Things to Read and things to Argue About

Hello world - rather a lot going on in blogland this week, and coming up next week. The big event, I imagine, is the For the Love of Film: Film Preservation Blogathon - starting Sunday and running all week, hosted by Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren. It's a blogathon and a blog-a-thon - promising what looks like an overwhelming slate of writing on the subject, as well as providing direct support for the National Film Preservation Foundation. An important and fascinating topic - should be a good week of reading...

Meanwhile - Girish has another discussion of Auteurism at his blog - I'm not sure I can stand it. I can't even bring myself to read through it, to tell the truth. I run into an argument about auteurism every couple years somewhere - 2 years ago at Girish's blog, for instance - I can't muster any enthusiasm for another go... On the other hand, Girish posted an interesting question on Facebook yesterday - a question about the diegetic status of Fontaine's voiceover narration in Bresson's A Man Escaped. Is it diegetic or not? the consensus in the thread seems to be that since Fontaine is a character in the world of the film, his narration would be diegetic, even if displaced from the time of the images. Sounds good - though it strikes me that there could be times when you would want to distinguish between diegetic words, and diegetic sound - that is, between words (or perhaps the thoughts or meanings they express) that issue from within the depicted world - and sounds that, perhaps, do not exist in that world. I suppose the Bresson film is not the best example - but what about Joe Gillis' narration in Sunset Boulevard? the words seem to me to be diegetic enough, coming from a character in the film (even if he is dead as he says them) - but couldn't you say that the speech, the actual sounds of those words, don't exist in the real world of the film? Or other examples - Mark Whitacre's voiceover in The Informant! - or Takeshi Kinoshiro's character's words in Fallen Angels. Whitacre's voiceover is presented as his stream of consciousness, but the sounds - the spoken words - do not have the same reality that the dialogue has; Kinoshiro plays a mute - the words are, again, in his head (more narration after the fact - time and memory being a central theme in Wong Kar-wei's work), but never spoken - the words express diegetic thoughts, but the sounds of the words are not real in the fictional world. I'm not sure if diegetic/non-diegetic is the right distinction to make on this - but I think it is important to pay attention to the materiality of the sounds in a film, or the precise form words are given. Filmmakers play with these things, use them - think of how much Soderbergh gets out of the ways the voices in Whitacre's head interact with the words spoken in the film... This question threatens to keep expanding - like, what can you do with the different conventions for presenting a letter in a film? the paper and text on screen; the reader's voice reading (literally, or as voiceover); the writer's voice, the various tricks, like showing the writer writing and saying the words out loud... There's a lot there.

And one more bit of blog business - an interesting discussion springing up at Wonders in the Dark - Sam Juliano ponders the importance of professional criticism, and its relationship with amateur criticism - on the internet, particularly. The proximate cause was this post - a Why I Don't Like Citizen Kane essay by Stephen Russell-Gebbett. Both posts have garnered millions of comments, which makes adding anything to the fray pretty foolish... But, having read the two essays fairly carefully (and skimmed the comments), I can't help adding a word or two hundred.

First - it's a strange piece for Juliano to hang his complaint on - whether Mr. Russell-Gebbett is a professional or not, his post is a fairly serious attempt to make a case against Citizen Kane. The idea, the reasons, could well have been written by a professional - the prose even seems to be competent, careful, etc. - it rather undermines Juliano's point. As does the fact that Russell-Gebbett never says anything that would pass as an attack on professional criticism. He doesn't claim to be taking on the critical establishment, doesn't claim that he's as good as anyone else and just as entitled to his opinion, or any of the other myriad ways bloggers avoid accountability when these arguments crop up. (Maybe there's something like that in comments - I didn't see any in my scan of the comments, but maybe there's something there.) I'm not sure why Juliano attaches that particular set of arguments to Russell-Gebbett's post. (If anything, Juliano indulges in the professional's version of the duck and weave - appeals to authority, deference to authority - the critic's way of avoiding accountability.)

Second - one of the problems in debates like this is that the arguments tends to congeal around the question of whether professionalism makes you a better writer or critic - it doesn't. There is no reason why amateurs can't match professionals at this game, especially in blog sized posts. (And no lack of evidence that amateurs do just that.) It is true that professionals, on balance, are better writers and critics than amateurs - not because professionalism conveys authority so much as that ability tends to get people to be willing to pay you...

Which brings me to a third point, and one I don't see being made that much in this argument. What actually makes you a professional is not a paycheck, but an editor. And particularly, a professional editor. Professionalism is more a matter of credentials than anything else. For academics, the credentialing is explicit - you have to earn a degree, by proving to credentialed experts that you have mastered the field. It's not so defined for writing, but it really does amount to proving to someone that your work deserves to be published under their name. It's the editors that make the professional writer. And in practical terms, for telling the difference between professional and amateur writing online say - that's true for both senses of "editor" - editor as selector of the best work; editor in terms of crossing the t's and dotting the i's and making sure you don't use "barnstorm" when you mean "firestorm." (Not to pick on Mr. Juliano, but...) Professionalism, and whatever authority it conveys, depends on the matrix of professionals vouching for one another - a critics' value is determined by their being accepted and cited by other critics, and by knowledgeable readers.

That, I suppose, brings us around to the facts on the internet. The technology is changing: much of the discourse of professionalism is tied very closely to the technological fact of text being distributed through ink on paper. But text now is distributed almost as much through bits on screens as ink on paper, and the costs and labor and material involved is so different as to be impossible to compare. 20 years ago, if I wanted to play media critic, I might have printed this out and handed it around to my friends; 30 years ago I would have had to type it up and then xerox or mimeograph it. Now, I type it in blogger, hit publish and 20 or 30 people end up reading it before the day it out! a brave new world! But it is - the means of publication changes the dynamic between writer and editor - makes it possible for anyone to be their own editor, basically.

That, however, does not make all writing equal - what it does is create a problem - when anyone can publish more or less at will - how do we credential one another? One way, obviously, is through sites like The House Next Door - edited websites, that can vouch for the ability of the writers there. But they also provide a lot of links to blogs and sites that aren't professional in any meaningful sense - and provide a kind of endorsement of them, as well. But that's a different kind of endorsement, and implies a different kind of relationship among writers, readers, editors and the like. The internet does undo the hierarchical model of credentialing that editors provide - but that doesn't make all writing and criticism equal. Good writing is still good writing; good criticism is still good criticism. (And professionalism is no guarantee of good criticism - has everyone forgotten the Tom O'Neill's Sunrise article? He's a pro...) What I think it means is that "credentialing" becomes less formalized - it becomes a function of links, from people you trust to other people you trust - from good critics to other good critics, or maybe more precisely, from good readers to good writers...

I think there is too much attention paid to the internet as a means of publication, as an outlet for writers, and not enough to the ways the internet creates a network of readers - who then report on their reading to one another. I think this is a responsibility we need to pay more attention to - we need to be better readers, and to act as readers who can recommend strong (interesting, knowledgeable, creative, what have you) writing. I think perhaps people reading and writing on the internet need to pay more attention to the way that we are becoming collective editors. I don't know what will become of journalistic criticism, in its current form - I don't know if it will last very long. I think in fact, blogs and whatever sites carry on this kind of writing, might well absorb most of the functions of that kind of criticism. Indeed have - blogs now are as good a read as most professional reviewers, and often approach the quality of good film journals - though you have to wade through a lot more second rate stuff to find the good stuff. Not to mention the way blogs and Facebook and the like blend more or less serious film writing with all manner or fluff and all kinds of other writing... though for me, that very mixture of discourses is a feature of the medium, not a bug. It's one of the main attractions...

I better stop, before I start thinking about the future of academic criticism, and film books... cause that's a whole other set of questions, isn't it...

Two Weeks of Movies Noted

Well - another way too long layoff here at this blog. Can't say I have much excuse for the first week, but then the cable went out over the weekend - that stunk. Though with no TV or internet over the weekend, I watched movies (and Get Smart) instead, which is good. Turning over the Netflix queue, trying anyway... So here's a roundup, bi-weekly, films seen.... Typing is not too successful just now - I have a cut finger, which is annoying me quite a bit, but I am going to grind it out...

