1980s WITD Poll Votes

At Wonders in the Dark, voting for the film of the year continues to march through the years, up into the 90s, and so here, I'll repost my votes for the previous decade (with some slight amendment, I have to admit), along with my best of the decade votes. This is the 1980s - an odd stretch, that people seem to remember badly and not too fondly, and that I find - a mixed bag. Though looking through all these films - I find that somewhere in the middle of the decade the number of films I have records of seeing spiked - and stayed spiked ever since. Though this happened before the number of films I went to see in theaters spiked - very odd. Anyway - here it is - my favorites of the 1980s.

The Decade:

PICTURE: City of Sadness
DIRECTOR (single film): Hou Hsiao-Hsien, City of Sadness
DIRECTOR (decade): Hou Hsiao-hsien
LEAD ACTOR (single film): John Hurt, Elephant Man
ACTOR (decade): Chow Yun-fat
LEAD ACTRESS (one film): Brigitte Lin, Peking Opera Blues
ACTRESS (decade): Brigitte Lin?
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Isabella Rosselini, Blue Velvet
SHORT: Broken Down Film, Osamu Texuka
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Blue Velvet
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Frederick Elmes, Blue Velvet

Plus bonus picks:
Script: City of Sadness (Chu Tien-wen & Wu Nien-jen)
Music: Stop Making Sense has the best music, I have to say. Something Wild, though, has the best use of a song - though over all, Blue Velvet's use of music is on a very rarified level. That sounds like three different votes, and probably is, since they use three different criteria.
Sound: this, though, I think is Ran
Martial Arts: I think the best martial arts film, as a martial arts film - is Project A part II. {eking Opera Blues is a better film as a film, I think - though not in a landslide - but Jackie Chan's virtues are more tightly bound to the actual stunts and acrobatics than Tsui Hark's...
Documentary: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On

1. City of Sadness
2. Blue Velvet
3. Elephant Man
4. Fitzcarraldo
5. Sans Soleil
6. Dekalog
7. Peking Opera Blues
8. Do the Right Thing
9. Brazil
10. Blind Chance
11. Dust in the Wind
12. This is Spinal Tap
13. Raiders of the Lost Ark
14. The Emperor's Naked Army Matches On
15. Blade Runner
16. Ran
17. Kegemusha
18. Merry Christmas Mr. Laerence
19. The Big Red One
20. Black Rain

(I just noticed how many of the 80s best films are World War II films: City of Sadness (sort of; begins with the emperor's speech announcing the end of the war), Emperor's Naked Army, Nerry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, the Big Red One, Black Rain - and Come and See, which is as good as anything here; shoot, you can make a case for Raiders of the Lost Ark, too. More than one part of the Dekalog too.)

And By Year:

1989:

A fairly extraordinary year, to end the decade...

PICTURE: City of Sadness
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
LEAD ACTOR: Chow Yun-fat (sometimes, you just want a Movie Star)
LEAD ACTRESS: Kati Outinen (if Match Factory Girl is 89...)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jack Nicholson, Batman
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Rosy Perez, Do the Right Thing
SHORT: Creature Comforts
SCORE: Danny Elfman, Batman
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Takashi Kawamata, Black Rain

Plus bonus picks:
Script: This is also City of Sadness, the best film of the 80s, one of the all time greats.
Music/Sound: Leningrad Cowboys Go America? No, not really - Do the Right Thing, in a walk.
Martial Arts: Some nice films to choose from, but Jacky Chan's Capra remake, Miracles, takes the prize.

1. City of Sadness
2. Do the Right Thing
3. Black Rain
4. Johanna D'Arc of Mongolia
5. Mystery Train
6. Miracles - Mr. Canton and Lady Rose
7. The Killer
8. Why Has the Bodhi Darma Left for the East
9. Kiki's Delivery Service
10. Batman

1988:

PICTURE: Dekalog
DIRECTOR: Kieslowski
LEAD ACTOR: Forest Whitaker, Bird
LEAD ACTRESS: Carmen Maura, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Michelle Pfeiffer, Dangerous Liaisons
SHORT:
SCORE: Toru Takemitsu, Wuthering Heights
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Junichiro Hayashi, Wuthering Heights

Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Dekalog, collectively, and individually, they'd come close to being the top 10
Music/Sound: Married to the Mob has the Feelies again... Demme's soundtracks are usually as interesting as his films
Martial Arts: I forgot this last week. This is a good year for it though - Dragons Forever is absolutely thrilling

1. Dekalog
2. Dragons Forever
3. Wuthering Heights
4. Rouge
5. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
6. Damnation
7. Family Viewing
8. Chocolat
9. Beetle Juice
10. A Fish Called Wanda

1987:

This is a very strong year. Very strong.

PICTURE: Dust in the Wind
DIRECTOR: Kazuo Hara, Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
LEAD ACTOR: I am tempted to say Kenzo Okuzaki, documentary or not, not least because he is so aware of the camera, and his performance for the camera.
LEAD ACTRESS:
SUPPORTING ACTOR: the choices are overwhelming; Vincent D'Onofrio, though, I suppose has to take it. But Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Guest, Charles Grodin, R. Lee Ermey, etc. - what is there to choose among them?
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Maggie Cheung, Project A II?
SHORT: The Unnameable Little Broom? if that's the right year...
SCORE:
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Dust in the Wind (Ping-bin Lee)

Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Princess Bride
Music/Sound: Ishtar - if you admit that you play the accordion they won't let you play in a rock and roll band.
Documentary: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is among the best ever
Martial Arts: (I forgot to add this during the voting, though I'd already started putting them on the ballots - odd, since this is the year the film I think is the best straight martial arts film came out.) Project A Part II

1. Dust in the Wind
2. The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
3. Full Metal Jacket
4. Project A II
5. Where is the Friend's House?
6. Evil Dead II
7. Raising Arizona
8. The Princess Bride
9. Ishtar
10. Daughter of the Nile

1986:

THere's a lot of good stuff in 86, and of course, one of the films of the decade at the top... It is also pretty much the beginning of the stretch where the Chinese completely took over my film viewing... And world cinema, for that matter.

PICTURE: Blue Velvet
DIRECTOR: David Lynch
LEAD ACTOR: Richard E.Grant, Withnail and I
LEAD ACTRESS: Bridgitte Lin, Peking Opera Blues
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Dennis Hopper
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Isabella Rosselini
SHORT: Rocky VI (though isn't Street of Crocodiles a short? or have I only seen part of it?)
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Blue Velvet
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Frederick Elmes, Blue Velvet

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Blue Velvet
Music/Sound: I thought this one would probably be Assayas' Disorder (New Order and Pere Ubu? not likely to beat that...) - but that was because I had the idea that Something Wild came out in 87. That's got the Feelies - now, while they get in range of Pere Ubu, over all, in any sort of general contest, they do fall short... but in these films: it's Slipping (Into Something) vs. Non-Alignment Pact - great as Non-Alignment Pact is, it's not gonna win that comparison. And add in the Feelies doing Fame, and the Demme film wins, even without looking at the way the music is used in the films. But there - the way Demme scores the big turn in Something Wild to the musical turns in Slipping (into Something) - it's no contest. That's one of the great music/film moments ever.
Martial Arts: Peking Opera Blues

1. Blue Velvet
2. Peking Opera Blues
3. Terroriser
4. Something Wild
5. Down by Law
6. Ferris Bueller's Day off
7. Dream Lovers
8. From Beyond
9. Shadows in Paradise
10. Withnail & I

1985:

This is another very strong year, with obvious greatness and a disproportionate number of films that are rather better than they should be. Being particularly definitive of what might be a minor type of film. Teen comedies and jokey horror and the like, that are hard to compare with the Great Films of All Time, but are still infinitely enjoyable.

PICTURE: Brazil
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, A Time to Live, A Time to Die
LEAD ACTOR: Jonathan Pryce
LEAD ACTRESS: Sandrine Bonnaire, Vagabonde
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kim Darby, Better off Dead (? - though this is not far off - she is so strange and wonderful...)
SHORT: Broken Down Film, Tezuka, which is one of the best short films ever.
SCORE: Toru Takemitsu, Ran
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda, Asaichi Nakai, Ran

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Taipei Story
Music/Sound: Desperately Seeking Susan takes this prize.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact - I wasn't voting for them regularly then) Police Story

1. Brazil
2. Ran
3. Come and See
4. A Time to Live, a Time to Die
5. Taipei Story
6. Tampopo
7. Reanimator
8. When Father Was Away on Business
9. Vagabond
10. The Sure Thing

1984:

Oddly underwhelming year, despite the very fine films at the top.

PICTURE: This is Spinal Tap
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao Hsien, Summer at Grandpa's
LEAD ACTOR: Philip Baker Hall, Secret Honor
LEAD ACTRESS: Gena Rowlands, Love Streams
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Harry Dean Stanton, Repo Man
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sigourney Weaver, Ghostbusters (why not? she's funny, she's cool amidst the nonsense, she's game - why not?)
SHORT: Jumping, Osamu Tezuka
SCORE: This is obviously Spinal Tap - not sure why it's not nominated, the songs were written for the movie... or - wait - wasn't the music for Purple Rain original to the movie too? holy crap.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Zhang Yimou, Yellow Earth

Plus bonus picks:
Script: This is Spinal Tap
Music/Sound: no matter what was original and what wasn't - Prince vs. The Talking Heads offers as great a competition as you could ask.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - Wheels on Meals

1. This is Spinal Tap
2. Twenty-Eight Up
3. Summer at Grandpa's
4. Secret Honor
5. Repo Man
6. Stranger than Paradise
7. Love Streams
8. Ghostbusters
9. The Funeral
10. Stop Making Sense

1983:

PICTURE: San Soleil
DIRECTOR: Chris Marker
LEAD ACTOR: Tom Conti, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
LEAD ACTRESS: Sylvia Chang, That Day on the Beach
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Takeshi Kitano, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sandra Bernhard, The King of Comedy
SHORT: not yet... (Unless I were to arbitrarily abstract Hou Hsiao Hsien's "Sandwich Man" from the anthology of the same name...)
SCORE: MArk Knopfler, Local Hero
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kiyoshi Hasegawa, The Makioka Sisters

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Marker again, Sans Soleil
Music/Sound: David Bowie singing Rock of Ages has to get a mention somewhere.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - Project A

1. Sans Soleil
2. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
3. The Makioka Sisters
4. L'Argent
5. The Boys of Fengkui
6. That Day on the Beach
7. Zelig
8. Local Hero
9. The Green, Green Grass of Home
10. Project A

1982:

This is the thinnest year for me in a long time - I don't know if the year is that bad (probably not, since what I have seen is quite strong, with a handful of stone classics), but I have seen astonishingly few films from this year.

