Viewing Log #85: When you are the cancer

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]

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]

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.

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

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.

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

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]

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]

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.

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

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

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.

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

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]

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.

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

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]

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

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

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]

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]

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.

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

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

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]

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.

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

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.