From the Maltese Falcon, 1931: this is not film noir - most of the film is a solid, not too interesting looking reading of the text, stagy, competent, nothing special. (Though very entertaining, because of the power of the text, the excellent cast, and Roy Del Ruth's clean, precise presentation.) But in a couple scenes, things change a bit. Like this one, Spade's interview with Gutman - which moves fast from an insert of the telegram from Gutman to their conversation - which starts in the middle, with alternating medium shots, low angled, full of little details in the front of the screen - the bottle, Gutman's fan, Spade's knee and hand... these alternate, as they talk (the familiar dialogue from the novel that Huston used in 1941 as well):
Only well into the conversation do we get longer shots of the men, though as soon as we do - and the convcersation turns to money - the camera moves in again, framing them even tighter than before:
Then backing off, as the money changes hands...
...and backs off more as Wilmer comes in:
Some of this is repeated, less drastically, in the DA's office - though there Del Ruth starts with an establishing shot, before moving in, to similar obstructed medium shots, with hats, telephones, lamps springing into the frame:
All that - moments of visual flair in an otherwise fairly generic looking film. But the story is noir (Hammett is it's founding angel), and here - the camera inserts itself into the decor, and things lose their natural shapes. Shadows break free from their objects, faces, hands, objects, break off from their proper places, and become looming presences... stylistically, noir grew out of expressionism - passed through horror, as much as any style in America - and melded with the crime movies of the 30s... And along the way, put out feelers, so to speak, those moments when the images start to pulse into menacing being, like here...
The first highlight of the film year has been Harvard's Hong Sang-soo series, that played over the last weekend of January and first of February. They showed 8 of his 11 films, and he was there for two nights, doing the Q&A thing - all told, a very pleasing event. (Despite some god-awful weather outside.) He is an intriguing director, one who deserves thought - I'm not sure if I am quite ready to write anything too substantial about his films, though I'd like to. In the meanwhile - given that my thoughts are fragmentary and partial - I will offer some notes on his work, as well as his appearance at Harvard. (A big disadvantage of this approach, though, is that I find that I've made lots of casual references to the films - which are a definite challenge to find and see... I think, however, a lot of the things I mention here are present in enough of his films, that anyone who's seen a couple should be able to know what I'm talking about...)
1) As for the Q&A - these things can be a mixed blessing - some people thrive in those situations, others seem completely lost. Hong came off somewhere in the middle. He's a mumbler (maybe from jet lag? the weather? I don't know), and rather evasive. He circled questions, never quite addressing anything directly - making lots of claims to do it all on intuition, never you mind that AIC degree... Never mind as well the playfulness and patterning of the films themselves, their self-reflexivity, etc. In truth -it seems that he was trying to avoid some kinds of questions - "themes" - in fact, he spoke quite clearly about his working methods and ideas. You can see where the patterns and repetitions in his films come from, you can see the working methods that create the films he makes....
2) He talked about his films starting from everyday things - I could be wrong, but I suspect he means objects as much as incidents. His films have a powerful attention to objects - phones and wallets and clothes and things like cameras and cable cars, cars, and so on. They structure the films, markers of movements and changes; they are also the subject of many incidents - the scenes in Virgin Stripped Bare By her Bachelors discussing how to hold chopsticks, the passage of scarves in Tale of Cinema, Woman is the Future of Man, etc.... Virgin might do this the most - chopsticks in a couple scenes; napkins, forks or spoons, the cameras, gloves, the sheet, etc. Sometimes, the treatment of these objects does seem to carry meaning - like the talismanic nature of something like the red scarf in Woman is the Future of Man, or the contrast between the new video camera and the obsolete 8mm camera in Virgin, or the way Jingu in Oki's Movie riffs on the empty juice box...
3) Building on that - incidents cycle, of course, situations - repeated in films, repeated between films: losing/forgetting wallets (and money) - which happens in several films... things like the impotence and double suicide scenes in Turning Gate and repeated in Tale of Cinema... And more general types of scenes - walks with people in parks, nature, etc - Kangwon, Turning Gate, Oki's Movie... impromptu visits - Turning Gate, Woman is the Future of Man...
4) Structures - doubles and repetitions are absolutely fundamental to Hong's films. They are everywhere, at every level, taking many different forms, doing a number of different things. Repetition becomes a formal element, and not just a way of exploring perspective, or re-evaluating events. I mean - in some films, the repetition is purely formal: Virgin, for example, repeats the story twice, slightly differently - somewhat paradoxically, this makes it more about the content, about differing perspectives, about subjectivity... that quality is stronger still in films like Oki's Movie and Tale of Cinema, that acknowledge shifting levels of narration - that part of what we see is a film-in-a-film. But repetition also occurs in other ways: Oki's section of Oki's Movie, for instance, does this - showing two walks through a park, with 2 different men. This plot device - actions (sometimes words) being repeated, by the same characters, or other characters, happens quite often in Hong's films - Turning Gate's two parts show first a man pursued by a woman, then a man pursuing a woman - it repeats several moments and situations, and repeating old stories as well... Finally - events, episodes, etc. are repeated (as I've been saying) across films - plot elements (usually frustrated love triangles); the impotence/suicide episodes in Turning Gate and Tale of Cinema; all the other repetitions listed above (wallets, scarves, walks in parks, calling people the wrong name, etc.) Actors and character types recur - not quite with the obsessive formalization of an Ozu film, but with some similar effects... The result of all this is, in a way, to turn your attention away from questions about the material - the "modernist" questions of how individuals experience and process events - to questions about form - the more "post-modernist" (or formalist) question of the shapes themselves. Which may have psychological implications as well - as you shift from attention to how one experiences their own life, to how those experiences are inevitably shaped by form - how we experience things as repetitions, how we organize our experiences into patterns. How things today are given meaning by the contexts we put them in - by the things that have happened in the past - a process of sorting and classifying.
