Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
FX Master Ray Harryhausen, on King Kong and Mighty Joe Young
Ray Harryhausen (b. 1920), childhood hero of mine via the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland and numerous libido-revving films like Jason and the Argonauts, Mysterious Island, and One Million Years B.C., here discusses his early interest in stop-motion animation and his break into film-making.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Halloween Castle
In House on Haunted Hill (1959), Vincent Price and Carole Ohmart "get the guests" a good three years before Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The Tingler (1959) features Price again, this time co-starring cute-as-a-button Darryl Hickman and a trilobitish creature that lives on the spine.
As for Strait-Jacket (1964), five words: Joan Crawford. With an ax.
Had I only planned ahead, I would be watching a William Castle triple feature tonight. The idea's been gestating in my head for a few days now. Castle's films played a pivotal role in my childhood love of horror. Castle (1914-1977) was the king of gimmicky horror films in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These three were both directed and produced by the poor man's Hitchcock. He produced one of my all-time favorite prestige horror films, Rosemary's Baby, directed by Roman Polanski, in which he also appeared in a cameo role--as he did also in another of my favorites, non-horror, Hal Ashby's 1975 Shampoo.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Continuity and the "Portals of the Past": Unresolved Issues in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958)
There’s a special category of film fanatics who specialize in spotting continuity errors in movies. Continuity errors are disconnects between two shots, inappropriate and inexplicable given the time frame and events of a scene—for instance, when a half-smoked cigarette in one shut has suddenly shot back out to full length in the next shot
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo would offer a goldmine of comparable “mistakes,” were it not for the fact that clearly most if not all of them are intentional on the filmmakers’ part. This is, after all, a movie about time and our clumsy efforts to erase the unpleasant effects of the past—to create false continuities in the mess of existence—to dispel guilt—to revise history by making it over—a driving purpose not only for the film’s hero, John “Scottie” Ferguson, played by James Stewart, but also for his antagonist—who, not to spoil the film’s ending for anyone who hasn’t already seen it—will remain unidentified.
What I’d like to do here is simply list these discontinuities—at least the ones I personally find perplexing and intriguing. I offer no film analysis here, no interpretations, no attempts to explain what, as I’m sure Hitchcock intended, should remain an unsolved mystery.
The film’s opening sequence ends with an unresolved action. Police detective Scottie hangs on the ledge, but we never see how he gets down. The next shot shows him in Midge’s apartment, calculating how he might be able to beat his fear of heights.
We find out that Scottie and Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) were engaged once. She called it off, but we never are told why, even though then and later in the film it’s obvious that she still loves him. Perhaps the fact that he’s blithely best chums with the woman who dumped him is a clue as to what was wrong with the relationship in the first place. Or perhaps it’s her stalking tendencies—control issues evident when, later in the film, she plays the Mozart phonograph that Scottie told her he disliked earlier and tries to comfort him, saying, “Mother’s here.”
We also learn that Scotty has quit the police force, though his innocence in the policeman’s accidental death is unquestioned and the department has offered to keep him on. However, his chipper mood with Midge suggests that he is not deeply haunted by the officer’s death at all; despite Midge’s suspicions and concern, he seems ready to accept that it was not his fault.
Scotty tails Madeleine Elster (Kim Novack), who her husband suspects is haunted by her late great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes, to the florist’s shop, the chapel graveyard where Carlotta is buried, the art museum, and finally the McKendrick Hotel, where she rents a room and is well known to the proprietress. He even sees her opening a window. However, when a minute later he questions the proprietress, she states with certainty that “Carlotta” has not been there, even pointing to the unclaimed room keys and ultimately the empty room itself as proof. Why did the proprietress not see her?
Later, Scottie and Midge visit an antiquarian bookshop owner in search of answers to the mystery of the historical Carlotta. As the storyteller recounts his long and rather boring exposition (rather like Simon Oakland’s tedious explanation of split personalities in Psycho), the bookshop gradually darkens. When Scottie and Midge step out into the street, which has also darkened at dusk, I assume, the bookshop behind them suddenly brightens. Pop, the shop owner, is nowhere near a light switch, so the sudden illumination of a space associated with dead history has no natural explanation.
Of course, the central mystery of the film is the dead Carlotta, who haunts at least one character in the film, if not more. A tragic and (perhaps importantly) ethnic figure from California’s past, whose mystery is ultimately displaced when Scottie falls in love with Madeleine. However, the romantic mystery of her madness and death is never explained—and, more important, and, sorry, here a hint of a spoiler is unavoidable, we later learn that Elster’s wife may never have really been obsessed with (or possessed by) Carlotta after all—Carlotta’s story may be a “McGuffin” (Hitchcock’s term for illogical elements that nevertheless propel a plot—even a sinister one—forward). But later in the film, just when we’re convinced that the Madeleine/Carlotta story arc is a fraud, we see a distinctive necklace, which is hard evidence that a connection between Carlotta and Madeleine existed. This mystery has a logical explanation, of course, in fact, several logical explanations—which we’ll leave alone here.
I find it interesting that now, fifty years after the film’s release, America is mulling over its past—the 1960s, the Hanoi Hilton, the Weathermen, the civil rights movement, and assassinations (or threat of assassination), perhaps nowhere more particularly than in AMC’s series Mad Men, elements of which have been pegged by critics as Hitchcockian.
I should say “mulling over its past yet again,” since for such a young nation, America has an odd propensity for nostalgia. So here are other discontinuities, signs perhaps of the nation’s lightheadedness over the dizzying heights it reached over the last 100 years:
A war in Iraq that was conceived to “correct” an earlier war in Iraq.
A collapse of the world’s strongest economy in a shadow image of the Great Depression, a faltering of capitalism which, on paper, at least, could never happen again.
A nation’s election-year love affair with “hope,” “change,” and “country first,” while remaining hopelessly cynical, reactionary, and self-involved.
Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, descendents of the continent's first European settlers, who may, like Carlotta Valdes, now hold the key to the future.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo would offer a goldmine of comparable “mistakes,” were it not for the fact that clearly most if not all of them are intentional on the filmmakers’ part. This is, after all, a movie about time and our clumsy efforts to erase the unpleasant effects of the past—to create false continuities in the mess of existence—to dispel guilt—to revise history by making it over—a driving purpose not only for the film’s hero, John “Scottie” Ferguson, played by James Stewart, but also for his antagonist—who, not to spoil the film’s ending for anyone who hasn’t already seen it—will remain unidentified.
What I’d like to do here is simply list these discontinuities—at least the ones I personally find perplexing and intriguing. I offer no film analysis here, no interpretations, no attempts to explain what, as I’m sure Hitchcock intended, should remain an unsolved mystery.
The film’s opening sequence ends with an unresolved action. Police detective Scottie hangs on the ledge, but we never see how he gets down. The next shot shows him in Midge’s apartment, calculating how he might be able to beat his fear of heights.
We find out that Scottie and Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) were engaged once. She called it off, but we never are told why, even though then and later in the film it’s obvious that she still loves him. Perhaps the fact that he’s blithely best chums with the woman who dumped him is a clue as to what was wrong with the relationship in the first place. Or perhaps it’s her stalking tendencies—control issues evident when, later in the film, she plays the Mozart phonograph that Scottie told her he disliked earlier and tries to comfort him, saying, “Mother’s here.”
We also learn that Scotty has quit the police force, though his innocence in the policeman’s accidental death is unquestioned and the department has offered to keep him on. However, his chipper mood with Midge suggests that he is not deeply haunted by the officer’s death at all; despite Midge’s suspicions and concern, he seems ready to accept that it was not his fault.
Scotty tails Madeleine Elster (Kim Novack), who her husband suspects is haunted by her late great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes, to the florist’s shop, the chapel graveyard where Carlotta is buried, the art museum, and finally the McKendrick Hotel, where she rents a room and is well known to the proprietress. He even sees her opening a window. However, when a minute later he questions the proprietress, she states with certainty that “Carlotta” has not been there, even pointing to the unclaimed room keys and ultimately the empty room itself as proof. Why did the proprietress not see her?
Later, Scottie and Midge visit an antiquarian bookshop owner in search of answers to the mystery of the historical Carlotta. As the storyteller recounts his long and rather boring exposition (rather like Simon Oakland’s tedious explanation of split personalities in Psycho), the bookshop gradually darkens. When Scottie and Midge step out into the street, which has also darkened at dusk, I assume, the bookshop behind them suddenly brightens. Pop, the shop owner, is nowhere near a light switch, so the sudden illumination of a space associated with dead history has no natural explanation.
