PRO:
The Strange M. Victor (Jean Gremillon, 1938)
My first Gremillon, and an amazing movie. He’s a first-class filmmaker: even extra-narrative shots contain remarkable background-foreground tension. He’s also a dramatist to rival the Dardennes, with daring and effective narrative ellipses, and a central character whose burden lies suspended between benevolence and guilt.
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Preston Sturges, 1944)
The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
Blood Relatives (Claude Chabrol, 1978)
8 Million Ways to Die (Hal Ashby, 1986)
Stands out like a sore thumb from Ashby’s filmography, but he’s a natural at the redemptive thriller: his trademark self-deprecating, hedonistic sense of humor inflects a rather sincere representation of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Andy Garcia’s laid-back, wise-cracking drug lord (“The white stuff? Isn’t that a movie about… astronauts, or something?”) is a perfect villain.
99 River St. (Phil Karlson, 1953)
Prelude (Michael Snow, 2000)
Fascinating: perplexing, yet graceful. Snow’s films are like a very skilled ongoing argument with Bazin, and this short is no exception.
Sex Is Comedy (Catherine Breillat, 2002)
A Life of Her Own (George Cukor, 1950)
pro:
Sarabande + Winter + Alaya (Nathaniel Dorsky, 1976-1987)
I mused during this screening that there’s perhaps no other director, avant-garde or no, so readily identifiable by looking at a single shot as Dorsky. (Tsai?) His intuitive method is constant and aggressive, especially in the later works: give the viewer complex visual information indicative of some connective relationship, but obscure just what that relationship is. I asked Dorsky if he considered this process unique, and he name-dropped The French Connection (!!), Shoah, Joseph Cornell, Warren Sonbert, Bruce Conner, the poems of John Ashbery, and perhaps most emphatically, Dziga Vertov, which made me wince, although Dorsky himself acknowledged that Vertov’s politics were unsatisfying. (Dorsky is generally a pretty brilliant speaker, by the way, and I think the real answer to my question, albeit unstated, is “Yes, I do.”) Anyhow, as much as I enjoy his films—and these ones are just about as gorgeous as Song and Solitude—I enjoy them so much on the basis of each individual shot that any kind of meaningful editing scheme tends to elude my comprehension.
Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)
Diane (Alan Clarke, 1975)
Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008)
After the somewhat vague, arty aloofness of Paranoid Park, I was surprised by the precise, unresolved tension between private and public spheres Van Sant derives from Milk’s campaigning methods, particularly his imploring for others to come out. Although GVS’s allegiances are clear, a surprising amount of energy is expended giving homophobes dignity and our hero crassness.
Night Train (Yinan Diao, 2007)
Beloved Enemy (Alan Clarke, 1981)
The most audaciously prosaic movie I've ever seen.
Age of Consent (Michael Powell, 1969)
Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1963)
A good movie that I can’t quite revere, and one of the more commercial exponents of the French New Wave, with a jazz-laden soundtrack and cross-cutting that uneasily treads the line (or perhaps intends to bridge the gap) between broad, comic effect and contemplation.
Sirens (John Duigan, 1994)
Moloch (Alexander Sokurov, 1999)
The Night of Truth (Fanta Regina Nacro, 2004)
Hotel Imperial (Mauritz Stiller, 1924)
Adua and Her Friends (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1960)
Allonsanfan (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 1973)
mixed:
A Tree in Tanjung Malim (Tan Chui Mui, 2005)
Tan is a pretty good director: she usually puts the camera in the right place, and clearly enjoys long takes in service of her material. A few scenes are promising: the iffy way characters express themselves is Bujalski-esque. Unfortunately, she occasionally breaks concentration on mode of expression, apparently trying to enter into some direct, Joe-esque communion with the audience. (E.g., the sing-off.)
The Seagull’s Laughter (Ágúst Guðmundsson, 2001)
The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
Martel’s compositional obliquity is omnipresent, as is an inscrutable relationship between narrative and performance. Some will say it’s beguiling and mysterious; I say that with a few faint exceptions, it’s unrewarding and deliberately unobservant.
The Southerner (Jean Renoir, 1945)
con:
The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
Ledger is the sole point of interest here; Nolan is pretty much a non-entity in terms of directing actors, emphasizing action in an interesting way, etc.
Changeling (Clint Eastwood, 2008)
Did the 1920s-era LAPD kill Clint’s cat or something? A promising movie in the first reel: perhaps a better director could have made a bit more out of making Jolie unsympathetically emotional, and the police surprisingly rational.
CON:
The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001)
Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005)
DNF:
Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008) [0:40]
As if I’d ever have finished this. That said, not as painful as I’d suspected—Luhrmann is many things, but pompous is not one of them, and while as far as tonally jarring goes he’s no Bong c. Memories of Murder, at least this doesn’t quite fit the traditional mold for these sort of projects.
Birdsong (Albert Serra, 2008) [0:10]
The beauty of Serra’s compositions is a hushed, abstracted, plastic thing that doesn’t seem worth trying to penetrate. On the bright side, I’m now more comfortable knowing that Serra is an asshole in person.
Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008) [0:10]
The Quarterly Balance (Krzysztof Zanussi, 1975) [0:45]
Baal (Alan Clarke, 1982) [0:40]
Clarke’s most overtly distanced movie, understandably suited to the Brecht material but lacking the vigor of his better work. Bowie’s deliberately bland “songs” are in keeping with a sense of muffled creativity in service of the play.
Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc. (George Landow [Owen Land], 1966) [0:02]
This is something like 5 minutes long, and still I could not finish it. Some kind of imperceptible shift in hue seems to occur along the filmstrip, which wasn’t quite pleasurable enough for me, I suppose. I may revisit Landow, as I’ve heard his other works are more dynamic. (Why is it that I have such an easy time with some a-g artists, e.g. Dorsky or Kyle Canterbury or Bruce Baillie, and such an impossible time with guys like Landow or Michael Robinson or Bruce Conner or, much of the time, Brakhage? Perhaps I’ll have to write my own history of avant-garde cinema one day…)
And as for literature...
PRO:
Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy, 1895) [2nd reading]
The Eternal Husband (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1873)
The Charterhouse of Parma (Stendhal, 1839)
Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy, 1874)
The Wings of the Dove (Henry James, 1902)
Late James, for me, is the literary equivalent of Akerman: rough going, and at times outright dislikeable, but astonishing anyway. One unfortunate extreme of James’s personality is blind adoration of social tact (i.e. unironically time and time again labeling composure "wonderful"), and the other is inconsistently employed narrative obscurity, in which the reader is called upon to dig through pronouns for clues. On the other hand, he’s totally adept at reshaping the reader’s moral perspective.
pro:
Joseph Andrews (Henry Fielding, 1742)
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
Scattered Notes on 2006/2008 Catch-Up, + Various Auteurist Excursions
Bled Number One (Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche, 2006)
Outsider from France adopts an attitude of casual resistance—“Do you not know how to pray?” “No, I don’t know how to pray,” he answers—but ultimately cracks yet again under the pressures of living in his homeland. Depiction of religious violence is electrifying: Ameur-Zaimeche doesn’t downplay threat or even victimization, but transforms the surrounding terror into a cacophony of conflicting impulses, rendering disunity monstrous. Le Dernier Maquis was so uninflected I couldn’t catch on, but then I was spectacularly disengaged during that screening—perhaps more on that someday.
Lucy (Henner Winckler, 2006)
My first encounter with Winckler, who seems assured and certainly immune to cheap pathos, even if this film leaves a rather vague, bland, slice-of-life taste. Maggy’s slight recessiveness is almost always interesting, and Winckler is good at blending cross-currents of conflict ((a), Maggy’s attempts to balance motherhood with a social life and (b) Gordon’s apparent maturity that ultimately leaves one wanting). Sometimes he seems content to turn the burner off entirely on one when another is at a boil—it’s hard to accept the idyllic phase of her relationship with Gordon, for example, and sure enough Winckler doesn’t seem to buy it himself.
Two Friends (Jane Campion, 1986)
Like Sweetie, curiously muted and strikingly composed, but I like this one more—the sharp structure lends import to a withholding style. Somewhat hindered by a (likely autobiographical) impulse to include borderline-meaningless anecdotes, though. I also watched and enjoyed her shorts Peel and A Girl’s Own Story.
Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)
So similar to McCarey’s 1957 remake that it barely registers as a distinct film.
Ni d’Eve Ni d’Adam (Jean-Paul Civeyrac, 1996) [DNF]
Not at all like Civeyrac’s last two films. Along with the short Life According to Luke, his early work strives to poeticize the lives of irredeemable whores and thieves… and to my mind, fails, as Civeyrac’s definition of “poeticize” amounts to a brief moment of introspection sandwiched in between scores of juvenile theatrics. There is, however, a documentary looseness here that occasionally works to his advantage, and my not finishing the film might merely speak to my impatience w/r/t sifting through an undeveloped sensibility for good bits.
