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.

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.

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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.

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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...

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.

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:

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!

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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.

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.)

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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.

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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).

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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:

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...)

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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.

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...

There Will Be Amazement

[Possible spoilers ahead]

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - For weeks now, my choice for the best American film of 2007 had been the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men. A metaphysical vision of a universe in which death stalks us all and people either rage against it or despairingly accept it, No Country is not only one of the most brilliantly made films I've ever seen---every shot, cut and sound effect is just about perfect---but also one of the more genuinely resonant of our current national malaise. It's also probably my second-favorite Coens film (behind The Man Who Wasn't There), and, as I tried to argue in a recent post, certainly a lot more soulful and serious---and appreciably less snarky and condescending---than the backlash (headed by the likes of Mr. Dave Kehr and his taste for linoleum floor tiles) suggests. It really floored me at the time, and I predicted in that earlier post that it would probably make my top 5 of the year...

...until I saw Paul Thomas Anderson's latest, a little movie entitled There Will Be Blood.

Let's put it this way: There. Will. Be. Amazement.

And struggle.

And ambivalence.

All I know is, no other movie this past year has gotten me wrestling it---as much with its successes as with its shortcomings---as much as this one. Certainly not No Country for Old Men, as great as it is.

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I finally saw the film a couple of weeks ago and staggered out of it stunned---mostly by its ape-shit final scene---yet not quite sure whether I had seen a genuine masterpiece or just an impressively made, overreaching attempt at one. (As Boogie Nights and Magnolia proved, the latter is an area Anderson is very much familiar with, for well and ill.) And yet I had certainly seen something.

Now, even with a film like I'm Not There---which is so dense and complex by its very design that it pretty much demands multiple viewings (whether one feels it's ultimately worth the effort or not)---because of real-world concerns like saving money, I'm usually content to simply wait for the eventual DVD release to revisit a film I've been puzzled by in a theater. So There Will Be Blood marks a first for me: the first time I've found myself so challenged by a film that I've paid to see it twice on a big screen. The argument I had over the film in my head so overwhelmed me days afterward that I felt I had to see it at least one more time to decide where I stood on the film.

What bothered me about the film the first time? Well, as much as I couldn't help but marvel at Anderson's sheer confidence and Daniel Day-Lewis's amazing tightrope-walk between stylization and caricature, there was a feeling that lingered in me of something missing on a dramatic level.

There Will Be Blood has been described as an epic, and it is in one sense: much of the atmosphere in the film has been heightened from mere realism to near-Biblical allegory. This story has ambition and retribution on a grand scale. But if you expect an epic drama to also have a reasonably large cast of major characters and feature big character arcs, then the film might come off as rather half-baked. This film is basically all about Daniel Plainview, the greedy capitalist who isn't above hypocrisy and manipulation to achieve his riches, and Anderson trains his focus almost solely on him, at the expense of anyone that might complicate Plainview's ruthlessness and pessimistic point-of-view. When he, in a rare moment of soul-baring candor, utters to someone, "I look at people and I see nothing worth liking," I couldn't help but be bothered by the fact that, up to that point, we hadn't been given much of a clue as to why he would feel that way toward his fellow man. None of the townsfolk is shown to have done anything particularly duplicitous to Plainview---with the exception of the young preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), the townsfolk are mostly easy, religious pushovers who don't know any better. In fact, we don't hear or see much from the townspeople in general as to what they ultimately come to think about this man who has taken over their community for his own selfish ends; the only indication we get as to possible unrest comes from Eli, when he blows up against his father for letting Plainview trample all over them (and Eli may well just be taking out his embarrassment at being publicly humiliated by Plainview the scene before). And of course there's Eli himself: Anderson sets him up as Plainview's nemesis throughout the film, but it's more of a battle between two selfish individuals---one more one-dimensional than the other---rather than between good versus evil. In short, There Will Be Blood, as viscerally gripping as it is, felt rather one-dimensional itself, lacking the complexity and richness of, say, Orson Welles's more humane portrait of a capitalist run amok in Citizen Kane, in which many different character bore witness to Charles Foster Kane's various sides. As filmmaking, it's indubitably tops---Anderson's use of long takes and wide shots is particularly masterful---but in other ways---in emotional range, in its critique of capitalism---it felt disappointingly limited. Perhaps once again Anderson had bitten off more than he could actually chew---that his skills as a filmmaker couldn't quite overcome limitations as a dramatist.

