Link for the Day: An Interview With Sally Potter

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - For this post, I just wanted to invite you all to enjoy my latest contribution to The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog: an interview with director Sally Potter, whose latest film, Rage, premiered today not in theaters, but on mobile phones. (The film's minimalistic form more or less dictates the approach.)

I think that's it for now. Oh, yeah: also, Claire Denis's latest film, the generational family drama 35 Shots of Rum, gets my highest recommendation. In its warmth and poetry, it just about rivals Olivier Assayas's equally beautiful and profound Summer Hours (still my favorite film of the year to date, though both Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and maybe Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control---both film as far from the Assayas and Denis as possible---are running it very close). So there's that.

Why I Love This Business We Call Film Criticism

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - A couple of days ago, someone at work sent an email to a whole bunch of people that featured a picturesque photo of a castle high up in the mountains in Burma. When I saw the photo, I immediately made a connection in mind: this looks like something out of Powell & Pressburger's Black Narcissus! So, to a couple of editors sitting next to me who reacted to the photo with quiet amazement, I sent a still I found on Google from Black Narcissus of the palace in the Himalayas in which the film's gradually crazed drama takes place. One of them turned around to me and started asking me a bit more about the film it came from: what it was about, whether I liked it (I most certainly do), whether that still image really was color or whether it was colorized from black-and-white, whether there were any famous names in it (I mentioned Deborah Kerr, and she immediately recognized the name).

It was immediately after this brief exchange that I realized why I'm really interested in this whole film-criticism business. Really, it's simple: I love movies. I love talking about them to people who are willing to listen (even if I'm probably better than expressing my thoughts on a film in writing than I am in person). I love sharing my enthusiasms, my likes and dislikes. I love being turned on by a really great film.

All of these things give me a great pleasure. And dammit, I want to feel and express that kind of pleasure on a daily basis, full-time, for the rest of my life. Is there anything wrong with that? At this point, I don't care if that makes me sound impossibly naïve or impractical (all adjective my mother has used to characterize my foolish pursuit of the profession---cuz most regular folk don't care about "movie critiques," says she).

That's it. No higher purpose, really. Watching, absorbing, learning and gleaning insights and revelations from films---and from art in general---makes me happy. And writing about them pleases me immensely as well. Do I really need any other reason?

Accidental Byline?

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - For the longest time, I've been intending to get published somehow in the newspaper for which I work. I've been pitching ideas, feeling a sense of triumph maybe two or three times, feeling utterly rejected many others.

But the last thing I expected was that my first-ever byline in the print version of the domestic paper would totally blindside me.

Last night, while hanging out with co-workers at a bar right across from our new office at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, I found out from someone that she saw my byline in the Money & Investing section of the Wednesday, July 8 edition of The Wall Street Journal. My eyes widened immediately; I had no idea. Naturally, I ask, "for what?"

Turns out that a routine minor story about CD yields that I plug in the numbers for every Tuesday---a little thing that usually gets no byline---got a byline this week. There was absolutely no reason for it, as far as I could see. Was it accidental? (Maybe that's just how much my superiors like me...)

In any case...it totally wasn't planned---I was recently working on another story that I was hoping would be my first in the print edtion---but hell, I'll take it!

Funny how things work out like that!

Here's the link to the story; if you hit the subscriber wall for it, just try searching, say, "kenji fujishima yield wsj" on Google.

Movies 2009: My Barebones Midyear Round-up

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - On Twitter, quite a few of the cinephiles I follow have been tweeting their mid-year roundups of the best movies they've seen thus far. Being that I'm generally a trend-follower on the microblogging site rather than a trend-starter, I've decided to follow suit...though not on Twitter. I'm using this poorly maintained blog to post my midyear cinematic reckoning.

Here are my 10 favorites so far, in rough order of preference. There were plenty more I could have chosen---in my opinion, this half-year has been fairly rich in intriguing cinematic offerings, at least depending on where you looked---but for now, this will do. (I won't annotate this; I'll leave that for my year-end wrap-up. Seems more "final" to do it then than now. But feel free to comment and engage me on my picks!)

1. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
2. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
3. Birdsong (Albert Serra)
4. 24 City (Jia Zhangke)
5. Up (Pete Docter)
6. Moon (Duncan Jones)
7. Goodbye Solo (Ramin Bahrani)
8. Two Lovers (James Gray)
9. Serbis (Brillante Mendoza)
10. Coraline (Henry Selick)

To future delights and revelations at the movies in the next six months!

What's Going On? Not Much, Really.

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - After a month of dabbling---with, I will freely admit, a certain amount of exhilaration---in the world of Twitter, I've come crawling back to this here blog because...why? I dunno. Just because.

Well, there's a reason, I guess. Much of that reason is emotional. I'm pretty much feeling stuck again in my life (I could explain why, but it would take a whole book chapter to explain, and it might probably bring undue attention from people at work anyway, so I will remain discreet publicly unless prompted privately), and right now I feel like the only thing I can fall back on to feel better about the rut I'm in is, well, writing. The one thing that I feel like I know how to do, and the one thing I would really like to do for the rest of my life, in some form or another.

