DREYER at BAM. Links + Words.

by Ryland Walker Knight

Last year, my spring-time cinematheque education plunged me into Pedro Costa. This time, it's Carl Theodor Dreyer. This seems apt. Costa's work brings us past cinema, per se, into a digital world of filmmaking that, though not as radically (to say as abrasively) avant as somebody like Lynch (who I focused on two springs ago), forces one to rethink what images can do in these new forms available. What's intriguing to me about Carl Th. Dreyer's career, beyond the obvious stature his name has grown to, is how it bridges the sound divide, which will be another interesting way to think against Lynch and Costa, who both do so much with such simple sound effects (and affects). These are all things I'm going to pay attention to as tonight's screening of La passion de Jeanne d'arc (Friday, March 13th, 2009) starts the month-long DREYER at BAM series that spans the Danish filmmaker's career from his silent start to his full-arsenal endpoint. I plan on seeing as many as possible (which means all but two) and writing up each for The Auteurs Notebook. David Phelps got things started as only he could and if you click this link, you'll see all the posts under the "Dreyer" category over there, where my little missives will begin to appear (next week? tomorrow?). Additionally: I'll post a list of links to these pieces here so don't forget to check this space as we, ahem, march through the month. If I find other online readings, I'll go ahead and throw them into the mix here, too.

• First worthy posts outside our little circle about this specific retro: Jonathan Rosenbaum and Michael Joshua Rowin.
  
• Back in September I saw Jeanne for the first time. Words + Images.
  
• Dreyer Diary #1: Joan
  
• Part of the reason this series is such a thing for me at this juncture is precisely because I get to see these films projected on an impressive screen. But for those without this opportunity, due either to funding or to location, you can find a number of the films on DVD. Or, if you're really desperate (or just plain curious), there are youtubers like this dude who have uploaded the whole of Day of Wrath in pieces and made a playlist for our internet viewing convenience.
  
• Dreyer Diary #2: Wrath
  
• I skipped Monday and Tuesday's films, The President and Michael, because of friendly (and not so friendly) adventures out in the world. This doesn't seem too large a loss since, at the least, I did see Michael last summer at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (more here at home). Chances are I would have appreciated it more at this point in my education but I still remember its apt sadness, its "plangent blocks of hurt," as I wrote then. Also, it's all about seeing, which is dope. In any case, I'll be seeing Ordet later this evening with a diary entry to follow as early as Friday afternoon if I come home ready to pump out some words.
  
• Dreyer Diary #3: Ordet
  
• Since relaunching their new website, The Criterion Collection has posted close to all of the essays included in their lovely releases in blog form. This, of course, means that a number of the essays included in the Dreyer Box Set are all available for our reading pleasure; ditto Joan and Vampyr. Thus: Dreyer himself on Joan; Jonathan Rosenbaum on Day of Wrath; Chris Fujiwara on Ordet; Philip Lopate on Gertrud; Kim Newman and Mark Le Fanu on Vampyr. There's also something of an overview piece by Armond White titled, simply, "Carl Th. Dreyer." I will writing more about these essays (and this set) as entry points for those unable to attend this (or any other cinematheque) retrospective/s for another outlet. Link coming soon!
  
• Dreyer Diary #4: Glomdale
  
• "Chain of Dreams: Carl Th. Dreyer," by Tag Gallagher at Senses of Cinema
  
• André Bazin on The Passion of Joan of Arc
  
• Dreyer Diary #5: Master of the House
  
• My buddy Darren Hughes, of Long Pauses, is a big Dreyer fan. I sat behind him last summer when I saw Michael and our conversation afterwards helped me to get with the picture a little better. In the past he wrote posts on Day of Wrath and Ordet that I recommend reading.
  
• Dreyer Diary #6: Gertrud
  
• My friend Kevin B Lee worked with Jonathan Rosenbaum on a video essay comparing Gertrud to John Ford's The Sun Shines Bright (which I have not seen). It's in two parts. Part One focuses more on the Ford picture while Part Two focuses more on the Dreyer; however, there is overlap. And, yes, it pays dividends to watch them together, and in order, to let the argument JR makes in his commentary build. More of which can be read here.
  
• Dreyer Diary #7: Love One Another + Vampyr
  
• Dan Callahan at The House Next Door on this current retrospective and its opportunity to see the earlier, silent stuff.
  
• Andy Rector posts "FEROCIOUS" by Jean-Marie Straub at his joint. It's all about our man at hand and his distaste for the bourgeois world, as translated by Rosenbaum.
  
