August Staff Picks

I never got around to July. Whatever. FYI, they were: Bonjour Tristesse, Leave Her to Heaven, L'Atalante, Tabu & M. Hulot's Holiday.

But July is so far gone it's practically last July. Besides, August marks a redundantly momentous moment in the life of yours truly: thirty! Yes indeedy. I can't wait. I've been over my twenties for years now. Clearly I needed to honor the occasion within my August staff picks. However, despite my most noble efforts to unearth five decent movies about turning thirty, I ran headfirst into a brick wall at precisely three: 13 Going on 30, Logan's Run & Beautiful Girls. I mean, sure, there are movies about Zach Braff turning 30 & there are movies based on Douglas Coupland books about people turning 30, but...ew. I wouldn't even watch those, let alone "recommend" them. So I instead chose to feature American movies released in 1978. After much thought & careful consideration, I came up with:


Days of Heaven, Terrence Malick, 1978. But of course. Beautiful, stunning, etc. Ignore Gerbil Ass & marvel at the Malickability of it. And give thanks to the gods that made Malick's first choice star, John Travolta, unavailable. Glorious. If we had five copies, I would have made it all five of my picks.

Coming Home, Hal Ashby, 1978. Hmm...so my two most favorite American movie directors of the 1970s, Malick & Ashby, both just happened to release films during the year in which I was born. Oh, AND Haskell Wexler, one of my favorite cinematographers, shot both of them (although Nester Almendros has primary credit for Days, he had to leave the production early.) Coincidence? Sure. But this one's still a keeper, even if it is a bit heavy-handed nowadays. Then again, the more things change... At any rate, I'm absolutely mad for Bruce Dern's last scene; & if you've only seen Jon Voight in, ahem, Zoolander (like me), you're in for a treat! Penelope Milford is excellent as well.

Piranha, Joe Dante, 1978. The evil bastardos team of bound-for-Gremlins Dante & John Sayles (yep, the same one) totally sock it to the campground kiddies! Per the commentary, I apparently have Roger Corman to thank for so delighting my misanthropic inclinations - seems he instituted a maximum-gore-per-reel policy which didn't see fit to save the children. Also, the piranha noise is fabulous AND it all ends in a most fantastically un-PC fashion. Heh. I hear that in the sequel (James Cameron's first movie, if you care) they breed with...wait for it...flying fish. Oh yes.

The Cat from Outer Space, Norman Tokar, 1978. Cats! Well, a cat! From outer space! With Roddy McDowell, who's also from outer space! Although I loved it as a child, this is not a good movie. In fact, when I found out that I'd confused it with That Darn Cat & it didn't feature spunky Hayley Mills as I'd originally thought, I struck it from my list. But then the Donna Summer disco movie Thank God It's Friday turned out be a real stinker, & when I watched Heaven Can Wait I finally admitted that I actively dislike Warren Beatty, & following that I ran out of time to come up with anything else. The cat talks though! And he's all sassy & droll.

Dawn of the Dead, George Romero, 1978. Fine. You want to get all technical, this was released in the U.S. in April 1979. To which I reply, so? It premiered at Cannes in 1978, bitches. Eat my brain. Zombies, a Goblin (or, er, "The Goblins" as they're credited here) soundtrack & a cutesy little satire of American consumerism? Yeah, I stretched the rules for that. Besides, we don't have Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

For September, I'm doing something French. Either softcore pr0n, or candy-coated movies with realism filling (think The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which puts my own color sensibilities, of which I feel justly proud, to shame & makes me tear up more the older I get (because of the story, not the colors)) or Robert Bresson. I've not decided which.

Cats Playing Jazz

No, seriously.

CATS

PLAYING

MOTHERFUCKING

JAZZ

I am in love, love, LOVE with The Aristocats.

So much so that I can almost actually forgive Disney for ruining The Little Mermaid for ten-year-old Me with its fake happy ending. Because frankly Me didn't see what, exactly, was so terribly unhappy about the main character not only not getting the guy, but sacrificing her own happiness for the sake of his & dying because of it; & having her very selflessness allow her to enter heaven rather than becoming mere foam on the sea like her mer-brethren. It's Hans Christian Andersen, for fuck's sake.

I mean, compared to my all-time favorite Andersen tale The Travelling Companion's macabre S&M beatings & my second favorite tale The Red Shoes' gruesome body-part cost of avarice (not to mention The Little Freakin' Poor, Cold, Motherless & Oh Yeah, Dead Match Girl), the mermaid's demise is positively sunny!

But I became burdened with a gravity ill-suited to my years at an early age, which it then took me several subsequent years to learn to leaven with equal parts sparkles'n'sunshine.

And behold! Sparkles'n'sunshine made cartoon:


Aaaahhhh. On a less-than-stellar day of painful cornea sunburn, ten-percent-jacked-up apartment rent notice, & being so temporarily choked with bile that I spent several minutes really, really trying to think of a way to make the horn-playing men outside the French bakery cry, this fully restored my spirits. Now, I can't promise that you'll like it; but it hits every one of my cute-buttons.

Full-on HURRAH!

Unbated Breath

Despite knowing next to nothing about it, beyond its truly marvelous title, I desperately* want to see Kung Fu Panda. Because of, well, its truly marvelous title.

Just in case you were wondering where I stood on that important issue.

* "Desperately" meaning "I will see it in three months when it plays at the Laurelhurst as long as it plays at grown-up times & not just at 1 p.m. on the weekend when kids are allowed in".

Happy Almost June!

