Wow, am I sick. Barely strong enough to stand up. I was standing in line at the pharmacy yesterday and the next thing I knew I was waking up on the floor, with my head spinning. All I can do is sleep through it...

Posted by Jim Emerson at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)

Ten movies, two or three shots apiece (more or less), 76 seconds, no dialog, no annotations. (The critical comments will come later.) This is my hommage to the ending of the late Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Eclipse" and to the writers who are currently on strike. (Full disclosure: I'm a WGA/west member and I strongly support the writers.) The effort was to look at my favorite movies of the year (inspired, to begin with, by the opening of "No Country for Old Men") solely through establishing shots, architecture, landscapes, inanimate objects... and a few glimpses of extras and motionless actors who don't speak.

How many of them can you name (in one shot? two?). Titles, writers and directors are cited at the end. (For some reason, this iKlipz/Flash version hangs for a few seconds just before the final titles -- but they do appear...)

10. "Helvetica"
9. "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
8. "The Orphanage"
7. "Superpad"
6. "Breach"
5. "Persepolis"
4. "12:08 East of Bucharest:
3. "Zodiac"
2. "I'm Not There"
1. "No Country for Old Men"

Posted by Jim Emerson at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (56)

IndieWIRE has announced the results of its annual critics' poll, and Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" dominates (picture, director, screenplay, cinematography, lead performance), followed by David Fincher's "Zodiac" and Joel & Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men.

For most American viewers, this is going to be a Netflix list: Two of the top ten movies never barely opened theatrically outside of New York ("Syndromes and a Century," "Colossal Youth"); two never played in more than 20 theaters at once ("Offside," "Killer of Sheep" -- the restoration of Charles Burnett's 1977 film); two haven't opened yet, and won't in most places until 2008 ("There Will Be Blood," "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days"); and, in these days when wide releases typically launch on 2,000 - 4,000 theaters, two never made it to more than 400 at any given time ("I'm Not There" [149], "The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford" [301]). Only two others ever spread beyond 1,000 screens: "No Country for Old Men" and "Zodiac." Three of the ten best selections -- "Killer of Sheep," "Offside" and "Zodiac" -- are currently available on DVD.

Poll administrator Dennis Lim noted that, compared to 2006 when "the relative dearth of truly exciting films" was lamented by many critics, this year's 106 participants were more enthusiastic about their choices. One eyebrow-raising development was cited in the indieWIRE introduction, though:

If there is a strking hole to be found in this year's [poll results]... it is the utter lack of American indie films. While last year's survey celebrated outside-the-system films such as David Lynch's "Inland Empire," Kelly Reichart's "Old Joy," Ryan Fleck's "Half Nelson" and Andrew Bujalski's "Mutual Appreciation," the acclaimed new films from American filmmakers this year came from directly within the Hollywood and Indiewood system, starring name actors.

Other poll-toppers: Best First Film (Sarah Polley, "Away From Her"), Best Documentary ("No End in Sight," Charles Ferguson), Supporting Performance (Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There"), The complete results in all the categories can be scrutinized here. And the individual critics' ballots (including mine) are here.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I resisted seeing John Carney's "Once" at first. Sounded to me a little too much like what, in the 1970s, somebody might have called a "folk opera" -- an Irish acoustic-balladeer musical. You know: moosh. Guy (Glen Hansard) meets Girl (Markéta Irglová) -- yes, that's as much as the movie tells us about the main characters' names -- and, before you know it, they're bursting into song. Which they do, but it's not like "West Side Story" on the streets of Dublin. He sings because he's a busker, but he's also a non-musical vacuum repair guy. The important thing is that "Once" is by no means a conventional romantic musical. It's just that the performances, and the dialog, and the story, are primarily expressed through the songs composed and sung (for plausible reasons) by the Guy and the Girl. The music is what passes between the two of them, particularly in a marvelous scene in which he teaches her one of his songs, and she accompanies him on piano, in the back of a music store.

"Once" is the kind of movie everybody calls "charming," but I think that does it a disservice. Not that it isn't charming, just not in quite the ways you'd necessarily expect. For instance, I don't think I've ever pulled so strongly for the two lead characters to not "get together" as I did in this movie. If, even for a moment, it had tipped over into a conventional romance it would have failed.

Which is why the DVD cover for "Once" bugs me. Look at the original poster, above left. The Guy and the Girl are walking side by side, having a conversation. They're looking at each other, but no PDA. Now look at the DVD image: Same photo (with colors brightened), same cobblestone-street-as-guitar... but are they holding hands? That is wrong, wrong, wrong! She's received a colorized accessory makeover, while he's been de-scruffed and dressed in a more svelte and stylish jacket and sweater, with a newly color-coordinated scarf, and what looks like tighter-fitting jeans. And a gym membership. Is somebody is trying to sell this movie as a "chick flick"? I hate that term, but I think it accurately reflects what's going on here... The movie got terrific reviews and became a sleeper hit with audiences -- a $150,000 movie that grossed about $9.5 million in the US (approximately 65 percent of its worldwide take). Was this really necessary?

(Tip: Dave McCoy, who has "Once" as the #2 movie on his ten best list.)

Posted by Jim Emerson at 09:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (20)

Kathleen Murphy and Richard T. Jameson present their much-anticipated annual list of indelible memories-at-24-fps, Moments Out of Time, at MSN Movies. They've been sifting through the fragments of movie-time for these shining moments for many years, beginning in Movietone News and continuing through the 1990s in Film Comment.

Beginning when I was in high school, I would read through them religiously, looking for moments I'd treasured, too -- or maybe even ones I hadn't spotted or properly appreciated. Then I'd re-read, again and again, as if I were holding gems to the light and examining them through a magnifying glass, for the sheer pleasure of how they caught the rays. I'd pore over every turn of phrase, teasing out the meanings, even for the movies I hadn't seen with my own eyes (yet).

Here are a few of my favorites for 2007:

In "Ratatouille," the remembrance of things past courtesy of the eponymous dish: the critic's flashback to childhood

When Bourne (Matt Damon) wonders why the CIA operative (Julia Stiles) who once set him up is helping him now, she answers with what passes for a declaration of love in the killing environs of "The Bourne Ultimatum": "You were ... hard for me." ...

In "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," the pebbles sliding away from the vibrating rail as Jesse's boot rests there, waiting to stop his last train

Leaving her friend to wait out her abortion, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) attends an obligatory birthday party in "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." The camera holds and holds as she sits frozen, claustrophobically hemmed by babbling guests, until she and we nearly explode with tension

The first getting-to-know-you-and-your-music duet in "Once," one of the purest distillations of rapport ever

In "Starting Out in the Evening," confronted by a redheaded beauty (Lauren Ambrose), the elderly gentleman (Frank Langella) involuntarily covers his face with his hand -- to hide his age or to shield his eyes from her bright heat

Night birds: Chigurh, the raven, and the gunshot reverberating off the otherwise deserted bridge, after which the two bend their separate ways in "No Country for Old Men" ...

