Detoured

Body Snatching, Body Body Snatching

2006-03-27T09:25:00.000+02:00

This post is at least semi-related to the Abel Ferrara blog-a-thon. Read more about the blog-a-thon here.

I'm not really sure what this was supposed to be. I remember having a vague idea about taking screenshots from all the three Body Snatcher movies - Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1956, Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1978, Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers from 1993 - and hoping that the juxtaposition of images would somehow make for an interesting starting point for further discussion. Perhaps accompanied by some humorous - or even better, clever - comments? Whatever the lazy and unfocused intentions were, the end result left me unsatisfied, yet I was oddly fascinated by how snaps made at the exact same moment in some cases formed rather interesting trios when put together - like the ones at the 50 minute mark - or how I in many cases managed to avoid pure cutaways and actually capture some nice shots.

So take this for what it is - a series of images, snapped at every five minutes from each film. From top to bottom: 1956, 1978, 1993. Feel free to draw conclusions or make observations. If such things escape you, just enjoy the slideshow.

Note that Kaufman's version is almost two hours long, while the other two are about 80 minutes each. Also note the final end credits snapshot - a coincidental nod to the original.

(Thanks to Eric.)

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Recent YouTube Highlights

2006-02-11T13:43:00.000+01:00

Like everyone else, I love YouTube. And YouTube loves me.

Please Kill Mr. Kinski

Zach Galifianakis sings You Bring Me Joy, from his out-of-print DVD Look Who It Isn't

Jenny Lewis sings Rise Up With Fists - but the real highlight is Sarah Silverman

Divine sings I'm So Beautiful

Happy Whatever!

2005-12-23T15:03:00.000+01:00

Recent Highlights: Samurai, Spooks, and Catching Up with 2005

2005-11-07T12:33:00.000+01:00

Considering how few and far between the updates have been lately, how about turning this blog into a sloppy capsule/screening log, sort of like a WHYSL* round-up? Say, once or twice a month? Why not indeed.

* What Have You Seen Lately?

On and off through September and October I've been cultivating my near-embarrassing knowledge of Asian movies, both old and new. In particular, I've seen a hefty bunch of samurai flicks, most notably Okamoto's Samurai Assassin [mixed] (1965) and The Sword of Doom [PRO] (1966), and Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion [pro] (1967) and Harakiri [PRO-] (1962). Of the four, The Sword of Doom stands out as a defiant, wild masterpiece, but its cynical-bordering-on-nihilist outlook on life, society and the world around us may not be to everyone's liking. The charismatic Tatsuya Nakadai stars as a samurai with a seriously dark streak, doomed to bring death and destruction not only to his enemies, but also his allies, friends and loved ones - but no matter how much he recklessly puts his own life on the line and tries to give up, his fate just doesn't let him break the chain of violence brought on by his sword and direct it against himself. Nakadai's psychotic performance is the highlight of the movie. Ends with a memorable mid-action freeze-frame, not unlike Truffaut's The 400 Blows (but under slightly different circumstances).

The two Kobayashi films are, despite their traditional settings, vicious attacks on the old samurai society; they unmask the rituals and traditions as hipocrisy - rigid frauds only kept alive to maintain the proper power balance between the haves and the have-nots. Both movies caused quite a stir back in the day, especially Harakiri, the better of the two (also starring Nakadai), since up until then all Japanese movies about samurai culture had been rather flattering and respectful - according to many scholars, filmmakers were simply unwilling to critically deal with this arguably flawed culture that still cast a shadow on Japan - while Kobayashi portray many of the closely knit samurai clans as havens of self-interest and cowardice.

To connect the past with the present, I also happened to watch Tsui Hark's Cannes '05 opener Seven Swords [mixed] a couple of weeks ago. It's another grand martial arts saga following in the (lucrative) footsteps of Zhang Yimou's recent epics (while quoting several classic martial arts epics in the process), and it's pretty weak for most of its 150 running minutes. Some great art direction, beautiful vistas, and a stunning sword fight between Donnie Yen and Honglei Sun, paying tribute to a similar fight in Once Upon a Time in China II, save the day.

The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon, 1973) [pro-] is an odd blaxploitation flick, a satire exposing and exploiting the white man's supposedly ultimate fear - the Intelligent Negro. As a political stunt to boost popularity among the public, the CIA launches a drive to enlist more African-American agents into the organization. Out of many applicants, Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook) emerges as the most qualified: a well-educated, thorough pencilhead with a black belt in karate. Graduating with top honors, he is presented to the brass as the token black guy, only to get pushed down the ladder when the hype has died down. Stuck with a demeaning deskjob, Freeman quits the agency, returns to the ghetto, and starts up a Black Panther-like militia, hellbent on overthrowing the Man. Despite its narrative ups and downs, the film gains a lot by employing a much larger perspective on society than most blaxploitation films of the era, commenting on racism and injustice not through the eyes of a single hoodlum or pimp, but by literally starting a revolution, culminating in a bizarre, outrageous finale where the militia men are fighting the US army.

I have now seen about 55 films that, according to IMDb, were released in 2005. An average year - lots of crap, some good stuff. Like any other year. Biggest disappointments so far are Michael Haneke's Caché [mixed-] and David Cronenberg's A History of Violence [mixed-] (I can see myself lowering both to con). Caché is shallow arthouse fluff parading as tense thriller, it wants to be both a nailbiting piece of dread and a critique of the bourgeois society's tendency to forget its past (in this case France's treatment of the Algier crisis) - and it fails in both respects. Apart from the dependable Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche, and some nice static camera shots, it's barely interesting. Predictably, it was loved to death upon its release here some weeks ago. One critic said it best: "I don't understand one bit - it's great!". That's the spirit.