So. I got a part-time job at a video store. It's all part of my evil plan for WORLD DOMINATION. Well. Actually, my evil plan is way less stressful than that & totally hedonistic. The point is, at my part-time video store job, the employees choose "staff picks" every month. I obviously have exquisite taste, so what could be better than being obligated to show off the knowledge gleaned during those years I did nothing but watch movies all day, every day? I get to be silently pretentious. I know. Whoo hoo!

I went for a non-Babette's Feast food(-related) theme for June & chose the following:

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Luis Bunel, 1972 A bunch of boring Frenchies & the ambassador (diplomat?) from a fake South American country spend the whole movie trying, & failing, to sit down & eat. Clever, if you like Bunuel - & I do, very much. (I personally prefer The Exterminating Angel, where a bunch of people sit down to eat & then can't leave, but - horror! - it's not yet had a proper DVD release. Boo.)

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover - Peter Greenaway, 1989
I gather this is considered summat of a commentary on Thatcherism. I don't know about that, but this is a wickedly excellent, madly disturbing film. Which like as not I will never watch again. I would like to take this opportunity to berate Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix for forcing me to break my solemn vow to never, ever, under no circumstance EVER watch Michael Gambon eat again. Also: Helen Mirren 4ever!

How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman - Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1973
C'mon. Best movie title in the history of the world. Also, political film? Not so much. I'd shove a broomstick up Godard's ass before I'd ever endure Tout Va Bien again. But somehow, I'm mad for Brazil's Cinema Novo. It manages to be deliriously dreamy & earthy &, heavens forbid, entertaining within its politics. Et tu, Brecht?




Conspirators of Pleasure, Jan Svankmajer, 1996
Hahahahaha. Like the others, it's actually not really about food, although I wouldn't tell that to the postmistress. It's about sexual fetishists in Prague. A pornographic film with no naked bits. And, I daresay, tremendously funny to boot.



The Gold Rush, Charles Chaplin, 1925
Well, really! I'd have been remiss to exclude it. Jolly well brilliant, it is. Besides...Gold Rush relates to Conspirators relates to The Cook, the Thief relates to Frenchman relates to Discreet Charm relates to Gold Rush. I just can't make it a circle for you unless you've seen all five.

What, you thought there wasn't some grand master idea behind all this? I inject all sorts of narrative into my fucking mix CDs, fer chrissakes.

OMG OMG OMG

Holy cow. I think I just hit the motherfucking April jackpot here.

Item 1: Film verson of the musical set to ABBA songs, Mamma Mia, is opening this summer. Did we not just establish that I love ABBA? You may also have noticed that I love musicals. Dare I say it? This could be better than Hairspray.

Item 2: One of my biggest man crushes, Stellan Skarsgard, is in it. I've followed him ever since Breaking the Waves. (I know, I know, kind of a weird character to inspire a sustained crush. Shut up. We've already established that I'm kind of twisted. Besides! In real life, he's apparently dating a buxom 32-year-old. I've got the first one covered like nobody's business; I'm thisclose to 30; and I have better fashion sense than that girl. It could totally happen for me.)

Item 3: Another man crush, Colin Firth, is also in it. He was Darcy, he is Darcy, & he will be Darcy forevermore. Even when he played Amanda Bynes' secret daddy in What a Girl Wants he was Darcy. (And shut up about that one too. Yes. I watched it. The whole thing. Amanda Bynes is fucking adorable & looks thoroughly corruptible.) Although his Darcy-ish Vermeer in Girl with a Pearl Earring was enjoyable. And shhh, I have a secret soft spot for Bridget Jones' Diary & Firth's Darcy-ish Darcy.

Item 4: A third could-be man crush is in it too! His name is Dominic Cooper. I don't know anything about him, but Interview magazine did a story on him a while ago & he looked cute in his picture. Plus, British! Can't go wrong. I have to reserve judgment however until I actually see him move & hear him talk.

Item 5: Amanda Seyfried is in it. Although I do not have a girl crush on her, I do think she's awfully talented (ref: Mean Girls, "Big Love") & pretty.

18 July 2008, people. I. Can't. Wait. It's gonna be fucking epic fun.

What's A Girl Like You Doing On A Knight Like This?

Okay, okay, I owe a few post-things. I'll get to them soon, cuddlies, promises! Things have been busy. In the meantime, I simply must say a few words. Seven to be precise.

Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Comedy.

GENIUS. It was made for me! Alice. Musical. 1970s pr0n (real breasts & hair on their ladyparts!). Also, any movie that has a credit reading "Underwater Nude Volleyball Sequences by Jacques Coote" is pretty much guaranteed to be good. Especially if there is not a single underwater nude volleyball sequence in the movie. Played on a double bill with Star Wars according to questionable sources. (The acting in Alice is better, for the record.) Now imagine if we lived in a world where fantastical song-&-dance sex films had won out over sexless preadolescent Wonder Bread space-capades. It's a real shame that this country progressed a bit only to then enter a decades-long slide. We put the puritan back in prurient. Because I cannot imagine any sort of "respectable" distributor releasing this today, but 20th Century Fox put this corker out back in the day.

