Enemies of Logic

JAMES CAMERON, COULD YOU PLEASE TELL YOUR 3D TO STOP DESTROYING MY CINEMA?!

2010-05-01T23:01:00.001-07:00

James Cameron thinks 3D will never die, but regrets it. Wants people to make films in 3D and not do it in Post-Production. The issue with this is he think his "stero-scopic" 3D is a) different than the old Blue/Green 3D, b) wants people to actually think its real 100% 3D experience, and c) he has no problem with the fact that film art is forged out of the fact film is not 3D.

There are still limitations to even Cameron's camera. All it can do is mimic "reality." If you want an actual 3D experience you will need to shoot a film at your eye level standing up and then design a theater as to fit the specifications of you standing up in that shot. Then you need to shoot one static shot with two cameras and then project that shot with two projectors, not meshing the shot together like 3D film does in editing, but doing it with the projectors. That single shot will be the closest you get to 3D, but still doesn't a screen end?

I see this push towards "actually being there," with technology that is hardly getting you there a real threat. I agree with Cameron that its worse when a film does it in post-production just to get on the bandwagon. Still, I really think this will die off because some films just shouldn't be made in 3D. He thinks this is different than the 50s when red/green 3D was used, but I see it as the same. Those 50s 3D horror films were used to contend with television, now Hollywood has to contend with people not going to the movies for even more reasons (like they are making poor films, piracy, etc.) So they have found, through Cameron, a way to get them out of the dumps. I just think they need to not think of this as a golden parachute and get "real."

Film is not reality. Here are my views on this and 3D summed up in a quote:
"Art begins where mechanical reproduction leaves off... The two-dimensional relationships, of course, become almost as slight, and the manner in which one object appears behind another in space will be so obvious that the projective as well as any inherent symbolic connections will hardly make themselves felt at all. Engineers are not artists... It vexes the engineer that film is so lacking in stereoscopic quality. His ideal is exactly to imitate real life." -Rudolf Arnheim

Why Do We Hate Capitalists?

2010-01-22T07:05:00.000-08:00

Daybreakers, by the brothers Michael and Peter Spiering, is a interesting take on the vampire story. It is fun due to it's goriness, but also it isn't a bad film. Being that, most horror films fall apart in the areas of story, pace and mood, due to the directors not knowing what they are doing. Or, to better state it, horror directors sometimes have the mind of a 13 year-old. The Spiering's kind of make a movie that works, but their political statement could of been more polemic and this is what I want to stress.

To elaborate on why Daybreakers work and why it doesn't, I start with a quote about vampires by anthropologist David Graeber. He states that early vampire tales were "about the failure of the French Revolution--which was supposed to kill off all those bloodsucking aristocrats in their castles and usher in a rational world of liberty, equality, fraternity and enlightened commercial self-interest." Daybreakers takes place ten years in the future where a vampire epidemic has broken out, turning 95% of the population into vampires. The 5% of humans left are hunted and harvested for blood by the mega-corporation Bromley Marks (it's CEO played by Sam Neill), which seems to be the government and the whole economy. I mean, they got the product that every one needs and wants. So, its just Capitalism 101 or whatever Adam Smith posits.

If one sticks with traditional vampire-lore, Bromley Marks and it's CEO are the modern advanced capitalism take on the old story. Here in lies the problem, the Spiering brothers don't make us understand why it is good to be human (or the Other or oppressed in this film) and why we should give a damn if they get turned into human vegetables to be harvested for the blood. Other than the fact we self-identify with the human's Bromley Marks is harvesting. The vampires in the film are sexy and never die. The humans are dirty and rugged in not a cool way. The only mention of why it's good to be human is that they have a "soul." The thing is it didn't seem like the vampire's lacked one, as it seemed they were pretty conscious and compassionate. Just, when they lacked blood, something in short supply due to a depletion of humans (and a preference to real blood by Bromley Marks instead of artificial), they turned into violent Hobbesian bat creatures. The film then is smart, but it doesn't contain the intelligence or depth needed. I mean, if they want to make a statement about the evils of monopoly (the head of Bromley Marks rather keep people vampires than give the world a cure) then we need to know why it is good to be human.

The film then had parallels to Romero's Land Of The Dead, but in that film we were informed why we should be on the side of the proles (the zombies) and not the capitalists (the people living in Fiddler's green (who were basically run by George W. Bush)). Other than the fact that Bromley Marks was bad and the lack of blood lead to anarchy in the world of Daybreakers, I didn't feel it focused enough on what makes us human. Something Del Toro does in his films or the recent Pathology attempted and succeeded at. They bring a human element into the story and make it a story about humanity, which most horror films don't even care about. Still, unlike most horror, the film narrative worked, had character development and actually attempted to have a pace and mood. Also, it had a look reminiscent of Proyas' Dark City, which they pulled off pretty well on a pretty small budget. It is then a step in the right direction for horror. It also leaves us with a statement about our future, one were corporations have patents on the genome for disease and cancer cures, and also want to privatize the air and water supplies. Daybreakers just doesn't explain though why this future would be hell.

PONTYPOL AND THE INTERNATIONAL: GREAT FILMS OF 2009

2009-06-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

The International and Pontypol are two films that came out this year. They are both about ideas: the later is about the “idea” and the former is a meditation on ideas. Each deserve immense praise.

