Good Morning

This is a not quite so random meditation on things Ozu: the Brattle Theater screened Ozu's Ohayo this weekend - any chance to see Ozu on a big screen is a treat not to be missed. This was a particularly nice event, as it was introduced by Ty Burr, of the Boston Globe (as well as the Brattle's Ned Hinckle) - there were other critics in the audience (notable, the Phoenix's Brett Michel), leading to a nice little discussion of the film.

Good Morning is a bit of an oddity in Ozu's career. Burr called it his only full comedy, which might be a bit of a stretch (especially counting the pre-war films), but it probably is the most sustained comedy. It tends to avoid the melancholic twists most of his films have - it doesn't linger on the loss or failure or disappointment that crops up in his work. But one way it does this is by making the comedy itself darker. Good Morning contains some pretty harsh material - unemployment and thieves, nasty gossips and spying neighbors, a woman telling her mother she should go to Narayama to die, and mom giving it back... Compensates for its more consistent comic tone by making the comedy darker - the jokes are crueler, more at people's expense.

But that's not the only thing that's different. Start with the music - the score is by Toshiro Mayuzumi - who scored Imamura's early films, as well as a few others for big directors - Ichikawa, a Naruse or so... That's a departure - both in his style, which is a kind of breezy jazz, with streaks of experimentation (especially in the Imamura's) and the occasional comic sound effect - and in the fact that the music actually seems integrated into the film. Ozu's soundtracks usually play fairly neutral - other than an occasional music theme, there's not much sense of the music working together with the image and story. Mayazumi, though, works the music in more conventionally - partly, I think, by slipping it closer to diegetic music - radios and TVs and the singing cabaret couple next door. Partly because things like Ozu's fart sound effects are so readily integrated into Mayazumi's style. It works very nicely here.

Mayuzumi's score also helps give the film a definite Tati feel - noted by Ty Bur and members of the audience. It's a good comparison - and another departure for Ozu. Good Morning is full of long, layered, Tati-esque shots - people moving around in the far distance of the shots, action staged in multiple planes, - creating lots of little silent comedy off in the corner or the back of the screen. And this film makes a lot of its space, as space - the houses and neighborhood as social spaces - much like Tati. Ozu usually develops his key spaces - exploring them - but usually analytically, fragmented. This film has a lot more depth shots than usual. And it's all given social significance - these crappy little prefab houses, all alike, all crammed next to each other. Ozu plays it for all its worth - the interchangeable houses, the way they're piled on top on one another. His customary low angle, combined with some fairly long lenses, flatten out the space completely - so people talking across the street, each in their own house, seem to be standing next to one another. He is known for flattening out space- stripping away the depth markers - but here, it's given a fairly direct social meaning. It exaggerates their proximity. So does the fact that - if I am not mistaken - often the people you can see moving around in the back of the shot are, in fact, across the street.

He emphasizes this: he shoots the various houses alike, from the same angles, with the same compositions - reinforcing the impression of all these people living in these identical, prefab houses, and never able to get away from anyone around them. (Though it could be worse - they could live in the godawful concrete slab the english teacher lives in.) In the beginning, especially, he cuts between different houses, in disorienting ways - it takes a while to figure out where you are. And of course - he uses this to build to one of his great gags: a drunken man comes home, starts taking off his shoes - in the wrong house. When the housewife comes to greet him, he even asks her why she's in his house... when he does get to his house, he's still not sure until his wife comes out to nag him... At the same time, though, Ozu does teach you which place is which - you just have to look for which pots and bowls are where...

Ah, pots and bowls - and hula hoops - and circles - and Red: it's not entirely uncharacteristic Ozu. In fact you can watch the whole film just following the movement around the screen of the red things -bowls and cups and stripes of cloth and socks and coats and rugs and lettering on boxes and the trim on the mailboxes and the hula hoops.... there's always that....

Though what there isn't: nature? This came up in the conversation after the film - the lack of nature in this film. Somewhat downplayed by Burr and others - but it's notable. Ozu doesn't spend much time in nature proper - but most of his films include quite a bit of nature in them. He's particularly fond of the sea, which figures in many films, with quite a few scenes set by the sea - but even when the characters don't interact with nature, he usually includes quite a few "pillow shots" of nature - the sky, sea, trees, hills, birds (at least), and so on. There's not much of that here. The "pillow shots" are of lamps and lampposts, electrical towers, hula hoops.... Not much natural.

Though there is an even more shocking omission in this film: where are the trains? No trains? Thankfully, they are evoked - the scene at the end at the station... and train whistles, once or twice during the film... But - no trains! how did he stand it?

Anyway - that's enough. It's a fascinating film - it's also a pretty unambiguous masterpiece, for all its oddness in Ozu's career, and all its seeming lightness. As always he is a perfect master of story telling - elliptical and subtle as always. The way he shows us that the 2 salesmen are in cahoots; the way he wraps it up - the old man coming home drunk, to the wrong house, then his house,saying he's happy - why is he happy later - we see him at his new job as a salesman - he visits the family, they talk about his wares, though we never see a sale being made. Instead - Ozu switches to the boys' story - taking food, running away - and the parents' and friends' concern... and only at the end, when they come back and see, almost as an afterthought, what they see.... does he let you wrap it up. And - the gags (including the original "that's not a knife - this is a knife!" gag), the politics - the ubiquity of money, and fears about money, the consumerism, selling, etc. - the social changes registered - the concentration of language, different registers of language... a grand and glorious film. And funny as heck to boot!

John Lennon

It's John Lennon's birthday, isn't it? There's a post at Lawyers, Guns and Money n his honor with people listing their favorite Lennon songs in comments.. I'll play along:

1. Norwegian Wood
2. Working Class Hero
3. Tomorrow Never Knows
4. In My Life
5. She Said She Said

And A Day in the Life, though that's only half John.... Anyway - I was always a Lennon fan: and even now, if I put together a Beatles top 10, top 20, it's be mostly John's songs. Maybe a bit skewed by what I actually have on the iPod - I don't think I have a copy of Hey Jude - or Strawberry Fields Forever - or If I Needed Someone - or Yesterday, for that matter. So who knows.

I don't have much of John's post-Beatles work either - or the others' either. Ram, All Things Must Pass and the Plastic Ono Band - which I think fairly accurately reflects my opinion if their collective post-Beatles' career - the essential records, and a bunch of other stuff... John probably managed the best body of work, a couple fairly classic records (I suppose I do need to get Imagine, don't I?), reasonable work elsewhere. McCartney made some good singles over the years, but very little I can't live without... Harrison - I'm not sure I quite agree with the idea that All Things Must Pass is the best post-Beatles record, but it's in the top 3. (I'm cheating a bit - counting a wild card: Yoko's Plastic Ono Band album - which is half Beatles - and some of the best rocking any of them did...) Anyway: YouTube requites we post video here - what can I find?

Well - here's a couple more songs that could make my top 5 - Come Together, Live:



And a Revolution promo:



And one of y favorite Lennons: Cold Turkey, live footage, studio sound...

Baseball League Championships

There may be some politics going on somewhere tonight, but never mind that. Vote Obama! what more is there to say about it?

Baseball though - there's always something to say about that! The first round of playoffs are done - I got 3 of 4 right! I don't know what possessed me to pick the Cubs over the Dodgers - at least I waffled on it.

Now? I'll stick with Boston in the AL - not just for the rooting interest. They've been here, they've done it, they'll keep their heads. The series with the Angels was the only competitive series in the first round - 3 of the 4 games decided in the last inning - the Red Sox are the toughest team going. But - Tampa has the deepest pitching staff, they can run and catch the all, and they have enough offense to make things tough - and they play in a weird and dangerous ballpark that they seem to get. That got the Twins to two championships. Either way, I would expect this series to be a fight to the finish.

