2009 (and Earlier) in Review: My Year in Personal Discoveries

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Truth is, I didn't really start getting serious about cinephilia until halfway through my undergraduate years at Rutgers, when I decided to ditch the whole accounting thing and focus on journalism. And my interest in expanding my horizons to other arts didn't really assert itself until maybe my last year of college, when I started to dip my toes into music beyond the classical and classic-rock realms.

These days, I feel like I'm engaged in a never-ending game of catch-up: There's always something I haven't seen, read or heard that someone else has. The sheer amount of art I have yet to be exposed to can be overwhelming when I reflect on it—which is why I try to avoid dwelling on what I haven't experienced, and forge ahead and try to fill in my legion of blind spots.

In other words, I'm always trying to discover something sublime, every day. And in that spirit, I figure, why not let you all in on some of the more exhilarating things, in film, in music, in literature, and beyond, that I've discovered this year?

Thus, in no particular order, my year in personal discoveries:

Top Music Discovery of the Year:

(Tie) Dummy (1994), Portishead / On the Corner (1972), Miles Davis

There's nothing at all to connect these two wildly disparate albums, stylistically or otherwise, except for the fact that these were the two musical discoveries that blew my mind the most—especially the Davis album, which took his late experiments in jazz/rock fusion to some kind of nutball zenith. With its Stockhausen-inspired tape experiments mixed in with jazzy improvisations all wrapped in funky bass grooves, it's the kind of mad work of art that could only come from a visionary artist. Nothing against Bitches Brew (1969), or his earlier, "saner" jazz classics Kind of Blue (1959) and Birth of the Cool (1956), but On the Corner is the Miles Davis album that I keep finding myself wanting to return to repeatedly.

Portishead's Dummy operates on a wholly different register from On the Corner, coolly alienating rather than relentlessly driving. But its eerie nocturnal vibe is no less entrancing to my ears; it may be the closest musical equivalent to Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels (1995) in my experience. (Wong Kar-Wai and Portishead: oh the possibilities!) Though their later two albums are scarcely less fine—Third in particular, especially with that great song "We Carry On"—Dummy is the one that hits my nerves the hardest. Put it on in the dead of night, with the lights down to a flicker, and I'm gone, lost in a sea of moody melancholy.

Other memorable musical discoveries of the year (in alphabetical order):

—Alright, Still (2007), Lily Allen
—The College Dropout (2004), Kanye West
—Mighty Like a Rose (1991), Elvis Costello
—Double Nickels on the Dime (1984), Minutemen
—Fleet Foxes (2008), Fleet Foxes
—Great Recordings of the Century: Janet Baker Sings Mahler (1968/1970): Janet Baker/Hallé Orchestra/New Philharmonia Orchestra/Sir John Barbirolli: mostly for Baker's haunting rendition of Mahler's great setting of Rückert's "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I have lost track of this world)," from his "Rückertlieder" song cycle. Jim Jarmusch fans will recognize the song from the concluding segment of Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
—Illinoise (2005), Sufjan Stevens: maybe not Best Album of the Decade great, but wonderful nevertheless
—Let It Be (1984), The Replacements
—Off the Wall (1979), Michael Jackson (RIP)
—Weathervanes (2009), Freelance Whales: What's this band, you might be wondering? It's an up-and-coming band from Brooklyn that deals in a kind of dreamy, whimsical electro-pop that I find myself quite taken by. Full disclosure: its percussionist is a friend of mine from high school. But believe me, that's not why I like them. Weathervanes, their debut album, is on iTunes; they are absolutely worth the download.
—Wish You Were Here (1975), Pink Floyd
—Zen Arcade (1984), Hüsker Dü

And of course, I cannot forget to mention some of my favorite discoveries in the realm of Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop music from the '80s. I suspect none of you will care about this, but hey, whose blog is it? (If, by any chance, any of you are interested in any of these...well, some of these are technically out of print, so the links I've provided to some of the harder-to-find ones are to free downloads or streaming-audio pages. The first pick, though...well, I have a copy at home, so if it's of interest, by all means, hit me up):

—一切爲明天 (1988), 蘇芮 (pronounced "Su Rey"; also known as the artist whose song Zhao Tao dances to alone in Jia Zhangke's Platform (2001). That wonderful ballad, however, is not featured in this magnificently passionate album. Again, its out-of-print, but you can try to listen to some mediocre audio samples here before trying to track it down on Taobao.com.)
—不了情 (1983), 蔡琴 (pronounced "Tsai Chin"; fans of Infernal Affairs (2002) will have heard her rich, creamy voice. She's the grand old lady of Taiwanese pop. Also, she was once married to late film director Edward Yang.)
—繼續革命 (1992), Beyond (a Hong Kong rock band, often considered the Beatles of Cantopop)
—無伴的舞 (1986), 甄楚倩 (also known as Yolinda Yan, a Hong Kong starlet who was featured in John Woo's Bullet in the Head (1990), as a drug-addicted singer)
—賭徒 (1986), 黃鶯鶯 (also known as Tracy Huang; her heavenly voice is featured towards the end of Stanley Kwan's Center Stage (1991), interpreting a song originally sung by Ruan Ling-yu)

Top Literary Discovery of the Year:

Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962), John Steinbeck

No matter that Steinbeck never quite finds the "real" America, as he aimed to do at the outset of his famous literal/literary trek across the country with French poodle and his camper vehicle; in this case, it's all about the journey, and not about the destination. There is no destination, really, but there's a lot of exploration, and it's that sense of discovery, and the insights he gleans from his curiosity, that truly inspires. And like Steinbeck, who writes that he felt like a "criminal" writing about a country he hadn't actually explored in-depth, I often feel like I'm writing about art from an incomplete perspective on life. After reading this book, I immediately felt a desire to travel the country—heck, the world—to try to experience environments, lives and perspectives outside of my own comfortable vantage point. In short, this is endlessly illuminating stuff.

Other memorable literary discoveries of the year (in alphabetical order):

—A Confederacy of Dunces (1980), John Kennedy O'Toole
—Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco (1990), Bryan Burrough & John Helyar
—Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity (2004), Lawrence Lessig
—Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century (1999), Jonathan Glover
—Madame Bovary (1857), Gustave Flaubert
—The Road (2006), Cormac McCarthy
—Watchmen (1987), Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Top Theatrical Experience of the Year:

Waiting for Godot, Roundabout Theatre Company

Actually, I didn't go to many theatrical productions this year—mostly because Broadway tickets are so damn expensive! That, and few of my friends seemed to be all that interested in seeing the Broadway shows I wanted to see (the South Pacific revival, Next to Normal). I did, however, get to see this revival of Samuel Beckett's famously bleak minimalist drama...and a wonderful experience it proved to be!

This was actually my first encounter with this play, and immediately I could tell that this is a theatrical work that could easily be botched if the acting and directing isn't sharp; its near-plotlessness and the repetitive nature of some of its dialogue can come off as agonizingly dull in the wrong hands. But director Anthony Page and his brilliant cast—Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin, John Goodman and John Glover—brought both killer timing and a wealth of expressive variety that fully brought out the dark comedy and tragic pathos of the piece without ever lapsing into easy sentimentality. The result was an electrifying theatrical experience as profoundly moving as it was hilarious and entertaining—not bad for a play about two fellows who spend two long acts waiting for someone who never comes.

Other memorable theatrical experiences of the year (in alphabetical order):

—Company, Plays in the Park
—The Good Dance: dakar/brooklyn, Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group and Compagnie 1er Temp
—Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, New Jersey Youth Theatre

Top Film-Discovery-on-DVD of the Year:

Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais (1962)

Yeah, it's a challenging, enigmatic film about memory, as everyone says. What doesn't seem to be mentioned quite as much is just how damn sensual this masterpiece is, more than 40 years after the fact. Sacha Vierny's sweeping camerawork and Gothic chiaroscuro lighting, along with Francis Seyrig's unsettling score, combine to give a tactile dimension to Resnais's hardcore-intellectual musings; the confusing thickets of memory have never felt so achingly real and immediate. I have little doubt in my mind that this film will be brought up all over again when Resnais's Wild Grass—arguably his most Marienbad-ish film in years—is released next year. Its mysteries remain as bottomless as ever.