Fish Tank: 10/15 - Andrea Arnold's follow up to Red Road... Story of Mia, a 15 year old girl living in a wretched apartment with her wretched mother and ghastly little sister; she wants to be a dancer, she fights with her friends, she tries to save a horse from a family of drifters - misery abounds. Then her mother brings home a new man - Michael Fassbender, looking gorgeous, looking like a cross between Matthew McConaghey during the week or so he was a star and a downscale Heath Ledger... Things happen - she starts hanging around one of the boys with the horse, she gets ready to audition for a club as a dancer, she flirts with the boyfriend... This, needless to say, goes badly. But for all the misery on display, it's not precisely a downer of a film - Mia is too feisty, the actress playing her is riveting, Fassbender comes off as a budding star (as he has in the other films I've seen him in) - Arnold has a good eye, and a tough minded and direct approach to the material. And - as someone said, in a review or article or post somewhere a few months ago, when it was on the festival circuit - Arnold presents an unapologetic vision of female desire in the film. Her characters ogle Fassbender, and so does the camera...

Crazy Heart: 10/15 - Jeff Bridges vehicle, and let's hope it wins him an oscar. The story is not unfamiliar - aging country star, down on his luck, drinking himself to death, meets a lady, younger and livelier, and it sort of brings him back around. But he's still a drunk and soon enough something will happen to screw things up - though the film departs from the formula somewhat in allowing people something like a happy ending. Probably most surprising - a happy ending without a couple - that you don't see so much, not in this country. The film is best served by its actors - Bridges and Duvall and Colin Farrell all turn in great work, Bridges carrying the film, the other two providing clean detailed character turns... Maggie Gyllenhaal, though gorgeous and very likable, is a bit outclassed - though her character seems a little underwritten as well. She's got a bigger role than Farrell, say, but doesn't seem to be anywhere nearly as sharply written - she's just a bit too much of a device here... Shame... You get hints in the film (Ebert mentions one, a turn of a phrase that indicates his ability) or why this younger, more together woman goes for old drunk Bad Blake - both what he offers and what kind of person she is to be drawn to him - but they aren't developed... or she doesn't sell them - I'm not sure who to blame... But overall - it's a neat little film, that twists its formulae here and there in ways that give it real juice. (Farrell's character; the separate happy endings, as it were...) And finally - it is a pretty explicit riff on Jeff Bridges' career - full of Lebowski references, to name one - the bowling alley he plays in; picking his glasses out of a trash can; the "barley pop" line ("oat soda" in Lebowski)....

A Town Called Panic: 8/15 - amusing little Belgian animation about three roommates, cowboy, Indian and horse - cowboy and indian want to buy a present for horse - order 50 bricks, but get 50 million; this ruins their house, and when they rebuild them, fish start stealing their walls - hijinks follow. Surreal and amusing, but probably better suited for TV. As an ongoing series, it's one I think I'd watch...

The Last Station: 7/15 - Polite, sometimes interesting biopic about the last days of Tolstoy, from a Jay Parini novel. Secretary arrives - a naive young man, a vegetarian (and celibate and a virgin) - he will serve the master. He will also spy on everyone for everyone. Instead he is caught in the power struggle between the countess and Tolstoy's associates. This is very one sided, as the Tolstoyans are all monsters (twirling their mustaches and stealing the poor man's copyright from his loving family) - while she is a long suffering (though somewhat histrionic) wife, etc... There is much drama, the kid gets paid, Tolstoy dies, the actors get to ham it up (with inevitable - and deserved, don't get me wrong - oscar nominations) - not much is made of the fact that it is 1910 and Russia has 7 years of this nonsense left before things get really wild... I don't know if there is much to say pro or con about the film - there do seem to be some ideas hiding in the margins (all those camera; gramophones and ticker tapes, the modern world creeping into furthermost Russia), but they seem pretty incidental; I don't see much point in the film's existence other than providing Plummer and Mirren with juicy roles - though that's not to be discounted.... Unfortunately, the most substantial reaction I had to the film was irritation at the constantly moving camera. I suppose it's par for the course in mainstream films - the camera roves and drifts round and round endlessly - but to no purpose at all. The best you can hope for is a shot that draws your attention to different objects in turn - but most of the objects turn out to be meaningless as well. All the action is in the words and the actors delivering them - but the camera won't stay still and let them do their thing - or even just follow them around... the movements are gratuitous, distracting and pointless. It makes me mad! The only time it stopped was for obvious second unit work - landscape shots, that sort of thing - and closeups in extreme shallow depth of field, where moving the camera would have put the actor's face out of focus. The only thing worse than the endless meaningless motion was when the director hit on the Utterly Unprecedented Device of shooting a Violent Argument with a wobbly handheld camera - great heavens! why has no one ever thought of doing that before? Anyway... it's pointless to complain... but reminds you rather sharply of the difference between contemporary art films (in all their shapes) and contemporary - whatever this is - prestige pictures....

As for DVDs? I had to watch the Big Lebowski again - it gets better every time, smarter, more moving, and funny as hell... a couple more Langs - Return of Frank James, which while a fine movie, seems the most generic of the Langs I've seen - a very well executed old fashioned western. It seems to have established Lang's ability to work on American genre pictures, and the ones that come after it are more individualized... like The Woman in the Window - a superb little noir, with a strange twist in the tail - that - I should save for another post to talk about - it seems to be doing a couple things at once, and it's hard to describe them without rather massive spoilage... And finally - though I can't quite force4 myself to watch it all the way through all that much, I find it awful tempting to put Inglourious Basterds in and watch scenes at random...

Salinger

Another icon dies - J. D. Salinger, only a day after Howard Zinn... Is it true that many of the comments on Salinger's death are personal? it seems that way - notes about reading Catcher in the Rye, the personal connection the reader had to it. There may be good reasons - Salinger seems to me to have had a particularly intimate way of writing - "to inhabit the skin" of Holden Caufield, say (as Ted Burke put it) - a quality, that intimacy, that interiority - I remember from all his work I read. My strongest memory of Salinger is personal - less the stories, more the fact that I found a copy of Nine Stories at a summer camp where my parents volunteered and we usually took summer vacation. An old beat up paperback, maybe missing the cover, that I carried around with me most of the week, reading it when I could, sitting in the shade, reading it in the back seat of the car. I remember there was something off about that summer - somebody did a lot of fighting, me and my mother, or me and my brothers, or my brothers and my parents - I don't remember who or why, just a kind of simmering tension, that was unusual, especially for vacations. (Might have been the year my brother broke his leg, though that seems late - but it would certainly explain the bad tempers.) There was one day, we took a day trip somewhere - godawful hot, but someone had to go to the DMV, I think it was - and I ended up stuck in the car with some collection of quarreling relatives, waiting while someone was attending to unpleasant official business. Sitting in the back seat listening to whatever argument and whining was going on, reading Salinger, and tuning out everything else. It seemed like the perfect thing to be reading... As for Catcher in the Rye, I read that in high school, toward the end - later than a lot of people did, I suspect. I liked it well enough, but it didn't really stick with me. I was enough of an old fart at 17 that I was obsessed with "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" - the most inspiring novel at the time was Ignacio Silone's Bread and Wine. After the fact, I found, the best book I read at the time to be The Great Gatsby - I had to reread it once or twice to really get it, but it gained in power; I can't say the same for Catcher in the Rye... but Nine Stories haunts me.

January Capsules

This is something I have to get back into doing - writing about films as I see them. I hope this becomes more of a weekly thing than a monthly thing, but for now, this is going to have to be a month long roundup. All the new films I see in the theaters, at least - with older films, DVDs, and such mixed in when it seems right. Capsules and ratings, I think - using a scale I picked up somewhere on the internet - out of 15 - basically, a five star rating, with three levels per star. So - 12/15, say, is a 4-star film, out of 5, and on the verge of being 5 - probably one of the best films of a given year... 8/15 might be a 3 star film, the quintessential 3 star film, etc... 5 stars are rare - last 13 film I saw (for the first time, in a theater) - Liverpool and Los Muertos, say; last 14 - Secret Sunshine (couple years back, to be honest) - 15's are all time, top 50 type films... Just as a reference.

