Viewing Log #45: Climb out, come on [5/10/10 - 5/16/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

Didn't keep a log this week, to be perfectly honest, though I did watch a number of things of varying stripes. Didn't finish all of them, watched only pieces of some, and all because I was plumb worn out from some viral crazy weight that fell onto my head and heart sometime last weekend but didn't really register until early Monday when I could barely move a muscle. Which is a long sentence to say I was sick all week. But you may have gathered that if you follow my twitter or read that diary-like tumblr I reactivated a short time ago. To give a quick gloss, I watched a bunch of comedies to try to cheer me up and I kept at the Agnes Varda despite the haze (more on her to come). I even looked at the Martel movies again, Michael, in an abortive attempt to jog my brain that only lead me to fall asleep. That was a big problem with finishing movies this week: falling asleep. When the body needs rest, you must oblige it. The body is smart, complex, obnoxious in its stubborn patterns and wills and manifestations of improper treatment. And the brain cannot function without it! Go figure! So here's some images from the week that caught my eye enough for me to hit "pause" and "snapshot" in succession. This, of course, limits me to things viewed on my laptop and eschews a lot of the hilarious television I watched. In any case, here's to a better seven days to start tomorrow.
i.


—Like gravity

ii.


—Point at it

iii.

—Sometimes you gotta

iv.

—Sometimes you oughta

v.


—Not like this

Viewing Log #42: What's broken's broken but glue's going around [4/19/10 - 4/25/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

• Treme "Right Place, Wrong Time" [S1E3, Ernest Dickerson, 2010] A marked, knowing improvement that casts a shadow on a lot of bad behavior and surprises with some real evil behavior and a genuine apology. Also, a beautiful final shot capping a beautiful final scene. Still don't like the scraggly keyboardist dude.
  
  
• Marwencol [Jeff Malmberg, 2010] Watched it in pieces over the week. It plays next week at the festival. I recommend it. I'll try to write something a little longer in a bit. Here's the film's website.
  
  
• Party Down "Steve Guttenberg's Birthday" [S2E5, Bryan Gordon, 2010] Not sure why Starz is showing this one now on demand, but of course I'll watch it. Guttenberg's great, really commits, and Ryan Hansen is perfect as that bleached idiot. And this one had not just a McLovin cameo but also Lizzy Caplan in a hot tub and jokes about people in AA having "real" drinking problems that Ron doesn't have; funniest is that you kind of believe him, that AA's just a put-on for him.
  
• Party Down "Jackal Onassis Backstage Party" [S2E1, Bryan Gordon, 2010] Everything I loved about the first season, minus Jane Lynch. Except Megan Mullally is an apt substitute in a different (ok: shorter, stupider) way. Still love Lizzy Caplan's insecurity and her smile (like a lot of boys, I trust), and Adam Scott is pretty underrated for his tight-wad act. I'm sure it'll unravel, though, as tensions and jokes mount.
  
  
• 36 vues du Pic St. Loup [Jacques Rivette, 2009] # Big surprise, I know: on film it's even better. The colors mean a ton, as does the graceful slide of most camera set ups. Even the static ones aren't static—they likely push somewhere, or open another space through simple framing or an edit. My favorite edit is the one along that wall when Birkin's getting ready to leave; she walks across the pipe dividing her and Sergio Castellitto and then past him off camera; he turns, smirks, and follows; there's an edit to five more, different feet of wall adjacent; a new tact of conversation begins, however hesitant, until Sergio disagrees and exits in the opposite direction (the way he came in). My favorite camera move is the one from outside the tent, watching Sergio walk over wires to stay in the frame as he approaches André Marcon in the foreground, then their little dance plays out in medium, then Sergio moves into the tent with the camera to find Birkin alone on a riser surrounded by blue. That's the other joy of this little, dense film: Sergio Castellitto dances through it, enters every scene as an interloper from the background and then stirs things up or plays a bit in a messy way. It reaches its apogee when he takes the stage. I should try to write some more about why I love this thing, but all the regulars are there: acting, physical comedy, some wordplay (in secondary languages), a cohesive mise-en-scene that makes jokes out of every scene's structure, sadness mixed with hilarity, and brevity. Also, just my luck that got to see it with Danny. Then I made this from materials at home.
  
  
• Lost "The Last Recruit" [S6E13, Stephen Semel, 2010] Certainly entertaining, but still table setting. We watched it with a lot of noise, so that might also explain why I only did some images in this post.
  
