Summer CH Counterpoint

by Mark Haslam and Ryland Walker Knight

CHEZ MOCKING SEAGULL

by Ryland Walker Knight

One day in Cannes, I woke up rather early.

Cannes 2011 #5: Wraps so lissome she could fly

by Ryland Walker Knight

Got a few more dispatches hitting the Cargo site late, post-fest due to my computer being tied up with FCP work and my aversion to writing on "foreign" keyboards all last week. Granted, I wrote a lot by hand, but not all of that's for the internet's eyes to see. So keep checking that link.

There's a high school behind my friend's apartment in Milan and the constant babble is almost better than music. Except when the glee club (they have those here?) starts trying to harmonize "Don't Stop Believing" for a good half an hour. That's when I retreated to headphones. But watching basketball happen, even when it's bad and these kids can't shoot, was better than half the movies I saw at the festival. Too bad I forgot to grab my camera. Too bad I just watched. But also not: living and making don't have to be one and the same at every juncture and I'm glad I hold that memory, like the waves off the beach at Cannes those first two days, or like certain dinners out in the streets, in a corner of my brain you will never open even if your eyes are wide. I'm reminded of windows at all events; it's probably why I shoot them so much.

UPDATE WAY LATER: Found the Indonesian TV clip I was in over here. I play the yokel quite well.

Cannes 2011 #3: There is no tunnel, only light

by Ryland Walker Knight

After Tree of Life I made some eggs (above) and wrote my mom a letter about the movie, which I am very happy to have seen but that made me miss a lot of people at home and elsewhere. Here's the link to Cargo again.

UPDATE: If you want to see me still dazed (though also re-caffeinated) and bemused in the bustling lobby of the Palais after the film, watch this video at The Guardian.

Convergence for your barreling without blinders (5/6/11)

by Ryland Walker Knight

—On and up and forward!

SFIFF54 #1: Viewing Log #82: Lilac under linen [4/7/11 - 4/20/11]

by Ryland Walker Knight

— "landscapes and mindscapes"
One of the funny things about the San Francisco International Film Festival, which starts tonight, is that a good portion of its offerings are festival circuit "holdovers" that started their trek to SF last year at the Cannes Festival. Well, funny only because this year I'll be playing catch-up here and then leapfrogging a lot of tour stops by hitting Cannes in May. Granted, this year's Croisette selections are not quite as appetizing as a lot of us had hoped; however, it's still the premiere fest and it still costs an arm and a leg to be a part of it. But more on that adventure later. Here, I'm concerned with laying out what my last few weeks in town look like from a cinephile standpoint.

There's certainly plenty to see at SFIFF54 (pronounced "s'fiffty-four" by some), and I do plan on attending daily, but I also don't want to get burnt out on a bunch of movies all at once. So, as often as I can, I'm going to just see one film a day. And then I'll throw up a quick take here that night or the next morning. Given that two of my most anticipated titles are 272-minute and 212-minute affairs, this one-a-day dictum should be easy enough on those two Saturdays: this weekend I'll settle in for Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon for the entire afternoon, starting right at noon, and the following week I plan to head over to the PFA for the 35mm screening of Fassbinder's World on a Wire. Yet there are a number of shorter films as well, such as Federico Veiroj's A Useful Life, which is only about an hour long and easy to pair with an evening of avant-garde shorts in a program called The Deep End, with newer work from people I respect and enjoy like, say, Ben Russell and Vincent Grenier to name two of the nine featured filmmakers.

