Summer Friday Interlude

Waiting for the end of the World Cup - should be a good game - the one I wanted to see, Holland and Spain. Crown a new champion! Sneijder vs. Xavi! Relive the wars of the 16th and 17th centuries! Rembrandt and Vermeer vs. Goya and Velazquez! (Van Gogh vs. Picasso for the more modernist minded.) (That's a hell of a lineup there - pound for pound, it's hard to beat the Dutch at painting, though when all is said and done, Velazquez and Picasso might be the Xavi and Iniesta of... um... there's a metaphor there...) Right. I'll root for the Dutch, but have no complaints should Spain win. There's not much to pick between them - Spain seems to have a better team, and the ability to simply take complete control of every game; Holland has a defense built to disrupt teams like Spain's (those tough tackling midfielders), and, seemingly, better finishers up front. Should be good...

Once the world cup is done - I may get back to seeing films. I did see a couple last week, I Am Love and Cyrus - I might even get around to reviewing them... This week, the rereleased Breathless plays, and that's always a must see...

And - I should note - one more week in Lucas McNelly's Kickstarter Campaign. Anyone who can make a movie out of a $4G grubstake probably deserves a shot at it...

Finally? Been too damn hot the last week or so, and I have not been getting my beauty sleep. I am cranky and full of sloth. So here are the Kinks singing about summer in the snow:

World Cup Semifinals

We've reached the end of the World Cup, the last week, the semis starting tomorrow... (I'm sure anyone who actually comes here for movie notes instead of uninformed soccer comments will be thrilled. Or would be thrilled if any such readers remain...) They should be good. The quarterfinals had it all - a major (if not exactly world stopping) upset (Holland over Brazil), a rout (Germany over Argentina), two close games, one between heavy favorite Spain and a very gritty Paraguay team, the other an absolute thriller of a game between Uruguay and Ghana. That game, particularly, was something to see - a 1-1 tie through 90 minutes and overtime, with both teams playing to win really... And ending in more or less unimaginable fashion - a flurry of attack by Ghana with no time left, the ref ready to call time the minute the play ended, but it didn't, they put the ball on net, again and again, until a Uruguay player - Luis Suarez, one of their stars - swatted it out. Penalty, with no time left - and Ghana's Gyan (who had 3 goals and 2 penalty shots already in the tourney) missed... Leading to a penalty shootout, which Uruguay rather cooly won. Amazing. Heartbreaking too, for the last African team to go out like this - having played extraordinary soccer in 2 straight overtime knockout games...

It will take some to top that game (though Paraguay and Spain tried, at least on the penalty missing front, both teams missing one within about 2 minutes of each other), but it stands to be a pretty lively semifinal round, and a good final game. Germany's back to looking pretty much unbeatable, putting up 4 for the third time in the tournament, this time against a decent team. But they play Spain, who are showing signs of why they were the favorites coming in. They (Spain) are an odd team - they play a pretty brand of soccer, but have the devil's time scoring goals - their brand of possession soccer starts to look like the most attractive kind of defensive soccer in the world. Germany has been blitzing people, but I don't know if that will work as well if they never get the ball, and that's Spain's game. If I had to pick, I suppose I'd say Germany looks stronger - but this is a pretty close game, and no result will surprise me. (Except maybe a 4-0 Spanish win... )

Meanwhile - The Netherlands comes off beating Brazil to play Brazil's neighbors, Uruguay. Holland has been deadly efficient - beating Brazil might seem like an upset for the ages, though in the rankings, it means #4 beat #1 - Holland has been playing very well the last couple years, they have a load of talent... They are not as thrilling to watch as some past Dutch teams, but they are very organized and efficient, and are able to mount a pretty effective attack when they need to. They have players who can win a game alone - Wesley Snejder has done most of that in this world cup, but he is not alone... Uruguay, on the other hand, has been - as I said last time - playing the part of Italy: strong, team defense, and a spectacular front line to take care of getting the goal or two they need... They will have to play this game without Suarez - which makes it Forlan vs. the world, basically... I suspect they will play for the 0-0 tie (or a set piece goal) - it's not impossible, they did it (shorthanded even) against France, who should have been able to score. Holland is a different matter though - they have looked out of synch on offense, but they are also resourceful and willing to work - I think they can find a goal.

Though in the end - almost any combination for the finals is going to be exciting. Personally, I would love to see Spain and Holland - probably the two best national teams, over time, never to win the cup - that would make a great final. But Germany Holland would be a great final - traditional rivals, one of the perennial champs vs. the great underachievers - a rematch of 74, when the best team never to win lost to the Germans... Revenge! And if the Dutch don't win, well - Uruguay in the finals has to be a fantastic story on its own - a huge underdog - though one carrying two cup wins already. And if they can beat Holland, they should have a chance against the other two, especially with Suarez back on the field....

So yeah - it's going to be a fun ending to the cup. I hope? Holland beats Spain. My cold, analytical opinion? Well - consider that a week ago I would have said, Argentina beats Brazil... notice how that turned out... But I suppose the hard-hearted answer is Germany beats Holland. But those guesses never come out right... so probably Spain beats Uruguay. I will say - almost no result will leave me disappointed - I rather like all the teams left in the fray.

Independence Day

Happy fourth of July, folks. Let's celebrate with some vintage Springsteen. "All men must make their way" - I must say my first year of college I lived with The River - somehow, that record seems a bit submerged in Bruce's oeuvre these days, overshadowed by the earlier, rawer stuff and later poppier stuff - but I lived with it, and am always surprised to be reminded how well it holds up.

Here he is, live in 1980:

Heart of the World

Happy Canada day! And thanks for Guy Maddin... one of the great films of the decade, this one...

Some Film Reviews

I haven't actually been to any movies (or watched any, for that matter) since the World Cup began - it's been a bit of a soggy patch for new releases, and that's made it easy to ignore films in favor of soccer. The World Cup only happens every 4 years, after all - and it is such a magnificent spectacle, it's hard to take your eyes away. So this post rounds up films I saw a few weeks ago, and has been sitting in draft ever since - that has more to do with a couple events (a niece's graduation, notably) taking up time than the cup, but still... There were some good ones in this batch, so I want to get it posted eventually...

Metropolis - the restored version: 15/15 - No doubt about it, this is an event. I don't know if it is because of the quality of the print, or the new footage, but it is like seeing a different film. The new footage is important - some of it is added plot - the "Thin Man", following Freder and his associates around town - more details about Georgy (the worker Freder trades places with) and Josephat (Joh's fired assistant) - etc... Though most of the additions seem to be adding shots to familiar sequences. These shots, maybe even more than the added plot elements, give the film a brand new feeling - and, frankly, make it seem more like a Fritz Lang film. A couple sequences in particular - Freder and Maria's rescue of the children, and the mob chasing the "witch" through the city - really illustrate this. Both are a good deal longer - both are much more detailed and intricate. The rescue gains a sequence trying to break through a grate that threatens to doom them at the last moment (a la Harry Lime) - the mob scene gains a number of shots, that show more of the geography of the city, and clarify the relationship between the two Marias (real and robot) and the mob. Bbut more than making more sense, the two esquences have a much better rhythm - Lang is a master of rhythm, of alternating slow and fast passages and shots, action and pause - he's a master of building tension and releasing it... that's missing in the versions of Metropolis I remember (and confirmed by glancing at my 10 year old DVD). Those sequences are dashed off in the old version - they lack sense (it's not clear at all that the mob is chasing the real Maria when they catch the robot, say), and the rhythm is direct and fairly monotonous. Everything is cut, action to action to action - all movement and violence, unfolded without pause. The new version is much more Langian - the action is varied - there are shots full of movement and shots of stillness, tension - literally, the movement of the children in the rescue and the mob in the chase is blocked - there are obstacles (the grate) - people in motion run into walls... Throughout these sequences, and many others, the new footage builds tension - creates multiple threads of action, retards the action before releasing it, and so on. I would say - for the first time, this film looked and felt like a truly great film - not just an iconic film, full of wild ambition and great imagery. For all that, in the past, I think I always felt a bit distanced from it - as iconic as its imagery and ideas were, the film felt dated. But the full version feels anything but dated - it is as thrilling and powerful as M or the Mabuse films - it's just bloody great.