I don't know how much that has to do with what Hong Sang-soo is after in these films - though it is not impossible he's thinking on those lines. But it is an interesting phenomenon - and his method, of arranging individual films primarily as exercises in subjectivity, while emphasizing the patterning ("parametric") devices between films - seems to lead you there. To think about how these formal elements relate to questions of subjectivity....
5) He spoke quite a bit about improvisation - not as such, but - his method of working.... to start with very brief treatments of the stories - to look for actors who would fit the characters in this treatment - then to write the script shaping the characters around the actor, as a type, as a person... Then - he said - he would end up writing the actual dialogue on location the day of shooting, and give the actors just enough time to memorize the lines before shooting... And it strikes me that his films have the elements of improvisation - the looseness and ability to surprise within a fairly simple and sometimes rigid structure. Their repetitions, the simplicity of the basic situations, help in this method - they provide the structure and connections for the film, and allow the dialogue and actors to develop the emotional impact...
I just saw a post about another blogathon - this one, inspired by Jafar Panahi's imprisonment, and a letter written to the Berlin Film Festival - is devoted to Iranian Cinema, and is scheduled for the week of February 21-27. I am very pleased to see this - it seems to me that Iranian cinema has been somewhat neglected in the last decade - in the late 90s, when I was particularly movie mad, Iranian films seemed to be at the center of the world's art cinema. New Kiarostami or Makhmalbaf films were events - though often events one could only read about for a year.... In the 2000s - I'm not sure - but a lot of that excitement seemed to be lost - probably not coincidentally, as Iran's politics took a retrograde turn, culminating in the disaster of the last election, which has led directly to Panahi's incarceration (for example.) Iranian films are (or seem) less talked about now - this blogathon will be a very welcome reminder, I think, of what they achieved. While they seem less talked about in the 00s, I don't know if they have become any less accomplished - not least because of the work of Panahi himself, whose films this decade have been, as far as I am concerned, almost as crucial as those of Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf in the 90s.
I'm under no illusions about the possible effects a bunch of film bloggers talking about Panahi and Iranian films might have on the Iranian government - but it can serve to remind us of what that government is trying to destroy.
Again, it is not my intention to ONLY post Friday music notes, but that's what we've got... That should change - there are things going on in the world which should bring some life out of me - a new Film Preservation Blogathon, next week, again hosted by the Self-Styled Siren and Ferdy on Films. It will be, like the first one, a purposeful blogathon, raising money for film preservation - you can donate here.
And, coming next month, we have a blogathon devoted to Korean film, hosted by New Korean Cinema and Cineawsome. This is scheduled for March 7-13 - it should be good... This is closer to the reasons for the lack of posts here, too - last week's Hong Sang-Soo series at the HFA kept me out at night - I am trying to write somethign about it - at the rate I'm going I might make it by next month...
But for now - it's Friday - and that's my musical day, and the only effective bit of discipline I'm able to impose on myself, so here goes, completely randomly:
1. Robert Wyatt - Lullaloop 2. James Brown - Try Me (live) 3. Ramones - Glad to See You Go 4. Modest Mouse - Ohio 5. Better than Ezra - Allison Foley 6. Janelle Monae - Mushroom's and Roses 7. Husker Du - Celebrated Summer (live) 8. Smokey Robinson - Tears of a Clown [iTunes is bering very very kind today...] 9. Pere Ubu - The Fevered Dream of Hernando de Soto 10. Soft Machine - A Certain Kind
Video? since we have 2 entries with Robert Wyatt - here's a third - singing Comfortably Numb, live, with David Gilmour:
...another odd week in which I got next to nothing done, leaving me with no answer for it but to post a Friday Random 10 list - which I will do with no further ado:
1. The Wild Swans - The Revolutionary Spirit 2. The Who - I'm a Boy (live at the BBC) 3. The New Pornographers - Use it 4. Bo Diddley - Before You Accuse Me 5. The Pretenders - Stop Your Sobbing 6. David Thomas & Two Pale Boys - Little Sister 7. Mogwai - The Precipice 8. Dinosaur Jr. - Kracked 9. Roxy Music - Re-make/Re-model 10. Nick Cave & Bad Seeds - Darker With the Day
An interesting set... I'm not sure I have ever heard the Wild Swans before - sounds like a candidate for a video... like most of their contemporaries, they still seem to be at it, here live in 09...
Well, here I am, buckling down for another snow storm, this one threatening to last a couple days, turning into sleet somewhere in the middle. That sort of thing sets off alarms - put down a foot of snow, then cover it in ice - there won't be a tree left standing in New England! The electrical situation may soon become precarious, even in the metropolis. Fortunately, this waited until the middle of the week - it's been a very nice stretch for movies, the last couple weeks - some of last year's best films replayed; and a Hong Sang-Soo series at the HFA. I'd just as soon not try to plow through a blizzard to see them - though I have done worse. I made it out during the April Fool's blizzard of 1997 to see Rebel Without a Cause! I suppose I'd make it to Hong's films anyway...
The weather hasn't started yet, so it's off to work I go. It's supposed to start any minute though. The commute back home in the evening ought to be entertaining.
One possible consolations is that no Groundhogs will be seeing any shadows this week.
That's all for now. I will leave you with a Cat Picture. She agrees with me on the merits of Grinderman, I think.
While I certainly hope I can follow through on my desire to put up a music post every Friday, it is not exactly the plan to post nothing but music posts on Friday. But here are two in a row. And two lists in a row, to boot! This one at least will be worthy of the name....
I should have posted this last year, at the beginning of the new decade - but things happened last year, and I put it off, and I haven't been listening to music as much this year, or thinking about it, and suddenly here we are, in 2011, and I've done nothing to come to grips with the music of the past decade and so... We'll try it now. I could pretend to make a virtue of it - giving myself another year to think things over, catch up - but it hasn't worked that way. I alluded to my listening cycles last week - I am in a very definite down cycle now... That's a bit inconvenient when it comes to trying to assess the 2000s (or what I thought of the 2000s), because for most of that decade, I was in a most definite up cycle. I bought an awful lot of records in the 00s, and listened to them, songs and records alike, and brooded on them, I read about music, I formed and occasionally shared opinions of music. It's thus very odd now, in a period when I'm not doing those things, to try to sum up what I thought in a time I did....
