"Fish Tank": Coming of Age in an English Housing Project

A couple weeks ago, I finally got around to watching Andrea Arnold's 2009 film Fish Tank, winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.  Images from it have come into my mind every day since.

Now available on a Criterion DVD, it can also be watched instantly on Netflix.  Here's the Criterion blurb:

SYNOPSIS: British director Andrea Arnold won the Cannes Jury Prize for the intense and invigorating Fish Tank, about a fifteen-year-old girl, Mia (electrifying newcomer Katie Jarvis), who lives with her mother and sister in the housing projects of Essex. Mia’s adolescent conflicts and emerging sexuality reach a boiling point when her mother’s new boyfriend (a lethally attractive Michael Fassbender) enters the picture. In her young career, Arnold has already proven herself to be a master of social realism, evoking the work of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach; and she invests her sympathetic portraits of dead-end lives with a poetic, earthy sensibility all her own. Fish Tank heralds the official arrival of a major new filmmaker.

The Criterion WEBSITE for the film has the trailer and one of their great "Three Reasons" videos for it, along with several articles.  Here's the trailer:

I like what Peter Rainer had to say in The Christian Science Monitor:

"Because Arnold hews the film so close to Mia's hurts, what might come across as a downer instead often has a startling immediacy. Only bad movies are depressing movies. "Fish Tank," for all its faults and vagaries, brings us up close to a fully realized human being, and that's revivifying.
Jarvis, who had no previous acting experience, was accidentally discovered by Arnold when she overhead the girl arguing with her boyfriend in a train station. Arnold was right to go with her instincts in casting an untrained unknown: Jarvis has an openness to the camera that a more accomplished performer might have lacked. Her acting has a moment-to-moment excitement because we can never tell what Mia will do."

I think it's worth your time.

Meet Ross, a Navajo Horse

This is Ross.

He's the star of Melissa Henry's award-winning short film Horse You See, in which he tells us about himself in the Navajo language and even sings a song.  Here it is:

In an interview, Melissa Henry was asked what she wanted viewers to take away from the film.

Melissa: I would just like them to be happy that they watched it, that it brings some sort of joy or happiness to their day, even if it's just for a little while. But for the more "serious" answer I'd like people to see that a film in the Navajo language can reach out to all audiences regardless of who they are or where they grew up. If anything it would be great that they become so curious that they use the movie to learn some Navajo words and phrases.

Melissa and her producer (and husband), Alfredo Perez, were asked what advice they could give to aspiring filmmakers.  Here's what they said:

Alfredo: Melissa grew up in the Navajo reservation with limited access to TV, so she and her brothers had to make their own fun and exercise their imaginations playing in nature and with animals around them. So my advice I guess is for people to try to tell their own stories and not so much copy other things they've seen. Postmodernism has its limits, eventually you run out of movies to quote and pay homage to, and your audience is exhausted and hungry for new and different things. So just go with your own idea and make your own movie. It can be hard to come up with new things if you grew up surrounded by media, but it's always possible to offer a fresh approach. Then other people can quote you instead.

Melissa: Do something that's fun, do something that's going to be worth the time you'll be putting into the movie. Also, when you get too much advice from other people it can really cloud what you are aiming for, so you need to find people who really know you and you really trust. Find a good producer, someone who believes in what you're doing and who will fight for your vision.

Melissa and Alfredo started Albuquerque's Red Ant Films in 2003 "to create original films in the Navajo language."  HERE is a link to their website.

Students' Favorite Movies, Spring 2012

A couple of weeks ago, I asked 318I students to write down three of their favorite movies on the back of that week's quiz.  Some wrote down three, some more, some less.  I was surprised that there was so little overlap of choices.  There were a total of 160 votes, and 132 different movies were chosen.  Here they are:

5 Votes

The Dark Knight

3 Votes each

Harold and Maude, A Clockwork Orange, Midnight in Paris, Trainspotting

2 Votes each

Return of the Jedi, Slumdog Millionaire, Children of Men, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Pirates of the Caribbean, Titanic, Toy Story, The Lives of Others, The Fountain, Fight Club, Princess Mononoke, Lord of the Rings, Oceans 11, Memento, Old Boy, There Will Be Blood

1 Vote each

The Wizard of Oz, Serenity, Soldier, The Never Ending Story, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Forrest Gump, Unbreakable, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, My Cousin Vinny, The Sandlot, Toy Story 3, Jurassic Park, Be Kind Rewind, To Kill a Mockingbird, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, All About My Mother, The Godfather, The Godfather Part III, Superman IV, Eraserhead, The King’s Speech, Hamlet (Branagh), The Seven Samurai, The Evil Dead, Dr. Strangelove, American Psycho, Lost in Translation, Steel Magnolias, Swingers, Good Will Hunting, Elf, Step Brothers, Newsies, Pulp Fiction, Requiem for a Dream, Leon the Professional, The Beat My Heart Skipped, Machete, Planet Terror, La Dolce Vita, Super Troopers, The Hangover, Paris, Texas, Mad Max, Goodfellas, A Patch of Blue, Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Tree of Life, Sweet Land, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Constant Gardener, Into the Wild, King of the Hill, Eastern Promises, Life is Beautiful, Noises Off, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Dragonfly, Wall E, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Transformers, New Year’s Eve, The Usual Suspects, Casablanca, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Taxi Driver, Once Upon a Time in America, White Ribbon, Disney’s Hercules, Anchorman, Grease, Rushmore, Fargo, Blue Velvet, Beauty and the Beast (animated and French live action), Phantom of the Opera, Edward Scissorhands, Top Gun, Apocalypse Now, Donnie Darko, Silence of the Lambs, Finding Nemo, The Hunger Games, Iron Man 1 & 2, Sherlock Holmes, Beetlejuice, The Darjeeling Limited, Tell No One, The Lion King, The Departed, American Beauty, Two for the Road, Amadeus, The Matrix 1 & 2, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Gattaca, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, Back to the Future, The Shawshank Redemption, Mary and Max, The Holy Mountain, Final Flesh, Fritz the Cat, Fantastic Planet

Gourmet Food Trucks and FREE Artwalk Thursday Night in San Pedro

Gail Werner, Bird Dreams V, 2012, encaustic

at Gallery Neuartig

The monthly 1st Thursday ArtWalk will take place Thursday night, May 3, from 6:00 to 9:00.  You can see lots of art, for FREE, at a variety of galleries and in artists' studios.  A number of local bars, cafes, and restaurants will have live music.  And there will be at least SIXTEEN food trucks, including The Grilled Cheese Truck, OG Tempura, Asian Cravings, Let's Roll It (sushi), Shrimp Pimp, Palazzolo's Truck (gelato), Waffles de Liege, and Auntie's Fry Bread.

For more info, check out the 1st Thursday website HERE .  And if you miss it, there's always next month.  FREE parking.