"There Will Be Blood": Killing God in a two-lane bowling alley: "I'm finished."...

Hungry for more? Devour all of 'em here.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My favorite documentary of 2007 (which I haven't had a chance to write about yet) is Gary Hustwit's "Helvetica," a look at a ubiquitous typeface. It's the kind of movie that helps you to see the world around you anew, freshly attuned to all the fonts in your world. Me, I'm a Helvetica guy. I hate fonts that call attention to themselves, and Helvetica is so clean and strong and elegant you can do almost anything with it just by varying sizes, colors, weights, spacing and placement. Our good friend Larry Adylette, the superlative movie and music and pop culture blogger formerly known as The Shamus (and, before that, That Little Round-Headed Boy), has a few words on Helvetica (and "Helvetica") over at his new blog, Welcome to L.A. -- which is also the title of Alan Rudolph's funny-peculiar 1976 debut feature, starring Keith Carradine, Sally Kellerman, Harvey Keitel, Sissy Spacek, Lauren Hutton, Geraldine Chaplin, Viveca Lindfors and Richard Baskin. (A parenthetical time-out to say: "Hello, Larry!," as they used to remark on NBC for a very short time in 1979-80 after McLean Stevenson left "M*A*S*H," thus providing Garry Shandling with a great network-meeting joke in an early episode of "The Larry Sanders Show.") Larry writes:

Just like film bloggers who parse every frame of "No Country For Old Men," these font fanatics have obsessed about every curve and dimension of Helvetica. To them, Helvetica is either a perfect, easily readable form of mass communication or something akin to Anton Chigurh with a coin and an air-tank gun. They are an argumentative, often hilarious bunch...

I have no idea what he's talking about.

But that's not really the reason for this post. It's about an entirely different (serif) font, Trajan, which as Kirby Ferguson of Goodie Bag details in the above movie, has become the movie font. "Trajan is the movie font," he says -- and then goes on to show you so many examples your head will spin. In the end, though, like me, he's a Helvetica guy. Look at those end credits. Not Trajan. Helvetica. I'll write more about "Helvetica" later, because I'm fascinated with it (the font and the movie) and I already want to see it a third time.

(tip: Ali Arikan)

P.S. Karsten (in comments below) offers an explanation for the film-font phenomenon with a link to this animated murder mystery, "Etched in Stone." (link opens new browser tab/window)

Posted by Jim Emerson at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

It wasn't even close. In the MSN Movies 2007 Top 10 Poll, Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men" scored 106 points out of a possible 120 -- the only film to rank on all ten of the contributing critics' best-of-the-year lists. It was #1 or #2 on nine of the ten, and #4 on the other one.

Some of you may have gotten the impression that I think rather highly of "No Country for Old Men," so I was pleased to be asked by editor Dave McCoy to write a little blurb about it summarizing my appreciation. It goes like this:

Shot by shot, cut by cut, sequence by sequence, no movie this year (or any other year) was more grippingly, cinematically exhilarating than "No Country for Old Men." Joel and Ethan Coen's first literary adaptation (from Cormac McCarthy's novel), crackles with an intensity that sharpens and stimulates your senses and reminds you of how little most other films do with the essential expressive properties of the medium: light, color, sound, movement, language. Movies are as much about the orchestration as the composition, and the Coens have orchestrated and composed a masterpiece -- one that embodies what most movies only describe.

A Western, a crime picture, a chase thriller, a ghost story (though not in the supernatural sense), "No Country" is the story of Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a man chasing a dream ($2 million in drug money he's found in a satchel); Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a messenger of death who's tracking down Moss for the money; and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who's trailing both of them. Tension builds as the film progresses, even as the violence recedes. This isn't a movie about murder; it's about the awareness of inevitable death that stalks us all.

Check out our individual lists here. My Scanners list (with blurbs on all my favorites) will be somewhat different...

Posted by Jim Emerson at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

(A comment by Phillip Kelly in reply to an earlier post made me chuckle and got me thinking. He wrote: "I guess my theorizing [of] Anton Chigurh as main character doesn't stand now that Miramax is touting him for Best Supporting Actor. Too bad." That's the jumping-off place for this entry.)

The New York Film Critics Circle gave Javier Bardem its 2007 Best Supporting Actor award for his role as Anton Chigurh ("shi-GUR") in Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country For Old Men" (which was also named Best Picture). The funny thing is, so much of the discussion of the of the movie centers around Chigurh that you'd think he was was the lead. And critical reservations about "No Country" tend to focus on interpretations of Chigurh, and whether the critic accepts him as a character or a mythological presence or a haircut or some combination thereof.

"No Country" traces the path of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), from his opening narration to his closing monologue, from his nostalgia about the "old times" and his fear of the violence in this modern world to his account of two dreams about his father. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), sets things in motion by taking the satchel of drug money, and Chigurh spends most of the film relentlessly tracking him down, while Ed Tom follows a trail of blood to catch up with them both. None of these characters is a conventional "lead." We never even see Moss or Ed Tom come face-to-face with Chigurh. He exists in the physical world, but his presence is strongest when it's felt by these other two characters, even though they don't share screen space with him.

... As I wrote in an earlier piece on "No Country," he's a catalyst, who represents different things to different people in the movie: evil, chaos, "the ultimate badass." Chigurh, with the nearly vowel-less-sounding, unpronounceable name is a Western figure of mythical stature, like Clint Eastwood's 'Pale Rider' or The Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy -- or Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) or Mystery Man (Robert Blake) in David Lynch's movies."Only Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) has met him, and he's the only one who dares to speak his name -- two times. (He's the only one who knows how to pronounce it, although most of the time he just calls him "Anton.")

It's rare that a movie -- or a figure in the movie -- generates this kind of discussion and interest (see comments on the above post, where the interpretive debate continues). Chigurh has been described as a representation of Destiny, Death, the Devil, God (intriguing question: Is God a supporting actor?), Greed, Capitalism, Chance, Evil, a ghost -- even (by the more literal-minded) a "serial killer." That last one is the only approach that makes no sense on the movie's own terms, for reasons I have described in some detail previously. Chigurh just doesn't work for some viewers -- as a character or a concept or a myth -- but I found him awesomely fascinating, as a physical presence as well as an abstraction.

The Coens often like to work into their movies a small character who offers a way of understanding what the movie is doing. (I've called this character the "key" to the film before, but that's a little too tidy.) In "Miller's Crossing," it's Mink (Steve Buscemi), who explains everything before you even know what you're hearing -- and whose dilemma echoes Tom's (Gabriel Byrne). In "Fargo," it's Mike Yanagita (Steve Park), the old classmate of Marge (Frances McDormand) whom she at first pities (he makes audiences very uncomfortable, too), until she figures out she's being conned, which helps her figure out how to approach Jerry Ludegaard (William H. Macy). (I'm astounded when I hear people complain that the portrayal of Mike is racist or condescending; it reveals their own uncomprehending racism and condescension that they can't see the character with anything but pity themselves.)

