Synecdoche Review (plus)

I need to get back to actually writing - and posting - about films. It has been a while. It's also been a somewhat more promising last couple months - over all, this has not been a very impressive year for films. I've liked a fair number of films, but haven't been blown away by much. (The Headless Woman, basically.) Maybe it's too soon - the best films tend to show up at the end of the year and the beginning of the new year - might happen this year. And - to some extent - it has been happening this year. Moving into fall, a number of interesting fiction films came out (most of the best films before that were non-fiction: My Winnipeg; Man on Wire) - moving into September, October, things got decidedly more appealing...

But it's not just quality of the films - it's the appearance of films that I want to write about. Films that do something interesting - even if I'm not convinced by it. Like Synecdoche, New York - pretty much the definition of a film that's more interesting to write about than watch. I don't mean I didn't enjoy it - it was amusing, sometimes moving, sometimes clever, and sometimes its cleverness clicked - especially the beginning, those slippery time frames... And it resonated - it happened that the poetry class I mentioned was reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock the week I saw the film: it's almost a blueprint. Kaufman has always packed in his literary allusions, almost as tight as Eliot and company. That might make a subject for a post... But not this one. No: because while I enjoyed the film enough, I didn't find it to be anything special - clever, a bit obvious, a bit of a gimmick. The odd thing is, the more praise I read for the film, the less I liked it. And I saw a lot more praise than abuse, from all over the place - Ebert, Walter Chaw - and most of all, Filmbrain - twice! Maybe that will change - the film will go into wider release and start pissing people off more visibly - I suspect when that happens I will change sides and start defending it. It's that kind of film.

But we're not there yet. It's hard to say what I don't like about it - how it fails. Or no - that's not it, that's not what I mean. It is, in fact very easy to say where it lost me: the question is whether it's a fair criticism. I mean - I suspect I may be condemning it for not being another movie. A very great offense. But what can you do?

I can single out what loses me: Catherine Keener. It has the same problem Hamlet 2 had - the film gives us a mopey middle aged guy main character, who, mopy or not, may be worth following - then we meet his wife: it's Catherine Keener! Who is (actress and character) funnier, cooler, sexier and more interesting than the main character - but the film keeps following the schlub! And then Keener runs off with the boarder! And we’re stuck with the schlub!

Now - Steve Coogan and Philip Seymour Hoffman are fantastic actors, and can carry this sort of thing as far as it is possible to go with it. But why on earth do we have to see another film about middle aged male self-pity? Or - why on earth should we treat another film about this very well covered field as though it were going to tell us anything new? or do anything unexpected or revealing or anything else? And especially why do we have to see this film, again, when we could be watching a film about Catherine Keener? Why can't we follow her instead? or even better - why can't we follow both? Is this an American thing? might be - though the best Americans managed to get out of it (Lynch; Altman; the young Americans are in danger of getting into it - Anderson and Anderson, though they haven't hit middle age yet - they also haven't quite succumbed to the utter identification with the self-pity of these characters... But that too is another post.)

I know it is a sin to complain that a film is not a different film, but it can't be helped. There are films that do this right - A Christmas Tale came out this month, and it is a fine example: it too is centered on a middle aged male loser, but it does not stay with him - it heads out in every direction away from him. [And deserves its own post: which will come (soon, I hope) after this one. Along with comments on another film, Rachel Getting Married - which basically does reverse the SNY pattern and follows a crazy woman instead of a crazy man. which by itself more than justifies its existence.] Actually, of Desplechin's films, Kings and Queen is a better comparison - same depressed, middle aged guy, a loser, though (like Hoffman and Coogan), talented and imaginative, in his weird way. But it gives us Emmanuelle Devos as well. That alone is enough to make it a better film - any film that puts her, or Catherine Keener, on screen for half its running time is going to be more than watchable by that fact alone. But the divided story creates something far more interesting - it breaks the self-pity of the men, opens the story up. Amalric and Devos both have their troubles - but they compliment each other, and complicate each other - the alternation keeps either his or her self-pity from taking over the film. We keep seeing them from a different angle. It cuts off their tendency to drown in their own vanities. That’s how Desplechin generally works: most of his films follow multiple characters, even if one is more important than the rest - there are always strong counterlines going on.

