Here at the Western World

Capsule reviews: MYSTERIES OF LISBON, THE TREE OF LIFE, MELANCHOLIA, DRIVE, and HUGO

2011-12-18T19:27:00.003-06:00

On MYSTERIES OF LISBON

No 2011 film has impressed me quite as deeply as Raul Ruiz's MYSTERIES OF LISBON, an immense period epic concerned with memory, identity, and narrative. Story begets story in a four hour-long chain of incident, largely revolving around sexual sin and its fallout. While the story itself is quite old-fashioned, the filmmaking is nevertheless decidedly contemporary, continually exploring the effect point of view has on story. MYSTERIES ends in the only possible way it can, refusing definite resolution, but instead offering a last look into the past. The moment suggests that even with all its entanglements, secrets, and tragedies, the chain of events of human interaction creates a space where love--in this case, the love of and for a mother--can come into being.

On THE TREE OF LIFE

THE TREE OF LIFE is not so unlike MYSTERIES OF LISBON; the two films share similar concerns and have some similar motifs (particularly in the way the films conclude with images of mothers), as well as a decidedly strong Christian influence. THE TREE OF LIFE achieves its most transcendent moments when it centers on childhood, adolescence, and adult disillusionment, investing all these common moments with a rich, vital spirituality (in no small part thanks to the contributions of cinematographer Emanuel Luzbecki). But Malick too often strains towards more obvious displays of cosmic significance, trafficking in overblown visual metaphors, and the broader narrative of cosmic redemption is too vaguely sketched to challenge or inspire.

On MELANCHOLIA

Of all the films I've seen this year, none seem more unjustly praised than MELANCHOLIA, a tedious wallow in misery. Von Trier has an undeniable talent for striking imagery, as the glossy opening sequence demonstrates, but little worthy thought. A more tangible sense of the characters might have invested the film with some powerful emotion, but Von Trier's handling of his story is both too scattershot and too removed to effectively register the characters' despair. His nihilism is less deeply-felt than it is purely cynical.

On DRIVE

DRIVE is all swagger and adrenaline, powered by Nicolas Winding Refn's sense that anger is a kind of inexplicable, cosmic force (kudos for Michael Leary pointing out that element of Winding Refn's filmography over at Arts&Faith). That counts for something, as does Refn's Michael Mann-esque grasp of alienation and loneliness in Los Angeles. But the story's simplicity keeps DRIVE from being anything more than a slick exercise in genre conventions. In interviews, Refn suggested he wanted to treat the story as a fairytale, but he apparently forgot that the best fairytales are only deceptively simple, distilling tremendous insight into a single, striking episode.

On HUGO

No filmmaker working today is quite as enjoyable to listen to as Martin Scorsese, who is so contagiously jovial and passionate in all his discussions about film. It comes as little surprise, then, that the strongest moments of HUGO occur when the film leaves the forced attempts at childlike wonder and whimsy behind and gives itself over to displays of unadulterated cinephilia. As with the rest of Scorsese's work this decade, HUGO is terribly inconsistent, but nevertheless offers enough intriguing moments to be worthwhile.

Another pointless list

2011-11-10T05:50:00.000-06:00

One year, one film:

2000-2010
2010: MYSTERIES OF LISBON
2009: A SERIOUS MAN
2008: BURN AFTER READING
2007: THERE WILL BE BLOOD
2006: PAN'S LABYRINTH
2005: THE SUN
2004: 2046
2003: OLDBOY
2002: FEMME FATALE
2001: A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
2000: EUREKA

1990-1999
1999: TITUS
1998: THE BIG LEBOWSKI
1997: HAPPY TOGETHER
1996: SECRETS & LIES
1995: NIXON
1994: CHUNGKING EXPRESS
1993: THREE COLORS: BLUE
1992: BARAKA
1991: THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE
1990: METROPOLITAN

1980-1989
1989: THE DECALOGUE
1988: DEAD RINGERS
1987: THE DEAD
1986: BLUE VELVET
1985: RAN
1984: ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA
1983: THREE CROWNS OF THE SAILOR
1982: THE THING
1981: BLOW OUT
1980: KAGEMUSHA

1970-1979
1979: STALKER
1978: AUTUMN SONATA
1977: THE LAST WAVE
1976: THE TENANT
1975: BARRY LYNDON
1974: F FOR FAKE
1973: DON’T LOOK NOW
1972: AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD
1971: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
1970: THE CONFORMIST

1960-1969
1969: ANDREI RUBLEV
1968: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
1967: POINT BLANK
1966: WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
1965: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
1964: THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
1963: CONTEMPT
1962: THE TRIAL
1961: LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD
1960: PEEPING TOM

1950-1959
1959: HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR
1958: VERTIGO
1957: NIGHTS OF CABIRIA
1956: BIGGER THAN LIFE
1955: ORDET
1954: SENSO
1953: TOKYO STORY
1952: OTHELLO
1951: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
1950: SUNSET BOULEVARD

1940-1949
1949: THE THIRD MAN
1948: THE RED SHOES
1947: THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI
1946: GREAT EXPECTATIONS
1945: BRIEF ENCOUNTER
1944: IVAN THE TERRIBLE
1943: DAY OF WRATH
1942: CASABLANCA
1941: CITIZEN KANE
1940: FANTASIA

1930-1939
1939: THE RULES OF THE GAME
1938: ALEXANDER NEVSKY
1937: MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW
1936: MODERN TIMES
1935: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
1934: THE BLACK CAT
1933: TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE
1932: VAMPYR
1931: THE THREEPENNY OPERA
1930: THE BLUE ANGEL

1920-1929
1929: PANDORA’S BOX
1928: THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
1927: NAPOLEON
1926: FAUST
1925: BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
1924: GREED
1923: LA ROUE
1922: NOSFERATU
1921: DESTINY
1920: THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI

Book Sale Purchases of October 16, 2011

2011-10-16T16:24:00.000-05:00

A few more for today:

THE DISPOSSESSED by Ursula K. Le Guin
THE MACHINERIES OF JOY by Ray Bradbury
THE ROCK GARDEN by Nikos Kazantzakis
SEVEN GOTHIC TALES by Isak Dinesen
THE STAND by Steven King (original 1978 version)
ZORBA THE GREEK by Nikos Kazantzakis

Book Sale Purchases of October 15, 2011

2011-10-15T12:52:00.000-05:00

THE ALIENIST by Caleb Carr
AMERIKA by Franz Kafka
BAUDELINO by Umberto Eco
CARTE BLANCHE by Jeffrey Deaver
THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY by Erik Larson
THE LEOPARD by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
MONSIGNOR QUIXOTE by Graham Greene
A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E. M. Forster
SKELETON CREW by Stephen King

Not a bad haul, really. I'm especially excited to dig into Kafka's AMERIKA.

Walker Percy on the contemporary novelist

2011-10-06T19:49:00.000-05:00

"Something, it appears, has gone wrong with the Western world, and gone wrong in a sense far more radical than, say, the evils of industrial England which enraged Dickens. It did not take a diagnostician to locate the evils of the sweatshops of the nineteenth-century Midlands. But now it seems that whatever has gone wrong strikes to the heart and core of meaning itself, the very ways people see and understand themselves. What is called into question in novels now is the very enterprise of human life itself. Instead of writing about this or that social evil from a posture of consensus from which we agree to deplore social evils, it is now the consensus itself and the posture which are called into question. This state of affairs creates problems for the novelist. For in order to create a literature, whether of celebration or dissent, a certain shared universe of discourse is required. It is now these very shared assumptions which are called into question. Forty years ago Steinbeck had an easy job writing about the Okies and the dust bowl. It is a different matter now when the novelist confronts third-generation Okies in California who have won, who seem to have everything they want--and yet who seem ready any moment to slide physically and spiritually into the Pacific Ocean.

So the novelist today is less like the Tolstoy or Fielding or Jane Austen who set forth and celebrated a still intact society, than he is like a somewhat bemused psychiatrist gazing at a patient who in one sense lives in the best of all possible worlds and yet is suffering from a depression and anxiety which he doesn’t understand."

~ Walker Percy, 1977.

CONTAGION (2011, dir. Steven Soderbergh)

2011-09-12T14:22:00.002-05:00

With Soderbergh on the verge of a possibly permanent hiatus, these last few films we're getting from him seem a little more precious. CONTAGION, a thriller about a deadly virus sweeping through the world population, is a pretty slick bit of work, generally well-written, acted, and photographed, but, while this bit of respectable entertainment achieves a decent level of suspense, it's also fairly forgettable, lacking standout moments or ideas to elevate it beyond being a decent time at the movies. CONTAGION does what it says on the tin, so to speak, but nothing more.

As a Soderbergh fan, I'm looking forward to his next effort a bit more: the unabashedly trashy action thriller, HAYWIRE.

Twilight of the Gods

2011-08-15T21:18:00.000-05:00

We knew it had to happen sometime. Maybe it's premature to declare the US of A dead in the water, but with our current mess and no foreseeable bright future, it doesn't make a great deal of sense for me to be an optimist. So, in this time of national decay and global disorder as nations reap the reward of their hubris and folly, I naturally turn toward The End that all minor tremors of entropy foreshadow.

The End never received such a stellar representation (in opera, anyway, though likely in any narrative art) as in Wagner's Götterdämmerung:

I'm hoping I can make it to the Met's new production, though tickets are admittedly scarce.

This year, we also have two apocalyptic films; Malick's The Tree of Life and Von Trier's Melancholia. I've yet to see the latter, but I'm interested to see how they measure against each other (as they have often been compared and contrasted since their Cannes debut this year). Malick's Tree of Life offers an optimistic, it-all-turns-out-good-in-the-end, pseudo-Christian vision of cosmic history, and Von Trier's Melancholia, as far as I understand it, serves up a bleak, welcome-to-the-abyss, nihilistic finale (incidentally, Melancholia uses Wagner as the score to its depictions of The End). Both films, though, posit annihilation through natural forces; Malick gives us the gradual demise of the stars, and Von Trier gives us a collision of planets.

We can also turn to bleak finales of Cold War films such as Dr. Strangelove or Beneath the Planet of the Apes, which envision total annihilation by nuclear war. My favorite variation on this is the terrifying meltdown at the end of Kiss Me Deadly, which plays out such nuclear destruction on a smaller scale, but retains the apocalyptic overtones:

But the "Lacrimosa" from Mozart's Requiem stays with me the most. Though only the first nine bars were actually authored by Mozart, and it was completed after his death by other individuals, it is nevertheless a breathtakingly beautiful piece.

Two Highly Anticipated 2011 Releases

2011-07-27T10:22:00.000-05:00

THE GRANDMASTERS (dir. Kar-Wai Wong)

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY (dir. Tomas Alfredson)

Twenty Favorite Films: Because I Like Lists

2011-07-27T10:15:00.000-05:00

In lieu of posting any actual content, which would take serious thought and work, here's a top twenty films list I've compiled for myself that I think holds up pretty well:

A. I. : ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
APOCALYPSE NOW
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
2046
BARRY LYNDON
THE BIG LEBOWSKI
BLOW OUT
F FOR FAKE
KISS ME DEADLY
THE LAST WAVE
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
POINT BLANK
THE RED SHOES
RAN
THERE WILL BE BLOOD
TOUCH OF EVIL
THE TRIAL
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
VERTIGO
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN

Yeah, that seems to work out alright.

Seriously, though, I have been tinkering on a review of Nicolas Roeg's INSIGNIFICANCE which I may or may not eventually publish here (in short, the new Criterion release is splendid; the film isn't quite splendid, but it is interesting).

Discussing THE TREE OF LIFE

2011-05-18T19:10:00.000-05:00

I'm not among those lucky folks who have seen THE TREE OF LIFE and are able to discuss its intricacies. But, for various reasons, I suspect when I have, I'll have much to echo or respond to in Robert Koehler's review, a large portion of which I've excerpted below:

Most critical in a 2001 comparison is how this “Dawn of Life” film-within-a-film climaxes, and how it points to the film’s central philosophical defects. A long-necked dinosaur, first observed at its beach hangout, lopes into a forest where it encounters a smaller, wounded dino prey, looking for all intents and purposes like dinner as it presses a claw like a death-grip on the little guy’s head. But, in a truly Spielbergian moment (and even Spielberg couldn’t conceive of such dino-to-dino kindness in Jurassic Park), big dino takes apparent compassion upon little dino, releasing its grip and consoling it with a gentle stroke. This, we can only conclude, is the birth of love, or, at least, pity. (Compare, if you will, this image of big dino’s gentle claw with Monica Vitti’s white hand on the forehead of Gabriele Ferzetti at the end of L’Avventura for a useful contrasting expression of genuine pity.) This is pure anthropomorphism, and precisely the opposite of Kubrick’s apes-into-men. Such a depiction of dinosaur love is little more than human wish fulfillment, a fantasy–even a romance–of altruism amongst animals, and this after having just been told in blunt terms on the film’s whispered soundtrack that “nature” is bad. Kubrick’s apes, having accidentally stumbled upon the usefulness of bones as weapons, deploy their invention to kill members of a competing band of apes, confirming that man’s innately violent nature is certain to make tools into implements of violence. These, not love, are some of the elements of evolution.

