Well - Manny Ramirez is no longer with the Red Sox. Traded to LA - with Andy LaRoche from LA, and Brandon Moss and Craig Hanson going to Pittsburgh. The sox had to give up a lot right there - but on balance, I like the deal. Manny's problems are well documented - though even on the field, I don't think it's a bad deal. He's not the hitter he used to be - he's still very good - about the same as Drew or Youkilis, or Jason Bay... he was a good deal more than that in his prime. But now - he hits like Drew or Youk or Lowell - but he doesn't bring their defense. And the odds are, he's not going to suddenly morph into his 2004-5-6 form again - he should maintain what he's doing - but that's all... And Bay gives them that - and Bay should play better defense... and costs a third as much.... This is what they would have had to do at the end of the year - find someone to replace Ramirez. So I'll take this deal.
As for the other teams involved? The Dodgers get a real hitter - can't be bad, at least as long as they know enough to sit Pierre. The Bucs? LaRoche was supposed to be ready this year, but got hurt; Hanson hasn't figured it out yet, but will probably have some decent years eventually - though who cares? Moss - provably won't do too much,but has the potential to be a solid major leaguer, I think. Though only LaRoche is good enough to maybe be as good as Bay...
Meanwhile - an even better player, though even more washed up, got traded - Ken Griffey heads t the south side of Chicago, where he is supposed to play center field. That doesn't sound wise - but if he can do anything, that could give them a boost... I mean - I still play center field once in a while, and I'm almost as old and crippled as Griffey...
Anyway - it is exciting. Some nice pennant races shaping up - in the AL East and central, all the NL divisions, though the west, even with Manny around, is a sad sad thing...
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Links July 30
Being completely lazy and without discipline, and trying to work out the best way to use Newsfire (since it rather messes up my favored Save-It-For-Later device, the Shared Google page), I shall have recourse to a links roundup. Of course as usual, this takes as long as a real post would have....
Budd Boetticher's Seminole DVD - Glenn Kenny, at the Auteur's Notebook.
Watching silent movies online, from The Bioscope.
David Cairns explores the horror of Sea Monkeys.
TCM's blog examines Written on the Wind.
Grand hotel Screenshots at Sixmartinis and the Seventh Art.
And a Rug Rats Blogathon, I just found.
In other news, Orson Scott Card is crazy.
Pacze Moj writes about the Olympics, politics, and money.
And oh yeah - new Tor site, with an all star cast.
Finally - and anticipating a real post here, I hope -Dennis Lim's history of the fight scene in Slate is getting a lot of attention. For example - Glenn Kenny - Screengrab - David Cohen at Anne Thompson's Variety blog - to pick three I remembered to bookmark.
Lawyers, Guns and Money, meanwhile, takes on both Lim's fight post, and A.O. Scott's dismissal of the superhero film. Putting the two together like that reminds me: Lim's big How To Stage A Fight Scene example - Oldboy - IS a superhero film. At least as much as any Batman is.
Budd Boetticher's Seminole DVD - Glenn Kenny, at the Auteur's Notebook.
Watching silent movies online, from The Bioscope.
David Cairns explores the horror of Sea Monkeys.
TCM's blog examines Written on the Wind.
Grand hotel Screenshots at Sixmartinis and the Seventh Art.
And a Rug Rats Blogathon, I just found.
In other news, Orson Scott Card is crazy.
Pacze Moj writes about the Olympics, politics, and money.
And oh yeah - new Tor site, with an all star cast.
Finally - and anticipating a real post here, I hope -Dennis Lim's history of the fight scene in Slate is getting a lot of attention. For example - Glenn Kenny - Screengrab - David Cohen at Anne Thompson's Variety blog - to pick three I remembered to bookmark.
Lawyers, Guns and Money, meanwhile, takes on both Lim's fight post, and A.O. Scott's dismissal of the superhero film. Putting the two together like that reminds me: Lim's big How To Stage A Fight Scene example - Oldboy - IS a superhero film. At least as much as any Batman is.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Youssef Chahine
I just want to adda note about the passing of Youssef Chahine, the great Egyptian director. I've seen a handful of his films, and heard him speak once, promoting Al-Massir, his Averroes musical. The best of his films, for my money, was Alexandria, Why? - an autobiographical/national epic told in a breakneck style - there are swarms of characters, representing the cultural richness of Egypt (though some of it about to be lost): the main (autobiographical) character, Yehia, and his family; a Jewish family, with a daughter who loves a communist; a pair of bumbling Egyptian nationalists; an evil rich man and his more decent son; a decadent aristocrat who falls in love with a British soldier he kidnaps; a petty crook - and mobs of people around these, people who keep popping in out of nowhere and taking surprisingly substantial places in the story, all of a sudden.... Chahine tells his stories fast, getting a wealth of incident and plot into a short amount of time, and does it in many registers - melodrama, politics, musical numbers, love scenes, intercut documentary footage, etc. It's a great film, and not the only great film he did.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Kurosawa Blogathon (etc)
Since I jumped the gun by a week, it's probably no surprise to learn how excited I am to see the Kiyoshi Kurosawa blogathon up and running at the Evening Class.
Also, the X-Files blogathon at South Dakota Dark is running another day.
Meanwhile - one of the ongoing threads in online writing about the film world is the continued hand wringing about the fate of critics: Philip Lopate weighs in at Film in Focus.
And another, from Nathaniel Rogers. This article also joins the ongoing debate over the Dark Knight (the "cons" are starting to gain on the "pros", I think), and contributes to a Dangerous Trend - St. John of the Cross Puns!
Also, the X-Files blogathon at South Dakota Dark is running another day.
Meanwhile - one of the ongoing threads in online writing about the film world is the continued hand wringing about the fate of critics: Philip Lopate weighs in at Film in Focus.
And another, from Nathaniel Rogers. This article also joins the ongoing debate over the Dark Knight (the "cons" are starting to gain on the "pros", I think), and contributes to a Dangerous Trend - St. John of the Cross Puns!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Retribution
Today is Kiyoshi Kurosawa's birthday - an excellent excuse to post about him. It helps that I have had Retribution out from Neflix for a while, putting off watching it until I would have the time to do justice to it, maybe even write about it.
This is about Retribution. It’s a ghost story (which kind of spoils it, though not really, since it doesn't waste much time before turning fantastic.) Koji Yakusho plays a cop investigating the murder of a woman, drowned in salt water. He starts finding clues that he was the criminal - he thinks he can’t be, but for some reason he can’t shake the feeling. Then he starts dreaming and seeing ghosts... The story will be familiar to J-horror fans, and Kurosawa fans - vengeful female ghosts, mystical serial killers. It plays a bit like Cure for a while (complete with sinister madhouses), before sliding toward a more conventional J-Horror ghost story - but Kurosawa makes it unmistakably his own, bringing a characteristic intense sadness to his apocalypses. Its a beautiful film, moving, and thrilling to look at.
I want to pull out one stylistic device Kurosawa uses heavily in the film. He has a tendency to film characters in murk or from behind, and bring them into the light, or a clearer shot - as this shot, Yoshioka seen through a plastic screen:
But even when they are not obscured - he very frequently composes shots to put the characters in a darker, more shadowy foreground, with a bright, intrusive light source in the background - usually a door or a window, or something leading out of the space of the shot.
This shot of the police station (repeated a couple times in the film):
Or the first shot of the ferry, again using the dark foreground, bright background:
And almost every shot in Yoshioka’s house has some variation on this. His introduction, being awakened by an earthquake - all fairly shadowy, noirish, but with two bright windows puncturing the background:
A dinner scene, with recessive openings leading to a bright window, almost threatening in the background:
These compositions quickly take on thematic, dramatic force - Kurosawa withholds what they signify at first, but it’s hard to see these shots and not know something isn’t quite what it seems right now.
Harue leaving:
Harue commenting on the neighborhood - full of screening effects, plus the lighting in the background:
All of which pays off in the end. Kurosawa sets up the pattern and carries it through - those background lights keep haunting the shots, as much as the ghosts do. In the madhouse, Yoshioka moves through darkness, with slashes of lights cutting the background, before finding what he was looking for - with a nice visual rhyme to the earlier shots of Harue, as well:
All that, while maintaining the tightrope between uncanny and marvelous, that Kurosawa usually walks. How much of all of this is in Yoshioka’s head?
And how much in the world?
(Or - )
But through it all - Harue's story, while always seeming to be in the background, carries the most weight - and is given the most weight, by Kurosawa's camera (not to mention the last word, which I am not going to include, in a belated and feeble gesture at not "spoiling" anything.) But these shots - one of the couple together, one of the couple parting - seem to me to be the center of the film. Both come before the real plot of the film has been revealed - but they show everything....
Harue in the light:
Harue leaving:
This is about Retribution. It’s a ghost story (which kind of spoils it, though not really, since it doesn't waste much time before turning fantastic.) Koji Yakusho plays a cop investigating the murder of a woman, drowned in salt water. He starts finding clues that he was the criminal - he thinks he can’t be, but for some reason he can’t shake the feeling. Then he starts dreaming and seeing ghosts... The story will be familiar to J-horror fans, and Kurosawa fans - vengeful female ghosts, mystical serial killers. It plays a bit like Cure for a while (complete with sinister madhouses), before sliding toward a more conventional J-Horror ghost story - but Kurosawa makes it unmistakably his own, bringing a characteristic intense sadness to his apocalypses. Its a beautiful film, moving, and thrilling to look at.
I want to pull out one stylistic device Kurosawa uses heavily in the film. He has a tendency to film characters in murk or from behind, and bring them into the light, or a clearer shot - as this shot, Yoshioka seen through a plastic screen:
But even when they are not obscured - he very frequently composes shots to put the characters in a darker, more shadowy foreground, with a bright, intrusive light source in the background - usually a door or a window, or something leading out of the space of the shot.
This shot of the police station (repeated a couple times in the film):
Or the first shot of the ferry, again using the dark foreground, bright background:
And almost every shot in Yoshioka’s house has some variation on this. His introduction, being awakened by an earthquake - all fairly shadowy, noirish, but with two bright windows puncturing the background:
A dinner scene, with recessive openings leading to a bright window, almost threatening in the background:
These compositions quickly take on thematic, dramatic force - Kurosawa withholds what they signify at first, but it’s hard to see these shots and not know something isn’t quite what it seems right now.
Harue leaving:
Harue commenting on the neighborhood - full of screening effects, plus the lighting in the background:
All of which pays off in the end. Kurosawa sets up the pattern and carries it through - those background lights keep haunting the shots, as much as the ghosts do. In the madhouse, Yoshioka moves through darkness, with slashes of lights cutting the background, before finding what he was looking for - with a nice visual rhyme to the earlier shots of Harue, as well:
All that, while maintaining the tightrope between uncanny and marvelous, that Kurosawa usually walks. How much of all of this is in Yoshioka’s head?
And how much in the world?
