Fifty-Five

Three films from 1955 here... three conversations...

All Good Cretins Go to Heaven

Keepin' it short and sweet - 100% Random Friday Random 10!

1. Erase Errata - Dexterity is #2
2. The Go-Betweens - Right Here
3. Earth - Dissolution III [only 15 minutes of feedback, that's hardly nothing; the other track on the record goes an hour.]
4. The Young Knives - Another Hollow Line
5. Ramones - Glad to See You Go
6. Steely Dan - East St. Louis Toodle-oo
7. Beastie Boys - Live at PJ's
8. Ramones - Cretin Hop [well - this is kind of old iTunes! 2 Ramones tunes!]
9. Bishop Allen - Cue the Elephants
10. Blue Oyster Cult - Godzilla [with a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound...!]

Video - obviously:

New Films Reviewed

It's been more than a month since I've posted one of these roundups - it's been an odd month. I didn't watch anything in July, on vacation - but since I came back, I have kept up a pretty steady stream of films. Nothing like Sam Juliano - but there's nothing like the big pre-code series he's talking about to keep me that busy... What is keeping me busy is taking advantage of my last month of 4-at-a-time Netflix - and a nice series of revivals in town. In the last couple weeks I've seen screenings of Baby Face, It's a Gift, 3:10 to Yuma and The Man Who Fell to Earth - new films have had a hard time competing with that. Still - I've managed a few new films...

Tabloid 10/15 - funny, engaging, strange story of a woman, Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen who fell for a Mormon, went to England and kidnapped him, maybe, raped him, maybe - maybe he ran off with her for a randy weekend and had second thoughts, or was brainwashed, or rekidnapped - maybe... In the end, they - she - became a huge Tabloid Scandal in England - manacled mormons and naked pictures and prostitution and what not... Errol Morris tells this tale - or gets many of the participants, especially McKinney, to tell it - and the sequel - when she turned up again, in 2008, paying to have her dog cloned in Korea... All this is quite entertaining, very funny - and she is a remarkably entertaining character, though apparently a genuine nut case - Morris knows how to let people tell their tales.... the whole business seems a bit slight, but well worth the watching.

Friends With Benefits - 9/15 - another try at a decent rom com, this one with the leads breaking up with the latest in a string of losers (though they are kind of losers too) - they hit it off fast as pals, and then start sleeping together, with no strings. This works well enough for a while, but sooner or later, they start looking for more - with other people? with each other? It's an odd film, a bit hard to really figure out. Enjoyed it, beginning to end, but felt like a couple things weren't quite there. There's too much talk about romcoms and such - too explicit in its need to act out the old Umberto Eco bit - "like they say in the movies, I love you madly"... That and - unlike all the other comedies I've seen this year - this says nothing whatsoever about money, or work. I can't convince myself that that should matter - but I can't convince myself it doesn't, either. Maybe I'm condemning this for not being a different film - maybe. Still - all those films - Cedar Rapids, WIn Win, Bad Teacher, Bridesmaids, even Larry Crowne - are about money, work, status - they are - interesting that way. This one? while the surface is quite good, it lacks that particular subtext, and - sometimes - any other subtext as well. (There are big subplots with both families - which have some nice moments, but seem to have been imposed on the film - and both of which turn into lessons on Letting Your True Love Get Away. Yeah yeah, so much for undermining Hollywood cliches, huh?) Anyway - I can't stop without noting that I really enjoyed the leads - Justin Timberlake has the makings of a real actor, I think; and Mila Kunis is great. I think, especially after the fact, that they sell the material more than it deserves - the script is funny enough, but they make it work better than it might deserve...

Road to Nowhere - 11/15 - Monte Hellman's return after 20 plus years without a film - a noirish tale about a politician and his girlfriend, who is actually a double for the woman she's supposed to be (Velma Duran) - they steal 100 million, fake their deaths.... No, not quite - the film is actually about a film being made from that story - Road To Nowhere, too, directed by Mitchell Haven, written by Steve Gates... In this film (within the film) the girl hired to play the lead role (Velma) in the movie might have been the girl already playing Velma in the underlying story... Except - how much of this is in the movie in the movie, and how much is the plot of the movie about the movie of the story, I don't know... Just to add to the fun - at the end of the film, people get shot (allegedly in the diegetic reality of the movie we're watching) - the director of the film (in the film) then picks up a camera (as directors, especially of films within films, are wont to do, even in the most extreme circumstances) and films the carnage - and, turning round the room, films the "real" crew of the "real" movie... (Hellman, who was visiting for this screening, says this was improvised by the actor - he had a camera in the scene, and picked it up and shot what he shot - and the editor used the footage from the shot, to uncanny effect. It is certainly a cool shot.) It is all very clever, this movie - packed with quotes, open and covert - clips from The Lady Eve, Secret of the Beehive, The Seventh Seal - references to Vertigo obviously, and probably more - Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive? At least, strong similarities. It is, in any case, a great looking film, shot with a digital still camera, of all things - it looks digital, but a gorgeous kind of digital, with deep, rich textures, superb low light qualities... I suppose in some ways it is, in fact, too clever for its own good - there's a sense, I think, that the convolutions of the narrative is a cover for the banality of the plot - and the convolutions themselves are not that extraordinary... But this is a very mild quibble - if the narration covers for the lack of plot - it does so very well - it keeps you quite engaged in the story, all the levels of the story (and the surfaces - faces and spaces and such) - it is a very neat piece of work.

The Future - 8/15 - new Miranda July film, a rather dull indie drama - twee, though more damning, it's empty, built around two utterly passive characters... They are scheduled to pick up a cat from a shelter in 30 days - after that, they don't know if the cat is supposed to live 6 months or 5 years - this brings them face to face with the fact that they are coming up toward middle age.... So - they have crises - they quit their jobs - he starts canvassing for some kind of environmental outfit selling trees; she sets out to to create 30 dances in 30 days. He instead of working spends most of his time hanging out with an old man that he suddenly realizes is himself in 50s years - she starts up an affair with the father of a little girl they met at the animal shelter. Somewhere in here - he can stop time and does - then?... All this - there are a couple moments where things click - the time stopping bit is, in fact, stunning - a great piece of filmmaking. But - most of the rest is - not that bad, just centered on people who are very hard to give any trace of a good god damn about - with nothing special to look at...