A History of Violence is another beast. Though mildly entertaining - certainly not as frustrating and, yes, boring as Caché - it left me with the feeling of "that's it?", more than anything else. Something about it just doesn't gel; everything is slightly off, from the awkward high school scenes to the sudden acceleration of the narrative - and then it's all over, in about 95 minutes. I realize that Cronenberg might be adopting some sort of ironic or distanced position here, I've read comments about how he perhaps directed some scenes badly "on purpose" to hammer home a point, but that just sounds like apologetic auteurism nonsense. And what point, exactly? Apart from the "violence is not a good thing" sentiment, I have trouble finding any subtext. As someone wiser than me said, "for a film that doesn't want to be taken at face value, it's pretty easy to take it at face value".

Seen Lately

2005-09-29T11:23:00.000+02:00

I was probably too optimistic about having the time to update this blog as much as before, now that I run a Swedish blog, but I will try and squeeze out these small capsules every once in a while.

Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made (Mika Kaurismäki, 1994) - pro
Sam Fuller takes a trip to the Brazilian jungle to revisit a remote part of the Mato Grosso, where he was supposed to shoot a movie for Darryl Zanuck back in 53-54 called Tigrero, starring John Wayne, Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner. The movie never happened, for insurance reasons, but Fuller kept the footage from his personal location scoutings (later, he inserted parts of it in one of the more bizarre sequences of Shock Corridor!). With said footage as guiding light, Fuller tries to find his way back to the small Indian village he once visited, to see how much of it is still there. Along for the ride is Jim Jarmusch, who as it turns out is a perfect travel companion - his trademark cool and genuine interest and knowledge of Fuller's career matches Fuller's straight-shooting intensity. The film is bookended by a couple of ridiculous scripted scenes: Jarmusch pretending he doesn't know where Fuller is taking him, and so forth, in a half-hearted attempt to make it seem like a fictional film. Unnecessary and silly, but apart from that, it's a very interesting documentary.

***

Four Brothers (John Singleton, 2005) - pro-
This is probably the closest thing to a serious blaxploitation movie we're gonna get in this year of 2005. And I'm not talking about the pimping, funky, jokey school of blaxploitation, but the socially conscious, crime-themed ones, like Across 110th Street and Detroit 9000, almost completely stripped of any jive swagger. The cold city of Detroit is ripe with corruption, black and white cops are on the take, and there's a certain naïve outlook on power structures and hierarchies in the film - everything is sort of levelled and accessible, like in a modern, flat, project-oriented organization - which I find sympathetic. And there's plenty of gunplay. The soundtrack - consisting almost exclusively of Motown tracks from the 70's - incredibly enough doesn't feel tired but is employed in a rather loving and fresh way. Singleton even has the good taste to let Marvin's Trouble Man - an iconic piece of music, written for another movie to boot - play over most of the opening and credit sequence. It's too bad the movie surrenders to action clichés about two thirds in, but overall this is Singleton's best movie since Boyz N The Hood. Or, if you're not a fan of that one, his best ever. (Maybe not saying much, but still.)

***

Death Line (Gary Sherman, 1972) - mixed-
Eccentric London Police Inspector Donald Pleasence is investigating several cases of missing persons at the Russell Square tube station, when he unearths a plague-ridden colony of underground cannibals, in this cheap exploitation flick, which is relatively low-key and emphasises creepiness over gore. Big plus for Pleasence's grumpy performance and all the authentic underground locations, but the film doesn't deliver in the scare department. Equally unimpressive is a subplot (heh) concerning an American/British student couple who get tangled up in the goings-on. Christopher Lee makes a cameo appearance as an MI5 official. Known as Raw Meat in the US.

Back to My Roots

2005-09-12T21:59:00.000+02:00

As if I didn't have enough to do, I've been pressured into creating a new blog, in Swedish. The reason for this is primarily the fact that although maintaining a blog in English is fine and dandy, it hardly puts the spotlight on my chops as a writer in Swedish, which - in all sincerity - is where my strengths lie (if anywhere). I'm still stupid enough to believe that there might be a future for me as at least a semi-professional Writer of Stuff, and then it's good to have a forum to showcase any talent I might have. The new blog will be more of your "typical" blog, with everyday thoughts on important matters such as movies, music, food, drinks, and so on. Don't worry though! Detoured will live on, I will continue updating it whenever I have something worthwile to say. I'm sure all of my (five? seven?) regular readers will appreciate that.

The new blog is located here. Check it out - but remember, it's entirely in Swedish.

Film Days IV

2005-09-11T18:40:00.000+02:00

Just to wrap up the Film Days entries, a few words on the last two movies I watched. At this point, I was more than pleased with the amount of films seen, if not completely satisfied by their quality. The last two didn't exactly raise the average by much. Doxa (Leif Magnusson, 2005, con+) is a new Swedish movie shot in my home town of Malmö, which in and of itself made me a more alert viewer. I think they used the locations reasonably well, including a run-down abandoned lot which I instantly recognized as a location our film crew used back in 2001, when we shot parts of a failed feature there (buy me a drink and I'll tell you all about it).

In Doxa, a young woman called Jessica (Eva Rexed) is watching her father slowly fading away in a hospital, terminally ill with cancer, which he may or may not have gotten at his former working place, an industrial site. Ridden with personal troubles of her own, and increasingly prone to conspiracies, Jessica begins to trace the tracks back to her father's employer, only to find that more people have become ill. The plot thickens, but at the same time it doesn't; the protagonist's deteriorating mental state and paranoia is used by the director to blur the line between truth and fiction, which is a good idea until you realize how lazily written the script is, and how ultimately wasted all the good ideas are. Characters come and go, leads are never really developed, scenes materialize and fade away without reason. There is a larger picture looming here, dealing with the decline of Sweden's social democratic welfare state and the sense of confusion caused by it; a very interesting thing to explore, to be sure, but unfortunately it's rather clumsily executed.

