By Vadim Rizov
I went back to my hometown of Austin for a few days last week, something I do twice a year to catch up with a few folks who haven't moved, and also to eat BBQ and Tex-Mex (a decent fall-back if you're in the area and short on time, but featuring one of the worst websites known to man: if you click on that, be prepared to hear uber-hack Pat Green singing "Have some tacos and beer and let ourselves go." Tacos and beer! Sodom trembles.). Since I stopped buying CDs pretty much when I got to college, everything I have back home is an automatic nostalgia trip: I will never know any albums as well as I know these, though I'm not sure I want to reclaim the circumstances that made me learn them inside-out in the first place. Back when my income was, um, considerably more straitened, every used CD purchased (new albums? Ha! I was bankrupting the RIAA before it was cool) was a thoughtful investment, to be played something like 8 times each at a minimum. I'd spend hours trolling half.com, freakishly absorbing what the basic price for every CD was, then comparing it to whatever copies I found. This could quite satisfyingly fill up a lot of hours and, as a high school loser, I had a lot of hours to fill.
These albums still sound really good to me, although I feel kind of pathetic blasting Girls Can Tell or Lapalco whenever I pull into a parking lot, like I'm the cranky old man who won't shut up about some Neil Young show he saw in '73. "I know about Fleet Foxes!" I want to yell. Of course, no one cares; still, I feel weird about reverting to the old when, for the past few years, I've been racing through albums with such alarming speed (rare and exceptional is something that grabs me more than three times) that I can't remember half of what I hear anymore. And then there's David Bowie's Hunky Dory, an album I always re-approach a little gingerly. I don't write about everything I listen to; e.g., I've been blasting Low for quite a few months now, working myself into it, with remarkably little to say. At first, all it really did for me, oddly enough, was deepen my appreciation for what Gary Numan's own peculiar synth project was all about, and how distinctive his version of synth songwriting was from Eno's. Low is also—massive, undeniable influence apart—still a difficult album to write about or parse, equal parts impenetrable and stupidly obvious (until you embrace how dramatically the bass drops down and the vocal wails kick in, "Weeping Wall" can seem like an embarrassing exercise in Orientalist kitsch).
Seems to me that Hunky Dory is the last time Bowie was hanging back and outside of his "generation"; after that, the gloves were off and he'd dominate the zeitgeist with effortless eagerness 'til decade's end. "Changes" is a great song (and an unlikely hit single), but Bowie can't identify with anyone explicitly: "These children that you spit on," he chides, "are immune to your consultations / They're quite aware of what they're going through." The pronoun being "they," and Bowie's presumably somewhere else, positioning himself God knows where. "Changes" is somewhere between a much smarter version of some awful late '60s ballad about the new generation and/or, depending how you feel about these things, a blueprint for Bowie's continuing persona shifts to come. I think it has more to do with the album proper than his much-insisted-upon chameleon qualities: Bowie's persona shifts were internally consistent within each album, but Hunky Dory is a grab-bag of whatever's around, and probably better for it.
Bowie's always been a cover fiend, but there's arguably four here: not just "Fill Your Heart" (an early example of how to rehabilitate a bad song and bring out the melodic goodness underneath: Bowie skips over the simplistic lyrics as if they were so much metrical dross, which—given, if nothing else, the excellence of songwriter Paul Williams' Phantom Of The Paradise contributions—I'm willing to believe is a valid approach), but his twin tributes to Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan (more ambivalent than most would give them credit for), capped off with "Queen Bitch," which outdoes Lou Reed (and sets the template for the glossy treatment Bowie would rehab Reed with on Transformer). Indeed, the second half of the album finds Bowie increasingly retreating into his influences. Then there's "Quicksand," the kind of song I only find myself listening to when I'm listening to the whole album start-to-finish, and that's a damn shame. No matter what the spiritual allusion/Nietschze is supposed to be, it's hard to find a whole lot of distance from a song which instructs "Don't believe in yourself" and "Knowledge comes with death's release." (The Delgados start here, presumably.)
Mostly what I got from re-listening to Hunky Dory (and let's not even get into "Life On Mars?" or "Oh You Pretty Things," a song without which no liberal arts college party is complete, apparently... at one point, it seemed as mandatory as any given Belle & Sebastian track) is a renewed sense of the depth and complexity of Bowie's catalogue. Whenever I get disgusted or burned out with keeping up with current musical trends, I half-jokingly threaten to quit everything for a year and spend a solid year investigating every nook and cranny of Bowie's catalogue (except maybe that one stupid fucking album with Peter Frampton on guitar). Listening to Hunky makes me feel that reading a truly comprehensive Bowie bio (any suggestions?), and spending a year with Bowie, would be as rewarding and illuminating as finally reading the complete Orwell, my other goal. I'm glad there's so much to look forward to.
Speaking of Austin: I was in a shitty high school band, just like everyone else there. The band wasn't technically mine, but instead a co-production of one Eric Wilson (who, among other wonders, casually saved my social life from utter disaster senior year) and myself, backed by a motley but game crew of semi-competent drummers and one massively stoic, stoned bassist. Our name was unimportant (read: embarrassing, at least to me), our run a mercifully brief 6 months. It can safely be said that the project, uh, "never realized its full potential." The one thing we did that made us seem like a real band was that we split up over "creative differences." (Also, I couldn't—and still can't—fucking sing. Which was a problem, since I sometimes insisted on it.) Those differences, in brief: I wanted to write 3-minute pop songs. Eric wanted us to cover "Sister Ray." The end was obviously nigh. Since then, Eric's gone through a variety of incarnations that just weren't for me. But the demon ghost of garage rock is lying a little more dormant these days, and The Spirit of Space is kicking ass.
A 2-hour runway wait at JFK (what the hell is going on over there?) put me on the ground to just catch the last half of their set: suffice it to say that it turns out there's a way to cover "Psycho Killer" that isn't actually boring, which was news to me. Eric and his trusty crew put on a show that's tight, catchy and—most importantly—loud. So yes, I'm pimping my high school buddy's band; deal with it. They're quite good and if you're in town, one of their shows (sometimes free!) should hit the spot, assuming you don't mind being surrounded by much cooler kids my age. Eric's also become quite an excellent engineer, and the band's latest product—This Machine Kills Rhythm; 10 songs in a zippy 27 minutes—is pretty immaculate, though the show is better. Over at MySpace, I'd recommend listening to "Dream Girl," a morose kind of doo-wop thing with a very neat chorus and "Outside," which has a very cool minimalist guitar solo. (If you want to see what I was running away from, the undeceptively titled "Velvet Jam" is also on tap.)
While I was hanging out at Eric's house, I also heard one of his roommate's songs. Taft (also in the band) has what Eric described as "a genius pop song that's going to take over the world," and that's hopefully not far off. Go here and marvel at the biggest chorus I've heard in a while (second version preferred, although for my money it's reiterated one too many times). In a late-night moment, I described it as "Maroon 5 meets Orange Juice," which kind of grossed out its creator. But I meant it in a good way.
And now we slay the beast that is The Dodos. I've been grappling with Visiter for a while—longer than I would under normal circumstances, but it was enthusiastically recommended by trustworthy colleagues, not just the usual Pitchfork dipshits. The fucking beast is an hour long, and what I'm supposed to do with that exactly I don't know. The Dodos are two guys—Meric Long plays guitar and sings, Logan Kroeber avoids getting tied to a drum kit with all kinds of tricks (which include tambourines tied to shoes, a touch too cute for me). As two-man duos go, they're preferable, I suppose, to the endless raft of so-called couple-rock ensembles making the world an even twee-er place than I can handle (e.g. Matt & Kim) or another shitty blue-rock band trying to get at that sweet White Stripes action. Ah, but I keep forgetting we live in a bold new age where all that's passe (right?), and The Dodos represent (be still my beating heart), among other things, "campus-quad pop, art-punk, and communal, lo-fi folk" (aren't these the same damn thing? Did the campus somehow get cut off from the art school?) and companions to "new-primitivist bands." Which is, I guess, supposed to be descriptive rather than pejorative, but I'm not sure why we're all supposed to be celebrating pseudo-childlike innocence (which generally annoys me) and the deliberate refusal of sophistication. These are the same people who find XTC too "clever," I suppose, which is when music criticism starts seeming like some weird updating of old, ingrained 20th-century British prejudices against people who are "too clever."
Chip on my shoulder showing yet? Anyway, I guess it's no surprise that I'm not much of a lad for the long-form musical explorations, especially if there's only two of you: there's five songs here over six minutes, and only four under three. When The Dodos are short and concise, they're right up my alley: for my money, their best moment is "Park Song", which I predictably like because it's melancholy and quiet. "Time to cut my hair and get it parted" leads, with faultless if unexplained logic, to "I think she thinks I'm retarded." But the short rule certainly wouldn't explain a rude blast like "It's That Time Again," a series of unpleasant trumpet blasts punctuated by banal sentiments like "Be my love again." I'm not sure when the brass from Close Encounters' mother-ship became the preferred sound of the moment; presumably Beirut has a lot to answer for. A lot of the longer songs lead, almost as a matter of course, from an interesting verse to moments where the song speeds up, Long starts abusing his slide-finger like an acoustic Jack White (or moments that just seem to owe an odd debt to John Lee Fahey), and/or everything degenerates into a tangle of percussion with little-to-no discernible order or method. Which may be very exciting live, but isn't so much on record.
I'm not sure why bands like The Dodos annoy me so much: they're preferable to most things, some of their songs are quite good, and they're surely talented. I guess it's that I'm really all about song structure, with the occasional exception, and The Dodos aren't: they're about a show, and talent, and the songs come not as an after-thought, but not as the main attraction either. Like most music writers (I suppose), I've always wanted to be able to sustain, if not the musical omnivorousness of the late John Peel, at least his ability to never get stranded in whatever tiny corner of the musical landscape I've marked off for myself. Bands like The Dodos always threaten to leave me behind, and no one wants to feel irrelevant, especially when I haven't even hit 25.
Video round-up will probably not be a regular feature here, but a couple of things deserve your attention, one good, one reprehensible. Naturally, the reprehensible thing is more fun to talk about: Arcynta Ali Childs, a reporter with way bigger balls than mine, recently spent an afternoon following Thug Slaughter Force, a Brooklyn posse I sincerely hope to not run into on the street. Their thesis statement "No Tight Clothes" is entertaining if, at 5 minutes long, really pushing the novelty value further than it can stretch. The video pulls no punches: "Wearing tight clothes by men may result in feminine tendencies, homosexuality, possible yeast infection, severe hemorrhoids, permanent wedgies, and genetically inherited transsexual characteristics in your son." TSF is just smart enough to hedge their bets (albeit way too transparently) during the interview: "It basically boils down to: You are in a homosexual attire, and you are claiming to be something else. ... That's what I have a problem with—not the homosexualism. You're a front artist, and you're promoting homosexuality with your actions and dress code, but you're promoting gangster lifestyle with your lyrics. The two don't match up." Sure, sure. TSF don't actually deserve that much shit: they're just inept enough to not make them a real threat. (I adore Clipse, but there's no doubt that when they rap out "You fucking faggot," it stings that much more because they only use it once and they seem to really mean it: it's reprehensible, duh, but they're great rappers and if W.C. Fields survived despite revelations like "anyone he met whose eyes were not considered normal by American optical standards, he imagined to be a Nipponese spy," I'll chill.) What's really scary is that they're obviously tapping into something: e.g. an unnamed NYPD officer complaining "This movement of everyone wearing tight-fitting clothes—it's not nice," as if they were pissing on the street or punching old ladies.
More fun is the unlikely 11th-hour semi-resurrection of Weezer. I have no intention of listening to their latest album (judged a debacle all round, apparently): "Pork 'N Beans" is bitchin', and I'm happy to leave it at that. But the Hootenanny tour they've embarked upon has yielded some neat videos (even though I'm unsure when Rivers started modeling himself on Jason Schwartzman in The Darjeeling Limited), most notably the band leading a small-high-school-marching-band's worth of people in a very nice acoustic version of "Creep." It's very cute to watch near-contemporaries with comparatively little staying power cover their longer-lasting contemporaries' only massive single, and I bet if you recorded this version with a decent mic it'd be revelatory. The song co-written with fans, however, is shit.
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Vadim Rizov is a New York-based freelance writer. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Onion AV Club and Paste Magazine, among others.
Monday, June 30, 2008
"Indie 500": David Bowie, The Spirit of Space/Taft, The Dodos, video round-up
Keith's Korner: Confessions from the Editor (#7)
By Keith Uhlich
Two weeks missed. So now that that’s over with, let’s get back on track:
When I was very young, I received a fuzzy toy caterpillar. Memory suggests that it came in one of those packages with bright cardboard backing, the toy itself encased in plastic lightly smudged with fingerprints. The caterpillar was vibrantly colored (a subtle blend of shades of the rainbow) with big googly eyes that seemed to look outwards and upwards simultaneously. It fit, with only slight dangle, in the palm of my hand, and it was, for all intents and purposes, alive.
I’d been wanting this toy for a while, and it was my intention to treat it with the utmost care. On a paper insert included with the caterpillar’s packaging were instructions with corresponding illustrations. I only remember a single one of them: two words (“Avoid water”) and a picture of the caterpillar bent into a sort of backwards “S” curve, several cartoonish drops of water hanging a few inches above its body. It looked like it was having fun, swimming its way through a penciled-in flash-flood. But I was uncertain, because I didn’t know the meaning of the word “Avoid.”
Then as now, I possessed an essential stubbornness. When I set my mind towards figuring out a problem or overcoming an obstacle, I did it entirely myself, even if the results were, in 20/20 hindsight, invariably catastrophic. Such was the mindset that led a can of paint to be spilled all over my parents’ new shag carpet or a rental car to roll backwards down a relative's steep-incline driveway to the road below. (Per human nature, the bad in these cases tends to stick out more than the good.)
Then as now, I was more a visual than a verbal person, so I trusted my initial impression of the illustration—that the caterpillar was having fun in the water and I should oblige his desires. I took my new toy, received just minutes before, into the bathroom and turned the sink faucet on full force, the sound of it somewhere between a forest waterfall and television snow-static. Then I put the caterpillar, plush and fluffy in my hand, directly under the stream.
I knew immediately that I’d made a mistake. All of an instant, the caterpillar’s vibrancy vanished; its fuzzy hair—light to the touch—became clumpy and bedraggled (its body seemed to be weeping, begging for respite). The soaked fur made the caterpillar look smaller than it was, as if it were shriveling, and this only called attention to the midnight of its eyes, which pooled into darkness—an illusory dilation. Though they remained in the self-same position (looking at once outwards and upwards), they were dying. It was the eyes that finally cued my reflex to pull it away.
I held it now above the sink, my sadness swelling, my own tears forming. My mother heard me and came to see what was wrong. She saw what had happened and, after I’d calmed down somewhat, explained to me the meaning of the word “Avoid.” We put the caterpillar on a windowsill in the direct sunlight, hoping it would dry out and resurrect. But it only became hard and brittle, its black eyes separating into a misshapen, diagonally-spaced horror. After a day or two, I threw it into the trash. I recall it landing on the heap of fruit rinds, torn-up papers, and potato skins, its body battered and broken, at just the right angle so that it looked up at me one last time.
This was the first thing I killed.
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Keith Uhlich is Editor of The House Next Door and a contributor to various print and online publications.
Links for the Day (June 30th, 2008)
1. Shout out to our friends at Benten Films, who've just put out their 4th release, Matthias Glasner's magnificent The Free Will. GreenCine gathers the reviews thus far. We'll be conducting a Grassroots podcast with the Benten boys this week, for publication in the near future. (And when I get off my lazy ass, I'll be reviewing the disc myself.)
[""Hats off to Benten Films once again for having the guts to release a challenging film like this," writes Charlie Prince at Cinema Strikes Back. "If you can handle uncomfortable dramas, I can't recommend the film enough; it's one of the best films I've seen in the last 10 years.""]
2. "Dispatch from Sweden, Part One": Reverse Shot and indieWIRE contributor Michael Koresky reports from the Bergman Week festival.
["Although American viewers only get the slightest sampling of Swedish films in any given year (other than Bergman's final film, "Saraband," U.S.-distributed releases from Sweden in the past five years included those by the increasingly difficult and militantly confrontational Moodysson, Hafstrom's film, and not much else), the industry is chugging along steadily, even if attendance for its own films has been on a downslide. (And in a search for stability, only twenty-nine films were made in 2007 -- as opposed to more than forty between 2005 and 2006 -- after too many production companies were trying to survive in Sweden at once.) Of course it goes without saying that the grant-based and state-sponsored Swedish Film Institute, which, founded in 1963, proudly touts itself as the world's first film archive, and which today produces, promotes, and preserves its country's cinema, needs to think about the future even more than the past, especially with Bergman's passing."]
3. "North Pole could be ice-free this summer, scientists say": From CNN.
["The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. "We kind of have an informal betting pool going around in our center and that betting pool is 'does the North Pole melt out this summer?' and it may well," said the center's senior research scientist, Mark Serreze. It's a 50-50 bet that the thin Arctic sea ice, which was frozen in autumn, will completely melt away at the geographic North Pole, Serreze said. The ice retreated to a record level in September when the Northwest Passage, the sea route through the Arctic Ocean, opened briefly for the first time in recorded history."]
4. "Who Was More Important: Lincoln or Darwin?": Malcolm Jones ponders the question at Newsweek.
["How's this for a coincidence? Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12, 1809. As historical facts go, it amounts to little more than a footnote. Still, while it's just a coincidence, it's a coincidence that's guaranteed to make you do a double take the first time you run across it. Everybody knows Darwin and Lincoln were near-mythic figures in the 19th century. But who ever thinks of them in tandem? Who puts the theory of evolution and the Civil War in the same sentence? Why would you, unless you're writing your dissertation on epochal events in the 19th century? But instinctively, we want to say that they belong together. It's not just because they were both great men, and not because they happen to be exact coevals. Rather, it's because the scientist and the politician each touched off a revolution that changed the world."]
5. "Tartan Films, RIP": Filmbrain eulogizes.
["It was at this year's European Film Market in Berlin (a wonderful source for industry gossip) that I first learned of the troubles brewing over at Tartan Films. Jane Giles, head of acquisitions, and Sam Dunn, of the home entertainment division had both recently left Tartan for senior positions at the British Film Institute (BFI), whose DVD division had grown somewhat stagnant of late. On top of that, I heard that the home office in the UK was siphoning off most of the Tartan USA's revenue, making it extremely difficult for them to maintain operations. Lo and behold, several months later Tartan USA joined the growing list of North American indie distributors to shut their doors this year. While that didn't come as much of a surprise, news of Tartan UK's sudden folding arrived without warning on late Friday afternoon. Some reports claim that employees showed up to work on Thursday to find the doors locked shut. Tartan hasn't released an official statement, but that hasn't stopped rampant speculation in the blogosphere."]
Quote of the Day: Albert Szent-Györgyi
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): A camel a day keeps the elephant away. 
Clip(s) of the Day: Been iTunesing Samurai Champloo and Lain, so here's the opening credits for both.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Doctor Who: Season 4, Ep. 9, "Forest of the Dead"
By Ross Ruediger
“Forest of the Dead” is an episode that left me so thoroughly perplexed that I had to see it several times to even begin thinking I understood it. I can honestly say that no installment of the new series (or even classic Who for that matter) confused me as much as this one and if that earns me the nickname “Thick as a Whale Omelet Ruediger,” then so be it. I asked for some help from fellow Who/Moffat enthusiasts Steven Cooper, Peet Gelderblom and Chris Hansen, three people whom I figured could help me get to the bottom of it all. They did help, were full of insights and opinions and their words are as important to recap as anything I’ve got to say. Yet another viewing helped, too, and I’m starting to believe the story is either not as complex as I’d originally thought, or it’s so obtuse that I’m never truly going to see the bigger picture.
The episode begins with the Doctor (David Tennant), River Song (Alex Kingston) and the rest (skipping the Gilligan’s Island joke this time) fighting off the Vashta Nerata-riddled corpse of Proper Dave. River whips out a sonic blaster similar to the one Captain Jack used in Moffat’s “Empty Child” two-parter. (Moffat has apparently said that it is in fact the same blaster; Jack left it in the TARDIS and River confiscated it at some point in the Doctor’s future.) Anyway, the gang exits through a hole in the wall, while the girl (Eve Newton) watches their escapades on TV. She flips the channels and settles on a less frenetic adventure starring Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), who is now under the care of Dr. Moon (Colin Salmon) at a care facility called CAL. The girl doesn’t seem surprised that her shrink is on her TV and she recognizes Donna from The Library. The Svengali-like Dr. Moon guides Donna into a new life—one without the fictitious Doctor, but with a husband and children. It all happens alarmingly fast—too fast in fact. If it weren’t so ideal, Donna might have a stronger sense that something isn’t right about it all. But there is something safe and cozy about this new world—it’s the sort of life Donna dreamed of having before meeting the Doctor.
Back in The Library, the Doctor and the hole in the wall gang continue dealing with the Vashta Nerada threat. The Doctor and River get into a fight about the sonic screwdriver she possesses and he finally blows his stack and demands to know who she is. Lux (Steve Pemberton) accuses them of arguing like an old married couple, which is immediately followed by River whispering something into the Doctor’s ear. It turns him white and reduces him to silence. Later on in the story he reveals that she spoke his name, which is something he would only have told someone under a very specific circumstance. It appears that in the Doctor’s future, River is his wife or at least as much of a wife as the Doctor could ever have. It’s entirely open to interpretation of course, but I was hard-pressed to come up with any other take on it.
The Doctor drags himself away from the emotion of the moment and gets back to business. He asks about the moon hovering above, and Lux reveals it’s not a real moon, but a “Doctor Moon”—a sort of virus checker/tech support for The Library. He fiddles with his screwdriver and a hologram of Donna appears for a brief moment and then the shadows are once again on the move, this time stalking Anita (Jessika Williams), and the story goes through similar motions as it did with Proper Dave in the first episode. Speaking of, Dave’s skeleton shows up once again to plague the group. The skeletons are rather silly, and seem shoehorned into the tale because you can’t make a proper Vashta Nerada action figure. (How cynical I’ve become toward my favorite series in the past four years; at least I haven’t stooped to declaring that Russell T. Davies raped my childhood.) The Doctor finally communicates with the Vashta Nerada through one of the data ghosts which leads to the least successful moment in the entire story. One of the worst sins Doctor Who can commit is delivering a moment when we’re ahead of the Doctor. Here it is when the Vashta Nerada said, "We didn't come here—we were hatched here", and the Doctor replies, "Of course you came here. You're hatched from spores in trees." Immediately, I made the connection to the books and the paper within them—but it takes the Doctor a few beats to figure it out. Further, it seems such an obvious payoff once the fact they hatch from trees is revealed, that I can see why it wasn't mentioned in the first episode at all. But that itself is problematic because it should have been something the Doctor pondered from early on in the story, and thus he should have at least been suspicious long before episode two. This is a huge failure on the part of the narrative.
Steven Cooper said of “The Doctor’s Daughter” that it “suffers from being told in one episode rather than two (although, given how consistently good this season has been, I can't think of another episode I'd want to lose to make way for an expanded version of this one).” I suggested that perhaps this tale could perhaps have been a better one-parter, due to the excessive running around and the repetition of numerous elements and information in both episodes. Peet Gelderblom did not agree with me and stated the story “…was particularly layered and condensed, so I don't agree this could ever have worked as a single episode. And the skeletons in spacesuits rule, dammit!” Peet added to the thought (as only Peet can) that “They make brilliant sense as a metaphor for mortality, too: In the future we all die...” Steven agreed with me on the skeletons by saying they were “the least successful of the ‘creepy’ elements, mainly due to the fact that (like a lot of Doctor Who monsters) they don't actually do anything apart from lurching slowly after our heroes.” As far as the episode count goes, Steven was with Peet and didn’t think this could have worked as a one-parter, but he did rather astutely declare, “I think both this and 'The Doctor's Daughter' have about one and a half episodes worth of plot.” Best laid plans, eh?
A bizarre veiled figure is trying to get the attention of the increasingly confused Donna, who is beginning to see bigger holes in the veil of her strange new world. The figure leaves her a note saying, “The world is wrong” and requesting Donna’s presence at her “usual play park.” Bam! It’s the next day and Donna is there and the figure, a woman, waits for her on a bench. She begins explaining the jagged nature of time in this world and how desires seem to be instantly met. She also reveals herself to be “what is left of Miss Evangelista,” and slowly Donna’s real life and her memories of the Doctor start coming back to her as she learns that she’s been programmed to forget her real life. When the woman insists that even Donna’s children are a construct, she forces her to see that all the children on the playground are the same boy and girl. It’s a disturbing, weird moment followed by one that’s even creepier. One the most disturbing images ever shown on Doctor Who is when Donna rips the veil off Evangelista and sees the twisted, computer-botched horror beneath. It’s striking imagery and an interesting idea that Steven Cooper didn’t entirely buy into: “Her increased intelligence made her able to understand the nature of the data core and not be fooled by the virtual reality—and also to insert herself into the virtual reality of others. I should say that I think this is an example of Moffat using some clever gags—‘I think a decimal point may have shifted in my IQ’ and the ‘brilliant and unloved’ bit (shades of Sally Sparrow's ‘Sad is happy for deep people’)—to try and paper over a necessary plot implausibility. As anyone who has had actual data corruption in a computer file will know, the chance of it producing anything useful is zero.”
Around the same time Donna is discovering that the world she’s living in is a computer construct, the Doctor is figuring out that The Library has “saved” 4022 people from the Vashta Nerada and placed their consciousnesses into these perfect realities, while their physical selves are saved as “energy signatures.” (At this point, you’re either buying everything that’s said or it’s all gone south.) As the various characters continue to solve the numerous predicaments, the girl becomes progressively unhinged. Lux reveals that CAL is an acronym for Charlotte Abigail Lux—his grandfather’s youngest daughter who was dying. She was wired into The Library as the main Node so she could read forever… but nobody counted on the Vashta Nerada which screwed everything up and now the computer’s exhausted its resources from all the saving. The Doctor deduces that he must wire himself into the computer (a risky proposition), but before he can do this River knocks him unconscious. He awakens to see her wired in, and explains that she must do it as she cannot risk him dying as it would mean they would never meet. He says that time can be rewritten, but she refuses, “Not those times. Not one line, don’t you dare.” It’s an intensely emotional scene with the Doctor reacting to a future he has yet to experience, but knows will someday bring wonders.
