tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48196300555503520082024-03-12T17:25:48.682-07:00East Village IdiotBillyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-8941258033814907712016-06-16T11:52:00.001-07:002016-06-16T11:52:08.527-07:00directions<div dir="ltr">SriPraPhai <br><br><span class="">64-13 39th Ave 11377</span><br><br>640 200 (100)<br></div> Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-46007121269808401372010-02-02T15:55:00.000-08:002010-02-02T15:59:32.983-08:00Lazy Heart<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXr7ie5tmBLtvS3yNeWv-aCcB7-z_wWNcI30E2TWbETmj2vFJCVS-prQR_j5NAuTb1wCEYYAW0BLkJkho_X3hNx6Tiae25RXE_MjF9vR6lNzJFPjJ7hTr8L1iU7RVlmJvI5V63J_bDiUM/s1600-h/crazy+heart.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXr7ie5tmBLtvS3yNeWv-aCcB7-z_wWNcI30E2TWbETmj2vFJCVS-prQR_j5NAuTb1wCEYYAW0BLkJkho_X3hNx6Tiae25RXE_MjF9vR6lNzJFPjJ7hTr8L1iU7RVlmJvI5V63J_bDiUM/s320/crazy+heart.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433799780695253394" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">Thirty years after playing a small Texas town’s dim, handsome jock in Peter Bogdanavich’s <i>The Last Picture Show</i><span style="font-style:normal">, Jeff Bridges returns to the parched Southwest in </span><i>Crazy Heart</i><span style="font-style:normal">, with what could be his breakthrough character gone to flesh and seed. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Bridges plays Bad Blake, an alcoholic over-the-hill country singer (Is there any other kind?) Bad’s boozy fall from grace lands him in a series of desert honky tonks for a string of desperate, sparsely attended shows played through a sweat and puke-stained shirt. Sparks somewhat unconvincingly fly when fledgling journalist<b> </b><span style="font-weight:normal">Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) stops by one show to interview the fallen star, and inspires his gradual, painful redemption. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Crazy Heart</i><span style="font-style:normal">’s stubborn resistance to a plot-propelling conflict is an odd thing to see in a movie otherwise rife with clichés. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Not every plotline can or should reinvent the wheel. And <i>Crazy Heart</i><span style="font-style:normal"> has its moments. Its early live performance scenes endear us to and make us feel embarrassed for Bad. (You look on as the shows teeter on the verge of drunken disaster with the same wince Bad gives his lonely, weathered one night stands on those hungover mornings after.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These scenes also hint at some insight into the music industry. When Jean asks Bad if he “ever gets tired of playing” his signature big hit, I realized how tedious life on the road must get. I also wondered how the film’s composer, T. Bone Burnett, went about creating a soundtrack he knew going in would have to contain both crowd-pleasing hits and relative duds. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">But <i>Crazy Heart </i><span style="font-style:normal">doesn’t dig deep enough. Musical interludes and discussions of the country genre (grizzled old vets of the “real” country versus the mass-produced poster boys—here embodied by an uncredited Colin Farrell’s Tommy Sweet—fronting the “glossy” modern country) are relegated to the sidelines. And don’t expect any revelations about journalism. For all we know, Maggie took it up as a hobby to avoid the extracurricular drudgery of crocheting. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">What could have been and almost is a unique look at a craft like music or writing gives way to a trite, oddly listless romantic and family drama. Jean was burned in the past, so she’s weary of Bad. Bad adores Buddy, Jean’s son possibly more than Jean (shades of <i>Jerry Maguire</i><span style="font-style:normal">). Naturally this is because Bad is estranged from his own boy, with Buddy<b> </b></span>being the second in a line of surrogates after Tommy. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Then Bad’s struggle with the hooch kicks into high gear and <i>Crazy Heart</i><span style="font-style:normal"> abruptly turns into </span><i>Leaving Las Nashville</i><span style="font-style:normal">. After Bad pukes into one too many motel room wastebaskets and loses Buddy<b> </b></span>as he gets plastered in a shopping mall bar, Jean rejects him and sends him straight into the arms of his buddy Wayne Kramer (the great Robert Duvall, also a producer, in a sinfully underwritten, boring and extraneous role). </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">There isn’t a <i>bad</i><span style="font-style:normal"> performance across the board; even the faded floozies with caked on makeup who rub up against Bad have their charms. But aside from Bridges, no one’s acting or, more troublingly, character is memorable. </span><i>Crazy Heart</i><span style="font-style:normal">’s characters, like its loose strands of a plot (part concert movie, part alcoholic nightmare, part romance, part horror movie about aging) never cohere. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Crazy Heart</i><span style="font-style:normal"> plays like one of the commercial country hits Bad deplores, hinting at misery, but through a glossy veneer, with redemption never in doubt, just off the next exit on the lonely desert highway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-1029203744143647182010-01-07T20:59:00.001-08:002010-01-07T21:05:32.379-08:00The White Ribbon<p class="MsoNormal">“Beauty must suffer.” So says The Doctor (Rainer Bock) in a small German town in Michael Haneke’s latest, <i>The White Ribbon</i><span style="font-style:normal">. The line could apply to the characters living in the bucolic village in 1915 as it hurtles toward World War I, the modernity that war unleashed and the fascism it provoked in Germany.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At least that’s what Haneke, or his narrator (Ernst Jacobi), tells us at the start of the film. The voiceover technique is often derided as intrusive and heavy-handed. It’s especially conspicuous in a work by this sometimes stubbornly oblique director. This narrator warns us of the odd tragedies that will befall the village and reflects on the light they shed “some of the things that would go on to happen in this country.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A narrator is a useful technique here, because despite the film’s early telegraph of incipient horror, <i>The White Ribbon </i><span style="font-style:normal">is Haneke’s most restrained and sedate work. At times, the pacing is almost too glacial, the whole film too stately and clinical. (Christian Berger’s starkly gorgeous cinematography recalls a B&W </span><i>Days of Heaven</i><span style="font-style:normal"> and jolts you just as you may start to nod off.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But if you think about the earlier entries on the Austrian’s resume, you’ll realize that a Haneke movie usually winds up being compelling despite taking its sweet time to convince you that all its underlying unpleasantness is worth it.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In this case, the bad news starts when the doctor takes a nasty spill off his horse. This being a Haneke movie, the fall was no accident, but caused by a wire strung between two trees. Other bad omens: The Baron’s son, Sigi (Fion Mutert) is hanged naked and upside-down in the woods, the barn burns down and a peasant mother is killed in the mill. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Aside from the doctor’s incident, we don’t see any of these events take place. Haneke is only interested in the aftermath. Some villagers swear vengeance and some seek escape from the increasingly “cruel, miserable” village. But everyone suspects. And it’s strongly implied (we could never expect this director to spell <i>everything</i><span style="font-style:normal"> out) that the community youths are behind it all.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A note on the children: they are strikingly beautiful. (And the child actors, like the entire cast, are flawless.) Despite some early comparisons to <i>Village of the Damned</i><span style="font-style:normal">, their wickedness is not painted in broad strokes. “Looking back, I always thought it was strange how Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus) and her friends walked to the edge of the woods after school instead of running home with the rest of us," says the narrator. That’s about as damning as it gets. At least until the very end when The Teacher (Christian Friedel) shares his suspicions. (The Teacher’s courtship of Eva, the metaphorically named young nanny played by the Leonie Benesch in a standout performance, provides the most comic relief I’ve ever seen in a Haneke flick.)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Haneke rests the blame for the children’s indiscretions, no matter how savage (they torture and nearly blind a retarded child), on their parents. “Our sin punishes our parents’ sin, and their parents’ sin to the third and fourth generations,” the perpetrators write in one note. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Original sin is a very Christian idea. But Haneke indicts religion’s rigid single-mindedness and hypocrisy in the character of the Pastor (Burghart Klausner), an abusive brute who straps his adolescent son to his mattress to keep him from masturbating and then dismisses warnings that his daughter is, we’re led to believe, the ringleader of the town miscreants. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then there’s <i>The White Ribbon</i><span style="font-style:normal">’s greatest, most squirm-inducing scene, in which the Doctor (who for a while looked like the only character over 18 devoid of sinister intentions) breaks things off with his girlfriend, criticizing her as “plain, ugly and reeking of bad breath.” She grimaces and tells him he “must be very unhappy to be so mean.” And then she asks how he could desert her after she’d caught him fingering his daughter and told no one; it’s classic Haneke—a bomb disrupting the kind of silence where you could have heard a pin drop. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">That said, what Haneke leaves offscreen is always more disturbing than what he shows. And as in <i>Benny’s Video</i><span style="font-style:normal">, </span><i>Funny Games</i><span style="font-style:normal"> and </span><i>Cache</i><span style="font-style:normal">, it’s the misdeeds of children that get lodged in the viewer’s skull. And it’s the teenagers in </span><i>The White Ribbon</i><span style="font-style:normal"> who would become the disenfranchised young adults most susceptible to Hitler’s spell 15 years later. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In his narration that closes the film, The Teacher says that in the spring of 1916, the German army drafted him to fight in the First World War. But for the people living in <i>The White Ribbon</i><span style="font-style:normal">’s pastoral Eden, the battle was already lost. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-30814619681067765942009-11-19T19:20:00.000-08:002009-11-19T19:21:54.133-08:00Bad Educations<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps to atone for the enduring myth of the “casting couch,” Hollywood often returns to the theme of young people being corrupted by conniving elders. From Hitchcock’s damsels in distress to <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i><span style="font-style:normal"> to </span><i>Taxi Driver</i><span style="font-style:normal"> and </span><i>Mulholland Drive</i><span style="font-style:normal">, a long history of movies suggests that youth isn’t wasted on the young, but snatched out from under them. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> Raymond Warner Fassbinder’s <i>Fox and His Friends</i><span style="font-style:normal"> is an unorthodox entry in the genre by dint of its gay characters and unwavering cynicism. Fassbinder never really graduated from being the enfant terrible of German cinema (he overdosed at 37, having already directed 40 feature length films). So it’s unsurprising that this story of Fox, a working-class circus performer (played by Fassbinder) picked up, taken in and swindled by a group of “prissy, posh” sophisticates is bleak through to the end.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The most intriguing thing about <i>Fox and Friends </i><span style="font-style:normal">is its peripheral treatment of homosexuality. It’s a testament to Fassbinder that his 1974 movie outpaces many being made in today’s professedly liberal and liberated Hollywood. It’s a “gay movie” that is neither PSA nor a minstrel show. The film is largely confined to places where its characters could live quietly and without tension—gay bars and boutiques, cruising areas and their own apartments. But even casual acquaintances and family members don’t bat an eye.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Fassbinder was a libertine, but any salaciousness in <i>Fox and Friends</i><span style="font-style:normal"> is muted by the film’s classical composition. There is no fancy camerawork, jumbled chronology or postmodern trickery to distract from the barebones plot. But the static medium shots frame unusual activities, like naked bathhouse patrons and businessmen tentatively picking up hustlers in public bathrooms. Fassbinder’s measured technique is more effective at establishing this subculture than showy frenetic devices could be. It lets these people and places, and not the cinematographer, expose themselves.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Besides, Fassbinder hasn’t made gay underworld expose, but an indictment of money and its ruinous effects on individuals and their relationships. Eugen tries to cultivate Fox, but it’s a selfish effort. He teaches him how to order off of a French menu, which wine goes with which course and what clothes to wear. But he imparts all of this wisdom to spare himself any embarrassment. The irony is that Fox funds all of Eugen’s sophistication with his rapidly dwindling lotto winnings.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Eventually, Eugen and his family dupe Fox into saving their bankrupt business. It’s a damning critique of the capitalist system—a somewhat dim prole who falls into chance money keeping an industrialist family’s fortune afloat. But the confidence trick has an even more cynical take on the power dynamic that, no matter how buried, is inherent to all relationships: each partner provides something the other needs. It’s refreshing to see the naïve, young buck end up the (accidental) breadwinner and not just a hood ornament. But Fox, needy, clueless and attracted to Eugen’s classy façade, still draws the short end of the stick.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>Fox and His Friends</i><span style="font-style:normal"> is a very German movie. The distrust of capitalism is grounded in the personal. But the movie’s quiet efficiency tempers plot developments (and some fantastically kitschy settings) that would otherwise veer toward melodrama. There’s also a sense of somewhat wearily looking beyond national borders for enlightenment (whether through posh French restaurants, American johns or an ill-fated trip to Marrakech), only to stay bound by the same old personal and cultural handicaps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Jenny (Carry Mulligan) is another babe in the woods battling social constrictions in <i>An Education</i><span style="font-style:normal">. Unlike Fox, Jenny’s got the brains to match her effortless charm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>She also benefits from her supportive if overbearing mom and dad (Alfred Molina, ranging from funny to stern without becoming a movie dad cliché) to steer her in the right direction (which in this case leads straight to Oxford). But she still falls for a duplicitous would-be mentor, David (Peter Sarsgaard), whose displays of fleeting glamour nearly derail Jenny’s straight march to self-made success.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Jenny is the most promising student at her starchy girls prep school. She’s one of those students whose middle-class parents did not enroll her in private school for etiquette lessons, but to see her study through the night and unlock the Pandora’s Box of potential that admission to elite universities suggests to this day.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Life hasn’t hardened Jenny yet. Naiveté is the only chink her in her cardigan-heavy armor. (<i>An Education</i><span style="font-style:normal"> pours her endearing cluelessness on a bit thick.) She dreams of a life in Paris where she’ll “eat in good restaurants, smoke lots of cigarettes and watch great films.” David spots her and her giant cello seeking shelter from a downpour and drives her to her modest two-family home. He drops the names of some jazz greats and smokes a cigarette (she turns one down for fear of her parents smelling the residue). She is smitten.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">After charming Jenny’s parents (they’re biggest objection is not his age—a dozen years older than Jenny—but his Jewishness) with wit and cultural references, David takes her out on the town for a…chamber music concert. She meets Danny (Dominick Cooper), a dapper friend of David’s, and his affable ditz of a girlfriend, Helen (Rosamund Pike, who like Cooper is engaging and underused). After nodding off at the recital, the crew heads to a smoky jazz club. Jenny’s downfall is underway.