Thanks to Adam Ross, who pushes a fine new meme on me - The Holy Grail List. A variation on the 12 films meme Piper sent into the world - 12 films (1) you haven't seen - and (2) aren't available on Netflix. As usual, it's taking me forever to get this thing written - but here it is! and in time for my first item still to be true!
Those who know me won't be surprised that this is heavy on the Asian films. And I know that this is a list that I will add to, in my head at least, endlessly after I post it. (Heck - I might put it in the sidebar alongside the blogathon list and keep adding to it on purpose...) This is going to have to be the first 12 films [more or less - I fully intend to cheat when possible] that come into my head, which isn't likely to cover it....
1. I have to start with Edward Yang -because if things go well, his films will come off this list over the next week or two. The HFA is running a retrospective - complete, I believe. I have seen 2 - Mahjong and Yi Yi - the first interesting, the latter a towering masterpiece. I suspect if I could see Mahjong again, it would rise as well. I don't know why his films are so hard to see - granted, they're difficult art films - but not that difficult. Maybe that's the problem - they're not as extreme as Hou Hsiao Hsien, lack the romanticism of Tsai Ming-liang - so they get short changed. I don't know. I can't explain it. But I am intensely grateful that they are finally coming...
2. Humanity and Paper Balloons - Sadao Yamanaka's classic, the values of contemporary films by the likes of Ozu and Naruse applied to the Japanese period film. Gotta see it. I could fill this list with 30s Japanese films (just going through Michael Kerpan's blog, say), but this one can stand as emblem for them all....
3. ...maybe not all - take for instance Chikamatsu Monogatari - AKA, Tale of Crucified Lovers - Mizoguchi.... this is often listed high in rankings of his films, but never available as far as I have seen. Sooner or later, I suppose, these films might make it here - Mizoguchi is slowly coming into print in the US. Kurosawa has always been available in the states; Ozu is catching up - with 14, 15 films available here - another half dozen and he might be reasonably well represented. (The 30s masterpieces - An Inn in Tokyo and The Only Son, at the very very least, have to be available first.) Mizoguchi has a lot of ground to make up. And then Naruse and Imamura and Oshima and Ichikawa and all the rest... (Of that lot, only Oshima is a good candidate for this list - decent retrospectives of the other three have played here, so I have seen a fair sample - all of Imamura, most of it multiple times... also probably no surprise to readers, at least those who recognize a reincarnated husband when they see one. Though Oshima might not be long for this list either - a retrospective is touring...)
4. Ishtar - what? Foul, you cry - Ishtar IS listed at Netflix! True true, I say, that's why it's been sitting in my "Saved DVDs" list there for 3 years (more or less.) I notice A New Leaf and the Heartbreak Kid are there too, to "Save" - not to "Add." The bastards. Those of you who haven't seen it though, can console yourselves with Mikey And Nicky. Why yes, I do like Elaine May. And - shit... I am cheating: "You must not have seen any of the films on your list, either in theatres or on video" - shit. That ruins that. Of course I've seen Ishtar - on TV - most of it anyway - have I seen Ishtar? It used to be on TV all the time, but I dont know if I have seen it, start to finish, on purpose, or not. I want to. Given its reputation, at least when it came out, compared to what I know about May, and now that I've seen May's other films - could it be so bad? The bits of it I've caught in the last few years have played as sneakily amusing instead of ham-fisted and dull. One should also consider the effects of seeing (and loving) a bunch of Luc Moullet films (many of them available on Netflix!) - that might be an instructive comparison.... I have to see it again... but that seems more or less impossible.
5. Out One: Noli Me Tangere - The French could be pretty well represented here too. I've seen the short version of Out One, but not this. I've never seen a Rivette film that came close to being too long, including 6 hours of Jeanne la Poucelle, so I quite expect this to be a riveting 13 hours.
6. La Cicatrice Interieure - I've had the good luck to see some pretty darned obscure Philippe Garrel films - Le Lit de la Vierge, say... but nowhere near enough. Like a few directors on this list, almost all his films could qualify - Cicatrice Interieure sounds fascinating - it can stand for them all....
7. Hirokazu Kore-Eda's Hana Yori mo Naho - oh wait: look at that! So why wasn't this released? Because no one expects a samurai film from Kore Eda? that's certainly an annoying fact - directors who depart from their established styles, tend to be ignored. Take Zhang Yimou - now that he's become a big costume epic filmmaker, his smaller films (like Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles) get the barest of releases... This is off topic: darn - how do I get this back? Keep Cool? That was one of the first films I noticed this phenomenon with - after a string of historical epics and melodramas, Zhang turned to contemporary China, a looser, more comic film (so they say - I haven't seen it, obviously) - and besides whatever trouble the commies made for him back home, the film never got distributed - and - happily for our purposes, if not for those wanting to see the film - it ain't on Netflix!
8. Jang Sun-woo's Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie - one of the first Korean movies I read about, 10 odd years ago - it sounded very interesting, but I don't think it has ever surfaced anywhere near me. Lies is on Netflix - I guess a good flogging is always helpful in getting your films distributed. It's also a fairly remarkable film - makes me want to see more of his work.
9. Bigger than Life - Nicholas Ray's film, also mentioned at the Dancing Image - but yeah, one I haven't seen, and long to see.
10. Histoires du Cinema - Godard's big video project. This is another one others have mentioned, but I have to note it,because, damn.... I suppose it's just a region 2 DVD player and £25.98 away, but still...
11. Oh yes - Fantomas - Feuillade's 1913 epic... Another reason to get a Region 2 DVD player, I guess. But - yeah. In fact - freakin' Bordwell might as well be the last entry on this list - especially when he writes about the early silents. Enough of my Netflix queue is already occupied with Victor Sjostrom, Evgenie Bauer, William S. Hart and the like - never mind the ones that aren't there. Though if you think he's bad - try reading Noel Burch!
12. I knew once I started I'd never stop... Souls on the Road - one of the great early Japanese silent films, 1921... or Red Bat - 1931 chambara...
Enough!
For tags - well - how about the rest of the Film and Discussion crew? Joseph tagged Evan - but if I can get Karyn, Erik, Blade, Mike to join in - why, that would be a fine thing!
(I've also posted a shorter version of this list there.)
Monday, September 08, 2008
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
My Septennial Woody Allen Film
It's a strange fact. I have managed, for 21 years now, to see a Woody Allen film, new in the theater, every 7 years. I saw Radio Days - then Bullets Over Broadway - then The Curse of the Jade Scorpion - and now, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I've mentioned before - not on this blog, another one - that Woody Allen was one of the first filmmakers I noticed, as a filmmaker. (It's interesting that Film Walrus said almost the same thing is his recent "let's just be friends" post about Allen - "one of the first highbrow auteurs that budding film nerds gravitate towards." Yup.) I was a fan in the 80s - the only filmmaker I followed, at least until Blue Velvet came out and I discovered a rather more intoxicating brew.... So it is odd that I have basically stopped seeing new Woody Allen films.
The first gap (87-94) made the most sense - I barely saw any movies in the late 80s - 88-91, say, I'd be surprised if I saw a dozen new films combined. That changed, and after I started going to films again, I finally got around to seeing Woody Allen again... But here - the truth is, I didn't love Radio Days - found it sentimental nostalgia, not up to proper Woody Allen - Sleeper or Annie Hall or Zelig or even Broadway Danny Rose (which I greatly enjoyed on its release.) And Bullets Over Broadway, which came well hyped, proved to be amusing, but kind of drab - predictable plot and characters, a bit forced and over designed. So though I enjoyed it, I didn't feel obliged to see the next Allen film... though throughout the late 90s I always considered it - I'd plan to see them - but it never worked out... What finally did work out was The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Why? Because I was stuck in Manchester New Hampshire for a week, with 3 channels of cable and dial up connection to AOL to fill the evenings - a movie was a joyous respite. The Woody Allen was the best of what must have been a dreary slate up in the hinterlands - o that's where we went. And again - I enjoyed it - it was fun, like a Duck Tale on film - maybe not a Carl Barks duck tale, but a decent imitation... But that's not enough to send you back to the auteur, and the next few Woody Allen films are so forgettable I would not know they existed if I had not looked them up. And then he moved to England for a few films, which - in the immortal words of Belle Waring, "has been implausibly touted as watchable"...
Right. Now comes a new Woody Allen, this one set in Barcelona, and again, inspiring a certain amount of gushing in the press - not very plausibly, to be sure, but still. And again I found myself with a weekend without any inspiring options and excellent weather that convinced me to hike over to Coolidge Corner to see the it.
Michael Atkinson is right. This is not something that happens to me much - but there I was, 15, 20 minutes into the film, the scene in the restaurant, where Javier Bardem has invited the girls off for a weekend of sight-seeing and sex, then left them to argue about it - one of them is an uptight wise ass nerd, the other a dreamy insecure hedonistic, so they disagree - and keep disagreeing, and Woody keeps cutting back and forth between them, simple 3/4 shots, cutting, back and forth, as they drone on and on and on and... I don't think I've ever actually bailed on a film - but if this had happened five minutes earlier - if I had had time to go downstairs and see Frozen River instead - I would have. It was close. Instead I scanned the back of the shot, hoping something would move back there to give me something else to look at... there was a nice shot somewhere, early in the film, some combination of characters blabbing away in the middle of the screen, but in the corner, Allen had left a statue, sort of out of focus, but visible. Probably an accident - maybe the matte as wrong... But for a bit, there was something to look at!
I was able to take some comfort over the next hour or so in spotting the better films Allen was intentionally or otherwise referencing. Given the dry voiceover, the setting, the characters - not just the uptight nerd/hedonist central pairing, but all the insufferable rich Americans around them - even the frigging plot, with the two Americans getting tangled up with the same local lovers, with a dangerous ex- turning up with a gun to resolve the whole thing - it is hard not to drop the "Vicky Cristina" part of the title and think of the almost unimaginably better Barcelona. Now that's a movie. And while Stillman is not exactly Wes Anderson with a camera (...and the voiceover, the Americans trying to "find themselves" in an exotic land, etc., occasionally called him to mind too...), he knows how to cover a scene to bring out the best in the dialogue. Though of course, he also writes dialogue that is funny and clever and tells a story and all the other good things Woody Allen used to do somewhere in the dim past. He also makes characters - even those representing types, even a lot of the bit players - interesting, worth finding out more about. He seems interested in finding out more about them. Not so Mr. Allen, not in 2008. No one ever is or does or says anything that was not more or less obviously predictable from the minute they appear onscreen - unless they are required to behave in a certain way for Plot Purposes.
I wish - in a dream, Woody Allen has a tiff with some financier on the set and goes home in a huff and the Insurance Stooges step in and demand someone Finish the Film - Whit Stillman would be a fine choice; Wes Anderson too; or Pedro Almodovar, another one Allen seems to be trying to channel here. Or nearly anyone, really.... They've got a gorgeous cast, they've got Barcelona, they have the bare makings of a decent story - it can't be that hard to make something watchable. Instead - this looks and plays like a soft-core porn film with the sex scenes cut out. Dull, unbelievable, and promising titillation but then primly turning away whenever something smutty starts to appear. And just so boring to look at! all those streets, those houses, those Gaudi buildings, and there's never anything going on anywhere but between whichever two characters are droning away in the foreground. (Or middle distance - where they wander listlessly back and forth...) None of the background business, the elaborate compositions, etc. that Anderson loves; lacking the patience and interest in group dynamics Stillman has; none of the joy in design, in colors and movement, even in just the solid facts of human bodies, that Almodovar has. Dull editing - that's what almost sent me running, the plain back and forth cuts, edited to a metronome I think... nothing.
I'll leave with one more complaint. A documentary turned up on PBS this weekend - "Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey" - showing a biologist, Spencer Wells, traveling round the world, tracing the genetic history of man... okay - nothing special - but full of shots that - why can't Woody Allen do this?