Coming up with a list, then, is troublesome - a lot more difficult than coming up with a list of favorite films was. The sense of distance from music I have been talking about it - but only part. There's also the fact that I have never documented my music purchases and likes and dislikes as obsessively as I do my film watching. And there's the fact that, looking back at things I bought, listened to, liked in the last decade, I'm reminded how often and how much my tastes have changed. Not that I stop liking things - what I liked in 2002 I like today (what I liked in 1986 I like today; most of what I liked in 1978 I like today) - but I go on binges, getting semi-obsessed with one type of music or other, then moving to something else. This can be quite extreme - I spent the first half of the 90s listening almost exclusively to jazz, ignoring rock, barely even listening to my favorites. But I moved through jazz history, and by 95 or 96 had reached John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock, and then it was a simple thing to shift back to Richard Thompson and Pere Ubu, and next thing I know, I'm buying rock records again (Built to Spill, Tool, PJ Harvey among the first new artists to catch my ear), and there you go.... So in the 00s - I started the decade listening to a lot of old and new punk (Minutemen; Sleater-Kinney & The White Stripes) and guitar stuff (AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Neil Young; Built to Spill, a new commitment to the Rolling Stones, etc.) - discovered Japanese punk (Boredoms) and neo-prog (Mercury Rev) and combined them (Acid Mothers Temple; Ghost); had a run of listening to lots of extreme stuff (Keiji Haino, Soft Machine and Van Der Graf Generator, Krautrock, Pete Cosey era Miles, Derek Bailey) - until I started listening to new folk (Devendra Banhardt, Neutral Milk Hotel), combined in turn with noise and prog (Six Organs of Admittance; Ghost again, Sigur Rus.) And then the Liars came out and I got obsessed with post-punk - Gang of Four and PIL - but that was like picking up an old thread, filling in the gaps, buying the albums of songs I liked in 1983 or 84 - I was, from the time I heard them, a Pere Ubu and Joy Division fan, so this Gang of Four/PIL/Wire enthusiasm was building on old loves.... Meanwhile, I liked their contemporary imitators, though only the Liars really convinced me... And then TV on the Radio came out and, you know, whatever that led to, not to mention the complications of getting more obsessed by Boris, the Melvins, Mono, etc. ca. 2007... What do you do?
It means that now, looking back, I don't entirely know what to do with the decade. Sometimes, the music I bought in the 00s looks like it was collected by 4 different people - and each one seems to jump up and insist on their judgments being the right one. Can one person really get as enthusiastic about Mercury Rev, The Liars, The Crane Wife, Rainbow, "Halfway Home" or "Only the Sun Knows" or "Casimir Pulaski Day" as I have been? Apparently so. But it makes for a particularly uncertain kind of list-making... Though I suppose there are constants: electric guitars - soloists - drums - and I guess a back of the mind love of melodies (the Smokey Robinson effect, call it.)
So then - here it is - my favorite 25 records of the 2000s:
1. Mercury Rev - All is Dream
2. David Sylvian - Blemish
3. White Stripes - White Blood Cells
4. Boris (with Michio Kurihara) - Rainbow 5. The Liars - They Were Wrong So We Drowned 6. Earth (with Bill Frisell) - The Bees Made Money in the Lion's Skull 7. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain 8. The Decembrists - The Crane Wife 9. Danielson Famille - Fetch the Compass Kids 10. PJ Harvey - Songs from the City, Stories from the Sea 11. Grinderman - Grinderman 12. Scott Walker - The Drift 13. Six Organs of Admittance - The Sun Awakens 14. TV on the Radio - Dear Science 15. White Stripes - Icky Thump 16. Sigur Rus - Hvarf/Heim 17.Godspeed You Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists to to Heaven 18.Radiohead - Kid A 19.Outkast - Speakerboxx/The Love Below 20.Sonic Youth - Murray Street 21. Ghost - Hypnotic Underworld 22. David Sylvian - Manofan 23. Damon and Naomi With Ghost 25. Gomez - Split the Difference 25. Devendra Banhardt - Rejoicing in the Hands
...and since that seems - incomplete - close contenders, might include:
Acid Mothers Temple - La Novia, Geocrentric Worlds of the Acid Mothers Temple Boris - Pink Deerhoof - Reveille, Apple O' Sigur Rus () Derek Bailey - Mirakle Devendra Banhardt - Cripple Creek Earth - some combination - a reminder, maybe, that sometimes bands as a whole make more impression than individual records... The Fire Theft - the Fire Theft Ghost - In Stormy Nights Jay Farrar - Sebastapol Kills - Keep on your Mean Side Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose MIA - Arular MIssion of Burma - Obliterati Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antartctica Nick Cave & Bad Seeds - any? all? Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer? Ruins - Tzamborgha Six Organs of Admittance - Compathia, Dark Noontide Sonic Youth - The Eternal TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
...though that is still awfully arbitrary... I think I may need another post like this, dedicated to my favorite bands of the 00s - I think I will put that off, though, and try to write more about those bands, when I post it. I'll stay with straight lists here....
And songs? I will stick to a top 10. And say that I don't listen to the radio enough to make any distinction between album cuts and singles, and most of the stuff I listen to barely registers as singles anyway - still...
1. Damon and Naomi (with Ghost) - I Dreamed of the Caucuses 2. Sufjian Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day 3. Mercury Rev - Hercules 4. David Sylvian - The Heart Knows Better 5. Radiohead - Idioteque 6. TV on the Radio - Halfway Home 7. Six Organs of Admittance - Only the Sun Knows 8. Boris - Rainbow 9. Decembrists - The Crane Wife 3 10. Modest Mouse - Dark Center of the Universe
And finally - since Michio Kurihara plays on what seems like half the records and songs on these lists - I'll leave you with Kurihara, playing with Boris, Rainbow, live, getting as much from about 3 notes as can be gotten...