• I wrote a little something for SpoutBlog about this series which you can read by clicking here.
  
• Fellow VINYL head Steve Boone on Day of Wrath: Church of Cinema.
  

[Pic 1: Day of Wrath / Pic 2: Gertrud / Pic 3: The man, tongue out]

Tumble weeds.

by Ryland Walker Knight

Click Jacques Tati and his dogs or click this link here and see us tumble forward. It should be said that I stole this picture from the always popping, always great tumblr called Archive Arcade.

Fall into your feet. Mister Lonely.

by Ryland Walker Knight

An accident proves faith, as ever, when a nun falls free from a plane. However, her mad and rushing drop is called flying upon her unscathed return to earth. Roughly a third of Mister Lonely is a contrapuntal narrative about nuns in South America, a number of whom fly-fall back to earth as a test of (or, more apt, a testament to) their God. Their end is no surprise—nor is it a surprise that it ends the film—but its wash and lull fits the pull of the world that this odd, beautiful film so desperately tries to find purchase with and portray, expose, rend, render. Flight, for humans, we must remember, is terminal. We find our feet one way or another. Korine seems to say something beyond "Know your role" here. He seems to say, "Find it," first and then, "Keep playing," so long as (1) you can and (2) you find comfort in it. His ideal theatre is one shorn of masks. The arena he advocates has us happy with our capacities, without sacrificing the dream (to say moral plight) of perfectionism. All trajectories point down, down, down, just as Werner says in the plane: down to earth, into your world, into this life. The tragedy, such as it is, comes when we find we cannot find any productive joy as we tumble around town, or bounding outside.

—pull it up, out
—push back the wind
—see waves scorch us










—grateful for the quartet falling, flooded
with light and sought in a wink
—direct your own spotlights

Convergence for your weekend (3/21/09)

by Ryland Walker Knight

Masks keep shrinking.

by Ryland Walker Knight

I got some advice from my friend Justin: he said, in much more elaborate terms, to go ahead and join twitter. He made such a good (persistent) argument that I followed suit. You can "follow" me, if you like, by clicking right here. I'm wary as all get out, of course, but branding is what it is: a tool. Just like this "Something like a CV" post I threw up semi-covertly. Oh, and, I'm still waiting for my page to look like I want it to look. So, you know, be patient with me. Jacque and his mask will soon enough be something of a patron mascot. Finally, I've added the widget over on the sidebar for those skeptical, smart few who just don't want to play this new 2.0 game. [fN!]

Convergence for your weekend (3/14/09)

by Ryland Walker Knight

Taste the cloud: 35 Rhums Rendez-vous #3

by Ryland Walker Knight

Tried to tackle a lot with this new piece on Denis' new film. You can read it here. It may be a little abstract, but, then again, when you're talking Denis, that seems unavoidable. One of the ideas I did not explore quite fully therein is one that came to me riding a train: riding a train often feels like floating, or hovering, as trains are not ever quite connected to their tracks—or they are, but briefly, forever connecting to a new space. And, sure enough, from the first shot in 35 Rhums, Denis has us hovering on a train. What struck me further about the hovering metaphor to describe her "cloud style" (as I name it in the linked-to piece) is how this suggests the feeling of the diffuse nature that typifies her ability to surround an event, to envelop a feeling, without much concretion and yet less explication. Somehow, here, she turns this into an invitation to think about tactics over against the denial of L'intrus and its globular and, agreed, baffling-yet-beautiful arrangement.

Though most shows are sold out, do click here to buy your tickets to see the film. If you see me there, feel free to say, "Hi." I guarantee I'll be in a good mood.

Found Facts. Time stands still. UPDATED.

by Ryland Walker Knight

There's so much movement in these stills. We see fire spark and hands clap, we see the world a blur: we see the blemish of time in digital grain. I'm trying to edit together the footage from that show last October in a way that will animate the stills into life, and blend with the live motion captured by my digi-kino-eye. I'm trying to make something these guys on stage would like, and not get all Lars Ulrich about; that is, something beautiful. Something like this genuinely "perfect" album. And, again, here's the earlier installments I'm hoping to add more to in the coming weeks. (Also, I plan to mirror/port the files in higher quality to my new vimeo account.)

UPDATE: This video, seen at supervillian, makes my little in-progress work seem so much more, um, gritty. And, how do you say, non-representational? Which is to say: it's cool to see Mezzanine (and snippets of Frisco) all bright like neon love in HD.