PICTURE: Fitzcarraldo
DIRECTOR: Herzog
LEAD ACTOR: Klaus Kinski
LEAD ACTRESS: Susan Berman, Smithereens
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Karen Black, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
SHORT: (I might get around to voting this week... gotta hope, lot of good looking stuff on offer...)
SCORE: Vangelis, Blade Runner
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Thomas Mauch, Fitzcarraldo

Plus bonus picks::
Script: Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Music/Sound: Smithereens, with its Feelies songs - can't beat that....
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - this is probably Fantasy Mission Force - another reason for the Best Actress of the decade vote - though an odd one.

1. Fitzcarraldo
2. Blade Runner
3. Fanny & Alexander
4. Burden of Dreams
5. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
6. Chan is Missing
7. Forty Deuce
8. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
9. The Draughtsman's Contract
10. In Our Time

1981:

PICTURE: Blind Chance
DIRECTOR: Oliveira, Francisca
LEAD ACTOR: Andre Gregory?
LEAD ACTRESS: Barbara Sukowa, Lola
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Armin Mueller-Stahl, Lola
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: why is this one so hard?
SHORT: alas...
SCORE: Williams, Raiders
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shinsaku Himeda, Eijanaika

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Blind Chance
Music/Sound: This is a Sound one - Das Boot, which gets as much from the sound as the visuals, really thrilling.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - Prodigal Son

1. Blind Chance
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Eijenaika
4. Lola
5. Francisca
6. Chan is Missing
7. Prodigal Son
8. Possession
9. Gallipoli
10. Das Boot or My Dinner with Andre

1980:

PICTURE: Elephant Man
DIRECTOR: Kurosawa
LEAD ACTOR: John Hurt
LEAD ACTRESS: Susan Sarandon, Atlantic City
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Peter Boyle, Where the Buffalo Roam
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Mary Steenbergen
SHORT: not yet...
SCORE: I think this is the Elephant Man, too...
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Freddie Francis, the Elephant Man

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Let's give this to Airplane!
Music/Sound: I'm inclined to be perverse and name Harry Nilsson for Popeye...

1. The Elephant Man
2. Kegemusha
3. The Big Red One
4. Atlantic City
5. Raging Bull
6. Melvin and Howard
7. Return to the 36th Chamber
8. The Last Metro
9. Airplaine!
10. Heaven's Gate

Vicksburg

Today, May 18, marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the seige of Vicksburg. This was the culmination of a long and complicated campaign, that stretched back, really into the middle of 1862.

I sometimes regret that most of my Civil War posts have been about battles and generals - the Civil War is the defining event in United States history, and it encompasses every aspect of American life. I know that, at the very least, I should be writing about politics and about slavery - the war emerged from political conflicts, and specifically, political conflicts over slavery - the war came to be fought over slavery, and its place is utterly central. And I should find ways to talk about all the things that went with the war - the economic developments, the technological changes, the relationship between the war and the west, the war and immigration, the war and - Christ - everything... But - so far, it's been all battles and generals, with the occasional consideration of underwear. Well - there it goes. There will be time - and the anniversaries are on us now...

So Vicksburg. It is generally regarded as U.S. Grant's finest hour - this part, May 1863, especially. But even taking it as a whole, it illustrates one of the things that made him successful. He kept at the thing. He tried a host of schemes over the previous winter - direct assault, marching overland, building canals, trying to use the rivers and bayous to get around behind the city - everything failing, sometimes disastrously. But he kept at it, and the activity didn't stop him from thinking about the problem until he came up with the plan that worked - run ships past the city, gunships and transports, march the army down the western shore of the Mississippi, cross the river, and attack from the south and east. Lee gets credit for dividing his forces and making daring attacks, counting on the passivity of the enemy, maybe - Grant deserves the same credit. And this, with much larger distances and a bloody great river splitting his army in half, is even more audacious. Though it is true - Grant had significant advantages in manpower and equipment - he had all those ships - he could get away with it.

He also had some particularly passive enemies. The North has a bad reputation for generalship, but other than Lee, and Virginia generally, the South was a pretty consistent mess. Not the field commanders - people like Forest and Cleburne and Wheeler were quite superb - but the higher command was a mess. They weren't helped by the central government - Jefferson Davis fancied himself a Military Genius, and meddled quite a bit in western affairs. (Grant is rather fond of mocking him in his memoirs.) Davis' part in the Vicksburg campaign wasn't too helpful - he was very determined to hold Mississippi at all costs - and his pressure kept the confederates in Vicksburg itself beyond what might have been wise. It was a difficult situation, of course - in they lost control of the Mississippi, they were done and they knew it - but they also lacked the resources to hold it. Militarily, they would have been better consolidating their forced, and finding the Union armies and beating them, preferably one at a time.... Bus was that practical? And if they let the Mississippi go, could they have sustained armies in the field? You see the problem...

In any case - the south couldn't decide what to do, so they did everything badly. Davis and Pemberton, commander at Vicksburg, wanted to hold the city, but Joe Johnston, sent to support the city, saw no point in it. He did very little to help, made no effort to reinforce the city, relieve the city, or force the men in the city to join him and fight elsewhere. And when he was attacked, at Jackson, May 14 - he declared defeat and took off. Meanwhile Pemberton waffled - he went out to meet Grant, but late, and so met him after Grant's army had all crossed the Mississippi. He started one way, lost a battle or two and went back to Vicksburg. An altogether uninspired campaign. The results are that Grant did exactly what he wanted - marched up east of Vicksburg. Chased Pemberton back, sent part of his army to drive off Johnston from Jackson, to the east, then gathered the full army and met Pendleton at Champion's Hill. Gave them a beating there, then at the Battle of the Big Black, and so pinned them up in Vicksburg proper. It was very neatly done.

Though it left Grant facing Pendleton's army in Vicksburg, dug in to their eyeballs, able to last god knows how long. So Grant tried to take them by storm, first on the 19th, which was repulsed with heavy casualties, then again on the 22nd, attacking with the whole army, and again, repulsed with heavy casualties. (Lessons there about attacking fortifications in the age of the rifle that he unfortunately did not take to heart before the Virginia campaign of 1864.) And so Grant settled in for a siege, and no one in the South could do anything about it - and on July 4, the garrison surrendered. The father or waters would flow unfettered to the sea. Grant would be lionized. The South was finished, though they still had armies in the field, and wee able to kill a lot of people for not much purpose in the coming 2 years.

Friday Morning

And time for music. Actually listened to music this week - I've been going through one of those stretches where I don't very much... I was listening to new records - Richard Thompson, Nick Cave, Pere Ubu, Atoms for Peace - sort of an all star listing, I guess, which is what happens when I drift away from music for a while; just get the things I know I like... But - in fact, they are all very nice records - I'm sorry I haven't been listening to them as much as I should. What can you do? The habit will come back....

Anyway, today is just another Friday - so here are 10 songs selected by our friendly neighborhood iTunes!

1. Theoretical Girls - Lovin in the Red
2. REO Speedwagon - Back on the Road Again [I wonder how often those two songs come up back to back on anyone's playlist?]
3. Asian Dub Foundation - Change
4. REO Speedwagon - Can't Fight the Feeling [I am being punished for that wise crack at 2]
5. Linda Ronstadt - It Doesn't Matter Anymore
6. Minutemen - June 16th
7. Ryan Adams - Tina Toledo's Street Walkin' Blues
8. Madvillain Featuring MED - Raid
9. Mission of Burma - Einstein's Day
10. Pink Floyd - Eclipse

Well? What about video? No way around it, really - iTunes has spoken... it's REO you're getting:



And - in a vague hope of countering that - here's Mission of Burma:



And unrelated to the random ten, but - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, because - well - you know...

Recent Films - May 2013

In the interests of getting back on track, putting up at least capsule reviews at regular intervals....

The Angel's Share - 10/15 - A comic heist picture from Ken Loach, which not be the first thing I would expect either, but here it is. Not bad, actually - starts with a bunch of kids sentenced to community service for various stupidities, like trespassing onto a train tracks, or climbing a statue, or beating up someone who attacked him... The last one turns out to be the main character, Robbie, a hard case who is trying to change, has a girl, who's having a baby, but the world is against him. The girl's family hates him, he has enemies on the streets, the law has just about given up on him - he has no hope - but he is somewhat taken in my Harry, the man in charge of the community service. Harry toasts him with whiskey, a fine single malt, when Robbie's son is born - and starts Robbie thinking about whiskey. He takes the kids on a tour of a distillery, and Robbie starts to develop a nose for it - he studies it - he goes to tastings - he impresses professionals and meets a collector... And then conceives a plan for stealing a few bottles of a very rare cask of the stuff, likely to sell for a million dollars or so. Well, after that - just say the film's sympathies are with the people likeliest to enjoy the whiskey and least likely to pay $100,000 for a bottle of it. It's all charming, with the steel of the streets in it, though very slight, in the end.

Mud - 11/15 - Jeff Nichols' follow up to Take Shelter. Matthew McConaughey is Mud, hiding on a island, where he's found by two kids who are looking at a boat in a tree. They start helping him, and his story slowly comes out - he loves a girl, they've had trouble all their lives, she probably doesn't love him as much as he loves her - he's ended up shooting a man in Texas. The law is after him, and so is the man's family, who are a hard lot. Well - there's plenty running along wise this - one of the kids, the main one, Ellis, is having trouble at home - his parents are breaking up, they will lose their houseboat - he meets a girl, flirts with her, but she dumps him - he suffers. But he keeps helping Mud, and Mud helps him too, in the end, until things sort of explode.... It is, in any case, a superb film - not as powerful as Take Shelter, but very fine - handsome looking, with an ace cast - Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland as the kids, McConaughey augmented by Sam Shepherd, Sarah Paulson, Ray McKinnon, Michael Shannon, Joe Don Baker - all of them among the elite American character actors, and Shannon one of the best actors in the business. Even Reese Witherspoon fits in perfectly, as though she were one of AMerica's elite character actors... And McConaughey these days is becoming almost as sure a guarantee of quality as Shannon.

