Jack Nicholson and Koyaanisqatsi

I have been accepting my penance for neglecting the blog and have been watching a bunch of movies. While watching Chinatown I was reminded just how much I like Jack Nicholson's acting. The scene in Chinatown that brought this to mind is when he is telling a joke and cackling after the punchline while Evelyn Mulwray stands behind him. There is something about his intensity that I don't think other actors can come close to. All of his movies allow him to showcase this intensity perfectly. Even people that haven't seen The Shining can relate to this image.



Even his performance recently in The Departed had the same amount of craziness. His ability to act intimidating was perfect for a Boston crime boss. It is completely believable to me that Jack Nicholson could take several shots from Matt Damon, play dead for several seconds and sit up briefly to fire a few more times just before dying simply to terrify his opponent. Even his appearance at Lakers games is entertaining to me. Seeing him sitting court side and standing up to step onto the court at questionable calls by the refs is hilarious.

Another film I watched is Koyaanisqatsi. Francis Ford Coppolla's experimental film that features no dialogue and interesting time lapse shots of civilization. I didn't know what to expect going into the movie but after watching it I believe that it was one of the most powerful films I have seen. The overall tone of the film is that human civilization is unsustainable and our behavior is quickly destroying the planet. Filmed in 1982 it is far beyond its time and it was released way before it was cool to be green. It also came out 24 years before An Inconvenient Truth, made about 47 million dollars less, and unlike Al Gore Coppolla didn't win a Nobel Peace Prize. But I found Koyaanisqatsi to be much much more powerful than Al Gore's production. Its message that humans are messing up is delivered without a single word, graph, chart, politician, or image of cute animals suffering. I suggest that everyone check it out as it is available for free on YouTube.

I would also like to agree with Andrew's post. I feel as though school often diminishes my creativity and replaces it with stress and frustration.

About Chinatown

So I took Arturo's advice and watched Chinatown over the weekend. I just got to say that If you guys are interesting in watching one of the most developed story lines you will probably see in the movie industry, this is your movie. A brief review, directed by Roman Polansky, Chinatown tells the story of private investigator, Jack Gittes (Jack Nicholson), as we tries to unveil a conspiracy to steal the water supply of the city of Los Angeles. I know this storyline sounds kind of dull and overdone, but I think that Chinatown is more than that. The plot for this story unfolds by itself. The audience goes along with the movie as this reveals every key point of the story. This type of storytelling is so subtle that you don't even realize the complexity of it until you are done watching the movie. It just flows very naturally. I don't want to spoil the movie, but the big theme of the story (the water supply stealing) ends up being not as important as the story lines between the characters develop and overshadow the water supply storyline. I also think that it's really impressive that Polansky only use the main character, Jack Gittes, as his only mean to reveal the plot.

Chinatown reminded me of Dexter. In this show we also get a lot of information from Dexter's point of view. Dexter is also a suspenseful drama where the audience follows him as he investigates his different victims. For example, the way both of this characters sneak around to get the information that they need is pretty similar.

But coming back to Chinatown, its composition is pretty interesting as well. There is some pretty cool shots in this movie. Especially when Gitter is observing or hiding from someone, which brings me back to the story being tell only through Gitter's point of view.

I think that this movie is worth watching. I'm not really into movies from the 70's and early 80's because they tend to be pretty cheesy with the music and the general mood (and I did see some of this in Chinatown, especially during the credits), but I guess that was the style back in those days. But you should definitely watch this movie since it's a great example of storytelling and direction.