Now, on to the show - moving backwards from this weekend:

Police, Adjective: 12/15 - A cop is following three kids - one has informed on his friend, claiming a brother is bringing drugs into the country - there is also a girl, who is assumed to be the center of the triangle. The officials want a quick sting to arrest the kids and maybe get the dealers - the cop doesn't want to arrest them for possession. The film alternates between long shots of surveillance, as our hero watches the kids, and police procedure, going through the details, trying to find the dealer, punctuated by scenes at home, where the cop argues with his wife (a teacher) about metaphors and the meaning of words, and the ways the language is changed, by fiat.... Concludes with a drawn out meeting with his captain, that combines modes - police business and the dictionary, defining conscience, law, moral, police - though to be honest, it boils down to brute force - do what you're told... A very strong film - patient and attentive to detail, morally engaged in its way...

The Man From London: 11/15 - Bela's Tarr's latest - 28 shots in 133 minutes, from a Simenon novel - a watchman sees two men who seem to have stolen some money - he retrieves the money - policemen come looking for it. It's a simple enough story, and a fairly generic noir, when you think about it, in plot and style, the shadowy black and white - subjected to great pressure, that stretches and mutilates the conventions almost, not quite, beyond recognition. Not quite... Bela Tarr always makes me think of the band Earth - at their most extreme - taking a simple riff and resting on it, sustaining it, milking it s far as it will go, until you move past the surface - the notes, the story - to the overtones, the pure play of light and shadow, things on screen... turns surreal at times - shots and sounds that look and feel like David Lynch - and another really cool, funny, musical interlude in a bar - an accordianist playing as a man dances with a billiard ball balanced on his forehead...

The White Ribbon: 11/15- Haneke's latest, a German village in 1913-14, where strange incidents occur - a man falls from his horse; a woman falls through some rotted boards at the mill; her family attacks the landlord's cabbages; children are beaten, punished, keep secrets, suffer; paranoia, cruel parents, class resentment, repressed sexual desires play their part; then the war comes. It's something like the perfect art film - austere, handsome, reserved, ambiguous, in very studied ways - portentous, haunting, and tends to remind you of the long tradition of art films. (I kept thinking of Young Torless, a rather better version of the type.) An excellent film, though not one that seems to quite justify its existence...

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus: 9/15 - a total mess but nice to look at; Heath Ledger is wonderful, when he gets a chance, and the rest of the cast gets their own moments of glory. Though Tom Waits, as the devil, sort of, steals the show. I would be lying if I said I knew what it was about - some kind of contest who can get the most souls in the doctor's imaginarium, with Waits constantly reraising, so they never have to stop - something like that.... Makes no sense in the least, not that that's the end of the world.... it looks lovely - it is, in fact, almost unfailingly entertaining and engaging - just rather slight, and doesn't quite carry off the effort.

And a couple notable DVDs: finally got around to watching Scott Walker: 30th Century Man, streamed from Netflix - a fine documemtary about one of the extraordinary musical talents of the last 45 years... I've had Christian Petzold's Yella sitting on the shelf for months - finally watched it - a fine work (12/15) - it occurs to me, though IMDB mentions something about a reference to Alice in the Cities as the source of the title, that the film bears quite a bit of resemblance to Italian horror, especially Argento (at his most restrained, in the build ups of his films) - giallo, maybe? Still more Fritz Lang - Man Hunt, Hangmen Also Die, Fury, these going back to December (and multiple viewings of each.) More to come on that score...

Music 2009

I'm a bit worried that though I have managed to put up a good number of posts this month, they've all been lists, end of the year trivia, or political rants. This one, I'm afraid, isn't going to change that - I'm finally getting around to posting something about last year's music.... (And the lists aren't done: I have a Best Music of the 00s post in the works, and a couple more film posts - especially a Directors of the 00s - and if I'm ambitious enough, a directors of the 10s post. Might as well predict the future while we're here. But not today. Today is just music.)

2009 was not a big year for music for me. The decade was - I went on a couple major buying sprees, listened to lots of music, especially on the iPod - but the last couple years, I've backed off a bit. I won't try to explain why - I will just say I tend to go in cycles on the arts. I'll go a couple years listening to all the music I can - then a couple years reading in all my free time - movies tend to stay pretty stable, but my attention to other arts shifts around a lot. So - I did not break the bank on music this year, and what's worse, a lot of what I bought went into iTunes and sat their forgotten and unheard... in any case, my opinions of what I heard have not been as strong as some years. But that won't stop me from a bit of a survey...

CDs:

1. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs - they are always reliable, and this seems a bit more consistent (And maybe a bit more rock) than some of their recent work even..
2. David Sylvain - Manofan - the avant-garde heard from; I listened to this CD specifically, too, which helps it.
3. Sonic Youth - The Eternal - like a lot of Sonic Youth, the material tends to bleed together, but this has some great stuff on it - seeing them live was a treat too (though - you know - Feelies, and all...)
4. Times New Viking - Born Again Revisited - closest thing to a discovery this year... cool crude lo-fi rock...
5. PJ Harvey and John Parrish - A Woman A Man Walked By - this is what you get for not listening to records enough; I've barely heard anything from this - but when I seek it out - it's PJ Harvey after all. I'd guess this would be near the top if I listened to it a few times.



6. Dead Weather - Hore Hound - solid record - Jack White remains very reliable.
7. Mission of Burma - The Sound The Speed The Light - maybe up if I listened to it more, though mostly it's just MIssion of Burma doing what they do...
8. Pere Ubu - Long Live Pere Ubu - Mr. Thomas and co. finally take on M. Jarry....
9. Decembrists - Hazards of Love - this didn't knock me over like their last record, but it's still pretty interesting...
10. Bishop Allen - Grrr - what's odd about the records I got this year is how many by bands I really like (from Devandra Banhart to DInosaur Jr. to Six Organs of Admittance to Son Volt) I haven't listened to - I can't remember a single song from any of those CDs. I feel ashamed.... Bishop Allen, on the other hand, keeps coming up on the iPod when I listen to it - catchy, clever, likable - what's wrong with that?

Times New Viking:


That's records - Songs, I suppose, I can manage better - I hear them, after all... Here, then, is a list!

1. Yo La Tengo - And the Glitter is Gone - the Krautrock blow out on this year's record - but I am an unabashed fan of 10 minute guitar wankings, and motorik leanings are a plus - so...
2. Sonic Youth - Massage the History - this is their version, with a bit more variation even...
3. Dead Weather - So Far From Your Weapon
4. Sonic Youth - Walkin Blue - SY at their most feeliesesque - including lyrically I'm afraid...
5. PJ Harvey & John Parrish - A Woman a Man Walked By
6. David Sylvain - Small Metal Gods
7. Times New Viking - These Days or Martin Luther King Day
8. Decembrists - The Hazards of Love 1 or The Rake's Song
9. Meat Puppets - Rotten Shame - luck of the draw, probably, though not a bad song... this was actually a decent record, especially considering their recent output
10. Yo la Tengo - Avalon or Someone Very Similar - well, when in doubt, stick with Yo La Tengo...

Here's 10 minutes or so of Yo la Tengo, for your viewing as well as sonic pleasure:



there's more, actually:

My 2010 Movie Posts

This is just what it is - an index of film posts, sorted a bit. As much for my convenience as anything, since it's the only way to find things I might have written once.

Longer Posts:

5/11: Kick-Ass and Superheroes - inspired by Matt Zoller Seitz.
6/4: Gertrud considered, and the Dreyer site.
9/11: On making it up - mostly Tarsem's The Fall, though Gentlemen Broncos and The Three Musketeers as well. More essay than review.
9/24: Vampires - Nosferatu and Dracula, at length.
10/31: Halloween, sympathetic monsters, and Mamoulian's Jekyll and Hyde.
11/1: Jekyll and Hyde part 2 - style.