If I can, I am going to make Friday music day at this blog. If nothing else comes to mind, I shall resurrect the old Friday Random Ten posts - though I'll try to keep it more varied than that. I am not as good as I wish I was at writing about music - I end up substituting lists and quotes and allusions for even the barest analysis, but I guess that is all right. We shall see what comes to mind.
I will start the year off by making a list of the best music of 2010... and immediately run into a major problem. Here I want to talk about music, and here I barely listen to music at all anymore. My music habit is very cyclical - I go a few years listening to and buying lots and lots of music; then go a year or two (this spell has been going on almost 2 years now) and barely listen to music at all. Go from buying 40-50 new records a year to buying 15-20 (which I don't listen to) - it's strange. I don't know when I will start up again, though I always do start up again; I don't know what I will listen to when I do (I had a big jazz phase back in the 90s; came back to rock, and passed through a bunch of phases in that - old punk, prog, "post-rock", post punk, etc. - the last semi-trend was a spell of 3-4 months of listening to opera and 20th century classical...) The result - I can barely put together a top 10 (this is almost a top 2, plus a bunch of name-dropping), and most of it turns out to be old favorites - in lean times, one relies heavily on reliable old favorites.... This spell, this year, is no exception. And so - on to the list:
1) Grinderman - Grinderman2 - perhaps the ultimate in old favorites. That itself is a little odd - I heard Nick Cave in the 80s, and did not care too much about him. I listened to him more in the 90s, and around the Murder Ballads era started to really like him. And in the 00s, this grew stronger, until the Grinderman records, which somehow, hit every single one of my buttons and hit them square. I might also have to confess that this is the only record I listened to end to end more than once - though like everything these days, I especially obsess over songs...
Heathen Child - embedding disabled, alas, but this is a hoot of a video...
And here, live, When my baby comes, which I could listen to on infinite loop almost, especially the freak out at the end:
2) Janelle Monae - Archandroid - not a lot in common with Grinderman, I guess, but the rather sad truth is that this is the only other record this year to totally grab me. For good reason, she is the real deal, exciting, varied, imaginative music, just great...
Here's a live clip, a couple songs:
3) MIA - Maya - I'm cheating, I'm afraid. I have no idea if I listened to this record or not. I think so, most of it - but this is mostly because of "Born Free". The video - well, it's interesting, maybe not exactly coherent - a bit of a cliche, I suppose - interesting though. But the song - from that accelerating drum intro, through the shuddering drone of it - it's for me. It's apparently a Suicide cover/rewrite, given a battering ram drum track - plus, someone on a blog somewhere, that at this point I would have no chance of ever finding, compared it to the Fall - I hear that, too, some of those phrasings are very Mark Smith.... If you must steal, those are good sources - and I think she pulls it off. It's certainly addictive. Between this and Grinderman, it should be obvious that what little I have listened to has tended to the drony - fast, noisy drones....
Here, in all its overblown glory, is the Video:
and here, live - it is interesting, digging around YouTube, how different her performances are from one another. Start here, on Letterman with an army of impersonators, and Martin Rev himself:
And here on Jools Holland, with an all girl band, including, apparently, Victoria Smith on drums:
4) Melvins - The Bride Screamed Bloody Murder - another old favorite, that probably makes it in for providing what I like them for, if not doing anything special with it. Though who knows - they are a more immersive band - I like settling in with them awhile - which mitigates against the hit or miss listening habits I have these days, and against really evaluating any given song or record. I like the Melvins - any song, any bunch of songs will do... in that sense, this is still quite a satisfying record, that I tend to like more whenever I hear it...
A couple songs, live:
5) Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart - This is the record that seems to benefit the most from coming up on the iPod, this year. Odd, but their brand of hippy sludge doesn't always play as well when I mean to listen to it as when it comes along randomly - it has an odd way of tempting me to dismiss it, but not quite letting me - and paying off... And here's a video...
And now - this is about as far as I can go in accurately assessing even as subjective a thing as how much I liked a bunch of records. After this - I don't think I bought anything last year I don't like, and won't like in the future - but the rest is pretty arbitrary. I will make the list to 10, though from here on out, it's guesswork.
6. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs 7. The New Pornographers - Together - a very Canadian year... I don't know if I trust this record - New Pornographers records are getting very indistinguishable, which isn't quite a virtue in their case.... 8. Richard Thompson - Dream Attic - lots of polite sounding, well crafted songs, with effortlessly brilliant guitar bits - another typical late career Richard Thompson record, that I can't help grading on a curve. 9. The Fall - Your Future Our Clutter - they're still around, making good music - so I ain't leaving them out. 10. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
I leave out live records - I would make my life a little easier including them - Mogwai's Special Moves is quite nice, especially. A live clip would not be amiss:
As the new year begins - finally, a couple weeks with some actual decent films. A couple weeks in a row where there were films out I wanted to see and felt some keenness in the choices I made. Very gratifying. There may have been more good films in 2010 than I give credit to, but it certainly seemed as though there were a lot of weeks with nothing out I cared a whit for. Even in November and December, usually a good time for films. It's a great relief for this year's releases to start out much more appealingly. So here are some short notices - some of these films might get more later, if I get more energetic.
True Grit - 11/15 - the Coens on their best behavior, in some ways, thought he story itself is very close to their sensibility. A beautiful film, wonderfully played, a straightforward western perfectly executed. Oddly, given their love of comedy, it is less funny than the original - though more of a story, and a movie, less a star piece. Adaption or remake or not, though, it is all theirs - like all their films, it is a kind of celebration of the spoken word, the human voice, human faces, landscapes and skies, light and textures. Voices and faces especially, which is what makes their films almost infinitely rewatchable.