(Or - )
But through it all - Harue's story, while always seeming to be in the background, carries the most weight - and is given the most weight, by Kurosawa's camera (not to mention the last word, which I am not going to include, in a belated and feeble gesture at not "spoiling" anything.) But these shots - one of the couple together, one of the couple parting - seem to me to be the center of the film. Both come before the real plot of the film has been revealed - but they show everything....
Harue in the light:
Harue leaving:
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Weekly Post
This is getting awful. I am back on my summer schedule, lucky to post once a week... I don't know. I can blame vacations or the heat or watching the Red Sox or playing softball, but who knows...
All right: keep a toe in until I get some energy back.... The Film of the Month Club has moved on to its new film: The Fireman's Ball. I look forward to this - Czech new wave is one of those things I have never really explored - in fact, I don't know if I have explored it at all... This is a perfect excuse. Assuming I can muster the energy to sit down in front of the TV and watch a movie...
There are other blogathons going on, coming, or just concluded - check out the blogathon page to the right. The one I'm itching for is Maya's Kiyoshi Kurosawa blogathon (mentioned down at the bottom of this post) coming on the 19th. That's coming up fast: if Im going to show some life it had better be quick.
The year is halfway through: I should make a list or something... the year so far. Others have. Maybe I should make a list of the films that have played in Boston, possibly for the only time in years - that I was too lazy to go to? Boarding Gate? Chaotic Ana? God - how can I face myself?
The best I have seen? Quite a few of this year's releases made it onto last year's retrospective lists - so this is only since the last list post. 2008 releases, best since May:
1. Edge of Heaven
2. My Winnipeg
3. Chop Shop
4. Up the Yangtze
5. Gonzo: Life and Works of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
6. Speed Racer
7. Operation Filmmaker
8. Monkey Warfare
9. All For Free
10. The Tracey Fragments
Heavy on the documentaries and Canadians, as usual this time of year. I have to write some of these up, if I ever get the energy to sit in front of the computer for a couple hours... Right.
And music? Haven't been buying a lot of stuff, down from usual. But some recent good stuff... new Beck record (Modern Guilt) sounds pretty good, though I just got it... And the Melvins have a new one out - I've been listening to the Melvins a lot lately. Working backwards from Boris, I guess you'd say. New one is called Nude with Boots... And I've been digging up Mark Stewart records when I can - Edit, the new one, is pretty interesting. And Sigur Rus - who in the last couple years have become one of my favorites. Haven't quite gotten into this one yet, but they usually come... Still - overall, I haven't been buying that many records this year: the best all year are probably the Earth record (Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull) - with Bill Frisell! and the latest Nick Cave (Dig, Lazarus, Dig!)
All this of course is an excuse to post a video - easy material! Let's use live Earth - Engine of Ruin. Another beautiful song...
All right: keep a toe in until I get some energy back.... The Film of the Month Club has moved on to its new film: The Fireman's Ball. I look forward to this - Czech new wave is one of those things I have never really explored - in fact, I don't know if I have explored it at all... This is a perfect excuse. Assuming I can muster the energy to sit down in front of the TV and watch a movie...
There are other blogathons going on, coming, or just concluded - check out the blogathon page to the right. The one I'm itching for is Maya's Kiyoshi Kurosawa blogathon (mentioned down at the bottom of this post) coming on the 19th. That's coming up fast: if Im going to show some life it had better be quick.
The year is halfway through: I should make a list or something... the year so far. Others have. Maybe I should make a list of the films that have played in Boston, possibly for the only time in years - that I was too lazy to go to? Boarding Gate? Chaotic Ana? God - how can I face myself?
The best I have seen? Quite a few of this year's releases made it onto last year's retrospective lists - so this is only since the last list post. 2008 releases, best since May:
1. Edge of Heaven
2. My Winnipeg
3. Chop Shop
4. Up the Yangtze
5. Gonzo: Life and Works of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
6. Speed Racer
7. Operation Filmmaker
8. Monkey Warfare
9. All For Free
10. The Tracey Fragments
Heavy on the documentaries and Canadians, as usual this time of year. I have to write some of these up, if I ever get the energy to sit in front of the computer for a couple hours... Right.
And music? Haven't been buying a lot of stuff, down from usual. But some recent good stuff... new Beck record (Modern Guilt) sounds pretty good, though I just got it... And the Melvins have a new one out - I've been listening to the Melvins a lot lately. Working backwards from Boris, I guess you'd say. New one is called Nude with Boots... And I've been digging up Mark Stewart records when I can - Edit, the new one, is pretty interesting. And Sigur Rus - who in the last couple years have become one of my favorites. Haven't quite gotten into this one yet, but they usually come... Still - overall, I haven't been buying that many records this year: the best all year are probably the Earth record (Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull) - with Bill Frisell! and the latest Nick Cave (Dig, Lazarus, Dig!)
All this of course is an excuse to post a video - easy material! Let's use live Earth - Engine of Ruin. Another beautiful song...
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Summertime Links
Yes, it's high summer, with its holidays and vacations and heat and softball games (and attendant aches and pains, for I have become old), and so there's not much blogging being done here. There's plenty going on elsewhere though - so here are some links:
First - a couple blogathons: Culture Snob's Self-involvement blogathon starts today. I quote: "Most film writing is movies filtered through the self; I want the self filtered through movies.”
At the Valve, John Holbo is hosting discussions on Douglas Wolk's book, Reading Comics. A first day round up here.
And though it was scheduled to finish on July 3, there are still posts coming in related to the New York films blogathon at 12 Grand in Checking. This one, for example, from the Self-Styled Siren.
Meanwhile: the midyear roundups are starting to appear - multiparter at Fin de Cinema, starting here. And Larry Aydlette sketches the first half of the year in several media. I may join that party one of these days...
And - another obituary: Bruce Conner has died. GreenCine, Ray Pride round up links and notes.
First - a couple blogathons: Culture Snob's Self-involvement blogathon starts today. I quote: "Most film writing is movies filtered through the self; I want the self filtered through movies.”
At the Valve, John Holbo is hosting discussions on Douglas Wolk's book, Reading Comics. A first day round up here.
And though it was scheduled to finish on July 3, there are still posts coming in related to the New York films blogathon at 12 Grand in Checking. This one, for example, from the Self-Styled Siren.
Meanwhile: the midyear roundups are starting to appear - multiparter at Fin de Cinema, starting here. And Larry Aydlette sketches the first half of the year in several media. I may join that party one of these days...
And - another obituary: Bruce Conner has died. GreenCine, Ray Pride round up links and notes.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Friday, July 04, 2008
Happy Independence Day
It's summer vacation time, so, you can see the rate of posting... but I can pop in long enough to note the passing of someone who did more than his share to piss on the legacy of this holiday - Jesse Helms. Don't speak ill of the dead, yeah yeah yeah... easier said than done - he worked to make the country a worse place for decades. What am I supposed to say? People like Helms should not be part of our public life. Just being reminded that he was alive is a downer...
Anyway, to help you cheer up - let's let Galaxie 500 get the last word - happy fourth of July!
Anyway, to help you cheer up - let's let Galaxie 500 get the last word - happy fourth of July!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Miscellany
I wish to apologize for the last post. I don't know what could have happened there. Some strange disturbance in the universe. Who can explain? In expatiation - this month's Wire cover boy - Mark Stewart, in Pop Group, doing Boys from Brazil...
Anyway - with Piper's folly out of the way, there's not much time to start on the next blogathon I know about - New York in the movies - starts Sunday, runs all week. A subject I need to work something up for....
As for the regular blogosphere - another interesting conversation, about received ideas about films and filmmakers, over at Girish's place. Lots of conversations going on about Entertainment Weekly's new classics, and the AFI's latest list show - but I might as well link to the other blog I'm on - another excuse to post counter lists, always welcome.
And the Film of the Month club is continuing - discussion of DeMlle's 1915, The Golden Chance. It took forever for the damned thing to arrive from Netflix, but it finally did, and I'm looking forward to jumping in. A very eat film, too, if you can get it...
And - another music video, another bit of penance for the last post...
Hell - Bobby Darin, too: this might atone for My Humps...
Anyway - with Piper's folly out of the way, there's not much time to start on the next blogathon I know about - New York in the movies - starts Sunday, runs all week. A subject I need to work something up for....
As for the regular blogosphere - another interesting conversation, about received ideas about films and filmmakers, over at Girish's place. Lots of conversations going on about Entertainment Weekly's new classics, and the AFI's latest list show - but I might as well link to the other blog I'm on - another excuse to post counter lists, always welcome.
And the Film of the Month club is continuing - discussion of DeMlle's 1915, The Golden Chance. It took forever for the damned thing to arrive from Netflix, but it finally did, and I'm looking forward to jumping in. A very eat film, too, if you can get it...
And - another music video, another bit of penance for the last post...
Hell - Bobby Darin, too: this might atone for My Humps...
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
5 Musical Geniuses!
I don't have much to say - some quick links: Bizarro Days are upon us again, chez Piper. Great fun! Hijinks galore! I wish I could contribute, but I can never come up with anything appropriate for this kind of spoofery - so I'l leave it to the witty people. And - let's face facts: there are times - haven't we all felt? - when the endless irony and meta-meta-meta-metaness of the internet becomes so depressing - does anyone really need another snarky wiseass pretending to love Jean-Claude Van Damme in order to mock Jean Claude Van Damme? Pretending to pretend to hate Citizen Kane to prove they really love Citizen Kane so snobs won't laugh at them? No, that won't be me. Sincerity is my middle name.
So since I don't have any actual content, I think I will have recourse to that old standby, the Music Post. How about a list? Five Great Songs!
1. Creed - My Own Prison: who doesn't love Creed? speaking of sincerity - truly, has ever a pop star exuded more sincerity than Scott Stapp? Look at that hair! His hair alone is a higher being! Look at him grasp the microphone stand! what a man! what a star! he's created his own prison, you know. Irony is a prison! satire is a prison! snark is a prison! No more snark! Think back to the wonderful days of the late 90s when this might be heard on any radio station in the land! Ah - just thinking about how much we all miss Scott Stapp's hair makes me want to run to a Denny's for a grand slam.
2. Jewel - Foolish Games: better than Joni Mitchell, you know! and from one of the Great films of the 90s - so let us enjoy this fine piece of crooning, and not engage in the "foolish games" of making fun of such a talented artist. Or this high tech and oh so artistic video... these foolish games are tearing her apart!
3. Air Supply - I'm all Out of Love: sadly, embedding has been disabled on this fine piece - taking me back to my youth - many happy hours spent spinning the radio dial trying to find a station that wasn't playing this. Was - was playing this.... what are you thinking of?
4. For some things - words simply can't ...
5. I don't know what this fine song from those toweringly talented nu-metal geniuses, Linkin Park, is called - but I know, it's a worthy addition to this list: words are failing me again... god bless pro tools!
I think I may have caused myself permanent brain damage writing this post. Damn you Bizarro Piper!
So since I don't have any actual content, I think I will have recourse to that old standby, the Music Post. How about a list? Five Great Songs!
