VINYL IS HEAVY

BANG BANG: An Index

2011-12-24T09:00:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

— The Talmadge Memorial Bridge in Savannah
All this week we'll be running a series of year-end pieces by friends of the blog in a manner that, I trust, suits the blog and its character. That is, there weren't many rules. We just wanted to share our enthusiasms about a number of things that impressed us and helped each of us on our way to today, tomorrow, to 2012. Each post will be cross-published on Brian Darr's still-invaluable SF-centric cinephile blog, Hell On Frisco Bay not as a traffic generator but because he's my good buddy and we thought of this project together. It's also just fun to spread the wealth/love. So check back, subscribe, whatever. There will be daily updates to the feed and to this post in particular (as well as to Brian's blog). Until then, bite your nails and eat your hearts out.

Crimmus Eve Update: We're all done! Thanks for reading. Hope it was fun for you. It was fun to share. Merry Crimbo and a Happy New Year. Go see some movies!

— Mia is in South Africa, in Cape Town

THE RUN DOWN

BANG BANG: Brian Darr

2011-12-23T07:00:00.004-08:00

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

5 x 5 by Brian Darr

2011 was a year filled with terrible and wonderful things for me. When it comes to film-watching, there was plenty that fell into the "wonderful" category. My relationship with the cinema, and especially the "new" cinema, is constantly changing, and finding a way to put together a coherent top ten list encapsulation was more of a struggle for me than ever this year. So in true obsessive fashion, I've made a "modular" top ten, exploiting various quirks of eligibility that diehard list-watchers and -makers may recognize, but that everyone else can just read as an excuse for a nice round top 25.

Five magnificent films that had a week-long "commercial" release in San Francisco in 2011. Definitely on my top ten list, no matter how you slice it.

Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011) From the beautifully slo-mo opening sequence of Manhattanites in ritualized motion, reminiscent of James Benning's early collaborations with Bette Gordon, I suspected I was seeing something special. Drying my eyes during the closing credits, I knew for sure that I had. "You will weep and know why." If you've heard of this sprawling, 150-minute character drama about a teenager (Anna Paquin) struggling with every emotion under the sun in the wake of a traffic accident, you've probably also heard how it was given short shrift by a studio contractually obliged to release it but seemingly determined to take a loss on it. Though frustrations of the legal system is a sub-theme of the movie, (as are poetry, post-9/11 stress, burgeoning sexuality, opera, and a million other concerns) it's a shame that the story of Margaret's belated and shoddy distribution has overshadowed all other discussions about the film. To be expected when prints disappear from theatres after a week or two, and perhaps reversible now that the film is re-opening at a Greenwich Village theatre today; I hope a Frisco Bay venue tries the same gambit soon.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Part Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010) Into the cave.
The Tree of Life (Terence Malick, 2011) Into the light. Multiple viewings and much ruminating have made its evident flaws insignificant in the face of its visionary design.
A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, 2011) Keira Knightley's polarizing performance in this impeccably composed, perfectly Cronenbergian film, led my way to a new understanding of my long-least favorite genre: the biopic. Historical figures perform specific functions for modern humans; why not allow actors to embody these functions by acting them out on screen?
Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010) It's a bit strange that the San Francisco Film Critics Circle picked a largely English-language film for their 2011 Foreign Language Film award. I'll approve and attribute it to the masterful illusionism practiced by its Iranian director, its French star (Juliette Binoche), and the Tuscan countryside setting. All three create a mesmerizing surface beneath which there is even more to see, and contemplate. English-language films just don't do that, do they? Except for the exceptions.

Five superb films I saw in 2011 that screened in San Francisco for the first time this year. All had so-called "commercial" releases except the first one listed; it played for a week in New York but had only a handful of screenings at the San Francisco International Film Festival here.

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu (Andrei Ujica, 2010) "Look in my eyes; what do you see?...I'm the smiling face on your TV..." The past months have seen the final days of two of the world's most reviled dictators. We can hope, but not really expect, that they won't be replaced by others equally heinous somewhere in the world. But how often does tyranny conform to the images we expect from it? Such a question is at the center of this three-hour compilation of naked newsreel footage taken from the archives of the 1965-1989 Romanian leader's personal photographers. Kim Jong-il's father Kim Il-sung makes an astonishing cameo appearance.
The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman, 2009) Palestinian director Suleiman applies the darkly absurdist, somewhat Tati-esque style he perfected in his previous film Divine Intervention to even more overtly autobiographical material. If its predecessor is any indication, it should only grow in my estimation with repeated viewings in the coming years.
The Arbor (Clio Barnard, 2010) A strange and remarkable work. The documentary tradition in theatre is long but little-known, so bringing some of its techniques for merging non-fiction material with acted performance into a cinematic sphere feels like a real breath of fresh air. It's particularly inspired in the service of its subject: the life and legacy of Yorkshire playwright Andrea Dunbar.
The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar, 2011) I run hot and cold on Pedro's filmography, and had even skipped Broken Embraces after being disappointed by his previous two features. I'm back on board. Here, he forays into horror and science fiction without upsetting his delicate balance of telenovelistic melodrama and cinematic spectacle. To hint at why this film is something only Almodovar might have devised is to give too much of its plot away. I'll just say that maybe Bad Education could've been improved with a hint of Karl Freund's 1935 Mad Love in it.
Inni (Vincent Morisset, 2011) Is this monochromatic, visually experimental shadow box a new way forward for the concert film? If you prefer imagining the Icelandic band's sustains ricocheting against the back of a darkened concert hall rather than off beautiful mountains and lakes (as in 2007's Heima), then this is the Sigur Rós movie for you.

Five beautiful films which I didn't see in 2011, but which were first publicly screened in San Francisco this year and were a big part of my conversations about cinema. Having seen them in 2010, I wish I'd made time to see them again when they played in local cinemas in 2011.

A Useful Life (Federico Veiroj, 2010) I never had to see a Uruguayan film before this one to fall in love with this neorealist-goes-expressionist oratorio for that tiny country's cinema culture and one average man's place in it. And out of it.
The Mysteries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz, 2010) A fitting swan song for one of the most mysterious filmmakers I know. The impossible-to-peg Chilean died in August but not before gracing us with a beautiful, sprawling adaptation of a novel by 19th-century Romantic Camilo Castelo Branco. (No, I hadn't heard of hm before either.) Dig those digital split diopter shots!
Another Year (Mike Leigh, 2010) The British misanthrope-or-is-he's most Ozu-esque film to date.
Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010) One of the American filmmakers best at portraying the so-called "outsiders" (or should I say the 99%?) of our modern society points her camera into history, showing us the stratifications found among a small community of pioneers heading West circa 1845.
Essential Killing (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2010) Just as exciting as The Fugitive except far more ambiguous and ambivalent about its moral position. Pure cinema.

Five terrific films that I saw at San Francisco festivals or other alternative venues in 2011, that have yet to secure "commercial" distribution in this country, as far as I am aware. In alphabetical, not preferential, order.

28.IV.81 (Descending Figures) (Christopher Harris, 2011) A brightly-colored dual-projector comedy set amidst a Florida amusement park passion play where baseball caps mingle with Centurion helmets.
Chantrapas (Otar Iosseliani, 2010) Films about filmmaking are cinephile catnip, right? Well, this certainly trumps The Artist as an authentically moving tribute to a vanished mode of production left behind for a new life and search for meaning.
Disorder (Weikai Huang, 2009) Around Guangzhao in an hour. Dizzying in design, execution, imagery, editing style, and political audaciousness. Truly the closest thing to Dziga Vertov's vision for his kinoks the 21st Century has seen thus far in a single work.
HaHaHa (Hong Sangsoo, 2010) One of the funniest and most thought-provoking films from one of my favorite working directors. Need I say more?
Lethe (Lewis Klahr, 2009) Klahr's collage films can provide a closer look at vintage comic book art than even the most finicky collector is likely to take unless scrutinizing that line between "very fine" and "near mint". We see the visual DNA of colors and shading magnified, and at the same time we read between the panels, guided by the filmmaker's temporal and spatial dislocations. The standout of a strong set of new-ish work Klahr brought for local premieres this year, Lethe is a remix of a 1960s Doctor Solar story that becomes a noirish drama set to Gustav Mahler.

Five amazing films I saw in 2011 that have yet to screen publicly anywhere in San Francisco. In alphabetical, not preferential, order.

Almayer's Folly (Chantal Akerman, 2011) Entrancingly old-fashioned adaptation of Joseph Conrad's first novel, transposed to stuck-in-time Cambodia.
the Day He Arrives (Hong Sangsoo, 2011) Is Hong's return to black-and-white cinematography, eleven years and as many films after Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, a sign that we should question the veracity of every scene, but this time around without a bifurcated structure to help guide us?
Ghost Dance (Mark Wilson, 2009) Named for the call to apocalyptic change performed by the Modoc (as beautifully described in Rebecca Solnit's book River of Shadows), this brief, but spectacularly ever-expanding animation recalls Eadweard Muybridge's own technological call for for a paradigm shift.
Longhorn Tremelo (Scott Stark, 2010) Begins and ends as a study of black shadows against mobile fields, but goes through a dazzling array of burnt-orange-and-white permutations in between. A version is viewable on vimeo, but I'd love to be able to see the full two-projector version somehow.
The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr, 2011) A Nietzche-inspired tour-de-force from one of the most forceful visions around.

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Brian Darr lives in San Francisco, where he watches movies, though he's been known to travel for cinema as well. He blogs here and twitters here.

BANG BANG: Ryland Walker Knight

2011-12-23T06:30:00.007-08:00

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

My, How Impermanent by Ryland Walker Knight

Earlier this week my Indiewire ballot appeared. I still stand by it, I suppose, but even just a week after publication I itch to change things. In fact, the whole enterprise gives me hives to a certain degree. The whole idea of absolutes in general, in any context. If you take a look at that list, you'll see a collection of films, I'd wager, premised on contingency, or some form of mystery or mess or exuberance. Even the more "straight" narratives (Cronenberg's & Jacobs' portrait-films) exhibit an interest in how things do not fit, or ever fix into reliable—much less accepted, normal—forms. Perhaps the best term I can reduce this idea to is a favorite on this blog: navigation. Life's not a maze, but there are hurdles every day, including waking up, not to mention the unexpected tidal wave every so often. We're so used to the narratives we're given or that we give ourselves that eluding the unwanted can wreck a day, a month, a year. (Lucky me: my year saw hiccups and headaches but nothing got wrecked. Truth is, I had a fantastic year. And I'm grateful.) Naturally, I'm attracted to films about finding ways through life.
———
Finding a way to make movie-going more a part of my movie-watching has been difficult this year, the past couple years. Granted, I got to attend Cannes. But the pleasures of that were certainly "extracurricular" as much as within the salles and theaters. The dinners, the new friends, the jokes over whiskey and rosé with Danny and Adrian after long days. But I still cherish movie-going.

Early last week, in fact, I had the supreme pleasure to take in one of the best double bills in recent memory at the Roxie Theatre (with Brian, yes): the early show was Borzage's Moonrise followed by Renoir's first H'wood venture, the insanely under-seen and apparently under-recognized Swamp Water. Two films about the south made by not-southerners that understand the south and southerners in ways you rarely see anymore. (Of course, I'm not a southerner; I'm a Californian. My Okie roots are roots and my relationship to GA/SC is tertiary at best.) But aside from any obtuse anthropological/ethnological reading I can offer, the films exist and excel simply as films. Borzage's at his Murnau best and Renoir is at his dollies-everywhere (and "people as people") best. And they spoke to one another in delicious ways the way a double bill is supposed to work. Steve Seid usually knows what he's doing but this was a special program. The swamp has different narrative functions in the films, but in both the swamp is a hunting ground, a space of violence, something untamable that few can master or at least negotiate (or inhabit!). Again, this speaks to how I see the world at large. Life takes skills we never anticipate requiring, but nonetheless accrue. True to this optimism I harbor—inside an unavoidable but I hope healthy cynicism w/r/t life's obstacles, including people (above all people?)—both protagonists of these films find ways to join the world by their stories' ends.

Then again, not every path is a success. The film I felt worst about leaving off my "official" top ten was Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day. That movie's all about the disconnect we're forced to confront as we grow through adolescence. It's about a lot more, too, including light, but there's a violence in adolescence that it understands (something Haz and I talk about as he is a teacher). This is true of all the Yang pictures I've seen, but this one is obviously special. Its length affords its narrative the space for us to observe characters rationalize their way through choices good and bad alike (though mostly bad) all the way. This is what critics mean when they call a film novelistic: time affording space for character. Granted, that's a limited view of what "the novel" is or can be, but this film in particular, as with many likewise classified films, is after a Dickensian kind of scope forever grounded in place and details. This, too, is how best to think of something like Breaking Bad, which Jen talked about yesterday.

Television, after all, is serialized much how the early money-making novels were; both are strategized as much as constructed with plot doled out in delimited chunks. But, as Jen noted, one of the pleasures of BB is just how digressive it is, how much air time is given to behavior and go-nowhere episodes of bickering. And it's not like this show's hopeful. It's got a pretty grim take on human desire and nature and intelligence. As I've said before, these characters are idiots. Walter White seems to have figured out a few things watching Gus operate, like the cost of survival in such a dangerous game as the drug racket, but he's still a bald, selfish, myopic stranger to himself and his oh-so-beloved family by the end of this last season. And the person he's closest to has every reason in the world to want to slit his throat.
———
I've been using my tumblr more than this home base throughout the year. Part of it is simply ease of use. Another is desire. The last is time. I like the scrapbook/notebook feel of the microblog. It feels like a repository of reminders. And it usually takes very little effort. Writing here is more work. (Writing anything is work!) Not sure what the new year will bring, but I'm not quite ready to quit my baby. But I quit making zines to make this blog and I may wind up quitting this blog to wind up making more films. Even if they're just little goofs about the sounds of seagulls or odd poems about light and memory. The future has more answers than me.
———

One thing I know for sure: though I've made some great friends via emails (cf. this week), there's a lot I'm proud of from this past year outside the walls and tubes of the internet. Thank you to everybody who helped make those realities real. You know who you are.

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Ryland Walker Knight is a writer and filmmaker living in San Francisco. He has three names, which you can read above, at left, and all over this blog.

BANG BANG: Durga Chew-Bose

2011-12-22T07:00:00.009-08:00

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

by Durga Chew-Bose

I’ve been especially preoccupied with women this year. My desktop is a cluttered mess of young Michelle Pfeiffers and Diane Lanes, a spitfire-y Linda Manz, a pouty Tatum O’Neal, Elaine May, Gilda, Sissy and Shelley, Karen Black (multiple times), Cher with Winona, and screengrabs of Gena as Minnie. The young mother in Andrea Arnold’s short film, Wasp, is giving me the finger, Haydée Politoff, her back, Geraldine Chaplin and Monica Vitti seduce, smoke…seduce, and Bibi Andersson is beside herself. Marie-France Posier—who in an eerie way, congeals into "Laura Palmer"—is slouched in a bathtub, moon-eyed and fully-clothed, hair braided and boots dangling over the edge like a child who’s not quite sure how she got there or if she wants to get out.

I should probably organize all of these pictures. Or at least drag them into a folder. But what’s the fun in that? I enjoy the distraction; their perpetual orbit, the familiarity. The delight of seeing Chiara Mastroianni and remembering the way she says “Ann-Gé-lah Bah-ssette” when ribbing about Emmanuelle Devos’ butt in Desplechin’s Un conte de Noël. Or even now as I write, on the top right corner of my screen, Diane Keaton’s Kay Adams is smiling: red dress and sun hat, she’s listening as Michael tells her to eat her spaghetti while he spins a story about Luca Brasi.

Barbara Loden’s Wanda aired on TCM in the fall. I watched it twice in a row—the first time completely crushed but immediately devoted; the second time, with a pen and my notebook. I jotted down images and words that drew near in the way some movies—the most pressing ones—appear to come from somewhere itchy inside me. I also copied dialogue; harmless in print, vivid, near wicked on screen. Like how credulously Wanda asks at a dive bar if “[She] can borrow a comb,” or how promptly a patron spots her sitting alone with no money and says, “I’ll take care of this.” I scribbled stuff like “washed-up cheerleader ponytail,” “WOOLWORTH’S parking lot,” “Mabel Longhetti, Rayette Dipesto…” “pincushion top bun, hand resting on forehead as cigarette burns,” “sitting in back of empty bus,” “sits with knees up at movie theater,” “follows instructions!!!” Soon after, I wrote about the film and Loden, and her marriage to Elia Kazan for This Recording.

At least twice a month this year I watched the same YouTube clip: a 1974 episode of the Dick Cavett Show with guest Lucille Ball. Cavett’s hair looks two days short of a haircut and Lucille is wrapped in a brown Muppet-trimmed jacket. Her legs are crossed away from him, impassive as if sitting at a coffee shop one table over. She turns her torso only slightly to answer his questions, as if saying, “Why are you talking to me?” It’s incredible. But when Cavett recalls the time a Marx brother appeared on her show, Lucille melts. Her eyes roll back as she says his name—“Haaaaaarpo." Pure piety. As Dick sets up the clip, Lucille falls back into her sad clown state, burrowing in her feathers, only to jump at any chance to honor her friend; a "darling man." Mimicking the famous mirror scene in Duck Soup, Lucy, dressed as Harpo, surprises him and matches his every move. Two Harpos. Two distressed top-hats. Two bulb horns. Out-and-out laughs. My face gets mangled with cheer each time.

Mia Hansen-Løve makes moments on screen that I'd like to elope with. Her 2009 feature, Le père de mes enfants, plucks ornament from the everyday—the way three daughters occupy adult spaces, a father's unexpected helplessness, adolescent agonies, a parent's things—and her follow-up, Un amour de jeunesse, kindly plots the elaborate confusion and spectacle of first love and teenage heartbreak. It screened once at IFC and I made sure to see it.

Teenagers, especially French girls, are terrifically soulful characters. Like Sandrine Bonnaire's Suzanne or Virginie Ledoyen as Christine in L'eau Froide, they are rash, sneaky, jumpy, and dip into dark bouts of misery or big dopey loves. Hansen-Løve (who too, looks eternally adolescent and slightly anonymous like a face in a found passport photo) perfectly maneuvers teenage girl unrest. Tethered to a boy who leaves her, Camille (Lola Creton) undergoes grueling grief—inexplicably endless when we're young. But before that—and what Hansen-Løve does so well—Romance is breathless, braless, a series of grand gestures and promises that bank on time never ticking. In one scene, Camille and Sullivan are in the country experiencing an afternoon cold war; she upstairs in bed moping, he outside, somewhere. He returns with food and cooks dinner for the two of them. Later, Camille stumbles downstairs and slides into her chair. She has one bite before slowly crawling across the table's bench which separates them and nudges her head into his neck. All is forgotten, for now. The audience knows that this brief moment of peace is bittersweet and that we cannot will it to last longer.

And finally, here are bits from a November 1993 PREMIERE piece, She’s Done Everything (except direct) by Rachel Abramowitz, about Polly Platt, a woman I truly admire. When she died on July 27th, I read everything I could find on her life.

"Tonight she seems quite ebullient, charged up by her recent discovery of two young filmmakers from Texas… Bottle Rocket makes her giddy….'If I were young, I’d give up everything -boyfriend, home- and go to Texas and beg these guys to let me work on their movie.'

…

"Still, when her ex-husband picks up, all her expansiveness vanishes. She seems to contract into an almost fetal position. Her voice becomes tight, careful. The conversation has a ritualistic quality: all the habits of intimacy, but no longer the trust. She treats him as if he were fragile, thanking him for the flowers he sent her, babying him with the good buzz she’s heard about his latest venture. She tells him about Bottle Rocket. 'It’s in Texas and there’s no Larry McMurtry, but it has a bit of the feel of The Last Picture Show, she says. She asks him to talk to PREMIERE about her. He refuses. 'I’ve been talking all these fucking years about you!' she erupts."

...

"One year later, they packed their meager belongings into a car, along with Platt’s one-eyed dog, Puppy, and set out for L.A., where they soon befriended the auteurs they worshiped. One night, Howard Hawks took the pair out for dinner, along with a beautiful young starlet from Rio Lobo named Sherry Lansing. Toward the end of the meal, Lansing decided to visit the ladies’ room. 'She stood up, and she was gorgeous. And I was not,' says Platt. 'Peter and Howard watched her. She walked to the bathroom, and I remember having Howard on my right and Peter on my left, and their eyes were following her.' As Lansing disappeared from view, Platt recalls, Hawks leaned across her and said, ‘Peter, now that is the kind of girl that you should be with.’ I remember thinking, It’s like I don’t exist.'"

…

"One summer while the children were with Bogdanovich, Platt drank seventeen cases of beer and wrote Pretty Baby."

…

"After sending other emissaries, Brooks asked her personally to produce Broadcast News, which she did. Her all-around dedication to the project renewed her legend for telling detail. Brooks had wanted Broadcast News’ key color to be red; now he was shooting the schoolyard scene where the young Aaron is getting beaten up. He looked up and saw the woman who fifteen years ago had removed the E from a TEXACO sign; she was down on her knees, painting a red accent line on a staircase. 'If you were putting together a baseball team, this is the person you’d kill for,' says Albert Brooks, who played the adult Aaron. 'She can play any position. She can hit; she can pitch.'"

…

"'There are times when I hear Jim talk that I experience something that is so much worse than the jealousy that I felt toward Cybill. I am so envious of his ability to think and express himself that I think I’m going to die. I totally identify with Salieri [in Amadeus], because when he picks up Mozart’s music and starts talking about how brilliant it is, I feel like that’s me. But I don’t have any desire to destroy Jim or Peter or anybody.'"

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Durga Chew-Bose is a writer living in Brooklyn. She twitters here and tumbls here.

BANG BANG: Jenny Stewart

2011-12-22T06:30:00.002-08:00

Even though television serials are the right medium with which to tell immersive character stories, it is still a pretty rare thing to see a show that isn’t primarily plot-driven. What I mean is that our usual (pedestrian mainstream) experience in front of the screen is to be very quickly clued into certain archetypical/idealized characters, so that we may watch said characters react to a series of events (loosely, ‘plot’). Nothing explains this better than the Hangover movies, where the whole point is to watch oh-so-subtly differentiated dudes responding to outrageous events. Note that Hangover’s reverse chronology is just the ideal cinematic contrivance for getting the audience to salivate in anticipation of immanent character reactions. We want to see that guy being that guy, etc.

