Friday, January 30, 2009

Better late than never.

A month after the close of 2008, I feel at least vaguely qualified to do top tens for two media. Before the task gets any more embarrassingly belated, here they are.

Films:

1. Lorna’s Silence (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
2. Ballast (Lance Hammer)
3. Revanche (Gotz Spielmann)
4. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
5. Sarabande (Nathaniel Dorsky)
6. Boogie (Radu Muntean)
7. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
8. Burn After Reading (Joel and Ethan Coen)
9. Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone)
10. Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim)

Songs (I'm afraid my album list looks too sorry):

1. Broadfield Marchers – “When Cowards Stall” (The Inevitable Continuing)
2. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – “Think I Wanna Die” (Pershing)
3. The Mommyheads – “Stupid Guy” (You’re Not a Dream)
4. Broadfield Marchers – “Mondo From Growth” (The Inevitable Continuing)
5. In Elvis Garage – “Residue” (Winning By Cheating)
6. Winterpills – “Burning Hearts” (Central Chambers)
7. Broadfield Marchers – “Sailing Fortune” (The Inevitable Continuing)
8. Bob Mould – “Who Needs to Dream?” (District Line)
9. Times New Viking – “Drop-Out” (Rip It Off)
10. Robert Forster – “Demon Days” (The Evangelist)

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

January: Second Half

PRO:

The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (Eric Rohmer, 1993)
Maybe Rohmer’s most formally laid-back movie, with the possible exception of his documentaries: no way in hell such awkward zooms would have made their way into, for example, My Night at Maud’s. Typically, Rohmer builds the dispute over the mediatheque, clearly resolves it—the winner is Fabrice Luchini, pissed-off environmentalist schoolteacher—but hands the baton of cool satisfaction over to Pascal Greggory’s mayor, to whom it just really doesn’t matter all that much. Bonus points for making Greggory two-faced, forming sinister hypotheses with his girlfriend and presenting himself as open to discussion with the teacher’s daughter, and yet so stupefied he’s impossible to dislike.

Boogie (Radu Muntean, 2008)
“Couldn’t be farther from Lazarescu, 12:08 and 4 Months,” multiple reviews note, referring to this film’s fairly breezy account of a night on the town with some high school buds, and its vaguely insidious effect on one’s marriage. But Muntean’s latest is, no doubt, a stylistic cousin to those forebearers, with takes verging on 10 minutes and subtle insinuations of a creeping class and physical divide between the eponymous hero and his pals. Muntean ingeniously tricks us, I think, into precisely sharing Boogie’s virtues and vices: the hangout sessions, although mired in condescension and wasted dreams, are dynamic and enjoyable, and the wife, although smart and loving, seems dreary. Here we have both a searing critique of the basic principles on which friendship is often founded, and the devastating conclusion that those dubious friendships still give more pleasure than traditional ego-boosters like fatherhood.

pro:

Crashing (Gary Walkow, 2007)
Finally: a writer’s movie that revels in complex, accurate self-criticisms rather than crass distinctions. Few works of art so cunningly mirror the artistic process. The downward spiral of self-loathing and fantasizing gets a bit heavy, but the film is sustained by funny, deconstructive energy.

Ask Any Girl (Charles Walters, 1959)
Unlike, say, Sturges, who flirts with crudity but always slaps his own signature on the execution thereof, Walters lapses into rather anonymous schtick. But again and again, he lends the ridiculous story serious consideration: I’m thinking of the chubby woman’s melancholy attitude of resignation towards marriage, or Niven’s reserved, cynical detachment that masks attraction.

mixed:

How to Become Myself (Jun Ichikawa, 2007)
Ichikawa’s stylistic excesses—using split-screen with the same perverse casualness with which Ashby used dissolves in The Last Detail; bold, “cinematic” means of portraying technological communication—are actually kind of interesting and expressive, if distracting. Few directors would dare to emphasize such blah, insignificant details with such sentimental bravura. I like the contrast, but the sentimentality gets a bit much to bear as the film goes on: the film more or less lets the protagonist give herself an hour-long hug.

DNF:

State Legislature (Frederick Wiseman, 2007)
Alas, there’s only so much inner life simmering beneath a meeting on branding cattle to identify diseased cows. No doubt state legislators themselves would share my fidgety idleness.

Sparrow (Johnnie To, 2008)
Slick is the word: this exudes overdeliberate coolness that smothers any meaningful tension. I sort of enjoyed the Election movies, but I don’t think I know what to do with To anymore.

Afternoon (Angela Schanelec, 2007)
Sort of like if Lucretia Martel did a Bergman script. Too languorously shot and behaviorally blunt to do much of anything for me.

