A couple weeks of viewing... some interesting films here, though nothing to measure up to the old timer of the bunch. (I should add - there's an undue number of action/suspense films here - I have made no effort to avoid giving away plot points... so perhaps, if you are planning to see some of these and don't want them spoiled - have a care. I don't think there are many mysteries revealed, but...)
Contagion - 10/15 - Steven Soderbergh's latest, an disaster movie about and epidemic, treated with a mixture of excitement and matter of fact. Starts with Gwyneth Paltrow coughing in an airport where she is waiting for a plane after a quickie with a man - she has just come from Hong Kong, and Soderbergh takes us there, to another sick man, then a man dying on a bus in Tokyo, then - a string of sickness and death and then - characters: a sleazy blogger, a doctors at the Center for Disease Control, GP's family (Matt Damon), etc. - they figure out what is happening and the story is on its way. The opening sequence might be the best - the quick cutting from runny noses to hands to doorknobs and credit cards and bus and subway poles to terrible painful death.... Once everyone figures out what is going on, they try to control it - Kate Winslet in MInnesota, Elliot Gould in San Francisco - and as it gets worse, the control becomes more desperate - panic in the streets of Chicago, Minneapolis, Hong Kong - society threatens to collapse, violence, disorder, kidnappings, careless use of social media, etc. - cures are promised, conspiracies mooted, money is made, experiments are performed, press conferences and TV shows go awry - and in the end? a doctor finds a vaccine, tries it on herself, it works, and the world begins to emerge again from this disaster.
Soderbergh takes an interesting approach - he uses horror and science fiction tropes, building tension, then sliding away from them - suggesting - is it a zombie picture? is it science fiction? is it terrorism? is it a government conspiracy? The evil blogger (Jude Law) plays an interesting part in this - the paranoid outsider - and Soderbergh plays with the character - is he right? does forsythia cure this? he seems to cure himself - but did he? did he just have a mild case? did he have something else? did he fake it all for the publicity? - Soderbergh holds off letting us know until the end. He knows this is a major archtype in disaster films - he knows government conspiracies are a major theme of these films - he knows science vs. money vs. power are fundamental conflicts in these films, and he keeps them all active as long as he can. Choosing among all the options only when he has to... This happens over and over - suggestions of terrorism raised and dropped; Gould's experiments, in an unsafe environment - that could make things worse, or better, and which it is we have to wait for... It's a fascinating exercise in film construction, really - a very nice film, overall.
The Guard - 10/15 - highly amusing if inconsequential cop buddy picture. Brendan Gleeson plays Boyle, a bad cop in Galway, who finds a man murdered in a holiday house - then at a meeting about a shipment of drugs coming in, sees the man as one of the gang. So he and Don Cheadle, playing an FBI agent, head back to the coast to work on the case - sort of. Cheadle gets hung out to dry for most of the film, since it's Gleeson's day off - alas, he spends the day getting his rocks off with a pair of whores - who turn out to be working for the drug smugglers and are bound on blackmail... etc. The crooks, inevitably, come to kill our man, but in the meanwhile he's found a stash of IRA guns, which prove useful when the time comes. It's all very neatly plotted, down to the convenience of the three guns he steals (a derringer, a glock and an AK-47) - sometimes, maybe, it's a bit too neat. The real pleasure is in the performances, and the material given tot he actors - Gleeson is glorious, Cheadle plays more of a straight man, but gets his moments - and the bad guys (Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong, David Wilmot) get to chew through some highly amusing, if improbable, dialogue. Like so many films, it plays halfway between an homage to Pulp Fiction and a parody - though here, it pushes the metafiction to 11, and makes no bones about its plain joy in the words and the way the men say them - the crooks arguing aboiut their favorite philosopher and quoting Nietzsche, that kind of thing. It's a load of fun.
World on a Wire - 13/15 - A wonderful science fiction film - actually a 2-part TV show - from Rainer Werner Fassbinder, in 1973. Virtual reality, with a strong PK Dick vibe... There is, apparently, a huge VR computer - the Simulacron - overseen by the government.... the film starts with its programmer going a bit crazy ont he government people, then, after making some obscure comments to the head of security - dying.... His replacement is Stiller - the security chief (Lause) tells him about Vollmer - but then - disappears, in the middle of a party. And then? Stiller sets out to run the project while worrying about these two mysteries (Vollmer's death and Lause's disappearance) - made worse by the fact that no one else can remember Lause at all. Uh oh. He is not the last person to disappear - or reappear, inside the simulacron. It is not too much a spoiler, I think, to say that by the end of part one, a character from the Simulacron tells Stiller that he is also part of a simulation program - another, bigger one. In Part 2, Stiller sets out to find out if this is true, and what you might do with the information if it was.
It's all handled quite well - the is-it-real-or-is-it-Simulacron business stays interesting - we may have a pretty clear idea what is going on, and by the middle of the film, so do the characters - but they still have to prove it, to themselves or anyone else, and how this goes remains interesting. But the plot is less thrilling than the filmmaking - Fassbinder is working his most Sirkean mode - gorgeous compositions, mirrors and balls and flowers and doors and screens, complex and gorgeous. The sound design, also typical for Fassbinder, is magnificent. And the lead - Klaus Lowitsch - is just great - giving a wild, athletic performance, like a mix of Mike Hammer and Jackie Chan. The film too draws on cinematic history - Sirk plus Alphaville plus Kiss Me Deadly plus god knows what - a brilliant piece of work.
Rapt - 11/15 - Strong french thriller, that reminds me, oddly, of Contagion - in the way it deals with genre conventions, it's way of slipping around obvious points, obvious emotions, and so on - its matter of fact depiction of a disaster. In this case - Yvan Attal plays a very rich businessman who we see working, meeting high government officials, fucking a mistress, playing poker, interacting with his wife and children, then getting kidnapped. He's hauled off to god knows where - abused - has a finger cut off and mailed to his family with a ransom note for 50 million Euros Is he worth it? will they pay? Well - they only have 20 million Euros to spare - his company surely isn't going to pay (though they could offer a loan) - then all his sins and misdemeanors start to be revealed and - well, the wife still wants to pay.... So - the crooks try different tactics, try to work with different parts of his family and entourage - his lawyer tries to pay, for example, thought he cops get wind of it and follow, queering that deal. And so it goes - and after another failure to get the money - the crooks turn him loose.... and now things get really difficult. Everyone distrusts everyone else - all his sins are in the open; he's a bit chuffed that no one bothers to ask him how he is doing, how he is holding up. He loses it all in the end, everything except the money - but the crooks send him a letter.... Throughout, the film maintains a great sense of multiple perspectives, and pays it off especially well at the end. The way he and his wife both seem to be right - and wrong; the way we don't really learn whether he is indispensable to his firm or just a figurehead; the way we see hints of deeper plots - who organized all this? is it just a bunch of smart crooks, or is there a conspiracy? These things aren't resolved - like Soderbergh, Lucas Belvaux plays with genre expectations, plays with possible plots and interpretations, but doesn't settle them. Another very fine film.
Drive - 10/15 - existential crime film, that taciturn 70s style, with an 80s look and feel - about a driver, who obviously never gets a name, who does stunts, works in a garage, and drives getaway cars.... Inevitably, after one job, he moves into a new building and meets a pretty girl with a cute kid - the kind of woman and kid who play games and cutesy jokes at the supermarket... her car breaks down and he helps and etc. He doesn't seem to fuck her though! Steve McQueen would have fucked her. Anyway - he has an old coot as a mentor, the mentor is trying to get him into the race car circuit, he's dealing with crooks to do it, the crooks are played by Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman, which seems important. (The diriver is Ryan Gosling, girl is Carey Mulligan, coot is Bryan Cranston).) The girl's husband gets out of jail, but he owes people money, so the driver offers to help, but alas - crosses are doubled and doubled again and before long the driver is on the warpath. This is, I'm afraid, one of those films where there are only about 12 people in the city of LA - so obviously the driver's own gangster friends are involved... Anyway. It's hard to describe the plot without getting a bit glib - to say it's been done before... it has moments - it builds to a certain amount of tension - the crooks, especially, are given scenery to chew, lines to linger over and such - there are a couple very nicely shot action sequences. But you know - it's nothing new, it's not all that interesting an old thing - at least - it something I have seen before, and don't feel any particular need to see it again. It's kind of the opposite of Contagion and Rapt - where they raise genre conventions then complicate or confound them, this one just ticks them off and delivers them, on cue. Without any sense of just how silly and sentimental it all is... It's still a fairly effective film - I mean - 10 is a good rating - there are parts of it I would watch any chance I got - I wish Albert Brooks could get a spinoff as this character - but.... it's the least interesting of this run of theatrical viewings, by a fair margin.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Fassbinder - Capitalism, Violence, Media
I have watched a handful of Fassbinder films lately - World on a Wire most notably - but a couple other films on DVD as well.
It was hard not to think about this, from The Third Generation, during the 9/11 commemorations last week. One of the first things I thought after the towers were hit was, we are just like everyone else now - we will have to live with terrorism, the way they have in the rest of the world for decades. It's an odd thing to think, though - in the 90s, we had the first WTC attack, we had Oklahoma CIty, we had the Atlanta bombings, we had bombings and assassinations against abortion providers - we had plenty of terrorists and terrorism in the good old USA. Still - I thought it, and a lot of other people said something similar. But oddly - we didn't seem to think that maybe the rest of the world, so experienced in terrorism, might have already had a few things to say about it. We have never been so unique - we are not the first, nor the last, to deal with these things.
The three Fassbinders I watched last week - Third Generation, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, and World on a Wire - all deal with violence - with the intersection of power and resistance. And the intersection of the individual and society - society in all its forms, from families to political groups to, well - metaphysical ontology... How one man's possibly inexplicable act (Herman Kuster's murder suicide) is pulled into the web of human relations - how do you make sense of it? What do you do about it? Mother Kusters does this directly - it is her husband, after all, who did the deed. But she does this while the rest of society pulls at it themselves. The media, the politicians, pulling at the deed, and at her, from all directions, to put it (and her) to use...
