October's Auteur - Yasujiro Ozu

It is time for October's Director of the Month - and the end of my little countdown of favorite Japanese filmmakers. We have reached the top - Yasujiro Ozu. For most of these, I have written up an essay - but the truth is, I've written so much about Ozu here, it might be easier just to point. Particularly to this one, summing up my love of Ozu - I can't really add much to that. He is, I say, the greatest filmmaker of all - an almost endless source of awe and beauty.



Maybe in place of a top 10 films I could list the top 10 reasons he is the best - or my favorite:

1. His formal brilliance



2. His Humanism
3. Space - the way he slices it up and recombines it
4. Every screen is impeccable
5. His editing - which is where his formal brilliance lies, I think - no one puts a film together like he did. The cuts on motion, the matches, on motion, on actions, or just on the images, the graphic match. And his disregard for the usual rules of editing - or more properly, his disruption of the normal rules of editing - he quite deliberately disorients the viewer, while teaching us to put an Ozu film together.
6. His range - I mean, to extend on those remarks about editing - the fact that all the things Ozu does, formally, can be done for emotional resonance, for a pure formal effect - or (and this happens a lot) as a gag.
7. His humor - the way his comic skills (of all kinds, physical humor, verbal jokes, character humor, formal gags with cuts and set design and what have you) are always there, worked into the fabric of the film, even when it's not a comedy. Though most of them are, at least partially, comedies. And some of them - Good Morning maybe most of all - are absolute comic masterpieces. The old lady and the knife gag....



8. His subtle, but unmistakeable and unmissable once you notice it, attention to economic and social issues. Really - attention to how people live, and how people live within their specific economic circumstances, is everywhere in his films.



9. Death - I have read that people don't usually die in Ozu films - but that is not right. His films are full of death. Seldom on screen (though there are a few - you can find just about anything in an Ozu film somewhere) but it is always there, offscreen - people are haunted in film after film by the people who have died - sons in the war; mothers, wives, children, young and old - there is no getting around it.



10. The way he runs changes on situations - the way he explores a theme, by circling it in a series of films. Take the obvious question of marriage in Japan - and all the different possibilities - arranged marriages, love marriages, sad marriages, happy marriages... Or running through parent child relationships: mother and son, father and son, father and daughter, mother and daughter....



And I could probably add this - that I can almost follow the dialogue in a lot of them.

So - that is that. As for the films - up to now, I've stuck to top 10s, but for Ozu, I am going whole hog - all the complete features I have seen, in order. That leaves out A Mother Should be Loved - I have seen it, but it is missing at least the first and last reels. It would come in near the bottom - it's a nice enough film, but a bit of an over the top tear-jerker. Still - there's nothing here that isn't a very well made piece of work...

1. Early Summer
2. Late Spring
3. Tokyo Story
4. I Was Born But...
5. The Only Son
6. Good Morning
7. Passing Fancy
8. An Inn in Tokyo
9. Tokyo Chorus
10. Autumn Afternoon
11. What did the Lady Forget?
12. Early Spring
13. Story of Floating Weeds
14. Woman of Tokyo
15. Tokyo Twilight
16. That Night's Wife
17. Floating Weeds
18. Record of a Tenement Gentleman
19. Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice
20. There Was A Father
21. Equinox Flower
22. Days of Youth
23. Brother and Sisters of the Today Clan
24. Late Autumn
25. Where Now are the Dreams of Youth
26. Hen in the Wind
27. Walk Cheerfully
28. Dragnet Girl
29. I Flunked But...
30. The Lady and the Beard
31. End of Summer
32. Munekata Sisters

Lou Reed RIP

Lou Reed has died. I guess it is not too surprising, but... that gets pretty close to the center of the musical universe, you know.

Here he is, playing Sweet Jane, with Robert Quine.

Friday Music World Series Edition

Here we are, Friday, middle of the World Series - people were thinking the Sox were going to run off with it after the first game, but things have come back down. All tied up and off to St. Louis. It's going to be a tight one.

And so? let's go straight to the tunes...

1. Neil Young - Long May You Run
2. Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - Absolutely Free
3. Pere Ubu - Postcard
4. Love - Listen to My Song
5. Red Krayola - Farewell to Arms
6. Johnny Cash - Rock Island Line
7. George Michael - Look at Your Hands
8. Pavement - Perfume (live)
9. Grinderman - Depth Charge Ethel
10. T. Rex - Jeepster

Video? It's starting to feel rather Canadian out there - good an cold... so let's start with Young Neil on the pump organ:



And how about Absolutely Free played as a duet for guitar and clarinet?

Problems of Command

On October 23, 1863, Ulysses S. Grant arrived in Chattanooga, to take over command of the effort to rescue the Army of the Cumberland, which was sealed up in that place.

After the battle of Chickamauga, the Union army had retreated, in great disarray, to Chattanooga. Half the army, and William Rosecrans, its commander, were completely wrecked - the rest, which had made an epic stand under George Thomas, retreated during the night. All of them were in a bad way. The Confederates came after them - but not at full speed. The Yankees were able to dig in around the city, though in the valley. The Rebels dug in along the hills ringing the city. The Union men were not exactly trapped in Chattanooga - but they were cut off from easy contact with the rest of the world. The Rebels could block the river, most of the main roads - food had to come in over the mountains, there in southern Tennessee. For the next month or so, the Southerners tried to starve the Yankees out. While this was happening, Grant was put in charge of everything from the Appalachians to the Mississippi, Rosecrans was replaced by Thomas, and Grant set out to save them. He worked his way through the wilderness to Chattanooga, followed by reinforcements - his own Army of the Tennessee, now led by Sherman, and a detachment from the Army of the Potomac, the XI and XII corps, led by Fightin' Joe Hooker himself.

Grant didn't waste any time getting to work on a plan (or accepting a plan that Thomas and Baldy Smith had already worked out) - but that can wait for now. I want to write about Command, right now. Especially, the difference between how the Union and Confederacy handled command problems after Chickamauga. The north we've seen - they were whipped and whipped bad at Chickamauga. Rosecrans himself could be blamed for the defeat, and was - and his indecisiveness after the battle sealed his fate. Lincoln put Grant in command, and gave Grant the authority to decide who commanded the Army of the Cumberland - Grant dismissed Rosecrans and appointed (or rather, accepted Lincoln's appointment of) George Thomas. Things went differently in the south.

Let's start with this - was there a more troublesome general on either side than Braxton Bragg? He was a strange case - it is not that he was incompetent, or even particularly unsuccessful; he acquitted himself well in his Kentucky campaign of 1862, and you could say that he actually won all three major battles he had fought to this point (Perryville, Stone's River and Chickamauga). But he had a knack for failure. He might have carried most of the field at Perryville and Stone's River, but he abandoned the field in both cases, and they went down as Union victories. He won clearly at Chickamauga, but it is hard to see how any credit could go to him - Rosecrans' and Wood's blunders, Longstreet's attack, and the Confederate division and brigade commanders deserve the credit there - and at the end of it, he did not pursue aggressively, and a wrecked Union army got back to Chattanooga intact, and dug in, to hold the town.

Bragg's underlings certainly blamed Bragg, and wasted no time before they started scheming against him. MOre or less openly. The usual suspects - Polk and Breckinridge and Buckner, joined now by the easterners, Longstreet and D.H. Hill - writing their political allies in Richmond, writing to Jeff Davis, writing open letters, anonymous letters.... And that is the real problem with Bragg. Whatever he was on the battlefield, Bragg was an astonishingly unsuccessful leader of men. From top to bottom. The men in the ranks hated him. His generals hated him and openly schemed against him. Politicians hated him. Everyone hated him, except a few toadies, and Jefferson Davis. It is hard to imagine what Jefferson Davis was thinking. Bragg's generals were lobbying for his replacement after Chickamauga - which is bad enough, except they did exactly the same thing after Stone's River and Perryville - and every time, Davis left him in charge. It is very hard to see why - you are left thinking that either Davis was a terrific fool, or he simply despaired of the situation.

It isn't as though he didn't have options. After Stone's River, Davis was prepared to let Joe Johnston take over, sent him to decide whether Bragg should go or not - but didn't order Johnston to take over. After Chickamauga, Davis had even more choices - Johnston again, with the added option of having Johnston bring his army east to combine with Bragg's. And Longstreet - who was on the scene, and seems to have been scheming for the job. Longstreet's behavior, especially, was rather unseemly - but then again - he was just about the only one of the lot willing to take the job if it were offered. Either general brought problems - Johnston was a resolutely defensive minded general - though for a siege, that might have been just what was needed. He had the added advantage of being able to bring reinforcements with him - the south outnumbered the north at Chickamauga, and could have maintained that, by adding Johnston to Bragg and Longstreet. Longstreet's politicking might have been unseemly, but he was a real general - men followed him, Lee trusted him, he was willing to act on his own - he would have been well suited for the job.