Renoir - 7/15 - film by Gilles Bourdos about the Renoir family - set in 1915 or so, the old man getting along in years - Jean off to war, Claude wandering around moping.... starts with the old man hiring a model; Jean comes home with a war wound and hangs around. He screws the model, then goes back to war, over the protests of dad and lover - he promises to come back and all - and since we already know he does come back, well, all right. He did come back, he married the girl, they made movies together and (a little poking around tells us), they broke up when he started casting other women in his films, so she disappeared and he stayed Jean Renoir. I guess it's a happy ending anyway. There are a couple flickers of things that might figure in Jean's films (some business with maids and hunters and such), but mostly, it's more interested in the father than the son. Certainly, as a film, it's more attuned to father than son - it is gorgeous, lush and rich and brilliantly lit, a moving painting, shot, as it is, by Mark Ping-bin Lee. Unfortunately, there's not much in the filmmaking to recommend. Not put together with much life, certainly with none of the sense of space and movement Jean Renoir's films had. Nor is there much of a story - it tries to play the part of a straightforward dramatic biopic, but there's not a lot of drama, and they don't tell us all that much about the characters on display - flat and drab. But lovely to look at!

In the House - 10/15 - another French film, from Francois Ozon - tres French indeed. He's back to making subtle metafictional psychodramas, like Swimming Pool - this time, there's a bored high school teacher married to Kristin Scott Thomas who runs a gallery for a pair of twins. The teacher has a student, who starts turning in assignments describing his efforts to infiltrate the house of his friend. The teacher is intrigued and inspired - he starts offering private lessons in plotting and characterization, and the boy keeps going with the story. He has a crush on the woman, the man is in trouble at work, the boy is dull, but with the teacher's encouragement, things get a little more lively. The boy turns out to have a crush on the writer; the kid beds the wife and so on... It does tend to rather swallow itself in the end - though Ozon isn't exactly apologetic about it: the teacher and writer end up sitting on a bench looking into people's windows making up stories about them... It is all very clever, but is, really, Swimming Pool lite.

Something in the Air - 13/15 - Olivier Assayas' latest, on the other hand, is the real deal. Set in 1971, based roughly on his own teenaged years, starting in high school, where the main character, Gilles, is part of a group of high school radicals. The film proceeds in episodes - first, their adventures at the school - they make plans, protest and so on - then cover the school in graffiti, but are chased by guards, and one of them is identified. They then firebomb the guards in retaliation, not really trying to hurt them, though - but one of them is hurt. The first kid is accused, though he was not there - the rest of them get out of town to let things cool down. Some of them go to Italy, then start splitting up - Gilles comes back to Paris to take exams; his girlfriend Christine joins a collective of radical filmmakers; another friend Alain heads off with some American hippies; Jean-Pierre, the kid accused of the attack, radicalizes. And Gilles' other girlfriend, Laure, goes to London with her parents, hanging around rock stars, and taking up older men and drugs. It tends, as it goes, to unravel - from the tight opening, focused on the protests and politics, it starts to diffuse, as characters move away, as the political groups splinter and recombine, as everyone, really, starts to define themselves. All of them do, in some ways - Jean-Pierre in politics, Gilles in film (he works for his father, a TV producer; he goes to London to work at Pinewood), Alain as a painter, even Christine, whose foray into political filmmaking ends up with her serving as housewife to a bunch of ineffectual filmmakers, but who ends it by riding away on her own... All this is made in what is perhaps Assayas' most identifiable style - fast, mobile, everyone always on the run, the camera moving along with them, music everywhere - propulsive, restless filmmaking that is a thrill to watch. This probably, in the end, is not quite as good as Carlos or Cold Water - or for that matter, Philippe Garrel's similarly retrospective Regular Lovers - but it is in their league. Superb film, rivaling Beyond the Hills for best film in theaters this year.

Friday Music Post

With no anniversaries to celebrate (though 150 years ago, Grant's Vicksburg campaign was in full swing, and we will be visiting that when the chance comes), it's back to our regular musical posting this week. I am thinking I may start a similar series to the Director of the Month one, maybe a Group of the Month - counting down favorite songs by favorite bands. That would probably come on a first or last Friday of every month. Or maybe I should randomize it....

Meanwhile, should note - in the wider world - Wonders if the Dark is conducting a Westerns poll - that should be fun. Something to keep me busy I imagine...

And so - Friday it is - iTunes Randomizer! Activate!

1. Mono - Black Rain
2. Spirit - Verushka
3. Yoko Ono - Ask the Dragon
4. Bruce Springsteen - Promised Land
5. Danielson - He Who Flattened Your Flame is Getting Torched
6. Elastica - See that Animal
7. Tin Huey - Pink Berets
8. Rolling Stones - Live With Me (live)
9. Melt Banana - Plasma Gate Quest
10. Six Organs of Admittance - They Fixed the Broken Mirror Today

And for video, this Friday morning? Let's try - Well, Spirit is always a good choice, one of the most underrated bands of all time... Here in a rather nightmarish combination of 70s "psychedelic" video manipulation and bad quality shot-off-the-TV footage - but still:



And a little live Bruce is always good for the soul:

Chancellorsville

Today, Friday music is pre-empted to resume my occasional series on the Civil War by remembering the battle of Chancellorsville, fought this week, 150 years ago. It is an odd battle - it doesn't seem to me to be remembered all that well, even by Civil War nuts like me. It's not so much that people overlook it, though sometimes they do - but that only certain parts of it are remembered.

Everyone remembers Stonewall Jackson's part - caving in the Union right flank, sweeping the south to victory, then being shot by his own men in the confusion of nightfall in a forest. What they don't remember is that as spectacular a victory as that attack was, it didn't really win the battle. The Union still had an overwhelming superiority of numbers, and very little reason to go anywhere. One of the main things people don't remember (or know) about Chancellorsville is that the next day, May 3, the day after Jackson's flank attack, was the second bloodiest day of the war. (Which is to say, the second bloodiest day in American history.) Jackson's attack left the Union in a strange and difficult position, with units exposed to attack from both sides. The next day, the rebels attacked all across the front to break the exposed parts - the Yankees held as long as possible - and both sides shot each other to hell. After the brilliant feat of daring and execution (moving all those men around the Union army in the middle of the day to launch a surprise attack) that led to Jackson's attack, the next day, the fight turned into a brutal stand up and blast the other guy to hell fight. Something that happened a lot in the war - well, the brutality happened a lot; the brilliance wasn't so common. But when you do find it, you almost always find an unimaginative slog on its heels. In any case - by the end of the day on the 3rd of May, the Yankees were sill there, driven back a bit, but dug in, with overwhelming numerical superiority, with much of the army completely fresh, having seen no action.... But the battle was over and they had lost. The army not so much - but the generals were beat.

This is generally taken to be Lee's finest hour - it is. He was badly outnumbered, caught between two large forces of Yankees, one at Fredericksburg under Sedgwick and the main force at Chancellorsville under Hooker. But he went straight to the attack - leaving a skeleton force to hold off Sedgwick while he fought Hooker, then splitting that force again to have Jackson march around the Union army to attack the flank. And - worth noting that when that part of the battle petered out, and Sedgwick finally got moving, he divided the army again, leaving a small force to look after Hooker, while the main force tried to pin down Sedgwick - and did, trapping his force by the river, making its fate a close thing. Lee probably had to do something like that - he couldn't match all the Union forces directly - he had to try to beat them in detail, and he did os masterfully. (Thanks to Jackson.) But boy - when you talk about Lee's luck... It's hard to imagine a more poorly handled battle this side of John Pope - by people who were, actually, fairly competent generals. It's a litany of bad decisions - from Hooker pulling back his advance guard on the first day of the fight, to Howard leaving his right flank completely in the air, to Dan Sickles (who wasn't competent) chasing after phantoms, to the army's abandonment of the high ground that the confederates used as an artillery platform, to Sedgwick's failure to act while the lines around Fredericksburg were thinnest, then getting himself pinned down when he did move - and Hooker, of course, not doing anything to help him, let alone take advantage of Lee moving troops around. And it all, in the end, comes down to Hooker - who lost his nerve - maybe before the battle; most definitely, though, on the 3rd, when he was knocked out by an artillery near miss. From the sounds of it, he had a concussion, and was virtually incapacitated for much of the day - no one else took charge in that time, and when he resumed command,t he fight was completely gone from him. So he never noticed Lee's weaknesses; he left a third of his army out of the battle; and in the end he rather meekly packed up and left. It's the story of the Army of the Potomac, at least before Grant got his hands on it - they constantly stopped fighting before they'd won or lost. They weren't anywhere nearly beaten here, for all the beating they took - but they walked away as if they were.

Finally - it is Friday... poking around YouTube reveals a plethora of Confederate songs - this would be fascinating, if they weren't all fitted to videos made by CSA apologists. The treason in defense of slavery crowd is still going all too strong in this country.... But still: this is a song written, apparently, in 1862 in honor of Stonewall Jackson - and the historical interest is too much for me. Jackson himself, of course, was a damned good general, traitor or not - and, well - he's the central figure of Chancellorsville, both for his success and for his death there. So - here's Bobby Horton, and Stonewall Jackson's Way.

May Day

Pete Seeger singing The Internationale in French.



And an English language version....



Finally - in the interests of ecumenical celebration, here's a Japanese performance of Staines Morris.

April Director - Mikio Naruse

Another month comes to a close, and so it's time for another director. I will continue in the direction I've been taking - counting down my favorite Japanese directors. If Oshima is 6 - and Kurosawa 5 - #4 is Mikio Naruse.

