Viewing Log #74: Eyebrows up [2/14/11 - 2/21/11]

by Ryland Walker Knight

• PRINCE AT THE ORACLE I lost my voice, I danced myself some kind of clean, I felt three kinds of emotions for three different people beside me, I felt other emotions for people not beside me, I laughed, I was happy to be alive. A unique night indeed.
  
• The Leopard [Luchino Visconti, 1963] So, as some may know, I left at intermission. I'd fallen asleep about eight different times and all I knew when the house lights came up was that Burt liked to fuck and Alain lost an eyeball. Figured I was missing something. So I left. I stepped outside and that bright San Francisco sun, the kind you only see when it's 48 degrees outside, met me like a meal and I walked over to a bar with a good window full of that light and I read more Pnin and I laughed out loud and I drank a beer and I felt happy with my choices.
  
  
• Unstoppable [Tony Scott, 2010] # Still as pure as the day I saw it, only this time I was more attuned to certain sociological lenses brought to bear by some of my friends (or just one friend in particular), which I don't exactly vibe with since I think it's a victory that it's about the working class. Sad that's a victory, and weird that an abusive husband (he didn't hit her but he was sure wrong) is our main point of identification, but, still: this movie looks and moves and feels better to watch than just about any action movie of late.
  
• Slings and Arrows First Season, episodes 1-3 [Peter Wellington, 2003] Written and acted better than it's shot/edited, but such is the pratfall of a lot of TV; point is that it's conceptually rather perfect, sometimes poignant and I want to see the backstory unfold. It's on Instant.
  
  
• Pneuma [Nathaniel Dorsky, 1983, 29 mins @ 18fps] Kinda like a drone album without the sound! Certainly, it was gorgeous. But I'm not so certain it needed its length. There was something biological about the energy within the frame in this one, with all those motes dancing and colliding and after-image-ing on my retinae, which is maybe what Dorsky meant when he said he was trying to be as humane to and with the film as possible. (Without humans, without figures.)
  
• Metal Cravings [Elise Hurwitz, 1990–1997, 5 mins] Brian made an interesting point: though this paint-with-emulsion chemistry game was obviously the product of elements brewed, it felt biological.
  
• Light Shaft [Vincent Grenier, 1975, 8 mins] Something of an obvious parallel to how cinema works in a theatre but I do love windows (they're eyes!) and I love the shifts of light caught here from rather simple tools and execution. As with all the films of the evening, this one lives by its breath, its rhythms; that is, when it allows you a breath. Which is an odd thing to say about something so fixed on an image of vision. Which makes me think blinks are the eyes breathing.
  
• Soundtrack [Barry Spinello, 1969, 10 mins] Really funny. Inventive use of paint to make images into sound in a material way. (That's the whole point, btw, since Spinello painted the same images within the frame as on the soundtrack to do some hilarious synesthesiac rhythms.)
  
• XFilm [John Schofill, 1968, 14 mins] Dug the dreamlike associative patterns and the doubling/tripling/quadrupling of some images, but the logic wasn't exactly dreamlike nor was it structured all that tight. In fact, the factory of dreams idea was a little on-the-nose. That said, I also liked how somber the film felt. For such a figurative film, it's surprising the affect was the organizing force, not the repetition of certain forms.
  
• Stroboscopic Images [Dion Vigné, 1964, 6 mins] Again, nice to see some old versions of things that are now somewhat commonplace but the music, I thought, dated it a bit too easily. Or maybe that was the Belson.
  
• Allures [Jordan Belson, 1961, 9 mins] Kitschy, almost, at this late date. But still great fun to look at if only because my fatigue and inability to breath all that well made me feel like I was on painkillers.
  
• Obmaru [Patricia Marx, 1953, 4 mins] Honestly? Can't tell you what this one was like.
  