Rabbit Hole - 10/15 - story of a couple who have lost their 4 year old son in a car accident, some 8 months before the film takes place. They are not coping well. The man goes to group therapy (without his wife), which soon prompts a somewhat predictable plot point; she, meanwhile, stalks the boy who ran over their son, another somewhat predictable plot point... It would probably be churlish to note that the woman has a sister who is expecting her first child - as sisters inevitably seem to do in films about the loss of a child. It's churlish because in spite of the borderline cliched situations, the film is a carefully made, resonant examination of grief and recovery. It feels right - it feels very familiar, but the details and moments still seem to have life in them.
Blue Valentine - 10/15 - a film about a bad marriage shot in gritty realistic style that though honorable and well made in every way comes short, somehow. It's hard to say why - just that somehow, the blend of gritty realism, mopey whimsy, Cassavetes style melodrama and more conventional melodrama comes off as less than the sum of its parts. I don't mean to complain, though - it is a smart, well made film, a welcome attempt to tell a fairly honest, simple story, to show lives of regular people - salt of the earth! the working man! It even flirts with showing people working, which is bloody rare in American films. The performances are superb - the story is grim, without being over the top - the characters are interesting, sad, complicated - so don't take that griping too much to heart. I suppose what it comes to is that it's a bit too schematic in places - the ways neither of them wants to repeat their upbringing (he's from a broken home, and will do anything to preserve any kind of home; she's from a nightmarish "stable" home, and would do anything to spare her kid that kind of hatred.) That's maybe too neat (for instance) - though it's also accurate, so again - the quibbles are quibbles, doubts about a very good film.
Somewhere - 11/15 - I was a bit surprised to find myself really liking this film. Is there a backlash against Sofia Coppola? I don't know - I just come across the complaints now and then. Usually about all the time she devotes to the terrible suffering of privileged white folks. The problem is - she makes pretty good films. She has an eye, and she films what she knows - and while what she films may be limited (what she knows may be limited), she makes it live. This film starts and ends rather schematically (driving in a circle; walking toward something) - in between, though, it is surprisingly effective. The plot - a dissolute Hollywood star forced to take care of a precocious kid for a week - is old stuff - but it doesn't quite go in the directions these kinds of films usually go in. He does not resent the kid (then learn a life lesson); he does not do anything stupid and careless with the kid; he is, in fact, a decent father, when he chooses to be. And if he learns a life lesson - it was one we could see coming before the kid turned up. The emptiness of his life is clear enough without the kid, and it is clear enough that he knows it. So - I'd say it succeeds, in telling a story about someone nothing like normal people, but still making it recognizably human, and having a fair sense of the specificities of his life. The boredom and randomness of acting and publicity; the swarms of enablers around you; the endlessly freely available pussy (and cock, if you were so inclined) - oddly enough, it probably comes the closest to showing someone working for a living of all these films. A very strange kind of job - but a job.... And she has that eye - it's a slow film, but one that absorbs you into its rhythms, its imagery, and keeps you there. I liked it.
Here then is my yearly Index of my film posts. This year, I think I will add links to blogathons and similar projects during the year, even if I don't actually participate. I used to try to keep on top of these things, but these days, there are fewer of them, and I am lazier - I won't pretend this is comprehensive, but I'll try to make it useful.
Mostly, though, this is to keep track of what I manage to write during the year.
1/17: Capsules - True Grit, Rabbit Hole, Blue Valentine, Somewhere. 4/20: Certified Copy 4/23: Le Quattro Volte. 6/9: Midnight in Paris and Tree of LifeReviews 6/23: Big roundup - Bridesmaids, Princess of Montpensier, The Trip, Nostalgia for the Light, Blank City, Legend fo the Fist, 13 Assassins, Meek's Cutoff 7/10: Summer roundup - Pianomania, Buck, Page One, Bad Teacher, Larry Crowne. 8/15: Capsules - Tabloid, Friends With Benefits, Road to Nowhere, The Future 9/7: New films - The Sleeping Beauty, Mysteries of Lisbon, Magic Trip, Myth of the American Sleepover and Senna. 9/21: More theatrical viewings - Contagion, The Guard, Rapt, Drive & World on a Wire. 10/21: More new films: Detective Dee, Restless, Black Power Mix Tape, Ides of March, Love Crime 12/6: Recent films - Melancholia, Take Shelter, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Skin I Live In.
Yes indeed. Very pretty snowstorm, but it's all pretty heavy and there's a lot of it, so there is an awful lot of this around:
I myself got a day off from work, which is just as well as I also got half a day with no electricity... I took the opportunity to wander the neighborhood looking at the aftermath (if that's the word - its still coming down, sort of...), then warmed up with a bowl of Pho before coming home... I've been looking at theinternet, and I am confused - did someone accuse Sarah Palin of drinking the blood of Christian children? Surely that can't be right - she would never discriminate on the basis of race, color or creed, would she?
Right. The mere mention of a certain reality show star and failed politician gives me a pain - here, as an antidote, is a picture of a cat misbehaving, cutely...
It is time for the real marker of the turning of the seasons, Dennis Cozzalio's movie quiz - this one named in honor of Professor Hubert Farnsworth. Here we are, and here we go:
1) Best Movie of 2010 A: Carlos, the long version
2) Second-favorite Roman Polanski Movie A: The Pianist, I think
3) Jason Statham or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson A: I think the Rock, though I have not seen him that much - both are fun to watch though.
4) Favorite movie that could be classified as a genre hybrid A: I'm afraid this is an invitation to waffle. I'm not sure how far apart the genres have to be for this - there are thousands of horror comedies, for instance, enough that I don't know if that counts as a hybrid or as a genre unto itself - if a hybrid, the answer has to be something like Bride of Frankenstein. But that seems to be more sub-genre than hybrid, somehow... How about a western comedy, like Destry Rides Again? or do I stick with something obvious, like Blade Runner?
