The kabouters have good taste

So, here I am, on the bus, scrolling down on my iPod, intending to listen to the new Nellie McKay songs I downloaded. Suddenly, I see "Midlake" between the bands, and I think, huh, that doesn't sound familiar. Neither does the album title "Trials of Van Occupanther". Nor any of the 6 (count 'em: six) songs I have. I seach my memory. I haven't done much downloading lately. I can't remember reading a review. Nobody has sent me songs lately. And I am fairly sure Larry (just to avoid misunderstanding, that's who I'm typing on right now) isn't cheating on me.

As you might know, curiosity is one of my many vices. So of course I listen. And you know what? It pretty much blows me away.

There's only one explanation. Pixies. Or elves. Fairies. Midgets. Leprechauns. Or some other fictional creatures who exist only if you believe in them. To be honest, I don't much care which ones. As long as they promise to enrich my iPod again.

H.

Also: recent additions to my DVD collection:
- Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (Volver had me thinking Penelope Cruz was the ultimate woman, but Jeanne Moreau made me reconsider)
- All About Eve (How can films you know will be amazingly awesome still blow you away? I never understood the fascination with Bette Davis until now. Now thinking there might be some flaw in the idea that all women are poor shadows of just one idea. There HAVE to be at least six)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (I haven't rewatched it yet, but I loved it the one time I saw it)
- The Passenger (Never seen. Will let you know what I think when I do)

6 words

I will/might be trying to hit 50.000 words again from the 9th of November onwards (yes, nanowrimo has already started. However, I have midterms), but let us not forget some of the most brilliant fiction takes only 6 words. Joss Whedon's is, of course, one of the best.

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I like them better tortured

I just finished watching episode 4 of the new BBC Jane Eyre series. And, first things first, I loved it. It manages to be thrillingly romantic without having a too modernised Jane, all but the first episodes made me cry, and all in all I agree with most of the deviations from the book, especially how they handled the tricky scene from the book in which Rochester dresses up as an old fortuneteller gypsy. I also thought the casting was note perfect: Ruth Wilson is sensuous and passionate yet also believable as a literal "plain jane", and Rochester, well, Rochester, he might have been just a touch too pretty but he was burly and gruff enough to make up for it. Enough for me to get my panties in a bunch, in any case.

But let's talk about those panties. See, I think I have a small problem. I loved the early scenes of him drawing her out. I loved the scenes in which she is so obviously clueless to his intentions, misinterpreting everything he says. The proposal scene: wonderful. The wedding preparations and short span of hopeful bliss? Interesting only because I knew what was coming.

Same thing afterwards. The flashback scenes in episode four of Rochester trying to tempt Jane to stay? Almost unbearably sexy. Yet everything after they find each other again, especially the final scene with Rochester with a baby in his arms and a beatific smile on his face? Somehow disappointing.

Ok, ok, I should say something positive: thank God they left the miraculous recovery of sight out, something that always bothered me in the book. But my criticism is, in fact, not so much a criticism of the book or the series, but more a problem I'm discovering with myself. I'm generally a happy kind of person. Glass half-full, rather than half-empty. I mean, I might not be looking for a long-term relationship at the moment, but I'm sure at some point it'll be nice. So why do I like my romances better doomed?

It's not just me of course. Just look at the list of favorite romance books and films. Romeo and Juliet. Yeah, I hope I'm not spoiling this for anyone, but they kinda end up dead. Tristan and Isolde: it depends on the versions, but basically same thing. Want to go further back? Take Pyramus and Thisbe. More modern? Take Love Story. An Affair to Remember. Titanic. Brokeback Mountain.

So yeah, then someone can raise a finger, and annoyingly, say, what about Eliza and Mr. Darcy? What about Harry and Sally? And, ehm, didn't Jane Eyre, at the end, write "Reader, I married him"?

Ok, so yes, back to me. What makes me a Bronteite rather than and Austenite, to put it that way (and to make sure I am, I am currently downloading the 1939 version of Wuthering Heights)? Make no mistake, I like Jane Austen, admire her wit and clear eye for social interactions, but in the end, I'm less drawn in. I think Elisabeth Bennet is a wonderful character, one I would personally be like much more than I would want to resemble Jane Eyre, who is, in the end, just a little too puranitanical (in other words, I probably would not have been able to, or even wanted to, resist living in sin with Mr. Rochester all that much). But the gothic world in which Jane Eyre lives seems so much more alive than Austen's world, which seems to consist solely of social visits that last for months. So much more thrilling.

In my dreams tonight, I'll be walking the wild marches. I'll (hopefully) meet a man with dark, wild eyes. But does that have to mean I'll never be happy calm and peaceful with a nice guy?

"Avond van het Liefdeslied"

Lyrics are often mistaken for poetry. Only rarely is a good poet also a good songwriter, and only rarely to lyrics stand up as poetry when read out (a rare example of a succesful double-tasker, and the only one I can think of, is the great Leonard Cohen). So what happens if you ask 13 poets and 13 pop musicians to collaborate in pairs and make 13 love songs?

Apparently, 13 love affairs.

Tonight on Dutch television, the "Night of the Love Song", showed the results, and as can be expected with these projects, it was a mixed bag. Some songs were perfect, others interesting but not quite succesful, and other pretty but rather bland. But in every case, it was clear that soulmates had been found. Hafid Bouazza declared he wouldn't mind sharia to be instituted right now so he could marry all three lovely belgian singers of "Lais" who hauntingly brought his poem to life. Ilja Leonard Pfeiffer (who managed to be both awesomely cool and utterly, heartbreakingly adorable) was so inspired he considered writing a book of poetry titled "songs for Ellen", and I for one would not mind if he did, since his collaboration with Ellen ten Damme was, as far as I am concerned, the most perfectly crafted and satisfying song of the night. Hagar Peters could not take her hungry eyes off Martin Buitenhuis (of "de Dijk"), and Erik-Jan Harmens did not even try to hide his crush on fiery-haired Roos(beef).

Maybe it's inevitable, when collaborating on a love song, to fall at least a little bit in love. It wasn't limited to same-sex pairs either (or compatible sexual orientations). It did however, seem to go mainly from the poets to their interpreters. I wonder why.

In any case, it was nice for once to break from narrative (although make no mistake, I am still addicted to storytelling) and to sit back to enjoy just aesthetics for once. To be reminded of how beautiful Afrikaans sounds. To discover the voice of Frederique Spigt. And of course, last but not least, to see a 62 year old man in a cap be happy as a little boy performing with a rap band.

For a great WTF moment...

...check www.ryan-adams.com




Also: the song that currently fits my mood best consists of Norwegian guys singing in french...Kings of Convenience - Parr a Pluie

Furthermore: Marcello Mastroianni is/was currently my kind of sexy. Some guys should always wear glasses.

What's more: Veronica Mars starts kicking butt again tomorrow. W00t!

And did you know that I also sometimes still manage to enjoy physics in my free time?


Finally: I'm in a random mood. Can you tell?

Heroes = freaking awesome

And my addiction to scripted TV continues...

I'll elaborate later, but suffice to say it's the closest any TV show has come to a comic book. There's a lot of total crap in it (but then again, you know, radioactive spider bites don't scientifically lead to spidermen either), and I hope they'll insert a little more humor lately, but it's visceral, it drags you along, and it's wonderfully grounded in common myths.

I cannot wait

Viva Pedro

So, here's to bucking the trend that all things 'net should be new

The Films of Pedro Almodovar

Volver is opening in a few weeks here. Until then, this article, and in the style of Mainly Movies, my "sidebar" on Pedro (and yes, I am aware I have seen shamefully few)

Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios: B+
Todo Sobre Mi Madre: A
Hable Con Ella: A-
La Mala Educacion: A

The Daily Show: scientifically proven to be poisoning our youth?

