the whine colored sea

Pssst.

2008-01-07T20:43:00.000-08:00

Les films français = depravity, smoking, crotch shots.

2006-12-19T20:58:00.000-08:00

Just a quick hello, how are things?, blah blah blah. I started a new job that isn't very conducive to blogging, hence the silence. Working on a post on seeing Inland Empire for the second time. In the mean time, feast upon my favorite piece of film crit in ages, courtesy of one Gina DeFalco, Netflix commentator. Of Francois Ozon's See the Sea:

Key elements to a french movie - slow as thick snot in January - moral
depravity - infidelity - boobs are shown, sometimes crotch - people smoking
This film has all of those elements, but even with the extra leeway, knowing
it is French, this movie blows choda! Only recommended if you enjoy activities like sewing your head to the carpet, or get off looking at
someones green apple splatters.

Thank you, Gina. Thank you.

This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls. (Barf.)

2006-12-11T20:37:00.000-08:00

When watching The History Boys it's impossible not to (at least passingly) think of Peter Weir's oppressive Dead Poet's Society. While far from perfect, The History Boys is a far better film; it at least is smart and charming and has actually says something about how poetry and art and education intersect with one's life.

Anyway. That's not the point of this post.
No, I just wanted to remind you of the fact that motherfucking DPS won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1990. I know, I know... the Oscars mean nothing, they don't actually award actual talent, Kane was ignored, etc.
But just look--LOOK!--at its competition that year. (And just ignore the Ephron nom. It's fine and all, but it totally weakens my argument.)

* Tom Schulman for Dead Poets Society - Winner
* Woody Allen for Crimes and Misdemeanors - Nominated
* Spike Lee for Do the Right Thing - Nominated
* Steven Soderbergh for Sex, Lies, and Videotape - Nominated
* Nora Ephron for When Harry Met Sally... - Nominated

And just as a cherry on top: Schulman didn't have a great writing career after the majesty that is DPS. He went on to write Medicine Man, Holy Man, and Welcome to Mooseport. Karma's a bitch, huh?

This year, to save me from tears / I'll give it to someone special.

2006-12-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

Well hello there. I've been ITless since Wednesday (thanks Time Warner!), hence the silence. Anyway, just a quick Sunday hello and a link to a website totally devoted to covers of Wham!'s "Last Christmas". You know you want to hear Erlend Øye, Travis, and/or Crazy Frog covering the third greatest modern Christmas standard*. Get over there and take your stand against the war on Christmas.

* The best modern Christmas standard ever is obviously Macca's "Wonderful Christmastime" followed by the Michael Penn/Jon Brion composition "Christmastime" (as sung by Aimee Mann).

A peak at the Empire.

2006-12-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

A taste of what I babbled about:

Elsewhere, 'Nohla nails it:

“Inland Empire” isn’t a film to love. It is a work to admire, to puzzle through, to wrestle with. Its pleasures are fugitive, even frustrating. The first time I saw it, I was repulsed by the shivers of Lynchian sadism, a feeling doubtless informed by my adoration of the far more approachable, humanistic “Mulholland Drive.” On second viewing, though, “Inland Empire” seemed funnier, more playful and somehow heartfelt. Certainly, there is nothing but love in Ms. Dern’s performance, which is as much a gift to us as to the director who has given this actress her greatest roles. It’s easy to get lost in a David Lynch film, but Ms. Dern and her amazing rubber-band mouth, which laughs like the sun and cries us a river, proves a magnificent guide.

A friendly reminder.

2006-12-05T16:50:00.000-08:00

Today is the day, kids.
Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist--one of the greatest pieces of narrative cinema in existence--is finally available on DVD. If you haven't seen it yet, bump it to the top of your queue, buy it, track it down, whatever. See it. It's an absolute essential.

If you're interested, I rambled about it last year.

You need a steak and a vitamin.

2006-12-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

Amy Sedaris was on Conan last week and that appearance alone got me to netflix Strangers With Candy: The Movie. The film is... well, it's OK. But I laughed harder at these nine minutes than anything in the movie*. Enjoy:

*= OK, that might not be totally true. I laughed really hard when Colbert, as the science teacher, yells at his class "Eyes to the back of the room!" and then has a total ugly-crying meltdown. Ugly-crying meltdowns are the best.

Indeed.

2006-12-02T16:05:00.000-08:00

"The one thing I'll give it: it made a compelling case for death."

--Morgan, after a screening of The Fountain.

You're kinda layin' a mindfuck on me.

2006-12-01T21:30:00.000-08:00

47, 9:45 (or is it midnight?), Axxon--->, "Black Tambourine," Bucky Jay, bunny rabbits, circus, cursed films, dancing whores, dark hallways, dead child, DV, "good with animals," High On Blue Tomorrows, Hollywood & Vine, industrial hum, ketchup, lamp shades, laugh track, lightbulb mouth, "Locomotion," mindfuck, Polish folk tales, red curtains, screwdriver, strobe, "tell me if you recognize me from somewhere," tits & ass, trains in the distance, "yes, she's here..."
INLAND EMPIRE.

(I need to see it again.)

Thank you, Rob Thomas.

2006-11-30T18:25:00.000-08:00

Fear not, no spoilers here.

I've mentioned my nerdy obsession with Veronica Mars before, but not lately. Here's a little explanation. I'm insanely in love with the first season: the characters and their relationships are vivid and perfectly acted, the writing is uniformly smart and witty and warm, and the central mystery is expanded and resolved in such a thoroughly satisfying manner that it adds up to, in my mind, one of the finest blocks of television I've ever seen.

Season Two is patchy. Things get off on the right foot (that first episode back is one of the best VMs ever), but gets a little wonky by the midpoint. There are so many threads and subplots muddling the new "big mystery" that it turns into a confusing and frustrating ride. It's still compelling, sure, but by the time the big revelations occur, it's a massive letdown. (Am I alone in thinking Season Two's greatest moments are always set to perfectly selected pop songs? My three favorite Season Two moments: Dead body washes ashore [The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?"], Veronica and Logan run from crazy child abusers [Air's "Run"], Prom [M. Doughty's "I Hear the Bells"].)

Rob Thomas and co. tried to remedy this situation in Season Three by creating an initial "big mystery" arc of nine episodes, then two mini-arcs to round-out the season. (At least that was the initial plan. Now it looks like Mr. Thomas might tweak the formula again by finishing the second arc, then running a series of stand alone episodes.) This season hasn't been without its growing pains (really, what was all that bidness with Logan in Mexico? Laura San Giacomo? Really?), but it's been a sturdy run that absolutely killed with the most recent episode. Tuesday's show, which saw the saga of the Hearst Rapist concluded and the introduction of the next mystery, was so twisty-turny-watching-through-your-fingers-brilliant, with a legitimately rewarding payoff, it felt like Season One all over.* Here's hoping it keeps up the momentum. The show's going on hiatus until mid-January, but the first nine episodes will be running in order over the holidays. If you've missed them, fire up that Tivo and get busy. Or add the first two seasons to your Netflix queue. Or use the ITs to catch-up. I dunno. Just don't let this series escape you.

* Perhaps my favorite summation of the episode came in an e-mail from Nayiri:

Re: VMars, Keith [her husband] comes home from class in the middle of it, and usually I don't talk to him (aside from maybe saying hello) until it's a commercial break, but Tuesday night I was scampering around the middle room and clutching pillows to my bosoms and yelling at the TV. And then he came in, and then I started frantically telling him everything that he missed (the whole season) and hopping from one foot to the other like I was holding a lot of pee.

Yup. Sounds about right. And one more picture, 'cause the t-shirt is too goood not to:

You know you enthrall me...

2006-11-29T12:04:00.000-08:00

My love affair with the 33⅓ series is only getting more intense. LD Beghtol's entry on 69 Love Songs just came in the mail and based on my initial browse, it might just be my favorite entry yet. It's a two part "field guide" to Stephin Merritt's opus; part one is a lexicon of all the major words, phrases and numbers found in the 69 songs. Part two is a song by song guide to the album, identifying the singer(s)/the song's key/BPM/genre, things to look for, and commentary from Stephin, other band members, critics, etc.

It's an insanely thorough and funny read. An example: I've always loved "Reno Dakota" from Volume 1, but I had no effing clue what was going on when Claudia sang "You know you enthrall me/and yet you don't call me/It's making me blue/Pantone 292." So, I flip to the handy lexicon, head to P and voila:

Pantone 292 (n) A rich sky blue, the color of Claudia's hopeless love for filmmaker Reno Dakota. Pantone, Inc. is the proud parent of the Pantone Matching System-- 1,114 standardized ink colors and process-color screen mixes created for graphic-designers and printers. Why shyly murmur "school bus yellow" when one can shout PMS 109, or dream of "Campbell's Soup made with milk" when one can demand PMS 180? According to [the song] Reno Dakota Blue is best approximated by PMS 292.

Yeah, I know there's always the Googles, but isn't it way more fun to have a handy little book all alphabetized and filled with neat anecdotes? (Like when the Bush reelection committee tried to license "Washington D.C." for an ad.) I think so.

Challenge.

2006-11-28T19:56:00.000-08:00

Earlier today, my friend Morgan asked me to name--off the top of my head--a pair of consecutive movies that showed an enormous fall from grace for a filmmaker. That is: Film A is considered an unimpeachable masterpiece and was followed by an utterly disasterous Film B. Morgan's example:

Schindler's List -> The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2.

I guess I have Altman on the brain (sigh) as my first thought was:

Short Cuts -> Prêt-à-Porter.

Tim's contribution:

sex, lies, and videotape -> Kafka.

Kinda fun, no? Your picks in the comment section. (And I'm opening it up to... whatever. It doesn't have to be a director; musicians, authors, actors, etc. are all fair game.)

Quote of the day.

2006-11-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

"I like Bobby Fischer. I read his book and his story. I like him because his life is like a hip-hop life: a person who comes out, finds himself, gotta rock the world, and then the government is against him. You know the government took all his shit from him, right? Exiled his ass. This nigga ain't crazy, son. This nigga's a genius."
--The RZA, Stop Smiling No. 28.

Extraordinary update.

2006-11-28T10:04:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, the saga over the various versions of Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine is so 2005. But the good folks over at fairfax ave. unearthed this ~~great piece of dirt~~ interesting tidbit from EM 2.0's "co-producer" Brian Kehew and it's too good to ignore. A sample:

I had no power - they had someone else mix the record - who charged 40k PLUS points (I was not taking mixing points) and who smashed the hell out of all the beauitful dynamics we had created. As importantly, he completely missed some of the most important tracks we had in our arragements, which makes me realize the "other producer" probably wasn't even at the mixes - or paying attention. Personally, I think it's cookie-cutter mixing by someone who is not that talented - smash everything so you don't have to worry about levels changing. I don't even listen to the CD now - although our engineer's roughs (Hey - I'm an engineer, but I didn't try to control that, did I?) sound great and I still isten to them. MUCH better music, with all the intended tracks.

Then, when the album comes out, my credit has dropped further. It now says "Produced by XX" and underneath this, "Co-produced by Brian Kehew". Totally an unrealistic credit, because if I had shared the work of something, so had the other person shared and been "co-producer". Certainly as the person who got the artist to work (she had no intention to work again with Jon Brion) and hired the studio and chose the set of tracks to use, then worked daily to make a record...

Delayed response.

2006-11-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

Back from the holidays. A few things that I really should've blogged about ages ago:

Josh sent me an e-mail with that image attached. He was concerned that the joke might be wearing thin. Nope.
Let me jump on the blogger-cliche bandwagon (again): Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable" is fantastic. I'm not the biggest B-supporter, but I can whole-heartedly get behind this shit. The simple drum programming and acoustic strum... the way she tentatively hits those high notes when she sings "I could have another you in a minute..." Yup, that works nicely. (The remix with Ghostface is even sicker. Hurry over to Rich Fourfour's place and snag it.)
Yes, Casino Royale is as a fun as you've heard. Afer the first hour it sags a little, but I dare you to deny it. And, yes, I feel a little dead inside for enjoying something that has Paul Haggis's name attached to it.
Ever since he left Slate, I've been really bad about keeping up with David Edelstein. I really should try to keep up with him because he's not only insightful, he makes me laugh. From his review of The Fountain:
"The movie would be more bearable without the unyielding score by Clint Mansell, which somehow melds the worst of Minimalism, art rock, and New Age music. It's what you'd hear if your massage therapist wanted to induce a stroke."
Speaking of Slate: thank you, Bryan Curtis.

Everything you need to know about Twyla Tharp's The Times They Are A-Changin'.

2006-11-06T23:16:00.001-08:00

Tharp has taken Bob Dylan's musical catalogue and turned it into a Broadway show.
Joan Acocella, in the pages of The New Yorker (11/6/2006), summarizes it thusly:
In [Tharp's] show, the owner and ringmaster of the circus is Captain Ahrab (Thom Sesma), an evil tyrant who abuses his innocent son, Coyote (Michael Arden); his kind, worse-for-the-wear girlfriend, Cleo (Lisa Brescia); and everyone else in his vicinity—namely, six Pierrot-like clowns and Cleo’s dog, whom he eventually garrotes. Then the times, they change. Coyote pairs off with Cleo, and the clowns kill Ahrab. (Or I think he died—it was hard to tell, because the scene was lit only by flashlights, but he didn’t reappear after that.) Coyote takes over the circus, which now becomes a democratic organization: everyone gets ringmaster wear. They all sing “Forever Young,” and the curtain comes down.

That is all.

Finally.

2006-10-31T10:10:00.000-08:00

Unpopular pop fans, your prayers have been answered:
fairfax avenue: a jon brion resource.

Now go and revel in its goodness.

'Tis the season.

2006-10-31T00:12:00.000-08:00

Who knew that writing about psychotic mutant hillbillies would be such a problem? I've been meaning to write about Alexandre Aja's remake of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes for months now. With Halloween upon us, I figure it's now or never.

I'm a little embarrassed over how much I love the film. It's such an unapologetically ugly film, full of extreme violence and an unrelenting pace. But that's why I've always loved the classic horror movies of the '70s and the early '80s: they're ruthless in execution (unintentional pun, I swear) and full of anxiety. I don't have a lot of love for the recent spate of horror films because most of them are so poorly paced and ineptly made. (Hello, Eli Roth.)

The Hills Have Eyes is all momentum and sick fluidity: it's smartly shot, judiciously cut, and competently acted. Sure, there's little to the plot (all-American family gets stuck in the desert, hillbilly mutants descend, chaos and carnage ensues) and the characters are all stock (former police detective Dad, loving Mom, two hot daughters, bumbling son-in-law). Honestly, that's what I want in a horror movie. I want a compendium of phobias rubbed in my face; I want it to be outlandish and unbelievable; above all, I want it to be scary. Hills is all of those things and a little more. Like those 70s/80s classics, it's all jittery about current events. This is where that I have problems whole-heartedly endorsing the film. (Deep breath) You see, I'd argue that Aja intends this film to be a pro-Iraq War/anti-insurgency rallying cry.

Consider the frame of the story: a Midwestern family makes a fatal error when they take seriously bad advice from a man they thought they could trust. They wind up stranded in the desert and quickly realize they've made a huge mistake. As night falls, the hillbilly mutant killers descend and really, really mess things up. (Arson, rape, torture, dog-killing, you name it.) It's kill or be killed now. Up until this point, the nebbish--i.e., liberal Jewish--son-in-law was a pacifist who refused to hold a gun. When he realizes exactly what's at stake (namely the safety of his wife and child), he picks up that gun... and an ax... and flammable liquids and learns to love warfare. He realizes that, yes, he's been lied to and should never have been in this situation, but by God, the threat is real and he's got to get some blood on his hands.

And exhale.

Before you think I'm insane and an asshole film nerd making shit up, Aja's flirtation with conservative politics emerged in his debut film, 2004's High Tension. That movie I can't abide by. Technically savvy: yes. But also illogical and plain dumb. Without really spoiling the film's much-touted shock twist, I'll just say that I'm not alone in thinking the entire film amounts to a crazed rant about how the gays are destroying the traditional family.

This is the point in the post where I suddenly ask myself: Wait, why do I like this movie again? Then I say: Oh yeah, because its primary objective (to make me really uncomfortable and scare the bejesus out of me) is more than met. The fact that the politics are repellent and naive is secondary to me. (I like that George Romero wrangles with Vietnam and consumerism in his Zombie movies, but that's not what makes them great; first and foremost they're effing creepy.) I don't need to be constantly coddled, I'm OK with debate. And I'm not going to lie: I'm amused that a 28 year-old Frenchmen seems to have the same world-view as Bill O'Reilly and he used Hollywood money to craft a hardcore exploitation film to express it. Then I realize that if O'Reilly ever saw the film, he'd probably consider it a sign of the apocalypse and try to have it banned. It's the gift that just keeps on giving.

Happy Halloween.

And on November ~~4th~~ 7th, please vote against lying gas station attendants who tell you that the quickest way to California is on an unpaved road that goes through the desert. They're assholes and they need to go.

It's Monday. I know you could use a little love.

2006-10-30T10:39:00.000-08:00

There's something theraputic about compiling a list/manifesto of lurve via e-mail. That's what I found myself doing the past couple of days with Nayiri, friend and co-editrix of Horny Gandhi. Ostensibly this is a list of things we mutually love; for the most part it really is. I will confess that I had to google a couple of her selections, and I really can't say that I love (or am even familiar with) some of her selections that deal with makeup, purses, and fashion-designers. But I trust her, she has impeccable taste. Anyway.

Here's our love parade.