Naruse is probably the least discussed of these, of my favorites, if not of the acknowledged greats of Japanese cinema. He's not very well represented on DVD. Things were much worse in the past - when I started tracking down Japanese films, in the late 90s, it was possible to see a decent selection of Ozu or Mizoguchi - 6 or 8 films anyway - Kurosawa was very well represented, as always... Oshima and Imamura were not so easy to find - but Oshima stuff was around, and Imamura was alive and active, and his new films were being distributed, and he got (in 1998 or so) a full retrospective that toured the states... Naruse did not get that treatment for another decade or so, and even now, is the least available of these filmmakers on DVD, at least region 1. But - there was that retrospective a few years back - and seeing a sweeping selection of his work, in a short time, was, for me, as overwhelming as one could expect. I wrote up most of it at the time - so in place of the capsules here, I will point you to what I wrote then. Part 1 and part 2, and some overflow, here.

You will find most of my general thoughts about him scattered among those reviews - I could offer some generalities. Compared to his most canonical contemporaries - I think where Ozu works with simple setups, and uses editing to put together his stories, and subtly disrupt the surface (which he does - I think he is one of the most radical mainstream filmmakers imaginable), and Mizoguchi moves his camera to shape and exploit space (something Ozu does with editing), Naruse works with composition. That is - Ozu combines shots to create space and meaning; Mizoguchi moves the camer to do it; Naruse builds in in shots on screen. He uses depth, layers, symmetries, positioning characters in the middle of complicated backgrounds, complicated spatial arrangements caught in single shots, single set ups, etc. He uses static compositions to create complex images - a style that I think turns up in a few later directors, sometimes more than the moving camera or montage heavy styles of Ozu or Mizoguchi. Imamura, Ichikawa do this a lot as well - I don't know if they got it from Naruse, it's not exactly unique - but he is a master. Probably not THE master - check out that fish atop this blog! - but he'll do.

That'll do. And so? a more or less straight list - though you can find more, sometimes quite a bit more, at the links above. Finally - is there a filmmaker ever who paid closer attention to money?

1. Late Chrysanthemums
2. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs - worth noting that Hideko Takemine might well be the most beautiful woman ever put on screen, especially in front of Naruse's camera.
3. Wife! Be Like a Rose! - comedy! and masterfully handled, at that...
4. Mother
5. Floating Clouds - an interesting film, because, despite his reputation as a melodramatist, maybe something of a miserablist - this is one of the few films that don't end on at least a stubborn note - I have to quote myself: For good bad or indifferent, Naruse's heroines usually have to keep going at the end - their stories don't really end - some episode ends, the film can end, but they have to get up in the morning and go back to whatever it is they do.... His films usually end with the woman ascending the stairs... This is an exception.
6. Every Night's Dream
7. The Sound of the Mountain
8. Repast
9. Summer Clouds
10. Lightning - almost a comedy!

Friday Random Ten Normal Service Resumed

Things are returning to normal in Boston; the streets are open, the trains are running, with delays for the usual reasons. Yesterday, I saw the power of a puppy on the red line - there was a kid, year or so old in a stroller, screaming her eyes out - then a lady came along with a little dog, and stood beside her - and the kid stopped howling to look at the dog. It was very sweet.

Anyway - let us now go to iTunes for some randomly selected musical numbers:

1. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - We Came along this Road
2. Henry Kaiser - The Andy Griffith Show Theme: The Fishin' Pole
3. The Long Ryders - Masters of War
4. Atoms for Peace - Judge, Jury and Executioner
5. Rage Against the Machine - Know Your Enemy
6. Richard Thompson - Let it Blow
7. The Beatles - Don't Pass Me By (go Ringo!)
8. Outkast - Mamacita
9. The Pretenders - The Wait
10. Lift to Experience - Into the Storm

And video: hey, Ringo!



and the Pretenders sounds right:

Auteurist Roundup Spring '13

I've slipped back into my worst habits in writing about film - that is, not writing about film. Been ages since I have managed as simple a thing as writing up notes on what I've seen lately. This despite seeing some pretty good films this spring. No answer for that put to write a post, so here goes. These are the films by important directors that have come out this spring. Most of them deserve more, but you have to take what you can get...

To the Wonder - 10/15 - good old Terrence Malick. He managed to get this one made in a year or so instead of the usual 8, but the results are basically the same - gorgeous looking, brilliantly edited, but still fluff. He has somehow acquired a reputation for depth and seriousness, though I can never see why. He makes films that look like advertisements - full of gorgeous photography, beautiful people twirling (my god, do they twirl) with their hair and clothes billowing around them, edited to music, the whole thing flowing along as a kind of image of Beauty and Wonder - all that's lacking is a clear product being sold. Though this time, the product seems a bit more obvious than usual - it seems to be the Catholic Church. Okay - for all the snark, the truth is, I rather liked this film - more than anything of his since Days of Heaven. There is a story of sorts - Ben Affleck in Paris meets a Ukrainian woman with a kid, takes them to Oklahoma (I guess it is), where they don't quite settle, she leaves and they scuffle while apart, then she comes back and marries him for the green card, followed by a marriage with its good and bad moments, etc. Javier Bardem, meanwhile, shuffles around visiting the poor and downtrodden, while afflicted by Malick's voiceovers. And somewhere in here, among the fluff, there are some very fine moments, not just the usual nature photography (which is as ravishing as ever), but some almost documentary looking footage of the town, houses and people, of parades and schools, trees and streets and walls. It is at its best in those moments of documentary detail. It is also, like Tree of Life, a bravura editing performance (as is Upstream Color) - how he puts this stuff together is always breathtaking.

Upstream Color - 11/15 - Shane Carruth comes back with another experimental science fiction film. This one has a clear enough plot: a thief raises worms that he feeds with some kind of hallucinagin that lets him form a psychic bond to people; he uses one on a girl, and steals all her money, and somewhat inadvertently ruins her life along the way. When he is done, she wanders off to a man who makes sound recordings, who extracts the worm from her and puts it into a pig - which allows him to have a psychic bond with both the pig and the girl. She gets on with some kind of life and meets another man who seems to share her memory - he's obviously been in the same situation she's in. They fall in love, somewhat uneasily - and in the end find the sampler.... Like To the Wonder, this is largely an exercise in editing - told in a similar elliptical style, with very little dialogue or conventional narrative - but the underlying story is much stronger, and more convincing, and the style fits the story and its themes, its hallucinatory qualities, its blurring of identities. And, I suppose, I just prefer the tone of this to the mysticism Malick deals in. This does not look like an ad.

Beyond the Hills - 13/15 - latest film from Romanian director Cristian Mungiu; in this one, a girl, Alina, comes back to Romania from Germany to join her friend, Viochita; the latter lives in a monastary. Alina's plan is to convince Voichita to go to Germany with her - Voichita does not want to go; she has turned religious. Alina stays, trying to convince her to leave, but she is a bit crazy, and madly in love with Voichita. She has an episode, they put her in the hospital, but she comes back, as everyone thinks she would be better off with friends - but things go from bad to worse. She tries to go to her foster parents, but like Alex' parents in a Clockwork Orange, they have taken in a boarder... so no matter what everyone wants, she keeps landing back at the monastery, where she cracks again, and they have no answers but to try to exorcize her, which goes very very badly.... It is a fairly magnificent film, really - the best by some margin that I have seen this year. It is very complex. I think you could say there are three stories running parallel: the first is the friendship, which is itself rather complicated - Alina loves Voichita, Voichita has changed, moved on - that creates tension, between love, change, loyalty, obsession, and the fact that both of them seem to need help - Alina seems to know this - they are both in trouble, one going crazy, one torturing herself with crackpot religion... Second is a fairly obvious and straightforward religious allegory: Alina comes to the church like Christ in the guise of one who is naked and hungry - she is a test; how will they react? The answer is clear enough - they treat her like Christ himself was treated, literally - rejected, scorned and finally crucified... And finally - there is a diffuse commentary on the world - the film is set in the modern day, but this is hidden at times, and at other, is clearly important in its ambiguity - the fact that things aren't noticeably different than in communist days is probably to the point. We see the poverty and trouble of society; we see hints of the abusive system the girls grew up in. The politics are subtle, and I can't pretend to know what is going on, but it's there....

Spring Breakers - 7/15 - Harmony Korine is back - I don;t know. 4 college girls decide to go on spring break. Having no money they rob a chicken shack. In Florida they are arrested at a party and bailed out by a skeezy rapper played by James Franco who pulls them into crimes - his war against Gucci Mane, a gangster. A couple of the girls go home, starting with Selena Gomez, who's only willing to go so far in sullying her image after all... Two of them stay and go over completely to the rapper's life of crime. After reenacting Wild Things in the pool, they go to kill his rival - Franco goes down, but the girls wipe out Mane's gang and drive away in his convertable. The American Dream! Despite the exploitation story, it's just Korine - fake outrageousness, moralizing, pop culture references, colors, and artsty talkiness, repetitive voiceovers and forced partying. Dumb, pointless, amusing - Franco is fantastic, the girls are indistinguishable (they're all playing Britney Spears one of the actresses says - sounds right - this is Mr. Lonely Part II). It's got a couple scenes - "look at my shit!" - that almost justify its existence, but that's not really enough.

Like Someone In Love - 12/15 - Kiarostami in Japan. Starts with a girl at a bar arguing with someone on the phone, a man who doesn't believe her. Meanwhile she has to go on a date - she is a prostitute - she argues with her boss, saying her grandmother is in town, but it doesn't help. She goes, though she drives by the station looking at the poor old woman standing by a statue waiting to see her.... So she goes to her date, which is with an old man, a translator, who tries to entertain her, but she falls asleep. The next day he gives her a ride to school and there she runs into her boyfriend - who starts talking to the old man... he assumes the old man is her grandfather, and the old man does not deny it. The boy talks about the girl - when she comes back, he offers to fix the man's car (he's a mechanic) - but they run into an old student of the professor. Later -t he girl calls the old man, panicky - he takes her home, and the boyfriend shows up, ranting and raving - it ends with a brick through a window. That's a lot of plot, I suppose, for Kiarostami - though he moves through it in his customary way. It's the details - he's kind of the opposite of Malick and Carruth and their elliptical rush from image to image - he stays put, letting long scenes play out - some dialogue, but some not; some dialogue with two people on screen, sometimes just one side of the conversation - or one side of a confrontation at the end. These are never static - the scenes evolve, characters evolve, relationships are changed and recreated, worlds are filled in behind the scenes. Something like the boyfriend's conversation with the old man - the boy seems threatening at first, but as he talks, seems increasingly harmless. He loves her - he wants to marry her - but he also says, he wants to marry her to control her, so she can't ignore him. This kind of endlessly shifting understanding of the situation is Kiarostami's bread and butter - this might not be as exhilarating as Certified Copy or some fo the Iranian films, but it's still first rank work.