River’s sacrifice fixes everything and 4022 people are restored, including Donna. I’m still confused as to what exactly the deal was the Doctor made with the Vashta Nerada (have at it folks—I’m losing steam here). In the final moments, the Doctor realizes that his future self must have given River his sonic screwdriver for a reason and it turns out her data ghost is bleeping away on the inside of the device (although I do not understand how it got there). He takes the data ghost and sends her consciousness off to live in the computer forever, something I found weirdly cruel, despite my atheism, which I’m told should be a key philosophy to appreciating the development. Perhaps it’s the latent Catholic in me.
This recap was all over the place, but then again so is the episode. I know I left stuff out and oversimplified far too much of it, and perhaps even made hay over things that weren’t all that important. It’s an incredibly ambitious storyline (perhaps too much so) that’s got so many elements banging up against each other it’s amazing it works at all. It’s arguably Moffat’s weakest contribution to the series thus far, yet it’s still better than most Doctor Who stories. The River Song/Doctor love story is easily the standout section, but one cannot watch this material without wondering if we’ll see River later on the series. It seems all the more of a setup since Moffat wrote this during a time in which he knew he’d be taking over the series in 2010. But for a concept in which the youth of the Doctor is emphasized from River’s POV, can the show reasonably bring Kingston back to the show when she as an actress is two years older than she is here? Would it matter? What if David Tennant doesn’t return for Season Five in 2010? Do River’s comments still apply? Peet Gelderblom has numerous thoughts on these issues: “I think you're taking River's remark about how young the Doctor looked too literally, Ross. My wife Tina has exactly the same feeling about a picture of me taken two years before we met. The difference is in the eyes. Moffat clearly shows the Doctor as a changed man in the end, more assured of his own powers. For all we know, this Doctor could already be the one River remembers. If River ends up being the Doctor's future companion (she sure seems an obvious candidate to me), Season Five could still offer a regenerated Doctor. River's remarks would still make sense if she's looking at a previous incarnation of the man she's become so attached to.”
She’s aware of regeneration within the story, so it’s feasible she’s already known more than one incarnation of the Doctor. Chris Hansen offered up his thoughts: “With regard to how ‘young’ the Doctor supposedly looked to River, I initially thought she meant that the version she knew was a future regeneration, but I’ve since decided that it was written vaguely enough to imply a regeneration or simply the idea that he seemed older when she knew him. I don’t know if she’ll be a companion, but she’d be a welcome one. I really sensed by what the Doctor said that there was some specific reason that she would know his name—it made me think they were married and more than just generally “in love” or some other thing. I’m not really sure marriage is correct—but he seemed to be alluding to some specific reason he would have told her his name, something more than simply having deep affection or even love for her.”
Steven Cooper has many ideas on these issues—and he’ll no doubt throw down a few more in the comments section—but here’s some of what he conveyed to me: “The story makes it quite clear that she really is his future wife or similar significant other… It's left ambiguous whether she has met the Tenth Doctor before, but my hunch is that she did meet him… and also saw him regenerate into the Eleventh. Her description of the Doctor who visited her for the last time before she came to the Library doesn't fit Tennant's Doctor—she mentions him wearing a suit as though it was something unusual. I don't think we can conclude that she is being set up as the companion for Series Five, or even that we'll necessarily ever see her again. Doctor Who is structured loosely enough that adventures can always be assumed to be happening between the ones we see on screen…”
Steven is correct about off-screen adventures occurring in the Who timeline, but it seems to me that it would be a massive cheat if the bigger story of River Song and the Doctor were never addressed again. It seems too important to our understanding of the Doctor, but then again perhaps it was Moffat’s intention to inject a major unsolved personal mystery into the central character’s life; something that fanboys can debate through the ages, without ever getting a proper answer. If that’s the case, then my hat goes off to him. It’s a far more intriguing mystery than much of what was attempted in the Sylvester McCoy era of the series. Chris Hansen made an observation that was either incredibly perceptive or just plain wrong (I’m sure we’ll find out by season’s end): The death of River Song was the Ood’s prediction fulfilled (“Your song will end soon”). If he’s correct, I admire the production team for not beating us over the head with it via a flashback. Maybe the truth of the Doctor and River Song would be less engaging than any fabled romance our imaginations can conjure up.
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Ross Ruediger is a San Antonio-based writer. In addition to contributing to The House Next Door, he also publishes The Rued Morgue and writes for Bullz-Eye.
NEXT WEEK: It's the Fourth of July, so you know what that means: Twilight Zone marathon on Sci Fi! No new Who!! Tune in on July 11th for "Midnight," which is hands down one of the boldest, bestest stories of the new series, and it's even written by Russell T. Davies himself.
Classic Who DVD Recommendation of the Week: Since Who's taking a week off, why not invest in the recently released "Beneath the Surface" box set? It features all three stories detailing the Doctor's encounters with the Silurians and the Sea Devils.
Links for the Day (June 29th, 2008)
1. "La Notte di San Lorenzo: Film or Theater?": A Dan Sallitt article from earlier in the week on The Taviani Brothers' Night of the Shooting Stars. DVDBeaver disc comparisons (from which the above image is grabbed) here.
["After watching ten minutes of the movie, I came to the conclusion that the Tavianis are really theater directors! Not an insult, to my mind…but theirs is not a very pure form of cinema."]
2. "Chinese investor pays $2.1M to eat with Buffett": Not Jimmy Buffett, silly!
["A Chinese investment fund manager won the chance to have lunch with billionaire Warren Buffett by bidding $2.1 million in the most expensive charity auction ever held on eBay. Zhao Danyang of the Hong Kong-based Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund won the auction, which ended Friday evening with a bid of $2,110,100. A spokeswoman for the Glide Foundation, which receives all the proceeds from the auction, identified the winner Saturday."]
3. "The Hottest New York Art Exhibit is So Big, It Won’t Fit in a Museum": A Newsweek report on Olafur Eliasson's "The New York City Waterfalls." With video. Art Fag City's Paddy Johnson points us to some other Eliasson links in a recent roundup.
[""The New York City Waterfalls" is the latest contemporary work to expand our notion of public art—an idea that goes back to ancient times, in the form of memorials and religious or civic monuments. Think of the pyramids, or the Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan destroyed by the Taliban in 2001—or consider Constantine's foot, which, along with his colossal head and hand, is all that remains of a 30-foot statue of the emperor in the basilica in the Roman Forum. In America, public art once tended to be heroic, too, with bronze generals on horseback leading the charge across the quiet green of city parks. Modernism injected a new kind of heroism into the civic realm. Enormous abstract sculptures, landed like spacecraft in front of courthouses or shopping malls, have tended to be—with the exception of, say, a Calder stabile—as still as a tomb and as eternal. But now, contemporary artists like Christo, who wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin, or Cai Guo-Qiang, with his carefully choreographed gunpowder explosions, are up to something different. Their art is epic in scale but dynamic and ephemeral—they don't create an object so much as an experience."]
4. "The Pantheon of Macho-Fey": Erich Kuersten illuminates the stark truth, as previously defined by Kim Morgan.
["Do I mention this in time for Gay Pride week? Is Downey even gay? Should I go google and find out? No.. The beautiful thing is, it doesn't matter. In not shutting out the traits he inherently possesses because society labels them "feminine" he opens the door for "full" real character to emerge."]
5. "Teen decapitated at Six Flags over Georgia": Seriously, one of my worst fears realized.
["A teenager was decapitated by a roller coaster after he hopped a pair of fences and entered a restricted area Saturday at Six Flags Over Georgia, authorities said. Six Flags officials are uncertain why the unidentified 17-year-old from Columbia, S.C. scaled two six-foot fences and passed signs that said the restricted area was off-limits and dangerous to visitors, spokeswoman Hela Sheth said in a news release. Authorities were investigating reports from witnesses who said the teenager jumped the fences to retrieve a hat he lost while riding the Batman roller coaster, said Cobb County police Sgt. Dana Pierce. Police have declined to release the teenager's name until an autopsy is completed."]
Quote of the Day: From a recent e-mail forwarded by someone near and dear.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous 'yes.'
The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
'Now,' said the professor as the laughter subsided, 'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.
The sand is everything else—the small stuff. 'If you put the sand into the jar first,' he continued, 'there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
'Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first—the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.'
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. 'I'm glad you asked.
It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.'"
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): The subtext of relationships. (Hattip: Lichman, that sick sonuvabitch.) 
Clip of the Day: So this is where older style phones go when they die.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Eisenstein + Biggie Smalls = Gunnin' For That #1 Spot
By Keith Uhlich
Beastie Boy Adam Yauch tricks out his new documentary, Gunnin' For That #1 Spot, with a ton of aural and editorial bling, and I daresay the results would inspire Eisenstein himself to proffer an affirming nod from the great beyond. There's clear method behind each and every of Yauch's multiple cuts, freeze-frames, digital zooms, overlays, and transpositions, all of which are countered and/or harmonized by a truly awesome soundtrack that skips effortlessly (though never nonsensically) between numerous funk and hip-hop tracks—Kool and the Gang bumping up 'gainst Jay-Z; Afrika Bambaataa going head-to-head with Biggie Smalls.
Yauch's aesthetics are impressive, but his meanings are muddled.
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To read the rest of the review at UnderGroundOnline, click here.
Links for the Day (June 28th, 2008)
1. "24Lies & The House to Merge": An important announcement from 24LiesASecond editor, and House contributor, Peet Gelderblom. Related: At De Palma a la Mod, site moderator Geoff Beran has added a comments function so discussions begun at the De Palma-centric 24Lies can continue.
["I have good news and bad news, everybody… First the bad: In the next few months, the 24LiesASecond website as you’ve come to know it will cease to exist. Now the good: 24LiesASecond will merge with The House Next Door."]
2. Embedding disabled on these clips, but would like to give some link love to Fretkillr, an anonymous guitarist/singer from Long Island who has quite the musical talent: "Over The Rainbow" and "You Don't Mess Around With Jim", plus his main bio page.
["I'm a self-taught musician who has learned to play primarily by listening to recordings and through self-discovery. My love of folk, blues, bluegrass, country, rock, ragtime, and jazz has been the catalyst for teaching myself to be a proficient flatpicker and fingerpicker. My youtube videos employ a close-up view of my performances to maintain anonymity. They are provided solely for entertainment. My clips are not meant as guitar lessons. I do not use or have music or tabs. I can't respond to questions about guitar models and tunings. I hope you enjoy my clips and your positive comments are certainly appreciated."]
3. "Microsoft Seeks Path Beyond Gates’s Legacy": See also our Clip of the Day for a choice Gates quote.
["Bill Gates is retiring, sort of. He is still only 52, and he is going off to spend more time guiding the world’s richest philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He will still be Microsoft’s chairman and largest shareholder, but Friday is his last day as a full-time worker at the software giant, marking the unofficial end of his career as a business leader."]
4. "'Up the Yangtze' director 'conflicted' about his project": House contributor N.P. Thompson interviews filmmaker Yung Chang for Northwest Asian Weekly.
["At once overwhelming and outrageous, the documentary “Up the Yangtze” charts the excursion of a cruise ship filled with wealthy, non-Asian sightseers who are making a “farewell tour,” along the banks of cities being flooded by Three Gorges Dam. (For most of these passengers, this “farewell” marks their first experience in China.) The movie, however, spends as much time below deck as above, getting to know the Chinese youth employed by the cruise line as dishwashers and wait staff. Yung Chang, the 30-year-old Montreal-based filmmaker, who went on the cruise in 2002, saw a parallel to the ship’s class divide in Robert Altman’s “Gosford Park,” another story of the working poor literally under the feet of the rich."]
5. "Court: Exorcism is protected by law": The power of Christ compels you (according to subsection D of paragraph 4B on brief page 169).
["The Texas Supreme Court on Friday threw out a jury award over injuries a 17-year-old girl suffered in an exorcism conducted by members of her old church, ruling that the case unconstitutionally entangled the court in religious matters. In a 6-3 decision, the justices found that a lower court erred when it said the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God's First Amendment rights regarding freedom of religion did not prevent the church from being held liable for mental distress triggered by a "hyper-spiritualistic environment." Laura Schubert testified in 2002 that she was cut and bruised and later experienced hallucinations after the church members' actions in 1996, when she was 17. Schubert said she was pinned to the floor for hours and received carpet burns during the exorcism, the Austin American-Statesman reported. She also said the incident led her to mutilate herself and attempt suicide. She eventually sought psychiatric help."]
Quote of the Day: Richard Wagner
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Alright, I can do gossip.
Clip of the Day: Related to #3 above.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Friday, June 27, 2008
"He's the Internet": A Conversation on Satoshi Kon
By Brendon Bouzard, John Lichman, and Keith Uhlich
[Satoshi Kon: Beyond Imagination opens today at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and runs through July 1st. Click here for details. In anticipation of the retrospective, Brendon Bouzard, John Lichman, and Keith Uhlich gathered at Grassroots Tavern to discuss Kon and his work. See after the break for their podcast conversation and a transcript, slightly edited for clarity.]
Podcast
Embedded below. Any problems, it can also be found here as a downloadable mp3 file. (TRT: 46 minutes, 04 seconds)
Transcript
JOHN LICHMAN: Hello and welcome to a House Next Door podcast featuring myself, John Lichman, contributor and author of "Idiot Savant Japan," the somewhat bi-weekly column if I remember to write it. Joined here with Keith Uhlich, editor of The House.
KEITH UHLICH: Howdy, howdy John.
JL: And Brendon Bouzard of My Five Year Plan. Which is currently on the third year.
BRENDON BOUZARD: Yes! Just entered my third year on the five year plan.
KU: And we’re here today to talk about…
BB: … the films of Satoshi Kon. As well as his television series, Paranoia Agent.
KU: And this is because of an upcoming retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
JL: Which runs June 27th to July 1st, where on the opening night we have a conversation with Satoshi Kon after a screening of Paprika. So I think it’s fitting we start off on his most recent film.
KU: And before we do, I should say that where I’m currently coming from is I’ve watched all of Kon’s movies, but I haven’t watched them recently. So I’m going mainly by memory on everything, and what I’m actually is that the movies are pretty fresh in my memory in spite of having some distance from them. Brendon, what about you?
BB: I just rewatched all of the features. I have not seen Paranoia Agent, but I rewatched all the features over the past couple of weeks so they’re relatively fresh in my mind. And being able to see them all together at a clip allowed me to see a lot of the similarities and some of the subtle differences between the films, which I really appreciated.
KU: And John?
JL: And I’m coming from somewhere.
KU: Coming from where?
JL: Somewhere.
KU: That’s fine. You’re the middle ground.
JL: Brendon, you've actually brought up an interesting point of how Kon's films tend to blend together. He’s had four major motion pictures and one TV series, and most of the films, aside from Tokyo Godfathers, follow a very new media nightmare—it’s always an information driven society that eventually destroys itself and then rebuilds after the fact. Do you see any recurring themes like that? How would you interpret those?
BB: I think Kon is up there with De Palma and a few other filmmakers working today whose films are grounded in a very strong understanding of theory and, specifically, of the means by which film communicates, theoretically, as a medium. I think that three of his films—Paprika, Millennium Actress, and Perfect Blue all sort of work together. Obviously two of them are specifically about filmmaking in one way or another. But they all sort of comment on the relationship between the spectator and the onscreen figure—the female onscreen figure—in a way that is really compelling.
KU: And always a female onscreen figure?
JL: Aside from Tokyo Godfathers all three have lead female figures. Part of the reason, at least from what Kon said in an interview, is that he thinks women are more interesting than men, and that having a male lead is pointless.
KU: Which is something that De Palma actually has echoed in his own filmmaking as well—an interesting point of comparison.
BB: Both of them are extremely intelligent about film. Both of them have seen a lot of films, obviously, and they both draw a lot on the same filmmakers. Both have been compared to Hitchcock. Perfect Blue has gotten the Hitchcock comparison quite a few times and of course De Palma can’t quite escape that in criticism. But I think the two are very similar, at least in terms of their understanding of the female figure as relates to the audience.
KU: This brings up a point: in anime I know the portrayal of women is something that’s often discussed, sometimes disparaged. John, I’d turn to you on that and say does Kon bring a different perspective on the female form to his movies than is traditional in anime or does he tweak it in some way?
JL: Well I think he tweaks it in that you’re not dealing with a magical pretty sailor girl or a buxom bouncy bubbly person. You’re dealing with very averagely drawn characters; the only people who really are exaggerated in Kon’s work are either the elderly or the male figure. Women are always drawn in a very subtle, non-assuming style, unless he makes them be extravagant. Like in Paprika and Millennium Actress where the women portray characters in order to protect themselves.
KU: Where they have alter-egos.
JL: When the alter-egos are used as protection. They’re not used to attack. They’re not used to pry. They’re used as a defense mechanism. There’s that great scene in Paprika where—I’m not going to remember any of their names, which is awful—where Paprika is being stripped of her alter-ego and then she’s a very plain looking woman left naked on the table. And the co-worker who’s doing that to her remarks how beautiful that is. So even though Paprika is this beautiful pixieish woman, this is what’s really underneath her and it’s better than being the pixie. So I think Kon has a very interesting realism when it comes to a female character, one I’d say that’s not used anywhere else. The only others who may treat women that well the two other major anime directors: Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii. With Kon, they’re the only three. I think it’s worth it to say: they’re the three mainstream directors of anime.
BB: They’re the three that have sort of crossed over to Western audiences on that level. I think it’s interesting though that Kon’s treatment of women has developed over the course of his career. If you look at something like Perfect Blue and the treatment of Mima: to a certain extent, one could make the argument that he includes a few fan service shots of Mima over the course of the film. Mima is of course nude at various points, but I think that even then he’s very intelligent about how he does that. Perfect Blue is so much about spectatorship that it makes the audience complicit in the exploitation of Mima when, for instance, she’s being photographed by that photographer who basically takes advantage of her and sort of elevates the stalker’s insanity to the next level. Whereas later Kon films, I think, go more towards a level of respect and understanding of femininity.
JL: I want to bring up a point since we got on the track of Oshii and Miyazaki. These are the three best received anime directors for Western audiences right now.
KU: Oshii, Miyazaki, and Kon.
JL: And I think it represents a great trio because you have Miyazaki who is heavily the mainstream favorite. He has family-friendly fare that is actually social satire. And being repped by Disney doesn’t hurt because that guarantees box office. Then you have Oshii who is basically art-house. No matter what he does he can’t get out of the art-house, and he likes it there. And then you have Kon, who straddles this middle ground of extremely highbrow thinking. I mean in terms of identity, of femininity, of what it means to be a digital culture, of what it means to be an apocalyptic culture, of living in the shadow of the bomb… you can go on and on. But he’s very much a 21st-century thinker. And yet he juxtaposes that with extremely cartoony images, like the parade sequence in Paprika. And I’m trying to figure out, do we think Kon is happy there? Does living in that middle ground give him the freedom to do something like Paprika and Tokyo Godfathers?
BB: Well the thing about Tokyo Godfathers: on so many levels that is a film that can be appreciated by pretty much anyone. It’s a very heartwarming film. It’s got a lot of extremely funny stuff in it. The characters are extraordinarily likable. And yet there’s this darkness to it that I feel nevertheless would prevent its reception by a large cross-section of the audience. And so in terms of it being a middle ground—I feel Kon really is a middle ground. He blends elements in Tokyo Godfathers and the art of the film reflects this in the very realistic portrayal of these three homeless people in Tokyo.
JL: See this also brings up another idea of mine: If you look at how Kon’s work has progressed, when Perfect Blue first premiered in New York it played the Angelika. That was it. Then when Millennium Actress came out: Angelika and Landmark. Tokyo Godfathers comes out: Angelika and Landmark. Paprika comes out: most of the chain theaters, Angelika, and Landmark. It just shows that he’s being more and more accepted, but I think it’s unheard of for an anime director to get that acclaim.
BB: Especially with what I’d say is probably his most difficult film, Paprika. It’s probably the hardest to glean a lot of meaning from, at least on a first viewing.
KU: And especially if you’re not familiar with some of the earlier works because it really does grow out of them. (As you were pointing out, John, the ending of Paprika with the three movie posters of the films that Kon had directed previous on the marquee—that sort of cyclical thing that’s there in pretty much everything he's done). Just to go on something with the middlebrow idea.
JL: I don’t think it’s middlebrow. I think it’s middle ground.
KU: Yeah, I know what you mean, but it just brought up something in my mind about my first reaction to Paprika. I liked it more on the second viewing, but the first time out… I’ve always found that Kon’s apocalypse’s, and there are a few, save for Millennium Actress which I actually think does that more psychologically and emotionally than the others. Yet I felt like the ones in Paranoia Agent and Paprika kind of paled in comparison to what I feel is the definitive anime apocalypse, which is Evangelion by Hideaki Anno.
JL: Going into Eva’s a whole other can of worms.
KU: I’m sure it is and that’s why it’s probably something of an unfair comparison. Kon approaches it differently than Anno does, but I’m just saying purely from the visceral sense of apocalypse portrayed, I’ve always felt like that’s one of the weaker aspects of Kon because it seems so tossed off and thrown away to me. And maybe that’s the point. If we’re talking about getting the anime out of the ghetto, maybe it’s getting it out of the “we’re influenced by the atomic bomb” ghetto.
JL: But you’re never gonna get out of that. Every part of anime is taken from the Little Boy standpoint of Takashi Murakami, which is robots, atomic bomb, apocalypse, atomic bomb, changing oneself, atomic bomb, dystopian future, atomic bomb. These are all things that are ingrained in their culture. You can’t take away that and still expect to get the same product.
KU: Right, but what you’re saying is that Kon is appealing to a more Western audience.
JL: He’s appealing to them through the art style. He’s always had a very mundane style of art. All his characters look very humanesque and no one’s really exaggerated except for in Paprika where she dons the avatar. Paprika is the bubbly pixie, and she flies through billboards and she flies through signs for eating fast food, J-Pops behind her. I mean that’s the deal. But as her regular self she’s a boring, flat, straight-lined, dark-haired figure.
KU: But then there’s the guy, her assistant, the big portly assistant…
JL: He’s otaku. He’s fat. He likes robots. And, eventually, when the dream world takes over, he sees himself as a robot. Not just any robot, but a 1950s sci-fi chic robot that goes out and wants to help people, but yet causes more damage, which—you can say right there—that’s the US Army. That’s how people can see that.
KU: But I’m just thinking of this appeal to Western sensibilities as much as Eastern because there’s even history of that in, say, Iranian culture with Kiarostami or Majidi or Panahi. I would say at their worst they play to prejudices that Westerners harbor about Easterners. Because they know that will get them more exposure. And I’m not saying they always do that. And I’m not necessarily saying Kon is doing that, but just because of his appeal, do you see anything of that in his work?
JL: I do, but let’s go back to the main three argument. Miyazaki, Kon, and Oshii all use apocalypse. All use dystopian future. All use a corruption of modernity. And I think that’s what appeals most. They’re moving out of the whole Little Boy phase and into the fact that the world is a corrupt place anyway, and there’s no more perfect example of that than the Internet. Than digital culture.
KU: Oshii’s Fast Food Grifters movie is very much about that.
JL: Oshii is huge into that style. He also did that adaptation of Avalon. I mean Oshii is very much stuck in that and maybe that’s why he’s doomed for the art-house. But Kon knows that he can trick his viewers. He's going to show you a very pretty thing, but really it’s going to be much darker. It’s not going to be Miyazaki level pretty. Actually, this is important. When you say Miyazaki, you say anime. When you say Kon, most times you say film. Kon’s transitioning out of anime into some other weird realm.
KU: Well bringing up this idea of the trickster is interesting because that really is ingrained in a lot of his work. And I’m thinking especially of Paprika when Kon is actually in the movie as one of the cyberbar bartenders who help out the detective. And he’s sort of copping to the fact that he's playing with your mind and such.
JL: It’s a bar that you can only reach by going on the Internet. So that takes into account the whole aspect of social networking. You pretend you’re going to a bar without going to a bar. Is the detective actually in a bar or is he sitting at his computer watching this animated feature play out? I mean Kon is a master, pardon my French for a second, of mindfucking. He was working on Paprika while doing Paranoia Agent and those two rub off on each other.
KU: They really do, yeah.
JL: So I wonder, Keith, if you can actually go into the themes of Paranoia Agent, ‘cause we’ve been going over Paprika nonstop. Paranoia Agent was the 24 episode…
KU: No it’s only…
BB: ...13. A 13 episode series.
JL: Gosh, it seems a lot longer. A 13 episode series focusing around what we at first think is the Little Slugger attacks, but quickly turns into another story.
KU: There’s basically this figure attacking people in Tokyo, and he’s this kid on rollerblades with a cap down over his eyes, and he has a hockey stick, and he comes at you, and he basically hits you…
JL: It’s a baseball bat. It’s a crooked baseball bat.
KU: Right. Right. It’s a crooked baseball bat. This is why I need to have seen it more recently, but yeah, it’s a crooked baseball bat, essentially I assume from all the people he’s hit—it’s just gotten that shape. And once you’re hit you become part of this shared madness in the city…
JL: You become part of it, or you wake up to it? It’s like being hit and once you’re hit, you’re awakened to what’s going on.
KU: Right, exactly. When that’s first happening, it seems like madness because it’s only affecting a few people, but the minute madness tips into the majority, it can become sanity. And the whole opening of Paranoia Agent is everyone in the series laughing in maniacal unison while the city around them moves in fast motion. And that’s definitely a Kon image in that it’s an image of shared madness.
JL: Don’t forget the final sequence of the opening as a mushroom cloud comes up over Tokyo. And yeah, it’s a great image for Kon. I think he's coming back to the whole theme of apocalypse, which he and a bunch of other directors are very much accepting of.
KU: It’s an image of unitedness. And I’m remembering this one episode of the series ("ETC"), which basically takes place among these ladies in an apartment complex who gossip to each other, and each of their stories that they tell about Little Slugger is shown as a five minute interlude. At the end, Kon zooms up above the apartment complex and you see the buildings themselves are shaped into either a number or a symbol that specifically refers to Little Slugger. So it’s like they’re gossiping about it, but they’re also being affected by it without even really knowing it. And that’s later in the series, so at that point Little Slugger is infecting the populace whether or not he’s actually hit you.