Don’t Worry, I’m Fine (Philippe Lioret, 2006)
A cleverly structured melodrama whose sense of loss and stasis is at odds with its almost Mamet-like plotting.
The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short (Andre Delvaux, 1965)
In retrospect, Delvaux uses a strong undercurrent of infatuation in order to dissolve it, but you wouldn’t guess that by watching, oh, the first 85 minutes. Lead performance = tic-laden, but it’s interesting how sometimes he seems to have a neurotic aversion to grandiosity surrounding him and other times lifts it. (He’s of mediocre, unassertive intelligence, but this weirdly works to his advantage and perhaps results in Fran’s unexpectedly sympathetic reaction.)
A High Wind in Jamaica (Alexander MacKendrick, 1965)
The secret of this “kids” film is to make the wonder of children both innocent and unseemly, e.g. the boy who retorts, “really? Wish I’d seen!” upon hearing that the schoolmaster on board has nearly been burnt to death. Bumbling Villain Anthony Quinn, meanwhile, is curiously noble, at his worst when the kids seem to be making fun of religion. The Ladykillers (1955) is less visually impressive, but pulls off the curious trick of deriving suspense predicated on the remaining intelligence of a woman well on her way into dementia.
The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray, 1959)
Badly staged at times, but Ray redeems it by pitting Our Morality in such direct opposition to Theirs. Dance sequence at the trading post is lots of fun.
How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941) [DNF]
I tried, but kept putting on Prefab Sprout instead, “When Love Breaks Down” vaguely synching up with Ford’s unusually direct mood, other songs not so much. I’d be curious to watch a version without the score, which is quite bad and intrusive. But there’s lots of misjudged emphasis here: even when the doe-eyed protagonist might have worked to the film’s advantage—as when he looks dolefully on as his sadistic teacher is given a pounding—Ford overwhelms this subtle moral development with low comedy. Also watched (and finished) The Last Hurrah (1958) and The Horse Soldiers (1959): the former polemicizes but keeps its cool, and the latter is prime Ford: Wayne’s “humanizing”-moment-as-drunken-rant is a highlight.
Burn After Reading (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2008)
I sometimes find the Coens’ sense of humor kind of repulsive, sometimes too ready to mythologize, e.g. just about anything said about Chigurh in No Country, and also ready to shunt minor characters in a rather blasé way, like Richard Jenkins’s loser in this film. It seems their best moments occur when caricatures clash together, e.g. Clooney’s encounter with Pitt, in which the former’s alarm is just as comically inflated as the latter’s grinning, gee-wiz adieu.
My Brother Is An Only Child (Daniele Luchetti, 2007)
The “other side” of (decent) Italian cinema opposite Garrone, where catharsis isn’t deliberately obscured by a harsh artistic persona so much as distended into a confused aria of emotion. Could have been really insufferable if the fraternal shenanigans and political oppositions weren’t so interwoven.
Poor Boy’s Game (Clement Virgo, 2007)
I can easily imagine Virgo making a bad film, given this one’s occasional sops to easy sentiment. It’s redeemed by a powerfully muted performance by Rossif Sutherland, which takes the Ed-Norton-in-American-History-X character to the inevitable conclusion that reformed racists endure genuine shame from all sides, rendering redemption a hazy concept.
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
Homages to Hawks abound: a character says “easy, easy” to a dog; MacReady (get it?) is posited as a model of unfeeling but necessary efficiency. And yet Carpenter’s horror-film impulses are in many ways the reverse of Hawks’s original, decidedly focused on amplifying disunity, panic, and unease among the crew, and removing the love interest that gave Hawks’s otherwise manly protagonist an inferred soft side. I vastly prefer the Hawks, and it seems those who love the Carpenter seem to be expressing a preference for disunity over unity, when Hawks forges a dialectic between the two.
Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1874)
A staggering masterpiece, which I don’t have much to say about besides finding it fascinating that some find Dorothea hypercritical and pretentious, and others a triumphant feminist heroine. (She’s both, of course.)
The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir, 1936)
If this is weaker than other ‘30s Renoirs—well, it is—it’s because Renoir encourages us to take pleasure in the melancholy contemplation of characters, rather than letting us do the contemplating ourselves.
Lemming (Dominik Moll, 2005)
Shame that Gainsbourg’s characterization, impressive and nuanced in the film’s first half, pretty much gets annihilated for gamesmanship’s sake.
Still hate Heavenly Creatures and Whale Rider.
Outsider from France adopts an attitude of casual resistance—“Do you not know how to pray?” “No, I don’t know how to pray,” he answers—but ultimately cracks yet again under the pressures of living in his homeland. Depiction of religious violence is electrifying: Ameur-Zaimeche doesn’t downplay threat or even victimization, but transforms the surrounding terror into a cacophony of conflicting impulses, rendering disunity monstrous. Le Dernier Maquis was so uninflected I couldn’t catch on, but then I was spectacularly disengaged during that screening—perhaps more on that someday.
Lucy (Henner Winckler, 2006)
My first encounter with Winckler, who seems assured and certainly immune to cheap pathos, even if this film leaves a rather vague, bland, slice-of-life taste. Maggy’s slight recessiveness is almost always interesting, and Winckler is good at blending cross-currents of conflict ((a), Maggy’s attempts to balance motherhood with a social life and (b) Gordon’s apparent maturity that ultimately leaves one wanting). Sometimes he seems content to turn the burner off entirely on one when another is at a boil—it’s hard to accept the idyllic phase of her relationship with Gordon, for example, and sure enough Winckler doesn’t seem to buy it himself.
Two Friends (Jane Campion, 1986)
Like Sweetie, curiously muted and strikingly composed, but I like this one more—the sharp structure lends import to a withholding style. Somewhat hindered by a (likely autobiographical) impulse to include borderline-meaningless anecdotes, though. I also watched and enjoyed her shorts Peel and A Girl’s Own Story.
Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)
So similar to McCarey’s 1957 remake that it barely registers as a distinct film.
Ni d’Eve Ni d’Adam (Jean-Paul Civeyrac, 1996) [DNF]
Not at all like Civeyrac’s last two films. Along with the short Life According to Luke, his early work strives to poeticize the lives of irredeemable whores and thieves… and to my mind, fails, as Civeyrac’s definition of “poeticize” amounts to a brief moment of introspection sandwiched in between scores of juvenile theatrics. There is, however, a documentary looseness here that occasionally works to his advantage, and my not finishing the film might merely speak to my impatience w/r/t sifting through an undeveloped sensibility for good bits.
Don’t Worry, I’m Fine (Philippe Lioret, 2006)
A cleverly structured melodrama whose sense of loss and stasis is at odds with its almost Mamet-like plotting.
The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short (Andre Delvaux, 1965)
In retrospect, Delvaux uses a strong undercurrent of infatuation in order to dissolve it, but you wouldn’t guess that by watching, oh, the first 85 minutes. Lead performance = tic-laden, but it’s interesting how sometimes he seems to have a neurotic aversion to grandiosity surrounding him and other times lifts it. (He’s of mediocre, unassertive intelligence, but this weirdly works to his advantage and perhaps results in Fran’s unexpectedly sympathetic reaction.)
A High Wind in Jamaica (Alexander MacKendrick, 1965)
The secret of this “kids” film is to make the wonder of children both innocent and unseemly, e.g. the boy who retorts, “really? Wish I’d seen!” upon hearing that the schoolmaster on board has nearly been burnt to death. Bumbling Villain Anthony Quinn, meanwhile, is curiously noble, at his worst when the kids seem to be making fun of religion. The Ladykillers (1955) is less visually impressive, but pulls off the curious trick of deriving suspense predicated on the remaining intelligence of a woman well on her way into dementia.
The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray, 1959)
Badly staged at times, but Ray redeems it by pitting Our Morality in such direct opposition to Theirs. Dance sequence at the trading post is lots of fun.
How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941) [DNF]
I tried, but kept putting on Prefab Sprout instead, “When Love Breaks Down” vaguely synching up with Ford’s unusually direct mood, other songs not so much. I’d be curious to watch a version without the score, which is quite bad and intrusive. But there’s lots of misjudged emphasis here: even when the doe-eyed protagonist might have worked to the film’s advantage—as when he looks dolefully on as his sadistic teacher is given a pounding—Ford overwhelms this subtle moral development with low comedy. Also watched (and finished) The Last Hurrah (1958) and The Horse Soldiers (1959): the former polemicizes but keeps its cool, and the latter is prime Ford: Wayne’s “humanizing”-moment-as-drunken-rant is a highlight.