Other memorable film-on-DVD discoveries of the year:

—Bad Lieutenant (1992), Abel Ferrara
—Down by Law (1986), Jim Jarmusch
—In a Lonely Place (1950), Nicholas Ray
—The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
—Quiet City (2007), Aaron Katz (Aside: this mumblecore gem would make a very fine double bill with Peter Sollett's underrated Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist)
—Rouge (1987), Stanley Kwan
—Sansho the Bailiff (1954), Kenji Mizoguchi
—The Son (2002), Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

Top Television Discovery of the Year:

"The Prisoner" (1967)

Technically, I've stopped watching much primetime television and thus don't really have any newer discoveries to report on that front (no, folks, I still have not jumped on the "Mad Men" bandwagon, though I hope to soon enough; possibly "Lost," too). Thus, "The Prisoner" was really the only television series I saw this year, and on DVD no less. But man, what a deliriously brilliant, provocative, fucked-up brew the late Patrick McGoohan concocted for this legendary 17-episode run! Each episode is a blast of creative ingenuity and thematic depth, touching as it does on issues of societal and individual freedoms. Its last two mind-blowing episodes have to be seen to be believed; even now, I'm still not quite sure what to make of its concluding ten minutes, except that I watched its audaciously inconclusive ending with my mouth hanging wide open. (I didn't see the recent AMC miniseries remake; a good hometown buddy of mine already expressed disappointment with it. Is that the consensus?)

The only other TV discovery of note for me this year? That the popular FOX TV series 24 still actually had some fuel left in its creative tank after all. Could it be a coincidence that the most morally complex season of this series since Season 2 aired at the dawn of the Obama presidency? Maybe, maybe not. What was memorable about Season 7 was this sense that, for once, the writers were actually trying to confront, head-on, the myriad implications of Jack Bauer's soldier-like service to his country: whether he had lost his soul in the process, and whether there is any humanity left in him to find. Moral dilemmas were written all over this season, among a wide variety of characters, and the writers didn't try to shove them into the show's by-now worn-out formulas (as Season 6 did, to calamitous effect). Season 7 stared into the abyss, and came out of the other side with some comforting answers, and some not-so-comforting ones. My guard is up again for the upcoming season, but I'm going out on a limb and declaring Season 7 to be quite possibly its best year, or "day," since Season 2. Yes, even better than its Emmy-winning fifth season.

Top Technological Discovery of the Year:

Twitter

Yeah, I was skeptical about it at first too; Facebook seemed good enough for me, and I initially didn't feel like I had a whole lot to say, especially in a mere 140 characters. Then I started using it, and now (like MC Hammer) I've seen the light. Look, I don't necessarily care about what you're doing every minute of every day. That's not what Twitter's good for. I think of Twitter as a kind of online thought journal, a way to pool whatever ideas come to your head and get instant feedback on them. And also, instead of isolating people, I've found that it can bring people closer—to friends, to trends, to news of the day. I've met and interacted with a lot of interesting people on Twitter; heck, I would say that I've actually learned things by using the social-networking site. I still have friends to believe that this a fad. To me, it feels like the way of the future; telling that Facebook has gradually morphed into a sister version of Twitter (with, admittedly, one improvement: a character limit way, way over 140 characters). But hey, I could be wrong. Nevertheless, I don't plan to back down in the coming year; where else can I get into discussions with cinephiles living across the country? (Well, for cinephile discussions, there is The Auteurs, but still...)

And finally...

Top Travel Experience of the Year:

Hong Kong

Around mid-October, after months of putting it off, I finally got to experience, on my own, the splendors of Hong Kong—a place I had dreamed of visiting for years (I think I have Wong Kar-Wai to thank for this too). Though I only spent five days there, even in that relatively brief period of time, Hong Kong pretty much lived up to my high expectations. The clash of tradition and modernization is intoxicating, and of course there are plenty of glorious sights to see, both in central Hong Kong and in outlying islands like Lantau and Lamma. Also, I don't think I've partied it up as much this year as I did in Lan Kwai Fong. (I think it's only fair, at this point, to give a shout-out to my hostess, a lovely lady by the name of Emily who was generous enough to provide me room and board as well a bit of a tour around certain parts during my five days there. Thanks, Emily; hope I wasn't too much of an imposition and a hassle.)

I also went to Japan for three days after that, but honestly, I felt so short-changed by those three days that I don't have much to say about it. I got a peek, but not the full view. I'm already planning on going again, this time without a guided tour to keep rushing us along.

To wrap up this entry, then, a few select photos of sights from Hong Kong, as well as a question to readers: What else do you think I need to see, hear, read, etc., in the various areas that I've covered in this post? I am open to all sorts of suggestions for the coming year!

In Central Hong Kong, from left to right: the Bank of China Tower, the Cheung Kong Center and the HSBC Main Building.

Central Plaza in Wan Chai. This is where the Asian Wall Street Journal is based.

 

A view from the Peak

 
 

The great Anita Mui, Cantopop star extraordinaire. Lady Gaga, eat your heart out!

Looking out at Central Hong Kong from the Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade

A view from the highest point on Lamma Island

 The Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau Island

(I have more photos of my trip to Hong Kong and Japan—but they're on Facebook. Looks like you have to be a member to be able to see them, however. Join up, if you haven't already! Hey, it's free, at least.)

UPDATE (12/30/09, 12:28 A.M.): I added a tidbit of new info to the Canto- and Mandopop subsection of the music section of this post, for those who are interested.

2009 (and Earlier) in Review: An Introductory Overview

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—This week, to celebrate the coming New Year's Eve and Day on Thursday and Friday, I'll be taking stock of 2009 personally, cinematically and otherwise here at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second. Expect lists galore: favorite films of the year, and possibly of the decade; favorite discoveries, artistic and personal, of the year; and the like. And on New Year's Day, I'll try to look ahead to 2010—most likely, on what I hope to achieve in my life in the coming year.

To kick off this retrospective week, then, a brief reflection on the year in my life that was.

Truth is, I'm already waiting for 2010 to come, because 2009, when I consider it broadly, felt, at best, more like a year of transition than great leaps forward. I'm still working basically the same job now that I was at the beginning of the year, even if the location has changed (I started the year working in lower Manhattan, at the World Financial Center; now I'm in midtown Manhattan, at the News Corp. building). As far as my film writing goes, I'm still doing it as a side hobby, i.e. not getting paid for doing it full-time. And, of course, I am still living at home with my family, making long commutes to New York both for and outside of work.

However, even though many things have essentially stayed the same from January to December, I like to think I have made some progress this year in paving the way for possible changes in the year ahead. I finally made my first writerly contributions to The Wall Street Journal online this year while toiling away at my day job at the international news desk; I hope my work is catching the attentions of the right people in my field. Regarding people in the field, I finally got around to meeting some of the New York-based critics and cinephiles I had, until this year, only known via their online and/or print reviews. (The fact that some of these esteemed writers, upon meeting me for the first time, received me almost as if I was a minor celebrity surprised and delighted me even more.) And as for my living situation: well, I don't know if the fact that my parents—my mother, mostly—are trying to lay the groundwork for my future living situation by buying a house in Perth Amboy, N.J., of all places, is a sign of progress considering the fact that I don't plan to actually live in Perth Amboy. (This is probably one of those things I'm being pushed into—because, you know, my parents know better what I want and need than I do.) But it's something, I suppose. (I think their thinking  is that, by taking advantage of the low housing prices now, I can earn enough rental income from this Perth Amboy house in order to be able to afford to buy a house somewhere in or close to New York years down the road.)

And, even amidst the overwhelming feeling of stasis in my life—odd, considering that the world around me this year, what with the nation's economic, political and global-affairs troubles, sometimes felt on the verge of near-apocalyptic collapse—there were still considerable pleasures worth remembering and savoring this year.

