tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-278257982024-03-13T17:42:08.214-04:00My Life, at 24 Frames Per Secondconstant seeker of the sublimeKenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.comBlogger682125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-49872580968291623152013-06-03T08:00:00.000-04:002013-06-03T08:00:05.813-04:00Stuff I've Written in MayBROOKLYN, N.Y.—Apparently it just worked out that it took another whole month for me to finally get around to doing my usual self-promotional round-up of stuff I've written and published.<br />
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Well, the big news of May is that I attended—to the consternation of my ever money-conscious dear mother—the 66th Cannes Film Festival and covered it for my site, <i>In Review Online</i>. I ended up getting four dispatches out of it:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nYATBiNXQQM/UavDs_qRoQI/AAAAAAAAEys/iKYzPiNoz3g/s1600/1-The-Immigrant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nYATBiNXQQM/UavDs_qRoQI/AAAAAAAAEys/iKYzPiNoz3g/s400/1-The-Immigrant.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Immigrant </i>(2013)</td></tr>
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<i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2132285/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>The Bling Ring</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2852400/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>A Touch of Sin</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404461/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>The Past</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2331143/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Like Father, Like Son</b></a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2852458/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Stranger by the Lake</b></a> </i><a href="http://inreviewonline.com/inreview/home/Entries/2013/5/20_Festival_Coverage_-_Cannes_2013__First_Dispatch.html">here</a><br />
<i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2852470/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>The Missing Picture</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2332707/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Blind Detective</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2347144/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Shield of Straw</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2388637/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Ain't Them Bodies Saints</b></a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2042568/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Inside Llewyn Davis</b></a> </i><a href="http://inreviewonline.com/inreview/home/Entries/2013/5/24_Festival_Coverage_-_Cannes_2013__Second_Dispatch.html">here</a><br />
<i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2626926/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Closed Curtain</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1602613/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Only God Forgives</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2017038/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>All Is Lost</b></a> </i>and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2821088/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Bastards</b></a></i> <a href="http://inreviewonline.com/inreview/home/Entries/2013/5/28_Festival_Coverage_-_Cannes_2013__Third_Dispatch.html">here</a><br />
<i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821549/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Nebraska</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2852432/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Norte, the End of History</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1951181/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>The Immigrant</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2278871/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Blue Is the Warmest Color</b></a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1714915/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Only Lovers Left Alive</b></a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2912144/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><b>Manuscripts Don't Burn</b></a></i> <a href="http://inreviewonline.com/inreview/home/Entries/2013/5/29_Festival_Coverage_-_Cannes_2013__Final_Dispatch.html">here</a><br />
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Perhaps I'll say more about my first-ever Cannes experience in a separate blog post; it had its ups and downs, admittedly (screw you, colored-badge system), but of course I'd gladly do it again in the future!<br />
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I also wrote about the great Chinese documentary <i><b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1519635/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Disorder</a></b></i> for <i>In Review Online </i><a href="http://inreviewonline.com/inreview/old_hat_blog/Entries/2013/5/9_An_Anti-City_Symphony__Huang_Weikais__i_Disorder__i__%282009%29.html">here</a> and <i><b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095179/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood</a></b> </i>for <i>The House Next Door </i><a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/09/summer-of-88-friday-the-13th-part-vii-the-new-blood">here</a>. Yes, I somehow managed to rattle off more than 1,000 words on a silly <i>Friday the 13th</i> movie. (I really should start trying to make more of an effort to get, you know, <i>paid</i> for writing shit like that.)<br />
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<br />Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-77072109820630740532013-05-07T09:00:00.000-04:002013-05-07T09:00:16.042-04:00Literary Interlude, "Statement of Purpose Via Roland Barthes" EditionBROOKLYN, N.Y.—<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...The Text is plural. Which is not simply to say that it has several meanings, but that it accomplishes the very plural of meaning: an <i>irreducible</i> (and not merely an acceptable) plural. The Text is not a co-existence of meanings but a passage, an overcrossing; thus it answers not to an interpretation, even a liberal one, but to an explosion, a dissemination. The plural of the Text depends, that is, not on the ambiguity of its contents but on what might be called the <i>stereographic plurality</i> of its weave of signifiers (etymologically, the text is a tissue, a woven fabric). The reader of the Text may be compared to someone at a loose end (someone slackened off from any imaginary); this passably empty subjects strolls—it is what happened to the author of these lines, then it was that he had a vivid idea of the Text—on the side of a valley, a<i> oued</i> flowing down below (<i>oued</i> is there to bear witness to a certain feeling of unfamiliarity); what he perceives is multiple, irreducible, coming from a disconnected, heterogeneous variety of substances and perspectives: lights, colours, vegetation, heat, air, slender explosions of noises, scant cries of birds, children's voices from over on the other side, passages, gestures, clothes of inhabitants near or far away. All these <i>incidents</i> are half-identifiable: they come from codes which are known but their combination is unique, founds the stroll in a difference repeatable only as difference. So the Text: it can be it only in its difference (which does not mean its individuality), its reading is semelfactive (this rendering illusory any inductive-deductive science of texts—no "grammar" of the text) and nevertheless woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages (what language is not?), antecedent or contemporary, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The intertextual in which every text is held, it itself being the text-between of another text, is not to be confused with some origin of the text: to try to find the "sources," the "influences" of a work, is to fall in with the myth of filiation; the citations which go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet <i>already read</i>: they are quotations without inverted commas. The work has nothing disturbing for any monistic philosophy (we know that there are opposing examples of these); for such a philosophy, plural is the Evil. Against the work, therefore, the text could well take as its motto the words of the man possessed by demons (Mark 5:9): "My name is Legion: for we are many." The plural of demoniacal texture which opposes text to work can bring with it fundamental changes in reading, and precisely in areas where monologism appears to be the Law: certain of the "texts" of Holy Scripture traditionally recuperated by theological monism (historical or anagogical) will perhaps offer themselves to a diffraction of meanings (finally, that is to say, to a materialist reading), while the Marxist interpretation of works, so far resolutely monistic, will be able to materialize itself more by pluralizing itself (if, however, the Marxist "institutions" allow it).<br />
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<div style="text-align: right;">
—Roland Barthes, from "From Work to Text" in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Image-Music-Text-Roland-Barthes/dp/0374521360/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367929017&sr=8-1&keywords=image%2Fmusic%2Ftext">Image/Music/Text</a> </i>(1977)</div>
</blockquote>
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I may well be reading too much into this passage, but, in the way it suggests, through all the semiological jargon, the possibility of finding multiple meanings in a text, I see a justification of sorts of the existence of arts criticism: as an outlet for elucidating these meanings through various prisms, whether self-contained or connected to the wider world. And considering Barthes, in <i>Image/Music/Text</i>, uses a frame of cultural reference that ranges from Beethoven to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058150/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"><i>Goldfinger</i></a>, I imagine he would embrace the idea, arguably made popular a couple decades before this by those <i>Cahiers du cinéma </i>critics in the 1950s, that such a multiplicity of meanings can be found even in the most seemingly "lowbrow" of texts.<br />
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By the way, if any of you want to have your brain hardwired to look at art through a deconstructive prism of signs and signifiers, Roland Barthes—judging by this one book of his I'm still reading—is your man. It's truly mind-altering stuff, if sometimes verging on the dryly academic.Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-65388640849619195782013-04-30T09:00:00.000-04:002013-04-30T09:53:41.348-04:00Stuff I've Written in AprilBROOKLYN, N.Y.—Let's start from most recent first this time.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rRswf9LhAWk/UX_Mxi2K3DI/AAAAAAAAEvc/lKAM5qVaoXE/s1600/large_machine_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rRswf9LhAWk/UX_Mxi2K3DI/AAAAAAAAEvc/lKAM5qVaoXE/s400/large_machine_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Machine</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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New York's own Tribeca Film Festival came to an end on Sunday, and once again I was on the beat for <i>Slant Magazine</i>. I ended up writing four reviews:<br />
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<i><b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2393799/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Flex Is Kings</a> </b></i>(<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/flex-is-kings">here</a>)<br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1925435/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Frankenstein's Army</a> </i></b>(<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/frankensteins-army">here</a>)<br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1817081/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">A Case of You</a> </i></b>(<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/23/tribeca-film-festival-2013-a-case-of-you">here</a>)<br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2317225/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">The Machine</a> </i></b>(<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/25/tribeca-film-festival-2013-the-machine">here</a>)<br />
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As you can see, I was mostly underwhelmed by these four (<i>The Machine</i> was the best of the bunch, and even then I wouldn't make any grand claims for it as a great, visionary sci-fi achievement or anything); in fact, the only Tribeca Film Festival title that truly blew me away was <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2209418/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"><i>Before Midnight</i></a>, the latest in Richard Linklater's <i>Before...</i> series—and alas, I wasn't assigned to review that one (I did write <a href="http://letterboxd.com/kenjfuj/film/before-midnight/">this short Letterboxd entry</a>, though). Actually, truth is, I didn't see a whole lot of films at Tribeca this year, so I'm sure I missed a lot of potentially good stuff (especially on the non-fiction front, as I kept hearing Tribeca had a lot of great documentaries to offer this year).<br />
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Otherwise, three more non-festival reviews: <a href="http://www.inreviewonline.com/inreview/current_film/Entries/2013/4/12_To_the_Wonder_%282012%29.html">this</a> of Terrence Malick's latest film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1595656/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"><i style="font-weight: bold;">To the Wonder </i></a>(I'm firmly in the "pro" camp); <a href="http://inreviewonline.com/inreview/old_hat_blog/Entries/2013/4/19_Blurred_Impressions__Shirley_Clarkes__i_Portrait_of_Jason__i__%281967%29.html">this</a> of Shirley Clarke's recently restored 1967 documentary <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062144/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Portrait of Jason</i></a>; and <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/unmade-in-china">this</a> of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2355666/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1"><i style="font-weight: bold;">Unmade in China</i></a>, a problematic but nevertheless compelling documentary about one filmmaker's increasingly nightmarish attempts to make a movie under the ultra-controlling grip of the Communist Chinese government.<br />
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Holy crap, did I write <i>all</i> that in April? I've sure kept myself busy this past month—and that also includes editing reviews for <i>In Review Online</i> and <a href="http://letterboxd.com/kenjfuj/films/diary/">writing up shorter reviews at Letterboxd</a>! And next month is looking to be about as productive...being that I'm going to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time! Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-70766851708779636262013-04-05T09:00:00.000-04:002013-04-08T21:29:12.832-04:00RIP Roger Ebert (1942-2013)BROOKLYN, N.Y.—A titan of film criticism has truly passed.<br />
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Roger Ebert's death was especially stunning a mere two days after <a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/04/a_leave_of_presense.html">he had announced</a>, at his blog, that his cancer had returned and that he was cutting back on film reviewing. Even in the midst of such adversity, he was still writing, planning...<i>living</i>. (Fitting that he called his upcoming scale-down of activity a "leave of presence" rather than the standard "leave of absence.")<br />
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It is Ebert's thirst for life that I'll remember from reading his writing, whether related to film or not. At his best, his writing exuded an openness to fresh ideas, impressions, sensations—and really, shouldn't this be the mindset of all critic? What made Ebert arguably singular among film critics was that he was able to convey his vision of cinema and the world in prose that was both eloquent and accessible to the layperson, without the insular shackles of academic theories to constrain his reach. To him, cinema had the power to reflect and illuminate life; you don't have to go too far than his recent reviews of <i><a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110602/REVIEWS/110609998">The Tree of Life</a> </i>(with <a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/05/a_prayer_beneath_the_tree_of_l.html">this</a> as an even more illuminating corollary) and especially <a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081105/REVIEWS/811059995"><i>Synecdoche, New York</i></a> (here's <a href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/o_synecdoche_my_synecdoche.html">an addendum to it</a> that he wrote) to grasp this. But, of course, if all you know about Roger Ebert is his television show and his thumbs, then you owe it to yourself to read him in print, whether online or in his books, and really get to know the man—because at his best, he was able to merge the personal and cinematic in ways that most of us would envy.<br />
