BANG BANG: Brian Darr

[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.

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

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.

SFIAAFF 2010: Preview, Like You Know It All

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Nothing mundane
For whatever reason, be it school or myopia or plain ignorance, I've not attended any of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festivals prior to this year. However, now that I'm here, and was kindly invited, and now that I'm more "knowledgeable," or appropriately curious, I'm greatly looking forward to next week's run of films. Actually, it starts this week, this Thursday, at the Castro as always, with a film starring Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi called Today's Special.

But for me the festival starts Friday. I'll be seeing the Thai film, Agrarian Utopia, which festival director Chi-Hui Yang spotlit as one not to miss. Its title says a lot, I worry, but I'm told it lives past that pegging through a unique visual style attuned to mud and snakes as much as trees and humans. Chi-Hui even called it part of the Apitchatpong school as a way of short hand. Also under that umbrella is Mundane History, which I plan to see Sunday night. It's too bad both of these films have such jejune titles. Hopefully I can talk about more than that when I see them.

Yet more exciting is the minor Lino Brocka retrospective. Four films will be shown, starting with Insiang, which Noel Vera claims is a masterpiece, an inversion of what we ought to teach our children; that is, a survival guide premised on moral wrongs not rights. Part of my interest, no doubt, is pure cinephilia, but I will cop to also wanting, plainly, to see what the Philippines looked liked in 1976. That's always an interest in foreign cinema, but rare artifacts like these seem to push that interest to the fore. (This is also true of stuff like the Thai films mentioned above.) I know this borders on exoticism, and tourism, but I'm okay with that; it's not, after all, anything but curiosity. So I hope to learn some other things about that world when I see You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting (1974, a broad-canvas melodrama; perhaps an opposite to Insiang), Bayan Ko: My Own Country (1985, the film that prompted the Marcos regime to revoke Brocka's citizenship) and Manila in the Claws of Neon (1975, a defining Filipino neo-noir) through the week.

The final curiosities I've earmarked are a pair of shorts programs. The first I'll get to see is called Memory Vessels and Phantom Traces, which pulls together a video about a boat, a little film that reappropriates propaganda films from the Vietnam war to talk history and historicity, and a little five minute landscape film about an Indian salt flat. Should be pretty, and quiet. The other program, called What We Talk About When We... is kind of a who's who of the festival circuit's Asian contingent: Joe's A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (which I wrote about here), Tsai Ming-Liang's Madame Butterfly (which Danny saw at Rotterdam), Jia's Cry Me A River (which I've been wanting to see since it debuted at Cannes) and Hong Sang-soo's Lost in the Mountains (which I'm sure will be funny and deadpan and bifurcated, even if smaller than normal).

—You don't know nothing
As it happens, I had the pleasure of seeing one of the festival's other films by Hong, his newest feature, Like You Know It All, on a screener. It's just the third Hong feature I've seen (or maybe second and change), after Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (2000; thanks to Brian) and the first half of the first half of Woman is the Future of Man (2004; which I've reacquired for reacquaintance). And it made me think like it was actually the first one I've seen. In fact, I barely remember Virgin, and Woman is the Future is hazy at best. What I can say is that this new one feels wildly different despite obvious consistencies such as the doubling/mirroring and the surrogate/stand-in protagonist.

Like You Know It All isn't a knee-slapper by any stretch, but it seems funnier than those other two I've seen (if equally deadpan), and some of the jokes come from the style. He's using a zoom now, not just a tripod, and many scenes are bookended by not-quite pillow shots where the image jerks from its putative subject to reorient and reframe the surroundings. Sometimes this is just a simple whip-pan to a window. Others, it's like he's trying to find a postcard image. I'd call it sloppy if it weren't so intentional. It makes the film more buoyant, for sure, and helps skip over that ugly rape narrative in troubling ways (you're laughing to not look back), and it sets up the final scene on the beach, with its wayward idiots going in opposite directions, to show just how fickle people (and the world) can be. Which is all to say go see it; it plays three times at the festival.

There's not much more to say, I don't think, but there is a movie there—a real film—complete with a dream sequence worthy of late Buñuel and all kinds of self-flagellation. I can say that: Hong never lets himself off the hook. Like any good, suffering type he knows his own hypocrisy and how to poke at it while simultaneously inflating himself. I'm guessing this is consistent based on everything I've heard or read so I'm curious to see one that people think is a masterpiece to suss out why. Case in point: 2008's Night and Day, which Danny says is pretty close to perfect. I'll have to report back on that, but maybe it has something to do with the move outside of Korea? Unsure, but okay—and piqued, of course.

