It's Friday, and that's music day, so in honor of the Iranian Films Blogathon, here is some Iranian music...
Here is Take it Easy Hospital, the band featured in No One Knows About Persian Cats, performing live in Budapest:
And another band featured in the movie, the Yellow Dogs:
And, clicking around on YouTube - here's something different, a rather video featuring some rather neat Tool inspired animation, by a metal band called Aliaj:
And - to finish - something completely different: traditional Persian music, by Mohammad-Reza Shajarian.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Iranian Film Blogathon - Announcement and a List
All this week, The Sheila Variations is running a blogathon dedicated to films from Iran, beginning Monday and running through Sunday. I hope to contribute more substantively as the week goes on - there are many things to be said about Iranian films; right now, though, I am behind on everything, so I will have to start with something more modest. Perhaps a list of my all time favorite Iranian films?
It's something of an awkward list - very heavy on the Great Auteurs - Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Mehrjui, and heavily pre-2000 (all but one) - but that mirrors my viewing experience. As I mentioned previously, Iranian films were something of a thing back in the late 90s - they were certainly featured in festivals, retrospectives and so on. In the 00s - they haven't exactly faded from view, and in some ways, they are more available then before (heck - I found a copy of Offside for $3 at Big Lots a while back...) - but some of the excitement seems to be gone. And - with the increasing repression in Iran, the films have dried up as well as people go abroad or suffer under the government. And artistically - while several important directors have emerged in the 2000s (Panahi, Ghobadi, Samira Makhmalbaf, notably), they seem less adventurous than the previous generation. (Panahi might be the exception there.) Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf in particular combined humanism, realism and political engagement (in difficult circumstances) with some of the most audacious formal experimentation in the world. Their successors have carried on the first three, but (except for Panahi) dialed back on the experimentation. Which leaves us with some nice films in the 00s but not quite the eye-opening masterpieces of the earlier years. (Though it should be said that neither Kiarostami or Makhmalbaf have abandoned anything - their recent films have been as challenging as ever...)
So without further ado - a fairly simple list, with some commentary...
1. Through the Olive Trees - the third film in Abbas Kiarostami's Koker/Poshtar trilogy, after Where is the Friend's House? and Life Goes On, and a particularly elaborate piece of metafiction. The three films seem like a camera tracking backwards, revealing levels of framing. The first one tells a story, directly. The second tells a story about the people acting in the first film, revealing its fictionality, as well as the reality behind the fiction of the film. This, the third, tells a story about the making of the second film, while foregrounding its own fictionality, even more than the previous film, as actors step in and out of roles, the time frames are manipulated and so on. It's also a lovely and funny love story, focusing on a young man, an actor in the second film, trying to convince the girl he has a crush on to love him. Ending, as Kiarostami films are wont to do, magnificently.
2. A Moment of Innocence - Mohsen Makhmalbaf's reflection on his own youth, as a political radical... In 1974, Makhmalbaf (ae 17) attempted to steal the gun from a cop; he ended up stabbing him and the policeman shot him. 20 years later the policeman showed up to audition as an actor in one of Makhmalbaf’s films, and they made this film. It;s mostly about the process of making the film - looking for actors, coaching the actors, using the rehearsals to talk about their own motivations 20 years before. And, in the end, shooting the film, about the events, 20 years ago - but, I guess you'd say, trying to get it right this time. A beautiful and moving film, full of wit and grace and a sense of sadness and regret, and redemption. A marvel.
3. The Circle -one of Jafar Panahi's ambitious feminist films - following a series of women one night in Tehran, a series of women, one after another, in a circle through the night in the city, each one running, but all ending up in jail... An intense and powerful film, its politics is brutal and sharp and expressed through the story - it has a propulsive desperation, with its tight, in you face camera style, putting you in the middle of the story, starting stories in the middle, staying close to the protagonist (at any given time)... Panahi has a way, in many of his films, of withholding information - sometimes by limiting our point of view to the characters - but also, by denying us information they have. In this film, we often see women panicking before we learn what spooks them - we have to figure out what is going on. An intense and masterful work.
4. Close Up - Here, Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf team up, in a film, about a man who Mohsen Makhmalbaf, insinuating himself into a family, convincing them he wanted to use them in his next film. He was, in the end, caught, exposed and tried - Kiarostami filmed the trial as the man tried to explain, his obsession with art, his poverty and helplessness, the pleasure and power of acting this role. And then, the principals play themselves in this film, and the imposter gets to meet Makhmalbaf himself (an amazing scene, the man bursts into helpless weeping when he sees Makhmalbaf). One of the first films to plunge wholeheartedly into metafiction, a device that became extremely common in 1990s Iranian cinema.
5. A Taste of Cherry - Kiarostami again, here - shot almost entirely from a car, driving around the outskirts of Tehran, as a man looks for someone to bury him, if he kills himself. He finds three potential helpers - a soldier (who runs away), a Afghani religious student who tries to convince him not to do it for religious reasons, and a taxidermist, who will do it (because he needs the money), but tries to talk him out of it for humanist reasons. And in the end? a strange coda, on video, the film crew on the side of the hill where the man was to die, soldiers lurking near the tree that marked his grave - stepping outside the story without any fuss, leaving it hanging in the air, accompanied by Louis Armstrong. It's a strange and lovely film about alienation (a film set almost entirely on a series of barren hills on the outskirts of a city of 6 million) and paying attention...
6. The Cycle- A much older film - Darius Mehrjui's 1978 film about a father and son who get involved in a blood donation scheme - they give blood, they get involved in the workings of a hospital, they get involved with gangsters, etc... Slow building but brilliant... Sometimes reminiscent of Oshima's The Sun's Burial - the blood donation scheme (an obvious enough metaphor in both cases), the way the film follows the factions involved, the similar blend of nihilism and metaphor.
7. Where is the Friend's House? - Lovely film, the first of Kiarostami's Koker/Poshtar films. A boy takes his friend’s notebook by mistake, tries to return it, running an obstacle course to do so: his mother won’t listen to him trying to explain what he’s doing; the friend lives in the next town and when he gets there, no one knows the boy he’s looking for; the town itself is a maze of streets and stairs and alleys - he's sent back and forth, following lead after lead, never quite finding the friend. It's full of nifty details and characters, very funny at times...
8. A True Story - Abolfazl Jalili is a filmmaker whose work showed up stateside in the 90s, but not so much since. This is another of the many films about filmmaking from the late 90s - here - a documentary about a boy with as crippled leg. The story starts as the director looking for an amateur actor for a film - he finds this boy, a talented musician, and sets out to get help for his bad leg, and to make a film about it.
9. The Silence - If there is a more deliciously sensuous director in the world than Mohsen Makhmalbaf, I don't know who it is. In this film, a blind boy and his mother have five days before they will be evicted. The boy tunes lutes for a mean instrument maker, but he keeps getting lost - he rides the bus to work, but follows people with beautiful voices or who play beautiful music. He is led around by a gorgeous little girl in long braids who dances to his lute tuning, wearing cherries for earrings and flower petals to paint her nails. The movie is full of grace notes, building to a thoroughly transcendent ending - the landlord knocks 4 times and the boy imagines it as Beethoven's fifth. Pieces of the symphony crop up on the soundtrack, he gets people to play it - at the end, he gets a pair of pot pounders to play the beat - then a whole factory pounds it, then, it turns into a full symphonic (augmented with middle eastern instruments) rendering of the fifth.
10. The Cow - One of the films that brought modernist filmmaking to Iran - Merhjui's 1969 film is about a man named Hassan who owns the only cow in his village. He loves his cow. He goes one day to work, and while he is gone, the cow dies. The village panics - they don't want to tell him, so they hide when he returns. He refuses to admit the cow is dead - he ends up moving into the barn an becoming the cow himself. The villagers drag him away in ropes - this doesn't end well. A strange, surrealist film, full of clever details and subplots - a neighboring village, an idiot, a delinquint who'd been to the city, old women worrying about witchcraft - a great film. And - I recently discovered to my great delight - available on Netflix, on DVD or streaming.
It's something of an awkward list - very heavy on the Great Auteurs - Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Mehrjui, and heavily pre-2000 (all but one) - but that mirrors my viewing experience. As I mentioned previously, Iranian films were something of a thing back in the late 90s - they were certainly featured in festivals, retrospectives and so on. In the 00s - they haven't exactly faded from view, and in some ways, they are more available then before (heck - I found a copy of Offside for $3 at Big Lots a while back...) - but some of the excitement seems to be gone. And - with the increasing repression in Iran, the films have dried up as well as people go abroad or suffer under the government. And artistically - while several important directors have emerged in the 2000s (Panahi, Ghobadi, Samira Makhmalbaf, notably), they seem less adventurous than the previous generation. (Panahi might be the exception there.) Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf in particular combined humanism, realism and political engagement (in difficult circumstances) with some of the most audacious formal experimentation in the world. Their successors have carried on the first three, but (except for Panahi) dialed back on the experimentation. Which leaves us with some nice films in the 00s but not quite the eye-opening masterpieces of the earlier years. (Though it should be said that neither Kiarostami or Makhmalbaf have abandoned anything - their recent films have been as challenging as ever...)
So without further ado - a fairly simple list, with some commentary...
1. Through the Olive Trees - the third film in Abbas Kiarostami's Koker/Poshtar trilogy, after Where is the Friend's House? and Life Goes On, and a particularly elaborate piece of metafiction. The three films seem like a camera tracking backwards, revealing levels of framing. The first one tells a story, directly. The second tells a story about the people acting in the first film, revealing its fictionality, as well as the reality behind the fiction of the film. This, the third, tells a story about the making of the second film, while foregrounding its own fictionality, even more than the previous film, as actors step in and out of roles, the time frames are manipulated and so on. It's also a lovely and funny love story, focusing on a young man, an actor in the second film, trying to convince the girl he has a crush on to love him. Ending, as Kiarostami films are wont to do, magnificently.
2. A Moment of Innocence - Mohsen Makhmalbaf's reflection on his own youth, as a political radical... In 1974, Makhmalbaf (ae 17) attempted to steal the gun from a cop; he ended up stabbing him and the policeman shot him. 20 years later the policeman showed up to audition as an actor in one of Makhmalbaf’s films, and they made this film. It;s mostly about the process of making the film - looking for actors, coaching the actors, using the rehearsals to talk about their own motivations 20 years before. And, in the end, shooting the film, about the events, 20 years ago - but, I guess you'd say, trying to get it right this time. A beautiful and moving film, full of wit and grace and a sense of sadness and regret, and redemption. A marvel.
3. The Circle -one of Jafar Panahi's ambitious feminist films - following a series of women one night in Tehran, a series of women, one after another, in a circle through the night in the city, each one running, but all ending up in jail... An intense and powerful film, its politics is brutal and sharp and expressed through the story - it has a propulsive desperation, with its tight, in you face camera style, putting you in the middle of the story, starting stories in the middle, staying close to the protagonist (at any given time)... Panahi has a way, in many of his films, of withholding information - sometimes by limiting our point of view to the characters - but also, by denying us information they have. In this film, we often see women panicking before we learn what spooks them - we have to figure out what is going on. An intense and masterful work.
4. Close Up - Here, Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf team up, in a film, about a man who Mohsen Makhmalbaf, insinuating himself into a family, convincing them he wanted to use them in his next film. He was, in the end, caught, exposed and tried - Kiarostami filmed the trial as the man tried to explain, his obsession with art, his poverty and helplessness, the pleasure and power of acting this role. And then, the principals play themselves in this film, and the imposter gets to meet Makhmalbaf himself (an amazing scene, the man bursts into helpless weeping when he sees Makhmalbaf). One of the first films to plunge wholeheartedly into metafiction, a device that became extremely common in 1990s Iranian cinema.