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I can't say I ever really <i>knew</i> the man personally; though I did get to meet him and shake his hand at Ebertfest two years ago, I was never bold enough to actually, you know, contact him and maintain a steady correspondence. (My heart now burns with regret for not reaching out. Missed opportunities? Story of my life.) And yet, last year, he was apparently so impressed with <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2012/08/if-i-had-a-sight-sound-film-ballot-kenji-fujishimas-top-10-films-of-all-time/">my hypothetical <i>Sight and Sound</i> list</a> for <i>The House Next Door</i> that he especially highlighted it <a href="https://twitter.com/ebertchicago/status/232140264079241217">in this tweet</a>. (My editor, Ed Gonzalez, told me that my list absolutely killed in web traffic as a result of this.) I have no idea if Ebert remembered me when he posted that or if he just really liked the list; I guess now I will never know, sadly. <br />
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There is now a huge hole left in the world of film criticism—and heck, the world in general, if the outpouring of fond remembrances when the news broke yesterday is any indication—as a result of Roger Ebert's passing. But if his writing over the years—especially his more personal essays during his cancer-ridden years in the '00s, which to my mind, constituted his best recent writing—suggests anything, it is that he would not have wanted us to dwell on the fact of his death and would instead have implored us to return to living our own lives. I will do that, Mr. Ebert, while drawing strength from the very full and rich life you led.Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-49864604821620012912013-04-04T14:00:00.000-04:002013-04-04T14:00:00.830-04:00A Self-Promotion Catch-Up of Epic ProportionsBROOKLYN, N.Y.—As many of you could tell, I indeed have been slacking mightily in keeping this blog active...but this week has been a bit of a lighter one than I expected—perhaps a welcome calm before the storm that is Tribeca Film Festival, which I'll be covering for <i>Slant Magazine</i> again this year—so now I have a bit of time to catch up on promoting things I've been writing in the past couple of months.<br />
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So let's go all the way back to January, when, over at <i>In Review Online</i>, I wrote <a href="http://inreviewonline.com/inreview/current_film/Entries/2013/1/18_Hors_Satan_(2011).html" target="_blank">this review</a> of <b style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1666168/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Hors Satan</a></b>, the latest film from French filmmaker Bruno Dumont. Good movie—maybe not quite as good as I remembered it from Toronto International Film Festival back in 2011, but still a fascinating watch.<br />
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Then came three reviews for <i>Slant Magazine</i>. The "best" of the trio, relatively speaking, was <i><b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1857913/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">The Sorcerer and the White Snake</a></b></i>, a martial-arts spectacle that didn't entirely leave me unaffected—I admit, the romance aspects sort of got to me towards the end—but which can't help but pale by comparison to the splendors its director, Ching Siu-tung, once unleashed in films like <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093978/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">A Chinese Ghost Story</a> </i>(1987) and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084924/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Duel to the Death</a> </i>(1983). You call that CGI "state-of-the-art"???<br />
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But at least I found that more passably entertaining than either the egregiously hagiographic Mumia Abu-Jamal documentary <i><b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2005276/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey With Mumia Abu-Jamal</a></b> </i>(reviewed <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/mumia-long-distance-revolutionary/6794" target="_blank">here</a>) or, worst of all, the insufferable glorified globalization sitcom <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2070597/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Shanghai Calling</a></i> (<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/shanghai-calling/6813" target="_blank">here</a>).<br />
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Later in February, I gave a second look to <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2006802/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Gebo and the Shadow</a></i>, the latest film from that seemingly ageless Portuguese auteur Manoel de Oliveira (he's 104!), and wrote <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/02/film-comment-selects-2013-gebo-and-the-shadow/" target="_blank">this</a> up over at <i>The House Next Door</i> as part of its coverage of Film Comment Selects, a local festival hosted by the renowned film magazine. If nothing else, the film offers a master class in making something truly cinematic out of the theatrical.<br />
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Fast-forward to March. I went to South by Southwest for the third year in a row! I ended up filing these five dispatches from Austin, Texas:<br />
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<i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790628/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">The Incredible Burt Wonderstone</a> </i>and <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2450186/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">V/H/S/2</a> </i>(<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/03/sxsw-2013-the-incredible-burt-wonderstone-vhs-2/">here</a>)<br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2195548/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Prince Avalanche</a></i> </b>and <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2265398/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Drinking Buddies</a></i></b> (<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/03/sxsw-2013-prince-avalanche-and-drinking-buddies/">here</a>)<br />
<i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268732/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Museum Hours</a></i> and <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2101441/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Spring Breakers</a></i></b> (<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/03/sxsw-2013-museum-hours-and-spring-breakers/">here</a>)<br />
<i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2033981/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Downloaded</a></i>, <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2670192/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Touba</a></i> and <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2473762/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Before You Know It</a></i></b> (<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/03/sxsw-2013-downloaded-touba-before-you-know-it/">here</a>)<br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2389182/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Cheap Thrills</a></i></b> (one of the worst of the festival) and <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2370248/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Short Term 12</a></i></b> (one of the best) (<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2013/03/sxsw-2013-cheap-thrills-and-short-term-12/">here</a>)<br />
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And finally, I <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/somebody-up-there-likes-me/6920">reviewed</a> Bob Byington's <i>ne plus ultra</i> of deadpan<i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>comedy <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2014346/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1">Somebody Up There Likes Me</a> </i>(no relation to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049778/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_2">the Robert Wise boxing picture with Paul Newman</a>)—a review that apparently so annoyed a certain well-known film critic with my suggestion that Byington might actually be doing something somewhat Robert Bresson-like with his style that he made an offhand dismissive comment about it <a href="http://letterboxd.com/vrizov/film/somebody-up-there-likes-me-1/" target="_blank">in this comment thread</a> at the film site Letterboxd. I'll, um, take it as a compliment that I engendered some kind of reaction, however contemptuous. (As for whether I'm just full of shit, well, you should just watch the film for yourselves and decide.)<br />
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Speaking of Letterboxd: In between <i>not</i> blogging here and handling all the other crap in my life (occasional existential crises included), I've become rather addicted to the site's capabilities of allowing one to keep track and log reviews of films you watch. So if you all want to know what I've been watching since the beginning of this year, <a href="http://letterboxd.com/kenjfuj/" target="_blank">check out my profile</a> and explore...because who knows if I'm ever going to revive that consumption-log thing I used to do?Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-53633049932493827432013-04-01T09:00:00.000-04:002013-04-01T09:46:46.988-04:00White Elephant Blogathon 2013: A Hidden Treasure in the (Avocado) JungleBROOKLYN, N.Y.—<i>[This is my contribution to the White Elephant Blogathon. What is the White Elephant Blogathon, you may be wondering? Well, remember <a href="http://mylife24fps.blogspot.com/2012/04/white-elephant-blogathon-2012-prey-ing.html" target="_blank">this</a> from last year, on this same date? Hopefully you get the idea.]</i><br />
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A few weeks ago in Austin, Texas, during this year’s South by Southwest film festival, I saw a documentary called <i>Rewind This!</i>, a loving tribute to the VHS format especially during its prime in the 1980s. But wait, I said to myself going into the screening: VHS has been widely recognized to be an inferior format as far as visual quality goes. Why should we be nostalgic about it if DVDs and Blu-rays have been demonstrated to be superior home-video formats? But the film’s director, Josh Johnson, offered at least one persuasive reason for not completely tossing the medium overboard just yet: With major studios now exercising near-total control over what films make it to the new digital formats, there is the strong possibility that a lot of hidden treasures will get lost in the shuffle, maybe forever. After all, silent masterpieces like Erich von Stroheim’s <i>Greed</i> and King Vidor’s <i>The Crowd</i> still have yet to make it to standard-definition DVD, much less high-definition Blu-ray—but of course, there are far less widely celebrated films that are facing the threat of biting the dust with the end of the popularity of VHS.</div>
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I couldn’t help but think of <i>Rewind This!</i> as I watched my White Elephant blogathon assignment this year, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094834/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank"><i><b>Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death</b></i></a> (1989). Here’s a direct-to-video item that one would expect to be little more than curiosity for VHS fetishists by now—so imagine my surprise when I finally sit down and watch it…and discover myself not only enjoying it immensely, but finding something legitimately worth talking about (and you bet I’ll be doing so below). Granted, this film, for some odd reason, actually <i>did</i> make it into the DVD ranks; that’s how I watched it, after all. But if this is an indication of the kind of sneakily intelligent visions that can exist even in direct-to-video material—well, one can only imagine the kinds of films of this sort that <i>aren’t</i> making it to digital formats.<br />
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And yes, I do mean “sneakily intelligent” when it comes to <i>Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death</i>, which credits a “J.D. Athens” as its writer/director, but which is in fact the writing/directing debut of J.F. Lawton, the man who would soon afterward be best known as the screenwriter of Hollywood hits like <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100405/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Pretty Woman</a></i>(1990) and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105690/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Under Siege</a></i>(1992). In <i>Cannibal Women</i>, one can already see bits of the underlying social concerns of Lawton’s <i>Pretty Woman</i> script allied with the kind of refreshing sense of the absurd that made <i>Under Siege</i> far more entertaining than it had to be. <br />
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With the presence of former Playboy centerfold (and soon-to-be erotic thriller queen) Shannon Tweed in the cast, one would expect this film to feature all sorts of gratuitous female nudity…and Lawton obliges us in the film’s first five minutes, as two guys lost in the titular avocado jungle encounter, to the vocal delight of one of the guys, a bunch of scantily clad women—some of them more topless than other<b>s—</b>washing themselves in a waterfall. But then, one of the women fires a couple of arrows and kills one of the men, and then the rest of the women pursue the other guy into one of their traps. Here, in miniature, is an encapsulation of the kind of purposeful overturning of viewer expectations, especially when it comes to the so-called “male gaze,” that <i>Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death</i> gleefully engages in throughout. Perhaps the biggest subversive element of all: Shannon Tweed never, ever gets naked in this film.<br />
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Instead, she plays, believe it or not, an academic: Dr. Margo Hunt, a women’s studies professor with a strong anti-male bent. She’s recruited by a couple of government officials, with the coercive help of her college dean, to track down a tribe of “piranha women”—a bunch of extreme feminists who capture, cook and eat men with guacamole dip—at the edge of the avocado jungles in San Bernardino, Calif. Dr. Hunt develops her own personal interest in the mission when she discovers that a celebrity feminist scholar named Dr. Kurtz (horror scream queen Adrienne Barbeau) recently disappeared, presumably at the hands of these piranha women. One of Dr. Hunt’s students, a ditz named Bunny (Karen Mistal) who says she wants to learn how to be an independent woman, accompanies her on this adventure…and later on, these two are joined by Jim (Bill Maher—yes, <i>that</i> Bill Maher, of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108897/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Politically Incorrect</a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0350448/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_4" target="_blank">Real Time</a></i> fame), an alpha male who was once Dr. Hunt’s boyfriend before she broke it off.<br />
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Reading that brief plot summary is bound to inspire lots of raised “are you kidding me with this movie?” eyebrows…but one of the more disarming things about <i>Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death</i> is the realization that Lawton knows how silly all of this is and proceeds to have fun with it. This film practically overflows with comic grace notes: the two government officials who go by the names “Ford Maddox” (as in writer Ford Madox Ford) and “Col. Mattel;” a tribe of emasculated men named Donahues (as in talk-show host Phil) whose vocabulary consists entirely of either “Alan Alda,” “Mark Harmon” or “Walter Mondale;” gender-war-inflected parodies of <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_4" target="_blank">2001: A Space Odyssey</a></i> (to tie in with the Donahues triumphantly locating their inner macho men) and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Apocalypse Now</a> </i>(this film’s version of Col. Kurtz’s “the horror” lies not in the atrocities of war, but in the prospect of facing David Letterman on the talk-show circuit with a book about male insensitivity). That’s really just the tip of iceberg.<br />
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Perhaps most surprising about <i>Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death</i>, however, is the realization that there is actually a <i>vision</i> underneath the breezy surface frivolity. Granted, Lawton presents a broadly cartoonish vision of the battle of the sexes here, with Shannon Tweed’s bespectacled ultra-feminist college professor pitted against a slew of macho caricatures—not just former boyfriend Jim (whose chauvinism is frequently subverted by his own slapstick pratfalls), but also Ford Maddox and Col. Mattel, both of whom want to relocate the piranha women to “reservations” in Malibu that will no doubt anesthetize their feminist leanings in a wave of numbing domesticity; and three brutish action-hero types—a crazed Vietnam vet, a samurai and a wrestler—she encounters at a bar, all of whom slink away in cowardly fashion when they realize she’s going after the piranha women. (This, Dr. Hunt concludes, is proof that the threat of a strong woman is the one thing that punctures their male machismo.)<br />