One for you and one for me: Everlasting Moments. UPDATED.

by Ryland Walker Knight

Some of you may remember our friend Martha's glowing essay about Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments from a little while back. Well, I've seen the film now, too, and I threw together a little review for Spout Blog. Knowing how much the film means to my friend makes it resound that much more with me but I do think, independent of that association, that it is a refined film: gentle, curious and quite lovely. I'm told Troell was something of a to-do in the 1970s, when his film, The Emigrants, was nominated for Best Picture despite its foreign tongue (cough, subtitles). Given all the "he's back!" profiles (such as this one in the Times) leading up to this new film's release, perhaps we can expect it to rightfully garner an audience and earn some money away from the latest so-called "film adaptation" of a comic book that happens to open today as well. Because, for all its easily dismissable "prestige" qualities (and one goofy icicle gleam), Troell's work is so careful and so loving that his film develops into the exact opposite: something filled with wonder, brimming past hurt and swinging into life with open eyes.

UPDATE: Martha's new piece on this film can be found at The Auteurs' Notebook.

Metro Classics Speak. An internet interview.

by Ryland Walker Knight

[From tonight's film, The Maltese Falcon]
As we wrote earlier, the impetus for Metro Classics began during my last stop-over in Seattle some fall seasons ago. It was a fun dream to cultivate. It's been yet more fun to see it materialize from afar since that time. And with each calendar my friends Sean and Mike put together, I routinely forget to make mention of it here on VINYL. Not so this time! I'm very proud of their pet project as I feel I have some kind of ancestral stake in its future and so I thought: Heck, why not ask these guys about it so far and, you know, blog about it? If we can throw some eyes their way, and perhaps some patrons, we would love to wield such a power. Also, this random-fire set of questions was a veiled excuse to correspond beyond the every-so-often note like, say, "I've been fighting through that Bolano book, too! It's great!" So, here's some Q'n'A with the twin brains behind the always-fun Metro Classics series...

[From the final film of the calendar, Pennies From Heaven, to screen April 29th @ 6:50 and 9:15 PM]
What's the first repertory film you saw in a theatre? When and where?

Sean Gilman: When I was a kid (mid 1980s), the independent art theatre in Spokane (there was only one) had a summer series of kids movies. The one I remember seeing was Yellow Submarine, but there were others, too. After that, there was nothing until one of the dollar theatres in Spokane played Casablanca in 1996 or so. In the spring of '98, while visiting Boston I saw Seven Samurai and Mr. Arkadin at the Brattle in Cambridge. That summer, I moved to Seattle and one of the first things I did was see three Kurosawa movies at the Varsity (Rashomon, Throne of Blood and The Hidden Fortress). I filled out my Landmark Theatres job application during the intermission of the Throne/Fortress double feature.

Mike Strenski: It was either The Wizard of Oz or Harvey, both of which I saw at the beautiful Stanford Theater in Palo Alto at a very young age. I remember them coloring the sidewalk out front in yellow chalk for Oz and sitting high up in the balcony. It was the first time I noticed a reel change because I could see the path of the light coming from the booth.

There's talk of the movies turning into a more specialist art with patrons, as with opera or with plays, as the home market continues to develop and improve. How do you see the movie theatre evolving into the next decade? Do you think thoughtful retrospective calendars may play a role in the continued success and interest in a movie theatre experience?

Sean: I don't really see any parallel with opera at all. Cinema is a mass entertainment. It's the cheapest, most convenient thing for people to do between dinner and sex on Friday night. HDTV doesn't change that.

What digital cinema (both projectors and high-quality digital versions of films) offers is the opportunity to show repertory films with very little overhead. Rep cinema died in the 90s as the cost of renting and shipping prints skyrocketed. With digital, you're not shipping anything, and the distributor doesn't have to worry about print damage.

Mike: Repertory totally has a place in the future of cinema, the current programming/cinema model just needs to change. With digital presentation the cost of exhibiting these movies is negligible and more theatres should look to turning one or two of their 20 to 30 screens into permanent rep houses. Show The Searchers for a week-long run in a hundred seat house. It will bring out a diverse (and more importantly) loyal crowd than using that 27th screen for another copy of Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

What films bring the biggest crowds at Metro Classics? Can you even answer that (legally speaking)?