Burn After Reading (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2008)
I sometimes find the Coens’ sense of humor kind of repulsive, sometimes too ready to mythologize, e.g. just about anything said about Chigurh in No Country, and also ready to shunt minor characters in a rather blasé way, like Richard Jenkins’s loser in this film. It seems their best moments occur when caricatures clash together, e.g. Clooney’s encounter with Pitt, in which the former’s alarm is just as comically inflated as the latter’s grinning, gee-wiz adieu.
My Brother Is An Only Child (Daniele Luchetti, 2007)
The “other side” of (decent) Italian cinema opposite Garrone, where catharsis isn’t deliberately obscured by a harsh artistic persona so much as distended into a confused aria of emotion. Could have been really insufferable if the fraternal shenanigans and political oppositions weren’t so interwoven.
Poor Boy’s Game (Clement Virgo, 2007)
I can easily imagine Virgo making a bad film, given this one’s occasional sops to easy sentiment. It’s redeemed by a powerfully muted performance by Rossif Sutherland, which takes the Ed-Norton-in-American-History-X character to the inevitable conclusion that reformed racists endure genuine shame from all sides, rendering redemption a hazy concept.
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
Homages to Hawks abound: a character says “easy, easy” to a dog; MacReady (get it?) is posited as a model of unfeeling but necessary efficiency. And yet Carpenter’s horror-film impulses are in many ways the reverse of Hawks’s original, decidedly focused on amplifying disunity, panic, and unease among the crew, and removing the love interest that gave Hawks’s otherwise manly protagonist an inferred soft side. I vastly prefer the Hawks, and it seems those who love the Carpenter seem to be expressing a preference for disunity over unity, when Hawks forges a dialectic between the two.
Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1874)
A staggering masterpiece, which I don’t have much to say about besides finding it fascinating that some find Dorothea hypercritical and pretentious, and others a triumphant feminist heroine. (She’s both, of course.)
The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir, 1936)
If this is weaker than other ‘30s Renoirs—well, it is—it’s because Renoir encourages us to take pleasure in the melancholy contemplation of characters, rather than letting us do the contemplating ourselves.
Lemming (Dominik Moll, 2005)
Shame that Gainsbourg’s characterization, impressive and nuanced in the film’s first half, pretty much gets annihilated for gamesmanship’s sake.
Still hate Heavenly Creatures and Whale Rider.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Here's More Random Stuff; Or, I Suck at Titling Blog Posts
Windows on Monday (Ulrich Kohler, 2006)Decidedly desultory, and sometimes vaguely quirky to the point of evoking Tati more than Hong, but no matter: it continues to grow in the memory, and contains the single most inspired take I’ve seen all year, a sort of inversion of The Wayward Cloud’s bittersweet reconciliation that is hilariously audacious in its blunt, albeit measured pessimism. I initially found star Isabelle Menke (pictured above, on the left) a bit of a blank, but Kohler unleashes her when necessary, and I can’t think of another movie character whose personality so closely mirrors my ex’s.
Light is Waiting (Michael Robinson, 2007)
Good for a laugh, but so is this. Being engaged with a text and being able to fashion grotesque abstraction out of it are not the same thing, and Robinson doesn’t even strike me as particularly aware of the little that Full House has going for it formally.
The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
The poster gives away the best bit, in which Fonda and Stanwyck, huddled closely together, flirt in a way that suggests the possibility of genuine aversion. I guess I buy Stanwyck’s series of internal transformations, but there’s a big contradiction between that degree of internal conflict and her extroverted personality that isn’t quite fully explored, in my view.
Haut les coeurs! (Solveig Anspach, 1999)
Anspach is obviously a born filmmaker, utterly committed to concision, contrast, and structure, and an unerring sense of where to put the camera and how to end a scene. Characterizations are almost too intelligently drawn: one doctor is admirable without being nice, another nice without appearing adequately sensitive. More impressive is Anspach’s control of atmosphere, which gives the impression of a world that is basically ideal—contented, yet sensitive—but oppressive to her protagonist anyway.
A Cry in the Dark (Fred Schepisi, 1988)
I will never forgive my Australian Cinema class for choosing to watch this instead of Sirens, but concede that they may never forgive me for giggling at Streep’s misery.
High Heels (Pedro Almodovar, 1991)
Barely remember anything about this a mere few days later—the melodrama is more theoretically “subversive” than finely tuned, a recurring problem with Almodovar—although Letal’s initial seduction of Rebecca is unassuming sexual confusion at its finest.
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, 1905)
Impressionistic in a way that doesn’t intensify emotion so much as particularize it, which works for me. Wharton’s worldview is like Austen + malice, tortured rather than bothered by a learned preoccupation with luxury. That said, her mastery is to never fully embrace contempt: character descriptions bordering on hateful are tempered by behavior anything but.
Nick Drake – Bryter Layter (1970)
I had trouble consistently enjoying Drake when I first started listening to his work, but in retrospect the problem was one of distinguishing between the Five Leaves Left period and this album, which now seems to represent a big leap forward in songwriting. I read somewhere that legendarily shy Drake was in awe of John Cale’s work on his records, which baffles me, since I hold Drake in much higher esteem than Cale. I would, however, be curious to have seen what Drake’s face looked like upon watching Richard Thompson play guitar on “Hazy Jane II.”
Sunday, November 9, 2008
The week (well, past few days) in review.
U.S. Go Home (Claire Denis, 1994)
I’m not a huge Denis fan, but this might be my favorite of hers. She likes diffuse tangents, not for contemplation of drama so much as willful disengagement from it. In other words, every once in a while, her inner Warhol takes over. This can have a really satisfying effect: when Gregoire Colin rocks out for three solid minutes to (The Animals’ (?)) “Chevrolet,” for example (pictured above), is the otherwise constricted character’s necessary moment of private glory. And there’s lots of well-considered character stuff here: in this supposedly autobiographical work, Denis ruminates on her own passivity and the sorrow of men she let down, whether handsome and rakish or decent-looking and spirited. Her own (i.e. protagonist Martine’s) sorrow is expressed in a half-laugh, half-cry, and an attraction to Vincent Gallo at his most whiny. Not all of it works for me, but I’m glad I saw it.
Keep It for Yourself (Claire Denis, 1991)
… which I can’t say for this one, in which self-effacing Denis either lets things get excessively vacant or lets Gallo shtick carry the day. Didn’t help that the print was burnt, and that the burn looked like a vibrating, Antonio Gaudi-designed UFO gracing the top of each frame, especially apparent against blacks and dark grays.
Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)
I’m watching this again in a couple weeks. That’s right, I’m in two separate classes screening Heavenly Creatures. (Not to mention two separate classes featuring The Castle of Otranto.) Jackson’s overemphatic style is just as painful to take as it was a few years ago in the LOTR movies, and I don’t have much to say about him besides that I’m baffled he’s taken seriously in some circles.
Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein, 1996)
Not exactly riveting, but I sort of enjoyed this. Ripstein’s sequence shots, which might have some Ophuls or Sirk influence behind them, given the melodrama theme, actually feel less like either of those guys to me than Gaspar Noe on downers, roving miserably about rooms at random. The acting is too big for my taste, but there’s an inherent sense of mystery to the material. What remains unspoken—what the killers can’t say to the victim and Coral’s mistrust in Nicolas—blurs the traditional boundaries of killer/victim identification, particularly because the killers have a sorrowful, insecure streak and their victims, however doomed, get righteously vindictive.
Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1949)
Lean and sometimes expressive, but I can’t help but feel that Lewis’s commitment to the dichotomy between nervous, trigger-happy Annie and sensitive Bart is limiting. He also lets genre conventions blunt characterizations: what, for instance, is up with the third act’s cheery amusement park montage, in which neither Peggy Cummins, screaming joyously in the same way an actor in a Six Flags commercial would, nor Lewis, editing smoothly and playing happy music, shows knowledge of the tormented, murderous Annie we know?
The Thing From Another World (Christian Nyby [Howard Hawks], 1951) [third viewing]
Albeit anchored by an efficient, terse protagonist, I find this an exemplary Hawks lesson on how to use a crowd: everyone, even the effete, anxious scientist, is trying to contribute, which means engaging in the art of contradiction, and to observe them crowd the frame is to take in an overload of rational energy.
Waverly (Walter Scott, 1814)
Very enjoyable, even if I had a hard time keeping up with the background material. As historical novelists go, I think Tolstoy’s better at avoiding generalizations or phraseology, keeping things human and making drama stem organically from situations rather than ideas, but Scott is better at resisting the impulse to toot his own apolitical horn, and even goes to the point of ending on a note of near-embarrassing humility. He (Scott) is a bit like Edward Waverly himself, actually, who often makes strained attempts to express big emotions with tact.
Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser, 1900) [second reading]
This feels more like a masterpiece than it did the first time. Dreiser is an amazing writer of dialogue: his characters’ speech is wholly independent from their inner lives. Hurstwood, whose fall from grace leaves him a self-loathing, desperate fool, musters extraordinary strength in resisting alliance with strikers or policemen; Carrie, talented, modest, and kind, is avaricious in a way invisible to everyone but herself. Perhaps Dreiser explains too much of these contradictions away, but they’re also evidence of a sensibility forever fixed on the contrast between the workings of the mind and the body.