Carol Reed's Sunday Screenshots

Decided to catch up on Carol Reed lately -to watch and rewatch his films, in a bunch. Spies, windows, grids, rooms -









Darkness and shadows, things just out of sight -





And streets - oh, the streets...

Our Friday Rituals...

I am still trying to work myself back into blogging habits. This has been complicated a bit by Netflix - their upcoming price change has led me to try, very hard, to get one last month's money's worth from my old fashioned 4 at a time DVD plan - might be the first time in about 5 years I've got my money's worth from it, but what can you do.... anyway - it's Friday, it's time to look to iTunes for inspiration - what, oh magical digital jukebox, have you for us today?

1. Brian Eno - Some of them Are Old
2. Dinosaur Jr. - Thumb
3. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Over & Over
4. Radiohead - Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
5. The Byrds - 5D (Fifth Dimension)
6. Meat Puppets - Flaming Heart
7. John Zorn - Batman
8. Pere Ubu - Waiting for Mary
9. Monks - Cuckoo
10. Richard Thompson - Miss Patty

Video? This seems pretty obvious, right? The Monks on German TV...

The Furies

The Brattle is showing Baby Face this afternoon - as good a reason as any to post some Stanwyck pictures.













Never someone you'd want to get mad at you...

Holidays and Politics

I have been on vacation - thus the blog silence, after a run where I almost got back to a regular posting routine. (Mostly gimmick posts, I admit - Friday Random Music posts, Sunday screen shots, that sort of thing - but still, content!) I have been to a strange and mysterious foreign land where the temperature never gets above 30 (at least not where I was - it might have gone higher in the plains), where they give change in $2 coins, where they eat poisonous concoctions like rappie pie. As well as more conventional pies...



It was, I'm happy to say, very nearly off the grid - what news I saw on TV was all local, Maritimes stuff, and that mostly weather related (how to stay cool when the temperature hits 32! sort of thing.) That and Anne Murray... Even so, I couldn't completely avoid the news back in the USA - mostly bad news, daily idiocies related to the debt ceiling... I managed to get on the internet and got to follow the whole sorry mess. I don't have anything profound to add to it - I might as well link to Krugman (like every blog I read) - the joys of balance... I did notice, on the road, the tendency by the TV news to seek out people who would bewail the "partisanship" in Washington for their vox populi bits - spreading the blame around evenly. Christ. We all know, the GOP is doing this deliberately, creating a false crisis over the debt limit business, figuring they can force the politics right - though they don't seem to be satisfied with that. I suspect they are playing a longer game - deliberately trying to crash the economy, and blame it on Obama - figuring the president gets blamed for everything anyway, and they will reap the benefits. They may have a point - I keep seeing these bits on facebook:

Dear Mr. President, I heard you say you will not guarantee SS checks if the debt ceiling isn't raised. Why does it always has to do with SS, Medicare, & our Soldiers pay? Why not stop your pay, your staff, or Congress and the Senate? Lets hold the paychecks of all house & senate members, then see how fast they resolve the debt ceiling crisis ! If you agree repost this & keep it going across the whole USA

I dunno where that started, though now it seems ubiquitous... it's pretty friggin' sad. From the implication that the president is creating this crisis (oh sure, it's got congress in there too - see what Krugman said about "balance"...) - even the implication that the president controls spending... to the magic thinking in all the variations on the "let's cut congress's salaries and balance the budget" spam going around... to the fact that even my tea party loving friends are posting it - shit - I thought they wanted to kill social security and medicare! they voted for the Republicans - what did they think they were voting for?

I'm not hopeful about any of this. I don't see any good coming of any of the possible results. If the dems cave - that's bad. (And, of course, once Obama and Reid agree to cut social security and medicare, the GOP will blame them for cutting Social Security and medicare. Everybody knows this, but somehow, the dems don't seem to notice.) If there is not a deal - the GOP will blame Obama for any bad fallout. If Obama does anything more aggressive to get around the problem (I like Matthew Yglesias' trillion dollar coin idea!), they will howl about tyranny and usurpation of congressional powers (powers they deliberately failed to exercise) - until they win the White House, then they will embrace and extend them. (There's probably a larger story here, of the ultimate triumph of the executive branch, of the legislature's complete abandonment of its responsibilities. I fear this - and with the increasing willingness by Congress to simply refuse to govern, beyond the structural deadlock - executive government is a real possibility. That is too depressing to go on about....)

Right. Meanwhile, since almost any result of this vote will be less government spending, with unemployment still pushing 10% and the economy starting to tank again, we are likely to see the economy crash again... Amazing.

I think I might go back to the Great White North...

Summertime Movie Viewing Report

The last couple weeks have been a good example of the kinds of films I seem to be driven to lately. Mid-level Hollywood comedies, (I've never been so desperate to pay money for something like Transformers, or the Hangover, for that matter) and amiable documentaries, that maybe belong on TV. This is not exactly a bad thing - the films are generally edifying in some way - but they do seem like a lot of filler. There aren't enough movie movies to see. When one comes along - a revival of The Leopard, say - what bliss!

Anyway - what have I seen lately? Well - start with Pianomania -a fascinating and lovely look at the backstage of concert music, through the eyes of a high end piano tuner, Stefan Knupfer. We see him working with a variety iof musicians - Lang Lang, Alfred Brendel, etc. - we see him working with Steinway to buy a new piano (for the Vienna Concert House), and overseeing the sale of another piano. Much of the film is devoted to a recording session with pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard - Aimard is recording Bach, and wants to use different kinds of sounds from his piano - tuned like a harpsichord, a clavichord, an organ, etc. - he and Knupfer work on that for a year. It's quite a fascinating film, showing the details of piano tuning, the manipulation of sound - and quite entertaining. Knupfer is a witty, amiable fellow - "I think I'll have a very sportive day" he says, in the midst of running up and down stairs between Aimard and his piano, and the room where the recording engineers are set up. What's best about it, though, is probably that it shows something I know nothing about, and teaches me something about it.

That's also true of Buck - a nice doc about Buck Brannaman, a horse trainer and trick roper and cowboy, who runs clinics on training horses - he had a hard childhood, which has somehow left him almost saintly seeming, and utterly devoted to training horses gently - and people too... It's a nice story, and Buck and his family and other associates are nice people to spend a couple hours with though there isn't much more to the film. Except, again, showing me something I don't know anything about, and leaving me knowing more about it - not a bad thing...