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As the relationship progresses and Jenny’s grades freefall, David grows sinister and Jenny reluctant. Sarsgaard nails David’s seductiveness, but is a bit one-note. That’s due more to the character’s limitations than the actor’s. David is a small-time crook with some shady real estate dealings (he basically moves black people into white neighborhoods, a subplot that mirrors the movie’s commentary on Britain’s stubborn class divisions). But, unlike Eugen fleecing Fox, his motives for wooing Cassie remain vague.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mulligan nails it, alternating between levelheaded intelligence, vulnerability and suspicion as David’s well-crafted front begins to crumble. In the wake of her suitor’s betrayal and the opportunities it endangers, she avoids the easy histrionics that lesser actors might employ in favor of quietly picking up the pieces.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s a good thing that Jenny’s alternative “education” took place before Swinging London kicked into psychedelic full gear. Otherwise she might have been lost for good. The setting in 1964 also mercifully confines Jenny’s struggles to her character (mostly) instead of mooring them to the decade’s burgeoning feminist movement. She is able to handle her problems on her own, without the sort of social pedagogy movies always make shrill or reductive.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As <i>An Education </i><span style="font-style:normal">concludes, Jenny grasps the implications of her tumultuous year, saying she “feel[s] old. But not very wise.” </span><i>Fox and His Friends</i><span style="font-style:normal"> and </span><i>An Education</i><span style="font-style:normal"> are two sturdy entries in a canon of movies that provide that wisdom. </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-48307181424331389242009-11-06T17:06:00.001-08:002009-11-06T17:10:25.213-08:00Trash Humpers and Antichrist<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">Is a movie a success if you’re still thinking about it days after viewing? This was the case with Harmony Korine’s <i>Trash Humpers</i><span style="font-style:normal"> and Lars Von Trier’s </span><i>Antichrist</i><span style="font-style:normal">, two entries in the New York Film Festival that I very nearly walked out on, whose endings could not arrive soon enough, that made me question the credibility, if not sanity, of the selection committee. But the imagery in both was indelible. These are flawed, irritating provocations. And both are worthwhile. </span></p> <div style="border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">Korine shot <i>Trash Humpers</i><span style="font-style:normal"> on VHS and wanted the no-budget movie to resemble “found footage” salvaged from a dumpster (likely assaulted by one of the film’s demented participants). You can’t accuse the man of taking himself too seriously. In a Q&A after the movie, he said he wanted to make the “shittiest looking movie possible.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Fair enough, but you might ask why often snooty festival selection committees the world over consistently fall for his half-baked experiments. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><i>Trash Humpers</i><span style="font-style:normal"> is not a complete wash. As cheap as it looks, the VHS film lends a bleached, fuzzy feel to the movie that often heightens its beauty. Twilight and nighttime scenes are especially affective. In one early sequence, the camera focuses away from its horny subjects doing God knows what in a big box parking lot to linger on a magnificent magenta sunset. In a complimentary shot, Korine takes a break from the manic cuts for a long, soft-focus gaze at a streetlamp against the darkness. There’s also the time the lens sticks on the female humper as she sits forlornly on the curb and watches her cohorts screw some bushes. (It’s one of the only times where a characters recognizes, or at least wonders, what the hell is going on and hangs her head in shamed confusion.) </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">Moments like these don’t just impress because they’re surrounded by, well, garbage. They stand on their own. If only <i>Trash Humpers</i><span style="font-style:normal"> had more of them. Instead, Korine assaults us with more and more of the titular visual gag (it gets old about 30 seconds into the movie). </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">There is also the matter of sound: <i>Trash Humpers</i><span style="font-style:normal"> is the most aurally unpleasant movie I have ever seen. Its characters rarely speak; they bray, howl and guffaw. Think of a cross between </span><i>South Park’s</i><span style="font-style:normal"> Mr. Hanky and Jim Carry’s “Most Annoying Sound in the World” in </span><i>Dumb and Dumber</i><span style="font-style:normal"> for an idea of the torture your ears are about to endure. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><i>Trash Humper</i><span style="font-style:normal">’s sonic endurance test is all the more unsettling for being unexpected. The first few minutes are nearly silent. When dialogue arrives, the content is either self-consciously base (lots of gay jokes) or comically pretentious. There are two coherent monologues: a frilly contemplation delivered by a poet and a colloquial digression on modern ennui as the gang drives through a barren suburb (“I can smell their sadness in the trees,” says the driver.) They struck a chord with me, but bomb with the characters (who actually kill the poet, for kicks, after his screed). Funny enough, but the dismissal robs the audience of any sustained reprieve from the gutter. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">With <i>Trash Humpers</i><span style="font-style:normal">, Korine reaches for a combination of David Lynch’s ironic absurdity (a few moments explicitly recall </span><i>Elephant Man</i><span style="font-style:normal">) and Jon Waters’ anarchic, white trash bonhomie. But he lacks Lynch’s coal-black humor and formal control and Waters’ madcap glee. As </span><i>Trash Humpers</i><span style="font-style:normal"> grinded on, the audience was less given to courtesy laughs and started to seem perplexed more than anything else. But maybe they weren’t confused at all. They could have just realized Korine’s joke was on them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><i>Antichrist</i><span style="font-style:normal">, unlike </span><i>Trash Humpers</i><span style="font-style:normal">, takes itself </span><i>very</i><span style="font-style:normal"> seriously. And if Korine’s audience feigned laughter, Von Trier’s must have repressed it, because Antichrist often feels like a parody of art house pretension. </span><i>Trash Humpers </i><span style="font-style:normal">hints at redemption through children as one character cradles her new, albeit kidnapped, baby. </span><i>Antichrist</i><span style="font-style:normal"> wallows in misery as a couple torture each other after the death of theirs. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">The movie begins with the gorgeous cinematography (by Anthony Dod Mantle) that sustains the rest of the film. A couple, unnamed beyond He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), ravage each other over every conceivable surface of their well-appointed home. (There’s a penetration shot thrown in, presumably to ruffle MPAA feathers.) While husband and wife are in heat, their baby boy escapes from his crib, catches a glimpse of the action and falls out an open window to his death. (He falls alongside a teddybear he clutches; the bear’s plunge is shown in extended slow-mo.) </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">He is a psychotherapist of some kind, and misguidedly dedicates himself to curing his wrecked wife with obtuse psychobabble. She takes to smashing her head repeatedly against a toilet bowl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In a sign of things to come (and few people watching <i>Antichrist</i><span style="font-style:normal">’s are unaware of what’s to come), she initiates sex, he demurs and she bites his nipple until the skin breaks. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">What better time to go on a country retreat? And so they head up to their wood cabin, subtly called Eden, arriving only after She complains that the ground burns her feet and He spots a deer bloodily carrying a stillborn (or maybe half-born) fawn. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">For all its heavy-handed foreboding and willfully dull shrink talk, the first two-thirds of <i>Antichrist</i><span style="font-style:normal"> is intriguing to watch. Dafoe excels once again at playing an insufferable ass; if there’s one voice you don’t mind hearing in monotone, it’s his. And his off-kilter features are softened here—he actually looks classically handsome in certain scenes—which tempers the storm clouds Von Trier hangs over the rest of the film. Gainsbourg nails every conceivable shade of distress, treating viewers to something resembling the Kubler-Ross model on meth. As impressive as the two leads (in fact, the movie’s only two actors) are individually, they never betray much chemistry (actually, they don’t appear in the same frame that often). But I guess that’s the point. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><i>Antichrist</i><span style="font-style:normal">’s main asset is Mantle’s camerawork. From the pristine black and white of the prologue to the abstract flourishes (a beating pulse, a slow-motion silhouetted walk through the woods) to the slate-toned nature scenes, this is a great looking movie. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">Unfortunately, Von Trier wants viewers to avert their eyes. After building to a slow burn (the woman in front of me was out cold after 15 minutes), <i>Antichrist</i><span style="font-style:normal"> explodes first into a ludicrous jumble of mystical/psychological/astrological/paranormalsociological/feminist phooey. Then, I guess to relieve the actors’ and the audience’s confusion, She smashes a wood log into His balls. (This is when the lady in front of me woke up.) </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">What follows is a flat-out slasher movie, with some talking animals thrown in for good measure. (“Chaos Reigns,” as uttered by a disemboweled fox, has become the movie’s catchphrase, though I’m not sure how Von Trier would take the cackling that swept the audience following its delivery). The denouement of <i>Antichrist </i><span style="font-style:normal">sees a horde of faceless women climbing up a hill toward Him. It’s Von Trier’s last attempt to hammer home a thesis, but the bludgeoning on display throughout will leave most people searching for an exit rather than a resolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">Arthouse films often pride themselves on the sort of subtlety that withholds graphic details, sexual and violent, from their supposedly evolved audiences. But surprisingly it is the cerebral, stylized <i>Antichrist</i><span style="font-style:normal"> and not the subversively lowbrow </span><i>Trash Humpers</i><span style="font-style:normal"> that threatens to become a cynical exploitation flick. Von Trier’s expensive therapy session—he couldn’t hold the camera during film because his “hands shook with depression”—shabbily deconstructs little more than a marriage. Risqué sex and violence aside, </span><i>Antichrist</i><span style="font-style:normal"> sticks to genre conventions; Trash Humpers discards genre altogether.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0in;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in">Both directors sought visceral reactions with these incendiary movies. They’re masturbatory works. And despite their merits, it’s the audience that ultimately gets jerked around. </p> </div> <!--EndFragment-->Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-56572833124523919172009-07-11T15:54:00.001-07:002009-07-12T15:06:51.459-07:00The Hurt Locker<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbRbAn2uSu2Z7aZQlEh3fqSPOubdEz_VjfygKR72nSc1QDd-RdekJxfJdTsElrEjYQJ5gV-FwEBk0ZHQk4MnH10xdq18i56kiWT2Puh-F7LbLTpjNm7Yd9HhlLrnoWLe2t8agI4ev_waY/s1600-h/the-hurt-locker-pic.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbRbAn2uSu2Z7aZQlEh3fqSPOubdEz_VjfygKR72nSc1QDd-RdekJxfJdTsElrEjYQJ5gV-FwEBk0ZHQk4MnH10xdq18i56kiWT2Puh-F7LbLTpjNm7Yd9HhlLrnoWLe2t8agI4ev_waY/s320/the-hurt-locker-pic.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357341724757139986" /></a><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Hurt Locker</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> is the greatest video game movie ever made. This is not a slight. It’s an acknowledgment of how director Katherine Bigelow’s film distills the action movie to its pulsing, suspenseful basics.<br /><br />Bigelow deposits the viewer right in the middle of the action. A US Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal team patrols a deserted street in downtown Baghdad. There’s no exposition, but the roles are clear. The levelheaded Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) calmly gives orders to the cocksure Sergeant Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce) as he approaches a bomb in need of diffusing. Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) nervously eyes the streets, each scattered civilian a cause for potentially fatal concern.<br /><br />The tense opening sequence only lasts a few minutes. So it gives little away to reveal that the mission fails, with a passerby detonating the bomb via cell phone. Thompson is killed, despite the heavy, almost astronautic protective armor he wears.<br /><br />This is an unsentimental movie; Sanborn and Eldridge’s reaction to Thompson’s death consists only of muted anger. Thompson is replaced by Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) and the soldiers have no choice but to wearily welcome him into the fold.<br /><br />Bigelow replaces any pathos the audience expects from these characters with a tireless regard for routine. The film is little more than a series of vignettes that observe the bomb squad at work. These sequences veer from hushed and clinical to suspenseful and adrenalized, but, like the men they showcase, never lose their finesse.<br /><br />And the movie audience does not watch them alone. Iraqi citizens are always on the periphery of the crew. Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd’s handheld camera frequently cuts to their street level or birds eye view. This technique alternately humanizes the locals and makes them suspect. Ironically, it’s the civilians outfitted with the most Western accessories that stir alarm among the Americans. A cell phone prompts a raised gun. A camcorder results in crosshairs. (“What’s this guy doing, putting me on YouTube?” screams Eldridge.)<br /><br />The framing device implicates the viewer as well. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Hurt Locke</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">r</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> has no political agenda and refuses to glamorize what little violence it shows. But the audience I saw it with hooted and applauded at the conclusion of one lengthy sequence when the squad, reduced to sitting ducks under fire in the middle of the desert, shot and killed its last enemy at long range. It was odd—a very blockbuster reaction to such a smart, clinical and topical film. The blood and killings and explosions in The Hurt Locker are muted relative to standard summer fare. But brought back down to earth, they resonate.<br /><br /></span><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqSXwjjHTBiijaSJmkUIlj246kjNLF3Nt2TDXiNTUdIW9e3ScQ3hu5rs6bm4WWlGH19imev61tzJCYXy8btSUytYxvEC3vVbI7EiaxFy8ELTET1ffaiP_b9HIbnbriuM1u1PaJOkxgh44/s320/the-hurt-locker_1231882171_640w.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357341227786151378" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Subtlety extends to the lead performances. Renner resembles a young, downhome</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Russell Crowe and, like Crowe, possesses a simmering intensity that tempers James’s battlefield bravado. Mackie makes exasperation a fine art as the cerebral Sanborn attempts to constrict, and then just tolerate, James’s swagger.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And the babyfaced Geraghty nails Eldridge’s rage and constant panic—he seems on the verge of a breakdown for the entire film.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style=""><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">James’s bluster cracks twice in the movie, both times when he is in domestic situations far from IEDs. The first finds him in the home of an Iraqi family whose son he fears dead. His glimpse into their familiar home life—modest furniture clustered around the TV, a courteous host insisting James makes himself comfortable—provokes his sole jolt of terrified outsider alienation.</span></span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The other finds him stateside with his own wife and son, lost in a gleaming supermarket with miles of neon cereal boxes. Grocery shopping is a routine that is far more disorienting for James than bomb-diffusion. “War is a drug,” says the movie’s opening quote. And James is hooked, unable to extract himself from the rush of battle and enjoy the freedoms he ostensibly fights for.