And really, I shouldn’t be smug or cynical, because at the very least, all these structural conventions (i.e. beginning the film at its chronological end) are interesting, if only insofar as they get allied to other generic conventions (the dude movie, etc.) Film itself mentors us into reading character and personality as popular film conventions have conceived them. A show begins by showing us just enough characterization to clarify precisely what the character will experience and exactly how s/he will and will not change (ex: The Godfather trilogy), so that we may watch a certain stability of who they truly are prevail through all happenstance/fantastical events. This film shorthand for characterization is itself highly formulaic, though it can still be interesting or even original – think of how There Will Be Blood showed you who Daniel Plainview is through his incredibly tense and impatient dealings with Paul/Eli Sunday. The innovation being that Plainview was too horrifying to be legibly revealed all at once, and his character so graphically linked with the confusion of blood and oil (insights for another essay never written, alas).

Anyhow, that this kind of storytelling continues to prevail – namely, 1. introduction of characters 2. embroil characters in plot machine so we can see them being themselves OR turning inevitably into who we suspect they are to be – is easily explained by how much we enjoy watching eccentric, essentialized, and/or idealized personalities undergo life and its passions.

The past couple years, I’ve been thinking about how the advent of great serial television series has allowed groundbreaks from this tradition. Pretty simply, serials have the requisite time in which to do so. Even a film trilogy has such limited space within which to upset the normal character/plot formula. This is because most of the disruptive work requires defamiliarizing who it was you thought was on screen, and a two-hour film simply hasn’t the time to lay groundwork. Imagine trying to make a Breaking Bad movie capable of showing any of the central characters (Skyler, Jessie, Gus, Walt Jr, Marie, and Hank, let alone Walter). Disastrous.

Breaking Bad is doing something subtle and thrilling. Think of how cursory the ‘plot’ is – nothing just happens, all events are a precipitated by complex backmoves and antecedents between combinations of characters, and virtually all of these on-the-fly miracles of impulse in the face of struggle and resistance from others. Even Walt’s vainglorious inability to let Hank mistake Gale for Heisenberg owes to the same uncertainty principle (right?) as rashly swerving into traffic to keep Hank from Gus’ laundry. If there is anything predictable about Walt, it is that he finds himself – much to his own horror – capable of unpredictability. It is neither characteristic nor uncharacteristic, and this is what the show has been demonstrating from the start. Consider Walt’s tortured and circumambulating dispensing of Krazy-8 in the early episodes of Season One. Attempting to, oh, rationally persuade himself to murder the drug dealer bike-locked by the neck in Jessie’s basement, Walt composes a pro versus con list whilst sitting on the toilet. But it took a sandwhich, a fall down the stairs, and a shattered plate shard in Walt’s leg; committed decision not being enough, he needed a chance for reactive adrenaline.

Note how Skyler’s resolve against Walt was at first backed by steadfast principle, only to then just wear away. She seizes upon the delusion that good (paying for Hank’s rehabilitation) justifies the means. Welcomes it even, so that the war of attrition is over and she need no longer resist. On any other show, once established that her character stood for any principled stance, there’d be no need to show any more of her. Instead, she breaks, just like everyone else on Breaking Bad.

By the end of 2011’s fourth season, we can see Walt’s now refined ability to premeditate complex manipulations on equal par with Gus. Yet recall the heartbreaking scene between Walt and his son in S04E10, “Salud.” It’s the morning after Walt and Jessie’s physical fight. Junior’s calling and buzzing as Walt, disorientated, medicated, beaten, pulls back a sheet stuck to his face with dried blood. The shroud comes away for a few precious minutes and Junior sees his dad unguarded. At first Walt sticks to the story – “don’t tell your mother, I was gambling, can we just keep this between us?” – but when Junior asks who did you get into a fight with that’s the end of Walt’s posturing. Walt sees Jessie where Junior is; the possibility of relief, forgiveness. But as sobriety dawns Walt takes it all back and the layers of blood-caked cover go back on. Now Walt asks Junior not for connection and forgiveness, but to promise to not take that unshrouded image as defining; the way the “empty spray-paint can” imagine of his rasping father dying of Huntington’s disease, is Walt’s only “real memory” of his father.

W: “I don’t want that to be your memory of me when I’m gone.”

Jr: “Remembering you that way wouldn’t be so bad. The bad way to remember you would be the way you’ve been this whole last year. At least last night, you were real. Y’know?”

Walt is confusing the revelation of nothing beneath the shroud with emptiness. RJ Mitte kinda steals this scene, and Walt junior is now the character to watch in Season Five…

p.s. Jessie. No one’s been broken more than Jessie, in ways he has yet to fully discover.

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Jennifer K Stewart is a philosopher and yoga instructor living in Canada. She believes in the body.

BANG BANG: Akiva Gottlieb

2011-12-21T07:00:00.009-08:00

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

by Akiva Gottlieb

The movie I most wanted to evangelize for all year—at least before Margaret started kicking down doors—was usually synopsized in embarrassing fashion. Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry, in prose courtesy of IMDb: “A sixty-something woman, faced with the discovery of a heinous family crime and in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, finds strength and purpose when she enrolls in a poetry class.” Yes, every word of this heartwarming short story is technically accurate, but the implied causality is almost willfully misleading. In actuality, her discovery of the heinous crime is sublimated, her awareness of her Alzheimer’s is either denied or forgotten, and if she finds strength and purpose when enrolling in a poetry class, it’s not the result of anything she learns there.

The perverse irony of this unpredictable, quietly devastating film is Lee’s framing of his protagonist’s terminal illness as less of an impediment than an enabler—it causes her to forget, but just as crucially gives her license to walk away from trauma. Poetry’s most resonant mysteries pivot upon the impossibility of knowing the difference between a selective memory and a faulty one.

Lee’s film is an object lesson in everyday escapism, and if he never indicts the movies as our favorite emotional management tool, he probably expects we’d repress that knowledge anyway. Poetry draws a precise visual map of those other places we hide from what we don’t want to know—behind locked doors, under the covers, in the shower, in a karaoke bar, in a poem—and the negotiations we’re willing to make with ourselves and others to keep an ugly truth from coming to light. This is not a chronicle of disease and triumph, or finding one’s voice, but a testimonial to compartments and evasions. Poetry’s poetry lessons allegorize the process of emotional disengagement as a method of scaling back, limiting one’s scope, concentrating. To repress one memory might just be way of focusing more intensely on another. A debilitating illness is a tragedy, but Poetry discovers a state of grace—or at least a deferral of inevitabilities—in being lost for words.

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Akiva Gottlieb writes about film for The Nation, but does not write poetry. He lives in Michigan.

BANG BANG: Eric Freeman

2011-12-21T06:30:00.011-08:00

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

Some Things I Found Interesting in Some Things I Saw This Year by Eric Freeman

A Brighter Summer Day (dir. Edward Yang): I saw this in January at a mostly empty screening with no intermission in Berkeley, and it’s still probably the best thing I’ve seen all year, old or new. Read Rosenbaum's longer piece if you want more comprehensive breakdown. I’ll just note that what strikes me about ABSD (and Yi Yi, as well) is that the epic scope follows not from stunning natural vistas or loud pronouncements of import, as we’ve come to expect from the medium, but finding an interesting situation and treating the context and its characters with complete respect and as much depth as necessary. It’s an epic because it’s so true to the way people relate to one another.

World on a Wire (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder): If ABSD is the best movie I saw this year, then this one has proven to have fascinated me the most. It was my first Fassbinder, and since then I’ve steadily run through a good chunk of his career. One thing I love about this one, apart from the “what if we shot through four panes of glass?” aesthetic, is how RWF sets up shots where a pan finishes in a hilariously overdetermined setup. It’s the movie in microcosm: things may appear free-flowing, but everything has been decided already.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (dir. Sean Durkin): A disappointment even as I enjoyed it, if only because it’s so easy to see how it could be better. While the structure is indeed very clever, many of the match cuts fall flat because it’s immediately when and where the scenes take place. As the last shot proves, Durkin wants the audience to identify with Martha’s displacement, yet continually keeps her at remove. Which is all a way of saying that the film needs more moments of actual ambiguity, like the several shots of Martha walking through a dark hall, when it’s unclear where she is until she ends up in a room she herself might not have expected to enter.

Certified Copy (dir. Abbas Kiarostami): Ryland thinks this film is fundamentally a work of criticism, and I mostly agree with that statement. But I also think it comes across as more dismissive than it should, because in this case the criticism gets at important points about how relationships change over time, the value of authenticity in everything from art to interactions, and all sorts of other deep philosophical questions that we tend not to consider on a daily basis. So, yes, it’s criticism, but also proof that criticism isn’t really about the thing it directly addresses, but deeper conceptions and feelings about how people relate to the world around them.

Mildred Pierce (dir. Todd Haynes): It’s no surprise that a director who regularly gets great performances from actresses does so well with Kate Winslet, who plays this role as a mix of her usual technical strength and the rare looseness usually lacking in her most awarded work. What’s less expected is that Evan Rachel Wood acquits herself so well. Veda can easily come off as a monster, but Wood instills her with enough relatable pride to seem human. Her best moment (and also the one that will make me seem particularly pervy for noting) comes when, directly after Mildred finds out about the affair with Monty, Veda gets out of bed fully naked, struts over to her vanity, and regards herself in the mirror, all as a sort of victory celebration after embarrassing her mother. It’s a triumphant moment for the character, the point at which she believes to have finally proven herself as a dominant woman. For different reasons, the scene makes the same case for the actress.

Drive (dir. Nicholas Winding Refn): I’m of the camp that takes this movie as a massive spastic fuckup, mostly because NWR has no idea what he was trying to do and not for some difficulty in melding tones and styles. But there are some delightful moments of clarity, especially the opening set-piece and the various music videos (not like music videos) that distill the latent emotions of the piece into perfect pairings of image and sound. For all the talk of Drive as an arthouse action movie, the best parts are almost always the most overtly commercial.

Rango (dir. Gore Verbinski): It’s become standard in some circles to say that the home-viewing experience is almost as good as the theater these days, but Rango is the first movie that ever made me think it could be true. I loved the movie in March, mostly for its gag-a-minute pace, but I don’t think I fully appreciate the visual dazzle until I saw it on the very excellent Blu-Ray transfer on a reasonably-sized TV. Multiplex projection standards are so poor that, for a detail-driven, wide-audience movie like this one, it’s almost preferable to watch it on a couch.

Bridesmaids (dir. Paul Feig): As the thinkpieces all said, an important step forward for the status of women in Hollywood comedies. Unfortunately, the movie itself is a sad commentary on exactly what those Hollywood comedies entail. Almost all the best parts are moments of emotional discord between Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph or throwaway lines from the amazing Melissa McCarthy -- the worst are the zany, insert-setpiece-here laugh-generators that could have been ported in from any Apatowville (or, worse yet, Farrelly Bros) creation. Turn this into a movie about adult friendship with regular laughs, and it might have felt a little more true to its characters. Instead, it’s all too familiar.

Enlightened (created by Mike White and Laura Dern): This HBO series isn’t especially cinematic, but it deserves mention on this list for Laura Dern’s performance as Amy Jellicoe, in my opinion the best acting work of the year. It’s easy to caricature Amy—the pilot arguably does it too often—as a hypocritical woman who believes herself to have found inner peace when she falls victim to the same sort of jealousies and grudges she did before getting a few weeks of new-age counseling. In Dern’s hands, however, Amy is fascinatingly complicated, oblivious enough to peacock a new friend in front of past confidants but introspective enough to acknowledge that pettiness a few hours later. In a TV landscape heavy on melodrama, Enlightened stands out as a series about the everyday difficulties of trying to be a better person in a world that tends to incentivize the opposite behavior. It’s about self-awareness and emotional processes, and those battles register on Dern’s face as often as they manifest in an external conflict.

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Eric Freeman writes regularly about sports at The Classical and Ball Don’t Lie, and intermittently elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @freemaneric.

BANG BANG: Matthew Flanagan

2011-12-20T07:00:00.003-08:00

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

by Matthew Flanagan

I seem to be roughly a year behind with everything at the moment, so will have to shirk the brief here and recall films I saw in and from 2010 instead. Perhaps that’s best: reflecting on a year too soon tends not to leave enough time for its patterns and convergences to emerge, if they are to. A few neat couplings from 2010: films about the sea and its displacement of capital (trade and gold) — The Forgotten Space, Film socialisme; gentle forest fictions — Yuki & Nina, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives; the past and present of American cities — Get Out of the Car!, Cold Weather; sharp, lucid digital films, shot for love and little money — Saskia Gruyaert, Raya Martin, Antoine Thirion’s Tales & Gina Telaroli’s A Little Death; and, loosely, Daïchi Saïto’s Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis & Richard Skelton’s LP Landings. There were other films of note — Thomas Arslan’s In the Shadows, Sharon Lockhart’s Double Tide, Jean-Claude Rousseau’s Festival, Nathaniel Dorsky’s sublime Compline & Aubade — but, in all, two favourites: Liu Jiayin’s 607 and Patrick Keiller’s Robinson in Ruins.

Liu’s Oxhide II (2009) is, in its small way, an extraordinary structural film, but I think I like the lesser-known 607 more. It’s an ostensibly minimalist work: a single, 16-minute shot (followed by three brief dissolves) of clear water in a wooden bathtub: a quiet, almost serene, space, just theatrical enough. The actors are Liu’s hands and those of her mother and father, a porcelain fish, a few bobbing mushrooms and the disruptions of the water line. That’s all. The hands tease and hook each other, and it seems most movements exist for their sound: ripples breaking and bubbles tearing the surface. A minor, playful film, and the most pleasurable of recent memory.

Robinson in Ruins was first screened here in the UK at LFF on the 19th and 21st of October, the days immediately before and after what was probably the year’s defining domestic event: the announcement of the CSR, a structural adjustment programme aimed at permanently altering the role of the welfare state in British society. Keiller’s film was shot between January and November of 2008, documenting that year’s financial crisis before the cost of its systemic collapse was transformed into the class project of austerity. Its study of mostly agrarian, bucolic spaces — connected by a network of military bases, oil pipelines and sites of social unrest — questions, laterally, the autonomy of our landscape by way of a biophilic inventory of flowers, plants, trees and a few animals. With this shift in focus, Robinson in Ruins leaves behind the urban and (increasingly invisible) sites of industrial activity in London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997), and that geography is remapped instead in Owen Hatherley’s superb book A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, published concurrently. Hatherley’s book is a more pointed analysis of the abject failure of the neoliberal project, and together with Robinson in Ruins offers a vital base to reflect on the point of transition at which we find ourselves: wondering whether the CSR signals a permanent reentrenchment of neoliberalism amidst crisis (seemingly, its natural state), or whether the strain of underwriting its collapse will prove too much for the vestiges of democratic capitalism to bear. This year, we’ve watched as the locus of what began to unravel in 2008 has shifted from the US, via the UK, to the most intertwined states of Europe, and it’s likely one particular sequence from 2011 could prove prophetic: the end of Christoph Hochhausler’s high-finance art movie The City Below and its hushed final retreat: “…it’s begun.” Hatherley’s book ends its dérive in Liverpool amidst one of the most striking visible corpses of the Blairite redevelopment project: the few lonely cultural and residential substitutes for deindustrialisation at the heart of its docks, the thinnest of economic and social hopes. We visited Liverpool on the second to last day of 2010, and, picking out some lights on the other side of the Mersey, the immediate future looked pretty bleak. This year, it’s bleaker still.

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Matthew Flanagan lives in the UK and blogs sometimes at his blog.

BANG BANG: Dave McDougall

2011-12-20T06:30:00.002-08:00

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

Selected 2011 discoveries, briefly noted and across various media by Dave McDougall.
———

Homeland —— the characters on this show run deep; their history and demons are as much a driver as the twists of plot. Which certainly helps Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin and Damian Lewis and Morena Baccarin act their asses off. Allegiances don't shift as much as they are gradually revealed; even though the audience isn't only in the headspace of Danes' rebellious CIA agent, everything is filtered through the line between the watchers and the suspects, and the further into each world we're given access, the more complicated the line between terrorist and hero. This isn't a war of ideas as much as a war between wounded people who've sided with ideas, and those wounds are what drive both the terrorists and those trying to stop them. This week's showstopping season finale toyed with heavy political and personal dénouement and teased an even greater moral complexity to come. If there's a better show on television right now, I'd like to see it.

The Color Wheel (Alex Ross Perry, 2011) —— A masterpiece, a perfect screwball comedy, and a vicious, misanthropic, prickly little thing. What Ignatiy said, and then some.

And two other filmic masterpieces-to-be-named-later that also tackle communication (and shared histories) between men and women, on which I'll have more to say in the Mubi year-end roundup.
———
Governments toppled, not by social media but by people going to the streets to battle for their due. But the dynamics of open source protest and new media communication flows were a big part of why this was the year that kicked off an #ArabSpring, an indignado movement, a global coalition of #Occupy protests. It's not just coordination of protests but the ability for knowledge flows to reveal the silent political preferences of a people, and to rally supporters to the cause. None of these movements were created by the emergence of social media -- all grew out of previous organization by activists on the ground, over years and decade -- but it's hard to deny that these movements could only coalesce through communication, and that new forms of one-to-many communication smooth the friction of reaching out to wide audiences.
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As the 2008 financial crisis has shifted to become a crisis of solvency and liquidity in the Eurozone, the economic intelligence of the left-ish political blogotwittersphere rises almost as fast as events shift; but the key insight is that, unlike the people-powered movements and revolutions mentioned above, the fate of all of our economic lives still hangs in the balance of deals to be cut in back rooms by power brokers. Which, as those same movements will attest, is the opposite of democracy. If the revolutions of Egypt or Libya or Tunisia (or Syria or Bahrain or Yemen, if you're looking for revolutions-in-the-making) were best revealed by the participants themselves in 140 characters (or 140 character updates, compiled), then the stories of our economic dilemmas have been best told by those savvy enough to get to the bottom of capital flows and reveal these inner workings via blogs, articles, and interviews, whose links were embedded in 140-character updates themselves. Information, in all its forms -- pictures, videos, charts, analysis, stories from the front lines -- move and flicker and flow just the ways frames do in the cinema. For me, these were a few of the sources that made the leap to essential in 2011, from the MENA uprisings to the Econopocalyse and the social movements pushing back:

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Among all the books and blogs and analysis, an epic cornerstone of how to even begin to think of how we got here — David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years.
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David McDougall is a writer, filmmaker, and media strategist based in London and Los Angeles. He's got blogs and films and words in various places, some of them on the internet. He twitters here.

BANG BANG: Julian Tran + Cuyler Ballenger

2011-12-19T07:00:00.003-08:00

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

Julian Tran and Cuyler Ballenger Present: Crime

Netflix doubled our monthly fee this year. What a crime. Here are the best crime movies we saw on Netflix this year.

1. Carlos (Mini-Series), 2010, Olivier Assayas. Carlos is an interesting movie because the entire six hours is comprised of five repeating scenes: Cars driving up to a place; Johnny Walker Red being consumed; Shooting into a ceiling with an automatic weapon; Deboarding planes; The Cure. Because of, not despite, this simplicity, Carlos is irresistible, like (see picture). Don’t let the six hour running time dissuade you – Assayas burns through scenes with the naïve recklessness of a true Marxist. In a good way.

2. The Robber (Der Räuber), 2010, Benjamin Heissenberg. Further proof that rich people run. Madoff probably ran 5 miles, 5 days a week, before going into the office and robbing half the eastern seaboard. The Robber runs before and after his job. He also amasses a sizeable fortune, although his main asset is physical endurance. Unfortunately, even the best marathon runners tire and shit themselves, which is probably exactly what Madoff is doing these days.

3. Army of Shadows (L'armée des ombres), 1969, Jean-Pierre Melville. Not a crime movie exactly, unless you count Nazis as criminals, which basically nobody does anymore. Vive la Résistance.

4. Body Heat, 1981, Lawrence Kasdan. Body Heat is about a lawyer played by William Hurt who has an affair with the wife of a wealthy businessman. He is quickly ensnared in a plot to kill her husband. See, lawyers are people too. It’s the single largest act of betrayal perpetrated in Miami-Dade county pre-Lebron James. And the sex. Oh, the sex. It’s so inappropriately graphic, it’s like watching your parents do it. Great performances by Hurt, Kathleen Turner and Ted Danson, and Kasdan captures the fetid, damp rot of south Florida perfectly, which is fortunate, as I personally have no desire to visit.

5. Revanche, 2008, Götz Spielmann. We all know one of the dumbest crimes is trying to turn a Ho into a Housewife. Thankfully, Revanche knows this too. By killing off the female lead, the film is allowed to move onto more interesting relationships, like that of an aging father and his wayward son. Alex (played by Johannes Krisch) contemplates revenge numerous times: against his lover’s killer (gun), against his own father (Oedipal), and against many logs of firewood (axe) but manages to find a sort of redemption.

6. VOICEOVER: The Only Thing More Dangerous Than a Bartender Serving You Drinks is One That’s Feeding You LIES. The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a 1973 Film by Peter Yates.

[cut to: A MASKED MAN FIRING A SHOTGUN. The screen goes black.]

V.O. (CONT’D): With Friends Like This, Who Needs Enemies.

[title: NOW PLAYING.]

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Julian Tran and Cuyler Ballenger are writers living in New York. But they're friends, just like California. Julian can be found here and Cuyler writes at http://cablesports.blogspot.com

BANG BANG: Adam Hartzell

2011-12-19T06:30:00.001-08:00

[BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.]

by Adam Hartzell

I spend most of my time watching movies out of sync with my time and place. Since I prefer cinema from elsewhere, only one U.S. film makes my Top Ten, though it does make the top spot. Work and financial constraints keep me from traveling abroad for film festival premieres, which means I have to wait until they make it here to San Francisco. So my Top Ten lists usually say something about my cosmopolitan dreams that are anchored awake by my restricted finances and mobility. But here are 10 films which were released this year, or made their way to Bay Area festivals in 2011, about which I have found myself still ruminating in a positive way since they shined their light and heat on my eyes.
　
10. Passion (Khusel Shunal) (Byamba Sakhya, 2010, Mongolia) I knew nothing about Mongolian cinema until this documentary about said cinema, told through a lonely road movie, found its way into the program of this year's San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival. Now I want to know more, which is ironic since the film presents a pessimistic view of Mongolian cinema's future. But it's at least caught the fascination of one viewer even more isolated from this nation's cinema than the Mongolian residents portrayed in the documentary.