Who is that character in "No Country"? Or is there one? To some extent, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) and Ellis (Barry Corbin) provide that function, but not until late in the film. I think Chigurh's most formidable adversary, the character who best sizes him up and refuses to be intimidated or to give the slightest ground, is the Desert Aire trailer park manager (Kathy Lamkin). Her principles are steadfast, she locks him in a stare-down, a contest of wills, and she will not budge: "Sir I ain't at liberty to give out no information about our residents.... Did you not hear me? We can't give out no information."

Perhaps she's saved by the off-screen flush of a toilet, or perhaps Chigurh simply has to respect the force of her will. Carla Jean is the only other character who gets him to adjust his position. When she says, matter-of-factly, "I need to sit down," she takes the upper hand for a moment, and he offers a coin toss. But she refuses to accept his terms. (Reminds me of the original "Nightmare on Elm Street": refuse to cede power to your nightmare and it loses the ability to terrify you.) Carla Jean's fate is decided off-screen, too, but for the first time you feel that Chigurh is diminished by an encounter with his prey. In the next scene, he becomes the wounded dog, and slinks off into suburbia.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

I'll publish my annotated "best of" list next week, but while thinking back over the year's movies I recalled some things that seemed to me "beyond category." Or the usual categories, anyway. One way or another, they made my head feel that it might explode. So, while everybody's preoccupied with all those other awards, here are the 2007 Exploding Heads for Achievement in Movies:

Best endings:
• "The Sopranos" (final episode): blackout
• "No Country for Old Men": "Then I woke up."
• "I'm Not There": Dylan's harmonica on "Mr. Tambourine Man"
• "Superbad": Baby-steps toward adulthood, separating at the mall escalator
• "Zodiac": Stare-down

Most electrifying moment:
A dog. A river. "No Country for Old Men."

Best grandma:
"Persepolis"

Best surrogate grandpa:
Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"

"Arrested Development" Award for Best Throwaway Lines:
• "Keep it in the oven..." -- Jason Bateman, "Juno"
• "... Terrorism..." -- Michael Cera, "Superbad" (actually, Cera has so many astonishingly brilliant under-his-breath moments in "Superbad" and "Juno" it's uncanny)

Best performance by an inanimate object:
(tie) The cloud (and its shadow), the candy wrapper, the blown lock housing in the motel room door, "No Country for Old Men"

Most cringe-worthy lines:
• "My cooperation with the Nazis is only symbolic." -- "Youth Without Youth"
• "That ain't no Etch-a-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be undid, home skillet." -- "Juno" (the cutesy moment at the beginning when I nearly ran screaming for an exit; cutting this entire unnecessary scene would improve "Juno" immensely)

Funniest double-edged observation:
"He's playing fetch... with my kids... he's treating my kids like they're dogs." -- Debbie (Leslie Mann) in "Knocked Up," watching Ben (Seth Rogen) play with her daughter, who is loving it. That's her point of view, and she's right, but she says it like it's a bad thing.

The Real Thing:
"Non-actor" Brian Dierker, rubber tramp, "Into the Wild" (and, of course, his "old lady" Catherine Keener, actor extraordinaire)

Best film about the way The Industry really works since "The Big Picture":
Jake Kasdan's "The TV Set." The moment I knew it was going to be exceptional (sharp, precise and, therefore, extraordinarily funny) was when the writer's choice for the lead role gives an audition that's just... underwhelming. He isn't good. He isn't terrible. He just isn't enough. Which then allows the network execs to push for the "broader" alternative ("To me, the broad is the funny"). And even he proves himself capable of being not-awful -- in rehearsal, at least...

Best political film:
(tie) "12:08 East of Bucharest" and "Persepolis" -- a pair of smart, funny movies about the effects of political revolutions on individuals in (respectively) Romania and Iran.

Deadliest stare:
(tie) Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), "No Country for Old Men"; Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), "Atonement"

Young comedy whippersnapper stars of the year:
Michael Cera (19), Ellen Page (20), Seth Rogen (25), Jonah Hill (24), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (18)

Game savers:
J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, who come to the rescue of "Juno" not a moment too soon

Best torture porn:
The excruciatingly funny baptism scene with Paul Dano and Daniel Day Lewis (both of 'em overactin' up a storm -- but in a fun way), "There Will Be Blood"

Most worthless critical label:
"Independent." A movie should not be viewed through its budget, financing or distribution. And in these days of studio "dependents" (Miramax, Focus Features, Paramount Vantage, Fox Searchlight, etc.), the term "indie" is frequently misleading at the very least.

Best bureaucrat:
Dr. Fischer (Alberta Watson), "Away From Her"

Best negotiations:
• Chigurh and the gas station owner, "No Country for Old Men"
• Chigurh and the trailer park lady, "No Country for Old Men"
• Chigurh and Carla Jean, "No Country for Old Men"
• "4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days": The painfully protracted, ever-shifting moral balance (and exhausting power-struggle) in the hotel room, between the friend and the abortionist -- while the pregnant woman herself passive-aggressively bows out of any responsibilities for what has happened, or will happen.

"Perfume" Award for Best Portrayal of Synesthesia:
"Ratatouille"

Best Supporting Crotch:
Sacha Baron Cohen, "Sweeney Todd." An squirm-inducing scene-stealer that makes you long for a change of angle: Please give us an above-the-waist shot! (Did they have spandex in mid-19th century London?)

Brilliant ideas for documentaries:
(tie) a typeface ("Helvetica") and the Salton Sea ("Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea")

Best cocktail:
The Aqua Velva, "Zodiac"

Best monologue:
• Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), "No Country for Old Men" (opening)
• Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, "No Country for Old Men" (closing)
• Ellis (Barry Corbin), "No Country for Old Men"

Best dress:
The green one, with Keira Knightley in it, "Atonement"

Best smile:
The "crazy" grin of the invincible optimist -- and survivor -- Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), "Rescue Dawn"

George W. Bush Award for Questionable Promotional Gimmick:
From a press release: "It’s not the end of the world, but pandemonium may erupt as Warner Bros. takes to the streets of Seattle in support of the upcoming film I AM LEGEND, starring Will Smith! Movie fans will have an opportunity to prepare themselves for the end of the world as we know it when one lucky winner receives a special Survival Kit including a $250 gift card to Best Buy!" (That National Intelligence Estimate on Iran must've really put a damper on the marketing opportunities. Pretend it's World War III: Go shopping!)

Best exit:
(tie) Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), "Breach"; Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), "No Country for Old Men"

Literalist Award for Most Relentlessly Unnecessary Verbal Over-Explanation of Every Single Plot Point and Thematic Statement:
(tie) "Southland Tales" and "Youth Without Youth" (both of which made me momentarily question whether, in fact, their auteurs had ever made a movie that wasn't just a slide show with words)

Most belabored inappropriate metaphor:
The milkshake, "There Will Be Blood." No, an oil well is not like a long straw that goes from one person's milkshake into another's. It's a straw that sucks up one big milkshake that both think they are sharing. The weird thing is that he gets the concept right earlier in the scene.

