Down Down Down

Quick dip into the sewer of politics....

And I mean the sewer - an editorial at NewsMax entitled, "John McCain: Torture Worked on Me", arguing that since John McCain broke under torture, he's a hypocrite for not supporting the use of torture now.

No, really, that's the title - that's the point of the article! Read the final paragraph:

That McCain broke under torture doesn't make him any less of an American hero. But it does prove he's wrong to claim that harsh interrogation techniques simply don't work.

I've read low and disgusting things...

From the Rude Pundit and Atrios.

Music Randomizer, Thanksgiving Edition

Nothing like a long ride on a train to provide fodder for blog posts. So in lieu of the weekly random 10 post (not to mention the weekly movie post), here's a random 20 (only a few days late), courtesy of Amtrak. With comments, written In Real Time (mostly)...

1) Slint - “Washer” - tinkly guitar, a spare slow drum - with little flickers of guitar slipping in and out. The little delicate guitar filigrees - sliding fingers on the strings - singing - delicate - odd . . . This is pretty good - they were big in the 90s - "big” - and I never heard of them until they reunited. . . . There’s the release - twin guitars banging out chords - someone faking a solo - back to the jangle. Is this “emo”? - those are “twinkly guitar parts” if I ever heard any.

2) Outkast (Big Boi) - “Intro to Speakerboxx” - cutesy noise, drum machines . . .

3) Neil Diamond - “Love on the Rocks” - lucky me! Boy, I’m glad I got that record! Shitty live recordings of Oh Caroline and a couple good songs, plus crap like this. Stinks of record contract shenanigans - the early stuff must be on a different label. Christ.

4) Neil Young - “After the Gold Rush” - “we got mother nature on the run in the 1970s.” Brother Neil wrote real songs in the Dylan style, but cleaner, with plain lyrical lines. Still - Dylan is Strange - Neil is more classic - the lyrics make actual sense, on the surface. (Damned harmonica.) “Children crying and colors flying all around the chosen ones” - “all in a dream, all in a dream, the loading had begun” . . . a song you have to listen to . . .

5) Edith Piaf - “Avant Nous” - French pop is quite nice. [That’s all I wrote? Why is it nice? It sounds like nothing else, really - not folk, not jazz, not classical, does it? Interesting. I don’t know what to say about it, but I do like it.]

6) Bikini Kill - “Alien She” - cheesy hardcore stylings - not bad, but hardly X-Ray spex . . .

7) Velvet Underground - “Stephanie Says” - good old Lou.

8) Ramones - “Pinhead” - thank god - I don’t want to be a pinhead no more . . . precise and tight - as a Dixieland band, Johnny said. They didn’t evolve, but why change when you’re all set? Gabba gabba! Gabba gabba!

9) Fleetwood Mac - “Rattleshake Shake” - from one of the Boston Teaparty shows. We’ll be here awhile. “I guess I got to shake it myself.” But get Pete going- I’ve only listened to this once in all the time I’ve had it. I like this record - like this song - but how often do I have 25 minutes to spend on one song? [And why spend it on Fleetwood Mac and not Miles or Coltrane?] It’s a good car song - trains will do; “jerk away the blues” - the intertwining guitar lines - a lot more groove to Fleetwood Mac than to almost anything like it - the 2 guitars playing off each other - the constant, rock solid groove - and Green’s unbounded inventiveness and utter mastery of the instrument. They circle the beat (Green and Kirwin) - Kirwin dropping back, speeding up, dropping chords into different places - accenting . . . while Pete solos . . . and the rhythm section grooves - grooves - grooves! - like a motherfucker. Kirwin comes in (as Pete slides off to he side). Kirwin’s biting attack on the guitar - like Townshend, or like he maintains his role as a rhythm guitarist in his solos. I love that. If you gotta boogie for 20 minutes, this is how to do it. (Oops - that was 12 minutes - now they’ll do Albatross.)

I have to note - Peter Green is better than anyone other than Hendrix, and - I think - Richard Thompson. Thompson is more versatile - and a much better songwriter (though that is probably due as much to the drugs as anything else - Green, sane, probably would have held his own most of those years. [Though it’s also due to the fact that Thompson is much less beholden to the blues. White Englishmen are not the ideal blues songwriters - Thompson draws from a much wider array of music, and draws more fundamentally from British folk, which probably makes his songs sound more real. But it’s moot since Green did not stay healthy all those years.]) . . . Delicacy, touch - the perfect notes - always in tune with the song, the rhythm, everything else . . .