Tom Tykwer's The International is a incredible film, but was one that was unfairly dismissed by American critics. Why do I think this is? The film has more European sensibilities than American ones, not only in the story and style, but also in the politics. This is shown by the film's very anti-bussiness stance and not one of the moderate's like “monopolies are bad” or “money needs to be regulated.” The film actually makes a surprising consideration, that transnational business operations maybe the cause of true corruption. The film postulates this position by showing the immense power the large banks have over everything. Something shown structurally with socio-political examples and masterfully through visuals by showing the foreboding architecture of the buildings that the transnationals possess. Tykwer then, pushes a polemical visual motif, that of structural limitations, symbolized by the immensely scary structures of the transnationals buildings.

One major political point that may confuse American's is a conversation between a British rogue cop main character and a old Russian communist. The film generally doesn't deride communism and constitutes a reality were maybe some communists were actually communists. The effects of McCarthyism in America destroyed this spark of realization I think for many American viewers, but for me it actually heightened it. Something I felt was symbolized by the American character spying on the conversation between them. She sees their discussion through a crack and tries to make out the positions. Her hiding I believe is metaphor for her fear of the possibility of radical alternatives. Then, her character ultimately, after this seen, returns to her “bourgeois” lifestyle. Still, I think the film posits that the radical might be possible and not dangerous, like most American's believe.

Overall, the film posits a anarchistic position on business, that people must work outside of the state to achieve the disillusion of business. It pushes this though through multiple positions, which I think makes this film a meditation. The first, that art may have the ability to deride the dominance of capitalism. Something eloquently symbolized by a shoot out in the Guggenheim Museum. Another position is that people may need to take the sabotage of capitalism into their own hands through vigilantism. This then is suggested through two forms in the film, violence and the spread of knowledge. The later of these opinions I feel Tykwer was giving the most hope too, but the former I feel was either a slight bit of pessimism or just that he was making an action movie. Either way, I feel the film postulated an amazing position about the current world. One that Noam Chomsky has pointed out:

“Corporation are tyrannical organizations. They are totalitarian institutions. In fact, if you look at them…that what is a corporation…it is an unaccountable private tyranny in which power comes from above, from the owners and the managers, orders are transferred down below and inserted inside the system. You take your orders below and above and you transmit them below. At the very bottom people have the right to rent themselves to this tyrannical system. It is essentially unaccountable to the public except by weak regular career apparatus. In fact, it is a totalitarian institution. And if you look at their intellectual roots, it happens that they come out of the same neo-Hegelian conceptions of the rights of organic entities that led to bolshevism and fascism. We have three forms of twentieth century totalitarianism: bolshevism, fascism and corporation. Two of them, fortunately, were dissolved, disappeared mostly. The third remains. It shouldn’t. Power should be in the hand of populations.”

Another note about this film, many were angry that the characters in this film, were as one critic put it, “not humans.” Well, I believe this was due to the more european nature of the film. The characters grow, but also stand for political entities or positions. Our self identification with them then should have been a struggle.

On Pontypol:

Pontypol is one of the best zombie horror films I have seen in a long time. It is about ideas and how they can spread through communication. It understands then that zombie horror films have always had metaphors, but this film is not about that. It is ultimately a probing studying into what a metaphor even is. I don't want to give much away though about this one. I think the synopsis's of this film trick people into thinking it is a duller experience than it is. Actually it is closer to the intelligence of a Cronenberg film mixed with a book on socio-linguistics. Something not surprising since the film is Canadian. I MUST STRESS THOUGH THE GREATNESS OF THIS FILM. Please go out and see it. It is a horror film, but not a typical one, so don't think you will get overly frightened. You probably will spend more time thinking about the astute subject matter presented than worry about the “zombies.”

Convention Comes Together: A Look At Favreau's Iron Man

2008-05-03T23:13:00.000-07:00

John Favreau's Iron Man is a rich film. It is also not a particularly daring one.

It's competent in a way that is enriching and entertaining, pandering and politically safe, an antiseptic big budget movie and a film with some respect for letting art grow. It is a craftsman's film and also one that doesn't suck.

The plot is a well worn one that you could probably guess before ever setting foot in the theater. Tony Stark is playboy that don't give a fuck bout nobody. Something terrible happens. BAD ARABS enter the scene. Innocent people hurt in front of Tony. He becomes super man. Mentor figure is actually behind BAD ARABS. Face off at the end. Subplot involving complicated love affair that-just-can't-quite-happen between Tony and Secretary. Safe plot that makes money and doesn't take any risk at making any more or less money and puts the burden of making the film fun and entertaining entirely on the mise en scene.

There are little pushes beyond the ordinary. Tony and Pepper Pots do have a somewhat interesting relationship. Things are complicated in a believable and exciting way (Gwyneth Paltrow really sells the whole "RD Jr. I wanna hump you" vibe) and modern (in at least an idealised male fantasy kind of way (it's totally cool with her that Tony is just fucking chicks and leaving them for her to throw out in the morning, she stills loves him without reservation)). And there some little steps beyond the expected in the action scenes.

The story structure is also superb and well paced, but superb in the sense of good story telling rather than, again, being at all inventive.

The mise en scene is not, on the face of it, very adventurous either. The camera work is pretty conventional. A fairly pedestrian dutch angle in the film that would have been totally lost in a movie like Crank provides a potent emotional punch in Iron Man. The sets, costumes, etc are all very pleasingly designed. The lighting is also nice. But while these elements do shine like spectacle should there's also nothing to set them apart from the pack, an approach one could contrast with Christopher Nolan and Sam Raimi's in their superhero films.