A clearer difference in philosophies, between Malick’s essentially naive romanticism–which proves to gird much of what follows in The Tree of Life–and Kubrick’s Darwinian view of natural selection, is hard to imagine. Yet this probably wont stop the upcoming flow of commentary likening The Tree of Life to 2001, encouraged by the participation of Kubrick’s important special effects collaborator, Douglas Trumbull, with Malick, as well as a spate of classical music selections (John Tavener, Holst) which directly acknowledge the influence of 2001. While Malick’s early films, including Badlands and Days of Heaven, combined an awareness of class conflict and the inevitable clashes of human desire with a fascination with nature that bordered on Pantheism, The Tree of Life dives headlong into a world view that can be summed up in the Beatles lyric, “All you need is love.” Mrs. O’Brien, in one of her few whispered voice-overs as the family moves out of their old Waco house, states that without love, life goes by in a flash. Love is seen to finally bridge the growing barrier between Jack and his father. An increasing lack of love between Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien can be seen to fuel his angry outbursts when he’s confronted with his boys’ disobedience.

At the same time, Malick is either uninterested, unwilling or unable to convey emotions on screen, except through the crutch of all those whispered voiceovers allowing us to eavesdrop on characters’ inner thoughts. The annoying mannerism of the whispering aside (and it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the spectacular misjudgment of the flagrant overuse of this device, to say nothing of its pseudo-poetic language, the on-the-nose obviousness and the particularly vexing issue that about 75% of what’s whispered is inaudible, even when seen in the Directors Guild’s superb big cinema), the emotional undercurrents are crowded off screen for the picturesque. The actual human dimension is replaced by bits of bullet-point dialogue; when Jack faces his father and says, “You’d like to kill me,” it doesn’t shock or resound, because there’s nothing backing it up, since there’s nothing in the father’s behavior that’s remotely homicidal, only aggressive. Malick wants to convey love’s force, and, as he deems it, “grace,” but he can’t find cinematic correlatives for it. His narrative contains all the aspects of a primal father-son conflict, but he drains it away and replaces it with New Age quotations. “The glory” is a term heard often, in a throwback to its use in The Thin Red Line to far more powerful effect, since it was tied to actual human endeavors and historical events. (The New Age effect also flows to the soundtrack: Tavener is a favorite composer with the New Age crowd, as well as the progressive Anglo-Saxon Christian crowd, with whom New Agers have much in common. This is also true of Henryk Gorecki, whose music is also periodically cued.) Even Mr. O’Brien’s real-world work at a giant oil refinery and his efforts to cash in on his various patents comes across as abstract and vacuous, materialist engagements framed in purely spiritualist terms; the refinery resembles nothing so much as a cathedral of industrial pipes, while the Texas state capitol building where O’Brien tramps around aimlessly and to no real purpose is filmed as if it were St. Peter’s in Rome.

The Tree of Life begins with a quotation from the Book of Job (Chapter 38, verses 4 and 7, in which God puts Job in his place), and references Job’s trials with God later during a pastor’s sermon. Nods to God and Job and references and quotations do not, however, by themselves earn meaning. Nor does a train of images early on of the family grieving over news of the son’s death conjure up a Job-like struggle. A detectable pattern emerges: Ideas are stated, and then not explored in cinematic terms. Worse: the ideas contradict one another. Take the matter of grace vs. nature, which Malick clearly intends as his central dialectic. The ways in which these two states of mind/existence are defined by Malick has little to do with any recognizable view of either. Grace is typically associated with either the comforting power of a supreme being, or in Malick’s Pantheistic view, an equilibrium between humans and nature. As for Nature, philosophers have clashed for centuries over it’s essential meaning, ranging from the kind of anthropomorphism dramatized by Malick with his dinos or poets’ use of “the pathetic fallacy” to a more scientific view that sees Nature as an amoral process of birth, life, death, decay and regeneration–the view, if you will, of “2001.” But Malick has wholly confused his terms. Two direct literary influences on The Tree of Life are William Faulkner and D. H. Lawrence; Faulkner for his fracturing of narrative into a stream-of-consciousness, better to convey the unstructured momentum of inner thought and emotions, and for his fascination with the eternal battle between fathers and sons; Lawrence for his concern with the conflict between what he viewed as ”nature” and “will.” Mr. O’Brien is a purely Lawrencian character, which Malick proceeds to utterly misread. Rather than representing nature (that would actually be Mrs. O’Brien, who’s constantly depicted outdoors, under the trees, walking barefoot in the grass, dipping her toes in water), Mr. O’Brien is pure will, and he states it as such in a few lines of dialogue while advising his sons on the cruel ways of the world. His entire character can be viewed as a man trying to exert his will on his sons to follow in his path; the middle son’s interest in music draws him closer to the father, who regrets aborting his own music studies (now channeled into some organ playing of Bach and record-spinning of Brahms and other composers at home), and which seems to spur Jack’s jealousy. This is not nature, but it’s opposite, the human forces impinging themselves upon nature, exactly as Lawrence viewed it.

Ultimately, Malick discards these matters for something far more amorphous: Adult Jack’s quest for meaning, conveyed in a manner that can only be described as graduate film school surrealism. In the early reels, Malick inserts strange footage of Sean Penn in his business suit traipsing through what may be a desert in California or Utah; trippy and maybe a bit silly, but quickly forgotten what with the dinosaurs and Jack v. dad tale that consumes much of the film. But then, in the final reel, it all comes back, with Penn’s Jack still traipsing, climbing over rocks, walking through a door standing alone in the wilderness (I’m not kidding), then the roofless family house (or a small section of it replicated by Malick’s longtime production designer Jack Fisk in the desert) and finally reaching a long, flat beach with lots of folks blankly wandering around. They include, in a true stroke of Kitsch, Jack’s family as they were when he was a kid; these are, it seems, the living dead, or ghosts of Jack’s past, or perhaps something else, since almost nobody in this gaggle of beachside wanderers outside of the family is recognizable from the rest of the film. Nothing much happens; Penn and Pitt walk silently together in the film’s only superstar moment, the kids receive a few hugs, the water laps ashore, and then it’s over.

And to what end? It might reasonably be expected that this sequence should be adult Jack’s final cathartic release of emotional memory, an expunging of familial toxins, a recognition of impending mortality as well as a reconciliation with the past. Whether this was Malick’s intention can only be guessed at, since none of this happens, and nothing else either, expect a bunch of images of various people walking on the beach. Literally, and nothing more, pictures. This is important, since endings are important, this is where he ends the film, accented by such postcard Kitsch as a shot of a field of sunflowers. Nothing more clearly points to a film run aground by undeveloped ideas in contradiction than this.

The tragedy of The Tree of Life is the film itself, a project of such profound importance to the filmmaker that he worked on concepts and images for it ever since he’s been a filmmaker–nearly 38 years. He clearly based the family story on his own memories growing up in Texas as a boy in the late 1940s and 1950s, and this is best preserved on film in the many wonderful, Wyeth-like moments of rambunctious boys playing indoors and out, having fun for the sake of it. (The sole moments of anything like lightness in a film utterly devoid of humor, irony or inference.) He sweated out several 200-page drafts, and when producer Bill Pohlad told him a decade ago that his script contained two films that weren’t joined into one, he worked on it some more, making The New World in the interim. It’s now clear that Pohlad’s criticism was precisely on point; what hardly makes any sense is why the film was subsequently funded and produced when the very problem Pohlad defined was never resolved. Like the New Age itself, The Tree of Life is an aspirational quest that can’t come full circle, since it never determines what it is in the first place, and concludes as a cinema con.

The Awfulness of Beauty

2011-05-07T22:58:00.003-05:00

"The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man."
~Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

The Future Cinema

2011-02-19T13:00:00.000-06:00

Though the future cinematic landscape seems to be over-populated reboots and sequels, there are nevertheless some interesting, ambitious projects up ahead:

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, dir. Guillermo Del Toro
Del Toro's MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS plans to be an epic, pulse-pounding action horror romp the likes of which hasn't been seen, well, ever. While Del Toro seems more interested in mining Lovecraft's novel for excitement than for existential terror, which is a little disappointing to me, there's no denying that this film will likely be unmissable.

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, dir. Werner Herzog
Herzog's documentary about the Chauvet caves in the south of France has dazzled critics. Some of Herzog's recent films have left me cold (RESCUE DAWN and BAD LIEUTENANT), but as a documentary filmmaker, he's one of the best around.

CONTAGION, dir. Steven Soderbergh
Soderbergh is planning on retiring after CONTAGION and a few other films. Let's hope he makes this one count; it's a kind of cinema verite thriller with a sprawling storyline about an out-of-control virus. The cast is crammed with high-profile names, including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, and Sanaa Lathan.

DALI, dir. Philippe Mora
A highly unusual, non-linear biopic of artist Salvador Dali, bring his artwork to life in startling 3-D (a format for which Dali supposedly had a great affinity). Philippe Mora has an odd filmography, but there's good reason to believe this film will be worth a look.

FAUST, dir. Alexander Sokurov
I was waiting for this one to come out this year. Alas, no luck. Sokurov, the Russian visionary behind RUSSIAN ARK and THE SUN, gives us his take on the Faust narrative.

GOD OF CARNAGE, dir. Roman Polanski
Polanski follows THE GHOST WRITER with a blackly comic, WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?-esque tooth-and-nail battle between two couples after their children get into a conflict. Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, and Kate Winslet star.

THE GRANDMASTERS, dir. Kar-Wai Wong
For my money, there is no contemporary filmmaker greater than Wong. His last film, which was six or so years ago, was a knock-out. For this film, he returns to the martial arts, ground he explored before in ASHES OF TIME. Beautiful visuals and sorrowful romance are expected.

INHERENT VICE, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
Thomas Pynchon supposedly has given his seal of approval to Anderson's screenplay adaptation of Pynchon's novel, set in the California of the early 1970s, is a kind of psychedelic Raymond Chandler story, breezy and fun. Should be an interesting return to the realms of Anderson's earlier outings, HARD EIGHT and BOOGIE NIGHTS.

THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET, dir. Martin Scorsese
Scorsese gives us a 3-D kids film. Word is that the film's budget has ballooned to epic size as Scorsese has struggled to get a handle on the technology. Good or bad, I want to see the end result.

THE MASTER, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
The other Anderson film in the pipeline, THE MASTER is a film about a cult known as the Cause (a thinly-veiled representation of Scientology) and a ne'er do well who gets caught up in its rise to success.

THE MILL AND THE CROSS, dir. Lech Majewski
What a film this appears to be. THE MILL AND THE CROSS brings to life the art of Brueghel the Elder, using all kinds of digital trickery. The trailer alone is a visual feast, even if the film itself might turn out to be a bit slight.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, dir. Orson Welles
It's hard to predict whether or not this film will ever see the light of day. But recent reports suggest that Welles' final work may finally be completed (most likely at the hands of director Peter Bogdanovich, a friend of Welles and a star of the film in question). I hope so.

THE TREE OF LIFE, dir. Terrence Malick
I kinda hate the sentimental trailer for this film, but there's enough ambition and visual fire-power on display to keep me intrigued. It juxtaposes the story of the cosmos--its birth and death--against the life of a young boy growing up in the 1950s, struggling with the realities of death and suffering.

UBIK, dir. Michel Gondry
This one, just announced, will hopefully come to pass, and soon. UBIK, arguably the greatest of sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick's novels, is a maddening, fractured tale about states of mind and time and consumerism. The thought of making a two-hour film out of it boggles the mind, but I'll be interested to see what kind of twisted, mind-bending experience Gondry can conjure up.

The Arts & Faith Top 100 Films (and Top 25 Horror Films)

2011-02-15T22:09:00.000-06:00

Film lists are everywhere these days, and now we have another one. IMAGE, a journal of literature and the arts, has a sister community of film lovers that goes by the name ARTS & FAITH. This community, around since 1999, has dedicated itself to exploring the intersection of, well, arts and faith. Every once in a while, they release a Top 100 films list, the outgrowth of much conversation and struggle within the community about the place of mystery and meaning in the cinematic medium.

As a member the community, I've had the pleasure of voting for the Top 100, and I think it's probably the strongest Top 100 we've yet produced, marvelously diverse and very accomplished. You can check it out here.

In addition to the Top 100, the ARTS & FAITH community has produced a Top 25 Horror Films list, which is similarly quite strong, and will hopefully be one of many themed lists in the future. That one is right here.

Great Scenes: THE LION IN WINTER (1968, dir. Anthony Harvey)

2011-01-30T00:30:00.000-06:00

Great Scenes: TOUCH OF EVIL (1958, dir. Orson Welles)

2011-01-29T23:52:00.000-06:00

Great Scenes: LOLITA (1962, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

2011-01-29T23:46:00.002-06:00

Arnold Böcklin: Prometheus (1882)

2011-01-28T21:48:00.000-06:00

Visions of the Future

2011-01-25T20:52:00.000-06:00

Talking about Darren Aronofksy

2010-12-14T05:42:00.000-06:00

The House Next Door has been housing some discussion about Darren Aronofsky and BLACK SWAN. In the first part of the conversation, Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard walk through his first four feature films: PI, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, THE FOUNTAIN, and THE WRESTLER. In the second part, they tackle BLACK SWAN. I'll be surprised if you can find a better examination of Darren Aronofsky's body of work.

