November 2009 Archives

Let us give thanks for Matt Zoller Seitz, who cooked up this luscious banquet -- entitled "Feast" -- for our delectation in this season of gustatory revelry. It is available on the Moving Image Source site in two flavors -- straight up and annotated. Matt writes:

Writer-director Paul Schrader has said that sex and violence are the vicarious pleasures that drive the vast majority of commercial films, and he's right. But food is arguably just as alluring, and in its way, its appearance on screens -- and when it does appear, it's often as lovingly lit and framed as a reclining nude -- might be even more revelatory and pleasurable, because its appeal isn't solely based on unattainable fantasy. It's not bloody likely that any of us will ever be able to bed a movie star or save the universe from evil. But if we study and practice the culinary arts (or are lucky enough to know somebody who's already an expert) we can experience delights that are as astounding as any mouth-watering scenario that food-obsessed filmmakers can devise. Every plate of food that appears onscreen is a dream that could come true.

Kirby Ferguson of GoodieBag.tv (whom you may remember from "Trajan is the Movie Font") has composed a spectacular image overture, "Hollywood vs. New York," which he describes as, "Four decades of celluloid New York annihilation distilled into one musical montage." Think of it as the opening of Woody Allen's "Manhattan" without the spoken narration, even as it echoes in your memory: "Chapter One. He Adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion." Uh, no, make that, "He romanticized it all out of proportion..."

(tip: @theauteursdaily)

This film, "The Knife" by Mario Balducci,¹ was made for Nic Clear's Unit 15 course, "Crash: Architectures of the Near Future" at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. It consists of four sections, involving re-imagined images from Hitchcock's "North by Northwest": The Knife, The Cliff, The Cafeteria and The Forest.

So, it evidently has something to do with J.G. Ballard and his architecture criticism, but I don't quite know how to look at it that way. What I see is something strangely compelling, presenting recurring nightmarish highlights from "North by Northwest." With additional fish. And dotted lines and arrows that map out or suggest movement within the frame. OK, I can't explain it, but I kinda like it.

* * * *

¹ NOT based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire.

Everybody hates it when they don't explain everything that happened by the time the movie is over. What we need at the end is not open-endedness but clarity, loose-end tying-up, closure. We need more movies like "Psycho" (unfortunately Simon Oakland has passed, but Larry King is still with us) and "Mulholland Dr." -- movies that take a little time to explain exactly what happened so we're not left feeling stupid all the way home. You know what they say: The difference between a comedy and a tragedy is where you end the story. Well, the same goes for the ending: The difference between a good ending and a bad ending is how good the ending is. Here are eleven of the most outrageously unsatisfactory ambiguous endings in movie history:

"Gone With the Wind" (1939) Scarlett O'Hara says, "I'll go home. And I'll think of some way to get him back. After all... tomorrow is another day." That's not the ending of a movie -- that's the beginning of act three! Put up or shut up, Scarlett. Clark Gable has just said the word "Damn" at you and that's it? If tomorrow is such another day, then bring it on!

"Casablanca" (1942) What do you mean Ingrid Bergman goes off with Paul Henreid and all Bogart's left with is the barest hint of a homosexual future with Claude Rains? At the end he puts her on a damn plane (something about how she doesn't amount to a hill of beans) and he and Rains walk off into the fog together as Bogart says, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Whoa! What the hell happened then? What if "Brokeback Mountain" ended right after Heath Ledger threw up? What kind of ending would that be? And how does Peter Lorre figure into it?

Ten years after its release, there are still plenty of people who will not get David Fincher's "Fight Club" because they refuse to see what is in front of their eyes. They think it's about a cult of men who get together to punch each other, which is like saying "Citizen Kane" is about a sled. Fundamentally, it's an uncannily accurate depiction of depression and delusion -- capturing a uniquely (post-?)modern strain of anomie to which perhaps older baby boomers and their seniors find it difficult to connect because it's beyond their frame of reference. (I don't know -- that's just a hunch.)

"People get scared, not just of violence and mortality, but viewers are terrified of how they can no longer relate to the evolving culture," "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk told Dennis Lim recently in the New York Times:

Some older audiences prefer darker material in conventional forms; they "really truly want nothing more than to watch Hilary Swank strive and suffer and eventually die -- beaten to a pulp, riddled with cancer, or smashed in a plane crash."

In that Times piece, Lim dubbed "Fight Club" "the defining cult movie of our time."