The media is the other great theme of the three films - or I could say, mediation, through technology and the media. The ever-present television of the Third Generation; the press and its abuses in Mother Kusters; and - the very premise of World on a Wire. The question, I suppose, is one of representation, representation and power - explicitly in World on a Wire (how do you represent the real world in a computer, that you can control?), but just as clearly in the others. How do you represent the world? what happens? the people in it? how are those images controlled?
Third Generation stages this question - it is in the plot, in the ways the industrialists and police manipulate the terrorists, but also in the TV sets and cameras that pervade its world. The TV set always on, haunting every scene (visibly or audibly) - and then leading to the terrorists' attempt (rather absurd, really) to control the image themselves.
And in the films themselves - they are also representations, not reality. Fassbinder keeps that close at hand - the ending of Mother Kusters, with its frozen image and cold, fatalistic text, to pull us away from the direct reality, to acknowledge the representation:
...or endings - I am not entirely sure what the history of the 2 endings of Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven is - but they create a lovely effect: the harshness of the first, followed by a different kind of harshness in the second, as everyone just walks away:
And then - what I imagine is something of a take off on the end of The Last Laugh.... though why not give her a happy ending?
It was hard not to think about this, from The Third Generation, during the 9/11 commemorations last week. One of the first things I thought after the towers were hit was, we are just like everyone else now - we will have to live with terrorism, the way they have in the rest of the world for decades. It's an odd thing to think, though - in the 90s, we had the first WTC attack, we had Oklahoma CIty, we had the Atlanta bombings, we had bombings and assassinations against abortion providers - we had plenty of terrorists and terrorism in the good old USA. Still - I thought it, and a lot of other people said something similar. But oddly - we didn't seem to think that maybe the rest of the world, so experienced in terrorism, might have already had a few things to say about it. We have never been so unique - we are not the first, nor the last, to deal with these things.
The three Fassbinders I watched last week - Third Generation, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, and World on a Wire - all deal with violence - with the intersection of power and resistance. And the intersection of the individual and society - society in all its forms, from families to political groups to, well - metaphysical ontology... How one man's possibly inexplicable act (Herman Kuster's murder suicide) is pulled into the web of human relations - how do you make sense of it? What do you do about it? Mother Kusters does this directly - it is her husband, after all, who did the deed. But she does this while the rest of society pulls at it themselves. The media, the politicians, pulling at the deed, and at her, from all directions, to put it (and her) to use...
The media is the other great theme of the three films - or I could say, mediation, through technology and the media. The ever-present television of the Third Generation; the press and its abuses in Mother Kusters; and - the very premise of World on a Wire. The question, I suppose, is one of representation, representation and power - explicitly in World on a Wire (how do you represent the real world in a computer, that you can control?), but just as clearly in the others. How do you represent the world? what happens? the people in it? how are those images controlled?
Third Generation stages this question - it is in the plot, in the ways the industrialists and police manipulate the terrorists, but also in the TV sets and cameras that pervade its world. The TV set always on, haunting every scene (visibly or audibly) - and then leading to the terrorists' attempt (rather absurd, really) to control the image themselves.
And in the films themselves - they are also representations, not reality. Fassbinder keeps that close at hand - the ending of Mother Kusters, with its frozen image and cold, fatalistic text, to pull us away from the direct reality, to acknowledge the representation:
...or endings - I am not entirely sure what the history of the 2 endings of Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven is - but they create a lovely effect: the harshness of the first, followed by a different kind of harshness in the second, as everyone just walks away:
And then - what I imagine is something of a take off on the end of The Last Laugh.... though why not give her a happy ending?
Friday, September 16, 2011
Guilty Pleasures
Another Friday, another music post, and this time (thanks to the iPod tossing up one of the songs below), about Guilty Pleasures. This is a hardy perennial on the internet, so I won't claim any originality... And I suppose there's not much originality in my opinion of the idea of guilty pleasures in the first place - I don't tend to feel guilty about my pleasures. But I won't deny, there are things I like that need a bit of explaining. Some of them things that shouldn't require too much justification - bands that get a bad reputation for some reason, that fall out of fashion, that are associated with values that are denigrated, etc. - but are in fact quite good. Light pop, cheesy metal, bloated bombast, singer-songwriters - that kind of thing - styles that manage to produce an inordinate amount of garbage - but when done well, are done very well indeed.
So - there are perhaps those who would think you should feel guilty for liking, oh - the Carpenters - the Steve Miller Band - Gordon Lightfoot - but not me. There are certainly bands that sneak up to the line - 70s Jefferson Starship, say - they were ready to topple over into the utter dreck they made in the 80s - but songs like Miracles or Caroline are better than good. (This may come down to the degree of involvement from Marty Balin - he seems to be the key to the good stuff...) But basically - these are very fine acts, working in styles that have passed out of (and into, and out again, every half a decade maybe) fashion - or who worked at a time, in a milieu that produced a kid of structural crappiness (the 1970s!), that the material still transcends. I will add - this sort of thing occasionally catches up bands that are indisputably great, but get missed, or dismissed for extraneous reasons. (I have treated this subject before.) There are people who would question ones devotion to Queen, or George Michael, or Elton John even, or maybe even the Go Gos or - is this possible? - Blue Oyster Cult... these are not guilty pleasures at all - and one must question the judgment of those who question yours...
Not guilty - pleasure:
But that's not what I'm here to write about. No. I mean, real guilt! Though this requires another distinction - because again, there are songs, acts, etc. that, well - they aren't so respectable, and maybe it's fair this time, maybe they aren't so respectable because they do tend to suck.... But not these songs. That is - these songs are as good as they are - but I still feel like I need to explain them, in ways I don't feel any need to explain liking "Freedom 90".
1. REO Speedwagon - Time for Me to Fly - REO became something evil in the 1980s (though still catchy enough) - and in the 70s - they were a bland, middle of the pack semi-arena band - along about the level of Journey or something... Though unlike Journey, they did not suck in the 70s. Unlike Journey, they do not make me want to break something when I hear them. And some of their songs - especially this one - are - heard later, all these years later - fucking great. I mean really - this is one of the best breakup songs ever, and I am not kidding.
Really:
2. Styx - Lady - cheesy 70s psudo-prog bullshit, but when you listen - well, all right, get past Dennis DeYoung's caterwaul, yes, and the tinkly piano, sure, and - the fucking bells... and then? The guitar riffs kick in - is it a bolero? I think it might be - but the way it plays against DeYoung's mewlings - I don't know - it's great, for all that. It feels - modern.
3. Fannypack - Cameltoe - songs like this - cutesy comic bubblegum - might be worth an eyeroll or two, but in the end - catchiness and comedy will carry the day. There's no point pretending to feel any guilt for liking this, done well.Which is good, because I don't feel guilty.
4. Blind Melon - No Rain - I know I probably should hate myself for liking this, but I can't; especially when the guitar solo kicks in.
5. Eddie Money - Two Tickets to Paradise - this has to be mentioned. Eddie Money sucks eggs, but something went wrong here - the song - you know, I'm tempted to dismiss it, but it's not half bad - catchy, nothing wrong with the lyrics, neat sound - and then.... It features a guitar solo that I am not alone is considering not just one of the best solos on a bad song, but one of the best guitar solos period - one of the most wonderful musical breaks in pop music. Seriously. On an Eddie Money song.
And so, after all that, we get to the Real Deal. You want guilty pleasures? here they are - songs that no decent person should be listening to, and no sane person should defend, but... Even here, I suppose this is a bit dishonest - I don't really feel guilty for liking all these songs - but I probably should. I shall Count Them Down, least to most guilt - because, by the end of it - yes - there are a ocuple songs here that, well - I hate the fact that I have ever heard these songs, let alone listened to them, let alone listened to them intentionally - and yet I have - and have perhaps paid the 99¢ for the privilege. Even added them to frequently played playlists. I may not be able to face myself if I admit this in public... but here goes. In reverse order, from least guilt to most:
5. Starland Vocal Band - Afternoon Delight - this is a close thing, really - for all that's wrong with it, it has to get some points for: A. being one hell of a catchy number; B. being unambiguously about fucking; C. Very close to being self-parody all by itself, even before Will Farrell got hold of it. So - the truth is, I don't feel very guilty about liking this at all - but I had to include it somewhere in this post, if it wasn't here I'd have to think of something to say about something by Yes or System of a Down, and I can't face that.
4. Bay City Rollers - Rock and Roll Love Letter - a lot of things I liked when I was a wee bairn, then decided were crap, I went back to as an old fart and realized, Dang! this is pretty good! The Bay City Rollers, alas, were not one of them. Most of their stuff turns out, in retrospect, to be utter crap... But not this song. It's almost cool enough to leave off, here, maybe in favor of Yesterday's Hero - but - Yesterday's Hero, despite having some merits, really isn't good enought o bear comparison to the likes of Afternoon Delight - so, Rock and Roll Love Letter stays...
Fake can be fun too!
3. Terry Jacks - Seasons in the Sun - here, we start moving into the self-loathing territory. Now, granted, this is a Jacques Brel song, and brings with it the merits of M. Brel - but given a wimpy, lachrymose reading and arrangement... I grew up listening to this song every frigging morning on AM radio and - couldn't help loving it almost as much as I hated it. Certainly couldn't get it out of my head.
2. Petra - The Coloring Song - Christian Rock is a reliable source of complete crap, and this is a fine example - awful, cheesy, MOR Christian Rock from the late 70s, complete with flutes or recorders or some shit like that - and gory lyrics ("red is the color of the blood that flowed" - why didn't Mel Gibson use this during the flogging scenes in his Jesus in bondage film?) - but damn, it's pretty...
These things exist!
1. Morningwood - Nth Degree - I hate myself for enjoying this song. It's from a fucking car ad! the song itself - is cheesy and fake (it sounds like it was written for a car ad, possibly by the car) - it has no lyrics - I do not believe there are any actual humans participating in the song. And yet, christ, isn't it catchy? It's horrible - it's embarrassing - it makes me want to kick a puppy - but I still can't help listening to it.
Unspeakably horrible, and irresistible. Thank Christ the video contains an ad.
