I'm at the McDonald's in Whitney Point surfing the Internet instead of mowing my lawn.
In the process of surfing, I found Nathan Wilson's review of HtTYD:
http://www.credenda.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=185:how-to-train-your-dragon-and-the-animated-film-wars&catid=101&Itemid=122
I appreciated this perspective that I missed:
"...dragons were bad. They raided the village stealing sheep. They burned it down constantly. They killed people. Lots of people. And here’s one of a few things that stunned me. Why did they do these evil things? Well, because they served The Dragon. The big one. The huge, ancient, evil one. And the story progresses not with one small boy (Hiccup) successfully communicating to his father (Stoick) that dragons were misunderstood, but with that boy crushing The Dragon’s head and . . . losing his foot in the process."
I appreciate what Wilson brings to the story here and I'm almost convinced, but I'm not entirely sure that the slaying of the large dragon is developed enough to be consistent with or contrast enough with what has come before.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Some Quickly Muddled Thoughts on Not Slaying Dragons
How to Train Your Dragon is a fun mess of a message movie.
Surprisingly enough, HtTYD is about the dominion mandate.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
Dominion does not mean killing things (though it doesn't exclude it). Dominion means ruling with authority. And in the immediate context of being made in the Image of God, it means ruling with authority in love.
In such a way that even the deadliest of dragons is under the authority of King Man.
The problem I have with HtTYD, as a fun-spoiling adult, is that the dragons become too cute and cuddly. They are subdued much too easily. By the end of the film, we're asked to forget that sometimes a dragon is just a dragon and wants to kill things at the same time that we get the satisfaction of killing a giant dragon.
I think I'd be okay with young children watching this as long as it was played as a double feature with Grizzly Man.
(That's a joke.)
In "real life," it is possible to tame dragons/serpents/grizzlies, but the enormous difficulty of this task shouldn't be glossed over.
(I'm probably being inconsistent here because I still love Nausicaa and her bug charming ways. But there's a different tone in Nausicaa and it is stressed that she is extraordinary in her talents and gentle understanding even as she leads her people to a greater understanding. I think that it's HtTYD that is inconsistent and not me, but maybe I'm wrong.)
There's a scene toward the end in which Hiccup is supposed to kill a dragon in the arena and instead puts down his weapons and approaches the dragon with outstretched hand. I wanted so badly for the dragon to eat Hiccup and for the credits to roll. But, that's a different movie.
Minor gripes aside, the reason this film works at all is because it works hard to reinforce creative dominion through love.
You can easily get a dog to lie down by shooting it in the head. Bravo! You've subdued that beast! This is the sort of biological/ecological dominion practice that the West at its worst has been guilty of. But no king lasts long on the throne by killing all of his subjects.
The "green" movement is to be praised in recognizing that we have responsibility for a living kingdom. Green folks err whenever they insist that we abdicate responsibility and get out of Nature's way. Not ruling at all is not a proper alternative to poor rule. The obvious (but difficult) task before us is ruling well.
Back to the dog example, we properly exercise authority by working to have Fido lie down in obedience to a verbal command. Not by beating him to a pulp or by leaving him to do as he pleases when he pleases.
I've got a rooster (the closest thing to a dragon in Nanticoke) that I respect. I like him. Sometimes I have to kick the sorry bastard for his own good. He needs to learn that it is not ever okay to attack human children. He's walking a fine line between head of the henhouse and headless on the butcher's block. I like him. I'll like him in a different way roasted.
I don't know why I brought up the rooster. Maybe because it's important to kick him and possibly having to kill him. Even more so, it's important to not kick him the large majority of the time and let him be about his proper business as a rooster. A rooster is a rooster. Let it be so.
A dragon is a dragon.
The strange part of HtTYD is that it works so hard to establish that dragons are just misunderstood puppies, then ends with a climactic fight against a larger dragon. Hiccup does not try tickling this dragon into submission. He never engages it in love or respect. Based on everything that has come before, why not?
Why are we asked to hate this dragon after we've learned to love all the other dragons? Simply because it's bigger? This dragon somehow has evil instincts that the other dragons lack? Why do the other dragons hang around this large dragon? Why is there only one large dragon? Is it an essential part of their ecosystem? How do they later function outside of their nest as pets in a village?
HtTYD falls apart.
(This is another place in which Nausicaa is more consistent and far superior in its insistence on embracing the ugliest and worst of bug creatures and also having a developed logic behind its natural world.)
I know I'm being a killjoy, but HtTYD's fun is marred for me by its mixed messages and failure to seriously engage with its own themes. I had fun with HtTYD, but for the long run I'll stick with Nausicaa and Grizzly Man.
Surprisingly enough, HtTYD is about the dominion mandate.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
Dominion does not mean killing things (though it doesn't exclude it). Dominion means ruling with authority. And in the immediate context of being made in the Image of God, it means ruling with authority in love.
In such a way that even the deadliest of dragons is under the authority of King Man.
The problem I have with HtTYD, as a fun-spoiling adult, is that the dragons become too cute and cuddly. They are subdued much too easily. By the end of the film, we're asked to forget that sometimes a dragon is just a dragon and wants to kill things at the same time that we get the satisfaction of killing a giant dragon.
I think I'd be okay with young children watching this as long as it was played as a double feature with Grizzly Man.
(That's a joke.)
In "real life," it is possible to tame dragons/serpents/grizzlies, but the enormous difficulty of this task shouldn't be glossed over.
(I'm probably being inconsistent here because I still love Nausicaa and her bug charming ways. But there's a different tone in Nausicaa and it is stressed that she is extraordinary in her talents and gentle understanding even as she leads her people to a greater understanding. I think that it's HtTYD that is inconsistent and not me, but maybe I'm wrong.)
There's a scene toward the end in which Hiccup is supposed to kill a dragon in the arena and instead puts down his weapons and approaches the dragon with outstretched hand. I wanted so badly for the dragon to eat Hiccup and for the credits to roll. But, that's a different movie.
Minor gripes aside, the reason this film works at all is because it works hard to reinforce creative dominion through love.
You can easily get a dog to lie down by shooting it in the head. Bravo! You've subdued that beast! This is the sort of biological/ecological dominion practice that the West at its worst has been guilty of. But no king lasts long on the throne by killing all of his subjects.
The "green" movement is to be praised in recognizing that we have responsibility for a living kingdom. Green folks err whenever they insist that we abdicate responsibility and get out of Nature's way. Not ruling at all is not a proper alternative to poor rule. The obvious (but difficult) task before us is ruling well.
Back to the dog example, we properly exercise authority by working to have Fido lie down in obedience to a verbal command. Not by beating him to a pulp or by leaving him to do as he pleases when he pleases.
I've got a rooster (the closest thing to a dragon in Nanticoke) that I respect. I like him. Sometimes I have to kick the sorry bastard for his own good. He needs to learn that it is not ever okay to attack human children. He's walking a fine line between head of the henhouse and headless on the butcher's block. I like him. I'll like him in a different way roasted.
I don't know why I brought up the rooster. Maybe because it's important to kick him and possibly having to kill him. Even more so, it's important to not kick him the large majority of the time and let him be about his proper business as a rooster. A rooster is a rooster. Let it be so.
A dragon is a dragon.
The strange part of HtTYD is that it works so hard to establish that dragons are just misunderstood puppies, then ends with a climactic fight against a larger dragon. Hiccup does not try tickling this dragon into submission. He never engages it in love or respect. Based on everything that has come before, why not?
Why are we asked to hate this dragon after we've learned to love all the other dragons? Simply because it's bigger? This dragon somehow has evil instincts that the other dragons lack? Why do the other dragons hang around this large dragon? Why is there only one large dragon? Is it an essential part of their ecosystem? How do they later function outside of their nest as pets in a village?
HtTYD falls apart.
(This is another place in which Nausicaa is more consistent and far superior in its insistence on embracing the ugliest and worst of bug creatures and also having a developed logic behind its natural world.)
I know I'm being a killjoy, but HtTYD's fun is marred for me by its mixed messages and failure to seriously engage with its own themes. I had fun with HtTYD, but for the long run I'll stick with Nausicaa and Grizzly Man.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Born without arms
In light of our discussion, I had to re-watch Julien Donkey-Boy.
The hose scene:
[If I was laughing "uncontrollably" (and I don't doubt that I may have been), it was probably largely due to my not having seen the film in a long while and then being nervous about showing to you and Carey a film that I have a personal investment in which I know is usually not well received by anyone.]
[As far as laughing at "inappropriate" things, Abby will tell you that I did laugh hard during Breaking Bad Season 2 when an ATM machine falls on a man's head. I still chuckle thinking about it. That was the episode before or after the one with the severed head strapped to an exploding turtle. I'm writing this in my living room and Abby just commented that I've had a big grin on my face while writing whatever I'm writing. See?]
Back to Julien Donkey-Boy.
It's actually the father and the brother Chris in the hose scene, not Julien (I did misremember this).
The humor comes from the father (who is HERZOG!) saying things like, "Be a man," and "don't be a moody brooder" as he douses his son in cold hose water. Really, it doesn't change much if it had been Julien.
The father is not "just" an abuser and his family victims. He is a father who loves his children, but doesn't always express this "appropriately."
There is horror (extremely uncomfortable at times) here AND love. The father is misguidedly trying to help improve his son(s). The father also very much has his own mental/moral/spiritual problems.
[The hardest scene to watch (which also has its own humor) and also the worst reflection on the father comes later when he does completely verbally abuse Julien.]
I hazard a guess that your "problem" with the hose and wrestling scenes and others is that you are still only seeing through one perspective. Korine has the audacity to love and side with the father as much as with the more obviously sympathetic Julien or any of his siblings.
What's really important is that immediately after this scene (the hose scene) of strained family dynamics and a brief cut to Chris alone and painfully asserting his manhood, we get a scene of the sister singing the Agnus Dei, pleading as it were on behalf of her family.
-Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.-
This is the heart of the film.
Later, the wrestling scene is among the best in the film. When Julien, the Jammin' Jammer, yes, in bra and undies, is being pinned by his brother and being yelled at by his father to be serious, he declares repeatedly "I love you, Chris." This is heart-rending soul-stopping schlock, yes it is. This is living wisdom, wrapped in flailing flesh and failing words. Yes it is.
More than this..
When the sister hits the ice and the baby dies, there is an amazing scene after this when Julien steals the dead baby. For a moment, he is absolutely clear in his communication. Sober as death. The remaining few minutes are devastatingly lovely. Call it melodrama if you must. I won't deny it.
You can't stop me from crying.
--
I do concede to you the inexplicable opening involving what appears to be the spontaneous murder of a young boy over a turtle. I don't know what to make of it. I think I may have brought up to you in the past my idea that not every image in the film is to be trusted (masturbating nun, hm?) and that the editing/construction of the film attempts to reflect Julien's schizophrenia at times, not necessarily a "factual" narrative. I tend to forget that opening sequence of the film when I think about it. I don't know. I don't even have a clue.
Julien Donkey-Boy is also a magnificent technical achievement. The editing (including the sound editing) is probably the most important element, but I think the cinematography is also great. The DP was Anthony Dod Mantle who has since then established himself as one of the more exciting and excellent DPs now working.
Because of all of the above and all that I've previously stated and for so many other reasons that I can't properly understand or articulate, I love Julien Donkey-Boy. A desert island pick and an obvious inclusion on my top 50 that I have yet to compile.
I'm really eager for you to see Mister Lonely. I want to hear what you think of it. Your last paragraph about Korine does have me excited.
It's refreshing to hear your criticisms and reluctant praise. I think that many of your objections are valid even if I can't share those objections. I hope I'm doing a decent job of showing why I love Julien Donkey-Boy and conveying the reasons why I think Korine should be valued as one of our greatest current filmmakers. Your post makes me want to revisit Gummo, which I haven't seen since college- at least a decade ago!
Unrelated to everything above, I did catch The Ghost Writer the last day it played at Cinema Saver. All I can say is that I enjoyed every minute of it and don't care if I never see it again. A perfect summer movie (even if it was released a couple of months ago!).
So far, 2010 has been an odd year.
1) Alice in Wonderland
2) Shutter Island
3) The Ghost Writer
4) Iron Man 2
5) Kick-Ass
I'm still hoping for much better.
The hose scene:
[If I was laughing "uncontrollably" (and I don't doubt that I may have been), it was probably largely due to my not having seen the film in a long while and then being nervous about showing to you and Carey a film that I have a personal investment in which I know is usually not well received by anyone.]
[As far as laughing at "inappropriate" things, Abby will tell you that I did laugh hard during Breaking Bad Season 2 when an ATM machine falls on a man's head. I still chuckle thinking about it. That was the episode before or after the one with the severed head strapped to an exploding turtle. I'm writing this in my living room and Abby just commented that I've had a big grin on my face while writing whatever I'm writing. See?]
Back to Julien Donkey-Boy.
It's actually the father and the brother Chris in the hose scene, not Julien (I did misremember this).
The humor comes from the father (who is HERZOG!) saying things like, "Be a man," and "don't be a moody brooder" as he douses his son in cold hose water. Really, it doesn't change much if it had been Julien.
The father is not "just" an abuser and his family victims. He is a father who loves his children, but doesn't always express this "appropriately."
There is horror (extremely uncomfortable at times) here AND love. The father is misguidedly trying to help improve his son(s). The father also very much has his own mental/moral/spiritual problems.
[The hardest scene to watch (which also has its own humor) and also the worst reflection on the father comes later when he does completely verbally abuse Julien.]
I hazard a guess that your "problem" with the hose and wrestling scenes and others is that you are still only seeing through one perspective. Korine has the audacity to love and side with the father as much as with the more obviously sympathetic Julien or any of his siblings.
What's really important is that immediately after this scene (the hose scene) of strained family dynamics and a brief cut to Chris alone and painfully asserting his manhood, we get a scene of the sister singing the Agnus Dei, pleading as it were on behalf of her family.
-Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.-
This is the heart of the film.
Later, the wrestling scene is among the best in the film. When Julien, the Jammin' Jammer, yes, in bra and undies, is being pinned by his brother and being yelled at by his father to be serious, he declares repeatedly "I love you, Chris." This is heart-rending soul-stopping schlock, yes it is. This is living wisdom, wrapped in flailing flesh and failing words. Yes it is.
More than this..
When the sister hits the ice and the baby dies, there is an amazing scene after this when Julien steals the dead baby. For a moment, he is absolutely clear in his communication. Sober as death. The remaining few minutes are devastatingly lovely. Call it melodrama if you must. I won't deny it.
You can't stop me from crying.
--
I do concede to you the inexplicable opening involving what appears to be the spontaneous murder of a young boy over a turtle. I don't know what to make of it. I think I may have brought up to you in the past my idea that not every image in the film is to be trusted (masturbating nun, hm?) and that the editing/construction of the film attempts to reflect Julien's schizophrenia at times, not necessarily a "factual" narrative. I tend to forget that opening sequence of the film when I think about it. I don't know. I don't even have a clue.
Julien Donkey-Boy is also a magnificent technical achievement. The editing (including the sound editing) is probably the most important element, but I think the cinematography is also great. The DP was Anthony Dod Mantle who has since then established himself as one of the more exciting and excellent DPs now working.
Because of all of the above and all that I've previously stated and for so many other reasons that I can't properly understand or articulate, I love Julien Donkey-Boy. A desert island pick and an obvious inclusion on my top 50 that I have yet to compile.
I'm really eager for you to see Mister Lonely. I want to hear what you think of it. Your last paragraph about Korine does have me excited.
It's refreshing to hear your criticisms and reluctant praise. I think that many of your objections are valid even if I can't share those objections. I hope I'm doing a decent job of showing why I love Julien Donkey-Boy and conveying the reasons why I think Korine should be valued as one of our greatest current filmmakers. Your post makes me want to revisit Gummo, which I haven't seen since college- at least a decade ago!
Unrelated to everything above, I did catch The Ghost Writer the last day it played at Cinema Saver. All I can say is that I enjoyed every minute of it and don't care if I never see it again. A perfect summer movie (even if it was released a couple of months ago!).
So far, 2010 has been an odd year.
1) Alice in Wonderland
2) Shutter Island
3) The Ghost Writer
4) Iron Man 2
5) Kick-Ass
I'm still hoping for much better.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Conversations 2010 #11
Conversations 2010 #11
The old sky cake dodge.
With an (even more than usual) abundance of asides that break the flow of "conversation."
Brandon wrote:
{I haven’t seen THE SEVENTH CONTINENT so I can’t comment on “systematic dismantling“ or “metaphorical self murder” but if Haneke believes that the argument of modernism’s logical conclusion is suicide or senseless brutal murder (Funny Games) then I feel bad for the guy.}
For the record, those phrases in quotes are my own, not Haneke's and the argument is one that I see there, regardless of Haneke's intentions. If you need to feel bad for someone, feel bad for me. The Seventh Continent is also "guilty" of being filled with cracks for the viewer to project meaning into. I don't know how many folks would come to the same conclusions about it that I do.
[Really, I shouldn't have brought up Haneke. I don't really want to defend him and I agree that his attitude in interviews is often smug, condescending, and generally atrocious. Whenever I re-watch Funny Games, though, I'll write the defense you've been waiting for. Then, we can really go at it.]
Brandon wrote:
{I’m not a fan of nihilism in general, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that I am unable to enjoy, that’s not the word, appreciate art that harbors it. When I’m referring to “it” I mean those (artists, their works, or both) who believe that life is meaningless and therefore morality should not exist and we should either “eat drink and be merry“ or sulk around all day.}
I think you have that backwards. It's not so much that "life is meaningless and therefore morality should not exist." It's more, "there is no morality apart from humanity's arbitrary whims, therefore life is meaningless or only has what meaning we assign to it," but your wording works fine enough.
If life and morality are not fixed (by fixed, I mean unchanging) (and, to be clear, I am unashamedly theocratic in insisting that moral law is both fixed and external of man), if it is not fixed, then man is indeed the measure of all things, or there is no measure.
It's all well and good to have the opinion that man should always act in the best interest of other men (and animals, if you insist!), but, apart from an external law/measure, that opinion is no more true or valid than the opinion of the guy down the street feeding men and women to his crocodile.
[One of the funniest elements of Eaten Alive is that Judd insists that his pet is a fancy imported crocodile and not an alligator. I'm sorry that I gave the impression that I had a miserable time watching it. It wasn't all miserable and there were a few praiseworthy elements. It's already provoked more writing from me than any of the Rohmer shorts I adored. Take from that what you will. Back to content, you are right. There is a lot of screaming. The last 20 minutes or so is pretty much exclusively yelling/screaming. Also, I almost mentioned the Tarantino homage to Eaten Alive, but giving a little nod by rhyming 'Buck' and 'fuck' in your own movie isn't much more clever than it was in the source material and it didn't seem relevant to my post so I omitted it. It's amazing to me that Tarantino is so steeped in 70's trash. It's definitely part of what makes him unique as a director/critic.]
-
Some will theoretically defend someone's right to live as they please apart from any moral law, but this defense usually falls to pieces when this person is chained to a wall and slowly being tortured. Then, all of a sudden, right and wrong are as real as a hot poker to the groin.
I love Hitchcock's Rope because it exposes the pretences and inconsistencies of intellectually rigid moral relativists. Also, as we've noted, Hitch had a better sense of humour than almost anyone.
To beat a dead horse (to use what I'm sure is one of your favorite metaphors), I need to quote you again:
{When I’m referring to “it” I mean those (artists, their works, or both) who believe that life is meaningless and therefore morality should not exist and we should either “eat drink and be merry“ or sulk around all day.}
You seemed to take strong issue with my saying that "Haneke follows the argument of modernism to its logical conclusion, suicide" and my implying that it also leads to brutal murder, yet you then define nihilists as those who either "eat, drink, and be merry" or sulk around all day. These two things are exactly what I'm getting at. "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die" (wrongly understood) doesn't have to, but can and does sometimes lead to "pillage, rape, and feed my crocodile for tomorrow we die.". Sulking all day doesn't always lead to suicide, but it's always a real option for the serious sulkers.