Look at that shot - the kid in the background - the statue... but especially the kid - who, in the actual shot, follows Wells and the camera as Wells walks around that wall, or whatever it is. It's a great shot - funny in itself - almost impossible to imagine the filmmakers set it up, the kid I mean... It's the main thing missing in the Allen film. Any sense of there being anything alive in the shot - anything in the shot not there on purpose, or - anything in the shot that isn't completely functional in the shot. (It's probably the same thing: Wes Anderson's films are full of that kind of background business, though all of it is exquisitely choreographed. So it's not spontaneity that's missing, it's - anything.) There's nothing. Allen isn't a good enough writer, not now, to pull off turning on the camera and letting the words come - and really, no one any good actually does that anyway. But he has no ideas - no ides how to turn a simple dialogue scene into an interesting dialogue scene. Nothing that opens the film up - or, really, closes the film in. (If he were making a film about claustrophobia - he doesn't do that either.) It's just there.
The first gap (87-94) made the most sense - I barely saw any movies in the late 80s - 88-91, say, I'd be surprised if I saw a dozen new films combined. That changed, and after I started going to films again, I finally got around to seeing Woody Allen again... But here - the truth is, I didn't love Radio Days - found it sentimental nostalgia, not up to proper Woody Allen - Sleeper or Annie Hall or Zelig or even Broadway Danny Rose (which I greatly enjoyed on its release.) And Bullets Over Broadway, which came well hyped, proved to be amusing, but kind of drab - predictable plot and characters, a bit forced and over designed. So though I enjoyed it, I didn't feel obliged to see the next Allen film... though throughout the late 90s I always considered it - I'd plan to see them - but it never worked out... What finally did work out was The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Why? Because I was stuck in Manchester New Hampshire for a week, with 3 channels of cable and dial up connection to AOL to fill the evenings - a movie was a joyous respite. The Woody Allen was the best of what must have been a dreary slate up in the hinterlands - o that's where we went. And again - I enjoyed it - it was fun, like a Duck Tale on film - maybe not a Carl Barks duck tale, but a decent imitation... But that's not enough to send you back to the auteur, and the next few Woody Allen films are so forgettable I would not know they existed if I had not looked them up. And then he moved to England for a few films, which - in the immortal words of Belle Waring, "has been implausibly touted as watchable"...
Right. Now comes a new Woody Allen, this one set in Barcelona, and again, inspiring a certain amount of gushing in the press - not very plausibly, to be sure, but still. And again I found myself with a weekend without any inspiring options and excellent weather that convinced me to hike over to Coolidge Corner to see the it.
Michael Atkinson is right. This is not something that happens to me much - but there I was, 15, 20 minutes into the film, the scene in the restaurant, where Javier Bardem has invited the girls off for a weekend of sight-seeing and sex, then left them to argue about it - one of them is an uptight wise ass nerd, the other a dreamy insecure hedonistic, so they disagree - and keep disagreeing, and Woody keeps cutting back and forth between them, simple 3/4 shots, cutting, back and forth, as they drone on and on and on and... I don't think I've ever actually bailed on a film - but if this had happened five minutes earlier - if I had had time to go downstairs and see Frozen River instead - I would have. It was close. Instead I scanned the back of the shot, hoping something would move back there to give me something else to look at... there was a nice shot somewhere, early in the film, some combination of characters blabbing away in the middle of the screen, but in the corner, Allen had left a statue, sort of out of focus, but visible. Probably an accident - maybe the matte as wrong... But for a bit, there was something to look at!
I was able to take some comfort over the next hour or so in spotting the better films Allen was intentionally or otherwise referencing. Given the dry voiceover, the setting, the characters - not just the uptight nerd/hedonist central pairing, but all the insufferable rich Americans around them - even the frigging plot, with the two Americans getting tangled up with the same local lovers, with a dangerous ex- turning up with a gun to resolve the whole thing - it is hard not to drop the "Vicky Cristina" part of the title and think of the almost unimaginably better Barcelona. Now that's a movie. And while Stillman is not exactly Wes Anderson with a camera (...and the voiceover, the Americans trying to "find themselves" in an exotic land, etc., occasionally called him to mind too...), he knows how to cover a scene to bring out the best in the dialogue. Though of course, he also writes dialogue that is funny and clever and tells a story and all the other good things Woody Allen used to do somewhere in the dim past. He also makes characters - even those representing types, even a lot of the bit players - interesting, worth finding out more about. He seems interested in finding out more about them. Not so Mr. Allen, not in 2008. No one ever is or does or says anything that was not more or less obviously predictable from the minute they appear onscreen - unless they are required to behave in a certain way for Plot Purposes.
I wish - in a dream, Woody Allen has a tiff with some financier on the set and goes home in a huff and the Insurance Stooges step in and demand someone Finish the Film - Whit Stillman would be a fine choice; Wes Anderson too; or Pedro Almodovar, another one Allen seems to be trying to channel here. Or nearly anyone, really.... They've got a gorgeous cast, they've got Barcelona, they have the bare makings of a decent story - it can't be that hard to make something watchable. Instead - this looks and plays like a soft-core porn film with the sex scenes cut out. Dull, unbelievable, and promising titillation but then primly turning away whenever something smutty starts to appear. And just so boring to look at! all those streets, those houses, those Gaudi buildings, and there's never anything going on anywhere but between whichever two characters are droning away in the foreground. (Or middle distance - where they wander listlessly back and forth...) None of the background business, the elaborate compositions, etc. that Anderson loves; lacking the patience and interest in group dynamics Stillman has; none of the joy in design, in colors and movement, even in just the solid facts of human bodies, that Almodovar has. Dull editing - that's what almost sent me running, the plain back and forth cuts, edited to a metronome I think... nothing.
I'll leave with one more complaint. A documentary turned up on PBS this weekend - "Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey" - showing a biologist, Spencer Wells, traveling round the world, tracing the genetic history of man... okay - nothing special - but full of shots that - why can't Woody Allen do this?
Look at that shot - the kid in the background - the statue... but especially the kid - who, in the actual shot, follows Wells and the camera as Wells walks around that wall, or whatever it is. It's a great shot - funny in itself - almost impossible to imagine the filmmakers set it up, the kid I mean... It's the main thing missing in the Allen film. Any sense of there being anything alive in the shot - anything in the shot not there on purpose, or - anything in the shot that isn't completely functional in the shot. (It's probably the same thing: Wes Anderson's films are full of that kind of background business, though all of it is exquisitely choreographed. So it's not spontaneity that's missing, it's - anything.) There's nothing. Allen isn't a good enough writer, not now, to pull off turning on the camera and letting the words come - and really, no one any good actually does that anyway. But he has no ideas - no ides how to turn a simple dialogue scene into an interesting dialogue scene. Nothing that opens the film up - or, really, closes the film in. (If he were making a film about claustrophobia - he doesn't do that either.) It's just there.
More Politics, I'm Afraid
A political miracle - Peggy Noonan (and Mike Murphy) say pretty much what I think about McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for veep:
The link is everywhere, at least on the lefty blogs. I first saw it at If I Ran the Zoo, where in comments, Tom Hilton links to Daniel Nexon noting what this says about modern pundits. They know better, but keep putting it out.... hypocrisy, cynicism, shamelessness - the modern republican party.
The link is everywhere, at least on the lefty blogs. I first saw it at If I Ran the Zoo, where in comments, Tom Hilton links to Daniel Nexon noting what this says about modern pundits. They know better, but keep putting it out.... hypocrisy, cynicism, shamelessness - the modern republican party.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
September
I don't really fee like writing anything about the Republican Convention. It's bound to be clown show - McCain's campaign has been a clown show so far - picking Palin as VP? it's hard to believe. Skim through the Sarah Palin posts at Lawyers, Guns and Money: we've got pork barrel politics and lies about government pork; we've got the secessionist party; we've got the abuse of power to settle old grudges and personal feuds; the book banning; the ignorance about history (the founding fathers and the pledge of allegiance); the inexperience and incompetence and hilarious attempts to cover for it (Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard!); the fact that she's never been to Canada - and oh yeah, the kid... Well, it's not fair to pick on the kid - lots of kids mess around, and it's not as though the GOP and their supporters would ever criticize the choice sand misfortunes of others. Right?
Those fuckers. Its endless - the things they - the right, at least the public face of the right - do to prove, one more time, that they are utterly without shame. Shameless moralizing hypocrites - they have no values, no morals, nothing, but sheer naked self-interest. There's no reason to be surprised any more - one reason I haven't bothered writing much about politics in a long while. There's nothing left to say. The modern republican party is a party of hypocrisy and power -there is nothing to say or do but vote as many of them out of power as is necessary to convince the rest to grow up and act like human beings again. I imagine most republicans are decent human beings - the ones I know are, they just don't agree with me. But they make common cause with scum, and reap the benefits of the viciousness of the bad ones, so they - the decent republicans - need to lose some elections and fast. Though who knows - there's no sign that the public is much better...
I don't know. You can see the results of of Republican governance on display - Tucker at Pilgrim Akimbo has a post up about protests in Minnesota, and police over-reaction; Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings comments; Glenn Greenwald reports and summarizes.
This is nothing new. Police have been ramping up their response to demonstrations since at least Seattle 1999. September 11, of course, provided an excuse or even more "security", especially around big events like political conventions - though lot of this occurs at a more day to day level. 9/11 put the fear in us - with cause - but we allowed the fear to linger, and it has become paranoia and cowardice. The republicans, in particular, have been the party of paranoia and cowardice - which translates into shows of toughness - attacking the weak, from Iraq, to torturing POWs, to sending cops out in riot gear against radio personalities. (And lite brites! don't forget lite brites!) And what I said then - at some point, it's hard not to see all of this, the petty crap, the bag searches at ball games, the riot cops in subways, the absurdities at airports, the illegal phone tapping and retroactive immunities, the shows of force at conventions and the like, as being meant to teach us to take a police state for granted. Keep pretending they're protecting us, so that when they need to act to genuinely control us, they can - and we can't do anything about it.
I'm not inclined to paranoia, though - I doubt anyone is planning all this. I don't expect a coup, by anyone. But things happen. And habits form. And we form the habit of having everything supervised by men with guns and bullet proof vests and we form the habit of keeping quiet about it. And - if anything happens - our government is in the habit of using those security forces to control it. So... we should not be so willing to accept it. None of it.
So anyway. This stuff won't go away when the republicans lose power - Obama voted wrong on the telecom immunity act - democrats will use it - they encouraged it in the 90s..... But they haven't made a career of it - they seem to have values other than just their own power, and they appeal to emotions besides fear and the desire to find someone else to blame and hurt. So there is hope there.
Oh well. I don't want to write much about politics - too depressing by half. Septembers do it though. The anniversaries of September 11, of Hurricane Katrina - and of my friend's death in Iraq - push this stuff to the front of my mind. And the insult of McCain's choice of Palin for VP (insult to everyone - the American people, women, Palin herself, competent republican women politicians, HIllary Clinton, etc.) plus the usual thuggery in the name of security gives me ample material to rave about....
Those fuckers. Its endless - the things they - the right, at least the public face of the right - do to prove, one more time, that they are utterly without shame. Shameless moralizing hypocrites - they have no values, no morals, nothing, but sheer naked self-interest. There's no reason to be surprised any more - one reason I haven't bothered writing much about politics in a long while. There's nothing left to say. The modern republican party is a party of hypocrisy and power -there is nothing to say or do but vote as many of them out of power as is necessary to convince the rest to grow up and act like human beings again. I imagine most republicans are decent human beings - the ones I know are, they just don't agree with me. But they make common cause with scum, and reap the benefits of the viciousness of the bad ones, so they - the decent republicans - need to lose some elections and fast. Though who knows - there's no sign that the public is much better...
I don't know. You can see the results of of Republican governance on display - Tucker at Pilgrim Akimbo has a post up about protests in Minnesota, and police over-reaction; Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings comments; Glenn Greenwald reports and summarizes.