9. Aurélie Laflamme's Diary (Christian Laurence, 2010, Canada) A French language film from Quebec that was part of the NY/SF International Children's Film Festival that ran from October 21-23 at Viz Cinema, it ended up winning an audience award. I would have voted for it as well, had I seen it in the theater along with that awarding audience rather than on DVD for an sf360.org overview I wrote on the festival. It's a teen film that doesn't have to throw an American-Pie in our faces thinking that will entertain the kids and kidults. Marianne Verville is a refreshing presence in the lead role, allowed to be awkward in what is an awkward time of our lives. Plus, although she gets the boy the genre demands, she isn't swan-ed away from her duckling beginnings.

8. The Trip (Michael Winterbottom, 2011, United Kingdom) I am still laughing about the scene where Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are riffing on announcing the inexact time of an ancient battle. Adding to this comedic pleasure was that I got to laugh at this scene along with a friend I hadn’t seen in some time whom I randomly ran into in the lobby of The Bridge theatre before the screening. It was a nice day in the Richmond neighborhood thanks to the run-ins such local establishments afford.

7. Oki's Movie (Hong Sang-soo, 2010, South Korea) I got to see three of my favorite director’s films for the first time this year. (The others were Ha Ha Ha on DVD because I couldn't make the screenings at the San Francisco International Film Festival and The Day He Arrives on screen at the Starz Denver Film Festival in mid-November with the proprietor of the Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee blog, Peter Nellhaus.) Thanks to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, I was able to watch Oki's Movie in the theatre in late June after having already seen it on DVD to prepare a piece for sf360. I'm biased in that I always find something to ruminate on endlessly in a Hong film (even with my least favorite, Woman Is the Future of Man). But Oki's Movie seems to have won over those who haven't been fans of his work. I think a big reason is the auditioning of men in Oki's movie nested within "Oki's Movie" that Andrew Tracy expertly analyzes in the Fall 2010 issue of Cinema Scope magazine.

6. The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls (Leanne Pooley, 2009, New Zealand) Finally getting the theatre release it deserved, The Topp Twins graced our local screens outside of the film festivals that started the momentum (Frameline in 2010 and Mostly British in 2011). I own the DVD and saw the film in the theatre three times, once each at those festivals and once in Berkeley at Shattuck Cinemas with my cousin when it was released. Even after all these screenings, I'm still moved by how much major moments of the lives of these yodeling, country singing lesbian twins are tied up with major political successes in New Zealand history. I am still giddy about getting to meet them for an interview for sf360, the most nervous I have ever been for an interview.

5. Poetry (Lee Chang-dong, 2010, South Korea) Poetry definitively represents what I have been appreciating lately about South Korean cinema - how much it has opened up cinematic space for its senior actresses. Yun Jung-hee came out of retirement for this virtuoso performance of Lee Chang-dong's as he continues to explore the life of the outsider in South Korea. During my first draft of this brief commentary on Poetry, I went into a rant about how, if there failed to be a Best Actress nom nod to Yun, the Oscars would continue to be irrelevant in my cinematic life. But after writing that draft, I went to talk with Brian Darr of Hell on Frisco Bay blog and he informed me the Los Angeles Critic Circle gave Yun their Best Actress award. As a result, I put my seething rage at the Oscars as a failed institution back into its cage to be unleashed some other day.

4. The Salesman (Sébastian Pilote, 2011, Canada) I am someone upon whom car commercials fail to make the intended impact. I don't desire the products they advertise. And I don't buy into the false sense of freedom the commercials purport to symbolize. (The streets are usually much more crowded than as portrayed in the commercials and buying a car shackles you with debt, high gas prices, and vast acres of asphalt requirements for roads and parking.) That said, I'm primed to appreciate the tragedy in The Salesman, a perfect example of a genre I'm calling 'Post Peak Oil Cinema', where the life of a successful car salesman is turned on its head by the very products he sells so successfully. The Salesman is a sad, sad film that doesn't pummel you but rather slowly piles upon you like the snow that surrounds this little Quebec town.

3. The Life of Fish (Matías Bize, 2010, Chile) My wife and I caught this film during our yearly Caltrain trip to Cinequest in San Jose because it fit with our schedule and it's one of those happy accident, eeny-meeny-miney-mo(e)ments where you select a film with no real sense of what you are getting yourself into and you realize the programmers have made an excellent choice for you. In this film, we travel through a party held in a single house as our main character relives his younger self through his memories and those of others. Simple, poignant, and delightful.

2. Nostalgia for the Light (Patrico Guzmán, 2010, France/Chile/Germany) This was a truly amazing film I saw in the Dolby screening room as part of the press screenings for the San Francisco International Film Festival this year. Guzmán’s pairing of professional astronomers with amateur archaeologists works on so many levels. Even though the archaeologists are searching for the remains of family members killed by their own government, somehow, in spite of all this, Guzmán leaves us with tremendous hope for humanity.

1. Deaf Jam (Judy Lieff, 2011, USA) I have not had the experience with a film for a long time like I had with Lieff’s documentary about high school Deaf poets venturing out into the venues of a (hearing) poetry slam. Cinema transfixed me again at the Mill Valley Film Festival like it did the first time I could not stopping about the impact a film had on me. Lieff captures the vibrancy of American Sign Language through several tactics of translation. Her willingness to mess with the text of subtitling the poems in the opening sequence is mesmerizing. At the same time, she even took the risk not to translate the ASL later in the film and it is just as powerful sans subtitles. Mixed in with this story of the life of young Deaf folk is a story about the struggles of immigrant children whose parents’ citizenship comes after they enter adulthood and a friendship between a young Israeli Jew and Palestinian Muslim. Lieff and the subjects of her documentary show us how ASL is as perfect a language of cinema as any other, leaving you hoping Lieff and the students she films don’t stop here. We need these stories. We need this kind of active, engaged cinema.

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Adam Hartzell is totally bummed that sf360.org is no longer publishing because he had a blast writing for them for three years. He continues to write for Brian Darr's San Francisco film blog, Hell on Frisco Bay, and the premier English language website on South Korean cinema, Koreanfilm.org. He began this year as a guest on an episode of the VCinema podcast where he discussed the original version and the recent re-visioning of the South Korean classic The Housemaid (MP3). He has had a few magazine pieces in Kyoto Journal, a chapter on The Power of Kangwon Province for The Cinema of Japan and Korea (Wallflower Press), and next year he will have a bunch of essays in the upcoming publication of World Directory of Cinema: Korea (Intellect, Ltd.).

Summer CH Counterpoint

2011-11-29T05:46:00.001-08:00

by Mark Haslam and Ryland Walker Knight

Viewing Log #85: When you are the cancer

2011-10-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knght

[Amidst a few other films I watched and writing projects I kept chipping away at in August, I finished the second season of AMC's Breaking Bad.]

Right off the bat: Skyler is the worst. Anna Gunn is brave, but Skyler is as unsympathetic a character as I've ever seen. So much so that I had to stop watching the episodes back to back, as is the common desire with instant/on-demand viewing. However, I quickly fell back into plowing through one episode then another, in part because I'm attracted to how condensed the story is compared to, say, Mad Men, where time's certainly not of the essence unless by dint of the television medium's format (seems there's a lot of "something's gotta happen eventually" in MM). It's not as condensed and rigorous as either Milch HBO show (to date) but then even Deadwood feels like years given all the time that passes in between its season arcs. Breaking Bad, on the other hand, though it plays with time some, is mostly driven by a consequential logic. In other words, I was surprised to see this season start precisely where the last one ended. But it makes sense.

The genius of the show, if I can use that word, is how much attention is paid to every step Walter takes towards villainy. We get to watch a basically good brain go, yes, bad. We see all the rationale behind his choices, sometimes without words. I told a friend it was like Dostoevsky and I meant it. But the delusion of doing wrong in the name of good isn't just a trope of the great Russian depressive; it's really rather common. The idea of "white lies" comes from somewhere not related to white nights. I think it comes from everyday life. One must contend, all the time, with too many compromising choices to remain moral. However, this show, unlike those Milch masterpieces, isn't concerned with the ethical life. No, this is just the wrong way to do things. Remember the title: it's forgoing the righteous path.

And if Mad Men is about television as advertising, Breaking Bad is certainly about television as a drug: a perfectly calibrated bit of magic that keeps you coming back for more, designed to hit you where it hurts and where it feels the best. (Why else watch more than one episode at a time, right? It becomes a compulsion, if not outright addiction.) This show, like The Sopranos, makes you complicit, designs a rooting interest in Walter, and dares you to not get excited with him and for him. Until, of course, he explodes and, as his brow lowers, all that venom bubbles up. The most obvious and scary instance of this is when he beats up that towel dispenser (see evidence above). Unlike The Sopranos, nothing is glamorous here. There's nothing sexy about two men making meth in a desert, or anything related to meth. Hell, the meth cooking passages are my least favorite parts of the show. Krysten Ritter may be sexy, but the show goes out of its way to make her unsexy by the end of her character's sad, pathetic, idiotic life. Her death, after all, is just another instance of Walter's growing selfishness as the root of his growing evil. For Walter's whole trajectory is about taking control of his life. But he's pretty lousy at that, too, since he's only ever looking for shortcuts. And, again, the show shows us that these are all myopic moves from a novice. That's maybe my favorite part: these people are idiots.

Walter is a chemistry genius, I suppose, but he's a child compared to Pollos Gus. (Giancarlo Esposito is so awesome at his two face it's incredible; yet another movie-quality actor brought to television and instantly upping the ante.) I suspect he will change the game going forward quite a bit more than Saul Goodman, though Bob Odenkirk is about as crucial an element as can be. After all, he's the only one expressly keeping the comedy going. He has his moments of clarity and seriousness but he's mainly there to act the fool, to play dumb—though he's not dumb, at least not as dumb as Walter—to show the other dummies how dumb they are. This vision of comedy is quite close to condescension. I get that. But nothing's so simple in this show. It's a black comedy, after all, where everything farcical is tied to horror. The horrific is often papered over by laughter in order to diffuse tension, but sometimes horrible things are just horrible. Like letting a girl choke to death on smack-induced vomiting. Other times, horrible things can be hilarious—because they're so stupid—like Saul's whole wardrobe.

Not sure what to do with the framing device of the season, but the tidy color coding of the teddy and Walter's sweater seems obvious. Walter is adrift, charred by wrong. And all that build up to that collision seems like a ploy, not plotting. I cannot imagine how that's going to actually effect the trajectory of Season Three other than Jesse's already rock bottom self-esteem flatlining a little longer. But maybe we're (I'm) in for another rise. Maybe Jesse will seize sobriety and do some things right. Worst case, which it usually is, he'll be a marginally better criminal because he'll be clean. Best case, it'll complicate how Walter sees him, because Jesse is certainly something in his life that Walter can and has controlled. I doubt Jesse will learn how to interpret his way out of manipulative moves by Walter, but he'll likely get better at staking a claim for himself in kind. Then again, Jesse's kind of the show's test dummy par excellence, a raggedy ann at the mercy of bigger and stronger and meaner people. His best episodes in the season were all about his sensitivity. Hope he doesn't get beat up so much that he loses it. Walt sure is trying to lose his.

—You are not okay here at all

Viewing Log #84: So rid of all your stories [9/9/11 - 9/18/11]

2011-09-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Breaking Bad Season 1, [Vince Gilligan, 2008] So far, I'm a fan of the farcical elements that sharpen the edges of the drama and elevate the show past one of the stupidest (or most roll-your-eyes) pitches you can imagine. Oh, a failed chemist now teaches high school and has cancer and, get this, to pay for his chemo he starts selling the purest crystal meth ever thanks to his skills in and knowledge of chemistry? Yeah, that sounds like a party—when does it air? That train of thought is why I never watched. But my friend told me it was funny, actually, and since the first three seasons are all on Netflix Instant at present I thought I'd give it a shot. Turns out she was right and I was wrong! It's not dumb, it's funny. But it's dark, a black comedy. However, I can imagine things only get heavier as Walter White turns into more of a heavy. For now, I'm enjoying all the play on that line we draw between right and wrong, legal and not, good and evil. Plus, it's about money in the late oughts and that's bonus points right there.
Drive [N.W.Refn, 2011] # I gave it a second chance and I'm still unimpressed. It simply doesn't add up. For a while, after I read the Sallis book a couple times, I thought it might be interesting to write an article all about adaptation using this as an intriguing example (as part of the pitch, too, I'll be honest). But the adaptation's strengths are lost in the haze of what Refn's after, which I think can be simplified to one of the weirdest ways to say, "I love you," to his wife (1). Even disregarding that mostly useless extrapolation of projection-as-interpretation, the object itself is rather basic, though pretty, and altogether empty—a film of integers arrayed, not added up, instead of the matrix of significance it seems to pose as in all those extra beats and drawn out googly eyes scenes. That is, there are a lot of "symbols" that don't add up to any kind of meaning. The most interesting motif—the satin scorpio jacket—is ruined, near the close, with that line of dialog that acts like a "looky here!" instead of letting the images and editing reinforce that the jacket is his armor, what keeps him alive, if not a second skin. He's not wearing it at all times, but when he's not wearing it, he's holding it across an arm. Or he's draping it on the kid, which is both an everyday gesture (keep the kid warm) and a gesture of protection (shielding the boy) (2). After all (spoiler), our "real hero" is stabbed in the gut while he's wearing this "trademark" and he doesn't die; that gratuitous act of violence just bloodies him, and the festishistic camera glides up his stoic face to reify this guy as alone, like so many "heroes" before. What Danny calls soulless, I call boring. I might even call it rote. But I must cop to the fact that I spent a lot of time anticipating the movie, and gabbing with my friends about it afterwards, but more in SF than Cannes because I felt I had to explain myself a lot more. Point is, there's obviously things there (Refn knows how to compose shots, if not film action) if it spawned this many words, this many hours of thinking and talking. Thing is, I still want more to warrant it all.
The Driver [Walter Hill, 1978] # Hoberman called it schematic in his review of the Refn picture. I think it's great. My favorite scene might be the one where he trashes their orange Benz to prove his skills behind the wheel. And Isabelle Adjani is super hot. Total score. I've got "deeper thoughts" but this is all you get here.
Curb Your Enthusiasm "Larry vs Michael J. Fox" [Alec Berg, 2011 "Thank God he didn't hand you his dick, you know what I mean? He coulda been shaking and shook that dick up, hand you the dick and the dick shot sperm in your face." Finally, a few truly great Leon moments and lines. And what an amazing guest spot: so awesome MJF can make fun of himself like that. And what about that "Paris" set? Priceless.
Curb Your Enthusiasm "Mister Softee" [Larry Charles, 2011] A weaker link, but, granted, this one had some good Leon moments, too, to spice up the rather "predictable" convergence of threads.
Contagion [Steven Soderbergh, 2011] American movie of the year? Maybe. Truly digital, truly D-G capitalism-as-schizophrenia, truly mosaic. A cheap shot of a human villain in Law, but it's the filmmaking (moviemaking? it's digital, after all...) that elevates the often obvious script. That and the actors. But more later. UPDATE: Here's more.
The Runaways [Floria Sigismondi, 2011] It starts well, with all that messy sex stuff and Michael Shannon doing something flamboyant instead of all nervous everywhere, but it sure hits a wall when they get famous and it tries to slow down to get serious as if those two things were dependent on one another. Was really ready for this to join Whip It as this fall's grrl movie I have a place for in my heart but this one just isn't that one.

—The real star of the picture
(1) Refn basically said as much to Durga during their interview.

(2) Cambomb gave me this reading.

Viewing Log #83: Moving daze [9/1/11 - 9/8/11]

2011-09-08T23:14:00.001-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

My summer travels are long gone, crowding the rearview like a bus. I'm back in San Francisco, working, writing, slowly piecing together some more moving images. Not as much fun as galavanting around Europe. But not awful. Truth is, I have a good life. In fact, I missed it quite a bit while I was gone. I did not miss writing the viewing log, but I know of at least one friend (and a certain mom) who did miss reading them/me. So I think I'll start it up again. That said, I've been reading more than watching movies. But I still watch movies. In fact, there's a number I should watch sooner than later. But there's also a ton I won't fret pushing down the line. Especially during a stretch like this when the US Open's going (starting and stopping and starting as it has) and there's all kinds of drama right there along those baselines (not to mention the weather report). But I'll stop boring you with this intro that's only yet another stalling tactic. The important thing is that I cannot recall all I watched since Cannes so I'm starting over since the beginning of this month. So, working backwards as ever, let's count from ten down to zero.

The Mechanic [Simon West, 2011] West is a pretty lousy action director, forever chopping up things in useless/pointless ways that are obnoxious in their advertising gleam more than any spatial misrepresentation. He gets space fine, as some killings make perfect sense in living room geometry, but he's bad with bodies. Too often we see a body as one limb or another and only for a second. It's not surprising that the big stunt (the fall off the building) is the only time you see Jason Statham and Ben Foster's whole bodies moving through a space; it's annoying that the shots are so fisheyed and seesawing between their perspectives, but props for shooting the fall as their POVs; it's a good stunt, sure, but it's so clearly staged that any verve you get from seeing these dudes do their own stunt is lost in a fit of sped-up frame rates shot on super fast film stock. And yet, these guys are, as the saying goes, "compulsively watchable." I like seeing Statham clench his jaw and shoot guns. I'm looking forward to another Expendables installment. And I like Ben Foster's ability to project hurt in his angry way through roles. I'll always watch him play a psycho.
How Do You Know [James L. Brooks, 2010] # Flipped over during the rain delay in the Fed-Tsonga match. The scene with the newborn and the proposal is unbeatable. Lenny Venito is the man.

Bridesmaids [Paul Feig, 2011] # Went to the Castro, which was packed with single ladies and gay boys in pairs and quartets all over the auditorium, and had a blast. It definitely tapers, but it is so fun with an audience. More on Wiig and McCarthy soon.

War of the Worlds [Steve, 2005] # This is how you make action scenes. The first 70 minutes of this movie are maybe flawless. Or, those contain some truly/typical visionary stuff from good old Steve. Why does nobody talk about how great his master shots are? Because even simple one-take shots/scenes are awesome, like after the lightning when Tom goes through the living room, flipping the light switch and trying the cell phone and tapping his stopped-dead watch, all handheld without shakes and without a cut. Every camera movement is justified in a Spielberg set piece. It's crazy how rigorous and off-handed he can be. Too bad so much of this one stinks.

Louie "Niece" [Louis CK, 2011] # Hard to follow the Afghanistan episode, so it kind of makes sense to go all serious in this one. Yet another stranger teaching Louie-Louis how he's gotta go with the world, and be in it, instead of only approaching it from outside. But this one was a deep cut since it revolves around a young girl getting abandoned. Still, loving this season. Duh.

Monkey Business [Howard Hawks, 1952] # Rivette said it better but this movie's interest in where we place intelligence is basically a punchline to the entire search for the bone that is the movie we saw just before...
Bringing Up Baby [Howard Hawks, 1938] # ...which is just about as good as it gets in terms of zany, fast-as-a-nail-gun screwball ping ponging of plot and characters. Plus all that Cavell stuff. I've said it before. Look it up.

Curb Your Enthusiasm "Car Periscope" [David Mandel, 2011] Not quite as laugh out loud funny for me as the prior week's "Bi Sexual" but still pretty great. This season definitely seems more bound up in the clever concepts Larry's dreamt up rather than an arc as the last two seasons showed. Basically I want as much Leon as I can get and I'm barely getting any.

The Awful Truth [Leo McCarey, 1937] # The best. Without a doubt. Okay maybe a little doubt. In any case, there are few movies as fun and smart at the same time. Never hurts to see it with an appreciative crowd and two great friends, either.

CHEZ MOCKING SEAGULL

2011-07-18T06:00:00.001-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

One day in Cannes, I woke up rather early.