So - there are perhaps those who would think you should feel guilty for liking, oh - the Carpenters - the Steve Miller Band - Gordon Lightfoot - but not me. There are certainly bands that sneak up to the line - 70s Jefferson Starship, say - they were ready to topple over into the utter dreck they made in the 80s - but songs like Miracles or Caroline are better than good. (This may come down to the degree of involvement from Marty Balin - he seems to be the key to the good stuff...) But basically - these are very fine acts, working in styles that have passed out of (and into, and out again, every half a decade maybe) fashion - or who worked at a time, in a milieu that produced a kid of structural crappiness (the 1970s!), that the material still transcends. I will add - this sort of thing occasionally catches up bands that are indisputably great, but get missed, or dismissed for extraneous reasons. (I have treated this subject before.) There are people who would question ones devotion to Queen, or George Michael, or Elton John even, or maybe even the Go Gos or - is this possible? - Blue Oyster Cult... these are not guilty pleasures at all - and one must question the judgment of those who question yours...
Not guilty - pleasure:
But that's not what I'm here to write about. No. I mean, real guilt! Though this requires another distinction - because again, there are songs, acts, etc. that, well - they aren't so respectable, and maybe it's fair this time, maybe they aren't so respectable because they do tend to suck.... But not these songs. That is - these songs are as good as they are - but I still feel like I need to explain them, in ways I don't feel any need to explain liking "Freedom 90".
1. REO Speedwagon - Time for Me to Fly - REO became something evil in the 1980s (though still catchy enough) - and in the 70s - they were a bland, middle of the pack semi-arena band - along about the level of Journey or something... Though unlike Journey, they did not suck in the 70s. Unlike Journey, they do not make me want to break something when I hear them. And some of their songs - especially this one - are - heard later, all these years later - fucking great. I mean really - this is one of the best breakup songs ever, and I am not kidding.
Really:
2. Styx - Lady - cheesy 70s psudo-prog bullshit, but when you listen - well, all right, get past Dennis DeYoung's caterwaul, yes, and the tinkly piano, sure, and - the fucking bells... and then? The guitar riffs kick in - is it a bolero? I think it might be - but the way it plays against DeYoung's mewlings - I don't know - it's great, for all that. It feels - modern.
3. Fannypack - Cameltoe - songs like this - cutesy comic bubblegum - might be worth an eyeroll or two, but in the end - catchiness and comedy will carry the day. There's no point pretending to feel any guilt for liking this, done well.Which is good, because I don't feel guilty.
4. Blind Melon - No Rain - I know I probably should hate myself for liking this, but I can't; especially when the guitar solo kicks in.
5. Eddie Money - Two Tickets to Paradise - this has to be mentioned. Eddie Money sucks eggs, but something went wrong here - the song - you know, I'm tempted to dismiss it, but it's not half bad - catchy, nothing wrong with the lyrics, neat sound - and then.... It features a guitar solo that I am not alone is considering not just one of the best solos on a bad song, but one of the best guitar solos period - one of the most wonderful musical breaks in pop music. Seriously. On an Eddie Money song.
And so, after all that, we get to the Real Deal. You want guilty pleasures? here they are - songs that no decent person should be listening to, and no sane person should defend, but... Even here, I suppose this is a bit dishonest - I don't really feel guilty for liking all these songs - but I probably should. I shall Count Them Down, least to most guilt - because, by the end of it - yes - there are a ocuple songs here that, well - I hate the fact that I have ever heard these songs, let alone listened to them, let alone listened to them intentionally - and yet I have - and have perhaps paid the 99¢ for the privilege. Even added them to frequently played playlists. I may not be able to face myself if I admit this in public... but here goes. In reverse order, from least guilt to most:
5. Starland Vocal Band - Afternoon Delight - this is a close thing, really - for all that's wrong with it, it has to get some points for: A. being one hell of a catchy number; B. being unambiguously about fucking; C. Very close to being self-parody all by itself, even before Will Farrell got hold of it. So - the truth is, I don't feel very guilty about liking this at all - but I had to include it somewhere in this post, if it wasn't here I'd have to think of something to say about something by Yes or System of a Down, and I can't face that.
4. Bay City Rollers - Rock and Roll Love Letter - a lot of things I liked when I was a wee bairn, then decided were crap, I went back to as an old fart and realized, Dang! this is pretty good! The Bay City Rollers, alas, were not one of them. Most of their stuff turns out, in retrospect, to be utter crap... But not this song. It's almost cool enough to leave off, here, maybe in favor of Yesterday's Hero - but - Yesterday's Hero, despite having some merits, really isn't good enought o bear comparison to the likes of Afternoon Delight - so, Rock and Roll Love Letter stays...
Fake can be fun too!
3. Terry Jacks - Seasons in the Sun - here, we start moving into the self-loathing territory. Now, granted, this is a Jacques Brel song, and brings with it the merits of M. Brel - but given a wimpy, lachrymose reading and arrangement... I grew up listening to this song every frigging morning on AM radio and - couldn't help loving it almost as much as I hated it. Certainly couldn't get it out of my head.
2. Petra - The Coloring Song - Christian Rock is a reliable source of complete crap, and this is a fine example - awful, cheesy, MOR Christian Rock from the late 70s, complete with flutes or recorders or some shit like that - and gory lyrics ("red is the color of the blood that flowed" - why didn't Mel Gibson use this during the flogging scenes in his Jesus in bondage film?) - but damn, it's pretty...
These things exist!
1. Morningwood - Nth Degree - I hate myself for enjoying this song. It's from a fucking car ad! the song itself - is cheesy and fake (it sounds like it was written for a car ad, possibly by the car) - it has no lyrics - I do not believe there are any actual humans participating in the song. And yet, christ, isn't it catchy? It's horrible - it's embarrassing - it makes me want to kick a puppy - but I still can't help listening to it.
Unspeakably horrible, and irresistible. Thank Christ the video contains an ad.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
September 11, 2011
I don't know what to write for the 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I have written quite a bit about it in the past - most of the posts under the Memorial tag are about September 11. I've seen a lot of pieces this week about the legacy of 9/11 - I won't add another, since most of what I've written in the past was about the political fallout. The political legacy has not been a good one - we are a weaker nation now than we were before - though I admit in the last couple years, it seems the sins of Reagan (systematic destruction of the American economy) have overtaken the sins of Bush (systematic destruction of civil liberties, the rule of law, democracy itself.) So it's true, if I were to rant, I would be more likely to rant about the continued need for a trillion or so dollars of infrastructure spending to put people to work....
So no, I'll skip the politics. Though I don't know quite what else to say - I wish to mark the day - and mourn the dead and maybe look back at what was lost. I was in New York in the summer of 2000, and like every tourist, shot the length of Manhattan from the top of the Empire State Building. An iconic view, as filmmakers certainly knew - how better to show the promise of America? It may be coincidence that the image I found first was from Stroscek - but it's hard to think of a better encapsulation of the promise and threat of America. So I'll start with Herzog and end with me, looking out across the great city, at those two towers anchoring the composition, and hope we can find more of the promise of America as we go forward...
Friday, September 09, 2011
Friday Music & Otis Redding
Today - Otis Redding's birthday! probably worth a mention, and a video at least...
It's an odd fact that I have exactly one Redding song in iTunes - Mr. Pitiful, obviously. I have records, but no CDs - so nothing has made it to the computer. I have more of those kinds of records than I care to admit, including a few things that rank pretty high up my list of bands - I've never replaced most of my Husker Du LPs for instance. I should do something about that, I suppose, but....
Anyhow - let's go with a straight random list today [ Plus annotation, I see!]:
1. Saint Etienne - Action [a CD I have no idea why I bought in the first place and have barely heard through the years.]
2. Wilco - Everlasting Everything [a band I probably should be more of a fan of - I loved Uncle Tupelo, but am almost always underwhelmed by Wilco - until they get to Nils Cline's parts anyway]
3. Bloc Party - Idea for a Story [from the second (I think) record - I didn't like it as much as the first, which was one of the neo-post-punk/new wave records of the early 21st century that actually seemed to live up to its models... So I haven't listened to this all that much - but this is a pretty neat song, with its skittering drums and odd synth sounds... Actually better than that - this is a bit of a revelation. This is what comes from actually listening to the songs that come up on these shuffle tests...]
4. Loren Connors - Airs No. 17 [very pretty guitar work... though this is music that does not fare well on iPods]
5. Pere Ubu - 30 Seconds Over Tokyo [The live, Shape of Things Version. This is of course one of the great songs of the 70s, one of the crucial songs of the decade, of music history. The secret history, perhaps, where Pere Ubu is accepted by more people than me as American's greatest rock band. This one's got Tom Herman and Peter Laughner fighting over the guitar parts. No Ravenstine, though - but the guitarists are taking up the slack in the Strange Sounds Department... I'm never going to leave the house this morning, cause I am going to have to listen to the whole thing again...]
6. The Mars Volta - L' Via L' Vazquez [no one quite brought guitar wanking back so well as The Mars Volta...]
7. Galaxie 500 - Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste [... not that Dean Wareham ever slacked in the guitar wanking dept...]
8. Melt Banana - Stick Out [will they finish before I finish this line? nope.]
9. Pere Ubu - Indiangiver [short piece from Pennsylvania - still - America's greatest band?]
10. Michio Kurihara - Canon in "C" (C is for Cicada) - [somewhat disappointing solo record from probably the best guitarist of the last 20 years. My favorite anyway...]
Video? Recent Pere Ubu, with Robert Wheeler providing the Strange Sounds on theremin:
It's an odd fact that I have exactly one Redding song in iTunes - Mr. Pitiful, obviously. I have records, but no CDs - so nothing has made it to the computer. I have more of those kinds of records than I care to admit, including a few things that rank pretty high up my list of bands - I've never replaced most of my Husker Du LPs for instance. I should do something about that, I suppose, but....
Anyhow - let's go with a straight random list today [ Plus annotation, I see!]:
1. Saint Etienne - Action [a CD I have no idea why I bought in the first place and have barely heard through the years.]
2. Wilco - Everlasting Everything [a band I probably should be more of a fan of - I loved Uncle Tupelo, but am almost always underwhelmed by Wilco - until they get to Nils Cline's parts anyway]
3. Bloc Party - Idea for a Story [from the second (I think) record - I didn't like it as much as the first, which was one of the neo-post-punk/new wave records of the early 21st century that actually seemed to live up to its models... So I haven't listened to this all that much - but this is a pretty neat song, with its skittering drums and odd synth sounds... Actually better than that - this is a bit of a revelation. This is what comes from actually listening to the songs that come up on these shuffle tests...]
