Checking in with a couple links and a movie or two... First - Armistice Day is over, but there are a few more hours of Veteran's day - there's a great post on the Great War on Making Light, with links to film footage and much more, and a nice link from Lawyers Guns and Money to a list of the remaining surviving veterans of the war to end all wars. There's much to be said for Farley's comments about the specificity of this holiday: WWI was a pretty sharp and decisive break with something - you can trace a direct line from damn near anything that's happened since back to it. From modern art to WWII to the end of colonialism to horror movies...
...including prohibition, and after prohibition, the "war on drugs" in all it's stupid variations... and thus, American gangsterism, the tradition of American crime fiction, and the Coen Brothers! And Sidney Lumet... two new takes on that venerable genre came out this weekend... Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a new version of the ever popular heist gone wrong picture - in this case, Philip Seymour Hoffman (as a dope fiend embezzler) lures Ethan Hawke (as his loser little brother) into an ill advised scheme to rob a mom and pop jewelry store... heh heh heh... I hope it doesn't spoil anything to say it goes spectacularly wrong. It's a fine little film - it reminded me somewhat of Exiled: a pure genre picture, made for the pure pleasure of going through all the paces of the genre - not quite up to Johnny To's technical chops, but similarly blessed with first rate actors biting into meaty roles... None of it adds up to a thing, except the plain pleasure fo the style, the genre, the craft of it, which we are invited to share without illusions...
No Country for Old Men starts somewhere like that: a genre tale told with full attention to the specific pleasures of the genre itself. But it keeps going. First - because the Coen brothers have filmmaking chops that surpass Johnny To - partly since they bring the same command to everything, not just the set pieces, but even on the merits: they are better story tellers - much of this film is virtually silent: men running, chasing, searching, sometimes fighting... dialogue when it comes up is almost incidental (especially in the first half) - though it can pack a punch... The story itself is as generic as anything in the Lumet film: a schmoe finds a suitcase of money, various bad guys are looking for it, he has to lam, the bad guys come after him (and each other), a trail of bodies ensues. Good enough and well told on the face of it, it slides toward something more as it goes... Peter Keough at the Phoenix talks about Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, magnificent, while sporting an unfortunate late 70s page boy haircut) as Death, and the film as being about Death: which is just about right. The film is, basically, a hideous and intolerable allegory about Death: random, inescapable, the end of every story. It is to their credit that they do this, incorporate a walking symbol into the film, and make him fit, make the story work on its own terms. And - because they find new ways to tell the story: they can surprise you, even when you know what's coming, and how, they find a way to tell it that can take you unawares. It's impressive work. They've had a bit of a down run lately - I like The Man Who Wasn't There a good deal less than a lot of people - and no one defends their next two films. This is a nice return - maybe not up to their best films (Fargo, The Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou? - that's a damned impressive stretch; plus Raising Arizona, I say) - but close.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Thursday, November 08, 2007
I'm Brian and So's My Wife!
The Film & Faith blogathon is reminding me what a lazy slob I can be some time. I have plenty of time to plan and prepare and what do I do? Watch the Red Sox, watch the Celtics, load Syd Barrett and Sigur Rus CDs into iTunes - NOT rewatch Naked or O Brother Where Art Thou or After Life or A Touch of Zen (nothing says it has to be Christian) or Pulp Fiction or The Gospel According to Matthew or Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, or Lady Vengeance, or any other promising subject - not work up a decent essay on the subject. Sloth! one of the Deadly Sins!
Still, it's too interesting a topic not to do something. I might work up a post out of an existing piece - in the meantime, let's expand a bit on the clip in that last post... In fact, I think Life of Brian is, not just a great film - which it is - but a darned good religious film. Presents a more appealing vision of christianity than most overt christians do - Passion of the Christ? God, no... Life of Brian takes an interesting approach to religion - it analyzes it a bit, taking it apart into its component parts. Religion, after all, is not, really a single, unified thing: it's a melange of social organizations and institutions, ideologies and belief systems, behaviors, ethical and moral values, rituals, traditions, ethnicities, identities.... Life of Brian offers a fairly savage attack on part of this - religion as social and political phenomenon, as ideology used to support social and political control. It is much more sympathetic to the ideas and behaviors inspired by faith. A big part of the point of the film is, in fact, the way admirable and sensible religious ideas get warped into excuses for forming gangs and attacking other people.
It's interesting, actually, that faith and belief don't figure all that much in the film. Some of this, of course, is due to the fact that it is more about politics than religion anyway. It's also because faith and belief are simplified in the film: collapsed into a couple main ideas. First - the good idea - that religious belief is about values - specific values - getting along, treating people well, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Being yourself and respecting others. Blessed are the peacemakers. The film (being a political satire) puts more energy into the second main idea about religion: the ways beliefs, ideas, etc., are transformed into ideologies, ways of controlling people. It’s done pretty directly: blessed are the cheesemakers; we are all individuals - good ideas are absorbed by society and twisted, put to use as ways to control, as tools for the exercise of power. (The Pythons aren’t quite as Foucauldian as Frank Capra, but they make a good start sometimes.) Good ideas and values are turned into dogmas and ideologies useful for forming gangs: defining who’s with us and who’s against us, who’s in, who’s out, who you can abuse and who you can’t. That’s a pretty universal Monty Python theme - the misuse of language - words, turned into tools for power. (Or resisting and undermining power, sometimes.) The ideology of religion hardens, into taboos and irrational codes, stupid vows of silence, excuses for stoning people, that get twisted and warped all around each other themselves. With pretty serious, seriously awful, consequences - those idiotic revolutionaries convincing themselves that Brian is dying for the cause - and the even more idiotic crack suicide squads...
All of it a perversion of the perfectly sensible things Jesus and Brian say in the film; probably an inevitable perversion, since we are social and political animals and do those things naturally. Though what makes what they say sensible is their insistence on the worth of the individual against the group, or within the group. A kind of calling out from the group - to not forget that social and political organizations are conveniences, ways of living in the world. There’s a sense in which something like the Sermon on the Mount is a call to flexibility of mind - don’t judge lest you be judged; take everyone as they come; see the world as the other fellow sees it. Don’t get tied down to any one group or set of ideas, even if you are part of one group: social organizations are fluid and changeable. We should be fluid and changeable. At least that seems to be something like the conclusion the Pythons draw about it - their work constantly condemns people who treat their particular class or profession or any given role as an Absolute Value. Hell - the boys themselves embody the idea, playing all the roles, working, most of the time, in sketch comedy style, rather than establishing one persona, one universe, to live in, to act in.
Anyway - here's another clip, the sermon on the mount falling on deaf ears....
Still, it's too interesting a topic not to do something. I might work up a post out of an existing piece - in the meantime, let's expand a bit on the clip in that last post... In fact, I think Life of Brian is, not just a great film - which it is - but a darned good religious film. Presents a more appealing vision of christianity than most overt christians do - Passion of the Christ? God, no... Life of Brian takes an interesting approach to religion - it analyzes it a bit, taking it apart into its component parts. Religion, after all, is not, really a single, unified thing: it's a melange of social organizations and institutions, ideologies and belief systems, behaviors, ethical and moral values, rituals, traditions, ethnicities, identities.... Life of Brian offers a fairly savage attack on part of this - religion as social and political phenomenon, as ideology used to support social and political control. It is much more sympathetic to the ideas and behaviors inspired by faith. A big part of the point of the film is, in fact, the way admirable and sensible religious ideas get warped into excuses for forming gangs and attacking other people.
It's interesting, actually, that faith and belief don't figure all that much in the film. Some of this, of course, is due to the fact that it is more about politics than religion anyway. It's also because faith and belief are simplified in the film: collapsed into a couple main ideas. First - the good idea - that religious belief is about values - specific values - getting along, treating people well, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Being yourself and respecting others. Blessed are the peacemakers. The film (being a political satire) puts more energy into the second main idea about religion: the ways beliefs, ideas, etc., are transformed into ideologies, ways of controlling people. It’s done pretty directly: blessed are the cheesemakers; we are all individuals - good ideas are absorbed by society and twisted, put to use as ways to control, as tools for the exercise of power. (The Pythons aren’t quite as Foucauldian as Frank Capra, but they make a good start sometimes.) Good ideas and values are turned into dogmas and ideologies useful for forming gangs: defining who’s with us and who’s against us, who’s in, who’s out, who you can abuse and who you can’t. That’s a pretty universal Monty Python theme - the misuse of language - words, turned into tools for power. (Or resisting and undermining power, sometimes.) The ideology of religion hardens, into taboos and irrational codes, stupid vows of silence, excuses for stoning people, that get twisted and warped all around each other themselves. With pretty serious, seriously awful, consequences - those idiotic revolutionaries convincing themselves that Brian is dying for the cause - and the even more idiotic crack suicide squads...
All of it a perversion of the perfectly sensible things Jesus and Brian say in the film; probably an inevitable perversion, since we are social and political animals and do those things naturally. Though what makes what they say sensible is their insistence on the worth of the individual against the group, or within the group. A kind of calling out from the group - to not forget that social and political organizations are conveniences, ways of living in the world. There’s a sense in which something like the Sermon on the Mount is a call to flexibility of mind - don’t judge lest you be judged; take everyone as they come; see the world as the other fellow sees it. Don’t get tied down to any one group or set of ideas, even if you are part of one group: social organizations are fluid and changeable. We should be fluid and changeable. At least that seems to be something like the conclusion the Pythons draw about it - their work constantly condemns people who treat their particular class or profession or any given role as an Absolute Value. Hell - the boys themselves embody the idea, playing all the roles, working, most of the time, in sketch comedy style, rather than establishing one persona, one universe, to live in, to act in.
Anyway - here's another clip, the sermon on the mount falling on deaf ears....
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Catch Up
No, I don't have a good excuse for not posting in a week. I don't know - just the occasional spell of sloth. Anyway - we have 2 blogathons tempting us back to the internets: New Critics asks, What is the purest comedic moment you have ever experienced? - and RC at Strange Culture hosts Film & Faith. Both are pretty wide open, and should genehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifrate lots of good reading. I hope I can muster a contribution or two, but meanwhile - I have gotten my movie viewing in, so let's run through some recent shows. With stars! the first resort of the lazy critic, and that's me...
Control - ** - the Ian Curtis biopic - it looks great; sounds good - the music being superb; has a nice approach, in some ways - getting at the sordidness of Curtis' life - but it's still static and dull, and not very revealing. The music gets short shrift - and the sad fact is, without the music, Ian Curtis doesn't matter much. We wouldn't have heard of him, and his story would be just another another miserable tale, told (in this film) without much life or insight... Flashes of Stroszek on the TV screen remind you of what a great filmmaker can do with poverty and desperation, and the flashes of the music remind you of what a great mind can do with their pain and worries. The most interesting thing about the film is thinking about how it brings a photographic style to cinema (the reserve of some of the discussion around Tucker's Jeff Wall post). I'm inclined to think that "cinematic" photography is photography that activates offscreen space: so photographic cinema might be film that negates offscreen space. Though of course - this is always relative: the offscreen always exists in cinema, just as it doesn't exist in photography - but an artist like Cindy Sherman uses thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhe absence creatively. Corbijn, in a way, freezes the spaces and things in this film: there is very little sense of things happening that the camera doesn't see - a sense of the world being closed in. It's a relative thing, of course. It's also pretty effective, given the material: it gives a claustrophobic, elegiac sense to the film, which works. So whiile it is not the film you would probably want to see, it has merits. And is, I say, handsome to look at, and has just enough of that great music...
What else? Lars and the Real Girl and Wristcutters: A Love Story are a pair of neat little indie pictures, clever high concept pieces graced with enjoyable performances and some nice ideas, though neither one can quite justify 100 minutes with the concept, and neither one has an ounce of actual filmmaking style. I am spoiled: I have, in the last month or two, seen films by Pedro Costa, Wes Anderson, Michael Haneke, Johnny To, Arnaud Desplechins, a couple fine Romanian films, and a raft of Val Lewton (to celebrate Halloween) - it's hard to come back to watching plain looking indie films like this, however well they are written or acted. But - they are pretty well written and acted, and do what they do efficiently and entertainingly - I suppose I could compare them to Lust, Caution - they start to look like masterpieces.
Exiled - *** - Johnny To sets several pf his favorite actors loose on a very hoary plot about that Last Big Score (gone, of course, Terribly Wrong) - Anthony Wong, Francis Ng, Simon Yam as a flamboyant boss - Nicky Cheung, Roy Cheung, Lam Suet... scenery is chewed, figurative at least, then shot to hell... robbery, styling gunslingers, Ennio Morricone style music, empty streets, morbid jokes follow, all as sharp and clean as a Ramones song. What can you say? Not up to the Election films, but a sharp, dead on genre parody/pastiche done right....
Okay - that's if for now. Meanwhile, here's a teaser for both blogathons.... jehovah jehovah jehovah!
Control - ** - the Ian Curtis biopic - it looks great; sounds good - the music being superb; has a nice approach, in some ways - getting at the sordidness of Curtis' life - but it's still static and dull, and not very revealing. The music gets short shrift - and the sad fact is, without the music, Ian Curtis doesn't matter much. We wouldn't have heard of him, and his story would be just another another miserable tale, told (in this film) without much life or insight... Flashes of Stroszek on the TV screen remind you of what a great filmmaker can do with poverty and desperation, and the flashes of the music remind you of what a great mind can do with their pain and worries. The most interesting thing about the film is thinking about how it brings a photographic style to cinema (the reserve of some of the discussion around Tucker's Jeff Wall post). I'm inclined to think that "cinematic" photography is photography that activates offscreen space: so photographic cinema might be film that negates offscreen space. Though of course - this is always relative: the offscreen always exists in cinema, just as it doesn't exist in photography - but an artist like Cindy Sherman uses thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhe absence creatively. Corbijn, in a way, freezes the spaces and things in this film: there is very little sense of things happening that the camera doesn't see - a sense of the world being closed in. It's a relative thing, of course. It's also pretty effective, given the material: it gives a claustrophobic, elegiac sense to the film, which works. So whiile it is not the film you would probably want to see, it has merits. And is, I say, handsome to look at, and has just enough of that great music...
What else? Lars and the Real Girl and Wristcutters: A Love Story are a pair of neat little indie pictures, clever high concept pieces graced with enjoyable performances and some nice ideas, though neither one can quite justify 100 minutes with the concept, and neither one has an ounce of actual filmmaking style. I am spoiled: I have, in the last month or two, seen films by Pedro Costa, Wes Anderson, Michael Haneke, Johnny To, Arnaud Desplechins, a couple fine Romanian films, and a raft of Val Lewton (to celebrate Halloween) - it's hard to come back to watching plain looking indie films like this, however well they are written or acted. But - they are pretty well written and acted, and do what they do efficiently and entertainingly - I suppose I could compare them to Lust, Caution - they start to look like masterpieces.
Exiled - *** - Johnny To sets several pf his favorite actors loose on a very hoary plot about that Last Big Score (gone, of course, Terribly Wrong) - Anthony Wong, Francis Ng, Simon Yam as a flamboyant boss - Nicky Cheung, Roy Cheung, Lam Suet... scenery is chewed, figurative at least, then shot to hell... robbery, styling gunslingers, Ennio Morricone style music, empty streets, morbid jokes follow, all as sharp and clean as a Ramones song. What can you say? Not up to the Election films, but a sharp, dead on genre parody/pastiche done right....
Okay - that's if for now. Meanwhile, here's a teaser for both blogathons.... jehovah jehovah jehovah!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Boris, Live
...or, the blogger relives his 20s. I don't think I have ever posted a concert review on this blog. That is mostly because I have barely seen a concert since starting this blog. In fact, I believe I have now seen three in the three years of its existence: one was some old college friends of mine, playing a church in New Hampshire; the other two were Damon and Naomi, supporting their previous CD and now this show, last night, opening for Boris. It was not always thus: in my youth, in the late 80s, I saw many concerts - some of my friends and I made a habit of it, frequenting the Channel, the Rat, TT The Bears - following local bands (The Zulus, Bullet LaVolta, Galaxie 500 [as one may surmise from my recent concert experiences], Buffalo Tom, The Blood Oranges, as well as national indie bands. Seeing The Feelies at least once (usually twice) a year; the Butthole Surfers, Meat Puppets, Husker Du, Replacements whenever they came to town, and bands like that. I didn't see many really big acts: I saw U2 and REM in arenas (the woostah centrum - whatever it's called these days), saw Husker Du, Lou Reed, The Waterboys, a few others at middle sized theaters.... Mostly clubs.... But I stopped going in the early 90s - I started listening to jazz all the time; people got married and had kids and stopped hanging around nightclubs; the rock scene got boring - Nirvana? christ, I'd seen 15 bands that sounded like them by the time they came around - why were they the ones getting big? So now - I still go to shows once in a while, but it's either people I personally know or it's those one or two bands I insist on giving money to - Damon and Naomi; Pere Ubu and its many offshoots.