This is nothing new. Police have been ramping up their response to demonstrations since at least Seattle 1999. September 11, of course, provided an excuse or even more "security", especially around big events like political conventions - though lot of this occurs at a more day to day level. 9/11 put the fear in us - with cause - but we allowed the fear to linger, and it has become paranoia and cowardice. The republicans, in particular, have been the party of paranoia and cowardice - which translates into shows of toughness - attacking the weak, from Iraq, to torturing POWs, to sending cops out in riot gear against radio personalities. (And lite brites! don't forget lite brites!) And what I said then - at some point, it's hard not to see all of this, the petty crap, the bag searches at ball games, the riot cops in subways, the absurdities at airports, the illegal phone tapping and retroactive immunities, the shows of force at conventions and the like, as being meant to teach us to take a police state for granted. Keep pretending they're protecting us, so that when they need to act to genuinely control us, they can - and we can't do anything about it.
I'm not inclined to paranoia, though - I doubt anyone is planning all this. I don't expect a coup, by anyone. But things happen. And habits form. And we form the habit of having everything supervised by men with guns and bullet proof vests and we form the habit of keeping quiet about it. And - if anything happens - our government is in the habit of using those security forces to control it. So... we should not be so willing to accept it. None of it.
So anyway. This stuff won't go away when the republicans lose power - Obama voted wrong on the telecom immunity act - democrats will use it - they encouraged it in the 90s..... But they haven't made a career of it - they seem to have values other than just their own power, and they appeal to emotions besides fear and the desire to find someone else to blame and hurt. So there is hope there.
Oh well. I don't want to write much about politics - too depressing by half. Septembers do it though. The anniversaries of September 11, of Hurricane Katrina - and of my friend's death in Iraq - push this stuff to the front of my mind. And the insult of McCain's choice of Palin for VP (insult to everyone - the American people, women, Palin herself, competent republican women politicians, HIllary Clinton, etc.) plus the usual thuggery in the name of security gives me ample material to rave about....
Monday, September 01, 2008
Labor Day
Happy labor day people! To quote some of America's finest Aristocrats:
You get up in the morning to join the common herd
Your lot is a hard one, or so I have heard
I know how hard it is to bust one's ass
'Cause I'm a Friend of a Friend of the Working Class
And I can only wish the best for the poor working man - if things are hard - well,there's always Roque!
Or - Marianne Faithful doing Lenin:
Or Lennon, as it were...
You get up in the morning to join the common herd
Your lot is a hard one, or so I have heard
I know how hard it is to bust one's ass
'Cause I'm a Friend of a Friend of the Working Class
And I can only wish the best for the poor working man - if things are hard - well,there's always Roque!
Or - Marianne Faithful doing Lenin:
Or Lennon, as it were...
Saturday, August 30, 2008
End of Summer Answers
I'm proud to get this done in less than the usual three weeks! Here it is - Dennis Cozzalio's latest quiz - Dr. Smith’s Lost in the Space at the End of Summer Movie Quiz. I'm also posting it there - but I want it here, because some of these questions (as always) might draw me back for more...
And away we go:
1) Your favorite musical moment in a movie
- This is simple - Night and Day in Gay Divorcee. If "musical moment" is meant to mean specifically to exclude "musical number", then I think I might vote for the moment in Something Wild, as Charley and Lulu head for home, when the Feelies song on the soundtrack, Slipping (into Something), slips into something and out of something else - it's after the end of the second verse, the guitars have done their intro and started to intertwine and the drums do a little hitch and the song starts speeding up - the song heads off for the guitar solos, and the film turns into a Ray Liotta picture.
2) Ray Milland or Dana Andrews
- Andrews I think
3) Favorite Sidney Lumet movie
- It turns out that Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was the first I had ever seen. I could not believe that either, and had to look up a bunch of films - Tootsie, say - to prove he did not direct them. It is also possible I have seen Dog Day Afternoon, though I don't remember ever sitting through it start to finish. Though if you add up the clips I might end up having seen the whole thing... I have read 12 Angry Men, though. And - wait! wait! I have seen Fail Safe! way back in college. I don't remember anything about it except that Henry Fonda was in it and New York gets it.
4) Biggest surprise of the just-past summer movie season
- Did anything surprise me? Speed Racer? I certainly enjoyed it, which didn't seem likely before I saw it... The biggest surprise MIGHT be that I have no interest at all in seeing The Dark Knight. Nothing about it seems worth knowing about. I'd rather see Batman and Robin again than see it the first time. I'll probably like it, modestly, when I see it, but I couldn't care less if I do. That attitude does surprise me.
5) Gene Tierney or Rita Hayworth
- Rita
6) What’s the last movie you saw on DVD? In theaters?
- This changes all the time. The answer when I started was King Kong on DVD; The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in a theater. It looks like I am going to finish it with the answers, The Boy With Green Hair on DVD, and (I'm sure Dennis will approve), Once Upon a Time in the West.
7) Irwin Allen’s finest hour?
- No clue. Airplane?
8) What were the films where you would rather see the movie promised by the poster than the one that was actually made?
- This is the kind of question that drives me crazy. I can't think of a good answer - but I will. I se enough posters like that - I just can't think of them on command. I'm completely stumped.
9) Chow Yun-Fat or Tony Leung
- It’s a question of peak vs. longevity - or depth vs. breadth. Chow has a perfect sweet spot - in those John Woo films and most of his films (actioners, a couple comedies, and quite a few in between) from the late 80s early 90s, he is unbeatable. But he hasn't done much since, and less worth caring about, while Leung, who was always a fine actor, has kept on going. He's had a long, varied, downright majestic career when you think about it, covering a much wider range of roles, types of films, everything, than just about anyone, anywhere. Program pictures to Hou Hsiao Hsien, and all the time seeming committed to the work he's doing. So maybe he can't match Chow at his charismatic best, but he's kept his career moving, taken more chances, done more to advance serious and challenging filmmakers, and done all of it well. In this, he's less like Chow Yun Fat than like Leslie Cheung, though Cheung was better than either of the at anything any of the three tried. But that's another matter.
10) Most pretentious movie ever
- This is tough - I would have to define pretentiousness to answer it well. So I will stay obvious - Bertolucci is the grand champion - and The Last Emperor is the worst kind of bloated nothing. Felt like they shot it in real time. Yuck.
11) Favorite Russ Meyer movie
- Boring answer, but, Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!
12) Name the movie that you feel best reflects yourself, a movie you would recommend to an acquaintance that most accurately says, “This is me.”
- In some moods, Rushmore - though all rather plowed under by the demands of a Paying Job. Or maybe Waking Life - with its sense of a world of consciousness existing alongside the world of the world. In fact - Waking Life is probably about right.
13) Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo
- “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.” I can't say there's any contest, really.
14) Best movie snack? Most vile movie snack?
- I don’t eat at the movies, so this is not easy. Milk Duds are a vile concoction, I'll say that. A good bucket of popcorn has its place....
15) Current movie star who would be most comfortable in the classic Hollywood studio system.
- George Clooney seems obvious; Tony Leung probably has, as much as anyone - Hong Kong still is (or was, through the 90s) pretty darned close to the old Hollywood system.
16) Fitzcarraldo—yes or no?
- Hell yeah.
17) Your assignment is to book the ultimate triple bill to inaugurate your own revival theater. What three movies will we see on opening night?
- This is beautiful - this is one of those questions that’s almost worth a post itself. What would I show, if I won the lottery and bought a theater and could show any three films? Rushmore, the Maltese Falcon and It's a Wonderful Life. I might try to resist it, but I doubt I could.
18) What’s the name of your theater? (The all-time greatest answer to this question was once provided by Larry Aydlette, whose repertory cinema, the Demarest, is, I hope, still packing them in…)
- All right - another one I could brood about for a month... probably could do worst than "Playtime"...
19) Favorite Leo McCarey movie
- Duck Soup of course. Though since that is really a Marx Brothers film - Make Way for Tomorrow (or The Awful Truth? this question is a lot harder - after the Marx Brothers - than it used to be, now that I’ve seen bunch of these films.) (Hey! The Awful Truth 24 Times A Second! how's that for a movie theater name?)
20) Most impressive debut performance by an actor/actress.
- James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause? Orson Welles in Citizen Kane? Bruno S in The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser? IMDB ruins my hope that Full Metal Jacket was Vincent D'Onofrio's first film... alas!
21) Biggest disappointment of the just-past summer movie season
- I didn't see any high profile releases, at least since Speed Racer. Smaller films - The Tracey Fragments turned out to be pretty bland, for all the hype and promise, though it's almost too mall to complain about... Maybe Mr. Lonely, which kept promising things and delivering incoherence and sentimentality....
22) Michelle Yeoh or Maggie Cheung
- Cheung Man-yuk. This is even less of a contest than the first actress show down. (Though again - neither one holds up to Brigitte Lin, who’d give Marlene a run for it.)
23) 2008 inductee into the Academy of the Overrated
- Nobody's bugged me this year. And I haven't seen the films that are getting all the (probably) undeserved praise - Batman, etc. So - until someone drags me to see the Batman film, and I am confirmed in my suspicions about it, I have nothing really.
24) 2008 inductee into the Academy of the Underrated
- You know what? I am feeling perverse: the Joel Schumacher Batmans. The scripts probably are as bad as they get credit for, but I'll take that campy overacting and over directing over - well - over Batman Begins, no question. So there.
25) Fritz the Cat—yes or no?
- Haven’t seen the movie, but, yes, in general.
26) Trevor Howard or Richard Todd
- Probably Howard, though I'm rather hot to see the Robin Hood film Todd was in...
27) Antonioni once said, “I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.” What filmmaker working today most fruitfully ignores the rules? What does ignoring the rules of cinema mean in 2008?
- I don't know what the rules of cinema are - "rules" sounds so rigid, like it's possible to make mistakes making films. "Conventions" maybe... either way, there probably comes a point in the development of an art form where it ceases to have right and wrong ways of doing things, and just competing sets of rules (or conventions, or whatever.) That point has probably passed for film - anything you do, however strange by the standards of one type of film, will make sense within some other branch of filmmaking.... All that said - I don't know if anyone else really looks like Luc Moullet, to this day. He pays as little attention to the things that do approach being rules - treat the world you make as if it were real; try to either achieve technical competence or hide technical limitations; or make self-conscious art of them - as anyone. So I'll say Luc Moullet.
28) Favorite William Castle movie
- Goodness. I don't think I've even accidentally seen one of his films, unless you count Rosemary's Baby. Probably the kind of director I'll decide to take in a bunch somewhere along the line. Maybe now... in compensation, I'll say that The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus might be the most underrated LP of all time. Which has nothing to do with Castle that I know of except a reference to a title...
29) Favorite ethnographically oriented movie
- I'm not altogether sure what counts. Killer of Sheep might be the answer - Several Friends might be even better, as it's even more directly focused on a specific group of people just living their lives.
30) What’s the movie coming up in 2008 you’re most looking forward to? Why?
- For wide release, it's probably the Coen brothers film; for more specialized releases - not sure what's coming. There's an Edward Yang retrospective coming to Harvard in September - that's bigger than anything else I know of.
31) What deceased director would you want to resurrect in order that she/he might make one more film?
- Edward Yang is a good bet.
32) What director would you like to see, if not literally entombed, then at least go silent creatively?
- Woody Allen and Whit Stillman should switch career tracks.
33) Your first movie star crush
- This is one I will remember somewhere along the line - I will see something and go - holy cow, I was a wreck for her in 19[redacted]! What I'm coming up with right now are Talia Shire or Debra Winger but that can't be right. Though I certainly felt unwholesome things for Ms. Winger.... TV Star crushes are another matter - Barbara Feldon and, as my brothers continue to mock me for, Lady Elaine Fairchild. Pop culture crushes are something else entirely.
And away we go:
1) Your favorite musical moment in a movie
- This is simple - Night and Day in Gay Divorcee. If "musical moment" is meant to mean specifically to exclude "musical number", then I think I might vote for the moment in Something Wild, as Charley and Lulu head for home, when the Feelies song on the soundtrack, Slipping (into Something), slips into something and out of something else - it's after the end of the second verse, the guitars have done their intro and started to intertwine and the drums do a little hitch and the song starts speeding up - the song heads off for the guitar solos, and the film turns into a Ray Liotta picture.