4. Loren Connors - Airs No. 17 [very pretty guitar work... though this is music that does not fare well on iPods]
5. Pere Ubu - 30 Seconds Over Tokyo [The live, Shape of Things Version. This is of course one of the great songs of the 70s, one of the crucial songs of the decade, of music history. The secret history, perhaps, where Pere Ubu is accepted by more people than me as American's greatest rock band. This one's got Tom Herman and Peter Laughner fighting over the guitar parts. No Ravenstine, though - but the guitarists are taking up the slack in the Strange Sounds Department... I'm never going to leave the house this morning, cause I am going to have to listen to the whole thing again...]
6. The Mars Volta - L' Via L' Vazquez [no one quite brought guitar wanking back so well as The Mars Volta...]
7. Galaxie 500 - Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste [... not that Dean Wareham ever slacked in the guitar wanking dept...]
8. Melt Banana - Stick Out [will they finish before I finish this line? nope.]
9. Pere Ubu - Indiangiver [short piece from Pennsylvania - still - America's greatest band?]
10. Michio Kurihara - Canon in "C" (C is for Cicada) - [somewhat disappointing solo record from probably the best guitarist of the last 20 years. My favorite anyway...]
Video? Recent Pere Ubu, with Robert Wheeler providing the Strange Sounds on theremin:
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
New Films Recently Viewed
Another month has passed since my last review post - annoying, but this time, it's mostly because I simply haven't seen that many new films. Partly because of all those older films I've seen in theaters - Went the Day Well, 3:10 to Yuma, The Man Who Fell to Earth, etc. - a run much more interesting than most of what was coming out new. I've also been watching a lot of DVDs - getting as much use as I can from Netflix before I change the plan.... I should write up some of those, though I admit I'm more likely to root around those films for my screen shot posts... Lately, I've been digging into Fassbinder - what with World on a Wire coming to Harvard this weekend. We'll see.
In the meanwhile - new films I've seen this past month - which is again heavy on the documentaries, but with a bit of variation, and one plain masterpiece.
The Sleeping Beauty - 11/15 - Catherine Breillat's latest, returning to fairy tales, this time to tell the story of a little girl who goes to sleep, for 100 years (to save her life) - and dreams. She passes through a series of places - a quiet house with a mother and boy, forming a little family for a while, but then, the boy discovers the Winter Queen (puberty! - Breillat is not pretending otherwise - she lays out her symbolism and has a laugh about it...) - he disappears, and the girl goes looking for him. She finds instead a strange kingdom, a train station guarded by mannequins and a dwarf station master, rules by an albino prince and princess. They befriend the girl and send her on her way with riches and sweets - she is promptly set upon by brigands, who are led by another willful little girl. They in turn send her along, this time mounted on a doe travelling to lapland, where she meets an old owman in a teepee who sends her to meet her love - and she awakens, now 16 years old, in an empty castle, where she meets a boy, who may be the descendent of her love Peter. The brigand girl turns up, also grown - as one expects from Breillat, there is sex (the girls, then the princess an the boy), and it ends with the princess pregnant in the boy's world, the modern world.... All of this is quite ravishingly beautiful, unabashedly playful (the sense of make believe is strong), witty and sweet, with an undercurrent of romance, sensuality - it's Breillat after all - but it's Breillat that feels grown up, somehow. Here, the sex is incorporated into living, part of a broader sense of what life is - a trend I think has been coming in her last 3, 4, 5 films - these days, her films don't feel so much like plain provocation. The spikiness of her stories serves a more complete view of life - she never leaves sex out of these films, or life itself - but she also takes more care not to leave out the rest of people's lives. From Une Vieille Maîtresse on, I think she has moved up, to the first rank of directors.
Mysteries of Lisbon - 13/15 - from a novel by Carmilo Castelo Branco, a vast elaborate adaptation of a convoluted tale - stories inside of stories - starting with a teenaged orphan raised by a priest. The boy learns his story - his mother a countess held prisoner by her husband (in the present) - she escapes to tell her story - the forbidden love affair, the incipient bastard, the attempted murder, the child slated for death, the gypsy who pays off the killer... And then - the film shifts tot he count's story, how he met the boy's mother, how it all went wrong... and then, to the mysterious Brazilian who defends the countess's honor... then - the monk who cared for the dying count tells the priest (/gypsy/aristocrat/Napoleonic soldier/etc.) the story of his (the monk's) youthful love affair, that led to his (the priest's) birth.... etc. There's still quite a bit more of it - we get the Brazilian's story, the backstory of one of his lover's, a French Duchess, who happens to be the daughter of a woman loved (hopelessly) by our friend the priest (/gypsy/aristocrat/Napoleonic soldier/etc.)... the ultimate fate of the young orphan - and so on.
It was a mistake pretending to try to sketch the plot of this thing. Though don't be fooled - it's complicated, but coherent enough in fact. All those stories, growing out of one another, and winding around one another, are, in the end, a perfect delight - and Ruiz took obvious delight in unfolding them. Lovely film, full of strange details - a servant who runs in place, a woman hiding under tables, 80,000 francs that circulate quite a bit, and so on. Attempted murders and duels and suicides ending in failure, though sometimes not., and all those stories, breeding themselves like - well, like all the bastards being dropped across the generations. It is a bit of a dreamlike film - it is very like Oliveira's Doomed Love (another Carmilo Castelo Branco story), though perhaps more cinematically surreal than theatrically surreal. In place of Oliveira's static tableaux and stylized stagings, you have Ruiz's articulated spaces and levels of artifice. It's a double feature I would love to see, even if it would be 9 or 10 hours long. This is just a thrilling film.
Magic Trip - 9/15 - You might think that a film about the Merry Pranksters' 1964 cross country drive in a psychedelic painted school bus called "Further" might be a bit more surreal and strange than an adaptation of a mid-19th century Portuguese novel, but you would be wrong. This is, as it happens, an okay documentary, compiled mostly from footage shot by the pranksters themselves in 1964 - with a few additions (animations, found footage, etc.) - you get 1964 America, the world's fair, the cross country trip, Neal Cassady speeding and driving, acid and sex and psychedelia before anyone else was doing it. It's interesting enough, from a documentary perspective - the footage itself is amateur and nothing special, though Gibney and Ellwood put it together in interesting ways. The material is even less interesting. Kesey's lot are not that interesting - they act like a bunch of frat boys pretending to be 9 year olds on a long road trip - it's hard to see what the appeal is. Which isn't to say they aren't interesting at all - there is something vert odd about them, with their short hair and red and while polo shirts and their desperate antics, as if willing themselves out of the doldrums of their world. They are, as they say themselves, caught somewhere between the Beats and the hippies, with a strong dose of All American Boys thrown in - they come off, in fact, a lot like the Beach Boys - caught, themselves, somewhere in the middle between Elvis and the Beatles, very uneasy with their image and place in the culture. (And they seem to have fucked themselves up about as badly as the Beach Boys, too.) Still. There is something unconvincing about this gang - other than Kesey himself, they don't seem to have accomplished much - even he accomplished most of it before this stuff happened. It's unintentional, but there is something rather sharp in the way they are bracketed, in the film, by Ginsburg in New York (the great poet, who like him or not did the work), and the Grateful Dead in San Francisco - who, like them or not - also did the work. I mean - Ginsburg and the Dead left behind art, not just antics (as did Kesey - but not here). I can't quite get around that.
Myth of the American Sleepover - 9/15 - Another film about the Last Day of Summer - this one with sleepovers, 2 houses full of girls (older, younger), one of boys (younger), plus a college kid, who goes to Ann Arbor to find a pair of twins, one of whom may have had a crush on him. The film follows four people - college kid Scott; Rob, a younger boy who sees a girl in the supermarket and looks for her everywhere; Maggie, who flirts with boys along with her friend Beth, who looks like a refugee from Todd Solondz (or the two of them from Ghost World); and Claudia, a new girl, who goes to a sleepover and finds out her boyfriend banged the hostess - so she steals her boyfriend... All this is set somewhere near Detroit in the mid-90s, though the times are carefully elided. It is all very calm and understated, occasionally insightful, but rather bland in the end. There is nothing much to look at - it's well made, yes, but.... it strikes me that it illustrates why comedy, melodrama, action are so useful to filmmaking - jokes (or violence or whatever) focuses the story - gives it a kind of hook, something that organizes the rest of the material. The best films of this sort (like what? Dazed and Confused? Cold Water?) hang similar kinds of observational filmmaking on something else - jokes - plots - or just sheer cinematic brilliance.
And finally - Senna - 9/15 - a documentary about Ayrton Senna, Brazilian superstar Formula 1 race car driver who - Spoilers! to anyone who doesn't have access to Google - drove his car into a wall in 1994, the last Formula 1 driver to be killed on the track. (The result, it seems of either a broken steering column, or punctured tires, that caused the car to lose its grip on the track and not turn...) The film is made of archival footage - of which there is plenty, Senna being a huge star - and put together very well. I can't say there is anything special about the filmmaking, but it tells a fascinating story of a fascinating person. The film does this in a constantly engaging and interesting way - and is very edifying for that.
In the meanwhile - new films I've seen this past month - which is again heavy on the documentaries, but with a bit of variation, and one plain masterpiece.