Occasional Posts:

01/07: Best of 2009.
01/10: Resolutions (mostly movie related)
01/13: Rohmer obit.
01/17: Best older films seen for the first time in 2009.
2/13: Comments on Auteurism and diegesis, and more death of criticism, sparked by Sam Juliano vs. Stephen Russell-Gebbett.
3/4: Miscellany - more death of criticism, particularly related to spending money (the Ebert club) - and links. One review, of Mother.
4/26: Television considerations.
5/1: Mayday with Pirate Jenny.
5/6: Lubtchansky Obituary.
5/8: National Train Day pictures.
5/25: Panahi's release.
5/30: Dennis Hopper remembrance and Blue Velvet.
7/1: Canada Day with Guy Maddin.
7/14: Bastille Day and Godard.
7/20: Pictures from the new Ozu set and Vivre sa Vie.
8/6: Blogathon links. (Huston, Summer Movies, Cronenberg.)
8/12: Bruno S obituary.
9/8: Professor David Huxley's Back to School quiz.
11/4: Japanese film blogathon link and comments.
11/11: The Great War remembered - Paths of Glory.

Reviews etc:

1/26: January Roundup - Police, Adjective, The Man From London, The WhIte Ribbon, the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, plus Yella, Scott Walker, Fritz Lang, in passing.
2/9: Another Roundup - Fish Tank, Crazy Heart, A Town Called Panic, The Last Station
2/15: Roundup - Broken Embraces, Most Dangerous Man in America, The Headless Woman
4/1: Catchall again - Greenberg, Secret of the Kells, The Red Shoes, Ghost Writer, Byron on DVD.
4/12: Roundup again - Warlords, The Sun, several Kurosawa films (Red Beard, Cobweb Castle, Lower Depths and Dedeskaden), LAnd fo the Pharoahs, The Sheik and Sleeper.
5/4: Late April roundup: Exit through the Gift Shop, Vincere, Hausu, The Good the Bad the Weird, plus Kingdom of Heaven on DVD, and Mysterious Object at Noon, mentioned but not reviewed.
5/19: Another roundup - No One Knows About Persion Cats; Hot Tub Time Machine; Bluebeard; Please Give.
6/26: June Reviews: Metropolis; Air Doll; Harlan: in the Shadow of Jud Suss; Network; Casino Jack and the United States of Money.
8/18: Summer film roundup, part 1, oldies and foreign films - Anthony Mann films, Wild Grass, 36 Vues du Pic St. Loup, Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl, I Am Love.
8/19: New American films seen - Cyrus, The Kids Are All Right, Despicable Me, Dinner for Schmucks.
9/5: Weekly theatrical reviews - Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Soul Kitchen, Two in the Wave, The Tillman Story.
10/4: A Film Unfinished review.
10/8: another roundup - Room in Rome, A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop, Catfish, The American, Machete and Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child.
10/18: The Social Network review.
11/14: Ishtar screening.
12/19 - Roundup - brief notes on White Material, Black Swan, Marwencol, I Love You Phillip Morris, Tiny Furniture, Waking Sleeping Beauty, Anton Chekhov's The Duel, Inside Job and Red.

Massachusetts Fail

I'm not sure how depressed I should be about Scott Brown's victory last night. Pretty fucking depressed, I guess, though... what's really depressing about it is even with 60 votes in the Senate, and a huge advantage in the house, the Democrats have barely gotten anything done in the last year. Obama is basically governing to the right of Nixon - and still can't get anything big passed. The GOP is a disgrace - they;ve stopped caring about government, they are united in their determination to thwart anything Obama tries to do - they will cause the dems to fail, and then run on the dems' inability to do anything... nice trick... The Democrats haven't learned any lessons from this, they refuse to play the same game - you'd think they'd learn to vote as a block and cram things through, and leave it to the voters to decide whether it was a good idea or not. But they don't. And they end up with disasters like this health care reform bill - not that it hasn't got some benefits (enough to deserve to pass - take what Evan talks about for starters) - but it does it without really getting at any of the underlying problems. It's ironic - the farther left the bill, the better the bill - at some point, I don't see any way to cut into costs without some kind of very strong public option... But that is what gets compromised out in an (ultimately pointless) effort to bring in conservative votes - leaving us with a bill that probably costs more than what we have now. (Though with more coverage, and maybe some chance of cost movement.) That's depressing....

Though the voters - I don't know.... There's not a lot of love for this health care bill - but it's astonishing to think that people would vote for a republican because they don't like this bill. The Republicans are not going to come up with a better alternative - they are satisfied with what we have. Their strategies are depressing - block the democrats and run on the dems' failures; make government useless, and run on the fact that government is useless; convince people that they can't change things, that politicians are corrupt and incompetent, and get them to vote for style and slogans; do all you can to eliminate actual policy choices in politics, and all you can to keep people from thinking about the policy choices they are voting for. Create frustration and run on frustration. Convince people politics is too complicated to understand, that the world is frightening and they are weak, teach them to whine about the government while accepting government authority.

Oh well. It's very strange to treat an election that reduces the democratic majority from 60-40 to 59-41 like a disaster - unfortunately, given the recent track records of both parties, the increasing dysfunction of the Senate, and the bizarre inability of the public to actually realize there aren't any republicans like Edward Brooke anymore - it's hard to see this not being a disaster....

Old Films, Newly Viewed

I'm killing some time here, monkeying around with exporting video on my other computer - so I think I will post another list. This is inspired by Joseph B. - who just posted his best five non-2009 movies seen in 2009. Sounds like a plan! I go to a lot of old films, at Harvard and the Brattle especially, and even now surprise myself with number of films I've never seen... Anyway - I think I will divide this list into three parts, since so much of my viewing was for the two German cinyema classes I took...

For Class:

1. Mabuse the Gambler - probably no surprise there...
2. Testament of Dr. Mabuse



3. Romance in a Minor Key - 1943 melodrama made in Nazi Germany, but almost completely outside the system of the time...
4. Student of Prague
5. Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

DVD:

1. Hands Over the City - thanks to the Film of the Month Club, a neat idea that seems to have faded away, as so many neat internet ideas do...
2. Arigato San - Shimizu
3. Wild and Wooly - Douglas Fairbanks out west...



4. An American in Paris...
5. Three Penny Opera - German film not covered by the class...

Screen:

1. Eros + Massacre - Kuji Yoshida
2. Blue Collar - Paul Schrader's best film
3. Land of Silence and Darkness - Herzog
4. The Wild Child - Truffaut
5. Bigger than Life - Ray

Happy Birthday Captain Beefheart!

Happy Birthday to Don Van Vliet - 68 today... one of America's finest musical artists... source of this blog's subtitle and motto...

Video is called for - Electricity on a beach:



And Big Joan Sets Up, live in Detroit, with washed out video, but at his and the band's challenging best:

Rohmer, Haiti

It's hard to even wrap my mind around the disaster in Haiti - the death toll, the devastation - in a place that has more than its share of suffering. It hits rather close to home - my brother was planning a trip down there later this month, a volunteer work trip... Not sure what will happen now - this certainly gives it added urgency, if they can still make it. Time to hit head for the Red Cross site, I guess...

And - it's been a couple days, and I might be the last film blogger to make a public note of Eric Rohmer's passing, but I have thought of a couple things to say. First, if I'm remembering right, wasn't the last line in his last film, "Live! I command you!" ? - I like that; I hope it's true. In any case - he was one of the giants of film - I haven't seen nearly enough of his films as I should, just enough to know that he was one of the greats, and that sooner or later I need to spend a sustained amount of time on him. This year, I've been watching Fritz Lang films whenever I can - one of these years, I will have to take on Rohmer...

Thinking about him, and his place in history, it is impressive how many of the French New Wave directors are still alive, and active - Rohmer lived to 89, and remained active until a year or two ago; Godard and Rivette are still making films; Resnais, Varda, Chabrol, Marker are all active, still making films that are among the best of the year. The new Rivette and Resnais, in particular, are highly praised - I hope they get here soon... They were a remarkable generation - revolutionary, brilliant, and so many of them able to sustain their creativity and productivity well past the immediate flush of the movement.

Imagine my Claude Rains Voice...

Mark McGwire admits to using steroids. This is shocking news, huh? I have never been a Mark McGwire fan - nothing to do with steroids, really, it's just that - without steroids, he would have been a one dimensional slugger, a new Dave Kingman - with them, he set records and was mistaken for one of the all time greats. A problem in part because it overshadowed people who probably were among the all time greats - and I remain fairly convinced, drove those players to the same expedients that made McGwire seem like more than he really was. And so people act as though Clemens and Bonds, to name names, were just chemical byproducts, instead of two of the best who ever played. And McGwire's part in this goes deep - we shouldn't forget that he and Canseco (and probably a few others, but mostly the bash brothers) were instrumental in moving steroids from a dirty little secret of the game to front and center, the engine of the game in the late 90s and early 00s. I didn't like that style - I like pitching and defense and line drives and walks - I may only be able to play slow pitch softball, but I don't want to watch it.... But that is how the game was built, and it was very popular, and restored the game to new heights after the labor problems that almost ruined it.