I don't know if you deny these things are true or if you're getting tripped up on my use of the word modernism, an epistemic system that has been demonstrated to lead historically straight to nihilism and our current "postmodern" situation.
In no way was I arguing that every modernist and/or nihilist should kill themselves or each other. I was using broad language and maybe being a bit hyperbolic to make a point while contrasting two horror films.
All of this matters and is relevant exactly because of one of the reasons you state for appreciating the horror genre.
{A lot of the horror genre is a wake up call, much like hip hop and punk music, it brings unpleasant realities/attitudes to the foreground for us the consumer to evaluate.}
If it is horror's "job," so to speak, to shake us up and make us more aware of the unpleasant realities of our current mental landscape... And I agree with you, I think, that it is... If this is true, then horror ought to horrify us. My argument was that Eaten Alive provides a few thrills, then ultimately reinforces a safe familiarity and love for the way things are. The Seventh Continent, on the other hand, actually leaves one unsettled and unwilling, at least for a moment, to maintain any kind of deadening status quo.
If it helps for me to stop mentioning Haneke, I'll throw out Cronenberg's Videodrome as a masterful horror film that shakes foundations of knowing/seeing/acting and does this questioning in a very visual, frightening and even almost primal way. Videodrome is just as exploitative in its own way as Eaten Alive is, but it does not let anyone off the hook in its explorations. Somehow it rides a thin line and uses a theme of exploitation as a critical running commentary on its own very real exploitative content.
-------------------------
Well, I wrote all of that on Monday night. Today, Wednesday, I saw your Gummo post and I think that, as usual, we mostly agree. We just sometimes strongly disagree about particulars.
I hate Halloween II and think you give it way too much slack.
You fly off into a blind rage each time you see the name Haneke. :)
/
As far as Korine goes, I think the problem many people have with his films is that the horrific (for example, a father washing his grown schizophrenic/mentally retarded son with a high powered garden hose while spewing degrading insults at him) is so uncomfortable and ridiculously inhumane that our (in)human response is to laugh at it or walk away from it. Instead of denying this, Korine embraces the seeming contradiction and allows it to stand as is. He creates what is just as close to realism as anything Rossellini ever achieved.
You wrote: {it’s deliberately hyperbolic and yet it strives to relay some sort of backwater realism.}
Yes. Absolutely. And "real life" is often filled with gonzo nuthouse maniacs who aren't killers and don't live in asylums. They have families.
And obviously in JDB the father is doing something insensitive here at best, abusive at worst, but we need to remember that the father is not a monster. We may want him to be, but he is not. He is a flawed and troubled man with his own mental challenges, raising his children as best he can on his own. I hope you don't think I'm crazy if I say that I can relate to even the worst of this character's actions.
A Lifetime Movie Network (or typical Hollywood) treatment of schizophrenia and low-income low-intelligence urban family life would make us cry and rage against the injustice of it all. We need to save these people! In so many ways, it would reaffirm our prejudices and confirm our smug superiority.
You and I both know well that even when the media types want to make a movie about the oppressed and disadvantaged, those "suffering" from mental retardation or mental illness, it is always the CR8s that make the news and get the praise and get the movie adaptations and TV series. No one on the outside sees much of CR5 or even CR1. We get Corky, not shit in the hair or "shut your fucking face, you fucking ass mouth, is it time to go home yet" which is always both extremely funny and extremely sad.
Those who think that last part is only funny (like the punk kids glorying in the depravity of Gummo that you mentioned) are usually wicked and cruel. Those who only think it's sad/awful usually think that it's sad/awful for the wrong reasons and won't ever understand the immense satisfaction of smearing shit on the wall as a token defiance of all who would seek to enslave the weak rather than serve and protect the weak. We need to both laugh and cry simultaneously because neither one will suffice on its own.
Korine, at his best, seems able to hold that tension.
Korine does insist that "the least of these" have a place at the table.
I honestly believe that Korine loves his actors and characters. If he's laughing at them, it's in the same way that you or I would laugh at P.G., because the Giants won 17-17, because we love him and value him, not because we're so much smarter or better than he is.
Anyhow, it's been a long time since I've seen Gummo. I'm sure it does have traces of juvenile schlock and isn't quite as pure as I make Korine sound. Maybe it is fair to think of him as mean-spirited at times. But, how often do we love purely?
Korine has matured with each successive picture. Julien Donkey-Boy is still one of my favorite movies of all time (I saw it three times in a short time span while it played in London and I've watched it multiple times on DVD since). Mister Lonely is really beautiful and probably Korine's best film yet. I am excited about seeing Trash Humpers eventually, but also think it looks a bit silly, which may be the point, I guess.
-------------
Now it's Friday, and Jason, I just read your post. Thanks for responding. You hadn't posted in a while. I thought we might have lost you.
Reality disconnect.
I do understand what you're saying here, and certainly I'm excited about Iron Man 2 and Jonah Hex and Robin Hood which will give me my thrills and make me happy for a couple of hours without having to think too hard.
I think my problem with certain horror may be that, in the horror genre as a whole, I'm looking for something that scares me, not something that I can have fun with. For the most part, I don't like the over-the-top tongue-in-cheek horror that fans of the genre seem to adore. I don't see much to like. Degradation of women? Heinous acts of violence and cruelty? Really? I'm supposed to smirk alongside the director? These movies alsojust aren't all that scary. They're annoying.
I understand "wake-up call" horror. I don't understand amusement park ride horror.
It's often the attitude of these films that I object to.
I know that my continuing to defend Funny Games opens me up to all sorts of charges of hypocrisy at worst and/or inconsistency at best. But, I do think that Funny Games has a fundamentally different attitude than other straight slasher genre films. Like Videodrome, Funny Games walks a tightrope in using genre elements to relentlessly question the audience's motivations and responses. There's also a sense in which Funny Games works precisely as a slasher flick, the same way that Videodrome is precisely an exploitation picture. Paradoxically, this simultaneously strengthens and undermines the arguments of both films. Both are flawed and fascinating.
Enough Haneke already. Enough Cronenberg, too.
Now, here's the thing. I love genre fiction. I dabble in LitFic. I read the occasional Western, Crime, and even Horror novel. I stay away from Romance, but I acknowledge that there probably are some great Romance novels. Robert Morgan's The Truest Pleasure is a really great novel, a favorite of mine, and is essentially Romance, though it gets shelved with the LitFic.
My chosen genre, though, is Science Fiction. Off the top of my head: Hard SF, Space Opera, Science Fantasy, Time Travel, Future History, First Contact, Utopia, Dystopia, Alternate History, Slipstream, Terraforming, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, Fabulism, Interplanetary Espionage, Robotics, Singularity, Whatever, etc. I'll read it all. From Asimov and Blish to Weinbaum and Zelazny.
I guess I'm just bringing this up because I don't want you guys to think that I'm just taking a dump on the horror genre or even the slasher sub-genre. I'm just not steeped in it. I don't love it, either blindly or with eyes wide open. I'm looking at it from the outside and I still don't understand it. I see such tremendous promise and I see it too often squandered.
That's enough.
Breathless. Yeah, it seems overrated now. I too was a bit disappointed by it. But, then again, few films have been hyped the way that that film has or share in its lofty reputation. It is very hard to see that film today the same way someone in 1960 would have seen it. I agree that it doesn't quite hold up, but it's historical importance is impossible to deny.
The good news is that Godard went on to make a LOT more films through the 60s, each one seemingly better than the last. My favorite is Les Caribiniers, but I confess that it is least like the other films he was making at the time, though it definitely shares many commonalities as well. As far as films more representational of Godard's style at the time, I'd suggest Pierrot le Fou or, as Brandon suggested, A Woman is a Woman. Godard also made a decent SF/Noir hybrid, Alphaville, at least a decade before Blade Runner, but if you don't like Godard, you won't like Alphaville.
Somewhere, Godard said or wrote that all he was ever trying to do was make a Howard Hawks film. Along the way, he discovered that he couldn't make anything other than a Godard film. I think his films are to be appreciated at the very least as singularly brilliant expressions/demonstrations of the idea of director as auteur.
Also, Godard just isn't for everyone. If you don't like him, you don't like him. There are plenty of happy cinephiles who can get along just fine without him.
To end all of this...
Lost is fun again.
Breaking Bad's 3rd season continues the series' high level of excellence.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus satisfied this Gilliam fan. It's a fun revisiting of Gilliam themes and, as such, is a worthy celebration of Stories and Storytellers and Silly Imaginings.
---
And now it's late Sunday and confession time. Another Hollywood Video is going out of business. This is the one right in downtown Ithaca across from the Barnes & Noble and right next to the new skate park. My first mistake was stopping at all. Once there, I told my self that I was only going to scan the foreign titles, the Westerns, and the Classics. Fortunately or unfortunately (I'm still not sure), the Classics section was pretty great. 3 for $12.
$60
The Charley Chase Collection (McCarey)
Go West (Keaton)
Behind Locked Doors (Boetticher)
The Kennel Murder Case/Nancy Drew Reporter (Curtiz/Clemens)
The Titfield Thunderbolt (Crichton)
A Run for Your Money (Frend)
Whiskey Galore! (Mackendrick)
Passport to Pimlico (Cornelius)
The Baron of Arizona (Fuller)
I Shot Jesse James (Fuller)
T Men (Mann)
The Paleface (McLeod)
Summer (Rohmer)
Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong)
Dear Wendy (Vinterberg)
Dang.
----
Alright, it's Monday the 10th and I'm finally going to post all this. I got paid to see Iron Man 2 tonight. I wanted to walk out. I actually had HUGE expectations. I was sorely disappointed.
Oh well. Robin Hood is next on the summer list.
Eventually, Shyamalan will make things better.
Yup, that's a joke.
Oh, I've begun to dread the wave of Summer films that I was so excited about just a few weeks ago!
The old sky cake dodge.
With an (even more than usual) abundance of asides that break the flow of "conversation."
Brandon wrote:
{I haven’t seen THE SEVENTH CONTINENT so I can’t comment on “systematic dismantling“ or “metaphorical self murder” but if Haneke believes that the argument of modernism’s logical conclusion is suicide or senseless brutal murder (Funny Games) then I feel bad for the guy.}
For the record, those phrases in quotes are my own, not Haneke's and the argument is one that I see there, regardless of Haneke's intentions. If you need to feel bad for someone, feel bad for me. The Seventh Continent is also "guilty" of being filled with cracks for the viewer to project meaning into. I don't know how many folks would come to the same conclusions about it that I do.
[Really, I shouldn't have brought up Haneke. I don't really want to defend him and I agree that his attitude in interviews is often smug, condescending, and generally atrocious. Whenever I re-watch Funny Games, though, I'll write the defense you've been waiting for. Then, we can really go at it.]
Brandon wrote:
{I’m not a fan of nihilism in general, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that I am unable to enjoy, that’s not the word, appreciate art that harbors it. When I’m referring to “it” I mean those (artists, their works, or both) who believe that life is meaningless and therefore morality should not exist and we should either “eat drink and be merry“ or sulk around all day.}
I think you have that backwards. It's not so much that "life is meaningless and therefore morality should not exist." It's more, "there is no morality apart from humanity's arbitrary whims, therefore life is meaningless or only has what meaning we assign to it," but your wording works fine enough.
If life and morality are not fixed (by fixed, I mean unchanging) (and, to be clear, I am unashamedly theocratic in insisting that moral law is both fixed and external of man), if it is not fixed, then man is indeed the measure of all things, or there is no measure.
It's all well and good to have the opinion that man should always act in the best interest of other men (and animals, if you insist!), but, apart from an external law/measure, that opinion is no more true or valid than the opinion of the guy down the street feeding men and women to his crocodile.
[One of the funniest elements of Eaten Alive is that Judd insists that his pet is a fancy imported crocodile and not an alligator. I'm sorry that I gave the impression that I had a miserable time watching it. It wasn't all miserable and there were a few praiseworthy elements. It's already provoked more writing from me than any of the Rohmer shorts I adored. Take from that what you will. Back to content, you are right. There is a lot of screaming. The last 20 minutes or so is pretty much exclusively yelling/screaming. Also, I almost mentioned the Tarantino homage to Eaten Alive, but giving a little nod by rhyming 'Buck' and 'fuck' in your own movie isn't much more clever than it was in the source material and it didn't seem relevant to my post so I omitted it. It's amazing to me that Tarantino is so steeped in 70's trash. It's definitely part of what makes him unique as a director/critic.]
-
Some will theoretically defend someone's right to live as they please apart from any moral law, but this defense usually falls to pieces when this person is chained to a wall and slowly being tortured. Then, all of a sudden, right and wrong are as real as a hot poker to the groin.
I love Hitchcock's Rope because it exposes the pretences and inconsistencies of intellectually rigid moral relativists. Also, as we've noted, Hitch had a better sense of humour than almost anyone.
To beat a dead horse (to use what I'm sure is one of your favorite metaphors), I need to quote you again:
{When I’m referring to “it” I mean those (artists, their works, or both) who believe that life is meaningless and therefore morality should not exist and we should either “eat drink and be merry“ or sulk around all day.}
You seemed to take strong issue with my saying that "Haneke follows the argument of modernism to its logical conclusion, suicide" and my implying that it also leads to brutal murder, yet you then define nihilists as those who either "eat, drink, and be merry" or sulk around all day. These two things are exactly what I'm getting at. "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die" (wrongly understood) doesn't have to, but can and does sometimes lead to "pillage, rape, and feed my crocodile for tomorrow we die.". Sulking all day doesn't always lead to suicide, but it's always a real option for the serious sulkers.
I don't know if you deny these things are true or if you're getting tripped up on my use of the word modernism, an epistemic system that has been demonstrated to lead historically straight to nihilism and our current "postmodern" situation.
In no way was I arguing that every modernist and/or nihilist should kill themselves or each other. I was using broad language and maybe being a bit hyperbolic to make a point while contrasting two horror films.
All of this matters and is relevant exactly because of one of the reasons you state for appreciating the horror genre.
{A lot of the horror genre is a wake up call, much like hip hop and punk music, it brings unpleasant realities/attitudes to the foreground for us the consumer to evaluate.}
If it is horror's "job," so to speak, to shake us up and make us more aware of the unpleasant realities of our current mental landscape... And I agree with you, I think, that it is... If this is true, then horror ought to horrify us. My argument was that Eaten Alive provides a few thrills, then ultimately reinforces a safe familiarity and love for the way things are. The Seventh Continent, on the other hand, actually leaves one unsettled and unwilling, at least for a moment, to maintain any kind of deadening status quo.
If it helps for me to stop mentioning Haneke, I'll throw out Cronenberg's Videodrome as a masterful horror film that shakes foundations of knowing/seeing/acting and does this questioning in a very visual, frightening and even almost primal way. Videodrome is just as exploitative in its own way as Eaten Alive is, but it does not let anyone off the hook in its explorations. Somehow it rides a thin line and uses a theme of exploitation as a critical running commentary on its own very real exploitative content.
-------------------------
Well, I wrote all of that on Monday night. Today, Wednesday, I saw your Gummo post and I think that, as usual, we mostly agree. We just sometimes strongly disagree about particulars.
I hate Halloween II and think you give it way too much slack.
You fly off into a blind rage each time you see the name Haneke. :)
/
As far as Korine goes, I think the problem many people have with his films is that the horrific (for example, a father washing his grown schizophrenic/mentally retarded son with a high powered garden hose while spewing degrading insults at him) is so uncomfortable and ridiculously inhumane that our (in)human response is to laugh at it or walk away from it. Instead of denying this, Korine embraces the seeming contradiction and allows it to stand as is. He creates what is just as close to realism as anything Rossellini ever achieved.
You wrote: {it’s deliberately hyperbolic and yet it strives to relay some sort of backwater realism.}
Yes. Absolutely. And "real life" is often filled with gonzo nuthouse maniacs who aren't killers and don't live in asylums. They have families.
And obviously in JDB the father is doing something insensitive here at best, abusive at worst, but we need to remember that the father is not a monster. We may want him to be, but he is not. He is a flawed and troubled man with his own mental challenges, raising his children as best he can on his own. I hope you don't think I'm crazy if I say that I can relate to even the worst of this character's actions.
A Lifetime Movie Network (or typical Hollywood) treatment of schizophrenia and low-income low-intelligence urban family life would make us cry and rage against the injustice of it all. We need to save these people! In so many ways, it would reaffirm our prejudices and confirm our smug superiority.
You and I both know well that even when the media types want to make a movie about the oppressed and disadvantaged, those "suffering" from mental retardation or mental illness, it is always the CR8s that make the news and get the praise and get the movie adaptations and TV series. No one on the outside sees much of CR5 or even CR1. We get Corky, not shit in the hair or "shut your fucking face, you fucking ass mouth, is it time to go home yet" which is always both extremely funny and extremely sad.
Those who think that last part is only funny (like the punk kids glorying in the depravity of Gummo that you mentioned) are usually wicked and cruel. Those who only think it's sad/awful usually think that it's sad/awful for the wrong reasons and won't ever understand the immense satisfaction of smearing shit on the wall as a token defiance of all who would seek to enslave the weak rather than serve and protect the weak. We need to both laugh and cry simultaneously because neither one will suffice on its own.
Korine, at his best, seems able to hold that tension.
Korine does insist that "the least of these" have a place at the table.
I honestly believe that Korine loves his actors and characters. If he's laughing at them, it's in the same way that you or I would laugh at P.G., because the Giants won 17-17, because we love him and value him, not because we're so much smarter or better than he is.
Anyhow, it's been a long time since I've seen Gummo. I'm sure it does have traces of juvenile schlock and isn't quite as pure as I make Korine sound. Maybe it is fair to think of him as mean-spirited at times. But, how often do we love purely?
Korine has matured with each successive picture. Julien Donkey-Boy is still one of my favorite movies of all time (I saw it three times in a short time span while it played in London and I've watched it multiple times on DVD since). Mister Lonely is really beautiful and probably Korine's best film yet. I am excited about seeing Trash Humpers eventually, but also think it looks a bit silly, which may be the point, I guess.
-------------
Now it's Friday, and Jason, I just read your post. Thanks for responding. You hadn't posted in a while. I thought we might have lost you.
Reality disconnect.
I do understand what you're saying here, and certainly I'm excited about Iron Man 2 and Jonah Hex and Robin Hood which will give me my thrills and make me happy for a couple of hours without having to think too hard.
I think my problem with certain horror may be that, in the horror genre as a whole, I'm looking for something that scares me, not something that I can have fun with. For the most part, I don't like the over-the-top tongue-in-cheek horror that fans of the genre seem to adore. I don't see much to like. Degradation of women? Heinous acts of violence and cruelty? Really? I'm supposed to smirk alongside the director? These movies alsojust aren't all that scary. They're annoying.
I understand "wake-up call" horror. I don't understand amusement park ride horror.
It's often the attitude of these films that I object to.
I know that my continuing to defend Funny Games opens me up to all sorts of charges of hypocrisy at worst and/or inconsistency at best. But, I do think that Funny Games has a fundamentally different attitude than other straight slasher genre films. Like Videodrome, Funny Games walks a tightrope in using genre elements to relentlessly question the audience's motivations and responses. There's also a sense in which Funny Games works precisely as a slasher flick, the same way that Videodrome is precisely an exploitation picture. Paradoxically, this simultaneously strengthens and undermines the arguments of both films. Both are flawed and fascinating.
Enough Haneke already. Enough Cronenberg, too.
Now, here's the thing. I love genre fiction. I dabble in LitFic. I read the occasional Western, Crime, and even Horror novel. I stay away from Romance, but I acknowledge that there probably are some great Romance novels. Robert Morgan's The Truest Pleasure is a really great novel, a favorite of mine, and is essentially Romance, though it gets shelved with the LitFic.