Lastly, there's three other "banner" inclusions. The most famous and controversial (maybe of the festival?) is City of Life and Death, which will have a rare US screening, and is sure to make me cringe, or so I've been lead to believe. Less famous, I guess, is Raya Martin's Independencia, which actually played at Cannes last year, and which looks beautiful. Unfortunately it only plays twice and I'm going to miss the first showing this Friday (because I'll be at Ben Russell's film at YBCA), so I hope to squeeze it in between a showing of The Housemaid (1960, Korean, free to see on The Auteurs if you want to deny yourself a theatrical screening) at the Castro and Mundane History back up at the Kabuki on what's stacking up as a packed Sunday this weekend. For that matter, it'll be a packed week. Should be fun. Stay tuned.

Viewing Log #30: Color cannot clean a canting [1/18/10 - 1/24/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Sat behind Godard.

• Casino [Martin Scorsese, 1995] # Like for the first time. I'm blown away. This is the ur-Scorsese picture. Everything's dialed up delirium, all the colors and lights and camera movements. For such a sad and scary movie, it's damned fucking giddy. I'm publishing this as I'm watching it, so my giddiness is sure to wane as these fools keep fucking up their silver lined lot.
  
• Californication [Most of the third season] It was way too easy to do errands and little writing projects and just plow through this in one day. Rain played a part, but, also the sex.
  
  
• Playtime [Jacques Tati, 1967] # Yes, the best. Really: the best.
  
  
• The Seventh Victim [Mark Robson, 1943] # I tweeted a hash tag (#bestmovieever?) that gets at how powerful this thing is for me, especially at this stage in the game, with its weight and frisson of social anxieties. More Monday.
  
• Cat People [Jacques Tourneur, 1942] # Simon Simone's nose, let me tell you, can do things to a boy. Also, Tourneur's pace is all wonky: a real jam of angles keeps this from slipping down easy. More Monday.
  
  
• A Letter to Uncle Bonmee [Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2009] Watched on The Auteurs for free (click here) and then wrote this little nugget about it.
  
• "Parisian Goldfish" by Flying Lotus [Eric Wareheim, 2009] Watched at the behest of Danny while talking Coachella. It's really something. Watch it here. It's very NSFW. It's weird: how much is celebratory? How much is a joke? Can it be both? I'm continually flabbergasted by the audacity of T+E.
  
  
• Band of Brothers, "Currahee" Episode 1 [Phil Alden Robinson, 2001] Halfway decent, but a lot of it is what I hate about war movies and World War II movies in particular. I appreciate that generation, of course, since it gave us its youth in ways I can't imagine, but I'm pretty sick of it getting called "the greatest" all the time. Weird to see so many British actors playing Americans, including Simon Pegg of all people.
  
• The Sopranos "Live Free or Die" (S6,E6) [Tim Van Patten, 2006] # The world opens for one man, for a bit, in the form of a vase and a bed & breakfast. Too bad you know this natural can't escape that hateful haunting in his history. There's more Paulie's than Tony's in this world. Even with Bacala's dunderheaded "Well we can't have him in our social club no more; that I do know."
  
• The Sopranos "Mr. & Mrs. John Sacramoni Request..." (S6,E5) [Steve Buscemi, 2006] # A devastating episode of perceptions: misinterpretation abounds, even from the people fearing it the most (ie, Tony). Then again, the biggest perceptive revelation—Vito's true identity, as a gay man, um, coming out into view—is deferred an episode by Tony's misguided attempt to reassert his power. Oh, man, men make bad choices.

Nimble epistle, verdurous carrion

by Ryland Walker Knight

I do love letters, even letters that aren't love letters, so I quickly warmed to Joe's short A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, though it is quite cryptic. Then again, I like cryptic, too. Especially beautiful cryptic. Thus I wrote this little ditty for Danny in The Notebook. You, too, assuming you're signed up on The Auteurs, can watch the short film (just 17 minutes) by clicking here. Then you can tell me things about what you saw turning those corners and hearing those voices.

Viewing Log #9: Shoe Thief [8/25/09 - 8/30/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Pale, blue

• Husbands [John Cassavetes, 1970] # Carousing and breaking, laughing through the take: seems the most documentary of his movies, of course, yet somehow it's crisp. Maybe not as "good" as other Cassavetes pictures, but mostly a treat to watch the roundelay of macho jaunting. I want to fly to London and run in rain. I want to laugh at everything. No homo, no phony. Dig blurs at The Art of Memory. Also, I'm reminded by Simington of the Cavett interview, which I put up a couple years ago, which is kind of better than the movie and the best piece of criticism on the movie you could ever expect or hope or dream of.
  