My intensive research has shown that there are three versions: R, X, & XXX. I understand that this release by Subversive Video has the X & the XXX versions. I cannot figure out which version I watched - there were some rather thorough anatomy lessons that I've not previously encountered in X-rated movies, but I understand the XXX version is pretty seriously hardcore. Whichever version I watched had a few cum shots but nothing that made me ill (they ain't exactly my bag - I'm more Emmanuelle than Splendor in the Ass (although that is my all-time favorite porno title) - softcore porn served with a generous helping of wonky French philosophy is not just up my alley, as it were, it's the alley that's named after me). The disc boasts possibly the crappiest transfer I've ever seen & appears to use a well-worn VHS dub as its source, but it's still totally worth watching if you can find it. (EDIT: I figured out the DVD I watched was not the Subversive Video release but rather from some outfit called Arrow Video. And it is the XXX version. Because I hadn't actually quite finished the entire movie when I wrote this post (guilty!), & near the end there is a random three-ish-minute fuck-tage, which did make me feel a wee bit sick.)

The lead actress, Kristine De Bell, has an engaging on-screen persona & is a convincingly innocent libertine-in-training. For you Meatballs fans out there (I have a soft spot...), she played A.L. in that fine movie. Overall Alice is really quite sweet with some clever moments (Mad Hatter: "Oh, that's not my HAT size..." Hee hee!) & a simple little if-it-feels-good-do-it message.

Plus, the scene & song from which this post's title is derived are freakin' priceless.

My Bitches Wear My Collars

Let's be clear about one thing: I adored the first Elizabeth movie. The palace intrigue, the betrayed young princess, the sumptuous costumes, the oh-so-meaningful shadows & light. ALL of it. I get into that bodice-ripping double-crossing soap operatic stuff like nobody's business. It is a shameless & naive love, & Elizabeth the first is a near-perfect example of its shiny dollar store beauty. It also bestowed upon me a decade-long adoration for Cate Blanchett that no number of middling Oscar bait vehicles can diminish.

There are two things of which I was unsure: (1) Why did they make a sequel? and (2) How did I not even know it existed until the Oscar nominations were announced? The former remains a mystery, which goes a long way toward explaining the latter. I don't know what's wrong with me lately, but I have not seen a movie made in this century that I have actually enjoyed since early November, when I saw Ang Lee's Lust, Caution (N.B. It's totally worth checking out). Well, I did like the Lindsay Lohan stripper movie. But I also hated it, so I'm not sure it counts. Don't do this to me, brain. I love tawdry! I love slick! I love sprawling epic! Lately every movie I've watched ('cept M. Hulot's Holiday & Mon Oncle) has bored me senseless. I actually fell asleep in a movie theater during Michael Clayton last week. I was sober. The last time that happened, I was drunk, high & stuffed full of Vicodin. I cry foul.

ANYWAY. Back to Elizabeth: The Golden Age. It's pretty awful. Everybody looks bored out of their minds. Abbie Cornish, who plays Elizabeth's little handmaiden (& is called Bess though her full name is ALSO Elizabeth OMG totally meaningful!!!1!!1!!), is boringly pretty in an utterly typical fashion & appears to have all the mental faculties of Tupperware (& that curtain in the picture at left looks almost exactly like the shower curtain I had before I got my silver disco-tastic one). The usually yummy Clive Owen, who generally manages to be the only generically handsome leading man type that I crush on & I admit provided quite the impetus for me to move this to the top of my queue, delivers the most ridiculous lines as though he believes them not one iota. You must say the platitudes as though they emerge from the very bowels of your shallow soul, man! His clear disdain for his words makes him a poor character. And, really, the entire cast seems to be comprised of somnolent Cesares. Sheesh. With the sole exception of Ms. Blanchett, who (1) appears marginally interested & (2) has the dignity to believe in her dialogue cliches. Should you insist upon watching it, just compare the moment at which Owen says, "We mortals have many weaknesses; we feel too much, hurt too much or too soon we die, but we do have the chance of love" with Blanchett's delivery of "I have a hurricane in me that will strip Spain bare when you dare to try me!" It's no more possible to believe that Sir Walter Raleigh has any fucking clue about love than it is to doubt inner fury with which Elizabeth burns. Actually, the scene in which she exclaims with righteous fury, "You ask my permission before you fuck. Before you breed. My bitches wear MY collars" whilst slapping the bitch in question is the single moment of fabulosity in the film entire. (Though...if her bitches really did wear her collars, it probably would have been a way more interesting movie.)

The problem is, this Elizabeth is simply not as compelling or interesting as the first film's. She has already chosen power over love, & apparently the writers' solution to creating romantic intrigue is to make her a whiny vicious sex-starved shrew. I don't know. Shouldn't it, to paraphrase Mel Brooks, be good to be the queen? I mean...surely she could get herself some ass right quick. Which wouldn't really solve the whole love-hungry thing, but at least it'd take care of the sex, right? UGH. I really fucking hate it when movies make me play feminist. It is so very irritatingly inimical to my nature. My solution then? Focus on the production elements to maintain interest. And, oh my, I want, I need, I long for a foyer that would do justice to this:



We'll ignore the raging obviousness of that purple. I, um, actually got bored enough to take my own pictures during the film, in case I couldn't find any online. So here's another:


And, holy cow, the horse frills & THAT MARVELOUS CAPE:


I want that cape. Were I a butch lesbian, I would probably have serious Cate Blanchett fantasies from the armor, too.

I also decided that feathers are totally ready for their accoutrement-status comeback in both clothing & home fashion(love the collar too):


Seriously, I'm starting to think I may have missed my calling. I would be a fantastic decorator.

Pop Quiz, Asshole

Exhibit A most fully illustrates which of the following:


(a) Why April actually really doesn't need to force herself to emerge from her hermit-hole more often.
(b) Why nobody should ever give April pen & paper when she's four deep in whiskey & ginger ales (despite the atrocious penmanship & extra period in the ellipsis I'm pleased to note my confidence in my spelling wavered not).
(c) Why April should never go see Paul Thomas Anderson movies that make her want to drink large amounts in short periods of time.
(d) All of the above.