Air Doll: 10/15 - Kore-Eda's little mermaid update - a sex doll comes to life, lives, suffers... It starts well, but it seems to run out of ideas. The Air Doll comes to life, wanders around Tokyo, takes a job at a video store, etc. - her adventures are intercut with snippets from the people around her - her owner, a clerk at the store and the store's manager, a drunk girl next door, some kind of kid, an old woman who seems to want to be arrested, a cop looking for bad cop movies, and old man on a bench, a father and daughter.... We get the usual array of living doll/robot/fairy princess imagery, but at first it's quite intriguing, in its low key meander through the streets, and its not-that-subtle intimations of sex slavery and the immigrant experience. (It's a Korean woman, after all, playing this doll - her experience is not unlike someone brought here, without knowing the language, dependent on a man, etc.) There are hints of similar alienation in the other characters - her owner is from Osaka, and she is mocked for speaking with an Osaka accent, for example - though most of the alienation turns out to be less literal, just loneliness and isolation. (That is, it blunts its potential political edge.) In the end, it never really builds - the second half tends to slide into cliches, competing cliches - will she be redeemed? will she be destroyed? will someone innocent suffer? It fades; Kore-Eda is a superb director, but this story loses its way and goes to nothing.

Harlan: In the Shadow of Jud Suss: 10/15 -fascinating documentary about the family of Veit Harlan, director of Jud Suss, dealing with the repurcussions of his activities in the war, especially that film. Or I should say - dealing with the lack of repercussions. The conscience of the film, and family, is Veit's son Thomas Harlan - who made a life of trying to take the responsibility for his father's act of enormity... Meanwhile the rest of the family seems to grasp the evil of the film, but still tend to make excuses - and claim that they are not to blame, that they too suffered - though it is to the point that they did not suffer in any way comparably to the way Jews suffered, to some extent because of the film. One of the women in the film talks about her grandparents - Harlan on one side; on the other, a Jewish couple who were murdered in Russia. The film addresses these issues quite well - through the experience of this family.

Network: 10/15 - Howard Beale is fired, and goes mad on the air, first promising suicide, then trying to apologize, but saying he couldn't take the bulshit anymore. This is a hit so he is allowed to rant - at first, things go nowhere special, then he has a real crack up and starts talking about visions - and finally turns up in his PJs and gives the mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore speech. Success! WIth Faye Dunaway as a cynical programmer, William Holden as an old time news producer who makes moralizing speeches but is as selfish and amoral as anyone, Robert Duvall as a company man, and Ned Beatty as the big boss, who steals the movie with a speech about money. There's a subplot about terrorists as entertainment, that ends the film. Overall, it's basically Meet John Doe with the roles redistributed a bit, and in general, simpler and more paranoid. (Rather obvious parallels - from the promised suicide to a confrontation at a long table to the girl reporter to the John Doe clubs...) Money and information has replaced power politics as the goal and means, though. Still, it's a bit too simplistic, and not too convincing in its implication that TV is the devil, especially considering that Lang and Capra were doing this stuff in the 20s and 30s - the ballyhoo boys...

Casino Jack and the United States of Money: 10/15 - basic documentary about Jack Abramoff, the super lobbyist, right wing freak, and con man. Though the most disturbing thing is how the confidence schemes are indistinguishable from the legal lobbying. All of it is deeply immoral and corrupt. Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Edward Arnold and Ned Beatty would feel right at home.

Knockout Rounds Begin (Soccer again)

Well, the US is out of the World Cup, losing to Ghana for the second World Cup in a row. I can't say I'm surprised - if I wanted to, I could say I called it, since I did, after Ghana's first game - they hadn't been so sharp in the last couple games, but this time looked quite good. It was a great game - tense and close and active throughout - the US screwed up on D again, though, and Ghana made them pay. Fun to watch, anyway, and I can't really feel too bad - I am glad to see an African team playing well, getting deep into the tournament, after the continent's bad showing in the groups. I wish the US had gone on, but it's not a heartbreaker.

I think Uruguay will handle Ghana fine in the next round - they would have handled the Americans maybe even easier. That was another nice game to watch - Uruguay's forwards are so slick, they make you pay attention - and for a defensive minded team, they seem to play a relatively watchable brand of soccer. The commentators kept mentioning Inter Milan, with their great defense and flashy scorers, striking fast and sure - that's a comparison that occurred to me too. Uruguay seems to be playing the part of the good Italy in this world cup - defense and slick, counter-attack oriented offense. I suspect Portugal will play the part of the bad Italy - defend and dive...

The rest of this round? I think I'd stick with the quarterfinalists I predicted before the groups were done: Argentina, Germany; Brazil and Holland; Paraguay and - I think the Iberian cup (so to speak) is a lot harder to predict than I let on. Spain has a boatload of talent, but they still don't seem to be entirely in synch. Portugal may or may not score another goal from the run of play - but they don't seem likely to give much up and are exceedingly opportunistic. And, I have to admit - what I've seen this time, as well as 2006, they are completely shameless about how they get their chances. Last time out, they played Holland in the second round, in what I thought would be a very pretty game - it ended up being a disaster. The game against Spain might not be any better. An overmatched ref and it might be unwatchable. For all that - they are almost a home team, for my neighborhood (they were definitely the home team last time, Portuguese flags everywhere - but I've moved, back to a more Brazilian part of town) - and as annoying as they can be, I can't help wishing them well... Spain winning would make for prettier soccer later on - and if they do win that game, it could be the hurdle they needed to clear to reach their potential - but I suspect Portugal will take the game....

Anyway - I am looking forward to quite a few of these upcoming games - Paraguay and Japan could be an interesting contest - the Japanese played some very solid soccer in the group stages, as did Paraguay - that could be a well played, closely contested game. Holland Slovakia might be fun - might be the Dutch's chance to finally get the offense running (especially is Robben plays). Though Slovakia deserves some kind of reward for getting rid of Italy, bless their souls. And Chile might give Brazil some jitters - if they can keep their players on the field. Oh well - onwards!

Still All Soccer All the Time

It is - the world cup is still taking up pretty much all my discretionary time. It's been well worth it. Things have shaken out a bit, though not always the way you'd think - some groups have gone to form, some are exceedingly mysterious... It has been enjoyable, and could get very entertaining in the next couple days.