• Only Angels Have Wings [Howard Hawks, 1939] # Maybe a perfect movie, or the perfect Hawks movie? In any case, it's always a pleasure. Recently, Dan Sallitt wrote this bit of lovely.
  
  
• The Lady From Shanghai [Orson Welles, 1947] # Loopy and obvious, and hampered no doubt by that awful "brogue" from Welles, this thing is saved by the unreal sexiness of Rita Hayworth. She's top shelf "material" here. And that's the point.
  
  
• Metropolitan [Whit Stillman, 1990] Smart, yes, but hard for me, at this moment, to get worked up about its world and its concerns. That said, I do like Chris Eigeman and the black outs. Seems to be a theme of the week.
  
• Isle of the Dead [Mark Robson, 1945] Awfully similar to The Ghost Ship in some ways, though not as good; Karloff's face is amazing.
  
  
• Adventureland [Greg Mottola, 2009] Had me at The Replacements. One of the best soundtracks in a while. Not exactly an earth-shattering movie, but it hits the right notes to charm a sucker like me.
  
• Tropical Malady [Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004] # Now here's a movie that understands the significance, and the fun, of black outs. Joe knows a lot about punctuation, and trees. For all the myths and spirits, his cinema is decidedly grounded: we're always looking up at the world.
  
• Smiley Face [Greg Araki, 2007] Anna Faris makes faces and falls over things for about 90 minutes and it's a good time, vaguely intelligent, often amusing, but slight. I'm sure if I partook in its inspiration a little more (ever?) I'd feel differently about the thing.
  
  
• Blitz Wolf [Tex Avery, 1942] Thanks to Phelps. You can watch it, too, by clicking here. DP says, "at least the Avery's a critique of war." I say, yes, it is, and smarter than the QT, but, still, that's largely avoiding what Basterds is after.
  
• Inglourious Basterds [Quentin Tarantino, 2009] # Different reasons, different focal points. Still a kick in the pants. Left a ramble in the comments back here post screening.

My Friday Screen Test. There's talk of Cary Grant and Richard E Grant, liquids and words and films; there's even a Claire Denis reference.

Maybe you've heard of Adam Ross' Friday Screen Test series? Every Friday he "interviews" a blogger about their interests in film and film writing. Today he posted my responses to his queries. It's fun. You should read it. You can read it by clicking here. There's talk of Cary Grant and Richard E Grant, liquids and words and films; there's even a Claire Denis reference. I filled out the questionnaire a while back, actually, so the DVD question is a little off. Since then I got a few DVDs for Christmas and just last week got that Charles Burnett set from Milestone as well as Syndromes and a Century. Anyways, read the rest of Adam's blog, too; he's a swell dude. Big up yourself. And big ups to Beatrice Dalle, again, always. She lites my fire. --RWK

Catching up with 2007.

by Ryland Walker Knight

It is a characteristic criticism of Emerson to say that he lacks a sense of tragedy; for otherwise how can he seem so persistently to preach cheerfulness? But suppose that what Emerson perceives, when he speaks of his fellow citizens as existing in a state of secret melancholy, is that in a democracy, which depends upon a state of willingness to act for the common good, despair is a political emotion, discouraging both participation and patience. So when Emerson asks of the American Scholar that he and she raise and cheer us, he is asking for a step of political encouragement, one that assures us that we are not alone in our sense of compromise with justice, that our sense of an unattained self is not an escape from, it is rather an index of, our commitment to the unattained city, one within the one we sustain, one we know there is no good reason we perpetually fail to attain.
-- Stanley Cavell, Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life

Go to The House to read a kinda-lengthy wrap up of what tickled me in 2007. While it's got pretty much the same format as what I used last year, this time I actually made a list at the end. Still can't rank anything, though, so it's an alphabetical list. I figure that most of the year-end lists and awards are redundant and silly to start with so why not throw my lot in with them? I guess the impetus to not make a list is because it's the same tired grammar most of film criticism continues to use. Not that I think a Better-Than List is worth much; it's still a posture. Not that my awards aren't a posture; my argument is with overbearing seriousness. (For example: I think it's awesome that my buddy Keith lists the Aqua Teen movie-film alongside The Horse.) Not that I'm not serious, but I like some levity; I like to laugh. Every film on my list, even the Reygadas, gave me a chuckle. But there's more of this over there so click this link if you didn't click that link at the beginning.