I admit, my prejudices are showing: subjectivity is not that interesting. The inside of someone's head is not that interesting. What goes on between people is interesting: intersubjectivity is interesting. Desplechin is hard to beat - but that's not the only way to get out of your character's heads: stick to Charlie Kaufman - take Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This is a far more satisfying film - probably the only Kaufman film I think completely works. Why? I think the reason is clear enough: though the film is set in Jim Carrey’s head, what we see in Jim Carrey’s head is his relationship with Kate Winslet. So though it is solipsism incarnate, it is also not solipsistic - in story terms, this is because it is all about the intractability of relationships, of our connections to other people, in this case, about his connection to Winslet’s character. And in cinematic terms, it is because this structure keeps Kate Winslet on screen, and usually makes her resist the ways the film and story (and the SF device) reduce her to a function of his imagination. We shouldn't underestimate that - films giving us things to look at, things to listen to, things happening - and the value of contrast: Carrey and Winslet, Amalric and Devos, etc.

But it also does a better job, I think, of getting at the basic fact that human beings are not subjects, we are intersubjects. We exist through relationships to the world. And I admit: if and when I change my mind about Synecdoche NY it will be because I will be convinced by the ways Kaufman represents Cotard's subjective mind in objective terms: the signs and artifacts of his mind. Texts are made of other texts; minds are made of other minds - of words, memories of things, stories, images, sensations. And - that's here too. In the eruption of Cotard's body into his consciousness; in the way personality and consciousness, in this film, are brought into actuality - as theater, as sets and actors and roles, etc. The problem is - I see it now as being a film about the mind splitting off its signs: eliminating them, rather than - relating to them. It feels like a retreat from lived life toward felt life. I don't know if that makes sense quite. Maybe this: it seems that, for all the proliferation of characters and actors and signs and voices, they are all, in the end, inside Cotard's head.

It didn't have to be. It could have split the narrative - followed more than one character. Or split worlds, a la Inland Empire. Or just made the phantoms inside of Cotard's head seem more alive, independent. I don't know. Partly because I'm writing a thousand words explaining why I think a good film isn't a great film (the way Kings and Queen or Inland Empire are great films, and Eternal Sunshine and A Christmas Tale are almost great films.)

Riding the Rails Music Post

Home again - back from the usual extravaganza of turkey, pie and other kinds of pie. I do think Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, these days - there's food, and family, and games to play, all with a fairly minimal amount of preparation - just the food shopping, really. It's only marred by the "Black Friday" nonsense the day after, but that's more of a Christmas thing than Thanksgiving, so it doesn't do any harm. There aren't many holidays left that allow you to just enjoy them at face value - no matter what you think of Christmas, it requires a month of shopping, or hearing about shopping - and these days, it's burdened with the Weight of the Continued Economic Survival of the Republic... not to mention Bill O'Reilly. Halloween has always been a rather dull holiday, more or less redeemed by watching Frankenstein or the Evil Dead films - but those days are gone, at least online. With every film blog on earth given over to a month of horror film posts, Halloween jumped the shark, married the costar, had a kid, brought in Ted McGinley and offered a Very Special Episode all at once. I may never watch another horror film as long as I live. It's bad enough devoting December and half of November to Christmas crap - at least Christmas has good music.

Leaving us with Thanksgiving, thank you very much. I don't have much more to offer, so I will leave you with 2 other things I am thankful for: trains, and my iPod - and the playlist of my trainride home, a kind of Random Ten on Steroids. Or bloated with apple pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate pie, banana cream pie...