2) Ray Milland or Dana Andrews
- Andrews I think
3) Favorite Sidney Lumet movie
- It turns out that Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was the first I had ever seen. I could not believe that either, and had to look up a bunch of films - Tootsie, say - to prove he did not direct them. It is also possible I have seen Dog Day Afternoon, though I don't remember ever sitting through it start to finish. Though if you add up the clips I might end up having seen the whole thing... I have read 12 Angry Men, though. And - wait! wait! I have seen Fail Safe! way back in college. I don't remember anything about it except that Henry Fonda was in it and New York gets it.
4) Biggest surprise of the just-past summer movie season
- Did anything surprise me? Speed Racer? I certainly enjoyed it, which didn't seem likely before I saw it... The biggest surprise MIGHT be that I have no interest at all in seeing The Dark Knight. Nothing about it seems worth knowing about. I'd rather see Batman and Robin again than see it the first time. I'll probably like it, modestly, when I see it, but I couldn't care less if I do. That attitude does surprise me.
5) Gene Tierney or Rita Hayworth
- Rita
6) What’s the last movie you saw on DVD? In theaters?
- This changes all the time. The answer when I started was King Kong on DVD; The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in a theater. It looks like I am going to finish it with the answers, The Boy With Green Hair on DVD, and (I'm sure Dennis will approve), Once Upon a Time in the West.
7) Irwin Allen’s finest hour?
- No clue. Airplane?
8) What were the films where you would rather see the movie promised by the poster than the one that was actually made?
- This is the kind of question that drives me crazy. I can't think of a good answer - but I will. I se enough posters like that - I just can't think of them on command. I'm completely stumped.
9) Chow Yun-Fat or Tony Leung
- It’s a question of peak vs. longevity - or depth vs. breadth. Chow has a perfect sweet spot - in those John Woo films and most of his films (actioners, a couple comedies, and quite a few in between) from the late 80s early 90s, he is unbeatable. But he hasn't done much since, and less worth caring about, while Leung, who was always a fine actor, has kept on going. He's had a long, varied, downright majestic career when you think about it, covering a much wider range of roles, types of films, everything, than just about anyone, anywhere. Program pictures to Hou Hsiao Hsien, and all the time seeming committed to the work he's doing. So maybe he can't match Chow at his charismatic best, but he's kept his career moving, taken more chances, done more to advance serious and challenging filmmakers, and done all of it well. In this, he's less like Chow Yun Fat than like Leslie Cheung, though Cheung was better than either of the at anything any of the three tried. But that's another matter.
10) Most pretentious movie ever
- This is tough - I would have to define pretentiousness to answer it well. So I will stay obvious - Bertolucci is the grand champion - and The Last Emperor is the worst kind of bloated nothing. Felt like they shot it in real time. Yuck.
11) Favorite Russ Meyer movie
- Boring answer, but, Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!
12) Name the movie that you feel best reflects yourself, a movie you would recommend to an acquaintance that most accurately says, “This is me.”
- In some moods, Rushmore - though all rather plowed under by the demands of a Paying Job. Or maybe Waking Life - with its sense of a world of consciousness existing alongside the world of the world. In fact - Waking Life is probably about right.
13) Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo
- “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.” I can't say there's any contest, really.
14) Best movie snack? Most vile movie snack?
- I don’t eat at the movies, so this is not easy. Milk Duds are a vile concoction, I'll say that. A good bucket of popcorn has its place....
15) Current movie star who would be most comfortable in the classic Hollywood studio system.
- George Clooney seems obvious; Tony Leung probably has, as much as anyone - Hong Kong still is (or was, through the 90s) pretty darned close to the old Hollywood system.
16) Fitzcarraldo—yes or no?
- Hell yeah.
17) Your assignment is to book the ultimate triple bill to inaugurate your own revival theater. What three movies will we see on opening night?
- This is beautiful - this is one of those questions that’s almost worth a post itself. What would I show, if I won the lottery and bought a theater and could show any three films? Rushmore, the Maltese Falcon and It's a Wonderful Life. I might try to resist it, but I doubt I could.
18) What’s the name of your theater? (The all-time greatest answer to this question was once provided by Larry Aydlette, whose repertory cinema, the Demarest, is, I hope, still packing them in…)
- All right - another one I could brood about for a month... probably could do worst than "Playtime"...
19) Favorite Leo McCarey movie
- Duck Soup of course. Though since that is really a Marx Brothers film - Make Way for Tomorrow (or The Awful Truth? this question is a lot harder - after the Marx Brothers - than it used to be, now that I’ve seen bunch of these films.) (Hey! The Awful Truth 24 Times A Second! how's that for a movie theater name?)
20) Most impressive debut performance by an actor/actress.
- James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause? Orson Welles in Citizen Kane? Bruno S in The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser? IMDB ruins my hope that Full Metal Jacket was Vincent D'Onofrio's first film... alas!
21) Biggest disappointment of the just-past summer movie season
- I didn't see any high profile releases, at least since Speed Racer. Smaller films - The Tracey Fragments turned out to be pretty bland, for all the hype and promise, though it's almost too mall to complain about... Maybe Mr. Lonely, which kept promising things and delivering incoherence and sentimentality....
22) Michelle Yeoh or Maggie Cheung
- Cheung Man-yuk. This is even less of a contest than the first actress show down. (Though again - neither one holds up to Brigitte Lin, who’d give Marlene a run for it.)
23) 2008 inductee into the Academy of the Overrated
- Nobody's bugged me this year. And I haven't seen the films that are getting all the (probably) undeserved praise - Batman, etc. So - until someone drags me to see the Batman film, and I am confirmed in my suspicions about it, I have nothing really.
24) 2008 inductee into the Academy of the Underrated
- You know what? I am feeling perverse: the Joel Schumacher Batmans. The scripts probably are as bad as they get credit for, but I'll take that campy overacting and over directing over - well - over Batman Begins, no question. So there.
25) Fritz the Cat—yes or no?
- Haven’t seen the movie, but, yes, in general.
26) Trevor Howard or Richard Todd
- Probably Howard, though I'm rather hot to see the Robin Hood film Todd was in...
27) Antonioni once said, “I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.” What filmmaker working today most fruitfully ignores the rules? What does ignoring the rules of cinema mean in 2008?
- I don't know what the rules of cinema are - "rules" sounds so rigid, like it's possible to make mistakes making films. "Conventions" maybe... either way, there probably comes a point in the development of an art form where it ceases to have right and wrong ways of doing things, and just competing sets of rules (or conventions, or whatever.) That point has probably passed for film - anything you do, however strange by the standards of one type of film, will make sense within some other branch of filmmaking.... All that said - I don't know if anyone else really looks like Luc Moullet, to this day. He pays as little attention to the things that do approach being rules - treat the world you make as if it were real; try to either achieve technical competence or hide technical limitations; or make self-conscious art of them - as anyone. So I'll say Luc Moullet.
28) Favorite William Castle movie
- Goodness. I don't think I've even accidentally seen one of his films, unless you count Rosemary's Baby. Probably the kind of director I'll decide to take in a bunch somewhere along the line. Maybe now... in compensation, I'll say that The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus might be the most underrated LP of all time. Which has nothing to do with Castle that I know of except a reference to a title...
29) Favorite ethnographically oriented movie
- I'm not altogether sure what counts. Killer of Sheep might be the answer - Several Friends might be even better, as it's even more directly focused on a specific group of people just living their lives.
30) What’s the movie coming up in 2008 you’re most looking forward to? Why?
- For wide release, it's probably the Coen brothers film; for more specialized releases - not sure what's coming. There's an Edward Yang retrospective coming to Harvard in September - that's bigger than anything else I know of.
31) What deceased director would you want to resurrect in order that she/he might make one more film?
- Edward Yang is a good bet.
32) What director would you like to see, if not literally entombed, then at least go silent creatively?
- Woody Allen and Whit Stillman should switch career tracks.
33) Your first movie star crush
- This is one I will remember somewhere along the line - I will see something and go - holy cow, I was a wreck for her in 19[redacted]! What I'm coming up with right now are Talia Shire or Debra Winger but that can't be right. Though I certainly felt unwholesome things for Ms. Winger.... TV Star crushes are another matter - Barbara Feldon and, as my brothers continue to mock me for, Lady Elaine Fairchild. Pop culture crushes are something else entirely.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Back to School Linkage
And again at the turning of the seasons comes another of Dennis Cozzalio's oh so excellent quizzes - Professor Zachary Smith's Lost in the Space at the end of the Summer Quiz. These are not things to be entered into lightly, though there are 16 answers up already since yesterday (as of this posting.) But no, this can't be rushed...
Elsewhere - Girish lauds Manny Farber.
Moviezzz urges critics to see more foreign movies. He's also been reading Haruki Murakami - my own gateway drug to Japanese literature, and probably Japanese movies. Not to mention a comment on the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention - in connection with the Chicago 10 DVD. I should Probably watch that film - given the attention paid to 1968 in France by filmmakers, it's interesting to wonder what came out of 1968 in the states - Medium Cool, which is a hell of a start.
Things are going a bit better for the country these days, at least as far as the Democratic National Convention goes. I haven't said much about politics here lately - I don't know what I am supposed to say. I can think of no excuse on earth not to vote for anyone the Democrats nominated - and don't see much point in quibbling about who they nominated - as long as they win. Bush has nigh on demolished this country - and completely demolished the Republican party. In 2000, I could see John McCain as president without feeling all that distraught about it - now? he's spent 8 years groveling t some of the worst people in American political history, and now represents nothing but more of the same, with possibly a bit less raw stupid at the top. Plenty of dishonesty and raw privilege though...
But that aside: not only is it a great relief to have one of the major parties nominate a Black man for president (narrowly beating a White woman in the primaries), and that (both of them, really) a sign(s) that we are, in small ways, still capable of doing things right - better than we used to anyway... But this is the first time since, probably, Gary Hart that I have felt that someone with a reasonable chance of being president is someone I would, on balance, like to see as the president. Kerry, Gore (in 2000 at least) both Clintons, Dukakis, any of the other major contenders - Bradley, Brown, Edwards - were all people I'd settle for. (And back in the day, I voted for Jesse Jackson, without thinking he had much chance - but hoping he'd get some pull at the convention. But I don't think I'd have wanted him as president.) But Obama - runs on programs I can support (mostly); and seems like someone who can get people to follow him. That counts - presidents ought to have charisma - they ought to be able to command respect and admiration, even from their foes. I can see him doing that, and putting it to good use.
So that's my political speech for the year. (Far cry from 4 years ago - all politics, all the time!) And I guess it brings us to the obligatory music video - probably a boring choice, half the internet's going to be linking to it, but hey, it's good enough for the Dems, so - the O'Jays, with Love Train:
[And let me add: it's the O'Jays! why shouldn't half the internet link to it?]
Elsewhere - Girish lauds Manny Farber.
Moviezzz urges critics to see more foreign movies. He's also been reading Haruki Murakami - my own gateway drug to Japanese literature, and probably Japanese movies. Not to mention a comment on the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention - in connection with the Chicago 10 DVD. I should Probably watch that film - given the attention paid to 1968 in France by filmmakers, it's interesting to wonder what came out of 1968 in the states - Medium Cool, which is a hell of a start.
Things are going a bit better for the country these days, at least as far as the Democratic National Convention goes. I haven't said much about politics here lately - I don't know what I am supposed to say. I can think of no excuse on earth not to vote for anyone the Democrats nominated - and don't see much point in quibbling about who they nominated - as long as they win. Bush has nigh on demolished this country - and completely demolished the Republican party. In 2000, I could see John McCain as president without feeling all that distraught about it - now? he's spent 8 years groveling t some of the worst people in American political history, and now represents nothing but more of the same, with possibly a bit less raw stupid at the top. Plenty of dishonesty and raw privilege though...