Supergirl

All reluctance to make this a personal blog aside, I think this shout-out is justified: I'm DONE! As in, finally, I've finished my last assignments, and while I still need to get most of my grades and officially graduate and all that, I think I can already claim to be a Bachelor of Science. I think a W00t is in order.

Somehow, being this close to the end of yet another stage, I've been flashing back a lot to the end of the last one: high school. It probably contributes too that my little sister is in the middle of her final exams of high school now. Or that I keep running into things that were a big part of my life then. Cultural things, I mean.

It started when, as a part of his top 5 "Movies about America", Adam of Cinecast (soon to be rechristened filmspotting) listed, at number 4, "Pleasantville". Now, while Adam is absolutely right in saying that Gary Ross "never met a metaphor he didn't want to beat into the ground", this is one of the movies that made me love movies, this is one of the first movies that I wanted to see more than once to unpack all its layers. It's also a movie that I'm afraid I might have become a little "sophisticated" to love as unconditionally now.

Then, this morning, the song "Supergirl" by Reamonn was played on the radio, and all of a sudden I was in a bad teen movie, dancing in my bright yellow skivvies and T-shirt (yes, I wear brightly colored underwear. Usually pyjama pants too, but at that particular moment I was halfway through getting dressed), or rather making un-coordinated weird movements with a silly smile on my face, admittedly much less graceful, pretty and skinny than the girls who usually do this in movies, but dancing nonetheless. This song I hummed to myself continuously throughout my last year of high school, like a mantra, and hearing it again was both weird and exhilarating.

So yeah, no real point to this post....but I definitely feel like I supergirl! And supergirls just fly.

H.

Question of the day: Can a book and a movie be redeemed by the totally hilarious pans they inspire?

Why Charlie Kaufman is us

Glad to know plan B can work out - telling stories with Sufjan

Looking forward to: Brick (no NL release date yet, unfortunately)

Stuff I learned: even Nobel prize winners sometimes to switch their phones off
Listening to: Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
Thinking about writing about: Pleasantville
Not enthusiastic about: unexpected shower visitors
Wants to read: about one of the men who fascinate me most

From the vault: What should I read next?

Unrelated comment: 1 down, 4 to go. 1 more week until being DONE.

The Eccentrics

Armond White has a very interesting piece up at slate about the group of filmmakers he calls "the Eccentrics", prompted by Wes Anderson's brilliant AmEx ad. The filmmakers he labels as such are:

• Wes Anderson
• Spike Jonze
• P.T. Anderson
• David O Russell
• Alexander Payne
• Sofia Coppola

Now, I don't have any issues particularly with this list, although I think Sofia Coppola's inclusion is still up for debate, at least until I see Marie-Antoinette (luckily coming out soon already, the 8th of June I believe). It's not that I don't like her: I love Lost in Translation, and while I've only seen parts of the Virgin Suicides, I love the book and still want to see the whole thing. She just seems a little less ideosynchratic, cramming less strange details into her frames, keeping her themes more clearly separate, and maybe most importantly she invests her characters with psychological realism. I can understand why she'd on the list, though: like the others, she takes a long time to make a film, and like many of the others, she pays a lot of attention to which (pop) music she uses.

So, what about these eccentrics? White's point seems to be mostly that they take their time with their movies, out of perfectionism perhaps, but that this doesn't make for perfect films perse. He puts it quite critically: "It seems that the Eccentrics' own egotistical indolence has resulted in self-imposed limits to their skills". He contrasts them in this respect to another group, the "entertainment specialists", a list which I'm afraid I have more issues with. The names:

• Quentin Tarantino
• M.Night Shyamalan
• Bryan Singer
• Michael Bay
• Brett Ratner
• John Moore

First of all, according to White's own criteria, Quentin Tarantino is definitely an eccentric, and not someone who "turn(s) out updated genre vehicles as if on schedule". True, Tarantino's sensibilities are less "indie", less quirky than the others, but he definitely takes his time on every movie, and he also definitely ponders over every single detail, every single element of the frame, and, obviously, every single song. Second of all, I really have trouble lumping in Bryan Singer, who's shown to be able to see into the blockbuster genre and make it both more fun and more interesting, with the lover of explosions Michael Bay and utter studio hack Brett Ratner (I dread to find out what he did with the X-men...).

Finally, I really take issue with the suggestion that what these guys (Tarantino excluded) do, filming movie after movie, playing with genres, is better somehow, more satisfying than what the eccentrics do. I agree with White that for example "the Life Aquatic" was far from perfect: yes, it was clunky in parts, the pirate thing didn't work at all, the tone was uneven, but it also had moments of pure cinematic genius in it, and I think those are the result of the maybe slow development. Maybe these perfect details need time to grow, to ripen. In any case, I doubt whether working faster and smoother, and therefore necessarily with less attention to detail, will improve the films of not only Anderson but also Russell (I {heart} huckabees was a mess, but some parts were inspired, transporting even) and PTA (though admittedly Magnolia was overlong). In fact, I think it would flatten them instead, and there are enough flat films out there already. Enough Michael Bay's, in any case.

Another filmmaker that White mentions is Spielberg, as a professional, fast worker "whose ideas and reflexes keep flowing" because he gets the opportunity - from his financial success- to jump from style to style and from theme to theme. I think Spielberg is actually the perfect counterexample to White's argument that the Eccentrics should stop being "precious" and just work faster and more. There is no doubt that Spielberg is an extrordinary filmmaker, with more talent for suspense and storytelling than maybe any other living director, a craftsman who could direct and action scene in his sleep and still make it rivetting. Lately though, his films have been burdened by more than just his obsession with absent father and overbearing mothers, by more than just his sentimental impulses. Lately, his movies have started to be less interesting, to me at least, because the jumping from theme to theme means that every one of his movies has just one main theme, usually quite a simple one, and this removes all possible depth.

Take any Wes Anderson movie, any movie by Russell or PTA or Payne or even Coppola, and they're not just filled with visual details but also all kinds of thematic excursions. Yes, Anderson's movies talk mostly about dysfunction (surrogate) families, but also about success, love and jealousy, creative ambition, etc. Payne's "Sideways", while pretty straightforward on the surface, was allowed to meander a little bit. Spike Jonze's Adaptation took on all kinds of things.
"The Terminal" or "War of the Worlds"? Not so much. Munich restricted itself to even a single message, and one not as wise or enlightened as it apparently thought it was: "An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind", well, yeah, we knew that. (Just as an aside, I greatly admire Spielberg's refusal to take a side in this film, when both sides are angry at you you're doing something right, but I just didn't think the film was all that interesting. Plus, it had MAJOR perspective issues). I'll still go see any new Spielberg movie because he is so good at making things compelling, because he knows better than anyone how movies work (although he apparently still doesn't get that happy endings can just be wrong, and even if he's apparently still uncomfortable with sex scenes), but I'm more interested when I hear about a new Wes Anderson or Sofia Coppola or Tarantino project, because I know that while it will probably be flawed, it will be fascinating.

It's unfortunate, of course, that we have to wait so long every time, but I think it's rather worth the wait. I'm still waiting for the new Dave Eggers too, after all. Meanwhile, we can just watch the AmEx ad over and over again.

H.

Westerbork, May 3rd 2006

Finally, summer is truly upon us: the heat lingers now after the sun is gone, especially in my room with its huge windows facing south, the heat stifling but still so new that it doesn't bother me much: it makes my skin sticky and salty, and I've rarely felt more bloated, but I can't be made to mind. The nice thing about sunny weather is that whatever your doing it feels like it's the break: in between writing this, browsing the facebook - the University of Utrecht was recently added, which means I finally stopped pretending that I'm still at UCLA - and listening to the new music I downloaded in order to find my summer sound (so far, "Stadium Arcadium" seems a worthy candidate, but I also recently discovered a scottish band called "My Latest Novel", a Scottish band which could offer some serious competition), I am in fact working on the physics paper on neutrino oscillations that's due tomorrow, but without any sense of urgency: this warmth slows everything down, even time, it seems. Doesn't it affect quality, slow down the brain as well? It probably does: the creative writing portfolio I handed in earlier today wasn't one of my proudest achievements, especially not the short story that was supposed to be its crowning piece, but as I said before, things like that stop feeling like they matter. It's over now, it's done, and I'm free to revert to my tendency to write overlong sentences filled with asides and comments between brackets.