Night Across the Street - 11/15 - the last film by Raul Ruiz, set in Chile. An old man about to retire seems to be living in his head - taking classes with Jean Giono; remembering childhood adventures; politics (Ibanez, a dictator in the 1920s); walking around with Beethoven - or images of talks with Long John Silver... Along with this, there is a kind of radio show, about his memories, and scenes in a boarding house, where a man turns up to kill him, or to be killed by someone else. Everyone ends up shot, I guess, though - the central images - marbles of time - keeps coming back, and certainly animates the events. Lovely little film in any case.

Stoker - 10/15 - Here is Park Chan-wook working in English, with somewhat underwhelming results. It's somewhere between Shadow of a Doubt and a ghost story - a man dies - his brother turns up at his funeral, and soon moves in. The women of the house are Nocole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska, both more than a little mad. In any case, people start dying - Park plays with the idea of the supernatural without committing to it - then, at the end, switching away to a simple serial killer plot, at which point the eyes roll.... Indeed - the script is crap, but Park gets about as much out of it as is humanly possible - and the actors are very entertaining.

Side Effects - 10/15 - A Steven Soderbergh thriller, slickly made, a bit soulless. A woman's husband gets out of jail (for insider trading) - she is depressed and drives her car into a wall. The psychiatrist evaluates her, sends her home, puts her on drugs - she reacts badly, and continues to be erratic and depressed at home - she finally gets to a drug she likes (recommended by her former doctor, Catherine Zeta Jones channeling a bit of Barbara Bel Geddes) - it makes her alert and healthy, but also makes her sleepwalk - but she wants to stay on it... then - she stabs her husband... while sleepwalking. Much trouble for the shrink, fears of malpractice, he loses everything - then he starts to suspect - something is wrong: the old shrink wrote a story about the drug - things happen - names don't match up, the crazy woman quotes Styron, everyone quotes Styron - everyone tries to stop him, but he finally gets her with a placebo truth serum, and slowly traps her, by convincing her that the shrink/lover sold her out. And so - she turns state's witness - then gets arrested herself, and all is well. It is all very slick, but that's about all. I kept trying to remember if this was the plot of that Raul Ruiz film a few years ago - Isn't this the plot of that Raul Ruiz film a few years ago? (Shattered Image) Is it? I don't know. Either way, it's a Hitchcock pastiche that works well enough, is very nicely made, but is a bit flat...

More Bombing Comments

Well - I suppose, being a Boston area resident, I have some obligation to say something more about this very interesting week. First thing to say, obviously, is to note that it took the law 4 days to get the guys who apparently did this - that is impressive. And, given the suspects' behavior, it looks pretty good that they got the right guys - so that, while there was a lot of misinformation and noise around this thing, the officials zeroed in on the perps and got them...

How they got them - there is some controversy about that. Tom Watson probably gets at the issues best - the implications of near martial law, imposed because of one guy with a gun and maybe some homemade bombs; the implications of making these things ubiquitous media events. I have to admit - I have mixed feelings about the way the police handled things Friday. It does seem excessive - it's worrisome that one guy can shut down an entire city, a whole metropolitan area. But - well, there's a lot on the other side. There's no escaping the fact that they got the kid. Granted, they got him after they lifted the lockdown - that might be related. But they got him. And more importantly - they got him alive - and they didn't get anyone else.

While I probably do share some of Watson's concerns about this lockdown, I think paranoia about what the government might do is not too different from paranoia about terrorists. You can't live as if terrorists are going to blow stuff up every week; when they do, you have to do something about it. (I am about to quote the Maltese Falcon here - twice, actually... - beams and partners...) I think maybe the officials extended the lockdown too far - Watertown, Cambridge, parts of Boston - quite reasonable; all of Boston? maybe not. But - I can see why they did it, and as far as I can tell, it worked. It was a police action - an active shooter, well armed and desperate, on the loose somewhere - the lockdown served to get everyone else out of the way. Without it, there was always going to be a very real chance of mistakes - mis-identifications, people interfering with the police, people getting caught in the middle of the kid turned up again.

All this happened Friday, April 19 - Patriot's Day proper, and more recently, the 18th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombings, and the 20th anniversary of Waco. I found it hard not to think of that when this ended - I think the only people the cops hurt in all this episode were the two suspects. Given the nature of events - the potential for arresting the wrong people, or just the danger inherent in getting into shootouts with desperate criminals - getting through this clean is impressive. And now - they have a suspect in custody, taken alive; he will be arraigned and indicted and tried, he will have a lawyer and somewhere along the line give interviews (frigging McVeigh did...), and probably apply for parole like Charles Manson. And all of that, I think, is what will really vindicate our freedom. It's more important than the possible overreactions on Friday.

Finally - read Pierce for the details.

Boston Bombing

I was out of town this weekend, up in Maine, like I usually am on Patriot's Day. I used to go to the Red Sox game every year, back before they sold out every game, but haven't done that in years - the money and the hassle of getting tickets overwhelmed the fun of the game and the event, and once I stopped going to the games, I had no desire to be anywhere near the crowds.... So - I usually take advantage of the long weekend, go out of town, celebrate the weekend with the rest of the family.... So I heard about the bombing when someone sent an IM - then I got a couple calls, saw things come up on Facebook... and watched the news in shock. It felt surreal - to see all this happening on TV, in places I walk through every day. The sugar heaven store blown half to pieces... it was very hard to wrap my head around.

Today, the building where I work opened again. Yesterday I came back home - I had the day off anyway, but the block where I work was still closed anyway - so my brother and I went to Redbones and I waited to find out whether the company was open again today. They were. So off I went. It's a very strange sight - we're more or less on the edge of the area still sealed off - the cops had possession on one side, the media, and various onlookers held the line, watching down Boylston street for something to happen. There was another media encampment at the edge of the Public Garden, blocking the foot paths through the garden. Cops directing traffic, national guardsmen on duty here and there. People coming to see, to pay homage, carrying flowers - and people like me, going to work, trying to figure out what was going to be happening in our neighborhood. Once I got into work, I suppose things went back to normal, more or less - though you could look out the window and see cops and bomb-sniffing dogs and sight-seers and TV trucks and crews and cameras. And everyone kept checking the net for news. Rumors are flying around - everyone has a theory - I guess it's all pretty hard to avoid.

And in the background, those damned poisoned letters - though I see someone has been arrested there. Whether this has anything to do with the Patriot's Day bombing, it makes an odd repetition of what happened after 9/11 - the anthrax letters were, I think, almost more disturbing than the initial attacks. They couldn't match the carnage and horror of the attacks, and these ricin letters can't match the carnage of what happened Monday, but the anthrax scare made it seem much more intimate - something that was going to continue, that would keep haunting us. It made it harder to isolate the attack, treat it as a discreet event, with specific actors - made the whole thing more diffuse....

All right. I don't have a lot to say about this. The evil of the attack is obvious enough, me saying it isn't going to change much. I don't want to try to guess or speculate on who did it or why - I don't want to play politics at least until we know what the politics are. I hope the cops catch the perpetrators - find them, arrest them, arraign them, indict them, try them, convict them, and lock them away - and do it clean, with strong consistent evidence - I don't want to watch a documentary in 20 years about how the cops got the wrong guy and the real killers got away.

Otherwise? I don't think there's much to say. It's not the kind of thing that really changes anything. I don't feel less safe than I did last Thursday, the last time I walked that way down Boylston street. This kind of mass murder attempt is rare - it's not going to be less rare in the future. It's not less rare now than in the past. Bombings have happened throughout our history - not a lot, not enough, most of the time, to do much more than check through your security measures, make sure you're covering the obvious stuff... then getting on with your life. I think. (Shootings are another matter - because they happen more often - because the mass shootings that get all the press are a tiny blip in the sea of violence and terror that results from guns in the country. Which is why this stuff is disgraceful - the NRA owns congress, and no one else, except a few rubes. If Sandy Hook can't convince republicans to vote for mostly symbolic, but still useful, gun regulations, then they have no souls.)

Enough. I don't have much to say about what happened Monday, except that once the cops open up the streets, I'll be walking by the site more or less every day. Shopping at stores and eating at restaurants and going into the library, across the street from where the bombs went off. It's going to be there, inescapably, in the corner of my eye, and the back of my mind, for the rest of my life, more or less.

Friday Music

Off we go, without much ado...

1. Soft Machine - Fire Engine Passing with Bells Clanging
2. Deerhoof - No One Fed Me SO I Stayed
3. Beatles - Back in the USSR
4. James Brown - It's a Man's Man's Man's World
5. Television - Guiding Light
6. Puccini - La Boheme: Viva Parpignol! Parpignol! Parpignol!
7. Beck - Mixed Bizness
8. Jack White - Missing Pieces
9. Mozart - Don Giovanni: Credele? Ah no, Mio Bene!
10. Outkast - Mighty "O"

Video? looks like a day for Culture - here's some Puccini for you:



and Sir Paul:

Friday Music, Better Late than Never

Maybe not that late... between innings in Toronto, so here goes:

1. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - The Journey
2. Earth - Crooked Axis for String Quartet
3. OOIOO - Asozan
4. Outkast - A Day in the Life of Benjamin Andre
5. Charlie Parker - Ornithology
6. Mission of Burma - Absent Mind
7. Yoko Ono - No, No, No
8. Iron & Wine - Teeth in the Grass
9. Sonic Youth - Master-Dik
10. Thomas Dolby - Hyperactive

Video - let's be topical, sorta - for Roger and Gene: "At the Movies" - the Bad Brains:



And - you know, Thomas Dolby made some really cool videos...