5. A Taste of Cherry - Kiarostami again, here - shot almost entirely from a car, driving around the outskirts of Tehran, as a man looks for someone to bury him, if he kills himself. He finds three potential helpers - a soldier (who runs away), a Afghani religious student who tries to convince him not to do it for religious reasons, and a taxidermist, who will do it (because he needs the money), but tries to talk him out of it for humanist reasons. And in the end? a strange coda, on video, the film crew on the side of the hill where the man was to die, soldiers lurking near the tree that marked his grave - stepping outside the story without any fuss, leaving it hanging in the air, accompanied by Louis Armstrong. It's a strange and lovely film about alienation (a film set almost entirely on a series of barren hills on the outskirts of a city of 6 million) and paying attention...
6. The Cycle- A much older film - Darius Mehrjui's 1978 film about a father and son who get involved in a blood donation scheme - they give blood, they get involved in the workings of a hospital, they get involved with gangsters, etc... Slow building but brilliant... Sometimes reminiscent of Oshima's The Sun's Burial - the blood donation scheme (an obvious enough metaphor in both cases), the way the film follows the factions involved, the similar blend of nihilism and metaphor.
7. Where is the Friend's House? - Lovely film, the first of Kiarostami's Koker/Poshtar films. A boy takes his friend’s notebook by mistake, tries to return it, running an obstacle course to do so: his mother won’t listen to him trying to explain what he’s doing; the friend lives in the next town and when he gets there, no one knows the boy he’s looking for; the town itself is a maze of streets and stairs and alleys - he's sent back and forth, following lead after lead, never quite finding the friend. It's full of nifty details and characters, very funny at times...
8. A True Story - Abolfazl Jalili is a filmmaker whose work showed up stateside in the 90s, but not so much since. This is another of the many films about filmmaking from the late 90s - here - a documentary about a boy with as crippled leg. The story starts as the director looking for an amateur actor for a film - he finds this boy, a talented musician, and sets out to get help for his bad leg, and to make a film about it.
9. The Silence - If there is a more deliciously sensuous director in the world than Mohsen Makhmalbaf, I don't know who it is. In this film, a blind boy and his mother have five days before they will be evicted. The boy tunes lutes for a mean instrument maker, but he keeps getting lost - he rides the bus to work, but follows people with beautiful voices or who play beautiful music. He is led around by a gorgeous little girl in long braids who dances to his lute tuning, wearing cherries for earrings and flower petals to paint her nails. The movie is full of grace notes, building to a thoroughly transcendent ending - the landlord knocks 4 times and the boy imagines it as Beethoven's fifth. Pieces of the symphony crop up on the soundtrack, he gets people to play it - at the end, he gets a pair of pot pounders to play the beat - then a whole factory pounds it, then, it turns into a full symphonic (augmented with middle eastern instruments) rendering of the fifth.
10. The Cow - One of the films that brought modernist filmmaking to Iran - Merhjui's 1969 film is about a man named Hassan who owns the only cow in his village. He loves his cow. He goes one day to work, and while he is gone, the cow dies. The village panics - they don't want to tell him, so they hide when he returns. He refuses to admit the cow is dead - he ends up moving into the barn an becoming the cow himself. The villagers drag him away in ropes - this doesn't end well. A strange, surrealist film, full of clever details and subplots - a neighboring village, an idiot, a delinquint who'd been to the city, old women worrying about witchcraft - a great film. And - I recently discovered to my great delight - available on Netflix, on DVD or streaming.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Friday Music Cleveland Noir Edition
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Same Place, 10 Years Later...
Here again - another post inspired by the Love of Film (Noir) blogathon, which continues apace... This is a pretty direct follow up to my first post - this time, let's look at how John Huston handled the meeting between Gutman and Spade in his version of the Maltese Falcon. Doing this, I admit, isn't quite saying anything about noir - though the comparison of the scenes brings out a couple things that do mark the style...
Both films draw pretty directly on the Hammett book - but there are some notable differences between the way the films handle this scene. First, the Huston version is a good deal longer - and split into two interviews, as in the book. Second - Wilmer's present (in both parts), significantly. And Cairo is not. Those changes illustrate a couple things different in Huston's version - the supporting characters have quite a bit more to do in the 1941 version. Gutman and Cairo are featured in the first, but Wilmer is almost a cameo. (A shame since it's Dwight Frye, who brings even more baby faced psychopathy to the role than Elisha Cook.) The other change - removing Cairo from the scene - is directly relevant to the evolution of film noir, I think. Huston's version never departs from Spade's point of view. That's a fairly important element in noir - the limitation of knowledge. Characters who are in the dark - and audiences who are kept in the dark with them. We don't get the outside perspective, we don't know more than the characters. We share their subjectivity.
As for this scene - in some ways, it is actually more conventional than in Del Ruth's version. Instead of beginning in the middle of the conversation, as Del Ruth did, we start with an establishing three shot -
- then move closer through a series of alternations. The effect is less jarring than in the 1931 film - also, better integrated into the film as a whole. This scene comes as a departure from the otherwise stolid style of the 1931 film - here, the angles, decor, and so on are used as in the rest of the film.
Huston's framings aren't quite as jarring as Del Ruth's, but in this film too, the objects, decor, and so on, are very prominent. Bottles, lamps, paintings, light and dark, windows and so on surround the characters - sometimes innocuously, sometimes as pure visual elements - but always seeming to be waiting to take on significance....
The sequence builds to this very famous low angle shot of Gutman - then Spade jumps up, and we get this - not quite as low, but noticeable - and Sam's threatening gesture echoing the painting behind him....
... Wilmer comes back in, and we get this lovely, tense triangle (lots of triangles in this film), before Spade storms off...
When Spade returns, Huston follows much the same pattern. Establishing shots with Spade, Gutman and WIlmer, then a two shot, Spade on the couch now...
He alternates closer shots, shooting Gutman from below...
...and Spade more from eye level (though below Gutman's POV) - with Spade starting to look hemmed in by the bottles and flowers and background decor...
...Gutman rises to pour the spiked drink, looming over Spade -
- and shot from below, as he looks down on Spade, waiting for the mickey to kick in -
- and as it does, the camera comes closer, catching his anticipation -
...then moving closer to Spade, surrounded by bottles and flowers and curtains, looking up, starting to drift a bit...
And ending, with a pair of shots of the men on the couch, the fatal glasses raised...
And so... you can see the evolution of filmmaking in the ten years between these films - in Huston's moving camera, the more expansive staging, and so on... But also the continuity - the similar use of decor, of props, the similar framings - low(ish) angles, the prominent placement of props in the shots. And the specific differences, as in the very different conceptions of Gutman... As it happens - this is clearly the high point of the 1931 film - and probably the high point in 1941 as well. The dialogue shines - the performances shine - and both filmmakers rise to the moment. A conversation between two men - but one frought with deception, threat, menace - which you get from the way the scenes look. And those bottles, glasses, resting there like loaded guns... neat stuff.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Not Quite Noir
From the Maltese Falcon, 1931: this is not film noir - most of the film is a solid, not too interesting looking reading of the text, stagy, competent, nothing special. (Though very entertaining, because of the power of the text, the excellent cast, and Roy Del Ruth's clean, precise presentation.) But in a couple scenes, things change a bit. Like this one, Spade's interview with Gutman - which moves fast from an insert of the telegram from Gutman to their conversation - which starts in the middle, with alternating medium shots, low angled, full of little details in the front of the screen - the bottle, Gutman's fan, Spade's knee and hand... these alternate, as they talk (the familiar dialogue from the novel that Huston used in 1941 as well):
Only well into the conversation do we get longer shots of the men, though as soon as we do - and the convcersation turns to money - the camera moves in again, framing them even tighter than before:
Then backing off, as the money changes hands...
...and backs off more as Wilmer comes in:
Some of this is repeated, less drastically, in the DA's office - though there Del Ruth starts with an establishing shot, before moving in, to similar obstructed medium shots, with hats, telephones, lamps springing into the frame:
All that - moments of visual flair in an otherwise fairly generic looking film. But the story is noir (Hammett is it's founding angel), and here - the camera inserts itself into the decor, and things lose their natural shapes. Shadows break free from their objects, faces, hands, objects, break off from their proper places, and become looming presences... stylistically, noir grew out of expressionism - passed through horror, as much as any style in America - and melded with the crime movies of the 30s... And along the way, put out feelers, so to speak, those moments when the images start to pulse into menacing being, like here...
Inspired by the Love of Film (Noir) blogathon, also at the Siren's.
Raising money for film preservation... donate!
Only well into the conversation do we get longer shots of the men, though as soon as we do - and the convcersation turns to money - the camera moves in again, framing them even tighter than before:
Then backing off, as the money changes hands...
...and backs off more as Wilmer comes in:
Some of this is repeated, less drastically, in the DA's office - though there Del Ruth starts with an establishing shot, before moving in, to similar obstructed medium shots, with hats, telephones, lamps springing into the frame:
All that - moments of visual flair in an otherwise fairly generic looking film. But the story is noir (Hammett is it's founding angel), and here - the camera inserts itself into the decor, and things lose their natural shapes. Shadows break free from their objects, faces, hands, objects, break off from their proper places, and become looming presences... stylistically, noir grew out of expressionism - passed through horror, as much as any style in America - and melded with the crime movies of the 30s... And along the way, put out feelers, so to speak, those moments when the images start to pulse into menacing being, like here...
Inspired by the Love of Film (Noir) blogathon, also at the Siren's.
Raising money for film preservation... donate!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Some Notes on Hong Sang-Soo
The first highlight of the film year has been Harvard's Hong Sang-soo series, that played over the last weekend of January and first of February. They showed 8 of his 11 films, and he was there for two nights, doing the Q&A thing - all told, a very pleasing event. (Despite some god-awful weather outside.) He is an intriguing director, one who deserves thought - I'm not sure if I am quite ready to write anything too substantial about his films, though I'd like to. In the meanwhile - given that my thoughts are fragmentary and partial - I will offer some notes on his work, as well as his appearance at Harvard. (A big disadvantage of this approach, though, is that I find that I've made lots of casual references to the films - which are a definite challenge to find and see... I think, however, a lot of the things I mention here are present in enough of his films, that anyone who's seen a couple should be able to know what I'm talking about...)
1) As for the Q&A - these things can be a mixed blessing - some people thrive in those situations, others seem completely lost. Hong came off somewhere in the middle. He's a mumbler (maybe from jet lag? the weather? I don't know), and rather evasive. He circled questions, never quite addressing anything directly - making lots of claims to do it all on intuition, never you mind that AIC degree... Never mind as well the playfulness and patterning of the films themselves, their self-reflexivity, etc. In truth -it seems that he was trying to avoid some kinds of questions - "themes" - in fact, he spoke quite clearly about his working methods and ideas. You can see where the patterns and repetitions in his films come from, you can see the working methods that create the films he makes....
2) He talked about his films starting from everyday things - I could be wrong, but I suspect he means objects as much as incidents. His films have a powerful attention to objects - phones and wallets and clothes and things like cameras and cable cars, cars, and so on. They structure the films, markers of movements and changes; they are also the subject of many incidents - the scenes in Virgin Stripped Bare By her Bachelors discussing how to hold chopsticks, the passage of scarves in Tale of Cinema, Woman is the Future of Man, etc.... Virgin might do this the most - chopsticks in a couple scenes; napkins, forks or spoons, the cameras, gloves, the sheet, etc. Sometimes, the treatment of these objects does seem to carry meaning - like the talismanic nature of something like the red scarf in Woman is the Future of Man, or the contrast between the new video camera and the obsolete 8mm camera in Virgin, or the way Jingu in Oki's Movie riffs on the empty juice box...