10) Big Country - “Republican Party People” - a slide guitar intro - cheesy vocals - kind of crappy. Stuart Adamson! I remember this guy’s name! (Is this song about Lee Atwater? Holy crap - could be.)

11) PJ Harvey - “Rubit til it Bleeds” - the quiet little beginning, slowly building into that distorted buzzsaw of release - most of her songs do that, back then . . .

12) Minor Threat - “Sob Story”

13) Mission of Burma - “Train” - “making sense of all the hidden facts” - the sputtering guitar parts and bits of jangly noise - “how can you pretend to give a fuck when nothing seems to matter at all”. The “solo” at the end - great stuff - all chords - all three of them throbbing and crashing . . .

14) Six Organs of Admittance - “Shadow of a Dune” - Another band that is instantly recognizable, an odd fact, since I've been listening to them less than a year. They are in deep already. They’re good - or, Ben Chesny (or whatever his name is) is good.

A tripod in a meadow.

15) Modern Lovers - “Road Runner” - ah. And the highway when it’s late at night, “don’t feel so alone got the radio on” - “the highway is your girlfriend . . . I’m in love with rock and Roll and I’ll be out all night” . . . that sweet beautiful organ solo.

16) Friction - “Dear Richard” - Peter Laughner and company - Pete jangles - sputtering guitar parts . . .

17) Johnny Cash - “25 Minutes to Go” - “the trap and the rope they work just fine . . . this ain’t the movies so forget about me.” Goddammit what a song. Cash’s banter - “my idiot sheet” - “how ya doin’ Shirley?”

18) Buzzcocks - “I Believe” - another great one.

19) Pere Ubu - “Perfume” - Pennsylvania, one of David Thomas’ nourish recitations - all desert imagery, echoey guitars (Tom Herrman’s return - the sharp, cutting slides.)

20) Jim O’Rourke - “Halfway to a Threeway” - quiet little acoustic thing. “I try again and again to indulge in just one sin.”

That’s all. That got me home.

Movies 11/20

Another week - a few more films...

Walk the Line *** - solid biopic, with nice performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. That's about it, though. Could it be better? Is it possible to make a great film about a great artist? It seems to me, anything a filmmaker could say about someone like Johnny Cash has already been said, better, by Johnny Cash himself. It's that way with most great artists, isn't it? In a way, this film reminds me of Bird - it's not so much that they are alike (pther than being about great American musicians), but they both seem to make honorable attempts to get at their subjects, in a style that itself attempts to do justice to the subject. They come short, but they come short in a very admirable way. Bird's twisty, impressionistic style seems right for Charlie Parker's story; the plain, direct, concrete style of Walk the Line is right for Johnny Cash. In her review, Salon's Stephanie Zacharek notes the solidity of Cash's demons - trains, guns, fire - and the film works that way, embodying evil and redemption in real things and real sounds: saws, trains, tractors, fishing rods, guitars, pills and pill bottles, to the point of making Cash's return to the church quite literal - he returns to a building. The emotion is the same - the power in Cash's music is in its unsentimental sentimentality. Emotion - love, anger, fear, pain - is felt for real - a sad song is a sad song and you are supposed to feel sad about it. The film gives you that - gives you the heart tugging moments you're supposed to have in this kind of film, the uplift, the sorrow, gives them to you pretty close to their baseline - "God has given you a second chance" - as sentimental a line, and plot point, as you could ask, but played perfectly straight, because it is perfectly real.

Smile - ***1/2 - 1975 Michael Ritchie film about a California beauty pageant. Even more Altman-light than Bad News Bears, but light or not, it's pretty damned good on its own. Sharp and funny dialogue, an array of more or less defined characters, some great parodies of mid-sized American towns in the 70s - "want a major weenie?" In the end, bitter and sad - Bruce Dern trying to talk to some soldiers - "we held the Chosen reservoir!" - "Did you see the knockers on that one?"