But Davis left Bragg in charge. He couldn't bring himself to make the change - even after Stone's River, he wouldn't make the decision, he left the choice to Johnston - a man very unlikely to make a decision if he didn't have to. So Bragg stayed in command, though by this time, he was an obvious liability. He had lost the confidence of his officers, and of the men in the ranks; he showed no sign of being able to run a campaign. He had to go.

It is ironic: there is a legend that the South went to war with far better soldiers and leaders than the north. Most accounts grant that the Union learned the business of war as they went along, and by the end had leaders who knew how to win with overwhelming odds. You could put it that way, but it misses the point, even of what you have just said. This story illustrates it: the fact is that the Union, when it failed, changed commanders. More in the east than in the west, but they failed more in the east than the west. The whole point is that Lincoln, once he got going, was willing to change. The Union high command - Lincoln and Stanton and company - were ruthless. They expected success and chased it hard. They found it. It took awhile - took a year’s worth of campaigning in the east, to basically shake out the lesser men and give the better ones time to learn their trade. By 1863, even in the east,m where things had gone so badly, Lincoln had men to choose from. Meade, Reynolds, Sedgwick - all of them had drawbacks, mostly their lingering McClellanisms, the institutional caution and ponderousness the Army of the Potomac never shed - but all were strong leaders, willing and able to fight, and any of the three, at least, would have won the battle of Gettysburg, as Meade did, for the reasons Meade did. They did their jobs. They knew what they had. They knew their underlings and knew how to use them (Meade’s decision to rely as heavily as he did on Hancock was inspired - it’s like Grant’s decision to rely on Sheridan at the end of the war, or on Sherman in the west. You could almost say that the difference at Gettysburg is that Meade had Hancock, and used him - Lee no longer had Jackson.)

The Union had better luck early in the west - Grant had an army by 1862, Sherman and Thomas were in positions of authority, and did well - though there were still bumps in the road. Rosecrans was a mixed bag - brilliant at some things, overwhelmed at others - after Chickamauga, he'd lost the confidence of much of his army and the Union high command... But again - the important point is that the Union high command was willing to act. It's true, Lincoln had had Grant and Thomas and Sherman on hand to take over - men he trusted, and who were, themselves, willing to take on the responsibility they were given. (Joe Johnston was not willing to relieve Bragg when given the option; Grant had no problem replacing Rosecrans with Thomas when given the authority.) The Union got there by being willing to change.

That refinement did not happen in the south. Partly, to be sure, because Lee found those men in 1862 - Longstreet and Jackson, the division commanders - A. P. Hill and Ewell and Hood and the like, people like Gordon and Rodes and Early, all very fine officers, who were identified fairly early. The Union found some good officers at the beginning of the war, but not as many, and they never quite managed to get them in position. The first round of leaders - Franklin and Porter, Sumner and Keyes - were not quite up to it. The next round - Hooker and Kearney, Richardson and the like, died or drifted - it’s the third generation, and the fourth - Sedgwick and Meade and Reynolds, Hancock, Howard, Gibbon, Birney, Barlow, and so on, who really distinguished themselves. BUt the emergence of strong officers later in the war in part of the difference - in the south, even in Lee’s army, as the top men were killed or disabled, the men moving into their place did not expand to their new responsibilities as often. Generals like Hill and Ewell, Early, Anderson, Rodes were all good men, but none of them as good as the men they replaced, none of them as good at higher levels as they were with their brigades and divisions. People like Sherman and Sheridan, meanwhile, got better as they rose through the ranks - they were better with more responsibility than less.

But all of this was far, far worse for the Confederacy in the west. You can imagine the way the north would have reacted to some of those battles - Bragg would have been done at least after Stone’s River. Lincoln, pulling a sad face, would tell him about the old farmer he knew, and his favorite cow, that wouldn’t give, and send him home. He’d have tried Polk or Hardee - he’d have given Breckinridge or Buckner a shot at it - he might even have been willing to bring back Beauregard or put Johnston in charge - but he’d have found someone, and if they fucked up, he’d have found someone else. They’d have gotten to the men who knew their jobs - in the Union army, men like Cleburne or Stephen Lee or Forrest, who had real talent, would have found their way to high command, the way Sheriden and Sherman and McPherson and James Wilson did. It is fascinating - in the long run, the Union did a far, far better job of identifying talent, developing it, keeping a fair stream of talent occupying high positions. And you have to say - that the Union did a much better job of moving people up successfully. The Meades and Hancocks and Warrens, later Humphreys - the Logans and Blairs, the Sheridans, Wilsons, etc., all made the transition from brigade to division to corps command, successfully. Yes - often with the institutional problems of their armies intact (which is a reason why people like Howard and Slocum seem so inept in the east and thrived in the west, maybe), but still, far more successfully than Hill or Ewell or Hood moved up.

In the end, if all comes back to Jeff Davis. He has to take a lot of the blame for this. He sustained Bragg in the face of universal condemnation, and in the face of Bragg never accomplishing anything. He sidelined Beauregard, marginalized Johnston, because he did not like them. He did insanely self-destructive things like putting John Hood in charge of the most important army in the “country”. He did many things - he pushed to hold all of Mississippi when it was impossible; kept Pemberton in command in the face of universal distrust; he could never act decisively - to concentrate, to scatter, to give Lee unqualified support, or to force Lee to support someone else. He let feuds and personal bickering simmer, never removing the people complaining or the target of their complaints, and nothing he did helped.

The closest comparison to Bragg's position in 1863 might be Burnside's at the beginning of 1863. It's true that Burnside had failed far more than Bragg. His army was melting away (as was Bragg’s). His officers were in open revolt (as were Bragg's). Burnside himself, usually a generous, good man (no one ever said that of Braxton Bragg), was on the warpath against them. What to do? Lincoln got rid of Burnside. He bit the bullet and turned to the most talented and successful general on hand, Fightin' Joe Hooker, even though he was also a self-aggrandizing blowhard who was openly (and surreptitiously) campaigning for the job (Lincoln's as much as Burnside's, I suspect. Giving interviews about the need for a military dictator?) It didn’t work out all that well - Hooker choked at the key moment. But Lincoln did it. And when Hooker failed - Lincoln turned him out and put Meade in. It's not hard to guess what would have happened in the south if Lincoln were their president - he would have sent Bragg home and put Longstreet in charge. There is no doubt. And the war might well have lasted another year.

World Series, Here We Come!

I am happy to report that I got the playoffs right so far - we've got Boston and St. Louis in the World Series, the two best records in the game, and pretty clearly the two best teams. So it should be pretty good. Sox got there rather predictably, by staying close, and taking out the Tiger's bullpen - winning two games late that way. Cards won mostly by shutting down the Dodgers, though they did rise up and smite Clayton Kershaw in game 6.

They look pretty evenly matched - the Cards with great young arms, deep and strong, and a deep, balanced, tough lineup; the Sox with a run of proven starters, a couple of them in fine form (Lester and Lackey), backed by a solid bullpen in front of a nearly unhittable closer. Plus a lineup a lot like the Cards' - everyone hits, everyone brings something; they hit line drives, they hit for power, they have some speed - and it's all anchored by David Ortiz. Which isn't too far from what the Cards bring - maybe less power, but plenty of high average hitters - and Carlos Beltran, who, it should be noted, is a better post-season hitter than Ortiz.

The last time these teams played was 2004 - the Sox came into that one on a more or less unmatchable high, and took the poor Cards (and their 105 wins) apart. But that was a different kind of team - different pitching - the Cards ran out 4 solid journeymen starters, none of them lights out arms. None of them with the kind of history Boston's worse starter had (dear old Derek Lowe, who took the whole year off, until the team was behind 3-0 in the playoffs, when he reverted to his 21 game winning 2002 form.) The Sox just put it to them. Of course - the 2004 Red Sox were a pretty notable bunch of underachievers most of the year - they never really got going until August, though after that they almost ran the table. They let the Yankees take 3 from them, and had to fight an almost supernatural battle for the next two wins - but really, after the Bloody Sock game, there wasn't much room for doubt. That team wasn't about to lose.

This year is another matter. This Red Sox team has not underachieved at all. It's tempting to think they overachieved, since they weren't exactly expected to be this good - but mostly, that's a matter of people staying healthy, and performing to expectations. Well - hopes; but reasonable hopes. I think one of the things Ben Cherington did right is see that he had good players, 93 losses notwithstanding, and didn't need to rebuild fromt he top. Ortiz (if healthy), Pedroia, Lester and Buchholz (if healthy) were quite capable of anchoring a good team - they needed a roster to go with it. So he added players that filled out the roster, all of them proven players, with good track records; added arms in the bullpen (to their salvation). It is a 25 man team - everyone on the roster brings value. It's impressive. This Cardinal team, meanwhile, is just as good - not many holes in the lineup; a bench; lots of good young power arms (unlike the 04 version), plus an ace, in Wainwright (the 2004 St. Louis ace was Chris Carpenter, who was injured - when he was healthy, he was 3-0 with a 2.00 ERA in the World Series.) They have a tough, deep bullpen. This is going to be a tight series, I think - 6 or 7 games, and I'd expect most of them to be nail-biters. In the end? I'm going with the Red Sox because I have to, and also - their resiliency. Grinding out every at bat, inning, game; they never seem to break...