Page One:Inside the New York Times - In a way, I'm not sure this is all that much different from previous two - it is, as subtitled, a year inside the New York Times, specifically the media desk (editor Bruce Headlam, reporters Tim Arango, Brian Stetler, and most of all, reporter and columnist, David Carr.) It is, basically, a fly on the wall type film, put together after the fact - it's not quite pure hagiography (of the institution, let's say) - but close, and certainly, one imagines the Times was able to exercise a good deal of control over what ended up in the film. Though like the films above - it shows us the day to day workings of a big newspaper (the big newspaper, at least in the US) - and that too is inherently fascinating stuff. But as a film - maybe just a nice look at something....

But it feels like more than that. A lot of it, I have to admit, is just that there is something so exhilarating about newsroom films - I am a sucker for that stuff. Hecht and Hawks and Capra - and this is right in that tradition. I get twinges watching these guys working the phones, typing away on their laptops, pitching stories, walking the halls looking for that last paragraph, waiting for the lawyers to call back - even just the simple stuff, watching how fast and easy they type - great stuff. It's a great genre, because newspapers are a great setting, and this is a ,ore than worthy entry in the tradition. But I suppose, there is more than that - there is, after all, the Big Question, whatever that is - here, it takes the form - will the New York Times survive? - and spreads out from there. Whither journalism? Whither print? Whither the web? Etc. And how will these changes change society? the body politic? etc. etc.

I don’t know. The issues raised are, undeniably, vital questions, and they are given something of an airing here. And their importance gives the film heft - though in the end I'm left a bit unsatisfied. I don't know if that is the film's problem, or if it's broader - I am not sure I have ever been all that happy with the debates I've seen over these issues (the whole Whither Media stuff). It's hard to say why - here, a lot of my dissatisfaction seems to come from the way the discussions always seem to get sidetracked, bogged down, or how single issues come to take over for the whole range of issues. As an example here - there is a panel where Markos Moulitsas and David Carr get into a discussion about the place of the Mainstream Media - which Kos turns into a discussion of Judith Miller and Jayson Blair, and the failures of the New York Times, a position Carr routs mainly by pointing to the rest of the paper. But really - both seem to be evasions - Kos of the general value of the paper (and other papers), Carr of the fact that the authority he claims relies completely on not fucking up like that.

Now - I have opinions on the subject. In fact, I think the problem for print newspapers (and not necessarily just print) is driven by two things - 1) the big one is the advertising crisis - I mentioned this last year, days where I could not find a classified section in my local paper. (At least not in print.) That trumps everything else, since the daily paper lives on its ads. (Monthly publications, books, I think, will find ways to continue to make money through sales - I don't think daily papers can do that enough to survive.) 2) The digitization of information - and the web - which makes bits easy and cheap to exchange. ("Free" - or - free as far as the information goes - the cost revolves around the connections and servers - you get on the web and then do what you do, and it doesn't much matter what....) This changes the economy - it's one thing to charge for objects - something else to charge for information that can be reproduced for almost nothing. I can hold these opinions, and a variety of opinions based on them (that you can't control the flow of information enough to charge for it like you could for a piece of paper, things like that) - but... I hold other opinions too - that nothing on the web except web-based newspapers can do what newspapers can do. That without all the things newspapers have - the departments and bureaus, reporters and editors, people doing the legwork, the cold calling, grinding through the archives, interpreting the data - you cannot provide the real service newspapers provide. And this opinion collides with the ramifications of the first 2 - because I don't know how newspapers can survive in their current form with the current models of revenue. I don't think you can afford to put out a daily edition on the revenues you can get from ads, now - and I don't think (the Times' attempts to the contrary) you will be able to maintain much headway charging for online content. It's too easy for the information to get out of the paywall. And maybe more importantly - even if the Times and a couple others survive - having one or two or a dozen great papers in the whole country is not much better than having none. Someone will have to work something out. And - someone will work something out. That is not "optimism" it's just a fact - news and information will circulate in the future. But I don't know how, who will pay for it, what it will look like, what kinds of (valuable) things will be lost (or gained) - or who will be ruined getting to that point. We are kind of stuck in limbo for a while. There was someone in the movie, testifying before Congress, who said, we are early in the process - John Kerry took the opportunity to pontificate about the people who have lost their jobs - but she was simply right. Things have not worked themselves out in the least yet - the process is just starting....

Okay - crap - that went on longer than I expected. Well - what of the fiction?

Well - there's Bad Teacher - Cameron Diaz as a bad teacher, who plans to quit to marry a rich kid - when his mother intervenes, she's got to go back to work, and does so, with all the enthusiasm we might expect. She shows films every day in class; she smokes pot in the parking lot; she steals money from the class car wash to fund her breast enhancement surgery. She's surrounded by loons - Lucy Punch as Amy Squirrel, the probably mad do gooder neighbor; Jason Segal as a randy gym teacher; Justin Timberlake as a rich goofy christian (not stated, but the "pro-choice" joke, and a dry-humping scene make it clear enough); John Michael Higgins as a dolphin obsessed principal; Phyllis Smith as a nice old lady who's up for anything... All this rolls along amusingly enough - the jokes are good, the performers on their game, the story manages not to turn sappy - or gratuitously nasty - I mean, of course people sort of change, and things sort of get better for people, that's what stories do, they change people... to do this without lapsing into life lessons (beyond obvious stuff like don't be a[ny more of a] dick [than you have to be]) is a small triumph, and I'd say it gets there.

Larry Crowne, on the other hand - not so much. It's a likable enough film, I guess, but not a very good one. I have to blame Glenn Kenny and Sam Adams for this one - Kenny kind of liked it; Sam Adams - abetted, I think, by the Most Interesting Man in the World - played a great role the day before in making me miss an 11 AM screening of the African Queen - The Larry Crowne Affair turned out to be a bit more convenient... So what do we have? Tom Hanks is a master criminal laid off from his job at Goldman Sachs and is pursued by Faye Dunaway, or Julia Roberts, as Elizabeth Warren - no, wait, no, that's wishful thinking... Larry Crowne is laid off from UMart because he lacks a college education. He goes to community college, where he has classes with Julia Roberts (another Bad Teacher, though she already has a lousy husband, so isn't looking for another) and George Takai (being very strange). Also in the latter class is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (in the person of Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who rides a scooter (like Crowne) and so orchestrates his midlife crisis makeover. The potential for age inappropriate sex does not materialize, and Hanks and Roberts pair up in the end. He gets A's in his class, but the MPDG drops out (and Crowne doesn't repay her generosity to him by telling her to see Bridesmaids for a lesson on what happens when you start a quirky new retail store in the middle of a fucking recession. Jesus lady! get the degree, so at least in 10 years you can get temp work for an outsourcing firm!) Where was I?