But all that aside - this confession would be enough to get me to vote for McGwire to the hall of fame. I don't care if it's cynical and fake-sentimental and years too late for something - the fact is, he's the first major star of the era to state the obvious without being forced to. (Unless you count Canseco, though his was even more cynical and self-serving; and a bit pathetic.) McGwire is catching hell for it - sanctimonious shits like Brian Williams pontificate away, mewling about the "magical stuff" of the summer of 1998 (not magic - science!) - ugh.... Look - it was possible to look at Bonds, know what kind of player he had been all his career, and sort of imagine that maybe, if he gave up trying to run and just bulked up, he could hit those home runs - wishful thinking maybe, but still... But not McGwire, and not Sosa - they were steroids players, playing a steroids game - with the tacit (at least) approval (even encouragement) of the owners and league officials - not to mention the people who played the business up on TV. The only other explanation for all those homers that ever had any validity was that the sport was juicing the balls - it was the baseballs or the players or both, but something was getting juiced...

And people enjoyed it. Why not? they enjoyed it then, and are enjoying it now, cause they get to play the victim - oh, we were fooled! - and huff and puff and bask in their own righteousness and the convenient amnesia about what kind of dope the old timers were using. And McGwire - going first - will get the worst of it. Just like A Rod got it worse than Manny and Manny got it worse than David Ortiz last summer.... every player who admits this will get just a little less crap about it, and by the time Bonds or Clemens gets around to it, they'll be able to brag about it. And - I'd wager - by summer, McGwire will be getting more cheers than boos - and maybe - who knows, in time this will look like what it is - a misguided era in baseball history, creating some odd offensive stats that require some on the fly translation to understand (at least until everyone 'fesses up and the statisticians can start trying to parse out what, exactly, steroids changed) - it will be something like the dead ball era that you just have to count around. No one will ever win 42 games again; probably no one will hit 73 home runs; both are products of how the game was played at the time....

Up, Up and Away, 2010 (Resolutions)

Given a new decade as well as a new year, I might as well post a set of resolutions I can break. Or fail to live up to. This is, of course, a film and blog related set of resolutions - I'll skip the eat better, save money, get more exercise resolutions, more or less.

Last year's are at the Film & Discussion blog - I did not do very well: 250 movies? almost, and I spent a lot of time on individual movies, thanks to taking classes, so that's pretty much good... turn over the netflix queue? Not quite, but not bad - bursts... I did not watch DVDs I bought, I still haven't watched Center Stage again... #4 was a rousing success - I took two film classes (and an English class, on theater), and all were immensely rewarding - though time consuming... thus - 3 blog posts a week? I was lucky to get 3 a month! though all three classes I took required weekly postings/papers - which were blog posts by another name... comments? not enough, no... Making things? nope... I did not do Piper's dinner with X meme... I did not travel much at all (up to Maine a bunch of times, for reasons that may be deduced from my recent personal notes here...)

So 2010 dawns and - try it again!

1) Start with a perennial - see more movies: 250 makes a good goal - that's not so much a resolution for change as a target... And again - and turn over the netflix queue - every month, say, at least, all 4 films in a month... this year, I've tended to sit on one or two films and switch out the others fast - especially with the classes. I've had Yella and The Fall since this summer, but have gone through a pile of other films in the same time frame... I'll try to improve that. And try to at least open and look at every movie I buy... ha!

2) Post 3 times a week on the blog and comment more often on other blogs. I try - we'll see. There is also Facebook, which complicates matters, because I don't know quite what to do with it. I haven't quite worked out what belongs where... the overall point, in any case, is to post here regularly, and be more active around the Interwebs. (I mean, in reality, not in the minds of others - though more actual interaction with people, even to the point of picking the occasional fight is not a bad thing. Though preferably with sane people. Though I'd be a piss poor stalker if I didn't notice that he just posted a note about Lang's Metropolis, but embedded a video of the trailer to the anime. Thought he anime is pretty good, and originates in Osamu Tezuka's manga, and Tezuka is an even more important artist than Fritz Lang, so no harm done...)

3) Classes and the like - I like the discipline, I like doing it - in terms of hobbies, I'd rather take a class than play video games or join a bowling league - not that I wouldn't join a bowling league if I had the chance... though softball is more my game, even at this advanced age. (I was almost competent again last year - only hurt myself once, though it was at a key moment, and turned a game where we had a chance into a humiliating defeat, when 3 of our starting outfielders got hurt. Since all three of us are north of 40, that's not much of a surprise, though.) But - I will take classes, though if they monopolize my time as much as last year's did, resolution #2 will likely suffer as well...

4) Eat better! save money! exercise more! Save money the big one - I need stuff - furniture especially - and want stuff - a new TV, an all region blu-ray/DVD player... a house would be nice, but... I'll settle for an all region DVD player and the new Mabuse set. (See? I worked it around to movies. Fritz Lang, too...)

5) I want to do things in other media - video, sound, pictures - this may not turn up on the web, but I hope I can do some work in video, etc. I monkey with video and animation from time to time, though it never gets far - but it's fun. Over the summer, I did make a film of sorts with my brother's kids - with their Johnny West figures and some nice woodsy settings out by their house - it's a blast, the kids loved it (my niece provided the story, the nephews provides most of the "puppetry", so to speak)... I'm not much of an artsy craftsy kind of guy, but it's fun, and there's no reason I can see not to treat making films like making tree forts or go-carts or whatever it is people do with and for kids, or their own entertainment and distraction. I need to do more of that. I doubt any of it will be good enough to share with anyone not involved, but anything worth doing is worth doing badly... There's also Piper's dinner meme, 2 years overdue - the two might go together.

6) Speaking of other media, and doing things badly - I should try to learn to play the piano again. I poke at it for a week or two every year, but never get anywhere... ought to try to change that.

7) Travel - this year, probably Canada, etc., visiting relatives, friends, places - but get out of the country. A film festival would be nice, but probably going to take a back seat to socialization this year.

8) Universal Health Care would be a nice thing. Ha!

Anyway - thus 2010. Here's to a decent year of it...

Best Films of 2009

A first cut, anyway. This list is of the top 25 films released commercially in Boston in 2009. This list was harder to make than I expected - it's not that this was a bad year (or an especially good one) - but looking at the films I saw, a lot of the good ones seem, now, smaller than I remember them. And some of the films that seem to be growing larger with memory, I'm not really sure how good they are. They just feel important - they demand your attention - even if there are other films better... difficult. We'll see...