We love:
1. Crispy, flaky, hot croissants. Preferably in Paris.
2. Paris.
3. Corrugated metal.
4. The Arrangement of Things by Ross Bleckner.
5. Eighties songs like "A New England" by Billy Bragg and "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" by Mission Of Burma.
6. Lost. (Yes, that includes Season Two and the new episodes. Shut it, haters.)
7. Dogs.
8. Coffee from The Diesel Cafe, Somerville, MA.
9. Good font usage.
10. Kristen Bell.
11. Archaic-sounding synonyms for slut, i.e. slattern, hussy, painted woman, floozy, tart, etc.
12. The Christian Bale oeuvre.
13. The word oeuvre.
14. Sigerson Morrison.
15. Zombies and the undead in general.
16. The Criterion Collection.
17. The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey.
18. Trivial Pursuit. (But only when played in teams and it gets mad contentious.)
19. Lunch.
20. Snark.
21. Chocolate mousse.
22. Harald.
23. Ann Patchett.
24. Cheese.
25. Danger Mouse, particularly his accent, his eyepatch and his little yellow car.
26. Danger Mouse, the producer.
27. Rum drinks.
28. Dead Baby Jokes.
29. Steven Soderbergh's work ethic.
30. "Laura Palmer's Theme."
31. The theme song and second version of the opening credits of "Homicide: Life on the Street."
32. Dirty martinis with extra olives.
33. Hong Kong.
34. HTML color charts.
35. The Behnaz Sarafpour, Doo.Ri, Lela Rose, Peter Som and Vera Wang collections for Spring 2007.
36. Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentiis.
37. Mead Composition Notebooks.
38. Book covers/jackets designed by Chip Kidd.
39. New Order.
40. Xenu.
41. Vincent Cassel and Monica Belluci.
42. Shu Uemura makeup & paraphernalia.
43. Birds, particularly penguins, parrots, flamingos and sparrows.
44. Pedro Almodóvar.
45. Traveling, be it domestic, international, or intergalactic.
46. Garlic.
47. Wikipedia.
48. Largo.
49. Mark Romanek's music videos.
50. Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch in St. Louis
51. Butik.
52. Small Space, Big Style.
53. Regensburg.
54. Yelp.
55. Evan Rachel Wood.
56. Postcards.
57. Sleeping with the window(s) open.
58. The word "parapluie."
59. Cucumbers.
60. Lemony Snicket
61. Lake houses, and waterfront property.
62. Around the World in 80 Homes.
63. GQ.
64. Alexis Bittar jewelry.
65. Century Gothic.
66. Mary Louise Parker.
67. Taschen books.
68. Chamberlins.
69. David Bowie's Berlin period.
70. The celebrity guest appearances on Scooby Doo.
71. Good posture.
72. Proper use of punctuation.
73. Citrus fruits and fragrances.
74. David Ebershoff.
75. Harry and the Potters.
76. Carmel-by-the-Sea.
77. Sad Christmas songs.
78. Chick bassists.
79. Turner Classic Movies.
80. Saul Bass title sequences.
81. The Muse bag by Yves Saint Laurent in burnished gold calfhair.
82. Untying my boss's shoelaces when he's not looking.
83. The dancing styles of the Peanuts cast.
84. Elektra: Assassin, particularly Bill Sienkiewicz's artwork.
85. The Audrey Hepburn/Hubert de Givenchy collaboration.
86. Huy Fong chili paste/sauce.
87. "Waterloo Sunset" by The Kinks.
88. Sally O'Malley. (She likes to kick, stretch, and kick, she's fifty! Fifty years-old.)
89. Macacas For Webb.
90. Articulate contrarians.
91. The light at exactly 8.12 in the morning, EST.
92. "No One Will Ever Love You" by the Magnetic Fields.
93. The smell of tomatoes on the vine.
94. Lavender - the plant, the color, the fragrance.
95. Winston Krikorian.
96. Calvin & Hobbes.
97. Blueberry pancakes.
98. Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall.
99. Wong Kar-wai.
100. Lists.

No, I would not like to court.

2006-10-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

(From Married To The Sea, sent to me by Joshua.)

Eyes, windows, soul, etc.

2006-10-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, Marie Antoinette again.
As noted, I had major issues with it. Funny thing is, I can't get the damn thing out of my head, which, I guess, is a compliment. I mean, if you're going to make a mediocre movie, why not make it catchy like a pop song?

The thing that's sticking with me isn't so much a character or a scene, but a look. Literally a look. During the course of the film, Coppola repeatedly breaks the rules of Film School 101 and has Kirsten Dunst look directly into the camera. I'd need to re-watch the film to get a precise count, butI'd guess it happens three or four times.

The first occurrence is during the opening shot. Kiki is lounging on a couch, amid a collection of pastries, being attended to by a maid; as the Gang of Four's "Natural's Not It" climaxes, she turns her head and seductively looks directly into the camera. The camera/we hold her gaze for a moment and then scene cuts to black. It's simultaneously sexy/funny, a "come hither" and a "fuck you," and it's an undeniably great moment. (Alas, it's one of the few.)

Obviously, Sofia isn't the first to break this protocol. The final shot of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia has my favorite use of direct contact. After three hours of misery and heartbreak, the clouds are lifting; Claudia (Melora Walters) sits on a bed, listening to a lecture from Jim (John C. Reilly). Anderson pushes Reilly's speech way low in the mix; instead we're entirely focused on Walters' reaction and the song playing on the soundtrack, Aimee Mann's "Save Me." As the song reaches a crescendo, Walters raises her eyes, looks directly into the camera, and smiles. It's the first time in the film's entire running time that this major character actually smiles. (And if you've seen the film, you know that she's been through a lot and it really means something.) The camera holds on that smile for a beat before cutting to the credits. In a film full of great moments, Melora's eye contact/smile is a capper.

And now I'm blanking. I'm sure there are other truly great instances of actors looking directly at us, but nothing's jumping at me. Your picks?

When GOOD collides with EVIL.

2006-10-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

A confession: I love nasty, below-the-belt political ads. And because some of my readers don't live in the California area, I fear that they will live their lives having never experienced the brilliance that is this anti-Jerry Brown ad.

My favorite parts: the sub-Fincher mise-en-scene and the Manson comparison. Enjoy. (Oh and if you have any particularly excellent forms of political hate speech from the YouTubes, I'd love some links in the comment section.)

Needless to say, Jerry Brown's got my vote.

A self-fulfilling prophecy.

2006-10-20T23:31:00.000-07:00

When I walked out of an advance screening of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou two years ago, I remember thinking "So this is what all his detractors saw in his earlier films." Precocious and two-dimensional, Anderson made the (perfecto) art direction and (flawless) soundtrack do all the heavy-lifting and couldn't be bothered with little things like, you know, a well-formed script or compelling characters. That said, Zissou isn't without its moments--even though it's done nothing to really merit it, I still get choked up when I see that Jaguar Shark/"In twelve years, he'll be eleven and a half"/Sigur Ros scene--it's just a huge let down.

Leaving Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette earlier this evening, I felt the same way. While The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation were impeccably-stylized and heartfelt shards of melancholy filmmaking, Marie Antoinette is... well, just what Coppola's critics have always maintained: a series of fashionable and pretty sequences, set to an excellent soundtrack, without an ounce of characterization or depth.

As many critics have noted, the first hour--documenting how a naive Austrian princess became the dauphine of France--is fine; Coppola's pop-lyricism meshes nicely with Chateau Versailles. The much-touted use of contempty music works surprisingly well and everything looks gorgeous. But as the film progresses, it's as if Sofia's lost any sense of rhythm or pace and can't be bothered to further develope her lead character. She starts frantically adding political elements, rushing through biographical bits, all in a last minute sprint to the end. Considering how many languid sequences of Marie exploring the grounds of Versailles we've sat through, it's odd to see the birth and death of a child take up a minute of screen time.

It's not that I'm demanding historical fidelity or a more political film--hardly. I think it's a smart move for Coppola to isolate us with Marie in this opulent cocoon, away from reality. I just wish that when reality, in the form of pissed off and starving masses, descended upon the chateau it had more of a punch. And if you're going to make a film entirely from Marie's POV, you've got to give you actress more than what's been given to poor Kirsten Dunst. There's no doubt that Kiki certainly looks the part, and as long as she's frolicking in a field at dawn, Aphex Twin on the soundtrack, all is well. But nearly every time she opens her mouth, the dialogue fails her. (It doesn't help that Ms. Dunst seems to literally chirp most of her lines; but for fear of giving fodder to the haters, I'm'a stop there.)

There are positives:

I will never tire of Coppola shooting golden sunlight through trees or pretty blonde women collapsing into tall grass.
Marianne Faithful as Marie's Mommy. That cigarette-cured voice... fuck yeah.
Somehow, some way, Sofia has managed to get Kevin Shields out from under his rock (again). True, his contributions are limited to two Bow Wow Wow remixes, but still. It's Kevin effing Shields, people.
Even though they're given next to nothing to do, it's fun to watch Molly Shannon kvetch with Shirley Henderson in insane period costumes.
When Marie/Kiki has her big meltdown, Coppola places the camera about four inches away from her face. It's an unexpected and ballsy move.
Did I mention the soundtrack?
Asia Argento = Best. Asia Argento with a pet monkey = better.
"I'm saying good-bye." Nice.

Leaving the screening, Tim nailed it when he said, "There's just no there there." Indeed. Le sigh.

He went there.

2006-10-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

As my admiration for Armond White surely attests, I love me verbose contrarians. It will come as no surprise to you, then, that Ian Parker's recent New Yorker profile of Christopher Hitchens was like Christmas morning for me. How can you deny a man who talks about the transformative power of Proust in one sentence and then drops this:

Hitchens claims to be unperturbed by his critics. "You'd think I'd driven over their pets and abducted their daughters," Hitchens said. "I'd like to know what brings them on." A pause. "So I could do it more." He added, "People say, 'What's it like to be a minority of one, or a kick-bag for the internet?' It washes off me like jizz off a porn star's face."

So anyway.

2006-10-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

Right, so where was I? Oh yeah... A list of random things I want to get out of the way. Huzzah for lists.

Two years ago I read Tom Perrota's Little Children. It didn't make a huge impact, but it was a pleasant enough read. Odd, as novels about sex predators and the havoc they create aren't normally "pleasant," but whatevs. It was well-written and smart enough and I enjoyed it. When I heard that Todd Fields was following up ~~Granola Death Wish~~ In the Bedroom by collaborating with Perrota on a film version of Little Children, I was intrigued. And when the eerie/ominous/beautiful trailer dropped, I was actually excited for the project.

Oops.

Look: I get it, the film's gorgeous. Antonio Calvache is a fine cinematographer. And yes, Kate Winslet is one of the best actresses working. Noted. But I have a really hard time sitting through two-plus hours of reactionary, puritanical claptrap masquerading as "progressive" satire. Sorry. Do we really need another film that tells us that the 'burbs are a hotbed of hypocrisy? Really? Oh I forgot, there's also a really weak bit of Iraq-allegory and a whole lot of anti-sex posturing. To recap: the suburbs are filled with hateful, ignorant people; fear controls us and that's stupid; porn is bad. Thanks, Todd, but no thanks.

Of course, while Little Children is being ridiculously lavished with praise, John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus is being largely ignored. It's far from a perfect film, but it's legitimately progressive and patriotic and that's... well, refreshing.
Best passage from a book I couldn't manage to finish:
"You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world's. This slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory, make your skin turn opaque so your twitching organs and blue-cheese veins will be semivisible. You will venture out only in daylight, avoiding weekends and school holidays. Language, too, will leave you behind, betraying your tribal affiliations wherever you speak. On escalators, on trunk roads, in supermarket aisles, the living will overtake you, incessantly. Elegant women will not see you. Soon detectives will not see you. Salespeople will not see you, unless they sell stair lifts or fraudulent insurance policies. Only babies, cats, and drug addicts will acknowledge your existence. So do not fritter away your days. Sooner than you fear, you will stand before a mirror in a care home, look at your body, and think, E.T., locked in a ruddy cupboard for a ruddy fortnight."
--David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas.
Worst passage from a book that I did manage to finish:
"I was able to enter the room and stroll about and, magically, I did not get in the way of the Gestapo officer and the Chinaman who were having their way with Nicole [Kidman]. She wore a very revealing brassiere, a size or two too small, I calculated--how else was her bosom such a promontory? And her matching white panties were meshed with a garter belt that held up her long stockings. She gasped and sighed at every intrusion and indecency from her odd Abbot and Costello. You know the sort of thing."
--David Thomson, Nicole Kidman.
Regarding David Thomson's Nicole Kidman:
(1) Dude, "chinaman" is not the preferred nomenclature.
(2) The book isn't as bad as the passage above. It's actually a really entertaining riff on Kidman's body of work.
When I was 12, this was, like, maybe the sickest shit ever:

No, I'm not joking.
Trust me on this, bump Weeds: Season One to the top of your Netflix queue. Thank you.
Oh, one more: buy AIR's Late Night Tales pronto. I know, I know, just what you need, another chillout comp. I ask you this: how many chillout comps do you have that successfully segues a Cure song into a Black Sabbath song into a Nino Rota track? Yeah, that's what I thought. Buy it.
Monkey portraits!
And because it's been two months, an Armondism just for you:
"The difference between Infamous and last year’s Capote is the difference between feeling and sophistication. Hoffman and his writer, director team Dan Futterman and Bennett Miller took pride in loathing Capote (a subtle, culturally accepted homophobia). They built their bad-art, Oscar-nominated reputations on Capote’s dead body while sneering that Capote had built his literary reputation on the deaths of Smith, Hickok and the Clutter family. It was an arrogant indie attempt at seeming superior to an artist of an earlier era. (There are Hitler biopics more compassionate than Capote.) This contempt gave itself away in the film’s pseudo-sophisticated literary exposé. But condemnation of Capote’s careerism actually reflected Hoffman’s own gloating egotism, his look-at-me stunt performance."

This is the girl.

2006-08-07T09:50:00.000-07:00

Girish's reminder that Inland Empire's debut is right around the corner had me reaching for my copy of Lynch on Lynch over the weekend. (Oof, that was some wonky syntax. Deal with me. It's Monday.)

I'd forgotten that in his intro to the book's section on Mulholland Drive, editor Chris Rodley touches briefly on the film's meaning and just what exactly is going on, but is much more interested in why Lynch made it. Anyone familiar with the Twin Peaks backstory knows that Lynch and his co-creator Mark Frost spent years struggling with a Marilyn Monroe biopic before scrapping it and deciding to develope a murder-mystery soap opera. Here Rodley connects that aborted project with Drive:

At one time he agreed to direct a film, to be written by his Twin Peaks partner Mark Frost, based on Anthony Summers' book Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. It never happened: "I loved the idea of this woman being in trouble," Lynch says, "but I didn't know if I liked it being a real story."
Marilyn was, of course, found dead in suspicious circumstances--lying on her bed in a semi-foetal position. She was supposed to have had mob connections. Hers was an unhappy childhood, and apparently she feared being genetically prone to insanity. She once noted that--as a Gemini--she was "Jekyll and Hyde. Two in one." She was even diagnosed as being a "borderline personality." "Borderlines" are emotionally unstable, excessively impulsive and dependent on external approval. They crave applause and become extremely depressed when rejected by others. Marilyn's lifelong friend, the poet Norman Rosten, is quoted at the beginning of Goddes: "Hollywood, the dream factory, has created a dream girl. Could she awaken to reality? And what was the reality? Was there a life for the girl outside the dream?"

This is the girl--probably, possibly, maybe.

Pretty perfect, huh?

A plea.

2006-08-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

Since around 60% of my 2006 posts have contained some sort of pathetic "I'm sorry I was away, I'm'a do better, I'm back" bullshit, I'm going to forgo that shtick and get straight to talking about movies.

What better way to return to the fray than by writing about a movie none of you have seen? (Work with me, people, I'm rusty.) I just got back from a test screening of Billy Ray's Breach and I'm experiencing one of those nice movie highs that you get when you walk into a theater with no expectations and walk out deeply satisfied. The film's a fact-based thriller about the FBI and its case against Robert Hannsen; do me a favor, if that name doesn't instantly ring a bell, leave it alone. Don't go Google him or look him up on Wikipedia, Breach's twists will work that much better if you're fairly ignorant of the case (like I was).

If you've seen Ray's previous film, Shattered Glass, you have an idea of what you're in for: a competently shot, impeccably edited, precisely written, perfectly acted piece of entertainment. And again, Ray works his hoodoo voodoo by taking the blandest, most vanilla leading man imaginable (in Glass that'd be Hayden Christensen, in Breach it's Mr. Reese Witherspoon), making him act opposite a gauntlet of brilliant character actors (in this go-round it's Chris Cooper, Laura Linney, Gary Cole, and that girl from Wonderfalls) and somehow elicits a real and sturdy performance out of the guy.

Breach is the perfect Sunday afternoon movie to me; the weekend is fading fast, you're itching to go to the movies, and you want something substantial (so you feel like your Sunday afternoon has been wisely spent) but light (because you're hung-over, because you need to take your mind off the fact that Monday is rapidly approaching, because Lars Von Trier is too much for a Sunday, etc.). Here it is, kids.

But this is the main reason I'm writing about a movie that's not scheduled to come out until March of '07: I took part in the post-screening focus group... It's as depressing and soul-killing as you've heard. A lot of talkin' loud and sayin' nothing.