The Sleeping Beauty - 11/15 - Catherine Breillat's latest, returning to fairy tales, this time to tell the story of a little girl who goes to sleep, for 100 years (to save her life) - and dreams. She passes through a series of places - a quiet house with a mother and boy, forming a little family for a while, but then, the boy discovers the Winter Queen (puberty! - Breillat is not pretending otherwise - she lays out her symbolism and has a laugh about it...) - he disappears, and the girl goes looking for him. She finds instead a strange kingdom, a train station guarded by mannequins and a dwarf station master, rules by an albino prince and princess. They befriend the girl and send her on her way with riches and sweets - she is promptly set upon by brigands, who are led by another willful little girl. They in turn send her along, this time mounted on a doe travelling to lapland, where she meets an old owman in a teepee who sends her to meet her love - and she awakens, now 16 years old, in an empty castle, where she meets a boy, who may be the descendent of her love Peter. The brigand girl turns up, also grown - as one expects from Breillat, there is sex (the girls, then the princess an the boy), and it ends with the princess pregnant in the boy's world, the modern world.... All of this is quite ravishingly beautiful, unabashedly playful (the sense of make believe is strong), witty and sweet, with an undercurrent of romance, sensuality - it's Breillat after all - but it's Breillat that feels grown up, somehow. Here, the sex is incorporated into living, part of a broader sense of what life is - a trend I think has been coming in her last 3, 4, 5 films - these days, her films don't feel so much like plain provocation. The spikiness of her stories serves a more complete view of life - she never leaves sex out of these films, or life itself - but she also takes more care not to leave out the rest of people's lives. From Une Vieille Maîtresse on, I think she has moved up, to the first rank of directors.
Mysteries of Lisbon - 13/15 - from a novel by Carmilo Castelo Branco, a vast elaborate adaptation of a convoluted tale - stories inside of stories - starting with a teenaged orphan raised by a priest. The boy learns his story - his mother a countess held prisoner by her husband (in the present) - she escapes to tell her story - the forbidden love affair, the incipient bastard, the attempted murder, the child slated for death, the gypsy who pays off the killer... And then - the film shifts tot he count's story, how he met the boy's mother, how it all went wrong... and then, to the mysterious Brazilian who defends the countess's honor... then - the monk who cared for the dying count tells the priest (/gypsy/aristocrat/Napoleonic soldier/etc.) the story of his (the monk's) youthful love affair, that led to his (the priest's) birth.... etc. There's still quite a bit more of it - we get the Brazilian's story, the backstory of one of his lover's, a French Duchess, who happens to be the daughter of a woman loved (hopelessly) by our friend the priest (/gypsy/aristocrat/Napoleonic soldier/etc.)... the ultimate fate of the young orphan - and so on.
It was a mistake pretending to try to sketch the plot of this thing. Though don't be fooled - it's complicated, but coherent enough in fact. All those stories, growing out of one another, and winding around one another, are, in the end, a perfect delight - and Ruiz took obvious delight in unfolding them. Lovely film, full of strange details - a servant who runs in place, a woman hiding under tables, 80,000 francs that circulate quite a bit, and so on. Attempted murders and duels and suicides ending in failure, though sometimes not., and all those stories, breeding themselves like - well, like all the bastards being dropped across the generations. It is a bit of a dreamlike film - it is very like Oliveira's Doomed Love (another Carmilo Castelo Branco story), though perhaps more cinematically surreal than theatrically surreal. In place of Oliveira's static tableaux and stylized stagings, you have Ruiz's articulated spaces and levels of artifice. It's a double feature I would love to see, even if it would be 9 or 10 hours long. This is just a thrilling film.
Magic Trip - 9/15 - You might think that a film about the Merry Pranksters' 1964 cross country drive in a psychedelic painted school bus called "Further" might be a bit more surreal and strange than an adaptation of a mid-19th century Portuguese novel, but you would be wrong. This is, as it happens, an okay documentary, compiled mostly from footage shot by the pranksters themselves in 1964 - with a few additions (animations, found footage, etc.) - you get 1964 America, the world's fair, the cross country trip, Neal Cassady speeding and driving, acid and sex and psychedelia before anyone else was doing it. It's interesting enough, from a documentary perspective - the footage itself is amateur and nothing special, though Gibney and Ellwood put it together in interesting ways. The material is even less interesting. Kesey's lot are not that interesting - they act like a bunch of frat boys pretending to be 9 year olds on a long road trip - it's hard to see what the appeal is. Which isn't to say they aren't interesting at all - there is something vert odd about them, with their short hair and red and while polo shirts and their desperate antics, as if willing themselves out of the doldrums of their world. They are, as they say themselves, caught somewhere between the Beats and the hippies, with a strong dose of All American Boys thrown in - they come off, in fact, a lot like the Beach Boys - caught, themselves, somewhere in the middle between Elvis and the Beatles, very uneasy with their image and place in the culture. (And they seem to have fucked themselves up about as badly as the Beach Boys, too.) Still. There is something unconvincing about this gang - other than Kesey himself, they don't seem to have accomplished much - even he accomplished most of it before this stuff happened. It's unintentional, but there is something rather sharp in the way they are bracketed, in the film, by Ginsburg in New York (the great poet, who like him or not did the work), and the Grateful Dead in San Francisco - who, like them or not - also did the work. I mean - Ginsburg and the Dead left behind art, not just antics (as did Kesey - but not here). I can't quite get around that.
Myth of the American Sleepover - 9/15 - Another film about the Last Day of Summer - this one with sleepovers, 2 houses full of girls (older, younger), one of boys (younger), plus a college kid, who goes to Ann Arbor to find a pair of twins, one of whom may have had a crush on him. The film follows four people - college kid Scott; Rob, a younger boy who sees a girl in the supermarket and looks for her everywhere; Maggie, who flirts with boys along with her friend Beth, who looks like a refugee from Todd Solondz (or the two of them from Ghost World); and Claudia, a new girl, who goes to a sleepover and finds out her boyfriend banged the hostess - so she steals her boyfriend... All this is set somewhere near Detroit in the mid-90s, though the times are carefully elided. It is all very calm and understated, occasionally insightful, but rather bland in the end. There is nothing much to look at - it's well made, yes, but.... it strikes me that it illustrates why comedy, melodrama, action are so useful to filmmaking - jokes (or violence or whatever) focuses the story - gives it a kind of hook, something that organizes the rest of the material. The best films of this sort (like what? Dazed and Confused? Cold Water?) hang similar kinds of observational filmmaking on something else - jokes - plots - or just sheer cinematic brilliance.
And finally - Senna - 9/15 - a documentary about Ayrton Senna, Brazilian superstar Formula 1 race car driver who - Spoilers! to anyone who doesn't have access to Google - drove his car into a wall in 1994, the last Formula 1 driver to be killed on the track. (The result, it seems of either a broken steering column, or punctured tires, that caused the car to lose its grip on the track and not turn...) The film is made of archival footage - of which there is plenty, Senna being a huge star - and put together very well. I can't say there is anything special about the filmmaking, but it tells a fascinating story of a fascinating person. The film does this in a constantly engaging and interesting way - and is very edifying for that.
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Quick Links - Nick Ray Plus
I don't want to forget this - though I have been forgetting it... Don't miss the Nicholas Ray Blogathon hosted by Tony Dayoub at Cinema Viewfinder. There is a host of material there, and around the internet....
Also - I'm reminded that yesterday was Freddie Mercury's birthday - that's gotta be worth noting....
Also - I'm reminded that yesterday was Freddie Mercury's birthday - that's gotta be worth noting....
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Friday, September 02, 2011
Labor Day Weekend Friday Music
Thank god for Fridays, cause this is one day a week I can make myself post something here! This being labor day weekend, I should post something - labor related - heck, I could work in some politics, something about JOBS [the president's speech; the fact that the whole government has already basically taken the one thing sure to create jobs - spending money to hiure people - off the table, etc.] - but... I've gotten myself in a bind, getting up late, starting this late, leaving myself a small window of time to compile interesting songs - fortunately, help is only a search field away - here we go!
1. Devo - Working in a Coalmine
2. Feelies - Forces at Work
3. Frank Sinatra - Nice Work if you can Get It
4. John Lennon - Working Class Hero [something of a perennial in these lists, no?]
5. Lone Justice - Working Late
6. Merle Haggard - Workin' Man's Blues
7. MInutemen - Working men are Pissed
8. PJ Harvey - Working for the Man
9. Prince - Let's Work
10. Sufjan Stevens - To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament
Video? Minutemen of course:
Why not? We are Devo!
1. Devo - Working in a Coalmine
2. Feelies - Forces at Work
3. Frank Sinatra - Nice Work if you can Get It
4. John Lennon - Working Class Hero [something of a perennial in these lists, no?]
5. Lone Justice - Working Late
6. Merle Haggard - Workin' Man's Blues
7. MInutemen - Working men are Pissed
8. PJ Harvey - Working for the Man
9. Prince - Let's Work
10. Sufjan Stevens - To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament
Video? Minutemen of course:
Why not? We are Devo!
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Hurricane Day
Shall I try a hurricane post? Though we (Boston) don't seem to be in line to get a hurricane this time around. I have been through 2 of them, Gloria and Bob - both time I was living next to a beach, but a beach on a shallow bay, well away from any potential danger. It was the perfect kind of beach to stand out in the hurricane force winds and rains without worrying about waves or trees or flying patio furniture or loose wires - just me and nature. That was fun - though both hurricanes turned out to be a bit less than advertised. Bob didn't even knock out the power!
This time that won't quite work. I'm not living by a beach, I'm inland, in a nice tree lined neighborhood - no walking around in the hurricane this time, thanks! I am up on the third floor, in a big apartment building, on top of a hill - about as safe as I can imagine, from wind, rain, floods, you name it, even in the midst of a full blast hurricane. The power might go, the cable might go, but that's about the worst of it. (That and a very nervous cat.) The one thing I do have to worry about is a tree - a huge thing, just outside my window.
It's a big brute - this is on the third floor - and the closest branch keeps going, up well past the roof, straight up over the roof. (The rest of the tree is higher than the roof too, but it's growing away from the building, so I'm less nervous about it.)
I don't really worry about the thing coming down, especially if the winds aren't really going to get over 50-60 MPH - the storm hasn't gotten all that bad yet, and it seems like the winds are coming from the building side, so I don't think the tree is in real danger. I do worry about branches coming off and coming through my window. Though the most likely effect is that the cable gets knocked out - the wires go right up the side of the building. Plenty of room for mischief there.
So - this thing isn't likely to be much trouble here in Boston. Not for me, probably not much more than an inconvenience anywhere. (I mean, I probably won't even get a day off work out of it - it ruins my weekend, and I don't even get a free day off?) Obviously can get a lot worse elsewhere - hopefully not, of course. And if you are in a low lying area, well - the rain alone might make this thing a hell on earth. So good luck, everyone!