The only really arty thing I could find in the whole film was how Favreau seemed to treat his actors. There are many scenes that Robert Downey Jr. seems to have been allowed to almost direct himself. The "love-in" press conference in particular seems so much more apart of Downey's rhythm than the film's, not to say that the rhythm's don't integrate. Jeff Bridges seems to have also been given a free hand. I imagine the segway and cigar idea (to take just one idea from a performance with some pretty good ones) being totally his own. It belongs to his character and it seems like the character belongs to Bridges. Even the BAD ARAB characters seem to have been given respect as actors, making them more human than they might have been under another director. But beyond the weirdness of a free Bridges and Downey Jr. still the movie doesn't break any new ground.

So why did I feel like I liked this film without reservation? Why do I not remember forgiving the filmmakers once for the sake of a fun night at the movies? Why do I not wish this was Alfonso Cuaron directed this movie?

It's for two reasons:

1. This is simply a well made movie. There is nothing new about it. It's a collection of elements that no one looked very hard to find and appropriate. It doesn't really on the stylistic tricks invented by some anonymous Estonian 8mm animator from 1938 to make for pleasant images. The story tellers just knew what they were doing. They simply did their jobs well.

2. Many of us would like to say we are interested in art because we want progress. Because we want to do something different, that we want to break down walls, that want to conquer a new frontier. But really, how many walls can you break down before you don't have house? How far can you travel before you start going in circles? What will you do when space is the final frontier? Have you ever been to space? It sucks out there. At some point we need to say enough. At some point we need to say "thanks Picasso, Ornette, Godard: we're free. Now what?"

Iron Man doesn't answer this question by itself, it is not great cinema, it is not our savior, but it helps build the case. This a "now what?" generation and movies like Iron Man point more to our survival rather than films like Speed Racer that seem to point to our destruction.

One reservation though: Iron Man almost had a great place to step apart from the pack. There was a plot element that really should not have been trample over and translated into a conventional movie plot. And that was: what an un-super hero Tony Stark is. He's not Superman, born with super powers. He's not Spiderman given them as the result of an accident. He's not even Batman who's super power is being a rich guy with lots of free time, what changes Tony Stark is not becoming more superior than the average man. It's that he becomes more vulnerable.

The narrative is that of a disabled person's fantasy. What is the most pathetic looking device that keeps people alive? An oxygen tank. You can argue that this is immoral to say, but the image is what it is and people who wear these tanks know it. There's a look on their faces like they expect the other wolves to take out the weaker member of their pack any moment. We understand our selves in relationship to images of normalcy, virility, goodness, etc.. How we measure up is how we understand ourselves in terms of value. Moral TV and Movie creators have tried to readjust the images of the disabled, and thus their value. But a moral image is fundamentally dishonest as well as unnecessarily unpleasant.

But, what image does Iron Man offer us of a disabled man? Virile, normal, attractive, rich, confident Tony Stark with not an oxygen mask attached to his face but a fucking car battery running his heart!* And then this man returns to life as a sexy international playboy and superhero that can fly and kick ass and solve the international conflicts he observes on CNN. All while having an ostentatious glowing pace maker sticking out of his chest. All while powering his suit from the same source that keeps him living. That's a narrative for the disabled. It's "kind" but it's not "good". It's more Shaft than Crash, but then again it's no Killer of Sheep**. It had the chance to shift the image in a way a paraplegic on special episode of Desperate Housewives couldn't.

To some extent it is there throughout the film, but in another sense it felt swept under the rug. Lost in the pace of this conventional action film. Maybe that's fair enough, to have Tony Stark say: well I guess my heart don't work good, I'll make another, ok I'm gonna go bed ladies and kill people now and move on with my life, but really I wish that was one place they didn't play it safe, that maybe they stuck their necks out a little and made that a part of the character's humanity.

Also I would be remiss if I didn't mention Terrence Howard. I really liked him in Hustle & Flow but here he didn't really wow me at any point. I know he's supposed to get a bigger role if they make another film and I hope that's his time to step out, but here he was playing one note, and not Joel McCarae's. I do like his and Robert's on-screen friendship, but I'm hoping for something different in the sequel (which they set up excellently in the best "if you stay for all the credits we'll give you a treat" sequence I've ever seen.

*I know the car battery does not actually run his heart, but that point kind of gets changed as the movie progesses by the filmmakers themselves. It's symboliclly and eventually literally his heart, you fucking pedantic fanboy fucks who don't even read this blog I bet.
**To just speak in kind dishonest hyperbole.

Herzog at Penn 10/24/07

2007-10-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

Werner Herzog recently gave a two hour speech at the University of Pennsylvania entitled Was The 20th Century A Mistake? I don't know if anyone else recorded it in any sort of official context but I did with a shitty computer microphone and a minidisc player and - I must tell you - it was magical. The actual talk (which had nearly nothing to do with it's title (which I think came about mostly out the hosts' need to assert their own intelligence and sense of importance (which was a theme they carried over into the "interview" itself))) not the recording, which suffers from bad microphones (theirs, which kept cutting out and getting static), my fidgeting, my laughing, and at one point my getting a phone call from my Mom. It's not that bad, but apologies are still in order.

You miss a lot by not actually being in the same room as him. Seeing him is one thing: the eyes that sag under the bulbous forehead emerging from his skull like a second birth into raw and dangerous space, the obvious physical fortitude, the leather bomber jacket, the illustration of his face and hands when he talks, but more than anything else (to parallel something he points out later in the interview) what's great about being near him is not reading the body but something much more receptive. Like being in the same room as some really fulfilling radiator.

All of it gives his message more weight, he seems not like the dangerously insane Greek myth of a man snickered about at ironic film school cheese parties. He seems like a man in possession of an essential sanity. A sanity that never turned away with age. A sanity that embraces real risk and demands it of every other member of the human race. You know you're listening to a profound man if you're laughing at what he has to say. Like David Lynch, Herzog can tell a joke but he can get a laugh much more easily by simply speaking from his heart.

