in which I try to catch up

Last Tuesday I saw Wassup Rockers, very good, exhilarating skateboard sequences, kind of the punk rock version of the "China Girl" sequence in Mauvais Sang.
Final shot: close-up--epiphany.
Wednesday saw Os Mutantes at The Moore. Amazing performance, despite the absence of Rita Lee. People didn't get on their feet until late in the show--I could hardly keep still, but as no one else was up and dancing, I, typically Seattle, stayed seated as well. Sergio looks like Mike Meyers playing Billy Zoom. They did everything I wanted to hear. I was surprised to hear an English language version of Virginia, but apparently they recorded a whole album in English (which I've never heard). Sir Richard Bishop opened--at first, I found him merely pleasant, albeit proficient, but he took his final piece into raga territory and it just tore my head open. I was accompanied by The Prettiest Critic--I found it difficult to tell if she was enjoying herself or not--I was probably bouncing around in my seat enough for the both of us. My schpilkas perhaps is rather annoying.
Thursday, two more Luc Moullet films: Shipwrecked on Route D17 which was the least interesting and most recent of his films, despite an intriguing premise. Final shot: tableau--embrace--then pan up to sky. Followed by A Comedy of Work, easily the best of the films. About an employment officer who actually gets jobs for her clients who meets an unemployed man who is happy to stay that way. Incredible absurdist sight gags, and refreshingly cynical about the value of work to an individuals character. Final shot: protagonist walks off screen.
Friday: ReAct Theater's production of Six Degrees of Separation at Richard Hugo House. An old friend was in the cast, and I'm afraid I didn't stick around to congratulate her, as the production was pretty amateurish. It didn't seem like any of the actors had ever encountered a wealthy person before. Guare is incredibly hard to perform (I've failed at it before), and occasionally they managed to hit a few of the moments quite effectively, but there were way too many dead patches.
Sunday: at the NWFF to see Kaleidoscope Eyes : Songs for Busby Berkeley in which composer Chris Jeffries writes new songs to accompany musical (and other) numbers from Busby Berkeley's films. Jeffries is a occasionally brilliant songwriter--certainly his songwriting skills are better than those of the authors of most recent big-deal musicals, if only about on par with a better-than-average hip-hop artist--but a lot of this verged on Mystery Science Theatre territory and ended up pissing me off. Most egregiously was a song mocking the sexist nature of the big Dames number--it's not like these aspects aren't apparent to anyone viewing it, but the lyrics of this number caused the audience, which I think included the entire congregation of Seattle Unity Church, to start hooting derisively at what is one of the most gorgeous examples of Hollywood surrealism ever put on film. The thing is, I don't think Jeffries even feels that contempt, but found himself taking the easy road, the road that allows an audience to congratulate themselves for being progressive, probably under pressure from a deadline. But there were a number of songs that had wit and grace and ability to imagine contemporary concerns in a vintage style, rather like Stephen Merritt at his best. The last couple of numbers were perfect: working with the images, but offering an alternative story that celebrated Berkeley's brilliance, and a lovely song to go with the final sequence from Jumbo that made clear Jeffries respect for classic Hollywood cinema. The vocal performances were lovely, and I particularly liked the guy who sang in the manner of Dick Powell.
Finally: I watched Alan Clarke's Made in Britain on DVD. Although extremely well-paced, this again had a Socially Conscious Message aspect to it that kept it from ever catching fire. Surprisingly, I thought Tim Roth was kind of awful! It was his first screen job, and like so many young actors I've seen over the years, firsthand, he took so much relish in playing a bad, bad boy, that you can see his acting wheels turning--"watch me now, I'm going to really scare you!" I'm glad that this was not my first exposure to Roth--it would have taken years for me to take him seriously after watching this mannered mess of a stunt performance. I'd like to see more of Alan Clarke's work--he's clearly a great director, but he's at the mercy of his writers, and it would take a truly visionary director to move these films out of the realm of the trite. Of the five films in this box, Elephant is the only masterpiece. Final shot: freeze frame, close-up.

in which I do the same thing I did yesterday

Back to NWFF to see two more Luc Moullet films. First, A Girl is a Gun, or, An Adventure of Billy the Kid. This was in the madcap vein of Smugglers, although I liked it somewhat less. Still shot without sync sound, but in living color, it depicts the eternal struggle between man and woman. It stars Jean-Pierre Léaud at his most beautiful--of course he ends up being scalped: who wouldn't want that hair? He's such a mugger, too; the scene of his palm being cut in an "Indian" wedding ceremony features Jean-Pierre making an hilarious "yeeowch" face. And I loved the scene of him trying to strangle himself with the noose he's just been saved from. As in both of yesterday's movies, there's a lovely woman rolling around in mud (this time with Jean-Pierre--both of yesterday's featured girl-on-girl action). It climaxes in a variation on the final scene from Duel in the Sun, except with a happy(ish) ending. Only three people in the audience, one of whom left a half hour into the movie.
Final shot: repetition of opening shot, tableau.
This was followed by Anatomy of a Relationship, preceded by the 12-minute short film, Attempts at an Opening. Attempts depicts Luc's attempts at opening a Coke bottle. It was amusing, but after about three minutes, I felt like, "Oh, for fuck's sake, just give it here and let me do it." It felt more like one of those movies I'd have rather heard him talk about making, than to actually see. Anatomy was amazing, though. (It's funny--so far the films that NWFF scheduled for the reviewers to see have not been as exciting as the ones they didn't schedule. Billy the Kid was a little more polished than Smugglers, but it also had dead patches that Smugglers never had.) Anatomy is really a Caveh Zehedi film, made before Caveh was out of diapers. An hilarious and lacerating portrait of what went wrong in his relationship, he's pretty unsparing of himself (playing himself). The movie is co-directed by the woman in question, although she doesn't play herself in the relationship, but does show up as co-director at the end. I guess I always bought the story that French men know exactly how to please a woman, but Luc makes it clear that the French are every bit as clueless as men anywhere. Although he does open the possibility that perhaps it's just him, that perhaps no man has had this problem before now. As a magical thinker myself, I completely identify with his Religious Christian Atheism: when he has a sudden windfall of money, he launches into an excruciatingly funny rationalization of how it must be a divine blessing, but since there is no God, he must have suddenly come into existence for just that moment, performed the miracle of giving Luc $14,000, and then died--this is all delivered in the utmost sincerity, as if he's given it a great deal of thought (which I'm sure he did) and understood that this is the most plausible explanation.
Final shot: tableau, two protagonists.