But that aside: not only is it a great relief to have one of the major parties nominate a Black man for president (narrowly beating a White woman in the primaries), and that (both of them, really) a sign(s) that we are, in small ways, still capable of doing things right - better than we used to anyway... But this is the first time since, probably, Gary Hart that I have felt that someone with a reasonable chance of being president is someone I would, on balance, like to see as the president. Kerry, Gore (in 2000 at least) both Clintons, Dukakis, any of the other major contenders - Bradley, Brown, Edwards - were all people I'd settle for. (And back in the day, I voted for Jesse Jackson, without thinking he had much chance - but hoping he'd get some pull at the convention. But I don't think I'd have wanted him as president.) But Obama - runs on programs I can support (mostly); and seems like someone who can get people to follow him. That counts - presidents ought to have charisma - they ought to be able to command respect and admiration, even from their foes. I can see him doing that, and putting it to good use.
So that's my political speech for the year. (Far cry from 4 years ago - all politics, all the time!) And I guess it brings us to the obligatory music video - probably a boring choice, half the internet's going to be linking to it, but hey, it's good enough for the Dems, so - the O'Jays, with Love Train:
[And let me add: it's the O'Jays! why shouldn't half the internet link to it?]
Sunday, August 24, 2008
The Seventh Art and the Eighth Wonder of the World
For the movies about movies blogathon, at Goatdog blog. King Kong! (and a bit of Busby Berkeley.)
King Kong is a movie that is explicitly about movies. It's also pretty explicitly autobiographical, both in the characters populating the film (Carl Denham being a dead ringer for Merian C. Cooper and all), and in the development and structure of the film itself. The film planned in the story of the film is the film we're watching, pretty much. In fact, King Kong is about both movies and movie making directly, and metaphorically - it is a figure for movies in general. That's not unusual in films, and especially not in the early 1930s, a period with a good deal of technological and social change. What is unusual about King Kong is how explicit it is, especially its direct comments about spectacle, sex, the market, and so on. It's especially unusual in a film as enthusiastic about films as this one is.
Films that are or contain figures of film tend not to be so direct. Usually, they use another art form - books, the stage, music - to stands for film. (Or, taking a recent example - cooking, in Ratatouille.) Denham's show in NY, displaying Kong, works that way - it's a pretty direct analogue to the film we're watching, no pretending otherwise - but it is not, itself, cinema. What makes King Kong different is how everything else in the film that points to cinema does so without any disguise. The story is about a man who sets out to make a film: adventure! Spectacle! Sex! Drama! Beauty and the Beast! Denham and company come right out and say it - and they aren’t sentimental about it. They say it, they plan for it, they rehearse it, and then life (in the film) comes along and does it, more or less to cue. And with fine eye for spectacle - the natives stake out Ann Darrow just like a master showman would - and indeed Denham repeats the staging almost exactly in his show in NY.
Repeats Kong's defeats, too...
And of course King Kong the movie is, from start to finish, built around cinema - it’s designed to look good as a film; it’s conceived around the technology of film. And revels in it - the stop motion animation, the elaborate mattes and models and process shots. It's set up to look right on screen. They aren't trying to hide these things - they are presenting us with an amazing spectacle, and expect us to marvel in it, all of it. The planning, the formal properties of the film, are made more explicit by being prepared by Denham's talk. His attempts to film on the island, his attempts to stage-manage the villagers or the fights with Kong, etc., set up the formal structure of the rest of the film - the parallel imagery on the island and in NY (the wall on the island serving as stage and curtain, that recurs in the second half; the parallels in how Ann and Kong are staked out for display; the parallel battles on Kong's mountain and the empire state building, complete with dangerous birds. Even details like the several scenes in both parts of the film of Kong fishing around caves/apartments for people.) The depiction of the act of making a film sets you up to wonder at the artistry of the story proper when it gets going.
It's reminiscent of one of the other outstanding figures of cinema of the period - Warner Brothers' musicals, especially Busby Berkeley's parts. Berkeley’s numbers are almost parables for the shift from stage to screen. Their placement in the films (in 42nd Street, at least), and their overall structure, almost always enacts the shift from stage to screen. The numbers usually follow that pattern - starting on something like a real stage, then opening up toward film. First (usually) by shooting them from impossible places (the flies, through the floor), but eventually abandoning all sense of the spatial unity and integrity of the stage. The space in “42nd Street” (the song) or “By a Waterfall” or “Shanghai Lil” is pure cinematic space - much of it designed explicitly for the camera (and for editing), certainly constructing the three dimensional space of film. Interestingly, while this abandons the "real" space of the theater, it moves toward a "real" space of films - itself referring to the "real" space of, um - reality.
This is a bit like what King Kong does. The first section sets up the idea of the film Denham is going to make - they land on the island, he tries to start filming, but things go wrong: and then very wrong, and instead of making an adventure film, he has to live one. Which, of course, is almost exactly the film he planned all along (and certainly the one Cooper and Schoedsack were planning - and Denham "is" Cooper....) - though since his film plans fell through, he puts on his show the old fashioned way, on stage. This, perhaps, ties us back to the Warner's films. Of those films, Footlight Parade comes closest to matching King Kong's explicitness about the role of cinema. It comes closest to acknowledging the historical circumstances that these films reflect, the historical move from stage to screen. Jimmy Cagney stages musical preludes for movies - already, movies have replaced shows: now, they are starting to squeeze him. Largely, of course, because films like this have managed to recreate a good chunk of the spectacle of the stage. And of course - as Cagney holds off history a bit longer, he does it by staging “preludes” that are, of course, dazzling films.
Though one of the things this has in common with King Kong is the way they treat film as a part of a grander world of spectacle. Films, stage musicals, giant apes, are all attractions - all things put on for the amazement of the audience. Cooper and Schoedsack were no stranger to this - they made documentaries to show to lecture groups; they made films to be the Eight Wonder of the World! Cooper's later ventures, Cinerama, notably, work almost exactly like Denham's Kong exhibition - a grand event, demonstrating the wonders of something new. That's not far from what those Warner Brother's musicals were doing (or what Warner's did in the 20s, with sound films) - setting out to show that film was every bit the spectacle that theater could be. It's an approach that runs through King Kong - the way it was marketed, the way it is structured (with its overture and shows in shows and so on) - and the way it was made. Willis O'Brien's animation tests were central to the whole conceit. It's a film about spectacle - about story and everything else as an attraction. Presentationalist through and through, and quite delighted in it.
King Kong is a movie that is explicitly about movies. It's also pretty explicitly autobiographical, both in the characters populating the film (Carl Denham being a dead ringer for Merian C. Cooper and all), and in the development and structure of the film itself. The film planned in the story of the film is the film we're watching, pretty much. In fact, King Kong is about both movies and movie making directly, and metaphorically - it is a figure for movies in general. That's not unusual in films, and especially not in the early 1930s, a period with a good deal of technological and social change. What is unusual about King Kong is how explicit it is, especially its direct comments about spectacle, sex, the market, and so on. It's especially unusual in a film as enthusiastic about films as this one is.
Films that are or contain figures of film tend not to be so direct. Usually, they use another art form - books, the stage, music - to stands for film. (Or, taking a recent example - cooking, in Ratatouille.) Denham's show in NY, displaying Kong, works that way - it's a pretty direct analogue to the film we're watching, no pretending otherwise - but it is not, itself, cinema. What makes King Kong different is how everything else in the film that points to cinema does so without any disguise. The story is about a man who sets out to make a film: adventure! Spectacle! Sex! Drama! Beauty and the Beast! Denham and company come right out and say it - and they aren’t sentimental about it. They say it, they plan for it, they rehearse it, and then life (in the film) comes along and does it, more or less to cue. And with fine eye for spectacle - the natives stake out Ann Darrow just like a master showman would - and indeed Denham repeats the staging almost exactly in his show in NY.
Repeats Kong's defeats, too...
And of course King Kong the movie is, from start to finish, built around cinema - it’s designed to look good as a film; it’s conceived around the technology of film. And revels in it - the stop motion animation, the elaborate mattes and models and process shots. It's set up to look right on screen. They aren't trying to hide these things - they are presenting us with an amazing spectacle, and expect us to marvel in it, all of it. The planning, the formal properties of the film, are made more explicit by being prepared by Denham's talk. His attempts to film on the island, his attempts to stage-manage the villagers or the fights with Kong, etc., set up the formal structure of the rest of the film - the parallel imagery on the island and in NY (the wall on the island serving as stage and curtain, that recurs in the second half; the parallels in how Ann and Kong are staked out for display; the parallel battles on Kong's mountain and the empire state building, complete with dangerous birds. Even details like the several scenes in both parts of the film of Kong fishing around caves/apartments for people.) The depiction of the act of making a film sets you up to wonder at the artistry of the story proper when it gets going.
It's reminiscent of one of the other outstanding figures of cinema of the period - Warner Brothers' musicals, especially Busby Berkeley's parts. Berkeley’s numbers are almost parables for the shift from stage to screen. Their placement in the films (in 42nd Street, at least), and their overall structure, almost always enacts the shift from stage to screen. The numbers usually follow that pattern - starting on something like a real stage, then opening up toward film. First (usually) by shooting them from impossible places (the flies, through the floor), but eventually abandoning all sense of the spatial unity and integrity of the stage. The space in “42nd Street” (the song) or “By a Waterfall” or “Shanghai Lil” is pure cinematic space - much of it designed explicitly for the camera (and for editing), certainly constructing the three dimensional space of film. Interestingly, while this abandons the "real" space of the theater, it moves toward a "real" space of films - itself referring to the "real" space of, um - reality.
This is a bit like what King Kong does. The first section sets up the idea of the film Denham is going to make - they land on the island, he tries to start filming, but things go wrong: and then very wrong, and instead of making an adventure film, he has to live one. Which, of course, is almost exactly the film he planned all along (and certainly the one Cooper and Schoedsack were planning - and Denham "is" Cooper....) - though since his film plans fell through, he puts on his show the old fashioned way, on stage. This, perhaps, ties us back to the Warner's films. Of those films, Footlight Parade comes closest to matching King Kong's explicitness about the role of cinema. It comes closest to acknowledging the historical circumstances that these films reflect, the historical move from stage to screen. Jimmy Cagney stages musical preludes for movies - already, movies have replaced shows: now, they are starting to squeeze him. Largely, of course, because films like this have managed to recreate a good chunk of the spectacle of the stage. And of course - as Cagney holds off history a bit longer, he does it by staging “preludes” that are, of course, dazzling films.
Though one of the things this has in common with King Kong is the way they treat film as a part of a grander world of spectacle. Films, stage musicals, giant apes, are all attractions - all things put on for the amazement of the audience. Cooper and Schoedsack were no stranger to this - they made documentaries to show to lecture groups; they made films to be the Eight Wonder of the World! Cooper's later ventures, Cinerama, notably, work almost exactly like Denham's Kong exhibition - a grand event, demonstrating the wonders of something new. That's not far from what those Warner Brother's musicals were doing (or what Warner's did in the 20s, with sound films) - setting out to show that film was every bit the spectacle that theater could be. It's an approach that runs through King Kong - the way it was marketed, the way it is structured (with its overture and shows in shows and so on) - and the way it was made. Willis O'Brien's animation tests were central to the whole conceit. It's a film about spectacle - about story and everything else as an attraction. Presentationalist through and through, and quite delighted in it.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Another Links Post
Here are some things to have caught my eye - and things to look forward to.
Don't forget - starting tomorrow, it's a Movies about Movies blogathon, at the Goatdog blog.
UPDATE: Goatdog's main blogathon page.
Elsewhere - Ted Pigeon looks back at the films of 2007.
Bioscope looks at the history of Kinemacolor - part of its series on color (since they're British, I guess that's colour), and other things.
Screengrab takes a look at the 20 best animated films.
Spoutblog looks at some underrated fictional music.