Back in 1999, I described it as "a grim fairy tale for adults, a consumerist revenge fantasy, a portrait of a disintegrating personality, and, for all its hyper-active stylization, an astonishingly vivid portrait of the berserk materialist wasteland in which (like it or not) billions of city dwellers live today." (It can also be seen, in retrospect, as a prescient 9/11 nightmare.)

Nobody has ever satisfactorily explained what is supposedly "ambiguous" about the ending of "No Country for Old Men," which has one of the most exquisitely judged denouements in movie history. ("A Serious Man," too.) So, what is it, precisely, that some folks need explained or resolved for them? The smartly funny video above imagines what would happen if "The Wrestler," "Lost in Translation," "NCFOM," "The Graduate" and "The Sopranos" gave the literal-minded exactly what they desire.

Stop by one of the most-loved movie blogs on the Intertubes and give Dennis your best! Several of us already have, as you can see when you get there...

See more ("Up in the Air," "Little Miss Sunshine," "Madea Goes to Jail") at The Auteurs, where Adrian Curry writes:

Two of my favorite posters of recent years, those for "Margot at the Wedding" (2007) and "Funny Games" U.S. (2008) both used versions of Helvetica to great effect. "Margot" used a stylish Neue Helvetica Thin in pink, with the actors' names in the same size and type as the title, while "Funny Games" uses an unusually small point size for a movie poster title to great effect.

See "Why the Helvetica is Trajan the movie font?" from 2007.

Remember last Independence Day when the (then-) governor of Alaska posed for a (psychologically) revealing photo spread in Runner's World Magazine? (Check out the whole photo spread series.) Back then, I posted the photo at right, which has now been recycled as the cover photo for this week's Newsweek magazine,¹ causing a ruckus. Sarah Palin, promoting the book ghostwritten with Lynn Vincent, posted on Facebook last night that she does not approve of the photo's re-use:

[The] profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness -- a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention -- even if out of context.

It's so true. The darned media will just do just about anything to get attention, won't they? I mean, they practically bend over and show off their babies, they're so desperate for publicity! Last July, I was struck by the provocative red-white-and-blue overtones in this particular photo, and proposed "a fun exercise in critical thinking and visual interpretation." The carefully arranged, iconic image, I wrote:

(Finding and reposting many video essays lost when iKlipz went under. This one was originally published here.)

(Finding and reposting many video essays lost when iKlipz went under. This one was originally published ,here.)

AMC's re-do of the classic British TV series "The Prisoner" gets under way Sunday night, following the conclusion of "Mad Men"'s third season last week. The new version stars Jim Caviezel as Number Six and Ian McKellen as Number Two. (The great Leo McKern played Number Two a couple times in the original series, and there were some other repeats as I recall, but generally there was a new Number Two each week.)

From the teasers it appears that the new version (tagline: "You Only Think You're Free") takes place in a desert suburb of Dubai rather than a quaint seaside village. (Actually, the new "Prisoner" was shot in Cape Town, South Africa, and Swakopmund, Namibia.) The big white bouncy billowy security devices are back. But I'm most interested in the opening credits sequence, because I became so enamored with the ritualistic nature of the earlier one, as you can see from the following obsessive video analysis originally published in 2008:

(Rescued and reposted months after the death of iKlipz caused all my video essays to disappear from the web. Originally published -- with more on "The Prisoner" here.)

Without making a big deal of it, New York Times critic A.O. Scott slyly slips several sharp observations about the role of movie critics into this paragraph from his review of "The Fantastic Mr. Fox":

Is it is a movie for children? This inevitable question depends on the assumption that children have uniform tastes and expectations. How can that be? And besides, the point of everything [director Wes] Anderson has ever done is that truth and beauty reside in the odd, the mismatched, the idiosyncratic. He makes that point in ways that are sometimes touching, sometimes annoying, but usually worth arguing about. Not everyone will like "Fantastic Mr. Fox"; and if everyone did it, would not be nearly as interesting as it is. There are some children -- some people -- who will embrace it with a special, strange intensity, as if it had been made for them alone.

