12.05.2004
big update
i decided to begin posting my more thought-out posts from my new blog, "the bad baroque", here... so if you scroll down, there's a good bit of new info for you...
lars von trier's dogville
well, i finally saw dogville, lars von trier's controversial allegory about power dynamics in rural 1930's america. and while, ultimately, i think it's miserably one-dimensional and needlessly long, i am (perhaps reluctantly) glad i made it to its conclusion. it at least got me thinking...
first, let's get the description out of the way-- dogville is the story of a mysterious, beautiful woman named grace (nicole kidman, interesting both as a choice and as an actress). grace is on the run from mobsters when she strolls into a small mountain town. there she meets tom (a totally miscast paul bettany), who convinces the town's population to protect her. to show her gratitude, kidman becomes determined to help the local people with their day to day business. the town is reluctant to let her at first, but upon acceptance they slowly begin to take advantage of her. this eventually triggers a downward spiral of increasingly hyperbolic abuses of power, all punctuated with allegorical musings about the nature of power itself.
trier's films, at least from breaking the waves to the present, create for me a bit of a crisis...
on the one hand, i thank god he's got the resources to do what he's doing. unlike your average arthouse director, trier has not only resisted the urge to make more mainstream fare, he's actually become more and more stylistically audacious. and more power to him. our theaters are better off populated with mentally-ill-impersonators and musicals with bjork in them. the sheer existence of dogville is refreshing at first. the film is quite radical in its rejection of realism. the set is jet black and map-like, punctuated only by props that serve either an indexical or allegorical purpose. in my opinion, anyone who can talk nicole kidman and lauren bacall into pretending to open doors on a set more threadbare than that of a high school play is worthy of some admiration.
but let's not beat around the bush. trier is also appallingly pedantic, often cheap with his provocations, and, in the end, an unforgivable misogynist. and with dogville, he's orchestrated a film which, by its conclusion, has had almost every man in it literally rape one of the most recognizable women in contemporary film (kidman). beyond his superficial radicality, trier proves time and time again that much of his creative energy is borne from a deep-rooted, garden variety madonna/whore complex. carrie rickey of the philadelphia inquirer puts it rather well:
Of a piece with the director's Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark, his new film also sees a guileless woman as the trembling object of fear and desire. Von Trier is a New Age Victorian, one who gets a sexual thrill from seeing a woman defiled try to maintain her fortitude. To watch this film is to be a sadist's accomplice.
indeed, trier's female protagonists always seem to fall short of the joan-of-arc-like determination he tries to bestow upon them. his recent labeling of the three films proceeding dogville (breaking the waves, the idiots, dancer in the dark) as his "golden heart" trilogy is particularly revealing in its faux-pious yuckiness. with grace, however, the violations she must endure are more overt and graphically sexual than those dealt to the "golden heart" ladies. trier's point of reference moves from saint joan to sade's justine. by film's end, kidman has become a sex slave with a metal clamp around her neck (for real), and it's getting pretty hard to not to notice that rod in his pants.
dogville is allegorical in the worst way possible. trier's pervasive sense of entitlement keeps its metaphors strict and rigid. all of the questions raised by it are polluted with a plodding, alpha-male assurance that he's already answered them for you. the only thing that seems to escape this logic is the unchecked, sadistic eroticism i've described above.
the attempt to compensate for this randiness creates an even bigger mess. after two solid hours of dull benevolence, grace inexplicably chooses the dark side, and dogville becomes a revenge fantasy. trier tries to convince us that he is not at all a "new age victorian," but has been merely a misanthrope all along. a five minute sermon about the arrogance of pity becomes the proto-nietzschean apology for grace's unlikely, old-school idealism. it's not very convincing.
as an investigation of power, the film never abandons the position of power long enough to get anywhere interesting. trier's ideas about xenophobia and america are so belligerent that one begins to mourn the subtleties he misses along the way. for example, the town of dogville contains two oddly de-racialized women of color. for a film set in a xenophobic town in middle america during the dust bowl, the way they are pushed into the periphery of the story is both ignorant and irresponsible (sidenote: for a far superior film about race and gender in rural america, try elia kazan's baby doll). trier is less concerned with the schematics of power than he is with the volume of his own thoughts regarding them. his controversial, anti-american photo-montage during the credits is more of the same... it replaces any real investigative interest in the working poor of our country with cheap cultural elitism. i gather he intended something a bit more complex than this, but he hasn't done the legwork to back it up. the last thing this film's largely progressive audience needs is more ghetto stereotypes and ironic music, whatever the cloudy agenda behind them might be.
if trier could focus his wild fearlessness on something other than style, he might arrive at something vulnerable and magical. unfortunately, this shit ain't it.
first, let's get the description out of the way-- dogville is the story of a mysterious, beautiful woman named grace (nicole kidman, interesting both as a choice and as an actress). grace is on the run from mobsters when she strolls into a small mountain town. there she meets tom (a totally miscast paul bettany), who convinces the town's population to protect her. to show her gratitude, kidman becomes determined to help the local people with their day to day business. the town is reluctant to let her at first, but upon acceptance they slowly begin to take advantage of her. this eventually triggers a downward spiral of increasingly hyperbolic abuses of power, all punctuated with allegorical musings about the nature of power itself.
trier's films, at least from breaking the waves to the present, create for me a bit of a crisis...
on the one hand, i thank god he's got the resources to do what he's doing. unlike your average arthouse director, trier has not only resisted the urge to make more mainstream fare, he's actually become more and more stylistically audacious. and more power to him. our theaters are better off populated with mentally-ill-impersonators and musicals with bjork in them. the sheer existence of dogville is refreshing at first. the film is quite radical in its rejection of realism. the set is jet black and map-like, punctuated only by props that serve either an indexical or allegorical purpose. in my opinion, anyone who can talk nicole kidman and lauren bacall into pretending to open doors on a set more threadbare than that of a high school play is worthy of some admiration.
but let's not beat around the bush. trier is also appallingly pedantic, often cheap with his provocations, and, in the end, an unforgivable misogynist. and with dogville, he's orchestrated a film which, by its conclusion, has had almost every man in it literally rape one of the most recognizable women in contemporary film (kidman). beyond his superficial radicality, trier proves time and time again that much of his creative energy is borne from a deep-rooted, garden variety madonna/whore complex. carrie rickey of the philadelphia inquirer puts it rather well:
Of a piece with the director's Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark, his new film also sees a guileless woman as the trembling object of fear and desire. Von Trier is a New Age Victorian, one who gets a sexual thrill from seeing a woman defiled try to maintain her fortitude. To watch this film is to be a sadist's accomplice.
indeed, trier's female protagonists always seem to fall short of the joan-of-arc-like determination he tries to bestow upon them. his recent labeling of the three films proceeding dogville (breaking the waves, the idiots, dancer in the dark) as his "golden heart" trilogy is particularly revealing in its faux-pious yuckiness. with grace, however, the violations she must endure are more overt and graphically sexual than those dealt to the "golden heart" ladies. trier's point of reference moves from saint joan to sade's justine. by film's end, kidman has become a sex slave with a metal clamp around her neck (for real), and it's getting pretty hard to not to notice that rod in his pants.
dogville is allegorical in the worst way possible. trier's pervasive sense of entitlement keeps its metaphors strict and rigid. all of the questions raised by it are polluted with a plodding, alpha-male assurance that he's already answered them for you. the only thing that seems to escape this logic is the unchecked, sadistic eroticism i've described above.
the attempt to compensate for this randiness creates an even bigger mess. after two solid hours of dull benevolence, grace inexplicably chooses the dark side, and dogville becomes a revenge fantasy. trier tries to convince us that he is not at all a "new age victorian," but has been merely a misanthrope all along. a five minute sermon about the arrogance of pity becomes the proto-nietzschean apology for grace's unlikely, old-school idealism. it's not very convincing.
as an investigation of power, the film never abandons the position of power long enough to get anywhere interesting. trier's ideas about xenophobia and america are so belligerent that one begins to mourn the subtleties he misses along the way. for example, the town of dogville contains two oddly de-racialized women of color. for a film set in a xenophobic town in middle america during the dust bowl, the way they are pushed into the periphery of the story is both ignorant and irresponsible (sidenote: for a far superior film about race and gender in rural america, try elia kazan's baby doll). trier is less concerned with the schematics of power than he is with the volume of his own thoughts regarding them. his controversial, anti-american photo-montage during the credits is more of the same... it replaces any real investigative interest in the working poor of our country with cheap cultural elitism. i gather he intended something a bit more complex than this, but he hasn't done the legwork to back it up. the last thing this film's largely progressive audience needs is more ghetto stereotypes and ironic music, whatever the cloudy agenda behind them might be.
