Not Naruse

I am going to try to post a weekly recap of the Naruse films seen. I hope to work up something longer as well, but that's not likely to come here until next week. Meanwhile - I saw other films last week, and here they are:

My Sex Life (or How I Got into an Argument):**** - a long, but brilliant, French film about an assistant philosophy professor and his circle of friends and lovers. Full of characters, swirling around the central pair, lots of back and forth - and an amazingly rich and varied style. Glorious film. The shifting points of view, the odd rhythms, the way things are played funny and sad and weird all at once - Arnaud Desplechinsturns a very conventional type of film (French intellectuals on the mope) into something surprising, engrossing, and thrilling to look at. I'd seen this before on video, but missed the aesthetics of it - this time, even on a rather sketchy print, I could see - Desplechins uses everything he has to turn a film about a bunch of people talking into a feast for the eyes. Sometimes films like this come off wrong - too flashy, almost desperate, trying to make static material look interesting - this film doesn't. Like last year's masterpiece, Kings and Queen - also starring Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Devos - the style conveys the sense of people bursting at the seams, which they are, in their talky ways. It's wonderful. Assisted mightily by the cast - Amalric and Devos were marvelous together - she smiles and smirks through all kinds of fights and sarcasm, breaks down, when he starts getting sentimental... Every scene is a surprise - a flow of emotion, back and forth, out the other side. The rest of the cast is just as good - especially Jeanne Balibar (as a very canny nutcase). Desplechins may be telling Paul's story here, but he gives other people their time - spending time away from the central character, following his friends for a while. A great movie.

Mutual Admiration *** - Andrew Bujalski's follow up to Funny Ha Ha. Same style, similar characters - slackers, this time in Brooklyn... The main slacker is a musician named Alan, a scruffy, nerdy, indie rocker who has just moved to Brooklyn without his band. He hangs around, looking for a drummer, drinking too much, running up credit card debt, not returning calls, and almost stealing his best friend's girl. Like Funny Ha Ha, it is deceptive - the simplicity, lack of overt drama, awkward sounding conversations hiding the care that goes into structuring those conversations and getting them to come out right. It's shot in black and white and looks a bit gloomy and claustophobic, which it probably is. It is also, at times, uproariously funny - in a kind of understated way....

Dial M For Murder **1/2 - on TV when I got home from Saturday's Naruse, so I watched it. Looks nice, but it's a pretty dull whodunnit in the Columbo mode (albeit well before Columbo). Very stagy - Hitchcock perhaps trying to make a virtue of limitations (the one room set, mostly), without quite managing it.

Keane ***1/2 - intense and sad film about a man, probably schizophrenic, who hangs around the Port Authority bus terminal in NY, looking for his daughter, who disappeared while he was watching her. He keeps reenacting the scene - watching the clock until 4:30, trying to spot the man who took her... The rest of the time, he beats back the voices in his head with booze and coke... Then he meets a waitress with a daughter and problems of her own - she pulls him in to her life a bit, and then has him babysit her daughter.... Ebert's review gets at the effect this has - we know what kind of man Keane is - we have seen him in the throes of his madness - we have also seen him (in the scenes with the waitress, especially) calm, rational, effective. The suspense comes from wondering what will happen - and from the fact that we know that Keane himself is feeling more or less exactly what we are feeling. He knows himself - he is as desperate to make it through this as we are....

It is very hard to take. Kerrigan puts us right next to Damien Lewis, his actor - the camera sticks to him like a Dardennes brother's film. At times, it's as if we are the voices in his head - he suffers, we stare, never giving him an inch... It's heartbreaking, this film - we are buried deep in Keane's sadness. We see that he could have been a good father, if only he were healthy. And we - who know what he is really like - ache for the waitress, who does not know what he is like. To her he is kind, down on his luck, and all she has to go on. Just a hugely affecting film.

Return of Friday Random 10

Since I installed iTunes 5, iTunes isn't recognizing my iPod - wonderful. This is not the time to do trouble shooting htough - i{od and iTunes work ifne on their own - but I have an Isley Brothers CD that has to get on the iPod soon... but until then....

Random 10!

David Bowie - Moonage Daydream
Sleater-Kinney - Let's Call it Love
Robert Johnson - if I had Possession over Judgment Day
Gomez - Do On (live)
Yoko Ono/Yo La Tengo - Hedwig's Lament/Exquisite Corpse
Crabs - Tumbling Away (what this is, where it came from and why, I don't know in the least; though it's not half bad)
Matthew Sweet - Nothing Lasts
Faust - Just a Second (Starts like That)
Pavement - Lions (Linden)
Pere Ubu - Misery Goats

don't fret now baby, don't be so tired...

So Long and thanks for the Dart Guns

While reading Feministe, I came across this story - 36 armed and dangerous dolphins were swept into the Gulf of Mexico by hurricane Katrina. No, I'm not joking. The Navy, apparently, trained them how to shoot terrorists with poison dart guns...

What can I say? Just pray, pray! that their Weapons of Windsurfer Destruction don't fall into the wrong hands... tentacles, more precisely.

Return of Sunday Night Movie Reviews

I have not posted any movie reviews in almost a month - looks like August 28 - great scott. I have, in that time, seen exactly 4 movies - I have been moving, that has taken all my disposable time....

All right then! here we go!

The Brothers Grimm - ** - 2 whole stars? I suppose it's watchable. In short, a really mediocre film. A disappointment from Terry Gilliam.

If Lucy Fell - ** - Okay. I know a lot of people hate Eric Schaeffer films - I understand that, especially hating Eric Schaeffer himself. He has as annoying a screen presence as you can get. Even when I figured out that he was trying to do Mickey Rooney (the hair, the mannerisms - he's doing Mickey Rooney!) - it didn't help. He was still annoying.... But the rest of it - the film - is not all that bad, not really. Not really worth seeing (except maybe to test your ability to take Eric Schaeffer himself), but hardly the atrocity it's sometimes billed as.

The Baxter **1/2 - it occurs to me that this film is giving a name to a genre of films - "Baxter" films. About more or less nice guys, passed over by life and love, who find life and love. The 40 Year Old Virgin, maybe even the Wedding Crashers, definitely Sideways (all the films I mentioned last time)... Anyway - this is from Michael Showalter, one of the guys who makes Stella, the TV show (that I don't watch, since I don't watch TV) - he's an accountant, engaged to a yuppy princess, but her old boyfriend comes back, in the form of Justin Theroux (who is very funny)... But Showalter meets another girl, Michelle Williams, playing a mousy temp who sings, and is dating Paul Rudd... Some hilarity, some absurdity, some pointlessly convoluted story-telling follows, with amusing results. But no better than that. It's just okay.

The Conformist **** - Bernardo Bertolucci is probably the world's most overrated director - perpetrator of endless, dragging, extravaganzas.... yuck... But this one probably deserves the praise. Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as the title character - an Italian intellectual, trying to join the fascist party to fit in - who is sent to kill an exiled professor... it's a gorgeous film, the sets and cinematography used to great effect - isolating Trintignant in vast, empty, soulless spaces, or making him fight against waves of people - he constantly tries to go along, to disappear into society, but constantly finds himself fighting against people. The symbolism is a bit heavy handed at times, but it works anyway.

List o' Auteurs

I have been away. I have been moving, unpacking, the works. I have been between places. I am getting settled in - may even see a movie or two soon! Hooray!

I am going to play the auteurist game a bit - I am going to post a list of my top 20 favorite directors. I am posting it because I suspect it is going to change. The top 20, possibly the top 10 is going to change in the next month - there is a nice Mikio Naruse series coming to Boston (a nicer one coming to New York, I think) - I have seen three of his films (Late Chrysanthemums, Mother, and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs) - all masterpieces. Seeing another dozen or so should push him well up this list...

So without further ado - here it is:

1 Yasujiro Ozu
2 Frank Capra
3 Jean-Luc Godard
4 Kenji Mizoguchi
5 Howard Hawks
6 Jean Renoir
7 Shohei Imamura
8 Sir Alfred Hitchcock
9 Robert Altman
10 Hou Hsiao Hsien
11 Robert Bresson
12 Werner Herzog
13 David Lynch
14 Sergei Eisenstein
15 John Cassavetes
16 Akira Kurosawa
17 FW Murnau
18 Buster Keaton
19 Satyajit Ray
20 John Ford

Some of these change every time I try to write a list - the order of course, and the last 2-3 of them. Ray and Ford aren't very safe - Griffiths, Bergman, Rosselini, Welles - Kieslowski and Ichikawa - are all close. I have little doubt, though, that Naruse will make the "safe" list.

I also hope to report back on the Naruse series as I see it. I have been lax in writing here - I hope to make that up in the coming weeks.

Blog Like a Scourge of the Seas Day

Argh and avast, ye lubbers, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day! So run up the jolly roger and prime the 9 pounder, we're comin' fer yer booty, ye dirty scurvy dogs!

And check out P.Z. Myers for buccaneer talk, blog schmoozing, and squid vs. whale battles.

Cable's Back!