I'd like to point out that the movie--in the cut that I saw--clocks in at ninety minutes. The thing is perfectly paced, not an ounce of fat on it, the thing just clips. Over half the group felt it was "boring," "too slow," and "too long." Ninety minutes, people. Ninety. In addition they felt that not enough happened and they started offering notes: the movie's so dull, why couldn't they make Ryan Phillipe's wife a double-crossing spy? It needs more shoot-outs. Can't they change the fate of Hannsen/Cooper? People, this is a historically based piece. Making Phillipe's wife a double-crossing spy is not only fucking insane and dumb, it's, uh, not how it happened. If you don't like the "story arc" of Hannsen/Cooper, take it up with the FBI and, er, history.

It kills me to think that Universal executives are going to listen to playback of these focus group tapes and take any of it seriously. Surely they don't/won't, right? I'm not so sure.

So here's my plea: I'm know that one of my readers can get this post into the hands of some Universal executive's assistant or somebody who is covering Breach over there (I'm looking at you Ms. DreamWorks and you Ms. Focus) and I've just got to let them know -- please don't touch this thing. Please. Just let Billy leave it as is, it's a really really fine piece of film. And, look, if you want to listen to what those idiots have to say about how they felt about Chris Coooper's religion or how they felt about the portrayal of Phillipe and his wife's domestic life... fine, whatever, I'll deal. But for the love of Christ, ignore all the script notes (obvs) and realize that a ninety minute running time is not too long. Thank you.

That's it for now, yo. Back for more film nerd adventures soon.
And if you haven't seen Shattered Glass, get on it pronto.

Hey there.

2006-07-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

To My Three (or so) Regular Readers,

I am not dead, merely out of a job. (Huzzah for unemployment.)
I'll be back shortly with a rundown of all the pop culture goodness that I've been ingesting lately. I leave you with bits from Armond White's latest valentine to Woody Allen:

Why doesn’t Woody Allen just quit? He craps out movies (six already this millennium) as if Vincent Canby were still at the Times dictating New York’s cultural taste. It’s hard to deny that Allen’s artistic stature owes less to skill or vision than to his cemented media caché—all the ineptitude that’s fit to praise. This hometown boy phenomenon is made clear by Allen’s recent fish-out-of-water relocation to England for Match Point, a vile drama, and his not-so-different, lamentable new comedy, Scoop. Outside Manhattan, Woody’s movies have no justification. [snip] To humiliate [Scarlett] Johansson any further, Allen would have to ... literally take a dump on her.

xo Ben

Thank you, Michaelangelo Matos.

2006-07-10T14:35:00.000-07:00

Mr. Matos,

Not only do I enjoy reading your music criticism, I need to send you propers for sending me over to Rich Juzwiak's blog FourFour. His seventy minute New Jack Swing mix has made this day bearable. Bobby Brown and SWV and Tony! Toni! Toné! and ABC and "Mowtonphilly"? Please. It makes me want to dig out the Z. Cavariccis my Mom bought me at The Buckle and go make out with some girl at the RollerDome. (I hope I'm not alone here. I imagine if one was born between the years 1975 and 1983, it'll hold true for them too. I hope.)

Plus the accompanying commentary is brilliant. A sample:

But what I hate the most is the whole "Everybody should be making love shit," because: FUCK YOU, SPINDERELLA. DO NOT TELL ME HOW TO FUCK.
Tevin Campbell recites a limerick in "Round and Round." FACT.
Can you believe Michael Jackson released a song called "In the Closet"?!?! So that "something" about you baby that makes him want to give it to you is a penis, right? Too easy, Mike!
"I Like the Way" wasn't playing during my first French kiss (with a girl, of course), but it was popular around that time (late spring of '91) and it came on the radio soon after we dribbled all in each other. FACT.

It's rich, yo. Rich.
Remember when people unironically liked Bobby Brown? I seriously loved his theme song to Ghosbusters II* a lot. A lot, a lot.

Those were the days.

Your pal,

Ben

* Just in case you need your memory jogged:
Too hot to handle, too cold to hold
They're called the Ghostbusters and they're in control
Had 'em throwin' a party for a bunch of children
While all the while the slime was under the building
So they packed up their group, got a grip, came equipped
Grabbed they proton packs off their back and they split
Found about Vigo, the master of evil
Try to battle my boys? That's not legal
(Oh-we-oh) They're in control
(Oh-we-oh) Y-Y-Ya know it

Yup, it's an Armondism.

2006-07-05T16:40:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed that my critic-crush on Armond White has waned lately. I can't help it, his reviews of late are beyond self-parody. If you need specifics, I present his reviews of Nacho Libre (loved it beyond words, compared it to a Biblical illustration, reitirates his hatred of Richard Linklater as well as Maria Full of Grace and the hipsters who love either of them) and The Road to Guantanamo (hated it, claimed it's "a Weapon of Crass misInstruction," seems to defend torture in the name of "American self-protection").

But before you get ahead of yourself and think I've forsaken the man entirely, he drops a line like this and ~~all is forgiven~~ I soften a little:
"Not since The Newton Boys—actually, not since Tape—has a feature film been as visually ugly as A Scanner Darkly."

For the record, I don't even hate Linklater (when he's responsible for Dazed and Confused, how could I?) but that invocation of The Newton Boys deserves propers.

Happy weekend.

2006-07-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post this forever. I figure, hey, it's Superman weekend, what better timing? Here's Brett Ratner's 2002 Holiday Card.

I know it's a little blurry; in case you can't tell, that's Brett Ratner as Superman.

Happy Weekend, everyone.

Ann hearts New Potato Caboose.

2006-06-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

Even if this is a fake (and I don't think it is), I love the idea of Ann Coulter giving an interview to jambands.com:

TH: Are there any other jambands you like?

AC: All the usual – String Cheese Incident, Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, New Potato Caboose. I can't really tell you all the groups I like because have an iPod so have a lot of songs my friends send me and I never really know who I'm listening to. But I try to keep up with what the young people are listening to these days (I love saying that). There’s Jet, Cake, Outkast, 50 Cent, Black-Eyed Peas, Lord Alge, Beck, Kanye West (I like his Jesus song), Missy Elliot, and Eagles of Death Metal. I'm five years behind, aren't I? I'm very busy!

Full confession: I used to be a dirty prep-school hippie that went to a lot of Phish shows (Deer Creek '96, yo), but Ann totally out hippies me. And I like that she's come around and learned to embrace the hip-hop (not to mention effing Eagles of Death Metal).

Take my wife...

2006-06-29T10:08:00.000-07:00

Two blurbs. Two writers clearly amused by their own cleverness. Two woefully subpar jokes. A battle to the death.

GO!:

David Edelstein, A Scanner Darkly: "It’s terribly frustrating when one’s Dick is at arm’s length."
Neil LaBute, Barry Lyndon: "Outside of perennial holiday fare like The Wizard of Oz, It's a Wonderful Life, or Salo, I think I've watched Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon more times than any other movie I can remember."

(In case you didn't know, Edelstein wins this round.)

Girlie so groovy.

2006-06-25T20:27:00.000-07:00

I bet you all didn't rush out and buy the 33 1/3 entry on the Pixies' Doolittle like I told you to. That's okay, I ain't madatcha. However, I finished it today and I'm going to bore you with another amazing anecdote.

Another lyrical change [to "Debaser"] was more consequential. When the song was first written, instead of "Un chien andalusia," Thompson [aka Frank Black] sang "Shed, Apollonia!" after Prince's buxom plaything in Purple Rain. As usual, he had a rhyme scheme before he had lyrics, and "Apollonia" fit just as well as "andalusia." (Plus, do you remember the scene where you see those tits?) Thompson thankfully came to realize his cinematic affections lay more with mutilated eyeballs than Morris Day. "I couldn't sing about stripping Apollonia 6, that was just too silly--although I like the idea!" he told Sounds. "It was just too tongue-in-cheek, too like an inside joke. I had to be a little more broad than that."

Again, I can't recommend the Doolittle entry more highly. Aside from Douglas Wolk's exhaustive (and exhausting) monograph on James Brown's Live at the Apollo, this is the best of the 33 1/3 series.

I learn something new every day.

2006-06-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

"['Gigantic' is] Kim Deal's greatest moment with the Pixies, and perhaps ever*. On the most obvious and enticing level, it is an unabashed praisesong to a well-endowed black man ('Gigantic! Gigantic! Gigantic! / A big, big love!'). But a commonly overlooked theme is its eroticized maternalism: Deal has said than an inspiration for the lyrics was the 1986 film Crimes of the Heart, in which Sissy Spacek plays a married woman who has an affair with a teenager."

--Ben Sisario in his 33 1/3 entry on the Pixies' Doolittle.

* Er, no. That would be "Cannonball" by The Breeders. Then "Gigantic." Then the "Oooooooh" backing vocal part in "Where is My Mind?" Then the bassline to "Debaser." Then the vocals to "In Heaven." Then...

Reshaping the human body by modern technology.

2006-06-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

I can't tell you why, but I'm drawn to David Cronenberg's Crash.

Initially, it was an ironic infatuation; in college I'd watch the tape in mixed company, snickering at Cronenberg's ability to profoundly repulse unsuspecting viewers. I didn't much care for the film (or Cronenberg for that matter), but Crash was good for a laugh.

Then a funny thing happened. I started taking Cronenberg and his work more and more seriously (during my third or so viewing of Dead Ringers I was startled to realize that it was easily one of the best films of the 1980s and an indisputable masterpiece) and Crash became something entirely different. I still think there's a lot of gallows humor in it, but I'm struck by how Cronenberg seems to be wrangling with these weighty concepts--the erotics of danger, compulsion, technological paranoia, relationships--and he doesn't seem to have (or care about) a defined thesis. He's content to wrestle with these themes in a film that basically lacks any conventional narrative and does it in the most clinically explicit, provocative, and violent way imaginable. And in the end, he ultimately leaves it all open for discussion.

A confession: when I watched the film a couple of nights ago, I spent most of the time not thinking about the moral implications or the perfect production values; I thought about Ted Turner. This was the mental image in my head: Turner, then owner of TimeWarner, is settled into his private screening room to view this controversial movie his conglomerate has recently acquired at Cannes. He brings a perfectly grilled beefalo burger to his mouth and just as he's about to take a bite, from the screen Deborah Kara Unger asks James Spader if he knows was Elias Koteas's semen tastes like. Uncle Ted chokes for a second and does a spit take. And scene.

Juvenile? Yup. But every time a Cronenbergian bit of perversity showed up on the screen, that was the mental image that ran through my head. And it made me laugh. Every time.

Lynchiana.

2006-06-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

Bare with me, I need to share this weird piece of synchronicity.

Yesterday, as the work day was winding down, I decided to track down new information on David Lynch's long-gestating feature, Inland Empire. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot on that front* but this quest across the ITs took me to davidlynch.com, which I hadn't been to in ages.

At that moment (6:10 p.m. PST), my cell phone rings; Nayiri is calling. My boss doesn't take too kindly to personal calls in the office, so I let it go to voice mail. Meanwhile, I notice that davidlynch.com has started selling ringtones. Yes, ringtones. Now, when someone calls, you can have David Lynch's digitally manipulated voice announce "My teeth are bleeding! My teeth are bleeding!" Or "I like to kill deer. I like to kill deer."

I check my voicemail. Nayiri is calling me to ask me if I was aware that David Lynch started selling ringtones on his website. Didn't Agent Cooper say that there's no such thing as a coincidence? But what does it mean? What does it mean?

Shrug. Probably that I like to kill deer or some stizz.

* Venice '06? Hopefully, fingers crossed, fingers crossed.

Bonus video clip (because I care): "Brilliant! I have absolutely no clue what's going on."

Bonus anecdote: Remember that silly trend in the late '90s wherein a major city would mass produce a blank fiberglass sculpture-- usually something animalish; Boston, for instance, had a fish--and get a bunch of artists/school kids/etc. to paint said object and place them all over the city? Well, in NYC they put up cows and somebody had the great idea of inviting David Lynch to decorate one of them. It didn't go over too well. Needless to say, they didn't end up using Lynch's cow.

Do you find this happens all the time?

2006-06-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago I meant to make a public prediction that 2006 would be the year of Sofia Coppola's comeuppance. I imagined it would go like this: The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation were just too slight for the amount of hype and praise being thrown at Ms. Coppola's feet; that she got where she got using the family name; that she surrounds herself with great craftsmen and they do all the heavy lifiting; that, whether based on an honest critical evaluation or not, Marie Antoinette is a giant piece of shit.

(To which I'd respond: [1] As if she has control over critical hyperbole; [2] But it's cool that, you know, Schwartzman rocked the family connection to find his way into Rushmore; [3] Right, just like how Kurt Cobain wrote those Hole records, because we know that girls can't get by on their own; [4] Ding ding ding. See, among others, Jeffery Wells's "review" from Cannes. To my fellow music nerds, doesn't this feel like an annoying extension of rockism?)

This is a long way of saying: my desire to see this movie will not die, especially when I see (purportedly) the finalized soundtrack. Just try to deny it:

1. Gang of Four - Natural's Not In It
2. Dustin O'Halloran - Opus 17
3. Windsor for the Derby - The Melody of a Fallen Tree
4. The Radio Dept. - I Dont Like it Like This
5. Aphex Twin - Jynweythek Ylow
6. Jean-Philippe Rameau - 1er Menuet pour Les Guirries et les Amazones, 2eme Menuet
7. The Radio Dept. - Pulling Our Weight
8. Air - Il Secondo Giorno Instrumental
9. The Radio Dept. - Keen On Boys
10. Jean-Philippe Rameau - Aux Languets d'Appollon
11. Dustin O'Halloran - Opus 23
12. Bow Wow Wow - I Want Candy (Kevin Shields Remix)
13. Siouxsie and the Banshees - Hong Kong Garden
14. Bow Wow Wow - Aphrodisiac
15. Bow Wow Wow - Fools Rush In (Kevin Shields Remix)
16. The Cure - Plainsong
17. New Order - Ceremony
18. Squarepusher - Tommib Help Buss
19. Phoenix - Où Boivent Les Loups
20. Adam and the Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier
21. Aphex Twin - Avril 14th
22. The Strokes - What Ever Happened?
23. Jean-Philippe Rameau - Tristes Apprêts, Pâles Flambeaux
24. Dustin O'Halloran - Opus 36
25. The Cure - All Cats Are Grey

Observation One: No "Age of Consent"? After its appearance in that perfect trailer, it's a shame not to include it.

Observation Two: Greedily, I was hoping for a new Air track; alas, it's a piece from the band's odd novelty record City Reading.

Anyone check you for a heartbeat recently?

2006-06-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

Can I suggest John Dahl's perfect neo-noir The Last Seduction for when you're not sure what to watch this weekend? I saw it last night for the first time in a couple of years and it's just as delicious, cruel, and pulpy as I remembered. I want my film noirs unapologetically mean and black as pitch, that's why Dahl's exercise in evil will always warm my heart. Two hours of Linda Fiorentino scheming/killing/fucking her way further and further off any recognizible moral grid? Yes, please.

Besides its darkness, I think the reason I love this film so much is it strikes such a deft balance: it's not some glib exercise in "noir," it is a noir... But, as Roger Ebert points out, there's still a comedic element to it. We don't laugh at it because, wink wink nudge nudge, we're above this material, we laugh because it's relentless and vulgar and mean. Well, that and the script is genuinely hilarious in places. This scene--featuring the unholy combination of Fiorentino's Mojave-dry delivery, Peter Berg's clueless small town guy shtick, and Steve Barancik's writing--is a perfect exmaple:

[A little set-up: Mike (Berg) is desperately trying to pick-up Bridget (Fiorentino) in a bar. She is having none of it.]

Bridget Gregory: Could you leave? Please?
Mike Swale: I haven't finished charming you yet.
Bridget Gregory: You haven't started.
Mike Swale: Gimme a chance.
Bridget Gregory: Look, go find yourself a nice little cowgirl and make nice little cowbabies and leave me alone.
Mike Swale: I'm hung like a horse. Think about it.
[pause]
Bridget Gregory: Let's see.
Mike Swale: Excuse me?
Bridget Gregory: Mr. Ed, let's see.
Mike Swale: Look, I tried to be nice. I can see that's something you're not...
Bridget Gregory: No, I'm trying. I can be very nice when I try. Sit down.
Mike Swale: OK, maybe we just got off to a bad start. I know plenty of people---
[Bridget unzips his fly]
Mike Swale: What are you doing?
Bridget Gregory: I believe what we're looking for is a certain horse-like quality...

So perfect, so eeeeeevil.

I must admit, I've never worked up the courage to rent the straight-to-video softcore followup (imaginatively titled The Last Seduction II) that features not a single member of the original cast or crew. Have any of youse?

We interrupt this silence...

2006-06-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

Shit, when the Jane Magazine blog is calling you out for being lazy, you gotta hop to. (Hollatcha, Spence.)

Proper post in the works. In the mean time, links:

Did Michelle Malkin really formulate this equation: "F-16s + Beastie Boys = Crazy Delicious"? Yes. Yes she did.
Party like it's 2004: Douglas Wolk's excellent essay on The Irresistible Rise of the Numa Numa Dance.
Stop the press, I just felt a little pride for my alma mater: Pixies live from Emerson College's WERS.
Don't miss the ongoing conversation re: Vanity 6's "Nasty Girl" over at Moistworks. It's a nice reminder of the good ol' days when Prince was... well, hilariously nasty. As Alex points out:
"Prince wanted to name the group 'The Hookers,' and suggested that Matthews - the 'Vanity' in Vanity 6 - go by the stage name 'Vagina.' According to Wikipedia, 'the 6 represented the group's breast count.' Nice one, Prince!"
Ever the charmer, huh?
Speaking of the Purple One, ickmusic has a set of mp3s showing off Prince's sick guitar skillz.
Armond, the answer is (1) No and (2) unfortunately, I don't think they're concerned:
"Have Vaughn and Aniston never seen Mike Leigh's minor masterwork, Career Girls? Their best hope is that you haven't."
The video for The Red Hot Chili Peppers's "Can't Stop" (originally directed by Mark Romanek)-- Lego style.
In case you're wondering (and I know you are) Mr. Skin's Number One Film of All Time is... Artie Lange's Beer League.
Fun for film nerds: Which film critic are you? (For the record I'm Jonathan Rosenbaum.) (Link via girish.)
Moral of the story: don't fuck with Akiane.

