December 2009 Archives

Nobody makes movies as richly and densely composed as the Coens. I've said it before that when I'm watching one of their films it's like being exposed to the distilled essence of cinema, and it makes me realize how anemic and unfocused most movies are. They pack a world of information into their words and images, but they also find the music within them. Their movies sing, every dimension in harmony or counterpoint with every other. Their soundtracks, created with the collaboration of sound designer Skip Lievsay and composer Carter Burwell, are the most vibrantly imagined anywhere. In "No Country for Old Men" they created soundscapes that served as the score, even though very little of it was actually music (beyond a few tones that almost subconsciously quiver beneath certain moments).

David Schwartz has a superlative interview with Carter Burwell at Moving Image Source, in which he talks about the thrilling sonic dimensions of "A Serious Man." Burwell has worked with the Coens for a quarter century, and they're all in tune with one another's genius:

Before the Coens had even cut more than a reel, they called me to say that they'd like me to start working on a piece of music that comes out of a story told entirely in Yiddish in some unspecified old world and leads right up to the opening bar of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love." The idea was that during this transition from the shtetl to the Jefferson Airplane, you're traveling through the ear canal of this boy in Hebrew school. It's a dark and mysterious tunnel, and when you finally get to the end it turns out that it's the earpiece of his portable radio through which he's listening to Jefferson Airplane. That was the first piece of music I wrote for the film.

As near as I can tell, this particular discussion got started when Sara Libby wrote a short piece at True/Slant called "Worst Movie of the Decade: 'Crash'." She said:

It's been called a "feel-good" racism movie -- one that leads people to believe they're on the right side of racism, when in fact they're just having their buttons pushed and their preconceived notions re-affirmed. [...]

Bad movies get made all the time. But what infuriated me about "Crash" was that so many people mistook it for something profound when it was truly the opposite. It shouts at the top of its lungs: "I'M SUBTLE! I'M NUANCED!" and so many people somehow agreed.

Ow, my brain hurts. So, let's just get these out of the way, shall we? In the annual Village Voice/LA Weekly Film Poll, announced just before Christmas, 94 critics (including me) came up with 160 nominations for best films of 2009 -- and voted in a bunch of other categories, too, including Best Film of the Decade ("Mulholland Dr."). [My decade favorites are here.]

Meanwhile, Film Comment polled another big batch o' crix (a lot of the same ones, in fact) and came up with a somewhat different 20 Best of 2009 list -- and 150 Best Films of the Decade (topped by... "Mulholland Dr."). Just for fun, let us compare the two groups' Top Dozen for both year and decade:

You're going to be seeing a sufficient number of lists between now and the end of 2009 -- on that you can rely -- but the most middling of all movie lists has at last been composed by filmmaker David Wain ("Role Models," "Wet Hot American Summer"):

"David Wain's Middle Ten Neither Best Nor Worst Movies of the Decade."

"Obviously," he writes in an explanatory foreword, "there were A LOT of great contenders over the last decade. But only 10 can be in the middle, so here are my picks..." When mediocrity is the chief criterion, questions arise: Are these really the most moderate accomplishments of the '00s? How strongly do you feel about that? Is today Tuesday? And now, as @davidwain tweeted: "Let the discussions begin!"

(Full list after jump...)

As I always like to say, "Everybody Loves Lieblingsfilme." I know I do, which is why I made this list of my 22 favorite films of the '00s. No, that is not entirely true. I made the list because the estimable Milan Pavlovic, editor of the German Filmzeitschrift Steadycam (and for whom I wrote this profile of Barbara Baxley's Lady Pearl in Robert Altman's "Nashville") asked me to.

He asked others, too, and the aggregate findings will be published in a future issue of Steadycam. The important thing to remember here is that these are favorite films. Sure, everything on my list is also an accomplished work of art, but these are the movies I love, that have had the most personal impact on me, that I have found most moving and exhilarating, that have permanently ingrained themselves into my psyche -- whether they're anybody else's idea of the "best of the decade" or not:

Now updated with links to my previous noodlings, where available:

1) "No Country for Old Men" (Coens, 2007)
2) "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" (Jones, 2005)
3) "Caché" (Haneke, 2005) [Opening Shot]
4) "Zodiac" (Fincher, 2007) [Opening Shot] See also: Hurdy Gurdys and Aqua Velvas, The "Dirty Harry" Scene, Three Kinds of Violence.
5) "A Serious Man" (Coens, 2009)
6) "Mulholland Dr." (Lynch, 2001)
7) "Brokeback Mountain" (Lee, 2005)
8) "Pan's Labyrinth" (Del Toro, 2006)
9) "Birth" (Glazer, 2004)
10) "24 Hour Party People" (Winterbottom, 2002)

(continued...)