Which brings us around to last nights show. In 2004, coincidentally, David Thomas played Cambridge the very night the Red Sox won game 4 of the world series: however devoted and passionate a Pere Ubu fan I may be, I never pretended to be David Thomas growing up, and god knows I pretended to be Carl Yastrzemski from more or less as soon as I could lift a toy bat. I had some fears of the same thing happening this year - a Rocky win wold have brought on a game 5, with Beckett closing out the series - could I have resisted that for a concert? I certainly hope so.
Damon and Naomi were fine - they were touring with a kind of big band - cello, horns, Kurihara - playing most from their new record, which is okay. It's taking a while to settle in - longer than their previous couple records did, for some reason. But they were fine, more than enough to get me out on the first really cold night of the year, probably even if they were going up against Josh Beckett. But I admit - Boris was the kicker. I've been listening to them almost constantly this year: Pink began separating itself from the bunch of psychedelic hard rock prog I've been listening to over the last year or so (Comets on Fire and bands of that ilk, including Ilk) - and Rainbow, the Kurihara record, has become one of my favorites in the last year or so. So I had high hopes.
I was not disappointed. It's been a while - it was about as good a show as I have ever seen. Overpowering: as loud as I can remember, certainly the loudest band I have ever seen sober (seeing groups like Ministry, the Surfers, a couple death metal bands - Rigor Mortis! - I made heavy use of the bar....) - but what was strange is how well I could hear it. All the drones and feedback Boris uses, the overtones and guitar interplay, I could hear. I can't hear anything today, but that's life. I could hear the band. And I have to say - they hit my sweet spot. Pummeling volume, hard fast songs, epic solos, double, blended guitar parts (at least with Kurihara), a good deal of variety for all that - fast songs, slow dirgy songs, experimental songs, straightforward melodic songs - sometimes all at once.... It was bliss.
I can't resist - the wonders of the internet being what they are: here is a clip from a show in Georgia, just a taste...
Which brings us around to last nights show. In 2004, coincidentally, David Thomas played Cambridge the very night the Red Sox won game 4 of the world series: however devoted and passionate a Pere Ubu fan I may be, I never pretended to be David Thomas growing up, and god knows I pretended to be Carl Yastrzemski from more or less as soon as I could lift a toy bat. I had some fears of the same thing happening this year - a Rocky win wold have brought on a game 5, with Beckett closing out the series - could I have resisted that for a concert? I certainly hope so.
Damon and Naomi were fine - they were touring with a kind of big band - cello, horns, Kurihara - playing most from their new record, which is okay. It's taking a while to settle in - longer than their previous couple records did, for some reason. But they were fine, more than enough to get me out on the first really cold night of the year, probably even if they were going up against Josh Beckett. But I admit - Boris was the kicker. I've been listening to them almost constantly this year: Pink began separating itself from the bunch of psychedelic hard rock prog I've been listening to over the last year or so (Comets on Fire and bands of that ilk, including Ilk) - and Rainbow, the Kurihara record, has become one of my favorites in the last year or so. So I had high hopes.
I was not disappointed. It's been a while - it was about as good a show as I have ever seen. Overpowering: as loud as I can remember, certainly the loudest band I have ever seen sober (seeing groups like Ministry, the Surfers, a couple death metal bands - Rigor Mortis! - I made heavy use of the bar....) - but what was strange is how well I could hear it. All the drones and feedback Boris uses, the overtones and guitar interplay, I could hear. I can't hear anything today, but that's life. I could hear the band. And I have to say - they hit my sweet spot. Pummeling volume, hard fast songs, epic solos, double, blended guitar parts (at least with Kurihara), a good deal of variety for all that - fast songs, slow dirgy songs, experimental songs, straightforward melodic songs - sometimes all at once.... It was bliss.
I can't resist - the wonders of the internet being what they are: here is a clip from a show in Georgia, just a taste...
Sunday, October 28, 2007
World Series
There is is: Papelbon blows some kid away - boom boom boom. Made it a bit interesting, the Rockies, but - I guess I was right - this was basically San Antonio vs Celeveland - no more doubt...
So then - who's the MVP? Pabelbon? Nope - the other obvious choice: Lowell. And the question - which is better, this team or the 04 team? I suspect - 04 - they had 7 inning starters, who could keep away from the bullpen - which did make things exciting here. Though this team got 4 great starting performances - Beckett was Beckett; Schilling went 5 plus, but, did he make a bad pitch in his outing? he had fresh Okajima and Papelbon, so that game went well. Matsuzaka had his best start in months, and Lester was just plain great. What can you say? It's fun to play these games, though: I'd say this team is up there - probably not up to the 2004 team, with its 373 doubles and all - even watching this series, compared to 04 - the Cards were a far far better team than the Rockies - so I'm guessing.... In fairness though: the 2004 red sox team, I think, was, in fact, the best team of the decade. This one is good too - though #2 I think is probably the 2005 White Sox, another team loaded with starters, a deep bullpen and a bunch of great hitters, that beat some really good teams, in tight games. But this is impressive.
Back to this: as a fan, this is strange. It's nice - but it's not the end of the world (the brilliace of Manny.) In 2004 - that win - yes - that was the end of the world. This is fun, but without all the emotion. Just fun: you get to just enjoy winning. It's such a relief.
Okay: anything more? Oh, right - like in 2004, everyone chipped in - everyone in the lineup contributed, most of the pitchers did good work - and then Bobby Kielty - Bobby Kielty!!!!!! comes in and hits the game winning home run!
Anything else? Not much, I guess. I'm certainly glad they won in four - I get to go see Boris tomorrow night without missing anything. Great stuff: finally - this was a pretty boring post-season - all the sweeps and so on: but it does portend well. The red sox are likely to be around a while - they have the money, but they have a nice organization as well: all those rookies, all those young players they have, even Matsuzaka, Beckett... But they aren't alone. This whole post-season might be a kind of passing of the guard. The Red Sox will be around, the Angels - but both have some kids, Weaver and Kendrick and so on, that are as important as the big money players. And the rest - the Indians are a groups of young veterans; the Rockies and Diamondbacks are bother very young teams, that should get better. Get Milwaukee over the hump, get some pitchers in Philly? a new bunch of teams will be comign through.
So - baseball looks good right now - the Yankees are done (A Rod leaves, as Fox had to pop in t0 talk about - Jerry Remy thinks that's "disgusting" - well, they had to talk about something - the game was pretty much done. Stil - what a bunch of dinks.) The sox will take some of their place, but the rest is oging to be more open than it's been in years. Nice news.
And finally - yes - I can hear the people yelling from Kenmore square. What fun. Good night.
So then - who's the MVP? Pabelbon? Nope - the other obvious choice: Lowell. And the question - which is better, this team or the 04 team? I suspect - 04 - they had 7 inning starters, who could keep away from the bullpen - which did make things exciting here. Though this team got 4 great starting performances - Beckett was Beckett; Schilling went 5 plus, but, did he make a bad pitch in his outing? he had fresh Okajima and Papelbon, so that game went well. Matsuzaka had his best start in months, and Lester was just plain great. What can you say? It's fun to play these games, though: I'd say this team is up there - probably not up to the 2004 team, with its 373 doubles and all - even watching this series, compared to 04 - the Cards were a far far better team than the Rockies - so I'm guessing.... In fairness though: the 2004 red sox team, I think, was, in fact, the best team of the decade. This one is good too - though #2 I think is probably the 2005 White Sox, another team loaded with starters, a deep bullpen and a bunch of great hitters, that beat some really good teams, in tight games. But this is impressive.
Back to this: as a fan, this is strange. It's nice - but it's not the end of the world (the brilliace of Manny.) In 2004 - that win - yes - that was the end of the world. This is fun, but without all the emotion. Just fun: you get to just enjoy winning. It's such a relief.
Okay: anything more? Oh, right - like in 2004, everyone chipped in - everyone in the lineup contributed, most of the pitchers did good work - and then Bobby Kielty - Bobby Kielty!!!!!! comes in and hits the game winning home run!
Anything else? Not much, I guess. I'm certainly glad they won in four - I get to go see Boris tomorrow night without missing anything. Great stuff: finally - this was a pretty boring post-season - all the sweeps and so on: but it does portend well. The red sox are likely to be around a while - they have the money, but they have a nice organization as well: all those rookies, all those young players they have, even Matsuzaka, Beckett... But they aren't alone. This whole post-season might be a kind of passing of the guard. The Red Sox will be around, the Angels - but both have some kids, Weaver and Kendrick and so on, that are as important as the big money players. And the rest - the Indians are a groups of young veterans; the Rockies and Diamondbacks are bother very young teams, that should get better. Get Milwaukee over the hump, get some pitchers in Philly? a new bunch of teams will be comign through.
So - baseball looks good right now - the Yankees are done (A Rod leaves, as Fox had to pop in t0 talk about - Jerry Remy thinks that's "disgusting" - well, they had to talk about something - the game was pretty much done. Stil - what a bunch of dinks.) The sox will take some of their place, but the rest is oging to be more open than it's been in years. Nice news.
And finally - yes - I can hear the people yelling from Kenmore square. What fun. Good night.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Misc Films Catching Up
What do we have? another day before the world series starts so another chance to get something written. I still hope to write something non-trivial for the Double Bill-a-thon but it's competing with the Sox, and I've been lazy as a dog lately.... I also want to write up a real review of Darjeeling Limited - which might turn out to be the double feature (I saw it the same day I saw California Dreamin', as it happens - 2 films about Americans on a train stranded in a far off land, one from the POV of the Americans, one not....) But not yet. Instead, a few film capsules and comments, I suppose...
First: why do I keep spending money on Ang Lee films? They're all the same damn film - the same dull melodrama spiked with some kind of twist: Explicit Sex! Gay Cowboys! Hulk Smash! Kung Fu! Jewel's tits! I don't know why I keep going. I suppose the main reason I saw Lust, Caution was to see Tony Leung - anything of his that gets released here I suppose I have to see... otherwise - why? They keep coming out, and winning awards - I suppose he's the classic Hollywood prestige director - set design and photography, classicist editing, the impersonation of substance - that's all you need, I guess, and it marks you out as "serious" in Hollywood.
I suppose I should try to muster something to say about the film itself, but it's hard to think of a point. It's basically a remake of Notorious with Claude Rains getting away with it. Without the filmmaking skills or Cary Grant, and with the infamous long kiss replaced by acrobatic sex. Which reminds me - can't anyone make a movie with explicit fucking in it where the sex looks like fun? At least stop these films - even Last Tango in Paris or Lies, for all the downer sex, the characters at least looked like they were getting off on it. This is a mopey boring film with mopey bring sex - after this, I'd settle for Catherine Breillat....
Meanwhile, not everything I've seen has stunk: in fact, it's been a pretty good couple of months. Some fine series' - Romanian films, Pedro Costa films, Michael Haneke films - Haneke will be in town this weekend (at both the HFA and MFA), following Costa who was here back in September, and Arnaud Desplechins, who was on hand last week with Kings and Queen and Life of the Dead. Kings and Queens is one of my favorites of the decade - Life of the Dead was his first film, an hour long examination of the family of a young man who has shot himself - packing an old house full of actors (from all different styles, he said), and bouncing them off each other. It's a very accomplished first film - handing the cast and space with aplomb, telling stories subtly but fairly clearly. It establishes what seems to be a pretty characteristic style for Despleshins - a rhythm he has: calm/movement - stillness and sudden movement - empty shots and spaces/full shots and spaces - which he maintains throughout his career. This one also seems to me to have a strong Rivette flavor - the old house, the huge cast, the decentralized story telling, the fact that the "real" story (the boy dieing) is happening somewhere else - along with the fact that he brings along several of Rivette's actresses - Mariane Denincourt; Laurence Cote... It's very good.
First: why do I keep spending money on Ang Lee films? They're all the same damn film - the same dull melodrama spiked with some kind of twist: Explicit Sex! Gay Cowboys! Hulk Smash! Kung Fu! Jewel's tits! I don't know why I keep going. I suppose the main reason I saw Lust, Caution was to see Tony Leung - anything of his that gets released here I suppose I have to see... otherwise - why? They keep coming out, and winning awards - I suppose he's the classic Hollywood prestige director - set design and photography, classicist editing, the impersonation of substance - that's all you need, I guess, and it marks you out as "serious" in Hollywood.
I suppose I should try to muster something to say about the film itself, but it's hard to think of a point. It's basically a remake of Notorious with Claude Rains getting away with it. Without the filmmaking skills or Cary Grant, and with the infamous long kiss replaced by acrobatic sex. Which reminds me - can't anyone make a movie with explicit fucking in it where the sex looks like fun? At least stop these films - even Last Tango in Paris or Lies, for all the downer sex, the characters at least looked like they were getting off on it. This is a mopey boring film with mopey bring sex - after this, I'd settle for Catherine Breillat....
Meanwhile, not everything I've seen has stunk: in fact, it's been a pretty good couple of months. Some fine series' - Romanian films, Pedro Costa films, Michael Haneke films - Haneke will be in town this weekend (at both the HFA and MFA), following Costa who was here back in September, and Arnaud Desplechins, who was on hand last week with Kings and Queen and Life of the Dead. Kings and Queens is one of my favorites of the decade - Life of the Dead was his first film, an hour long examination of the family of a young man who has shot himself - packing an old house full of actors (from all different styles, he said), and bouncing them off each other. It's a very accomplished first film - handing the cast and space with aplomb, telling stories subtly but fairly clearly. It establishes what seems to be a pretty characteristic style for Despleshins - a rhythm he has: calm/movement - stillness and sudden movement - empty shots and spaces/full shots and spaces - which he maintains throughout his career. This one also seems to me to have a strong Rivette flavor - the old house, the huge cast, the decentralized story telling, the fact that the "real" story (the boy dieing) is happening somewhere else - along with the fact that he brings along several of Rivette's actresses - Mariane Denincourt; Laurence Cote... It's very good.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Local Nine Make Good
Well, first up - the Red Sox are back in the World Series. Coming back from down 1-3 to the Indians, which might have seemed more impressive if they hadn't come back on the Yankees from 0-3 in 2004. But still something. Last night's game was a good one - the closest 11-2 rout I've ever seen. (Kind of like how game 2 was the closest 13-6 drubbing you're likely to see.) The talk is mostly about the misfortunes of the Indians - poor Kenny Lofton*.... Of course, 30-5 in three games is a bit more than "misfortune". The big "turning pint" plays last night - Lofton being called out at second; Lofton being held at third - were probably being oversold a bit - especially the latter. I'm not sure how being in a 3-3 tie would have made Pedroia miss that high fast ball in the bottom of the seventh. It would have just made Okajima the winner instead of Matsuzaka. Still - there were breaks - though fairly even on both sides. Take Lofton held at third - he wouldn't have been on if Lugo hadn't dropped an easy pop up. Though that's the real difference: first - the Red Sox got the big breaks, the ones that scored runs or stopped a run from scoring (Manny's bad hop over Peralta; the bad call at second; Garko's 400 foot blast to the left of the line in center; holding Lofton); and second - when the Red Sox got breaks they took advantage of them: got the double play ball; delivered the baserunners who reached on errors; picked up the guys they got on when Peralta and Blake ran into each other in the "bermuda triangle" in the 8th. They made the plays, the Indians didn't. which isn't exactly true - the Indians did a good job of making plays in the field, which kept them in this game until Westbrook found his groove - but they didn't make the plays at the plate. The sox did. Which you can explain any way you like - luck? or the Red Sox are just a better team and better teams come out in the end - or they are a veteran team, and less likely to under perform over a long series. More likely, that is, to rise to their accustomed levels. Which I think is pretty much all there is to clutch play - the ability to perform at your accustomed level under pressure. Guys like Beckett, Ortiz, Schilling (who set it all up in game 6 - pitching 7 kept the bullpen 100% for game 7, which they needed: if that game had been 12-8, and Okajima or Papelbon had had to see some time, things could have been a bit more nerve wracking in the 7th game) - are all first rate players all year long. But in the playoffs, it tough situations, they just do what they usually do, as well as usual - it's harder than it looks. It's not magic - just the ability to keep your head.