Here is an intro for the event by the assistant director of Penn's Cinema Studies who has an affected Italian accent.

Italian Guy

Here is an intro for Herzog by Nathaniel Kahn who directed My Architect.

Kahn's speech

The room it was held in (which I think maybe seated 200-250 people) was packed a good half hour before the show started and people were eventually told they could sit in the isles. Later though, they were told they actually couldn't block the isles as it was a fire hazard. Then they were told again and that the event would have to be canceled if they wouldn't leave. Then they were told the police had been called. Then the police had to come in the room and begin herding these fucking brats out of the hall. Then the cops had to argue with the really tenacious ones that refused to rise in the face of police intimidation. Then began the slowest fucking march of 20 people across a five foot line in space in the history of mankind. I included the audio of the last part of this experience for whatever reason you can find for it which is probably none. There's also audio of the montage of Herzog's films and the audience's reaction.

the wait
the montage

And here is Herzog:

Pt. 1
Pt. 2
Pt. 3
Pt. 4
Pt. 5
Pt. 6

Jean-Luc Godard's Favorite Films

2007-03-31T07:07:00.000-07:00

Godard is one of my favorite directors and I came upon a list of his favorite films from Cahiers du Cinema via Godard on Godard.

Ten Best American Sound Films(December 1963-January 1964 issue)
01. Scarface (Howard Hawks)
02. The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin)
03. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
04. The Searchers (John Ford)
05. Singin' in the Rain (Kelly-Donen)
06. The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles)
07. Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray)
08. Angel Face (Otto Preminger)
09. To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch)
10. Dishonoured (Josef von Sternberg)

Six Best French Films since the Liberation(January 1965 issue)
01. Le Plaisir (Ophuls)
02. La Pyramide humaine (Rouch)
03. Le Testament d'Orphee (Cocteau)
04. Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (Renoir)
05. Pickpocket (Bresson)
06. Les Godelureaux (Chabrol)

To see his favorite films for each year 1956-1965 click here

My movie site

2007-03-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

I'm currently in the last days of pre-production for my film "Tony Hawk". TH is a zombie horror film about a skateboarer living in a world over run with the living dead. Check out it's site at http://www.tonyhawkfilm.blogspot.com

Volver

2007-03-06T22:48:00.001-08:00

The first time I watched Volver the most impressive thing to me was what a casual thriller it was. The movie seems patterned after a Hitchcockian thriller but the only real tension is in waiting for the tension to start. Or as my sister put it ‘it was like the murder itself was the MacGuffin.’

But watching it the second time, knowing the plot, I was also struck by how fast the movie moves. The film was constantly being stirred. The camera and the characters are constantly moving. When they come to rest in the old aunt’s dinning room Penelope Cruz sweeps something off the table quickly, lest any dust settle. When you left a house you didn’t see the rest of the village, the wind just swept you against the wall of the building across the street. The only really solid picture you get of the setting was also the stillest place in the narrative, when the issues between Penelope Cruz and her mother are finally resolved.

That was the other thing that I got out of my second viewing. I had been told before seeing it the first time that the film was what a Hitchcock movie would be like if he had made women's films and definitely saw the truth of the comment. But since it was no longer a thriller for me, I was able to sink a little deeper into that side of the story. Into the moments of tenderness. The comforting, the forgiveness, the support. The movie was brilliant as an homage to Hitchcock. In its conception, preserving his angels so far away from his demons. From it’s referencing that strengthened and gave meaning to the film’s images. But even without all that, even without the murder, I’d still watch this movie just as a celebration of women and femininity.

If only for how hard it seems to be to make movies like this. I don’t claim to be a total student of film, but I’ve seen a lot of movies. And though I’ve seen a lot by people with a definite preoccupation with women, there aren’t that many where women are really all that human inside the story. I've read the problem is the phenomenon of “the Other”, when a certain character in a movie is part of a group (i.e. male, white, Christian) is set up as “me” and people from other groups in the movie (i.e. women, people from other races or religions) are “not me.” And that phenomenon exists in every aspect of the film: the narrative, the dialog, the photography, etc. I haven’t seen that many movies that exist without this problem. Godard makes the case in Notre Musique that Howard Hawks’ movies did and one could make the case that, in Notre Musique at least, Godard has left the problem behind as well.

So obviously, when a film like this appears, and it’s pretty freakin’ good, it’s worthy of some attention, even when the way femininity is presented isn’t that radical.

The film seems partially about how female adroitness could deal with a murder much better than filmmakers to this point have assumed. The female characters seem to glide on the wind that sweeps the film along. There’s no hesitation in the acts they put on, there’s no time for much anxiety. They constantly dance with and adapt to the situations they encounter in a way that seems distinctly feminine, borne out lives that are very much structured around dealing with other people.

That’s what’s really at the heart of this film. Femininity examined in a way not easily expressed in words but instantly understood in images. Almodovar brings you into this world with lingering shots on the female character’s backsides. He gives you the whole film in a bird’s eye view of Penelope Cruz, the cleavage of her beautiful, full breasts exposed above a kitchen sink in which she’s cleaning a knife. Her breasts aren't there just so you can go "hey, boobs!" her breasts are nearly her most important co-stars in the film. I would go as far as to say the whole film pivots around a really nice pair of tits. So much so that it'd be a shame to explain why. It’s the kind of story that needed to be a movie and in Volver in became a pretty freaking good one.

David Lynch!

2007-03-02T05:32:00.000-08:00

DAVID LYNCH THROUGH A AUTUERIST LENSE!