Top Hat **** - I'm tempted to drag poor old Busby Berkeley back out for some theorizing and comparing. Thought of it toward the end here, during the Picolino dance number - which has, like Berkeley, a gang of dancers making patterns and traces for an overhead camera, before Fred and Ginger join in for some celebratory hoofing... Mark Sandrich and company may have picked up the large patterns of dancers Berkeley favored, but none of his style - none of the cutting in and out of the dance, none of the construction of the dance on the editing table. No - Sandrich shoots almost all of it from high above, one or two angles - dropping down only to give a better look at the dancing as a whole (or at least of a pair of legs) - and, of course, for Fred and Ginger. But comparing Top Hat to Berkeley has little point except to note where the energy of this film (and the Fred and Ginger films in general) lies - it is about the performances, about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing. Berkeley's films are about the movement and colors, the patterns, etc. - the music and dancing in films like the Chevalier/MacDonald films are much more about creating character and a world - the music and dancing in Fred Astaire's films is about Fred Astaire, singing and dancing. The story (this one a paper thin series of highly contrived misunderstandings performed delightfully by the usual set of loons - Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore and Erik Rhodes and Helen Broderick) is there to get them together to dance - and to create the sense of conflict that can be enacted and overcome through dancing... The dances, though, carry the film - they set up the conflict, show the two coming together, and, of course, give you the lgorious release they promise... Anyway. A more satisfying film, or type of film, has seldom been made... (And a word in favor of Mark Sandrich, or someone - not only does he do a fine job of allowing Fred and Ginger to put their moves across on the screen, but there are some nice little motifs run through the film - sound and silence, birds and flying... and the gorgeous art deco look of everything.)

The Squid and the Whale **** - yes, I saw it 2 weeks ago. Just checking in. Yes, it is the best film of the year.

Friday is Music Day Chez Nous

What if I started blogging in French? That woulnd be a problem since I would be limited to the present tense and about 50 words. Sacre bleu!

But it is Friday, yes, and so we get, Random Music. Today, as well, you'll get a comment or two...

1 Beatles - Back in the USSR
2 Mouse & The Traps - Sometimes You Just Can't Win [this came from one of those Mojo compilations - neat stuff - may have to poke around for it...]
3 Carter Family - The Church in the Wildwood [just in time for the Johnny Cash bio - which seems to be almost as much about June Carter Cash - a chance to hear one of their signature songs, which Johnny and June also adopted. And a great song anyway.]
4 Beatles - I want to Tell You
5 Radiohead - Paranoid Android (live)
6 Bob Dylan - It's Allright Ma, I'm only Bleeding
7 Six Organs of Admittance - Close to the Sky
8 Shellac - This is a Picture
9 Decembrists - 16 Military Wives
10 U2 - So Cruel

Movies (and DVDs) Seen 11/7-13

Three Outlaw Samurai *** - More samurai cinema, this one directed by Hideo Gosho, starting Tetsuro Tamba. Three peasants have kidnapped the daughter of a corrupt lord - they are hiding in an old mill, and sure enough, who turns up by a hard-bitten ronin, who takes their side. Well - the lord comes for them, using crooks and villains, including another ronin, who soon turns side - and off it goes... It starts comic, but with a gritty edge, and darkens about the middle, into betrayals and reprisals, and an oddly nihilistic happy ending. More than any of these films, this one plays like the Chinese films that followed them - the style, the character types, etc. feel more like Chang Cheh than Kurosawa.

Samurai Rebellion **** - With Mifune as a master swordsman whose lord orders his son to marry one of his (the lord's) discarded concubines - 2 years later, the lord wants her back, but Mifune and his son won't go along with it. Time to use those martial arts!... Kobayashi is a hard case. He is a master, a great director, but I can't warm to him. There is something dishonest about him - his films suggest a kind of politics they don't quite achieve, I think. They concoct elaborate, self-pitying melodramas to justify their characters' killing sprees and manly posturing - they are anti-feudalist and anti-militarist, but those things are opposed by military supermen (this is true in both these samurai films, and in his epic The Human Condition, where liberal anti-militarist Tatsuya Nakadai turns out to be a superhuman soldier.) It's an old problem, of course - the difficulties inherent in making an anti-war war film: he never figures a way around it.