So I am writing right now. Do I have anything interesting to say? Well...why not talk about Twitter?

Cards on the table, then: I like Twitter. It keeps my mind and senses alert for things that intrigue me enough to share with the rest of the world, or at least the people who follow my feed. No need to worry about forgetting that precious thought that came to your head that you liked so much; just put it down as a tweet and see who bites.

Sure, it's exhibitionism. But you know what? I guess I've come to realize that I like a certain amount of attention, at least the right kind of attention from the right people. I like knowing people actually read and care about what's going on inside my head. ("What's going on inside my head"---a Hüsker Dü lyric, by the way. I actually tweeted that early on.) I like the interaction that Twitter can afford. And sometimes I just like the challenge of boiling thoughts and ideas down to 140 characters or less.

So yes, it's totally self-centered. But I do it for me, not really for anyone else. You're all free to join into entering my scattered mind, if you wish.

So yeah...Twitter. Maybe it's a fad, as some of my more resistant friends insist that it is. Well, okay, maybe. But for now, it's a fad I'm on board with...until, I suppose, I get bored with it. We'll see.

In the meantime, no promises that this update means that I will start blogging more. I really should, though. I don't know how many people actually read this damn thing anymore, anyway...but I really should just write these kinds of longer entries more. If nothing else, it might just take my mind off some of the more depressing things that are happening---or, more precisely, not happening---in my life right now.

Tweet Tweet Tweet

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Well, I have finally capitulated to the supposed destruction of privacy in American society by creating my own Twitter feed.

I don't really have a good reason for joining the ranks of Twitterers---just curiosity, I suppose. And maybe a bit of narcissistic attention-seeking.

Mostly, though, I see this as perhaps a constructive way to keep my eyes and my mind alert to things throughout a normal day---to find something Twitter-worthy to share.

We'll see how far I go with this. Feel free to enter into my head with this Twitter thing!

Look, Ma! A New Link At wsj.com!

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - At last! A follow-up to my Wall Street Journal---or, rather, wsj.com---debut a little over a month ago! It is here: an interview with Paolo Sorrentino, the director of the new film Il Divo, a lively postmodernist look at the mystique of longtime Italian politician Giulio Andreotti. Enjoy!

Alive! And With a Question For Y'All!

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Just wanted to let you all---or at least, all of you without Facebook accounts---know that yes, I am still alive, and that hopefully you will be hearing from me soon...if not with an actual substantive post (haven't been in much of a mood for that recently, a lack of motivation perhaps stemming from a David Bordwell-inspired crisis of confidence), then at least with, well, something cool and interesting to share with you all. Heck, maybe even something with ideas.

Here's an idea: Maybe I should just start a damn Twitter account already. Sure, I only get 140 characters to say what's on my mind---but hey, I suppose it's better than nothing, and people who actually bother to check in on this blog can at least be connected to me on certainly a more consistent basis than they're connected to me here. And theoretically, if I really do think something I feel like expanding upon in more depth, I'll have this as a back-up of sorts. But no, I wouldn't be posting about my trips to the bathroom or a whole lot daily routine-related. I may be self-centered, but not that self-centered.

Anyway, what say you, readers? To Twitter or not to Twitter? (The big question plaguing my generation...)

One Worth Watching, One Not: Watchmen, Duplicity, and a Brief Life Update

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Aside from seeing my first byline on wsj.com last week, the biggest change in my life in the past couple of weeks has been a change in work hours. I'm working slightly later hours at The Wall Street Journal now, roughly 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. compared to the 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. shift I was working previously. One of my superiors approached me a couple of weeks ago about the shift change, saying that one of the news pods needed some extra help with its news assistant moving to a different floor—and so, trouper that I am, I said, sure, no problem, if you need the help, I will gladly help.

What the shift change does, however, is pretty much take away the one personal perk I found in my more-or-less 9-to-5 schedule: If ever I was so inclined, after work one day I could walk to an MTA subway station, hop onto an A, C or E train and, a few stops or so later, be at one of New York's fine art-house theaters, be it Film Forum, IFC Center, Angelika Film Center, or even the really edgy Anthology Film Archives. Basically, I could catch a movie that may never find its way to my neck of the (New Jersey) woods, and be home at a relatively reasonable time at night—and I wouldn't always have to make a special trek on a Saturday for it.

That convenience is pretty much gone now, barring any further changes down the road. And frankly, as much of a cinephile as I may be, I guess I just am not enough of an obsessive one to make a habit of commuting for about 1¼ hours or so each way just to check out a flick in New York every week.

So you may not be seeing a whole lot of writing from me about the more obscure current releases for a while—not, at least, until I finally do decide to make the break from living at home and finding a place of my own closer to New York, if not in it. (There is hope on that front, actually, but that hope probably won't have a chance of becoming a reality until the middle of the year, I would say—still a few months away.)

Yes, I'm cutting back on my moviegoing habits somewhat. I blame the difficult economic times we're living in. Isn't everybody?