Phillies and Dodgers, I have no idea. Dodgers are hot - they're obviously a different team now than they were all year - I'd say on paper, odd as it sounds, they're the favorites. But the Phillies are no rollovers. They have a that offense - they have 3 solid starters - Hamels is as good as anyone. Back in June when the Sox played Philly, it looked like that was the world series match up to bet on - the Phils went soft after that - but have come back lately. I can see it. That's certainly what I will be rooting for - Boston/Philly. I suspect it will come, too.

One final note - though I hate the Dodgers in general, this Dodger teams is loaded with players I like - all those ex-sox, Lowe and Nomah especially (even Manny), Greg Maddux (greatest pitcher ever?), etc... the other three - Tampa is just too great a story to feel too bad if they win; I mostly like this Phillies club (helps to have Cole Hamels on your fantasy team....) - and the Sox are the Sox. So I can enjoy things without much angst whoever wins - unless the Dodgers beat the Red Sox: I don't think I could stand that.

Almost Random Film Observation - Ozu

Prompted by something, I can't put a finger on what, I've been thinking about Ozu's camera work, specifically, how he moves the camera. It's probably due to a class I'm taking, on poetry - I was probably thinking about how form signifies in art - how a formal device can convey emotion or meaning. (Like the repeating pairs of sounds etc. in, say, Shakespeare's Sonnet #12 invoke the ticking of a clock, the back an forth of time.) That, I suppose, made me think of the crane shot that comes at the end of Early Summer - the only crane shot Ozu ever used, as far as I know. And maybe even more rare - an instance of a moving camera (or any formal device) in an Ozu film that carries fairly explicit emotional and signifying weight. The camera goes up as two women walk to the sea, and it's hard not to see it as a metaphor - a moment of soaring, something - whatever sorts of troubles are coming for all involved, here is a moment where someone in an Ozu film is about to do Exactly what She Wants To Do. And before the scene is over - her sister in law will second her decision: the two women will share the understanding that while nothing is perfect, this will be a Good Thing for Noriko.

But what struck me about it, thinking about it, and thinking about the patterns of moving cameras in Ozu's films, is this: that though this is the only time he used a crane, he uses it in a way that maintains the general rules he sets for moving his camera. That is - it might be his one crane shot - but it is still very much an Ozu shot.

I suppose I should say something about that. I don't mean to do a complete anatomy of Ozu's camera movements - just sketch the patterns, and note their characteristics. (Though once you start playing that game with Ozu, it's hard to stop.) He's fond of lateral tracks - especially in the prewar films, though there are still some in the later films, like Early Summer. In the earlier films they are often comic - and can be very elaborate, sometimes reversing direction, cutting in the middle, making jokes and so on - the later moves tend to be very spare and much less motivated. He's also fond - always was - of shots of people walking, that keep the people in the same place in the frame. These can be lateral tracks (especially in the early films), or frontal shots where the camera retreats, or following shots. And sometimes, he will track forward - usually through an empty space - a hall or room - though once in a while it will move in on an object. Early Summer has a track in on a broken oaf of bread, for instance. Okay - given these types of camera movements: he also usually organizes them characteristically. He will repeat a camera movement - Early Summer repeats a track through a theater - the first time toward the old man cupping his ear; the second time the theater is empty. He also frequently cuts from movement to movement - Early Summer has, I think, 13 moving shots: 3 different times, he cuts from a moving shot to another moving shot - and one of the three is in fact 3 consecutive moving shots. And - all of them, I think, follow the same patterns of 45-90-135-180 degree angles that David Bordwell has discussed in his editing. Shots move perpendicular to the dominant plane of the shot - or they move straight forward or back. Very rarely (though more commonly in the early films, again) they will move at a 45 degree angle...

Which brings me to the crane shot. Even here - 1) it is related to all those shots of people walking and talking: the camera rises as the women rise, climbing a dune - it rises to keep them roughly in a fixed place in the screen. 2) Note that the camera goes straight up - maintaining the 90 degree rule; 3) and emphasizing it, with the strong horizontal horizon lines of the beach. Even when he does something uncharacteristic - he makes it completely characteristic. even something that has as much emotional freight as this might be made to carry - it functions more or less perfectly within the abstract patterns of his style. The ability to do both, always - is what makes Ozu Ozu.

Baseball Playoffs

Ah, baseball. Last year I jumped the gun, starting my post-season picks before I knew who was really in the post-season. This year, have been holding off - but they're still at it! make up games and playoffs - Lord! Well, I have to do it - I won't have time tomorrow, and the games will start tomorrow, and - all right! Here goes! predictions and everything!

AL 1: ANAHEIM over Boston: if I had to bet... I'll say what I said last year: the winner of this series should win it all. My rooting interest is Boston, of course, but with Beckett up in the air, and Lowell and Drew iffy, the advantage has to go to the halos. Last year, I underestimated the Angels' injuries - with Anderson and Vlad off their game, they weren't going anywhere. The Sox, I think, are in better shape than that - but without Beckett, they are a very long shot. The news is good, on Beckett, though - and Lester is the real deal; Dice-K - you tell me. He seems unhittable when his head is in it - if that translates to the post-season, and Beckett pitches, the Sox could be in good shape here. But for all that - California (I promise to refer to them by every name they've had in the last 50 years) was a good team last year, and even better this year - deep rotation, deep bullpen, and deeper lineup, along with better players at the top - Vlad is off, but lesser Vlad is still pretty damned good (like lesser David Ortiz) but Texeira is playing like he means it. So -good series, Angels have the advantage, but the Sox are in the thick of it - and, I say again - the winner of this should win it all.

AL 2: TAMPA BAY over AL Central Champ: why not? The Rays have deep pitching, a nice, balanced lineup, they've been winning big games all month - neither of the Central teams are perfect, though both have merits. The Twins have a sneaky good offense, solid pitching - the White Sox good pitching, lots of pop in the lineup - can't catch a ball which could kill them in a tight series, against teams that do catch the ball. So Tampa, I say. Setting up a heck of a second round.

NL 1: CHICAGO over LA: this is the logical pick - Cubs have good starting pitching, okay bullpen, tons of offense - while LA dragged to a barely over .500 finish. BUt they too have a great rotation, deep bullpen - and freaking Manny, playing like it's 1999. So the Dodgers could steal it - or disappear - who knows. Cubs have to be the favorites here - but don't rule the Dodgers out.

NL 2: PHILLIES over Milwaukee - I guess. Brewers had to run themselves to the edge to get there - Sabathia pitching every day for a month, it seems - and I'm not sure what they can do now. Phillies came on strong - failed to maintain the longest stretch of 80s win seasons ever by getting to 92 - they have better starters than it looks, with Moyer and Hamels and Myers (before those last 2 starts: holy crap!), and decent relief pitching, and they Can Hit. So - I expect - Phillies win. Though won't be shocked if I'm wrong.

Second round: Angels (or Sox) over Tampa; good god - I'm in position to pick the Cubs to make the world series! Okay - fine: they make it. (If LA wins, they make it.) AL team wins all.

And now: let's do some end of season awards.

AL MVP: this is tough - as a homer, I should take Pedroia or Youkilis - though Mauer (batting leader, catcher) is a fine pick. In fact, there seem to be a lot of players deserving it - most of the teams in contention this year did it with balanced, deep attacks, rather than spectacular performances. So - I say Pedroia: gold glove second baseman, spark-plug for the team all year - but Youk and Mauer are excelent choices, and Morneau is a better pick this year than the year he won. (That was a disgrace.)

AL Cy Young: Cliff Lee, easy.

AL Rookie: Evan Langoria - if he had made the team out of spring training and not gotten hurt he;d probably be joining Fred Lynn and Ichiro Suzuki and MVP/ROY co-winners.

NL MVP: Pujols - the arguments are simple - he had a monster year - he kept a very mediocre team in contention. Pujols.

