Beyond the Clouds revisited

During an interview conducted in Houston on a press tour for Queen Margot several years ago French actor Vincent Perez spoke about working with Michelangelo Antonioni in Beyond the Clouds.
The movie is like a testament, said Perez. It's his last movie, he's 82. There are four stories. It was weird, here was the same question, Do I believe in God?
My character was a thought of Antonioni, and he's at the end of his life, Perez said. He pauses a Pinter-esque five-seconds before continuing.
He couldn't say more than 20 words at a time. He was half-paralyzed, so it was very difficult for him to explain what he wanted to say. When he was saying Quiet, everybody was like .... Perez says ending the sentence with a percussive splashing sound.
Be careful, he's the master; he's still powerful today, even with those 20 words, recalled Perez.
Each word was used to give you an internal resonance, to understand something about the situation. My story is a man who's following a girl on the street. Normal, trying to seduce her. Superficial talk at the beginning and after that starting to talk about fears, about thoughts, about more deep things. Then she goes into a church, to a mass. Everyone is waiting to see what Michelangelo wants to do. How he wants to shoot the scene in the church. He didn't answer.
We're waiting four hours in this church. Suddenly he came to see me, somebody was helping him to walk. Then he told the person helping him to go away and I was the one who's helping him walk. We started to walk together.
We'd stop at a place in the church and he'd say, Beautiful, beauty. Bella! Bella!'We continued to walk to the crucifix, he kept saying Bella! After that he started to sing for me. He stopped singing and said, Bella! Bella!
Perez lets out a breath. It was like - not far from tears. After that he asked me to sit and close my eyes. We were standing alone. It's the first time I saw him alone without anybody helping him. I closed my eyes and in fact my movement, that was the movement of the camera, that was the scene.
After that, when I opened my eyes, Antonioni was there looking at me, crying with a little smile, Perez said. That was him at the end of his life.

Good Luck Chuck

It should be good luck to the audience. I like Dane Cook in Waiting and Mr. Brooks, but despite showing comic flair in Good Luck Chuck it seems that Cook is trying to outdo Employee of the Month as a lame film. At the end of Good Luck Chuck here is how I felt. Remember when your Dad caught you smoking and he bought a pack and made you smoke all 20 cigs one after the other. That is close to how I felt after watching Good Luck Chuck.

Send a Bullet aims high

In Manda Bala (English title Send a Bullet) a documentary from Jason Kohn we meet the following cast of characters: a plastic surgeon, a kidnap victim in need of plastic surgery, a kidnapper, a frog farmer, a corrupt politician (Jader Barbalho as himself), and a policeman investigating same. If these people were in a fictional narrative their story would have you on the edge of your seat. The realization that this story is true will have you riveted to your theater chair.
The essence of Manda Bala is corruption in Brazil and in particular Sao Paulo a city of 25 million. To put that number in perspective consider that there are currently about 1.5-million people less in the entire state of Texas. Kohn seems to be concentrating on kidnap victims but then he broadens the range of the story to include every strata of society and (in the manner of All the President's Men) he follows the money. That monetary trail leads to fake companies taking huge contracts that total millions, and subsequently laundering that money in frog farms. Meanwhile the kidnappers have their turn in front of the camera and come off as victims of society forced to commit crimes to feed their families. Don¹t worry you won't feel too much compassion for these bastards after you witness a ransom video where they cut a man's ear off with a large kitchen knife.
Manda Bala is just one of a half dozen documentaries currently playing or opening in the next two weeks in Houston. Other quality docus include No End in Sight; The Devil Came on Horseback (Darfur genocide), In the Shadow of the Moon (Apollo missions), The King of Kong (video arcade game world¹s record); and Deep Water (docu on 1968 around the world boat race).

- Michael Bergeron