in which I am proven wrong about the Eiffel Tower

To the NWFF for the two films in a series they're sponsering from a French director I've been completely unaware of: Luc Moullet. First was Brigitte et Brigitte, about two college girls who dress alike and have similar backstories and identical names. It's a series of vignettes, entirely post-dubbed. There are lots of extraneous construction noises creeping in and occasionally drowning out the dialogue. The article linked above says that Godard said the movie was "revolutionary": I'll bet he did--all the way through I kept thinking of the soundscape of 2 ou 3 Choses que Je Sais d'Elle, which was made the following year. Loved the kid with the list of 323 American directors in order of quality, with Jerry Lewis at the bottom. Loved Claude Chabrol, looking like Rowen Atkinson, as a nasty uncle who vigorously rocks a Brigitte on his knees just like he did when she was little. And I really did love that soundscape, and the enjoyment I got from scenes of frolicking that weren't accompanied by a pop song on the soundtrack. Despite my claim of a few weeks ago, this film features a lengthy shot of the Eiffel Tower, although it's treated as a gag. It also opens with a shot of the Arc d'Triomphe, for no reason I can figure.
Final shot: tableau; embrace.
Second movie was The Smugglers. An entirely free-form set of absurdist gags. This is the kind of movie that puts me in heaven immediately, from the opening scene of a border guard saying "Some days it's hard to be a border guard," as he frisks a beautiful young woman looking for contraband watches. The Brigitte who was dandled by her uncle in the first movie continues her story here, and in the intervening year she became a knockout. She's got these short, slightly stocky, R.Crumbish legs ("great calves") and stance, despite being petite otherwise. And she's absolutely willing to be ridiculous. I don't know how her legs stay looking so pristine, because the story calls for her to climb around on rocks for pretty much the duration. If I'd done half of her stunts, I'd have been black and blue. Loved her smuggler boyfriend, getting all Jerome Robbins on the big rocks when he steals a pair of shoes from a dead border guard. Loved the way the two girl smugglers avoid the border guard on the island--they just don't go to the island, basically, this island where there is nothing except a border guard. Loved how Brigitte can make not only nature, but another character's internal monologue stop short, just by yelling "Shut Up!" And in both these movies, I love how Moullet expects you to accept whatever reality he gives you. This comedy of borders, with smuggling as an altruistic act, seems as potent now as it must have ever been.
Final shot: two protagonists walk off camera (after an upending of the opening shot).

in which I complain that movies aren't as good as they used to be

To the Central Cinema to see Chaos, a kidnap thriller by the director of Ring. It's most interesting for the way it fractures time, although at least one plot strand gets completely lost because of this. Does the handyman actually kidnap the businessman's nephew? Did his "wife" tell the handyman the businessman's sister was an easy mark? Even unexplained, this subplot doesn't seem to advance anything in the story, other than getting the handyman away from the apartment so the bodies can be switched, which could have been achieved any number of other ways. Some lovely images--most particularly the two conspirators behind a cage of rain, and some haunting sequences of corpse disposal and corpse recovery; and a great lighting change towards the end during a fairly hot petting session in the back of a van--the handyman discovers the switchblade hidden in the woman's pocket, and suddenly the warm lighting changes to a cold morning light; it gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. There's also some great quasi-bondage sequences--people realizing what they're doing and going, "hey, this is kind of exciting!" A puzzling ending, which doesn't seem organic at all, just a convenient way of closing off the story--almost moralistic, as all the "bad" people get punished. Ultimately a frustrating movie, although a worthy noir. I suppose it's unfair to criticize something I can only read in subtitles, but it seems that all modern noirs are about the plotting, and none of them have good hard-boiled dialogue (save Tarentino, bless his heart). 8 people in the audience, although this place just projects video and has basically no advertising budget, so it's not surprising.
Final shot: repitition of symbolic opening shot.

in which I make a choice based on Uma.