Of course, the central mystery of the film is the dead Carlotta, who haunts at least one character in the film, if not more. A tragic and (perhaps importantly) ethnic figure from California’s past, whose mystery is ultimately displaced when Scottie falls in love with Madeleine. However, the romantic mystery of her madness and death is never explained—and, more important, and, sorry, here a hint of a spoiler is unavoidable, we later learn that Elster’s wife may never have really been obsessed with (or possessed by) Carlotta after all—Carlotta’s story may be a “McGuffin” (Hitchcock’s term for illogical elements that nevertheless propel a plot—even a sinister one—forward). But later in the film, just when we’re convinced that the Madeleine/Carlotta story arc is a fraud, we see a distinctive necklace, which is hard evidence that a connection between Carlotta and Madeleine existed. This mystery has a logical explanation, of course, in fact, several logical explanations—which we’ll leave alone here.
I find it interesting that now, fifty years after the film’s release, America is mulling over its past—the 1960s, the Hanoi Hilton, the Weathermen, the civil rights movement, and assassinations (or threat of assassination), perhaps nowhere more particularly than in AMC’s series Mad Men, elements of which have been pegged by critics as Hitchcockian.
I should say “mulling over its past yet again,” since for such a young nation, America has an odd propensity for nostalgia. So here are other discontinuities, signs perhaps of the nation’s lightheadedness over the dizzying heights it reached over the last 100 years:
A war in Iraq that was conceived to “correct” an earlier war in Iraq.
A collapse of the world’s strongest economy in a shadow image of the Great Depression, a faltering of capitalism which, on paper, at least, could never happen again.
A nation’s election-year love affair with “hope,” “change,” and “country first,” while remaining hopelessly cynical, reactionary, and self-involved.
Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, descendents of the continent's first European settlers, who may, like Carlotta Valdes, now hold the key to the future.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” (Rev. of YOUNG @ HEART and LAGERFELD CONFIDENTIAL)
Bette Davis said, “Getting old is not for sissies.” Stephen Walker’s documentary YOUNG @ HEART captures the rehearsals and performances of the Young @ Heart Chorus, a group of singers, whose average age is 80, who cover the songs of Prince, Coldplay, James Brown, the Police, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, and the Doors.
Eileen Hall opens the film, limping with her walker to a mike on stage, staring down an ecstatic packed house, and belts out, “Darling you gotta let me know, / Should I stay or should I go?” The Clash song has never struck me as quite so defiant … or so metaphysical.
Later we see Eileen, age 92, flirting with three male film crew members, drolly inviting all three at once back into her bedroom. And then, later in the film, she propositions a fellow group member, Lenny, on his birthday.
Bob Cilman, the chorus director, who, one member says, “chews nails and spits rust,” has driven the chorus from singing Tin Pan Alley hits and Rodgers and Hammerstein showtunes originally, to a slate of punk, disco, and soul. He pushes and cajoles his singers into performing music they despise on first hearing—but, then, warming up to the sass of the lyrics, the singers eventually step up to the challenge. And scene by scene, we discover that Cilman’s unsentimental no-bullshit exterior hides a great deal of compassion.
Besides the infirmities of old age, a central thread of conflict in the film is the group’s attempt to master the 72 can’s in the Pointer Sisters’ “Yes We Can Can.” And there are some fine comic moments. Two old guys can’t figure which side of a CD should face up. And the oldsters, whose musical tastes tend towards opera, turn up their noses at Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia,” but hunker down to tackle the piece anyway, after Cilman testily scolds them for making fun of it.
We see the group members’ commitment and optimism, the tenacity to go on with the show. In one sequence, just one hour after finding out that one of their members has died, the chorus rock out (in a manner of speaking) on Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” … to an audience of hardened prison inmates. And then they dedicate Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” to their fallen friend, earning a standing ovation and wolf whistles from the convicts.
Interspersed with interviews and scenes of rehearsal and performance, there are videos of the chorus singing the Ramones’ “I Want to Be Sedated” (in a nursing home, IVs hooked to their arms), David Bowie’s “Golden Years,” Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere,” and the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” (the lead singer in a white suit a la Travolta, and the whole troupe dancing in a bowling alley).
We see that music makes you forget your “creaking bones,” and a community of kindred hearts can make life, even at its most ravaging stage, a beautiful thing.
On another continent, in a different art form, we see an entirely different temperament at work in Rodolphe Marconi’s documentary LAGERFELD CONFIDENTIAL.
I must admit I had disliked Karl Lagerfeld since the 1990s, when he ostentatiously refused to cooperate with my hero, director Robert Altman, who was making a film about the fashion industry in Paris (PRËT-À-PORTER in 1994). The only reason I wanted to see Marconi’s documentary was the chance of seeing Lagerfeld’s stunningly beautiful young assistant, Sebastien Jondeau—glimpses of whom are all too fleeting here.
This film, unlike Walker’s, makes no attempt to warm the viewer up to its subject—its subject is partly the spoiled Madonna of Alek Kashishian’s TRUTH OR DARE and partly the distant and neurotic Marlene Dietrich of Maximillian Schell’s masterful MARLENE.
LIke Cilman, Karl Lagerfeld presents himself as a no-bullshit artist/entrepreneur. With his trademark sunglasses and ponytail, he strolls from event to event, jaded to the superficialities of the fashion business, yet electing to take it and himself very seriously. But Lagerfeld has no warm and fuzzy center, for which I respect him every bit as much as I admire Cilman’s compassion.
Lagerfeld coolly discusses the ruthlessness and unfairness of a life in the arts, urging those who are shocked by injustice to do social work instead. He glowingly praises his parents, both raised in restrictive Catholic families, for purging religion from his childhood, leaving the matter entirely in his hands to decide for himself. He defends the sang-froid of his mother, as well, contending that, by making her love conditional, she inspired him towards excellence.
He speaks frankly of his homosexuality, scolding the filmmaker’s reticence in broaching the subject, of which he and his parents were aware when he was a child.
With true Germanic disdain, he mocks current politically correct notions, boasting that, when he at age 13 told his mother that he had been propositioned by both a man and a woman, she scolded him for bringing the situation upon himself by the way he presented himself as an outrageous child, whom adults of course would approach with a certain sense of liberty. He derides the modern parent who would have run to the courts at such information.
Later, he similarly dismisses the strides the gay movement has made to legalize same-sex marriage. A position with which I sympathize:
“I hated the idea of bourgeois marriage. They [gays] wanted to be different. Now they want to be like the bourgeoisie. I’m against it. What was needed was something new, a new way of living. Marriage, as we know it, was created by the Church for reproduction. So let’s invent something else, not ape the despised bourgeoisie. You can also try to piss off the bourgeoisie by forcing them to accept something unacceptable, whatever the format.”
We see Lagerfeld the photographer with young, beautiful models, male and female (Nicole Kidman, in one sequence), but for him their beauty seems a teasing cruelty. Not quite 70 when the film was shot, Lagerfeld seems reluctant to delve into his current love life. Typically, though, he has no romantic illusions about sex, particularly in his role as an artist:
“A physical relationship is fine, but it is condemned to be something fleeting. The daily grind burns up such things, so idealization is rather good. I’m not interested in the reality of people. People aren’t accountable to me. I only see what I want to see. I don’t go any further, and it’s usually to their (the models’?) advantage. It’s better to benevolently skim over things than try to get involved in things that have nothing to do with me.”
Like YOUNG @ HEART, this film addresses the subject of age and mortality. When Marconi asks him whether he sometimes thinks life is short, Lagerfeld responds pretty much the way the chorus members did. He chooses not to obsess over it:
“There are people I’d hate to lose. For myself, since it means canceling out all emotionalism, and since I don’t believe in rebirth or resurrection, etc., it doesn’t really matter. I don’t know what existed before I was born. Then it’s over. Maybe passing away is awakening from the dream of life. Don’t dramatize your body. Billions of people live on earth. You can’t shout about every single one. … We’re here, then we’re gone. You’re admired by people, then they forget you.”
Eileen Hall opens the film, limping with her walker to a mike on stage, staring down an ecstatic packed house, and belts out, “Darling you gotta let me know, / Should I stay or should I go?” The Clash song has never struck me as quite so defiant … or so metaphysical.
Later we see Eileen, age 92, flirting with three male film crew members, drolly inviting all three at once back into her bedroom. And then, later in the film, she propositions a fellow group member, Lenny, on his birthday.
Bob Cilman, the chorus director, who, one member says, “chews nails and spits rust,” has driven the chorus from singing Tin Pan Alley hits and Rodgers and Hammerstein showtunes originally, to a slate of punk, disco, and soul. He pushes and cajoles his singers into performing music they despise on first hearing—but, then, warming up to the sass of the lyrics, the singers eventually step up to the challenge. And scene by scene, we discover that Cilman’s unsentimental no-bullshit exterior hides a great deal of compassion.
