EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - For this week's entry, I was originally planning to expound upon the intellectual and visceral revelations of Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman (to put it in drooling-fanboy terms, yes, it is as amazing and perception-altering as you've heard) and maybe put in a mild defense of the new Martin Scorsese concert documentary Shine a Light, which some critics seem to be complaining about because: a) it isn't The Last Waltz in tone; b) the Rolling Stones are way past their prime and are more or less on autopilot in this movie; and c) Scorsese, visually speaking at least, seems to put Mick Jagger & co. on a pedestal too much. (Short version: I agree with a lot of those criticisms, but I was exhilarated by the film anyway, and even found something rather transcendent about the group's refusal to let their age show onstage even as Scorsese's constantly roving camera scans the members closely for even a whisper of their individual 60-some years.)
But I think I'm going to set that aside for now and steer My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second---at least, for this one entry---back to diary mode. Because...what a day I had yesterday! And not exactly in a good way.
First, to set this story up. If I haven't informed you faithful readers, hear hear: I, and members of my family, will be embarking on an 8-day trip through parts of China toward the end of May, with---for me, at least---an all-too-brief 8-hour stop in Hong Kong and a couple days or so in Taiwan at the tail end.
But, of course, in order to get into China, we need visas.
Apparently, it costs a bit too much extra for my mother's taste to try to put in visa applications through our travel agent, so she thought it'd be better to just go to the Chinese Consulate in New York and give them the papers there. But my mother has been having foot problems of late, so she asked me to go into the city to do it.
So that's what I did yesterday. My mother and I drove up to Jersey City (she's thinking about buying a house up there, so because she had a day off from work, she figured it'd be as good a time as any to check out the area), and I took a PATH train into the city to the Chinese Consulate.
Then the nightmare started.
I got to the consulate at around 11:55 a.m.---after being mocked by a paid-parking cashier when I asked him for directions and said "New York Consulate" instead of "Chinese Consulate," not knowing that there are different consulates in different parts of the city---and then I saw the huge waiting room swarming with people.
I wasn't worried about that at first; previous waiting experiences at the DMV have conditioned me to expect, and endure, long waiting times. But then, I got my ticket and looked up at the display of the ticket numbers being served at the front of the room.
Of the four windows servicing visa applicants, the highest number was somewhere in the V0020s.
My ticket was V0301.
My impatience soared when, about an hour later, the highest number was something like V0029.
"Having fun yet?" I said sardonically to the man next to me, sensing that he---a big traveler, from what I gathered from talking to him---was feeling the same frustration that I was.
Readers, I ended up spending a little less than five hours in the same room waiting to put in those visa applications (mine, my mother's and one of my younger brothers'). Worse, I was without food (I hadn't packed any lunch, and I was afraid to leave the building lest they decided to open up another window or something), without water (I had finished up my bottle), and with only my iPod and an occasional conversation to make me feel less bored. I've never applied for visas before---and apparently my mother hasn't either, so the extraordinarily long wait surprised the both of us. I can imagine that this is what being stranded in an airport feels like (the measure of how sheltered I've been most of my life is in the fact that that is something I can only imagine). Actually, with the lack of food and water---I didn't end up eating anything 'til I got home at around 7:15 p.m.---I might as well have been trapped in a desert, sans the stifling heat.
And yet I haven't even gotten to the really good part yet (read: it's not good at all).
Well, first, the actual good part: after the consulate closed its doors at 2:30 p.m., the queue numbers started going up at a quicker rate than before---so now, instead of, oh, 8 numbers in a couple of hours, one could see 20 numbers pass by in maybe half an hour. It looked like a lot of people got impatient and left. Not that I was wondering too loudly.
I eventually got to speak to someone at about probably 4:30ish...
...and then I find out that, after all that waiting...after all the gum-chewing attempts to convince myself that I wasn't all that hungry...after wearing down the battery life on my iPod considerably---after all that, I find out from the lady I speak to that our applications are incomplete. Suffice it to say, there are bank statements and employer letters that all three applications still need.
Thus, after playing the American-Idol-results-show version of the Waiting Game, I leave the consulate with all the papers I came in with---in this case, not a good thing.
I can see some of you now, clucking your tongues at me and saying, You should have been prepared with everything when you came in, obviously. First of all: my mother's been doing pretty much all the planning of this upcoming trip, so I relied on her to know exactly what was needed for the visa applications. (If you're going to say I should have been more involved in the first place, fine, that's a fair point.) Second: it's quite possible that the things that were missing from the applications were the result of recent new requirements that not even our travel agent knew about until today. (My mother called our travel agent after I told her that our applications had been rejected for the time being, and apparently the agent said she received a bunch of rejected applications at her office too.) So I'd like to think that this near-waste of a day for me was not the fault of anyone in particular.
Still, when all is said and done, it was, to put it lightly, supremely annoying.
Live and learn, though. I had no idea about how notorious the wait times are in the Chinese consulate going in, so if I have to do this again, I'll actually know what I'm getting into.
Either that, or a) next time I pay whatever is necessary to get a travel agent to put in the visa application for me; or b) just don't ever go to China again. (I haven't even stepped foot in Hong Kong, and already I'm dying to spend a lot more time there.) Heck, if there is truth to some of the horror stories my parents were telling me in the car about the Chinese government's ruthlessness---and, judging from what I hear every day about China and Tibet, I have no reason to doubt their stories---maybe it'd just be better not to step foot there at all...at least until the country becomes less, uh, Red.
Despite all that, I'm trying to look on the bright side of this lost day in New York City. Here's what I got for the bright side: it was a lovely 80 degrees or so out today. (So you know what that means for sex-starved gentlemen like myself: exposed female flesh and a reasonable amount of covert gawking opportunities. Sorry, I just had to say it.) I got to walk outdoors in New York City for a bit, while listening to my iPod. It was a nice day weather-wise: warm, but with a decent breeze and without an excess of sticky humidity. Near-perfect for me, in other words.
The style of the day looked good, but the content underneath turned out to be a grave disappointment, because the story eventually went nowhere except back to Square One.
And no, that is not a review of Wong Kar-Wai's latest film (which I have not yet seen, and am dying to, in spite of its generally middling reviews).
I just wonder if I'll have to do this again...
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
A Few Thought Bubbles
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Hello again, readers!
For the most part, this weekend will basically consist of me finishing up my federal tax return before the forthcoming April 15 deadline. Really, it shouldn't take too long---I don't earn that much, and I don't have a lot of property or anything like that to report)---but I'm trying to fit it in between personal movie (and Wire) screenings. Hopefully I'll find enough time to get it done and send it out this weekend (because, at this point, I pretty much have no choice).
Thus, for this particular installment of My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second, instead of an in-depth entry into something intensely occupying my mind, I'm going to simply throw out a few sketches, if you will, of ideas I may want to develop in future entries. Consider these "thought bubbles" of sorts...
**********
One of the movie screenings I'm catching this weekend---barring any unforeseen circumstances---is my first-ever encounter with Chantal Akerman's famous 1975 experimental/feminist feature Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. I'm pumped! It's at Rutgers University's own New Jersey Film Festival tonight; not sure why the organizers decided to show the film at this particular point in time, but, as there is no Region 1 DVD edition of this film available (it's included in a Region 2 DVD box set of Akerman films that I'm too cheap to invest in right now), I'll go for it, no questions asked---even if the "print" turns out to be a relatively cheap VHS source.
I'll let you all know what I think next week; I'm sure the movie will merit more than a passing paragraph or two!
**********
A few weeks ago, Nathan Lee, one of the Village Voice's most well-known and well-respected film critics, was unceremoniously fired from his job there. Couple that with a slew of other film-critic firings at even smaller newspapers over the past few months, and it's all gotten me rethinking by initial professional film-critic plans. As many have suggested in the blogosphere, it is increasingly looking like the future of film criticism will be in the hands of people writing more out of passion than trying to do it regularly for a living---as more newspapers cut out individual film-critic voices (mostly for cost-cutting reasons, I'm fairly certain) and replace them with, say, undistinguished Associated Press wire reviews, the future for incisive, intelligent, informed film writing may well be online. And so far, few people have actually been able to figure out how to make a living strictly blogging online. So I'm not sure I want to take that risk just yet...
So maybe copy editing and/or reporting really is where my future is headed, with film writing---like the kind I occasionally contribute to The House Next Door---relegated to a side hobby. If so...well, in a way, that would validate exactly what my mother has been saying to me all these years.
I think I just felt a chill go up my spine in writing that. Not sure if I'm ready to face that harsh truth just yet...
**********
Another slap-in-the-face reality check this past week came in the form of a meeting after work in which the full force of Rupert Murdoch's takeover of Dow Jones hit me like a kid swatting a fly. No, there were no warnings of layoffs at this meeting, thank goodness---but what one of our supervisors offered was arguably more unnerving: uncertainty. Essentially, no one really has a clear idea what Murdoch has in store for us, so all we can hope for now is possibly a smooth transition to a different kind of job within the company, just in case Murdoch has it in his mind to shut down the South Brunswick branch altogether and relocate all of us to the News Corp. building in New York. Something like that.
My only real regret here is a selfish one: my plans for spending two years at the monitor desk while educating myself artistically on the side may be ending sooner than I had hoped for. Adulthood, here I come---and I must confess, I'm nervous about meeting you, Adulthood, face to face, secluded as I have been here in quiet old East Brunswick, N.J. for the past few months.
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You know what I haven't written about much recently? Politics---specifically the ongoing presidential race. I should probably say something about it, if only just to add a bit of variety to this blog. On the other hand, do I really have anything to say at all? I don't find myself all that enthusiastic about either Democratic candidate; despite her formidable intelligence, I've never really trusted Hillary Clinton's sincerity about anything; and while temperamentally I should be more enthused about Barack Obama than I am (and I was impressed with his candid speech on race a few weeks back), I'm equally suspicious of his rampant hope-mongering, especially how it'll all look if he gets into office and runs up against, you know, political interests and all sorts of avenues toward compromise. As for the so-called "presumptive Republican nominee" John McCain---well, I have to admit I have a more favorable view of him as a person based on his TV appearances and what I've heard about his record in Congress (anyone who stands up against torture as he has over the years is admirable in my book). I'm not sure, however, that I really want to stay in Iraq as long as it takes, as he has publicly pledged.
But then, I also have to admit that I haven't really done all my research on these candidates, so maybe I shouldn't say anything more on the subject (for now). The only other thing I'll say right now, then, is: I hate politics. I really wish I could just stay indifferent to it all. I can't, of course; to do so would be to forsake my duty as an American citizen. But I just wish I could say to myself, and to others, "screw politics" without being tarred and feathered as a lamentable example of what is wrong with young Americans today. I just don't like to talk about it, and I could do without it, personally. But there's no avoiding it, so I have to be involved, in some way. As Sheriff Bell says in No Country for Old Men, "Okay. I'll be a part of this world."
Here's the Obama speech I referred to earlier:
**********
On a more upbeat note: after taking in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou again last weekend (on the recently released Criterion Collection DVD), and remembering that the first spoken word in the film is "Velázquez"---as in the 17th-century Spanish painter---I decided to briefly surf online for some of his paintings. (Yes, my art knowledge is so deficient that I'm not sure if I've ever actually seen a Velázquez painting anywhere.) And I struck a minor personal revelation that ties somewhat to the intellect-versus-emotion stuff I wrote about a few weeks go here on this blog.
Take a look at Velázquez's "The Lady with a Fan":
Now, one may certainly look at this painting on a formalistic level and admire, say, the accuracy of fleshtones, the interplay between light and dark, the intimate atmosphere, etc. But when you get right down to it, what does one really respond to in this portrait, putting inside technical concerns? The subject itself. What is going on in this lady's face? What might she be thinking? She doesn't exactly look all too happy; is she in a hurry? Who knows? All human beings have their mysteries, and the real brilliance of portraits like these, it seems to me, is in preserving that mystery even while depicting its surface particulars. I look at this painting, and I don't necessarily find an earth-shatteringly fresh way of perceiving the world around me, philosophically or emotionally. Does that even have to be a prerequisite for what distinguishes great art from merely serviceable craftsmanship? The artwork is all there is, in the end. If it makes you feel or reflect on something---whether that reflection is as minor as how it corresponds with a mood you or someone else has felt previously---maybe that is all one really needs to know in order to gauge one's reaction to that work. The deep intellectual contemplation can come later.
All of these thoughts swirled around my head as I sat down a couple days ago with the newly released DVD of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, a film that I've gone back and forth on for months now (just look at my previous posts about it here and here), but which resolutely refuses to depart from my mind, even as I've taken in great films like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and The Flight of the Red Balloon in recent months. Does it add to my understanding of the corrupting force of unchecked capitalism and ambition to the human soul? Maybe, maybe not. (Again, I'm not convinced it has anything revelatory to say on the subjects of capitalism or religion---at least nothing that hasn't been broached by Welles or Kubrick films that Anderson so lovingly recalls.) But there is still the mystery of Daniel Plainview, that force of misanthropic, bullying nature at the heart of the film. What, for example, is his real reason for slapping the tar out of Eli Sunday soon after his "son" loses his hearing? Is he really just venting his frustrations, or is he simply and fearsomely showing his secular dominance over this supposedly holy preacher? Maybe it's both. Anyway, such mysteries of one man's human consciousness are arguably much narrower than the mysteries of fate and chance in a godless universe posited by the Coen brothers in No Country for Old Men---but should that necessarily mean one film is worth prizing more than another? Because one gets me thinking about the world I live in, and another gets me thinking just about another (fictional) human being? I guess I used to think so, which is why I've so baldly voiced my intellectual ambivalence about There Will Be Blood on this blog before. But maybe I've been too narrowly focused in my artistic concerns all along. (Or maybe I'm just trying to justify my sheer visceral exhilaration of watching Blood, which I felt all over again watching it on DVD.)