if trier could focus his wild fearlessness on something other than style, he might arrive at something vulnerable and magical. unfortunately, this shit ain't it.
lee kang sheng
reading an interview with tsai ming liang today (with rebels of the neon god sitting here in its netflix package, waiting to be watched), i was reminded of how much i love lee kang sheng, the star of most of his films.
lee kang sheng's enigmatic blankness is too fickle and peculiar to merit comparisions to the bold singularity of a clint eastwood or an alain delon. his non-presence is not a directorial command to "fill in the blanks" with one's own content (as in the famous "perfect blankness" of greta garbo). he is, in all of the films i've seen him in, a rather peculiar fellow who gives embodiment to a wholly interior monologue/crisis of great distinction. kang sheng's behavior is often disingenous in its blankness; it is the mark of a masterful faker.
in eastwood, you get icy determination. the sublime inhumanity of the no-named-gun-for-hire is the result of his clarity and conviction. he seduces you with his superhuman purity. there is no code to crack in the clintonian cowboy. his cards are on the table.
lee kang sheng, by comparison, arrives at awkward sublimity through repression. he is cool and understated, and yet somehow amounts to a dormant powder keg. he is the perfect protagonist for ming-liang and his erotic meditations on privacy (see, for example, the near-malevolent anonymity of sex in the river). his body eminates a strange longing, but its shape never takes complete form.
the "kang sheng protagonist" is whole and multi-dimensional, yet explicitly unavailable. the respect he affords to his characters propels them beyond mere trickery. it is not binary, misplaced desire that makes him alluring. his secrets are too infinite (and too interesting) to point to any great unveiling. kang sheng cannot be assimilated. his charisma, for me, sits within one of those great windows of the world from which i feel wholly seperate, but which i witness as if it were a miracle.
lee kang sheng's enigmatic blankness is too fickle and peculiar to merit comparisions to the bold singularity of a clint eastwood or an alain delon. his non-presence is not a directorial command to "fill in the blanks" with one's own content (as in the famous "perfect blankness" of greta garbo). he is, in all of the films i've seen him in, a rather peculiar fellow who gives embodiment to a wholly interior monologue/crisis of great distinction. kang sheng's behavior is often disingenous in its blankness; it is the mark of a masterful faker.
in eastwood, you get icy determination. the sublime inhumanity of the no-named-gun-for-hire is the result of his clarity and conviction. he seduces you with his superhuman purity. there is no code to crack in the clintonian cowboy. his cards are on the table.
lee kang sheng, by comparison, arrives at awkward sublimity through repression. he is cool and understated, and yet somehow amounts to a dormant powder keg. he is the perfect protagonist for ming-liang and his erotic meditations on privacy (see, for example, the near-malevolent anonymity of sex in the river). his body eminates a strange longing, but its shape never takes complete form.
the "kang sheng protagonist" is whole and multi-dimensional, yet explicitly unavailable. the respect he affords to his characters propels them beyond mere trickery. it is not binary, misplaced desire that makes him alluring. his secrets are too infinite (and too interesting) to point to any great unveiling. kang sheng cannot be assimilated. his charisma, for me, sits within one of those great windows of the world from which i feel wholly seperate, but which i witness as if it were a miracle.
track ten from frog eyes' the folded palm...
... is the three minute dose of mayhem that has been missing in my life for some time now. the song, called "new tappy is heard and beheld," is emblematic of why this album is totally great, and why this band gives me hope for howl-at-the-moon rock music as we know it. their earlier record, the golden river, was a big surprise for me at the beginning of the year (as noted on my other blog *scroll about three posts down*). the new record is similar, yet not "more of the same"-- the keyboards play a stronger role... the mix is more careful and experimental... there is great usage of echoing effects and occasional drum distortion. but essentially, it is still all about vocals that teeter on the edge of an epileptic fit and the band that gleefully keeps up with them. nowhere is that more present than on track ten, where the flamboyant bombast of an ian svenonius or a jon spencer is stripped to the bone of its irony, only to stand buck naked and blow out the candles at the nick cave birthday party. this song amounts to neither artful entropy nor nostalgia for a rockier era. it is sheer abandon with a beat to it-- viscerally immediate and almost illegible. it is frothing at the mouth-- spewing forth strange utterances ("little bird:fuck your bird:fucking bird") like an obscene phone call one might receive from antonin artaud or kathy acker. and somehow, its mania manages to dissolve into a chorus; what should be the "guitar meltdown" moment of the song rises upward instead. it ends on a pretty note, with a beach boys style sing-a-long carrying its flayed corpse off to some strange heaven.
music like this makes me want to rip my clothes off and light myself on fire. i wish i felt that way more often.
music like this makes me want to rip my clothes off and light myself on fire. i wish i felt that way more often.
new school dawn of the dead, with a sad sigh...
dear dawn of the dead remake,
i really wanted to like you. i admired you for casting sarah polley in the title role. i was even prepared to put aside my indifference toward ving rhames, thinking his on-screen persona was fitting enough to fill the shoes of the great ken foree. and i even loved your first fifteen minutes (like everyone said i would)-- where you got right into it with good pacing and unbridled mayhem and a stylish usage of johnny cash.
but from there on out, you are hot fucking garbage. pure and simple.
here i must confess that the original dawn of the dead is one of my all time, stranded-on-a-desert-island, favorite FAVORITE movies. like, top-five-ever level favorites. but no, i didn't expect the uncanny humor of the original-- in which a shopping mall becomes a claustrophobic anti-paradise for the folks at the end of the world. i wasn't expecting the many nuanced, brilliant surprises in its handling of race, gender and social formation. i wasn't expecting the same visceral celebration/condemnation of lawlessness and anarcho-freedom. that was then, this is now. and even if the new version "went there," it'd probably bludgeon us with a bunch of empty rhetoric. let the classic stay the classic. but what i did want from the remake, frankly, was a decent horror movie. and you fucked it up.
some things i never want to see in a horror movie ever again:
1. blair witch-style camcorder garnishing. the shit ain't novel anymore, and it sure as hell isn't scary.
2. wisecracking character actors, unless they're really funny. if you're not joss whedon, do your fucking homework before you whip out your lame ass robert downey jr. impersonation already. sheesh.
3. "fat people are scary" chic
4. "wb" teen-series actors with handlebar moustaches that are supposed to be "white trash." and while we're at it:
5. "white trash" stereotypes... look, i know unimaginative horror buffs need a scapegoat and contemporary social mores have effectively (thankfully) reclaimed the majority of their beloved, xenophobic targets-- but just because someone is "white" doesn't mean garden variety hateful nonsense gets off the hook. one might say here, "but dan, it's just a horror movie!"... yes. but this is a remake of a romero horror movie. and that guy put a lot of thought and effort into dismantling this kind of bullshit. so, whereas, i'm fine with not feeling the need to follow in his footsteps with "identity politics," the least you can do is spare us the trailer-trash yokels and thug-baby-daddy-gone-straight nonsense.
6. evil babies that aren't meant to be hilarious.
7. nu-metal (teach me how to type "ooom-lats" (sp???) and i'll be yer best friend), and ironic usage of acoustic music.
8. ambiguity between horror/comedy, unless you've got the smarts to back it up. stupid horror movies should know the difference between texas chainsaw 1 & 2.
9. noble animals of all varieties. dawn of the dead is not lassie.