Besides the infirmities of old age, a central thread of conflict in the film is the group’s attempt to master the 72 can’s in the Pointer Sisters’ “Yes We Can Can.” And there are some fine comic moments. Two old guys can’t figure which side of a CD should face up. And the oldsters, whose musical tastes tend towards opera, turn up their noses at Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia,” but hunker down to tackle the piece anyway, after Cilman testily scolds them for making fun of it.
We see the group members’ commitment and optimism, the tenacity to go on with the show. In one sequence, just one hour after finding out that one of their members has died, the chorus rock out (in a manner of speaking) on Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” … to an audience of hardened prison inmates. And then they dedicate Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” to their fallen friend, earning a standing ovation and wolf whistles from the convicts.
Interspersed with interviews and scenes of rehearsal and performance, there are videos of the chorus singing the Ramones’ “I Want to Be Sedated” (in a nursing home, IVs hooked to their arms), David Bowie’s “Golden Years,” Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere,” and the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” (the lead singer in a white suit a la Travolta, and the whole troupe dancing in a bowling alley).
We see that music makes you forget your “creaking bones,” and a community of kindred hearts can make life, even at its most ravaging stage, a beautiful thing.
On another continent, in a different art form, we see an entirely different temperament at work in Rodolphe Marconi’s documentary LAGERFELD CONFIDENTIAL.
I must admit I had disliked Karl Lagerfeld since the 1990s, when he ostentatiously refused to cooperate with my hero, director Robert Altman, who was making a film about the fashion industry in Paris (PRËT-À-PORTER in 1994). The only reason I wanted to see Marconi’s documentary was the chance of seeing Lagerfeld’s stunningly beautiful young assistant, Sebastien Jondeau—glimpses of whom are all too fleeting here.
This film, unlike Walker’s, makes no attempt to warm the viewer up to its subject—its subject is partly the spoiled Madonna of Alek Kashishian’s TRUTH OR DARE and partly the distant and neurotic Marlene Dietrich of Maximillian Schell’s masterful MARLENE.
LIke Cilman, Karl Lagerfeld presents himself as a no-bullshit artist/entrepreneur. With his trademark sunglasses and ponytail, he strolls from event to event, jaded to the superficialities of the fashion business, yet electing to take it and himself very seriously. But Lagerfeld has no warm and fuzzy center, for which I respect him every bit as much as I admire Cilman’s compassion.
Lagerfeld coolly discusses the ruthlessness and unfairness of a life in the arts, urging those who are shocked by injustice to do social work instead. He glowingly praises his parents, both raised in restrictive Catholic families, for purging religion from his childhood, leaving the matter entirely in his hands to decide for himself. He defends the sang-froid of his mother, as well, contending that, by making her love conditional, she inspired him towards excellence.
He speaks frankly of his homosexuality, scolding the filmmaker’s reticence in broaching the subject, of which he and his parents were aware when he was a child.
With true Germanic disdain, he mocks current politically correct notions, boasting that, when he at age 13 told his mother that he had been propositioned by both a man and a woman, she scolded him for bringing the situation upon himself by the way he presented himself as an outrageous child, whom adults of course would approach with a certain sense of liberty. He derides the modern parent who would have run to the courts at such information.
Later, he similarly dismisses the strides the gay movement has made to legalize same-sex marriage. A position with which I sympathize:
“I hated the idea of bourgeois marriage. They [gays] wanted to be different. Now they want to be like the bourgeoisie. I’m against it. What was needed was something new, a new way of living. Marriage, as we know it, was created by the Church for reproduction. So let’s invent something else, not ape the despised bourgeoisie. You can also try to piss off the bourgeoisie by forcing them to accept something unacceptable, whatever the format.”
We see Lagerfeld the photographer with young, beautiful models, male and female (Nicole Kidman, in one sequence), but for him their beauty seems a teasing cruelty. Not quite 70 when the film was shot, Lagerfeld seems reluctant to delve into his current love life. Typically, though, he has no romantic illusions about sex, particularly in his role as an artist:
“A physical relationship is fine, but it is condemned to be something fleeting. The daily grind burns up such things, so idealization is rather good. I’m not interested in the reality of people. People aren’t accountable to me. I only see what I want to see. I don’t go any further, and it’s usually to their (the models’?) advantage. It’s better to benevolently skim over things than try to get involved in things that have nothing to do with me.”
Like YOUNG @ HEART, this film addresses the subject of age and mortality. When Marconi asks him whether he sometimes thinks life is short, Lagerfeld responds pretty much the way the chorus members did. He chooses not to obsess over it:
“There are people I’d hate to lose. For myself, since it means canceling out all emotionalism, and since I don’t believe in rebirth or resurrection, etc., it doesn’t really matter. I don’t know what existed before I was born. Then it’s over. Maybe passing away is awakening from the dream of life. Don’t dramatize your body. Billions of people live on earth. You can’t shout about every single one. … We’re here, then we’re gone. You’re admired by people, then they forget you.”
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Paul Newman 1925-2008
My earliest memories of Paul Newman are of him wrapped in a terry-cloth towel in (what was it?) HARPER or THE PRIZE. His pecs and shoulders damp and fresh out of the shower. For months the words “terry cloth” meant sex to me.
I also remember him, a bit later, open-shirted as a krazy beatnik painter, channeling Brando and Kerouac, in WHAT A WAY TO GO!
Before Brad Pitt, six-pack meant Newman.
The iconic image of Newman is the HUD poster. I saw the movie only on TV, but, all respects to Patricia Neal, Melvyn Douglas, and Brandon de Wilde, the movie was all Newman’s—bristling machismo, boy-manly arrogance, attracting and repelling with the same brooding looks.
It’s the poster Joe Buck takes with him to NYC in MIDNIGHT COWBOY.
And then, somewhat later, Newman made an even deeper impression on me when I discovered he was also a stage and film director, a political activist, a racecar driver, and a saucier.
He was a sort of Renaissance man, a master of many talents. He embodied Hollywood liberalism in the same way he embodied “cool," in a gentle, self-effacing way—so that nobody ever mistook him for seeking a career in politics (though maybe he should have).
His late acting career showed that he had lost none of his diamond-like intensity with age. His Sidney Mussburger in the Coen brothers’ THE HUDSUCKER PROXY is a fine comic villain—vain, opportunistic, slick, the decadent ghost of the can-do spirit. His sinister turn as crime king John Rooney in ROAD TO PERDITION presented us with a nightmarish father figure, self-justified and ruthless, a man whose cynicism and greed have caused him to loath even those he thinks he loves.
Paul Newman died yesterday. Cancer. He was a class act.
***
“I'm a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being ... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.” –Paul Newman
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Burn After Reading (Review)
It's interesting the amount of stalking that happens in the Coen brothers’ latest movie—BURN AFTER READING—from Internet searches to tailgating to breaking-and-entering to the use of hired investigators to uncover other people’s secrets.
The film suggests that Americans are all hunting and being hunted. Everyone’s a predator and everyone’s prey.
The little scene in the latter half of the film when a pediatrician (Tilda Swinton) tries to pry a kid's mouth open suggests the callous and intrusive nature of 21st century life. The scene reminds me of the short William Carlos Williams story “The Use of Force,” in which self-justifying authority out-maneuvers the resistance of the powerless, who simply want to be left alone.
This idea is also present in the art direction of the scenes at Hardbodies, the fitness center where three pivotal characters work—adjacent cubicles, glassed in, where privacy and seclusion are not only impossible but no longer desirable.
And our willingness to be intruded upon—poked and prodded by cosmetic surgeons for the sake of constant self-improvement, or publishing self-aggrandizing memoirs, or letting it all hang out on social networking questionnaires (and blogs!)—suggests an anonymously interconnected mass community where privacy and discretion no longer matter.
And in the broader contexts explored in the film, these intrusions affect our economy, our politics, and our "private" (or not so private) lives.
Everybody wants to be an “insider” in everybody else’s business.
And, in return, everybody wants to be an open book.
I have to admit that at the movie’s end I was puzzled and let down. You will be, too, no doubt. But I’m not inclined to think that the Coens have simply failed to present us with a satisfying ending.
I think what they are trying to depict is the futility of all the busy maneuvering we engage in. That is, the satisfying denouement we look for (even in life) does not exist.
Our rush to find and understand the Big Picture—when in fact, in the modern world, the Big Picture is just so much dissonant noise.
Our belief in complexly conceived conspiracies and our fascination with counter-counter-counter conspiracies.
Our trust in optimism and the can-do spirit (Americanism!)—self-improvement for its own sake.
“Keep an eye on everyone,” a CIA boss states at one point. “Report back to me when … I don’t know, when it makes sense.” That moment never arrives.
The cast is uniformly in high gear. Except for J.K. Williams, who plays the tired CIA boss quoted above, all the actors perform with breathless busy-ness that suggests that they are all pitching products—even if the products are themselves.