1. Creed - My Own Prison: who doesn't love Creed? speaking of sincerity - truly, has ever a pop star exuded more sincerity than Scott Stapp? Look at that hair! His hair alone is a higher being! Look at him grasp the microphone stand! what a man! what a star! he's created his own prison, you know. Irony is a prison! satire is a prison! snark is a prison! No more snark! Think back to the wonderful days of the late 90s when this might be heard on any radio station in the land! Ah - just thinking about how much we all miss Scott Stapp's hair makes me want to run to a Denny's for a grand slam.
2. Jewel - Foolish Games: better than Joni Mitchell, you know! and from one of the Great films of the 90s - so let us enjoy this fine piece of crooning, and not engage in the "foolish games" of making fun of such a talented artist. Or this high tech and oh so artistic video... these foolish games are tearing her apart!
3. Air Supply - I'm all Out of Love: sadly, embedding has been disabled on this fine piece - taking me back to my youth - many happy hours spent spinning the radio dial trying to find a station that wasn't playing this. Was - was playing this.... what are you thinking of?
4. For some things - words simply can't ...
5. I don't know what this fine song from those toweringly talented nu-metal geniuses, Linkin Park, is called - but I know, it's a worthy addition to this list: words are failing me again... god bless pro tools!
I think I may have caused myself permanent brain damage writing this post. Damn you Bizarro Piper!
Monday, June 23, 2008
George Carlin
I wish this is just a Bizarro Blogathon hoax, but I'm afraid it isn't: George Carlin has died. His records were a fixture in my college days - we'd listen to them as much as music... I still think of them, probably because he had something funny to say about almost anthing people do. I've been through the MFA's (quite marvelous) Antonio Lopez Garcia show a couple times, and every time, come to this and start doing Carlin's ice-box man routine. It's Meatcake! (Audio version here, at the 5:34 point.)
So farewell and thanks, Mr. Carlin.
So farewell and thanks, Mr. Carlin.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Thanks Kevin(s)!
I should come in here to say something about the Celtics' rousing championship - it was dpne in fine fashion: they dominated from the beginning of the season, and outside of a few unduly interesting playoff games, never really let up. (And the playoffs - the first series, Atlanta ran them out of the building in Georgia, and the C's seemed pretty wound up throughout the series; then they had to play Cleveland, which may not have the best talent in the game, but they play hard, and they have the best player in the world. Anyone who wants to try to claim it's Kobe Bryant - compare his elimination game - 22 points, 3 rebounds, assist) to LeBron's - 45, 5 and 6... Kobe's got skills, but LeBron elevates his team.)
Anyway - Pierce was immense, and everyone else contributed (like the sox have done in their world series' wins - everybody seems to end up with a moment or two) - though it's hard to deny that it all comes down to Kevin Garnett. He certainly got off the best lines after the game - quoting Jimmy Cagney (not Titanic - he got the "made it ma!" in there too) - then that exchange with Bill Russell: "I hope we made you proud." I'd say they did - at some level, this team should annoy me - I don't like buying championships, I don't like teams built for the short term - but one of the things that marked this team was that they never quite played like that. Maybe in the Atlanta series... but most of the year, they have played like they have been together for years - or just added one part. They played as a unit, they played defense, they were tough, they kept their heads (except for the Atlanta series) - they were admirable all year.
Finally - thanks has to go to Kevin McHale as well - he should get credit for his 4th Celtics championship, because he certainly gifted us. He bailed out Danny Ainge whose track record until he made that trade was perfectly awful. And much as I have hated Danny Ainge (and Doc Rivers) through the years - it's as if getting Garnett made them smarter. Ainge signed the right players - Posey and House; Brown and Cassell later; Rivers kept the whole roster involved, and able to perform on short notice, while keeping the stars focused and active. You can almost forget that Danny Ainge traded Brandon Roy for Sebastian Telfair (more or less) just a year before. Let's hope it lasts: they ought to have another year or two of contention with this group - if they don't want to relive the 90s, they will have to find some kids to replace them. They'll have to take advantage of what time they have - you can see 4 or 5 teams in the east coming fast - Orlando, Atlanta, maybe Toronto - and sooner or later Cleveland's going to get someone worthy of LeBron, and he'll take a couple rings... But for now - it's a fine thing.
Anyway - Pierce was immense, and everyone else contributed (like the sox have done in their world series' wins - everybody seems to end up with a moment or two) - though it's hard to deny that it all comes down to Kevin Garnett. He certainly got off the best lines after the game - quoting Jimmy Cagney (not Titanic - he got the "made it ma!" in there too) - then that exchange with Bill Russell: "I hope we made you proud." I'd say they did - at some level, this team should annoy me - I don't like buying championships, I don't like teams built for the short term - but one of the things that marked this team was that they never quite played like that. Maybe in the Atlanta series... but most of the year, they have played like they have been together for years - or just added one part. They played as a unit, they played defense, they were tough, they kept their heads (except for the Atlanta series) - they were admirable all year.
Finally - thanks has to go to Kevin McHale as well - he should get credit for his 4th Celtics championship, because he certainly gifted us. He bailed out Danny Ainge whose track record until he made that trade was perfectly awful. And much as I have hated Danny Ainge (and Doc Rivers) through the years - it's as if getting Garnett made them smarter. Ainge signed the right players - Posey and House; Brown and Cassell later; Rivers kept the whole roster involved, and able to perform on short notice, while keeping the stars focused and active. You can almost forget that Danny Ainge traded Brandon Roy for Sebastian Telfair (more or less) just a year before. Let's hope it lasts: they ought to have another year or two of contention with this group - if they don't want to relive the 90s, they will have to find some kids to replace them. They'll have to take advantage of what time they have - you can see 4 or 5 teams in the east coming fast - Orlando, Atlanta, maybe Toronto - and sooner or later Cleveland's going to get someone worthy of LeBron, and he'll take a couple rings... But for now - it's a fine thing.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Honor thy Father and Mother
I can't quite justify this as a father's day, Dads in Media post - it's more of an honor thy father and mother post. Or - a fortuitous opportunity to revisit one of the questions in SLIFR's Memorial Day Quiz: #32: "Name a favorite film and describe how it is illuminated and enriched by another favorite film." I had the chance to see Leo McCarey's Make Way For Tomorrow, and that inspired me to return to an all time favorite, Tokyo Story. The former is often suggested as a direct source for the latter - believable enough. This is not a finished essay - these are notes, comparing them, to draw out some of the specific concerns of each. If it matters - I won't pretend to avoid spoilers; after 50 and 70 years, I hope that's not too much a concern.
1) Seeing them together, it's notable that McCarey's film is a good deal harsher than Ozu's. Make Way for Tomorrow is one of the saddest movies ever made, and the story is quite a bit darker. The old couple in MWFT are forced out of their home - they have nowhere to go, they have to rely on their children. In Tokyo Story, the old couple is just visiting. They have a home to go back to - they are still independent. Not only that - in McCarey's film, the couple is separated - the film is about their forced separation. Not so much in Ozu - when they do separate, it's only for a night,and it's voluntary. (Though this obviously changes at the end of the film - though more later.) The tone is lighter too in the Ozu -and there are decent people - Noriko (Setsuko Hara's character) notably; Kyoko, the youngest daughter, also comes off pretty well. None of the kids redeems themselves in MWFT - strangers,and a shop keeper, treat the old couple well, do them a good turn or two, but the kids all fail.
2) On the other hand - Ozu is more complex and detailed in showing the social relationships in the family. Not only are some of the (extended) family members quite nice, but we see the problems between the old couple. McCarey presents them as happy together - deeply in love - never having any real doubts about one another, despite their failures. Ozu, however, shows a happy old couple that has not always been happy. The father used to be a drunkard, and probably abusive - indeed, the difference between his behavior when he drank and when he didn't might influence the way his children react to him. Shige and Koichi knew him when he was a mean drunk - he stopped drinking when Kyoko was born, and Noriko only knew him after she married Shoichi. In any case - in Ozus film, this is a couple who have hurt each other in the past, have hiurt their children - just as their children are hurting them now. If there is anything like that involved in the McCarey family, it's not in the film.
3) Tokyo Story is more socially and economically detailed. That isn't t say that money and class and all that aren't significant in the cCarey film - they are - but that Ozu digs into it deeper. I think this is a fairly important point - Ozu is usually not treated being particularly socially relevant, yet throughout his career he deals with the social and economic world with good deal of care. Tokyo Story contains a precise set of observations and analysis of the world - he addresses money and class in remarkably subtle and intelligent way. He's more subtle than McCarey - McCarey makes explicit points: about unemployment and foreclosure; about Anita giving bridge classes to maintain a certain standard of living (which is not enough to add another member tot he household - though that's because they are selfish) - as well as jokes, like the idea of old people having millions stashed away. But he doesn't really link it to the outside world. The links are obvious, in 1937 - they don't have to be spelled out... But Ozu, also not spelling things out, does weave the various strands together. The parent's expectations vs. the kids' lack of success; their stinginess, especially compared to Noriko's generosity and very noticeable poverty; the links between the conditions all of them live in and the conditions in Japan, 1953 - a period when Japan began to bounce back from the war, but did so very unevenly. Money was being made, but it wasn't being spread around very well. Those issues probably come out more clearly in Naruse's films, or Ichikawa's, or Kurosawa's contemporary films, but Ozu does a fine job of showing the contradiction. Here the contradictions are implied - in Good Morning, say, the contradictions - the expectations that people should live a certain way compared to the difficulty most people have living up to those expectations - are much clearer. But still - here, the war, the boom, the need to work to survive and get ahead, the ways people work - the social issues involved in what people do (shops in the home and so on) are all implied.
4) A point about awareness. It is interesting that McCarey gives the old couple a chance to take a shot at the kids - when they decide to ditch dinner with the kids, Bark tells Nelly what he thinks of them. The message gets through - they talk about it. It is interesting though that we don’t get to hear it. Compare this to Tokyo Story - where no one tells Shige and Keizo what they think of them - indeed, Noriko and the father remain solicitous to the end. But - Shichiki and Tome do discuss it, as do the three drunkards. (This is similar to Bark and Max talking.) And more importantly, perhaps - after the funeral, Kyoko lights into the rest of them. We hear it - but they don’t. In MWFT - they hear it - we don't. One thing both films have is the middle generation indulging in self-pity and guilt: oh, how awful we are! The end of the McCarey film does this rather neatly - the four of them sit around and say they knew what bastards they were, though it only hurts when Dad says it. And they go on - we really are monsters - but none of them does anything to stop it. None of them is going to raise a finger to change the way things are. They wallow in their misery, they let their self-recrimination take the place of any decent behavior. This is more pointed than the similar scenes in the Ozu film - but it’s there too. Shige wails about mom’s death; Keizo says what a bad son he was (Shige does too, of course) - neither of them lets it do more than fill them with the delight of self-pity.