This was never a personal blog, and despite what the above might suggest, I don't really mean to make it one. I still don't think my life is very interesting to anyone who doesn't know me, I often think it's not even interesting to those who do. The reason my blog sorta, well, died was that I stopped thinking my opinions were very interesting to anyone either. That, and taking five courses -four of them science, three of those on the highest level- left little time for watching movies and discovering new music. I failed to keep my "movies seen in 2006" list up to date, but I wouldn't have had many to add, a dozen at most. A short list of those I remember right now:

• Walk the Line: Nice performances, nice music, but ultimately too long and not very interesting
• Capote: Riveting, fantastic, mind-blowing. I expected to find this a good movie, but I didn't expect I would be so involved by it
• Mar Adentro: Beautiful and much less manipulative that I had expected. Still, not a movie I'll probably watch again, I'm not sure there will be much to find in a second viewing and I never look forward to watching a movie that I know will make me cry.
• The Squid and the Whale: Funny, sharp. Ultimately not entirely satisfying.
• The Opposite of Sex: Glad I finally saw it, and I definitely laughed. It feels very dated already though.

Two lines for every movie, and I already bore myself. I suppose it's always a back and forth, especially for me: I have periods in which the arts fascinate me and in which I can blab on for ages about every single aspect and every tiny detail of movies, books, songs, but currently I can't find anything interesting to say, while I could - if my friends let me, which they usually don't- talk on and on about things like, well, neutrino oscillations (the paper is already over 5000 words, and there are a dozen more things I want to say, not to mention all the things I still want to understand better). Don't worry, I won't start about them here, but I suppose I felt like I needed to offer some explanation for why I've neglected this blog so badly. And the poor Boomerang, of course. Last semester my ambitions took flight, but now I realize I'm definitely not fit to be a journalist: I need to be able to write consistently, and not give up anytime I cannot find an interesting angle.

That's exactly why this post exists, despite the lack of a purpose you might have detected. Any purpose aside from light procrastination, that is. I'm going to write here again, try, at least, and hope that inspiration will follow. Waiting for it to come to take the lead certainly didn't work. I hope this will.

H.

WARNING: blog re-animation attempt starting soon

I really need to see more movies of his

"If something freaked me out, it wouldn't mean that I would be less likely to do it. I'd be more likely to do it. I think that is what the artistic compulsion is, that you don't accept reality as it's presented to you, either socially or even physically. You're always wanting to know what's really going on, so you're going into the ceiling, you're going into the walls, you're digging under the floor. You don't feel as if you've necessarily gotten the real version of life on earth and the human condition, as it's presented officially by human society, or by art. So you're constantly looking for that....

[Y]ou're looking for those moments where things go wrong; usually when things go wrong is when you see how they're put together. You don't bother about the engineering of your car until something goes wrong. Then you want to know how it works. Not to be too mechanistic about it, but that to me is the impulse.

I don't really think of myself as someone who's driven to push things to the edge. I just seem to be naturally drawn to those things. I just think it's a very common artistic impulse to do that. If you're talking about censorship, and what things should be shown and what things shouldn't be shown, I've said that as an artist you have no social responsibility whatsoever. Once again, it's a willing amnesia. You have to forget for the moment what the effect of what you're doing might be, or what the revelations that you come up with might suggest, or what the implications of them are. Of course, no artist works in a vacuum, you're working in a social context ultimately. So you have to balance those things. You have to deal with the consequences of what you've done.

It's so easy to destroy yourself by being responsible -- what I mean is that an artist who's worried about being politically correct, to me, is dead as an artist. And on censorship, the ultimate triumph of any totalitarian state has always been to create the internalization of censorship, so that the state doesn't even have to worry about it. The citizens are so self-censored that they have reduced themselves to impotence. It's very easy to do that, even in a place that's not a totalitarian state, but that has gentle, right-minded political movements. You could make a case that the origins of political correctness have a certain validity, but if you incorporate that into your nervous system, and that is there when you're trying to create art, you're finished. "

David Cronenberg (via GreenCine via Jim Emerson)

There are no words...

Twitch

Have you picked a fight today?

Discovery of the week

A friend asked me earlier today, just as a part of conversation, what we (the other people at the table) had discovered in the previous week, movies, shows, book, lines, etc. Unorginal copier that I am, I conceived this wild plan to implement this as a weekly blog feature. In other words, it's here now, might be here next week again, and after that, well, Insya'Allah.

My discovery of (last)(the) week? Imogen Heap . Not my usual kind of music, true. I tend to go for the more acoustic, singer-songwriter, and - to quote someone else with a somewhat, shall we say, different appreciation of music - "boring" artists, with admittedly the occasional foray into the more electronic (Air, Portishead), oddball (Sufjan Stevens, the Fiery Furnaces) and orchestral (Rufus Wainwright) realms.

Imogen Heap is a little different. I can't find a better description for her music than "Goldfrappy", but you know what, I had a Goldfrapp period some time ago, and I think this is just the right time for an Imogen Heap period. See, I'm trying this new thing called "discipline" (don't worry, it's already starting to wear off) and most of my music is either too distracting or well, unsuited because its combination with physics equations is a powerful soporific.

Energetic music, then, is what I need, but as I have a strong aversion to dud-dud-dub beats and too overcheery girly voices, the right energetic music can be hard to find. This works perfectly. What also does is the new Belle & Sebastian album, "The life pursuit". It's surprisingly dancy, more so even than "Dear Catastrophe Waitress", without losing the great lyrics.

Had I thought of it at the time, my discovery of the week might also have been the following brilliant exchange from last week's Gilmore Girls, which I hereby shamelessly copy-paste from Jess' blog:

(Lorelai is stealthily attempting to put a leash on her dog)
Sookie: What are you doing?
Lorelai: Uh, he freaks out if he sees his leash. You have to make sure you hide it from him, make sure he doesn't see you putting it on him.
Sookie: How is he once he's on the leash?
Lorelai: Oh, he's totally fine having his personal freedom slowly stripped away, as long as he's completely unaware that it's happening. Just like a true American.

Don't worry, I won't turn this into a political blog (Bush-bashing, as justified as it usually is, gets boring after a while), but I just have to mention this here: on the case of the Danish cartoons, George dear (or his spokesperson, anyway), defender of freedom and crusader in the name of personal liberty, has stated that the cartoons were unacceptable. Insert disturbing lack of shock.

Stay tuned for next week's discovery of the week, or something...

H.

Back at last

I've been more or less on break for the past four weeks now. You'd think that would allow me to update my blog more rather than less often, but as you might have noticed, the opposite was true. My meager explanation? Breaks tend to suck all creativity out of me, leaving me rather like a depressed zombie. Somehow I seem to need some bustle, some energy around me to write. I hereby apologise to my non-existant readers for my absence. The good news? The new semester is starting in two days, and I expect the two posts I just made won't be the only ones.

H.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

When I review a film, even when I simply think about a film, in the end I come back to one basic question: did the film work for me, or didn’t it. A History of Violence worked for me on all levels, and got to look even better the more I thought of it. Serenity worked for me after the “how could he do that!” shock, because what he did was shocking and hurtful but in the end absolutely fucking brilliant. Broken Flowers and Le Temps Qui Reste did not “work” for me entirely, and neither did Munich. Most of Spielberg’s body of work doesn’t work for me, as a matter of fact, but more on that and Munich later.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by Agent K himself, Tommy Lee Jones, worked for me, and to judge by the applause at the end of it, it worked for many people. It’s not a film that will probably become anyone’s favorite movie of all time, it’s not really extraordinary in any way, but everything in it just feels right.