I was thinking about that watching Matsuzaka pitch. Especially Garko's at bat, when he hit the double - one of those epic battles, down 0-2, Dice-K making pitch after pitch and Garko fouling them off, taking the balls... I think, though it's a bit of a speculation, that this is the kind of thing where Dice-K goes wrong. Francona alluded to it in the interview between innings - hoping he didn't try to get too fine when he got ahead of hitters. He does that - he nibbles - he doesn't challenge people, sometimes... But it's also that he seems to lose his concentration. I've seen some games where someone will do that sort of thing with Papelbon - keep fouling off his pitches, make him work... But he never seems to lose those battles. He keeps making his pitches until he gets them out - or, at worst, the hitter makes a great play to get a ball into the outfield. Matsuzaka, though, made a bunch of great pitches - then left one in the middle of the plate to hit. It's like he gets frustrated and misses the target.
I have high hopes for Daisuke - it's still pretty clear that he has nasty stuff, he's tough and smart and competitive... another year of seasoning, getting used to the league, getting used to Tek, I think the odds are good he develops like Beckett did this year. They're similar pitchers - lots of success, though without quite proving themselves - Beckett couldn't stay healthy until last year; Dice-K pitching in Japan... coming to Boston and being both brilliant and awful. But the next year, Beckett has been just brilliant - I think Matsuzaka will do likewise. He has the stuff. Maybe he needs to learn to pace himself - to trust his catcher and fielders, to trust himself to get people out. I think he probably wore himself out this year - too many pitches, too many innings - which didn't have obvious physical effects, but probably forces him to work harder to achieve the same effects, probably disrupts his concentration. I expect that to go better next year as well. Last night though - to be honest, he did his job. Faded as he went, but came up big in the bottom of the fifth again, shutting down a bit of a rally. Got to the bullpen, which last night, with Okajima and Papelbon available for extended work, and Beckett as a safety net, was not likely to let it go - just what the doctor ordered.
So on to the Rockies and their 21-1 record... That's not against teams like the Red Sox (or the Indians, for that matter) - it's not much of a predictor of what is likely to happen next. The rockies can hit, have enough pitching - but Boston has pretty much everything you could ask, they are hot themselves, they just came back from 1-3 and did it without extending their roster - though with Fox's idiotic schedule, they could have played 20 innings last night and been rested for Wednesday... It's going to be a hard road for the rockies. This isn't quite San Antonio vs Cleveland in the NBA finals (and baseball is always a contest), but it's the same idea. Deep, veteran club that has proven itself capable of more or less anything - vs a nice young team playing over its head...
* Good lord, I almost forgot this: why are people still referring to Kenny Lofton as a "speedster"? Have they seen him walk lately? My brother and I saw a game this summer, when Lofton was still in Texas, he was playing center field, right in front of us (we had bleacher seats in dead center.) And inning or so into it my brother said, "look at Lofton - he's walking on one leg." He was: warming up, jogging in and out, you could see that he didn't put any pressure on one of his legs - you could see that he was basically unwilling to bend the knee. He looked like Bill Buckner. He could still move - he could still get going and motor when he did, but it hurt to watch him - and I have to say, I felt sorry for him, then, a great gutsy player like that, stuck in Texas.... so it was very satisfying to see him tearing up the Yankees in the playoffs... and rather poignant to see him the center of the Indians' failures last night. He deserved a lot better. Too bad he wasn't on the Red Sox!
Not that we need him. The other notable point of that game I saw was that it was Jacoby Ellsbury's major league debut: a great thrill! Then he beat out a routine ground ball to short stop his second time up...
I was thinking about that watching Matsuzaka pitch. Especially Garko's at bat, when he hit the double - one of those epic battles, down 0-2, Dice-K making pitch after pitch and Garko fouling them off, taking the balls... I think, though it's a bit of a speculation, that this is the kind of thing where Dice-K goes wrong. Francona alluded to it in the interview between innings - hoping he didn't try to get too fine when he got ahead of hitters. He does that - he nibbles - he doesn't challenge people, sometimes... But it's also that he seems to lose his concentration. I've seen some games where someone will do that sort of thing with Papelbon - keep fouling off his pitches, make him work... But he never seems to lose those battles. He keeps making his pitches until he gets them out - or, at worst, the hitter makes a great play to get a ball into the outfield. Matsuzaka, though, made a bunch of great pitches - then left one in the middle of the plate to hit. It's like he gets frustrated and misses the target.
I have high hopes for Daisuke - it's still pretty clear that he has nasty stuff, he's tough and smart and competitive... another year of seasoning, getting used to the league, getting used to Tek, I think the odds are good he develops like Beckett did this year. They're similar pitchers - lots of success, though without quite proving themselves - Beckett couldn't stay healthy until last year; Dice-K pitching in Japan... coming to Boston and being both brilliant and awful. But the next year, Beckett has been just brilliant - I think Matsuzaka will do likewise. He has the stuff. Maybe he needs to learn to pace himself - to trust his catcher and fielders, to trust himself to get people out. I think he probably wore himself out this year - too many pitches, too many innings - which didn't have obvious physical effects, but probably forces him to work harder to achieve the same effects, probably disrupts his concentration. I expect that to go better next year as well. Last night though - to be honest, he did his job. Faded as he went, but came up big in the bottom of the fifth again, shutting down a bit of a rally. Got to the bullpen, which last night, with Okajima and Papelbon available for extended work, and Beckett as a safety net, was not likely to let it go - just what the doctor ordered.
So on to the Rockies and their 21-1 record... That's not against teams like the Red Sox (or the Indians, for that matter) - it's not much of a predictor of what is likely to happen next. The rockies can hit, have enough pitching - but Boston has pretty much everything you could ask, they are hot themselves, they just came back from 1-3 and did it without extending their roster - though with Fox's idiotic schedule, they could have played 20 innings last night and been rested for Wednesday... It's going to be a hard road for the rockies. This isn't quite San Antonio vs Cleveland in the NBA finals (and baseball is always a contest), but it's the same idea. Deep, veteran club that has proven itself capable of more or less anything - vs a nice young team playing over its head...
* Good lord, I almost forgot this: why are people still referring to Kenny Lofton as a "speedster"? Have they seen him walk lately? My brother and I saw a game this summer, when Lofton was still in Texas, he was playing center field, right in front of us (we had bleacher seats in dead center.) And inning or so into it my brother said, "look at Lofton - he's walking on one leg." He was: warming up, jogging in and out, you could see that he didn't put any pressure on one of his legs - you could see that he was basically unwilling to bend the knee. He looked like Bill Buckner. He could still move - he could still get going and motor when he did, but it hurt to watch him - and I have to say, I felt sorry for him, then, a great gutsy player like that, stuck in Texas.... so it was very satisfying to see him tearing up the Yankees in the playoffs... and rather poignant to see him the center of the Indians' failures last night. He deserved a lot better. Too bad he wasn't on the Red Sox!
Not that we need him. The other notable point of that game I saw was that it was Jacoby Ellsbury's major league debut: a great thrill! Then he beat out a routine ground ball to short stop his second time up...
Friday, October 19, 2007
Seeking New Advances
Not that I have anything profound to say. Baseball playoffs still going on - from the looks of it, they may be going on in January. At least Boston and Cleveland are making it worth while - the only competitive series of the post-season so far. Not surprising that it's competitive - they're the best two teams and playing like it. Boston has been underwhelming, but they've been oddly resilient all year, looking about ready to choke and then not choking... so I'd say it's still about even money who wins it. Edge to the Indians, but close. The Rockies, meanwhile, get to sit around and think about it for a week - a red hot team with a chance to cool down; a young team with a week to think about how amazing it is that they're in the world series... with the best team in baseball coming up. Meaning - I'll stick to predicting the AL to win. Though the real fun, as it pours rain here in Boston, is the fact that they will be starting the world series on, what, October 23 - in either Boston or Cleveland, then going to Denver, the last weekend in October. Barring rain, snow, sleet.... that's first rate planning.
In other sports news - Yankees let Torre go. As a red sox fan, I am happy. I can't see anyone else winning in that situation any time soon. Even with the players they have, and they probably won't have them for long. Go Blue Jays!...
Meanwhile - leaving sports for a bit - plenty of bloggy goodness around. Close-Up blogathon rolling along; Montgomery Clift blogathon a couple days ago, on his birthday; next week, a double-bill-a-thon. (I have a couple movie posts I've put off so long they might end up in this blogathon - fortunately, it might fit...) Elsewhere, Tucker points to the Write a novel in a month website - an idea that always seems appealing in October, but I never seem to do anything about....
And Walter at Quiet Bubble has a couple comics posts up, including this magnificent tribute to Gasoline Alley. I may have a comics binge coming on: just bought Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics - we'll see if that leads anywhere. I'm building up a huge backlog of things to procrastinate writing about here...
Finally - sorry, no random music links. I dunno. I want to write about music, but I'm getting tired of that gimmick. We must find a better way.... But in the meanwhile, a video is in order. I picked up a Creation compilation recently - lousy sound quality: great music. I think I posted a video of the band doing Makin' Time some time back - no harm doing it again, but happily, there's more from the same show, 3 songs, including Makin' Time. Good stuff.
In other sports news - Yankees let Torre go. As a red sox fan, I am happy. I can't see anyone else winning in that situation any time soon. Even with the players they have, and they probably won't have them for long. Go Blue Jays!...
Meanwhile - leaving sports for a bit - plenty of bloggy goodness around. Close-Up blogathon rolling along; Montgomery Clift blogathon a couple days ago, on his birthday; next week, a double-bill-a-thon. (I have a couple movie posts I've put off so long they might end up in this blogathon - fortunately, it might fit...) Elsewhere, Tucker points to the Write a novel in a month website - an idea that always seems appealing in October, but I never seem to do anything about....
And Walter at Quiet Bubble has a couple comics posts up, including this magnificent tribute to Gasoline Alley. I may have a comics binge coming on: just bought Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics - we'll see if that leads anywhere. I'm building up a huge backlog of things to procrastinate writing about here...
Finally - sorry, no random music links. I dunno. I want to write about music, but I'm getting tired of that gimmick. We must find a better way.... But in the meanwhile, a video is in order. I picked up a Creation compilation recently - lousy sound quality: great music. I think I posted a video of the band doing Makin' Time some time back - no harm doing it again, but happily, there's more from the same show, 3 songs, including Makin' Time. Good stuff.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
My Kid Could Paint That...
...probably not, actually. My Kid Could Paint That is a new documentary about Marla Olmstead, abstract expressionist in diapers. It's a cute story - dad's an amateur painter, Marla, aged 2, wanted to play with the paints so dad let her - and she produced things that looked like real art. Someone put some up in a coffee shop - where they sold. A gallery owner started showing her work - and it sold. And sold and sold and she became rich and famous and lived happily ever after! Until 60 Minutes came calling and put a camera in the basement and got footage of dad telling her where to put the red... Scandal! Mom and dad fought back, producing a video of their own showing the tyke painting a piece from start to finish, while hoping the documentary would clear their name. But the director, Amir Bar-Lev, was having his own doubts. All the time he filmed the family and the kid, he never saw her paint anything start to finish either. Hmm, thought he. And so the film ends, with director saying he doesn't quite believe it, then telling mom and dad, so they walk off, mom in tears... and you, viewer, are left to make up your mind.
It's quite a yarn. Enough that when I first saw the trailers, I thought it was fiction - a mockumentary. (Not having read anything about little Marla before this.) And even now, I'm not so sure it isn't fiction - you can create one hell of a viral marketing campaign on the internets - which I suppose is the theme of the film. Is little Marla, 4 year old genius painter, a work of fiction? Charlie Rose and a child psychologist say no: she's a normal kid, whose father coached her into creating works of art. The family of course says no no no! she did it all! Bar-Lev says - I don't believe it, but I have nothing more to show you, one way or the other. Which plays a bit like a cop out - though it's honest enough. But ending it there feels wrong; we need something like the ending of Imamura's A Man Vanishes: where the final confrontation between film crew and subjects seems to take place in a restaurant - but halfway in, a crew starts taking it apart, and it turns out to be a set on a sound stage. Now that's how you acknowledge the artifice of a film - not having a critic or newspaper columnist tell you your film will be a lie... (At least the critic asks if he can say it, then says it, as if he expects the scene to be edited: leaving it in is a nice touch.)
The truth is - I wish Bar-Lev had followed through more on the promise that the film would be about modern art, and what it means that a 4 year old can (or can't) fake it. The point is raised, a couple times: hostility to modern art, the idea that if a kid can fool the experts then the experts are full of crap, or that no one buys art like this for what it is, just for what they can say about it. For the story. That's the only part that is really addressed, though - the ways abstract expressionism, action painting, was about the story of the painting being made as much as what ended up on the canvas. And that drives this story, clearly: people buy these paintings because a precious little girl painted them - or rather, they pay $20,000 for these paintings because the precious little girl painted them. Which, to be fair, is a significant element of modern art - it has become increasingly "indexical" rather than "iconic" - taking meaning from their production more than what they represent. But there is a lot more going on in abstract art that the conditions of their painting - and Bar-Lev doesn't do much to explore those things.
What does makes a good abstract painting vs. a bad one? It's an important part of this story: it's why people like these paintings - why people are "fooled" if they are "fooled" - why they got attention in the first place. It's also why people doubt that Marla painting them: they are too good - and they are good in ways that betray too much knowledge and understanding about art, and abstract art. They are, as far as I can see, nice paintings - pretty, pleasant to look at - with a decent sense of unity and compositional sense - they have balance, structure - the forms and colors lead the eye around, and satisfy it. They work for the same reason classic abstractions work - they look good, they are unified, they create an enveloping visual field. Which, I have to say, is one of the things that casts some doubt on them. People say it in the film - that they are too finished, too complete - kids don't cover whole canvases like that, when left to their own devices. And it seems to me (and my amateur eye) that they are too well designed - they have too much balance, of color and form.There's no sign that little Marla even knows how to draw - and these paintings don't look like something you could get more than once in 10 tries without being able to draw. Drawing takes more than just making the hand do what the mind wants it to - it's knowing what the hand should do. Marla just makes shapes and marks - it's hard to see how she could know to create paintings that look like these, except by accident. Maybe she's painting 10 bad ones for every good one, and the bad ones are disappearing - there's no sign of that though.
(This is "Dinosaurs" by Marla Olmstead. Image found at the New York Times.)
And there's more. First - I don't want to say they are great paintings - they're nice, they're pretty, but I don't know what more to say about them.... For one thing, they are about 50 years behind the times. Abstract expressionism was a product of the 40s and 50s - by the 60s it was being replaced by pop art and minimalism and conceptual art. This is important too - especially if you think this story and this film are about resistance to modern art. The real story of Marla Olmstead is that abstract art has long since ceased to be anything special. This kind of modern art is now completely mainstream, completely safe - it's pretty and fun and looks good on the wall. Which is not a condemnation - that's equally true of Pollock or Matisse or Degas or Warhol these days. But it means this story isn't quite about resistance to abstract art. It's about the acceptance of modern art, it's transformation into mainstream culture....
In any case: this is what is missing from the film. any kind of formal discussion of the paintings - or a fairly serious historical discussion of them. Just assuming the kid is painting them - what does it mean that she's working in a 40 year old style? more or less. But more significantly, Bar-Lev should have found time for some kind of analysis of the paintings. There are comments in the film related to these issues - the adult themes, the big ideas, the compositions and so on - but none of it is developed. What is an "adult theme"? a "big idea"? How do these paintings have them? why isn't that here?