5) Finally - going back to the first point. MWFT is, ultimately, about separation - the story is almost as much a variation on Love Affair, with it's tragically parted lovers (after an idyllic interlude), as about the generation canyon. It is also about the old couple's helplessness and dependency on their children, where Ozu’s is about the failures of the kids merely to be good enough. Circumstances do not force the couple apart - they have a home to return to. But as if in compensation for this - Tome dies. It's odd - this may be more final than the ending of MWFT, but it does not seem quite as dark. They stay together to the end, after all - though more, McCarey’s ending focuses on the human choices being made. The couple is not parted by anything absolute - they are parted by the selfishness of their children. They suffer directly through the meanness of their children. Ozu’s couple parts by death - something outside the range of human agency.
It's a different dynamic. Ozu is, in the end, less devastating than the McCarey film. Everything is more ambivalent, and the ambivalence is more explicit, closer to the surface - the fact that some of the younger people are nice, the lack of direct complicity by the children in the suffering of their parents, the more complicated relationship between the old people and so on. McCarey focuses the melodrama, the anguish - both by emphasizing the doomed love aspect of the story, and the responsibility the children bear for it. Ozu diffuses it - makes the film about life itself. Allows more time for the other failures of the kids - their mediocrity (present in McCarey, but somewhat underplayed - though interestingly, he plays it up in Bark’s case: he’s shown as a genial mediocrity himself), the broader generational themes, the connection of the generational issues to the specific circumstances of their lives. There is more a sense of flow in Ozu - which is typical of his work.
Indeed - it’s what marks him out: nothing ends in Ozu. I think this also connects him more to Capra than McCarey (a controversial statement I know...) McCarey’s films end - fairly definitively, even if the ending is a beginning (as it is in The Awful Truth.) Capra’s end, but they end on patently artificial notes. It's as though Capra were telling us: this is where we are going to stop; everyone is happy everything has worked out for these nice people. But if you have been watching this film, you know that every time things work out, something new comes along - don't be fooled into thinking this is different, just cause I'm ringing a lot of bells on the soundtrack.
Ozu dispenses almost entirely with the happy endings - indeed, with anything that could really count as an ending. The films end - definitively, but that's because he establishes himself as their maker so forcefully - he ends them formally - as here, with echoes of the opening of the film... But the story - the worlds - the things happening to the people in the film, are usually well on the way by the time he reaches the end of the film. This effect - of continuation, of constant change - is usually reinforced by the fact that soething in the story we have been told almost always foretells the things that will happen next. Even in as devastatingly sad a film as Late Spring - we have been told about the father's marriage, which started badly, was loveless and sad - but turned into something else - became happy. This film (Late Spring), crushing us with the separation of two people who love each other - already contains within it an image of the rest of their lives, where this pain will give way to something else. (A new set of pains, when the daughter has to marry off her children? Late Autumn?)
1) Seeing them together, it's notable that McCarey's film is a good deal harsher than Ozu's. Make Way for Tomorrow is one of the saddest movies ever made, and the story is quite a bit darker. The old couple in MWFT are forced out of their home - they have nowhere to go, they have to rely on their children. In Tokyo Story, the old couple is just visiting. They have a home to go back to - they are still independent. Not only that - in McCarey's film, the couple is separated - the film is about their forced separation. Not so much in Ozu - when they do separate, it's only for a night,and it's voluntary. (Though this obviously changes at the end of the film - though more later.) The tone is lighter too in the Ozu -and there are decent people - Noriko (Setsuko Hara's character) notably; Kyoko, the youngest daughter, also comes off pretty well. None of the kids redeems themselves in MWFT - strangers,and a shop keeper, treat the old couple well, do them a good turn or two, but the kids all fail.
2) On the other hand - Ozu is more complex and detailed in showing the social relationships in the family. Not only are some of the (extended) family members quite nice, but we see the problems between the old couple. McCarey presents them as happy together - deeply in love - never having any real doubts about one another, despite their failures. Ozu, however, shows a happy old couple that has not always been happy. The father used to be a drunkard, and probably abusive - indeed, the difference between his behavior when he drank and when he didn't might influence the way his children react to him. Shige and Koichi knew him when he was a mean drunk - he stopped drinking when Kyoko was born, and Noriko only knew him after she married Shoichi. In any case - in Ozus film, this is a couple who have hurt each other in the past, have hiurt their children - just as their children are hurting them now. If there is anything like that involved in the McCarey family, it's not in the film.
3) Tokyo Story is more socially and economically detailed. That isn't t say that money and class and all that aren't significant in the cCarey film - they are - but that Ozu digs into it deeper. I think this is a fairly important point - Ozu is usually not treated being particularly socially relevant, yet throughout his career he deals with the social and economic world with good deal of care. Tokyo Story contains a precise set of observations and analysis of the world - he addresses money and class in remarkably subtle and intelligent way. He's more subtle than McCarey - McCarey makes explicit points: about unemployment and foreclosure; about Anita giving bridge classes to maintain a certain standard of living (which is not enough to add another member tot he household - though that's because they are selfish) - as well as jokes, like the idea of old people having millions stashed away. But he doesn't really link it to the outside world. The links are obvious, in 1937 - they don't have to be spelled out... But Ozu, also not spelling things out, does weave the various strands together. The parent's expectations vs. the kids' lack of success; their stinginess, especially compared to Noriko's generosity and very noticeable poverty; the links between the conditions all of them live in and the conditions in Japan, 1953 - a period when Japan began to bounce back from the war, but did so very unevenly. Money was being made, but it wasn't being spread around very well. Those issues probably come out more clearly in Naruse's films, or Ichikawa's, or Kurosawa's contemporary films, but Ozu does a fine job of showing the contradiction. Here the contradictions are implied - in Good Morning, say, the contradictions - the expectations that people should live a certain way compared to the difficulty most people have living up to those expectations - are much clearer. But still - here, the war, the boom, the need to work to survive and get ahead, the ways people work - the social issues involved in what people do (shops in the home and so on) are all implied.
4) A point about awareness. It is interesting that McCarey gives the old couple a chance to take a shot at the kids - when they decide to ditch dinner with the kids, Bark tells Nelly what he thinks of them. The message gets through - they talk about it. It is interesting though that we don’t get to hear it. Compare this to Tokyo Story - where no one tells Shige and Keizo what they think of them - indeed, Noriko and the father remain solicitous to the end. But - Shichiki and Tome do discuss it, as do the three drunkards. (This is similar to Bark and Max talking.) And more importantly, perhaps - after the funeral, Kyoko lights into the rest of them. We hear it - but they don’t. In MWFT - they hear it - we don't. One thing both films have is the middle generation indulging in self-pity and guilt: oh, how awful we are! The end of the McCarey film does this rather neatly - the four of them sit around and say they knew what bastards they were, though it only hurts when Dad says it. And they go on - we really are monsters - but none of them does anything to stop it. None of them is going to raise a finger to change the way things are. They wallow in their misery, they let their self-recrimination take the place of any decent behavior. This is more pointed than the similar scenes in the Ozu film - but it’s there too. Shige wails about mom’s death; Keizo says what a bad son he was (Shige does too, of course) - neither of them lets it do more than fill them with the delight of self-pity.
5) Finally - going back to the first point. MWFT is, ultimately, about separation - the story is almost as much a variation on Love Affair, with it's tragically parted lovers (after an idyllic interlude), as about the generation canyon. It is also about the old couple's helplessness and dependency on their children, where Ozu’s is about the failures of the kids merely to be good enough. Circumstances do not force the couple apart - they have a home to return to. But as if in compensation for this - Tome dies. It's odd - this may be more final than the ending of MWFT, but it does not seem quite as dark. They stay together to the end, after all - though more, McCarey’s ending focuses on the human choices being made. The couple is not parted by anything absolute - they are parted by the selfishness of their children. They suffer directly through the meanness of their children. Ozu’s couple parts by death - something outside the range of human agency.
It's a different dynamic. Ozu is, in the end, less devastating than the McCarey film. Everything is more ambivalent, and the ambivalence is more explicit, closer to the surface - the fact that some of the younger people are nice, the lack of direct complicity by the children in the suffering of their parents, the more complicated relationship between the old people and so on. McCarey focuses the melodrama, the anguish - both by emphasizing the doomed love aspect of the story, and the responsibility the children bear for it. Ozu diffuses it - makes the film about life itself. Allows more time for the other failures of the kids - their mediocrity (present in McCarey, but somewhat underplayed - though interestingly, he plays it up in Bark’s case: he’s shown as a genial mediocrity himself), the broader generational themes, the connection of the generational issues to the specific circumstances of their lives. There is more a sense of flow in Ozu - which is typical of his work.
Indeed - it’s what marks him out: nothing ends in Ozu. I think this also connects him more to Capra than McCarey (a controversial statement I know...) McCarey’s films end - fairly definitively, even if the ending is a beginning (as it is in The Awful Truth.) Capra’s end, but they end on patently artificial notes. It's as though Capra were telling us: this is where we are going to stop; everyone is happy everything has worked out for these nice people. But if you have been watching this film, you know that every time things work out, something new comes along - don't be fooled into thinking this is different, just cause I'm ringing a lot of bells on the soundtrack.
Ozu dispenses almost entirely with the happy endings - indeed, with anything that could really count as an ending. The films end - definitively, but that's because he establishes himself as their maker so forcefully - he ends them formally - as here, with echoes of the opening of the film... But the story - the worlds - the things happening to the people in the film, are usually well on the way by the time he reaches the end of the film. This effect - of continuation, of constant change - is usually reinforced by the fact that soething in the story we have been told almost always foretells the things that will happen next. Even in as devastatingly sad a film as Late Spring - we have been told about the father's marriage, which started badly, was loveless and sad - but turned into something else - became happy. This film (Late Spring), crushing us with the separation of two people who love each other - already contains within it an image of the rest of their lives, where this pain will give way to something else. (A new set of pains, when the daughter has to marry off her children? Late Autumn?)
Friday, June 13, 2008
Quick Hits on Friday
Lots going on, on the blogs:
For father's day, the Dads in Media Blogathon is up and running, at Strange Culture. Good stuff to be had.
The second month of the Film of the Month Club is underway. Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 film, The Golden Chance is on the menu for June - plenty of good stuff should be forthcoming over the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, outside blogs and movies, Tim Russert has died. I don't know what to say, other than extending condolences to his family. He's one of those public figures I read about every day, more or less, but might well not have been able to identify from a photograph. Teevision news is not something I take very seriously.
On happier news - I haven't done much blogging about the Celtics, and - strangely enough, have barely watched them since February (a habit I developed in their lean years that seems to have come back this year; I suspect the real answer is - once the baseball games start, basketball is just a distraction.) But they are one game away from a championship. Defense wins, especially if you can score too, and the Lakers do not seem to have the defense they need.... Though 1 game isn't a given at that level: ask the Indians.