Lovely to see France implode. They cheated to get in, they came apart at the seams - it's been a delightful spectacle. Nice to see South Africa salvage a win, even if it was too late... Uruguay and Mexico definitely deserved to go through from this group. Rather massive disparity in what they get next though - Argentina being Argentina with a vengeance, South Korea - a nice, energetic side, but not world beaters. It's been a South American cup so far - and it occurs to me that it would not take much - an upset or two, and not necessarily big upsets, to create an all South American semifinals. Uruguay looks more than able to handle any of the teams it might get in the second round (winner of C or second in D, I think). Brazil and Argentina have been the best of the tournament (though Brazil still seems to be coasting) - Brazil might run into some nasty teams in their side of the draw, though. Argentina looks like it has an easier road (unless Germany comes back strong.) Leaving, really, one upset required - which could come in the last group game - Chile wins their group with a point or more, and that eases their path significantly. Though Paraguay has also looked very good, and could get through. Very interesting.

Anyway - tomorrow's games are the big ones for us Americans. We should be able to win. I dearly hope Slovenia knocks England out (a draw does it, if the US cooperates - though if the US loses, Algeria might beat out England, almost as entertaining, if less enjoyable...) That would put 2 of the bit European powers out. And Italy, Spain and Germany are vulnerable as well. They all should manage to get through - but it's dicey. Spain has to deal with a very good looking Chile, while Switzerland plays Honduras - not a done deal. Germany's group is confusing, since both Serbia and Australia look capable of winning or losing the game (regardless of the other team's performance), and Ghana has been the most effective African team. A draw, and the wrong combination of events in the other game, and Germany could be out. And Italy? gave up early goals in both games, and got them back on a goalie mistake and a very weak penalty call - if the other team and the ref don't give them anything they might not score - and if New Zealand eke out another point - oh, what joy!

All right: predictions, because I can and have to post something here:
US beats Algeria (3-1, say)
England and Slovenia tie - US wins the group...

d - Serbia and Australia tie; I think Germany beats Ghana, but Ghana gets through on goals.

E is easy - Netherlands have already won, basically; Japan I think just needs to tie, and I think they manage it.

F - Paraguay wins; Italy ties and advances, much as it disappoints me

G - Brazil wins, Portugal rides those 7 goals to the second round, where they won't score any more

H - I think Honduras steals a tie from Switzerland - I think Spain wins the other game, but it could be a tie - Chile has been very good. It could be w wild one, though - Spain has to win, and Chile has enough offense to make them pay for trying. Interesting.

After which - Uruguay beats SK, Argentina beats Mexico. The US beats Ghana, Germany beats Slovenia. I think I have Holland playing Italy - god, I hope they win if that game comes off, but the Dutch are bound to choke... Paraguay beats Japan easily. And -Brazil and not-Portugal (Spain, I suppose) win.

Then? Uruguay beats the US; Argentina beats Germany. (Even if I get the orders wrong, I think these teams are getting through those games.) Brazil beats the Holland Italy winner. Leaving Paraguay the team that has to pull an upset to get to the finals. Though to be honest, I think if Spain makes the second round, and can beat Portugal (assuming that's who they get), they will probably have their form. If they don't, well - Chile or Paraguay will have this spot. Which I think would be a pure delight. The South American teams have been winning so far, and have been a pleasure to watch doing it. (Other than maybe Uruguay, when they go fully defensive.)

I think a Brazil Argentina final is in the works. The way it looks right now - that's Argentina's game. Though if Brazil gets their act together - they should win it all, as usual.

We'll see how this turns out.

More World Cup Comments

Happy Bloomsday! Not much left of it - time to take in the words, though: "Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine." Such a beautiful book.

Anyway - my mind has not been on literature this past week - but rather, Sport. The World Cup (eclipsing even the Celtics' run) - thanks to the magic of DVR, I have managed to see every game played so far - not every minute, perhaps, but a good percentage of them. And might as well offer opinions, group by group?

Group A? France looked terrible; after the first game, Mexico looked solid and South Africa looked passable, though the second game against Uruguay changes that - though they really only fell apart after the penalty. But Uruguay has been a revelation. They packed it in against France and completely baffled them - then came out playing a much freer, more open game against South Africa, dominating them. They look well deserving of the second round, and Diego Forlan looks like one of the players of the tournament so far - he looked to have more real chances on goal than France did in the first game, and he scored a perfect beauty of a goal in the second game... I think Mexico has a fine shot at beating France - France would have to play far better to get past them. Could happen, but - they look ready to collapse, and god, I hope they do. It's Bloomsday, after all...

Group B: Argentina looks legit - they didn't overwhelm Nigeria, but they dominated play. Though Nigeria kept the pressure on, and their goalie was huge. I could see them coming back from that. South Korea looked very good, though against Greece, who were helpless. Tomorrow's game there will tell - whether Argentina is really a title contender, and whether South Korea is really as good as they looked. If South Korea gets exposed, NIgeria might be able to beat them - I could see that. Finally - Messi didn't get a goal, but looked his brilliant self.

Group C: Slovenia's win complicates things, but I think they're still hard pressed to get through - even if they can draw out, both England the the US should beat Algeria, and should get more than a goal... England lost on that ghastly bit of keeping, but looked beatable anyway - they mounted decent threats, but had lots of trouble at the back, defenders getting beaten and so on... The US, meanwhile, looked like a pretty complete team - solid D (after their ugly breakdown on the Gerrard goal), great keeper, enough offense. They have choked before in the world cup though. England too, though they usually wait for the second round...

Group D: deutschland, deutscheland uber alles... They are always sort of favorites - they looked like the real deal there. Their strikers are going to score - their midfield play looks strong and creative - they don't mess up on D - they should be around at the end. They're young and all, but they laid those doubts to rest. Of the others - Serbia probably played better than the results - though they obviously ran out of steam at the end - got a red card when a beaten defender grabbed a player; and lost on a penalty after an idiotic handball. (Lots of strange incompetence in the first round - goalie blunders by England, Algeria, Paraguay; this handball; the Danish own goal... nerves? exhaustion, in Serbia's case, I think.) Ghana, on the other hand, looked very impressive. The African teams have been a bit disappointing, but not Ghana. They had injury problems too, with Essian out - but the rest of the team came through - Kevin Prince Boateng had a very nice game... The US and England (assuming they get through) will get the top two teams in this group, and frankly, I think Germany and Ghana will both win those games...

Group E: The Netherlands is another team with a load of talent but a bad track record - their opening game was rather bland. Denmark hung around, and looked like they were going to beat themselves, with that own goal - though the Dutch got better later. They looked a lot more dangerous without Van der vaart and Van Persie - I think because they were all coming into the middle - the subs went wide - and Wesley Snejder began to operate in the extra space. A couple teams have this problem - England worries about having too many midfielders in the middle; I thought SPain's troubles were partly due to their tendency to bunch up... Holland looked much better late. In the other game - the commentators were right - Cameroon had nothing coming through the mid-field, reduced to long balls into the box at the end. Japan played hard and did a good job creating chances, and played a pretty good D as well. Denmark can beat them - they have to, I think - but I can see Japan getting through. I'd like to see that, being a Japanophile - though I like the Denmark team too...