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But Lawton doesn’t just reserve his burlesques for those feverishly macho types; he’s a classic equal-opportunity offender, it turns out. The aptly named Bunny, for instance, is ridiculed for wholeheartedly embracing the objectifying male gaze, despite the lip service she offers about desiring feminist enlightenment. Later on, though, even the extreme feminists come in for comic ribbing, most notably in a late plot twist in which it is revealed that the piranha women are also engaged in a battle of their own—an ideological one with so-called “barracuda women,” who, Dr. Hunt discovers to her horror, <i>aren’t</i> so much against the more extreme feminism of the piranha women as they are against their choice of <i>dip</i> on the men they cook and eat (they prefer clam dip).<br />
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Throughout the film, Dr. Hunt stands as the voice of reason amidst a sea of gender-war insanity, the outspoken but level-headed academic who prefers consciousness-raising over radicalism—and Lawton seems to align with that mindset. It’s because of his commitment to a more moderate brand of feminism that he manages to get away with the most potentially problematic late development with her character: her love-at-first-sight attraction toward Jean-Pierre (Brett Stimely), a to-be-sacrificial lamb of the piranha women that she meets at their compound. In the context of a world in which men are either chauvinists or wimps, Jean-Pierre represents the “perfect” man: one who exudes a brand of masculinity that is tempered with sensitive and intelligent impulses (he learned a bit of English from listening to Dr. Kurtz and audibly laments about how the piranha women value men not for smarts but only for their muscle tone). Dr. Hunt—who earlier had been complaining to Bunny about how her feminist beliefs have had the unfortunate side effect of leaving her unable to make any romantic commitments—finds in Jean-Pierre the man she has perhaps been looking for all her life; naturally, her convictions are strengthened when he ends up being the one rescuing her from doom at the hands of the piranha women at a crucial juncture. By the end of the film, Jean-Pierre is now enrolled in Dr. Hunt’s class, and teacher and student appear to be carrying on an affair. Is the movie going a conservative route in suggesting that all Dr. Hunt needed was the right man after all? I’m more inclined to give Lawton the benefit of the doubt that perhaps this was his way of acknowledging that hardcore political ideology can’t always account for matters of the heart. <br />
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Who knew a film with a title like <i>Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death</i> could not only be often genuinely funny, but also somewhat politically intelligent as well? Who knew such a film would actually have thematic ideas worth grappling with? It’s heartening to know that the world of cinema can still offer up surprises, no matter how long one has been immersed in it.Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-58369922269883979362013-02-23T09:00:00.000-05:002013-02-23T09:00:01.537-05:00Abbas Kiarostami and The Photographer's GazeBROOKLYN, N.Y.—Yes yes, I know, I've been neglecting this blog for about a month and half now. With the combination of my Wall Street Journal day job, my <i>In Review Online</i> editor-in-chief duties, and some unexpected personal stuff (I won't go into much detail about it here except to say that it was basically a sadly short-lived romance), such neglect was bound to happen. Yesterday, though, I was struck by something I saw at work, and I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to articulate my thoughts and feelings about that something in a mere 140 characters on Twitter...so here I am.<br />
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This image was on the front page of Friday's Wall Street Journal Asia edition:<br />
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Now, I see photos like this pretty often not only in the pages of the Journal, but in many other forms of news media, print, online or otherwise. I suppose you could say I've become somewhat numb to the suffering such photographs portray. And yet somehow, this one hit me a lot harder than I expected when I saw it at work on Thursday.<br />
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It wasn't simply the grief inscribed in the woman's crying face that got to me, though. Look at how the photographer seems to have pointed his/her camera lens directly at this woman's face. There's no escaping her heartache; we're forced to stare right back at it and confront it, without any obstructive artiness to distance us from the raw emotion of the moment. As I kept staring at this photograph, I couldn't help but wonder: What was the <i>photographer</i> thinking when taking this shot at this straight-ahead angle. Was the photographer as shaken by this as I was? <br />
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Not that that really matters in the long run; the photographer got the shot, and there you go. But about a week ago, I finally saw Abbas Kiarostami's 1999 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209463/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank"><i>The Wind Will Carry Us</i></a> at Film Society of Lincoln Center's recent complete retrospective of the great Iranian filmmaker, and couldn't help but think of Behzad Dourani, the photographer at the heart of the film, when contemplating the photograph above. In the film, Behzad is a man so devoted to his craft that he basically camps out in a remote Iranian village waiting for a particular individual to die just so he can snap a few shots of townspeople in the midst of funeral rites. Sounds callous, right? And the Behzad that's presented in the film isn't always easy to read; mostly, we see him coolly observing and reacting rather than emoting. Kiarostami, however, doesn't go for simplistic moralizing; his approach to storytelling and characterization is too patient, elliptical and exploratory for us to pass easy judgment on Behzad. <i>The Wind Will Carry Us</i> gradually reveals itself to be partly a meditation on the distance between an artist and his subject, and as such I couldn't help but think about Behzad as I gazed at that picture above.<br />
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At the very end of the film, Behzad—in his car, all by himself, camera in hand—snaps the photographs for which he came in the first place and simply drives away...and Kiarostami refuses to follow him, leaving us to wonder what might be going through his mind as he makes his exit. We've seen Behzad, during the course of the film, make gestures toward developing a kind of affection toward the town and its inhabitants, to the point where he's even desperately summoning townspeople to come help a villager who has fallen into a hole. Does that sense of emotional involvement and human empathy end for some photographers when they wield their cameras and snap their precious shots? Maybe that photograph above is as much implicative of the photographer's gaze as it is of our own.Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-9532678159057418282013-01-07T18:00:00.000-05:002013-01-07T18:00:07.360-05:00Celebrities Are People Too, You Know!NEW YORK—<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wn3u1uFbOdM/UOtMkTVMIyI/AAAAAAAAEpg/yGgNUdz_CMU/s1600/sellebrity_xlg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wn3u1uFbOdM/UOtMkTVMIyI/AAAAAAAAEpg/yGgNUdz_CMU/s400/sellebrity_xlg.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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Or, at least, that's one idea that celebrity photographer Kevin Mazur wants us to take away from his debut documentary feature <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258233/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">$ellebrity</a></i>, which I reviewed for <i>Slant Magazine </i><a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/ellebrity/6764" target="_blank">here</a>. There's more to the film than that, but for me, that's the thread that comes through most strongly. My inner humanist finds a certain value in a film that expresses such a sentiment...but considering the way Mazur seems to pin as much blame on the general public for fostering paparazzi culture as he does on the vulture-like photographers themselves (but oh, not him, <i>surely</i> not him), I have a feeling that he wasn't exactly working from a humanist perspective himself. Still, the film has its, uh, useful qualities; it's, at the very least, a slightly more interesting film than I was expecting going in.Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-26606890812290354282013-01-07T08:00:00.000-05:002013-01-07T08:00:16.080-05:00Artistic Consumption Log, Dec. 31, 2012 - Jan. 6, 2013BROOKLYN, N.Y.—This was a fairly light week in artistic consumption, and attendant earth-shattering revelations were kept to a minimum. The closest I came to such an experience was with Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1971 adaptation of <i>The Decameron</i>, the opening panel of his so-called "Trilogy of Life." Actually, "life" could be one way to suggest the scope of Pasolini's film underlying the deceptive lightness of touch; many of the episodes in this unabashedly episodic film may deal with matters of flesh and spirit—but really, broadly speaking, isn't "flesh" and "spirit" the two things that make up all human existence, more or less? Pasolini's film feels like the work of a filmmaker who, taking off from Boccaccio's source material, wanted to cram in everything he had on his mind regarding sex, love, religion, class differences and art into this one film; the result is consistently surprising, endlessly playful, often irreverently funny but not without moments of darkness to puncture the frothy, airy surface at certain points. But hey, that's just how life itself is like, right?<i> </i>I wish I had been able to see the other two films in Pasolini's triptych, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067647/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">The Canterbury Tales</a> </i>(1972) and <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071502/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_2" target="_blank">Arabian Nights</a> </i>(1974), this weekend at Museum of Modern Art...but thankfully, in this case, it's the Criterion Collection <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Trilogy-Decameron-Canterbury-Criterion-Collection/dp/B008Y5OWKW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357530622&sr=8-1&keywords=trilogy+of+life" target="_blank">to the rescue</a>!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3GfHD_1tZ0g/UOpFG0yFgBI/AAAAAAAAEoo/alW6BlrQ9-o/s1600/large+the+decameron+blu-ray4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3GfHD_1tZ0g/UOpFG0yFgBI/AAAAAAAAEoo/alW6BlrQ9-o/s1600/large+the+decameron+blu-ray4.jpg" height="215" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Decameron </i>(1971)</td></tr>
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<b>Films</b></div>
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<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057940/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Cheyenne Autumn</a></i> (1964, John Ford), seen at Walter Reade Theater in New York</b><br />
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</b> <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258233/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">$ellebrity</a></i> (2012, Kevin Mazur), seen via screener link at home in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
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★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065622/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">The Decameron</a></i> (1971, Pier Paolo Pasolini), seen at Museum of Modern Art in New York</b><br />
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<b>Music</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/apollo-atmospheres-amp-soundtracks-mw0000189935" target="_blank">Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks</a> </i>(1983, Brian Eno)</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-pearl-mw0000189937" target="_blank">The Pearl</a></i> (1984, Brian Eno)</b></div>
Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-69886193432700241542013-01-03T08:30:00.000-05:002013-01-03T08:30:03.280-05:00Catching Up on Promoting MyselfBROOKLYN, N.Y.—Oh man, I've got a <i>lot</i> of catching up to do in regard to self-promotion on this blog!<br />
<br />
For much of my November and December, I found myself consumed by balancing my <i>Wall Street Journal</i> day job with my <i>In Review Online</i> editor-in-chief duties, which in December including trying to organize an end-of-year cinema wrap-up. Now 2013 is finally here, all of that is done, and I can finally focus on other things. Behold the end result of all my duties <a href="http://inreviewonline.com/inreview/home/Entries/2012/12/30_Year_in_Review_2012_-_Top_20_Films.html" target="_blank">here</a>! (Thank you to all my writers at InRO for helping me pull this off!)<br />
<br />
As a contributor to <i>Slant Magazine</i>, I also contributed to that site's end-of-year movies feature with a short blurb about my favorite film of 2012, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1748122/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Moonrise Kingdom</a></i>. Click <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/feature/the-25-best-films-of-2012/342" target="_blank">here</a> to check out the whole shebang (Wes Anderson's film placed at No. 10). Oh, and speaking of <i>Moonrise Kingdom</i>, listen to me basically re-read my <i>Slant </i>blurb for Peter Labuza's <i>Cinephiliacs</i> podcast at some point during <a href="http://www.thecinephiliacs.net/2012/12/special-episode-our-favorite-films-of.html" target="_blank">this most recent two-part end-of-year wrap-up episode</a>.<br />
<br />
Amidst all this, I still somehow managed to write some film reviews! Let's start with a couple of negligible items, both of them for <i>Slant Magazine</i>: that of Darragh Byrne's completely forgettable Irish drama starring Colm Meaney named <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1571409/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Parked</a> </i>(review <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/parked/6703" target="_blank">here</a>) and Antonino D'Ambrosio's marginally more engaging documentary about the rise of punk entitled <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1943747/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Let Fury Have the Hour</a></i> (see <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/let-fury-have-the-hour/6736" target="_blank">here</a>).<br />
<br />
Over at <i>Slant</i>'s sister blog <i>The House Next Door</i>, I penned <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2012/11/doc-nyc-2012-far-out-isnt-far-enough-the-tomi-ungerer-story/" target="_blank">this review</a> of Brad Bernstein's <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1974254/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_2" target="_blank">Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story</a></i>, which screened during the DOC NYC festival here in New York in early November. I didn't love the film, but I wouldn't necessarily discourage anyone from seeing it whenever it receives a proper theatrical release; its interview subject—a cartoonist who pushed the boundaries of taste with his illustrations in the '60s and eventually got ostracized for his fidelity to his vision—is, if nothing else, an endlessly fascinating personality to witness onscreen.<br />
<br />
Speaking of documentaries, I made <a href="http://www.inreviewonline.com/inreview/current_film/Entries/2012/11/22_The_Central_Park_Five_%282012%29.html" target="_blank">my first proper review</a> at <i>In Review Online</i> that of <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2380247/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">The Central Park Five</a></i>, Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon's often scalding chronicle of the institutional and personal injustices that befell five black New York City youths as they were sentenced for a horrific gang rape in 1989 in Central Park that they did not commit. It's an entirely honorable and sometimes incisive picture and definitely worth seeing, though I would hesitate to call it a great one (if only Spike Lee had handled this material instead of the ever-respectable Ken Burns...).<br />
<br />
For my second review to date at InRO, however, I took on one of the biggest films of 2012: Kathryn Bigelow's much-lauded search-for-Bin Laden chronicle <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Zero Dark Thirty</a></i>. Let's just say, I'm not entirely on board with the near-universal praise this film has been getting. You can read my ambivalent take on it <a href="http://www.inreviewonline.com/inreview/current_film/Entries/2012/12/19_Zero_Dark_Thirty_%282012%29.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
And I think that's it for catching up. Here's to more great films and film writing in the new year!Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-17256640527030414302013-01-02T14:30:00.000-05:002013-01-02T14:30:01.657-05:00Artistic Consumption Log, Dec. 24, 2012 - Dec. 30, 2012NEW YORK—Happy New Year, everybody! I hope you all had a good one!<br />
<br />