Late night pondering

2007-02-28T22:56:00.000-08:00

So I was just thinking about the scene in The Departed where Nicolson is grilling Decaprio to see if he's the rat. If I remember correctly, there's a shot where Nicoloson takes a sip of wine, spits it on the drawing he's made, and then there's a cut to show the picture splattered with wine. I was wondering why they bothered to show the second shot. If this scene was happening in front of you in real life, you wouldn't need to walk around the Irish mob boss's back to see what he spit on for it to have the same impact. There's something about film that is, for all the confusion it causes, less real than the real world. For whatever reason, film is more distant and you make choices for shots like these to pull people into it. To make it real.

The question then is, how real do you want film to be? Do you want to let it be what it is and work your story around it? Do you want to use it as a tool to get as close to what you conceptualise as possible?

Maybe this is news to no one, but maybe not.

Patron Saints of Cinema Hustle: David Lynch

2007-02-15T14:32:00.000-08:00

It took me awhile to get into David Lynch. I started way too early. All Eraserhead and Blue Velvet did for me in my early teens was make me feel ill and ruin my day. My impression of him was basically that he just thought of the most disturbing images he could imagine, filmed them, and duped lots of gullible people into believing it was art. Even after I made peace with his talent in The Straight Story, it took me awhile to appreciate what was really going in the crooked, labyrinthian, avant-gaurd mystery stories he’s more famous for. But now I think he’s one of the most amazing film makers of all time, especially considering the best stuff is from the 1980’s.

I don’t know of any other film makers that makes images like he does. He shows you things that you know make sense, at least to some obscure part of your brain, and sometimes have profound resonance with your own experience and pain but you may never be able to (if you wanted to) explain what you saw in words.

He claims to not be great at verbal communication, but his dialog is pretty fantastic too. One of my favorite scripts of all time is Blue Velvet’s. It’s so absurd, but also so uncommonly realistic. That’s essence of his style. He’s able to have such shockingly real scenes like Willem Dafoe’s death scene in Wild At Heart by letting the movie swing back to such completely ridiculous scenes as when Sailor is explaining to heavy metal enthusiasts how his snake skin jacket is a symbol of his “individuality and belief in personal freedom.” It seems like the only way you’re able to make really realistic scenes in film is by also letting your movie remind people how ridiculous and not-reality it is. To quote Godard (whose work also makes a case for this principle) ‘cinema isn’t the reflection of reality, it’s the reality of that reflection.’ It seems like there’s always something in a movie to remind you of that fact, and Lynch knows how strike the right balance with it.

Another thing I really like about Lynch is his sense of humor. His movies are, of course, funny. The director was laughing all the way through Isabella Rossellini’s rape scene on the set of Blue Velvet. But what I think is really his accidental/intentional stroke of comic genius is his attitude in interviews on shows like Jay Leno’s and David Letterman’s. The man is completely honest, and it’s funny, but people laugh at him like they’d laugh at a crack addict, like they'd laugh at the elephant man. They don’t get the brilliant, unintentional joke that is that the people don’t realize that a)what he's saying is beautiful or true and b)he knows he’s being funny. The joke is on everyone who doesn’t get it. And the best part is that the man is just honest and this situation forms around him. He just becomes absorbed in the secret, ironic sense of humor that’s a part of the fabric of the universe.

That’s also David Lynch: a smart dude, but also one who never takes credit for his own good ideas. Any serious fan of David Lynch whose watched the occasional interview or picked up some quotes knows that getting ideas to Lynch is like going fishing. He recognizes he has no control over when and how they come or, after they come, how they will develop themselves. It seems like that’s what it takes to make great art, just to have great philosophy. Or just to have great clarity.

And because of that attitude, it seems like he’s been able to live a really rich artistic experience. He brings art with him everywhere. It’s in his clothes. It’s in his hand gestures. It’s in the introductions on his shorts DVD. It’s in the way he talks. It’s in his hair. And he’s not bound by any kind of occupation. Any title. He’s a great script writer. He’s a great film maker. He made some genuinely cool music with his film score composer, Angelo Badalamenti and a pop singer named Julee Cruise (not for films, just to make some cool music (although some of the songs have shown up in movies)). He makes cool furniture. He’s a good painter, photographer, sculpture, and thinker*.

He may not be a happy guy. His films and just appearance point away from that. But he does get to do what he loves. He gets to be ‘the dreamer that lives his dreams’. And though he probably does have some ego, he ultimately does seem to do what he does because he loves art.

From the very, very little I know about Jacque Derrida, I’m sure this kind of cult building will make him, if not spin, at least turn over uncomfortably in his grave. And that gives me pause. I really agree with his statement that “the death of author is the birth of the reader”, but I still can’t help my hero worship. Maybe it’s saved a little bit by being interested in Lynch through the “how” of his movies rather than the “what” of the person that they come through. I’m not going to talk about his alleged misogyny. He’s right to say Dorthy Vallens is just one female character in one story. It only becomes a problem if we’re worried about supporting the work or letting ourselves get into the work of and thus be connected to a misogynist. It’s just not what art’s about. It’s just not what art is. You can’t say part of him isn’t in his movies, but, especially with a person like Lynch, his movies are not his to make. They’re his to bear. Or to ruin. And, more than most filmmakers, he tends to avoid the latter. And I suspect that that's all genius really is.

*He has some pretty cool stuff to say about film in this interview he did with a Scottish interviewer Mark Cousins. This is just one of a couple clips on GooTube, I forget which one he talks about The Eye of The Duck and stuff, I'll look through it later.