My chosen genre, though, is Science Fiction. Off the top of my head: Hard SF, Space Opera, Science Fantasy, Time Travel, Future History, First Contact, Utopia, Dystopia, Alternate History, Slipstream, Terraforming, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, Fabulism, Interplanetary Espionage, Robotics, Singularity, Whatever, etc. I'll read it all. From Asimov and Blish to Weinbaum and Zelazny.
I guess I'm just bringing this up because I don't want you guys to think that I'm just taking a dump on the horror genre or even the slasher sub-genre. I'm just not steeped in it. I don't love it, either blindly or with eyes wide open. I'm looking at it from the outside and I still don't understand it. I see such tremendous promise and I see it too often squandered.
That's enough.
Breathless. Yeah, it seems overrated now. I too was a bit disappointed by it. But, then again, few films have been hyped the way that that film has or share in its lofty reputation. It is very hard to see that film today the same way someone in 1960 would have seen it. I agree that it doesn't quite hold up, but it's historical importance is impossible to deny.
The good news is that Godard went on to make a LOT more films through the 60s, each one seemingly better than the last. My favorite is Les Caribiniers, but I confess that it is least like the other films he was making at the time, though it definitely shares many commonalities as well. As far as films more representational of Godard's style at the time, I'd suggest Pierrot le Fou or, as Brandon suggested, A Woman is a Woman. Godard also made a decent SF/Noir hybrid, Alphaville, at least a decade before Blade Runner, but if you don't like Godard, you won't like Alphaville.
Somewhere, Godard said or wrote that all he was ever trying to do was make a Howard Hawks film. Along the way, he discovered that he couldn't make anything other than a Godard film. I think his films are to be appreciated at the very least as singularly brilliant expressions/demonstrations of the idea of director as auteur.
Also, Godard just isn't for everyone. If you don't like him, you don't like him. There are plenty of happy cinephiles who can get along just fine without him.
To end all of this...
Lost is fun again.
Breaking Bad's 3rd season continues the series' high level of excellence.
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus satisfied this Gilliam fan. It's a fun revisiting of Gilliam themes and, as such, is a worthy celebration of Stories and Storytellers and Silly Imaginings.
---
And now it's late Sunday and confession time. Another Hollywood Video is going out of business. This is the one right in downtown Ithaca across from the Barnes & Noble and right next to the new skate park. My first mistake was stopping at all. Once there, I told my self that I was only going to scan the foreign titles, the Westerns, and the Classics. Fortunately or unfortunately (I'm still not sure), the Classics section was pretty great. 3 for $12.
$60
The Charley Chase Collection (McCarey)
Go West (Keaton)
Behind Locked Doors (Boetticher)
The Kennel Murder Case/Nancy Drew Reporter (Curtiz/Clemens)
The Titfield Thunderbolt (Crichton)
A Run for Your Money (Frend)
Whiskey Galore! (Mackendrick)
Passport to Pimlico (Cornelius)
The Baron of Arizona (Fuller)
I Shot Jesse James (Fuller)
T Men (Mann)
The Paleface (McLeod)
Summer (Rohmer)
Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong)
Dear Wendy (Vinterberg)
Dang.
----
Alright, it's Monday the 10th and I'm finally going to post all this. I got paid to see Iron Man 2 tonight. I wanted to walk out. I actually had HUGE expectations. I was sorely disappointed.
Oh well. Robin Hood is next on the summer list.
Eventually, Shyamalan will make things better.
Yup, that's a joke.
Oh, I've begun to dread the wave of Summer films that I was so excited about just a few weeks ago!
Friday, April 30, 2010
April Recap
13 Features
The Howling (Dante) 1981
Alice in Wonderland (Burton) 2010
Where the Wild Things Are (Gondry) 2009
Werewolf of London (Walker) 1935
The Box (Kelly) 2009
She-Wolf of London (Yarbrough) 1946
Good Hair (Stilson) 2009
Kick-Ass (Vaughn) 2010
My Night at Maud's (Rohmer) 1969
Eaten Alive (Hooper) 1976
Beat Street (Lathan) 1984
Trapped in Paradise (Gallo) 1994
Mutual Appreciation (Bujalski) 2005
Shorts
Peoples House (Bujalski) 2007
TV Episodes
Lost
Simpsons - Burns in prison
Star Trek - The Man Trap, Charlie X
The Howling (Dante) 1981
Alice in Wonderland (Burton) 2010
Where the Wild Things Are (Gondry) 2009
Werewolf of London (Walker) 1935
The Box (Kelly) 2009
She-Wolf of London (Yarbrough) 1946
Good Hair (Stilson) 2009
Kick-Ass (Vaughn) 2010
My Night at Maud's (Rohmer) 1969
Eaten Alive (Hooper) 1976
Beat Street (Lathan) 1984
Trapped in Paradise (Gallo) 1994
Mutual Appreciation (Bujalski) 2005
Shorts
Peoples House (Bujalski) 2007
TV Episodes
Lost
Simpsons - Burns in prison
Star Trek - The Man Trap, Charlie X
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Adventures in sanctity.
I'm having difficulty figuring out how to write about My Night at Maud's. I may just skip over it for now.
I have no difficulty writing about Eaten Alive.
Eaten Alive is the most depraved and reprehensible film I'm likely to subject myself to all year. I'm unlikely to see the Human Centipede, Brandon, but it was fun hearing you talk about it and reading your post.
She-Wolf of London is still the worst film I'm likely to see all year.
Eaten Alive is actually fairly well-crafted to deliver exactly all of the illicit thrills its title promises.
I'm really trying hard to understand why anyone would enjoy or possibly benefit from the type of horror film represented by Eaten Alive and I just can't see any good here at all. Horror fans, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here. What's up with this?
Eaten Alive is a string of episodes of different folks showing up at a country hotel and being fed to a crocodile.
It's not necessarily the subject matter. It's how it's handled. Eaten Alive is an exploitation picture from start to finish. The character of Judd is over-the-top (and honestly the entire film could be magnificent if the POV was with him through the film instead of straying off with so many other weak characters). The women mostly exist to take their shirts off and the men are there to act like they deserve to be painfully murdered. Then, there's a little girl who is there to simultaneously provide suspense and comfort because the audience knows that no filmmaker could get away with killing off a cute little kid. The crocodile is there for comic relief, maybe?
Hooper may show contempt toward middle-brow wankers. He also shows contempt toward life and people in general.
Brandon, you wrote:
One thing that sets some of these films apart (Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is their utter lack of regard for middlebrow acceptance plunging us into the worst of humanity without any chance of hope or redemption.
There are at least two types of narrative nihilism. And maybe they are distinguished more by tone than content. Or maybe I'm just splitting hairs.
Haneke's The Seventh Continent is representative of the one sort. Eaten Alive is representative of the other. Or better yet, to avoid accusations of arthouse pretensions, I'll suggest that Kaufman's Synechdoche, New York is in the tradition of Eaten Alive. (And Synechdoche, New York is by far the more terrifying horror film of the two).
Synechdoche, New York is essentially an exploitation film in which Kaufman is just as happy to torture individuals and have girls take their shirts off as Hooper is. One could argue that Kaufman doesn't enjoy it as much, but I think he giggles a lot. He's just as much about fulfilling his juvenile fantasies as Hooper is.
Haneke's film is different. There is no easy entrance into the film. But once you have inserted yourself into the film's way of seeing, there is no way out except through systematic dismantling and a metaphorical self-murder.
Haneke follows the argument of modernism to its logical conclusion, suicide. This is the only narrative satisfaction we can have when starting with certain assumptions about life.
Hooper and Kaufman may want to plunge us into a world "without any chance of hope or redemption," but they ultimately puss out by letting the little girl live or by giving life a glimmer of meaning or satisfaction. In a sense, they justify a way for themselves to remain in darkness and confusion while Haneke at least shows the end of darkness, which points toward the Light.
[Note: I'm really not arguing for how great Haneke is here. I think that he's stuck in his own rut of condemnation and hasn't figured out how to positively affirm anything yet, but all of my judgments on Haneke need to be taken lightly since I've only seen The Seventh Continent and Funny Games US.]
Back to Eaten Alive.
There are a few moments of greatness that transcend the exploitation. Scenes involving Judd, the hotel owner, alone and listening to country music, come close to being great and emotionally honest. There are a few times in which the gentle country music becomes a terrifyingly abstract and murderous background that is scarier than anything else in the film. At times, the sound design is so close to brilliant that I'm angry that it was wasted on a film that I'll never watch again and can't really recommend to anyone for any reason.
[Note on ALL of the above: I was just tossing out ideas and connections that popped into my mind. Don't take any of it as reasoned, tested, or established analysis. As always, I'm writing here to try to clarify my own thoughts, thinking anything out loud with the benefit of having a few readers/friends to possibly interact with and challenge my reactions.]
I needed something unambiguously life-affirming after the shifting moral sands of Maud's and the sinking quicksand of Eaten. I found solid ground in Beat Street, a film that I know must inspire waves of happy nostalgia in those lucky enough to have seen it when they were young in the mid-80s.
Alas, I was too young in the mid-80s (I was 5 when Beat Street was released in '84) and I missed Beat Street at the time.
Beat Street is a simple, straight-forward "follow your dreams" type of story. What is great here is that mixing music, graffiti art, and breakdancing are all legitimized. Illegally tagging trains may get you fried on the 3rd rail, but, sweet sadness, it's a better life and death than wearing a suit and crunching numbers.
There's an awesome Christmas concert sequence featuring a performance by The Treacherous Three that ranks high up there in any list of cinematic Christmas moments.
In the end, if Beat Street feels more like an after-school special than Linklater's Slacker, it can be forgiven. It goes far in its own way to encourage dropout culture (specifically here hip-hop culture) as a valid and forceful alternative to the power structures that be.
Related to challenging power structures and tearing down strongholds, Trapped in Paradise is becoming cemented as one of my favorite films, raising in stature each time I watch it for two reasons:
1) It's funny
2) 1 Corinthians 1:27
It's a pretty perfect Christmas sermon if the congregation can excuse some harsh language.
Someday, in my fantasy world, I'll be showing a double feature of Blast of Silence and Trapped in Paradise on Christmas Eve in my little arthouse theatre in the woods. See you there.
Finally, I watched Bujalski's 2005 film Mutual Appreciation, which in a way brings this entire post back around to My Night at Maud's. There are the obvious reasons. Both films have a lot of talk. Both films have as their centerpiece a man and a woman spending a physically chaste night together and that night having emotional consequences.
Rohmer always seems to point toward something more true than any of his characters are currently feeling. Even as they muddle about in their self-centered pettiness, there is a broader awareness that this is not all there is. Bujalski stumbles over this in Mutual Appreciation and projects a more ambiguous acceptance of fleeting fidelity and interpersonal reckonings. Maybe there's not something better than this.
I wonder how much Rohmer's early insistence on voiceover narration changes audience perceptions. We're allowed to think with one person and see/hear/experience folly. The lack of narration leaves things more ambiguous.
There are also some stylistic similarities. Bujalski cuts more frequently than Rohmer, but both hold shots longer than others and favor medium shots that reveal two figures in the frame speaking with each other instead of a constant flow of cuts from speaking character to speaking character. Most importantly, both make really compelling personal films on small budgets.
I'm impressed. Bujalski is someone I'll be watching closely in the future.
Beeswax was a Bujalski film from last year that left a strong impression on me. I dismissed it a bit at first even as I praised it, but it has totally stuck with me. I've been thinking about re-doing my 2010 list now in the order that I'd most like to revisit the films of 2010. Beeswax would easily place in the top 5. Unfortunately, Redbox won't carry it and I'm still Netflix-deprived.
I forgot to post my last set of purchases from the last week that Hollywood Video on the hill was open. Here's the list.
The end of binge discount shopping.
Hollywood Video -- 6 for $10
$20
Audience of One (Jacobs)
Interkosmos (Finn)
Carnage (Glieze)
Lulu on the Bridge (Auster)
The Man Without a Past (Kaurismaki)
Gunslinger's Revenge (Veronesi)
The Work of Director Stephane Sednaoui
Peace Hotel (Wai)
I Can't Sleep (Denis)
Cutter's Way (Passer)
Gorky Park (Apted)
Memories of Murder (Bong)
Last Friday, I was driving through Cortland and what do I see? Another Hollywood Video going out of business! Of course I stopped. 3 for $10. After about half an hour and a large stack of DVDs, I walked away without buying a thing. I decided that finding this sale was not a blessing. It was a temptation to be resisted. I need to get rid of books and DVDs and read and watch what I already have. I don't need more. I do not. No!
Peace.
I have no difficulty writing about Eaten Alive.
Eaten Alive is the most depraved and reprehensible film I'm likely to subject myself to all year. I'm unlikely to see the Human Centipede, Brandon, but it was fun hearing you talk about it and reading your post.
She-Wolf of London is still the worst film I'm likely to see all year.
Eaten Alive is actually fairly well-crafted to deliver exactly all of the illicit thrills its title promises.
I'm really trying hard to understand why anyone would enjoy or possibly benefit from the type of horror film represented by Eaten Alive and I just can't see any good here at all. Horror fans, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here. What's up with this?
Eaten Alive is a string of episodes of different folks showing up at a country hotel and being fed to a crocodile.
It's not necessarily the subject matter. It's how it's handled. Eaten Alive is an exploitation picture from start to finish. The character of Judd is over-the-top (and honestly the entire film could be magnificent if the POV was with him through the film instead of straying off with so many other weak characters). The women mostly exist to take their shirts off and the men are there to act like they deserve to be painfully murdered. Then, there's a little girl who is there to simultaneously provide suspense and comfort because the audience knows that no filmmaker could get away with killing off a cute little kid. The crocodile is there for comic relief, maybe?
Hooper may show contempt toward middle-brow wankers. He also shows contempt toward life and people in general.
Brandon, you wrote:
One thing that sets some of these films apart (Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is their utter lack of regard for middlebrow acceptance plunging us into the worst of humanity without any chance of hope or redemption.
There are at least two types of narrative nihilism. And maybe they are distinguished more by tone than content. Or maybe I'm just splitting hairs.
Haneke's The Seventh Continent is representative of the one sort. Eaten Alive is representative of the other. Or better yet, to avoid accusations of arthouse pretensions, I'll suggest that Kaufman's Synechdoche, New York is in the tradition of Eaten Alive. (And Synechdoche, New York is by far the more terrifying horror film of the two).
Synechdoche, New York is essentially an exploitation film in which Kaufman is just as happy to torture individuals and have girls take their shirts off as Hooper is. One could argue that Kaufman doesn't enjoy it as much, but I think he giggles a lot. He's just as much about fulfilling his juvenile fantasies as Hooper is.
Haneke's film is different. There is no easy entrance into the film. But once you have inserted yourself into the film's way of seeing, there is no way out except through systematic dismantling and a metaphorical self-murder.
Haneke follows the argument of modernism to its logical conclusion, suicide. This is the only narrative satisfaction we can have when starting with certain assumptions about life.
Hooper and Kaufman may want to plunge us into a world "without any chance of hope or redemption," but they ultimately puss out by letting the little girl live or by giving life a glimmer of meaning or satisfaction. In a sense, they justify a way for themselves to remain in darkness and confusion while Haneke at least shows the end of darkness, which points toward the Light.
[Note: I'm really not arguing for how great Haneke is here. I think that he's stuck in his own rut of condemnation and hasn't figured out how to positively affirm anything yet, but all of my judgments on Haneke need to be taken lightly since I've only seen The Seventh Continent and Funny Games US.]
Back to Eaten Alive.
There are a few moments of greatness that transcend the exploitation. Scenes involving Judd, the hotel owner, alone and listening to country music, come close to being great and emotionally honest. There are a few times in which the gentle country music becomes a terrifyingly abstract and murderous background that is scarier than anything else in the film. At times, the sound design is so close to brilliant that I'm angry that it was wasted on a film that I'll never watch again and can't really recommend to anyone for any reason.
[Note on ALL of the above: I was just tossing out ideas and connections that popped into my mind. Don't take any of it as reasoned, tested, or established analysis. As always, I'm writing here to try to clarify my own thoughts, thinking anything out loud with the benefit of having a few readers/friends to possibly interact with and challenge my reactions.]
I needed something unambiguously life-affirming after the shifting moral sands of Maud's and the sinking quicksand of Eaten. I found solid ground in Beat Street, a film that I know must inspire waves of happy nostalgia in those lucky enough to have seen it when they were young in the mid-80s.
Alas, I was too young in the mid-80s (I was 5 when Beat Street was released in '84) and I missed Beat Street at the time.
Beat Street is a simple, straight-forward "follow your dreams" type of story. What is great here is that mixing music, graffiti art, and breakdancing are all legitimized. Illegally tagging trains may get you fried on the 3rd rail, but, sweet sadness, it's a better life and death than wearing a suit and crunching numbers.
There's an awesome Christmas concert sequence featuring a performance by The Treacherous Three that ranks high up there in any list of cinematic Christmas moments.
In the end, if Beat Street feels more like an after-school special than Linklater's Slacker, it can be forgiven. It goes far in its own way to encourage dropout culture (specifically here hip-hop culture) as a valid and forceful alternative to the power structures that be.
Related to challenging power structures and tearing down strongholds, Trapped in Paradise is becoming cemented as one of my favorite films, raising in stature each time I watch it for two reasons:
1) It's funny
2) 1 Corinthians 1:27
It's a pretty perfect Christmas sermon if the congregation can excuse some harsh language.
Someday, in my fantasy world, I'll be showing a double feature of Blast of Silence and Trapped in Paradise on Christmas Eve in my little arthouse theatre in the woods. See you there.
Finally, I watched Bujalski's 2005 film Mutual Appreciation, which in a way brings this entire post back around to My Night at Maud's. There are the obvious reasons. Both films have a lot of talk. Both films have as their centerpiece a man and a woman spending a physically chaste night together and that night having emotional consequences.
Rohmer always seems to point toward something more true than any of his characters are currently feeling. Even as they muddle about in their self-centered pettiness, there is a broader awareness that this is not all there is. Bujalski stumbles over this in Mutual Appreciation and projects a more ambiguous acceptance of fleeting fidelity and interpersonal reckonings. Maybe there's not something better than this.
I wonder how much Rohmer's early insistence on voiceover narration changes audience perceptions. We're allowed to think with one person and see/hear/experience folly. The lack of narration leaves things more ambiguous.
There are also some stylistic similarities. Bujalski cuts more frequently than Rohmer, but both hold shots longer than others and favor medium shots that reveal two figures in the frame speaking with each other instead of a constant flow of cuts from speaking character to speaking character. Most importantly, both make really compelling personal films on small budgets.
I'm impressed. Bujalski is someone I'll be watching closely in the future.
Beeswax was a Bujalski film from last year that left a strong impression on me. I dismissed it a bit at first even as I praised it, but it has totally stuck with me. I've been thinking about re-doing my 2010 list now in the order that I'd most like to revisit the films of 2010. Beeswax would easily place in the top 5. Unfortunately, Redbox won't carry it and I'm still Netflix-deprived.
I forgot to post my last set of purchases from the last week that Hollywood Video on the hill was open. Here's the list.
The end of binge discount shopping.
Hollywood Video -- 6 for $10
$20
Audience of One (Jacobs)
Interkosmos (Finn)
Carnage (Glieze)
Lulu on the Bridge (Auster)
The Man Without a Past (Kaurismaki)
Gunslinger's Revenge (Veronesi)
The Work of Director Stephane Sednaoui
Peace Hotel (Wai)
I Can't Sleep (Denis)
Cutter's Way (Passer)
Gorky Park (Apted)
Memories of Murder (Bong)
Last Friday, I was driving through Cortland and what do I see? Another Hollywood Video going out of business! Of course I stopped. 3 for $10. After about half an hour and a large stack of DVDs, I walked away without buying a thing. I decided that finding this sale was not a blessing. It was a temptation to be resisted. I need to get rid of books and DVDs and read and watch what I already have. I don't need more. I do not. No!