3) Building on that - incidents cycle, of course, situations - repeated in films, repeated between films: losing/forgetting wallets (and money) - which happens in several films... things like the impotence and double suicide scenes in Turning Gate and repeated in Tale of Cinema... And more general types of scenes - walks with people in parks, nature, etc - Kangwon, Turning Gate, Oki's Movie... impromptu visits - Turning Gate, Woman is the Future of Man...
4) Structures - doubles and repetitions are absolutely fundamental to Hong's films. They are everywhere, at every level, taking many different forms, doing a number of different things. Repetition becomes a formal element, and not just a way of exploring perspective, or re-evaluating events. I mean - in some films, the repetition is purely formal: Virgin, for example, repeats the story twice, slightly differently - somewhat paradoxically, this makes it more about the content, about differing perspectives, about subjectivity... that quality is stronger still in films like Oki's Movie and Tale of Cinema, that acknowledge shifting levels of narration - that part of what we see is a film-in-a-film. But repetition also occurs in other ways: Oki's section of Oki's Movie, for instance, does this - showing two walks through a park, with 2 different men. This plot device - actions (sometimes words) being repeated, by the same characters, or other characters, happens quite often in Hong's films - Turning Gate's two parts show first a man pursued by a woman, then a man pursuing a woman - it repeats several moments and situations, and repeating old stories as well... Finally - events, episodes, etc. are repeated (as I've been saying) across films - plot elements (usually frustrated love triangles); the impotence/suicide episodes in Turning Gate and Tale of Cinema; all the other repetitions listed above (wallets, scarves, walks in parks, calling people the wrong name, etc.) Actors and character types recur - not quite with the obsessive formalization of an Ozu film, but with some similar effects... The result of all this is, in a way, to turn your attention away from questions about the material - the "modernist" questions of how individuals experience and process events - to questions about form - the more "post-modernist" (or formalist) question of the shapes themselves. Which may have psychological implications as well - as you shift from attention to how one experiences their own life, to how those experiences are inevitably shaped by form - how we experience things as repetitions, how we organize our experiences into patterns. How things today are given meaning by the contexts we put them in - by the things that have happened in the past - a process of sorting and classifying.
I don't know how much that has to do with what Hong Sang-soo is after in these films - though it is not impossible he's thinking on those lines. But it is an interesting phenomenon - and his method, of arranging individual films primarily as exercises in subjectivity, while emphasizing the patterning ("parametric") devices between films - seems to lead you there. To think about how these formal elements relate to questions of subjectivity....
5) He spoke quite a bit about improvisation - not as such, but - his method of working.... to start with very brief treatments of the stories - to look for actors who would fit the characters in this treatment - then to write the script shaping the characters around the actor, as a type, as a person... Then - he said - he would end up writing the actual dialogue on location the day of shooting, and give the actors just enough time to memorize the lines before shooting... And it strikes me that his films have the elements of improvisation - the looseness and ability to surprise within a fairly simple and sometimes rigid structure. Their repetitions, the simplicity of the basic situations, help in this method - they provide the structure and connections for the film, and allow the dialogue and actors to develop the emotional impact...
1) As for the Q&A - these things can be a mixed blessing - some people thrive in those situations, others seem completely lost. Hong came off somewhere in the middle. He's a mumbler (maybe from jet lag? the weather? I don't know), and rather evasive. He circled questions, never quite addressing anything directly - making lots of claims to do it all on intuition, never you mind that AIC degree... Never mind as well the playfulness and patterning of the films themselves, their self-reflexivity, etc. In truth -it seems that he was trying to avoid some kinds of questions - "themes" - in fact, he spoke quite clearly about his working methods and ideas. You can see where the patterns and repetitions in his films come from, you can see the working methods that create the films he makes....
2) He talked about his films starting from everyday things - I could be wrong, but I suspect he means objects as much as incidents. His films have a powerful attention to objects - phones and wallets and clothes and things like cameras and cable cars, cars, and so on. They structure the films, markers of movements and changes; they are also the subject of many incidents - the scenes in Virgin Stripped Bare By her Bachelors discussing how to hold chopsticks, the passage of scarves in Tale of Cinema, Woman is the Future of Man, etc.... Virgin might do this the most - chopsticks in a couple scenes; napkins, forks or spoons, the cameras, gloves, the sheet, etc. Sometimes, the treatment of these objects does seem to carry meaning - like the talismanic nature of something like the red scarf in Woman is the Future of Man, or the contrast between the new video camera and the obsolete 8mm camera in Virgin, or the way Jingu in Oki's Movie riffs on the empty juice box...
3) Building on that - incidents cycle, of course, situations - repeated in films, repeated between films: losing/forgetting wallets (and money) - which happens in several films... things like the impotence and double suicide scenes in Turning Gate and repeated in Tale of Cinema... And more general types of scenes - walks with people in parks, nature, etc - Kangwon, Turning Gate, Oki's Movie... impromptu visits - Turning Gate, Woman is the Future of Man...
4) Structures - doubles and repetitions are absolutely fundamental to Hong's films. They are everywhere, at every level, taking many different forms, doing a number of different things. Repetition becomes a formal element, and not just a way of exploring perspective, or re-evaluating events. I mean - in some films, the repetition is purely formal: Virgin, for example, repeats the story twice, slightly differently - somewhat paradoxically, this makes it more about the content, about differing perspectives, about subjectivity... that quality is stronger still in films like Oki's Movie and Tale of Cinema, that acknowledge shifting levels of narration - that part of what we see is a film-in-a-film. But repetition also occurs in other ways: Oki's section of Oki's Movie, for instance, does this - showing two walks through a park, with 2 different men. This plot device - actions (sometimes words) being repeated, by the same characters, or other characters, happens quite often in Hong's films - Turning Gate's two parts show first a man pursued by a woman, then a man pursuing a woman - it repeats several moments and situations, and repeating old stories as well... Finally - events, episodes, etc. are repeated (as I've been saying) across films - plot elements (usually frustrated love triangles); the impotence/suicide episodes in Turning Gate and Tale of Cinema; all the other repetitions listed above (wallets, scarves, walks in parks, calling people the wrong name, etc.) Actors and character types recur - not quite with the obsessive formalization of an Ozu film, but with some similar effects... The result of all this is, in a way, to turn your attention away from questions about the material - the "modernist" questions of how individuals experience and process events - to questions about form - the more "post-modernist" (or formalist) question of the shapes themselves. Which may have psychological implications as well - as you shift from attention to how one experiences their own life, to how those experiences are inevitably shaped by form - how we experience things as repetitions, how we organize our experiences into patterns. How things today are given meaning by the contexts we put them in - by the things that have happened in the past - a process of sorting and classifying.
I don't know how much that has to do with what Hong Sang-soo is after in these films - though it is not impossible he's thinking on those lines. But it is an interesting phenomenon - and his method, of arranging individual films primarily as exercises in subjectivity, while emphasizing the patterning ("parametric") devices between films - seems to lead you there. To think about how these formal elements relate to questions of subjectivity....
5) He spoke quite a bit about improvisation - not as such, but - his method of working.... to start with very brief treatments of the stories - to look for actors who would fit the characters in this treatment - then to write the script shaping the characters around the actor, as a type, as a person... Then - he said - he would end up writing the actual dialogue on location the day of shooting, and give the actors just enough time to memorize the lines before shooting... And it strikes me that his films have the elements of improvisation - the looseness and ability to surprise within a fairly simple and sometimes rigid structure. Their repetitions, the simplicity of the basic situations, help in this method - they provide the structure and connections for the film, and allow the dialogue and actors to develop the emotional impact...
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Iranian Film Blogathon
I just saw a post about another blogathon - this one, inspired by Jafar Panahi's imprisonment, and a letter written to the Berlin Film Festival - is devoted to Iranian Cinema, and is scheduled for the week of February 21-27. I am very pleased to see this - it seems to me that Iranian cinema has been somewhat neglected in the last decade - in the late 90s, when I was particularly movie mad, Iranian films seemed to be at the center of the world's art cinema. New Kiarostami or Makhmalbaf films were events - though often events one could only read about for a year.... In the 2000s - I'm not sure - but a lot of that excitement seemed to be lost - probably not coincidentally, as Iran's politics took a retrograde turn, culminating in the disaster of the last election, which has led directly to Panahi's incarceration (for example.) Iranian films are (or seem) less talked about now - this blogathon will be a very welcome reminder, I think, of what they achieved. While they seem less talked about in the 00s, I don't know if they have become any less accomplished - not least because of the work of Panahi himself, whose films this decade have been, as far as I am concerned, almost as crucial as those of Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf in the 90s.
I'm under no illusions about the possible effects a bunch of film bloggers talking about Panahi and Iranian films might have on the Iranian government - but it can serve to remind us of what that government is trying to destroy.
I'm under no illusions about the possible effects a bunch of film bloggers talking about Panahi and Iranian films might have on the Iranian government - but it can serve to remind us of what that government is trying to destroy.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Friday Musical Interlude
Again, it is not my intention to ONLY post Friday music notes, but that's what we've got... That should change - there are things going on in the world which should bring some life out of me - a new Film Preservation Blogathon, next week, again hosted by the Self-Styled Siren and Ferdy on Films. It will be, like the first one, a purposeful blogathon, raising money for film preservation - you can donate here.
And, coming next month, we have a blogathon devoted to Korean film, hosted by New Korean Cinema and Cineawsome. This is scheduled for March 7-13 - it should be good... This is closer to the reasons for the lack of posts here, too - last week's Hong Sang-Soo series at the HFA kept me out at night - I am trying to write somethign about it - at the rate I'm going I might make it by next month...
UPDATE: I didn't mean to miss this - there has also been a Michael Mann blogathon going on right now (2/7-14) at Seeti Maar- Diary of a Movie Lover. Worth checking out...
But for now - it's Friday - and that's my musical day, and the only effective bit of discipline I'm able to impose on myself, so here goes, completely randomly:
1. Robert Wyatt - Lullaloop
2. James Brown - Try Me (live)
3. Ramones - Glad to See You Go
4. Modest Mouse - Ohio
5. Better than Ezra - Allison Foley
6. Janelle Monae - Mushroom's and Roses
7. Husker Du - Celebrated Summer (live)
8. Smokey Robinson - Tears of a Clown [iTunes is bering very very kind today...]
9. Pere Ubu - The Fevered Dream of Hernando de Soto
10. Soft Machine - A Certain Kind
Video? since we have 2 entries with Robert Wyatt - here's a third - singing Comfortably Numb, live, with David Gilmour:
And, coming next month, we have a blogathon devoted to Korean film, hosted by New Korean Cinema and Cineawsome. This is scheduled for March 7-13 - it should be good... This is closer to the reasons for the lack of posts here, too - last week's Hong Sang-Soo series at the HFA kept me out at night - I am trying to write somethign about it - at the rate I'm going I might make it by next month...
UPDATE: I didn't mean to miss this - there has also been a Michael Mann blogathon going on right now (2/7-14) at Seeti Maar- Diary of a Movie Lover. Worth checking out...