10. if your cast is largely non-famous, don't hire actors that are kinda-sorta famous. we'll spend half the movie distracting ourselves with epiphanies like "hey! that's max headroom!!!"
ho hum... i was so excited too... ed, you are 100% right. sigh...
i really wanted to like you. i admired you for casting sarah polley in the title role. i was even prepared to put aside my indifference toward ving rhames, thinking his on-screen persona was fitting enough to fill the shoes of the great ken foree. and i even loved your first fifteen minutes (like everyone said i would)-- where you got right into it with good pacing and unbridled mayhem and a stylish usage of johnny cash.
but from there on out, you are hot fucking garbage. pure and simple.
here i must confess that the original dawn of the dead is one of my all time, stranded-on-a-desert-island, favorite FAVORITE movies. like, top-five-ever level favorites. but no, i didn't expect the uncanny humor of the original-- in which a shopping mall becomes a claustrophobic anti-paradise for the folks at the end of the world. i wasn't expecting the many nuanced, brilliant surprises in its handling of race, gender and social formation. i wasn't expecting the same visceral celebration/condemnation of lawlessness and anarcho-freedom. that was then, this is now. and even if the new version "went there," it'd probably bludgeon us with a bunch of empty rhetoric. let the classic stay the classic. but what i did want from the remake, frankly, was a decent horror movie. and you fucked it up.
some things i never want to see in a horror movie ever again:
1. blair witch-style camcorder garnishing. the shit ain't novel anymore, and it sure as hell isn't scary.
2. wisecracking character actors, unless they're really funny. if you're not joss whedon, do your fucking homework before you whip out your lame ass robert downey jr. impersonation already. sheesh.
3. "fat people are scary" chic
4. "wb" teen-series actors with handlebar moustaches that are supposed to be "white trash." and while we're at it:
5. "white trash" stereotypes... look, i know unimaginative horror buffs need a scapegoat and contemporary social mores have effectively (thankfully) reclaimed the majority of their beloved, xenophobic targets-- but just because someone is "white" doesn't mean garden variety hateful nonsense gets off the hook. one might say here, "but dan, it's just a horror movie!"... yes. but this is a remake of a romero horror movie. and that guy put a lot of thought and effort into dismantling this kind of bullshit. so, whereas, i'm fine with not feeling the need to follow in his footsteps with "identity politics," the least you can do is spare us the trailer-trash yokels and thug-baby-daddy-gone-straight nonsense.
6. evil babies that aren't meant to be hilarious.
7. nu-metal (teach me how to type "ooom-lats" (sp???) and i'll be yer best friend), and ironic usage of acoustic music.
8. ambiguity between horror/comedy, unless you've got the smarts to back it up. stupid horror movies should know the difference between texas chainsaw 1 & 2.
9. noble animals of all varieties. dawn of the dead is not lassie.
10. if your cast is largely non-famous, don't hire actors that are kinda-sorta famous. we'll spend half the movie distracting ourselves with epiphanies like "hey! that's max headroom!!!"
ho hum... i was so excited too... ed, you are 100% right. sigh...
r.i.p. o.d.b.
ol' dirty bastard was not merely a clown, but at his best, reached the operatic heights of a wailing little richard, a strutting iggy pop or a marching freddy mercury. i first heard ol' dirty in the wonder-bread, ultra-caucasian environment of art school, 1995. i greeted him with enthusiasm, being eager to plant new words like "dada" and "nihilism" into any awkward contemporary context i could fit them. and on that level, dirty was a boundless treasure of absurdities and accidents. my neurotic white distance from "the world he came from" (on display as much now as it was then) admittedly took the initial guise of patronizing, half-amused laughter-- quieting, inevitably, with the guilty awareness of my own snobbery. but eventually, with my good friend jack playing return to the 36 chambers again and again in the painting studio (with all the accompanying "cred" of jack's far deeper investment in hip hop), i began to think of the record as less of a novelty. i began, essentially, to like it on my own terms. and the early ODB-- of that record, of the first wu tang album, and occasionally thereafter (i'm less impressed than most by ni**a please, but it does have a few goodies...)
was raw and stylish and surprising. and it's that sense of surprise that elevates him above novelty for me. the feeling that anything could happen on his records (or in his life). legibility and illegibility were equally exciting; the accidents as stylish as the on-point deliveries. and he was funny as hell, too. i remember reading an interview in mean magazine in which he was asked, following declaring himself "big baby jesus," what his latest name for himself was...
"nuts," he replied.
...and wasn't ODB a great unraveler of our cultural fabric??? i'll miss the apprehension i've felt following mention of his name; the thrill of guessing his latest adventure, etc. (not that they're all light-hearted and entertaining, but if you're gonna be a voyeur, he had the right stuff). too bad the last of such episodes led me to a record of his death. the final surprise of a great prankster... and a hell of a rapper. a man borne of the same crazed, often accidental spirit that reminds us that when things go wrong they go right, that george w. bush has something taped to his back, that tara reid's boob is in the house (dude, find the link yourself), and who the fuck is shawn colvin anyway????
was raw and stylish and surprising. and it's that sense of surprise that elevates him above novelty for me. the feeling that anything could happen on his records (or in his life). legibility and illegibility were equally exciting; the accidents as stylish as the on-point deliveries. and he was funny as hell, too. i remember reading an interview in mean magazine in which he was asked, following declaring himself "big baby jesus," what his latest name for himself was...
"nuts," he replied.
...and wasn't ODB a great unraveler of our cultural fabric??? i'll miss the apprehension i've felt following mention of his name; the thrill of guessing his latest adventure, etc. (not that they're all light-hearted and entertaining, but if you're gonna be a voyeur, he had the right stuff). too bad the last of such episodes led me to a record of his death. the final surprise of a great prankster... and a hell of a rapper. a man borne of the same crazed, often accidental spirit that reminds us that when things go wrong they go right, that george w. bush has something taped to his back, that tara reid's boob is in the house (dude, find the link yourself), and who the fuck is shawn colvin anyway????
atypical adulthood
i was reading at work today and i came across a brief description of a "singles bar." when i think of a singles bar, the first image that pops into my head is fred mac murray and shirley mac laine in that shady chinese restaurant from the apartment. what a singles bar might be in 2004 (as opposed to 1960) totally escapes me. but it's the sort of thing i feel a kind of distant expectation to know something about, as "an adult."
sometime last year, i started to notice that the world thought of me as an adult. 27. you're an adult. but, without older siblings or boho parents, i found no appropriate model of adulthood before me (no complaints there, by the way)... just a vague feeling that it was finally upon me, reinforced by slight differences in cultural expectation, and so on.
currently, i find myself in a kind of blank space regarding adulthood. on the one hand, i lack an interest in children, property or aggressive financial advancement. i won't be emulating ward cleaver or gordon gecko or bill gates anytime soon. on the other hand, i think i can safely say my interests/lifestyle doesn't lend itself to a state of suspended adolescence (livejournal excluded). i don't long to transform into frodo baggins or darby crash or charles bukowski. adulthood is an empty signifier most of the time, and that's fine.
but then i can't imagine a "singles bar," and i'm reminded of the particularity of my life's path. a "norm" emerges without anything to enforce it, or even promote it. and it always starts with signifiers like that-- singles bar: a place where singles go to be "single" (a prequel to marriage, divorce?), guest room: a vacancy in one's house where friends go to be "guests." these are the adult things i inevitably collide with. and there is no friction in the collision. i collide with indifference, but i collide nonetheless...
adulthood emerges for me as something with a content when i contemplate "the singles bar." i feel cut off, ideologically. a feeling of alienation, but free of melancholia or reactionary entitlement. emotionless alienation; feeling alienated from that which was always "alien" in the first place.
sometime last year, i started to notice that the world thought of me as an adult. 27. you're an adult. but, without older siblings or boho parents, i found no appropriate model of adulthood before me (no complaints there, by the way)... just a vague feeling that it was finally upon me, reinforced by slight differences in cultural expectation, and so on.
currently, i find myself in a kind of blank space regarding adulthood. on the one hand, i lack an interest in children, property or aggressive financial advancement. i won't be emulating ward cleaver or gordon gecko or bill gates anytime soon. on the other hand, i think i can safely say my interests/lifestyle doesn't lend itself to a state of suspended adolescence (livejournal excluded). i don't long to transform into frodo baggins or darby crash or charles bukowski. adulthood is an empty signifier most of the time, and that's fine.
but then i can't imagine a "singles bar," and i'm reminded of the particularity of my life's path. a "norm" emerges without anything to enforce it, or even promote it. and it always starts with signifiers like that-- singles bar: a place where singles go to be "single" (a prequel to marriage, divorce?), guest room: a vacancy in one's house where friends go to be "guests." these are the adult things i inevitably collide with. and there is no friction in the collision. i collide with indifference, but i collide nonetheless...