I will gladly admit that the primary reason I watched In Her Shoes (Curtis Hanson, 2005, mixed) was because of its director. Curtis Hanson's post-LA Confidential projects have been rather puzzling - Wonder Boys was amazing but then he picked up the Eminem showcase 8 Mile for some reason like a regular director-for-hire guy, and now he's at the helm of a Cameron Diaz rom-com bestseller-adaptation chick-flick thingy. Funny that. But since he actually injected some quality into 8 Mile I was curious to see what he could add to this - and I was pleasantly surprised. In short, In Her Shoes is about two sisters (Diaz and Toni Collette) living very different lives - one has a career, is tidy, reliable, and boring; the other is a flaky, irresponsible slut without job or education. Guess who plays who? The sisters are despite their differences very tied together, but when the shit hits the fan one time too many, courtesy of Diaz, they part ways. The End. Or is it?!

Despite being filled to the rim with cheap symbolism and countless life lessons for people of all ages, for the most part, the film actually works. Not in a flawless way - it's a bit too long and the narrative suffers from its literary roots (an assumption on my part, since I haven't read the novel - long-winded split narratives tend to work much better in a novel than in a film), but we're spared many of the tired rom-com clichés, or those associated with overly weepy families-come-together dramas. The cast is decent all around, but although servicable, Diaz is simply unable to reach that higher level of acting that Collette so effortlessly achieves whenever she is onscreen.

Film Days III

2005-09-08T23:41:00.000+02:00

I got a much needed break from the onslaught of current/upcoming movies on Wednesday morning, when I watched the Garbo classic Camille (George Cukor, 1936, pro-). It was screened as part of a package of classics which the Institute is promoting this fall (others include 8½, Touch of Evil and 1900). I was perhaps foolishly expecting a new print; turns out it was neither new nor even fresh - instead rather dusty and dirty all the way through. And unfortunately for us viewers, the movie was apparently shot in a format which few if any modern projectors can handle these days, especially not multiplex projectors (don't ask me to get technical, cuz I don't know the details). This resulted in severe top-and-bottom cropping, so either all the heads of the actors would be chopped off, or the subtitles would be out of frame. One would think that's an easy decision (begone subs!) but the projectionist made a fatal compromise: half of the heads were chopped off, and one subtitle line was missing. The occasional brilliance of the movie shone through anyway though. As is so often the case with these old movies featuring people with fancy costumes playing high-risk emotional games with each other, it's an old grouch who gets the best scenes: Henry Daniell as the bitter Baron that Garbo shacks up with and eventually leaves delivers some truly acidic remarks which are both sincere and amusing.

Next was one of the most anticipated movies of the entire four-day line-up: the brand new Aardman feature Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Steve Box, Nick Park, 2005, PRO-). This is the first W&G adventure made into a feature-length film; it is also the first thing that's come out of Aardman since teaming up with Dreamworks. And it's well worth the wait. Some of it has a cutesy feel that the early work didn't have, and some might interpret that as Aardman sugarcoating things in the name of Dreamworks, but all the familiar stuff is there, they are definitely staying true to the originals - retro-futurism and Old England imagery is all over the place. The only problem that I can see is a slight repetition of scenes and settings; maybe it's because we've seen W&G so much in the past, but some bits do feel like rehashes of older routines - but it's still amazingly well done, insanely detailed and for the most part very, very funny. The climactic battle scene/chase sequence is on par with the model train chase in The Wrong Trousers. The voice talent is also good - Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes join Peter Sallit and the others.

(Next: final Film Days entry!)

Film Days II

2005-09-05T22:28:00.000+02:00

(Great, now I'm two weeks behind. Stay with me.)

Tuesday morning kicked off big time, with The Aristocrats (Paul Provenza, 2005, PRO), a film I had eagerly anticipated ever since reading about it a few months back. In case you don't know what this documenary is about, let me put you up on the scoop: in the world of comedians and entertainers, one particularly nasty and crude joke has been making the rounds for generations, without ever really reaching an audience other than the entertainers themselves - it's been deemed too out there, too offensive, too much of everything to be performed in front of an unsuspecting crowd, and as such it's been living a sheltered life, a life of its own. It has become an inside joke amongst comedians. The joke is called The Aristocrats. Structurally, it's a perfect joke for comedians to put their personal spin on, and that has probably contributed to its longevity in the business. With an easy set-up and a clear punchline, it contains a middle-section which is more or less a blank sheet for the comedian to paint his or her picture of what is, ahem, happening.

The movie about the joke is fairly simple in its form. Director Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller fame) meet up with a heap of comedians and ask them about their relationship to the joke, and most of the time ask them for their version of it. The result is a staggering cavalcade of crudeness and laughter. The joke is, in its best incarnations, outrageously offensive in every way imaginable - but that's sort of the point. The punchline can be used in an effective manner, but The Aristocrats is basically an anti-joke, which many of the participating comedians also acknowledge in their renditions of it.

After this great start (8.30 am!) it was off to safer, more boring and predictable horror territory. The Amityville Horror (Andrew Douglas, 2005, con) isn't really worth saying much about, except that Philip Baker Hall was utterly wasted in a small role as an incompetent priest. Nothing is new: stupid people stay in creepy ghost-infested houses despite all signs pointing towards doom and gloom, family members don't talk to each other about strange occurrences, and quiet little dead girls are just not good company for your daughter. I kept thinking of Eddie Murphy: "When a fucking haunted house says, Get out!, I'm gone!".

Next up was the world premiere of Josef Fares' Zozo (2005, con+). Fares is one of the golden boys of Swedish cinema today, having previously made the cute but ultimately disappointing Jalla! Jalla! and the action farce Kopps, both critical and box office hits. Zozo moves him into more serious and dramatic territory. This semi-autobiographical tale follows a young boy (the Zozo of the title) from the war-ridden streets of Beirut to the promised land of Sweden, sometime in the late 80s. It's a straight-shooting movie, occasionally sprinkled with some magic realism but otherwise lacking in any sort of subtext, just like Fares' previous films. And that's fine; it's all very well done, but strangely unengaging. The Beirut part works best, but it's filled with standard boyhood scenes as seen in thousands other movies, and crucial, character-defining moments just slavishly serving the plot. When little Zozo comes to Sweden, things get worse, as the supporting parts are reduced to thin stereotypes - the bullies, the loud cheerful immigrant grandfather, the passive teachers. Zozo opened nationwide this past Friday (Sept 2), not surprisingly to massive critical acclaim.