I suppose I should make a New Year's resolution to do a better job of keeping up with these weekly artistic consumption logs—and heck, even this whole blog in general—than I've done in the past couple of months or so. But I'm pretty sure that is a resolution that I will eventually break. I'll try my damnedest, however!<br />
<br />
Anyway, my highlights of this particular week in artistic consumption came courtesy of that German-American Romantic Ernst Lubitsch—<i>Ninotchka </i>especially (having Greta Garbo at the top of her form as well as Billy Wilder's endlessly witty and layered dialogue sure helps, apparently). Just about everything you want to know about what interests me in cinema, as in life—specifically, the intersection between cold logic and warm emotion, and the ways both intersect and enrich each other—can be seen in this 1939 comic masterpiece.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9LC8_s4jmpw/UOSBaS8JUCI/AAAAAAAAEnw/3sYzISJHfug/s1600/n2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9LC8_s4jmpw/UOSBaS8JUCI/AAAAAAAAEnw/3sYzISJHfug/s400/n2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ninotchka</i> (1939)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Films</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033045/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">The Shop Around the Corner</a></i> (1940, Ernst Lubitsch), seen on Turner Classic Movies at home in East Brunswick, N.J.</b><br />
★<b> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031725/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank"><i>Ninotchka</i></a> (1939, Ernst Lubitsch), seen at Film Forum in New York </b><br />
<b><br />
</b> <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853728/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Django Unchained</a> </i>(2012, Quentin Tarantino), seen at AMC Bridgewater Commons in Bridgewater, N.J. <i>[second viewing]</i></b><br />
<br />
★ <i><b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2011953/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Keep the Lights On</a> </b></i><b>(2012, Ira Sachs), seen via screener link at home in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125490/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Detropia</a></i> (2012, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady), seen at IFC Center in New York</b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Music</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★<b style="font-weight: bold;"> <i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/ambient-vol-2-the-plateaux-of-mirror-mw0000650122" target="_blank">Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror</a> </i>(1980, Harold Budd/Brian Eno)</b><br />
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/my-life-in-the-bush-of-ghosts-mw0000651183" target="_blank">My Life in the Bush of Ghosts</a> </i>(1981, Brian Eno/David Byrne)</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★<b style="font-weight: bold;"> <i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/ambient-4-on-land-mw0000189816" target="_blank">Ambient 4: On Land</a> </i>(1982, Brian Eno)</b><b> </b> </div>
Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-76070477131101719072012-12-26T09:00:00.000-05:002012-12-26T09:00:04.758-05:00(Another Supersized) Artistic Consumption Log, Dec. 10, 2012 - Dec. 23, 2012EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—I'm not going to bother apologizing for the extreme lateness this time. Life...you know. Perhaps needless to say, the log below will be barebones.<br />
<br />
Anyway, hope you all had a great holiday yesterday! I, for one, am actually rather dreading having to force myself to get back into the daily grind after two days, more or less, of just sitting around and doing <i>nada</i>. Wish me luck...<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BSJnrKuQPpE/UNnI3eLq5KI/AAAAAAAAEmg/xvU4D7qwRKg/s1600/the-perks-of-being-a-wallflower-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BSJnrKuQPpE/UNnI3eLq5KI/AAAAAAAAEmg/xvU4D7qwRKg/s400/the-perks-of-being-a-wallflower-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Perks of Being a Wallflower</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Films</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1659337/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">The Perks of Being a Wallflower</a></i> (2012, Stephen Chbosky), seen on screener at home in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
<b><br />
</b> ★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045658/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Silver Linings Playbook</a></i> (2012, David O. Russell), seen at Angelika Film Center in New York</b><br />
<b><br />
</b> <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903624/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_4" target="_blank">The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey</a></i> (2012, Peter Jackson), seen at AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 in New York</b><br />
<b><br />
</b> <br />
★ <b><i><a href="http://ahomefaraway.com/en" target="_blank">A Home Far Away</a></i> (2012, Peter Entell), seen on screener at home in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YOZbXmJgTlg/UNnJRy4YXdI/AAAAAAAAEms/r-bix6WoLOM/s1600/Brian+Eno+-+Music+For+Airports+(Ambient+%231)+-+Front.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="398" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YOZbXmJgTlg/UNnJRy4YXdI/AAAAAAAAEms/r-bix6WoLOM/s400/Brian+Eno+-+Music+For+Airports+(Ambient+%231)+-+Front.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Music</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/before-and-after-science-mw0000193718" target="_blank">Before and After Science</a> </i>(1977, Brian Eno)</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/music-for-films-mw0000189936" target="_blank">Music for Films</a></i> (1978, Brian Eno)</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b><i> <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/after-the-heat-mw0000180809" target="_blank">After the Heat</a></i> (1978, Brian Eno/Moebius/Hans-Joachim Roedelius)</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/ambient-1-music-for-airports-mw0000193717" target="_blank">Ambient 1: Music for Airports</a> </i>(1978, Brian Eno)</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MKeC9691Px8/UNnJ8GLi9uI/AAAAAAAAEm0/PPb7BmpRo1Y/s1600/a-scene-from-les-troyens-photo-by-marty-sohl-met-opera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MKeC9691Px8/UNnJ8GLi9uI/AAAAAAAAEm0/PPb7BmpRo1Y/s400/a-scene-from-les-troyens-photo-by-marty-sohl-met-opera.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Les Troyens</i> at the Metropolitan Opera House</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b>Theater</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b><br />
</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b><i><a href="http://www.universitysettlement.org/us/news/PerformanceProject/2012-2013_performance_calendar/your_day_is_my_night_live_perfor/" target="_blank">Your Day is My Night</a> </i>(2012, Lynne Sachs), seen at University Settlement in New York</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b><br />
</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">★ <b><i><a href="http://www.metoperafamily.org/opera/troyens-berlioz-tickets.aspx" target="_blank">Les Troyens</a> </i>(1858, Hector Berlioz), seen at Metropolitan Opera House in New York</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b><br />
</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">★ <b><i><a href="http://www.bam.org/music/2012/where-we-live" target="_blank">Where (we) Live</a></i> (2012, Sō Percussion), seen at Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b></span></div>
Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-60865212438186862312012-12-12T09:00:00.000-05:002012-12-12T09:00:08.988-05:00(Supersized) Artistic Consumption Log, Nov. 26, 2012 - Dec. 9, 2012BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Well, I'm pretty sure I <i>have</i> published two-week artistic consumption logs before, so it's not like this is without precedent...<br />
<br />
Some day, 2012 movie catch-up will end. (Over the past weekend, I turned in one ballot, and I have two more to submit before the year is out—not to mention the year-end wrap-up I'm planning for <i><a href="http://inreviewonline.com/inreview/home/home.html" target="_blank">In Review Online</a></i>.)<br />
<br />
Oh, and if any of you are wondering why I haven't put a recommending star next to <i>Zero Dark Thirty</i>—well, no, I'm not especially enthusiastic about it, in stark contrast to seemingly every critics' group that has bestowed Best Picture honors to Kathryn Bigelow's latest action epic. Are we looking at the next Best Picture Oscar winner? In any case, I'm planning to explain the sources of my resistance over at <i>In Review Online</i> soon.<br />
<br />
Until then...well, below is a barebones overview of all the art I've consumed in the past two weeks.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8ZNVwUYqHc0/UMe6iZWY0II/AAAAAAAAElY/qP5_BKtZnfg/s1600/vlcsnap_2012_10_21_04h27m58s21_large.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="215" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8ZNVwUYqHc0/UMe6iZWY0II/AAAAAAAAElY/qP5_BKtZnfg/s400/vlcsnap_2012_10_21_04h27m58s21_large.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Vamps</i> (2012)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Films</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2055711/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Photographic Memory</a></i> (2011, Ross McElwee), seen on screener in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2190367/" target="_blank">Neighboring Sounds</a></i> (2012, Kleber Medonça Filho), seen on screener in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/" target="_blank">Zero Dark Thirty</a></i> (2012, Kathryn Bigelow), seen at Director's Guild Theater in New York</b><br />
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1650453/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">I Wish</a></i> (2011, Hirokazu Kore-eda), seen on screener in New York</b><br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443272/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_2" target="_blank">Lincoln</a></i> (2012, Steven Spielberg), seen at Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1545106/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1" target="_blank">Vamps</a></i> (2012, Amy Heckerling), seen on screener in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1943747/" target="_blank">Let Fury Have the Hour</a></i> (2012, Antonino D'Ambrosio), seen on screener in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853728/" target="_blank">Django Unchained</a></i> (2012, Quentin Tarantino), seen at Academy Theater at Lighthouse International in New York</b><br />
<b><br />
</b> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NzHcKdL_RGE/UMe62_T4DqI/AAAAAAAAElg/_rWah2RVPeU/s1600/tumblr_mdyqhlIxW11qzlxiyo1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NzHcKdL_RGE/UMe62_T4DqI/AAAAAAAAElg/_rWah2RVPeU/s400/tumblr_mdyqhlIxW11qzlxiyo1_1280.jpg" width="398" /></a></div>
<b><br />
</b> <br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Music</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/here-come-the-warm-jets-mw0000650121" target="_blank">Here Come the Warm Jets</a></i> (1974, Brian Eno)</b><br />
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/taking-tiger-mountain-by-strategy-mw0000193719" target="_blank">Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) </a></i>(1974, Brian Eno)</b><br />
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/another-green-world-mw0000650120" target="_blank">Another Green World</a></i> (1975, Brian Eno)</b><br />
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/discreet-music-mw0000196896" target="_blank">Discreet Music</a></i> (1976, Brian Eno)</b><br />
<b><br />
</b> <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w73LJK6GapE/UMe8BeMEfbI/AAAAAAAAElo/8tEA7zfJcs0/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w73LJK6GapE/UMe8BeMEfbI/AAAAAAAAElo/8tEA7zfJcs0/s400/photo.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The set of the latest Signature Theatre Co. production of <i>The Piano Lesson</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Theater</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.signaturetheatre.org/tickets/production.aspx?pid=2350" target="_blank">Golden Child</a></i> (1998, David Henry Hwang), seen live at Pershing Square Signature Center in New York</b><br />
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.signaturetheatre.org/tickets/production.aspx?pid=2371" target="_blank">The Piano Lesson</a> </i>(1990, August Wilson), seen live at Pershing Square Signature Center in New York</b><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="300.9375" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ib4SiDWo398" width="535"></iframe><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br />
</b> <b>Art</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.armoryonpark.org/programs_events/detail/ann_hamilton/" target="_blank">the event of a thread</a></i> (2012, Ann Hamilton), seen at Park Avenue Armory in New York</b></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-31019435671612848382012-11-28T18:00:00.000-05:002012-11-28T18:00:01.948-05:00Artistic Consumption Log, Nov. 19, 2012 - Nov. 25, 2012BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Sorry for the tardiness with this latest artistic consumption log...and, as you will all see below, sorry in advance for the lack of usual critical commentary. Thanks to a review I had to write for <i>Slant Magazine</i> this week (I'll post a link to it on this blog later on) plus <i>In Review Online</i>-related duties—not to mention, you know, Thanksgiving—I found precious little time to give this log the fuller treatment I usually give these kinds of posts. It's quite possible that you may see more of these barebones logs, too, as end-of-the-year film-roundup responsibilities look to be keeping me busy for the next few weeks, at least. But I'll make a more concerted effort to post future logs on Monday, as I usually do.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Oea9LT0BLrg/ULaPc9DRCWI/AAAAAAAAEkk/vfRMEqNu5hY/s1600/affiche-L-Homme-au-complet-blanc-The-Man-in-the-White-Suit-1951-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Oea9LT0BLrg/ULaPc9DRCWI/AAAAAAAAEkk/vfRMEqNu5hY/s400/affiche-L-Homme-au-complet-blanc-The-Man-in-the-White-Suit-1951-3.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Man in the White Suit</i> (1951)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Films</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044876/" target="_blank">The Man in the White Suit</a> </i>(1951, Alexander Mackendrick), seen at Film Forum in New York</b><br />
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062043/" target="_blank">A Man Vanishes</a></i> (1967, Shohei Imamura), seen at Anthology Film Archives in New York</b><br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1571409/" target="_blank">Parked</a></i> (2010, Darragh Byrne), seen on screener DVD at home in East Brunswick, N.J.</b><br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234719/" target="_blank">Red Dawn</a> </i>(2011, Dan Bradley), seen at Regal Commerce Center Stadium 18 in North Brunswick, N.J.</b><br />
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1781769/" target="_blank">Anna Karenina</a></i> (2012, Joe Wright), seen on screener DVD at home in East Brunswick, N.J.</b><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Music</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/substance-mw0000191190" target="_blank">Substance</a></i> (1987, New Order)</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Theater</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
★ <b><i><a href="http://virginiawoolfbroadway.com/" target="_blank">Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?</a> </i>(1962, Edward Albee), seen live at The Booth Theatre in New York</b>Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-36496117123158993402012-11-20T09:00:00.000-05:002012-11-20T09:00:13.136-05:00Artistic Consumption Log, Nov. 12, 2012 - Nov. 18, 2012: "Dominated By Experimental Theater" EditionBROOKLYN, N.Y.—This past week was the first one in which I tackled editor-in-chief duties at <i>In Review Online</i>, so much of my time was consumed by that. For that reason, I ended up not seeing too many movies—thus leaving it open for two startling pieces of experimental theater to pick up the artistic-consumption slack.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-stuRd9nYhiM/UKozQkpdsxI/AAAAAAAAEis/dOFx0BvZLHY/s1600/samsara_poster_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-stuRd9nYhiM/UKozQkpdsxI/AAAAAAAAEis/dOFx0BvZLHY/s1600/samsara_poster_large.jpg" height="400" width="272" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Films</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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★ <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770802/" target="_blank"><i><b>Samsara</b></i></a><b> (2011, Ron Fricke), seen on DVD at home in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