The first half is told non-linearly, jumping back and forth in time, but it is always clear where we are in the story, and the pace is so leisurely that it never feels in the least confused. The basic gist: Melquiades Estrada, an illegal mexican vaquero, is friends with Pete (played by Tommy Lee Jones, who got the acting prize for this in Cannes and who is fascinatingly vulnerable). Melquiades accidentally gets shot by an aggressive new border patrol guy, who hides it. The local police finds out, but chooses to cover it up; Pete finds out and decides to take matters into his own hands, in the linear second half abducting Mike, the border patrol guy (played by Barry Pepper) to give Melquiades a final burial in his homeland.

Tommy Lee Jones apparently object to this be calling a Western. On the one hand I understand, because in a way the word Western implies themes of vengeance, violence, men’s men, black and white thinking, the thrill of shoot-outs and all that. This film has much more texture than the average Western, I’ll admit, but I don’t think of the word as being pejorative, and for me it has to do more with grand vistas, characters who say little but feel much, and of course with the wildness and unpredictableness of border towns, and if you see these as the fundamental elements of Westerns, then the term fits the film perfectly.

It is hard to say what makes the difference between a film that works and one that doesn’t. Here, so many things could have gone wrong. The parts with the corpse could have been too absurd, too gross, too ridiculous (there was much laughter in those sequences, but I think it stemmed mostly from discomfort), but they manage to stay just within the bounds. Barry Pepper’s character was almost too despicable, but he was luckily given some redeeming moments too. The ending could have been a let-down, but was pitch-perfect. The entire film could have been cheap sadism, and it is very sadistic at some points, but the film rarely (in fact, only really at one particular moment) lets you enjoy seeing vengeance exacted, lets you cheer, and the true sadness of Tommy Lee Jones’ character keeps things grounded. The enotional core of the film, the friendship between these two men, is set up in just a few short sequences, but it is crucial to elevating this film above your average revenge fantasy.

Les Amants Reguliers

Both The Dreamers and Les Amants Réguliers take place in Paris, at least partly in 1968. Both films star Louis Garrel (who, by the way, is dreamy, though googling for pictures of him reveals a somewhat misguided choice of hairstyles). So, going into Les Amants Réguliers, I expected something roughly like The Dreamers.

There’s a pretty good chain of DVD stores in the Netherlands called “DVD Valley”, good in great part because they sort their films by genre, and not alphabetically. Two of the genres they have are “Arthouse” and “Arthouse light”. The Dreamers definitely fits under the arthouse light category, despite all the full frontal nudity. Les Amants Réguliers? Far out in the hardcore arthouse field. And you know what? I kinda really liked it. To put it more precisely: it reminded me of what film can do, reminded me that indie films aren’t just be about a slower pace or quirkier characters, but that true arthouse films can be an entirely different experience from traditional narrative film.

This is a black and white film with barely the outline of a plot which nonetheless manages to be three hours long, with long almost static takes in which little happens, only scatterings any background music in the first half, and characters with no clear personality traits. I understand entirely if it sounds like torture to sit through it.

The film gets to the Paris riots pretty soon, long before it gets to any part involving lovers, in any case. Molotov cocktails and police charges. Sounds exciting? Not really. There is only extremely long take showing people throwing Molotov cocktail after the other at a burning car, with a few people in the foreground with helmets on watching impassively, a girl with a similar helmet kissing a guy, the main character crouching on the ground, standing up, crouching again. They move a car, throw it on its side as a barricade.

This sequence is crucial in the film, I believe, because it allows you to let go. It was during this passage that I stopped trying to make sense of things, look for the usual signs of narrative, stopped registering everything so precisely. It’s when I stopped watching the film to much and just let myself be carried away. And I love that, especially in the cinema, just letting you forget yourself for a moment (and I’ll admit, in one very slow passage, close my eyes for a few seconds). It’s why I loved La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, though this film was far from Fellini’s level, the individual passages much less fascinating, the artistic vision much less clear, and, to be honest, the characters a little generic. Interchangeable, even, at points. Despite these failings, the film took me somewhere else for a few hours, somewhere a lot less glamorous than I like imagining it, but in a way that I had somehow managed to forget existed.

A new crop

So, there's this guy, let's call him Klaas ('cause that's his name). He kinda rocks. I know I shouldn't be so shallow as to say people rock primarily because they buy me gifts, but these gifts warrant the epithet.

See, I went into town with him today. And well, I had to show him my favorite DVD-store, of course (the "Boudisque"). How that turned into a Hedwig-in-the-candystore-with-wide-eyes-and-a-sponsor I honestly don't know. An early birthday present, let's call it.

I kind of feel like I have to defend my first pick, "The Dreamers". Yes, it's kind of lacking a plot. Yes, it's muddled thematically. Yes, it is "minor Bertolucci" (I've been listening to Cinecast too much...)

I guess I like it because of my strange sense of nostalgia for 1968. Paris in '68 specifically. I really don't know where it comes from. I have the privilege of hindsight, after all, I can see that the whole revolutionary spirit didn't really lead to all that much good. I can't see the whole "free love" thing as innocent knowing AIDS would come along barely a decade later. Still, the idea of a revolution led by students, sparked by the firing of the director of a movie shrine, of a revolution against conventionality and the illusion of happiness appeals to me a great deal. Maybe that's also why I love "No Direction Home" so much. It tracks the period just before, smells the storm coming. Anything that will give me a taste of what it was like to be there, in that movement in that period, I haste to absorp, hoping to catch a whiff of that mood. The film doesn't show that much of the revolution that never happened, not until the end, but even with the characters firmly ensconced in their apartment for most of the film, it feels like it could not have taken place anywhere else, nor for that matter at a different moment in time.

There are other things to appreciate about "the Dreamers" besides the '68 ambiance, of course. Louis Garrel for example (although, I'll grant I understand that many will drool over Eva Green instead). I really do have a weakness for cute frenchies. This Louis (the son of French director Philippe Garrel, incidentally), he's all sharp lines and brooding eyes and well, I think I'll stop here before my schoolgirlish whimpering gets the best of me. What is it with the French and gorgeous dark brooding types anyway? In Le Temps Qui Reste, the first thing my mom said after the lights went up was a comment on how hot Melvil Poupaud was. And I'll readily admit to having a thing for Romain Duris ("De Battre mon Coeur s'est arrêté", "Arsène Lupin", "L'auberge espagnolle" and its sequel). And did I mention there's a lot of nudity, both male and female, in this film?

Aside from appreciators of physical beauty, this film should delight any film lover who knows his classics. All three main characters in this film are movie nuts, and in their games they replay a number of iconic scenes, not to mention have debates about Keater vs. Chaplin. They even mimic the scene from Bande à Part (a film which, regretably, I have not seen yet) where they run through the Louvre. The joy of filmmaking, the fanboy nature of Bertolucci, even, speaks from this movie. Doesn't that compensate for minor details like not really having a plot?

The second DVD I picked was one I almost bought two months ago already, and the last copy they had left of it. A classic set in post-war Vienna, starring a secret kinda crush of mine...Yep, "The Third Man", and well, its the star is of course not Joseph Cotten, but Orson Welles.

This was one of the first real classics, b&w classics I mean, that I saw. I might even have seen it before Casablanca. I haven't seen it since, and I'm really curious how it will hold up to my memory, but then I loved it. The music. The setting. The fabulous shots, too, the shadows in the sewer. The cynical attitude.

Most of all, I was blown away by the final scene. If I recall correctly (and I might not, but if so you can expect a neat correction soon when I watch it again) Joseph Cotten is standing, leaning on his car maybe, close to the camera at the left side of the frame. We can see the main female character in the distance, walking towards us. And walking, the music playing jauntily, for what I remember as being ten minutes, but which probably lasted only 2 or 3 minutes. And then, when she reaches the first plane, walking to the right and straight out of the frame. The end.