Yes it is, I'm afraid. Or almost. Good grief, I know, it's not even Thanksgiving yet and they've already got the festive "Best Of" decorations up in the stores! And I know lots of critics who've been told by their editors to start working on their big '00s lists -- so, reluctantly, I've begun to ponder mine, as well. I haven't even taken a first stab at it but I can tell you this: It will probably not resemble the Top 100 list published a few days ago in the Times of London. Oh, sure, I can conceive of putting together some kind of list that includes "Crash" (#98), "Bowling for Columbine" (#77), "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (#28), "Slumdog Millionaire" (#6) and the like -- but such a ranking would not be comprised of movies that I hold in high esteem. (Have any of the decades' movies plummeted in reputation more dramatically than "Columbine" and "Crash"?)

If you want to page through the Times' list, you can go ahead and start here. It's not all so bad. Meanwhile, here are the top 20 -- with links to things I've written about some of the titles:

WGA strike / Antonioni edition. (No dialog, no actors except the quick mug shots of Dylan personae from "I'm Not There.")

(Finding and reposting many video essays lost when iKlipz went under. This one was originally published here.)

"When in uniform I have to be the exact same as everyone else, I need to look exactly like them."
-- a soldier in "Tattooed Under Fire"

As a person of ink (and I'm not just referring to the stuff that runs through my newspaperman veins, but to my eight tattoos -- so far), I know how intimately tattoos can project images of who you are (or were at the time of the tattooing) from the inside out. And how they conversely shape your identity through the incorporation of symbols, literally internalizing them under your skin. My tattoos are me, as much as any other part of my mind or body. They are physical memories, ideas made flesh. Beginning Wednesday (11/11/09), Veteran's Day, PBS stations will be showing a documentary about Fort Hood soldiers and their skin art called "Tattooed Under Fire." I haven't seen it in advance (my TiVo is set to record it tonight), but Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote at Salon.com just a few days ago:

"This is Fort Hood, and it goes on for miles and miles and miles." Director Nancy Schiesari's riveting documentary, "Tattooed Under Fire," about the River City parlor in Killeen, Texas, and the soldiers who patronize it, was already being hailed as one of the great unreleased films of the year when it finally got picked up to air this month on PBS. But in a grim piece of poetic timing, suddenly the world is looking to understand how the largest military base in the country could become the site of one its worst mass murders, an attack that left 13 dead and 30 injured.

Trailer and showtimes after the jump...

Now engaged in a marathon publicity junket for his new film "Up in the Air," director Jason Reitman ("Juno," "Thank You For Smoking") has been flying around the country doing interviews. Lots of interviews. Gang-bang interviews (as they are known in the trade) and one-on-ones. Through the magic of Twitter, he published two pie charts listing the most-asked questions. (Thought experiment: Imagine being asked the same questions over and over for days or weeks and answering them so that you sound like you care what you're saying.)

Roger Ebert has posted his questions here. After the jump: The 11-20 most-asked questions, and my own Venn diagram!

In a reply to what he feels is a misleading (nay, delusional) review of his essay film "Poliwood" by New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley, Barry Levinson offers this sound advice:

To reiterate, criticism is a part of a filmmaker's journey. Any time you attempt to tackle a subject that is complicated, one is open to criticism. It comes with the territory. A WARNING: to any thin-skinned filmmaker, get out of this line of work quickly or you'll die a hemophiliac. But when one's work is used as fodder for a critic such as Ms. Stanley, then I feel I must speak up... and throw caution to the wind. [...]

The New York Times is known throughout the world as one of the leading newspapers in this country. It has excellent film criticism and book reviews. And a very strong op-ed page. Where Ms. Stanley fits into this strong lineup is questionable at best.

As a filmmaker, all you can expect is for your work to be examined for what it is....

(Finding and reposting many video essays lost when iKlipz went under. This one was originally published here.)

Another in a series of video essays that disappeared from the web earlier this year when iKlipz went under. I'm in the process of finding them in old backups, uploading and restoring them to their proper places on scanners. This one, an x-ray of the Coens' "Miller's Crossing," was originally posted (with commentary, dialog, frame grabs) here.

There's a war going on in America, people, and the stakes are nothing less than Glenn Beck's internal organs. It's all about the connections. Is Glenn Beck, who has not denied raping and killing a young girl in 1990, the only one "crazy" enough to see it?!?! Or to mention Hitler? No. No, he is not, because last night on "The Daily Show" Jon Stewart (in the most inspired television comedy monologue since the Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, gave us Johnny LaRue on the Christmas Eve edition of "Street Beef") traced the connections between Glenn Beck's appendicitis and his previous hemorrhoid surgery! Conspiracy or coincidence? You decide. He's teaching the controversy, fair and balanced. Only Stewart is courageous enough to actually take us inside Beck himself, to follow thoughts as they wend their way through the contours of his brain, down his alimentary canal, into his intestines, and finally out his mouth.