But for now - it's Friday - and that's my musical day, and the only effective bit of discipline I'm able to impose on myself, so here goes, completely randomly:
1. Robert Wyatt - Lullaloop
2. James Brown - Try Me (live)
3. Ramones - Glad to See You Go
4. Modest Mouse - Ohio
5. Better than Ezra - Allison Foley
6. Janelle Monae - Mushroom's and Roses
7. Husker Du - Celebrated Summer (live)
8. Smokey Robinson - Tears of a Clown [iTunes is bering very very kind today...]
9. Pere Ubu - The Fevered Dream of Hernando de Soto
10. Soft Machine - A Certain Kind
Video? since we have 2 entries with Robert Wyatt - here's a third - singing Comfortably Numb, live, with David Gilmour:
Friday, February 04, 2011
Musical Interlude
...another odd week in which I got next to nothing done, leaving me with no answer for it but to post a Friday Random 10 list - which I will do with no further ado:
1. The Wild Swans - The Revolutionary Spirit
2. The Who - I'm a Boy (live at the BBC)
3. The New Pornographers - Use it
4. Bo Diddley - Before You Accuse Me
5. The Pretenders - Stop Your Sobbing
6. David Thomas & Two Pale Boys - Little Sister
7. Mogwai - The Precipice
8. Dinosaur Jr. - Kracked
9. Roxy Music - Re-make/Re-model
10. Nick Cave & Bad Seeds - Darker With the Day
An interesting set... I'm not sure I have ever heard the Wild Swans before - sounds like a candidate for a video... like most of their contemporaries, they still seem to be at it, here live in 09...
1. The Wild Swans - The Revolutionary Spirit
2. The Who - I'm a Boy (live at the BBC)
3. The New Pornographers - Use it
4. Bo Diddley - Before You Accuse Me
5. The Pretenders - Stop Your Sobbing
6. David Thomas & Two Pale Boys - Little Sister
7. Mogwai - The Precipice
8. Dinosaur Jr. - Kracked
9. Roxy Music - Re-make/Re-model
10. Nick Cave & Bad Seeds - Darker With the Day
An interesting set... I'm not sure I have ever heard the Wild Swans before - sounds like a candidate for a video... like most of their contemporaries, they still seem to be at it, here live in 09...
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
More Snow! Hooray!
Well, here I am, buckling down for another snow storm, this one threatening to last a couple days, turning into sleet somewhere in the middle. That sort of thing sets off alarms - put down a foot of snow, then cover it in ice - there won't be a tree left standing in New England! The electrical situation may soon become precarious, even in the metropolis. Fortunately, this waited until the middle of the week - it's been a very nice stretch for movies, the last couple weeks - some of last year's best films replayed; and a Hong Sang-Soo series at the HFA. I'd just as soon not try to plow through a blizzard to see them - though I have done worse. I made it out during the April Fool's blizzard of 1997 to see Rebel Without a Cause! I suppose I'd make it to Hong's films anyway...
The weather hasn't started yet, so it's off to work I go. It's supposed to start any minute though. The commute back home in the evening ought to be entertaining.
One possible consolations is that no Groundhogs will be seeing any shadows this week.
That's all for now. I will leave you with a Cat Picture. She agrees with me on the merits of Grinderman, I think.
The weather hasn't started yet, so it's off to work I go. It's supposed to start any minute though. The commute back home in the evening ought to be entertaining.
One possible consolations is that no Groundhogs will be seeing any shadows this week.
That's all for now. I will leave you with a Cat Picture. She agrees with me on the merits of Grinderman, I think.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Music of the 2000s
While I certainly hope I can follow through on my desire to put up a music post every Friday, it is not exactly the plan to post nothing but music posts on Friday. But here are two in a row. And two lists in a row, to boot! This one at least will be worthy of the name....
I should have posted this last year, at the beginning of the new decade - but things happened last year, and I put it off, and I haven't been listening to music as much this year, or thinking about it, and suddenly here we are, in 2011, and I've done nothing to come to grips with the music of the past decade and so... We'll try it now. I could pretend to make a virtue of it - giving myself another year to think things over, catch up - but it hasn't worked that way. I alluded to my listening cycles last week - I am in a very definite down cycle now... That's a bit inconvenient when it comes to trying to assess the 2000s (or what I thought of the 2000s), because for most of that decade, I was in a most definite up cycle. I bought an awful lot of records in the 00s, and listened to them, songs and records alike, and brooded on them, I read about music, I formed and occasionally shared opinions of music. It's thus very odd now, in a period when I'm not doing those things, to try to sum up what I thought in a time I did....
Coming up with a list, then, is troublesome - a lot more difficult than coming up with a list of favorite films was. The sense of distance from music I have been talking about it - but only part. There's also the fact that I have never documented my music purchases and likes and dislikes as obsessively as I do my film watching. And there's the fact that, looking back at things I bought, listened to, liked in the last decade, I'm reminded how often and how much my tastes have changed. Not that I stop liking things - what I liked in 2002 I like today (what I liked in 1986 I like today; most of what I liked in 1978 I like today) - but I go on binges, getting semi-obsessed with one type of music or other, then moving to something else. This can be quite extreme - I spent the first half of the 90s listening almost exclusively to jazz, ignoring rock, barely even listening to my favorites. But I moved through jazz history, and by 95 or 96 had reached John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock, and then it was a simple thing to shift back to Richard Thompson and Pere Ubu, and next thing I know, I'm buying rock records again (Built to Spill, Tool, PJ Harvey among the first new artists to catch my ear), and there you go.... So in the 00s - I started the decade listening to a lot of old and new punk (Minutemen; Sleater-Kinney & The White Stripes) and guitar stuff (AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Neil Young; Built to Spill, a new commitment to the Rolling Stones, etc.) - discovered Japanese punk (Boredoms) and neo-prog (Mercury Rev) and combined them (Acid Mothers Temple; Ghost); had a run of listening to lots of extreme stuff (Keiji Haino, Soft Machine and Van Der Graf Generator, Krautrock, Pete Cosey era Miles, Derek Bailey) - until I started listening to new folk (Devendra Banhardt, Neutral Milk Hotel), combined in turn with noise and prog (Six Organs of Admittance; Ghost again, Sigur Rus.) And then the Liars came out and I got obsessed with post-punk - Gang of Four and PIL - but that was like picking up an old thread, filling in the gaps, buying the albums of songs I liked in 1983 or 84 - I was, from the time I heard them, a Pere Ubu and Joy Division fan, so this Gang of Four/PIL/Wire enthusiasm was building on old loves.... Meanwhile, I liked their contemporary imitators, though only the Liars really convinced me... And then TV on the Radio came out and, you know, whatever that led to, not to mention the complications of getting more obsessed by Boris, the Melvins, Mono, etc. ca. 2007... What do you do?
It means that now, looking back, I don't entirely know what to do with the decade. Sometimes, the music I bought in the 00s looks like it was collected by 4 different people - and each one seems to jump up and insist on their judgments being the right one. Can one person really get as enthusiastic about Mercury Rev, The Liars, The Crane Wife, Rainbow, "Halfway Home" or "Only the Sun Knows" or "Casimir Pulaski Day" as I have been? Apparently so. But it makes for a particularly uncertain kind of list-making... Though I suppose there are constants: electric guitars - soloists - drums - and I guess a back of the mind love of melodies (the Smokey Robinson effect, call it.)
So then - here it is - my favorite 25 records of the 2000s:
1. Mercury Rev - All is Dream
2. David Sylvian - Blemish
3. White Stripes - White Blood Cells
4. Boris (with Michio Kurihara) - Rainbow
5. The Liars - They Were Wrong So We Drowned
6. Earth (with Bill Frisell) - The Bees Made Money in the Lion's Skull
7. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
8. The Decembrists - The Crane Wife
9. Danielson Famille - Fetch the Compass Kids
10. PJ Harvey - Songs from the City, Stories from the Sea
11. Grinderman - Grinderman
12. Scott Walker - The Drift
13. Six Organs of Admittance - The Sun Awakens
14. TV on the Radio - Dear Science
15. White Stripes - Icky Thump
16. Sigur Rus - Hvarf/Heim
17.Godspeed You Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists to to Heaven
18.Radiohead - Kid A
19.Outkast - Speakerboxx/The Love Below
20.Sonic Youth - Murray Street
21. Ghost - Hypnotic Underworld
22. David Sylvian - Manofan
23. Damon and Naomi With Ghost
25. Gomez - Split the Difference
25. Devendra Banhardt - Rejoicing in the Hands
...and since that seems - incomplete - close contenders, might include:
Acid Mothers Temple - La Novia, Geocrentric Worlds of the Acid Mothers Temple
Boris - Pink
Deerhoof - Reveille, Apple O'
Sigur Rus ()
Derek Bailey - Mirakle
Devendra Banhardt - Cripple Creek
Earth - some combination - a reminder, maybe, that sometimes bands as a whole make more impression than individual records...
The Fire Theft - the Fire Theft
Ghost - In Stormy Nights
Jay Farrar - Sebastapol
Kills - Keep on your Mean Side
Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose
MIA - Arular
MIssion of Burma - Obliterati
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antartctica
Nick Cave & Bad Seeds - any? all?
Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer?
Ruins - Tzamborgha
Six Organs of Admittance - Compathia, Dark Noontide
Sonic Youth - The Eternal
TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
...though that is still awfully arbitrary... I think I may need another post like this, dedicated to my favorite bands of the 00s - I think I will put that off, though, and try to write more about those bands, when I post it. I'll stay with straight lists here....
And songs? I will stick to a top 10. And say that I don't listen to the radio enough to make any distinction between album cuts and singles, and most of the stuff I listen to barely registers as singles anyway - still...
1. Damon and Naomi (with Ghost) - I Dreamed of the Caucuses
2. Sufjian Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day
3. Mercury Rev - Hercules
4. David Sylvian - The Heart Knows Better
5. Radiohead - Idioteque
6. TV on the Radio - Halfway Home
7. Six Organs of Admittance - Only the Sun Knows
8. Boris - Rainbow
9. Decembrists - The Crane Wife 3
10. Modest Mouse - Dark Center of the Universe
And finally - since Michio Kurihara plays on what seems like half the records and songs on these lists - I'll leave you with Kurihara, playing with Boris, Rainbow, live, getting as much from about 3 notes as can be gotten...
I should have posted this last year, at the beginning of the new decade - but things happened last year, and I put it off, and I haven't been listening to music as much this year, or thinking about it, and suddenly here we are, in 2011, and I've done nothing to come to grips with the music of the past decade and so... We'll try it now. I could pretend to make a virtue of it - giving myself another year to think things over, catch up - but it hasn't worked that way. I alluded to my listening cycles last week - I am in a very definite down cycle now... That's a bit inconvenient when it comes to trying to assess the 2000s (or what I thought of the 2000s), because for most of that decade, I was in a most definite up cycle. I bought an awful lot of records in the 00s, and listened to them, songs and records alike, and brooded on them, I read about music, I formed and occasionally shared opinions of music. It's thus very odd now, in a period when I'm not doing those things, to try to sum up what I thought in a time I did....