For that matter - the hints that the film might be about the question of the emptiness of abstract art - "a kid could do that!" - aren't really fulfilled either. The most substantial statement of that case comes fro the gallery owner himself, kvetching that he slaves over his photo-realist canvases for ages and this kid dashes hers off in a couple sittings and gets almost as much money as he does - he even claims he pushed her to expose the con game of modern art. This rant might be more convincing if it didn't come right after the 60 Minutes revelation in the middle of the film. Now, sure - Bar-Lev could be cheating here: there's no indication of when Brunelli said those things - Bar-Lev puts them right after the 60 Minutes footage, but he might be cheating. But it sounds about right - it sounds like sour grapes, like something Brunelli would say when he thought he'd lost his cash cow. In fact, the paintings are still selling, and he doesn't seem to have stopped pushing the kid's art - though I suppose if he's in it for the money, he wouldn't... But at best, it says more about him than the kid's art (or her dad's art, if this is all a scam.)
Not that it matters anyway. Brunelli's claims aren't very convincing anyway. Painters have never been paid by the hour: the value of art, to collectors and critics alike, has never been determined by the effort put in. Ease, effortlessness, spontaneity are valued just as highly as hard work (more so, though it's usually a myth - the effortless genius. That's another aspect of this whole story that gets short shrift: the utter pervasiveness of the myth of the genius, whose work is a miracle - that's what little Marla is, just like Giotto before her!) Spirit and feeling valued as highly as skill, overall effect and expressiveness as much as virtuosity. Though all of this tends to simply circle the question of how much ability is involved in being able to create a truly great abstract painting. And that's still open for debate, guess. I got into a fracas recently over the merits of Pollock and Rothko and the like - defending them against a fairly standard array of arguments: a kid could do it, it takes no skill, it shows no skill, it's boring. All of which, to me, seems driven by a refusal to take the painting at face value, or to read it on its terms. I found a nice quote from Clement Greenberg, the great champion of this kind of art: "art is essentially a matter of means and results, not of means and ends." Whatever Greenberg meant by it, I think you can take it to mean, you can't impose your idea of what art is on the work. You can't judge the skill, the effort to create it, on something outside the work itself.
Which has wandered a ways away from little Marla Olmstead and whether or not her dad painted her paintings. But it is still related. First - because abstract paintings are not simply random patterns of paint - the good ones have structure and unity (or a significant type of disunity), that sometimes arises from randomness and chaos. Second because, the fact that a 4 year old might do something like this would not, really, discredit the work of the Pollocks of the world: it doesn't discredit painters to discover forms in nature like the forms in their work. It's probably not far fetched to say Pollock and others like him were trying, at some level, to reproduce natural forms, with their mixture of randomness and structure - it's also probably not to far-fetched to expect a 4 year old's paintings to have a similar natural mix of randomness and structure. She isn't reproducing it - she's just doing it... if she's doing it. And I suppose - it tends to undermine the claims that she did this unaided: it seems far more likely that she was guided, probably by her father. He doesn't seem to have had the ability to paint these things himself - but he probably has the eye to "edit" his daughter's improvisations into more unified canvases. At least, that is my interpretation of it.... Unfortunately - I don't know enough about art to really make the case I want to make here. I wish I did - and I wish this film had done more to make it.
And finally - I will say that this film comes at a very good time, as far as I am concerned. I've been thinking about art. I've been wondering how to work in more posts about art, music, books, and so on - not that I've been banging out the film posts recently. But I'm interested in art: I was grateful for the post I linked to above, and for Tucker's recent post on Jeff Wall - both were chances to talk about art. Arguing about Rothko, especially, sent me to the books - to Greenberg and others - and to the BMFA, to look for specific things. (Unfortunately, all their 20th century art is in storage - no Pollock! Dove! O'Keefe! Sheeler! Davis! Marin! even the Hoppers are out of sight! even the Picassos and Legers are gone! Fortunately, one can make a lot of good arguments about Pollock and Rothko from Monet alone.... And there are compensations - a wonderful wonderful wonderful exhibition of Japanese art. That should be a future post, if I have any discipline in me at all.) This film, whatever its failings, fits in well with my current mood. It makes a good jump off point for all kinds of thought about art, the media, documentary filmmaking, whatever you'd like.
The real thing - Pollock's Lavender Mist. Your kid couldn't paint that.
It's quite a yarn. Enough that when I first saw the trailers, I thought it was fiction - a mockumentary. (Not having read anything about little Marla before this.) And even now, I'm not so sure it isn't fiction - you can create one hell of a viral marketing campaign on the internets - which I suppose is the theme of the film. Is little Marla, 4 year old genius painter, a work of fiction? Charlie Rose and a child psychologist say no: she's a normal kid, whose father coached her into creating works of art. The family of course says no no no! she did it all! Bar-Lev says - I don't believe it, but I have nothing more to show you, one way or the other. Which plays a bit like a cop out - though it's honest enough. But ending it there feels wrong; we need something like the ending of Imamura's A Man Vanishes: where the final confrontation between film crew and subjects seems to take place in a restaurant - but halfway in, a crew starts taking it apart, and it turns out to be a set on a sound stage. Now that's how you acknowledge the artifice of a film - not having a critic or newspaper columnist tell you your film will be a lie... (At least the critic asks if he can say it, then says it, as if he expects the scene to be edited: leaving it in is a nice touch.)
The truth is - I wish Bar-Lev had followed through more on the promise that the film would be about modern art, and what it means that a 4 year old can (or can't) fake it. The point is raised, a couple times: hostility to modern art, the idea that if a kid can fool the experts then the experts are full of crap, or that no one buys art like this for what it is, just for what they can say about it. For the story. That's the only part that is really addressed, though - the ways abstract expressionism, action painting, was about the story of the painting being made as much as what ended up on the canvas. And that drives this story, clearly: people buy these paintings because a precious little girl painted them - or rather, they pay $20,000 for these paintings because the precious little girl painted them. Which, to be fair, is a significant element of modern art - it has become increasingly "indexical" rather than "iconic" - taking meaning from their production more than what they represent. But there is a lot more going on in abstract art that the conditions of their painting - and Bar-Lev doesn't do much to explore those things.
What does makes a good abstract painting vs. a bad one? It's an important part of this story: it's why people like these paintings - why people are "fooled" if they are "fooled" - why they got attention in the first place. It's also why people doubt that Marla painting them: they are too good - and they are good in ways that betray too much knowledge and understanding about art, and abstract art. They are, as far as I can see, nice paintings - pretty, pleasant to look at - with a decent sense of unity and compositional sense - they have balance, structure - the forms and colors lead the eye around, and satisfy it. They work for the same reason classic abstractions work - they look good, they are unified, they create an enveloping visual field. Which, I have to say, is one of the things that casts some doubt on them. People say it in the film - that they are too finished, too complete - kids don't cover whole canvases like that, when left to their own devices. And it seems to me (and my amateur eye) that they are too well designed - they have too much balance, of color and form.There's no sign that little Marla even knows how to draw - and these paintings don't look like something you could get more than once in 10 tries without being able to draw. Drawing takes more than just making the hand do what the mind wants it to - it's knowing what the hand should do. Marla just makes shapes and marks - it's hard to see how she could know to create paintings that look like these, except by accident. Maybe she's painting 10 bad ones for every good one, and the bad ones are disappearing - there's no sign of that though.
(This is "Dinosaurs" by Marla Olmstead. Image found at the New York Times.)
And there's more. First - I don't want to say they are great paintings - they're nice, they're pretty, but I don't know what more to say about them.... For one thing, they are about 50 years behind the times. Abstract expressionism was a product of the 40s and 50s - by the 60s it was being replaced by pop art and minimalism and conceptual art. This is important too - especially if you think this story and this film are about resistance to modern art. The real story of Marla Olmstead is that abstract art has long since ceased to be anything special. This kind of modern art is now completely mainstream, completely safe - it's pretty and fun and looks good on the wall. Which is not a condemnation - that's equally true of Pollock or Matisse or Degas or Warhol these days. But it means this story isn't quite about resistance to abstract art. It's about the acceptance of modern art, it's transformation into mainstream culture....
In any case: this is what is missing from the film. any kind of formal discussion of the paintings - or a fairly serious historical discussion of them. Just assuming the kid is painting them - what does it mean that she's working in a 40 year old style? more or less. But more significantly, Bar-Lev should have found time for some kind of analysis of the paintings. There are comments in the film related to these issues - the adult themes, the big ideas, the compositions and so on - but none of it is developed. What is an "adult theme"? a "big idea"? How do these paintings have them? why isn't that here?
For that matter - the hints that the film might be about the question of the emptiness of abstract art - "a kid could do that!" - aren't really fulfilled either. The most substantial statement of that case comes fro the gallery owner himself, kvetching that he slaves over his photo-realist canvases for ages and this kid dashes hers off in a couple sittings and gets almost as much money as he does - he even claims he pushed her to expose the con game of modern art. This rant might be more convincing if it didn't come right after the 60 Minutes revelation in the middle of the film. Now, sure - Bar-Lev could be cheating here: there's no indication of when Brunelli said those things - Bar-Lev puts them right after the 60 Minutes footage, but he might be cheating. But it sounds about right - it sounds like sour grapes, like something Brunelli would say when he thought he'd lost his cash cow. In fact, the paintings are still selling, and he doesn't seem to have stopped pushing the kid's art - though I suppose if he's in it for the money, he wouldn't... But at best, it says more about him than the kid's art (or her dad's art, if this is all a scam.)
Not that it matters anyway. Brunelli's claims aren't very convincing anyway. Painters have never been paid by the hour: the value of art, to collectors and critics alike, has never been determined by the effort put in. Ease, effortlessness, spontaneity are valued just as highly as hard work (more so, though it's usually a myth - the effortless genius. That's another aspect of this whole story that gets short shrift: the utter pervasiveness of the myth of the genius, whose work is a miracle - that's what little Marla is, just like Giotto before her!) Spirit and feeling valued as highly as skill, overall effect and expressiveness as much as virtuosity. Though all of this tends to simply circle the question of how much ability is involved in being able to create a truly great abstract painting. And that's still open for debate, guess. I got into a fracas recently over the merits of Pollock and Rothko and the like - defending them against a fairly standard array of arguments: a kid could do it, it takes no skill, it shows no skill, it's boring. All of which, to me, seems driven by a refusal to take the painting at face value, or to read it on its terms. I found a nice quote from Clement Greenberg, the great champion of this kind of art: "art is essentially a matter of means and results, not of means and ends." Whatever Greenberg meant by it, I think you can take it to mean, you can't impose your idea of what art is on the work. You can't judge the skill, the effort to create it, on something outside the work itself.
Which has wandered a ways away from little Marla Olmstead and whether or not her dad painted her paintings. But it is still related. First - because abstract paintings are not simply random patterns of paint - the good ones have structure and unity (or a significant type of disunity), that sometimes arises from randomness and chaos. Second because, the fact that a 4 year old might do something like this would not, really, discredit the work of the Pollocks of the world: it doesn't discredit painters to discover forms in nature like the forms in their work. It's probably not far fetched to say Pollock and others like him were trying, at some level, to reproduce natural forms, with their mixture of randomness and structure - it's also probably not to far-fetched to expect a 4 year old's paintings to have a similar natural mix of randomness and structure. She isn't reproducing it - she's just doing it... if she's doing it. And I suppose - it tends to undermine the claims that she did this unaided: it seems far more likely that she was guided, probably by her father. He doesn't seem to have had the ability to paint these things himself - but he probably has the eye to "edit" his daughter's improvisations into more unified canvases. At least, that is my interpretation of it.... Unfortunately - I don't know enough about art to really make the case I want to make here. I wish I did - and I wish this film had done more to make it.
And finally - I will say that this film comes at a very good time, as far as I am concerned. I've been thinking about art. I've been wondering how to work in more posts about art, music, books, and so on - not that I've been banging out the film posts recently. But I'm interested in art: I was grateful for the post I linked to above, and for Tucker's recent post on Jeff Wall - both were chances to talk about art. Arguing about Rothko, especially, sent me to the books - to Greenberg and others - and to the BMFA, to look for specific things. (Unfortunately, all their 20th century art is in storage - no Pollock! Dove! O'Keefe! Sheeler! Davis! Marin! even the Hoppers are out of sight! even the Picassos and Legers are gone! Fortunately, one can make a lot of good arguments about Pollock and Rothko from Monet alone.... And there are compensations - a wonderful wonderful wonderful exhibition of Japanese art. That should be a future post, if I have any discipline in me at all.) This film, whatever its failings, fits in well with my current mood. It makes a good jump off point for all kinds of thought about art, the media, documentary filmmaking, whatever you'd like.
The real thing - Pollock's Lavender Mist. Your kid couldn't paint that.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
More Baseball
That was quick! 3 sweeps? And thanks to TV and stupidity, a week of waiting. why not start up Tuesday? Anyone? anyone?
Anyway, we do still have the Indians trying to finish off the Yankees - and a happy reminder of the good old days of the Bronx Zoo, with Steinbrenner threatening Torre's job if he loses this series. That's very good news, for a Red Sox fan: it's hard to imagine anyone else getting much out of that Yankees team; and if Steinbrenner sticks his nose in, things can only get worse in the Bronx. So go Tribe!
I might as well repeat my predictions - nothing need change. Sox over whoever wins (since it isn't over); Diamondbacks in the NL. Which isn't to say the Indians couldn't make it close - it's going to depend on what they get from their 3-4 starters and bullpen. If they win tonight with good pitching - it could be a very tight series. (They can still lose, obviously - but... oops! there goes the Greatest Pitcher in History! perhaps for the last time ever! For about the 10th time in his career...) Beckett and Schilling continue to demonstrate why they are such big game pitchers - and will get plenty of rest... but Sabathia and Carmona are no slouches, and the Indians have a nice team on the field. It should be good.
As for the NL - both teams come in hot: but I the Diamondbacks are in fact, the best team in the league. Momentum, as they say, is only as good as today's starting pitcher. So there we go...
Anyway, we do still have the Indians trying to finish off the Yankees - and a happy reminder of the good old days of the Bronx Zoo, with Steinbrenner threatening Torre's job if he loses this series. That's very good news, for a Red Sox fan: it's hard to imagine anyone else getting much out of that Yankees team; and if Steinbrenner sticks his nose in, things can only get worse in the Bronx. So go Tribe!
I might as well repeat my predictions - nothing need change. Sox over whoever wins (since it isn't over); Diamondbacks in the NL. Which isn't to say the Indians couldn't make it close - it's going to depend on what they get from their 3-4 starters and bullpen. If they win tonight with good pitching - it could be a very tight series. (They can still lose, obviously - but... oops! there goes the Greatest Pitcher in History! perhaps for the last time ever! For about the 10th time in his career...) Beckett and Schilling continue to demonstrate why they are such big game pitchers - and will get plenty of rest... but Sabathia and Carmona are no slouches, and the Indians have a nice team on the field. It should be good.
As for the NL - both teams come in hot: but I the Diamondbacks are in fact, the best team in the league. Momentum, as they say, is only as good as today's starting pitcher. So there we go...
Monday, October 01, 2007
Baseball Post Season Guesses
Holy Cow! Baseball season is over! almost! Playoffs! A Play In to the Play Offs! etc! After last year's 0-8 debacle, I should know better than to go on record picking anything: but I never learn. It's too bad the Padres and Rockies are already underway: if not, I'd have a chance to go 0-9 this year! It looks like I'm already on the way: the Rockies are up 3-0 as of this writing, and I would not have picked them. In fact - this is a good time to offer free advice: Rockies to win it all: because if I match last year, they'll be taking it all.
But that was a fluke. I hope. No - this year I have a rooting interest again! that has to help... though not much, because, like last year, I don't see much separating any of the teams in the playoffs. There is a pretty obvious gap between the AL and the NL this year - the win loss records reflect the quality of the teams - all the AL teams look significantly better than any of the NL teams. Within the leagues, there doesn't seem a lot to pick between. But that won't stop me.