Finally, I watched Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005, pro), which finds Jarmusch back into old-school territory circa Stranger Than Paradise. Bill Murray plays a man who reluctantly sets out on a road trip, looking up old flames to see if any of them is the mother of a son he just found out he might have. By the chuckles from the audience, I gather people were expecting another "Bill Murray as an alienated quirky guy in a fun movie" à la the films of Wes Anderson, but this isn't Anderson, or even Sofia Coppola - this is Jarmusch, and he has never been one for cheap laffs, especially not big belly ones. The movie is funny, yes, but it warmed my heart more - without ever stooping to sentimentality. Perhaps it's not one of his best, but it feels good that Jamusch in this way reconnects with his early works, without sacrificing any of the style and deadpan humour he's known for. Plus, the signs of a great filmmaker is there from the start: the use of music, the assured cuts, the confidence to hold on to certain shots for maximum effect.

Film Days I

2005-08-31T20:04:00.000+02:00

Last week I attended the annual Malmö Film Days (Malmö filmdagar to Swedish readers), an event which is half film festival, half industry wooing; during four very busy days the various film companies pool their resources and show advance screenings of about 30 upcoming films to important (and not so important) industry folks - including distributors, theatre managers, Institute people, and critics. This was my first time there, and I understand now why it's so popular, not to mention tough to get into (invitation only, peasants!). It's a fun mix of people too, from the networking pros to the unashamed freeloaders, via stiff academics and faux bored critics who really hate being there, but unfortunately had to. There are the middle-aged women who only watch Swedish movies and love all of them, there are the competing critics strutting their stuff, there are the distributors comparing press kits, and so on.

In addition to seeing so many movies for free ahead of everyone else, the neverending supply of sugar-rush candy to gorge on between screenings, and plenty of fringe benefits like a Chronicles of Narnia-sponsored luncheon with turkey rolls and decent red wine, there is the gift bag. A couple of years ago, when the film companies organized the event without interference by the Institute, they apparently went completely over the top with gifts, showering critics and distribs with extravagant bribes - please Mr Critic Man, hype Van Helsing for us! Too bad I missed out on that. These days things are much more moderate (read: cheap), and every attendee gets but one bag filled with goodies. Jaded faces around me signalled that I really shouldn't be excited about this lame excuse for a freebie-bag, but I was thrilled. Eleven DVDs! An umbrella! A silly clock! A t-shirt! Two... books? I thought I came here to watch movies.

Anyway, I was psyched about getting home, sitting down in front of the comp and summing up the intense days with long, thoughtful posts about all the great new films I'd been watching, but then, a sluggish, strange, post-everything coma set in, and I didn't watch a single film in four days. Nor did I write a word about any of the ones I'd seen during the film fest. So sorry 'bout that, and let's get down to business.

Things kicked off Monday night with a cocktail party followed by Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang (Shane Black, 2005, pro), which I didn't know a thing about, and which in hindsight was a perfect opener for this cheerful audience, greasy from the complimentary snacks and tipsy from the endless outpour of kiwi/wasabi cider as they were. It's a crowdpleasing neo-noir thriller comedy thing, definitely Hollywood all over but surprisingly witty, occasionally hilarious, and while not exactly intelligent, it has a distinct non-stupid feel to it that I found satisfying. Black has made a living writing era-defining actioners like Lethal Weapon in the past, and this is his first gig at the helm. It's a fine accomplishment, but it's obvious that his love affair is with the dialogue, which is handled in excellent fashion by the principal players, Robert Downey Jr. in particular. Downey plays a goodhearted smalltime thief from NYC who literally stumbles into an audition for a movie while running from the cops, and hey presto, it's off to Tinseltown for a movie career. Once there, he gets tangled up in a myriad of metariffic mysteries, that may or may not be interconnected. Filling out the cast is a long-lost high school sweetheart, and chubby Val Kilmer, fresh off the overweight set of Alexander, as an outrageous celebrity detective called Gay Perry.

Black obviously hasn't been out of L.A. (or worse, Hollywood) for the last fifteen years or so, which might explain his obsession to connect every plotpoint and supporting player back to the glamorous movie world, and keep them there. The film goes overboard a few times in its self-referential gab, most notably in Downey's "been there, done that" voice-over, but most of the time it's very entertaining. Joel Silver produced - I was expecting more explosions.

Next entry: day II...

Beef

2005-08-11T09:48:00.000+02:00

Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges, 1948) - pro-
Gets a low pro, because while it features some of the trademark Sturges wit and a rather brilliant way of letting the classical score Rex Harrison is conducting dictate his fantasies (and thus the narrative) about what he should do with his supposedly unfaithful wife, the film is marred by a silly use of sound effects and a sloppy, catch-all ending perhaps fitting for the genre but unworthy of Sturges. Harrison grows into his role, and he handles the free-flowing dialogue with authority - just witness his verbal assault on the poor tailor mistaken for a private dick. The rest of the cast is a bit disappointing, even though the reliable Rudy Vallee gets a few good scenes as Harrison's unbearable brother-in-law.

***

Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie, 1972) - pro
In this bizarre exploitation flick, previously near-forgotten and only recently released on DVD for the first time, Lee Marvin plays Nick, a Chicago mob guy sent out to rural Kansas to collect a debt from a shady sleaze called Mary Ann(!), played by Gene Hackman. Mary Ann is a dope dealer who fronts his operation with a meat packing factory, co-run by his brother "Weenie", but he is also a slave trader, grabbing young girls from a local orphanage and selling them to the highest bidder in twisted events resembling cattle auctions. Needless to say, Mary Ann doesn't take too kindly to Nick's presence, and the standoff between the two quickly turns into a full-blown confrontation. In the process, Nick frees one of the young orphans (a dreamy Sissy Spacek in her first credited performance) and learns all about the depths of Mary Ann's depravity.