Karl Starkweather's Top 25 Films

2007-02-08T06:00:00.001-08:00

25. The Shining
24. The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
23. The Third Man
22. Apocalypse Now
21. Yojimbo
20. Breathless ("À bout de souffle")
19. Touch of Evil
18.Branded To Kill (“Koroshi No Rakuin”)
17. Dancer in the Dark
16. Julien Donkey-Boy
15. Mulholland Drive
14. Band Of Outsiders (“Bande à part”)
13. Seven Samurai (“Shichinin no samurai”)
12. The Passion of Joan Of Arc (“La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc”)
11. 8 1/2
10. Metropolis
9. Le Samouraï
8. The Big Sleep
7. The Bicycle Thief (“Ladri di biciclette”)
6. My Life to Live (“Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux”)
5. Taxi Driver
4. Psycho
3. A Tokyo Story
2. Weekend
1. Dawn of the Dead
“If I was told that I could only watch one movie for the rest of my life, I would choose Dawn of The Dead. HOLLA ATCHO BOY!”

Cool Stuff @ International House

2007-02-07T16:45:00.000-08:00

All these are $5 to students/seniors and $7 general admission.

Friday, February 23 at 7pm:
Half-Cocked: dir. Suki Hawley, USA, 1994, 16mm, 90 mins, b/w

Ian Svenonius from Nation of Ulysses stars in this move that looks pretty cool .

Thursday, March 1 at 7pm (Part of A Liberated Cinema: Feminism and Beyond):
Invisible Adversaries: dir. Valie Export, Austria, 1977, 16mm, 112 mins, color, German w/ English subtitles

"Breaking free of conventional unities of body, space and time, this early feature by one of Europe's leading feminist filmmakers is a haunting excursion into psychic disintegration and crumbling identity. It loosely covers one year in the life of Anna, a young Viennese photographer increasingly convinced that the Hyksos, a hostile alien force, are invading people's bodies and responsible for the decay and rising violence around her. Valie Export skillfully exploits montage and integrates video, performance and installation art with elements from Cubism, Surrealism, Dada and avant-garde cinema."

Friday, March 2 at 7pm (Part of A Liberated Cinema: Feminism and Beyond):
Number Two (Numero Deux): dir. Jean-Luc Godard, France/Switzerland, 1975, 35mm, 88 mins, color, French w/ English subtitles

"Claiming the film to be a “remake” of his debut feature film Breathless, Godard’s Numero Deux is a far more complicated outing than any of his previous works. Co-written with his wife, Anne-Marie Meiville, the film dissects a family relationship from just about every angle. In addition to the familiar “Godardian” themes of class, violence and politics, the film looks at the various sexual and emotional issues that confront a married couple. The unique use of video and television monitors serves to reinforce the deconstructive approach to the characters inner and outer lives."

Saturday, March 3 at 8:30pm (Part of A Liberated Cinema: Feminism and Beyond):
Born in Flames : dir. Lizzie Borden, USA, 1983, 35mm, 90 mins, color

"Directed by Lizzie Borden (Working Girls), feminist classic Born in Flames is the futuristic tale of the turmoil that still brews years after a "peaceful" social revolution. Thwarted by a system which rejects its minorities, a group of women band together in an effort to gain control of the state owned media. With humor and style, the film combines the many cadences of the women's movement – militant, moderate, hip hop rap, punk cool - to suggest the possibility of a unified voice."

Saturday, March 24 at 7:30pm:
Street Trash: dir. Jim Muro, USA, 1987, 35mm, 102 mins, color

"Street Trash stands as one of the most outrageous gore-comedies of the 1980s. The rotgut booze Tenafly Viper can cause much more than a hangover... drink some and you'll melt within seconds! Join a cast of screwballs and revel in the grue and gore in this subversive little gem of a cult classic."

The writer of Street Trash, Roy Frumkes, is showing his rare 35mm print of Street Trash and his never-before-seen documentary about the making of George A. Romero's Land Of The Dead, Dream Of The Dead. Sick! If Roy Frumkes sounds familiar it is probally because he did the best movie ever, "Dawn Of The Dead", documentry, "Document Of The Dead" which is a pretty impressive documentry if your into horror and Romero.