Re: There Will Be Crap Blood - I had a dream on Saturday which I think exemplifies the way I felt about it. I dreamt that I was in one of those super-cheesy rent-to-own furniture places, with all those tacky wares, & I was secretly smoking cigarettes inside. And the character of Eli was the manager of the chintz & the cheese.

If that doesn't make sense, how 'bout this:

"Sometimes I look at people & I see nothing worth liking."

I felt the exact same way. When I was fifteen. And that is one reason why I didn't like it. I don't need happy-happy-joy-joy, y'know, but for heaven's sake, if I want to gorge on the relentlessly downbeat & the thoroughly misanthropic, if I want to nurse disdain & hatred for all mankind,

well,

I'll watch the news. There are enough puppy abusers & wife beaters & school shootings to give me a veritable feast of vitriol.

Not to give anything away, but I totally misjudged it from the preview. I thought it was going to be...more. An exploration of something besides ugliness. I expected, well, I expected the dynamic between Daniel & Eli to be...less material.

There is one single element of that film by which I have been interested these last few days, however, & that is the character of Paul. You know, the guy who was onscreen for five whole minutes. Who I think may have been the character that I expected Eli to be. The fact that they were played by the same actor muddles things. Oh, & I will grant you the film was pretty to look at.

But now I implore you - did you see this movie? Did you like it? WHY? I'm so serious, you have no idea. I need to know. One of the people with whom I went to the theater had seen it four times before, & so I asked him why he liked it so much, but...I didn't get a real answer & I know that people are creaming themselves over this & I want to understand. Need input, Steph-a-nie, input.

You're A Silly Little Goose

1. Song of the week: Caetano Veloso's lovely rendition of Irving Berlin's "Let's Face the Music & Dance", as performed at his 1997 tribute concert to Federico Fellini & Giulietta Masina. Download here.

2. I've turned into a buy-local organic/natural hippie freak in the past three weeks. Luckily, I happen to live in the most perfect place in the world to be a buy-local organic/natural hippie freak. My quest to fulfill this unexpected destiny recently led me to the Alima Cosmetics website. It's a Portland-based natural mineral make-up company. But the best part? They sell samples of all their cosmetics online, so you can try them out before you commit to dropping $8-$18 for full-size jars. Oh yeah. They're a buck to a buck-fitty a pop & shipping's under $5. I ordered 19 different samples of foundations, powders, eye shadows, eyeliners, & lip balms yesterday afternoon - & they shipped this morning! Check it out. I'll update once I've had a chance to give 'em a whirl.

3. Hair - I finally made an appointment here to get a cut'n'color from him, on Friday at three. Which is apparently going to cost me at least $125. Plus tip, I presume. I am alternately horrified & amused that I am prepared to throw that much money at my freakin' hair. Also, I'm curious to see what Mr. Kane suggests, considering the overall strictness of my prerequisites: 1) absolutely no shorter, 2) not too much longer, 3) not radically different & 4) ease of styling & maintenance - my patience level for the amount of time I'm willing to spend on the rituals of girl-ness tends more toward deficit than surfeit. I've got about a five-minute attention span for that shit.

4. A friend & I are planning to go to Mexico to wander Mayan & Aztec ruins. Well, the ruins are my plan, anyway. And to get some tasty, tasty food. Mmm. Anybody wanna come? It's going to take me a little while to brush up on completely re-learn my Spanish & do some decent historical & cultural research (you know me, I can't just go somewhere without reading about it like a fiend &, if applicable, teaching myself how to botch the language). So I'm thinking of going sometime in the upcoming 12 months. Most likely during next fall/winter, for the warm sunny escape factor. Tickets look super-cheap into Mexico City - about $350 round-trip from PDX, anyway, so this international trip might actually happen. EDIT: Apparently Powell's entire stock of books on Mexican & Mesoamerican histories is on sale; this evening last, for $9 each, I picked up Mexico: Volume 1, From the Beginning to the Spanish Conquest by Alan Knight; Mexico: Biography of Power by Enrique Krauze; & A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya by Linda Schele & David Freidel. They all look like nice solid texts, so I'm pretty excited to read them. It barely begins to cover what I want to know; but it's a start. Project!

5. Ooh, Lars von Trier's The Kingdom 2 is FINALLY out on DVD! No joke, I just about ran out & bought a VCR last year for the sole purpose of renting my video store's bootleg VHS copy of this. Only it's been so long since I've seen part the first that I'm not sure whether I really liked it enough to warrant my severe excitement or whether it's the unattainability of the thing that's made me so hot to trot for it all these years. Eh, who cares.



6. Speaking of hot to trot, my girlfriend's coming back to town on 23 February! Sweet. It feels like only yesterday, or possibly late October 2007, that she was gazing at me & touching my arm. I can't wait.

Blessed Art Thou; Or, It's Totally Your Lucky Day!

Gather the blankets & glasses of milk, bring the cookies if you got 'em, because it's time for a little story. (Mandy, stop pulling my hair & settle down!) Go back, back, waaaaay back here, to the big bang, aka the genesis of this here blog-thing. Following the standard "Hey world friends! This is my blog! Hey!" post, the very first thing I wrote about was a filmmaker by the name of Phil Solomon. The words were few, succinct (I used to try!) & heartfelt (to the max, Phil. Heh. I've hardly begun to exhaust my repertoire). What I did not mention was that I had actually had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Solomon on more than one occasion, in more than one state (& I use "state" with more than one meaning, naturally), over the course of several years. I even chauffeured him to TJ's house - that would be Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, for those who aren't hip to the C-ville slang - in a pick-up in, I think, 2004. Alas! sadly, that had been the last of it.