AL 1: BOSTON over Anaheim: I am not picking against the Red Sox anywhere in the post-season. That is the rooting interest - and there is more. They had the best record in baseball - and probably are the best team in baseball. They lagged after the fast start - injuries (Schilling at the beginning of summer, Wake at the end, Manny in September), fatigue, especially to the Japanese pitchers, slumps and such slowed them down - never enough to put them in serious danger of missing the playoffs, but enough to make people lose track of how good they are when they are all together. They've put things back together the last week or so - rested Okajima and Matsuzaka (who's had a couple nice starts to end the season); gotten Manny and Youk and Coco back in the lineup; the DL stint seems to have preserved Schilling - he seems fresh enough to be something like his self in the post-season; and all the injuries gave Ellsbury a chance to develop into what could be a series breaking wild card. So - I say they go all the way.... But I say that knowing well that there isn't a lot of difference between them and the Angels - who have tough pitching, enough offense, and are playoff hardened enough to win it all themselves. It's a close match: I say Red Sox out of loyalty as much as anything.
AL 2: CLEVELAND over the Yankees: granted, the Yanks have had their number; granted the Yanks can beat the bejesus out of the ball; granted the Yanks are hardened veterans - some of them played in the very first World Series, I think! Still - I think the Yankees are clearly inferior to the rest of the AL post-season pack - because pitching catches up with hitting sooner or later in the post-season, and all three other teams have genuinely superb pitching. The Yankees pitchers were also superb - in 1998 (Clemens, Mussina, Pettitte?).... The Yanks have to get past 2 teams with better pitching than they have. They might as well fall to the Indians.
And then, I think whoever wins this series will get sent home by Boston or Anaheim. The Red Sox/Angels series should determine the world series winner. I probably would have said that about the Twins and A's last year, and you saw how that turned out. But truthfully, last year was weird: usually, there are 2-3 genuinely superior teams in the post-season and they end up winning it - I think it's that way this year. Last year you couldn't really tell - you could make a case for anyone (except the team that actually won it). This year, you can make a strong case for the Sox and Angels, a solid case for the Indians, and maybe the Yankees. Go Sox!
NL 1: PHILLIES over TBD - actually, I don't know if I believe that. The Padres, if they win, have a very deep rotation, nice bullpen and all - missing 2/3 of their outfield will probably sink them though. The Phils are the NL version of the Yankees without the pitching. They should club their way through this series, but it's a closa call against SD - they should not get past the next team. And they are not going to beat any of the AL teams.
NL 2: ARIZONA over the Cubbies: I could be wrong. The Cubs didn't win all that much, but they have some very nice players, a couple strong pitchers at the top of the rotation... But I think the Snakes are more balanced - and they aren't the Cubs. Though I can see the Cubs getting hot for a month and going far. Maybe this will be a Chicago - Cleveland World Series! it's too late for the Red Sox/Cubs apocalypse - but the Indians would be an okay substitute.
But more likely, the Diamondbacks win that series - and the next one (unless the Pads get going - they're up 5-4, by the time I finished the post, so maybe... if they do, I am going to pick them t win another one)- and lose in the world series.
But that was a fluke. I hope. No - this year I have a rooting interest again! that has to help... though not much, because, like last year, I don't see much separating any of the teams in the playoffs. There is a pretty obvious gap between the AL and the NL this year - the win loss records reflect the quality of the teams - all the AL teams look significantly better than any of the NL teams. Within the leagues, there doesn't seem a lot to pick between. But that won't stop me.
AL 1: BOSTON over Anaheim: I am not picking against the Red Sox anywhere in the post-season. That is the rooting interest - and there is more. They had the best record in baseball - and probably are the best team in baseball. They lagged after the fast start - injuries (Schilling at the beginning of summer, Wake at the end, Manny in September), fatigue, especially to the Japanese pitchers, slumps and such slowed them down - never enough to put them in serious danger of missing the playoffs, but enough to make people lose track of how good they are when they are all together. They've put things back together the last week or so - rested Okajima and Matsuzaka (who's had a couple nice starts to end the season); gotten Manny and Youk and Coco back in the lineup; the DL stint seems to have preserved Schilling - he seems fresh enough to be something like his self in the post-season; and all the injuries gave Ellsbury a chance to develop into what could be a series breaking wild card. So - I say they go all the way.... But I say that knowing well that there isn't a lot of difference between them and the Angels - who have tough pitching, enough offense, and are playoff hardened enough to win it all themselves. It's a close match: I say Red Sox out of loyalty as much as anything.
AL 2: CLEVELAND over the Yankees: granted, the Yanks have had their number; granted the Yanks can beat the bejesus out of the ball; granted the Yanks are hardened veterans - some of them played in the very first World Series, I think! Still - I think the Yankees are clearly inferior to the rest of the AL post-season pack - because pitching catches up with hitting sooner or later in the post-season, and all three other teams have genuinely superb pitching. The Yankees pitchers were also superb - in 1998 (Clemens, Mussina, Pettitte?).... The Yanks have to get past 2 teams with better pitching than they have. They might as well fall to the Indians.
And then, I think whoever wins this series will get sent home by Boston or Anaheim. The Red Sox/Angels series should determine the world series winner. I probably would have said that about the Twins and A's last year, and you saw how that turned out. But truthfully, last year was weird: usually, there are 2-3 genuinely superior teams in the post-season and they end up winning it - I think it's that way this year. Last year you couldn't really tell - you could make a case for anyone (except the team that actually won it). This year, you can make a strong case for the Sox and Angels, a solid case for the Indians, and maybe the Yankees. Go Sox!
NL 1: PHILLIES over TBD - actually, I don't know if I believe that. The Padres, if they win, have a very deep rotation, nice bullpen and all - missing 2/3 of their outfield will probably sink them though. The Phils are the NL version of the Yankees without the pitching. They should club their way through this series, but it's a closa call against SD - they should not get past the next team. And they are not going to beat any of the AL teams.
NL 2: ARIZONA over the Cubbies: I could be wrong. The Cubs didn't win all that much, but they have some very nice players, a couple strong pitchers at the top of the rotation... But I think the Snakes are more balanced - and they aren't the Cubs. Though I can see the Cubs getting hot for a month and going far. Maybe this will be a Chicago - Cleveland World Series! it's too late for the Red Sox/Cubs apocalypse - but the Indians would be an okay substitute.
But more likely, the Diamondbacks win that series - and the next one (unless the Pads get going - they're up 5-4, by the time I finished the post, so maybe... if they do, I am going to pick them t win another one)- and lose in the world series.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Fall Preview of Sorts
A couple small points, stepping back from the brink of politics and religion, to talk about films and film writing in the upcoming months...
First - this should be a busy weekend pour moi, though I am always nervous about declaring Wher I Will Be in the coming hours and days (especially when I have not yet bought tickets). But odds are, a good part of the weekend you will find me at the Harvard Film Archive, watching the works of Pedro Costa, with Mr. Costa in attendance.
Second - a nice month for Rivette fans: big writeups in not one but two serious film magazines! Film comment - CinemaScope. Bless them all! And hope the film comes out.
Third - I've again shamelessly swiped Edward Copeland's list of upcoming blogathons for my own sidebar item. It's a good crop: there's a good variety to it - thematic blogathons (Film and Faith), technical/aesthetic issues (The close Up), critical blogathons (the double bill-a-thon, say: a very interesting idea), plus films - actors, directors, etc, from high and low (a bit more high than low in this group, with Kurosawa and It's a Wonderful Life getting their dues.) It looks like there will be quite a bit to read in the next few months.
December 16: in honor of its 24-7 presence on the airwaves, a day for It's A Wonderful Life, at Cinemathetics.
November 15-22: work up a Thanksgiving appetite with a week of Kurosawa movies at Film Squish!
November 10: A Bob Fosse fest at Forward to Yesterday.
November 7-9, 2007: Film and Faith blogathon at Strange Culture.
October 22-26: The Broken Projector's Double Bill-a-thon - write about 2 films for the price of one!
October 17: Honor Montgomery Clift, at Film Experience.
October 12-21: Close-Up Blogathon, at The House Next Door.
First - this should be a busy weekend pour moi, though I am always nervous about declaring Wher I Will Be in the coming hours and days (especially when I have not yet bought tickets). But odds are, a good part of the weekend you will find me at the Harvard Film Archive, watching the works of Pedro Costa, with Mr. Costa in attendance.
Second - a nice month for Rivette fans: big writeups in not one but two serious film magazines! Film comment - CinemaScope. Bless them all! And hope the film comes out.
Third - I've again shamelessly swiped Edward Copeland's list of upcoming blogathons for my own sidebar item. It's a good crop: there's a good variety to it - thematic blogathons (Film and Faith), technical/aesthetic issues (The close Up), critical blogathons (the double bill-a-thon, say: a very interesting idea), plus films - actors, directors, etc, from high and low (a bit more high than low in this group, with Kurosawa and It's a Wonderful Life getting their dues.) It looks like there will be quite a bit to read in the next few months.
December 16: in honor of its 24-7 presence on the airwaves, a day for It's A Wonderful Life, at Cinemathetics.
November 15-22: work up a Thanksgiving appetite with a week of Kurosawa movies at Film Squish!
November 10: A Bob Fosse fest at Forward to Yesterday.
November 7-9, 2007: Film and Faith blogathon at Strange Culture.
October 22-26: The Broken Projector's Double Bill-a-thon - write about 2 films for the price of one!
October 17: Honor Montgomery Clift, at Film Experience.
October 12-21: Close-Up Blogathon, at The House Next Door.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
A Bit of a Rant
Could it be time for a political post? (Preferably random and incoherent!) I see a certain amount of shock and horror being expressed over a Da Vinci parody - not directly, I mean I see a few blogs reacting to the shock and horror over a Da Vinci parody... I mean - I'm not going to read Rod Dreher for love or money.... and with things like this, you can never be sure if there's anyone who's not basically earning a living by Taking Offense who cares a whit. (Or why they'd care, if it wasn't in their job description.) But it reminds me of some things I've been thinking about, so I'll use it as an excuse to gas a bit about religion and art and politics and such...
A first point worth noting is that the inciting poster (Leonardo's last supper enacted by folks in bondage gear) is not, really, parodying or insulting religion - it's parodying The Last Supper: a famous painting, already (as Dan Savage documents) much parodied in the culture. A second point might be that the picture itself is hardly offensive: a bunch of guys and a couple women in leather, maybe a mask or two - whatever. Sure sure, if you want to examine it closely, I'm sure you can find something to be offended at - and I suppose the mere thought of S&M is going to offend some people - again: whatever. Their problem. None of that in the picture. Now I know - the outrage is fake; it's ginned up to justify oppression of homosexuals, and oppression in general - the plain authoritarianism of the right has long since been proven... It's all about establishing the right as the voice of "morality" that it can use to justify its authoritarian politics... It's still worth repeating the point. Noting, again, that the "outrage" is not aimed at anything concrete - not what's in the poster, but the idea behind it: that there might be people who like a good spanking in the world. And probably - the idea that people who like a good spanking now and then might be quite happy and good natured people - since everyone in the picture looks quite satisfied with their lot....
But that's old hat. This is a good excuse to note again that this is Bunuel week - an artist who had great fun mocking religion (as well as the great artworks of our past), including his own Last Supper parody, in Viridiana... as well as more offensive tricks - the ending of L'Age D'Or, with Jesus and disciples in the roles of the libertines of 120 Days of Sodom, is particularly amusing. Which suggests one angle on this latest "controversy" - the fact is, religious imagery is pervasive in western culture: a very high percentage of visual art is religious, is drawn from religious material. Stories, symbols, sayings, language itself, is drawn from or heavily influenced by religious sources. So - anything you do, that addresses the culture - the shared pool of images and ideas and types and so on - is going to refer to religion, somewhere. It can be hard to specify where the lines are drawn: this is a clear example, where a bible story has been adapted into a painting - which has become every bit as pervasive in the culture as the story. But is the painting religion? Is parodying the painting an insult to religion? does it have a thing to do with religion?
There's a broader question here - of what religion is. One thing that sometimes bugs me about radical atheists (like PZ Myers, say - who in fact I quite admire) is their tendency to speak of religion as a single, unitary thing. As if religion was the same as religious belief. It isn't. "Religion" covers a world of things - institutions; beliefs; moral and social rules and precepts; rituals and practices; symbols and images; cultural identities. And it is not religion so much as religionS: they are all different, putting different weight on the various pieces of religion. And many of these aspects of religion are taken over whole by ideologies that get rid of the idea of God: Stalinism, Maoism (so often cited as proof that atheists are Just As Bad as Christians at being murderous bigots), were religions in pretty much everything but the name. Even the central, organizing, imagery - the images of Stalin and Mao - the cult of personality.... (This is of course also the case with perfectly harmless movements.) I am inclined, myself, to think that the unifying principal of religions is their reliance on symbols: religious thought itself is based on taking symbols literally. Religion becomes about the enactment of symbolism - all the rest (the institutions and cultural identities and texts and moral systems) are all extensions of the founding symbols. (That is a reason why things like this story, starting from the idea of a group of atheists trying to come up with a symbol for themselves, seem so profoundly wrong to me. Once you get a symbol for your particular set of views about the world - that sounds like religion to me. In the worst sense, too - of forming gangs, and identifying who is in and who is out. It gives me hives.) If there is a defining religious principal, I would think it is aesthetic: it's taking aesthetics literally.
Okay... I've lost the plot. What does that have to do with an S&M parody of the Last Supper? or the "outrage" it causes? Ah! found it! It's the outrage... The manipulation of the complexity of religion by the profession Takers of Offense. Because: religion is many things - one thing it is is a set of beliefs. As a set of beliefs, there should be no question of the right to ridicule it. Beliefs - religious, philosophical, political, you name it - should be fair game: to argue with, pick apart, mock - there may be better and worse ways of doing it - but arguing with beliefs is as fundamental a right as holding beliefs and expressing them.
But things get complicated with religion. Ridiculing someone for their race is not acceptable, or shouldn't be. Race, ethnicity, culture - you see where this is going? Religion is not just beliefs - it is culture. And charlatans like William Donahue exploit this - they take things that ridicule (or parody or generally question) religious belief, or religious institutions (as political and social forces in the world), or religious symbolism or practices - and treat them as though they were attacks on religion as a cultural identity. But they are not: this is a conflation. That leathermen parody of the Last Supper is not, in any meaningful sense, attacking christian culture - it's not like a blackface version of the last supper would be. It's not. It's not like Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot (as Dreher claims) - it's not. Saying it is is cheating. It's an important point to remember because there are plenty of instances of attacks on religious cultures - much of the anti-Islamic rhetoric in this country is plain bigotry. And certainly when religious beliefs are grounds for discrimination - whether against atheists as in the symbol story linked above, or the not always all that subtle attempts to go after Mitt Romney's Mormonism (from both sides) - that is unacceptable. But those kinds of genuine offenses have to be distinguished from criticism of religious policies, or even mockery of the specifics of religious belief. The Outrage industry turns it all to mush, turns everything into posturing. Bastards.
A first point worth noting is that the inciting poster (Leonardo's last supper enacted by folks in bondage gear) is not, really, parodying or insulting religion - it's parodying The Last Supper: a famous painting, already (as Dan Savage documents) much parodied in the culture. A second point might be that the picture itself is hardly offensive: a bunch of guys and a couple women in leather, maybe a mask or two - whatever. Sure sure, if you want to examine it closely, I'm sure you can find something to be offended at - and I suppose the mere thought of S&M is going to offend some people - again: whatever. Their problem. None of that in the picture. Now I know - the outrage is fake; it's ginned up to justify oppression of homosexuals, and oppression in general - the plain authoritarianism of the right has long since been proven... It's all about establishing the right as the voice of "morality" that it can use to justify its authoritarian politics... It's still worth repeating the point. Noting, again, that the "outrage" is not aimed at anything concrete - not what's in the poster, but the idea behind it: that there might be people who like a good spanking in the world. And probably - the idea that people who like a good spanking now and then might be quite happy and good natured people - since everyone in the picture looks quite satisfied with their lot....
