Viewing Log #7: Our pig's world [8/10/09 - 8/16/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp [Powell & Pressburger, 1943] # Despite the propaganda, there is a critical eye towards tradition. Love the conceit about Kerr playing three ladies, and Wolbrook's tenderness is perfect; Livesey's got stuffy down pat to the point where I don't know how much he's acting.
  
• The Flight of the Red Balloon [Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2007] # A year later, at home by myself (with myself a little more), and I love it even more. About as lovely as can be. One of those movies you don't need to say anything about; just watch it. Cheers. Chin-chin.
  
  
• Terrace of Unintelligibility [Phill Niblock, 1985] Damned lovely. More back here.
  
• The Dirty Dozen [Robert Aldrich, 1967] Somehow, I'd never seen this beast. It was worth the wait. As ever, Cass is my hero: so hip, so cool, so fearless (so to speak). Also, he's a ham. (Love Bronson, too, for what it's worth.)
  
  
• The Big Heat [Fritz Lang, 1953] So brutal, full of real pain. All those doublings and violent reversals make you dizzy, almost. Fitting the opening credits show over a fuzzy spiral background. I should watch it again; I want to.
  
• Macao [Josef von Sternberg, 1952] Gloria Grahame is sexier than Jane Russell (I've never been into her) and Robert Mitchum acts tough real well. Obvious. The real crazy ideas here are about documentary. A real treat, if all over.
  
• Sylvia Scarlett [George Cukor, 1935] The first Kate and Cary pairing, and the first time I've really heard him use his Cockney heritage. Though it's a little sweet, the film is a fun look at her, chiefly, and gender as a costume. Too bad our now-famous pair (Cary was still starting to pick up steam in the machine) weren't allowed more chemistry, but, you know, it's a fun first step towards the rest, like Holiday.
  
  
• The GoodTimesKid [Azazel Jacobs, 2007] Andrew Grant sent me a copy of this and I enjoyed its limber go-nowhere antics. Love that the ship stays moored—a terrible haven, however impenetrable, from the kicks and screams of love outside.
  
  
• The Ghost Ship [Mark Robson, 1943] Questions of dominion and grace, and communication, plague these men. There's a fear of tyranny apt to the time, but it's also cool to think about the power of the director over against the power of the producer, especially in these Lewton pictures, as part of and partial to the cinema's constitutional power over the viewer, and our desire to escape that relationship.

—Finding a tune

Buddhist bubblegum, where the islands go.

by Ryland Walker Knight

Arthur Russell and Phill Niblock's "Terrace of Unintelligibility" is split in two on YouTube, thus this playlist I made. I first heard about the music-art-video when I read this Mark Richardson column a while back. As Richardson notes, the arbitrary start and stop make this document especially curious and lovely: how long could you listen to this? Forever? What strikes me now is the mask of darkness, the will to obscurity that can often result from perfectionism—or simply more "adventurous" art. All the darkness makes me think of Costa, and curious as ever to see what Ne Change Rien looks like on a big screen. Light leaks around the form, as the words Russell spills coalesce in the corners of his mouth, which is, of course, our first focal point. It's also an image of proximity where the ghost pushes present (however in shadow), transformed at least thrice over. But, again, this battered image endears the piece to me and my eyes so hungry for textures of light—even degraded pixel squares cobbled mosaic-like. In any event, Russell's not all minimal warbling and cello tapping and ethereal drones. He made disco, too, and gave Paradise Garage one of its hallmarks: "Is It All Over My Face." I made another playlist for its A and B sides below; the B side remix is by Larry Levan, who was also a superstar, and deserves his own post.

—Thanks, @cambomb, for reminding me of this earlier tonight.