A conjunction of quotations #13

2011-05-27T09:30:00.002-07:00

— edited by Ryland Walker Knight

— Paul Nozolino
1.
We don't even know if what ends in daylight terminates in us as useless grief, or if we are just an illusion among shadows, and reality just this vast silence without wild ducks that fall over the lakes where straight and stiff reeds swoon. We know nothing. Gone is the memory of the stories we heard as children, now so much seaweed; still to come is the tenderness of future skies, a breeze in which imprecision slowly opens into stars. The votive lamp flickers uncertainly in the abandoned temple, the ponds of deserted villas stagnate in the sun, the name once carved into the tree now means nothing, and the privileges of the unknown have been blown over the roads like torn-up paper, stopping only when some object blocked their way. Others will lean out the same window as the rest; those who have forgotten the evil shadow will keep sleeping, longing for the sun they never had; and I, venturing without acting, will end without regret amid soggy reeds, covered with mud from the nearby river and from my sluggish weariness, under vast autumn evenings in some impossible distance. And through it all, behind my daydream, I'll feel my soul like a whistle of stark anxiety, a pure and shrill howl, useless in the world's darkness.
— Fernando Pessoa

2.
C. Bergvall says space is doubt—
What emerges then?
Something cast in aluminum from a one-half scale model of a freight shed
Intrication
The slight smudge of snow in the shadow of each haycock in the still-green field
The hotel of Europe. Its shutters.
Fields and woods oscillate as in Poussin
While the vote is against renewed empire, or at least capital temporarily
Each wants to tell about it but not necessarily in language
— Lisa Robertson

3.
Walked through Covent Garden; there were five of their mimes knocking about. I don't understand why people take pictures of mimes. Everyone looks like a mime in a picture.
— Karl Pilkington

4.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To where were the foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
— Job, 38:4-7 º

5.
English has a hard time speaking the deed, articulating the event. We can speak actively — I love you — or passively: I am loved. But it's difficult to speak in a way that is neither active nor passive, that is both active and passive: loving. Which is to say, it's difficult to speak with the world because either we're doing things to it or things are being done to us.
— Daniel Coffeen

6.
There’s no need to invoke the Beyond when talking about Dreyer. Neither God, nor master. Just soul, that’s all. A gospel of images, that’s all. That the images happen to be sharp, ultra-sharp, is a plus – a ‘bonus’, as people say these days. The essential thing in Dreyer (as in Fassbinder, the master of cinema after cinema, which obviously needs a master) is what he tells, not how he tells it. What he sings, if you like. Oh, you don't like, you want your short-order review of Ordet. And what does Ordet even mean? It means ‘the word’. And that means there is speech, and that this speech matters. Is that too complicated for you? Tough luck.
— Louis Skorecki

7.
The logic of artistic construction and esthetic appreciation is peculiarly significant because they exemplify in accentuated and purified form the control of selection of detail and of mode of relation, or integration, by a qualitative whole. The underlying quality demands certain distinctions, and the degree in which the demand is met confers upon the work of art that necessary or inevitable character which is its mark. Formal necessities, such as can be made explicit, depend upon the material necessity imposed by the pervasive and underlying quality. Artistic thought is not however unique in this respect but only shows an intensification of a characteristic of all thought. In a looser way, it is a characteristic of all nontechnical, non-"scientific" thought. Scientific thought is, in its turn, a specialized form of art, with its own qualitative control. The more formal and mathematical science becomes, the more it is controlled by sensitiveness to a special kind of qualitative considerations. Failure to realize the qualitative and artistic nature of formal scientific construction is due to two causes. One is conventional, the habit of associating art and esthetic appreciation with a few popularly recognized forms. The other cause is the fact that a student is so concerned with the mastery of symbolic or prepositional forms that he fails to recognize and to repeat the creative operations involved in their construction. Or, when they are mastered, he is more concerned with their further application than with realization of their intrinsic intellectual meaning.
— John Dewey

8.
My difficulty is only an — enormous — difficulty of expression.
— Wittgenstein

9.
Somebody go fetch me a preacher
So I can buy the rights...
I wanna love you!
— The Mighty Hannibal

10.
I’ve been dancing so long, I don't know. Maybe. I don't know, I’m not against the idea. Again, it’s like these guys in the play entering middle age. You say, well, what stopped me from this, and was it the other person, or was it in me? And I don’t have the full answer for that. I was never really settled in being an actor, what I wanted to really do in my mind was think, Okay, let me settle that first because then I’ll do this. Because if you get married and have kids you should shovel shit for them, you really should. When I was 25 or 35, "shoveling shit" in my parlance would mean doing really crappy movies, intentionally making crappy movies I didn't want to do. I mean, I had some that came out crappy, but it was never the ideal.
— Jason Patric

11.
We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees.
— Jason Kidd

12.
Sometimes it’s unfair, because of how strong I am.
— LeBron James

13.
The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
— Wallace Stevens

14.
The bowl that emerged was one of those gifts whose first impact produces in the recipient's mind a colored image, a blazoned blur, reflecting with such emblematic force the sweet nature of the donor that the tangible attributes of the thing are dissolved, as it were, in this pure inner blaze, but suddenly and forever leap into brilliant being when praised by an outsider to whom the true glory of the object is unknown.
— Vladimir Nabokov

15.
Forgiving is never as easy as we would like. Apparently quite a lot of people cried.
— Karen Green

Cannes 2011 #5: Wraps so lissome she could fly

2011-05-25T03:00:00.000-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Got a few more dispatches hitting the Cargo site late, post-fest due to my computer being tied up with FCP work and my aversion to writing on "foreign" keyboards all last week. Granted, I wrote a lot by hand, but not all of that's for the internet's eyes to see. So keep checking that link.

There's a high school behind my friend's apartment in Milan and the constant babble is almost better than music. Except when the glee club (they have those here?) starts trying to harmonize "Don't Stop Believing" for a good half an hour. That's when I retreated to headphones. But watching basketball happen, even when it's bad and these kids can't shoot, was better than half the movies I saw at the festival. Too bad I forgot to grab my camera. Too bad I just watched. But also not: living and making don't have to be one and the same at every juncture and I'm glad I hold that memory, like the waves off the beach at Cannes those first two days, or like certain dinners out in the streets, in a corner of my brain you will never open even if your eyes are wide. I'm reminded of windows at all events; it's probably why I shoot them so much.

UPDATE WAY LATER: Found the Indonesian TV clip I was in over here. I play the yokel quite well.

Cannes 2011 #4: Cannes Questionnaires

2011-05-17T13:45:00.011-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight
# 1: Gerardo Naranjo

Here's a post I will continue to update as we post these videos on vimeo and in The Notebook. Our first, with Gerardo Naranjo, had its fair share of problems, like a battery dying and the implementation of Danny's Flip in lieu of the T2i, and our second, with BONG Joon-ho, presented new audio issues. Luckily, most of our audience will see the video first on MUBI so this little bit of text won't set up expectations of post-synch hiccups.

In any case, more are in the pipe. We hope you like them because it's a lot of fun for us; maybe even more fun than writing.

# 2: BONG Joon-ho

# 3: Bruno Dumont

# 4: Vimukthi Jayasundara

Cannes 2011 #3: There is no tunnel, only light

2011-05-16T05:50:00.002-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

After Tree of Life I made some eggs (above) and wrote my mom a letter about the movie, which I am very happy to have seen but that made me miss a lot of people at home and elsewhere. Here's the link to Cargo again.

UPDATE: If you want to see me still dazed (though also re-caffeinated) and bemused in the bustling lobby of the Palais after the film, watch this video at The Guardian.

Cannes 2011 #2: Making things happen

2011-05-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

So far, so sweaty. Or, thank heavens we have a clothesline outside our kitchen window. Without providing any real content, let me remind you that you should check in with this dedicated blog at Cargo's website for my more or less long-form coverage the festival. My first missive, about the new Woody Allen movie, which I liked, is up. Early Thursday morning, I saw We Need To Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsay's newest, the one we've been waiting for since 2002 or 2003, and it's got chops like her other work, but I'll save my more potent/cogent thoughts for another Cargo blog. If you follow me on twitter you can get more immediate, though maybe cryptic, takes as I find wifi post-screenings. And, oh yeah, Danny and I will have some moving images at The Notebook in due time. Never fear: there will be updates.

[Note: I thought I posted something yesterday but it seems to have disappeared; the text above has been changed. Bonus, maybe: here I am, drinking some good whiskey.]

Cannes 2011 #1: Defense de wouf

2011-05-11T00:15:00.000-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight
I.

Lazy lunch

II.

I went up a hill to take some stills
and look what I did find

III.

Postcard point of view

SFIFF54 #5: Hear the words in here out there

2011-05-08T09:30:00.002-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Toronto's own Adam Nayman as he was in San Francisco on FIPRESCI jury duty for the festival. One of the fruitful conversations we shared was about Kelly Reichardt and her new movie, Meek's Cutoff, which, at first, made me madder than a snake. (What're spoilers?) The finest point to point at in my reaction to the film is its ending, which is exactly the kind of storytelling move that I've grown to detest: that seemingly open-ended "grace note" that feels if not over-determined then a cop-out. I complained to another friend that, if you're going to write a story about life and death consequences (risking starvation) on the road to the frontier, then you ought to make some real choices about trajectory, about what those consequences mean; and that it appeared Reichardt "copped out" on any such choices by opting for a "mystic allegory" that makes the film's alarmingly literal lefty slant unavoidable and, well, without argument beyond what I already know about how confused and confusing humans can be. That is, the political element is as rootless as the characters, awash in reaction not conviction. After all, the majority of the film made me angry because the way Meek is characterized—the ignorant blow hard wearing a red shirt quick to beat The Other he refuses to grant any value, let alone agency—leaves little room for interpretation outside allegory when met at first glance (1). But I must admit that not only was I rapt through the plodding but also that I marvel at Reichardt's gift for film grammar and staging. And, yes, that, while grimacing my way through the post-screening talks, trying and failing to bite my angry tongue, I tried to add to every exchange that I did not trust my basic reaction because it felt reductive and far too broad (funny how those dovetail!) for a film this specific.

When Adam and I started talking about the film a few days later nobody had presented any kind of argument to get me out of my funk with the film. I still explained the anger in terms of expecting the ending: "In that reverse shot through the trees, looking at the Indian, before the penultimate one of Williams, I was thinking, Please don't do it, and then you get Williams' face—did you realize her lips are perfect no matter what?—and she's all 'confused' or whatever before the final reverse, this time with less leaves, and I kept thinking, Don't fucking do it, and then it starts down, starts to fade, and I'm a riot inside, just totally, You fucking did it, didn't you? And I wanted to bolt from the theatre." Adam's reply was as simple as it was brilliant, one of those, ouch, I-should-breathe-better moments where your jaw doesn't drop but your mouth does open. He asked, "Does it matter that it's Williams' point of view, looking through those trees, to you?" My head went click and thud, my eyes widened and I said, "Huh, well, okay. Yes, of course that matters. How did I not think of that?" It's not like that question precipitated a complete reversal but it did open a new way to appreciate the film, or, at the very least, a way to let my useless anger abate. Because I'm still not sold on it, nor Reichardt, though I do like being forced to think about a movie, about a filmmaker, about my criteria, about myself. Thinking about thinking and thinking about how you are thinking are rather indulgent modes, I suppose, but that's all I understand criticism to be at bottom. Or, that's the kind of philosophical criticism I'm attracted to: the kind that brings intentionality into play while guiding a reader through one's experience of an object. I realize that ideal is not always possible, or desirable.

Part of what makes it improbable is that sense of duty a critic feels inside a festival's screening schedule not only to see as many films as possible but also to have something to say about all those free tickets she's received (2). "Duty" may be the wrong word, however, when what's really motivating me (I can only speak for me) is that I simply like going to the movies. But, in turn, I guard that enthusiasm by not going to the movies. (In fact, after Meek's, I only saw five films of the fifteen I'd planned (via iCal) to see. There were a lot of reasons, but the truth of the matter is that I wanted to watch basketball more than I wanted to watch movies. Luckily, this is something Adam is amenable to since he is, among other things, a big basketball fan as well. We will return to this.) Which gives me pause on the eve of my first visit to the Cannes Film Festival. I'm in Nice writing this and though my fatigued body wants to stay inside and lay down or get into some stretching, my brain wants to push that body outdoors as often as possible to feel a different sun and speak a different language walking around a city I do not know. Granted, I'll have a running mate in Danny at the festival and I don't doubt some odd kind of competition will push me to see more and write more than normal. Yet, no matter how flat out cool it is to the fan in me that I get to participate in this festival this year, the sun will always tempt me. Which is another motivating factor to pump out this post to wrap up my SFIFF54.

Thus, to regain the thread: I enjoyed Adam's question of perspective because it brought back a rather basic question I'd forgotten in the haze my eyes had created, reacting to the simple story onscreen in Meek's. Because that is the great thing at work in the film: bringing this woman's eyes to the fore. Her gaze may not be clear, or always level, but she's the moral rock of the picture and by the close she has, in fact, been brought from the back of the wagon ditching heirlooms to the center of the frame with a voice and a face for all to reckon. This reading, too, is reductive of course. But I'd much rather value the film for its picture of a woman emerging than disparage a film for its (by my lights) lazy storytelling. Reichardt may not be interested in story the same way I am, I must allow, since she has a certain a-g background that speaks to interests in space and time (both paramount abstractions here), but the fact is she chose to make a narrative feature that is only ever subtle in its patient formal craft, not its ideas, and that still bugs me. Then again, all three of Reichardt's Oregon pictures are on the cynic's side of the table and part of my problem may simply be my desire for a more generous world, my desire to see some new way towards charity. Put otherwise, I know I rate magnanimous movies higher for their obvious alignment with my own values. This may be selfish.

This is also why I love something like Claire Denis' 35 Rhums, which is nothing if not charitable. So imagine my thrill to meet Stuart Staples of Tindersticks prior to their event at the festival, adding a live score to a sort-of clip-reel of films they have worked on with Mme Denis. Our chat was brief but I can assure that Mr Staples is a gentle and patient man. He talked about a duty, too, he feels to the object at hand, to do right by it by the end of the process. On their first score with Mme Denis, for Nenette et Boni, he said the band had the idea that they would follow in Miles Davis' footsteps by trying to play live to the images, to be real jazz musicians, before they realized it would take time to find apt melodies and write real songs where needed. Now, he says, they get ideas earlier thanks to the script and dailies but it really takes seeing a rough assembly to have the kind of emotional reaction necessary to inspire his/their/that responsibility to the object that can produce such wonders as the delicate, lilting rhymes of the opening image-and-score tandem of 35 Rhums, where the train and its tracks shuffle a bit in time with the accordion. Or the title track from the soundtrack to Trouble Every Day, which was a highlight of the live performance (3) along with the song "Tiny Tears" from that first partnership on Nenette et Boni. Lucky for us, somebody talented shot that part of the show, its finale, and put it on youtube:

It was a low-key event. But it was certainly more about the concert than it was about the visuals (or the interplay between stage and screen) from my vantage. Which is fine, of course, since I feel privileged to live in one of the two U.S. tour stops for the show. And the music is really great, no matter how much I wanted to re-order things or at least open with more of a bang than that (admittedly lovely) shot of Alice Houri floating in the pool near the front of N&B. So I'll quit that tact by saying, Thanks.

Some other things I was grateful to catch on a big screen before departure include: Ben Russell's Trypps #7, which really did start its shorts program with a bang (or a bong, or a gong), as it took me forever to figure out we were looking in a mirror at that lady's face stay placid in the quivering frame; T.Marie's Slave Ship was projected smaller than the rest of the series but it still impressed the hell out of me because it flips the "watching paint dry" quip into something productive, forcing us to see an image not take shape but explore its own variance; The Mill and The Cross by Lech Majewski is somewhat confounding, especially from the 2nd row, but its palate is wide and deep and its ideas, though rooted in the narrative structure of the painting, feel yet more modern in how arrayed (not inter-related) they are, but then maybe Breugel was just ahead of his time (in any case I was too tired to offer a more cogent take); Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte is by turns cute and brilliant, with far more whimsy than any note could prepare me for, which isn't a bad thing since we should welcome some levity inside a largely wordless observation on cycles of life (it's not Disney, ok, though its like-minded brevity is a blessing) that still exist outside cities; Breillat's The Sleeping Beauty is nowhere near Disney and so full of stuff that I can't say what I think other than I like how she sees a dream life in a similar way to Lynch on a thematic level if nowhere close on a stylistic or formal level; and, finally, that big bad momma of some smoke and a shitload of mirrors, RWF's World on a Wire.

Believe me, I'm sorry to have missed plenty, but at the least I saw this large-scale goof of a thesis on modernity that's so funny and smart it's hard to believe people get daunted by its size. It's the kind of movie all cinephiles will enjoy, if not adore, and the kind they can never sell to non-movie-people they love. The running time is unavoidable in any description one might try to entice with due, in part, to the fact that the film just keeps getting better as it goes along, accruing incidents of insanity designed for maximum punchline effect. The gambit is easy enough, though, and largely ripped off: there's a government-funded project to build a computer world that mimics our own with a series of programmers, each holding the (invisible marionette) strings on fabricated subjects, going mad when they realize the very apocryphal truth of their own reality. Sounds familiar, huh? Well part of the joy in the thing is precisely its lower case, 16mm filmmaking that relies on performance and structure and sound design with very minimal set decoration to get at a sense of a future just past our present (even if the costumes are unmistakably 1973)—as well as a world enveloping itself. I'm astounded this is only the second Fassbinder film I've seen. But that just gives me another autodidact project, among so many, for after Cannes.

The trick is to step out of such impulses, though, when you're in a foreign country (4) (5) and look how I've failed today, spilling so many words. Whatever, I say; I say, my body saw the sun this morning—for a stroll to the market and beyond, for a lunch in the park and for a snack on the patio at my hotel with the owner. So out I go again, hoping for a cheap pizza and some good wine on a sidewalk where I can watch people in clean clothes try their best to act like they don't have a million eyes on them at all times, or actually convince themselves their lover's the only one looking at them—and only them!—in the world.

—Happy Mothers Day, moms
(1) He's an easy Bush stand-in, if I must use that name, and Michelle Williams' character has a line of dialog that only helps cement this link: "I don't know if he's ignorant or just plain evil."

(2) Not to mention the fact that you want to ply press people with clips to quiet at least one chorus of voices ringing in one corner of one ear.

(3) However, the selection of the man-eating scene was, as S.S. promised, shocking. Even when you see that scene in the context of the greater film it's brutal, gross and nigh gratuitous. Here, it rankled more than most and, again, I looked away for the duration, though that didn't spare me the sounds of the horny young dude screaming and choking and bleeding to death.

(4) I'll be in Europe for a while post-Cannes.

(5) That's the trick anywhere, I think, which is part of the point of World on a Wire: you should want to want your own body, you should want to live in it, you should want to move it and slap windows with delight at movement and light.

Convergence for your barreling without blinders (5/6/11)

2011-05-06T03:30:00.001-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—On and up and forward!

SFIFF54 #4: A Useful Life

2011-04-26T11:00:00.003-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Federico Veiroj's A Useful Life is a black and white short feature (only 67 minutes) that doesn't need your eyes to be excellent but your eyes could only help its cause since its main point is a flip on the title of Dave Kehr's new book: movies matter. Not only that, our reparatory houses matter no matter what somebody with a microphone* tells you. Matter of fact, this movie's got rather simple aims but it's also got enough love for the movies that any cinephile will likely fall in love with it. The style echoes Bresson's presentational purity (this desk, this bag, this staircase) and the film is full of so many references that they're too many to name here** but the two that matter most are pretty tough to miss.

First, as hinted by a title card up front (the entire credits precede the film), there's a speech culled from Mark Twain about lying and the value of lying in a world of lies delivered by our main man from the cinematheque, Jorge (played by Uruguayan film critic Jorge Jellinek), in a law classroom when he nods, "Yes," to the query, "Are you the substitute teacher?" He finishes his speech (I wish I could quote it or find the passage online) as the real substitute teacher enters the classroom and leaves without confrontation. No one stops him. No one should. Besides, he's not the only one having fun in the scene: the student who asked him to take a role he was not meant for understands his practical joke and she laughs from her front row seat.

The second quote involves our man, alone, on a white staircase, trying out some Fred Astaire moves—up and down and around the steps—making himself smile for a good few minutes in an unbroken shot. It's truly a joyful moment, his movements filling the frame with an energy of something like discovery and everything like pleasure; that is, he's having a ball playing with this world. But it's not cloying because our man is more clumsy than graceful, moving in spurts, his hands still as slack at his sides as when he trudges Montevideo's streets or the hallways of his dying/dead home of cinema. It's not learning how to walk—he does that fine—, it's learning how to make use of what he learned in the dark, which is as good a classroom for life as any other arena. After all, the pick up line that works for Jorge isn't, "Care for a coffee?" Rather, with a bunch of teeth flashing: "Want to see a movie?"

* or an impressive New York apartment, or a lot of cash to withhold, or an institution's denial of said funds to hide behind

** in part because I could not tell you what other movies were mined for a lot of the sweeping score on the soundtrack

SFIFF54 #3: Convergence for your ship gone glass (5/25/11)

2011-04-25T05:30:00.000-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

SFIFF54 #2: Waking up to life sometimes seems worse

2011-04-24T13:00:00.008-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

— Getting naked with clothes on
Despite the worst projection/presentation I have ever experienced at the Kabuki*, Hahaha proved once again all you need to make a fabulous movie is a sense of humor and a couple of good actors. This flick has more than just a couple, though, with at least seven fully realized characters criss-crossing, eluding each other even, over a rainy week in the port town of Tongyeong. I don't need to really tell you who these characters are, though, nor what really happens, since the charm of the picture is just how conceptual it is without being clever or, as is often the case in Hong, overtly structural. Granted, there is a device: the present tense of the story is rendered in black and white still photographs, heard as narration, as two friends meet for drinks to talk about their recent visits to Tongyeong, ignorant of the peripheral role each played in the other's vacation. However, it becomes more of a tool for rhythm than anything else as these two stories cohere around the perpetually liminal space of the port with one friend finding a way to leave untethered to anything or anybody and the other finding his way towards the commitment he's been avoiding. True to its blood as a comedy, it ends in a marriage of sorts—let's call it a pledge—and a laugh.

Though the majority of the film is spent observing the problems boys encounter when they wear the bodies of men, the women somehow matter more even though we're never granted a look from inside their eyes. One lady keeps saying, "You see me," without realizing this boy-man does not know her, truly; rather, he knows how to compliment her—not to mention stalk her, to the point of breaking into her apartment while she's gone. Almost an axiom: men in a Hong picture, even when they are True, are always creeps. That is, they all drink too much and they all seem mainly interested in sex, not love, to say nothing of work. Which is odd since Hong's the ultimate professional. He debuted two pictures in 2010 for Heaven's sake. And this one is just superb. It's casual, like a good dinner: one story leads into another and after a couple hours you're full or you're wasted and it's time for one last joke before you hit the road satisfied you understand your friend, and maybe life, a little better.

A movie at opposite ends—not once does it picture a better world—Christoph Hochhäusler's The City Below is practically apocalyptic from the get-go. As lucid an interpretation of a certain Mille plateaux perspective on our recent global crash climate, the film isn't strictly a political engine though its main structure as far as I can see is to de-center everything, to expose how this fiberobtic planet of moving monies is as thin as a glass wall is a look-don't-touch denial. To that end, I'm slightly sympathetic to the people who find the film "cold," but, that's a starting point not an argument. And, in fact, its distance is simply part of its Resnais-like openness. Its Biblical coda is (I'd like to think D&G would approve) crazy multivalent with significance moving in a million directions thanks to its oblique construction. A "complete" read is impossible for me at this point in part because I was so seduced by the aesthetics.