<br /><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Hurt Locker</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> is a restrained, human-scale action movie in a season of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Transformers</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">-style CGI bombast. For once, the prevention of loud explosions is more thrilling than their wanton detonation.</span></span></div></div></div>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-91424733303325795472009-05-12T16:11:00.001-07:002009-05-12T16:11:14.052-07:00The Girlfriend Experience<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cbilly%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><b style=""></b> <p class="MsoNormal">A few months after releasing <i style="">Che</i>, his four-and-a-half hour Che Guevera biopic, Steven Soderbergh returns with <i style="">The Girlfriend Experience</i>, a 77-minute long take on five days in the life of Chelsea (porn star Sasha Grey), a high-end Manhattan escort. The director is fond of mixing it up; his resume includes big-budget blockbusters (the <i style="">Ocean's</i> series), Oscar-baiting star vehicles (<i style="">Erin Brockovich</i>)<i style=""> </i>and indie fare (<i style="">The Limey</i>, <i style="">Full Frontal</i>, <i style="">Bubbl</i>e).<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">As Soderbergh said at a Tribeca Film Festival panel following his latest, "movies need to have either absolute perspective or none at all." He called <i style="">The Girlfriend Experience</i> "a myopic movie" about a very narrow breed of New Yorkers doing very specific things in October of 2008. And while <i style="">The Girlfriend Experience</i> represents a downsizing of budget, scope and star power for the director, his ambition is undiminished.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The movie's pinpoint topicality comes not only from its protagonist's resemblance to a certain governor-toppling working girl, but from its production coinciding with last fall's Wall Street meltdown. Pillow talk between Chelsea and her clients revolves around crumbling portfolios, bailouts and cautious investment strategies. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">But fiscal panic hasn't hurt her client's willingness to shell out. Dates occur in swank downtown lounges and hotels, the camera lingering on their facades in establishing shots. Chelsea name drops designers and upscale restaurants, Patrick Bateman-style. "I met with Philip on October 5<sup>th</sup> and 6<sup>th</sup>. I wore a Michael Kors dress and shoes with La Perla lingerie underneath and diamond stud earrings." </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Grey's deadpan delivery is coolly appealing. "During lunch he talked about the financial crisis. And when we got back to the room, he immediately got on the phone and ordered some Macallan 25. I put on a Kiki de Montparnasse corset, panties and gloves. After he got off the phone, we made out for awhile," Chelsea's voiceover narration tells us as she commits a tryst to paper. (A businessman suggests she write a memoir: "There's a huge market out there for that these days.")<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Soderbergh called <i style="">The Girlfriend Experience</i> "a movie about transactions," with the film's Great Recession backdrop exposing their fragility. Chelsea sleeps with "the hobbyist", an escort connoisseur, in hopes of a favorable, profit-boosting review on his website. Her <i style="">real</i> boyfriend, Chris (Chris Santos), is a personal trainer often seen haggling with clients looking for their own form of physical wish-fulfillment.<span style=""> </span>Everything and everyone is for sale. "If they wanted you to be yourself, they wouldn't be paying you," Chelsea explains to a journalist (in a whole different sort of transaction). <br style=""> <br style=""> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The hobbyist criticizes Chelsea for her "flat affect." But Grey's dry monotone and vacant stare only strengthen the actor's performance; they bring the character's odd girlish giggle and flash of life behind the eyes into sharp relief. Soderbergh praised Grey for the "Zen" she brought to Chelsea. (He knew a porn star "in command of sexual situations" would fit the part.) But it's the almost-reluctant emotions that manage to break through Chelsea's cool façade (all of them outside of the bedroom) that keep you watching. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Domestic scenes between Chelsea and Chris are bathed in warm amber hues, but offer no more emotional warmth than the many hotel flings, here tinted a clinical blue. The pair's selfish indifference to one another suggests that the emotional toll of "the real thing" is just as taxing as paid simulations and truncated "experiences." </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Character anomie aside, <i style="">The Girlfriend Experience</i> is too funny to be cynical and too broad an indictment of consumer culture to be a didactic slam on the world's oldest profession. For Soderbergh, prostitution is no different than investment banking, which is no different than filmmaking. (Moderator Caryn James asked Soderbergh if he felt he'd prostituted himself with the <i style="">Ocean's</i> movies; he diffused the awkwardness by saying all of his movies required him to sell his time and ideas to executives.) </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">The Girlfriend Experience</i> might not rake it in like Soderbergh's mainstream efforts. But the hordes who queued up for the three Tribeca screenings indicate a collective interest in the gilded underbelly of Wall Street's good old days, when, as the director said "money became a national fetish." </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Porn is another national pastime (Soderbergh noted that Utah has the highest porn traffic rate in America) and Grey's stature in that industry will likely draw many one-handed keyboard tappers to the arthouse. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Will they be disappointed with the lack of onscreen sex in the movie? "I excel at undercutting expectations," Soderbergh shrugged. He hoped that people desensitized by Grey's graphic pornography would be jolted by the inverse, saying that "fantasy is what you can't have." </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">With money dried up and the elicit thrill of sex dimmed by accessibility, the confluence of the two in <i style="">The Girlfriend Experience </i>make it the ultimate post-crash fantasy. </p> Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-87143466040799976052009-05-05T13:04:00.000-07:002009-05-07T13:32:15.927-07:00Blank City<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 10"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cbilly%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="State"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceType"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceName"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="City"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"></o:smarttagtype><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} span.black {mso-style-name:black;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} </style> <![endif]--><o:p></o:p> <p class="MsoNormal">As downtown New York seems to teeter on the brink of a fresh set of “bad old days,” <span class="black">Celine Danhier’s compelling documentary,<i style=""> Blank City</i>,</span> reminds audiences that they might stand to gain as much from fiscal ruin as they do to lose. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><st1:place><st1:placename><span class="black"><i style="">
<br /></i></span></st1:placename></st1:place></p><p class="MsoNormal"><st1:place><st1:placename><span class="black"><i style="">Blank</i></span></st1:placename><span class="black"><i style=""> </i></span><st1:placetype><span class="black"><i style="">City</i></span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span class="black"> played at a Tribeca Film Festival screening in t</span>he now-trendified <st1:place><st1:placename>East</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Village</st1:placetype></st1:place>. But the young, French Danhier’s examination of <st1:state><st1:place>New York</st1:place></st1:state>’s No Wave cinema movement of the ‘70s and ‘80s conjures the neighborhood in burned-out tatters. Rents for floor-through lofts peaked at $300. Neighborhood streets were so desolate that movie shoots took place in broad daylight without permits or distracting passersby. Such alienation and constant fear (“Walking home at night felt like going to war,” is a constant refrain) produced a frenetic creative hotbed that prospered in since-shuttered outposts like Max’s Kansas City, CBGB’s and the New Cinema on St. Mark’s. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">No Wave filmmakers defied mainstream categorization (director Lydia Lunch: “I’m fine with the No Wave label, because the word ‘no’ is in it”). But they strived to elevate cheap 8mm and 16mm film stock above the esoteric film school ghetto to which those grainy formats had been confined. These were no-budget art films, but traditional narrative was key. Influences included Godard, Fellini, Antonioni and Cassavettes, brilliant filmmakers who, while outside the <st1:place>Hollywood</st1:place> mainstream, attracted the <i style="">New Yorker </i>raves and subsequent uptown crowds that the No Wave misfits ostensibly shunned. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">
<br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Blank City</i> showcases a dizzying array of avant-garde filmmakers. And while it’s gratifying to see so many underground artists gain exposure, the movie’s purview is almost <i style="">too</i> encyclopedic.<span style=""> </span>The impression is of a splinter group of artists who lived in the <st1:place><st1:placename>East</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Village</st1:placetype></st1:place> in the late ‘70s, all made edgy movies and all <i style="">hated </i>each other. There are petty squabbles and romantic soap operas (“I respect his talent, his art and his intelligence, but he didn’t even have to <i style="">say</i> anything for people to despise him” Lunch says of former flame Nick Zedd) but scant camaraderie. And the film’s segue from late-‘70s/early-‘80s No Wave (highlighting Amos Poe, Jim Jarmusch, Charlie Ahearn, Beth and Scott B, Eric Mitchell and others) to the shock-heavy Cinema of Transgression (Zedd, Richard Kern, Casandra Stark) of the Reagan years is flimsy. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Outward misanthropy be damned (Steve Buscemi, something of a No Wave muse, remembers his giddiness whenever he witnessed a reluctant half-smile from Zedd), many subjects (including, yes, <span style=""> </span>Zedd) emphasized that humor was key to the subgenre. No Wave was born of the desperation that living in a bombed out <st1:place><st1:placename>East</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Village</st1:placetype></st1:place> (“It looked like postwar <st1:city><st1:place>Dresden</st1:place></st1:city>!”) inspired. But it also rebelled against the self-important high art scene that was about to explode onto already-sanitized SoHo galleries and, God forbid, Park Avenue living rooms—at least until growing recognition inevitably diluted the genre’s scrappy charm. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">It’s possible that No Wave was a victim of its own success. Jean-Michel Basquiat, an emblem of the ‘80s <st1:state><st1:place>New York</st1:place></st1:state> art scene is eviscerated by his peers for, as Poe says “making money cool. I <i style="">still</i> hate him for that.” And Buschemi recounts his ambivalence about attending one friend’s film premiere uptown in <st1:city><st1:place>Chelsea</st1:place></st1:city>, “outside the art ghetto.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Parties weren’t made to last, of course, and <st1:place><st1:placename>Blank</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>City</st1:placetype></st1:place> attributes the death of scrappy No Wave cinema to all the usual external suspects: drugs, AIDS, gentrification, Reaganism and the recently deceased money culture it inspired. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">But <st1:place><st1:placename><i style="">Blank</i></st1:placename><i style=""> </i><st1:placetype><i style="">City</i></st1:placetype></st1:place> is no elegy. Several interviews were shot after the economic meltdown, and Poe for one is optimistic about the “power of ideas” finally fighting back against the “lying, murdering thugs” selling wars in the desert from <st1:state><st1:place>Washington</st1:place></st1:state> and intangible derivatives from Wall Street. Jarmusch echoes that thought with the documentary’s closing line: “Forget about the past; bring on the future!” </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-63637080991172200342009-03-26T13:45:00.001-07:002009-03-26T21:15:53.306-07:00Hunger<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6YgcQeTCSd9Oks32P_wUdLetiuz56M-Q76rW8McVydcRRlYfbVrbOhmoxmxEddrzMdlGetXdFbwkeOwt9mWURbt0PXinyilp5t1hu_cZpMycjfY7cR3NGYkMW_GxeLNwBuaGVjcNR_yg/s1600-h/hunger_xxl_01.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6YgcQeTCSd9Oks32P_wUdLetiuz56M-Q76rW8McVydcRRlYfbVrbOhmoxmxEddrzMdlGetXdFbwkeOwt9mWURbt0PXinyilp5t1hu_cZpMycjfY7cR3NGYkMW_GxeLNwBuaGVjcNR_yg/s320/hunger_xxl_01.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317712651115119954" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Hunger </i>is about the body, its waste and torments. Excrement smears the IRA inmates' walls in director Steve McQueen's debut film about the 1981 Irish hunger strike led by Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender). Piss is funneled under cellblock doors to flood the hall. Nightsticks rain down on naked flesh. Food is refused to the point of fatal emaciation. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">But McQueen bristled when an audience member at a recent IFC Center Q& A called it violent. "Show me a summer blockbuster whose death toll and wasted bullets <i style="">don't </i>outnumber <i style=""></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Hunger</i>'s," he reasoned. But <i style="">Hunger</i>'s unflinching portrayal of corporal punishment, self-inflicted or not, sears the retinas more than any comic book adaptation's could. It's a testament to McQueen that his debut film will likely force you to avert your eyes.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Such an aversion might make viewers complicit with the British government that McQueen renders through a grave, dismissive Margaret Thatcher voiceover. It's a fitting decision for the director who said the movie is "about the power of the mouth more than anything else. When nothing was going in, volumes were coming out," he explained.<span style=""> </span>Thatcher's interjections are the only times <i style="">Hunger</i> refers to the ethnic and religious struggles behind the IRA impriso</p><p class="MsoNormal">nments and hunger strike.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Shying away from the political, conflict initially revolves around guards and prisoners in Her Majesty's Prison Maze, and brutally so. Inmates are pushed, dragged and clubbed down the block's narrow halls, dunked in ice-cold water and anally probed during contraband searches. It's in one of these sequences that we first meet Sands. Beaten to a pulp, lying naked and supine with his glazed eyes staring at the camera, the audience wonders what further debasement could possibly await him.<br /></p><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 178px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqdAnq0s81tf5_slZHXXuCffASkcORfBb76E7R4nu8Z3121UBDtEgOF50sMaSoAfXvs264LFXerBID4yqY5PR2FcOfhiElTeDaaUgSSeMVgCuIg6exjGAfPVqBiZdhjrDrwDYUgPKCzI/s320/2008_hunger_004.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317716352065316626" /> <p class="MsoNormal">Physical abuse gives way to intellectual and spiritual debate in the film's crackling centerpiece. Sands summons a priest to announce his plans for the strike. Over twenty minutes (interrupted by only two cuts) the pair veers between the mundane ("Better than smoking the Bible, ay," the priest asks while Sands enjoys a rare tobacco cigarette instead of his usual substitute, a shredded page from the Book of Lamentations) and the profound.<span style=""> </span>Father Moran points out the futility of the plan and the damage, including Sands' son, it will leave in its wake, but stubborn Irish resolve prevails. "I don't think I'll be seeing you again, Bobby," he concedes.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">McQueen saves his most devastating work for the film's final third, which witnesses Bobby's prolonged disintegration. The director said he envisioned <i style="">Hunger</i> as a silent movie; this act is largely free of dialogue. Instead the viewer observes Bobby's oozing sores, protruding ribs and bloody bowel movements in blue-toned, almost clinical close-up. The intimate, sustained portrayal of Bobby's decline (he died after 66 days; ten fellow strikers followed) avoids fetishism only because of the profound context of dehumanization the films has established—witness a split screen shot of a lone guard sobbing as his peers partake in savage beatings for proof that degradation extends beyond the prisoners.