BB: The collective experience of madness comes up again and again in Kon's films. And I think the example that stands out strongest for me is in Millennium Actress. The way that the three figures of the actress as well as the documentarian and his cameraman all find themselves collectively in this world that exists between her memories of the past and her films, sort of blending the two together. And in a way it represents the collective memory of the audience—the filmgoing audience of Japan over this very historically specific period—and it regards collective historical memory as a sort of shared delusion. Of all his films, I think Millennium Actress is the one that’s the most grounded in reality, and yet it’s the one that I think formally interrogates that question of where reality and fantasy blend together in the strongest sense.
JL: I’ve always enjoyed how Kon assumes his audience is global. Millennium Actress is inherently Japanese. As you were saying earlier before we were recording, he looks at Ozu and never says you’re looking at an Ozu film. He looks at Chanbara, but you’re not looking at a Chanbara film. In Paprika he models one of the characters after a screenshot of Akira Kurosawa. And another shot in Paprika is entrusted to Son Goku, not of Dragon Ball, but of Journey to the West. And most people won’t get that image.
KU: They won’t get it, but they will. I think that’s probably the key.
BB: Yeah, he draws on images that are part of the collective visual culture of Japan, but also more, in Paprika, of the West.
JL: And that’s why you can tell that he’s spreading. ‘Cause either he’s spreading or we’re all combining—Eastern and Western images are combining. And there’s no longer a big divide. Now it’s: “Oh that’s the rising sun flag. I know exactly what that means.” Or: “There’s the battleship Yamato. I know the history behind that now.” Or: “There’s two smoking towers. I know that.” Or: “There’s a square-jawed white guy on the TV screen. That’s Kennedy.” That’s actually another weird tangent I want to get off on for a sec. Kennedy is the most iconic American president figure in Japanese animation. And I don’t know why.
KU: Really? Hm. I seem to recall Oshii put him in a movie.
JL: In 70s and 80s anime, Kennedy is the American president. And even in the early 90s. I don’t know if that builds up from the whole icon aspect of the animation, and of the global figure. ‘Cause Kennedy’s probably one of the most globally known US presidents.
BB: He died young. He was a very telegenic figure. A lot of the myth of Kennedy comes from the whole idea of the television age and people being able to see him, which helped him win the debates against Nixon. So I think the iconic image of Kennedy is one that’s very strong for all viewers.
KU: Kennedy was coming up during a time when televisions were really, really infiltrating worldwide. Moreso than with Ike. And so I wouldn’t be surprised if, in Japanese culture, especially post-war, he was the first American president that the masses of Japan had a collective image of. That’s a proposition. I’m not entirely certain.
JL: Here’s a theory for you all. If we consider Miyazaki to be the storyteller who relies on fantasy imagery. If we consider Oshii to be the avante-garde New Wave. Is Kon then truly middle ground in that he is television?
KU: See middle ground just sounds so negative to me…
BB: Yeah.
JL: I know, but he just seems the perfect balance of the art-house and the mainstream.
KU: Maybe it’s because I don’t necessarily think of movies in terms of art-house and mainstream that I’m resisting that. I think that there are just figures who are more polarizing to people than others. Oshii I can absolutely see why because his movies can be very lethargic and really disturbingly hypnotic, and—I don’t mean this as a criticism—incoherent. There’s an incoherence to Oshii that actually works on the level of a dream. I think Kon is a bit more coherent. I think you can read a Kon film with story. You can read it as a dream. There are a lot of elements and layers that he works on for different people and I can see why because if you go to it as, say, a fanboy I think you’ll get your anime fix. If you go to it as, “Oh, I want to see something at the art-house” I think you’ll get that with Kon. If you even just want to see a kind of mainstream, plot-driven whatever, I think you can get that out of him as well. Again, I don’t necessarily mean this as a criticism, I just believe there’s something of an incoherent dream logic to a lot of anime. But in Paprika I think you can pretty much figure out what the story is. I don’t think that it’s that hard to figure out for anybody. I think he delineates what the dream space and the real space are enough that people get it.
JL: Or blends them together.
BB: The word that you use that I think is really good is “delineate.” “Linear.” There’s a linearity to Miyazaki that is part of what I think makes him so accessible to people and I think part of what makes Kon accessible to people is that there’s a basic linearity to the narrative, vs. what you see as the incoherence of Oshii. The fact that there’s this sort of through-line temporally, even though his films blend fantasy and reality, and even venture into the past. I feel as though there’s a definite through-line that you can follow in any of Kon’s films. And yet they do sort of fold in fantasy and the past. And if you can say he’s a middle ground between the two, I think it’s in the degree to which he relies on linear storytelling. John. you brought up the issue of “Is Kon television?” I would actually say he’s the Internet. You can follow the pathway between various hyperlinks and you can find a coherent narrative, but there’s also so many other tangents that are being drawn into every moment. He uses the Internet motif so often in his films.
KU: And I think that this differentiates him from Miyazaki as well. Brendon, you were positing him as something of a more popular figure than Miyazaki. Certainly Miyazaki’s films have made a lot of money in this country, but at the same time there’s also a kind of antiquated fairytale aspect to his films, whereas Kon is engaging in the present tense and the present moment. I would say Miyazaki tends to model his characters, at least to Western eyes, and maybe he’s not doing this consciously, but I think his characters would appeal more immediately to children. Or those, let’s say, with younger eyes. Whereas Kon is drawing adults in animation realistically.
JL: I agree with that. Miyazaki’s a radical, leftist…
KU: Environmentalist.
JL: Yeah, I mean he would hate Kon because Kon champions technology. I mean that’s where they split right there.
KU: Do you think Kon is championing technology or that he just accepts that it’s there and he looks at it in all its complexity?
JL: I think he realizes what… you know the complexity argument… he sees it and he realizes that that’s what the society is based on right now.
KU: Now that I think about it, when I look at the apocalypses in Kon, maybe what is bothering me that I’m now starting to put together is I don't necessarily find them horrifying. In Anno’s Evangelion, it’s horrifying and legitimately like a psychological scar, a wound being ripped into your brain. Whereas in Kon, you look at it and it’s just a fact. It’s a fact and it’s there. Technology can lead to this, but it can also lead to Paprika (the doctor who is Paprika) and her assistant connecting on a very human level. So he sees the beauty and the horror at the same emotional level.
JL: But if you do have, like the scene in Paprika where there is the big apocalyptic moment that I think actually "Eschers" Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Akira. You know, the gigantic white light, the sphere appearing around the city. It’s like the final scene from Akira when Tetsuo’s about to explode and the entire city gets destroyed in another blast. Yet it gets swallowed in on itself and instead of death it brings back the entire world. And let’s the world be reborn.
BB: And, of course, Ôtomo was Kon’s mentor.
JL: Kon does show the grittiness of what happens, but he’s also very careful to follow it up with, "But look at the bright side. It’s not going to happen. If we have someone to check it, we’ll be fine. If there was no one like Paprika who would want to stop this from happening, then we would all be dead." Which is fatalistic, but hey… Brendon: We keep talking about Paprika and Paranoia Agent. You have drawn some comparisons between Millennium Actress and Perfect Blue.
BB: I think they’re two sides of the same coin. Both of them are essentially about the relationship between a woman and her audience, specifically a fan. In Perfect Blue it’s this extremely dangerous relationship between Mima and her stalker, as well as her other stalker as it turns out. And in Millennium Actress, it’s the documentarian who’s been a lifelong fan of the actress Chiyoko Fujiwara. And throughout the film, as she’s reliving these moments from her various films, or these moments from her life, the documentarian consistently reinvents himself as this knight in shining armor who rushes in and saves her at the last moment. To a certain extent, I think both of the films are about the way that the audience injects themself into a narrative. The way that they relate to the onscreen figures. And the way that they project themselves into these stories. In the same way that Paprika shows you the apocalypse, but then pulls back and says, “But this isn’t gonna happen,” I think that Perfect Blue shows you an extremely dangerous relationship between a performer and her fan and then Millennium Actress pulls back and says “Okay, but this is more likely.”
KU: So those two films engage in the dialectic that then in subsequent films he blends into a single story.
BB: Absolutely. And I think Paprika is where he blends that most cogently. Tokyo Godfathers I consider a bit of an anomaly.
JL: It’s funny because Kon's next film is going to be a children’s fairy tale, which has me really worried.
KU: What is it called?
JL: It has a name. I don’t know it offhand. I just know that it’s about two kids who find a book and then they live out the fairy tale. And I’m wondering if we’re not supposed to be seeing some theme here: we have Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress. Paprika and Paranoia Agent. And then Tokyo Godfathers and this fantasy film. Is he creating these dual notions?
KU: I would just say that in terms of Tokyo Godfathers: it does fit in with his other films in terms of people living as a collective mind. Having their own very defined individual personalities in Tokyo Godfathers, and very disparate personalities in a lot of ways, and then having that thing, essentially, that brings them together. Paprika, as you say, bringing the darkness and the light together in harmony. As the baby in Tokyo Godfathers bring this trio together. I think the trio… it’s taken from John Ford, but certainly I think there’s a Catholic reading, or a Christian reading to be given to it.
BB: A very explicit one because in the beginning of the film, the first images are of the three wise men showing up at a Nativity scene.
KU: Indeed. But also acknowledging the present day in the sense of: there’s a transsexual, there’s a girl, there’s a man. They all have their traumas. One of the things I’d actually like to get into, and this is a comparison between Tokyo Godfathers and Paranoia Agent, is that both that film and that TV series hinge around a character’s relationship to a pet that died when they were a kid. This is something that a lot of people were nonplussed by… that the pet was the cause of this girl’s psychological grief. As it is in Paranoia Agent. I have this feeling that that is something that’s very specifically Japanese, this worshiping of a pet or an animal. I wonder if either of you might be able to expound on that.
JL: I don’t think it would be the worshiping of a pet. I think it’s more about childhood and being forced to move on.
KU: Right. But in hearing and reading about Japanese culture, in seeing that most signs and other public spaces have cartoon animals that are everywhere telling you what to do and where to go, I don’t think of it just as a childhood thing. There’s something about the way Kon puts those two incidents across. He portrays it very seriously. It’s not just flippant: “Oh, the reason she’s fucked up is because her dog died.” No. It’s a real big trauma. And yes it happened during childhood, but it’s still rooted in the culture in some way. Or so it seems, from what I understand about Japanese culture, the place animals have in it, and the way that’s it’s portrayed in Kon’s films, those two specifically.
BB: Yeah.
KU: In Paranoia Agent, it’s essentially the catalyst for the entire series. The reason the whole city is going mad is because this girl created a toy based on her dead dog. Her emotion surrounding that event, of that dog getting run over, infects the populace. And they all react to varying degrees in shared emotionalism, in shared madness.
JL: I would read that as bad childhood memories, but moreso of remembering hardships from early on in your life. And having that affect you later. I don’t know how much I would read the animals into that. But…
KU: So do you think it’s more metaphorical?
JL: I’m gonna go with more metaphorical. The animal thing is interesting and there may be something to it, but I don’t know what because I can’t speak to it. I’m going to lean towards the more metaphorical aspect of being brought up and having this awful memory in your past, and you can’t quite define it. But it sets you for the rest of your life—who you’re going to become. Which also leads back into the whole Little Boy theory. Of an entire infantilized culture.
BB: I’m not of an opinion either way on this animal issue, although I do remember in Perfect Blue one of Mima's obsessions are these pet fish that she has. And she has a traumatic vision of all her pet fish dying.
JL: Man, this is like an untapped animal thing that we’re getting on now. We got to write to Film Comment right away.
KU: I remember thinking about it just because I saw Paranoia Agent and Tokyo Godfathers in close succession and it was striking to me ‘cause it seemed to tap into something very much of Eastern culture. When I first saw it I didn’t quite know how to react to it. It didn’t really touch me that deeply on any level. But then when I saw other critics writing from a Western perspective and saying, “Oh, it all comes down to that?” I thought, “Well why not.” And I don’t think Kon's necessarily saying it all comes down to that. But he is portraying something that’s very ingrained and deeply traumatic to these particular characters. I can’t think of anything comparable in Millennium Actress or Paprika necessarily, but it seems like these are driving psychological stressors in the other films, just another avenue of exploration.
JL: That might be a good note to end out on as we uncover a brand new aspect of Kon that I actually have never thought about before.
KU: Well… Film Comment I hope you come calling after you hear this. If you’ve listened to the end, as Vadim says. Any final thoughts on Kon?
JL: I stand by the fact that I think he is going to become more influential in the coming years. I think it’s interesting that he’s backed by Studio Madhouse who are one of the main independent studios. (All creator-run and creator-owned for the most part, unless they’re hired out to do backgrounds or something of the sort.) And it shows in that he’s only worked on his own projects, which is a rarity for an anime director or for anyone involved in anime. Even Miyazaki had to do background—in-betweens, foreground, background. Was Kon Otomo’s apprentice or was he…
BB: Otomo was his mentor and I think Kon did scene design for one or two of Otomo’s projects, but yeah he didn’t have to pay that many dues in order to get his directing position.
JL: Which is unheard of. In the anime system today, you have to wait until you’re 30 or 35 until you’re even given art director or until you’re put in charge of a group. In your twenties you’re told to do in-between. You’re told to do background, and that’s why there’s a lack of current anime. Or a lack of current anime directors, ‘cause you have guys like Shinichirô Watanabe who did Cowboy Bebop. He’s fairly old. Most younger guys are leaving the studio system and handmaking everything. And Kon exerts amazing creative control.
KU: His hands are all over everything.
JL: And that’s extremely admirable… I love Kon’s work…
KU: And it should be seen on the big screen on Walter Reade.
BB: Absolutely.
KU: So everybody get there because he’s well worth it.
JL: So to change our usual ending. For The House Next Door, I’m John Lichman.
KU: I’m Keith Uhlich.
BB: I’m Brendon Bouzard.
JL: And if you see us at Walter Reade, please buy us a soda pop.
_________________________________________________
Brendon Bouzard is author of the blog My Five Year Plan.
John Lichman is a freelance writer who contributes to The Reeler, Primetime A&E [print only] and anyone with cash. He works odd jobs to afford his vices, sleeps on couches and can drink Vadim Rizov under a table.
Keith Uhlich is Editor of The House Next Door and a contributor to various print and online publications.
The Brave One: Trumbo
By Lauren Wissot
[Trumbo opens today at Manhattan's Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and Sunshine Cinema. Click theater names for screening info.]
Trumbo, Peter Askin’s poignant, mind-stirring documentary about the defiantly prolific screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten blacklisted during the McCarthy era, based on a play written by his son Christopher (from letters Trumbo wrote during that tumultuous period) is essential viewing for all film critics—any professional writer really—recently affected by the economic recession. To call Trumbo tenacious, awe-inspiring, a courageous hero doesn’t do the man justice. How many writers working today would accept poverty and prison, shame and exile to stand by their convictions—and do it for ten long years? How many writers in 2008 would have prefaced that with nearly another decade stoically working as a night bread wrapper for an L.A. bakery while studying at USC, repossessing motorcycles, reviewing films for a trade magazine—and churning out six novels and eighty-eight short stories (all of which would be rejected for publication)? To all those laid off writers I say, if you can’t write without a paycheck being involved then you’ve no business considering yourself in the same profession as Mr. Trumbo (thus you probably didn’t deserve that paycheck in the first place. Ah, isn’t karma sweet?)
Yes, karma eventually arrived to vindicate Trumbo when he became the first writer to break the Blacklist courtesy of Kirk Douglas (who fought for his credit on Spartacus) and Otto Preminger (who did the same on Exodus). Askin uses swiftly edited film clips, interviews (with both McCarthy era scholars and those who knew Trumbo like Douglas and Dustin Hoffman) and archival material, including interviews with the witty and crotchety screenwriter himself, but the beating heart of the film is the many A-list actors who read Trumbo’s letters to friends and family, his words so alive and precise even today that not much is needed in the way of interpretation. The plainly dressed thespians merely channel the magic on the page. Askin changes camera angles here and there, but the scenes mainly consist of a giant like Brian Dennehy, perhaps a glass of water and a table, and the letter being read. Theatrical, yes; cinematic, no. In fact, Askin who was in the midst of directing the London stage version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch when he was approached to do Trumbo seems more suited to directing for the stage. And every single actor who gives voice to Trumbo’s words (save for Josh Lucas—Josh Lucas?) has more than solid theater training and cred. In addition to Dennehy, there’s fellow Tony Award winners Joan Allen and Nathan Lane, Paul Giamatti, Liam Neeson, David Strathairn, Donald Sutherland and Michael Douglas (who every once in awhile has to take on some moving parts like this and the one in Wonder Boys to remind us he’s every bit the hard-working talent his father once was).
Ironically, these scenes of mesmerizing theatrical performance also end up the Achilles heel of Askin’s film. As one blessed to have seen Dennehy in his Tony Award winning turns in Death of a Salesman and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (with Vanessa Redgrave!), as well as his critically underappreciated performance opposite Christopher Plummer in Inherit The Wind”(he got robbed!), I can vouch for the electric current that pulses throughout the theater whenever Dennehy is onstage. He’s a one-man earthquake, a shamanistic actor in the truest sense. So it’s a bit frustrating that talent like his and the rest of the cast (Joan Allen is even moved to startling tears while reading a letter, no acting tricks required) is confined to the screen. I wholeheartedly would have preferred to see Trumbo as a live theater piece, all the interviews, archival footage and film clips confined to video monitors in the background. This material needs that visceral quality only human flesh can provide to do its present-day themes justice (even the most powerful cinema will never eclipse, but must always coexist, with live performance). We need to overwhelmingly feel what Trumbo and other blacklisted artists went through, not just hear about it through interviews and see it in archival footage. The fact that Trumbo began life as a play only makes me long for that original form. I’ve seen Ralph Fiennes do Hamlet onstage—and I can say with utmost certainty that a film’s lens would be lucky to capture one-tenth of his animal passion. Some artists are just too big to be adequately contained within a frame. And Trumbo was a man who fit this definition to a T.
Wishful thinking aside, within cinema’s limits Trumbo is still incredibly moving. Some images, like the pan across the Hollywood Ten panel at the HUAC hearings, their respective Oscar nominations and awards superimposed beneath the determined faces (massive fish for McCarthy), is heartbreaking. Like with the Holocaust, archival footage of the HUAC hearings is always intriguing (for proof see the epic Point of Order) for it poses the mind-boggling question, “How the fuck could we have allowed this to happen?” And Askin’s film does an admirable job in providing context for the McCarthy atrocity, reminding us that our cool, WWII Russian Commie allies became our Cold War enemy virtually overnight (“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?” was the 40s political equivalent of “Have you ever tried marijuana?”). “Get ready to become nobody,” is how Trumbo puts it in an interview in his later years, describing the actions a writer took after being subpoenaed—sell your house, get in as much work as possible, save every penny before the news becomes public. One can’t help but think of the Jewish persecutions in Europe, and indeed Trumbo is seen at the hearings declaring, "This is the beginning of a Jewish concentration camp—for writers," an uncomfortable truth that could have been probed more deeply by Askin.
Aside from a few clips of Nazi-sympathizing Walt Disney himself vowing to rid Fantasyland of the Reds, not much is uttered about the fact that right on the heels of the Holocaust an overwhelmingly anti-Semitic Congress was holding hearings that in effect ordered mostly Jewish Hollywood moguls to cleanse themselves of First Amendment clinging artists (it’s important to remember that on the stand Trumbo and his fellow railroaded colleagues took the First—not the Fifth—in a brilliant act of legal defiance), silencing art through spectacle in much the same way Hitler staged exhibitions of “Degenerate Art.” In light of the situation, I don’t think it’s too hysterical to call these cowardly moguls, bowing to the almighty dollar, Jewish capos for the ruling fascist government, building “concentration camps for writers” by selling them out. After all, one of the most insidious, disturbing aspects of the Blacklist, a nightmarish blackmail—“Faustian” as Trumbo describes it—is that it was created by the capos in order to save their own skins. Really, how far is it from “denounce your religion, convert to Christianity and you will be spared” to “name names and you’ll be able to feed your family”? Did they not see the parallel or did they not want to see it?
Not that the Blacklist succeeded in stifling artistry, in being any less farcical than the Hayes Code. Wherever artists are being silenced they will always find a way to be heard. Trumbo and his self-exiled cohorts (Mexico—the place to roam when you’ve got nothing left to lose!) merely created their own underground railroad of fronts and pseudonyms, a clandestine subversion of the system spawned from the same constraining seed that created the passionate filmmaking during the Hayes years. Trumbo wrote some of his best work under aliases (he had thirteen of them!), Roman Holiday and The Brave One to name just two. (In an interview Trumbo coyly explains why he refuses to confirm or deny that he wrote any particular script—so he can take a little credit for every great film without having to be responsible for the “scamps.”) To this list I would add his letters, which were oftentimes his only means of communication and connection, and a catharsis as well. Hollywood’s golden age, when the studios served as patrons to artists, was glorious—until those artists awoke to the hard cold truth of being owned, traded and kicked into the street on a whim. In his letters, Trumbo was able to recapture the lost innocence of playing with words, a pure enjoyment not dependent on payment (highlighted in Lane’s reading of a winking, hilarious essay on masturbation accompanied by a teasing orchestral score).
“Freedom of speech is a luxury,” Trumbo states in an interview, when faced with going hungry. In his letters he declares that “choice is the devil,” the free will to decide whether to inform or to starve. One can’t help but think that Trumbo made the right decision glimpsing at the bounty of happy family photos taken in the wake of the Blacklist, including Ring Lardner Jr.’s daughter’s album, which contains a B&W still of the ex-pats wrestling like kids. Old home movies of the families and friends who banded together are both touching and painful. They may have lost everything material, but they evidently kept their love for one another—and their pride. (One talking head recalls visiting the blacklisted writer Adrian Scott in a house with no furniture, only a typewriter on a crate and a photo of FDR gracing the wall. Scott was willing to sacrifice everything, save for his dignity and his voice.)
And yet—the fallout in those tight-knit families, the “psychic injuries” inflicted upon Trumbo’s teenage daughter Mitzi, mocked at school until she refused to go anymore, her father forced to live undercover using pseudonyms like a criminal on the run—gives pause. What does it feel like to watch the Academy Awards, to see Robert Rich’s trophy for The Brave One sit unclaimed, then have to tell your children, “No, of course we can’t go get it.” That statue now resides with Mitzi, though of it Trumbo wrote at the time, recalling how many suicides the Blacklist had spawned, “It is covered in the blood of my dead friends.” I wonder if Elia Kazan ever wrote a heart-pounding letter like the one penned to the widow of Ray Murphy, one of Trumbo’s fronts who died suddenly at the age of 29, expressing his indebted gratitude to her husband (this is the letter that brought tears to Joan Allen’s eyes), detailing exactly why and how this man touched his life. In Trumbo’s words to the grieving wife one can trace the origin of “I am Spartacus!” Trumbo’s fronts and Spartacus’ comrades were one and the same.
Through passion and outrage Trumbo retained his freedom, the payoff coming not in any onetime statuette, but in the simple ability to get up each and every morning and proudly face himself in the mirror. After all, being able to live with one’s self is something no amount of money can buy. And in this way Trumbo proves just as much an indictment of the cowards who informed without uttering one bad thing about them—as dignified as Trumbo himself. Thirty-two years after Dalton Trumbo’s death his remarkable words about life being one long fight, not a series of battles (read by Sutherland over the closing credits), ring truer than ever. Instant gratification and the myopic nature of consumer culture will always serve to blind us to the bigger picture, to mask that profound piece of advice Trumbo gave to a young Donald Sutherland. “Don’t forget to be happy.”
Brooklyn-based writer Lauren Wissot is the publisher of the blog Beyond the Green Door, the author of the memoir Under My Master's Wings, and a contributor to The Reeler.
Links for the Day (June 27th, 2008)
1. "Family of faggot fans fly the flag": There are no words... (Hattip: John Lichman, a sick, sick man.)
[" A West Midlands family is playing a central role in the quest to raise the profile of a forgotten British dish - faggots. The Doody family from Wolverhampton has been crowned The Faggot Family in a national competition, and to kick off their reign they will launch National Faggot Week."]
2. "Justices Rule for Individual Gun Rights": From The New York Times.
["The Supreme Court on Thursday embraced the long-disputed view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for personal use, ruling 5 to 4 that there is a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense. The landmark ruling overturned the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns, the strictest gun-control law in the country, and appeared certain to usher in a fresh round of litigation over gun rights throughout the country. The court rejected the view that the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear arms” applied to gun ownership only in connection with service in the “well regulated militia” to which the amendment refers."]
3. At Tomato Nation, Sars reflects on the new documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
["His artistic output doesn't lessen the seriousness of the crime, or make him more eligible for forgiveness or leniency; neither does the stupidity and carelessness of the victim's mother. Nothing does. It cuts both ways, though, and the standing ovation Polanski got at the Oscars surprised me — not least because of the snotty pouting that greeted Elia Kazan a few years earlier; I guess it's okay to sulk at a guy who named names, because that put Hollywood people out of work, but if you rape some no-name, all is forgiven?"]
4. "Getting lucky with Dirty Harry": Whitty on Callahan at The Star-Ledger.
["At one point or another, nearly everyone -- Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Paul Newman -- was considered. Finally the studio went to Western icon Clint Eastwood who, eager to get out of the saddle, agreed. He just had two suggestions -- use Don Siegel, the director on the movie he'd just finished, 'The Beguiled,' and switch the action to the San Francisco Bay Area, the actor's long-time home. The changes changed everything. Start with the choice of director. Siegel was a no-nonsense Hollywood veteran -- he'd done the montages for 'Casablanca' -- but he specialized in anti-heroes, and relished ambiguity. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," his '56 classic, worked as a parable of left-wing subversion or of right-wing conformity; 'The Beguiled' toyed with audience sympathies. Eastwood was complicated, too. Although he had voted for Nixon, he wore his hair long, played jazz piano and sported jeans and open-necked shirts. The actor may not have liked everything about the times, but he was clearly of them; his presence made the movie vital in a way an older star couldn't have. And then, finally, there was the setting. The movie could have worked in New York; it had all the big parks and urban streets the script demanded. But San Francisco, with its curving roads and voluptuous hills, had a feminine feel; it was also seen as the bleeding heart of political permissiveness and 'alternative lifestyles.' It was precisely the contrast, and challenge, a man like Inspector Harry Callahan needed."]