Salvador Dali's DESTINO

2010-12-01T12:20:00.002-06:00

Alain Resnais and WILD GRASS

2010-11-27T06:57:00.000-06:00

I'm an avowed fan of Alain Resnais. If the only film he had ever made was the sublime HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, he would still be considered one of the greatest film directors of all time, but his resume displays one tremendous film after another. His latest, WILD GRASS, premiered this year and I can't wait to see it. The trailer hints at tremendous visual virtuosity:

BRIGHTON ROCK trailer

2010-11-27T06:52:00.001-06:00

Doesn't look bad:

BLACK SWAN (2010, dir. Darren Aronofksy)

2010-11-26T11:44:00.003-06:00

BLACK SWAN never offers a more thrilling moment than it does in one of its three Tchaikovsky-scored ballet sequences. The camera frantically sweeps through the movement, turning something elegant and graceful into something maddening and overwhelming. Other moments and images also linger in my memory, if not quite as strongly: the lithe form of ballet dancer Nina transforming into a swan creature, or a nail file finding a particularly gruesome purpose.

But despite these effective moments, BLACK SWAN cannot be quite called a complete success. I will openly make the case that BLACK SWAN is Darren Aronofksy's most successful film to date--his bombastic instincts work better here than ever before thanks to a story that so welcomes his more theatrical instincts--but like so many of Aronofsky's previous outings, it is both a bit shallow side and somewhat unimaginative, particularly when one considers the shape of BLACK SWAN's narrative (a few minor effective twists withstanding).

When he's not toying with swan imagery, Aronofsky stuffs BLACK SWAN with stock horror images and sequences, and the psychology of BLACK SWAN's central character comes across like a bit of an unimaginative cocktail of other films, from REPULSION to THE RED SHOES to MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Aronofsky, of course, is trying to play with the classic doppelgänger trope that plays such a significant role in Tchaikovsky's own SWAN LAKE--he's playing with a tradition, not out to reinvent the wheel--but surely Aronofsky could have brought some of these contrasting aspects (life versus death, sexual freedom versus sexual restraint, assertiveness versus timidity) in more intriguing and illuminating ways than he does here.

But the cast certainly does their very best with the material. Natalie Portman, who I have never found impressive, delivers remarkably strong work here as Nina, moving from timid to ferocious. She gets bonus points for the year of ballet training she had to undergo to take the part; even though the film often shoots her from the waist up, presumably to mask her imperfections, there are moments where we are given a complete view of her dance performance and she does remarkably well indeed. Mila Kunis' Lily serves as a near-perfect opposite to Portman's Nina, relaxed, fun, and sensual. In the shadow of these two young promising ballerinas is Winona Ryder's washed-up Beth, who is given limited, but memorable screentime, and lingering over all of these dancers is Vincent Cassel's Thomas Leroy, a ballet instructor with a predatory, controlling streak.

I am not as enthusiastic about Barbara Hershey turn as Nina's overbearing, dominating mother, Erica. Her character is little more than an archetype, almost always stern or forceful. A more subtle take on the character, more like the casually controlling Mrs. Iselin from THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, which Angela Lansbury played to perfection, would have been both more convincing and unsettling.

Weaknesses aside, it must be said that BLACK SWAN is ultimately more than the sum of its parts; Aronofsky's film propels the audience through to a furious climax with such force that the sheer visceral power of the affair overwhelms many of the less satisfying, rote elements of his story. Aronofsky might not have yet made his masterpiece, but on the evidence of BLACK SWAN, he is getting close.

Why I visit book sales

2010-10-17T18:36:00.000-05:00

For less than $25, I picked up the following today:

Ingmar Bergman: A FILM TRILOGY - THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, THE COMMUNICANTS (WINTER LIGHT), THE SILENCE
Ray Bradbury: THE ILLUSTRATED MAN
Bertolt Brecht: COLLECTED PLAYS VOL. I and VOL. V
Charlotte Chandler: I, FELLINI
Joseph Conrad: TALES OF UNREST
Michael Cox: THE MEANING OF NIGHT
Fyodor Dostoevsky: HOUSE OF THE DEAD
Fyodor Dostoevsky: TALES OF THE UNDERGROUND
Daphne DuMarier: REBECCA
Ian Fleming: THRILLING CITIES
Frederick Forsyth: THE DAY OF THE JACKAL
John Fowles: THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN
Graham Greene: MAY WE BORROW YOUR HUSBAND? & OTHER COMEDIES OF THE SEXUAL LIFE
Graham Greene: THE PORTABLE GRAHAM GREENE (THE HEART OF THE MATTER, THE THIRD MAN)
Aldous Huxley: BRAVE NEW WORLD
Aldous Huxley: POINT AND COUNTERPOINT
Doris Lessing: BRIEFING FOR A DESCENT INTO HELL
William Shakespeare: THE COMEDIES AND TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE
Upton Sinclair: ARROWSMITH
Booth Tarkington: THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

THE SOCIAL NETWORK reviewed

2010-10-02T16:10:00.003-05:00

Coming in after a veritable storm of critical acclaim, much of it merited, THE SOCIAL NETWORK has taken the lead this weekend at the box office. I suspect it will continue on to great success. THE SOCIAL NETWORK represents a rare breed of film, one that showcases remarkable craftsmanship while remaining entirely accessible. THE SOCIAL NETWORK deals in smart, tight storytelling with wit and emotional heft, offering a welcome twist on the "rise to power as a rise to isolation" narrative that we Americans love so much. As far as I can tell, the title does not refer to Facebook so much as it refers to the social desires that drive power struggles.

If any one element of THE SOCIAL NETWORK deserves acclaim, it is Aaron Sorkin's script, which propels the film. Fincher claims that he more or less shot Sorkin's first draft, crediting Sorkin for shaping the film as we see it. But we cannot dismiss Fincher's contribution as director; on the page, Sorkin's script lacked weight. It was energetic but shallow. Fincher, in his stylistic choices and casting calls cultivates an emotional core that subtly builds throughout the film, rendering a conclusion that might, in other hands, feel contrived, with resounding sadness. That Sorkin and Fincher can make so much of adolescent/post-adolescent characters, their relationships, and the development of a website, all of which do not seem the stuff of rich drama, is, indeed, fairly remarkable.

Contrary to my own expectations, THE SOCIAL NETWORK is not an attempt at character assassination. Its subject, the somewhat enigmatic Mark Zuckerberg, has been adapted into a fairly nuanced character (thanks, in no small part, to Jesse Eisenberg's very fine performance). The Zuckerberg of THE SOCIAL NETWORK is not an unsympathetic monster. He dabbles in being a jerk, sometimes in extreme degrees, but there remains something sympathetic about him. At times, we even root for him. This Zuckerberg stands as an outsider, an underdog, someone refusing to play by the rules of the establishment because he knows he cannot win that way. That tension between wanting to belong and knowing he never really can provides his arc with some genuine ambiguity, and even as the story places him on a trajectory towards loneliness, it never outright damns him.

The supporting characters, too, receive engaging, layered characterization. Andrew Garfield, who plays Eduardo, Zuckerberg's best friend, proves to be a real find (he has been cast as the new Spider-Man, which, from my perspective at least, is somewhat unfortunate; he's capable of far more than donning spandex and fighting outrageous CGI villains). Armie Hammer's turn as the Winklevoss twins provides ample humor throughout, managing to give life to the classic archetype of the privileged, super-competitive frat boy leader(s) while not ever becoming the standard cartoon villain we might expect. Rounding it all out is Justin Timberlake as maverick Sean Parker, demonstrating that Timberlake does, in fact, have some genuine acting chops.

Will THE SOCIAL NETWORK win Best Picture at the next Oscars? Who can say? It is undoubtedly the strongest contender at the moment (excluding foreign films, which tend not to carry weight in that category; the Italian film I AM LOVE is this year's masterpiece, though I have no doubt Oscar will neglect it when the time comes), and would make a better winner than most. But the Oscars have an unfortunate habit of overlooking quality, and because of that trend, I suspect THE SOCIAL NETWORK will lose out to some other film. But THE SOCIAL NETWORK will not be worse off for it; unlike so many Best Picture winners, it is too good to be forgotten.

"The Apparition" by Gustave Moreau

2010-09-25T09:54:00.000-05:00

"The Victory of the Sphinx" by Gustave Moreau

2010-09-25T09:52:00.000-05:00

Oliver Stone's NIXON

2010-09-25T08:44:00.000-05:00

I cannot claim to be one of Oliver Stone's fans. He is a competent storyteller, but not usually a very sophisticated one. His films lack subtlety and subtext, as do another notable American film director, Steven Spielberg. I suppose there is something admirable about such straight-shooting, but there is something limiting about it, as well. Furthermore, Stone's place as a decidedly political filmmaker does not endear him to me. Stone can be controversial in profoundly stupid ways.

But one film of Stone's genuinely works for me. Even more so than his alleged "classics," like PLATOON or WALL STREET or JFK, his epic NIXON strikes me as a major accomplishment, the film where everything genuinely comes together for Stone. He tells the story of the very controversial Richard Nixon like Shakespearean tragedy, anchored in a riveting, astonishing performance by Anthony Hopkins. NIXON fires on all cylinders, and the sheer force of the film makes it a winner.

The American Constitution

2010-09-25T08:16:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Alan Jacobs for bringing this article by Jonathan Bernstein to my attention. A selection:

“But, yes, race. The Constitution protected slavery, no question about it. Still…I’d argue that even there, the values of the Constitution are not values of racism and dehumanization — not even the odious 3/5 clause. The values of the Constitution are pragmatism and compromise in the spirit of self-government among real people in the real world. The values of the Constitution say: in a democracy, in true self-government, one sometimes has to learn to work with bigots, with really hateful people, and find a way to keep things together anyway. Now, that’s a tough lesson, and it will without a doubt lead to mistakes…there’s no question but that Americans who were not themselves bigots have, over time, made many mistakes of pragmatism and compromise that never should have happened. But I’m not unhappy that the Constitution forces us to see that self-government involves making terrible choices. The alternative is a kind of happy-talk democracy, in which we pretend that The People are good and pure, and that if only we properly listened to The People then everything would be hunky-dory and flowers and rainbows. Democracy, by that conception, is equivalent at all times with what’s good and right. The Constitution, however, says: no! Self-government means nothing more than self-government, and sometimes that’s going to mean tragically horrible choices. Believing in democracy — really believing in democracy — means accepting that abhorrent things are going to be done in your name, because you are a citizen, not a subject. Even worse, believing in democracy — really believing in democracy — means that sometimes you will have to grudgingly support abhorrent things because the alternative is something even worse, and because, as a citizen, you have to choose.”

Glenn Kenny on THE SOCIAL NETWORK

2010-09-25T08:02:00.000-05:00

Glenn Kenny's thoughts on THE SOCIAL NETWORK strike me as especially, well, thoughtful:

I said it on Twitter and I'll say it here: proclaiming "I'm not interested in this movie because I couldn't care less about Facebook" is like announcing "I'm not interested in All About Eve because self-absorbed theater people really turn me off." I mean, we're all grown-ups here, we've been around, we've seen a bunch of films, we all kind of know...what I'm trying to say here is, isn't it pretty elemental...that a film isn't really necessarily "about" what it's about; no? This being the sort of observation that allows the very gifted Mr. Sorkin to invoke Aeschylus at press conferences, because of the whole grand-human-themes bit. It may be pompous on his part, but it's not entirely wrong. (For all that, there are some who believe that the film's themes aren't Sufficiently Something to make it a Really Significant something; see, if you must, David Poland's silly "Doesn't say Big Theme to me" "review," which gave me a bracing reminder of why I found the guy such an inviting figure of fun and/or rabid, insane contempt back when I was having my own angry-man-in-the-dark [that's a line from the movie!] relationship with the film blogosphere.) Anyway, you might be wondering what my larger point is, e.g., do I actually think this film is as good as All About Eve, and, yeah, I do, maybe. Most likely, even. And it's got snazzier visuals that are going to wear better than 95% of the other Snazzy Visuals of Our Time, too. (Godard, writing on Joseph Mankiewicz in 1958, provides a presage of why a Sorkin/Fincher teamup is close to ideal, and why Sorkin is probably smart not to try his hand at directing: "[T]he complaint one might make about Mankiewicz: [...] he is too perfect a writer to be a perfect director as well. Basically, what is missing from The Quiet American is cinema. It has everything—brilliant actors, sparkling dialogue—but no cinema." Fincher brings cinema to The Social Network in a way that Rob Reiner absolutely could not for A Few Good Men.)