Yes, I have been missing - I have been moving. I am back online, and starting to unpack, and so, perhaps, we can get back to our regularly scheduled 2 a week posts.

Now - a week away from regular access to the internet causes great pain - so now that I'm back, it's good to be reminded of why the internet was invented in the first place. If it was not invented so someone could create Dictionareoke, it should have been. Words cannot describe the happiness this brings! Online dictionary voices singing many fabulous hits! What more could anyone ask? (Via Empty Handed.)

(Though of course, Cats in Sinks are nice too. Via Xoverboard.)

Slate Outdoes Onion Once Again

What the hell is this? From Slate - one Steven Landsburg writes about how disaster relief encourages people to live in dangerous places. He sets up a cute little model - a "fable" - in which people choose between living in a dangerous city and a safer city - he complains that disaster relief encourages people to live in dangerous places. That, in the absence of disaster relief, people would not live in New Orleans or San Francisco.

Part of the comedy is built on one of the points in his model - that given identical cities, one subject to earthquakes and one not - hosing prices (say) will be cheaper in the one subject to earthquakes. ("Otherwise, nobody would live there.") Now true - he's cheating by imagining these 2 identical cities - and real cities are not identical - but still. There's great comedy inherent in imagining that San Francisco, for instance, has cheap housing.

He hems and haws about his model, but what the model really does is eliminate the underlying reason why there are cities in flood planes and next to volcanos and on fault lines in the first place. New Orleans is a Port - an ocean port that connects to the third largest river n the world, a river, furthermore, that connects one of the most fertile plains of the world to the ocean. That is far more important in why there is a city there than any federal disaster relief. Likewise San Francisco. Have you ever been to San Francisco? Did you notice the deep harbor? Did you notice the proximity to superb agricultural areas? Even the climate, Mark Twain notwithstanding - compared to New Orleans? Compared to Buffalo?

Cities stand in these places because places like New Orleans and San Francisco (and Los Angeles, for that matter, or Tokyo or Naples or most other large cities in disaster prone locations) offer the things civilization needs - access to water, to fertile lands, accessible from other places. I wish people whining about disaster relief or why people would live in a drained swamp 10 feet below sea level in hurricane country would just spend 10 minutes looking at a fucking map, and then shut up and send some money to the Red Cross.

(The title, of course, is a gloss on the Onion's coverage of the hurricane. Which, while not up to their post 9/11 coverage, is predictably sharp, funny and, for the most part, true. "White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters". Yep.)

Emerging New Orleans Stories

The stories coming out of New Orleans this week are not encouraging. "Be careful what you wish for" - last week we were wondering where the feds were, where the military were - now - they're in New Orleans, but are acting, according to some reports, like an occupying army. Granted, much of this is anecdotal - but there is a lot of it, and so far, it's all fit with what was around last week.

This story has been getting a lot of play on the blogs. It's by two paramedics who were attending a conference, were trapped in New Orleans by the hurricane, and had the devil's time getting out. It confirms, of all things, Geraldo Rivera's hysterical bit about letting the people walk out of the city: the paramedics had been at a hotel - they left, passed the conference center and - having been told there were buses across the river, tried to cross the bridge to Gretna - and were turned back by police. Later (after the news of the people trying to cross the bridge got out?), the police dispersed the people waiting on the freeway. Digby has some comments - making the salient point that any effective attempt to cope with the catastophe has to start with meeting basic needs - water, food, some degree of security. Once that's there, people move on - cooperate, think about how to get out, etc. The excuse given for FEMA not letting the Red Cross into New Orleans is that "relief operations" might encourage people to stay in New Orleans - but it seems far more likely that getting food and water and whatever other relief the Red Cross could get to the city would have reassured the evacuees, cut down the desperation, fear, and so on, made the evacuation operation go much better.

Meanwhile - here is another eyewitness account, from a French tourist in the superdome - complete with stories of callousness from the National Guard. That - like the stories of rapes and murders in the superdome - sounds very likely to be fairly isolated and uncommon. But with 30,000 people crammed into a building, or being stuffed into buses outside, one or two incidents will be observed by a lot of people, and the stories will spread, and... I don't know that: but the stories coming out now tend to indicate that violence and evil were far less widespread than were reported in the media. (Here's a good story, from the Lenin's Tomb blog, summarizing and discussing these stories.) It's being noted that the stories about looting probably drove soe of the panicky decisions to keep rescuers out of New Orleans until security could be restored (when, of course, the easiest way to have restored security would have been to feed everyone and maybe give them a clean place to take a crap, and give them a straight answer on when they could get out.) Someone (I don't remember who - a peril of getting news from the internet) pointed out that the stories of violence and horror in the superdome were pushed to emphasize the importance of dealing with the problems there - and might have gotten the attention of the government, enough that, by the weekend at least, they seemed resigned to letting the people stuck in New Orleans live. But those stories also probably slowed down response, and are being used now to justify drastic security measures - the Red Cross may or may not b in New Orleans - the Hessians are there!

Another disturbing possibility is this - Josh Marshall has evidence that the government is cutting off press access to New Orleans. His evidence comes from wild-eyed radicals like Brian Williams - "the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history". Now - since seeing that post, I have seen a few stories from other journalists and blogs that journalists have good access to the city still - it' hard to say what is going on. Obviously, it is crucial that the press have access to the city - it is bad enough that the press has been fairly well censored in Iraq - it would be a Very Bad Thing if the same standards were applied on American soil.

I don't know what kinds of conclusions I can draw from this. There is to much information to process, and it's all - almost every single bit of it - raw, limited, impressionistic - eyewitness accounts, specific news reports, etc. - it is almost impossible to put together a complete picture of what happened and what is happening.

One conclusion that suggests itself, though, is that the official response to this crisis is just as piecemeal, confused, uncoordinated as the news. Nothing at all has emerged indicating that FEMA has been able to mount any kind of coherent coordinated response to this crisis. The Respectful of Otters blog has a good post about the lack of coordination among what has been, in fact, a pretty damned impressive response to this crisis. It's been fun scoring theoretical political points in the wake of this crisis, but - there are some good ones to score. This is what governments are for. This is also, probably, an indication of both the limits of capitalism, and the reasons why capitalism itself requires a reliable government to work correctly. Capitalism - in the sense of individuals and organizations acting in their own interests - can get people to act, and has, in this instance. (And let me say this: anyone who thinks that it is not in their interests to help their fellow citizens in a time of need is a fool. The simplest reason is that the interests of the people directly affected by this hurricane are our interests - "they" are we. It is gratifying to see that this view is shared by a very large number of private citizens, cities and states, corporations, etc. Even if Sean Penn brings a crew of photographers along - he's there and he's helping people.) But for it to work, there has to be something guiding it - especially in a crisis of this magnitude. Someone has to be in charge. Someone has to be able to coordinate between the various kinds of rescue operations going on - between the local cops protecting their neighborhoods (to put the best possible spin on the bridge story) and the people trying to leave the city, between Walmart's donated water, Aaron Broussard, and whoever got that water instead of Broussard - and so on. That seems to be completely missing - no one seems to have been aware of everything going on - no one seems to have been trying to line up all the potential sources of aid - no one was making sure all the i's were dotted and t's were crossed to get government resources onto the scene - no one was assessing the aid that was coming in and making sure it was being used effectively (the story of the firemen being trained as leafletters has caused justifiable outrage)... No one was in charge.

Post of the Year?

I was planning to go to bed, half an hour or so ago or more - but came on this post, over at Making Light. "Folksongs are Your Friends" - I will quote only the end:

Pop quiz!

You are a beautiful young lady named Janet. On the first of May you meet a man in a patch of broom down by the greenwoodside. He invites you to his home on the far side of the sea, and earnestly entreats you to keep his invitation secret from your parents. The ship is leaving right away, this very night!

What should you do?

What can you do?

What the Navy Thinks

I don't know what good it does to pile on to George Bush at this point - the government botched the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a pretty well established fact. But Kevin Drum points out this story - a naval officer criticizing the president. Really? Yes - the navy was on the scene, directly behind the hurricane, ready to send in aid as soon as the hurricane moved on - but the military needs explicit orders from the president to act within the United States. Which they did not get. Some of Bush's supporters like to claim that in this modern day and age, he does not have to be in Washington to run the country - he can be dicking around at his ranch, of hamming it up with some country singer, and still be in charge.

Apparently not.