Couldn't he stick to ruining shitty '70s TV shows?

2006-05-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

Doesn't this sound like something from The Onion?

From Variety:

Turner Classic Movies is close to greenlighting its first original series ever, commissioning movie industry-related pilots "Take Two" and "Idols."

Both are working titles.

The premise of "Take Two" is that a young actor dissects a great movie of the past -- in the pilot, Wilmer Valderrama takes on "The Lost Weekend" -- choosing actors and filmmakers to re-enact a classic scene from the movie. The supplier is World of Wonders, with Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato as exec producers.

Can't wait for Frankie Muniz to take on Le Samourai.

Little Boston News.

2006-05-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

Head over here for the latest flimflam, photobloggery, and Moby Dick excerpts courtesy of the Blood crew. I'm such a helpless fan boy that this script morsel (posted on the site) gets my heart pumping:

127A EXT. VARIOUS LOCATIONS. TBD. SHOTS OF H.W SHOTS OF HW AND MARY. CU, HW RUNNING NEAR MAGIC HOUR. CUT TO BLACK. TITLE CARD: 1927

What does it mean? Shrug. But I like it.

Adventures in blurbery.

2006-05-26T09:23:00.000-07:00

From the back of A.M. Homes's This Book Will Save Your Life:
"If Oprah went insane, this might be her favorite book." --John Waters.

(It's sad that John goes out on a limb invoking Insane Oprah, then qualifies it with that "might.")

From the promo sticker on the front of Matmos's The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast:
"Featuring Antony, the Kronos Quartet, Björk, Don Bolles, recordings of anonymous sex at Blow Buddies during the Bear Festival, etc."

(1: You know this isn't the first time Kronos has shared a bill with anonymous sex from Blow Buddies. 2: The "etc." is so excellent.)

Adventures in misanthropy.

2006-05-25T14:09:00.000-07:00

I can't think of a better way to kill another soul-deadening day at the office than compiling a Hate list with the co-founder of Horny Gandhi.

I'm pleased to present "50 Things We Hate"* compiled by Ben and Nayiri.

1. Sweaty feet.
2. Improper use of your/you're, its/it's, their/there/they're, etc.
3. Mustard yellow.
4. Pitstains.
5. Periods, commas, etc. outside of the end-quote. If you're a Brit,we'll let it slide. Not in America, yo.
6. Being forced to touch the bathroom door after washing your hands.
7. Bathroom doors that require you to touch them after washing your hands ( i.e. doors with stupid handles, or doors in bathrooms that
only have air dryers and no towels)
8. People who say "I like every kind of music except country."
9. Dave Eggers.
10. "Family Guy"
11. People who quote "Family Guy"
12. Things that are sticky (jamhands, breakfast menus covered in maple syrup, etc.)
13. Slow pedestrians who take up the entire sidewalk.
14. Coconut, a.k.a cuticle.
15. John Travolta and Kelly Preston.
16. Hives. (The malady, not the band.)
17. Stetson cologne.
18. Mouthbreathers.
19. People who are proudly tech-ignorant.
20. Hot cauliflower.
21. Lipstick marks on glasses, mugs, straws, and other miscellaneous beverage-related items.
22. VPL.
23. Chapped lips.
24. Face marks on windows, i.e. from where an airplane passenger rested his or her head whilst sleeping/watching the in-flight movie.
25. Coral-colored nail polish, particularly on toes.
26. Misuse of the transitional "Anyway" as "Anyways."
27. Excessive regional pride.
28. Dirty laundromats.
29. The statement "I'm not really religious, I'm spiritual."
30. The phrase "Post 9/11."
31. Men with long fingernails who aren't transvestites, drag queens, etc.
32. People who call California "Cali," Atlantic City "AC," San Francisco "SF," etc.
33. Beyoncé.
34. Poor spellers who have no excuse for being poor spellers.
35. Foot draggers, especially foot draggers in flip-flops.
36. Weak handshakes.
37. Sloppy diction.
38. Road Rules/Real World challenge(s).
39. Jay Leno.
40. People who yell out "Free Bird!" during a lull at a concert.
41. Cat people.
42. Decaf.
43. Picky eaters, specifically when they are adults.
44. Women who can't walk in their shoes.
45. People who say "fudgeicle" instead of "fudgesicle."
46. Lint.
47. Jean shorts.
48. Ticketmaster.
49. Jägermeister.
50. Waiting four months for Season 3 of "Lost."

* = I guess I should put a slight caveat in place. Some of these are more personal than others. For instance, I'm personally okay with VPL, coral nail polish, and Beyoncé-- especially when they're all part of one intoxicating blend.

That ain't me, babe.

2006-05-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Guardian's CultureVulture works up a lather (gender politics, whether a female actors should be called an "actress," etc.) over the news that Cate Blanchett will play Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes's upcoming biopic, I'm Not There. "Maybe Todd Haynes thinks that Blanchett has a radical spirit that coincides with Dylan's," The Vulture writes, "Maybe Blanchett can express Dylan's female side. Maybe she can sing. Who knows?"

Am I wrong in thinking that The Vulture is missing the point entirely? As I understand it, Haynes hired eight very different actors and actresses to portray abstract aspects of the Dylan persona. For Christ's sake, Haynes unsuccessfully wooed Oprah frickin' Winfrey to "play" "Bob Dylan." Both Charlotte Gainsbourg and Richard Gere are already on board as other variants of Zimmy. Anyone who thinks this film--subtitled Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan--is going to be a two hours of hagiographic mimicry (a la Walk the Line and Ray) is way off.

Oh, and happy birthday, Mr. Dylan.

Ouch.

2006-05-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

"[Southland Tales] winds up more like a 12:52 a.m. Saturday Night Live sketch (the cast includes, in significant roles, Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, Cheri Oteri, and Amy Poehler) crossed with Hudson Hawk, only far more pretentious and interminable than either. This is a potential career killer, I suspect...'
-- Mike D'Angelo, Nerve (via GreenCine).

In praise of April Grace.

2006-05-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I happened upon Diane Sawyer's thoroughly puffy interview with Tom Cruise. (And by "happened upon," I mean I Tivo'd it so as not to miss it.) As Cruise unleashed his usual gamut of bizarro interview tics (that awful laugh, the serious "I'm really listening to you" stare, etc.), I wondered if he was at all self-conscious considering this was the exact shit he and P.T. Anderson deconstructed in that Magnolia scene. Of course, in that scene, Gwenovier the interviewer (played by April Grace) flips the shtick and uses it to hang Cruise/Frank TJ Mackey; Diane Sawyer seemed to gladly gobble everything up.

I also wondered just where the hell April Grace has been. She pops up in small TV roles every once and awhile and I am aware that parts for middle-aged women, especially middle-aged women of color, are not exactly plentiful. Still, I thought, it's a crime that someone hasn't found use for that empathy, that supreme confidence that April Grace radiates.

That's why I literally pumped my fist in the air when Grace's name showed up in the opening credits of last night's episode of Lost. I'm not going to spoil anything for anyone, as I'm sure some of you might not have gotten around to it yet. (Notice that I'm assuming that you all watch the damn show. I just do. Sorry.) I'll just say this: whoever had the idea of [A] casting her and giving her a substantial part and then [B] taking Miss Grace's strengths and using it for dark, sinister purposes... Thank you, you get a golden star.

Ms. Klugh? Shudder.

Quote of the day.

2006-05-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

"Are his films not enough for you? Fellini is dead and Bergman doesn't travel."

--Unnamed Cannes official on why Wong Kar-wai was selected to be head of the Cannes Jury. (via Josh/Andrew O'Hehir.)

UPDATE: I might've spoken to soon. This ranks up there. Sure, the, er, veracity is questionable, but it's all about the sentiment, baby.

Has anyone heard the new Matmos record?

2006-05-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

Via Pitchfork's review of the new Matmos record, The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast:

Each track is just as thematically tight-- scored and curated to the smallest detail. "Snails and Lasers for Patricia Highsmith" uses the mystery writer's snail obsession-- she supposedly kept hundreds of them as pets, and she wrote about them in works like the short story, "The Snail-Watcher"-- as the slimy composers of that piece. The technique: A laser was pointed at a light-sensitive theremin; snails were let loose within the theremin's range, fucking with its pitch. The result is an ominous, hard-boiled brushed jazz piece accented with what sounds like a harpsichord flourish. It eventually turns into a bleakly paranoid theremin landscape as the snails frolic in slow motion.
[snip]
Another piece based primarily around a written text is "Tract For Valerie Solanas". The same way Sunn 0))) was nailed for recording Xasthur in a coffin, Matmos will get a lot of column space for playing a cow uterus and vagina as tribute to the woman best known for shooting Andy Warhol. Sunn 0))) was aiming for claustrophobia and positioning Xasthur as cryptic solo artist; in a similarly smart way, the moo parts are a great pun on both the cow's goods (its reproductive tract) and Solanas's S.C.U.M. Manifesto (a feminist tract). Score.

UPDATE: Score! The iTunes store has samples.

UPDATE 2: While I can't hear the cow ladyparts on the "Solanas" track, the Patricia Highsmith piece sounds pretty snazzy (in that Angelo Badalamenti/sinister cocktail jazz kind of way). I might just have to pick this shizz up.

Other voices, other rooms.

2006-05-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

Blah blah blah. No excuses, no whining, etc.
Go read some stuff (both new and old) written by friends (both imaginary and real):

There's no doubt that this LA Times story is compelling-- but did it warrant the front page? Regardless, stories about trying to communicate with Earth dwellers in the year 11991 appeals to ~~my inner-nerd~~ me. Try to deny this:
"You'd think it would be easier to communicate with humans" than extraterrestrials, he said. [snip] "All we can guess about the future inhabitants of the area near WIPP is that they are human — unless they are cyborgs…. Once you have people with augmented brains or genetically engineered minds with enhanced perceptions, you can't be sure how human they will be."

Admit it, that's hella interesting. And no, I do not own Deep Space Nine on DVD. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Well, there is. But I'm saying there isn't to be nice and not step on any toes.)
As much as I preach pop-tolerance and acceptance, I just can't get on the "the latest Mariah album is excellent" bandwagon. Sorry. That doesn't mean I can't appreciate S/FJ's New Yorker piece on Mimi, especially when it contains passages like this:

["Vision of Love"] begins with several bars of lovely, wordless melisma, as if Carey were warming up, and it ends with two very loud passages of melisma, one of them an a-cappella expansion on the word “all” that can be roughly transcribed as: “ah-ha-uh-uh-oh-oo-oh-ooah-ha-uh-uh-oh-oo-oh-oo-ah-oh.”
I love the lucidity in girish's essay on Drawing Restraint 9. I missed its mini-Los Angeles engagement, can't wait for the DVD.
News flash: Armond White hearts Morrissey. "Because Morrissey has few champions among those mainstream American pop critics preoccupied with business-as-usual routines by Pink, T.I., Beth Orton, and the Arctic Monkeys, the millennial vision and excitement—the progress—of Ringleader has been overlooked. Here's a pop album that helps one get a handle on how we live today... Having moved past the bed-sit miserabilism of the Smiths, he now shows a wider social consciousness in his unsatisfied yearnings."
Joshua published his latest PopMatters essay, this time evaluating the status of queer cinema by looking at Mysterious Skin and Brokeback Mountain. Well-written and unfailingly smart (obvs) and insistent that marriage is the worst thing ever (sigh). Oh and his Seed of Chucky riff is great.
Matthew Fluxblog's new column for the AP, Hit Refresh, debuted today.

Pedastalizing ZOG.

2006-05-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

As I'm not actually Jewish nor am I a raving anti-semite, the whole ZOG thing has never been entirely clear to me. I bring this up because I was recently reading customer reviews on Netflix (Jesus, that sounds so pathetic) and came across this blurb by "TruthSetsFree":

Veronica Mars: Season One
Two out of Five Stars

Standard Zionest formula. Cutie pie Jewish Princess and Sweet Daddy solve crimes. Targeted at the high school demographic (the most programmable and impressionable age) the show promotes and pedestalizes Blacks, accepts the Hispanic gang presence as cool and outright denegrates the Irish race. Scattered, pointless writing worked around the major premise with snotty-valley-girl coolness to make it hip to teenagers. What a waste of air time!

Rrrrriiiight.
Let's tackle the most glaring problem first: that is not a two star review. Clearly that's a one star review if I've ever seen one. Secondly, I don't think "pedestalizes" is a word. Thirdly, I don't remember any Irish denigration in Season One. You can make the case in Season Two, but that's not what's at issue here.
Oh and then there's that whole Zionist thing. Yeah, so Kristen Bell (the titular V. Mars) is a total Midwestern shiksa in real life and on the show the Mars family has never acknowledged any Jewish heritage. No casual mentions of seders, matzo, Israel, Maccabees, or Tu Bishvat... nothing. In fact, the Mars family has celebrated Christmas on the show...

And that's when it hit me-- TruthSetsFree might be one of those, er, conspiracy nuts. You know, who likes to find hidden meanings in every pop cultural artifact they get their hands on. I decided I had to dig deeper, to find out if my hunch was correct. So I looked up his other reviews.

Glory:

"A fictional Jewish production of the 54th Massachusettes' actions during the Civil War. Could this be what the ZOG would like to see happen all over the US today?"

Well, to be fair, Glory is a political piece and was made by someone of the Jewish persuasion, so it's a wash; can't tell. Maybe that is what ZOG would like see all over the USA. (Although I'm not entirely sure what "this" is.)

Me, Myself & Irene:

"1 out of 5 stars.
Overt Zionest Jim Carrey's most despicable offering, which denigrates Whites and pedestalizes Blacks; overt profanity, disgusting situations...overt Zionest propaganda. Do yourself a favor and throw this one in the trash without viewing."

Again, what is it with the "pedestalizing"? And I gotta say, I really don't remember any overt Zionism (or subtextual for that matter) in the film, nor can I recall Jim Carrey ever getting political on any topic. I'm beginning to suspect that TSF does fit the conspiracy nut mold.

Next up, Team America:

"1 out of 5 stars.
Whether you get this film or not depends on if you believe the US-ZOG has been utilizing our unsuspecting National Guard boys(at their expense) as mercenaries to murder Muslims in Iraq! This film perpetrates the myth that the US is the supplier of expendable cannon-fodder for the world's wars, as designated by the ZOG and the US Corporate Structure. Half phony jingoist propaganda and half overt zionest denigration of the White and Muslim races, the film reaches new heights in despicable film making. Highlights include forced white male felatio, puppet pornagrapics and denigration of other races. Do yourself a favor and throw this ethnocentric/racist piece of garbage where it belongs!"

That does it. I am now prepared to say that TSF is most likely a conspiracy nut.
Here's the thing: I definitely "got" Team America but I'd never heard of--never could've imagined!--the US-ZOG utilizing the Guard for such mendacity. Does that mean I didn't actually get it? I read it as an allegorical/libertarian bit of wishful thinking by Trey Parker and Matt Stone wherein the Left would stop whining and realize that we're in the midst of some serious Islamofacist danger and the Right would stop acting like jingoistic, trigger-happy bullies. Man, I guess I was way off. Oh wait, no... No, I'm not fucking insane.
Case closed, y'all.

(All snark aside-- don't you love that this guy charges Team America with racism when he's taking offense to depictions of "forced white male felatio [sic]"? He'd have no objection to, say, an Asian man being forced to give head apparently.)

Since (I've) Been Gone*.

2006-04-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

Yeah, things have been quiet around here. That doesn't mean I didn't stop consuming crazy amounts of pop culture. Some highlights:

Billy Bragg: "St. Swithin's Day" [single]
I'm always impressed with Josh's ability to make grand critical proclamations, so, dammit, I'm'a make one too. "St. Swithin's Day" is easily one of the ten best pop songs ever written.

Well, that didn't so much work.

As I typed it, I started thinking about how nebulous the term "pop" is and how many songs I'm probably slighting.
Fuck it; Bragg's ode to accepting lost love--with those gorgeous rainy-day references--is about as succinct and perfect as pop songs get.

Brick [film]
Rian Johnson's debut film is a big wet lickery kiss to all things Hammett, Leone, and Hughes. And like big wet lickery kisses, it's a little sloppy and goes on (perhaps) a bit too long, but I'm not gonna hate.

1st Wave (Sirius Channel No. 22) [radio station]
Haircut One Hundred plus reeeeeally early/random R.E.M. plus alternate mixes of The Pretenders plus Nik Kershaw plus M plus... yeah, you get the picture. It's great.

Gnarls Barkley [musical group]
I hope the album is as great as "Smiley Faces." Even if it's not, I'll still eternally love them for this picture:

Neutral Milk Hotel: "King of Carrot Flowers, Part 1" [single]
I know I'm a decade late, thanks for reminding me. It's still an amazing bit of cryptic (autobiographical?) storytelling. I love the way that it starts sparsely and then slowly mutates into full elephant-six overdub glory in exactly two minutes.