Let me move the bar on this question, just for the hell of it: why wouldn't you be interested in Facebook, anyway, except for the opportunity to place yourself above it. There's a commenter over at Wells' place who's yammering on about how Social Network is about "an essentially trivial social phenomenon," and in order for it to be really important is should really be about "about Britain's war for survival" (everybody genuflect!) or something else that's really elevating. Not only is this bleat classic dumb faux-middlebrow breast-beating, it could also be wrong. Yes, Facebook is a "social phenomenon," but we don't know that it's necessarily trivial. The internet has, in its various permutations, been redefining the concept of privacy, which concept I suspect—I'm not entirely sure, mind you, I only suspect—is a central one in certain corners of Western culture. That, in itself, is potentially a very big deal for Civilization Itself, and Facebook is an interesting and apt cynosure from/at which to consider this cultural shift, I think.

Kubrick's FEAR AND DESIRE to get a DVD release?

2010-09-23T12:51:00.002-05:00

So says the Wall Street Journal:

Stanley Kubrick completists may soon have another DVD to add to their collections – and one, amazingly enough, many may not have seen. On Sunday evening, Caroline Frick Page, curator of motion pictures for the George Eastman House, hosted a screening at Los Angeles’ American Cinematheque of the director’s little-seen 1953 feature debut, “Fear and Desire,” where she revealed that plans were underway to restore the film and eventually release it on home video.

Praise for THE SOCIAL NETWORK

2010-09-23T12:46:00.000-05:00

I've been anticipating this film--the "Facebook movie"-- for a while. I dig David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin. But never did I expect it to be getting this degree of praise. Just check out these reviews:

Todd McCarthy, DEEP FOCUS:

"The Social Network is about so many things—the primacy of an idea, the things that define a generation, ambition and drive fomented by rejection and anger, the limitations of orthodoxy versus unbridled imagination, simultaneous creative and destructive impulses, the fluidity of what’s considered an outsider and insider, rebel and establishment—that it provides almost an unlimited number of things to think about, while also providing a viewing experience of continual stimulation. Everything about it is rich."

Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE:

"This is the first film I've seen so far in 2010 that deserves my highest rating, 4 stars. It's better than the movie of the year. The Social Network also defines the decade . . . [A] fierce and funny powerhouse, a modern Rashomon that will pin you to your seat."

Lou Lumenick, NEW YORK POST:

"Quite possibly the first truly great fact-based movie of the 21st century."

Justin Chang, VARIETY:

"A very modern story inspires a classic study in ego, greed and the slippery nature of American enterprise in The Social Network, David Fincher's penetrating account of the accidental founding of Facebook. Moving like a speedboat across two hours of near-nonstop talk, scribe Aaron Sorkin's blow-by-blow deconstruction of how Harvard computer whiz Mark Zuckerberg (and friends) stumbled on a multibillion-dollar phenomenon continues Fincher's fascinating transition from genre filmmaker extraordinaire to indelible chronicler of our times."

Kirk Honeycutt, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER:

"The film comes down to a mesmerizing portrait of a man who in any other age would perhaps be deemed nuts or useless, but in the Internet age has this mental agility to transform an idea into an empire."

Drew McWeeney, HITFLIX:

"The Social Network represents the very best of both Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, a combination I never would have expected to see."

Whether you like it or not, INDIANA JONES V is coming.

2010-08-20T18:55:00.002-05:00

Shia LaBeouf spills the beans to ShowbizSpy:

“They’re script writing right now,” says Shia. “I got called into Steven’s office and he pitched a little bit to me and it sounds crazy, it sounds really cool.”

For better or worse, INDY V looms on the horizon. Let's hope that Steven sees this as a challenge rather than just another way for he and the gang to goof off and have a good time.

"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats

2010-08-06T07:38:00.000-05:00

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Ten Films: 1960s

2010-07-31T09:55:00.000-05:00

This time, a glorious decade for cinema.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
A better science fiction film has never been made. In fact, a better film, period, may never have been made. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is one of the few contemporary works of art to successfully create a new, over-arching myth of human identity and purpose. That it is able to do so with such simplicity is truly astonishing.

8 ½ (1963, dir. Federico Fellini)
The definitive film about an artist in crisis. Fellini's semi-autobiographical film about a director and his too-complicated life is told with great passion, imagination, and beauty.

ANDREI RUBLEV (1966, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)
Another list, another Tarkovsky film. ANDREI RUBLEV is a kind of biopic, detailing the life of the notable icon painter of the same name, though admittedly Tarkovsky only loosely follows history. Tarkovsky is less interested in the historical Andrei than he is in the nature of the artist, and he explores that territory with marvelous insight and profundity.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962, dir. David Lean)
There's little I can say about LAWRENCE OF ARABIA that hasn't been said many times before. It's one of the great achievements, an epic where the characters make as much of an impression as the sweeping vistas.

THE LION IN WINTER (1968, dir. Anthony Harvey)
THE LION IN WINTER is a powerhouse of a film, and that it doesn't receive wider recognition is a great shame. The script by James Goldman, adapted from his play of the same name, is one of the all-time greats, and it's brought to life by an extraordinary cast including Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, and Timothy Dalton.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968, dir. Sergio Leone)
The best Western ever made? Probably. While Leone had made many fine Westerns up until this point--including the phenomenally entertaining THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY--here, Leone made glorious opera out of pulp cliches and traits.

REPULSION (1965, dir. Roman Polanski)
I've never seen madness so effectively brought to cinematic life as it is in REPULSION. Roman Polanski, more than any other director, understands how to make paranoia palpable, perhaps because he is a bit of a paranoid himself. Polanski has little interest in explaining madness--this film, like THE TENANT, is very enigmatic--but he has plenty of interest in the experience of it.

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1965, dir. Martin Ritt)
The anti-James Bond film, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD is the best spy film ever made, largely because of its deep sense of humanity. Richard Burton gives a remarkable turn as the weary, self-loathing spy Alec Leamas, who is used and abused by the cold and calculating government powers, whose interests lie in political power games rather than in care for human lives.

THE TRIAL (1962, dir. Orson Welles)
Orson Welles claimed it was his best film and I'm inclined to agree. It's certainly the film where his vision feels most complete, untouched by the meddling hand of the Hollywoood studio system. If Welles had been given this much freedom and support in his other cinematic endeavors, the world of cinema would almost certainly be that much richer. Nevertheless, THE TRIAL is enough on its own.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966, dir. Mike Nichols)
An extraordinary play rendered into an extraordinary film. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton deliver the performances of their careers, and director Mike Nichols finds just the right style to give this material life.

VIVRE SA VIE (1962, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
Godard was never in finer form than he was in the 1960s (though his contemporary work is somewhat under-appreciated), and any one of his films from that bold decade could rightly belong on this list. VIVRE SA VIE is my pick, as it is the most human and affecting of his films.

2010-07-21T21:34:00.000-05:00

"It is far harder to kill a phantom than reality."
~Virginia Woolf

"Batter my heart" from John Adams' DR. ATOMIC

2010-07-21T09:29:00.000-05:00

John Adams stands as one of the finest living composers, and this marvelous setting of John Dunne's "Batter my heart, three-person'd God" has been on my mind the past few days.

Ten Films: 1990s

2010-07-21T09:16:00.001-05:00

I don't like the 1990s, as far as cinema is concerned. If I was fonder of Tarantino, maybe I would find more to revel in, but the 1990s strike me as a real dry spell. Nevertheless, here are my picks:

BARTON FINK (1991, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
The Coens really came alive in this decade, putting their stamp on American cinema. For my money, BARTON FINK is the most fascinating and powerful of their works. It's a cryptic kind of dream story, a story of artistic frustration, and as usual with the Coens, the strangeness of the world.

CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994, dir. Kar-Wai Wong)
Wong, perhaps the greatest of the contemporary directors, earns two films on this list. I still have yet to see all of Wong's 1990s output (I'm looking forward to his wuxia film, ASHES OF TIME), but I doubt they will earn my affection quite as much as this breathtaking film about the shared experience of human life.

DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990, dir. Kar-Wai Wong)
The second Wong film to make the list. DAYS OF BEING WILD is actually the beginning of a loose trilogy (it is followed by IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE and 2046), but it stands strongly on its own. It's a wonderful place to begin in understanding Wong's obsessions, with his weary, melancholy sense of romanticism and human identity.

FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (1993, dir. Kaige Chen)
The only Chinese film to ever win the Palm D'or at the Cannes film festival, this heartbreaking tragedy deals with the shift in Chinese culture that occurred during and following World War II. It would make for an astonishing double-feature with Bertolucci's THE LAST EMPEROR (one of my favorites from the 80s), which comes at similar subject material from a different perspective.

FARGO (1996, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
A terrific black comedy, FARGO explores the Coens' consistent fascination with evil and its absurdity, and does so in a way that is significantly more affecting than their award-winning NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

HEAT (1995, dir. Michael Mann)
Mann's icy crime thriller delivers in just about every way it can. Mann's meticulous hand guides the story in all of its detail, while keeping the pulse running. The writing and performances (Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, before they reached their current washed-up states) are top-notch.

MAGNOLIA (1999, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
I'll get some flack for this choice. By no means is MAGNOLIA a perfect film. Indeed, it may be that BOOGIE NIGHTS, just to take one film into account, is a finer film on numerous levels. But MAGNOLIA is a film with real gusto, unconcerned with the rules of good taste. It's a film that goes for broke, and I'm glad it does. Rarely has a film left me so moved.

THREE COLORS TRILOGY: BLUE, WHITE and RED (1993, 1994, 1994, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski)
These films are the truly great cinematic contributions of the 90s. When it comes to masterpieces, these are the genuine article. Kieslowski, also known for his work on the very-acclaimed DECALOGUE and THE DOUBLE-LIFE OF VERONIQUE, establishes him one of the great masters, a filmmaker of great humanity and great insight.

Kenneth Branagh's THOR

2010-07-19T18:22:00.001-05:00

Next year, Kenneth Branagh's THOR will hit theaters. It is, of course, the cinematic adaptation of the very silly comic book character. Given the images so far, Branagh seems to be reveling in its sheer over-the-topness, with a gloriously FLASH GORDON-esque aesthetic. After a string of dour, down-to-earth superhero flicks, the sheer outrageousness of THOR stands to be a breath of fresh air. I, for one, can't wait.

Ten Films: 1970s

2010-06-23T09:01:00.000-05:00

Now I turn from a weak decade for film to one of the strongest (only the 1960s genuinely give the 1970s a run for its money). As such, my selection of these films is terribly subjective. I could have easily made a list of twenty films. Thirty, even.

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
The 1970s were truly Coppola's greatest decade. Between this film, the first two GODFATHERs, and THE CONVERSATION, he was on a golden run. But of all of them, APOCALYPSE NOW earns my greatest affection. What Coppola produced in this HEART OF DARKNESS adaptation was not the great Vietnam film, or even the great war film, but one of the great horror films. It's not about politics. It's about the irrationality and cruelty that exists deep within the human heart.

BARRY LYNDON (1975, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
Friends who know me know how highly I think of BARRY LYNDON, the most graceful and heartfelt of all of Kubrick's films. Here, Kubrick adopts a visual style that mimics the paintings of the period in which the story takes place, and the pacing of the story echoes that of a stroll through a museum gallery. Its general quietness and restraint has often put off viewers, but nevertheless, BARRY LYNDON stands as one of the most astonishing films ever produced.

CABARET (1972, dir. Bob Fosse)
Fosse adapted one of the defining stage musicals into what is very arguably the best screen musical. Some may feel that CABARET does not deserve that title; in its adapted-to-the-screen form, CABARET plays like more a movie with a great amount of music in it than a true-blue musical, and thus it feels inappropriate to sit it alongside films like SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. Regardless, I submit that CABARET is the very best film to have ever been classified as a musical, regardless of whether the title is warranted.

CHINATOWN (1974, dir. Roman Polanski)
Polanski made his name with more arthouse fare, but he struck gold when he partnered with screenwriter Robert Towne to create a old-school detective story. CHINATOWN hits all the hallmarks of the genre, but quietly subverts it; CHINATOWN is a tale of failure to stop evil, not of success. That deep-seated cynicism, so common to the 1970s, meets with breathtaking Hollywood glamor.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
The other Kubrick film released in the 70s, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE remains a fairly controversial film. However, the unforgettable quality of its images cannot be denied, and I would furthermore suggest that A CLOCKWORK ORANGE offers a chilling and profound narrative about morality. That A CLOCKWORK ORANGE can make us sympathize with a decidedly frightening, vicious individual with no redeeming qualities says a great deal about Kubrick's talents (and it also says something about us as viewers).

THE CONVERSATION (1974, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
The 1970s produced many excellent thrillers, and this one, which won the Palm D'Or at Cannes during the year of its release, stands as my favorite of the bunch. THE CONVERSATION plays an expert mind game not only on its protagonist (perfectly played by Gene Hackman), but on the viewer.

MANHATTAN (1979, dir. Woody Allen)
Woody Allen, love him or hate him, remains one of the most unique presences in American film. ANNIE HALL, released a few years earlier than MANHATTAN, may be his more famous work during the 70s, but MANHATTAN, for my money, is the better of the two. Maybe it's just my enthusiasm for Gershwin's RHAPSODY IN BLUE, which Allen uses to wonderful effect.