adulthood emerges for me as something with a content when i contemplate "the singles bar." i feel cut off, ideologically. a feeling of alienation, but free of melancholia or reactionary entitlement. emotionless alienation; feeling alienated from that which was always "alien" in the first place.
arrested development
i am increasingly obsessed with the tv show arrested development. it has become my most beloved distraction from apocalyptic thoughts in the wake of the election.
i think a lot of people are turned off by the show because it is so complex. like seinfeld (but better, i would argue), it's the sort of thing where if you miss the beginning, you won't get all the jokes at the end. so here's a little summary: development follows the layered and absurdly complex story of the bluth family/corportation, a motley crew of sinfully rich cultural misfits. the father, played with great subtlety by jeffery tambor (one of those "character actors" you recognize from god-knows-where), is jailed for an immense variety of corporate wrongdoings, building up to this season's biggie-- illegal real estate deals with saddam hussein. the majority of the show's content is dedicated to managing the company in his absence. this job falls, in large part, to his only (relatively) normal child, michael bluth (played by jason bateman-- who i've had a soft spot for since the teen wolf too era)-- an uptight widower stubbornly determined to provide his well-meaning son, george michael bluth (called "george michael" with wes-anderson-esque poker face), with "a family." the "family" in question includes: michael's racist, conniving and downright villianous mother, his superficially "activist" twin sister (and her possibly-gay husband), his hipster doofus older brother, and my favorite character-- younger brother buster.
buster, with his anxiety attacks and icky oedipal conflicts, best embodies all that is great about the show. the very concept of him as a character-- a dumpy, thirtysomething homebody with little interest in much beyond pleasing/antagonizing his mother-- is funny in the abstract. he is the sort of person you encounter from time to time in reality and feel a kind of fatal pity for... he is totally psychologically fucked; life for this guy is one rough ride, and one too ridden with cowardice to even merit outright sympathy. fortunately for us, the result is hilarious. tony hale plays "buster" with complete dedication-- his posture, his grimace & his bumbling manner are all activated the minute he hits the screen. he doesn't overdo it either, as david cross does occasionally as confused actor/husband dr. tobias funke. he lets silence arrange for laughter, and lets the spiraling plot do its thing. it is through buster that we see the many ways that the show is great: the way it turns abject tragedy into biting comedy, the way predicament out-performs "gag," the way it seductively orders you to pay attention (often the best jokes are the peripheral ones... character reactions, quick edits, strange musical clues) and, simply, the dumb brilliance of labeling this specimen "buster."
every contributor to arrested development seems to be playing. and doing so with a sense of abandon straight out of the marx brothers. the script-writers are as intuitve as the actors. the faux-documentary camera work seems eager and unaware of what's to come, mirroring adoring spectator-nerds such as myself. each plot development triggers an infinite number of shenanigans (not all brilliant, but so rapid fire in their delivery that you are continually amused), and each contributor to the whacked-out-whole goes scrambling off to attend to them. it's a wonderful juggling act.
(and i am a dork with too much free time on his day off)
i think a lot of people are turned off by the show because it is so complex. like seinfeld (but better, i would argue), it's the sort of thing where if you miss the beginning, you won't get all the jokes at the end. so here's a little summary: development follows the layered and absurdly complex story of the bluth family/corportation, a motley crew of sinfully rich cultural misfits. the father, played with great subtlety by jeffery tambor (one of those "character actors" you recognize from god-knows-where), is jailed for an immense variety of corporate wrongdoings, building up to this season's biggie-- illegal real estate deals with saddam hussein. the majority of the show's content is dedicated to managing the company in his absence. this job falls, in large part, to his only (relatively) normal child, michael bluth (played by jason bateman-- who i've had a soft spot for since the teen wolf too era)-- an uptight widower stubbornly determined to provide his well-meaning son, george michael bluth (called "george michael" with wes-anderson-esque poker face), with "a family." the "family" in question includes: michael's racist, conniving and downright villianous mother, his superficially "activist" twin sister (and her possibly-gay husband), his hipster doofus older brother, and my favorite character-- younger brother buster.
buster, with his anxiety attacks and icky oedipal conflicts, best embodies all that is great about the show. the very concept of him as a character-- a dumpy, thirtysomething homebody with little interest in much beyond pleasing/antagonizing his mother-- is funny in the abstract. he is the sort of person you encounter from time to time in reality and feel a kind of fatal pity for... he is totally psychologically fucked; life for this guy is one rough ride, and one too ridden with cowardice to even merit outright sympathy. fortunately for us, the result is hilarious. tony hale plays "buster" with complete dedication-- his posture, his grimace & his bumbling manner are all activated the minute he hits the screen. he doesn't overdo it either, as david cross does occasionally as confused actor/husband dr. tobias funke. he lets silence arrange for laughter, and lets the spiraling plot do its thing. it is through buster that we see the many ways that the show is great: the way it turns abject tragedy into biting comedy, the way predicament out-performs "gag," the way it seductively orders you to pay attention (often the best jokes are the peripheral ones... character reactions, quick edits, strange musical clues) and, simply, the dumb brilliance of labeling this specimen "buster."
every contributor to arrested development seems to be playing. and doing so with a sense of abandon straight out of the marx brothers. the script-writers are as intuitve as the actors. the faux-documentary camera work seems eager and unaware of what's to come, mirroring adoring spectator-nerds such as myself. each plot development triggers an infinite number of shenanigans (not all brilliant, but so rapid fire in their delivery that you are continually amused), and each contributor to the whacked-out-whole goes scrambling off to attend to them. it's a wonderful juggling act.
(and i am a dork with too much free time on his day off)
top ten relatively mundane things i like
i thought this up while bored at work...
10. my favorite crappy snack food is andy capp's hot fries, the only junk food product i can think of with a target audience of disgruntled old men. i find it amusingly inaccurate to make the most lifeless, unfunny cartoon character in history the spokesperson for the spiciest corner-store snack food in history. i also really like the way andy capp is drawn.
9. bob dylan's moustache
...sort of crystallizes the whole "i'm old and i don't give a fuck" look he's been rockin' lately. and he's pulling it off. more and more, i'm a fan of playing the cards fate has thrown you. if father time has concluded that you are not to be dashing and distinguished in your twilight years, the pencil thin stache and ten gallon hat is a worthy plan b.
8. women's knee length skirts, preferably of the tweed variety, remain my most sure-fire (dare i say pavlovian?) turn on. i hope they never go out of style...
7. i can't help it. i'm beginning to feel sorry for downtrodden ben affleck. while neither particularly talented or charismatic, i still contend that ben is less nauseating than your average a-list lemon. he doesn't stab in the dark at bukowski-esque, "beautiful loser" horseshit like brad pitt, he isn't unanimously applauded for unforgiveable overacting like tom cruise, he didn't ruin solaris, like george clooney's smug ass-- he just dated j lo, and had his picture taken one too many times, and made some crappy movies. in addition, he did try and fail to get howard zinn's a people's history of the united states of america made into a tv mini-series (for rupert murdoch, no less). and though it sort of makes me want to barf, he may prove to be the left's bar-lowering answer to "the governator." fine. fight fire with fire.
6. arizona green tea is the only remotely light beverage available in my neighborhood. not too much sugar, not thickened up with fake lemon or whatever-- just good tea. plus they have those nice green bottles.
5. the way the train from "thomas and friends" is drawn. vintage, in a way that's not annoying...
4. most people i know hate this, but i love used books with scribbling from previous owners. i find it to be a seductive distraction. i get caught up in how that person approached the book, and why that person abandoned the book, and how that person felt about the book. it's also refreshing to see that past generations have had the same problems you've had, like when a written-in "?" reassures me that i'm not the only one shrugging when roland barthes uses words like "pleonasm".
3. moammar qadhafi's "look"
kim jong il might steal a bit of his thunder stylistically (especially now that we're all buddies again), but that doesn't mean our favorite reagan-era adversary doesn't know how to work it in the wardrobe department. sort of a cross between james brown and che guevara, with a little host-of-iron-chef thrown in for good measure.
2. watching pigeons walk. watch them walk long enough and it's tough to imagine them ever flying.
1. the part of the rolling stones song "angie" where mick sings: "ain't it good to be alive"...
10. my favorite crappy snack food is andy capp's hot fries, the only junk food product i can think of with a target audience of disgruntled old men. i find it amusingly inaccurate to make the most lifeless, unfunny cartoon character in history the spokesperson for the spiciest corner-store snack food in history. i also really like the way andy capp is drawn.