Chief among them was my first-ever visit to Hong Kong in October, in which I spent five mostly glorious days not only taking in its intoxicating multicultural big-city atmosphere, but also simply enjoying the freedom of being on my own—a feeling I don't experience all that much living at home as I do. (I didn't feel that sense of freedom in the three days I spent in Japan after my Hong Kong venture, mostly because my parents, aunt and I were locked into a rather lame tour package; I'm already looking forward to returning to Japan to visit on my own.)

The other highlight of the year I can recall off the top of my head right now: seeing and hearing legendary French film director Alain Resnais at a New York Film Festival press conference in late September after a screening of his latest film, Wild Grass—a day that included not only Resnais, Mathieu Amalric and André Dussolier sitting on the same stage as Resnais, but also a screening of Corneliu Porumboiu's great Police, Adjective and, later on, a meeting with the towering film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. I was seeing stars in my eyes after that day! Now, if only I had been able to get New York Film Festival press accreditation... (Wild Grass, by the way, is set to be released in spring of 2010; it's worth checking out, although my feelings on it, even after two viewings, remain deeply mixed.)

And, even through the highlights and the lowlights—and there were some fairly extreme lowlights this year, mostly on the familial and professional fronts—there were always the revelations and beauties of great art to fill my soul. I may be an agnostic when it comes to religious convictions, but I am most certainly a a true believer in the religion that is Art—and 2009 gave me no reason to cast off that faith.

Oh yeah, and of course good friends. Because, as Clarence says at the end of It's a Wonderful Life, "No man is a failure who has friends." (Capra-)Corny, perhaps, but I'd like to believe it to be true.

John McClane and the Engine of Doom

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Merry Christmas to all of you out there who are reading the newly invigorated (or so I'd like to think) My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second!

I'm not one to go all-out on Christmas; my parents never did when I was young, and so naturally I have taken up their non-example. (They never even bothered to try to fool me with the Santa Claus thing.) And being that the Fujishima family network doesn't extend much beyond our East Brunswick, N.J., home in the United States, we're haven't partaken in the massive Christmas-shopping push either.

Thus, on the theory that "It's the thought that counts" still means something these days, the one gift I plan to give out is...you guessed it: a special Christmas blog post on one of my favorite movies to watch on Christmas!

Yep, that's Bruce Willis you see in the image above, in his now-iconic role as supercop John McClane. But the image is not from John McTiernan's original 1988 Die Hard, a film that, even now, still holds up as a classic of the action genre. It's from Renny Harlin's 1990 sequel Die Hard 2, a follow-up that many might say is the original's retarded evil twin. Well........

I wrote an appreciation of Die Hard more than three years ago for The House Next Door, and while I haven't seen the film from start to finish in a while, I find no reason I can think of, off the top of my head, to retract anything I set forth in that piece. Especially in the context of the Hollywood-blockbuster genre, the original film is still a rich and witty concoction, delivering the goods in the action department while lavishing more-than-usual attention to character development, humor and even self-satire. You believe in the characters onscreen as three-dimensional people—a rarity for these kinds of mega-budget Hollywood blockbusters. It's just about perfect—in the context of the genre and outside of it.

Many argue that Die Hard 2, on the other hand, is a crasser, cruder rehash of the original, emphasizing the action spectacle while downplaying character development, and upping the ante on violence and gore. All of that is indeed true. And yet, in the right mood, I find that Die Hard 2, in its own caveman way, provides more sheer pedal-to-the-metal excitement than the relatively sober-suited original. In fact, I would go so far as to put forth this notion: Die Hard 2 is the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom of the Die Hard series.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, of course, is Steven Spielberg's 1984 sequel to his 1981 adventure classic Raiders of the Lost Ark; it also has a rather low reputation among many Indiana Jones fans, with many considering it either the worst or second-worst (depending on what one thinks of the recent Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). Guess what? I like Temple of Doom a lot as well, perhaps even more than I do Raiders. Coincidence? Maybe not...

Both films occupy an interesting place in the context of their respective franchises; after the hugely popular successes of their predecessors, no doubt studios demanded sequels to try to rake in more cash. So how do both Renny Harlin with Die Hard 2 and Steven Spielberg with Temple of Doom decide to approach their follow-ups? By basically turning everything to 11: upping the ante on violence, exploding notions of plausibility set out by their predecessors, and generally pushing the boundaries of good taste and sense.

Start with the "Anything Goes"-in-Mandarin musical number that audaciously opens Temple of Doom.

Not only does it feature Kate Capshaw breaking the fourth wall winking at the camera at one point...

...but Spielberg then leads us into to some unseen backstage space where the dancers continue to perform, for no apparent audience whatsoever.

Raiders of the Lost Ark started in media res, with Indy already knee-deep in adventure; in Temple of Doom, Spielberg the showman steps in to open up the proceedings in spectacular style.

There's a much briefer moment like that in the opening moments of Die Hard 2 that similarly suggests a more playful style to this follow-up. After our main villain, Col. Stuart (William Sadler) has been introduced—doing calisthenics in the buff in a hotel room across Washington's Dulles International Airport—he, now fully dressed, comes out of his room...

and, two-by-two, his henchmen come out of their respective rooms...

...with what seems like clockwork timing. Unless Col. Stuart, for some bizarre reason, wanted this mass exodus to be as well-orchestrated as his traitorous terrorist plot, there's no plausible way to explain the perfect timing of the henchmen's exits from their rooms. Could Renny Harlin have found inspiration from Temple of Doom? Take away composer Michael Kamen's ominous low rumblings and replace the moment with, say, something Broadway-brassy, and who knows? You could quite possibly have Busby Berkeley in miniature.

Both these moments of what-the-hell invention suggest that the rest of these films will follow suit in their throwing of caution to the winds—and so it proves. While, in Temple of Doom, its disregard for plausibility and tastefulness mostly manifests itself in extravagantly staged settings, situations and set-pieces (with cinematographer Douglas Slocombe capturing the film's extraordinarily vivid and evocative production and art design in the Panavision widescreen format), Die Hard 2's disregard manifests itself mostly in its winking, self-referential recognition of the implausibility of it all. Thus: "Another basement, another elevator," says McClane at one point. "How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?" In another throwaway moment, he mutters to himself, "Oh, we are just up to our ass in terrorists again, John!" If Die Hard insisted, in spite of all of McClane's cowboy humor, that we in the audience take these characters and situations seriously, Die Hard 2 revels in its inherent ridiculousness, disarming criticism by essentially poking fun at itself, and to a great extent its genre, for being so ridiculous. Not even Spielberg in Temple of Doom quite dares to toe the line so dangerously between triviality and gravitas. (Even Sadler's Col. Stuart gets into the act, shouting "Time for the main event!" just before he and McClane face off in its climax.)

That over-the-top feel also manifests itself in the level of violence in both films—more brutal and horrifying, sometimes appropriately so and sometimes not. Temple of Doom's more memorably sadistic moments of violence are mostly concentrated in its second act, a physical and spiritual trek through an underground Hell that finds Indy tortured and hypnotized into doing head Thuggee Mola Ram's bidding before being redeemed and "reborn" into the Indy we all know and love. What was before a high-flying adventure yarn has become a supernatural horror film. Die Hard 2 has a section like that: a midpoint suspense set-piece that ends tragically with the crashing of a planeload of innocent passengers, all victims of Col. Stuart's cruel attempt to prove to his Dulles control-tower hostages that he's not to be fucked with. It's a stunning moment that, like that entire underground section of Temple of Doom, reverberates throughout the rest of the film, raising the stakes for the characters. Both sequels, though, also have moments of "fun" grue: a villain gets a shish kabob thrown into his chest in Temple of Doom, while another villain gets an icicle stabbed into his eye in Die Hard 2. (The violence in Temple of Doom was enough to raise MPAA eyebrows and lead to the creation of the PG-13 rating; Die Hard 2, suffice it to say, deserves its hard R.)