It was a revelation to me. So, you could do this? Just like that? And you could make it last this long? I might be distorting this in my memory, but I truly believe this was one of the films that made me appreciate all that cinema could be and do. I still have these discoveries sometimes, when I saw "Sunset Boulevard" for the first time last spring, and this was one of the first ones.

The third movie (it was a three for 25 deal) is one I haven't seen yet, so you can breathe more easily, this post won't go on much longer. It's "Habla Con Ella". My mom loved it and I usually find Almodovar films interesting at the very least, so it seemed like a good bet. Also, I don't want to watch films I've already seen and liked. Expect it to pop up on the "seen in 2006" list soon.

H.

This looks like it could be fun

The Star Wars franchise has definitely lost its appeal to me now, the wonderful storytelling and sense of adventure of the first trilogy (or well, actually mostly of "A New Hope" and "The Empire Strikes Back") spoiled by the melodrama and stale dialogue of the new one, but it looks like this might capture the sense of wonder I never got to experience 'cause I wasn't born yet in 1977.

Truth is, I can barely remember the first time I saw Star Wars. In black and white, I know that, we had the wrong kind of VCR for the tape. Might even have been dubbed in French. What I do still remember is that we watched those tapes over and over again. It wasn't until I saw them again, quite a bit later and with many more films under my belt, that I realised how truly brilliant they were.

You know, that feeling how you sometimes wish you'd never even heard about the Matrix Reloaded and the Matrix Revolutions, because after that the first film was never as great again? It's not quite as intense with the Star Wars prequels because light-saber fights stay cool (what? You didn't know I was a geek by now?), because there's an epic, immortal quality to the primal story being told, and because Ewan McGregor gives a pretty amazing perfomance as a badly acting Alec Guiness. Still. Somehow the name "Star Wars" is not really awe-inspiring any more.

I agree with the T-shirt.

Movies seen in 2006

To be updated regularly of course. The format is: Title (Director, year of release) Date Seen [code]
Films I saw before will be preceded by a *. The codes are the same ones I used for "My Year in Movies" and can be found below. A permanent link will be in the menu on the right soon. I'll list the new films above the older ones. If the name is a link, it links to a review on this blog. I considered giving grades, but thought the better of it. Grading is hard, always arbitrary, and it really is unable to convey on which level I did or didn't like a movie. Enjoy!

• *Sous le Sable (Francois Ozon, 2000) 29/01 [t]
  
• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005) 28/01
  
• Les Amants reguliers (Philippe Garrel, 2005) 28/01
• Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe, 2005) 26/01 [c]
  
• Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005) 22/01
  
• Hoodwinked (Edwards & Edwards, 2005) 19/01 (?) [c]
• Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962) 10/01 - 13/01 [d]
  
• *The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) 07/01 [d]
  
• King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005) 02/01
• Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) 01/01 [d]

[c]: downloaded
[d]: DVD
[t]: TV
else: seen in the cinema

2006

Happy New Year!

It's all about Willie

When I first heard that Tim Burton was going to make a new film adaptation of Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", with Johnny Depp as Willie Wonka, I thought this I gotta see. Not only did I love all three previous collaborations between the two (Ed Wood especially), but Tim Burton's quirky imagination, sense of the gothic and affinity for outsides and weirdos seemed perfectly suited to the book, and aside from the fact that I'll see anything with Johnny Depp in it, I was interested in what he'd do with the character.

Somehow though, between reviews that complained his Willie Wonka was too much like Michael Jackson, others that called the movie just plain unsatisfying, and being in France at the time of its release, I managed not to see it. Until yesterday, that is, when I found out that sometimes you should just ignore reviews and go with your gut instinct, because this film is a near-perfect visualisation of the book.

I think what's different between me and say, MaryAnn Johanssen on this count, is that I had read the book about twenty times by the time I saw the 1971 version, and that, to be honest, I didn't really like that movie. Gene Wilder was pretty ok, alright, I'll admit, he was a good Willie Wonka, but the rest? It was just too different from the book, and I didn't see the point of what they added. To MaryAnn, however, the 1971 movie is the benchmark, and I can see why this movie could disappoint if you were expecting a retread of that film: it forgets that film ever existed, and goes back to the book. While watching, my family and I agreed that somehow it felt like we'd seen it before, and this has nothing to do with the 1971 film (I think I'm the only one who has seen it) but everything with how visual the book already was, and how closely the film sticks to it.

I think what makes Roald Dahl and Tim Burton fit so well together here is their sense of exaggeration. They know that sometimes things need to be over-the-top to be truthful. Dahl's bratty kids were so awful they could barely exist, and their punishments grotesque, but the conceit worked because of this. Like the chocolate factory in the title, everything was oversize, the imagination taking just one step further than you would have expected, and Burton understands this like no other. The house the Buckets live in is not just crooked, it's leaning over so far it's a wonder it hasn't falled over, and even the door is so slanted that the characters have to bend to enter. When a chocolate palace collapses, it does so completely and violently, giant columns of chocolate falling down. Burton undertands that it is necessary for everything to be so big, larger-than-life, he understands that the boat they use to travel down the chocolate river is made from candy and it looks it.

In fact, the only parts in which the film kind of fails are the ones that were added. Granted, the idea of Willie Wonka having a dentist father is a good one, and having the father played by Christopher Lee is a stroke of genius, but aside from this the backstory's just a little too neat psychologically. Dahl's Wonka didn't need a reason to be strange and arbitrary, didn't need a reason to have isolated himself from the world. He was just weird that way. Depp's Wonka however - and I blame this solely on the script - cannot say the word "parents", and a neat resolution of his complexes is in store for him at the end. The end doesn't work: Dahl knew the importance of a swift happy ending without much thought of the consequences, in fact, when he did write about the consequences, in his follow-up book "the Glass Elevator", he failed miserably, but Burton wanted more than just saying "and they all lived happily ever after" and leaving it at that, and it's too bad.

One last thing I would like to comment on is the Michael Jackson thing. I think that so many people saw Michael Jackson in Depp's performance has to do with how they viewed the film, with the trial at that point fresh in everybody's mind, because I looked for direct evidence and it just isn't there. Yes, Wonka is effeminate, and yes, he lives in his own fantasy world, but he hates children! Violet hugs him and he's horrified, just as Wonka in the book would have been. He is mean and he does not need a reason for it. He lures children into his Neverland not for his own purposes, but because he has no choice, and he has no trouble dispatching them one by one.
It might be that what confuses people is that they are used to looking for connections with reality. I often do it too, and often with reason: I'm almost sure the references to 9/11 in War of the Worlds was intentional, and it's not hard to find the criticism on forcefully bringing peace in Serenity. Tim Burton is a different creature from most directors, however, because he doesn't care much about reality. His mind is celluloid, and I don't think he intended any real world parallels with this film. With Tim Burton, it's all about the pretty pictures, it's about celebrating weirdo's, not about any contemporary allusions. Even other films do not interest him that much, because they are in reality. He only has one major reference to another film (well, films, but it revolves around one in particular) and it is, appropriately, in the Mike Teavee sequence.

If there is a message to this film, it is the same as the one in the book: it's a celebration of imagination. That's why Dahl opposes TV so much: not because there aren't worthwhile programs being made, but because it "makes the brain lazy". Mike Teavee is a smart kid, more so in the film than in the book, even, he figures out the "system" to find his bar (although I found the reference to the Nikkei index kind of ridiculous), he immediately sees why Wonka's idea to send a chocolate bar through the TV would not work, he is the voice of reality, in a way, seeing right through the "pointlessness" of Wonka's entreprise. Wonka's answer? Like in the book, he simply ignored this "voice of reality", tells Mike he's mumbling and that he can't understand a word he's saying. I believe both Dahl and Burton are trying to tell us this way that we shouldn't always restrict ourselves to reality, and that imagination is vital. I couldn't agree more, and I think the movie is worth seeing if only just for this: it shows just what is possible if you refuse to be restricted by reality.