  
• Blue Valentine [Derek Cianfrance, 2010] Michelle Williams' Cindy is as woefully underwritten as Ryan Gosling is attractive and she winds up a walled-off villain given this imbalance. Seems unfair. Especially with that sideways inclusion of her total sexual partners tally, which is nothing if not unnecessary as it's just another knock against her and her judgment skills since, given the setting this is relayed within, it is way too easily a magic marker writing the word "slut" on the screen. Instead of "woman" or, you know, "human." Still worth seeing, though, if only for Gosling's absurd charm and some of the rather beautiful images.

Viewing Log #30: Color cannot clean a canting [1/18/10 - 1/24/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Sat behind Godard.

• Casino [Martin Scorsese, 1995] # Like for the first time. I'm blown away. This is the ur-Scorsese picture. Everything's dialed up delirium, all the colors and lights and camera movements. For such a sad and scary movie, it's damned fucking giddy. I'm publishing this as I'm watching it, so my giddiness is sure to wane as these fools keep fucking up their silver lined lot.
  
• Californication [Most of the third season] It was way too easy to do errands and little writing projects and just plow through this in one day. Rain played a part, but, also the sex.
  
  
• Playtime [Jacques Tati, 1967] # Yes, the best. Really: the best.
  
  
• The Seventh Victim [Mark Robson, 1943] # I tweeted a hash tag (#bestmovieever?) that gets at how powerful this thing is for me, especially at this stage in the game, with its weight and frisson of social anxieties. More Monday.
  
• Cat People [Jacques Tourneur, 1942] # Simon Simone's nose, let me tell you, can do things to a boy. Also, Tourneur's pace is all wonky: a real jam of angles keeps this from slipping down easy. More Monday.
  
  
• A Letter to Uncle Bonmee [Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2009] Watched on The Auteurs for free (click here) and then wrote this little nugget about it.
  
• "Parisian Goldfish" by Flying Lotus [Eric Wareheim, 2009] Watched at the behest of Danny while talking Coachella. It's really something. Watch it here. It's very NSFW. It's weird: how much is celebratory? How much is a joke? Can it be both? I'm continually flabbergasted by the audacity of T+E.
  
  
• Band of Brothers, "Currahee" Episode 1 [Phil Alden Robinson, 2001] Halfway decent, but a lot of it is what I hate about war movies and World War II movies in particular. I appreciate that generation, of course, since it gave us its youth in ways I can't imagine, but I'm pretty sick of it getting called "the greatest" all the time. Weird to see so many British actors playing Americans, including Simon Pegg of all people.
  
• The Sopranos "Live Free or Die" (S6,E6) [Tim Van Patten, 2006] # The world opens for one man, for a bit, in the form of a vase and a bed & breakfast. Too bad you know this natural can't escape that hateful haunting in his history. There's more Paulie's than Tony's in this world. Even with Bacala's dunderheaded "Well we can't have him in our social club no more; that I do know."
  
• The Sopranos "Mr. & Mrs. John Sacramoni Request..." (S6,E5) [Steve Buscemi, 2006] # A devastating episode of perceptions: misinterpretation abounds, even from the people fearing it the most (ie, Tony). Then again, the biggest perceptive revelation—Vito's true identity, as a gay man, um, coming out into view—is deferred an episode by Tony's misguided attempt to reassert his power. Oh, man, men make bad choices.

Nimble epistle, verdurous carrion

by Ryland Walker Knight

I do love letters, even letters that aren't love letters, so I quickly warmed to Joe's short A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, though it is quite cryptic. Then again, I like cryptic, too. Especially beautiful cryptic. Thus I wrote this little ditty for Danny in The Notebook. You, too, assuming you're signed up on The Auteurs, can watch the short film (just 17 minutes) by clicking here. Then you can tell me things about what you saw turning those corners and hearing those voices.

