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.

Viewing Log #24: Exact xylophone xerox extract [12/7/09 - 12/13/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Multiply. Make it happen.

• Baby Mama [Michael McCullers, 2008] Sure, that was fine. I laughed enough. [Cough.]
  
• The Hurt Locker [Kathryn Bigelow, 2008] Puts other Iraq movies to shame, no doubt, and makes Jarhead in particular, despite its strong cast and factual basis, feel all the more counterfeit. For one, it's an actual action film: its subject is action and action, here, dictates character. Pathologies dominate, but it's not a psychological film—we only see surfaces, and our visibility is poor. Still not sure if the film deserves all of its accolades since its tertiary characters and subplots are rather broad and the final "act" (so to speak) is expected, but it makes sense why it's such a favorite: terse, spatially aware, and, in one way, a very "safe" narrative structure built on camaraderie that plays to our vicarious thrill—way more than horror—at seeing these set-pieces go boom or whisk away from the safety of our hometown haunts.
  
• False Aging [Lewis Klahr, 2008] A lovely little ode to relics remaining relevant, and alive, through art. Viewable here, with thanks to Matt for the tip.
  
  
• The San Francisco Silent Film Festival's Winter Event, 2009. More to come in a dedicated post. But here's a few words on each of the films, each one a pleasure to take in, even with some beyond-brazen yakkers behind me for the Keaton segment.
  
• West of Zanzibar [Tod Browning, 1928] Depraved, as ever with these guys. A hell of an ending.
  
• Sherlock Jr. [Buster Keaton, 1924] # Movies inspire life, duh, on top of recording it or creating havens from it; also, "objective reality" can, without a doubt, be a lie.
  
• The Goat [Buster Keaton and Malcolm St. Clair, 1921] That shot of Buster riding the train up to the camera is something special: hilarious, daring, a tad ludicrous, seemingly unreal and yet wholly real.
  
• J'accuse [Abel Gance, 1919] Unbelievably gorgeous print; insane, great fantastical final third.
  
• Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness [Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1927] Talking animals, and lots of them, made this a blast.
  
  
• All of these Resnais shorts listed below are recounted and read, maybe even narrativized, over here.
  
• Statues Also Die [Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, 1953] 27min, 35mm, a blemish.
  
• Guernica [Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens, 1950] 12min, in English, 35mm, crisp.
  
• Toute la mémoire du monde [Alain Resnais, 1956] 20min, English version, 16mm, kinda grubby.
  
• Le chant de styrène [Alain Resnais, 1958] 19min, projected digitally, looked great.
  
  
• Whatever Works [Woody Allen, 2009] Pretty damned bilious, though it tries its hand at sweet. Still, its fantasyland made me laugh and Evan Rachel Wood in white pants is a vision. Also, it's simple, and that helps. Maybe the best movie Woody's made since, um, Sweet and Lowdown? It's still such a mystery to me how little he trusts his comedy in these later years. Don't get me wrong, a lot of his 00s comedies aren't exactly hilarious, but they're always more interesting/enjoyable than those dunderheaded "tragedies" he dreams up.
  
  
• Mélo [Alain Resnais, 1986] # For the recherche; it was just as painful.
  
• Broken Embraces [Pedro Almodovar, 2009] What else? A fiction about fictions, an onion that wants you to cry so bad it chops itself, a film about a woman (or her trace) as not just fatal but fated. Almodovar's got style on tap and colors that pop and perhaps the sexiest, most beautiful lead actress in pictures—who is most game with her maestro mate—but the picture's almost rote. Nothing surprised me, though Pene always excites me, except the site of Chus Lampreve still kicking jokes like a champ. You know the tropes, and you know the wistful feelings—you even know Pene's body—by now, so the biggest pleasure to be had with the film is watching it construct itself and peel off its trappings.
  
• You Can Count On Me [Kenneth Lonergan, 2000] # I've been needing this. Up there with A Man Escaped and Kings and Queen for those "it's gonna be okay" moments.
  
  
• Beowulf [Robert Zemeckis, 2007] Zemeckis calls his motion capture company Image Movers, which is pretty perfect, since all he wants to do, it seems, is fly his images all over the map from wherever he sees fit. A truly bizarre, prurient, silly spectacle. Maybe I'm just tired, but beyond the obvious myth riffing (self-mythologizing, historicity, etc) I have zero idea why the man would make the film other than some kind of nerd macho impetus. That is, a nerd's idea of macho seems to motivate this balloon of a "cartoon" the way a bro's idea of cool seems to motivate Bay's movies. That and what I'm guessing some trumpet as cinematic freedom. Probably should have seen it in a theatre, with 3-D goggles. Phelps is a big fan, and you can read why over here.
  
• Kill Bill: Volumes 1 + 2 [Quentin Tarantino, 2003 + 2004] # A few bits and pieces, in HD on Spike, while on commercial breaks from a few basketball games. Boy did it look good (Uma, too), and boy does QT know how to light a scene. But, boy, this sure is a one-note kind of movie. Also, I continually ask myself: Who did what to wrong this dude? And when? How early on?