There's only one other director who might fit Dahl just as well. It's Wes Anderson, of course, and he is currently working on an animated film based on... "The Fantastic Mr. Fox". I'm looking forward to it. Maybe these movies will be enough to make us forget the saccharine horror that was "Matilda".

Gay? Big deal. He's Dying.

Also from the Boomerang, but without the wretched first sentence.

The New York times probably put it most dramatically. “The Winner is…only acting gay” is the attention-claiming title of an article published not too long ago, an article that proclaimed a gay revolution. The Guardian, titling this year the “year of the Gay”, is not far behind. So what are these papers so in uproar about? What’s their big point?

Six, no fewer than six movies with gays in them are coming out this fall, count ‘em! No need to worry, though, both articles haste to comfort us, the actors playing them are very much straight. It’s Oscar time, people, and it seems playing gay is this year’s playing disabled, this year’s impressive weight loss or gain. Will the strategy work?

Include dramatic sigh.

Of the New York Times’ big invasion, only one film can be considered mainstream (the film adaptation of the musical Rent). Not only is the renowned newspaper clearly grasping to find a phenomenon to report on, but the angle they put on it is outrageous. Their main point? Playing gay is only accepted, nay, only possible, if the actor’s sexuality is decidedly “normal”.

Take Heath Ledger in what I confess to have called, like so many others, “the gay cowboy movie”, Brokeback Mountain. If we believe the New York times, the only way we can appreciate this love story between two men is because we know that Heath is a manly man in real life, who’s even knocked up his on- and offscreen wife/girlfriend, Michelle Williams. The Guardian goes so far as to suggest she’s been cast merely as a “sexual alibi”. And of course the fact that Peter Sarsgaard, who portrayed gay characters in several films, “appears in gossip columns linked with Maggie Gyllenhaal” is crucial. How ridiculous their point is, is best seen when using their own words: “Our awareness of these nonfiction roles makes it easier and maybe more acceptable for middle-class heterosexual viewers - a group that does, after all, include most of us in the audience - to embrace characters whose sexual preferences we don't share.”

Bollocks.

It just makes you want to flee to France, where they – at least on film, and in film criticism- have a more relaxed way of dealing with the subject. Take François Ozon, for example, one of France’s most prolific and interesting directors at the moment. The main character in his new film, , “Le Temps qui Reste” (the time that remains) is gay, and dying. In any American film, his illness would have been Aids. In this film, he gets cancer. Admittedly, this is necessary for a later plot point, but still: it shows that to this director and writer, the sexual orientation of this character is not the only thing that’s important. Despite some rather graphic scenes (yes, this is what my mother and I do for quality time) the film might not have been all that different had the main character been straight.

For all the above, but also for the beautiful music by Arvo Pärt, for the astounding cinematography, for the chance to see Jeanne Moreau shine on screen again, for some scenes that really worked, I would love to proclaim this film a masterpiece. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

It’s a pity really. Some parts here work beautifully, other almost do, but as a whole the film is ultimately unsatisfying. It charts what happens to beautiful, arrogant and yes, gay, photographer Romain after he finds out he only has a month or two to live. He pushes everyone away, his family, his boyfriend, and tells only his grandmother (Moreau) what’s going on. He goes to a darkroom. He sees himself as a kid. He has a conversation with a waitress in a diner who thinks he’s beautiful. In the end, Ozon returns to his fascination with beaches and lets his story end.

As the summary above, the film feels to episodic, too aimless. There are some nice moments with the boyfriend, and the short segment with his grandmother is wonderfully worked out, but in the end we have no insight whatsoever into his relationship with his family, with his sister especially. We don’t know why he reacts the way he does, why he shuts everyone out. We spend a whole movie with this man, but while it would take me a long time to grow weary of watching the beautiful Melvil Poupaud, we ultimately get no insight into who he is. As an exploration of death and how people deal with it, Ozon’s own “Sous le Sable” is a much better film, and it’s a pity, because this one shows the potential to be just as great.

Do actors win Academy Awards just for morphing, for once not their appearance, but their sexuality? Is Philip Seymour Hoffman a contender for best Actor this year because despite their differences in statures and physique he managed to embody who and how Truman Capote was, or because Truman happened to be gay? Until the media starts growing up and out of its jitterish and exalted treatment of homosexuality, it will be hard for movies that feature homosexual protagonists to be judged on their own merits.

Art and Reality

My "editorial" for this month's Boomerang...So yes, real published work! Enjoy. More to come.

‘tis the season to be jolly…and the season of gold. The Academy Awards are coming up and in the US most films aiming for one or more little statuettes are being rolled out in December: early enough to still qualify and late enough that they will be fresh in the voter’s memory. Remarkable again this year is how many of the contenders have a basis in reality. Last year this trend was already visible – four out of the five nominees for best actor were portraying real people – and this year continues it: hopefuls include Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney’s second film as a director about the reporter Edward Murrow and his fight against McCarthyism, Capote, a film documenting the writing of “In Cold Blood”, Truman Capote’s famous non-fiction novel, and Walk the Line, a biopic about Johnny Cash. Steven Spieberg’s Munich, about the killing of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists in Munich in 1972 and the retribution that followed it, has yet to come out but is already rumored to be one of the front runners. The only film not based on reality that stands a chance to win Best Picture is Brokeback Mountain and this was enough for some ridiculous responses in the media, as you can read in the article on Le Temps qui reste.

It makes you wonder: do we need art to put reality in perspective? Can art only be considered to be “high art” if it takes reality as its basis and transforms it? And if the answer to these questions is yes, why is the non-documentary film rated highest on rottentomatoes.com King Kong, not exactly the most realistic film?

The question arises whether the films based on “true stories”, and for that matter all art that has a basis in reality, merely reflects it or transforms it in a subtle way, reinvents it so to speak. For example, the photographs by Rinke Dijkstra, an exhibition of which Floor reviews, come as close to objectivity as photography allows yet we look at them with more interest than at random snapshots because she chose these people, these children to photograph. Simply this makes them more important, more mysterious and more intriguing than they would otherwise have been. Rineke Dijkstra’s work was also on display at this year’s Museumnight in Amsterdam together with other works that can be seen in the context of their manipulation of and influence on reality and how we perceive it. Aansan reports especially on those by VJ Erwin Olaf, whose works according to her “[play] with reality on the edge of fantasy and dream”.

Then there’s Bob Dylan, about whom it’s always been almost impossible to distinguish fact from fiction. Scorsese made a documentary about him –also reviewed in this section- but didn’t even try to disentangle truths from falsehoods, the invented from the real, just observed. Still, why is it worth mentioning that Scorsese directed it if not because this influences the end product greatly? By leaving some things out and putting others in, by lingering on Dylan’s face sometimes a little longer than we’d expect, by superimposing specific comments over certain images, he molds reality to become art and as such he influences how we see it.

Umberto Eco recently wrote in the Telegraph that while ours should be a cynical age because we’ve mostly let go of God, we live instead in a world of endless credulity. It is understandable in a way that people nowadays blend fact and fiction, with reality shows that might or might not be scripted and truth often seeming stranger than fiction. The Da Vinci Code is not only a best-selling book but many follow it as some kind of evangelism while other books like the Da Vinci Code decoded attack is as if it were a history book, and not conspiracy theory escapism. Eco argues that it is the lack of religion that makes us turn to other “spiritual” avenues, books like “the Celestine Prophecy” for example, passionately defended by Orr Shomroni here.

Sometimes it would seem that we need art to understand reality, almost. That we need some kind of fiction as a comfort in our lives. How else to explain the popularity of astrology and similar things? Art might be as good a way as any a lens to see the world through. If God is dead, let’s hope it makes art live a long and healthy life.