I was going to make a double bill of Poseidon and M:I III but at the last minute the opportunity came up to see an advance screening of My Super Ex-Girlfriend, so rather than driving to West Seattle and paying $10 for four and a half hours of undoubtedly bad entertainment, I was able to walk to a theatre and see something for free and get home before the light had left the sky. Plus neither of the big action flops had Uma. The movie is an 80s throwback, from the New York skyline title sequence on. Uma is hysterical throughout, but Luke Wilson is curiously charmless, like Griffin Dunne with no comic timing, and Rainn Wilson is certainly no John Candy. (I think I may have been in a play once with Rainn Wilson's wife.) I like him so much on The Office, but I think the problem here is that the character is supposed to be likable in a guy's guy sort of bigtalker way, and, at least for me, that's exactly why I don't like him--Dwight, from The Office, is essentially the same character, but you're not expected to think of him as your best friend and sidekick. I completely don't get the physics of one of the film's most repeated gags: the bed moving during intercourse. Eddie Izzard has some funny moments as the Super Villain, although how that character grows up to be Eddie Izzard is also something of a puzzle. I appreciate that, although I thought for sure the film was moving that way, not only does it not make the characters happy by taking away the woman's superpowers; it actually grants superpowers to another woman, and shows them both with mates happy to carry their purses while they go off to fight crime. I guess this is really just meant to be funny in the manner of If Men Played Cards As Women Do, but it made me sort of pleased. I also liked that Uma was often in heels, and so towered over Luke. Oh, Uma, Uma, Uma... I was sitting next to a very fat couple; near the end of the movie there is a scene at a fashion show, and the camera cuts to a reaction shot from a large woman in a bright red dress and hat--the couple next to me let out an "ewwww" sound. I thought the woman in the movie looked kind of glamorous, in a Divine sort of way. I have no idea why they thought their response was necessary; it was not the response the filmmakers wanted, I'm sure--the woman just mugged well and so they cut to her for a funny shocked reaction. Interesting form of self-loathing.
Final shot: two-shot as two major characters begin to walk offscreen.

Just finished reading Diary of a Married Call Girl by Tracy Quan. I'd read her previous Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl several years ago when there was a glut of sex worker books on the market. This is amusing as kind of a parody of Chick Lit--all the obsessions with designers and products, but with graphic, un-romance-novel-like, and very funny matter-of-fact descriptions of sex acts. The book is almost convincing as a diary, as it pretty much just stops after 250 pages. She does a High Noon thing with her birth control pills, so I guess that would be considered an "ending", but there's a half-dozen unresolved plot elements that don't even get a final wink. I like the picture of marriage as just a succession of lies people tell to each other, and that she doesn't consider that a bad thing. It's also interesting that the book stops several weeks before 9/11. If she writes another, I'm afraid it will have to deal with Serious Issues in a way that I suspect the author is not up to. Doesn't matter to me. I think I've done my time with her.

I also finished The Ticking by Renee French. For French, it's a pretty delicate work--hardly nightmarish at all. About coming to be at home in one's body, and understanding one's family. I'm reading a book about Dr. Johnson, and there's a portrait of his wife who looks very much like Edison's father from this book (except she has ears). I think French is one of the greatest cartoonists working today--I might prefer Chris Ware's sensibility or Ben Katchor's Calvino-like imagination, but I can get lost in French's deceptively simple drawings much easier. In some ways, she reminds me of Claire Denis; there are no unimportant details in her work.

in which I take exception to Michael Atkinson

Went to The Grand Illusion to see Favela Rising, a documentary about the musical group/social movement, AfroReggae. It's a very interesting, inspirational story about a political grassroots organization that arises out of the drug culture of the Brazilian slums. Shot in the high-contrast color of City of God, it's always visually interesting as well. My complaint about it, perhaps shallowly, is that there's not enough music, and most of the concert footage has music recorded later and dubbed over it. I also suspect that what is presented to us as the lead singer's comeback concert after a terrible surfing accident is actually a pre-accident concert. I have nothing to base this on; only that they present it while a voiceover talks about his return to performing, but never actually say that this is footage from that show.
Final shot: freeze frame. Followed by skyline of Rio for credit sequence.
Then I saw The Hidden Blade, which I enjoyed greatly. I kept thinking of John Ford during it, and when I looked up Michael Atkinson's Village Voice review this morning, that was his headline. However, he seems to except it from the "tavern yuks" of Ford, but what I thought of most was how the humor usually doesn't quite work, in the manner of Ford's humor. Major exception: the Japanese learning how to drill like Western soldiers. Incredible sensei sequence, as well. And I'm always a sucker for movies where the love cannot be expressed until the last train pulls out of the station, and maybe not even then (that would be me, without the excuse of class codes). However, there was a little too much "I washed me face and hands before I come, I did" in the last scene, even for me.
Final shot: tableau.

in which I cheat to help a kid win a prize

Took my Fake Nephew to see an advance screening of Monster House. Gratified that, as opposed to most US ghost stories, it takes time for a little sadness amidst all the running around and screaming. The Nephew was on the edge of his seat for most of the picture, as were all the kids around me. It uses the Joe Dante template of kid summer action horror, but without any sort of political edge to it--although I loved the sign for a new housing project: "We've drained the lake!" Steve Buscemi does a wonderful Mean Old Man, and I appreciate where the movie took his character. The Nephew discussed with me afterwards why the House was so angry, and came to some useful conclusions. There were "prize packages" afterwards for kids who arrived in costume, so I took a catsup packet and squeezed it all over his face and he achieved the rest of his zombie costume through sheer acting ability. The prize package was hardly worth getting catsup smeared on me, though: a poster and a handful of candy.
Final shot: protagonists walk down the street, shot from above--followed by several gag shots of characters climbing out of the cellar of the monster house.

Later watched another Alan Clarke DVD: Elephant. I was worried before it began as I saw that one of the DVD extras was an interview with David Hare, perhaps the most overrated playwright of all time. His yappity-yap-yap style of Important Theatre would seem to play right into all the worst qualities of television drama. Luckily, he had nothing to do with this movie, and Elephant couldn't be further from a Hare play. It's a series of almost dialogue-free encounters between executioners and victims: one person moving, encounter, executioner moving away, hand-held close-up of corpse. You're never sure if you're initially following executioner or victim to begin with, and the sustained shots of the corpses, with almost imperceptible camera-movement, leave you as an unwilling witness no matter how you approach the scene. And every expectation is overturned with the final scene. The cinematography and use of natural sound is powerful--all these empty public spaces, barren factories and schools, like almost everyone is already dead. It's produced by Danny Boyle, and despite the fact that this is specifically about The Troubles, it could as easily be a chapter from 28 Days Later. An amazing film.
Final shot: still life, I guess.