Scariest horror movie:
(tie) "The Orphanage" and "Margot at the Wedding"

Worst gimmick:
Shooting from the "POV" of a paralyzed stroke victim in Julian Schnabel's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." A literal conceit overused to absurdity ("Hey, was that a zoom, or did his eyeball just pop out?") for William Castle effects -- like sewing an eyelid shut so you can see the lid, the eyelashes, and the needle. All I could think of was the inside-Bill-Murray's-big-rubber-prop-mouth shot of dentist Steve Martin in "Little Shop of Horrors."

Most expressive body language:
Remy, "Ratatouille"

That's the whole movie in a nutshell:
Jack Black, wallowing in narcissism along with the rest of the characters in "Margot at the Wedding," looks at himself in the mirror with his jockey shorts down: "My scrotum is longer than my penis." In a film that's all about characters watching themselves watching themselves, this is as close as anyone gets to self-discovery.

Subtlest score:
Carter Burwell, "No Country for Old Men" (inseparable from the sound design)

Least subtle score:
Jonny Greenwood, "There Will Be Blood" (equally inseparable from the sound design)

Best performances in/of a musical:
Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, "Once"

Best fight scene:
You know. David Cronenberg's (and Viggo Mortensen's) ball-bruiser in "Eastern Promises."

Worst shot:
(tie) "Southland Tales": Miranda Richardson leads her office staff in stretching exercises. Camera dollies in, she bends down to reveal a line of dwarves behind her. Ho-ho! "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly": After the paralyzed protagonist has a change of heart and imagines himself as a butterfly (rather than as a man trapped in a diving bell) he decides to write an autobiography and when his rehab therapist calls the editor... a butterfly lands on her desklamp. Got it.

Best dogs:
(tie) The wounded one, the dead one, and the bounding torpedo one, "No Country for Old Men"

Best face:
Michael Cera, "Superbad" and "Juno"

Best credits sequence:
"Superbad" -- originally shot for the DVD menu, then incorporated into the movie.

Best boy:
Dillon Freasier, "There Will Be Blood"

Coolest girl:
Jules (Emma Stone) in "Superbad"

Best Laura Linney:
Laura Linney, "Breach"

The Paul Rudd Moment of the Year:
"I wish I liked anything as much as my kids like bubbles.... Their smiling faces just point out your inability to enjoy anything." -- depressed Pete (Paul Rudd), watching his kids in "Knocked Up"

Most repressed homoeroticism:
The awkward, jealous relationships between the members of the James gang in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." I probably could have done without the line in the bathtub that spells it out, though: "Do you want to be like me, or do you want to be me?"

Most terrifying sex scene:
Jackie (Kate Dickie) and Clyde (Tony Curran), "Red Road"

Sexiest non-sex scene:
The climax of Eric Rohmer's "Romance of Astree and Celadon"

Most agonizingly funny sex scene:
Michael Cera and Martha MacIsaac in "Superbad"

Best coitus interruptus:
(tie) McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and Nicola (Aviva) in "Superbad"; Cecelia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy) in "Atonement"

Worst movie song since "Evergreen":
"Society" from "Into the Wild," written by Jerry Hannan and sung by Eddie Vedder:

Society, you're a crazy breed
I hope you're not lonely without me...
Society, have mercy on me
I hope you're not angry if I disagree

Posted by Jim Emerson at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (40)

Excerpts from two pieces I've read recently that to me (of course) get at the essence of movies, and how we perceive them: First, a paragraph from Jonah Lehrer's introduction to his book "Proust Was a Neuroscientist" (look for the madeleine on the cover!), a most enjoyable volume dedicated to the proposition that the arts understood science long before science did. (Lehrer, the 26-year-old author, is described in the jacket blurb as a Columbia grad and Rhodes Scholar who "has worked in the lab of Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Erik Kandel and in the kitchens of Le Cirque 2000 and Le Bernardin." His book includes chapters on Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cezanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf.)

Unfortunately, our current culture subscribes to a very narrow definition of truth. If something can't be quantified or calculated, then it can't be true. Because this strict scientific approach has explained so much, we assume that it can explain everything. But every method, even the experimental method, has limits. Take the human mind. Scientists describe our brain in terms of its physical details; they say we are nothing but a loom of electrical cells and synaptic spaces. What science forgets is that this isn't how we experience the world. (We feel like the ghost, not like the machine.) It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of the matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness.

On the other hand, the mind is what the brain does. We just have no way of knowing how or why. But this paragraph speaks directly to experience of all kinds, including vicarious or representational ones -- and to my conviction that valid criticism of any kind needs to be both empirical (drawing on specific examples) and aesthetic (a subjective attempt to explain how something feels). Blanket terms like "beautiful" or "ugly" can only be defined/refined in this context. I think of it this way: A dog's butt doesn't smell "bad" to a dog. And poop doesn't offend a dog's sensibilities. Canine responsiveness to scent is roughly 40 times greater than ours, so perhaps you could say that dogs can smell "past" the limitations of our olfactory abilities to detect something more fully dimensional (the way some people savor the flavor of stinky cheese, perhaps). Or, they just like stink, in which case we may consider them to have bad taste. Or, maybe, admire them as perverse primitivist punk rebels who enjoy wallowing in filth for the sheer animalistic pleasure of it. Or would that be anthropomorphizing them? If only dogs could explain what and how they see and smell and hear and feel...

OK, moving on to number two....

From a recent Scientific American article about physicist Hugh Everett, who introduced the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, which posits the existence of countless alternative universes:

In the quantum world, an elementary particle, or a collection of such particles, can exist in a superposition of two or more possible states of being. An electron, for example, can be in a superposition of different locations, velocities and orientations of its spin. Yet anytime scientists measure one of these properties with precision, they see a definite result -- just one of the elements of the superposition, not a combination of them. Nor do we ever see macroscopic objects in superpositions. The measurement problem boils down to this question: How and why does the unique world of our experience emerge from the multiplicities of alternatives available in the superposed quantum world?

No, I don't pretend to understand the first thing about quantum physics. I just like metaphors (see above). And what is a metaphor but something that is one thing and another at the same time? I think this is the most compelling argument for "dancing about architecture" that I've ever seen. Substitute "movie" for "superposed quantum world" in that last sentence, and that's the kind of question movie critics should be asking every time they (we) set out to write something. A movie can never be definitively measured. It exists in space and time and other sensory dimensions that are irreducible and inaccessible to language. So, how does our own experience of a particular film emerge from the possible alternatives? Or, returning to the Lehrer quote, how do you convey what happens in the gap between the synapses? I hope that's what the best of us are asking.