5. "In new Web names, .sky is the .limit": From the L.A. Times.
["In addition to the likes of .com and .net, the Internet might soon have Web addresses ending in .fun, .cars and .prettymuchanythingyouwant. Heralding the most dramatic expansion of virtual real estate in 40 years, the international group controlling Internet addresses decided Thursday to let anyone apply to be in charge of new last names for the Web. The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers -- which is as close as the Internet gets to a governing body -- opted to open up the process to companies, individuals and coalitions. That means that any word or name approved by ICANN could follow the dot in a Web address. Big corporations and Web address sellers -- as well as scammers looking for new places to lure unsuspecting Web surfers -- are expected to make bids for some of the new classes of Web address. The application procedure is still being hammered out, but it won't be cheap or hassle-free."]
Quote of the Day: Afranius
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): So it is.
Clip of the Day: The latest dance craze, The Seagal, is sweeping the nation.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008: Letter to Anna
By Lauren Wissot
[Letter to Anna premieres today at the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008. Click here for screening information.]
In Letter to Anna, Swiss director Eric Bergkraut juxtaposes interviews he shot with the crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya—before her still unsolved murder in the lobby of her apartment building on Vladimir Putin’s 54th birthday in October 2006—with interviews with family and colleagues to create a personal video diary of a woman fueled by an obsession with justice, more a tribute than a “letter” or film. Though dry and straightforward, even clunky in spots (especially when narrated in the English language version by Susan Sarandon, standing in for the filmmakers), the doc is a low-key, respectful summation of a life that resembled a tabloid-ready espionage thriller. From the Chechen “genocide” caught on VHS tapes by a guilt-ridden Russian soldier and clandestinely delivered to Anna, to the hostage negotiations she undertook at the behest of the Chechens who stormed a Moscow theater (the thugs to be gassed along with their hostages by the Russian police, in an incident likely instigated by a double agent), to her poisoning on a plane by an unknown substance slipped into her tea (during the Beslan crisis), to her imprisonment in a pit in Chechnya, it’s a wonder she lived as long as she did (Anna herself says as much, calling it a “miracle”) before being gunned down at the age of 48.
Her grown daughter and son, Vera and Ilya, saw their mother less as a journalist than as a soldier willing to die in patriotic duty. (Bergkraut—who met Anna while filming his doc “Coca the Dove From Chechnya,” about the Chechen women who record the Russian army’s human rights abuses—notes that she only made major purchases in the name of her children.) Anna even explains that the people she reports on are in life-threatening situations, just like her. And after her murder, those situations became ever more dire. The ludicrous Russian spin—that individuals outside of Russia killed her to discredit Putin!—gives way to the still-radiating corpse of dissident writer Alexander Litvinenko, then to chess champ and Kremlin nemesis Garry Kasparov speaking out for both Litvinenko and Politkovskaya, saying Russia asks nothing of the west except to “not interfere by turning a blind eye to Putin.”
This elegant, Princess Di-like journalist, with her unwavering moral compass and passion for righting the wrongs of the oppressed, was part of a bigger picture. Even today, with the war in Chechnya officially over, Putin’s handpicked Chechen president—who Anna, in her last article, which she never lived to see published, accused of “disappearing” people—could theoretically become president for life, since he changed the constitution upon taking office. “You see, it’s impossible to live on top of a volcano,” Anna’s ex-husband offers by way of explaining their split. Or on the tip of an iceberg, for above all Letter to Anna is a call to others to complete the investigation into her death and to continue her crucial life’s work. (I can see Bergkraut’s portrait of a lady being incorporated into a grander film—hopefully before Angelina Jolie picks up the rights!)
Brooklyn-based writer Lauren Wissot is the publisher of the blog Beyond the Green Door, the author of the memoir Under My Master's Wings, and a contributor to The Reeler.
Links for the Day (June 26th, 2008)
1. "The Guys We Would Fuck": Paddy Johnson interviews Nayland Blake at Art Fag City.
["Nobody can accuse artist Nayland Blake of poor titling. The Guys We Would Fuck, the attention grabbing headline of his current curatorial efforts at Monya Rowe not only caught my eye, but does exactly what it claims; ask participants to chose the men they’d fuck. Constructed by way of a meme, the exhibition will continue to grow throughout the duration of the show as those initially chosen by Blake invite others to participate. Tall, bearish and adorned with tattoos, Nayland Blake is a well known and active figure within both the kink and fine art community. He also has a reputation for blurring such distinctions; over the past twenty years the artist has drawn from his experiences as a gay mixed African American as a means of investigating that complex identity. I sat down with the artist recently to discuss his latest show, S&M and other related themes in his work, and his opinions on gay marriage."]
2. "Urduja (2008)": By Oggs Cruz at Lessons From the School of Inattention.
["Critics are often blinded by so-called cultural advancements, hence the unanimous A rating by the local Film Ratings Board. Urduja is technically apt, well voice-acted, and sometimes interesting. However, beyond it being the first (or second, or third, if you count the two tepid movies by Garcia) full length Filipino animated film, it is really nothing more than an example as to the direction Philippine commercial animation is going. As it turns out, despite Urduja being locally financed and produced, it still partakes of a way of thinking and doing business (although less pronounced) that I have detested ever since the animators at the Mickey Mouse studio had turned Kimba the White Lion (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1965-1967) into The Lion King, without crediting the former. As such, Urduja is a mishmash of many unsavory things: borrowed aesthetics, misplaced adaptations, and misaligned virtues. Thus, I'm still waiting for that true first Filipino full-length animated film since this one is as Filipino as Disney's Mulan (Tony Bancroft & Barry Cook, 1998) is Chinese."]
3. "George Carlin, 1937-2008: A man of many words": By Alan Sepinwall.
["Carlin was always meticulous with the words he chose, and in turn had no use for people who used words improperly. He hated unnecessary language -- referring to a news report that said "police have responded to an emergency situation," he sneered, "We know it's a situation. Everything is a situation!" -- and despised euphemism even more. He would want any reports of his death to be exactly that: "George Carlin died." Not "George Carlin passed away," not "George Carlin slipped this mortal coil," nor any other linguistic misdirection designed to take the sting out of this sad, unexpected news."]
4. "Sidney Poitier's message to his great-granddaughter": From CNN.
["It all began when Sidney Poitier flew to Atlanta, Georgia, in late December 2005 for the birth of his first great-granddaughter. "When I arrived at the hospital, I saw my great-granddaughter in her mother's arms," he recalled. "Directly behind her was my daughter, the baby's grandmother. Next to her was my former wife, who was the baby's great-grandmother. "I saw that I was in a room of four generations. I would soon be 80, and Ayele was one day old. I realized that the time between us would be short. I decided I would write a book in the form of letters so I could cover everything that I've felt and learned, and talk to her about things that I don't understand." The result is "Life Beyond Measure, Letters to My Great-Granddaughter." It follows his 1980 autobiography, "This Life," but is much more personal, with little reference to his movie career. The chapter titles tell of his concerns. Among them: "Me and God," "Battling the Demons," "People of Courage," "The World I Leave You.""]
5. "McCain, Obama disagree with child rape ruling": From MSNBC.
["Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama said Wednesday they disagree with the Supreme Court's decision to outlaw the executions of people who rape children. McCain called the ruling an "assault" on legal system. Obama said it is wrong to flatly prohibit the death penalty in such cases if states want to apply it. The court's 5-4 decision struck down a Louisiana law that allows capital punishment for people convicted of raping children under 12, saying it violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment."]
Quote of the Day: Frank Dane
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): R.I.P. Kermit Love, creator of the Big Bird costume and other Jim Henson creations.
Clip of the Day: "It's All Because": Oded Gross knows why the world is going to hell in a handbasket. (Hattip: Bob Westal)
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
5 for the Day: Lew Ayres
By Dan Callahan
My grandmother was not much of a moviegoer, but when I mentioned Lew Ayres in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), her face lit up with recognition. “I saw that picture! At the end, doesn’t he reach out for a butterfly?” Her hand reached out, and she mimed the famous last scene. I nodded. “I can’t believe I remember that!” she said. “I can see it in my head, just what it looked like.” A whole generation was haunted by Lew Ayres reaching out for that butterfly in the final scene of one of the worthier Best Picture Oscar winners, but Ayres himself suffered for taking the lesson of that anti-World War One movie to heart. At the onset of World War Two, Ayres declared himself a conscientious objector and suffered savage criticism from all sides. He served honorably in the war as a medic, but refused to put himself in any situation where he would have to kill another human being.
After the war, Ayres’ film career petered out, and he made most of his living from television guest appearances. As an older man, he devoted himself to a labor of love, a documentary about Eastern religion called Altars of the East (1955), which eventually grew into Altars of the World (1976), an intelligent, judicious look at faith of all kinds. In that engrossing film, Ayres shows that all religions are based around the precept that we must love our neighbors as ourselves, do unto others as you would have done unto you, and so forth. He spends a lot of time weighing the pros and cons of each faith; by the end, Buddhism wins out as the best and most challenging of disciplines. Ayres emphasizes Buddhism for a reason: he wants nothing less than to make us ask ourselves why there are still wars, and he sees religious enlightenment as the best way out of perpetual slaughter. This was a man so touchingly sensitive that the infamously grudge-holding Joan Crawford ended a book of interviews with Roy Newquist on a pained mea culpa for yelling at Ayres when he was late to the set of a movie they were making. More than a fine and under-used actor, Ayres was an exceptional person, a model pacifist in a world that still cannot conceive of such an option.
1. The Kiss (1929): While working as a musician, Ayres was discovered by MGM producer Paul Bern, and he was personally selected by Greta Garbo to play her adolescent admirer in this late silent directed by Jacques Feyder. Garbo sensually responds to Ayres’ youthful intensity, cupping his face with her hand and tenderly inspecting his boyish prettiness. Young as Ayres is here (all of twenty-one years old), he seems like an adult presence, meeting his imposing co-star more than halfway at all times; there’s something furtive and obstinate about Ayres that kills the “puppy love” clichés of his role. He looks like someone who always gets his own way, and he’s almost ruthless in his desires until confronted with Garbo’s jealous husband, who badly beats and almost kills him. Reportedly Garbo named Ayres as her favorite leading man, and you can see why; he holds the screen with her as an equal in beauty and depth, a major accomplishment for someone just starting out in movies.
2. All Quiet on the Western Front: The film that would define Ayres and determine his life is a bit creaky today, with visual techniques more suitable to the silent screen. And there are several moments where Ayres betrays his inexperience as an actor, especially during some long and now corny speeches to God and to his fellow soldiers. But he lands the big emotions when they count, like a scene where he wearily tells off a jingoistic teacher, and the moment when he passionately kisses a French girl’s hand only to have his ardor go unappreciated. Though his performance is flawed, and the film unwieldy, there’s no getting around the impact of the essential anti-war message, carried non-stop by Ayres until the last scene, where he reaches out for a butterfly that’s so much more than a butterfly.
3. Holiday (1938): After his breakthrough in All Quiet, Ayres’ career didn’t quite work out. He was badly miscast as a gangster in Doorway to Hell (1930) and a boxer in Iron Man (1931), and by the mid-thirties he had descended to Z movies at small studios (being married to rising star Ginger Rogers from 1934 to 1940 couldn’t have been easy). But George Cukor came to his rescue with the role of Ned, the drunk brother of Katharine Hepburn in this canonical film. Hepburn and Cary Grant are so dazzling here that Ayres’ uncanny performance has been overlooked, but he’s the soul of the movie. A thwarted composer of Gershwin-style music, Ned is so deeply unhappy with himself that he has retreated into a kind of Zen alcoholism, but he’s alert enough to know just how shallow his sister Julia (Doris Nolan) is, and his love for Hepburn’s black sheep Linda lets us love her more. It’s an exquisitely judged study of the self-pity that Ayres would not indulge in himself. The part led to a contract with MGM and commercial success in their Dr. Kildare movie series, where he tolerated Lionel Barrymore and delighted all with his sly, almost smirky but cuddly bedside manner. When World War Two came, he stood up for his beliefs and paid the requisite penalty without flinching.
4. Johnny Belinda (1948): Something of a comeback, this effective melodrama brought Ayres his only Oscar nomination for Best Actor. His boyish looks eroded and hidden under a mustache, a careworn Ayres makes his saintly doctor role work by making us see that trying to be kind in this world means hard work; his good deeds do not lead to narcissistic self-satisfaction but a sort of harried irritability. Ayres’ thoughtful quality has deepened, his reedy voice is at its most expressive, and he’s very subtle: watch his reaction in church when he realizes who raped Jane Wyman’s deaf-mute Belinda. Ayres isn’t outraged, just slightly amazed that he still has the capacity to be even mildly shocked by the cruelty of some human beings. Wyman fell in love with Ayres on the set, which hastened the end of her marriage to Ronald Reagan.
5. Advise & Consent (1962): In Otto Preminger’s inventively cast political film, Ayres plays the Vice President, a charming, self-effacing man who jokes when other people don’t listen to him. Over the course of the movie, Ayres will have to bear up to the idea of becoming President, and it’s clear that he’ll make a good one, a better one, even, than the country deserves. This VP makes it known that he’s not willing to sacrifice a man’s life for any reason, a reflection of the real Ayres. We have only to imagine Ayres as President instead of Ronald Reagan to see how often the movies improve on life. His roles were seldom worthy of him, but Ayres’ example as both actor and human being should not be forgotten.
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House contributor Dan Callahan's writing has appeared in Slant Magazine, Bright Lights Film Journal and Senses of Cinema, among other publications.
Links for the Day (June 25th, 2008)
1. "The Director's Director": From GOOD Magazine. (Hattip: Audrey Laricchia)
["Hal Ashby's movies captured a messy, post-1960s America in alternately hilarious and poignant ways. Here, Wes Anderson, Judd Apatow, Alexander Payne, David O. Russell, and Jason Schwartzman talk about their favorites. ... Payne on The Landlord: I don’t want to tell you much about it. Discover it the way I did: Just see it. It contains all the gentleness, eccentric rhythms, oddball humor, brilliant editing, and deep humanism that mark his other films, and like his other films, it’s utterly unique. The performances are sensational—particularly by Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Louis Gossett, Jr., and the great Diana Sands. Add cinematography by Gordon Willis—his third film—in case you need more convincing. All right, it’s a little uneven at times, but so what? It’s wonderful to watch a great artist still searching for economy of style."]
2. "Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Brasillach, and Anti-Semitism: Some observations": Fascinating post from Glenn Kenny; equally thought-provoking comments.
["In English, the inscription reads, "Here, Rene Revel, Peace Officer in the 15th District, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, was killed by the Germans, August 19 1944." Berthe, who later, in the film’s video-shot flashback, will try to do battle with the forces of Steven Spielberg (a Jew! imagine!), says of the plaque: “They shouldn’t phrase it like that. Neither ‘Officer,’ neither ‘peace,’ neither ‘Germans’.” That Eloge de l’amour, roundly heralded as a contemporary Godard masterpiece, fetishizes Robert Brasillach while turning up its nose at the Liberation is certainly…um, provocative?"]
3. "Just a Minute With: Gene Hackman on his retirement": From Reuters India.
["I haven't held a press conference to announce retirement, but yes, I'm not going to act any longer. I've been told not to say that over the last few years, in case some real wonderful part comes up, but I really don't want to do it any longer."]
4. "What's on Barack Obama's iPod?": From CNN.
["Bob Dylan. Yo-Yo Ma. Sheryl Crow. Jay-Z. These aren't musical acts in a summer concert series: They're artists featured on Barack Obama's iPod. "I have pretty eclectic tastes," the Democratic presidential contender said in an interview to be published in Friday's issue of Rolling Stone."]
5. "'X-Men' frogs sprout claws on demand": From MSNBC.
["At least 11 species of African frogs carry a built-in concealed weapon — they can sprout claws on demand to fight off attackers, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. When threatened, the frogs can puncture their own skin with sharp bones in their toes that they then use to claw their attackers, David Blackburn and colleagues at Harvard University reported. "It's surprising enough to find a frog with claws," Blackburn, a graduate student, said in a statement. "The fact that those claws work by cutting through the skin of the frogs' feet is even more astonishing. These are the only vertebrate claws known to pierce their way to functionality.""]
Quote of the Day: Thomas Carlyle
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Could one of these become Hassel Castle?
Clip of the Day: Well... my soul is destroyed.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Lichman & Rizov "Live" at Grassroots Tavern (Episode 13, Part 3: "Roman Holiday"), with Glenn Kenny and Karina Longworth
By John Lichman & Vadim Rizov
[Editor's Note: The views expressed in this podcast are those of the commenters, and do not necessarily reflect the official policies, positions, or opinions of The House Next Door.]
If a Wookie can fondle a princess, can an Academy Award winner feed a 13-year old a Quaalude? But enough about Vadim's sex life...
Part 3 of our Cannes podcast, featuring the gracious and glorious (in that order and vice-versa) Glenn Kenny and Karina Longworth, goes spinning off on even more liquor-assisted tangents. First Glenn and Karina discuss their reactions to Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. From there we somehow segue into the Sex and the City movie, salute the unsung darkness of Garry Marshall, then offer a final farewell to Cannes before Vadim shoots a withering glance at all us old coots who like pasión in our cinéma (really, you had to be there).
This is Keith Uhlich standing in for John Lichman on Part 3 of Episode 13 of Lichman & Rizov "Live" at Grassroots Tavern. After all this, we're gonna buy you listeners a drink. John will, anyway... he's in corporate. (KU)
Podcast is embedded below. Any problems, it can also be found here as a downloadable mp3 file. (TRT: 21 minutes, 21 seconds)
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John Lichman is a freelance writer who contributes to The Reeler, Primetime A&E [print only] and anyone with cash. He works odd jobs to afford his vices, sleeps on couches and can drink Vadim Rizov under a table.
Vadim Rizov is a New York-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Reeler, Nerve, and, oddly enough, Salt Lake City Weekly.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Down and Dirty: Sharky's Machine
By Matt Zoller Seitz
Sharky's Machine is the story of Tom Sharky, an Atlanta narcotics officer demoted to the vice squad after accidentally getting a civilian shot during a bust gone bad. The character is a veteran cop on his way down. The movie is the pet project of a star at the peak of his fame. Adapted by Gerald DiPego from the debut novel by William Diehl, and directed by Reynolds, Sharky's Machine was released in December, 1981, when Reynolds was coming off a string of box office hits. The film was only a modest success, and in retrospect one can see why. Aside from Reynolds' cocky charisma, it barely trades on his established persona. It combines the gallows humor of Joseph Wambaugh's cop novels, the bleak brutality of The French Connection and The Getaway, and a strong undercurrent of film noir, with Sharky as an errant knight brawling and shooting his way through the Atlanta underworld.
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Matt Zoller Seitz is a filmmaker and Editor Emeritus of The House Next Door.
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008: USA vs. Al-Arian
By Lauren Wissot
[USA vs. Al-Arian premieres today at the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008. Click here for screening information.]
Sami Al-Arian, the subject of Line Halvorsen’s real-life, Kafkaesque nightmare doc USA vs. Al-Arian, is a highly regarded professor with a loving wife named Nahla, three daughters, and two sons, who happens to be an outspoken advocate of Palestinian rights (unsurprisingly since he and Nahla were raised refugees, displaced when Israel came into being). He’s also one of the many residents of the United States who found himself on the wrong side of the Patriot Act after 9/11, held for two and half years in maximum security, awaiting trial on flimsy, terrorism related charges. But what separates the Al-Arian case from the many now commonplace, Ashcroft-certified, civil liberties abuses is that this University of South Florida prof is no unknown Mohammed Atta taking flight lessons in the Sunshine State. Indeed, Sami Al-Arian has lived quite visibly in the U.S. for over 31 years! His articulate daughters show the (inadmissible as evidence) photos of a smiling Sami with George W. Bush, another beside Senator Clinton. Halvorsen interviews a congressman who seems baffled as to how a man so open about his political activities and beliefs could be accused of having a “secret life” (Bush’s “find ‘em and smoke ‘em out” rhetoric seems to have been reduced to “videotape a rally then knock on the door”). This is precisely what’s so terrifying about USA vs. Al-Arian. Like the slain journalist at the center of Eric Bergkraut’s Letter to Anna, Al-Arian learns that activist fame will not shield him in George W. Bush’s America any more than Anna Politkovskaya’s high profile protected her in Putin’s Russia. In fact, it can make things much, much worse.
Halvorsen opens the film with an interview with Nahla followed by one with her youngest son at home, recollecting the day officers arrived at the door to take Sami away (with a show of intimidating force better suited to Fallujah than to Florida). The images of Sami’s stunned wife and child segue into a freeze of rotoscope animation (the technique used to powerful effect later on in the courtroom trial as portions of the transcripts are read) before Halvorsen cuts to news footage of a somber Ashcroft announcing the big catch. In a jailhouse interview the very professorial-looking—balding with glasses and a beard—Palestinian intellectual tells of how he came to America for the education, and stayed after receiving his Ph.D. because he thought he could “make a difference.” Unfortunately, the more we hear directly from Sami and his wife Nahla, the more it becomes apparent why the government would spend such a huge amount of money trying to convict an innocent man. Sami is highly educated, incredibly articulate, outspoken—part of the cultural elite the Bush administration disdains. He and his strong defiant wife, committed to social justice, place their faith in an appeal to the intellect, to facts and reason, while they’re fighting a government for whom facts are truly unimportant—it’s all about playing to people’s emotions. (Had they never heard of the Rosenbergs?) Sami and Nahla reminded me of black kids in the ghetto arguing with the cops. It doesn’t matter that the police are in the wrong. Loudly vocalizing your rights won’t get you out alive.
What it will get you is solitary confinement without being charged, and your youngest daughter, braces on her teeth, being able to recite jail procedure down pat. Accused of funding the overseas killing by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami faces a “show trial” in Tampa, more juicy news story than judicial process. Those still animated scenes of the trial, the voiceover of lawyers presenting statements and the media reports, let us in on the circus. Halvorsen interviews both sides, the white male Attorney General prosecuting the case as well as the Hispanic female defense lawyer, but doesn’t get into the gritty details of “evidence,” such as the 400 phone calls garnered from 472,000(!) after nine years of wiretapping. Nahla, outraged by the invasion of privacy (“This is unbelievable!”), is relieved when the tapes are finally declassified and handed over. Halvorsen’s camera hovers above the mother and her daughters gathered around a laptop listening to the government tapes, which consist mostly of statements like, “Yeah, I’d like to order a pizza. A Bigfoot.” The family erupts into uncontrollable laughter—hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic—until Nahla suddenly stands up, can’t bear to listen anymore. She considers the government's tactics “indecent.”
Of course, the irony is that dignified Sami had always worked within the system for his Palestinian cause, donating to charities (which got him into trouble), speaking at rallies, and encouraging Muslim youth in America to vote. There’s a heartbreaking scene in which Sami tries to speak normally with his own kids on speakerphone, as if he’s calling from the office. “How much luggage did you pack?” he asks his youngest daughter who will be leaving on a trip. The reality that he’s phoning from a jail cell and his little girl is on her way to Egypt to live with her grandmother for a year—to take the pressure off—is never mentioned. (Later she tells the camera that she hopes to “touch him goodbye” before she leaves.) On his youngest son’s birthday, Sami—joining the party via speakerphone once again—asks, “Did he blow them all out?” Nahla bickers with the boy as she trims his hair before the trial, while Sami tells him to mind his mother. The eldest son wears a Coldplay T-shirt while playing videogames with his younger sibling. Take away the headscarves and the terrorism charges and this is the quintessential American family—which is what makes it all the more surreal.
But perhaps not as surreal as the prosecution entering as evidence footage of Israeli suicide bombings—even flying Israelis (officers, survivors, bomb technicians, etc.) over to testify—while the defense is prevented from presenting the Palestinian side. (Perhaps Al-Arian’s lawyers should have tried to screen Tamar Yarom’s To See If I’m Smiling, the unforgiving viewpoint of women soldiers in the Occupied Territories.) One of Sami’s older daughters, disgusted, says that this only proves that the government doesn’t have a case if they have to resort to such crude tactics, while Nahla just can’t comprehend why they have been “denied context.” To Halvorsen’s camera, Sami explains that he unwaveringly condemns all violence—he’s for “resistance” to the occupation, which is very different. Even the A.G. admits in a candid interview that there is “no direct link to the violence shown at the trial” and Sami, “nevertheless, he’s just as guilty.” (Say what?)
Which is just a bit more shocking than the defense resting without calling any witnesses—reasoning that the burden of proof is on the prosecution after all, and the A.G. only succeeded in proving their client a Palestinian activist. Halvorsen’s lens captures a stressed out beyond belief Nahla searching her kitchen for her “medicine” (like any true American!) “I’m so embarrassed,” she apologizes after swallowing a handful of pills. “I don’t know why I feel this way.” The government’s modus operandi simply seems to be to drive people crazy—through solitary confinement, through psychological torture. “They break you down by breaking your family down,” Sami later laments. And indeed when Nahla gets the news that the jury has reached a verdict she finally falls apart and cries for the first time on camera. The paparazzi stalking the family on their way into the courthouse—robbing them of their last remaining shreds of dignity—hits home through Halvorsen’s swift-moving camerawork, darting from angle to angle. Unbelievably, a “not guilty” verdict is reached—on all counts! Nahla speaks to reporters outside the courtroom. “I’m happy for justice in America,” she says, visibly relaxed for the first time in perhaps years. “I’m happy for the American people.” A microphone-shoving reporter asks a juror what it would have taken for him to render a guilty verdict. “Evidence,” is his reply. A female juror didn’t like that the government’s case boiled down to “just take our word for it.” And perhaps in the end it was to Sami’s benefit that he’d been locked away long enough for post-9/11 tensions to have simmered down before trial, for emotions to have cooled, for Americans to have started questioning their government again.