1. Che - Steven Soderbergh - the first of three he got released this year. And that's counting this 2 parter as one - count em as 2, and that's 4! Criminy!
2. Tokyo Sonata - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
3. Thirst - Park Chan-wook
4. 24 City - Jia Jiang-ke
5. Bad Lieutenant, Post of Call New Orleans - Werner Herzog - and actual 09 film
6. A Serious Man - Coen Brothers
7. Hunger - Steve McQueen
8. Inglourious Basterds - Tarantino - this is exhibit A in those films that loom larger in memory than fact. I'm still not sure if it is a great film - but it feels like it should be - it has heft and power, even if it is a bit emptier than it should be. I reserve the right to upgrade this severely - or downgrade it. I don't know. It will take a couple more viewings at least - except - other than Waltz's parts, I don't know if I care enough to sit through it.
9. The Limits of Control - Jarmusch - another one I can't quite place. I loved it, but don't know, without seeing it again, whether it's much more than a cool looking trifle (with great music - I do love Earth and Sunn O)))))
10. Antichrist - Lars von Trier - exhibit B in films looming larger etc...
11. The Hurt Locker - Kathryn Bigelow - the anti Inglourious Basterds? I think I've downgraded it from when I saw it - but that seems wrong. It's a bit too slick sometimes, but it's still masterfully made, haunting, attentive to detail, a classic war film, and truly worthy of the best of the genre.
12. 35 Rhums - Claire Denis
13. Moon - Duncan Jones - Exhibit C - this time, with none of the hype...
14. Revanche - Gotz Spielmann - I resisted this a bit, watching it, but was almost completely convincing by the end - reminds me of the arc of Head On - starting out rather sensationalistic, and getting smarter and more moving as it went. I don't know now if I am overrating or underrating it.
15. Gomorrah - Matteo Garrone - this has shrunk in my memory, but I think it might deserve to stay high on the list...
16. Beaches of Agnes - Agnes Varda - so light seeming it almost flits away from you - though it's not quite so light as it seems... and masterfully made.
17. Beeswax - Andrew Bujalski - probably better than this...
18. Fantastic Mr. Fox - Wes Anderson - this is a good bet to ascend when I see it again
19. Il Divo - Paulo Sorrento
20. Summer Hours - Olivier Assayas
21. Julia - Erick Zonca - god I love Tilda Swinton
22. Bright Star - Jane Campion
23. Treeless Mountain - So Young Kim
24. SIta Sings the Blues - Nina Paley
25. The Informant! Soderburgh #2... though now that I'm at the end of the list, things look a bit different. I didn't think this was a great film year, but there are a lot of films to go that are every bit as good as a lot of the ones above. It's been that kind of year - lots of decent films, not a lot of really overpowering ones. Though I suppose the first 10 or so might make it. What might be more surprising is that a lot of these decent films were from 2009 itself - for January, this list feels like it has more than the usual number of real 2009 films...

And another thing - last year, the only film I managed to get on any of my lists directed by a woman was Lucretia Martel's The Headless Woman (though I had it down as the best film of the year.) This year - there are 6 on the list; since I don't go out of my way to include them, that's a good sign - that's a bunch of really good films made by women; a couple of them in fact with very strong careers shaping up - Denis, Campion, even Bigelow...

And a quick shot at the best films made in 2009:

1. Thirst
2. Bad Lieutenant...
3. A Serious Man
4. Inglourious Basterds
5. The Limits of Control
6. Antichrist
7. The Hurt Locker
8. Moon
9. Beeswax
10. Bright Star

And - some other notables -

Actors:
1. Christophe Waltz - spectacularly good.
2. Nic Cage
3. Denis Lavant in Tokyo
4. Benicio del Toro
5. Michael Stuhlbarg

Actresses:

1. Tilda Swinton - Julia
2. Gainsbourg - Antichrist
3. Abby Cornish
4. Tilly & Maggie Hatcher - Beeswax
5. Kim Ok-vin - Thirst

Directors:

1. Soderburgh - Che
2. Kurosawa - Tokyo Sonata
3. Herzog - Bad Lt...
4. Von Trier - Antichrist
5. Coens - A Serious Man

Scripts:

1. Inglourious Basterds - Tarantino
2. A Serious Man - Coens
3. Extract - Mike Judge
4. Beeswax - Bujalski
5. In the Loop - Iannucci, Armstrong, Blackwell, Roche

Cinematography:

1. Antichrist - Antony Dod Mantle
2. A Serious Man - Roger Deakins
3. Che - Soderbergh
4. 35 Rhums - Agnes Godard
5. Inglourious Basterds - Robert Richardson

Moments? since I never actually got around to doing this last year, I will do it for everything I saw this year, new:

* The karaoke job interview in TOKYO SONATA

* The girl discovers the thrills of vampirism in THIRST

* The long central conversation in HUNGER

* Iguanas and Nicholas Cage

* The realization that his girlfriend is dead, in the Austrian contemplative noir, REVANCHE.

* The cameraman moving on the bridge in ANTICHRIST - Von Trier's (and Mantle's) integral use of the handheld camera

* "I don't want, Santana, Abraxis!"

* Everything Christophe Waltz does in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, though especially that opening scene.

* The stink monsters in BIG MAN JAPAN - and the final confrontation, so to speak - when things get strange...

* The narration, especially, in SITA SINGS THE BLUES

* The beginning, especially, of Leos Carax' section of TOKYO, with Denis Lavant running amok on the streets of Tokyo.

* "Squirrel!"

* Ben Affleck's marriage advice in EXTRACT - probably not a good source of marital counseling there

A Goodbye

Welcome to the New Year, not to mention the new decade. Been a while since I've posted - 2009 ended badly. My mother died the day after Christmas - that puts a damper on things. She was a good woman (better than that) - she lived a full life, at least until her health started to go. She had heart surgery 10, 11 years ago - and since then, a series of medical problems, that slowly wore her down. She'd been on dialysis for the past three years, and in that period especially, she seemed to be withering away. She kept her mind, but her energy went, and she had to give up a lot of the things that filled her life - and I imagine, as she lost the ability to do things she had been doing (from doing the books for various organizations to her sewing and quilting, to being able to take walks outside), the enforced idleness contributed to her decline. It was startling to be reminded of all the things she had her fingers in - she taught for 20 years; she ran quilting classes and workshops; she kept books for the PTA, for the church, for the town cemetery commission; she worked for the town, she volunteered at summer camps, she ran quiz programs for kids - as well as running a family. It's hard to think of those things - because over the past dozen years, they all peeled away, one by one. Still - it was only this summer that things went really wrong. She had surgery on one of her legs, and never quite recovered. Every time I saw her this fall, it was a bit shocking to notice how much weaker she looked - I can't say her passing was a surprise. But when it came, it came quickly - itself something of a blessing, since drawn out deaths can be horrible, for the sufferer and family alike... Still, it hurts, and I will miss her.

I'll leave you with one of her quilts, one she worked on for years:

The Decade's End

Ah December - must be the season of the list... and in a year ending with 9, that means, the season of the end of the Decade list.... It is too early, of course, to say definitively what really were the best films of the 00s - but... lists are fun. And favorite lists (however defined) are also fun, and useful. Why not chart your taste/interests/values? and why not take the chance to chart other people's?

So here goes - for some reason, a lot of lists I've seen have gone to 50 - so I think that's where I will stop now. These are "in order", though after the first dozen or so, that's usually a completely arbitrary designation, so I will probably not maintain the pretense the whole way down...

1. Inland Empire - 2006 - David Lynch - USA (I notice that my post "explaining" Inland Empire still seems to be the one that gets the most hits... I wish searchers luck - I don't know if I'd call it explicable... just mesmerizing.)



2. Yi Yi - 2000 - Edward Yang - Taiwan
3. In Vanda's Room - 2000 - Pedro Costa - Portugal
4. Kings and Queen - 2004 - Arnaud Desplechin - France... (found a Catherine Deneuve box set with this in it for $10 yesterday. Not bad.)
5. Colossal Youth - 2006 - Pedro Costa - Portugal
6. 2046 - 2004 - Wong Kar wei - Hong Kong/China
7. Death of Mr. Lazarescu - 2005 - Christi Puiu - Romania
8 L'Intrus - 2004 - Claire Denis - France
9. O Brother Where Art Thou - 2000 - Coen Brothers - USA
10. Los Angeles Plays Itself - 2003 - Thom Anderson - USA
11. Mulholland Drive - 2001 - David Lynch - USA
12. Secret Sunshine - 2007 - Lee Chang-dong - South Korea
13. Goodbye, Dragon Inn - 2003 - Tsai Ming-liang - Taiwan
14. The Son - 2002 - Luc & Jean Pierre Dardenne - Belgium
15. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance - 2002 - Park Chanwook - South Korea
16. Syndromes and a Century - 2006 - Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Thailand
17. There Will Be Blood - 2007 - Paul Thomas Anderson - USA
18. Memories of Murder - 2003 - Bong Joon-ho - South Korea
19. Platform - 2000 - Jia Zhang Ke - China
20. House of Flying Daggers - 2004 - Zhang Yimou - China
21. Ichi the Killer - 2001 - Takashi Miike - Japan
22. En Construccion (Work in Progress) - 2001 - Jose Luis Guerin - Spain
23. Che - 2008 - Steven Soderburgh - USA
24. Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors - 2000 - Hong Sang-soo - South Korea
25. Doppleganger - 2003 -Kiyoshi Kurosawa - Japan
26. Royal Tenenbaums - 2001 - Wes Anderson - USA
27. Tokyo Sonata - 2008 - Kiyoshi Kurosawa - Japan
28. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days - 2007 - Christian Mungiu - Romania
29. The Headless Woman - 2008 - Lucrecia Martel - Argentina
30. Woman on the Beach - 2006 - Hong Sang-soo - South Korea
31. Songs from the Second Floor - 2000 - Roy Andersson - Sweden
32. Zodiac - 2007 - David Fincher - USA
33. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - 2004 - Michel Gondry - USA
34. Va Savoir - 2001 - Jacques Rivette - France
35. Donnie Darko - 2001 - Richard Kelly - USA
36. The Flight of the Red Balloon - 2007 - Hou Hsiao Hsien - Taiwan/France
37.Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary - 2003 - Guy Maddin - Canada
38.Regular Lovers - 2005 - Philippe Garrel - France
39. Retribution - 2006 - Kiyoshi Kurosawa - Japan
40. Blissfully Yours - 2002 - Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Thailand
41. Thirst - 2009 - Park Chanwook - South Korea
42. California Dreamin (Endless) - 2007 - Christian Remescu - Romania
43. Distance - 2001 - Hirokazu Kore-Eda - Japan
44. La Cienaga - 2001 - Lucrecia Martel- Argentina
45. Los Muertos - 2004 - Lisandro Alonso - Argentina
46. No Country for Old Men - 2007 - Coen Brothers - USA
47. Squid and the Whale - 2005 - Noah Baumbach - USA
48. RR - 2007 - James Bening - USA
49. Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - 2004
50. Liverpool - 2008 - Lisandro Alonso - Argentina