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Hunger</i>'s bleak themes and solemn imagery, coupled with the director's video-artist background, distinguish it from standard cinematic fare.<span style=""> </span>But McQueen corrected an audience member at a recent IFC Center Q&A who called it "a work of art." "I want everyone to look at this as a feature film," he said. Veering between lyrical beauty (flashbacks of a young Bobby running through a meadow punctuate his deathbed scenes) and stark decay, <i style="">Hunger</i> qualifies as both.<br /></p>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-89594951010362484632009-03-15T20:29:00.001-07:002009-03-26T20:51:45.771-07:00Redux Reflux<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZa3-f1nZMhwDh_45qmIwqFGcwOktG0bnbMg_KjJEzAPcdV-w9Sc5T2lKUDA66Oqj3R9ONvjJNL4US4h1fG1yhAtMHWs-kYM7sYt0TtLHduj01FMXq7gBjEfX5xq8JQC4davGw8gqbH8o/s1600-h/Last.House.on.the.Left.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 215px; height: 249px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZa3-f1nZMhwDh_45qmIwqFGcwOktG0bnbMg_KjJEzAPcdV-w9Sc5T2lKUDA66Oqj3R9ONvjJNL4US4h1fG1yhAtMHWs-kYM7sYt0TtLHduj01FMXq7gBjEfX5xq8JQC4davGw8gqbH8o/s320/Last.House.on.the.Left.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316781327004465346" border="0" /></a><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">"To avoid fainting, keep repeating to yourself, 'It's only a movie…It's only a movie…It's only a movie.'" Such was </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Last House on the Left</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">'s marketing slogan upon its 1972 release.</span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It wasn't muc</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">h of an exaggeration. The British Board of Film Classification deemed the movie so disturbing that it did not allow its release until March of 2008. Critics were torn. The movie was borderline exploitation: two teenage girls head into the city for a rock concert and are abducted, raped and murdered by a Manson-like gang whose members coincidentally spend the night at the home of one victim's</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> parents. Murders revealed, mom and dad enact a revenge so violent (famously including a castration at the hands, or rather mouth, of the mother) it would be comical were it not for the film's low-budget grit and potent exploration of loss.</span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">A remake of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Last House on the Left </span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">was released last weekend. It is the latest in a long line of slasher remakes including </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Texas Chainsaw Massacre</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Amityville Horror</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The H</span></i></span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">itcher</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Prom Night</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> and last month's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Friday the 13</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">th</span></sup></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">. All of these movies retain the basic plots of their sources. But gone is the endearing rawness—sometimes edgy (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Texas Chainsaw</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">…_), sometimes campy (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Friday the 13</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">th</span></sup></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">)—that made them cult classics. In its place is a numbing big studio gloss even miniscule budgets can afford these days. These facsimiles also shy away from the nihilism that made the originals shocking. Leatherhead's killing sprees in the updated </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">TCM</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> stem from being called a retard. One of the teen victims in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Last House </span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">redux springs miraculously back to life at the end.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">No matter how watered down these remakes are, Hollywood churns them out because for all the red onscreen, they bring out the green. With the family friendly exception of Pixar movies, horror might be Hollywood's most consistently bankable genre. Budgets are razor-thin; the intended audiences indifferent to the critical lashings most slasher movies (deservedly) receive. The foolproof equation breeds laziness. Not all horror movies scrape the bottom of the barrel and continue to burrow through the floor beneath it.</span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">B</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">ut the worthwhile entries are poorly and tirelessly imitated to within an inch of the genre's life.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Texas Chainsaw Massacre</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Halloween </span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">ushered in the teen slasher genre in the '70s. Both</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">are classics, the former for its bleached, cinema-verite photography, gallows humor and Vietnam allegories and the latter for its elegantly composed shots, restrained pacing and chillingly effective score. (Neither shows much blood.) But the bargain basement knockoffs (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Prom Night</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Hills have Eyes</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Friday the 13</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">t</span></sup></i></span><span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">h</span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, the so-bad-it's-almost-good </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Sleepaway Camp</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">) and infernal sequels that followed made horror movies a laughing stock for all but the schlock-happiest Fangoria subscriber.</span></span></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBEUjzhdG_nBR0p1JNZJH9PhMzCg-5CIuUsmOGZ_ab2Jt2xv1lRdEAdEcNFHuecCGsmETx08ke_ab0OZ3IItO27gP25qzMyGzHzpAslqCHY5ds9f-08tQb2tgaQ_1uW5n6savcesHfHMU/s1600-h/142224__texas_chainsaw_l.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBEUjzhdG_nBR0p1JNZJH9PhMzCg-5CIuUsmOGZ_ab2Jt2xv1lRdEAdEcNFHuecCGsmETx08ke_ab0OZ3IItO27gP25qzMyGzHzpAslqCHY5ds9f-08tQb2tgaQ_1uW5n6savcesHfHMU/s320/142224__texas_chainsaw_l.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316780803025629138" border="0" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">With the exception of 1984's original </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">A Nightmare on Elm Street</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> (featur</span></span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">ing Freddy Krueger before he became a disfigured, utensil-handed Borscht Belt comic) mainstream horror did not regain respectability until </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Scream </span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">in 1996. That Wes Craven smash deftly mixed comedy and horror with a winking self-awareness of genre conventions. A slasher revival followed, but the post-modern irony shtick got old fast. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Scream</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> exposed, though hardly subverted, all the rules. By mimicking </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Scream</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, its sequels and too-clever-by-half imitators (the largely forgotten </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I Know What You Did Last Summer </span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Urban Legend</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> series) became just as formulaic as the hackwork their predecessor mocked.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Torture porn, critically maligned as it is, at least introduced a fresh slasher milieu. The rusty, industrial ascetic of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Saw </span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hostel</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> movies compliment their anonymous brutality. The victims are harshly unsympathetic, their sad fates even more transparent than in previous horror films. Sex always equals death in a slasher movie, but torture porn's methodical killings are more tactilely retributive than usual. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hostel</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">'s louts pay for hedonistic romps through depressed Eastern European backwaters with exacting amputations, their limbs and organs to be sold on the black market. The junkies whose halfway house becomes a deathtrap obstacle course in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Saw II</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> choose between instant death and a dip in a tub of hypodermic needles. And therein lies the problem with joyless, self-important torture porn: in punishing its victims for having fun, it doesn't let the audience have any.</span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Horror is in a rut. Queasy, embarassed nostalgia aside, there is little worthwhile about the recent rush of slasher remakes. The best horror movies are the unheralded ones. They introduce new villains and mythologies, fresh techniques (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Blair Witch Project'</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">s</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Dramamine-requiring handheld camera) and surprises (the zombies of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">28 Days Later</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> who run rather than hobble). Slasher fans are genuflecting at the altar of genre icons for now. But like Michael Meyers lurking in the shadows, there's got to be a new face of horror waiting to deliver audiences from the current spate of lazy retreads and into a fresh form of evil.</span></span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></p>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-84025449108209873352009-03-09T20:57:00.001-07:002009-03-15T20:36:33.458-07:00Every Upcoming Movie Will Now Be About the Recession<span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-family:Times;font-size:16;"><p style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Hollywood never needs excuses to revel in an imagined apocalypse. From </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Invasion of the Body Snatchers</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Night of the Living Dead</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> to</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Escape from New York</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">28 Days Later</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I Am Legend</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, few scenarios are mined more frequently than impending human eradication. And critics and audiences alike frequently impose deeper meanings on movies dealing with Earthly destruction, whether such allegories are intended by the filmmakers or not. The alien invasion flicks of the Cold War '50s represent pinko infiltration/insurrection and nuclear dread. George Romero's zombie movies comment on the civil rights struggles of the '60s (the original </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Night of the Living Dead</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">) and the mad consumerism that blossomed post-Vietnam (in the mall-set </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Dawn of the Dead</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">). Other entries in the genre are viewed as time capsule parables about subsequent zeitgeist panics: the crack epidemic and urban decay (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Escape</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">…), HIV/AIDS (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">28 Days Later</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">) and 9/11 (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">28 Days Later</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, again). </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">With America in the midst of another mass anxiety attack, prepare for a slew of reviews and Sunday Arts & Leisure feature pieces devoted to what will now be the theme of every successful movie released in the next nine months: The Great Recession of 2008- God Knows When. </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This year has already seen the release of three suddenly prescient movies. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Confessions of a Shopaholic</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, initially sold as a tween </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Sex and the City</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> (with Marc Jacobs and Ralph Lauren getting plum exposure in the trailer), rebranded itself as a movie about a shallow material girl who realizes the folly of her spendthrift ways (by working at a finance firm, no less). </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The International</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, a Clive Owen dud, is about a nefarious bank wiping out investor portfolios and dallying in political assassinations. And </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Watchmen</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> recreates the grimy New York of 1985 at the precise moment New Yorkers (or at least the city's journalists) are alternately dreading and exulting in the possible return of squeegee men and Times Square porn palaces. </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style=";"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Public Enemies</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> is the upcoming release best custom-fitted for the economic meltdown. Set in the Depression, it tells the story of bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and the FBI agent (Christian Bale) hot on his trail. Just as 1968's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Bonnie and Clyde</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> is a Great Depression period piece that nonetheless became emblematic of the '60s counterculture, expect </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Public Enemies</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> to acquire topical resonance, with many rooting for the assumed villain as he fights the good fight</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. Amelia</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, an Amelia Earhart biopic starring Hilary Swank, is another Depression-era movie coming out this year. The taglines ("Just as the markets crashed, Amelia took flight") and Captain Sully parallels will nauseate. (On the bright side, Hilary Swank, after a few disastrous turns as a sexpot, is back on fertile Oscar ground as a woman fighting her way into a man's world.)</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Two annihilation epics tread on more familiar, bombed out blockbuster territory this summer: Michael Bay's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">2012</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and McG's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Terminator Salvation</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. The Mayans and Nostradamus marked December 2012 as the date of end times--sure to be rendered deafeningly by Bay's CGI and sound editing. Inverting the not-too-distant future destruction scenario are </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Ice Age 3: The Age of the Dinosaurs</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Year One</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. Both movies are set in prehistoric olden times and offer a glimpse into the sort of hunter-gatherer lifestyle that the more pessimistic (and press hungry) economic doomsayers see as a logical endpoint to our societal regression. </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The flaw in declaring many of these imminent releases timely, or at least purposefully so, is the source material they grew out of. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Road</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> follows a father and son on a despairing, perilous journey through a landscape made barren by an unnamed cataclysm. Their experience might mirror that of people currently reviewing their 401K statements, but the movie is an adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel from the frothy days of 2006. And of course, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Terminator Salvation</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> emerges from an enduring blockbuster franchise that has spanned nearly four decades. </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Topicality is usually achieved by accident. It is possible to make a movie for the times in which it's released, but more likely that the times will make the movie. Maybe there's no collective psychic pull among moviegoers to flock to certain films at certain times after all. When </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Harry Potter</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Lord of the Rings</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> did gangbusters in the months following 9/11, some critics said audiences</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> facing murky real world conflicts</span></span><span style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> had responded to those neatly delineated cinematic battles between good and evil. Certain journalists viewed </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Dark Knight</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, with its themes of moral ambiguity, tough justice and invasive surveillance techniques, as a cathartic response to, if not defense of, the senescent Bush administration. </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">But maybe in these cases viewers were simply responding to engaging movies sown from already iconic entertainment sagas. </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It's tempting to declare a zeitgeist when one might not exist. Entertainment grows more fragmented by the day. When 10% of Americans see </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Dark Knight</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> on the big screen in the film's opening seventy-two hours, there is reason to cheer. Maybe Johnny Depp beats out mortgage woes and latent bank heist fantasies as the biggest draw of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Public Enemies</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. Maybe not. What's certain is that at a time when a $10 movie ticket is the costliest entertainment many people can afford, these movies will be packed, regardless of audience motive. </span></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span></span><br /></p></span>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-41494649934279121852009-03-02T18:02:00.001-08:002009-03-15T20:34:29.945-07:002 or 3 Things I Know About her<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv9lkB75NSe352Exf4VgZU1TENj9k-tqLBl-e2xTxeTMZSTCATVe5vhOg15AoWfD4mAePEkDh-YFj17Grjp-tbH-8OygxpdnqGor9GG74ZpizE3Y623EGfuO_xxBVwQpWlXZGyHV6Z8No/s1600-h/2ou3choses5sm.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 149px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv9lkB75NSe352Exf4VgZU1TENj9k-tqLBl-e2xTxeTMZSTCATVe5vhOg15AoWfD4mAePEkDh-YFj17Grjp-tbH-8OygxpdnqGor9GG74ZpizE3Y623EGfuO_xxBVwQpWlXZGyHV6Z8No/s200/2ou3choses5sm.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308777612684306594" border="0" /></a><div class="gmail_quote"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Freud argues that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but Jean-Luc Godard would disagree when it comes to a lit cigarette. How else to explain the prolonged close-up of a burning smoke in the director's <i>Two or Three Things I Know About Her</i>? Like the movie's other famed close shot—a cup of coffee reminiscent of the cosmos—the sequence turns the mundane into the profound.</span><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; letter-spacing: 0px;font-family:Times;font-size:16;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;font-family:Times;font-size:16px;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; letter-spacing: 0px;font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:16;">Godard's nominal plot follows a day in the life of Juliette </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">(Marina Vlady), a Parisian housewife wh<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">o moonlights as a prostitute. But by 1967 when this movie was released, the director was not concerned with narrative. This movie is about the dynamic between style and substance. </span><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; letter-spacing: 0px;font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:16;">"One might say that living in society today is almost like living in a vast comic strip," says the narrator (voiced by Godard). While the film's</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> lush Technicolor photography recalls a comic book, the weighty, occasionally soporific interior monologues (covering the Vietnam war, laundry detergent advertisements and everything in between) it frames will not be serialized by Marvel anytime soon. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Despite its title declaration of familiarity, <i>2 or 3 Things..</i>. ask<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">s questions. What is language? "Language is the house man lives in," says Juliette. That is not a decent definition of language in a film that practically drowns in it. Then again, the many words in t</span>his wordy film are circuitous; they pose rhetorical questions and offer vague declarations ("I was the world; the world was me," Maria recalls feeling during a recent trick) but seldom resolution. What of modernity? <i>2 or 3 Things... </i>does not tackle that subject in its dialogue, but it's a postmodern work that serves as a commentary on modernity's desta<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">bilizing influence. </span><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; letter-spacing: 0px;font-family:Times;font-size:16;"> </span></span></p></div><div class="gmail_quote"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Dubious progress is why the characters question language and art. It's why traditional family structures have collapsed to the point where a comfortable housewife drops her children off at a brothel's daycare center as she looks for johns. And it's why Godard's characters, despite retaining their own chic glamour, live far away from the quaint Rues of postcard Paris in monolithic apartment towers abutting construction cranes and freeways. </span><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; letter-spacing: 0px;font-family:Times;font-size:16;"> </span><br /></p><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 85px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKk94dEbTb3pVlmDcoJa9SDjzUAozNcdc8PpjIhclnzgTr9CgkqodkijkvyUPVObICVrat6J0mbHmdpLw2_lYJvlP1OWwitnBVmGtB66QMCNeJqmrR8usa_wRp6ovJoBSxIfgACr6BQWk/s200/choses2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308777362278449394" border="0" /> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>2 or 3 Things...</i> is a distillation of Godard's favorite themes: nationality, self, advertisin<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">g, color. A travel agency fronts as a whorehouse, its walls lined with splashy posters peddling a whole different sort of exotic product. Bangkok, India and Spain are sold through the sort of reductive imagery (a Buddhist temple, the Taj Mahal, a bullfighter) that promotes travel to this day. This is no less crude than the packaging of sex and flesh. A buffoonish American client wears a white t-shirt with the American flag emblazoned across it. He has his two hookers wear TWA and Pan Am luggage over their heads to avoid eye contact. Maria was mistaken in her earlier sexual reverie: people are products; products are people. </span><span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; letter-spacing: 0px;font-family:Times;font-size:16;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">With art, Godard says, "the style is the man; therefore art is the humanizing of forms." It's the human touches in this movie—the brief swelling of classical music, Juliette reading a bedtime story to her son—that make <i>2 or 3 Things.</i>.. more than a philosophy essay or advertisement itself. It's in these moments that the viewer remembers what Godard is defending. </span></p> </div>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-28420907836020785202009-02-10T14:47:00.000-08:002009-02-10T14:51:45.739-08:00The ClassIn Laurent Cantet's <em>The Class</em>, high school teacher Francois Marin (Francois Begaudeau) is shocked to learn that his students routinely leave the lower-class fringe environs of the 20th Arrondissement for the more glamorous precincts of central Paris. The movie does not follow them on these excursions, containing itself within the struggling public school it documents. This initially jars. Faculty introductions and rote grammar lessons dominate the first hour of <em>The Class</em>, which opens on the first day back from summer vacation. Francois teaches French to a group of “nice, but tough,” mostly immigrant students. He’s a delicate wisp of a man (and thus the froggiest of the bunch) perpetually struggling for control of his classroom. But the movie diffuses the tension inherent to the ghetto-high-school-in-peril genre with lessons on the imperfect subjunctive. Miraculously the audience does not stampede the box office for a refund, and instead settles into the rhythms of this affecting film.<br /><br />Here<em> </em>is the rare Issue movie that doesn’t feel like a public service announcement. To use a venerable maxim of high school writing classes it shows rather than tells. And what it shows is a mélange of diverse adolescent faces united only by their blemishes. These are teenagers rarely seen in American movies outside of Gus Van Sant’s inter-Oscar bait experimental offerings. The kids are roundly excellent, but sisters-in-sass Esmeralda (Esmerelda Quertani) and Khoumba (Rachel Regulier) stand out alongside sullen Souleyman (Frank Keita), shy Louise (Louise Grinberg) and ambitious Nassim (Nassim Amrabt). These descriptors sound reductive but <em>The Class</em> eschews the nerd-jock-princess-goth paradigms that have defined the best and worst high school movies since John Hughes established the template. Its characters are not two-dimensional ambassadors of their racial or ethnic backgrounds either, a pitfall of the multiculti genre. The students are empathetic because they cannot be distilled to a single ingredient. Insolent and indifferent one moment and reverentially engaged the next, <em>The Class</em>’ teens prove that an inconsistent character (particularly one suffering daily trig quizzes) is not necessarily a weak one.<br /><br />The most compelling scenes avoid schmaltz but still open tear ducts. A boy named Carl reads an essay on his likes (“helping my mom around the house”) and dislikes (“visiting my brother in jail”). An intelligent student’s parents beam when Francois praises their son despite a limited understanding of the French he speaks. Inarticulate Souleyman excels at a photo collage of his reticent mother, earning a rare commendation from Francois that leaves him in gleeful disbelief. Heartrending, perceptive scenes make <em>The Class</em> an anomaly: too grounded in reality too feel like typical entertainment and too emotionally potent to register as a documentary.<br /><br />If <em>The Class</em> makes one slight stumble it’s in the glacial exposition of the second hour’s dramatic conflict. Maybe the movie needed the sort of structure and suspense this dilemma provides (it involves a student’s potential expulsion) but it does not entirely jive with the first half’s freeform pleasures.<br /><br />While Cantet's import is about messy, xenophobic modern-day France, its take on education and growing up will resonate with most viewers. And its optimistic theme of immigrant ambition overcoming the odds is uniquely American.Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-74258138999633039802009-01-21T14:47:00.000-08:002009-01-21T14:57:58.619-08:00Oscar '09<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 13px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><!--StartFragment--> </p><p class="MsoNormal">The theme of this years Academy Awards is that there is no theme. Last year’s ceremony showcased a slew of violent, depressive takes on the American psyche, with <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">No Country for Old Men</span> proving a superior downer to <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">There Will Be Blood</span>. Martin Scorcese dominated 2007, basking in long-overdue Academy accolades for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Departed</span>. Past shows have been defined by individual blockbusters (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Forrest Gump</span>, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Titanic</span>, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Gladiator</span>) that left their edgier, critically adored counterparts (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Pulp Fiction</span>, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">LA Confidential</span>, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Traffic</span>) fighting for the scraps, often in the screenplay categories. All five best picture nominees in 1997 were independently financed, a momentary triumph for the indie movement that in retrospect was its death knell. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>But despite many favorites this year, the top awards will likely be scattered among several different movies that are diverse in narrative and production. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Slumdog Millionaire</span></span> is the frontrunner for the big prize. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Curious Case of Benjamin Button </span></span>(stars, schmaltz, vaguely edgy director) and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Milk</span></span> (Sean Penn, topicality, patting of liberal backs) are locks for nominations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Frost/Nixon</span> and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">The Dark Knight</span></span> are favorites for the remaining two slots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But I’m going to say that <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Gran Torino</span></span> will sneak in and upset Frost/Nixon. Frost has been an awards show also-ran and hasn’t generated the audience buzz or box-office scratch of the other nominations. Gran Torino has the Clint Eastwood pedigree and recently broke out as a surprise box-office champ in its wide release. This means a bigger audience for a ceremony whose recent ratings have been as anemic as its featured starlets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Apply the same box office argument on a much larger scale to The Dark Knight. At a time when increasingly small niche audiences are watching their movies on an ever-multiplying number of platforms, a well-received $525 million-generating cultural behemoth (and the awards campaign that money affords) is too big to ignore.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>As usual, the nominated directors will follow suit with Best Picture. Expect <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Ron Howard</span> to sneak in ahead of The Dark Knight’s Christopher Knight if Frost/Nixon indeed goes without a Picture nod.</o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Not much mystery here. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Mickey Rourke </span>(<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Wrestler</span>) and<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"> Sean Penn </span>(<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Milk</span>) lead the pack. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Gran Torino</span>’s <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Clint Eastwood</span> (in what he says is his last performance) and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Frank Langella</span> (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Frost/Nixon</span>) are locks. Brad Pitt is the presumed fifth nominee; his star power combined with Button’s epic scope and digital wizardry will likely result in a nod. But many reviews were lukewarm and he’ll probably show up at the ceremony regardless (see: ratings). If he’s snubbed, look for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Richard Jenkins</span> (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Visitor</span>) to take his place.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Anne Hathaway </span>(<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Rachel Getting Married</span>), <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Kate Winslet</span> (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road</span>) and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Meryl Streep (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Doubt</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">) </span>won’t be losing any sleep on nomination eve. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Kristen Scott Thomas</span> earned raves for her restrained turn in <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">I’ve Loved You So Long</span> and Winslet aside this year’s likely acting nominees are unusually light on the foreign thespians the Academy loves. Perceived wisdom suggests Angelina Jolie (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Changeling</span>) in the fifth slot. But there was grumbling in that movie’s initial reviews over her Oscar-baiting histrionics. That and what I feel and hope to be St. Brangelina fatigue will open the slot up to <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Sally Hawkins</span> (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Happy-Go-Lucky</span>), another Brit and an unknown (the Academy fawns over those too) in a very star-studded category.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>It’s all about <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Heath</span>. Despite rumblings of a backlash against the traveling eulogy parade, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Josh Brolin</span> (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Milk</span>), <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Robert Downey Jr. </span>(<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Tropic Thunder</span>) and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Phillip Seymour Hoffmann</span> (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Doubt</span>) will all wake up Thursday morning happy to be nominated and in no rush to write a speech. The fifth spot is about as open as any in the major categories: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">James Franco</span> (for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Milk</span>, which could double as a write-in vote for his great job in Pineapple Express), Tom Cruise (though two nominations for a comedy like Tropic Thunder would be pushing it), Dev Patel (someone in Slumdog has to get an acting nod, right?) and Michael Shannon (a standout handicapped by limited screen time in Revolutionary Road). I'll go with Franco for double-timing it. </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This category is a perennial question mark. Frontrunners are rare and out-of-the-blue winners (Marisa Tomei, Marcia Gay Harden) are frequent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Viola Davis </span>is the kind of relative unknown this category favors and her brief but potent performance in <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Doubt</span> could make her the leader of the pack.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"> Kate Winslet</span>’s a sure thing for a nomination, but <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Reader</span> lacks <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road</span>’s momentum and prestige. There is always a spot or two reserved at the Oscars for whatever Woody Allen movie came out that year, so <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Penelope Cruz</span> is a safe bet for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Vicky Cristina Barcelona</span>. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Tomei </span>will be up for it again for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Wrestler</span> (never underestimate the appeal of a hooker/stripper with a heart of a gold). I’ll give<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"> Debra Winger</span> the fifth slot for R<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">achel Getting Married</span>—as Mickey Rourke and countless others can attest, Hollywood loves embracing its prodigal sons and daughters. <br /></p> <!--EndFragment--> <p></p></span>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-55947483305354608152008-12-27T15:02:00.000-08:002008-12-27T15:04:11.090-08:00Wendy and Lucy<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">It’s the rare movie Q&A where the director has to contend with a dog. But such a canine intrusion can be tolerated when the mutt (Lucy) belongs to the director (Kelly Reichardt) and shares top billing in her latest film, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Wendy and Lucy</i>. Reichardt recently spoke with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Star</i> critic Marshall Fine at the Emelin Theater in Mamaroneck. And despite a rambunctious Lucy (“She’s clearly not trained”, Reichardt explained, making the dog’s finely calibrated “performance” all the more impressive), the director shed light on her critically-appraised (and suddenly topical) feature. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">W<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">endy and Lucy</i> is a minimalist movie. The barebones plot—girl (Wendy, played by a subtle Michelle Williams) loses dog (Lucy, starring as herself) on her trip north to Alaska—is unaccompanied by music and goes for long stretches without dialogue. Reichardt shot it in two weeks and hunkered down in her Queens apartment for six months of editing. But there is a warmth to the film that belies its precise production. Cinematographer Sam Levy bathes the woods outside of Portland in an amber glow. A nighttime scene with a group of runaway teenagers and their pierced, prematurely weathered faces illuminated only by a bonfire is particularly effective.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The friendship Lucy strikes with a security guard (Wally Dalton) is her lone (human) beacon; just about every other character she meets represents a roadblock.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Reichardt wanted to make a movie about people “without a net.” Wendy doesn’t have a family, education or savings account to fall back on. “You can’t get a job without a job; can’t get a house without a house,” says the guard.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>While these limitations can be tragic (the film was inspired by Hurricane Katrina and the brutal class divide it exposed), they also allow Wendy to fall off the grid in an America where it is increasingly difficult to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Reichardt explained that the Portland of the film is meant to look anonymous; its superstores stand as oases in massive parking lots just as they do in every other town.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The big box strip mall ennui of the modern road trip (what would Kerouac think?) compels Lucy to keep running toward an unknown future until she’s practically out of land. Wendy might be rootless, but is there anything out there worth being rooted down to? </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>It’s hard to ignore the relevance of a film with a broke, homeless heroine who just scrapes by on the quest for a better life. But Reichardt (who shot the film a year before the credit crisis left all of us couch-diving for nickels) shudders to think of her movies as soapboxes. The director omitted character exposition (an injury that left Wendy’s ankle in a brace is unexplained) and Psych 101 lecturing (“I’m going to say I didn’t hear that,” she responded to a question about the lack of maternal figures). <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>While unsentimental, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Wendy and Lucy</i> is affecting. Reichardt has empathy to spare—she spoke of the movie’s “gutter punk” transients like a worried mother—but does not romanticize Wendy’s struggle. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She has made a lean movie for lean times, refusing to prey on audience emotion. Even despite that adorable dog. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p></o:p></b></p>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-71521894756518372342008-12-11T15:27:00.000-08:002008-12-11T15:33:53.815-08:00Hey Mickey, what's my line?Mickey Rourke disappeared from the public eye years ago. And for a half hour, the packed house at the Times Center on December 8th thought he’d pulled a similar act on his talk with New York Times reporter Lynn Hirschberg and director Darren Aronofsky. But he eventually made an entrance in a pinstriped suit and purple John Lennon shades that he wore despite the dimmed auditorium setting. There’s serious Oscar buzz for Rourke’s turn as Randy “The Ram” Robinson in Aronofsky’s <em>The Wrestler</em>. Despite his bad boy image, Rourke wouldn’t blow this shot at career redemption with a missed appearance.<br /><br />Rourke all but shoved the moderator off the stage as he entertained the crowed with expletive-laden self-deprecation. But mostly Rourke offered effusive praise for the director who inspired what he called the best work of his roller coaster career. He’d never seen Aronofsky before they had a meeting in the Meatpacking District (“Uh-huh. I’ll always call it the Village.”). Despite Aronofsky pulling up on a green bicycle and wearing a yellow helmet, Rourke “could just tell he had a huge set of balls.” Initially reluctant to do a wrestling movie with a director “whose only exercise comes from buttoning his suit,” Rourke came to see him as “one of the greats who only come around every thirty years. To me, he’s the new Coppola.”<br /><br />He needed the help. The years Rourke spent boxing hindered rather than prepared him for the role. Boxers look down their disfigured noses at wrestlers. The broad, theatrical fighting moves of WWE matches are anathema to the hunched stances and quick, intricate jabs required of successful boxers.<br /><br />Six grueling months of training humbled him. His trainer, a former member of the Israeli army (who would “put that cap thing on” whenever they hit the gym during Shabbat) had to push him up and guide him down the stairs of his TriBeCa walkup. He bonded with the wrestlers he met and learned the business, for better (a backstage camaraderie that brightens the often bleak film) and worse (life-altering injuries, a dependence on “vitamins” that Rourke mentioned with a wink).<br /><br />Rourke has not seen <em>The Wrestler</em>. He won’t for “a few years” He never looks back on his movies until they’re long gone from the theaters since he only looks for their flaws. As Aronofsky said, “he is a man who is absolutely impossible to compliment.” The actor even tried to leave the stage when Hirschberg announced she would be showing a clip from the film. After the moderator shot him down (perhaps out of fear he would never return) he compromised by sticking his fingers in his ears and closing his eyes.<br /><br />Whatever confidence Rourke lacks in his performances has not changed the work ethic behind them. A graduate of New York’s Actor’s Studio, the <em>Times</em> called him “one of the few true method actors of today.” Aronofsky noted the rewarding challenge of such an understated actor playing a character whose trade demands hamming it up. “Anger is easy,” Rourke said of the Ram’s wrestling scenes and tempter tantrums. It was the longing and regret called for in scenes between Randy and his estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) that took an emotional toll. The actors met on camera. Aronofsky explained that “the daughter is a woman who only knows her celebrity father through imagery and that’s just how Evan knew of Mickey.” It’s the kind of authenticity that permeates the film and has made its star an awards season frontrunner.<br /><br />Whatever praise that Rourke continues to receiving on his comeback tour is unlikely to go to his head. A member of the audience recalled that Rourke had once said in an interview that he could teach anyone to act in fifteen minutes. “Sorry, I was all messed up when I said that,” he admitted. “I think had a court date the next morning.”Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-58343994127117884732008-12-04T15:03:00.000-08:002008-12-11T15:49:25.298-08:00City by the Fay<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN9hkCXgkBB_s-RSpRGwXb20YdUXw1zTkOPBjocqTgU3yYZx35FrtpqA7m43AapQ7vpXMg0klBoiq2fNAgnrx5DVBVP25Q_JMpUJZrtMxSHfbGFbJrD0_uYJiFmdHFLzhZiijuRbR0cTQ/s1600-h/milk2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278683348871908626" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 150px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN9hkCXgkBB_s-RSpRGwXb20YdUXw1zTkOPBjocqTgU3yYZx35FrtpqA7m43AapQ7vpXMg0klBoiq2fNAgnrx5DVBVP25Q_JMpUJZrtMxSHfbGFbJrD0_uYJiFmdHFLzhZiijuRbR0cTQ/s200/milk2.jpg" border="0" /></a>There’s a tension between the political and the personal in <em>Milk</em> that is shared by director Gus Van Sant and the man his compelling film brings to life. <em>Milk </em>begins in a New York subway station in 1970, with Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), a gay, closeted 40 year-old, picking up the cherubic Scott (and endearing James Franco). The pair head to the Castro, San Francisco’s burgeoning gay enclave. Milk has no plan, but quickly finds himself at the forefront of a revolution.<br /><br />San Francisco’s, and the Castro’s, place in the contemporary imagination make it hard to believe that just forty years ago, working-class old-timers made the city inhospitable towards gays. But Milk is surrounded by resistance and brutality that inspire him to start a movement in his modest camera storefront. He becomes the first openly gay man elected to major office. From there, he battles conservative foes on the national stage (Anita Bryant, orange juice spokeswoman-cum-Patron Saint of Bible Belt Bigotry) and municipal halls (family values champion Dan White, played with an effective mix of creepiness and vulnerability by Josh Brolin).<br /><br />Van Sant’s recent films have been restrained exercises in style (<em>Elephant</em>, <em>Gerry</em>, <em>Last Days</em>, <em>Paranoid Park</em>) that abandoned traditional narrative for sometimes gorgeous and sometimes ponderous lyricism. With <em>Milk</em> the director is tempered by three timeworn genres—the biopic, the docudrama and the Issue movie—that often mute their subjects, reducing them to textbook blurbs. <em>Milk </em>avoids this fate and provides an engaging portrait despite a first half that is too reliant on archival footage and Penn's gratuitous voiceover narration. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhspTVTkY3ZXA4FnLBniNXY3CBvel6GYWQuZV2U9ZiwR-RF9_W9QfZ8DKUz5nnwnZcCrYn3759XE43xyMvTY2dC4KfBV2oy3Xo7pbhI1T5roUMI8pxuOqSkP7donSxppfNK0MxCG9aw7xU/s1600-h/xin_2321104191712515270563.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278683562390179346" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 130px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhspTVTkY3ZXA4FnLBniNXY3CBvel6GYWQuZV2U9ZiwR-RF9_W9QfZ8DKUz5nnwnZcCrYn3759XE43xyMvTY2dC4KfBV2oy3Xo7pbhI1T5roUMI8pxuOqSkP7donSxppfNK0MxCG9aw7xU/s200/xin_2321104191712515270563.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The director’s occasional trademark flourishes (slow motion, freeze-frames, loooong tracking shots) distract in on an otherwise staid film, but solid, straightforward storytelling triumphs. Penn also dials down his usual histrionics in a subdued, poignant and at times funny performance—is Milk his first character since Jeff Spiccoli to have a sense of humor?<br /><br /><em>Milk</em>’s political insights comprise some of its most absorbing moments. But Van Sant does not spell out why Harvey Milk tirelessly threw himself into the machine. He was a successful politician, but not a natural. (He lost his first three bids for office.) He was well-liked (with a few glaring exceptions) but not above getting down and dirty and trading favors. But the big question is whether Milk’s political career owed a greater debt to a moral calling or sheer ambition.<br /><br />This dilemma makes Scott one of the film’s most intriguing characters. Milk could be swayed by a suicidal gay teenager calling from across the country. He mentions that three of his four boyfriends killed themselves rather than step out of the closet. There are emotional reasons for him to seek change. But Scott delivers an ultimatum: me or the campaign. And despite years of longing after the split, Milk lets him leave without an argument. It’s a testament to Franco that his performance elevates Scott above romantic lynchpin. What could have been a peripheral character winds up exposing Milk’s emotional handicap, putting a welcome/humanizing dent in the halo.<br /><br />Harvey Milk brought progress. But <em>Milk</em>’s closing credits remind the audience of the AIDS epidemic that shortly followed his death. And Proposition 6, the legislation proposed in the film that would prohibit gays from teaching in public schools, brings Proposition 8 to mind. Milk used to open speeches with the line “I want to recruit you.” Hopefully the film will do the same and usher in a new generation of change.</div>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-40339247442894085632008-11-30T20:33:00.000-08:002008-12-11T15:56:45.702-08:00Houston Street<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6IkMrKFVqWIBA8jRhioYT8Dp6lecF6NTlop3JV8IgDvFS8EPn_dLrQF3nPR7uaF8wZXr5mloSttL4SUSHS3eZxHltjpVyxvytQTJx5otpXlFKLPn2LuKyx2UgD_NGfBzZl1Emr_3NksE/s1600-h/7CA2QDWSCCACQS86QCAIYWD6CCAERGFD9CAH7BT3FCAGLEZ9TCAIMVPN0CAIVH30BCAZKTZ89CAYA39Q2CADO7TIOCAN9TY0BCAV3EU0JCAKVBINWCA70J5WGCARNHAC7CACN32RWCAAWKRK7CA3Z40FG.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278684107567422850" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 141px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 169px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6IkMrKFVqWIBA8jRhioYT8Dp6lecF6NTlop3JV8IgDvFS8EPn_dLrQF3nPR7uaF8wZXr5mloSttL4SUSHS3eZxHltjpVyxvytQTJx5otpXlFKLPn2LuKyx2UgD_NGfBzZl1Emr_3NksE/s200/7CA2QDWSCCACQS86QCAIYWD6CCAERGFD9CAH7BT3FCAGLEZ9TCAIMVPN0CAIVH30BCAZKTZ89CAYA39Q2CADO7TIOCAN9TY0BCAV3EU0JCAKVBINWCA70J5WGCARNHAC7CACN32RWCAAWKRK7CA3Z40FG.jpg" border="0" /></a>The recent closure of Avenue A’s Pioneer Theater set off another round of hand-wringing over the sorry state of indie film and the diminished audience appetite—even in New York!