A Respite

Meanwhile, maybe the Friday icommute can bring some relief to the gloom on this blog:

1. Fairport convention - Sir Patrick Spens
2. Beastie Boys - Something's got to Give
3. O Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack -Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby
4. The Byrds - Hungry Planet
5. System of a Down - This Cocaine Makes me Feel Like I'm On this Song
6. Embrace - Money
7. Radiohead - Morning Bell (Kid A version)
8. Grateful Dead - Cosmic Charlie
9. Rage Against the Machine - Township Rebellion
10. Big Star - Dream Lover
1. Pere Ubu - Young Miles in te Basement
12. Mahavishnu Orchestra - A Lotus on Irish Streams

September Second

First - another day of ghastly post-hurricane new from New Orleans. Maybe, finally, people are getting out - but the place is hell on earth. It's inconceivably horrible - horrible for obvious reasons, inconceivable because, how could this happen? Not the hurricane and floods themselves, that happens - even the destruction of the city - cities are sometimes destroyed. What's inconceivable is how, in the United States, 5 days after the storm hit, and 4 days after the levees broke and submerged the city, there are still tens of thousands of people in the city, living in utterly desperate circumstances, in a war zone. You can see the relief efforts ramping up - but how did it take this long? Nothing that has happened is a surprise - looting? people living without food or shelter or water? people dying? All of that was predictable - much of it could have been mitigated (more supplies laid in at the Superdome - immediate resources committed to keep the peace) - how did it not happen? I have seen this - a major hurricane hitting New Orleans - listed as one of the three worst case disasters we could face: terrorism in New York - a major earthquake in San Francisco - and this. Of the three - this is the one you have the most time to prepare for. We had 2 or 3 days to prepare for this one - we had a pretty clear idea of what would happen if it hit - and yet - everything about it, from the evacuation planning to the provisions for refugees to the relief efforts have been half-assed. It's horrible.

Meanwhile - unrelated (except so far as getting involved in an unjustified war has drained money and resources that could have been used to deal with domestic problems - especially so far as sending National Guardsmen overseas for extended duty has drawn them away from their primary purpose, which is to deal with events like hurricane Katrina), but horrible - it is the second anniversary of the death of my friend Todd in Iraq. A guardsman, an MP - exactly the kind of person needed at home in case of crisis. I hate to politicize disasters, personal or public - but it's hard. He had no business being there. None of our soldiers had any business being there, but it's adding insult to injury to do it on the cheap. If we were going to fight this war, we would have been far far better doing it honestly - paying as we went - not stripping domestic security, mortgaging the future, stripping money away from preventive measures like work on the levees, to fight it. What we are getting in New Orleans is worse than the taxes would be, worse than the draft, worse than whatever it would have taken to fight the Iraq war honestly. We will end up paying for it directly as well.

It's been a very bad week for America...

Hurricane Post #2

While I still doubt that my opinion adds anything to the hurricane news, I can't stop thinking about it. It's hard to get a grasp on the scope of this disaster. It is harder still to get a grasp on how such a thing could have happened in the face of what we have known about its possibility. Kevin Drum links to several discussions of the potential for disaster - such as this one from last year, describing what could happen if Hurricane Ivan hit New Orleans. The last line:

"My fear is, if this storm passes (without a major disaster), everybody forgets about it until next year, when it could be even worse because we'll have even less wetlands," van Heerden said.

The disaster has been heavily politicized already - given the reports of the Bush administration cutting funding for disaster relief and preventive measures in Louisiana (see Kevin Drum, again); given the administration's rather - odd - reaction to the disaster (Bush playing guitar; Condi Rice buying shoes); the director of Homeland Security blaming the victims - and the rest of the administration lining up behind him: "...to help those who are stranded, who chose not to evacuate, who chose not to leave the city..." - it's going to be hard not to politicize it. This stands a very good chance of being the thing that destroy's Bush's presidency - ironic, since it is a natural disaster, something he had no control over - but it can wake people up. And - after all - he had enough control over the conditions that made this such a nightmare, and he has control over how the government reacts to it. Blaming the victims isn't going to fly.

Just watching TV this evening - it's different. The first day or two, seeing the looters and hearing the TV people talk about looting, there was a different tone - that usual smug judgmental toe about the looters, though even then - looking at the footage - everyone they showed seemed to be dragging bags of food and drinks around with them. But tonight - on one of the channels, some cop was being interviewed and the TV person asked him how the cops would distinguish between people taking food and people taking televisions. There's still way more attention to the TV thieves than they deserve - but the focus does seem to be on the real problem - the fact that tens of thousands of people were stuck in the city because they could not get out of the city. And that - what - 3 days later, no one has gotten them out of the city, no one is getting food and water and supplies in to them in the city.

How much of this could have been prevented? By what means? Commandeering buses or planes or boats and evacuating people before the storm hit? Having a contingency plan for this completely foreseeable possible disaster? What?

I'll stop. Blame is - well, sometimes it's useful - knowing why things were this bad might teach us lessons. Though it probably won't... The hardest thing remains just processing the scope of the disaster. Xoverboard has some interesting thoughts on that - on the ways this disaster dwarfs the 9/11 attacks, on the overall importance of this event. And some thoughts on blame - who and why - that I can’t argue with.

Anyway - once more - if you have it, give - The Red Cross is as good a place as any.

Hurricane Aftermath

As usual, I don't have much to say about the devastation of the gulf coast by hurricane Katrina. There's not much my opinion can do. If you can, give - charities abound - the big portals (Yahoo, Amazon, etc.) usually have a prominant link or page for donations (usually to the Red Cross) - most newspapers have links. The best collection of links, information and discussion (among the blogs I usually read) is probably at Making Light - they offer a collection of links themselves, at this post; and a link to a nice article about emergency preparedness - "jump bags".

A Musical Meme

This is kind of fun. From Rox Populi it's a meme - take the top 100 songs from the year (you can find them at Music Outfitters) you graduated high school, and tell the crowd: good? bad? love it? hate it?

Like Roxanne, I'm an 81 graduate, so I'm saddled with the same bunch of crap she is. I'm going to mark it up with text though, rather than try to format... I will employ stars for quick reference * isgood, ** is great. *** is the best of the litter.