The truth is - there's an interesting story lurking in the shadows here. The MPDG who revivifies poor middle aged Tom Hanks - and Tom Hanks who revivifies mopey Julia Roberts. The little side step - where someone wakes him up and he wakes up someone else - is a cool twist. And some of it is played with some wit and grace. Just not enough. Or really anything beyond the actors pouring on the charm and treating it all like a lark. There's a good idea there - but it's just an idea. Even the idea that Hanks saves Roberts - the film tells us that she saved him (that is, he says that to her), but - we've seen the film - seen her class, which is atrocious, we know she's mailing it in, but his enthusiasm, and his ability to engage his classmates, wakes her up. It would have been nice to have the filmmakers notice this - they might have gotten around to writing a decent film if they had... Instead - it plays like a very sketchy first draft.

Friday Ulster Genius Edition

Since I've had Suspect Device running through my head lately - let's let Genius do it's thing...

1. Modern Lovers - Roadrunner
2. Devo - Mongoloid
3. Public Image Ltd. - Public Image
4. The Pogues - a Pair of Brown Eyes
5. Television - Marquee Moon
6. Gang of Four - Damaged Goods
7. Replacements - Bastards of the Young
8. Echo & the Bunnymen - The Cutter
9. My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow
10. Jesus and Mary Chain - Some Candy Talking

sounds good... for your viewing pleasures - Still Little Fingers Live, in 1978:



And - this seems quite different, but I'm glad it came up. Here's Echo & The Bunnymen live, with strings:

Sunday With the Duke and Friends

Just keeping it simple this time around, Howard Hawks and the Duke on a Fourth of July Weekend...

2011 Halftime Report

We have accomplished half a year - what kind of year has it been for films? Looking at my lists - 10 deep, it seems pretty good. But it's felt awfully thin, at times. There have been stretches where there seem to be lots of good films out - but also weeks at a time when there is next to nothing that seems worth the trouble. I have resorted to Hollywood comedies (Bridesmaids; Bad Teacher - both quite enjoyable, don't get me wrong), to ho hum documentaries, the sort of thing they'd show on TV if the non-fiction TV channels didn't suck so bad (Blank City; Pianomania, etc.) - enjoyable and informative, but.... I suppose a lot of this is me - though I don't seem to lack for enthusiasm when there is good stuff out.... so - maybe.

Anyway - here are a couple lists for the first half of the year. First - 10 best films released this year:

1. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives
2. Certified Copy
3. Quattro Volte
4. Poetry
5. 13 Assassins
6. Dogtooth
7. Meek's Cutoff
8. Strange Case of Angelica
9. Jane Eyre
10. Rango

And - best films made in 2011 (from what is still a pretty short list...):

1. Meek's Cutoff
2. Jane Eyre
3. Rango
4. Cedar Rapids
5. Bridesmaids
6. Bad Teacher
7. Win WIn
8. Midnight in Paris
9. Rubber
10. Tree of Life

And, since it takes a while for a year's films to turn up - here's a look back at 2010 - a pretty good haul of which have come out this year (with positions on original list marked):

1. Carlos (long Version) - #1 at the end of the year
2. Uncle Boonmee - seen in 2011
3. Certified Copy - ditto
4. Quattro Volte - ditto
5. Poetry - ditto
6. Exit through the Gift Shop - 2
7. True Grit - 4
8. The Social Network - 3
9. Oki's Movie - seen in 2011
10. 13 Assassins - ditto

Canadian Music Day

In honor of Canada day - today's top 10 is devoted to Canadian rock! Something like - 5 favorite songs, with 1 per band, something like that...

1. Neil Young - Like a Hurricane
2. Leonard Cohen - Bird on a Wire
3. Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown
4. The Band - Up on Cripple Creek
5. Tragically Hip - Courage
6. Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark
7. Rush - Tom Sawyer
8. Arcade Fire - Month of May
9. BTO - You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
10. New Pornographers - Mutiny I Promised You

Video? Maybe a couple who have been overlooked above.... for instance - I did not know that Terry Jacks was Canadian!



And no tribute to our neighbor tot he north would be complete without their tribute to the USA:



And a band featuring long form music, I can't really fit on a list of great songs - Godspeed You! Black Emperor:

Farewell Columbo

I will miss Peter Falk - one of the most consistently enjoyable actors of the past 50 years. He made everything he touched better - he was always a joy to watch. He was part of some of the best films of his era, specifically his collaborations with Cassavetes - and that after working with America's greatest filmmaker, even getting an Oscar nod out fo it.... And if he is best known for Columbo - that's just about as good - for my money, Columbo might be the second best television show of all time. Looking at why it was so good - you can start with the character, with Falk's performances, as well as his look - you can look at the writing, the care taken in building those mysteries, the care taken in working the formula. It was a very formulaic show - quite unapologetically - start with the crime, then bring in Columbo, almost as an afterthought, and have him find something... then work off the guest stars of the week. And that, I think, is really what made the show so great. All the pieces are there - the stories, the dialogue, the actors, the guest stars, Falk - but they are all worked together with such skill, and especially, the interactions between Falk and the guest stars. That's the core of the show - those direct confrontations between someone who thinks they've committed the perfect crime and Lieutenant Columbo - it's where the show worked all the variations it needed to stay fresh through all those mysteries. It's notable - the concept of the show derives pretty explicitly from Crime and Punishment - and don't forget that Raskalnikov is the main character of Crime and Punishment. I don't know if Falk got more screen time then the crooks or not - it had to be close a few times - but the show's ability to get close to the killers and stay there gave it it's poignancy. It may have been mostly from Columbo's POV, but you always got the crook's perspective too - the sense of something closing in, even if they couldn't be sure what... Yes. And it matters that a good number of the killers come off - well - some of them are positively sympathetic. Even some nasty sons of bitches come out - well, almost regrettable. They build rapport with Columbo - he seems almost disappointed when he catches them, disappointed in them, I suppose - and we share in it.

