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 #60: Vitalism dialectics [11/15/10 - 11/21/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—On your way up to poetry

• The first half of the first season of Mad Men [2007]. When we all lived in Berkeley, we watched the pilot and I was beside myself with (obtuse and undue) disbelief at how on-the-nose all the anachronisms were, how the jokes felt forced. And I kept bad mouthing it, wrote it off. And I still hate its weird cultural cache. But because of a certain someone I decided to go for a second try. And it's not bad. But I still don't get why people, including so-and-so, think it's so great. Jon Hamm's something, sure, but it's not all that cinematic (slick art direction isn't image-making, really) nor is it written all that well. Yet I am entertained. I cannot front on that front. It's easy to gobble up on rainy days. I'll have more to say, maybe, when I finish the season. I'll have even more to say, I imagine, once I get a few talking points (or just plain pointers) from that goof who goosed me onto this path. For now? It makes perfect sense why Christina Hendricks got famous. (Hamm, too, duh.)
  
  
• 30 Rock "College" [wr: Josh Siegal & Dylan Morgan, 2010] I thought she was saying, "Lizzard." Was she saying, "Lizzard"?
  
  
• Sauve qui peut (la vie) [JLG, 1979] Love the aesthetic, as ever, and wish I could make a feature with this much freeze-frame "animation," but I just don't think it's all that interesting; nor do I think it's any great leap beyond, say, Vivre Sa Vie in terms of ideas. The real treat, as I can tell, is Nathalie Baye's fits and fights and her tank top at the breakfast table. Also, her first appearance on the bike is one of the more beautiful things I've ever seen in moving images precisely because he (JLG) arrests it so.
  
  
• Unstoppable [Tony Scott, 2010] Yet "purer" than Pelham, as Danny said, because of its focus; yet obviously more mobile as well. But at bottom this thing wins due to its actors and their charisma as much as the all-over always-moving cover-everything Scott style I adore. It's a good time, Chris Pine's got a good career ahead, and Denzel's getting fat. See it in a theatre while you can. But don't think too hard on it ya loons.

—We go where?

Viewing Log #59: Mine, all mine [11/8/10 - 11/14/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

• The Taking of Pelham 123 [Tony Scott, 2009] As prep for Unstoppable because I didn't make it to the theatre this weekend and I did want to watch this one first since they're both about trains. As Danny and Andrew and I laughed on 6th Avenue that one time, its final shot is so fucking cheesy cheese balls that it almost works. And the movie's goofy enough along its nowhere way to love like a pet, like a fishtank maybe.
  
• —A bullet for the entire week. The first four episodes of the fourth season of The Sopranos [Fall 2002]. The early star of this season is Janice and her insanity, which is good for a "holy shit" as often as a laugh, as when she's encouraged to talk to Ralph about breaking up with the compassion she's famous for—only to, instead, throw him down the stairs. That this event also involves the other stalwart of this season, Joe Pantoliano's Ralph, speaks to the writers' obvious excitement at throwing these two hairballs of crazy at each other, if only for a few hours of screen time. And it's a great analog to Ralph's relationship with Tony, as evidenced in Ralph's kink to be pegged and degraded in bed. Because this show, fearless as it is, goes there.
  
  
• Whip It [Drew Barrymore, 2009] Kinda clumsy and clichéd, but winning with its jokes and its tight script and its performances, this thing's a real rawr'r for all the girls out there. And for saps like me, I suppose, who aren't afraid of the word "feminist" as much as they might've been, say, a couple years ago. Also, because, duh, this kind of strength is sexy as much as simply charming.
  
• Van Gogh [Maurice Pialat, 1991] Almost feels like a Renoir with all the hanging out at parties and the theatrical staging of certain events, but it's certainly a Pialat in its offhanded, everyday dealings with sex and desire. That is, nothing's sensational or trumpeted. Or, if things are, it's the violence people do unto one another, not the acts of love, which are always understated and (here at least) often edited around. Nudity isn't racy, it's a fact, for Pialat. Just as are flings and the fluid (some might say fickle) changes a person can seem to undergo in the course of an afternoon, or 67 days, though it's obvious to the aware viewer than the person hasn't changed; it's how s/he's choosing to interact with others, with the surrounding world. Which is to say that once again here's a film about perception as registered in actions, without psychology, or without access to the minds inside the many clam-like characters.
  
  
• Vivre sa via [JLG, 1962] # Another ringing BluRay recommendation. Amazing what JLG's able to convey with simple title cards, how two words will color a face five minutes later; a face, as is often the case, turned from the action that the camera's turned from, doubling the negation and the horror. The film also wins, of course, because of Anna Karina—but you knew that already. The point is to watch this and pay attention to the shape of it, not of her, as JLG's films are often blocky, as reflected in the 4:3 frame, but this one takes it further to break up the blocks themselves; it's a film of segregation, really, in the most basic way—separations determine everything. It's bleak. But it looks so good! (Sometimes I think it's the best one of this, the much vaunted, early period, because it's such a "pure" document. All the "tricks" serve some concrete answer to the question. After all, A.Baz's Q is the only one we all answer differently, and never the same way twice.)
  