Also worth reading is Brian Darr's terrific Bay Area rep round up at Hell On Frisco Bay. It helps me to realize that as cool as New York City is (and it's definitely cool), San Francisco and the greater Bay Area have a lot to brag about. It helps to have a blogging buddy like Brian, too, with his calendar-scouring acumen pointing at things I don't always think to check up on. However, during this, my final, semester, I will probably only find time to attend screenings at the PFA. Thankfully, though, their newest calendar is pure dope: on Friday I got to go see Andrei Rublev on a big screen for the first time and during the afternoon of February the 17th I will see Out 1: Spectre, the shorter version (240 minutes) of the best film I saw and hardly wrote a thing about in 2007, Out 1: Noli me tangre (773 minutes). Plus: La Chinoise on my mom's birthday and a mini Terrence Davies retrospective (with the auteur in person at almost every screening, including a shot-by-shot discussion of Distant Voices, Still Lives). On to more merry movie watching and illuminating film writing in 2008.

No Claire Denis?

by Ryland Walker Knight

When Ed Copeland asked us to nominate 25 non-English films for a list to be voted upon by others I kind of dashed off my list. I have expressed some of my issues with lists here before. They rarely feel complete. Which is an impossible goal anyways, right? So my thought process was: I'll type out a bunch and then whittle it down to 25 or so. I initially only had about 30. I was surprised. Losing five wasn't too tough, actually, it was coming up with 30 I felt I could stand behind without any qualms that I found most difficult. So here's my list, silly as it may be, in the order they appeared in the email sent to Ed. After the first two the order is rather arbitrary but you can probably follow my train of thought.

Mirror
Rules of the Game
Playtime
Out 1
Celine & Julie Go Boating
L'eclisse
Persona
Fanny & Alexander
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Stalker
Diary of a Country Priest
Au Hasard Balthazar
Contempt
Pierrot le fou
Masculin-Feminin
La Dolce Vita
8 1/2
2046
Talk to Her
Double Life of Veronique
Seven Samurai
Beau Travail
Law of Desire
Chung Kuo Cina
J'ai Pas Sommeil

I guess a fair ammount of my choices did not make the final list. The most shocking, to me, at least, was the absence of a single Claire Denis film (where you at Travis?!), and Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest. (And, yes, this list means I have now seen both Playtime and Celine and Julie. I cannot begin to express myself yet. I may have to shell out for both, though, when that fall disbursement comes through the pipeline.) But, you know, whatever, the list is good, fun. Lists are good and fun, even when they are frustrating endeavors for nerds like me who can obsess over idiotically banal, and minor, details. That is, nerds who niggle. (What a fun phrase! Alliteration!) If I were to spend more than five minutes on a list it would probably strain to look a lot "cooler" with less director repetitions and a broader scope of time, perhaps stretching back to include something like Le Million or throwing in one of those Mizoguchi films I fretted about a couple months, or so, ago. Or, if only we could stretch the timeline to include some Carlos Reygadas and Apichatpong Weerasethakul up in this. See: it's all silly. So, there's my list, for what it's worth. I know I'll think harder, and probably longer, about my next ballot for this project.

BTW: Jim Emerson is hosting the individual lists in the comments of this post on Scanners. He's a kind fellow. Enjoy. This is a helluva learning tool for a young film nut looking to broaden his or her horizons beyond the googleplex and Coca Cola. There's shit like art houses and red wine out there, too, and they're both delicious. But then again so is Coca Cola. Also, as Darren Hughes points out in the comments at Ed's site, this list shows how much the Criterion Collection has effected the shaping of the modern canon (notice the links above?). But let's not bring that word up again. That was really silly, right Zach?

Dialogue vs. Duplicity: Notes on Syndromes and a Century and I Don't Want To Sleep Alone

By Ryland Walker Knight

1. Friday the 13th, July, 2007: Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA:
7:00 — Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century
9:05 — Tsai Ming-liang’s I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone
My seat: dead-center, five rows back from the screen.
My posture: slouched, a little pooped, but wide-eyed; I ate some semi-sweet chocolate chips on the low and drank water from my Nalgene

[For the rest of the notes click here to be forwarded to The House Next Door]

02006: 105 minutes: written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
02006: 115 minutes: written and directed by Tsai Ming-liang
[The quality is shitty but this is an amazing sequence near the close of _Syndromes_ that you should watch, regardless of whether or not you've seen what's preceded it in the film up to this point.]