Group F: This is Italy's group, isn't it? All ties of course. Italy looked dull and inoffensive, though probably more organized than France. Paraguay gave them a good game, and should have won - gave them a gift. The other two - Slovakia outplayed New Zealand, but looked like they though the game was over by the 80 minute mark - you could see trouble brewing - they stopped working on D... NZ didn't stop and you see the results. Italy and Paraguay should get through anyway. Ho hum.

Group G: The Portugal/Cote D'Ivoire game was not much fun - Portugal has nothing but Christiano Ronaldo and their defense to go on, though both are first rate. (Though if there is a more irritating player in the game than CR I don't know who it is - a diving diva, though my god, he can do things on the field...) CIV had trouble mounting scoring threats, but they played a good game - hopefully, Drogba will be stronger in the later games - he looked very tentative out there - this game might re-establish his confidence - and they could do better. They have to - Brazil wasn't overwhelming, but they were Brazil. They got careless at the end, but still... and North Korea - played DEFENSE and played it well, and even managed a couple counters... things might go differently for them against less composed teams - they might get some points out of this group yet...

Group H: Spain looked beautiful, but came up empty. Switzerland gave them very little, and took what they got. Chile looked great - Honduras looked like what they were - a team in a weak confederation sneaking in on a late goal by someone else... Spain is hardly out of it - Chile can score, but can they stop Spain? Can Switzerland repeat their performance against Chile? Can they score enough against Honduras? Interestingly - you can almost imagine this group leaving someone behind with six points - if Spain wins out, while Chile beats Switzerland and Switzerland Honduras - none of them all that far-fetched... that would be very interesting in itself. It's probably a bit more likely to see the Swiss and Spanish go through, though...

And so... second set of games, here we go - with Brazil and Germany the two powerhouses who've basically established themselves - the rest are still a bit up in the air. I think Ghana and Uruguay are the most impressive underdogs so far (Switzerland is a bit too one-dimensional to get away with it forever), though South Korea is certainly promising. The rest, I imagine, will be clarified this upcoming week...

World Cup 2010

Time, once more, for what is, really and truly, the most exciting sporting event on earth. Through the years I have been one of those Americans who gets addicted to soccer* every world cup, but ignores it in between - this year, though, I added the Fox Soccer Channel back in January, and have been watching the game religiously since. European club soccer mostly - but this means that, for once, I have seen most of the stars - Messi and Xavi and Wesley Snejder and Maicon and Franck Ribery and Drogba and Lampard and David James and Nicholas Bendtner and so on. I know who Jon Mikel Obi is! For once, all my soccer thoughts will not be strictly theoretical and second hand. Mostly theoretical and second hand, but not just....

I am happy to watch the tournament purely for pleasure, without caring who wins - or opportunistically cheering for whoever started to look like fun - that's how I used to do it. (And how I learned to love, if not spell, Hristo Stoichov)... But I suppose I have druthers, and even opinions this year. The latter are mostly conventional wisdom and prejudices - it seems beyond pointless to pretend to predict the cup's progress, but in general terms - it looks very likely to be completely wide open - upsets, surprises, underdogs, for all the usual reasons when the cup is held outside Europe, plus the fact that the traditional reliable teams seem weaker than usual (Germany, Italy), while the most talented (non-Brazil) teams have rather checkered tournament pasts, or insane coaches (Spain, Holland, Argentina.) I think - Brazil is Brazil; one of those talented chokers will come through big; African teams will almost all play over their heads - I'd guess Cameroon and Nigeria do best, given the draw and the injuries... Etc. Nothing profound there, but hey....

As for rooting? I'll cheer on the Americans as long as they are relevant. I think they have a pretty good chance of taking out England - they have a lot to play for, winning that game is a realistic goal and likely to be seen as such... though they are sure able to choke.... After that - I am very fortunate in being able to root for the local favorites. I can promise you, most of my part of town will feature a lot more yellow and green in the next few weeks than red white and blue - actually, it features more yellow and green the rest of the year than red white and blue. The travel agencies and street front churches are all Brazilian - I hear as much Portuguese as English at the supermarket. This is very handy come world cup time.... Otherwise? I admit to mostly cheering against France and England - then, for any African teams, plus the Dutch (who always at least make for pretty soccer) - and, I think, this year - hoping one of those underachievers (Spain or Argentina, plus Holland) breaks through. Mostly though - I just revel in the games....

*this is the USA, and calling soccer "football" just makes you look pretentious, not to mention confusing people.... when the English stop putting "u's" in words like "color" and "labor" then they can criticize. Though if anyone can get rid of that boring abomination Americans call football, they will have my enduring love.

Carl Dreyer and Gertrud

Via David Bordwell (first, and other sites since), I see that a new English language site devoted to Carl Theodor Dreyer is on line. There's a good overview at the Bioscope site - it's a thing of beauty. Biographical info, info on the making of films, discussion of films, essays on his methods, his style, and a huge array of photographs, film clips, archival material - amazing.

It happens that this week I finally got around to (re)watching Gertrud - I've had it sitting on the shelf for the last 6 months or so, my usual habit with DVDs. I have seen it before - back in the 90s, at Harvard, with Ray Carney himself in attendance. He got into an argument across the auditorium with a woman who had the temerity to laugh at something that might, in fact, have been a joke. (It might have been the line near the beginning when Kanning asks Gertrud why she is laughing - she says she's only smiling: she's barely that...)



It is hard to say what I thought of it then - I can quote myself: "Very slow, austere film about a woman married to a politician who has an affair with a musician who doesn't love her so after far more talk than is necessary moves away to Paris and lives a lonely but apparently fulfilled life. Hard to get a handle on." Still - it must have stuck with me - I would come across references to it, effusive praise often enough, and I would have an idea what they meant. I read Carney's Dreyer book, and recognized the movie in it. I knew there was something there, but could not quite presume to say what.

So finally I have gotten around to watching it again. And I think, in fact, it is something like a masterpiece. Maybe not Dreyer's best (though that is very good indeed), but a superb work nonetheless. It is, undeniably, a very strange film - strange looking, strangely put together. I don't know that it looks like anything else - it seems that critics called it old-fashioned when it came out, but did films anywhere ever look like this? Those stiff, static poses, the flat line readings, the lack of any overt reaction or emotion? It's not like a silent film - it doesn't intensify the pure visuals - it tends to freeze the images - people in the middle distance, unmoving, or moving in slow precise patterns, shadowed by the camera. It isn't theatrical, exactly, either - if it were on stage, it would be as strange and uncanny as it is on film.



That seems to be the strategy at work - the style mutes the emotions, it puts them in quotes, rather than acting them out. It is anti-representational, anti-illusionist - it does not try to enact its story as if it were real people in a real place - it presents them, as artificially as puppet theater. The actors/characters tell you the story, more than show it. And everything in the style works to maintain this attitude. Though as it happens, the story itself is more emotionally complex than it might seem - the characters are hard to get a read on, as characters. Gertrud is selfish and demanding, though also sympathetic - the men around her take her for granted - offer her less and less, and finally she seems to recognize that she really doesn't need what they can offer. And the men too - they are believable types (at least) - they make decisions, and live with consequences, and regret them... Dreyer seems to keep us closest to Gertrud's perspective, but not absolutely - and makes the shifting perspectives and relationships one of the organizing principals of the film's style. The camera movement, the choreography, all create a fluid physical representation of the psychic ebb and flow of the story. (You can find plenty of discussion of that aspect of Dreyer's style in Carney book.)