Looking forward to exploring more of Hochhäusler's work with the help of my Cargo editor, Ekkehard Knörer, who interviewed the filmmaker and his writing partner here (in German, but you can hit "translate" in Chrome and get the gist), who agrees I could probably make an argument about the apocalyptic gloom of this easy-to-allegorize but still-rich tower of depravity. (Bonus: any movie that makes Gang Gang Dance** a part of its characterization of the lead earns lots of points.) And I've said nothing about how excellent the acting is, nor the economy of the script, or any other thing I might want to praise, because I don't really need to, I'd hope; after all, compliments are nice but often boring. The most thrilling moments of this film are the ones where characters literally or metaphorically wake up because it's great to watch a face recognize a shift in the world they live in.

Which reminds me, it's okay to love somebody and tell a story about it. And Mysteries of Lisbon is nothing but stories. In fact, Ruiz makes a joke about the length and breadth of his film right at the start of the second part, presumably experienced after an intermission as we relished, by having one character tell another that he has a long story to tell and it will be mystifying as to why he's telling the story but that if his audience of one is patient and keeps listening everything will be told in the proper order for maximum cathartic effect. This is the film, of course, talking to us in the seats***. Because the film takes its time. And it repeats itself. We hear one story after another, with stories within stories, making audiences of every character at almost every encounter; or every character has a chance to play narrator. Which reminds me, the voice is a powerful tool.

This polyphony is a way to bend your ear, the same way that the way Ruiz circles scenes bends the space, and because we learn so many histories, motivations get bent into new senses or understandings of the world. The entire film is trying to bend you to its formal will, put you in a place, force you into roles you hear inside your own head, make you lose yourself as much as our first/primary narrator winds up losing himself through the course of his maze of a life. With most of the movie taking place indoors, a series of interlocking chambers, this makes rigorous sense thanks to Ruiz's roving eye so nimble to traverse a wall or glance past a hidden stairwell with a face gone sour listening to evil perpetrated beyond this private box of echoes. Again, audiences; again, multiplied; again, again. It's so interior that locales beyond walls remain concepts, fantasies, stages. And we remember the dioramas that double the scenes here and there where everything's a cut-out, a make believe, and you begin to wonder just how much of any of these stories are—here's a dumb word—real. Real is necessary, though, since it's the root of surreal and that's just what this labyrinth winds up: a magic mirror dolly into the light of a new life yet to be dreamt.

* The center of the frame was out of focus for long stretches and at two separate points in the last third of the film, the SFIFF digital slideshow of sponsor ads popped up in purple and pink to cover the screen.

** I feel like GGD is what I always wanted from Deerhoof and never got.

*** SFIFF, like any film festival, has a number of grey hairs who think they're retaining some grasp on high culture by coming to "obscure" foreign movies only to talk their way through whatever it is they've forked over however many dollars they had to in order to spend, as was the case here, four hours in the dark. My complaint is an old one: let the movie tell you how to watch it. And shut up. Asking, "Does this mean he's his son?" right before the reveal is announced (we all felt it, lady) is one hell of a way to not be subsumed by the images in front of your eyes. Which is a long, stupid rant shoved into a footnote so I could include a likely-useless bit of blogging tid bit saying that, thanks to a mom and a daughter under the impression that movie time is gab time, I switched seats at intermission from a perfectly good seat with a decent neck-bending ratio to the front row, which, though it is recessed thanks to a rather deep stage in K1, forced a slouch I did not want to make my body perform. I know, boo-fricking-hoo. At least my ticket was free and the movie itself didn't suffer because of my pet peeves.

SFIFF54 #1: Viewing Log #82: Lilac under linen [4/7/11 - 4/20/11]

2011-04-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

— "landscapes and mindscapes"
One of the funny things about the San Francisco International Film Festival, which starts tonight, is that a good portion of its offerings are festival circuit "holdovers" that started their trek to SF last year at the Cannes Festival. Well, funny only because this year I'll be playing catch-up here and then leapfrogging a lot of tour stops by hitting Cannes in May. Granted, this year's Croisette selections are not quite as appetizing as a lot of us had hoped; however, it's still the premiere fest and it still costs an arm and a leg to be a part of it. But more on that adventure later. Here, I'm concerned with laying out what my last few weeks in town look like from a cinephile standpoint.

There's certainly plenty to see at SFIFF54 (pronounced "s'fiffty-four" by some), and I do plan on attending daily, but I also don't want to get burnt out on a bunch of movies all at once. So, as often as I can, I'm going to just see one film a day. And then I'll throw up a quick take here that night or the next morning. Given that two of my most anticipated titles are 272-minute and 212-minute affairs, this one-a-day dictum should be easy enough on those two Saturdays: this weekend I'll settle in for Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon for the entire afternoon, starting right at noon, and the following week I plan to head over to the PFA for the 35mm screening of Fassbinder's World on a Wire. Yet there are a number of shorter films as well, such as Federico Veiroj's A Useful Life, which is only about an hour long and easy to pair with an evening of avant-garde shorts in a program called The Deep End, with newer work from people I respect and enjoy like, say, Ben Russell and Vincent Grenier to name two of the nine featured filmmakers.

I only caught two press screenings prior to the festival and I don't think I'll be looking at any screeners but I do have a copy of Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg that I've been meaning to watch ever since I saw/felt Dogtooth. The two films I have seen, I should say, are Patricio Guzman's Nostalgia for the Light and Werner Herzog's The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Both of these films will open in the Bay in the summer months so, logistics wise, there is no real rushing need for you to see them at the festival. However, both are very good pictures. The Guzman is a tad less poetic than I'd've hoped (in fact it's kind of hokey near the close) but the Herzog, though I could quibble with it, is just great. You might know by now that it's his first and last film in 3-D, but his use of the medium makes so much more sense than so many productions force fed at kids these days. Ostensibly a documentary, as they often are, the 3-D is less about realism than it is about phenomena and creating new realities for your eyes; that is, the experience you have seeing these rare paintings matters because you're given a sense of their physical depth and of their curves for light to play against. You see new movement of old visions. It's thrilling, moving even, and it should only be seen as big as possible.

The main highlight of the run, for me, is likely the evening with the Tindersticks at the Castro (more here), which will feature clips of Claire Denis movies accompanied by live performances of the scores of the films in the clip reel. Truth be told, it sounds like quite the nerd event (it could be a major let down), but I'm more than game to see those images and hear those sounds in that theatre. If all goes according to plan, I'll have something extra on this event.

Other items on the list include: Hong's Hahaha, Christoph Hochhäusler's The City Below, Kelly Reichart's Meek's Cutoff (which I hafta catch at SFIFF54, despite its wider release a week or so later, because I'll be gone for so long), Breillat's The Sleeping Beauty (which sounds even better than the superb Bluebeard), Lee Anne Schmitt's The Last Buffalo Hunt (in part because Haz liked her last film at SFFIFF52 and in part because James Laxton shot some of it), Michelangelo Frammartino's Le quattro volte, Lech Majewski’s The Mill and The Cross, J.P. Sniadecki & Véréna Paravel's Foreign Parts, Florent Tillon's Detroit Wild City, Otar Iosseliani's Chantrapas, Andrei Ujica's The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins, Mike Cahill's Another Earth, Romain Goupil's Hands Up, Christopher Munch's Letters from the Big Man (one of Sean Uyehara's favorites), and Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy. There are yet others, of course, but those are the ones I'm targeting, the ones I'd feel less "ok" skipping, the ones I hope I can find something to say about in a timely manner.

In any case, I do hope to offer more than glib summaries. But I've got these last two weeks of dayjob work that I must focus on before the fun of the festivals takes over my life, fostering a whole new set of anxieties (am I writing enough? is it worthy of eyes? where's the coffee? why can't I stay awake? is there food in my beard? do I stink? how bad can my posture get?) to wade through. So, until then—let's say, Saturday—end that week with a bang! Any way you want to! Any way you can!

— I thought it'd be more fun to go down the street this way.

Meet Avery

2011-04-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

She's learning to use her eyes, the light is still too bright
No poop in fact but yelps no less
No teeth in that trap to keep her polite

Viewing Log #81: Dogtooth [Giorgos Lanthimos, 2009]

2011-04-06T04:15:00.001-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—The only audience for philosophy is the one performing it.
One of those ugly films that looks beautiful, Dogtooth a trouble maker. That is, it's difficult. Abusive and about abuse, controlling and about control, and all kinds of weird in the sexual arena save the hilarious swap of meanings where, at this compound's dinner table, "pussy" means "lightbulb" and, in the bedroom, a lady calls her vagina a keyboard. (My not wanting to use "pussy" twice is another odd linguistic/cultural impulse worth looking into another time.) The film starts with a lesson in words, in fact, with a tape recording made by the mother defining new meanings for words anybody "with language" should already know; so from the start we've got a film about education awry. But this picture of children finding meanings for themselves within a totalizing system they cannot control isn't just an unlearning, nor some new light shone, but a more basic urge—I want to say compulsion—in the human to sublimate one's every day. It just takes more drastic actions, with greater consequences, when one's every day is defined in terms that are outright wrong, plainly false. The exciting thing is Dogtooth doesn't try to redefine the terms for you; the troubling thing is it doesn't exactly open the world.

Such is the risk of the metaphysical, I suppose: languages make the everyday in concrete actions every day. The best way I can describe what I'm failing to say here, because I want these posts to be as quick and dirty as possible, is, and this is a huge idea to toss off in a goofy little blog post, that you learn a language by speaking it, not reading it or writing it. That old game of praxis versus theory. Which is another long-winded way of saying, inside all the gorgeous and irregular compositions in the film, there's a course-load of philosophy to elucidate for those inclined. Not being a grad student, I don't plan to go into it here. But I would gladly read certain people's papers (that ignore the qualitative aspect of criticism) on this film and its ideas. What really got my brain going, to be honest, was that the movies (both home and Hollywood) are manifestly a big part of the education herein. But we don't see the Hollywood ones (though there are grainy clips of the home videos), we see static on the TV and we see a performance, a "third-party" representation/reproduction/redescription as part of our understanding of the worlds colliding inside one tough lady's body and soul.

Viewing Log #80: Fish Tank [Andrea Arnold, 2009]

2011-04-03T17:30:00.002-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Though I'm perpetually curious how female filmmakers/artists will represent sexuality (ie, women tend to render the complications and contradictions in fascinating ways), most of this flick is bogus. Sure, Katie Jarvis has spunk. But this Ouroboros idea of "the poor" and their tendencies isn't just clichéd but condescending. Like Sicinski, I thought the "reveal" was going to be commentary on the cinema's tourism, but, no, it's just a hackneyed way to say what you already know: people make bad choices for selfish reasons all the time. All that said, the film is visually compelling, with its square format frame (though the conceptual weight of that choice is rather like a sack of cement) and play with POV/voyeurism. Better, Arnold carves a sense of place/milieu, however obvious it might be, which gives me hope that her Wuthering Heights will be mired in the moors, gloomy and scary along with sexy, and not some Ho'wood romantic gloss with stairways to heaven.

Viewing Log #79: Opening daze counting down [3/23/11 - 3/31/11]

2011-04-01T07:00:00.002-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

The External World [David O'Reilly, 2011] Watch it here. Anybody familiar with O'Reilly's twitter knows how morbid he can get, but this thing is fucking funny. In part, duh, because it's morbid. It's no surprise that those T+E guys loved it at Sundance, and I wouldn't be surprised (again) if they wound up working together.
Beau Travail [Claire Denis, 1999] # Still the best ending ever. Too bad that snore monster made an appearance two seats away from me and wouldn't sit up straight or wake up when I moved the seat his arm was resting on. Hate that guy.
Nenette et Boni [Claire Denis, 1996] # Not my favorite, but I love the play between fantasy and reality that makes adolescence a haze of projection. But there is just a little too much awful to be the kind of affirmation so many of her other films are; in other words, there are no good choices made by any character.
I'll Do Anything [James L. Brooks, 1994] Wow this is a mess. Glad Brooks loves kids, kind of as a rule, and understands how sex can be funny, but, man, the only reason I finished this thing was because I was ironing.
Terms of Endearment [James L. Brooks, 1983] # I watched the first half and then had to eat some brunch. I forgot about it and haven't found a good time to start up again. I've seen it before so I know where it's going. Main takeaway this time: Larry McMurtry writes women really well. And I have a crush on Debra Winger in her flustered-yet-confident "throw your hands up at this life" fits.

Heft in here like still cold in the pipes water hitting your face

2011-03-25T07:00:00.002-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Like a ruler it both measures and defines the object
It's official, folks: I'm going to Cannes this year. I've been accredited as a correspondent/critic for the film magazine Cargo*, which is German in print but open to English on its blog, where I hope to write as often as possible about the films I see. Odds favor that I'll contribute some things to The Notebook for/with Danny, and I may have some other opportunities to write about my experience/s, but more on all that later. Hell, I don't know yet what we'll be seeing with any certainty. I sure do hope we see Tree of Life but all I can do right now is cross my fingers. (Well, that and save money.) In any event, what plays the festival and what doesn't play the festival—or, what I get to see, what I don't—doesn't matter to me as much as, simply, my good fortune to be in a position to make the trip. Not everybody gets to go to Cannes. So I promise to enjoy it, first of all, and, second of all, I promise to make my reports (whatever form they take) worthy of your time. That is, they won't just be tossed off viewing logs. I'll try to make real, cogent arguments for my Cargo blogging. I still might post a stray log (with links) here at home base, for fun, but I'm going to try to focus my energies outside my current, little routines.

Since I know you're super curious (doubt it) and since my parents like this photo, here's the picture that will grace my festival badge for Cannes and for the SF Int'l just prior to my departure. I suppose offering the image is not just narcissism but also a reference if, by some miracle, you happen to spot me at either festival and want to say hi. Funds are slim (cough, we do have a tip jar on the side bar), but I'd be willing to buy you a free drink and talk about things beyond the silver screen. Otherwise, you can find me on twitter, as ever. I don't begrudge twitter haters, or people who've grown bored with my shtick in said arena, but I will say that I may (though I may not) tweet my way through the two fests and you might want to tune in (follow? subscribe?) to keep abreast of all my observations in a more immediate, two-point-oh way. Odds are good on the twitter angle, too—San Francisco in particular as it's kind of like a warm up round before the real plunge (and I do hope to swim some, I'll have you know)—but I've still got a day job in the meantime and it requires a lot of energy so posting, as it has for a while, will remain largely light around here. Just so we're clear. Until such time as I may say grace again at your table, or just post a viewing log, I bid you fond farewells.

* My latest essay for the magazine, on David O. Russell and The Fighter in particular, can sort of be seen by clicking here. The title in German is "Demolierte Pathosformeln" and Google does me a hilarious service by translating it as "Demolished pathos formulas" (I did not submit a title, fwiw).

Viewing Log #78: Philogyny forever [3/15/2011 - 3/22/2011]

2011-03-23T06:00:00.001-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—This guy...

Spanglish [James L. Brooks, 2004] Not quite a success, but noble yet. The framing device is too television and the narration far too choke-me. Sandler does his nervous thing well and is largely absent for a lot of the picture, which is a funny flip on the Ho'wood marketing plan, but it's maybe odd that his major function in the movie is to fawn; cool that he's a chef, sure, and that you see him cook some dishes in snippets, but that creative side isn't funneled into the rest of the character except that he's such a sensitive dad that the weight of his heralded genius* just seems like neurotic self-abnegation. The biggest surprise is just how caricature ugly Tea Leoni's character is compared to the saint-like Paz Vega who is literally an alien sent to fix humans (or at least catalyze reflection/education/change); doesn't hurt that Vega's a curvy lady, tho still movie star thin with the cheek bones to prove it, and Leoni's got this absurd fitness addict body the movie almost makes fun of; or, it's just too easy that the softer one's the mom. In any case, I still didn't mind a minute of it, really, because I'm an idiot for kindness and good lighting and a pretty face—just like the movie hopes I am/you are.
Broadcast News [James L. Brooks, 1987] # Sorry, but I gotta: Holly Hunter in all her polka dots is so god-damned adorable in this movie it's insane. Part of that is the character touch of her private crying jags, part of it is her mouth full of accent, part of it is that she is not needy the way Albert Brooks is; she keeps her real pain to herself (for the most part) and she's a real lady who is excellent at her job and the weight of that brilliance is understandable. Love that JLB is all about the right choice, too, but what keeps it from moral high-grounding is the way each choice is rooted in consequence. Makes it feel like ethics even though it isn't, quite, despite the word getting bandied about a few times. I wish there was more play with the medium of television on an image level but the bottom line is that I hope to watch this one with my sister before she goes to college.
How Do You Know [James L. Brooks, 2010] The bait-y punk in me wanted to tweet, "HOW DO YOU KNOW > CERTIFIED COPY ????" immediately after finishing this one (instead). Granted, it hit some sweet spots for me, but the construction is this rare patient thing that arranges characters like chess without seeming a game. That is, for however contrived it might be, it's just as up front about its fiction as the AK film below. Further, there's a number of set-pieces designed to make certain freaks with theoretical clouds hanging in their heads leap to attention. Simply put, it relates to the notion that the only audience for philosophy is the one performing it. But, of course, this is never a simple thing to reckon and the picture of education in Reese Witherspoon's character is as winsome as Brooks' commitment to the importance of compartmentalizing daily life. That is, there's a time and a place for everything. It's in that awful trailer and it's better than a gag in the flick: Rudd, backing from dad Jack with eyes up to heaven, pleading, "God, are you going to literally make me run from bad news?" He does. It's the right choice.
Certified Copy [Abbas Kiarostami, 2010] Rather lovely, yes, but also not a masterpiece, I'm afraid. In fact, the further I'm from it, the less generous I'm getting—though, I must admit, at first it put me in a trance**. That said, as I briefly "discussed" with Akiva, one of the interesting things that doesn't seem to get talked about is the role of gender in the turns this path takes. That is, how it determines these, to use Sicinski's word, pivots as much as any history or motivation behind this reality or these realities that may be false or may be true (all of which sure are some bogus words in this conversation). Maybe better: how does this lady control the events or rip agency from the man? She's driving the car to start, she directs their walk for the most part, she finds their turret of a honeymoon room; it's her fabrication, if we want to believe it so, and it's her anger, which is real no matter what's fake, that move this thing. Binoche is, as you might suspect, rather out of this world.
Caught up on the second season of Archer [Adam Reed, 2011] and it continues to be a fun way to waste a half hour.

* Akiva also pointed out this motif in Brooks, which is consistent in all three I just watched: Reese's softball player has these little sayings as a ritual to balance the heft of being excellent at something; Holly does her crying; Sandler can't quit moving his feet.

** When I got home I shot angles on/of my bathroom mirror for a half hour. Then again in the morning for longer, as evidenced above. All I could really do after that movie was listen to wordless music and think about geometry.

We cover ourselves, our cities

2011-03-22T08:30:00.004-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight
I.

Ready for distribution

II.

Eight pages

III.

IV.

See the site, too/again, of course

Click the images to see'm bigger on my flickr stream

And stay tuned here and here and here for whereabouts

The shush of the interstate off past the windbreak

2011-03-19T09:22:00.002-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

— For Matt and Haz, title via

Viewing Log #77: Waindell Rainwell [3/8/2011 - 3/14/2011]

2011-03-15T05:00:00.001-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

— Quasi

Archer [Season One, 2010] A hoot. Very "of our time" in a cultural cache way. Which means there's a lot of references to "esoteric shit" and a lot of dickhead characters. Also lots of jokes about sex. No wonder clammy hands all over love it, amirite?
I watched a lot of basketball this week, but I also went to that Warriors OT come-from-20-down win against the Magic on Friday night. I sat in some great seats with Bomber and the next day I realized that, in fact, I'd lost my voice because I screamed so much. But I wasn't drunk, just so happy. Seeing basketball from the 8th row is some kind of experience, I'll tell you. Not only can you hear some choice banter from the crowd, you can hear some retorts and some shit talking from the players. Plus, from that close, in real time, Monta Ellis looks faster than Taz. But the number one stunner highlight might have been when Stephen Curry threw that outlet pass and, right when I thought it was too far, Dorrell Wright literally put his head down to sprint for it, caught it for one dribble and lept with his momentum, turning, to flush a reverse while the place erupted.

— via mia

The Bayside Club

2011-03-13T05:00:00.006-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Convergence for your toss-turning (3/13/11)

2011-03-13T04:30:00.002-07:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Viewing Log #76: Who You Are and Who You Say You Are [3/1/2011 - 3/7/2011]

2011-03-07T18:15:00.003-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives [Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010] Not sure why I feel compelled so immediately to compare it to Syndromes but I do: I like the latter better, though this is surprising given how devoted to liquids this newer picture is. Matter of fact, Boonmee has a lot of things I love all working together, but specifically light and liquids grounded by loss and romance and real people in a real (political) world. It's also easy to analyze when you start thinking but it's not quite here for that; rather, its flow is to be felt through the eyes. I will try to see it again this week.
The Ricky Gervais Show [HBO animated iteration, 2nd Season, a few different episodes] The best part is how Ricky thinks everything is the funniest thing ever every single time.
Fighting [Dito Montiel, 2009] As Iggy says, "Un vrai film." But what's weird is that the fights are the least interesting (certainly the least interestingly shot) parts of the movie. Unless of course you like beefcakes like Channing Tatum, who is real here, with slowly building confidence that never outshines his quietness. Matter of fact, it's a really quiet movie in general and that's what I like so much: how much action plays on faces. Terrence Howard is a master at whispering and deflecting and I think he's going to be an even better actor in his 50s. I hope he stays in shape so he can do some Walken-like bad guy turns.
30 Rock "TGS Hates Women" [Beth McCarthy-Miller, 2011] There hasn't been an episode this funny and this on point on so many targets in ages. Read this list and tell me she's wrong. (Don't, btw.) I busted a few guts, but none harder than at Baldwin's dismissive skip-over delivery of: "He's not a strong writer." And that was the secret to this episode: Jack had a great role against another great ludicrous obstacle figure.
Rango [Gore Verbinski, 2011] # Ran into Daniel and Felix by chance outside and Daniel summed it up: "That Gore Verbinski's pretty lit up, eh?"
Chocolat [Claire Denis, 1988] # Somehow I'd forgotten how funny this one is, how breezy despite the big stakes for the little lady. The print wasn't lousy but it sure was old. And, boy, Issach de Bankolé sure was young then; not to mention exceptionally gorgeous; now, as a middle aged man, his face is more handsome than pretty. Would've been nice to see how it played off White Material, but I had to skip the first one to finish some work. Great final shot, as ever, set to some great music with the world just happening around and through the frame.
Rango [Gore Verbinski, 2011] Got to see it a first time at Skywalker Ranch thanks to Emma's dad, Michael, who did the dialog sound editing. So it was a charmed screening to start, and the setting certainly put me in a generous mood, but I truly think it has a shot at staying amongst my favorites of the year all year long. Because it's not just clever quotes. There's real interpretive work done here on the part of G.V. and his writer John Logan and his actors (chiefly Depp, duh) and his animators. That is, for all it points to and lifts from, it's a unique work of art about acting and action. And it's beautiful. Every single composition and set piece. And it's funny. Every single scene and sequence. There are so many gags it's crazy. It's really hard to keep up, to be honest, since it skips along rather well. But more on all of that soon. This is just a late night scribble of pure enthusiasm.
In The Loop [Armando Iannucci, 2009] # With the Hambone, who loved it, I'm happy to report. Gandolfini sure steals the show.