[Side note to Lehrer's paragraph: "Our culture" (by which I believe he means Western culture, specifically American culture) is also permeated by strong beliefs in the non-empirical and unscientific -- pervasive feelings that the world can be explained by supernatural or mystical forces. That's the impulse behind the unique 20th century (worldwide) rise of the phenomenon known as fundamentalism, a reaction against the rational and materialistic aspects of modernity. Polls show that more Americans believe in the devil than in the validity of evolution, a finding that Reuters says reflects "America's deep level of religiosity, a cultural trait that sets it apart from much of the developed world." The same 2007 Harris Poll estimates that 31 percent of Americans believe in astrology, 68 percent in the devil, 27 percent in reincarnation, and 69 percent in a literal afterlife that includes hell. My favorite stat from the (unscientific, I'll bet) 2003 Harris Poll: "... some people who say they are not Christian believe in the resurrection of Christ (26%) and the Virgin birth, Jesus born of Mary (27%)." Talk about your superpositions: If self-defined non-Christians hold core Christian beliefs, then what makes a Christian a Christian? Or not?]

Posted by Jim Emerson at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Richard Corliss writes at TIME:

In the past five days, five groups — the National Board of Review, the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Washington. D.C. Film Critics Association and my crowd, the New Yorkers — have convened to choose the most notable movies and moviemakers. "No Country For Old Men" was named best picture in four of the groups, "There Will Be Blood" in L.A. George Clooney won two best actors awards, playing a lawyer at crisis point in "Michael Clayton," Daniel Day-Lewis a pair for his oil mogul in "There Will Be Blood" and, in Boston, Frank Langella won the prize for playing an aged novelist in "Starting Out in the Evening." Three groups selected Julie Christie as best actress — she's an Alzheimer's patient in the Canadian film "Away From Her" — and two liked Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in "La vie en rose." [...]

That's the deal with critics' awards. They give prizes to whom they damn well please. No problem with that; it's their gig, and obviously they should pick their favorites. (The choices are fine with me: "No Country," "Persepolis" and "No End in Sight" are all on my 10 best.) But these laurels factor into publicity campaigns for the Oscars and Golden Globes; often they are the campaigns. It's the way we critics contribute to the art-industrial complex. Our prizes certainly help determine which films get nominated, setting in motion the next round of ballyhoo before the final prizes are handed out. So almost all the nominees will be from worthy obscurities that can't draw much of an audience in the theater or, when the awards shows are aired, on TV. [...]

Actually, it's hard to tell which if any of the critical faves will be popular, because most of the big winners ("Diving Bell," "No Country," "Persepolis," "Starting Out in the Evening," "Sweeney Todd," "There Will Be Blood") are November or December releases. Half of them haven't hit the commercial theaters yet. Maybe the critical establishment has A.D.D.

More likely it's a combination of the novelty of the new and the deliberate timing of "serious" movies for what has become known as "awards season."

But I think the key phrase above (and one RC has appositely chosen) concerns how critics' awards "factor into publicity campaigns." I doubt that critics, even bevies of critics, have much direct influence on the actual Oscar balloting -- or on ticket sales, either, for that matter. But I know for a fact that filmmakers can use the leverage of critical awards in order to pry publicity dollars out of a studio or distributor. Some may even have it written into their contracts.

But movies are personal matters. I don't put much stock in committee decisions about the "best" or the "worst" -- particularly within an arbitrary unit of measurement like a "year." (That won't stop me from participating in critics polls, though!) What interests me are the critics' personal selections, and their reasons for selecting them. A list... well, it's just a list.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (my former homies) have announced their collective choices for best achievements of 2007 and... well, for now, I'll just say that I doubt most of them would even be on my short list of runners-up for this year. (I haven't seen "Sweeney Todd" or "Diving Bell and the Butterfly" yet, though.) I'm glad that some honorees are getting recognition: Milestone Films, Sarah Polley, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (from "Once": music as dialog/acting), Jack Fisk (to whom I will always be grateful for, among other things, the prom in "Carrie," the house in "Days of Heaven," and pulling the lever in "Eraserhead" -- yes, that was him), "Persepolis" and "Ratatouille" (tied for best animated feature), Vlad Ivanov (for negotiating the trickiest of roles) and a few others. But I know how misleading these group-ballot things can be. LAFCA's list does leave the impression that they felt "Blood" (and, perphaps, "Diving Bell") tower the rest of the year's releases. I wonder if that's really the overwhelming majority opinion, or if it's another case of second- or third-choice consensus carrying the day. Too many of these seem like Academy-style picks to me (Most Noticeable Acting, Most Obvious/Intrusive Score, etc.). More about that later on in the month...

UPDATE (12/10/07): LAFCA member Robert Koelher writes to Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere:

"I've cited to both Anne Thompson and David Poland the various fictions they've written about re. LAFCA's awards, namely that our pick for 'TWBB' had to do with going against National Board of Review (Anne) or the Academy (David). And now you say we were generally flying the contrarian flag. [...]

"By a wide margin, LAFCA felt... that 'There Will Be Blood' was the best American film of the year. That's all. No chess work, no calculations, no triangulation -- nothing but a matter of taste based on seeing more movies over the year than anybody else.

"And Jeff, the group judgement was based -- with perhaps no exceptions, since there was simply no time for most or all of us to view it more than once -- on a single viewing of 'TWBB.' It's a great movie on the first viewing."

[NOTE: In my post I did not surmise that LAFCA was intentionally striking any groupthink contrarian pose. I know from experience that it doesn't really work that way -- and, besides, LAFCA is the first crix group to vote, so what's to react against? But I wondered about the margin of victory, a legitimate question regarding the results of any balloting or committee decision-making procedure -- including the Oscars. Koehler's letter helps clarify that. I'm glad to know I disagree with some genuine majority sentiments rather than some statistical flukes. I disagreed with some choices when I was a member of the group, too -- and I don't know anyone who didn't, from time to time. It's a group of critics, you know....]

The LAFCA 2007 awards:

PICTURE: "There Will Be Blood"
RUNNER-UP: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"

DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood"
RUNNER-UP: Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"

ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"
RUNNER-UP: Frank Langella, "Starting Out in the Evening"

ACTRESS: Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en rose"
RUNNER-UP: Anamaria Marinca, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days"

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Vlad Ivanov, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days"
RUNNER-UP: Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby Gone" and "Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead"
RUNNER-UP: Cate Blanchett, "I’m Not There"

SCREENPLAY: Tamara Jenkins, "The Savages" RUNNER-UP: Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood"

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days"
RUNNER-UP: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"

DOCUMENTARY: "No End in Sight"
RUNNER-UP: "Sicko"

ANIMATION: "Ratatouille" and "Persepolis" (tie)

MUSIC: Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, "Once"
RUNNER-UP: Jonny Greenwood, "There Will Be Blood"

PRODUCTION DESIGN: Jack Fisk, "There Will Be Blood"
RUNNER-UP: Dante Ferretti, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Janusz Kaminski, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"
RUNNER-UP: Robert Elswit, "There Will Be Blood"

NEW GENERATION: Sarah Polley, "Away From Her"

INDEPENDENT/EXPERIMENTAL: Pedro Costa’s "Colossal Youth"

SPECIAL CITATION: New Crowned Hope series commissioned by director Peter Sellars to honor the anniversary of Mozart’s 250th birthday

LEGACY AWARDS: Milestone Film and Video and the Outfest Legacy Project

Posted by Jim Emerson at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

The owls are not what they seem. And Richard Beymer has the photos to prove it, in this beautiful online gallery from the set of "Twin Peaks." The shot of Hank Worden ("Grateful to the hospitality of your rocking chair, ma'am!") with Lynch makes me very happy.