★★★★
So I might as well play some brief catch-up on some of the recent mainstream stuff...though I wish I had something exciting to report on that front.

Regarding Zack Snyder's much-hyped Watchmen adaptation: I was about to say that it was a disappointment...but considering the director at the helm, was anyone really expecting something with the deeply personal, feverish passion of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' celebrated 1986 graphic novel? Forget the ads proclaiming Snyder as a "visionary director"; vision is more or less what the movie lacks—or, more precisely, a vision that could be said to be the director's own, rather than merely a lifelessly faithful rendering of the notes behind Moore/Gibbons' own excoriating deconstruction of heroism and heroic images. Snyder's only real contributions are a few interesting music cues (Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" to illustrate the alternate version of history that highlights its admittedly inventive opening credits; ironic uses of "The Sounds of Silence," Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower," and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries"; and, most hilariously, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" during a sex scene that looks right out of softcore porn) and some exaggerated instances of ultraviolence that, for me, pretty much give the game away. Snyder, like most skilled Hollywood hacks, is more interested in "kewl" action and gory violence than in exploring the moral shadows that lie behind it. And what better way to emphasize all that coolness than with his lame slo-mo-then-fast-mo visual signature dragging out the action scenes?

I suppose enough of the book's emotional and moral complexity comes through that that some of its ideas might resonate, however punily, with both Watchmen newbies and fanatics. Rorshach's black-and-white worldview remains pungent—mostly thanks to a fantastically intense Jackie Earle Haley—as does Dr. Manhattan's icy aloofness and the Comedian's world-weariness. The graphic novel was nothing if not a gripping dialogue between wildly divergent points of view regarding a hero's place in a broken society, and some of that dialogue does make itself felt here and there. But Watchmen was hardly a mere philosophical thesis paper in comic-book form; Moore managed to create vivid characterizations to prop up his intellectual musings. Moore gave his superheroes flesh and blood; the movie basically reverts them back to lofty superheroes again, completely missing the cynical ironies Moore built into his story. Snyder seems to regard his superheroes with awe where Moore saw some rather disturbing and scary things in them.

Putting aside further movie-and-book comparisons, however, the fact remains that much of the movie felt rather rushed and, frankly, dull to me. It was a relief to turn back to the gorgeous hand-drawn panels in my copy of the book; there's infinitely more heat to those drawings than there is in most frames of Snyder's overly reverent film adaptation. His reverence flattens it out. Stick with the book—giant squid and all (and no, fans, I don't think the film's altered ending is necessarily an improvement on the book's).

★★★★
There is, believe it or not, more fun to be had at Tony Gilroy's Duplicity—or basically Michael Clayton, Gilroy's previous film, reimagined as a modern-day Tracy/Hepburn-style romantic/comic romp. Sure, its view of big business as ruthlessly competitive cutthroats is glib and certainly old-hat (whereas Gilroy put across a similar outlook in Michael Clayton more convincingly). But you know what? Call me a Coen-esque wiseass if you must, but Lord knows we might as well try to squeeze a good laugh at this kind of stuff, what with the sheer scale of the kind of fraud perpetrated by the likes of Bernard Madoff causing people like myself to chuckle with angry disbelief as more details came out. Does corporate greed have any limits?

Actually, there is a deeper emotional drama of sorts to be found amidst the jazzy cuteness of James Newton Howard's occasionally oppressive score and Gilroy's clumsy and gratuitous use of splitscreen effects (hey, are you having fun yet?). It turns out that the two main characters, played by Hollywood superstars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, are almost as screwed up as any of the Watchmen folk. Having played spy games for so long, Julia Roberts's Claire has become so immured from romantic feeling that, when love does hit her, she finds herself incapable of giving herself over to those feelings; instead, she keeps her emotional guard up, always trying to make sure she's not being conned—and Clive Owen's Ray find himself increasingly exasperated by her tests of faith, mostly because he's struggling to grow out of that kind of lifestyle. The dictates of Hollywood genre might suggest that their relationship grows out of a deep well of unspoken passion or something like that...but the central relationship of Duplicity is, if anything, more out of necessity than passion—the need for something honest and true.

If you look at the two characters that way, then, I think it makes a certain kind of sense that Roberts and Owen don't exactly burn up the screen with chemistry: burning passion is not what leads them back to each other. Really, they are the only ones who may truly understand each other in this crazy, twisted world of cutthroat corporate competition. And I can't say I agree with all those reviews that suggest that Gilroy somehow overdoes the narrative twists and turns. I say it's not about the plot: it's all about the feelings of disorientation and distrust that all those twists, thrown together, produce in the viewer. The plot is, in other words, an abstraction.

Duplicity is hardly a masterpiece, but it has some interesting undercurrents coursing through it, and Gilroy maintains an admirable focus on his two main characters even as he tries to distract us with his narrative tricks.

It's not bad at all; in fact, I found myself enjoying it more as it went along. Nevertheless, it just made me yearn for the art-house more.