What I think attracts me to both of these sequels in comparison to their originals is precisely that sense of reckless excess. If Temple of Doom can be seen as an unadulterated peek into Steven Spielberg's subconscious, then I would argue that Die Hard 2 is just as much of a blast from Renny Harlin's id—an id fueled by fascistic/jingoistic '80s-era trashy action-movie bloodthirst and machismo rather than "classier" racist/imperialist '30s and '40-era pulp serials. Maybe it's no surprise that, in Harlin's 1993 film Cliffhanger, he comes up with the image of a baddie getting skewered on a stalactite, or a good guy getting kicked repeatedly in the torso like a soccer ball; that's clearly the same adolescent Roman-circus sensibility behind some of the more outrageously gory moments of Die Hard 2. (Hey, I'm not telling you whether you should approve of that kind of sensibility in movies or not; that's up to you to decide.)

Also worth touching upon are these two films' positions in their respective franchises, especially in light of the films that came afterward. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and ...Crystal Skull (2008) both pull back from the unapologetic excesses of Temple of Doom, but while they may feel mild compared to Doom, that's merely a reflection of not only an older and wiser director at the helm, but also of an older, wiser and wearier hero. In the climax of Last Crusade, he finds the Holy Grail, but then comes to understand that there are things in this life worth more than even the cup's promise of everlasting life. Crystal Skull, in its own unassuming way, finds Indy coming face-to-face with his mortality in that indelible image of him shielding himself from a mushroom cloud; by the end of that film, he has seemingly dealt with that realization by re-forming a family unit he thought he had lost.

Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995) and Live Free or Die Hard (2007) aren't nearly so rich in humane wisdom and insight, but that same sense of weariness still hovers over these two, primarily through Bruce Willis's aging features. Vengeance finds him alone and apparently estranged from his wife for good; in Live Free or Die Hard, he's not only estranged from his daughter, but also from the technologically savvy world around him (the latter aspect proves to be the film's richest source of comedy). Both Hollywood blockbusters in mentality through and through—of course the analog man will win out in the end—they nevertheless manage to offer the kind of tantalizing suggestions of bruised and battered depth that Die Hard had in abundance and that Die Hard 2, in its gleeful adolescence, chucks out the window right from the beginning.

Look, I'm not here to make any grand claims about Die Hard 2 as some underappreciated masterpiece. To be perfectly honest, it probably is the least of the series (and Harlin, needless to say, is no Spielberg), and my attachment to it is probably more nostalgic than anything else; it's the kind of film I used to watch repeatedly as a younger film enthusiast, back in high school. But I still get a kick out of it the same way that I still get a kick out of Temple of Doom: it grabs you by the throat within its first few minutes and rarely ever lets up, like a rolling juggernaut that keeps accumulating energy scene-by-scene until its arrives to a big-blowout finish. No, these kinds of entertainments ain't the height of cinema, but it's the kind of high-flying entertainment that, when it works, you're sorry to see end. When I think about these two towering action franchises as a whole—source of some of the most entertaining Hollywood action-adventure moments in cinema history—the second installments are the ones I feel most like rewatching—not because they're necessarily the best films of their cycles, but because they're the ones that I remember as the most far-out, the most intense, the most exhausting and exhilarating. For better and/or worse, they are just about free of inhibition; that's their spiritual (if that's the right word for it) connection, and that's what I respond to—maybe against my better judgment, but hey, judgment isn't what makes these sequels as fun as they are, right?

And on that note: Happy holidays!

Only Angel Babies Have Wings

NEW YORK—I was going to weigh in on the Summer Hours backlash that's been brewing in cinephile quarters on Twitter the past couple of days, in which some have only now come out to complain—if I'm getting their collective argument right—about how boringly prosaic, middlebrow and ridiculously flawed its conception of bourgeois privilege apparently is. But I don't think anything I have to say about the film—other than the fact that I found it beautifully shot, probing and insightful in its own quietly tempestuous way, and that I was able to accept the characters and the milieu as they are—will change any of the naysayers' minds; apparently something about the film, be it class-related or aesthetically related, rubs them the wrong way. Not much I can do about that; besides, I could probably use another viewing of it before I can confidently make any more arguments in its favor. Not that it needs any special pleading from me, really; many film critics seem to be in agreement over the film's high quality, if the recently concluded IndieWire 2009 poll is any indication. (I mention this not as proof of anything, just as a statement of fact.)

So I'll just move on to the next film in my film-review queue, and leave the Summer Hours debate for another day, especially because some on Twitter are already starting to express ennui over the whole thing. Thus...


Ricky (2009; Dir.: François Ozon)

There's one point about this fascinating work of magical realism that I'd like to dwell on for a bit, and that's one cut early in the movie. I wish I had taken notes during my viewing of this film Friday at the IFC Center, because I don't exactly recall when exactly this particular cut occurs. (Maybe someone who has seen the film can refresh my memory?) Basically, though, it's a cut that elapses time, jumping suddenly and unexpectedly nine months later into a birth that we in the audience have not been prepared for. That birth is, of course, the baby-boy-with-angel-wings of Katie (Alexandra Lamy)—a struggling mother with a daughter (Mélusine Mayance) and a long-absent husband—and Paco (Sergi López), the co-worker with whom Katie falls in love. Yes, you read right: the baby boy has angel wings.

The reason I'm honing on this one elapsed-time cut is that, when I mull over this film in my head, I feel that this one moment—or, rather, non-moment—carries a whole host of intriguing implications in light of the wildly varied directions Ozon's film takes throughout the rest of the picture, and the blatantly fantastical tone its concluding moments evoke. Consider: Up to the point of that cut, Ricky mostly plays like a gritty working-class love story, emphasizing dreary—but never Frozen River-like condescending—realism. Then Ricky is born, and...well, I guess you can say all heaven and hell break loose, narratively and structurally speaking, as the story touches upon domestic angst, media sensationalism and finally spiritual healing.

It's a heady mix Ozon cooks up in Ricky, but its story pre- and post-elapsed time cut so clearly separate the gritty realist and magical-realist portions that I can't help but wonder: Could a good majority of this film be possibly, you know, a dream? The film's concluding shot of Lisa clutching Paco, eyes closed and head rested on his back as they ride on a motorcycle, suggests that something restful and peaceful has overtaken her; this comes right after a shot, bathed in golden tones (by cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie), of a newly pregnant Katie, acting almost as if the whole Ricky story had never really happened. The way these two images are framed and lighted are powerfully suggestive. Could this be young Lisa's dream of the struggle of her beloved mother to let go of (unseen but implied) marital troubles? Or maybe much of this is all in Katie's troubled, emotionally guarded imagination?

Dream or not—and whether it's one or the other is, in the end, probably beside the point—my intention in bringing up the many implications of this one cut is to suggest why I was able to accept the film's wild mix of tones and themes wholly on its own terms, as opposed to some critics who have found Ozon's mixture clumsy and unwieldy. That one cut is so jarring in the time that it skips over that, for me, it immediately signaled not only that something strange was about to occur in the story, but that something deeper might be going on underneath its charming fairy-tale surface. It may not be enough to take Ricky completely at face value, and that sense of mystery—never resolved, always tantalizingly suggestive—is something that I often crave in cinema, and which is present here, though never to a suffocating degree. Above all else, the film still works quite beautifully on more "normal" dramatic and emotional levels, as an allegorical yet intimately grounded drama about a small family dealing with past losses, present fears and future hopes.

(Ricky is still playing at the IFC Center.)

Oh yeah...and speaking of fantasy: For those who were possibly wondering, yes, I did see James Cameron's heavily hyped Avatar this past weekend (in 3-D but not IMAX). I hope to write about it sometime soon...but I have quite a bit planned for my blog in the coming week, to wind down 2009 and the decade, so I'm not sure when I'll have the time to get to writing about it (or the billions of other movies, most of them of the Oscar-contender variety, that I'll aim to see in the coming week). For now, I'll just say: It's no game-changer—or, at least, not nearly as much of one as Cameron would want you to believe—but as eye candy, it's probably the most dazzling thing I've seen on an American movie screen this year. Make of that what you will.