Even for the iconoclast era of the early 70's and a director like Ritchie, whose early work include the tremendous political fake doc The Candidate and the beauty queen satire Smile, Prime Cut is decidedly an odd number. Both suspenseful and humourous, and brimming with seedy details, it is elevated above the cheapest exploitation fare thanks to the colourful characters and the suggestion of a dark rural underworld among all the corn fields and sunny country fairs, where the henchmen are blonde farmboys and the opposition literally ends up in the meat grinder. The cast is uniformly good, especially Hackman, grinning and chuckling as the outrageous Mary Ann. Hackman was on an amazing roll at the time this was made, just coming off his Oscar-winning performance in The French Connection (1971) and on his way towards his very best appearances, in Schatzberg's Scarecrow (1973) and Coppola's The Conversation (1974).

The scene where Mary Ann is enjoying a full plate of cow guts while naked and drugged-up orphan girls sit in droves in stables, waiting to be picked up and bought, is significant of the movie - it's delirious, unsettling, and funny all at once.

The Preminger Binge

2005-08-10T19:20:00.000+02:00

The other night I wrote the following about a film I had then just seen:

It's just one of those movies - the look, the feel, the setting... The decadent bourgeoisie, the riviera. Jean Seberg apparently took a beating upon the release, but I think she's fine and lovely, especially in the scenes with David Niven hinting of an incestuous relationship between the two. I could do without some of the prolonged dance/party sequences, and it dips considerably right before the powerful finale, but that's OK. Some find the material trashy and soap-operatic - maybe, but since I recently watched both Written on the Wind and Bigger Than Life, in comparison it didn't register as such. While not a revelation, I think the film delivers the message of the sometimes futile and pointless existence of these characters with accuracy and finesse.

What could I possibly have been talking about?

Bonjour tristesse (1958, pro) is one of many films directed by Otto Preminger I've seen lately. Consciously or not, it seems I've dug through a whole bunch of them in recent months - most notably his three post-Laura (1944, PRO) noirs he made under contract for Fox - Fallen Angel (1945, pro), Whirlpool (1949, pro), and Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950, PRO). Laura is the most famous one of these four, and justly so, but the others are not bad at all. Where the Sidewalk Ends in particular is a great film, in which we agonizingly follow the inevitable downfall of a troubled cop who accidentally kills a suspect and desperately tries to cover his tracks. It's a tense 90 minutes, filled with familiar finality and propelled by a tight script, which makes room for a typical noir voice-over that seethes with regret. It is also impeccably acted - Dana Andrews plays the lead, just like in Laura and Fallen Angel.

Whirlpool is by far the craziest of the bunch. Gene Tierney plays a wealthy psycho-analyst's wife with a dark secret - she's a cleptomaniac! When she gets caught for shoplifting in an upperscale department store, self-proclaimed therapist José Ferrer steps in from nowhere and saves her from embarrassment, promising the store management that he will treat Tierney's condition - with hypnosis. Tierney agrees, lest her husband finds out about her problem, and before you know it, Ferrer sets her up for murder. The film features an over-the-top, ridiculous climax - imagine a complex whodunnit solved with psychology exploitation tactics, and you get the general idea.

Off-the-cuff favourite Premingers:

Laura (1944)
Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Bonjour tristesse (1958)
Fallen Angel (1945)
Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
Whirlpool (1949)
Advise & Consent (1962)
Skidoo (1968)

Skidoo is almost impossible to rank, at least in the same breath as the others. It really has to be seen to be believed.

Wild Style

2005-08-08T08:08:00.000+02:00

Wild River (Elia Kazan, 1960) - con+
What to make of this preachy drama? It centers around a government official (Montgomery Clift) who oversees the building of dams in an area of Tennessee heavily affected by floods. The small population that's left there is to be relocated so the job can get under way, but lo and behold it's not as easy as to simply buy them out. It's not all "evil government vs the small man", because staying in the rural area of the banks of the river is a safety hazard for both the people and their homes, and for the most part, the film's sympathies lies with the evictors, not the evictees.

However, as Clift gets to know the locals, including grumpy matriarch Jo Van Fleet and lonely widow Lee Remick, all the familiar themes of convention vs progress, and countryside vs civilization overwhelms whatever good intention Kazan had in the first place. Clift becomes a beacon of reason and rationale, while the dumb locals prove to be just about the most stubborn and ignorant bunch you'd ever find. Kazan crams it all in - racism, good ole boys, forbidden relations, etc - and it's just too much; most of the time he even handles it pretty heavy-handedly. Clift is adequately restrained as the struggling official with a heart, but most of the bit parts are as poorly performed as they are lazily written.

***

The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray, 1959) - con
Anthony Quinn adds "eskimo" to his long list of realized celluloid ethnic characters in this flawed culture-clash film by auteurist favourite Nick Ray. This was Ray's first film with European backing, after fleeing Hollywood just a few years after the success of Rebel Without a Pause (and subsequent flops, including the interesting Party Girl and the outrageous near-masterpiece Bigger Than Life, which I also watched recently). The result is an ambitious but ultimately disappointing character study, shot in glorious 'scope, mixing outdoor locations with unconvincing studio sets. Quinn plays a naïve hunter who accidentally kills a white man and has to run from the law - represented by, among others, a young, crudely dubbed (and therefore by own request uncredited) Peter O'Toole. Of all the Ray films I've seen, this is the first real dud.