★★★★

P.S. Maybe this relatively minor lifestyle change will finally give me an opportunity to share more of what I'm watching through my Netflix subscription these days. If I do go down that route in my next entry, perhaps it will concern this:

Guess Who Has a Byline at The Wall Street Journal?

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Readers, this has been a few weeks in the making, but it's finally here: my first byline for The Wall Street Journal---or, at least, wsj.com, where you can find this: an interview feature with Steve McQueen, director of the soon-to-be-released film Hunger.

Hopefully this will be the first of many stories to come.

It is also why I haven't updated this blog in a little over a week: I've been working on this, and dealing with some new challenges at work and at home (situations which I'll probably elaborate on in a future post).

But I just wanted to share this with you all for now.

P.S. And oh yes, to briefly put on my movie-critic hat: the movie itself---beautiful, devastating, thought-provoking, humane and remarkable---is very much worth seeing.

The Mundane and the Spiritual: Two Lovers, Birdsong

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Film director James Gray apparently has developed a divisive reputation over the course of his four films, some marveling at his epic ambition and emotional sincerity, others finding said ambition exceeding his talent. (Many French critics apparently love him, which some people I suppose take as an ominous sign---what happened to those days of Cahiers du cinéma influence?) I haven't yet seen his other films, Little Odessa, The Yards and We Own the Night, but if they are half as affecting as his latest film, Two Lovers, then I may well join the chorus of supporters.

Two Lovers---which is loosely based on Dostoyevsky's short story "White Nights," previously adapted into films by Luchino Visconti (Le Notti bianche) and Robert Bresson (Four Nights of a Dreamer)---is ostensibly a standard romantic love triangle between depressed aspiring photographer Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix), who lives with his parents after he suffers painful heartbreak; the plain-Jane Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) with which his parents try to set him up; and the wild neighbor Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow) who lives across his apartment bought for her by the married man with whom she's having an affair. To these characters, however, Gray's film introduces a treasure trove of complexities, details and grace notes, and gradually draws us into these people's lives, thoughts and feelings without ever resorting to sentimentality and clichés. The range of emotions these people experience---from the heights of ecstatic desire to the depths of bitter disappointment---are almost extravagantly romantic, yet Gray maintains a classical poise and elegance: operatic melodrama rooted in the quotidian. And yet Two Lovers never lapses into the merely dull or tasteful, because Gray is clearly right inside this world and his characters, empathizing with all of them while refusing to soften their darker eccentricities or ambiguities.

By the end, the film may perhaps not amount too anything earth-shatteringly profound---but why should it? The desires aroused by this love triangle surely mean the world to these characters, through thick and thin; we in the audience share in their emotional spheres, and surely that is one of the most appealing aspects of going to the movies. In Two Lovers, the glow of warmth and affection, and the dark clouds of bitterness and resignation, are enough to leave a lasting, moving impression.

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Catalan director Albert Serra's Birdsong, which just completed a complimentary week-long run at Anthology Film Archives, doesn't, it must be said straight away, exist on the same emotional plane as Two Lovers. Nevertheless, it contains its own kind of magic, for those who are willing to adjust to the film's lazy, drifting rhythms. If it ever ends up in your neck of the woods somewhere, or maybe even on DVD, I strongly urge you to give it a shot.

Using as a starting point the story of the three Magi who trekked across a long distance to meet the baby Jesus, Serra reimagines the story as a playful meditation on the ways the mundane and the spiritual coexist in the real world. To that end, Serra uses extremely long takes and very wide shots to not only induce a trancelike state in a viewer, but also to visually suggest the insigificance of us mere humans in natural surroundings. The Magi themselves are painted as sometimes comical figures, getting into lengthy, Beckettian absurdist arguments over things like who's in charge and whether they should climb a mountain or rest overnight; but at other times, they are seen sitting and wondering about the unknown forces of the world around them (at one point the three discuss how it might feel to fall from a cloud like a raindrop). Later on, Serra immerses us in the humdrum lives of Mary and Joseph, portrayed as, really, just another married couple, with Mary seen taking a particular interest in a sheep they own.

And yet, after all of Serra's searching for God within the details of His earthly creation, the spiritual finally takes over for an extended, shining moment when the Magi reach their destination, kneel down and pray to Jesus: free of nondiegetic music until then, Pablo Casals's cello-driven arrangement of "El Cant dels ocells" suddenly roars to full volume on the soundtrack, and the visceral effect, in context, is sublime, ecstatic and pure, like an angelic spirit being taken to higher spheres.

The rest of Birdsong regains the same aimlessness that preceded that revelatory encounter; real life once again takes over, as the Three Wise Men decide on an alternate route home to avoid power-hungry King Herod. The absurdist discussions pop up again: the three find themselves lying in a forest discussing wondrous and frightening dreams. And in its concluding shot, Serra finds the three men far in the distance, exchanging their coats and seemingly joking around with each other (we don't hear what they're saying).