Jonathan Richman & Modern Lovers - She Cracked
Stooges - Ann
MIA - Hombre
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Elmo Delmo
Deerhoof - Sound the Alarm
MIA - Paper Planes [yes, the iPod was on shuffle... a reminder - Slumdog Millionaire makes the song its own...]
Butthole Surfers - Rocky["All of my friends, baby, they're going insane..."]
Big Star - Big Black Car
Radiohead - Hunting Bears
Melt Banana - One Drop, One Life
Nick Cave - Deanna (live)
George Harrison - Plug Me In [rockin' out!]
Isley Brothers - Fight the Power [time is truly wasting...]
Derek Bailey - This time [Bailey with Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Calvin Weston, rhythms section for Ornette Coleman, James Carter, James Blood Ullmer, etc. This record works amazingly well - I love this stuff. The rhythm section plays straight, straight free-funk - Bailey gets in the spirit of things - working the sounds, tones, pitch possibilities, the machinery of his electric guitar - placing it in context of the rest - they give him a tight groove and he lays sounds over it, without clashing - he accepts it as a fact and works around it, off it; he doesn’t ever settle into their groove, either time or their chords, but he keeps it in view - it all works beautifully.]
Big Star - Give me Another Chance [another repeated act.. this is a lovely song in full fake Beatles mode]
Charlie Parker - Don’t Blame Me
Velvet Underground - Black Angels Death Song [from the Quine tapes]
Van Halen - Jamie’s Crying [that first record doesn’t actually suck, oddly enough. Though already their sound is impossibly processed. They invented that sound, and no one else did it well, not really.]
REM - Supernatural superserious [the new record; not terrible but completely anonymous. Dull guitar lines, recycled harmonies from their old records etc.]
Rolling Stones - Coming Down Again [prefiguring Nick Cave’s latter day career - piano ballad with twists; Keef singing? Thoroughly gorgeous though.]
Black Mountain - No satisfaction
Echo and the Bunnymen - The Cutter
The Undertones - She’s a runaround [they really were a neat band]

That will do: something appropriate to finish it off - not quite M.I.A. but bearing some resemblance...:

Some Things to Love in Old Movies

Jacqueline Lynch and the Self-Styled Siren have started something that should be a meme: Ten Things They Love About Old Movies. It is a rich vein: rather too rich - I did not set out to post 38 pictures, but how can you choose just one of the hats in 42nd Street? how can you have too many pictures of Warren William, anywhere? Once you get started, you know... Here, then, are 10 things I love about old movies - illustrated to a fault...

1. Hats



2. Credit sequences using footage of the actors.




3. Warren William!






4. Rear projection, painted backdrops, and models.





5. Tinting.





6. Trains - and movies named after trains.





7. Telephones.





8. Hard bitten reporters



9. Hotels, hotel rooms, hotel dicks, room service...






10. Ocean Liners and freighters...





Etc....

If Franklin got his Way, Would we have to Eat Eagles?

Popping in for some trivia... A new meme of sorts: the "They've Gone Too Far" post about Sarah Palin. For a lot of people, it was the "Africa is a country" story - even before it was debunked. Now comes another one - the Turkey Shoot. This one - okay no one wants to see all that blood and gore on the 6 o'clock news, but geez! Who among us isn't planning to eat the bird in a week? We ought to know where that comes from.... And for people who live around farms and wildlife, it's just normal behavior...

Though still - I have been inclined to call Poe's Law on everything about the McCain campaign, and especially Sarah Palin's part, and things like this certainly make it a tougher call. That shot, with the guy carefully positioned in the back of the frame, killing the bird and looking back at the camera - looks as carefully staged as a sitcom. It's not even a blooper - it's like a sitcom staging a blooper.... I don't see what it has to do with Sarah Palin (except to prove she doesn't consider food preparation unusual), but there might have been some intent on the part of the cameraman: that's a pretty well composed shot, and composed for maximum comic value.

An Aside on Film and Poetry

I'm in another posting slump. There might be reasons. I have been taking a class - a poetry class, for pure edification. It keeps me busy, it's been draining off whatever energy I might be putting into blogging.

I suppose I could get around that by blogging about the class - or about ideas the class inspires. I could write about poems that work "cinematically" - often hundreds of years before the invention of cinema. I suppose that's an old game - spotting things in novels or poems or Shakespeare or such that anticipate techniques we think of as cinematic. It's probably a silly game - the point is probably that things happen in the world, and have always happened in much the same way - in space and time, and we experience them and remember them, and try to put them into other forms - words or pictures or stories - and the forms we put them in will resemble one another. (I think I am quoting someone here: is it Manny Farber? or Jean Mitry? someone I have read in the last few months, who wrote about "cinematic" techniques that predate cinema.... Mitry I think...) Anyway - it's not too useful, probably - but it's fun - and might be useful. "Cinematic" techniques are techniques that use space and time as their basic building blocks. Poets and novelists and obviously painters always used space and time as building blocks - so analogies are inevitable.