Though looking at it again - the writer who really got it right was Jacques Rivette. In the course of an altogether unedifying (and one-sided) argument over Getrud with the inimitable (thankfully) Dan Schneider, one of the interlocutors posted a quote, taken - as it happens - from this old Cahiers roundtable discussion. (Or possibly Jonathan Rosenbaum's reference to the same passage.) I shall quote, almost in full:

if Dreyer's film, more "logical," in any case more chronological, [than Straub's Not Reconciled, I think] doesn't doesn't function formally as a dream, it nevertheless also prescribes an "oneiric" vocabulary: at once the telling of a dream and a session of analysis (an analysis in which the roles are unceasingly changing; subjected to the flow, the regular tide of the long takes, the mesmeric passes of the incessant camera movements, the even monotone of the voices, the steadiness of the eyes -- always turned aside, often parallel, towards us: a little above us -- the strained immobility of the bodies, huddled in armchairs, on sofas behind which the other silently stands, fixed in ritual attitudes which make them no more than corridors for speech to pass through, gliding through a semi-obscurity arbitrarily punctuated with luminous zones into which the somnambulists emerge of their own accord...).

Seeing it now - that is dead on. Seeing it now, with Rivette in mind, you can't miss the parallels. Time and again, characters assume the position of a session of analysis (as much as it is anything) - one person behind the other, usually one sitting, one standing, or sitting above the other person - turned away from each other, each talking in turns (taking turns - lines of dialogue are kept distinctly separate here), often enough about - dreams, emotions, values and desires, in almost clinical tones.... But as Rivette notes - the positions change, the roles change - one stands and the other sits - they take turns speaking.... And I noticed that quite often - it is the character in the "doctor's" position (behind the other) who speaks, as if they were the patient. Which strikes me as another means of running variations on the patterns....




It's interesting as well that there are scenes in the film that explicitly stage many of these very relationships. That is - that if the doctor/patient positions of Analysis are one of the characteristic staging strategies of the film - it is notable that at least one scene depicts this relationship in fact.



In this shot, Axel is Gertrud's doctor (she fainted; he gave her a pill.) He is also, explicitly, studying psychology and psychiatry, and tells her so. And here - he leans behind her as she talks, explicitly, about her father, about her ideas about marriage and fate, and eventually about her dreams - prompted, as it happens, by Axel's reference to his Paris discussions of dreams and symbols...



It's interesting as well that Dreyer does something like this with the staging, as well. All those shots of people standing or sitting next to each other, looking past one another -



- look, in fact, as if they were looking at one another in mirrors: and sure enough, Dreyer makes the pattern explicit: they stand in exactly the positions they have through the bulk of the film, but this time - the mirror is really there.



It's an interesting strategy, what I would call providing a naturalistic instance of a convention. There is a lot of this in the film. It is like telling a dream - and contains the telling of dreams; it is like a dream - and has dream sequences; it is as artificial as an opera - and contains songs. It seems to spell out the types of formal elements that will make it up - to include direct instances of them, along with the many variations on their conventions.... A fascinating film...

Another Perfect Gam!e

Back around the beginning of the baseball season, I saw a handful of articles and blog posts(though for the life of me, I can't remember where) based on the question of whether anything new could still happen in baseball. I think possibly, having three perfect games thrown within the space of a month would count. Though the fact that the third one didn't count because the ump blew the call on the last out might trump that. That is a hard mistake to make - in that situation, I can't imagine not erring on the side of the pitcher. Anyway, to top this, someone is going to have to hit 5 home runs in a game, and get called out on the last one for missing third base.

Now It's Dark

Sadly, Dennis Hopper died yesterday. He has been ill for some time - this is not a surprise. Still... he had a long and fascinating career, a crucial career, in a lot of ways. Though a strange one - defined, maybe over defined, by a handful of films - Easy Rider and Blue Velvet more than any. It's probably unfair to always talk about him in those terms, but I can't help it either - Frank Booth is one of the great monsters of film history, and Blue Velvet one of the transformative films of my life.



He comes in - "Where's my bourbon?" - and everything shifts. It isn't that the film isn't strange or disturbing before Frank appears, I mean, he comes in right after Dorothy catches Jeffery in the closet - but he turns it into something altogether new. I wish I could find some record of my initial reaction - I know most of the attention, at the time, was toward Hopper's performance. The film as a whole is, and was, an overwhelming experience - it was, I am pretty sure, the most completely absorbing film I had ever seen. I'd say it was the first time a film had seemed completely satisfying, but I'd seen films like Brazil and Dr. Strangelove by then that had a lot of the same effect - but I think it was a good deal more overwhelming than they were. The way it looked, sounded - and Dennis Hopper.



He explodes. A lot of it is the character, Frank Booth is somewhere off the charts of madness - but the intense strangeness of the character is only worth so much. Hopper completely commits to it, pushes it where it goes - the character is over the top - he is over the top - he does not give you anything to hang on to. He forces you to take the film seriously (even as a big part of its power comes from how funny it is) - that horror/disgust/comedy is part of the secret - you have no way out. You have to accept the film's world, its people and stories, and go with it. It's riveting.



Now the film - makes sense. As usual with Lynch, the logic is dream logic - here given an explicit Oedipal turn ("Daddy wants to fuck!" - "Is that your mom?"), linked back to the real world (Mr. Beaumont's breathing apparatus and Frank's gas mask, say.)





But sense is not all. And shock and horror is not all - Hopper doesn't just give you menace, he gives you - something. His need, or whatever you call it - his reaction to the music, particularly, to Ben - is more than just threat, more than just pulling faces.



What is he looking for? What does he want? Part of what makes this film so great is the way the Oedipal significance is complicated - Frank is as much child as father, as lost, in a sense, as Jeffery is. They are doubles. And for that to work - Frank has to be more than just horrifying - he has to be seductive, and he has to be - lost, somehow; longing. Jeffery has to see himself in Frank, and Hopper has to show us what he sees.... and Hopper does it.





This was the film that convinced me that film was capable of art as good as any art form. It's as stunning today as it ever way, and Hopper still as magnificent. So - for that - I think him.

The Doctor

Well - this is a bit less surprising than the last perfect game - Roy Halladay has been one of the premier pitchers in the game for quite a while, and when he's on, doesn't give you anything. Still - 2 perfect games in 3 weeks? Amazing. Three no-hitters this year too - just one of those things.

Jafar Panahi

Very happy to read that Jafar Panahi, the Iranian film director recently arrested, has been released. On bail, but as noted in the article, it could be that the government will not take it to trial - a trial would create more international attention, and (again, as noted in the article), if they had any evidence, the odds are they would have released it. So - guarded optimism seems in order, as well as relief that he has been released.

Film Roundup Time

A couple weeks worth - haven't been killing myself to see a lot of films, which I suppose is a bad habit. But since we're less than a month from the World Cup, which is going to consume all my free time in June - 2-3 films a week might be all I manage for a while...