Just finished listening to the Recorded Book of Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer, performed by Jeff Woodman and Scott Shina. This may be the best performance of a recorded book I've heard--they completely captured the voices of the two narrators. The book is powerful, and extremely clever, but I get the same sort of feeling from him as from Nellie McKay. He's a brilliant architect of words, but there's something in his concerns that paints him as very, very young. Which he is, and that's fine, but for this book (more than for McKay's songs) I wish he'd waited until he was a little older. There's a lack of subtlety, and a nonchalance about things that age would temper--and often I think he misses the importance of a particular scene. On the other hand, age tends to limit the willingness to go for the good jokes, and I appreciate a good joke more than anything, especially in work with a serious core.

in which I make a baseless accusation against Hou Hsiao-Hsien

To NWFF to see Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Three Times. It begins with a game of snooker, played to the tune of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", by the Platters. Oh, you bastard! I thought. Edward Yang owns that song after his use of it in The Terrorizer. And then he plays it again! And then he plays "Rain and Tears" by Aphrodite's Child multiple times, too! Like it's a Wong Kar-Wai movie or something! And then it stars Chang Chen, discovered by Yang, and a frequent performer in Wong's movies. Is Hou throwing down the gauntlet or something? Or is this like all those Fifth-Generation filmmakers suddenly starting to do wuxiá films? ...Not that Yang is getting that much more attention, although I think he's the greatest of the three... But, despite my resistence, the "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" sequence works beautifully, and I was completely under the spell of the first story's romantic longing. It duplicates the scene I liked most from Russian Dolls: the backs of two hands brushing, and then the fingers slowly interlocking, defined by the negative space--if he'd held the shot a couple of seconds longer, I would have been in tears, but, thankfully, that's not what he's after. I understand why so many people like the first sequence best (I guess I do, too), but the whole movie is brilliant. I love that there's more dialogue in the silent movie than in the other two sequences combined. I love that the contemporary sequence is harder to identify with than the sequences set in the past. I love that the same elements show up in three entirely different stories with three entirely different rhythms. I loved the way the musical accompaniment to the silent film becomes direct sound--breathtaking.
Final shots (since there are basically three films here): two tableaus, and one shot of the protagonists shot from above going down the road, eventually offscreen (which is also a repitition of the opening shot).
I had meant to stay and see 42nd Street, but Three Times lasted too long, so I went home and tried to make my new cat feel secure while watching The Firm on DVD, the Alan Clarke film starring Gary Oldman as a 30-year-old football hooligan. I still have a lot of Clarke films to get through, but I'm not sure I love his stuff. There are always amazing performances, but there's an "educational" aspect to each one I've seen so far; a tsk-tsking that inevitably involves the suffering of the cutest, most blameless character because of the actions of the protagonist: the lad who gets raped in the two versions of scum, and Gary's baby's encounter with "Stanley"
here. That's tv-movie stuff, and I guess they are, actually, tv-movies.
Final shot: I don't have a classification for it--the movie suddenly switches to documentary-style, and it's a group shot of all the secondary characters toasting.

In which I realize I'm not as literate as I think I am

One of the main reasons I began writing this is so that I wouldn't end up forgetting all the books I read. Only to find I don't actually read that many any more! Mostly lately I've been reading issues of film magazines and The Believer, which I feel is making me feel like I'm reading books while actually accumulating nothing but interesting quotations. However I did just finish Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel. Very good British novel of mediums and their bloody useless spirit guides. The conceit of the book is that the mediums actually do have contact with the spirit world, but they can't effect much control about what messages, if any, come through, so they resort to the same sort of blind reading tricks that debunkers are constantly pointing out. The spirit world generally is more concerned with why you can't find good chips anyplace these days, than with helping out, or with attempting to feel up one of the psychics or actually crawl inside a womb in an attempt to be reborn. It's a visceral, often very funny book, and a fairly savage picture of how people believe what they want to believe.
Also recently listened to the new album from Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell, Ballad of the Broken Seas. My only observation is that Izzy's ethereal warbling in the background of the first track, "Deus Ibi Est", sounds pretty much like the Whoville carol from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I love it when these humorless types do something really funny.
Currently listening to Sun Ra and Kristy MacColl to make it through the days. Maybe I will throw in some Billie Holiday later.