Sean: I wish we knew. Our best weeks were Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz (which you'd expect) and The Red Shoes (which is a little surprising). Aside from the top two outliers, we tend to do best with films that are popular, but not too popular (think Blue Velvet or Purple Rain as opposed to The Manchurian Candidate or Notorious).

Mike: The tried and true "classics", hands down. Casablanca raked in the cash, as did The Red Shoes and Oz. At the onset of programming these calendars, I assumed people would be burnt out on these titles because they're so ubiquitous but their popularity refuses to wane.

Is there a target audience in Seattle you aim for? Who do want to see come out?

Sean: People who like movies. We try to keep the series diverse, with movies that appeal to all different kinds of people. The one thing that holds it together is they're all movies we think movie lovers would like.

Mike: Another assumption I was completely wrong on was the demographic of our audience. I thought we would be catering to the college crowd nearby, with a room full of film majors but our clientele is predominately older couples who live in the surrounding neighborhoods. I think if there is any target audience that Sean and I are aiming for it's ourselves. We're far too out of touch to know what people want to see, which is proven week in and week out at our shows.

How long does each calendar take to assemble? Do you have to narrow your dream list a lot? Or is it more pragmatic?

Sean: We kick around ideas for awhile at random times (we've been thinking about something to do with locations for the last year or so), but once we settle on the idea, we generally get the lineup set in a single evening. We've not yet been able to book every film we initially planned on. Such are the vagaries of print availability and tangled rights issues.

Mike: Sean and I usually toss around theme ideas during the final weeks of the current series until we stumble on something we are both excited about. Then we spend another couple of weeks refining it and creating ever more intricate subsets that strait jacket our film options. I like working in boxes within boxes within boxes which makes the programming ever more difficult. How many Shakespearean adaptations fit into the adventure/sci-fi/musical category? We then sit around biting our nails for a good fortnight while the booking department secures the films or tells us to go back to the drawing board. All in all, I spend my whole life planning this malarkey.

Where did the idea for Adaptations come from?

Sean: I honestly don't remember. We'd done decades, directors, genres, countries and families, source material seemed like a natural next step.

Mike: I don't remember. Sean I think. I know I came up with the Page/Stage/Image line. I'll totally take credit for that. And Pennies from Heaven.

Sean: I'm pretty sure I came up with "Page, Stage, Image". . . . If not, I approved right away.

Mike: Dream on, I came up with that shit. I remember you were in the manager's chair and I was sitting on the other side of the table. You came up with pretty much everything else this go around.

What's your dream double bill? Have you programmed anything approaching that?

Sean: I don't know about a dream double bill, how about The Gang's All Here and Chungking Express? I liked our Nosferatus double feature, with the Murnau and Herzog versions. But really we haven't had a chance to do as many as we'd like.

Mike: My dream double bill would probably be something like City Lights and WALL*E. Good luck on that one. The Nosferatu double feature was pretty slamming. We've only done a couple double bills because we have to find a public domain film that fits the bill to keep costs down.

What's been your favorite program?

Sean: The genres series last Spring was our most successful, and was also a lot of fun (it was three Gershwin musicals (Shall We Dance, An American In Paris, Funny Face) three Westerns with scores by folk rock legends (Pat Garret & Billy The Kid, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Dead Man) and three movies about musicians with colors in the title (The Red Shoes, The Blues Brothers, Purple Rain).

Mike: Going back to my themes within themes idea, I am most proud of our nine week music series with three films each in the following categories: Gershwin Musicals; Westerns with Scores by Folk Rock Musicians; and Movies about Musicians with Colors in the Title. We got to play Purple Rain!

Your favorite particular night on a program?

Sean: It's always fun when a bunch of people show up to a movie you love and have a great time with it. The Red Shoes was great because I was surprised at just how many people showed up. But other nights, with fewer people, can be just as fun, if the crowd is really enjoying the movie.

Mike: There have been a few. Duck Soup on the 4th of July was fun, The New World the day before Thanksgiving. Did I mention Purple Rain?

I haven't been able to attend any of these evenings of course but my other Seattle friends tell me you two have trivia to go along with the shows. What is a sample question? Do people get the answers correct ever? What do they win?

Sean: I try to make the questions pretty hard to start with, but I've a number of them that get progressively easier as people fail to guess them. I think we only ran out of questions once, we managed to make something up though. The most complicated was something along the lines of: what 5 (pre-Departed) films was Martin Scorsese nominated for the Best Director Oscar, who and for what films did he lose each of those years?