My previous post, Impressions Based on the Hype for the Movie Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, was an account of exactly that -- how even limited exposure to advance word for the movie over 11 months, from Sundance in January to theatrical release in November, created expectations that made me not want to see it. What follows are my impressions when I finally did.

* * * *

UPDATE (12/24/09): "I didn't have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodóvar, and actors that were part of that world. Different."
-- Lee Daniels, June 2009

* * * *

None of us is immune to movie publicity, unless we're lucky enough to see the picture well in advance of its theatrical release (perhaps at an early film festival screening) -- or stay away from publications, television, radio, the Internet and any form of communication with other people until we can see it. In the case of "Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire," I reluctantly came to feel that I knew all-too-well what to expect: a grueling torture-fest of a movie that would culminate in an equally manipulative upbeat ending.

Turns out, it is all that, but it's also something else I hadn't anticipated: funny. Yes, it's a rags-to-redemption "social problem" movie, but at the same time it's a consciously camped-up fairy tale, complete with Evil StepMother. It's a showcase for two heartfelt bravura performances (by Mo'Nique and Gabourey Sidibe) and an often laughably overwrought melodrama -- not just because of the horrors it depicts but because it's fully aware of how shockingly high it stacks the decks against its heroine. "Precious" is a virtual remake of John Waters' 1974 "Female Trouble," which makes for a crazy, volatile clash of tones and textures.

MSN's Dave McCoy writes:

Saying that we've come up with the 12 best films of the decade is pretty hilarious when you get right down to it. You can't take the thousands of films released in the past 10 years and say, "Yes, these by far represent the greatest cinema had to offer!" Hell, if you quizzed the 12 of us right now, we'd probably give you completely different lists than the ones we delivered in early December 2009. But, you can't say it isn't fun, right?

This reminds me: How the hell did I manage to omit Laurent Cantet's 2001 "Time Out"? You can find the aggregate ballot results here, individual contributors' lists here.

After the jump: The composite list, my list, and my capsule appreciation of "Caché":

From Roger Ebert @ebertchicago: "To people who say 'Just enjoy! Don't analyze!' This speaks eloquently for me." From Racialicious via io9 ("When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like 'Avatar'?"):

Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be "Why can't you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why can't you just enjoy it? Why do you have to analyze it???" [...]

First of all, when we analyze art, when we look for deeper meaning in it, we are enjoying it for what it is. Because that is one of the things about art, be it highbrow, lowbrow, mainstream, or avant-garde: Some sort of thought went into its making -- even if the thought was, "I'm going to do this as thoughtlessly as possible"! -- and as a result, some sort of thought can be gotten from its reception....

So when you go out of your way to suggest that people should be thinking less -- that not using one's capacity for reason is an admirable position to take, and one that should be actively advocated -- you are not saying anything particularly intelligent. And unless you live on a parallel version of Earth where too many people are thinking too deeply and critically about the world around them and what's going on in their own heads, you're not helping anything; on the contrary, you're acting as an advocate for entropy.

I've been reading Mitchell Zuckoff's "Robert Altman: The Oral Biography" before going to sleep each night, and it's reminding me of how much he influenced my life -- from the life-changing epiphany of "Nashville" in 1975 to the first time I met him in 1977 to the countless hours I've spent living with (and in) his films, writing about them, talking about them with people who knew him and knew his movies...

Reading this, from Julian Fellowes (Oscar-winning screenwriter for "Gosford Park"), made me feel the loss acutely once again -- and kept me awake, wandering down memory-trails, for hours:

The standard thing in Hollywood is to direct the camera with a movement on the scene. The dog goes down the walk and the camera follows the dog, and it leads to the body. With Bob, the dog goes one way and the camera goes the other. He creates this illusion in the mind of the spectator that they are directing the camera. It becomes an autonomous being that is moving around the room. Because you are the viewer, you take responsibility for the image. You are given the impression that you are exploring this film.

"You take responsibility for the image." Was there ever a director who offered his audience so much freedom, trust, responsibility (and everything that word implies)?

Of course, Altman's camera did sometimes "follow the dog," but more often than not both the dog and the frame would continue moving, allowing new elements to enter and exit so that you were fully aware of the world that extended beyond the edges of the frame. The frame wasn't just a proscenium, but a permeable membrane through which life continually ebbed and flowed...