Personal Heroes

"I'm gonna good a great big tree hear, I like big trees, but you can out it there if you want, or there, it's your painting. Hm, let's see, I think the light is coming from here, so we're just going to add a few shadows here, and here, just carefully put a few shadows on, not too much."

Do I even need to explain this one? Nothing on TV is more soothing than Bob Ross (who, unfortunately, died in 1995), not even curling tournaments.




I was amazed, a few days ago, to find the book "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", a collection of essays and reviews by Pauline Kael, just standing there in a small bookcase known grandly as the "college library". I'd been looking for it forever! And here it was, and the prize was even still on the inside cover: 20 eurocents.

They really are amazing essays. She destroys Blow-Up, in a way that doesn't make me want to agree with her right away, but that makes me want to watch the movie again and see if she has a point. She was the critic who "discovered" Bonnie and Clyde, at least, the one who first saw why it was great, and her essay on it is so full of details, so nuanced, and thoroughly fascinating to read.

Finally, Ricky Gervais. Some might know him from series such as "the Office" (the original, British version) and "Extras", but I have to admit I never caught more than a couple of episodes of both. Now, however, he has a podcast, and as you all know I love those. So, in that train this last Sunday, I listened to the first two episodes...And people must have thought I was crazy, laughing out loud, doubling over, from what was coming from my headphones. Totally weird, without structure or goal (though there is a lot about monkeys), but somehow incredibly funny.

H.

Sampling Metafilter

Keep in mind, this is from only 5 days of posting.

In the spirit of Christmas
Or if, instead, you want to give your loved one something from the health and family planning section
In the "oh, yeah, that had to be invented, too..." category (more info here)
Disney made a bad decision (really, terrible) and people revolt
If you haven't had your daily dose of cute (seriously, you can find anything on the net...)

Research confirms what we already knew: Wikipedia rules
I hope my mind (and sense of humor) will still be this sharp at 83
'Cause I love Paris
Dutch Bathroom Tiles enter the internet age

Time Cover Art: how flash should be used.

Finally, some links from other sources:

Kong and Sexual Politics
I want this.
There are too many top-ten lists too mention, but this has to be one of the best designed ones
'Cause most other reviews made the point that Memoirs of a Geisha was boring boringly
Pitchfork reviews 29. 4 more days until it comes out.

To end up, the most beautiful commercial on TV these days is of course, a triumph in these days of CGI because it didn't use it. Those are real balls, hard as it may be to believe.

I looked up the music that accompanies it. The song is Heartbeats "arranged" (whatever that means) by José González. It's a little flat without the accompanying images, but still quite beautiful.

H.

My Year in Movies

Yes it is that time: the time of year-end lists. And who am I to decline participation in this joyous -though also oft-annoying - tradition?

So, below, find the films I've seen this year. Well, not all of them. First, only films I saw for the first time in 2005 count. Also, only those that came out in 2005...and in 2004. Let me explain: 2005 because that's traditional, and 2004 because, well, 16 films is not a whole lot. Thing is, I skip a lot of bad movies, and the good ones tend to come out near the end of the year - academy awards and all - meaning I usually don't see them until the year after.

Well, you ask, as soon as you're at it, why not do it about all films you've seen this year? Two good reasons for that: first, I don't remember all the films I've seen this year, there were so many, and I can't even guarantee this list is comprehensive. Most importantly, I took a film course this year, and while some beautiful films I've seen in that don't qualify as I'd seen them before (Citizen Kane, Casablance, the Godfather) I think this year's films would have had a hard time competing with the likes of Sunset Boulevard and Vertigo.

Enough talk. On with the list. An explanation for the thingies between brackets is below.

Top 4 (because I'm random that way. Also, in no particular order)

• Serenity
• A History of Violence [s] (the more I think about it, the more I like it. Read more.)
• No Direction Home [t]
• Sideways [2]

Admired, but did not love:

• Hotel Rwanda [2]
• Closer [2]

Flawed, but still worth seeing:

• Le Temps Qui Reste (for cinematography, music, a gorgeous main character and mostly: Jeanne Moreau. The review I wrote for the Boomerang will be up soon)
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou[d] (for a near perfect first hour)
• Lords of Dogtown [s] (for the exhilerated feeling, and Heath Ledger doing Val Kilmer. By which I mean doing his best impersonation of, of course.)
• Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles (for reminding us that WWII wasn't the only horrific war)
• Sin City (for style if nothing else. Watch out for your balls)

Succesful Action Spectacles:

• Batman Begins
• The Incredibles [2]
• Hellboy [d]

Unsuccesful Action Spectacles

• Kingdom of Heaven
• Sahara [s](alright, alright, that one was kinda fun. In the way that only bad films can be fun. And well, I maintain that it had much to do with the way William H. Macy delivered the line "They did a Panama". Also, Lambert Wilson can do no wrong in my book.)
• Constantine[s](but Tilda was cool in it, I have to admit)

Action Spectacle with the lamest dialogue: Star Wars (you know which one)

Action Spectable with the worst acting: Star Wars (explain again, how can you have Ewan McGregor do a pitch perfect impersonation of Alec Guiness....acting badly?)

Action Spectable with the most cop-out ending: War of the Worlds (Spielberg sometimes really is too much of a sap)

Sleekerst Action Spectacle: Collateral [d]

Most Fun Brainless Action Spectacle: Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Most Fun Brainless Caper: Ocean's Twelve

Biopics (meaning taken loosely. From those I liked to those I liked less):

• The Motorcycle Diaries [2] (made me want to pack up my bags and leave for South-America immediately. Definitely too positive about its subject, though)
• Kinsey [2] (A lot of fun, maybe a little too positive)
• The Aviator : (not that much fun, still maybe a little too positive)

Documentaries (same)

• No Direction Home [t] (Home run by Scorsese. Among the best films of the year. Read more here)
• Inside Deep Throat [s] (maybe not all that insightful, but boy did I laugh...Also, I now get why people went to see the movie. It's Linda Lovelace's "how the ... does she do that?!" factor)
• Control Room [a] (Intriguing. Isn't that the best you can say abut a doc?)
• Outfoxed [a] (way too polemic)

Mind-Fuck Movies (ditto)

• Primer (shows time-travel movies are possible without Ah-nulds butt and/or eighties music. Or whirly effects, for that matter)
• I {heart} Huckabees [d] (many interesting ideas, not always well exucuted, but some really cool moments)

Hilarious even if it shouldn't be: The Spongebob Squarepants Movie

Not as hilarious as it should be: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (although the song at the beginning deserves an award of its own. And "Bless you" was brilliant)

Movies randomly not assigned to a specific category for being neither bad nor really good:

• Broken Flowers [s] (works really only when the amazing Jeffrey Wright is onscreen)
• Garden state [d] (I probably should have liked this more than I did, but only the music and Peter Sarsgaard's performance really stood out)
• Team America [c] (funny enough. Not a standout)
• Mean Girls [d] (ditto. The bus moment was the only thing that stayed with me)
• Napoleon Dynamite [c] (same, again)
• Criminal [d] (It has Westwood! And Diego Luna! And I can't remember much else...)
• Anchorman [d] (Ok, ok, I did laugh. Especially when the different teams showed up. Still...)

Classics I saw for the first time this year and wanted to mention:

• La Dolce Vita [d] (Wow. I'll have to watch that about 5 times more, I think)
• 8 1/2 [d] (ehm, yeah. Ditto. Also, I want to look like Anouk Aimée)
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (loved it. How could I not?)
• Sunset Boulevard (ditto, of course)
• Vertigo (not as convinced about this one, but definitely a film I'm glad I finally saw)
• Singin' in the Rain (it's official, I'm not the musical type)
• The Terminator (how could I not mention the naked gubernator?)
• Many, many more. Film classes rock.
  