NL Cy Young: interesting race - most people say it comes down to wins vs. numbers, Webb vs. Lincecum - but if that's your choice: why not Santana? who had the same numbers as Lincecum, basically. The other complicating factor is that Webb in fact, had almost the same numbers as Lincecum - worse ERA, but in a better hitter's park. Lincecum had the strikeouts, but that's a glamor stat - meaningless except as a predictor of future success. So - here's the real question - if a guy leads the league in shut outs -leads both leagues in shut outs - leads the majors in IP and complete games, singlehandedly pitches his team to the playoffs: how many votes should he get for Cy Young? I'd be tempted to vote for Sabathia. BUt I think I'd actually vote for Lincecum, barely. But if Webb wins, don't let anyone tell you the voters only look at the wins. Even if it's true - he was just as good as Lincecum. WHIP is where it's at.

NL Rookie: Geovany Soto, obviously.

Onwards! Thanks to the wonders of the 1-0 pitching duel, the White Sox made the playoffs before I finished this post. Whoo hoo! Actually - crap. I wanted the Twins to win. (Yes, I picked them to finish last - so what?) The White Sox managed to be barely better than my 65-85 wins prediction, and just as unpredictable - look at the last week alone. Anyway - this doesn't change anything - Tampa should beat them anyway. I hope so. The Rays might be the Mortal Enemies of the Home Town 9, but they are also One Hell of a Story - and have armies of players I love, from Carlos Pena (of Northeastern University!) and Rocco Baldelli (pride of Rhode Island!) to Cliff Floyd (Expo!) to Scott Kazmir (oh, those poor Mets) to Grant Ball Four to scrubs making good again like Eric Hinske. So - see you in the second round, I hope! (And if the Sox fail - the Angels have always made a good fall back team.) It;s all good as long as the Dodgers lose.

Edward Yang Week 2

It's taken me all week to get around to writing anything up about the second weekend of Edward Yang and Wu Nien-jen films at the HFA. I would like to write more - but I am lazy... and, let's not overlook the fact that these are long, complicated, dense films: it is very hard to do do any kind of justice to them on one viewing. I just hope it is not another 10 years before I get to see Brighter Summer Day or Terroriser again. For now, though - get thoughts down in words, and out to the internet.

Brighter Summer Day is all it is cracked up to be. 4 hour film about high school kids in early 60s Taipei - they are all mixed up in gangs - there is tension between the children of mainland families and the native Taiwanese as well as between various gangs (and amongthe gangs, since they seem to fight with each other as much as their rivals.) We follow Xiao Sir, mostly, played by Chang Chen - his fights, his amours, his family, etc. He is the center of a dazzling array of stories and characters - the gang plots, with missing heroes and intrigues with girls and elaborate schemes involving rock concerts and pool sharks, are a full length movie unto themselves... But Sir's family (his father's troubles with the government and corrupt friends, his brother's gambling problems, his sisters - one a Christian, who hangs in the background until nearly the end then emerges), his friends (Cat, a tiny little kid with an ethereal voice and a tape recorder doing phonetic Elvis covers when he isn't starting fights; and Ma, a rich trouble maker who becomes Sir's best friend, but can't leave the ladies alone... ), plus all the people around them - the drunken neighbor who resents their "iron rice bowl", the teachers, the film studio next to the school, etc. - all get their due. It's an easy 4 hours to take - gorgeous looking, made with consummate skill. The problem is - its density, the number of characters, the fact that most of the characters go by nicknames in some scenes, actual names in others - and that a number of characters seem to have been deliberately set up to resemble each other (a good deal of plot turns on the fact that Ming and Jade (2 girls) look alike) - all this makes it very hard to keep track of who is who and why: by the time you figure it all out, the film is almost over. It's a film you need to see at least twice, just to know what is going on - and to appreciate the skill with which it is all handled. (Since a lot of the things that make it difficult - like the doubling of characters and names and such - are integral to what makes it work.) But good luck with that.

The Terroriser is the other Yang film I've read about - Frederic Jameson and all that. It also lived up to expectations. Its a network narrative of sort - following a doctor and his writer wife, a photographer, and Eurasian girl - they have nothing to do with one another, but, network narrative fashion, cross paths at key points. The photographer shoots the girl escaping from a police raid; the girl, locked in at home by her mother, phones people at random - she tells the writer her husband is having an affair... eventually they all come back together - maybe. It's Yang's most difficult, strange film - the Antonioni references at their strongest (bits of Blow Up, Zabriskie Point, etc.) - or Oshima. All of it placed most emphatically in the city - the streets and roofs and buildings, the flats and offices and roads of Taipei shaping the material throughout.

Confucian Confusion and Mahjong are Yang's least known, or least talked about, films: they are comedies - CC is a madcap near farce among a bunch of people associated with a magazine; Mahjong is a dark comedy about gangsters, businessmen, international hustlers and the like... Mahjong probably should have been better - it goes astray a couple places - notably, some of the non-Chinese casting is a problem. It's especially noticeable given that the role of Markus was originally supposed to be played by David Thewlis - you can see Thewlis in the role - it sounds like Thewlis - the actor doing it has no hope.. But it's still high quality stuff - very funny at times (Wu Nien-jen as a gangster is a total hoot), capable of sudden swerves into horror and violence - and most of the cast carries it off very well. Confucian Confusion, meanwhile, though overlooked among Yang's work, is a first rate film. Starts out, I admit, a bit too busy - lots of shouting and people bustling about in an imitation of a madcap comedy - but once it gets going, it becomes very good. There are a host of characters, again (all of Yang's films, at least since Terroriser, have been fairly large ensemble pieces), all of them sleeping with each other (like in a Coen brothers film). It's intricately plotted - a series of rumors and real infidelities set everyone chasing everyone else around trying to get proof - everyone bounces off everyone else... though it finds time to reflect - there is a writer, morose and possibly crazy, who hates himself for writing popular novels and now can't sell his serious work, who gets to reflect seriously on the condition of things... he's paired, I should note,by his opposite - an extremely silly playwright and director, who starts the whole thing rolling by plagiarizing one of the writer's popular novels... doubles and parallels abound,but that's a given in Edward Yang's work.

Anyway - these two films are interesting for a couple reasons. One is - his 80s work is often compared to Antonioni - comparison it well earns. (And Oshima - though Oshima and Antonioni often parallel each other as well - at least the films I've seen: compare The Man Who Left His Will on Film and Zabriskie Point, say). But these films - Confucian Confusion and Mahjong - seem to me to shift toward something like a Rivette or maybe Chabrol influence. (I don't know too much about Chabrol: but it seems possible.) The big casts, running through fairly elaborate comedic plots, that turn dark or light almost instantly - all of it circling around artists (in CC at least), all of it very theatrical. Even Yang's famous fascination with architecture and spaces fits - Rivette, too, is notable for his fascination with places,and space.... It's an interesting thought anyway - whether there's anything to it or not.

Finally - the series also showed In Our Time - an omnibus film from 1982: Yang contributed a section, about a teenaged girl's first crush. It's a nice piece - the films as a whole is interesting, especially the first 2 pieces, for how similar they are - the long takes, long shots, the restraint. Yang's style emerges from this blend of neo-realism, Japanese classics, a bit of modernism - it's not quite formed here, though his control of the medium is already apparent.

And Wu Nien-Jen's second film was also shown: Buddha Bless America - a comedy about a Taiwanese village taken over by the US military for maneuvers. The story is familiar enough - the mysterious Americans, the greedy, shifty villagers, the idealist caught in the middle - but it's all quite amusing with an undercurrent of sadness. Interesting too for reserving its harshest attitude for the Mandarin speaking translators who do more to separate the Taiwanese speaking villagers from the Americans than to link them. The Americans and villagers may be selfish and callous to one another, but they don't come off as intentionally cruel - the translators are. Anyway - it's a fine movie, though somewhat overshadowed by the Yang films.

Paul Newman

Paul Newman has died. Greencine has a roundup of reactions.

Far be it from me to link this to the politics of the day - but how can I not? With Wall Street in the tank, looking for some jerk they can really push around - well.... here's Charles Durning's great exit, and Newman's even greater entrance in The Hudsucker Proxy. Sure sure - he may have had better roles (did it matter though? every time I saw him, he, at least was thrilling), but give a great actor with a great voice Coen brothers lines to say - ah, yes. Long live the Hud.