Represent Repertory #3: Tiers on tires, on tableaux

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Nothing?
Really, if you didn't read Brian's Tati preview, you should. He's got all the links you need and then some, including this one, which points to a translation by Bert Cardullo, complete with introductory table setting, of Bazin's review of M. Hulot's Holiday at Bright Lights. I missed the PFA screening on Thursday because of a certain poodle's stubborn ways and the resulting headache that installed but I am hoping to maybe trek up to the Rafael this week to catch it since that theatre is even better, and easily better than the YBCA screening room and the Red Vic (Jan 28 and Feb 3/4 respectively), not to mention the fact that, despite certain impulses (and my reputation?), I don't want to spend all day Saturday, January 30th, at the PFA.

I do, however, want to spend some time there on that day because, in addition to all the Tati going on around town these first two months of twenty-ten, the PFA will be hosting a Val Lewton series. Last summer I watched a bunch of the films via Netflix, but I've never seen them on a big screen so I'm pretty damned excited for that light and those shadows to meet my eyes all emulsified. What's more, the series is structured around double bills, which seems particularly apt given the B-movie status/history of Lewton's catalog. (Also, as many of you know, I'm a fan of that film-going format.) To a certain extent, I plan to mimic my Dreyer and Resnais format/s for this series, so expect some enthusiastic notes once the series starts next weekend, on the 22nd, with one of the best pairs imaginable: Cat People followed by The Seventh Victim. Not only are both films brisk (neither tops 75 minutes), they're plain bizarre—especially Robson's Victim, which I did not do justice to back at first blush. Flip-side: I'm particularly proud of this Cat People image essay. More to come for sure.

Though I may miss the James Benning night at YBCA on Friday, February 26th, I am marking the Nathaniel Dorsky evening earlier that week, on the 23rd at the PFA, as a must-attend. First billed as a trio, the night is now a full quartet of films. I've been very excited to see Sarabande and Winter since they debuted at TIFF 2008 and spawned a number of great articles, including a pair from The Notebook: Darren Hughes' interview with Dorsky and David Phelps' consideration of Sarabande (from its NYFF showing). If I play the game well enough, I might be able to interview Dorsky as well as have the chance to write about his newer works ahead of the pack as (I'm guessing, since he's bringing them with him) the second pair of films on the program that evening, titled Compline and Aubade, will be enjoying their Bay Area premieres. (I'll get back to you on all that, but, for now know that it's all very exciting. Especially since I've got my own brand-spankin-new copy of Devotional Cinema already broken in, already not-so-spankin-new.

Finally, to round things out, there will be a reprise of Hou Hsiao-hsien's City of Sadness on Saturday February 20th, which follows a putatively rare Ozu the night before, a silent gangster melodrama from 1930 called That Night's Wife. I hope to see both. But now, on this rather gorgeous day, I need to go for a run before I catch Jour de fête a little later on across the Bay.

Battle for the light!

by Ryland Walker Knight

"Fireworks" by Animal Collective
video directed by Jon Leone
A couple years ago, Animal Collective released Strawberry Jam on this date. Some people, however, like me, already had the album thanks to the internet. Perversely, Jam was overshadowed by Panda Bear's Person Pitch, which came out the spring beforehand and, as far as I could tell or vaguely remember, kept cresting a (deserved) wave of critical adoration for a long while. Though getting annoyed at the continued devotion to Person Pitch, which I know some fans peg as "the best," is pointless, it still probably colors the fact that Jam is my favorite Animal Collective album. But, hangups aside, this group effort is the best sequenced album they've put together, always a make-or-break element with these dudes, and the most poignant for me. It's been getting a lot of air time this summer. Specifically, that middle pair of perfect ("For Reverend Green" helicopters into "Fireworks") keeps circling around my head, sending me into silly spins of contradictory emotions, making me dance with the door closed or reaching for that stretch just a little harder after a run.