1. Bette Davis Eyes, Kim Carnes - blah
2. Endless Love, Diana Ross and Lionel Richie - I have forgotten this, though te knowledge that it exists makes me tremble.
3. Lady, Kenny Rogers - oh god
*4. (Just Like) Starting Over, John Lennon - kind of lame John Lennon, but passable
5. Jessie's Girl, Rick Springfield - bland but harmless
*6. Celebration, Kool and The Gang - This isn't half bad - it can get irritating, but it's still pretty decent.
7. Kiss On My List, Daryl Hall and John Oates - ghastly
*8. I Love A Rainy Night, Eddie Rabbitt - perfectly acceptable pop
*9. 9 To 5, Dolly Parton - I like Dolly Parton
*10. Keep On Loving You, REO Speedwagon - I should hate this, but don't; I don't like it very much though.
11. Theme From "Greatest American Hero", Joey Scarbury - this keeps getting used in movies, but it sucks.
12. Morning Train (Nine To Five), Sheena Easton - blah
**13. Being With You, Smokey Robinson - Smokey can do no wrong
14. Queen Of Hearts, Juice Newton - lightly likable
**15. Rapture, Blondie - plenty cool...
16. A Woman Needs Love, Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio - this I have forgotten ocmpletely
*17. The Tide Is High, Blondie - this is okay, not great
18. Just The Two Of Us, Grover Washington Jr. - I kind of like this - Bill Withers singing, right?
19. Slow Hand, Pointer Sisters - okay
20. I Love You, Climax Blues Band - I have forgotten this
*21. Woman, John Lennon - more sappy John Lennon, but sappy John Lennon is so far above almost everything else on this list...
22. Sukiyaki, A Taste Of Honey - cute song, though pointless
23. The Winner Takes It All, Abba - I don't remember this one either
24. Medley, Stars On 45 - I should remember this, but I think I'm glad I don't
25. Angel Of The Morning, Juice Newton - 2 Juice Newton songs? sweet Jesus!
26. Love On The Rocks, Neil Diamond - I think I a glad to have forgotten tis
27. Every Woman In The World, Air Supply - before Creed, there was Air Supply - evil incarnate
28. The One That You Love, Air Supply - ditto
29. Guilty, Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb - gone from the attic of my mind.
30. The Best Of Times, Styx - gone! old age has its benefits.
31. Elvira, Oak Ridge Boys - ugh.
32. Take It On The Run, REO Speedwagon - not great, but I can't hate it
33. No Gettin' Over Me, Ronnie Milsap - oy
34. Living Outside Myself, Gino Vannelli - I know this exists, but can't remember any of it, to my relief
35. Woman In Love, Barbra Streisand - if I remembered this I might have to kill myself
36. Boy From New York City, Manhattan Transfer - cute, pointless
37. Urgent, Foreigner - what a shitty band this was
38. Passion, Rod Stewart - dumb new wave/disco crap. Rod Rod Rod
39. Lady (You Bring Me Up), Commodores - I can't remember it; I probably would not hate it though.
40. Crying, Don Mclean - why bother? the original is fine.
41. Hearts, Marty Balin - bland, but it's not "we built this city"
42. It's My Turn, Diana Ross - no
43. You Make My Dreams, Daryl Hall and John Oates - they could be lame when they wanted to
44. I Don't Need You, Kenny Rogers - and we don't need you, Kenny
45. How 'Bout Us, Champaign - I think I like this, if I remember it right. Probably shouldn't admit that, if I want to keep any credibility - though I could be misremembering it.
46. Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Pat Benatar - make it go away
**47. The Breakup Song, Greg Kihn Band - I love this song; there may be better songs on this list, but this is the one I still listen to and sing along with...
48. Time, Alan Parsons Project - not bad
*49. Hungry Heart, Bruce Springsteen - another fine song, if not the Boss's best
50. Sweetheart, Franke and The Knockouts - long forgotten
51. Someone's Knockin', Terri Gibbs - ditto
52. More Than I Can Say, Leo Sayer - ditto
53. Together, Tierra - good lord - someone's messing with me, I don’t remember this either.
54. Too Much Time On My Hands, Styx - oh, I remember this; Styx really sucked by the time the 80s came - I can't even muster any ironic appreciation of their crap
55. What Are We Doin' In Love, Dottie West - forgotten!
56. Who's Crying Now, Journey - lame, but not horrible
*57. De Do Do Do, De Da Da, Police - palatable
58. This Little Girl, Gary U.S. Bonds - I don't remember it, but I bet I liked it - I had a frien who had this record and loved it.
59. Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, Stevie Nicks With Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers - palatable, though not much more - now Weird Al'sversion...
60. Giving It Up For Your Love, Delbert McClinton - okay
61. A Little In Love, Cliff Richard - what?
62. America, Neil Diamond - I can stand this
63. Ain't Even Done With The Night, John Cougar - lousy as hell
64. Arthur's Theme, Christopher Cross - drive anyone to drink
*65. Another One Bites The Dust, Queen - hey - Queen is more than acceptable
**66. Games People Play, Alan Parsons Project - this is pretty good, actually - I have a soft spot for some of that clever AOR...
67. I Can't Stand It, Eric Clapton - Eric Clapton's solo career is Phil Collins without the songs. He was fine backing Jack Bruce or Steve Winwood, but after that...
**68. While You See A Chance, Steve Winwood - speak of the devil! not a bad song.
69. Master Blaster, Stevie Wonder - I wish I remembered this; I would if I heard it
70. Hello Again, Neil Diamond - yuck.
**71. Don't Stand So Close To Me, Police - better Police...
***72. Hey Nineteen, Steely Dan - another pretty great song; ah, decadence!
73. I Ain't Gonna Stand For It, Stevie Wonder - I wish I remembered this, too
74. All Those Years Ago, George Harrison - bland
75. Step By Step, Eddie Rabbitt - no no no
76. The Stroke, Billy Squier - stoopid, but harmless
77. Feels So Right, Alabama - nope
78. Sweet Baby, Stanley Clarke and George Duke - don't remember it at all
79. Same Old Lang Syne, Dan Fogelberg - nor this
80. Cool Love, Pablo Cruise - nor this, even
81. Hold On Tight, ELO - nor this
82. It's Now Or Never, John Schneider - wait - is this the Duke's of Hazard guy?
83. Treat Me Right, Pat Benatar - go away!
*84. Winning, Santana - Now this I loved back in the day - still holds up okay, I think
85. What Kind Of Fool, Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb - another one gone from my poor small mind
**86. Watching The Wheels, John Lennon - the best of the John Lennon’s here - in fact, a pretty god song.
87. Tell It Like It Is, Heart - a great song, but the Wilson sisters aren't the Neville Brothers
88. Smoky Mountain Rain, Ronnie Milsap - don’t remember it
89. I Made It Through The Rain, Barry Manilow - would not admit to remembering it if I did
90. You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin', Daryl Hall and John Oates - pointless cover
91. Suddenly, Olivia Newton-John and Cliff Richard - whatever
92. For Your Eyes Only, Sheena Easton - lousy, really
93. The Beach Boys Medley, Beach Boys - probably schlock
**94. Whip It, Devo - where did this come from? When a problem comes along, you must whip it!
95. Modern Girl, Sheena Easton - no
96. Really Wanna Know You, Gary Wright - don't remember this either
97. Seven Year Ache, Rosanne Cash - oddly - nor this - a lot of the country of the day is lost forever
98. I'm Coming Out, Diana Ross - this is kind of stupid, actually
99. Miss Sun, Boz Scaggs - don’t remember it
100. Time Is Time, Andy Gibb - what?

Someone in the comments at Rox Populi said that if you do this for the year you were 13, it comes out a lot better. That's obviously the case for those of us who grew up in the 70s. 81 or 82 is about when pop music went to hell, and it's not my age - it's punk's fault. It split off all the good stuff into the margins, and the crap took over the mainstream. That's my theory. Same as movies.

Weekly Movie Update

Okay - here we are. Another week, another - only 3 films? Well - good ones, at least. Still working on a full 2046 review - it's coming. In the meanwhile - this isn't a bad selection.

Batman Begins - ** - better late than never, I guess... a competent, entertaining, well made film, another Batman origin story. Nothing special though, the Tim Burton Batmans and the TV series movie are still the gold standards.

The World - **** - Jia Zhang Ke is one of the best directors in the world. He has been charting China's evolution into the 21st century (and - in Platform - through the 80s as well), from below - petty crooks, disaffected youth, marginal workers - paying special attention to marginal entertainers. That’s what we have here - The World is set in an amusement park in Beijing, where we follow a handful of its workers - a dancer, a security guard, their friends - as they live. People come and go, work, party, steal, suffer, die. Spending their time in a place full of tiny replicas of the rest of the world - the Eiffel Tower, the World Trade Center (China's version are still standing, someone notes), the Taj Mahal - they are reminded daily who they are, what they have done. They have not traveled, most of them have no hope whatsoever of leaving the country - many of them haven't traveled around China - probably taking a train or bus straight from their home town in the sticks to Beijing, sleeping in basements and dangerous apartments while they work at dangerous jobs. Some turn to theft - some marry - some slip into prostitution - some leave the country (the ones with some money) - some die. Jia shows it all with his mostly impassive camera - long takes, complex articulated spaces, and the ubiquity of the park, with its miniature version of the world - interrupting this impassivity from tie to time with titles, and animations, usually inspired by cel phone text messages. It's another impressive entry in on of the strongest bodies of work of the past decade.

The 40 Year Old Virgin - *** - this is, actually, a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it is extremely funny, very likable and generous to its characters, and full of nice little details that give it bite and depth; on the other hand, it stretches plausibility even by the standards of romantic comedies - and most seriously - it's the latest in the line of romantic comedies that are completely one sided - the man's side. It almost gets away with this by making Catherine Keener the female lead - but her presence just emphasizes the fact that she has very little to do. She's an object - she's never a subject. Now - in a movie like Broken Flowers or 2046, that might be understandable, if they did that. If they were about the man - and the women were seen only through his perspective. Those are films about the perceptions of the man. They are films, in a lot of ways, about our distance from other people - a distance the films rightfully illustrate in their style and POV. (Or - they could; in fact, 2046, especially, does a good deal more. But that's its own post, which is coming sooner or later.) But The 40 Year Old Virgin is a romantic comedy - and no, I'm not giving it a pass because it's "not trying to be a romantic comedy" - no: it is a romantic comedy. And it is a romantic comedy where only one side of the couple is given anything special to do.

There are no excuses. Films like this have an obligation to make the women in them have something at stake, as well as the men. That is the point of a romantic comedy - to present the lovers, apart at first, but overcoming obstacles to form a couple. And it is crucial, for a romantic comedy to work, that both lovers be made subjects - that both sides be given an inner life, reasons for the liaison, etc. Keener's character here, wonderful as Keener is, and interesting as her character seems to be, is not, ever, a subject. She is an object... I must also protest that she is never given the chance to be ridiculous. Everyone else is ridiculous: Jane Lynch gets to be ridiculous. Why not Keener? Damned shame....

This film is the latest in a moderately scary trend - The Wedding Crashers, Sideways - romantic comedies told almost completely from the male point of view, with flawed, if amusing, men, and women who - are presented as a kind of abstract grounding agent. It's probably not a new trend: it's probably dominant since the 40s. But these films make it noticeable, through their first rate revival of the form. But a revival that maintains, from 80s teen comedies and the like, the purely male-centered attitude. Of the three (Virgin, Crashers and Sideways), it is interesting that the one doing the best job of escaping this is Wedding Crashers - the one generally considered the least evolved. But the fact is - both the female leads in the film are given personalities - desires, wills of their own. They may be secondary, but they are independent. (Another recent comedy that does this well is Anchorman - Christina Applegate is both the sensible, grounding character - and a willful, obsessive, comic character herself - with a life, desires, will, etc.) Sideways flirts with this, but isn't as convincing as it thinks - and Virgin makes no effort. To its shame, and thus costing what otherwise might have been the best Hollywood film of the year.

Wars and Who Fights Them

I am not a big fan of the "chickenhawk" insult. It's over-simplistic - it implies that all wars are created equal; that everyone who fights or doesn't fight does it for the same reasons; it opens you up, a bit, to claims that you are saying that only soldiers should make foreign policy decisions (expressed in this Rich Lowry article on National Review Online). If the "chickenhawks" themselves weren't already committed to the far more offensive idea that opposition to the war = treason, they could turn it back around: "if you want to oppose the war, shouldn't you be out there making love not war?" Both are good sentiments, I admit - if you support the war you should do something meaningful about it - if you are against the war, you should do something meaningful about it - but what is meaningful depends a bit on who you are.