Film Essay #1

2007-02-07T15:11:00.000-08:00

The cultural imperative to finding meaning in the universe has created a action. An action that is a requisite for existing in reality. This action, the high five, is the exchange of an arm raised slap between one of your hand’s and another person’s hand. The high five is done in admiration of a deed presented in the moment by a person in a arm’s length distance. It can also be done in collective appreciation of an event occurring at the moment or in the past. The high five can also be simply used as a greeting that bears no meaning. The gesture being equal parts existential, rational and absurdist is astounding. It’s copious use’s imply a perfect and complete use of out meta-psychical experience. The high five can discern between our social calumniations about our lives. Yet, the high five can also exist within a realm of incongruity.
With this observation the high five can be used as a device to enjoy great art. Art in this case being the film which is a story or event recorded by a camera as a series of moving images and shown in a cinema or home. The high five’s ability to offer admiration without speaking or even eye contact makes it an obligatory aid. A decisive tool in communal realization of the beauty and genius of the art being shown in the cinema; where silence is a necessity to the experience of watching the film.
It’s vital nature can also be seen in the abodes of cinéphiles and ciné-familiars for it’s method will not intrude on a film watching experience (as a word or words would). The high five is therefore a collective gift for the cultural betterment of society. For the high five lacks the claim of either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat.
This social acceptance on all levels (except for aged (and unnecessary) Judy Dench loving elderly) of the practice of the high five can better film viewing greatly. While watching a recent film like Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children Of Men” or a classic film like Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” you can high five at certain moments of excellence. For example “Children Of Men” and their use of steady cam long shots. Also for example “Breathless” and it’s excellent use of jump cutting. These examples should get some recognition for their creativity and beauty. With the high five they can and it can be done easily. It’s facile nature lacking monetary need to be preformed is admirable. It also contains an appeal that allows it to be used by anyone lower, middle or upper crest. So after the high five is exchanged between two consenting people a cinematic moment is cherished. While if the high five were not exchanged the moment would be kept locked away in the minds of the viewer. This could mean the auteur would maybe never getting the props he or she deserved.
The auteur benefits greatly from the wonderful slap of two consenting people’s hands. The raised arm of the high five symbolizes positivity and strength. The use of the high five bears several uses all of which for film are absolutely necessary. It’s allowance of two people to communally respect a work or a hot girl (or guy) is astounding. It’s incredible that the high five’s reign is growing and the loud talking from the populous in cinema halls of yesteryear will turn into slap happy playgrounds. Allowing two people to give props to a work of art and induce a positive experience. While at the same time possibly bringing people together who usually wouldn’t be together (except for the aged (and unnecessary) Judy Dench loving elderly) through respect for most likely the most popular form of visual art (billions upon billions enjoy movies every year). This social shift through respect of this art will be done with the high five and will lead towards closing the gap between the lower, middle and upper classes. This collectiveness will cause a government to disperse for the people will respect and care for each other through mutual aid. Societies issues will cease to exist and people will only have to deal with peace. Simply, all of this can be achieved by giving your bro or brodette a high five at your local movie theater when something rad occurs.

Actresses That Give Me A Hard-On (And When I Knew)

2007-02-06T02:52:00.000-08:00

Barbara Stanwyck (dial-up might not like these pictures). I don't know when I fell in love with Miss Stanwyck. Maybe it was The Lady Eve when she proved herself the cutest, evilest, kittenishest, sexiest woman ever filmed. She was so good. She was sexy to the point of being slightly perverse. Betty Page in bondage gear has nothing on Barbara Stanwyck in a pair of black gloves. And her mouth, if like Iggy Pop you were going to ask to be kissed "like the ocean breaze", that's the mouth to do it with. Her eyes are her bread and butter, but that smile is her real jewel.

There are some movies I don't like her in. Though I love The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, it's just not a role I can like her in more than her ability to play the part. I think it has something to do with her wardrobe. It's like the element that made her sexual appeal feel so wrong turned around and just made her look plain unappealing. Like old ladies who wear crayon red lipstick on their hairy lips.

Veronica Lake. I've only seen her in Sullivan's Travels, but really that was enough for me. Partly for her hilarious gattling gun comedic delivery and partyly just for her being such an adorable sex kitten. Her charm is her face and hair. In Sally Potter's Orlando the main character states her desire not drown in 'the milk of female kindness'. I used to sympathize with her up and until I saw my first image of Veronica Lake, who always seems on the verge of melting away into a puddle of that kind of femininity. Frankly I would trade a limp to be able to go with her. I don't know how kind she really was, but there is something about just looking at her that's nourishing.

Jennifer Hudson may not turn my little man to marble on looks alone, but it does make me stiff to know there are actors like her working today. She's damn good at acting and damn good at singing and in Dream Girls she used both abilities to move me the closest to tears I've been at the movies in a long time. I think there might actually be something wrong with my tear ducts, I don't know why I wasn't crying like an four year old when she sang And I'm Telling You I'm Not Leaving. Actually, I don't know why I'm ragging on her looks. That picture I found is pretty damn appealing.

Myrna Loy will always have a special place in my heart. I can remember the first time my Mom decided to show us The Thin Man. That movie might have been the turning point for my dislike for the old movies she always wanted to watch with us. It was dark, it was exciting, but most of all, it was hilarious. And that was in no small part because of Myrna Loy. I can't think of any other actress who could play that part. That could be so sophisticated, charming, adorable, and witty as she was. That could play off William Powell so well. It was a movie made in heaven. And she was the Jesus Fucking Christ of sexy ladies in it.

There are more women that deserve inclusion that I may put in a "part two" but that's all for now.

Hostel/Somking Aces

2007-02-06T01:59:00.000-08:00

This is part of a long standing argument between me, Karl, and our friend Ben about my liking the movie Hostel. I left it on Karl's Facebook wall after we saw Smoking Aces. Karl's position on Hostel is basically that it's Saw in Europe, the first half is a really bad teen comedy, and Eli Roth could maybe make passable movies if he didn't have to direct actors. I've always argued that he's actually a decent director who knows how to make decent horror movies/thrillers that are actually scarey for the opposite reason the original Dawn of The Dead is. You're afraid in Dawn of The Dead because you like the characters so much and you don't want to see them get hurt, in Hostel and Cabin Fever you fucking hate the characters and you know the director does too and thus you have no idea what he's going to do to them. But anyway, here's the rest of my argument:

Re: Our Hostel discussion last night. Didn't you think the main thing going on with Cabin Fever was the whole movie was about building and undercutting your expectations? Like with the rifle scene for example. Don't you think that's actually something Eli Roth does well?

I don't understand how you could watch Hostel and totally feel like you could know what was going to happen from one scene to the next. That wasn't my viewing experience at all. It wasn't like in Smoking Aces when you're told explicitly with the camera that the dude in the wheelchair is going to be the assassin and then he was the assassin and you wonder why the scene was set up like there was some legitimate tension or surprise going on.