Adam Elk – Labello (1999)
Not as good as the two preceding Mommyheads albums, but few LPs are. First two tracks are terrific, as well as “Ripple Effect,” in which Cohen “runs away from the ripple effect” with a chord mimicking a sudden distance from natural progression.
Marshall Crenshaw – Downtown (1985)
Crenshaw is always at least a little interesting, and terrific about a quarter of the time. Highlights here are “Little Wild One (No. 5),” “Yvonne,” and “Lesson Number One.” “(We’re Gonna) Shake Up Their Minds” has a nice melody, but it’s also exactly the same one Crenshaw would use in the 1991 Kirsty MacColl song, “All I Ever Wanted,” which I prefer.
Jackie Greene – “About Cell Block #9” (Somewhere Sweet Bound, 2004)
This song is vivacious and dynamic and really pleasing, but all the other Greene stuff I’ve heard is pretty bad.
The dB’s – The Sound of Music (1987)
It’s no Stands for Decibels, but it’s still a masterpiece anyone interested in pop music should seek out immediately.
Graham Parker – “And It Shook Me” (Struck by Lightning, 1991)
A lot of later Parker suffers from smugness, so perhaps this song is an anomaly for making vague, residual pain its subject.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Sirk x 2; Sturges x 2; Praise; oh yeah, and Muriel's Wedding
I'm watching a lot of films for school, hence repeat viewings that I'd otherwise put off, or, in the case of Muriel's Wedding, happily do away with altogether.
Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956) [2nd viewing]
Usually I'm not a screen-cap kinda guy, as I suspect were Andre Bazin to blog, neither would he be. But check out the above composition, expressive of everything that's great about Sirk: nostalgic pleasure (i.e. the etching), sorrowful defeat (i.e. Dorothy Malone hunched over), the evocative location (i.e. water), all quiet, all together, all simultaneous. Earlier on, we have Lauren Bacall's introduction to the suite: gaudy, lush production design fills the frame, swelling music fills the soundtrack, and Bacall looks downright nonplussed, at a standstill between the surrounding beauty and the knowledge that she's being duped. Even minor characterizations are really satisfying, like the bartender who persistently sides with Robert Stack in action, but never in emotion, suspended in dubious loyalty. The "happy" ending, a bit of a lift from Notorious in my opinion, significantly shifts emphasis away from the few who prevail back to Malone. A quibble: the camera ominously rests on Stack's dad's portrait, shortly before [SPOILER]. Sirk is too good for superfluous foreshadowing.
Muriel's Wedding (P.J. Hogan, 1994) [2nd viewing]
Just godawful, but it presented a challenge to my descriptive abilities when trying to slam it in a class discussion. (Yes, apparently this is more representative of quality Australian cinema than Praise or any film by John Duigan.) I was tempted to write: "Hogan reduces adult interaction to middle-school terms"--but s/he (sorry, too lazy) fails to even capture the social repercussions of the latter. Yes, the social persecution of Muriel is exaggerated. BUT, yes, Muriel is herself a pitifully inept outcast. That said, I'm not seeing any graceful attempt to juggle levels of heightened realism here, just a disengaged wash of cartoon and soap opera impulses.
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959) [2nd viewing]
It's no Written on the Wind, but it has its pleasures. Liked how Annie is intrusive but well-meaning; liked how, a la the above image, Sirk gives us at least one striking composition in which latent ugliness underlies catharsis. (I'm referring to Annie's deathbed speech to Lora, in which Sarah Jane's smiling photograph is sandwiched in between the two. This drew audible laughter from my audience, and it is funny in the sense that no other director would dare draw such sharp attention to the thorny contradictions of melodrama, for fear of falling into camp.) Didn't like boyfriend's sudden, unnatural transition from lover to oppressor, which is inexplicable apart from giving the audience a cheap jolt; didn't like Sirk's deficient understanding of the typical ego of a teenage girl, or perhaps people in general. (E.g. Sarah Jane's earnest admission of "you've been wonderful" after humiliating her white friends.) I have subdued affection for this: Sirk's mastery is evident throughout, but he can't quite find a satisfying way into the material.
The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges, 1940)
Sturges's debut, but it seems he'd had everything figured out. There's a dialectic here between McGinty's laconic pragmatism and his wife's admiring intellectualization that nearly functions as an allegory for the relationship between early Hollywood auteurs and auteurists, even if the latter had yet to come along. McGinty has vague aspirations to greatness, but he also laughs incredulously when earnestly called decent. (Hawks, anyone?) Sturges derives a lot of humor from the way motivations are naturally obscured in real life: loved the way McGinty's future wife shyly disguises an earnest marriage proposal as a business transaction; also loved the way McGinty shamelessly glances at her legs and she weakly retorts with the barely credible, “What’s that got to do with it?” And I laughed very hard at the chauffeur's vague, boring, and rather endearing one-sided conversation.
The Great Moment (Preston Sturges, 1944)
Lesser Sturges, but a singularly dry biopic all the same. Token romance is played so casually it barely exists; Morton, the ennobled discoverer of ether as an anaesthetic, is also a belligerent psychopath who orders his patients to open their mouths and abruptly begins smashing glasses at a store. The crudity of 19th century dentistry, rather than merely representative of past blunders, is played for derisive comedy, and Sturges doesn't fail to temper exaggerated tributes demanded by friends (“every hospital should be named after him!”) with low-key ones made by others ("maybe one or two hospitals...") A lesser film might have portrayed Charles T. Jackson as a "sarcastic drunkard" and an incompetent failure alongside our hero Morton, who in Sturges's film merely looks humorless next to Jackson's funny, credible resignation. And then there's this film's equivalent of the chauffeur's platitudes: a hilariously mundane series of intertitles detailing every stop Morton makes while thumbing through a medical encyclopedia. Why? Why not! It seems the running theme I'm getting from this Sturges double-header is an analysis of the ways in which essentially noble men are dangerous and immature...
Praise (John Curran, 1998)
As embarrassed as I am to link here, I guess I just did.
Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956) [2nd viewing]Usually I'm not a screen-cap kinda guy, as I suspect were Andre Bazin to blog, neither would he be. But check out the above composition, expressive of everything that's great about Sirk: nostalgic pleasure (i.e. the etching), sorrowful defeat (i.e. Dorothy Malone hunched over), the evocative location (i.e. water), all quiet, all together, all simultaneous. Earlier on, we have Lauren Bacall's introduction to the suite: gaudy, lush production design fills the frame, swelling music fills the soundtrack, and Bacall looks downright nonplussed, at a standstill between the surrounding beauty and the knowledge that she's being duped. Even minor characterizations are really satisfying, like the bartender who persistently sides with Robert Stack in action, but never in emotion, suspended in dubious loyalty. The "happy" ending, a bit of a lift from Notorious in my opinion, significantly shifts emphasis away from the few who prevail back to Malone. A quibble: the camera ominously rests on Stack's dad's portrait, shortly before [SPOILER]. Sirk is too good for superfluous foreshadowing.
Muriel's Wedding (P.J. Hogan, 1994) [2nd viewing]
Just godawful, but it presented a challenge to my descriptive abilities when trying to slam it in a class discussion. (Yes, apparently this is more representative of quality Australian cinema than Praise or any film by John Duigan.) I was tempted to write: "Hogan reduces adult interaction to middle-school terms"--but s/he (sorry, too lazy) fails to even capture the social repercussions of the latter. Yes, the social persecution of Muriel is exaggerated. BUT, yes, Muriel is herself a pitifully inept outcast. That said, I'm not seeing any graceful attempt to juggle levels of heightened realism here, just a disengaged wash of cartoon and soap opera impulses.
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959) [2nd viewing]
It's no Written on the Wind, but it has its pleasures. Liked how Annie is intrusive but well-meaning; liked how, a la the above image, Sirk gives us at least one striking composition in which latent ugliness underlies catharsis. (I'm referring to Annie's deathbed speech to Lora, in which Sarah Jane's smiling photograph is sandwiched in between the two. This drew audible laughter from my audience, and it is funny in the sense that no other director would dare draw such sharp attention to the thorny contradictions of melodrama, for fear of falling into camp.) Didn't like boyfriend's sudden, unnatural transition from lover to oppressor, which is inexplicable apart from giving the audience a cheap jolt; didn't like Sirk's deficient understanding of the typical ego of a teenage girl, or perhaps people in general. (E.g. Sarah Jane's earnest admission of "you've been wonderful" after humiliating her white friends.) I have subdued affection for this: Sirk's mastery is evident throughout, but he can't quite find a satisfying way into the material.