Until very recently, when Mr. Solomon found my feeble little post about him & left me a wonderful comment, which gave me a case of the warm fuzzies you wouldn't believe. Subsequently, memories were jogged & communications (re-)established. All to your benefit, friends, as I've laid my grubby little paws on clips from some of his films!

Now, I realize that I am slightly inclined toward hyperbole. I am simply helpless in the face of that with which I am enthralled, be it positively or negatively. My words can be a minefield of superlatives. However! If you took the whole of every aggrandizing statement I've ever made, every command & must & implore & love & amazing & so forth, & you put them in a mortar & mashed them to a splendidly redolent paste, the resulting bouquet would still not do these films justice.

My limited mind knows not how to provide a better introduction. Tell me you believe me. Better yet, just watch the clips. I provide them to you out of love. (And if you love me, you'll watch them, bitches.) Yes, they are necessarily but pale ghosts of the films entire; but after all, as Double Exposure so well put it, "Ten percent of something/It beats one hundred percent of nothing at all"!

The Passage of the Bride

Clepsydra

The Exquisite Hour

Nocturne

Remains To Be Seen

Seasons....

The Secret Garden

What's Out Tonight is Lost

Yes, I Said Yes, I Will, Yes

Psalm III: Night of the Meek

The Snowman

Psalm II: Walking Distance

Because Really I Just Don't BUY Enough Stuff

After getting my DVD shelves up on the wall last week, I was alarmed & saddened to discover that I have far, far fewer DVDs than I had imagined. Apparently the attrition rate during the war was much higher than it looked when the DVDs were in boxes.

Although I was glad to see that the frivolous titles have been kept to a minimum (meaning that of the DVDs I own, the majority are ones which I truly love), & I am happy that in April-land Clueless sits next to The Conformist, as Mean Girls sidles up alongside Mulholland Drive, I realized also how very very few of my actual favorite movies I own. Not that I don't absolutely adore the ones I do own, but I'm talking about the ones that I respond to most on an emotional basis. The special ones. For me, there's a fine but clear delineation betwixt films that touch my head & films that go beyond & take up residence in my heart. I mean, I admire Citizen Kane twelve ways to Sunday, but I don't love it. I've got a few of 'em on hand, to be sure - Wings of Desire. Au Hasard Balthazar. A Little Princess (want early evidence of Alfonso Cuaron's cinematic talents? Skip the tepid Great Expectations adaptation & start here. Damn thing makes me bawl like a baby every time I see it & it's deathly gorgeous to boot).

Thanks to evil Amazon & my temporary delusion of disposable cash, I have attempted to remedy this situation in my own small way.


First: I finally broke down & bought the Criterion Collection release of Naked. Seeing as I was moved to actually email them the title as a suggestion several years ago, I figured since they lived up to their end of things by actually releasing it, I'd better pony up & buy the damn thing already. Out of all the trenchant & cutting things said in that film, this is my favorite, courtesy of Johnny:

"Was I bored? No, I wasn't fuckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody - you're all so bored. You've had nature explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the living body explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the universe explained to you and you're bored with it, so now you just want cheap thrills and like plenty of them, and it don't matter how tawdry or vacuous they are, as long as it's new, as long as it's new, as long as it flashes and fuckin' bleeps in forty fuckin' different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I'm not fuckin' bored. "

Words to live by.


Second: Yay! It Happened One Night! Yay! One of my all-time most favoritest movies ever. The film that killed off men's undershirt sales because of the scene pictured above. The first film to sweep the Big 5 at the Oscars (picture, director, screenplay, actor & actress- only One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest & The Silence of the Lambs have done it since). The movie no one wanted to make at the studio for which no one wanted to work - the two leads were forced into it. Featuring the lovely Claudette Colbert. Also Clark Gable (no especial favorite of mine, truth be told). Frank Capra at his finest. I've adored this film madly ever since I was 16, so it's about time I actually had it at my permanent disposal.


Third: Oh, those Germans. It was bothering me that insofar as (1) I love Werner Herzog & (2) I spent an inordinate amount of time watching his films in college, the only title I actually owned of his was Grizzly Man. A most excellent film indeed, but hardly the one upon which his international renown was built. I remembered that there exists a boxed set of all the work Mr. Herzog did with Klaus Kinski (& if you don't know anything about their relationship, well, I heartily recommend delving into it. Kinski on Herzog: "I wish he would catch the plague, more than ever." Herzog on Kinski: "We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder". More quote fun here.). Amazon's got it for 50% off list price - that's six titles for $45 - what works out to $7.50 each. And being a compendium of his work with Kinski, of course it's some of his absolute finest stuff - Aguirre, the Wrath of God (although I think the German title is far more fierce-sounding: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes); Fitzcarraldo; Woyzeck; Nosferatu the Vampyre; Cobra Verde; and the nonfiction film Herzog made about Kinski, called My Best Fiend. I think I'm most excited about revisiting Fitzcarraldo, although I think Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror & Herzog's "re-imagining" make for a spectacular double feature - every time I see either of them, my admiration for the actor portraying the title character (Max Shreck in the former; Kinski, naturally, in the latter) grows leaps & bounds. They're both absolutely astonishing.