"Take a look, very quickly, if you will, at what your appendix is connected to. I mean... it's all there! Your appendix is connected to your large intestine, which is connected to your small intestine, which is something that Karl Marx... had! That doesn't seem suspicious? Because what is the small intestine connected to, people? Oh, I don't know -- the stomach?!?! Which is where acorns would go if you ate them? Acorns -- where have we heard that name before? And after the intestines sucked the nutrients from the acorn it would go to the colon which goes to the rectum which goes to the anus which is the site of the hemorrhoids that nearly killed Glenn Beck! It's aallll connections!"

Freeze-frame of The Big Board (featuring Van Jones, Che, ACORN and Purity of Essence) after the jump:

Richard Schickel wrote a book review of Robert Altman: The Oral Biography by Mitchell Zuckoff. Except that, rather than review the book, he chose to review Robert Altman's capacity for drinking and dope-smoking:

It appears that from the beginning of his career until almost its end (when illness slowed him), Robert Altman never passed an entirely sober day in his life. When he was not drinking heavily, he was smoking dope -- often doing both simultaneously. When he screened dailies on location, he insisted the cast and crew gather to view them in a party atmosphere, with the merriment rolling on into the night.

Shocking, isn't it?

Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest" is just about my favorite movie. No film has ever been more entertaining. (See Glenn Kenny's personal paen to the picture, "Obviously, they've mistaken me for a much shorter man.") And a piece of it is still alive and well in Lake Forest, IL. From The Lake Forester:

"I bought it about five years ago," Knauz, 81, said of the fully restored Navy N3N that he keeps in his hangar at the Kenosha Regional Airport.

The appeal of owning the plane used in the film -- named by the American Film Institute as the 7th greatest American mystery movie in history -- intrigued Knauz.

"It sat in a hangar in Bakersfield, California until I found it," Knauz said during an interview at his hangar, "Stick and Rudder," in Kenosha.

"The guy I bought it from actually restored it in Hawaii," Knauz said, explaining that the surplus Naval planes built before World War II were later converted to crop-dusters.

(photo by Michelle LaVigne)

Excellent op-ed piece by philosophy prof Tom Dodd Todd May in the New York Times ("Happy Ending") about the ending of "No Country For Old Men":

The harm of death goes to the heart of who we are as human beings. We are, in essence, forward-looking creatures. We create our lives prospectively. We build relationships, careers, and projects that are not solely of the moment but that have a future in our vision of them. One of the reasons Eastern philosophies have developed techniques to train us to be in the moment is that that is not our natural state. We are pulled toward the future, and see the meaning of what we do now in its light.

I'm in the process of tracking down, rescuing and reposting all my video essays that disappeared along with iKlipz when the latter died unexpectedly earlier this year. This one, about M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable," came to mind when posting Richard T. Jameson's comments on framing and John Carpenter's "Halloween."

Blame it on Roger Ebert. He Tweeted up (@ebertchicago) a coupla weeks ago and I have learned from his example that there's more to Twitty-ositude than using a small keyboard to broadcast what you're doing at any given moment. You see, in my daily Intertubular rounds (it's part of my job), I come across all kinds of interesting -- even fascinating -- things that I never get around to writing about. Often because all I want to say is: "Take a look at this, why don't ya?"

So, that's what I will do. I will show you all the good stuff. And warn you about the bad stuff. I do not like the term "follow," for I am neither a Pied Piper, a Fantastik, nor a Jesus Christ, but do pop over here and help me get started, won't you? That's jeeemerson. Thank you.

Above: The most flattering mug shot I could find. Almost used it for my passport.

Steven Boone at Big Media Vandalism has composed a mesmerizing collage (OK, montage) using text from Jackson's 1988 biography "Moonwalk," audio interviews with MJ, and footage from some of Lynch's films, notably "The Elephant Man," "Mulholland Dr.," "The Straight Story," "The Grandmother" and "Eraserhead" to imagine a biography of Michael Jackson directed by David Lynch. He calls it "Notes for a David Lynch adaptation of Moonwalk."

Boone writes:

It all comes down to what you believe, because none of us knew the man....