Filmed in striking black and white, Birdsong is marked by an eye for painterly images, beautiful landscapes and the human figures that are dwarfed by their surroundings and by everything they perceive and don't perceive. Perhaps most memorable of all, for me, are its night scenes: when it is night, the film's images are truly, inescapably pitch-black---the kind of night most of us suburban and city folk have probably forgotten thanks to neon lights, streetlamps and such. It's that kind of revelatory awareness of natural surroundings that makes Serra's film as breathtaking as it often is. Neither deeply religious nor staunchly secular, it situates itself somewhere in between, constantly seeking both the worldly and the beatific, often in the same setting. It's a search that, once undertaken, never ends, for some.

Can You Say "Synecdoche" Three Times Fast?

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - My latest article at suite101.com is a more favorable reconsideration of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York. I admit that I found the film a pretty tough slog the first time, but there was always the feeling lurking in the back of my mind that a second viewing might prove to be more illuminating, at least now that I was prepared for the film's emotional and narrative terrain. Last week, I finally got around to getting in that second viewing, and I do find myself in greater appreciation and even affection toward the film than before---particularly its final 10 minutes, in which Kaufman's neuroses finally transcend literary conceits and attain something close to genuine visionary grandeur. I always admired this concluding passage of the film even as I had doubts about the rest, but only after this second viewing did I realize just how much I really admired it. When the DVD comes out in a couple of weeks, I am hoping I get the time to dig into this portion of the film and explain just what it is about it that moves me so.

If anyone is interested in my take on the Oscars Sunday night...well, I'll just say: Oscars Schmoscars. I don't usually care much for judging the ceremony itself, because, however entertainingly it's put across---and thanks to Hugh Jackman's solid hosting job, it certainly had its entertaining moments, mostly in its deliberately crude opening musical montage---the Academy Awards are still just a glamorous industry circle-jerk. As for Slumdog Millionaire, the big winner of the night: the makers and producers of that piece of tricked-up, condescending swill may be enjoying their moment in the sun right now, but I'm guessing that, decades down the road, the film will join the ranks of recent Oscar winners like Gladiator, Shakespeare in Love and others as films that will eventually be consigned to trivia oblivion once all the hype has subsided and the film is revealed for the inconsequential piece of wish-fulfillment Hollywood hokum that it really is.

The 2009 movie year is off to a fast start, however: so far, Coraline, Serbis, Two Lovers and the upcoming movie Hunger have proven to be real keepers. Already, I'm building up a list of blind spots: Terence Davies' latest Of Time and the City, for one, and Cristian Nemescu's California Dreamin'. Hopefully, these and others will be released on DVD by the end of the year---provided neither Strand Releasing or IFC Films goes the way of New Yorker Films.

And what about my life outside of movies? Well, I'm more or less doing the usual: trying to keep my writing going and trying to make strides in my journalism career, while trying to keep as active a social life as possible on my weekends. No global economic downturn is going to keep me down, dammit!

Welcome to the "Dollhouse"/Goodbye Oscar

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - My latest published suite101.com article takes a look at the pilot for Joss Whedon's latest TV series, "Dollhouse." The execution of the pilot seemed fairly lackluster to me, but there are a lot of interesting ideas floating around here. In short, it shows a lot of promise, but I'm not sure if it's appointment viewing for me (though I hear its second episode, which I haven't yet seen, is a stronger effort).

And oh yeah, Oscar night. I pretty much said all I wanted to say about this year's crop of nominees here. As for what will win tonight, well, I'll just go with what the majority seems to be saying that predicting that it'll be Slumdog Millionaire's night (and that that film, however entertaining and zeitgeist-tapping, will be forgotten years from now anyway).

All I know is: last night I was at a friend's wedding, and it was such a joyous and heartwarming occasion that it made me want to watch the less Oscar-celebrated Rachel Getting Married again. (Go Anne Hathaway!)

Short Takes: Gomorrah, Coraline, Let the Right One In, Serbis, Taken

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - This is my first fairly quiet weekend in quite a while---at least after excursions to New York in the past few weekends either eating dinner with friends, catching art-house flicks (like Film Forum's recent Jeanne Dielman revival) and even ice skating for the first time ever, at the South Street Seaport. The relative dullness of this weekend is especially exacerbated by the fact that I don't have a significant other with which to celebrate Valentine's Day. Next weekend---Oscar weekend---will hopefully provide more fireworks.

So, to keep myself occupied, perhaps a little catch-up is in order as far as some of the recent films I've seen are concerned.

**********
First up: Gomorrah. Actually, I can be curt with this one, because I pretty much lay out my detailed thoughts on Matteo Garrone's highly praised crime saga in my latest piece of writing, this one for The House Next Door (my first in a few months for the site, actually). The short version: it's a film I admire a great deal, especially as a piece of complex storytelling, but I find it difficult to get too excited about it; it's a rather dry, detached film that feels made more out of duty than passion. Frankly, I found the whole thing just a tad boring. That's not much of an intellectual reaction, I realize...but I dunno: its emotional distance just seems self-defeating to me. It left me neither angry nor enlightened, just indifferent.