Musical Friday

Welcome back to business, US Government! I am very relieved to see the government back in action, and without the Democrats giving anything up. It has been very obvious that as long as the GOP House kept getting things from their antics, they were going to continue driving us to the edge of demolition - that has to stop. Granted - by "stop" I mean, put off until winter or spring. But - the fact that the Democrats did not bend is a cause for optimism. Having found the limits of what they can get by extortion, maybe they will try politics...

Anyway - that's that. Right now? a random selection of musical tunes for your contemplation:

1. Motorhead - Fast and Loose
2. Hoodoo Gurus - Bittersweet
3. Built to Spill - Conventional Wisdom
4. Johnny Cash - Wreck of the old 97
5. Tom Verlaine - Balcony
6. U2 - Bad
7. Boredoms - House of Sun
8. King Crimson - The Power to Believe II
9. Saint Etienne - Like a Motorway
10. Ray Charles - Drown in My Own Tears

Video: I have had the misfortune recently to get Air Supply stuck in my head... this is terrible, and enough to make one consider reprisals against our antipodean friends; this, I hope, can counter such horrors - this is a song that would make a very welcome ear worm...



And Ray Charles of course.

2000s WITD Poll Votes

Over at Wonders in the Dark, they have almost reached the present in their yearly polls, hitting the 2010s. I imagine, in a couple weeks it will get interesting, as we find out what will be the best films of 2014 and 15 and beyond. Better get my time machine going...

Anyway - here are my votes for the 2000s, my posted votes by year, and my overall choices. I notice that I have changed the order of a couple films since I voted - I have posted most of these votes as I went along, but I am not going to look to see how that has changed. Orders of merit tend to be pretty arbitrary, beyond the absolute top, usually....

Decade:

PICTURE: Inland Empire
DIRECTOR (single): David Lynch, Inland Empire
(decade): Pedro Costa
LEAD ACTOR (single): George Clooney, O Brother Where Art Thou?
(decade): Song Kang-ho
LEAD ACTRESS (single): Laura Dern, Inland Empire
(decade): Emmanuelle Devos
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bae Doona, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
SHORT: Heart of the World, Guy Maddin
SCORE: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood
CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Lubtchansky, Regular Lovers

Plus bonus picks::
Script: Outside of the top 20? Mother... overall?
1. Secret Sunshine
2. Kings and Queen
3. Yi Yi
4. Mother
5. O Brother Where Art Thou?
Music: O Brother Where Art Thou?
Sound: Shirin
Martial Arts: House of Flying Daggers
Documentary: Los Angeles Plays Itself - though this might be the best decade for documentaries yet - so deserves a top 5 at least:
1. Los Angeles... (Anderson)
2. En Construccion (Guerin)
3. Forty-Nine Up (Apted)
4. RR (Bening)
5. Grizzly Man (Herzog)
Animated: Waking Life (plus - Wall E, Incredibles, A Scanner Darkly, Waltz with Bashir)
Musical: depending on your definitions... top 5?
1. O Brother...
2. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
3. Chunyang
4. No One Knows About Persian Cats
5. 24 Hour Party People

Total:
1. Inland Empire
2. Yi Yi
3. Kings and Queen
4. In Vanda's Room
5. Colossal Youth
6. Secret Sunshine
7. Death of Mr. Lazarescu
8. O Brother Where Art Thou
9. Los Angeles Plays Itself
10. Memories of Murder
11. 2046
12. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
13. L'Intrus
14. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
15. The Royal Tenenbaums
16. The Headless Woman
17. Mulholland Drive
18. Syndromes and a Century
19. The Son
20. There Will Be Blood

2009:

Decent year, 2009, though maybe lacking any great masterpieces. But lots of films in the almost-great range, if that means anything. A contest of Korean films for the top spot...

PICTURE: Mother
DIRECTOR: Bong Joon-ho, Mother
LEAD ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, Thirst
LEAD ACTRESS: Kim Hye-ja, Mother (This is another tough one, with Isabelle Huppert and Kim Ok-bin to think about...)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds
SHORT:
SCORE: Alexandre Desplat, Fantastic Mr. Fox
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Antony Dod Mantle, Antichrist

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Mother
Music/Sound: No One Knows about Persian Cats

1. Mother
2. Thirst
3. A Serious Man
4. Police, Adjective
5. White Material
6. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans
7. Inglourious Basterds
8. Limits of Control
9. Antichrist
10. The White Ribbon

2008:

This is something of a step back, though there are still plenty of decent films....

PICTURE: The Headless Woman
DIRECTOR: Steven Soderbergh, Che
LEAD ACTOR: Benicio del Toro, Ché
LEAD ACTRESS: Maria Onetto, Headless Woman
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Eddie Marsan, Happy Go Lucky
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lina Leanderson, Let the Right One In
SHORT:
SCORE: Thomas Newman, Wall-E
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Steven Soderbergh, Ché

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Beaches of Agnes
Music: Sita Sings the Blues
Sound (& editing): Shirin
Documentary: Man on Wire

1. The Headless Woman
2. Che
3. Tokyo Sonata
4. Liverpool
5. Birdsong
6. 24 City
7. Hunger
8. Christmas Tale
9. Wall E
10. Night and Day

2007:

This is one of the best years of the decade - great at the top, and a deep run of good films.

PICTURE: Secret Sunshine
DIRECTOR: PT Anderson, There Will Be Blood
LEAD ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis
LEAD ACTRESS: Jeon Do-yeon (though this is a very strong year for actresses - Juliette Binoche, Sylvie Testud, Jeanne Balibar, Nina Hoss...)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kurt Russell, Grindhouse
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
SHORT:
SCORE: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Harris Savides, Zodiac

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Secret Sunshine
Music/Sound: Darjeeling Limited - Kinks baby!

1. Secret Sunshine
2. There Will be Blood
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
4. Flight of the Red Balloon
5. Zodiac
6. California Dreamin'
7. No Country for Old Men
8. RR
9. In the City of Sylvia
10. Mourning Forest

2006:

Another very good year. With a couple of the really great films of the decade...

PICTURE: Inland Empire
DIRECTOR: David Lynch
LEAD ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, The Host
LEAD ACTRESS: Laura Dern, Inland Empire
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bae Doo-na, The Host
SHORT:
SCORE: I rather like the electronic hum of Syndromes and a Century, I think.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Akiko Ashikawa, Retribution

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Woman on the Beach, Hong Sang Soo
Music/Sound: Inland Empire
Design: I have to add this category to get The Fall mentioned somewhere. If there were an Exceeds Expectations category, it would win the all time award.

1. Inland Empire
2. Colossal Youth
3. Syndromes and a Century
4. The Woman on the Beach
5. Retribution
6. Still Life
7. Letters from Iwo Jima
8. Children of Men
9. Brand Upon the Brain
10. Triad Election


2005:

PICTURE: Death of Mr. Lazarescu
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao Hsien, Three Times
LEAD ACTOR: Issei Ogata, The Sun
LEAD ACTRESS: Keira Knightley, Pride and Prejudice
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Rob Brydon, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Adams, Junebug
SHORT:
SCORE: Richard Thompson, Grizzly Man
CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Lubtchansky, Regular Lovers

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Mutual Appreciation, Andrew Bujalski
Music/Sound: Three Times (for both, music and sound)
Documentary: I think I have three of these in my top 10 - 49-Up, Grizzly Man and Into Great Silence

1. Death of Mr. Lazarescu
2. Forty-Nine Up
3. Regular Lovers
4. The Squid and the Whale
5. Grizzly Man
6. The President's Last Bang
7. Magic Mirror
8. Three Times
9. L'Enfant
10. Into Great Silence

2004:

This is another very good year.

PICTURE: Kings and Queen
DIRECTOR: Zhang Yimou, House of Flying Daggers
LEAD ACTOR: Jim Carrey, Eternal Sunshine fo the Spotless Mind
LEAD ACTRESS: Emmanuelle Devos
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Owen Wilson, Life Aquatic
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lily Tomlin, I ♥ Huckabees
SHORT: Sombre Dolorosa, Guy Maddin
SCORE:
CINEMATOGRAPHY: 2046, Christopher Doyle, Lai Yiu Fai, Kwan Pun Leung

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Sound: Tropical Malady
Editing: Notre Musique
Documentary: Darwin's Nightmare
Scene: The grocery store robbery in Kings and Queen.

1. Kings and Queen
2. L'Intrus
3. 2046
4. House of Flying Daggers
5. Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
7. Los Muertos
8. The World
9. Innocence
10. Nobody Knows

2003:

PICTURE: Los Angeles Plays Itself
DIRECTOR: Tsai Ming-liang, Goodbye, Dragon Inn
LEAD ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, Memories of Murder
LEAD ACTRESS: Toni Collette, Japanese Story
SUPPORTING ACTOR: James Urbaniak, American Splendor
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Hope Davis, American Splendor
SHORT: Phantom Museum
SCORE: Kevin Shields, Lost in Translation
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Harris Savides, Elephant

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Memories of Murder
Music/Sound: A Mighty Wind
Editing: 21 Grams
Documentary: a very good year for it, but Los Angeles Plays Itself is in another world...