And in the real world:
They were shooting a movie last week, on Mass Ave. Pedro Costa is right - shooting a movie is like an invasion: trucks up and down the road, wires everywhere traffic diverted.... This is the tail end, breaking down - still junk everywhere. I don't know what film they were shooting, but I doubt it will be very good. There's something creepy about shooting on location and turning the location into a sound stage - with all that crap, what else can they do? You move away from the artifice of the studio, but then recreate it on the street? Gah...
And, sort of finally - treated myself to a concert last night - Damon and Naomi at TT The Bears, with Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh opening. A fine time was had! I tested my camera - I'm curious about how it works in bad light: some digital cameras work very well - this one, I'm afraid, does not. At least, I haven't found the right setting. This is about as good as they get:
Though this one, of Espvall, gotten by monkeying around with the settings in the dark, looks very cool:
Anyway - enjoy the weekend, and I hope I make it back here with a father's day post before the weekend is out...
For father's day, the Dads in Media Blogathon is up and running, at Strange Culture. Good stuff to be had.
The second month of the Film of the Month Club is underway. Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 film, The Golden Chance is on the menu for June - plenty of good stuff should be forthcoming over the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, outside blogs and movies, Tim Russert has died. I don't know what to say, other than extending condolences to his family. He's one of those public figures I read about every day, more or less, but might well not have been able to identify from a photograph. Teevision news is not something I take very seriously.
On happier news - I haven't done much blogging about the Celtics, and - strangely enough, have barely watched them since February (a habit I developed in their lean years that seems to have come back this year; I suspect the real answer is - once the baseball games start, basketball is just a distraction.) But they are one game away from a championship. Defense wins, especially if you can score too, and the Lakers do not seem to have the defense they need.... Though 1 game isn't a given at that level: ask the Indians.
And in the real world:
They were shooting a movie last week, on Mass Ave. Pedro Costa is right - shooting a movie is like an invasion: trucks up and down the road, wires everywhere traffic diverted.... This is the tail end, breaking down - still junk everywhere. I don't know what film they were shooting, but I doubt it will be very good. There's something creepy about shooting on location and turning the location into a sound stage - with all that crap, what else can they do? You move away from the artifice of the studio, but then recreate it on the street? Gah...
And, sort of finally - treated myself to a concert last night - Damon and Naomi at TT The Bears, with Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh opening. A fine time was had! I tested my camera - I'm curious about how it works in bad light: some digital cameras work very well - this one, I'm afraid, does not. At least, I haven't found the right setting. This is about as good as they get:
Though this one, of Espvall, gotten by monkeying around with the settings in the dark, looks very cool:
Anyway - enjoy the weekend, and I hope I make it back here with a father's day post before the weekend is out...
Monday, June 09, 2008
Homework - 3 Weeks Late
Once again, from Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule - pop quiz! More like a freakin' final exam - that I'm weeks late on... It has gotten a bit ridiculous. It's time to post. Though even now, I'm probably going to have to skip a couple of the questions - the best ones, probably. Though I should maybe make a virtue of it - pin em on the wall, and when I have a good answer for them, it'll be another post! hooray! Anyway - with no further ado, because if I'm not careful, it'll be fourth of July already:
UPDATED (7/9): Dennis has posted selected answers: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3. A good way to kill a morning or two... I've also added links to my "promised" makeup work.
1) Best transition from movies to TV (actor, actress, producer/director, movie/show)
- This isn't easy - I don't watch much TV anymore - what I've seen in the last 20 years I've caught up with after the fact... since it should be someone I've actually seen - I'm tempted to say Fred MacMurray - a fine film career, and then a big TV career - though he's bland on TV. William Demerast then? though I'm tempted to go to something more basic - Edward Everett Horton, whose voice is utterly engrained in my head...
2) Living film director you most missing seeing on the cultural landscape regularly
- Not easy - one way to answer would be to lament the unavailability of films by people like Tsui Hark, Peter Chan, Zhang Yuan... but another - a director gone missing - Whit Stillman? I miss Alan Rudolph, too...
3) Eugene Pallette or Charles Coburn
- Coburn is probably a better actor, but Pallette is in too many films near and dear to my heart. And - he is a wonderful presence n all of them.
4) Fill in the blank: “I pray that no one ever turns _____________ into a movie.”
- Hard to say - maybe Calvin and Hobbes? though I suppose the right people could do it - right now though, I suspect it would end up looking like Garfield or something...
5) Jane Greer or Veronica Lake
- Gotta say Veronica Lake
6) What was the last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD? And why?
- This keeps changing, as I keep putting off posting it. The last couple weeks have been very rich: from Love Eterne (Shaw Brothers, Chinese opera, the first full blown opera film I have ever seen), to 14 Amazons (Shaw Brothers again, 14 Amazons plus Lilly Ko as the son of the family... to The Awful Truth - the HFA has been very good to me lately.
- DVD? - would be Modesty Blaise. Why? David Cairns. (And what I said about the HFA? It's not on their web site yet, but in July - the HFA is promising "The Complete Joseph Losey"....)
7) Name an actor you think should be a star
- I suppose one answer is that I think Louis Garrel will cross the Atlantic in a couple years, to be the French Gael Garcia Bernal; in this land - is Paul Dano a star yet?
8) Foxy Brown or Coffy
- No idea - Coffy I think, but I'm not sure. Haven't seen either one anywhere but on TV.
9) Favorite TV show still without its own DVD box set
- I don't know - I don't pay close enough attention to DVD releases to know what it and isn't available. Though I know that Max Headroom is not available, and that's one of the great shows of the 80s...
10) Jack Elam or Neville Brand
- not much hope here... I'll say Jack Elam, for no particular reason
11) What movies would top your list of movies you need to revisit, for whatever reason?
- Among older films - Kurosawa's The Idiot, which I saw on VHS many years back and didn't get much out of... Dreyer's Joan of Arc, just because it's been too long since I've seen it.... Rio Bravo, ditto.... more recently: The Ice Storm comes to mind... I need to rewatch some Cronenberg's - I might like them better. There are filmmakers I've seen once and want to see again - Olmi, Ichikawa, etc... And - RC reminds me - a couple Coen Brothers films - actually, about half of them, but especially The Man Who Wasn't There...
12) Zodiac or All the President’s Men
- Zodiac - for the way it looks, I think, though there's nothing wrong with how ATPM looks or Zodiac's story...
13) Using our best reviewer-speak, what is an “important” film comedy? And what is to you the most important film comedy of the last 35 years?
- "Important" is always trouble - I don't think I can answer that in any context... Rushmore is the best, for many many reasons - but important? setting Bill Murray on his latter day career path is a good reason - though that if so, maybe the answer should be Groundhog Day... I suppose another way to go might be to say, Evil Dead: besides giving Sam Raimi his career, it ushered in a kind of horror/comedy hybrid... etc. I don't know. I might come up with a better answer later - this is one I plan to hold on to and answer at length if I come up with something good.
14) Describe the ideal environment for watching a movie.
- Any good theater, really - with good seats, plenty of room to prop up the feet without poking anyone in the back - no one in front of you or behind you, but a decent crowd in the building, enough to react to things that need reactions. Clear view of the screen, no talkers, no one coming and going during the film, good screen good projection, good sound - it's not that unusual, really. I see a fair number of films that make the grade pretty well any given year - month, even. Those nice clean Shaw Brothers prints, a modest but enthusiastic crowd - what more could you ask, except maybe better seats...
15) Michelle Williams or Eva Mendes
- Williams sounds right. Sometimes, she seems in danger of turning into Renee Zellweger, but it hasn't happened yet.
16) What’s the worst movie title of all time?
- If translation counts - can anything beat Tough Beauty and the Sloppy Slop? In English - Lucky Number Slevin? I Heart Huckabees? Dumb and Dumberer? Ithere are probably worse,but that's enough to think about for now...
17) Best movie about teaching and/or learning
***- This is too good a question: I don't have a great answer - but I like the question too much to let go. It's kept me from posting these two weeks or so. I have to give up. I will cheat: Drunken Master! I'll say - or 36th Chamber of Shaolin. But I will keep this question around to answer when I have a good one.
18) Dracula (1931) or Horror of Dracula (1958)
- Dracula, easy
19) Why do you blog? Or if you don’t, why do you read blogs? (Thanks, Girish)
- I like the give and take, I like the conversations, and blogging is how people interact online these days. I have been playing around online for 15 odd years - Prodigy to AOL to message boards and Usenet, now blogging - it's what people do. I do think blogging is one of the best ways to have this conversation about film - it's flexible, easy to do, easily integrated into the broader community, allows you to do anything with it. I certainly hope it isn't replaced by crappy systems like Facebook or MySpace - those things give e the creeps...
20) Most memorable/disturbing death scene
- One that always bites me - the end of Tabu, when the boy reaches the priest's boat and the priest reaches out and cuts the rope he's hanging too, as casually and easily as that...
21) Jason Robards or Robert Shaw
- Which one? Robards, I guess, no matter which one...
22) A good candidate for Most Blasphemous Movie Ever
***- this is another one I can't answer, even after 2 weeks of thinking. Maybe Passion of the Christ? Anyway - another one I will try to return to in the future....
23) Rio Bravo or Red River
- Red River, I will say, though it might be just because I've seen it n a theater and not Rio Bravo.... [Add Rio Bravo to the films to revisit list, I guess.]
24) Werner Herzog is remaking Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage—that’s reality. Try to outdo reality by concocting a match-up of director and title for a really strange imaginary remake.
- I'm very glad this movie is happening. Not that I want to see it, but already, it has Abel Ferrera and Werner Herzog taking shots at each other like Coco Crisp and Carl Crawford. [That reference is already a week out of date! alas!] As for an equally absurd remake - the next two questions suggest a Judd Apatow remake of Max on Amour with Julia Roberts in the lead. Though I wish they didn't.
25) Bulle Ogier or Charlotte Rampling
- Charlotte Rampling. Oh yes.
26) In the Realm of the Senses— yes or no?
- Absolutely - great film.
27) Name a movie you think of as your own (Thanks, Jim!)
***- I should be able to answer this: I will come back to it. This is - like the others that I've skipped, a great question - it deserves an answer worth the time it's taking to think of one.
28) Winged Migration or Microcosmos
- Microcosmos, for no profound reason
29) Your favorite football game featured in a movie
- The easy answer is Horsefeathers - I'm not positive though. MASH, The Freshman, all have their merits...
30) Wendy Hiller or Deborah Kerr
- I'll say Kerr
31) Dirtiest secret you have that is related to the movies
- I don't know what to say to this.
32) Name a favorite film and describe how it is illuminated and enriched by another favorite film.
***- Another question that's too good to answer: this one, especially, is something I want to think about, turn over in my head, all by itself, until I have a good answer. If I don't complete wimp out, this quiz could give me half sumer's worth of blogging material... UPDATE: I answered this one! I was lucky enough to see Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow, and posted about its relationship to Tokyo Story.
33) It’s a Gift or Horsefeathers
- Horsefeathers - now if you asked about "You're Telling Me" that would get dicey...