This time that won't quite work. I'm not living by a beach, I'm inland, in a nice tree lined neighborhood - no walking around in the hurricane this time, thanks! I am up on the third floor, in a big apartment building, on top of a hill - about as safe as I can imagine, from wind, rain, floods, you name it, even in the midst of a full blast hurricane. The power might go, the cable might go, but that's about the worst of it. (That and a very nervous cat.) The one thing I do have to worry about is a tree - a huge thing, just outside my window.
It's a big brute - this is on the third floor - and the closest branch keeps going, up well past the roof, straight up over the roof. (The rest of the tree is higher than the roof too, but it's growing away from the building, so I'm less nervous about it.)
I don't really worry about the thing coming down, especially if the winds aren't really going to get over 50-60 MPH - the storm hasn't gotten all that bad yet, and it seems like the winds are coming from the building side, so I don't think the tree is in real danger. I do worry about branches coming off and coming through my window. Though the most likely effect is that the cable gets knocked out - the wires go right up the side of the building. Plenty of room for mischief there.
So - this thing isn't likely to be much trouble here in Boston. Not for me, probably not much more than an inconvenience anywhere. (I mean, I probably won't even get a day off work out of it - it ruins my weekend, and I don't even get a free day off?) Obviously can get a lot worse elsewhere - hopefully not, of course. And if you are in a low lying area, well - the rain alone might make this thing a hell on earth. So good luck, everyone!
Friday, August 26, 2011
Friday Hurricane Music
Today's music post can really only have one theme, right? We New Englanders don't get to experience the thrill of anticipation of a big hurricane very often - better make the best of it, at least until that big tree comes down...
Neil Young - Like a Hurricane - obvious, I know, and the obvious video (Live Rust), but really, this is the measure of all hurricane songs...
Warlocks - Hurricane Heart Attack - an army of guitars and drums thrashing away like 100 mile an hour winds...
Red Crayola - Hurricane Fighter Plane - not the same kind of hurricane, but I'm always happy to name drop Red Crayola
And though I don't want to encourage this sort of thing - under the circumstances, I suppose I must: here are the Scorpions with the Berlin Philharmonic, performing with all the subtlety and good taste of a tree coming in through the roof. WIth subtitles!
And I guess - this too was inevitable, wasn't it? a little bonus history lesson in there too!
Be safe, dear readers, if you are in the path of this thing...
Neil Young - Like a Hurricane - obvious, I know, and the obvious video (Live Rust), but really, this is the measure of all hurricane songs...
Warlocks - Hurricane Heart Attack - an army of guitars and drums thrashing away like 100 mile an hour winds...
Red Crayola - Hurricane Fighter Plane - not the same kind of hurricane, but I'm always happy to name drop Red Crayola
And though I don't want to encourage this sort of thing - under the circumstances, I suppose I must: here are the Scorpions with the Berlin Philharmonic, performing with all the subtlety and good taste of a tree coming in through the roof. WIth subtitles!
And I guess - this too was inevitable, wasn't it? a little bonus history lesson in there too!
Be safe, dear readers, if you are in the path of this thing...
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
All Good Cretins Go to Heaven
Keepin' it short and sweet - 100% Random Friday Random 10!
1. Erase Errata - Dexterity is #2
2. The Go-Betweens - Right Here
3. Earth - Dissolution III [only 15 minutes of feedback, that's hardly nothing; the other track on the record goes an hour.]
4. The Young Knives - Another Hollow Line
5. Ramones - Glad to See You Go
6. Steely Dan - East St. Louis Toodle-oo
7. Beastie Boys - Live at PJ's
8. Ramones - Cretin Hop [well - this is kind of old iTunes! 2 Ramones tunes!]
9. Bishop Allen - Cue the Elephants
10. Blue Oyster Cult - Godzilla [with a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound...!]
Video - obviously:
1. Erase Errata - Dexterity is #2
2. The Go-Betweens - Right Here
3. Earth - Dissolution III [only 15 minutes of feedback, that's hardly nothing; the other track on the record goes an hour.]
4. The Young Knives - Another Hollow Line
5. Ramones - Glad to See You Go
6. Steely Dan - East St. Louis Toodle-oo
7. Beastie Boys - Live at PJ's
8. Ramones - Cretin Hop [well - this is kind of old iTunes! 2 Ramones tunes!]
9. Bishop Allen - Cue the Elephants
10. Blue Oyster Cult - Godzilla [with a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound...!]
Video - obviously:
Monday, August 15, 2011
New Films Reviewed
It's been more than a month since I've posted one of these roundups - it's been an odd month. I didn't watch anything in July, on vacation - but since I came back, I have kept up a pretty steady stream of films. Nothing like Sam Juliano - but there's nothing like the big pre-code series he's talking about to keep me that busy... What is keeping me busy is taking advantage of my last month of 4-at-a-time Netflix - and a nice series of revivals in town. In the last couple weeks I've seen screenings of Baby Face, It's a Gift, 3:10 to Yuma and The Man Who Fell to Earth - new films have had a hard time competing with that. Still - I've managed a few new films...
Tabloid 10/15 - funny, engaging, strange story of a woman, Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen who fell for a Mormon, went to England and kidnapped him, maybe, raped him, maybe - maybe he ran off with her for a randy weekend and had second thoughts, or was brainwashed, or rekidnapped - maybe... In the end, they - she - became a huge Tabloid Scandal in England - manacled mormons and naked pictures and prostitution and what not... Errol Morris tells this tale - or gets many of the participants, especially McKinney, to tell it - and the sequel - when she turned up again, in 2008, paying to have her dog cloned in Korea... All this is quite entertaining, very funny - and she is a remarkably entertaining character, though apparently a genuine nut case - Morris knows how to let people tell their tales.... the whole business seems a bit slight, but well worth the watching.
Friends With Benefits - 9/15 - another try at a decent rom com, this one with the leads breaking up with the latest in a string of losers (though they are kind of losers too) - they hit it off fast as pals, and then start sleeping together, with no strings. This works well enough for a while, but sooner or later, they start looking for more - with other people? with each other? It's an odd film, a bit hard to really figure out. Enjoyed it, beginning to end, but felt like a couple things weren't quite there. There's too much talk about romcoms and such - too explicit in its need to act out the old Umberto Eco bit - "like they say in the movies, I love you madly"... That and - unlike all the other comedies I've seen this year - this says nothing whatsoever about money, or work. I can't convince myself that that should matter - but I can't convince myself it doesn't, either. Maybe I'm condemning this for not being a different film - maybe. Still - all those films - Cedar Rapids, WIn Win, Bad Teacher, Bridesmaids, even Larry Crowne - are about money, work, status - they are - interesting that way. This one? while the surface is quite good, it lacks that particular subtext, and - sometimes - any other subtext as well. (There are big subplots with both families - which have some nice moments, but seem to have been imposed on the film - and both of which turn into lessons on Letting Your True Love Get Away. Yeah yeah, so much for undermining Hollywood cliches, huh?) Anyway - I can't stop without noting that I really enjoyed the leads - Justin Timberlake has the makings of a real actor, I think; and Mila Kunis is great. I think, especially after the fact, that they sell the material more than it deserves - the script is funny enough, but they make it work better than it might deserve...
Road to Nowhere - 11/15 - Monte Hellman's return after 20 plus years without a film - a noirish tale about a politician and his girlfriend, who is actually a double for the woman she's supposed to be (Velma Duran) - they steal 100 million, fake their deaths.... No, not quite - the film is actually about a film being made from that story - Road To Nowhere, too, directed by Mitchell Haven, written by Steve Gates... In this film (within the film) the girl hired to play the lead role (Velma) in the movie might have been the girl already playing Velma in the underlying story... Except - how much of this is in the movie in the movie, and how much is the plot of the movie about the movie of the story, I don't know... Just to add to the fun - at the end of the film, people get shot (allegedly in the diegetic reality of the movie we're watching) - the director of the film (in the film) then picks up a camera (as directors, especially of films within films, are wont to do, even in the most extreme circumstances) and films the carnage - and, turning round the room, films the "real" crew of the "real" movie... (Hellman, who was visiting for this screening, says this was improvised by the actor - he had a camera in the scene, and picked it up and shot what he shot - and the editor used the footage from the shot, to uncanny effect. It is certainly a cool shot.) It is all very clever, this movie - packed with quotes, open and covert - clips from The Lady Eve, Secret of the Beehive, The Seventh Seal - references to Vertigo obviously, and probably more - Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive? At least, strong similarities. It is, in any case, a great looking film, shot with a digital still camera, of all things - it looks digital, but a gorgeous kind of digital, with deep, rich textures, superb low light qualities... I suppose in some ways it is, in fact, too clever for its own good - there's a sense, I think, that the convolutions of the narrative is a cover for the banality of the plot - and the convolutions themselves are not that extraordinary... But this is a very mild quibble - if the narration covers for the lack of plot - it does so very well - it keeps you quite engaged in the story, all the levels of the story (and the surfaces - faces and spaces and such) - it is a very neat piece of work.
The Future - 8/15 - new Miranda July film, a rather dull indie drama - twee, though more damning, it's empty, built around two utterly passive characters... They are scheduled to pick up a cat from a shelter in 30 days - after that, they don't know if the cat is supposed to live 6 months or 5 years - this brings them face to face with the fact that they are coming up toward middle age.... So - they have crises - they quit their jobs - he starts canvassing for some kind of environmental outfit selling trees; she sets out to to create 30 dances in 30 days. He instead of working spends most of his time hanging out with an old man that he suddenly realizes is himself in 50s years - she starts up an affair with the father of a little girl they met at the animal shelter. Somewhere in here - he can stop time and does - then?... All this - there are a couple moments where things click - the time stopping bit is, in fact, stunning - a great piece of filmmaking. But - most of the rest is - not that bad, just centered on people who are very hard to give any trace of a good god damn about - with nothing special to look at...