Peace.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Conversations 2010 #10
Conversations 2010 #10
Spike posted his 50!
http://spikedunn.blogspot.com/2010/04/spikes-50-favorite-movies.html
I've only seen 58% (29/50) of the list.
Not too long after my brief Ikiru post I read this:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/03/ikiru-akira-kurosawa-1952/
That's how I wanted to feel about Ikiru, but I didn't and I don't and I can't fake it.
It's funny that you mention Fearless. I saw it at a fairly young age (14/15) and "it wrecked me," to borrow a phrase from the Ikiru post I just linked to. Fearless would probably just miss being in my top 50, too, but it might make the cut depending on the day.
Peter Weir is one of my favorite directors. I grew up loving his films way before I'd ever heard that silly word auteur. Try to find a torrent for The Plumber. I think you can find it if you search for "freakyflicks The Plumber" on the Pirate Bay or try to find the freakyflicks message board.
I can't knock you for including Sound of Music. I'm trying to overcome my bias against musicals, but really I just avoid them whenever I can.
C.S. Lewis wrote somewhere that he hated romances involving children, that he had an almost unnatural revulsion toward them. He pointed out that therefore he was probably entirely untrustworthy when it came to reviewing any such stories.
So?
Don't trust a thing I write or say about dudes singing and dancing.
I have to ask: Really? New Hope over Empire? Over Return?
I just bought a copy of Gates of Heaven at the great Hollywood video closing sale. I had no idea that you love it. I've never seen it. It's one of those films that gets mentioned only infrequently and even then usually only about its budget or length and not its content.
Never mind. I just checked. I was thinking of Hraven's Gate. Gates of Heaven is the Errol Morris pet cemetary picture. That's different. For the record, I've seen and enjoy Gates of Heaven. Which means I'm up to 60%.
M*A*S*H is the only film that I actively dislike on your list. It has always felt a bit too mean-spirited to me. Okay, I also dislike Royal Tannenbaums. It annoys me. Oh, and High Fidelity disappointed, but I haven't seen it again since opening night.
I really need to re-watch Joe vs. the Volcano. I loved it as a child, but I haven't seen it since. I also loved Overboard with Kurt Russel and Goldie Hawn and I'm absolutely frightened to ever watch it as an adult.
I can't remember what our first film conversation was about, but I remember pretty early on being shocked at your devotion to Meg Ryan. Around that same time, I saw her in HurlyBurly and I was flummoxed. Meg Ryan?
I'd love to read Spike's Appreciation of Meg Ryan. In my mind, you've already written it.
Anyhow, I'm hoping for more film writing to appear on your blog.
I can't remember if you said you had seen it or not or if we even talked about it, but here's the link to my top ten (thirty) post from last year.
http://chasingpictures.blogspot.com/2009/06/for-bgg-film-guild.html
Brandon, I haven't seen Superbad yet. My offhand comment was based on its reputation and me having seen a 10-year-old-or-so boy wearing a MacLovin (is that right? Something like that) t-shirt. I might love it. Based on what I know of it, I just don't think it's good for children.
Jason and Brandon, I don't have much to add to your war posts at the moment. I do think that The Hurt Locker is essentially an Army recruitment tool in the same way that almost all "anti-war" films are, but I don't feel like putting the energy into writing enough to back up that claim right now. Buy me a beer sometime and I'll talk your ear off.
It's been way too long since I've seen any of those Vietnam films and I've never seen Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket.
Rambo:First Blood may be my favorite Vietnam war film.
As far as "pro-war" films go, John Ford's When Willie Come Marching Home is one of the best films I've seen so far this year.
Jason, Brandon and I did put up Top 10 War Film lists last year if you want to check them out.
My list: http://chasingpictures.blogspot.com/2009/07/waltzing-with-bashir.html
Brandon's list: http://poopnoises.blogspot.com/2009/07/war-hoooo-what-is-it-good-for-top-ten.html
Finally, some one sentence reviews.
She-Wolf of London
I can't write about this movie without swearing.
Good Hair
Chris Rock lovingly exposes the insane hair practices of black women in one of the best ignored films of last year.
Lost
I love and cherish Lost after episodes like Everybody Loves Hurley.
Star Trek: Man Trap
Is every episode of the original series about sex?
Kick-Ass
Kick-Ass succeeds as a summation of every wrong and stupid impulse in today's developmentally arrested middle age comic book culture and fails in just about everything else.
Peace.
Spike posted his 50!
http://spikedunn.blogspot.com/2010/04/spikes-50-favorite-movies.html
I've only seen 58% (29/50) of the list.
Not too long after my brief Ikiru post I read this:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/03/ikiru-akira-kurosawa-1952/
That's how I wanted to feel about Ikiru, but I didn't and I don't and I can't fake it.
It's funny that you mention Fearless. I saw it at a fairly young age (14/15) and "it wrecked me," to borrow a phrase from the Ikiru post I just linked to. Fearless would probably just miss being in my top 50, too, but it might make the cut depending on the day.
Peter Weir is one of my favorite directors. I grew up loving his films way before I'd ever heard that silly word auteur. Try to find a torrent for The Plumber. I think you can find it if you search for "freakyflicks The Plumber" on the Pirate Bay or try to find the freakyflicks message board.
I can't knock you for including Sound of Music. I'm trying to overcome my bias against musicals, but really I just avoid them whenever I can.
C.S. Lewis wrote somewhere that he hated romances involving children, that he had an almost unnatural revulsion toward them. He pointed out that therefore he was probably entirely untrustworthy when it came to reviewing any such stories.
So?
Don't trust a thing I write or say about dudes singing and dancing.
I have to ask: Really? New Hope over Empire? Over Return?
I just bought a copy of Gates of Heaven at the great Hollywood video closing sale. I had no idea that you love it. I've never seen it. It's one of those films that gets mentioned only infrequently and even then usually only about its budget or length and not its content.
Never mind. I just checked. I was thinking of Hraven's Gate. Gates of Heaven is the Errol Morris pet cemetary picture. That's different. For the record, I've seen and enjoy Gates of Heaven. Which means I'm up to 60%.
M*A*S*H is the only film that I actively dislike on your list. It has always felt a bit too mean-spirited to me. Okay, I also dislike Royal Tannenbaums. It annoys me. Oh, and High Fidelity disappointed, but I haven't seen it again since opening night.
I really need to re-watch Joe vs. the Volcano. I loved it as a child, but I haven't seen it since. I also loved Overboard with Kurt Russel and Goldie Hawn and I'm absolutely frightened to ever watch it as an adult.
I can't remember what our first film conversation was about, but I remember pretty early on being shocked at your devotion to Meg Ryan. Around that same time, I saw her in HurlyBurly and I was flummoxed. Meg Ryan?
I'd love to read Spike's Appreciation of Meg Ryan. In my mind, you've already written it.
Anyhow, I'm hoping for more film writing to appear on your blog.
I can't remember if you said you had seen it or not or if we even talked about it, but here's the link to my top ten (thirty) post from last year.
http://chasingpictures.blogspot.com/2009/06/for-bgg-film-guild.html
Brandon, I haven't seen Superbad yet. My offhand comment was based on its reputation and me having seen a 10-year-old-or-so boy wearing a MacLovin (is that right? Something like that) t-shirt. I might love it. Based on what I know of it, I just don't think it's good for children.
Jason and Brandon, I don't have much to add to your war posts at the moment. I do think that The Hurt Locker is essentially an Army recruitment tool in the same way that almost all "anti-war" films are, but I don't feel like putting the energy into writing enough to back up that claim right now. Buy me a beer sometime and I'll talk your ear off.
It's been way too long since I've seen any of those Vietnam films and I've never seen Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket.
Rambo:First Blood may be my favorite Vietnam war film.
As far as "pro-war" films go, John Ford's When Willie Come Marching Home is one of the best films I've seen so far this year.
Jason, Brandon and I did put up Top 10 War Film lists last year if you want to check them out.
My list: http://chasingpictures.blogspot.com/2009/07/waltzing-with-bashir.html
Brandon's list: http://poopnoises.blogspot.com/2009/07/war-hoooo-what-is-it-good-for-top-ten.html
Finally, some one sentence reviews.
She-Wolf of London
I can't write about this movie without swearing.
Good Hair
Chris Rock lovingly exposes the insane hair practices of black women in one of the best ignored films of last year.
Lost
I love and cherish Lost after episodes like Everybody Loves Hurley.
Star Trek: Man Trap
Is every episode of the original series about sex?
Kick-Ass
Kick-Ass succeeds as a summation of every wrong and stupid impulse in today's developmentally arrested middle age comic book culture and fails in just about everything else.
Peace.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Daytime werewolfery, frabjous day, dying suns, struggling NASA paycheck to NASA paycheck, and other nonsense no one believes in.
At the end of this post, piling folly on folly: unreserved hope for the films of 2010.
The long title serves to warn that this is a long post.
I was going to start a Joe Dante marathon as soon as my Bergman marathon was over, but, as y'all know, I never did finish my Bergman marathon.
Good Friday morning I was up too early and needed a scare. With werewolves on the mind, I brewed some coffee, pulled Dante's The Howling off the shelf, popped it in, and settled down for some pre-dawn lycanthropy.
The Howling's werewolves are both different and not so different from the Universal Wolf Man. They can change whenever they want, full moon or no full moon. That's a big difference. An even bigger difference? These werewolves have embraced the curse. They love it. They are wild, restrained only as far as is socially necessary to protect themselves from being hunted and exterminated.
Those differences noted, Larry Talbot would still be morally conflicted if he was bitten in this other world. In the end, the only likable characters in The Howling are those who welcome death as a relief.
I loved the ending.
Saturday, a couple of the guys I work for wanted to see a movie and we came to the group consensus of Alice in Wonderland. An 11:45 showing at the Regal. We were the only ones there.
I should have written about the film immediately, but I didn't, so all I've got left are vague impressions.
The "real world" parallels to the Underland reality are funny and I found it refreshing that it wasn't quite the 1:1 correspondence of Oz/Kansas. I found myself smiling through the entire garden party/proposal sequence.
The whole "return to Wonderland" idea allows a lot of wiggle room for playing around in Carroll's universe without being unfaithful. Like Return to Oz, one of my childhood favorites, in its playing loose but respectful with sources, this Alice in Wonderland is an amalgam of Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-glass, Carroll's poetry, and also all of the adaptations of Alice so far and our cultural expectations of Alice.
What I found most refreshing was the innocence of this 20-year-old (!) Alice.
In a cinematic culture of raunch and ruin, in which too many of today's children have had their imagination formed by the likes of Saw and Superbad, or, maybe worse, sitcoms and Spongebob, I choose and champion the beautiful naivety of innocent and lovely Alice.
Or the savage grace of Max.
In this context of enjoying Alice, I caught up with Where the Wild Things Are on DVD. WtWTA is as good as all of its defenders have said it is.
Here is youth that carries the dying sun in its heart.
A heavy burden indeed. Max here is as innocent as Alice, but wounded and grieving. If Alice is an ideal from the past, Max may be closer to our current reality or at least the reality of my generation, the dying sun generation.
Both films go far in capturing the spirit and sensibility of youth.
Note to self: the Sun of Righteousness has risen, is even yet rising, and shall never set.
I suppose I knew I had to experience disappointment eventually after a solid run of films like the above. The next film I watched was 1935's Werewolf of London which is pretty bad by most standards. I don't even care enough to trash it right now.
Not at all what I expected, but not at all a disappointment, The Box is magnificent. Not quite Shyamalan The Happening level magnificent. All the same, entirely to be celebrated uniquely magnificent.
I hope I'm clear in comparing the two. I described The Happening as a noble failure and am now placing The Box right beside it. The Box doesn't work as metaphysical suspense thriller. It falls flat and is often more than laughable, bordering on outright lunacy. We're a race of greedy murderers and judgment will come. Either through a lightning-inspired superior being or killer plants.
But, there is a sincerity and intensity and honest craftsmanship here that should not be mocked.
I need to stress... The Box is so much better than any typical Hollywood studio picture. I totally support The Box. I mean it when I describe it as magnificent. It's amazing that a film like this got made and seemed to have a good advertising campaign and strong studio support. I hope for a long and happy career for Richard Kelly. He's proven himself to be extremely talented and wildly inventive even when restraining himself. I want more.
In TV land, Lost keeps on disappointing. I wish I could care more. I'm almost ready to stop watching (stupid empty threat). I fell asleep twenty minutes into the Desmond episode. Don't worry. I watched it later in the week. It sucked.
Even worse than a parallel timeline is a parallel timeline in which parallel folks start discovering that they suck. Because I know they suck. The solution is not to make the characters aware that they suck. The solution is to just STOP already. Okay?
So, now I've worked myself up into a frenzy of negativity.
You'll just have to believe me that I remain cheerfully optimistic. Even about the direction of Lost. Especially about 2010 in film.
2010 may end up being really, really great.
We're probably getting True Grit by the end of the year.
We're definitely getting a Jonah Hex adaptation with a great cast.
And...
Kelly Reichart may have a Western done by the end of the year... Meek's Cutoff.
That's three Westerns.
It seems almost certain that we'll get Tree of Life in November.
Iron Man 2 will be shocking if anything other than the most fun movie of the summer.
So, even before the Cannes lineup announcement, here is a 2010 anticipation list...
This list is based mostly on me having read tiny blurbs on each film and getting excited over a director, a cast, or just an idea. I'm sure I've missed some worthy films or may be giving some of these films too much credit, but, hey, I'm still excited. Tell me about what else I should be excited about.
20 all-American films expected to deliver AWESOME!!! I'm feeling patriotic.
1) True Grit (Coen)
2) Tree of Life (Malick)
3) Meek's Cutoff (Reichart)
4) Jonah Hex (Hayward)
5) Iron Man 2 (Favreau)
6) Survival of the Dead (Romero)
7) The Town (Affleck)
8) Toy Story 3 (Unkrich)
9) The American (Corbijn)
10) Get Low (Schneider)
11) The Last Airbender (Shyamalan)
12) Robin Hood (Scott)
13) The Green Hornet (Gondry)
14) The Fighter (Russell)
15) Your Highness (Green)
16) Kick-Ass (Vaughn)
17) The Last Exorcism (Stamm)
18) Cyrus (Duplass)
19) My Soul to Take (Craven)
20) You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (Allen)
The long title serves to warn that this is a long post.
I was going to start a Joe Dante marathon as soon as my Bergman marathon was over, but, as y'all know, I never did finish my Bergman marathon.
Good Friday morning I was up too early and needed a scare. With werewolves on the mind, I brewed some coffee, pulled Dante's The Howling off the shelf, popped it in, and settled down for some pre-dawn lycanthropy.
The Howling's werewolves are both different and not so different from the Universal Wolf Man. They can change whenever they want, full moon or no full moon. That's a big difference. An even bigger difference? These werewolves have embraced the curse. They love it. They are wild, restrained only as far as is socially necessary to protect themselves from being hunted and exterminated.
Those differences noted, Larry Talbot would still be morally conflicted if he was bitten in this other world. In the end, the only likable characters in The Howling are those who welcome death as a relief.
I loved the ending.
Saturday, a couple of the guys I work for wanted to see a movie and we came to the group consensus of Alice in Wonderland. An 11:45 showing at the Regal. We were the only ones there.
I should have written about the film immediately, but I didn't, so all I've got left are vague impressions.
The "real world" parallels to the Underland reality are funny and I found it refreshing that it wasn't quite the 1:1 correspondence of Oz/Kansas. I found myself smiling through the entire garden party/proposal sequence.
The whole "return to Wonderland" idea allows a lot of wiggle room for playing around in Carroll's universe without being unfaithful. Like Return to Oz, one of my childhood favorites, in its playing loose but respectful with sources, this Alice in Wonderland is an amalgam of Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-glass, Carroll's poetry, and also all of the adaptations of Alice so far and our cultural expectations of Alice.
What I found most refreshing was the innocence of this 20-year-old (!) Alice.
In a cinematic culture of raunch and ruin, in which too many of today's children have had their imagination formed by the likes of Saw and Superbad, or, maybe worse, sitcoms and Spongebob, I choose and champion the beautiful naivety of innocent and lovely Alice.
Or the savage grace of Max.
In this context of enjoying Alice, I caught up with Where the Wild Things Are on DVD. WtWTA is as good as all of its defenders have said it is.
Here is youth that carries the dying sun in its heart.
A heavy burden indeed. Max here is as innocent as Alice, but wounded and grieving. If Alice is an ideal from the past, Max may be closer to our current reality or at least the reality of my generation, the dying sun generation.
Both films go far in capturing the spirit and sensibility of youth.
Note to self: the Sun of Righteousness has risen, is even yet rising, and shall never set.
I suppose I knew I had to experience disappointment eventually after a solid run of films like the above. The next film I watched was 1935's Werewolf of London which is pretty bad by most standards. I don't even care enough to trash it right now.
Not at all what I expected, but not at all a disappointment, The Box is magnificent. Not quite Shyamalan The Happening level magnificent. All the same, entirely to be celebrated uniquely magnificent.
I hope I'm clear in comparing the two. I described The Happening as a noble failure and am now placing The Box right beside it. The Box doesn't work as metaphysical suspense thriller. It falls flat and is often more than laughable, bordering on outright lunacy. We're a race of greedy murderers and judgment will come. Either through a lightning-inspired superior being or killer plants.
But, there is a sincerity and intensity and honest craftsmanship here that should not be mocked.
I need to stress... The Box is so much better than any typical Hollywood studio picture. I totally support The Box. I mean it when I describe it as magnificent. It's amazing that a film like this got made and seemed to have a good advertising campaign and strong studio support. I hope for a long and happy career for Richard Kelly. He's proven himself to be extremely talented and wildly inventive even when restraining himself. I want more.
In TV land, Lost keeps on disappointing. I wish I could care more. I'm almost ready to stop watching (stupid empty threat). I fell asleep twenty minutes into the Desmond episode. Don't worry. I watched it later in the week. It sucked.
Even worse than a parallel timeline is a parallel timeline in which parallel folks start discovering that they suck. Because I know they suck. The solution is not to make the characters aware that they suck. The solution is to just STOP already. Okay?
So, now I've worked myself up into a frenzy of negativity.
You'll just have to believe me that I remain cheerfully optimistic. Even about the direction of Lost. Especially about 2010 in film.
2010 may end up being really, really great.
We're probably getting True Grit by the end of the year.
We're definitely getting a Jonah Hex adaptation with a great cast.
And...
Kelly Reichart may have a Western done by the end of the year... Meek's Cutoff.
That's three Westerns.
It seems almost certain that we'll get Tree of Life in November.
Iron Man 2 will be shocking if anything other than the most fun movie of the summer.
So, even before the Cannes lineup announcement, here is a 2010 anticipation list...
This list is based mostly on me having read tiny blurbs on each film and getting excited over a director, a cast, or just an idea. I'm sure I've missed some worthy films or may be giving some of these films too much credit, but, hey, I'm still excited. Tell me about what else I should be excited about.
20 all-American films expected to deliver AWESOME!!! I'm feeling patriotic.