34) Your best story about seeing a movie at a drive-in
- I don't know if I ever have, sadly enough
35) Victor Mature or Tyrone Power
- Power - I've been watching his films lately, after working through a bunch of Fairbanks and Flynn movis - neat stuff, though he's not in their league.
36) What does film criticism mean to you? Where do you think it’s headed?
- Where it's headed? I don't know - I imagine it will continue roughly as it is. Academic critics will keep rolling along, someone somewhere will be reviewing new releases every week, giving them stars and trying to steer the public toward better films - probably all of us, though, rather than trained professionals - either way - I am going to end with thought from yesterday, that last movie I ended up seeing, in fact: The Awful Truth. Which, as it happened, was shown with an introduction from Stanley Cavell, who wrote about it in Pursuits of Happiness. Two things came to mind - first, I was thinking about why Cavell is so good (for I think his film writing is among the very best there is): it's that he shows us things that are in the films, and in the world, that we might not have thought of. That's what critics should do - make us see things we didn't see - in the film, or in the world, related to the film. And the other - a reference to his description of what marriage is, what a good marriage is, what the comedies of remarriage show: a "deepening of the conversation." That is what criticism should be - a conversation about films, and about life, through films... This might be the answer to the "important comedies" question too - because this is what the contenders do. Rushmore - Groundhog Day - O Brother Where Art Thou - Life of Brian - Fallen Angels (the Kinoshiro half anyway) - White: they tell us about life, they give us life as conversation, and a way of talking about the world, of inventing ourselves and taking responsibility for ourselves in the world... So - if we keep talking about films, criticism should make it, in the end.
UPDATED (7/9): Dennis has posted selected answers: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3. A good way to kill a morning or two... I've also added links to my "promised" makeup work.
1) Best transition from movies to TV (actor, actress, producer/director, movie/show)
- This isn't easy - I don't watch much TV anymore - what I've seen in the last 20 years I've caught up with after the fact... since it should be someone I've actually seen - I'm tempted to say Fred MacMurray - a fine film career, and then a big TV career - though he's bland on TV. William Demerast then? though I'm tempted to go to something more basic - Edward Everett Horton, whose voice is utterly engrained in my head...
2) Living film director you most missing seeing on the cultural landscape regularly
- Not easy - one way to answer would be to lament the unavailability of films by people like Tsui Hark, Peter Chan, Zhang Yuan... but another - a director gone missing - Whit Stillman? I miss Alan Rudolph, too...
3) Eugene Pallette or Charles Coburn
- Coburn is probably a better actor, but Pallette is in too many films near and dear to my heart. And - he is a wonderful presence n all of them.
4) Fill in the blank: “I pray that no one ever turns _____________ into a movie.”
- Hard to say - maybe Calvin and Hobbes? though I suppose the right people could do it - right now though, I suspect it would end up looking like Garfield or something...
5) Jane Greer or Veronica Lake
- Gotta say Veronica Lake
6) What was the last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD? And why?
- This keeps changing, as I keep putting off posting it. The last couple weeks have been very rich: from Love Eterne (Shaw Brothers, Chinese opera, the first full blown opera film I have ever seen), to 14 Amazons (Shaw Brothers again, 14 Amazons plus Lilly Ko as the son of the family... to The Awful Truth - the HFA has been very good to me lately.
- DVD? - would be Modesty Blaise. Why? David Cairns. (And what I said about the HFA? It's not on their web site yet, but in July - the HFA is promising "The Complete Joseph Losey"....)
7) Name an actor you think should be a star
- I suppose one answer is that I think Louis Garrel will cross the Atlantic in a couple years, to be the French Gael Garcia Bernal; in this land - is Paul Dano a star yet?
8) Foxy Brown or Coffy
- No idea - Coffy I think, but I'm not sure. Haven't seen either one anywhere but on TV.
9) Favorite TV show still without its own DVD box set
- I don't know - I don't pay close enough attention to DVD releases to know what it and isn't available. Though I know that Max Headroom is not available, and that's one of the great shows of the 80s...
10) Jack Elam or Neville Brand
- not much hope here... I'll say Jack Elam, for no particular reason
11) What movies would top your list of movies you need to revisit, for whatever reason?
- Among older films - Kurosawa's The Idiot, which I saw on VHS many years back and didn't get much out of... Dreyer's Joan of Arc, just because it's been too long since I've seen it.... Rio Bravo, ditto.... more recently: The Ice Storm comes to mind... I need to rewatch some Cronenberg's - I might like them better. There are filmmakers I've seen once and want to see again - Olmi, Ichikawa, etc... And - RC reminds me - a couple Coen Brothers films - actually, about half of them, but especially The Man Who Wasn't There...
12) Zodiac or All the President’s Men
- Zodiac - for the way it looks, I think, though there's nothing wrong with how ATPM looks or Zodiac's story...
13) Using our best reviewer-speak, what is an “important” film comedy? And what is to you the most important film comedy of the last 35 years?
- "Important" is always trouble - I don't think I can answer that in any context... Rushmore is the best, for many many reasons - but important? setting Bill Murray on his latter day career path is a good reason - though that if so, maybe the answer should be Groundhog Day... I suppose another way to go might be to say, Evil Dead: besides giving Sam Raimi his career, it ushered in a kind of horror/comedy hybrid... etc. I don't know. I might come up with a better answer later - this is one I plan to hold on to and answer at length if I come up with something good.
14) Describe the ideal environment for watching a movie.
- Any good theater, really - with good seats, plenty of room to prop up the feet without poking anyone in the back - no one in front of you or behind you, but a decent crowd in the building, enough to react to things that need reactions. Clear view of the screen, no talkers, no one coming and going during the film, good screen good projection, good sound - it's not that unusual, really. I see a fair number of films that make the grade pretty well any given year - month, even. Those nice clean Shaw Brothers prints, a modest but enthusiastic crowd - what more could you ask, except maybe better seats...
15) Michelle Williams or Eva Mendes
- Williams sounds right. Sometimes, she seems in danger of turning into Renee Zellweger, but it hasn't happened yet.
16) What’s the worst movie title of all time?
- If translation counts - can anything beat Tough Beauty and the Sloppy Slop? In English - Lucky Number Slevin? I Heart Huckabees? Dumb and Dumberer? Ithere are probably worse,but that's enough to think about for now...
17) Best movie about teaching and/or learning
***- This is too good a question: I don't have a great answer - but I like the question too much to let go. It's kept me from posting these two weeks or so. I have to give up. I will cheat: Drunken Master! I'll say - or 36th Chamber of Shaolin. But I will keep this question around to answer when I have a good one.
18) Dracula (1931) or Horror of Dracula (1958)
- Dracula, easy
19) Why do you blog? Or if you don’t, why do you read blogs? (Thanks, Girish)
- I like the give and take, I like the conversations, and blogging is how people interact online these days. I have been playing around online for 15 odd years - Prodigy to AOL to message boards and Usenet, now blogging - it's what people do. I do think blogging is one of the best ways to have this conversation about film - it's flexible, easy to do, easily integrated into the broader community, allows you to do anything with it. I certainly hope it isn't replaced by crappy systems like Facebook or MySpace - those things give e the creeps...
20) Most memorable/disturbing death scene
- One that always bites me - the end of Tabu, when the boy reaches the priest's boat and the priest reaches out and cuts the rope he's hanging too, as casually and easily as that...
21) Jason Robards or Robert Shaw
- Which one? Robards, I guess, no matter which one...
22) A good candidate for Most Blasphemous Movie Ever
***- this is another one I can't answer, even after 2 weeks of thinking. Maybe Passion of the Christ? Anyway - another one I will try to return to in the future....
23) Rio Bravo or Red River
- Red River, I will say, though it might be just because I've seen it n a theater and not Rio Bravo.... [Add Rio Bravo to the films to revisit list, I guess.]
24) Werner Herzog is remaking Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage—that’s reality. Try to outdo reality by concocting a match-up of director and title for a really strange imaginary remake.
- I'm very glad this movie is happening. Not that I want to see it, but already, it has Abel Ferrera and Werner Herzog taking shots at each other like Coco Crisp and Carl Crawford. [That reference is already a week out of date! alas!] As for an equally absurd remake - the next two questions suggest a Judd Apatow remake of Max on Amour with Julia Roberts in the lead. Though I wish they didn't.
25) Bulle Ogier or Charlotte Rampling
- Charlotte Rampling. Oh yes.
26) In the Realm of the Senses— yes or no?
- Absolutely - great film.
27) Name a movie you think of as your own (Thanks, Jim!)
***- I should be able to answer this: I will come back to it. This is - like the others that I've skipped, a great question - it deserves an answer worth the time it's taking to think of one.
28) Winged Migration or Microcosmos
- Microcosmos, for no profound reason
29) Your favorite football game featured in a movie
- The easy answer is Horsefeathers - I'm not positive though. MASH, The Freshman, all have their merits...
30) Wendy Hiller or Deborah Kerr
- I'll say Kerr
31) Dirtiest secret you have that is related to the movies
- I don't know what to say to this.
32) Name a favorite film and describe how it is illuminated and enriched by another favorite film.
***- Another question that's too good to answer: this one, especially, is something I want to think about, turn over in my head, all by itself, until I have a good answer. If I don't complete wimp out, this quiz could give me half sumer's worth of blogging material... UPDATE: I answered this one! I was lucky enough to see Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow, and posted about its relationship to Tokyo Story.
33) It’s a Gift or Horsefeathers
- Horsefeathers - now if you asked about "You're Telling Me" that would get dicey...
34) Your best story about seeing a movie at a drive-in
- I don't know if I ever have, sadly enough
35) Victor Mature or Tyrone Power
- Power - I've been watching his films lately, after working through a bunch of Fairbanks and Flynn movis - neat stuff, though he's not in their league.
36) What does film criticism mean to you? Where do you think it’s headed?
- Where it's headed? I don't know - I imagine it will continue roughly as it is. Academic critics will keep rolling along, someone somewhere will be reviewing new releases every week, giving them stars and trying to steer the public toward better films - probably all of us, though, rather than trained professionals - either way - I am going to end with thought from yesterday, that last movie I ended up seeing, in fact: The Awful Truth. Which, as it happened, was shown with an introduction from Stanley Cavell, who wrote about it in Pursuits of Happiness. Two things came to mind - first, I was thinking about why Cavell is so good (for I think his film writing is among the very best there is): it's that he shows us things that are in the films, and in the world, that we might not have thought of. That's what critics should do - make us see things we didn't see - in the film, or in the world, related to the film. And the other - a reference to his description of what marriage is, what a good marriage is, what the comedies of remarriage show: a "deepening of the conversation." That is what criticism should be - a conversation about films, and about life, through films... This might be the answer to the "important comedies" question too - because this is what the contenders do. Rushmore - Groundhog Day - O Brother Where Art Thou - Life of Brian - Fallen Angels (the Kinoshiro half anyway) - White: they tell us about life, they give us life as conversation, and a way of talking about the world, of inventing ourselves and taking responsibility for ourselves in the world... So - if we keep talking about films, criticism should make it, in the end.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Presidential Politics Noted
I thought I'd take a moment to at least comment on politics. I am very happy, and relieved, that Barack Obama has clinched the democratic party nomination for president. Relieved because I'm tired of watching democrats campaign against each other - it's time to get after John McCain. And while the campaign seemed to generate an awful lot of ugly and stupid identity politics down the stretch, it's hard not to be a bit thrilled at the fact that a Black man stands the best chance of being elected president in a few months. And if he hadn't won, a woman would have been nominated, and this year, like Obama, would have to be considered the favorite. The fact that the US has had one president in its history who was not a white protestant man is disgraceful. Hell, we're 20 years behind Pakistan!
