this something of an achievement. 

With each subsequent film, Aronofsky has grown as an artist, and his subject matter, though often disturbing, is consistently engaging and thought-provoking. The Fountain, a film that was a failure both critically and commercially, was one of my favorite films of 2006. It was ambitious in a way that turned some people off. I thought it was bold. Visually, it’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen.  

Following The Fountain, Aronofsky turned to the more character-driven piece The Wrestler. The film was not very interesting visually (intentionally so), but the performances (specifically Mickey Rourke’s) were extraordinary. 

Black Swan finds a middle-ground between the meticulously crafted visuals of Aronofsky’s earlier work and the cinema verité style of The Wrestler. I’m not sure there is a shot in Black Swan that isn’t handheld, but there is a virtuosity to the camerawork that wasn’t present in The Wrestler. 

The film follows (often very literally) Nina (Natalie Portman), a ballerina in New York who finds herself cast as the lead role in a new production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), encourages the reserved Nina to embrace the darker side of her character.

Swan Lake is, of course, a retelling of the swan princess myth. The story goes something like this: 

The time has come for prince Siegried to choose a wife. One night, he sees a flock of swans land upon a glassy lake. One of them is revealed to be a woman, princess Odette. Cursed by the evil von Rothbart, she lives as a swan by day and a woman by night. 

At the royal ball, von Rothbart arrives with his daughter Odile, who is dressed to look like Odette, only wearing black. Mistaking Odile for Odette, Siegried announces their marriage. When he realizes his error, it is too late. Because he has already pledged himself to Odile, Odette’s curse cannot be broken. 

The tale ends with Siegfried and Odette jumping to their deaths in the lake. 

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW

Leroy is intent on Nina embracing her darker side because she must play both parts - the white and the black swan. Nina lives with her mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), a former dancer whose entire existence revolves around her daughter. Nina’s room functions as an ode to childhood - butterfly wallpaper, pink everywhere, a pile of stuffed animals in the corner. To say her emotional development has been stunted by her mother would be something of an understatement.

As a result, Nina isn’t very social. She sticks to herself and is intent on perfecting her craft. Leroy becomes quickly frustrated with her. He insists that she has to “feel it”. It can’t just be about the technicalities of her dancing; she must lose herself in it. It’s as if Aronofsky is making a statement about his own films.

Under the increasing pressure, Nina begins to lose her grip on reality. She has hallucinations about her fingers bleeding and her toes becoming disfigured. She is determined to hide a small cut on her back, as if it might mar her otherwise perfect figure. In one horrifying sequence, she plucks a small, black feather from the wound. 

She is haunted, in a way, by a fellow member of her company, Lily (Mina Kunis), whose outgoing, sexually frank personality is foreign to her. Her character functions as a sort of doppelgänger in the film, showing up at strange times and often morphing into Nina herself. In an already famous scene, Lily takes Nina out on the town, and the two end up returning to Nina’s bedroom to make love. We learn later that Lily never followed Nina home.

Nina is haunted by the dark side of herself, the side she keeps hidden, like the cut on her back. Her black swan taunts her and seduces her, and wears the face of a rival.

The themes of the film are evident in the cinematography and production design. Nina wears white and Lily wears black. Leroy’s office and apartment are decorated with black and white furniture and decor - he embraces both sides of himself.

Nina cannot escape from herself, and her quest for perfection. Aronofsky reminds us of this by placing mirrors in nearly every scene. Sometimes the mirrors lie. 

The subtext of the film is about filmmaking itself. An actor must give himself fully to a performance; he must lose himself in it if he wishes to achieve greatness. A director is constantly encouraging his actors to do this very thing. When Leroy instructs Nina to go home and touch herself, it is not a sexual advance. He is trying to get her to let go.

In Leroy’s version of Swan Lake, Odette is the only one who plunges to her death at the end. Inevitably, Black Swan must end with Nina doing the same. As she lands on the mattress beneath the stage, her chest covered in blood from a self-inflicted stab wound, she looks up at Leroy and company, and says, “I felt it. It was perfect.”