• The Holy Girl [Lucrecia Martel, 2002] # Looking at a certain scene for a certain piece of writing that should have been done ages ago.
  
  
• Treme "Meet De Boys on the Battlefront" [S1E2, Jim McKay, 2010] The first half had me not just let down but actively pissed off at its narrow ideas; but the murder and a few other things in the second half made me think twice about writing it off. Clarke Peters sure is something.

Viewing Log #39: Factors in the masquerade [3/22/10 - 3/28/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Triangle waves.

• La Cienega [Lucrecia Martel, 2001] Way jumpier than either of the features that follow, though there are hints at the oblique framings and unique off-screen spaces that follow. (The final five minutes are quite a calm harbinger.) Always interesting, too, to see how smart ladies figure desire in their films. Here, there's all kinds of confusions like incestuous temptations and teenage infatuation (along an LGBT line) that fudge relationships typical to a swamp: it's a muddy pool.
  
  
• Oddsac [Danny Perez, 2010] I'm starting to believe that some of my will to dancing and late night envelope opening is a form of psychedelia. That is, though my only fun with hallucinogens (so far?) was a mild mushroom munch in the Grand Canyon, the kind of shared experience of mass dancing (and movies, hell) is a plight to find some transcendence amidst muck. Oddsac is full of muck, and easily "darker" than the most recent Animal Collective music, but it does end with a lyric-chant of "I'm happy" over and after a food fight all flashbulbed and flour-covered. And there is some structure to all this silly play. However, it's hard to shake the idea that these are just some dudes having a goof (a blast) and calling it art. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but sometimes the mood feels thin. Thin or fat, though, all that "avant-garde" imagery—optical printing and computer-generated phosphenes—is truly affective. Everything in the video operates on affect. There's no real pathetic appeal. And I dig that. But, given its picture of some emotional underbelly, it's not exactly a vibe I want to sit with, whiskey or weed or whatever else's around, for 52 minutes in the dark. I'd much rather have it on at home while I imbibed and inhaled and ingested to my heart/stomach's content. Still fun to see big, and from the front row, sipping and smiling.
  
  
• Holy Girl [Lucrecia Martel, 2004] # How do you get a diagonal to feel so weighted and weightless? Sacred and profane, indeed.
  
  
• Lost "Ab Aeterno" [S6E9, Tucker Gates, 2010] A really fun episode full of mythology we could have predicted, or that I did. Just didn't add up to much. Slightly more back here.
  
  
• Robocop [Paul Verhoeven, 1987] # Smart and funny and brutal, like all great satire. It's even rousing, but I guess that shouldn't be a surprise since it's a "classic" now and still watched for its violent thrills more than its comedy. Or so it seems? I can't speak for anybody but me, duh, and it's just my sense that Verhoeven's Hollywood films live on, when they do, simply because, nevermind the smarts it takes, he likes pumping movies full of pulp and gore and sex.

—Across the water, the sky

Viewing Log #38: Kangaroo cowbell [3/15/10 - 3/21/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Yes, that.

• Burn After Reading [Coens, 2008] # So funny, so angry. So undervalued. So perfect for a Sunday night
  
  
• The Holy Girl [Lucrecia Martel, 2004] # Trying to find something. Think I found it. More later, elsewhere.
  
  
• Lost, "Recon" [S6E8, Jack Bender, 2010] Pretty fun episode with a few expected turns of plot. More here.
  
  
• Heaven Can Wait [Ernst Lubitsch, 1943] # I wish Pedro Costa was all the way correct, but idiot me has a rather obvious hurdle with this movie making everything right. However, without that distraction, or trying to ignore it, of course this movie feels amazing. Lubitsch, of course, truly got it, and without cynicism. Comedy doesn't need to spring from disgust; comedy can spring from anywhere, including love.
  
• The Ghost Writer [Roman Polanski, 2010] A cynic's film, no doubt, all held together by the clamped Polanski camera. Was great to see something so accomplished, so tight, so much fun.

—You don't fall, or fade; it does

Viewing Log #35: Baby birch bleat bang [2/22/10 - 2/28/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Culture clash

• The Holy Girl [Lucrecia Martel, 2004] Just as soon as I wrap up another Word Doc, I'm gonna give this a go, finally, for words to be read elsewhere and later. A real "thinker," as they say.
  