1. Los Angeles Plays Itself
2. Memories of Murder
3. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
4. Doppelgänger
5. Cafe Lumiere
6. Elephant
7. Blind SHaft
8. Morning Sun
9. Crimson Gold
10. Story of Marie and Julien

2002:

Kind of an odd year - solid films, lots of very interesting not quite great films, the likes of Zatoichi and Dolls and Secretary and the like, and somewhat muted at the top. Though I suppose not too muted - the top three - Mr. Vengeance, The Son, and the Pianist are very good...

PICTURE: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
DIRECTOR: Park Chanwook, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
LEAD ACTOR: Adrien Brody, The Pianist
LEAD ACTRESS: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Secretary
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bae Doona, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
SHORT: The Skywalk is Gone, Tsai Ming-liang
SCORE: Elmer Bernstein, Far from Heaven
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mark Li, Springtime in a Small Town

Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Son
Music/Sound: Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary

1. The Son
2. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
3. The Pianist
4. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
5. Man Without a Past
6. Blissfully Yours
7. Gerry
8. Unknown Pleasures
9. Ten
10. Springtime in a Small Town

2001:

Another strong year; this was a particularly good year for actress. I feel almost guilty about adding another vote for Mulholland Drive though - looking at the results, it seems to be moving rapidly into the realm of the overrated. It's a clear enough favorite for 2001, but not by that much of a margin - this isn't 1986 or 2006, years where Lynch has no competition.

PICTURE: Mulholland Drive
DIRECTOR: David Lynch
LEAD ACTOR: Gene Hackman, Royal Tenenbaums
LEAD ACTRESS: Jeanne Balibar, Va Savoir
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Bill Nighy, Lawless Heart
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Laura Elena Harring, Mulholland Dr.
SHORT: In Public, Jia Jian-ke
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Mulholland Dr.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Peter Deming, Mulholland Dr.

Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Royal Tenenbaums
Music/Sound: The Royal Tenenbaums, again.
Best Takashi Miike film (I saw three of them from 2001, after all): Ichi the Killer (and Tadanobu Asano is a pretty close runner up to Hackman for best actor, I'd say. Best makeup anyway.)

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Royal Tenenbaums
3. Ichi the Killer
4. Va Savoir
5. En Construccion
6. Donnie Darko
7. Waking Life
8. Distance
9. La Cienega
10. Pistol Opera

2000:

PICTURE: Yi Yi
DIRECTOR: Edward Yang
LEAD ACTOR: George Clooney, O Brother Where Art Thou
LEAD ACTRESS: Maggie Cheung, In the Mood for Love
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tim Blake Nelson
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ziyi Zhang, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
SHORT: Heart of the World (on the very shortlist for best ever)
SCORE: Mihaly Vig, Werckmeister Harmonies
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle, Pung-Leung Kwan and Mark Lee Ping-bin, In the Mood for Love

Plus bonus picks:
Script: this is a tough one: Yi Yi and O Brother Where Art Thou are as good as you could ask.
Music/Sound: O Brother...

1. Yi Yi
2. In Vanda's Rom
3. O Brother Where Art Thou
4. Platform
5. Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors
6. Songs from the Second Floor
7. The Circle
8. Eureka
9. In the Mood for Love
10. The Gleaners and I

A Sort of Homecoming

Well, it's October, and the trees are stripped bare of all they wear - so it's time for another post on a favorite band - this time, U2. They are another band I embraced in college - and maybe the first band that I embraced almost in real time. I heard U2 - I Will Follow, specifically - on the radio, sometime in the spring of 1981 I think, senior year of high school. There were a lot of new wave type bands on the radio those days, and I can't say U2 sounded all that different at first - but the more I heard it, the more impression it made. They didn't sound like everyone else - the echoey production, the rattling percussion, and the riffs - the guitars - the guitars... they jumped off the radio, they stopped me cold, made me listen. I am a sucker for a riff. I remember at first, they were not that big - bands like the Police or The Knack (a couple years earlier) or, shoot - Flock of Seagulls - were in heavy rotation at times; you couldn't escape those songs. U2, at the beginning, were just one of the songs on the radio, a modest hit I guess - but every time they came on I turned it up and stopped to listen.

I went to college in Boston about the time October came out. In Boston, they were in heavy rotation. I Fall Down was the single (I believe) - but stations played both records, all the way down - though especially I Will Follow, Out of Control, Electric Co., maybe Stories for Boys, Gloria, Rejoice, I Fall Down, October.... that was enough. It is probably pretty obvious that I loved guitar music all along - U2 was the first new band (punk, new wave, etc.) that really caught my ear, and it was the guitar that got me. I liked them as much as I liked anyone, and unlike all the other bands I really liked, they were still around,, active, making music, engaged with the world as it was in 1982. They struck me, over the first three records, as the obvious successors to the Who - the insistent rhythm guitar, the energy, the power - I had become a fanatical devotee of the Who - U2 seemed like their modern equivalent...

It felt like I had them to myself the first couple years of college. My friends were mostly into either classic rock or mainstream pop - some of them were actively hostile to new wave or punk. Somehow, the ones who were into newer stuff didn't seem to be into U2 - one guy (the Springsteen fan) loved Elvis Costello, X and XTC; another guy listened to The Police and Prince all the time. (That's how I remember it, anyway - a couple years later, he drove a bunch of us to Worcester to see U2 - he must have been a fan all along - I guess neither of us mentioned it until War or The Unforgettable Fire came out.) There were more U2 fans later - after War - but the first year or so, they were really just mine.... And they were - I didn't have a lot of money in college, I didn't buy many records - just U2's records, the day they came out (if I could). Going by record stores until they did come out. Then making my poor brothers listen to them until they were as enthusiastic as I was...

And then? I saw them live, spring 85 I think, at the Worcester Centrum. That was something - but for some reason, it seemed like it opened the door to doubts. Maybe they were too professional by then - maybe their live act sounded too much like the records. Not that I was an expert on live music, but I was spoiled, listening to Live at Leeds all the time - and having seen a real guitar hero (however obscure) in Phil Keaggy - as great a show as they could put on, I guess I probably wished there was more to listen to. I shouldn't make too much of this - seeing U2 live was truly a peak experience in those days... But it didn't quite hold - and where seeing other favorite bands tended to seal the deal (The Replacements, REM, things like that), seeing U2 seemed to make room to find fault. Though it's probably just this - when I got out of college, I hit another of the periods when I started discovering music. I changed radio stations; I read different magazines; I discovered underground music (the Replacements and Husker Du), and older bands - punk, the Velvets, the Stooges, country... U2 got left behind, maybe. Or maybe, they just took three years to get a new record out, and I spent it with those bands and REM. That happens.

But Joshua Tree came out - a record I looked forward to as much as their earlier records - and though it sounded fantastic, it did not satisfy. I am going to say - it is the funniest record this side of the Song Remains the Same. It is not meant to be funny - but the lyrics - "I see the stone set in your eyes" - lord lord. On and on and on with that stuff.... I do not think that record would pass a Turing Test. Someone has fed a bunch of Rock Cliche Symbols (stones, rocks, rivers, fire, red, sky, snow, sleet, driving rain) into a computer and had it generate lyrics. I swear.... But even then - they can sound so good. Joshua Tree makes me wish I didn't speak English - because those songs, Bono included, sound fantastic. Great riffs (though they do get a bit repetitive), a propulsive beat - they never stopped sounding great. But - in his early days, Bono's songs almost make sense - and by the time of Achtung Baby, they're almost neutral again... But the damage was done. I didn't care all that much anymore...

But those early records still pack a lot of punch. And the later ones retain The Edge's riffing, and the propulsion of the rhythm section. I noticed, listening to them the last week or so, to prep for this, that they never lost that propulsion, from start to finish. Their songs race along - they lock into a groove, and they don't let up. Those early songs all have a break in the middle, a swirly abstract bit, where Bono mewls and the Edge noodles and Larry and Adam step back and Steve Lillywhite drops plates on the floor - but they never lose the beat in those sections, never lose the pulse, not on record, not live... I don't know if they were the best rhythm section, necessarily, but they were locked in (and The Edge is most definitely part of the rhythm section), and they never faltered. They are still a joy to listen to. And The Edge - he never seems to come up with more than one idea per song - but he comes up with an astonishing number of ideas, and he rides 'em into the ground. And that works for me.

Okay then - to the list: top 10 U2 songs.... you will note the heavy concentration of early stuff - I won't deny it or apologize - they started at the top, and never matched it, lyrically, musically, anything. But they have some high moments along the way...