9. bob dylan's moustache
...sort of crystallizes the whole "i'm old and i don't give a fuck" look he's been rockin' lately. and he's pulling it off. more and more, i'm a fan of playing the cards fate has thrown you. if father time has concluded that you are not to be dashing and distinguished in your twilight years, the pencil thin stache and ten gallon hat is a worthy plan b.
8. women's knee length skirts, preferably of the tweed variety, remain my most sure-fire (dare i say pavlovian?) turn on. i hope they never go out of style...
7. i can't help it. i'm beginning to feel sorry for downtrodden ben affleck. while neither particularly talented or charismatic, i still contend that ben is less nauseating than your average a-list lemon. he doesn't stab in the dark at bukowski-esque, "beautiful loser" horseshit like brad pitt, he isn't unanimously applauded for unforgiveable overacting like tom cruise, he didn't ruin solaris, like george clooney's smug ass-- he just dated j lo, and had his picture taken one too many times, and made some crappy movies. in addition, he did try and fail to get howard zinn's a people's history of the united states of america made into a tv mini-series (for rupert murdoch, no less). and though it sort of makes me want to barf, he may prove to be the left's bar-lowering answer to "the governator." fine. fight fire with fire.
6. arizona green tea is the only remotely light beverage available in my neighborhood. not too much sugar, not thickened up with fake lemon or whatever-- just good tea. plus they have those nice green bottles.
5. the way the train from "thomas and friends" is drawn. vintage, in a way that's not annoying...
4. most people i know hate this, but i love used books with scribbling from previous owners. i find it to be a seductive distraction. i get caught up in how that person approached the book, and why that person abandoned the book, and how that person felt about the book. it's also refreshing to see that past generations have had the same problems you've had, like when a written-in "?" reassures me that i'm not the only one shrugging when roland barthes uses words like "pleonasm".
3. moammar qadhafi's "look"
kim jong il might steal a bit of his thunder stylistically (especially now that we're all buddies again), but that doesn't mean our favorite reagan-era adversary doesn't know how to work it in the wardrobe department. sort of a cross between james brown and che guevara, with a little host-of-iron-chef thrown in for good measure.
2. watching pigeons walk. watch them walk long enough and it's tough to imagine them ever flying.
1. the part of the rolling stones song "angie" where mick sings: "ain't it good to be alive"...
panoramic pennsylvania (from the sublime to the ridiculous)
i've had an exciting day.
me and my dad have been chit-chatting about taking a day trip to the hawk mountain bird sanctuary for about a year and a half, and today we finally did it. the sanctuary is located about 20 miles south of pottsville, PA-- a town which inevitably has seen a great deal of my $$$, being the home of the yuengling lager brewery. all of this is tucked away in lush, under-appreciated rural PA. the PA known as "pennsyl-tucky," following that old george carlin bit ("ever been to PA?? you've got pittsburgh on one end, philly on the other, and kentucky in between")-- resulting in a somewhat bad reputation for an area so scenic and charming. today i learned that it is most certainly autumn, despite what the tree-less urban sprawl i inhabit daily might suggest. once "upstate," mother nature goes psychedelic. sharp reds, yellows, greens and browns all around-- enough to trigger my inner hippie...
getting to the sanctuary was a pleasure in and of itself, due not only to fall weather but also to traces of the pennsylvania dutch. once we left the highway, it was all storybook farmhouses with hex signs on the sides of them (like the one above). bright red silos and grungy cows. to a city slicker like me, it looked more like a giant model-train-set than "reality." even right-wing propaganda is interesting out there: a painfully handmade wooden billboard in the middle of a farm field-- reading only "bush", a wood-burned sign nailed to a tree on the side of a road reading "teresa is not fit for the white house." and before you begin to panic, yes, "kerry/edwards" made an occasioanl appreance too, more often than i might have guessed.
once at the mountain, we went hiking. didn't really see too many hawks (two or three in the distance, through binoculars), but it was fun anyway. lots of great lookout spots, and you couldn't ask for a more picturesque environment, season, etc.. i love panoramic views, cliche as it may sound. being totally engulfed. the suspended, physical state of apprehension. i need to get out of the fucking city more often. we poked around for 2 hours or so and then had a huge meal (i had spicy catfish, mashed potatoes and corn; we split a sensational apple cobbler) in a diner with hank williams (and co.) on the stereo in the background.
after lunch, things took a strange and fortunate turn. my dad's boss told him to stop into cabela's, a hunter's outfitting retail store. he claimed it was "not to be missed," and he was correct. cabela's was las vegas, home depot and natural history museum rolled into one. the only thing i can think to compare it to-- even remotely-- is south dakota's famous wall drug. upon entering the store, we found, in addition to an endless array of camoflauge, fishing wire and firearms, a four storey high taxidermy wilderness scene. there were literally hundreds of preserved animals, ranging from rattlesnakes to polar bears to adult mooses-- all 100% real-- climbing higher and higher atop a fabricated mountain. it was like a hunting man's tower of babel; a zoo of preserved death. making our way through the store, we found that there were two additional galleries of this sort-- one devoted to deer (with a paul mc carthy-esque talking hunter automaton) and one devoted to the animals of africa (see below-- that's a fucking african elephant!!!). there was also an aquarium, featuring live fish, a shooting gallery, a gun gallery (guns are really expensive) and a restaurant.
say what you will about all of this, but i enjoyed it thoroughly. and yes, the ted nugent-like atmosphere and ample doseage of right-wing paranoia did generate an inevitable cloud of ambivalence, but there is something to be said of the surprise of the damn thing. that moment, upon walking in, of pure "holy shit." and the layered detail to which every excess is taken. you end up with an unimagineable hybrid of commerce, fantasy and museum (with an audience largely foreign to me), and the effect was interesting to say the least. i allowed myself complete seductive abandon in the name of "weirdness," which i suppose is all you can do.
upon leaving i resumed neurotically counting bush vs. kerry lawn signs and bumper stickers, feeling refreshed and a little bewildered, convincing myself to get out of dodge alittle more often...
claire denis' friday night
friday night, a recent film by claire denis, is one of the most stubborn, singular and miraculous things i've seen in quite a while. it is as warm as it is austere, and as thoughtful as it is thoughtless. put simply, it is the story of a one night stand. and as such, it is the deepest and most tender film i've ever seen devoted to the subject. it also surpasses in its complexity any account i've ever heard (or experienced) of such an event.
***out of fairness, i must add here that i am fundamentally not a one-night-stand-type of guy, so take the above sentence with a grain of salt***
the plot can be dealt with rather quickly: a woman is preparing to move in with her lover. she stops packing her belongings to head to her friends' house for a dinner party. while driving through the streets of paris, she finds traffic in complete gridlock due to a transit strike. in the midst of the congestion, she picks up a hitch-hiker. the dinner is eventually canceled, prompting her to check herself and the hitch-hiker into a hotel and have a one night stand.
the rest is, as they say, in the details.
night is the second film i've seen by denis, the first being beau travail, which i often hear referred to as "her masterpiece." i liked beau travail, but found it difficult to become invested in. in both films, part of what is stylistically distinguished about denis is a certain distance from her content. both films put the sensual on at least equal footing with the psychological. travail struck me as, above all else, a "filmmaker's" movie. the emphasis seemed more on style and structure than empathy or emotion. i found it too "formalist" for my taste (though i should probably see it again.) there was great beauty in its panoramic camera work and its orchestrated military spectacles. but it left me feeling chilly, in the end.
similar techniques are at work in night-- the camera drifts from surface to surface, from dark to light. there are long passages where forms only partially emerge-- hair without a face, flesh without a body, etc. and somehow none of the detachment i expected, following travail, ever emerged. this was particularly strange because the film rejects sentimentality almost completely-- this couple is not intended to last, not interested in anything beyond a single night (either consciously or unconsciously), and, most importantly, in no way inclined to "get to know one another." the effect of all of this is neither sordid nor sensational. and to go a step further, there is no trace of longing or melancholy at work either. the ideology of "the relationship" is not lamented for its inability to occur-- it is done away with entirely. and it is done so in a gesture of great lightness.