• Shutter Island [Martin Scorsese, 2010] # Yeah, I went again. More shortly. But, quickly, I'll say that the music is the best part and that I was surprised at, again, how everything feels.
  
  
• Landscape Suicide [James Benning, 1986] Okay, I get it now, Matt. Great, just great. Was more partial to the first part set in Orinda, but not only because I used to live there and manage that movie theatre; also because her interview, with all its stammering and indecision, not to mention her note of confession and all its pain, made sense and made her isolation in herself feel real. Put otherwise, it turns the formal into a pathetic appeal. Gein, on the other hand, became more othered, less human. I'd love to see it again, or read a smart text about it, to address my curiosity with its gender divide. At first blush, my neophyte eyes say it's maybe the film of the 1980s. Maybe not my favorite, but easily one of The Great Things.
  
• American Dreams [James Benning, 1984] Kinda like a great video podcast (only so emulsified that's a silly comparison) with three different threads twined and abutting/overlapping. I spent most of my time reading the Bremer letters and listening to "the radio" while largely ignoring the particulars of the Hank Aaron cards and jigsaws. For that reason, it took me a while to realize that the numbers that kept fading up and down were his home run totals tallying up. Overall a pretty damned tight picture, one worth a look at least twice. And there is a curio corkscrewed into it: Benning himself. From Milwaukee, he must have been a fan of Aaron, and may have collected more than a few of those cards, if not all of them. And what does his inclusion in these dreams mean? I'm not one for investigating behind the screen all that much, but it seems impossible not to here, despite the abundance of material culled from general Americana. Because, if Benning's singing this song (these songs), what's his dream? Only to critique? Or just to witness? How's it not his diary, too?
  
  
• Shutter Island [Martin Scorsese, 2010] Plenty surprised by this one, but not by the so-called twist, and not because I "saw it coming" or whatever but because everything fits from the get-go. Plenty more to say, even after all the internet mess. Will try my hand at it for another outlet shortly. Mostly I dig stories about storytelling, and architecture, so this was a treat on that level. And it kicked me in some sore spots in unexpected ways.
  
  
• The Wire: "The Target" [S1E1, Clark Johnson, 2002] Somehow forgot all about this episode. Not a single scene seemed familiar. The pacing's all wonky, nobody's in a rhythm and it's only the dialog that's interesting. Or so it appeared to me. I was tired and full of risotto. Still, there are some good things, of course, and some jokes, but it's so damned self-serious it's kind of obnoxious. Maybe I'll go through Season One again while it's on demand. I do want to see the "Fuck" scene again in the context of its episode.
  
  
• Lost: "Lighthouse" [S6E5, Jack Bender, 2010] Kind of like a big 45 minutes of "duh" (but what do I know?).
  
• Winter [Nathaniel Dorsky, 2008] tweet: all in the rain beads on that hood / truly SF / floating quince blossoms in plastic, & so many circles / the wettest, most palpable
  
• Aubade [Nathaniel Dorsky, 2010] tweet: bright, static / color lines dont twirl / purple rises, stands, almost billows, sways / closes with a door closing
  
• Compline [Nathaniel Dorsky, 2009] tweet: aerial, more angular / more pools of light round clouds / a ribbon of blue carousels across a diagonal near forever / lift off
  
• Sarabande [Nathaniel Dorsky, 2008] tweet: a nest, thatched thick / to reorient gravities / to look *through* things at the world.
  
  
• The Same River Twice [Rob Moss, 2003] # The first half hour or so, for a little ditty I'll link to soon. For now: Karen Schmeer, you knew how to weave things. Now this film takes on even more sentimental value—and I never got to meet you! Also worth noting: can't wait to go rafting this summer.
  
• A Serious Man [Coens, 2009] # Yikes! More here, in simple and (I guess) serious terms. The revisit made me think of sound a lot, and tuning, but that didn't make it into the finalized edit. In fact, I think a lot more things. I could probably write two thousand words, not just six hundred, on this movie.