NETWORK (1976, dir. Sidney Lumet)
NETWORK, for a film produced over thirty years ago, remains remarkably relevant, perhaps because media continues to play an ever-important role in the consciousness of Western society. Brilliantly cast and even more brilliantly written, NETWORK paints an all-too frightening picture of media run amuck.

STALKER (1979, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)
Another decade, another Tarkovsky film. STALKER is my personal favorite of all of Tarkovsky's works. You won't find a more beautiful science fiction film than this one, a strange examination of the repressed desires of the human heart.

THE TENANT (1976, dir. Roman Polanski)
The second Polanski film to make this list, THE TENANT does not enjoy universal acclaim in the same way that Polanski's REPULSION or CHINATOWN do. But I consider THE TENANT to be one of Polanski's finest works, a film that gets deeper under my skin than any of Polanski's other psychological thrillers. I've never seen a film with a more frightening ending.

Ten Films: 1980s

2010-06-20T21:50:00.002-05:00

There are too many great films out there that I have yet to watch for me to ever produce a "definitive" selection of films for every decade, but I thought, as a fun and quick exercise, I'd go through every decade since the 1920s to the present and post my personal favorites. For my starting point, I've actually chosen the 1980s, largely because I think it's such slim pickings that it's one of the easier lists to make (the only decade, in my humble opinion, that offers a weaker set of films is the very, very dire 1990s).

So, without adieu:

AMADEUS (1984, dir. Milos Forman)
This largely fictitious biopic of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a terrific example of great, accessible, epic filmmaking (of which there are more than a few examples on this list). It's primarily a triumph of writing, rather than performance or direction, though both are more than serviceable. AMADEUS' triumph is that it has created a myth about Mozart that is so compelling, one wishes it was true, even if it isn't (much to the constant irritation of historians).

BLADE RUNNER (1982, dir. Ridley Scott)
One of the greatest science fiction films ever made. To be entirely honest, I don't think BLADE RUNNER is everything everyone claims it is. Its creators had to struggle to make it, and in the end result, it suffers from an underdeveloped screenplay that gives its ideas a surface-level glance, but never truly engages in their implications. But what it lacks in thematic depth it more than makes up for in sheer visual bliss. BLADE RUNNER is one of the few films where its visual style brings a substance all its own. BLADE RUNNER becomes more than the sum of its parts, an awkward, but nevertheless brilliant, experience.

BLUE VELVET (1986, dir. David Lynch)
David Lynch produced some remarkable work in the 1980s, and BLUE VELVET, in my personal estimation, is right at the top of the pack. I don't think it's Lynch's finest work--for that, I point you to ERASERHEAD--but this surreal, dark noir is absolutely captivating.

BRAZIL (1985, dir. Terry Gilliam)
This, Terry Gilliam's finest film to date, is a pitch-perfect comic tragedy of bureaucracy gone mad, a fable about imagination's inability to conquer reality. It's bitingly funny, but also one of the most terrifying films I've ever scene. No other vision of the future has depressed me quite as this one, where the individual disappears, overwhelmed by a tide of incompetence and irrelevance.

KOYAANISQATSI (1982, dir. Godfrey Reggio)
This strange pseudo-documentary defies easy categorization. It's best understood as a kind of cinematic poem, merging visuals to a soundscape produced by composer Philip Glass. Surprisingly exhilarating--even exhausting--KOYAANISQATSI may have some simplistic notions at its heart, but it's unlike anything else I've seen.

THE LAST EMPEROR (1987, dir. Bernardo Bertolucci)
A graceful, sweeping epic. It's remarkable that the first feature film to authorize shooting within the Forbidden City would be so extraordinary, but THE LAST EMPEROR is perhaps the finest film I've seen dealing with the shift in China's cultural tapestry (Chen Kaige's FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE also does an exceedingly fine job).

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988, dir. Martin Scorsese)
In my humble opinion, Martin Scorsese has made two truly great films. The first is TAXI DRIVER. The second is THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. Make no mistake, some of the controversy it garnered is indeed deserved. THE LAST TEMPTATION offers a heretical, not orthodox, presentation of the Christ narrative. But this is not a work of blasphemy, but of inquiry, and the result is also an unforgettable, remarkably vital film experience.

NOSTALGHIA (1983, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)
Tarkovksy, the most remarkable Russian filmmaker, produced a body of remarkable work, almost any one of which is worthy of appearing on a list such as this. Like all of his films, it's also a difficult, challenging film. Indeed, this may be the least accessible film on the list. But for those who are willing to wrestle with his works, the rewards are great.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984, dir. Sergio Leone)
Leone is one of the very best operatic storytellers. That he dealt in pulp narratives has sometimes excluded him from the halls of the truly great, but this is somewhat unfair. Few can imbue a moment with the same visceral power that Leone achieves in his few films. This story is an epic--it runs at nearly four hours--but the story is surprisingly intimate and simple. The story has been boiled down only to the most necessary scenes, and each of those scenes are pitched just right, played just long enough. It has often sat in the shadow of the GODFATHER films, but it is every bit their equal.

RAN (1985, dir. Akira Kurosawa)
For many Kurosawa enthusiasts, his greatest work came earlier in his career. For me, it came towards the end. At any rate, there is little disagreement that RAN is one of Kurosawa's crowning achievements, and perhaps his last great film.

2010-06-13T16:57:00.000-05:00

"The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism."
Albert Camus

"You live in a deranged age, more deranged that usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing."
Walker Percy

"And crawling on the planet's face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time
Lost in space
And meaning."
Richard O'Brien

2010-06-12T21:35:00.000-05:00

"Futurism: This was a movement of intellectuals who wanted to replace tradition with the modern world of machinery, speed, violence, and public relations. It proves that we should be careful what intellectuals wish for, because we might get it."
Brad Holland

2010-06-12T21:21:00.001-05:00

"The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeletons of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life."
Arthur Koestler

Utopia

2010-06-12T21:08:00.000-05:00

"To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia."
Michael Novak

What I'm looking forward to in 2010

2010-06-11T09:32:00.001-05:00

Admittedly, 2010 has been a bit of a dry spell so far. I'll stand behind SHUTTER ISLAND and THE GHOST WRITER (if you haven't seen them yet, they're both very solid, well-crafted thrillers), but nothing else has inspired me. Still, 2010 isn't over just yet, and I can think of a few movies worth anticipating:

FAUST. Master filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (RUSSIAN ARK, THE SUN) turns his considerable talents towards retelling this famous fable. A masterpiece in the making? I expect so.

THE GRAND MASTER. Kar-Wai Wong's latest film. I know next to nothing about it other than that, but Wong's name is enough to inspire the greatest confidence.

INCEPTION. Christopher Nolan, hot off of THE DARK KNIGHT, offers up a mind-bending slice of entertainment. The concept: a heist flick set in people's dreams.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK. David Fincher tells the story of the origins of Facebook. Does that seem a bit silly? Well, it's understandable, but Aaron Sorkin's screenplay has been getting nothing but raves. I'm intrigued.

THE TEMPEST. Julie Taymor returns to Shakespeare. Sure, her latest film (ACROSS THE UNIVERSE) was a travesty, but advance reviews have suggested that her TEMPEST is a return to the good form she displayed with TITUS.

TRUE GRIT. The Coen brothers do a Western, and this time they're remaking a John Wayne "classic" (I put classic in quotes because I don't think too highly of the Wayne original). The always awesome Jeff Bridges takes over Wayne's part.

Ridley Scott's ALIEN prequel to focus on new aliens

2010-04-27T12:11:00.003-05:00

Well, that's not entirely true, but it will focus on different aliens than the ones you remember. The alien, that slick, black creepy thing that's been used by the franchise so far will not be appearing in this new installment. Scott, in a recent interview with MTV, let it slip that his prequel to ALIEN will focus on another alien race, that which has been nicknamed the "Space Jockeys." If you don't remember them, it's understandable. They appear once, when the skeleton is briefly glimpsed in the first film. Here's a picture to jog your memory:

In addition to the Space Jockeys, Scott suggested we'll see other aliens, but that they will be the predecessors of the alien race we've seen in the films thus far (he's presumably sticking to his previously stated theory that the chest-burting aliens of the previous films were developed by the Space Jockey race as a weapon). He's expecting H. R. Giger, who designed the original creatures, to provide new designs.

Whether this film will be any good is anyone's guess. Scott's had a lackluster track record as of late, and his latest, ROBIN HOOD, has met with lukewarm reviews. Still, can't be any worse than what we've seen from this franchise lately. Maybe he'll just about succeed in washing away the stain left by ALIEN RESURRECTION and the two ALIEN VS. PREDATOR films.

Catching up

2010-04-11T11:20:00.004-05:00

I've had a busy few months. Family crises, getting married, working on screenplays, a car crash... I haven't been able to devote much time to this blog, despite seeing and reading plenty of stuff I want to talk about. But one has to take the time they need to decompress. So, anyway, here are some highlights of what I've been looking at, with some brief comments:

2666 by Roberto Bolano. A very long, very striking novel that remains as consistently readable as it is sprawling. Amazingly, it's most engaging section has to do with literary critics; any author that can make stuffy critics fascinating deserves great accolades.
FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM by Umberto Eco. I've never read anything by Eco, but his reputation is well-deserved; he's a terrific writer, and he knows how to mix highbrow intellectualism with just good ol' entertainment value. This spin on the "conspiracy theory" genre delivers the goods.
THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST by Nikos Kazantzakis. Kazantzakis' heretical (but not blasphemous) novel strikes me as a bit rough around the edges, but I feel inadequate judging it. By the translator's own admission, he's unable to recreate in English what Kazantzakis did with the Greek language. Some of the core issues, though, strike me as structural and ideological. While it's consistently fascinating, I'm not sure Kazantzakis' novel ever fully coheres, or that his subtle subversions of the gospel accounts have as much significance as he seems to think they do.
A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. I'm talking about the current Broadway revival of Sondheim's classic musical, directed by Trevor Nunn. A little slow and stuffy in the first half, but the second half delivers big time. Catherine Zeta-Jones brings beauty and charm to the part of Desiree, and Angela Lansbury is positively magical as Madame Armfeldt.
THE ODYSSEY: A MODERN SEQUEL by Nikos Kazantzakis. The second book I've read by Kazantzakis, and it's a revelation. The exquisite translation renders Kazantzakis' epic poem in breathtakingly beautiful English, and the story remains respectful of the original while striding into decidedly more contemporary thematic concerns. It's probably the best literary work you've not heard about, and you should probably pick up a copy as soon as you can (it's out of print, sadly, so you'll have to find it used)
SIGNPOSTS IN A STRANGE LAND by Walker Percy. This collection of odds and ends by Walker Percy isn't quite as satisfying as any one of his works, but it contains some real gems.
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Brilliant material brilliantly acted. Possibly a new favorite.

Coming up soon? THE GIFT by Vladimir Nabokov, THE BERLIN STORIES by Christopher Isherwood, OIL! by Upton Sinclair, POMPEII by Robert Harris, and THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH and VALIS by Philip K. Dick.

On the temptation of Christ

2010-03-21T21:44:00.005-05:00

"The temptation of Christ was harder, unspeakably harder, than the temptation of Adam; for Adam carried nothing in himself which could have given the tempter a claim and power over him. But Christ bore in himself the whole burden of the flesh, under the curse, under condemnation; and yet his temptation was henceforth to bring help and salvation to all flesh.

The Gospel reports that Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil (Matt. 4:1). Therefore the temptation does not begin with the Father equipping the Son with every power and every weapon, in order that he might be victorious in the struggle; but the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness, into solitude, into abandonment. God takes from his Son all help of man and creature. The hour of temptation must find Jesus weak, lonely, and hungry."
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Temptation

Scientific Humanism

2010-03-20T10:42:00.001-05:00

"This life is much too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then be asked what you make of it and have to answer, 'Scientific humanism.' That won't do. A poor show."
~Walker Percy, Signposts in a Strange Land

Roman Polanski's THE GHOST WRITER

2010-03-12T00:34:00.000-06:00

With Roman Polanski likely to face the consequences of his decision to flee America to escape sentencing many years ago, it may very well be the case that he may never again make another film. If THE GHOST WRITER, Polanski's latest work, does serve as his final cinematic outing, it is a very worthy final bookend to an accomplished, if slightly uneven, career. THE GHOST WRITER is the work of a consummate craftsman, a taut, controlled, and subtle thriller that plays an expert game with the viewer.

Appropriately for a "good-bye" project, THE GHOST WRITER hearkens back to Polanski's greatest days. Everywhere are echoes of films like ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE TENANT, and CHINATOWN. The slow-boiling tension, the sinister touches, the grim mood, and the occasional dose of welcome humor all remind the viewer that it's a Polanski film he's watching.

The opening sequence perfectly sets the stage; a car is left abandoned on a ferry. Its passenger washes up on the shore. Sinister games are afoot. Caught in the center of all the intrigue is the ghost himself, played by Ewan MacGregor (in keeping with the anonymity of his profession, his character is never named). He is brought in to fix up the memoirs of ex-Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan, in his strongest turn since THE MATADOR), and soon finds himself caught in a web of political intrigue, but a decidedly intimate one. Due to the security surrounding the memoirs, the ghost is kept at an arm's length the whole time, and though he might like to escape, he never really gets the chance.