Brad Pitt plays the eternally boyish, middle-aged personal trainer at Hardbodies, who teams with a fellow employee, played by Frances McDormand, to make a fast buck over some potentially valuable information discovered in the women’s locker room. Both of them giggle and grin their way through characters of no particular intelligence and unfocused ambitions.
John Malkovich plays a disgruntled ex-CIA man, Osborne Cox, whose belief that everyone around him is a moron is both true and no contradiction of the fact that he is something of a moron, too. The only person he can comfortably confide in is his catatonic father. In this film, Malkovich achieves his most animated comic performance since the underseen COLOUR ME KUBRICK three years ago. He makes the character both a voice of reason and a monster of egoism.
As his wife, Tilda Swinton, always a riveting screen presence, plays the ultimate icy bitch. I’m not sure what it is about her, but Swinton always has the power to mesmerize and yet make me feel oddly uncomfortable. Her pinched mouth and cold predatory stares here serve to intimidate her husband and her lover.
George Clooney plays Harry Pfarrer, a federal marshal neurotically obsessed with sex gadgets, pine flooring, lactose, shellfish, and firearms—each obsession begging for Freudian analysis. Clooney goes over the top zany, like the other players—more complications occur in his eyebrows than in the intentionally minimalist/absurd plot.
As a follow-up to the nihilistic NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN last year, the Coens’ latest production supplies us with a nihilistic farce. In both, we have hunters and hunted, inexplicable violence, experienced lawmen who scratch their heads and shrug their shoulders, and mavericks who futilely buck fate and the unwinnable game we call everyday existence.
The film suggests that Americans are all hunting and being hunted. Everyone’s a predator and everyone’s prey.
The little scene in the latter half of the film when a pediatrician (Tilda Swinton) tries to pry a kid's mouth open suggests the callous and intrusive nature of 21st century life. The scene reminds me of the short William Carlos Williams story “The Use of Force,” in which self-justifying authority out-maneuvers the resistance of the powerless, who simply want to be left alone.
This idea is also present in the art direction of the scenes at Hardbodies, the fitness center where three pivotal characters work—adjacent cubicles, glassed in, where privacy and seclusion are not only impossible but no longer desirable.
And our willingness to be intruded upon—poked and prodded by cosmetic surgeons for the sake of constant self-improvement, or publishing self-aggrandizing memoirs, or letting it all hang out on social networking questionnaires (and blogs!)—suggests an anonymously interconnected mass community where privacy and discretion no longer matter.
And in the broader contexts explored in the film, these intrusions affect our economy, our politics, and our "private" (or not so private) lives.
Everybody wants to be an “insider” in everybody else’s business.
And, in return, everybody wants to be an open book.
I have to admit that at the movie’s end I was puzzled and let down. You will be, too, no doubt. But I’m not inclined to think that the Coens have simply failed to present us with a satisfying ending.
I think what they are trying to depict is the futility of all the busy maneuvering we engage in. That is, the satisfying denouement we look for (even in life) does not exist.
Our rush to find and understand the Big Picture—when in fact, in the modern world, the Big Picture is just so much dissonant noise.
Our belief in complexly conceived conspiracies and our fascination with counter-counter-counter conspiracies.
Our trust in optimism and the can-do spirit (Americanism!)—self-improvement for its own sake.
“Keep an eye on everyone,” a CIA boss states at one point. “Report back to me when … I don’t know, when it makes sense.” That moment never arrives.
The cast is uniformly in high gear. Except for J.K. Williams, who plays the tired CIA boss quoted above, all the actors perform with breathless busy-ness that suggests that they are all pitching products—even if the products are themselves.
Brad Pitt plays the eternally boyish, middle-aged personal trainer at Hardbodies, who teams with a fellow employee, played by Frances McDormand, to make a fast buck over some potentially valuable information discovered in the women’s locker room. Both of them giggle and grin their way through characters of no particular intelligence and unfocused ambitions.
John Malkovich plays a disgruntled ex-CIA man, Osborne Cox, whose belief that everyone around him is a moron is both true and no contradiction of the fact that he is something of a moron, too. The only person he can comfortably confide in is his catatonic father. In this film, Malkovich achieves his most animated comic performance since the underseen COLOUR ME KUBRICK three years ago. He makes the character both a voice of reason and a monster of egoism.
As his wife, Tilda Swinton, always a riveting screen presence, plays the ultimate icy bitch. I’m not sure what it is about her, but Swinton always has the power to mesmerize and yet make me feel oddly uncomfortable. Her pinched mouth and cold predatory stares here serve to intimidate her husband and her lover.
George Clooney plays Harry Pfarrer, a federal marshal neurotically obsessed with sex gadgets, pine flooring, lactose, shellfish, and firearms—each obsession begging for Freudian analysis. Clooney goes over the top zany, like the other players—more complications occur in his eyebrows than in the intentionally minimalist/absurd plot.
As a follow-up to the nihilistic NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN last year, the Coens’ latest production supplies us with a nihilistic farce. In both, we have hunters and hunted, inexplicable violence, experienced lawmen who scratch their heads and shrug their shoulders, and mavericks who futilely buck fate and the unwinnable game we call everyday existence.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Message to Tim (re: Lars and the Real Girl)
My friend Tim, who teaches at a seminary, sent me a lengthy message today. Here's an excerpt:
"Hey I saw [...] that one of your recent favorite movies is Lars and the Real Girl. We've found it to be a powerful movie about community! [...] One of the questions I've been asking in response is this: how do you discern when your acceptance of someone is enabling their brokenness rather than helping them experience healing? We tend to be a very accepting community (our church), but sometimes people stay stuck right where they are for years. Any thoughts on this, and on the movie?"
And here's my reply:
I love LARS AND THE REAL GIRL for precisely the aspect you mentioned--community. The brother, his wife, the would-be girlfriend, the doctor, the townspeople--the sense of wisdom and support there--fantastic--and deeply moving for me. It's what I always hoped existed somewhere.
Of course, the movie's a fantasy. Such a huge level of support and acceptance seems far-fetched--even the ease with which resistance was subdued seems improbable--far more likely (to pessimistic me, anyway) is that those who disapproved of Lars' little folly would have entrenched themselves, perhaps found a way to turn the whole deal into a Righteous Cause ("What kind of example is this for the children?")--the primal herd instinct to repel outsiders is much stronger than the movie presented.
But, then, I don't mean any of this as a complaint--it's only a movie, after all--Oz probably doesn't exist either.
Your related question is intriguing. How much is too much acceptance?
Here's my first thought on the matter, having not given it close examination yet: Acceptance is the opposite of resistance and entrenchment. When should we resist? Should we never resist?
Resistance is almost certainly the right thing to do when confronted with injustice, cruelty, manifestly destructive behavior--particularly when the harm is immediate and unmistakable.
But HOW should we resist? Nonviolently, compassionately. Is it possible? Is that really what turning the other cheek means? Satyagraha?
But we live in a culture that believes in redemptive violence--either the violence of swift revenge (or even torture) as an effective arm of true justice, or the violence of martyrdom, sacrifice, and (what's the word I'm looking for?) shunning, closing off, driving off. (I'm thinking as I go along here, so don't expect coherence.)
So, acceptance--I'm going on a limb here--is generally preferable to resistance--that is, saying YES is better than saying NO ... in general.
So when is acceptance wrong? I think acceptance runs the danger of becoming indifference when it ceases to be active. If "acceptance" is passive, it is simply not-caring. Active acceptance involves curiosity and involvement, empathy--an imaginative leap into the consciousness of others.
So in LatRG the townspeople (the ones we like anyway) manage, through openness and imagination to enter into Lars' delusion. In doing this, they are diligent enough not to become deluded themselves, but rather to find creative ways to interpret the delusion and mine it for its beneficial effects--not just for Lars but for themselves as well.
I feel the movie indicates that the people surrounding Lars are as profoundly changed in the end as Lars himself. (And we see some of them are already capable of this in the sister-in-law's persistence in trying to get Lars to come into the house for dinner, at the beginning of the movie.)
Talking about this subject, I'm reminded of something I read years and years ago about some Native American culture--what tribe or tribes I cannot remember. But it goes like this--if a child were born into the tribe whose only gift was to make dolls out of corncobs and could do nothing else, the tribespeople would then develop a NEED for corncob dolls--for ritual uses or as toys, or maybe as decorations. The tribe took from each what each was able to offer, in other words. When the dollmaker died, and if there was no replacement for him/her, the tribe gradually ceased to need the dolls anymore.
Of course, such a society would have to depend on the fact that most people would bring skills to the tribe conducive to survival, but given their organic view of community, all people's gifts were assumed to have value, not because they conformed to what is normal but because each member was already assumed to be irrevocably an organic part of the tribe.