in which I want movies to be something else

Finally getting around to The Da Vinci Code, me and two women the full audience at this late date. I enjoy seeing a summer blockbuster that is about intellectual problem-solving. Doesn't mean it's good. I'm always game to watch a little mortification of the flesh (seems to me the easy way to obtain Grace), too. I'm willing to accept Audrey Tatou as the descendent of Christ; makes more sense than anything else. It's nice to have a movie that pisses off the Christians, in general, that isn't striving to be a work of art (or is it? I'm never sure how seriously Ronny Howard takes himself)--one doesn't feel compelled to be its defender. It doesn't matter to me who boycotts it--also, no one is willfully misunderstanding it. The lipservice to "maybe it's all true after all" at the end (like Santa Claus' cane in the corner) isn't fooling anyone. I just wish it was more deeply felt by Dan Brown and Ronny. It's just a mildly ripping yarn in the form of a not-quite-scholarly dissertation. A few days ago I mourned an absence of real faith in modern movies, but I mourn every bit as much an absence of real atheism. Also, a sense of humor would help most movies, but this one perhaps a little more than most. And, yes, since this is a US film, there's a nice shot of the Eiffel Tower to establish the Paris location.
Final shot: Hero in pensive pose.
And Wordplay: I wanted to like this a lot more, but it was only mildly amusing. The one moment I loved had nothing to do with crossword puzzles: a crossword addict who is also a piano accompanist tells about playing "It Might as Well Be Spring" for an auditioner, and starting to diverge from the sheet music because he knew the vocalist could handle it. It made we want to be there, or anywhere, where people were singing rather than filling in little boxes.
Final shot: collage of principle subjects (in the shape of a crossword puzzle).
Then to see a Shakespeare in the Park production of As You Like It directed by my Best Friend. Despite opening myself up to charges of nepotism, I think it was an absolutely delightful production of a play I've never considered one of my favorites. Other than an unnecessarily action-obscuring set design in the opening scenes, there was little to distract from the pleasure of the play. The director has jettisoned the misogyny aimed at Audrey by giving some of her lines and all of her function to Corin the shepherd, thereby making this a sort of Brokeback As You Like It. It works very well is relatively unobtrusive. My favorite line, from Jacques: "I can suck melancholy from a song as a weasel sucks eggs." Bring on the Morrissey!

in which I avoid talking about anything but myself

To a multiplex to see Superman Returns and Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Man's Chest. It's far from cool to say so, but Superman has always been my favorite superhero, despite his lack of any sort of dark side (DC at various times has tried to market various "bad" Supermans, including an ultra-patriotic version who only sees things without "liberal" shades of grey, but the conceptions never seem to take hold--although there was a series a few years back where Supey was a Soviet hero--I'd love to read that sometime). Much of this is nostalgia, because the first superhero comic I ever owned was Superman (on trial for murder, and organizing the league of Super-Pets) given to me as a 5-year-old, against my parents wishes, by a family friend. A few years later, the first comic book I ever bought with my own money ("You spent your allowance on that?!?!"--25 cents) was an 80-Page Giant Superman featuring Tales from the Bizarro World. And I was off! I think the thing about Superman is precisely that he is such a blank canvas that you can do anything with him and, as long as he remains genial, it works. In the late 50s and 60s, when they were sending Batman into space to fight giant starfish, and having him meet Batmite, it just irritated fans, but Superman could turn into a half-ant/half-man or fight Giant Turtle Olsen, and it still remained (and remains) within the realms of "possibility". Superman, despite his demeanor, really doesn't have any dignity as a character. That's why I even like Superman 3, with Richard Pryor. So I quite enjoyed this new movie, it's surprisingly lyrical. I suddenly find myself with no time to write about it though. So:
Final shot: Superman flies away from the camera.
And Pirates: Also a lot of fun--I liked it better than the first one, although in some ways Johnny's performance is superfluous in this one, upstaged by any number of things. I do love Kevin McNally as his first mate. It's too long--makes me wish we still had serials, because 15-minute chapters would really be the way to view this (and, I'm sure, the next one). I have no use for Kiera and Orlando, as characters or as actors, in anything.
Final shot: it hardly counts, as it is really just a set-up for the next chapter: It's a surprise close-up of a special guest star.

in which I am cynical about the possibility of love in a cold cold world

Back to the NWFF to see Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here. The opening shot was lifted for Zardoz, surely the only dystopian sci-fi to borrow its opening from Busby Berkeley and its closing from Buster Keaton. This was the third time I've seen Gang, first as a midnighter at the Broadway Market Cinemas, and second at the late lamented Pike Street Cinema's Berkeley series. No particular memory of either screening--the shock of that opening floating head and the even greater shock of the ending still get me as strongly as at the first viewing. One moment I really love is the crossfade between the fallen curtain at the end of "The Lady with the Tutti-Frutti Hat" and the scrim beneath the stairway leading from the stage. Love the way Little Miss Alice Faye raises one eyebrow at the callow lead--but about the lead: something about his mouth reminds me of Kubrick's favorite actor Joe Turkel. So he may not be quite so innocent. Love Charlotte Greenwood (oh, those long limbs!) and especially when she hears the phone ring and answers the cat. Laff? I thought I'd die! And of course Carmen Miranda: I'm nuts for those goofy dames.
Final shot: um, sort of a curtain call? It echoes the opening shot, so I guess I could put it in the repetition category.
Then stayed to see Russian Dolls. It's a sequel to a movie I haven't seen--attractive young people and their love problems, not my genre of choice. However, the first film that I saw from this director, When the Cat's Away, made a very favorable impression--it has the best vacation sequence I've ever seen. Russian Dolls is very charming, and the performers are appealing. The director indulges himself in too many Amélie-style fantasy sequences, which rarely work (I'm slightly partial to the Fellini shot of the hero dancing to the movement of his perfect model girlfriend walking sexily down a perfect street), but the majority of the story works well. And it has one of the best compositions I've seen in a while: backwards tracking shot of the red-haired girlfriend walking down the center of a St. Petersburg train platform, her jacket open to show her seafoam green shirt, but everything else around her shades of rust--devastating. I hadn't been sure what was on the character's mind during her speech right before this shot, but her expression and movement solidify everything. And I loved the protagonist's memory of the first time he held one ex's hand--a breathtaking shot of the backs of two hands brushing each other. The movie is convincing enough about the possibility of love that I found myself believing it for a second there. This is why movies are dangerous. Granted, I feel romantic longings after something as silly as The Gang's All Here, too, but the fact that people wouldn't appreciate it if I were to break into song on the street tempers the feeling somewhat...Another thing: The Paris sequences of The Devil Wears Prada begin, as do most Paris sequences in US movies, with a shot of the Eiffel Tower. I realize that I can't remember the last time I saw the Eiffel Tower in a French movie. Or even the Arc de Triomphe (shot #2 or #3 in Devil). Is this a French thing? Because the Americans will still stick the Empire State Building into every New York-shot film, even Spike Lee or Scorsese.
Final shot: protagonists walk off screen. It is also followed midway through the credits by another final shot, an altogether less satisfactory ending, as it tries for a fairy-tale promise that I don't think either of the two characters would agree with. That final shot is, I guess, a still life.