Literature:

PRO:

Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
Wrote something I liked about this for class but won’t post it here for fear of dubious self-plagiarism charges. Basically, as in Jude, seemingly worthwhile intellectual development is crushed by its inapplicability to relationships. I don’t quite know what to do with Alec D’Urberville, doubtless an agent of evil by the book’s end. Quite good, but my least favorite Hardy novel so far.

“Barn Burning” (William Faulkner, 1938)
Faulkner, to me, exemplifies holding oneself to a standard of intense emotional subjectivity while resisting the lugubriousness that can often imply, and this story is no exception. Sometimes I wish the dense thickets of language weren’t so forbidding.

“A&P” (John Updike, 1961)
Wasn’t sure if I was going for this at first, but I ended up really liking it: the honor and disgrace brought upon the naïve, horny protag are perfectly balanced.

More short stories from my fiction writing class: I liked something by Joyce Carol Oates, mildly appreciated Charlotte Perkins Gilman, met Rick Moody with groaning indifference, and loathed Kate Chopin and Katherine Anne Porter.

pro:

Motherless Brooklyn (Jonathan Lethem, 1999)
Given Lethem’s liking for Dostoevsky and Rohmer I’d expected something a little more austere, but this is fun for all of its jazzy aloofness. The convoluted plot mechanics do little the unsentimental interplay between the protag’s OCD and awareness that, for better and worse, others are functioning in a profoundly different way.

mixed:

The Taming of the Shrew (William Shakespeare, 1594)
The extreme, comic transformation of Katherine seems to me hard to put to good artistic use, and it’s no wonder that the Zeffirelli film, which a bit of was screened in class, is so head-scratchingly awful, Zeffirelli’s obviousness highlighting everything crass and nothing subtle about the play. That’s not to say a good version couldn’t be done, my idea of which would probably try to account for the misery and embarrassment of the personality change. In the text itself, this seems like a relatively marginal goal.

Music:

The Beckies – The Beckies (1976)
Left Banke, Montage and Stories material accounted for, this is Michael Brown’s best work: there’s not a bad song to be found. Download it here.

Times New Viking – “Drop-Out” (Rip It Off, 2008)
Most of this album is bland Indie 101 to me, but this is a nice imitation of a good GBV throwaway.

Plush – “I’ve Changed My Number” (Fed, 2002)
There’s a spirit of innovative craftsmanship coursing through this album, but to my liking it only really comes together on this track.

The Beautiful South – “Don’t Marry Her” (Blue Is the Color, 1996)
How the hell did it take me 13 years to hear this?

The Beat – “Different Kind of Girl” (The Beat, 1979)
This is a masterpiece; “You Won’t Be Happy” is very good, and very Flamin' Groovies-esque; “I Don’t Fit In” is interesting.

Sloan – “Coax Me”
The version off the A-Sides Win compilation from 2005: it lives and dies by a brilliantly tense riff, and the performances I found on YouTube killed the magic by subtly altering it. The Wrens c. Secaucus would be proud.

Bleu – “Snow Day” (1999)
I feel very dorky for loving this song, but I do. The chords in the verses course along with a lot of pleasurable variation, skirting and triumphing over archetypal pop-punk.

Theater:

Uncle Vanya (Austin Pendleton, 2009)
My first encounter with Chekhov, staged with expressive use of the Classic Stage Company’s theater-in-the-round: emphasis is distributed evenly throughout the space. Aside from occasionally delving into complex use of simultaneous action, Pendleton’s major motif seems to be giving most every actor (with the notable exception of Mamie Gummer’s Sonya) an ironic, nervous laugh to accompany despairing monologues. This isn’t a bad device, really, but Denis O’Hare overuses it. Extra-artistic Pleasures Dept.: I’d never really been on the Maggie-Gyllenhaal-is-hot bandwagon prior to this, but having sat a few feet away from her, I change my story.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

January: Halfway Post

PRO:

Counterparts (Jan Bonny, 2007)
The inexplicable recipient of middling reception at Cannes 2007 (sample review quote: “Absence of music also reinforces the small-screen feel”; amazingly, it seems I have watched much more TV than Variety’s Derek Elley), this feature debut employs Dardennes-style camerawork and editing to glorious effect. The scenario, a domestic-abuse relationship with the roles reversed, is played blessedly free of sensationalism: Bonny has a fine-tuned and unusual sense, for example, of the “triggers” afflicting the abuser, such as overdeliberate attempts at reconciliation on the part of the abused. Is she horrific, or is he merely sentimental? On and on it goes…

Falbalas (Jacques Becker, 1945)
This Becker masterpiece is a miracle of acting style trumping shot duration: visuals fly by at a rapid clip, all charged with latent emotion. I’ll be thinking of Becker’s terse dissolves on suggestive facial expressions when polishing my own screenplay. Patience does not necessarily equal wisdom.

pro:

The Wackness (Jonathan Levine, 2008)
From the likes of this and the less impressive All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (not written by Levine), Levine is working out a preoccupation with a social middle ground of sorts, and in this case an ambivalence about youthful abandon. We’re not talking about a Stillman-esque take on the pros and cons of a modern social class system so much as an illustration of an attempt to live life as if that system doesn’t exist, ultimately semi-conceding to it. My biggest quibble is what seems to me a rather mild depiction of benzodiazepine withdrawal, which is a hell I wouldn’t wish on Hitler.

