2006年NPR美国国家公共电台十二月-Movie Reviews: 'Deja Vu' is First-Class（在线收听）

Films produced by Hollywood KingPin Jerry Bruckheimer usually don’t have French titles. But ‘Deja Vu’ breaks a lot of rules. Los Angeles Times and Morning Edition film critic Kenneth Turan has this review.

Deja Vu was in the business of confounding expectations. It's not the routine potboiler starring Denzel Washington, the advertising indicates. Instead, it’s a thriller that plays like the noir classic Laura would if science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick had a hand in the screenplay.

Don't answer that, I'll prove it to you that's your friend Beth called, let the machine pick it up, she is gonna say
Hi Clare! It’s Beth, are you there? I'm sorry to call you so early but when you didn't call me last night I got worried.

Claire? Hi, it’s Beth. Are you there? I’m sorry to call you so early but you said you were gonna call me when you got home and when you didn't, so I started to get worried.
Beth, is this a joke?
Oh, hi, hi……

' Deja Vu’ translates as “already seen”, it’s a film viewers will be hard-pressed to explain to themselves. Let alone anyone else. But if the script doesn’t make any sense, it does so in such a delirious and energetic way that it’s hard not to go along for the ride.

The key notion here has been a sci-fi(science fiction) staple for years. It’s whether the past is truly past or whether past, present and future are in someway connected via shortcuts through space and time called Wormholes. These shortcuts enable people in the humble present to influence both the past and the future.

Basically in folding space in a higher dimension to create instantaneous link between two distant points.

Instantaneous?

Well, that’s what we hope for that’s what we expected, we used huge amounts of energy to create this French.

All right, how huge?

You remember that old blackout we had a few years back (Yes I do) New York blamed Canada( right), Canada blamed Michigan.

Half the northeast. You're saying you guys…

50 million homes.

Right.

My bad…

When you’ve got a far-flung premise like that you need a star who grounds the film in everyday reality. Denzel Washington playing a government agent investigating a terrorist blast does that beautifully.

An actor with charisma and intelligence to burn, Washington is someone who never wastes his time, never takes on projects that don’t deserve to be made. Also essential when you’re making a film with a plot nobody should be thinking about too hard. He is a strong director who can move things along at a breakneck clip, a director like Tony Scott. Scott is expert at filling the screen with so much forward motion that the questions you might otherwise ask get left in the dust.

Though he has made his share of fiascos, Scott and Washington form an especially potent combination, witness 1995's "Crimson Tide" and 2004's "Man on Fire".

What is interesting about' Deja Vu' is not how little sense it makes but how little that matters.

If you want your films to add up logically, you are welcome to take your calculator somewhere else. But if you do you’ll be missing out on some first-class genre fun.

Kenneth Turan is a film critic for Morning Edition and the Los Angeles …
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potboiler
为混饭吃而粗制滥造的文艺作品, 粗制作品作家(或画家)
noir
1. Of or relating to the film noir genre.
2. Of or relating to a genre of crime literature featuring tough, cynical characters and bleak settings.
3. Suggestive of danger or violence.
Noir 的法文意思：
黑色電影 ( Film Noir ) 的法文 Noir 是指"黑色 ( Black )"與"憂鬱 ( gloomy )"，黑色電影可以說是此類型或是指有此種風格和敘事傾向的電影，它承襲了盜匪電影中尖刻及暴力的故事情節，因其形成背景而被稱為跨越領域的電影和一種移民文化作品。
黑色電影背景：
黑色電影故事源自於美國 20 年代的偵探小說，它不同於傳統的英國偵探小說，將發生在英格蘭老舊豪宅或鄉間背景的上流社會人物，轉變為在都會中一般市民小人物的經歷，人物個性冷漠現實、狡猾聰慧，故事情節詭譎，影像拍攝則受到 20 年代德國電影的影響，黑色電影中幾位頗具代表性的導演均為德裔，早在德國時期的作品已有黑色電影的雛形，後來移民至美國好萊塢發展，成熟後蔚然成風，因此在電影史上，美國在 40 年代戰爭期間拍攝完成，並於 1945 年之後很快在國外上映的一群影片，此種類型電影被稱為「黑色電影」。
有很多香水的名字也叫做 Noir 喔！
delirious
Of, suffering from, or characteristic of delirium.
失常的，精神错乱的：神志失常的，遭受神志失常的痛苦的，或具有神志失常的特征的
Marked by uncontrolled excitement or emotion; ecstatic:
发狂的，狂热的：具有无法抑制的极度兴奋特征的；狂喜的：
delirious joy; a crowd of delirious baseball fans.
狂喜；一群狂热的棒球球迷
breakneck
Dangerously fast:
极快的，非常危险的：
a breakneck pace.
极快的步伐
Likely to cause an accident:
可能引起事故的，极快的：
a breakneck curve.
危险的曲线
forward motion
移动, 前进运动
wormhole
A hole made by a burrowing worm.
Physics. A theoretical distortion of space-time in a region of the universe that would link one location or time with another, through a path that is shorter in distance or duration than would otherwise be expected.

  原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/NPR2006/40936.html