In which fashion magazines and terrorists perform the same function

Three movies: Press screening of Little Miss Sunshine. Dysfunctional family drama. Always good to see Alan Arkin. Confused by Sufjan Stevens' "Chicago" played as background music to a drive through New Mexico/Arizona. Loved the little girl. Apparently they run kid's beauty pageants differently in Albuquerque than in Los Angeles, because the girl's parents are shocked shocked at how tarted up the other contestants are. I was with the movie up until the Weekend at Bernie's part. And of course family turns out to be the greatest bond of all by the end of the movie. It's no wonder this "independent" film got picked up right away in Sundance. Oh, and there's the #1 US Proust scholar, who reduces a life's work to a self-actualization program. Another thing I hate is how all the likable characters prove to be likable by laughing good-naturedly at the climactic shocker--in real life, Miss California would be as appalled as all the big hair ladies--and what is poor Mary Lynn Rajskub doing in a one-line role?
Final shot: protagonists drive off down the road, shot from above.
Then to see The Devil Wears Prada: Much better than I expected. Meryl Streep is some sort of genius at comedy. She creates real characters who are much funnier for being unaware of how hilarious they are (as opposed to, say, Clooney in that hillbilly movie). The second movie in which Anne Hathaway starts out gorgeous and then gets a makeover to become far less interesting. I swear that once she starts glopping the mascara on, those preternaturally large eyes become smaller. And her annoying boyfriend wears mascara, too. Stanley Tucci makes a lion face, as does Alan Arkin in Sunshine. Loved the scene where Hathaway's outfits change every time she walks through a door. Hated the outfits, though, but loved watching the sequence. Streep looks great in everything she wears, though. The story could have been written by a computer program, although I appreciate that Hathaway gets to keep her career, and not go running back to her mascara'd chef boyfriend. I can't imagine reading the book of this movie; what could have possessed people to make it a bestseller? The movie was very entertaining, though, despite, or because of, it's predictability.
Final shot: protagonist walks down the road, crane shot.
Then, Cavite, a Filipino-American movie. Absolutely incredible thriller, an amazing percussive score driving the action. A real sense of place for the parts of the Phillipines that tourists don't get to see. The protagonist, guided through terrorist actions by a voice on the telephone; like Hathaway, he comes to a fuller sense of himself through his interaction with a Satanic character--although coming to an understanding of himself as a Filipino and a Muslim is perhaps a little more important than finding a good job at the Village Voice (if such a thing existed these days). This is the sort of movie that makes me fully embrace digital filmmaking--the whole thing seems, and probably was, a guerilla production. Certainly the shots on the airplane were stolen. Besides being as exciting as any summer blockbuster I've seen in many a summer, it's a rich film about ethnic identity in a changing world.
Final shot: repitition of opening shot (or is it the identical shot?)

In which I miss Joe Strummer

To the EMP to see a couple of documentaries by Dick Rude. Packed house (free admission). First up was a (way too) short film about LA punk: Xerox-Babies. It is apparently included as an extra on the Punk : Attitude DVD, as a corrective to that movie's East Coast bias. Packed with great interviews, all shot in luminous black-and-white. Paul Simon is so wrong about everything looking worse in b'n'w. These guys have never looked better. John Doe has always been beautiful, but the cinematography makes him look beatific. Mike Watt seems to radiate sweetness (which I understand he doesn't do in real life). The lines of age in their faces, even their jowls, give them gravity and wisdom. The only woman interviewed, a scene photographer, is also given an elegance that she probably didn't have in her youth--although I can't say for sure, not being familiar with her and her work. No music included, except some ersatz punk instrumentals for the opening and closing credits. Rude claims he is planning to expand this, and I hope he does. Followed by the feature, Let's Rock Again, which follows Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros on Joe's last tour. Joe could have used some black and white, as in color he just seemed to be a perfectly nice, but ordinary, middle-aged man. I would have loved to see him shot by the same camera that graced Mike Watt. Joe also was far less eloquent than the majority of the West Coast punks--there's virtually nothing in the movie he says that isn't a cliche in some way, even his self-deprecation. But he seems an altogether decent sort, signing autographs for three hours after a show, to give everyone an opportunity to tell their stories. And he's a good sport, showing up unannounced at a NJ radio station and basically begging to be let in to plug his show. All his eloquence is in his performing, and he makes the songs come alive, including the Stooges' "1969", and his own "Johnny Appleseed"--particularly during this last song he reminded me, both in the way he aged and his style of clothing, of Bruce Springsteen, if Bruce had a more interesting voice. The funny thing is, it seems like he's been gone longer than just four years. I remember him coming to town at the EMP not long after Sept.11. I should go see him, I thought, but then, no, he'll be back.
Final shot: Freeze frame on Joe, birth and death dates superimposed.