Look for marvelous/creepy shots of Ray Wise, Grace Zabriskie, Harry Goaz, Heather Graham, Carel Struycken, Frank Silva, Charlotte Stewart and Don S. Davis and more of your favorite "Twin Peaks" stars, hanging out in the Great Northern, the Double R, the Red Room, and the woods!

(tip: Movie City Indie)

Posted by Jim Emerson at 07:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A comment by Anonymous at Girish's on the stages in the life of a cinephile contains more truth than I'd like to admit:

1. Ages 6-13/ marvel at the lights, learn about adult life, eat sugar/Disney, Spielberg, John Hughes

2. Ages 14-19/ age of discovery, excitement and inspiration/ Rear Window, Bicycle Thief, early Godard

3. Ages 20-26/ O.C.D. attempt to see everything by every major director/ Dreyer, Ozu, late Godard

4. Ages 27-33/ burn out period, start seeing films rarely and complain about how bad movies have gotten, sell your old videos/ Straub, Snow, Dziga Vertov Group

5. Ages 34-41/ burn out continues, fall asleep in one two many Sokurov films, stop watching art films and start watching blockbusters again, become a faux-populist and develop inane arguments about movies you’ve never seen

6. Ages 42-45/ watch only Reality TV and Internet porn, get drunk alone, send mass emails linking to Armond White reviews

7. Ages 46- /after therapy and anti-depressants repeat steps 3-6.

In my case, stage 1 began at age 3 (at a drive-in with, yes, Disney's 1961 "101 Dalmatians"). Stage 3 lasted until about age 37, and stages 4 and 5 were condensed, though I'm not sure I ever became a neo-populist, since I never disliked popular movies just because they were popular. (No comment about stage 6.) My real "crisis of faith" in movies was from about 1998 - 2003.

BTW, the book "Defining Moments in Movies," edited by Chris Fujiwara, that inspired this comment is delicious and nutritious cinemaniacal brain candy. Once you start tasting, you'll just want more and more. As Fujiwara explains in his introduction, the 800-page, still-studded nibble-book (organized by decade, 1890 - 2000+) "is designed to highlight film scenes, or events in the history of cinema, that the [62] contributors (who include film critics, film historians, writers in other fields, and academics) regard as profound, essential, illuminating, or significant..." -- "a network of visions and preoccupations, an anthology of cinephilic passions, a casual encyclopedia of cinematic events." In fact, Fujiwara's intro is a worthy "moment" itself.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

All week I've been meaning to link (and contribute) to the 'Short Film Week' Blog-a-thon co-hosted by Only the Cinema and Culture Snob (December 2 - 8). But I'm still recovering from the Pacific Northwest storm and flooding (long story) earlier in the week. There are many things I'd like to write about, but I probably won't get to them until after the blog-a-thon is technically over. (For now, maybe I can recycle my Close-Up Blog-a-thon short movie [above] and my piece on the opening credits sequence for 'Dexter', which is a perfect little short on its own -- not unlike Martin Scorsese's "The Big Shave," in certain provocative respects.)

But the archive of articles will remain -- and there's some great stuff, including Matt Zoller Seitz on Chuck Jones' classic Looney Tune, "What's Opera, Doc?"; Joe Bowman at Fin de cinema on 20 breakthrough music videos (hey, they can be incredibly expressive and accomplished works); Jeffrey Hill at Liverputty on the Disney science film "Our Friend the Atom" (1957) [as a kid, I was fascinated by Frank Capra's Bell Telephone film, "Hemo the Magnificent" (1957), about hemoglobin]; and more than I can even begin to mention. It's a trove you'll have fun digging through...

Posted by Jim Emerson at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

From Brandon Colvin, Out 1:

The opening shot of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 noir masterpiece “Le Samouraï” establishes the tone of Melville’s contemplative crime film, defines its amoral protagonist Jef Costello (Alain Delon), and introduces the connections between Costello, a hired assassin, and the concept of the Japanese samurai, particularly the ronin, or masterless samurai. The nearly three-minute shot maintains a simple but wonderfully expressive composition throughout, remaining within the drab gray-blue confines of Jef’s apartment.

Jef lies stiffly on his white mattress with black polka dots in the bottom right corner of the frame. Two windows, overflowing with soft light, balance the composition by providing visual anchors in the center of the frame. Jeff’s pet bird chirps away in his birdcage, resting on a table centered between the two windows. Chairs and dressers crowd the outskirts of the frame, completing the layout of Jef’s ascetically simple, disciplined apartment. For minutes, the only sound is the constant drizzle of rain outside the windows and the intermittent whooshing of cars on the street below, punctuated by the light cries of Jef’s bird. Jef’s lights a cigarette and when he puffs, the smoke floats up softly, stagnating in the light of the windows, rolling around as if trying to escape. The completely still shot seems as if it’s attempting to emulate the frozen camera of Ozu. Jef lies with solemnity and his imprisonment in his dreary apartment is analogous to the situation of his caged bird.

Following the credits, text appears in the top right corner of the shot. The text reads, “There is no greater solitude than that of a samurai, unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle . . . perhaps . . .” The quote is attributed to Bushido (Book of Samurai), which Melville fabricated for the film, and illustrates the connection between Jef’s disciplined isolation and the social exile experienced by great warriors, like samurai. Particularly interesting is the connection between Jef and ronin, or masterless samurai. Ronin are noted in Japanese storytelling for their lack of morality and existential listlessness, caring for themselves above all and feeling no loyalty to exterior forces. Jef exemplifies this sort of selfish existence, which, as with the ronin, fates him to a sense of dread and, ultimately, death.

Immediately after the text appears in the frame, the shot begins undulating violently from rapid zoom-ins while the camera moves out. The jarring mutation of the shot results in the shot actually being wider, the camera further away from Jef. His isolation and distance is intensified, correlating with the revelation of Jef as a type of modern ronin. Following the widening of the opening shot, Jef sits up in his bed and turns his back to the camera, facing the windowed wall, smoky light dancing over his head. He has turned away from the camera, away from the audience, delving further into his own separation and loneliness. This is Jef’s acceptance of his role as the necessarily solitary warrior, an enforcer of the zeitgeist of “honorable” violence.

The slow, lingering pace of the opening shot of “Le Samouraï” sets the momentum of Melville’s film and the gray-blue dreariness of the color scheme is consistent throughout, almost as if Melville is attempting to make a color film in black and white. This anachronistic quality is ultimately what defines Jef, a remnant of the past, of the legend of the ronin, a pre-vanquished anti-hero seemingly awaiting his own extinction.