No One Knows about Persian Cats: 12/15 - Wonderful fictionalized documentary about Tehran's underground music scene - a young man gets out of prison and meets his girlfriend (who may also have been in prison) - they are musicians, they are trying to get a band together to either go to London and play a concert or play a show and make a record in Iran. An underground music producer introduces them to a fixer and the film takes off - the fixer (Nedar by name) rides them around town on his motobike talking a mile a minute and setting everything up - the passports, the permits - introducing them to all the musicians - a heavy metal group (nu division) playing in a cow shed; jazz acts, acoustic guitar singers, traditional folk singers, a bluesy chanteuse, and a couple indie bands (one with a very Stone Roses looking drummer, and a Stone roses sound - the other - a dronier version of the same, more Interpol, less Strokes maybe.) The leads sing a sweet poppy style - Bishop Allen in Farsi, almost... Overall, the film has some of the feel of the great Beijing Bastards - less completely fictionalized, less accomplished (filmically or musically), though it may be because working underground in Iran is tougher than it was in 90s Red China... But like Beijing Bastards, it gives you a sense of the lives being led, and is very generous with the music, which gains a sense of complete exhilaration. Several nearly complete musical performances are included, usually accompanied by documentary shots of the city - it plays like a love letter to something being lost - I believe the principals left the country after shooting the film and did not go back - I suspect those pieces were put together from that footage with much that intention.... It is heartbreaking, though - the 90s were a thrilling time to watch Iranian films, and seeing them over a run of years, you could see things changing in Iran. Every year it seemed, the films took more chances, showed more, and showed their world changing, becoming, slowly, a better place. But that is gone, and the story of Iranian films in the 00s has been a story of filmmakers leaving while the country becomes more politically retrograde - now, with Panahi in jail and most of the other major talent in exile (Ghobadi, the Makhmalbafs, Kiarostami), Iranian film as a national entity is damn near dead. This film offers a pretty nice eulogy...

Bluebeard: 10/15 - The latest from Catherine Breillat - a filming of the classic fairty tale - a man dies, leaving two impoverished daughters whose only chance to marry is to old Barbe Bleue, an ugly man whose earlier wives have all disappeared - the younger daughter agrees to marry him, out of desire to free herself from her sister and mother, as well as a degree of greed and curiosity. This couple proves - well - something close to happy, for all the weirdness of it.... BUt there are rules of course - she insists on sleeping in her own room until she is of age, and he agrees; but he prohibits her from entering that one room at the end of the hall... I hope you have all read the story somewhere along the line and know what happens - not that it is any real mystery. Rules like that have only one possible outcome. Of course she goes in and of course the other wives are there and of course he has to kill her and of course she begs for time to say her prayers, to put on her wedding dress - etc... All this is intercut with two little girls reading the story - the younger one is brash and enthusiastic, the older one is scared... the double narration, the cheap simple sets and costumes, give it an air of both unreality, told-ness, and a kind of naturalism - it comes off as a lesser version of late Rohmer, or even Rivette - very stylized, simplified, and clever and engaging - one of the more enjoyable, and satisfying Breillat films. It lacks Breillat's usual explicit sexuality, but it is quite plainly about sex - about sexual desire, the girl's, especially. The forbidden room is made an explicit symbol not just for her sexual desire, but for her sexual maturity, maybe mixed with the idea of losing her virginity - all that blood... It's an interesting film - Breillat's treatment of female sexuality is nearly unique...

Hot Tub Time Machine: 9/15 - I don't know what kind of double feature this would make with Bluebeard, though I saw them the same day.... This proved to be a silly buddy movie with some nice undercurrents. John Cusack, Rob Corddry and Craig Robinson as three buddies in the throes of midlife angst - when Corddry's Lou nearly kills himself in his garage, they head off (with Clark Duke, playing Cusack's nephew) to a ski resort where they wasted the 80s - it's a dump now - but there's a time machine and some Russian Red Bull, so anything can happen. They wake up in 1986 - and decide (for some reason) they have to exactly reproduce what they did in 1986 to get back to the present. It's not clear why they want to go back to the present - though it might have something to do with the non-existence of the nephew in 1986 - but they try... for a while... but not only don't they have much to go back to, but what happened to them in 1986 was mostly bad, so repeating it seems awfully dumb. It's all very funny and a bit grim, as they prove to have been a pretty awful crew in 1986, and just as bad now - but they manage, I suppose, in a backhanded way, to get something like redemption. A big part of the fun is the shameless self-referentiality - lots of Better off Dead and Say Anything jokes, and Back to the Future (Crispin Glover is also on hand), plenty of 80s mockery... though I fear it has a couple details that are so wrong as to almost ruin the experience. I don't know, but I find it hard to believe there would be a lot of girls around in 1986 who would get Dr. Who jokes - 2009, yeah - 86? But there's a bigger mistake, a bit of detailing that totally ruins the illusion that they've gone back to 1986 - they hang around in restaurants, bars, a pool hall and through it all - No One Is Smoking! This clearly indicates to me that this whole time travel thing has to be seen as Someone Having a Bad Dream. I remember what 1986 smelled like...

Please Give: 10/15 - New film from Nicole Holofcener, a slice of life in upper New York City. Catherine Keener is married to Oliver Platt, they sell used furniture they buy from dead people, they own the apartment next to theirs and are waiting for the old woman who lives there to die, and they have a 15 year old daughter with problems... The old lady has two granddaughters played by Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet - one is a nice, mopey technician at a clinic, the other is a mean, depressive drunk who works at a spa. The two families intersect; there is a disastrous birthday party full of booze and passive aggressive "honesty" that leads to an extremely unwise relationship - while Keener and Hall look for a bit of improvement in their lives.... It's a bit strange, off-kilter, understated - the plot turning, really, on two events, an affair and the inevitable housing change, that splits these two families, without quite resolving anything. It is hard to pin down, but it is still utterly convincing. It has that odd tone you get from some films, some French films, of simultaneously satirizing and sympathizing with its characters - here - they act foolishly for good reasons - it almost makes fun of them, for their inept gestures at generosity, their thinking they can buy off guilt, even their guilt (I mean, that's how used furniture shops work - you buy low, you sell high...) It's a fine film. My only real complaint is this - that like way too many American films that try to do this (tell smallish, domestic stories carefully, elliptically), there is nothing to look at. Why is it like that? The French and Japanese have long been masters of films like this, and they all look fantastic - why do American indies look so boring? American quietism - the worst thing about American films. A problem that goes across the board, actually - I can say the same thing about Hot Tub Time Machine, or Kick-Ass - they're all competent, but there's nothing really to look at except the story being told.

Kick-Ass And Superheroes

So I ventured into the mainstream this weekend, taking in a show of Kick-Ass - and came out surprisingly happy. It's an awfully clever movie that pulls enough from the right sources to almost do justice to them - a post-incredibles superhero movie, a post-Kill Bill John Woo homage, probably a lot of other post-'s I'm missing for ignoring comics and TV for the last decade - none of it up to the sources, but none of it insulting... Ya got a normal guy who reads too many comics and thinks, why not dress up and fight crime? So he does it, with disastrous consequences - but he keeps doing it, and probably would end up dead except a real superhero turns up, in the form of an 11 year old girl (and her father, Nicholas Cage in a home made Batsuit and handlebar mustache channeling Adam West...) So - this makes him famous, and draws the ire of a local gangster, who has a son who also reads comics and so dresses up as his own superhero, to lure the others in... it all ends in blood (fire, explosions, brutal beatdowns and Joker quotes...) In the end, Hit Girl goes to school (woe to the bullies) - sequels are promised....