East Bay View lists his favorite jazz records since 1970 - and before 1970. It's making me think about my own interest in jazz. I have an odd history with jazz - didn't listen to it much at all until the early 90s, though what I did hear I liked, though I didn't quite get - then - I went to New Orleans n the fall of 91, spend a couple nights wandering around Bourbon street mostly popping in and out of jazz bars, came home and decided to listen to Louis Armstrong and was, more or less immediately, completely converted. I listened to jazz, and almost nothing but, for the next five years - almost systematically, though tending to radiate out from Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Coltrane, moving forward through time - until, mid-90s, I'd reached fusion. Sonny Sharrock and Electric Miles and John McLaughlin - and that led back to rock... to Richard Thompson, specifically, but then, to everything else. Since then, jazz has mostly been on the back burner, except for where it meets avant garde guitar players... Saw Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue this weekend - documentary about Miles Davis and electric jazz, with his performance at the Isle of Wight the centerpiece: boy oh boy, but I like that stuff... I don't know where this comment is going really, but it might lead to a video...
It might lead to a meme - Samurai Frog offers up an iTunes game - iTunes as magic 8 ball, really. Basically:
That might lead somewhere too.
Though not before noting - fafblog's The Medium Lobster has a new gig!
And now? Since I've stopped doing the Friday Random Tens, I haven't posted much of anything about music. Alas! Miles and company can rectify that - this being a performance of "Ife" from 1973. Broken in two - part one:
And Part Two, which is where things really get me: right now, my jazz world really revolves around Pete Cosey, who lets it rip on 12-strong here....
And good night - and see you at the movies about movies blogathon!
Don't forget - starting tomorrow, it's a Movies about Movies blogathon, at the Goatdog blog.
UPDATE: Goatdog's main blogathon page.
Elsewhere - Ted Pigeon looks back at the films of 2007.
Bioscope looks at the history of Kinemacolor - part of its series on color (since they're British, I guess that's colour), and other things.
Screengrab takes a look at the 20 best animated films.
Spoutblog looks at some underrated fictional music.
East Bay View lists his favorite jazz records since 1970 - and before 1970. It's making me think about my own interest in jazz. I have an odd history with jazz - didn't listen to it much at all until the early 90s, though what I did hear I liked, though I didn't quite get - then - I went to New Orleans n the fall of 91, spend a couple nights wandering around Bourbon street mostly popping in and out of jazz bars, came home and decided to listen to Louis Armstrong and was, more or less immediately, completely converted. I listened to jazz, and almost nothing but, for the next five years - almost systematically, though tending to radiate out from Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Coltrane, moving forward through time - until, mid-90s, I'd reached fusion. Sonny Sharrock and Electric Miles and John McLaughlin - and that led back to rock... to Richard Thompson, specifically, but then, to everything else. Since then, jazz has mostly been on the back burner, except for where it meets avant garde guitar players... Saw Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue this weekend - documentary about Miles Davis and electric jazz, with his performance at the Isle of Wight the centerpiece: boy oh boy, but I like that stuff... I don't know where this comment is going really, but it might lead to a video...
It might lead to a meme - Samurai Frog offers up an iTunes game - iTunes as magic 8 ball, really. Basically:
1. Put your iTunes/ music player on Shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must put down the song name no matter what.
That might lead somewhere too.
Though not before noting - fafblog's The Medium Lobster has a new gig!
And now? Since I've stopped doing the Friday Random Tens, I haven't posted much of anything about music. Alas! Miles and company can rectify that - this being a performance of "Ife" from 1973. Broken in two - part one:
And Part Two, which is where things really get me: right now, my jazz world really revolves around Pete Cosey, who lets it rip on 12-strong here....
And good night - and see you at the movies about movies blogathon!
Monday, August 18, 2008
Manny Farber
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Link Day Links
Wednesday upon us, so with nothing much to say, let's post some interesting bits...
There's this - the story of Shanta Rao Dutt, film Pioneer - maybe. Via Bioscope, a blog I've started reading only lately, and find quite wonderful.
Or this - films in films Christopher Campbell at Spoutblog wants to see. Me too, for quite a few of them.
UPDATE: I want to add a similar project Andrew Osborne at Screengrab posts a series devoted to the best movies about movies. I've written a longer post on it at the Film & Discussion blog, but I want to note it here too - it fits too well with the previous two items.
Or - a blogathon announcement - James Bond blogathon, at Lazy Eye Cinema, November 5-7. Should be good.
And - welcome back, Edward Copeland - here's hoping his health problems are on the mend. I've missed him.
And of course, another week, another interesting post from Girish - this one on Creative Geography. Extended, as usual, in comments...
Meanwhile: I haven't been watching the Olympics - with football season starting? I jest, of course - though if that game got much worse, we wouldn't be joking about Youilis kicking a field goal, we'd have been making cracks about hitting a three pointer. You gotta love the Rangers - in that game and the previous one, they combined to score 32 runs on 40 hits - and split. Counting the 9-0 and 9-1 losses to Baltimore over the weekend and tonight's 8-4 loss, they've given up 52 runs in 5 games - scoring 37, even with the shut out.... Great fun. I should be more concerned with the Boston bullpen - taking a good shellacking last night, and one of the few who didn't fuel the flames coming in tonight and offering up a quick three run homer... but the main starters and the end of the pen are so good (Lester dominant again tonight), and the offense still so potent that things look pretty good for the local 9. Even with guys hurt we're catching the breaks - we lose Lowell, but Tampa loses Langoria and Crawford - all this just as Ellsbury starts hitting again, Jed Lowrie comes up and looks like the real thing (leading all SS in RBI since the all star break - couple more tonight) - it's good.
So - that's it for tonight. Some film stuff to read, and Baseball - what else can you ask? (I should write up some of the films I've seen lately - nice weekend of films, though I did miss one I wanted to see - Kon Ichikawa's last film - thanks to a monsoon; I did see an excellent documentary on Ichikawa, directed by Shunji Iwai; along with Man on Wire, Boom, the La Chinoise DVD and some William S. Hart. Maybe over the weekend - there are a couple more playing in town. Mourning Forest, say. We'll see.)
There's this - the story of Shanta Rao Dutt, film Pioneer - maybe. Via Bioscope, a blog I've started reading only lately, and find quite wonderful.
Or this - films in films Christopher Campbell at Spoutblog wants to see. Me too, for quite a few of them.
UPDATE: I want to add a similar project Andrew Osborne at Screengrab posts a series devoted to the best movies about movies. I've written a longer post on it at the Film & Discussion blog, but I want to note it here too - it fits too well with the previous two items.
Or - a blogathon announcement - James Bond blogathon, at Lazy Eye Cinema, November 5-7. Should be good.
And - welcome back, Edward Copeland - here's hoping his health problems are on the mend. I've missed him.
And of course, another week, another interesting post from Girish - this one on Creative Geography. Extended, as usual, in comments...
Meanwhile: I haven't been watching the Olympics - with football season starting? I jest, of course - though if that game got much worse, we wouldn't be joking about Youilis kicking a field goal, we'd have been making cracks about hitting a three pointer. You gotta love the Rangers - in that game and the previous one, they combined to score 32 runs on 40 hits - and split. Counting the 9-0 and 9-1 losses to Baltimore over the weekend and tonight's 8-4 loss, they've given up 52 runs in 5 games - scoring 37, even with the shut out.... Great fun. I should be more concerned with the Boston bullpen - taking a good shellacking last night, and one of the few who didn't fuel the flames coming in tonight and offering up a quick three run homer... but the main starters and the end of the pen are so good (Lester dominant again tonight), and the offense still so potent that things look pretty good for the local 9. Even with guys hurt we're catching the breaks - we lose Lowell, but Tampa loses Langoria and Crawford - all this just as Ellsbury starts hitting again, Jed Lowrie comes up and looks like the real thing (leading all SS in RBI since the all star break - couple more tonight) - it's good.
So - that's it for tonight. Some film stuff to read, and Baseball - what else can you ask? (I should write up some of the films I've seen lately - nice weekend of films, though I did miss one I wanted to see - Kon Ichikawa's last film - thanks to a monsoon; I did see an excellent documentary on Ichikawa, directed by Shunji Iwai; along with Man on Wire, Boom, the La Chinoise DVD and some William S. Hart. Maybe over the weekend - there are a couple more playing in town. Mourning Forest, say. We'll see.)
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Double Bills to Double Your Fun!
There's a lot of talk going around about double features. Diablo Cody's week at the New Beverly Cinema set off a swarm of posts - a meme, red in tooth and claw, circling the internet in the usual manner... And Sight and Sound, probably not inspired by Diablo or Piper, though who can say, offers up their own set of double features (that's PDF, I'll have you know), chosen by a host of critics and film people. Girish expands, and the comment section buzzes with suggestions and, lately, math.
There's nothing for it but to combine these - or, really, to do the meme, though taking off from the Sight and Sound list. Specifically, Brad Stevens' suggestion of a pairing of Celine and Julie Go Boating and Inland Empire. Ryland Walker Knight is also moved by the matchup. It's good. I was surprised to find I hadn't brought up the comparison in any of my Rivette posts last year - nor my Inland Empire "explanation"*. I knew I wrote about them - turns out, it was part of a draft for those Rivette posts linked above, and left on the cutting room floor. Or blogger's abandoned drafts. It's not all that profound - in fact, I think there are more overt references to Celine and Julie in Mulholland Drive than Inland Empire - the way one woman finds another sleeping on her doorstep (so to speak), the girl detective plot, etc... But there are plenty of parallels between any of these films - the way they combines multiple stories, sometimes at the same level, sometimes splitting the levels - the way they moves in and out of these stories stylistically, and so on. Though in some ways they are inverted, Rivette and Lynch: with Lynch, everything that gets into the film is given the weight of “reality” (within the fiction) - that is, Laura Dern’s journeys through god knows how many plots and ontological orders in Inland Empire are all played as if what you see, what she sees, at any given moment, is completely and inescapably real. With Rivette, you get the exact opposite - the sense instead that everything you see, everything the characters see, do, experience is always a game, a play, a joke - though Rivette is quite flexible about this.
Anyway: the point of all that is that you can, sort of, look at Lynch's films as a kind of disguised remake of the Rivette film. And that suggests a film festival! So - a dozen films, arranged in pairs - linked pairs: twisted (or not) remakes, or separated twins...
1. So start right there: Celine and Julie Go Boating and Mulholland Drive.
2. The Wizard of Oz & Stalker - that's what Stalker is, right? three men go into a zone looking to be granted wishes. This moves from black and white to color. They hallucinate, pass through various threats... find out it's all a bit of a joke, though whatever changes changes inside them. Right? (It's been ages since I've seen Stalker: I think the parallels are better than that even.) So there.
3. Vanda's Room & En Construccion - two films shot more or less simultaneously in Lisbon and Barcelona with similar ambitions and technical conditions (Costa shooting more or less alone with digital video; Guerin shooting on film, but as part of a film school project, that made it possible to shoot for free, with a minimal crew, and to spend a long time in the place they were shooting, as Costa did.) And coming out with similar stories, about the destruction of old neighborhoods and their replacement with new - all of it (both films) anchored by charismatic tough drug addicted women...
4. Play Time & Alphaville - day and night in 60s new Paris.
5. Cat People & Tropical Malady - it's as though Weerasthukal combines Cat People with I Walked With a Zombie, combining the inner divisions of the first with the spatial divisions of the second - the divided character and the two places, house and jungle... why not? A film that masters the Lewton/Tourneur use of suggestion, and deep ambiguity...
6. California Dreamin' (Endless) and Darjeeling Limited - not remakes of course since they were made about the same time - but two films about Americans on trains in strange countries - they become almost mirrors: Anderson’s Americans see everything around them as a means to their own salvation - while Nemescu's lot sees the Americans as their salvation, a chance to work out something of their own. Though there's a bit of that in Darjeeling Limited as well - both films, for example, have local women using American men to get out of something, while letting the American think he's using her... Anyway - a double bill I'd love to see, and that's the real point...
I suppose there are plenty more like this - but this is a week of films I would love to see. So - that's all anyone can ask, right? And as I mentioned in Girish's comments, there are so many ways to approach something like this - like - real double features I've seen, whether intentional (programmed by someone) or accidental - like the day I saw Letters from Iwo Jima and Jeanne La Poucelle (all 6 plus hours of it) more or less back to back...