Random Content

Ha ha! a double entendre! This post is random - and so is this!

Sarah Palin trying to answer questions from Katie Couric. Like Jim Henley I am particularly fond of this one:



"Our next door neighbors are foreign countries." Whoo hoo! Hey - I grew up in Maine - our next door neighbors were foreign countries too! some of them even speak F***h! I'd even been to those foreign country before I turned 44, unlike Ms. Palin! why didn't John McCain pick me for VP? even being a full on democrat, I don't think I could do more harm to his campaign than Palin and McCain themselves have done. Is Johnny boy going to show up at the debate tomorrow? or will he be in the next studio, arguing with Katie Couric?

(I should add, for those expecting a higher level of discourse here [good luck with that] - it was a long weekend last weekend - I will try to get some comments up about the second part of the Edward Yang series. Maybe tomorrow, with some luck... And meanwhile - I must point to the Film of the Month club, where Chris Cagle has kicked off this month's consideration of Claire Denis' L'Intrus.)

This Expedition does have some Rather Unusual Aspects Jim Lad

In honor of the great day, I offer something other than else:

Edward Yang Weekend (1)

Not much blogging hereabouts this week - that is to say - none. Late nights, you know. Halfway through the Edward Yang/Wu Nien-Jen series I've mentioned before. Still to see the 2 films I would have put at the top of that list - Terrorizer and A Brighter Summer Day. Coming this weekend. Have now seen That Day at the Beach and Taipei Story - plus Wu's Borrowed Life. They are all they are advertised to be. I will have to come back ad write up something more about them - I should have the material: my notes about the films have tended to take off in every direction at once, so I ought to get some content... For now just note - Yang was an ambitious and accomplished director from the very start - That Day at the Beach is a complex, detailed story that he handles with aplomb - it's got a more lush, melodramatic look to it than his later work, probably due to having Christopher Doyle as DP (his first film also). There are hints of Doyle's later style in it - handheld camera work, the dense spaces and lighting effects, the dreamines, characters swallowed by light and darkness that marks his mature style... Yang's style is harder edged, clearer - full of reflective, shining surface - characters swallowed by the spaces, the buildings, what have you. All of which is present in Taipei Story - along with the overpowering presence of modern Taipei - the buildings, traffic, the people, etc.

Meanwhile - Wu Nien-jen was at the screenings, showing his film A Borrowed Life, and talking about that film and Yang's films. He's the of Yi Yi and the writer of That Day on the Beach, and one of the driving forces behind the Taiwanese films of the 80s - producing, writing films like Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness, etc... Borrowed Life (Chinese title, Duo Sang, meaning "Father") is quite a bit like those films, or other of Hou Hsiao-hsien's realist 80s films (A Time to Live a Time to Die, say.) It is the story of Wu's father, a miner, born at the end of the 20s, during the Japanese control of Taiwan. Wu called that generation the "orphan generation" - educated by the Japanese, that they were Japanese - then, as he sad, learning in 1945 that they were Chinese. This film is less explicit than City of Sadness, say, about the idea that Japanese occupation of Taipei was replaced, effectively, by mainland Chinese occupation of Taiwan - but the idea is there. The film itself is a long, slow examination of village life, the lives of the characters, both the miners and their children, who move away, and modernize... It looks a lot like Hou Hsiao-hsien - with less of the mastery of the medium, but Wu is a solid director, who knows how to present his stories... A fine film.

Anyway - more to come - more films - more commentary I hope. But I wanted to get some of these thoughts down now - the longer I wait, the more I'm inclined to procrastinate further. But right now, I'm procrastinating going to bed, so good night world!

Memorial

It seems like a good idea today to spare a thought for your local
skyscraper. And all the people they house and employ.

Wish List Meme

Thanks to Adam Ross, who pushes a fine new meme on me - The Holy Grail List. A variation on the 12 films meme Piper sent into the world - 12 films (1) you haven't seen - and (2) aren't available on Netflix. As usual, it's taking me forever to get this thing written - but here it is! and in time for my first item still to be true!

Those who know me won't be surprised that this is heavy on the Asian films. And I know that this is a list that I will add to, in my head at least, endlessly after I post it. (Heck - I might put it in the sidebar alongside the blogathon list and keep adding to it on purpose...) This is going to have to be the first 12 films [more or less - I fully intend to cheat when possible] that come into my head, which isn't likely to cover it....

1. I have to start with Edward Yang -because if things go well, his films will come off this list over the next week or two. The HFA is running a retrospective - complete, I believe. I have seen 2 - Mahjong and Yi Yi - the first interesting, the latter a towering masterpiece. I suspect if I could see Mahjong again, it would rise as well. I don't know why his films are so hard to see - granted, they're difficult art films - but not that difficult. Maybe that's the problem - they're not as extreme as Hou Hsiao Hsien, lack the romanticism of Tsai Ming-liang - so they get short changed. I don't know. I can't explain it. But I am intensely grateful that they are finally coming...

2. Humanity and Paper Balloons - Sadao Yamanaka's classic, the values of contemporary films by the likes of Ozu and Naruse applied to the Japanese period film. Gotta see it. I could fill this list with 30s Japanese films (just going through Michael Kerpan's blog, say), but this one can stand as emblem for them all.... 

3. ...maybe not all - take for instance Chikamatsu Monogatari - AKA, Tale of Crucified Lovers - Mizoguchi.... this is often listed high in rankings of his films, but never available as far as I have seen. Sooner or later, I suppose, these films might make it here - Mizoguchi is slowly coming into print in the US. Kurosawa has always been available in the states; Ozu is catching up - with 14, 15 films available here - another half dozen and he might be reasonably well represented. (The 30s masterpieces - An Inn in Tokyo and The Only Son, at the very very least, have to be available first.) Mizoguchi has a lot of ground to make up. And then Naruse and Imamura and Oshima and Ichikawa and all the rest... (Of that lot, only Oshima is a good candidate for this list - decent retrospectives of the other three have played here, so I have seen a fair sample - all of Imamura, most of it multiple times... also probably no surprise to readers, at least those who recognize a reincarnated husband when they see one. Though Oshima might not be long for this list either - a retrospective is touring...)

4. Ishtar - what? Foul, you cry - Ishtar IS listed at Netflix! True true, I say, that's why it's been sitting in my "Saved DVDs" list there for 3 years (more or less.) I notice A New Leaf and the Heartbreak Kid are there too, to "Save" - not to "Add." The bastards. Those of you who haven't seen it though, can console yourselves with Mikey And Nicky. Why yes, I do like Elaine May. And - shit... I am cheating: "You must not have seen any of the films on your list, either in theatres or on video" - shit. That ruins that. Of course I've seen Ishtar -  on TV - most of it anyway - have I seen Ishtar? It used to be on TV all the time, but I dont know if I have seen it, start to finish, on purpose, or not. I want to. Given its reputation, at least when it came out, compared to what I know about May, and now that I've seen May's other films - could it be so bad? The bits of it I've caught in the last few years have played as sneakily amusing instead of ham-fisted and dull. One should also consider the effects of seeing (and loving) a bunch of Luc Moullet films (many of them available on Netflix!) - that might be an instructive comparison.... I have to see it again... but that seems more or less impossible.

5. Out One: Noli Me Tangere - The French could be pretty well represented here too. I've seen the short version of Out One, but not this. I've never seen a Rivette film that came close to being too long, including 6 hours of Jeanne la Poucelle, so I quite expect this to be a riveting 13 hours.

6. La Cicatrice Interieure - I've had the good luck to see some pretty darned obscure Philippe Garrel films - Le Lit de la Vierge, say... but nowhere near enough. Like a few directors on this list, almost all his films could qualify - Cicatrice Interieure sounds fascinating - it can stand for them all....