Prince: "3121" [single]
First thing's first: the album (also titled 3121) is good, not great; better than 2004's Musicology to be sure. I think we might just have to accept that the mad genius who effortlessly dropped classic track after classic track in the '80s is gone forever and we'll have to make do with little glimmers and sonic shards that remind us of Prince's heyday. "3121" is one of those glimmers: a myriad of different Prince vocals--sped up, slowed down, double-tracked, fucked wit--skitter over slap bass and... well, I'm not exactly sure what he's singing about. The number of a hotel suite where dirty deeds are gonna go down? The year 3121? Whatever, when it's this silly and funky and new, it really doesn't matter.

She Wants Revenge: "Tear You Apart" [single]
Wherein our mall-goth heroes try to out-deadpan Interpol in the Joy Division ~~ripoff~~ Homage Olympics. The best radio hit about S&M since "Closer."

South Park: Season 10 [TV show]
Forget about creating one of the best critiques of the Muhammad cartoon insanity. Forget about taking Scientology, Oprah, and Family Guy head on. The latest edition of South Park would make this list just for introducing the word "minge" into my lexicon.

Videoteque [blog]
The first (only?) blog I've come across exclusively dedicated to posting music videos on the web. In my initial visit I managed to grab videos by Gnarls Barkley, Sigur Rós, and The Knife--and they're all compatible for my video iPod. Essential.

* Is there anything more pathetic than a blogger explaining his absence? I still feel slightly obligated. It goes like this: the boss gets sick; I'm in charge of the whole office; due to the boss's illness, I am in charge of packing up the entire office and moving it into a new office; my birthday rolls around and I get le malaise; the parents come to town and I have to entertain; I dip my toe into my first adventures in the real estate ocean, suddenly I'm worrying about carpet and paint and shit; my grandfather dies; the funeral; I play catchup at work; y'know life.

Now where was I...?

2006-04-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

...oh right. I have a blog.
Huh.
I guess they're good for linking to Wes Anderson's American Express commercial.

(And, of course, both Spence and His Royal Thighness beat me to it. What are you going to do? How 'bout this: my one contribution to the ongoing nerd-deconstruction of the commercial is that guy with the tennis racket... that's Barry Mendel, Wes's tennis-obsessed producer. How ya like me now? How ya like me now?)

UPDATE:
Another bit of Anderson clippage, this time of the Paul Thomas varierty: P.T. directs Demo Jail for David Spade's Showbiz Show. Here's hoping There Will Be Blood is better.

Do it!

2006-03-24T10:46:00.000-08:00

You readers of the WCS (all three of you remaining) are witty-ass people; now let your voices be heard. The makers of Snakes on a Plane have been listening to the interweb buzz surrounding their shitastic new Samuel L. Jackson vehicle and have actually added fanboy-submitted dialogue to the final cut. Head over here and make a contribution and/or vote for a line.

My personal favorite: "Motherfucker, I CHECKED the 'NO MOTHERFUCKIN' SNAKES' box when I BOUGHT these mothefuckin' TICKETS to be on this MOTHEFUCKIN' PLANE WITH ALL THE MOTHERFUCKIN' SNAKES ON IT!"

Skankvision 9000.

2006-03-23T09:44:00.000-08:00

Brick update coming in the near future. (Pssst, it's really f-ing good.)

In the meantime, don't miss MZS's post on the worst films that've won a Best Picture Oscar. And don't skip the comment section either. If you do, you'll miss items like this:

I'll concede that Ridley [Scott] has perhaps too high an opinion of himself, but Tony's Scott's movies go too far in the other direction. They are unnervingly proud of their skankiness. They seem to be shot with a special camera system, Skankvision 9000, that amps up the skank factor. I think that accounts for the haze in every frame of a Tony Scott film; it's not a smoke machine, it's the skank floating in the air. After stuff like MAN ON FIRE and REVENGE, I felt like I needed to go get vaccinated or something. Peckinpah is Merchant-Ivory compared to that guy.

All right, all right, all right.

2006-03-18T08:11:00.000-08:00

Criterion has finally unveiled the specs on its long-gestating Dazed and Confused edition. It's clear that Richard Linklater really put some time into this-- check out the modifications to Criterion's hilariously verbose ABOUT THE TRANSFER section:

Dazed and Confused is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Black bars at the top and bottom of the screen are normal for this format. Director Richard Linklater and director of photography Lee Daniel supervised this new high-definition digital transfer, which was created on a high-definition Spirit 4K Datacine from a 35mm interpositive. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, and scratches were removed using the MTI Digital Restoration System. To maintain optimal image quality through the compression process, the picture on this dual-layer DVD-9 was encoded at the highest-possible bit rate for the quantity of material included. The soundtrack was mastered at 24-bit from the original stems, and audio restoration tools were used to reduce clicks, pops, hiss, and crackle. Plus, Melba Toast is packin’ 411 Positrac outback, 750 double pumper Edelbrock intakes, bored over 30, 11 to 1 pop-up pistons, turbo-jet 390 horsepower. We’re talkin’ some fuckin’ muscle.

Best.

And one more thing.

2006-03-17T09:50:00.000-08:00

I should just let the haiku speak for itself, but I want to add a few things about V for Vendetta.

Politics aside, I couldn't believe how incoherently the film unravels; it's all muddled backstory, bogged-down rhetoric, and inert action sequences. The sad thing is, there's something there. An undercurrent, that x-factor, that whatever that makes Alan Moore's graphic novel so legendary. In nearly every scene I thought "God, I bet this works really well as a comic." (Forgive me, I haven't read it.)

Now, as for film's much-hyped revolutionary politics... puh-lease. How anyone* can claim this as an important/progressive film, when Michael Haneke's Caché is only two months out of the theater, is beyond me. What's that? Haneke's film is an art-house film that no one would go see? Okay. Fine. Steven Spielberg's Munich was a pop-political MultiPlexer that aesthetically and philosophically shames V. (Manohla summed it up perfectly: "The more valid question is how anyone who isn't 14 or under could possibly mistake a corporate bread-and-circus entertainment like this for something subversive. You want radical? Wait for the next Claire Denis film.")

On an unrelated note, since we see V rock out to Cat Power and Antony and the Johnsons, I was hoping that we'd get a flashback sequence that showed V as a young music-blogger circa 2005. Tell me that wouldn't've made the film a little better. You know it would.

*Like, say, Dave Poland: "Some audiences will be sure that there is a direct attack on George W Bush. Others will make no connection at all. But the truth is, until we are all wide awake most of the time, this film will be relevant forever. Like the Brothers Grimm, Shakespeare, and the Bible, V for Vendetta is a work of parable."

(Emphasis mine.)

Haiku Review: V For Vendetta.

2006-03-17T09:09:00.000-08:00

Nat-Nat, Fight Club called.
Return its politics to
Hot Topic. Thank you.

Fragments.

2006-03-16T16:16:00.000-08:00

Is anyone out there?

I didn't forget about youse, but... Whatever, you know how it goes.

Before I disappear down the rabbit-hole once more, some bits and pieces:

Check out Jonathan Glazer's return to music videos. It's a clip for Massive Attack's excellent new single, "Live With Me," and while it's just as technically gorgeous as one would expect, it's a bit heavy-handed in that Leaving Las Vegas sort of way.
If you have the chance to see Goldfrapp on their current tour, do it. Not only do you get to hear them recreate nearly all of their retardedly sexy new album, you'll be treated to she-wolves in bikinis, disco-ball pony-girls, and Alison Goldfrapp controlling a theremin with her crotch.
Sigh. You know I love Armond, but this review is almost self-parody:
Let Viggo Mortenson rehash the tired clichés of fantasy and thrillers. Moviegoers with hearts, minds and eyes know that Paul Walker is a more significant movie icon. Walker confirms his movie star status with Eight Below. [snip] Director Frank Marshall understands Walker's charm and frames it right, along with Jason Biggs' less glamorous but no less companionable and ethical presence as Shepherd's sidekick. Eight Below enhances what in lesser hands would merely be Disneyana; the secret is not anthropomorphism but a natural, inquiring humanism. In this way, Eight Below recalls the humane genre revisionism that occurs in Running Scared (the other jab in Walker's current one-two punch).
They've been picking up my slack: Josh on Walter Kirn's new novel/experiment in hyper-text, Brennon on the funniest movies of all time, MZS welcomes back The Sopranos in a spectacular evaluation of season six's first episode (warning: it's filled with spoilers), meanwhile Dave Kehr dismisses The New World here and here.
Gimme a day or two and I'll let you know if Brick lives up to the hype.

Fun with context.

2006-03-08T09:25:00.000-08:00

From my inbox:

From: Joshua
Subject: Oh, Wernie
Date: March 8, 2006 3:10:45 AM PST
To: Ben, etc., etc.

Did you guys see this funny thing Herzog said to Ebert in response to a question about The Discovery Channel's airing of Grizzly Man with commericials and additional footage? It appeared in Eb's "Answer Man" column, and I've unfairly cut out the previous paragraphs where he thanks Discovery for financing the film in the first place. This is only one more reason why I love German cinema:

"Sure, centuries from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events."

He should've added "Crash winning the Oscar for Best Picture" between the burning of witches and inquisition part, but, yeah, he's pretty dead-on.

His heart-exploding words.

2006-03-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to warm up to Rhett Miller's new comme ci comme ça album The Believer. While I've never been the biggest Old 97's fan, I spent most of September - November 2002 exclusively listening to Miller's solo debut The Instigator. I get the feeling I'll come around to the new album, but listening to it has only made me go back and reacquaint myself with The Instigator. Okay, so that's a lie; I haven't made it past "Our Love," the album's opening track. In the past two days I've listened to the damm thing nine times. (This according to my iPod's handy play-counter.)

There's much to obsess over: the off-the-chart power pop chorus, Jon Brion's galloping electric guitar work that nearly jumps the rail at the 1:48 mark, Jim Keltner's monster drumming. However, it's the opening verse that really kills me. Check it:

Richard Wagner's letters to his lover Mathilde were a mess
He should have quit before he had written the address
They made love on the mezzanine her husband was his friend
Vienna in a fugue-state working on a thing
That when he finished it took almost seven hours to sing
He still found time to write to her his heart-exploding words.

That's right. Dude took Richard Wagner's epistolary activity with his mistress and turned into into a pop song. The second verse, while not as great (what's up with the third to first person jump?), tackles Franzie:

Kafka in his letters to his lover Milena was alive
But he was waiting for a love that never would arrive
Their rendezvous was singular her husband was his friend
She is a living fire she is a reason to live
She is killing me burning only for him
I'll spend my whole life loving her my heart exploding words.

I love the incongruity of a guy writing a three minute song for his girl and expressing his love via biographical sketches of two long-dead artists.

The Miller song made me think of how hilarious it is to hear Natasha Bedingfield namecheck nineteenth century poets in her TRL-sanctioned hit "These Words." ("Read some Byron, Shelly and Keats / Recited it over a Hip-Hop beat / I'm having trouble saying what I mean / With dead poets and drum machines.")

Your turn: in the comment section, your vote for the most unlikely fodder for and/or reference in a pop song. And the Nabokov ref in Sting's "Don't Stand So Close to Me" doesn't count. Go.

2 + 2 = 5 (Altman edition).

2006-03-03T01:50:00.000-08:00

Remember how I said I was going to get back into the swing of making a weekly list of the pop cultural strata clogging my brain? Despite my recent silence (damn you, work!), I meant it. So here's round two of the resurrected 2 + 2 = 5, dedicated to Robert Altman, in observation of this weekend's Altman Blog-a-thon.

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller's elliptical structure.

Girish recently asked readers to name "One film you've wanted to see for a long time, available on video/DVD, that you haven't gotten around to seeing yet." Pathetically, my answer was McCabe & Mrs. Miller. I'm a huge Altman fan; I'm a big Pauline Kael fan; Pauline loves her some McCabe; for Christ's sake I've owned the DVD since 2002! And still, it sat on my shelf for years. Last Sunday I finally saw it and it did not disappoint.

I won't lie, the opening twentyty-some minutes worried me. I'd forgotten that I often have to find my sea-legs when watching an Altman film for the first time. The early scenes of McCabe establishing his new town felt so vague, I was convinced I was missing crucial details. By the time Mrs. Miller came to town, I was onto Altman's M.O. and was squarely in his pocket. Those first twenty minutes were jarring because the film's structure is so elliptical; nearly every time a new scene is established, an unspecified but substantial amount of time has passed. It's a total violation of conventional film grammar, but it gives the film a chaotic propulsion that I love. For instance, Shelley Duvall is in maybe four scenes total; in those four scenes her character goes through a dramatic transformation. We've missed months and months of her life, but each time she shows up we momentarily recalibrate, fill in the blanks, and then go with the flow. It's that kind of unorthodox spirit that makes A Decade Under the Influence and the other '70s cinema hagiographies somewhat (please note I said somewhat) palatable.

2) Altman's Lynchian-before-there-was-Lynch period.

I saw David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me on VHS when I was in eighth grade. I didn't understand what the hell was going on, but it was so beautiful and odd and inexplicable that I became obsessed with Mr. Lynch's films; I still am. But imagine my surprise when, two years ago, I saw Images and 3 Women and realized that Bob had put two dream-fugue mindfuckers in the art-house years before Lynch. People get so fixated on Altman's multi-character epics that they forget about these two psychosexual delusions and what-the-hell-just-happened? identity-swapping dramas.

3) Philip Marlow's supermarket exchange in The Long Goodbye.
If you haven't seen it, forgive me, this just won't do it justice:

Philip Marlowe: Excuse me, I don't see any Courry Brand cat food here.
Supermarket Clerk: Some what?
Philip Marlowe: Some Courry Brand cat --
Supermarket Clerk: Could you spell that?
Philip Marlowe: Courry Brand, C-O-U-R-R --
Supermarket Clerk: Oh, we're all out of that. Why don't you get this. All this shit is the same anyways.
Philip Marlowe: You don't happen to have a cat by any chance?
Supermarket Clerk: What do I need a cat for, I've got a girl.
Philip Marlowe: Ha, ha. He's got a girl, I got a cat.

4. The ballet set to "The World Spins" in The Company.

There's not enough love for The Company. Dr. T and Cookie's Fortune seem to get all the attention from cinephiles looking to shower attention on Altman's recent, underappreciated output. That's a shame, because The Company, about a year in the life of the Chicago Joffery Ballet, is an intimate and lovely docudrama anchored by the exceptional Malcolm McDowell. However, the film's greatest moments are the various ballets recreated throughout. The most stunning of them is a piece performed by Emily Patterson, set to Julee Cruise's ghostly pop song "The World Spins" (written by, ahem, David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti). In it, she glides, piourettes, and floats across the stage with the help of a bungee cord. Altman captures the scene with such effortless fluidity, that when I saw it for the first time I held my breath in awe. It'd be impossible to film a dance sequence with more artistry.

5. Gosford Park's ensemble.

This category was originally going to be "Helen Mirren in Gosford Park." Every time I revisit the film, I'm floored by how beautifully she underplays her role. Then I think, well, she got an Oscar nomination, so people clearly see how great she is. But do they remember how solid, how refined Emily Watson is? Or how hilarious Michael Gambon is? (Watch the first dinner scene again and just look at the way he's eating his food.) Or Stephen Fry's bit of ham 'n cheesery? Or Kristen Scott Thomas's self-deprecation? Or Maggie Smith... Or... You get the picture.

And how is your day going?

2006-02-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

Blah blah blah stupid job blah blah blah blah blah don't miss Matthew Ronson's version of "Just" featuring the Dap Kings Horn Section over at Fluxblog blah blah Happy Belated Birthday, David Byrne blah blah etc.

In appreciation of James K. Polk.

2006-02-20T09:09:00.001-08:00

Dear James K. Polk,

I've always admired the fact that you were the original dark horse candidate, plus that whole manifest destiny bit was pretty rad. But today, JKP, I'd like to thank you--well, you and your fellow Presidential brethren--for allowing me to sit at home, eat waffles, watch garbage on television, and, you know, do whatever else might happen on President's Day.

Thanks again.

Your pal,

Ben

A dose of haterade for your Friday afternoon.

2006-02-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

Oh man:

"[Timur Bekmambetov's Night Watch] is a fractious fiasco: whiplash camera movement set to raging blasts of death metal, a story so incoherent it made me wish I was watching, instead, the collected outtakes from Van Helsing."

--Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly.

Feel the burn.

The A.V. Club.

2006-02-17T13:01:00.000-08:00

A short doc about Mark Romanek by Hillman Curtis.
Diane Martel's dirrty vid for Goldfrapp's "Ride a White Horse." (Link via Goldenspence.)
Matthew Fluxblog has two excellent Talking Heads demos from the new re-release series.
Old lists are good lists: Slant's 100 Greatest Music Videos (from 2003). Where, pray, is Bjork's "All Is Full Of Love"?
Can it be? Pitchfork's four star review of the new Prince single: "It's harsh and alien, like he's been listening to Mu or some shit. Finally, someone cancelled his subscription to The Watchtower."
The Onion A.V. Club listens to Michael Bay's Island commentary track: "My job is to make Scarlett likeable, and her picking up this wrench is the first sign of her doing something badass."
Aimee & Michael vs. John & Paul over at Girish's.
If you're into aliens, manwhores, booty girls, and Lawnmower Man-style cybersex, the video for The Juan Maclean's "Give Me Every Little Thing" is gonna make your head explode.
You didn't forget about David Edelstein did you? Good.
Armond's review of LVT's Manderlay isn't nearly as vitriolic as you'd think. Oh, he hates it all right ("Manderlay is so ignorant of authentic American behavior that the calculated outrageousness of its premise is dull rather than scandalous."), but where's the intensity? Fear not, he does manage to work in some Spielberg love in the form of a Hook (!) shoutout.