Roger Ebert

I imagine every film blogger will write something about Mr. Ebert's passing. (I suppose as it happens that included Roger Ebert himself.) What can I add? Well - that, for me at least, it is right that the internet be full of Ebert today. I was not a fan of his before the internet. I watched Siskel and Ebert on TV, fairly faithfully at times, especially when it was on PBS, and the first few years afterwards - but stopped somewhere in the late 80s. Sometime after Blue Velvet came out - an important point. I remember that episode - I remember being somewhat awed by the clips from the film. I had to see it; I did; I loved it. It is ironic, because Ebert hated it - and when I read his review of it, in one of his books - it soured me completely on Ebert. Blue Velvet was one of the films that made a real film lover out of me - and he was on the wrong side.

So I put him down as a middlebrow bore, a TV personality whose influence came from the fact that everyone had heard of him. It didn't help that I came across something he wrote against Kiarostami in the late 90s - by which time I was eye-deep in art films, and loved Iranian films. But -

The internet happened. Ebert's reviews showed up on the web. You could find them and read them. And this is the thing: once I read Ebert, I understood Ebert. I didn't always share his taste, and I have too say - for a first rate critic, he screwed up more details in films than anyone I know of... But almost no one, and certainly no popular, mainstream film reviewers, could match his ease with the language - and none of them could get their personalities into their prose like he could. And - none of them had his kind of personality, his generosity, curiosity, enthusiasm for film. Though even there - I found that though I came to respect his film reviews (they form a kind of baseline - when I check a films reviews, I always check his - they are a kind of baseline for opinion, and they always give you an idea of what the film is like), what I really loved were his other writings. Essays, on films or other subjects - the kinds of memoirs he has been writing in the last few years - blog posts - I found as his focus broadened, his best qualities were more and more evident. He's a solid reviewer, a decent critic - he's obviously a profoundly important figure in the film world - but he was a genuinely outstanding writer.

I will end with this. I saw him once, at Million Year Picnic, a comic book store in Harvard Square. He was with Andy Ihnatko, a computer writer - they were talking about Love and Rockets, leafing through the books. I didn't bother them - may have nodded as I passed them, on the way to buy whatever I was buying at the time (probably something like Richard Sala or Julie Doucet, this being the late 90s, and that's what I remember reading then) - but it made me very happy. Maybe that's when I became a fan - if he liked the Brothers Hernandez, I could forgive him for hating Blue Velvet. In any case - the world will be poorer without him.

Baseball Predictions, 2013

Spring has been a long time coming this year, but there is one unmistakable sign - baseball! Somehow last year I did not manage to get a post up at the beginning of the year - I blame Bobby Valentine; at least it saved me the embarrassment of picking the sox for the post-season. Anyway - this year -

AL East:

Toronto - the truth is, I don't think this division can be picked in the least. Toronto seems to be the consensus, having imported a host of top class players - but note that they imported them from the Marlins and Mets - those teams did not win with Reyes and Johnson and Dickey and company, why are the Jays so much better? Now - in fact, I suspect the Jays will have a heck of a team - but... it's a little too easy to pick them. I have Jose Batista in my fantasy league, though, so you can be assured I'll be waving the Canadian flag any time I can.

Boston - Ah, well... I don't know what criteria I have used to pick the order of these teams - but I might as well go with the rooting interest. One game in the book, they sure look capable of winning some games - though I think the real question with this team is going to be the rotation. If Lester and Buckholtz bounce back (as they can - they are young...), 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), if Dubront can be a bit more consistent - there's a lot to like. They won't be hammering the ball, but they ought to be driving line drives and doubles all over the place; they have speed; they have very good defense; they have what looks like a deep and effective bullpen. It's fragile - that rotation, especially, can go to hell in a hurry - but if they hold up, this is a team that can do a lot more damage than anyone outside of Boston thinks...

Baltimore - with all the angst about the Sox and Yankees it is easy to forget the Orioles, who won, a bit earlier than they were supposed to. I don't know if they can sustain it - probably not, a lot of luck went into last year's run - but they got some decent pitching, and at least some of it could get better... No, I don't really believe it... I do think they will continue to hit pretty well - something better from Wieters seems a safe bet, I think Davis and Jones will continue to produce - they have enough core to hang around, but getting into the post-seasomn is going to be a struggle.

Tampa Bay - let's see how far pitching can take a team. Though if Myers is ready or Jennings steps it up, they could be all right. And the pitching can take them quite a ways. But without things working out, they are thin...

New York - this is a rooting interest. But looking at the team they're running out there - holy crap! They are old; they are all hurt - Texeira and A Rod and Jeter, Granderson too. They do have some pretty decent pitchers, and Cano, and financial resources... but the team on the field today is sub-Astros quality - and not going to get better for a while. I don't think they are going to be able to overcome the missing players this year. Maybe enough of them will come back to not embarrass themselves - but I suspect the worst for the Yanks. Heh heh heh.

Central:

Detroit - I think they might be the safest pick in baseball - 90 odd wins, and the division. They have a great top of a rotation; they have a great middle of the lineup; they have - well, some talent around that. And they have holes. But they are in a weak division and they are going to get to 90 wins - the post-season seems a safe bet here.

Chicago - They are still around. They never quite seem to make up their minds if they are going to contend. I think they got a bit more last year than they have a reason to expect this year, which means they shouldn't trouble the Cats, but will probably finish second easy enough.

KC - All their good young hitters regressed last year - so - they'll probably come back this year. I don't know if they have enough pitching - though they did load up on Tampa Bay pitchers. Second place is in reach, if things break for them.

Cleveland - probably not for the Indians, though who knows - Tito ought to steady them, they have some interesting players, and brought in a bunch of interesting failures (the likes of Drew Stubbs...) They could be respectable. Or hopeless. Probably a bit better than hopeless. 72 wins, that sort of thing.

Minnesota - there's talent hanging around this roster too, but not enough to trouble anyone. I took three hitters and a closer on my fantasy team, so there is that. Here's hoping for that big Justin Morneau comeback!

West:

Angels - on paper they are a beast, though perhaps thin in the rotation. In fact - I am not sold on them, though they should get past 90 wins easily enough. They might be this year's version of the Yankees - hammer their way to the post-season, then get bumped by the Tigers or Rays or something...

Rangers - they lost a lot of talent this year, but I think they have enough of a team to hang around (though they have to do better than yesterday.) The pitching is still decent, starters and bullpen, they have a strong defense, they have hitters - they don't have the anchor of someone like Hamilton, but they are pretty good. They should hang around the wild card race.

A's - teams that rise too fast do tend to settle a bit, especially young pitchers; but they have real talent - they are certainly capable of hanging around. I hope they do - at least, I hope they stay in contention over the next couple years - I hate seeing good young teams that fall apart. They could be TAmpa west...

Seattle - they don't look nearly as bad as they have in recent years... that's not saying a lot.

Houston - poor bastards.

NL East:

Washington - this might be the best team in baseball. ALl that pitching, starters and relievers; a killer infield; Bryce Harper. I expect they will stay a force for a while. They seem determined to put a team on the field. A good thing.

Atlanta - they seem to have done a neat job of retooling on the fly, without dropping all that far out of contention. Now, they are putting together another good young team - Hayward and all those Uptons, good young pitchers, good young infielders - they should be in the wild card hunt, and in position to take the division if things go wrong in the capitol.

Philly - fading, but still dangerous with all those pitchers - and the ever present possibility that the old hitters will rise up for one last gasp. Everything went wrong last year - if things were to go right this year, they could slither into the post-season and cause trouble. Their problem is that they are in a tough division (well, behind 2 tough teams) - it will be hard to get close enough...

Florida - is Giancarlo Stanton the loneliest man in America? is he checking out houses in Boston and New York as we speak? Will some surprise team pull the trigger for him? (Washington? Detroit? San Francisco?) What odds do you give that he will last the year in Miami?

New York - poor bastards.

Central:

Cincinnati - this is another division that is very difficult to predict. The Reds, though, are another contender for the best team, in the game. Pitching - Cueto, Latos, etc. - Chapman, Marshall, Broxton; Votto and Bruce and Phillips and Choo and - they're really good. Deep and talented with a track record, with promise - a good bet, I think...

SL - they have some old timers who could fade, but plenty of solid talent - I don't hate them anymore, so I can take a cooler look at them. They have front line pitching, pitching depth; they do rely on some ancient outfielders and some uninspiring, but useful, ball players - but still seem quite capable of continuing to haunt the post-season...

Pittsburgh - this is being perverse, there are probably no reasons to pick them ahead of Milwaukee, but I am going to do it anyway. I was thinking Andrew McCutcheon might be the loneliest man in America, but in fact, they have some decent players around him. Maybe. Sometimes.

Milwaukee - They are probably better than Pittsburgh - though they weren't all that great with Greinke and Hart and one is gone and one hurt... We will see.

Chicago - hopeless. Some nice players getting developed, but still...

West:

SF - might as well. Part of what gives you pause is that they did what they did without getting the best from a bunch of players - if Pence and Sandoval hit, if Lincecum comes back - this is a team capable of greatness. Though even without that, they should slither into the post-season, and are then more than capable of winning it all, with all that pitching.

LA - on paper, there is a lot to like; in the real world - I don't know. But talent will out, sooner or later - chemistry and the like are not going to win and lose ball games very often. The pitching is impressive - we'll see where it takes them.

Arizona - trading players like Upton for character guys is a good way to finish fourth. Character only really matters when you are finishing fourth and you don't want guys punching each other in the dugout.

Colorado - I believe they are again devoid of pitching. There were a couple years there where Rockies starters were getting drafted in fantasy leagues - not so much anymore. Make what you will of that.

SD - they seem to creep a little closer to not being an embarrassment every year - so who knows. They also seem capable of winning games for no conceivable reason, which is worth something.

So: all right - who will do what? Wild Cards - AL: Boston, Texas. NL: Atlanta - SL. World series? oy - Detroit vs. Washington - though Boston/Washington is the one I want.

Awards?

AL:
MVP - should have been Trout last year - might as well pick him this year.
Cy Young - Verlander, until someone else beats him
Rookie of the Year - wishful thinking, sure, but Jackie Bradley Jr.

NL:
MVP - there's a fair amount of competition here. Braun generally puts up the numbers, though it might be a matter of time before he puts up a 50 game suspension. Votto has one and could get another any time. How good will Bryce Harper be? can Hayward step up a notch? could Stanton's team win enough to make anyone remember he exists? can Kemp stay healthy? Ad Gon recover? Will Posey keep playing like he has? I'll say Votto, this year.
Cy Young - Strasbourg is bound to win it sooner or later.
Rookie - I should have an opinion - there seem to be lots of pitchers around this year (the AL has more offense) - I'm going togo with Shelby Miller, though that might be because I have him in three different fantasy leagues. Sad, I know, but hey, you have to root for something!