Of course, this information may have been BS, part of the sentimentalizing of Indian culture--the noble savage and all that. But I think even if there never were such a culture, even if LatRG portrays a Hollywood dream, even if violence and ... ostracism! that's the word I was struggling to find up above ... but even if violence and contempt for outsiders are deeply ingrained in human nature, possibly even for good survival-centered reasons, still, isn't the idea of community a rather wonderful dream?
And maybe I haven't even answered the very intriguing question you posed.
"Hey I saw [...] that one of your recent favorite movies is Lars and the Real Girl. We've found it to be a powerful movie about community! [...] One of the questions I've been asking in response is this: how do you discern when your acceptance of someone is enabling their brokenness rather than helping them experience healing? We tend to be a very accepting community (our church), but sometimes people stay stuck right where they are for years. Any thoughts on this, and on the movie?"
And here's my reply:
I love LARS AND THE REAL GIRL for precisely the aspect you mentioned--community. The brother, his wife, the would-be girlfriend, the doctor, the townspeople--the sense of wisdom and support there--fantastic--and deeply moving for me. It's what I always hoped existed somewhere.
Of course, the movie's a fantasy. Such a huge level of support and acceptance seems far-fetched--even the ease with which resistance was subdued seems improbable--far more likely (to pessimistic me, anyway) is that those who disapproved of Lars' little folly would have entrenched themselves, perhaps found a way to turn the whole deal into a Righteous Cause ("What kind of example is this for the children?")--the primal herd instinct to repel outsiders is much stronger than the movie presented.
But, then, I don't mean any of this as a complaint--it's only a movie, after all--Oz probably doesn't exist either.
Your related question is intriguing. How much is too much acceptance?
Here's my first thought on the matter, having not given it close examination yet: Acceptance is the opposite of resistance and entrenchment. When should we resist? Should we never resist?
Resistance is almost certainly the right thing to do when confronted with injustice, cruelty, manifestly destructive behavior--particularly when the harm is immediate and unmistakable.
But HOW should we resist? Nonviolently, compassionately. Is it possible? Is that really what turning the other cheek means? Satyagraha?
But we live in a culture that believes in redemptive violence--either the violence of swift revenge (or even torture) as an effective arm of true justice, or the violence of martyrdom, sacrifice, and (what's the word I'm looking for?) shunning, closing off, driving off. (I'm thinking as I go along here, so don't expect coherence.)
So, acceptance--I'm going on a limb here--is generally preferable to resistance--that is, saying YES is better than saying NO ... in general.
So when is acceptance wrong? I think acceptance runs the danger of becoming indifference when it ceases to be active. If "acceptance" is passive, it is simply not-caring. Active acceptance involves curiosity and involvement, empathy--an imaginative leap into the consciousness of others.
So in LatRG the townspeople (the ones we like anyway) manage, through openness and imagination to enter into Lars' delusion. In doing this, they are diligent enough not to become deluded themselves, but rather to find creative ways to interpret the delusion and mine it for its beneficial effects--not just for Lars but for themselves as well.
I feel the movie indicates that the people surrounding Lars are as profoundly changed in the end as Lars himself. (And we see some of them are already capable of this in the sister-in-law's persistence in trying to get Lars to come into the house for dinner, at the beginning of the movie.)
Talking about this subject, I'm reminded of something I read years and years ago about some Native American culture--what tribe or tribes I cannot remember. But it goes like this--if a child were born into the tribe whose only gift was to make dolls out of corncobs and could do nothing else, the tribespeople would then develop a NEED for corncob dolls--for ritual uses or as toys, or maybe as decorations. The tribe took from each what each was able to offer, in other words. When the dollmaker died, and if there was no replacement for him/her, the tribe gradually ceased to need the dolls anymore.
Of course, such a society would have to depend on the fact that most people would bring skills to the tribe conducive to survival, but given their organic view of community, all people's gifts were assumed to have value, not because they conformed to what is normal but because each member was already assumed to be irrevocably an organic part of the tribe.
Of course, this information may have been BS, part of the sentimentalizing of Indian culture--the noble savage and all that. But I think even if there never were such a culture, even if LatRG portrays a Hollywood dream, even if violence and ... ostracism! that's the word I was struggling to find up above ... but even if violence and contempt for outsiders are deeply ingrained in human nature, possibly even for good survival-centered reasons, still, isn't the idea of community a rather wonderful dream?
And maybe I haven't even answered the very intriguing question you posed.
Monday, September 1, 2008
The Seeds of Atheism in Jason and the Argonauts: Some Notes
I don’t think any man of my generation did not see the 1963 Columbia Pictures production of Jason and the Argonauts in his boyhood. But behind the thrilling special effects supplied by Ray Harryhausen (a god to FX lovers and readers of Famous Monsters of Filmland), could there be a serious, maybe even subversive message?
It seems that a good portion of the film’s dialogue, written by Jan Read and Beverley Cross, concerns the belief in God or gods—about which little is said that is favorable to theism.
Having just watched the movie on DVD, I give you my notes:
I. Hercules
When the giant statue Talos collapses on top of his young friend Hylas, Hercules complains that the gods are unjust. Talos comes to life because Hercules steals a Titan’s golden hairpin. Hylas in fact warns Hercules not to take the javelin-sized pin, so he’s entirely innocent.
Later, as Jason struggles to stop the vengeful statue, Hercules flees and drops his souvenir pin. Out of love for Hercules, Hylas runs back to retrieve it, but the falling giant crushes him.
Why should the gods punish an innocent boy for Hercules’ offense?
II. Phineas
Later, King Phineas makes another point about divine justice. Admitting that he has sinned and perhaps deserves Zeus’s punishments (harpies who steal the blind man’s food), Phineas states that he nevertheless does not sin every day, so why then must he be punished every day?
The question of perfect, proportionate justice is contradicted by continuous and everlasting punishment, for which even the worst sinners can not possibly pack enough offenses into their brief lives.
III. Jason
When the Argonauts are forced to pass through the Clashing Rocks, Jason accuses Zeus and the other Olympians of going “too far.” He complains bitterly, “The gods of Greece are cruel. In time all men will learn to live without them.”
Once Hera and Poseidon intervene to save the ship and crew, Jason offers only a well-qualified thanks. In a philosophical mood, Zeus decides not to punish Jason, stating that if he were to punish every blasphemy, no men would be left to worship the gods at all.
Hera remarks that once mankind stops believing in gods, Zeus will be “nothing.” Zeus agrees and notes that the fact that Hera stays by his side in the face of looming non-existence is almost “human.”
IV. Medea
Jason then rescues the princess Medea from the Clashing Rocks, when gods fail to intervene on her and her shipmates’ behalf. At the ends of the earth, where Jason and his men hope to find the legendary Golden Fleece, Medea, high priestess to the Underworld goddess Hecate, has a crisis of faith.
When her father the king arrests Jason for treachery and murder, Medea prays to the goddess to help her, even though she owes her life to Jason’s human intervention. She shares her dilemma with the statue of Hecate (whom, interestingly, the film never bothers to personify as anything but a stone icon). If Medea helps Jason escape, she is a traitor to her country and her gods, but if she does not, she is a traitor to herself.
Ultimately, at great risk, she helps Jason. But her father Aeetes in turn calls on Hecate for help. Through Hecate’s black magic, he raises an army of skeletons, the victims of the seven-headed hydra that Jason has slain to claim the fleece. Jason and his men fight the resurrected warriors by sword and hand to bony hand. Ultimately, Jason outwits the undead, and they fall into the sea.
* * *
The movie ends before the true end of the story (ultimately, Jason will spurn Medea, and in vengeance she will kill their children, along with the woman Jason hopes to replace her with).
The goddess Hera spares the movie audience this hopeless violence and provides a Hollywood ending, with Jason and Medea kissing.
However, despite the victory over the skeletal army of Hecate, two human adversaries remain for Jason—King Aeetes and King Pelias (who’s not seen after, in the film’s first 30 minutes, he tricks Jason to go on the quest so that Jason will not kill him for destroying Jason’s family and stealing the throne). (In the full myth, Medea disposes of both kings, in grisly ways worthy of Hannibal Lecter.)
Zeus and Hera agree to stop the chess game they’ve been playing with their human pawns … for the time being anyway. But clearly in their minds (and in the minds of the audience members familiar with mythology) the story (ultimately tragic) is far from over. The happy ending, then, is another ruse by the gods—whose shabby treatment of humanity has been repeatedly questioned throughout the film—but the movie audience is at least spared having to see the worst of it.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Tropic Thunder (a review)
I found myself smirking more often than laughing at Ben Stiller’s new movie Tropic Thunder, and I don’t mean that as damning faint praise—the film is satire, not comedy, so it doesn’t mainly divert and try to pander to an audience’s feelings like a traditional comedy. You have to think while watching this one—and try not to get your feelings hurt in the process.