Take Shelley's Ozymandias: there's a poem that's almost a camera ready script. Scenes and shots are all laid out: the poet meets a traveler from an ancient land, who starts to tell of what he's seen. As he does, the poem almost cross fades (across an ellipse) to shots of the ruined statue of Ozymandias in the desert. We are give a series of shots - as analytically edited as a Russian: "legs of stone... shattered visage... lip and sneer..." - described like a series of shots, edited together - though you could do it as a track past the pieces, though still fairly close... with maybe superimposed ghosts of the old days, the artist's hands carving the scowling face.... then in - cut or track in, to the inscription:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

And then - what I would call a shock cut, to a long, long shot of the site: "Nothing beside remains." says the poem - and describes the scene in its full context - the desert sands, "boundless and bare" - with what amounts to a zoom out or pan away from the statue to the empty sands - "The lone and level sands stretch far away."

It's a thing of beauty. I suppose treating it like a film doesn't really add much - that might be the point, though. Poets, novelists, playwrights, painters manipulate space, time, combine images, vary their position relative to their imagery, to create their effects - you have to pay attention to how they treat space, when they do manipulate it. It's more or less a given with film - the way manipulation of words is a given in poetry, manipulation of stories and characters are in novels or plays - but novels and films manipulate words, poems manipulate characters - cross media techniques are a valuable device for any and all....

Anyway - it's all very interesting. One thing this class has done is emphasize the value of close reading - I notice that the techniques of close reading are pretty consistent across all art forms. The specifics vary, as one looks at different elements that go into making a poem or a panting or a film - but the general principals remains. Repetition - patterns of repetition and variation, parallels, series, related pieces: all the sound effects of poetry (rhyme, alliteration and assonance, meter), semantic patterns, patterns of imagery... in films: manipulation of space is primary; repetition of patterns of things on the screen, editing, how images connect... I might get ambitious and pursue some of this - it occurs to me that all films are in fact more poetry than prose: there is a reliance of the detail of the shots and sequences of shots in film that seems more like the pressure poems put on words and lines and sentences, than like the way prose uses those things. But if I start down that road I may never get to stop.

Armistice Day

Let us again celebrate the (temporary) (incomplete) end of The Great War. 4 years of pointless murder that continued to poison the world for the rest of the century. (Our current war in Iraq is a descendant of the pure line.) By most standards, it is hard to surpass WWI for sheer empty horror. It remade the world (not necessarily for the better), and remade the human mind, again - not necessarily for the better... Though as a naked lunch moment, it probably did its share of good, revealing the pervasive corruption in the world before the war. It's hard to claim innocence in anything after 1914, or to trust anyone who pretends to innocence. It's a war steeped in sadness, with no sense of accomplishment or even relief about it.

Eric Bogle's song does justice to the horrors and pointlessness of it all. Here are the Pogues, since that's the version I have lived with for 20+ years, and because someone has put together a nice video for the song.

...tell me what you think of me

Since everyone else is doing it, and to provide a break from the politics, and a placeholder while I try to get myself to write about something else, let me post my alphabet meme - the brainchild of Blog Cabins...

Aguirre Wrath of God
Blue Velvet
City of Sadness
Duck Soup
Elephant Man
Fort Apache
The General
His Girl Friday
It’s a Wonderful Life
Jour de Fete - this might have turned out the be the hardest letter to fill...
Killer of Sheep - or Killing of a Chinese Bookie? oh, the dilemmas we face!
Late Spring - uh oh - foreign language cheat!
M - what? you couldn't think of a title starting with am M?
Nashville
Osaka Elegy - this should be N, of course
Pierrot le Fou
Que Viva Mexico
Rules of the Game - foreign language, non-cheat!
Seven Samurai - and another!
Touch of Evil
Ugetsu
Vertigo
Woman Under the Influence
Xiao Wu - Jia Jiang-ke comes through in the pinch!
Yi Yi
Zero for Conduct

I should do numbers as well. Cheating a bit here...

1 Armed Swordsman
2046
36th Chamber of Shaolin
47 Ronin (Mizoguchi)
5000 Fingers of Dr. T
6 Fingered Lord of the Lute - ah, now this - a wu xia I saw with no subtitles or synopsis, though the notes for the show said they would do no good - very true. Delirious nonsense of the very best sort!
7 Chances
8 1/2
9 Songs
0 Kelvin - to avoid repeating from the first list. And because this is the first time I have thought about this film since the day I saw it, whenever that was. (It's Norwegian - Stellan Skarsgaard as the nemesis of a writer who decides to spend a year in Greenland, hunting... three men locked in a cabin... vague hints of it come to mind, like a half remembered dream.)