Deeply depressing.

2006-02-16T14:36:00.000-08:00

There's something depressing about artists disavowing their work. It sucks knowing that if you see Prince in concert, you're going to hear something from The Rainbow Children instead of "Sexy MF" or "Gett Off."

That's the first comparison I thought of when I found this interview with the late, great Moira Shearer. It's from 1994 was the last interview that she gave; it's clear that her strained relationship with Michael Powell hadn't improved over the years:

Your last film appearance for Michael Powell was his notorious Peeping Tom.

Yes, I did that out of kindness of heart. Michael Powell arrived on my doorstep in 1959, with an ashen face and a large script under his arm. Could I help him? A small part - it would only take four days - the actress he had cast, Natasha Parry, had flown off to New York. At least, would I read the script? So I did, and thought it quite interesting, stupidly forgetting his sadistic streak. It was only four days in the studio and I saw nothing else of the filming, so the finished article was quite a shock.

Was it horrifying to do?

No, it wasn't. There was such an air of unreality and artificiality on the set and, as I've already said, Michael Powell was hardly the man to release emotion in his actors. I thought the critics were absolutely right about it*. I am only sorry that, recently, those violent boys, Scorsese and Coppola, have tried to make it into a cult film. It is deeply depressing.

Isn't that sad? She's in a work of art that's so cereberal, visionary, and raw that it took people decades to catch up to it and... she just dismisses it.

Deeply depressing, indeed.

*A critical sampler:
"The sickest and filthiest film I remember seeing" (Isabel Quigly, The Spectator);
"I don't propose to name the players in this beastly picture" (CA Lejeune, The Observer); "sadism, sex and the exploitation of human degradation" (Leonard Mosley, Daily Express);
"from its slumbering, mildly salacious beginning to its appallingly masochistic and depraved climax, it is wholly evil" (Nina Hibbin, Daily Worker).

"A perfect storm of anemic indie conventions."

2006-02-16T10:23:00.000-08:00

Because I have a chunk of coal where my heart should be, The Reeler's takedown of Winter Passing made my morning. Revel in the snark:

While Passing does not quite float up from the same burbling gastric swamp responsible for, say, Flannel Pajamas, it implodes spectacularly enough as [Adam] Rapp's rambling drama-ectomy removes any sense of conflict the way one might remove an opponent's spine while playing Mortal Kombat. It seems unlikely--if not impossible--that such inoffensive principals could be so repellent together, but you would not expect the vice-president to shoot someone either, so chalk it up to bad chemistry or a misaligned cosmos or whatever. Shit happens.

Yee-ouch. Have you seen Winter Passing's trailer? Even the Focus Features Marketing Department can't save this one. First of all, it looks like the film was shot on Super 8, sent to a lab to be developed in bacon grease, then blown up to 35mm. Secondly, it's one of those tortured indies where the father and his estranged daughter are trying to reconcile, but in this case the father is J.D. Salinger (played by Ed Harris). Of course, they can't call him J.D. Salinger, so they call him Don Holden. Get it? Get it? Subtle, Adam Rapp. Subtle.
Okay, enough beating up on some helpless indie I haven't even seen.

2 + 2 = 5.

2006-02-15T17:26:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog, I used to make a weekly list of pop cultural artifacts that were lodged in my head. I stopped making the lists a year ago for no real reason. It wasn't a conscious decision, I think I just forgot to do it one week and never picked it back up. A year later, I'm back at it.

Obsession [DePalma, 1976]
AKA DePalma does Vertigo. It goes a little something like this: that dude who plays Uncle Ben in Spiderman goes to Venice on business and spots a woman--played by that woman with the mutant uterus in Dead Ringers--who looks exactly like his deceased wife. Obsession follows. Yes, it sounds almost exactly like Vertigo. Yes, it's another exercise in DePalma's never-ending Hitchcock fetish. Yes, there's more to it. For starters, there's John Lithgow doing a really bad N'Awlins accent; a script by Paul Schrader that's full of his overheated psychodrama schtick; and a killer kidnapping sequence set to Bernard Hermann's ripe score. You know that sounds tempting.
"I Know" (Live Recording from iTunes Originals) by Fiona Apple.
In its original incarnation, "I Know" was a wrenching bit of melancholic jazz-pop; basically Fiona in a nutshell. In this version, recorded live for an iTunes Originals session, Jon Brion's weepy string arrangement has been replaced by a warped-calliope synth line, giving the song a narcotic charge that sounds like those Julee Cruise/Twin Peaks songs.
ACME Novelty Library No. 16 by Chris Ware.
I'm not trying to reignite the war over Mr. Ware's merits, but the latest edition of his ACME Novelty Library series is stunning. The graphic novel's themes (suburban ennui, midlife crisis, burgeoning/ misplaced sexuality, high school angst) are well-worn, but they're handled with such empathy and effortless creative ingenuity (the narrative is told from two POVs that run simultaneously for the length of the book) that it feels entirely original.
The House Next Door.
As if being a colleague of The Whine Colored Sea's Favorite Rebel Critic wasn't enough, Matt Zoller Seitz gets massive props for [1] being a fucking great film critic in his own right (I'd link to his excellent essay on the use of space in Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol, but the New York Press's website is acting crazy) and [2] for his blog, The House Next Door. If you're a film nerd and THND isn't a daily destination, shame on you; MZS's writing is too sharp to be missed. Por ejemplo (dig the Casino metaphor!):
[Leonardo DiCaprio] deserved the acclaim he received early on; his work in "This Boy's Life," "The Quick and the Dead," "The Basketball Diaries" and "Titanic" (a great young male ingenue performance, unironic and sincere)were as good as almost anything the late River Phoenix came up with, and Phoenix was close to a genius. (I still miss him.) But DiCaprio, like Natalie Portman and Kirsten Dunst, seems less complicated and charismatic the older he gets. And his partnership with Martin Scorsese has been a disaster -- symbiotic, dysfunctional and fundamentally unsatisfying. DiCaprio gets Scorsese the funding he needs, and in return, DiCaprio delivers a performance that's more like oil than glue; I thought he was competent in "The Aviator" and borderline dull in "Gangs of New York," and miscast in both. If Scorsese is Ace Rothstein in "Casino," DiCaprio is his Ginger, the beautiful blond who brings the whole empire crashing down.

While I'm a shameless defender (enabler?) of later Scorsese, I think MZS is onto something here.
Dakota Fanning in Hide and Seek [Polson, 2005].
Who knew that the director of the ludicrous Swimfan@ could flip the killer kid genre on its head and deliver a surprisingly effective horror/thriller? I certainly didn't and I'm not ashamed to admit that I gobbled up every minute of the damn thing. Director John Polson isn't bad at creating atmosphere, but he's way too fond of tired genre tropes*. Regardless, it's Dakota Fanning's performance that carries the show. Well, maybe "performance" is giving her too much credit. Look: it's undeniable that Dakota is a preternaturally talented actress; Spielberg's War of the Worlds proved that. In Hide and Seek, her performance consists largely of casting those enormous eyes directly at the camera and staring DeNiro/us down. With that Wednesday Addams hairdo and the dark bags under her eyes, it's enough. Trust me. Every time she did that shit, it gave me the heeby-jeebies.

* He's especially fond of ike Surprise!-It-Was-Just-A-Cast and Doesn't-It-Look-Creepy-When-I-Shoot- Through-The-Slatted-Closet-Door?

Fug yeah.

2006-02-14T11:21:00.000-08:00

A suggestion: stop what you're doing and remind yourself that the Ladies Fug serve up the best snark on the ITs.

While not overtly snarked-out, this seemed especially dead-on:

"Maybe Meryl [Streep] is going to take Lindsay under her wing and whip La Lohan into shape. Wouldn't that be an exciting development? I feel like Meryl wouldn't let Lindsay run all over town drinking and sleeping with inappropriately old men and accidentally running things over with her car. Meryl would have Lindsay studying, like, Strindberg, and practicing accents alone in her room until late in the night. And then Lindsay would start crying and call her and be like, 'Meryl, this is so hard,' and Meryl would be all kind, but very firm, like, 'I don't want to hear your whining, Lindsay,' and then Lindsay could realize her full potential and I wouldn't have to apologize for liking her anymore."

Quote of the day (Sartastic Edition).

2006-02-09T17:24:00.000-08:00

"Studies that I have read indicate that having babies is a sign of a faith in the future. You know, unless you believe in the future, you're not going to take the trouble of raising a child, educating a child, doing something. If there is no future, why do it? Well, unless you believe in God, there's really no future. And when you go back to the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, the whole idea of this desperate nightmare we are in -- you know, that we are in this prison, and it has no hope, no exit. That kind of philosophy has permeated the intellectual thinking of Europe, and hopefully it doesn't come here. But nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate. And they just can't get it together. Why? There's no hope."

--Marion "Pat" Robertson on The 700 Club. Way to destroy the future, JP. (Via Hit and Run.)

Eye to eye.

2006-02-09T15:51:00.000-08:00

I've been debating if I should purchase Eros, 2005's wildly uneven omnibus. Steven Soderbergh's segment is instantly forgettable, Michaelangelo Antonioni's is so screechingly bad it's depressing, but Wong Kar-wai's piece... It's such an elegant and precise piece of short-filmmaking that I considered buying the DVD just to have those twenty-some minutes. Then Dave Kehr dropped this morsel and now the purchase is a done deal:

Eros: This three-part film on sexual themes with segments by Wong Kar-wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni received mixed reviews when it was released theatrically last April, but its DVD release is remarkable for the one great extra it contains: "Michelangelo Eye to Eye," a 19-minute short directed by Mr. Antonioni and included here out of the sheer goodness of Warner Home Video's heart.

Largely silent, with the exception of some choral music by Palestrina that rises slowly during the film's last five minutes, 'Eye to Eye' depicts the 93-year-old Italian filmmaker (effectively rendered mute by a stroke in 1985) as he pays a visit to a work by another Michelangelo: the sculptor's marble statue of Moses, created for the tomb of Pope Julius II. No words are pronounced, and none need to be as Mr. Antonioni's slowly moving camera caresses the curves and textures of the monumental artwork while it closes in on his own aging, almost translucent flesh. Crosscutting between his own clouded eyes and the frozen, eternal regard of the sculpture, the director establishes a dialogue across time. The artist ages; the art does not. This wise, reverberating piece contains unspoken volumes.

I'm putting my faith in Mr. Kehr on this matter; if Eye to Eye bares any resemblance to Antonioni's ~~Cinemax~~ Eros segment, I'm'a be pissed.

Land of the lost.

2006-02-09T10:47:00.000-08:00

'Fess up, you watched (some) of the Grammys. Me too. For some strange reason, I thought the much-hyped Sly tribute was going to be something special. (I know, I know, I know, shhhh.) Was there anything more depressing than Sly actually showing up and, uh, half-miming a keyboard solo for thirty seconds before departing?

Sigh.

I now present some of my favorite comments from the I Love Music gang re: the Sly & The Family Stone Tribute.

Does he have a hunchback? DOES HE HAVE A HUNCHBACK?
-- Michael Daddino (epicharmu...), February 9th, 2006.

how could sly in his worse throes of coke binge be worse than this
-- dan bunnybrain (bunnybrai...), February 9th, 2006.

ok, it's official, there's no God
-- Thomas Tallis (tallis4...), February 9th, 2006.

He *is* hunchbacked.
-- Michael Daddino (epicharmu...), February 9th, 2006.

To quote my wife: "He looks like my grandfather crossed with a dragon!"
-- Josh in Chicago (Vitesse9...), February 9th, 2006.

Even the cameraman can't look.
-- Michael Daddino (epicharmu...), February 9th, 2006.

i loved the shots of steven tyler looking around to see whether he should be making any rawk noises or not.
-- Kim (grimstitc...), February 9th, 2006.

Steve Tyler did say "Sly, let's do it like we used to do it" ... he was obviously talking about leaving the stage to go snort some coke.
-- NoTimeBeforeTime (mbvarkestra197...), February 9th, 2006.

He looked to me like one those Land of the Lost Chaka people had started interbreeding with the Sleestaks.
-- Redd Harvest (louder...), February 9th, 2006.

It's too late in the day for me to come up with a witty title.

2006-02-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

This picture makes me laugh every time I look at it:

Oh Stipe. I used to be the biggest R.E.M. fan, but it's been a rough couple of years. (And by couple of years, I mean decade.) If the Micahel 'n Dolly photo has you feeling nostalgic, I've got two suggestions:

Try to catch the episode of Sundance's "Iconoclasts" with chef Mario Batali and Stipe. It's completely charming and features quality cameos by (among others) Bono, Mark Romanek, and Jonathan Glazer. Plus it actually made me enjoy an Around the Sun jawn. (That would be "Wanderlust" in case you're wondering.)
Read this excellent bit of memoir/New Adventures in Hi-Fi analysis by Michaelangelo Matos.

Ringing endorsement of the day.

2006-02-07T16:45:00.000-08:00

"Last night [Howard] thought about masturbating but decided to watch 'Brokeback Mountain' instead. Howard said he tried to watch that 'Wife Swap' show but it was horrible... Howard said that 'Brokeback Mountain' might be one of the best movies he's ever seen. There's one ass scene that doesn't last all that long."

As found on MarksFriggin.com, a daily digest of the goings-on on the Howard Stern Show. (Via Sully.)

Doll parts / bad skin / doll heart.

2006-02-03T17:35:00.000-08:00

If you told me that you thought Bubble was an interminable piece of shit, I'd disagree with you, but I'd understand. I chafed against the latest "Steven Soderbergh experience" (as it's touted on the DVD cover) for the first fifteen, twenty minutes; then what I'd found banal and rote became surprisingly hypnotic and effective. I won't get into a plot discussion (it doesn't have much in that department and the little there is involves twists), but I've gotta tell you: it looks great.

Thanks to Collateral, Caché, and Bubble, I think I'm coming around on my staunch anti-digital filmmaking stance. I've always respected the medium's fluidity and the freedom it afforded certain members of the Dogme95 crowd, but deep down I always thought it looked like crap. Soderbergh's Full Frontal was an especially ugly case as I recall, which is why I'm stunned that Bubble is one of the best looking digital features I've seen. There's still a discernible video sheen to it, but I was genuinely floored by how majestic it looks. Soderbergh has eschewed the frenetic hand-held camerawork of his last few films for meticulously framed, mostly static composition. Sodey credits Michael Winterbottom's In This World and Gregory Crewdson's photography as aesthetic inspiration. I'm really fond of Crewdson's work, but haven't seen the Winterbottom film. Have any of youse? Let me know. And go see Bubble and tell me if I'm crazy.
So, look, I've gotta get this off my chest: will you think less of me if I admit that I've gotten choked up not once, but twice while watching In Her Shoes? Seriously, when Cameron Diaz reads that e.e. cummings poem... Forget about it. I'm way too much of a softie to make it through that.

Why don't critics cut Curtis Hanson some slack? I'll be the first to admit that the first fifteen, twenty minutes of In Her Shoes are awkward and conventional. And, sure, there's some eye-rolling Hollywood hokum throughout. Fine; accepted, admitted, moving on... What I think is exceptional about the film (and Hanson's work in general) is how textured it is. I love how meticulously detailed and distinct each character's world is; I love that Hanson surrounds his stars with quality character actors who should be seen more often. I shouldn't have to mention that Hanson can pull genuinely great work out of unlikely sources, but Diaz's performance in Shoes is so far beyond what she normally does, it reminds you that she actually is a really good actress and not just the hottness. I guess what I'm driving at is: I'm sick of hearing about how Hollywood doesn't make any adult entertainment anymore, blah blah blah, when Curtis Hanson is continually delivering it and no one seems to notice. Wong Kar Wai he's not, but I can't think of a much better Hollywood journeyman. (Before I forget, what happened to Shirley MacLaine's goddam Oscar nomination?)
Despite the ace "Father Figure" sample, PM Dawn's "Looking Through Patient Eyes" is best left where it belongs: on B106 FM in 1993.
Happy weekend.

Mimi and The Boss.

2006-02-01T15:03:00.000-08:00

I bet you thought that Armond White, resident rebel-critic hero of The Whine Colored Sea, was all about film, right? Not so. The results of the annual Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll were released today (nothing all that shocking; the top five albums: Kanye, M.I.A., Sufjan, Sleater, Fiona) and Mr. White allowed his voice to be heard.

His picks:

ALBUMS
1. Carey, Mariah: The Emancipation of Mimi
2. New Order: Waiting for the Sirens' Call
3. Bush, Kate: Aerial
4. West, Kanye: Late Registration
5. Elliott, Missy: The Cookbook
6. Common: Be
7. Chesney, Kenny: The Road and the Radio
8. Scott, Raymond: My Kind of Music
9. Springsteen, Bruce: Devils and Dust

SINGLE
1. Urban, Keith: Better Life
2. Amerie: 1 Thing
3. Elliott, Missy Featuring Ciara & Fat Man Scoop: Lose Control
4. West, Kanye Featuring Jamie Foxx: Gold Digger
5. Chesney, Kenny: Who You'd Be Today
6. Bentley, Dierks: Come a Little Closer
7. Paisley, Brad: Alcohol
8. Wilson, Gretchen: All Jacked Up
9. Scott, Raymond: My Kind of Music
10. Underwood, Carrie: Jesus, Take the Wheel

I've gotta admit, I'm feeling vindicated (see pro-country music screed below). Not sure about Mimi's status as number 1 (I just can't get on that love train), but I wholeheartedly endores albums 2 through 6.