• The Red Shoes [Powell & Pressburger, 1948] # Consider this my endorsement for the BluRay Criterion put out of the new Film Foundation restoration. Everything's sharp, sure, but there's grain in there. And the colors feel real as much as caked-on and painted-loud surreal. Not to mention the fact that the movie is superb, of course, and speaks to a number of things on my ideas-worth-thinking-about check list. This time all I could focus on, whether due to a flu or to this presentation, was the well-renowned mise-en-scene of the film. A favorite moment is somebody saying something about Lermontov leaving on the 8:15 train to Paris, to which Vicky responds by looking up at the top left corner of the frame, which aptly dissolves to a clock on the platform, hands at 8:05, with her eyes directly on it. It's a simply thing, really, and obvious, but it's also an effective visual touch that's become rather rare in the making of movies these days. It's also the kind of thing people like to laugh at, or point at, in current cinemas like, say, a Wes Anderson picture, as some kind of arch touch when it's simply good visual storytelling. Sure, there's variances in tone between my two examples but I get the same thrill from, say, Kumar saying, "There he goes," followed by a shot of Owen Wilson hailing a cab, as I do this clock moment. Though, of course, in a world of "cut-away" humor (even good versions of it like on this week's 30 Rock) this pointing within a story can seem short-hand for clever instead of actually being clever. At any rate, this picture is not just clever, it's gorgeous. And worth sharing.
  
  
• 30 Rock "Brooklyn Without Limits" [S5E7, 2010] We all know, as somebody on This Recording said, that it's Tina Fey's rack, not her butt, that turns LL's nerd chic into some kind of sexy (and makes TF's classier IRL attire that much more attractive) with, among other things, all those deep-V's. We also know that this season is turning out great, with "veiled" jabs all over the place: at the show itself, its character construction say, and at this modern world, as some say, with a bunch of dumb gross out jokes I can't get enough of since they're neither dumb nor all that gross.
  
  
• Open Five [Kentucker Audley, 2010] More here.
  
  
• That Paul Millsap explosion in that Jazz-Heat game sure was something. It's almost like Carlos Boozer's an afterthought these daze. Also, the Heat-as-villains can't quite work when they play like chumps coasting on cred they haven't earned yet together.

Viewing Log #46: Collecting returns [5/17/10 - 6/13/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—What do I know?
Yesterday, a friend told me I ought to bring back the Viewing Log. As a result of this flattery, I do plan on it. But, as you can see, this is the second log in a row where I won't run down what, exactly, I watched. This time, however, it's both because I haven't been watching much and also because I haven't been keeping track. Been trying, with varying degrees of success, to simply enjoy watching things. Not everything's something to take note of; or, not everything's something.

To get naked on this dance floor: the whole blogging experience has turned into something I don't necessarily relish. Not because I make more money at my "real job" nor because I'm too tired to keep it up as a result of such work but just because I feel a door shut a while ago and now it's (the 'sphere is) a closed room full of loud voices talking about the most boring topics imaginable with not enough levity and not enough intelligence. Put otherwise, I stopped reading a lot of/on the 'net. For the most part. I still spend too much time "surfing," but I've begun to rediscover real paper-bound books in a serious way. For example, I've bought more books than movies (or movie stubs) this year and I've probably read about 85% of them. There is a backlog, despite my tendency to read five things at once, and I plan on bumping that number up—though it might go down if I stumble upon the right thrift store book section. This is not a novel idea: it plain feels better to not sit with this black box on my chest or my lap or the table and instead hold a book and a beer in the afternoon. My eyes love me more, my brain feels better, I get less angry at useless targets. You may have noticed that I still use twitter*, still tweet (and I've even started to use tumblr, to tumble), but I stopped following more than half the people I followed on twitter because, rather simply, it made sense for my life.**

Another part of the shift has been to writing things besides film criticism because, when it gets down to it, I am sick of all that. Not that I've outgrown it, but I don't get much from it either in terms of entertainment or in terms of edification, though posts like this one by Mubarak today are pretty great—but great because they're rare. I still plan on writing about movies from time to time (especially if somebody wants to pay me to do that), but I don't know anymore what, exactly, this purpose serves. Take, for example, that recent bit on Varda that I wrote. It was fine. I appreciate that people appreciated it (and by extension me). But I didn't get too-great a thrill writing it (in fact, it caused me more stress than pleasure, as can happen all too often), and I don't know if it helps people understand her any better; I just hope it was fun to read. That's all I really want to offer, when it comes down to it: some fun times with words. I don't really know anything. Or, I don't know anything you can't know. I just know how to string some words together in unusual ways. Generally speaking, I'm not in this mix to prove anything. In fact, I like being mostly ignorant of a lot of stuff. It's something like a maxim that these blind spots simply mean I've got more goodies ahead. And that's the only kind of life I want to lead: ready for what's next, and excited. Even if I settle into a family routine some day down the line I hope to meet every day ready for something new. It should be obvious one of the books I've bought in 2010 is Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. And that I dig it.

But enough about me me me. What about some movies. I still love the movies. We still love the movies! Don't we? For example, I'm stoked to see the above-cited Bluebeard at ybca this coming weekend (more here), and the second-to-newest Oliveira with that great title, Eccentricities of a blonde hair girl, the following weekend. And, as Brian has blogged (scroll to the bottom for a schedule, but read the whole thing, duh; I did), there's a bunch of Mizoguchi up at Viz Cinema that I'll try to take in one way or another. That's just to round out June. In July there's the Silent Fest (more coming) and a new PFA calendar and a bunch of those movies I loved at SFIFF coming to a SF theatre near you. I'm getting exciting just typing this. Expect more, but not too much more, soon.

* Danny urges me to quit twitter altogether, but, as I tumbled (shudder), I like the challenge of the medium. I may not make everybody laugh the way, say, Conan can, but I do enjoy that it's mostly a place for me to try out text-based jokes. I should add that this, too, is not a novel idea.

** Worth noting: I quit facebook and that's cleared a lot of mental space, lifted a lot off my brain. And, really, do you want most of your social interactions (over-) determined by some website? It doesn't feed you; it's not even a beautiful representation of your life; just an informational one; it's simply a device; a device for pain as much as pleasure (what doesn't straddle that, I hear you saying) and a device for more false flattery and more false avenues to debase legitimate communication. Again, not a novel idea.