The Day After

Still feeling pretty giddy about last night... I'm sure there will be plenty of political talk in the coming months - there's hope in politics again - something good might happen - we might have some political goals based on something other than pretending to be tough for a change... It's fun.

Meanwhile - to transition back to movies - check out the Jason Bellamy's Poltics and Movies blogathon, already in progress.

Victory

Obama projected to win. This goes a long way toward undoing the angst I felt 4 years ago. We are a little closer to the country we should be now. We have elected someone who deserves to be president - Obama has been a superb candidate, and I see no reason not to expect him to be a very strong president. But the historical stuff - there's no denying the fact that America's treatment of Black people has been a disgrace. Slavery was a poison on our revolution, a poison in the country for the next 4 score and 7 years, cause of the horror of the civil war, which we are still suffering from. And we've only really started fixing that stuff in the last 45-50 years. Race is at the center of what has always been wrong about America - a point where America diverged from what it said it was. Our record on race has made mockery of our ideals. But we have gotten better - and this is a big big step in getting better yet.

It's thrilling. This is what America should be. This country is a mongrel country - we are many races many backgrounds many languages, many everything. It is thrilling beyond words to see how this has come about - the across the board support for Obama - taking back states won by the GOP recently, winning support from all kinds of demographic groups - it's wonderful.

And so? I am going to watch a bit more of this celebration, wait for Obama to speak... we're past McCain, conceding at the earliest possible moment - and doing so in an utterly gracious way. Now it's John Lewis expressing his astonishment at the changes he's seen in his life. It's something.

Yes I did

Civic duty done. Forty odd minute wait around ten thirty. Chatter in
the line that these were the longest waits of the day though turnout
had been brisk since the polls open. As always an inspiring moment,
voting. At that hour a lot of parents with kids in line, a cop handing
out paper and crayons to the rugrats. All of them behaving (except
maybe the one who made a dash for an open elevator door). All good.
Now we just wait. I took the day off for reasons unrelated to the
election, and am going to spend the afternoon with the devine Max:
Lola Montes is in theaters and I shall go to see.

So I hope I send this to the right blog. Typing on the iphone from a
bench in Coolidge corner next to a playground. Some kid behind me got
stuck on the jungle gym, yelling for help. Looks like one of the
teachers or maybe his mom got him down. A happy ending! Let's hope
the country gets a happy ending too!

One More Day

We're down to the end. Tomorrow we go to the polls and vote. I doubt there's anyone reading this blog who can't guess how I'll vote - Barack Obama all the way! I doubt there's anyone reading this blog who hasn't already made up their minds - hopefully, also for Obama. I'm doubt I'd be particularly good at talking anyone into it - I've run out of all patience with republicans a long time ago. I have a fair number of friends who will probably vote for McCain - many of them are Bush loyalists to the core. They repeat his propaganda. They think 24 was a documentary. They are terrified of illegal immigrants, the local mosque, Iran, probably shampoo. I have stopped arguing with them - I could not hold back my contempt, and would prefer not to express it. The best way to counter them is to elect someone competent and decent to the presidency, get the congress well out of their reach, and start fixing things. Let em complain about taxes, while their insurance premiums start going down. (I know, I know: that's a long shot. Not even Obama seems willing to cut off continued government subsidy of the medical and insurance industries.)

No: one more day. Undoubtedly an anxious one, though things are looking good right now. Keep an eye on the polls, and vote!

Two Cents Worth

Still don't have much important to say. Congratulations Philadelphia... took em three days to win the last one, but they did it. Wish it had gone 6 or 7 but, hey...

Anything else? I suppose there are some momentous events on the horizon - things look good for the republic, with Obama well in the lead - but until the votes are counted and the results are in, you can never rest easy. But probably not much point in panicking. It has been a strange capaign, geting stranger - look at this rant, quoted by Belle Waring - what on earth is that guy talking about?