Mike: Oh god, Sean comes up with the most convoluted questions in the world. They're like seven parts and involve naming the gaffer on the third film of the director's that was released only in Poland for one week. . . I am getting accustomed to standing in front of a dead silent auditorium.

Where would you like to see Metro Classics go to next?

Sean: I'd like us to have a regular, year round, 7 days a week program. But that's probably not realistic for the near future.

Mike: It would be awesome if it was a permanent institution playing every night in a small auditorium for three weirdos, one of which is me.

I often think that rep calendars prove that film history (like all history) is not a to b linear—that we organize our thought in wildly tangential ways, often around themes. As anybody who watches a lot of movies is a student of movies, what can you say you learn from watching these movies like this in this order?

Sean: I don't think we have any kind of educational intention in mind, other than "these are great movies and we think you should watch them". You can learn things with the contrasts sometimes, for example, we specifically opposed three Herzog movies to three Malick movies, because they seem so opposite in their view of the natural world. But generally, the themes have been organizational and not pedagogic.

Mike: Perspective is everything. Hearing "Das Rheingold" crop up in Herzog's Nosferatu and then again three weeks later in The New World. New angles, man.

What do you think your job is as the programmers?

Sean: I just like giving people the chance to see movies I love. My job is to program it in such a way that we'll draw enough people to let us keep going.

Mike: To waste the company's money.

[click to enlarge]

Gangster violence and some language. Sold.

by Ryland Walker Knight

[This man is in jail.]
Wherein the fan side of things gets tickled into action. Thank you, Michael Mann. (And the ad people at Universal.) Why? The teaser trailer for his summer tentpole, Public Enemies, is now available for viewing. After last night's waste, I'm happy to be excited about Ho'wood product because I can trust that, unlike that bloated advertisement masquerading as a "movie," this feature will only get better the longer it lingers on screen. Also, it will be gorgeous without a ton of digital paint. It will weigh something, too, I imagine, despite its speed. [fN!]

Rappin "advocacy" with Gavin Smith around Film Comment Selects 09

by Ryland Walker Knight

Last week Daniel Kasman asked Andrew Grant and me if we would like to interview Gavin Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Film Comment, with him. We agreed. Now you can read the interview right here. I didn't ask many questions but, I must say, it was an illuminating meeting. Lots on insight provided on the thought process behind the annual Selects series of films programmed at Lincoln Center as well as the organization of Film Comment magazine. I especially hope you brave the length of the piece so you get to my question about the role of advocacy in criticism, but we do understand that this thing is long.

Seattle Specific: Metro Classics Adapts.

by Michael Strenski and Ryland Walker Knight

[click to enlarge]
Our friend Sean already announced the line-up at his blog but we thought we might as well put up a notice here as well. The idea for this series began to gestate during Ry's last whirl through Seattle when we three worked together there at Landmark's Metro Cinemas but it was really the adventurousness and curiosity (the tenacity!) of those two guys who stayed that got it going after RWK left. So, here's the lead copy on the flier:

This spring, Metro Classics returns. Each quarter we pick a theme and bring you a variety of movies on that theme. This season: Adaptations, nine weeks of films based on other media — with the added twist that we’re grouping the adaptations not only by their original source material (three weeks each of books, plays and moving pictures) but also by three different genres (three weeks each of adventure, science fiction and musicals.) Does that make sense? We didn’t think so. Think of this flyer as a BINGO card.

And here's a run-down of the films on the schedule. Come on, Seattle! Go see some good stuff! Go have some fun! Prove that silly article correct!

PAGE

• Mar. 04 - The Maltese Falcon (USA, 1941) @ 7:00 and 9:15 PM
  
• Mar. 11 - Barbarella (France/Italy, 1968) @ 7:00 and 9:15 PM
  
• Mar. 18 - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (USA, 1953) @ 7:00 and 9:00 PM

STAGE

• Mar. 25 - My Own Private Idaho (USA, 1991) @ 6:50 and 9:15 PM
  
• Apr. 01 - Forbidden Planet (USA, 1956) @ 7:00 and 9:15 PM
  
• Apr. 08 - Kiss Me Kate (USA, 1953) @ 6:50 and 9:15 pm

IMAGE

• Apr. 15 - A Fistful Of Dollars (Italy, 1964) @ 7:00 and 9:15 PM
  
• Apr. 22 - The Fly (USA, 1986) @ 7:00 and 9:15 PM
  
• Apr. 29 - Pennies From Heaven (USA, 1981) @ 6:50 and 9:15 PM