1) True Grit (Coen)
2) Tree of Life (Malick)
3) Meek's Cutoff (Reichart)
4) Jonah Hex (Hayward)
5) Iron Man 2 (Favreau)
6) Survival of the Dead (Romero)
7) The Town (Affleck)
8) Toy Story 3 (Unkrich)
9) The American (Corbijn)
10) Get Low (Schneider)
11) The Last Airbender (Shyamalan)
12) Robin Hood (Scott)
13) The Green Hornet (Gondry)
14) The Fighter (Russell)
15) Your Highness (Green)
16) Kick-Ass (Vaughn)
17) The Last Exorcism (Stamm)
18) Cyrus (Duplass)
19) My Soul to Take (Craven)
20) You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (Allen)
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
March recap
11 Features
The Princess and the Pirate (Butler) 1944
Show People (Vidor) 1928
Ikiru (Kurosawa) 1952
What Price Glory (Ford) 1952
When Willie Comes Marching Home (Ford) 1950
Lakeview Terrace (LaBute) 2009
Suzanne's Career (Rohmer) 1963
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Neill) 1943
Billy the Kid Trapped (Scott) 1942
Steamboat 'Round the Bend (Ford) 1935
Boxcar Bertha (Scorcese) 1972
4 Shorts
The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Rohmer) 1962
Bumping Into Broadway (Roach) 1919
Nearly Wed (Kneitel) 2002
Whistle (Jones) 1957
TV Episodes
The Academy Awards
The Office season premiere
Lost s6e6-10
Breaking Bad s1e6-7, s2e1-13
Three Sheets - Lithuania
Between the Folds - origami doc
Stargate: Atlantis "Brain Storm"
Star Trek "Mudd's Women"
The Princess and the Pirate (Butler) 1944
Show People (Vidor) 1928
Ikiru (Kurosawa) 1952
What Price Glory (Ford) 1952
When Willie Comes Marching Home (Ford) 1950
Lakeview Terrace (LaBute) 2009
Suzanne's Career (Rohmer) 1963
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Neill) 1943
Billy the Kid Trapped (Scott) 1942
Steamboat 'Round the Bend (Ford) 1935
Boxcar Bertha (Scorcese) 1972
4 Shorts
The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Rohmer) 1962
Bumping Into Broadway (Roach) 1919
Nearly Wed (Kneitel) 2002
Whistle (Jones) 1957
TV Episodes
The Academy Awards
The Office season premiere
Lost s6e6-10
Breaking Bad s1e6-7, s2e1-13
Three Sheets - Lithuania
Between the Folds - origami doc
Stargate: Atlantis "Brain Storm"
Star Trek "Mudd's Women"
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The Wolf Man wants to die and other stories.
It's been a while since I've had a long lazy day of staying home and enjoying movies. This past Saturday was a nice treat.
I woke up before anyone else and watched Rohmer's 2nd Moral Tale, Suzanne's Career. Like Bakery Girl, it's a simple story about emotional attraction and the ways that man is dishonest with himself when engaging with the fearsome otherness of woman. The male friend plays a much larger role here than in Bakery Girl, adding rivalry into the already bewildering landscape of gender interactions.
Everyone woke up. I cooked some eggs, then after breakfast Abby left with Millie, Susie, and Lu. Me, Annie, and the Pip were left all alone in an empty house with shelves full of DVDs.
With no mama to warn against monster movies, we had to watch Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.
I loved it. Lon Chaney, Jr. is the major reason why. This is the third film I've seen him in as the Wolf Man. The guy is so likable it hurts.
It may be silly to say, but the scenes between him and the Frankenstein monster are touching. Talbot is basically using the monster, but he also understands the monster and shows only gentleness and not fear.
Most importantly, Annie loved it.
Next, we watched Billy the Kid Trapped, a pretty standard entry in the Crabbe Billy the Kid series of pictures. And "pretty standard" = fine afternoon entertainment. I've got 20 of these films on a cheap DVD set that I got from my mother this past Christmas. Trapped has an above average share of laughs, but my favorite moment is the cheap laugh when Fuzzy comes face to face with his doppleganger.
Even with the white hats and the black hats, Annie had a hard time keeping straight who was who, but she liked it all.
Also, this was the Golden Age of cowboy movies, when a fight scene was exciting because the action was clearly understood. I sound like an old fogey, but I can do without today's incomprehensibly frenetic action editing.
Actually, the same holds true for Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. The obligatory showdown between the two at the end is TENSE!
We took a break. Potatoes for lunch.
Next, we watched Steam Boat 'Round the Bend, a John Ford comedy that I've let sit on my shelf for too long. It's the first film I've ever seen Will Rogers in. And it's funny. I love the sly pokes at temperance preachers and self-proclaimed prophets. The way that the film celebrates the South while ridiculing it. White/Black relations is one of the thorniest elements of this movie, if only because of the silence on the matter. Stepin Fetchit puts in an amazing performance as David Begat Solomon or George Lincoln Washington or we'll just call him Jonah. He's really funny. He's also among equals while on the steamboat. Of course, those equals are all crazy in their own way, but that's what integration will get you. He also is the final character holding the trophy in the end.
I need to watch Judge Priest now.
Boxcar Bertha I watched alone while the girls napped. I'm actually really surprised that this film is so little known and not thought that well of.
The textbook Flashback: A Brief History of Film was the text used in the only film class I ever had the opportunity to take. Here's what Flashback says:
"After directing a Roger Corman cheapie, he got a chance to direct his first important feature, Mean Streets (1973)."
That Corman cheapie was Boxcar Bertha. Not having instant gratification through Internet access, I can't tell you how the film was received at the time nor how it is widely viewed today. My impression is that it's forgotten either on purpose or out of contempt.
Which is too bad. I can't say that I loved it, but then again I've never really loved any Scorcese picture. Maybe Bringing Out the Dead I can say I loved. But, dang, I respect the man. And Boxcar Bertha seems to fit into Scorcese's body of work very well.
Boxcar Bertha is a really interesting early example of Scorcese as part of the "New Hollywood" and as a Corman disciple. Gangs of New York is the most recent Scorcese film that it reminded me of, but there are hints of everything to come from Last Temptation of Christ to Goodfellas. Seriously, these films have as much if not more in common with Boxcar Bertha than with Mean Streets.
It's also the first instance of Scorcese tackling an historic American story that isn't part of the accepted history curriculum. (though I have no experience with the source material and no idea how faithful this film is to it but in some ways that is beside the point)
It's easy to see Scorcese's early work as extremely personal as evidenced by the director's own scripts for Who's That Knocking at My Door and Mean Streets or his later collaborations with Schrader. But, this gritty "personal" style only holds true as a fact if one overlooks the "anomolies" of Boxcar Bertha and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore or the later The King of Comedy and After Hours.
I'm being unclear. I'm not arguing that Boxcar Bertha isn't personal. I'm arguing that people forget it because it doesn't fit nicely into the common conception of early Scorcese.
I'm arguing that Boxcar Bertha is just as personal or at least as meaningful as Scorcese's more celebrated films and reveals just as much about the director as those other films do. Certainly, Scorcese's developing style is evidenced here as well as the themes that will preoccupy him for the rest of his career. It's just that this isn't urban Scorcese. Here is Scorcese the alternative historian, the man who tells stories of outlaws and martyrs who nonetheless were flesh and blood. Scorcese both mythologizes and carnalizes through the crazy concrete fluidity of his films. I'm not sure if that makes sense. But I'm speaking of guys crucified on boxcars now. Yeah?
Boxcar Bertha also was the most recent instigation for Abby to yell at me for watching movies with naked ladies in them.
Without getting into that too much, I'll just note that visualized sexuality has always been as important to Scorcese as religion and violence. In fact, the three are often tied up together in his films and many of his films are just barely on the artful side of the exploitation line.
So why do I subject myself to a Scorcese film when I pretty much know that I'm guaranteed an eyeful of sex and graphic violence accompanied by an earful of foul language? And that I don't even like most Scorcese films that I've seen?
It has something to do with auteur theory. I've grown to know Scorcese as an author and even if I know that I'll see something I find distasteful in his films, I know just as surely that he'll be wrestling with his faith (or lack thereof) in public each time he makes a picture. Also, that each film of his is in a sense an act of film criticism as he interacts with genres and other specific films. Scorcese is striving for (and often achieving) artistic excellence in the medium he loves.
Likewise and even more extreme, I'm more interested in the next abhorrent Reygadas or Von Trier film than whatever the Fireproof studio has planned next, even though I understand that I'm in fundamental agreement with the message of fidelity and monogamy found in Fireproof and am absolutely at war with Reygadas's salvific fornication and Von Trier's unfocused religious mania. But, hot damn and hellfire, these two guys can make powerful films.
Now I need to see Fireproof if I'm going to make it a whipping boy. Not having seen Fireproof, it is unfair of me to use it as an example above, but it is the most recent representative of mediocre "Christian" films and I know it by reputation.
More often than not, I'd rather see a demonically well-crafted film depicting a worldview I despise than a mediocre film with a message I cherish.
This is one reason I love Rohmer so much and haven't yet found a reason not to. The man's films exude excellence while challenging the lies and half-truths of modern and post-modern man looking to get laid. Rohmer's films explore love and sexuality as earnestly and honestly as a Reygadas or Von Trier or even Apatow or Smith, to be generous toward America's leading men of raunch, who I do think are seeking for answers. The difference is that Rohmer seems to cherish virtue and seems optimistic even at his most disheartened.
That was a long tangent. Sorry.
After Bertha, Abby returned home with the other girls and the napping girls woke up. I made a quick trip to The Point for ale and cheese.
Once home again, I watched Whistle, a short (28m) film by Duncan Jones which was, surprisingly enough, dedicated to me. It's good. I'm excited to see whatever Jones does next after Moon.
Speaking of Moon, it's a crime that its score hasn't received much recognition. It may be the best score of last year. I guess most scores, good or bad, receive little recognition.
I didn't watch Moon, but I did dabble in the bonus features on the disc.
I watched the two Q and A sessions featuring Duncan Jones at Sundance and at NASA and I love Moon even more now. Jones is remarkably humble and grateful to be making films at all.
There was some more time spent away from the TV, suppertime and such.
Then, some final moving images - a bedtime viewing of Breaking Bad, Season 2 Episodes 10 and 11.
[Spoilers]Breaking Bad has the distinguished honor of making its audience love its protagonist, then having us feel really conflicted, almost disappointed, when we get the news that Walt's cancer is in remission and that he might just live for a long time to come. Amazing! This news, coupled with the idea of Jesse as an obvious liability moving into the future is enough to wrench anyone's guts. Or at least mine.[/Spoilers]
At the end of the day, roughly 7 hours of viewing. A good day at the movies. At home.
Also, for the record, besides Saturday, the only other films I've watched since my Ikiru post are Lakeview Terrace, a disappointment from Neil LaBute and Nearly Wed, a funny enough Popeye short. Oh yeah, and Lost. Ricardo is Jesus. Yeah.
In short, minimal viewing for a couple of weeks followed by a Saturday binge.
I feel alright.
I woke up before anyone else and watched Rohmer's 2nd Moral Tale, Suzanne's Career. Like Bakery Girl, it's a simple story about emotional attraction and the ways that man is dishonest with himself when engaging with the fearsome otherness of woman. The male friend plays a much larger role here than in Bakery Girl, adding rivalry into the already bewildering landscape of gender interactions.
Everyone woke up. I cooked some eggs, then after breakfast Abby left with Millie, Susie, and Lu. Me, Annie, and the Pip were left all alone in an empty house with shelves full of DVDs.
With no mama to warn against monster movies, we had to watch Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.
I loved it. Lon Chaney, Jr. is the major reason why. This is the third film I've seen him in as the Wolf Man. The guy is so likable it hurts.
It may be silly to say, but the scenes between him and the Frankenstein monster are touching. Talbot is basically using the monster, but he also understands the monster and shows only gentleness and not fear.
Most importantly, Annie loved it.
Next, we watched Billy the Kid Trapped, a pretty standard entry in the Crabbe Billy the Kid series of pictures. And "pretty standard" = fine afternoon entertainment. I've got 20 of these films on a cheap DVD set that I got from my mother this past Christmas. Trapped has an above average share of laughs, but my favorite moment is the cheap laugh when Fuzzy comes face to face with his doppleganger.
Even with the white hats and the black hats, Annie had a hard time keeping straight who was who, but she liked it all.
Also, this was the Golden Age of cowboy movies, when a fight scene was exciting because the action was clearly understood. I sound like an old fogey, but I can do without today's incomprehensibly frenetic action editing.
Actually, the same holds true for Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. The obligatory showdown between the two at the end is TENSE!
We took a break. Potatoes for lunch.
Next, we watched Steam Boat 'Round the Bend, a John Ford comedy that I've let sit on my shelf for too long. It's the first film I've ever seen Will Rogers in. And it's funny. I love the sly pokes at temperance preachers and self-proclaimed prophets. The way that the film celebrates the South while ridiculing it. White/Black relations is one of the thorniest elements of this movie, if only because of the silence on the matter. Stepin Fetchit puts in an amazing performance as David Begat Solomon or George Lincoln Washington or we'll just call him Jonah. He's really funny. He's also among equals while on the steamboat. Of course, those equals are all crazy in their own way, but that's what integration will get you. He also is the final character holding the trophy in the end.
I need to watch Judge Priest now.
Boxcar Bertha I watched alone while the girls napped. I'm actually really surprised that this film is so little known and not thought that well of.
The textbook Flashback: A Brief History of Film was the text used in the only film class I ever had the opportunity to take. Here's what Flashback says:
"After directing a Roger Corman cheapie, he got a chance to direct his first important feature, Mean Streets (1973)."
That Corman cheapie was Boxcar Bertha. Not having instant gratification through Internet access, I can't tell you how the film was received at the time nor how it is widely viewed today. My impression is that it's forgotten either on purpose or out of contempt.
Which is too bad. I can't say that I loved it, but then again I've never really loved any Scorcese picture. Maybe Bringing Out the Dead I can say I loved. But, dang, I respect the man. And Boxcar Bertha seems to fit into Scorcese's body of work very well.
Boxcar Bertha is a really interesting early example of Scorcese as part of the "New Hollywood" and as a Corman disciple. Gangs of New York is the most recent Scorcese film that it reminded me of, but there are hints of everything to come from Last Temptation of Christ to Goodfellas. Seriously, these films have as much if not more in common with Boxcar Bertha than with Mean Streets.
It's also the first instance of Scorcese tackling an historic American story that isn't part of the accepted history curriculum. (though I have no experience with the source material and no idea how faithful this film is to it but in some ways that is beside the point)
It's easy to see Scorcese's early work as extremely personal as evidenced by the director's own scripts for Who's That Knocking at My Door and Mean Streets or his later collaborations with Schrader. But, this gritty "personal" style only holds true as a fact if one overlooks the "anomolies" of Boxcar Bertha and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore or the later The King of Comedy and After Hours.
I'm being unclear. I'm not arguing that Boxcar Bertha isn't personal. I'm arguing that people forget it because it doesn't fit nicely into the common conception of early Scorcese.
I'm arguing that Boxcar Bertha is just as personal or at least as meaningful as Scorcese's more celebrated films and reveals just as much about the director as those other films do. Certainly, Scorcese's developing style is evidenced here as well as the themes that will preoccupy him for the rest of his career. It's just that this isn't urban Scorcese. Here is Scorcese the alternative historian, the man who tells stories of outlaws and martyrs who nonetheless were flesh and blood. Scorcese both mythologizes and carnalizes through the crazy concrete fluidity of his films. I'm not sure if that makes sense. But I'm speaking of guys crucified on boxcars now. Yeah?
Boxcar Bertha also was the most recent instigation for Abby to yell at me for watching movies with naked ladies in them.
Without getting into that too much, I'll just note that visualized sexuality has always been as important to Scorcese as religion and violence. In fact, the three are often tied up together in his films and many of his films are just barely on the artful side of the exploitation line.
So why do I subject myself to a Scorcese film when I pretty much know that I'm guaranteed an eyeful of sex and graphic violence accompanied by an earful of foul language? And that I don't even like most Scorcese films that I've seen?
It has something to do with auteur theory. I've grown to know Scorcese as an author and even if I know that I'll see something I find distasteful in his films, I know just as surely that he'll be wrestling with his faith (or lack thereof) in public each time he makes a picture. Also, that each film of his is in a sense an act of film criticism as he interacts with genres and other specific films. Scorcese is striving for (and often achieving) artistic excellence in the medium he loves.
Likewise and even more extreme, I'm more interested in the next abhorrent Reygadas or Von Trier film than whatever the Fireproof studio has planned next, even though I understand that I'm in fundamental agreement with the message of fidelity and monogamy found in Fireproof and am absolutely at war with Reygadas's salvific fornication and Von Trier's unfocused religious mania. But, hot damn and hellfire, these two guys can make powerful films.
Now I need to see Fireproof if I'm going to make it a whipping boy. Not having seen Fireproof, it is unfair of me to use it as an example above, but it is the most recent representative of mediocre "Christian" films and I know it by reputation.
More often than not, I'd rather see a demonically well-crafted film depicting a worldview I despise than a mediocre film with a message I cherish.
This is one reason I love Rohmer so much and haven't yet found a reason not to. The man's films exude excellence while challenging the lies and half-truths of modern and post-modern man looking to get laid. Rohmer's films explore love and sexuality as earnestly and honestly as a Reygadas or Von Trier or even Apatow or Smith, to be generous toward America's leading men of raunch, who I do think are seeking for answers. The difference is that Rohmer seems to cherish virtue and seems optimistic even at his most disheartened.
That was a long tangent. Sorry.
After Bertha, Abby returned home with the other girls and the napping girls woke up. I made a quick trip to The Point for ale and cheese.
Once home again, I watched Whistle, a short (28m) film by Duncan Jones which was, surprisingly enough, dedicated to me. It's good. I'm excited to see whatever Jones does next after Moon.
Speaking of Moon, it's a crime that its score hasn't received much recognition. It may be the best score of last year. I guess most scores, good or bad, receive little recognition.
I didn't watch Moon, but I did dabble in the bonus features on the disc.
I watched the two Q and A sessions featuring Duncan Jones at Sundance and at NASA and I love Moon even more now. Jones is remarkably humble and grateful to be making films at all.
There was some more time spent away from the TV, suppertime and such.
Then, some final moving images - a bedtime viewing of Breaking Bad, Season 2 Episodes 10 and 11.
[Spoilers]Breaking Bad has the distinguished honor of making its audience love its protagonist, then having us feel really conflicted, almost disappointed, when we get the news that Walt's cancer is in remission and that he might just live for a long time to come. Amazing! This news, coupled with the idea of Jesse as an obvious liability moving into the future is enough to wrench anyone's guts. Or at least mine.[/Spoilers]
At the end of the day, roughly 7 hours of viewing. A good day at the movies. At home.
Also, for the record, besides Saturday, the only other films I've watched since my Ikiru post are Lakeview Terrace, a disappointment from Neil LaBute and Nearly Wed, a funny enough Popeye short. Oh yeah, and Lost. Ricardo is Jesus. Yeah.
In short, minimal viewing for a couple of weeks followed by a Saturday binge.
I feel alright.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Conversations 2010 #9
Conversations 2010 #9
It was good to see Jim Emerson give a shoutout to Fr. Robert Barron recently.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2010/03/a_priest_interprets_a_serious.html
Fr. Barron has been one of my favorite RC media personalities for a couple of years now. My brother-in-law Peter introduced me to Barron back then and I've been enjoying Barron's work since. His Word On Fire podcast is always worth listening to and his Youtube movie reviews are typically five times smarter and more detailed than the average syndicated newspaper review. Barron wrestles with films because he loves them. He may consider his movie reviews part of his ministry, but I don't think he's getting paid for them or putting them out for any reason other than sharing what he loves.
Brandon,
I have no idea what is being released in 2010. And I'm sort of happy that way. I'm sure I'll follow Cannes coverage when it begins, but I haven't been paying attention to any other festivals and haven't yet seen any summer preview lists.
Right now, Shutter Island is my favorite film of 2010, a spot that Adventureland held about a year ago.
Shutter Island is also the ONLY 2010 release that I've seen so far.
Nothing else released locally has looked even remotely interesting. Art Mission, Cinemapolis, and Cornell are all still playing catch-up with 2009. The multiplexes have been stocked with the usual filler garbage for this time of year and are also still milking late 2009 releases.
Like you, I'm excited about Tree of Life and Iron Man 2, but that's my entire list right now. I might say "oh yeah" if you threw out some titles at me, but none are popping to mind while I'm writing this. What are the big titles of 2010? I'm most excited about True Grit, but I'm not sure if it will get a 2010 release. I'm still not entirely convinced that Tree of Life will be out by November.
Spike,
Post your top 50.
Jason, I'll do my best to make that pilgrimage to you and the Dryden happen. I've just got to find the right film/event and then talk Brandon into it. Brandon?