Kurosawa has some of this - but Kurosawa is not sentimental about it. His swordsmen, first, are practical - they fight, they win, they don't pretend to be anything special. (Unless they are, and when they are, they are usually more like monks than samurai - not an accident, necessarily, that Takeshi Shimura first appears in Seven Samurai impersonating a priest.) Second - competence is taken as a value in itself. And third - the political implications of this stuff gets a far more serious turn. Swordsmen in Kurosawa's films, good or bad, are not particularly important, politically - they can come through and disrupt and break things, but it is more the canny types (the honest ugly official in Sanjuro), the professionals (Nakadai's character in High and Low) or the masses (the peasants in Seven Samurai) who make things run or not.

But back to Samurai Rebellion: it has those flaws - it is, after all, really a melodrama, as weepy as any Mizoguchi or Naruse, if you get down to it, but instead of suffering women, it's Mifune murdering extras. It's a rigid and symmetrical films, all blocks and squares, careful compositions - with a few twists - direct overhead shots, freeze frames, flashbacks inside flashbacks.... It's brought alive, however, by the performances, especially Mifune. He is grand - caught between all the forces (his lord, his nagging wife, his sons, his own bitterness and pride), holding himself in, until things reach a point where he can release - once the die is cast, once there's no going back, he comes alive, in a rush of defiance. You see him, Mifune, bringing the character alive, when his son first defies the lord's ruling - you feel him thinking, "I have raised a man! I have raised a son to die for! And he's married a woman to die for!" He - Mifune - expands into this character, a glorious and exhilarating thing to see, like watching Gondo change in High and Low.

Harakiri **** - another melodrama of poverty and doomed love and friendship that ends in a bloodbath - but again - Kobayashi builds the tension higher and higher, waiting for the release, then giving it to us... Here, Tatsuya Nakadai stars as a ronin with a daughter and a son in law, who is the son of his best friend - they suffer in the peace of the early Tokogawa era when no one needs samurai... They suffer too much, and the son-in-law tries to get some cash by threatening in to kill himself in front of the Iya family's gates - well: they decide to make an example of him by forcing him to really kill himself - which he is quite literally not prepared to do. Nakadai finds out - and a few days later shows up himself, repeating the boy's request. But first, a little exchange of stories, theirs, his.... Then - the whirlwind is reaped.... It is a terrible denunciation of the samurai code - not the code as such, but the fact that it is a facade, used only to defend the power of those that have it from those who don't. But as I said - Kobayashi's attacks on feudal, military values always seem to involve a superstar actor with katana in hand knocking over walls and slicing up villains - which tends to undermine the point a bit.

Twentieth Century **** - Carole Lombard and John Barrymore are unleashed on one another in an early (1934) Howard Hawks screwball comedy... he's a Broadway impresario - she's his greatest discovery - both turn up the ham to 11... With Roscoe Karns, Walter Connolly and the like doing their character thing to the very hilt... "What was Oscar doing, rowing?" Great stuff.

The Passenger ***1/2 - This is an odd case. Watching it, I didn't really warm to it - oh, it looks as good as films have a right to look, and I could sort of nod along with it's philosophical pretensions, but it didn't add up to much more than that. It felt like something was about to happen - but never did.. or did it? whatever.... But now, getting ready to write this, reading a couple reviews (Ebert and O'Hehir, in Salon), it seemed to come together. That may be a function of the themes - the emptiness, the kind of meaningless trace of the character - who is not a character... it's a heady brew, probably better suited to words than pictures. Though it loops back - what comes to mind are the pictures, Jack Nicholson's face, the empty landscapes, the crappy hotels, the blowing sand - so maybe what I mean is it's a film better appreciated in memory. I don't know, but I am more impressed than I thought I would be.

Bad News Bears ***1/2 - Baseball misfits win anyway, begetting a million films about bratty unathletic kids winning championships. It's enough to put you off your feed. It's enough, if you aren't careful, to make you forget how good this film really is. (I'm referring to the Matthau film, of course. Haven't seen Billy Bob's take.) We all know the story, I hope - Matthau is a bum who's hired to coach a bunch of loser little leaguers... they start bad, then start to win. He brings in a girl and a hoodlum as ringers. It's about the evils of competition in America, especially among kids. All the cliches are there, but this is where a lot of them came from - and there are a couple things that utterly redeem it. First, the real nastiness under the story - the violent, bitter competition, the sense of desperation and anger, the loss and regret... Second, Michael Ritchie's Altman-light style (the documentary look, the American pageantry, the way he displaces dramatic showdowns) - these elevates it. The harshness is real - Matthau's anger, disappointment, self-hatred - the way none of the cliched resolutions come off - he doesn't get back with Amanda's mother; Amanda and Kelly don't get together; the Bears don't win; he doesn't quite save anyone, though a lot of the kids get a second or two of fairly believable redemption - drawing a walk - laying down a good bunt - catching a ball... It's a great film.