**********
I feel a lot more comfortable singing the praises of Henry Selick's splendid new foray into stop-motion animation, Coraline, which is absolutely bursting with passion for creepy imagery and childlike wonder.

Based on a slim novel by Neil Gaiman, Selick's film uses its plot---in which the title character stumbles upon an imaginary universe that initially provides a welcome respite from the drudgery of her home life, before it turns into a nightmare that intrudes upon that reality---basically as a clothesline to hang wonderfully dreamlike images together. Dancing mice, giant grasshoppers, a talking cat, dolls with buttons for eyes brought to life, eccentric neighbors: all of these, and plenty more, can be found throughout Coraline, but the crucial thing here is that all of these lovely images---enhanced, for once, by 3-D---are bound together by Selick's own tough-minded yet wholly empathetic take on childhood dreams and desires. Coraline herself is no cliched cute tyke; she's a restless, sometimes irritable, always imaginative child who struggles to relieve her boredom after moving to a new home in Oregon. She makes for quite a believably human heroine, and the movie itself is infused with a warmth that beautifully meshes with some of Selick's wilder flights of animated visual fancy. Everything here is surrealistically exaggerated---even the physiques of the characters themselves, with Coraline perhaps fittingly having the widest-size head of all of the characters---and yet grounded in some kind of emotional reality. In its own way, it's quite enchanting.

**********
Enchanting in a wholly different way is last year's celebrated Swedish horror import Let the Right One In, which I finally got around to checking out a couple of days ago. I now regret missing it before 2008 was out. Atmospheric in a primeval children's-storybook way, it is also startlingly, uncompromisingly dark, both visually and thematically.

Tomas Alfredson's film also features children at its center: a young boy, Oskar, who is constantly picked on at school, and the eccentric young girl next door, Eli, he turns to for comfort. The catch: she's a vampire, who obviously needs the thirst of human blood to sustain herself. The bigger catch: she begins to feel for the boy, and the feelings they both try to dance around eventually lead to serious consequences, both for themselves and for people who get tangled in their web of young love and unwitting destruction.

Let the Right One In is a dazzling aesthetic object, to be sure, but it also works as an emotionally complex drama that hauntingly dramatizes both the life-or-death scale of the intimate feelings these two young kids have toward each other, and the broader world which experiences the fatal consequences of their personal drama. Alfredson, to wit, manages a tricky mixture of both engagement and distance, sometimes expressing the tortured emotions of the characters with dramatic music cues and observant close-ups, but other times going for extra-wide shots that put their passion in its proper and sometimes horrifying perspective. Boys will certainly be boys---but these kids not only both have a potential for violence, but they bring forth violence outside of their world that cannot be controlled. By the end, the boy makes a decision that might feel right for him and Eli---he's a kid, what does he know about adult love and friendship?---but which feels tragically wrong when you step outside of their emotions and consider its worldly implications. It's a horror movie, all right, but not about vampires; if anything, it's a horror film about adolescents being adolescents, young kids who believe their troubles really are the ends of their respective worlds---because, being the boys that they are, they just don't know any better.

**********
Two more, one worth seeing and one worth skipping. The one worth seeing is Serbis, Brillante Mendoza's lively dip into the squalid milieu of a family-owned porn theater in the Philippines. A film that edges perilously close to exploitation and yet somehow stays on the right side of the fence, Serbis manages to find a surprising amount of humanity and life amidst the sucking and fucking, focusing as it does on the Pineda clan, which has owned the once prestigious theater for years, and which is now struggling to keep both family relations and the theater itself afloat. Some have read into the film a critique of both Philippine capitalism and even Philippine cinema into its porn-theater setting. There's probably something to that; me, I'm more fascinated by the ways Mendoza manages to immerse us in this particular environment---when some of the central family members converse with the din of the city outside the open window, for instance, Mendoza allows the conversation to naturally blend in with the outside noise, not always bothering to make it intelligible, giving such scenes a convincing documentary feel---and by the film's overall mix of raunch and warmth. Supposedly the R-rated theatrical version I saw was cut down from a longer, more sexually explicit version that was shown, to wildly mixed reviews, at Cannes last year; I look forward to hopefully seeing the cut footage, but I can nevertheless wholeheartedly recommend the rated version for its modest but impressive and oddly affecting achievements.

The less impressive achievement is Taken, of which I have little to say except that the spectacle of seeing the often stolid Liam Neeson kicking righteous ass wasn't quite as gleefully entertaining as I was hoping it would be. Some of the ass-kicking is actually quite ugly and sordid, especially when Neeson---who is desperately trying to get back his daughter, who was abducted by human traffickers in France---tortures a baddie, with Jack Bauer-like grimness, with electricity. He may be bad-ass, but he's also just plain bad---something Pierre Morel, Luc Besson and co. don't seem all that interested in acknowledging, probably because for them it's all about empty-headed thrills. Even TV's 24, which is as much of a right-wing fantasy as Taken is, has made gestures over the years toward acknowledging the moral cost of torture on the torturers, even if the ends did justify the means. Still, for what it's worth, Neeson actually is quite good in this---livelier than he usually is as an actor, in fact. Maybe a little bit of righteous ass-kicking can be good for an actor's system; look at Kiefer Sutherland (though let's try to forget about his recent jail stint).