Or maybe not. For things only get more Kafkaesque when the government, astonishingly, won’t let go and decide to retry him! Sami calmly tells the camera that in a democracy the government acts on behalf of the people—so the people need to stand up and say “not in my name.” Soon black activists are onboard, filling in the empty spaces where Muslims who’ve endured FBI intimidation at their mosques and homes, fear to stand. When a plea deal is offered—pay restitution to the victims of the suicide bombings (those same victims Sami was acquitted of killing!)—Nahla wide-eyed in disbelief is stunned speechless as she listens to Sami and his lawyer on speakerphone. But this farce has dire consequences so the Al-Arian team decides to negotiate another deal, to put the family first, rather than to go on fighting for perhaps another decade or more. Nahla is surfing the Internet while chatting with the defense attorney as she happens upon the Department of Justice website, which leaks the new deal—that Al-Arian is being deported—law and order has prevailed! All the more proof that they didn’t have a case (why else let a big bad terrorist simply walk away?) the rational congressman later explains.
One of Sami’s daughters reflects that it’s kind of sad that her parents are descendants of refugees, they themselves are refugees, and now the U.S. government is making her and her siblings refugees. Like the Laotian family at the heart of The Betrayal (Nerakhoon),” the Al-Arians made the mistake of wholeheartedly trusting the U.S. government, of believing in the myth of the American dream. Once the family is in the courtroom to work out the formalities of the plea, the federal judge stuns both sides by giving Sami more prison time (along with a diatribe about his kids going to the best universities while he blows up other people’s children. The journalists outside the courthouse gather to compare notes on the sound bite. “Anyone get that?”) The government blackmailed Sami into a plea only to hang him, returning Nahla and her children to another state of shellshock and their husband and father to a “special housing unit,” allowed one phone call a week. The “good” news comes with the final words on the screen—Sami is due to be released and deported in November. Just in time for elections. We shall see.
Brooklyn-based writer Lauren Wissot is the publisher of the blog Beyond the Green Door, the author of the memoir Under My Master's Wings, and a contributor to The Reeler.
919 (60). Les deux anglaises et le continent / Two English Girls (1971, Francois Truffaut), commentary by C. Mason Wells
By Kevin B. Lee
[Editor's Note: This is the latest entry in House contributor Kevin B. Lee's Shooting Down Pictures, a record of his ongoing quest to see every title on the list of the 1000 Greatest Films compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?]
Long considered a stately (read: mediocre) gender-reversing rehash of Jules and Jim (TSPDT #40), Francois Truffaut’s second foray into the work of Henri Roche is in fact his most mature and fully realized work, and one of the very best films I’ve seen throughout the Shooting Down Pictures project. Instead of Jules and Jim’s giddy, free-flying use of cinema to amplify the exuberance of its young lovers, here Truffaut’s techniques soberly and masterfully emphasize a tactile, constricting sense of place and time against which the desires of this ill-fated threesome continually struggle, charging the film with a steadily accumulating sexual tension that is never fully satiated despite two lengthy sex scenes. Truffaut builds and expands on Jules and Jim’s vision of love as a dark descent into obsessive ownership killing off the sense of free discovery from which it sprung, while being equally deft, less ostentatious and more judicious in his stylistic approach (characterized by finely choreographed long tracking shots) to emphasize the dramatic core of each scene. The narration is dominated by a voice-over that emphasizes the film’s origins as a novel, but is by no means a reversion to the cinema du papa literary adaptation against which Truffaut made his name criticizing. Narration itself is the controlling theme of the film: it is both a behavior endemic to the film’s highly literate post-Victorian milieu, and an actualization technique through which the three leads formulate their respective identities, though largely at the expense of their innocence and friendship. It is hard to think of many films that are as vigorous and heartfelt in their consideration of the two sexes’ perilous relations as friends and lovers as this masterpiece, Truffaut’s finest._____________________________________
To read the rest of the article at Shooting Down Pictures, click here. Read more!
Links for the Day (June 24th, 2008)
1. "Drive-In Movies: A Primer": A GreenCine specific feature by Dennis Cozzalio.
["Although they are far less in number than they were during their peak in the late '50s (in 1958, specifically, there were 4,058 drive-ins in operation across the nation), the drive-in movie theater still exists. The number of drive-ins still showing movies has remained at slightly above 400 over the last 10 years - the last precipitous drop occurred from 1998-1999, when 134 drive-ins closed during that single year. (Less than a year after we last visited with my daughter in 2000, the Foothill Drive-in closed. It has been dark for several seasons, its screen torn down, though its lavish marquee, a noted attraction along Route 66, remains standing.) But since 1999 the total number of drive-ins has stabilized; fewer have closed and disappeared. Going to the drive-in in 2008 is a rarified experience, to be sure - Californians in 1958 had 223 separate drive-ins in this state alone from which to choose. That number, as of 2007, was down to 19, and at this writing, on the 75th anniversary of the opening of the first drive-in back in 1933, it may be even lower than that."]
2. "New DVDs": Dave Kehr's latest, on the Criterion release of The Furies and Konrad Wolf's Solo Sunny.
["Based on a 1948 novel by Niven Busch — included as a paperback in the Criterion Collection’s superb new edition of the film — “The Furies” is shot through with Freudianisms fashionable at the time, including a scene worthy of Buñuel, in which Vance discourages a rival for her father’s affections (Judith Anderson) by flinging a pair of scissors and piercing her eye. But Mann gives the action a metaphysical dimension that overwhelms easy psychoanalytic readings. As in his films noirs (“Raw Deal,” “Desperate”), he systematically composes his shots to create a sense of instability, using lines of perspective or boldly massed foregrounds to pull the images off balance. The titanic struggle between father and daughter has knocked the world off its axis."]
3. "Une Vielle Provocatrice": Fernando F. Croce interviews Catherine Breillat for Slant.
["From a distance, Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress looks like a Merchant Ivory production, until you feel all sorts of pungent sexual tension ready to erupt through the costume-drama gentility. Similarly, Breillat in person is soft-spoken and courteous, a gracious host and an easy laugher. It's not until I notice her piercing gaze as I listen to the translator that I sense the prickly, frequently invasive scrutiny familiar to viewers of Romance, Fat Girl and Anatomy of Hell. Like the filmmaker in the self-reflexive Sex Is Comedy, Breillat demands the same concentration from interviewers that she does from her subjects. I spoke to her at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival (where Last Mistress was the opening-night film) about literary adaptations, the formidable force that is Asia Argento, and French cinema's shortage of matinee idols."]
4. "Americans see truth in a range of faiths, massive study finds": From The Boston Globe. Who among our readers is a believer, and what are the nuances of your faith?
["The study confirms a fact known widely by scholars of religion in public life: the more often people attend worship, the more likely they are to be politically conservative. Mormons and evangelical Protestants are the most likely to be doctrinally orthodox and politically conservative, while Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and atheists are more liberal in both their theology and their politics, the study finds. But there is tremendous diversity within each faith - among evangelical Protestants, for example, only 52 percent describe themselves as conservative, and 30 percent say they follow government and public affairs only some of the time. Although evangelicals have traditionally been viewed as Republican voters, the poll suggests a significant minority do not view themselves as conservative, a fact reflected this year as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tries to reach out to evangelical voters."]
5. "God accused of selling cocaine near church": From MSNBC.
["Police said a man named God was arrested near a Tampa church for selling cocaine. Authorities began investigating God Lucky Howard in April, and he was arrested on Saturday. Police said he sold the cocaine to undercover detectives in his neighborhood. When officers searched his home, they reported finding 22 grams more of cocaine and a scale. Jail records show Howard was charged with several counts of drug possession and distribution, which include increased charges for being within 1,000 feet of a church, a school and public housing."]
Quote of the Day: Havelock Ellis
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Lt. Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody, the first female four-star U.S. Army general to be nominated.
Clip of the Day(s): I just can't stop watching Ryan Stiles' Carol Channing impressions.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Monday, June 23, 2008
George Carlin (May 12th, 1937-June 22nd, 2008)
GreenCine gathers obituaries. Share your thoughts in the comments section. See after the break for a few clips of Carlin in action.
Doctor Who: Season 4, Ep. 8, "Silence in the Library"
By Ross Ruediger
The name Steven Moffat has been the stamp of quality on Doctor Who scripts over the past three seasons, so it’s easy to go into “Silence in the Library,” the first of a two-part story, with high expectations. Further, since Moffat was recently named the series’ new showrunner (beginning in 2010), viewer expectations are perhaps even a bit higher for this story. He certainly doesn’t waste any time putting his dramatic flourishes on the piece. The story begins with a little girl (Eve Newton). She appears to be in therapy with a Dr. Moon (Colin Salmon) while her dad (Mark Dexter) lingers in the background. In her mind exists a fantastical library the size of a planet. She peacefully floats around the silent library, seemingly the only patron. The silence is suddenly broken by a loud banging from the other side of a pair of doors. The girl is alarmed. The Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna (Catherine Tate) bust through.The Doctor: “Hello! Sorry to burst in on you like this. Is it OK if we stop here for a bit?”
After the opening credits, the story takes a few steps backwards. The Doctor and Donna have just arrived at The Library in the 51st century. The Doctor says it’s so big it doesn’t even need a name. It is the size of a planet and it contains every book ever written. The core of the planet is an index computer—the biggest hard drive ever. He says they’re near the equator so they must be in the biography section. Donna picks up a book and the Doctor takes it from her hand saying “Spoilers! These books are from your future.” Then he realizes that for the biggest library in the universe, there’s a distinct lack of visitors. In fact, the place is empty. Donna presses him as to why they’re even there (a good question from someone who isn’t allowed to even read the material). He doesn’t answer, but he does do a scan for humanoid lifeforms and finds only two—he and Donna. He expands the scan to cover other forms of life and finds a million million! But where are they? Could it be that the books have a life of their own?
They do some more investigating and come across a Node, which is a sort of information kiosk with a creepy, moving face attached to it. The Node, without any particular sense of urgency tells them to run and that nowhere is safe. It then has yet another message, which is “For god’s sake, count the shadows.” The Doctor wisely tells Donna to stay out of the shadows. They continue on and he confesses that he received a message on the psychic paper to come to The Library as soon as possible. Immediately giant blocks of shadows begin filling the hallway they’re in. The Doctor tries to use the sonic screwdriver on a door, but since it’s made of wood it doesn’t work. Donna opts to kick it in and the story returns to the point where it started, only the Doctor isn’t addressing the little girl, but rather a floating security camera that drops with a thud to floor. At this point, we’re very confused. How can the time travelers exist in a world that we’ve already been told exists only in the girl’s head? Back in the therapy session, the girl hears the penetrating sonic screwdriver at the same time the Doctor inspects the cam with it. As she yells, “No, stop it!” the same words scrawl across a sign in The Library. The girl tells Dr. Moon The Library has been breached and others are coming. The shadows continue to circle the Doctor and Donna and he realizes what they are even though he doesn’t verbalize it.
Suddenly there’s an explosion of light and a group of astronauts dramatically enter the room. The leader—a woman—smiles at the Doctor and calls him “sweetie.” He dismisses her and demands that the group return to their rocket and leave. They ignore him and remove their helmets, revealing they’re part of an archaeological expedition and they’ve come to find out why the place has been deserted for 100 years and the meaning of its final communication, "4,022 saved. No survivors."The Doctor: “Oh, no. Are you? Tell me you’re not archaeologists.”
The Woman: “Got a problem with archaeologists?”
The Doctor: “I’m a time traveler. I point and laugh at archaeologists.”
The Woman: “Ah!” (she extends her hand) “Professor River Song—archaeologist.”
The Doctor again insists that they leave and set up a quarantine around the planet. Since nobody seems to be leaving, he makes a ground rule: "Stay out of the shadows. Stay in the light." Nobody seems to care what he has to say, although River (the lovely Alex Kingston) is amused by his rantings. In addition to Professor Song, the others are Strackman Lux (Steve Pemberton), the man funding the expedition and whose family built The Library, Miss Evangelista (Talula Riley), Anita (Jessika Williams), Proper Dave (Harry Peacock) and Other Dave (O.T. Fagbenle). After dealing with some red tape issues such as signing contracts, which the Doctor and Donna refuse to do, he finally gives a name to what’s in the shadows.The Doctor: “Almost every species in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark, but they’re wrong. ‘Cause it’s not irrational. It’s Vashta Nerada.”
Donna: “What’s Vashta Nerada?”
The Doctor: “It’s what’s in the dark. It’s what’s always in the dark.”
River summons the Doctor to a private place, calling him “pretty boy,” much to Donna’s amusement. She pulls out a book whose cover bears a resemblance to the TARDIS exterior and begins paging through it. She thanks him for coming when she called (the psychic paper) and wonders why he’s pretending to not know her. She begins listing events from the book, seemingly trying to figure out at which point in his life she’s arrived. Problem is, he’s aware of none of them. He genuinely does not know her. She realizes how young he looks and it dawns on her, too, that whenever she knows the Doctor in the future, this version predates any of their meetings. Does River know a later Doctor? Does she know the Tenth Doctor later in his life? It’s a moving proposition that’s full of possibilities for the series’ future.
At this point the story certainly feels like a Steven Moffat tale: Unseen creatures in the shadows (shades of “Blink”), a mysterious child (another “Empty Child?”), the 51st century, a mindfuck of a situation (what’s real and what’s not?), and now a mystery woman from the Doctor’s future, which in many ways seems like the inverse of “The Girl in the Fireplace.” Indeed, “Silence in the Library” often feels like “Moffat’s Greatest Hits,” which is somewhat annoying since we want everything that Moffat does to surprise and bowl us over. But maybe we ask too much of the man. If there really are only eight or nine dramatic stories that can even be told, how many tricks can he possibly have up his Doctor Who sleeve? He has, after all, only had to deliver one story each season thus far, unlike Russell T. Davies who cranks out four or five per season, in addition to creating seasonal arcs and so forth. I very much look forward to the arcs Moffat will create further down the line (and likewise anticipate one or two episodes from Davies each season under Moffat’s vision).
Back to the story… Proper Dave sets something off in the computer system, which in turn causes a phone to ring in the little girl’s home. Her father doesn’t hear the ring, but Dr. Moon seems to know more than he’s saying. Just as she’s about to answer it, the ringing stops. In The Library, the Doctor tries something else since nobody answered the phone. He’s able to make contact with her through her TV set (note the Robby the Robot action figure in the background behind her—nice touch). She responds as any child might when dreams become reality, and the Doctor is confused by her childspeak. They don’t get very far before that transmission cuts out. The time travelers and the archaeologists are confused (as are we the viewers).
Miss Evangelista feels useless, because that’s how everyone sees her. She’s Lux’s assistant and he probably only hired her for her looks. Despite Donna’s attempt to connect with her, she wanders off into the shadows, only to be consumed by the Vashta Nerada. When the others find her, the only thing that remains aside from a skeleton in a space suit is a “data ghost”—a rambling series of pleas from the afterlife. It’s difficult to put into words how effective this lengthy sequence is or why it would be the highlight of the episode, and yet it is: Haunting, strange technology that allows the dead a few more words. The words call out to Donna—the last person who was nice to her—and she is crushed, as Donna often is when confronted with alien experiences. Soon after, Donna talks to River, trying to find out who she is. She tells Donna she knows the Doctor later in his life, and when she finds out Donna’s name she is silent, as if she knows something from the future. Something unspeakable.
In the realm of the little girl, Dr. Moon finally plays his hand. He tells her the people in The Library are real and need to be saved, the shadows are moving, and only she can save them. The Vashta Nerada are closing in on the people in The Library, and the Doctor goes into further detail about them being a swarm of creatures. He demonstrates their power by throwing a chicken leg into the shadows. It immediately turns to bone, the flesh melted away. They’re a powerful, unstoppable force—after all, not everyone comes back from the dark. But he’s never seen them in this quantity.River Song: “Every shadow?”
The Doctor: “No—but any shadow.”
River Song: “So what do we do?”
The Doctor: “Daleks—aim for the eyestalk. Sontarans—back of the neck. Vashta Nerada—run. Just run.”
Without warning, Proper Dave has two shadows. The Doctor tells him to stand still, as he puts the man’s helmet back on, and directs everyone else to do the same. In the midst of this, River produces her own sonic screwdriver, which alarms the Doctor. He shifts into let’s-get-shit-done mode and ushers Donna to a nearby teleport (which would most certainly exist in a library the size of a planet), and sends her into the TARDIS, but in the process (and unknown to the Doctor) she’s intercepted by something and screams howls of agony. Proper Dave is consumed by the Vashta Nerada, and turns into a walking, skeletal zombie—his data ghost repeating “Who turned out the lights?” He stalks. Everyone runs. Again River produces her sonic screwdriver and says that the Doctor gave it to her. He’s more unnerved than ever. In his own words, “I wouldn’t give my sonic screwdriver to anyone.” She replies, “I’m not anyone.” The Doctor addresses a Node for exit information. It turns around with Donna’s face and says, “Donna Noble has left The Library. Donna Noble has been saved,” over and over, as the Vashta Nerada-ridden Proper Dave lunges toward the Doctor, River and the rest (Here on Gilligan’s Isle!).
Being Part One of Two, “Silence in the Library” is of course a series of set-ups. They are very intense set-ups that are as frustrating as they are engaging. Where is this entire thing going? Can it possibly deliver on every dramatic beat that’s been presented? Even if this feels like a case of Moffat been-there, done-that, his game is still playing. This episode is jam-packed with foreshadowing, drama, weirdness—you name it. If it seems unsatisfying, that's only because it's so effective. It forces you to wait until next week for the answers to its questions. After all, that’s what the Doctor Who cliffhanger sting is all about, but rarely is the set-up this intriguing. Probably the one thing we can count on is a lack of silence in The Library.
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Ross Ruediger is a San Antonio-based writer. In addition to contributing to The House Next Door, he also publishes The Rued Morgue and writes for Bullz-Eye.
NEXT WEEK: Um, it's called "Forest of the Dead." You really don't need to know anything more. Spoilers are bad—surely you know that by now?
Classic Who DVD Recommendation of the Week: Last week I didn't recommend any classic Who. I'm going to continue with the theme this week and recommend checking out Jekyll, which was written by Steven Moffat and is a deliciously twisted turn on the Stevenson classic.
Links for the Day (June 23rd, 2008)
1. "Hiroshi Shimizu Film Collection Volume One: Landscape": By Glenn Kenny at Some Came Running.
["At a symposium on films and film criticism held last fall in Brookline, Massachusetts, the great critic and essayist Phillip Lopate, in the middle of an eloquent and inarguably correct disquisition against narcissistic '70s nostalgia and for a film history that privileges beauty and integrity over "edge," allowed that he now preferred films that had "something to do with humanity" to any other pictures. While fully respecting that perspective, the genre aesthete in me had to raise a hand in favor of putative genre formalists (I think Mario Bava came up). Which is not to say I object to pictures that have something to do with humanity. I just like films that offer something to do with humanity in ways I haven't seen. And it's true that such films can be found in all periods—but alas, these days, you're more likely to find the most eloquent and startling expressions and explorations of humanity in the films of the past. Such as, say, Toni, the Renoir picture released by Masters of Cinema and featuring a commentary by Phillip and Kent Jones, which I reviewed here."]
2. "Republican Running for House Dies at 67": Thou shalt covet no elephants.
["Francis H. Powers, a retired Wall Street executive who was recently selected by Republican leaders on Staten Island as their candidate for the Congressional seat being vacated by Representative Vito J. Fossella, died on Saturday at his home on Staten Island. Mr. Powers, who was 67, died in his sleep of a heart attack, family members and friends said. His death came less than a month after he became the Republican candidate after other potential candidates decided not to run."]
3. "Heartbroken Briton sells his 'entire life'": From CNN.
["Ian Usher, who moved to Australia six years ago, is selling his house, car, job and even an introduction to his friends on eBay. By 1000 GMT on Monday bids had reached almost $150,000. ... The 44-year-old, who originally came from Darlington, in northern England, will even include an introduction to his friends and a trial run at his job. "On the day it's all sold and settled, I intend to walk out of my front door with my wallet in one pocket and my passport in the other, nothing else at all," he said on his Web site, ALife4Sale.com. Usher said he wanted a fresh start because his current life reminds him of his former marriage."]
4. "Amy Winehouse has emphysema and could be in wheelchair": Gah!
["Frail Amy Winehouse has been struck down by the deadly lung condition emphysema - and she could be in a wheelchair within a MONTH if she doesn't stop smoking crack cocaine, her dad revealed last night. Doctors have also told the star, 24 - rushed to hospital after having a fit this week - that she will need a permanent oxygen mask to survive unless she takes their advice."]
5. "Australian man charged with drunk rolling": From MSNBC.
["A man found asleep in a motorized wheelchair on a highway in northern Australia has been charged with drunk driving, police said Monday. Officers in a patrol car noticed the man slumped in the stationary chair about 10 a.m. Friday on an exit lane near the tourist city of Cairns, regional traffic Inspector Bob Waters said. Cars were swerving to get around him, Waters said. The officers breath-tested the 64-year-old man, who registered a blood alcohol reading of 0.301 — more than six times the legal driving limit. He was charged with operating a vehicle while drunk and ordered to report to court July 7, where he faces a stiff fine if convicted."]
Quote of the Day: William G. McAdoo
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Lead image to Jamie Stuart's most recent article for Stream, "Make Up Memories."
Clip of the Day: Here's a 1983 movie of note: Joysticks!
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008: Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North
By Lauren Wissot
[Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North premieres today at the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008. Click here for screening information.]
Beginning with home movie footage of an Independence Day parade in Bristol, Rhode Island—the longest running in the U.S., so director Katrina Browne explains in voiceover—Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North explores, through a very personal lens, the sordid tale of the slave trade in the pious American north. In addition to being a first-time filmmaker, Browne is also a descendant of the prominent, revered DeWolf clan: New England royalty who amassed a fortune through the blood, sweat and tears of the estimated 10,000 Africans they tore from their homeland, the biggest traders in American history. After sending letters to 200 relatives with an invitation to join her on her quest to retrace the steps of the “triangle trade” from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba, Browne and nine of her kin (including active church members and an Episcopal priest) set off on their own truth and reconciliation journey.
Guided by somber music and Browne’s shy lilting narration over images of the DeWolf family crest (in archival materials, ancient maps, history books and meticulous business logs, in street signs bearing the family name, in the stained glass at the local church paid for with their wealth) we’re forced to confront the oxymoron of a dark secret hiding in plain sight, one that Browne and her relatives have lived with all of their lives. The disconnection is overwhelming. One of the most powerful moments occurs at the headstone of Adjua, one of two African children purchased as a Christmas present for a DeWolf wife, the image accompanied by kids’ voices eerily chanting an innocent nursery rhyme inspired by the young slaves. Browne finds mention of a shopkeeper’s complaint (he asked that the slave whipping post be removed from in front of his store as blood was getting all over his windows). Slaves were big business and the DeWolfs practiced what is now known as “vertical integration.” In other words they controlled all aspects of the trade, from the rum made with slave labor at their Cuban plantations, to the buying of people with that rum in Ghana, to the shipment of live flesh back to the states to be sold (or sent back down to Cuba, a hub for illegal slave activity). The DeWolfs were even granted a favor from Thomas Jefferson to conduct their (illegal at the time, we’re reminded!) family business, for the whole town of Bristol as well as most of the north lived off those profits as sure as they would any other lucrative industry.
Juxtaposing this history with present day interviews (reactions from the descendants), Browne is able to create a dialogue with her ancestors, and often a painful one. Family members are moved to tears when they see the steel manacles and leg irons on the ships—like confronting Nazi grandfathers who carried out the Holocaust. Browne unwaveringly shoots the horrors of place like the dungeons in Ghana where slaves were held before setting sail, after Christian missionaries had baptized them and taken away their African names, making them slaves in the name of the Lord. A child in Ghana asks one of Browne’s relatives “Are you not ashamed of coming here?” (Never mind that the DeWolfs traded with African kings.) “Yes, I am ashamed,” he answers honestly, and in so doing pinpoints the exact reason Traces of the Trade is so poignant. The ten DeWolf descendants are a thoughtful, forthcoming, from the heart group—willing to doubt, to not have answers, to admit both fear and internalized racism. One exasperated woman voices concern that the film will turn out to be a “travelogue through slavery” rather than a conversation about racism today. She’s tired of speaking to the past and wants to expand the circle to change the present. Browne’s African-American co-producer is unwittingly dragged into the debate, expressing her hope that the film will further both a liberation of her people (from anger) as well as of whites (from guilt).
In fact there is limitless drama (the stories in Traces of the Trade could easily fill a PBS miniseries) with everyone involved in a perpetual soul-search—this is what makes cinema (and life) so interesting. Slavery has been dealt with in American history in the same way as the Native American genocide and the Holocaust. It’s always the “good guys” (the North, the cowboys, America) vs. the “bad guys” (the South, the Indians, Hitler) when the reality is you can’t be a moral “good guy” if you’re only looking out for number one. The slave trade existed not so covertly after the Civil War because it was economically lucrative, the Native Americans were slaughtered because they were in the way of the white settlers, and America entered WWII because Pearl Harbor got bombed, not because Jews were dying. A female relative even compares the slave trade to sweatshop labor (we’re willing to look the other way if that direction is more convenient).
The DeWolfs started a great many legitimate businesses with their blood money—like all underground illegal activity the earnings eventually float back up to the top. So Browne takes her camera to African-American academics, asks about reparations (something largely supported by her own recently enlightened kin). Having finally found common ground with the descendants on the losing side of history, Browne and two family members take public action within their own Episcopal Church, issuing a call at a convention for the church to face its own slave trading complicity, for investments in education and low income communities (rather than for writing individual checks). There’s something sweet and humble in this, in Browne’s constant commentary describing how unsure and awkward she feels. Ending her journey where she began in Bristol she takes to the pulpit of the church (stained glass erected over slave blood). She offers an anecdote about a healing ritual in Ghana in which the family asked to participate. The reply from the tribal elder was, “Yes, I could do that, but I think you should ask your own elders.” And the liberation continues, one brave voice at a time.
Brooklyn-based writer Lauren Wissot is the publisher of the blog Beyond the Green Door, the author of the memoir Under My Master's Wings, and a contributor to The Reeler.