But even though I am uncomfortable with it in general, there are quite a few cases where it seems perfectly legitimate. James Wolcott expresses this position very well here:

For me, the working definition of a chickenhawk is--a chickenhawk is a cheerleader. A cheerleader for war. And not necessarily just the war in Iraq, or regional war in the Mideast, but war in general. A chickenhawk glorifies war as an enterprise, enjoying the heroics inside his or her head, mocking those less enthusiastic military aggression as pacifists, appeasers (Michael Ledeen's pet word), even traitors. Who patronize anyone with qualms, from the Quakers to the Chuck Hagel, with edgy impatience and disdain. Who treat the destruction of human life as a stupendous flourish as long as it's the US doing the destroying--who, that is, propose "creative destruction" on a geopolitical scale as an instrument of transformation. Not to mention an opportunity to teach those desert folks in sandals a lesson upside the head.

That is close to how I feel. People who mock opponents to the war - people who dismiss the ideas of actual soldiers - people who attack Cindy Sheehan and her supporters - who glorify a war they have no intention of taking part in (despite being of the proper age) - those are chickenhawks. The college kids who rave about how this war is the Great Issue of the Age, then whine that they have every right to hold political opinions without consequences (to themselves) - those are chickenhawks. And - the Vietnam generation - the Dick Cheneys and Tom DeLays and so on, who skipped the war, but feel free to attack veterans, to agitate for new wars that their kids won't have to fight in - they are chickenhawks, and deserve no sympathy.

There is another point here that should be made: in real wars, people serve. People signed up to fight in WWI, in WWII, even if they weren't required. The country, as a whole, supported the draft in those wars - and a draft that was not as patently unfair as it was during Vietnam. You do not hear the supporters of the Iraq war calling for a draft (unless they can find a way to blame it on a democrat). You do not see many of them volunteering, because they think it is the right thing to do - and, despite what Ben Shapiro thinks - it's the right thing to do, if you believe this war is necessary, and you are of a certain age. In fact - another sign of the chickenhawk is their attitude toward people like John Kerry who did just that - signed up for a war they could have ducked. They don't consider military service worthy of praise or respect. They may glorify the military in the abstract, but the left treats actual veterans and the families of veterans with more respect than the right does.

Meanwhile - at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte writes about John Fogerty and class issues - which again, points up the difference between this war and others. The fortunate sons fought in WWI and WWII - they did not fight so much in Vietnam - and now, they seem to take it for granted that they are not supposed to fight. That's what we have poor people for. The exceptions (poor Pat Tillman) prove the rule, a bit. You just don't hear much about pro-war types joining the army to put their money where their mouths are. Does every single warblogger have to join the marines? No, probably not - but you'd think you'd hear of a few more trying it...

Another Friday Commute

Got a bunch of them in today. I think I like this format better than the traditional Friday Random Ten. Maybe because it reflects the actual daily use of the machine. Anyway - into the void! (what did I do to get 2 Sabbath songs in there? acoustic folk, from the same record even! freaky!)

1. U2 - Trying to throw Your Arms Around the World -
2. Bob Dylan - Love Minus Zero/No Limit
3. Devendra Banhardt - Horseheadedfleshwizard
4. Black Sabbath - Orchid
5. REM - Second Guessing
6. Velvet Underground and Nico - Venus in Furs
7. Charlie Parker - Flat Foot Floogie
8. Shonen Knife - Banana Leaf
9. Bill Frisell - Billy the Kid: Mexican Dance and Finale
10. Black Sabbath - Into the Void
11. Red Crayola - Coconut Hotel
12. Sant 6 - Are you Human?
13. Meat Puppets - Crazy
14. Sleater-Kinney - End of You
15. Sunburned Hand of the Man - Easy Wind
16. The Carter Family - My Native Home
17. Can - Spray

Glad to be a Liberal

It's been a while since I've put up a political post, so let's try one. Lots of lovely right wing scumbags to comment on.

First, there's one of our scummier mullahs, Pat Robertso, calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez.

... then denying he did it.

... then weaseling about it. "Oh, I was 'adlibbing' - oh, I didn't mean it!"

Meanwhile, the American Legion disgraced itself: calling "an end to all “public protests” and “media events” against the war" -

"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu.

The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

Not a pretty picture.

Then there's Eugene Volokh, who's supposed to be a lawyer and a wise man (for a conservative) - writing at length about Gays and Lesbians Trying to Convert Others to Homosexual Behavior. The gist of which seems to be, gay people don't mind if bisexuals or straights are willing to sleep with them. But with charts, so it's gotta be serious. Right?

Actually, it's worse than that: apparently, he's put up a whole series of posts about homosexuality. I think Arthur Silber answered best.

A Loss

This is very sad - George Fasel, who ran a movie blog called A Girl and a Gun, has died. Despite being a hopeless movie geek, I've only really started looking for movie blogs in the last 2-3 months - this was one Lance Mannion recommended - it quickly jumped to the top of my list of blogs to read. For some reason, when people I don't know, but have started to know, die, I take it hard - I miss not getting to know people like Mr. Fasel better.

In his honor, I will list some of the better movie blogs I've come across - they are going on the "blogroll" too. (This blog is slowly starting to round into something coherent, too - after 2 years of playing...)

These are all good:

Filmbrain

Girl and a Gun

Culturespace

Girish Shambu

Long Pauses

Cinephiliac

Film Journey

Pullquote

Motion Picture it's Called

Self styled Siren

Randomized Entertainment

Sure, not all of these are strictly random - but... Like most people, I can lose hours on sites like these:

Overheard in New York
Overheard in Philly
Overheard in the Office
...And so on. I imagine everyone has one of those...
Live Journal Pictures - that really is wonderful. The cut up world.

And intentional collaborative/collective efforts: like Learning to Love You More.

Not to mention flipping through blogs...

Weekly Movie Post

This time, there are only three entries, and 2 of them repeats - I ended up watching Love Me Tonight a couple more times, and saw 2046 again. That only leaves one new film, which may be the only film covered in this post. The other two I think will require some more detail, especially 2046 (since it is new, and, now that I've seen it in a proper setting, I think it might be one of the best films of the decade.)

Junebug *** - a fine movie about the South, about a Chicago based English gallery owner who marries a man from North Carolina, and visits his family in the process of recruiting an "outsider artist"... It then turns into a kind of city folk in the sticks culture clash film, but without the usual cliches. It's a good film - fascinating, accurate, sympathetic, to everyone - it is interesting about art, especially outsider art (which it links, subtly, to broader habits, of making things, of taking pride in making things - woodworking, cooking, sewing, etc.) - on outsider art, it gets both the ugliness and passion of people like the artist here, with his psychotic civil war. Structurally, it does some notable things as well - the way Alessandro Nivola almost completely disappears when he goes home, turning into his father and brother, silent, mysterious, only emerging in a couple scenes - singing in church, the aftermath of the main plot event in the film... It's right - the way he changes when he's home - keeping his counsel, not wanting to reject them, but not part of them anymore either...

Stylistically, it's a well made indie type film with more than the usual ration of explicit Ozu references. I do mean explicit - credits on burlap, use of transition shots (within scenes even), the little tour Morrison gives of the house - as well as the broader influence of the story, the family dynamics, etc. It's not slavish imitation, and avoids the more obvious (and jolting) elements of Ozu's style - the frontal compositions, 180 degree cuts, the graphic matches and so on (which directors like Wes Anderson have adopted wholesale) - and some of the semantic elements (kids, marriages - though this is about marriage and leaving home, just seen from after the fact instead of before). But it's a clear homage, which Morrison has acknowledged.

EVIL Rears its UGLY Head, 2!

It's the 2005 edition of the Top Ten Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics! Ooh, it's scary, especially the nudity...

Where I'll be Sometime Next Year

There is no ambiguity here, is there? All you need to know - it's a movie called Snakes on a Plane, and it stars Samuel L. Jackson.

Now - if they end up calling it Pacific Air Flight 121 - fuck that shit!

Snakes on a Plane.

(Via Majikthise.)

iRidin' the iRails Again

Or, this week's Friday Random Ten (13)....

1) At the Drive In - One Armed Scissors
2) Sunny Day Real Estate - In circles (live)
3) Fugazi - Blueprint
4) John Lennon - TheLuck of the Irish (live)
5) Feelies - Moscow Nights
6) Johnny Cash - The Old Account was Settled (live at San Quentin)
7) Modest Mouse - Truckers Atlas
8) Linda Ronstadt - Love is a Rose
9) fIREHOSE - Lost Colors
10) Rocket From the Tombs - Final Solution
11) Charlie Freak - Monotony (this is what shuffle is good for; a friend of mine knows a couple of the guys in this band; they're decent, kind of nu-metalish, though not unbearably so... not something I'm likely to pick on purpose, but nice to hear...)
12) Tom Waits - The Black Rider
13) Husker Du - Hanging On (live) - does this come up as often as it seems? Or have I just put this into every playlist I have? It's very cool, though; this is a great version; one of those great little 20 second Bob Mould guitar solos that packs a minute and a half of information in...