here it might seem appropriate to describe the film as "carnal" or "animal"-- perhaps even "pornographic." but there is something you might call "homo sapien" about these two specimens... their randiness is too thoughtful to be a regression to the nitty-gritty one might find on the nature channel. for one thing, neither character is necessarily attractive (nor even fetishistic-ally unattractive). they are the sort of normal looking people you rarely find in a movie. if they are superficial, they are not so in the name of fortunate genetics. something else is turning them on.
so here you have an essentially plot-less, amoral, unsentimental film about two ordinary people with no past or future together-- and i'm blabbing on and on about "lightness" and "tenderness." obviously, i must explain...
friday night, as i see it, is fundamentally concerned with "how" people are what they are. how one chooses to move, the gestures one makes, how one "speaks" through one's body. and denis is so sensitive to this that her curiosity leads her somewhere secretly dramatic-- with only marginal context, and virtually no plot-line, the unconscious (perhaps even "natural") expressiveness of her characters takes center stage. when, for example, the hitch-hiker watches the woman burn her lip on a coffee, it is not that she looks particularly ravishing while doing so-- it is not that he takes delight in seeing her hurt herself either. what he is noticing--and what is really sensational about the film in general-- is the way she expresses herself by accident.
and isn't that what is often most painful when you lose someone? the glitchy details of being a person, the way a certain someone does a certain thing. if i am rejected by someone, i can "replace" basic things about that person-- i can find someone with similar looks, similiar tastes/ideas, perhaps even similiar sentiments. but what remains fundamentally irreplaceable is the random and essential "affect" of experiencing that person. the "how" of being an individual... my friend carl becomes furious at the mention of kevin spacey... my friend erin eats a slice of pizza with a knife and a fork... my mom, who possess almost no sense of humor whatsoever, becomes hysterical at the mere evocation of a fart joke...
i must add that i don't think this film is a love song to "individuality" or anything that grand. it is more concerned with style, in a sense. how style goes beyond fashion, beyond intention. how it's embedded deep within a person, clouding one's most basic actions with a specific kind of grace (or a lack thereof). accordingly, the "one night stand" undergoes a beautiful inversion. prudent assumptions go topsy-turvy, and surface becomes substance. it's a beautiful, refreshing sort of thing.
***out of fairness, i must add here that i am fundamentally not a one-night-stand-type of guy, so take the above sentence with a grain of salt***
the plot can be dealt with rather quickly: a woman is preparing to move in with her lover. she stops packing her belongings to head to her friends' house for a dinner party. while driving through the streets of paris, she finds traffic in complete gridlock due to a transit strike. in the midst of the congestion, she picks up a hitch-hiker. the dinner is eventually canceled, prompting her to check herself and the hitch-hiker into a hotel and have a one night stand.
the rest is, as they say, in the details.
night is the second film i've seen by denis, the first being beau travail, which i often hear referred to as "her masterpiece." i liked beau travail, but found it difficult to become invested in. in both films, part of what is stylistically distinguished about denis is a certain distance from her content. both films put the sensual on at least equal footing with the psychological. travail struck me as, above all else, a "filmmaker's" movie. the emphasis seemed more on style and structure than empathy or emotion. i found it too "formalist" for my taste (though i should probably see it again.) there was great beauty in its panoramic camera work and its orchestrated military spectacles. but it left me feeling chilly, in the end.
similar techniques are at work in night-- the camera drifts from surface to surface, from dark to light. there are long passages where forms only partially emerge-- hair without a face, flesh without a body, etc. and somehow none of the detachment i expected, following travail, ever emerged. this was particularly strange because the film rejects sentimentality almost completely-- this couple is not intended to last, not interested in anything beyond a single night (either consciously or unconsciously), and, most importantly, in no way inclined to "get to know one another." the effect of all of this is neither sordid nor sensational. and to go a step further, there is no trace of longing or melancholy at work either. the ideology of "the relationship" is not lamented for its inability to occur-- it is done away with entirely. and it is done so in a gesture of great lightness.
here it might seem appropriate to describe the film as "carnal" or "animal"-- perhaps even "pornographic." but there is something you might call "homo sapien" about these two specimens... their randiness is too thoughtful to be a regression to the nitty-gritty one might find on the nature channel. for one thing, neither character is necessarily attractive (nor even fetishistic-ally unattractive). they are the sort of normal looking people you rarely find in a movie. if they are superficial, they are not so in the name of fortunate genetics. something else is turning them on.
so here you have an essentially plot-less, amoral, unsentimental film about two ordinary people with no past or future together-- and i'm blabbing on and on about "lightness" and "tenderness." obviously, i must explain...
friday night, as i see it, is fundamentally concerned with "how" people are what they are. how one chooses to move, the gestures one makes, how one "speaks" through one's body. and denis is so sensitive to this that her curiosity leads her somewhere secretly dramatic-- with only marginal context, and virtually no plot-line, the unconscious (perhaps even "natural") expressiveness of her characters takes center stage. when, for example, the hitch-hiker watches the woman burn her lip on a coffee, it is not that she looks particularly ravishing while doing so-- it is not that he takes delight in seeing her hurt herself either. what he is noticing--and what is really sensational about the film in general-- is the way she expresses herself by accident.
and isn't that what is often most painful when you lose someone? the glitchy details of being a person, the way a certain someone does a certain thing. if i am rejected by someone, i can "replace" basic things about that person-- i can find someone with similar looks, similiar tastes/ideas, perhaps even similiar sentiments. but what remains fundamentally irreplaceable is the random and essential "affect" of experiencing that person. the "how" of being an individual... my friend carl becomes furious at the mention of kevin spacey... my friend erin eats a slice of pizza with a knife and a fork... my mom, who possess almost no sense of humor whatsoever, becomes hysterical at the mere evocation of a fart joke...
i must add that i don't think this film is a love song to "individuality" or anything that grand. it is more concerned with style, in a sense. how style goes beyond fashion, beyond intention. how it's embedded deep within a person, clouding one's most basic actions with a specific kind of grace (or a lack thereof). accordingly, the "one night stand" undergoes a beautiful inversion. prudent assumptions go topsy-turvy, and surface becomes substance. it's a beautiful, refreshing sort of thing.
bob rafelson's the king of marvin gardens
finding bob rafelson's 1972 film the king of marvin gardens on netflix was certainly a pleasant surprise. it's nice to know that things like it manage to emerge on dvd.
gardens is one of those weird, smart examples of 70's american cinema. the kind that sits on the footnotes of the hyped, canonical 70's (godfather I & II and so on), next to other offbeat treasures like robert altman's mc cabe and mrs. miller or monte hellman's cockfighter. it's slow, poetic and totally unsensational. in addition, it is further proof that jack nicholson-- here as a gloomy, clinically depressed radio commentator-- was a very nuanced actor prior to becoming "jack nicholson," the wise-ass we've seen duplicated for the past 25 years.
the film follows bookish, ho-hum nicholson (looking kinda vaguely like myself, heh heh) from his home in philadelphia to atlantic city, where his brother (a brilliant bruce dern) is attempting to sell him on a get-rich-quick scheme involving real estate in hawaii. reality sets in pretty quick for nicholson, as he is greeted by dern's aging, emotionally volatile girlfriend (an under-used ellen burstyn) and led into a rather sad web of small-time corruption. nicholson spends most of the film bearing witness to the various catastrophes that emerge (dern running errands for shady characters, dern slowly abandoning burstyn for her step-daughter), and the content remains largely psychological. the film feels stuck in the foggy mindset of nicholson's character, and generates a profoundly interior atmosphere-- detached, in a sense, but by means of prudish inactivity rather than objective analysis.
its most brilliant aspect, in my opinion, is its photography, care of easy rider veteran lazlo kovacs. the look of the film is as understated as its narrative and performances. kovacs and rafelson masterfully transform a wintery atlantic city boardwalk into a kind of on-going aftermath, and they do it with such subtlety that at times you hardly notice. shots that feel ordinary double as carefully composed, as is the case when a marching band abandons a song mid-performance and scatters into the background of dern and nicholson's conversing. nicholson is often shot through doorways and mirrors, behind visual barriers as well as conceptual ones. 70's hotel decor mirrors the unfortunate enthusiasm of delusional dern. the beach appears more like a desert.