So I went and found this video for "Fireworks" (again? I can't remember) and got obsessed with it independent of the song. When I said I was going to write about it, Martha asked, "What can you say about that video other than it's pretty?" Well, I don't really have much more, but, I do have some ideas about structure and repetition; about this as pop avant-garde filmmaking (see Kevin and Brandon's work at Moving Image Source for more concrete examples); about how cool it is to collage images on top of such a produced, layered soundtrack; about the joy of light bursting and drifting across the image; about fireworks' ephemera, like the fleeting kick of a pop song; about summer nights scaring babies with noise; about the fun of making art with friends; about the perceptual problems of music videos and how we've become accustomed to confusion; about step-printing; about the fade of memory, how it passes us by. I guess it's all about time: it falls away. Also, the song is all about those kinds (all kinds) of limits, which helps. One of the limits that pangs the deepest is the limit to our ability to step outside ourselves and let go of hurt in order to enjoy the bright spectacle of the world—that we have to fight for our fun.

Though on the global scale there has been little to celebrate in the past eight years, and a heart hangs heavy on this date no matter one's will to happiness, I think we each have plenty to memorialize with smiles today. If anything, if we indeed think of each day as a miracle, we can thank the rain that we wake up every morning. Every morning brings new light. The trick is to find your prism and fill your room with the refractions. To take pleasure in the private, the ordinary, the everyday accomplishments like brushing your teeth. The big stuff always stands out. What makes Animal Collective such a fun, dear musical act to a goof like me is that they're all about bombast and explosion—a real overflowing of life—but they sing about such little things. It's just that their puns and metaphors make it all bigger. Because the quotidian is important but reduction is never the goal; the goal is to take delight in every little thing, to build a better picture, to give rise to a fuller world. This song, and its video, help me with that. So, you know, never forget. I know you won't; you can't. Today is too big. Thank God it's Friday this year. Have a happy weekend! Go outside and dance with the sky!

[Don't forget about Mapping Monica!]

VINYL IS PODCAST #9: Dreamlands of the Night

by Ryland Walker Knight and Brian Darr

[Podomatic stream]
[Direct audio download]
[iTunes subscription available]
[Simple syndication subscription]
RWK here tryna glut our hello lil kitty (kiddy?) corner of the internet with two podcasts in two days. This late afternoon Brian Darr and I took in some dreamlands of the night at the PFA Library here in Berkeley. (You can browse their Film Collection online.) As I say in the podcast, I'm not particularly well versed in the avant-garde. Before today I had only seen stills from and read essays about and seen the littlest of little clips of Brakhage's bigger than big films. Before today I had seen zero films by Bruce Conner, much less read anything by him. And before, inside today, I was seriously down in the dumps of confusion after reading Sheila O'Malley's rather beautiful pean to Mickey Rourke and all his hurt. So these films this afternoon sure did lift. They did some real lifting. I think this comes through in our talk, too. It started with a Kenneth Anger film, called Eaux d'Artifice, which, surprisingly, you can watch by clicking right here if you want to watch it all monochrome blues, without the occasional pink highlight. Then we moved into Anticipation of the Night by Brakhage (the pix above are stolen from Fred Camper and repurposed/reordered and cropped/edited by me). Then, after Mothlight (yes!), we watched Bruce Baillie's All My Life, which you can watch by clicking right here, if you want to watch it on youtube, which seems like sacrilege after seeing it on what has to be one of the most beautiful 16mm prints around in this cinephile-world. Then my fatigue got the better of me and I missed out on some James Benning and Bette Gordon before we switched to DVD to watch two Conner shorts, which knocked my socks off my feet and (kind of) into my mouth. It was a hell of an inauguration. And now, here it comes, the compulsion to see more. Of course, given my love of words, there's a compulsion to read more, in turn, and I think a great first place to start has to be the Avant-Garde Blog-A-Thon that Girish started/hosted with this post. There's plenty there to keep a curious reader/seer busy for years to come. Guess that's my plan!


[Our talk is bookended by some Black Dice and Fennesz. You should buy Beaches and Canyons and Endless Summer if you do not own them; they're really great.]