The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges, 1940)
Sturges's debut, but it seems he'd had everything figured out. There's a dialectic here between McGinty's laconic pragmatism and his wife's admiring intellectualization that nearly functions as an allegory for the relationship between early Hollywood auteurs and auteurists, even if the latter had yet to come along. McGinty has vague aspirations to greatness, but he also laughs incredulously when earnestly called decent. (Hawks, anyone?) Sturges derives a lot of humor from the way motivations are naturally obscured in real life: loved the way McGinty's future wife shyly disguises an earnest marriage proposal as a business transaction; also loved the way McGinty shamelessly glances at her legs and she weakly retorts with the barely credible, “What’s that got to do with it?” And I laughed very hard at the chauffeur's vague, boring, and rather endearing one-sided conversation.
The Great Moment (Preston Sturges, 1944)
Lesser Sturges, but a singularly dry biopic all the same. Token romance is played so casually it barely exists; Morton, the ennobled discoverer of ether as an anaesthetic, is also a belligerent psychopath who orders his patients to open their mouths and abruptly begins smashing glasses at a store. The crudity of 19th century dentistry, rather than merely representative of past blunders, is played for derisive comedy, and Sturges doesn't fail to temper exaggerated tributes demanded by friends (“every hospital should be named after him!”) with low-key ones made by others ("maybe one or two hospitals...") A lesser film might have portrayed Charles T. Jackson as a "sarcastic drunkard" and an incompetent failure alongside our hero Morton, who in Sturges's film merely looks humorless next to Jackson's funny, credible resignation. And then there's this film's equivalent of the chauffeur's platitudes: a hilariously mundane series of intertitles detailing every stop Morton makes while thumbing through a medical encyclopedia. Why? Why not! It seems the running theme I'm getting from this Sturges double-header is an analysis of the ways in which essentially noble men are dangerous and immature...
Praise (John Curran, 1998)
As embarrassed as I am to link here, I guess I just did.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Proof; Romper Stomper; Some Came Running; Stella Dallas; Wuthering Heights
Proof (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 1991)
I was starting to like this for a bit when it became clear Martin was an off-putting, albeit disadvantaged guy, but it soon turns into a preposterous celebration of his pleasurable condescension, and gets worse with the introduction of a caregiver-client relationship absurd in countless ways.
Romper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright, 1992)
Repulsive, although Crowe has a credible moment or two. Questions of glorifying racism aside, how about the device of throwing in an epileptic fit to bring two coy lovers together? Somehow offense pales next to contrivance.
Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)
Shortly after the screening, a friend told me Minnelli had previously worked as a designer of window displays for upscale shops; a light bulb subsequently blazed directly above my head. I actually think Minnelli’s instinct to “frame” moments a certain way hurts him, resulting in theatrical gestures that bare vague relation to what’s going on dramatically. (E.g. Dave’s first kiss with Gwen, silhouetted to induce awe, or Dave cradling Ginnie at the end, which only serves to obscure the prior complications of their relationship.) I still enjoyed it, especially Sinatra’s dry, sarcastic portrait of resignation, sometimes funny and sometimes merely cranky.
Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)
Really liked the interplay between Stella and Steve: she’s a hedonistic dreamer, he’s handsome but reserved. He gets in the way of her dreams, but in the process seems like a pretty reasonable guy. The “other man” is ugly but fun, establishing a weird, uneven dialectic. Once the film hits Stella’s later years, her daughter grows into a saintly, embarrassed but forgiving girl, and Vidor doesn’t manage to milk much from the mother-daughter stuff, aside from a wonderful ending that he might owe to the way Stanwyck anxiously bites her scarf.
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte, 1847) [2nd reading]
The contrast between Cathy I / Heathcliff and Cathy II / Hareton forms a jagged structural shape in the mind, in which the only antidote to a curse of heartache is the joining of two souls opposed in nature, rather than aligned. Regarding the latter couple, it’s impossible to promote a healthy, symbiotic relationship between a condescending intellectual and a strong, humble idiot in any direct, sentimental way, only to suggest it works because each party receives something in the process of trying to rationalize his or her flawed position. So bad adaptations of the novel not only miss but inevitably distort the point.
Bronte isn’t unlike Pialat in her approach to hysteria as an idea-free vehicle for emotion—Cathy violently seeks out a second opinion while blindly asserting her own. Then there is Nelly, who voices an opposing pacifist sensibility that proves crude and cruel next to the material she struggles to conceptualize. In class I felt strangely defensive of the “weird” Bronte, anti-social by some accounts. Surely such a refined sensibility doesn’t discriminate entirely out of shyness, which casts doubt on the coolness of those giving the accounts.
Ten songs for the week…
Brendan Benson – "I’m Blessed" (One Mississippi)
Cardinal – "If You Believe in Christmas Trees" (Cardinal)
Jim Carroll Band – "Wicked Gravity" (Catholic Boy)
[Most of this album is affected and pretentiously intellectual (going she said that "everything is permitted" makes you picture Carroll manically congratulating himself for conflating Dostoevsky with VU), but it's a testament to his post-addiction sanity that this song exists.]
Catherine Wheel – "Delicious" (Adam and Eve)
Elvis Costello – "Blue Chair" (Blood and Chocolate)
[Aside from This Year's Model, there isn't a Costello album I consistently like. (Get Happy!! is a distant second.) Blood is no exception, but at least we get this song.]
Dire Straits – "Tunnel of Love" (Making Movies)
[The only case where Knopfler's supposedly R. Thompson-influenced playing seems to grasp the contrast of Thompson's work.]
Elastica – "Line Up" (Elastica)
[A bit of a Sleater-Kinney thing going on here: the straight punk songs don't work too well for me, but sometimes there's more contrast, more "duelling" in the guitar work, like in this.]
Brigitte Fontaine – "Le Noir c’est mieux chois" (Comme a la radio)
[I'd take Francoise Hardy over Fontaine any other day, but this is more nuanced than any Hardy song.]
Gladhands – "Kill ‘Em With Kindness" (La Di Da)
[Feels a lot like one of Jason Falkner's better songs from the same era.]
Squeeze – "Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)" (Argy Bargy)
[Amazing, as are several other songs from Argy Bargy and East Side Story.]
I was starting to like this for a bit when it became clear Martin was an off-putting, albeit disadvantaged guy, but it soon turns into a preposterous celebration of his pleasurable condescension, and gets worse with the introduction of a caregiver-client relationship absurd in countless ways.
Romper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright, 1992)
Repulsive, although Crowe has a credible moment or two. Questions of glorifying racism aside, how about the device of throwing in an epileptic fit to bring two coy lovers together? Somehow offense pales next to contrivance.
Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)
Shortly after the screening, a friend told me Minnelli had previously worked as a designer of window displays for upscale shops; a light bulb subsequently blazed directly above my head. I actually think Minnelli’s instinct to “frame” moments a certain way hurts him, resulting in theatrical gestures that bare vague relation to what’s going on dramatically. (E.g. Dave’s first kiss with Gwen, silhouetted to induce awe, or Dave cradling Ginnie at the end, which only serves to obscure the prior complications of their relationship.) I still enjoyed it, especially Sinatra’s dry, sarcastic portrait of resignation, sometimes funny and sometimes merely cranky.
Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)
Really liked the interplay between Stella and Steve: she’s a hedonistic dreamer, he’s handsome but reserved. He gets in the way of her dreams, but in the process seems like a pretty reasonable guy. The “other man” is ugly but fun, establishing a weird, uneven dialectic. Once the film hits Stella’s later years, her daughter grows into a saintly, embarrassed but forgiving girl, and Vidor doesn’t manage to milk much from the mother-daughter stuff, aside from a wonderful ending that he might owe to the way Stanwyck anxiously bites her scarf.
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte, 1847) [2nd reading]
The contrast between Cathy I / Heathcliff and Cathy II / Hareton forms a jagged structural shape in the mind, in which the only antidote to a curse of heartache is the joining of two souls opposed in nature, rather than aligned. Regarding the latter couple, it’s impossible to promote a healthy, symbiotic relationship between a condescending intellectual and a strong, humble idiot in any direct, sentimental way, only to suggest it works because each party receives something in the process of trying to rationalize his or her flawed position. So bad adaptations of the novel not only miss but inevitably distort the point.
Bronte isn’t unlike Pialat in her approach to hysteria as an idea-free vehicle for emotion—Cathy violently seeks out a second opinion while blindly asserting her own. Then there is Nelly, who voices an opposing pacifist sensibility that proves crude and cruel next to the material she struggles to conceptualize. In class I felt strangely defensive of the “weird” Bronte, anti-social by some accounts. Surely such a refined sensibility doesn’t discriminate entirely out of shyness, which casts doubt on the coolness of those giving the accounts.