But that's old hat. This is a good excuse to note again that this is Bunuel week - an artist who had great fun mocking religion (as well as the great artworks of our past), including his own Last Supper parody, in Viridiana... as well as more offensive tricks - the ending of L'Age D'Or, with Jesus and disciples in the roles of the libertines of 120 Days of Sodom, is particularly amusing. Which suggests one angle on this latest "controversy" - the fact is, religious imagery is pervasive in western culture: a very high percentage of visual art is religious, is drawn from religious material. Stories, symbols, sayings, language itself, is drawn from or heavily influenced by religious sources. So - anything you do, that addresses the culture - the shared pool of images and ideas and types and so on - is going to refer to religion, somewhere. It can be hard to specify where the lines are drawn: this is a clear example, where a bible story has been adapted into a painting - which has become every bit as pervasive in the culture as the story. But is the painting religion? Is parodying the painting an insult to religion? does it have a thing to do with religion?
There's a broader question here - of what religion is. One thing that sometimes bugs me about radical atheists (like PZ Myers, say - who in fact I quite admire) is their tendency to speak of religion as a single, unitary thing. As if religion was the same as religious belief. It isn't. "Religion" covers a world of things - institutions; beliefs; moral and social rules and precepts; rituals and practices; symbols and images; cultural identities. And it is not religion so much as religionS: they are all different, putting different weight on the various pieces of religion. And many of these aspects of religion are taken over whole by ideologies that get rid of the idea of God: Stalinism, Maoism (so often cited as proof that atheists are Just As Bad as Christians at being murderous bigots), were religions in pretty much everything but the name. Even the central, organizing, imagery - the images of Stalin and Mao - the cult of personality.... (This is of course also the case with perfectly harmless movements.) I am inclined, myself, to think that the unifying principal of religions is their reliance on symbols: religious thought itself is based on taking symbols literally. Religion becomes about the enactment of symbolism - all the rest (the institutions and cultural identities and texts and moral systems) are all extensions of the founding symbols. (That is a reason why things like this story, starting from the idea of a group of atheists trying to come up with a symbol for themselves, seem so profoundly wrong to me. Once you get a symbol for your particular set of views about the world - that sounds like religion to me. In the worst sense, too - of forming gangs, and identifying who is in and who is out. It gives me hives.) If there is a defining religious principal, I would think it is aesthetic: it's taking aesthetics literally.
Okay... I've lost the plot. What does that have to do with an S&M parody of the Last Supper? or the "outrage" it causes? Ah! found it! It's the outrage... The manipulation of the complexity of religion by the profession Takers of Offense. Because: religion is many things - one thing it is is a set of beliefs. As a set of beliefs, there should be no question of the right to ridicule it. Beliefs - religious, philosophical, political, you name it - should be fair game: to argue with, pick apart, mock - there may be better and worse ways of doing it - but arguing with beliefs is as fundamental a right as holding beliefs and expressing them.
But things get complicated with religion. Ridiculing someone for their race is not acceptable, or shouldn't be. Race, ethnicity, culture - you see where this is going? Religion is not just beliefs - it is culture. And charlatans like William Donahue exploit this - they take things that ridicule (or parody or generally question) religious belief, or religious institutions (as political and social forces in the world), or religious symbolism or practices - and treat them as though they were attacks on religion as a cultural identity. But they are not: this is a conflation. That leathermen parody of the Last Supper is not, in any meaningful sense, attacking christian culture - it's not like a blackface version of the last supper would be. It's not. It's not like Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot (as Dreher claims) - it's not. Saying it is is cheating. It's an important point to remember because there are plenty of instances of attacks on religious cultures - much of the anti-Islamic rhetoric in this country is plain bigotry. And certainly when religious beliefs are grounds for discrimination - whether against atheists as in the symbol story linked above, or the not always all that subtle attempts to go after Mitt Romney's Mormonism (from both sides) - that is unacceptable. But those kinds of genuine offenses have to be distinguished from criticism of religious policies, or even mockery of the specifics of religious belief. The Outrage industry turns it all to mush, turns everything into posturing. Bastards.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Music and Technology etc.
First - in case I don't get around to a more substantial movie post, announcements: a new round of blogathons is upon us: this weekend, GoatDog is hosting a William Wyler blogathon, even as we speak. Starting tomorrow, a week-long Bunuel extravaganza at Flickhead. And coming up, November 7-9, RC at Strange Culture is hosting a Film & Faith blogathon. Head on over!
Now then - I'm sure you've all been waiting breathlessly for news on my iPod woes: it's good news! I still blame microsoft (or apple or someone) for abandoning firewire for USB 2, but that's a secondary complaint. The real problem turns out to have been a defective iPod. I took it to the store they gave me a different one to try - and 16-18 hours later, whatever it was, I'm in business again! and since the old one has been working, more or less, we have a Friday random ten to post, only 2 days later!
Though I have to find a better way to write about music. That's the point of this - that and forcing myself to make at least one post a week... But it's a way to write about music. Not always the best, though - I feel as if it were growing stale. But one of the reasons I write about movies is that I go to the movies - 2 new films a week, and whatever other screenings look good, and a stream of DVDs, which sometimes flows like a torrential river (it's easy to watch 4-5 WC Fields films a week), sometimes not. But music - I tend not to listen to CDs whole: I listen to the iPod. And so - the easiest way to write about music is to write about the way I listen to music:iPod shuffle. And - there is this. One of the reasons not having a high capacity iPod handy is so hard to take is that I have all those CDs in there: and this is the way to hear them once i a while. One of the things the iPod does is remind me of what I have. Left to my own devices, I listen to whatever half dozen records I'm currently into - and sometimes go back to the old standards. Right now that means listening to Boris with Kurihara more or less constantly [with this tour - Boris and Damon & Naomi, both with Kurihara, like heave itself...], with MIA and the Liars mixed in for variety.... But the iPod, when it can draw from everything I've put in there - keeps me listening to a much greater variety of music. For demonstration thereof -
1. Pere Ubu - Voice of the Sand
2. Sugar Minott - Hang On Natty
3. Burnt Sugar - No direction Home part VI) - this is what I mean. I like this music - Greg Tate's jazz/rock/improv project - but how often do I put the CD in? and if I did put in a CD would I put this in ahead of Sun Ra or Miles Davis or Sonny Sharrock? not likely. But the iPod, sooner or later, offers it up.... granted - in chunks, which is probably not the best way to listen to it, but a good reminder.
4. Chicago - Introduction (live - from a crappy import of some sort) - hey... they're kind of cheesy, even early in the game, but they were not bad in those days. Had some punch.
5. Elvis Costello - Little Triggers
6. Public Enemy - Hard Truth Soldiers - this new record of theirs doesn't quite do it - there's still some talent here - but it's awful dry stuff. This song is 4:19! I could have sworn, listening to it, it was like 12 minutes... this isn't as depressing a "comeback" as the Who's misbegotten effort, but it's pretty bad. Though I'm happy to have put a few cents in Chuck D's bank account...
7. The Killers - Change Your Mind - play "guess the Strokes knockoff!" - I'd have lost; I'd have guessed the strokes themselves...
8. Bob Marley - Get Up Stand Up (live) *** - rated! but I'm not complaining about the rest. Anyway, Bob Marley is usually a nice lift...
9. Flaming Lips - Waiting for Superman
10. Arcade Fire - Keep the Car Running - I haven't gotten around to rating the songs on this record; this one deserves *** I think. I tend to be somewhat less impressed by them than some of the other - whatever this is called - new folk, whatever it is. Waterboys tribute bands, I call em! If I have to choose, I'll take the Decembrists; or go back to Neutral Milk Hotel, something like that. (Which is another way of saying, they're on the emergency playlists I burn to CD...) But thanks to the iPod, I don't have to choose! hooray!
Video? Let's go with Chicago, live in Japan 1972, per YouTube, trying desperately to rock out and almost managing it...
Now then - I'm sure you've all been waiting breathlessly for news on my iPod woes: it's good news! I still blame microsoft (or apple or someone) for abandoning firewire for USB 2, but that's a secondary complaint. The real problem turns out to have been a defective iPod. I took it to the store they gave me a different one to try - and 16-18 hours later, whatever it was, I'm in business again! and since the old one has been working, more or less, we have a Friday random ten to post, only 2 days later!
Though I have to find a better way to write about music. That's the point of this - that and forcing myself to make at least one post a week... But it's a way to write about music. Not always the best, though - I feel as if it were growing stale. But one of the reasons I write about movies is that I go to the movies - 2 new films a week, and whatever other screenings look good, and a stream of DVDs, which sometimes flows like a torrential river (it's easy to watch 4-5 WC Fields films a week), sometimes not. But music - I tend not to listen to CDs whole: I listen to the iPod. And so - the easiest way to write about music is to write about the way I listen to music:iPod shuffle. And - there is this. One of the reasons not having a high capacity iPod handy is so hard to take is that I have all those CDs in there: and this is the way to hear them once i a while. One of the things the iPod does is remind me of what I have. Left to my own devices, I listen to whatever half dozen records I'm currently into - and sometimes go back to the old standards. Right now that means listening to Boris with Kurihara more or less constantly [with this tour - Boris and Damon & Naomi, both with Kurihara, like heave itself...], with MIA and the Liars mixed in for variety.... But the iPod, when it can draw from everything I've put in there - keeps me listening to a much greater variety of music. For demonstration thereof -
1. Pere Ubu - Voice of the Sand
2. Sugar Minott - Hang On Natty
3. Burnt Sugar - No direction Home part VI) - this is what I mean. I like this music - Greg Tate's jazz/rock/improv project - but how often do I put the CD in? and if I did put in a CD would I put this in ahead of Sun Ra or Miles Davis or Sonny Sharrock? not likely. But the iPod, sooner or later, offers it up.... granted - in chunks, which is probably not the best way to listen to it, but a good reminder.
4. Chicago - Introduction (live - from a crappy import of some sort) - hey... they're kind of cheesy, even early in the game, but they were not bad in those days. Had some punch.
5. Elvis Costello - Little Triggers
6. Public Enemy - Hard Truth Soldiers - this new record of theirs doesn't quite do it - there's still some talent here - but it's awful dry stuff. This song is 4:19! I could have sworn, listening to it, it was like 12 minutes... this isn't as depressing a "comeback" as the Who's misbegotten effort, but it's pretty bad. Though I'm happy to have put a few cents in Chuck D's bank account...
7. The Killers - Change Your Mind - play "guess the Strokes knockoff!" - I'd have lost; I'd have guessed the strokes themselves...
8. Bob Marley - Get Up Stand Up (live) *** - rated! but I'm not complaining about the rest. Anyway, Bob Marley is usually a nice lift...
9. Flaming Lips - Waiting for Superman
10. Arcade Fire - Keep the Car Running - I haven't gotten around to rating the songs on this record; this one deserves *** I think. I tend to be somewhat less impressed by them than some of the other - whatever this is called - new folk, whatever it is. Waterboys tribute bands, I call em! If I have to choose, I'll take the Decembrists; or go back to Neutral Milk Hotel, something like that. (Which is another way of saying, they're on the emergency playlists I burn to CD...) But thanks to the iPod, I don't have to choose! hooray!
Video? Let's go with Chicago, live in Japan 1972, per YouTube, trying desperately to rock out and almost managing it...
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Non-English Films Ballot
Following up on this monumental project, the Ray Memorial 100, here are my votes and comments. The process - voting twice (nominations and final tally), plus writing a couple notes, plus parsing through the lists a few times - has given me plenty of time to think about films, lists, what I mean by having favorite movies - so I still have stuff to say about it. So here goes, organized around my final ballot and comments. With actual place on the list and some comments on the comments, since I am an incorrigible geek. (Only a couple of them are all that substantive...)
1. M - 1931 - Lang, Fritz - Germany: this film has been on my top 10 list more or less from the day I saw it. More like top 2-3. As everything else changes around it, it stays there.
#3 - I don't have anything much to add to this. I was pleased that the top 3 films in the poll were my 2, 1, 4 films, and my number 5 made the top ten - after that, the final list diverges from mine. Position may not matter all that much - but it's still nice to know you're not alone. Also nice to sometimes be a bit weird - so when my choices don't match the poll, that works too! Everything works! yay!
2 Rules of the Game - 1939 - Renoir, Jean - France - when I first rented it, as soon as it ended, I rewound and watched it again. You could put it on a loop and never get tired of it, I think. It’s hard to say much more and ever stop talking about it.
#1 - That's not surprising. M might be (and pleasing) - this and Seven Samurai would have been my guesses for the top 2-3.... they should be.
3 Late Spring - 1949 - Ozu Yasujiro - Japan - It was watching Late Spring, during the scene at the Noh performance where Chishu Ryu nods to the woman he claims he will marry and Hara starts squirming beside him, that I knew Ozu was the greatest filmmaker ever. The film has everything - far more comedy than it gets credit for; the cultural details and critiques, from all angles - celebrating Japanese culture, making fun of it, working in all those baseball and movie jokes, putting that big coke sign in the middle of a happy interlude; the brilliant performances, the way Hara and Ryu move, she being brought to bay, he holding everything in, acting the old man; everything. Almost endlessly rewarding, and ultimately heart-breaking. For my money, Early Summer is even better, but this will do. I tend to lump films from my favorite directors together anyway - choosing among them is an arbitrary science.
#48 - This breaks the pattern of me matching the poll - though I did some calculations and discovered that this had the third highest points per vote on the poll (after M and Rules) - which makes sense. I can't imagine you could watch this, like it, and not think it was one of the 10 or so best films ever made. It might be less seen - and people may not warm to it - but if they do, they will worship it. The process of voting has made me wonder if this isn't my favorite film of all time, period - better than Early Summer; better than M and Rules - better than It's a Wonderful Life, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, better than Duck Soup. Or maybe it's the film, at least on this list, that most makes me want to grab people by the lapel and scream at them - you have to see this film! You have to love this film! - Rules of the Game, M, Seven Samurai, It's A Wonderful Life, etc. people already know about - Late Spring is still something of a mystery. Whatever it is - it floors me.... I am also most happy to have been quoted about this film: part and parcel of what I'm saying I guess - whatever it means, this is the film on the list that ended up meaning the most to me.
4 Seven Samurai - 1955 - Kurosawa, Akira - Japan - What epics should be - thrilling, moving, technically breath-taking, and historically serious. Like - one example - the historical point of the way guns are transforming the world - all four dead samurai fall to gunfire.
#2 - about right. One thing I wonder, though - my comment: is that remark about guns on the commentary track of the film? I keep thinking I got it from somewhere, but I don't remember where, if I did. It might also be something most comments on Kurosawa mention....
5 Aguirre Wrath of God - 1973 - Herzog, Werner - Germany - a film featuring one of the half-dozen great opening shots in films: and maybe one of the half dozen greatest closing shots as well, Kinski holding up a shitting monkey and monologuing about marrying his daughter to found a pure line - then throwing the monkey away like an empty beer can.
# 8 - nice to see it up there.
6 Pierrot Le Fou - 1965 - Godard, Jean-Luc - France - Back in the theaters! It used to be my favorite Godard, but I went a long time without seeing it, and saw Vivre sa Vie a bunch of times in the interim, and it took over the spot. I imagine, if anyone else had nominated Vivre sa Vie, it still would be the top Godard film on this ballot, but Pierrot will do. It’s great. The eye popping colors and compositions (though there’s barely a frame anywhere in Godard’s work that isn’t magnificent looking); the song and dance routines; the many many tricks - addressing the camera, quoting himself, and piecing a story out of what he finds - books, movies, ads, comics, real life, the newspapers. And how much fun it is, how physical it is (especially Belmondo, running and jumping around, being tortured on camera and so on), and how well Godard manages to always keep it funny, serious, even moving, all at once.
# 87 - 87? weird. Anyway - I think I might be underrating it.
7 Gospel According to Matthew - 1964 - Pasolini, Pier Paolo - Italy - stands to reason that a gay communist atheist would make the best religious movie ever. By sticking to the text, mostly - and the land and faces of southern Italy - though he does use the style, the handheld cameras, zooming, telephoto lenses, to great effect as well.
# 98 (tied with Day of Wrath) - just made the 100, but I can't say I'm too surprised or exercised. These are all good films, after all....