JE: What I find most astonishing about this spellbinding shot is the overriding feeling that Jef is in suspended animation when he's in his room, just waiting to be summoned into action. You don't even necessarily notice him at first, until a curl of smoke rises from the bed. Just about the only motion in the shot, besides the smoke, comes from the bird and the shadows/reflections (on the ceiling and the soundtrack) from the cars passing by below his windows. The man himself is but a shadow, as we see when he rises from the bed -- a silhouette, a premature ghost, called into animation by his mission.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sometimes I doubt Richard Kelly's commitment to Sparkle Motion. The first time was the "Director's Cut" of "Donnie Darko," which de-emphasized all that was mysterious and exciting about the original film by insisting on a literal explication of the time-warp theories of Roberta Sparrow (aka "Grandma Death"). Huge mistake -- as bad as showing us the inside of the mothership in the "Special Edition" of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." At least Spielberg knew that was an error, and removed it from his Director's Cut: He'd wanted to tweak things he'd had to rush in order to meet his deadline (after all, the fate of Columbia Pictures was riding on this picture), and to flesh out some character details. But Columbia let him go back and fine-tune his blockbuster on the condition that he show Richard Dreyfuss inside the ship -- something we really didn't want to see, because it ruined the uplifting momentum of the ending, and who wants to see Richard Dreyfuss crying over anti-climactic special effects anyway?

"Southland Tales" is the product of the same literalist sensibility that produced the second version of "Donnie Darko." Part of me questions whether it's even worth writing about, mainly because it offers so little of cinematic interest. It's fussy and inert, like Part 4 of a PowerPoint slide-show based on a set of elaborately drawn storyboards that explain in excruciating detail the minutiae of the mythology behind "Hudson Hawk." There's nothing close to a movie here.

There's an obvious channel-surfing aesthetic to mimic "information overload," but nothing's on, anyway. One shot could just as easily be followed by any other shot -- they aren't cut together with any verve or intelligence, so the effect is flat and linear. We flip by a beachside talk show ("The View" with porn actresses), and that's as sophisticated and penetrating as "Southland Tales" ever gets about sex, politics and media. (He said "penetrating"!) Is it hard to follow? Not really. The voiceover makes sure everything is explained (often more than once), but it could just as well not have been explained and it wouldn't matter, because nothing is illuminated in the explanation.

Like "Hudson Hawk," it's a bloated, white-elephantine vanity production (for the writer-director, not the star) -- a strained, deliberate, joyless, big-budget, star-studded Hollywood effort to manufacture a "cult movie" by pandering to what some studio execs probably consider to be "the comic-book youth demographic." It wishes it could be "Repo Man" (or "RoboCop" or "Starship Troopers") but it's not even "The Postman." Actually, "Southland Tales" -- co-financed by Universal, which is distributing the film internationally but dropped any domestic plans after the disastrous reception at Cannes -- isn't "big-budget" by today's Hollywood standards ($17 million). But the feeling of waste and desperation behind it -- "Let's throw money at the screen for big sets and unimaginative digital effects!" -- is not unlike that dead-lump-in-your-stomach feeling you get while watching your average Michael Bay movie. [Since writing this, I have learned that the time and (Sony) money spent re-tooling "Southland Tales" after Cannes has included cutting 20 minutes, adding to Justin Timberlake's too-literal voiceover, and beefing up the special effects. That's what I was afraid of. It shows.]

"Just because it's loud doesn't mean it's funny," says a character played by Amy Poehler, and the words land with a lifeless thud, as if everybody on the set were trying to pretend that wouldn't become the picture's epitaph. What's missing is resonance -- a quality that's hard to define. Will "Southland Tales" become another "Hudson Hawk"? "Howard the Duck"? "Spaceballs"? "Strange Days"? "1941"? "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World"? "Battlefield Earth"? "Brazil"? "Baby Geniuses"? Maybe, but I doubt it's memorable enough to make much of a lasting impression. (Mike Judd's virtually unreleased "Idiocracy" strikes me as a much smarter and funnier satire.)

Of course, every cult movie -- even a calculated one like "Southland Tales" -- has its partisans, who will say it's a mess, but revel in it as an ambitious mess. But is it a "mess," or is it exactly what it's meant to be? The more pertinent question for me is: What is the nature of its ambition, and how does it manifest itself? There's not an image or a joke or an idea that isn't hackneyed. The movie has already dated badly, and probably would have felt so in 1997, when it feels like it was conceived. (One character mentions a URL for an underground neo-Marxist revolutionary pirate web site and spells out the "WWW." Maybe that's meant to be funny. It isn't when it happens.)

My favorite joke, I thought, was a title that indicated the early part of the movie as episode "IV." You know, like "Star Wars." Then I find out at All Movie Guide that "director Kelly also created an accompanying series of three graphic novels which chart these events and characters prior to this story." See what I mean? The whole thing is so literal that everything has a banal explanation.

I don't want to pile on after the movie has flopped with audiences and critics, but let me describe one shot. It's the only one that sticks with me because it was the moment I felt I had to decide whether to walk out or not. (I'd checked my watch when I thought it was just about over, about an hour and 15 minutes in -- something I never do, but I was confident I wouldn't disturb the other guy in the theater because he was way up in the back on the left.) So: Miranda Richardson, as the Disney animated villainess at the headquarters of the government domestic surveillance agency, US-IDENT, leads her staff through office calisthenics. The camera dollies past the stretching employees in their cubicles and when it gets to her, she bends down to reveal... a line of exercising dwarves! (I know the proper term is "little people," but this picture treats them as a freakshow sight gag. If anyone ever spoke of them, they would probably be called "midgets." That's the movie's sense of humor.) Anyway, it was so pathetic it made me really angry. But I stayed through the whole thing. Let me tell you: Nothing else happened worth mentioning.

Dissenting (i.e., much more favorable) opinions: Manohla Dargis, J. Hoberman, Ed Howard.

P.S. I did enjoy the performances of Cheri O'Teri, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake, Seann William Scott, and Jon Lovitz, though. Their in-the-moment energy is what kept me watching.

P.P.S. Just found this paragraph, from Scott Foundas at the L.A. Weekly, that hones in on something I found annoying about the movie, which is its inability to absorb its own explicit references:

As I wrote from Cannes, Kelly seems to think that to merely mention Fallujah or global warming — or to name a bank after Karl Rove — is the same as actually having an opinion about them, and his all-you-can-eat buffet of cinematic in-references (to say nothing of his Bartlett’s-style quoting of Eliot, Yeats and the Book of Revelation) operates on pretty much the same superficial level. The movie’s frequent invocations of "Kiss Me Deadly" and "Mulholland Drive" have been much discussed, but in addition, "Southland Tales" pilfers large chunks of its plot and visual style from Alex Cox’s "Repo Man," Kathryn Bigelow’s "Strange Days" and Shane Carruth’s Sundance-winning "Primer," and unlike the makers of those films, Kelly hasn’t digested his influences and made them his own — he’s more like the slacker college kid who’s just enough of an intellectual poseur to bluff his way to an A.