Motherfucker

2005-08-02T23:01:00.000+02:00

Surely you're not suggesting I'm jotting down a few lines about the latest entry in The Big Book of Contemporary Cinematic Euro-Trash, Ma mère (Christophe Honoré, 2004), just so I can put that profane title at the top of the page? Surely not. In any case, the film, with its lush sunlit villas, oft-used pools, absents fathers and slutty mothers, is not really worth seeing. Isabelle Huppert is the mom of the title, and the mother-whore-cocktease to her bewildered teenage son. When pop turns in, the mother-son relationship becomes even more complicated. Explicit sex, La Pianiste-style S&M, and the usual mind games. Fancy that!

con

The Daily Fix

2005-08-01T23:35:00.000+02:00

Sometime in May, my Daily Show fix fizzled, when all the big TV-oriented torrent sites like Shun TV got shut down by the Man. Without access to Canal+, which carries the show here, or CNN, which airs the global edition once a week, I was suddenly stranded without my weekly dose of this phenomenon of a show. For a Jon Stewart completist like myself, it was absolute terror. I re-watched previous shows, longed for the InDecision 2004 DVD that was just around the corner, and chuckled along to the mp3 version of America, the gang's best-selling book from last year. But it wasn't the same.

Now, about two months later, I've finally caught up with the flow, found some new sites, and I'm back on track, having subjected myself to a Daily Show binge the last week or so. New studio, same great stories, but you can tell that The Daily Show of '05 is an important show - people want to be guests there. Stewart played softball with Rick Santorum the other night, which was a bit unexpected, but he doesn't suck up to his guests in the way that other hosts do - although he's kinder now. If you can, look up his absolute thrashing of Jennifer Love Hewitt, who was on the show last summer to promote the Garfield movie. I actually felt sorry for her, even though she in a way got what she deserved. Best episode as of late: the one with Will Ferrell. Packed with hilarious comments, shot segments, and a great interview with Ferrell.

Anyhow, the show is still good, but what will happen when Stephen Colbert leaves? He's certainly the best correspondent they have, and has put a distinct imprint on the show. Good thing he's not going far - I was pleasantly surprised that Comedy Central actually picked up The Colbert Report, a spoof on talk shows like The O'Reilly Factor that the Daily Show crew made up for a laugh, with a fake preview and everything. Tagline: The Colbert Report - It's French, Bitch! Can't wait.

Speaking of things to come, I am now officially excited about The Aristocrats. Not only because it features a whole range of comedians who talk about, and perform, one of the most notorious - and secret - jokes in show-biz history, but because it opens up discussions about highs and lows in comedy, free speech, and authorship among comedians - as a friend said, it should be very interesting from an auteurist perspective to see all these comedians tell more or less the same joke, but with their own twist on it. Thus far, I've only seen the South Park boys' version of the joke. Looking forward to the rest.

More about TV and other upcoming movies later this week.

Enjoy the Silence

2005-07-14T16:51:00.000+02:00

The Thief (Russell Rouse, 1952) – mixed+
This thriller is schooled in the deepest of noirs, but it is also ripe with Cold War paranoia and xenophobia. Ray Milland stars as the titular thief; a government physicist who gets tangled up in an espionage scheme. Despite rigorous precautions, including a complicated way of receiving and sending information to the foreign power he works for, the feds find out about Milland’s actions, and he is forced to make his escape. Shot mostly in Washington D.C., with an illuminated Capitol Hill often looming in the background, the film hammers home its message of the importance of vigilantism and upstanding citizens, but it never becomes overly preachy, just slightly obvious – almost endearing, in a way. Milland delivers a fine performance as the tormented thief, but don’t hold your breath for any hardboiled noir banter – there is no audible dialogue! A gimmicky experiment to say the least, and director (also co-writer) Rouse struggles at times with the format, but it also has its merits: the mute menace of the spies and agents following Milland around creates an eerie, ominous ambience.

***

It’s All Gone Pete Tong (Michael Dowse, 2004) – con+
Rise and fall story of a British superstar DJ, set in that balearic den of iniquity Ibiza. Clearly made by people who know their way around the club scene, but apart from the setting, the result is uninvolving and formulaic: fame and money leads to girls, drinks, coke and an inevitable melt-down. Lead Kaye is a grimacing Shane MacGowan-like ape-man who chews, snorts and drinks up the scenery and everything else in his way. The plus is for the clever – and accurate – way of showing how a good beat mix is performed, from the perspective of the DJ.

Angels, Hitters, and Dicks

2005-07-10T01:06:00.000+02:00

An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion, 1990) - mixed
This biopic about quirky and troubled New Zeeland author Janet Frame is both sympathetic and picturesque, and offers a rare insight into the mind of a person who may or may not be mentally ill. Frame herself (played by three actresses from child to grown-up, but mostly by Kerry Fox) comes across as a fascinating personality, but director Campion makes a weak effort to portray the characters surrounding her as little more than cardboard charicatures, from parents and teachers to literary posers in London and mean doctors.

***

Hard Times (Walter Hill, 1975) – pro
Charles Bronson is a depression-era street fighter who hooks up with loudmouth promoter James Coburn for a series of underground brawls, in this taut, lean feature that was Walter Hill's first as a writer-director. The two lead characters are archetypical - the silent, stoic fighter and the debt-ridden, over-confident promoter - but they both work well in the hands of Bronson and Coburn, and Hill makes an assured directing debut, already displaying some of the traits that would become staples of his style; most prominently, the economy of both the script and the execution. The fight scenes are equally impressive and intense, often shot with the thuds and grunts from the hitters as the only soundtrack.