Ten songs for the week…
Brendan Benson – "I’m Blessed" (One Mississippi)
Cardinal – "If You Believe in Christmas Trees" (Cardinal)
Jim Carroll Band – "Wicked Gravity" (Catholic Boy)
[Most of this album is affected and pretentiously intellectual (going she said that "everything is permitted" makes you picture Carroll manically congratulating himself for conflating Dostoevsky with VU), but it's a testament to his post-addiction sanity that this song exists.]
Catherine Wheel – "Delicious" (Adam and Eve)
Elvis Costello – "Blue Chair" (Blood and Chocolate)
[Aside from This Year's Model, there isn't a Costello album I consistently like. (Get Happy!! is a distant second.) Blood is no exception, but at least we get this song.]
Dire Straits – "Tunnel of Love" (Making Movies)
[The only case where Knopfler's supposedly R. Thompson-influenced playing seems to grasp the contrast of Thompson's work.]
Elastica – "Line Up" (Elastica)
[A bit of a Sleater-Kinney thing going on here: the straight punk songs don't work too well for me, but sometimes there's more contrast, more "duelling" in the guitar work, like in this.]
Brigitte Fontaine – "Le Noir c’est mieux chois" (Comme a la radio)
[I'd take Francoise Hardy over Fontaine any other day, but this is more nuanced than any Hardy song.]
Gladhands – "Kill ‘Em With Kindness" (La Di Da)
[Feels a lot like one of Jason Falkner's better songs from the same era.]
Squeeze – "Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)" (Argy Bargy)
[Amazing, as are several other songs from Argy Bargy and East Side Story.]
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Melville; The Nerves; Renoir
Moby-Dick (Herman Melville, 1851)
Good dialogue; pity about the whaling lore. And days later, a reference book’s worth of whale info has hardly made a dent. Sort of like a book on the Fourth of July in which numerous commercial fireworks are meticulously described, gently sarcastic attempts at profundity are made, and the big night itself is a mixture of subdued awe and anticlimax, which just goes to show how hard it is to differentiate the moral implications of slaying relatively inexpressive animals from blowing shit up. I had quite a mixed reaction to this, and am curious if I’d like Melville’s other work more, but it’s not encouraging that this is considered the masterpiece.
The Nerves (The Nerves, 1976)
For 12 minutes, Jack Lee was the greatest songwriter in the world. Each song here is a concise, devastating, 2-minute hall of mirrors in which individual parts and sections subtly contradict each other. His solo material, unfortunately, is mediocre aside from, well, rehashed material from this E.P., which is realized to perfection in its original form anyway.
The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, 1953)
My favorite ‘50s Renoir film. In some ways it resembles Lola Montes, in which archetypal male lovers are given equal weight by a conflicted heroine, but I found Coach protag Camilla’s nasty, witty allure more palatable than Lola. Riccardo Rioli—what the hell happened to this dude?—is especially wonderful as a doggedly persistent bullfighter whose self-presentation is presented as more of a personal affront to Camilla than his own failing.
Good dialogue; pity about the whaling lore. And days later, a reference book’s worth of whale info has hardly made a dent. Sort of like a book on the Fourth of July in which numerous commercial fireworks are meticulously described, gently sarcastic attempts at profundity are made, and the big night itself is a mixture of subdued awe and anticlimax, which just goes to show how hard it is to differentiate the moral implications of slaying relatively inexpressive animals from blowing shit up. I had quite a mixed reaction to this, and am curious if I’d like Melville’s other work more, but it’s not encouraging that this is considered the masterpiece.
The Nerves (The Nerves, 1976)
For 12 minutes, Jack Lee was the greatest songwriter in the world. Each song here is a concise, devastating, 2-minute hall of mirrors in which individual parts and sections subtly contradict each other. His solo material, unfortunately, is mediocre aside from, well, rehashed material from this E.P., which is realized to perfection in its original form anyway.
The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, 1953)
My favorite ‘50s Renoir film. In some ways it resembles Lola Montes, in which archetypal male lovers are given equal weight by a conflicted heroine, but I found Coach protag Camilla’s nasty, witty allure more palatable than Lola. Riccardo Rioli—what the hell happened to this dude?—is especially wonderful as a doggedly persistent bullfighter whose self-presentation is presented as more of a personal affront to Camilla than his own failing.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Campion; Roeg; slasher movies; Austen; Handel and Beethoven
Sweetie (Jane Campion, 1989)
I’d seen this before, and vaguely remembered its stilted, poetic tone. It’s bizarre: whimsy bent on flagellating itself, Amelie gone depressive. It’s a mystery how Campion went from this, the edifying work of someone who finds herself unforgivably cold, to the pat, foregone Holy Smoke! in a mere ten years, one I plan to cease dwelling on as soon as I finish writing this sentence.
Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)
Meh. Liked certain behavioral bits, especially the lead girl's irritated impassivity in the face of trauma. But Roeg's editing, while vague in its intentions, is vague and not exactly subtle. Sometimes it appears that We Are Like Them; sometimes We Are Different From Each Other. Got it. But why limit yourself to that register, aside from pleasing symbolism-hungry film studies majors?
Friday the 13th Part 2 (Steve Miner, 1981)
Not good. But I’m beginning to appreciate experiencing these films as social rituals a la getting drunk. Not all appreciations are healthy—see also the way Laura Mulvey’s execrable ideas seep into my consciousness, not unlike an extended hangover, for a period of several days following forced repeated readings of her stupid fucking essay.
Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, 1817)
Uh, forget what I assumed about Udolpho: this is a precise indictment of both Radcliffe’s faults and her detractors’ careless exaggerations. Can’t think of an equivalent to the Gothic novel that I naively embraced at age 17—I dunno, Mystic River?—but can relate to Austen’s impulse to explain, over the course of a standard, albeit brilliantly plotted and observed, comedy of manners, why her tastes evolved out of a need to bridge the perilous gap between art and life.
On Handel and Beethoven
I’ve been wondering lately, in the process of briefly checking out a bunch of classical composers and concluding that I only really dig Handel and Beethoven, a) if there are some equally great ones I’m missing out on, and b) how sorely isolated those two must have felt, considering the distance between them and seemingly everyone else. Beethoven’s fabled social ineptitude makes almost too much sense: aside from problems w/r/t hearing and women, genius can only be disgruntled by a glut of mediocrity. (Apparently, if randomly Googled sites are to be trusted, the latter was a big fan of the former.) I can’t imagine ever liking Bach, who I find so diffuse that any emotional continuity fizzles out every two or three measures. I have the opposite problem with Mozart: complexities feel telegraphed, big, obvious. I find Haydn and Mendelssohn more intriguing, but both are working in a mode of counterpoint that leaves me instinctively cold, as if I’m either supposed to be sitting back and coolly observing, or making a strained attempt to feel something. The beauty of H and especially B is roughly a gazillion times more natural and fluid to me. But I’ll update if I find someone else I like.
I’d seen this before, and vaguely remembered its stilted, poetic tone. It’s bizarre: whimsy bent on flagellating itself, Amelie gone depressive. It’s a mystery how Campion went from this, the edifying work of someone who finds herself unforgivably cold, to the pat, foregone Holy Smoke! in a mere ten years, one I plan to cease dwelling on as soon as I finish writing this sentence.
Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)
Meh. Liked certain behavioral bits, especially the lead girl's irritated impassivity in the face of trauma. But Roeg's editing, while vague in its intentions, is vague and not exactly subtle. Sometimes it appears that We Are Like Them; sometimes We Are Different From Each Other. Got it. But why limit yourself to that register, aside from pleasing symbolism-hungry film studies majors?
Friday the 13th Part 2 (Steve Miner, 1981)
Not good. But I’m beginning to appreciate experiencing these films as social rituals a la getting drunk. Not all appreciations are healthy—see also the way Laura Mulvey’s execrable ideas seep into my consciousness, not unlike an extended hangover, for a period of several days following forced repeated readings of her stupid fucking essay.
Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, 1817)
Uh, forget what I assumed about Udolpho: this is a precise indictment of both Radcliffe’s faults and her detractors’ careless exaggerations. Can’t think of an equivalent to the Gothic novel that I naively embraced at age 17—I dunno, Mystic River?—but can relate to Austen’s impulse to explain, over the course of a standard, albeit brilliantly plotted and observed, comedy of manners, why her tastes evolved out of a need to bridge the perilous gap between art and life.