Coming up with a list, then, is troublesome - a lot more difficult than coming up with a list of favorite films was. The sense of distance from music I have been talking about it - but only part. There's also the fact that I have never documented my music purchases and likes and dislikes as obsessively as I do my film watching. And there's the fact that, looking back at things I bought, listened to, liked in the last decade, I'm reminded how often and how much my tastes have changed. Not that I stop liking things - what I liked in 2002 I like today (what I liked in 1986 I like today; most of what I liked in 1978 I like today) - but I go on binges, getting semi-obsessed with one type of music or other, then moving to something else. This can be quite extreme - I spent the first half of the 90s listening almost exclusively to jazz, ignoring rock, barely even listening to my favorites. But I moved through jazz history, and by 95 or 96 had reached John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock, and then it was a simple thing to shift back to Richard Thompson and Pere Ubu, and next thing I know, I'm buying rock records again (Built to Spill, Tool, PJ Harvey among the first new artists to catch my ear), and there you go.... So in the 00s - I started the decade listening to a lot of old and new punk (Minutemen; Sleater-Kinney & The White Stripes) and guitar stuff (AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Neil Young; Built to Spill, a new commitment to the Rolling Stones, etc.) - discovered Japanese punk (Boredoms) and neo-prog (Mercury Rev) and combined them (Acid Mothers Temple; Ghost); had a run of listening to lots of extreme stuff (Keiji Haino, Soft Machine and Van Der Graf Generator, Krautrock, Pete Cosey era Miles, Derek Bailey) - until I started listening to new folk (Devendra Banhardt, Neutral Milk Hotel), combined in turn with noise and prog (Six Organs of Admittance; Ghost again, Sigur Rus.) And then the Liars came out and I got obsessed with post-punk - Gang of Four and PIL - but that was like picking up an old thread, filling in the gaps, buying the albums of songs I liked in 1983 or 84 - I was, from the time I heard them, a Pere Ubu and Joy Division fan, so this Gang of Four/PIL/Wire enthusiasm was building on old loves.... Meanwhile, I liked their contemporary imitators, though only the Liars really convinced me... And then TV on the Radio came out and, you know, whatever that led to, not to mention the complications of getting more obsessed by Boris, the Melvins, Mono, etc. ca. 2007... What do you do?
It means that now, looking back, I don't entirely know what to do with the decade. Sometimes, the music I bought in the 00s looks like it was collected by 4 different people - and each one seems to jump up and insist on their judgments being the right one. Can one person really get as enthusiastic about Mercury Rev, The Liars, The Crane Wife, Rainbow, "Halfway Home" or "Only the Sun Knows" or "Casimir Pulaski Day" as I have been? Apparently so. But it makes for a particularly uncertain kind of list-making... Though I suppose there are constants: electric guitars - soloists - drums - and I guess a back of the mind love of melodies (the Smokey Robinson effect, call it.)
So then - here it is - my favorite 25 records of the 2000s:
1. Mercury Rev - All is Dream
2. David Sylvian - Blemish
3. White Stripes - White Blood Cells
4. Boris (with Michio Kurihara) - Rainbow
5. The Liars - They Were Wrong So We Drowned
6. Earth (with Bill Frisell) - The Bees Made Money in the Lion's Skull
7. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
8. The Decembrists - The Crane Wife
9. Danielson Famille - Fetch the Compass Kids
10. PJ Harvey - Songs from the City, Stories from the Sea
11. Grinderman - Grinderman
12. Scott Walker - The Drift
13. Six Organs of Admittance - The Sun Awakens
14. TV on the Radio - Dear Science
15. White Stripes - Icky Thump
16. Sigur Rus - Hvarf/Heim
17.Godspeed You Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists to to Heaven
18.Radiohead - Kid A
19.Outkast - Speakerboxx/The Love Below
20.Sonic Youth - Murray Street
21. Ghost - Hypnotic Underworld
22. David Sylvian - Manofan
23. Damon and Naomi With Ghost
25. Gomez - Split the Difference
25. Devendra Banhardt - Rejoicing in the Hands
...and since that seems - incomplete - close contenders, might include:
Acid Mothers Temple - La Novia, Geocrentric Worlds of the Acid Mothers Temple
Boris - Pink
Deerhoof - Reveille, Apple O'
Sigur Rus ()
Derek Bailey - Mirakle
Devendra Banhardt - Cripple Creek
Earth - some combination - a reminder, maybe, that sometimes bands as a whole make more impression than individual records...
The Fire Theft - the Fire Theft
Ghost - In Stormy Nights
Jay Farrar - Sebastapol
Kills - Keep on your Mean Side
Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose
MIA - Arular
MIssion of Burma - Obliterati
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antartctica
Nick Cave & Bad Seeds - any? all?
Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer?
Ruins - Tzamborgha
Six Organs of Admittance - Compathia, Dark Noontide
Sonic Youth - The Eternal
TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
...though that is still awfully arbitrary... I think I may need another post like this, dedicated to my favorite bands of the 00s - I think I will put that off, though, and try to write more about those bands, when I post it. I'll stay with straight lists here....
And songs? I will stick to a top 10. And say that I don't listen to the radio enough to make any distinction between album cuts and singles, and most of the stuff I listen to barely registers as singles anyway - still...
1. Damon and Naomi (with Ghost) - I Dreamed of the Caucuses
2. Sufjian Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day
3. Mercury Rev - Hercules
4. David Sylvian - The Heart Knows Better
5. Radiohead - Idioteque
6. TV on the Radio - Halfway Home
7. Six Organs of Admittance - Only the Sun Knows
8. Boris - Rainbow
9. Decembrists - The Crane Wife 3
10. Modest Mouse - Dark Center of the Universe
And finally - since Michio Kurihara plays on what seems like half the records and songs on these lists - I'll leave you with Kurihara, playing with Boris, Rainbow, live, getting as much from about 3 notes as can be gotten...
Friday, January 21, 2011
My Favorite Music of 2010
If I can, I am going to make Friday music day at this blog. If nothing else comes to mind, I shall resurrect the old Friday Random Ten posts - though I'll try to keep it more varied than that. I am not as good as I wish I was at writing about music - I end up substituting lists and quotes and allusions for even the barest analysis, but I guess that is all right. We shall see what comes to mind.
I will start the year off by making a list of the best music of 2010... and immediately run into a major problem. Here I want to talk about music, and here I barely listen to music at all anymore. My music habit is very cyclical - I go a few years listening to and buying lots and lots of music; then go a year or two (this spell has been going on almost 2 years now) and barely listen to music at all. Go from buying 40-50 new records a year to buying 15-20 (which I don't listen to) - it's strange. I don't know when I will start up again, though I always do start up again; I don't know what I will listen to when I do (I had a big jazz phase back in the 90s; came back to rock, and passed through a bunch of phases in that - old punk, prog, "post-rock", post punk, etc. - the last semi-trend was a spell of 3-4 months of listening to opera and 20th century classical...) The result - I can barely put together a top 10 (this is almost a top 2, plus a bunch of name-dropping), and most of it turns out to be old favorites - in lean times, one relies heavily on reliable old favorites.... This spell, this year, is no exception. And so - on to the list:
1) Grinderman - Grinderman2 - perhaps the ultimate in old favorites. That itself is a little odd - I heard Nick Cave in the 80s, and did not care too much about him. I listened to him more in the 90s, and around the Murder Ballads era started to really like him. And in the 00s, this grew stronger, until the Grinderman records, which somehow, hit every single one of my buttons and hit them square. I might also have to confess that this is the only record I listened to end to end more than once - though like everything these days, I especially obsess over songs...
Heathen Child - embedding disabled, alas, but this is a hoot of a video...
And here, live, When my baby comes, which I could listen to on infinite loop almost, especially the freak out at the end:
2) Janelle Monae - Archandroid - not a lot in common with Grinderman, I guess, but the rather sad truth is that this is the only other record this year to totally grab me. For good reason, she is the real deal, exciting, varied, imaginative music, just great...
Here's a live clip, a couple songs:
3) MIA - Maya - I'm cheating, I'm afraid. I have no idea if I listened to this record or not. I think so, most of it - but this is mostly because of "Born Free". The video - well, it's interesting, maybe not exactly coherent - a bit of a cliche, I suppose - interesting though. But the song - from that accelerating drum intro, through the shuddering drone of it - it's for me. It's apparently a Suicide cover/rewrite, given a battering ram drum track - plus, someone on a blog somewhere, that at this point I would have no chance of ever finding, compared it to the Fall - I hear that, too, some of those phrasings are very Mark Smith.... If you must steal, those are good sources - and I think she pulls it off. It's certainly addictive. Between this and Grinderman, it should be obvious that what little I have listened to has tended to the drony - fast, noisy drones....
Here, in all its overblown glory, is the Video:
and here, live - it is interesting, digging around YouTube, how different her performances are from one another. Start here, on Letterman with an army of impersonators, and Martin Rev himself:
And here on Jools Holland, with an all girl band, including, apparently, Victoria Smith on drums:
4) Melvins - The Bride Screamed Bloody Murder - another old favorite, that probably makes it in for providing what I like them for, if not doing anything special with it. Though who knows - they are a more immersive band - I like settling in with them awhile - which mitigates against the hit or miss listening habits I have these days, and against really evaluating any given song or record. I like the Melvins - any song, any bunch of songs will do... in that sense, this is still quite a satisfying record, that I tend to like more whenever I hear it...
A couple songs, live:
5) Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart - This is the record that seems to benefit the most from coming up on the iPod, this year. Odd, but their brand of hippy sludge doesn't always play as well when I mean to listen to it as when it comes along randomly - it has an odd way of tempting me to dismiss it, but not quite letting me - and paying off... And here's a video...
And now - this is about as far as I can go in accurately assessing even as subjective a thing as how much I liked a bunch of records. After this - I don't think I bought anything last year I don't like, and won't like in the future - but the rest is pretty arbitrary. I will make the list to 10, though from here on out, it's guesswork.
6. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
7. The New Pornographers - Together - a very Canadian year... I don't know if I trust this record - New Pornographers records are getting very indistinguishable, which isn't quite a virtue in their case....
8. Richard Thompson - Dream Attic - lots of polite sounding, well crafted songs, with effortlessly brilliant guitar bits - another typical late career Richard Thompson record, that I can't help grading on a curve.
9. The Fall - Your Future Our Clutter - they're still around, making good music - so I ain't leaving them out.
10. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
I leave out live records - I would make my life a little easier including them - Mogwai's Special Moves is quite nice, especially. A live clip would not be amiss:
I will start the year off by making a list of the best music of 2010... and immediately run into a major problem. Here I want to talk about music, and here I barely listen to music at all anymore. My music habit is very cyclical - I go a few years listening to and buying lots and lots of music; then go a year or two (this spell has been going on almost 2 years now) and barely listen to music at all. Go from buying 40-50 new records a year to buying 15-20 (which I don't listen to) - it's strange. I don't know when I will start up again, though I always do start up again; I don't know what I will listen to when I do (I had a big jazz phase back in the 90s; came back to rock, and passed through a bunch of phases in that - old punk, prog, "post-rock", post punk, etc. - the last semi-trend was a spell of 3-4 months of listening to opera and 20th century classical...) The result - I can barely put together a top 10 (this is almost a top 2, plus a bunch of name-dropping), and most of it turns out to be old favorites - in lean times, one relies heavily on reliable old favorites.... This spell, this year, is no exception. And so - on to the list:
1) Grinderman - Grinderman2 - perhaps the ultimate in old favorites. That itself is a little odd - I heard Nick Cave in the 80s, and did not care too much about him. I listened to him more in the 90s, and around the Murder Ballads era started to really like him. And in the 00s, this grew stronger, until the Grinderman records, which somehow, hit every single one of my buttons and hit them square. I might also have to confess that this is the only record I listened to end to end more than once - though like everything these days, I especially obsess over songs...
Heathen Child - embedding disabled, alas, but this is a hoot of a video...
And here, live, When my baby comes, which I could listen to on infinite loop almost, especially the freak out at the end:
2) Janelle Monae - Archandroid - not a lot in common with Grinderman, I guess, but the rather sad truth is that this is the only other record this year to totally grab me. For good reason, she is the real deal, exciting, varied, imaginative music, just great...