1. Out of Control
2. The Electric Co. - 1 and 2 were obvious; the order less so. Musically, I think I prefer Electric Co. - it rocks out about as much as anything they did. But I think Out of Control gets the top because it is a better song, because it just sums up everything on the first record - and has such a great riff to it. They are, though, both of them, exhilarating.
3. Bad - they got a bit spacy on this record - and the lyrics start to get really lost. Bono trying to do improv on some of those songs - ugh... but still, when they were on - and there's this, too - for some reason, when he got to writing about dope, Bono almost starts to make sense. I notice it on the Joshua Tree - Running to Stand Still works about as well as anything there, the imagery connects to something - people, places, and it fits the themes... like Bad does. I noticed, over the years, how much this song owes to Heroin, the song (in structure at least) - and to Joy Division's Atmosphere (pretty much everything - the drum patterns, the verse structures, half the lyrics)... But hey - steal from the best. And I cannot resist the sound of this song - the way it builds, the guitar sounds, the drums coming in and building up, it is just fantastic.
4. All I Want is You - I suppose Bono's lyrics and singing are not terrible here, but this is here because of the guitar. God, I love those open chords...
5. Gloria
6. I Will Follow
7. New Year's Day - it might be my imagination, but isn't Bono singing this song from the perspective of Jesus Christ, debating whether he should come back yet or not? whether we are worthy of him? it's any easy mistake to make, I suppose. Bono makes it rather often.
8. Sunday Bloody Sunday
9. A Sort of Homecoming
10. Mysterious Ways - I give short shrift to the later records, but they still have their merits, especially Achtung Baby. Though less character...

And so - video. Might as well start where it started for me - though I don't think I saw this actual video until the advent of YouTube. Still...



And a couple fairly early live performances - Out of control:



... and Electric Co.



And finally, first - an unembedded version of Bad, from 1984 - harder than later, more bite - I think part of what started to disappoint me about U2 was that I always heard their songs in my head harder than they played them. I would imagine Bad taking off in concert - the guitars tougher, everything faster, more violent - more like the Who. The records hinted at The Who - the concerts never delivered The Who. And over time, the music tended to slip inot the background - Bono seemed to take over more and more of the group, the sound - and I loved them for the Edge. Alas.... Still - here is Bad, from Live Aid... they were the band I watched that thing to see, not Led Zeppelin or Queen - and they are still far, far better than what those old timers offered up (however generous memory is)... This performance is starting to bloat, I'm afraid - Bono's starting to pretend he's a cowboy, he's quoting Lou Reed and Mick Jagger and seems confused by the security between him and the audience - and for most of this, the band is just vamping while Bono does his thing.... But boy, they could command a stage.

Western Countdown Link and Notice

Wonders in the Dark is running another countdown, this time, the top 50 Westerns, as voted by the site and its readers. It is sure to be a fun series.

I would have posted a link sooner, except that I volunteered for one of the first films to go up, and have been rather obsessing about it - it's up now - the Coen Brothers version of True Grit, which came in at #49... a lovely film, and a fascinating one, I think, which is why I was quite happy to grab it.



I somehow got through the essay without mentioning the simple fact of how beautiful it is - quite a bit there about attention to detail in the film, but not so much about it's straight aesthetics. So let these extra pictures give you an idea...

Baseball Playoffs

It has been a very good season for us Red Sox fans - AL East champions; best record in baseball (along with the Cards); best offense in baseball - solid pitching. I wish I'd picked them to win, not finish second - behind the Blue Jays? (oy.) But hey - give me credit for waffling, and give the Red Sox credit for hitting all the things I said needed to happen to win - "If Lester and Buckholtz bounce back" - they sure did (though Buckholz missed a third of the year).... "if Lackey and Dempster can be effective and stay on the field (I'm more optimistic about Lackey's effectiveness and Dempster's durability than the opposites)" - LAckey was as durable as he was effective (and he sure was effective); Dempster was durable and reasonably effective... "if Dubront can be a bit more consistent" - well - he was up and down, but his ups were up quite a ways.... The offense did drive line drives and doubles all over the place - no one (except Ortiz) really had a great year, but everyone, 12 or 13 deep, had good years... they had speed, they have a decent defense... I thought they had a "deep and effective bullpen" - thank god I was right, since half of it went on the DL. But Koji Uehara stayed healthy, and pitched a bit better than he has over his career (you know he's only once had a WHIP over 1 in his American career? has a career WHIP under 1? well under 1 - around .83? that he has 332K and 38 walks in 286 innings? this year was ridiculously good, but it's not really out of line with his career. Except for the 74 innings.) Tazawa and Breslow were outstanding. They kept it together. It's been something to see.

Well - the playoffs are here. Making predictions, in this brave new world of play in playoffs, with a wild card tie tonight and the wild card game tomorrow - might be a fool's errand, but what they hell. I can be a fool.

Boston vs. Wild Card winner - I suppose I should try to predict the wild card winner. Tampa is probably the team that should win... but I don't know. It's tough to cheer - I like the Rangers - but I like Tito too, and always pull a bit for the Indians... and running the table at the end of the year, even against the dregs (Houston and Minnesota), is something to see. Dennis Eckersly last week was saying it - all Cleveland has to do is win all their games against Houston and Minnesota and they're in - and they did it.... Unfortunately, neither Texas nor Tampa are the Astros or the Twins - and the Red Sox are another matter altogether.... My guess is Tampa vs. Boston - the Sox have been beating Tampa lately, so maybe that's good. I do think the Sox should win this - they have the pitching, they have offense, they have the ability, with Ellsbury and Victorino and Pedroia to manufacture runs - they should be all right.

Detroit vs. Oakland - Oakland is at home, but I think the Tigers take this easily enough. They have the power pitchers - a deep rotation - like most of the teams in the playoffs. They have no bullpen, but they have the bats - assuming Cabrera is playing. Oakland, I think, has a better regular season team - less power arms, less balance on the offense. Bartolo Colon, aged 40, won 18 games. My god.

The second round, then, I would expect to be Boston and Detroit - which I think the Sox can take. Getting into the bullpens of these teams is going to tip things to the Sox - I think they are all right...

In the NL - Pittsburgh and Cincinnati play the wild card game - I don't know how to pick them; I like them both; say it's the home team!

St. Louis vs. Wild Card - I would expect the Cards to take this, they can hit, they have pitching, a nice bullpen - though neither of the other teams would be an upset. I figured this division would be one of the toughest to predict, and there's not a lot separating these three teams - the Cards only pulled away at the end, and not too far...

Atlanta vs. LA - this at least offers a clear rooting interest, since I hate the Dodgers with the fires of hell, and have always liked the Braves. And with the Braves pitching, I see no reason to pick against them. Though Clayton Kershaw makes a pretty good reason....

Second round: The Braves haven't managed to figure out how to get out of the NL, and I don't expect to see it this year. The Cards, disappointingly enough, are the most likely team to get out. I would dearly love to see a Boston Pittsburgh series, though.

And now - like last year, let me take a stab at the seasonal awards:

AL MVP - Mike Trout had another mind-blowing season; Miguel Cabrera put up mind-blowing stats; Chris Davis hit a ton of home runs. I imagine the voters will give it to Cabrera, since the Tigers won... Trout is probably the best player in the league - but with his team out of contention, it's hard to feel too offended by the voters going with the OPS winner. Though - I wonder if anyone will consider Uehara and his half a baserunner an inning. Probably not with Davis and Cabrera putting up big counting stats - but still...

AL Cy Young - some nice contenders, but Scherzer's year - 21 wins, top in WHIP, second in K's - that works for me.

AL Rookie - I'm not sure - maybe I'm forgetting someone... Will Myers seems like a good choice... Jose Iglesias has a case. I'd pick Myers.

NL MVP - this is not easy - numbers were way down in the NL this year - 3 guys with 30 home runs? On the sheer stats - it might be Paul Goldschmidt's year - but MVP ought to include something about the team, and the Diamondbacks were nothing special. Personally, I think it should come down to Matt Carpenter and Andrew McCutcheon - the best players on a couple of the best teams - along with Freddie Freeman. I think I'd vote for Carpenter, myself...

Cy Young - actually, you could make a very good case for Clayton Kershaw for MVP. If he doesn't win the Cy Young award, fire all the writers.

Rookie of the Year - Yasiel Puig is probably the guy everyone will vote for - and probably for good cause. He's not far off the MVP race. But don't discount what Jose Fernandez did in Miami; aged 20. (I wasn't too far off with Shelby Miller - though he's not up to Fernandez. The NL is stocked with rather thrilling young pitchers - those guys and Patrick Corbin, and Matt Harvey, if he comes back like Strasburg did - and Strasburg himself is only 25. Though Kershaw himself is only 25, and has become as dominant as Verlander (before this year) has been in the AL...

Friday on the Road

All right - I am off on a wild goose chase, a Meeting, being held in some god forsaken corner of the Commonwealth, forcing me to rise and shine at a truly horrific hour. I must be out of the house before 6:30; I am not a morning person. Alas. But nothing is going to make me miss a Friday Music Post, nothing short of the anniversary of the Second Largest Battle of the Civil War, that is... so it goes... In any case - here we go: random 10 for this Friday...