Useless Blogtrivia

I should know better, but I was bored, so I got to clicking on the "next blog" button up in the corner - and find that blogger has been almost completely taken over by blog-spammers. Something like 7 of the first 10 sites to come up were ad sites... I guess they aren't really spammers, unless they're comment spamming, but that's where I first noticed it, not here - I don't even get comment spam.... Anyway. Pretty bad. Takes away most of the temptation to blogsurf, not that that temptation comes up too often.

Stranger Than Fiction

Here's a story, about "strangelets" - I quote:

Formed in the Big Bang and inside extremely dense stars, strangelets are thought to be made from quarks - the subatomic particles found inside protons and neutrons. Unlike ordinary matter, however, they also contain "strange quarks", particles normally only seen in high-energy accelerators.

Strangelets - sometimes also called strange-quark nuggets - are predicted to have many unusual properties, including a density about ten million million times greater than lead. Just a single pollen-size fragment is believed to weigh several tons.

Very interesting stuff. (Link via Ezra Klein.)

Movies Recapped

I think this feature is starting to evolve: more than a list, though still not quite real reviews - something between. The weather has had a definite effect on this post - the rotten heat all last week kept me from doing much of anything, not even making the terrible effort to switch from cable to the DVD player.... And then yesterday, thunder and lightning knocked out internet access for most of the evening. But that takes away any excuse for not writing up blurbs - so...

One more thing: I am putting stars on these things for convenience, for shorthand, for comparison - but I hate the 0-4 rankings people like Ebert use. That's too narrow a range. I'd rather ignore all the bottom end and stretch the top end. You know - like GPA! 2.0 is passing! (So's 1.0, in some contexts - outside your major, in most places, I think.) So - ** is a passing grade: that's a film worth seeing, without a lot of reservations - though not great. *** is very good, if not great; **** is reserved for the best.... (we've also got ***** for all time greats, one of which turns up in this post!)

So then: last week's movies:

Grizzly Man *** - the story of Timothy Treadwell, a failed actor turned grizzly bear enthusiast who got himself and his girlfriend eaten in 2003 - he had shot video footage in the Alaskan wilderness for five years, and it fell to Werner Herzog to make a film out of this footage. That is a wise choice. Herzog, in his documentaries, often seems to play the voice of reason, a role he may not play as director of fiction - he is able to examine Treadwell, what he did wrong, what he did right what he was like - to show Treadwell's personality, his beliefs, as well as Herzog's own ideas. Both men tend to project their desires onto nature - Treadwell idealizing bears and animals and the wilderness, to the point of incomprehension when he finds evidence of nature's cruelty; but Herzog's response, that nature is all cruelty, murder, chaos, is equally distorting. Just the fact that Treadwell spent 13 summers living very close to grizzly bears (and was eaten when he changed his routine) tells you something - as does his footage, showing himself living very well with bears, foxes - and foxes with bears as well - shows that nature contains both, harmony and mayhem....

It's that kind of film - it tempts you to philosophize about what it means - the film, Treadwell's life, his death, Herzog's career... I will leave instead with the note about plot: this film exists, in any form, because of Treadwell's death. It's the "grandma on the swing" rule from funniest home videos - granny on the swing is just cute video - but granny falls off the swing, it becomes a story. Which, itself, is a pure example of the Formalist rule about "making strange" - the strange, resisting element - the death of Treadwell (or a junkie rock star, coming up in Last Days) - catches our attention - and draws our attention to the rest of the material, to the everyday. Gus Van Sant has made three films in a row that exploit this device - the presence of death makes them into stories, but in doing so, gives the mundane, everydayness of the rest of the films weight. The strange element makes everything strange - makes you notice. Now, Treadwell's footage is gripping enough (I mean, he was petting wild grizzly bears, the idiot!), but his death allowed this film to be made - turned nature video into a meditation on the human soul. Really.

The Aristocrats - **1/2 - Documentary about a joke. The joke goes - a man walks into a talent agency and says, I got a great act for you; the talent agent says, what's the act? The man describes it - a string of obscenity and filth - the agent is shocked - my god, he says, what do you call that act? The aristocrats! The kick is the middle part - describing the act. How bad can you get? The film shows a swarm of comics telling the joke, talking about the joke, or other jokes, or just jokes... it's hilarious at times - it also tends to drag at times. Comedy depends on surprise, and to get a surprise out of this old a joke takes a sure touch. The best versions do that - surprise you, or succeed in the details of the scatology (George Carlin's bits about corn, and peanuts, say, make his version of the joke). The worst just list off atrocities and say fuck and suck a lot.

Last Days - **** - Gus Van Sant follows a junkie rock star around his big crumbling manse. Not much happens - there's a quartet of twits hanging around, misbehaving and annoying the star... Mormons come by, a yellow pages representative, Kim Gordon, Ricky Jay in a great turn as a talkative PI.... That's about all. As with Elephant, the knowledge of how it will end focuses your attention on what is happening - which is mostly banal, but given great gravity, because it is Life, and we know that what is coming is Death - and everything suddenly becomes precious. Macaroni and cheese, sour milk, feedback all play their roles. Another marvelous film.

Love Me Tonight - ***** - Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, music by Rogers and Hart. This is very close to the perfect musical - the perfect fairy-tale musical anyway (though it's also anticipating many of the devices of the "folk tale" musical [blame Rick Altman] - making music out of everyday sounds, singing out of talking, dancing out of walking, passalong songs, and so on). MC is a tailor who tries to collect from a deadbeat Vicomte, who passes him off as a baron, to buy time... while MC woos MacDonald, a widowed princess... Class contends with charm, and everything works out in the end - she gets her Prince Charming, who wasn't a prince, but he was charming... A beautiful and completely delightful movie.

Commuting with iTunes

Another Friday Random 10, though this time, it's 14, because this is, instead of the first 10 songs to pop up on the iPod, all the songs that came up on the iPod while I was en route to and from work. Thus:

1) James Carter and the Prisoers - Po Lazarus
2) Dr.Nerve - It's a Tincture (all 11 seconds of it)
3) DNA - Lying on the Sofa of Life
4) The Beatles - Honey Pie
5) Robert Johnson - Stones in my Passway
6) Wipers - Soul's Tongue
7) Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Motherfucker=Redeemer
8) The Clash - Train in Vain (Stand By Me)
9) Minutemen- Political Sog for Michael Jackson to Sig
10) Black Sabbath - Children of the Grave
11) Louvin Brothers - Just Rehearsing
12) The Kinks - (Don't) Forget to Dance
13) Come - Bell
14) Sleater-Kinney - Angry Inch

A nice run. I like the mix of traditional and avant-garde there at the beginning, moving through rather odd Beatles to the epic stylings of Godspeed... with a punk heavy second half, nicely flavored with the Louvin Brothers and some quietish Kinks. A nice mix.

Filmic Round-Up

Only four this week - odd. Watched The Son twice, though - that makes a difference...

Elevator to the Gallows - *** - Jeanne Moreau wandering Paris at night looking for her lover - who's trapped in an elevator... They'd schemed to kill her husband - it worked like a charm - except he left something behind - and when he went back... everything went wrong. Sleek and tense and ironic, with its doubled pair of protagonists (2 kids steal his car and pretend to be the lover ad his wife) getting each other in trouble... And Moreau is just very cool, looking like Bridget Lin in Chungking Express (I don't know if the resemblance is intentional, but it could be.)

Broken Flowers - ***1/2 - Jim Jarmusch directs Bill Murray as an "aging don Juan" (named Don Johnston) who gets a letter from an anonymous old flame warning him that he has a son. His neighbor urges him to find the woman - so he sets off across the country looking for which of the 4 possible lovers sent the letter. Murray plays it in complete deadpan mode, but he makes everything, every twitch, every movement of the eye, every angle count. It's quiet and sad, but very well done...

The Son - **** - The Dardennes brothers have won 2 top prizes at Cannes in 6 years, for Rosetta and L'Enfant - they probably could have won for this as well. Tells the story of a carpentry instructor who takes on a new apprentice - who clearly causes him great stress. Slowly, we learn why... it is about revenge and forgiveness and transference, and probably most of all, about work as redemption, about practicing a trade as a religious act. It is also, in a strange way, a kind of musical - the sounds of carpentry, the band of hammers and whine of saws - the synchronized movement of people working, apart and together, becomes music, and becomes a dance. Certainly the camera dances with the actors - the star, Olivier Gourmet, describes the process as a kind of ballet, during an interview included on the DVD. It is a great film indeed.

East of Borneo - **1/2 - more bad films - but this is a different order of bad film. The source material for Joseph Cornell's surrealist found footage Rose Hobart - the original is no slouch on the weirdness front. Rose plays a woman looking for her husband in the wilds of Borneo - she finds him living with a decadent Prince far up in the jungles - melodrama rears its ugly head for a scene or two, the the crocodiles swarm and volcanos erupt.... Not quite as brilliant as Guy Maddin's review would lead you to believe, but a keeper anyway, with it's off synch editing, stock footage of beasts, bad acting, decadence, symbolism, and the like.

Another Friday Random Ten

Hee we are, then - first 10 songs to come up on the iPod.... annotated, even. I don't know if this will be a lasting innovation....