in which I find that young coconut water is not easy to come by

Went to the Rock Journalist's house to watch a Tennessee Williams double-bill: Suddenly, Last Summer and The Night of the Iguana. I had planned to bring fixins' for rum-cocos, the drink of choice at Ava Gardner's hotel in Iguana, but they are made with young coconut water, and none of the large grocery stores, including Trader Joes, seemed to carry such a thing. Mostly, I got baffled stares. So we ended up with daiquiris, Mrs. Venable's "medicine" in Summer. Dramatic readings from Gore Vidal's Palimpsest beforehand. There was much drooling by the other guests over Elizabeth Taylor and Sue Lyon, but Ava is the woman of the day for me--I love the way she smoulders. Talk afterwards about how US filmmakers today, Hollywood or otherwise, would be afraid of that sort of acting and that sort of overripe dialogue--all true, but what also strikes me as lacking in film today is a seriousness towards spiritual struggle. God as a ravenous monster in Summer predates the spider-god of Through a Glass Darkly. The spiritual torment of Iguana would never be handled in such a manner today. Most filmmakers now (and then, too, and always, really) approach their art with a tacit atheism--not a philosophical approach, like Bunuel, or a true atheism like Cronenberg or Egoyan, where there's no reason to address things that aren't there, but a deliberate ignoring of things they feel might be there but that would make it inconvenient to tell the story they want to tell. And if spiritual issues are addressed, it is usually in such a smarmy, feel-good way that it has no power over the viewer after they leave the theatre: as in any religion, religious films are happy to do all the thinking for you--all conflict is resolved.
Later, while doing laundry, I watched both versions of Alan Clarke's Scum. I have the Alan Clarke DVD collection, found in a used record store's skuf pile, for much less than half the cover price. It appears to have been at least twice owned by others, as there are traces of removed price stickers on the cover (why would anyone divest themselves of this? and how could it be owned by two different people so inclined?). I bought it as a gift, but, as I've always wanted it myself, I've decided to watch the whole thing myself first, and maybe the prospective recipient will buy her own copy before I get done previewing the whole thing. I mean, it was a skuf, right? I'd better make sure it all plays before I give it away. So these two versions really point out why I generally don't like to watch movies on tv. The first version, made for the BBC, seemed incredibly realistic, despite the rather spartan (even for a borstal) settings. The second, theatrical, version, is heightened in every way. I'm not sure I would have noticed in a theater, but the acting is more emphatic, the violence is more vicious, the performers are better looking (although the great, very young, Ray Winstone is in both, his face is so much more mature and handsome in the theatrical version that he's almost a different actor), and generally, after watching the quick, dirty BBC version, it just seems so much more like a movie. The one improvement, of course, is that the sets are detailed, so you get a real feeling for the kind of work the boys would be doing in the borstal. The biggest loss to me is the abscence of David Threlfall as Archer, the non-conformist working the system. In the BBC version, he reminds me of Harris in Freaks and Geeks, a strange, but ultimately very cool (in every sense) young man who is enjoying the way he can manipulate the world; a wise man, a guru, a teacher. In the theatrical version, he's a handsome, robust chap, with a sneer for the authorities--he's a movie character; he could be played by Bruce Willis, as his anti-authoritarianism is just a mask for wanting to assume authority on his own. Again, without having just viewed the earlier version, I might not have disliked this second version. And, seen in a theatre, I might just have accepted the movie conventions. But I generally find that films made for television are the ones that play best on television, and, although many of them can work equally well on the big screen, a film for the big screen can't function as well on television. Cinema depends on images, and television depends on story and performance--I realize I haven't remembered what the Final Shot of any of the four movies I saw yesterday was, because I wasn't thinking about image at all while watching them. I think: one pan away from the main characters to a nature image; one embrace; two tableaus. I won't bet on that, though.

in which I am hypnotized by a painting

To the NWFF yet again to see the last of the samurai series I'll probably see--unless somebody slips an extra day into this week, I don't think I'll be able to make it to Seven Samurai. This night's offering was Zatoichi on the Road. It turns out not to be the movie that Te Amo Azul rented for us to watch on New Year's Eve--that one started with the masseur Ichi walking down a road, so you see from where the confusion could have resulted. This one begins with what amounts to basically a blackout sketch, or perhaps a teaser trailer for the movie: a 120-second vignette that shows you how cool masseur Ichi is, completely unrelated to the story. Once again, I find myself unable to figure out what everybody's problem is--why they want Ichi dead, why they want each other dead, why they don't seem to want certain people dead. Ichi is much more savage in the final battle scene than usual--there's a lot of lovingly detailed skewering. Of course, he is fighting two entire armies singlehandedly. And, once again, his heart is broken--I realize now that there are great similarities between the Zatoichi series and the Tora-San series: both characters travel from town to town, both constantly are getting their hearts broken, while more appropriate younger lovers get together through the protagonists honourable manouverings. If only Tora-San would occasionally get into a fight...
Final shot: the hero going down the road, shot from above.
Then I stayed for a screening of Stolen, a documentary about an unsolved art heist. The central character is a dashing old detective, without a nose, and with an eye-patch: he looks like a Dumas, pere, character. It features Blythe Danner, whom I adore beyond all reason, as the voice of Isabella Stewart Gardner, the founder of the plundered museum, and Campbell Scott, who has a very nice voice upon which I cannot seem to focus my attention, as her art procurer. Unfortunately, there's nothing extraordinary about this film's strategy. The director focuses on the colorful characters, who are a lot of fun, but doesn't seem to ask the questions one needs to know to get to the heart of the story. I loved the interview with the current museum director, who gets weepy as he describes visiting the museum as a 12-and-a-half-year-old (who, over the age of 12-and-a-half, describes their age in half-years?), and being psychically adopted by John Singer Sargent's portrait of Gardner. It's a great portrait I've never seen before, and I could imagine being hypnotized by it now as easily as at 12 (and a half). Featuring tinkly piano music.
Final shot: movement over water, seagull in frame, flies off (signifies the death of the dashing detective).