the small scale of the film, however charming in its cloudiness, is not without its flaws. gardens, like rafelson's more famous five easy pieces does briefly fall prey to the cliche allure of the woman-as-saviour (via a wide-eyed, heather-graham-esque julia anne robinson), but the saviour here has enough of nicholson's pathos (not to mention a decent line or two) to avoid the chauvinistic wishful-thinking that scars the films of woody allen. and the largely black crime unit for which dern is working provides a missed opportunity to further layer the film's meditative handling of people and predicaments. i wouldn't say there is racism or ignorance at work neccessarily, and the always likeable scatman crothers adds considerable dimension, but an interesting element could be fleshed out had rafelson taken the issue of race more seriously.
still, this is a film made with delicate hands, and the results are rather admirable. without buying in to too much of the woeful 70's cinema nostalgia that is popular these days, there is something minor about gardens that stands out strikingly next to contemporary american film. you get the sense that were one to attempt such a film today, no one would provide it with the proper attention to make it to the screen. i suggest rescuing it from its solitude on the video shelf. you won't be disappointed.
gardens is one of those weird, smart examples of 70's american cinema. the kind that sits on the footnotes of the hyped, canonical 70's (godfather I & II and so on), next to other offbeat treasures like robert altman's mc cabe and mrs. miller or monte hellman's cockfighter. it's slow, poetic and totally unsensational. in addition, it is further proof that jack nicholson-- here as a gloomy, clinically depressed radio commentator-- was a very nuanced actor prior to becoming "jack nicholson," the wise-ass we've seen duplicated for the past 25 years.
the film follows bookish, ho-hum nicholson (looking kinda vaguely like myself, heh heh) from his home in philadelphia to atlantic city, where his brother (a brilliant bruce dern) is attempting to sell him on a get-rich-quick scheme involving real estate in hawaii. reality sets in pretty quick for nicholson, as he is greeted by dern's aging, emotionally volatile girlfriend (an under-used ellen burstyn) and led into a rather sad web of small-time corruption. nicholson spends most of the film bearing witness to the various catastrophes that emerge (dern running errands for shady characters, dern slowly abandoning burstyn for her step-daughter), and the content remains largely psychological. the film feels stuck in the foggy mindset of nicholson's character, and generates a profoundly interior atmosphere-- detached, in a sense, but by means of prudish inactivity rather than objective analysis.
its most brilliant aspect, in my opinion, is its photography, care of easy rider veteran lazlo kovacs. the look of the film is as understated as its narrative and performances. kovacs and rafelson masterfully transform a wintery atlantic city boardwalk into a kind of on-going aftermath, and they do it with such subtlety that at times you hardly notice. shots that feel ordinary double as carefully composed, as is the case when a marching band abandons a song mid-performance and scatters into the background of dern and nicholson's conversing. nicholson is often shot through doorways and mirrors, behind visual barriers as well as conceptual ones. 70's hotel decor mirrors the unfortunate enthusiasm of delusional dern. the beach appears more like a desert.
the small scale of the film, however charming in its cloudiness, is not without its flaws. gardens, like rafelson's more famous five easy pieces does briefly fall prey to the cliche allure of the woman-as-saviour (via a wide-eyed, heather-graham-esque julia anne robinson), but the saviour here has enough of nicholson's pathos (not to mention a decent line or two) to avoid the chauvinistic wishful-thinking that scars the films of woody allen. and the largely black crime unit for which dern is working provides a missed opportunity to further layer the film's meditative handling of people and predicaments. i wouldn't say there is racism or ignorance at work neccessarily, and the always likeable scatman crothers adds considerable dimension, but an interesting element could be fleshed out had rafelson taken the issue of race more seriously.
still, this is a film made with delicate hands, and the results are rather admirable. without buying in to too much of the woeful 70's cinema nostalgia that is popular these days, there is something minor about gardens that stands out strikingly next to contemporary american film. you get the sense that were one to attempt such a film today, no one would provide it with the proper attention to make it to the screen. i suggest rescuing it from its solitude on the video shelf. you won't be disappointed.
the misfits' song "children in heat"
i haven't been too dilligent lately with the reading, writing or art-making. this is because of the shiny new machine i'm currently tapping away on... three or four days ago, my roommate charlie allowed me to download all of the music from his portable hard drive-- essentially his entire collection (plus about half of my own that he copied)-- and as a result i now have 7000 + songs stored on this computer, and am only beginning to gleefully sort through the beautiful chaos.
***
i discovered the misfits when i was 13/14 via their classic album walk among us. it had all the ingredients i wanted at the time: bouncing, adolescent energy... machismo... the suburban 8th grade equivalent of underground cred... devil iconography... and most importantly, a sharp and instinctive pop sense just sweet enough to ease my embrace of its punkier elements.
to be honest, i've always really been more of a pop guy than a punk guy-- all the punk i like tends to be either art-punk (e.g. the fall) or rough-around-the-edges pop (e.g. the buzzcocks). that said, i still hold true to a theory i whipped up during the hair-flopping era of my adolescence, which is that the misfits are about the best pop group i know.
that said, i was oddly unfamiliar with much beyond walk among us when i was younger. my friend chris had earth a.d. which was more hardcore and caveman-esque in its machismo. a real turn-off. so i guess i clung to walk out of fear and affection.
it wasn't really until college that i started to really explore the misfits like a collector (or whatever). and i found myself not only falling in love all over again with what i discovered, but falling in love the exact same way, and for the exact same reasons. like a wife given a diamond ring in a de beers commerical.
during that time, my roommate had a comp with the song "children in heat" on it, but i never copied it from him. i loved the song, but only heard it in passing, assuming--for the second time-- that i more or less had heard all of the misfits stuff worth hearing. and the stuff i didn't own i chalked up to alternate takes and those lackluster later songs like "wolfsblood" and shit. so, with only a few listens in me, "children in heat" eventually became the mystery misfits song. the one i had heard and loved but could hardly remember. i remembered the sing-along part where danzig shouts "no resistance!" but i couldn't remember the words. its hazy shadow lurked within me for years. but i was shit out of luck.
enter charlie's hard drive o' goodies... on which was collection 2, composed of mostly songs i already had. still i jumped from mystery title to mystery title, and lo and behold, i found my estranged track.
once again, i must stress that a kind of time-warp takes hold of me when i hear the misfits. they're the only band i can play on repeat (seriously--the only one! i hate songs on repeat!)... normally, when i hear a song i really like i kinda abstain from it; it takes on a "break in case of emergency" status following a few initial listens. there's nothing worse to me than wearing out something wonderful. but the really good misfits songs, songs like "hybrid moments" and "last caress" and "skulls" and "bullet," endure my listens like no other. they are a kind of "popeye spinach," but rather than giving me strength, they reduce me to a hormone-ridden, wide-eyed teenage wonder.
***
i discovered the misfits when i was 13/14 via their classic album walk among us. it had all the ingredients i wanted at the time: bouncing, adolescent energy... machismo... the suburban 8th grade equivalent of underground cred... devil iconography... and most importantly, a sharp and instinctive pop sense just sweet enough to ease my embrace of its punkier elements.
to be honest, i've always really been more of a pop guy than a punk guy-- all the punk i like tends to be either art-punk (e.g. the fall) or rough-around-the-edges pop (e.g. the buzzcocks). that said, i still hold true to a theory i whipped up during the hair-flopping era of my adolescence, which is that the misfits are about the best pop group i know.
that said, i was oddly unfamiliar with much beyond walk among us when i was younger. my friend chris had earth a.d. which was more hardcore and caveman-esque in its machismo. a real turn-off. so i guess i clung to walk out of fear and affection.
it wasn't really until college that i started to really explore the misfits like a collector (or whatever). and i found myself not only falling in love all over again with what i discovered, but falling in love the exact same way, and for the exact same reasons. like a wife given a diamond ring in a de beers commerical.
during that time, my roommate had a comp with the song "children in heat" on it, but i never copied it from him. i loved the song, but only heard it in passing, assuming--for the second time-- that i more or less had heard all of the misfits stuff worth hearing. and the stuff i didn't own i chalked up to alternate takes and those lackluster later songs like "wolfsblood" and shit. so, with only a few listens in me, "children in heat" eventually became the mystery misfits song. the one i had heard and loved but could hardly remember. i remembered the sing-along part where danzig shouts "no resistance!" but i couldn't remember the words. its hazy shadow lurked within me for years. but i was shit out of luck.