As was the case with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103767/" target="_blank"><i>Baraka</i></a> (1992), Ron Fricke's previous globe-trotting documentary epic, <i>Samsara</i> is an often astonishing mix of the profound and the facile. Ultimately, though, I think this follow-up cuts much deeper than its predecessor. It's still "a mile wide," still grounded in travelogue-like glimpses of exotic and modern cultures in its grand 70mm imagery. Instead of cheesy "we are one" sentiments, however, <i>Samsara</i> hones in on more specific, if no less broad, themes: life, death, birth, destruction, the differences between civilizations past and present. (Its opening pre-credits scenes lay out the whole movie, more or less: an exotic dance, an exploding volcano, an embryo, a preserved corpse.) Fricke is still as shallow as ever when it comes to trying to actually tackle human beings, especially in modern society: Its time-lapse footage of humans in assembly lines and wide shots of neon-lit city landscapes inspire a not-especially-revelatory sense of mechanized dread. (You can't get more clichéd, for instance, than that one cheap shot of morbidly obese American fast-food consumers downing their food—as if that was meant to represent the decline of Western civilization or something.) Once again, though, the Eisensteinian montage saves him, situating these momentary failures of taste and empathy in a more resonant wider context, as merely one piece of a larger societal/historical quilt. The sheer amount of food for thought that <i>Samsara</i> inspires in addition to its expected visual wonder is mind-boggling; one viewing is hardly enough to unpack it all. <br />
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★<b> <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2380247/" target="_blank">The Central Park Five</a> </i>(2012, Ken Burns/Sarah Burns/David McMahon), seen at SVA Theater in New York</b><br />
Here's another documentary I saw this past week, one that's far less aesthetically ambitious than <i>Samsara </i>but no less thought-provoking. I'm reviewing this for <i>In Review Online</i> (and since I'm the new editor-in-chief of that site, this is something I expressly <i>chose</i> to tackle) so you can read more about it when that piece goes up (by Friday, hopefully, when it starts a theatrical run at IFC Center here in New York). In spite of some regrettable pulled punches, it's worth your time, for sure.<b> </b><br />
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<b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1024648/" target="_blank"><i>Argo</i></a> (2012, Ben Affleck), seen at Director's Guild Theater in New York</b><br />
This is an entertaining thriller that one could also point to as a classic illustration of "This is why they hate us." It doesn't matter who "they" are in the viewpoint of a certain kind of self-absorbed American mindset; "they" are all just grist for a cinematic adventure of boy's-own derring-do. That's fine in, say, a big-budget Hollywood action blockbuster that doesn't pretend to allude to any recognizable real world. But when "they" are angry Iranians in the midst of a real-life event—the Iran hostage crisis, in this case—then it becomes rather more problematic. Granted, <i>Argo</i> does make brief gestures toward acknowledging U.S. involvement in getting some of its own into this particularly ugly situation, mostly through a few tossed-off lines of Aaron Sorkin-like "witty" dialogue and a half-animated opening sequence giving all of us a speedy overview of the history of U.S. involvement in Iran—all of which suggest a political complexity that is quickly brushed aside to focus on a mere sidebar to the main crisis: the rescue of six Americans from the Canadian embassy through a cock-eyed scheme involving the production of a fake Hollywood science-fiction epic. Though Ben Affleck never quite shamelessly overcooks the suspense like, say, Kevin Macdonald did in the gag-inducing finale of another based-on-true-events thriller <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455590/" target="_blank"><i>The Last King of Scotland</i></a>, the unexamined racist mechanisms are still basically the same: The Iranians become the implicitly villainous "other" preventing these six Americans, plus dour CIA "exfiltrator" Tony Mendez (Affleck, as stiff as ever), from their heroic escape. And what of those 52 hostages that remained in captivity for 444 days from 1979-'81? Well, you know, recreating a fictionalized version of <i>that </i>story and maybe exploring its political ramifications isn't nearly as "exciting" as being able to throw in tired jabs at the business of Hollywood in the midst of a story with a more uplifting ending.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lHqPP12MHnA/UKsH8AnrjTI/AAAAAAAAEjg/f6dlKxdopV4/s1600/Get-Ready-cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lHqPP12MHnA/UKsH8AnrjTI/AAAAAAAAEjg/f6dlKxdopV4/s1600/Get-Ready-cover.png" height="400" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Get Ready </i>(2001)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Music</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★<b style="font-weight: bold;"> <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/republic-mw0000097060" target="_blank"><i>Republic</i></a> (1993, New Order)</b> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★<b> <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/get-ready-mw0000012897" target="_blank"><i>Get Ready</i></a> (2001, New Order)</b><br />
<b>★ <i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/waiting-for-the-sirens-call-mw0000670599" target="_blank">Waiting for the Sirens' Call</a> </i>(2005, New Order) </b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I think there's some fairly underrated music in these three later New Order albums. <i>Republic</i>—the first album released after the demise of their usual label Factory Records—has a certain vague sense of personal reflection underpinning its dance beats. Soon afterward, they would break up—only to reunite five years later, in 1998. With <i>Get Ready</i>, the first album after their reunion and eight years after <i>Republic</i>,<i> </i>Bernard Sumner & co. would go back to their Joy Division roots, deemphasizing electronics in favor of a relatively more stripped-down, lyrics-based aesthetic. <i>Waiting for the Sirens' Call</i>, in the context of New Order's entire career, then, has the feel of a summation, veering from guitar-oriented opening tracks to electronica and then back again, all wrapped up in lyrics that, as was also the case with Bernard Sumner's lyrics in <i>Get Ready</i>, are more direct and earnest than one might expect from this band—for better and for worse. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Theater</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★<b style="font-weight: bold;"> <a href="http://arsnovanyc.com/great-comet" target="_blank"><i>Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812</i></a> (2012, Dave Malloy), seen at Ars Nova in New York</b><br />
★<b> <a href="http://www.bam.org/theater/2012/roman-tragedies" target="_blank"><i>Roman Tragedies</i></a> (2007, Ivo van Hove/William Shakespeare), seen at Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><b> </b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This past weekend, I took in two pieces of experimental immersive theater, both daring to place spectators within the same space as its performers. The results offered a fascinating study in contrasts.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LCoFHC1HRcs/UKsKWasXQUI/AAAAAAAAEjo/duv4hJyLGbA/s1600/GreatComet.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LCoFHC1HRcs/UKsKWasXQUI/AAAAAAAAEjo/duv4hJyLGbA/s1600/GreatComet.jpeg" height="400" width="321" /></a></div>
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Imagine an electro-pop opera set in a simulated Russian speakeasy—with free vodka served, no less—that is based on a selection from Leo Tolstoy's epic tome <i>War and Peace</i>? That's composer-lyricist Dave Malloy's new work <i>Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812</i> in a nutshell. It gets off to a bit of a gruesome start with an ebullient opening number setting up the characters and situations in a way that suggests, none too promisingly, that this will just be a self-aware, ironic and hip modern updating of Tolstoy...but such suspicions are immediately, thankfully dashed once the plot gets underway. Turns out, the novelty of its immersive staging is hardly the only notable thing about it; the music and lyrics are constantly keyed into their characters' emotional states, and the staging only helps to bring us closer to these people and their tumultuous inner passions: Natasha's naivete, Pierre's cynicism, Anatole's callowness, and so on. The result is a musical that is as profoundly moving as it is theatrically and musically inventive...and damned if its ending—in which Pierre sees the titular comet and achieves the kind of unspoken epiphany that James Joyce would later make a regular feature of his fiction—not only reaches for transcendence, but actually achieves it. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2wrICQzxMzk/UKsMJ2_gxEI/AAAAAAAAEjw/MKwGyro7buA/s1600/IMG_2110.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2wrICQzxMzk/UKsMJ2_gxEI/AAAAAAAAEjw/MKwGyro7buA/s1600/IMG_2110.JPG" height="298" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The masses rushing onto the stage in the early going of <i>Roman Tragedies</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<i>Roman Tragedies</i>—a six-hour conceptual theater piece involving consecutive abridged adaptations of three William Shakespeare tragedies, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolanus" target="_blank"><i>Coriolanus</i></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar_%28play%29" target="_blank"><i>Julius Caesar</i></a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_and_Cleopatra" target="_blank"><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i></a>—is a much chillier work...but of course it is, considering the dramatic material. Shakespeare depicted the political machinations and tragic flaws of these characters from an omniscient perspective, and so does Dutch theater director Ivo van Hove. One of Van Hove's major innovations with this century-old material, however, is to update it to our media-saturated political landscape while also retaining vestiges of the old Roman-arena theatrical style—politics as a ruthless, "survival of the fittest" Roman circus. To that end, the stage of <i>Roman Tragedies </i>is not only transformed into a kind of modernized Roman amphitheater, complete with huge jumbotron relaying what's happening on the stage; there are also television screens everywhere on set, as well as onstage cameramen filming the actors live. Oh, and did I mention that we spectators are allowed to actually go onstage and watch the action up close, either by watching the actors or by watching one of those many television screens? And that we're also expressly invited to live-tweet during the experience, if we so chose? And that below the jumbotron is a digital news feed of sorts offering headlines, broadcasting tweets and foreshadowing major characters' deaths (example: "395 minutes until Cleopatra's death") much like those bottom-of-the-screen tickers on news networks? <i> </i><br />
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<i>Roman Tragedies</i>, in short, is filled to the brim with provocative stage gimmicks—but does this all add up to an interesting and resonant vision? I admit, there were large portions of Van Hove's show where I felt disengaged from the drama onstage and wondered whether this show was ultimately all concept and no heart. The more I mull over the whole experience, though, the more intriguing I find elements of that concept—especially regarding its audience-interactive elements. With many audience members taking photos of the actors and/or looking down at their phones during the performance, it lent a purposely vulgar sideshow element to what, in other contexts, are supposed to be serious dramas. How does this necessarily make us any different from, say, those onlookers who gawk and take photos of car crashes without actually, you know, doing anything to help the victims? In this way, <i>Roman Tragedies </i>dares to implicate <i>us</i> as well, forcing us to question our relationship to the action onstage—because, for all that we're allowed to get close to the performers onstage, we don't actually interact with them, and they don't interact with us. That fourth wall remains upright; physically, we're close, sure—but emotionally we remain mere plebeians to the machinations of those of supposedly higher rank. </div>
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All of that might have come off as impossibly alienating if it weren't for the actors, whose performances in the various roles are often vivid enough to cut through the barriers Van Hove purposefully puts in front of us and move us in individual moments. What stamina it must take these actors to maintain such a level of emotional intensity for the better part of six hours! <i>Roman Tragedies </i>is a deeply impressive feat of theatrical ingenuity and performance, and even if I ultimately found it to be more intellectually than emotionally engaging, I'm certainly glad I saw it. Yay for experimental theater! </div>
Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-40353253840858745422012-11-12T18:00:00.000-05:002012-11-12T18:00:08.173-05:00Artistic Consumption Log, Nov. 5, 2012 - Nov. 11, 2012: "Consuming Art in Amsterdam" EditionBROOKLYN, N.Y.—Just because I was on vacation in Amsterdam doesn't mean I slowed down my artistic consumption. Heck, if anything, Amsterdam itself could be seen as one giant art museum, with all manner of classic architecture on display!<br />
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I'm back in the United States, by the way, as you all could surely tell from the dateline of this blog post. Maybe, sometime this week, I'll get around to doing what I never actually got around to doing on this blog during my trip and posting some impressions, photos and such. Maybe.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Films</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v1CqBqNxTdA/UKF6Ybml1FI/AAAAAAAAEhU/vf5___YceiQ/s1600/2012_skyfall_004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="186" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v1CqBqNxTdA/UKF6Ybml1FI/AAAAAAAAEhU/vf5___YceiQ/s400/2012_skyfall_004.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><i>Skyfall</i><br />
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<i><br /></i></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/" target="_blank"><i>Skyfall</i></a> (2012, Sam Mendes), seen at Pathé De Munt in Amsterdam</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
A part of me wants to applaud the attempt on the part of director Sam Mendes and screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan to imbue the iconic British superspy with something approaching genuine emotional depth. But I already think this was successfully accomplished in the series—in <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381061/" target="_blank">Casino Royale</a></i>, current Bond Daniel Craig's first outing as 007. Part of the stunning impact of Martin Campbell's 2006 entry wasn't just the novelty of seeing a freshly reimagined James Bond, but in witnessing, for all its thrilling action fireworks, a genuinely affecting drama about the death of a hero's soul. Has this brooding, angst-ridden Bond already worn out its welcome? The half-baked previous installment, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0830515/" target="_blank">Quantum of Solace</a></i>, certainly didn't help matters, though I still kinda/sorta like that entry more than most critics did. Parental issues, literal and figurative, get a work-out in <i>Skyfall</i>, but it's like trying to impose humanity onto a total void; after a while, the banality of its brand of psychoanalysis becomes crushing. That's why I had trouble taking its third act all that seriously as emotional drama, especially when it eventually hinges on a silly <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067800/" target="_blank">Straw Dogs</a></i>-like scenario of Bond being forced to protect his turf from his nemesis Silva's (Javier Bardem) cronies.<br />
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So overall, I can't really work up nearly the same level of enthusiasm that many of my colleagues have expressed regarding this latest Bond film; maybe, the truth is, beyond <i>Casino Royale</i>,<i> </i>I just don't have much of an investment in this character. But the action scenes are generally well-executed, and sure, Roger Deakins's cinematography is worth the singling out it's been getting among critics (although "best-looking Bond movie ever"? People who are making such an extravagant claim ought to give Claude Renoir's work in <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076752/" target="_blank">The Spy Who Loved Me</a></i> another look; the Cairo sequence in Lewis Gilbert's 1977 Bond film is about as visually seductive as the high-point Shanghai sequence here). <i>Skyfall</i> shows the Bond series as technically adept as ever; it's when it tries to be something more than it falls fatally short. I never thought I'd say this after<i> Casino Royale</i> and even <i>Quantum of Solace</i>, but I'm looking forward to the next Bond film being just another gimmicky action extravaganza, without the increasingly risible attempts at angst-ridden emotional baggage.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Music</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/technique-mw0000198784" target="_blank"><i><b>Technique</b></i></a><b> (1989, New Order)</b><br />