Fourth: My neighbor Totoro, To-to-ro. Totoro, To-to-ro. Heh! I waited a long while for My Neighbor Totoro to be released as it deserves: wide-screen, with the original Japanese audio track. Previously it was available only in a full-screen English-dubbed version. Now, finally, it comes back to my lovin' arms, more glorious than ever.

BTW

Hairspray is the modern movie musical for which I've so been longing.

It was shown on a flight I took recently. If it played on every flight I ever took, I would be a happy camper.

I watched it again on Thanksgiving at my folks' house.

Both times I realized about 2/3 of the way through that I'd had a big stupid grin on my face during the entire movie.

Much as I adore musicals, I didn't really want to like it - I've simply an abundance of fondness for the John Waters original. Plus, I didn't find the thought of John Travolta in drag to be hysterically funny solely on principle, as so many seem to have. But, shit, it won me over with the opening number alone. It's really fun, it's really well done, & it's just fantastic. It achieves a rare feat in managing to be super-sweet without being saccharine. Completely simplistic, but if you want, like, "a socialist critique of a capitalist world", go watch G.W. Pabst's film version of The Threepenny Opera & chase it with Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera or something equally drab.

Just don't invite me, because I'm gonna be busy singing along at the top of my lungs to "Good Morning Baltimore".

Holy Crap

I haven't been to a first-run theater besides Cinema 21 (a special case, since the first screenings on Saturday & Sunday are $4, & that's all I go to) since I saw Children of Men way back in, I think, January of this year. But, of course, my beloved Todd Haynes' new film I'm Not There opens today, & obviously I am trotting out to see it as soon as Aprilly possible (meaning, methinks, Friday). Oddly enough considering Mr. Haynes resides in Portland, it's playing in only one theater - the Regal Fox Tower 10. It's a short bus ride or healthy walk away, which is nice (hurrah for city life!), but in researching the showtimes I discovered the freakin' ticket prices. And apparently I am way, way out of the loop here.

Eight dollars for a matinee?!?!?! And, of course, ten dollars for a regular showing.

I'm absolutely flabbergasted that anybody, anywhere, still goes to these chain multiplexes. I mean, unless I'm mistaken, most of the movies that play at such theaters are kind of awful. Even if they are "independent", whatever that means nowadays.

I now feel completely justified in waiting for movies to come to the Laurelhurst, CineMagic, Avalon or Bagdad. Those multiplex hos can lick on these nuts & suck the dick.

P.S. Heh. Look at the sidebar - I'm watching, reading & listening all Haynes. If this were a Douglas Sirk movie, it would so be Magnificent Obsession.

Curry, Knitting & the Infected

No single theme for me today!

1) Pho Van is fantastic. I'm only sad that I'd never previously dined there. Delicious & no more than a hop, skip & jump (meaning ~12 blocks) away! I got the vegetarian curry, & while I was sorely disappointed that the sugar snap peas described on the menu were lacking, there was a surprise bonus of those tiny ears of corn!, which I can't help but find adorably cute, as recompense.

2) Xavier the Bitey Bastard decided Monday night that the tip of one of my #7 bamboo knitting needles would make a tasty treat. So I trotted over to the Yarn Garden last night - luckily, I needed some cotton yarn anyway - for a new pair. But what I found instead were these:


Which you can find here. Honestly, I didn't really need light-up knitting needles, but (1) they are awesome & make me happy & (2) Le Garden was fresh out of wooden #7 needles, & if I have to knit with plastic, they'd damn well better light up. The #7s come in blue. Knit one, lite one, indeed!

3) At some point between 1996 & 2002, Danny Boyle became a fantastic filmmaker, at least based on 28 Days Later, which I finally watched. I mean, yeah, I liked Shallow Grave & Trainspotting enough to actually sit through A Life Less Ordinary (which caused me to avoid Boyle for well-nigh a decade) but they always seemed kind of...gimmicky. He exhibited unrestrained visual flair within equally flamboyant narratives featuring caricatured characters, which honestly just gets somewhat tiring to watch. But with 28 Days Later, he really got it right. He astonished me with beautiful imagery (no doubt partially attributable to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle). He did something I thought was impossible - made me find digital video not just passable, not merely acceptable, but actually & truly lovely. It's got to be the most visually stimulating, gorgeous horror movie I've ever seen. It's one of the most gorgeous movies, period, that I've seen in a good while. And on top of that, he managed to find the hearts of his characters. And on top of that, he made a movie that's scary. The last third or so gets a bit heavy-handed & obvious, & its metaphors start to weigh it down into tedium territory, but let's just blame screenwriter Alex Garland for that.


4) All right, it's time to admit it: Cillian Murphy is my latest movie star crush. It's taken me a long time to get to this point, because he's simply nothing like the people I tend to crush on. He's boyish yet somehow feminine with good bone structure, for heaven's sake. However, he did tell Jane magazine that the celebrity he'd like to make out with is Maggie Gyllenhaal. So at least we've got the same taste in girls. Also, he does have a few things that tend to be themes for me: (1) Voice. Anything with an accent gets an automatic cuteness boost. (1.a) Name. Fantastic first name, both written & spoken. (2) Eyes. His face is full of his eyes, & they are limpid pools of cerulean luminosity. (3) Demeanor. This is where I get weird. It's important to understand that my first-ever movie crush, at the age of eight, was David Bowie in Labyrinth. Technically, if you think babies are better than Goblin Kings with rockin' hair & tight pants, he was the bad guy. The first movie I ever saw Cillian Murphy in was Batman Begins. The second was Red Eye. He plays psychopaths in both. But apparently I go for that weird, not-nice thing. After David Bowie, there was John Malkovich as Valmont from Dangerous Liaisons, then David Thewlis as Johnny in Mike Leigh's brilliant Naked. (And if you've seen it, you'll know just how completely fucked up it is to crush on Johnny.) You can see where this is going. The point is, Cillian Murphy is beautiful & frequently dangerous, & this is a potent combination. I might add that I am now thoroughly excited about Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto. Murphy playing a cabaret singer in girl's clothes named "Kitten"? Yes, please.