* Take THAT, Parallel Universe Film Guide! They haven't actually added Inland Empire, but when they do, if they don't call it, "You Think You're So Smart Explaining the Last One, Try Explaining This!" they could call it, "I Love Lamps!" I would.
There's nothing for it but to combine these - or, really, to do the meme, though taking off from the Sight and Sound list. Specifically, Brad Stevens' suggestion of a pairing of Celine and Julie Go Boating and Inland Empire. Ryland Walker Knight is also moved by the matchup. It's good. I was surprised to find I hadn't brought up the comparison in any of my Rivette posts last year - nor my Inland Empire "explanation"*. I knew I wrote about them - turns out, it was part of a draft for those Rivette posts linked above, and left on the cutting room floor. Or blogger's abandoned drafts. It's not all that profound - in fact, I think there are more overt references to Celine and Julie in Mulholland Drive than Inland Empire - the way one woman finds another sleeping on her doorstep (so to speak), the girl detective plot, etc... But there are plenty of parallels between any of these films - the way they combines multiple stories, sometimes at the same level, sometimes splitting the levels - the way they moves in and out of these stories stylistically, and so on. Though in some ways they are inverted, Rivette and Lynch: with Lynch, everything that gets into the film is given the weight of “reality” (within the fiction) - that is, Laura Dern’s journeys through god knows how many plots and ontological orders in Inland Empire are all played as if what you see, what she sees, at any given moment, is completely and inescapably real. With Rivette, you get the exact opposite - the sense instead that everything you see, everything the characters see, do, experience is always a game, a play, a joke - though Rivette is quite flexible about this.
Anyway: the point of all that is that you can, sort of, look at Lynch's films as a kind of disguised remake of the Rivette film. And that suggests a film festival! So - a dozen films, arranged in pairs - linked pairs: twisted (or not) remakes, or separated twins...
1. So start right there: Celine and Julie Go Boating and Mulholland Drive.
2. The Wizard of Oz & Stalker - that's what Stalker is, right? three men go into a zone looking to be granted wishes. This moves from black and white to color. They hallucinate, pass through various threats... find out it's all a bit of a joke, though whatever changes changes inside them. Right? (It's been ages since I've seen Stalker: I think the parallels are better than that even.) So there.
3. Vanda's Room & En Construccion - two films shot more or less simultaneously in Lisbon and Barcelona with similar ambitions and technical conditions (Costa shooting more or less alone with digital video; Guerin shooting on film, but as part of a film school project, that made it possible to shoot for free, with a minimal crew, and to spend a long time in the place they were shooting, as Costa did.) And coming out with similar stories, about the destruction of old neighborhoods and their replacement with new - all of it (both films) anchored by charismatic tough drug addicted women...
4. Play Time & Alphaville - day and night in 60s new Paris.
5. Cat People & Tropical Malady - it's as though Weerasthukal combines Cat People with I Walked With a Zombie, combining the inner divisions of the first with the spatial divisions of the second - the divided character and the two places, house and jungle... why not? A film that masters the Lewton/Tourneur use of suggestion, and deep ambiguity...
6. California Dreamin' (Endless) and Darjeeling Limited - not remakes of course since they were made about the same time - but two films about Americans on trains in strange countries - they become almost mirrors: Anderson’s Americans see everything around them as a means to their own salvation - while Nemescu's lot sees the Americans as their salvation, a chance to work out something of their own. Though there's a bit of that in Darjeeling Limited as well - both films, for example, have local women using American men to get out of something, while letting the American think he's using her... Anyway - a double bill I'd love to see, and that's the real point...
I suppose there are plenty more like this - but this is a week of films I would love to see. So - that's all anyone can ask, right? And as I mentioned in Girish's comments, there are so many ways to approach something like this - like - real double features I've seen, whether intentional (programmed by someone) or accidental - like the day I saw Letters from Iwo Jima and Jeanne La Poucelle (all 6 plus hours of it) more or less back to back...
* Take THAT, Parallel Universe Film Guide! They haven't actually added Inland Empire, but when they do, if they don't call it, "You Think You're So Smart Explaining the Last One, Try Explaining This!" they could call it, "I Love Lamps!" I would.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Creepy Suburban Doings Right Under Your Nose*
Via Screengrab, I have discovered another world, lingering just the other side of the movie screen - a Parallel Universe! with its own film guide and everything. I may never leave.... who wouldn't want to see Alienation with an F/Stop? or the classic rom-com, All in All, I'd Rather Marry the Rich Handsome One? not to mention the surrealist masterpiece, Venomous Stink of the Hoi Polloi.
There's plenty of fun to be had figuring out the references, though even when they're obvious, they're a hoot - take the works of the famed Rave brothers - Slack Jawed Yokels on Parade; Slack-Jawed Yokels in Minnesota; Slack-Jawed Yokels Picaresque and Slack-Jawed Yokels Feelin' Philosophical - it's mean, but what can you say? And can you improve on All Men Are Scum Sucking Pigs in summing up Mizoguchi?
* From the auteur of You Explain It...
There's plenty of fun to be had figuring out the references, though even when they're obvious, they're a hoot - take the works of the famed Rave brothers - Slack Jawed Yokels on Parade; Slack-Jawed Yokels in Minnesota; Slack-Jawed Yokels Picaresque and Slack-Jawed Yokels Feelin' Philosophical - it's mean, but what can you say? And can you improve on All Men Are Scum Sucking Pigs in summing up Mizoguchi?
* From the auteur of You Explain It...
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Baseball Post Manny
Well - Manny Ramirez is no longer with the Red Sox. Traded to LA - with Andy LaRoche from LA, and Brandon Moss and Craig Hanson going to Pittsburgh. The sox had to give up a lot right there - but on balance, I like the deal. Manny's problems are well documented - though even on the field, I don't think it's a bad deal. He's not the hitter he used to be - he's still very good - about the same as Drew or Youkilis, or Jason Bay... he was a good deal more than that in his prime. But now - he hits like Drew or Youk or Lowell - but he doesn't bring their defense. And the odds are, he's not going to suddenly morph into his 2004-5-6 form again - he should maintain what he's doing - but that's all... And Bay gives them that - and Bay should play better defense... and costs a third as much.... This is what they would have had to do at the end of the year - find someone to replace Ramirez. So I'll take this deal.
As for the other teams involved? The Dodgers get a real hitter - can't be bad, at least as long as they know enough to sit Pierre. The Bucs? LaRoche was supposed to be ready this year, but got hurt; Hanson hasn't figured it out yet, but will probably have some decent years eventually - though who cares? Moss - provably won't do too much,but has the potential to be a solid major leaguer, I think. Though only LaRoche is good enough to maybe be as good as Bay...
Meanwhile - an even better player, though even more washed up, got traded - Ken Griffey heads t the south side of Chicago, where he is supposed to play center field. That doesn't sound wise - but if he can do anything, that could give them a boost... I mean - I still play center field once in a while, and I'm almost as old and crippled as Griffey...
Anyway - it is exciting. Some nice pennant races shaping up - in the AL East and central, all the NL divisions, though the west, even with Manny around, is a sad sad thing...
As for the other teams involved? The Dodgers get a real hitter - can't be bad, at least as long as they know enough to sit Pierre. The Bucs? LaRoche was supposed to be ready this year, but got hurt; Hanson hasn't figured it out yet, but will probably have some decent years eventually - though who cares? Moss - provably won't do too much,but has the potential to be a solid major leaguer, I think. Though only LaRoche is good enough to maybe be as good as Bay...
Meanwhile - an even better player, though even more washed up, got traded - Ken Griffey heads t the south side of Chicago, where he is supposed to play center field. That doesn't sound wise - but if he can do anything, that could give them a boost... I mean - I still play center field once in a while, and I'm almost as old and crippled as Griffey...
Anyway - it is exciting. Some nice pennant races shaping up - in the AL East and central, all the NL divisions, though the west, even with Manny around, is a sad sad thing...
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Links July 30
Being completely lazy and without discipline, and trying to work out the best way to use Newsfire (since it rather messes up my favored Save-It-For-Later device, the Shared Google page), I shall have recourse to a links roundup. Of course as usual, this takes as long as a real post would have....
Budd Boetticher's Seminole DVD - Glenn Kenny, at the Auteur's Notebook.
Watching silent movies online, from The Bioscope.
David Cairns explores the horror of Sea Monkeys.
TCM's blog examines Written on the Wind.
Grand hotel Screenshots at Sixmartinis and the Seventh Art.
And a Rug Rats Blogathon, I just found.
In other news, Orson Scott Card is crazy.
Pacze Moj writes about the Olympics, politics, and money.
And oh yeah - new Tor site, with an all star cast.
Finally - and anticipating a real post here, I hope -Dennis Lim's history of the fight scene in Slate is getting a lot of attention. For example - Glenn Kenny - Screengrab - David Cohen at Anne Thompson's Variety blog - to pick three I remembered to bookmark.
Lawyers, Guns and Money, meanwhile, takes on both Lim's fight post, and A.O. Scott's dismissal of the superhero film. Putting the two together like that reminds me: Lim's big How To Stage A Fight Scene example - Oldboy - IS a superhero film. At least as much as any Batman is.
Budd Boetticher's Seminole DVD - Glenn Kenny, at the Auteur's Notebook.
Watching silent movies online, from The Bioscope.
David Cairns explores the horror of Sea Monkeys.
TCM's blog examines Written on the Wind.
Grand hotel Screenshots at Sixmartinis and the Seventh Art.
And a Rug Rats Blogathon, I just found.
In other news, Orson Scott Card is crazy.
Pacze Moj writes about the Olympics, politics, and money.
And oh yeah - new Tor site, with an all star cast.
Finally - and anticipating a real post here, I hope -Dennis Lim's history of the fight scene in Slate is getting a lot of attention. For example - Glenn Kenny - Screengrab - David Cohen at Anne Thompson's Variety blog - to pick three I remembered to bookmark.
Lawyers, Guns and Money, meanwhile, takes on both Lim's fight post, and A.O. Scott's dismissal of the superhero film. Putting the two together like that reminds me: Lim's big How To Stage A Fight Scene example - Oldboy - IS a superhero film. At least as much as any Batman is.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Youssef Chahine
I just want to adda note about the passing of Youssef Chahine, the great Egyptian director. I've seen a handful of his films, and heard him speak once, promoting Al-Massir, his Averroes musical. The best of his films, for my money, was Alexandria, Why? - an autobiographical/national epic told in a breakneck style - there are swarms of characters, representing the cultural richness of Egypt (though some of it about to be lost): the main (autobiographical) character, Yehia, and his family; a Jewish family, with a daughter who loves a communist; a pair of bumbling Egyptian nationalists; an evil rich man and his more decent son; a decadent aristocrat who falls in love with a British soldier he kidnaps; a petty crook - and mobs of people around these, people who keep popping in out of nowhere and taking surprisingly substantial places in the story, all of a sudden.... Chahine tells his stories fast, getting a wealth of incident and plot into a short amount of time, and does it in many registers - melodrama, politics, musical numbers, love scenes, intercut documentary footage, etc. It's a great film, and not the only great film he did.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Kurosawa Blogathon (etc)
Since I jumped the gun by a week, it's probably no surprise to learn how excited I am to see the Kiyoshi Kurosawa blogathon up and running at the Evening Class.
Also, the X-Files blogathon at South Dakota Dark is running another day.
Meanwhile - one of the ongoing threads in online writing about the film world is the continued hand wringing about the fate of critics: Philip Lopate weighs in at Film in Focus.
And another, from Nathaniel Rogers. This article also joins the ongoing debate over the Dark Knight (the "cons" are starting to gain on the "pros", I think), and contributes to a Dangerous Trend - St. John of the Cross Puns!
Also, the X-Files blogathon at South Dakota Dark is running another day.
Meanwhile - one of the ongoing threads in online writing about the film world is the continued hand wringing about the fate of critics: Philip Lopate weighs in at Film in Focus.
