FILM 1983: FIRST REFORMED

FILM 1983: FIRST REFORMED 

TRIVIA: This is the first movie in which Cedric the Entertainer is credited under his real name, Cedric Kyles.

Filming for the interior and exterior of the church was done at the Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, Queens.

Unusually shot in 4:3 ratio. Paul Schrader was inspired to shoot this way by Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida (2013) as he liked the way it framed the human body. Schrader also liked the sense of claustrophobia that the framing suggests.

Paul Schrader considered Jake Gyllenhaal and Oscar Isaac for the lead role but opted for Ethan Hawke instead. He's ten years older and had an innate air of world-weariness that was appropriate for the role.

FILM 1976: THE BIG SICK

FILM 1976: THE BIG SICK

TRIVIA: The film was released in the United States on Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon's tenth wedding anniversary.

While writing the script, Kumail Nanjiani wanted his on-screen family to reflect the jokey and humorous traits of his real-life family. He bemoaned that so many Muslim characters were so frequently depicted as overly serious, and he aimed to avoid that stereotype.

The decision to add the real-life photos of Emily and Kumail in the credits was suggested by actress Leslie Mann after seeing an early cut of the film.

Producer Judd Apatow reached out to Ray Romano for the part of Terry, after briefly working with him in the movie Funny People (2009). He was also a huge fan of Romano's sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond (1996).

In an interview on The Late Show, Zoe Kazan admitted that while filming the scenes where she was in a coma she often fell asleep and inevitably ruined takes by waking up in the middle of them.

The film was the only non-Best Picture nominee for the year to be nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars.

Mary's stand-up routine with the flip-chart easel is based on Aidy Bryant's real stand-up routine.

BOOK 180: JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT: LOUIS-FERDINAND CÉLINE

LITERARY STYLE: Céline's first novel is probably most remarkable for its style. Céline makes extensive use of ellipsisand hyperbole. His writing has the flow of natural speech patterns and uses the vernacular, while also employing more erudite elements. This has influenced French literature considerably. The novel enjoyed popular success and a fair amount of critical acclaim when it was published in October 1932. Albert Thibaudet, perhaps the greatest of the entre-deux-guerres critics, said that in January 1933 it was still a common topic of conversation at dinner parties in Paris.

INFLUENCE AND LEGACY: Paolo Sorrentino's 2013 film The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) opens with a quote from Journey to the End of the Night. The film concludes with a visual of the last paragraph of the book, passing under bridges, arches, and locks along the city's river.

Will Self has written that Journey to the End of the Night "is the novel, perhaps more than any other, that inspired me to write fiction".

The song "End of the Night" by The Doors references this book, as it had a great influence on the work of Jim Morrison.

Charles Bukowski makes reference to Journey in a number of his novels and short stories, and employs prose techniques borrowed from Céline. Bukowski wrote in Notes of a Dirty Old Man that "Céline was the greatest writer of 2000 years".

Céline's literary style greatly influenced Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

In Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 dystopian science fiction film Alphaville, protagonist Lemmy Caution dismisses a taxi driver's offer of route options to his destination by stating that he is on "a journey to the end of the night". The film depicts the use of poetry as a weapon against a sentient computer system.

MY VERDICT:

I can understand why this is cited as a great novel, however I did not enjoy it at all. This book probably, of all the books I’ve ever read, took me the longest to complete. The only reason I can give, is because of the disheartening subject matter that although travelling around the world to many different situations almost each one was more, or as, depressing as the last. There is no hope is this book, no humour, no let up, and because of that I found it difficult to get through. The protagonist is more unlikable the longer the story progresses and I found it hard to sympathize with him even when he was in sympathetic situations. I can see that it is well written, I believe there’s no argument on that part, but above all I want to be able to enjoy reading a book and I did not enjoy one part of this.

FILM 1710: THE WAILING

TRIVIA: For his ceremony scene, actor Jung-min Hwang filmed for 15 minutes without break. It was one long-take scene.

The Wailing is Jun Kunimura's first Korean film in his 35 years of acting career.

The movie contains many themes, but mainly based on folk religions in Korea.

FILM 1663: MOMMY DEAD AND DEAREST

TRIVIA: DeeDee named her daughter Gypsy Rose, but had never heard of the famous Gypsy Rose Lee (actress, burlesque dancer, basis for the stage play "Gypsy").

BOOK 145: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. It is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his return from 10 years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing.

Dostoyevsky conceived the idea of Crime and Punishment in the summer of 1865. At the time the author owed large sums of money to creditors, and was trying to help the family of his brother Mikhail, who had died in early 1864. Projected under the title The Drunkards, it was to deal "with the present question of drunkness ... [in] all its ramifications, especially the picture of a family and the bringing up of children in these circumstances, etc., etc." Once Dostoyevsky conceived Raskolnikov and his crime, now inspired by the case of Pierre François Lacenaire, this theme became ancillary, centering on the story of the Marmeladov family.

Despite its title, the novel does not so much deal with the crime and its formal punishment, as with Raskolnikov's internal struggle (the book shows that his punishment results more from his conscience than from the law). Believing society would be better for it, Raskolnikov commits murder with the idea that he possessed enough intellectual and emotional fortitude to deal with the ramifications, [based on his paper/thesis, "On Crime", that he is a Napoleon], but his sense of guilt soon overwhelms him to the point of psychological and somatic illness. It is only in the epilogue that he realizes his formal punishment, having decided to confess and end his alienation from society.

TRIVIA: When Crime and Punishment came up in an interview, Alfred Hitchcock told French director Francois Truffaut that he would never consider filming it. Hitchcock explained that he could make a great film out of a good book, and even (or especially) a mediocre book, but never a great book, because the film would always suffer by comparison.