***

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Billy Wilder, 1970) – mixed-
Fifty years after Dr. Watson's death, in compliance with his last will, his heirs unveil a previously unknown Sherlock Holmes mystery, deemed by Watson too hot to handle at the time he wrote it down, due to its delicate nature: it involves international espionage, Holmes' brother Mycroft, and hints of a softer side of the great detective. This is a rather clever device by Wilder and his screenwriting partner I.A.L. Diamond to kick-start a story obviously not written by Arthur Conan Doyle, but the result is pretty underwhelming. Originally intended as an epic, chronicling a number of different cases and episodes, but later chopped down to a more managable running time, it now resembles little more than a well-crafted detective story made for TV, with an unengaging plot and a disappointing showdown in Loch Ness that would be more fitting of an episode of Scooby Doo than the greatest detective in the world. Still, Robert Stephens is a good Holmes, and the scenes between him and Mycroft Holmes (Christopher Lee) are excellent in showing the brothers' mutual, and restrained, contempt for one another. Wilder directs with his usual flair, but his annoying habit of mixing drama with comedy doesn't work at all, and Colin Blakely's Watson – often reduced to comic relief – is hopeless; for a man of science and medicine, he sure is a clumsy, dim-witted moron.

Women and Fairies

2005-07-06T15:25:00.000+02:00

3 Women (Robert Altman, 1977) - pro-
I can see how Altman detractors may see this as a perfect example of how the director time and again, because of his artistic integrity and because of his status as an auteur, gets away with anything – in this case, a movie conjured up in his dreams, very loosely held together and seemingly without much of a script; enigmatic, problematic, deliberately introvert. For all its everyday Californian environments, it’s definitely the most cryptic of the Altman films I’ve seen. And while not trying to make sense of it, there were several things that left me wishing for more – the balance of the three women, in particular (without giving too much away, the third woman of the group is so narratively uninvolved that sans the last act, the film could have been called 2 Women).

But there’s always something to hold your attention in an Altman film. The setting is mesmerizing; just like in California Split, Altman manages to shoot California in a distinct way that, for me, sets him apart from many other directors – the attention to car rides, the bar interiors, the apartment buildings, crowds. And if you’re a Shelley Duvall fan, you’re in for a treat. She carries the film with a bravura performance as the pathetic, cocky, obnoxious and oblivious Millie.

***

The Good Fairy (William Wyler, 1935) - pro
Sparkling dialogue by Preston Sturges and slick direction by Wyler make this romantic comedy a breeze to sit through, despite its unnecessarily messy plot, which follows a good-hearted orphan (Sullavan), who stumbles out in the world and encounters a long line of suitors and wannabe tutors, before falling in love. A few scenes are virtually all about talking, with very little physical action, but always with the wit one can expect from a Sturges script. It's not on par with the razor-sharp The Palm Beach Story or Sullivan's Travels, but still highly enjoyable.

Later...

2005-07-06T15:08:00.000+02:00

"I'm pretty determined to dust off this blog and update it more often, btw." -- me, being foolish, over a month ago

Well, I can always blame the absence on my vacation, during which I tried to stay offline as much as possible (plus, the dial-up I was forced to use made being online almost unbearable). In any case, now I'm back, and I will try to put together some thoughts on stuff seen lately. Among the films I've seen during the last couple of weeks are a handful of classics, and putting together some small sentences about films like Weekend or The Red Shoes really seems redundant, in light of the amount of articles and reviews already written about them. Still, I will try to at least justify my ratings of them - we all love ratings, don't we? I have been toying around with the idea of publishing my screening log here, but at the end of the day, I think what the Internet needs right now is not another boring list with titles, directors, and ratings, without any comments. So unless I have something to say about the films I see, I won't mention them here.

Thanks to Russ for proving that someone actually reads this blog, and - even better! - cares.

Seven documentaries

2005-06-02T17:02:00.000+02:00

I recently put together some thoughts about a number of movies (for the CDDB project) that I've never written capsules about before. So I figured I might aswell put them here too. I'm pretty determined to dust off this blog and update it more often, btw.

A History of the Blue Movie (Alex de Renzy, 1971) – con
A weak effort to tell the history of dirty movies, from early quickies (heh) via pinup penny arcades and stag films, up to the DIY of “today” (circa 1970). The parts chronicling the “dirtification” of the burlesque of the 40s and 50s are interesting, but much of the later material is inadequate and crudely exploitative. And the big, big irony of this movie is of course its timing – premiering right at the beginning of the decade that probably meant more for the smut industry than any other makes it lose a lot of its relevance.

***

Wattstax (Mel Stuart, 1973) – PRO
Supreme musical documentary/concert film which, just like Wadleigh’s Woodstock, manages to go beyond the music and capture the people, the attitudes and the atmosphere of the Watts Summer Festival of 1972 – as far as I can tell, that is. Just as well-made as many other concert docs of the time, but for my money, Wattstax’s music alone blows both the Woodstock and Monterey pics out of the water. For a long time, this was only available on bootleg, but with the new DVD out, there are no excuses not to check it out.

***

Radio Bikini (Robert Stone, 1987) – mixed+
Oscar-nominated documentary about the Bikini test bombings following the end of WWII. Lots of clips from radio broadcasts that the navy did from Bikini (hence the title), but main focus is placed on a former chief and native Bikini resident who had to pack up and move when the tests began, and a former navy lieutenant who now suffers severly from the radiation he was exposed to during his time at the test sight. Amusing clips displaying the naïvete concerning the consequences of radiation at the time are effectively juxtaposed with examples of the destructive power of the atom bomb.

***

Wisconsin Death Trip (James Marsh, 1999) – mixed+
Was expecting more of this documentary, which has a macabre and intriguing premise: to go back in time to the late 1890’s, and meditate on a number of bizarre occurrences, most of which involve death and despair, in the small town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin. The film is inspired by a book, which in turn was based on a number of old photographs from the region, taken by a local photographer. The filmmakers employ a lot of ambitious dramatizations in order to recreate many of the gruelling stories, but the dull, pretty-looking retellings mostly fail to match the actual events.

***

Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky, 2000) – PRO
Although it re-hashes some material from the first Paradise Lost, this sequel is equally effective, and at times simply mind-boggling. [SPOILER ahead] Thanks to his presence in both films, John Mark Byers comes across as one of the most compelling villain characters in recent years – fiction or non-fiction.