enter charlie's hard drive o' goodies... on which was collection 2, composed of mostly songs i already had. still i jumped from mystery title to mystery title, and lo and behold, i found my estranged track.
once again, i must stress that a kind of time-warp takes hold of me when i hear the misfits. they're the only band i can play on repeat (seriously--the only one! i hate songs on repeat!)... normally, when i hear a song i really like i kinda abstain from it; it takes on a "break in case of emergency" status following a few initial listens. there's nothing worse to me than wearing out something wonderful. but the really good misfits songs, songs like "hybrid moments" and "last caress" and "skulls" and "bullet," endure my listens like no other. they are a kind of "popeye spinach," but rather than giving me strength, they reduce me to a hormone-ridden, wide-eyed teenage wonder.
ulrich seidl's dog days
dog days is a film with an interesting gimmick-- austrian director ulrich seidl chose to shoot his tale of human oddities in a bland austrian suburb exclusively on days where the temperature went well into the nineties (fahrenheit). accordingly-- one can assume-- the sweat coating his impressively un-lovely cast is the real deal. days is seidl's first fiction film (he's known for offbeat and off-putting documentaries-- none of which i've seen), and the traces of a documentarian's touch (such as its cassavetes-esque sense of improvisation) get the film off to a good start.
it begins by introducing a series of strange, troubled and decidedly un-hollywood suburban inhabitants... an abusive, jealous boyfriend who attacks the ogglers of his go-go dancing girlfriend... a mentally ill woman who spends her days hitch-hiking and assaulting the drivers who accept her with rude and inappropriate questions... an obese, elderly widower who decides to celebrate his wedding anniversary by replacing his dead wife with his (strangely consenting) house servant... and the list goes on. the camera begins by simply following them around, blurring "fact and fiction," and teetering on the threshold of exploitation in a manner similar to the films of harmony korine.
korine is possibly the first point of reference the film demands, but ultimately not the best. first, the look of it is much different-- more austere, occasionally "aesthetic" in a way i found too familiar. lots of quasi-modernist shots of garage doors and manicured lawns. a glossy take on the suburban uncanny with a fetish for the unflattering– as if hollywood darling american beauty were seen through the eyes of nan goldin. at forst, seidl goes all out with cinematic sensuality, and a half an hour into it, days feels like an atmospheric work, a document of an outsider's curiosity.
but eventually plots begin to emerge. here, i must confess to a certain artsy-fartsy plot-a-phobia on my part, being a big fan of directors to whom telling a story seems somewhat peripheral (abbas kiarostami, tsai ming-liang, etc.), but i assure you i'm not being superficial by saying that the narrative aspects of dog days are its eventual downfall. part of the problem is structural, and part is ideological...
structural: as paths begin to cross and dramas begin to unfold, it becomes clear that what seidl is making is an ensemble film. and despite its avant-garde flourishes, it encounters the same problems that most ensemble films run up against-- there's too much shit going on. this is what reduced all of paul thomas anderson's musings to the wretched, overrated soap-opera that magnolia was. this is what prevented wes anderson's the royal tenenbaums from being as brilliant as rushmore. too many characters, too many ideas, and nothing rich or pervasive enough to hold them all together. and in days the tone is so exhaustingly dark and brutal that in areas I felt robbed of the complexity the content demanded. put simply, by film's end i'd decided which stories were interesting and which weren't, and suffering through the lesser ones became increasingly laborious.
ideological: as the plots develop, seidl slowly abandons the sensuality that is the film’s most promising element. curiosity is sacrificed to pedagogy, and despite an immensely effective and convincing cast, the characters are reduced to melancholic specimens in the skinnerbox of seidl’s misanthropy. by the time the inevitable “character-overlap” element hits the screen (specifically– where an overworked, stressed-out salesman picks up the mentally ill hitchiker), fatalistic realism passes over into sensationalism (it's strikingly similar in its pessimism and assumptions to the films of larry clark). this pill is particularly hard to swallow because everything is rendered with punishing brutality. one expects a film of this kind to amount to something of real relevance. in the end, it feels like another entry into the growing genre of glamorized fatalism, where an audience is rewarded for its stamina and endurance rather than its sensitivity.
that said, the performaces and the lengths to which seidl is willing to subject the performers (for better or worse) do lend the film a decent dose of integrity (a.k.a. why I bothered with the post). if you can stomach it, it’s worth a look. also, to contradict myself a bit, the film’s most disturbing narrative (following a masochistic woman, her lover and a conflicted, sadistic sex partner) is–-oddly-- by far the most engaging. seidl’s uncompromising plunge into the layers of master/slave sexuality has real merit to it. and briefly, he weaves together a powerful mix of improv, pathos and insight. had the film focused more extensively on that one lineage–awful as it was to watch– I’d find it of far greater relevance. as is, i found it pretty disappointing.
it begins by introducing a series of strange, troubled and decidedly un-hollywood suburban inhabitants... an abusive, jealous boyfriend who attacks the ogglers of his go-go dancing girlfriend... a mentally ill woman who spends her days hitch-hiking and assaulting the drivers who accept her with rude and inappropriate questions... an obese, elderly widower who decides to celebrate his wedding anniversary by replacing his dead wife with his (strangely consenting) house servant... and the list goes on. the camera begins by simply following them around, blurring "fact and fiction," and teetering on the threshold of exploitation in a manner similar to the films of harmony korine.
korine is possibly the first point of reference the film demands, but ultimately not the best. first, the look of it is much different-- more austere, occasionally "aesthetic" in a way i found too familiar. lots of quasi-modernist shots of garage doors and manicured lawns. a glossy take on the suburban uncanny with a fetish for the unflattering– as if hollywood darling american beauty were seen through the eyes of nan goldin. at forst, seidl goes all out with cinematic sensuality, and a half an hour into it, days feels like an atmospheric work, a document of an outsider's curiosity.
but eventually plots begin to emerge. here, i must confess to a certain artsy-fartsy plot-a-phobia on my part, being a big fan of directors to whom telling a story seems somewhat peripheral (abbas kiarostami, tsai ming-liang, etc.), but i assure you i'm not being superficial by saying that the narrative aspects of dog days are its eventual downfall. part of the problem is structural, and part is ideological...
structural: as paths begin to cross and dramas begin to unfold, it becomes clear that what seidl is making is an ensemble film. and despite its avant-garde flourishes, it encounters the same problems that most ensemble films run up against-- there's too much shit going on. this is what reduced all of paul thomas anderson's musings to the wretched, overrated soap-opera that magnolia was. this is what prevented wes anderson's the royal tenenbaums from being as brilliant as rushmore. too many characters, too many ideas, and nothing rich or pervasive enough to hold them all together. and in days the tone is so exhaustingly dark and brutal that in areas I felt robbed of the complexity the content demanded. put simply, by film's end i'd decided which stories were interesting and which weren't, and suffering through the lesser ones became increasingly laborious.
ideological: as the plots develop, seidl slowly abandons the sensuality that is the film’s most promising element. curiosity is sacrificed to pedagogy, and despite an immensely effective and convincing cast, the characters are reduced to melancholic specimens in the skinnerbox of seidl’s misanthropy. by the time the inevitable “character-overlap” element hits the screen (specifically– where an overworked, stressed-out salesman picks up the mentally ill hitchiker), fatalistic realism passes over into sensationalism (it's strikingly similar in its pessimism and assumptions to the films of larry clark). this pill is particularly hard to swallow because everything is rendered with punishing brutality. one expects a film of this kind to amount to something of real relevance. in the end, it feels like another entry into the growing genre of glamorized fatalism, where an audience is rewarded for its stamina and endurance rather than its sensitivity.
that said, the performaces and the lengths to which seidl is willing to subject the performers (for better or worse) do lend the film a decent dose of integrity (a.k.a. why I bothered with the post). if you can stomach it, it’s worth a look. also, to contradict myself a bit, the film’s most disturbing narrative (following a masochistic woman, her lover and a conflicted, sadistic sex partner) is–-oddly-- by far the most engaging. seidl’s uncompromising plunge into the layers of master/slave sexuality has real merit to it. and briefly, he weaves together a powerful mix of improv, pathos and insight. had the film focused more extensively on that one lineage–awful as it was to watch– I’d find it of far greater relevance. as is, i found it pretty disappointing.