Okay, it's confession time.
I bought a movie at the dollar store.
$1
Flying Deuces (Sutherland)
I also returned to Hollywood Video in Ithaca. DVDs are now 3 for $8.
$32
Able Edwards (Robertson)
Junior Bonner (Peckinpah)
Baghead (Duplass Brothers)
Mutual Appreciation (Bujalski)
Automatons (McKenney)
The Wild Blue Yonder (Herzog)
The Most Terrible Time in My Life (Hayashi)
Time of the Wolf (Haneke)
Boxcar Bertha (Scorcese)
Heaven's Gate (Cimino)
Songs From the Second Floor (Andersson)
Eaten Alive (Hooper)
It was good to see Jim Emerson give a shoutout to Fr. Robert Barron recently.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2010/03/a_priest_interprets_a_serious.html
Fr. Barron has been one of my favorite RC media personalities for a couple of years now. My brother-in-law Peter introduced me to Barron back then and I've been enjoying Barron's work since. His Word On Fire podcast is always worth listening to and his Youtube movie reviews are typically five times smarter and more detailed than the average syndicated newspaper review. Barron wrestles with films because he loves them. He may consider his movie reviews part of his ministry, but I don't think he's getting paid for them or putting them out for any reason other than sharing what he loves.
Brandon,
I have no idea what is being released in 2010. And I'm sort of happy that way. I'm sure I'll follow Cannes coverage when it begins, but I haven't been paying attention to any other festivals and haven't yet seen any summer preview lists.
Right now, Shutter Island is my favorite film of 2010, a spot that Adventureland held about a year ago.
Shutter Island is also the ONLY 2010 release that I've seen so far.
Nothing else released locally has looked even remotely interesting. Art Mission, Cinemapolis, and Cornell are all still playing catch-up with 2009. The multiplexes have been stocked with the usual filler garbage for this time of year and are also still milking late 2009 releases.
Like you, I'm excited about Tree of Life and Iron Man 2, but that's my entire list right now. I might say "oh yeah" if you threw out some titles at me, but none are popping to mind while I'm writing this. What are the big titles of 2010? I'm most excited about True Grit, but I'm not sure if it will get a 2010 release. I'm still not entirely convinced that Tree of Life will be out by November.
Spike,
Post your top 50.
Jason, I'll do my best to make that pilgrimage to you and the Dryden happen. I've just got to find the right film/event and then talk Brandon into it. Brandon?
Okay, it's confession time.
I bought a movie at the dollar store.
$1
Flying Deuces (Sutherland)
I also returned to Hollywood Video in Ithaca. DVDs are now 3 for $8.
$32
Able Edwards (Robertson)
Junior Bonner (Peckinpah)
Baghead (Duplass Brothers)
Mutual Appreciation (Bujalski)
Automatons (McKenney)
The Wild Blue Yonder (Herzog)
The Most Terrible Time in My Life (Hayashi)
Time of the Wolf (Haneke)
Boxcar Bertha (Scorcese)
Heaven's Gate (Cimino)
Songs From the Second Floor (Andersson)
Eaten Alive (Hooper)
Monday, March 22, 2010
Conversations 2010 #8
Conversations 2010 #8
I wish that I had seen tomorrow night's Dryden schedule much earlier than yesterday. Then, maybe I'd make it there.
There is no way I'm going to make it up to Rochester tomorrow. Oh, but I want to.
Unless, Brandon, you feel like driving? :) I'll drop everything and tag along if you do. Call me immediately.
So, Jason, I need you to be my proxy. Please, get to the Dryden tomorrow night. Drag the wife and kid. Try not to pee your pants.
http://dryden.eastmanhouse.org/films/richard-m-roberts-in-person-calling-all-cuckoos-slapstick-masterpieces-from-the-hal-roach-studios/
I wish that I had seen tomorrow night's Dryden schedule much earlier than yesterday. Then, maybe I'd make it there.
There is no way I'm going to make it up to Rochester tomorrow. Oh, but I want to.
Unless, Brandon, you feel like driving? :) I'll drop everything and tag along if you do. Call me immediately.
So, Jason, I need you to be my proxy. Please, get to the Dryden tomorrow night. Drag the wife and kid. Try not to pee your pants.
http://dryden.eastmanhouse.org/films/richard-m-roberts-in-person-calling-all-cuckoos-slapstick-masterpieces-from-the-hal-roach-studios/
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Betting against tomorrow
2 from 1952
Ikiru is as good as promised. The first half is perfect. Really perfect. The second half is a bit too neat and nice in how things are wrapped up. I preferred the pain and the insight of the beginning to the heavy-handedness at the end. Still, it's a minor quibble. The wake/flashbacks work well and do hammer home Kurosawa's anti-bureaucratic message.
What Price Glory is a war comedy directed by John Ford. James Cagney has a lot of fun hamming it up in his role as Captain Flagg while Dan Dailey holds his own as Flagg's top seargent and romantic rival. What Price Glory isn't a great film like Ikiru, but it is a very watchable film, a solid entertainment, and that's sometimes just what is needed. It's also got a great supporting cast.
1 from 1950
2 years earlier, Ford and Dailey had already teamed up on a much better war comedy, When Willie Comes Marching Home. Bill Kluggs wants nothing more than to go kill some Jap and/or Kraut bastards. Instead, he gets orders to stay on base outside of his hometown because he's needed most as a sharpshooter instructor. Hilarity ensues! When Willie Comes Marching Home has a much better script/scenario than What Price Glory and is by far the better film, but both really hit the spot on a lazy Monday after an early morning Ikiru viewing.
Was it David Bordwell who recently compared Kurosawa to Ford? I can't remember.
Also...
I haven't mentioned the Oscars yet, but I did watch them when they were broadcast.
In my alternate universe, A Serious Man won best picture. Jim Jarmusch won best director. Pigs began flying. Sam Rockwell won both best actor and best supporting actor for his work in Moon. An historic moment! The sisters from Beeswax won best actress and best supporting actress. They are now household names. Next Day Air was nominated for original screenplay, but lost to A Serious Man. Julie & Julia won adapted. Still Walking won foreign feature. Yes Men Fix the World won best doc. Up won animation. The Coens swept the editing, sound editing, and sound mixing categories. They also won cinematography. Moon won both art direction and visual effects. In a surprise upset, Adventureland won costume design and Zombieland won makeup. Score went to Up. Song went to that crazy end credits Ponyo song.
Seriously, it was the best Oscars ever.
In my alternate universe.
Which doesn't exist.
Damn.
-——————
More stuff...
Stargate: Atlantis is stupid and I'm sorry I watched an episode.
Between the Folds is a neat documentary about origami artists that we caught on WSKG late at night. I'd like to track it down and see it again.
"Mudd's Women" is a fun episode of Star Trek. Three dazzling beauties distract all of the men on board the Enterprise. I forgot how campy the show could get. Watching the crew go googly eyes is fantastic.
Mudd's Women is also essentially an example of the "mail order bride" Western subgenre. A lot of early Star Trek has more in common with film and TV Westerns than with print SF.
Bumping Into Broadway is a forgettable early Lloyd short. The gags just aren't that great and the hoky intertitles elicit more groans than laughs. It's not bad, but it's far from Lloyd's best work.
That's all I've got. Goodnight.
Ikiru is as good as promised. The first half is perfect. Really perfect. The second half is a bit too neat and nice in how things are wrapped up. I preferred the pain and the insight of the beginning to the heavy-handedness at the end. Still, it's a minor quibble. The wake/flashbacks work well and do hammer home Kurosawa's anti-bureaucratic message.
What Price Glory is a war comedy directed by John Ford. James Cagney has a lot of fun hamming it up in his role as Captain Flagg while Dan Dailey holds his own as Flagg's top seargent and romantic rival. What Price Glory isn't a great film like Ikiru, but it is a very watchable film, a solid entertainment, and that's sometimes just what is needed. It's also got a great supporting cast.
1 from 1950
2 years earlier, Ford and Dailey had already teamed up on a much better war comedy, When Willie Comes Marching Home. Bill Kluggs wants nothing more than to go kill some Jap and/or Kraut bastards. Instead, he gets orders to stay on base outside of his hometown because he's needed most as a sharpshooter instructor. Hilarity ensues! When Willie Comes Marching Home has a much better script/scenario than What Price Glory and is by far the better film, but both really hit the spot on a lazy Monday after an early morning Ikiru viewing.
Was it David Bordwell who recently compared Kurosawa to Ford? I can't remember.
Also...
I haven't mentioned the Oscars yet, but I did watch them when they were broadcast.
In my alternate universe, A Serious Man won best picture. Jim Jarmusch won best director. Pigs began flying. Sam Rockwell won both best actor and best supporting actor for his work in Moon. An historic moment! The sisters from Beeswax won best actress and best supporting actress. They are now household names. Next Day Air was nominated for original screenplay, but lost to A Serious Man. Julie & Julia won adapted. Still Walking won foreign feature. Yes Men Fix the World won best doc. Up won animation. The Coens swept the editing, sound editing, and sound mixing categories. They also won cinematography. Moon won both art direction and visual effects. In a surprise upset, Adventureland won costume design and Zombieland won makeup. Score went to Up. Song went to that crazy end credits Ponyo song.
Seriously, it was the best Oscars ever.
In my alternate universe.
Which doesn't exist.
Damn.
-——————
More stuff...
Stargate: Atlantis is stupid and I'm sorry I watched an episode.
Between the Folds is a neat documentary about origami artists that we caught on WSKG late at night. I'd like to track it down and see it again.
"Mudd's Women" is a fun episode of Star Trek. Three dazzling beauties distract all of the men on board the Enterprise. I forgot how campy the show could get. Watching the crew go googly eyes is fantastic.
Mudd's Women is also essentially an example of the "mail order bride" Western subgenre. A lot of early Star Trek has more in common with film and TV Westerns than with print SF.
Bumping Into Broadway is a forgettable early Lloyd short. The gags just aren't that great and the hoky intertitles elicit more groans than laughs. It's not bad, but it's far from Lloyd's best work.
That's all I've got. Goodnight.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Man Up or Puss Out
I love Breaking Bad.
I'm finished with Season 1 now. The last two episodes do not disappoint. After a bit of necessary family drama, we've returned to the pulp dreamscape that has defined the best of this series.
[Don't get me wrong- it is the family twist that makes everything else important, but it is the everything else that we're all watching for.]
Season 1 ends on the greatest note possible.
Who is going to save your soul now?
I'm halfway through Season 2 and am happy to be along for the ride. I don't feel like writing about each individual episode, but maybe I'll write something up when I'm done with Season 2.
Lost continues to generally disappoint. I'm still hooked until the end. Go smoke monster!
This is the first season in a few years that we've watched the show as it was broadcast. I wonder how much commercial breaks (something I have not dealt with in many years) and waiting a week for each new episode are screwing with my enjoyment. Even so, this season just seems unrewarding so far. Go smoke monster!
Three Sheets continues to be good fun. Who knew that Lithuania was the last European country to embrace Christianity? And that their drinking culture is still tied up in its latent paganism? I'll never make it to Lithuania, but I've now said a prayer for the country as I bring this blessed malt beverage to my lips.
The Office season premiere was decent. I'm not half the fan that Abby is, but I enjoyed it all.
I do hope that commercial-based TV dies. Watching any show without commercial breaks is so much more enjoyable.
I wish TCM would start broadcasting the station, maybe modeled after PBS' member support. Without a doubt, I'd become a monthly supporter. I just can't justify the evils of cable/sattellite enough to embrace these formats for the sake of TCM. More realistically, I expect TCM to develop some sort of Internet subscription channel within the next decade. It doesn't make sense to stay as a part of a cable package when the capability exists to stream content directly to end-users. But, what do I know?
So, I've been watching a lot of TV shows, but I've still caught a few films.
Show People is a celebration of Hollywood. I know I love a comedy film if there's at least one moment in which I absolutely lose it. The moment in Show People is when, in a film within the film, Marion Davies (or maybe a stunt double) rides off on a large pig. Followed by a reaction shot of the director enjoying his film. Simply wonderful! And that's only one among many. I really loved the ending, so predictable, but utterly clever and thoroughly delightful. The film shines in its self-aware cameo moments: Chaplin, Fairbanks, and even King Vidor himself. 1928 has the reputation of being a magic year for silent film in which the form had reached its peak. Show People is among the best from that great year.
The Princess and the Pirate also has plenty of laughs even if it's not half the film that Show People is. The girls and I watched it projected on the wall upstairs. More than a few times, I had to shush their raucous laughter so that we could hear what was happening next.
As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a fool. -Proverbs 26:1
The Biblical proverbs are often as funny as they are wise.
The above could describe Bob Hope's hopeless actor, but I think that it better describes the protagonist of Rohmer's first Moral Tale, The Bakery Girl of Monceau.
Operating under a moral code of his own devising, ? is nothing more than a scoundrel justified in his own mind. In other words, a man.
It's a sad confirmation when this man gets the girl he wants and the happy ending. It's also really funny in a way and we can rest relieved that the bakery girl had her heart broken, all for the best.
It is exquisite and an instant favorite.
I'm finished with Season 1 now. The last two episodes do not disappoint. After a bit of necessary family drama, we've returned to the pulp dreamscape that has defined the best of this series.
[Don't get me wrong- it is the family twist that makes everything else important, but it is the everything else that we're all watching for.]
Season 1 ends on the greatest note possible.
Who is going to save your soul now?
I'm halfway through Season 2 and am happy to be along for the ride. I don't feel like writing about each individual episode, but maybe I'll write something up when I'm done with Season 2.
Lost continues to generally disappoint. I'm still hooked until the end. Go smoke monster!
This is the first season in a few years that we've watched the show as it was broadcast. I wonder how much commercial breaks (something I have not dealt with in many years) and waiting a week for each new episode are screwing with my enjoyment. Even so, this season just seems unrewarding so far. Go smoke monster!
Three Sheets continues to be good fun. Who knew that Lithuania was the last European country to embrace Christianity? And that their drinking culture is still tied up in its latent paganism? I'll never make it to Lithuania, but I've now said a prayer for the country as I bring this blessed malt beverage to my lips.
The Office season premiere was decent. I'm not half the fan that Abby is, but I enjoyed it all.
I do hope that commercial-based TV dies. Watching any show without commercial breaks is so much more enjoyable.
I wish TCM would start broadcasting the station, maybe modeled after PBS' member support. Without a doubt, I'd become a monthly supporter. I just can't justify the evils of cable/sattellite enough to embrace these formats for the sake of TCM. More realistically, I expect TCM to develop some sort of Internet subscription channel within the next decade. It doesn't make sense to stay as a part of a cable package when the capability exists to stream content directly to end-users. But, what do I know?
So, I've been watching a lot of TV shows, but I've still caught a few films.
Show People is a celebration of Hollywood. I know I love a comedy film if there's at least one moment in which I absolutely lose it. The moment in Show People is when, in a film within the film, Marion Davies (or maybe a stunt double) rides off on a large pig. Followed by a reaction shot of the director enjoying his film. Simply wonderful! And that's only one among many. I really loved the ending, so predictable, but utterly clever and thoroughly delightful. The film shines in its self-aware cameo moments: Chaplin, Fairbanks, and even King Vidor himself. 1928 has the reputation of being a magic year for silent film in which the form had reached its peak. Show People is among the best from that great year.
The Princess and the Pirate also has plenty of laughs even if it's not half the film that Show People is. The girls and I watched it projected on the wall upstairs. More than a few times, I had to shush their raucous laughter so that we could hear what was happening next.
As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a fool. -Proverbs 26:1
The Biblical proverbs are often as funny as they are wise.
The above could describe Bob Hope's hopeless actor, but I think that it better describes the protagonist of Rohmer's first Moral Tale, The Bakery Girl of Monceau.
Operating under a moral code of his own devising, ? is nothing more than a scoundrel justified in his own mind. In other words, a man.
It's a sad confirmation when this man gets the girl he wants and the happy ending. It's also really funny in a way and we can rest relieved that the bakery girl had her heart broken, all for the best.
It is exquisite and an instant favorite.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Conversations 2010 #7
Conversations 2010 #7
I've been bad. I was in Ithaca last Tuesday and I went back to that Hollywood Video. DVDs are 3 for $15 now. The selection is still quite good, but already only 1/4 of the riches that were to be found there a few weeks ago.
I was relatively good for being bad. I spent $15.
Boyfriends and Girlfriends (Rohmer)
Notre Musique (Godard)
The Hidden Fortress (Kurosawa)
I was being good so I left a lot of noteworthy stuff behind, most notably a copy of Vera Cruz that I felt sad leaving behind after you'd both vouched for it.
Jason, I'm not even sure if you noticed this, but I had to laugh. You posted about your Sundance set, which includes American Splendor, then, later, you posted about buying a copy of American Splendor on sale at Blockbuster. I'm pretty bad, but so far I've been able to refrain from buying multiple copies of the same film!
[okay, I admit that I've done this more than a few times--but always buying the duplicate discs with the intention of giving them away!]
I was thinking about your Star Wars collection recently. Is The Phantom Menace the only film that you and I saw together in the theatre? I don't want to believe this, but it's the only one I could remember.
Also, did we watch High Noon together at the same party at Oliver Gingrich's place (I think) with Joel heckling through the whole thing? Or were you not there?
Stranger Than Paradise was the first Jarmusch film I ever watched, probably when I was around 13 or 14. I had a long infatuation with Screamin' Jay Hawkins because of it. More importantly, I became a better film fan because of it.
I am jealous that you have the Dryden so close. Maybe I can find a great film on the schedule and convince Brandon that we need to make a pilgrimage up there for a night.
A Town Called Panic looks and sounds great.
I'm one of the few nincompoops who doesn't really care for The Dirty Dozen.
Brandon,
I've only seen four films on your '54 list. I'd rank them in the same order you do.
1) Seven Samurai
2) On the Waterfront
3) Johnny Guitar
4) Dial M for Murder
As for '46, I've only seen three that you list.
1) The Killers
2) It’s a Wonderful Life
3) Beauty and the Beast
I don't love any of those three, but each is charming enough in its own way. The Killers is solid. The ending of Beauty and the Beast is such a let-down. I need to rewatch It's a Wonderful life. I've only seen it once and I know I was too "hip" and more than a bit cynical then. Films don't change, but we do.
I wish that I had seen more, but I haven't.
No worries. I'm sure we'll have another good fight sooner or later.
Benjamin Button still sucks.
I've been bad. I was in Ithaca last Tuesday and I went back to that Hollywood Video. DVDs are 3 for $15 now. The selection is still quite good, but already only 1/4 of the riches that were to be found there a few weeks ago.
I was relatively good for being bad. I spent $15.
Boyfriends and Girlfriends (Rohmer)
Notre Musique (Godard)
The Hidden Fortress (Kurosawa)
I was being good so I left a lot of noteworthy stuff behind, most notably a copy of Vera Cruz that I felt sad leaving behind after you'd both vouched for it.
Jason, I'm not even sure if you noticed this, but I had to laugh. You posted about your Sundance set, which includes American Splendor, then, later, you posted about buying a copy of American Splendor on sale at Blockbuster. I'm pretty bad, but so far I've been able to refrain from buying multiple copies of the same film!
[okay, I admit that I've done this more than a few times--but always buying the duplicate discs with the intention of giving them away!]
I was thinking about your Star Wars collection recently. Is The Phantom Menace the only film that you and I saw together in the theatre? I don't want to believe this, but it's the only one I could remember.
Also, did we watch High Noon together at the same party at Oliver Gingrich's place (I think) with Joel heckling through the whole thing? Or were you not there?
Stranger Than Paradise was the first Jarmusch film I ever watched, probably when I was around 13 or 14. I had a long infatuation with Screamin' Jay Hawkins because of it. More importantly, I became a better film fan because of it.
I am jealous that you have the Dryden so close. Maybe I can find a great film on the schedule and convince Brandon that we need to make a pilgrimage up there for a night.