New (Adjective) Story (Noun)

NEW YORK—My latest contribution to The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog is an interview I did way back during this year's New York Film Festival with Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, whose second feature Police, Adjective opens at the IFC Center tomorrow. Hope you all enjoy reading this one, and also forgive Mr. Porumboiu for his occasionally awkward English (which I tried to keep intact as much as possible without totally obscuring his meanings). And I also hope you all check out Police, Adjective, which I think is quite fascinating, thought-provoking and wonderful.

An Adventure in Stupidity, Or Yet Another Lesson Learned the Hard Way

NEW YORK—Yesterday, Mother Nature dumped buckets of snow over the East Coast. A perfect time to stay in at home and avoid the treacherous roadways, right? Well, that's not what I did. Not at all.

I had tickets to a dance performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last night that I had paid for about three months in advance, so, despite warnings of the impending snowstorm worsening during the evening, I said to myself, you know, I've driven through snowstorms before. I might as well make the $18 I paid for the ticket stand up and not go to waste.

Thus, I left my house at around noon to catch a 12:29 p.m. NJ Transit train in New Brunswick to get to New York. The cold front was only producing flurries in the area at the time, and nothing was accumulating on the ground, so I decided to park in an empty spot on the street (you don't have to feed meters in New Brunswick during weekends).

I spent my afternoon and evening first in Astoria, hanging out with friends, and then in Brooklyn for this dance performance. By the time a friend and I got to Brooklyn, the blizzard had already intensified; still, it wasn't enough to faze me when I thought about the ride home.

But when I returned to New Brunswick at about 11 p.m. and saw my car not at its spot on the street—well, then I was fazed. You can guess what happened to the car.

My dad ended up having to drive out in the storm and pick me up. And while he was gracious about the whole unfortunate affair, my mom was decidedly not. I was still hearing complaints from her about the situation this morning—not just about how I shouldn't have parked my car on the street, but how I shouldn't have even gone out to New York in the first place. (The fact that I paid only $18 for the ticket, she felt, strengthened her case. "That's nothing," she kept saying—funny coming from Mrs. Extreme Frugality.)

Here's the one thing I can, with admittedly agonizing difficulty, tell myself about the incident: It was, in hindsight, disastrously shortsighted of me to park on the street, even when things weren't too bad weather-wise, knowing that the snowstorm was bound to worsen by the time I returned home. I certainly should have taken that into account and parked in some enclosed lot. (Nevertheless, if New Brunswick was so adamant about ridding Somerset St. of cars, why was I still seeing three cars on the right side of the street parked in metered spots at 11 p.m.?) Or, at the very least, I probably should have just found a place to crash overnight (I had to come in to work today; in the world of journalism, at least, there are no snow days).

But what of my mother's suggestion, that I should not have even gone to the show in the first place? Even though I had planned on this months in advance? Does the fact that the ticket cost $18 make a difference?

What else should I have done/not done in order make this situation much less fucked than it already is? I'm open to suggestions/advice, to try to learn from this rather embarrassing experience.

P.S. The dance performance at BAM presented a fascinating representation, strictly via choreographed body movement, of issues of religion, family and cultural identity. It was worth the slushy, snowy trek, I think. Not that my mother would care about that.

No Limits to Interpretation

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Inspired by my second viewing of Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control on DVD today, here's an image I wanted to share with all of you, the significance of which I will try to explain below:

The Limits of Control, Jarmusch's latest film, is one of the most divisive not only of this year, but of the great iconoclastic director's career: Many decried it as Jarmusch's shallowest film ever, while others defended it as quite possibly his most "earnest" work. I saw it at the Angelika Film Center sometime during its theatrical run in May, and while my experience of watching this abstract, minimalist, deliberately repetitive film ranged from fascination to occasional moments of boredom, by the end my head was swimming in intellectual and visceral overload. A second viewing today only strengthened my affection for it—and the image above encapsulates why. 

For those who have not seen the film (and watch out; there may be spoilers ahead): The Limits of Control is basically one extended shaggy-dog tale about a nameless Lone Man (Isaach de Bankolé) who embarks on a vague mission that involves meeting up with a slew of bohemian characters who spout off on subjects related to art and science, and exchanging matchboxes with cryptic clues on small pieces of paper (all of which he disposes of by putting them in his mouth and washing them down with espressos). That's pretty much all there is to the storyline; the story, one soon realizes, is hardly the point. This is one of those films that are almost entirely about how ideas, characters and moods are expressed through sound and image. Thus, Jarmusch lays on the druggily evocative drone of Japanese band Boris; rhymes shots and camera angles as a way to evoke the Lone Man's insistent focus on routine; and so on. To try to describe it all is to perhaps miss the point; this is a movie above all to surrender to, to experience.

This is not to say, however, that The Limits of Control is merely about pure sensation. I do think Jarmusch has an honest-to-God subject—maybe even a message—here, one that resonates with me as someone who is deeply interested in art in all its various forms: It's a film about opening oneself up to different ways of looking at the world. "Reality is arbitrary," the Lone Man utters during his meeting with his assassination target—an unnamed American played by Bill Murray—repeating a mantra uttered by one of his contacts. Jarmusch, through his exultant celebration of the sheer movie-ness of the particular alternate reality he creates in this film, suggests that one's view of the world is basically what one envisions it to be, through science, painting, film, music, etc. Unlike what the Lone Man's American target believes about himself, no one really has a monopoly on an understanding of the way the real world operates. (Anyone who thinks he does "ought to go to a cemetery," as another repeated mantra in the film goes.)

This brings me to the image above. In The Limits of Control, the Lone Man himself doesn't say a whole lot, sticking closely to his habits and routines (including a tai chi routine he's glimpsed doing in his fancy clothes), and keeping his emotions mostly in check. He operates, then, as a kind of blank slate on which his contacts can voice their various visions of art and reality—and that, I think, is what the above image expresses beautifully. After he has accomplished his mission, he returns to the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid and takes in a work of art—Antoni Tàpies's "Gran Sábana"—that is essentially a white bedsheet spread across a canvas. If, in his previous excursions to the museum, he has looked at artwork that illustrates images he encounters in real life, this time he's looking at a work that basically mirrors himself.

When it comes to approaches toward art, I'm not always so much interested in what a work of art can tell me about myself, but what it can reveal either about the artist himself or the wider world. In some ways, I feel something of a kinship with this nameless, impassive hitman. And that's why I find the above image very beautiful, and why I think The Limits of Control resonates with me as deeply as it does.

How Does It Feel?

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Just wanted to drop a quick link for you all to ponder and savor.

Matt Zoller Seitz, filmmaker, film critic, and the founder of the film blog The House Next Door—a place I've haunted every once in a while—is currently in the midst of writing up a series at Salon.com's new blog Film Salon considering the greatest film directors of this decade. His latest entry is especially scintillating, a consideration of a batch of directors he labels as "the sensualists": David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Michael Mann, Wong Kar-Wai and Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Here's how he kicks it off:

Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in "Stagecoach," and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in "The Third Man." -- Walker Percy, "The Moviegoer" (1961)

The poignancy of that quote comes from the implication that the novel’s hero, Binx Bolling, is so alienated from his existence that films feel more real to him than life. But certain filmmakers -- I call them sensualists -- go Walker Percy one better. Through boldly expressive shots, cuts, sound cues and music, they suggest that we experience movies as moments because we experience life that way, too.

Michael Mann, Terrence Malick, David Lynch, Wong Kar-wai and Hou Hsiao-hsien -- the decade’s great sensualist filmmakers -- accept this proposition as a given. Read a cable channel's one-paragraph schedule-grid summary of Mann’s "Ali," "Collateral," "Miami Vice" and "Public Enemies"; Malick’s "The New World" (all three versions, each of which is a different and equally valid film); Wong’s "In the Mood for Love," "2046," "The Hand" (a segment of the omnibus "Eros") and "My Blueberry Nights"; Lynch’s "Mulholland Dr." and "Inland Empire," or Hou’s "Three Times" and "Millennium Mambo," and you would never guess that the films’ directors had anything in common.