This album finds the British synthpop band more inviting than ever before. It's all rather pleasant to listen to, in fact, and the beats are as infectious as ever. I can't say I find much memorable about it beyond that—except that sure, I've finally gotten used to Bernard Albrecht's tuneless singing.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.concertgebouw.nl/en/concertagenda/royal-concertgebouw-orchestra-and-lorin-maazel-take-the-treasure-fleet" target="_blank">"Royal Concertgebouw and Lorin Maazel Take the Treasure Fleet,"</a> performed live by Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Lorin Maazel at Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam </b><br />
Let's quickly dispense with the performance itself: a reasonably diverting concert piece entitled "Piet Hein Rhapsody" by a Dutch composer named Peter Van Anrooy (you can listen to it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IXaRji5ll4" target="_blank">here</a>); a vivid rendition of a suite from Prokofiev's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet_(Prokofiev)" target="_blank"><i>Romeo and Juliet</i> ballet score</a>; and a workmanlike performance of Tchaikovsky's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._4_(Tchaikovsky)" target="_blank">Fourth Symphony</a>. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra was in pretty good form throughout; if only they had had a more inspiring maestro than the chilly Lorin Maazel at the helm.<br />
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But wow, the venue! At the very least, the Concertgebouw easily beats Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall in sheer visual grandeur. I mean, look at this...<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YPqmSZOFy1I/UKF7EVd_urI/AAAAAAAAEhc/dnWSFzsnXDQ/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YPqmSZOFy1I/UKF7EVd_urI/AAAAAAAAEhc/dnWSFzsnXDQ/s400/photo.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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...and this!<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fPPqVzUj17U/UKF73ZSx5uI/AAAAAAAAEhs/dIDKoifllC4/s1600/photo+(1).JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fPPqVzUj17U/UKF73ZSx5uI/AAAAAAAAEhs/dIDKoifllC4/s400/photo+(1).JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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It's enough to make me forget how bland the actual concert was.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Theater</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><a href="http://www.boomchicago.nl/my-big-fat-american-election/" target="_blank"><i>My Big Fat American Election</i></a> (2012, Pep Rosenfeld/Greg Shapiro/Michael Orton-Toliver/Andrew Moskos), performed by members of Boom Chicago at the Chicago Social Club in Amsterdam </b></div>
Because I was in Amsterdam during Election Day here in the U.S., I decided, on a tip from my Dutch host, to go check out this Amsterdam-based, English-language comedy troupe on Tuesday, Nov. 6, to get my Election-Day fix. I had a good time overall—and while these members of Boom Chicago certainly admit their leftist leanings from the start, some of their best jokes take aim at both candidates as well as at the blatant manipulation that goes into these kinds of political contests in general. That kind of bipartisanship maybe made up about 40% of their shtick, though; much of the rest is mere choir-preaching—but sometimes the choir-preaching was pretty funny as well. I'd recommend checking Boom Chicago out for those of you who venture to Amsterdam in the future; their comedy improvisations are especially worth witnessing.<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Art</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O54aw5VeGwc/UKF94b97GCI/AAAAAAAAEh0/mss6TkedDVI/s1600/photo+(2).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O54aw5VeGwc/UKF94b97GCI/AAAAAAAAEh0/mss6TkedDVI/s400/photo+(2).JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can see a bit of Andy Warhol's <i>The Last Supper</i> in the distance of this detail of De Nieuwe Kerk</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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★ <a href="http://www.nieuwekerk.nl/en/#/en/het_meesterwerk/2012/?m=2" target="_blank"><b>"</b><i><b>The Last Supper</b> </i></a><b><a href="http://www.nieuwekerk.nl/en/#/en/het_meesterwerk/2012/?m=2" target="_blank">by Andy Warhol,"</a> seen at De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam</b><br />
Amidst the stained-glass windows and lavish architectural marvels of De Nieuwe Kerk, there stood <i>this</i> wholly pink Andy Warhol's canvas from 1986, twice reproducing Leonardo da Vinci's famous late-15th-century depiction of Jesus Christ's final meal with his 12 disciples before his betrayal, turning it all pink and black, and, in Warhol's own inimitable way, daring us to access the spirituality of the original work in a more "commercialized" form. Plus, the dissonance of seeing this very modern work of art in the context of a 15th-century church added an extra <i>frisson</i> to the experience that you might not necessarily get anywhere else (except, I guess, in other churches).<br />
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</b> <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LG8ISkjfZNg/UKF7ju2RsYI/AAAAAAAAEhk/rH4o-xB-t3M/s1600/800px-Van-willem-vincent-gogh-die-kartoffelesser-03850.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="281" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LG8ISkjfZNg/UKF7ju2RsYI/AAAAAAAAEhk/rH4o-xB-t3M/s400/800px-Van-willem-vincent-gogh-die-kartoffelesser-03850.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Potato Eaters </i>(1885), Vincent Van Gogh</td></tr>
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<b><br />
</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★<b> <a href="http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?page=252394&lang=en" target="_blank">"Vincent. The Van Gogh Museum in the Hermitage Amsterdam,"</a> seen at Hermitage Amsterdam in Amsterdam</b><br />
Many of my friends had suggested that I should go check out the Van Gogh Museum while I was in Amsterdam. Alas, the museum itself was closed for renovations last week, and will remain so until next year. Until then, though, part of the Van Gogh Museum collection was up at the Hermitage Amsterdam—so I checked that out instead. The main thing I took away from the exhibit was a refreshed awareness of Van Gogh's seemingly endless curiosity, his willingness to constantly tinker and refine his style and try new subjects and approaches. I had no idea, for instance, that, for a certain spell, he was obsessed with Japanese art, to the point of "copying" some Japanese canvases and filtering it through a style that feels distinctly Van Gogh-ian. I guess I'll just have to make another trip to Amsterdam in the future in order to see the full Van Gogh Museum collection. For now, though, I was mostly pretty satisfied with the selection on offer at the Hermitage Amsterdam. </div>
Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-79925792466332483162012-11-05T05:00:00.000-05:002012-11-05T05:00:10.614-05:00Artistic Consumption Log, Oct. 29, 2012 - Nov. 4, 2012HAARLEM, THE NETHERLANDS—As expected, I didn't find a whole lot of time to annotate this week's artistic-consumption log, so a barebones one this shall be. Not that I ended up consuming whole heck of a lot, thanks to the power I lost as a result of Hurricane Sandy.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RyyxmgVRgfQ/UJeDOOS56YI/AAAAAAAAEgg/ldz7wNrCJmQ/s1600/WomenInLove.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RyyxmgVRgfQ/UJeDOOS56YI/AAAAAAAAEgg/ldz7wNrCJmQ/s1600/WomenInLove.JPG" height="400" width="276" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Films</b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074179/" target="_blank"><i>The Private Eyes</i></a> (1976, Michael Hui), seen on DVD at home in East Brunswick, N.J.</b><br />
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<b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108399/" target="_blank"><i>True Romance</i></a> (1993, Tony Scott), seen on DVD in Haarlem, The Netherlands </b><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Music</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/brotherhood-mw0000191077" target="_blank"><i><b>Brotherhood</b></i></a><b> (1986, New Order)</b><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Literature</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <i><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_love" target="_blank">Women in Love</a> </b></i><b>(1920, D. H. Lawrence)</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Art</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <b><a href="http://www.teylersmuseum.eu/rafael/tickets.php?lang=en" target="_blank">Raphael</a>, seen at Teylers Museum in Haarlem, The Netherlands </b></div>
</div>
</div>
Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-44873021639492059782012-11-04T04:15:00.000-05:002012-11-04T04:15:00.506-05:00Greetings from the Netherlands!HAARLEM, THE NETHERLANDS—There's one other thing Hurricane Sandy screwed up, at least temporarily: my trip to Amsterdam!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-778rn7FU5VM/UJVyKk490yI/AAAAAAAAEe4/M3gkBd-C-Bo/s1600/Flag_of_Amsterdam.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-778rn7FU5VM/UJVyKk490yI/AAAAAAAAEe4/M3gkBd-C-Bo/s1600/Flag_of_Amsterdam.svg.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amsterdam's flag</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Up until now, I had never traveled to any European country—most of my previous international travels had been to either Asian countries or Canada—so one other resolution I made at the beginning of this year was that I would finally take a trip to that continent—and because I know a couple of people in Amsterdam, I figured the Netherlands would be as good a starting point as any. (No, folks, it's not about the pot and the hookers—or, maybe, not <i>entirely</i> about both...)<br />
<br />
Through Aer Lingus—which would take me to Dublin Airport before heading over to Amsterdam-Schiphol—I was all set to fly out to Amsterdam from John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday night. But then, Hurricane Sandy reared her ugly head and, with its damaging winds, essentially crippled all New York/New Jersey air travel until Wednesday, when JFK and Newark Liberty International Airport reopened to limited service. So I was forced to rebook my flights—and by the time I finally decided it would be a good idea to actually rebook, all of the available Wednesday- and Thursday-evening Aer Lingus flights to Dublin filled up, leaving a Friday-night flight as the earliest option. Thankfully, Aer Lingus made the rebooking free of charge—and better yet, the airline even allowed me to rebook my return flights to a later date. So in the end, I'm losing only one of my initial projected seven full days in the Netherlands.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_ADUVsAelCw/UJV00NaDXEI/AAAAAAAAEfs/I0EU97jsOt0/s1600/IMG_1821.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_ADUVsAelCw/UJV00NaDXEI/AAAAAAAAEfs/I0EU97jsOt0/s1600/IMG_1821.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A view of the sun rising out of the window of my flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Dublin Airport</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
So now I'm here! (Or, at least, I'm near Amsterdam; technically, I'm staying with someone who lives just a bit of outside of Amsterdam, in a quiet little town called Haarlem.) And I look forward to being able to share my experiences here in the Netherlands with you all here at <i>My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second</i>—at least, if I don't get too caught up in activity that I find myself with no time to post! (Hey, I at least found time to post this, right?)<br />
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More words and photos to come soon... Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-43529148506952234232012-11-02T13:00:00.000-04:002012-11-02T13:00:03.237-04:00Lost in the Hurricane Sandy ShuffleBROOKLYN, N.Y.—Two film criticism-related things on the personal end got lost earlier this week amidst the Hurricane Sandy mess.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NOJyXkc5xuE/UJPs-wxdAVI/AAAAAAAAEd8/Mgla2EstLV0/s1600/girlwalktop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NOJyXkc5xuE/UJPs-wxdAVI/AAAAAAAAEd8/Mgla2EstLV0/s1600/girlwalktop.jpg" height="207" width="400" /></a></div>
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First: <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/girl-walk-all-day/6655">my review</a> of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2287749/" target="_blank"><b><i>Girl Walk // All Day</i></b></a>, which begins a week-long run Sunday at the newly reopened <a href="http://girlwalkallday.eventbrite.com/">reRun Gastropub Theater</a> in Brooklyn. For those who don't live in New York or simply don't want to pay to see it, you can technically see the whole 77-minute film <a href="http://girlwalkallday.com/watch-the-film">here</a>. But Jacob Krupnick's film is great enough that it deserves to be seen on a big screen, if possible.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sALaJyscqD0/UJPtJQOsBPI/AAAAAAAAEeE/uotUXVTz7hU/s1600/shapeimage_1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sALaJyscqD0/UJPtJQOsBPI/AAAAAAAAEeE/uotUXVTz7hU/s1600/shapeimage_1.png" /></a></div>
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Second, a bit of personal news: I have agreed to take on editor-in-chief duties of the film- and music-review website <a href="http://www.inreviewonline.com/inreview/home/home.html"><i>In Review Online</i></a> from its creator/now-former editor-in-chief (and current Brooklyn roommate) Sam C. Mac. I had made a resolution at the beginning of this year that I would somehow shake myself out of the routine I felt I'd been falling into professionally and personally speaking, so when Sam asked me if I would be willing to help keep his site alive as he focused his energies on other projects, I figured this was as good an opportunity as any to make good on that resolution. I've never been in charge of an entire website before—even at Rutgers, during that one year I was film editor for <a href="http://www.dailytargum.com/inside_beat/">the weekly entertainment section</a> of <a href="http://www.dailytargum.com/"><i>The Daily Targum</i></a>, I didn't play the role of the, uh, "head honcho," so to speak. This, then, will be a fresh experience for me, made possibly more challenging by the fact that I'll still be juggling my day job at <a href="http://online.wsj.com/home-page" target="_blank"><i>The Wall Street Journal</i></a> while doing so. Nevertheless, on the much-bandied-about theory that one needs to push oneself out of one's comfort zone every once in a while if one has any shot of getting anywhere in life, I'm looking forward to taking on these challenges head-on and hopefully elevating Sam's already very fine site to even greater heights...<br />
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...or at least, I'm looking forward to it once I come back from my Amsterdam vacation, which is set to commence in a matter of hours! Amsterdam, you say? More on this later...Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-84358775961203249742012-11-02T11:30:00.000-04:002012-11-02T11:30:03.441-04:00Hurricane Sandy's Long LinesBROOKLYN, N.Y.—Yesterday was the first day I ventured outside of my parents' home in East Brunswick, N.J., to survey the damage Hurricane Sandy wrought in my town. As expected, there were the usual fallen trees...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fsiCh9aq0no/UJPhDMFdZNI/AAAAAAAAEc8/VOBiSFbErAk/s1600/IMG_1809.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fsiCh9aq0no/UJPhDMFdZNI/AAAAAAAAEc8/VOBiSFbErAk/s400/IMG_1809.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
...and downed, possibly live wires:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JgV4SbdfoRw/UJPhPGwMGUI/AAAAAAAAEdI/sUXUO7bR-lE/s1600/IMG_1810.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JgV4SbdfoRw/UJPhPGwMGUI/AAAAAAAAEdI/sUXUO7bR-lE/s400/IMG_1810.jpg" width="299" /></a></div><br />
And there was also this:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="300.9375" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9p3imQsGQ6E" width="535"></iframe><br />
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As a result of Hurricane Sandy, gasoline is running dangerously low at a lot of gas stations in the New York/New Jersey area, leading to long lines of cars waiting to refuel at the precious few gas stations left operating—like the Hess station on Route 18 that I captured during the first part of that video above.<br />
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Of course, yesterday I also finally made it back to New York and had to deal with another long line to get back home: a massive line to catch special shuttle buses New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority had set up that would take us past the still-mostly-powerless areas of lower Manhattan and get us into Brooklyn. That's what I captured in the second part of that video.<br />