Anyway: on the subject of presidential primaries, 40 years ago today, Robert Kennedy was shot. American history has not trended upwards from that point. Political history at least - Nixon to Reagan to Bush have taken the good parts of government out at the knees through the years, while pushing us toward authoritarianism and militarism. It would be nice to see that trend turned. Clinton tried, but did in in the teeth of nasty resistance, and with an annoying tendency to run to the middle... Now - the republicans have run the country into the ground, in ways pretty much anyone can see. And the trends of cultural history have fairly definitively gone against them, as they have been going for the last century of so... There is a chance here, the first in a while, probably, to do more than hold off the most appalling tendencies of the right - there is a chance to actually move the country forward. Do things every other rich country does - health care, decent train systems. Free college tuition! (Though it might be too much for many American's to grasp that getting people educated without burying them in debt might have benefits even to their employers....)
Anyway: on the subject of presidential primaries, 40 years ago today, Robert Kennedy was shot. American history has not trended upwards from that point. Political history at least - Nixon to Reagan to Bush have taken the good parts of government out at the knees through the years, while pushing us toward authoritarianism and militarism. It would be nice to see that trend turned. Clinton tried, but did in in the teeth of nasty resistance, and with an annoying tendency to run to the middle... Now - the republicans have run the country into the ground, in ways pretty much anyone can see. And the trends of cultural history have fairly definitively gone against them, as they have been going for the last century of so... There is a chance here, the first in a while, probably, to do more than hold off the most appalling tendencies of the right - there is a chance to actually move the country forward. Do things every other rich country does - health care, decent train systems. Free college tuition! (Though it might be too much for many American's to grasp that getting people educated without burying them in debt might have benefits even to their employers....)
Monday, June 02, 2008
Who do you Love?
I have to post this news: Bo Diddley has died. (Via Glenn Kenny.) Boy, but he made the world a better place.
UPDATE: and, a clip - live on TV, 1966:
UPDATE: and, a clip - live on TV, 1966:
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Authorship in Kazuo Hara's Films
[Cross Posted from the Film of the Month Club blog - added here for archival purposes.]
Thinking about The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On made me curious about Kazuo Hara's other films. Earlier this month I watched his two earlier films, Sayonara CP and Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, hoping to get a better idea of Hara as a filmmaker. I posted some notes on his style and themes at my blog - but now I'd like to address another characteristic of these films I put off from that post. This emerges, specifically, from some of Harrytuttle's comments here, that Okuzaki seems to be more important to the film than Hara. It's an interesting point - in fact, I think it is characteristic of Hara's approach.
His films are definitely about strong personalities: the poet and photographer in Sayonara CP, Miyuki Takeda in Extreme Private Eros, and Okuzaki, are all assertive individuals with their own agendas. But usually even documentaries about strong characters retain a fairly clear hierarchy of "authorship": the subjects (Bob Dylan or Mark Borchardt or the Crumbs) do their thing - the filmmakers (Pennebaker, Smith, Zwigoff) film it and shape it. The subject of the films may control their discourse - but the filmmakers retain control of the discourse of the film. But Hara cedes more control of the films to his subjects - he allows them to shape what is in the film, to comment on the film more directly. Okuzaki's crusade is a good example - along with his tendency to perform, to stage manage confrontations, to act violently (though always photogenically). And his control of what will be in the film - inviting Hara to film him killing Koshimizu is probably the extreme example, but there are others. Several posts and comments here have explored Okuzaki's "shtick", so I will concentrate a bit more on the earlier films.
In Sayonara CP, the Greenlawn group (an organization of cerebral palsy sufferers) has significant input into the film, shaping its content, and its purposes. When the film is endangered (the wife of one of the main characters, the poet, Hiroshi Yokota, demands he stop filming), the Greenlawn people are as adamant about continuing as Hara. (And a good deal more vocal - he just keeps shooting; they yell at Yokota, nearly get into fight with him.) Beyond this, both Yokota and the other main character, a photographer, are given extended scenes, and explain their ideas and hopes at length. Hara has spoken of his desire to show things that are hidden - the CP sufferers share this desire. The photographer says he began taking pictures because other people took pictures of him - "we can only be passive" he says - he wants to reverse that, to look, as well as be looked at. He implicates Hara in this - Hara was always photographing him, he says - now he wants to be the one with the camera. Yokota, the poet, has similar goals - to read his poetry in public, to make people look at him, listen to him, acknowledge him. He has a major speech at the end of the film - describing his hopes for the film, for a different kind of film, only to have those hopes shattered. He will always be helpless, he says - while Hara cuts between shots of Yokota sitting nude in the street and repeatedly trying and failing to stand. Whose idea was that? Hara's? Yokota's? Either way, it pits the image against the words in a way that, I think, that underlines the authority of the character in the film. Both of these men resist their appropriation by the film, at least by speaking about it directly.
Hara's second film, Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, contains perhaps the most extreme example of this shared authorship. The film is a portrait of Hara's ex-lover, Miyuki Takeda - an extraordinary woman in her own right. The first half of the film is fairly conventional, as far as the relationship between Hara and Takeda, as filmmaker and subject, go - he shoots her, she talks, goes about her business - but the film is basically his. But in the second half the relationship changes. He films her giving birth - but this was her idea. We heard her plans earlier - she wants to give birth completely alone, with no help from anyone: and wants Hara to film it. That is what happens. She has the baby, while Hara films and his current lover records the sound. This scene is hers by any standards - she plans it, does the work (to say the least), and Hara just records.... This also tends to recast her activity in the earlier scenes - Hara tagging along as she went through the Okinawa underworld, trying to help the women there. Only at the end do we learn what she was doing there: by the end, seeing her efforts to create a model community, we see her as a far more active character than before.
Now - I don't think this in any way diminishes Hara's contributions to the films, and I certainly don't think it makes them less interesting formally than other documentaries. On the contrary - I think it makes the tension between the subject of the documentary and the maker of the documentary more explicit. It plays into the broader issues of control and independence found in these films, and often into their themes of revelation and repression - as all these characters in many ways seek to say and show things that have been suppressed. In this they are partners with Hara - though as well, as a filmmaker, he is appropriating their words and their images for his own purposes. They often, fairly explicitly, try to take control of those words and images back. It makes for a fascinating interplay.
Thinking about The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On made me curious about Kazuo Hara's other films. Earlier this month I watched his two earlier films, Sayonara CP and Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, hoping to get a better idea of Hara as a filmmaker. I posted some notes on his style and themes at my blog - but now I'd like to address another characteristic of these films I put off from that post. This emerges, specifically, from some of Harrytuttle's comments here, that Okuzaki seems to be more important to the film than Hara. It's an interesting point - in fact, I think it is characteristic of Hara's approach.
His films are definitely about strong personalities: the poet and photographer in Sayonara CP, Miyuki Takeda in Extreme Private Eros, and Okuzaki, are all assertive individuals with their own agendas. But usually even documentaries about strong characters retain a fairly clear hierarchy of "authorship": the subjects (Bob Dylan or Mark Borchardt or the Crumbs) do their thing - the filmmakers (Pennebaker, Smith, Zwigoff) film it and shape it. The subject of the films may control their discourse - but the filmmakers retain control of the discourse of the film. But Hara cedes more control of the films to his subjects - he allows them to shape what is in the film, to comment on the film more directly. Okuzaki's crusade is a good example - along with his tendency to perform, to stage manage confrontations, to act violently (though always photogenically). And his control of what will be in the film - inviting Hara to film him killing Koshimizu is probably the extreme example, but there are others. Several posts and comments here have explored Okuzaki's "shtick", so I will concentrate a bit more on the earlier films.
In Sayonara CP, the Greenlawn group (an organization of cerebral palsy sufferers) has significant input into the film, shaping its content, and its purposes. When the film is endangered (the wife of one of the main characters, the poet, Hiroshi Yokota, demands he stop filming), the Greenlawn people are as adamant about continuing as Hara. (And a good deal more vocal - he just keeps shooting; they yell at Yokota, nearly get into fight with him.) Beyond this, both Yokota and the other main character, a photographer, are given extended scenes, and explain their ideas and hopes at length. Hara has spoken of his desire to show things that are hidden - the CP sufferers share this desire. The photographer says he began taking pictures because other people took pictures of him - "we can only be passive" he says - he wants to reverse that, to look, as well as be looked at. He implicates Hara in this - Hara was always photographing him, he says - now he wants to be the one with the camera. Yokota, the poet, has similar goals - to read his poetry in public, to make people look at him, listen to him, acknowledge him. He has a major speech at the end of the film - describing his hopes for the film, for a different kind of film, only to have those hopes shattered. He will always be helpless, he says - while Hara cuts between shots of Yokota sitting nude in the street and repeatedly trying and failing to stand. Whose idea was that? Hara's? Yokota's? Either way, it pits the image against the words in a way that, I think, that underlines the authority of the character in the film. Both of these men resist their appropriation by the film, at least by speaking about it directly.
Hara's second film, Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, contains perhaps the most extreme example of this shared authorship. The film is a portrait of Hara's ex-lover, Miyuki Takeda - an extraordinary woman in her own right. The first half of the film is fairly conventional, as far as the relationship between Hara and Takeda, as filmmaker and subject, go - he shoots her, she talks, goes about her business - but the film is basically his. But in the second half the relationship changes. He films her giving birth - but this was her idea. We heard her plans earlier - she wants to give birth completely alone, with no help from anyone: and wants Hara to film it. That is what happens. She has the baby, while Hara films and his current lover records the sound. This scene is hers by any standards - she plans it, does the work (to say the least), and Hara just records.... This also tends to recast her activity in the earlier scenes - Hara tagging along as she went through the Okinawa underworld, trying to help the women there. Only at the end do we learn what she was doing there: by the end, seeing her efforts to create a model community, we see her as a far more active character than before.