Tabloid 10/15 - funny, engaging, strange story of a woman, Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen who fell for a Mormon, went to England and kidnapped him, maybe, raped him, maybe - maybe he ran off with her for a randy weekend and had second thoughts, or was brainwashed, or rekidnapped - maybe... In the end, they - she - became a huge Tabloid Scandal in England - manacled mormons and naked pictures and prostitution and what not... Errol Morris tells this tale - or gets many of the participants, especially McKinney, to tell it - and the sequel - when she turned up again, in 2008, paying to have her dog cloned in Korea... All this is quite entertaining, very funny - and she is a remarkably entertaining character, though apparently a genuine nut case - Morris knows how to let people tell their tales.... the whole business seems a bit slight, but well worth the watching.
Friends With Benefits - 9/15 - another try at a decent rom com, this one with the leads breaking up with the latest in a string of losers (though they are kind of losers too) - they hit it off fast as pals, and then start sleeping together, with no strings. This works well enough for a while, but sooner or later, they start looking for more - with other people? with each other? It's an odd film, a bit hard to really figure out. Enjoyed it, beginning to end, but felt like a couple things weren't quite there. There's too much talk about romcoms and such - too explicit in its need to act out the old Umberto Eco bit - "like they say in the movies, I love you madly"... That and - unlike all the other comedies I've seen this year - this says nothing whatsoever about money, or work. I can't convince myself that that should matter - but I can't convince myself it doesn't, either. Maybe I'm condemning this for not being a different film - maybe. Still - all those films - Cedar Rapids, WIn Win, Bad Teacher, Bridesmaids, even Larry Crowne - are about money, work, status - they are - interesting that way. This one? while the surface is quite good, it lacks that particular subtext, and - sometimes - any other subtext as well. (There are big subplots with both families - which have some nice moments, but seem to have been imposed on the film - and both of which turn into lessons on Letting Your True Love Get Away. Yeah yeah, so much for undermining Hollywood cliches, huh?) Anyway - I can't stop without noting that I really enjoyed the leads - Justin Timberlake has the makings of a real actor, I think; and Mila Kunis is great. I think, especially after the fact, that they sell the material more than it deserves - the script is funny enough, but they make it work better than it might deserve...
Road to Nowhere - 11/15 - Monte Hellman's return after 20 plus years without a film - a noirish tale about a politician and his girlfriend, who is actually a double for the woman she's supposed to be (Velma Duran) - they steal 100 million, fake their deaths.... No, not quite - the film is actually about a film being made from that story - Road To Nowhere, too, directed by Mitchell Haven, written by Steve Gates... In this film (within the film) the girl hired to play the lead role (Velma) in the movie might have been the girl already playing Velma in the underlying story... Except - how much of this is in the movie in the movie, and how much is the plot of the movie about the movie of the story, I don't know... Just to add to the fun - at the end of the film, people get shot (allegedly in the diegetic reality of the movie we're watching) - the director of the film (in the film) then picks up a camera (as directors, especially of films within films, are wont to do, even in the most extreme circumstances) and films the carnage - and, turning round the room, films the "real" crew of the "real" movie... (Hellman, who was visiting for this screening, says this was improvised by the actor - he had a camera in the scene, and picked it up and shot what he shot - and the editor used the footage from the shot, to uncanny effect. It is certainly a cool shot.) It is all very clever, this movie - packed with quotes, open and covert - clips from The Lady Eve, Secret of the Beehive, The Seventh Seal - references to Vertigo obviously, and probably more - Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive? At least, strong similarities. It is, in any case, a great looking film, shot with a digital still camera, of all things - it looks digital, but a gorgeous kind of digital, with deep, rich textures, superb low light qualities... I suppose in some ways it is, in fact, too clever for its own good - there's a sense, I think, that the convolutions of the narrative is a cover for the banality of the plot - and the convolutions themselves are not that extraordinary... But this is a very mild quibble - if the narration covers for the lack of plot - it does so very well - it keeps you quite engaged in the story, all the levels of the story (and the surfaces - faces and spaces and such) - it is a very neat piece of work.
The Future - 8/15 - new Miranda July film, a rather dull indie drama - twee, though more damning, it's empty, built around two utterly passive characters... They are scheduled to pick up a cat from a shelter in 30 days - after that, they don't know if the cat is supposed to live 6 months or 5 years - this brings them face to face with the fact that they are coming up toward middle age.... So - they have crises - they quit their jobs - he starts canvassing for some kind of environmental outfit selling trees; she sets out to to create 30 dances in 30 days. He instead of working spends most of his time hanging out with an old man that he suddenly realizes is himself in 50s years - she starts up an affair with the father of a little girl they met at the animal shelter. Somewhere in here - he can stop time and does - then?... All this - there are a couple moments where things click - the time stopping bit is, in fact, stunning - a great piece of filmmaking. But - most of the rest is - not that bad, just centered on people who are very hard to give any trace of a good god damn about - with nothing special to look at...
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Carol Reed's Sunday Screenshots
Decided to catch up on Carol Reed lately -to watch and rewatch his films, in a bunch. Spies, windows, grids, rooms -
Darkness and shadows, things just out of sight -
And streets - oh, the streets...
Darkness and shadows, things just out of sight -
And streets - oh, the streets...
Friday, August 12, 2011
Our Friday Rituals...
I am still trying to work myself back into blogging habits. This has been complicated a bit by Netflix - their upcoming price change has led me to try, very hard, to get one last month's money's worth from my old fashioned 4 at a time DVD plan - might be the first time in about 5 years I've got my money's worth from it, but what can you do.... anyway - it's Friday, it's time to look to iTunes for inspiration - what, oh magical digital jukebox, have you for us today?
1. Brian Eno - Some of them Are Old
2. Dinosaur Jr. - Thumb
3. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Over & Over
4. Radiohead - Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
5. The Byrds - 5D (Fifth Dimension)
6. Meat Puppets - Flaming Heart
7. John Zorn - Batman
8. Pere Ubu - Waiting for Mary
9. Monks - Cuckoo
10. Richard Thompson - Miss Patty
Video? This seems pretty obvious, right? The Monks on German TV...
1. Brian Eno - Some of them Are Old
2. Dinosaur Jr. - Thumb
3. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Over & Over
4. Radiohead - Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
5. The Byrds - 5D (Fifth Dimension)
6. Meat Puppets - Flaming Heart
7. John Zorn - Batman
8. Pere Ubu - Waiting for Mary
9. Monks - Cuckoo
10. Richard Thompson - Miss Patty
Video? This seems pretty obvious, right? The Monks on German TV...
Sunday, August 07, 2011
The Furies
The Brattle is showing Baby Face this afternoon - as good a reason as any to post some Stanwyck pictures.
Never someone you'd want to get mad at you...
Never someone you'd want to get mad at you...
Friday, July 29, 2011
Holidays and Politics
I have been on vacation - thus the blog silence, after a run where I almost got back to a regular posting routine. (Mostly gimmick posts, I admit - Friday Random Music posts, Sunday screen shots, that sort of thing - but still, content!) I have been to a strange and mysterious foreign land where the temperature never gets above 30 (at least not where I was - it might have gone higher in the plains), where they give change in $2 coins, where they eat poisonous concoctions like rappie pie. As well as more conventional pies...
It was, I'm happy to say, very nearly off the grid - what news I saw on TV was all local, Maritimes stuff, and that mostly weather related (how to stay cool when the temperature hits 32! sort of thing.) That and Anne Murray... Even so, I couldn't completely avoid the news back in the USA - mostly bad news, daily idiocies related to the debt ceiling... I managed to get on the internet and got to follow the whole sorry mess. I don't have anything profound to add to it - I might as well link to Krugman (like every blog I read) - the joys of balance... I did notice, on the road, the tendency by the TV news to seek out people who would bewail the "partisanship" in Washington for their vox populi bits - spreading the blame around evenly. Christ. We all know, the GOP is doing this deliberately, creating a false crisis over the debt limit business, figuring they can force the politics right - though they don't seem to be satisfied with that. I suspect they are playing a longer game - deliberately trying to crash the economy, and blame it on Obama - figuring the president gets blamed for everything anyway, and they will reap the benefits. They may have a point - I keep seeing these bits on facebook:
Dear Mr. President, I heard you say you will not guarantee SS checks if the debt ceiling isn't raised. Why does it always has to do with SS, Medicare, & our Soldiers pay? Why not stop your pay, your staff, or Congress and the Senate? Lets hold the paychecks of all house & senate members, then see how fast they resolve the debt ceiling crisis ! If you agree repost this & keep it going across the whole USA
I dunno where that started, though now it seems ubiquitous... it's pretty friggin' sad. From the implication that the president is creating this crisis (oh sure, it's got congress in there too - see what Krugman said about "balance"...) - even the implication that the president controls spending... to the magic thinking in all the variations on the "let's cut congress's salaries and balance the budget" spam going around... to the fact that even my tea party loving friends are posting it - shit - I thought they wanted to kill social security and medicare! they voted for the Republicans - what did they think they were voting for?
I'm not hopeful about any of this. I don't see any good coming of any of the possible results. If the dems cave - that's bad. (And, of course, once Obama and Reid agree to cut social security and medicare, the GOP will blame them for cutting Social Security and medicare. Everybody knows this, but somehow, the dems don't seem to notice.) If there is not a deal - the GOP will blame Obama for any bad fallout. If Obama does anything more aggressive to get around the problem (I like Matthew Yglesias' trillion dollar coin idea!), they will howl about tyranny and usurpation of congressional powers (powers they deliberately failed to exercise) - until they win the White House, then they will embrace and extend them. (There's probably a larger story here, of the ultimate triumph of the executive branch, of the legislature's complete abandonment of its responsibilities. I fear this - and with the increasing willingness by Congress to simply refuse to govern, beyond the structural deadlock - executive government is a real possibility. That is too depressing to go on about....)
Right. Meanwhile, since almost any result of this vote will be less government spending, with unemployment still pushing 10% and the economy starting to tank again, we are likely to see the economy crash again... Amazing.
I think I might go back to the Great White North...
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Summertime Movie Viewing Report
The last couple weeks have been a good example of the kinds of films I seem to be driven to lately. Mid-level Hollywood comedies, (I've never been so desperate to pay money for something like Transformers, or the Hangover, for that matter) and amiable documentaries, that maybe belong on TV. This is not exactly a bad thing - the films are generally edifying in some way - but they do seem like a lot of filler. There aren't enough movie movies to see. When one comes along - a revival of The Leopard, say - what bliss!
