Mark me down for a deuce

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 Ehrenst​ein 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]

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.

Letters sent and not sent

by Ryland Walker Knight

Though of course I would have loved to receive a review copy of the Letters from Fontainhas box set, for whatever reason I ultimately did not. This is not really a problem, to be honest, because I feel it's a certain duty of mine to buy the box. Or, I want to. That is, I learned a lot a couple years ago when Costa visited the PFA and I hope I can learn a few more things looking back at these films presented this way (instead of the, um, illicit way). Granted, these aren't exactly party pictures, and they aren't my favorite (that'd be Où gît votre sourire enfoui?), but they will be a fine addition to my nerd collection. Once I do get around to watching them, I will likely write a few more words about what it means to watch them now at this remove. That is, I want to see how time has shaped me as much as these people, since that's a definite part of the project at hand: the change in Vanda, and her cough, is one of the most obvious lines to trace aside from Costa's evolution as an image-maker, which I like to see as going from somewhat classical, everything's a bit perfect, to a grimey pragmatism, which renders a different and steady beauty, to a new realm of myth expressionism that makes shadows (and spot-lights) colors of time and character. I'll try to elucidate that when the time comes.

Speaking of letters from places, like home and not home, my still-mint Ackerman set needs watching, too, come to think of it, and that might just happen soonish. Heck, I may even buy that Gadamer book while I'm at it, since I added it to the widget at right, along with the trilogy and Close-Up and the Brakhage anthology (both Blu Ray). Which is to say that I think a Blu Ray player of some kind (perhaps the gaming kind) may be on my May birthday horizon.

[Top image stolen from Glenn, purveyor of delicious lasagna and, along with His Lovely Wife, an altogether generous host for a late Easter evening meal. Second image stolen from that invaluable blog the art of memory.]

Viewing Log #33: From here we go [2/8/10 - 2/14/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—to sublime

• Basic Instinct [Paul Verhoeven, 1992] # The other day, Miriam called it "one of the great feminist films of the last half century." Since my dad has a copy just sitting around, I thought I'd see if I see anything new. Now that I'm all about Black Book, maybe I will. In any event, I'll update tomorrow after I draw a verdict of some kind.
  
• Nausicaa [Hayao Miyazaki, 1984] # When I first watched it, on some crappy dvix I found online in 2000, it wowed me with its metaphors and imagery. The imagery still wows in spots, but it's a clunky thing, ain't it? At this point, I like Mononoke more because it's the more mysterious story of these two screeds. (Though I also think Howl's Moving Castle the angriest, and most intriguing, of Miyazaki's eco- and pax-preaching.) Still, though, the finale here is pretty powerful. Watched with Chloe around leftover suppers.
  
• Zombieland [Ruben Fleischer, 2009] Funny, apt flick with the fam on a day purportedly about "love" or whatever. Not exactly "smart" but easily clever. I like all the popup titles acting like video game information, but to call it interested in gaming would be misdirection. It's a family road film! With zombies! Bill Murray and Woody Harrelson are great, of course, but I was surprised at how winning I found Jesse Eisenberg. No real surprise, though, that Emma Stone's just going to get more and more attractive through the next, say, ten years.
  
  
• Adam's Rib [George Cukor, 1949] # Found time to watch this one, and take some stills (look here), but I am mad at myself that I didn't actually get my full post up in time. However, that just means life got in the way in good, productive ways. And I think Cavell would salute that. (Not to mention Emerson and Locke and Katherine Hepburn.)
  
  
• Lost "What Kate Does" [Paul Edwards, 2010] Kinda shitty groundwork episode. More here.
  
  
• Saute ma ville [Chantal Akerman, 1968] What a goof she is! Here's your kitchen with kitsch, at all events a tongue in cheek tumble into activity. Quite literally a kitchen sink film. Such fun with sound, too, as it seems like everything is post-dubbed to nutty ends.

—May need to stretch more

Viewing Log #29: Spots like Fort Knox [1/11/10 - 1/17/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Sixteen minimeters between me and you

• Jour de fête [Jacques Tati, 1949] # Straight from my notebook: J. Tati just gets it. Life's cycles, all circles, a merry-go-round of comedy. And why not have a laugh? The body's the best joke machine—it's your number one interface with the world. Life, for Tati, is bounded by one's capacities to move through this obstacle course; all we can do is hurdle and parry and jump; all we do is dance with things. Tati's definitely an artist of things. Things: a bike, a pole, a tent, animals, hills, fences, night vision (of a lack of it), booze, a piano. And everything circles back in the end. The world's too fast, too, it seems, for things to elude you forever. (Also worth noting: so much more dialogue than the others.)
  
• L'École des facteurs [Jacques Tati, 1947] A perfect little sketch for the bigger feature to follow.
  
  
• La Captive [Chantal Akerman, 2000] # Lots here, including Vertigo right off the bat and a lot of Levinas-like investigations of "the other" and how confrontation takes different forms. My second Akerman, believe it or not, and easily a right angle away from that linoleum-bound block of process that made her name. Still, makes me want, even more than normal, to see more movies made by women about women. There's a reason Bigelow gets a lot of pub: she's into boys in the way a lot of male filmmakers are into girls. But this one—this lady and her film (her films)—is all about how the differences in sex (during cinema, embodied in gender, across a windowpane) make a difference in how we act. Wild but true: this is Proust! Phew! Makes me want to know those books (that book?) all the more! I think I'll have more to say soon. (Also, I'll have more on Akerman when I finally get around to Icarus Films' recent release of D'est, which everybody assures me is an odd blood beauty.)
  
  
• The Sopranos "The Fleshy Part of the Thigh" (S6,E4) [Alan Taylor, 2006] Really great movement between threads in this one; written very well. And there's even a quick fade to black punctuation at one point, not to mention the treelines of the final moments moving from Tony's respite by the pool to Paulie's beat down of the Barone heir and then back again (twice!) to show what's in the background of all this big life of grab-all.
  
• The Sopranos "Mayham" (S6,E3) [Jack Bender, 2006] An underrated episode, no doubt, even though one might call the coma-world a bit of a reach; I, for one, totally dig all the cross-consciousness interaction because there are jokes, as ever, to go with the scares. Also, Paulie is amazing.
  
  
• Gone To Earth [Powell and Pressburger, 1950] Fucking fell asleep. Twice. I felt like an idiot. Still do. However, what I did see was pretty amazing, though Brian tells me I missed a lot of contextual "a-ha"s as the film closed.
  
  
• Fantastic Mr. Fox [Wes Anderson, 2009] # For a memory jog over breakfast I watched a few moments, got some laughs and a few notes.
  
  
• La Captive [Chantal Akerman, 2000] Amazing first eight minutes. Then an amazing cut to a title card, which prompted me to shut it off. I tried again the next night, but other things and people got in the way.

Jeanne Dielman: Solitude's a fortress?

by Ryland Walker Knight

—The lid!
It took Danny some time to get me this copy of Criterion's beautiful new edition of Akerman's masterpiece, and then it took me a little time to get my image-essay together. But I have, now, with another assist from Danny on the gif-making, and you can take a look by clicking here. As I looked for these images these past weeks, I noticed how, for all the long takes and long monologues, Akerman cuts some sequences rather rapidly. The space isn't cut up, of course, as we often linger after the frame has emptied, but the apartment is a maze of separation; finding the pathways' connections is difficult. This spatial confusion is another funny knot I spend the "down time" attempting to untangle. Is the bathroom across from the kitchen? How far is it down that hall to the bed?

The first time I saw the picture, at the PFA with Jen, I was drowsy and a lot of the choreography's humor was lost on me. Not that Akerman is Tati or anything, but there's something hilarious about how aloof Jeanne/Seyrig is when she drops that shoe buffer, or when she can't figure where to put the mushy 'taters. (Though that's also quietly devastating.) Put another way, the picture is a lot more contradictory than I remember. I can't imagine falling in love with it the way some of my friends have, but this time definitely shined more and showed me more. Maybe you can tell me some other things I'm missing in the comments here or there. (For what it's worth, Kasman would love it if you dropped the comments over there.) The most obvious thing is that I've ignored a lot of the feminist appeal of the picture, but that's just because, as Jeanne tells her son, I'm not a woman: it's not my argument, as I see it. Or, I wouldn't want to speak for Jeanne or Chantal or Gina or Jen—nor Miriam nor Mia nor Maya nor Martha—that is, not for any of the strong ladies I'm lucky to know. They're liable to... get smart with me. See, without being too-too silly a scaredy-cat, I should assure you that, like all good feminists, these ladies aren't all bark.



—Beware the bureau!

Viewing Log #19: Sea salt swordfish [11/2/09 - 11/8/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

— Beaming and leaning

• Last Year at Marienbad [Alain Resnais, 1961] # I could watch this movie a million times. A lot funnier than I remembered, though I remembered it being funny, I think. Another reason to own a Blu-ray player, no doubt. I wrote a smarter, funnier response over here.
  
  
• City of Sadness [Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989] Not quite the emotional experience I'd expected, though it easily lives up to its title, this picture made me feel, for lack of a better word, small. That is, my political world is much smaller, or narrower, and thankfully/paradoxically/obviously less totalitarian. Not that the picture need be enjoyed strictly for its political-historical import. Plenty, as ever with HHH, is just about life, about living, about letting things happen. There's so much communion in its eating scenes. That baby working its clumsy way around that table was out of this world delightful. The interstitial "exposition" inserts bouncing off of, and sometimes replacing, the inter-titles—as modes of communicating for the deaf but still-sponge-worthy Tony Leung, whose end-of-an-era bridge type acts like a silent cinema stand-in—made my Bazin crush flutter up. Fine first rep feature back in town. —Read Brian at Hell On Frisco Bay.
  
  
• Wings of Desire [Wim Wenders, 1987] # The morning after I grabbed one image before conking out, I watched the whole thing over coffee and toast under grey clouds behind the kitchen. Startled, I'm writing this before my Auteurs piece, and here I'll say that I'm confused and moved in equal measure. It stirred up a bunch of memories; it feels, for better or worse, more formative than many other films.
  
  
• Va Savoir [Jacques Rivette, 2001] The first half-hour, until Sergio meets the delicious blonde in the library. Then I got tired of the headphones and went to bed. So far: love how Balibar narrates her life. Nice echo of Léaud in Out 1. Also, this earlier Sergio appearance changes 36 vues a bit.
  
• Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell [Matt Wolf, 2008] Surprisingly artful, though its structure is pretty standard. I was moved, as ever, by Arthur's story and Wolf does some fine juxtapositions and compositions of his own, layering light in nice ways. Can imagine it plays well for audiences of both fans and neophytes, though the fans may want more than 73 minutes and the neophytes are probably won over and content with what's been assembled.
  
• Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles [Chantal Akerman, 1975] # Shopping, duh, for pix. Lookey here why dontcha.

Viewing Log #18: Saints break stains and blue runs red [10/26/09 - 11/1/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

This second week back in the Bay has been awfully full of commitments that have kept me from the movies. I've spent most of the week looking at Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles [Chantal Akerman, 1975] # in preparation for an overdue image-essay that will hit The Auteurs shortly. Once again I'm reminded of how amazing the film is, but, also, how little passion I have for it; I regard it through a veil, almost, of painful echoes. I have found time for some television this week, though, with the finale of this latest Peep Show series as well as another Curb Your Enthusiasm (and one yet to catch up on from last night)—not to mention NBC stuff, like 30 Rock, which keeps proving its smarts week in, week out, by playing dumb. Other than that, there was only one other movie of my stack that I got to, and tardily, last night: I Know Where I'm Going! [Powell & Pressburger, 1945]. Given my fatigue, it shouldn't surprise you that, though I loved the picture, I don't have much to say to account for its typically gorgeous tale of restraint. The obvious thing to say is that its use of off-screen space is fantastic: you can feel the pull of all that sits beyond grasp or fogged-galed-rained out of sight, the way conduction works. Fate, these filmmakers would have you believe, is an equation, a leveling, maybe, where the world finds its balance.

—Le fou, for real

Bunch your matter and count the pages.

by Ryland Walker Knight

Back to widget time. Really. Just want to sell some books, even if this internet thing is part of the reason why lovable stores like Black Oak (and Cody's, of course) are long gone. So, here's some stuff you should read, and probably own, if you haven't/don't already, along with some quick plugs for some DVDs (released and yet to be released) that I'll be bringing up and blogging about, again, in greater depth, soon. Cough:

• As inspired by his recent Fresh Air interview, which was amazing for how moving it was on top of how hilarious it was, I want to nod at what Tracy Morgan was helping sell: his memoir, I Am the New Black.
  


• Since I took off that Library of America collection, but couldn't leave off my man, here's a plug for the paperback I own of Pale Fire, which may be the best book ever.
  


• Georges Perec's Species of Spaces is pretty phenomenal, as is most of his work, and this Penguin edition is an affordable introduction to one of the great Oulipo brains (and hairdos) to create language fun full of wit and smarts. I think I like Perec more than Queneau, if that matters.
  


• Coming out of Bright Star the other day, I spent a lot of energy thinking about how much I wanted to read all kinds of Keats. I did not buy any, and may not yet, but I may check this Complete Poems and Selected Letters put out by Modern Library Classics. [Update: You can also get the poems, all of them, for free right here.] The Brawne-inspired poem that gives Campion her title is quite lovely, and Ben Whishaw reads it well; recites it well, too, laid against Abbie Cornish's breast. Still thinking about the film...
  


• And, for good measure, here's some movies I'll be writing about shortly: from The Criterion Collection, Wim Wender's perhaps-pinnacle (or a high point never touched again?), Wings of Desire, and Chantal Akerman's seminal structuralist block of routine-art that couches feminist politics inside a maze of linoleum and potatoes, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; from the long-lost file (also the terrible art direction file), John Huston's final film, The Dead, adapted from James Joyce's short story of the same name (itself the final story of its Dubliners book), which I've recently re-read.