I mention this because I firmly believe Barack Obama absolutely loathes my kind. This man will not be content to win the presidency. He will spend his waking hours thereafter not pursuing the legitimate goals of state, but punishing those who would dare to oppose him. The man is devoid of humility, or any sense of humor. He cannot humbly accept his incredibly lucky break in the crapshoot of American politics. The absolute lack of any pushback or intercessions on the part of the journalist class has rendered him peckish and intolerant of any dissention, if indeed he was not born that way.

What is that? that makes no sense - which Barack Obama is that? not the one running for president - unless he's running some very different ads out in the "red" states. How did the campaign against him become such a complete fantasy world? Socialism and terrorism and anti-semitism and - witchcraft? sweet jesus... It's a strange thing. Maybe I see too much of it, reading blogs - there's not so much nuttiness in the papers; I don't watch TV, though there seem to be a fair number of imbeciles playing dumb on TV. I don't know. The voters, over all, seem to be a bit more sensible.

Okay: this is a Summing Up post, This Week on the Blogs, not just politics. So, whadda we got?

David Bordwell writing about - oh noes! - politics - political "Narratives". A very rich vein....

Meanwhile, one of our other great critics atones for his sins - Roger Ebert follows up that already infamous 8 minute review with a group of ethical ground rules. They do not, even after the kerfuffle, include "watch the whole movie" - they do, however, provide the Rog with opportunity for vengeance - taking shots at Ben Lyons, his television "replacement" - though without naming names. Ah yes....

I have to say: Ebert's original crime - watching 8 odd minutes of something called Tru Loved then giving up and publishing (more or less) his notes from those 8 minutes - isn't terribly shocking. It's probably more honest and accurate a review than the full review linked to above: it's almost certainly more than the film deserved. It even gives the movie whatever traces of notoriety it will get. Ebert says he let his cleverness get in the way of his duty as a critic - well- I'd say his first duty as a critic is to be interesting, and he was. The first review is a gem. Though so are the rules. In fact most of his posts are gems. It is interesting - I find Ebert a much better blogger than reviewer. I suppose that's an extension of the fact that I used to find him a better essayist than reviewer - his occasional pieces were almost always better than his reviews. He's an odd writer - I dismissed him when he was on TV; discovered him on the internet (when I could read a fair sampling of his work) - and became something of a fan; but liked the longer pieces - the later pieces, the "Movies of Distinction" reviews,better than the regular reviews. And now find his blog a perfect delight to read. So - I forgive him for falling in love with his own prose. It's what he's best at.

That's enough. Tomorrow, I shall celebrate halloween with 2 more Minnellis - I hope I get around to posting a roundup. After that? Claire Denis... (though I expect to fit the Flaming Lips movie in there somewhere...) though it's all building to December, when the HFA is taken over with a full retrospective of Nagisa Oshima. That will be a big deal...

A Week Later

I see the Phillies are well on the way to winning the world series. Behind one of the mainstays of my fantasy team, Mr. Cole Hamels. I could have told you he was the real deal. Though now I see it's tied and raining - happily, with the red sox home, I don't have to care!

I have not been in mourning this last week. I have been occupied, mostly here - Harvard is running a series of Minnelli's melodramas. It is confession time: before this series started, I had never seen a single film by Vincente Minnelli. I don't know how I managed it - even granting that I am not a huge fan of MGM musicals, it is hard to believe I have seen none of his. But those days are over, 6 films later, with more to come. It's interesting - it took seeing a couple to get in their rhythm - it's always interesting how films, and filmmakers, will teach you how to watch their films. It may also be that the films have gotten better as the series went on - certainly, a couple of them - Some Came Running and Home from the Hill, especially - are a cut above the rest, indisputable masterpieces. I'll have to come back, put up some thoughts when they're better formed. Though I doubt my filmgoing schedule will get much lighter next week - Harvard has Claire Denis' films - and Denis herself - starting this weekend...