1. Billy Bragg & Wilco - The Unwelcome Guest
2. Husker Du - No Promise Have I Made
3. The Modern Lovers - The Astral Plane
4. Buddy Holly - Maybe Baby
5. Television - Careful
6. Transit Kings - America is Unavailable
7. Ghost - Images of April
8. Roxy Music - Strictly Confidential
9. Sonic Youth - Self-Obsessed and Sexxee
10. Liars - What Would They Know

And video? if I could find the Lovers or Jonathan Richman doing it, that would be better - but Yo La Tengo, plus Roger Miller, that's a decent substitute, right?



And since I will be riding around the highways of Massachusetts - Yo La Tengo and the Feelies, doing the Modern Lovers. They look just like they could...



And we need Jonathan himself, yes?



And finally - Grant Hart live, in the present, in Brazil:

Chickamauga Day 2

(Before I start - be sure to check out Robert Bateman's writing on Chickamauga at Charles Pierce's blog. An actual professional soldier and historian, who's always enlightening...)

So - today is the second day of the battle of Chickamauga. The first day had brought attacks all along the lines, most of them going in on their own, really, without much coordination. Nothing had been decided - the battle would be resumed in the morning.

But first, Bragg decided to reorganize his army overnight. He appointed Leonidas Polk commander of his right wing. He appointed James Longstreet commander of the left wing. Longstreet himself arrived on the battlefield sometime after dark on the 19th - got off a train, rode some distance to reach the battlefield, and was put in command of half the army. Bragg also had the idea that they should all attack at dawn on the 20th - whether this idea made it out of his head or not is an open question. In any case, none of his generals seemed to have any idea they were attacking at dawn, though it is hard to tell if that is because Bragg never told them to or because none of them much cared what Bragg wanted. None of them, not Bragg or anyone else, seemed to have put much effort into making sure they knew what they were supposed to do.

So the fighting started back up on the 20th, at about 9:30 or so, quite a bit after dawn. It started, again, on the Confederate right/Union left. The Yankees had used the night and morning to put up fortifications along this part of the line, with predictable results. This time, some of the Rebels did get on their flank, but only a few - most of them ran into the main lines, now behind cover, and were shot to hell. That kept up most of the morning; Longstreet, on the rebel left, was in no hurry to get going, so most of the action stayed where it started. This meant a couple things - one was that the Union was able to shore up its lines on the left and deal with the rebels who did manage to get around the flank. But another was that as Rosecrans kept moving men to their left, he started to lose track of where people were. And that had consequences.

Basically, two things happened, more or less at the same time, that brought on disaster for the Union. Both, I would have to say, had been coming.... One is - Rosecrans gave a bad order. He had a reputation for losing composure in battle, and he did it here - he had been shuffling troops around the battlefield, reacting to every threat, sometimes without quite thinking about what else was happening - and he lost track of where people were. He was also dispatching orders very quickly - he wrote some, his chief of staff, James Garfield, wrote some, and other staff officers wrote others - the orders were not always clear, and the group of them were not always checking against one another to make sure everything was accurate. The specific incident went roughly like this: there were three divisions in a row, left to right, near the center of the union line - Reynolds, Brennan and Wood. Most of the fighting was taking place on the left, and troops were being moved from the right and center to reinforce the left. In the middle of this, Brennan was ordered to move to the far left to meet the threat. Someone pointed out that if Brennan moved, it would leave a hole in the line - so Rosecrans ordered Wood to move into the space Brennan vacated, to support Reynolds. The problem was - all these orders got gummed up. Brennan didn't go anywhere until his replacements arrived; his division hadn't moved when Wood received his orders to move next to Reynolds. Now - maybe another general, another day, would have decided if the order’s conditions weren’t met, he shouldn’t follow them - or would have sent someone back to HQ to say that the division he was supposed to replace was still there. But Wood and Rosecrans had been feuding, over the giving and following of orders - Rosecrans had made a point, during these disputes, that an order was an order and Wood had better follow it - so Wood was not going to take the heat here. He had an order, in writing - he would follow it to the letter come hell or high water...

...Or Longstreet’s corps. Because that was the other thing happening - James Longstreet was preparing an attack on the center of the Union line even as Wood pulled out of the line. And when James Longstreet attacked, he attacked. He had a reputation for moving slow - for having his own ideas about battles and being stubborn about them - but when he moved, he moved hard. (He was a lot like George Thomas in that.) And here - unlike everyone else in this battle, he prepared this attack: he stacked his men 5 lines deep, planning to drive through any opposition - sent them in - right where Wood used to be. That pretty much did it. They punched straight through the middle of the union line, and proceeded to rout everyone to their south. It wasn't immediate - south of the break, the Yankees put up a fight for a while - but Longstreet's men could get around behind them, and every line broke. Before long, the right side of the Union army was all gone, heading west as fast as they could go - taking with them a fair part of the army's high command. Rosecrans, McCook and Crittenden, their much more talented division commanders like Phil Sheridan and Jeff Davis (the Indiana Jeff Davis, who had only two things in common with the Mississippi Jeff Davis - his name and the fact that he commited a hanging offense during the war but didn't hang. The Indiana Davis shot a superior officer dead in cold blood in a hotel lobby, but ended up commanding a corps. It helped to be friends with governors back then.) And, we can't forget, Charles Dana, assistant secretary of war, attached to the army to spy on Rosecrans and keep him moving.... Dana ran with the rest of them, but did more harm than most, interfering with a counterattack that might have stabilized the situation. John Wilder's infantry brigade had been equipped with Spencer repeaters - they came up in the middle of this fight, and determined to counterattack. They were a brigade strong, but they could get off seven shots at a time, which gave them the firepower of a couple divisions - they were an elite unit, and might well have tipped things. But Dana thought the day was lost and demanded an escort off the battlefield - by the time Wilder had sent him along, the chance was lost.

Things were almost as bad on the union left - Longstreet's attack cut the army in half, and his men were trying to roll up to the Union left like they did the Union right - but that didn't quite work. Thomas' men hadn't moved all day - their lines were still as solid as ever. All those reinforcements, people like Wood's men, were already on this side of the battle - quite a few of them got into line along a series of hills called Horseshoe Ridge. And - as things started to fall apart, the last of Rosecrans corps commanders, George Granger, appeared with most of his men - they came in just in time to hold Horseshoe Ridge. And then?

Over and over during the war, armies who looked like they had swept the field clear, ran into a force that stood up to them and stopped them cold. It happened at Shiloh, in the Hornet's Nest. It happened at Chancellorsville, where on May 2, Jackson caved in the union right, but on May 3, both sides faced off in a day long toe to toe slog. It happened at Stone's River, first when Sheridan's division held, later in the Round Forest. And it happened at Chickamauga, on Horseshoe Ridge. The Confederates had driven off half or more of the army - had gotten behind the half that stayed - but the Union threw up a defensive line, and the Rebels proceeded to simply throw themselves at it, over and over, without any further coordination, no more attempts to get around the Yankees, nothing. There were probably better reasons for it than for most of the troubles the Confederates had - John Hood had been in direct command of the attack, and he'd been shot down, leaving no one quite in charge. Longstreet exercised very little control over this part of the battle. Bragg, obviously, played no role. It was left to the brigade and division commanders to keep attacking, and they did, but with no plan beyond attacking what was in front of them.

It was still a close thing. The rebels kept coming. There were astonishing stands made - by the 21st Ohio, say, a regiment armed with Colt repeating rifles, who held off attack after attack, all day, before being left behind, without any ammunition. Desperate charges and counter charges, dirty tricks (at one point, a Confederate unit appeared, and were challenged by the Yankees - who are you? asked the Northerners; Jeff Davis' men, came the reply - honest, I suppose, but you do recall that [Indiana] Jeff Davis commanded a division in the Army of the Cumberland?) It all ended after dark, with more confused fighting and people being captured without knowing who got them... but the Union army got away, and hoofed back to Chattanooga, where they were quickly bottled up... but that's another battle.

So there it was. 34 or 35,000 casualties total, the second highest of the war. The Confederates lost more men shot, having spent two days attacking, and the end of it, relentless attacking, often against men dug in. The Union almost evened the numbers because of their prisoners. It was a very significant Confederate victory - they broke Rosecrans' army, chased half of it away, shot up all of it - they restored a lot of their fortunes in this battle. Though - well, we can discuss what happened next when we get to Chattanooga. The battle ruined men - Rosecrans was doomed, and was relieved once Ohio held their elections in a month or so, replaced by Thomas. McCook and Crittenden were soon gone. Others - Thomas particularly - were made by the battle. Some, like James Garfield, Rosecrans' chief of staff, saved their reputations by going back to he battle - Sheridan and Davis left, but did enough to try to get back to be spared the fate of McCook and Crittenden. On the Confederate side - well - that has to be another post. Bragg here won his biggest victory - but the army hadn't gotten to Chattanooga to besiege Rosecrans' wrecked army before the rest of the rebel generals were howling for his head. In that army, fighting the Union was a distraction from fighting with one another...