New Link for the Day

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - For my latest suite101 article, I offer five better alternatives to the films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar prize this year.

I should add that I don't necessarily love all of my alternative picks---I'm deeply mixed on Synecdoche, New York, and I think both W. and Che are at best interesting failures---but they're far worthier of engaging with and arguing over than the five Hollywood has ordained to be the best it offered last year.

Finally, I am hoping I will come up with a more substantive post than another one of these links for the day. Perhaps another short-take movie review will be forthcoming...

The Latest Link for the Day, With Additional Comments

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - My latest article for suite101.com is mostly just a flimsy excuse to try to review two movies at once: Chantal Akerman's 1975 masterpiece Jeanne Dielman and Sam Mendes's 2008 non-masterpiece Revolutionary Road.

The former is just about to complete a weeklong revival run at the Film Forum, in a brand new 35mm. print. I saw it this past Saturday for the second time; my first time was at a screening of a 16mm. print at Rutgers. You would think a 201-minute movie that features the barest minimum of plot and drama and focuses mostly on an unremarkable Belgian housewife's daily habits over the course of three days would be duller the second time around, after the initial shock of a first viewing has faded. Believe it or not, however, it's just as hypnotic and devastating the second time around as it is on the first. Hopefully this weeklong run will signal a Criterion DVD in the future (although there is a DVD box set of this and other Akerman films available from Belgium which I keep meaning to pick up)---although I wonder if a concentrated theatrical experience isn't somewhat essential to the film having its proper effect.

As for Revolutionary Road: I probably might have found it more affecting if I hadn't read Richard Yates's 1961 novel, which pulses with psychological anguish and humanity in ways Sam Mendes's relatively sterile adaptation rarely approaches (with the exception of those shock-to-the-system scenes with Michael Shannon, deservedly nominated for an Oscar for rising above the deliberate tastefulness). This may well be the best one could have done in adapting a novel as reliant on inner psychology as Yates's book is, but the elisions---the main characters' backstories, for instance---mostly make this seem like yet another of these smug Hollywood "soulless surburbia" dramas that have become all too prominent these past few years. Seriously: what's the point of films like this one, American Beauty, Little Children and others except for middlebrow filmmakers to crack wise---while maintaining a "serious" veneer, of course---about the middle class of which they were once a part? (Not that you could actually get a sense of personal involvement from any of these movies...)

To look on the bright side, though: even though I'm not rooting for her, clearly Kate Winslet was nominated for the wrong movie.

Two Links for the Day, and Oh Yeah, Oscar

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - First: my latest suite101.com article, on Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 film Made in U.S.A., which only now has gotten a proper U.S. theatrical release at Film Forum (its run is already over, however). I've seen it once before, on a copied DVD from an underground source, but I was much more impressed with the film the second time around in this new 35mm. print: it's as rich and provocative as much of his '60s work, but, in its sense of melancholy, you can already see seeds of his later style being planted.

But the second link is the one I'm really itching to share: I'm on a podcast! Talking about movies! Talking about the year in movies 2008! Granted, I am one of many voices in this one, and I only got to chime in a few times with comments, but it was still cool to be a part of it, and to meet certain film bloggers that I read frequently. Click here to check it out (and let me know how I sounded, because I certainly am not going to be listening to myself on this one).

Oh yeah, and speaking of 2008 movies: the Oscar nominations yesterday? Pffft. I don't necessarily agree that 2008 was a weak year for movies---as I was trying to come up with my top 10 of last year, I could have easily rattled off 25 or so solid-to-great titles. Overall, though, it was a fairly unexciting year for American mainstream films---yeah, despite much-discussed films like The Dark Knight and Synecdoche, New York, neither of which impressed me all that much---and its Oscar crop represents this. Any Oscar year that considers an unintentional Holocaust sex comedy like The Reader as the epitome of prestige and good taste gives one more piece of evidence of its lack of relevance.

Perhaps, between now and Feb. 22, I'll consider discussing why I pretty much have no love for any of the Best Picture nominees, especially the deeply problematic Slumdog Millionaire. (If the Academy had actually had the guts to lump WALL-E into the Best Picture category, then maybe we'd have a contest---even if, for me, it would have been a landslide victory.) Until then, I will just put in these three random comments:

1. Where the fuck is Sally Hawkins in all this?

2. What the fuck is Departures? (It's the Japanese Foreign Film nominee, yes, but I've never even heard of it until today.)

3. I missed Melissa Leo in Frozen River, but even so, I pretty much think that, with the exception of Anne Hathaway, Juliette Binoche in Flight of the Red Balloon pretty much beats all of this year's Best Actresses. I'm just saying.