I only caught two press screenings prior to the festival and I don't think I'll be looking at any screeners but I do have a copy of Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg that I've been meaning to watch ever since I saw/felt Dogtooth. The two films I have seen, I should say, are Patricio Guzman's Nostalgia for the Light and Werner Herzog's The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Both of these films will open in the Bay in the summer months so, logistics wise, there is no real rushing need for you to see them at the festival. However, both are very good pictures. The Guzman is a tad less poetic than I'd've hoped (in fact it's kind of hokey near the close) but the Herzog, though I could quibble with it, is just great. You might know by now that it's his first and last film in 3-D, but his use of the medium makes so much more sense than so many productions force fed at kids these days. Ostensibly a documentary, as they often are, the 3-D is less about realism than it is about phenomena and creating new realities for your eyes; that is, the experience you have seeing these rare paintings matters because you're given a sense of their physical depth and of their curves for light to play against. You see new movement of old visions. It's thrilling, moving even, and it should only be seen as big as possible.

The main highlight of the run, for me, is likely the evening with the Tindersticks at the Castro (more here), which will feature clips of Claire Denis movies accompanied by live performances of the scores of the films in the clip reel. Truth be told, it sounds like quite the nerd event (it could be a major let down), but I'm more than game to see those images and hear those sounds in that theatre. If all goes according to plan, I'll have something extra on this event.

Other items on the list include: Hong's Hahaha, Christoph Hochhäusler's The City Below, Kelly Reichart's Meek's Cutoff (which I hafta catch at SFIFF54, despite its wider release a week or so later, because I'll be gone for so long), Breillat's The Sleeping Beauty (which sounds even better than the superb Bluebeard), Lee Anne Schmitt's The Last Buffalo Hunt (in part because Haz liked her last film at SFFIFF52 and in part because James Laxton shot some of it), Michelangelo Frammartino's Le quattro volte, Lech Majewski’s The Mill and The Cross, J.P. Sniadecki & Véréna Paravel's Foreign Parts, Florent Tillon's Detroit Wild City, Otar Iosseliani's Chantrapas, Andrei Ujica's The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins, Mike Cahill's Another Earth, Romain Goupil's Hands Up, Christopher Munch's Letters from the Big Man (one of Sean Uyehara's favorites), and Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy. There are yet others, of course, but those are the ones I'm targeting, the ones I'd feel less "ok" skipping, the ones I hope I can find something to say about in a timely manner.

In any case, I do hope to offer more than glib summaries. But I've got these last two weeks of dayjob work that I must focus on before the fun of the festivals takes over my life, fostering a whole new set of anxieties (am I writing enough? is it worthy of eyes? where's the coffee? why can't I stay awake? is there food in my beard? do I stink? how bad can my posture get?) to wade through. So, until then—let's say, Saturday—end that week with a bang! Any way you want to! Any way you can!

— I thought it'd be more fun to go down the street this way.

Convergence for your toss-turning (3/13/11)

by Ryland Walker Knight

The Philosophy Department Is Full Of Ghosts

by Ryland Walker Knight

I.


II.




III.


IV.

Or, since my last visit, none'd left. And, it'd been a while.

&Review no.4, Garments

by Ryland Walker Knight

— West Dressed
The issue is live! SEE IT NOW! However, the print version will not be available in your hands until March 1st, or thereafter, given the printing and distributing and mailing schedules that come with wet ink newsprint. That is, the internet's easier—far easier—to manage than a real live publication. In any event, we're up and running and I'm proud of the jigsaw we pieced together. Above you'll find a video I made for the issue, which is rather raw, and below you'll see my favorite image from the issue, which is nothing but lovely. Please do take the time to look at all of it, subscribe to the &Review tumblr, maybe follow the twitter feed, tell your friends and stay tuned to my twitter and Mia's twitter for news of where we're dropping off those newsprint editions around our towns and anywhere else.

Update (3/7/11): Click here to see a pdf of the print version.

— Serrah Russell, She Wore Her Grandma's Dress

One must eat

by Ryland Walker Knight

One way or another

Light doesn't die and water will find its equal

by Ryland Walker Knight

Hemingway/Ecclesiastes

Getting going in 20!!

by Ryland Walker Knight

———

If you follow me on twitter, the image atop this is no surprise, nor is the news that I got a new camera. But this video is something new. That is, it's a test run that a couple people egged me on to make public and share. So, here's a nugget, a tease of what's to come in 20!!.