Chickamauga Day 1

150 years ago today - the second largest battle of the war began. Chickamauga was fought in the north Georgia wilderness, two days of brutal, relentless mayhem, a fight with little thought put into it, that almost turned the course of the war anyway, almost accidentally.

What happened, broadly speaking? Chickamauga came at the end of a summer of campaigning in the middle of Tennessee. This was the Union Army of the Cumberland, commanded by William Rosecrans - an army that seems kind of forgotten sometimes, compared to Grant's (and later Sherman's) Army of the Tennessee, that took Vicksburg, and later Atlanta; and the Army of the Potomac, back east getting (mostly) whacked around by Robert E. Lee. Rosecrans was in the middle, charged with taking east Tennessee, Chattanooga, and menacing Georgia. Rosecrans had been in command at Stone's River - a bloodbath, where the Rebel Army (The Army of Tennessee, under Braxton Bragg) caved in the Union right, and almost wrecked Rosecrans' army - but it managed to stabilize things, and ended up almost wrecking Bragg's army, when it kept on hammering away at those stabilized lines. (One of those things you see over and over in the war - someone scores a major partial victory - at Shiloh, Chancellorsville, here, Chickamauga - but a line forms, and the attackers end up battering themselves to pulp attacking it.) Stone's River felled about a third of both armies and left them with a lot of work to do to recover. It took Rosecrans 6 months to recover - a good deal longer than Abraham Lincoln (to name one) thought it should have taken him, and Lincoln made things hot for Risecrans for a while. But at the end of June, Rosecrans moved, and moved well - in the Tullahoma campaign he managed to outflank Bragg and drive him out of the middle of Tennessee virtually without a fight. Bragg retreated to Chattanooga - Rosecrans dallied for another month of so (once more annoying Lincoln, Stanton and company) - but he finally got going, and did it again - getting around behind Bragg and forcing him to give up Chattanooga without a fight. Except that in the doing of it, he scattered his army over quite a bit of northern Georgia, and Bragg and his army decided to take advantage. They tried to catch the separate parts of the Union army, but could never get their act together - so Rosecrans was able to bring his force together neat Chickamauga Creek - where Bragg determined to attack him.

The whole of it was a fairly interesting campaign, operationally - about as much actual sustained maneuver and positioning as you would see in the war. Feint's and quick marches and races for the crucial mountain pass, and so on... Though in the end, they all came together in one place and fought a straight up brawl. Maybe even more interesting strategically, especially from the Confederates' point of view. It is hard to see much good in the Rebel's strategy in the war. It's hard to see any strategy at all, most of the time. Once in a while - Lee had a strategy, try to win one big battle, that would destroy the Union army, or cause Washington to fall, something like that - something that would cause the north to sue for peace. (Basically the same strategy the Japanese employed at Pearl Harbor - with about the same degree of success.) (That and protect Virginia, at all costs, including the destruction of the rest of the Confederacy, to put it harshly.) Jefferson Davis? He seemed to vacillate, between trying to hold everything, and trying to get that one big win - or a big political win, like invading Kentucky and convincing them to switch sides.... In practical terms, it's hard to see much that he did. Vicksburg might be the worst example - he insisted on holding it, but did not force his generals to combine or cooperate, did not come up with anything like a plan to give them a chance to hold it, let Lee tell him what he was going to do with his army, Vicksburg be damned - and so Grant took the city and an army with it. After Vicksburg, Davis still didn't quite commit to anything - he didn't force Joe Johnston (in Mississippi) to join Bragg in Tennessee, or vice versa, didn't really commit to anything. But he did, for once, make a decision, toward the end of the summer, to send James Longstreet and most of his corps west to reinforce Bragg. Lee could usually stop that sort of thing - but after Gettysburg, it was obvious he would have to stick to the defensive, and if so, he could spare some men. So off went Longstreet and his men and they arrived just in time for the battle.

And - their arrival meant that for just about the only time in the war, in a major battle, the Confederates outnumbered the Union on the field. Not that it did them an awful lot of good. On September 19, in they went. The plan was to get around the Union left, cutting off Rosecrans's retreat to Chattanooga - that was one of the plans anyway. The battle started - the rebels never did quite get on the Union flank, and a messy, hard fight developed at that end of the line. As fight grew, Bragg ordered in the rest of his army - just attacking whatever they found, basically. Both sides fed men in piecemeal, and a confusing battle developed in the woods and fields between Chickamauga creek and the main roads to Chattanooga. The fighting went went back and forth most of the day, the Confederates driving the Yankees back, then being driven in turn - though in broad terms, the Union left got the better of it, while the center and right were closer calls. Through it all, the fighting was disjointed and uncoordinated and very very bloody.

The truth is, it is hard to get a grip on this battle. You can get a grip on Antietam or Gettysburg or even Shiloh or Stone's River - show the lines, see where the attacks developed, where the reinforcements came from, where the stands were made - and put the whole thing together into a kind of flow. That's hard to do with Chickamauga. Yes - you can trace the lines on the map, but the fact is, it seems to have been fought as a series of barely connected, uncoordinated chunks. I suspect a big part of that was the terrain - it was fought across a handful of fields and clearings, hills and ridges, surrounded by dense forest that cut up battle lines, separated units, made control of anything above brigade level completely hit or miss, and often made even brigade level control impossible. There were a few battles like that in the Civil War, but not many. Stone's River was fought in forests and across hills and ridges, though not as bad as this. Chancellorsville, and The Wilderness, in 1864, were both fought in dense woodland - the latter seems to have been mostly fought in the woods, even more than Chickamauga. At Chickamauga, most of the fighting was arranged around farms and fields - but the woods kept all these fights apart....

And - well - we're back to another of my old themes: call it the fog of war, if you want to sound high minded about it. Call it lack of battlefield control maybe... Here - I think you might want to call it incompetence and sheer bloody mindedness. There are lots of badly run battles in the Civil War, but are there any as bad as this one? It's beyond incompetence, into something like complete confusion. Rosecrans was on the verge of collapse, and screwed the whole thing up with his own carelessness and panic. Crittenden and McCook (two of the four Union corps commanders) never really did much, and disappeared when their men were routed on the second day. Meanwhile, the rebel generals were opening feuding with one another. They were a complete mess. Braxton Bragg was about as badly hated as any significant general on either side. (By everyone, from private to Lieutenant General; everyone but Jefferson Davis.) He commanded the Army of Tennessee from the summer of 1862, fought 4 major battles, Perryville, Stone's River, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga. Basically won, on the battlefield, the first three, though he abandoned the field after both Perryville and Stone's River, letting the Union claim the victory. After every one of those battles, his subordinates turned on him, openly - petitioning Jeff Davis to remove him, writing anonymous letters, or signed letters, organizing cabals.... somehow, he stayed in command - and maybe just as bad, most of the generals he feuded with (Polk and Hardee and Cheatham and Breckinridge etc.) stayed around as well. All that was bad enough - it was worse than that at Chickamauga (though it would get even worse at Chattanooga). Bragg had new generals on board - Longstreet and D.H. Hill. Longstreet didn't start causing trouble until after Chickamauga; Hill - well, he was a fine general, who had gotten himself exiled from Lee's army for his inability to get along with anyone. He came to Bragg from the Carolinas, and he brought along a full dose of his natural contrariness. He joined right in with the rest of the army in hating Bragg....

All that trouble really came home to roost. It started earlier - Bragg's attempts to catch parts of Rosecrans' army before they could unite failed because his generals didn't cooperate, no one trusted anyone else, some of them approaching insubordination, everyone moving on their own timetable. When they did catch Rosecrans and attack, the same thing happened - Bragg ordered attacks, but his underlings went where they wanted, when they wanted - when the attacks came, they were uncoordinated, behind schedule, out of place - and Bragg could do nothing to change anyone's behavior, and wasn't exactly brimming with ideas for how they should be fighting the battle. So what happened happened - a bunch of fights, all along the line, with little connection, and none of them very successful.

Now to be sure - there were exceptions to these failures. A good many brigade and regimental commanders, and a fair number of division commanders, acquitted themselves quite well, for both sides. Higher up, George Thomas, one of the Union's best generals, did his job and very well, holding on to the Union left, and the fourth Union corps commander, George Granger, would act decisively on the second day, saving the army. On the rebel side, James Longstreet mounted one of his patented devastating attacks, led, very effectively, by John Hood... But then, Hood got shot, Longstreet disappeared for much of the battle (maybe because he'd arrived on the battlefield straight from a train in the middle of the night before being assigned command of half the army), and in the end, the battle degenerated into another series of uncoordinated direct attacks on strong defensive positions - a bloodbath.

... But we'll come back to that. This note has gotten a bit out of a control - there are two days to this battle, so I think I'll finish it up tomorrow. The second day is a good deal more narratively compact, I will say that - you can make sense of it.... We'll see you tomorrow.