March Director of the Month - Akira Kurosawa

Here today is the third installment in my Director of the Month series. Or would be if I had posted something about an actual director last month. But last month's Donald Ritchie post does help a bit - I wasn't sure what criteria to use for this feature - who to include when? in what order? all that. Well - let's accept the signs - Oshima, Japanese films - and Kurosawa, who's 103rd birthday got a lot of attention this month - I shall take it as a sign, and count down the best Japanese directors. 6 to 1 (unless I decided to go up as well as down).... There you go.

I have written about Kurosawa before - and about the place he has in film history, and in my history with film. This post in particular from a blogathon 5 1/2 years ago lays out a lot of my doubts, but then again, it has always seemed as if I have to explain my reservations about him. He is, you see, a towering figure - a crucial figure in film history. I mentioned it in the Ritchie post last month - the ways Japanese film changed the criticism of films; and in a very real sense, it is Kurosawa that did it. Now - given that importance, given the quality of his films, ranking him 5th among Japanese directors might need some explanation.... Well - maybe the best explanation is that I'd put at least 6 Japanese directors in the top 20 - 3 definitely in the top 10 and 2 more who move in and out depending on my mood.... I am, that is, a fan.

And so? I will turn to the films:

1. Seven Samurai - This is one of the Great Ones. A big sprawling spic that never flags, with a host of clear and distinct characters, with spectacular action scenes that are, themselves, always completely coherent and clear. Technically, dramatically, politically, a magnificent achievement. After all.



2. High and Low - A medical students kidnaps the son of shoe magnate, but gets a chauffeur's son instead. What will the executive do? This becomes many things - a first rate police procedural; a first rate character study, of 2 superbly wrought characters - the student is pathetic and cruel and desperate... But Gondo, Mifune's character, is something truly other than else. He goes from the ruthless businessman of the early scenes to a kind of reluctant hero, until in the end he becomes godlike. Kurosawa's contemporary films were always tightly bound to their places - he used city streets and locations to great effect throughout his career, and this one has some of the best examples of it. But he could also use a set - the scenes in Gondo's house start stagy, but become increasingly deft - the whole film is structured that way - from the claustrophobia of Gondo's house, the the different claustrophobia of the train, to the scenes in the city, on the train, to the streets of Yokohama, the bars and hangouts. One of the most Langian of films - Kurosawa someone who could do credit to Lang...

3. Rashomon - A film that has become the symbol for unreliable point of view and multiple perspectives. (As well as being the strange example of a crime story where all three protagonists confess to the actual crime, in order to exonerate themselves.) Though also a thrilling piece of filmmaking. It is great looking, dynamic and exciting, and Kurosawa here, as in most of his films, uses pacing - the delay/gratification cycle - to great effect. It was the first Japanese film to make a sensation abroad - obviously successful, and a useful introduction, as it brings together a few tendencies in Japanese films. Chambara, women's melodrama, heroic samurai melodrama (for lack of a better term) - and a kind of realistic undercutting of those genres, all in one film.

4. Stray Dog - A cop loses his pistol on the bus - he tries to track it but it is used by a thief, who is a kind of double to the cop, to hurt other people. An extraordinary film, making great use of its setting - the location shooting, the heat, the themes of doubles and pursuit and the poisonous horror of the Gun. Even this early in his career, Kurosawa was a very self-conscious filmmaker - it feels like a precursor to new wave practices, with its documentary sections, its text and divided images, and so on. It prefigures High and Low, with its police procedural story, its urban settings, its dopplegangers - but it;s fully formed more than a decade before.



5. Ikiru - An old bureaucrat learns he is going to die. He does not know how to die, his son is a jerk, hetries partying but isn't very good at it, he takes a shine to a girl, but that is unwise - but she guides him to the idea of making a park, and he grows obsessed and dies happy. It moves slowly, but Kurosawa's style - his use of delay and indirect release - requires space to work correctly, and it does. This is Kurosawa's most Capraesque film, and seems very clearly modelled on some of Capra's works. The theme of the individual vs the system; the structure of the film - (voiceover, flashbacks, the bifurcated structure even), even things like the epiphany in the snow - that conjure up ideas and moments from Capra's films. Though maybe you're getting to Kurosawa's limits, here - he is not quite up to Capra. There is an element of caricature in Kurosawa that isn't quite there in Capra, and things in this film are almost always what they are - good, bad, weak, small. Watanabe's family, say, is not the ambiguous force it is in Capra's films - there is none of the way families or societies sustain and destroy, the doubleness of everything in Capra. (That's the rhealm of Ozu more than any Japanese director of that age). But none of that takes it from being a great film...

6. Yojimbo - Kurosawa may not have admitted it, but it's a transparent Red Harvest adaptation, and a damned fine one. Even more than Seven Samurai, it's a Japanese western (that of course immediately turned into an Italian western...) And as formalized and aestheticized as the Leone's to come - widescreen, dusty streets (or pouring rain) fire and death; people moving in strange dancelike ways - more noticeable than usual, even, for Kurosawa (who likes dancelike movement). With that hard-boiled twist on the western mythos, the stranger coming to clean up the town....

7. Ran - Kurosawa does Lear. Story - a great lord retires, leaving son #1 in charge - son #3 makes a fuss and is banished. However it does not take long for #1 to start bullying dad (egged on by his wife), and not not long after that before the sons are at one another's throats and everything goes to hell. All stunning to look at and maybe even better to listen to. Everyone dies, except a blind boy, perched atop the walls of his family's ruined castle.

8. Kagemusha - A thief is made the double of Lord Shingen during the wars between Shingen (Takeda), Ieyasu (Tokagawa) and Nobanaga (Oda). Shingen is killed not long after and the thief becomes his double. He fools the old man's grandson and concubines, as well as spies and his own men, but he is discovered from trying to ride a horse. He is injured and banished and mocked, while Lord Shingen's son goes to war and is defeated easily. (Guns again.) This is interesting historically, being much closer to actual events than most of Kurosawa's period films - set in the 1570s, the rise of Oda and Tokugawa - ending with the battle of Nagoshino, when 3000 riflemen destroyed the Takeda army, in something like a precursor to Cold Harbor or the Somme.

9. Throne of Blood - MacBeth on Mt Fuji - which Satyajit Ray singled out as one of the things that made Japanese cinema great - those real places... It is a handsome and haunting film, a horror film, as much as anything, with its ghosts and murders and madness and its strange smoky spaces....

10. Sanjuro - sequel to Yojimbo, not quite as tight and clean, but still very entertaining. Here, Mifune is a ronin who joins up with 9 idealists who are trying to undo a villainous superintendent. Tatsuya Nakadai plays the superintendent's right hand man. Very harsh parody of Japanese manners, samurai ethos and the rest, as Mifune constantly outsmarts and outfights everyone as if he's already read the script. And an old woman - who seems silly and weak and caught up in the web of politeness, but who proves consistently to be the only one as smart as he is...

Oh Good! Friday!

Well - happy Easter weekend and all... I am not sure I can come up with anything thematic for the weekend, but I guess that's just as well. Still - it is the season of resurrection and new hope, and even hard-bitten old me has to acknowledge the power of this weekend, one in which I truly do stop to take a moment and think of this powerful reminder that everything that dies comes back. Even I think of higher things this weekend - I do love Opening Day!

Anyway - more on that later this weekend... for now - random music!

1. Pink Floyd - Shine on You Crazy Diamond
2. Johnny Cash - Let the Train Whistle Blow
3. PJ Harvey - Ecstasy
4. Outkast - Xplosion
5. Pavement - Zurich is Stained
6. The Slits - Earthbeat
7. Big Star - Kizza Me
8. Michael Jackson - Wanna be Startin' Something
9. Theoretical Girls - Theoretical Girls
10. Dinosaur Jr. - Almost Ready

Video? let's be startin' something with some live Jacko - how's that?



And some Floyd - that also seems like a good choice.

1970s WITD Poll Votes

The voting at Wonders in the Dark for films of the year is by now half way through the 80s - taken me a terrible amount of time to get around to polishing up my 1970s votes. Well - here they are!

DIRECTOR (Individual): Altman, McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Director (Decade): Altman (closely followed by Herzog and Fassbinder, and Cassavetes - and Rivette, if I were able to see more of his 70s films, I think))
LEAD ACTOR (Film): Warren Beatty, McCabe and Mrs Miller
Actor (Decade): Robert DeNiro
LEAD ACTRESS (Film): Gena Rowlands, A Woman Under the Influence
Actress (Decade): Rowlands (who had a better director to work for.... the answer might, again, be someone like Bulle Ogier, though, if I could see more of the Rivettes)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sterling Hayden, the Long Goodbye
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ronee Blakely in Nashville
SHORT: Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia, Hollis Frampton
SCORE: Leonard Cohen, McCabe and Mrs Miller
CINEMATOGRAPHY: McCabe and Mrs Miller again
CINEMATOGRAPHY: while this is a strong decade for photography - Vilmos Szigmond wins out over all - those Altman films are magnificent looking
Script: I think Life of Brian might take the cake here... listing the top 5, though, not to make the top 20 films:
1. The Marriage of Maria Braun
2. Charlie Verrick
3. A New Leaf
4. Doomed Love
5. Chinatown

Music/Sound: Gimme Shelter
Documentary: really strong decade for this - enough so that I have to make another top 5 - 1 is not enough:
1. Grin Without a Cat
2. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
3. Hitler: A Film From Germany
4. Gimme Shelter
5. Sayonara CP

Best films:

1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
2. Celine and Julie Go Boating
3. Aguirre Wrath of God
4. Nashville
5. The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser
6. A Woman Under the Influence
7. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
8. Killer of Sheep
9. The Long Goodbye
10. Camera Buff
11. Saint Jack
12. Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail
13. Life of Brian
14. Erasorhead
15. Vengeance is Mine
16. Mean Streets
17. The Conversation
18. World on a Wire
19. The Godfather
20. Trash

And now by years:

1979:

Much stronger year, to end the decade.