I never.

2006-01-30T15:58:00.000-08:00

First things first: I heart Jenny Lewis. Blogger cliche? Yup. And I take full responsibility. The new album? I like it a lot, especially when listened to all the way through (I think the big picture works better than the singles).

That said my heart sank a little when I read this New York Times profile. Says Miss Lewis: "I find most modern country virtually unistenable."

I hate that snobbery. I've mentioned before that I loathe the old "I like all music except for country" trope; of course, that line doesn't really work anymore, what with the recent (and largely deserved) hagiographic treatment of Johnny, Loretta, and Dolly. So now the new line is "I like country music, just not modern country music."

For one, I don't buy for a second that Jenny Lewis has spent any real time listening to modern country radio. (Full admission: I haven't really either, but I'm not the asshole making dumb blanket generalizations.) I'm guessing that this is based on the indie-kid notion that modern country music is encapsulated wholly by what's played on the radio. Can we count Lyle Lovett, Alison Krauss, Old 97's, Gillian Welch*, Nickel Creek, and Lucinda Williams as contemporary country? Or would their inclusion screw up Lewis's/indiedom's tired snobbery?

But let's forget about those KCRW/Starbucks-approved singer/songwriter types and get a little more radical: contemporary country that's played on the radio isn't all shit. I know. Stunning. An example: the first time I listened to Lewis's new record, I was struck by a lyric that goes "When you're sleeping with someone who doesn't get you / You're gonna hate yourself in the morning." It's impeccably delivered, but I couldn't help but think of Lee Ann Womack's "I May Hate Myself In the Morning," wherein our heroine makes a drunk dial, fucks an old boyfriend, and concludes "I may hate myself in the morning / but I'm gonna love you tonight." Womack's song is not only smarter and bolder, it was a huge country radio hit. (I'm not the only one who made this connection.)

Want more? You can't tell me that you wouldn't take Miranda Lambert's "Kerosene," a country hit about getting over heartbreak via arson, or Brad Paisley's "Alcohol," a radio staple about a love/hate relationship with getting drunk, over one of the approximately 9,732 solipsistic dirges that Ryan Adams released in 2005**. So there are three of the biggest country hits of 2005, all of them expertly crafted and immensely entertaining. And that's just based on my cursory, passing knowledge of current commercial country music; I bet there are dozens of songs that are in the same league. (And the list expands greatly if you include the aforementioned KCRW/Starbucks types.)

Don't get me wrong, should Ms. Lewis be in the market for a nice, Jew-friendly goy, I'm more than willing to overlook this bout of snobbery.

Oh, and go buy Rabbit Fur Coat. It really is an excellent collection of Nyro'd-out country. (And, yes, I even like that Traveling Wilburys cover featuring grumblegrumblegrumble Bright Eyes.)

* Have you heard Gillian's raw take on Radiohead's "Black Star"? If not, get over to the iTunes store and shell out the 99 cents.
** MEMO TO RYAN ADAMS: please, please, please reform Whiskeytown and write songs like you did circa 1998-2000. Thanks.

Transmission.

2006-01-24T16:22:00.000-08:00

Hola amigos.
Not dead, just, you know, stuck doing dumb stuff. Trust me, I'd rather be blogging about my newfound love for Mouse Hunt (no, really... for real... I hella loved it) or joining in the Caché chats over in Girishberg or Trixville (Aaron Hills is killing it over there).
Whatever, you'll get your Mouse Hunt love soon enough.
I'll leave you with a blast of candid radness from Lou Reed: "I read [the Factory Girl] script. It's one of the most disgusting, foul things I've seen - by any illiterate retard - in a long time. There's no limit to how low some people will go to write something to make money."
(For the record: I don't really know anything about Factory Girl, I'm just a fan of sound bites from celebrities that haven't been bludgeoned by publicists.)

For real?

2006-01-20T15:42:00.000-08:00

Can somebody tell me if either of these suckers are legit? Thanks.

(via I Love Music.)

Update: They have a friend at the LA Weekly etc etc etc blah blah blah:
OFFICIAL COACHELLA LINEUP

April 29: Depeche Mode, The Strokes, Portishead, Franz Ferdinand, Fatboy Slim, Massive Attack, Infected Mushroom, Royksopp, Kings of Leon, Doves, Sufjan Stevens, Broken Social Scene, Atmosphere, Blackalicious, Super Furry Animals, The Buzzcocks, Primal Scream, Supergrass, Ladytron, DJ Peretz, The Shins, Dieselboy, Tortoise, Sleater Kinney, Richard Hawley, Grooverider, Death From Above 1979, Yesterdays New Quintet, The Walkmen, Son Volt, Will Oldham, The Clientele, Lightning Bolt, Cage, The Crimea, OK Go, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, John Kelly

April 30: The White Stripes, Roxy Music (featuring Brian Eno), The Arcade Fire, Sigur Ros, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Boards of Canada, Underworld, Ween, Death Cab for Cutie, Armin Van Buuren, Built to Spill, De La Soul, Big Star, Iron & Wine, Uberzone, Happy Mondays, Dinosaur Jr, TV on the Radio, Elbow, Eagles of Death Metal, The Tears, Esthero, T. Rauschmiere, Cat Power, The New Pornographers, Carl Cox, Grandaddy, Calexico, Explosions in the Sky, The Wedding Present, Andy C, Fatlip, DJ Icey, The Notwist and Themselves preforming as 13 & God, Devendra Banhart, The Coral, Stateless, 65 Days of Static

Dear Focus Features Marketing Dept.,

2006-01-18T17:04:00.000-08:00

I know you're getting a lot of love because you've taken a nice, old-fashioned weepie that's remarkable only because it's, er, gayer than usual and turned it into an Oscar sureshot. Propers to that, but that's not why I'm writing. Nope, I'm writing re: your promotional efforts for Brick.

I'd never heard of it until today. (Somehow I missed its triumphant 2005 Sundance win for "Originality of Vision"--God bless those batshit Sundance juries and their fancy awards--and haven't really been keeping up with Lukas Haas's career.) Then I came across these two posters for the film:

Guys, bravo. Bra-vo. Based on those beautifully-executed suckers, I immediately downloaded the trailer. Guess what shot way up on my most-anticipated-in-'06 list? Yup, your little movie that I'd never heard of until today. Of course, it doesn't hurt that it looks like you actually have a good film on your hands, making the whole promotion thing a little easier. Plus, the fact that I'm in the midst of a full-on Veronica Mars, uh, fixation*--which your film bares a striking resemblance to**--probably makes me an easy sell. Regardless, the posters are excellent, the trailer is one of the best of I've seen in ages, you made my day.

Your admiring pal,

Ben

PS: Double/triple bonus points for (a) reading my blog and (b) tracking down my work address and sending me a bunch of Brick posters. That kind of homework is clearly why Brokeback is going to win Best Picture.

*Sigh. That admission makes me sound like one of those sad Buffy fans that used to annoy the hell out of me.
** Minus Kristen Bell (alas) and with the Twin Peaks allusions pumped way up (always fine in my book).

Tivo alert.

2006-01-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

You know how I'm forever prattling on about Bernardo Bertolucci's difficult-to-track-down The Conformist? Well, you lucky people, set those Tivos and/or VCR/DVDr/whatever- contraptions because TCM is airing it this Friday, January 20, at 11:30 p.m. (That's 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning for you east coasters.) Even better, it's subtitled and letterboxed. For those who need a refresher: Bertolucci's obscenely entertaining political-pop masterpiece has never been released on DVD and when found on VHS it's usually a dubbed/pan-and-scan copy, so this TCM screening is a rare treat.

You can't say I'm not looking out for youse.

Finally.

2006-01-18T09:32:00.000-08:00

I'm guessing this means the earliest we'll be seeing There Will Be Blood is Fall '07; At least there's something official:

Scott Rudin, who is transitioning from Paramount to Disney, is getting back into business with his old home.
Rudin will exec produce "There Will Be Blood," a period drama loosely based on the 1927 Upton Sinclair novel "Oil!," for Par Classics and the new Miramax.

Daniel Day-Lewis and director Paul Thomas Anderson will team this spring on the pic.

It is the first major project for John Lesher since he left Endeavor to take the top post at the classics division, which will soon be renamed.

Rudin is transitioning from Paramount to Disney, and one of his priorities will be to make prestige projects for Miramax.

The 50/50 partnership formula will be used on several pictures Rudin will put together this year. Some of those titles will be distributed domestically by Miramax, with Paramount taking foreign.

Lesher's unit will handle domestic distribution rights, while Daniel Battsek's Miramax will distribute internationally.

Anderson wrote the script and used as his basis Sinclair's expose of the seamy side of the drilling business in Southern California when it became the equivalent of the gold rush.

Day-Lewis will play a prospector who buys the oil rights to a family's ranch, and then hits a major pocket of crude. The story then turns into a tale of greed and faith, as the prospector realizes the American dream and is destroyed by it.

Pic will be produced by Anderson and Joanne Sellar, with Rudin exec producing with Eric Schlosser, the author of "Fast Food Nation." Shooting will begin mid-May, in Texas and New Mexico.

Lesher was Anderson's longtime agent, and knew the project well because he tried to set it up independently last year. Day-Lewis was already doing his research on his character and the oil business, but the project's summer 2005 shoot stalled because of problems raising the budget Anderson felt he needed. The agency and Day-Lewis' reps, Gene Parseghian and Victoria Belfrage kept pushing and Day-Lewis didn't take another acting job.

The wait was worth it, as the package allows them to make a large-canvas picture for a budget just north of $20 million.

Thursday night links.

2006-01-12T19:02:00.000-08:00

LynchNet has pictures from Mr. Lynch's upcoming Inland Empire.
Suggested Listening: Mark Romanek's keynote address at ResFest L.A. (Among questions finally answered: how did they get Joni Mitchell to provide a commentary track on Mark's compilation DVD.)
Your weekly Armondism:
"Fans of Match Point should confess that they are indifferent to brutality, having sunk to the same level as extreme-horror punks. Surely those scandalous Abu Grahib photos can be viewed with the same delectation as stills from Hostel and Johansson’s various fuck-me postures."
Yup, he went there.
Suggested Listening, Part 2: Diplo remixes Bloc Party.
Aw fuck it, you know you want one more Armondism. Here it is:
"[T]he Farrellys’ radical humanist philosophy is so cheerful that, despite what Entertainment Weekly says about Brokeback Mountain, The Ringer is the revolutionary film of the moment."

Happy almost-Friday.

Dear John Powers,

2006-01-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

Thank you for making my Sam Mendes hateration look like child's play:

After the latest tarted-up flop from director Sam Mendes — and to think people gave Marisa Tomei grief for her Academy Award — he returned to England declaring that we Yanks just can’t handle a neutral movie on the subject of gulf war. Which is like an American returning to Iowa and claiming the dull-palated Brits can’t grasp the culinary refinement of a corn dog. Call me a hard-ass, but I don’t need any more war movies by some London theater director for whom Marines might as well be Martians.

(The rest of the article is pretty damn great.)

Your pal,

Ben

There's always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs after you.

2006-01-11T16:01:00.000-08:00

I was going to do one more Showgirls-related post before the proverbial lights of the Stardust go dim. It was going to be a compendium of the best Showgirls characters and their defining quotes... and then I saw Eric's post. How can you compete with that? Not only is it hilarious and super tech-savvy (the screen captures lead to mp3s!), it's thorough. I thought my coup de grace was going to be the inclusion of the little-discussed-but-personally-beloved Latina Personnel Woman (Irene Olga Lopez) and her supremely depressing interaction with ~~Pol~~ Nomi. It's clear to me that Eric misses nothing. (For the record, my definitive quote from that exchange was going to be Lopez's empathetic "Deceased?")

However, that doesn't mean that I can't still post my ghetto-ass screen-capture of my pick for the number one Showgirls quote:

Don't speak French? Head over to Eric's and listen to it for yourself. (He ranks it at Number 3.)

On loving Showgirls.

2006-01-11T00:46:00.000-08:00

In which your humble author writes an introduction to a day of Showgirls-related posts as part of the Showgirls blog orgy...

Ten years ago I rented a laser disc copy of Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls for the tits. I'm not going to lie, I was lured in by that shiny new NC-17 rating and its unspoken promise of wall to wall nudity and debauchery of the highest caliber. (In case you were wondering the NC-17 is actually for "nudity and erotic sexuality throughout, and for some graphic language and sexual violence.") Ten years, two home video formats, and dozens of viewings later I'm over the wall-to-wall nudity but I'm not over the film. Here are a couple of reasons why.

For one, it's an enormously entertaining and wicked satire of the star system and Hollywood via Vegas (or Vegas via Hollywood, or Hollywood and/or Vegas, etc.). Yes, bad-to-horrible acting abounds and Joe Ezterhas's script/intentions might just be questionable... But can we get past that? Can we try? If that's possible, I think you might just be able to see it as a prequel of sorts to Mulholland Drive, with Verhoeven opting to tell the story as an oversexed melodrama rather than using the abstract-dream-film idiom that Lynch employs. I think people get wrapped up, uptight, and offended by Showgirls when they take it as some sort of literal docudrama and not as the brash poison valentine that it is.

I also suspect part of Showgirls's longevity (and much of its camp appeal) springs from how committed the people in front of and behind the camera are to the material. When Elizabeth Berkley literally throws herself into her role (Did you see her slam herself into that car? Did you see her attack that ketchup bottle?), I find it next to impossible to resist. And it's my sneaking suspicion that those involved take it so seriously because, well, it's deeply personal and-- fuck it, I'll say it, it's autobiographical.

Consider: the ingenue so hungry for her big break that she's licking poles and risking serious back injury via aquatic sex romps all in the name of some very dubious "art"; the hard-ass director of the project, oblivious to the fact that the material isn't so much erotic as it is crass, announcing "I'm erect, why aren't you erect?"; the reliable older star who knows she's wallowing in big budget shit--hey it's glitzy, but it's still shit--but doing it with charm and a wink; the backer of the show, convinced he's doing something classy, has deluded himself into thinking that Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul (circa 1995) would be willing to take part in it.

Need I go on? I'm not implying that Elizabeth Berkley actually fucked her way to the role of Nomi (er, well, maybe I am) but it's a thin line that separates Berkley '95--fresh off Saved By the Bell and ready to be the next Sharon Stone--and Nomi Malone.* And could there be a better line than "I'm erect, why aren't you erect?" to illustrate the chasm between Verhoeven and the initial audience? And do you doubt that executive producer/writer Joe Ezterhas thought he could get A-list stars (i.e., Janet and Paula) for the project? (Apparently Madonna and Drew Barrymore were the first picks for Cristal and Nomi.) That's a long-winded way of saying I think that the autobiographical connections seep into the film, grounding some of the melodrama and adding an over-the-top ferocity to the rest.

And just as the actors and their roles blur, I think that we, the audience (or at least the appreciative, receptive audience), blur with the Goddess audience. As much as you try to fight it, that tawdry, shitty, profoundly vulgar spectacle sucks you in through sheer will and makes you like it. Yup, that neon is garish and David Stewart's synth-score is all bombast and Cristal emerging from that papier-mâché volcano is silly, but goddam is it effective; Verhoeven and Ezterhas have got their hands all up in your id and they're not letting go.

Leave your inhibitions at the door, the show's about to begin.

*Need more? How 'bout this: "We were filming the scene where Nomi's about to go into her audition at the Stardust and she's saying 'I can't do this.' And suddenly I thought, I can't. I can't do it. I looked up and saw the sign that said CRISTAL CONNORS IS GODDESS, and for a second I saw ELIZABETH BERKLEY STARRING IN SHOWGIRLS, and it was so emotional." (As found in the Taschen Director's volume on Paul Verhoeven.)

Discoveries '05.

2006-01-10T14:56:00.000-08:00

Mmmm... more lists. This time I'm posting my favorite "old" films that I saw for the first time in 2005.

The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963)
I'm cheating right off the bat. I'd seen The Birds years ago, but my second viewing was such a completely different experience that I might as well've been seeing it for the first time. I was completely unprepared for how truly frightening and complex and smart it really is. The bold narrative loop-de-loops (it begins as a romantic comedy morphs into family drama then into a slowburning thriller and finally an outright horror film) coupled with that saturated Technicolor palette and Tippi Hedren's mutant variation on the Hitchcock blond in the lead... Bliss.
The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1970)
The best film I saw all year and one of the greatest I've ever seen. In a year where critics are fawning over the pop-politics of Syriana and Crash, Bertolucci ~~puts them to shame~~ decimates them.
The Devil Thumbs a Ride (Feist, 1947)
I randomly Tivo'd this nasty bit of noir-bile when it was shown as part of TCM's night of hitchhiking movies. I loved every delicious/evil moment. A word of advice: if you've had one too many to drink and Lawrence Tierney asks for a ride back to Los Ang-el-eese, don't do it.
Elevator to the Gallows (Malle, 1958)
Français refroidissez à une crête tôt.
The Fallen Idol (Reed, 1948)
A criminally overlooked film from Carol Reed (via a Graham Greene short story) that manages to be both an unsentimental look at childhood and an unbearably tense thriller.
Fanny & Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
One word: thunderous. One more: perfect.
Pickup on South Street (Fuller, 1953)
This is what struck me about South Street: it's a hardboiled procedural, but Fuller infuses it with such heart and empathy that you forget how nasty it can be.
Le Samourai (Melville, 1967)
Suddenly the zen-pulp of Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog doesn't seem so special considering Melville perfected it thrity years prior.
The Small Back Room (Powell & Pressburger, 1949)
Alcoholism and post-war paranoia as refracted through the Archers's prism; smaller in scale when compared to P&P's Technicolor masterpieces, but no less epic.
Spider (Cronenberg, 2002)
You know how everyone feels about A History of Violence? That's how I feel about Spider. It's a brainy and ice-cold bit of stunt-filmmaking anchored by the superb Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Richards in a shattering performance that's a career highpoint.