in which I appreciate digital animation

Took the Fake Niece and Fake Nephew to some cineplex to see Over the Hedge. I thought we were going to have a private screening, but at the last minute, one lone guy, and a family of much more poorly behaved kids than my little angels arrived. The movie engaged us all in loud prolonged laughter from the very beginning. I appreciated that it was an anti-consumption, anti-sprawl sort of movie, (the only product placement in the movie, rife with opportunity for it, is for THX sound), but I suspect that these characters are being used to hawk all kinds of appalling stuff in the real world: thankfully, I'm unaware of it if they do, because I haven't watched any kids tv in ages, nor have I checked out the Happy Meals on offer. From my few encounters with the comic strip, I get the feeling that this movie is far less dark--kind of like the Peanuts television specials, where, other than A Charlie Brown Christmas, the undercurrents of depression are left out. The character animation was wonderful, which pains me to say, as I try to go on record as often as possible saying that all digital animation is rubbish. I don't like the way the people looked, but the animals were very expressive. (Also, it pains me even more to say that I'm incredibly excited about a trailer for a movie that is not only computer animation, but also stars Robin Williams: it features him voicing a penguin singing "My Way" in Spanish. I was practically levitating in ecstasy after seeing it, in spite of everything. It was a trailer I could live in happily. The movie is Happy Feet, and perhaps it won't suck...I just looked it up online and it turns out to be a George Miller movie! Oh my god! Now I really can't wait!) I do wish animation would get back to using actual voice artists for characters. It's not that Avril Lavigne did a bad job, but she didn't do anything that Yeardley Smith or Carolyn Lawrence couldn't have done better, and, really, who's she supposed to pull into the theater? And what's up with the Ben Folds soundtrack? The songs fit the movie less well than the Jack Johnson songs in Curious George, where the songs were, Jack Johnson-style, quiet and inoffensive, just like the movie. Whereas Ben Folds slightly whiny, mildly sardonic stuff seems entirely wrong--the lyrics are more captivating than Johnson's, so they call more attention to themselves, so consequently one realizes that the songs have no place at all in the movie. Then, at the end of the credits, he does a cover of "Lost in the Supermarket", which, while appropriate, is neutered by his tepid delivery. It did make me think that maybe some pop-punk group could have given the movie the right sort of juice--I don't know who, really, as I haven't listened to any pop-punk groups in a while. Are Fall Out Boy any good? Everybody slams them in the press, but they did reiterate the Incesticide liner notes (next to last paragraph) at a concert in the South, and that seemed pretty respectible...
As soon as the credits started, my Fake Niece turned to me and said, "Miyazaki is a good artist." "This wasn't by Miyazaki," I said. "I know that", she said, "but he's a good artist." I thought that meant that she hadn't liked the movie, but apparently it was just an observation, made relevent by the presence of animation, even of lesser quality. My Fake Nephew observed that it was much better than Madagascar. I am willing to believe that.
Possibly due to the movie, last night I dreamed that there were two dead black bears in my yard, one being eaten by a coyote and a kangaroo. One of the bears had two orphaned cubs, and a brown bear was trying to adopt them.
Final shot: comic close up as the manic squirrel bangs into a glass screen--confusing. Was this originally intended as a straight-to-DVD feature? There are also many television viewing jokes during the closing credits, which seemed quite out of place in a feature.

When I got home, I listened to Phrenology, by The Roots. Amiri Baraka had some things to say about Stepin Fetchit that I hadn't noticed when I'd listened to the album before--of course I don't know that I'd ever played it to the last track since I got it.

In which I admit to liking Stepin Fetchit

At the NWFF again, to see Hara Kiri. As I mentioned earlier, the samurai festival back in 1980 was where I saw a good number of these films for the first time. Hara Kiri was another one I'd first seen on PBS, when they ran a Thursday night series of Janus films for a couple of years in the 70s. The following day I told the entire plot to The Chicken Farmer on the schoolbus--complete with sound effects. I'd seen it for a third time when the art museum brought Toru Takamitsu to town--I wish I could remember something about that--he spoke for quite a while afterwards about his work on the film. Smallish audience at the NWFF, and the presenter almost apologized for the anti-samurai nature of the film. I love the way Kobayashi handles flashbacks--sudden cuts as someone starts to relate a story, but with no voiceover following the cut.
Final shot: repetition of opening shot--as a kid, it was that opening shot that grabbed me, the suit of armor that looks like a monster. I guess it is a monster.

Just finished reading Stepin Fetchit: the Life and Times of Lincoln Perry by Mel Watkins. I've always thought he was some kind of comic genius, but of course it's not really easy to see his work, and because of its nature, it's hard to feel good about laughing. Watkins makes the case that the character ("the laziest man alive") meant one thing to white audiences and another to black audiences, but also that the movies consistantly left out the part of Perry's vaudeville act that would have made it clear that his "laziness" had a subversive purpose. I was walking down the street, reading this book, and someone stopped me to ask directions to a place I didn't know. My first reaction was to reach up, and full-palm rub my bald head to get my thinking muscles working: one of Stepin Fetchit's signature moves...Unfortunately, there's a lot of Perry's life that just isn't documented, so there are several places where the author goes, "we don't really know what Perry was doing during this period, but here's an excerpt from Bessie Smith's autobiography that describes the part of the circuit we think he was on." It still makes good reading. The Wikipedia entry says that he converted to Islam in the 60s, but that isn't true. He was a lifelong Catholic.