Convergence for your metabolism's liaison in light (12/15/10)

by Ryland Walker Knight

Go, ye giddy goose, so should I be sure to be heart-burned.

by Ryland Walker Knight

—A shout long silent across the sky

...

Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile.

...



—Nesting habits armed with folios like fingers

...



...

Peace, good pint-pot; peace, good tickle-brain.
Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy
time, but also how thou art accompanied: for though
the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster
it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted the
sooner it wears. That thou art my son, I have
partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion,
but chiefly a villanous trick of thine eye and a
foolish-hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant
me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point;
why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall
the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat
blackberries? a question not to be asked. Shall
the sun of England prove a thief and take purses? a
question to be asked. There is a thing, Harry,
which thou hast often heard of and it is known to
many in our land by the name of pitch: this pitch,
as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth
the company thou keepest: for, Harry, now I do not
speak to thee in drink but in tears, not in
pleasure but in passion, not in words only, but in
woes also: and yet there is a virtuous man whom I
have often noted in thy company, but I know not his name.

...



...


—Thaw, and resolve yourself into a dew

Convergence for your internal industries (7/21/10)

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Forge, receive; acquire, establish

Last Lost: "Across the Sea"

by Ryland Walker Knight

So Lost finally gives us something of a Freudian-like take on a few different histories chopped and screwed together (both biblical and classical; go on a wikipedia adventure to trace traces, maybe) and all we get, really, out of this mythology episode is the origin of the smoke monster. Granted, I really like seeing Titus Welliver and Mark Pellegrino, and their scenes are usually good, but it's mostly just dancing around ideas we already have. It's an episode to prove these writers went to college, mostly, and to keep the lid on the magic box just a little longer. That is, though we know now where these two forces (they're not really characters) came from, we aren't given any angle on the real purpose of the world surrounding them, the island.

What we do know now: That the Man in Black wants to go home because his true mom was Roman or Greek or some kind of sea-faring ancient. That Jacob was born first and that these two are in fact fraternal twins. But that this doesn't make the Man in Black any kind of inverted Esau eager to buy Jacob's birthright; in fact, he wants his own, his home. That the Man in Black killed the mom with no name, which made Jacob angry; so angry, in fact, that Jacob cast his brother into "the light" down what looks like a drain, which doused that light and gave rise to the column of clickety smoke. That it was Jacob's duty to protect this light. That, thus, Jacob failed his first day on the job. That the brothers have been playing a game of one-upsmanship since the beginning involving oppositions. That the protector of the island always sees the same cycle in part because the protector always leads the arrivals in the same direction. That people are people are evil, apparently, and prone only to corruption. That, in essence, the mom and son with no names were the original sinners and that original sin was and is a selfishness.

I'm guessing, then, that "What They Died For," will be more about these two dark forces, though it could easily be about anybody on the show that we've watched die, or it could even be more about "the light." But, to be honest, I appreciate them keeping "the light" vague. It introduces some element of faith into the show that is really about an object of faith, or makes faith directed by objects as much as by actions. Rituals matter, certainly, but that's not the aim as much as finding purpose through this devotion. That certainly seems to be Jack's "arc" so far. But faith is tricky, and Lost seems atheist, not agnostic, which leads me to worry "The End" will prove nihilistic after all. But then I remember how practically any event in Lost is milked for its sentiment and I remember my other fears that it will prove to be "humanistic" after all. That there will be a faith "in people" in the end. Of course, I'd like to believe in that. But it's only set up, here, as an end to oppositions. As if there can be a leveling (in any sense) in the end that sets things in their "right place." What I want is creation. They need to make something of this mess, not reduce it. Thankfully, though, we've seen the show's not afraid to be "unhappy" with its "resolutions" so at least we can wait for some kind of killings that matter, though that's the cynicism it seems largely unhappy with itself.