7. Hirokazu Kore-Eda's Hana Yori mo Naho - oh wait: look at that! So why wasn't this released? Because no one expects a samurai film from Kore Eda? that's certainly an annoying fact - directors who depart from their established styles, tend to be ignored. Take Zhang Yimou - now that he's become a big costume epic filmmaker, his smaller films (like Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles) get the barest of releases... This is off topic: darn - how do I get this back? Keep Cool? That was one of the first films I noticed this phenomenon with - after a string of historical epics and melodramas, Zhang turned to contemporary China, a looser, more comic film (so they say - I haven't seen it, obviously) - and besides whatever trouble the commies made for him back home, the film never got distributed - and - happily for our purposes, if not for those wanting to see the film - it ain't on Netflix!

8. Jang Sun-woo's Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie - one of the first Korean movies I read about, 10 odd years ago - it sounded very interesting, but I don't think it has ever surfaced anywhere near me. Lies is on Netflix - I guess a good flogging is always helpful in getting your films distributed. It's also a fairly remarkable film - makes me want to see more of his work.

9. Bigger than Life - Nicholas Ray's film, also mentioned at the Dancing Image - but yeah, one I haven't seen, and long to see.

10. Histoires du Cinema - Godard's big video project. This is another one others have mentioned, but I have to note it,because, damn.... I suppose it's just a region 2 DVD player and £25.98 away, but still...

11. Oh yes - Fantomas - Feuillade's 1913 epic... Another reason to get a Region 2 DVD player, I guess. But - yeah. In fact - freakin' Bordwell might as well be the last entry on this list - especially when he writes about the early silents. Enough of my Netflix queue is already occupied with Victor Sjostrom, Evgenie Bauer, William S. Hart and the like - never mind the ones that aren't there. Though if you think he's bad - try reading Noel Burch!

12. I knew once I started I'd never stop... Souls on the Road - one of the great early Japanese silent films, 1921... or Red Bat - 1931 chambara...

Enough!

For tags - well - how about the rest of the Film and Discussion crew? Joseph tagged Evan - but if I can get Karyn, Erik, Blade, Mike to join in - why, that would be a fine thing!

(I've also posted a shorter version of this list there.)

My Septennial Woody Allen Film

It's a strange fact. I have managed, for 21 years now, to see a Woody Allen film, new in the theater, every 7 years. I saw Radio Days - then Bullets Over Broadway - then The Curse of the Jade Scorpion - and now, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I've mentioned before - not on this blog, another one - that Woody Allen was one of the first filmmakers I noticed, as a filmmaker. (It's interesting that Film Walrus said almost the same thing is his recent "let's just be friends" post about Allen - "one of the first highbrow auteurs that budding film nerds gravitate towards." Yup.) I was a fan in the 80s - the only filmmaker I followed, at least until Blue Velvet came out and I discovered a rather more intoxicating brew.... So it is odd that I have basically stopped seeing new Woody Allen films.

The first gap (87-94) made the most sense - I barely saw any movies in the late 80s - 88-91, say, I'd be surprised if I saw a dozen new films combined. That changed, and after I started going to films again, I finally got around to seeing Woody Allen again... But here - the truth is, I didn't love Radio Days - found it sentimental nostalgia, not up to proper Woody Allen - Sleeper or Annie Hall or Zelig or even Broadway Danny Rose (which I greatly enjoyed on its release.) And Bullets Over Broadway, which came well hyped, proved to be amusing, but kind of drab - predictable plot and characters, a bit forced and over designed. So though I enjoyed it, I didn't feel obliged to see the next Allen film... though throughout the late 90s I always considered it - I'd plan to see them - but it never worked out... What finally did work out was The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Why? Because I was stuck in Manchester New Hampshire for a week, with 3 channels of cable and dial up connection to AOL to fill the evenings - a movie was a joyous respite. The Woody Allen was the best of what must have been a dreary slate up in the hinterlands - o that's where we went. And again - I enjoyed it - it was fun, like a Duck Tale on film - maybe not a Carl Barks duck tale, but a decent imitation... But that's not enough to send you back to the auteur, and the next few Woody Allen films are so forgettable I would not know they existed if I had not looked them up. And then he moved to England for a few films, which - in the immortal words of Belle Waring, "has been implausibly touted as watchable"...

Right. Now comes a new Woody Allen, this one set in Barcelona, and again, inspiring a certain amount of gushing in the press - not very plausibly, to be sure, but still. And again I found myself with a weekend without any inspiring options and excellent weather that convinced me to hike over to Coolidge Corner to see the it.

Michael Atkinson is right. This is not something that happens to me much - but there I was, 15, 20 minutes into the film, the scene in the restaurant, where Javier Bardem has invited the girls off for a weekend of sight-seeing and sex, then left them to argue about it - one of them is an uptight wise ass nerd, the other a dreamy insecure hedonistic, so they disagree - and keep disagreeing, and Woody keeps cutting back and forth between them, simple 3/4 shots, cutting, back and forth, as they drone on and on and on and... I don't think I've ever actually bailed on a film - but if this had happened five minutes earlier - if I had had time to go downstairs and see Frozen River instead - I would have. It was close. Instead I scanned the back of the shot, hoping something would move back there to give me something else to look at... there was a nice shot somewhere, early in the film, some combination of characters blabbing away in the middle of the screen, but in the corner, Allen had left a statue, sort of out of focus, but visible. Probably an accident - maybe the matte as wrong... But for a bit, there was something to look at!

I was able to take some comfort over the next hour or so in spotting the better films Allen was intentionally or otherwise referencing. Given the dry voiceover, the setting, the characters - not just the uptight nerd/hedonist central pairing, but all the insufferable rich Americans around them - even the frigging plot, with the two Americans getting tangled up with the same local lovers, with a dangerous ex- turning up with a gun to resolve the whole thing - it is hard not to drop the "Vicky Cristina" part of the title and think of the almost unimaginably better Barcelona. Now that's a movie. And while Stillman is not exactly Wes Anderson with a camera (...and the voiceover, the Americans trying to "find themselves" in an exotic land, etc., occasionally called him to mind too...), he knows how to cover a scene to bring out the best in the dialogue. Though of course, he also writes dialogue that is funny and clever and tells a story and all the other good things Woody Allen used to do somewhere in the dim past. He also makes characters - even those representing types, even a lot of the bit players - interesting, worth finding out more about. He seems interested in finding out more about them. Not so Mr. Allen, not in 2008. No one ever is or does or says anything that was not more or less obviously predictable from the minute they appear onscreen - unless they are required to behave in a certain way for Plot Purposes.

I wish - in a dream, Woody Allen has a tiff with some financier on the set and goes home in a huff and the Insurance Stooges step in and demand someone Finish the Film - Whit Stillman would be a fine choice; Wes Anderson too; or Pedro Almodovar, another one Allen seems to be trying to channel here. Or nearly anyone, really.... They've got a gorgeous cast, they've got Barcelona, they have the bare makings of a decent story - it can't be that hard to make something watchable. Instead - this looks and plays like a soft-core porn film with the sex scenes cut out. Dull, unbelievable, and promising titillation but then primly turning away whenever something smutty starts to appear. And just so boring to look at! all those streets, those houses, those Gaudi buildings, and there's never anything going on anywhere but between whichever two characters are droning away in the foreground. (Or middle distance - where they wander listlessly back and forth...) None of the background business, the elaborate compositions, etc. that Anderson loves; lacking the patience and interest in group dynamics Stillman has; none of the joy in design, in colors and movement, even in just the solid facts of human bodies, that Almodovar has. Dull editing - that's what almost sent me running, the plain back and forth cuts, edited to a metronome I think... nothing.

I'll leave with one more complaint. A documentary turned up on PBS this weekend - "Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey" - showing a biologist, Spencer Wells, traveling round the world, tracing the genetic history of man... okay - nothing special - but full of shots that - why can't Woody Allen do this?