Jordan Gray -- a graphic designer, filmmaker and scanners reader -- has posted his choices for the Worst Movie Posters of the Decade. (Others' picks for the best of the decade can be found here, here and here.)

To the right is his choice for the second-worst one-sheet design of the '00s. JG writes:

Just try to look at this and not laugh. It's not even remotely convincing that these 3 actors were in the same region of the world when their photos were taken. Look at the alignment of the billing block. What? Absolutely nothing about this makes any sort of design sense.

Three attractive (though not necessarily recognizable) faces and a poster that's ugly in every way. The positioning of the names at the top is likely somebody's awkward solution to a contractual obligation that Uma Thurman receive top billing. Relative size and arrangements of faces and names are often written into all parties' contracts these days, presenting designers with... nightmares like this. Who could possibly have approved such flagrantly bad work?

The eyestrain I got from watching James Cameron's "Avatar" reminded me why I think so-called "3D" cinema is still a cheap-looking gimmick that hasn't improved since the View Master was introduced at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Upon returning home from the movie I wrote:

[Each] layer looks flat, stacked in front of or behind some other layer. So, people for example look like cardboard cutouts rather than rounded figures. What's worse, if the camera's depth of field holds something out of focus in the foreground or background, you can't do anything about it. If you look at something that's closer or farther away, your eyes have a natural tendency to bring it into focus. 3D camerawork frustrates that instinct. Regular old 2D imagery, on the other hand, does not trick your eyes into trying to focus on something they can't, because both eyes are always looking at the same plane. All around, fewer headaches.

Martin Anderson has since published a piece at Shadow Locked called "How to avoid getting a 3D headache while watching Avatar," discussing the problem of stereoscopic photography and illustrated with 2D examples from Hitchcock and Ridley Scott:

Shortly after getting gut-shot, one of the characters in James Cameron's "Avatar" wisecracks: "This could ruin my whole day." I know the feeling. The line, like so many others, lands with a hollow thud.

To my eyes (and ears), "Avatar" is the first Cameron feature that's a near-total failure. Obviously, I'm not talking about ticket sales, since the movie just opened today, or the early reviews, most of which were ecstatic. I emphasize "my eyes" because: 1) the golden-saucer eyes of the lovely, elongated blue protagonists, the Na'vi, are their most entrancing features; 2) the movie is explicitly about the act of seeing ("I see you" is one of its catch phrases, and the title of the Celine Dion-ish end-credits theme song that goes on and on); 3) the central problem with the movie is not its less-than-impressive technology but the triteness of its artistic vision; and 4) the 3D process -- at least for me, with my particular prescription lenses behind those Polarized glasses -- is continually distracting. And yet, "Avatar" strikes my retinas as an achievement that amounts to something considerably less than meets the eye.

Once again, Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy transform the year's movies into poetry -- and poetic criticism -- at MSN Movies: Moments Out of Time 2009. A few excerpted stanzas:

• Middle Atlantic States summer heat and humidity visible in the air, the color, the softness -- "Taking Woodstock"...

• "Public Enemies": the thrill of seeing a piece of "Manhattan Melodrama" big as a movie-palace wall, with the luster of the brand-new. Worth dying for...

• "The Hurt Locker": rust and scale popping off a derelict car when an IED explodes nearby...

• What spaces and places look like after people leave them: a man hikes up a snow-covered hill, then simply disappears from sight -- and the movie that is "Liverpool"...

• In "Limits of Control," Tilda Swinton's platinum-blonde-wigged femme fatale reminding us that "The Lady from Shanghai" made no sense either...

• "35 Shots of Rum": kids with Japanese lanterns among the dune grass at sunset...

• "A Serious Man": the traffic accident that doesn't happen. But does....

• The terrible uncertainty of what lies on the road behind her, as "The Headless Woman" drives on after having hit something...

• Old people disappearing up flights of stone steps in "Summer Hours" and "Still Walking"...