But, y'know, there's a chance that maybe, just maybe, I have some sort of deep-rooted unconscious issues at work here:

I'm Not There

There is a lovely, lovely long article in the NYT Magazine's 7 October edition on Todd Haynes & his new film, called "This is Not a Bob Dylan Movie". Rather informative. Admittedly, I'm not exactly a Bob Dylan fan, but I'm not a hater either; I simply have had neither occasion nor impetus to seek his work out. All right, it is true that his voice kinda bugs me; but if somebody sat me down & said "You must listen to this", I most likely would.

Todd Haynes, however, is simply the greatest living American narrative filmmaker. End of sentence period. (Although it does bear mention that he is also the most truly avant garde narrative filmmaker in the U.S. - but this digression belongs in a worthier setting than I can provide at the moment.) So yes, I will be going to see I'm Not There on opening night. I will fork over my $10 or however much an evening show at a first-run theater costs nowadays.

Read the article. But really, if images such as these two do not foster immediate infatuation with this film's potential, then...well, I don't know. I don't have anything to say to you.

I Love The Laurelhurst

It is one of the joys of my life that the Laurelhurst Theater is a five-minute walk from my apartment.

$9 at any other movie theater might, just might, cover the price of admission.

$9 at the Laurelhurst buys me admission and a pitcher of PBR.

Plus an audience that gets as rowdy as I apparently do after drinking some beer. An audience that cheers when good things happen. An audience that will (thankfully) laugh rather than shush me when I get saucy & yell "Damn straight, fuckwad!" at the screen. An audience that, as both my friends ChrisAnn & Heather have pointed out, is a lot like us. It's disconcerting, to be sure, but you know what? It's also fun. Because this audience knows exactly when Johnny Castle walks up to the Housemans' table & says "Nobody puts Baby in the corner", & you know that they know it because you all say it as it happens. And erupt in shouts & applause.


Anyway, go see The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. It's really fun. What's it about? The world of competitive "Donkey Kong". Billy vs. Steve, & only one is the fuckwad of note. Go see it at the Laurelhurst if you can; if not, rent it when it comes out on video. I recommend getting some beer & some people who are like you, & will cheer when good things happen, & don't mind so much when you hurl obscenities at the bad guy.

And this weekend, they're showing Peter Jackson's Dead Alive! I will be there. If you've not seen it, it's...wonderful. I rented it as a teenager in Scio thinking it was going to be "scary". Ha!

Something To Believe In

Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain is the worst movie I've seen in quite some time. It is truly, tragically awful. The only thing I can say in its favor is that it's mercifully short (96 minutes).

It makes me sad that it's so terrible. I mean, this picture is pretty awesome:


But the film fails to achieve a balance betwixt its narrative & its magic. It can't decide whether it wants to adhere to a more traditional concept of story, & work its magic within those confines; or whether it wants to stretch its wings & take flight into a realm of pure imagination. The end result is that it fails to do either, & images that had the potential to be powerfully moving are instead giggle-inducing (like the one above).

I admire its refusal to explain itself in the beginning; it doesn't tell you why Tommy (Hugh Jackman) is both battling Mayans & meditating inside gold sparkles. But it does attempt to present a story in the present; that Tommy is some sort of brain tumor researcher whose wife, Izzy, just happens to be dying from a brain tumor. Izzy is played by Rachel Weisz, an actress I've never seen in a film before. Unfortunately, Aronofsky (her real-life partner) gives her precious little to do except smile luminously as she accepts her imminent death, so I have no idea whether she's any good or not.

The root of the film's problem is that it demands you merely accept Tommy & Izzy's love unquestioningly, but gives you no indication that it actually exists, other than present-day Tommy being totally obsessed with "saving" his wife. I didn't believe in their love, & I was upset that the film just expected me to believe it. The film is too head in the clouds to allow you to accept narrative conventions that would be easy to believe in a better told story (for example, I also watched Carol Reed's The Third Man this weekend, a walloping good yarn that was so expertly constructed I willingly forgave its lapses of logic).

On the other hand, the film also wants you to accept its magic. But it's too grounded in narrative to let the viewer's imagination have room to take flight. So it's just kind of gross when shaved-head-futuristic Tommy breaths on the dying tree he is insisting on saving, pretty much makes out with it, & then eats pieces of it. The film explains too much to allow the viewer to think.

It's disappointing that The Fountain is so singularly awful; I truly admire its intent. And it is a very unique construction within the realm of contemporary cinema, which is always cause for celebration. Darren Aronofsky is a extremely talented filmmaker, & I deeply admire his work (Pi; Requiem for a Dream). It's just that the film itself isn't any good.

A Sick Film Made By Sick People For Sick People

This post's title references an (in)famous remark made by one of the executives of the production company responsible for financing Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing. And Harvey Keitel don't even get nekkid in this one!

This film had a rather astounding impact on me.

One review I read claims that "Bad Timing tells an extremely simplistic story". Sure, if it were a movie about a psychoanalyst who met a pretty young thing & had an affair with her, & then the pretty young thing ended up in the ER, I would consider the story simplistic. But...that's not the story. That's more or less the "Once upon a time" part of the story. The subtitle of the film at the time of its release was "A Sensual Obsession". That's the story. That's the plot. That's what happens. The film focuses less on standard plot machinations & chooses to make its story the repercussions of obsession.