A Town Called Panic looks and sounds great.
I'm one of the few nincompoops who doesn't really care for The Dirty Dozen.
Brandon,
I've only seen four films on your '54 list. I'd rank them in the same order you do.
1) Seven Samurai
2) On the Waterfront
3) Johnny Guitar
4) Dial M for Murder
As for '46, I've only seen three that you list.
1) The Killers
2) It’s a Wonderful Life
3) Beauty and the Beast
I don't love any of those three, but each is charming enough in its own way. The Killers is solid. The ending of Beauty and the Beast is such a let-down. I need to rewatch It's a Wonderful life. I've only seen it once and I know I was too "hip" and more than a bit cynical then. Films don't change, but we do.
I wish that I had seen more, but I haven't.
No worries. I'm sure we'll have another good fight sooner or later.
Benjamin Button still sucks.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
February Recap
15 Features
Next Day Air (Boom)
Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton)
The Bad Lieutenant Port of Call: New Orleans (Herzog)
Act of God (Baichwal)
The Ace of Hearts (Worsley)
Hot Water (Taylor/Newmeyer)
Sleep Dealer (Rivera)
My Favorite Year (Benjamin)
Bang the Drum Slowly (Hancock)
Shutter Island (Scorsese)
Cold Souls (Barthes)
Crazy Heart (Cooper)
Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)
Labyrinth (Henson)
Inside the Labyrinth (Saunders)
13 Shorts
Rapunzel (Harryhausen)
Act of God (Greenaway)
The Flag (Maude)
Puss Gets the Boot (Hanna/Barbera)
The Midnight Snack (Hanna/Barbera)
The Night Before (Hanna/Barbera)
Fraidy Cat (Hanna/Barbera)
Dog Trouble (Hanna/Barbera)
Puss N' Toots (Hanna/Barbera)
Let's Sing With Popeye (Fleischer)
Little Swee' Pea (Fleischer)
Me Feelins Is Hurt (Fleischer)
Me Musical Nephews (Kneitel)
6 TV Episodes
Fraggle Rock - Let the Water Run
Lost - 4 episodes
Three Sheets - Poland
Next Day Air (Boom)
Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton)
The Bad Lieutenant Port of Call: New Orleans (Herzog)
Act of God (Baichwal)
The Ace of Hearts (Worsley)
Hot Water (Taylor/Newmeyer)
Sleep Dealer (Rivera)
My Favorite Year (Benjamin)
Bang the Drum Slowly (Hancock)
Shutter Island (Scorsese)
Cold Souls (Barthes)
Crazy Heart (Cooper)
Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)
Labyrinth (Henson)
Inside the Labyrinth (Saunders)
13 Shorts
Rapunzel (Harryhausen)
Act of God (Greenaway)
The Flag (Maude)
Puss Gets the Boot (Hanna/Barbera)
The Midnight Snack (Hanna/Barbera)
The Night Before (Hanna/Barbera)
Fraidy Cat (Hanna/Barbera)
Dog Trouble (Hanna/Barbera)
Puss N' Toots (Hanna/Barbera)
Let's Sing With Popeye (Fleischer)
Little Swee' Pea (Fleischer)
Me Feelins Is Hurt (Fleischer)
Me Musical Nephews (Kneitel)
6 TV Episodes
Fraggle Rock - Let the Water Run
Lost - 4 episodes
Three Sheets - Poland
Saturday, February 27, 2010
February Finished
For the first time there was a stir of feeling, a hint of motivation. The tip of a pallid tongue licked hungrily around the pale lips. "I want my soul."
-Fritz Leiber, from Conjure Wife
Cold Souls is a big disappointment. It especially fails seen in the light of Leiber's Conjure Wife, which I read a few weeks ago. Leiber's description of a soulless body is unsettling, as these things probably should be. Barthes's film, in comparison, is just one long weak joke, never really realizing what an outrageously scary subject she is trying to tackle.
Inside the Labyrinth is an awe-inspiring look at the making of Labyrinth. The mid-80s were the very height of creature effects and Henson and company were among the very best.
Hour of the Wolf might be my favorite Bergman film. In it, Bergman explicitly externalizes the demons that he has previously only allowed to be seen and heard in fleeting glances and strained dialogue.
I'm having a hard time feeling motivated to write more.
Briefly, one major connection between Shutter Island and various Bergman pictures is the very obvious one of all of the action being isolated to an island. The tormented "mentally insane" man is isolated from other human beings in his head; this distance and isolation are manifest visually by the concrete physical metaphor of an island.
I started my Shutter Island post with a poem from Songs of Experience because the film itself references Blake via a print on the office wall. I can't remember what else was on the wall, but the Blake was obvious. I think one of the characters actually takes it off the wall at one point.
The visual references and allusions are certainly rich in Shutter Island. In this aspect especially, Shutter Island shares a lot of commonality with Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Both directors live and breathe film. Filmmakers like Bergman or Tarkovsky made films as the best way of expressing themselves. Both tended to reference other forms of art, especially music and (more in Tarkovsky's case) painting. Filmmakers like Scorcese and Tarantino (each following the lead of the French New Wave) make films as an act of film criticism (which is not to say that they are not also expressing themselves). They will sometimes reference and incorporate other forms of art (each has a sense of timing informed by pop music), but, at heart, they're both primarily film critics. Film nerds. Absolute cinema addicts. The best kind. The kind who can only make sense of other films by making their own response films.
What's amazing about these two specific visually complex films is how immensely popular they are with big audiences. Why do audiences flock to what are essentially film nerd treatises? Obviously, it's because both films are also a lot of fun.
But, yeah, many critics are scared of this or something. Inglourious Basterds has gotten a better critical respoonse than Shutter Island, but I think a lot of that might be bandwagon hopping. The initial reviews out of Cannes and upon its opening here in the States was very mixed to say the least. I think you may be right, Brandon, that even though Shutter Island is being largely critically reviled right now, it will be vindicated in good time.
-Fritz Leiber, from Conjure Wife
Cold Souls is a big disappointment. It especially fails seen in the light of Leiber's Conjure Wife, which I read a few weeks ago. Leiber's description of a soulless body is unsettling, as these things probably should be. Barthes's film, in comparison, is just one long weak joke, never really realizing what an outrageously scary subject she is trying to tackle.
Inside the Labyrinth is an awe-inspiring look at the making of Labyrinth. The mid-80s were the very height of creature effects and Henson and company were among the very best.
Hour of the Wolf might be my favorite Bergman film. In it, Bergman explicitly externalizes the demons that he has previously only allowed to be seen and heard in fleeting glances and strained dialogue.
I'm having a hard time feeling motivated to write more.
Briefly, one major connection between Shutter Island and various Bergman pictures is the very obvious one of all of the action being isolated to an island. The tormented "mentally insane" man is isolated from other human beings in his head; this distance and isolation are manifest visually by the concrete physical metaphor of an island.
I started my Shutter Island post with a poem from Songs of Experience because the film itself references Blake via a print on the office wall. I can't remember what else was on the wall, but the Blake was obvious. I think one of the characters actually takes it off the wall at one point.
The visual references and allusions are certainly rich in Shutter Island. In this aspect especially, Shutter Island shares a lot of commonality with Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Both directors live and breathe film. Filmmakers like Bergman or Tarkovsky made films as the best way of expressing themselves. Both tended to reference other forms of art, especially music and (more in Tarkovsky's case) painting. Filmmakers like Scorcese and Tarantino (each following the lead of the French New Wave) make films as an act of film criticism (which is not to say that they are not also expressing themselves). They will sometimes reference and incorporate other forms of art (each has a sense of timing informed by pop music), but, at heart, they're both primarily film critics. Film nerds. Absolute cinema addicts. The best kind. The kind who can only make sense of other films by making their own response films.
What's amazing about these two specific visually complex films is how immensely popular they are with big audiences. Why do audiences flock to what are essentially film nerd treatises? Obviously, it's because both films are also a lot of fun.
But, yeah, many critics are scared of this or something. Inglourious Basterds has gotten a better critical respoonse than Shutter Island, but I think a lot of that might be bandwagon hopping. The initial reviews out of Cannes and upon its opening here in the States was very mixed to say the least. I think you may be right, Brandon, that even though Shutter Island is being largely critically reviled right now, it will be vindicated in good time.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Finishing February
Puss N' Toots is a pretty average Tom & Jerry short. With its romantic competitions, it was fun to watch a couple of days after Valentine's day.
The girls and I started watching Popeye shorts. We're all fans of the Segar Thimble Theatre/Popeye newspaper strip so I was hesitant to watch these, but I should have never doubted Fleischer studios. Also, Segar gave his approval to these cartoons. I grew up having seen a lot of these, but don't remember much except the theme and iconic spinach eating (which isn't in the strip!).
Let's Sing With Popeye is a fun follow the bouncy ball session to learn the theme song.
Little Swee' Pea made me cry. Seriously. Funny. When the alligator starts rubbing Popeye's belly, I lost it. At least I retained control of my bladder and bowels. Popeye brings Swee' Pea to the zoo and plays rough with the animals, always a few steps away from runaway Swee' Pea.
Me Feelins Is Hurt sees Popeye mixing it up out on the range, exchanging his sailor cap for a saddle.
Me Musical Nephews is probably Mildred's favorite. Popeye's nephews make a lot of noise while he's trying to sleep. It ends in a nice "meta" moment in which Popeye takes himself "outside" of the frame.
The Old Spice "I'm on a horse" reveal is Abby's favorite moving image moment of the year so far.
Episode four of Lost is only decent. I'm tired of the whole Shepherd without a flock business. Like Sawyer, I'm ready to be done with it all. But, of course, I'll keep watching.
Three Sheets is a discontinued TV show that my friend Mike recommended to me. While I was on the Island in November, I grabbed some torrents. Only now have I begun watching some episodes. It's a lot of fun learning about international drinking habits.
Labyrinth is Annie's favorite movie. The girls watch Nausicaa and Labyrinth each about a half a dozen times a year. They'd watch 'em once a week at least if I let them. Usually, when I let the girls watch these, I'll sit with them for about 20-405 minutes, then do something else (or fall asleep). The other night, I sat through all of Labyrinth. Okay, I fell asleep at the end, but I later finished it in my own. Not counting the Muppets, this is Jim Henson's greatest achievement. I still love it.
Abby and I went out on a rare date and saw Crazy Heart. It's good even if it is a little bit too much by-the-book. It all works because everyone involved so obviously believes in the story being told. But, what is Colin Farrell doing here?
I've watched Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen) and will write about it and a little more on Shutter Island soon.
The girls and I started watching Popeye shorts. We're all fans of the Segar Thimble Theatre/Popeye newspaper strip so I was hesitant to watch these, but I should have never doubted Fleischer studios. Also, Segar gave his approval to these cartoons. I grew up having seen a lot of these, but don't remember much except the theme and iconic spinach eating (which isn't in the strip!).
Let's Sing With Popeye is a fun follow the bouncy ball session to learn the theme song.
Little Swee' Pea made me cry. Seriously. Funny. When the alligator starts rubbing Popeye's belly, I lost it. At least I retained control of my bladder and bowels. Popeye brings Swee' Pea to the zoo and plays rough with the animals, always a few steps away from runaway Swee' Pea.
Me Feelins Is Hurt sees Popeye mixing it up out on the range, exchanging his sailor cap for a saddle.
Me Musical Nephews is probably Mildred's favorite. Popeye's nephews make a lot of noise while he's trying to sleep. It ends in a nice "meta" moment in which Popeye takes himself "outside" of the frame.
The Old Spice "I'm on a horse" reveal is Abby's favorite moving image moment of the year so far.
Episode four of Lost is only decent. I'm tired of the whole Shepherd without a flock business. Like Sawyer, I'm ready to be done with it all. But, of course, I'll keep watching.
Three Sheets is a discontinued TV show that my friend Mike recommended to me. While I was on the Island in November, I grabbed some torrents. Only now have I begun watching some episodes. It's a lot of fun learning about international drinking habits.
Labyrinth is Annie's favorite movie. The girls watch Nausicaa and Labyrinth each about a half a dozen times a year. They'd watch 'em once a week at least if I let them. Usually, when I let the girls watch these, I'll sit with them for about 20-405 minutes, then do something else (or fall asleep). The other night, I sat through all of Labyrinth. Okay, I fell asleep at the end, but I later finished it in my own. Not counting the Muppets, this is Jim Henson's greatest achievement. I still love it.
Abby and I went out on a rare date and saw Crazy Heart. It's good even if it is a little bit too much by-the-book. It all works because everyone involved so obviously believes in the story being told. But, what is Colin Farrell doing here?
I've watched Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen) and will write about it and a little more on Shutter Island soon.
Monday, February 22, 2010
God is a Spider
The Voice of the Ancient Bard
Youth of delight come hither:
And see the opening morn,
Image of truth new born.
Doubt is fled & clouds of reason.
Dark disputes & artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze,
Tangled roots perplex her ways,
How many have fallen there!
They stumble over bones of the dead;
And feel they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others when they should be led.
-William Blake
The best moment in Shutter Island is when Max von Sydow (!) turns to Leonardo DiCaprio and asks, "Do you believe in God?"
There's really no reason for von Sydow to say this in terms of Shutter Island's plot and nothing in the immediate context suggests its being said. It may be in the novel, but I don't remember it. I believe it's there simply to evoke Bergman.
I really loved seeing von Sydow in this. Shutter Island would make a great double feature with Through a Glass Darkly. Maybe I'm seeing Bergman everywhere, but Shutter Island plays out like pulp Bergman.
Other than that, my enjoyment was weakened by familiarity with the source text. A lot of the joy of the story is being taken along for a dark ride. The adaptation is as faithful as these things get. I'm sure you know it by now if you've been reading lots of reviews. SPOILER. This story depends on a twist at the end. Not knowing that allows for suspension of disbelief. Knowing that there is a twist, what the twist is, and when it's coming makes lots of the premise seem silly. On the positive side, it also allows one to enjoy subtle and not so subtle acting choices early on that play into the end. I liked Ruffalo here.
There is earned emotion at the end; I think that Scorsese presents every dream/memory/hallucination just right and it pays off. This is quite the accomplishment in the current wasteland of trite flashbacks.
I'm not sure if Justin McDonald made the final cut. My best guess is that that's his body glimpsed out in the street through a window while a Nazi officer is struggling to die inside. I'll try to get in touch with him and find out.
Finally, seriously, Bergman. I listened to Edelstein's negative review on Fresh Air and he lists certain noir films that are visually referenced. I need to rewatch Shutter Island more closely, but I'm sure Through a Glass Darkly is there. There's a reference to insects crawling in a skull (spiders aren't insects. Yes they are. No they are not. Yes they are. I don't care. Scary little creatures that are terrible to look at) for goodness' sake. It's there in the script. I'd guess it's there visually somewhere.
Probably not. But, I want to believe so.
God is a Spider.
-----------------
I wrote all of the above Saturday. Today is Monday and, Brandon, I just read your review this morning. Good stuff. We're definitely on the same page here. I'm also glad to hear that you took my advice. I had been afraid that too many reviews might have given you too many spoilers.
Did you get my phone message Friday night?
The last thing I wanted to say is that I enjoyed being out in a crowd. This is the first time in a long time that I've been to an opening night show. Watching the trailer for Sorcerer's Apprentice was awesome because sharing a hearty guffaw with about a dozen other persons when Nicholas Cage is revealed as the action hero... That is priceless.
Youth of delight come hither:
And see the opening morn,
Image of truth new born.
Doubt is fled & clouds of reason.
Dark disputes & artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze,
Tangled roots perplex her ways,
How many have fallen there!
They stumble over bones of the dead;
And feel they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others when they should be led.
-William Blake
The best moment in Shutter Island is when Max von Sydow (!) turns to Leonardo DiCaprio and asks, "Do you believe in God?"
There's really no reason for von Sydow to say this in terms of Shutter Island's plot and nothing in the immediate context suggests its being said. It may be in the novel, but I don't remember it. I believe it's there simply to evoke Bergman.
I really loved seeing von Sydow in this. Shutter Island would make a great double feature with Through a Glass Darkly. Maybe I'm seeing Bergman everywhere, but Shutter Island plays out like pulp Bergman.
Other than that, my enjoyment was weakened by familiarity with the source text. A lot of the joy of the story is being taken along for a dark ride. The adaptation is as faithful as these things get. I'm sure you know it by now if you've been reading lots of reviews. SPOILER. This story depends on a twist at the end. Not knowing that allows for suspension of disbelief. Knowing that there is a twist, what the twist is, and when it's coming makes lots of the premise seem silly. On the positive side, it also allows one to enjoy subtle and not so subtle acting choices early on that play into the end. I liked Ruffalo here.
There is earned emotion at the end; I think that Scorsese presents every dream/memory/hallucination just right and it pays off. This is quite the accomplishment in the current wasteland of trite flashbacks.
I'm not sure if Justin McDonald made the final cut. My best guess is that that's his body glimpsed out in the street through a window while a Nazi officer is struggling to die inside. I'll try to get in touch with him and find out.
Finally, seriously, Bergman. I listened to Edelstein's negative review on Fresh Air and he lists certain noir films that are visually referenced. I need to rewatch Shutter Island more closely, but I'm sure Through a Glass Darkly is there. There's a reference to insects crawling in a skull (spiders aren't insects. Yes they are. No they are not. Yes they are. I don't care. Scary little creatures that are terrible to look at) for goodness' sake. It's there in the script. I'd guess it's there visually somewhere.
Probably not. But, I want to believe so.
God is a Spider.
-----------------
I wrote all of the above Saturday. Today is Monday and, Brandon, I just read your review this morning. Good stuff. We're definitely on the same page here. I'm also glad to hear that you took my advice. I had been afraid that too many reviews might have given you too many spoilers.
Did you get my phone message Friday night?
The last thing I wanted to say is that I enjoyed being out in a crowd. This is the first time in a long time that I've been to an opening night show. Watching the trailer for Sorcerer's Apprentice was awesome because sharing a hearty guffaw with about a dozen other persons when Nicholas Cage is revealed as the action hero... That is priceless.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Conversations 2010 #6
Conversations 2010 #6
Adrienne, hi.
Jason,
You need to check out Brandon's horror posts from last year...
http://poopnoises.blogspot.com/2009/10/we-accept-you-john-owen-we-accept-you.html
http://poopnoises.blogspot.com/2009/10/come-play-with-us-johnny-forsaken.html
You should also definitely watch TimeCrimes. There's not much cheese to be found in it, but I don't think you'll mind. It reminds me more than anything of a Hitchcock thriller. And I do mean that as high praise. The first half especially is quite suspenseful. It is also impressively structured both visually and narratively. There's even a strange "wrong man" idea running through the film.
As far as Herzog goes, check out Aguirre: the Wrath of God. I've seen a decent amount of his films and this one is still my favorite.
Wolfman.
Brandon, I don't feel like we've won. I'm actually really disappointed that you were disappointed with The Wolfman. I was skeptical, but I was hoping that I was wrong and that you'd come back from your viewing ready to tear my doubts apart like a sweet child's throat.
We all lost this time. You just bore the brunt of it for the rest of us.
I've only seen 5/12 of your '59 list. Of those five, I'd rank them pretty much the same as you do.
1) Shadows
2) North by Northwest
3) Breathless
4) Some Like it Hot
5) Sleeping Beauty
We won't talk about FBI Story. :)
I own copies of Rio Bravo and Ride Lonesome, but I haven't seen either one. I regret not seeing Pickpocket most of all, but every film on the list is one I'd like to see eventually. Do you have a copy of the Ford film?
I need to get your DVDs back to you so we can do another swap. I still need to watch Ikiru and Vertigo. I've been waiting for nights when Abby and I are both awake enough and not doing something else so we can watch those together since she expressed interest in both films.
Johnny Guitar is great. I think it was Rivette who wrote that you need to love Hawks and Ray. If you prefer one and dislike the other, that's maybe forgivable. If you dislike them both, you dislike cinema itself.
