Tindersticks, Claire Denis Film Scores 1996 – 2009

By Michelle Patterson

How I judge whether or not a soundtrack feels organic to its cinematic equal is whether or not it can stand on its own. This does not determine whether or not it is good—the apparent strength of the music isn’t a question—but if it can genuinely remind me of the film when I am listening to it in the quiet of my own bedroom or on the chaotic bus to work.

The clearest role of the soundtracks as experienced in the Tindersticks‘ Claire Denis Film Scores box set is as passive listener. This music stands on its own, without its marriage to the visuals; better yet, it imports another sense of value when associated with an entirely new set of identifiers, all depending on the situation of the listener.
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I’m The Real Victim Here: I Spit On Your Grave Remade and Revisited

By Michelle Patterson

Victimhood has had an ironic stranglehold on cinema since the medium’s very inception. The “woman’s picture,” along with the romantic comedy and action-adventure genres, tap into the potential for an audience to live both vicariously through the film and also fully explore their empathetic side. The horror film has also allowed this to continue for over a century now.
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Slumber Party Slaughter: Don’t Go Into the Shower

By Michelle Patterson

I was not the world’s most together child. In fact, up until the age of 25, I saw morbidity in every little thing and imagined the worst-case scenarios for every event in my life.
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I Spit On Your Grave: Revenge Is Not So Sweet

By Michelle Patterson

While working on this piece, a hopeful idea flickered to life: could 23-year-old Michelle and 33-year-old Michelle be pals? Although perhaps possible, perhaps I’m too hopeful that my past self and present self should be friends in some alternate universe. Seeing as I have yet to shake the pop culture-related obsessions which began in my youth and continue to snowball into one massive contradictory mass, it’s not that much of a long shot, physics quandaries aside.

So until time travel becomes reality, here’s the imagined correspondence between two versions of myself about an important piece of film-making, the original I Spit On Your Grave.
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Ten Reasons Why You Should See In Bruges

By Michelle Patterson

In Bruges, a delightful and surprising film out of Ireland that won critical acclaim in 2008—winning a Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Golden Globe for Colin Farrell, gaining an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and winning numerous awards in its native country—deserves much credit for being a genuinely black comedy.

When it is funny, it creates guffaws a-plenty and when it is black, it is inky, friends. What is most astonishing is how it manages to allow the proper amount of depth within the characterization. Yet, when one considers that the filmmaker, Martin MacDonagh, is a well-established playwright and has a Best Live Action Short Film Academy Award under his belt for his first foray into film, Six Shooter, it isn’t really that shocking. We’re also reminded that Colin Farrell can act. So, let’s settle into the Top Ten Moments of one brilliant piece of Irish filmmaking.
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Andy Barker, P.I.

By Michelle Patterson

One of Andy Richter’s strengths as a comedic actor is something he was just born with: his cherubic face. What the majority of his performances exhibited—in his other (sadly) failed television shows and various film roles—was a wholesome, dimpled mug offset against a usually sardonic soul or secret freak-of-nature. It’s an old show business trick (see Jack Benny and even Dick Van Dyke) but it works.
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Character Actor In A Movie Star’s Body: Roger Livesey

By Michelle Patterson

Acting isn’t that hard to figure out; either you keep it simple or you make it seem simple without giving away your hand. While I’m not an actor, I do know that as a woman in day-to-day life, I have to be able to become a different woman to different people. This is something we all do; people can tell when we really believe in what we are saying and when we do not. Life is full of performances, which makes it that much easier to decide who is a good actor and who is not. The act itself is invisible and instead of seeing a character, we see a person.
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District 9

By Michelle Patterson

A car windshield splattered and smeared with the guts of bugs and men and swirls of dust and haze appears in front of the camera, doubling as a means to lessen the intense sun of South Africa. The bloody spray of horror married with the vroom-vroom of the action film—all in the midst of a bleak near-future within the science-fiction genre. It adds to the grime of this particular dystopia.
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The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Film Remakes, Part Three

By Michelle Patterson

Read Parts One and Two of this series.

Ahhh, it’s time to close the final chapter to the film remake saga. Such wonderful memories have been created in the past few months as a result of devotion to this glorious torture. Boring bears on the baseball field, terrible tweens taking on the Disney vault classics, and Nicolas Cage punching a series of women in the face—I can’t say that it’s been complete misery. The ability to admit when I’m wrong has never been something that I’ve shied away from; there is concrete proof that on rare occasion Hollywood can get it right when they take another crack at a story that has already been told. Ironically, this trilogy of articles ends on a bitter note right when it’s supposed to be time to laugh and adore one another.
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The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Film Remakes, Part Two

By Michelle Patterson

Read Part One of this series here.

In the previous installment, I explained what separates the good film remakes from the bad and the ugly. There should be a lot of care taken to avoid any of the mistakes of the past, or in the case of a particularly artistic original film, one should not overdo what made that film so good in the first place. Bludgeoning the audience to get a message across won’t make them roll over like kittens and beg for their bellies to be scratched; it will leave them numb and confused, desperate to go home and crawl under the covers to make it all just go away.
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