I've seen a certain amount of angst about the premise - the little kid making like Chow Yun-fat, the little kid getting the shit kicked out of her (which she does), the little kid calling people cunts - but I can't get too worked up about any of that. Movies are make believe, and this is particularly obviously make believe - and enough about the process of making believe to make something thematic of it. And kids - even 11 year olds - make believe things like this - blood and guts and fake violence and extravagant horrible fears and dangers overcome in the most hyperbolic ways possible - who didn't make up stuff like this? I did, and I was as tame a lad as you can find... It's tempting to get woo woo about it, about how it's a fairy tale (complete with absent mothers and monsters to defeat and dark night journeys and all the rest) and all - so I might as well. I think, as far as superhero movies go, it does a better job than almost any at getting at something Walter Chaw says in his review - "this superhero game makes perfect sense for kids feeling their way around a budding moral sextant, navigating their twisted, confused straits--but not so much adults, who need to find a better way through." I think he's hit it on the head there - this one plays its adolescent material straight - the underlying themes are acted out in the film. It's not as good a film as The Incredibles (to name one), but it has the same kind of sneaky seriousness...

The question of comic book movie seriousness has become something of an internet meme this week, thanks to Matt Zoller Seitz' subtly titled article at Salon - Superheroes Suck! Responses abound - Jim Emerson, The Telegraph, Pandagon (going outside the movie world) - with plenty of comments hashing it all out... I'm not sure how much I can add, but some things have been running through my head... I can't say I disagree with Seitz - most superhero films do suck - or, maybe better, are drab, formulaic crowd-pleasers, disposable and harmless... I disagree with him on a couple specifics - I liked Kick-Ass quite a bit, as you might be able to guess - and I still love the two Burton Batman films, especially the first one - though that's partly down to the experience of seeing it (twice the first two nights - a great urban showing, packed house, everyone cheering everything - Jack, Prince, Burton, the Batman, the Joker, Vicky Vail - absolutely wonderful... and the next night in a suburban theater with a crowd sharply divided between black kids cheering for the Joker and Prince and white kids cheering for Batman and, for some reason, booing Prince; complete with a fist fight before the show and a stabbing in the parking lot during the show... Exhibit A in why I'll take cities over suburbs any day of the week....)

Where was I? Oh yes - one of the problems with Seitz' article, I think, is that it looks like he's saying - Superhero movies can't be great films... when what he really presents is, No Superhero movies have been great films. He does not make an argument (not a convincing one anyway) for why superhero films can't be great films - maybe he doesn't mean to, but given the sweeping terms of his complaints - it looks like that's what he has in mind....

A second problem is - he doesn't quite define his terms. What is he talking about? You can, I think, parse out what he means, looking at his examples, at what he leaves out (The Incredibles?) He seems to mean - Mainstream American films adapted from mainstream American Superhero (or masked hero) comic books. It's an interesting definition though - because it seems to me to rather conveniently define around the superhero films that have the best claim for being "great" films - or at least, substantially interesting, individualized, imaginative films - films with the ambition and substance of the zombie films he praises. Let me name names - take these four: The Incredibles; Kill Bill; A History of Violence; Ichi the Killer - make it five - Big Man Japan. None of them fit - 2 Japanese films; an original story; a manga adaptation, and a fairly mainstream, non-superhero comic adaptation. That seems important to me - first, that to exclude films that don't suck, you have to do quite a bit of definitional shuffling - but also, that you can construct a pretty well defined type of superhero film that - to some extent - sucks... But I think what makes those films suck is that they are, in fact, mainstream adaptations of mainstream superhero comics. They are adaptations of long established characters and stories - that are guarded rather heavily by their owners and fans. It is difficult to make films out of them that go against the desires of their owners and fans - they have become very beholden to whatever the current vogue is for superhero comics.

The truth (as I've written about in the past) is that I have a soft spot for the more ridiculous kinds of superhero stories - Burton's Batman films, and even more, the 60's Batman. Even the Schumacher Batmans (which really puts me in a minority.) Camp, surrealism, ultraviolence (all coming together in Takashi Miike's films) - these things have been drained a bit from the superhero genre, but they have been there in the past, and can be again. (See Chris Stangl's comment on Seitz' article.) It's harder to do at the center - the big budget, high prestige properties - easier to do at the margins - smaller comics, smaller budgets. That might be why Kick-Ass is better than most of the other recent superhero films - its striving to be part of the mainstream might be why it still doesn't measure up to those 5 exceptions I named.

I Guess the Mound is His

Dallas Braden threw a perfect game, today, against the best team in the majors. Not bad. Though what struck me is the fact that 12,000 people saw it, on a Sunday afternoon in Oakland - that doesn't say anything good about the team...

National Train Day

Via Jacqueline Lynch I learn that today is, in fact, National Train Day. That's a holiday I can get behind! Happy National Train Day, then, from -

Buster Keaton -











Wes Anderson -





And the Coen Brothers -

William Lubtchansky

William Lubtchansky has died. Perhaps not a household name, except for French movie fans. I'm mostly familiar with his work with Rivette - beautiful, elegant, understated and witty, as I think these shots, all from Va Savoir (a film that seems a little overlooked, even by Rivette's standards), should show...

Jeanne Balibar makes her escape...





...and one of the great drunk sequences in all film:











May he rest in peace...

April Movies Basically

Latest movie roundup: a long stretch of time, as this covers a mini-vacation...

Exit Through the Gift Shop: 12/15 - A Banksy film, whatever that means - and an absolutely wonderful documentary about - something. Street art? Contemporary art? itself? Something... Starts with a man named Thierry Guetta, a strange frenchman who runs a vintage clothing store (where he buys junk in bulk and marks it up as "designer" clothes - a hint of things to come) - and obsessively films everything he can. Well - Guetta has a cousin, who happens to be a street artists called "invader" - putting up space invader mosaics in various places. He films Invader - and this leads him to other artists, in Paris, LA, who Guetta films as well - most notably, Shepherd Fairey. And after a few years of this, Guetta meets Banksy himself (maybe)... though not much is coming of any of this. Guetta films, and puts the tapes in boxes - lots and lots of boxes.... But as Banksy starts making money, he tells Guetta to make the film he's been promising - which (according to the story) goes very badly... so Bansky starts editing the film, and Guetta invents a character for himself (Mr. Brainwash) and puts on a hell of a big art show (called "Life is Beautiful") - that consists of some of the most inanely derivative pop and street art knockoffs ever. But despite its complete paucity of ideas and the fact that it is all put together on the fly at the last possible second - it is a huge success, and makes a mint.

All this seems a bit too good to be true, and critics (Roger Ebert for example) are given to speculate on its veracity... Apparently, Mr. Brainwash exists, and makes art and sells it - and it is as silly as it looks in this film... and that Wikipedia article isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of authenticity... Though exactly what "authenticity" might refer to there is anyone's guess. And as for the art - is it Guetta seeing a chance to market art like fake designer clothes? is it Banksy taking the piss? something else? Whatever it is, it is hilarious - the art almost as funny as the movie. As an artist, Mr. Brainwash isn't doing much more than a million LOLcatters with photoshop are doing - it's all just altered art - but it is relarkably funny, both in itself and conceptually - the idea of passing this stuff off as art is hilarious. And it even looks good (though that's probably because it's all swiped from real art...)

