Thursday, February 12, 2009

A Week Later...

(Pablo the Penguin, in the Galapagos.)

More than a week. I have no excuse - or not much of an excuse. Classes, the German film class I mentioned before, and a Drama class - they aren't really a reason not to blog, they haven't been all that time consuming so far.

I can't blame my film-going. At least last week end brought a couple fine movies to town: The Class was a treat, a worthy winner at Cannes last year. It's hard to say much about it - it's a self-contained and self-sufficient kind of film. It says what it shows and shows what it says - anything you can say about it is in the film. And Truffaut's The Wild Child has been rereleased, to continue the pedagogical theme. I hadn't seen it before... I am not a huge Truffaut fan, but this was hugely satisfying, on par with his best (400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, I'd say) - lean and spare and beautiful, great work.

ON video - there's the Three Cabelleros, under consideration at the Film of the Month Club - a strange, somewhat uneven hodge podge of propaganda, travelogue, animation, that builds to some rather extravagant surrealism, and filthy jokes featuring Donald Duck.... I did watch Rio Bravo - I haven't seen it in ages, and it's nice to be reminded what a fine work it is. Character over story, you bet... The German film class bracketed Nosferatu and Mabuse the Gambler (Part 1) - we'll see if I can muster anything on those in the future- not this week, apparently...

And out in the world? Pitchers and catchers are reporting - the world is a happy place. The sporting news has not been happy - another superstar disgraced - that's Bud Selig at that last link, saying A-Rod "shamed the game." No word if he said that in a Claude Rains voice, but it's certainly a piece of performance art. Steroids saved the game in the 90s, saved it in spite of people like Selig, saved Selig - it's good they're cleaning it up, but when anyone in authority in the game says they are shocked or shamed by the dopers, you know they are lieing. I'll take the cheaters over the liars any day.

But I don't care. Bud Selig can't reduce my happiness in the game - he's been trying for years to ruin it, and hasn't done it yet. This is too wonderful a time of year to care....

ANyway - let's wrap up with some remembrances. Today is the 200th birthday of both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Both widely celebrated on the web. Jacqueline Lynch has a nice post up about one of the stranger moments in classic American cinema - the Abraham number in Holiday Inn. A fairly late blackface routine in American film, and one presented almost guiltily, and cut in the middle with a neat chorus by Louise Beavers. It's strange - off-putting now, with signs that the filmmakers shared the discomfort, the sense that this was not right... anyway - a nice essay...

2 comments:

pm said...

Thanks for the Holiday Inn link. I think I'll stick to the Tall Target/ Prisoner of Shark Island birthday double feature... but what a strange piece of film that was...
Speaking of which -- I was hoping to see some sort of Ken Jacobs wrap-up on this here blog. Did you skip it?

weepingsam said...

I did skip it. I didn't really mean to skip it, but missed it - I had to check, I thought it was at the end of the month for some reason... I should have seen some of it. I skipped the whole Ophuls series too, though at least I have the excuse of having seen those films before...

I didn't skip Albert Serra and Mark Peranson tonight though: thus the late hour of this posting. I shall try to comment on that, though I know how that usually works...