The movie, cowritten by actors Stiller and Justin Theroux and writer Etan Cohen, focuses on the shooting of a war film in Vietnam—with evidently deliberate parallels to Apocalypse Now, Platoon, First Blood, and Born on the Fourth of July. But the film, like Altman’s The Player in 1992, aims higher—skewering not just Hollywood excess and superficiality but also the culture the movie industry represents in miniature. The title may or may not be meant to “rhyme” with Desert Storm, and the incompetence and venality of the movie people portrayed here can be equally tagged to Washington and any boardroom in America.
The movie’s edginess and unevenness stop the audience from ever feeling entirely relaxed. Like Pineapple Express, the movie has unexpected gore. It tramples on people’s sacred cows—already individuals have protested the frequent use of the word “retard,” but clearly they miss the point—all kinds of thin skin (about race, sexuality, drugs, children, not to forget the continuing raw nerve of Vietnam) have a moment on the hot seat.
The film involves an ensemble of actors—a technique usually more successful with US audiences on TV than in movies. It works here, I think.
Stiller, buffed up as an action star whose biggest hits are behind him, is great here in an over-the-top performance reminiscent of Zoolander. Jack Black is funny as a chubby comic actor struggling with heroin addiction, whose whole career has thus far been established on fart jokes. Brandon T. Jackson plays a hiphop artist making the crossover into action—brandishing a phony credibility of his own, while serving as a foil to Robert Downey Jr, playing an A-list Australian actor who has undergone pigmentation treatment to play a black character in the film within a film. In some respects, each character is a caricature of some other actor who is actually in the film or of aspects of the actor playing the character. Good sports, every one.
Tom Cruise plays a ruthless middle-aged studio exec, fixated on money and ego. Matthew McConaughey plays an agent, who hammers down details while missing the overall point. Nick Nolte plays the veteran GI whose bestselling memoir is the basis for the production. Steve Coogan plays an inept, first-time director. Jay Baruchel is the ingénu, a young actor getting his big break, who is better prepared and more professional than his costars.
It’s Downey and Cruise here who mainly worked for me. Downey gets across a sense of panic and world-weariness underlying his character’s polish. This is Downey’s year, it looks like—this film being a great follow-up to his triumph in Iron Man. Cruise seems to relish the opportunity to be an actor, rather than a celebrity/Scientologist. This film is a reminder to us than he can act and raises the question of why he doesn’t do so more often.
The movie, cowritten by actors Stiller and Justin Theroux and writer Etan Cohen, focuses on the shooting of a war film in Vietnam—with evidently deliberate parallels to Apocalypse Now, Platoon, First Blood, and Born on the Fourth of July. But the film, like Altman’s The Player in 1992, aims higher—skewering not just Hollywood excess and superficiality but also the culture the movie industry represents in miniature. The title may or may not be meant to “rhyme” with Desert Storm, and the incompetence and venality of the movie people portrayed here can be equally tagged to Washington and any boardroom in America.
The movie’s edginess and unevenness stop the audience from ever feeling entirely relaxed. Like Pineapple Express, the movie has unexpected gore. It tramples on people’s sacred cows—already individuals have protested the frequent use of the word “retard,” but clearly they miss the point—all kinds of thin skin (about race, sexuality, drugs, children, not to forget the continuing raw nerve of Vietnam) have a moment on the hot seat.
The film involves an ensemble of actors—a technique usually more successful with US audiences on TV than in movies. It works here, I think.
Stiller, buffed up as an action star whose biggest hits are behind him, is great here in an over-the-top performance reminiscent of Zoolander. Jack Black is funny as a chubby comic actor struggling with heroin addiction, whose whole career has thus far been established on fart jokes. Brandon T. Jackson plays a hiphop artist making the crossover into action—brandishing a phony credibility of his own, while serving as a foil to Robert Downey Jr, playing an A-list Australian actor who has undergone pigmentation treatment to play a black character in the film within a film. In some respects, each character is a caricature of some other actor who is actually in the film or of aspects of the actor playing the character. Good sports, every one.
Tom Cruise plays a ruthless middle-aged studio exec, fixated on money and ego. Matthew McConaughey plays an agent, who hammers down details while missing the overall point. Nick Nolte plays the veteran GI whose bestselling memoir is the basis for the production. Steve Coogan plays an inept, first-time director. Jay Baruchel is the ingénu, a young actor getting his big break, who is better prepared and more professional than his costars.
It’s Downey and Cruise here who mainly worked for me. Downey gets across a sense of panic and world-weariness underlying his character’s polish. This is Downey’s year, it looks like—this film being a great follow-up to his triumph in Iron Man. Cruise seems to relish the opportunity to be an actor, rather than a celebrity/Scientologist. This film is a reminder to us than he can act and raises the question of why he doesn’t do so more often.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
10 Movies That Should Be on DVD
The Window (1949)
—Truly scary boy-cries-wolf story about a habitual liar who thinks he witnesses a murder in his working-class tenement
Circus World (1964)
—Story of economic and familial hardships of touring circus life in Europe, featuring a thrilling sequence in which an ocean liner capsizes
Crack in the World (1965)
—Mix of special effects and stock footage portrays a reasonably plausible end of the world
Taking Off (1971)
—Episodic, offbeat tale about middle-aged parents who find their own liberation when their hippie daughter runs away from home
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)
—Technically flawed, but intriguing head game about reincarnation, set in the sex- and demon-obsessed 70s
Fellini’s Casanova (1976)
—Extravagant, elegant, pessimistic, and confrontational biopic that says goodbye to both free love and the golden age of Italian cinema
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
—Kathy Bates, Sandy Dennis, Cher, and Karen Black stuck together in a hot Texas roadside diner
L’Argent (1983)
—Quietly shocking depiction of the soul-killing effects of money and injustice, based on a short story by Tolstoy
Dreamchild (1985)
—Sympathetic and touching portrayal of author Lewis Carroll, but the real subjects are loneliness and the nature of ideal love
The Long Day Closes (1992)
—Nostalgic period film blending bubbly pop standards and dreary slice-of-life scenes of postwar England
—Truly scary boy-cries-wolf story about a habitual liar who thinks he witnesses a murder in his working-class tenement
Circus World (1964)
—Story of economic and familial hardships of touring circus life in Europe, featuring a thrilling sequence in which an ocean liner capsizes
Crack in the World (1965)
—Mix of special effects and stock footage portrays a reasonably plausible end of the world
Taking Off (1971)
—Episodic, offbeat tale about middle-aged parents who find their own liberation when their hippie daughter runs away from home
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)
—Technically flawed, but intriguing head game about reincarnation, set in the sex- and demon-obsessed 70s
Fellini’s Casanova (1976)
—Extravagant, elegant, pessimistic, and confrontational biopic that says goodbye to both free love and the golden age of Italian cinema
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
—Kathy Bates, Sandy Dennis, Cher, and Karen Black stuck together in a hot Texas roadside diner
L’Argent (1983)
—Quietly shocking depiction of the soul-killing effects of money and injustice, based on a short story by Tolstoy
Dreamchild (1985)
—Sympathetic and touching portrayal of author Lewis Carroll, but the real subjects are loneliness and the nature of ideal love
The Long Day Closes (1992)
—Nostalgic period film blending bubbly pop standards and dreary slice-of-life scenes of postwar England
Saturday, August 2, 2008
$14 Million
Value to People magazine of photos of Brad and Angelina’s newborn twins
Estimated street value of 7250 marijuana plants uprooted in Los Padres National Forest, California
Five-year salary for Aqib Talib to play football for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Amount of US Department of Energy’s grants to develop solar energy
Amount of NIH grants to Harvard researchers to study tuberculosis
Minimal cost of raiding polygamist compound in Texas
Winning bid for United Arab Emirates vanity license plate with simply the numeral “1” on it
Production budget of Brokeback Mountain (2005)
. . . . . . . . . . . .
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/01/brangelina.photos.ap/index.html
http://robocaster.com/dailynews/podcast-episode-home/news-ci_10028297/14-million-in-pot-plants-found-in-forest.aspx
http://www.nfl.com/news/story;jsessionid=2F92E5B3E0538A2D0AD1EF4065BFB28C?id=09000d5d80983dfe&template=with-video&confirm=true
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25948
http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/medicine-health/articles/harvard-researchers-receive-14-million-tb-study-grant
http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/19942454.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/17/vanity-plate-sold-for-14_n_87072.html
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=brokebackmountain.htm
Estimated street value of 7250 marijuana plants uprooted in Los Padres National Forest, California
Five-year salary for Aqib Talib to play football for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Amount of US Department of Energy’s grants to develop solar energy
Amount of NIH grants to Harvard researchers to study tuberculosis
Minimal cost of raiding polygamist compound in Texas
Winning bid for United Arab Emirates vanity license plate with simply the numeral “1” on it
Production budget of Brokeback Mountain (2005)
. . . . . . . . . . . .