Look at that shot - the kid in the background - the statue... but especially the kid - who, in the actual shot, follows Wells and the camera as Wells walks around that wall, or whatever it is. It's a great shot - funny in itself - almost impossible to imagine the filmmakers set it up, the kid I mean... It's the main thing missing in the Allen film. Any sense of there being anything alive in the shot - anything in the shot not there on purpose, or - anything in the shot that isn't completely functional in the shot. (It's probably the same thing: Wes Anderson's films are full of that kind of background business, though all of it is exquisitely choreographed. So it's not spontaneity that's missing, it's - anything.) There's nothing. Allen isn't a good enough writer, not now, to pull off turning on the camera and letting the words come - and really, no one any good actually does that anyway. But he has no ideas - no ides how to turn a simple dialogue scene into an interesting dialogue scene. Nothing that opens the film up - or, really, closes the film in. (If he were making a film about claustrophobia - he doesn't do that either.) It's just there.

More Politics, I'm Afraid

A political miracle - Peggy Noonan (and Mike Murphy) say pretty much what I think about McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for veep:



The link is everywhere, at least on the lefty blogs. I first saw it at If I Ran the Zoo, where in comments, Tom Hilton links to Daniel Nexon noting what this says about modern pundits. They know better, but keep putting it out.... hypocrisy, cynicism, shamelessness - the modern republican party.

September

I don't really fee like writing anything about the Republican Convention. It's bound to be clown show - McCain's campaign has been a clown show so far - picking Palin as VP? it's hard to believe. Skim through the Sarah Palin posts at Lawyers, Guns and Money: we've got pork barrel politics and lies about government pork; we've got the secessionist party; we've got the abuse of power to settle old grudges and personal feuds; the book banning; the ignorance about history (the founding fathers and the pledge of allegiance); the inexperience and incompetence and hilarious attempts to cover for it (Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard!); the fact that she's never been to Canada - and oh yeah, the kid... Well, it's not fair to pick on the kid - lots of kids mess around, and it's not as though the GOP and their supporters would ever criticize the choice sand misfortunes of others. Right?

Those fuckers. Its endless - the things they - the right, at least the public face of the right - do to prove, one more time, that they are utterly without shame. Shameless moralizing hypocrites - they have no values, no morals, nothing, but sheer naked self-interest. There's no reason to be surprised any more - one reason I haven't bothered writing much about politics in a long while. There's nothing left to say. The modern republican party is a party of hypocrisy and power -there is nothing to say or do but vote as many of them out of power as is necessary to convince the rest to grow up and act like human beings again. I imagine most republicans are decent human beings - the ones I know are, they just don't agree with me. But they make common cause with scum, and reap the benefits of the viciousness of the bad ones, so they - the decent republicans - need to lose some elections and fast. Though who knows - there's no sign that the public is much better...

I don't know. You can see the results of of Republican governance on display - Tucker at Pilgrim Akimbo has a post up about protests in Minnesota, and police over-reaction; Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings comments; Glenn Greenwald reports and summarizes.

This is nothing new. Police have been ramping up their response to demonstrations since at least Seattle 1999. September 11, of course, provided an excuse or even more "security", especially around big events like political conventions - though lot of this occurs at a more day to day level. 9/11 put the fear in us - with cause - but we allowed the fear to linger, and it has become paranoia and cowardice. The republicans, in particular, have been the party of paranoia and cowardice - which translates into shows of toughness - attacking the weak, from Iraq, to torturing POWs, to sending cops out in riot gear against radio personalities. (And lite brites! don't forget lite brites!) And what I said then - at some point, it's hard not to see all of this, the petty crap, the bag searches at ball games, the riot cops in subways, the absurdities at airports, the illegal phone tapping and retroactive immunities, the shows of force at conventions and the like, as being meant to teach us to take a police state for granted. Keep pretending they're protecting us, so that when they need to act to genuinely control us, they can - and we can't do anything about it.

I'm not inclined to paranoia, though - I doubt anyone is planning all this. I don't expect a coup, by anyone. But things happen. And habits form. And we form the habit of having everything supervised by men with guns and bullet proof vests and we form the habit of keeping quiet about it. And - if anything happens - our government is in the habit of using those security forces to control it. So... we should not be so willing to accept it. None of it.

So anyway. This stuff won't go away when the republicans lose power - Obama voted wrong on the telecom immunity act - democrats will use it - they encouraged it in the 90s..... But they haven't made a career of it - they seem to have values other than just their own power, and they appeal to emotions besides fear and the desire to find someone else to blame and hurt. So there is hope there.

Oh well. I don't want to write much about politics - too depressing by half. Septembers do it though. The anniversaries of September 11, of Hurricane Katrina - and of my friend's death in Iraq - push this stuff to the front of my mind. And the insult of McCain's choice of Palin for VP (insult to everyone - the American people, women, Palin herself, competent republican women politicians, HIllary Clinton, etc.) plus the usual thuggery in the name of security gives me ample material to rave about....

Labor Day

Happy labor day people! To quote some of America's finest Aristocrats:

You get up in the morning to join the common herd
Your lot is a hard one, or so I have heard
I know how hard it is to bust one's ass
'Cause I'm a Friend of a Friend of the Working Class

And I can only wish the best for the poor working man - if things are hard - well,there's always Roque!



Or - Marianne Faithful doing Lenin:



Or Lennon, as it were...

End of Summer Answers

I'm proud to get this done in less than the usual three weeks! Here it is - Dennis Cozzalio's latest quiz - Dr. Smith’s Lost in the Space at the End of Summer Movie Quiz. I'm also posting it there - but I want it here, because some of these questions (as always) might draw me back for more...

And away we go:

1) Your favorite musical moment in a movie
- This is simple - Night and Day in Gay Divorcee. If "musical moment" is meant to mean specifically to exclude "musical number", then I think I might vote for the moment in Something Wild, as Charley and Lulu head for home, when the Feelies song on the soundtrack, Slipping (into Something), slips into something and out of something else - it's after the end of the second verse, the guitars have done their intro and started to intertwine and the drums do a little hitch and the song starts speeding up - the song heads off for the guitar solos, and the film turns into a Ray Liotta picture.

2) Ray Milland or Dana Andrews
- Andrews I think

3) Favorite Sidney Lumet movie
- It turns out that Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was the first I had ever seen. I could not believe that either, and had to look up a bunch of films - Tootsie, say - to prove he did not direct them. It is also possible I have seen Dog Day Afternoon, though I don't remember ever sitting through it start to finish. Though if you add up the clips I might end up having seen the whole thing... I have read 12 Angry Men, though. And - wait! wait! I have seen Fail Safe! way back in college. I don't remember anything about it except that Henry Fonda was in it and New York gets it.

4) Biggest surprise of the just-past summer movie season
- Did anything surprise me? Speed Racer? I certainly enjoyed it, which didn't seem likely before I saw it... The biggest surprise MIGHT be that I have no interest at all in seeing The Dark Knight. Nothing about it seems worth knowing about. I'd rather see Batman and Robin again than see it the first time. I'll probably like it, modestly, when I see it, but I couldn't care less if I do. That attitude does surprise me.

5) Gene Tierney or Rita Hayworth
- Rita

6) What’s the last movie you saw on DVD? In theaters?
- This changes all the time. The answer when I started was King Kong on DVD; The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in a theater. It looks like I am going to finish it with the answers, The Boy With Green Hair on DVD, and (I'm sure Dennis will approve), Once Upon a Time in the West.

7) Irwin Allen’s finest hour?
- No clue. Airplane?

8) What were the films where you would rather see the movie promised by the poster than the one that was actually made?
- This is the kind of question that drives me crazy. I can't think of a good answer - but I will. I se enough posters like that - I just can't think of them on command. I'm completely stumped.

9) Chow Yun-Fat or Tony Leung
- It’s a question of peak vs. longevity - or depth vs. breadth. Chow has a perfect sweet spot - in those John Woo films and most of his films (actioners, a couple comedies, and quite a few in between) from the late 80s early 90s, he is unbeatable. But he hasn't done much since, and less worth caring about, while Leung, who was always a fine actor, has kept on going. He's had a long, varied, downright majestic career when you think about it, covering a much wider range of roles, types of films, everything, than just about anyone, anywhere. Program pictures to Hou Hsiao Hsien, and all the time seeming committed to the work he's doing. So maybe he can't match Chow at his charismatic best, but he's kept his career moving, taken more chances, done more to advance serious and challenging filmmakers, and done all of it well. In this, he's less like Chow Yun Fat than like Leslie Cheung, though Cheung was better than either of the at anything any of the three tried. But that's another matter.