I mentioned the virtuosity of the camerawork. It is a mistake to assume that shooting handheld is easier than on a tripod or dolly. Very often it is more difficult, especially for the focus-puller. There are some shots in Black Swan that left my mouth hanging open. 

I don’t gravitate towards films shot in this style, but it was the right choice for the material. The camerawork lends an air of reality to the story, which is then disrupted by the nightmarish images of Nina’s mental breakdown. 

This is a rich film with a truly extraordinary performance by Portman. And I should note that the score by Clint Mansell, which incorporates some of Tchaikovsky’s music and is therefore ineligible for an Oscar, is fantastic.

Black Swan might be the best film of 2010.

I felt it.  

Last Thursday was a good day for me. We signed the deal with our investors, securing the financing for our film. Although I’ve intentionally kept quiet about it in the past, I can now say that the film is called After and it’s a supernatural thriller with a very minimal cast. Other than that, I still can’t say much. But we’re now officially in pre-production. You can check out the website at www.after-movie.com.

John August posted this on his blog, and I felt it was too cool to not post here. Animation by Isaac Niemand.

★ ★ ★ 1/2

Toy Story 3 picks up eleven years after the events of Toy Story 2. Andy has graduated high school and is getting ready to leave for college. His mom is still single (does she ever date?). The toys we have come to love over the years aren’t played with anymore, and Andy has to make a decision about whether to bring them along to college or throw them out. You’ve seen the trailer, and know that through a turn of events, they end up at Sunnyside Day Care, where we are introduced to a new group of toys. And that is all I will say about the story.

What occurred to me while I was watching the film was not only the longevity of these characters, but how the boys from Emeryville, CA have somehow made us care about them. About toys. And this is a quite an emotional film, it being the last of the Toy Story films (or so I assume). From the very beginning, there is something slightly depressing about Andy being grown up, but that is quickly eclipsed by the exciting sequences that follow. There is plenty of suspense, and some surprisingly dark moments as well. I was excited to take my three year old to see the movie, but now I’m having second thoughts. She might be genuinely frightened by a handful of scenes.

If I have any complaints at all, it is that some ideas seem to have been recycled from the past two films. But that is not necessary a problem, as they work for this story. To bring this to a close, there is only one thing to say: Pixar has done it again. But have they ever given us a reason to doubt them?

★ ★ 1/2

Curious about the new Karate Kid remake? Here’s how it breaks down:

The story follows Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) and his single mother (Taraji P. Henson), who are moving to China because the mom has been transferred there (though we never see her at work). As you can imagine, this is difficult for Dre. Not only does he not speak the language, but there is also a bully who walks out of a Disney Channel original movie and starts giving him a hard time. The bully is friends with Mei Ying, a cute girl at Dre’s school whose family is staking everything on her making it into a music academy or something. Dre falls for Mei Ying, and the bully makes it clear that he doesn’t approve by frequently beating Dre up.

There is a scene where Dre spies on Mei Ying as she practices violin with her British piano teacher. This man says things like, “This isn’t good enough. Your family has everything riding on this. I’m going to call your father.”

For the first forty-five minutes or so, The Karate Kid plays very much like a TV movie. The acting is forced, the dialogue is on the nose (not sure if this ever improves), and the pacing is sluggish. Then Dre meets Mr. Han, the janitor in his building, who also happens to be a kung fu master (that’s right – kung fu, not karate). Mr. Han is played by Jackie Chan in a restrained performance that occasionally reveals a deeper side of the actor. The chemistry between Smith and Chan is what carries the film, and it comes too late. I’m not convinced the cut we saw was final, so there’s still a chance the filmmakers will wisely trim some fat from the first half of the film.

You know the rest of the story. Dre trains for a competition in which he will face the bully hitherto mentioned, and win the heart of the girl he loves. There are great scenes in The Karate Kid, and if I were twelve it would probably be my favorite movie, but the weak script and lackluster direction hold it back from really soaring. And Taraji P. Henson, who was so good in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, is horribly over the top here.

But you know what? When I saw Three Ninjas as a kid, I wasn’t worrying about the dialogue or the direction. And neither were the millions of kids who flocked to the original Karate Kid. Regardless of my feelings about the movie, I think it’s going to be a massive hit.