Aleksandr Petrov's The Old Man and the Sea

Here’s a gem from Aleksandr Petrov -- a film that is both short and sweet, and also a very good way of blending artistry with technology. And no disrespect to Disney and company, but I consider this masterpiece to be one of the most beautiful animations I've ever seen.

Yes, the Russian animator/director famous for being a proponent of Romantic Realism in his works made this short 20-minute animated film based on Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

Mr. Petrov’s technique may look old-school to some, but it's not. It is in reality solid, unique and beautiful. By just looking at the pictures, it surely evokes varied thoughts and emotions, surely painting a thousand words. Of course, it would help if one reads the book, since it would be far easier to understand this winner of the 1999 Academy Awards for Animated Short Film.



I will let Wikipedia provide the detailed explanation regarding the painstaking work and process that the artist/director, with the help of technology, did to breathe life into Papa’s classic man versus fish tale--

...the first large-format animated film ever made. Technically impressive, the film is made entirely in pastel oil paintings on glass, a technique mastered by only a handful of animators in the world. By using his fingertips instead of a paintbrush on different glass sheets positioned on multiple levels, each covered with slow-drying oil paints, he was able to add depth to his paintings. After photographing each frame painted on the glass sheets, which was four times larger than the usual A4-sized canvas, he had to slightly modify the painting for the next frame and so on. It took Aleksandr Petrov over two years, from March 1997 through April 1999, to paint each of the 29,000+ frames. For the shooting of the frames a special adapted motion-control camera system was built, probably the most precise computerized animation stand ever made. On this an IMAX camera was mounted, and a video-assist camera was then attached to the IMAX camera.

Master Scorsese's The Departed

Martin Scorsese is a master filmmaker and one of my favorite directors of all time; his films which are veritable masterpieces showed the enormous talent of the man behind the camera.

However, it is really funny and a shame that for whatever reasons he has been snubbed numerous times by the Academy Awards.

If there is a film director out there worthy of the golden statue it is Signore Scorsese--

In my list of movies - Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Aviator and now, The Departed in no particular order will always be in the top echelons of movies borne out of Hollywood that could stand on its own merits and worthy story-telling.

The Departed which was based on the Hong Kong‘s 2002 movie, Infernal Affairs once again showed his unequaled touch especially when the subject is about the Mafia and Organized Crime. He has mastered the genre like no other and knows every thing there is like the palm of his hands.



With a powerful all star cast, he can do no wrong here--

Jack Nicholson as the Boston Irish Mob Boss Frank Costello is a joy to watch and proves that he can still dish out his trademark “evil self” without much effort unlike most of the younger actors of today, his distracting eyebrows notwithstanding. Hahaha!

Leonardo Di Caprio as the rookie undercover cop Billy Costigan tasks to penetrate the mob in South Boston has really grown up on this film and Scorsese has done wonders for him and he‘s one actor who’s so at home with the master having been under his tutelage in the past in such notable films like The Aviator and Gangs of New York. He really has evolved into one of the finest young actors of today and he will be a force to reckon with in the film industry for years to come if he will just play his cards right.

Matt Damon is his usual exceptional cool but explosive self as the morally- torn Colin Sullivan, the mob boss’ protégé since his childhood and groomed to be his eyes and ears in the police force.

Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg these two veteran actors played the two no- nonsense dedicated cops Queenan and Dignam whose main job and obsession is to eliminate the Irish Mob in Boston’s crime landscape and have done what they have been paid to do as the driven handlers of Billy Costigan in his undercover work against Costello.

Alec Baldwin’s short but meaty performance as the overeager agent, Special Investigations Unit Captain Ellerby is worth mentioning here and he has shown maturity as an actor through the years by accepting some meaty but worthy non- lead roles in his career.

Scorsese has woven an action- packed 150- minutes of a thriller here. I must admit that The Departed is the first movie that I have watched in the movie house this year that had my undivided attention right from the beginning up until the end and I tell you it‘s already a tribute to the Director for I usually fall asleep in the movie house in the middle of the majority of movies (boy, they are many) that I have seen this year prompting a friend to quip that the movie house is just a place for me to steal a wink or two, a hideaway from the hassles of my job.

The film had me on the edge of my seat and glued my eyes on the screen as one scene after scene unraveled until it reached its peak in the end. It is one "bloody" but superb filmmaking that catches your attention which younger directors of today should try to emulate and follow.

But even the master could sometimes overlooked something like the scene in the movie house where Costigan (Di Caprio) was trailing Costello(Nicholson) in his rendezvous with Sullivan (Damon) where he is shown holding his cell phone in silent mode "texting" his handlers about the so-called meeting between the mole and the puppeteer.

Afterwards when Sullivan exited the movie theater and Costigan tried to tail him into the narrow side streets, his cell phone suddenly rang that caught Sullivan’s attention and prompting Costigan to scamper into an unscheduled detour to hide thus, letting his prey escape in the process. Such a glaring boo-boo from a well-trained undercover operative in the cutthroat world of the Mafia could only mean one thing in real life--Death.



There is no letdown here though, for all in all, The Departed is still the best film of 2006 in my book owing to the actor’s captivating performances under the baton of the master storyteller if only the people at the Academy Awards should finally shun their undeserved and unfounded bias to one of the best filmmakers of all time and hand him the coveted Best Director Oscars come awards night which in my opinion is a well- deserved one and is long overdue.