Links for the Day (June 22nd, 2008)
1. "Art of Surprise": From The American Scholar, a reprint of a 2006 lecture delivered by film and theater critic Steve Vineberg. (Hattip: N.P. Thompson)
["The art I love most dearly emerges from an acknowledgement that we’re none of us pure of either mind or heart. It’s the art of mixed tones—buffoonery mixed with regret, as in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro; comic absurdity mixed with heartache, as in Chekhov’s stories; salvation that appears improbably out of despair, as in Shakespeare’s King Lear, or when all hope is lost, as in The Winter’s Tale. It’s the art of surprise, which can only come from the unpredictable—and what I mean by “unpredictable” isn’t the preposterous (like the twists in M. Night Shyamalan’s movies) but the turn you don’t expect just because it’s so true to life, and life is never predictable, yet when you see it or hear it you think, “Of course.”"]
2. "American Murder Mystery": A Hanna Rosin feature from The Atlantic on the rise of crime in American cities.
["It’s difficult to contemplate solutions to this problem when so few politicians, civil servants, and academics seem willing to talk about it—or even to admit that it exists."]
3. "Intent on charging for access — or just clueless — the New York Times fails to link to its own wonderfully rich archive": From Ann Althouse's blog. (Hattip: Tram Ngo)
["Now, I've had a little side project — which, admittedly, I've been ignoring for the last week or so — where I blog from the NYT archive for a date in the past as if I were blogging the news today. And I've struggled with the way the Times limits access to the archive for the years 1923 to 1986). Efforts to limit access to the current issue — the "TimesSelect" program — failed. But the partly closed historical archive remains. I'd love to be able to link to the old articles freely. They can't be getting much traffic. Why not let them burst out to a big audience when someone wants to talk about something, like what Jean Delannoy wrote in 1952 about the French New Wave?"]
4. "Rare Monroe-Gable footage auctioned": From CNN.
["Candid footage of Marilyn Monroe on the set of her last completed film brought in $60,000 at an auction of movie memorabilia Saturday. The two reels of silent, 8-millimeter color film shot on the set of "The Misfits" had been expected to draw starting bids of between $10,000 and $20,000. The auction also included the original disco ball from "Saturday Night Fever" and an original script of "The Godfather" signed by Marlon Brando. The sale was held by Julien's Auctions at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino. The 47-minute film, "On the Set with 'The Misfits," was shot by film extra Stanley Floyd Kilarr. It features candid moments with Monroe and co-star Clark Gable as well as Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter and director John Huston."]
5. "Toilet-paper wedding dress wins contest": It's a nice day for a brown wedding.
["Tourists gaped at six stunning wedding dresses displayed at Ripley's Believe It or Not! in New York's Times Square. The fashionable white frocks were fashioned entirely of toilet paper. Six dresses were displayed at the Times Square "odditorium" Thursday and three winning designers squared off for the top prize of $1,000. The judges from Ripley's Believe it or Not!, Charmin and Cheap-Chic-Weddings.com crowned this year's winner, Katrina Chalifoux of Rockford, Ill. She spent two weeks creating a sheath dress with a raised flower pattern from molded toilet paper."]
Quote of the Day: Robert Frost
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Ladies and gentlemen, the world's ugliest dog.
Clip of the Day: The Whose Line? crew does Indiana Jones with sound effects.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Links for the Day (June 21st, 2008)
1. "Tell me a story... or don't": Jim Emerson ponders the importance of story in cinema.
["In the words of Isaac Hayes: "Rat own." I always come back to the principle that Roger Ebert has phrased so succinctly: "A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it." To me, that's as eloquent a definition of movies, and film criticism, as anybody's ever articulated. And it seems to me that we don't take the storytelling -- not the contortions of the plot, but the shot-by-shot construction of a movie (the telling that is the movie) -- seriously enough most of the time. To put it in literary terms, I wish people would concentrate more on ill-formed (sloppy, repetitive) sentences and paragraphs and less on plot holes or improbabilities. Story is optional; style is what's there, on the page or on the screen, from moment to moment. (Just so I'm clear: I'm not talking about criticizing e.e. cummings for improper capitalization and punctuation, or complaining that Hitchcock put too many cuts in the "Psycho" shower scene. I'm interested in how and why they do what they do, and what effects they achieve in doing it.)"]
2. Two Happening post-mortems of note: Michael Koresky at Reverse Shot & Erich Kuersten at Bright Lights After Dark.
["It's not M. Night's fault really, is my point. The siren song of media is sweet to the ear -- how simple and easy to become the set of easy signifiers the lazy journalists paint you in? The only problem is, they help you climb the perch and get a crowd to gather, and then they sell them eggs to throw at you. Oh Shyamalan, you fool! You eternal sucker at the troph of ego. Oh mighty critics, next time you throw a rock at a director who dared to dream too big for his britches, ask yourself, who convinced him he should? Wasn't it you? Shouldn't you have to go watch THE HAPPENING? Again and again and again?"]
3. "Just Say ‘Mariska Hargitay’ and Snicker": Bravo, A.O.
["The movie’s takeaway catchphrase is “Mariska Hargitay,” which is used by the title character as a fake-Hindi spiritual greeting. This is almost hilarious the first 11 or so times he does it, but by the time Guru Pitka (Mr. Myers) says “Mariska Hargitay” to Ms. Hargitay herself, it’s somehow less amusing than it should be. Which might sum up “The Love Guru” in its entirety but only at the risk of grievously understating the movie’s awfulness. A whole new vocabulary seems to be required. To say that the movie is not funny is merely to affirm the obvious. The word “unfunny” surely applies to Mr. Myers’s obnoxious attempts to find mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, “The Love Guru” is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again."]
4. "Felon Fest: Notes on Camp": House contributor Steven Boone's latest column for Spout. Watch your back, Susan Sontag!
["Susan Sontag wouldn’t know what to do with us. No such thing as camp down here, unless you mean tents and canteens and shit. What’d she know anyway? In Notes on Camp, a condescending tastemaker’s primer from 1964, she dissed both Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Sherwood Anderson’s lovely old book, Winesburg, Ohio. She didn’t know shit."]
5. "Ex-cook faces jail after putting hair in steak": From MSNBC.
["A former restaurant cook has pleaded guilty to inserting hairs in a steak before giving it to a dissatisfied customer. Ryan Kropp, 24, of West Bend, Wis., was fired along with another cook after the incident Feb. 23 at the Texas Roadhouse restaurant. Kropp was charged in Washington County Circuit Court with a felony of placing foreign objects in edibles, carrying up to 3 1/2 years in prison. ... According to the complaint, a second kitchen worker told police Kropp had put a slit in the cooked steak and pushed something inside, then stated, "These are my pubes," referring to pubic hair."]
Quote of the Day: Dwight D. Eisenhower
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): The disembodied head of Eugene Pallette compels you...
Clip of the Day: Always best to be Pennywise.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Friday, June 20, 2008
The Criterion Collection #434: Classe Tous Risques
By Andrew Chan
[This review also housed at The Criterion Collection Database.]
Until recently, Claude Sautet’s Classe Tous Risques was a long forgotten noir relic. A commercial flop in its own country, it was only released briefly in the U.S. in a dubbed version called The Big Risk before it fell completely out of sight. But thanks to a Rialto Pictures re-release in 2005, and the attraction of lead performances from stars most consider among the immortals, it has the air of a major new discovery. Following hopeless fugitive Lino Ventura as he sneaks his way from Milan to Paris with wife and children in tow, Sautet’s first major film adopts some of the mood and energy from American crime movies but—like a handful of French films before and after it—tries to endow the genre with a conscience. Responsibility to friends and family humanizes even the most heartless, and Classe Tous Risques takes as its subject the masculine codes of honor that are upheld and broken by those who dare to live outside the law.
The rediscovery of Classe Tous Risques is, in a way, doubly special, as it leads us to reexamine the work of someone who is not an acknowledged master. Sautet’s career is notable for its lack of ostentation. Having begun as a highly respected assistant director in the ’50s, known for fixing the weak spots in a script and taking the reins from inept filmmakers (Truffaut once called him the “mender of French cinema”), he made a name for himself as a skilled and competent craftsman but not as an auteur. Against the two great superstars of the French New Wave, both of whom made their debuts right around the time Classe Tous Risques was released, he had neither the stylistic flair nor the youthful preoccupations to hold his own. What anchored his films was not the nouvelle vague’s cinephilia or ideology, but rather the ordinary human concerns he found at the center of big genre constructions like the criminal underworld or the comic ménage a trois. For him, even the fantasies of genre were subject to the cruel disappointments of real life.
I can’t claim any special expertise on Sautet, having only seen the four titles (out of the 14 features he made) currently available on American DVD. But looking back at what I’ve seen of this unsung oeuvre, what strikes me are the affinities linking works as disparate as his first gangster film and the not-quite-romantic dramas for which he later became famous. Consider the lovely César and Rosalie, which was a hit for him in 1972, and the intriguingly understated, mostly unarticulated passion of Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, which in 1995 became his swan song. Both films introduce an amiable, well-liked man in the autumn of his years falling in love with a young woman. Both are leisurely paced and visually sunny, but also characterized by midlife male frustration. This fascination with aging—with the male’s stumbling transition from one self to another, milder, less free self—can be found in Classe Tous Risques, where Ventura must face up to the responsibilities of a grown man just as the sins of his youth are catching up with him.
In contrast to the sympathy Sautet extends to the men in César and Nelly, the women (Romy Schneider and Emmanuelle Béart) remain about as enigmatic as the trio of female characters in Classe Tous Risques. Defined by the vagueness of their whims, they are gauzily emotional, steely and unknowable, as if Sautet were paralyzed by the thought of having to enter a woman’s psychology. Accordingly, the representations of and attitudes toward love in these films are uniformly ambivalent, and remarkable for being neither condescending to that emotion nor confined by its intensity. When Ventura—almost at the end of his rope—takes time to fall in love with some random chambermaid, the plot twist serves as nothing more than an evanescent moment of grace, requiring minimal dramatization and no further explanation. Even at the end, love is possible, though it is clear it won’t absolve anyone’s sins or compensate for the greatest human weaknesses.
While Sautet’s films profess to be grounded in and conflicted over adult fears and dilemmas, there is still something inexplicably remote about them. In César and Rosalie, the lack of intimacy we feel toward the characters allows us to buy into the central love triangle’s frequent and absurd rearrangements. But in Classe Tous Risques’ case, this remove becomes an impediment, keeping the film just out of reach of the ranks of Touchez pas au grisbi, Rififi, and Bob le flambeur, even in the moments when it thrills and moves us. In the effort to avoid melodrama—a difficult act to pull off with those children in jeopardy—it sometimes feels stiff and stifled rather than suave. There is no scene here comparable to the grudging tenderness of Jean Gabin and his best friend sharing a hotel room, or the twinkle in Roger Duchesne’s eyes when he acts as a father figure to a duo of street kids—no scene that gives us a feel for the genuineness of the gangster’s heart of gold and the depth of his family crisis, while also revealing the thug’s capacity for brutishness.
Ventura is great for his role and instantly relatable, his iconic face exuding more life-size decency than movie-size courage or charisma. But here he is largely incapable of communicating the sorrowfulness of a Bogart or the humor of a Gabin—qualities that make a cliché-ridden genre come alive with inner drama. It is Belmondo, with his mixture of toughness, seduction, and angelic innocence, who emerges as the film’s most alluring element, even as Sautet’s elliptical style keeps the character mostly inscrutable. As the hapless hero’s saving grace, Belmondo (fresh off a star-making turn in Breathless) offers the perfect foil to Ventura. More or less at peace with the contradictory extremes of criminal life, he’s as suave as any of the great men of noir, and separate from all the film’s middle-aged hand-wringing.
Sautet’s vision was able to recognize human fragility without turning soft, and was willing to accept the ultimate dissatisfaction in relationships and social life. Where the rules of love fail the characters in Sautet’s later romances, the unforgiving nature of adult society and the irresoluteness of male friendship are what lead Ventura to his inescapable destiny. These darker, more personal undercurrents can easily go unnoticed when Classe Tous Risques is lumped with other pre-New Wave crime flicks, and when César and Nelly are marketed to appeal to the middle-brow tastes Truffaut famously ridiculed in his rants against “la qualité française,” along with the kind of movies that now get exiled to Blockbuster’s foreign section. If a director as subtle and sophisticated as Sautet still fails to inspire much excitement, it’s because he was always, in the words of Jonathan Rosenbaum, aesthetically conservative, even as he tried to breathe new life into tired old formulas. His Classe Tous Risques is not as cold-blooded or urgently told as the finest Hollywood noirs, or as boldly atmospheric as a Jean-Pierre Melville film, or even as entertaining as that wonderful Italian gangster comedy, Mafioso, just recently released on Criterion, which shares the same juxtaposition of the demands of domestic, private life with the relentless pull of the underworld.
But one trick that Sautet quietly pioneered in both Classe and his later romances is sure to leave a deep impression on anyone interested in taking a closer look at the parallels in his work. His great trademark is a harsh, clipped narrative brevity: deaths and separations and ends of relationships coming so unceremoniously, with so little fanfare, that they show us the swiftness with which life’s changes—and a film’s climax—can occur. In Sautet’s world, as in ours, people depart without warning, without proper goodbyes. And at the end of Classe Tous Risques, Ventura, too, has vanished like an afterthought of the camera, perhaps no luckier or more tragic than the rest of us.
Image/Sound/Extras: The Criterion Collection’s one-disc package boasts a typically beautiful transfer, as well as an impressive collection of excerpts from interviews conducted by French critic N.T. Binh. These include conversations with Sautet, who shares his early experiences in the film industry, and novelist and screenwriter José Giovanni, who relates the true story that inspired him to write Classe Tous Risques. Also included is an old interview of Ventura looking back on his career. Along with the highly informative essays in the set’s booklet—most notable of which is a tribute by Bertrand Tavernier, reminiscing on his double-friendship with mentors Sautet and Giovanni—these supplementary materials emphasize the close bonds forged during the filmmaking process, an insight that complements the film’s focus on the complicated loyalties of male relationships.
Andrew Chan is a poet and film critic currently studying at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is the creator of the blog Movie Love.
The Criterion Collection #435: The Furies
By Dan Callahan
[The Furies streets on June 24th, 2008. Screencaps from DVDBeaver. This review also housed at The Criterion Collection Database.]
Anthony Mann is best known today for the remarkable series of westerns he made with James Stewart in the fifties, but he reached his peak with Men in War (1957) and Man of the West (1958), late works which brought his central theme of the violence within man and the demoralizing aftermath of violence to nearly intolerable heights of insight and catharsis. In his famous Stewart films, Mann had a tendency to be a bit too tidy in his storytelling; coming out of one of his mid-period westerns can be a little like exiting a scrupulous, intelligent lecture on ethics and morality, festooned with some of the best landscape photography this side of John Ford. Criterion’s surprising, all-stops-out release of Mann’s early western The Furies (1950) offers a valuable view of this director nearing the height of his powers, before his gifts had calcified; in many ways, it’s his most exciting movie because it’s also his most unresolved, opening up a Pandora’s box of psychological issues that cannot be contained in any conventional conclusion.
At its core, The Furies is a passionate stand off between a father and a daughter, played by a rip-snorting Walter Huston (in his last role on screen) and a primal Barbara Stanwyck, who dazzlingly alternates between extreme aggression and extreme, childlike vulnerability. As T.C. Jeffords, a wily cattle baron who fancies himself a sort of prairie Napoleon, Huston is in titanic grand old man mold (if you want to see the real genesis of Daniel Day-Lewis’ John Huston-aping Daniel Plainview, look no further). His beady eyes twinkling, T.C. continually asks Vance to scratch his “sixth lumbar vertebrae,” and when you see the outrageously knowing way that Stanwyck scratches her Daddy’s itches, you’ll wonder how Mann snuck this Incest Out West epic past the censors.
The Furies has several tributary plots, the most affecting of which is Vance’s platonic love affair with her best friend Juan (Gilbert Roland), a Mexican on the verge of being burned off his own land by her father. Stanwyck develops far more heat and feeling with Roland than with her nominal leading man, Wendell Corey, but the real face-off mid-way through the film is between Vance and a self-described “adventuress” played by the formidable Judith Anderson. In the theater, Anderson was the greatest modern Medea and had cornered the market on vengeance, so it’s quite appropriate when this vengeance is visited upon her in the film’s most shocking scene; I won’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say that Stanwyck is the first, best and ultimate Scissors Sister.
It would take a boatload of Freudian psychoanalysts to unpack all the psychosexual baggage on display in The Furies, all amplified by one of Franz Waxman’s stormiest scores; most of the film is so alarming, and Stanwyck’s Vance is so dedicatedly perverse, that it’s easy to shake off the last twenty minutes or so, which serve as a kind of valedictory for Huston the actor while smoothing out the rough edges of his crude tycoon character. Fascinating as Stanwyck and Huston are, though, in the end it’s Anderson who haunts the film. In her last scene, this former tigress rises to a level of regret that’s practically Shakespearian in its pathos and depth, matching Mann’s obsessive attempts to bring the form of classical tragedy to the western. Her suffering is echoed in the famous scene in Mann’s The Man from Laramie (1955) where James Stewart’s hand gets shot at point blank range, and the sickening scene in Man of the West where Julie London is forced to strip. Mann was always after the root of our worst impulses, and in The Furies, a very messy, provoking film, he came a little closer to those roots than he ever would again, even in the justly lauded movies of his maturity.
Image/Sound/Extras: There’s been a meticulous clean-up of the image, especially in the many outdoor scenes played in soft, nearly out of focus grey half-light, and the sound is good, though there’s a bit of hiss on the track towards the end. There’s a brief interview with Mann himself, a touching interview with his daughter Nina, who emphasizes how personal his movies were, an excellent commentary track by Jim Kitses, and Niven Busch’s original novel, a lurid blueprint for the film where Juan is more clearly Vance’s lover. Best of all, there’s a superb essay by Robin Wood on Mann’s westerns and The Furies in particular. All in all, this is one of the essential DVD releases of the year.
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House contributor Dan Callahan's writing has appeared in Slant Magazine, Bright Lights Film Journal and Senses of Cinema, among other publications.
“Tell Me Everything You Saw,” SIFF 34: The Post-Mortem!
By N.P. Thompson
Of the things that will have shelf life in my memory as the rest of the festival collectively fades, I’ll long remember the SIFF trailer that ran before each film. “Tell me everything you saw,” Grace Kelly, in her pearls and black gown, implores Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, as frames within frames of iconic images flicker past—among them, Sean Young exhaling in Blade Runner, a car skidding along the façade of a building from Day Watch, and Claudette Colbert showing Clark Gable exactly how one hitches a ride in It Happened One Night. This beautiful piece, designed by Digital Kitchen, deserves a small prize of its own, if only for being a welcome departure from the leaden clunk of SIFF trailers past. Any festival-goer who recoils at the mention of “Who ordered the murdered mistress?” or “We’re gonna take little Joey and put ‘im in show biz!” will undoubtedly share my sense of gratitude.
Last Sunday morning at the Space Needle, over a brunch of scrambled eggs and mushy, overcooked salmon, the festival winners and juried awards were announced. I won’t go into them all, suffice to say that when Alan Rickman’s name was called as “Best Actor” for the universally reviled Bottle Shock, you could have heard the sound of one hand clapping. Granted, there were no obvious frontrunners for Best Actor this year, at least not among the films I caught, but that Bottle Shock had only screened once publicly (the night before the awards ceremony) struck me as a trifle suspicious.
There was better news in the Best Director category. I was delighted that Nina Paley took second runner-up for the wonderful Sita Sings the Blues. Of course, she merited higher than that, yet the refreshing thing is that of the five finalists, three of them were women directors. It was heartening to see Dorota Kędzierzawska (Time to Die) and Courtney Hunt (Frozen River) acknowledged along with Paley. Emerging ahead of them, alas, was Amin Matalqa for the Jordanian Captain Abu Raed, a movie I began to watch and—for a number of reasons—couldn’t finish.
It was disappointing that the documentary jurors were impervious to the great Trouble the Water, which ought to have won the competition. This year, as in years past, I somehow managed not to see any of the Grand Jury Prize winners. I did, nonetheless, catch—partially—a couple of the Special Jury Prize mentions. I’m not going to say anything about the Russian film Mermaid (New Directors Showcase). I’ve already made my disdain for it quite clear. As for the New American Cinema competition, well… normally I’d skip over Russell Brown’s The Bluetooth Virgin in charitable silence. I hate to pick on Brown. He’s a decent critic, his heart is in the right place, and like me, he had the insight to realize just what an empty, overblown fiasco the ridiculous There Will Be Blood amounts to (it isn’t just Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie that’s a fiasco, it’s all of the arrogant, embarrassing critical hosannas heaped on it by Scott Foundas and his ilk), and also like me, Brown had the temerity to say so in public.
But when something as bad as The Bluetooth Virgin receives a jury commendation for Brown’s “fresh and squirmy script,” duty compels me to step in and say that, yes, it’s squirmy all right. I suppose that David Schmader (!) and his fellow jurors have in mind the argument scene between a hack screenwriter and his breadwinner wife. Each accuses the other of coasting on what he or she has that the other lacks, and it is a mortifying encounter—not because it rings true, but for the very opposite reason and because it is so poorly, so unconvincingly acted by Austin Peck as the writer. There’s no heat; it’s lacerating only in a sitcom-ish way. In theory, there’s nothing inherently wrong with lengthy sequences of two persons talking. Yet Brown’s movie, presumably written for the screen, feels like a filmed play. The stilted rhythms define his way of working with actors, too, so that even as lively a performer as Karen Black, who plays a writing coach, can’t do anything about the dead air that engulfs her.
The kicker, however, at the Sunday awards brunch was this: that the Golden Space Needle for Best Picture went to Doris Dörrie’s Cherry Blossoms—Hanami. One of my editors from Northwest Asian Weekly, seated next to me, said, “You hated that, didn’t you?” Um, yes. Although far from the festival’s worst, I did pan it. Not only here, but there.
Well, dispensing with all that, what follows are some of my choices for festival bests, as well as a smattering of SIFF 34’s dubious achievements. First, the cream of the crop…
Best film: Not merely the best animated film or best American, but like the bejeweled Hindu goddess who rises from an ocean of puppet waves with her wind-up Victrola, simply the finest of all. Writer/director/cartoonist Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues re-imagines Valmiki’s epic poem The Ramayana as a Jazz Age feminist parable. Setting a 14th-century saga of a banished bride to Depression-era ditties initially seems amusing, yet becomes haunting, too. When Sita enters the belly of Mother Earth, Paley’s decision to score this sequence to Fats Waller’s “I’ve Got a Feelin’ I’m Fallin’” fuses sound and image into an emotionally charged statement on the history of heartbreak across the ages and continents. In this context, Irving Berlin’s lyric, “The song is ended, but the melody lingers on,” heard over the final credits, may never have felt as devastating as it does here. Yet like Persepolis, Sita Sings the Blues is often howlingly funny. Paley shares with Marjane Satrapi a comic sensibility imbued with a sense of the tragic.
And another thing: engaged and engaging artworks get us to think about or respond differently to something we thought we knew. Until seeing this film, I’d never much liked the standard, “Mean to Me.” Fred Ahlert and Roy Turk’s song always struck me as melodically a bit lazy and thematically masochistic. Hearing Annette Hanshaw sing it through the persona of Sita not only changed my perception of this sneakily minimalist tune, the song has spun ‘round on the jukebox in my brain for weeks on end, and it isn’t leaving—it’s become a part of me. The same weekend that Paley placed as a Best Director runner-up at SIFF, the Annecy Festival announced Sita Sings the Blues as its Best Film. As of this writing, Sita still has no U.S. distributor. This is the kind of work that Sony Pictures Classics ought to be blazing a path to Paley’s door to acquire.
Runners-up for best film: A festival programmer confided in me that I’m in the minority on championing the Australian surfers coming-of-age drama Newcastle. Which tells me: I’m right. Whenever I’m in the critical minority, I’m almost always right, and as for the naysayers, well, they may or may not catch up. Also, Bliss.
Best actress, who is in fact a real person: Melissa Leo as Ray Eddy in Frozen River, the kind of blue-collar heroine rarely seen in movies since the halcyon days of Sissy Spacek and Sally Field. Tugging gently at my heart and my conscience, the nonagenarian actress Danuta Szaflarska, as lovely as she is feisty, in Time to Die, runs an awfully close second.
Best actress, who is in fact a cartoon character: There are actually two Sitas in Sita Sings the Blues. I’m voting for the busty, Bengali Betty Boop version, who shimmies with her exaggerated round curves to the 1929 recordings of white blues vocalist Annette Hanshaw.
Best actor: Ah, now this is a toughie, as there were no truly major contenders. I’ll give a four-way split to a quartet of performances I liked. One: Dennis Hopper, in the archival presentation of 1961’s Night Tide, has a sublime, purely physical moment in a rowboat near the end of the picture. His mermaid girlfriend, whom everyone takes to be a murderess while he alone believes in her innocence, has just tried to off him in the midst of a deep-sea dive. Having swum up to the boat, Hopper’s buff young sailor collapses, his back to the camera as his body reacts both to the death struggle and the sense of betrayal. It’s a heartbreaking scene on a few different levels, not the least of which being the youthful openness Hopper brought to his first leading man role—a quality he would rarely, if ever, show again.
Two: Yao Anlian as the migrant worker father in Cai Shangjun’s impressively downbeat The Red Awn. Like Hopper, the trusting Yao also dodges—narrowly—attempted murder at the hands of a loved one; in this case, his estranged teenage son attempts to run him over with the red combine of the movie’s title. Yao, who at one point is misguidedly optimistic enough to pay a girl to seduce his maladjusted offspring, expertly conveys this essentially honorable man’s inability to process the nature of the beast. Three and four: Reshad Strik as a bitter ex-pro surfer in Newcastle, and Josh Peck in The Wackness, who lends a sweet face and a romantic soul to the friendly (upper Manhattan) neighborhood drug dealer. His monologue to an absent girlfriend’s answering machine, “Are you not calling me back because I said, ‘I love you’?” justly drew applause from the closing-night crowd at Cinerama.
Best documentary, overall: Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s masterful Trouble the Water, which placed in the top-ten of audience favorites, even if the doc jury ignored it. The footage of Ninth Ward residents, who were left behind by their state and federal governments, sequestering in a neighbor’s attic as the waters rose from Hurricane Katrina struck me as—and I know this is a leap—roughly an African-American equivalent to The Diary of Anne Frank. That a video camera takes the place of a written journal… plus ça change.