Still, am I simply lowering my standards here? I wonder...
But that, as with all these other sketches of ideas, is for possible future discussion.
Heck, if you want to discuss all or any of these right now, feel free to post comments. I welcome the discussion, always!
For the most part, this weekend will basically consist of me finishing up my federal tax return before the forthcoming April 15 deadline. Really, it shouldn't take too long---I don't earn that much, and I don't have a lot of property or anything like that to report)---but I'm trying to fit it in between personal movie (and Wire) screenings. Hopefully I'll find enough time to get it done and send it out this weekend (because, at this point, I pretty much have no choice).
Thus, for this particular installment of My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second, instead of an in-depth entry into something intensely occupying my mind, I'm going to simply throw out a few sketches, if you will, of ideas I may want to develop in future entries. Consider these "thought bubbles" of sorts...
One of the movie screenings I'm catching this weekend---barring any unforeseen circumstances---is my first-ever encounter with Chantal Akerman's famous 1975 experimental/feminist feature Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. I'm pumped! It's at Rutgers University's own New Jersey Film Festival tonight; not sure why the organizers decided to show the film at this particular point in time, but, as there is no Region 1 DVD edition of this film available (it's included in a Region 2 DVD box set of Akerman films that I'm too cheap to invest in right now), I'll go for it, no questions asked---even if the "print" turns out to be a relatively cheap VHS source.
I'll let you all know what I think next week; I'm sure the movie will merit more than a passing paragraph or two!
A few weeks ago, Nathan Lee, one of the Village Voice's most well-known and well-respected film critics, was unceremoniously fired from his job there. Couple that with a slew of other film-critic firings at even smaller newspapers over the past few months, and it's all gotten me rethinking by initial professional film-critic plans. As many have suggested in the blogosphere, it is increasingly looking like the future of film criticism will be in the hands of people writing more out of passion than trying to do it regularly for a living---as more newspapers cut out individual film-critic voices (mostly for cost-cutting reasons, I'm fairly certain) and replace them with, say, undistinguished Associated Press wire reviews, the future for incisive, intelligent, informed film writing may well be online. And so far, few people have actually been able to figure out how to make a living strictly blogging online. So I'm not sure I want to take that risk just yet...
So maybe copy editing and/or reporting really is where my future is headed, with film writing---like the kind I occasionally contribute to The House Next Door---relegated to a side hobby. If so...well, in a way, that would validate exactly what my mother has been saying to me all these years.
I think I just felt a chill go up my spine in writing that. Not sure if I'm ready to face that harsh truth just yet...
Another slap-in-the-face reality check this past week came in the form of a meeting after work in which the full force of Rupert Murdoch's takeover of Dow Jones hit me like a kid swatting a fly. No, there were no warnings of layoffs at this meeting, thank goodness---but what one of our supervisors offered was arguably more unnerving: uncertainty. Essentially, no one really has a clear idea what Murdoch has in store for us, so all we can hope for now is possibly a smooth transition to a different kind of job within the company, just in case Murdoch has it in his mind to shut down the South Brunswick branch altogether and relocate all of us to the News Corp. building in New York. Something like that.
My only real regret here is a selfish one: my plans for spending two years at the monitor desk while educating myself artistically on the side may be ending sooner than I had hoped for. Adulthood, here I come---and I must confess, I'm nervous about meeting you, Adulthood, face to face, secluded as I have been here in quiet old East Brunswick, N.J. for the past few months.
You know what I haven't written about much recently? Politics---specifically the ongoing presidential race. I should probably say something about it, if only just to add a bit of variety to this blog. On the other hand, do I really have anything to say at all? I don't find myself all that enthusiastic about either Democratic candidate; despite her formidable intelligence, I've never really trusted Hillary Clinton's sincerity about anything; and while temperamentally I should be more enthused about Barack Obama than I am (and I was impressed with his candid speech on race a few weeks back), I'm equally suspicious of his rampant hope-mongering, especially how it'll all look if he gets into office and runs up against, you know, political interests and all sorts of avenues toward compromise. As for the so-called "presumptive Republican nominee" John McCain---well, I have to admit I have a more favorable view of him as a person based on his TV appearances and what I've heard about his record in Congress (anyone who stands up against torture as he has over the years is admirable in my book). I'm not sure, however, that I really want to stay in Iraq as long as it takes, as he has publicly pledged.
But then, I also have to admit that I haven't really done all my research on these candidates, so maybe I shouldn't say anything more on the subject (for now). The only other thing I'll say right now, then, is: I hate politics. I really wish I could just stay indifferent to it all. I can't, of course; to do so would be to forsake my duty as an American citizen. But I just wish I could say to myself, and to others, "screw politics" without being tarred and feathered as a lamentable example of what is wrong with young Americans today. I just don't like to talk about it, and I could do without it, personally. But there's no avoiding it, so I have to be involved, in some way. As Sheriff Bell says in No Country for Old Men, "Okay. I'll be a part of this world."
Here's the Obama speech I referred to earlier:
On a more upbeat note: after taking in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou again last weekend (on the recently released Criterion Collection DVD), and remembering that the first spoken word in the film is "Velázquez"---as in the 17th-century Spanish painter---I decided to briefly surf online for some of his paintings. (Yes, my art knowledge is so deficient that I'm not sure if I've ever actually seen a Velázquez painting anywhere.) And I struck a minor personal revelation that ties somewhat to the intellect-versus-emotion stuff I wrote about a few weeks go here on this blog.
Take a look at Velázquez's "The Lady with a Fan":
Now, one may certainly look at this painting on a formalistic level and admire, say, the accuracy of fleshtones, the interplay between light and dark, the intimate atmosphere, etc. But when you get right down to it, what does one really respond to in this portrait, putting inside technical concerns? The subject itself. What is going on in this lady's face? What might she be thinking? She doesn't exactly look all too happy; is she in a hurry? Who knows? All human beings have their mysteries, and the real brilliance of portraits like these, it seems to me, is in preserving that mystery even while depicting its surface particulars. I look at this painting, and I don't necessarily find an earth-shatteringly fresh way of perceiving the world around me, philosophically or emotionally. Does that even have to be a prerequisite for what distinguishes great art from merely serviceable craftsmanship? The artwork is all there is, in the end. If it makes you feel or reflect on something---whether that reflection is as minor as how it corresponds with a mood you or someone else has felt previously---maybe that is all one really needs to know in order to gauge one's reaction to that work. The deep intellectual contemplation can come later.
All of these thoughts swirled around my head as I sat down a couple days ago with the newly released DVD of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, a film that I've gone back and forth on for months now (just look at my previous posts about it here and here), but which resolutely refuses to depart from my mind, even as I've taken in great films like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and The Flight of the Red Balloon in recent months. Does it add to my understanding of the corrupting force of unchecked capitalism and ambition to the human soul? Maybe, maybe not. (Again, I'm not convinced it has anything revelatory to say on the subjects of capitalism or religion---at least nothing that hasn't been broached by Welles or Kubrick films that Anderson so lovingly recalls.) But there is still the mystery of Daniel Plainview, that force of misanthropic, bullying nature at the heart of the film. What, for example, is his real reason for slapping the tar out of Eli Sunday soon after his "son" loses his hearing? Is he really just venting his frustrations, or is he simply and fearsomely showing his secular dominance over this supposedly holy preacher? Maybe it's both. Anyway, such mysteries of one man's human consciousness are arguably much narrower than the mysteries of fate and chance in a godless universe posited by the Coen brothers in No Country for Old Men---but should that necessarily mean one film is worth prizing more than another? Because one gets me thinking about the world I live in, and another gets me thinking just about another (fictional) human being? I guess I used to think so, which is why I've so baldly voiced my intellectual ambivalence about There Will Be Blood on this blog before. But maybe I've been too narrowly focused in my artistic concerns all along. (Or maybe I'm just trying to justify my sheer visceral exhilaration of watching Blood, which I felt all over again watching it on DVD.)
Still, am I simply lowering my standards here? I wonder...
But that, as with all these other sketches of ideas, is for possible future discussion.
Heck, if you want to discuss all or any of these right now, feel free to post comments. I welcome the discussion, always!
Friday, April 04, 2008
The Good, The Bad, and the Beautiful
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - My apologies for the lack of update last weekend; I was busy working on my Flight of the Red Balloon review in addition to picking up some extra hours at the State Theatre in New Brunswick (yes, I still usher there, at least whenever they really need staff for a show).
Thus I hope this update will suffice, even though this weekend might bring its share of busy-ness as well: in addition to finally delving in-depth into the recent Criterion DVD release of Godard's Pierrot le fou (maybe I'll fully embrace the film wholesale this time instead of loving its first hour and admiring the rest of it from a dispassionate intellectual distance), I figure I'll probably have to file at least one of my 2007 tax returns (I'll probably do the state return first). Shouldn't be too much work for me---it's not like I own a lot of property or a small business or anything---but we'll see...
Anyway, a brief life update this weekend rather than another one of my solipsistic examinations of my movie taste.
**********
First: starting next week (barring any last-minute surprises), I will officially become a full-time employee at The Wall Street Journal instead of the regular part-time worker I am now. Though I will still be working my usual day shift, starting next week I'll actually be staying all the way through the first Europe lock-up, at 4:30 p.m.
For the first few months at the monitor desk, I didn't really mind working part-time; I felt like I was getting enough time outside of work to do my reading, music-listening, movie-watching, etc. Maybe I've just been accomplishing less of that lately---it's been probably a week since I cracked open a book---but these days, whenever I've left at 3:30 p.m., I've felt weird about doing so. Perhaps I've become so attached to my job that I almost can't bear to leave it just before the Europe paper locks up first. It's more likely that my willingness to become a full-time worker comes mostly from the realization that that extra hour at home hasn't really transpired into anything particularly productive recently. So why not go full-time and pick up some extra money?
Really, though, the main reason for jumping to full-time status was for practical reasons: I found out that, with the Aetna health plan I picked as a regular part-time employee, I wasn't eligible for prescription drug benefits. I could have picked another available plan, but that other plan required you to seek referrals from a primary care physician---and I found that a sufficiently annoying prospect (I can pick my own doctors, dammit!) that I decided that it was just time to become a full-time employee.
I'm actually rather lucky I was able to go full-time so soon. At Dow Jones, if you want to jump from part-time to full-time in the same department, you have to wait until someone else leaves; then the department manager will place a listing on the company's internal job listings database, which will allow a part-time employee to apply for it. (Side note: this process is apparently called "posting," although that has always confused me; I've always associated "posting" with the putting up of a job listing, not of applying to one.) As ever in life, it isn't as easy as saying "I wanna work full-time now" and that's that. (This is business, people!) Lucky for me, someone left the monitor desk a lot earlier than I expected, which left the door open for me.
Now there's something to be fairly happy about...
**********
...unlike an argument at home that popped up between me and my mother over---not future plans, not job issues. No, it was about our family dog.
Readers, Dusty, our beloved shih tzu, is still peeing around the house randomly. And even after the floors have started to get a little sticky and the house has started to smell like piss, my mother refuses to get him checked out by a veterinarian. "Oh, he's just getting old," my mother has said repeatedly. "Not much you can do about it."
Well yes, he is old---about 10 years old. But if a human were relieving himself uncontrollably around the house, wouldn't you get him checked out by a doctor to see what may be the problem? If there isn't one, then okay, we'll deal. But I figure, at least get a professional opinion; that's what a doctor is there for. Why should it be any different with a dog? Because he's a dog?
Personally, I'd rather find out if there was problem than passive-aggressively clean up his sticky, smelly messes nearly every day. I'd much rather not keep stepping in sticky residue and smelling piss every day.
Apparently my mother is willing to do just that. Is it possible that she is so damn unwilling to spend her time and money to make an appointment with a veterinarian that she'll just rationalize it away and suffer the consequences? I don't have actual proof that that is her way of thinking---but I wouldn't be surprised, having lived through her extremely frugal ways for, oh, 22 years now. If this is actually the case, then I can't help but think that her frugality has reached a new peak.
That's what we argued about earlier in the week: I kept (gracelessly, I'll admit) insinuating that he should be taken to a vet, and finally my mother got fed up with my insinuations. "Why do I need to take him to a vet?" she said. "He still begs for food; he doesn't look sick. He's healthy!"
It seems my opinion counts for less than ever in this house. So what if he seems normal in every other respect? If it's a urinary tract infection, for instance, would that affect a pet's appetite?
This just frustrates the heck out of me: I feel like, in this matter, I'm the only sane one around. (My dad, as usual, refuses to argue with my mother about it, and my youngest brother remains indifferent to it all.) Honestly, it's the kind of thing that might make me move the hell out if---well, if I wasn't a) so afraid to live out there on my own, and b) so bent on trying to save as much as possible right out of college.
What do you say readers: am I being too irrational here, to think that a trip to a veterinarian wouldn't be too daft an idea? I mean, maybe he/she would basically confirm what my mother has been saying all along, that Dusty is too old and he just needs to be fed less water or something like that; but I'd rather hear it from a professional than from an arrogant mother who seems to distrust most doctors in the first place. Or is she being arrogant at all? Is she, in fact, being reasonable? (Everyone I talk to agrees with me; my mother, of course, said, "Of course they'll agree; they don't know the real situation.")
**********
Finally, on a more positive note, that Flight of the Red Balloon review I worked on last weekend? Read it here. Feel free to leave me feedback over at The House Next Door or here, if you wish. I'd love to hear from y'all!
Thus I hope this update will suffice, even though this weekend might bring its share of busy-ness as well: in addition to finally delving in-depth into the recent Criterion DVD release of Godard's Pierrot le fou (maybe I'll fully embrace the film wholesale this time instead of loving its first hour and admiring the rest of it from a dispassionate intellectual distance), I figure I'll probably have to file at least one of my 2007 tax returns (I'll probably do the state return first). Shouldn't be too much work for me---it's not like I own a lot of property or a small business or anything---but we'll see...
Anyway, a brief life update this weekend rather than another one of my solipsistic examinations of my movie taste.
First: starting next week (barring any last-minute surprises), I will officially become a full-time employee at The Wall Street Journal instead of the regular part-time worker I am now. Though I will still be working my usual day shift, starting next week I'll actually be staying all the way through the first Europe lock-up, at 4:30 p.m.
For the first few months at the monitor desk, I didn't really mind working part-time; I felt like I was getting enough time outside of work to do my reading, music-listening, movie-watching, etc. Maybe I've just been accomplishing less of that lately---it's been probably a week since I cracked open a book---but these days, whenever I've left at 3:30 p.m., I've felt weird about doing so. Perhaps I've become so attached to my job that I almost can't bear to leave it just before the Europe paper locks up first. It's more likely that my willingness to become a full-time worker comes mostly from the realization that that extra hour at home hasn't really transpired into anything particularly productive recently. So why not go full-time and pick up some extra money?
Really, though, the main reason for jumping to full-time status was for practical reasons: I found out that, with the Aetna health plan I picked as a regular part-time employee, I wasn't eligible for prescription drug benefits. I could have picked another available plan, but that other plan required you to seek referrals from a primary care physician---and I found that a sufficiently annoying prospect (I can pick my own doctors, dammit!) that I decided that it was just time to become a full-time employee.
I'm actually rather lucky I was able to go full-time so soon. At Dow Jones, if you want to jump from part-time to full-time in the same department, you have to wait until someone else leaves; then the department manager will place a listing on the company's internal job listings database, which will allow a part-time employee to apply for it. (Side note: this process is apparently called "posting," although that has always confused me; I've always associated "posting" with the putting up of a job listing, not of applying to one.) As ever in life, it isn't as easy as saying "I wanna work full-time now" and that's that. (This is business, people!) Lucky for me, someone left the monitor desk a lot earlier than I expected, which left the door open for me.
Now there's something to be fairly happy about...
...unlike an argument at home that popped up between me and my mother over---not future plans, not job issues. No, it was about our family dog.
Readers, Dusty, our beloved shih tzu, is still peeing around the house randomly. And even after the floors have started to get a little sticky and the house has started to smell like piss, my mother refuses to get him checked out by a veterinarian. "Oh, he's just getting old," my mother has said repeatedly. "Not much you can do about it."
Well yes, he is old---about 10 years old. But if a human were relieving himself uncontrollably around the house, wouldn't you get him checked out by a doctor to see what may be the problem? If there isn't one, then okay, we'll deal. But I figure, at least get a professional opinion; that's what a doctor is there for. Why should it be any different with a dog? Because he's a dog?
Personally, I'd rather find out if there was problem than passive-aggressively clean up his sticky, smelly messes nearly every day. I'd much rather not keep stepping in sticky residue and smelling piss every day.
Apparently my mother is willing to do just that. Is it possible that she is so damn unwilling to spend her time and money to make an appointment with a veterinarian that she'll just rationalize it away and suffer the consequences? I don't have actual proof that that is her way of thinking---but I wouldn't be surprised, having lived through her extremely frugal ways for, oh, 22 years now. If this is actually the case, then I can't help but think that her frugality has reached a new peak.
That's what we argued about earlier in the week: I kept (gracelessly, I'll admit) insinuating that he should be taken to a vet, and finally my mother got fed up with my insinuations. "Why do I need to take him to a vet?" she said. "He still begs for food; he doesn't look sick. He's healthy!"
It seems my opinion counts for less than ever in this house. So what if he seems normal in every other respect? If it's a urinary tract infection, for instance, would that affect a pet's appetite?
This just frustrates the heck out of me: I feel like, in this matter, I'm the only sane one around. (My dad, as usual, refuses to argue with my mother about it, and my youngest brother remains indifferent to it all.) Honestly, it's the kind of thing that might make me move the hell out if---well, if I wasn't a) so afraid to live out there on my own, and b) so bent on trying to save as much as possible right out of college.
What do you say readers: am I being too irrational here, to think that a trip to a veterinarian wouldn't be too daft an idea? I mean, maybe he/she would basically confirm what my mother has been saying all along, that Dusty is too old and he just needs to be fed less water or something like that; but I'd rather hear it from a professional than from an arrogant mother who seems to distrust most doctors in the first place. Or is she being arrogant at all? Is she, in fact, being reasonable? (Everyone I talk to agrees with me; my mother, of course, said, "Of course they'll agree; they don't know the real situation.")
Finally, on a more positive note, that Flight of the Red Balloon review I worked on last weekend? Read it here. Feel free to leave me feedback over at The House Next Door or here, if you wish. I'd love to hear from y'all!
Friday, March 21, 2008
Five Words
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - This was kind of a weird week in my life emotionally.
For half of it, I felt not only depressed---mostly about how static and dull my life has felt in the past couple of weeks---but downright taken with the sentiment expressed by Daniel Plainview (that man again!) in There Will Be Blood---that I'd rather just get away from everyone and live alone in order to not have to deal with "people." (Insert maniacal laugh here.) Well, perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit, but I think that captures how strangely sad I felt. (I won't bore you all with the details about how I became so downtrodden; let's just say that I began to suddenly feel both real bored with my life and real frustrated with certain personal issues that popped up. If you're interested in details, perhaps I'll explicate if you leave some nice comments :-) .)
All of that negative energy seemed to dissipate in one fell swoop with five words: Flight of the Red Balloon.
Readers, on Wednesday evening I went to a press screening of Hou Hsiao-hsien's latest work---a reimagining of the Albert Lamorisse classic The Red Balloon, and his second film, as far as I know, set outside of his native Taiwan---and it was exactly the tonic I needed to lift me up from my doldrums. It's that awesome. I've always had at least a detached appreciation for Hou---depending on my mood at a given point in time, sometimes I find him profoundly patient and revelatory, sometimes merely slow and dull---but I was practically walking on air, basking in the film's warm glow, after I left the screening room Wednesday night. I'm writing a review of this for The House Next Door, so I'll have much more to say about it when it opens (at the IFC Center on April 4). But of course---picking up on last week's theme of emotion vs. intellectualism---that review will probably express a more thoughtful, considered reaction than the one I have now. For this particular point in time, however, I will just say that the movie left me not only feeling more open to life---challenges and all---but also eternally grateful for the enriching possibilities of art.
For half of it, I felt not only depressed---mostly about how static and dull my life has felt in the past couple of weeks---but downright taken with the sentiment expressed by Daniel Plainview (that man again!) in There Will Be Blood---that I'd rather just get away from everyone and live alone in order to not have to deal with "people." (Insert maniacal laugh here.) Well, perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit, but I think that captures how strangely sad I felt. (I won't bore you all with the details about how I became so downtrodden; let's just say that I began to suddenly feel both real bored with my life and real frustrated with certain personal issues that popped up. If you're interested in details, perhaps I'll explicate if you leave some nice comments :-) .)
All of that negative energy seemed to dissipate in one fell swoop with five words: Flight of the Red Balloon.
Readers, on Wednesday evening I went to a press screening of Hou Hsiao-hsien's latest work---a reimagining of the Albert Lamorisse classic The Red Balloon, and his second film, as far as I know, set outside of his native Taiwan---and it was exactly the tonic I needed to lift me up from my doldrums. It's that awesome. I've always had at least a detached appreciation for Hou---depending on my mood at a given point in time, sometimes I find him profoundly patient and revelatory, sometimes merely slow and dull---but I was practically walking on air, basking in the film's warm glow, after I left the screening room Wednesday night. I'm writing a review of this for The House Next Door, so I'll have much more to say about it when it opens (at the IFC Center on April 4). But of course---picking up on last week's theme of emotion vs. intellectualism---that review will probably express a more thoughtful, considered reaction than the one I have now. For this particular point in time, however, I will just say that the movie left me not only feeling more open to life---challenges and all---but also eternally grateful for the enriching possibilities of art.
Monday, March 17, 2008
On Matters of Thought and Emotion in Movies
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Let's start with specifics: No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, arguably the two best American releases from last year.
When I first wrote about There Will Be Blood, I think I was writing both from the thrill of the movie itself and my own struggles with it---whether I thought its shortcomings were signs of a noble, overreaching failure, or whether I could embrace it strictly on its own, gloriously idiosyncratic terms. All I knew was that I had seen something that, like Daniel Plainview himself, wasn't going to go gently into the dark night; it had such a physical impact on me that I couldn't help but look a little less fondly toward the drier and more dispassionate No Country for Old Men. Was it really as good as I had previously thought, or was the film as lifeless as some of its detractors claimed?
A few weeks later, I decided to see No Country a second time in a movie theater, and something unexpected happened: I realized, by the end of it, that I hadn't really grasped this film at all the first time. Oddly enough, I had simplistically interpreted Anton Chigurh's occasional dialogue lines about fate and chance as simply the ravings of a bona-fide lunatic, thus not meant to be taken seriously. But then I paid more attention to his words the second time and realized that those ravings---his view of human life as subject to the whims of a flip of a coin---were the absolute dark heart of the movie. At one point, a character describes Chigurh as having "his own set of principles." What kind of principles? More than after my first viewing, I left the theater eflecting on not only Chigurh's twisted morality, but also something deeper: similar to the way Sheriff Bell was left sobered by the violence he has just witnessed and wondering whether this new generation had any use for old fogeys like him, I started thinking about the unsettling implications of the Coens' carefully constructed world of wanton interspecies violence and arbitrary randomness, and what it suggested about the larger world we all live in.
It also forced me to confront my own personal movie tastes, and thus this particular blog entry was born.
**********
What do I treasure from a movie? Sure, feelings and aesthetics are important, but when a movie is powerful enough to illuminate a new way of looking at the world---whether philosophically or simply emotionally---well, I prize that feeling more than almost any other from a work of art, and No Country---far from being just a weird little thriller---brought me to a state of deep reflection.
So what of There Will Be Blood, which I had initially considered the best American movie of 2007 the last time I wrote extensively about it? Having seen it three times, the third time a few days after seeing No Country that second time---I came to realize that maybe my initial reaction was just a little hasty. For all its tension, intensity and ferocious sensuality, the tragic rise and fall of Daniel Plainview didn't inspire that same kind of reflection. Sure, the nutty finale left me dazed and horrified---but that's strictly a visceral reaction. Intellectually speaking, did that finale, or the film as a whole, leave me reflecting on, say, the scary depths of human greed and misanthropy, or the devouring of religious faith by the excesses of unchecked ambition? Not so much. Sure, its characters have a mystery and ambiguity to them that is easy to become obsessive over, but as far as any wisdom it had to impart about a world beyond the movie frame, it's rather lacking. (In the Paul Thomas Anderson oeuvre, even Magnolia, that great untamed beast of a third film, had a more lasting resonance for me---it may be the first film since Ozu's infinitely more modest Tokyo Story to move me to reconsider my attitudes toward my own family in the face of possible unseen forces greater than us all.)
And yet...damn, what a movie! That oil-derrick explosion about an hour in will probably go down as one of my favorite action sequences of all time. And already, many professional film critics are going so far as to label this a new American classic.
I know, I know: it shouldn't matter to me what other people think. Nevertheless---especially after No Country took home all those Oscars a few weeks ago---both of these fascinating films have gotten me to reflect on matters of style and substance---the old "form-versus-content" discussion. Or, more important, emotions versus intellectualism, or brain versus heart.
**********
I will freely admit that I am a bundle of contradictions, particularly when it comes to the way I feel about things in my gut and the ways I handle those feelings in my head. Sometimes I am something of an emotional animal, acting in the moment without much forethought to the consequences of said action. (I indeed have broken objects in the heat of anger and frustration, although thankfully I haven't been so rash as to break a part of my body...yet...) And sometimes I do get a charge out of surrendering to my emotional impulses---losing control. That's the kind of sensuality movies can provide; Pauline Kael sometimes seemed to base her whole critical point of view on how a movie made her feel (at the expense of considerations of what those feelings actually meant); she even wrote a whole essay entitled "Fear of Movies" in which she criticized bloodlessly "tasteful" movies (like Woody Allen's Interiors) and the supposedly "discriminatory" moviegoers who, in acclaiming such dull films, were perhaps really just expressing a fear of experiencing cinema at its height.
But most of the time I'm just not the kind of person who relies on feeling and emotion to dictate my response to something I'm seeing. Thus, I may have just come out of a movie exhilarated or disturbed, but then my intellectual side may rudely assert itself and tell me, Sure, it engaged my emotions and had some lovely imagery and bits of technique, but... In other words, I'm not always the kind of moviegoer to just surrender to a film; I'm usually thinking along with a film (or, in some cases, in spite of it), and sometimes the thought may overwhelm the emotion.
(Photo courtesy of Dave Kehr)
Recently, for instance, I took my very first look at a late Godard fiction feature, his 1982 Passion. As someone who pretty much loves---or at least greatly admires---nearly every Godard feature from Breathless (1960) to Weekend (1967) (except for A Married Woman, which I haven't seen, or Made in U.S.A., which I just didn't get), I knew, even before popping in the DVD, that this was going to be a lot more autumnal and reflective, less immediately exciting than his early '60s Hollywood-deconstructionist films but also less overtly didactic than something like La Chinoise. To put it simply, it's not what one might call a "deep emotional experience." (Sam Fuller might have defined cinema as a medium of "emotions" in Pierrot le fou, but Godard has rarely struck me as a particularly emotional filmmaker---not cold, just drier and less warmly humanist than, say, his French New Wave compatriot François Truffaut.) But even though I wasn't exactly deeply moved on a human level by Passion, I liked it nevertheless mostly because I found it so fascinating to think about after it was over---its juxtapositions (mostly through sound and image) between high art and industrial life, its vision of a world in which its inhabitants are seemingly unable to respond to the beauty around them. In the case of Passion, my intellectual edification outweighed my relative lack of emotional engagement.
Let's go to the other extreme. Last year's Eastern Promises involved me deeply in its milieu and its characters while I was watching it; when I think more about it, however, far removed from the theatrical experience, I can't help but remember it as basically just another gangster melodrama that intrigues largely by virtue of director David Cronenberg's typically sober, near-scientific approach to the material, as well as a few distinctly Cronenbergian touches (like the biographical body art that has been grafted onto Viggo Mortensen's torso, flesh as a sign of humanity being one of the Canadian director's great running themes). Otherwise, it didn't really strike me as particularly profound or even significant (especially compared to his rawer early works, like Videodrome). Should that necessarily nullify the sheer pleasurable experience of being so mysteriously immersed in the film's ugly universe? Should I ultimately dismiss the film just because a part of me feels the substance doesn't quite measure up to its style?
Jim Emerson, a film writer who maintains a blog I read daily, has written quite a bit about form, style and content both in general and regarding No Country for Old Men, a film that many critics---even its staunchest supporters---have accepted as merely a brilliantly made thriller exercise with existential pretensions.
I quote from a November 27 entry he wrote:
For a medium that so emphasizes the visual, the aural, the sensational, I can't think of anything more logical than the idea that a film's style---its way of expressing something---is its content. The shots, the cuts---that's what a film, in some way, is ultimately about, and what those shots and cuts might mean in context. Words can certainly play a part in it, but in such an artistically inclusive medium, words are hardly everything; if they were---if we merely relied on a speeches or dialogue to give us clues as to what a movie is about---then a movie would be merely a moving slideshow rather than a work of cinema.
I may know all of this to be true deep down...but then I consider my own reactions to both No Country and There Will Be Blood, and I wonder if my suspicions toward the latter, in spite of how the film made me react in the moment, reflect a bit too much literalism on my part. My admiration for No Country comes mostly from its philosophical bent, from a view of the wider world that the filmmakers convey so convincingly. But that point of view is voiced mostly through its characters; does its imagery and technique support its themes? I think it does, but whenever I reflect back on the film---and it's been something I've been doing a lot recently---its images aren't so much what I'm thinking about. What I'm thinking about are its more prosaic qualities: say, that tense scene in the shop where Chigurh challenges the shopkeeper to "Call it"; the haunted, withdrawn quality of Sheriff Bell's monologues; that final showdown with Chigurh and Carla Jean. Do I like the film for the wrong reasons?
Emotions, however, are plentiful in There Will Be Blood---shock, awe, revulsion, fear, even some warmth. When Plainview slaps Eli Sunday around and buries his face into oil on the ground (a perverse trial by fire?), one can feel the weight of every single blow. Baby H.W. is looked on with something approaching real affection in a brief, wordless scene on a train, and the tenderness just about glows from the screen. The images and the sounds (especially the amazing Jonny Greenwood score) add to P.T. Anderson's controlled sensory assault: ejaculating oil wells; a face lighted by the fire Plainview witnesses, shrouded by the pitch-black darkness surrounding him; the blast of "holy" light that greets Plainview after he has woken up from a really bad night (an effect enhanced by the fact that the scene smash-cuts from a fade-to-black). All those images burn with a feverish intensity that serves the director's apparent attempt to instill a Biblical feel to his modern American myth; in some ways, it's even more successful than No Country at pushing sound and image to create an otherworldly atmosphere. Simply taking the sheer sensory experience of seeing the film into account, one could perhaps acclaim it as an indubitable masterpiece, and leave it at that.
Somehow, though, that isn't quite enough for me. In wrestling with this film over the past couple of months, I've come to realize: when you get right down to it, There Will Be Blood doesn't really have anything especially fresh and insightful to add to the lonely/greedy capitalist cliché that hasn't been explored with more humanity and complexity in the kinds of films---like Citizen Kane or Giant---that Anderson so lovingly evokes. Do people really, truly see something of themselves in a character as overscaled in its conception as Plainview is? I can't say I did. And, as much as I've come to accept the deliberate creepiness of the Eli Sunday character---he's not so much an opponent of Plainview's as a weaker twin---the fact that Anderson chooses this one-dimensional cretin to stand in for religion can't help but strike me as an unfair stacking of the deck in getting us to admire Plainview more easily. (It reminds me of the way Stanley Kubrick made grotesques out of pretty much everyone around Alex in A Clockwork Orange, with the effect---deliberate, I have to assume---of making the ultraviolent droogie seem more sympathetic by comparison.)
Do all of these possible flaws have much to do with the film's style? Compared to the wondrous images and fascinating technique (a lot of slow pans and sinuous zooms), I'm using its more literary qualities to poke holes in it. None of these issues seem to have bothered the film's biggest boosters, though, judging by their reviews---which leads me to assume that, unlike me, they are somehow able to wholeheartedly embrace the film on its own terms. It seems as if they can groove on the experience alone and perhaps come up with interpretations later, while I, in my literal-mindedness, can't quite fuse sensation and thought in the same way. But is there enough substance to sustain its obvious epic striving? Ah, but if we accept form as content, shouldn't the film's visual and aural brilliance be enough?
I dunno. I've almost always believed that form, while certainly important, isn't everything--- and this realization has gotten me to reflect on my own artistic priorities as a filmgoer. Sure, I like to be moved by a film as much as anyone else---but I also look to the movies to provide me not just sensual excitement, but also new perspectives, new ideas. I found those kinds of perspectives in No Country for Old Men, not so much in There Will Be Blood. (I still think about the latter quite a lot, don't get me wrong; but I'm still not exactly convinced that it's this new American masterpiece that many critics seem to be claiming for it.) But by preferring a work that inspires intellectual reflection over something that is, I'd argue, almost entirely about its style rather than about any insights into human nature it has to impart, am I somehow going against the nature of movies---a medium that seems more conducive to appealing to emotions rather than intellect? Music is so abstract that I rarely have trouble accepting a song or a symphony strictly in terms of the sounds and harmonies it creates, outside of any stated or unstated"program." Shouldn't cinema be thought of in the same way? And the fact that I strongly suspect that I don't really think of cinema that way may or may not suggest some kind of artistic shortcoming on my part.
Heady questions all. I don't really have definitive answers to them (or am I just afraid of the answers?). That's typical of me---I love to pose questions more than answer 'em, especially if they're as loaded as these ones. But hey, that's exactly what I hope for from the good movies I see---not so much answers, but real good questions worth mulling over.
Maybe thats a good spot to end this post on---a door left open for a continuation of thought processes in the future. I don't know if this whole entry has come off as genuinely thought-provoking or merely insufferably solipsistic, but if this has intrigued any of you at all, by all means, stay tuned...
When I first wrote about There Will Be Blood, I think I was writing both from the thrill of the movie itself and my own struggles with it---whether I thought its shortcomings were signs of a noble, overreaching failure, or whether I could embrace it strictly on its own, gloriously idiosyncratic terms. All I knew was that I had seen something that, like Daniel Plainview himself, wasn't going to go gently into the dark night; it had such a physical impact on me that I couldn't help but look a little less fondly toward the drier and more dispassionate No Country for Old Men. Was it really as good as I had previously thought, or was the film as lifeless as some of its detractors claimed?
A few weeks later, I decided to see No Country a second time in a movie theater, and something unexpected happened: I realized, by the end of it, that I hadn't really grasped this film at all the first time. Oddly enough, I had simplistically interpreted Anton Chigurh's occasional dialogue lines about fate and chance as simply the ravings of a bona-fide lunatic, thus not meant to be taken seriously. But then I paid more attention to his words the second time and realized that those ravings---his view of human life as subject to the whims of a flip of a coin---were the absolute dark heart of the movie. At one point, a character describes Chigurh as having "his own set of principles." What kind of principles? More than after my first viewing, I left the theater eflecting on not only Chigurh's twisted morality, but also something deeper: similar to the way Sheriff Bell was left sobered by the violence he has just witnessed and wondering whether this new generation had any use for old fogeys like him, I started thinking about the unsettling implications of the Coens' carefully constructed world of wanton interspecies violence and arbitrary randomness, and what it suggested about the larger world we all live in.
It also forced me to confront my own personal movie tastes, and thus this particular blog entry was born.
What do I treasure from a movie? Sure, feelings and aesthetics are important, but when a movie is powerful enough to illuminate a new way of looking at the world---whether philosophically or simply emotionally---well, I prize that feeling more than almost any other from a work of art, and No Country---far from being just a weird little thriller---brought me to a state of deep reflection.
So what of There Will Be Blood, which I had initially considered the best American movie of 2007 the last time I wrote extensively about it? Having seen it three times, the third time a few days after seeing No Country that second time---I came to realize that maybe my initial reaction was just a little hasty. For all its tension, intensity and ferocious sensuality, the tragic rise and fall of Daniel Plainview didn't inspire that same kind of reflection. Sure, the nutty finale left me dazed and horrified---but that's strictly a visceral reaction. Intellectually speaking, did that finale, or the film as a whole, leave me reflecting on, say, the scary depths of human greed and misanthropy, or the devouring of religious faith by the excesses of unchecked ambition? Not so much. Sure, its characters have a mystery and ambiguity to them that is easy to become obsessive over, but as far as any wisdom it had to impart about a world beyond the movie frame, it's rather lacking. (In the Paul Thomas Anderson oeuvre, even Magnolia, that great untamed beast of a third film, had a more lasting resonance for me---it may be the first film since Ozu's infinitely more modest Tokyo Story to move me to reconsider my attitudes toward my own family in the face of possible unseen forces greater than us all.)
And yet...damn, what a movie! That oil-derrick explosion about an hour in will probably go down as one of my favorite action sequences of all time. And already, many professional film critics are going so far as to label this a new American classic.
I know, I know: it shouldn't matter to me what other people think. Nevertheless---especially after No Country took home all those Oscars a few weeks ago---both of these fascinating films have gotten me to reflect on matters of style and substance---the old "form-versus-content" discussion. Or, more important, emotions versus intellectualism, or brain versus heart.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
---Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself"
I will freely admit that I am a bundle of contradictions, particularly when it comes to the way I feel about things in my gut and the ways I handle those feelings in my head. Sometimes I am something of an emotional animal, acting in the moment without much forethought to the consequences of said action. (I indeed have broken objects in the heat of anger and frustration, although thankfully I haven't been so rash as to break a part of my body...yet...) And sometimes I do get a charge out of surrendering to my emotional impulses---losing control. That's the kind of sensuality movies can provide; Pauline Kael sometimes seemed to base her whole critical point of view on how a movie made her feel (at the expense of considerations of what those feelings actually meant); she even wrote a whole essay entitled "Fear of Movies" in which she criticized bloodlessly "tasteful" movies (like Woody Allen's Interiors) and the supposedly "discriminatory" moviegoers who, in acclaiming such dull films, were perhaps really just expressing a fear of experiencing cinema at its height.
But most of the time I'm just not the kind of person who relies on feeling and emotion to dictate my response to something I'm seeing. Thus, I may have just come out of a movie exhilarated or disturbed, but then my intellectual side may rudely assert itself and tell me, Sure, it engaged my emotions and had some lovely imagery and bits of technique, but... In other words, I'm not always the kind of moviegoer to just surrender to a film; I'm usually thinking along with a film (or, in some cases, in spite of it), and sometimes the thought may overwhelm the emotion.
(Photo courtesy of Dave Kehr)
Recently, for instance, I took my very first look at a late Godard fiction feature, his 1982 Passion. As someone who pretty much loves---or at least greatly admires---nearly every Godard feature from Breathless (1960) to Weekend (1967) (except for A Married Woman, which I haven't seen, or Made in U.S.A., which I just didn't get), I knew, even before popping in the DVD, that this was going to be a lot more autumnal and reflective, less immediately exciting than his early '60s Hollywood-deconstructionist films but also less overtly didactic than something like La Chinoise. To put it simply, it's not what one might call a "deep emotional experience." (Sam Fuller might have defined cinema as a medium of "emotions" in Pierrot le fou, but Godard has rarely struck me as a particularly emotional filmmaker---not cold, just drier and less warmly humanist than, say, his French New Wave compatriot François Truffaut.) But even though I wasn't exactly deeply moved on a human level by Passion, I liked it nevertheless mostly because I found it so fascinating to think about after it was over---its juxtapositions (mostly through sound and image) between high art and industrial life, its vision of a world in which its inhabitants are seemingly unable to respond to the beauty around them. In the case of Passion, my intellectual edification outweighed my relative lack of emotional engagement.
Let's go to the other extreme. Last year's Eastern Promises involved me deeply in its milieu and its characters while I was watching it; when I think more about it, however, far removed from the theatrical experience, I can't help but remember it as basically just another gangster melodrama that intrigues largely by virtue of director David Cronenberg's typically sober, near-scientific approach to the material, as well as a few distinctly Cronenbergian touches (like the biographical body art that has been grafted onto Viggo Mortensen's torso, flesh as a sign of humanity being one of the Canadian director's great running themes). Otherwise, it didn't really strike me as particularly profound or even significant (especially compared to his rawer early works, like Videodrome). Should that necessarily nullify the sheer pleasurable experience of being so mysteriously immersed in the film's ugly universe? Should I ultimately dismiss the film just because a part of me feels the substance doesn't quite measure up to its style?
Jim Emerson, a film writer who maintains a blog I read daily, has written quite a bit about form, style and content both in general and regarding No Country for Old Men, a film that many critics---even its staunchest supporters---have accepted as merely a brilliantly made thriller exercise with existential pretensions.
I quote from a November 27 entry he wrote:
When somebody claims that a movie overemphasizes the "visual" -- whether they're talking about Stanley Kubrick or Terence Malick or the Coens -- it's a sure sign that they're not talking about cinema, but approaching film as an elementary school audio-visual aid. When critics (and viewers) refer to the filmmakers' application of "craft," "technique," and "style" (can these things be applied, casually or relentlessly, with a spatula?) without consideration of how these expressions function in the movie, we're all in trouble. A composition, a cut, a dissolve, a movement -- they're all manifestations of craft (or skill), technique (the systematic use of skill), style (artistic expression).
For a medium that so emphasizes the visual, the aural, the sensational, I can't think of anything more logical than the idea that a film's style---its way of expressing something---is its content. The shots, the cuts---that's what a film, in some way, is ultimately about, and what those shots and cuts might mean in context. Words can certainly play a part in it, but in such an artistically inclusive medium, words are hardly everything; if they were---if we merely relied on a speeches or dialogue to give us clues as to what a movie is about---then a movie would be merely a moving slideshow rather than a work of cinema.
I may know all of this to be true deep down...but then I consider my own reactions to both No Country and There Will Be Blood, and I wonder if my suspicions toward the latter, in spite of how the film made me react in the moment, reflect a bit too much literalism on my part. My admiration for No Country comes mostly from its philosophical bent, from a view of the wider world that the filmmakers convey so convincingly. But that point of view is voiced mostly through its characters; does its imagery and technique support its themes? I think it does, but whenever I reflect back on the film---and it's been something I've been doing a lot recently---its images aren't so much what I'm thinking about. What I'm thinking about are its more prosaic qualities: say, that tense scene in the shop where Chigurh challenges the shopkeeper to "Call it"; the haunted, withdrawn quality of Sheriff Bell's monologues; that final showdown with Chigurh and Carla Jean. Do I like the film for the wrong reasons?
Emotions, however, are plentiful in There Will Be Blood---shock, awe, revulsion, fear, even some warmth. When Plainview slaps Eli Sunday around and buries his face into oil on the ground (a perverse trial by fire?), one can feel the weight of every single blow. Baby H.W. is looked on with something approaching real affection in a brief, wordless scene on a train, and the tenderness just about glows from the screen. The images and the sounds (especially the amazing Jonny Greenwood score) add to P.T. Anderson's controlled sensory assault: ejaculating oil wells; a face lighted by the fire Plainview witnesses, shrouded by the pitch-black darkness surrounding him; the blast of "holy" light that greets Plainview after he has woken up from a really bad night (an effect enhanced by the fact that the scene smash-cuts from a fade-to-black). All those images burn with a feverish intensity that serves the director's apparent attempt to instill a Biblical feel to his modern American myth; in some ways, it's even more successful than No Country at pushing sound and image to create an otherworldly atmosphere. Simply taking the sheer sensory experience of seeing the film into account, one could perhaps acclaim it as an indubitable masterpiece, and leave it at that.
Somehow, though, that isn't quite enough for me. In wrestling with this film over the past couple of months, I've come to realize: when you get right down to it, There Will Be Blood doesn't really have anything especially fresh and insightful to add to the lonely/greedy capitalist cliché that hasn't been explored with more humanity and complexity in the kinds of films---like Citizen Kane or Giant---that Anderson so lovingly evokes. Do people really, truly see something of themselves in a character as overscaled in its conception as Plainview is? I can't say I did. And, as much as I've come to accept the deliberate creepiness of the Eli Sunday character---he's not so much an opponent of Plainview's as a weaker twin---the fact that Anderson chooses this one-dimensional cretin to stand in for religion can't help but strike me as an unfair stacking of the deck in getting us to admire Plainview more easily. (It reminds me of the way Stanley Kubrick made grotesques out of pretty much everyone around Alex in A Clockwork Orange, with the effect---deliberate, I have to assume---of making the ultraviolent droogie seem more sympathetic by comparison.)
Do all of these possible flaws have much to do with the film's style? Compared to the wondrous images and fascinating technique (a lot of slow pans and sinuous zooms), I'm using its more literary qualities to poke holes in it. None of these issues seem to have bothered the film's biggest boosters, though, judging by their reviews---which leads me to assume that, unlike me, they are somehow able to wholeheartedly embrace the film on its own terms. It seems as if they can groove on the experience alone and perhaps come up with interpretations later, while I, in my literal-mindedness, can't quite fuse sensation and thought in the same way. But is there enough substance to sustain its obvious epic striving? Ah, but if we accept form as content, shouldn't the film's visual and aural brilliance be enough?
I dunno. I've almost always believed that form, while certainly important, isn't everything--- and this realization has gotten me to reflect on my own artistic priorities as a filmgoer. Sure, I like to be moved by a film as much as anyone else---but I also look to the movies to provide me not just sensual excitement, but also new perspectives, new ideas. I found those kinds of perspectives in No Country for Old Men, not so much in There Will Be Blood. (I still think about the latter quite a lot, don't get me wrong; but I'm still not exactly convinced that it's this new American masterpiece that many critics seem to be claiming for it.) But by preferring a work that inspires intellectual reflection over something that is, I'd argue, almost entirely about its style rather than about any insights into human nature it has to impart, am I somehow going against the nature of movies---a medium that seems more conducive to appealing to emotions rather than intellect? Music is so abstract that I rarely have trouble accepting a song or a symphony strictly in terms of the sounds and harmonies it creates, outside of any stated or unstated"program." Shouldn't cinema be thought of in the same way? And the fact that I strongly suspect that I don't really think of cinema that way may or may not suggest some kind of artistic shortcoming on my part.
Heady questions all. I don't really have definitive answers to them (or am I just afraid of the answers?). That's typical of me---I love to pose questions more than answer 'em, especially if they're as loaded as these ones. But hey, that's exactly what I hope for from the good movies I see---not so much answers, but real good questions worth mulling over.
Maybe thats a good spot to end this post on---a door left open for a continuation of thought processes in the future. I don't know if this whole entry has come off as genuinely thought-provoking or merely insufferably solipsistic, but if this has intrigued any of you at all, by all means, stay tuned...
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Sensations: Both Locked-In and Three-Dimensional
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I'm kicking around with the idea of writing a deeply personal, exploratory entry about my own movie tastes, because recently I've been pondering my free-floating ideas of what I, Kenji Fujishima, would consider a "good" movie---different for everyone, obviously, but not so easy to pin down for someone like me who tends to examine his reactions to almost anything under a microscope (especially if a particular reaction doesn't jibe with the consensus on something). I'd think I'm an emotional, Dionysian kind of guy ("How does it feeeeeel?" famously sang Bob Dylan), but the Apollonian in me almost always has to assert itself whenever I think I've settled on a particular opinion. It's the classic case, in other words, of "I felt great looking at it, but..."
More on that next week, perhaps...if I, uh, feel like it...
For now, this week's entry will mostly be short takes---on movies I've recently seen, and a couple tidbits about things going on in my (otherwise unremarkable) life.
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I finally caught up with Julian Schnabel's celebrated adaptation of the literally blinked-out memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last weekend, and I have to say: for a movie that obviously tries so hard to get inside the head of its main character---the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, a writer and editor-in-chief for Elle magazine who suffered a debilitating stroke that left him paralyzed and speechless as a result of a rare condition called "locked-in syndrome"---Schnabel's film ultimately made me feel more dispassionately impressed by the director's own visual ingenuity than feeling much specific empathy toward bedridden "Jean-Do."
Schnabel goes whole hog here, stylistically: lens flares, extended p.o.v. shots, metaphors made literal (a recurring image of a man in a diving suit underwater, for instance, that is meant to symbolize Bauby's own feeling of being trapped), relatively random flashbacks. Some of it is fascinating, some of it even wondrous, and certainly one can respect Schnabel's refusal to drown his movie in disease-movie-of-the-week bathos.
After a while, though, the sensory assault stops yielding the revelations of its first 20 minutes---in which we in the audience are successfully put into Bauby's body as he tries, with a good amount of frustration and resentment, to adjust to his new life---and becomes pretty monotonous and superficial. We never get a clear sense of the man as a fleshed-out human being, because Schnabel is apparently too busy trying to give us the impression that his swirling, flashy style is actually inside his ever-creative mind. But really, all we are left with, in the end, are the usual triumph-of-the-human-spirit clichés: he's angry about where he is now; he vows to stay productive amidst physical adversity; he tries to make amends for the person he was before, etc etc. Not that these clichés couldn't be genuinely moving stuff---there's a reason why Jim Sheridan's 1989 My Left Foot is so fondly remembered beyond its amazing Daniel Day-Lewis showcase---but Schnabel seems so wrapped up in his theoretically penetrating stylistic tropes that he seems to forget the living, breathing human being underneath. (Thankfully, Mathieu Amalric, the actor who plays Bauby, never forgets, although he has to fight a losing battle against Schnabel's visual fashion show.)
Maybe I should have read Bauby's memoir before seeing this film; perhaps it would have filled in some of the psychological gaps that Schnabel seems unaware exist. For me, the best way to look at The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is as a middlebrow experimental work---one that accepts the conventions of a standard-issue Miramax prestige drama and does its damnedest to dry out its sentimentality with a surfeit of visual surface activity meant to simulate Bauby's experiences and interpret his mindset. I applaud the intentions, and I admire parts of the film; I just wish the whole didn't seem so shallow and narcissistic---Schnabel, in effect, usurping Bauby's indomitable soul instead of locating and highlighting it.
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More sensations. Even though I have only a passing familiarity with the music of U2, I decided to go check out U2 3D anyway after having heard a good deal about how dazzling and even revolutionary it was (apparently it's the first live-action movie to be shot entirely on digital 3D).
Well, they certainly do successfully simulate the experience not just of being at an actual U2 rock concert, but at times of being on-stage right next to the members. And there are a few memorable instances of awesome 3D visual representation: Bono's left hand seems to come right out of the screen to wipe away your tears during the band's rendition of "Sunday Bloody Sunday"; during one song, directors Catherine Owen and Mark Pellington play with putting words on the screen (in something approximating Godard style); and there are even instances of animation throughout that seem suspended in air thanks to the 3D technology.
Combined with the neon lights, uncluttered stage designs (done by Owen, the band's usual production designer) and the big-screen images behind the band that highlight the songs, U2 3D provides a real treat for fans. For non-fans like me, though, I felt mostly on the outside looking in---impressed in a detached way but not really inspired to ecstatic highs even by the isolated moments of 3D splendor.
Still, the film, at the very least, does suggest some real artistic possibilities for the digital 3D format---not just for the expected technological awe, but for some kind of genuine human emotion and expression. If anything, the abstracted visuals of U2 3D suggest a sincere attempt to visually represent the inclusiveness Bono and company are aiming for with their music, to bring people together, to "coexist"; that kind of ambition is not something you can say for a lot of 3D movies.
Whether any new enterprising artist, however, will take up the challenge of making serious art out of a technology that has been exploited mostly for spectacle remains to be seen.
Side note: having to wear 3D glasses on top of my usual glasses wasn't exactly the most pleasant experience either---maybe the final push for me to switch to contacts?
For those interested in what the glasses look like, a few pics below (all courtesy of Photo Booth---very sophisticated, I know).
And hey, it's me!
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Okay, you can all stop clamoring for updates about my life all at once!
There's not much about my Wall Street Journal job that I feel particularly compelled to report; it's same-old, same-old, really (although don't take that as necessarily a complaint; I like stasis once in a while). I did finally qualify for health benefits from Dow Jones, though---after six months of work, I officially became a part-time regular employee at the end of February, and thus I was allowed health coverage. Power to all those who can live without health insurance for an extended period of time (like this film critic I read and admire), but, despite my artsy leanings, I do need a little bit of security in my life; I'm not so sure the starving-artist life is quite for me (although, as they say, you never know until you try...)
On an unrelated note: our dog Dusty has started to become trouble around the house. I mean, he never used to relieve himself indoors nearly as much as he's done in the past two weeks; now, it's come to the point that it's considered a good day for him if he can go the whole day without pissing on our floors once.
One of my younger brothers mentioned about a week ago that he knows a friend who had a dog who started having these "accidents" just before he died. Uh-oh.
All I know right now is, I have no idea why my parents are so seemingly reluctant to take him to a vet.
More on that next week, perhaps...if I, uh, feel like it...
For now, this week's entry will mostly be short takes---on movies I've recently seen, and a couple tidbits about things going on in my (otherwise unremarkable) life.
I finally caught up with Julian Schnabel's celebrated adaptation of the literally blinked-out memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last weekend, and I have to say: for a movie that obviously tries so hard to get inside the head of its main character---the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, a writer and editor-in-chief for Elle magazine who suffered a debilitating stroke that left him paralyzed and speechless as a result of a rare condition called "locked-in syndrome"---Schnabel's film ultimately made me feel more dispassionately impressed by the director's own visual ingenuity than feeling much specific empathy toward bedridden "Jean-Do."
Schnabel goes whole hog here, stylistically: lens flares, extended p.o.v. shots, metaphors made literal (a recurring image of a man in a diving suit underwater, for instance, that is meant to symbolize Bauby's own feeling of being trapped), relatively random flashbacks. Some of it is fascinating, some of it even wondrous, and certainly one can respect Schnabel's refusal to drown his movie in disease-movie-of-the-week bathos.
After a while, though, the sensory assault stops yielding the revelations of its first 20 minutes---in which we in the audience are successfully put into Bauby's body as he tries, with a good amount of frustration and resentment, to adjust to his new life---and becomes pretty monotonous and superficial. We never get a clear sense of the man as a fleshed-out human being, because Schnabel is apparently too busy trying to give us the impression that his swirling, flashy style is actually inside his ever-creative mind. But really, all we are left with, in the end, are the usual triumph-of-the-human-spirit clichés: he's angry about where he is now; he vows to stay productive amidst physical adversity; he tries to make amends for the person he was before, etc etc. Not that these clichés couldn't be genuinely moving stuff---there's a reason why Jim Sheridan's 1989 My Left Foot is so fondly remembered beyond its amazing Daniel Day-Lewis showcase---but Schnabel seems so wrapped up in his theoretically penetrating stylistic tropes that he seems to forget the living, breathing human being underneath. (Thankfully, Mathieu Amalric, the actor who plays Bauby, never forgets, although he has to fight a losing battle against Schnabel's visual fashion show.)
Maybe I should have read Bauby's memoir before seeing this film; perhaps it would have filled in some of the psychological gaps that Schnabel seems unaware exist. For me, the best way to look at The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is as a middlebrow experimental work---one that accepts the conventions of a standard-issue Miramax prestige drama and does its damnedest to dry out its sentimentality with a surfeit of visual surface activity meant to simulate Bauby's experiences and interpret his mindset. I applaud the intentions, and I admire parts of the film; I just wish the whole didn't seem so shallow and narcissistic---Schnabel, in effect, usurping Bauby's indomitable soul instead of locating and highlighting it.
More sensations. Even though I have only a passing familiarity with the music of U2, I decided to go check out U2 3D anyway after having heard a good deal about how dazzling and even revolutionary it was (apparently it's the first live-action movie to be shot entirely on digital 3D).
Well, they certainly do successfully simulate the experience not just of being at an actual U2 rock concert, but at times of being on-stage right next to the members. And there are a few memorable instances of awesome 3D visual representation: Bono's left hand seems to come right out of the screen to wipe away your tears during the band's rendition of "Sunday Bloody Sunday"; during one song, directors Catherine Owen and Mark Pellington play with putting words on the screen (in something approximating Godard style); and there are even instances of animation throughout that seem suspended in air thanks to the 3D technology.
Combined with the neon lights, uncluttered stage designs (done by Owen, the band's usual production designer) and the big-screen images behind the band that highlight the songs, U2 3D provides a real treat for fans. For non-fans like me, though, I felt mostly on the outside looking in---impressed in a detached way but not really inspired to ecstatic highs even by the isolated moments of 3D splendor.
Still, the film, at the very least, does suggest some real artistic possibilities for the digital 3D format---not just for the expected technological awe, but for some kind of genuine human emotion and expression. If anything, the abstracted visuals of U2 3D suggest a sincere attempt to visually represent the inclusiveness Bono and company are aiming for with their music, to bring people together, to "coexist"; that kind of ambition is not something you can say for a lot of 3D movies.
Whether any new enterprising artist, however, will take up the challenge of making serious art out of a technology that has been exploited mostly for spectacle remains to be seen.
Side note: having to wear 3D glasses on top of my usual glasses wasn't exactly the most pleasant experience either---maybe the final push for me to switch to contacts?
For those interested in what the glasses look like, a few pics below (all courtesy of Photo Booth---very sophisticated, I know).
And hey, it's me!
Okay, you can all stop clamoring for updates about my life all at once!
There's not much about my Wall Street Journal job that I feel particularly compelled to report; it's same-old, same-old, really (although don't take that as necessarily a complaint; I like stasis once in a while). I did finally qualify for health benefits from Dow Jones, though---after six months of work, I officially became a part-time regular employee at the end of February, and thus I was allowed health coverage. Power to all those who can live without health insurance for an extended period of time (like this film critic I read and admire), but, despite my artsy leanings, I do need a little bit of security in my life; I'm not so sure the starving-artist life is quite for me (although, as they say, you never know until you try...)
On an unrelated note: our dog Dusty has started to become trouble around the house. I mean, he never used to relieve himself indoors nearly as much as he's done in the past two weeks; now, it's come to the point that it's considered a good day for him if he can go the whole day without pissing on our floors once.
One of my younger brothers mentioned about a week ago that he knows a friend who had a dog who started having these "accidents" just before he died. Uh-oh.
All I know right now is, I have no idea why my parents are so seemingly reluctant to take him to a vet.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Look at Me, Ma! Belated Oscar Notes, Be Kind Rewind, Rats and Balloons
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Sorry readers; I'm a little late with my planned weekly post.
First things first: take a peek at my Chop Shop review at The House Next Door---and by all means, check the movie out and see if I gave it a
fair hearing. All in all, I'd say it's worth seeing, if it's playing anywhere near your area.
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Okay, so some belated Oscar commentary---not that anyone really cares at that point, but I kinda want to get this off my chest, so I'll inflict it upon all of you whether you want to read it or not ;-) .
Here's a reprint of a portion of a comment I made on a Facebook group thread in partial response to Marion Cotillard's Best Actress upset at last Sunday's ceremony:
I guess I'm reacting not so much to the quality of the performances themselves, because I can at least summon up a bedgruding admiration toward Cate Blanchett's drag act and Cotillard's over-the-top technique (and, in checking out some YouTube clips from the Haynes film, I'll concede that once in a while Blanchett does infuse some feeling to a part that perhaps is more notable for its lack of it). I guess I've just become mightily skeptical of this trend of showering these glorified, show-offy impersonations---indeed, falling in with media hype and celebrating them as "embodiments" when, more often than not, such performances are merely, cynically calculated to impress---over many more deserving performances that, you know, actually create characterizations from something like scratch.
I'm certainly not diminishing every single biopic lead performance by bringing this up---for every vanity act like Charlize Theron's Aileen Wuornos horror show or Philip Seymour Hoffman's condescending Truman Capote, there are genuinely remarkable channeling acts like Daniel Day-Lewis's defiant Christy Brown (from My Left Foot) or Joaquin Phoenix's underappreciated Johnny Cash interpretation in Walk the Line---but it's almost as if every high-profile biopic lead performance (other than, maybe, Kevin Spacey's Bobby Darin a few years ago) gets knee-jerk acclaim, whether or not the actor has actually managed to actually dig into the soul of the real-life figure he/she is playing. Oh, but he/she is actually trying to copy his/her subject's mannerisms and all down to the last detail---wow, that must be worth praising! Not so fast. For me, it's the difference between flash and heart---something that, to me, distinguishes a Cate Blanchett from a Julie Christie.
Other random Oscar notes:
Good call on Tilda Swinton, who managed to humanize a cliché dragon-lady lawyer in Michael Clayton to the point that you almost had to feel a little sorry for her as she was being bullied by George Clooney at the climax. Well, at least I did. (Maybe I just have fucked-up sympathies.) Anyway, the way Swinton played her character, you could sense she was just trying to keep up in a man's world---a desire that led her to make some pretty reprehensible decisions. That's the kind of imagination that deserves acclaim.
Oh, and for those who haven't seen the wonderful little movie Once (the real little indie that could of last year, not the Fox Searchlight-backed Juno), let me set the record straight: for its Oscar-winning song "Falling Slowly," there is no soupy orchestration that goes along with it in the movie. None. Boy, that was a rather disappointing performance to watch---after that, even I would probably gag and dismiss it as trite emo crap. The magic of that first instance when the two main characters sit down in a music shop and play the tune---he on guitar, she on piano---comes from from its near-conspiratorial intimacy; it's two ordinary people having a wonderful private moment making music. Having sappy strings behind it totally ruins the effect. By all means, don't let that Oscar performance scare you off of a movie that rarely ever stoops to that kind of manipulative sentimentality.
Here, take a look:
And as for the Oscar ceremony itself---no, it wasn't particularly memorable or even all that exciting this year. But then I've never really watched it for the glamour. All that matters is that the show ran smoothly, host Jon Stewart had a few amusing jokes (at least after a rather lame opening monologue), and, most importantly, the Academy came up with a mostly respectable list of winners.
That's all I have to say about the Oscars this year. Time to focus on more important things (like the rise of Barack)?
By the way, for those who care: I didn't do too badly in my first-ever Wall Street Journal copy desk Oscar pool---sixth place. Damn you, Tilda and Cotillard, for tripping me up!
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[SPOILERS AHEAD]
Some critics found the many touches of whimsy in Michel Gondry's previous film The Science of Sleep to be insufferably cutesy; me, I loved Gondry's handcrafted integrity as well as its descent into unexpectedly tragic territory in its final act, with its suggestions of self-criticism on the director's part. Live in the real world, Gondry seemed to be saying to his main character, instead of in your own self-absorbed, childlike head.
Judging from his new effort Be Kind Rewind, though, I can only wonder if he really meant what he suggested after all. Right at the outset, Be Kind Rewind clues you in that it takes place in some kind of Capraesque alternate universe---a self-contained fantasy world in which a VHS store still exists, one a couple of people around my age still frequent---and its first 30 hilarity-free minutes or so had me clutching my head from quirk overload. Jack Black's high-wire comic hipsterism can certainly be magnetic (witness High Fidelity and The School of Rock), but here I tired of his brain-addled schtick within his first two minutes onscreen. The endless gag revolving around Mos Def being unable to read letters backwards made me roll my eyes; and when this seemingly sincere guy---who wants to keep the VHS store in good condition for his practical, no-nonsense boss (Danny Glover)---somehow convinces himself to go along with Black's retarded plan to infiltrate a power plant that Black thinks is causing his headaches, I was ready to give this movie up as a fall into the deep end of suffocating preciousness for the usually more surefooted Gondry.
Once an accident at the power plant causes Black's head to become a magnetizer that leads all the tapes in the VHS store to be erased, however, Be Kind Rewind does become less exasperating. To please a longtime customer (Mia Farrow), Black and Def embark on a desperate, cockeyed plan to remake Ghostbusters in their own lo-fi image; the numerous Hollywood film parodies that flow forth from the unexpected popularity of their "Sweded" productions are genuinely cute and amusing. Eventually, though, copyright lawyers shut down the Sweding operation, the video store is threatened to be destroyed, and Gondry then lays the Capracorn on thick: the whole town unites to make their own movie, a faux biopic (oops, that word again!) of Fats Waller (a town cultural hero), and, even in the midst of the store's inevitable shutdown, the town rediscovers the magic and social solidarity of artistic creation. Gondry's vision is idealistic, nostalgic, and absolutely sincere; honestly, it's kinda sweet---and hard to gag on too much, because at least Gondry has enough real-world perspective not to throw in some last-minute twist that allows the store to stay open. Out with the old, in with the new---as long as we don't forget the old.
I can't bring myself to totally dislike Be Kind Rewind---as a movie fan myself, its celebration of DIY filmmaking and gentle satire of small-town celebrity is admittedly quite irresistible. (Its final five minutes are magical, it must be said.) But overall, the film can't help but strike me as a disappointment; The Science of Sleep---not to mention Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, although one might consider that more a Charlie Kaufman work than an all-out Gondry effort---was simply better realized, less evasively cutesy, and less sentimental.
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"This rat symbolizes obviousness."
That was the final line of last night's episode of The Simpsons, and I laughed my ass off. Why, you may be asking?
Remember the mind-numbingly literal final shot of The Departed? The rat scurrying across the railing outside of Matt Damon's apartment? Last night's Simpsons episode---a takeoff of that Oscar-winning film---ended with a rat scurrying across the top of a gate, and then Ralph Wiggum popping up out of a garbage can, pointing to the rat and uttering that line above.
Truer words have never been spoken, I say!
The rest of the episode, by the way, was serviceable---it used both basic plot elements and one memorable music cue (the Dropkick Murphys "Shipping Up to Boston" rocker) from the film, but transplanted it to Springfield Elementary School, with a new kid (voiced by Topher Grace) infiltrating Bart Simpson's circle of friends to try to take him down for Principal Skinner---but that last line was utterly brilliant---worth sitting through the rest for. (Too bad there wasn't an equivalent of the Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin characters, although one could argue that their characters in the film were already approaching parodies anyway.)
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Finally, a couple of stills from a classic film I finally saw a couple days ago, Albert Lamorisse's wonderful 1956 short The Red Balloon. It's in Technicolor, and just look at the glorious colors in these frame grabs:
There's more to this film than its colors, of course; maybe in my next post I'll write something a bit more extensive about it. For now, though, just gawk at them if you've never seen them. Well, they made my Saturday, at least.
First things first: take a peek at my Chop Shop review at The House Next Door---and by all means, check the movie out and see if I gave it a
fair hearing. All in all, I'd say it's worth seeing, if it's playing anywhere near your area.
Okay, so some belated Oscar commentary---not that anyone really cares at that point, but I kinda want to get this off my chest, so I'll inflict it upon all of you whether you want to read it or not ;-) .
Here's a reprint of a portion of a comment I made on a Facebook group thread in partial response to Marion Cotillard's Best Actress upset at last Sunday's ceremony:
Nothing against Cate Blanchett, but to be honest, her Bob Dylan impression in I'm Not There left me cold overall---even her Katharine Hepburn characterization in The Aviator had more soul. Of course, one could argue that her performance in I'm Not There isn't supposed to be soulful---if there was a point to...Todd Haynes's movie, it's that Bob Dylan is pretty much unknowable. Still, just b/c Blanchett gets all the man's mannerisms down pat doesn't mean it's automatically great acting. Far from a stunning channeling act, I was pretty much aware all the time that it was Blanchett imitating Dylan, and I found myself only able to muster begrudging respect for her obvious technique.
Same with Marion Cotillard, who won the Best Actress prize for playing Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose; I'm impressed by her dedication, and intellectually I can appreciate how her flamboyance and showboating fits the part of a singer who apparently couldn't help but turn every song into a flamboyant showstopper. And yet I couldn't help but always be aware of her ACTING. She sure acted up a storm---and got uglified and adopted a hunched walk to boot (not even Charlize Theron went quite that far in Monster, although she sure looked like a monster as Aileen Wuornos)---and got an Oscar for her trouble.
Is this kind of flashy, vain stunt performance really the kind of thing Oscar should consistently be awarding over indelible, humane characterizations from scratch (like Julie Christie's eloquent portrayal of an Alzheimer victim in Away From Her)?
I guess I'm reacting not so much to the quality of the performances themselves, because I can at least summon up a bedgruding admiration toward Cate Blanchett's drag act and Cotillard's over-the-top technique (and, in checking out some YouTube clips from the Haynes film, I'll concede that once in a while Blanchett does infuse some feeling to a part that perhaps is more notable for its lack of it). I guess I've just become mightily skeptical of this trend of showering these glorified, show-offy impersonations---indeed, falling in with media hype and celebrating them as "embodiments" when, more often than not, such performances are merely, cynically calculated to impress---over many more deserving performances that, you know, actually create characterizations from something like scratch.
I'm certainly not diminishing every single biopic lead performance by bringing this up---for every vanity act like Charlize Theron's Aileen Wuornos horror show or Philip Seymour Hoffman's condescending Truman Capote, there are genuinely remarkable channeling acts like Daniel Day-Lewis's defiant Christy Brown (from My Left Foot) or Joaquin Phoenix's underappreciated Johnny Cash interpretation in Walk the Line---but it's almost as if every high-profile biopic lead performance (other than, maybe, Kevin Spacey's Bobby Darin a few years ago) gets knee-jerk acclaim, whether or not the actor has actually managed to actually dig into the soul of the real-life figure he/she is playing. Oh, but he/she is actually trying to copy his/her subject's mannerisms and all down to the last detail---wow, that must be worth praising! Not so fast. For me, it's the difference between flash and heart---something that, to me, distinguishes a Cate Blanchett from a Julie Christie.
Other random Oscar notes:
Good call on Tilda Swinton, who managed to humanize a cliché dragon-lady lawyer in Michael Clayton to the point that you almost had to feel a little sorry for her as she was being bullied by George Clooney at the climax. Well, at least I did. (Maybe I just have fucked-up sympathies.) Anyway, the way Swinton played her character, you could sense she was just trying to keep up in a man's world---a desire that led her to make some pretty reprehensible decisions. That's the kind of imagination that deserves acclaim.
Oh, and for those who haven't seen the wonderful little movie Once (the real little indie that could of last year, not the Fox Searchlight-backed Juno), let me set the record straight: for its Oscar-winning song "Falling Slowly," there is no soupy orchestration that goes along with it in the movie. None. Boy, that was a rather disappointing performance to watch---after that, even I would probably gag and dismiss it as trite emo crap. The magic of that first instance when the two main characters sit down in a music shop and play the tune---he on guitar, she on piano---comes from from its near-conspiratorial intimacy; it's two ordinary people having a wonderful private moment making music. Having sappy strings behind it totally ruins the effect. By all means, don't let that Oscar performance scare you off of a movie that rarely ever stoops to that kind of manipulative sentimentality.
Here, take a look:
And as for the Oscar ceremony itself---no, it wasn't particularly memorable or even all that exciting this year. But then I've never really watched it for the glamour. All that matters is that the show ran smoothly, host Jon Stewart had a few amusing jokes (at least after a rather lame opening monologue), and, most importantly, the Academy came up with a mostly respectable list of winners.
That's all I have to say about the Oscars this year. Time to focus on more important things (like the rise of Barack)?
By the way, for those who care: I didn't do too badly in my first-ever Wall Street Journal copy desk Oscar pool---sixth place. Damn you, Tilda and Cotillard, for tripping me up!
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
Some critics found the many touches of whimsy in Michel Gondry's previous film The Science of Sleep to be insufferably cutesy; me, I loved Gondry's handcrafted integrity as well as its descent into unexpectedly tragic territory in its final act, with its suggestions of self-criticism on the director's part. Live in the real world, Gondry seemed to be saying to his main character, instead of in your own self-absorbed, childlike head.
Judging from his new effort Be Kind Rewind, though, I can only wonder if he really meant what he suggested after all. Right at the outset, Be Kind Rewind clues you in that it takes place in some kind of Capraesque alternate universe---a self-contained fantasy world in which a VHS store still exists, one a couple of people around my age still frequent---and its first 30 hilarity-free minutes or so had me clutching my head from quirk overload. Jack Black's high-wire comic hipsterism can certainly be magnetic (witness High Fidelity and The School of Rock), but here I tired of his brain-addled schtick within his first two minutes onscreen. The endless gag revolving around Mos Def being unable to read letters backwards made me roll my eyes; and when this seemingly sincere guy---who wants to keep the VHS store in good condition for his practical, no-nonsense boss (Danny Glover)---somehow convinces himself to go along with Black's retarded plan to infiltrate a power plant that Black thinks is causing his headaches, I was ready to give this movie up as a fall into the deep end of suffocating preciousness for the usually more surefooted Gondry.
Once an accident at the power plant causes Black's head to become a magnetizer that leads all the tapes in the VHS store to be erased, however, Be Kind Rewind does become less exasperating. To please a longtime customer (Mia Farrow), Black and Def embark on a desperate, cockeyed plan to remake Ghostbusters in their own lo-fi image; the numerous Hollywood film parodies that flow forth from the unexpected popularity of their "Sweded" productions are genuinely cute and amusing. Eventually, though, copyright lawyers shut down the Sweding operation, the video store is threatened to be destroyed, and Gondry then lays the Capracorn on thick: the whole town unites to make their own movie, a faux biopic (oops, that word again!) of Fats Waller (a town cultural hero), and, even in the midst of the store's inevitable shutdown, the town rediscovers the magic and social solidarity of artistic creation. Gondry's vision is idealistic, nostalgic, and absolutely sincere; honestly, it's kinda sweet---and hard to gag on too much, because at least Gondry has enough real-world perspective not to throw in some last-minute twist that allows the store to stay open. Out with the old, in with the new---as long as we don't forget the old.
I can't bring myself to totally dislike Be Kind Rewind---as a movie fan myself, its celebration of DIY filmmaking and gentle satire of small-town celebrity is admittedly quite irresistible. (Its final five minutes are magical, it must be said.) But overall, the film can't help but strike me as a disappointment; The Science of Sleep---not to mention Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, although one might consider that more a Charlie Kaufman work than an all-out Gondry effort---was simply better realized, less evasively cutesy, and less sentimental.
"This rat symbolizes obviousness."
That was the final line of last night's episode of The Simpsons, and I laughed my ass off. Why, you may be asking?
Remember the mind-numbingly literal final shot of The Departed? The rat scurrying across the railing outside of Matt Damon's apartment? Last night's Simpsons episode---a takeoff of that Oscar-winning film---ended with a rat scurrying across the top of a gate, and then Ralph Wiggum popping up out of a garbage can, pointing to the rat and uttering that line above.
Truer words have never been spoken, I say!
The rest of the episode, by the way, was serviceable---it used both basic plot elements and one memorable music cue (the Dropkick Murphys "Shipping Up to Boston" rocker) from the film, but transplanted it to Springfield Elementary School, with a new kid (voiced by Topher Grace) infiltrating Bart Simpson's circle of friends to try to take him down for Principal Skinner---but that last line was utterly brilliant---worth sitting through the rest for. (Too bad there wasn't an equivalent of the Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin characters, although one could argue that their characters in the film were already approaching parodies anyway.)
Finally, a couple of stills from a classic film I finally saw a couple days ago, Albert Lamorisse's wonderful 1956 short The Red Balloon. It's in Technicolor, and just look at the glorious colors in these frame grabs:
There's more to this film than its colors, of course; maybe in my next post I'll write something a bit more extensive about it. For now, though, just gawk at them if you've never seen them. Well, they made my Saturday, at least.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Showing and Not Telling: Oscars, 4 Months, and "The Wire"
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I didn't really do as much reading and music-listening as I would have liked this week; mostly I was writing.
Last week, I went to New York for a press screening of Chop Shop, a new film from Ramin Bahrani, a young Iranian-American director who, in both this new feature and his previous film, Man Push Cart (2005), likes to apply an Italian-neorealist aesthetic onto Robert Bresson-like character studies of flawed working-class characters struggling through the daily grind to try to eventually make better lives for themselves---and often finding the harsh realities of life hitting them in the face. I liked Man Push Cart, and I like Chop Shop too, although Bahrani's films---as apolitical and uncommitted to social criticism as they are---can seem rather slight compared to those more ambitious Italian-neroealist touchstones of old. Anyway, my review of it will be forthcoming at The House Next Door (it starts a two-week run at the Film Forum on Wednesday.)
**********
The Oscars, of course, are tomorrow, and for the first time in a long time I'll actually have something of a personal stake in this year's contest (however lacking in glamour it may be because of the recently ended writer's strike). No, it's not because I'm passionately invested in seeing a particular movie win a lot of prizes...or, actually, maybe I do. Because, for the first time ever, I am participating in an Oscar pool at the place I work---which is, of course, The Wall Street Journal. (See? Who says the people there are all business?) So I guess I will have a stake in who wins---just for the possibility of winning some money.
Of course, I'm probably going to pick No Country for Old Men as the pic to take home the big prize. But if the Academy shocked everyone and gave There Will Be Blood the big statuette of the night, you won't see me complaining. AMPAS would have drunk all of our milkshakes with such a move, but for a good reason, I'd say. Even after checking No Country for a second time in a movie theater recently and actually admiring it even more than I did before, I still find myself more haunted by Daniel Plainview's physical and spiritual disintegration than by Anton Chigurh's murderous, coin-flipping "freedom."
(Coincidentally enough, that milkshake would have cost me $5---the amount of money I have to put into the pool. Oh Pulp Fiction...)
As long as those two dark pieces of work don't cancel each other out and allow that annoyingly overhyped flick Juno---pleasant and occasionally touching, I'll admit, but not nearly clever or intelligent enough to bear up to the weight of its Roger Ebert-led praise---to sneak in and pull an upset in the Best Picture category, I'll be happy.
**********
Speaking of the Oscars, there was a lot of controversy over the official batch of nominees for this year's foreign-language film race. First, the highly acclaimed Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days ended up not even making the shortlist (after it had received a Golden Globe nomination); then another critically acclaimed film, an Israeli movie called The Band's Visit, got ignored by the Academy because about half of its scenes featured English dialogue.
I don't really have much to say about those two mini-controversies. They may or may not point to some kind of excessive rigidity and/or conservatism on the part of AMPAS---but then, they've been pretty conservative---and, dare I say it, political?---in their picks for years (just look at their Best Picture choices over the years, especially in light of the acknowledged masterpieces they snubbed---I'm looking at you, Dances With Wolves). Surely the quality of a movie will surely outlast whatever awards and/or nominations come their way. I'm not being too idealistic there, am I?
I haven't seen The Band's Visit yet, but this past Sunday, I finally caught up with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and I have to say: boy, what a flub, snubbing this one. This is quite an experience, folks---2 hours in which my heart felt like it was in my throat right from the get-go.
For those who haven't heard much about this film: it's set during the Ceauşescu regime in Bucharest sometime during the 1980s, and it details the increasingly desperate and emotionally draining efforts by two college roommates to procure an illegal abortion. These are two richly drawn and compellingly acted characters: Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), the pregnant one, is innocent and seemingly incapable of taking any responsibility for her own actions, while Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) is, by comparison, more assertive and self-sufficient. Even richer, however, is the gloomy sense of place this movie evokes: Romanian society during this time has apparently become so demoralized and downtrodden that many individuals' sense of humanity seems to have leeched away. You see this not only in some of Otilia's negotiations with insensitive hotel clerks, but also simply in the film's dank visual texture---director Cristian Mungiu isn't afraid to rub our noses in the bleakness and messiness of his settings and situations with his extreme, insinuating long takes. In this kind of environment, a character like Otilia---a loyal friend, willing to go to any lengths to help someone who probably doesn't deserve it---seems like a beacon of humanity in a cesspool of rot.
Sounds depressing, right? And yet, somehow, I found myself exhilarated as much as I was terrified throughout. It's so temporally sensitive in its minimalist technique, and that technique is married to a devastating vision---one that doesn't shy away from moral quandaries, especially when Otilia poses to her boyfriend, during a particularly testy exchange, the question of what he, a staunch anti-abortionist, would do if she became pregnant. But really, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days isn't a gaseous political or philosophical tract. It just sits back (literally---I wouldn't be surprised if the average of all the shot lengths in this film was something in the vicinity of five minutes) and observes events in sadness and horror (or, at the very least, gives a convincing impression of doing so).
**********
On another, totally unrelated front: I've been gradually working my way through the first season of the soon-to-be-concluded HBO series The Wire on DVD. I'm enjoying it immensely so far---I like the characters, I like its realism and its moral gray areas, and I like how it doesn't make a big show of, or congratulate itself for, blowing the lid off the ugliness of life in the Baltimore projects or the corruption and self-interest running rampant in the city police force (in other words, no sensationalized American Gangster crap in creator David Simon's baby).
But there is a sequence in its fourth episode that strikes me as so damn brilliant that I just wanted to share it with all of you who aren't familiar with it. In one scene, Detectives McNulty (the magnetic Dominic West) and Bunk (Wendell Pierce) go to a crime scene (one that McNulty isn't particularly interested in, but one which does relate to an anecdote recounted earlier in that episode by D'Angelo Barksdale, one of the people McNulty and others are investigating) and proceed to piece together a shooting death. The genius of this scene is in its lack of...well, I was going to say "lack of dialogue," but that's not exactly true. There is dialogue coming out of this couple's mouths, but it pretty much consists of "fuck" and all sorts of variations of that word ("motherfucker," "fuckity fuck fuck fuck," "fuckin' A"---you get the idea). Otherwise, they pretty much figure it all out without a word of explanation.
You might as well turn the sound off, although hearing only those primitive words coming out of their mouths during this scene is itself a delicious satire of lurid cop street language.
In some ways, this sequence is an apotheosis of the "show don't tell" philosophy that some consider the highest forms of cinema (recently exemplified, of course, by the first 15 minutes or so of There Will Be Blood, which relate a whole host of important character and plot developments with only maybe one line of dialogue throughout). That I discovered this particular marvel of acting, writing and directing in a TV episode is proof that these days, the best cinema really can sometimes be found on television.
Don't believe me? Check it out below:
Last week, I went to New York for a press screening of Chop Shop, a new film from Ramin Bahrani, a young Iranian-American director who, in both this new feature and his previous film, Man Push Cart (2005), likes to apply an Italian-neorealist aesthetic onto Robert Bresson-like character studies of flawed working-class characters struggling through the daily grind to try to eventually make better lives for themselves---and often finding the harsh realities of life hitting them in the face. I liked Man Push Cart, and I like Chop Shop too, although Bahrani's films---as apolitical and uncommitted to social criticism as they are---can seem rather slight compared to those more ambitious Italian-neroealist touchstones of old. Anyway, my review of it will be forthcoming at The House Next Door (it starts a two-week run at the Film Forum on Wednesday.)
The Oscars, of course, are tomorrow, and for the first time in a long time I'll actually have something of a personal stake in this year's contest (however lacking in glamour it may be because of the recently ended writer's strike). No, it's not because I'm passionately invested in seeing a particular movie win a lot of prizes...or, actually, maybe I do. Because, for the first time ever, I am participating in an Oscar pool at the place I work---which is, of course, The Wall Street Journal. (See? Who says the people there are all business?) So I guess I will have a stake in who wins---just for the possibility of winning some money.
Of course, I'm probably going to pick No Country for Old Men as the pic to take home the big prize. But if the Academy shocked everyone and gave There Will Be Blood the big statuette of the night, you won't see me complaining. AMPAS would have drunk all of our milkshakes with such a move, but for a good reason, I'd say. Even after checking No Country for a second time in a movie theater recently and actually admiring it even more than I did before, I still find myself more haunted by Daniel Plainview's physical and spiritual disintegration than by Anton Chigurh's murderous, coin-flipping "freedom."
(Coincidentally enough, that milkshake would have cost me $5---the amount of money I have to put into the pool. Oh Pulp Fiction...)
As long as those two dark pieces of work don't cancel each other out and allow that annoyingly overhyped flick Juno---pleasant and occasionally touching, I'll admit, but not nearly clever or intelligent enough to bear up to the weight of its Roger Ebert-led praise---to sneak in and pull an upset in the Best Picture category, I'll be happy.
Speaking of the Oscars, there was a lot of controversy over the official batch of nominees for this year's foreign-language film race. First, the highly acclaimed Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days ended up not even making the shortlist (after it had received a Golden Globe nomination); then another critically acclaimed film, an Israeli movie called The Band's Visit, got ignored by the Academy because about half of its scenes featured English dialogue.
I don't really have much to say about those two mini-controversies. They may or may not point to some kind of excessive rigidity and/or conservatism on the part of AMPAS---but then, they've been pretty conservative---and, dare I say it, political?---in their picks for years (just look at their Best Picture choices over the years, especially in light of the acknowledged masterpieces they snubbed---I'm looking at you, Dances With Wolves). Surely the quality of a movie will surely outlast whatever awards and/or nominations come their way. I'm not being too idealistic there, am I?
I haven't seen The Band's Visit yet, but this past Sunday, I finally caught up with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and I have to say: boy, what a flub, snubbing this one. This is quite an experience, folks---2 hours in which my heart felt like it was in my throat right from the get-go.
For those who haven't heard much about this film: it's set during the Ceauşescu regime in Bucharest sometime during the 1980s, and it details the increasingly desperate and emotionally draining efforts by two college roommates to procure an illegal abortion. These are two richly drawn and compellingly acted characters: Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), the pregnant one, is innocent and seemingly incapable of taking any responsibility for her own actions, while Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) is, by comparison, more assertive and self-sufficient. Even richer, however, is the gloomy sense of place this movie evokes: Romanian society during this time has apparently become so demoralized and downtrodden that many individuals' sense of humanity seems to have leeched away. You see this not only in some of Otilia's negotiations with insensitive hotel clerks, but also simply in the film's dank visual texture---director Cristian Mungiu isn't afraid to rub our noses in the bleakness and messiness of his settings and situations with his extreme, insinuating long takes. In this kind of environment, a character like Otilia---a loyal friend, willing to go to any lengths to help someone who probably doesn't deserve it---seems like a beacon of humanity in a cesspool of rot.
Sounds depressing, right? And yet, somehow, I found myself exhilarated as much as I was terrified throughout. It's so temporally sensitive in its minimalist technique, and that technique is married to a devastating vision---one that doesn't shy away from moral quandaries, especially when Otilia poses to her boyfriend, during a particularly testy exchange, the question of what he, a staunch anti-abortionist, would do if she became pregnant. But really, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days isn't a gaseous political or philosophical tract. It just sits back (literally---I wouldn't be surprised if the average of all the shot lengths in this film was something in the vicinity of five minutes) and observes events in sadness and horror (or, at the very least, gives a convincing impression of doing so).
On another, totally unrelated front: I've been gradually working my way through the first season of the soon-to-be-concluded HBO series The Wire on DVD. I'm enjoying it immensely so far---I like the characters, I like its realism and its moral gray areas, and I like how it doesn't make a big show of, or congratulate itself for, blowing the lid off the ugliness of life in the Baltimore projects or the corruption and self-interest running rampant in the city police force (in other words, no sensationalized American Gangster crap in creator David Simon's baby).
But there is a sequence in its fourth episode that strikes me as so damn brilliant that I just wanted to share it with all of you who aren't familiar with it. In one scene, Detectives McNulty (the magnetic Dominic West) and Bunk (Wendell Pierce) go to a crime scene (one that McNulty isn't particularly interested in, but one which does relate to an anecdote recounted earlier in that episode by D'Angelo Barksdale, one of the people McNulty and others are investigating) and proceed to piece together a shooting death. The genius of this scene is in its lack of...well, I was going to say "lack of dialogue," but that's not exactly true. There is dialogue coming out of this couple's mouths, but it pretty much consists of "fuck" and all sorts of variations of that word ("motherfucker," "fuckity fuck fuck fuck," "fuckin' A"---you get the idea). Otherwise, they pretty much figure it all out without a word of explanation.
You might as well turn the sound off, although hearing only those primitive words coming out of their mouths during this scene is itself a delicious satire of lurid cop street language.
In some ways, this sequence is an apotheosis of the "show don't tell" philosophy that some consider the highest forms of cinema (recently exemplified, of course, by the first 15 minutes or so of There Will Be Blood, which relate a whole host of important character and plot developments with only maybe one line of dialogue throughout). That I discovered this particular marvel of acting, writing and directing in a TV episode is proof that these days, the best cinema really can sometimes be found on television.
Don't believe me? Check it out below:
Friday, February 15, 2008
Reboot
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - This blog needs a swift, round, bloody kick in the ass.
Folks, I'm in one of my lazy-blogging phases right now. Shit, I've probably been in this phase for the past, oh, six months or so.
Yeah, I could try to excuse it by saying something like, "Oh, I'm always so busy doing other stuff; no time to devote to serious blogging." I could use that old crutch: life happens.
If I genuinely cared about getting my voice out there, however, then I would make the time to write carefully-crafted blog entries. And dammit, I would enjoy doing it regularly, too.
So readers, I think it's time to shake things up at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second a little. Wait, a little? How about a whole fucking lot?
(How classy of me, using profanities to denote intensity. Whatever, this ain't Merchant-Ivory...)
**********
Thus, a new direction for this blog.
Here's the plan, at the barest minimum: At the ends of every week, I am going to try to update you all with things I've seen/read/heard/thought about throughout the week. New film I've seen on DVD that I liked? First (inevitably rough and unformed) thoughts will go onto the blog, if I feel like it's worth writing a little bit about. An interesting passage from a book I'm reading? You bet. A song that's been in my head throughout the week? Fair game. Anything that intrigued or excited me will all be recorded, in raw, unfiltered (but, hopefully, somewhat coherent) form.
Who knows? I might not even wait 'til the end of a week for some of these thoughts. And maybe I'll just end up devoting my end-of-the-week round-ups to simply focusing on one thing instead of talking about a bunch of small things. But again, that's the bare outline. I'm flexible.
This will be good for me, I think. As I struggle not to get too bogged down in the monotony of daily routine, hopefully this will inspire me to start being more observant and thoughtful of things, more open to working out ideas, examining emotions, etc. At the very least, it'll force me to put pen to paper more in torrents of deep thought. I need to start doing it more regularly, I think---a little mental exercise.
Enough with the boredom. Time for some action. All of you are free to jump in, if you feel like it. I welcome you all.
Folks, I'm in one of my lazy-blogging phases right now. Shit, I've probably been in this phase for the past, oh, six months or so.
Yeah, I could try to excuse it by saying something like, "Oh, I'm always so busy doing other stuff; no time to devote to serious blogging." I could use that old crutch: life happens.
If I genuinely cared about getting my voice out there, however, then I would make the time to write carefully-crafted blog entries. And dammit, I would enjoy doing it regularly, too.
So readers, I think it's time to shake things up at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second a little. Wait, a little? How about a whole fucking lot?
(How classy of me, using profanities to denote intensity. Whatever, this ain't Merchant-Ivory...)
Thus, a new direction for this blog.
Here's the plan, at the barest minimum: At the ends of every week, I am going to try to update you all with things I've seen/read/heard/thought about throughout the week. New film I've seen on DVD that I liked? First (inevitably rough and unformed) thoughts will go onto the blog, if I feel like it's worth writing a little bit about. An interesting passage from a book I'm reading? You bet. A song that's been in my head throughout the week? Fair game. Anything that intrigued or excited me will all be recorded, in raw, unfiltered (but, hopefully, somewhat coherent) form.
Who knows? I might not even wait 'til the end of a week for some of these thoughts. And maybe I'll just end up devoting my end-of-the-week round-ups to simply focusing on one thing instead of talking about a bunch of small things. But again, that's the bare outline. I'm flexible.
This will be good for me, I think. As I struggle not to get too bogged down in the monotony of daily routine, hopefully this will inspire me to start being more observant and thoughtful of things, more open to working out ideas, examining emotions, etc. At the very least, it'll force me to put pen to paper more in torrents of deep thought. I need to start doing it more regularly, I think---a little mental exercise.
Enough with the boredom. Time for some action. All of you are free to jump in, if you feel like it. I welcome you all.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Little Giants No More
EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Being that I'm not a particularly knowledgeable or rabid sports fan---not anymore, anyway---there's not much else I can add to what is probably one of the most amazing football games I will ever see in my lifetime.
Was there a more thrilling feat glimpsed at tonight's Superbowl than Giants quarterback Eli Manning, under immense pressure from Patriots defenders, somehow running out of the pressure, heaving a pass into the air and seeing it somehow make its way into the hands of David Tyree late in the fourth-quarter during the crucial drive that put the Giants up once and for all?
I almost wish I was at Wall Street Journal right now eavesdropping on the reactions of the many Giants fans working tonight at this stunning, glorious upset. The office will certainly be teeming with excitement tomorrow.
I'll admit it: I'm not really a Giants fan, but I was rooting hard for them in this game just so those darned Patriots wouldn't reach that 19-0 landmark. (Funny how that little videotaping scandal---in which Pats coach Bill Belichick was caught taping an opponent---in the first week of the regular season seemed to be brush aside so quickly.) But my realistic side told me to brace myself for a Patriots victory and just hope that the Giants would put up a good fight, like they did in the last game of the regular season against the Pats. Well, they sure put up a fight...and more.
Oh, and that odd ending to the game---with everyone rushing out onto the field even though there was still one second left on the clock---couldn't help but remind me of the way ecstatic Rutgers fans stormed Rutgers Stadium a few seconds early as the Scarlet Knights football team was on the verge of upsetting Louisville.
This was fun; I feel like I was a part of history. Now, of course, the Giants will be put in the position to prove, next season, that this upset was no fluke---a position the Patriots are no strangers of, after having to prove their legitimacy after Tom Brady and co. upset the Rams a few years ago. They went 7-9 the next year, I believe; will the same fate befall the Giants?
We'll see. Anyway, I guess it's time to focus on more pressing matters of national import. Oh Super Tuesday...
Was there a more thrilling feat glimpsed at tonight's Superbowl than Giants quarterback Eli Manning, under immense pressure from Patriots defenders, somehow running out of the pressure, heaving a pass into the air and seeing it somehow make its way into the hands of David Tyree late in the fourth-quarter during the crucial drive that put the Giants up once and for all?
I almost wish I was at Wall Street Journal right now eavesdropping on the reactions of the many Giants fans working tonight at this stunning, glorious upset. The office will certainly be teeming with excitement tomorrow.
I'll admit it: I'm not really a Giants fan, but I was rooting hard for them in this game just so those darned Patriots wouldn't reach that 19-0 landmark. (Funny how that little videotaping scandal---in which Pats coach Bill Belichick was caught taping an opponent---in the first week of the regular season seemed to be brush aside so quickly.) But my realistic side told me to brace myself for a Patriots victory and just hope that the Giants would put up a good fight, like they did in the last game of the regular season against the Pats. Well, they sure put up a fight...and more.
Oh, and that odd ending to the game---with everyone rushing out onto the field even though there was still one second left on the clock---couldn't help but remind me of the way ecstatic Rutgers fans stormed Rutgers Stadium a few seconds early as the Scarlet Knights football team was on the verge of upsetting Louisville.
This was fun; I feel like I was a part of history. Now, of course, the Giants will be put in the position to prove, next season, that this upset was no fluke---a position the Patriots are no strangers of, after having to prove their legitimacy after Tom Brady and co. upset the Rams a few years ago. They went 7-9 the next year, I believe; will the same fate befall the Giants?
We'll see. Anyway, I guess it's time to focus on more pressing matters of national import. Oh Super Tuesday...
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