10) Most pretentious movie ever
- This is tough - I would have to define pretentiousness to answer it well. So I will stay obvious - Bertolucci is the grand champion - and The Last Emperor is the worst kind of bloated nothing. Felt like they shot it in real time. Yuck.

11) Favorite Russ Meyer movie
- Boring answer, but, Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!

12) Name the movie that you feel best reflects yourself, a movie you would recommend to an acquaintance that most accurately says, “This is me.”
- In some moods, Rushmore - though all rather plowed under by the demands of a Paying Job. Or maybe Waking Life - with its sense of a world of consciousness existing alongside the world of the world. In fact - Waking Life is probably about right.

13) Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo
- “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.” I can't say there's any contest, really.

14) Best movie snack? Most vile movie snack?
- I don’t eat at the movies, so this is not easy. Milk Duds are a vile concoction, I'll say that. A good bucket of popcorn has its place....

15) Current movie star who would be most comfortable in the classic Hollywood studio system.
- George Clooney seems obvious; Tony Leung probably has, as much as anyone - Hong Kong still is (or was, through the 90s) pretty darned close to the old Hollywood system.

16) Fitzcarraldo—yes or no?
- Hell yeah.

17) Your assignment is to book the ultimate triple bill to inaugurate your own revival theater. What three movies will we see on opening night?
- This is beautiful - this is one of those questions that’s almost worth a post itself. What would I show, if I won the lottery and bought a theater and could show any three films? Rushmore, the Maltese Falcon and It's a Wonderful Life. I might try to resist it, but I doubt I could.

18) What’s the name of your theater? (The all-time greatest answer to this question was once provided by Larry Aydlette, whose repertory cinema, the Demarest, is, I hope, still packing them in…)
- All right - another one I could brood about for a month... probably could do worst than "Playtime"...

19) Favorite Leo McCarey movie
- Duck Soup of course. Though since that is really a Marx Brothers film - Make Way for Tomorrow (or The Awful Truth? this question is a lot harder - after the Marx Brothers - than it used to be, now that I’ve seen bunch of these films.) (Hey! The Awful Truth 24 Times A Second! how's that for a movie theater name?)

20) Most impressive debut performance by an actor/actress.
- James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause? Orson Welles in Citizen Kane? Bruno S in The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser? IMDB ruins my hope that Full Metal Jacket was Vincent D'Onofrio's first film... alas!

21) Biggest disappointment of the just-past summer movie season
- I didn't see any high profile releases, at least since Speed Racer. Smaller films - The Tracey Fragments turned out to be pretty bland, for all the hype and promise, though it's almost too mall to complain about... Maybe Mr. Lonely, which kept promising things and delivering incoherence and sentimentality....

22) Michelle Yeoh or Maggie Cheung
- Cheung Man-yuk. This is even less of a contest than the first actress show down. (Though again - neither one holds up to Brigitte Lin, who’d give Marlene a run for it.)

23) 2008 inductee into the Academy of the Overrated
- Nobody's bugged me this year. And I haven't seen the films that are getting all the (probably) undeserved praise - Batman, etc. So - until someone drags me to see the Batman film, and I am confirmed in my suspicions about it, I have nothing really.

24) 2008 inductee into the Academy of the Underrated
- You know what? I am feeling perverse: the Joel Schumacher Batmans. The scripts probably are as bad as they get credit for, but I'll take that campy overacting and over directing over - well - over Batman Begins, no question. So there.

25) Fritz the Cat—yes or no?
- Haven’t seen the movie, but, yes, in general.

26) Trevor Howard or Richard Todd
- Probably Howard, though I'm rather hot to see the Robin Hood film Todd was in...

27) Antonioni once said, “I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.” What filmmaker working today most fruitfully ignores the rules? What does ignoring the rules of cinema mean in 2008?
- I don't know what the rules of cinema are - "rules" sounds so rigid, like it's possible to make mistakes making films. "Conventions" maybe... either way, there probably comes a point in the development of an art form where it ceases to have right and wrong ways of doing things, and just competing sets of rules (or conventions, or whatever.) That point has probably passed for film - anything you do, however strange by the standards of one type of film, will make sense within some other branch of filmmaking.... All that said - I don't know if anyone else really looks like Luc Moullet, to this day. He pays as little attention to the things that do approach being rules - treat the world you make as if it were real; try to either achieve technical competence or hide technical limitations; or make self-conscious art of them - as anyone. So I'll say Luc Moullet.

28) Favorite William Castle movie
- Goodness. I don't think I've even accidentally seen one of his films, unless you count Rosemary's Baby. Probably the kind of director I'll decide to take in a bunch somewhere along the line. Maybe now... in compensation, I'll say that The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus might be the most underrated LP of all time. Which has nothing to do with Castle that I know of except a reference to a title...

29) Favorite ethnographically oriented movie
- I'm not altogether sure what counts. Killer of Sheep might be the answer - Several Friends might be even better, as it's even more directly focused on a specific group of people just living their lives.

30) What’s the movie coming up in 2008 you’re most looking forward to? Why?
- For wide release, it's probably the Coen brothers film; for more specialized releases - not sure what's coming. There's an Edward Yang retrospective coming to Harvard in September - that's bigger than anything else I know of.

31) What deceased director would you want to resurrect in order that she/he might make one more film?
- Edward Yang is a good bet.

32) What director would you like to see, if not literally entombed, then at least go silent creatively?
- Woody Allen and Whit Stillman should switch career tracks.

33) Your first movie star crush
- This is one I will remember somewhere along the line - I will see something and go - holy cow, I was a wreck for her in 19[redacted]! What I'm coming up with right now are Talia Shire or Debra Winger but that can't be right. Though I certainly felt unwholesome things for Ms. Winger.... TV Star crushes are another matter - Barbara Feldon and, as my brothers continue to mock me for, Lady Elaine Fairchild. Pop culture crushes are something else entirely.

Back to School Linkage

And again at the turning of the seasons comes another of Dennis Cozzalio's oh so excellent quizzes - Professor Zachary Smith's Lost in the Space at the end of the Summer Quiz. These are not things to be entered into lightly, though there are 16 answers up already since yesterday (as of this posting.) But no, this can't be rushed...

Elsewhere - Girish lauds Manny Farber.

Moviezzz urges critics to see more foreign movies. He's also been reading Haruki Murakami - my own gateway drug to Japanese literature, and probably Japanese movies. Not to mention a comment on the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention - in connection with the Chicago 10 DVD. I should Probably watch that film - given the attention paid to 1968 in France by filmmakers, it's interesting to wonder what came out of 1968 in the states - Medium Cool, which is a hell of a start.

Things are going a bit better for the country these days, at least as far as the Democratic National Convention goes. I haven't said much about politics here lately - I don't know what I am supposed to say. I can think of no excuse on earth not to vote for anyone the Democrats nominated - and don't see much point in quibbling about who they nominated - as long as they win. Bush has nigh on demolished this country - and completely demolished the Republican party. In 2000, I could see John McCain as president without feeling all that distraught about it - now? he's spent 8 years groveling t some of the worst people in American political history, and now represents nothing but more of the same, with possibly a bit less raw stupid at the top. Plenty of dishonesty and raw privilege though...

But that aside: not only is it a great relief to have one of the major parties nominate a Black man for president (narrowly beating a White woman in the primaries), and that (both of them, really) a sign(s) that we are, in small ways, still capable of doing things right - better than we used to anyway... But this is the first time since, probably, Gary Hart that I have felt that someone with a reasonable chance of being president is someone I would, on balance, like to see as the president. Kerry, Gore (in 2000 at least) both Clintons, Dukakis, any of the other major contenders - Bradley, Brown, Edwards - were all people I'd settle for. (And back in the day, I voted for Jesse Jackson, without thinking he had much chance - but hoping he'd get some pull at the convention. But I don't think I'd have wanted him as president.) But Obama - runs on programs I can support (mostly); and seems like someone who can get people to follow him. That counts - presidents ought to have charisma - they ought to be able to command respect and admiration, even from their foes. I can see him doing that, and putting it to good use.