But the film - is something special. The best film about contemporary art I can think of. It takes the art seriously, while taking the piss - the documentary footage in particular is wonderful, exhilarating, liberating... And that art (the street art) often looks great - especially Banksy's art, which really is on another level from the rest of the artists here. And the film itself is quite well made - well structured, thoughtful, smart about it - about the way things like this are jokes and deadly serious, hard work and a form of play, all at once. Details like the way Guetta's clothing store anticipates his art show - show how well put together it is. It's great stuff.

Vincere: 10/15 - Marco Bellochio's latest, about Mussolini's rise - or really, a love affair - he meets a woman, in either 1907, 1914 or both, and starts an affair. In 1914 he supports the war, which causes the socialists to throw him out - by then the woman is his, body and soul, and she sells all to buy him a newspaper, and bears him a son. They are happy, but it can't last - he has another woman, more children, and when he goes to war he married #2 and abandons #1. After the war, he continues to shun her, but she won't let go - and this leads to her doom, madness, or at least madhouses, and the misery and eventual doom of her son... The performances are spectacular - Giovanna Mezzogiorno plays Ida magnificently, Filippo Timi plays Mussolini, father and son, and is superb as both. It's also a directorial tour de force - jumping around in time, integrating reality and fantasy, films, etc. - making great use of cinemas, the crowds interacting with the movies, brawling, kids jumping up and down along with what's on screen, Ida integrated into Chaplin's The Kid - a very fine film.

House: 11/15 - Not exactly new, I know, but getting a kind of release at last... Great fun - very strange haunted house film, with a bunch of schoolgirls going to visit one of the girl's aunt. There's a bit of backstory there - the girl ("Gorgeous") has a rich father who has a villa, but he has also acquired a fiancee (whose part seems to have been spliced in from a perfume commercial), and Gorgeous is jealous - thus, off to see mom's sister. SHe and her pals arrive at the aunt's house - an isolated old fashioned house on a hill, guarded (you could say) by a goofy guy selling watermelons) - at the house they meet the aunt, a sweet old lady in a wheelchair, with a white cat (who seems more or less omnipresent) - everything seems nice enough, but you know how it goes. The fat girl disappears - the high strung girl finds her head in the well - or does she? The girls start to worry - the aunt starts walking - then things get strange. Futons attack one girl, a piano eats another - Gorgeous, puts on her aunt's makeup and becomes a kind of monster bride - and then it gets stranger still. In the end, the girl's teacher arrives in his dune buggy, but turns into a bunch of bananas; then the finacee and her perfume commercial arrive, and Gorgeous greets her, but you can see the cat is still hungry... I can't do justice to it all - it is so far over the top it comes up from below - really cool stuff.

The Good, The Bad and the Weird: 9/15 -A certain kind of high ambition, that doesn't come off - a Leone knock off sort of, with buried treasure, a vicious crook, a mostly amoral bounty hunter, a goofy thief, swirling factions with political overtones around them. The thief steals a treasure map from some Japanese, that the Bad was supposed to have retrieved - the Good is hanging around - they all set off on a long chase across Manchuria, the three of them plus a couple gangs of bandits (with an inexhaustible supply of thugs) and the Japanese army. Lots of action, some comedy, but not much logic follows, and truth is, even the action is a bit flat - there are some nice set pieces, but they don't quite come off... It's watchable, I suppose, though a bit of a slog, never quite delivering on its premise - all that genre mashup ought to be more fun. The great Song Kang-so has the Wallach part and makes a meal of it, almost saving the thing... But overall, it's a film that made a spectacular trailer, but not much of a movie.

DVD:

Kingdom of Heaven: 8/15 - Orlando Bloom stars as a blacksmith plucked from his forge by a wandering crusader (we are set in the 1180s) who proves to be dear old dad. Young Balian the blacksmith does not wish to go, but he is mocked by a priest and promptly dispatches him, and finds it best to scarper for the holy land. Dad dies en route and our man washes up on the shores of Palestine a baron. He goes to Jeruselem and the film sets up its central conflict - the idealistic leper king Baldwin and his supporters (Balian, Jeremy Irons with a fake scar) vs. mad templars and Frenchmen. The latter provoke Saladin and his armies, but as long as Baldwin lives, he maintains the peace - but when he dies, it's war! All this has the makings of something awful, but actually isn't half bad. It's a long movie, 2 1/2 hours (and there's an even longer director's cut that I haven't seen), but moves along fairly briskly. There's not much point to it, I suppose, but it's distracting enough. Ridley Scott mostly maintains a modernized classicism, if that makes any sense - it feels like an old fashioned Hollywood epic, though without the conventional racism - Saladin and company are noble and heroic and victorious... Still - it's morality is extremely simplistic - there are good guys, there are bad guys, and there is no overlap between them. The bad guys are the templars, looking for WAR! - everyone else is a good guy, trying to keep peace, but forced to fight one another thanks to the folly of the warmongers. It is fascinating to compare this to Warlords - the Chinese film is infinitely more complex, morally. The three main heroes are forced constantly to choose - to do evil things to accomplish greater ideals, or prevent worse evils - they have to compromise, and their compromises not only lead them to do bad things, but undermine the ideals they claim to support. They have no way to win, really - act honorably and lose to the villains; act harshly and become the villains. Kingdom of Heaven has almost nothing of this - there is one moment, where poor Balian is offered the kingdom of Jerusalem (and the woman he loves) if he will agree to have her husband (the presumptive heir) murdered - he refuses - and no one really presses the issue. Here - villains lose, honorable and decent people win - or at least get out alive. It's very heartwarming but notably childish.

All that doesn't quite address the film itself. As I said - it is surprisingly watchable, even at its excessive length. It could do with a better hero - Orlando Bloom is not useless, but he is mostly pretty - and pretty much disappears among the Easter dinner's worth of hams around him. Fortunately, the leading lady, Eva Green, is as pretty and boring as he is, so you aren't really led to wonder why she wouldn't run off with Jeremy Irons instead...

Mysterious Object at Noon: 12/15 - I will need to digest this some before saying much - though as always, Apitchapong Weerasethakul delivers a beautiful, amusing, clever, challenging work...

May Day Celebration

Happy May Day, folks! I want to say - I rather wish the teabaggers were right, and Obama was a secret socialist, planning to establish a reign of terror of single payer health care, strong regulation of financial institutions and corporations, end of undue deference to religious organizations, strengthened unions, better safety and environmental regulations - and oh, so much more. One can dream, no? The dirty fucking hippy in me wishes he might get us out of a war or two, end the worst offenses against human rights stemming from those wars (treat prisoners as either prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva convention, or as criminals, protected by the American constitution and international law), maybe even reduce the war on drugs, and stop destabilizing our neighbors and filling our prisons in a vain attempt to keep hippies and football players from enjoying their weed... Not likely. The only comfort - and it's thin comfort indeed - is that the right seems determined to marginalize itself completely - Arizona's immigration law seems designed to keep any non-whites from voting Republican - they might have already succeeded in losing Florida to the Democrats by alienating the Cuban vote... though divisive, xenophobic, racist, authoritarian politics are always dangerous...

Enough of that. Let's celebrate the day with some music - the anger of the downtrodden (at least in the film version of the play): Lotte Lenya singing "Pirate Jenny" from Red Pabst's Threepenny Opera movie.