It depends on the guest stars - but they depend on Falk. Who shows, in those Cassavetes films, how well he works with other actors, how much he integrates into the ensemble. He does it here - he plays off the guest stars, they play off him - the best of them - Cassavetes himself, the Patrick McGoohan episodes, or the Johnny Cash episode (maybe the best of the series) - just sing, as the stars maneuver around each other. The formula allows for infinite variety - there are shows with sympathetic villains, others with monsters, who draw out a kind of shivery delight in Falk when he catches them - everything in between. It was an exquisite show - even when the stories weren't the best, the interplay between Falk and his victims could carry the show. I am eternally grateful to him for it...

Classroom Triangles

Father, Son, the Knack - coincidence?

Rainy Friday Songs

It's Raining Today - and that makes a good starting point - set Genius off from Scott Walker:

1. Scott Walker - It's Raining today
2. John Cale - Fear is a Man's Best Friend
3. Robert Wyatt - Sea Song
4. Young Marble Giants - Eating Noddemix
5. Roxy Music - 2 H. B.
6. The Modern Lovers - Girlfriend
7. Wire - Marooned
8. Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want to See the Brights Lights Tonight
9. PJ Harvey - The Words that Maketh Murder
10. Captain Beefheart - Ella Guru

And video? In memory of Clarence Clemons:

Spring Film Roundup

I have fallen back out of the habit of posting occasional roundups of recent films - not even monthly anymore. The last one I can find is from January... youch. I can take some comfort in the fact that I've managed to actually write about a few movies in that time, but I think the shorter pieces have their place... So here goes, again, a month or so worth of new films...

Bridesmaids - 10/15 - Very funny film with Kristin Wiig as Annie, whose best friend gets married and asks her to be the maid of honor. But - KW is broke (put all her money into a bakery and lost it), has a crappy job, crazy roommates, a lousy lover (a rich guy who throws her out every night) - she has no money for the gig, but everyone else in the party has money to spare.... hilarity ensues. It's quite single minded in being about money - everything that happens happens because Annie is broke and the rest of the party is not. Everything - the Brazilian barbecue, the dress fitting, all that happens because ANnie is saving money; the trip to Vegas goes like it does because Annie is stuck in coach; the shower? Annie offers a person gift and Helen tops it by flying the bride to Paris - an idea she stole from Annie. I mean, everything is about money - even the romance - a busted taillight that Annie can't afford to fix? It's rather unusual for that direct attention to money as such, sometimes interesting with bits of class as well - especially the way everyone tries to pretend that they are all equal, even while cash considerations create obvious problems. It's a pretty sharp look at people with similar backgrounds - and here, creative, smart people at that - who have significantly divergent fortunes. A phenomenon I've seen in my day... and here, played out with lots of variation around the edges - the people who have money and those who don't, the old money and new money, etc... Not bad...

Princess of Montpensier - 10/15 - set in the 16th century religious wars in France, a girl marries a prince instead of the duc she loves (the duc of Guise, head of the catholic league in future) - she is tutored by a mercenary turned pacifist who also loves her - and eventually runs into the duc of Anjou (brother of the king), a fop (a rather brilliant fop) who also loves her and makes trouble for everyone else. A very handsome film, and also very sharp in its delineations of the politics, obligations, social positions of these people, and the complications of their loves and wars.

The Trip - 10/15 - Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon tour the north of England, eating at gourmet restaurants and visiting historical sites. The story is formulaic, the actors playing caricatures of themselves - Coogan the restless movie star worried about his career, compulsively womanizing, etc. - Bryden joking his way through the trip, doing impressions and underplaying his real jealousy, with a wife and kid waiting at home... But it is a handsome film to watch, and they are hilarious when they get going...

Nostalgia for the Light - 12/15 - Gorgeous documentary about Chile's Altacama desert, where the clear skies and perfectly dry climate create perfect conditions for looking at the stars, and preserving the dead. ALternating between astronomers and their telescopes, scanning the skies, looking for the story of where the universe came from - and the story of political prisoners, kept here in camps, murdered by the thousands, buried, then exhumed and reburied to hide the crimes.... And the women, searching for the dead. And a third perspective (alongside the astronomers and political victims) - archeologists studying the remnants of the millennia of inhabitants of the desert - their sites and bodies preserved in the dry earth...) Beautiful, very moving film.

Blank City - 9/15 - Documentary about the film movement in NY in the late 70s early 80s, where Jim Jarmusch, Ann Magnuson, Steve Buscemi etc. got their start. It's an interesting story, but the film is rather bland. There are a fair number of clips from the films of the day - but they seem very bland. Hard to tell if this is because the films aren't very good or because they are badly chosen and integrated, or maybe because the aesthetic depends too much on patience and duration so the editing drains them, or something else. Where it does work (both the films in the film and the film itself, as a documentary) is as a documentation of NY in the late 70s. It's a fascinating time and place, and the film does a decent job of showing it to us.

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen - 6/15 - Donnie Yen as Chen Zhen, the character from Fists of Fury - here, he's survived, and comes back from WWI (where he wiped out a platoon of Germans with a pair of bayonets) with a new identity - he gets a job working for a gangster - he's surrounded by intrigue - Japanese, Chinese warlords, cops, assassins, bargirls, etc. - he's part of a secret organization fighting the Japanese... and - lots of death and posturing and traces of romance, lots of flashy camera movement and hinted musical numbers (that don't come off), plenty of anachronism (from the name of the nightclub to the 40s style cars) - in the end - the girls are all spies, his allies mostly get killed, and he wipes out the Japanese, in a less interesting fight than you would hope. All this was made worse by being digital projected from a DVD, which killed off the opulance of the sets and cinematography (which is a big part of what appeal the film has). Nothing terrible, but nothing very impressive either.