When so many films suffer from a lack of construction, it's a great relief to find a film like THE GHOST WRITER, where all the pieces seem to have been so carefully assembled. No element of the story feels out of place, no stylistic invention too distracting. Everything lies in service of the whole. It's strange to live at a time where a film can seem revolutionary by playing by the rules rather than breaking them. But in an age where cinema seems plagued by self-indulgence, it's a breath of fresh air to see something so tight and restrained.

Tom Waits: "I'm Still Here"

2010-02-25T23:38:00.005-06:00

You haven't looked at me that way in years
You dreamed me up and left me here
How long was I dreaming for
What was it you wanted me for

You haven't looked at me that way in years
Your watch has stopped and the pond is clear
Someone turn the lights back on
I'll love you till all time is gone

You haven't looked at me that way in years
But I'm still here

SHUTTER ISLAND

2010-02-21T22:42:00.006-06:00

Martin Scorsese has come a long way since the days of TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL, and one could argue that he's losing steam. His work from the past decade (GANGS OF NEW YORK, THE AVIATOR, THE DEPARTED) lack the vitality of his past work, even if they have their bright spots. Those looking to SHUTTER ISLAND for a change of pace may be disappointed; this isn't a new masterpiece for Scorsese, but rather him playing around in the toybox of genre cinema. Even so, SHUTTER ISLAND does manage to be Scorsese's best film in at least a decade.

Keeping with the recent trend on this blog, I'm too lazy to write an all-out review, but SHUTTER ISLAND is more than worth seeing. The cast does a fine, fine job, and while the film has some issues, it all holds together pretty well. If SHUTTER ISLAND suffers on any score, it's that could have used a stronger dose of Lynch-esque strangeness or Roman Polanski-style paranoia, but Scorsese's theatrical flair provides its own charms.

MondoTees' excellent posters

2010-02-08T22:22:00.007-06:00

If you don't know MondoTees and you're a film fan, maybe it's time to make the acquaintance. MondotTees specializes in producing artwork tailor-made for movie fanboys, like new posters for some old classics (and some exciting posters for new releases, the recent WOLFMAN poster that I posted being a good example). Below I've posted some of my favorites. At the very least, you have to admit that their take on THE SHINING rocks.

A nice old-school poster for THE WOLFMAN

2010-02-03T22:53:00.005-06:00

It's a little early to be naming the best posters of 2010, but this beautiful bit of work from MondoTees for the upcoming WOLFMAN is a real beauty:

Brief thoughts on A SINGLE MAN

2010-01-31T22:55:00.003-06:00

I finally caught up with Tom Ford's A SINGLE MAN, and have let it stew a bit before giving my thoughts. I'm too lazy to write a full review, so I'll deal with my thoughts in a bullet list:

In every way, A SINGLE MAN is a film directed by a fashion designer. There's an intentionality and a precision to the visuals that not many other films show these days. It's very controlled, and depending on your feelings, it will either feel too artificial, or nicely composed. Personally, I thought it rarely came across as beautiful as it wanted to be. For a similar "controlled" look dosed in nostalgia that offers far superior pleasures, turn to the work of Kar-Wai Wong. That said, one breathtaking shot in A SINGLE MAN, which features a poster for Hitchcock's PSYCHO, may be the best in any film of '09.
Colin Firth is terrific, delivering an Oscar-worthy turn. Julianne Moore is strong in her brief moments, oozing charisma. In fact, everybody's pretty good, except for Nicholas Hoult, who delivers a fairly flat performance.
The story would have greatly benefited from greater ambiguity. The character arc and theme are sketched out too strongly, and a less direct approach would have made everything sharper, particularly the ending, which plays a bit false due to the way the preceding story has been constructed. But make no mistake, it's the right ending, it's just that the events leading up to it haven't been shaped well enough to match it.
The film focuses on the wrong characters. The student played by Hoult dominates much of the film, but he's uninteresting and the role he will play in the story is obvious from the moment he steps into the film, and he condemns the story to unfold in a predictable fashion. Rather than dealing with him, the film would have done better to focus on the neighboring family, who are wonderfully presented by are left largely unexplored. Julianne Moore's Charley needed at least an additional five minutes of time, as well, but it may have been good to make her even more of a central player in the story's events.

So overall, good, but a bit uneven. Kind of like TETRO, even if TETRO offers far greater aesthetic pleasures (though A SINGLE MAN, for all of its narrative flaws, doesn't feel as half-baked as TETRO does).

Tom Waits: "Another Man's Vine"

2010-01-31T20:17:00.001-06:00

How Kubrick's 2001 might have sounded

2010-01-19T07:21:00.004-06:00

If you know the history of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, you know that at some point, Kubrick comissioned a music score by Alex North. Whether Kubrick ever had any serious intent to use the score or not is something of an open question; he may have never had the intention, and merely did it to placate the the studio heads. Regardless, when Alex North showed up for the film premiere, he had no idea his score hadn't been used, and was devastated to find that not a bit of his music was to be found in the finished product.

Now, thanks to the glories of technology, folks have been able to restore much of the North score to the film to give us a picture of what the resulting film would have looked like. It's undeniable that Kubrick's choice to use his original underscore was the right one, but that's not to say North's score isn't incredibly accomplished. It's certainly beautiful.

The 2009 film I absolutely can't wait to see: A SINGLE MAN

2010-01-17T22:20:00.001-06:00

My Top Ten Films, 2000-2009

2009-12-31T15:54:00.014-06:00

This decade has now reached its conclusion, and we are left to sift through a decade's worth of cinematic outings and sift out the masterpieces from the rest of the material. Some have claimed this decade has offered very little in the way of great cinema. I beg to differ. While TRANSFORMERS 2 and other such dire Hollywood product may lead individuals to despair about the state of the art, it's hard to deny that this decade has provided us with a vast variety of stunning and engrossing cinematic achievements.

As a result, picking out a mere ten for a list seems foolish. Not only am I overwhelmed with all the different choices this decade offers (I had to work from a master list of 40 films, each of which were deserving of placement), just choosing among the work of a particular filmmaker, like Charlie Kaufman, can be tortuous. Furthermore, I feel as though my knowledge of this decade's cinema is inadequate; I have yet to see a film from Jia Zhang-ke or Hou Hsiao-sen, and I'm nowhere near sufficiently acquainted with the Dardenne brothers. I take it on good authority that Jean-Luc Godard's recent films, particularly NOTRE MUSIQUE, are superb. So with that significant disclaimer, here are ten films, arranged in alphabetical order, that I consider some of the most significant and astonishing of this decade's considerable efforts.

2046
2004, dir. Wong Kar-Wai

Few films this decade have left as indelible a mark on my mind as the majestic 2046, a sumptuous mood piece dealing in sensuality, romance, and nostalgia. Its predecessor, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, is also a powerful film in its own right, but it is here, in the strange, melancholy, and lush passages of 2046, that Wong achieves true virtuosity.

ADAPTATION
2002, dir. Spike Jonze

Charlie Kaufman stands as one of the greatest American talents working in cinema today, and ADAPTATION, his collaboration with Spike Jonze, serves as fine an example of his talents as any. Following in the tradition of Fellini and 8 1/2, when suffering from writer's block, Kaufman made a semi-autobiographical film about his struggle with artistic frustration. As with Fellini's 8 1/2, the resulting film is more than handsome.

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
2007, dir. Andrew Dominik

An eerie, quiet film that deals in beautiful, lonely images and brief episodes that charter the melancholy last days of one of the most iconic figures of the West. Under Dominik's hand, extraordinarily faithful historical detail unfolds in a poetic, dream-like texture. It's the very best film the Western genre has seen since 1968's majestic ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
2004, dir. Michel Gondry

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is the second Kaufman film to make my list, and the man's just significant enough to merit such prominence. His brilliant sense of storytelling combined with Gondry's enchanting direction results in what is, arguably, this decade's finest love story. It's bizarre, original, and unmissable.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
2009, dir. Quentin Tarantino

I've written quite a bit about this film over the past year, and I deeply love it. It's Tarantino's greatest film, a work that one provides a distillation of everything he stands for as a filmmaker while pushing him to greater heights and depths. It is not without its juvenile and clunky aspects, but greatness does not go hand-in-hand with perfection.

GOSFORD PARK
2001, dir. Robert Altman

Most of the films on this list are far showier than this quiet murder mystery that explores class system tensions in 1930s England, but GOSFORD PARK is no less excellent for its lack of flashy style. GOSFORD PARK's virtues lie in its subtleties, in its grace notes, and its astonishing web of character relationships.

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD
2003, dir. Peter Weir

This decade has seen its fair share of epic cinema, from Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR to Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, and it seems that there are many more on the way in the decade to come. But in my estimation, it's Peter Weir's seafaring adventure that really takes the prize. Where the other cinematic epics inevitably lose focus, becoming cluttered and sloppy, MASTER AND COMMANDER deals in storytelling of impressive economy and structure. It's a uniquely controlled epic. Weir packs immense detail into every sequence, knowing that even when dealing with swashbuckling adventure, it's the little things that count.

OLDBOY
2003, dir. Park Chan-Wook

Korea's Park Chan-Wook remains one of the most distinct auteurs working today. Known primarily for JOINT SECURITY AREA and his Vengeance Trilogy, of which OLDBOY comprises the second installment, Park has created an aesthetic style all his own. Drawing on a variety of influences from Shakespeare to Dostoevsky to Balzac to Hitchcock to Polanski, Park frequently deals in complicated and intriguing morality plays about the darker corners of human nature. OLDBOY, Park's masterpiece, is one of the most devastating films I've ever seen.

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE
2002, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

If, as I suggested above, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is the great love story of the decade, then PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE is a close runner-up. Paul Thomas Anderson is almost certainly the most promising of the contemporary American filmmakers, and PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE is another entry in his consistently impressive career. Beautiful, painterly sequences reminiscent of Kandinsky elevate this film from just another finely-conceived, finely-acted love story into something altogether more striking and poetic.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD
2007, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

Like Charlie Kaufman, Paul Thomas Anderson merits two slots on this list. The debates about which is Paul Thomas Anderson's greatest film seemingly never end (and quite a few would consider it PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE), but for my money, it's the ferocious THERE WILL BE BLOOD, a film I have discussed at great length elsewhere. THERE WILL BE BLOOD is one of the great, great films, a cinematic nightmare of stunning virtuosity and visceral power. It's only proper that such a brilliant film concludes the list; it just may be the greatest cinematic achievement the decade has to offer.

TETRO

2009-12-31T15:49:00.002-06:00

Coppola's back. Last time he took a break from managing his wine label to make a film, he produced YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH, a film that was admirably personal and a welcome step away from the rather dreary studio products that characterized much of Coppola's later career. But YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH was almost too personal to be of any value to anyone but Coppola, so bound up in Coppola's philosophy and discoveries that it failed to create an engaging emotional experience.

But now he's given us TETRO, and TETRO is undoubtedly his finest film in what seems like ages. If nothing else, it's ravishingly beautiful; for my money, TETRO is the most beautiful film of '09, and it's a shame that it will likely be passed over for an Oscar nomination in that category just because so few have seen the film. Aside from its visual beauty, though, it also features a set of solid performances and generally strong writing, always managing to be entertaining and engaging as serves up a welcome serving of elegant melodrama.

TETRO never quite puts Coppola back on top, though. It's less a full return to form than it is a very strong step in the right direction. What keeps TETRO from making it all the way there are some underwritten essential story elements and a rather misjudged final section which too overtly embraces the melodrama at the story's core and in doing so loses the characters and their relationship to one another.

But TETRO is still admirable stuff, and it shows that Coppola's talent is not yet dried up. Here, Coppola serves the audience a vigorous, almost youthful, film. It seems Coppola is beginning to find his footing again, and I for one can't wait to see what he does next.

NINE

2009-12-31T15:35:00.003-06:00

NINE has been out for a while now, so I'm not going to write a full review, especially since my thoughts are in agreement with the critical consensus: Rob Marshall's NINE fails to deliver the goods. It's a sloppy, thin experience where the musical numbers are more or less extraneous detours to the story rather than something that contributes in any way to a coherent whole (the exception being three numbers, one sung by Nicole Kidman, and two that are sung beautifully by Marion Cotillard, whose performance provides the only real emotional content of the film). It just squeaks by as passable entertainment, but only just.

That time of the year, the film music of Umiliani, and a BLOODY OLIVE

2009-12-09T11:20:00.006-06:00

We're coming to the very end of 2009, and rapidly, the cinematic offerings are becoming less and less impressive. Yes, I still have to see UP IN THE AIR, NINE, THE LOVELY BONES and (especially) THE WHITE RIBBON, but reviews have indicated that there's no guarantee I'll love any of the above. The only three films of '09 that I'm certain have a spot on my top ten are THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, THIRST, and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (and if I can see it on time, it's my suspicion the Coens' A SERIOUS MAN will make it, too).