But they share a defining trait: a lyrical gift for showing life in the moment, for capturing experience as it happens and as we remember it.

This is an absolutely inspired linkage of brilliant filmmakers, and I feel compelled to add my own personal slant: all of these artists, in their own ways, have had a major influence in shaping the way I watch films these days. They—especially Wong (whose 2046 I would probably count as one of the great films of the decade) and Hou (whose Flight of the Red Balloon continues to be a great source of inspiration in my life)—have taught me to fully embrace, without apology, the sensual and the visceral in movies, as opposed to focusing on just its literary values (theme, story, dialogue, etc.). What words could satisfyingly describe the romantic frisson of two married people passing by each other in entrancing slow motion in In the Mood for Love; the sheer terror of an actress's distorted close-up in Inland Empire; or the transcendental spirit that infuses the whole of The New World? Embrace these ravishing moments, I say, and embrace filmmakers who dare to push the artistic envelope on such sensuality, the way these filmmakers have done. Relinquish some of that emotional control; that's what cinema, I've come to believe, is really all about, and why I continue to adore it so.

(Golden) Global Affairs

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Looking back on the first entry I wrote to kick off this tear of blogging I've done here at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second in the past month, I notice that I had initially planned on posting merely once a week, as I have tried to do in the past. It's gratifying, then, to see that it's become much more than a weekly thing. I hope all of you who read this are enjoying this barrage, because for once, I'm enjoying throwing this barrage at you all.

First things first, then: I find myself with nothing to say, really, about the Golden Globe nominations announced yesterday; there aren't many noteworthy surprises among the crop that I can see. And it's futile to complain about the Hollywood Foreign Press's legion of snubs (Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker, Tilda Swinton for Julia, the provocative Romanian film Police, Adjective—the list could go on and on), because most likely they're just nominating based on existing trends anyway. So no surprise Up in the Air—which is still on my to-watch list—is getting a lot of love this year; many critics groups have already crowned it as the movie of the year; same for The Hurt Locker (though yeah, I think it's a great film as well). It's all about glamour, artificial drama and horse races, not the art of cinema; in other words, it's showbiz, not art. But I'm sure many of you already knew that. 

Once I see most or all of the nominated films/performances, perhaps I'll have more to say, mostly regarding personal preferences. Also, I don't watch a whole lot of primetime television anymore, so I definitely have next-to-nothing to say about the TV nominations (I still haven't jumped on the "Mad Men" bandwagon yet, for one thing).

In the meantime, a few words on a couple more films, one of them a Golden Globe hopeful.

Invictus (2009; Dir.: Clint Eastwood)

I'm not sure I have much to really say about this one either. Clint Eastwood's latest work is well-intentioned and has a couple of excellent lead performances from Morgan Freeman, as Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon, as a South African rugby-team leader—but it's also just kind of boring and plodding in spots. It feels less like august contemplation from this 79-year-old American director, and more like merely a lack of urgency. Nevertheless, it doesn't screw up the inspiring true story—a South African rugby team's climb from national ill repute to World Cup contenders in 1995 during Nelson Mandela's presidency—at its heart, and it has at least one intelligent thematic curve to its otherwise predictably told story worth engaging with.

Structurally speaking, Invictus hews fastidiously to the standard underdog-sports-movie formula—no sucker-punch curves in its third act a la Million Dollar Baby—but it turns out not to be so much about whether this particular sports underdog becomes World Cup champions in 1995; if you know the history of the event the film covers, you already know that they succeed. Instead, Invictus—at least, in its more intriguing first half—directly takes on the idea of this rugby team's climb to victory as a consciously manipulative social symbol. Mandela, in his zeal to find a way to close the divide between blacks and whites in post-apartheid South Africa, latches onto the Springboks—a team that has become a denigrated symbol of South Africa's apartheid past—as a symbolic way to unite the nation and bridge that racial divide. What is admittedly refreshing about Invictus is that it doesn't merely accept Mandela's political calculation at face value; it genuinely explores the implications of this move, even questioning, at least a little bit, whether Mandela was perhaps being more politically manipulative than noble.

Once the sports-movie formula starts to really kick in during its last hour or so, Invictus becomes considerably less engaging, as the team's path to World Cup victory merely plays itself out via rather unimaginatively filmed rugby sequences (Eastwood's idea of turning up the suspense during the climactic final match is to turn a whole stretch of it into uniform slow-motion). Nevertheless, Damon's character's burgeoning political awareness, thanks to Mandela's calculation, is sometimes quite affecting; there's one rather beautiful scene in which he stands in the prison Mandela was held in for 27 years and literally imagines his turmoil. And if you consider the whole story in terms of Mandela's strategy of focusing on symbols as a source of national inspiration, then even the by-the-numbers rugby sequences take on a deeper retroactive resonance: It's not so much whether the Springboks win or not, but how their run toward the big prize unites and inspires a nation, at least for the moment—which makes the fact that they do achieve victory perhaps even more inspiring than it might have been otherwise.

Invictus may not necessarily breathe fresh air into this played-out genre, but Eastwood handles things with his usual no-nonsense simplicity—even if, in this particular case, "no-nonsense" means something occasionally didactic and dull.


Loot (2008; Dir.: Darius Marder)

Darius Marder's debut feature—which is currently playing at the IFC Center in New York—follows Lance Larson, an amateur treasure hunter looking for treasure stashed during World War II by a couple of veterans, one in Austria, the other in the Philippines. But his journeys takes him into many unexpected, psychologically fraught areas, one that ultimately becomes less about finding treasure, and more about how the two veterans themselves find ways to deal with their sometimes horrifying memories of war. Lance himself becomes rattled by the personal parallels he finds among these two vets (the vets had 19-year-old sons that were done in by drug overdoses; Lance's 19-year-old son is currently fighting his own addiction). As their journeys draw to their respective conclusions, whether or not the two vets find the closure they seek, Lance seems to have his own worldview and priorities expanded right before our very eyes. In a year in which a lot of excellent films (A Serious Man, You, the Living, Fantastic Mr. Fox—any others you readers can think of along those same lines?) have been, in some ways, about grasping and possibly understanding forces beyond ourselves, Loot is a modest, unexpectedly moving addition to such distinguished company.

Cinematic Impressions Subject To Change (With Notice)

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—

An Education (2009; Dir.: Lone Scherfig)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009; Dir.: Wes Anderson)

Here are two films that, for me personally, demonstrate that, yes, even (nonprofessional) film critics can evolve in their opinions of films over time. Not even we are wedded to positive or negative first impressions!

A couple of weeks removed from finally seeing the much-hyped British film An Education, I'm finding myself less enamored of it as a whole than I was immediately after the screening. For a film that focuses in large part on main character Jenny's (Carey Mulligan) desire to break out of her sheltered existence and see the wider world, An Education is mostly lacking in similar worldly wisdom, preferring to pitch most of its supporting characters as broad stereotypes and generally shoving aside real-world complexity for standard-issue coming-of-age homilies.

Still, as I watched the film, I found myself identifying so completely with Jenny's desires to expand her horizons that I can't quite bring myself to hate on this film too much, as simplistic and visually unremarkable as it is. It's not so much Carey Mulligan's charm that slays me in this regard (though, make no mistake, she's pretty much as magnetic as you've heard). No, I think it's mostly just a personal thing: As someone who still lives at home with his parents in central New Jersey, and who has always had an inferiority complex, justified or not, over all that I feel I have yet to experience in life and art, I was probably primed from the outset to see myself reflected intensely in Jenny's yearning to break free from her own sheltered home life and run off with the supposedly more experienced, "worldly" David (Peter Sarsgaard). Hell, I'd love to experience Paris in all its glory if I could do it on someone else's dime. Wouldn't you?