(I'll end with one more thing. One reason this post [posts] is [are] such a monster[s] is that it is very hard to find good information on this battle. I have read many many books about Gettysburg, and quite a bit about Antietam, Vicksburg, the 1864 Virginia campaigns, and so on - but this, the second bloodiest battle of the war - is a lot less well known. And that makes Peter Cozzens' book - This Terrible Sound - all the more valuable - a big, dense, detailed account of the fight, in all its confusion, horror and drama. All the ins and outs, from all perspectives, from the common private to all those generals ignoring orders and panicking and scheming one another's downfalls and so on. From national strategy to the men trying to scrounge water on the battlefield to how to keep a Colt repeating rifle from bursting if you loaded it with a larger caliber ammunition than it was designed for. Highly recommended.)

Bruuuuce!

This month's Band of the Month brings me to college. My next door neighbor, my freshman year, was a New Jersey kid and a Springsteen fan. He had most of the records, if not all of them - though he had them on LP, and, somehow, he and I and our roommates didn't have turntables. But he had also The River on cassette, and we wore it out.

I liked Bruce before I got there - that AOR station I mentioned last month played him, quite a bit actually - especially the first record, I think, because I remember hearing Blinded By the Light, Spirits in the Night and For You more than anything else. They were great songs; and songs from The River turned up on that radio station and others, and I liked them too, without quite loving it - but I was ready for it when I got to college. My first memories of Springsteen were more ambiguous - I read about him before I heard him, and what I heard was colored by the hype. There was that Time Magazine story, which I might have read; I think I remember something in one of those educational magazines they distributed in school (one of the useful ones, with stories about Thor and Jimmy Walker, and Brice Springsteen. Also, the Democratic primary contenders for 1976 - Sargent Shriver! Mo Udall! Jimmy Carter! I wish I remembered what it was.) All this prose was very giddy. When I finally heard Bruce - Born to Run, probably on America's Top 40 - I can't say I understood the fuss. Except - it was a haunting song - that strange, pulsing drone, those murmured/growled/yowled vocals - it didn't sound world changing too me, but it also didn't quite sound like anything else I had ever heard... Anyway - that was that, for a while, until Manfred Mann's Earth Band covered Blinded by the Light - a song (the cover) I dearly loved, at that young age. Again - Casey Kasem played the original, and it was strange and a bit beyond me - but you could hear the cool in it... Over the next year or so, I started hearing more Springsteen here and there - enough to start to get it, though I wasn't a fan exactly. There was a girl in high school who was a Springsteen fan - an Enthusiast. People thought that was very strange then - maybe it was, though when I got to college, well, I became one too.

It was a communal thing - bunches of us would listen to The River, sing along, play air guitar, do what guys do... or we'd listen to the records, which took some negotiation, to find a turntable - but we must have - those records, especially Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, are as familiar to me as The River or Nebraska are. (When Nebraska came out, someone got it on tape again - and I think I must have copied it, because I listened to it for years.) It was intense - and when Nebraska came out - it got more intense. That was not a communal record (though me and the kid from Jersey would listen to it together.) I listened to it alone a lot - or maybe it's just the kind of record that makes you feel alone. I don't know. I worshipped it though - it was one of my iconic records for many years...

But this infatuation with Springsteen, powerful as it was, did not last very long. It lasted roughly until the release of Born in the USA, to be honest. That was a record that came with very high expectations (as had Nebraska) - and it was very disappointing. It's hard to say why, exactly - there are good songs on there (the title track particularly) - but it felt wrong. It was so overproduced - it sounded normal, on the radio, in 1984. (Not a good time to sound normal.) Maybe more than that - it struck me as being a direct continuation of The River, with slicker production and fewer good songs - and it occurred to me that this was the first time Springsteen did not change with his new record. The first six were all different - they all sound different. There's obviously a lot of continuity - but still: the funky folk sound of the first one.... the more melodic, soulful, jazzy approach on the second... the epic rock and roll sprawl of Born to Run, piles of instruments all humming along.... then Darkness, while continuing some of that, moves toward a harder rock sound - think Adam Raised a Cain or Candy's Room... then The River's combination of much rootsier, rock & roll songs alongside the country/folk of the title track, Stolen Car, etc. - which gets stripped to the bone for Nebraska, country, rockabilly, folk.... all of them emphasizing different things, all of them revolving around slightly different musical styles - all of them telling slightly different kinds of stories, too. Moving toward narrative - songs like Blinded by the Light or Growin' Up aren't quite narrative at all; but every record is more story oriented, until you reach Nebraska, which plays like a set of short stories. And different types of stories - different locations (some of the records are very urban; some are very much New Jersey - some are clearly more rural, rural Jersey or PA, etc., and Nebraska is national) - different tones. Types of characters - the noirish songs on Born to Run morph into the serial killers, small time crooks, desperate auto workers shooting up a bar on a spree on Nebraska.... All that - he covers an amazing amount of ground in those records, covers a surprising amount of musical ground as well - and all that seems to be starting to spin its wheels on Born in the USA.

So he lost me. I bought the big live record that came out about that time - which, I thought, and still think, redeems most of the songs on Born in the USA... have I mentioned how much I dislike the production?... But after that - the next couple records were meh... and so? Other groups supplanted Springsteen in my heart... partly, I imagine, because I liked him in college, and I had no money in college, and so managed, despite loving Bruce, and listening to Bruce a ton - to never buy any Springsteen records until I got that big live thing - after I got out of college. And Tunnel of Love, I bought that... and so I didn't have the records around to keep going back to - not until a lot later when I made a point of getting Nebraska and Asbury Park. There you have it. He's tended to retreat in my mind more than even groups like U2, who I loved for a while, then started to love less - but I had those records (see, in college, I was the only U2 fan I knew, until I got my brothers to like them - so I had to buy their records if I was going to hear them. Other people liked Bruce - I could listen to their records.) So I didn't overlook them.

I shouldn't overlook Springsteen. My tastes have changed - he does not fit well with the things I have listened to for the last 25 years (that will be coming in this series - among the songwriting set, Lou Reed, David Thomas and Richard Thompson are going to loom large).... but he was so good in the 70s - the songs, when I listen to them now, still come back to me, how great they are, and how many different ways they are great. A song like Two Hearts or Factory plays now, and I feel what I felt then....

And now - top ten - a very difficult list to compile, for the reasons hinted at above - his consistency as a songwriter, the variety of styles he worked in... but here goes anyway:

1. Atlantic City
2. Blinded By the Light
3. Johnny 99
4. Growin' Up
5. The River
6. Born to Run
7. State Trooper/Open All Night [they are very close to the same song - same riff, one acoustic, quieter, the other fast and electric, thew lyrics echoing each other - one desperate, one hyperactive and joyful, both of them racing through the New Jersey night... though given the general tone of Nebraska, it's hard not to imagine the two of them running into one another out there... though - the mean one comes first; the happy one comes later - corrects it, maybe, who knows. I am counting them as one, no matter what.]
8. 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
9. Two Hearts
10. Candy's Room

Video - a liver version of Atlantic City:



And Manfred Mann - which doesn't really sound much like Bruce, but gave people a taste of his songs - and is still a pretty good bit of work....



Bruce Rocks - Candy's Room:



And a draft (sounding more like The River) - Candy's Boy:



And - I guess the iconic Springsteen song, Born to Run:

9-11 Again

Another September 11.

We have not gotten over it - we still seem incapable of undoing the damage we did to ourselves after the attacks. It's depressing - I look back at things I wrote in 2010 or 2006, and they are depressingly familiar. Very little has happened in those 12 years to move back from our initial overreactions. Looking at the rather insane overreaction to the Boston Bombing (shutting down the metro area because of a kid with a gun (maybe) and a homemade bomb (maybe)? Really? Yes; we did that), it's hard not to see a lot of hope for us. We have become very willing to turn over power to the government, police, military - not just in the first panic of the event (that's understandable, and frankly, that's what the police are there for) - but afterwards, onwards. It's hard to look at Edward Snowden's revelations, or the treatment of Snowden, or the people reporting on Snowden, or Bradley Manning, for that matter, and not despair a little. (Hopefully we can do better by Chelsea Manning at some point; I'm not optimistic.)

That's enough. I imagine I will get to do this all again next year. All I have to counter it is the thought that there are people like Manning and Snowden who are willing to act anyway; that this stuff gets aired out more than it did in the 00's; that people might start thinking about it. You never know. And, sometimes, things happen that do start to show some cracks - like the Syrian Situation. The fact that Obama put it to the vote is important - highly gratifying, too. Whatever his reasons - to avoid taking full responsibility, to buy time, to avoid the war (knowing the idiots in the house would never give him anything, even a war), or just because he's the first president in half a century or so to read the constitution - it's gratifying. And seems to have done some good in avoiding getting involved in the war.

I remarked on Facebook that everyone I knew who had expressed an opinion of the war had been against it - from the nuttiest teabagger (Obama wants to start WWIII!) to the Hippiest lefty. The polls tell the same story. So - the notion that democracy and legality might prevail (and diplomacy, internationally - though since that involves the Russians, one can't get too optimistic) is a cause for some hope. Maybe we will learn from it.