Convergence for your phlegm but not your expectorants (4/26/10)

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Don't be or put on a sad face

SFIFF53 #2: Everyone Else

by Ryland Walker Knight

Nothing's sounder: Birgit Minichmayr won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at Berlinale 2009 for her performance in Maren Ade's Everyone Else. Ade's film works because of the performances of both lovers acting out in different and not quite complimentary ways. But Minichmayr uses her body to go with her face and her voice to make her Gitti not come alive—it's a film of presence, or immanence, so "becoming" never happens, though the story does chart a sort of trajectory towards understanding—so much as, well, feel like a real person. Or, you get a sense of everything inside and behind her without a mention of any history (of old lovers, of youth) or much explaining. Everything registers on the surface—on her body, in her gestures—even her defenses, her silent treatments.

It's really hard to talk and/or write about this kind of acting or this kind of direction of acting, you just sense it; it's an energy or a verve you pick up on or not. But it's not an affect since this is not a film of faces; or if it is an affect its not made into images the way, say, Cassavetes could because Ade mutes things the way Cassavetes always amplified things. Nor is it really a film of bodies, though it is a film of actions and, again, gestures. It's a recording, primarily, with a few ideas about the fluidity of form and off-camera space. Its best, laugh-out-loud joke about spatial awareness (or lack thereof) dictating character is filmed like it happens, like an accident, without grace over a shoulder. It's pragmatic filmmaking, the camera in service of its subjects and largely free of anything like a style or a tic-trait or a tripod. Its duty is just to be there.

All Ade seems to want is to watch these people (these young people) amble about in the sun. For the lighting, either that amber of the Sardinian sun or the indigo of a bedroom at night, is the most interesting thing about the images. The sex scenes, for example, are hardly lit and shot in one take without close ups; not exactly the "sexy" stuff of, say, Bad Timing, though its intimacy is not without its sexiness. Or that room with the knick knacks registers just white, its pale walls and shelves another way to say this mom's passions aren't passions but filler, time-killers; this extends to her music collection, which is aptly trite; but it should be noted that nothing in this room is played for laughs. In fact, for all its jokes and on-screen laughter, nothing's truly played for laughs. Not that laughs are necessary, but it makes all the goofy stuff look a put-on, like these people can never remove a mask. And that's the brilliance of Minichmayr's performance (and I supposed Ade's direction): to give the feeling of layers, or intentions never voiced nor exactly seen.

After a prologue that shows Gitti already acting out, or only ever acting, though she's also giving directions on how to act to a young girl, things start happy enough. It's a vacation, the sun shines and they barely wear clothes. But that erodes just as soon as can happen (and how can it not happen?) as its stories' wonts. So as things get said, other things are left unsaid, and fissures begin. New masks grow, and Minichmayr stops sitting with her legs open, starts crossing her arms more. The couple stops embracing as much, they walk apart; interaction is forced. The relationship doesn't crumble or implode so much as evaporate, or dry up, which is seen in reverse as the deal breaker is when Gitti gets tossed fully clothed into a pool after a disaster of a dinner party. Minichmayr exits the pool cutting her eyes across it, tugging at her clinging dress, and inside she doesn't dry off. Instead she jumps out a window. Where it goes from there should be no surprise, but its limp-limbed finale may clamp you enough that the last line jolts some hope into your mainline. After all, it's about something truly cinematic though it's shot, again, like an accident over a shoulder or two: it's a plea to be seen.

[Already released in New York City by IFC, Everyone Else plays SFIFF three times, all at the Kabuki: Sun, Apr 25 at 8:45pm; Tue, Apr 27 at 3:30pm; Thu, Apr 29 at 6:15pm.]

Convergence for your freeze outs (3/9/10)

by Ryland Walker Knight

Convergence for what's out there (2/27/10)

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Stuff