On Handel and Beethoven
I’ve been wondering lately, in the process of briefly checking out a bunch of classical composers and concluding that I only really dig Handel and Beethoven, a) if there are some equally great ones I’m missing out on, and b) how sorely isolated those two must have felt, considering the distance between them and seemingly everyone else. Beethoven’s fabled social ineptitude makes almost too much sense: aside from problems w/r/t hearing and women, genius can only be disgruntled by a glut of mediocrity. (Apparently, if randomly Googled sites are to be trusted, the latter was a big fan of the former.) I can’t imagine ever liking Bach, who I find so diffuse that any emotional continuity fizzles out every two or three measures. I have the opposite problem with Mozart: complexities feel telegraphed, big, obvious. I find Haydn and Mendelssohn more intriguing, but both are working in a mode of counterpoint that leaves me instinctively cold, as if I’m either supposed to be sitting back and coolly observing, or making a strained attempt to feel something. The beauty of H and especially B is roughly a gazillion times more natural and fluid to me. But I’ll update if I find someone else I like.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Radcliffe/Stahl/Wallace/NRBQ
Sorry if this gets sparse on cinema-related stuff, which will remain in bold.
The Mysteries of Udolpho (Ann Radcliffe, 1794) [DNF; got to ~200 pages]
Of interest because, on the basis of Northanger Abbey, we can assume Jane Austen was a fan—why, Jane? Radcliffe is surely coming from somewhere faintly intelligent, but the extent to which she wants you to know that is weird and hypocritical: she celebrates Modesty with a capital M (not unlike Jason Sudeikis’s Joe Biden impression), negating her own values in the process of assaulting the reader with descriptions of Beauty, never failing to remind us that Emily St. Aubert is Sensitive. I suspect I'm having more of a clash with Radcliffe in particular than sentimentalism in general.
Holy Matrimony (John M. Stahl, 1943)
I’d started thinking of Stahl as a precise visual stylist to rival Rohmer after seeing Leave Her to Heaven, but I didn’t get that vibe from this lively, nuanced farce. Gracie Fields gives my fave performance, a reliable, adoring wife who’s still at odds with her husband underneath the winks and smiles. Monty Woolley is louder and harder to enjoy, but props to Stahl for making his hero such a vehement prick.
“The Depressed Person” (David Foster Wallace, 1998)
Marginally liked it. Spot-on about the subjective particulars of depression (e.g. combo of need and anticipation of boredom in trying to explain away indescribable torture to contented friends, or the patient-therapist relationship being both ideal and patently false in its one-sidedness), although reading it is a bit like watching someone scrape away at quicksand. (Mimicking tact in the midst of severe depression takes heroic willpower, but I’ve seen it done.) Parts are perhaps unconsciously revealing, like the recurrent phrase “abstract guilt,” [of a non-depressed person] which can only imply opposition to the depressed person’s bottomless, visceral guilt.
“That’s Alright” (NRBQ, All Hopped Up, 1977)
From the NRBQ stuff I’ve sampled, I’m rather baffled—the vast majority of it is pretty by-the-numbers. And yet “That’s Alright,” a serene needle in their bloated haystack of a discography, is as perfectly constructed a song as I’ve heard, an ode to the ambivalence of rejection as propulsive as the Raspberries’ “Go All the Way” and as meticulous as Richard Thompson’s better work. (I also like “It Feels Good” from the same album and “It’s Not So Hard” from Scraps.)
The Mysteries of Udolpho (Ann Radcliffe, 1794) [DNF; got to ~200 pages]
Of interest because, on the basis of Northanger Abbey, we can assume Jane Austen was a fan—why, Jane? Radcliffe is surely coming from somewhere faintly intelligent, but the extent to which she wants you to know that is weird and hypocritical: she celebrates Modesty with a capital M (not unlike Jason Sudeikis’s Joe Biden impression), negating her own values in the process of assaulting the reader with descriptions of Beauty, never failing to remind us that Emily St. Aubert is Sensitive. I suspect I'm having more of a clash with Radcliffe in particular than sentimentalism in general.
Holy Matrimony (John M. Stahl, 1943)
I’d started thinking of Stahl as a precise visual stylist to rival Rohmer after seeing Leave Her to Heaven, but I didn’t get that vibe from this lively, nuanced farce. Gracie Fields gives my fave performance, a reliable, adoring wife who’s still at odds with her husband underneath the winks and smiles. Monty Woolley is louder and harder to enjoy, but props to Stahl for making his hero such a vehement prick.
“The Depressed Person” (David Foster Wallace, 1998)
Marginally liked it. Spot-on about the subjective particulars of depression (e.g. combo of need and anticipation of boredom in trying to explain away indescribable torture to contented friends, or the patient-therapist relationship being both ideal and patently false in its one-sidedness), although reading it is a bit like watching someone scrape away at quicksand. (Mimicking tact in the midst of severe depression takes heroic willpower, but I’ve seen it done.) Parts are perhaps unconsciously revealing, like the recurrent phrase “abstract guilt,” [of a non-depressed person] which can only imply opposition to the depressed person’s bottomless, visceral guilt.
“That’s Alright” (NRBQ, All Hopped Up, 1977)
From the NRBQ stuff I’ve sampled, I’m rather baffled—the vast majority of it is pretty by-the-numbers. And yet “That’s Alright,” a serene needle in their bloated haystack of a discography, is as perfectly constructed a song as I’ve heard, an ode to the ambivalence of rejection as propulsive as the Raspberries’ “Go All the Way” and as meticulous as Richard Thompson’s better work. (I also like “It Feels Good” from the same album and “It’s Not So Hard” from Scraps.)
Friday, October 10, 2008
Weir/Pakula/Von Trier/Hardin
Films:
Gallipolli (Peter Weir, 1981)
Weir makes tripe, but a special kind of tripe that’s recognized by some as mysterious or distinctive. To me, the guy’s incapable of locating anything of interest in his material—I was thinking about looking up whether he had a hand in his screenplays, before realizing I didn’t give a shit. Hearing peers talk about the film’s portrayal of the depth of “mateship” was a particularly bitter laugh: it’s as if they actually believe Australians were born with some neurological mechanism that allows men to, y’know, just be closer with each other than we yanks could ever manage.
All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)
A good rejoinder to any who claim that recreating reality results in dramatic inertia, and a tightrope act of dramatic tension, eschewing the lapses into convention of Klute for investigational rigor. The journalists are a little insecure, a little inarticulate, a little sadistic, but they’re also different: Redford is sincere (to a fault), and Hoffman is conniving (to a fault). One is never sure whether to want them to stop hounding witnesses, or root for something explosive: both ends are kept so hushed and omnipresent.
Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000)
Bipolar cinema. I’d seen this before, several times, so as I tried to explain my problems with it to a professor with an uber-placid facial expression, it was painful in an I’m-vicariously-disillusioning-my-14-year-old-self type of way. But I did enjoy the unenjoyability of the experience of watching it. (It’s complicated, but the sensation of boredom is actually kind of therapeutic at the moment.) Strangest of all to think that I once found Bjork attractive. Or did I? I probably did.
Song:
"It'll Never Happen Again" (Tim Hardin)
Wouldn't feel out of place on After the Gold Rush. And AtGR is one of my favorite albums--Hardin is no Young c. 1970, for me, but his best work is on that level. Other faves: "Reason to Believe," "Black Sheep Boy."
Gallipolli (Peter Weir, 1981)
Weir makes tripe, but a special kind of tripe that’s recognized by some as mysterious or distinctive. To me, the guy’s incapable of locating anything of interest in his material—I was thinking about looking up whether he had a hand in his screenplays, before realizing I didn’t give a shit. Hearing peers talk about the film’s portrayal of the depth of “mateship” was a particularly bitter laugh: it’s as if they actually believe Australians were born with some neurological mechanism that allows men to, y’know, just be closer with each other than we yanks could ever manage.
All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)
A good rejoinder to any who claim that recreating reality results in dramatic inertia, and a tightrope act of dramatic tension, eschewing the lapses into convention of Klute for investigational rigor. The journalists are a little insecure, a little inarticulate, a little sadistic, but they’re also different: Redford is sincere (to a fault), and Hoffman is conniving (to a fault). One is never sure whether to want them to stop hounding witnesses, or root for something explosive: both ends are kept so hushed and omnipresent.
Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000)
Bipolar cinema. I’d seen this before, several times, so as I tried to explain my problems with it to a professor with an uber-placid facial expression, it was painful in an I’m-vicariously-disillusioning-my-14-year-old-self type of way. But I did enjoy the unenjoyability of the experience of watching it. (It’s complicated, but the sensation of boredom is actually kind of therapeutic at the moment.) Strangest of all to think that I once found Bjork attractive. Or did I? I probably did.
Song:
"It'll Never Happen Again" (Tim Hardin)
Wouldn't feel out of place on After the Gold Rush. And AtGR is one of my favorite albums--Hardin is no Young c. 1970, for me, but his best work is on that level. Other faves: "Reason to Believe," "Black Sheep Boy."
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Recent viewings, meaning more recent than last month.
In light of some recent personal troubles—in short, the title of my website came disturbingly close to having an unintended double meaning—I’m trying to write more, but the old 100-point system having become arbitrary to the point of meaninglessness, all I can bring myself to do is, y’know, write about the movies. I’m not trying particularly hard here—hell, I don’t have time to—but we’ll see if I can manage something verging on coherence.
Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1970)
Mike is at once reasonable and freakishly immature in his attitudes towards sex. The high point is the initial encounter with a woman in the bathhouse, in which he flails like a maniac but obviously tries to keep his composure all the while, and the woman makes a subtle shift from trying to seduce him to not caring whether he enjoys the experience. Skolimowski is the rare comic director who explores the possibilities of a scene rather than relying on behavioral exaggeration: when he watches the policeman accept a drink from the porn theater operator, it’s less an indication that the operator is screwed or that the police force is corrupt than that even bad-guy cops like G&Ts.
Klute (Alan Pakula, 1971)
Like how Bree’s attitude—she’s okay, because the guys are nervous, and she isn’t—runs counter to the very conventions the film is built upon, viz. perverse killer gradually succumbs to preying on prostitutes. Also like how Sutherland’s nice guy is also a little weird and withdrawn. But I’m disappointed that that weirdness is divorced from his sexuality, which seems utterly conventional, but that’s a perhaps necessary sop to audiences expecting an ordinary romance. Worse as it goes along, collapsing under the weight of romance and thriller conventions, but even the final villain speech is a surprisingly low-key and contemplative rumination on mistakes made and mistakes to follow.
Lola Montes (Max Ophuls, 1955)
A contradiction: a garish, romantic study of utter emotional isolation. Lola seems as incapable of finding strength in the wisdom of an older man as she does in finding joy in the free spirit of a younger man–and even when she seems close to a psychic match, e.g. Liszt, there’s a constant sense of up-and-down. We’re there with her, wistfully observing the barriers of incompatibility and trying our best to break through them.
Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo, 2008)
For some reason this made me think of Candide—maybe in the protagonist’s persistent, delusional belief that he can suddenly overcome his faults. But Hong doesn’t exactly let it become a running gag: sometimes, the contrast between intention and follow-through is blatant enough to funny, and at other times his dissipation seems to mirror Hong’s. Inchoate and rambling alongside Hong’s features, but I’d like to see it again—maybe there’s more here.
Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008)
Liked it, esp. the way Garrone blunts a sense of resolution—the final scene is like if Rossellini took on a gangster movie, at least in terms of pacing. I’m with the detractors who are confused as to how the various storylines overlap—I’d imagine that reading the book would be helpful.
Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1970)
Mike is at once reasonable and freakishly immature in his attitudes towards sex. The high point is the initial encounter with a woman in the bathhouse, in which he flails like a maniac but obviously tries to keep his composure all the while, and the woman makes a subtle shift from trying to seduce him to not caring whether he enjoys the experience. Skolimowski is the rare comic director who explores the possibilities of a scene rather than relying on behavioral exaggeration: when he watches the policeman accept a drink from the porn theater operator, it’s less an indication that the operator is screwed or that the police force is corrupt than that even bad-guy cops like G&Ts.
Klute (Alan Pakula, 1971)
Like how Bree’s attitude—she’s okay, because the guys are nervous, and she isn’t—runs counter to the very conventions the film is built upon, viz. perverse killer gradually succumbs to preying on prostitutes. Also like how Sutherland’s nice guy is also a little weird and withdrawn. But I’m disappointed that that weirdness is divorced from his sexuality, which seems utterly conventional, but that’s a perhaps necessary sop to audiences expecting an ordinary romance. Worse as it goes along, collapsing under the weight of romance and thriller conventions, but even the final villain speech is a surprisingly low-key and contemplative rumination on mistakes made and mistakes to follow.
Lola Montes (Max Ophuls, 1955)
A contradiction: a garish, romantic study of utter emotional isolation. Lola seems as incapable of finding strength in the wisdom of an older man as she does in finding joy in the free spirit of a younger man–and even when she seems close to a psychic match, e.g. Liszt, there’s a constant sense of up-and-down. We’re there with her, wistfully observing the barriers of incompatibility and trying our best to break through them.
Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo, 2008)
For some reason this made me think of Candide—maybe in the protagonist’s persistent, delusional belief that he can suddenly overcome his faults. But Hong doesn’t exactly let it become a running gag: sometimes, the contrast between intention and follow-through is blatant enough to funny, and at other times his dissipation seems to mirror Hong’s. Inchoate and rambling alongside Hong’s features, but I’d like to see it again—maybe there’s more here.
Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008)
Liked it, esp. the way Garrone blunts a sense of resolution—the final scene is like if Rossellini took on a gangster movie, at least in terms of pacing. I’m with the detractors who are confused as to how the various storylines overlap—I’d imagine that reading the book would be helpful.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Going home early...
Will try to write something substantive when I get back. Here were my faves:
1. Lorna's Silence
2. Happy-Go-Lucky
3. Revanche
4. Synecdoche, New York
5. Treeless Mountain
6. Acne
7. All Around Us
8. A Christmas Tale
1. Lorna's Silence
2. Happy-Go-Lucky
3. Revanche
4. Synecdoche, New York
5. Treeless Mountain
6. Acne
7. All Around Us
8. A Christmas Tale
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Day 4
PRO:
Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
pro:
Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim)
All Around Us (Ryosuke Hashiguchi)
con:
Daytime Drinking (Noh Young-seok)
Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
pro:
Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim)
All Around Us (Ryosuke Hashiguchi)
con:
Daytime Drinking (Noh Young-seok)
Days 1-3
What I've made it to so far:
PRO:
Revanche (Gotz Spielmann) [I've heard Spielmann compared to Haneke and Seidl, but he's clearly more interested in thriller conventions than either. He's also an expert at undermining them.]
pro:
Acne (Federico Veiroj) [Light and nostalgic, but there's something willfully unconventional about the protag's coming of age, and Veiroj's approach to characterization.]
mixed:
It's Not Me, I Swear! (Philippe Falardeau) [Sort of "Hal Ashby does Home Alone," but not quite as subversive as one would like.]
Le Dernier Maquis (Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche) [I'm a bit baffled by this one.]
con:
Me and Orson Welles (Richard Linklater) [I'm a bit non-plussed by this one.]
Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt) [De Sica-esque. Some people will think that's a good thing.]
Delta (Kornel Mundruczo) [Mundruczo has a good eye, but is terminally adverse to humor.]
PRO:
Revanche (Gotz Spielmann) [I've heard Spielmann compared to Haneke and Seidl, but he's clearly more interested in thriller conventions than either. He's also an expert at undermining them.]
pro:
Acne (Federico Veiroj) [Light and nostalgic, but there's something willfully unconventional about the protag's coming of age, and Veiroj's approach to characterization.]
mixed:
It's Not Me, I Swear! (Philippe Falardeau) [Sort of "Hal Ashby does Home Alone," but not quite as subversive as one would like.]
Le Dernier Maquis (Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche) [I'm a bit baffled by this one.]
con:
Me and Orson Welles (Richard Linklater) [I'm a bit non-plussed by this one.]
Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt) [De Sica-esque. Some people will think that's a good thing.]
Delta (Kornel Mundruczo) [Mundruczo has a good eye, but is terminally adverse to humor.]
Friday, August 29, 2008
2008 Preliminary Schedule
Here's how it's looking, with some wishful thinking:
4th
Acne
5th
Revanche
Delta
It’s Not Me, I Swear!
Wendy and Lucy
6th
Appaloosa
Dioses
Me and Orson Welles
Dernier Maquis
Pontypool
7th
Serbis
Treeless Mountain
All Around Us
Silence of Lorna
Daytime Drinking
8th
Hunger
New York, I Love You
Summer Hours
The Terence Davies Trilogy
When It Was Blue
9th
Voy a explotar
Two-Legged Horse
24 City
Tokyo Sonata
Synecdoche, New York
10th
Happy-Go-Lucky
Conte de noel
Four Nights With Anna
Je veux voir
Birdsong
11th
Gomorrah
Brothers Bloom
Barrage contre la pacifique
35 Rhums
12th
Che
Liverpool
Hooked
Sut
13th
Perfect Day
Adela
Under the Tree
Miracle at St. Anna
4th
Acne
5th
Revanche
Delta
It’s Not Me, I Swear!
Wendy and Lucy
6th
Appaloosa
Dioses
Me and Orson Welles
Dernier Maquis
Pontypool
7th
Serbis
Treeless Mountain
All Around Us
Silence of Lorna
Daytime Drinking
8th
Hunger
New York, I Love You
Summer Hours
The Terence Davies Trilogy
When It Was Blue
9th
Voy a explotar
Two-Legged Horse
24 City
Tokyo Sonata
Synecdoche, New York
10th
Happy-Go-Lucky
Conte de noel
Four Nights With Anna
Je veux voir
Birdsong
11th
Gomorrah
Brothers Bloom
Barrage contre la pacifique
35 Rhums
12th
Che
Liverpool
Hooked
Sut
13th
Perfect Day
Adela
Under the Tree
Miracle at St. Anna
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