Moments '05.

2006-01-09T16:18:00.000-08:00

Are you bored with year-end lists yet? I'm mixing things up and rather than doing a top ten with commentary, I'm presenting some of my favorite movie moments from 2005. Here they are in no particular order:

Early in 2046, a jittery android (Faye Wong) stands in front of a cyber-tree(?--a digital phonograph?) and, like a melancholy melody emerging from memory, Mr. Chow says, "In the old days, if someone had a secret they didn't want to share, they went up a mountain, found a tree, carved a hole in it, and whispered the secret into the hole. Then they covered it with mud. And leave the secret there forever."
Joaquin and Reese singing the hell out of "It Ain't Me, Babe." (Walk the Line)
Charles Hatton (Ben Kingsley in a bad white wig): "Today, you will travel back in time 65 million years to hunt the greatest predator the world has ever known!!! [he emphatically punches his hand to make his point]" (A Sound of Thunder)
The confrontation that follows the recital in Look at Me.
Kyle Cooper's breathtaking topographical opening credit sequence for The New World.
Anne Hathaway's face (and that single heart-stopping cutaway) during her phone conversation at the end of Brokeback Mountain.
Tony Kushner's speech for Golda Meir. (Munich)
Don Johnston's dinner chez Laura and Lolita. (Broken Flowers)
Tilda Swinton as the Angel Gabriel (via Ziggy Stardust) in Constantine.
Johnny desperately trying to tape a PBS special on meerkats for Ashley. (Junebug)
Kitten and her soldier slow dancing. (Breakfast on Pluto)
Kong and Anna atop the Empire State Building (and the aerial ballet that follows). (King Kong)
Batman's bumpy Gotham City debut. (Batman Begins)
Cronenberg having the brass balls to show les soixante-neuf in The History of Violence.
"It's for my dowry." (Me And You And Everyone We Know)
Kim Gordon in Last Days.
Truman Capote's "folks have thought they had me pegged" speech. (Capote)
Hogwarts' Winter Formal. (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)
Thomas's piano lessons with Miao. (The Beat That My Heart Skipped)
Vince Vaughn's speech in Wedding Crashers that culminates in "Maybe play a little game called 'Just for a second, just to see how it feels...'"
Noah Baumbach's use of School House Rock's "Figure 8" in The Squid & The Whale.
"We are both bourgeois!" ( A tout de suite)
Tom Cruise and family, emerging from the basement, finding an obliterated neighborhood. (War of the Worlds)
Sarah Jessica Parker getting loaded and letting loose in The Family Stone.
Miss Prissy's dance-off in Rize.
Sarah Silverman's version of THE JOKE in The Aristocrats.
Rachel McAdams. (Red Eye, The Family Stone, Wedding Crashers)

And since you twisted my arm, here's my actual list:

Munich
Los Angeles Plays Itself
2046
Look At Me
Broken Flowers
The Squid & the Whale
Last Days
Pride & Prejudice
Breakfast on Pluto
The New World

A productive Friday morning at work.

2006-01-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from an earlier IM conversation:

Me: Drudge just can't wait for Sharon to kick it. Sigh.

Morgan: I think someone should make a buddy comedy wherein he and Arafat are assigned to be roommates in Heaven/Hell/The Afterlife. You know, once he's dead.

Me: man, that sounds like some Benigni stizz.

Morgan: OH GOOD CALL! Then, in Act III, when they finally learn to like one another, they can come back to earth to broker true peace. They can be roommates in LIMBO!

Me: ha

Morgan: And the only way they can get assigned to singles in HEAVEN is to:
1. Become friends.
2. Broker Mideast peace.
Starring Danny Glover as Arafat.
And Willem Dafoe as Sharon.
It'll be based on THE ODD COUPLE.
Glover/Arafat is Matthaeu.
And Dafoe/Sharon is Lemon.
Sharon gets to limbo and Arafat has made a mess of the place and is all, "ARIEL! SO GOOD TO SEE YOU!"
And Sharon is having none of it.

Me: I might have to blog this.

That or maybe you made a really boring movie.

2006-01-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

"Fundamentally, Jarhead disobeys all the laws of American movies, and not just the political laws of American movies right now which demand on some level to tell us which side they're on. In Europe, there's a sense this film comes from the tradition of absurdist war movies about the futility of conflict. It has more in common with BECKETT, SARTRE and BANUEL [sic*] than it does with OLIVER STONE. In America, they assumed I was trying to make an Oliver Stone movie and that I'd failed."

--Sam Mendes. (Link via goldenfiddle.)

I'm really hoping that steaming pile of bullshit is one of those entirely fabricated entertainment stories being peddled by the British tabs (a la Boogie Nights 2: Rollergirl Returns!). I know Sam Mendes is a douche-- but that big of one? Is he really trying to equate "Welcome to the Suck" to Godot? Nice try but no. Krapp?** Maybe.

*Unless he's referring to an unknown absurdist/avant garde author named Banuel, I'm guessing he was name-dropping Buñuel and the writer botched it.
**Zing!

History repeating.

2006-01-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

Despite my status as one of exactly three dissenters (Hello, Timmy! Holla at ya, 'Trix!) in the glowing critical consensus regarding David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, I would never wish this box-art on it (or any other film for that matter):

Ouch.

I suppose now is a good time to mention that I watched AHOV a second time during my Christmas vacation and... still no dice. Over at the Village Voice Year End Free-for-all (too lazy to find the link right now), a critic argues that AHOV should be read like Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven-- as a film in quotation marks. But Haynes's film works purely in/as the genre that it deconstructs, whereas I don't think Cronenberg's does and that's why the film ultimately falls apart. Yes, there are some pulpy thrills and perfectly executed "fight sequences"; Yes, I appreciate the subtextual games and gallows humor. However, in making an amalgam of a genre picture and a Cronenbergian art film, a rhythm is never established, the performances go haywire, and the narrative crumbles. (Shane Black's fussy-but-fun Kiss Kiss Bang Bang works better as a pulp-thriller in quotation marks.)

Related:
Charles Taylor makes me laugh: "How do you take seriously a movie where William Hurt turns up looking like the world's biggest leprechaun?"

New York London Paris Munich / Everybody talk about... etc.

2006-01-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

I avoided compiling a list of my favorite music of 2005 because there's so damn much I didn't hear. Then Girish dropped a request in the comment section and I opted to compile a list of my favorite tracks of the year. (I guess that one could say it's a singles list, but, uh, many of them weren't proper singles and I heard very few of them on the radio.) Eschewing the sacred album format would have been unthinkable to me in college; thankfully the interweb/iTunes has loosened me up a little.

Here, in alphabetical order by artist, are fifty of my favorite tracks of the year. (I'm sure I'm missing dozens; these were the first fifty or so that popped into my head and were high on my iPod play count.)

!!! "Take Ecstasy With Me"
Tori Alamaze "Don't Cha"
Fiona Apple "Not About Love (Jon Brion Version)"
Fiona Apple "Tymps (Sick in the Head Song)"
Basement Jaxx "U Don't Know Me (JaxxHouz Klubmix)"
Beck "Ghettochip Malfunction (Hell Yes)"
Beck "Broken Drum"
Black Dice "Smiling Off (DFA Remix)" / "Smiling Off (Luomo Remix)"
Mary J. Blige and U2 "One"
Bloc Party "The Pioneers (M83 Remix)"
Boards of Canada "Chromakey Dreamcoat"
Kelly Clarkson "Since U Been Gone"
Common f/ John Mayer "Go"
Bob Dylan "Don't Think Twice It's Alright (Demo Version)" [No Direction Home]
Missy Elliott f/ Vybez Cartel and M.I.A. "Bad Man"
The Go!Team "Feelgood By Numbers"
Goldfrapp "Number 1"
Goldfrapp "Ooh La La"
Gorillaz "DARE" / "DARE (DFA Remix)"
Kronos Quartet & Asha Bhosle "Take Another Toke (Dum Maro Dum)"
Lady Sovereign "Random"
Bettye LaVette "How Am I Different?"
LCD Soundsystem "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House"
LCD Soundsystem "Great Release"
Aimee Mann "I Was Wishing I Could Clean Up for Christmas"
Miranda Lambert "Kerosene"
Jamie Lidell "Multiply"
Paul McCartney "Fine Line"
Brad Mehldau "Knives Out"
M.I.A. "Bucky Done Gone"
M.I.A. "10 Dollar"
Moby "Blue Paper"
New Order "Krafty"
New Pornographers "Sing Me Spanish Techno"
Nine Inch Nails "Only" / "Only (Richard X Remix)"
Sinead O'Connor f/ Sly & Robbie "War"
Michael Penn "Walter Reed"
Sia "Breathe Me (Four Tet Remix)"
Sigur Rós "Glósóli"
Nina Simone "Lilac Wine (The Album Leaf Remix)"
Gwen Stefani "Cool (Richard X Remix)"
Gwen Stefani "Hollaback Girl"
Sufjan Stevens "Chicago"
Sun Kil Moon "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes"
Kanye West "Hey Mama"
Kanye West f/ Consequence and Cam'ron "Gone"
The White Stripes "My Doorbell"
The White Stripes "Walking with a Ghost"
Lee Ann Womack "I May Hate Myself In the Morning"
Ying Yang Twins "Wait (The Whisper Song)"

Just the facts.

2005-12-30T07:22:00.001-08:00

I'm back.
Munich is now my favorite film of 2005. I'd also argue that it's Spielberg's best film since E.T. (Depending on your view of Spielberg that might mean a lot or nothing at all.) More on this topic when I have a second to gather my thoughts and write something cognizant.
It's the end of the year and I still have not seen a film by Ozu, Fassbinder, or Tarkovsky. I have seen Fantastic Four. Sigh.
Did I mention I loved nearly every shitty, grade-Z second of Fantastic Four? I mean, c'mon, how can you deny Jessica Alba making her grand entrance and being introduced as "This is Sue Storm, head of Genetic Research and Development"? So maybe loved is too strong a word... Strongly liked? I strongly liked nearly every shitty second of the movie? (Do you think less of me now that I've admitted this?)
I wish I could write with this clarity.
More later.

A quick one while (I'm) away.

2005-12-23T07:56:00.000-08:00

Hey there. In my pre-vacation haste, I neglected to mention that I was leaving the land of the Internet connections for some vacation and stuff. So a quick hello and goodbye from Ginny's eCafe & Antiques (?) and a giant call of BULLSHIT to Ken Turan who has seen fit to include seventeen films in his "top ten."

Happy Holidays, people. Back in a few.

Side note: I didn't copy/past the Ken Turan link properly on the first go-round. Instead this message from the previous guest of Ginny's eCafe & Antiques appeared:

thnx to every1 hu came 2 the gigmilly n rach my new guitar is sick cheers nick for the picshannah l says:
i guess u gt shaven haven not bein pervy
thnx to every1 hu came 2 the gigmilly n rach my new guitar is sick cheers nick for the picshannah l says:
llol

Anyone? Translation?

Fun and games.

2005-12-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

Aimee Mann just posted an iTunes-only e.p. of Christmas music. Like Wes Anderson, Charles Schulz, and Wong Kar-wai, Mann embraces the melancholy in the season and the songs are better for it. "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" is the unquestionable high point, with "The Christmas Song" a close second. (The chamberlain outro on "The Christmas Song" is a perfect touch: it flirts with the melody to "Auld Lang Syne" before fading out.)
The Family Stone is a surprisingly enjoyable addition to the Christmas movie canon. I'm not going to go so far as to compare it to Molière--one guess which critic made that comparison--but it's funny, unashamed of its sentimentality, and, above all, aware of the bittersweetness of watching Christmas movies late at night.
A year ago I attended a UCLA event where Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis gave a joint lecture. (Really it was more of a rambling chat, but that's neither here nor there). At some point during the evening, Amis brought up a drunken party where he, Hitchens, and Salman Rushdie dreamed up a new game. Woody Allen had just give an interview regarding the Soon-Yi scandal and had summed up the brouhaha by saying "The heart wants what it wants." Rushdie chortled at this and said something along the lines of "More like the dick wants what it wants." The three authors then spent the evening replacing the word "heart" with "dick" in famous sayings/titles/phrases. I was reminded of this parlor game yesterday as I was reading/thinking a lot about Match Point and what it reveals about the Woodster's sense of morality. That's a long way of saying: what better way to kill some time on a Friday than with the Heart/Dick game? I'll start, you follow in the comment section. The commenter with the best entry gets... uh, my undying admiration.
1. My Dick Belongs to Daddy. (Just for Mr. Allen.)
2. The Dick Is a Lonely Hunter.

Understatement of the year.

2005-12-15T15:36:00.000-08:00

Not to beat up on the old fucker, but...

"I felt I didn't do as good a job as I should have on The Curse of the Jade Scorpion."
--Woody Allen to the LA Weekly. (For the record, he doesn't understand why people hate Hollywood Ending: "I felt that I did a very good job on Hollywood Ending and for some reason that picture wasn't appreciated sufficiently; I felt it was a really wonderful comic idea and that I executed it just fine and it should have been very enjoyable." Should have being the key words, Woody.)

Don't believe the hype.

2005-12-15T10:11:00.000-08:00

What is it? Are A.O. Scott, Dave Kehr, and Roger Ebert (among others) so desperate for Woody Allen to make a film that's not an outright disaster that they're willing to trumpet the lugubrious and tin-eared Match Point as some sort of return to form? Look, the film is fine; there's a pleasant clip to the setup, it looks gorgeous, and certain scenes have a surprising grace. Hell, it's probably Woody's most solid achievement since Deconstructing Harry-- as if that really means much. But c'mon, guys. A return to form? Which form? Interiors? Match Point is fine in theory but a wreck in execution; it's all overheated acting and expository-heavy dialogue. (And Scarlett... It's OK, baby. I don't blame you. That was a thankless task handed to you.)
I think I'll leave it at that-- Woody's got some tricks up his sleeve and I don't want to reveal anything that would screw up your viewing of the film, but come back when you've seen it and tell me what you think and then we'll debate Match Point's merits.

Heeding the call.

2005-12-14T11:33:00.000-08:00

I hate to disappoint Anonymous, but, uh, the searing wit and coruscating erudition that has become a hallmark of this Interblog is just not compatible with 2005 Golden Globe Nom commentary. Or something.
But I'm not one to let my peoples down, so, Anonymous, this one's for you.

2005 Golden Globe Nominations, I ain't mad atcha. You're a notoriously fickle/silly/dumb award (insert tired Pia Zadora ref here) but this year's crop of nominees aren't so bad. Sure, you gave a bunch to The Producers (I haven't seen it, but it looks shrill and tiresome plus it stars Nathan Lane which is never a good sign), way too many to George Clooney's Murrow hagiography, two too many to Opie's Cinderella Man, and three prime spots to Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardner (bleh). Oh and you gave a nomination for Best Original Song to Christmas In Love's titular theme. Of course, the film was never seen in the U.S., doesn't have distribution here, and was released overseas in 2004, so go figure.
On the plus side, The Squid and the Whale got more nominations than Munich and King Kong, Alexandre Desplat earned a richly deserved nomination for his Syriana score, History of Violence was shown some love (despite my resistance to the film, anything that will allow David Cronenberg to make more movies is a good thing), Cillian Murphy's Breakfast on Pluto performance was recognized (as was Keira Knightley's excellent turn in Pride & Prejudice), and Rent was entirely shut out (Sorry, Josh). And I have zero qualms with the Brokeback/Walk the Line love--but that was entirely expected.
Thus ends this edition of The Whine Colored Sea By Request.

Film crit/quote/rant of the day.

2005-12-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

"Mickey Kaus (whose genes, presumably, don't want him to get a colonoscopy either) restates his aversion to cinema that might make his muff-loving sensibilities uncomfortable with the “wild hypothesis is that more people will go see a movie if it features an actor or actress they find attractive! If heterosexual men in heartland America don't flock to see Brokeback Mountain it's not because they're bigoted. It's because they're heterosexual.” Kaus goes on to claim that Brokeback Mountain “is a gay movie” based on the fact that, well, a gay guy took pleasure from it. First of all, there's no such thing as a gay movie, unless that movie has an apartment in Chelsea where it spends its time working out and sucking other movies' dicks.
Secondly, didn't a bunch of people flock to see that chick boxing movie? You know, the one that won Best Picture last year? Were they attracted to the two geriatrics or the chick who played the chick playing the dude in Boys Don't Cry, a film which we're guessing gave Mickey the same unpleasant feelings in his (twat-adoring) nether regions. In any event, Kaus is no more an expert on film than he is on anything else outside welfare reform and the 1993 Cutlass Cierra. The whole point of his post is to a) make himself feel better (and, it goes without saying, bolster his reputation as a guy who just loves vaginas) for having problems with a couple of homo cowboys, and b) tell the people who don't have those problems that they're the ones who are out of touch with the (pussy-pounding) general public. And maybe he's right. But he hasn't made the case. It's not enough to criticize a movie by saying it's based on ass-fucking. You have to say whether the ass is gently lubricated or roughly fissured."

--The Minor Fall, The Major Best Ever.