Here's a live clip, a couple songs:
3) MIA - Maya - I'm cheating, I'm afraid. I have no idea if I listened to this record or not. I think so, most of it - but this is mostly because of "Born Free". The video - well, it's interesting, maybe not exactly coherent - a bit of a cliche, I suppose - interesting though. But the song - from that accelerating drum intro, through the shuddering drone of it - it's for me. It's apparently a Suicide cover/rewrite, given a battering ram drum track - plus, someone on a blog somewhere, that at this point I would have no chance of ever finding, compared it to the Fall - I hear that, too, some of those phrasings are very Mark Smith.... If you must steal, those are good sources - and I think she pulls it off. It's certainly addictive. Between this and Grinderman, it should be obvious that what little I have listened to has tended to the drony - fast, noisy drones....
Here, in all its overblown glory, is the Video:
and here, live - it is interesting, digging around YouTube, how different her performances are from one another. Start here, on Letterman with an army of impersonators, and Martin Rev himself:
And here on Jools Holland, with an all girl band, including, apparently, Victoria Smith on drums:
4) Melvins - The Bride Screamed Bloody Murder - another old favorite, that probably makes it in for providing what I like them for, if not doing anything special with it. Though who knows - they are a more immersive band - I like settling in with them awhile - which mitigates against the hit or miss listening habits I have these days, and against really evaluating any given song or record. I like the Melvins - any song, any bunch of songs will do... in that sense, this is still quite a satisfying record, that I tend to like more whenever I hear it...
A couple songs, live:
5) Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart - This is the record that seems to benefit the most from coming up on the iPod, this year. Odd, but their brand of hippy sludge doesn't always play as well when I mean to listen to it as when it comes along randomly - it has an odd way of tempting me to dismiss it, but not quite letting me - and paying off... And here's a video...
And now - this is about as far as I can go in accurately assessing even as subjective a thing as how much I liked a bunch of records. After this - I don't think I bought anything last year I don't like, and won't like in the future - but the rest is pretty arbitrary. I will make the list to 10, though from here on out, it's guesswork.
6. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
7. The New Pornographers - Together - a very Canadian year... I don't know if I trust this record - New Pornographers records are getting very indistinguishable, which isn't quite a virtue in their case....
8. Richard Thompson - Dream Attic - lots of polite sounding, well crafted songs, with effortlessly brilliant guitar bits - another typical late career Richard Thompson record, that I can't help grading on a curve.
9. The Fall - Your Future Our Clutter - they're still around, making good music - so I ain't leaving them out.
10. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
I leave out live records - I would make my life a little easier including them - Mogwai's Special Moves is quite nice, especially. A live clip would not be amiss:
Monday, January 17, 2011
January Films, in Brief
As the new year begins - finally, a couple weeks with some actual decent films. A couple weeks in a row where there were films out I wanted to see and felt some keenness in the choices I made. Very gratifying. There may have been more good films in 2010 than I give credit to, but it certainly seemed as though there were a lot of weeks with nothing out I cared a whit for. Even in November and December, usually a good time for films. It's a great relief for this year's releases to start out much more appealingly. So here are some short notices - some of these films might get more later, if I get more energetic.
True Grit - 11/15 - the Coens on their best behavior, in some ways, thought he story itself is very close to their sensibility. A beautiful film, wonderfully played, a straightforward western perfectly executed. Oddly, given their love of comedy, it is less funny than the original - though more of a story, and a movie, less a star piece. Adaption or remake or not, though, it is all theirs - like all their films, it is a kind of celebration of the spoken word, the human voice, human faces, landscapes and skies, light and textures. Voices and faces especially, which is what makes their films almost infinitely rewatchable.
Rabbit Hole - 10/15 - story of a couple who have lost their 4 year old son in a car accident, some 8 months before the film takes place. They are not coping well. The man goes to group therapy (without his wife), which soon prompts a somewhat predictable plot point; she, meanwhile, stalks the boy who ran over their son, another somewhat predictable plot point... It would probably be churlish to note that the woman has a sister who is expecting her first child - as sisters inevitably seem to do in films about the loss of a child. It's churlish because in spite of the borderline cliched situations, the film is a carefully made, resonant examination of grief and recovery. It feels right - it feels very familiar, but the details and moments still seem to have life in them.
Blue Valentine - 10/15 - a film about a bad marriage shot in gritty realistic style that though honorable and well made in every way comes short, somehow. It's hard to say why - just that somehow, the blend of gritty realism, mopey whimsy, Cassavetes style melodrama and more conventional melodrama comes off as less than the sum of its parts. I don't mean to complain, though - it is a smart, well made film, a welcome attempt to tell a fairly honest, simple story, to show lives of regular people - salt of the earth! the working man! It even flirts with showing people working, which is bloody rare in American films. The performances are superb - the story is grim, without being over the top - the characters are interesting, sad, complicated - so don't take that griping too much to heart. I suppose what it comes to is that it's a bit too schematic in places - the ways neither of them wants to repeat their upbringing (he's from a broken home, and will do anything to preserve any kind of home; she's from a nightmarish "stable" home, and would do anything to spare her kid that kind of hatred.) That's maybe too neat (for instance) - though it's also accurate, so again - the quibbles are quibbles, doubts about a very good film.
Somewhere - 11/15 - I was a bit surprised to find myself really liking this film. Is there a backlash against Sofia Coppola? I don't know - I just come across the complaints now and then. Usually about all the time she devotes to the terrible suffering of privileged white folks. The problem is - she makes pretty good films. She has an eye, and she films what she knows - and while what she films may be limited (what she knows may be limited), she makes it live. This film starts and ends rather schematically (driving in a circle; walking toward something) - in between, though, it is surprisingly effective. The plot - a dissolute Hollywood star forced to take care of a precocious kid for a week - is old stuff - but it doesn't quite go in the directions these kinds of films usually go in. He does not resent the kid (then learn a life lesson); he does not do anything stupid and careless with the kid; he is, in fact, a decent father, when he chooses to be. And if he learns a life lesson - it was one we could see coming before the kid turned up. The emptiness of his life is clear enough without the kid, and it is clear enough that he knows it. So - I'd say it succeeds, in telling a story about someone nothing like normal people, but still making it recognizably human, and having a fair sense of the specificities of his life. The boredom and randomness of acting and publicity; the swarms of enablers around you; the endlessly freely available pussy (and cock, if you were so inclined) - oddly enough, it probably comes the closest to showing someone working for a living of all these films. A very strange kind of job - but a job.... And she has that eye - it's a slow film, but one that absorbs you into its rhythms, its imagery, and keeps you there. I liked it.
True Grit - 11/15 - the Coens on their best behavior, in some ways, thought he story itself is very close to their sensibility. A beautiful film, wonderfully played, a straightforward western perfectly executed. Oddly, given their love of comedy, it is less funny than the original - though more of a story, and a movie, less a star piece. Adaption or remake or not, though, it is all theirs - like all their films, it is a kind of celebration of the spoken word, the human voice, human faces, landscapes and skies, light and textures. Voices and faces especially, which is what makes their films almost infinitely rewatchable.
Rabbit Hole - 10/15 - story of a couple who have lost their 4 year old son in a car accident, some 8 months before the film takes place. They are not coping well. The man goes to group therapy (without his wife), which soon prompts a somewhat predictable plot point; she, meanwhile, stalks the boy who ran over their son, another somewhat predictable plot point... It would probably be churlish to note that the woman has a sister who is expecting her first child - as sisters inevitably seem to do in films about the loss of a child. It's churlish because in spite of the borderline cliched situations, the film is a carefully made, resonant examination of grief and recovery. It feels right - it feels very familiar, but the details and moments still seem to have life in them.
Blue Valentine - 10/15 - a film about a bad marriage shot in gritty realistic style that though honorable and well made in every way comes short, somehow. It's hard to say why - just that somehow, the blend of gritty realism, mopey whimsy, Cassavetes style melodrama and more conventional melodrama comes off as less than the sum of its parts. I don't mean to complain, though - it is a smart, well made film, a welcome attempt to tell a fairly honest, simple story, to show lives of regular people - salt of the earth! the working man! It even flirts with showing people working, which is bloody rare in American films. The performances are superb - the story is grim, without being over the top - the characters are interesting, sad, complicated - so don't take that griping too much to heart. I suppose what it comes to is that it's a bit too schematic in places - the ways neither of them wants to repeat their upbringing (he's from a broken home, and will do anything to preserve any kind of home; she's from a nightmarish "stable" home, and would do anything to spare her kid that kind of hatred.) That's maybe too neat (for instance) - though it's also accurate, so again - the quibbles are quibbles, doubts about a very good film.
Somewhere - 11/15 - I was a bit surprised to find myself really liking this film. Is there a backlash against Sofia Coppola? I don't know - I just come across the complaints now and then. Usually about all the time she devotes to the terrible suffering of privileged white folks. The problem is - she makes pretty good films. She has an eye, and she films what she knows - and while what she films may be limited (what she knows may be limited), she makes it live. This film starts and ends rather schematically (driving in a circle; walking toward something) - in between, though, it is surprisingly effective. The plot - a dissolute Hollywood star forced to take care of a precocious kid for a week - is old stuff - but it doesn't quite go in the directions these kinds of films usually go in. He does not resent the kid (then learn a life lesson); he does not do anything stupid and careless with the kid; he is, in fact, a decent father, when he chooses to be. And if he learns a life lesson - it was one we could see coming before the kid turned up. The emptiness of his life is clear enough without the kid, and it is clear enough that he knows it. So - I'd say it succeeds, in telling a story about someone nothing like normal people, but still making it recognizably human, and having a fair sense of the specificities of his life. The boredom and randomness of acting and publicity; the swarms of enablers around you; the endlessly freely available pussy (and cock, if you were so inclined) - oddly enough, it probably comes the closest to showing someone working for a living of all these films. A very strange kind of job - but a job.... And she has that eye - it's a slow film, but one that absorbs you into its rhythms, its imagery, and keeps you there. I liked it.
Film Posts 2011
Here then is my yearly Index of my film posts. This year, I think I will add links to blogathons and similar projects during the year, even if I don't actually participate. I used to try to keep on top of these things, but these days, there are fewer of them, and I am lazier - I won't pretend this is comprehensive, but I'll try to make it useful.
Mostly, though, this is to keep track of what I manage to write during the year.
Longer Pieces:
2/13: Notes on Hong Sang Soo - films, and appearance.
5/31: Mr Deeds Goes to Town - shots and essay
6/2: John Doe Footnote
9/18: Screen grabs and mini-essay on Capitalism, Violence and the Media in some Fassbinder films
10/30: Illustrated essay on the two classic Frankenstein films.
Occasional Pieces:
1/2: Best of 2010 (and 2009, in retrospect).
1/4: A quiz.
2/11: Pointers to Noir blogathon, Korean, Michael Mann blogathons. - Iranian blogathon announcement here.
2/14 & 17: Maltese Falcon (1931) notes, on style, especially in the meeting between Spade and Gutman. And 1941 notes on the same scene. For the Noir blogathon.
2/22: Iranian film blogathon, announcement and list.
also - 2/27: on Sound in Iranian films. (Shirin and The Mirror.)
3/7: Korean film blogathon - my list.
5/8: Mother's Day Screen shots - Japanese films
5/19 - Comments on Cannes, mostly Von Trier
5/22 - Syberberg Screen Shots
6/6: Big Red One D-Day post
6/12: Mon Oncle shots
6/18: Springtime Quiz
6/19: Fathers Day - Ozu
6/26: Sunday - Triangles (Ozu, Lester)
6/27: Peter Falk memorial, Columbo's strength
7/2: Halftime Report - movies of 2011.