Which is why it's ultimately disappointing to see An Education go in the reductively moralizing direction that it does in its last 20 minutes or so, as David is revealed to be a world-class cad and Jenny finds her life in a rut as a result of his deceptions—lies, it must be said, that she probably allowed herself to believe in the glamour of it all. Earlier in the film, Jenny passionately argues against what she had come to see as a deadening focus on book-learning at her private school; this struck me as having an unmistakable ring of truth: there are just some things about life you can't learn in a classroom. Once the bottom has come out from under her life, however, the only thing Jenny has learned from all this, apparently, is the value of staying in school. All well and good, of course...but what of all that high culture and worldly awareness she's supposedly picked up, for well and ill? All for nought, it seems, in the film's mad dash toward a tidy resolution. It's as if the film ultimately slaps her—and, by extension, us in the audience—in the face for achieving a level of the sophistication she yearned for so poignantly from the beginning. I feel like the true lessons of her unfortunate story are more complicated than An Education is prepared to admit; that's why, once the resonance of its evocation of youthful awakening has worn off, the film, in the end, feels far less than the sum of its parts, the more I consider it.

The kind of worldly wisdom An Education pretends to offer is in full supply in Wes Anderson's stop-motion Roald Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr. Fox—a film that, in contrast to my experience with An Education, only gets better the more I think about it.

To preface, a confession: When it comes to the films of Wes Anderson, you can call me an agnostic. I've always recognized the heart and sincerity behind Anderson's fussily designed cinematic worlds, and I always believe I grasp what it is he's aiming to evoke or explore in a given film of his. But, with the exception of Rushmore—and with the caveat that I still have not caught up with his 1996 debut feature Bottle Rocket—his films have mostly left me unmoved, with the sense that there's some kind of block preventing me from fully responding to his films the way I feel like I should. Is Anderson, with his penchant for the self-consciously whimsical and overdesigned, to blame? Not sure; I can always tell he's sincere and engaged even as he's, say, dazzling us with a Jerry Lewis-inspired cross-section of a boat in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Maybe I just keep hoping for more emotional directness in his family stories than he's willing to provide: his quirky sense of clever humor masks unspoken emotional turmoil, but the armor is very thick indeed. I see Anderson's notes, but, with isolated exceptions in all of his films, generally I have trouble hearing the music.

Now, with Fantastic Mr. Fox—his first animated feature—I feel like I've inched closer to hearing that music...and what beautiful music it is! There are still moments of his distracting ironic distance—music cues, for instance, that play as trivializing counterpoint to the emotion of a particular scene—but for once I left a film of his feeling that perhaps he does have something valuable and wise to impart to us after all. Maybe, with stop-motion animation and furry creatures to work with, Anderson has indeed finally discovered the logical toy box on which to splash his sense of visual play—a playfulness that makes Anderson one of the few filmmakers working today since Jacques Tati who demand you roam your eye all over his widescreen frames—while aiming for a grand, resonant consideration of universal childhood and adulthood in all of its joys and compromises.

Fantastic Mr. Fox clarifies at least one aspect of Wes Anderson's art that has always been a source of both fascination and frustration: While he is surely interested in real life and human beings, he has always couched his inquiries amid whimsical backdrops that beguile on the surface while daring you to discover the darker emotions underneath the look-at-me surface oddities. The Royal Tenenbaums explored upper-class family tensions in a picture-storybook setting; The Life Aquatic took stock of its titular explorer/filmmaker's life amidst a marine dream adventure world; The Darjeeling Limited used India as the setting for a brotherly reconciliation. Not all of his films necessarily take place in what one would recognize as "the real world," yet Anderson always aims to evoke hidden currents of real-world darkness among his human characters. Now, in Fantastic Mr. Fox, he even ditches human beings—and yet, even as he emphasizes these creatures' animal natures (a refreshing emphasis after the too-cutesy anthropomorphism that marred the otherwise wonderful Up), the moments of melancholy peek through even more strongly, and touchingly, than ever. What felt evasive previously simply feels true here.

The distance between a character's inner nature and the civilized front he puts up—possibly a concise description of Anderson's multifaceted vision and aesthetic, come to think of it—becomes more of an overt theme than in his previous films. Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) has turned away from a life of chicken thievery in order to settle down and raise a family, but his animal restlessness remains: he continues to cause mischief on the side. His side mischief gets his family and friends into trouble when his activities land him in dangerous hot water with three vengeful farmers. But Anderson is not interested in creating a simplistic morality play about settling down, paying more attention to your wife and child, etc.; Anderson's vision is more complex and empathetic—a bid for understanding and acceptance rather than easy moralizing.

There's plenty more to parse and savor in this film, but for now, I'll just say that the more I reflect on Fantastic Mr. Fox, the more impressed and moved I am by it. I look forward to seeing this again on a big screen; I also look forward, once again, to revisiting his previous films to determine whether I have indeed evolved in my appreciation of the ever-elusive Wes Anderson. It wouldn't be the first time I've turned around on my attitude around on a filmmaker or film I've previously been cold on, and it surely won't be the last.

Keep the Precious Cast, But Push The Rest Away

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—As most people know by now, it's that time of year: the season when Hollywood studios bring out their big prestige-pic guns for awards consideration. Over the years, I've pretty much learned to not put any traction in the increasingly irrelevant taste of the Hollywood Foreign Press, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the other awards-giving groups of its ilk; nevertheless, as much as I may cluck my tongue at these glorified popularity contests, I usually find myself getting rather caught up in movie-awards season, if only to see just how much my taste departs from the films getting all the awards hype. Here's one case, among others surely to come:

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009; Dir.: Lee Daniels)

Truth be told, I was rather dreading this movie. It was bad enough when Slumdog Millionaire won a whole slew of awards, including the big Oscar Best Picture prize, earlier this year for insensitively using the plight of the poor in India as a mere backdrop for a gaudy, clichéd, stylistically tricked-up Hollywood (or, er, Bollywood) fairy tale. Based on its trailer, Precious looked to possibly be worse: just as much of an over-the-top fantasy of poverty, but meant to be more gritty and realistic in manner. At least Slumdog was stylistically upfront about its being a fantasy, with handheld jiggling, quick edits and canted camera angles providing all sorts of distracting surface activity. Going into Precious, I was ready to be disgusted by a surfeit of sensationalism masquerading as "the way things are for these poor black folk."

Not so fast. Precious turns out to be, oh, maybe only half as offensive as its trailers make it out to be. The objectionable half mostly involves the unbelievably grotesque scenes of main character Precious's (Gabourey Sidibe) home life with her monstrously lazy and abusive mother (Mo'Nique). A montage of fatherly incest intercut with images of frying eggs...images of Precious being forced by Mom to eat cooked pig's feet...Mom throwing a TV down a bunch of stairs aiming for Precious's head, moments after she throws her baby on the floor like a plastic doll...Precious being forced to steal (I kid you not) fried chicken, and later seen walking around with her stolen bucket, wiping her greasy fingers on her pants and shirt. Believe me, there's plenty more—and all I have to say about this parade of stereotypes is, didn't Dave Chappelle lampoon this kind of stuff years ago on his late, lamented "Chappelle's Show"? (Remember Chappelle's Tiger Woods and his "Goodbye fried rice, hello fried chicken"?) And yet here we are in Precious, with director Lee Daniels apparently taking all of this with utmost seriousness of purpose (as well as with a whole bag of gratuitous stylistic visual tricks that are almost never deployed effectively in the film). Um, seriously?

Of course, Precious is also meant to be an uplifting tale of how this wronged young girl finds her way out of her hellhole of abuse and poverty. And you know what? Some of the more hopeful moments do come off fairly effectively, providing a sometimes genuinely inspiring contrast to the Jerry Springer-tinted domestic freak-show scenes. The classroom scenes in particular—in which the barely literate Precious tries to wade her way through alternative education after being thrown out of public school—are by turns funny and warmly emotional, with one particularly wrenching scene in which Precious breaks down in class and gives voice to all her insecurities in front of her teacher (Paula Patton).

If nothing else, Precious is proof positive of just how much great acting can elevate even the most ridiculous of scripts. Much has already been written about Mo'Nique's imposing performance as the shameless welfare-queen mother; I'd be more enthusiastic about her acting here if she wasn't saddled with such a risible role. Sidibe is a real find, however: she affects a kind of mumble in her vocal manner that feels almost poetic in the way it locates the wounded heart of her character. By all accounts, Sidibe herself is the polar opposite of the locked-in, barely articulate Precious; how she manages to portray such a locked-in character so empathetically is just one of those cherishable mysteries of the acting field. However she does it, she seems to have inspired the rest of the cast—yes, including Mariah Carey—to rise to her level. (I, for one, am excited at the prospect of seeing what wonders she may have inside of her in future performances.)

It's too bad their soulfulness is wasted on such an overwrought, silly, condescending movie. But hey, at least Precious isn't entirely flat-out laughable and dignity-free like last year's Frozen River.

Lookin' Sharp (I Hope)

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Hope all of you enjoying the sleek (?) new look I've given to My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second. If nothing else, I hope that this will indicate how serious I am this time—after a lot of broken promises over the past year—about keeping up with posting on this blog. These days, I find that my excitement about posting here is what keeps me going every day, among other things.

Oh, and no overhaul of a blog of mine would be complete without a still from Wong Kar-Wai's glorious Fallen Angels, seen above (just in case some of you didn't know where the photo in the blog's head banner came from).

Herzog, Herzog, What Have Ye Said?

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—In lieu of a review of Werner Herzog's latest film, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done: first, I will first direct you all to choice selections of a phone interview I did with Herzog recently regarding that film and a few other topics, posted here at my employer's Speakeasy blog. And second, I will step out of my objective-reporter hat and quickly say that yes, this creepily, subtly, fascinatingly strange little movie is very much worth seeing and puzzling over, and that I much prefer this to the more flamboyantly (and, to me, insufferably) over-the-top Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Hey, even Herzog seems to suspect that My Son, My Son is rather better than Bad Lieutenant! But don't take his, or my, word for it; it comes out for a brief run at the IFC Center this Friday.

Brought Down From Imagined Heights

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Because I have been a bit busy of late with an article I'm working on for The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog, I have not been able to blog as much about movies I've seen recently until now. But hey, that's what happens when writing about film isn't your full-time job.

Here's another one for your reading, and my writing, pleasure.

The Sun (2005; Dir.: Alexander Sokurov)

[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD]

This is one strange movie—odd not because of its subject, but because of the defamiliarizing style Sokurov employs to explore that subject. The subject is Japanese Emperor Hirohito (played in the film by Issei Ogata) during the last days of his rule towards the end of World War II, and Sokurov seems, among other things, interested in highlighting Hirohito's isolation from the outside world of Japan that he supposedly reigns over by divine right. But the way Sokurov pulls us into Hirohito's environment through visual means is idiosyncratic, to put it mildly. He lights a lot of indoor spaces so that those spaces take on the texture of a creepy horror movie; he uses an extremely spare musical score, and at many other points simply relies on sounds of jets flying far overhead the Imperial Palace to create a feeling of desolation; and, to top it off, he films the whole thing in earthy, purposefully smudged-looking digital video, using modern means to make a historical film feel vaguely like something from the early days of 19th-century photography. Neat trick! (Not even Michael Mann was quite as ambitious or imaginative in his use of high-definition video for Public Enemies this year—four years after The Sun, mind you.)

The result of these off-center artistic choices is that The Sun ends up feeling truly out of time and place. It's a purely visceral sensation that suits Sokurov's multifaceted view of Hirohito as a sheltered ruler whose childlike affectations—most notably, his way of moving his mouth like that of a fish trying to breathe (marine life being of particular fascination to him)—may well mask an innermost desire to cast off the role that has been conferred upon him by Japanese society and tradition.

The Sun isn't so much a psychological study as it is an impressionistic portrait not just of the imperial Japanese ruler himself, but of the sizable bridge between the man as a public image and as a flesh-and-blood person. Perhaps its most telling scene, in that respect, is a relatively straightforward one of Hirohito being photographed by Americans as he stands outside the Imperial Palace, tending to his flowers. The scene—in which the photographers snicker amongst themselves, "This is the Emperor?" as Hirohito's aide tries to keep the photographers at a distance—might as well play as a precursor to the ritual of the modern-day paparazzi going after a glamorous Hollywood celebrity. This is the Emperor stripped completely of the kind of God-like mystique that even Hirohito himself sometimes seems to believe. Really, it's merely a literalization of a disconnected feeling Sokurov instills everywhere else in The Sun, both physically and psychically.

Sokurov's vision of Emperor Hirohito's mental landscape in The Sun may strike some as distant and chilly for a while, but the film eventually reveals itself to ultimately take a compassionate stance toward the man. In its closing scene, it's rather cathartic to see Hirohito, liberated from his position of power after agreeing with General Douglas MacArthur to step down, acting almost like a warmly recognizable human being again with his wife. Alas, Hirohito may be ready to move on from being a god in the eyes of men, but, as one last twist suggests, the rest of Japanese society may not be so ready for what they perceive as a majestic fall from grace, not only for him but for Japan in general (this, of course, coming as it does on the heels of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings). Maybe there is indeed a greater tragedy in this story than one man's yearning to be brought down from imagined heights.

(The Sun is now playing at Cinema Village in New York.)

Choose Your Own Interpretation?

NEW YORK—Art critic Lance Esplund, in the context of a review published by The Wall Street Journal over the weekend, drops this turn of phrase at the end of a section in which he trashes Gerhard Richter (in the context of a review of a Richter exhibition currently running at the Marian Goodman Gallery): "As far as painting goes, Mr. Richter's formless decorations leave his viewers with virtually nothing (I guess this is the point), which allows them to make of his work whatever they want it to be."

Now, I might as well admit right now that I'm not too deeply familiar with Richter's art, apart from some of his smudged, and haunting, photorealist portraits of Red Army Faction members. (I'm not deeply familiar with Esplund's criticism either, so maybe Richter is just a critical blind spot of his.) However...my first reaction to this was, "Yeah, so?" Maybe I've just become more of an "art-for-art's-sake" kind of guy over the years, but Esplund's line of reasoning suggests to me an awfully shortsighted view of what can be beautiful and challenging about art. It's automatically a negative thing for a work of art to perhaps be so elusive in its meanings that whatever one "gets" from that work is entirely determined by subjective impressions and morés? Me, I thought that was one of the great things about art: no one necessarily reacting the same way to a work, perhaps coming away from it with something different, no matter what a particular artist may or may not have had in mind while creating it (if anything). Better a work of art that inspires many different interpretations than one that spoon-feeds you its intentions, I say.

It's fine that Richter's abstract paintings leave Esplund cold; I'm sure he's not the only one. But when I read that sentence, it felt to me as if he was implying that there's something wrong with work that leaves things entirely up to the viewer as to how it ought to be perceived and interpreted. It's a line of reasoning I've heard many times before, and personally, it strikes me as almost antithetical to the potential of art.

Of course, if anyone feels I am overreacting here, by all means, feel free to let me know!

Day of Birth

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Twenty-four years ago today, I was given birth and thus introduced to this world.

Twenty-four years later—well, I could do all the usual the introspective things and reflect on how much I've learned over the years (a lot, obviously), how much I have yet to learn, what lies ahead for me and what I would like to lie ahead. But for now, I will not do that. (If I did, who knows? I may end up feeling more depressed than invigorated.) Instead, I'm going to paaaaaaartyyyyy!!! 

In that spirit, I am celebrating my 24th birthday with a two-night, two-city celebration. On the first night, tonight from 8 p.m. - 2 a.m., I plan to have some tapas, drinks and hookah at the Kairo Kafe in New Brunswick, N.J. (an area close to my home turf).

Then, on Saturday night, also from 8 p.m. - 2 a.m., I will trek to New York to hang out for more drinks (but no hookah) at Langan's, a pretty nice bar and restaurant on 47th St. between 6th and 7th Aves., very close to my office, the News Corp. building. (The snow that is forecast for Saturday will not stop me, though I hope that won't stop others from coming out.)

Consider this an open invitation to all of you fine readers of mine to come and wish me a happy birthday on either of those nights, if you can swing it. Maybe I'll meet some of you readers for the first time!