Viewing Log #28: Shape the way you play [1/4/10 - 1/10/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Won't help to hold inside

• The Headless Woman [Lucrecia Martel, 2008] # I don't know why people said this was inscrutable. It seems perfectly open to me. Every edit matters and, though nothing's explicit, you have all the tools/information you need to reassemble this brain, this so-called mystery. There is no mystery, in fact, there's only the frame—windows, doorways, sometimes doors are windows, even a car is a frame filled in—and our Vero is forever pushed to its side. Sometimes she gets to throng up an image, but even then her eyes are often off to one side, or looking past this box of light she's in and making brim. I'd love to teach this film in a hermeneutics seminar. We'd read Ricouer and Bazin and Borges and Gadamer. I could keep watching this movie for the next month, but I won't; I'll probably just watch it once more then wait for it to screen in a cinematheque. I watched it with headphones, which certain felt apt and enveloping, but I can only imagine it packs more punch in the dark, sitting alone. (If I'd seen this in time for our double bills, I might have entertained the idea of writing about this flick and Gertrud, or Day of Wrath. It would have been the opposite of the pairing I did come up with—a true vision of light, of lightness even (however colored by hurt)—but sometimes you need the weight to better frame what bubbles up.)
  
  
• Up in the Air [Jason Reitman, 2009] Sure, that was fine; there were things to like. But, come on, how many condescending pats on the back do we need? I'm not advocating for some muddy road, per se, but Clooney's charisma can only do so much to make a shiny object, like this riveted thing all aligned, feel spontaneous. What's more, Vera Farmiga is gorgeous and talented and I wish to hell she would get a role that didn't flip her, however strong, into such an easy mark.
  
• The Sopranos, "Join The Club" (S6,E2) [David Nutter, 2006] # The best acting the show's got. Easily one of the best episodes ever, too. Would love to talk about this show and its silly brand of surrealism with Alain Resnais.
  
• The Sopranos, "Members Only" (S6,E1) [Tim Van Patten, 2006] # So good. Starts with Burroughs, ends with one of the biggest shocks in the series. I was surprised, again, at the ferocity of Junior's dementia. More inspired is the subtlety of that final segment's true structuring device: the pasta. We cut from Gene's suicide by hanging to Tony pouring spaghetti (I think) into boiling water, singing, and the episode ends with Tony gurgling in close-up as dinner continues to bubble under the image, signaling not only that this could, truly, be the end for Tony but that we've reached a definite point of no return; no matter what happens (we know now that Tony lives, duh) things will never be the same. Which, of course, goes against the whole ethos of the series finale (the whole series, really) which is all about how patterns so easily calcify while life marches on. I guess we're just talking a narrative turning point more than anything. And, again, the thing that separates this series from, say, The Wire is that its narrative is as brisk as it is brutal; i.e., its sidewinding always pushes something—some dread, some death, some delusions—forward.
  
• Tyson [James Toback, 2008] Mellow Mike is an amazing human being. Hell, Iron Mike was, too. The movie may be "so-so" but its story, his story, should be heard/seen. And in monologue form, what else can you ask for? Indeed, there's some cinematic play, here, too, with all this shifting and polyphony, but the real value of the film/video is its enduring status as a love letter.
  
  
• The Headless Woman [Lucretia Martel, 2008] So, yeah. This one. Best of the decade? Up there for sure. More soon, I trust. Until then, here's some of my favorite people/writers on this marvel (1) Martha (2) Danny (3) David (4) Koresksy [at No.2] (5) Glenn (6) Fernando (7) Sicinski (8) Nathan (9) Danny talking to Ms Martel. —Quick poll: where you at on the other two this lady's made?
  
  
• Death Becomes Her [Robert Zemeckis, 1992] Waiting for the plumber, I reacquainted myself with a few chunks (here and there) from this barf bag of grotesqueries. Maybe Phelps and Kehr are onto something: maybe Zemeckis really is some kind of special image'n'myth maker. I remember really digging the flick when my dad and I saw it in theatres, but, now, wow, it's like brand new (though still the same?). It's almost a toilet, though a shiny one, complete with shit and piss and pissy face-making. And in HD!
  
  
• In The Mood For Love [WKW, 2000] # Cuz of everybody's lists, and to wash that exacting movie out of my brain a bit before bed. I mean, wouldn't you rather dream about Maggie Cheung in form-fitting dresses more than eye-gouging and barn burning?
  
• The White Ribbon [Michael Haneke, 2009] # I don't want to say I saw through it the second time around but I think I saw through it the second time around. I've tried again and again to be charitable to this dude's movies since a couple people I love kinda love these flicks, but, at this point, fuck it. More soon, when it opens here in the Bay, but if you want to read a pan I nod with then you should read this bit of bile from Mr. Waggish.