This is the first of two posts about the movie "Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire." In this one, I talk about the impressions I got from the movie's press coverage, advertising, reviews and word-of-mouth, and why they put me off the film. In the second part I'll write about my response to the movie when I finally, reluctantly, went to see it... (Part II: "Precious Based on the Movie Female Trouble by John Waters")

I put it off as long as I could. For months I tried not to read about it, but I knew it had won a bunch of awards at Sundance back in January, 2009, when it was called "Push." That, in itself, is enough to make me want to avoid it. The Sundance Film Festival is notorious for hailing a certain type of dilettantish formula movie -- the feel-bad/feel-good story of degradation and redemption, set in a colorful, semi-exotic subculture -- and the picture eventually known as "Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire" sure seemed to fit the profile. There's nothing I hate more than a voyeuristic lesson-movie that goes slumming and then presents itself as an inspirational triumph of the spirit. By the time Oprah (Winfrey, that is -- promoter of bogus New Age twaddle like "The Secret") and Tyler Perry (maker of amateurish chitlin' circuit teleplays) signed on, with great fanfare, as "presenters" I was beginning to think (as I used to tell my newspaper editors about movies I was fairly or unfairly predisposed to despise) that nobody had enough money to pay me to see this thing.

(tip: Living in Cinema)

Ah, this is so refreshing. New York Times critic Manohla Dargis -- one of my favorites, as you know -- talks to Jezebel.com about women in Hollywood -- and doesn't hold back. (Compare and contrast with the arguments over Publishers Weekly's Top 10 books.) Just a few highlights:

>>"I am an equal opportunity critic. I will pan women as hard as men. I've had testy people imply that I should go easier on women's movies. I find that incredibly insulting. Are you kidding me? I don't want to be graded on a curve. None of us want to be a 'good woman writer.'

"I don't want to be the woman critic. I don't want to be the feminist critic. I don't want to be the shrew. What I want to do is talk about the art that I love and point out, every so often, inequities....It's a weird balancing act and I'm not saying there aren't contradictions."

>>"The only thing Hollywood is interested in money, and after that prestige. That's why they'll be interested in something like 'The Hurt Locker.' [Kathryn Bigelow's] done so well critically that she can't be ignored.

"Let's acknowledge that the Oscars are bullshit and we hate them. But they are important commercially... I've learned to never underestimate the academy's bad taste. 'Crash' as best picture? What the fuck."

>> "This business is really about clubby relationships. If you buy Variety or go online and look at the deals, you see one guy after another smiling in a baseball cap. It's all guys making deals with other guys. I had a female studio chief a couple of years ago tell me point blank that she wasn't hiring a woman to do an action movie because women are good at certain things and not others. If you have women buying that bullshit how can we expect men to be better?"

>> "I personally don't think either of them [Nancy Meyers or Nora Ephron] is a good filmmaker -- they make movies for me that are more emotionally satisfying but with barely any aesthetic value at all. I really like "Something's Gotta Give," but I don't think it's a good movie.... I'm of two minds. Sometimes I think that women should do what various black and gay audiences have done, which is support women making movies for women. So does that mean I have to go support Nora Ephron? Fuck no. That's just like, blech."

I think you'll find this list a bit more interesting and idiosyncratic than most of these kinds of things. Motley contributors include Richard T. Jameson, Kathleen Murphy, Dave McCoy, Kim Morgan, James Rocchi, Glenn Whipp, Sean Axmaker, Mary Pols, Don Kaye and me. Be sure to check out the individual lists here. Mine will no doubt be a little different for scanners -- in part because I've seen (and re-seen) more movies since the deadline. (Spoiler note: The point total for "The Hurt Locker" was even higher than the one for "NCFOM" in 2007.)

Why don't more directors do this -- congratulate their fellow filmmakers on their favorite achievements? We know that movie-mad Quentin Tarantino loves movie lists as much as anybody. Last week he gave the Hollwywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog his list of the best films of 2009 (not including "Inglourious Basterds") -- and he seems pretty serious about it. He admits he hasn't seen some of the possible contenders ("Avatar," "The Lovely Bones," "Invictus") and feels there are a few more he'd like to see again before he firms up the list ("Bright Star," "District 9"). I know how he feels: I just caught up with "Bright Star," "Still Walking" and "Anvil! The Story of Anvil" this weekend, got second viewings of a couple others ("Liverpool," "35 Shots of Rum")... and I'm still playing catch-up.

Watch the video above for QT's presentation of his Top 8 (so far), or see the list below...

NOTE: I have not seen the movie "Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire." I don't want to. I'm hoping I don't have to.

This is my favorite of my own video pieces so far because it's the most personal and spontaneous -- really a stream-of-consciousness memory-movie captured and strung together over a weekend for the House Next Door's Close-Up Blogathon. I pretend I now know what every image, every sound "means" here (though much of that was discovered just in the act of dreaming it up and putting it together -- or didn't occur to me until I actually saw it), but that's not the point: Just let it sink in and see what dreamy associations it might conjure for you...