2005 films I'd like to see in 2006, and maybe even sooner

• Brokeback Mountain
• King Kong
• Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
• The Squid and the Whale
• Match Point
• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
• Last Days
• Capote
• Good Night, and Good Luck
• Pride & Prejudice
• Walk the Line
• The Constant Gardener
• Grizzly man
• The Upside of Anger
• Nine Lives
• Caché

Needless to say, that's not going to happen, but a girl can dream. The plan, in any case, is to make a page on this blog, somewhere back-dated, where I'll keep a list of the movies I'll see from january 1st onwards.

Outraged at some of my picks? Something I blatantly left out? Can't believe I didn't see insert-film-here yet? Leave your comments!

H.

[a]: seen in class
[c]: downloaded (isn't it admirable how few those are?)
[d]: seen on DVD
[s]: sneak preview
[2]: 2 dollar movie at UCLA
Nothing: seen in theatres.

"It was beauty killed the beast"

King Kong, Cooper & Shoedsack, 1933

I can understand why this film made Peter Jackson want to be a director.

I'd managed not to see it, somehow. I did see both the 1931 Dracula and the 1931 Frankenstein, but not this one. Of course, with Jackson's monumental (and surprisingly well-received) remake coming out tomorrow, I had to revisit the original. I never thought it would be so genuinely good.

Oh, maybe good isn't the first word that comes to mind if you just start anywhere in the middle. To modern eyes, Kong himself, and most of the other effects, seem clumsy, laughable even. Watching from the beginning, however, letting the atmosphere creepm up on you, discovering the crew together with a screaming Fay Wray, he is suprisingly believable. Oh, of course you see he is made of clay, of course his movements show that he was made with stop-motion, and yes, foreground and background don't match all that often, but still, what a spectacle. After all, isn't the most important quality that special effects should have that they draw you into the movie? Who cares about realism, as long as the effects make you care. And I cared. I held my breath during the wrestling match between Kong and the dinosaur, and I felt a pang when he fell.

What I was most surprised by is not how much the film gripped me, but how violent it was. Many, many people get killed here, brutally, and somehow it shocked me more than, say, Sin City did (well, the Sin City deaths, at least, the whole ripped-off-balls things not taken into account). From the trailers and what I've heard, King Kong in the new version is a sweeter, more tender creature, and Ann Darrow loves him back in a way. Not in this version, but it's true that you almost blame here for it, because even this clay model has an amazing array of feelings on his face. I'm looking forward to see what Andy Serkis can do with that.

Many articles come out now asking what it is with our fascination for beautiful blondes in the paws of big black beasts. I don't know the answer, but whatever it is, it seems to work for Peter Jackson.

H.

Trailer tales

Disclaimer: I will get back to a more regular posting schedule, I promise. Just a bit busy right now.

I am a big fan of Apple's trailer website, especially now with the incredibly gorgeous high-definition trailer coming out. I check it probably three times a week. And as deceptive as trailers can be, I do obviously form an opinion about them, and they do affect how much I want to see a movie.

Or how much I'll make sure to avoid a movie...Take the trailer for the upcoming Tristan and Isolde, probably greenlighted back when King Arthur still looked like a good idea. James Franco, I'm all for (I truly believe in his acting talent, though he hasn't exactly chosen films that display it lately), and the story I devoured as a kid, fascinated by the inevitable tragedy (and well, I thought the living clandestinely together in the woods thing was, ahem, interesting). But as soon as I heard the Evanescence music underscoring the trailer, I said to myself, nope, sorry, I'll pass. It's not that I don't like Evanescence, though I'm not a big fan, it's mostly that it reflects the way the filmmakers are going with this, and I won't be going along.

Other trailers have the faculty of making you interested in a film you might not have thought about much before. Case in point: Inside man, with Clive Owen and Denzel Washington. I'll watch anything with Clive in it, of course (although, come to think about it, nothing will convince me to see Guinevere in a leather bikini, maybe it's just the Arthurian thing I'd rather keep in books), but a hostage negotiating thing mixed with a bank robbery sounds like a rental. The trailer makes it look good though. Oh, and look next to Denzel? Yep, it's the Operative, aka. Chiwetel Ejiofor. I'm glad to see this guy getting more and more success, he truly is a great actor, his performance in Dirty Pretty Things was amazing. Back to the topic, Inside Man, from this trailer, looks tight and twisty, suspenseful, and worth a look.

Then there are of course the trailer for films you already want to see and that frustrate you because you want to see the film now, right away, and not " somewhere in 2006". I must have watched the trailer for The Fountain twenty times already. trying to get as many details as possible from those few images, and everytime it gets me excited all over again, and frustrated that there isn't even a US release date yet. Hugh Jackman, Darren Aronovski, and well, it just looks pretty damn cool, too.


Finally, there are the trailers that tell you absolutely nothing about the quality of the final product. Yes, the "announcement trailer" for X3 is cool, shown all the characters, offers glimpses of the story, Jean Grey is back (as Phoenix?) and kicking ass, but with Brett Ratner directing, it isn't enough to convince me it won't suck. Also, I'm not quite sure I agree with the backing music and the whole action angle: what made X1 and especially X2 great was that next to terrific action pieces, Bryan Singer infused these stories, these characters with a heart. I'm not quite sure Brett Ratner can do the same, seeing as I've seen no evidence of him actually having a heart yet.

How these movies will end up? How indicative the trailers were? I'll tell you if and when I see them.

H.

29

Remember, my Jacksonville City Nights review? When I despaired, wondering if Ryan Adams would return to being the artist I loved him for being from time to time? How I hoped the third album he would put out this year would be truly glorious finally again?

It is.

29, Ryan's latest, doesn't officially come out until December 20th, but it's been leaked. It's streaming online, and downloadable if you're persistent (and really, nobody can convince me that's a crime, because I'll buy the CD the day it comes out), and I've listened to it about, oh, 3o times so far? It's just that beautiful.

The album's only nine songs, but they are wonderful little epics, beautiful and spare, relatively long (up to nine minutes), no Cardinals to be heard, just Ryan with his guitar, on the piano. According to Ryan himself, this is the album to conclude his twenties, and every song is one year in that decade. That seems to mean that at 2o, I'm not in my twenties yet, but I suppose that only makes it more interesting for me, this peak into the future.

In any case, while the first song ("29") has yet to grow on me, the second one is the wonderful "Strawberry wine", where Ryan flirts with singing off key but keeps it just sad, melancholic, gorgeous, and "Night Birds", which follows it, is similarly haunting, and would have fit perfectly on Love is Hell. Then, oh, just when you thought it couldn't get any better comes "Blue Skies Blues", the piano softly playing, and it takes your breath away, to use a cliched phrase. It is just that beautiful. It's over five minutes long, but it still ends too soon.

The delights don't end there. While "Carolina Rain" is not particularly remarkable, especially after just hearing "Blue Skies Blues", and seems to reflect a country phase in Ryan's life. "Starlite Dinner" is wonderful but a bit in the same vein as the other songs, though it's romantic atmosphere is hard to resist. Unfortunately, this also means this song features some of the weaker songwriting, inlcuding the lines "Is it possible to love someone too much? You bet", but weak songwriting in Ryan Adams terms is still pretty amazing.

Then comes "the Sadness", and it really makes me want to meet the 27-year-old Ryan Adams. it's a song that would fit perfectly in the soundtrack of a western, it is a western in fact, restless and breathless, talking of horses and trains and boxcars, storytelling at its best, and a song unlike any others I know by Ryan. I'm not sure if I like it yet as music, but it certainly intrigues me, invites you to listen to it again and again.

There are two more songs, and these are definitely more introspective, managing to convey such a richness of feeling with so few means: on "Elizabeth, you were born to play that part" is the melancholy tale of a girlfriend long gone but not forgotten, descending into a strange haunting instrumental part, while "Voices" is, according to Ryan himself, told from the grave, and accordingly chilling, a wonderful ending to a true return to form.

Thank you Ryan.