This has changed noticeable since I started the list yesterday, and will probably change half a dozen titles on or off before the year ends. But there you go.

Something Siegfried Kracauer Said

About girls...



and men and machines...



that applies to politics...





...though more than politics...





though sometimes, more politics...



made me think about how images and politics work together...



...to do evil...



And how evil...



...might be countered:



by being reconfigured





Maybe?



...gave me something to write anyway.

Saturday Placeholder

Oy, another week without any posts... at least the last two were big ones. I am, as it happens, in the middle of writing a paper for class - more Nazis and their films... though I might get this one in there as well:



Anyway - once this class is done - well, it'll be Christmas, shopping season at any rate - so the odds are probably against getting any decent blogging material through the end of the year. The end of the decade, in cold fact! There have to be lists coming, right? Of course! Not yet though - for now, I'll offer a tease, with the Cinematheque Ontario poll that's been out a few weeks and gotten much comment already. Film lists are fun - and I will certainly take the opportunity to put one together... the more challenging task will be constructing a musical list - Joseph B. did, a couple weeks ago - that's going to be a troublesome project. I listened to and bought a lot of new music this decade - up through the end of 2007, for some reason. The last couple years, not so much. Strange phenomenon - mix of habits (more walking, less trains, so less listening to the iPod) and spending priorities (I've been spending money on DVDs instead) and - um - redecorating the apartment (which included boxing up CDs to create more space for bookcases....) - who knows. So - I look forward to thinking about the music of the 00s, since I care, but have let it slide for a couple years....

Anyway.. lately I've taken the Friday Random Ten to facebook, where it seems a bit more at home... but maybe a video is in order? count down some of my favorite music of the decade that way? I don't know. Maybe now, one of this year's most intriguing records (and an artist likely to figure large in my end of the decade lists) - "Small Metal Gods" from David Sylvain's Manofan:

Winter Quiz

Whew! Finished! Dennis Cozzalio's Thanksgiving/Christmas quiz - a pleasure to fill in, but by god it's almost as much work as real classes! Anyway - here it is...

1) Second-favorite Coen Brothers movie.
A: Fargo (#1 - O Brother Where Art Thou)

2) Movie seen only on home format that you would pay to see on the biggest movie screen possible? (Question submitted by Peter Nellhaus)
A: I think I will say Tokyo Drifter - wide screen colors, the compositions and action - I think this is it.

3) Japan or France? (Question submitted by Bob Westal)
A: Japan. (France, of course, is the clear #2, or 3 if you will.)

4) Favorite moment/line from a western.
A: There are so many - always tempting to use Altman, but I think I'll say instead, the final Indian charge in Fort Apache - the devastating finality of it always gets me... as for lines - "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk" is hard to beat...

5) Of all the arts the movies draw upon to become what they are, which is the most important, or the one you value most?
A: I think films are too eclectic to say one is more important; I can say that novels are the most satisfying art form, and their satisfactions are the closest to those of films. Eclecticism again is important.

6) Most misunderstood movie of the 2000s (The Naughties?).
A: I'm tempted to say, Donnie Darko, primarily by the maker - the best thing about the film is its ambiguity, its ability to tread the line between scifi and It's All In His Head - when Kelly makes things clear, the film diminishes... But instead I think I will say Juno - it seems to me that no one notices that the main character in the film is the Jason Bateman character - he has a story arc, he makes decisions, he changes - he is the only person who, in the end, behaves responsibly, intelligently, and honestly. Juno the character is a conceit and the baby a MacGuffin; the wife is a nightmare... he is demonized by the film, but that's wrong - he is the protagonist, and he behaves properly. I don't know if anyone involved in the film realized this, though.

7) Name a filmmaker/actor/actress/film you once unashamedly loved who has fallen furthest in your esteem.
A: At one time, the answer was definitely Stanley Kubrick - he was one of the first directors I worshipped, but then I discovered other styles - through Altman, Hawks, classics in general, Cassavetes and Capra - and wrote Kubrick off, quite a bit. I don’t know if I can keep that up now though; I always end up enjoying his films when I see them. But I guess it’s still a good answer.

8) Herbert Lom or Patrick Magee?
A: Lom, I'd have to say.

9) Which is your least favorite David Lynch film (Submitted by Tony Dayoub)
A: Dune; I suppose I could say, Fire Walk With Me is my least favorite real Lynch film, though Dune is more Lynch than I would have thought.

10) Gordon Willis or Conrad Hall? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)
A: I would probably have to say Willis; maybe because I saw the Godfather movies within the last year. Though I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the last year too, so...

11) Second favorite Don Siegel movie.
A. Siegel's work is a substantial gap in what I've seen. The answer has to be Dirty Harry, because I have seen it, somewhere long ago. #1 of course is Charley Verrick, which ain't gonna change...

12) Last movie you saw on DVD/Blu-ray? In theaters?
A: As of today, the answers are: Cabin in the Sky on DVD & Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans in theaters. For what it's worth, the last movie I saw Online is more interesting than either - Romance in a Minor Key - a magnificent 1943 German melodrama that seems completely out of its time and place.

13) Which DVD in your private collection screams hardest to be replaced by a Blu-ray? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)
A: A Touch of Zen would probably be the winner... or Blue Velvet.

14) Eddie Deezen or Christopher Mintz-Plasse?
A: I'll say Eddie Deezen, at least for now - and because just looking at a picture of him brings back a flood of memories...

15) Actor/actress who you feel automatically elevates whatever project they are in, or whom you would watch in virtually anything.
A: There are quite a few, favorite actors, actors with unerring instincts for good films, whatever... But having just taken a class on Nazi cinema, I am going to name the most memorable performer of the era - Ferdinand Marian. As far as he is remembered, it is probably for playing the title character in Jud Suss - which itself is a strange film - utterly vicious, except Marian steals the picture completely, making the character seem human... he was in a number of other films as well - Munchhausen, Romance in a Minor Key, La Habenera, and steals them all - he's like a German Basil Rathbone, usually playing sleek villains, but always making them way more interesting than the heroes. (Though that's one of the odder features of Nazi era films - the heroes are a decidedly bland crew. No one can give Marian a run for his money - in the American films of the time, those great Warner Brothers adventure films with Rathbone vs. Errol Flynn or Tyrone Powers, both sides get their due - Flynn and Powers hold their own against the bad guys. The Nazis only seem to be able to make interesting villains.) Anyway - he's really astonishing - and seems to be coming back to attention. There's a film about him supposed to be coming out next year - and closer to hand - I think you can make a pretty good case that Tarantino and Christoph Waltz modeled Hans Landa on Marian's Joseph Seuss Oppenheimer.