Best tango documentary: Half history lesson and half concert film on the Río de la Plata’s veteran tango musicians (it could use less of the former and more of the latter), Café de Los Maestros came and went in the opening weekend in the bat of an eyelash, and it has no U.S. distributor, despite being produced by two-time Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla. Although the storytelling meanders, the sharply etched harmonics of the bandoneón, violin, and piano steep the soundtrack in the warmth, power, and wistful defiance of Argentine music. The movie provides a farewell to the magnificent singer Lágrima Ríos, who died on Christmas Day 2006. Seen here with the caramel-colored dye in her hair, and heard in the exquisite dark timbre of her voice, an instrument as resonant as a well-tuned viola, Ríos, for a time, lives again.
Best documentary on the art of the striptease: Among the students in Miss Indigo Blue’s “Academy of Burlesque,” I was most captivated by the petite 51-year-old Diane. With her Patricia Clarkson-esque vocal delivery and a beautifully lived-in quality to her face, she’s compelling in a way that her 20-something classmates are not. Diane speaks of having grown “stagnant” from being a stay-at-home mom. “I never really did fit in,” she confides, and on her comparatively late decision to so publicly embrace her sensuality, she tells us, “For every person that disagrees, there’s another person who’s going to applaud me for it.” Words to live by.
Diane isn’t the only reason to seek out Dierdre Allen Timmons’s all-over-the-map feature debut A Wink and a Smile. Timmons mixes up footage of students finding their alter egos with performance interludes by Seattle’s more established burlesque habitués. Some of these segments, such as the one with the pot-bellied James Bond-parody Ernie von Schmaltz, whose protruding crotch turns out to hold a cocktail shaker, have immense humor and charm. Some of them, such as the woman who smears bright blue and red paint over her body, allegedly in homage to Picasso, are repellent. Yet even through the occasional gross-outs and excesses, Timmons, a former newspaper journalist, has a good sense of mise-en-scène, especially in an early montage of accessorized body parts sans faces. I wish there had been a bit more of one student, a not-so-young virgin turned off to sex by the misfortunes of her bed-hopping best friends. For her burlesque act, she decides to be Little Red Riding Hood transforming herself into the Big Bad Wolf—a marvelously intriguing statement on heterosexuality, wouldn’t you agree?
Best incest movie: Or best performance trapped in an otherwise indefensible production goes to the fresh-faced Brit Eddie Redmayne for Savage Grace. A washout as Natalie Portman’s incestuous brother in the tepid Other Boleyn Girl, Redmayne here commands us to sit up and take notice of his protean talent for black comedy. After sharing beds with Unax Ugalde (Portman’s brother in Goya’s Ghosts) and Hugh Dancy (who’s so masculine as a “walker” I mistook him for Billy Crudup), Redmayne’s rich neurotic Tony Baekeland bookends a bout of sex on the sofa with Mommy Julianne Moore with queries into a missing dog collar. After she climbs off him: “Are you sure you didn’t put it any place?”
Best cinematography: A tie between Richard Michalak for the sand and surf ecstasies of Newcastle and Sabine Lancelin for Manoel de Oliveira’s Christopher Columbus—The Enigma. Although their Columbus collaboration lacks a strong central performance such as Michel Piccoli gave Belle Toujours, Lancelin and Oliveira work with such empathy on architectural and nature imagery of such grandeur, the cinematographer and director achieve the visual equivalent of finishing each other’s sentences.
Movie I missed: I caught most of what sparked my interest, except that Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda’s Juju Factory slipped away much too soon. Actually, this film about Africans in Belgium received no advance push from the festival at all, and it ran during the first—and busiest—week. I really wanted to see this film about a writer drawn into serious conflict with his editor—not that I personally could relate to the scenario, of course.
Best venue: The Egyptian Theatre. Old, yes, with lots of character. Tranquil, even among a large crowd.
Worst venue: Uptown Cinemas. Semi-new and corporate-ugly. Seeing a good film at the Uptown is a trying experience, because you’ve already been given a splitting headache by the house manager’s insistence of keeping those hideous fluorescent overheads burning brightly for a full half-hour before the screening starts. Seeing a bad film here, thus, is akin to a nightmare.
Worst Film: At the end of what may well be the sorriest literary adaptation in many a moon, a title credit appears: Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. Pretty soon we get to: Written by Rawson Marshall Thurber. Somewhere in the production credits, this bone of contention arises: Based on the novel by Michael Chabon (although the preceding movie we’ve just watched (in collective stupefaction) was only based on the title of a novel by Michael Chabon); a few more credits flash past, and then we come to it: A film by Rawson Marshall Thurber. At this point, I could no longer contain the whoop of derision that had been building in my craw over most of the past 85 minutes.
“A film” is precisely what Mr. Rawson Marshall Thurber hasn’t made of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon’s 1988 debut as a novelist. Rather, Mr. Rawson Marshall Thurber has made a complete hash—a motion picture so bad, so utterly at cross-purposes with the novel’s intent, and yet a movie so utterly sure of itself in the deforming liberties it takes as to seem an achievement on par with—what? With Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze’s trashing of Susan Orlean, perhaps? Well, not quite, because in that instance the makers of Adaptation were openly, quite self-consciously urinating all over The Orchid Thief; by contrast, Mr. Rawson Marshall Thurber genuinely appears to believe he has wrought somethin’ fine out of Chabon’s book by grinding it down into a sort of Apatow-esque Garden State 2. Yes, it’s just like revisiting Garden State, only with more nudity, a soupçon of bisexuality (lucky for us Mr. Rawson Marshall Thurber sure did get rid of all that gay stuff Chabon wrote about), a rapidly edited montage of hetero anal sex in a bookstore, oh and a jewel heist, followed by a high-octane police car chase with screeching sirens and crunchin’ gravel—yes sirree, Bob, just like at a real movie! Carried off with a straight face and everything. And have I mentioned all the voice-over narration that goes on and on in scene after scene (i.e., “Suddenly my mind went blank”), thereby relieving the actors of any responsibility for acting, as well as abdicating us, the viewers, of any obligation to watch (we can just close our eyes and listen, honey)? On the weight of this evidence, I pronounce Mr. Rawson Marshall Thurber the cinema’s first totally non-ironic graduate of the Donald Kaufman School of Acme Screenwriting.
There are no mysteries in Thurber’s Mysteries; those well-observed vicissitudes of Chabon’s that linger in the mind nearly 20 years after reading his book, those haunting, individual qualities that transcend the coming-of-age genre—those have been assiduously sponged clean. Thurber’s movie scarcely seems to have anything to do with Pittsburgh, either; it’s a whitewash that could take place anywhere. And although the story’s purportedly set in 1983, the writer-director’s lone concession to period detail lies in the fact that the three neurasthenic creeps who serve as his main characters do not text one another.
Runners-up in the worst film category: Mermaid, Wonderful Town, Towelhead, The Children of Huang Shi, The Home Song Stories, The Last Mistress, Máncora, and the game design competition for middle-schoolers doc Some Assembly Required, which borrows its template from Mad Hot Ballroom, but gives us no reason to care whether these ostensibly adorable tykes win or lose.
Worst music: This brings us right back to The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. When Jon Foster, the button-downed kewpie doll leading man, beds Sienna Miller, their director cues solo New Age piano on the soundtrack. (He couldn’t even have given them jazz?) Foster and Miller slowly disrobe, then there are shots of their naked torsos humping, then—somewhat inexplicably—Thurber crosscuts these with copious footage of the lovers undressing. If they’re already undressed and between the sheets, what’s the point? Ah, but I’ll tell you what the point is. Now that Boy has bedded Girl, Boy must also bed Boy, in order to maintain any relation whatsoever to Chabon’s source material. The lone male-male love scene in this Mysteries of Pittsburgh takes up considerably less screen time than the hetero frolicking. (Hasn’t Thurber heard of Brokeback Mountain?) And when, half a reel onward, Foster finally kisses Peter Sarsgaard, and they finally go to bed (I mean, why are we at this bomb anyway?) the boys hump to that exact same insipid New Age piano piece. Don’t different sexual partners deserve their own songs? Couldn’t the composer, Theodore Shapiro, have thought up anything else? I’m not being bitchily effete here, although Sarsgaard is. As petty hoodlum Cleveland Arning, the hirsute actor seems to have staked out a position as a post-postmodern Paul Lynde. And not to let the vanilla sameness of the music go, even the alcoholic, deeply closeted frat boys to whom Thurber gears this movie change their MP3s sometime.
Worst movie about orgasms: Alan Ball’s Towelhead, which also qualifies for Worst Movie about Statutory Rape, Worst Movie Involving Close-ups of the Menstrual Cycle, and (last but not least) Worst Movie about a Young Woman Learning to Express her Sexuality via Porno Magazines for Straight Men. Ball, Oscar-winner for American Beauty, returns to suburbia where things are just as rotten as they ever were, and thank heaven the screenwriter-turned-director is around to point this out. Gratuitous fantasy shots of buxom snowbunnies and topless golf cart drivers really ram home Ball’s self-congratulatory desensitization techniques in trotting out taboo subject matter. The director does almost zilch to differentiate his point-of-view from the sadistic mother overacted by Maria Bello, a woman whose neediness for her daughter is surpassed only by her desire to humiliate the girl. Lost in the jacked-up shambles here, there’s nice work by Summer Bishil as the cruelly mistreated by nearly everyone Jasira. Ball’s surface smooth yet out-of-control direction suggests what Alexander Payne and William Friedkin might have devised in the field of outré sitcoms—everything from tone to action is freaky, ghoulishly smug. Aaron Eckhart and Toni Collette acquit themselves with humanity to this booby trap; where the film spectacularly fails, besides in the writing and directing, lies in Peter Macdissi’s grotesquely ill-conceived approach to playing a Houston-based, traditionalist Lebanese father. It’s a tad difficult to buy into Daddy Dearest’s punitive objections to his daughter’s wearing a tampon when Daddy seems more like an interior decorator from Christopher Street than the NASA engineer he’s supposed to be.
Worst opening scene: Lazy, ugly filmmaking at its most vile abounds in Choke. Once again, we’re bombarded by voice-over narration, because an inexperienced director doesn’t know what else to do. He only knows that he doesn’t trust the actors or the audience to figure anything out; when you have an opening scene at an “AA” meeting for sex addicts, this pedestrian technique becomes more of a problem than usual. The moral implications of the reasons why, even or especially in a “comedy,” should be obvious. Yet here we are: writhing in claustrophobic distaste as the camera impales one sad-faced creature after another, set to Sam Rockwell’s condescendingly fast introductory spiel of their individual fetishes. Wouldn’t it have been more generous to let these sex addicts speak for themselves? Instead of deriding them as voiceless freaks, instead of being “hip” to their suffering, why not frame them in a sort of montage like the childhood classroom in Annie Hall? You know, rapid cuts of each kid speaking in the past of his or her future: “I’m into leather,” or “I’m a methadone addict.” Anything, anything other than what Clark Gregg comes up with.
Worst animated film: Either Vexille, from Japan, or Princess of the Sun, an Egyptian “adventure” from France, qualifies for the dishonor, but as I walked out on both, I’ll give the nod to Nocturna, an English-language Spanish cartoon that was absolute torture to endure, and yet I did—all 80-odd minutes. Beautifully swirled turquoise-and-white night skies cannot begin to compensate for an absence of charm and preponderance of cliché. A flock of angry lamplights chasing a porcine marshmallow-headed orphan child through dark, cobblestone streets implies an ambition toward Lewis Carroll terrain; the affected generic haughtiness of the voicing, nonetheless, firmly charts Nocturna in the flatly uninspired, broadly overplayed world of 1970s Hanna-Barbera.
Worst documentary: Chris & Don: A Love Story. No further comment.
Worst SIFF coverage: Although it’s tempting to let the axe drop on any byline credited to Kathleen Fennessy, an Amazon.com employee who fobs herself off as a movie reviewer, let’s indict the merry band of Hashmakers at GreenSlime, er, GreenCine Daily (no link provided) whose SIFF reports were so unfailingly ass-kissy in tone as to qualify as a form of liposuction.
Worst closing night band: The Casio player and off-key female vocalist SIFF hired to perform covers of shoddy pop tunes at the Pan Pacific Hotel, as part of the closing gala festivities. Surely, surely, the festival has deeper pockets than this “entertainment” would indicate? Or could it be that the person in charge has no taste? The closing night party lacked lustre in comparison to the memory of last year’s: it came a night early, for one thing; also, the food was not as good, the drinks were nowhere near as good; and in a perverse irony, there was no smoking section on the balcony this year, although a cigarette company had pitched a tent on said balcony, a place where free packs were disseminated, yet no one was permitted to light up. You could, however, smoke in the hotel courtyard far below, yet were mandated to leave your tasteless wine inside the hotel lobby. Bad, bad party planning—inexcusable. And I’m not even a real smoker. But about that band—it was dismal last year, too. Given all of the jazz pianists who orbit around Seattle (Bill Anschell, if you want a good one), why doesn’t the Seattle International Film Festival have sense enough to hire a jazz combo (piano, bass, drums—very possibly, a tenor saxophone) to whisk the whole shebang away? The right jazz ensemble could effortlessly lend SIFF events the sort of cosmopolitanism the festival craves and lays claim to, yet so often lacks. Hire Jim Knodle—he’s a brilliant local trumpet player. Anybody but the sort of twentieth-rate airport lounge acts the festival has been dishing up at what are supposed to be celebratory occasions. Ahh, but perhaps the festival has been holding out to make its next big anniversary—SIFF 35—appear to be something grander than a midlife crisis. You’ll tell me when we get there, won’t you?
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N.P. Thompson lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest.
Summer of '83: The Podcast
By Keith Uhlich
The centerpiece of our Summer of '83 feature: the Movie Geeks United! podcast featuring director John Badham, actress Dee Wallace, writer/director Tom Holland, critic Glenn Kenny, and yours truly waxing on and off with hosts Jamey, Jerry, and Aaron about the season of Jedi. Click here for the (strange) brew.
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Keith Uhlich is editor of The House Next Door and a contributor to various print and online publications.
Links for the Day (June 20th, 2008)
1. The latest articles from Moving Image Source: "The Long View" (Tom Charity reviews the book Defining Moments in Movies); "What Lies Beneath" (Adam Nayman on the Canadian filmmaker Peter Lynch); "Obscure Objects" (Jonathan Rosenbaum introduces the neglected cinema of Marcel L'Herbier); and "A Fine Madness" (Mark Asch looks at the career of Tomu Uchida).
["Peter Lynch is the great wanderer of contemporary Canadian cinema, traversing wide swaths of physical and psychological terrain in search of what he calls the "deeper myth." It's an idea that's within easy walking distance of Werner Herzog's oft-cited "ecstatic truth," and comparisons to the German master are inevitable given both filmmakers' predilection for (and reputation as) obsessive, questing types. When Grizzly Man was released in 2005, Canadian critics couldn't help invoking Lynch's wildly successful debut, Project Grizzly (1996), a simultaneously wry and awed account of how inventor/nutcase Troy Hurtubise—shaken by an unexpected encounter with a grizzly bear—endeavors to construct an ursine-proof suit out of whatever materials he has at hand. (The finished product, which sustains collisions with trucks, trees, and even a group of drunken motorcycle enthusiasts, would make Tony Stark proud.)"]
2. "Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back": What do you think of that, Mr. Bond?
["Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat. The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations."]
3. "Americans look to steroids; A Taiwanese artist looks to France": Godfrey Cheshire reviews Bigger, Stronger, Faster & Flight of the Red Balloon.
["It's possible, however, that there's a significant discrepancy between reviewers and filmgoers when it comes to Hou. Many critics, after all, have been following his fascinating and challenging work for years at international film festivals, where he is a celebrated artist with few equals in terms of lionization. Indeed, while Hou's name remains little known to the U.S. public, among critics his renown has reached the point where one senses that he receives raves that are more automatic than considered, even if they reflect an understandable desire to educate audiences about an important filmmaker. That kind of knee-jerk acclaim, I'm afraid, explains the widely sympathetic, sometimes gushing reviews that Flight of the Red Balloon has received. Hou is a genius, it is said; therefore every film of his is a work of art. In this case, though I'm a longtime admirer and defender of the director, I must beg to differ. Hou's latest strikes me as a trifle, more perplexing than interesting, with inherent problems that are bound up with the fact that it's the first movie he has made outside of Asia."]
4. "Hammer Horror Goes 'Beyond' The Screen": By House contributor John Lichman for Stream.
["Film is innately seductive. It whispers a promise to take us away for 90 minutes to the things we only daydream about: monsters, heroism, true love and impossible situations captured perfectly framed and timed. But if you're Hammer Films, the production company best known for immortalizing Christopher Lee as Dracula and making "British Horror" become a genre onto itself, the film experience isn't as simple as sitting down and hitting play. The audience wants to be completely drawn into a new, darker world."]
5. "Enema monument unveiled in Russian resort": I'll give it a sit.
["A monument to the enema, a procedure many people would rather not think about, has been unveiled at a spa in the southern Russian city of Zheleznovodsk. The bronze syringe bulb, which weighs 800 pounds and is held by three angels, was unveiled at the Mashuk-Akva Term spa, the spa's director said Thursday. "There is no kitsch or obscenity, it is a successful work of art," Alexander Kharchenko told The Associated Press. "An enema is almost a symbol of our region.""]
Quote of the Day: Blaise Cendrars
Image(s) of the Day (click to enlarge): The Monkees' Michael Nesmith, now and then. 
Clip of the Day: A visit to the grave of Mikio Naruse, shot by Chris Fujiwara. (Hattip: Kevin B. Lee)
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Making it was the Easy Part: Twisted—Marketing an Indie Documentary
By Elise Nakhnikian
Sara Taksler and Naomi Greenfield are an inspiration for aspiring indie filmmakers. Or are they a cautionary tale?
The two good friends, who met as students at Washington University in St. Louis, co-directed Twisted, a warmhearted charmer of a documentary about people who twist balloons into animals and other shapes. Their “balloonamentary” played film festivals for almost a year, starting with South by Southwest (SXSW) 2007, where it played to sold-out, smitten crowds and was nominated for the best first feature award.
A lot of distributors came sniffing around—but none of them picked it up.
So Taksler, an associate producer at The Daily Show, and Greenfield, a creative producer at FableVision Studios, which produces educational animation and other media, took the marketing skills they’d honed on the festival into turbo drive. They got a DVD distributor and an international distributor. And one by one, they booked Twisted in nine theaters, including New York’s Pioneer, where it will play (and where they'll conduct post-screening Q&A's) from June 20-26.
When we talked last month, Taksler and Greenfield were coming off a good week—a successful first showing in St. Louis and a piece in The New York Times.
Were you surprised it’s been this hard to get [Twisted] into theaters?
NAOMI GREENFIELD: I guess I had no clue about whether it would be hard or easy. Right after SXSW, a few big distributors voiced interest, so we thought it was going to happen then, and we were a little surprised that it didn’t.
SARA TAKSLER: It’s been a hard year for independent films, so I think a lot of the distributors are a little wary about trying films that are different. And we’re a little hard to place. We’re a documentary about a kind of quirky subculture, but we’re not a competition film, like most of the documentaries that got distributors recently.
NG: We fit into the niche of quirky documentaries. There’s an audience of people that are interested in that, but there are also people who are tired of it. Then again, our documentary doesn’t totally fit into that niche because we really focus on a few people and their stories, so it’s not about ‘Look at these crazy twisters.’ The best way to explain what it’s about is just to have people watch the film.
ST: Yeah. Even with distributors and theater owners, the trick has been getting them to watch it. Once people see it, they generally really like it.
Now that the technology has made it relatively easy and cheap to make a movie, so there are so many good movies out there, do you think it’s getting to be essential for new filmmakers to be almost as good at marketing as they are at filmmaking?
NG: When we were in Boston, they created an award just for us: the best marketing award. And they’ve continued that award this year, in recognition of the fact that, if you want to get an independent film seen, you do have to market it.
What did you do to market Twisted?
NG: We made a big marketing plan for SXSW that we started there and carried out in every city we’ve been to: Build a big balloon sculpture, have lots of people making balloon animals and wearing balloon T shirts, have pumps [to inflate balloons] and balloons everywhere, distribute flyers and postcards.
ST: We mail postcards and 11x17 posters to friends in each city where we'll be playing. They form a street team and put up posters in popular spots and hand out postcards on the street. We also send postcards, posters, balloons, and pumps to the theaters in advance to put out. The balloons and pumps are provided by Qualatex, a balloon company that’s helping sponsor the theatrical run. We look up every newspaper, radio station, and TV station in each city and email them. We send advance screeners to any interested press. We're on YouTube—in fact, somehow we became the site's featured video this weekend and have 200,000 hits so far!
NG: We’re lucky in that we have things that we can market—we can make the balloon animals and sculptures and hats. There are a lot of documentaries right now about the Iraq war or Afghanistan, and even if your Iraq war documentary is totally amazing, it’s going to get lumped in with the other ones.
ST: Yeah, it’s hard to make a fun sculpture of the Iraq war.
How did you get into all these theaters that are giving you limited runs?
ST: Several months ago, when we realized we weren’t going to get a distributor, we compiled a list of independent theaters that other festival films had gotten into and started calling and emailing them. We didn’t hear back for a while, and then we got a lot of rejections.
For a little while, we didn’t think it was going to happen because we’d already gotten our DVD producer. A lot of people weren’t interested in screening a movie that was already on DVD and didn’t have a distributor.
But finally a few said yes, and then it started to snowball. Once a few theaters were willing to stand by us, others were willing to take a chance.
It sounds like your first theatrical showing was a success.
NG: We did really well in St. Louis. We outsold all the films that were being shown in the theater that weekend.
ST: We had four screenings a day, and we didn’t have the support of a festival behind us, so we had no idea what to expect. But the balloon twisters in St. Louis were fantastic. They arranged four spots on a local show for us, so a lot of people came because they’d seen us on the morning show or read the review in the paper. And a local place donated pumps and balloons for the theater.
It was great to have our first showing in St. Louis, because we met in there and talked about doing some kind of creative process together some day.
NG: I remember sitting in our dorm brainstorming. It was a “What do you want to be when you grow up?” kind of conversation.
ST: We probably first discussed that in 1999. And now, in 2008, we got to go to the coolest theater in town and have this experience. It was really fun to see our names on the marquee. We had a really good time hearing all those people laughing and crying and enjoying the film.
Also, the guy who made the popcorn told us he had just gotten off the phone with his girlfriend in Thailand, and when he told her what was playing in the theater she said she had just seen our movie on TV. We had no idea we were on TV in Thailand.
How have you managed to make and market a movie while holding down full-time jobs?
ST: The movie is like a nights and weekend job. And we’ve always taken all of our vacation time for our movie.
NG: Actually, this year each of us did take one non-movie-related vacation. It felt funny to not be consulting each other before our vacations.
For a while, we weren’t doing much with it, but right now we’re in the same routine we were in during the hardcore part of making the film: We go to our jobs during the day, and then we each have a long list of things to do at night. Sometimes at 1 in the morning I’ll be sending an email to Sara and she’ll write right back.
When I saw you at SXSW, you seemed to genuinely enjoy talking up your movie, which is probably part of what makes you so good at it. How much of the marketing you’ve done is pure drudgery and how much do you actually enjoy?
NG: For me, this week was really fun when the New York Times article came out and random people saw it, and it got picked up by a lot of blogs that our friends know about. Our trailer on YouTube, which had about 1,000 hits at the beginning of the week, all of a sudden had, like, 8,000 views. It was fun to know that 8,000 people who aren’t all our family are genuinely intrigued by it.
And it still is fun to talk about the film, even though we’ve had so many Q&A's, because people ask good questions and it’s interesting to see the things people ask about.
But there is a lot of work with putting together the lists and getting ready—especially now, since there are nine cities at once to prepare for.
I’m intrigued by your partnership. Is it easier to easier to deal with the rejection and indifference you get when you’re making an independent film if you have a partner?
ST: I don’t exercise, but I think it’s like having a running buddy, where you have someone you have to answer to, who helps you stay motivated. And just to have someone else to share it all with. There were so many things to do, so many ups and downs. It was great to have someone else who knew exactly what you were going through.
How do you work together? Do you divide everything down the middle or play different roles?
NG: We started out both doing everything, but in the process of making the film, we naturally started going in two different directions. I got more interested in doing the camera work, and Sara got more interested in doing the interviews. Now Sara’s been doing all the press contacts and I’ve been putting together the marketing materials and getting new stuff printed. We have an email system, which is that one of us will write something and the other will check it and then we’ll send it out. It’s amazing how many emails go between us during the day.
ST: We both have a say in everything. We consult each other every day on what we’re doing for the film.
NG: We try to do all our interviews together too. There was one radio interview I did where they had just one line, so I did it on my own, and it felt weird. There are certain questions that I’m used to Sara answering.
It's also unusual that you’re both women. Most of the moviemaking pairs I can think of involve two brothers or two male friends: the Coens, the Wachowskis, the Duplass brothers, the Farrellys, etc. Do you think being women made your work any harder—or easier?
NG: I worked for a weekend on audio for another filmmaker’s documentary. There was a great moment in the interview, and he asked a question that felt really shallow. And I thought, “If he was a woman, he would have asked a smarter question.” I do think we were very sensitive to our subjects, and very careful to develop relationships with them so that we were able to get good information out of them.
ST: I think it made the interviewing easier. In our culture, people might be a little more comfortable being emotional with women. It might be a little less intimidating for two women with a camera to come up and talk to you. And I do think we had an interest in making sure that people felt comfortable.
Also, we’re both pretty young-looking. A lot of people thought we just had a school project. We were just, like, two little girls making a movie.
NG: I think people were more inclined to be nice to us than if we were two older guys.
ST: And in editing, our process was to show the film to focus groups, which was all about being open to other people’s ideas.
How long have you been working on this movie?
ST: We started filming summer of 2003 and finished just before we premiered at SXSW in March 2007, so three and a half years of filming and editing, then about a year on the festival circuit.
What kept you going?
NG: Initially, we made the movie after Sara and I got entry-level jobs in TV and film. They were in the industry we wanted, but we were kind of creatively stifled. So we were ready to work on something where we could use our creative energies.
ST: And then it became partially that we owed it to ourselves to see where we could take it. It was something we’d put so much into.