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I figured it would be cool to juxtapose those two lines together: the suburban and urban equivalents of the long lines and general craziness that this superstorm left in its wake. It's both amusing and sad at the same time.Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-56375358291861878562012-11-02T09:00:00.000-04:002012-11-02T09:13:39.773-04:00Studies of Candelight (Resulting from Hurricane Sandy)BROOKLYN, N.Y.—So it turns out that it might not have been such a bright idea to escape to New Jersey during the terrorizing reign of Hurricane Sandy—especially on Monday afternoon, when the strong winds helped knock out our power, which has still yet to be restored. <br />
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To look on the bright side, however...well, the lack of electricity meant that we were forced to bring out the candles—and thanks to both iPhone and the Instagram app, on each of the nights I stayed in East Brunswick, N.J., without power, I was able to take a series of photographs of candles and candlelight. Consider this my way of accessing my inner John Alcott (he being the cinematographer who did wonders with candlelight in Stanley Kubrick's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072684/"><i>Barry Lyndon</i></a>):<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ws-u-9jyzdA/UJNI_IGlXmI/AAAAAAAAEaw/n_g77a2WiCM/s1600/IMG_1778.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ws-u-9jyzdA/UJNI_IGlXmI/AAAAAAAAEaw/n_g77a2WiCM/s400/IMG_1778.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sN4WU8quwW0/UJNJI0LiWdI/AAAAAAAAEa8/8Kq40Aaz7pk/s1600/IMG_1779.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sN4WU8quwW0/UJNJI0LiWdI/AAAAAAAAEa8/8Kq40Aaz7pk/s400/IMG_1779.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GgmIgNOZPts/UJNJWzCL_XI/AAAAAAAAEbI/1D_VoxqVqY0/s1600/IMG_1781.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GgmIgNOZPts/UJNJWzCL_XI/AAAAAAAAEbI/1D_VoxqVqY0/s400/IMG_1781.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v31mMcJH2js/UJNJfGh-_SI/AAAAAAAAEbU/MMZlwX6_buw/s1600/IMG_1783.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v31mMcJH2js/UJNJfGh-_SI/AAAAAAAAEbU/MMZlwX6_buw/s400/IMG_1783.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fKE_e-CZCtw/UJNJnbeIL4I/AAAAAAAAEbg/9KGoN0he4yw/s1600/IMG_1784.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fKE_e-CZCtw/UJNJnbeIL4I/AAAAAAAAEbg/9KGoN0he4yw/s400/IMG_1784.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jWtzIS7nG0U/UJNJy2QmuqI/AAAAAAAAEbs/opPr216MZHI/s1600/IMG_1790.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jWtzIS7nG0U/UJNJy2QmuqI/AAAAAAAAEbs/opPr216MZHI/s400/IMG_1790.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7fmDfS7VXf4/UJNJ4_Kmy1I/AAAAAAAAEb4/JkmqKT7GJYo/s1600/IMG_1798.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7fmDfS7VXf4/UJNJ4_Kmy1I/AAAAAAAAEb4/JkmqKT7GJYo/s400/IMG_1798.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LtIwoxF7RpE/UJNKA3nlNoI/AAAAAAAAEcE/kibiU431kSU/s1600/IMG_1803.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LtIwoxF7RpE/UJNKA3nlNoI/AAAAAAAAEcE/kibiU431kSU/s400/IMG_1803.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
For now, I'll let those images stand as my way of commemorating this hard-hitting and in some cases tragic event. Thankfully, I at last had hot water and food to subsist on during the past few days without power; I hear a lot of my friends in lower Manhattan weren't so lucky.<br />
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As for ways we all can help the victims of Hurricane Sandy...well, my Wall Street Journal colleague Jonnelle Marte has a few tips for us:<br />
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<center><iframe frameborder="0" height="288" scrolling="no" src="http://live.wsj.com/public/page/embed-ADEDC7D1_FCB4_44B3_888E_7A23E3D5ED73.html" width="512"></iframe></center><br />
Plus, here's a handy American Red Cross <a href="https://www.redcross.org/donate/index.jsp?donateStep=2&itemId=prod10002">link</a>.Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-2501819680302207682012-10-29T16:30:00.000-04:002012-10-29T16:30:01.708-04:00Shelter from the (Franken)storm, with Musical AccompanimentEAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Some of your sharper-eyed readers might have noted the dateline in <a href="http://mylife24fps.blogspot.com/2012/10/artistic-consumption-log-oct-22-2012.html" target="_blank">my last post</a> and wondered, "What is he doing back in New Jersey?"<br />
<br />
Well, I am back home with my folks in New Jersey to ride out Hurricane Sandy, the major storm that's about to bear down on the mid- to upper part of the East Coast here in the United States and is predicted to cause some devastating damage. I made the choice to rush back home when New York decided to shut down its public-transportation system in anticipation of this massive weather event at 7 p.m. last night; because I was working until 7:30 p.m. yesterday, and because I'm supposed to be on vacation starting today (my trip to Amsterdam has been postponed until Friday night), I decided I might as well head back home, pay a visit to my folks and stay in their company as the so-called "Frankenstorm" increased in strength.<br />
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So, after nearly missing what I discovered only when I boarded a Suburban Coach bus at Port Authority Bus Terminal was the <i>last</i> Line 100 bus of the night before they shut down service completely (nice going in giving all of us advance warning, Suburban Coach!), I am now back in East Brunswick. The electricity here at home is still working...for now.<br />
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But boy, Sunday morning was already pretty ominous, as this video I shot with my iPhone attests:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="300.9375" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PT8Zxv1CX6g" width="535"></iframe><br />
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The winds started to pick up last night—to the point where I could hear it howling outside while sitting indoors—and it has only gotten worse, as this other video I shot demonstrates:<br />
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And, as of now, Hurricane Sandy hasn't even touched down on land yet! This doesn't appear to be yet another Hurricane Irene situation like last year; this looks to be the real deal. So stay safe, everybody!<br />
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In the meantime...well, one ought to have a bit of fun even amidst a potential natural disaster like this one, so I've been thinking of some of the best depictions of storms in music. I came up with this playlist of five on Spotify:<br />
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<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="380" src="https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:user:kenjfuj:playlist:5TUdKzggj2xHrWfewvq2SV" width="300"></iframe></center>
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I'd love to add more if anyone has other suggestions to offer!Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-40992083442373394522012-10-29T09:00:00.000-04:002012-10-29T09:10:26.788-04:00Artistic Consumption Log, Oct. 22, 2012 - Oct. 28, 2012: Dance Party EditionEAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—This may well turn out to be a crucial week for me in artistic consumption in one respect: It's the week where I feel like I at least came close to finally understanding dance.<br />
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I've seen my share of dance performances over the past few years—and have even put down some of my impressions on this here blog—but though I've responded to some more enthusiastically than others, I admit that, for the most part, I've always found the form to be somewhat difficult for me to grasp in some way. Maybe I've been approaching dance in too theatrical/cinematic a mindset, expecting thematic and character richness of a literary sort when really dance is all about the beauty of movement, whether purely for its own sake or for a higher purpose.<br />
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Anyway, I thought maybe I had reached my limit with dance during <a href="http://www.armoryonpark.org/programs_events/detail/trisha_brown_dance_company" target="_blank"><i>Astral Converted</i></a>, that suffocating 55-minute Trisha Brown/John Cage piece that seemed to just go on forever and at random. But this past week, I saw two dance pieces—one a film, the other an actual theatrical work—in which I felt perhaps I was coming close to finally breaking down my resistance to dance.<br />
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Plus, I listened to some dance music of a very high order thanks to, well, New Order.<br />
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You can read about all that and more in the log below...so, um, let's dance!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wFv-VxovX8Q/UI53YzAoS0I/AAAAAAAAEYA/Xst6itdFhug/s1600/girlwalkcap2-blog480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wFv-VxovX8Q/UI53YzAoS0I/AAAAAAAAEYA/Xst6itdFhug/s1600/girlwalkcap2-blog480.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Girl Walk // All Day </i>(2012)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Films</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1974254/" target="_blank">Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story</a> </i>(2012, Brad Bernstein), seen at IFC Center in New York</b><br />
★ <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2287749/" target="_blank"><i><b>Girl Walk // All Day</b></i></a><b> (2012, Jacob Krupnick), seen online at home in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
I'm reviewing both of these films for <i>Slant Magazine</i>—<i>Far Out Isn't Far Enough</i> for <i>The House Next Door</i>, <i>Girl Walk // All Day</i> for <i>Slant </i>proper—so I'll link you all to those reviews when they're published. All I'll say for now is, <i>Girl Walk // All Day</i>—which is the dance film I briefly mentioned above—has a secure spot in my Top 10 list this year; it's that good.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1496422/" target="_blank"><i>The Paperboy</i></a> (2012, Lee Daniels), seen at Quad Cinema in New York </b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Despite all the condemnation this film garnered at its world premiere at Cannes earlier this year, Lee Daniels's follow-up to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929632/" target="_blank"><i>Precious</i></a> is neither an embarrassment nor an underappreciated trash masterpiece. Actually, my cumulative reaction to the film is more of indifference than anything else—the last thing you expect from a film that features not only Nicole Kidman pissing on Zac Efron, but also a crocodile being cut up with its guts spilling out in loving close-up. Occasionally, through the unapologetic bad taste on display in this late-'60s-set tale of racism and sexual repression in the deep South, <i>The Paperboy</i> evinces a welcome awareness of thorny historical, thematic and character complexities; the film is, in part, a portrait of not only characters in states of transition—most notably, the titular "paperboy," a pubescent young man who gets his first taste of sexuality and the messy realities of adulthood—but an entire nation in transition, uneasily trying to shake off its racist past. (The word "nigger," for instance, is made the focus of perhaps its most emotionally wrenching moment, when Efron's Jack Jansen calls a black male character that racial pejorative in the heat of anger...in the presence of the black maid (Macy Gray) for whom he has a lot of friendly affection.) If only Daniels, as a filmmaker, wasn't so promiscuous in sacrificing sense to sensation, its vision might have made more of a lasting impression beyond the lurid surface details. (I mean, as far as I'm concerned, did we really <i>need</i> to see those damn crocodile guts? That's as egregious as the rape-intercut-with-fried-chicken montage in <i>Precious</i>.) But no, <i>The Paperboy</i> doesn't strike me as <i>entirely</i> negligible.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vKXr5vQrFXk/UI53rjG94GI/AAAAAAAAEYI/tDVue4q59ac/s1600/NewOrderPower,Corruption&Lies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vKXr5vQrFXk/UI53rjG94GI/AAAAAAAAEYI/tDVue4q59ac/s1600/NewOrderPower,Corruption&Lies.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Power, Corruption & Lies </i>(1983)</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Music</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/movement-mw0000201258" target="_blank">Movement</a></i> (1981, New Order)</b></div>
★ <b><i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/power-corruption-amp-lies-mw0000195060" target="_blank">Power, Corruption & Lies</a></i> (1983, New Order)</b><br />
<b><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/low-life-mw0000650557" target="_blank"><i>Low-life</i></a> (1985, New Order)</b><br />
I'm finally catching up with the British synth-pop band that was once known as Joy Division before Ian Curtis died, and while <i>Power, Corruption & Lies </i>is indeed as great as its reputation...guys, I don't know about this Bernard Sumner dude. I didn't mind his mediocre singing in that album or in their previous album, <i>Movement</i>, because the beats, textures and lyrics were enough to compensate for Sumner's barely-in-tune vocals as the lead singer. But while the beats, textures and lyrics in <i>Low-life</i> are as virtuosic and memorable as ever, overall the songs seem to be trying for a deeper emotional affect than Sumner is even close to capable of delivering. I guess people over the years have given him a pass because the songs themselves are so catchy? Because, I mean, on a dance floor, who cares about great singing, right? Anyway, the best song on <i>Low-life</i> is, naturally, "Elegia," the one instrumental on the album; "Sub-Culture" is also quite good—intoxicating in its ominousness—but again, Sumner's rough singing comes perilously close to completely breaking its distinctive spell. (I guess Ian Curtis was no great shakes as a vocalist, either, but his deep tenor voice had a certain alien allure to it that was fascinating to hear however depressive his lyrics were.) Does Sumner somehow get better as a vocalist in subsequent New Order albums? I'll see. Maybe, in their best albums, it ultimately doesn't matter so much.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I6j-2ta-bOQ/UI56MmArQDI/AAAAAAAAEYQ/0O0E9hmaLXE/s1600/IMG_1763.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I6j-2ta-bOQ/UI56MmArQDI/AAAAAAAAEYQ/0O0E9hmaLXE/s1600/IMG_1763.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House stage before <i>"...como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si...</i>.<i>"</i> This was, in fact, basically the whole set.</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Dance</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
★ <a href="http://www.bam.org/dance/2012/como-el-musguito-en-la-piedra-ay-si-si-si" target="_blank"><i><b>"...como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si..."</b></i></a> <b>(2009, Pina Bausch), performed by Tanztheater Wupperthal Pina Bausch at Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, N.Y.</b><br />
So seasoned dance critics aren't considering this one of legendary choreographer Pina Bausch's great works? Well, okay. I'm no seasoned dance critic, but for the most part, this was probably the most sheer fun I've had seeing a dance work maybe ever. Thanks to Wim Wenders's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440266/" target="_blank"><i>Pina</i></a>, I went into Friday night's performance of Bausch's final work, <i>"...como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si...</i>,<i>" </i>being at least somewhat aware of her innovative blending of dance and theater. But to see it up and close and personal was especially thrilling; for the first time, I felt as if I was actually <i>getting </i>dance in ways I never quite grasped before.<br />
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Based on Bausch and her Tanztheater Wupperthal's experiences and observations while doing a residency in Chile, <i>"...como el musguito..." </i>is essentially a plotless series of tableaux depicting the battle of the sexes, in interactions that are by turns romantic, creepy and funny. Considering how many of the female dancers proudly flaunt their feminine physicality/wiles to the men they playfully seduce, one can read an idiosyncratic vision of female empowerment into the work—but to my mind, both sexes are given just about equal praise/ridicule in the love games in which they enact. For me, though, much of the excitement in seeing <i>"...como el musguito..." </i>came simply from seeing dancers speaking dialogue, playing with props onstage, wearing extravagant fashions—in short, doing a lot of things I normally don't see in a typical dance piece. Like the best artistic experiences, I never knew what to expect moment to moment, and even as inspiration started to flag towards the end of this 2-hour-and-20-minute work, the sheer exhilaration of seeing what lovely/crazy things Bausch would come up with next for her dancers to do onstage kept me interested. Dammit, why am I only <i>now</i> discovering the work of this genuine visionary years after her death? (Rest in peace, Pina Bausch.)</div>
Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-61980296779345374652012-10-22T09:00:00.000-04:002012-10-22T09:00:10.335-04:00Artistic Consumption Log, Oct. 15, 2012 - Oct. 21, 2012: Decompressing After NYFF EditionBROOKLYN, N.Y.—I chalk up the light load of this past week in artistic consumption to my desire to take it easy after New York Film Festival. Good thing I made some worthy discoveries during this most recent seven-day stretch!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1L7DgunGtr4/UITDfmQDmvI/AAAAAAAAEWY/9HHh7EZUYyI/s1600/Jan_LeGrandAmour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1L7DgunGtr4/UITDfmQDmvI/AAAAAAAAEWY/9HHh7EZUYyI/s1600/Jan_LeGrandAmour.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Le Grand Amour</i> (1969)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Films</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
★ <b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1866249/" target="_blank"><i>The Sessions</i></a> (2012, Ben Lewin), seen at Angelika Film Center in New York</b><br />
I probably would not have even bothered to see this film if some critics I read regularly hadn't voiced enthusiasm for it; also, a friend of mine was interested in seeing it with me. As it turns out, this isn't bad at all. One might not expect much from a based-on-true-story chronicle of a 38-year-old polio-stricken paralyzed poet/journalist trying to lose his virginity; after all, something like this was recently mined for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1518330/" target="_blank">this jokey/mawkish Oscar-nominated fiction short</a>. Writer-director Ben Lewin, however, takes Mark O'Brien's story seriously indeed, and with the help of his game cast, manages to persuade us to take it seriously as well. The result is far less cloying than one might expect—but then, as he is depicted in the film, and as John Hawkes plays him, O'Brien himself is the last person to give into masochistic self-pity, meeting the challenges of his paralysis with good humor and a genuine thirst for life. And as for the sexual aspects of this story, <i>The Sessions</i> treats sex with a maturity and forthrightness that is rare in most American films, mainstream or otherwise. I wouldn't make any grand claims for the film—aesthetically, it's generally pretty unremarkable—but it's sensitively and sincerely done, and the acting is very fine across the board (though Helen Hunt's exaggerated Boston accent may or may not be a distraction for some). <br />
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★ <b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056066/" target="_blank"><i>Heureux Anniversaire</i></a> (1962, Pierre Étaix), seen at Film Forum in New York</b><br />
★ <b><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064390/" target="_blank"><i>Le Grand Amour</i></a> (1969, Pierre Étaix), seen at Film Forum in New York</b><br />
"Pierre Étaix?" some of you might be asking. "Who the heck is<i> that</i>?" And hey, before Film Forum programmed <a href="http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/pierre_etaix" target="_blank">a retrospective of his films</a>, I had never heard of the guy either. Born in 1928, he was a comedian who worked extensively with Jacques Tati on his 1958 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050706/" target="_blank"><i>Mon Oncle</i></a> before getting a chance to make his own films—none of which had been available until recently, in newly restored prints, all of which are screening as part of this series.<br />
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As an artist, one could describe him as a cross between his mentor Tati and Buster Keaton in his deadpan acting style, brilliance as a physical comedian and marked lack of sentimentality. <i>Le Grand Amour</i>—the 1969 color feature Film Forum is screening throughout the first week of this series—has all of these qualities in abundance, though not even Tati and Keaton were quite as bold in weaving so effortlessly between reality and fantasy as Étaix frequently does. Of course, the back-and-forth is appropriate for a film that depicts main character Pierre's (Étaix himself, as usual in his films) desire to escape the dullness of his current humdrum domestic existence with his plain-Jane wife (played by Étaix's own wife, Annie Fratellini) and continue the skirt-chasing ways he cultivated before settling down (he especially fixates on a barely legal secretary that works at his office). Pierre dreams about "free love"—a mindset very much in vogue at the time, of course—but does he have the actual guts to pull off such a lifestyle? An unsparing excoriation of male folly, a cutting satire of bourgeois manners, a comedy about the ways romantic desires mess with our heads: <i>Le Grand Amour</i> is all that and more, wrapped in a light, playful package that isn't afraid to delve into full-blown surrealism—most memorably, a dream sequence in which beds are turned into traveling vehicles on roads in the French countryside—to get at its greater emotional truths.<br />
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It's quite a discovery, <i>Le Grand Amour</i>—and the preceding 12-minute short, <i>Heureux Anniversaire</i> (which actually won a Best Short Subject Oscar in 1963), is even more impressive in its brilliantly escalating comic mayhem as the main character's attempts to get back home in time to celebrate a marriage anniversary with his wife are met with increasingly hilarious obstacles. I hope to be able to see more of Étaix's work before I go on vacation next week, because after these two films, I'm definitely intrigued.<br />
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★ <b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013741/" target="_blank">The Loves of Pharaoh</a> </i>(1922, Ernst Lubitsch), seen with live musical accompaniment from Numinous at Brooklyn Academy of Music's BAM Harvey Theater in Brooklyn, New York</b><br />
Ernst Lubitsch doing a lavish Cecil B. DeMille-style historical spectacle? Well, the filmmaker celebrated for such romantic entertainments such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023622/" target="_blank"><i>Trouble in Paradise</i></a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033045/" target="_blank"><i>The Shop Around the Corner</i></a> did it in his home turf of Germany in 1922 with his long-lost epic <i>The Loves of Pharaoh</i>, recently restored to something close to its original version by the same company, ALPHA-OMEGA, that handled the recent "complete <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/" target="_blank"><i>Metropolis</i></a>" restoration<i> </i>(there are still bits of footage missing, all of which are indicated either by explanatory intertitles and/or still images). For those viewers weaned on his American films throughout the 1930s and '40s, the darker tone of this much earlier Lubitsch work might come as a shock—which is not to say it's entirely free of that famed "Lubitsch touch." <i>The Loves of Pharaoh </i>is essentially a soap opera, centering around a love triangle that develops between Egyptian King Amenes (Emil Jannings), the Greek slave girl Theonis (Dagny Servaes) and the Egyptian laborer Ramphis (Harry Liedtke). But Lubitsch spreads his usual worldly wisdom all around the film, with the fickleness of crowds coming in for as much scrutiny as the ruthlessness of power-hungry rulers. Ultimately, though, it's <i>amour</i> that brings down King Amenes; by its final moments, rarely has a king's retaking of power felt so hollow, as he has lost the woman he loved to someone willing to throw away power for her sake. And rarely has a Lubitsch film been so devastatingly direct in its psychological insights.<br />
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I assume <i>The Loves of Pharaoh</i> will show up again—maybe with Eduard Künneke's original musical accompaniment? Not to take anything away from Joseph C. Phillips Jr.'s Alban Berg-like atonal score, a fascinating accompaniment performed live at the BAM Harvey Theater screening by Phillips's 18-piece orchestra, Numinous—but this seems like the kind of grand historical spectacle that lends itself to something more traditional than the disturbed, intimately scaled dissonances of Phillips's score. (Phillips might be the perfect man for coming up with a brand new <i>Metropolis </i>score—though the Alloy Orchestra score I heard when I watched the film most recently at Ebertfest last year was a stunning achievement.) But I do admit that the dissonances, at the very least, sounded quite pleasing to my ears in addition to getting at the more ironic, inward-looking undercurrents of the film.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ftO_COTnQfo/UITPV3yuBwI/AAAAAAAAEXM/nieB6vkupTY/s1600/IMG_1746.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ftO_COTnQfo/UITPV3yuBwI/AAAAAAAAEXM/nieB6vkupTY/s1600/IMG_1746.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My crappy iPhone photo of Fiona Apple onstage with her backing band at Terminal 5</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Music</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
★ <b><a href="http://www.terminal5nyc.com/event/136215/" target="_blank">Fiona Apple</a>, seen live at Terminal 5 in New York</b><br />
You all thought her songs were full of angst? Wait until you see her perform those songs live in concert to get a fuller measure of said angst! Onstage, Fiona Apple cuts a fascinatingly jittery profile, seemingly unable to stand still even in front of a microphone stand. The experience of seeing her live was akin to witnessing an artist expressing her own private emotions, with all of us in the audience as mere spectators to the display. "I just want to feel everything," she sings in "Every Single Night" (the first cut from her most recent album, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-idler-wheel-is-wiser-than-the-driver-of-the-screw-and-whipping-cords-will-serve-you-more-than-ropes-will-ever-do-mw0002332951" target="_blank"><i>The Idler Wheel...</i></a>); perhaps that one poignant lyric is a key not to just this compellingly mercurial artist as a singer/songwriter, but as a stage performer as well, with every gesture nothing if not deeply felt in the moment—even the couple of moments where she stood next to a grand piano and, with her back toward it, gyrated like a pole dancer while one of the guitarists did an improvisation. In such a context, perhaps it makes sense that she barely seemed to acknowledge the audience except to say "thank you; I love you all" at the end of her 90-minute set; in fact, she never came back out for any encores. But the sheer spectacle of seeing an artist perform her music in ways you wouldn't get just from her record was enough; that's part of the exciting <i>frisson</i> of the live-concert experience in general.<br />
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★ <b><a href="http://www.1ting.com/album/6f/album_18144.html" target="_blank"><i>因為愛你</i></a> (1987, 葉歡)</b><br />
<b><a href="http://www.1ting.com/album/6f/album_18141.html" target="_blank"><i>放我的真心在你的手心</i></a> (1988, </b><b>葉歡)</b><br />
★ <b><a href="http://www.1ting.com/album/6f/album_18142.html" target="_blank"><i>記得我們有約</i></a> (1988, 葉歡)</b><br />
For now, at least, I'm back in a Chinese-pop phase...and I suspect Ye Huan will probably interest most of you even less than, say, 蔡琴 (Tsai Chin—remember, filmmaking giant Edward Yang's first wife?) or 蘇芮 (Su Rui—one of living Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke's favorites, as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258885/" target="_blank"><i>Platform</i></a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0859765/" target="_blank"><i>Still Life</i></a> attest). As far as I know, Ye Huan didn't have connections to Taiwanese cinema or television...and yet, Warner Music Taiwan apparently saw it fit to re-release some of her late '80s albums on compact disc this year, so I guess she must be popular in <i>some</i> circles. Anyway, she has a beautifully lyrical voice—somewhat in between Tsai Chin's imperial richness and Su Rui's gritty directness—and most of the songs on her first three albums are solid-to-great (with the exception of one embarrassingly earnest plea for kindness throughout the world right smack dab in the middle of hte second album). (Plus, she's easy on the eyes.) Her debut album is the most consistent of the ones I've heard so far; if any of you are curious at all, feel free to sample it <a href="http://www.1ting.com/album_18144.html" target="_blank">here</a>.Kenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27825798.post-26460782364663876982012-10-18T18:00:00.000-04:002012-10-18T18:00:07.027-04:00Closing the Book on The 50th New York Film FestivalNEW YORK—Since I'm not on Criticwire, I wasn't asked to participate in this poll rounding up critics' favorite, and not-so-favorite, films and performances in this year's New York Film Festival. So I figured, by way of a sum-up, I'd offer some of my picks in the various categories.<br />
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This year's festival was such an embarrassment of riches, for the most part, that naturally there were plenty of titles and performances that I regret leaving off because of the limit of five in each category, especially in the acting categories. Plus, in the "Best Nonfiction Film" category, I cheated and threw in the wondrous avant-garde shorts by Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, seen during the Views from the Avant-Garde sidebar two weekends ago. Hey, it's <i>my</i> blog and <i>my</i> list, so I can break the rules if I want!<br />
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Anyway, by way of closing the book on the 50th New York Film Festival, here you go:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Uv5Bu88s7v4/UIBRvoyb4JI/AAAAAAAAEVM/Zs6m0OaWyew/s1600/like-someone-in-love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Uv5Bu88s7v4/UIBRvoyb4JI/AAAAAAAAEVM/Zs6m0OaWyew/s400/like-someone-in-love.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Like Someone in Love</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<b>Best Fiction Film</b><br />
1. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1843287/" target="_blank">Like Someone in Love</a></i><br />
2. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2076220/" target="_blank">Holy Motors</a></i><br />
3. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2178941/" target="_blank">Barbara</a></i><br />
4. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1844735/" target="_blank">Mekong Hotel</a></i><br />
5. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1829012/" target="_blank">Passion</a></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4H7WZsSKGdk/UIBR-glr2HI/AAAAAAAAEVU/-oNSck7RisQ/s1600/leviathan_02_medium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4H7WZsSKGdk/UIBR-glr2HI/AAAAAAAAEVU/-oNSck7RisQ/s400/leviathan_02_medium.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Leviathan</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i><br /></i>
<b>Best Nonfiction Film</b><br />
1. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2332522/" target="_blank">Leviathan</a></i><br />
2. <i><a href="http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2012/films/august-and-after" target="_blank">August and After</a></i>/<i><a href="http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2012/films/april" target="_blank">April</a></i><br />
3. <i><a href="http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2012/films/in-the-stone-house" target="_blank">In the Stone House</a></i>/<i><a href="http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2012/films/new-shores" target="_blank">New Shores</a></i><br />
4. <i><a href="http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2012/films/first-cousin-once-removed" target="_blank">First Cousin Once Removed</a></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XcDmrRh1c-U/UIBSQMaSQaI/AAAAAAAAEVc/OuB94YsXq1I/s1600/hills_4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XcDmrRh1c-U/UIBSQMaSQaI/AAAAAAAAEVc/OuB94YsXq1I/s400/hills_4.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Beyond the Hills</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i><br /></i>
<b>Most Disappointing Film</b><br />
1. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258281/" target="_blank">Beyond the Hills</a></i><br />
2. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1846472/" target="_blank">Something in the Air</a></i><br />
3. <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1843840/" target="_blank">The Last Time I Saw Macao</a></i><br />
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<b>Best Lead Performance</b><br />
1. Denis Lavant, <i>Holy Motors</i><br />
2. Nina Hoss, <i>Barbara</i><br />
3. Denzel Washington, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1907668/" target="_blank">Flight</a></i><br />
4. Tadashi Okuno, <i>Like Someone in Love</i><br />
5. Suraj Sharma, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454876/" target="_blank">Life of Pi</a></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<b>Best Supporting Performance</b><br />
1. John Goodman, <i>Flight</i><br />
2. Isabelle Huppert, <i>Amour</i><br />
3. Kylie Minogue, <i>Holy Motors</i><br />
4. Alessandro Nivola, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2115295/" target="_blank">Ginger & Rosa</a></i><br />
5. Ronald Zehrfeld, <i>Barbara</i><br />
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<b>Notably missed: </b><i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1690389/" target="_blank">You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet</a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1876360/" target="_blank">Night Across the Street</a></i>, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1833844/" target="_blank">Berberian Sound Studio</a></i>, and so onKenji Fujishimahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10635553450551818306noreply@blogger.com0