And another, from Nathaniel Rogers. This article also joins the ongoing debate over the Dark Knight (the "cons" are starting to gain on the "pros", I think), and contributes to a Dangerous Trend - St. John of the Cross Puns!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Retribution
Today is Kiyoshi Kurosawa's birthday - an excellent excuse to post about him. It helps that I have had Retribution out from Neflix for a while, putting off watching it until I would have the time to do justice to it, maybe even write about it.
This is about Retribution. It’s a ghost story (which kind of spoils it, though not really, since it doesn't waste much time before turning fantastic.) Koji Yakusho plays a cop investigating the murder of a woman, drowned in salt water. He starts finding clues that he was the criminal - he thinks he can’t be, but for some reason he can’t shake the feeling. Then he starts dreaming and seeing ghosts... The story will be familiar to J-horror fans, and Kurosawa fans - vengeful female ghosts, mystical serial killers. It plays a bit like Cure for a while (complete with sinister madhouses), before sliding toward a more conventional J-Horror ghost story - but Kurosawa makes it unmistakably his own, bringing a characteristic intense sadness to his apocalypses. Its a beautiful film, moving, and thrilling to look at.
I want to pull out one stylistic device Kurosawa uses heavily in the film. He has a tendency to film characters in murk or from behind, and bring them into the light, or a clearer shot - as this shot, Yoshioka seen through a plastic screen:
But even when they are not obscured - he very frequently composes shots to put the characters in a darker, more shadowy foreground, with a bright, intrusive light source in the background - usually a door or a window, or something leading out of the space of the shot.
This shot of the police station (repeated a couple times in the film):
Or the first shot of the ferry, again using the dark foreground, bright background:
And almost every shot in Yoshioka’s house has some variation on this. His introduction, being awakened by an earthquake - all fairly shadowy, noirish, but with two bright windows puncturing the background:
A dinner scene, with recessive openings leading to a bright window, almost threatening in the background:
These compositions quickly take on thematic, dramatic force - Kurosawa withholds what they signify at first, but it’s hard to see these shots and not know something isn’t quite what it seems right now.
Harue leaving:
Harue commenting on the neighborhood - full of screening effects, plus the lighting in the background:
All of which pays off in the end. Kurosawa sets up the pattern and carries it through - those background lights keep haunting the shots, as much as the ghosts do. In the madhouse, Yoshioka moves through darkness, with slashes of lights cutting the background, before finding what he was looking for - with a nice visual rhyme to the earlier shots of Harue, as well:
All that, while maintaining the tightrope between uncanny and marvelous, that Kurosawa usually walks. How much of all of this is in Yoshioka’s head?
And how much in the world?
(Or - )
But through it all - Harue's story, while always seeming to be in the background, carries the most weight - and is given the most weight, by Kurosawa's camera (not to mention the last word, which I am not going to include, in a belated and feeble gesture at not "spoiling" anything.) But these shots - one of the couple together, one of the couple parting - seem to me to be the center of the film. Both come before the real plot of the film has been revealed - but they show everything....
Harue in the light:
Harue leaving:
This is about Retribution. It’s a ghost story (which kind of spoils it, though not really, since it doesn't waste much time before turning fantastic.) Koji Yakusho plays a cop investigating the murder of a woman, drowned in salt water. He starts finding clues that he was the criminal - he thinks he can’t be, but for some reason he can’t shake the feeling. Then he starts dreaming and seeing ghosts... The story will be familiar to J-horror fans, and Kurosawa fans - vengeful female ghosts, mystical serial killers. It plays a bit like Cure for a while (complete with sinister madhouses), before sliding toward a more conventional J-Horror ghost story - but Kurosawa makes it unmistakably his own, bringing a characteristic intense sadness to his apocalypses. Its a beautiful film, moving, and thrilling to look at.
I want to pull out one stylistic device Kurosawa uses heavily in the film. He has a tendency to film characters in murk or from behind, and bring them into the light, or a clearer shot - as this shot, Yoshioka seen through a plastic screen:
But even when they are not obscured - he very frequently composes shots to put the characters in a darker, more shadowy foreground, with a bright, intrusive light source in the background - usually a door or a window, or something leading out of the space of the shot.
This shot of the police station (repeated a couple times in the film):
Or the first shot of the ferry, again using the dark foreground, bright background:
And almost every shot in Yoshioka’s house has some variation on this. His introduction, being awakened by an earthquake - all fairly shadowy, noirish, but with two bright windows puncturing the background:
A dinner scene, with recessive openings leading to a bright window, almost threatening in the background:
These compositions quickly take on thematic, dramatic force - Kurosawa withholds what they signify at first, but it’s hard to see these shots and not know something isn’t quite what it seems right now.
Harue leaving:
Harue commenting on the neighborhood - full of screening effects, plus the lighting in the background:
All of which pays off in the end. Kurosawa sets up the pattern and carries it through - those background lights keep haunting the shots, as much as the ghosts do. In the madhouse, Yoshioka moves through darkness, with slashes of lights cutting the background, before finding what he was looking for - with a nice visual rhyme to the earlier shots of Harue, as well:
All that, while maintaining the tightrope between uncanny and marvelous, that Kurosawa usually walks. How much of all of this is in Yoshioka’s head?
And how much in the world?
(Or - )
But through it all - Harue's story, while always seeming to be in the background, carries the most weight - and is given the most weight, by Kurosawa's camera (not to mention the last word, which I am not going to include, in a belated and feeble gesture at not "spoiling" anything.) But these shots - one of the couple together, one of the couple parting - seem to me to be the center of the film. Both come before the real plot of the film has been revealed - but they show everything....
Harue in the light:
Harue leaving:
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Weekly Post
This is getting awful. I am back on my summer schedule, lucky to post once a week... I don't know. I can blame vacations or the heat or watching the Red Sox or playing softball, but who knows...
All right: keep a toe in until I get some energy back.... The Film of the Month Club has moved on to its new film: The Fireman's Ball. I look forward to this - Czech new wave is one of those things I have never really explored - in fact, I don't know if I have explored it at all... This is a perfect excuse. Assuming I can muster the energy to sit down in front of the TV and watch a movie...
There are other blogathons going on, coming, or just concluded - check out the blogathon page to the right. The one I'm itching for is Maya's Kiyoshi Kurosawa blogathon (mentioned down at the bottom of this post) coming on the 19th. That's coming up fast: if Im going to show some life it had better be quick.
The year is halfway through: I should make a list or something... the year so far. Others have. Maybe I should make a list of the films that have played in Boston, possibly for the only time in years - that I was too lazy to go to? Boarding Gate? Chaotic Ana? God - how can I face myself?
The best I have seen? Quite a few of this year's releases made it onto last year's retrospective lists - so this is only since the last list post. 2008 releases, best since May:
1. Edge of Heaven
2. My Winnipeg
3. Chop Shop
4. Up the Yangtze
5. Gonzo: Life and Works of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
6. Speed Racer
7. Operation Filmmaker
8. Monkey Warfare
9. All For Free
10. The Tracey Fragments
Heavy on the documentaries and Canadians, as usual this time of year. I have to write some of these up, if I ever get the energy to sit in front of the computer for a couple hours... Right.
And music? Haven't been buying a lot of stuff, down from usual. But some recent good stuff... new Beck record (Modern Guilt) sounds pretty good, though I just got it... And the Melvins have a new one out - I've been listening to the Melvins a lot lately. Working backwards from Boris, I guess you'd say. New one is called Nude with Boots... And I've been digging up Mark Stewart records when I can - Edit, the new one, is pretty interesting. And Sigur Rus - who in the last couple years have become one of my favorites. Haven't quite gotten into this one yet, but they usually come... Still - overall, I haven't been buying that many records this year: the best all year are probably the Earth record (Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull) - with Bill Frisell! and the latest Nick Cave (Dig, Lazarus, Dig!)
All this of course is an excuse to post a video - easy material! Let's use live Earth - Engine of Ruin. Another beautiful song...
All right: keep a toe in until I get some energy back.... The Film of the Month Club has moved on to its new film: The Fireman's Ball. I look forward to this - Czech new wave is one of those things I have never really explored - in fact, I don't know if I have explored it at all... This is a perfect excuse. Assuming I can muster the energy to sit down in front of the TV and watch a movie...
There are other blogathons going on, coming, or just concluded - check out the blogathon page to the right. The one I'm itching for is Maya's Kiyoshi Kurosawa blogathon (mentioned down at the bottom of this post) coming on the 19th. That's coming up fast: if Im going to show some life it had better be quick.
The year is halfway through: I should make a list or something... the year so far. Others have. Maybe I should make a list of the films that have played in Boston, possibly for the only time in years - that I was too lazy to go to? Boarding Gate? Chaotic Ana? God - how can I face myself?
The best I have seen? Quite a few of this year's releases made it onto last year's retrospective lists - so this is only since the last list post. 2008 releases, best since May:
1. Edge of Heaven
2. My Winnipeg
3. Chop Shop
4. Up the Yangtze
5. Gonzo: Life and Works of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
6. Speed Racer
7. Operation Filmmaker
8. Monkey Warfare
9. All For Free
10. The Tracey Fragments
Heavy on the documentaries and Canadians, as usual this time of year. I have to write some of these up, if I ever get the energy to sit in front of the computer for a couple hours... Right.
And music? Haven't been buying a lot of stuff, down from usual. But some recent good stuff... new Beck record (Modern Guilt) sounds pretty good, though I just got it... And the Melvins have a new one out - I've been listening to the Melvins a lot lately. Working backwards from Boris, I guess you'd say. New one is called Nude with Boots... And I've been digging up Mark Stewart records when I can - Edit, the new one, is pretty interesting. And Sigur Rus - who in the last couple years have become one of my favorites. Haven't quite gotten into this one yet, but they usually come... Still - overall, I haven't been buying that many records this year: the best all year are probably the Earth record (Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull) - with Bill Frisell! and the latest Nick Cave (Dig, Lazarus, Dig!)
All this of course is an excuse to post a video - easy material! Let's use live Earth - Engine of Ruin. Another beautiful song...
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Summertime Links
Yes, it's high summer, with its holidays and vacations and heat and softball games (and attendant aches and pains, for I have become old), and so there's not much blogging being done here. There's plenty going on elsewhere though - so here are some links:
First - a couple blogathons: Culture Snob's Self-involvement blogathon starts today. I quote: "Most film writing is movies filtered through the self; I want the self filtered through movies.”
At the Valve, John Holbo is hosting discussions on Douglas Wolk's book, Reading Comics. A first day round up here.
And though it was scheduled to finish on July 3, there are still posts coming in related to the New York films blogathon at 12 Grand in Checking. This one, for example, from the Self-Styled Siren.
Meanwhile: the midyear roundups are starting to appear - multiparter at Fin de Cinema, starting here. And Larry Aydlette sketches the first half of the year in several media. I may join that party one of these days...
And - another obituary: Bruce Conner has died. GreenCine, Ray Pride round up links and notes.
First - a couple blogathons: Culture Snob's Self-involvement blogathon starts today. I quote: "Most film writing is movies filtered through the self; I want the self filtered through movies.”
At the Valve, John Holbo is hosting discussions on Douglas Wolk's book, Reading Comics. A first day round up here.
And though it was scheduled to finish on July 3, there are still posts coming in related to the New York films blogathon at 12 Grand in Checking. This one, for example, from the Self-Styled Siren.
Meanwhile: the midyear roundups are starting to appear - multiparter at Fin de Cinema, starting here. And Larry Aydlette sketches the first half of the year in several media. I may join that party one of these days...
And - another obituary: Bruce Conner has died. GreenCine, Ray Pride round up links and notes.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Friday, July 04, 2008
Happy Independence Day
It's summer vacation time, so, you can see the rate of posting... but I can pop in long enough to note the passing of someone who did more than his share to piss on the legacy of this holiday - Jesse Helms. Don't speak ill of the dead, yeah yeah yeah... easier said than done - he worked to make the country a worse place for decades. What am I supposed to say? People like Helms should not be part of our public life. Just being reminded that he was alive is a downer...
Anyway, to help you cheer up - let's let Galaxie 500 get the last word - happy fourth of July!
Anyway, to help you cheer up - let's let Galaxie 500 get the last word - happy fourth of July!
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