5) How important is foreknowledge of a film’s production history? Should it factor into one’s reaction to a film? A: I guess not much, as I do not often think about it. Once in a while a fact or two will come along that changes how I see a film - not often, and not in any consistent way.
6) William Powell & Myrna Loy or Cary Grant & Irene Dunne A: While I like the Awful Truth more than anything else these 4 combine in, I like the ongoing chemistry between Powell and Loy. Which is a nice way to split the difference.
7) Best Actor of 2010 A: This is not as clear as I'd like - I think Edgar Ramirez in Carlos has to be the answer, though Jesse Eisenberg makes it close.
8) Most important lesson learned from the past decade of watching movies A: Stella Artois commercials are annoying?
9) Last movie seen (DVD/Blu-ray/theater) A: Blu-Ray is The Maltese Falcon, as it happens. DVD as of now is Stagecoach. Theater is True Grit.
10) Most appropriate punishment for director Tom Six A: I'm afraid the only punishment I can inflict is to ignore him. Which I suppose is terrible enough...
11) Best under-the-radar movie almost no one else has had the chance to see A: Well - it's very hard to see - so let's say, Los Angeles Plays Itself.
12) Sheree North or Angie Dickinson A: Angie, I guess. I mean, Rio Bravo, right?
13) Favorite nakedly autobiographical movie A: 400 Blows, I suppose - or Contempt.
14) Movie which best evokes a specific real-life place A: Let's say Playtime and Alphaville - the new Paris, by day and night...
15) Best Director of 2010 A: This has to be Assayas.
16) Second-favorite Farrelly Brothers Movie A: Dumb and Dumber (after Something About Mary, I guess.)
17) Favorite holiday movie A: It's a Wonderful Life is a holiday movie in practice, though not as much in theory. The latter, for something quite specifically about a holiday - or two - how about a Nightmare Before Christmas?
18) Best Actress of 2010 A: of films released - Isabelle Huppert in White Material (Kim hye-ja in Mother close behind.) Of films made in 2010 - Hattie Steinfeld, right?
19) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson A: Baker
20) Of those notable figures in the world of the movies who died in 2010, name the one you’ll miss the most A: In terms of ongoing movie production, on films I seek out - the answer is probably, and somewhat obscurely, William Lubtchansky, for his part in all those Rivette films. I suppose in broader, historical terms, it would be Rohmer, though Hideko Takamine has been part of a lot of films I worship.
21) Think of a movie with a notable musical score and describe what it might feel like without that accompaniment. A: This is a great question, though I don't know what to say to answer it. No amount of thinking is going to bring an intelligent answer so I am going to have to pass.
22) Best Screenplay of 2010 A: The KIds Are All Right? of all the releases - Mother
23) Movie You Feel Most Evangelistic About Right Now A: What the hell - Ishtar.
24) Worst/funniest movie accent ever A: These questions are the hardest to answer - examples pop into my head later - when I see something - I'll hate myself for not doing better. So punt, and take as easy a target as there is - Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves has long been my touchstone for accentual ineptitude...
25) Best Cinematography of 2010 A: Not surprisingly, this is True Grit.
26) Olivia Wilde or Gemma Arterton A: No, I'm not going to pretend to know who these people are. EVen after googling them, I don't know who they are.
27) Name the three best movies you saw for the first time in 2010 (Thanks, Larry!) A: Not counting new films - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the Mamoulian/March version); The Red Shoes (in a theater, too!); Odd Man Out (also theatrical.)
28) Best romantic movie couple of 2010 A: Might well be Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor
29) Favorite shock/surprise ending A: favorite isn't the right word, but - Patrick Yau's Expect the Unexpected takes the cake...
30) Best cinematic reason to have stayed home and read a book in 2010 A: Those Louis Vuitton "journey" ads. The only ads I know to consistently draw boos.
31) Movies in 2011 could make me much happier if they’d only A: ...release more Korean films - a good default answer...
Happy New Year, again. And - no point beating around the bush - straight into the best of 2010. With all the usual caveats - this list of of the best films given a first release (that I know of) in a commercial theater in Boston and its environs in 2010. Obviously, that I have seen - a caveat that might matter more this year than most. This was a down year for me - I went 2-3 months barely seeing any film - I moved in the spring, which proved very time consuming, especially on weekends when I might be watching movies. I spent most of June and the beginning of July parked in front of the TV set watching soccer. I took a vacation in July and made lots of little trips. I did not watch as many films as usual. Though it's not just me - I did not find the year's releases all that thrilling. The first half the year was okay, with last year's foreign films coming through - but when that slacked off, the new offerings were singularly uninspiring - and this did not improve in the fall.... I don't know if that is fair - I may have skipped a lot of films for bad reasons that might belong on this list... But there it is.