Anyway - what have I seen lately? Well - start with Pianomania -a fascinating and lovely look at the backstage of concert music, through the eyes of a high end piano tuner, Stefan Knupfer. We see him working with a variety iof musicians - Lang Lang, Alfred Brendel, etc. - we see him working with Steinway to buy a new piano (for the Vienna Concert House), and overseeing the sale of another piano. Much of the film is devoted to a recording session with pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard - Aimard is recording Bach, and wants to use different kinds of sounds from his piano - tuned like a harpsichord, a clavichord, an organ, etc. - he and Knupfer work on that for a year. It's quite a fascinating film, showing the details of piano tuning, the manipulation of sound - and quite entertaining. Knupfer is a witty, amiable fellow - "I think I'll have a very sportive day" he says, in the midst of running up and down stairs between Aimard and his piano, and the room where the recording engineers are set up. What's best about it, though, is probably that it shows something I know nothing about, and teaches me something about it.
That's also true of Buck - a nice doc about Buck Brannaman, a horse trainer and trick roper and cowboy, who runs clinics on training horses - he had a hard childhood, which has somehow left him almost saintly seeming, and utterly devoted to training horses gently - and people too... It's a nice story, and Buck and his family and other associates are nice people to spend a couple hours with though there isn't much more to the film. Except, again, showing me something I don't know anything about, and leaving me knowing more about it - not a bad thing...
Page One:Inside the New York Times - In a way, I'm not sure this is all that much different from previous two - it is, as subtitled, a year inside the New York Times, specifically the media desk (editor Bruce Headlam, reporters Tim Arango, Brian Stetler, and most of all, reporter and columnist, David Carr.) It is, basically, a fly on the wall type film, put together after the fact - it's not quite pure hagiography (of the institution, let's say) - but close, and certainly, one imagines the Times was able to exercise a good deal of control over what ended up in the film. Though like the films above - it shows us the day to day workings of a big newspaper (the big newspaper, at least in the US) - and that too is inherently fascinating stuff. But as a film - maybe just a nice look at something....
But it feels like more than that. A lot of it, I have to admit, is just that there is something so exhilarating about newsroom films - I am a sucker for that stuff. Hecht and Hawks and Capra - and this is right in that tradition. I get twinges watching these guys working the phones, typing away on their laptops, pitching stories, walking the halls looking for that last paragraph, waiting for the lawyers to call back - even just the simple stuff, watching how fast and easy they type - great stuff. It's a great genre, because newspapers are a great setting, and this is a ,ore than worthy entry in the tradition. But I suppose, there is more than that - there is, after all, the Big Question, whatever that is - here, it takes the form - will the New York Times survive? - and spreads out from there. Whither journalism? Whither print? Whither the web? Etc. And how will these changes change society? the body politic? etc. etc.
I don’t know. The issues raised are, undeniably, vital questions, and they are given something of an airing here. And their importance gives the film heft - though in the end I'm left a bit unsatisfied. I don't know if that is the film's problem, or if it's broader - I am not sure I have ever been all that happy with the debates I've seen over these issues (the whole Whither Media stuff). It's hard to say why - here, a lot of my dissatisfaction seems to come from the way the discussions always seem to get sidetracked, bogged down, or how single issues come to take over for the whole range of issues. As an example here - there is a panel where Markos Moulitsas and David Carr get into a discussion about the place of the Mainstream Media - which Kos turns into a discussion of Judith Miller and Jayson Blair, and the failures of the New York Times, a position Carr routs mainly by pointing to the rest of the paper. But really - both seem to be evasions - Kos of the general value of the paper (and other papers), Carr of the fact that the authority he claims relies completely on not fucking up like that.
Now - I have opinions on the subject. In fact, I think the problem for print newspapers (and not necessarily just print) is driven by two things - 1) the big one is the advertising crisis - I mentioned this last year, days where I could not find a classified section in my local paper. (At least not in print.) That trumps everything else, since the daily paper lives on its ads. (Monthly publications, books, I think, will find ways to continue to make money through sales - I don't think daily papers can do that enough to survive.) 2) The digitization of information - and the web - which makes bits easy and cheap to exchange. ("Free" - or - free as far as the information goes - the cost revolves around the connections and servers - you get on the web and then do what you do, and it doesn't much matter what....) This changes the economy - it's one thing to charge for objects - something else to charge for information that can be reproduced for almost nothing. I can hold these opinions, and a variety of opinions based on them (that you can't control the flow of information enough to charge for it like you could for a piece of paper, things like that) - but... I hold other opinions too - that nothing on the web except web-based newspapers can do what newspapers can do. That without all the things newspapers have - the departments and bureaus, reporters and editors, people doing the legwork, the cold calling, grinding through the archives, interpreting the data - you cannot provide the real service newspapers provide. And this opinion collides with the ramifications of the first 2 - because I don't know how newspapers can survive in their current form with the current models of revenue. I don't think you can afford to put out a daily edition on the revenues you can get from ads, now - and I don't think (the Times' attempts to the contrary) you will be able to maintain much headway charging for online content. It's too easy for the information to get out of the paywall. And maybe more importantly - even if the Times and a couple others survive - having one or two or a dozen great papers in the whole country is not much better than having none. Someone will have to work something out. And - someone will work something out. That is not "optimism" it's just a fact - news and information will circulate in the future. But I don't know how, who will pay for it, what it will look like, what kinds of (valuable) things will be lost (or gained) - or who will be ruined getting to that point. We are kind of stuck in limbo for a while. There was someone in the movie, testifying before Congress, who said, we are early in the process - John Kerry took the opportunity to pontificate about the people who have lost their jobs - but she was simply right. Things have not worked themselves out in the least yet - the process is just starting....
Okay - crap - that went on longer than I expected. Well - what of the fiction?
Well - there's Bad Teacher - Cameron Diaz as a bad teacher, who plans to quit to marry a rich kid - when his mother intervenes, she's got to go back to work, and does so, with all the enthusiasm we might expect. She shows films every day in class; she smokes pot in the parking lot; she steals money from the class car wash to fund her breast enhancement surgery. She's surrounded by loons - Lucy Punch as Amy Squirrel, the probably mad do gooder neighbor; Jason Segal as a randy gym teacher; Justin Timberlake as a rich goofy christian (not stated, but the "pro-choice" joke, and a dry-humping scene make it clear enough); John Michael Higgins as a dolphin obsessed principal; Phyllis Smith as a nice old lady who's up for anything... All this rolls along amusingly enough - the jokes are good, the performers on their game, the story manages not to turn sappy - or gratuitously nasty - I mean, of course people sort of change, and things sort of get better for people, that's what stories do, they change people... to do this without lapsing into life lessons (beyond obvious stuff like don't be a[ny more of a] dick [than you have to be]) is a small triumph, and I'd say it gets there.
Larry Crowne, on the other hand - not so much. It's a likable enough film, I guess, but not a very good one. I have to blame Glenn Kenny and Sam Adams for this one - Kenny kind of liked it; Sam Adams - abetted, I think, by the Most Interesting Man in the World - played a great role the day before in making me miss an 11 AM screening of the African Queen - The Larry Crowne Affair turned out to be a bit more convenient... So what do we have? Tom Hanks is a master criminal laid off from his job at Goldman Sachs and is pursued by Faye Dunaway, or Julia Roberts, as Elizabeth Warren - no, wait, no, that's wishful thinking... Larry Crowne is laid off from UMart because he lacks a college education. He goes to community college, where he has classes with Julia Roberts (another Bad Teacher, though she already has a lousy husband, so isn't looking for another) and George Takai (being very strange). Also in the latter class is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (in the person of Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who rides a scooter (like Crowne) and so orchestrates his midlife crisis makeover. The potential for age inappropriate sex does not materialize, and Hanks and Roberts pair up in the end. He gets A's in his class, but the MPDG drops out (and Crowne doesn't repay her generosity to him by telling her to see Bridesmaids for a lesson on what happens when you start a quirky new retail store in the middle of a fucking recession. Jesus lady! get the degree, so at least in 10 years you can get temp work for an outsourcing firm!) Where was I?
The truth is - there's an interesting story lurking in the shadows here. The MPDG who revivifies poor middle aged Tom Hanks - and Tom Hanks who revivifies mopey Julia Roberts. The little side step - where someone wakes him up and he wakes up someone else - is a cool twist. And some of it is played with some wit and grace. Just not enough. Or really anything beyond the actors pouring on the charm and treating it all like a lark. There's a good idea there - but it's just an idea. Even the idea that Hanks saves Roberts - the film tells us that she saved him (that is, he says that to her), but - we've seen the film - seen her class, which is atrocious, we know she's mailing it in, but his enthusiasm, and his ability to engage his classmates, wakes her up. It would have been nice to have the filmmakers notice this - they might have gotten around to writing a decent film if they had... Instead - it plays like a very sketchy first draft.
Friday, July 08, 2011
Friday Ulster Genius Edition
Since I've had Suspect Device running through my head lately - let's let Genius do it's thing...
1. Modern Lovers - Roadrunner
2. Devo - Mongoloid
3. Public Image Ltd. - Public Image
4. The Pogues - a Pair of Brown Eyes
5. Television - Marquee Moon
6. Gang of Four - Damaged Goods
7. Replacements - Bastards of the Young
8. Echo & the Bunnymen - The Cutter
9. My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow
10. Jesus and Mary Chain - Some Candy Talking
sounds good... for your viewing pleasures - Still Little Fingers Live, in 1978:
And - this seems quite different, but I'm glad it came up. Here's Echo & The Bunnymen live, with strings:
1. Modern Lovers - Roadrunner
2. Devo - Mongoloid
3. Public Image Ltd. - Public Image
4. The Pogues - a Pair of Brown Eyes
5. Television - Marquee Moon
6. Gang of Four - Damaged Goods
7. Replacements - Bastards of the Young
8. Echo & the Bunnymen - The Cutter
9. My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow
10. Jesus and Mary Chain - Some Candy Talking
sounds good... for your viewing pleasures - Still Little Fingers Live, in 1978:
And - this seems quite different, but I'm glad it came up. Here's Echo & The Bunnymen live, with strings:
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