Now - I don't think this in any way diminishes Hara's contributions to the films, and I certainly don't think it makes them less interesting formally than other documentaries. On the contrary - I think it makes the tension between the subject of the documentary and the maker of the documentary more explicit. It plays into the broader issues of control and independence found in these films, and often into their themes of revelation and repression - as all these characters in many ways seek to say and show things that have been suppressed. In this they are partners with Hara - though as well, as a filmmaker, he is appropriating their words and their images for his own purposes. They often, fairly explicitly, try to take control of those words and images back. It makes for a fascinating interplay.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Observations on Style and Theme for Kazuo Hara
At the Film of the Month Club, the conversation about Kazuo Hara's The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is going apace. It is a rich and strange film, lending itself to a world of consideration - politics, history, Japanese society - the psychology of the protagonist, Kenzo Okuzaki - moral and ethical considerations, both for Okuzaki and the filmmakers - as well as being a fascinating piece of filmmaking. The conversation there so far has bent more toward the politcal, ethical, psychological elements of the film - I want to wrote about the formal elements of the film, and about Hara's style and themes as a filmmaker. I took a look at his earlier films as well, themselves quite extraordinary works: Sayonara CP is about a group of cerebral palsy sufferers; Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974about an Miyuki Takeda, Hara's ex-lover who has gone to Okinawa to try to help the bar girls there... These are some notes, some continuities among these films, and some of the devices used by Hara in The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On...
- Form and Style - the film follows a relatively common documentary form: Hara and crew follow their subject around, generally not interfering or overtly shaping the material. Hara doesn't add a lot of explanation - no voiceover, fairly minimal titles, and only a couple interviews of people other than Okuzaki to give context to the story. This is similar to his other films - even when there are more conventional interviews (as in Sayonara CP), they aren't presented as ways to fill in a broader kind of story - they are filmed and presented as monologues by the characters in the film. They don't provide context for the film's subject - they are the film's subject.
- Style - looking more closely at some of Hara's techniques: his preference for fly on the wall observation; his manipulation of sound and image (which is less radical in this film than the earlier ones - probably because he had enough budget to shoot real synch sound); his occasionally jarring use of text - these elements have thematic implications as well, that we will return to.
- Structure - in the interview cited by Girish, Hara mentions trying to show Okuzaki as an action hero. The film, in fact, is structured as a mystery - as a detective story. It is structured around a literal murder mystery - why were 2 private killed 23 days after the war ended in 1945? Who ordered them killed, who did the deed, and why? Okuzaki tracks down this mystery, interviewing all the surviving witnesses - but he does it like a detective - he doesn't just seek the truth about what happened 40 odd years before, he seeks to inflict justice in the present as well. (And yes, "inflict" seems to be the right word there.)
- Narration - while Hara does avoid conventional documentary construction - voiceover and explanations and background information and so on, he maintains a good deal of control over the narration of the film, the flow of information. The Emperor's Naked Army... begins with somewhat random seeming clips of Okuzaki - at a wedding, visiting the police, mounting a couple protests, visiting a man in the hospital - these scenes introduce him without explicitly stating who he is or what he is doing. But in fact, a good deal of information is revealed: we learn about his past, his records, from his own accounts (and eventually from Hara); we get some glimpses of his character, that might come clearer later (his remark that nations and families are walls between people - at a wedding! - should give us a hint as to his iconoclasm); we learn about his goals, his obsessions, and get some hints of his methods. Hara sets up later scenes: the first old comrade he meets is Yamada, in the hospital - who will also be the final, most significant encounter (shown) in the film.
- Themes - the dominant theme throughout Hara's work is one of revealing what is hidden - more than hidden, what is repressed. In the Iris interview, he mentions this, specifically about Sayonara CP - to show handicapped bodies because they are difficult to look at. "What I wanted to do with the film is show exactly what people did not want to see, to expose the hidden." Its a theme running throughout his films: in Extreme Private Eros, showing his private life and that of Takeda, as well as showing two explicit births; in The Emperor's Naked Army, he exposes the secrets - shameful, evil - from the war.
In fact, he goes beyond showing what is hidden. It's more that he explores the acts of revealing and hiding, and the mechanisms of repression. All three films contain moments that hide as well as show: obviously the things people don't want to tell, but also the people who resist being on film; acts of direct censorship and repression, and so on. So in Sayonara CP we see: the wife of the main character (Yokota, the poet) trying to stop the film, demanding that Hara stop filming in her home, which he ignores; police breaking up Yokota's poetry reading, calling it a freak show. In Extreme Private Eros: there is a similar scene - Takeda is distributing pamphlets to bar girls in Okinawa, with Hara filming - some men approach and the screen goes black and a title informs us that "Hara was assaulted by gangsters." It's similar to the end of Naked Army - where the trip to New Guinea yields nothing but a title saying the footage was confiscated by the Indonesian government. Even without elisions of this sort, the hiding/revealing dynamic appears: the quintessential example may be Takeda's birthing scene in Extreme Private Eros. Hara shoots the birth in one take - and presents the take in the film - even though the camera went out of focus early in the shot. He's showing something as intimate as it is possible to show - but showing it out of focus, blurred and ambiguous.
These scenes seem to me to come close to the core of Hara's ideas. They occur throughout his films - he emphasizes them, with titles explaining what's missing, or with a voiceover running over the out of focus shot of the birth of Tekeda's child - or just through their placement. They tend to come near the climax of the films, as when the police break up Yokota's poetry reading, at the end of the climax of the poem itself, for instance. They tend to come between moments of great power: in Sayonara CP, Hara draws out the moment hen Yokota reads his poem - the police arrive - and immediately after the scene, there is a shot of Yokota naked, in the middle of street, talking about his hopes for the film, and their let down. The end of Naked Army is similar - the emotional peak of the film is probably the long ocnfrontation between Okuzaki (and Oshima the anarchist) and Yamada - after this, comes the (invisible) trip to New Guinea and Okuzaki's attempted murder of Koshimizu's son. The latter especially, is the climax of the film - it's what the story has been building toward: the solution of the mystery (who killed the men and why? by that timem Koshimizu has emerged as the clear villain of the piece), and Okuzaki's imposition of justice (or vengeance.) And it happens offscreen, told in titles and an interview with Okuzaki's wife. Which is probably all the more appropriate given that Okuzaki's vengeance goes awry - he doesn't shoot the perpetrator of the old crimes - he shoots his son.
- Form and Style - the film follows a relatively common documentary form: Hara and crew follow their subject around, generally not interfering or overtly shaping the material. Hara doesn't add a lot of explanation - no voiceover, fairly minimal titles, and only a couple interviews of people other than Okuzaki to give context to the story. This is similar to his other films - even when there are more conventional interviews (as in Sayonara CP), they aren't presented as ways to fill in a broader kind of story - they are filmed and presented as monologues by the characters in the film. They don't provide context for the film's subject - they are the film's subject.
- Style - looking more closely at some of Hara's techniques: his preference for fly on the wall observation; his manipulation of sound and image (which is less radical in this film than the earlier ones - probably because he had enough budget to shoot real synch sound); his occasionally jarring use of text - these elements have thematic implications as well, that we will return to.
- Structure - in the interview cited by Girish, Hara mentions trying to show Okuzaki as an action hero. The film, in fact, is structured as a mystery - as a detective story. It is structured around a literal murder mystery - why were 2 private killed 23 days after the war ended in 1945? Who ordered them killed, who did the deed, and why? Okuzaki tracks down this mystery, interviewing all the surviving witnesses - but he does it like a detective - he doesn't just seek the truth about what happened 40 odd years before, he seeks to inflict justice in the present as well. (And yes, "inflict" seems to be the right word there.)
- Narration - while Hara does avoid conventional documentary construction - voiceover and explanations and background information and so on, he maintains a good deal of control over the narration of the film, the flow of information. The Emperor's Naked Army... begins with somewhat random seeming clips of Okuzaki - at a wedding, visiting the police, mounting a couple protests, visiting a man in the hospital - these scenes introduce him without explicitly stating who he is or what he is doing. But in fact, a good deal of information is revealed: we learn about his past, his records, from his own accounts (and eventually from Hara); we get some glimpses of his character, that might come clearer later (his remark that nations and families are walls between people - at a wedding! - should give us a hint as to his iconoclasm); we learn about his goals, his obsessions, and get some hints of his methods. Hara sets up later scenes: the first old comrade he meets is Yamada, in the hospital - who will also be the final, most significant encounter (shown) in the film.
- Themes - the dominant theme throughout Hara's work is one of revealing what is hidden - more than hidden, what is repressed. In the Iris interview, he mentions this, specifically about Sayonara CP - to show handicapped bodies because they are difficult to look at. "What I wanted to do with the film is show exactly what people did not want to see, to expose the hidden." Its a theme running throughout his films: in Extreme Private Eros, showing his private life and that of Takeda, as well as showing two explicit births; in The Emperor's Naked Army, he exposes the secrets - shameful, evil - from the war.
In fact, he goes beyond showing what is hidden. It's more that he explores the acts of revealing and hiding, and the mechanisms of repression. All three films contain moments that hide as well as show: obviously the things people don't want to tell, but also the people who resist being on film; acts of direct censorship and repression, and so on. So in Sayonara CP we see: the wife of the main character (Yokota, the poet) trying to stop the film, demanding that Hara stop filming in her home, which he ignores; police breaking up Yokota's poetry reading, calling it a freak show. In Extreme Private Eros: there is a similar scene - Takeda is distributing pamphlets to bar girls in Okinawa, with Hara filming - some men approach and the screen goes black and a title informs us that "Hara was assaulted by gangsters." It's similar to the end of Naked Army - where the trip to New Guinea yields nothing but a title saying the footage was confiscated by the Indonesian government. Even without elisions of this sort, the hiding/revealing dynamic appears: the quintessential example may be Takeda's birthing scene in Extreme Private Eros. Hara shoots the birth in one take - and presents the take in the film - even though the camera went out of focus early in the shot. He's showing something as intimate as it is possible to show - but showing it out of focus, blurred and ambiguous.
These scenes seem to me to come close to the core of Hara's ideas. They occur throughout his films - he emphasizes them, with titles explaining what's missing, or with a voiceover running over the out of focus shot of the birth of Tekeda's child - or just through their placement. They tend to come near the climax of the films, as when the police break up Yokota's poetry reading, at the end of the climax of the poem itself, for instance. They tend to come between moments of great power: in Sayonara CP, Hara draws out the moment hen Yokota reads his poem - the police arrive - and immediately after the scene, there is a shot of Yokota naked, in the middle of street, talking about his hopes for the film, and their let down. The end of Naked Army is similar - the emotional peak of the film is probably the long ocnfrontation between Okuzaki (and Oshima the anarchist) and Yamada - after this, comes the (invisible) trip to New Guinea and Okuzaki's attempted murder of Koshimizu's son. The latter especially, is the climax of the film - it's what the story has been building toward: the solution of the mystery (who killed the men and why? by that timem Koshimizu has emerged as the clear villain of the piece), and Okuzaki's imposition of justice (or vengeance.) And it happens offscreen, told in titles and an interview with Okuzaki's wife. Which is probably all the more appropriate given that Okuzaki's vengeance goes awry - he doesn't shoot the perpetrator of the old crimes - he shoots his son.
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