Enough of that. I complain about it being a bad year for movies, but that's less true at the top. Maybe nothing world-beating, and definitely thin, but there were still plenty of very fine new and recent films. (And quite a few that still haven't gotten screened here in town.) This is still a pretty good top 25, I think:
1. Carlos (long version) - Olivier Assayas 2. Mother - Bong Joon-ho 3. White Material - Claire Denis 4. Police, Adjective - Corneliu Porumboiu 5. Exit Through the Gift Shop - Banksy 6. The Social Network - David Fincher 7. True Grit - Coen Brothers 8. No One Knows About Persian Cats - Bahman Ghobadi 9. The White Ribbon - Haneke 10. A Film Unfinished - Yael Hersonski 11. House - Obayashi Nobuhiko (took 33 years, but it's a first release, right?) 12. Fish Tank - Andrea Arnold 13. Wild Grass - Alain Resnais 14. Greenberg - Noah Baumbach 15. The Tillman Story - Amir Ben-Lev 16. Vincere - Marco Bellochio 17. I am Love - Luca Guadagnino 18. Bluebeard - Catherine Breillat 19. Anton Chekhov's The Duel - Dover Koshashvili 20. The Ghost Writer - Roman Polanski 21. The Kids Are All Right - Lisa Cholodenko 22. Air Doll - Kore-Eda 23. A Woman A Gun and a Noodle Shop - Zhang Yimou 24. Kick Ass - Matthew Vaughan 25. Catfish - Ariel Schulman & Henry Joost
And - an early crack at a best of 2010 (made in 2010):
1. Carlos 2. Exit Through the Gift Shop 3. The Social Network 4. True Grit 5. A Film Unfinished 6. Greenberg 7. The Tillman Story 8. The Ghost Writer 9. The Kids Are All Right 10. Kick-Ass
The latter I imagine will change dramatically. In fact - since I did not do so last year, here is a retrospective top 25 for 2009, to compare to my first crack at 2009 - the latter (posted here) first:
1. Thirst 2. Bad Lieutenant... 3. A Serious Man 4. Inglourious Basterds 5. The Limits of Control 6. Antichrist 7. The Hurt Locker 8. Moon 9. Beeswax 10. Bright Star
With a year to think about it:
1. Mother 2. Thirst 3. White Material 4. Police, Adjective 5. Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans 6. A Serious Man 7. Limits of Control 8. The Antichrist 9. Inglourious Basterds 10.No One Knows About Persian Cats 11. White Ribbon 12. Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl 13. Fish Tank 14. Wild Grass 15. The Hurt Locker 16. Beeswax 17. 36 Vues du Pic Saint Loup 18. Fantastic Mr. Fox 19. Bright Star 20. Vincere 21. The Informant! 22. Moon 23. I Am Love 24. Bluebeard 25. Up
2011 is under way - how delightful! I am back from visiting the kin, and getting settled back in. I have a new housemate, a dear little kitty cat under the tree:
Though more typically, in the tree:
Anyway - she is settling in, and should be all right, as long as she doesn't try climbing to the top of my bookshelves - we might all be in for a nasty surprise then...
So it's been a full week or so, with traveling and holidays and all - a nice little rest, some very photogenic weather -
- way too much chocolate, cookies, pie, etc. And lots of Christmas movies. And Bogart - another nice gift under the tree:
And so - into the new year. I won't belabor my resolutions - I notice I posted blogging resolutions last year - yikes! I did visit the relatives, though - I did take a class or two - it took me all year, but I even got the Mabuse set! Otherwise.... the goals stand, basically - see more movies, write more - we'll see. This is about all I have the energy for today, having celebrated the new year mostly by eating way too much Tapas and Chinese food. Time for a nap!
And - I suppose - a somber note - the passing of Hideko Takamine, the extraordinary Japanese actress, aged 86. I have not really composed anything in her honor - I will give you the Siren's take and an image - Takamine as a delightful moppet in Tokyo Chorus. She would grow up to be among the very best actresses, in some of the very best films of all time. And, I think, the most purely beautiful of the great Japanese actresses of the 40s and 50s...
Christmas comes but once year, and some of us know what to do with it. A tree? Full of dangly things and noisy things and paper things? It's a catmas miracle! I'm told one of these monsters almost got Rudolph last night.
It's been ages since I've written up my new film viewing - partly because I haven't exactly been overwhelmed by the new films I've seen, partly because I haven't seen that many. (Going for older stuff instead, like three viewings of The Third Man this week, that sort of thing...) This is nothing but a sketch, going back a couple months. Some of these films I might come back to - well - one of them, I might come back to. (And Carlos is going to get its own post, though I won't make any promises about when.) It's pretty surprisingly thin pickings for the fall, I think.
White Material - 12/15 - I have to see it again - it only lasted 2 weeks in town... when I do, I hope I can come up with more to say about it.... It's a fantastic film, haunting and driven - Isabelle Huppert intense... set in Africa, a country on the brink of civil war (or toppling over from brink to throes), following Huppert, whose family runs a coffee plantation - it is harvest time - she is determined to bring the harvest in - but the rest of the family is useless, the government tells her to leave, but she won't go, etc. I can't do it justice, so won't try now. Beautiful, haunting, harrowing, another worthy entry in Claire Denis' filmography - she is one of the world's best, and every time shows it again.
Black Swan - 9/15 - I suppose Darren Aronofsky is something of an important filmmaker - he has chops - but I have yet to be won over by any of his films. This one has a lot going for it, but too much of it comes from somewhere else. It's got Nathalie Portman playing a ballerina who manages to win a plum role (partly since the company's artistic director seems to have broken up with the previous star ballerina and has designs on her, something like that.) There's a rival, though, just in from the west coast, sexy and ambitious and not above sabotage. Maybe. It might all be in the heroine's head! All this plays as a mashup of Inland Empire, The Piano Teacher, The Red Shoes and miscellaneous other dance movies... looks nice, but so what? There's nothing new in the story, and even the execution is imported - certainly Haneke and Lynch did it better... I think there is a better film lurking in it, though - like The Wrestler, the best stuff is in the details, the physicality of it. What you see in the dance scenes, in the preparations - preparing shoes, the trainer massaging Portman, a shot of the back muscles of two dancers practicing a move. Those moments, Aronofsky's ability to capture the physical details of bodies and material and movement, make the psychodrama seem trite.
Marwencol - 10/15 - fascinating documentary about Mark Hogancamp, a man in upstate New York who was beaten half to death 10 years ago (more or less) and who, when the money for his therapy ran out, started building elaborate dioramas with GI Joes and Barbie dolls as a way of practicing his motor skills and keeping his imagination active. He invented a town - Marwencol, an imaginary Belgian town in WWII, a place where everyone sort of calls off the war for a while, to hang around, have a beer, watch some cat-fighting... Until the SS comes, looking for drink! He started taking pictures of what he built, very carefully composed and staged pictures, and eventually these found their way to the art world, and from there, he got attention, and even a show. And a film made about him. The film is pretty basic, nothing too special, as a film, but it's such a fascinating story - and Hogancamp's work, both building the town and photographing it, is so strong - dramatic and compelling - that it becomes a powerful and lovely movie. I admit, it also plays into one of my fascinations - hand made, home made art, especially narrative art made from - detritus? scavengings? what do you call it? Whatever it is, I find it fascinating, and Hogancamp is as good at it as anyone...