I've got my replacement for my (broken) big iPod - I can't say it shows, exactly, since nothing really obscure came up - actually, I had most of the obscure stuff (White Heaven, say) on the emergency iPod - if Sweet or Glenn Gould or Heart had come up, that's probably more due to getting all my music back... Anyway, here goes!

1) Pixies - Gouge Away
2) Pretenders - Tattooed Love Boys - if I were doing coolness audits, this gets a 10 - one of the first punk songs to make me sit up and notice - and one of the great guitar solos....
3) Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) - Sly and company always rank high on the coolness scale. On any scale.
4) The Blank Theory - Sour Times - I don't know anything about this - comes from some compilation. Sounds okay, but I can't say anything else about it.
5) X-Ray Spex - Art-I-Ficial - first rate, this.
6) White Heaven - My Cold Dimention - Michio Kurihara and the boys swipe the riff to War Pigs, Kuri does some wanking... decent stuff, but there's better. The more Kurihara in a song, the better it is, and this is kind of short and conventional.
7) The Band - the Night they Drove OldDixie Down - a classic.
8) Red Crayola - Former Reflections Enduring Doubt - I'll take it, though I tnd to like Red Crayola's albums better than their songs in isolation - the flow of songs, sounds, etc., tends to work better than the songs by themselves. But this is pretty cool.
9) Cream - Swlabr - Cream is palatable. As long as Clapton knows his job is to play guitar he's fairly safe.
10) Wire - Men 2nd - Wire is always welcome.

Movies Weekly

I may have missed the Friday Random ten (I was at Fenway, booing Manny*), but I can make my weekly movie post, I hope. Thisweek brings us a couple new films, a couple DVDs, and a gift from TMC...

5x2 - *** - moment to moment, shot by shot, Francois Ozon is one of the best directors in the world. He's not necessarily showy (though sometimes he is), but he makes everything he does seem right. This is the story of a marriage, told in reverse, from divorce to first attraction, in five discreet episodes. Critics have sniffed at the structure, and maybe they have a point - but it serves a couple purposes that can't quite be gainsaid: it keeps you from investing in the suspense of what will happen - you know what will happen - so you don't think about how it will turn out; because of this knowledge, Ozon is free to concentrate on the incidents in their isolation - and on those moment to moment, shot to shot details. And, it allows Ozon to pose other couples against the main pair, in a more interesting way than if he had told the story chronologically. This strikes me as more important than most of the reviews I've seen notice - that each section (except the first) brings on a different couple, who pose a kind of alternative to them.... I don't know if this is enough to make it really work - except that it does work, at least it kept me completely engrossed, in the fate of a pair of people who aren't really worth the trouble.

Wedding Crashers -*** - there seems to be a wide range of opinions about this, critics (kind of) hating it, loving it, everything in between: I'll have to come down on the liking end of the scale. It's funny; Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are both in great form... the story? it's got a couple wild boys settling down because of women - oldest plot in the book - except, the women here aren't exactly all that settling. True love, here, is finding someone who wants to join you in doing what you want to do anyway...

The Merry Widow - **** - Ernst Lubitsch directs Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald - plus the requisite second bananas - Edward Everett Horton, Sterling Holloway, etc. - in a classic Viennese musical comedy. And who can resist? And what would possess anyone to resist?

42nd Street - **** - I see that look - yes, yes, more Berkeley. This one's on DVD so I can take another look... I've finally gotten around to reading Rick Altman (all that Berkeley adulation back in May and June was the start, not the end...), and am looking at 42nd Street in his terms. It's interesting - some of the elements he stresses are in full swing here (the modulation from real to ideal, the "audio dissolve") - others, such as the formation of the couple, are less clear. It would be interesting to spend some time on this film, in that context - I may, but not tonight. I will limit myself to this - the duality of work and art (real/ideal, inside the machine/above the machine, etc.) - the way the backstage part of the film builds toward the explosion of the Berkeley numbers, which themselves repeat the pattern, building from the stage possible to pure cinema - and maintaining the "real" (the real stage, I mean - the painted backgrounds in the 42nd Stret number, for instance) and the "ideal" (here, the illusionism of the cinema - the creation of depth and cinematic space during the number.) Etc. It is a glory of a film....

Showgirls - 0/inc. - ah. So lately I have been trying to track down crappy movies, and see if they really are crappy. This is an obvious candidate for that. Well - unfortunately, the DVD did not cooperate - giving up the ghost somewhere around the 52 minute mark. So now what? Is it fair to praise or trash it without seeing the rest? No, probably not - thus the "incomplete". But do I expect the rest of the film to change the impression of the first half? Not really. The odd thing is, it's actually rather difficult to attack it. Film Quarterly, for example, ran a roundtable discussion of it a couple issues back - the contributors ran off the predictable litany of its virtues - it is camp, it is satire, it comments, fairly meaningfully, on gender, race, class, sex, performance, drag, genre, movies, Las Vegas, etc., it establishes visual motifs of the double, the mirror, the whole nine yards. Al that is true - that stuff is all there. And it's probably supposed to be there a good deal of the style, feel, structure - good bad or indifferent - are pretty clearly intentional. So - why isn't it a neglected, misunderstood masterpiece? Well - partly because all of those things, whether they're in the film or not, are more interesting to talk about than to watch. They are in the film - usually in a bland, literal, calculated way - which it parodies, ironically.... The terrible sense one gets, in the end, is that Showgirls is to, oh, 42nd Street, what Creed is to The Ramones. Yeah - Creed is a rock group - look! they have a guitar player, he's got a leather jacket, they have a long haired singer, they sig songs! - it's rock, right? But it's just - just - just -

Zabriskie Point - ***1/2 - meanwhile: here's Antonioni trying to do a hippy flick. It's interesting, if never quite functional. Has some great shots of LA at the beginning - industrial wastelands, billboards, freeways... then heads out into the desert, where the boy and girl Antonioni has been somewhat aimlessly following meet. They go into the desert and flirt, and when the sex starts, Antonioni stages a very strange mass orgy in the dust - which now strikes me as a distant homage to The Merry Widow (or film like it) - in the Lubitsch film, there is a montage toward the end of Chevalier and MacDonald dancing - they dance alone in a room, then are joined by hundreds of dancers - Lubitsch cuts to another room, they dance alone, then hundreds of dancers come in - repeated a couple more ties... The Antonioni has the same effect - though it's silly rather than exhilarating. What is exhilarating, though, is the ending - ah, the redemptions of imaginary violence and Pink Floyd!

*I didn't boo Manny! the crowd did, and I don't blame them - but hey - he gets a big hit (like he did today), and all is forgiven.

Movies, Dully Listed and -

- I am going to try this. What does it look like? I don't know. This is just what I have seen since the last post about movies. I am going to adopt a shameless rating system, 1-4 stars, just like Roger Ebert! Sort of. Throwing in what commentary occurs to me. In an ideal world, something like this would become a weekly tradition, a Sunday night tradition, in the spirit of the Friday iMusic-blogging, and any other spirits I can conjure. I need some spirits if this blog is going to be anything other than a once a week music post...

Murderball ***
Youth of the Beast (DVD) ****
The Beat My Heart Skipped ***1/2
Batman and Robin (DVD) **1/2 - I have been trying to watch some crappy movies lately - to test myself, see if they are really all that crappy. This one, actually, crappy as it is, is not as crappy as it could be. Yes yes, the dialogue is appalling, the story is dim-witted, the spectacle is tiring and direction lacks any juice - for all that, it almost achieves the campiness it aims for - the spectacle here has slowed down from Batman Forever, and that makes it work better - the set design and colors and lighting - the whole works - works better slow - it looks more like a comic book or the TV show - and that is good, at least here. Uma Thurman in particular seems to get the idea, and camps it up with real gusto - she has the eye-rolling scene chewing absurdity of the TV villains; she's quite good. The rest... well... still... what can I say?
2046 (DVD) ***1/2 - I also saw a trailer for this at the movies - I am pleased. It is gorgeous indeed, even on DVD, but the TV cannot do justice to its widescreen, rich, lucious lighting... I shall reserve judgment on it until I see it in a proper setting - though it looks pretty good as is.
Happily Ever After - **1/2 - I was disappointed, somewhat to my surprise. A French ensemble comedy that didn't quite go anywhere.
Batman Forever - ** - I should hate it, but... it's passable, Carrey and Jones ham it up in fine style, and it almost manages... but in the end, this is probably the dregs of the franchise - that alone is perhaps a radical statement, given the usual reception of Batman and Robin - but I have to call what I see...
Me and You and Everyone We Know - *** - one of those films I couldn't help finding fault with, but that somehow adds up to more.... I think what it gets right - the kids, the performances (by John Hawkes and the kids playing his sons, especially), the structure - the loose arrangements of stories around a fairly convention romantic plot that it keeps in the background - outweighs what it gets wrong... some of the cutesier dialogue, some of the more overt symbol mongering, and anytime Miranda July herself appeared on screen - what an obnoxious character she played! On the whole then... I liked it. (This is one I may come back to when I have a chance.)
Mysterious Skin - **1/2 - billed as the Gregg Araki film that doesn't suck, it managed to reach that not very exalted level... ad maybe more. It started slow, but got better - Araki found a rhythm in the last third, and the characters seemed to outgrow the cliches they'd begun as... the acting is quite strong, and it ends on a powerful note.