And the film explores at extraordinary length an inherent factor in any romantic relationship - the desire to make somebody be who you really (secretly) want them to be. As Alex Linden (Art Garfunkel) theorizes when he & Milena (Theresa Russell) view Klimt's "The Kiss", the reason for the lovers' apparent passion & joy is because "they don't know each other that well yet" - meaning Klimt's subjects haven't discovered what would make the other perfect, hence they can still maintain the illusion of perfect happiness with each other. The original title of the film was, in fact, Illusions. Indeed, one of the film's first lines sums everything up - encountering each other at a party for the first time, Alex & Milena speak briefly. Alex says, "Why spoil the mystery? If we don't meet, there's always the possibility it could have been perfect," before confessing that he's not sure what that means.

Roeg acknowledges that nobody is immune from that sickness peculiar to relationships. Everybody wants to change something about their lover, & it's the question of whether you can ultimately accept that you can't accomplish this that often determines the longevity, & conclusion, of your relationship. The film offers a series of mirrors in a range of reflectiveness - Alex & Det. Netusil (Harvey Keitel, whose performance may or may not have been good; I spent every moment of his screen time trying to discern whether he was playing an Austrian or an American detective); Alex & Stephen (Denholm Elliott), Milena's Czech husband. The starkest mirror, the most absolute in terms of respecting the natural contrariness of the "mirror image", is betwixt Alex & Milena. When he laments that Milena will never change, she points out that "If you weren't who you are, I wouldn't have to". It's one of the most telling lines in the film, for it emphasizes that insofar as Alex wishes to tame the spirited Milena, Milena herself wishes that Alex would change. So the wild free-spirit is not immune to the sickness of wanting to mold somebody.

Subtlety is not a characteristic of Nicolas Roeg's. Although he never quite crosses over into Ken Russell territory, the filmic techniques that no doubt were fresh & new in the 1970s often seem a bit dated now. I think particularly of the cross-cutting employed in Walkabout to contrast the barbarianism of the modern world with the civility of the natural (Aboriginal) world. It's a bit obvious & overly dramatic. However, Roeg employed the same sort of labyrinthine structure in many of his films - the cross-cutting, the non-linearity. Bad Timing in a way reminds me of Atom Egoyan's magnificent The Sweet Hereafter, in that each film maker achieves the zenith of the labyrinthine structure (I would argue that Egoyan's style is a bit more akin to those Russian dolls (where each one reveals another) than Roeg's maze-like editing) in which they excel. To be somewhat more succinct, Bad Timing & The Sweet Hereafter are the pinnacle of each maker's distinctive style, in which technique & subject matter coalesce & commingle to masterful effect.

As for the actors, Theresa Russell is simply wonderful. It's difficult to believe she was twenty two when this was made. She has a unique quality, a definite beauty, but not in the cookie-cutter mode of, say, Jessica Alba. In fact, trying to imagine any contemporary young actress achieving what Russell did is well-nigh impossible. The few reviews that one can find online tend to carp on Garfunkel's wooden acting style, as though it were a fault of the film. I, on the other hand, thought it was, if not fully intentional, still rather effective. Because it helps obfuscate what otherwise might be as painfully obvious as those scenes in Walkabout - it keeps the viewer from guessing right away the lengths to which Alex's character is capable of going. What his "angle" is. How, exactly, Milena got to where she is at the film's beginning & what, if any, role Alex played in it. When the characters say they love each other, it's impossible to believe, because by that point all you see is their obsession with each other, & with each other's flaws. Is that a fault of the acting? If so, then it's an excellent fault.

The Criterion DVD release of Bad Timing marked the film's very first time on video. Twenty four years after it first came out. I expect the critical backlash was quite strong at the time of its release (frankly, I literally have a very hard time believing this film was ever made at all, which is a sad commentary on the current state of cinema), & I can't imagine a lot of people went to see it in the theater, but apparently the main point of contention barring a video release was the film's soundtrack. I'm not surprised - the soundtrack features Tom Waits, Keith Jarrett (the Koln Concert, no less), Billie Holiday & the Who, amongst others. (Roeg actually tells a funny story in the DVD extras about how Jarrett's music came to be used in the film.) Luckily, the good folks at Criterion managed to rescue this film from oblivion.


I say luckily, & I mean it. It makes me indescribably happy that this film exists. But at the same time, I found the experience of watching it unsettling in the extreme. Extraordinarily disturbing. In fact, I found it more disturbing than David Cronenberg's Videodrome, which heretofore was kind of my epitome of disturbing cinema. After the film, I had to go to my video store. The experience was no less unsettling than the film. I literally couldn't make eye contact with people. I wanted to be nowhere near them & I was terrified that one would try to talk to me. The overheard & kindly put suggestion of a boyfriend to his girlfriend that she take some ibuprofen was met with disdain by the woman, who coldly said "I'm going to deal with it on my own. Why are you being such an asshole?" On the surface afforded to me, of course, it seemed that the woman was the asshole. But who's to say? Did they even understand the mechanisms of their relationship?

The ultimate mirror of the film is the film itself, for it is the mirror which Roeg wields at the audience. Said Roeg later of the film:

"I made a film called Bad Timing that I thought everybody would respond to. It was about obsessive love and physical obsession. I thought this must touch everyone, from university dons down. But it had a curious effect on people..."