Forty Shades of Blue *** - star turn by Rip Torn as a Memphis music impresario, who looks like Merle Haggard, but plays more like, oh, Jim Dickinson or someone like that. He has a trophy girlfriend, a stunning Russian woman, they have a son - he also has a son from a previous marriage who turns up with his own problems. The three of them - Torn, the Russian woman (Dina Kurzon, who is fantastic), the son - go around each other, all of them a bit too fond of the bottle.... It's a superb film. Directed by Ira Sachs, who made The Delta 9 years ago now - this has more polish, but a similar look - the patient, observant camera, catching people almost unawares it seems...

Friday Music Random Ten

Once again:

1. fIREHOSE - Down with the Bass
2. Yo la Tengo - Tired Hippo
3. Sly and the Family Stone - Family Affair
4. Bing Crosby - White Christmas
5. X - In this House That I Call Home
6. The Waterboys - The Thrill is Gone
7. The Fall - C.R.E.E.P.
8. The Velvet Underground - Run Run Run
9. Linda Ronstadt - Different Drum
10. The Minutemen - The Tin Roof

Update

Nothing much to say this Tuesday evening... I did some tweaking to the "blogroll" - not much, just added a couple links and did a bit of reordering. It has been a while since I have tried a metapost - I need a metapost once in a while, though I can't come up with a reason why I need it. Something to break up the weekly iPod and movie review posts, which is about all this humble blogger seems to manage. Though to be honest - getting to the point where I get those 2 posts every week, however rote they may be, is a definite triumph. Now if only I had a cat to blog. I do have a potato:



Somehow I doubt that Wednesday potato blogging will ever replace Friday cat blogging. On the other hand, the potato serves a secondary purpose, a purpose it shall now fulfill, once I've fetched the sour cream....

Mostly Samurai Cinema

Doppelganger ***1/2 - Kiyoshi Kurosawa takes on Dostoevsky, Poe, everyone else who has made a doppelganger film. Koji Yakusho plays a scientist working on an artificial body - things are not going well, and when one of his coworkers tells him about a woman whose brother saw his double and killed himself, it's not long before Yakusho's own double shows up. The double, as is usually the case, is pure id - raising money and chasing women - while Yakusho sticks to moping and science. Then he finishes the machine, and the film gets strange... as usual with Kurosawa, it is very stylishly done - especially when the double shows up, and he splits up the screen, sometimes synchronizing the image, sometimes doubling it, sometimes dividing it. Throughout, though, the themes and images of doubles persist and multiply - as the literal doppelganger is joined by doubled characters - Yakusho and the girl (whose brother saw his double) - Yakusho's former manager and the kid he hires as an assistant - the kid and the double (the manager and the double) - etc. And mirrors, and windows, and movie quotes (Raiders of the Lost Ark!), and resurrections and of course the artificial body itself.... The first 2/3 or so has a nice spookiness to it, mixed with irreverence and wit - then gets very silly at the end. Very nice film all around.

Where The Truth Lies * - a strange experience, watching this film, knowing it is Atom Egoyan, knowing he has made great films - and this one is so dull. Empty, dull. It's getting some attention for the sex - the NC-17 rating, etc. - what on earth for? female nudity, some humping, a little bit of girl on girl - the only thing less explicable than why this got an NC-17 is why Egoyan thought he had to have all that sex in there in the first place. For a film that pretty much turns on sex (it's integral to the plot), the onscreen sex is a complete waste. This would have worked every bit as well (actually, badly) if it were rated PG-13. One wonders if there might have been other motives in not cutting it down - the knowledge that it was a stinker and needed all the help it could get? Maybe I'm too harsh. It's perfectly watchable, it moves along nice enough, but really... about the only thing it had going for it was the sex, and it was dull, conventional looking - just Hollywood sex.