I envy you having seen Leave Her to Heaven. I've seen that Scorcese program three times now (the last time being with you during the snowstorm) and that clip does stand out in my mind most vividly among the rest.
We should get together and watch it again. Set up some sort of annual Personal Journey Through American Movies With Martin Scorcese party. I wonder if we could get permission for a free public screening of the entire thing at that place Andy runs.
I do like Scorcese. Gangs of New York is pretty great. The Departed is good enough. And I know that it's a crime that I haven't seen The Aviator.
Not having Internet access at home and not using work computers too often anymore, I find that I haven't read many current reviews at all lately. I keep up with a handful of film blogs, but I'm usually behind on reading those, too. I used to follow lots of links from Hudson, but that's just too hard to do now on my iPod. I miss tabbed browsing.
I had no idea how Shutter Island is being received until I heard it from you.
I don't know what to think of it all. Based on Lehane's source material, I've thought that the film would do well and all of the trailers have looked promising. It was pretty obvious, though, that the delays meant that the studio didn't believe in the final product. Lehane adaptations aren't exactly a sure money-maker. Mystic River was a critical and popular success. Gone Baby Gone is just as good, if not better in some ways, yet it was mostly ignored by the masses and received a so-so critical response. Moreso than those two works, Shutter Island just doesn't fit neatly anywhere so it's hard to market and hard to grasp. I'm assuming that it was really difficult to film as well.
I'm still really excited about seeing it and might go tonight.
As for your aughts list...
I need to see A History of Violence.
I'm glad that you liked A Christmas Tale so much.
For fun, here's Desplechin's Top 10 of the Decade, from the Film Comment poll:
The Wire (TV)
Last Days
The Bourne Ultimatum
Private Fears in Public Places
The Royal Tannenbaums
Still Life
The Secret of the Grain
Kill Bill Vol. II
Million Dollar Baby
Collateral
Linklater's Sunrise/Sunset films have been high on my to-see list for a while now. Have you seen Fast Food Nation? That's another Linklater that I missed that I wish I hadn't.
I like Catch Me if You Can, but I might prefer The Terminal as my favorite Spielberg of the decade. I know I'm in a small minority with this opinion. I do need to check out both A.I. and Minority Report again. A.I. especially seems to have a lot of champions and renewed interest based in large part on Rosenbaum's steadfast admiration of it.
I fell asleep during Old Joy. I'm a dope.
The only film I know nothing at all about is Crimson Gold. I know I've seen that title, but I know nothing.
Finally, I have seen a few things.
Wednesday night, I ended up unexpectedly sitting with a good guy in the hospital. Fortunately, he was doing well and thought that watching movies on TCM was a great idea. Unfortunately, TCM was playing crap. My Favorite Year is remarkably unfunny. Bang the Drum Slowly doesn't really work as a baseball movie or a buddy movie or man dying while everyone else but him talks a lot movie or whatever else it is trying to be.
At home, Abby and I are up-to-date with Lost's final season. The "flash-parallels" are interesting after so many flashbacks and flashforwards. Where it's all headed is as much a mystery as ever, but I really hope that it all involves Hurley getting more and more stuff to do. Other characters have their moments. Hurley is the only character who has remained consistently engaging after all this time. I'm in this series to the end thanks to him.
My friend Spike's last post says more about Lost this season better than I could while saying less about Lost than I just did. Find it here: http://spikedunn.blogspot.com/2010/02/hit-with-rock-repeatedly.html
While I'm writing about Spike, I need to let him know that I've adopted him as my guru through the Lenten season.
"Every day for the rest of your life. That is a large statement. Well, I hope it is. No more smokes. Every day. Exercise. Every day. Sleep enough. Every day. Write. Every day. Sit. Every day. There are a lot of Every Days left. I hope. There is falsehood in the dictum to live every day as your last. Truth as well, but falsehood dominates. There are a lot more Every Days than there are Last Days."
There are two more items that I'll add to my personal list.
Pray the Psalms. Every day. Live the Story. Every day.
Live the story is personal shorthand for a lot of things, but at its core it means "walk in the spirit."
Love. Joy. Peace. Longsuffering. Gentleness. Goodness. Faith. Meekness. Temperance.
Against such there is no law.
Adrienne, hi.
Jason,
You need to check out Brandon's horror posts from last year...
http://poopnoises.blogspot.com/2009/10/we-accept-you-john-owen-we-accept-you.html
http://poopnoises.blogspot.com/2009/10/come-play-with-us-johnny-forsaken.html
You should also definitely watch TimeCrimes. There's not much cheese to be found in it, but I don't think you'll mind. It reminds me more than anything of a Hitchcock thriller. And I do mean that as high praise. The first half especially is quite suspenseful. It is also impressively structured both visually and narratively. There's even a strange "wrong man" idea running through the film.
As far as Herzog goes, check out Aguirre: the Wrath of God. I've seen a decent amount of his films and this one is still my favorite.
Wolfman.
Brandon, I don't feel like we've won. I'm actually really disappointed that you were disappointed with The Wolfman. I was skeptical, but I was hoping that I was wrong and that you'd come back from your viewing ready to tear my doubts apart like a sweet child's throat.
We all lost this time. You just bore the brunt of it for the rest of us.
I've only seen 5/12 of your '59 list. Of those five, I'd rank them pretty much the same as you do.
1) Shadows
2) North by Northwest
3) Breathless
4) Some Like it Hot
5) Sleeping Beauty
We won't talk about FBI Story. :)
I own copies of Rio Bravo and Ride Lonesome, but I haven't seen either one. I regret not seeing Pickpocket most of all, but every film on the list is one I'd like to see eventually. Do you have a copy of the Ford film?
I need to get your DVDs back to you so we can do another swap. I still need to watch Ikiru and Vertigo. I've been waiting for nights when Abby and I are both awake enough and not doing something else so we can watch those together since she expressed interest in both films.
Johnny Guitar is great. I think it was Rivette who wrote that you need to love Hawks and Ray. If you prefer one and dislike the other, that's maybe forgivable. If you dislike them both, you dislike cinema itself.
I envy you having seen Leave Her to Heaven. I've seen that Scorcese program three times now (the last time being with you during the snowstorm) and that clip does stand out in my mind most vividly among the rest.
We should get together and watch it again. Set up some sort of annual Personal Journey Through American Movies With Martin Scorcese party. I wonder if we could get permission for a free public screening of the entire thing at that place Andy runs.
I do like Scorcese. Gangs of New York is pretty great. The Departed is good enough. And I know that it's a crime that I haven't seen The Aviator.
Not having Internet access at home and not using work computers too often anymore, I find that I haven't read many current reviews at all lately. I keep up with a handful of film blogs, but I'm usually behind on reading those, too. I used to follow lots of links from Hudson, but that's just too hard to do now on my iPod. I miss tabbed browsing.
I had no idea how Shutter Island is being received until I heard it from you.
I don't know what to think of it all. Based on Lehane's source material, I've thought that the film would do well and all of the trailers have looked promising. It was pretty obvious, though, that the delays meant that the studio didn't believe in the final product. Lehane adaptations aren't exactly a sure money-maker. Mystic River was a critical and popular success. Gone Baby Gone is just as good, if not better in some ways, yet it was mostly ignored by the masses and received a so-so critical response. Moreso than those two works, Shutter Island just doesn't fit neatly anywhere so it's hard to market and hard to grasp. I'm assuming that it was really difficult to film as well.
I'm still really excited about seeing it and might go tonight.
As for your aughts list...
I need to see A History of Violence.
I'm glad that you liked A Christmas Tale so much.
For fun, here's Desplechin's Top 10 of the Decade, from the Film Comment poll:
The Wire (TV)
Last Days
The Bourne Ultimatum
Private Fears in Public Places
The Royal Tannenbaums
Still Life
The Secret of the Grain
Kill Bill Vol. II
Million Dollar Baby
Collateral
Linklater's Sunrise/Sunset films have been high on my to-see list for a while now. Have you seen Fast Food Nation? That's another Linklater that I missed that I wish I hadn't.
I like Catch Me if You Can, but I might prefer The Terminal as my favorite Spielberg of the decade. I know I'm in a small minority with this opinion. I do need to check out both A.I. and Minority Report again. A.I. especially seems to have a lot of champions and renewed interest based in large part on Rosenbaum's steadfast admiration of it.
I fell asleep during Old Joy. I'm a dope.
The only film I know nothing at all about is Crimson Gold. I know I've seen that title, but I know nothing.
Finally, I have seen a few things.
Wednesday night, I ended up unexpectedly sitting with a good guy in the hospital. Fortunately, he was doing well and thought that watching movies on TCM was a great idea. Unfortunately, TCM was playing crap. My Favorite Year is remarkably unfunny. Bang the Drum Slowly doesn't really work as a baseball movie or a buddy movie or man dying while everyone else but him talks a lot movie or whatever else it is trying to be.
At home, Abby and I are up-to-date with Lost's final season. The "flash-parallels" are interesting after so many flashbacks and flashforwards. Where it's all headed is as much a mystery as ever, but I really hope that it all involves Hurley getting more and more stuff to do. Other characters have their moments. Hurley is the only character who has remained consistently engaging after all this time. I'm in this series to the end thanks to him.
My friend Spike's last post says more about Lost this season better than I could while saying less about Lost than I just did. Find it here: http://spikedunn.blogspot.com/2010/02/hit-with-rock-repeatedly.html
While I'm writing about Spike, I need to let him know that I've adopted him as my guru through the Lenten season.
"Every day for the rest of your life. That is a large statement. Well, I hope it is. No more smokes. Every day. Exercise. Every day. Sleep enough. Every day. Write. Every day. Sit. Every day. There are a lot of Every Days left. I hope. There is falsehood in the dictum to live every day as your last. Truth as well, but falsehood dominates. There are a lot more Every Days than there are Last Days."
There are two more items that I'll add to my personal list.
Pray the Psalms. Every day. Live the Story. Every day.
Live the story is personal shorthand for a lot of things, but at its core it means "walk in the spirit."
Love. Joy. Peace. Longsuffering. Gentleness. Goodness. Faith. Meekness. Temperance.
Against such there is no law.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Ashes ashes we all fall down
Confession, or Why I Finally Cancelled Netflix.
In January, I spent a little less than $10 on DVDs... Pulse, Ju-on, and Synechdoche, New York, all used. The first two are horror films I haven't seen. The third is a horror film I have seen and survived to appreciate.
Relatively speaking, $10 is a forgivable trifle.
In February, I've already spent $200 on DVDs. That's bad. Stupid bad. Nearly unforgivable bad.
At least I have an understanding and forgiving wife.
Here's how my madness breaks down...
$35
I'm in Walmart at the beginning of last week with the girls and feel like splurging a bit since I'm happy about the new baby.
Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection Vol. 2
Clint Eastwood Western Icon Collection (High Plains Drifter, Joe Kidd, and Two Mules for Sister Sara)
Clint Eastwood Definitive Collection (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
$7.99
It's the end of the week. I get out of tractor supply in Vestal and think that it'll be harmless to check for movies at Hollywood Video.
Moon
$19.96
It's the same day at the end of the week and I'm in a really bad mood from being out shopping for too long. In a fit of impotent rage in Wegmans, I think to myself, "I know how I'll get back at the world. I'll piss everyone off by buying movies out of this $4.99 bin."
The Misfits
Wild Bill
A Prayer Before Dying
The Princess and the Pirate
At this point, I'm already feeling really guilty about how irresponsible I've been in my spending. So, of course, things only get worse.
$125
This past Sunday, I made the worst decision of all. I went into a Hollywood Video in Ithaca (the one by the mall) that is going out of business. All of their DVDs are on sale, including their entire foreign section that is crammed full of Criterion titles. As sick as I am with myself for what I spent, I have to confess that it was agonizing leaving so many great titles on the shelf. I walked away with 15 discs. I could have easily doubled that amount with films that are just as good as the ones I chose. All films were 3 for $25. Compared to retail Criterion prices, that's better than a buy 1, get 1 free sale. It's like a buy 1, get 2 free sale.
Mouchette (Bresson)
L'argent (Bresson)
Vampyr (Dreyer)
The Bad Sleep Well (Kurosawa)
High and Low (Kurosawa)
Dodes'ka-den (Kurosawa)
Le deuxieme souffle (Melville)
Grand Illusion (Renoir)
La bete humaine (Renoir)
Pauline at the Beach (Rohmer)
The Lady and the Duke (Rohmer)
Il generale della rovere (Rossellini)
La jetee/Sans soleil (Marker)
Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut)
The Fallen Idol (Reed)
What's really bad is that I'm already thinking about when I can get back there to see if the prices have dropped any further. But, then I'm done. Really. Okay, I need to stay away until the store closes.
And so I've cancelled Netflix.
Not counting the Tom & Jerry collection, I bought 26 DVDs. Throwing in the 3 from January, that's 29. Let's call it 30.
I made up a few deals for myself to get Netflix back, but all of them seem unfairly skewed in my favor.
So I've made a harder list comprised of two Herculean tasks.
I can get Netflix back if...
- I watch all of the unwatched DVDs in my collection (which will probably take at least a year to do)
-or-
- I lose 50 lbs (nothing else has motivated me; maybe new movies can)
That's it. Those are the conditions. Goodbye Netflix.
In January, I spent a little less than $10 on DVDs... Pulse, Ju-on, and Synechdoche, New York, all used. The first two are horror films I haven't seen. The third is a horror film I have seen and survived to appreciate.
Relatively speaking, $10 is a forgivable trifle.
In February, I've already spent $200 on DVDs. That's bad. Stupid bad. Nearly unforgivable bad.
At least I have an understanding and forgiving wife.
Here's how my madness breaks down...
$35
I'm in Walmart at the beginning of last week with the girls and feel like splurging a bit since I'm happy about the new baby.
Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection Vol. 2
Clint Eastwood Western Icon Collection (High Plains Drifter, Joe Kidd, and Two Mules for Sister Sara)
Clint Eastwood Definitive Collection (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
$7.99
It's the end of the week. I get out of tractor supply in Vestal and think that it'll be harmless to check for movies at Hollywood Video.
Moon
$19.96
It's the same day at the end of the week and I'm in a really bad mood from being out shopping for too long. In a fit of impotent rage in Wegmans, I think to myself, "I know how I'll get back at the world. I'll piss everyone off by buying movies out of this $4.99 bin."
The Misfits
Wild Bill
A Prayer Before Dying
The Princess and the Pirate
At this point, I'm already feeling really guilty about how irresponsible I've been in my spending. So, of course, things only get worse.
$125
This past Sunday, I made the worst decision of all. I went into a Hollywood Video in Ithaca (the one by the mall) that is going out of business. All of their DVDs are on sale, including their entire foreign section that is crammed full of Criterion titles. As sick as I am with myself for what I spent, I have to confess that it was agonizing leaving so many great titles on the shelf. I walked away with 15 discs. I could have easily doubled that amount with films that are just as good as the ones I chose. All films were 3 for $25. Compared to retail Criterion prices, that's better than a buy 1, get 1 free sale. It's like a buy 1, get 2 free sale.
Mouchette (Bresson)
L'argent (Bresson)
Vampyr (Dreyer)
The Bad Sleep Well (Kurosawa)
High and Low (Kurosawa)
Dodes'ka-den (Kurosawa)
Le deuxieme souffle (Melville)
Grand Illusion (Renoir)
La bete humaine (Renoir)
Pauline at the Beach (Rohmer)
The Lady and the Duke (Rohmer)
Il generale della rovere (Rossellini)
La jetee/Sans soleil (Marker)
Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut)
The Fallen Idol (Reed)
What's really bad is that I'm already thinking about when I can get back there to see if the prices have dropped any further. But, then I'm done. Really. Okay, I need to stay away until the store closes.
And so I've cancelled Netflix.
Not counting the Tom & Jerry collection, I bought 26 DVDs. Throwing in the 3 from January, that's 29. Let's call it 30.
I made up a few deals for myself to get Netflix back, but all of them seem unfairly skewed in my favor.
So I've made a harder list comprised of two Herculean tasks.
I can get Netflix back if...
- I watch all of the unwatched DVDs in my collection (which will probably take at least a year to do)
-or-
- I lose 50 lbs (nothing else has motivated me; maybe new movies can)
That's it. Those are the conditions. Goodbye Netflix.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Waking up at 6am
It is the people we know best who can, on rare occasions, seem most unreal to us. For a moment the familiar face registers as merely an arbitrary arrangement of colored surfaces, without even the shadowy personality with which we invest a strange face glimpsed in the street.
-Fritz Leiber, from Conjure Wife
Under different circumstances, I might be really harsh toward Sleep Dealer. As it is, I'm in an unbearably forgiving mood and grant the film a full pardon for its multitude of transgressions.
Besides the near-future Mexican setting, we've seen it all before. Country boy in a big city. Woman taking advantage of person falls in love with same person. Cozy bums 'round the campfire. Fuzzy-bordered memory sequences. Body implants that allow direct neurological connection to the Web and to others. So many worn-out types and tropes.
Nevertheless, Sleep Dealer shines.
Rivera is no Bergman, but he's asking the same fundamental questions that Bergman repeatedly asks. Who am I? Who are you? How can two individuals know one another? Why don't Americans like Mexicans?
It may be the protagonist's smile alone that kept me involved. I'm not sure. But I bought it all and really liked every moment. Having willfully submitted to the schmaltz, the emotional payoff at the end was extremely satisfying because I was invested in the character and this (barely) believable near future.
In fact, I was feeling so good that I had a Fraggle Rock tune jump into my head. Of course, later in the afternoon (I was up really early watching Sleep Dealer), I watched the Fraggle Rock episode "Let the Water Run" with my girls just to celebrate. It's an okay episode; nothing special. Except, yeah, it feels really good when the water starts running again. Feel the water run.
I recommend Sleep Dealer. I'm hoping that Rivera's next feature delivers on the promise and is twice as good.
There's been a nice little run lately of really decent relatively low-budget science fiction. Moon. Timecrimes. Visioneers. Sleep Dealer. I'm watching Cold Souls tomorrow night. District 9 fits here if I'm feeling generous. I'm sure there are plenty more that I'm missing. Film SF is still at least 40 years behind print SF, but signs of life continue to emerge. Here's to a bright future.
-Fritz Leiber, from Conjure Wife
Under different circumstances, I might be really harsh toward Sleep Dealer. As it is, I'm in an unbearably forgiving mood and grant the film a full pardon for its multitude of transgressions.
Besides the near-future Mexican setting, we've seen it all before. Country boy in a big city. Woman taking advantage of person falls in love with same person. Cozy bums 'round the campfire. Fuzzy-bordered memory sequences. Body implants that allow direct neurological connection to the Web and to others. So many worn-out types and tropes.
Nevertheless, Sleep Dealer shines.
Rivera is no Bergman, but he's asking the same fundamental questions that Bergman repeatedly asks. Who am I? Who are you? How can two individuals know one another? Why don't Americans like Mexicans?
It may be the protagonist's smile alone that kept me involved. I'm not sure. But I bought it all and really liked every moment. Having willfully submitted to the schmaltz, the emotional payoff at the end was extremely satisfying because I was invested in the character and this (barely) believable near future.
In fact, I was feeling so good that I had a Fraggle Rock tune jump into my head. Of course, later in the afternoon (I was up really early watching Sleep Dealer), I watched the Fraggle Rock episode "Let the Water Run" with my girls just to celebrate. It's an okay episode; nothing special. Except, yeah, it feels really good when the water starts running again. Feel the water run.
I recommend Sleep Dealer. I'm hoping that Rivera's next feature delivers on the promise and is twice as good.
There's been a nice little run lately of really decent relatively low-budget science fiction. Moon. Timecrimes. Visioneers. Sleep Dealer. I'm watching Cold Souls tomorrow night. District 9 fits here if I'm feeling generous. I'm sure there are plenty more that I'm missing. Film SF is still at least 40 years behind print SF, but signs of life continue to emerge. Here's to a bright future.
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