I think Eli Roth at least understands, like any good comedian does, that you need to use people's assumptions against them to create emotional reactions. That's why I'd says he's at least a competent filmmaker. Bitch.

later:

Another thing I think he does well is, while maybe he doesn't have the extreme kind of ideas of someone like Miike, he still understands that you can't just have something violent happen on screen and that's enough. That's what I didn't like about Smoking Aces and that's what I do like about people like Scorsese, Lynch, and Cronenberg. The latter three understand that violence still needs finesse and that violence can be legitimate creative content farther than the basic idea of what's going on in the scene. And from what I remember from seeing Hostel and Cabin Fever, I felt like Eli Roth had that down in a basic way too. He's not Scorsese Light he's probably more like the light, caffeine-free, Mexican knock-off soda equivalent of Scorsese in this regard. But he's still does violence better than the majority of the horror directors out today. He understands there's an art to good violence.

later:

I do wonder if the movie lives a better life in the legend I've made for it in my mind. So we do need to all watch it again. No apologies for spamming your wall.

Best of 2006

2007-02-06T00:06:00.000-08:00

1. Pan’s Labyrinth
2. The Departed
3. Volver
4. Dream Girls
5. Brick
6. The Proposition
7. Borat
8. Short bus
9. Children Of Men
10. Science Of Sleep

Honorable Mentions:
13 Tzameti, Nightwatch, The Notorious Betty Page, A Scanner Darkly, Science Of Sleep, Little Miss Sunshine, Silent Hill, Wassup Rockers, Water, The Devil And Daniel Johnston, The Descent, Letters From Iwo Jima, Half Nelson, Babel.

Havent Seen:
The Prestige, Perfume, The Death of Mr. Laazaarescu, Jesus Camp, Deliver us From Evil.

Convictions of La Bousculade de Cinéma ("The Cinema Hustle")

2007-02-05T23:58:00.000-08:00

YO! (“OI!”) We’re going to straight ride up on any fake auteurs! We like to holla at the works of Hitchcock, Lang, Ray, Hawks, Dreyer, Godard, Melville, Romero, Truffaut, Welles, Suzuki, Kurosawa, Ozu and countless others, CINE SET! We believe in the autuer-core theory son. Keep it auteur and keep it hardcore. THAT IS ALL WE ASK.

The Departed

2007-02-05T23:31:00.000-08:00

I liked The Departed. I was happy to see such a well made movie get the kind of main stream success it did without ever having to dumb itself down. It actually took less steps to explain itself than most movies today, mainstream or otherwise. You didn't have to be an active audience member to enjoy the film, but if you wanted to really understand the straight plot or what the film was trying to say the movie demanded a lot of your attention. I like films that require you to play the detective to really get into them.

I liked it's form. I liked Scorsesse's use of sound effects to punctuate his musical choices. For example, when the volume raises on "Give Me Shelter" after Nicholson gives his opening speech there is a loud car screech as the music fades and the next scene starts in the corner shop. I loved the iris that zooms in and out of Matt Damon to show the expanding and shrinking of the world he's connected to.

I liked it's story. It's the most years 2000 story I think I've ever seen. It's about the loss of genuine connection (love) between everyone and what comes after that's gone. Everyone in that movie is the rat. Scorsese echoes the line at the beginning of the film "Years ago we had the church. That was only a way of saying - we had each other" by using religious imagery to show characters like Nicholson's and Sheen's are relics of an era where there was real love between people, but, in the end, both characters represent the real death of that era. Sheen's character in the fact he was the one who threw DeCaprio under the tires of the soul-crushing, idenity erasing 18 wheeler that was his under cover experience, Nicholson in his giving up people who were "already on their way out". Neither are as advanced in their ratdom as Damon and Decaprio (who kill a man who was essentially a father figure to both (Damon to get ahead and Decaprio simply by nature of being a rat)) but still, no one's hands are clean. This is the way of our world now as Scorcesse tells you with the parting shot of the rat scurrying across the terrace rail, lest you believe Walburg has really given any sort of moral resolution to the story.

I liked all these things about the movie. It was a film that was fun to get excited about. I was really glad this kind of movie was playing at my local megaplexes. But still, there was something basic about the film that didn't agree with me. Some basic material that wasn't satisfying. It wasn't like watching The Best Way To Walk, which was interesting, but didn't having anything formally or in the story that struck me as that amazing. But watching it, just experiencing the cinematography changed my world experience. I could feel the walls of my mind expand. I felt like a healthier person for having watched that film. I had a different experience of The Departed.

It was like being a person who often eats good food tasting all the different extraordinary things happening in a meal prepared by a master chef but, by the end of dinner, still being left hungry. In a way I guess that makes it more of a 2006 movie than anything else. I guess that's really the most depressing thing the movie had to say about living in the future. Maybe I'm being too greedy. I don't know. I did go to see the film five times. I do admire all of Scorsese's ideas and his courage (the most important artistic value), but I doubt when I'm picking up something at the TLA some lonely Saterday night, this is going to be the box I reach for (no matter how appealing Vera Farmiga is in black lace panties). I just wanted to explain to my freinds why I'd put movies like Pan's Laberynth, Dream Girls, and Volver ahead of The Departed despite the excellent film making in every other aspect of the movie.

The First Post

2007-02-05T20:09:00.000-08:00

Hey. So this is our little area to whine and yell about the movie we like, love and hate, to talk about our theories and observations, to just basically move our weird, slightly ridiculous conversations about movies to a format that allows smarter people to maybe join the conversation.

That's it really. Don't expect anything. I have no idea what this is yet either.

E-mail me if you'd like to post. You can make your posts as long as short as you like. Just don't spam really boring crap.