The Philosophy Department Is Full Of Ghosts

2011-03-05T00:33:00.005-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight
I.

II.

III.

IV.

Or, since my last visit, none'd left. And, it'd been a while.

Convergence for your Kline of lines (3/5/11)

2011-03-04T23:22:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Viewing Log #75: Includes the lyrics [2/22/11 - 2/28/11]

2011-02-28T22:30:00.000-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Born This Way music video, [Nick Knight, 2011] It's not that I feel confronted and shocked and put off like that; it's that I think it's bad pop music. Comparing it to Prince, say, does it no favors but, holy hell, this isn't even Madonna level though it's aiming for a new century "Express Yourself" and/or "Vogue" thing mixed with Gaga's brand of, um, dada sexuality. Pretty silly, me thinks, to define yourself strictly via your sexuality since we all know that's simply a reaction to some "No!" somewhere along the line despite this song posing as a "Yes!" (though the lyrics are a giveaway, too). How's that for over-thinking it, eh folks?
The Oscars It's dumb to complain, but, hell. As Nellie tweeted: worst company picnic ever.
Inception [Christopher Nolan, 2010] # I was tired and didn't want to think and it'd already been ordered on our on demand. It's still really stupid and poorly shot.
The Fighter [David O. Russell, 2010] # A few scenes to look at all that competition—specifically between the performance styles and what separates the, excuse me this alliteration, brilliant Bale and loathsome Leo.
Three Kings [David O. Russell, 1999] # Wanted to make sure of something. Didn't watch the whole thing. It's entertaining, yes. It's also the perfect movie to get obsessed with when you're 17 and you think you're smart but really you can just name effects instead of simply watching a movie.
Slings and Arrows First Season, episodes 4-6 [Peter Wellington, 2003] Pretty lovely little wrap up with those kids figuring it all out. Lots of good will here. That's all I got on this.

Viewing Log #74: Eyebrows up [2/14/11 - 2/21/11]

2011-02-22T17:00:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

PRINCE AT THE ORACLE I lost my voice, I danced myself some kind of clean, I felt three kinds of emotions for three different people beside me, I felt other emotions for people not beside me, I laughed, I was happy to be alive. A unique night indeed.
The Leopard [Luchino Visconti, 1963] So, as some may know, I left at intermission. I'd fallen asleep about eight different times and all I knew when the house lights came up was that Burt liked to fuck and Alain lost an eyeball. Figured I was missing something. So I left. I stepped outside and that bright San Francisco sun, the kind you only see when it's 48 degrees outside, met me like a meal and I walked over to a bar with a good window full of that light and I read more Pnin and I laughed out loud and I drank a beer and I felt happy with my choices.
Unstoppable [Tony Scott, 2010] # Still as pure as the day I saw it, only this time I was more attuned to certain sociological lenses brought to bear by some of my friends (or just one friend in particular), which I don't exactly vibe with since I think it's a victory that it's about the working class. Sad that's a victory, and weird that an abusive husband (he didn't hit her but he was sure wrong) is our main point of identification, but, still: this movie looks and moves and feels better to watch than just about any action movie of late.
Slings and Arrows First Season, episodes 1-3 [Peter Wellington, 2003] Written and acted better than it's shot/edited, but such is the pratfall of a lot of TV; point is that it's conceptually rather perfect, sometimes poignant and I want to see the backstory unfold. It's on Instant.
Pneuma [Nathaniel Dorsky, 1983, 29 mins @ 18fps] Kinda like a drone album without the sound! Certainly, it was gorgeous. But I'm not so certain it needed its length. There was something biological about the energy within the frame in this one, with all those motes dancing and colliding and after-image-ing on my retinae, which is maybe what Dorsky meant when he said he was trying to be as humane to and with the film as possible. (Without humans, without figures.)
Metal Cravings [Elise Hurwitz, 1990–1997, 5 mins] Brian made an interesting point: though this paint-with-emulsion chemistry game was obviously the product of elements brewed, it felt biological.
Light Shaft [Vincent Grenier, 1975, 8 mins] Something of an obvious parallel to how cinema works in a theatre but I do love windows (they're eyes!) and I love the shifts of light caught here from rather simple tools and execution. As with all the films of the evening, this one lives by its breath, its rhythms; that is, when it allows you a breath. Which is an odd thing to say about something so fixed on an image of vision. Which makes me think blinks are the eyes breathing.
Soundtrack [Barry Spinello, 1969, 10 mins] Really funny. Inventive use of paint to make images into sound in a material way. (That's the whole point, btw, since Spinello painted the same images within the frame as on the soundtrack to do some hilarious synesthesiac rhythms.)
XFilm [John Schofill, 1968, 14 mins] Dug the dreamlike associative patterns and the doubling/tripling/quadrupling of some images, but the logic wasn't exactly dreamlike nor was it structured all that tight. In fact, the factory of dreams idea was a little on-the-nose. That said, I also liked how somber the film felt. For such a figurative film, it's surprising the affect was the organizing force, not the repetition of certain forms.
Stroboscopic Images [Dion Vigné, 1964, 6 mins] Again, nice to see some old versions of things that are now somewhat commonplace but the music, I thought, dated it a bit too easily. Or maybe that was the Belson.
Allures [Jordan Belson, 1961, 9 mins] Kitschy, almost, at this late date. But still great fun to look at if only because my fatigue and inability to breath all that well made me feel like I was on painkillers.
Obmaru [Patricia Marx, 1953, 4 mins] Honestly? Can't tell you what this one was like.
Blue Valentine [Derek Cianfrance, 2010] Michelle Williams' Cindy is as woefully underwritten as Ryan Gosling is attractive and she winds up a walled-off villain given this imbalance. Seems unfair. Especially with that sideways inclusion of her total sexual partners tally, which is nothing if not unnecessary as it's just another knock against her and her judgment skills since, given the setting this is relayed within, it is way too easily a magic marker writing the word "slut" on the screen. Instead of "woman" or, you know, "human." Still worth seeing, though, if only for Gosling's absurd charm and some of the rather beautiful images.

&Review no.4, Garments

2011-02-18T08:00:00.002-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

— West Dressed
The issue is live! SEE IT NOW! However, the print version will not be available in your hands until March 1st, or thereafter, given the printing and distributing and mailing schedules that come with wet ink newsprint. That is, the internet's easier—far easier—to manage than a real live publication. In any event, we're up and running and I'm proud of the jigsaw we pieced together. Above you'll find a video I made for the issue, which is rather raw, and below you'll see my favorite image from the issue, which is nothing but lovely. Please do take the time to look at all of it, subscribe to the &Review tumblr, maybe follow the twitter feed, tell your friends and stay tuned to my twitter and Mia's twitter for news of where we're dropping off those newsprint editions around our towns and anywhere else.

Update (3/7/11): Click here to see a pdf of the print version.

— Serrah Russell, She Wore Her Grandma's Dress

Convergence for your smile room (2/16/11)

2011-02-16T03:00:00.000-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Viewing Log #73: Two of each please [2/7/11 - 2/14/11]

2011-02-14T18:00:00.003-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Somewhere [Sofia Coppola, 2010] What a bonehead "third act." What a bonehead idea of significance in general. See, I wanted to like it and that's probably the problem. There's plenty to respect, like a female director's representation of sex, say, but, to be 100% unfair, this is no In The Cut. And there's this pride that gets in the way of Harris Savides phenomenal (that's the word) work and Elle Fanning's affectless though not flat performance (the word "natural" seems wrong, though it may be right) and the expert sound design. Granted, that sounds like it's coming from the really absurd and really sexist angle on Sofia that most critics take. But you don't have to announce your ideas in a Work Of Art to make your points. That was the thrill of the mess of Marie Antoinette: it really aimed for something beyond literalisms (not a word). You'll have to excuse me this seeming dismissal, ladies I love, but: maybe Sofia should make a documentary all about food. She gets parties great, sure, with all the haziness, but she also has a lot of good takes on food, where it's eaten and how it's made. Which is another way to say that my favorite scene was Cleo's preparation of the eggs benedict breakfast, as evidenced above.
The Fighter [David O. Russell, 2010] # "Research" & "jokes"
L'argent [Marcel L'Herbier, 1928] Wasn't as wowed as I'd hoped. Loved all the shadows but I couldn't suss a logic to all the ostentatious stylistics. And it felt lumpy. Though I don't doubt the producers hacked it up and cut what I would not, this movie would certainly benefit from some fat-trimming. Or at least some silent-movie-cliche-trimming. That is, there's way too many reaction shots. My favorite scene came in the second half, with Brigitte Helm entering Pierre Alcover's Saccard's privacy to needle his fears with a certain masochism that turns into fear past an unmarked threshold; the close-ups here make perfect sense and even add some deviant sexual charge, though also some misogyny, when we're honest with what this man (this director) expects of his subjects.
Four Windows [Ry Russo-Young, 2011] Um. "Shorts. Fashion. Pretty. Vacant? You decide!"
The curve of forgotten things [Paul Cole, 2011] You don't say. (Also via that pullquote queen; see link above.)
High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell [Mary Ann DeLeo & Rich Farrell & John Alpert, 1995] Could only handle a half hour while sick in bed, but it made me rethink The Fighter to the extent that it's a movie out to serve reality at bottom but David O. Russell's out to serve an audience a good time, too, which complicates things. Watch here, via the cinetrix, who's maybe a little weirded out by all these links (don't know the lady!), but, well, I'm not; I'm just thankful.
No Country For Old Men [Coens, 2007] # Okay, maybe this is some kind of masterpiece, over-determined though it may be. Danny wrote about the inheritors of Hitch in a dispatch from Rotterdam and I can't shake that association when watching "later Coens" movies. Every shot is so intentional, loaded with specific significance, that their beauty isn't strictly pictorial (don't you love the shadows throughout this thing?) but, ahem, semiotically, which carries over to the specificity of the language; that is, words carry another weight of meaning, adding a sonorous burden to these brutal procedings. (Always forget there's no score in this one, very Birds-like, and that makes the words crystalize.) Also, top notch action scenes, one after the other, that are more "thrilling" than "fun" because they're meant to be scary and they are quite scary. Plus, this has to be some of the finest work Roderick Jaynes has ever done. That lap dissolve from the coins on the carpet to Ed Tom's truck barreling towards Ellis's hut is one of my favorite transitions in the entire Coens corpus.

Viewing Log #72: Plinywurst [2/1/11 - 2/6/11]

2011-02-07T09:00:00.004-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

The Super Bowl. My favorite ads were the Transformers 3 ad because a teaser is supposed to blare and dazzle, the new bug teaser animation because the punchline made me look at Cam, and the Motor City paean from Chrysler because, as Barry said, it's about how we make things in America (or how we used to, at that). The game was fun, too, even though I lost money.
Scrapertown [Drea Cooper & Zackary Canepari, 2010] Part of California is a place, via Haz. Just great. The exactly perfect tone that's never cute but simply positive and charming.
Cry For Bobo [David Cairns, 2001] See it here. Conceptually pretty perfect, and you know I love jokes. Wish there were more goofy little gems, not all those sad sack lunch pails about Big Ideas. Gags are great! And I'm not just saying this to be "blog polite" (is that a term?); I really dug this little thing.
True Grit [Henry Hathaway, 1969] # I put the seen-this-before tag just left of these words, but, really, I didn't remember how cheesy and clunky and kinda-sorta bad this movie is. The Coens certainly improved on it, and clearly had more of the book in mind than any ideas of remaking this thing. Kim Darby sure was cute, though.
A lot of Larry Sanders on Instant, selected mostly at random. This week's NBC shows: I fear 30 Rock's veering away from its sweet spot again, but it's always nice to see Elizabeth Banks, and Community was all the clever things I don't like about it rolled up into a bottle episode that can't compete with the earlier one this season because this one was so damned sweet; that is, I like acerbity more than lobbed-on poignancy when it comes to my weekly sitcoms. Oh, and, Season Seven of Peep Show is, in the first episode at least, a marvel of hilariousness and exactly what I want. Then again, I also love this video below by Jaime Harley, for a song called "Suicide Dream" by How To Dress Well, so my criteria certainly shift all the time like anybody else.

>
Pure affect

One must eat

2011-02-07T05:45:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

One way or another

Light doesn't die and water will find its equal

2011-02-07T05:30:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Hemingway/Ecclesiastes

Viewing Log #71: High occupancy vehicle [1/24/11 - 1/31/11]

2011-01-31T21:30:00.002-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

The Hunted [Jack Bernhard, 1948] Kind of a clunker, but Belita was the business. A perfect example of a B-picture where budgetary concerns force a lot of formal ingenuity, and a fair number of long takes. The early exposition-heavy tete-a-tete scenes are the best because of the long two-shots with Belita and our idiot gumshoe on opposite sides of the frame, the way old lovers give each other space.
Angel Face [Otto Preminger, 1952] # A unique shape of a film, always pushing in. Apt that the big finale's wreck ends in rugged close-up. Frightening that these two dudes (OP & HH) put this lady through so much bullshit. Heartening that "Bob" was a real man. I will see this movie whenever it plays on any silver screen.
True Grit [Coens, 2010] The first one of theirs I was ever plainly bored by; but the ending is rather perfect and Damon's timing is priceless. I can't imagine watching it again, but it'll be on HBO some day, or I'll get bored one night after it's on Netflix Streaming, and I'll most likely warm to its go-nowhere-ness and its dialog's turns. Still caught in the afterglow of the novel to really be any kind of fair to the picture. Still, it's a paycheck flick. Part of the appeal of A Serious Man is that it was mounted with such care; that it was a picture they clearly lived with for a long time. This one's a dash.

—Her zipper's broken down the back

Viewing Log #70: The possessive element made my chest thump [1/18/11 - 1/23/11]

2011-01-24T03:30:00.005-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—The world allows a lot

30 Rock "Mrs. Donaghy" [S5E10] Love the concepts, and kind of loved that Weinerslav scene, but the mirroring across the studio is getting stale (as are the caricatures). I wanted to include this here simply to be able to say: Chris Parnell is always the best actor/comedian on the show. He's allowed to be a caricature, plain and simple, and it works every single time.
Two Lovers [James Gray, 2009] # Forgot how severe a downer this one is (somehow), how deep its truths cut. Yet Joaquin, as ever, made me laugh out loud a crazy number of times, as did some of the tossaway stuff his dad does. I'm still not in the "masterpiece" camp home to a lot of my friends, however, because of the cleverness of certain winks. Like, as much as its designed to excoriate the male psyche, it no doubt flatters it (or one kind of it), too. [I have no memory of what I wrote here.]
Close-Up [Abbas Kiarostami, 1990] # Still fabulous. Sabzian is too perfect, in all his roles, to ever be a villain. The BR disc is phenomenal not for clarity but for color. Throughout the picture, the colors pool, adding weight. But don't count out the jokes—especially all that bluster by the reporter, a perfect clown for this procession.
The Fighter [David O. Russell, 2010] I had a fine time watching it, even got some pangs of reflection when it comes to the self-reliance bits, but it's kind of a messy movie with a lot of competing, moving parts and a rather rote script. Worst thing is I don't think it was built to be something at odds with itself; instead, I think it's trying to serve too many agendas; or it's just kinda convoluted and cheesy in parts. The most curious thing, I find, is that fine line that separates the hamming Christian Bale does, which I dug, from the mugging Melissa Leo does, which I almost loathed. I think it's how Bale uses his eyes over against how Leo uses her mouth. People tell me they're both likely to win Oscars and that does not surprise me. (What Oscar result does anymore? ever?) I just wish Mila Kunis could/would beat Leo. [FWIW, the cinetrix kills it on the topic, as if that's a surprise.]

—Waves can surprise you

Viewing Log #69: Hello stranger [1/10/11 - 1/17/11]

2011-01-18T04:30:00.003-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Eccentricities of a Blonde [Manoel de Oliveira, 2009] All these frames—of light, of wood, of windows, of narrative—and the one that matters is only made tangible as exchange. That is, at bottom economics determine the course (already fixed, given the train that houses the story) of where such an obsession can go. Time's funny, too, in this leap-frog structure that sees daylight blink away, making the brief running time a kind of metonymy for bigger films by Senhor Oliveira; but the funniest thing is that a jig and a beard are all you need to see a man as younger. By contrast, the metonymy applied to "a blonde" and her "beautiful Chinese fan" is the saddest thing; that she's only seen for these things, that our narrator can only see these things. Her final posture of defeat—discarded like that poker chip thrown (that she stole), head hung to the floor in shadow and legs open almost in surrender—inverts her image from that sanctioned pedestal in the window, a final evacuation of the frame and of the image since we see neither her blonde shimmer nor her twirling fan. Money dooms love, indeed, as does thievery, the third metonymy at play: she stole his time, it blinked away. [Did any women write about this film?]
Bellow [Christopher Tirrell, 2010] Watch it here. Honestly can't remember how I found this, but it was sitting open in a tab for a few days before I watched it. Certainly a fine example of a 5Dmk2 doing film-like work, though its low light images are rather particularly digital (which isn't a bad thing), making the sound a bigger part of the argument (as if the title didn't point there). In any case, I dug how obfuscating it was, how it seemed like a test was being passed but at the same time how these little compositions added up to something like an argument; an argument about the sudden rush of the world, either by accident or by necessity, and about a fire on the horizon of life, though its flames are lit not for light but for signaling. Which is to say for alerting the world to your mark, which is a funny metaphor for emulsion given this digital bend.
Hudson Hawk [Michael Lehmann, 1991] # Some gchatting about Die Hard 2 with Haz resulted in a Bruce Willis investigation, which resulted in my giving this a go, wherein I lasted five minutes before I fell asleep.
The Wrong Man [Hitch, 1956] Were I not so tired when I saw this, I would have more to say beyond: amazing, this is the grim kind of movie that Hitch was certainly capable of but rarely made given his love of a good joke. (Any bit of levity, no matter how brief, seems "worth it" to him in movies like, say, the Tippi two, which are often alarming but somehow not all-the-way horrifying.) That is, this flick is almost the anti-NXNW the way Fonda is some odd inverse of Cary Grant, or the way a pool of mud can reflect the sky. I'll hafta watch it again.
Lifeboat [Hitch, 1944] I'd heard some cinephile types extol the cinematics of this one but I was always skeptical. Turns out: they were right and I was wrong! That said, this was the one I was super excited to see this last week of Hitch at the Castro. The print was in lousy condition, but the crowd was big and generally alright (some idiot snickers are to be expected) for this odd little capsule of a movie. Some of it's pat, sure, and dated; but its employment of the close-up is fabulous (punctuation, affect, a general timing device to break up the space/time) as is the relative lack of score.
The Strange Case of Angelica [Manoel de Oliveira, 2010] Very simple, and slow, but I was charmed by its near-naive devotion to the image. That is, it almost takes on the devotion of its twin director-audience surrogate. What keeps it this side of hokey isn't just its commendable seriousness but that long scene of breakfast yacking amongst the other boarders, none of whom can fathom this young man's swing into his own head, nor his interest in certain images. Which makes me think the film is about, to a certain degree, the divide between the cinephile and the (excuse me) regular Joe-Jane voyeur: most images for most people serve strictly as a sociological referent, not a spiritual one. (Reminds me of something Ignatiy wrote about skipping a sunrise to watch a de Toth (or whatever) because we movie nuts need to see another life lived, which is of course something I've pushed back on in the past half a year or more, but also something I cannot escape. Nor should I try to mask that desire since it motivates just about any human aiming a camera to make images.) This is another way of saying we initiated always-already believe in a beyond, and we often want to join it.

Some men dream #2

2011-01-13T05:00:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Small Black Room, Powell & Pressburger, 1949
shot by Christopher Challis

Mark me down for a deuce

2011-01-10T04:00:00.007-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Though in 2010 I largely strayed from the eat-everything cinephilia that drove a lot of my last decade (as I mentioned here), which makes me fear I'll be outpaced in this little group of us doing the Out of The Past series, I still saw a number of good, older flicks in the past twelve months. You can read my five that mattered most in The Notebook here. It's probably predictable given this, but there's more meat in it.

I should also take the time, here, since I'm up so early, to note my participation in the year-end Fantasy Double Bills, which I'm very happy Danny and I brainstormed last year, and continued this year. We both had a hard time picking this year (for very different reasons) and I love the fact that Danny, closing things out, took such license to not limit himself, to disobey his own rules. His picks are great. I kept mine pretty simple, to be fair, and only divulged one bill. Earlier, in December, Martha'd talked about pairing I Am Love with The Last Picture Show, but I guess time got away from her; in any case I didn't want to "steal" that one. So I wrote about some other forms of love. The kinds on the side of that word associated with mania, I guess, because I find them funnier. I also like the Resnais a lot more than that Tilda zig-zag (though I do love that one, too) and I hadn't written enough on why, though it could be simplified to my preference to favor (not that I always do) the ludicrously hilarious, not the ludicrously affective.