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/01/brangelina.photos.ap/index.html
http://robocaster.com/dailynews/podcast-episode-home/news-ci_10028297/14-million-in-pot-plants-found-in-forest.aspx
http://www.nfl.com/news/story;jsessionid=2F92E5B3E0538A2D0AD1EF4065BFB28C?id=09000d5d80983dfe&template=with-video&confirm=true
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25948
http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/medicine-health/articles/harvard-researchers-receive-14-million-tb-study-grant
http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/19942454.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/17/vanity-plate-sold-for-14_n_87072.html
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=brokebackmountain.htm
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Sunday Night at the Movies: TARZAN ESCAPES, dir. Richard Thorpe (1936)
I used to rush home after elementary school to watch old Tarzan movies on a local TV station, every weekday afternoon at 4:00.
I was born in (north) Africa, so jungle pictures had a peculiar fascination for me because, by my logic, I was African. (I did technically hold dual citizenship till age 14, but my fancy attached itself solely to the romance of Africa, and not so much the Libyan Sahara, where I was born on a U.S. military base.)
My earliest erotic dream had me dangling from Tarzan’s bare feet as he swung from vine to phallic vine beyond a Mutia escarpment where I was Boy and Jane did not exist.
One Tarzan film in particular left its mark on me—a movie that, though heavily censored, retains a general air of rawness and menace, laced with Freudian sex-dream symbolism from beginning to end.
Of all the MGM Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weismuller, TARZAN ESCAPES, the third in the series, was the biggest problem for the studio. It went through two years of production and five directors—including William Wellman, who had directed the first Oscar-winning Best Picture (WINGS), and John Farrow, future husband of Maureen O’Sullivan (Jane) and, even later, Mia’s dad. Only Richard Thorpe is credited.
Adding to the movie’s mystique are rumors that the movie was jinxed. MGM producer Irving Thalberg died just as filming ended. John Buckler, who plays Captain Fry, died in a car accident a month before the premiere. Herbert Mundin, who plays Rawlins, died three years later, also in a car accident.
(As of this writing, the only surviving cast member is Cheeta the chimp, born in 1932 and holding the Guinness world record as the oldest living primate. He lives in Palm Springs—and paints for a living. His ghost-written autobiography—ME CHEETA: MY LIFE IN HOLLYWOOD—is scheduled for publication in February 2009.)
--Cheeta, Untitled Painting (2003)
Ruined by censors and “too many cooks in the kitchen,” the third in the Tarzan series is clearly inferior to the previous two. TARZAN ESCAPES was cut, re-shot, and re-cut before release, since the studio felt earlier cuts were too violent.
The first version, directed by James McKay, featured giant vampire bats attacking adventurers trekking through a swamp. The second version snipped out the bats and introduced a new character to inject some comic relief into what the studio chiefs felt had become an overly savage story.
The character of Rita, Jane’s cousin, was nastier in the original version and in the end was killed by a giant ape. Originally a crocodile killed the arch-villain Fry, who sinks with a subdued gasp into bubbly gunk in the released version.
Further diluting the movie’s brutal Darwinian implications, MGM built an elaborate tree house for Tarzan and Jane—full of Rube Goldberg devices that not only domesticated but gentrified the couple, with hot and cold water, a chimp-powered ceiling fan, and an elephant-powered elevator. The new split-level house helped to disguise the fact that the jungle couple was technically unmarried, a problem as the Motion Picture Code became stricter in the mid-1930s. (Three years later, when the couple was blessed with a “son,” the baby had to fall asexually from the sky—dropped by a plane, instead of a stork.)
Still, the third film retains vestiges of the sensationalistic first version.
What excited me most as a kid—and by “excited” I do mean “sexually excited”—was less Weismuller himself—athletic, 6’3”, but unusually pasty and depilated for a jungle lord—than the art direction. The overall “look” of the first three films oozes exotic, feral sexiness—not the least part of which was Tarzan’s skimpy loincloth.
The MGM jungle is all hairy vines, furled ferns, and soft-focus flowers—suggestive of virility and fecundity at once—a pansexual Eden. Everywhere we see erect, hulking, moss-covered tree trunks, even underwater, even in a cave! Lurking through the paradise, we have nature “red in tooth in claw”—lions, leopards, crocodiles, cannibals, even man-eating plants—a constant reminder that survival of the fittest is the only law this world understands.
As in the previous film (TARZAN AND HIS MATE—a tellingly crude word choice—even Frankenstein has a “bride”), swimming is a metaphor for sex. The nudity in the original Tarzan-and-Jane water ballet doomed the scene to Code censorship, so it is re-enacted, with clothes this time, in TARZAN ESCAPES. Tarzan coerces Jane to “swim,” but despite her squeals and protestations, Jane appreciates the fact that her man takes control.
Jane:
“Out here, Tarzan’s a king. How do I know what he’d be back there [in London]? Perhaps, at first, sort of a freak. And then, as he learned more about civilization, he’d realize he was dependent on his rich wife. He’d never tolerate that. Or if he did, it might be even worse.”
Fry:
“Oh, Miss Parker, this looks like your lord and master coming now.”
The early Tarzan films’ mix of sex and deadly force brings to mind Freud’s theory of eros and thanatos (sex drive and death wish) and hints at sado-masochistic fantasy—that is, the repeated “man-handling” of Jane suggests rape, while avoiding the reality. When Tarzan first encounters Rita, Jane’s cousin, he grips the hair on the back of her head—as if she were a kitten to be held by its scruff. Of course, Tarzan’s roughhousing is merely a primitive, masculine form of affection … or interest—but Jane knows that she and Tarzan have a form of love that the civilized world cannot understand.
This passion has to be sublimated in a Hollywood film, though. Midway through the movie, Tarzan wrestles a giant crocodile to its death and yodels his famous victory call. He hands Jane a water flower and stands over her. His shadow lurches over her reclined body, and with a slight shudder Jane lets the blossom slip from her fingers back into the river.
Bondage too is a key point of the plot—necessitating the eventual “escape.” The opening scene establishes Captain Fry as a captor of wild animals. His custom-designed duralium cages prevent the teeth and claws of untamed nature from ripping civilization to shreds—the latter embodied by Jane’s white-clad and well-coifed cousins, also introduced at the opening. Bars, booby traps, inhospitable terrain, and “juju” all work to segregate the savage from the civilized—but these are boundaries Jane and Tarzan are able to transcend.
Subsequent events prove that Fry is a villain (first revealed in his brutal treatment of black native workers), and Tarzan, of course, an embodiment of wild nature and Fry’s intended quarry, repeatedly proves himself to be, as one character puts it, a “gentleman.”
Ironically, if predictably, the hunters become the hunted. Natives capture Fry, the cousins, and Jane and tie them to tree trunks. In one of the most haunting images of execution suggested in film (but not directly shown), the natives tie two of the hunting party’s servants spread-eagle to slender trees, restrained by ropes and crisscrossed. When the ropes are cut, the trees spring apart, thus ripping the victims in half.
At the end of the movie Tarzan escapes from the cage Fry has locked him in and unties the adventurers, while his elephant friends stampede through the village. Tarzan and the hunting party escape the natives by slipping through a cavern (“juju” for the superstitious natives, who do not follow), and it opens amazingly to a swamp, which the cave links to mountains! The geography alone is a dream.
The cave’s features are unnervingly gothic. Darkness, mist, black bubbling pools, dead jagged trees. That it represents death is underscored by Jane’s line: “This is the first time in Africa I haven’t been able to see some sign of a bird!”
I believe the standard Freudian interpretation of dreamt caves with monsters inside is that they represent repressed fears of the self, particularly of the unruly id, fount of lust and rage. So the final obstacle Tarzan and his train face in this adventure story aptly symbolizes Production Code-era suppression of sex and violence in American movies.
When they reach the safety of the other side, Tarzan forces Captain Fry to return to the cave to his certain death. This act of primitive justice shocked and thrilled me as a boy, as it does even now.
And for me, as a kid, the fact that this cave squirms with iguanas (reptiles signify the id-driven penis in Freud), growling in the misty shadows, thrilled me all the more.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Custom Made for a Daydreaming Boy
My last day of summer classes was on Monday, and contrary to my expectations, I have not spent the week reading.
I’ve picked up a couple of books, a gay detective story and a gay memoir, but couldn’t get past page 12 on either. The former is clogged up with similes, by my estimate 8-14 per page (like a toilet full of tampons), and the latter tries hard to be David Sedaris but without, you know, humor.