World Series

Well, I guess it's time for that congratulatory post to the Devil Rays* the Sox put on hold Thursday night. If you're going to lose, this is the way to do it - a hell of a game, really -Lester sharp, but Garza brilliant, the Rays making a couple big hits, the Sox not able to get it done: usually because the Rays pitchers made the pitches - though you do wish JD Drew would take a swing now and then, and Tek.... Tek, Tek, Tek.. I suspect this is not the last time these teams fight for the crown: Tampa is very young, and very good,especially the starters, with Price joining them... the core of the offense will be doing this for a while too. Though the Red Sox are not that different - their starters were a bit shaky in this series, but the top 3 are still good for 45-50 wins a season (even this year, with Beckett off all year), and all still in their 20s - with more on the way. The lineup is mostly in their prime as well - they have a few good years to come from this bunch. The Sox will spend to keep a competitive team out there - the crunch will come when the Rays have to ante up for a couple of their players. Even if they don't break the bank, if they're willing to pay to keep the team together, they should be in contention for a long time. A fine thing.

As for the Series? I'm the type of homer that if my team can't win, I'll change my loyalty to their closest rivals - so go Tampa! Though it's not a hard thing to do - they're a great story and the kind of team I like to watch - pitching, defense, around a core of stars - they're the Twins model, only able to actually win in the post-season....I think they have the same advantages against Philly they had against Boston: deeper pitching (without giving up much at the top); enough offense; sharp defense (though that went a bit off in the last series - which does look a bit like nerves); their weird and wacky park. They have the same disadvantages as well - the Phillies have some pretty good pitching as well (Hamels and Lidge particularly), do all the right things (catch the ball, etc.), have a deep and varied offense - and might have more game-breakers, who can do it themselves, the famed One Swing of a Bat - mobs of line drive hitters are a fine thing, but sometimes you want the bomber in the middle of the lineup, and Ryan Howard is the class of the game as a power hitter.... And not the only one in the lineup..... So - there's a good chance we'll see a competitive world series this year - first one since 2003 (sort of) or 2002. That alone is a good thing.

* And finally, a pet peeve. I hate it when teams get rewarded for doing silly things. Like the Patriots dropping Pat the Patriot for the flying elvis (to cite one of Gregg Easterbrook's genuine clever lines) and promptly winning the superbowl. The Rays drop the Devil and immediately turn into world beaters - what the heck? Devil Rays was much cooler. Hrumph!

Colin Powell

Here, via Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic, is Colin Powell, redeeming himself. He comes down hard on the crap the GOP has been slinging lately - Bill Ayers and the secret Moslem stuff an the real America and so on - and it's about time. Powell sacrificed a lot of his reputation by sticking with the Bush administration over the invasion of Iraq (he should have resigned rather than go the UN over that - there is no excuse), but he still was and is about the only person in the Bush administration with any trace of dignity...

And - this time he's right, and he said it directly and unambiguously: the Republicans are running a sordid, embarrassing campaign, and if they don't change, then you (if you are, like Powell, a moderate conservative, and a decent person) have to change. And let's face it - the story at the end may be predictable and manipulative, but by god it's also the truth: American Moslems serve and love their country as much as everyone else. The idea that merely accusing someone of being Islamic is an insult is disgusting, and if anything is unamerican, that's it, right there.

Sport!

Well, now. I went to bed last night thinking I'd be writing this morning about the Rays surprising demolition of the Red Sox. Getting ready to say, I'm not surprised they won - just surprised they did it so easily. Surprised mostly they did it to Jon Lester. The rest of the pitching is a little too wobbly this year - if Beckett were healthy, if I thought I could guess what Matsuzaka would do in any given game, it would be different, but....

I see that once again I was premature. This is a reason I don't watch every minute of every post-season game - I can't go a month without sleep. And I wouldn't have been sleeping if I'd watched that.... So what now? 2 more games to go... sooner or later someone is going to be able to beat the Red Sox in a season ending game - Tampa's got as good chance as anyone. But really... this is just ridiculous.

Anyway: I am glad to see the series extended. Even if Tampa wins, it means they will be better prepared for the Phillies. Young teams can't afford time off before the world series - that is my theory. And though I won't mind a Philly win, I hope the AL winner takes it, even if it isn't the Red Sox. And it's good, in general, to see some competition - the last couple years have been terribly one-sided. One of these years, someone should try a 7 game world series again...

Though the truth is - I can't say I'm exactly surprised the Sox staged an 8 run comeback last night. Until someone eliminates them, I guess they have to stay the favorites. They certainly keep playing until the champagne corks pop.

Good Morning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Lennon

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

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

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

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

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



And a Revolution promo:



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

Baseball League Championships

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

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

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

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

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

Almost Random Film Observation - Ozu

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

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

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

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