I Love You Phillip Morris - 8/15 - Jim Carrey as a con man - starting out as a cop, looking for his birth mother, than, after a car accident, deciding to come out of the closet - and turn to a life of crime. Insurance fraud, mostly - which lands him in jail where he meets the love of his life, Phillip Morris, played by Ewan MacGregor... Well - they fall in love, they get out of jail, he cons his way into honest work as CFO of a medical supply company of some kind, where he makes them a ton of money and embezzles a ton for himself... and ends up back in jail... All this is amusing - Carrey gets to let himself go, and is great when he's on the make, but it does turn into a bit of a downer (and a drag) when he the facts intrude.
Tiny Furniture - 9/15 - not sure what to say. Story of a kid just out of college, Aura by name, home, living with her mother (who happens to be a very successful artist, with a vast studio/loft in Tribeca) and sister... She - Aura - mopes and procrastinates, hangs around with loathsome young men and a crazy old girlfriend, takes a hopeless job, wallows in various forms of self-pity, sort of suffers, acts cruelly toward a friend.... All in all, it's handsome looking, amusing, but a bit off putting - all those loathsome characters behaving badly - and centered around a hopeless sad sack, played as a a bit of a damp dishrag.... The rest of the cast has a better time of it - they generally get to revel in their awfulness - playing a cad has to be such a joy for an actor. Still - hard to say how this could be done better - a stronger protagonist would probably come off as even more self-pitying - this way, it's possible, at least, to think her passive-aggression and self-indulgence is meant to look pathetic. I guess. Still - it's not half bad, for all that.
(These I saw a long time ago - not sure how much I can say at this point.)
Waking Sleeping Beauty (9/15) - solid documentary abouyt the rebirth of Disney's animation department. That's about all I can say about it - it's good on telling the story, not so much on bringing any kind of critical thought to it. That's all right - does what it sets out to do.
Anton Chekhov's The Duel (10/15) - fine, conventional Chekhov adaptation, about a civil servant and his mistress, and the crisis in their affair - her husband has died, he wants to get rid of her, but lacks money and will... he has enemies, she has suitors... All of this elliptical and subtle, very Chekhov...
Inside Job (10/15) - fascinating and infuriating film about the financial meltdown - makes the plain obvious point that wall street and the investment banks were run like a combination of a ponzi scheme and racketeering. Deregulation allowed criminals to prosper in the financial world - and by the 90s and 00s, the system had evolved to positively encourage dishonest behavior. All the incentives - from high compensation to public ownership of investment banks (and the attendant emphasis on stock prices and constant growth) - encouraged risky, predatory, short term profit maximizing strategies - with no real risk from failure. And - when the thole thing failed - most of them walked away, or kept going, or got jobs in the government. And then - as the recent Peter Orszag stories reiterate - went right back into the banks, for a few million a year. Hard not to feel utterly helpless in the face of this stuff.
Red (7/15) - very amusing if stupid actioner with a bunch of retired spooks being knocked off and getting together to go after the people doing it. I can't quite explain the plot, which has something to do with a VP killing off his past, at the behest of a contractor - but it's quite amusing, with a hammy cast in full swing... very welcome Mary Louise Parker sighting - one of those actresses lost to TV, but who brings life to anything. She holds her own with the rest of the hams.
Nothing much important here, but the world is turning around me, and I should put in a word....
The Cliff Lee sweepstakes are over - turns out there really was a "mystery team" - the Phillies! Not that mysterious, I guess. You had to wonder if they were going to step into any of the bidding - they aren't that far off the Boston/New York superteam standard. I will have to work up some baseball thoughts when I have some time - it has been a happy season here in the land of the bean and the cod...
On the film front - I have to get a note up about David Cairns' Late Film Blogathon, ongoing now.
And? I must leave you - I am still in thrall to the Vampires, for another day or so. After that, the holidays... I hope to get back in here and make up for some of my slackness, but who knows.
...since John Lennon's death. It was a fairly incomprehensible shock to me when it happened - more than I expected it to be. I was a Beatles fan before, but not terribly passionate - that came afterwards. I think - who can trust their memories?
There are many ways to memorialize Mr. Lennon - in today's political climate, though, I think this is necessary. We're still fucking peasants as far as I can see. He could have written this in 1980 - he could have written it today - and it would ring perfectly true. More true - this country, at least, does not seem to be moving forward - the class system is becoming more obvious, the divisions between rich and poor, those with power and without it, more extreme. We seem very willing to give up our freedom. We may or may not be getting better at smiling when we kill, but we sure seem eager to let the ones who can run the country. A working class hero is something to be...
I am actually rather shocked that it has been three weeks since I posted anything here. It's been a busy three weeks, with vacations and holidays -
(A thankful cat...)
- and a paper, about vampires, with this one figuring prominently:
- and not much else. I do have something of a backlog of films to write about. It's been a pretty underwhelming year in the theaters, and there hasn't been much this fall to tempt me out of the house, but there have been a few gems. White Material is all it should be - any Claire Denis film is an event, as far as I am concerned. And I had the chance to see both versions of Carlos - great film, and the relationship between the two is quite fascinating as well. There's a post in that, though I don't know when I'll get it done. I might also get a post or two out of the vampires before I'm done, you never know... And finally, well - there's Jayne Mansfield, ably presented by Frank Tashlin and company, which if nothing else, is worth a picture or two...
But still... I hope I get more content up here in December. Though it's another month that can disappear in a flash, with all the holiday stuff going on. I will conclude with a sports related comment - we Boston baseball fans have gotten a very lovely early Christmas present in Adrian Gonzalez. That is a fine way to warm the soul on these cold winter nights!