NG: Sara’s just doing it because she wants to get on Oprah. [they laugh]
ST: The article about us in the New York Times was right under an article about Oprah. I was almost as excited about that as I was about being in the Times.
What would you do differently if you made another movie now?
ST: If I did another documentary that looked like it would be a long-term project, I would probably want to find an executive producer at the beginning, because it takes a long time and a lot of money to make a movie. I would go in with more of a plan before I started it. I’m more interested in the director role than the producer role, so I like the idea of moving away from organizing things and figuring out money and the details of camera equipment and all those sorts of things and just being the filmmaker, planning out story lines and asking questions and that sort of thing.
NG: We did everything at first. We learned so much from the shoots we went out on when it was just the two of us, but we could have used an extra hand. The two of us were figuring out the shots and how to set things up, and also figuring out where we were going to eat and how to get places. That’s why you have production assistants and a crew.
ST: We had a running joke at the beginning about a fictional PA. When we would forget something or leave something behind, we would blame the PA.
NG: We had two other people when we shot the conventions—an extra camera person and an extra sound person—because we knew how much work that would be. And it was amazing how much more creatively we could interview people when we had other people helping out.
What surprised you about this process of getting your movie seen?
NG: We were surprised by how hard it was at first to get it seen in festivals. We got how many rejections before SXSW?
ST: Oh, I forget. A lot.
NG: There are so many movies, it’s hard to stand out, and you need the seal of approval by a quote unquote good festival for others to take a chance. SXSW opened a lot of doors. It was a great fit for us.
ST: Some festivals had an artsier, more serious air that we just weren’t going to fit into. But we were surprised by how much people got into the balloon animals and the balloon hats everywhere. We went to the festival in Newport, and we went to a very fancy party at one of those mansions. Around midnight, nobody was dancing, so we thought, oh, we’re just going to have fun. We started dancing and someone made balloon hats. Suddenly everyone there was dancing, in their tuxedos and formal dresses, with balloon hats on.
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Elise Nakhnikian is a contributor to Time OFF.
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008: Juizo (Behave)
By Lauren Wissot
[Juizo (Behave) premieres today at the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008. Click here for screening information.]
Wiseman-like in its patient stillness and no frills style, lacking in overbearing soundtrack or any other potentially distracting enhancements, Maria Ramos’ Juizo (Behave) is a study of the Brazilian juvenile judicial system illuminated through both “fact” (all the adults, from judges to lawyers to prison guards to parents, are the real thing, filmed during court hearings and on visits to the correctional facility in Rio de Janeiro) and “fiction” (the accused involved in the cases are minors and cannot be filmed, thus Ramos ingeniously substitutes other children from the favelas to play their roles).
Beginning with a hearing presided over by Brazil’s no-nonsense answer to Judge Judy, a sympathetic male public defender to her left, a poker-faced female prosecutor to her right, Juizo (Behave) starts out innocently enough with a kid who's stolen a bicycle. He doesn’t deny having done it—just that a gang member put him up to it. And he’s escaped from juvenile detention before. (His pained father explains that he’d run away because inmates had set another boy on fire.) As Ramos’ film unfolds, a pattern emerges of gang pressure (the next boy to face Judge Judy also blames a thug for forcing him to hold a man at gunpoint during a robbery), and of running away from detention. There are the two teenage girls charged with stealing a camera from a tourist—they have to have money to feed their kids after all!—and another who doesn’t want to be pardoned for her first-time offense if it means she has to return home. All these non-actors are wonderfully subdued, wise beyond their years, utterly connected to the words they speak. And those words—the onslaught of exposition in the hearings—are artfully balanced by Ramos’ unobtrusive camera at the Padre Severino Institute where those found guilty are taken. A lovely ebb and flow is achieved as Ramos cuts back and forth between court and lockup: a meticulously framed medium shot through bars as boys are delivered inside; the seedy cells where kids lean against graffitied walls and bare feet dangle from bunk beds. From the open, spacious, brightly lit correctional facility, surprisingly quiet, with its inmates lining up in formation, forced to put their heads down on the dining tables when finished eating, Ramos exposes us to a world more military camp than hardcore prison. She lets the shots linger after the kids leave the mess hall or their filthy cells, allowing the vast emptiness to loom large.
Never handheld, the stationary camera also deftly captures the poetry of monotony—from registration to humiliating strip searches to donning prison uniforms to shaving heads. Because these scenes are all told through exquisite composition, via images in lieu of words (save for the ever-present low hum of voices, like background flies), the cuts back to the verbal sequences are near jarring. A social worker checks on the facility’s living conditions. How do they sleep with so few mattresses? They don’t—and all the mattresses are crawling with rats besides. The judge hears a case in which a kid stabs his father to death in his sleep—a result, he claims, of years of abuse suffered by him and his mother. (Once again, no one is ever guilty. Or societal conditions are always implicated—everyone’s guilty it seems.) At a higher court, the prosecution recommends imprisonment since the boy’s alcoholic father represented “the Law,” thus the murderous act is dangerously symbolic. Nevertheless the judge grants him partial confinement. (“You were like King Solomon!” a public defender congratulates.)
When a kid—small in stature, doesn’t even know his birthday—is arrested for dealing cocaine, Judge Judy sends him to partial confinement so the dealers whose coke he lost won’t kill him. Case numbers flash by onscreen, superimposed over images of the freed delinquents doing daily activities (smoking cigs, nursing babies, wasting time). Ramos lets us in on the fates of the real kids: a girl goes to school and lives at home; most run away from partial confinement; a boy commits armed robbery and is sentenced to strict confinement; another is killed by three shots to the back. Alas, there is no such thing as a happy ending, but Ramos finishes on a humorous note. One teenager claims he escaped from detention in order to take care of his wife and kid. The judge releases him, laughing about his escape. He had been paroled at the time, and didn’t understand that he was due to be released the very next day.
Brooklyn-based writer Lauren Wissot is the publisher of the blog Beyond the Green Door, the author of the memoir Under My Master's Wings, and a contributor to The Reeler.
Links for the Day (June 19th, 2008)
1. "No Country For "It" Girls": From The Film Experience, the first edition of the new series "Best Pictures from the Outside In."
["Each week (or thereabouts) The Film Experience, Goatdog's Movies and Nick's Flick Picks will be looking at two Best Picture winners. We're pulling Oscar's favorites from the shelves from both ends, starting with the very first year of Oscar (Wings) and the most recent (No Country For Old Men). We'll work our way eventually to the 1960s, smack dab in the middle of Oscar's 80 years of back-patting. Wings (1927), the first film to ever win Best Picture, is an epic silent which tells the story of two young aviators from the same hometown, Jack Powell and David Armstrong (Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Richard Arlen), who fight the Germans and fight over women (sort of) in The Great War. No Country For Old Men (2007), more familiar to today's audiences, is the Coen Bros rendering of Cormac McCarthy's nihilistic spare novel about a death dealer drug kingpin Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), the man who stole his money Lewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) and the Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) who is trailing them both."]
2. "The Best Film Book Ever": Why it has to be Seagalogy by Vern, of course. Take it, Tully!
["Let’s begin with a rather bold statement, but one that I am convinced is wholly accurate and which I am prepared to defend to the bloody death: Vern’s Seagalogy is the definitive statement of film writing by a member of my generation. Laugh if you want, but it’s true. You can even quote me. Go ahead. I dare you. For the fact remains that there has never been a film writer whose voice so distinctly and accurately represents the bipolar blend of sarcasm and sincerity that defines the late 20th Century generation to which we belong. By celebrating, dissecting, and nitpicking through the entire oeuvre of Steven Seagal, Vern has turned other critics’ trash into his own unique art. If you think Seagalogy is all one big, funny joke, you’re missing the point. It’s not a joke. It’s dead serious. But it’s also hilarious. As in That Is The Funniest Fucking Thing I Have Ever Read In My Life hilarious."]
3. "Dreamworks in talks with India's Reliance ADA": From Reuters.
["The first act of a big Hollywood drama is nearing an end as Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks SKG closes in on up to $600 million in financing from an Indian conglomerate to further its scheme to exit Paramount, a person close to the talks said on Wednesday. The $500 million to $600 million deal with Reliance ADA, one of the biggest names in Indian business, is the initial step in Spielberg's and DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen's plan to leave Paramount and set up their own studio to make films to be distributed by a soon-to-be-determined studio."]
4. "Five Unsexiest Movies About Sex: The Breillat Awards": House contributor Lauren Wissot's latest column for Spout.
["I can think of no better poster child for celibacy than Parisian “provocateur” Catherine Breillat, the director of such erotic misfires as Fat Girl, Romance, and more recently, The Last Mistress, which stars another over-hyped “hottie” Asia Argento. Exiting the theater after a Breillat flick, I never want to have sex again. Ostensibly concerned with digging deep into the beating heart of female sexuality, Breillat creates characters that are writhing bundles of drama and pain, anger and confusion. There is no laughter, never any levity nor celebrations of desire at all – just academic intellectualization in lieu of visceral heat, cardboard cutout chemistry between actors, dire emotional consequences hidden in every fuck. The Breillat canon would make for a wonderful addition to those abstinence-only programs George W. loves so much."]
5. "German woman claims phobia of official letters": Well this speaks bad of my heritage.
["A German court has ruled against a woman who claimed a phobia of official letters in her appeal against authorities' decision to cut off child support benefits. The finance court in western Rhineland-Palatinate state said Wednesday that the woman was sent a letter in May 2007 asking that she supply evidence to support continued payments for her daughter. After she failed to respond, she was notified in July 2007 that the money was being cut off and given a month to appeal. Only in September did she reply and supply the requested documents — telling authorities, who threw out her appeal because it was too late, that she had a phobia of official correspondence."]
Quote of the Day: Thomas H. Huxley
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): A few billboards for your perusal.
Clip of the Day: "Trillions and Zillions of Ideas," in which David Lynch expounds on catching the big fish. Via Kyle VanHemert at The Atlantic.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Hulk is my Happening and it Freaks Me Out!
By Robert Humanick
Marvel and M. Night Shyamalan attempt to atone for their purported sins with The Incredible Hulk and The Happening, respectively—both unfortunate attempts to pander to popular taste/demand with something of an artistically cleft void in place of the bleeding, if perhaps misguided, hearts of their predecessors. More interesting than the fact that these two ill-fated apologies made their way into theaters on the same weekend is the fact that, as far as "corrections" go, neither was much necessary in the first place. For what it's worth as regards The Incredible Hulk, I'll restate the fact that I've never been one to hop on the anti-sequel/anti-remake bandwagon (I'd rather see more double-bills of films like Capote and Infamous than "original" films lacking in soul or depth), and despite his many offenses (most of them relative in my book), nor will I take part in the seemingly mandatory pastime of kicking M. Night Shyamalan when he's down. Both films deserve to exist and should be considered for exactly what they are unto themselves. And both are prime examples of self-imposed limitations bearing little fruit, films stunted by their shameless attempts to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible.
More pronounced in this department is The Incredible Hulk, which doesn't aim merely to mask over the existence of Ang Lee's audacious work, but to be as completely unlike it in every way imaginable. It illustrates the difference between a good, mindless summer film (not necessarily a bad thing) and one that's outright stupid. Populist concerns dictate that I review The Incredible Hulk based on the needs of the Average Joe, so here goes: It was loud and noisy and lots of stuff blows up real good, and unless you're doped up on Nyquil going in, it's very unlikely you'll find yourself taking a $10 nap. That was easy. Now here's the hard, more cinematically attuned question: did it nurture my soul? That the viewing experience left in me a sense of sinking, turgid waste is answer enough. As far as summer blockbusters go, The Incredible Hulk is a skilled enough piece of hackwork, with enough flair that I'm still willing to check out the director's previous Transporter films for signs of auteurist talent. Conceptually, it's a dud, treating Bruce Banner's (a meekly enthused Edward Norton) internal plague like the latest sound byte on E!. Sound and fury signifying nothing, indeed.
In doing a complete 180 from 2003's Hulk, this new film proves downright frightened not only of style-as-substance aesthetics (the only visual flair here being an improved take on the Greengrassian montage during the opening chase and closing battle sequences), but of more meat-and-potato components such as character development (tangible justifications for behavior and pathos, please) and strength of narrative. Seemingly under the impression that the more tanks blown up, the less focus on plot-based causes and effects required, Incredible Hulk panders with genuinely LCD cinema, making the juvenilia of Transformers look altogether deep by comparison. General audiences will likely fall head over heels for this reboot, and though I'd be lying if I said the film were entirely without merit, there's something depressing about a weapons-based spectacle without an emotive pulse. Zak Penn's script—a patchwork of moldy declarations of love and fear, motivation-deprived villains and stillborn exposition—reeks of studio nip-and-tuck, as if calculating the amount of down time allowed between each battle sequence and clipped so as to allow for as many showings per day as possible.
That there's something almost giddy in the air when the transmogrified Edward Norton is finally allowed to declare "Hulk… SMASH!!!!", only emphasizes the emptiness surrounding it. That Norton, Tim Roth, William Hurt and Liv Tyler (as beautiful as ever and the best piece of eye candy in the film by a mile) are all serviceable in their parts speaks to the slipshod nature of the film as a whole. The Incredible Hulk is many things—a tie-in to the upcoming Avengers film (via a last-minute cameo by Robert Downey, Jr.'s Tony Stark, likely added in post-production), maybe even a 2-hour videogame advertisement—but good entertainment it is not. A flash in the pan would have been preferable.
Coming to us from somewhat loftier slopes, then, is The Happening. Already in need of a second viewing, it is a work of roving minimalism, the camera almost completely free from overactive movement, enamored by pure scenery as it observes from casual, happenstance perspectives a tragedy that unfolds with frighteningly quotidian simplicity. It is Shyamalan's latest bedtime story, a simple (not necessarily simplistic) film meant to impart a basic virtue or belief, here implicitly reflecting our social and political moment as much as did Lady in the Water's tale of communal empowerment. Alas, whereas the director's previous offering continues to strike me as an artistic confession and introspection as daring and intimate (if not nearly as profound) as Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, this new film is only half good cinema, seemingly the result of its maker's stunted belief/determination in both himself and his audience. The Happening's plot is a bountiful source for readings and interpretations, or rather, it might have been, had the film's talking heads not continually harped on them as if we were too braindead to get it ourselves.
In an effort to return to the more narratively (if not thematically) straightforward virtues of The Sixth Sense and Signs, The Happening disregards its own implicitly non-dramatic arc, throwing forced revelations, dramatic structure, and thematic conclusions to the audience like a frightened man would bones to a dog. Beginning in Central Park, New York, scores of northeast American cities are being plagued by an unseen, inexplicable force, the none too subtle symptom being entire crowds of people committing suicide in almost simultaneous succession. Spreading from urban to rural settings, it is a force never explained outright, much like Cloverfield in that the characters have no point of reference by which to know more than the immediate violence surrounding them; ditto the scientists' inability to draw any conclusions from the effects without any practical means of examining their causes.
Eventually, our protagonists provide an educated theory (spoilers ahoy): that plant life, in defense of the Earth itself, could be releasing poisonous toxins when sensing the amassing presence of humans. Audiences were scoffing at the premise at my showing, and though I think it unfair to dismiss the purported seriousness of such a sci-fi scenario (the likes of which were practically routine amongst the 50s output of the genre, from the leafy villains of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the more violent herbs from The Day of the Triffids), Shyamalan does himself a disservice in his attempts to portray this creeping death as if it were some kind of malevolent bogeyman, literalizing the suggested and, in doing so, stripping it of both primal cinematic thrust and deeper thematic/political significance. The Happening's particulars are not devoid of those emotionally revealing, personal frissons that made Lady in the Water such a therapeutic exercise (for both artist and audience), but Shyamalan seems to be going against his instincts in presenting them here, forgoing the awkward but honest for self-conscious attempts at normality, thus rendering said awkwardness doubly more so for its faux attempts at concealment. The killer plants only seem silly when they're shot like Jason Voorhees, and I found myself unable to entirely condemn the hecklers in my audience for their derogatory responses during these sequences.
In many way's Shyamalan's take on An Inconvenient Truth by way of Romero, The Happening remains tantalizing in its details even as it routinely wanders into more preschool-laden territory. So deliberate and uneasy are Shyamalan's visual signifiers that, even at its most embarrassingly overreaching (a moment in which Marky Mark—attempting a last-minute, slow-motion leap to the rescue—is legitimately awful), the entirety remains genuinely arresting, almost dreamlike. Aided in no small part by Shyamalan's defiant use of characterization (death here stemming not from narrative demands, but the brutal indifference of the natural world), the uneasiness of The Happening's mise-en-scene serves to challenge our perspectives and expectations in a fascinating push-and-pull between audience participation and thwarted artistic instinct. Though the film's crowning moment is dialogue reliant—a conscious bit of self-parody that involves Mark Wahlberg's Elliot Moore taking an ultimately unnecessary precautionary measure (in perhaps the funniest moment in cinema since Mastodon instructed Aqua Teen Hunger Force audiences to take "the seed outside")—the strengths apparent here beckon to some of the great directors of silent cinema. After another viewing, I just may nominate Shyamalan as helmer of my own theoretical remake of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr.
House contributor Robert Humanick's writings appear in Slant Magazine and on his blog The Projection Booth. He also works sporadically with fellow Slant critic Paul Schrodt at The Stranger Song.
Dancing in the Dark: Cyd Charisse (1921-2008)
By Dan Callahan
It’s often been said that Cyd Charisse was the greatest female movie dancer, and she was able to partner the very different styles of the two great male movie dancers, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Her only real rival is Eleanor Powell, a prodigious hoofer who came from the world of slightly klunky tap-dancing, whereas Charisse had trained to be a ballerina and even danced with the Ballet Russes when she was a young girl. Ballet provided the backbone of her rock-solid technique, yet when she danced straight ballet on screen, something was missing; in trying to be overly correct for ballet dancing, Charisse looked too tall, too leggy. But give her something jazzy, something modern, something fifties, and she does things with her body that are hard to describe, let alone understand.
She was born Tula Finklea in Amarillo, Texas, and the name “Cyd” came from her brother calling her “Sid” instead of “sister” as a child, while the “Charisse” came from her first husband, a dancer named Nico. “Cyd Charisse” was a fantastic name for her: it sounds like back alleys strewn with colored streamers, a mix of grit and fancy style. MGM signed her in their forties musical heyday, smoothing out her Texas accent and giving her the full treatment in lessons and grooming. This early training would show itself in the stiff, anxious rectitude of her acting; Pauline Kael once cracked that in The Band Wagon (1953) it sounded as if Charisse “learned her lines phonetically,” and that’s not far from the truth. Charisse seemed worried that Texas would somehow come through in her voice, and she is very uncomfortable with dialogue in The Band Wagon and her early films. However, by the time of It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), her acting is perfectly serviceable, though no match for her ring-a-ding-ding, pugilistic dance number with boxers in a ring.
There are five essential Cyd Charisse films. The first is Singin’ in the Rain (1952), where she shows up with a Louise Brooks hairdo in the final big number. First, we see her shapely foot in close-up. Then, the camera moves up her leg, and moves, and moves, and moves. This is a woman with legs for days, and after we finally get to her torso, the camera moves up, and we see that she has a face that seems to be hard and humid with insatiable sexual appetite. Charisse was only five foot seven, but the incredible length of her legs and arms made her seem like an Amazon, a creature from another world. Her thighs were very fleshy, and she delighted in using their sensual amplitude for erotic effect, slyly sliding down Gene Kelly’s leg to the floor, a “bad woman” to dream about.
The second essential is The Band Wagon, where she moves into definite Queen of the Goosebumps territory in her two major dances with Fred Astaire, “Dancing in the Dark,” a lyrical romantic number, and the extended “Girl Hunt” number, a parody of Kelly’s “concept” ballets; these two numbers are Charisse’s clearest ticket to immortality. During “Girl Hunt,” when Astaire enters a dive and sees Charisse seated at a bar, she hesitates for just the right amount of time before doffing her greenish cloak and revealing the reddest damn scarlet woman red dress in movie history, with unapologetic little tassels hanging from her beautiful breasts. When the music speeds up, we’re in a kind of no man’s land: I really don’t know how Charisse does what she does here. Part of the magic is her technical skill, of course, but a huge part of it comes from her, and it has to do with a kind of taunting yet witty sexuality that actually makes the icy Astaire look randy in response. At the height of their pulsating, “are we being serious?” interplay, Charisse extends her epic legs out to Astaire on five horn blasts: one, two, three, four, five, and on the fifth beat she turns. Then, one, two, three, four, five, and on that crucial fifth beat, she flings her whole upper body backwards to the rhythm. That’s math, maybe, or dance. But the way that she throws her head back on that second beat of five is quite possibly the most thrilling single moment I’ve ever seen in a movie.
The boxing number in the underrated It’s Always Fair Weather is Charisse’s third marvel, and her fourth is Rouben Mamoulian’s musical remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka (1939), Silk Stockings (1957), a flawed movie, but a high point in Charisse’s development as a movie dancer. Let’s remember the exploratory sexiness of her solo dance as she unwraps delicate Parisian underwear, and the late tour-de-force with Astaire in long takes where they go through more emotions in movement than most actors do in a whole Shakespearean performance. Best of all, let’s remember and resurrect Nicholas Ray’s Party Girl (1958), Charisse’s fifth wonder, an underrated, modernist Technicolor noir full of pain and discomfort.
Charisse has two major dances in Party Girl, and they’re so detailed, so intense, so sexual, that they stand as her apotheosis. When I rented the film and saw these two dances, I could barely believe what I was seeing: I re-wound and watched them again and again, and then I called friends and told them to come over and watch the two Charisse dances in Party Girl with me. Jaws dropped, and the tape was re-wound many times for many people. Then I saw it on the big screen at the Museum of Modern Art: it wasn’t a pan and scan tape, but in widescreen, as it was meant to be. And I still can’t get over those two ineffable, indescribable Charisse dances in Party Girl. That’s the thing about dance: even professional dance writers (which I am not) have difficulty capturing just what it is we are seeing when we see a great dancer like Cyd Charisse.
She lived a long and presumably happy life with her second husband, singer Tony Martin, and she was surprisingly effective as the be-feathered wife in Vincente Minnelli’s Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), but her real legacy is those five films from the fifties. Late one night on television, I caught Astaire and Charisse doing “Dancing in the Dark” from The Band Wagon. As I watched the two of them dance with each other, I suddenly felt, with total certainty, that life can’t possibly be completely meaningless, not if something like Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse dancing together was created and still exists. That must mean something, I thought. And by that, I mean Charisse’s endless legs coming to a point on the beat of the music, the line of her body as her arms make their playful, often challenging and always heartfelt points in the air. Cyd Charisse died yesterday. That body that moved like no one else ever has will make no more movements. But her dances negate her death more resoundingly than any book of poems, any supreme novel, any gallery of paintings. On screen, she will always be moving, in both the literal and figurative sense, and that must mean something.
"Girl Hunt" from The Band Wagon
"Baby, You Knock Me Out" from It's Always Fair Weather
Party Girl
"Dancing in the Dark" from The Band Wagon
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House contributor Dan Callahan's writing has appeared in Slant Magazine, Bright Lights Film Journal and Senses of Cinema, among other publications.
Lichman & Rizov "Live" at Grassroots Tavern (Episode 13, Part 2: "Can-Can-Cannes You Dig It?"), with Glenn Kenny & Karina Longworth
By John Lichman & Vadim Rizov
[Editor's Note: The views expressed in this podcast are those of the commenters, and do not necessarily reflect the official policies, positions, or opinions of The House Next Door.]
John had to leave for a friend's farewell dinner after the first break, leaving the podcast solely in my fascistic, power-hungry hands... eh, who am I kidding? Preserving a judicious silence interrupted by occasional ill-timed bleating on my behalf, Pt. 2 is super-delicious and crunchy, just like the first one. It's also probably the most high-culture one we've ever done. John's absence: cause or coincidence? You decide.
Pt. 2 begins with Karina and Glenn discussing memorable bathroom graffiti; soon we're back on the Cannes bandwagon, discussing the new Assayas film, Summer Hours (Is it about Frenchness? Technology? Both? Discuss.). Then Karina talks about the "French-Canadian Paranoid Park, but with no homoerotic subtext," Everything Is Fine, and Glenn and Karina talk about their festival sleeping habits, or lack thereof, and how that makes Lucrecia Martel just that much harder to comprehend. A casual diss of 24 City and a name-check of Dave Kehr later, Glenn offers a historical overview and condemnation of scatalogical content in cinema. Then it's on to Depardon and Desplechin (who they like) and things they hate (Paolo Sorrentino, we're gunning for you buddy). Also, we take potshots at Variety and Louis Garrel, just to keep our offensiveness quotient intact, and wind down with about 10 minutes' worh of loose talk about Philippe Garrel. The Cannes buck stops here, and I spill a beer at the end just to cap it off. I'm an idiot.
Since I'm writing this for once, let me take the opportunity to thank all of you for listening. Lord knows why you do, but we like the silent adulation. Keep your ear to the ground, as we'll soon post a bonus mini-podcast, where our guests face off on Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired. Until then, as Edward Murrow would say, buy us a drink if/when you see us. Or dinner. Or new apartments. Or pay our ConEd bills. There's so many things you could do for us, really. (VR)
Podcast is embedded below. Any problems, it can also be found here as a downloadable mp3 file. (TRT: 35 minutes, 07 seconds)_________________________________________________
John Lichman is a freelance writer who contributes to The Reeler, Primetime A&E [print only] and anyone with cash. He works odd jobs to afford his vices, sleeps on couches and can drink Vadim Rizov under a table.
Vadim Rizov is a New York-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Reeler, Nerve, and, oddly enough, Salt Lake City Weekly.
Summer of '83: Elsewhere on the Web
By Keith Uhlich
[Editor's Note: The House Next Door is hooking up with Movie Geeks United! for a look back at films from the Summer of 1983. We'll be publishing entries on this topic through Wednesday, June 18th, culminating in the premiere of the Movie Geeks' "Summer of '83" tribute show, featuring guests Dee Wallace and John Badham, among others. Special thanks to Aaron "Nick Fury" Aradillas for arranging this tag-team.]
A sampling of reviews from across the web on Summer '83 releases. Note that some films were made prior to '83, but only secured a U.S. release date during the season of Jedi. Discuss, and feel free to link to more reviews in the comments section.