13 Assassins - 11/15 - conventional seeming assassin story, set in 1844, the usual thing - the shogun's nasty half brother is getting too close to power - the shogun's advisers decide to kill him and recruit Shinzaemon Shimada (Koji Yokusho) to do it. He recruits a band of samurai, 12 total (then they pick up a peasant to make 13), and ambushes the lord... mayhem ensues. It's firmly in the tradition - the recruiting, the retainers and retainers of retainers, there is the inevitable sword expert, a spear expert who does it for the money, a dissolute nephew, etc. - and the peasant, who they cut down from a cage in the woods, who leads them out amd joins them and has a blast... On the other side - the mad lord, his faithful retainer who is, of course, Shinzaemon's old pal - etc. It's relatively restrained, though given the kinds of things you saw in old chambara, that's a relative term indeed - you do get a couple Miike specialties - a woman with her arms and legs and tongue cut off.... a bunch of wild boars with fire strapped to their back... the immortal peasant... and a steady string of details - the village, samurai swinging hopelessly away in their death throes, a fight shot upside down from the POV of a dieing man, etc. And a very cool villain, who'd be right at home in Ichi the Killer - deliberately walking into the ambush - "the foolish road is more fun" - and carrying on during the fight in perfect delight - dying in the mud, in agony, thanking his killer for the best day of his life... In this - his love of war and the others' mixed feelings - you see Miike, a bit - the fight starts exciting but becomes drudgery, people slogging around swinging at eash other... though then it ends for the inevitable duel, though this is undercut by the lord commenting on it - that happens a lot - there's plenty of monologuing, but a lot of it is metacomment - commenting on the duel, etc... He doesn't undercut it as he is sometimes wont to do, but he doesn't seem quite willing to let anything stand as a straightforward representation of some kind of grand serious politically motivated bloodbath.... Great stuff anyway.

Meek's Cutoff - 11/15 - I think Kelly Reichardt is well on the way to becoming one of the great American filmmakers of the age. May or may not be fair to say she is there (the level of the Coens, Lynch, Anderson and Anderson, etc.) - but she's well on her way to becoming one of them. This story is set in the old west - a small wagon train, 3 wagons, 3 families - are following a mountain man on a new route to Oregon. They begin the film by crossing a river, but tat is the last water they see for a while. Things go badly - they scheme against Meek, the guide - then they spot and Indian, then catch the Indian, and compel/convince him to lead them to water. Which he may or may not do. The film is slow and patient, a hard story about hard people in a hard land, and Reichardt conveys the sense of a bunch of farmers looking for a better life, with everything at stake.... It is interesting, though, to think of how it compares to the history - the real story it is based on involved hundreds of wagons - though I suppose plenty of people crossed the west in groups of 3 or 4 wagons... Sometimes, though, I think the real story competes with the story on screen - the small party gives it more of an abstract feeling, a kind of dream state, that maybe contradicts the matter of factness of the real story. Certainly the scale of the real story, the scale of the whole westward migration in the 1840s and 50s. Either way though - this is a fine movie...

Father's Day Ozu Style

Of course he's no sentimentalist - father's can be monsters as easily as heroes.



...sometimes no better than kids themselves -



Families are trouble -



- but



Things do work out sometimes, whether you like it or not.



Happy father's day!

Summer Quiz

Time for the latest quiz from Dennis Cozzalio - Professor Ed Avery's Cortizone-Fueled, Bigger than Life, Super Gulp-sized Summer Movie Quiz. ALways fun, and always a challenge - these things are harder than most class work I've had! This one has taken me an awful long time, thanks to my inherent sloth, the Bruins, the fact that it's summer and, you know - summer and stuff... But it's done, more or less... Here goes:

1) Depending on your mood, your favorite or least-loved movie cliché

I'm not sure - though in general - montage sequences, set to some pop song - are getting old, and are almost self-parody when they start... though when they work - they switch to one of the best. If they substitute for the plot...

2) Regardless of whether or not you eventually caught up with it, which film classic have you lied about seeing in the past?

I am sure I have done this, though I don't remember any specific instances. I think I did claim to see Paths of Glory for a while, when all I had seen was a kind of filmstrip version of the film... of course it was worse than that, since the history teacher that showed us the film strip claimed that it was All Quiet on the Western Front. I knew better, having already read the book...

3) Roland Young or Edward Everett Horton?

Horton, easily.

4) Second favorite Frank Tashlin movie

The Girl Can't Help It

5) Clockwork Orange-- yes or no?

I used to love it - now - I guess it’s still a pretty good piece of work. I have been coming back around toward Kubrick, after a long stretch of tending to look down on him. Though I can't really deny the entertainment value. I prefer the book, though, for whatever that is worth.

6) Best/favorite use of gender dysphoria in a horror film (Ariel Schudson)

I looked it up, of course - unease with ones gender. Well - this comes to mind:



But in a horror film? blimey... back to the drawing board. Where I feel guilty about just using the obvious - Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, that sort of thing. I could say Antichrist, I suppose...

7) Melanie Laurent or Blake Lively?

Hard to say I have an opinion, though I liked what I've seen of Melanie Laurent.

8) Best movie of 2011 (so far…)

Genuine new movies - Meek’s Cutoff; last year’s movies, released in 2011 - Uncle Boonmee, followed (not too far off) by Certified Copy and Le Quattro Volte

9) Favorite screen performer with a noticeable facial deformity (Peg Aloi)

interesting question, sort of. Does Peter Falk's glass eye count? though I only notice it when I am thinking about it. Let's see - Owen Wilson's nose? W. C. Fields' nose? Belmondo's nose? or maybe Denis Lavant's acne?

10) Lars von Trier: shithead or misunderstood comic savant? (Dean Treadway)

Are the two incompatible in some way? I didn't find his remarks at Cannes all that offensive, or even unusual. I suppose bad taste to joke about nazis, and probably a bad idea in general to use Hitler as a metaphor for something else (Hitler and Nazis as a matahphor for depression, right?) - but still... he does this all the time, of course - most of his public pronouncements seem calculated to confuse and annoy, and part f a more or less elaborate private joke. And usually in some strange way - funny, clever, worth considering.

11) Timothy Carey or Henry Silva?

They are both wonderful, but Carey is something else again.

12) Low-profile writer who deserves more attention from critics and /or audiences

I should be able to come up with an answer for this, but I can't.

13) Movie most recently viewed theatrically, and on DVD, Blu-ray or streaming

Theater = Nostalgia for the Light; DVD = You Can't Take it With You; Streaming = The Knack and How to Get It

14) Favorite film noir villain

There are too many choices... I think I'll go neo-noir, and, since I'm thinking about the Bruins and the Stanley Cup - go with Peter Boyle in The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

15) Best thing about streaming movies?

I don’t really like them, but they do let you make a decision on the spot, which can be nice.

16) Fay Spain or France Nuyen? (Peter Nellhaus)

I don't think I can answer this one. How about Marie-France Pisier instead?

17) Favorite Kirk Douglas that isn’t called Spartacus (Peter Nellhaus)

Ace in the Hole? though this could be the answer to 14 above too. (Out of the Past)

18) Favorite movie about cars

Two Lane Blacktop, probably.