—for avant-garde cinema. The Pioneer is a major loss. Eccentric retrospectives focused exclusively on Luis Guzman flicks and 42nd Street Smut Films of the Late 70s. And it might be the only movie theater in the world to lay claim to both a Robert Altman Q&A and a recurring double bill of <em>Poultrygeist</em> and <em>Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie</em>. But there are still a number of venerable arthouse theaters that endure. And a number of them are located right along Houston Street, just a stone’s throw from the Pioneer’s old stomping grounds.<br /><br />The Landmark Sunshine (Houston between Eldridge and Christie) is a spiffy newcomer to the New York indie scene. It opened in a converted vaudeville theater in 2001. Landmark screens relatively mainstream independent movies (current options include <em>Synecdoche, New York</em> and <em>Happy-Go-Lucky</em>) for mind-bogglingly long runs. (<em>Man on Wire</em> has been there since July.) This theater stands out in the Houston Street crowd for remarkably tush-friendly stadium seats, perhaps explaining its frequent red-carpet premieres.<br /><br />Across Houston Street on 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street is the Anthology Film Archives. Founded in 1970, it has operated out of its distinctive brick home (a former courthouse) for thirty years, seemingly without a single cosmetic touchup. The theater emphasizes experimental (very) early cinema, shorts, foreign film and avant-garde work of the 60s and 70s. Recent repertories examined the New York vigilante genre, the Polish director Andrzej Wajda and contemporary Turkish cinema. Anthology sates the most obscure cinematic appetites. Chomping at the bit for <em>Paraguayan Hammock</em>, the 160 minute long movie about, well, little more than a Paraguayan hammock? Anthology is the place for you.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN_WoRStG11y3MBc5-kvdOU7W3Rj_gsF25U1mQtopySmt6Hoea79Vk18NA4DgFQuP3vm5zAVjuDvmtcuTPU4OVW5wJe4ScWZ7sSqeSZS_84dfJ6vYEQqD3UfgJ2MUSwWJW-4bFccQnKj0/s1600-h/dsc_01331.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278684402129119826" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 172px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN_WoRStG11y3MBc5-kvdOU7W3Rj_gsF25U1mQtopySmt6Hoea79Vk18NA4DgFQuP3vm5zAVjuDvmtcuTPU4OVW5wJe4ScWZ7sSqeSZS_84dfJ6vYEQqD3UfgJ2MUSwWJW-4bFccQnKj0/s200/dsc_01331.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />The Angelika (Houston and Mercer) opened in 1989 during the heady days of the American indie explosion. It’s defiantly 90s: a coffeehouse monopolizes the entire ground floor and its marquee makes it seem like a Miramax annex. These days the Angelika runs the most mainstream fare of the Houston crew and skips the retrospectives and midnight movies that set its peers apart from the multiplex herd. Still, the Angelika is an institution and a uniquely New York one—don’t fret over the shaking floor; it’s just the 6 train rumbling down below.<br /><br />In 2005, the IFC Center replaced the Waverly Theater on 6th Avenue just above Houston Street. The IFC runs shorts before all of its screenings—sometimes a blessing and sometimes a fate worse than Fandango commercials. Its slate of new movies consists of festival favorites that otherwise would not have seen the light of day. (This is New York’s House of Mumblecore.) The midnight movie is religion here—<em>Buffy: The Musical</em> and <em>El Topo</em> are perennial favorites. You can also count on the IFC reviving either a Lynch or a Bergman movie on any given weekend. Another Lynchian quirk: the concession stand serves a roast trademarked by the master of the surreal himself.<br /><br />Walk west down Houston and you’ll find Film Forum, the granddaddy of New York arthouses. As with actual granddaddy’s (which many of its patrons are), Film Forum’s programming can smell a little musty, but God you’ll miss it when it’s gone. Like the Met, this is where you go for the European masters: Godard, Truffaut, Fellini, Bergman. It’s not all repertory though; the theater was the first outside the festival circuit to screen <em>Lou Reed’s Berlin</em> and will soon run <em>Wendy and Lucy</em>, Kelly’s Reichardt’s hotly anticipated collaboration with Michelle Williams.<br /><br />Whether you’re looking for subtitles or sexploitation, animated shorts or Renoir marathons, the Houston Street crawl will likely deliver.Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-43598373974173154422008-11-21T10:51:00.000-08:002008-11-21T10:55:15.957-08:00Lifelines<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYbXrG3T6ULKBzcILdB6SkEuOTxtOGImtugWpkq6x12d2zLsI5qCjVb_pHuAUmIE7XDCmOJ4uvm7HQ9vjKMPWOWxK6rCuACchrEzFB8T-t9v8M9qhtHMUoL3Arif170p0FTSrpt3iGQeI/s1600-h/slumdogmillionaireposter.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271185782250446498" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 135px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYbXrG3T6ULKBzcILdB6SkEuOTxtOGImtugWpkq6x12d2zLsI5qCjVb_pHuAUmIE7XDCmOJ4uvm7HQ9vjKMPWOWxK6rCuACchrEzFB8T-t9v8M9qhtHMUoL3Arif170p0FTSrpt3iGQeI/s200/slumdogmillionaireposter.jpg" border="0" /></a>Danny Boyle has a flair for the apocalyptic. <em>Trainspotting</em>’s junkies famously dived into a scummy toilet for a hit. <em>28 Days Later</em> conjured an eerie, strangely beautiful London depopulated by all but rats and zombies. And the scientists in <em>Sunshine</em> were on a mission to blow up the sun to save an ailing earth. <em>Slumdog Millionaire</em>, the director’s latest, has plenty of misery to go around, but it’s wrapped up in a tidy (albeit clever) romantic bow that makes its characters’ tribulations feel a bit contrived. Still, Slumdog Millionaire is an unabashed epic and a compelling one at that, so viewers can forgive its genre conventions.<br /><br /><em>Slumdog Millionaire</em> has been described as Dickens transplanted to millennial Mumbai. Jamal is eighteen years old and about to hit the jackpot on <em>Who Wants to Be a Millionaire</em>. But he’s not after the money. Rather, he hopes that his performance wins over Natika, the girl of his dreams. Jamal’s life story (abject poverty and time spent in a seriously deranged “orphanage”) and his budding romance with Natika are related via flashbacks that explain how a lowly chaiwalla (tea server) knows answers that have stopped even the country’s upper-crust lawyers and doctors in their tracks.<br /><br />Boyle’s movies alternately revere and subvert or modernize tired genre tropes. <em>28 Days Later</em> was a zombie movie, but its zombies didn’t lumber; they hauled ass. <em>Slumdog Millionaire</em> alludes to Bollywood, India’s gargantuan and often garish movie industry, and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle employs the same vibrant color palette. But Boyle doesn’t shy away from the country’s underbelly. (Indian censors are expected to have a field day.) Audiences pulled in by Fox Searchlight’s sunny advertising campaign—“A buoyant hymn to life!”—will be shocked by much of the film’s violence and despair.<br /><br />The rags portion of this Horatio Alger tale is more compelling than the riches that Jamal and his malevolent brother Salim (a complex character well-played by Madhur Mittal) acquire. Their progress parallels Mumbai’s transformation into a modern, skyscraping metropolis where luxury glass towers replace filthy, destitute slums. (Jamal, in a funny bit, works at a call center.) Boyle takes an ambivalent view on the city’s evolution. Does it owe more to Jamal’s good-hearted pluck and fortunate destiny (“It is written”) or Salim’s criminal ruthlessness? In the end it is a composite of the two, but Boyle is more interested in the painful means that accompany such a metamorphosis than the end.<br /><br /><em>Slumdog Millionaire</em> has many joyous moments and such likeable characters that the audience winds up rooting for them. But you can’t help but think that Boyle is a bit hesitant about a happy ending.Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-30447833189376101452008-11-18T15:34:00.000-08:002008-11-30T20:43:50.624-08:00I've Loved You So Long<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal;font-size:100%;" ><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3DRq1BRtvd2AbhG3umKltYCATwvAQwgBRRNrNbx4GRGVt2Qh-pwNjZobIvjg13aBsCYa1ZxvZv0pOMFw4KDBxAc7Ye90v8OfMtQeUOyupJOIzRskd1LT6dRq3YmWgjrPL1BQQfAPnm8k/s1600-h/_12191850974683.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274677450966944482" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 134px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3DRq1BRtvd2AbhG3umKltYCATwvAQwgBRRNrNbx4GRGVt2Qh-pwNjZobIvjg13aBsCYa1ZxvZv0pOMFw4KDBxAc7Ye90v8OfMtQeUOyupJOIzRskd1LT6dRq3YmWgjrPL1BQQfAPnm8k/s200/_12191850974683.jpg" border="0" /></a></span><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal;font-size:100%;" >It’s been seven years and the French are still trying to live down <i>Amélie</i>. At least that’s what some of the country’s more successful recent imports suggest. <i>I’ve Loved You So Long</i> is the latest in a string of decidedly unsentimental Gallic films (<i>The Diving Bell and the Butterfly</i>, <i>2 Days in Paris</i>, <i>Dans Paris</i>, <i>Tell No One</i>) that serves as a corrective to the glossy, whimsical Parisian postcards American audiences consistently lap up.</span><br /><br /><div><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Kristen Scott Thomas plays Juliette Fontaine, a middle-aged woman fresh out of prison. She struggles to readjust to civilian life with the help of her altruistic sister Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) in the sort of high-ceilinged, tastefully appointed home only the French can muster. The movie is no charm offensive—bear in mind <i>Amélie</i> came out in the autumn of the Freedom Fry—but its insightful performances and intimacy compensate for the absence of boulangeries and <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:place><st1:placename>Eiffel</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Tower</st1:placetype></st1:place> shots. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p>Writer and director Philippe Claudel moves things along at a pace just above glacial, but that restraint is necessary to appreciate the depths of Thomas’ portrayal. Juliette is first shown in close-up, weary and sans makeup. Lea’s attempts at even the most diminutive small talk are met with painful indifference. Juliette can’t be bothered to ingratiate herself with Lea’s husband Luc (a convincingly hesitant Serge Hazanavicius) or warm to the couple’s adorable daughters. <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274677240470496818" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 134px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3m-B1BNAWW-VfcDBdT5a4TtKwPDvCgTUqvSpo2NUoTM6CBQheK6vaxveo8h0FeL8h-iXngFZy4ReKNY6V0WxxtXo-GSoawGVtR81Ujln1SM2ren8aBi0U4HdMmYX_G3bKa6QMEX_LtGc/s200/18893411.jpg" border="0" />But things gradually change: Juliette picks up a would-be Don Juan at a bar; she visits museums; enjoys swims with Lea and teaches her niece to play the piano. Claudel wisely avoids a lecture on the role prisons or a society play in rehabilitating its criminals. Juliette’s rebirth is inspired by culture, by an outward aesthetic that nonetheless penetrates. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>Juliette’s change is a moving thing to watch, but it’s undermined by a bit of manipulation from Claudel. The audience knows from early on that Juliette was doing time for the murder of her young son. But she is so fragile. Her progress is elegant. Her intelligent sister loves and nurtures her. Because we root for Juliette, we wait for the twist we know is coming.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>Some critics have said the reveal is a letdown, but <i>I’ve Loved You So Long </i>would not have benefited from a Shyamalian gotcha ending. It’s the structure that is a bit grating; the movie’s psychological depth would not have been compromised had the details of Juliette’s crime been known from the start. As it is, the dramatic ending seems histrionic compared to the subtlety that preceded it. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>Still, witnessing Juliette’s thaw makes up for the off-key denouement. There’s a moment when she enters the quiet, darkened house and fears she is once again alone. The relief and gratitude on her face when she finds her surrogate family says it all: she’s come home. <o:p></o:p></p></div>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-61003796835602483042008-11-14T09:05:00.000-08:002008-11-14T09:43:49.549-08:00F U TubeIt didn’t take long for The New York Times to move beyond conventional election analysis into the murky waters of the trend piece. But here it is, leading the first Sunday Styles section of the post-November 4th world: Generation O. “More 18-29-year-olds went to the polls this year than in any election since 1972…These younger voters…may forever be known as Generation O,” posits Damian Cave. Never mind that percentage-wise the youth turnout was not quite as a robust as had been predicted (and only a smidgen higher, at 52%, than in 2004 when John Kerry galvanized the young imagination).<br /><br />The Styles section has long prided itself on coining (or popularizing already antiquated) inane catchphrases—think metrosexual, drunkorexia, bromance, the man date. But its breathless coverage of this generational love affair ignores an ironic twist in the 2008 race: the internet, that great agent of the young, was just as important to John McCain’s stodgy campaign as it was to Obama’s slick machine. Only whereas the president elect harnessed the internet’s elusive power, McCain sat by as it led to his undoing.<br /><br />Grassroots was to the Obama campaign what maverick was to the McCain/Palin candidacy. The first-term Illinois senator was not supposed to win. He was up against the indomitable Clinton establishment and its reservoir of experience and deep pockets. But Obama and his people were clued in to the power of the internet in a way that stubbornly eluded older politicians. There were fundraising websites. Facebook groups. Emails and text messages seemingly from the candidate himself (convincing no more a discerning political pupil than Scarlet Johansson of a personal correspondence).<br /><br />Obama built an online community that realized the internet’s best potential. He created a savvy, coherent forum that met practical goals (spread the word; raise money, even incrementally) but also realized the loftier ambition of empowering (and flattering) his devotees. Hope and change are intangible. But the internet and its infinite tentacles made them seem within reach.<br /><br />John McCain did not steer the internet his way and the result was the inverse of Obama’s: a burlesque of disgruntled supporters tragically out of synch with their candidate. An elderly woman at a town hall meeting told McCain she could not trust Obama. Her reason, after a moment’ hesitation: “he’s an Arab.” When McCain mentioned his opponent’s name in speeches he was routinely meet with jeers of “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” A sheriff introducing Sarah Palin at a rally made sure to address the Democratic nominee by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. You can guess where he placed the emphasis. An Obama volunteer asked a crowd of Pennsylvania Republicans why his friend, under Palin’s policy, should have to pay for a rape kit. “She should pay double,” bellowed a man in the crowd.<br /><br />McCain hardly enabled this pettiness. He quickly removed the microphone from the elderly lady and clarified that Obama was “a good man. A family man.” (He did not clarify that Obama is a Christian, a seemingly gratuitous revision in light of earlier campaign controversies.) He winced at the caterwauling. But the damage was done. The internet is often lauded for its immediacy, but rarely for its permanence. Witnesses posted clips of these unfortunate incidents on the web, bloggers had a field day and millions of people sent them to the inboxes of family and friends. A picture emerged of a listless candidate surrounded by a lynch mob.<br /><br />The 2008 election was a modern one, but it exposed some dissonant, primitive truths about the internet. The web creates communities, but also encourages cliques. It enables universalism, but also preposterous niches. Facebook might unite you with a fellow stamp enthusiast, but the time spent ogling each other’s collections via online photo albums can potentially take you away from your family or that next door neighbor you’ve never met. And as McCain ruefully learned this year, the internet provides unparalleled access to information, but also occasional unwanted exposure to the noxious and loathsome (incessant penis enlargement spam being the proverbial, disconcertingly small tip of the iceberg). It wasn’t just the internet that did McCain in, but the subset of ignorant, bigoted McCain supporters that found their way on to the screen and at once appalled and appealed to the admittedly baser instincts of smug liberals and undecided voters alike. To borrow some internet lingo, the internet plagued the McCain campaign with a bad case of TMI.Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-18065478423417226872008-11-08T08:31:00.000-08:002008-11-14T09:15:18.075-08:00Let The Right One In<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-iw-EjFOaKK-gwmfVU8Da8Tx8Dzu0CfvfeEUHxGaRbrYAzcwf8PCpmudUemelDeLbaXlSrLnjTsSypv7dEizUNS3PfDs_ok9Duhh3LlEIShbeQ5V4wTg5jXvzWJVuDHX-WY9lihKTCbY/s1600-h/LettheRightOneIn.