The Squid and the Whale ***1/2 - brilliant film written and directed by Noah Baumbach, based on his parents' divorce. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney play the parents - both writers, he's on the way down, she's on the way up (a fact that hangs around in the background, but doesn't quite take over the film) - he's a shaggy professorial type who uses his knowledge and taste - for everything. It charms people, it's a defense against emotion, and a way of expressing emotion, it's a way to blot out the vulgar things like where the money comes from. She's quieter, less of a bully, but - maybe - not much better... They have two sons, Walt and Frank - Walt sides with his father, blaming his mother for everything at first - Frank with his mother, defying his father, claiming that he wants to be a philistine... But these categories don't hold. The film, in the end, does not take sides - though Daniels might steal the show a bit, because he is louder, more of a showoff - he may cover it in wit and Godard quotes, but he wears his heart on his sleeve... It's great, though, a moving, funny, sympathetic film...

Kill! *** - yes, it's Samurai week at the Brattle - this one is directed by Kihachi Okamoto, and it's a wild ride indeed. Let me attempt, somewhat feebly, to describe the plot. You have: 7 idealistic young rebels; a farmer who wants to be a samurai; a yakuza who used to be a samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai, channeling some of Mifune's Sanjuro); a yakuza who survived the massacre of his gang; a villain; a traitor; a commoner swordsman who wants money to redeem his wife from a brothel; the wife of course; a prostitute with dirty feet; a sleepy old man; swarms of extras, fit to be cut down by Nakadai and the commoner. This lot is turned loose on a dusty town straight out of Leone (complete with twangy guitar on the soundtrack), an old fort in the mountains, a samurai house, and a brothel, where they plot and scheme and fight and pretend to fight and argue and switch sides and pretend to switch sides... describing the actual plot would take longer than the movie, though in practice, it's not all that hard to follow - a good sign - anyone who can get keep this many people and stories moving, and straight, is doing something right. It's fast and funny, but manages to give some personality to a surprising number of the characters, and remain, as I say, startlingly coherent. It's quite a treat.

Sword of Doom *** - also directed by Okamoto, 2 years before Kill. This also stars Tatsuya Nakadai, this time as a master swordsman who is also a psychopath. He starts the film cutting down an old pilgrim on the Daibotsu pass, leaving a pretty girl orphaned (her story provides a subplot to his); the next day he kills an opponent in a kendo match, then wipes out a mob of men out for vengeance, and is obliged to leave the province, with the dead man's widow in tow. Things don't go well for them - and 2 years later they are poor and miserable, and he is a hired sword for a gang of pro-shogun thugs (this is 1863), skulking about in his black kimono and a big straw hat. Meanwhile, the dead man's brother is training with Nakadai's good twin, played by Mifune - and the orphan girl is misused by cads and sold to a brothel in Kyoto, despite the aid of her uncle the thief. Through it all there is much mayhem - not all of it perpetrated by Nakadai's character - and some nice swordplay... It all comes down to a confrontation in Kyoto - with the brother ready for his vengeance, the thugs divided against each other and ready to use and discard our anti-hero, and then - he meets the girl and his sins finally exact their toll. Then - there is a fight.... Contains 3 total blowout type swordfights - the one vs. all thing: Nakadai vs. the avengers after the kendo match; then Mifune obliterating a gang of assassins in a snowfall, while Nakadai stands in the back and stares in wonder; and then Nakadai vs. the thugs in a burning brothel. This tops it all, with Nakadai staggering through the place, wiping out all comers, even as they get a few cuts in, weakening him, but never enough to make him miss... all to the end, to a stunning and perfect ending...

Yojimbo **** and Sanjuro **** - nothing more needs to be said here does it?

Return of Friday Random Ten!

One of those things you should be able to count on - back! after an absence...

1. Kinks - Dead End Street
2. ...And You Wll Know us by the Trail of Dead - All White
3. Pink Floyd - Flaming
4. Undertones - She can Only Say No
5. Cibo Matto - Birthday Cake
6. Queen - We Are the Champions
7. George Michael - Look at your Hands
8. Fugazi - Sweet and Low
9. Imperial Teen - Freaks
10. Stooges - 1969