19) Audrey Totter or Marie Windsor?

No idea

20) Existing Stephen King movie adaptation that could use an remake/reboot/overhaul

I don't think I care all that much. The ones I've liked, I've liked, and the ones I haven't I don't care about.

21) Low-profile director who deserves more attention from critics and/or audiences

I could probably come up with a lot of people, though this sort of thing usually comes to me after the fact.... But right now, I think I would say, Ira Sachs.

22) What actor that you previously enjoyed has become distracting or a self-parody? (Adam Ross)

I should be able to come up with a good answer for this. I don't know though - there seem to be a few actors I am tired of, but then they make a good film, or a film with someone who understands their talents, and all is forgiving. I don't know. I suppose there are obvious cases - Woody Allen, say... but that's boring, he barely acts anymore. Maybe Ellen Page? who does not seem to be going anywhere. Or even more depressing - Zooey Deschanel? I do not mind them, but they do not seem to progess much. I doubt either of those young women are to blame, though.

23) Best place in the world to see a movie

I don’t know. Anywhere that’s showing Ozu, I guess.

24) Charles McGraw or Sterling Hayden?

I always like Hayden

25) Second favorite Yasujiro Ozu film

Late Spring

26) Most memorable horror movie father figure

Has to be Dr. Pretorious in Bride of Frankenstein.

27) Name a non-action-oriented movie that would be fun to see in Sensurround

Another one I might think of over time.... How about Duck Soup?

28) Chris Evans or Ryan Reynolds?

Not sure, though Reynolds is usually watchable.

29) Favorite relatively unknown supporting player, from either or both the classic and the modern era

Modern - Garret Dillahunt usually makes me take notice... classic: there's nothing unknown about Dwight Frye, but boy, he was good...

30) Real-life movie location you most recently visited or saw

I walked by the Thirsty Scholar today, same as almost every day. Why would a Harvard kid and a BU kid go drinking in Somerville? no one has answered that question yet...

31) Second favorite Budd Boetticher movie

The Tall T

32) Mara Corday or Julie Adams?

I don't know...

33) Favorite Universal-International western

Winchester 73.

34) What's the biggest "gimmick" that's drawn you out to see a movie? (Sal Gomez)


If it counts, probably live music for silent films, including some odd mixes. (A DJ for shows of old Martial arts films - Red Knight Errant and Swordswoman of Huang jiang - which worked better than you might think...)

35) Favorite actress of the silent era

This is difficult - partly because I don't have quite the systematic experience with silent films I should. Lillian Gish has to rank high; or maybe Kinuyo Tanaka, who is in some fine early films, as well as having a big career in sound films.

36) Best Eugene Pallette performance (Larry Aydlette)

I'm going to say My Man Godfrey, though there are few more welcome presences in films...

37) Best/worst remake of the 21st century so far? (Dan Aloi)

The best, I suppose, is True Grit - the worst - I can't say I've sought out a lot of remakes... Planet of the Apes seemed particularly pointless, and I did see it, though not in a very conscious state...

38) What could multiplex owners do right now to improve the theatrical viewing experience for moviegoers? What could moviegoers do?

I am not sure. I think - keep projecting film is a big one. Similarly Moviegoers - show up on time? Though I have become more and more guilty of showing up in the middle of the trailers, so I shouldn't complain.

Icy Friday Music

In honor of the local http://sports.espn.go.com/boston/nhl/columns/story?columnist=mcdonald_joe&id=6671740 triumph:

1. Meat Puppets - Ice
2. Joy Division - Ice Age
3. Husker Du - Ice Cold Ice
4. Van Halen - Ice Cream Man
5. Pere Ubu - Ice Cream Truck
6. Ugly Casanova - Ice on the Streets
7. Wiley - Treddin on Thin Ice
8. Yoko Ono - Walking on Thin Ice
9. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - In this Home on Ice
10. Cibo Matto - WHite Pepper Ice Cream

Video? Husker Du is always indicated:

June 16

Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!

Happy Bloomsday!

UPDATE: for one single post to read on Ulysses and the joys of Joyce, I would recommend Sheila O'Malley...

Bruins!

Bruins win the Stanley cup!

That takes me back - I was a hockey fan, back in the day, the Don Cherry years, the Middleton/Pederson/early Bourque years especially - then sort of drifted away. it's nice to see.

Sunday Screen Shots - Space

Posted without comment, today - mostly. A quiet weekend....







...and back to work in the morning:

Mid June Music

There could be a theme here:

1. Little Feat - Old Folk's Boogie
2. Captain Beefheart - Old Fart at Play
3. The Pogues - Old Man Drag
4. Richard and Linda Thompson - Old Man inside a Young Man
5. Neil Young - Old Man
6. The Pretty Things - Old Man Going
7. REM - Old Man Kensey
8. Modern Lovers - Old World
9. Scott Walker - the Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist regime)
10. Volcano Suns - Old Paint

Any excuse to post the Pogues will do:



And I should really post this too - the Pretty Things, with Dave Gilmour:

First in from Cannes

The first two films from this year's Cannes festival have made it to Boston, Midnight in Paris and Tree of Life. They may not seem to have much more than playing at Cannes in common, but to me, they are linked - films by auteurs I don't much like. I've written about my troubles with Woody Allen - I could say more. That I was once a fan; that I still love the early, funny ones; that I truly admire his work ethic - making a film a year is an achievement... I wish more of his films were better - though one of the advantages of knocking them out all the time is that you increase your chances of making something good. And so it happened, that breaking my one-every-seven-year pattern, I saw it, and was almost shocked to be rewarded with a perfectly enjoyable film. You've got Owen Wilson in Paris, with Rachel McAdams as his fiance, and her insufferable rich parents, and Michael Sheen in the person of an appalling pedant, and... so poor Gil (that's Wilson) starts wandering the streets alone and night and before long is pulled off into the 1920s to hobnob with his idols and romance imaginary art groupies. Lessons are learned and such (partly through the expedient of going even further back in time), decisions are made, work might be done... The lessons (You Can't Live in the Past, or some such) aren't particularly convincing - the Allen films I've seen lately all seem to be about some kind of renunciation of some kind of pleasure, and getting on with the life you have - but this time, the whole affair is light and off-hand enough to go down without any sourness... It is funny - the caricatures are great - Hemingway talking in Hemingway sentences about Love, and Death, and Honor, and Boxing; Bunuel looking confused and Dali acting the fool.... The modern parts are almost as good, at least when Paul (the pedant) is on screen - the character is very funny and Michael Sheen nails him... And Wilson is his usual enjoyable presence. It's not a great film, in any sense, but it's perfectly fine - funny, handsome looking, sharply performed across the board, a loose, clever, entertainment... I liked it without reservations.