Top to bottom, I liked all the pairs, really, but there were of course stand-outs. Miriam's up top definitely stood apart beyond its placement in the scroll for its audacious pairing—and, it should be noted, her likely-unnecessary, more-than-welcome defense, which invokes Stanley Cavell a little further, is a good thing to read. My other favorite pairing, probably, was R. Emmet Sweeney's, though I've seen neither of the films he chose, because it does what my favorite criticism does: not only does he make connections, elucidating significance, but more importantly his note makes me want to see the movies. Along these lines, I have to thank David Ehrenstein for the comments he left, alerting me, non-scholar that I am, to Warren Sonbert and his lasting imprint on collage-like cinema that interests me so. Unimportant declaration: I'll make a mission of seeing his films in 20!! as I largely forgot such missions through most of 2010. Not sure how it'll happen, with my day job and my new image-making projects I'm throwing myself into, but with the help of a friend like Brian Darr—one of the truest cinephiles I've ever had the pleasure to meet and eat pizza with—I'll have a leg up for sure. In any event, please do follow those links! The internet's a wicked game, prone to circled wagon spats, but it's also full of good things.

Oh, and read Steve's 2010 wrap-up at The House why don't you. I'm biased, of course, but there's a unique take, a real individual, a jaunty run-through everybody'd do well to enjoy and not fight with, as many may well attempt.

Viewing Log #68: Very [1/3/11 - 1/9/11]

2011-01-10T02:30:00.002-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—For fun; why not?

The Small Black Room [P&P, 1949] # Looking for an image.
La Captive [Chantal Akerman, 2000] # Looking for an image.
Heathers [Michael Lehmann, 1989] # The best movie ever? Some afternoons, yes. And, seriously, is it any big mystery why so many young men (and women, I'm certain) of a certain age are still obsessed with Winona? I don't think my love will ever die. Nor for this movie, as it happens. What I'm saying is: it'd been way too long. (Not sure it required a BluRay rental, but it still looked, well, crisp. The filmmaking's in the performances, not the stylistic touches.) —Veronica, why are you pulling my dick?! has to be one of the best lines ever said by a teenage babe in a movie or otherwise.
East A [Will Gluck, 2010] All kinds of fantasies went into this one. But it's a hoot, thanks largely to Emma Stone's actual acting prowess (not just a cute girl with a great voice, dudes!) and the timing of it all, which again makes me think Gluck is a pop filmmaker to watch (ahem) and makes me forgive a lot of the broader, wannabe-satirical jokes. That said, there's a lot of good self-awareness/self-analysis going on in the script. And it shows you can be sex positive without equating that with lots of sex. Not that it's prudish, either; rather, there's real choices being made by a seemingly real, well-rounded little lady character in this temper-tantrum.
Plenty from the first season of The Larry Sanders Show, which is on Netflix Streaming now. FWIW, I tweeted that the whole show is on there, when in fact it's about half. Regardless, watch as many as you can, as I will, because its maybe the best sitcom ever.

Farolito Fifty, take two

2011-01-08T09:00:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

———

Since this clip probably won't make the cut for what we're working on, here's another test I shot last night. Please do hit up the full screen if you've got the bandwidth.

Getting going in 20!!

2011-01-04T07:00:00.002-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

———

If you follow me on twitter, the image atop this is no surprise, nor is the news that I got a new camera. But this video is something new. That is, it's a test run that a couple people egged me on to make public and share. So, here's a nugget, a tease of what's to come in 20!!.

Was vom Jahr bleibt (What lasts of the year)

2011-01-03T06:00:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Over at CARGO's site, there's a slew of trios from the writers and friends of the magazine, just like last year, about what mattered in 2010. You have to allow google to translate most of them (if you don't read German), but you can read mine in my version of English (google will still play with it after you hit 'translate' FYI). But, still, I thought it'd be good to cross-post the list here since I'm sure EK et al would enjoy the link-back and because these things do matter to me so. And because I will be writing a bit more for these fine gentlemen as we move through the year.

1. Pressing pause

Slowing my intake of cinema and output of criticism has proven a boon. Though I wish I'd seen a few films from the rep circuit that I missed on purpose (eg, those two Oliveira films), I am confident that the choices I made those nights lead to more fulfilling engagement with this mad world we're in. Besides, it has lead to different creative writing projects — to say nothing of the new lessons learned about living a better life, which is what we're supposed to do, I'm fairly certain. In the cinephile department, though, it also lead to fully embracing…

2. Blu-Ray discs

I'm certainly lucky to have had access to Blu-Rays for a while yet, but it wasn't until this year, and late within it, that a player entered my home. Perhaps against my better judgment, I already owned some BRs, but the new device gave me a more legitimate opportunity to buy The Red Shoes and that Brakhage set (both put out by Criterion Collection). The BR image can't quite ever be expected to approximate the flicker of celluloid, but these films have their own, new, sometimes-bizarre shimmer. The crisp lines and erupting colors make a new vision of what images are capable of, and what their purpose may be now, which I'd like to believe is closer to affect than representation, given these don't look real or hyper-real (whatever that means) but rather some fancy, new interpretation of light. There is likely an entire book of theory to be written on this new phenomenology, but I won't try any harder (get started) here. I'll just say, try to see something big and bright and colorful. Be sure to have the right HDMI cables. And let it wash your face in luster.

3. Tim & Eric

Back to lo-fi for a second. These weirdos make me laugh more than just about anybody, and they did an especially great job in 2010. Not only did they give us two shows full of goofs and spoofs only film nerd assholes in love with VHS and closed circuit cables could make, they went on tour with their brand of disorienting lunacy. They brought it to our backyards. On certain days in the second half of our late year, in fact, you could hear me tell my friends that I thought their announcement for the Tim and Eric Awesome Tour Great Job 2010 (as well as their inimitable Chrimbus Special) was the single best piece of filmmaking (and comedy) that I saw all year long. You can watch it and judge for yourself right here, below.

Viewing Log #67: With a bang bang [12/27/10 - 1/2/11]

2011-01-03T03:30:00.002-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

— in the middle of the bed

Déjà Vu [Tony Scott, 2006] # This time, I kept thinking about how lazy my initial reaction was, back in Seattle, in 2006, when I thought the film not only crass but offensive. Shows how easy it is to not pay attention to stuff outside story. Shows how much I grew going back to school. Because there are some truly beautiful moments/visions in this film. My favorites are confined to that little room, for the most part, with all the overlays and interactions across that surveillance window screen, but the semi careening at the camera is great and who can forget: yet another Tony Scott movie ending on a freeze frame.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind [Steven Spielberg, 1977] # One of the odder Hollywood hits, for sure, that's pretty much all exposition and build up for its entirety. Dreyfus going nuts throwing the yard into the kitchen sink is the only concrete action/scene not spent dancing about, waiting for a concept to emerge. If anything, it's one of the better (more beautiful-looking) arguments about the allure of the concept. There's also a lot of goofball jokes that Steve is always trying really hard to get away with, and always only hitting about half the mark.
square shot [Daniel Kasman, 2010] Very conceptual, but also very cool. You can watch it below, if you haven't already (or if you have), and you can read more contextualizing from Danny in the Notebook. I think it's pretty unique but Kevin had a few nice compliments about influences in the comments that are quite clearly a part of the make-up. In any event, as I dropped in there, can't wait for more DKaz words put into images in 20!!.
Father of My Children [Mia Hansen-Løve, 2009] # One of the more wonderful films from last year, full of life amidst all those goodbyes. A great way to say goodbye, in fact, to a lot of things. And hello to others.

— expect more like this (and like this)

Viewing Log #66: 2010

2010-12-29T03:00:00.009-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

There will be more words as we trade up calendars, including a number of other wrap-ups, but I wrote this one a couple weeks ago and it's highly unlikely I'll see much to add to it. And even though some of it may be redundant with the coming lists (and the viewing log series as a whole), I wanted to share this summary of sorts of my year. It's a preferential ordering, but it's certainly open to revision and it's certainly open plain and simple. I know a lack of rules aggravates some readers/friends, but this is my blog and I say to hell with rules. These are the films I saw (for the first time, though I watched some more than once) this year that left something in me worth transcribing (or translating), even if that's just some glib toss-offs as we have below. Besides, it gives you all the more freedom to press and volley or scoff and move on to something more, I don't know, serious. At any rate, here goes nothing.

A Brighter Summer Day — I don't doubt an aura built from rarity fed my enjoyment, but I also know, for a fact, that this was the best lit and unlit film I saw all year.

Film Socialism — The best argument yet for any and all forms of digital images and non-linear leaps in editing and structure. Also, the best argument I've seen that most of us are illiterate in more languages than words can encompass—presuming, of course, that images are their own language—since JLG makes words into images at all events and overlays.
Winter, Sarabande, Compline, Aubade — Hard to choose because they're all so similar, which points to how hard it is to watch more than one at a time, but if I had the skills, I would love to make little things like these.
Let Each One Go Where He May — One of those 'perfect' movies that's not quite perfect so it becomes more perfect. Also, it's about a lot of stuff I'd love to make movies about; especially the last scene/shot.

36 vies du Pic St Loup — Because I saw it on film.
Wild Grass — I hope I have this much fun when I'm 86.

Angel Face — The best ending of any film I saw all year. (Except for maybe that one just above.) And sexy in a complicated way, the way sexy is.
The Small Black Room — Since I can't lob more hosannah's at their ballet movie, or any number of favorites by these dudes, I'll reserve this spot for this little number, which plays host to at least four amazing set pieces of paranoia.

La Captive — Perception gets grained into people.
Close-Up — Perception gets people ingratiated, and not.
Landscape Suicide — Perception kills.

L'enfence nue — Yes, life is hard. Could easily be paired with the Yang above for obvious reasons but could also be paired with the Akerman.
The Last Picture Show — Yes, life is sad and everything ends. But growing up, like sex, can be fun. (That is, after it's stopped being terrifying.)

Ruggles of Red Gap — A lesson in decency and in laughter.
Father of My Children — A lesson in decency.

Irma Vep — Scratchy gem full of footnotes and confusion and jokes about all of it; unending and unended, too.
Orlando — Sometimes the right face can sell the same joke 18 times. And videotape matters.
La France — This is how a fairy tale works, I'm fairly certain.
Bluebeard — Girls have problems with all kinds of narratives.
Boarding Gate — Sometimes the right lady can sell the same desperation to a bunch of different men and get herself across the globe. Sometimes that flight's just flight, though.
The Women — A mile a minute to nowhere but the start of more calisthenics jokes performed as/during calisthenics.
Everyone Else — Raspberries on the belly are never just for fun!
I Am Love — Affect porn, brought to you by soft focus and close-ups.

Unstoppable — Pure adrenaline poem to the proles!
A Letter to Uncle Boonmee — Pure melancholy poem to the peasants!

Lourdes — Indeterminacy isn't a reason to hide; nor is prayer a cure for fear. We're all tourists, just like Tati said before.
The Holy Girl — Hiding behind a wall and/or a uniform, listening—to the sounds in the thickening air—is just another kind of pretending to live.

To Die Like A Man — Always already acting sounds tiring, doesn't it?
Alamar — Dudes, listen.
Make Way For Tomorrow — Kids, pay better attention.
The Headless Woman — Ladies, listen, you better pay better attention!
Fin aout, début septembre — Guys, get writing already. Do something already.
Utamaro and his five women — Men, stop looking.

Bell, Book and Candle — CraaAAaaazy! And funny.
Shutter Island — InsaaAAaane! And poignant.
Macgruber — Pshh. Insanely funny, more like it.

A Perfect Getaway — Wherein the title reflects the experience to a P.
Jackass 3D — Wherein the title defines the subjects to a D.
Enter The Void — Wherein the title is the title and boys will be boys.
Gamer — Wherein the title should mean more amid all that boys noise.

The Portuguese Nun — Love's gotta start somewhere.
Dodsworth — Love's gotta stop somewhere.

The Ghost Writer — Taut and paranoid, just like you'd expect, with a kicker final shot after a shot (that one with all those hands passing the note) that teeters on unintentional hilarity.
Cold Weather — Crisp, minor, yet mobile and of a milieu. I've seen siblings talk like that. I also like that, at heart, this A.K. wants to entertain people; this movie's a comedy, not a caper.

Greenberg — Old dudes trying to be young dudes.
The Social Network — Old dudes trying to understand young dudes.
Sauve qui peut (la vie) — An old dude toying with understanding and trying and film and ladies.

Viewing Log #65: Mostly silent nights [12/20/10 - 12/26/10]

2010-12-27T06:30:00.003-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Speed Racer [Wachowskis, 2008] # The candy looks awful crisp on that BR disc. Wish it was shorter, but I still really enjoy all its leaps and plastic, its freakout lightplays.
Double Team [Hark Tsui, 1997] So many accents and so many twists! If you're tired from a lack of sleep and you're eating some serious mac'n'cheese alone on a Sunday, this is your best friend. Helps to like JCVD and HK action styles and middle-period-towards-later-period Mickey Rourke.
The Expendables [Sylvester Stallone, 2010] A grand goof that's not quite goofy enough since it wastes a few of its muscle-clad talents outside the action arena and spends far too much time trying to build emotions into everything. I wanted a full-on camp classic, basically, but more of those wishes later, with a sparring partner of my own.
I watched a lot of basketball this week.

A Conjunction of Quotations #12

2010-12-20T09:15:00.001-08:00

— edited by Ryland Walker Knight

— Hugo Alexander
1.
She seemed divided about herself and her image right from the beginning. She claimed she never knew she was to do nude scenes in “Ecstasy,” though people on the set said otherwise. On the breast issue, she researched the possibility of glandular augmentation, but later insisted she would never do anything about them. (Hers were perfectly fine except by the increasingly grandiose mammary standards of Hollywood.) She never mentioned her Jewish background, but assisted in the war effort and in later life congregated with fellow European exiles. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong about changing your name or your breasts or your hairline or your voice or your accent, or with suppressing your ethnicity and background, but with Lamarr the process involved whittling away parts of an identity without quite finding a new one to inhabit.
— Molly Haskell

2.
Capitalism is a male construct.
— Tilda Swinton

3.
There is no why for my making films. I just liked the twitters of the machine, and since it was an extension of painting for me, I tried it and loved it. In painting I never liked the staid and static, always looked for what would change the source of light and stance, using glitters, glass beads, luminous paint, so the camera was a natural for me to try—but how expensive!
— Marie Menken

4.
My, and I suspect Nathaniel's, basic concern is with the frame-rate and whether a DVD is capable of emulating his 18fps rate. And of course in electronic modes there is no black out between frames, which is really the fundamental difference between video generated images which are constant and traditional filmic projection in which half the time the screen is black.
— Jon Jost

5.
We’ve had a loss of the sense of the frontier. We have to reclaim that.
— Peter Thiel

6.
I'm not so fond of Foucault, it's because he's always saying, "During this period, people thought 'A,B,C,'; but, after such and such a precise date, it was thought, rather, that '1,2,3'." Fine but can you really be so sure? That's precisely why we're trying to make movies so that future Foucaults won't be able to make such assertions with quite such assurance. Sartre can't escape this reproach, either.
— JLG

7.
J-R-SMITH! WE JUST SAW A MAN FLY!
— Kevin Harlan

8.
Like sittin' on pins and needles
Things fall apart, it's scientific
— Talking Heads

9.
But architecture couldn’t hold him either. Philosophy, he was forced to realize, was his supreme gift, yet when he returned to philosophy in 1929, his mind never settled there. Still, much as he hated Cambridge, he instinctively knew that college life, and the relative freedom it afforded him, was more conductive to his work than a life spent on the Russian steppes, tending an endless line of human misery. But because he couldn’t settle on anything, the young men around him couldn’t really settle, either. And so this, too, was his legacy: to leave them and, later, philosophy deluged with his huge half-conscious will, which, like a sweeping flame, sucked up all the oxygen.
— Bruce Duffy º

10.
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
— T.S. Eliot

11.
It must be done with mirrors
my head that rests on nothing in mid-air.

Where is my body
where oh where?

I can see the stones
hidden in the hands.

O bring back my body to me, to me,
O miracle bring it back
before the mirrors break.
— Maya Deren

12.
The perfect page, the page in which no word can be altered without harm, is the most precarious of all. Changes in language erase shades of meaning, and the “perfect” page is precisely the one that consists of those delicate fringes that are so easily worn away. On the contrary, the page that becomes immortal can traverse the fire of typographical errors, approximate translations, and inattentive or erroneous readings without losing its soul in the process. One cannot with impunity alter any line fabricated by Góngora (according to those who restore his texts), but Don Quixote wins posthumous battles against his translators and survives each and every careless version.
— Borges º

13.
What is a wedding? Webster's Dictionary defines a wedding as "The process of removing weeds from one's garden."
— Homer Simpson

14.
I feel like Gene Wilder is my Marlon Brando or something. He just presents you with an array of emotions and leaves it up to you to decide. You know, when he played Willy Wonka [in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, 1971], there was always something slightly terrifying and angry and sadistic about that character, all of which you would imagine might take away from the magic of it. But there was something about how he played it that let you see how this guy living alone in this place, as Wonka was, could have been affected by all of that, how it would have affected his emotional state.
— Ryan Gosling

15.
He's the engine that stirs the drink.
— Charles Barkley, on Rajon Rondo

Viewing Log #64: No mad dream weaver [12/14/10 - 12/19/10]

2010-12-20T06:00:00.015-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—They come reversed

I Know Where I'm Going! [P&P, 1945] # ...and I know who's going with me. Also, this part (h/t, DC). Silly distinction but: maybe my favorite of P&P's (ironic) propaganda era?
The Bad and The Beautiful [Vincente Minnelli, 1952] Love the cast, love the photography, bored by the story. Probably the best shot of somebody driving crazy in a movie, and there are some arrangements in certain frames that tickle the eye, but it's a lousy script peopled only by rote hubris.
Spy Game [Tony Scott, 2001] # Could have hinged an entire film on the two minutes spent skipping over how Redford throws away Pitt's love object (that lady's hardly anything else) into that Chinese prison; instead, Tony goes for the cheezeball atonement angle that doesn't resolve the mud of intentions. Along with the consistent sentimentality, there's the stuck-in-a-room-of-exposition staple, but the film's fun enough to breeze through all of that. At my most generous, I'd argue it's about Hollywood actors as liars, preying on their audience's willful blind eye to fantasy. At my least, I'll call it kinda simple compared to the other dreams T.S. gave us last decade.
I Am Love [Luca Guadagnino, 2009] # Yep: again. This time on BluRay. It looks fabulous, and the details are there. This time, of all three times I've seen it this year, I paid particular attention to the mother-daughter relationship as the bridge to Tilda's/Emma's actualization. More pointedly: somehow I hadn't thought about the daughter's haircut as prelude to Emma's and felt rather chagrinned. Guess the first couple of times I was too busy looking for the (air) quotes and marveling at Tilda's face.
Film Socialism [JLG, 2010] There's a common, let's call it, "lay complaint" that Godard speaks in code. Here's the first movie whose constellation of associations might just fit that bill for most of its audience. That is, despite the (simple?) pleasures afforded by its construction, the film demands a lot of familiarity with a lot of things and not just with JLG and his pet projects. Though I'm not fluent in all the languages required to enter this hermeneutic circle, I like to think I'm approaching fluent in the language of the image et du français (not to mention "Philosophie und verstehen"), which helps my entry, but I'm still barred. Or, I am at one arm's length. Or, I need more visits to this well. Or, etc. Still love that digital, though! Still love that editing, though! (Still, thanks to M.S. for the "proper" subs and for the salient review.) Some day I'll watch it again on a much larger screen; some day I'll catch up. Until then, I'll hold tight my own understanding of it as a, um, crie de resentiment or something.
Fantastic Mr. Fox [Wes Anderson, 2009] # Appreciates, seriously.

Convergence for your metabolism's liaison in light (12/15/10)

2010-12-15T15:00:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Viewing Log #63: You stab yourself [12/8/10 - 12/13/10]

2010-12-13T19:00:00.003-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Though I did see some movies this week and though it was not ideal to battle insomnia with seven straight episodes last night, I barreled through Season Four in the past few days. So that's what I'll talk at below. But I did want to note that I saw that stupid ballerina movie, and I actually tried to like it, but I don't know how I could like it. I also watched some of Domino again, and it's wholly stupid, too, but it's not really aiming for anything profound; its main fault is its sentimentality; but that's almost an endearing through-line for Tony Scott now. In any case, they make a funny pair and it should be no surprise that the one that commits 100% to its lunacy (that is, doesn't try it on like a costume at arbitrary lengths) is the one that wins. But enough. There's bigger idiot winds to brave against.

Suffice to say, I was compelled. At this stage, I am drinking some kind of kool aid. However, compulsively entertaining as this season was, I must air some complaints. My major complaint, in the wake of what I wrote last week, is that the show simplified Betty a little too tidily. Sally was complicated almost to replace (rather than refract) what seemed to go on in her mom, but that's a different kind of relationship to a television character than I was looking for; and I was perhaps too easily skeezed out by the idea of people making that scene/those images of Sally's, um, transgression at the sleep over. Which is another way of saying that there was a lot more about work and about Don's sex life in this season than I'd anticipated. Yet, all that fed one of the best things about watching Don's trajectory: the tension in him between acting and being*.

Don is tired of acting. But Don's impulses at being, at responding to himself, are the most confused actions he takes. It's what got him into the pickle of a relationship with Anna Draper, before all, even though that was the first bit of acting he had to do. But even that sentence gets at what a mess it can be to delineate these two strains of behavior. That is, they're always woven.

Recognizing what idea feeds another idea and how we have responded or will respond or are responding is about as difficult an element of becoming a person as I know of. And that's all this show's about at bottom. That's part of the joke, of course: advertising is selling ideas to people, and the show does a great job to feed certain fantasies, as all mass media entertainment can (and more often does, duh). That's why I want to see Betty's complications instead of her press-button immaturity. I want to know there's more to that creature. It makes me feel shallow. I think that may be the point.

Even more fascinating, however, was Peggy's role in this season. She's really given a lot to do, for a lot of reasons, including sex and power and both at the same time and telling a lot of boys to shove it, even Don in a way; and the fantasy that this little lady lived and thrived back then in the mid-60s is one I want to believe as well. This one makes me feel something close to proud, some might say inspired, and I dont doubt that's the point.

