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.