16) Fight Club -- yes or no?
A: No way - dumb and fake.

17) Teresa Wright or Olivia De Havilland?
A: De Havilland, I think

18) Favorite moment/line from a film noir.
A: This is tough to come up with one, so I will go a bit off the main track - it's a cut, at the end of The Asphalt Jungle - we see the police commissioner giving a speech about the crooks, saying Sterling Hayden's character is a hardened killer - Huston cuts to Hayden, dying, driving through Kentucky, wishing he had his life back... cue music, cue daylight...

19) Best (or worst) death scene involving an obvious dummy substituting for a human or any other unsuccessful special effect(s)—see the wonderful blog Destructible Man for inspiration.
A: When in doubt, I think I will look for the most recent notable instance - in this case - Big Man Japan - the whole last 15-20 minutes is a surreal, Power rangers style fight, with plenty of dummy abuse along the way - it's - quite amazing, really...

20) What's the least you've spent on a film and still regretted it? (Submitted by Lucas McNelly)
A: I will say Failure to Launch, though in a sense I did spend 20 bucks on it, since it played on a bus ride, but I guess that makes it just an incidental expense. Just glancing at it, it was utterly fucking atrocious - the worst looking film I can remember seeing. The editing was so bad it hurts - shot/counter shot sequences don't match, don't come close to matching, there are way too many cuts, in the course of every freaking conversation, fast, random... Come to think of it I think I had to see it twice, both directions on the bus, and it offended me...

21) Van Johnson or Van Heflin?
A: Heflin, I think

22) Favorite Alan Rudolph film.
A: The Moderns.

23) Name a documentary that you believe more people should see.
A: I suppose there are a ton of these, but - let's say Clouzot's Mystery of Picasso.

24) In deference to this quiz’s professor, name a favorite film which revolves around someone becoming stranded.
A: There must be a lot of good examples - since I've just seen the newest Herzog, though, I'm reminded of Wings of Hope - a documentary he made about a woman named Juliene Koepke, who survived a plane crash in the Amazon in 1971 - about the time he was shooting Aguirre there... she was stranded, but walked her way out of the jungle - Herzog takes her back and they retrace her steps... Aguirre, of course, is about being stranded in the jungle - most Herzog is about being stranded somewhere, a stranger in a strange land...

25) Is there a moment when your knowledge of film, or lack thereof, caused you an unusual degree of embarrassment and/or humiliation? If so, please share.
A: I can't answer this; nothing's coming to mind... not that it hasn't happened, but it's not coming to mind...

26) Ann Sheridan or Geraldine Fitzgerald? (Submitted by Larry Aydlette)
A: Not that familiar with them, but Sheridan has had a couple moments I remember...

27) Do you or any of your family members physically resemble movie actors or other notable figures in the film world? If so, who?
A: Robin Williams?

28) Is there a movie you have purposely avoided seeing? If so, why?
A: I avoided The Dark Knight for some reason - I'm not sure why; maybe I'm tired of "serious" superhero films.

29) Movie with the most palpable or otherwise effective wintry atmosphere or ambience.
A: Literally or figuratively? Oshima's Boy?

30) Gerrit Graham or Jeffrey Jones?
A: Jones

31) The best cinematic antidote to a cultural stereotype (sexual, political, regional, whatever).
A: Another one I am having trouble answering, though I think there must be a lot of good answers... they'll come to me... so I'll go with an example from this year - Adventureland does a nice job of stopping the "nice guy abandons slutty girl because he's uptight" plot line cold in its tracks. As well as a variety of stereotypes about Nice Guys and slutty girls...

32) Second favorite John Wayne movie.
A: Fort Apache (after the Searchers)

33) Favorite movie car chase.
A: This meme went around a couple years ago... Nobody does chases better than Harold Lloyd - Girl Shy has the chase for the ages, including cars... though for just cars - I am very fond of the original Gone in 60 Seconds, partly because it's put together like a silent film - a series of obstacles, situations, settings, each set up and paid off for the cars, with pieces circling back around to each other, and the added fun of the radio reporter's interviews on the street ("he hit a boat?")...

34) In the spirit of His Girl Friday, propose a gender-switched remake of a classic or not-so-classic film. (Submitted by Patrick Robbins)
A: How about Psycho? I thought at the time, that's what Gus Van Sant should have done...

35) Barbara Rhoades or Barbara Feldon?
A: What? 99!!! not to mention Smile...

36) Favorite Andre De Toth movie.
A: This has to be Crime Wave, in the end

37) If you could take one filmmaker's entire body of work and erase it from all time and memory, as if it had never happened, whose oeuvre would it be? (Submitted by Tom Sutpen)
A: Another tough one - at least since it ought to be someone I've seen enough of to build up an antipathy. Chris Columbus comes to mind, though, wait a second, that included Gremlins, doesn't it? As a director, call it...

38) Name a film you actively hated when you first encountered it, only to see it again later in life and fall in love with it.
A: Variations on this get asked all the time; they should be easier to answer... I have, though, just thought the classic example - well, "love" is a strong word... but... I hesitated to type these words... but... Batman and Robin - the first time I saw it, I was primarily offended by the thought of stealing a Marlene Dietrich routine for a crappy Batman outing. Worse yet, wasting Uma Thurman playing Marlene Ditrich... But then I saw it again and was quite smitten - mostly by Uma, who camps it up for all it's worth, like she's in the TV show - but the rest of it has a strange, rather enjoyable B movie energy, never remotely takes a minute of this nonsense seriously - I suppose it's more Rose Hobart in East of Borneo than Dietrich in - anything - but that's better than the "serious" versions of Batman people keep foisting on us....

39) Max Ophuls or Marcel Ophuls? (Submitted by Tom Sutpen)
A: Max

40) In which club would you most want an active membership, the Delta Tau Chi fraternity, the Cutters or the Warriors? And which member would you most resemble, either physically or in personality?
A: I can't say this one moves me all that much.

41) Your favorite movie cliché.
A:This is the last question to answer - I'm going with one from the last movie I saw - Bad Lieutenant in New Orleans - the way cops always get a conviction from that One Magic Piece of Evidence - planted, found, whatever. Herzog and company mock the living shit out of it - the way the whole story winds itself up in one scene there, almost at the end - it's almost as funny as the Iguanas.

42) Vincente Minnelli or Stanley Donen? (Submitted by Bob Westal)
A: Very easy - Minelli, who has leapt into the forefront of my favorite directors, and gets more interesting with every film I see of his.

43) Favorite Christmas-themed horror movie or sequence.
A: I imagine something from Gremlins, though it's been too long since I've seen it to say what...

44) Favorite moment of self- or selfless sacrifice in a movie.
A: The sister walks into the water in Sansho the Bailiff

45) If you were the cinematic Spanish Inquisition, which movie cult (or cult movie) would you decimate? (Submitted by Bob Westal)
A: I should have a better answer for this - I'm going to say, all the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fans - that has always annoyed me to no end. If you're going to watch Chinese martial arts films, watch the real ones. Get Touch of Zen or Come Drink with Me or Once Upon a Time in China or something, leave the imitations alone. Or at least watch the Zhang Yimou's imitations - which are a lot closer to the real thing, thanks to Ching Siu tung...

46) Caroline Munro or Veronica Carlson?
A: No idea.

47) Favorite eye-patch wearing director. (Submitted by Patty Cozzalio)
A: Were there any that didn’t? Fritz Lang?

48) Favorite ambiguous movie ending. (Original somewhat ambiguous submission---“Something about ambiguous movie endings!”-- by Jim Emerson, who may have some inspiration of his own to offer you.)
A: Another one I could probably come up with a better answer for, but in the interests of hitting Post, will take a recent example - Andrew Bujalski's endings are generally neatly unresolved, but somehow precise - Beeswax is no exception.

49) In giving thanks for the movies this year, what are you most thankful for?
A: The release of 35 Rhums, the James Whale, Alexander MacKendrick & Kiju Yoshida retrospectives at the Harvard Film Archive, as well as appearances by James Bening and Lisandro Alonso, and Criterion's Imamura box set.

50) George Kennedy or Alan North? (Submitted by Peet Gelderblom)
A: Kennedy.

The end! Happy Holidays!