8 Ugetsu Monogatari - 1953 - Mizoguchi Kenji - Japan - once you start talking about most of these films, you realize there’s just too much to say. Nothing is enough. Since people usually focus on Mizoguchi’s style, I’ll note the thematic richness: Mizoguchi's usual subject, how women suffer to make men worth their suffering, here augmented by anti-militarism (the samurai are all scum, cowards, fools - the foot soldiers are bullies, rapists, murderers, thieves), a tract on the evils of greed, and the redeeming qualities of work and art. And the layers - the multiple ghost stories (there are ghosts inside the ghost stories!), the parallels between Lady Wasaka and Miyagi (the ghost is as sympathetic as the wife), the references to other arts - beautiful.
#22 - surprisingly low, I suppose, but still...
9 Playtime - 1967 - Tati, Jacques - France - It’s been a couple years since I saw it last: I would probably like it more now than I did then. I wish Alphaville had made the list - they are like a day and night view of the new (60s) Paris.
#23
10 High and Low - 1963 - Kurosawa, Akira - Japan - Plenty to like here too. One of my all time favorite moments in a film - when Mifune throws a bunch of greedy executives out of his house and behind him you can see Tatsuya Nakadai and his partner judging them. The way Nakadai looks at the executives as they leave might be the best put down ever put on film.
#51 - I wish I had the DVD - I wish I had a screen shot of Nakadai for this....
11 Breathless - 1959 - Godard, Jean-Luc - France - it’s odd: films made today that transparently copy Breathless end up looking conservative next to it. Like Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris - a fine film, obviously structured like Breathless, but everything about it is more conventional, softened. I usually don’t go for judging art as “progress” but Godard still looks newer, more radical, than most of what is made now (even in art films), and was way beyond even most of the great films of the 60s
# 21
12 Tokyo Story - 1953 - Ozu Yasujiro - Japan - though even Godard has trouble coming up to Ozu, as a master of formally adventurous, challenging work. In a completely commercial context!
# 12 - good lord! I got it dead on!
13 Mystery of Kaspar Hauser - 1975 - Herzog, Warner - Germany - “are you a tree frog?”
- I didn't notice this before - this is the one film I voted for that missed the cut.
14 Celine and Julie Go Boating - 1973 - Rivette, Jacques - France - one of only two films on my ballot I have only seen once: and, like the other one, I saw it this year. Along with the merits of the film, its immediate ascent is probably attributable to auteurism - I saw it as part of a long Rivette series, 12-13 of his films over a month or so. Celine and Julie is his best film, but it also seems more familiar because I saw all those other films at the same time. In a way, then, it stands in for his films in the mass. I suspect if I could see some of them again - Out 1 (either version), Amour Fou, Paris Belongs to Us, Jeanne la Poucelle - they might get on this list as well.
# 66 - kind of surprised this rated so high - this seems very hard to see. I don't remember any showings of it before the Rivette series I saw this year - I'm sure it plays somewhere now and then, but it's rare indeed. But a huge delight....
15 Yi Yi: A One and a Two directed by Edward Yang - the most recent film on the list. I have only seen two Edward Yang films - which is incredibly frustrating.
# 56
16 The Blue Angel directed by Josef von Sternberg - this is the oldest film on the nominations, isn’t it. Sternberg sometimes resists analysis - anything I can think to say feels too obvious. Just look at Dietrich. Which I do every day, since I have a poster from Blue Angel on the wall.
# 93
17 Sansho the Bailiff directed by Kenji Mizoguchi - I’ve seen this recently in the theater, a profound experience. I do think it’s odd that 3 Mizoguchi films got nominated and only 2 Ozus: in the last 10 years Ozu seems to have definitively passed Mizoguchi in the critical estimation. As imperfectly represented by DVD releases - there have been half a dozen Ozu films available for a couple years now (plus 5 more just released this summer) - Mizoguchi just has the two. Both are underrepresented - as is Naruse. Though I noticed that my vote for Late Chrysanthemums has disappeared - did it get rolled up into the votes for Mizoguchi’s Story of the Last Chrysanthemum? If so - it probably did more good there than in its proper place. Still - I’d be perfectly satisfied with a list of 25 films by just those three, Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse.
# 46 - I should have written an actual comment about the film. I did originally, but it was starting to turn into a mini-essay so I cut it and went for the metacomments.... the original comment was:
Takes a while, I think, to get past the sheer beauty of Mizoguchi’s films, to get to the themes - like, oh - the ways men can move and women can’t (whatever else may happen to them) - the way women sacrifice themselves in these films because that is the best they can hope for, the most they have available for them to do - men can be stars or heroes or artists; women are lucky not to be intentionally crippled.
18 The Decalogue directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski - I wish some of his earlier films were nominated - Camera Buff or Blind Chance. Though the Decalogue as a whole is better. It's hard to think of it as a single film, though. There are a couple episodes (1, 5, 10 anyway) I'd consider voting for on their own.
# 43 - still seems odd to consider this as one film; though it's only 3 hours longer than Satantango...
19 Pickpocket directed by Robert Bresson - like a lot of directors on this list, Bresson’s films often seem stronger taken as part of the series than separately. Any one of them can represent all of them.
# 45 - I wish Mouchette had made the cut, though.
20 Satantango directed by Béla Tarr - the other film I have only seen once, this year even. Sat through the whole thing more or less straight (there were intermissions) - if I hadn’t had other obligations I would have done it again the next day.
# 97 - not too surprising: another hard one to get to see, and I can imagine even movie fans thinking, what the hell am I doing here? But if you're into it, you're into it for real.
21 Cleo From 5 to 7 directed by Agnes Varda - I can’t think of anything to say about it. It’s all in the film, I guess.
# 89 - kind of wish this were higher.
22. Day of Wrath directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer - all about mothers loving sons...
# 98
23. Open City directed by Roberto Rossellini - Rosselini is like Bresson - sometimes hard to get a handle on the individual films. They seem better in the aggregate than individually,though all of them gain from their collective power. Since this is nominated, it is the one I’ll vote for.
# 78 - that's a mealy mouthed comment - more ambivalent than I feel. Open City is a great, marvelous film.
24 L'Eclisse directed by Michelangelo Antonioni - the only film on the ballot I haven’t seen in a theater. I made up for it the usual way, watching the DVD through two or three times, with and without the commentary. Still, DVD is no substitute for seeing films as films, especially when they look like this. This is a vote mostly for the potential: if it is this powerful seen in mediocre conditions, think how good it must be for real. That and the ending - which is still pretty breathtaking.
# 57 - that's lower than I would have expected - if just because Antonioni's death put him in people's minds.
25 Chungking Express directed by Wong Kar-Wai - this is an almost completely political pick. Chinese films and the 90s are both very badly represented on the nomination list. Satantango and maybe White are the only 90s films worth consideration; Chungking Express and Yi Yi the only Chinese films worth considering. Should I vote for it as a kind of proxy for the film I really want to be there, Fallen Angels? I guess so - I’m voting, unapologetically, for Open City because Germany Year Zero and the Flowers of St. Francis aren’t available; why not Chungking Express, as a stand in for Fallen Angels, Happy Together and 2046, and Wong Kar-wei as a stand in for any number of Hong Kong films, for Hou Hsiao Hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, Jia Jiang-ke, even the Zhang Yimou films that came in the '00s and deserved to be considered? Nothing can make me vote for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, or Raise the Red Lantern, or even Farewell My Concubine, but I can live with Chunking Express. Though it would probably be more honest to vote for one of the Truffauts or another Kurosawa or Godard.
# 63 - that's a really whiny comment. But I went through it all before. I do really like this film...
1. M - 1931 - Lang, Fritz - Germany: this film has been on my top 10 list more or less from the day I saw it. More like top 2-3. As everything else changes around it, it stays there.
#3 - I don't have anything much to add to this. I was pleased that the top 3 films in the poll were my 2, 1, 4 films, and my number 5 made the top ten - after that, the final list diverges from mine. Position may not matter all that much - but it's still nice to know you're not alone. Also nice to sometimes be a bit weird - so when my choices don't match the poll, that works too! Everything works! yay!
2 Rules of the Game - 1939 - Renoir, Jean - France - when I first rented it, as soon as it ended, I rewound and watched it again. You could put it on a loop and never get tired of it, I think. It’s hard to say much more and ever stop talking about it.
#1 - That's not surprising. M might be (and pleasing) - this and Seven Samurai would have been my guesses for the top 2-3.... they should be.
3 Late Spring - 1949 - Ozu Yasujiro - Japan - It was watching Late Spring, during the scene at the Noh performance where Chishu Ryu nods to the woman he claims he will marry and Hara starts squirming beside him, that I knew Ozu was the greatest filmmaker ever. The film has everything - far more comedy than it gets credit for; the cultural details and critiques, from all angles - celebrating Japanese culture, making fun of it, working in all those baseball and movie jokes, putting that big coke sign in the middle of a happy interlude; the brilliant performances, the way Hara and Ryu move, she being brought to bay, he holding everything in, acting the old man; everything. Almost endlessly rewarding, and ultimately heart-breaking. For my money, Early Summer is even better, but this will do. I tend to lump films from my favorite directors together anyway - choosing among them is an arbitrary science.
#48 - This breaks the pattern of me matching the poll - though I did some calculations and discovered that this had the third highest points per vote on the poll (after M and Rules) - which makes sense. I can't imagine you could watch this, like it, and not think it was one of the 10 or so best films ever made. It might be less seen - and people may not warm to it - but if they do, they will worship it. The process of voting has made me wonder if this isn't my favorite film of all time, period - better than Early Summer; better than M and Rules - better than It's a Wonderful Life, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, better than Duck Soup. Or maybe it's the film, at least on this list, that most makes me want to grab people by the lapel and scream at them - you have to see this film! You have to love this film! - Rules of the Game, M, Seven Samurai, It's A Wonderful Life, etc. people already know about - Late Spring is still something of a mystery. Whatever it is - it floors me.... I am also most happy to have been quoted about this film: part and parcel of what I'm saying I guess - whatever it means, this is the film on the list that ended up meaning the most to me.
4 Seven Samurai - 1955 - Kurosawa, Akira - Japan - What epics should be - thrilling, moving, technically breath-taking, and historically serious. Like - one example - the historical point of the way guns are transforming the world - all four dead samurai fall to gunfire.
#2 - about right. One thing I wonder, though - my comment: is that remark about guns on the commentary track of the film? I keep thinking I got it from somewhere, but I don't remember where, if I did. It might also be something most comments on Kurosawa mention....
5 Aguirre Wrath of God - 1973 - Herzog, Werner - Germany - a film featuring one of the half-dozen great opening shots in films: and maybe one of the half dozen greatest closing shots as well, Kinski holding up a shitting monkey and monologuing about marrying his daughter to found a pure line - then throwing the monkey away like an empty beer can.
# 8 - nice to see it up there.
6 Pierrot Le Fou - 1965 - Godard, Jean-Luc - France - Back in the theaters! It used to be my favorite Godard, but I went a long time without seeing it, and saw Vivre sa Vie a bunch of times in the interim, and it took over the spot. I imagine, if anyone else had nominated Vivre sa Vie, it still would be the top Godard film on this ballot, but Pierrot will do. It’s great. The eye popping colors and compositions (though there’s barely a frame anywhere in Godard’s work that isn’t magnificent looking); the song and dance routines; the many many tricks - addressing the camera, quoting himself, and piecing a story out of what he finds - books, movies, ads, comics, real life, the newspapers. And how much fun it is, how physical it is (especially Belmondo, running and jumping around, being tortured on camera and so on), and how well Godard manages to always keep it funny, serious, even moving, all at once.
# 87 - 87? weird. Anyway - I think I might be underrating it.
7 Gospel According to Matthew - 1964 - Pasolini, Pier Paolo - Italy - stands to reason that a gay communist atheist would make the best religious movie ever. By sticking to the text, mostly - and the land and faces of southern Italy - though he does use the style, the handheld cameras, zooming, telephoto lenses, to great effect as well.
# 98 (tied with Day of Wrath) - just made the 100, but I can't say I'm too surprised or exercised. These are all good films, after all....
8 Ugetsu Monogatari - 1953 - Mizoguchi Kenji - Japan - once you start talking about most of these films, you realize there’s just too much to say. Nothing is enough. Since people usually focus on Mizoguchi’s style, I’ll note the thematic richness: Mizoguchi's usual subject, how women suffer to make men worth their suffering, here augmented by anti-militarism (the samurai are all scum, cowards, fools - the foot soldiers are bullies, rapists, murderers, thieves), a tract on the evils of greed, and the redeeming qualities of work and art. And the layers - the multiple ghost stories (there are ghosts inside the ghost stories!), the parallels between Lady Wasaka and Miyagi (the ghost is as sympathetic as the wife), the references to other arts - beautiful.
#22 - surprisingly low, I suppose, but still...
9 Playtime - 1967 - Tati, Jacques - France - It’s been a couple years since I saw it last: I would probably like it more now than I did then. I wish Alphaville had made the list - they are like a day and night view of the new (60s) Paris.
#23
10 High and Low - 1963 - Kurosawa, Akira - Japan - Plenty to like here too. One of my all time favorite moments in a film - when Mifune throws a bunch of greedy executives out of his house and behind him you can see Tatsuya Nakadai and his partner judging them. The way Nakadai looks at the executives as they leave might be the best put down ever put on film.
#51 - I wish I had the DVD - I wish I had a screen shot of Nakadai for this....
11 Breathless - 1959 - Godard, Jean-Luc - France - it’s odd: films made today that transparently copy Breathless end up looking conservative next to it. Like Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris - a fine film, obviously structured like Breathless, but everything about it is more conventional, softened. I usually don’t go for judging art as “progress” but Godard still looks newer, more radical, than most of what is made now (even in art films), and was way beyond even most of the great films of the 60s
# 21
12 Tokyo Story - 1953 - Ozu Yasujiro - Japan - though even Godard has trouble coming up to Ozu, as a master of formally adventurous, challenging work. In a completely commercial context!
# 12 - good lord! I got it dead on!
13 Mystery of Kaspar Hauser - 1975 - Herzog, Warner - Germany - “are you a tree frog?”
- I didn't notice this before - this is the one film I voted for that missed the cut.
14 Celine and Julie Go Boating - 1973 - Rivette, Jacques - France - one of only two films on my ballot I have only seen once: and, like the other one, I saw it this year. Along with the merits of the film, its immediate ascent is probably attributable to auteurism - I saw it as part of a long Rivette series, 12-13 of his films over a month or so. Celine and Julie is his best film, but it also seems more familiar because I saw all those other films at the same time. In a way, then, it stands in for his films in the mass. I suspect if I could see some of them again - Out 1 (either version), Amour Fou, Paris Belongs to Us, Jeanne la Poucelle - they might get on this list as well.
# 66 - kind of surprised this rated so high - this seems very hard to see. I don't remember any showings of it before the Rivette series I saw this year - I'm sure it plays somewhere now and then, but it's rare indeed. But a huge delight....
15 Yi Yi: A One and a Two directed by Edward Yang - the most recent film on the list. I have only seen two Edward Yang films - which is incredibly frustrating.
# 56
16 The Blue Angel directed by Josef von Sternberg - this is the oldest film on the nominations, isn’t it. Sternberg sometimes resists analysis - anything I can think to say feels too obvious. Just look at Dietrich. Which I do every day, since I have a poster from Blue Angel on the wall.
# 93
17 Sansho the Bailiff directed by Kenji Mizoguchi - I’ve seen this recently in the theater, a profound experience. I do think it’s odd that 3 Mizoguchi films got nominated and only 2 Ozus: in the last 10 years Ozu seems to have definitively passed Mizoguchi in the critical estimation. As imperfectly represented by DVD releases - there have been half a dozen Ozu films available for a couple years now (plus 5 more just released this summer) - Mizoguchi just has the two. Both are underrepresented - as is Naruse. Though I noticed that my vote for Late Chrysanthemums has disappeared - did it get rolled up into the votes for Mizoguchi’s Story of the Last Chrysanthemum? If so - it probably did more good there than in its proper place. Still - I’d be perfectly satisfied with a list of 25 films by just those three, Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse.
# 46 - I should have written an actual comment about the film. I did originally, but it was starting to turn into a mini-essay so I cut it and went for the metacomments.... the original comment was:
Takes a while, I think, to get past the sheer beauty of Mizoguchi’s films, to get to the themes - like, oh - the ways men can move and women can’t (whatever else may happen to them) - the way women sacrifice themselves in these films because that is the best they can hope for, the most they have available for them to do - men can be stars or heroes or artists; women are lucky not to be intentionally crippled.