Original illustrated notes on "a free-association dream sequence" here. Originally posted here.

Matt Zoller Seitz (aka InsomniacDad) pays due tribute to to the "Critics of the '00s": David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, at IFC Blog.

Why? Well, because they've written some of the most influential and illuminating film books (and textbooks) of our age, educating a generation of up-and-coming moviemakers and moviegoers? Because their work, in print and on their essential blog ("Observations on film art") is simultaneously rigorous and readable, scholarly and accessible? Because their enthusiasm for cinema is unparalleled? Because they look at film as film, examining the images themselves and not just treating the medium as pop-culture detritus or literature with pictures?

Well, yes, all of the above and more. MZS puts it most eloquently in his introduction:

Film criticism as we know it tends to fall into a handful of time-worn categories: an expression of one's personality, politics and taste, with traces of social critique and memoir (Pauline Kael, James Agee); or a kind of performance art on the page, using individual films, actors or filmmakers as springboards for sustained riffs on art and life (Manny Farber); or a scholarly attempt to draw connections between films and film movements, rank filmmakers by aesthetic significance and put works in historical context (Andrew Sarris).

(tip: Matt Rosen)

Roger Ebert on Twitter: "2009 is one of those magic movie years like 1939 or 1976."

Leonard Maltin on his iPhone Movie Guide app: "'Up in the Air' is the best film I've seen all year. Frankly, that isn't much of a compliment..."

Jim Emerson, right here and now: "For my money, 2005 and 2007 were the best movie years of the decade."

Discuss.

"Well, watching a film by Godard is more or less like any other aesthetic experience, in that you're able to go back and forth, inside and outside, at the same time--watching/ thinking, thinking/watching."
-- Richard Brody, interview with Miriam Bale (2/23/09)

Which is more important in criticism, journalism and journalistic movie criticism: objectivity or transparency? OK, trick question. It's a false dilemma.

I admire critics who strive for the attitude that every movie starts with a blank screen, because every movie does, to some degree. In that respect, pre-existing opinions aren't relevant. The evidence of what transpires on that screen is all that matters. On the other hand, I don't think it's quite honest, or necessarily desirable -- or even humanly possible -- to possess significant knowledge or experience with movies and to put it all out of your memory every time you see a new one.

If you're just trying to lock yourself inside this one movie, not bringing yourself and everything you have to it, you're as ill-equipped to deal with the as the protagonist of "Memento," adrift in a present-tense vacuum. Often the experience of a new (to you) movie will depend on your familiarity with other movies from the same filmmakers, genre, period, culture, etc. So, I've always been more of a transparency guy, myself: I try to own up to my biases and preconceptions, while leaving myself open to having them overturned by any individual picture. I love surprises at the movies -- and most of all I love it when a move upends everything I expected or thought I knew about the filmmakers involved: Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain," Colin Farrell in "In Bruges"...

I tried to avoid it, but it took too much effort. Now I've given up, given in. I don't care about whatever's going on with Tiger Woods, the pro golfer. I had managed to ignore nearly all references to it, except for a rather amazing Taiwanese news-ish video re-enactment of crash scenarios (below, after jump). But then I accidentally happened upon this, and it made me laugh/cry. Not because it has much to do with that golfer, but because of the skill and wit with which it nails a particular musical style, using an actual "found" voicemail message and transforming it into a hilarious melodramatic narrative. I await the vintage Grand Ol' Opry version...

Wednesday, IMDb linked to my "Eleven Worst Ambiguous Movie Endings" post, and the comments from readers unfamiliar with the way we do things 'round here have been hilarious and disturbing. To spare embarrassment for those who seem to have unconsciously gotten the point even if they didn't get the joke, I decided not to post a few of their comments, such as:

This article is dumb. Do you really, actually need all that stuff explicitly explained to you? Maybe you should stop watching movies--or at least stop writting [sic] about them.

and

When the editors of Publishers Weekly came out with their lists of the best books of 2009, they divided them into several categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Mystery, Lifestyle (?), Comics, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, and so on. Out of 50,000 eligible titles, they chose 100 best and topped it off with a "Top 10." The problem: Although women writers were represented in the other lists, none were among the authors of the Top 10.

"We wanted the list to reflect what we thought were the top 10 books of the year with no other consideration...." explained PW's Louisa Ermelino. "We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz."

Headline in the UK Guardian: "Fury after women writers excluded from 'books of the year'."

From a "Sexism Watch" item on the blog "Women and Hollywood":