Posted by Jim Emerson at 02:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (27)

The message may not move me,
Or mean a great deal to me,
But hey! it feels so groovy to say...
-- Peter, Paul & Mary, "I Did Rock & Roll Music" (1967)

The sun's not yellow
It's chicken
-- Bob Dylan, "Tombstone Blues" (1965)

I listen to Bob Dylan for the music, not the words. I know: heresy. But it's the truth: I listen to him for the way he sounds, and that includes the sound of the words. The literal meaning of the lyrics, or what people used to call the "message" (if one can be found or deciphered), is secondary, just one dimension of his art. In his 1960s folk-pop-culture ascendance, Dylan's songs were scrutinized for coded messages -- supposedly embedded "between the lines," as die-hard folk-popsters PP&M put it in their satirical ditty about the superficiality and commerciality of rock 'n' roll music. That pop-culture illusion -- that Dylan and the Beatles were sending out encrypted signals into the collective consciousness, and especially to you -- is something Todd Haynes plays around with quite a bit in "I'm Not There" -- a pseudo-documentary/biopic not unlike his "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," but with six actors playing Dylan instead of Barbie dolls playing The Carpenters.

But before we get to that: No, I'm not at all knocking Dylan as a poet or a lyricist. (I read Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot and e.e. cummings for their music as much as anything else, too.) If Dylan's words weren't so satisfying to sing out loud, he wouldn't be much of a songwriter, would he? I mean, how does it feel to sing "How does it feel?" It feels fantastic, that's how. The black bile of those spleen-venting, "finger-pointing" songs ("Like a Rolling Stone," "Positively 4th Street," "Ballad of a Thin Man") can be so cathartic. All those playfully cryptic, electric-surrealistic rhymes in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (cue cards, anyone?) can make you dizzy with delight. A simple couplet like, "They sat together in the park / As the evening sky grew dark," doesn't look like all that much on the page, but you hear Dylan sing it and you feel a spark tingle to your bones.

What I mean to say is that, even if Dylan were writing in a language no one else on Earth knew (and sometimes I think that's exactly what he means to do), his great songs would still be great songs. Take Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Do you need to know the meaning of the words in Schiller's "Ode to Joy" to appreciate the fusion of vocal and orchestral sounds in the last movement?

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!...

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuer-trunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!

Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Admit it! It feels so groovy to say! (Or sing.) I feel the same way about "My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums," and "Awop-bop-a-loo-mop alop bom bom" (by Dylan's idol Little Richard) and "Beat on the brat with a baseball bat" (The Ramones) and "A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido" (Nirvana).

In Jude Quinn's (Cate Blanchett) last scene in "I'm Not There," he's riding in the back of a limo, apparently giving an interview to an off-screen reporter. The words come from a 1966 Playboy interview with Nat Hentoff:

What I’m talking about is traditional music … with all these songs about roses growing out of people’s brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels—they’re not going to die. … You’d think these traditional music people would gather that mystery is a traditional fact. These things are so full of mystery … contradictions … chaos, clocks, watermelons, it’s everything. People think I have some kind of fantastic imagination. It gets very lonesome. Traditional music … it’s too unreal to die. … And in that music is the only true valid death you can feel today off a record player. Like everything else in great demand people try to own it. … I think it’s the meaninglessness that’s holy.

"Everybody knows I'm not a folk-singer," Jude says, looks at the camera, and gives us a Mona Lisa smile.

Roses growing out of people's heads, swans turning into angels, Einstein disguised as Robin Hood, sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet...

Bob Dylan appears in the last shot of the movie. He's not there in any of the others. In the first shot, adapted from "Don't Look Back," the camera is Dylan, as he makes his way on stage (see "This Is Spinal Tap"). Oh, but there I go again. I'm trying to emphasize the Dionysian side of a movie that's Apollonian in intelligence. It's worth mentioning (as many have) that Todd Haynes majored in art and semiotics at Brown University. Haynes did extensive research and has compared his filmmaking method to writing a doctoral dissertation.

But as Robert Sullivan wrote in a New York Times Magazine story about the film:

Haynes didn't want to make a movie that was about anything. He wanted to make a movie that is something.

And, for everything else you can say about the film (and much can be said), what I believe he's made is an ode to joy. Yes, it's all about cultural references and signifiers and analysis and interpretation and image-manufacturing and PR. It's neither fish nor fowl: neither yellowtail nor chicken (see above). I laughed, I cried. Afterwards, I was elated, stoned, so happy just to be alive.

It's significant, I think, that the movie's most ecstatic musical moments -- ones that also signal turning points in the narrative -- are built around songs considered "lightweight" by some of Dylan's hardcore folkie fans: the electric machine-gun of "Maggie's Farm" (a straight-ahead blues) that scandalizes the "New England Jazz and Folk Festival"; the raunchy "Goin' to Acapulco" ("She puts it to me plain as day / And gives it to me for a song"), transformed into a haunting dirge for the surrealist town of Riddle by Jim James (in "Rolling Thunder Revue" whiteface) of My Morning Jacket, accompanied by Calexico as a funeral band; and, for a few glorious moments at the end, Dylan himself singing a pop song (and a No. 1 hit for The Byrds), "Mr. Tambourine Man" -- mostly the wail of his harmonica, like a midnight train whining low.

Although "I'm Not There" was co-written and directed by Haynes, and a title says it was "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan," one screen credit that shouldn't be overlooked is this one: "Story by Todd Haynes." Fragmented and kaleidoscopic as the movie's approach may be, there's a story (or, rather, stories) that's no more difficult to follow than "Traffic," "Babel" or any other "network narrative movie -- and, even for those who know next to nothing about Dylan, probably a whole lot easier than "Syriana" or "The Fountain." The primary difference, of course, is that the six main characters are all aspects of one character, although none of them is called "Bob Dylan."

Sure, "I'm Not There" is a phantasmagoria, riddled with historical, musical, cinematic, biographical and miscellaneous pop-cultural references and details, but it's also structured as a parody of ultra-familiar bio-pic formulas and clichés, so that you sense where the story beats are, even when the chronology is scrambled. The foreshadowing of The Motorcycle Accident under the single-shot Godardian title alone is a blast: just a motorcycle streaking across the 'Scope screen, black and white with some brown lettering. Whether you know there was a legendary Motorcycle Accident or not (you will), it's a delightful set-up for the autopsy scene that follows -- which is, among other things, a riff on the apocalyptic, Paul-Is-Dead-like speculation that swirled around the crash at the time. But you don't have to know that. Let me put it this way: If the flat-out spoof "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" can approach "I'm Not There" as a genre parody, we're in for another real good time.

Maybe "parody" isn't quite the right word. Is "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" a bio-documentary parody? Or the investigative doc and horror movie sections of "Poison"? Or the Sirkian melodrama of "Far From Heaven"? Todd Haynes' movies are all smart as a whip and sharp as a tack, but they make you laugh and they make you cry. And, sometimes, they make you sing.

So gather around
And see what the day brings
And see what makes you laugh
And see what makes you sing
And never, nevermind
The thing that people say
You'll never go away
You'll never go away
-- Brad, "The Day Brings" (1997)

Posted by Jim Emerson at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)