PICTURE: Camara Buff, Kieslowski
DIRECTOR: Herzog, Nosferatu Phantom of the Night
LEAD ACTOR: Ken Ogata, Vengeance is Mine
LEAD ACTRESS: Hanna Schygulla, The Marriage of Maria Braun
SUPPORTING ACTOR: why not Kinski, in Nosferatu (that might be a lead, though, hard to say)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Eva Mattes, Woycek
SHORT: at least for now, video again - Ancient of Days, by Bill Viola
SCORE: Nosferatu, Popol Vuh (assuming it's original)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jorg Schmidt-Ritwein, Nosferatu

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Life of Brian
Music/Sound: this one isn't easy - you have a Sex Pistols movie and a Who movie coming released this year - but great as those bands are, neither are up to the level of the Ramones, so Rock and Roll High School wins the prize.

1. Camera Buff
2. St. Jack
3. Life of Brian
4. Vengeance is Mine
5. Marriage of Maria Braun
6. Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night
7. The Tin Drum
8. Apocalypse Now
9. The Third Generation
10. Alien

1978:

PICTURE: Amor de Perdicao (though IMDB has it for 1979 - but you and Harvard have it for 1978, so that's 2 to 1, and that'll do for me... I have mixed feelings about that, since I wanted to vote for Chahine and Alexandria Why? but - on the other hand, 79 is a much stronger year, and de Oliveira wasn't going to win that, so I guess this works out...)
DIRECTOR: Manoel de Oliveira
LEAD ACTOR: Richard Pryor, Blue Collar
LEAD ACTRESS: Jamie Lee Curtis, Halloween (well - it's what sticks in my head after all theze years.)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Yaphet Kotto, Blue Collar
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Linda Manz, Days of Heaven (though since she narrates the damned thing, shouldn't she be the lead?)
SHORT: another post-ponement, though I'm starting early enough, I might be able to get it done this week.
SCORE: Morricone, Days of Heaven
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Nestor Almendros & Haskell Wexler, Days of Heaven

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Another vote for Doomed Love, in all its tangled romantic glory
Music/Sound: I suppose the obvious answer is the Last Waltz (which is also the documentary winner) - but - for one given song, I can't miss the chance to note Earth Wind and Fire's version of Got to Get You Into My Life from that, um, well, you know, Sgt. Pepper film.

1. Doomed Love
2. Alexandria Why?
3. The Cycle
4. Blue Collar
5. The Deer Hunter
6. Drunken Master
7. 36th Chamber of Shaolin
8. The Brinks Job
9. Days of Heaven
10. Snake in the Eagle's Shadow


1977:

PICTURE: Killer of Sheep
DIRECTOR: Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Hitler...
LEAD ACTOR: Bruno S., Stroscek
LEAD ACTRESS: Shelly Duvall, 3 Women
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Clemens Scheitz, Stroscek
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Eva Mattes, Stroscek
SCORE: Goblin, Suspiria
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Luciano Tovoli, Suspiria

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Stroscek
Music/Sound: Suspiria - it is a grand achievement for the senses...
Documentary: a couple big contenders, though both in the essay form more than the documentary form - Grin Without a Cat probably would win, though Hitler is an astonishing film.

1. Killer of Sheep
2. Eraserhead
3. Grin Without a Cat
4. 3 Women
5. Hitler: A Film from Germany
6. Stroscek
7. Suspiria
8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
9. Ceddo
10. Annie Hall


1976:

There are Rivettes I've missed, so I don't know how well this vote would hold up, but...

PICTURE: Killing of a Chinese Bookie
DIRECTOR: John Cassavetes
LEAD ACTOR: Robert DeNiro, Taxi Driver
LEAD ACTRESS: Eiko Matsuda, Ai No Corrida
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Timothy Carey, Killing of a Chinese Bookie
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jodie Foster, Taxi Driver
SHORT: I shall try to come back to this, though I'm tempted just to vote the for the Devo, for its place in history, and, you know, being brilliant.
SCORE: Herrmann, Taxi Driver
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ballhaus, Taxi Driver

Plus bonus picks::
Script: Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Music/Sound: this would probably be those Devo films, in any case...
Documentary: Harlan County USA, which has to land high on any list...

1. Killing of a Chinese Bookie
2. Taxi Driver
3. Ai No Corrida
4. Bad News Bears
5. Anatomy of a Relationship
6. Harlan County USA
7. Rocky
8. All the President's Men
9. People of the Wind
10. The Man Who Fell to Earth

1975:

PICTURE: Nashville
DIRECTOR: Robert Altman
LEAD ACTOR: Jack Nicholson, in the Passenger (not just to be perverse - I tend to find Cuckoo's Nest a bit overwrought... here, he is restrained, and the restraint plays well with his essential Jack-ness)
LEAD ACTRESS: Delphine Seyrig
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Henry Gibson, Nashville
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: this is very difficult - it didn't really occur to me before, but all the really good parts in Nashville are for women - the performances are all good, but the men tend not to be so important to the film - with Gibson and Carradine and Keenan Wynn as exceptions - but the women, all of them, are superb, and the film really turns around them. If I have to pick? maybe not for her pure acting, but for her overall performance, and her place in the film - it's Ronee Blakely, all the way.
SHORT: Two Solutions to One Problem
SCORE: Jaws, I'm afraid...
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Luciano Tovoli, The Passenger

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, obviously
Music/Sound: Nashville

1. Nashville
2. Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail
3. Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai du Commerce 108 Bruxelles
4. The Man Who WOuld be King
5. The Passenger
6. Galileo
7. Smile
8. Salo or 120 Days of Sodom
9. Dersu Urzala
10. I Am a Cat

1974:

PICTURE: Celine and Julie Go Boating
DIRECTOR: Rivette
LEAD ACTOR: Bruno S., Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
LEAD ACTRESS: Gena Rowlands, Woman Under the Influence
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Huston, Chinatown
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Madeline Kahn, Blazing Saddles
SHORT: we'll have to be back, when the chance arrives...
SCORE: Jerry Goldsmith, Chinatown
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jorg Schmidt-Ritwein, Kaspar Hauser

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence
Music/Sound: I'd say Kaspar Hauser - mix of classical, Bruno on the piano, and so on... very nice.
Documentary: another great Kazuo Hara film - Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974

1. Celine and Julie Go Boating
2. Mystery of Kaspar Hauser
3. A Woman Under the Influence
4. The Conversation
5. Out 1: Spectre
6. Chinatown
7. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
8. Godfather II
9. Fear Eats the Soul
10. The Circumstance

1973:

PICTURE: The Long Goodbye
DIRECTOR: Fassbinder, World on a Wire
LEAD ACTOR: Robert Mitchum, Friends of Eddie Coyle
LEAD ACTRESS: Sissy Spacek, Dablands
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sterling Hayden, The Long Goodbye, though it's hard to pass by De Niro
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ana Torrent, Spirit of the Beehive
SHORT: not really being qualified to vote on these, I'll vote for another great piece of video art - Nam June Paik's Global Groove
SCORE: John Williams, The Long Goodbye
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Vilmos Szigmond, The Long Goodbye

Plus bonus picks:
Script: I need a vote for Charley Varrick in here somewhere, and this makes a good spot for it
Music/Sound: Mean Streets
Best Quotation in another film or other medium: Tarantino's recycling the "pair of pliers and a blowtorch" line from Charley Varrick is a strong contender, but I have to vote for "if the devil comes, we'll shoot him with a gun" from Pere Ubu's Laughing (by way of Badlands).

1. Long Goodbye
2. Mean Streets
3. World on a Wire
4. Badlands
5. Charley Varrick
6. Spirit of the Beehive
7. The Mother and the Whore
8. Don't Look Now
9. Sleepers
10. The Wanderers

1972:

PICTURE: Aguirre Wrath of God
DIRECTOR: Werner Herzog
LEAD ACTOR: Klaus Kinski
LEAD ACTRESS: Liza Minelli, Cabaret
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Joel Gray, Cabaret
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Hanna Schygulla
SHORT: Vertical Roll (video art by Joan Jonas)
SCORE: Popul Vuh, Aguirre
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Thomas Mauch, Aguirre

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Love in the Afternoon. Rohmer
Music/Sound: probably Cabaret.
Documentary: Sayonara CP, by the inimitable Kazuo Hara

1. Aguirre Wrath of God
2. The Godfather
3. Sayonara CP
4. Solaris
5. Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
6. Fat City
7. Pink Flamingos
8. Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
9. The Heartbreak Kid
10. Fourteen Amazons

1971:

A good year, but totally dominated by its best film. (Though that's partly because I've only seen the later, shorter, version of Out 1.)

PICTURE: McCabe and Mrs. Miller
DIRECTOR: Robert Altman
LEAD ACTOR: Warren Beatty
LEAD ACTRESS: Julie Christie
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Warren Oates
SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
SHORT: Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia, Hollis Frampton
SCORE: Leonard Cohen, McCabe
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Vilmos Szigmond, McCabe

Plus bonus picks:
Script: A New Leaf, Elaine May
Documentary: Land of Silence and Darkness, Herzog

1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
2. The Ceremony
3. Two Lane Blacktop
4. Land of Silence and Darkness
5. Walkabout
6. Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
7. Get Carter
8. A New Leaf
9. Harold and Maude
10. Minnie and Moskowitz

1970:

PICTURE: Trash
DIRECTOR: Oshima, for The Man Who Put His Will on Film
LEAD ACTOR: Joe D'Alessandro, Trash
LEAD ACTRESS: Julie Christie, Go-Betweens
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Elliot Gould, MASH
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Holly Woodlawn, Trash
SHORT: I don't know if it's a vote, but I'll say Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty...
SCORE: Toro Takemitsu, Dodes'ka-den
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Vittorio Storaro, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Plus bonus picks:
Script: Pinter, for the Go-Betweens
Music/Sound: Gimme Shelter, which is also the best documentary of the year.

1. Trash
2. The Wild Child
3. The Man Who Left His Will on Film
4. The Conformist
5. Gimme Shelter
6. The Go Between
7. Dodeskaden
8. Zabriskie Point
9. Bed and Board
10. Claire's Knees