I'm much more confident, however, in my top ten of the decade list, which I'll put up at some point. Though I am considering expanding it to fifteen. There are many excellent films that deserve some mention. Of course, you can expect to see THERE WILL BE BLOOD on there, but it'll look a little different than the lists I've put forward in the past.

In other news today, I've spent the last few days listening to the music of Italian film composer Piero Umiliani, and find his contributions absolutely stunning. It's a tragedy the man isn't better known. His jazzy scores are at once supercool and musically accomplished. If you want an entry point into his music, his work on LA LEGGE DEI GANSTERS is superb.

Oh, and THE BLOODY OLIVE, a must-see film noir Christmas comedy short that's fun for the whole family:

Book covers, lepidoptery, and Vladimir Nabokov

2009-11-11T14:17:00.005-06:00

Over at The Design Collector Group, John Gall has supervised a rather interesting project that's a must-see for anyone with a taste for graphic design or literature. Gall explains:

Nabokov was a passionate butterfly collector, a theme that has cropped up on some of his past covers. My idea was also a play on this concept. Each cover consists of a photograph of a specimen box, the kind used by collectors like Nabokov to display insects. Each box would be filled with paper, ephemera, and insect pins, selected to somehow evoke the book's content. And to make it more interesting for readers — and less daunting for me — I thought it would be fun to ask a group of talented designers to help create the boxes.

Here's who I asked: Chip Kidd, Carol Carson, Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin, Megan Wilson and Duncan Hannah, Rodrigo Corral, Martin Venezky, Charles Wilkin, Helen Yentus and Jason Booher, Peter Mendelsund, Sam Potts, Dave Eggers, Paul Sahre, Stephen Doyle, Carin Goldberg, Michael Bierut, Barbara de Wilde, and Marian Bantjes.

Here are some of my favorites (the last one being my absolute favorite):

You can see the rest here.

Movies and music

2009-11-02T22:05:00.002-06:00

"I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence. Ever since childhood, music has been my great source of recreation and stimulation, and I often experience a film or play musically."

~ Ingmar Bergman

Fairy tales and myths

2009-11-02T21:59:00.002-06:00

"I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized 'realistic' story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its 'realist' style."

~ Stanley Kubrick

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T21:49:00.001-05:00

Von Trier's ANTICHRIST and the death of shock cinema

2009-10-21T18:38:00.002-05:00

David Ansen over at Newsweek has produced a spectacular article about the increasing ineffectiveness of so-called "shock cinema," particularly in light of Lars von Trier's latest film, Antichrist:

"In the age of Saw IV, Internet pornography, and unending real-life reports of torture and terrorism, aren't these bad-boy outrages looking a little tired? The shock of the new, after all, is now an old idea. But does it still carry a punch? It's not that we've become inured—you'd have to be half dead not to shudder at von Trier's grisly visions. But the artist's assumption that depicting these violations will open our eyes to mankind's vile nature—a lesson that can be learned almost daily on the front page of a newspaper—often seems smug and vainglorious, a clichéd subversion. Shock is too easy a shortcut to significance."

You can find the rest here.

THE WOLFMAN gets an excellent second trailer

2009-10-21T12:13:00.001-05:00

THE WOLFMAN looks better with each bit of footage we get. This trailer reveals a bit more, showing off some gorgeous visuals. I hope we have a winner on our hands.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

2009-10-17T20:45:00.008-05:00

Maurice Sendak's book, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE packs imagination and emotional depth into an astonishingly concise nine sentences and vivid illustrations. In its simplicity lies its genius. In adapting it to a feature-length film, Spike Jonze's film has to take things down a different road, and the result is anything but concise. Jonze tells a gently unfolding story with a meditative, character-centric narrative.

The film's main thrust is the quality of sadness, as seen and understood by a young boy, Max, whose life feels more than a little lonely and out of his control. Over the first 20 minutes of the film, Jones establishes Max's life; he's the child of a divorce, the brother of a less than compassionate sister, and is becoming aware of his own mortality thanks to his lessons at school. As a result of all of these things, he lashes out in anger at his mother one night and runs away from home to the imaginary land of the titular Wild Things, only to find that the grass is always greener.

But since WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, like PAN'S LABYRINTH and so many other childhood fantasy narratives, deals with escape from the turmoil of everyday life into a child's imagination and fantasy, it's deeply unsatisfying that Max escapes into a world that isn't particularly whimsical. Jonze knows how to capture beautiful images, but fails to imbue this strange realm with enough oddity or character to make it captivating (there's one delightful moment of absurdity featuring two owls, but it's a singular moment and not enough to dispel the rain cloud that hangs perpetually over the film). Our fantasies, once we have them, might not satisfy, but there should always be some kind of initial delight. However, Max steps out of the real world and into one that seems in turn harsh and forbidding.

Of course, fans of the book will recall that Max's initial entry to the land was not entirely full of delight--the monsters attempt to eat Max from the get-go--but Sendak tells this with great humor, and it's a brief trial that Max easily overcomes, leading right into the exhilarating "rumpus." In Jonze's film, Max wanders into the middle of a sorrowful tantrum by one of the wild things, which opens things on a sincere downer. Here, the rumpus never quite delivers the appropriate exhilaration; the audience has already been brought into the emotional neediness of the wild things, and that overshadows what should be an unambiguously joyful romp.

The narrative itself, which as previously mentioned is somewhat diffuse, offers one captivating conceit at its center, the closest the film ever comes to developing a plot. In his fantasy kingdom, Max and the monsters attempt to build a utopia, conceived with the simplicity and naivete of a child. It's a pretty smart concept, and the eventual failure of their endeavor remains undeniably depressing. But it's an idea that falters because the monsters themselves don't seem to have too much energy or capability for optimism. Jonze's monsters are flawlessly designed, but beneath their exteriors are inherently mopey, whiny souls. Jonze and screenwriter Dave Eggers have shaped these monsters to echo Max's inner conflicts and the troubles of his life, but they do so too consistently. The creatures rob the story of any momentum or vitality it might have had.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE undoubtedly has its wonderful moments, and it's certainly one of the most unique films released this decade, but it sadly lacks a pulse. It's entirely fair of Jonze to prioritize emotions over narrative, but the emotions he conjures are so relentlessly one-note that the film never really takes flight.

Guest reviewing the BASTERDS

2009-10-17T15:43:00.005-05:00

In the months following Inglourious Basterds' release, there was a great deal of ardent conversation about the film, both for and against what Tarantino had accomplished. Out of my conversations via Facebook with film critic and author Jeffrey Overstreet (who runs the site Looking Closer and has written on film for Christianity Today, Image, and Filmwell), came the chance to do a full-length review of the film, which Jeffrey has graciously hosted on his site. You can check it out here.

Some great horror trailers

2009-10-14T22:38:00.002-05:00

We're in the middle of October, and it's time to be gearing up for Halloween. In the spirit of the season, I've searched out some great horror trailers of yesteryear:

Dracula (1931)

Horror of Dracula (1958)

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Alien (1979)

Reading and teaching Edgar Allan Poe

2009-10-08T23:45:00.008-05:00

I stumbled upon this article by Nick Mamatas the other night, which argues that "Poe has been so completely taught that he is very rarely read with the eyes of a reader." Mamatas provides an excellent treatment of Poe, how he is to be understood among his peers as a horror writer, and how often he has been incorrectly represented in high school classrooms.

Poe at 200
by Nick Mamatas

Andrew Lloyd Webber's PHANTOM: LOVE NEVER DIES gets a press conference

2009-10-08T18:42:00.006-05:00

Well, the date has come and Andrew Lloyd Webber has officially announced PHANTOM: LOVE NEVER DIES. Here's the footage from the press conference, which includes Webber talking about the genesis of the show, and the premiere of some music (the so-called "Coney Island Waltz," which apparently opens the show, and then the Phantom's ballad, "Till I Hear You Sing," which is the Phantom's first appearance):

And here's a Q&A session with Webber about the musical:

My thoughts? Well, I continue to like the Coney Island setting. I think it's intriguing. I like the "Coney Island Waltz." I'm not as fond of "Till I Hear You Sing," which, while pleasant, is altogether a bit too generically romantic for a character as dark and interesting as the Phantom. Webber could have done better with the music, and Glenn Slater could have done better with the lyrics. Still, it's not a damning number, but if it's the best the show has to offer, PHANTOM: LOVE NEVER DIES isn't going to wow anyone, or produce a new set of musical theater standards.

Anyway, I remain curious. If LOVE NEVER DIES is going to be a failure (and in all probability, it will be), it will be an insane, spectacular failure.

G. W. Pabst's THREEPENNY OPERA and the dramatic power of stillness

2009-10-06T23:42:00.004-05:00

It seems every day our films get busier and busier, until they just explode with happenings, whether it be maddeningly complex stories, increasingly busy aesthetics, or frantic editing. True, there are some films that still take joy in slowness (THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD being a very notable recent example), but it's rare that a "slow" film rises to the top of the charts these days.

But going back further, to the early rise of cinema, one can find very powerful examples of stillness as an effective dramatic tool. German filmmaker G. W. Pabst bridged the gap from silent to sound cinema, and in the course of the jump, proved himself both a master of movement (his tracking shots are magnificent) and stillness. As an example of the latter, I submit his treatment of the musical number "Seeräuber Jenny" ("Pirate Jenny" in English) in his adaptation of THE THREENPENNY OPERA:

I can't imagine the number receiving such elegant, restrained treatment today, which is a terrible shame. There's great beauty there. Lotte Lenya, who plays Jenny in the scene, so delicately and quietly performs, offers more intensity and power in a few subtle movements than most performers manage with full arm-waving and shouting.

Notable posters of 2009, so far...

2009-10-04T21:25:00.003-05:00

As a film poster enthusiast, I often despair about the state of film posters today (curse you, Photoshop!). But that said, there are still a few gems, and here are some of the ones I've found:

NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT (1979, dir. Werner Herzog)

2009-09-24T18:38:00.014-05:00

Of the vast history of cinematic vampire stories, only a handful of films have any significant merit as works of art. In light of my recent comments on LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (which definitely stands as one of the better entries in the "vampire film" subgenre), I thought I'd offer a brief look at my favorite vampire film of them all: Werner Herzog's superb NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT.

NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT was shot simultaneously with the English-language NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE. Both were directed by Werner Herzog, and both feature the same cast (conveniently, both versions are available together on the DVD release). But while the films are essentially the same in narrative and most visual details, PHANTOM DER NACHT features stronger performances, given the cast is more comfortable with their native tongue.

A loose remake of F. W. Murnau's seminal NOSFERATU: EINE SYMPHONIE DES GRAUENS, NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT avoids realism entirely, instead pursuing the expressionism for which the original film serves as a seminal example. As a result, the affected performances lack any kind of warmth, so that the characters resemble actual humans less than they resemble ghosts moving quietly throw the world. The aesthetic may be very naturalistic and subdued, but it's always odd and unsettling; Herzog offers visuals that are realistic and recognizable in texture, but deeply surreal in content.

The horror of Herzog's vision derives from the terror of loneliness. Each of the central characters of NOSFERATU struggle with isolation, and Herzog plays upon that in his stark visual texture. As with most vampire films, NOSFERATU also deals in the fear of the predator, but notably, that receives secondary emphasis here. This Count Dracula may be a predator, and a terrifying one at that, but because of his predatory nature, he is undeniably severed from the rest of humankind. Other Dracula films have attempted to give Dracula a tragic side (including Francis Ford Coppola's take on the character), but Dracula has never seemed quite so folorn as he does in Herzog's hands.

Each of the main characters (Jonathan Harker, his wife Mina, and Count Dracula himself), act because of love, either in pursuit of it or for it.. All, even when they act with selfless motives, meet with frustration in their endeavors and come to tragic ends. Unlike so many stories, NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT does not celebrate the success of love over the darkness of the world; it suggests that darkness may overwhelm love.

Herzog closes the film on one of the most greatest final shots in cinema history. The shot is a long, still frame of Jonathan Harker--the one surviving main character, now turned vampire--riding out towards the horizon, alone and riding further and further into isolation:

It's a beautiful and profound frame, and one that perfectly sums up everything that has preceded it. Herzog's NOSFERATU is a poem, a cinematic nightmare that captures some of our deepest fears in profound and haunting images. In this regard, NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT stands proudly as one of the finest horror films. Others may be significantly more suspenseful, shocking, or disturbing, but very few are quite as sublime.

Herrmann's "Concerto Macabre"

2009-09-19T14:02:00.006-05:00

Bernard Herrmann holds a sacred place among film score composers, and has a set of iconic works from Psycho to Vertigo to Taxi Driver. But it is his little-known "Concerto Macabre," for the film Hangover Square, which remains one of his most captivating compositions. I thought I'd give it some exposure here:

Trivia: "Concerto Macabre" provided the key inspiration for Sondheim's score for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

2009-09-03T22:04:00.002-05:00

"He sank so low that all means
for his salvation were gone,
except showing him the lost people.
For this I visited the region of the dead . . ."

~Dante Aligheri, Purgatorio

More on Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

2009-09-02T15:14:00.006-05:00

There's been a great deal of controversy and heated discussion regarded INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS since its release, with many condemning it as an empty, bloodthirsty revenge fantasy. I've already shared some loosely sketched thoughts on BASTERDS, but wanted to point out a rather rich and interesting discussion of the film being held at The House Next Door.