7/3: Screen shots - Rio Bravo.
8/7: Screen Shots - The Furies
8/14: Screen Shots - Carol Reed
8/21: Screen Shots - minute 55 of three 1955 films (Ordet, Kiss Me Deadly, Smiles of a Summer Night)
9/4: Screen shots - Kick Me Deadly - feet in Kiss Me Deadly
9/11: Memorial, with shot from Stosczek
9/26: Shots from Guy Maddin's Dracula ballet movie, and links to a Maddin blogathon.
10/2: Rio Lobo shots.
10/9: from Horror of Dracula.
10/16: Empty spaces in Let the Right One In.
10/23: Thirst
10/28: Halloween Quiz from SLIFR.
11/13: Sergeant York, in honor of Armistice Day.
11/20: Platinum Blonde screen shots.
12/4: Godard's birthday commemorated with shots from 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her.
12/11: Manoel de Oliveira turns 103 - Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl shots.
12/12: Ozu's birthday, in pictures.
12/18: Snow! - from Frgo and The Saddest Music in the World.
12/25: Have yourself a Melancholy Christmas - courtesy of Meet Me in St. Louis.
Reviews:
1/17: Capsules - True Grit, Rabbit Hole, Blue Valentine, Somewhere.
4/20: Certified Copy
4/23: Le Quattro Volte.
6/9: Midnight in Paris and Tree of Life Reviews
6/23: Big roundup - Bridesmaids, Princess of Montpensier, The Trip, Nostalgia for the Light, Blank City, Legend fo the Fist, 13 Assassins, Meek's Cutoff
7/10: Summer roundup - Pianomania, Buck, Page One, Bad Teacher, Larry Crowne.
8/15: Capsules - Tabloid, Friends With Benefits, Road to Nowhere, The Future
9/7: New films - The Sleeping Beauty, Mysteries of Lisbon, Magic Trip, Myth of the American Sleepover and Senna.
9/21: More theatrical viewings - Contagion, The Guard, Rapt, Drive & World on a Wire.
10/21: More new films: Detective Dee, Restless, Black Power Mix Tape, Ides of March, Love Crime
12/6: Recent films - Melancholia, Take Shelter, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Skin I Live In.
Outside Events - blogathons, etc.:
1/17: Alfred Hitchcock blogathon at the Classic Movie Blog Association.
2/13-20: For the Love of Film Noir blogathon. Donation site.
2/21-27: Iranian Blogathon.
3/7-13: Korean blogathon.
9/5-9/9 : My 9/6 link to Nick Ray blogathon
11/10: Reaction to Wonders in The Dark's musical countdown.
Mostly, though, this is to keep track of what I manage to write during the year.
Longer Pieces:
2/13: Notes on Hong Sang Soo - films, and appearance.
5/31: Mr Deeds Goes to Town - shots and essay
6/2: John Doe Footnote
9/18: Screen grabs and mini-essay on Capitalism, Violence and the Media in some Fassbinder films
10/30: Illustrated essay on the two classic Frankenstein films.
Occasional Pieces:
1/2: Best of 2010 (and 2009, in retrospect).
1/4: A quiz.
2/11: Pointers to Noir blogathon, Korean, Michael Mann blogathons. - Iranian blogathon announcement here.
2/14 & 17: Maltese Falcon (1931) notes, on style, especially in the meeting between Spade and Gutman. And 1941 notes on the same scene. For the Noir blogathon.
2/22: Iranian film blogathon, announcement and list.
also - 2/27: on Sound in Iranian films. (Shirin and The Mirror.)
3/7: Korean film blogathon - my list.
5/8: Mother's Day Screen shots - Japanese films
5/19 - Comments on Cannes, mostly Von Trier
5/22 - Syberberg Screen Shots
6/6: Big Red One D-Day post
6/12: Mon Oncle shots
6/18: Springtime Quiz
6/19: Fathers Day - Ozu
6/26: Sunday - Triangles (Ozu, Lester)
6/27: Peter Falk memorial, Columbo's strength
7/2: Halftime Report - movies of 2011.
7/3: Screen shots - Rio Bravo.
8/7: Screen Shots - The Furies
8/14: Screen Shots - Carol Reed
8/21: Screen Shots - minute 55 of three 1955 films (Ordet, Kiss Me Deadly, Smiles of a Summer Night)
9/4: Screen shots - Kick Me Deadly - feet in Kiss Me Deadly
9/11: Memorial, with shot from Stosczek
9/26: Shots from Guy Maddin's Dracula ballet movie, and links to a Maddin blogathon.
10/2: Rio Lobo shots.
10/9: from Horror of Dracula.
10/16: Empty spaces in Let the Right One In.
10/23: Thirst
10/28: Halloween Quiz from SLIFR.
11/13: Sergeant York, in honor of Armistice Day.
11/20: Platinum Blonde screen shots.
12/4: Godard's birthday commemorated with shots from 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her.
12/11: Manoel de Oliveira turns 103 - Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl shots.
12/12: Ozu's birthday, in pictures.
12/18: Snow! - from Frgo and The Saddest Music in the World.
12/25: Have yourself a Melancholy Christmas - courtesy of Meet Me in St. Louis.
Reviews:
1/17: Capsules - True Grit, Rabbit Hole, Blue Valentine, Somewhere.
4/20: Certified Copy
4/23: Le Quattro Volte.
6/9: Midnight in Paris and Tree of Life Reviews
6/23: Big roundup - Bridesmaids, Princess of Montpensier, The Trip, Nostalgia for the Light, Blank City, Legend fo the Fist, 13 Assassins, Meek's Cutoff
7/10: Summer roundup - Pianomania, Buck, Page One, Bad Teacher, Larry Crowne.
8/15: Capsules - Tabloid, Friends With Benefits, Road to Nowhere, The Future
9/7: New films - The Sleeping Beauty, Mysteries of Lisbon, Magic Trip, Myth of the American Sleepover and Senna.
9/21: More theatrical viewings - Contagion, The Guard, Rapt, Drive & World on a Wire.
10/21: More new films: Detective Dee, Restless, Black Power Mix Tape, Ides of March, Love Crime
12/6: Recent films - Melancholia, Take Shelter, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Skin I Live In.
Outside Events - blogathons, etc.:
1/17: Alfred Hitchcock blogathon at the Classic Movie Blog Association.
2/13-20: For the Love of Film Noir blogathon. Donation site.
2/21-27: Iranian Blogathon.
3/7-13: Korean blogathon.
9/5-9/9 : My 9/6 link to Nick Ray blogathon
11/10: Reaction to Wonders in The Dark's musical countdown.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Snow Day
Yes indeed. Very pretty snowstorm, but it's all pretty heavy and there's a lot of it, so there is an awful lot of this around:
I myself got a day off from work, which is just as well as I also got half a day with no electricity... I took the opportunity to wander the neighborhood looking at the aftermath (if that's the word - its still coming down, sort of...), then warmed up with a bowl of Pho before coming home... I've been looking at theinternet, and I am confused - did someone accuse Sarah Palin of drinking the blood of Christian children? Surely that can't be right - she would never discriminate on the basis of race, color or creed, would she?
Right. The mere mention of a certain reality show star and failed politician gives me a pain - here, as an antidote, is a picture of a cat misbehaving, cutely...
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Professor Hubert Farnsworth’s Only Slightly Futuristic Holiday Movie Quiz
It is time for the real marker of the turning of the seasons, Dennis Cozzalio's movie quiz - this one named in honor of Professor Hubert Farnsworth. Here we are, and here we go:
1) Best Movie of 2010
A: Carlos, the long version
2) Second-favorite Roman Polanski Movie
A: The Pianist, I think
3) Jason Statham or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
A: I think the Rock, though I have not seen him that much - both are fun to watch though.
4) Favorite movie that could be classified as a genre hybrid
A: I'm afraid this is an invitation to waffle. I'm not sure how far apart the genres have to be for this - there are thousands of horror comedies, for instance, enough that I don't know if that counts as a hybrid or as a genre unto itself - if a hybrid, the answer has to be something like Bride of Frankenstein. But that seems to be more sub-genre than hybrid, somehow... How about a western comedy, like Destry Rides Again? or do I stick with something obvious, like Blade Runner?
5) How important is foreknowledge of a film’s production history? Should it factor into one’s reaction to a film?
A: I guess not much, as I do not often think about it. Once in a while a fact or two will come along that changes how I see a film - not often, and not in any consistent way.
6) William Powell & Myrna Loy or Cary Grant & Irene Dunne
A: While I like the Awful Truth more than anything else these 4 combine in, I like the ongoing chemistry between Powell and Loy. Which is a nice way to split the difference.
7) Best Actor of 2010
A: This is not as clear as I'd like - I think Edgar Ramirez in Carlos has to be the answer, though Jesse Eisenberg makes it close.
8) Most important lesson learned from the past decade of watching movies
A: Stella Artois commercials are annoying?
9) Last movie seen (DVD/Blu-ray/theater)
A: Blu-Ray is The Maltese Falcon, as it happens. DVD as of now is Stagecoach. Theater is True Grit.
10) Most appropriate punishment for director Tom Six
A: I'm afraid the only punishment I can inflict is to ignore him. Which I suppose is terrible enough...
11) Best under-the-radar movie almost no one else has had the chance to see
A: Well - it's very hard to see - so let's say, Los Angeles Plays Itself.
12) Sheree North or Angie Dickinson
A: Angie, I guess. I mean, Rio Bravo, right?
13) Favorite nakedly autobiographical movie
A: 400 Blows, I suppose - or Contempt.
14) Movie which best evokes a specific real-life place
A: Let's say Playtime and Alphaville - the new Paris, by day and night...
15) Best Director of 2010
A: This has to be Assayas.
16) Second-favorite Farrelly Brothers Movie
A: Dumb and Dumber (after Something About Mary, I guess.)
17) Favorite holiday movie
A: It's a Wonderful Life is a holiday movie in practice, though not as much in theory. The latter, for something quite specifically about a holiday - or two - how about a Nightmare Before Christmas?
18) Best Actress of 2010
A: of films released - Isabelle Huppert in White Material (Kim hye-ja in Mother close behind.) Of films made in 2010 - Hattie Steinfeld, right?
19) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson
A: Baker
20) Of those notable figures in the world of the movies who died in 2010, name the one you’ll miss the most
A: In terms of ongoing movie production, on films I seek out - the answer is probably, and somewhat obscurely, William Lubtchansky, for his part in all those Rivette films. I suppose in broader, historical terms, it would be Rohmer, though Hideko Takamine has been part of a lot of films I worship.
21) Think of a movie with a notable musical score and describe what it might feel like without that accompaniment.
A: This is a great question, though I don't know what to say to answer it. No amount of thinking is going to bring an intelligent answer so I am going to have to pass.
22) Best Screenplay of 2010
A: The KIds Are All Right? of all the releases - Mother
23) Movie You Feel Most Evangelistic About Right Now
A: What the hell - Ishtar.
24) Worst/funniest movie accent ever
A: These questions are the hardest to answer - examples pop into my head later - when I see something - I'll hate myself for not doing better. So punt, and take as easy a target as there is - Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves has long been my touchstone for accentual ineptitude...
25) Best Cinematography of 2010
A: Not surprisingly, this is True Grit.
26) Olivia Wilde or Gemma Arterton
A: No, I'm not going to pretend to know who these people are. EVen after googling them, I don't know who they are.