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5268562971608916050" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 147px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-iw-EjFOaKK-gwmfVU8Da8Tx8Dzu0CfvfeEUHxGaRbrYAzcwf8PCpmudUemelDeLbaXlSrLnjTsSypv7dEizUNS3PfDs_ok9Duhh3LlEIShbeQ5V4wTg5jXvzWJVuDHX-WY9lihKTCbY/s200/LettheRightOneIn.jpg" border="0" /></a>Sociologists take note: accidental exposure to Abba is no longer the greatest threat facing Sweden’s teenagers. For starters, there is the child murderer on the loose in Tomas <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Alfredson</span>’s <em>Let the Right One In</em>. The killer’s peculiar method of draining his victims’ blood serves an even higher evil: feeding his vampire daughter, Eli (Lina <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Leandersson</span>). Don’t dismiss the thriller as schlock with subtitles. <em>Let the Right One In</em> is a tender, gracefully shot coming of age tale with a slasher veneer. Its genre elements subside as Eli befriends <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Oskar</span> (Kare <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Hedebrant</span>), an outcast neighbor whose struggle with the local bullies is so extreme as to make bloodsucker company a relief.<br /><br />The running joke here is that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Oskar</span> suffers more acute isolation than his undead companion. Eli, forever twelve, has practical, immediate concerns (fresh blood, heavy curtains, impatiently waiting to be invited into homes she visits) and is spared the pubescent speed bumps (divorced parents, idiot teachers, schoolyard thugs) that confront frail <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Oskar</span>. The young vampiress meets <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Oskar</span> as he fantasizes about the revenge he might have on his tormentors and coaxes the same violent defense mechanisms out of him that she yearns to <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">suppress</span> in herself. But both child actors imbue their characters with a sweet vulnerability and longing that elicit the kind of audience empathy rarely found in horror films. A potent scene in which Eli makes an unbidden entrance into a sullen Oskar's home (and the searing aftermath) illuminates the emotional heft that the movie offers as an antidote to the usual featherweight character development in current horror cinema.<br /><br /><em>Let the Right One In</em>’s vampire story might serve as adolescent parable, but the movie respects its genre roots. The lighting is austere, alternating pitch black fright scenes with stark white, snowy landscapes. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Hoyte</span> Van <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Hoytema</span>’s cinematography eschews gruesome close-ups for elegant wide shots. And Johan <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Soderqvist</span>’s score spares viewers the cheap musical jolts that so often cue horror fans to jump in their sets. Still, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Alfredson</span> and writer John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Lindqvist</span> (upon whose novel the movie is based) do <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkIvJITh3abitn1DnAxYWlu66snAsmRkNg0FGCo-8RfFABIpu9uXmXk11XZjpifFq7eHItJtM8jYIq9Bjd-_BZ2hDAaEsCXC2lV-INhV9XZbUNtzY5GwbtNiVvU35FOsMikclC5GMrdcU/s1600-h/lettherightoneinpic.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266344961341331570" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 138px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkIvJITh3abitn1DnAxYWlu66snAsmRkNg0FGCo-8RfFABIpu9uXmXk11XZjpifFq7eHItJtM8jYIq9Bjd-_BZ2hDAaEsCXC2lV-INhV9XZbUNtzY5GwbtNiVvU35FOsMikclC5GMrdcU/s200/lettherightoneinpic.jpg" border="0" /></a>not take their film too seriously and include gleefully dark comic moments (particularly a school ice-skating trip gone fantastically awry) to lighten the somber mood.<br /><br />Things only fall apart in the final scene, a tacked on coda that spoils what would have been a subtle conclusion. <em>Let the Right One In</em> is a horror film with few scares, a black comedy with few outright laughs. What kept it ticking until its very end was the fragile bond between Eli and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Oskar</span> and the fortitude <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Oskar</span>’s supernatural friend inspired in him. But the movie ends not with a triumph of humanity but of the supernatural. It is a lame concession to genre norms, at its hoariest going so far as to hint at a sequel.Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-22652796942238806702008-11-02T15:34:00.000-08:002008-11-07T08:31:55.945-08:00Sulk Mania<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWZ7NBW-zI1nFcSqSWXSJ_7P20gSzhCwzAtC4-4pYeX6B1ZHr2YpsrqDc2fY31PrkCvuTXyt-AZUM_-fslnTGyKzqU1IqBtrcU0VFBfGcbxmQrgBYSyNAaWvTLnYUIO_NaXsVb9Eo3bgg/s1600-h/wrestler-aronofsky-promo-05.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5265953973415341826" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWZ7NBW-zI1nFcSqSWXSJ_7P20gSzhCwzAtC4-4pYeX6B1ZHr2YpsrqDc2fY31PrkCvuTXyt-AZUM_-fslnTGyKzqU1IqBtrcU0VFBfGcbxmQrgBYSyNAaWvTLnYUIO_NaXsVb9Eo3bgg/s320/wrestler-aronofsky-promo-05.jpg" border="0" /></a> Randy “The Ram” Robinson, the hulking over-the-hill <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">prizefighter</span> in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Wrestler, </i>is not the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">film</span>’s only player looking for redemption. Star Mickey Rourke and director Darren <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Aronofsky</span> also aim to revitalize their careers with the unassuming drama. Robinson’s floundering career in the ring has left his personal life a shambles; his estranged daughter Stephanie (Rachel Evan Wood) detests him and his only love interest is the reluctant stripper <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Cassidy</span> (Marisa <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Tomei</span>, in another role with a single digit costume budget). After a heart attack and failed attempts at stability with both women, Randy enters the fray one last time. But Rourke’s and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Aronofsky</span>’s naturalistic performance and direction suggest that neither career will burn out anytime soon.<br /><br /><div><p class="MsoNormal"><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Wrestler </i>is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Aronofsky</span>’s first feature to deal with human destruction working from the outside in. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Pi</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Requiem for a Dream</i> and the misguided <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Fountain</i> all examined the effects a ravaged mind could have on the body. But Randy’s punishment begins externally. It comes in the gruesome, hard-to-watch form of body slams, folding chairs and staple guns. Fans that had to turn away from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Requiem</i>’s close-ups of track marks and plunging hypodermic needles: you have been warned. Fittingly for a movie about the physical, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Wrestler </i>is the least cerebral of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Aronosfky</span>’s films in tone and production values. Robert <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Siegel</span>’s dialogue is restrained and straightforward, its more emotive moments tersely distilled to their cores. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Maryse</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Alberti</span>’s cinematography provides a bleached palette to match Randy’s weariness and the film’s forlorn Jersey Shore setting. And gone are the flashy editing techniques—split screens! Time jumping! <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Hyperkinetic</span> montages!—that defined <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Aronofsky</span>’s earlier efforts.</o:p></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-iM-hLC49VZi29Umsf8bt4IgWtMjsjynTsvb61rrYTCHLsAh-MqMqiyao5JRM8XSX4dPh_mwEZFt882x_9z_oVI76qAhcXGkB-PmfqXpeAiSFVqH6q92rcZCq5COOUn-63Q8rYlSvuRI/s1600-h/WrestlerNYFF.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5265953127942061266" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 112px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-iM-hLC49VZi29Umsf8bt4IgWtMjsjynTsvb61rrYTCHLsAh-MqMqiyao5JRM8XSX4dPh_mwEZFt882x_9z_oVI76qAhcXGkB-PmfqXpeAiSFVqH6q92rcZCq5COOUn-63Q8rYlSvuRI/s200/WrestlerNYFF.jpg" border="0" /></a> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Fountain, </i>despite its intellectual and visual ambitions, flummoxed many critics and alienated all but <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Aronofsky</span>’s most avid fans with its muddled time travel story arc. Ann <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Hornaday</span> called it an “earnest, magnificent wreck” in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Washington Post</i>. Carina <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Chocano</span> of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Los Angeles Times</i> was less kind, saying that enduring it was “a pretty decent case for euthanasia; here is what it’s like to long for a swift, merciful end.” With <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Wrestler</i>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Aronofsky</span> and Rourke (no stranger to career frustration himself and, by the weathered looks of him, a man who could identify with the Ram’s pathological self-abuse) find success by scaling back their ambitions. Rourke withdraws further and further into himself over the course of the film. At its conclusion he is an empty shell, spurned by the two women who were his last hopes. “That’s the only place they love me. Out there,” he says of the ring—displayed here as more of a fraternity than a deathtrap—before his ill-advised final brawl. And so he flings himself back into the embrace of the community that had lost faith in him. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Aronofsky</span> and Rourke have done the same and famously forgiving Hollywood is sure to provide a warm welcome back. </o:p></p></div>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-5236157781405403312008-10-25T17:31:00.000-07:002008-11-02T15:39:08.855-08:00"The Roaches Wave Hello"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3MayRWW09ICOmgAP73IJDkf7MMy_cRJDC55TYuRNKKMJ37isa9_RjFZCLPadWqmm8uGQICyBc1utws6W8xODkLSEcF0C693CSUSf6pKUUjLWeSvqpWj763GacsTe6T_AXwa22YPoyV0U/s1600-h/2395271483_d2846c83e6.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261254361558158738" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 134px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3MayRWW09ICOmgAP73IJDkf7MMy_cRJDC55TYuRNKKMJ37isa9_RjFZCLPadWqmm8uGQICyBc1utws6W8xODkLSEcF0C693CSUSf6pKUUjLWeSvqpWj763GacsTe6T_AXwa22YPoyV0U/s200/2395271483_d2846c83e6.jpg" border="0" /></a> Mars Bar does not blend. Its exterior is caked in evolving neon murals and graffiti, “Dive In” scrawled above the glorious dive bar’s rickety front door. But its outward brazenness betrays a dark, dank inside whose patrons want nothing more than anonymous bender. Recently, both sides have taken a hit. The Mars Bars windows have been cleaned. Timid passersby can finally look in and the customers, reluctantly, can see out.<br /><div><br />A series of Avalon luxury buildings have enveloped Mars Bar’s block in a cloak of hasti<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixCC4U9TLLWOKU2CHkFY9y2rwRWkLT4RlRHY-OeAQjta7b6hwE4f_t-NHEGlfvwZ2OJW1l0U_PQEKOxFJ3k80PDy9fUIrFkC8aN-W45zUrZvFT33Wn3CvazTmStvHs6ugg6YG9sLuHvwY/s1600-h/2395270005_9cc1622525.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261254583895933170" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 134px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixCC4U9TLLWOKU2CHkFY9y2rwRWkLT4RlRHY-OeAQjta7b6hwE4f_t-NHEGlfvwZ2OJW1l0U_PQEKOxFJ3k80PDy9fUIrFkC8aN-W45zUrZvFT33Wn3CvazTmStvHs6ugg6YG9sLuHvwY/s200/2395270005_9cc1622525.jpg" border="0" /></a>ly constructed glass mediocrity. Down the street you’ll find Blue and Gold, a high priced boutique imported to the East Village from East Hampton, the neighborhood’s spiritual antithesis despite the shared geographic moniker. Also on the block is Bowery Wine Company, co-owned by Bruce Willis (who honed his chops as a restaurateur with the highly regarded Planet Hollywood franchise) and easily among the most generic bars an unlucky soul might stumble upon in Manhattan. Across Houston is a behemoth Whole Foods store, saved from complete yuppie oblivion only by the marvelous, cheap beer store at its northeastern corner. True, Mars Bar does have a neighbor in debauchery with The Cock (nee The Hole), the notoriously louche cesspool of a gay bar just an eightball’s throw away. But gone are the days when Mars Bar was the rule of the area and not the exception to it.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtq5N8PfRujCXgDsDig2cx951ZNWR6OKeyWjHqRiU89bpt8wfdQZTdKifotpujyOvYwXaZicHPMuF6RDdjkxCiYY-h_1-7cICYXp2CbUG2vKKbI_fLj6IgSIKV4FWES_Q_HpxLZXqwACg/s1600-h/58196556_DSCN0423Edit.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261254884166774962" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 133px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtq5N8PfRujCXgDsDig2cx951ZNWR6OKeyWjHqRiU89bpt8wfdQZTdKifotpujyOvYwXaZicHPMuF6RDdjkxCiYY-h_1-7cICYXp2CbUG2vKKbI_fLj6IgSIKV4FWES_Q_HpxLZXqwACg/s200/58196556_DSCN0423Edit.jpg" border="0" /></a>As one of the ever-dwindling holdouts of the East Village’s CBGB heyday, any sign of a Mars Bar cleanup or, heaven forbid, renovation is greeted with consternation by it grizzled, stumbling clientele. Rex, the Dee Snyder look-alike who does not appear to have left the bar in eleven years, says the cops (who have busted into the place on the few occasions I’ve found myself there past New York’s 4am closing time) have it in for the joint. But with a set of customers like Rex, Crazy Dave (thrown out of the bar an average of twice a day) and Handsome Eddie (whose Lazy Boy chair occupies a corner), you can rest assured that one of New York’s great bastions of sleaze and grime will not go gently into that good night. Where would East Villagers drink when the sun comes up if it did?</div>Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819630055550352008.post-8089662771374302282008-10-24T11:28:00.000-07:002008-10-24T11:40:47.617-07:00George Washington<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid31zsTdt2D4pGCJSajpSf1oKaGGW12FvSPQrzs66p5xmxVQkRDV1Jg25IRRzRnmkh6oWyNf9Lo7sVaq73SD_lCew8n91eyy0P-LH4LxrTCgNl0d70MwORZKCYyXPxW-r6VQ2b_mFyL64/s1600-h/george-washington.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5260790876925762946" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 140px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid31zsTdt2D4pGCJSajpSf1oKaGGW12FvSPQrzs66p5xmxVQkRDV1Jg25IRRzRnmkh6oWyNf9Lo7sVaq73SD_lCew8n91eyy0P-LH4LxrTCgNl0d70MwORZKCYyXPxW-r6VQ2b_mFyL64/s200/george-washington.jpg" border="0" /></a> “He just wanted greatness.” That’s how Nasia (Candace Evaofski) describes her friend George (Donald Holden) in David Gordon Greene’s <em>George Washington</em>. The same could be said for the wunderkind director himself, just 25 when he made the ambitious, lyrical film. George Washington depicts one summer in the lives of impoverished youths in a decayed North Carolina town. Tragedy and triumph bookend the season and catapult the protagonists into complicated, compromised adulthood.<br /><br />Greene flaunts his influences. The film is uncannily reminiscent of Terrance Malick’s masterful <em>Days of Heaven</em>. This means lush cinematography (by Tim Orr) of pastoral landscapes threatened by (and dependent on) modern industrialism. Evaofski’s stirring voiceover narration, packed with plainspoken childhood wisdom (“The grown-ups in my town, they were never kids like me and my friends. They had worked in wars and build machines.”) also recalls Malick. But unlike Malick’s seemingly effortless beauties, Greene’s film, while an ascetic delight, occasionally falters under the weight of its artistic flourishes.<br /><br />Editors Steven Gonzales and Zene Baker’s provide an elliptical structure that compliments the film’s dreamy tone, but negates Greene’s naturalistic dialogue and simple plot. Moments of ethereal grace—George visiting his friend’s burial place (“No one will bother you here”), Nasia telling George, “I hope you live forever” — rub against stalled narrative asides and Orr’s overdependence on slow-motion.<br /><br /><em>George Washington</em> suggests a literary horror film. Characters are challenged by their own mortality. “I’m not a very good person. I didn’t feel anything,” says Sonya (Rachael Hardy) after witnessing a friend’s death. Viewers will not say the same of Green’s fitfully transcendent debut. Thankfully, the young director is unlikely to face his own mortality any time soon.Billyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05037388493851865915noreply@blogger.com0