So that's my political speech for the year. (Far cry from 4 years ago - all politics, all the time!) And I guess it brings us to the obligatory music video - probably a boring choice, half the internet's going to be linking to it, but hey, it's good enough for the Dems, so - the O'Jays, with Love Train:



[And let me add: it's the O'Jays! why shouldn't half the internet link to it?]

The Seventh Art and the Eighth Wonder of the World

For the movies about movies blogathon, at Goatdog blog. King Kong! (and a bit of Busby Berkeley.)



King Kong is a movie that is explicitly about movies. It's also pretty explicitly autobiographical, both in the characters populating the film (Carl Denham being a dead ringer for Merian C. Cooper and all), and in the development and structure of the film itself. The film planned in the story of the film is the film we're watching, pretty much. In fact, King Kong is about both movies and movie making directly, and metaphorically - it is a figure for movies in general. That's not unusual in films, and especially not in the early 1930s, a period with a good deal of technological and social change. What is unusual about King Kong is how explicit it is, especially its direct comments about spectacle, sex, the market, and so on. It's especially unusual in a film as enthusiastic about films as this one is.

Films that are or contain figures of film tend not to be so direct. Usually, they use another art form - books, the stage, music - to stands for film. (Or, taking a recent example - cooking, in Ratatouille.) Denham's show in NY, displaying Kong, works that way - it's a pretty direct analogue to the film we're watching, no pretending otherwise - but it is not, itself, cinema. What makes King Kong different is how everything else in the film that points to cinema does so without any disguise. The story is about a man who sets out to make a film: adventure! Spectacle! Sex! Drama! Beauty and the Beast! Denham and company come right out and say it - and they aren’t sentimental about it. They say it, they plan for it, they rehearse it, and then life (in the film) comes along and does it, more or less to cue. And with fine eye for spectacle - the natives stake out Ann Darrow just like a master showman would - and indeed Denham repeats the staging almost exactly in his show in NY.



Repeats Kong's defeats, too...



And of course King Kong the movie is, from start to finish, built around cinema - it’s designed to look good as a film; it’s conceived around the technology of film. And revels in it - the stop motion animation, the elaborate mattes and models and process shots. It's set up to look right on screen. They aren't trying to hide these things - they are presenting us with an amazing spectacle, and expect us to marvel in it, all of it. The planning, the formal properties of the film, are made more explicit by being prepared by Denham's talk. His attempts to film on the island, his attempts to stage-manage the villagers or the fights with Kong, etc., set up the formal structure of the rest of the film - the parallel imagery on the island and in NY (the wall on the island serving as stage and curtain, that recurs in the second half; the parallels in how Ann and Kong are staked out for display; the parallel battles on Kong's mountain and the empire state building, complete with dangerous birds. Even details like the several scenes in both parts of the film of Kong fishing around caves/apartments for people.) The depiction of the act of making a film sets you up to wonder at the artistry of the story proper when it gets going.



It's reminiscent of one of the other outstanding figures of cinema of the period - Warner Brothers' musicals, especially Busby Berkeley's parts. Berkeley’s numbers are almost parables for the shift from stage to screen. Their placement in the films (in 42nd Street, at least), and their overall structure, almost always enacts the shift from stage to screen. The numbers usually follow that pattern - starting on something like a real stage, then opening up toward film. First (usually) by shooting them from impossible places (the flies, through the floor), but eventually abandoning all sense of the spatial unity and integrity of the stage. The space in “42nd Street” (the song) or “By a Waterfall” or “Shanghai Lil” is pure cinematic space - much of it designed explicitly for the camera (and for editing), certainly constructing the three dimensional space of film. Interestingly, while this abandons the "real" space of the theater, it moves toward a "real" space of films - itself referring to the "real" space of, um - reality.



This is a bit like what King Kong does. The first section sets up the idea of the film Denham is going to make - they land on the island, he tries to start filming, but things go wrong: and then very wrong, and instead of making an adventure film, he has to live one. Which, of course, is almost exactly the film he planned all along (and certainly the one Cooper and Schoedsack were planning - and Denham "is" Cooper....) - though since his film plans fell through, he puts on his show the old fashioned way, on stage. This, perhaps, ties us back to the Warner's films. Of those films, Footlight Parade comes closest to matching King Kong's explicitness about the role of cinema. It comes closest to acknowledging the historical circumstances that these films reflect, the historical move from stage to screen. Jimmy Cagney stages musical preludes for movies - already, movies have replaced shows: now, they are starting to squeeze him. Largely, of course, because films like this have managed to recreate a good chunk of the spectacle of the stage. And of course - as Cagney holds off history a bit longer, he does it by staging “preludes” that are, of course, dazzling films.

Though one of the things this has in common with King Kong is the way they treat film as a part of a grander world of spectacle. Films, stage musicals, giant apes, are all attractions - all things put on for the amazement of the audience. Cooper and Schoedsack were no stranger to this - they made documentaries to show to lecture groups; they made films to be the Eight Wonder of the World! Cooper's later ventures, Cinerama, notably, work almost exactly like Denham's Kong exhibition - a grand event, demonstrating the wonders of something new. That's not far from what those Warner Brother's musicals were doing (or what Warner's did in the 20s, with sound films) - setting out to show that film was every bit the spectacle that theater could be. It's an approach that runs through King Kong - the way it was marketed, the way it is structured (with its overture and shows in shows and so on) - and the way it was made. Willis O'Brien's animation tests were central to the whole conceit. It's a film about spectacle - about story and everything else as an attraction. Presentationalist through and through, and quite delighted in it.

Another Links Post

Here are some things to have caught my eye - and things to look forward to.

Don't forget - starting tomorrow, it's a Movies about Movies blogathon, at the Goatdog blog.

UPDATE: Goatdog's main blogathon page.

Elsewhere - Ted Pigeon looks back at the films of 2007.

Bioscope looks at the history of Kinemacolor - part of its series on color (since they're British, I guess that's colour), and other things.

Screengrab takes a look at the 20 best animated films.

Spoutblog looks at some underrated fictional music.

East Bay View lists his favorite jazz records since 1970 - and before 1970. It's making me think about my own interest in jazz. I have an odd history with jazz - didn't listen to it much at all until the early 90s, though what I did hear I liked, though I didn't quite get - then - I went to New Orleans n the fall of 91, spend a couple nights wandering around Bourbon street mostly popping in and out of jazz bars, came home and decided to listen to Louis Armstrong and was, more or less immediately, completely converted. I listened to jazz, and almost nothing but, for the next five years - almost systematically, though tending to radiate out from Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Coltrane, moving forward through time - until, mid-90s, I'd reached fusion. Sonny Sharrock and Electric Miles and John McLaughlin - and that led back to rock... to Richard Thompson, specifically, but then, to everything else. Since then, jazz has mostly been on the back burner, except for where it meets avant garde guitar players... Saw Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue this weekend - documentary about Miles Davis and electric jazz, with his performance at the Isle of Wight the centerpiece: boy oh boy, but I like that stuff... I don't know where this comment is going really, but it might lead to a video...

It might lead to a meme - Samurai Frog offers up an iTunes game - iTunes as magic 8 ball, really. Basically:

1. Put your iTunes/ music player on Shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must put down the song name no matter what.

That might lead somewhere too.

Though not before noting - fafblog's The Medium Lobster has a new gig!

And now? Since I've stopped doing the Friday Random Tens, I haven't posted much of anything about music. Alas! Miles and company can rectify that - this being a performance of "Ife" from 1973. Broken in two - part one:



And Part Two, which is where things really get me: right now, my jazz world really revolves around Pete Cosey, who lets it rip on 12-strong here....



And good night - and see you at the movies about movies blogathon!