18 The Decalogue directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski - I wish some of his earlier films were nominated - Camera Buff or Blind Chance. Though the Decalogue as a whole is better. It's hard to think of it as a single film, though. There are a couple episodes (1, 5, 10 anyway) I'd consider voting for on their own.
# 43 - still seems odd to consider this as one film; though it's only 3 hours longer than Satantango...
19 Pickpocket directed by Robert Bresson - like a lot of directors on this list, Bresson’s films often seem stronger taken as part of the series than separately. Any one of them can represent all of them.
# 45 - I wish Mouchette had made the cut, though.
20 Satantango directed by Béla Tarr - the other film I have only seen once, this year even. Sat through the whole thing more or less straight (there were intermissions) - if I hadn’t had other obligations I would have done it again the next day.
# 97 - not too surprising: another hard one to get to see, and I can imagine even movie fans thinking, what the hell am I doing here? But if you're into it, you're into it for real.
21 Cleo From 5 to 7 directed by Agnes Varda - I can’t think of anything to say about it. It’s all in the film, I guess.
# 89 - kind of wish this were higher.
22. Day of Wrath directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer - all about mothers loving sons...
# 98
23. Open City directed by Roberto Rossellini - Rosselini is like Bresson - sometimes hard to get a handle on the individual films. They seem better in the aggregate than individually,though all of them gain from their collective power. Since this is nominated, it is the one I’ll vote for.
# 78 - that's a mealy mouthed comment - more ambivalent than I feel. Open City is a great, marvelous film.
24 L'Eclisse directed by Michelangelo Antonioni - the only film on the ballot I haven’t seen in a theater. I made up for it the usual way, watching the DVD through two or three times, with and without the commentary. Still, DVD is no substitute for seeing films as films, especially when they look like this. This is a vote mostly for the potential: if it is this powerful seen in mediocre conditions, think how good it must be for real. That and the ending - which is still pretty breathtaking.
# 57 - that's lower than I would have expected - if just because Antonioni's death put him in people's minds.
25 Chungking Express directed by Wong Kar-Wai - this is an almost completely political pick. Chinese films and the 90s are both very badly represented on the nomination list. Satantango and maybe White are the only 90s films worth consideration; Chungking Express and Yi Yi the only Chinese films worth considering. Should I vote for it as a kind of proxy for the film I really want to be there, Fallen Angels? I guess so - I’m voting, unapologetically, for Open City because Germany Year Zero and the Flowers of St. Francis aren’t available; why not Chungking Express, as a stand in for Fallen Angels, Happy Together and 2046, and Wong Kar-wei as a stand in for any number of Hong Kong films, for Hou Hsiao Hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, Jia Jiang-ke, even the Zhang Yimou films that came in the '00s and deserved to be considered? Nothing can make me vote for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, or Raise the Red Lantern, or even Farewell My Concubine, but I can live with Chunking Express. Though it would probably be more honest to vote for one of the Truffauts or another Kurosawa or Godard.
# 63 - that's a really whiny comment. But I went through it all before. I do really like this film...
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Yo Ho Ho!
Arrgh, me hearties, tis Talk Like a Pirate day again! And this year,what a bountiful treasure we've found! Edward Copeland has finished compiling the poll of non-English language films - the Ray Memorial 100! Not forgetting the castaways...
Long John and the boys will have plenty to celebrate tonight! Extra ration of grog for all!
(Image from Mervyn Peake's magnificent illustrations for Treasure Island.)
Monday, September 17, 2007
Windows Sucks!
I know that headline will not come as a surprise to anyone, but I have been reminded, yet again, of this inarguable fault. My new iPod - conked out the first time I tried synching it; so I tried it again, left it running overnight - and of course, it's conked out again in the morning. Now this is very annoying: I'm wondering what's to blame (and how to fix it) - I poked around the documentation and online without much luck. And then I notice, the documentation all says to plug the machine into the USB port. That can't be right, I think - I try to remember what the cable looked like, and start to get a sinking feeling - I take a good look, and yes indeed: USB!
That's annoying. So I try again with the firewire cable the 60gig iPod used, but nothing. So I go online, thinking, Apple has cleverly managed to lure me into spending an extra $50 on a firewire cable for this thing. Typical, I think... Until I realize - there IS no firewire cable! the new iPods ONLY synch through USB! It's NOT apple greed - it's pandering to the poor suckers who bought Windows machines! It'll take me a week to get this thing working and a month to get all my music onto it! Damn it all to hell!
Thanks again, Microsoft, for making the world a worse place.
UPDATE: Rather than add a new post or a comment, I'll add a word or two to this. First - I have to admit that the real problem is the computer: the iPods work with USB 2.0, and this old thing has only 1.1; that's the underlying problem. One I hope I can avoid addressing until next year, though I don't think it's worth trying to squeeze much more than that out of this thing. Second: the other real problem is not so much that the process is slow, but that it died in the middle - and now, I've managed to make it so it won't do a thing: connect the iPod, and iTunes hangs. Terrible! I can't get at any options to restore the iPod, to switch to manual updates or anything like that - nothing. That's a good deal worse than slowness. Third - though I realize now that these USB only machines have been around a while - it's worth noting that I have one, a shuffle - which is slow, but works fine with this computer - so it's not just the hardware.
But all this whining is beside the point - because the old warhorse, the old photo iPod from 2 plus years ago - suddenly started working again, after I charged it all the way. Hooray! It is just the battery! I might get to next year after all...
That's annoying. So I try again with the firewire cable the 60gig iPod used, but nothing. So I go online, thinking, Apple has cleverly managed to lure me into spending an extra $50 on a firewire cable for this thing. Typical, I think... Until I realize - there IS no firewire cable! the new iPods ONLY synch through USB! It's NOT apple greed - it's pandering to the poor suckers who bought Windows machines! It'll take me a week to get this thing working and a month to get all my music onto it! Damn it all to hell!
Thanks again, Microsoft, for making the world a worse place.
UPDATE: Rather than add a new post or a comment, I'll add a word or two to this. First - I have to admit that the real problem is the computer: the iPods work with USB 2.0, and this old thing has only 1.1; that's the underlying problem. One I hope I can avoid addressing until next year, though I don't think it's worth trying to squeeze much more than that out of this thing. Second: the other real problem is not so much that the process is slow, but that it died in the middle - and now, I've managed to make it so it won't do a thing: connect the iPod, and iTunes hangs. Terrible! I can't get at any options to restore the iPod, to switch to manual updates or anything like that - nothing. That's a good deal worse than slowness. Third - though I realize now that these USB only machines have been around a while - it's worth noting that I have one, a shuffle - which is slow, but works fine with this computer - so it's not just the hardware.
But all this whining is beside the point - because the old warhorse, the old photo iPod from 2 plus years ago - suddenly started working again, after I charged it all the way. Hooray! It is just the battery! I might get to next year after all...
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Technology and a Film or Two
Well - as noted, my iPod died - and as promised, I replaced it, with a 160 Gig monstrosity. Which leaves me here tonight synching the machine with iTunes.... which looks like an all night project. With luck. It crapped out once already. I just hope it gets to the end. It's this initial synch - 45 gb of music, more or less - that causes problems. I fear the days are numbered for my old iMac - I've had it awhile. It occurs to me, I have been using it as my main machine longer than any machine I had before - rather impressive. It's still adaquate - it's just starting to get slow. And the hard drive is smallish - so all my music, for example, is on an external - that can't be helping the synch process. (I'm pretty sure that's what killed it the first time, the externa; deciding to take a nap.) Anything intensive - video, music - is sluggish. It's almost time. I'll gut it out as long as I can - but....
What this means to us today, though, is just that I have some time to kill. A bit too late to start a movie - I can watch the Red Sox and Yankees, but really - those are, I'm afraid, about the least interesting games out there. Histrionics and hand-wringing - it's boring. The rivalry crap overshadows the games. I notice these days, the Yankees seem as into it as the Red Sox - a few years of mediocrity will do that. (What, you say? the Yankees have won the division every year since 1645! how can they be mediocre? - I say, 200 million dollars is a lot of money. It can dress up a pig in the finest silks. And that can get you through the early rounds when no one is paying attention. But have the Yankees won anything in the post season? bluffing their way past the red sox in 03 and alkmost bluffing their way past them again in 04 is all they have to brag about. This year, assuming they get the Angels int he first round, they won't get a chance to face the red sox. All for the best. Yankees/Red Sox is boring. Bring on the Mets!)
Failing that, I will use the moment to do some writing. Movies! reviews! Yesterday, I saw Tsai Ming-liang's latest, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone - set in Malaysia, but otherwise pretty consistent with the rest of his work. Long takes (92 shots in 2 hours, I think it works out to); not much dialogue, none by the main characters, I think; floods, fires, bugs, injury and illness; sexual longing, usually unwisely directed; loneliness sliding toward lunacy; basic bodily functions - eating and drinking, cooking, sleeping, pissing, cycles of bodily fluids, plus work - cooking, cleaning, etc. It's fairly grim, full of physical suffering and deprivation - perhaps the grimmest Tsai film since The River; though it ends as happily as any of his films have. Finally - the main protagonist of the film seems to be a mattress that gets dragged from place to place by the characters - it might be the "I" of the title, not wanting to sleep alone.
That was one thing. On the other hand, there's Across the Universe. I've noticed (and noted) that Inland Empire is a genuinely divisive film - people really do love it or hate it. Well - at least at the showing I saw, that's true of Across the Universe too. Sitting up front were a man and a woman who after gutting out an hour of it, had enough - they went out the front exit, and as they passed out into the street, the man flung his backpack angrily at a wall in front of him. I ca only assume this was a reaction to the film. Meanwhile, when the movie ended, a group behind me broke out into applause! And lest you think they might have been simply glad it was over - they were still there at the end of the credits, one of them declaring, "what a fantastic movie!" My own reaction fall between those extremes - though perhaps the way the letter C falls between A and Z. In fact - my main emotion during the film was disappointment. It could have worked. There are hints and flashes, usually in the dance routines - and indeed, it comes to shining life 2-3 times over it's 2 1/2 hours, though it never lasts. All through the film, the song and dance business tends to pop up, overmotivated, but not really integrated into the story - and quickly abandoned for more dull storytelling. It's a shame. A couple times it's almost criminal - "Come Together" gets a fine treatment - a real singer in Joe Cocker (the mediocrity of the lead actors as singers is a constant nag), and some very cool choreography of salarimen in a subway, then dancing with their briefcases on the street. Bono's bit - doing "I am the Walrus" - is embarrassing nonsense of the best kind, almost worthy of Moulin Rouge or Ken Russell, with Bono mugging and oversinging quite effectively. But the high point - the only part of this thing I hope ever to see again - is Eddie Izzard doing "For the Benefit of Mr Kite" more or less as himself. The film takes off for a moment - then comes back to earth, more bland standing around from the cast....
It's too bad. It's hard to imagine how this could have been a really good film - especially with the awful Forest Gump quality History of the Age story line. But it might well have been a properly over the top piece of shit - Julie Taymor, I think, is, in fact, not far from the Ken Russell of the age - with her biopix and Classics and now this, which at its best, is Tommy or The Wall on valium. Take away the valium, and people could at least have gotten a good laugh out of it. Instead - she is not willing to follow through on the weirder ideas; the dance routines toy with surrealism and general oddness, but they back off. Things start to go over the top, but they don't make it. And, on the other end - she doesn't extend the stylization of the everyday that crops up a couple times - some football cheers at the beginning, those commuters during "Come Together", some of the street scenes in Liverpool, especially at the end - far enough; doesn't extend it all the way. Abandons it completely for long stretches of melodramatic nonsense - dumb looking riots... too bad.
[This post has been updated: the laptop induced typos removed (or reduced), and a Ken Russell link added. And yes, I know The Wall is Alan Parker...]
What this means to us today, though, is just that I have some time to kill. A bit too late to start a movie - I can watch the Red Sox and Yankees, but really - those are, I'm afraid, about the least interesting games out there. Histrionics and hand-wringing - it's boring. The rivalry crap overshadows the games. I notice these days, the Yankees seem as into it as the Red Sox - a few years of mediocrity will do that. (What, you say? the Yankees have won the division every year since 1645! how can they be mediocre? - I say, 200 million dollars is a lot of money. It can dress up a pig in the finest silks. And that can get you through the early rounds when no one is paying attention. But have the Yankees won anything in the post season? bluffing their way past the red sox in 03 and alkmost bluffing their way past them again in 04 is all they have to brag about. This year, assuming they get the Angels int he first round, they won't get a chance to face the red sox. All for the best. Yankees/Red Sox is boring. Bring on the Mets!)
Failing that, I will use the moment to do some writing. Movies! reviews! Yesterday, I saw Tsai Ming-liang's latest, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone - set in Malaysia, but otherwise pretty consistent with the rest of his work. Long takes (92 shots in 2 hours, I think it works out to); not much dialogue, none by the main characters, I think; floods, fires, bugs, injury and illness; sexual longing, usually unwisely directed; loneliness sliding toward lunacy; basic bodily functions - eating and drinking, cooking, sleeping, pissing, cycles of bodily fluids, plus work - cooking, cleaning, etc. It's fairly grim, full of physical suffering and deprivation - perhaps the grimmest Tsai film since The River; though it ends as happily as any of his films have. Finally - the main protagonist of the film seems to be a mattress that gets dragged from place to place by the characters - it might be the "I" of the title, not wanting to sleep alone.
That was one thing. On the other hand, there's Across the Universe. I've noticed (and noted) that Inland Empire is a genuinely divisive film - people really do love it or hate it. Well - at least at the showing I saw, that's true of Across the Universe too. Sitting up front were a man and a woman who after gutting out an hour of it, had enough - they went out the front exit, and as they passed out into the street, the man flung his backpack angrily at a wall in front of him. I ca only assume this was a reaction to the film. Meanwhile, when the movie ended, a group behind me broke out into applause! And lest you think they might have been simply glad it was over - they were still there at the end of the credits, one of them declaring, "what a fantastic movie!" My own reaction fall between those extremes - though perhaps the way the letter C falls between A and Z. In fact - my main emotion during the film was disappointment. It could have worked. There are hints and flashes, usually in the dance routines - and indeed, it comes to shining life 2-3 times over it's 2 1/2 hours, though it never lasts. All through the film, the song and dance business tends to pop up, overmotivated, but not really integrated into the story - and quickly abandoned for more dull storytelling. It's a shame. A couple times it's almost criminal - "Come Together" gets a fine treatment - a real singer in Joe Cocker (the mediocrity of the lead actors as singers is a constant nag), and some very cool choreography of salarimen in a subway, then dancing with their briefcases on the street. Bono's bit - doing "I am the Walrus" - is embarrassing nonsense of the best kind, almost worthy of Moulin Rouge or Ken Russell, with Bono mugging and oversinging quite effectively. But the high point - the only part of this thing I hope ever to see again - is Eddie Izzard doing "For the Benefit of Mr Kite" more or less as himself. The film takes off for a moment - then comes back to earth, more bland standing around from the cast....
It's too bad. It's hard to imagine how this could have been a really good film - especially with the awful Forest Gump quality History of the Age story line. But it might well have been a properly over the top piece of shit - Julie Taymor, I think, is, in fact, not far from the Ken Russell of the age - with her biopix and Classics and now this, which at its best, is Tommy or The Wall on valium. Take away the valium, and people could at least have gotten a good laugh out of it. Instead - she is not willing to follow through on the weirder ideas; the dance routines toy with surrealism and general oddness, but they back off. Things start to go over the top, but they don't make it. And, on the other end - she doesn't extend the stylization of the everyday that crops up a couple times - some football cheers at the beginning, those commuters during "Come Together", some of the street scenes in Liverpool, especially at the end - far enough; doesn't extend it all the way. Abandons it completely for long stretches of melodramatic nonsense - dumb looking riots... too bad.
[This post has been updated: the laptop induced typos removed (or reduced), and a Ken Russell link added. And yes, I know The Wall is Alan Parker...]
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