I'm particularly fond of this quote:

"The finale's destruction of a Nazi-packed movie theater suggests that all revenge and brutality are ugly and cruel, even when the motives are good and even when the victims are deserving. This baroque, flaming finale is frantically edited, with shots of Shosanna's warped, cackling visage looming above the panicking crowd as Roth and fellow Basterd Omar Doom machine-gun the fleeing cinemagoers with that sadistic, gleeful look on their faces, monstrous and psychopathic. This scene represents a rewriting of history for the better—WWII ends early, and the worst of the monsters responsible for the war all die in flames and a hail of bullets—and yet watching it happen is unpleasant rather than celebratory, suggesting that all victories come at a price."

If you're interested, be sure to check it out.

The scientist and the novelist

2009-09-02T02:16:00.004-05:00

"If the scientist's vocation is to clarify and simplify, it would seem that the novelist's aim is to muddy and complicate. For he knows that even the most carefully contrived questionnaire cannot discover how it really stands with the sociologist or himself. What will be left out of even the most rigorous scientific formulation is nothing else than the individual himself. And since the novelist deals first and last with individuals and the scientist treats individuals only to discover their general properties, it is the novelist's responsibility to be chary of categories and rather to focus upon the mystery, the paradox, the openness of individual human existence. If he is any good, he knows better than to speak of the 'businessman,' as if there were such a genus. It was useful for Sinclair Lewis to create George Babbitt, but it has served no good purpose for bad novelists to have created all businessmen in the image of George Babbitt."
~Walker Percy, The Message in the Bottle

The novelist as prophet

2009-08-31T19:22:00.007-05:00

"Since true prophets, i.e., men called by God to communicate something urgent to other men, are currently in short supply, the novelist may perform a quasi-prophetic function. Like the prophet, his news is generally bad. Unlike the prophet, whose mouth has been purified by a burning coal, the novelist's art is often bad, too. It is fitting that he should shock and therefore warn his readers by speaking of last things--if not the Last Day of the Gospels, then of a possible coming destruction, of a laying of waste of cities, of vineyards reverting to the wilderness. Like the prophet, he may find himself in radical disagreement with his fellow countrymen. Unlike the prophet, he does not generally get killed. More often he is ignored. Or, if he writes a sufficiently dirty book, he might become a best seller or even be bought by the movies."
~Walker Percy, The Message in the Bottle

A bit of prose from Cormac McCarthy

2009-08-26T23:12:00.003-05:00

"In this company there rode two men named Jackson, one black, one white, both forenames John. Bad blood lay between them and as they rode up under the barren mountains the white man would fall back alongside the other and take his shadow for the shade that was in it and whisper to him. The black would check or start his horse to shake him off. As if the white man were in violation of his person, had stumbled onto some ritual dormant in his dark blood or his dark soul whereby the shape he stood the sun from on that rocky ground bore something of the man himself and in doing so lay imperiled. The white man laughed and crooned things to him that sounded like the words of love. All watched to see how this would go with them but none would caution either back from his course and when Glanton looked to the rear along the column from time to time he seemed to simply reckon them among his number and ride on."
~Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West

Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

2009-08-22T00:02:00.010-05:00

"This may just be my masterpiece."

In an astonishing move of bravado, Quentin Tarantino closes his latest film, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, with those words. It's a dangerous move, inviting a kind of intense scrutiny, and admittedly the film has received a bit of a less-than-stellar ride from critics. But in this instance, I think the critics have it wrong; INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is Tarantino's masterpiece, and in all likelihood, the film of the year.

Tarantino has always had a very distinct voice as a writer/director. His trademarks are well known, from the dashes of ultraviolence to an unorthodox narrative progression to characters that sit on the edge of caricature. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS dispenses with none of the Tarantino trademarks. What distinguishes BASTERDS from the rest is a greater sophistication. Part of that is the subject material and the European flair it demands--this is an undeniably more "arthouse" entry than Tarantino has attempted before--but Tarantino's handle on dialogue and characters is, astonishingly, better than it's ever been.

While I could gush about the craftsmanship of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS from now till the cows come home (or just talk about my new crush on actress Melanie Laurent), I'm instead most fascinated by BASTERDS' consideration of the state of the film industry under the Third Reich, and its status as a myth about the power of cinema.

Tarantino has always made films about film. All of his films, in one way or another, are a celebration of the medium's ability to provide a certain brand of entertainment. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS stands out a bit more overt in this regard; one of the characters is a film critic and an expert on the subject of German cinema, and there are a number of conversations pertaining to the subject. It helps that a certain theater plays a prominent role, and that the film revolves around the events and characters involved in an "Operation: Kino."

These are conversations that are undoubtedly lost on the average viewer, for whom the names Papst and Riefenstahl likely have no significance. But in these discussions, the undercurrent is always the Third Reich's takeover of German cinema, and its subsequent reduction of art to mere propaganda. It's no mistake that the story meets its climax at the film premiere of a certain propaganda film (entitled "Nation's Pride") from Joseph Goebbels.

At that film premiere, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS grants cinema its revenge on the Third Reich, defying history with abandon. The Third Reich dies in a movie theater, burned in a fire started by early cinema negatives. It's a truly mythic conclusion, and embodies a certain truth: through cinema, the Third Reich has died hundreds of deaths, and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is only the latest incarnation.

In this way, BASTERDS serves as reverse propaganda, and Tarantino seems well aware of that fact; in the film, the German audience's reaction to "Nation's Pride," which displays a German officer dispatching countless Allied sodliers, echoes very closely the anticipated audience reaction to Tarantino's display of American Jews taking out Nazis in violent ways. With that wink, Tarantino lets the audience know exactly what it is they're watching.

It's this undercurrent in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS that makes it Tarantino's most interesting--and his best--film. It's the distillation of everything he loves, and a paean to the only god Tarantino worships: cinema.

THE INFORMANT! gets a trailer

2009-07-01T08:03:00.001-05:00

Developing a cinematic canon

2009-06-28T20:55:00.004-05:00

In 2006, director and screenwriter Paul Schrader (TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF THE CHRIST) wrote a lovely article on the complicated process of determining a cinematic canon. I only stumbled on it this year, but it's good enough to merit sharing. Anyone interested in the category of film evaluation should give it a look.

Canon Fodder by Paul Schrader

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE revisited

2009-06-15T23:16:00.004-05:00

A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE premiered in 2001 after a long development. Stanley Kubrick had spent countless years developing the project with a number of different writers, failing to complete it by the time of his death in 1999. It was then finished by giant Steven Spielberg (Kubrick had requested Spielberg direct the film, even though Spielberg originally declined). Naturally, the hype was huge. The names Kubrick and Spielberg together was the kind of partnership that only happens in the dreams of film fans. The reaction upon its release, however, was less favorable. While some critics were enamored with this unique child of film giants Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, but others ranked it among Spielberg's worst outings. Until a few recent viewings, I found myself in the camp that considered it an interesting failure, equally compelling and frustrating.

But my opinion has shifted; ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE does have some flaws (mostly in its uneven middle section), but even so, it's phenomenally under-appreciated. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is Spielberg's finest cinematic venture in many years, a showcase for some of the most graceful and elegant direction of his career. It helps that Spielberg is building on what is, arguably, the most complex and intriguing narrative of his career, thanks to the work of Kubrick (who left him with a 90-page detailed story treatment from which to develop the film, as well as hundreds of production drawings).

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE sizzles with visual images of astonishing excellence. My favorite image from the film: a blimp designed to look like a moon, rising menacingly over a dark and misty forest. But there are many such joys in ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, from the cyber-Vegas of Rouge City to the flooded remains of New York City. In truth, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE cinematic sci-fi poetry as fine as it has been in many, many years.

For a satisfying in-depth analysis and appraisal of the film, I can point you no further than to Tim Kreider's analysis. It's a very insightful, and comprehensive, reading of a very complex and misunderstood film. I particularly approve of his comments regarding the ending of the film, which is a great deal more interesting and subversive than many viewers gave it credit for:

What [the super-evolved future mechas] give David, inevitably, is a kindly lie, like the lies we tell our own children--that we’ll never leave them, that we will never die—or the lies we demand from our popular storytellers—that the hero will find his heart’s desire, that love will prevail. "All problems seemed to have disappeared from his mommy’s mind," marvels the narrator, trying to pass off as a miraculous gifthorse, a change that is in fact ominous and telling. This new Monica is utterly unlike the one we remember, who was ambivalent, conflicted and distant, alternately affectionate and freaked out by her fiercely clinging "son," given to evasions and betrayal. In other words, it isn’t the real Monica. She’s a fantasy figure, custom-designed to answer David’s desires--no different from the robot prostitutes who could fine-tune their looks and personalities to suit the tastes of their customers. But it doesn’t matter to David, who can’t distinguish image from reality. (Remember how Gigolo Joe had to explain that the animated Blue Fairy hologram "was an example of her.") "There was no Henry, no Martin," the narrator continues, "just the two of them." It’s the ultimate Oedipal wish fulfillment, a dream date with Mommy without rivals or distractions. She’s been reconstructed for him as a perfect reflection of his desire, just as he was for her.

Most tellingly of all, every episode in David and Monica’s "perfect" day together-- the giggly game of hide-and-seek, the haircut, the birthday party--is a happy distortion of some ugly incident from their real life together. The only games of "hide-and-seek" they ever played were when Monica shut him up in the hall closet so he’d quit spooking her, and, later, when she deserted him in the woods. She never gave him a haircut in real life--although he, memorably, did once cut hers. And the only birthday party he ever attended was the disastrous one that ended with his expulsion from the family. What in real life was marred by Oedipal tension and trauma here becomes unambiguously innocent. It’s David’s defective fantasy of what a happy mother and son should be like. This is what he wanted—a fairy tale, not the messy, painful reality of human relationships. David’s carefully censored, Disneyfied re-creation mimics the way in which our own selective memories—and our movies--falsify the past.

[...]

But the illusion is a tenuous one. "David had been told not to try to explain to Monica," says the narrator. "Otherwise she would become frightened and everything would be spoiled." "Spoiled," indeed; imagine Mommy’s reaction if she were to understand that she’s actually a clone of the person she thinks she is, a two-thousand year-old corpse resurrected for only twelve hours in a world empty of any other human beings. She finally succumbs to an everlasting sleep murmuring the words David has waited two millennia to hear: "I love you, David. I do love you. I have always loved you." The real Monica, of course, never spoke such words. The tenderest moment we saw the two of them share was at his imprinting: "Who am I, David?" she begged him. Gigolo Joe was right; she loved him only for what he did for her.

Thus the narrator gives the kids a happy ending to his fairy-tale, David contentedly drifting off to "the place where dreams are born"—presumably that magical realm of love and metaphor of which Dr. Hobby spoke. Even positive reviewers rolled their eyes over this ending, calling it typically sappy and sentimental. (The Village Voice, anxious as always not to be taken in, warned that some hip and cynical viewers might weep “tears of mirth.”) But this closing image of David falling asleep in his Mother’s arms is neither mawkish nor ridiculous. It is utterly desolate. John Williams’ wordless lullaby is no more soothing than the one the French nanny mecha sang to David as they were borne away in a net. David is still as much a captive as he was then, or when he was buried under the ice; the only difference is that now he is content. David is trapped in his "one perfect moment," the only moment of happiness possible for him. At his "birthday party" he admitted that he has no more wishes to make. He will lie beside the dead form of his mother for eternity, just as he sat imploring the Blue Fairy for two millennia, still and silent and utterly at peace. Dr. Hobby designed him to be "caught in a freeze-frame," and so he is; Spielberg’s visual metaphor for love is being caged, frozen.

David has been given a comforting illusion, like the one Spielberg’s narrator offers us in this ending, if, like children, we choose to believe it. An illusion is all David has been chasing for twenty centuries: an idealized image of a mother who never existed, a fairy-tale angel like the Blue Fairy. His gaze fixed on this goal, he remains blind to his own cynical exploitation, to the death of his family and friends, even to the end of the world. Like a child, or a credulous audience, he is content with the mere image, with a story. But, as the real Monica tried to tell him long ago, "stories aren’t real." In reality, he’s asleep in an artificial fantasy, alone in an empty, icebound world. He’s like Jack Torrance as we last see him in The Shining, grinning out at us from that photograph on the wall of The Overlook Hotel—happy and fulfilled, finally home, frozen forever in Hell. And we, watching this ending with tears in our eyes, are like those soldiers in the final scene of Paths of Glory, who finally break down crying not over the carnage they’ve seen or for their unjustly executed comrades, but over a schmaltzy lullaby, mourning the memory of their own lost mothers."

Francis Ford Coppola returns with TETRO

2009-05-04T15:32:00.002-05:00

Francis Ford Coppola's career can best be summed up by the title, "When Good Filmmakers Go Bad." That said, I haven't ever stopped hoping for the guy to get back on track, or at least end up somewhere near it. His last flick, YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH, wasn't really my cup of tea, but I have to say the trailer for his latest offering, TETRO, has my attention.