—That's bullshit
Just as Joan's continued abasement at the hands of the writers continues to baffle me. Not that she can't stand on her own. Not that she doesn't have plans and dreams and boobs worth dying for. But one phone call to Vietnam in the finale is nothing compared to that whole birthday episode Peggy gets. Don't get me wrong: Joan gets to turn down Roger, she gets to flare up at Lane, she gets to do all kinds of Strong and Powerful acts. But they're forever undercut by what motivated them or what is consequent to them. There's got to be another avenue for her than another sign post that says sexuality was still circumscribed (and chastised, as highlighted by the Sally masturbation fallout), as well as circumscription for certain kinds of sexy ladies, in this era.

Which is why Don's choice of Megan over Faye is so sad, I suppose. We're reminded of his limits, of his inability to separate trains of thought; or, we see his rationalizations play out. We see she was right: she failed "the kids test" and Megan passed it better than should be expected. Faye was so appealing precisely because of the compliments Peggy gives her the same way Megan is so appealing precisely because she's allowed wrinkles and background the way Jane was not. (And because she never gives off that ugly gold digger pony bride vibe.) All these confusions in Don of course make me question my romantic confusions but I also have the luxury of some truly valuable time spent with professional that have helped me better understand all the strands woven through my life. Naturally, I'm still not an expert on myself, nor living, but I do take pride in how much attention I pay to differences that make a difference. I can see that California is a safe place for Don, a place where none of the expectations of New York matter; I see how he sees "a fresh start" not unlike his ex-wife; and I see how he conflates certain forms of happiness into a ball of expectations nobody will be able to make good on in the long run. When he figures out how to return to himself, once and for all, we might not have a show to watch anymore. But we also may not get there at this rate.

* = This construction is Martha's, I feel compelled to note, and it also describes some of the fun of the show where Weiner got his start, the irreplaceable Sopranos, which I feel compelled to mention in part because I can see how I've drawn a parallel between Betty and Carmella because I realize that my attraction to both of these characters is just that they are so complicated at times, just like anybody, though they can also be obtuse imbeciles with no grip on how to behave as adults.

Viewing Log #62: Indivisible has a lot of "I"s [11/29/10 - 12/7/10]

2010-12-08T21:00:00.011-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Though I did watch Broken Embraces again with Martha (ahem), and Prisoner of Azkaban again with Haz, I didn't watch much else last week besides the third season of Mad Men. So that's all I'm going to talk about here.

On my first night in Brooklyn last week, after an unexpected and unwelcome tour of the west side, I went to dinner with some friends. Talk turned to movies and TV, as should be expected with this crowd, and I brought up my recent plunge into Mad Men in part because I watched an episode on the flight and in part because I wanted to talk to one of these four people in particular about my reactions and assessments so far. Unfortunately, we two were the only people familiar with the show and the talk was short. Fortunately, it afforded us a private set of words to gush with: when I said, "What about that dance Pete and Trudy do at Roger's wedding?" we both lit up and shook our heads with delight. And we both agreed, out loud, turning to our friends, that it's one of the rare shows that gets markedly better as it goes along.

This is not a result of simple familiarity. Sure, we know these characters more/better by the time this third season gets started. But there's a tone, a dynamic between expectation and action, that sets this set of thirteen apart. The biggest factor is the show's sense of humor. The ridiculous is an easy target but when you mix horror into that you get a messier laughter. Disbelief is a basic reaction to absurdity and laughter's an easy way to paper over uncomfortable social interactions but I don't think that's the only thing that motivates the jokes and laughs in this show. (And yet, what else can you do but throw up your hands and laugh when somebody beautiful and smarmy gets his foot cut off and his foot blood sprays across a crowd of slack-jawed drunks?) I'm fairly certain there's some poking fun at certain characters going on in some of the jokes—and it's mostly these men the show makes fun of; you see Pete, above, eating cereal and watching cartoons while Trudy's gone—but there's also a dry wit and there's also a righteous "aha!" every now and again, like when Joan smashes that vase on her self-pitying dolt of a gorgeous husband.

Put another way: for all the damage done, this season was fun. Especially the finale. (Save, of course, that late-night scene when drunk Don calls Betty "a whore" and means it.) If this show's really about television as advertising—that is, how television's medium advertises fantasies and sets up expectations of a world you want to join—the same way The Sopranos is about television as therapy—as a perfect arena to get advice on how not to live—then this season finale did the best job selling me my American dream: to build something successful of my own, using talents I'm proud of, in a world beset by vultures.

Yet it's also telling that one success is met with another failure, as happens with Don's home, though that nuclear dissolution could hardly be a surprise to anybody with a brain. The show remains replete with tidy plot points. The surprises aren't the arcs, though Duck's new role in Peggy's life is a wrinkle I didn't expect until "Seven Twenty Three" (3x7) started with all those "awakenings" (again, the bluntness!). This is the most curious aspect of Weiner's world, I'm finding: one step forward is always meted by another step back. It's hard to say who's ever getting ahead—to the point that you think that isn't the point here. Then again, when "happiness" is the point, and when the show's selling us a world where happiness is a fantasy or at least fleeting, getting ahead may only be as simple as dealing with unhappiness better than the next guy or gal. And maybe that's the American they're selling so well at this moment: we deal with things, sometimes better than other times, and we find ways to live. Living, here, isn't just meeting an image of yourself or what's expected of that image (ie, buying something or fucking somebody); living is balancing on your own two feet in the role you've chosen.

A different friend said, "Don wants his children to be children," when I said, "This Grandpa character's a trip." And I think he was correct. Don wants everybody to fall in line, really. It'd read more autocratic and asshole if it weren't tempered by the love he so clearly holds for every single person he has a relationship with, even that senile Grandpa; however, lies rot bonds and/or lies sever ties. Proof positive that love is never enough, and money certainly is not. When Ruby shoots Oswald on live television and Don tells Sally that "nothing" happened, Sally knows it's a lie. It's those lies than doom Don. Because it's admirable in some ways to want your children to be children and nothing else but it's ignorant to ignore (look at the root!) your daughter's burgeoning brain powers. One can hope Don learned this when he groveled for Peggy, in a truly affecting scene thanks to some wet eyes and smart dialog, but I'm not holding my breath. In fact, I'd be surprised if Sally and Bobby and Lil Gene are anywhere near as big a part of Season Four as they were in Three. (Am I wrong? Don't tell me?) At any rate, the kids are hardly as interesting as their mother.

Betty Draper, soon to be Betty Francis I suppose, is probably the most interesting character of all. But I am forever at a loss at how to articulate why since I'm just so damned involved in finding out what she'll do next in her myopia-mirrored-mired life. Makes me think another shoe will drop soon. For all of Don's lies, he's pretty dependable. Betty, on the other hand, seems stuck inside her competing emotions, playing a role she doesn't know the stage directions for, counting all her chickens before they hatch (which last season made literal, which continued this season with her dad's arrival). So I'm quick to hold back judgment. And I'll withhold it yet longer still because Betty's mostly a child and the charitable person would have you believe children can learn things, like how to grow up, as they attempt to rudder their pursuits of happiness.

After all, we are a young country.

Convergence for your silver eyes (12/8/10)

2010-12-08T04:30:00.002-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Viewing Log #61: Nothing's arrears [11/22/10 - 11/28/10]

2010-11-28T11:00:00.003-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

The second season of Mad Men [2008]. Compromise is the name of the game in this season. Life's full of it, or so it would appear in Matthew Weiner's world of tropes, and the joy to be had here isn't flight; it's here, if anywhere. The schematism of the writing in this show is really something. It often works, really. But it's also so tidy in the structure that characters, however well drawn, are reduced to ideas. I think it has to do with the period setting as much as the actual writing. Something about signifiers that I'm too lazy to read closer here beyond a favorite damning word of many so-called intellectuals like myself: over-determination. The allure of the show may be its sheen and its ludicrously gorgeous cast (television's a medium of faces at its best and at its worst), but I keep watching because of those moments when things fudge and because there's way less exposition in this season than last. For instance, the low-light of the season, which I lead with above: Joan's rape. It's a terrifying scene in part because it's about competing perceptions, and because of its final dissolve, which is easily the most striking image so far in the show. Joan's looking at her future in that shot: an idle man waiting for his mess to be cleaned. And I don't think my sympathies for Joan and her continued belittlement over the course of these thirteen episodes stems from Christina Hendricks' beauty but her talent at quivering, and my amazement at what these writers want to put her character through in order to counterpoint Peggy's ascension. It's no secret that Peggy's the biggest success (so far) because she's self reliant. What's doubly amazing is that she is, in fact, our model for America in the show, which may be its home run trot in the end. She loves popsicles, she asks for what she wants, she believes in a loving God, she's great at her job, she continues to out-do herself, and she's open to life for all her tight-lipped interactions with the world. Don's fascinating and Hamm's beautiful, too, but his "arc" is the hanger the suit drapes from, as that line in San Pedro attests; no, this show belongs to its ladies, including both Mrs. Drapers. Can't wait to see how Betty—that dingbat—fords the future.
Inglourious Basterds [QT, 2009] # I do love this movie, lumpy though it may be, and the BluRay looks pretty incredible. The colors aren't quite celluloid rich but they still impress the eye at interesting wavelengths. Plus, the editing in this movie tickles synapses so well. (And not just bc RIP S.M.) Awful close to a masterpiece.
Shadow of a Doubt [Alfred Hitchcock, 1943] # Well, the first half hour. Then we went to dinner, to give thanks. (Chloe wasn't impressed, by the way, though she did find Cotten's drawl creepy.)
The second half of the first season of Mad Men [2007]. Seems like an unavoidable set-up season, with plenty to play out, but there were some moments I really dug: Betty shouldering the BB gun without a shred of affect save the smoke from her cigarette, that way John Slattery can be a total asshole but still charming, Joan's/C.Hendrick's eye brimming, Peggy's rise, Harry Crane, and the first glimpses of Duck Phillips' brand of creep. Not to mention Don's ability to, well, be a man despite also being another brand of louse prone to self-delusion and good old fashioned alcoholism.

—Come on back from way out west

Viewing Log #60: Vitalism dialectics [11/15/10 - 11/21/10]

2010-11-21T20:00:00.009-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—On your way up to poetry

The first half of the first season of Mad Men [2007]. When we all lived in Berkeley, we watched the pilot and I was beside myself with (obtuse and undue) disbelief at how on-the-nose all the anachronisms were, how the jokes felt forced. And I kept bad mouthing it, wrote it off. And I still hate its weird cultural cache. But because of a certain someone I decided to go for a second try. And it's not bad. But I still don't get why people, including so-and-so, think it's so great. Jon Hamm's something, sure, but it's not all that cinematic (slick art direction isn't image-making, really) nor is it written all that well. Yet I am entertained. I cannot front on that front. It's easy to gobble up on rainy days. I'll have more to say, maybe, when I finish the season. I'll have even more to say, I imagine, once I get a few talking points (or just plain pointers) from that goof who goosed me onto this path. For now? It makes perfect sense why Christina Hendricks got famous. (Hamm, too, duh.)
30 Rock "College" [wr: Josh Siegal & Dylan Morgan, 2010] I thought she was saying, "Lizzard." Was she saying, "Lizzard"?
Sauve qui peut (la vie) [JLG, 1979] Love the aesthetic, as ever, and wish I could make a feature with this much freeze-frame "animation," but I just don't think it's all that interesting; nor do I think it's any great leap beyond, say, Vivre Sa Vie in terms of ideas. The real treat, as I can tell, is Nathalie Baye's fits and fights and her tank top at the breakfast table. Also, her first appearance on the bike is one of the more beautiful things I've ever seen in moving images precisely because he (JLG) arrests it so.
Unstoppable [Tony Scott, 2010] Yet "purer" than Pelham, as Danny said, because of its focus; yet obviously more mobile as well. But at bottom this thing wins due to its actors and their charisma as much as the all-over always-moving cover-everything Scott style I adore. It's a good time, Chris Pine's got a good career ahead, and Denzel's getting fat. See it in a theatre while you can. But don't think too hard on it ya loons.

—We go where?

Convergence for your call and review (11/19/10)

2010-11-19T07:00:00.009-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

...

Yours truly will serve as "guest editor" this go-round
Some inspiration comes from Agee, too

...

issue 3 still "live"
(earlier)

Viewing Log #59: Mine, all mine [11/8/10 - 11/14/10]

2010-11-15T06:15:00.002-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

The Taking of Pelham 123 [Tony Scott, 2009] As prep for Unstoppable because I didn't make it to the theatre this weekend and I did want to watch this one first since they're both about trains. As Danny and Andrew and I laughed on 6th Avenue that one time, its final shot is so fucking cheesy cheese balls that it almost works. And the movie's goofy enough along its nowhere way to love like a pet, like a fishtank maybe.
—A bullet for the entire week. The first four episodes of the fourth season of The Sopranos [Fall 2002]. The early star of this season is Janice and her insanity, which is good for a "holy shit" as often as a laugh, as when she's encouraged to talk to Ralph about breaking up with the compassion she's famous for—only to, instead, throw him down the stairs. That this event also involves the other stalwart of this season, Joe Pantoliano's Ralph, speaks to the writers' obvious excitement at throwing these two hairballs of crazy at each other, if only for a few hours of screen time. And it's a great analog to Ralph's relationship with Tony, as evidenced in Ralph's kink to be pegged and degraded in bed. Because this show, fearless as it is, goes there.
Whip It [Drew Barrymore, 2009] Kinda clumsy and clichéd, but winning with its jokes and its tight script and its performances, this thing's a real rawr'r for all the girls out there. And for saps like me, I suppose, who aren't afraid of the word "feminist" as much as they might've been, say, a couple years ago. Also, because, duh, this kind of strength is sexy as much as simply charming.
Van Gogh [Maurice Pialat, 1991] Almost feels like a Renoir with all the hanging out at parties and the theatrical staging of certain events, but it's certainly a Pialat in its offhanded, everyday dealings with sex and desire. That is, nothing's sensational or trumpeted. Or, if things are, it's the violence people do unto one another, not the acts of love, which are always understated and (here at least) often edited around. Nudity isn't racy, it's a fact, for Pialat. Just as are flings and the fluid (some might say fickle) changes a person can seem to undergo in the course of an afternoon, or 67 days, though it's obvious to the aware viewer than the person hasn't changed; it's how s/he's choosing to interact with others, with the surrounding world. Which is to say that once again here's a film about perception as registered in actions, without psychology, or without access to the minds inside the many clam-like characters.
Vivre sa via [JLG, 1962] # Another ringing BluRay recommendation. Amazing what JLG's able to convey with simple title cards, how two words will color a face five minutes later; a face, as is often the case, turned from the action that the camera's turned from, doubling the negation and the horror. The film also wins, of course, because of Anna Karina—but you knew that already. The point is to watch this and pay attention to the shape of it, not of her, as JLG's films are often blocky, as reflected in the 4:3 frame, but this one takes it further to break up the blocks themselves; it's a film of segregation, really, in the most basic way—separations determine everything. It's bleak. But it looks so good! (Sometimes I think it's the best one of this, the much vaunted, early period, because it's such a "pure" document. All the "tricks" serve some concrete answer to the question. After all, A.Baz's Q is the only one we all answer differently, and never the same way twice.)
The Red Shoes [Powell & Pressburger, 1948] # Consider this my endorsement for the BluRay Criterion put out of the new Film Foundation restoration. Everything's sharp, sure, but there's grain in there. And the colors feel real as much as caked-on and painted-loud surreal. Not to mention the fact that the movie is superb, of course, and speaks to a number of things on my ideas-worth-thinking-about check list. This time all I could focus on, whether due to a flu or to this presentation, was the well-renowned mise-en-scene of the film. A favorite moment is somebody saying something about Lermontov leaving on the 8:15 train to Paris, to which Vicky responds by looking up at the top left corner of the frame, which aptly dissolves to a clock on the platform, hands at 8:05, with her eyes directly on it. It's a simply thing, really, and obvious, but it's also an effective visual touch that's become rather rare in the making of movies these days. It's also the kind of thing people like to laugh at, or point at, in current cinemas like, say, a Wes Anderson picture, as some kind of arch touch when it's simply good visual storytelling. Sure, there's variances in tone between my two examples but I get the same thrill from, say, Kumar saying, "There he goes," followed by a shot of Owen Wilson hailing a cab, as I do this clock moment. Though, of course, in a world of "cut-away" humor (even good versions of it like on this week's 30 Rock) this pointing within a story can seem short-hand for clever instead of actually being clever. At any rate, this picture is not just clever, it's gorgeous. And worth sharing.
30 Rock "Brooklyn Without Limits" [S5E7, 2010] We all know, as somebody on This Recording said, that it's Tina Fey's rack, not her butt, that turns LL's nerd chic into some kind of sexy (and makes TF's classier IRL attire that much more attractive) with, among other things, all those deep-V's. We also know that this season is turning out great, with "veiled" jabs all over the place: at the show itself, its character construction say, and at this modern world, as some say, with a bunch of dumb gross out jokes I can't get enough of since they're neither dumb nor all that gross.
Open Five [Kentucker Audley, 2010] More here.
That Paul Millsap explosion in that Jazz-Heat game sure was something. It's almost like Carlos Boozer's an afterthought these daze. Also, the Heat-as-villains can't quite work when they play like chumps coasting on cred they haven't earned yet together.

We've got heads on sticks

2010-11-11T05:00:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Napkins not necessary, but food is

2010-11-08T21:30:00.001-08:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Get ready for a ramble
—A while back, Kentucker Audley sent me some DVDs of his films Holy Land and Open Five, both bearing "2010" like a badge I actually respect. For whatever reason, and I've got plenty, I waited until tonight, just a couple nights before the end of Open Five's online run at KentuckerAudley.com, to actually watch said film. And I watched it online. Part of the reason is because Danny reminded me: it's only an hour long. Another part is because Craig Keller's long-former completes a cool circuit with the picture for the curious reader. So I took that tour—watched the movie and read the essay—and now I'm telling you to follow suit while you can.

The picture's modest, no doubt, a fine little fit of juxtaposition, as well as further evidence of microcinema's availability (and its plain ability) at this late hour. It doesn't look like anything but what it is, which is almost a diary or the appearance of one (which I surely hope and trust is the case), which isn't what you'll encounter many places besides this little niche of what now constitutes "indie film" in an era when "Independent Film Channel" means a largely successful distribution company with rather decent taste (or simply better taste than Ho'wood). And that's the encouraging thing: that if I find the right help, and especially the right actress, I could shoot my own little feature dream. Granted, I haven't tried to make anything more than actual dairy entries before; but I don't think that matters in some respects. The point is the doing.

Which is what makes the story of Open Five so basic-near-boring. Sure, things happen. But what are these people doing? Everything seems on the cusp. Hell, the film starts in the nowhere of a floating fortress disguised as a fire escape in Manhattan, the lights below a constellation of what we won't get to touch in this world, and ends in a storage corridor, a pit stop on some winding road. Yet, along this trail to nowhere, we do touch bodies. Audley's camera's, which I suppose might be Joe Swanberg's camera, is keen on faces and on bodies; and the film's (Audley's) got an ear for language games and a smart timing sense for edits. All stuff I like. But this economy of gamesmanship between its characters adds to little but games; games played by vain dolts pre-occupied with pleasure instead of living; or, life as a dull game of ownership. Where Jake tries to claim Lucy by claiming to not want to (and worse: not needing to, yea right), Kentucker claims to want to claim Rose without sounding like he's truly staking a claim. Not to say I'm any better at this living stuff, nor especially the romantic side of things, but what's propelling me (these daze at least) isn't simply the flattery of the fleeting. (And it's hard to gauge what's a mirror and what's smoke and what's the veil pulling back in this flick, which should be exciting, but I often found rather suspect.)

—Hate to turn this into me, honestly, because maybe I'm a bore, but I don't want to watch my peers flirt all that much, if at all. Granted, I know how much this—these games!—motivate/s daily life (I spend plenty of time thinking about love and sex and their difference and their interaction*) but what really intrigued me in the picture wasn't how these dopes were navigating each other, though a lot of that felt plenty "real" (like telling a picky girl, "this is what food tastes like"), and I almost enjoyed seeing that nut Jake squirm towards some hushed "earnestness" (which with that voice sounds false before any horse shit sentence/sentiment about romantic freedom is uttered in full) in order to lay some babe who's far better at life than him (though her aptitude's not simply because she's gorgeous). No, what's really interesting is the hop-scotch cross-cutting, to say the construction, which is a fun folding (un- and -in) play on roles played, in large part because Kentucker plays somebody named Kentucker, who makes films, and Jake plays somebody named Jake, who sings songs, and because the two girls who enter their lives are, in fact, actresses "by trade" played by actresses. (And I should note that its one of these girls, the cherubic Rose, who's the only one interested in what people do or advocates for what she does.) However, the fun isn't simply the relationships I just laid out; that's all obvious enough. The fun is that these masks worn and frayed make the story, such as it is, a layer cake of confusion. Craig's refrain: it's complicated. This youth, this time: it's complicated. Words, conversation: it's complicated. The things that go unsaid, it turns out, are the least complicated.

Which is why it feels silly to have spent an hour typing all of this. I could've watched Holy Land by now. Or I could have been writing about Gina's movie, A Little Death, which is specifically about life as routine, as directed actions, as finding a role in the world.

So go watch K.A.'s flick and then lobby G.T. to see hers sooner than later. Though, as I know some friends would agree, Gina's picture truly deserves the size of a silver screen to give its single-take scenes (and, yes, its Dielman lean) the necessary weight. Which is to say, K.A. made a film for the online audience and that's part of its success (Rose is a film blogger, remember). Part of the reason you (probably) haven't seen Gina's film is because its audience is blind to it right now, and often blind to a couple hours of computer time. In any case, here's ALD's site, which even sports my name somewhere, and watch the trailer below.

* I also spend a lot of time at work, at writing, at reading, at running, at eating, at movies, at the park, at tables of different sizes, at the cover of my bed and at the center of my bed. In short, my life's full of stuff that doesn't involve sex and/or love and/or just hanging out. Though, like anybody, some nights I'd love to hang with certain people more than I'd like to be alone watching movies I didn't make.