27) Name the three best movies you saw for the first time in 2010 (Thanks, Larry!)
A: Not counting new films - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the Mamoulian/March version); The Red Shoes (in a theater, too!); Odd Man Out (also theatrical.)
28) Best romantic movie couple of 2010
A: Might well be Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor
29) Favorite shock/surprise ending
A: favorite isn't the right word, but - Patrick Yau's Expect the Unexpected takes the cake...
30) Best cinematic reason to have stayed home and read a book in 2010
A: Those Louis Vuitton "journey" ads. The only ads I know to consistently draw boos.
31) Movies in 2011 could make me much happier if they’d only
A: ...release more Korean films - a good default answer...
1) Best Movie of 2010
A: Carlos, the long version
2) Second-favorite Roman Polanski Movie
A: The Pianist, I think
3) Jason Statham or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
A: I think the Rock, though I have not seen him that much - both are fun to watch though.
4) Favorite movie that could be classified as a genre hybrid
A: I'm afraid this is an invitation to waffle. I'm not sure how far apart the genres have to be for this - there are thousands of horror comedies, for instance, enough that I don't know if that counts as a hybrid or as a genre unto itself - if a hybrid, the answer has to be something like Bride of Frankenstein. But that seems to be more sub-genre than hybrid, somehow... How about a western comedy, like Destry Rides Again? or do I stick with something obvious, like Blade Runner?
5) How important is foreknowledge of a film’s production history? Should it factor into one’s reaction to a film?
A: I guess not much, as I do not often think about it. Once in a while a fact or two will come along that changes how I see a film - not often, and not in any consistent way.
6) William Powell & Myrna Loy or Cary Grant & Irene Dunne
A: While I like the Awful Truth more than anything else these 4 combine in, I like the ongoing chemistry between Powell and Loy. Which is a nice way to split the difference.
7) Best Actor of 2010
A: This is not as clear as I'd like - I think Edgar Ramirez in Carlos has to be the answer, though Jesse Eisenberg makes it close.
8) Most important lesson learned from the past decade of watching movies
A: Stella Artois commercials are annoying?
9) Last movie seen (DVD/Blu-ray/theater)
A: Blu-Ray is The Maltese Falcon, as it happens. DVD as of now is Stagecoach. Theater is True Grit.
10) Most appropriate punishment for director Tom Six
A: I'm afraid the only punishment I can inflict is to ignore him. Which I suppose is terrible enough...
11) Best under-the-radar movie almost no one else has had the chance to see
A: Well - it's very hard to see - so let's say, Los Angeles Plays Itself.
12) Sheree North or Angie Dickinson
A: Angie, I guess. I mean, Rio Bravo, right?
13) Favorite nakedly autobiographical movie
A: 400 Blows, I suppose - or Contempt.
14) Movie which best evokes a specific real-life place
A: Let's say Playtime and Alphaville - the new Paris, by day and night...
15) Best Director of 2010
A: This has to be Assayas.
16) Second-favorite Farrelly Brothers Movie
A: Dumb and Dumber (after Something About Mary, I guess.)
17) Favorite holiday movie
A: It's a Wonderful Life is a holiday movie in practice, though not as much in theory. The latter, for something quite specifically about a holiday - or two - how about a Nightmare Before Christmas?
18) Best Actress of 2010
A: of films released - Isabelle Huppert in White Material (Kim hye-ja in Mother close behind.) Of films made in 2010 - Hattie Steinfeld, right?
19) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson
A: Baker
20) Of those notable figures in the world of the movies who died in 2010, name the one you’ll miss the most
A: In terms of ongoing movie production, on films I seek out - the answer is probably, and somewhat obscurely, William Lubtchansky, for his part in all those Rivette films. I suppose in broader, historical terms, it would be Rohmer, though Hideko Takamine has been part of a lot of films I worship.
21) Think of a movie with a notable musical score and describe what it might feel like without that accompaniment.
A: This is a great question, though I don't know what to say to answer it. No amount of thinking is going to bring an intelligent answer so I am going to have to pass.
22) Best Screenplay of 2010
A: The KIds Are All Right? of all the releases - Mother
23) Movie You Feel Most Evangelistic About Right Now
A: What the hell - Ishtar.
24) Worst/funniest movie accent ever
A: These questions are the hardest to answer - examples pop into my head later - when I see something - I'll hate myself for not doing better. So punt, and take as easy a target as there is - Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves has long been my touchstone for accentual ineptitude...
25) Best Cinematography of 2010
A: Not surprisingly, this is True Grit.
26) Olivia Wilde or Gemma Arterton
A: No, I'm not going to pretend to know who these people are. EVen after googling them, I don't know who they are.
27) Name the three best movies you saw for the first time in 2010 (Thanks, Larry!)
A: Not counting new films - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the Mamoulian/March version); The Red Shoes (in a theater, too!); Odd Man Out (also theatrical.)
28) Best romantic movie couple of 2010
A: Might well be Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor
29) Favorite shock/surprise ending
A: favorite isn't the right word, but - Patrick Yau's Expect the Unexpected takes the cake...
30) Best cinematic reason to have stayed home and read a book in 2010
A: Those Louis Vuitton "journey" ads. The only ads I know to consistently draw boos.
31) Movies in 2011 could make me much happier if they’d only
A: ...release more Korean films - a good default answer...
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Best Releases of 2010 (And 2009 revisited)
Happy New Year, again. And - no point beating around the bush - straight into the best of 2010. With all the usual caveats - this list of of the best films given a first release (that I know of) in a commercial theater in Boston and its environs in 2010. Obviously, that I have seen - a caveat that might matter more this year than most. This was a down year for me - I went 2-3 months barely seeing any film - I moved in the spring, which proved very time consuming, especially on weekends when I might be watching movies. I spent most of June and the beginning of July parked in front of the TV set watching soccer. I took a vacation in July and made lots of little trips. I did not watch as many films as usual. Though it's not just me - I did not find the year's releases all that thrilling. The first half the year was okay, with last year's foreign films coming through - but when that slacked off, the new offerings were singularly uninspiring - and this did not improve in the fall.... I don't know if that is fair - I may have skipped a lot of films for bad reasons that might belong on this list... But there it is.
Enough of that. I complain about it being a bad year for movies, but that's less true at the top. Maybe nothing world-beating, and definitely thin, but there were still plenty of very fine new and recent films. (And quite a few that still haven't gotten screened here in town.) This is still a pretty good top 25, I think:
1. Carlos (long version) - Olivier Assayas
2. Mother - Bong Joon-ho
3. White Material - Claire Denis
4. Police, Adjective - Corneliu Porumboiu
5. Exit Through the Gift Shop - Banksy
6. The Social Network - David Fincher
7. True Grit - Coen Brothers
8. No One Knows About Persian Cats - Bahman Ghobadi
9. The White Ribbon - Haneke
10. A Film Unfinished - Yael Hersonski
11. House - Obayashi Nobuhiko (took 33 years, but it's a first release, right?)
12. Fish Tank - Andrea Arnold
13. Wild Grass - Alain Resnais
14. Greenberg - Noah Baumbach
15. The Tillman Story - Amir Ben-Lev
16. Vincere - Marco Bellochio
17. I am Love - Luca Guadagnino
18. Bluebeard - Catherine Breillat
19. Anton Chekhov's The Duel - Dover Koshashvili
20. The Ghost Writer - Roman Polanski
21. The Kids Are All Right - Lisa Cholodenko
22. Air Doll - Kore-Eda
23. A Woman A Gun and a Noodle Shop - Zhang Yimou
24. Kick Ass - Matthew Vaughan
25. Catfish - Ariel Schulman & Henry Joost
And - an early crack at a best of 2010 (made in 2010):
1. Carlos
2. Exit Through the Gift Shop
3. The Social Network
4. True Grit
5. A Film Unfinished
6. Greenberg
7. The Tillman Story
8. The Ghost Writer
9. The Kids Are All Right
10. Kick-Ass
The latter I imagine will change dramatically. In fact - since I did not do so last year, here is a retrospective top 25 for 2009, to compare to my first crack at 2009 - the latter (posted here) first:
1. Thirst
2. Bad Lieutenant...
3. A Serious Man
4. Inglourious Basterds
5. The Limits of Control
6. Antichrist
7. The Hurt Locker
8. Moon
9. Beeswax
10. Bright Star
With a year to think about it:
1. Mother
2. Thirst
3. White Material
4. Police, Adjective
5. Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans
6. A Serious Man
7. Limits of Control
8. The Antichrist
9. Inglourious Basterds
10.No One Knows About Persian Cats
11. White Ribbon
12. Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl
13. Fish Tank
14. Wild Grass
15. The Hurt Locker
16. Beeswax
17. 36 Vues du Pic Saint Loup
18. Fantastic Mr. Fox
19. Bright Star
20. Vincere
21. The Informant!
22. Moon
23. I Am Love
24. Bluebeard
25. Up
Enough of that. I complain about it being a bad year for movies, but that's less true at the top. Maybe nothing world-beating, and definitely thin, but there were still plenty of very fine new and recent films. (And quite a few that still haven't gotten screened here in town.) This is still a pretty good top 25, I think:
1. Carlos (long version) - Olivier Assayas
2. Mother - Bong Joon-ho
3. White Material - Claire Denis
4. Police, Adjective - Corneliu Porumboiu
5. Exit Through the Gift Shop - Banksy
6. The Social Network - David Fincher
7. True Grit - Coen Brothers
8. No One Knows About Persian Cats - Bahman Ghobadi
9. The White Ribbon - Haneke
10. A Film Unfinished - Yael Hersonski
11. House - Obayashi Nobuhiko (took 33 years, but it's a first release, right?)
12. Fish Tank - Andrea Arnold
13. Wild Grass - Alain Resnais
14. Greenberg - Noah Baumbach
15. The Tillman Story - Amir Ben-Lev
16. Vincere - Marco Bellochio
17. I am Love - Luca Guadagnino
18. Bluebeard - Catherine Breillat
19. Anton Chekhov's The Duel - Dover Koshashvili
20. The Ghost Writer - Roman Polanski
21. The Kids Are All Right - Lisa Cholodenko
22. Air Doll - Kore-Eda
23. A Woman A Gun and a Noodle Shop - Zhang Yimou
24. Kick Ass - Matthew Vaughan
25. Catfish - Ariel Schulman & Henry Joost
And - an early crack at a best of 2010 (made in 2010):
1. Carlos
2. Exit Through the Gift Shop
3. The Social Network
4. True Grit
5. A Film Unfinished
6. Greenberg
7. The Tillman Story
8. The Ghost Writer
9. The Kids Are All Right
10. Kick-Ass
The latter I imagine will change dramatically. In fact - since I did not do so last year, here is a retrospective top 25 for 2009, to compare to my first crack at 2009 - the latter (posted here) first:
1. Thirst
2. Bad Lieutenant...
3. A Serious Man
4. Inglourious Basterds
5. The Limits of Control
6. Antichrist
7. The Hurt Locker
8. Moon
9. Beeswax
10. Bright Star
With a year to think about it:
1. Mother
2. Thirst
3. White Material
4. Police, Adjective
5. Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans
6. A Serious Man
7. Limits of Control
8. The Antichrist
9. Inglourious Basterds
10.No One Knows About Persian Cats
11. White Ribbon
12. Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl
13. Fish Tank
14. Wild Grass
15. The Hurt Locker
16. Beeswax
17. 36 Vues du Pic Saint Loup
18. Fantastic Mr. Fox
19. Bright Star
20. Vincere
21. The Informant!
22. Moon
23. I Am Love
24. Bluebeard
25. Up
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