White Powder/White Heat

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I suppose it's heartening to know that even about a year and a half---well, give or take a couple of months---into my employment as a news assistant at The Wall Street Journal, I can still find some moments of surprise.

Today, I was at the heart of the latest white-powder-in-envelopes scare to hit a major newspaper. Apparently, some nut in Knoxville, Tenn., sent 12 envelopes with white powder to various top editors and executives (including Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson, whose office isn't too far away from where I sit on the ninth floor of One World Financial Center).

Some of them were opened, and so, close to 12 p.m., the alarms at our office went off and we got warned about the white powder, and that at that point we should just go about our normal business and just not open any mail. About 45 minutes later, however, we were told to evacuate the ninth floor.

I was allowed to go home early---guess the amount of required duties I have is small enough that it can be shouldered by others---but other, more important editors and such either decided to go home or go all the way down to the South Brunswick branch to try to get back online and do their thing.

Simply put: it was a crazy scene at that point; I don't think my description of the events as they transpired comes close to encapsulating the whirlwind feeling of the moment.

It was, in a perverse way, kinda exciting. Certainly, it made for some out-of-the-ordinary drama to give my daily routine a nice, hard shake.

As I wrote on my Facebook profile, "[I] can at least now boast to [my] friends that [I] was at the scene of a white-powder-in-envelopes scare."

P.S. Looks like the powder, upon initial investigation, was nothing serious after all. Back to work tomorrow (and, oh yeah, Oscar nominations...).

P.P.S. Perhaps I shouldn't really make light of all this...but I couldn't help but think back on this Chappelle's Show sketch (go 4:10 in to see what I mean):

Chappelle's Show

Tyrone Biggums Crack Intervention

Charlie Murphy Clips
Buy Chappelle's Show DVDs

Black Comedy
True Hollywood Stories

Short Take: Reprise

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I'm feeling a little bored right now, so I figured I might as well do a little movie mini-review before I get ready for bed (gotta work tomorrow; such is the strange schedule of a member of the journalism field). I'm not sure if I'm going to make this a regular feature, but it'd probably be nice to toss off these short takes once in a while.

I saw Joachim Trier's highly lauded debut feature Reprise earlier today on DVD, and for the most part I was quite impressed with its tricky mixture of formal/narrative playfulness and emotional directness. It's a portrait of two young budding writers and their torturous self-doubts; one, Erik, is taking his first, tentative dips into the book-publishing world, while the other, Phillip, has already experienced literary success and has allowed it to tear him up inside both emotionally and physically (the film follows the latter's attempts at trying to get back on track in his life after a major mental breakdown.)

Much has been made of the film's shout-outs to Truffaut's Jules and Jim, and its formal daring does suggest a bit of the French New Wave to it. But Trier quickly establishes his own distinctive, lovely moods and rhythms, melancholy yet alive to the characters' feelings, and inventive in the ways it portrays those feelings onscreen. Many of the characters are concerned---sometimes paralyzingly so---with the past, the future and the unknown: with trying to recreate the past; trying to decide how to shape their future; wondering, and worrying about, what may lie ahead for them. Trier takes those cues and toys with chronology throughout the film, creating a sense of temporal displacement at certain points as past and present occasionally get momentarily blurred; there are also a couple of bravura montages that explore the consequences of decisions that may or may not be made. None of this formal experimentation ever feels gratuitously show-offy; it all feels of a piece with Trier's modest but potent exploration of how his youthful characters respond to the vast amount of possibilities in their burgeoning adult lives.

Perhaps its most memorable sequence is one in which Phillip takes girlfriend Kari---who helped trigger the original psychosis---to Paris to try to methodically recreate the romantic experience they had three years ago in the same city as a newly formed couple. The attempts culminate in a powerfully sensual sex scene in which both of them try to rehash the sizzle of their first sexual encounter in Paris; suffice it to say, the spark is gone, but the scene is remarkable nevertheless for its emotional frankness and erotic immediacy.

Reprise ends on one of those montages of a possible future, concluding Trier's vibrant little portrait with neither obvious hope nor despairing pain---though it does come after a particularly painful moment for one of its main characters---but with either possibility up in the air. The lack of a clear resolution, of course, is deliberate; as the film eloquently suggests, who ever knows what will come next for anyone?

A New Outlet!

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - In the what-the-hell spirit that I'm trying to foster for myself (with varying degrees of success so far; impulsiveness doesn't always come easily to me), I recently decided to try my hand at some freelance writing on the side for a site entitled suite101.com, a site that covers a wide variety of subjects and carries a wide variety of writers. I basically put in an online application, submitted two short clips of mine, and bam! A few days later, I got an email saying that they had hired me to basically contribute 10 articles in three months on whatever I felt like writing about.

Thus my first contribution, and probably the only one I'll be putting up for this week: this piece on the latest season of 24.

At the very least, this will hopefully force me to keep those writing juices flowing...juices I allowed to run perilously dry towards the tail end of last year (as evidenced by my paltry amount of blog posts). I'm not sure whether this will lead to anything for my future...but at this point, I'm mostly just interested in keeping myself active and engaged.