I’m willing to take part of the blame. I’m probably too tired after reading freshmen essays to read much of anything else just yet. I can’t even bring myself to crack open THE MAGUS, though a month ago I greatly enjoyed re-reading Fowles’ THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN.
I’m not watching television either. Everything I find on television is boring—and loud—not a winning combination. I’ve enjoyed watching some dvds (SHELTER is the best-acted gay-themed movie I think I’ve ever seen), but practically every movie I’d be interested in seeing I’ve already seen.
My e-correspondence has not been successful of late. I had already lost one friend a few weeks ago when I defended Barack Obama from charges that he’s a crypto-Muslim and anti-American—looking back, I should have edited the word “dumbfuck” before hitting send.
Last night another friend wrote, “I don’t blame Bush … he gets blamed for everything.” Besides deleting a couple of paragraphs detailing my daydream of personally stomping the President’s face into the sidewalk, I did little to spare the writer’s feelings or illusions. Obviously, these are friends who haven’t seen me in a long, long while—decades, really.
My dog and I take longer walks than usual—about three miles in the mornings and the evenings, when it’s not so hot outside. We play fetch a lot more than usual, too.
I’m gradually upping the amount of exercise I do—nothing spectacular, just push-ups, sit-ups, and curling my 15-pound dumbbells.
And jerking off. I’ve perfected my widescreen fantasy of nude-oil-wrestling Channing Tatum (twins, he turns out to be) in the weightlessness of Barbarella’s spaceship.
I should take a stab at cleaning up the apartment. I’ve washed five weeks’ worth of laundry in the last 48 hours. But there’s dusting to be done, too. And if I could get ambitious, I’d throw out some old stuff that’s just taking up space.
But ambition is what I lack. I am cut out for a life of idleness—physically and mentally. I lounge around the apartment with my dog Tom Ripley, pretty much taking my cues from him on what to do next. Napping excessively works for both of us.
What amazes me is the time just zips by! I used to think that time flew only when I was involved in something stimulating. But I’m hardly into my third nap of the day before I realize the day is over.
I’ve picked up a couple of books, a gay detective story and a gay memoir, but couldn’t get past page 12 on either. The former is clogged up with similes, by my estimate 8-14 per page (like a toilet full of tampons), and the latter tries hard to be David Sedaris but without, you know, humor.
I’m willing to take part of the blame. I’m probably too tired after reading freshmen essays to read much of anything else just yet. I can’t even bring myself to crack open THE MAGUS, though a month ago I greatly enjoyed re-reading Fowles’ THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN.
I’m not watching television either. Everything I find on television is boring—and loud—not a winning combination. I’ve enjoyed watching some dvds (SHELTER is the best-acted gay-themed movie I think I’ve ever seen), but practically every movie I’d be interested in seeing I’ve already seen.
My e-correspondence has not been successful of late. I had already lost one friend a few weeks ago when I defended Barack Obama from charges that he’s a crypto-Muslim and anti-American—looking back, I should have edited the word “dumbfuck” before hitting send.
Last night another friend wrote, “I don’t blame Bush … he gets blamed for everything.” Besides deleting a couple of paragraphs detailing my daydream of personally stomping the President’s face into the sidewalk, I did little to spare the writer’s feelings or illusions. Obviously, these are friends who haven’t seen me in a long, long while—decades, really.
My dog and I take longer walks than usual—about three miles in the mornings and the evenings, when it’s not so hot outside. We play fetch a lot more than usual, too.
I’m gradually upping the amount of exercise I do—nothing spectacular, just push-ups, sit-ups, and curling my 15-pound dumbbells.
And jerking off. I’ve perfected my widescreen fantasy of nude-oil-wrestling Channing Tatum (twins, he turns out to be) in the weightlessness of Barbarella’s spaceship.
I should take a stab at cleaning up the apartment. I’ve washed five weeks’ worth of laundry in the last 48 hours. But there’s dusting to be done, too. And if I could get ambitious, I’d throw out some old stuff that’s just taking up space.
But ambition is what I lack. I am cut out for a life of idleness—physically and mentally. I lounge around the apartment with my dog Tom Ripley, pretty much taking my cues from him on what to do next. Napping excessively works for both of us.
What amazes me is the time just zips by! I used to think that time flew only when I was involved in something stimulating. But I’m hardly into my third nap of the day before I realize the day is over.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Sunday Night at the Movies: NORTH BY NORTHWEST, dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1959)
Trains play key roles in a number of Hitchcock films, including THE LADY VANISHES, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, and, of course, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.
A train figures prominently in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. The train is the Twentieth Century Limited, which ran from New York to Chicago for 65 years.
Other forms of transportation (automobiles, planes) also play pivotal roles in NxNW—and, as if to point up the importance of transportation in the story, Hitch’s precocious cameo shows the director just missing his bus in Manhattan.
Famously, the plane in NxNW is a threat, as is the automobile. The bad guys use them creatively but ineffectively to try to kill the main character, Roger Thornhill, played with trademark suavity by Cary Grant, perhaps my favorite classic movie star, whose wit and elegance Hollywood has tried to rediscover in subsequent leading men from Tony Curtis to George Clooney.
But Grant is the quintessential leading man, in much the way that NxNW is the quintessential Hitchcock movie … by design, it turns out—screenwriter Ernest Lehman wrote the scrpt, he said, to be “the Hitchcock film to end all Hitchcock films.”
The modern world of machines is no friend of Thornhill—except perhaps for the train, even one ominously named after the century of American technology and global influence, which ambivalently both saves our protagonist and further complicates his already bad situation.
Like a number of Hitchcock’s other films, this one is an examination of American ethics and power—or the ethics of power—or, more particularly, it exploits Hitchcock’s delight in discovering menace in innocuous and seemingly innocent objects, people, and settings—smalltown America, birds, shy motel clerks, the Statue of Liberty, the U.N., sacks of potatoes, and the sunny wide-open spaces of the Corn Belt.
The trouble Thornhill finds himself in fairly early in the plot stems from the shadowy workings of a think tank in the U.S. Intelligence Agency, over which a man simply called The Professor, presides. The movie climaxes at Mt. Rushmore, where Thornhill tries to elude the bad guys one last time by scampering across the gargantuan, somewhat contemptuous stone faces of Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, and Roosevelt, along with his newly found romantic interest, Eve Kendell (played by Eva Marie Saint in the archetypically glacial blonde mode Hitch favored in heroines).
So the film, planted firmly in the middle of the Cold War, is about espionage, not just as a plot device, but as a way to examine the absence of honesty in modern discourse, now that the USA is a world power.
NxNW has Hitchcock’s usual “wronged man accused of a crime he did not commit” in Thornhill, whose very name evokes Christlike suffering on a new Calvary. But Thornhill is no saint or innocent—his initials are “ROT”—and like the government bigshots who manipulate his reality, he, a Madison Avenue adman, manipulates the reality of the masses. Even more, he fakes chivalry to snatch other people’s taxicabs and escape crowded elevators, and he’s not above bribing his own mother to lie for him.
In the film, mirrored surfaces symbolize the characters’ duplicity and dishonesty—which Saul Bass’s opening credits set up, showing high-rise office windows in Manhattan, indifferently reflecting the comings and goings of the insignificant little citizens below.
The overall look of the film further stresses the point of how impersonal the world has become. Among other things, the movie is quintessentially a modernist work.
Many scenes seem deliberately allusive to Mondrian’s paintings—intersecting lines and sharp angles. The iconic crop-duster scene is carefully composed in diagonal and horizontal lines until, unexpectedly and suddenly, the plane flies directly towards the camera—and us the audience.
Hitchcock’s previous film VERTIGO focused on the fears and obsessions of James Stewart’s character and how they lead him to tragic realizations about his own dark motives, in part with the vibrant colors of San Francisco and the mesmerizing swirling of waves at Big Sur and Kim Novack’s hairdo. (The same swirling movement Hitch used again in PSYCHO, the shower water and blood whirling down the drain.)
Bernard Hermann’s musical score for VERTIGO is beautifully romantic, but his score for NxNW gallops with anxious intensity, punctuated at key moments with clashing cymbals.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST is, apart from Eve Kendell’s bright red coat at the end, almost devoid of color—with grays dominating virtually every scene—the Manhattan skyscrapers, the chrome train, and the looming stone faces at the end. Everything is oversize and threatening and, more importantly, inorganic—civilization removed from nature and humanity.
And deadpan incongruities like the housekeeper Anna’s farewell to arch-villain Vandamme with “God bless you” or the U.S. intelligence officer’s callous response to Thornhill’s life-threatening predicament (“It’s so horribly sad, how is it I feel like laughing?”) suggest to me that NxNW, which operates so obviously on the surface to be dismissible as “just entertainment,” embodies the director’s strongest critique of and skepticism about the dreams and values of his newly adopted homeland.
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