And yet...that last scene---in which Plainview, who has just lost a son (not physically, just mentally), turns Eli's preacher-man schtick against him as ruthlessly as he pillaged properties for oil---really got to me in a way that made me think that perhaps I was looking at the film in the wrong way. When Plainview starts crazily taunting Eli and shouting things like "I am the Third Revelation," I got a genuine chill in my body---the feel of a man's own personal religion, money/power, reveal itself in full, revelatory force. Maybe Anderson has made a film that should be seen as something different from the standard historical epic---a genre known for dramatic arcs, novelistic details and broad canvases---and thus should be taken on its own terms rather than on what it doesn't have---thus, by extension, what it's not. Maybe it's not your typical historical epic at all---maybe it's more of a religious horror movie in which the religion being examined is strictly a secular one. Anderson's vision became so apparent in that astounding final scene that I began to wonder if my criticisms of the film after that first viewing were, in fact, results of failures of imagination on Anderson's part at all. Instead of dwelling so much on the characters it doesn't explore, for instance, would I be able to accept the movie on its own terms and perhaps come close to embracing it wholeheartedly?

That was the rationale behind Viewing No. 2---whether I could put aside my misgivings and simply go with the movie's flow. After watching it a second time and reflecting on it more, I think the answer is a still-qualified yes.

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The best way, I think, to approach There Will Be Blood, then, is as a kind of character study/horror movie with perverse religious overtones. It is historical only in the sense that it takes place at the turn of the 20th century. Really, though, it takes place in Paul Thomas Anderson's feverish vision of a wide-open Hell on American soil, in which profit is the new religion and land is there mostly to be taken. Thus, the visuals---brilliantly shot by Robert Elswit---complement this vision: wide shots of the American landscape, darkness that shrouds faces in hard shadows, night scenes that blaze fiery orange on the sides of the wide (2.35:1) frame. Adding to this otherworldly feel is Jonny Greenwood's dissonant, Penderecki-inspired score, lending menace to the visuals with buzzing strings and rattling percussion that suggest some kind of apocalyptic chaos on the horizon. Then there are some of the film's images: a baby being daubed with oil on his forehead; a low-angle shot of Plainview holding up a hand filled with oil, in preacher-like fashion; a long shot of an oil fire whose flames fill the night sky. See a pattern? Oil is the lifeblood of the main characters, and oil thus informs the substance of the images. (A man who is killed by Plainview is even buried in a pit of a liquid that, if it's not oil, might as well be, as gooey and viscous as it seems when the body rolls into it.)

In such a context, then, perhaps one can accept the relative two-dimensionality of the characters---no one necessarily expects richly nuanced characters in Bible stories, and the major characters of There Will Be Blood are likewise conceived and performed on broadly. Not that this approach makes the characters mere thesis positions: P.T. Anderson has always been known for his generosity towards actors, and both Day-Lewis and Dano find nuance and human detail to flesh out their parts. Listen to Day-Lewis declare "I have abandoned my child!" in a fake-baptism sequence---fake because Plainview, up to that outburst, clearly doesn't mean what he says---and the sense of shame in his voice is apparent, even as he tries to mask it as his usual conniving. Other such details abound, but the point is: even in a film as bleak as this, its characters rarely feel like mere allegorical stick figures---not to me, anyway. We're probably not meant to sympathize with any of these people, but neither is the film so distant that it becomes a cold or inhuman experience. It's both detached and passionate. Stanley Kubrick---one of Anderson's many and varied influences---was able to pull off this tricky combination often, notably in A Clockwork Orange, which focused on a mostly reprehensible protagonist and dared us to take him seriously as a human being. Of course, Kubrick also made that job a bit too easy by making many of the characters around him grotesques (thus making it easier to sympathize with him as he suffered revenge after revenge in the film's second hour)---but that didn't make the film an implicit endorsement of Alex's violent past any more than P.T. Anderson's focus on Daniel Plainview makes There Will Be Blood a celebration of ruthless capitalism. The tone is too detached to be complicit, the violence too shocking. Plainview may be unlikable in many ways, but he's so convincingly human that you can't take your eyes off him---even when he, in the end, achieves his ironic triumph by beating an opponent to death.

What does the movie add up to, in the end? The best way I can explain it right now is: There Will Be Blood depicts the quest for money and dominance, at the expense of love and human connection, becoming the prevailing religion of the land. Original and profound? Not exactly, I suppose. And yet I take to hear Roger Ebert's famous saying: It's not what the movie's about it, it's how it is about it. The force with which Anderson put over this dark vision is astounding enough that it might fill you with a profound sense of despair, mixed in with exhilaration---despair over the senseless tragedy one has just witnessed, exhilaration at the skill with which the filmmakers have enacted this tragedy.

I don't think I'm done with this movie quite yet, because the more I think about it, the more my initial misgivings fade away and the chilling, amazing whole remains. That doesn't meant there still aren't problems I have with the film---at times, I still wish Paul Thomas Anderson had gone the extra mile to fill in blanks like the other townspeople or the source of Daniel Plainview's misanthropy. And, of course, I reserve the right to perhaps change my mind on this film later on (which I hope doesn't get me labeled as a flip-flopper). The more I reflect on it, though, the more they seem to matter less and less in the context of what the movie actually achieves. Besides, let's take Pauline Kael's oft-quoted maxim to heart: "Great movies are rarely perfect movies." I'll take freshness, revelation and passion over absolute perfection, at least in this particular case.

Way Too Young

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - This afternoon I was all set to type out that entry about There Will Be Blood I've been promising, when this news broke.

I first heard about Heath Ledger's sudden passing when I saw this blog entry on what is normally a TV-related blog. At first I thought it was a joke. Then I read on, realized that it wasn't, and said "Holy shit!" out loud in my empty bedroom.

Earlier this week, Brad Renfro died, and I barely felt a thing about it except "too bad" (as insensitive as that may sound). I hadn't really heard much about him in the past five years or so, so while I felt it was a shame he died so young, I couldn't say it viscerally shocked me or anything.

But Ledger's death...man. Way too young. Not only that, he seemed to have a good solid acting career going, making interesting choices (like Brokeback Mountain or, most recently, I'm Not There), and probably would have had a few more great performances in him yet.

Alas, looks like it is not to be.

I'm not really good with this kind of stuff---I haven't really had to deal with serious grief yet over a loved one's passing, although I've certainly felt humbled and saddened by the untimely deaths of others---so, in Ledger's case, allow me to just bear witness to his work.

To be honest, I wasn't really a rabid fan or deep admirer of Ledger's acting---not that I disliked him or found him overrated or anything, just that I never really familiarized myself deeply with his range of performances. Still, I think one look at his performance as Ennis Del Mar, the cowboy who represses his homosexual urges in Brokeback Mountain, and you could see genuine talent there, and maybe the possibility of carving out his own kind of niche as an actor/star.

Any flashy actor could have adopted the kind of mumble that he did, but Ledger, with palpable heart and empathy, pushed it beyond mere vocal mannerism and sold it as the discomfort of a deeply macho man---a cowboy, really---who finds himself struggling with his love for Jack Twist on the one hand, and his fear of the reprisals he might suffer if he ever expressed that love in public on the other. Quibble however you want about the worth of the movie itself, but his portrait of repressed passion was actually quite moving---you could sense the self-repression, and that made his emotional outbursts all the more powerful. A performance worthy of comparison to Brando, as a critic at the time of the film's release suggested? Well, perhaps Ledger, more accurately, did Brando somewhat in reverse in that film: Brando put his passion out there on the screen for everyone to see, while Ledger kept that passion purposefully bottled up.

That kind of deeply empathetic performance from any actor at such a young age would certainly bode well for any actor's artistic career, as far as I'm concerned.

Damn, this kinda makes me want to watch Brokeback again. Didn't think anything would make me revisit that film, but there you go. (Funny how life is sometimes.)

Anyway, it's deeply regrettable news, and because it so startled me, I felt I had to write something about it, even if I'm not enough of a Heath Ledger fan to have anything insightful to add about him as a person, a personality, or an actor.

So I hope this suffices somewhat. At least he left us, in Brokeback Mountain, with a tantalizing sense of the kind of emotional depths he might have been capable of again in future performances.

Requiescat in pace.

And the Rip Van Winkle Award Goes to...

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I deserve what critic James Berardinelli recently called "The Rip Van Winkle Award."

Apparently for the past few months there has been some kind of "viral" marketing campaign on the Internet to promote this new monster movie called Cloverfield.

Where have I been???

I check YouTube every day, I read film blogs, and yet I've barely heard a thing about this movie until this past week. I had no idea it had built up such a massive amount of hype.

I vaguely remember seeing a trailer for a first-person monster movie without a title months ago (maybe preceding Superbad), but I guess it didn't intrigue me enough to find out about it. I also vaguely remember catching a TV ad for it, but it didn't fascinate me then either.

Now that I've discovered all of this way after the fact, should I feel ashamed that I've apparently become so disconnected with pop culture that the Cloverfield hype machine passed me by entirely? Have I become that insulated in my own little world? (Because of the bountiful of repeats that have come about as a result of the writer's strike, I've pretty much steered clear of TV for the past few weeks---yes, even with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert back on the air, because apparently I'm no longer getting Comedy Central, and many other channels, from the tuner that's installed in our family HDTVs anymore...and likely won't for a long while, unless my mother suddenly decides to become less of a cheapskate and allow us to get cable. Maybe Comcast has gotten wise to HDTV tuners picking up their signal or something, and have started blocking certain channels.)

I actually had a bit of trouble sleeping last night worrying about the implications of this...

And as for the movie itself...since I somehow didn't allow hype to get me to see it on Friday night, should I even bother to see it at all? I highly doubt I'm missing anything, especially with films like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Persepolis still to see (not to mention There Will Be Blood to chew over some more).

Whatever man. I'm probably not the only one (just maybe the only one in my age group).

Go Giants!

The Dark Side of the (American) Force

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - New article of mine up at The House Next Door: a review of the new Alex Gibney documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, a startling and sobering but still rather one-sided look into torture as it is currently being practiced in interrogations by Americans against suspected terrorists.

It's worth checking out, for sure (and I didn't mention the graphic footage of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse that figures prominently in parts of the film---not pleasant, by any means, but probably necessary to see uncensored to get the full impact of the institutional breakdown that occurred in that scandal), but my gut feeling is that Gibney, as methodically, passionately and convincing as he argues against torture as a terrorism-fighting tool, isn't presenting the whole nuanced story here. (Perhaps he simply wasn't able to---perhaps he wasn't able to get the key interviews that might have added to a more satisfying sense of the other side of the debate---but maybe a recognition of that shortcoming would have been nice; at least Charles Ferguson, in last year's superb Iraq War documentary No End in Sight, was honest enough to let us know who he wasn't able to interview.) I know documentaries aren't required to be objective or evenhanded, but is it too much to ask for at least a recognition of nuance or gray areas even in a topic like torture (which, admittedly, most ordinary people seem to have turned against, especially with the recent scandal over those destroyed CIA interrogation videotapes)? There's so little actual "fair and balanced" in the news media, and, as impressed as I was by the film, it ultimately seemed nearly as pat as a Michael Moore documentary (even if Gibney's methods are preferable to Moore's). But that's just me; again, on its own terms, the film is probably essential viewing, so feel free to take my review with a grain of salt.

Also, head's up: I'm currently working on a piece that will attempt to document, in exhausting detail, the various thoughts that have been invading my head ever since I saw Paul Thomas Anderson's stunning (and I genuinely mean that; by the time the end credits started, my jaw was figuratively on the floor) new film There Will Be Blood. A new American masterpiece for the ages? I'm not so sure about that (yet), but no other film last year has challenged me quite like this one---not No Country for Old Men (which, though brilliant, There Will Be Blood, to my mind, handily supersedes in ambition and impact, though not in technical perfection), not even I'm Not There (which I'm starting to think I might have overrated, although I'll have to sit through it again to make sure). Certainly no other American film in 2007 has both delighted and frustrated me in almost equal measure. Let me put it this way: this film so disturbed me that, for the first time ever in my movie-going life, it provoked me to go see it a second time to confirm my initial impressions. Is a third viewing on the horizon? More to come...

A Look Back at Things I Discovered in 2007

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - New House Next Door blog post, this one a look back at music, movies, and books I discovered for the first time in 2007.

Already I remember things that I forgot to mention in it (Seinfeld complete and uncut on DVD, Pierrot le fou and La Chinoise on the big screen), but I think my post, overall, sums up my year in artistic (and not so artistic) discoveries nicely. Enjoy, and hopefully I'll have more discoveries to share with you all on this blog.

Happy New Year To All, and To All a Good 2008

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Yeah, the substance of this post is basically in its title.

And I don't have any cool New Year's Day-related pictures to post here either; only thing I could think of was to go to Google and search for a picture of a poster from a really bad 1981 slasher flick entitled New Year's Evil that I remember seeing chunks of during my days as an infant (psychologically/relatively speaking) filmwatcher. (There was pretty much no gore in it, from what I remember---which, those days, meant that it probably wouldn't interest me.) Too bad all the snapshots of the poster are all really low-resolution.

Of course, I worked at The Wall Street Journal today, since even the international editions have to put out a paper tomorrow. Not a big deal, really...except for the fact that last night I hung out with a few friends, from both Rutgers and from my high school days at East Brunswick, and stayed out much later than I had planned---I was at home in bed by 2:30 a.m., whereas usually I'm pretty strict about going to bed at around midnight if I have to go to work the next day (have to be in the office by 10 a.m.). So getting up this morning was a bit, uh, problematic, to say the least. I did drink and did get a little more than buzzed last night too (thankfully, a friend was able to take me home in one piece), but that turned out to be not a big problem this morning, since I drank a good deal of water before I went to bed. (So no headaches or hangovers for me.) Only the lack of sleep posed a bit of a problem during work (I nodded off quite a few times after Asia locked-up for good at 1:30 p.m.). That and a faint odor I detected that I think came from the sneakers I wore today---the same ones I wore last night while walking across the alcohol-stained floor of the bar I was at. In other words, I think there might have been a bit of a beer smell on me, although definitely not from any part of my body, clothes or breath (I showered last night before I went to bed).

Anyway...hopefully my next post will be a more formal entry looking back at the life of Kenji in 2007. Exciting, huh? Short version, I suspect, will be: all in all, 2007 was a pretty interesting, fun, and perhaps promising year. Details to come soon, I hope...