That's not quite the case for Tree of Life. If Woody Allen is a problem (an established auteur with a certain ongoing reputation in some corners of the cinephilic world, who I find almost unwatchable at times), Malick - is a bigger problem. Allen is a bit past his prime - all those films, so many of them mediocre - a lot of people have given up on him. But Malick, knocking out a film every half decade or so (after taking almost 2 decades off), still seems to be the critics' darling. People I like and respect consider his films among the best of the decade! how does that happen?

I do not share that opinion, you may have guessed. And this film - I have been dreading for a long time. I dread it because of his last couple films, neither of which I find particularly good; but I know what he is capable of - and have no intention of risking missing another Badlands (or Days of Heaven, for that matter) - so I would see it, no matter what. And I dread it because it will inspire gushing reports all around the internet, and I was all too sure they would get under my skin - and maybe poison me against the film, more than it deserves. All that came before the film did - now that the film is out - well - no surprises anywhere. The reception, at least among the blogs and writers I tend to follow, is (mostly) rapturous - there are nay-sayers, though more than one of them seem to be aiming at targets beyond Mr. Malick... And the film itself? kind of a bore, really, though the middle part is quite good....

What I guess nags at me the most is the idea that this is some kind of masterpiece, some kind of experimental film - that's the gist of a lot of the praise and complaints. (It's worth noting just how many of the reviewers and commentators mention that Malick once lectured on philosophy (see? I did it too!), as if proving his intellectual bona fides.) But I don't see it - there's nothing experimental about the film, unless making a feature length movie that looks sounds and feels like a mashup of Levis, Louis Vuitton and Latter Day Saints ads is experimental. (And the sad fact is - the Levi's ad had freaking Walt Whitman himself doing the voiceovers! instead of Malick's banalities... it's an ad that couldn't exist without Terence Malick, and at this point, is - except for the quality of the poetry - almost indistinguishable from him.) That complaint, I will say, applies mostly to the frame story - the opening 20 minutes, the end, etc. - the Creation of the Universe stuff isn't quite so bad (it has its own problems, though, especially the nonsense with the dinosaurs) - and the middle part is quite good. It's nicely set up - after another montage of babies being born and growing up (an insurance ad?), Malick lands us at the dinner table one evening, and the plot kicks in and suddenly, you have something worth watching. Better than that, maybe.

It's still montage heavy, still occasionally marred by voiceover (and always stupid voiceover) - but this part is much more engaged - the people resemble human beings, the dialogue, though on the nose, feels closer to true - it feels like memory. The sequence plays as a kind of memory/dream, and is very effective at it. Does some interesting things - the Pitt character is something of a tyrant - or rather, the kids see him as a tyrant - he is strict, he occasionally gets mean (and he plays Bach on a pipe organ like a monster movie villain) - but it’s still odd; he never quite does anything wrong - he seems more sad than cruel. You wonder if Malick is deliberately undercutting the emotional core of the film - this is Jack’s movie - we see his reactions to his father the monster - but don’t see father quite as a monster. Even if it’s not meant quite to undercut the narrator (the implied POV), it certainly seems aimed at giving us a complicated view of the father. The grown son remembering, doubting himself, his memories, his emotions as a kid, and so on. The father emerges as the richest and most interesting character - I suspect that is intentional. (The flip side of this is that the mother never emerges as anything - she is a wet dream, there’s nothing else. She wafts around with no personality or self, just being ethereal and interacting with nature and such. She is more imaginary than the rest of the family.) Anyway - things happen - fights at home, playing with the brothers and other kids, kids die, kids get hurt... There are some key moments - the father going away and freeing the rest of the family for a day or so... Jack's sexual awakening (breaking into a lady's house to - well - masturbate onto her nightgown, right? Malick makes this look as ethereal as the rest - the kid looking to hide the nightgown, then throwing it into the river - but it shouldn't take too much imagination to figure out why he had to hide it....) Not surprisingly, Jack immediately transfers this business onto his mom... (About the only real complaint I have with this section is that it's basically acting out the monologue from "The End" - which Jim Morrison got through in a minute and a half, and it takes Malick an hour...) And then - Dad loses his job and the family has to move - and somewhere in the future, one of the boys dies, and the others suffer.... And Malick cuts away from this memoir to Sean Penn wandering around in deserts and beaches and salt flats to no good end.

So - I'm left with a very split opinion of the film. I wish it were all like the middle part; I found the opening and closing sections inane and dull. The creation stuff - nothing NatGeo doesn't go better... But the middle - isn't stylistically that different from the rest. It's elliptical, it's impressionistic, it's as aestheticized as the beginning and end - but hooking into the story, and into the subjectivity of its originating intelligence, and exploring the washes of memory and impression as it does - is fascinating, engaging, the seeds of a good film.

D-Day

This week's Sunday Screen Shots come a day late, to honor the history - D-Day, in one of the best war movies of them all. It's a marvel of low-budget filmmaking, and a marvel of efficiency - capturing the chaos, violence, then the blood-curdling heroism of battle, the matter of fact horror of counting off who gets to risk their life next...

Music Friday

Another simple random ten, this Friday. I have some new records I have to listen to, and maybe get around to writing about - but that is still to come... Right now - Friday 10:

1. You La Tengo - Lost in Bessemer
2. Richard Thompson - Burning Man
3. Pere Ubu - Synth Farm
4. John Hartford - I Am A Man of COnstant Sorrow (Instrumental)
5. Pere Ubu - Heart of Darkness [specifically, a demo from one of their collections, a rehearsal session, working out the pulse... Neu would be proud]
6. Richard & Linda Thompson - Hokey Pokey (live)
7. Rites of Spring - Drink Deep
8. Merle Haggard - Silver WIngs
9. Yoko Ono - Why Not
10. The Doors - Back Door Man

That was interesting. Here then - video? Rites of Spring thrashing in the dark might be a good place to start....



And while the video is just an odd piece of animation - one never goes wrong with Pere Ubu: