Cannes 2011 #2: Making things happen

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.]

Viewing Log #55: September highlights

by Ryland Walker Knight

• demonlover [Olivier Assayas, 2002] Look at this twitpic, and then read Glenn's thing maybe. Here, again, I risk the wrath of GK, and Kent Jones: it's a hoot, and largely fascinating, but also the owner of a rather empty punchline.
  
• The Social Network [David Fincher, 2010] A problematic, thoroughly entertaining film I hope I never have to talk to anybody about ever again.
  
• The Thin Red Line [Terrence Malick, 1998] # Here's some gushing and here's some mush-mouth. It's important to me.
  
• The Last Picture Show [Peter Bogdonavich, 1971] As formal as it gets and so, so apt to anybody with an ear for confusion. You know, everybody.
  
• A Brighter Summer Day [Edward Yang, 1991] Worth every minute. Loved how much of it's specifically about light, and shining lights (on things) and not seeing because of the lack of light, and how all the big acts of violence happen at night, in low light. If I see it again (and hopefully in a theatre again), I'll take real notes and maybe write a real poem about it.
  
• Pretty much every single episode of Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job [T+E, 2007-2010] # Cuz I had to. And cuz I love it. Cuz they're the best. (Sure, it gets/got tiresome; but who gives a turd ya dingus?)
  
• The Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job Crimbus Special and Tour Promo [T+E, 2010] The best thing in the world. Everything.
  
• Enter The Void [Gaspar Noé, 2009] I tried to be positive at this joint and largely failed.
  
• The first half of Season Three of The Sopranos [David Chase?, 2001] #, which is absolutely brutal and absolutely fantastic and rather often absolutely hilarious.
  
• Danny Perez's visuals at the Panda Bear show; especially the wave and its square spots at the end.
  
• Oedipus Wrecks [Woody Allen, 1989] A lot of fun, in part because it's "on the nose."
  
• Life Lessons [Martin Scorsese, 1989] Rituals, process, it's all a lie to try to cover your patterns.
  
• Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? [Frank Tashlin, 1957] At the Castro, with Brian. The opening is my favorite part.

Viewing Log #24: Exact xylophone xerox extract [12/7/09 - 12/13/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Multiply. Make it happen.

• Baby Mama [Michael McCullers, 2008] Sure, that was fine. I laughed enough. [Cough.]
  
• The Hurt Locker [Kathryn Bigelow, 2008] Puts other Iraq movies to shame, no doubt, and makes Jarhead in particular, despite its strong cast and factual basis, feel all the more counterfeit. For one, it's an actual action film: its subject is action and action, here, dictates character. Pathologies dominate, but it's not a psychological film—we only see surfaces, and our visibility is poor. Still not sure if the film deserves all of its accolades since its tertiary characters and subplots are rather broad and the final "act" (so to speak) is expected, but it makes sense why it's such a favorite: terse, spatially aware, and, in one way, a very "safe" narrative structure built on camaraderie that plays to our vicarious thrill—way more than horror—at seeing these set-pieces go boom or whisk away from the safety of our hometown haunts.
  
• False Aging [Lewis Klahr, 2008] A lovely little ode to relics remaining relevant, and alive, through art. Viewable here, with thanks to Matt for the tip.
  
  
• The San Francisco Silent Film Festival's Winter Event, 2009. More to come in a dedicated post. But here's a few words on each of the films, each one a pleasure to take in, even with some beyond-brazen yakkers behind me for the Keaton segment.
  
• West of Zanzibar [Tod Browning, 1928] Depraved, as ever with these guys. A hell of an ending.
  
• Sherlock Jr. [Buster Keaton, 1924] # Movies inspire life, duh, on top of recording it or creating havens from it; also, "objective reality" can, without a doubt, be a lie.
  
• The Goat [Buster Keaton and Malcolm St. Clair, 1921] That shot of Buster riding the train up to the camera is something special: hilarious, daring, a tad ludicrous, seemingly unreal and yet wholly real.
  
• J'accuse [Abel Gance, 1919] Unbelievably gorgeous print; insane, great fantastical final third.
  
• Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness [Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1927] Talking animals, and lots of them, made this a blast.
  
  
• All of these Resnais shorts listed below are recounted and read, maybe even narrativized, over here.
  
• Statues Also Die [Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, 1953] 27min, 35mm, a blemish.
  
• Guernica [Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens, 1950] 12min, in English, 35mm, crisp.
  
• Toute la mémoire du monde [Alain Resnais, 1956] 20min, English version, 16mm, kinda grubby.
  
• Le chant de styrène [Alain Resnais, 1958] 19min, projected digitally, looked great.
  
  
• Whatever Works [Woody Allen, 2009] Pretty damned bilious, though it tries its hand at sweet. Still, its fantasyland made me laugh and Evan Rachel Wood in white pants is a vision. Also, it's simple, and that helps. Maybe the best movie Woody's made since, um, Sweet and Lowdown? It's still such a mystery to me how little he trusts his comedy in these later years. Don't get me wrong, a lot of his 00s comedies aren't exactly hilarious, but they're always more interesting/enjoyable than those dunderheaded "tragedies" he dreams up.
  
  
• Mélo [Alain Resnais, 1986] # For the recherche; it was just as painful.
  
• Broken Embraces [Pedro Almodovar, 2009] What else? A fiction about fictions, an onion that wants you to cry so bad it chops itself, a film about a woman (or her trace) as not just fatal but fated. Almodovar's got style on tap and colors that pop and perhaps the sexiest, most beautiful lead actress in pictures—who is most game with her maestro mate—but the picture's almost rote. Nothing surprised me, though Pene always excites me, except the site of Chus Lampreve still kicking jokes like a champ. You know the tropes, and you know the wistful feelings—you even know Pene's body—by now, so the biggest pleasure to be had with the film is watching it construct itself and peel off its trappings.
  
• You Can Count On Me [Kenneth Lonergan, 2000] # I've been needing this. Up there with A Man Escaped and Kings and Queen for those "it's gonna be okay" moments.
  
  
• Beowulf [Robert Zemeckis, 2007] Zemeckis calls his motion capture company Image Movers, which is pretty perfect, since all he wants to do, it seems, is fly his images all over the map from wherever he sees fit. A truly bizarre, prurient, silly spectacle. Maybe I'm just tired, but beyond the obvious myth riffing (self-mythologizing, historicity, etc) I have zero idea why the man would make the film other than some kind of nerd macho impetus. That is, a nerd's idea of macho seems to motivate this balloon of a "cartoon" the way a bro's idea of cool seems to motivate Bay's movies. That and what I'm guessing some trumpet as cinematic freedom. Probably should have seen it in a theatre, with 3-D goggles. Phelps is a big fan, and you can read why over here.
  
• Kill Bill: Volumes 1 + 2 [Quentin Tarantino, 2003 + 2004] # A few bits and pieces, in HD on Spike, while on commercial breaks from a few basketball games. Boy did it look good (Uma, too), and boy does QT know how to light a scene. But, boy, this sure is a one-note kind of movie. Also, I continually ask myself: Who did what to wrong this dude? And when? How early on?

10 Personal Touchstones in American Cinema

by Ryland Walker Knight

[Originally posted at the curator corner, where you can read the full post.]

Pretty cute: Scoop and Scarlett

by Ryland Walker Knight

I avoided this last summer as I'd hated Match Point the winter before. I was also convinced, then, that Scarlett Johansson was nothing more than, well, a great looking girl who got lucky with Lost In Translation but movie-wise has only travelled downhill; looks are only ever the opposite: I mean, Jesus. Plus, I'll break the broken record again: Woody Allen's films haven't delighted in some time, even when they're funny. However, I thought Scoop, while mostly pointless and admittedly a silly trifle, was not half bad. Well, maybe half bad. But certainly not horrible. I laughed frequently and, on the whole, everybody is charming. Hugh Jackman continues to prove he's a perfect screen actor, even when the characters are beneath him, and Scarlett looks like she's having fun, even when she's trying too hard. And Woody himself is there, blabbering on and acting a fool so well, as he has in years/films past. The point here isn't that there's some twist or anything: the point is simply to entertain. Woody's character is a magician, which is a nice-and-tidy metaphor for film director, and it's through his stage that the recently deceased Ian McShane character comes back as a well-informed, goading spectre of his former journalist self. I like the idea that news can come back to the dead in a film and help us solve our daily mysteries, but it's the least interesting thing in the picture; that would be watching the pretty leads act pretty and look pretty and laugh pretty cute. And there's lots of jokes. What I didn't expect was how Woody's technique behind the camera is so slick and efficient and effortless. It's easy to forget how talented a director he was, and can be, given all the middling movies he's made (like this one). But, in the end, Scoop is ostensibly better than something like Curse of the Jade Scorpion (or Match Point for that matter) simply because it's consistently funny, and not cold. If there's something here it's that comedic warmth that's been missing for some time. I don't know if that means his next movie, a drama about two brothers (played by Collin Farrell and Ewan McGregor) drawn into crime for the money, will be any good, but it will probably be similarly efficient, which was the best thing Match Point had going for it, too, when I think about it. That, and, ahem, Scarlett's naked body. Yeah, I said it.