In Memorial

...to an old friend - one of my brother's cats, Katrina. Aged - 14 plus - has expired of kidney failure, I believe. Poor old cat! She was a sweetheart...

In her memory - here she is. A kind of special Friday Cat Blog....

And a close up, looking for some petting:

Friday Random 10, Again

And, another quick and simple one. One of these days....

1. Ramones - Blitzkreig Bop - where it all started
2. Sleater Kinney - Banned from the End of the World
3. 15.60.75 (The Numbers) - About the Eye Game - this band and this record (Jimmy Bell's Still in Town) probably are the most underrated band and record in history.
4. At The Drive In - Napoleon Solo
5. Bjork -Verandi
6. Velvets - Candy Says
7. U2 - The Fly
8. Sunny Da Real Estate - Grendel
9. Fugazi - Cassavetes
10. Donovan - Sunshine Superman

iEulogy

This is a sad post. Not the end of the world - but the end of an iPod; and a couple weeks of irritation getting it replaced. It was working fine last week - thank god for that! This post documents its last triumph, 2 1/2 hours on the train, coming back from vacation. A couple days later - nada! woulnd't boot! (And bad timing too - a bunch of kids trying to sing on the subway - No! do not sing on the subway trains! even if you are moderately competent singers! do not do it! do not!) Anyway - this is a long post: I jotted stuff down while I was listening, and have added some since.. That (and inconsistent internet performance, oppressive heat and humidity, and sloth) have delayed the arrival of this post: but I hope it is worth waiting for! There are 35 songs here - that's a pretty good haul....

1) Que Vida- Love: this list was randomly generated, on the iPod, by opening the "Songs" list and starting at the beginning. This is the beginning, thanks to the spanish punctuation that marks the title. This never shows up on these lists since I always jump to the the next song. But this time, I'm leaving it in. It's a good song, after all - and it only seems right.
2) Red Morning Light - Kings of Leon: I don't have much to say, except it's a better song than I remembered - got this record, didn't listen to it all that much... but not bad.
3)Ye Olde Battlaxe - Danielson Famille: always welcome - "give it up for your momma!"
4) Exit Does Not Exist - Modest Mouse: lack of insightful comment does not imply comment. This is early MM, lots of guitars scratching each other like angry cats. Good stuff.
5) Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed:This song has a place - memories - I remember hearing it on the radio, when I was very young. I had no way to know what the lyrics were about. It sounded great and seductive and a bit scary, though. And the colored girls go do-de-do-de-do...
6) Everyday - Yo La Tengo: so far the iPod seems to be running a tribute to what I listened to from 1999-2001... right.
7) Marooned - Wire: no comment recorded...
8) Circles - Dag Nasty: uh oh! negativity! "Dull DC hardcore" says my notes... oops.
9) Electricity - Captain Beefheart: very cool; back to that 99-01 thing - a period where I started buying a lot of records again, concentrating on edgy, punky stuff - some contemporary, some classic - the Captain led the way, among the latter group...
10) Little Queen - Heart: the notes read, "better songs on here, but hey" - I think I was referring to Heart songs - should I admit to being a Heart fan? even just sort of a Heart fan? I should have pretended this was there for ironic or nostalgic reasons, but it really isn't...
11) Long Black Veil - Johnny Cash (live at Folsom): Stunningly beautiful song, with the bit where he almost breaks himself up ("I'd been in the arms of another man'swife") - then ends with the routine about a glass of water... the range Johnny Cash represented in everything he did...
12) Crown of Love - Arcade Fire: another good song, unglossed
13) I Think I Love You - The Partridge Family: oh, you mean this? but while this may be cheese, it's pretty cool cheese - goofy, but rather well constucted and written, and the kind of thing you turn up when you hear it on the radio, whether you're laughing at it or just digging it. Irony or pleasure you ask? both! sheesh!
14) Numb Erone - The Residents: I need more of their stuff. Odd, but fascinating tunage...
15) What's So Good About Goodbye? - Smokey Robinson and the Miracle: one of the greats here. Another of the greats, really - Lou Reed and Johnny Cash have come up, the Captain - Smokey is in that company.
16) One More Night - Can: cool quiet, understated, sexy stuff. Another band I went after when I started buying lots of records again... a bit later - 01-02... lots of Kraut rock and Japanese noise from that period.
17) Shakin' Through - REM:back when Michael Stipe refused to enunciate. God bless him.
18) Traveling Riverside Blues - Robert Johnson: "you know what I'm talking about" - go get em, Robert!
19) When My Baby's Beside Me - Big Star:god damn, what a gorgeous song! I went too long without listening to big star - a story of technology (the end of the LP)... I am very glad I found this CD, and stopped pretending I was going to set up the record player again...
20) Cortez The Killer - Neil Young (live) - very cool, but I have to admit, the Built to Spill version might have it beat.... if that had come up, this would have been a shorter list though!
21) A Second Life - Damon and Naomi (with Michio Kurihara): this comes up all the time - probably because I've added it to about 6 playlists. I'm not complaining. They are really good - this new record is really good... they are quiet, soothing, yes, but with a cool, sexy edge to them - and then Kurihara comes in, his solo (here) shocking, beautiful - top of the line song.
22) Embassy Row - Pavement: geez - this came up on the last one, didn't it?
23) Gravity Rides Everything - Modest Mouse: makes you want to buy a minivan! well, you know. That and a sexy soccer mom... Hey - I'm not complaining. A nice song - I'm not gonna begrudge Isaac and the boys getting a paycheck along the way.
24) Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands - Bob Dylan: a pretty song, this...
25) Breadcrumb Trail - Slint: this band grew out of squirrel bait, apparently - a band I never heard, but remember reading about back in the 80s, in Spin, for instance... Slint is interesting enough - got a nice slow burn about them... bought this because of the publicity about their "reunion" - pure curiosity...
26) Awaken - Six Organs of Admittance:
27) The Art of the Fugue: contra - Glenn Gould: um - what am I supposed to say about this? classical music (and a lot of jazz) doesn't make as much sense on the iPod as it could...
28) Light My Fire - Emma Franklin: from one of those Mojo compilations... this one sounds like the singer has, some time in her life, actually gotten laid. (The poor Lizard King - handsome to look at, in his youth, but about as sexy as a mangy rat.)
29) Return the Gift - Gang of Four: cool, cool, cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. "We'll send you an inside shower." Thanks! (They, on the other hand, are sexy as all fuck.)
30) One PM Again - Yo La Tengo: 30 songs in, te first band to repeat! pretty good, I have to say.
31) Pig's in Zen - Janes Addiction: nice to hear old friends... pig is nude, unashamed...
32) Till the Morning Comes - Grateful Dead: pretty sog - lots of them on that record - kind of dull, but great material.
33) Baby's on Fire - Eno: this isn't dull. Being a fan of guitar wannking, this will always be a classic - it's more interesting now, knowing that the guitar player has a name - Phil Manzanera, if I'm not mistaken. It's interesting, knowing it's someone I can trace to other records - listen for the similarities to something like "Gun" - it adds a dimension...
34) Motherbanger - Chris Morris:A very funny, and pretty damned good, Pixies parody - "I want to have sex with a mutant ibex"...
35) Remainder - Rites of Spring: and we're home....

Not a dog in the lot - not even any filler (since I'm not here to apologize for Heart or the Partridge Family). A very nice goodbye. I may do this again when the replacement comes in. Take a long train ride, just to get my money's worth from the toy...

Flickers of Life!

in the form of a (day late)Friday iPod post.... there may be another friday iPod post, last week's - in the form of a eulogy for my new iPod, which gave up the ghost, but not before providing 2 hours of train riding random entertainment - whch I am inclined to share.

But right now - just a random 10, from my old (though reloaded) iPod:

1 Stereo Sanctity - Sonic Youth
2 Tzomborgha - Ruins
3 Excitable Boy - Warren Zevon
4 Money Folder - Madvillain
5 Embssy Row - Pavement
6 Shelter from the Storm - Bob Dylan
7 D. Boon - Uncle Tupelo
8 Do It Clean - Echo and the Bunnymen
9 Sloth - Fairport Convention (live)
10 Bonnie and Clyde - Serge Gainsbourg

Friday is iPod Day

and do we have a random 10 for you! yee haw! just barely, I have to admit - the battery was run down to its last gasp... just snuck this in there.

1 Dawn - Mahavishnu Orchestra
2 I threw it all away - Yo la tengo
3 Camel Backwards - Sunburned Hand of the Man
4 Lost in the Supermarket - the Clash
5 Ricky - Butthole Surfers
6 Change - Asian Dub Foundation
7 Tundra/Desert - Modest Mouse
8 When you're gone away - The Waterboys
9 Don't Worry - Pere Ubu
10 Blueprint - Fugazi