Beauty #2 (Andy Warhol, 1965)
Long stretches of boredom, as usual, permeate this one-take opus, but it steadily develops into an indelibly reflexive take on voyeurism: the position of the camera makes the unwanted observer newly tantalizing.

Slumming (Michael Glawogger, 2006)
Seems to be about revenge, then redemption, and finally eviscerates any kind of straightforward moral oomph. The point, going off the observations of the spoiled Austrian kids, and later on, the Filipino drinking buddies, is that it’s fun, but probably wrong, to try to guess what’s really going on with someone. Admirable, but bizarre.

Guernsey (Nanouk Leopold, 2005)
Both this and Wolfsbergen are detached and elliptical in the manner of Haneke—shots are filmed at about twice the distance they need to be, although Leopold occasionally varies from master-shot mode—particularly Code Unknown. All we need to know, apparently, is that the protagonist travels, has become used to it, willingly trusts most people but operates underneath a constant veil of coldness. Performances are typically muted, but occasionally quite interesting. Sample moment: protag’ll ask a question—“do you think of her now and then?”—and then turn away in the same beat, suddenly meek. Style is at times weirdly showy—one will slowly track out as the characters talk before just lying there—and maybe they’d seem less weird if not for the lack of score, acting style etc.

Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)
Ending is very Night and Fog, but as far as stringently ethical treatments of real-life atrocity go, this is for the most part laid-back, to its benefit. (Because why should Folman deny that, despite the undercurrent of sadness in his discussions of the massacre, he trades and enjoys stupid barbs like “It’s a blast,” with his old buddies, as most would?) Most battle scenes, as a general rule, tend to bore me, either because a filmmaker strives to approximate the chaos of war and loses narrative coherence in the process, or in the reverse case, where we’re pinned down to a single perspective, drowns in monotony; both options are satisfyingly plausible and usually dull. That said, I was rarely bored during this film: encounters of otherworldly tension are situated in retroactive melancholy.

America, America (Elia Kazan, 1963)

mixed:

Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970)
Favorite bit: the memory game, perhaps because Ray is so adept at the language of melodrama that when he veers from it entirely, the effect is kind of magical. Not a very imposing movie, but not a particularly expressive one, either.

No Smoking (Alain Resnais, 1993)
Nobody seems to be able to account for Resnais’ infatuation with Alan Ayckbourn, least of all Ayckbourn himself. Mostly too mannered for my taste, and the formal gamesmanship isn’t anywhere near as deliberate or complex as in Private Fears in Public Places. Resnais does lend light, poetic consideration to crass characterizations, particularly in the way scenes close.

Ponyo on the Cliffs by the Sea (Hayao Miyazaki, 2008)
Sometimes I don’t know whether to enjoy the “subversive” quality of Miyazaki’s all-out warmth for his supernatural characters, which counteracts the banality of cackling cartoon villains, or to feel that it’s tediously cozy.

Literature:

PRO:

Diary of a Bad Year (J.M. Coetzee, 2007)
I’ve liked everything I’ve read by Coetzee, but this is my favorite, a conceptually gimmicky novel whose three-pronged design, to my mind, anticipates and negotiates with just about every conceivable intelligent criticism it invites. It’s not hard to imagine a potentially great writer who loves Dostoevsky, longs to approximate his greatness, feels vaguely insecure about his own storytelling abilities, not to mention conquered by lust, but it’s somehow inspiring that that skeletal, somewhat pathetic profile has been transformed into a masterpiece.

Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy, 1877)
When Tolstoy attempts to write anything conclusive about human nature, he often ends up chasing his own tail (e.g., much of War and Peace)—which is what makes this novel, in which he observes Levin doing the same and becoming conscious of it in a productive way, superior to that one.

pro:

After Dark (Haruki Murakami, 2004)
Murakami constructs stories of delicate intricacy for the sole purpose of leaving them hanging and watching them flutter in the wind, as usual. This feat is so impressive that the worldview tying it all together, a vaguely mystical summation of Japanese urban life, feels like an afterthought.

Theater:

pro:

Speed-the-Plow (Neil Pepe, 2009)
Seen with William H. Macy in the central role, who seems more suited to the apparently aging, insecure Bobby Gould than thermometer manqué Jeremy Piven anyway. The chief hook—Bobby is wisely stupid, Karen is stupidly wise—bristles with intelligence, even when it’s smothered by cleverness.