***

Dark Days (Marc Singer, 2000) – pro+
The homeless situation of many cities in the world was hardly an unknown phenomenon before this hard-hitting documentary, and while it’s not an eye-opener in that respect, it provides some great insight in the details of the everyday struggle many homeless people face. Surprisingly solid b&w photography and a soundtrack soaked in beats by DJ Shadow add to the experience.

***

Scratch (Doug Pray, 2001) – PRO
A turntablist’s wet dream, this outstanding documentary goes well beyond being just a fanboy concern; like all good documentaries it manages to enthuse enough about its subject – the world of hiphop DJs – to invite even people not that familiar with it. Of course, it helps if you know your Roc Raida from your Kool Herc, but I don’t think it’s necessary. It looks really good too, none of the sloppy DV footage you’d expect, instead slick 16mm photography – and most importantly, it sounds amazing.

Frogger

2005-05-09T00:52:00.000+02:00

Frog-g-g! (Cody Jarrett, 2004) - mixed+

In Generic Small Town, USA, a chemical plant decides to not play by the rules, and starts to dump toxic waste in a seemingly safe spot not too far from the town’s water supply. What could possibly go wrong? Needless to say, a lot. Before long, people start getting sick from drinking the water, and what’s worse – a dark green, man-sized, mutant frog pops up and wreaks havoc among the citizens, particularly the young women; it becomes increasingly apparent that the frog needs to reproduce with humans in order to survive! A bright young scientist tries desperately to convince the authorities that things look grim, but local politics and corruption gets in the way.

Cheap horror comedies with cheesy-looking monsters and endless tongue-in-cheek referential dialogue is old hat – we’ve seen it done a million times in this post-everything day and age, and sometimes it works (as in the case of the best Troma flicks) and sometimes it doesn’t (all the other Tromas). But Frog-g-g! is something slightly more interesting than an ironic MST3K excursion: a more or less straight-faced homage to the well-crafted, solid creature flicks of the 70s – the Joe Dante-helmed (and John Sayles-penned!) Piranha in particular. The obligatory nods to classic creature features like Creature from the Black Lagoon are all there, and yes, Mary Woronov phones in a cameo, but overall, writer-director Jarrett has enough confidence to try things his own way. The film also makes some interesting comments about sexual politics, and even manages to feature a female protagonist whose homosexuality amazingly doesn’t come across as contrived.

Frog-g-g! is not a very good film, but it is an interesting anomaly, like a weird blast from a past, and I can’t help to wonder how much of a splash it could’ve made, if, say, it had some help from the same marketing geniuses that were responsible for the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra campaign.

A few more...

2005-04-28T12:44:00.000+02:00

I realize I'm not that good with this "it's a blog, it should be updated once a day!" business, but it feels like I've been very inactive the last few weeks. So here's a bunch of quick notes of things I've seen over the last few days:

Birth (Jonathan Glazer) - mixed+
Clinical, impersonal execution of a sort-of eerie premise that evolves mostly into a string of scenes seemingly hellbent on showing just how socially awkward things become when your dead husband returns as a ten-year-old boy. Harris Savides is da man though - his tracking shots, during the opening jog in the park in particular, are as mesmerizing as in Elephant, and I also enjoyed the sub-bass sound mixing and the Glass-imitating score.

Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondo) - mixed+
Regardless how Ghiblilicious the animation is, the story never got to me and the hints of the fantastique frustratingly remained hints without exploring them as much as I wanted to - I like the admittedly lighter spin-off The Cat Returns better.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam Peckinpah) - pro+
Not without its problems, but picks up considerably in the second half, and it's only later that I realize why it's so great, apart from the usual Peckinpah blood & guts, thick-headed machismo and finality: the character of Benny feels so perfectly realized when it comes to conveying his dreams and ambitions and desperation, and the awesome Warren Oates lives and breathes that motherfucker like his life is on the line.

Cellular (David R. Ellis) - mixed+
Dumb fun, perfect companion piece to the inferior Phone Booth, also penned by Larry C; enough nonsense to keep it from pro, but it's damn close.

Silver City (John Sayles) - mixed-
Dangerously close to con; surely one of the sloppiest, overly talky, crude pics Sayles ever directed, yet there are glimpses of goodness in the acting and some of the scenes - the investigator's talk with the old mining engineer, for example, feels like vintage Sayles.

Elektrik Boogie

2005-04-14T23:33:00.000+02:00

Elektra (Rob Bowman, 2005) - mixed-

Color me surprised. After the abysmal Daredevil, I can't claim I went after this seemingly pointless spin-off, featuring the love/bane of Daredevil's existence, the mysterious and cold-blooded hired assassin Elektra, with any high hopes. In the comic book, Elektra was a great supporting player, adding a sinister and dark edge to the dangers DD had to face, whether he was fighting for, with or against her. It's to Frank Miller's credit that he never allowed her to become an all-out good gal, but rather stay ambiguous and dangerous to everybody around her – and her death in the comic book is still somewhat of a trauma for me, after reading it for the first time when I was around nine or ten.

Would it kill ya to use the door?

As a main character however, Elektra never fully worked. The movie can't shake that feeling, but it does what it can with surprising efficiency, and what’s more important, without much of the cringe-inducing and ridiculous moments that were so prominent in Daredevil (and most other action films, for that matter). Never mind that the plot is standard chosen-one stuff, and is so thin that even at 88 minutes it feels pretty stretched out; at least the film chooses a style and sticks with it, rarely venturing into deep waters. I was impressed with many of the visuals too - the 'Tattoo' thug/ninja/demon guy was an especially inspired creation. Bottom line: decent Westernized ninja B-action – you don’t see that every day.

A Fistful of Seen Lately

2005-04-11T22:22:00.000+02:00

My blog writes checks my creative output can't cash. That's why "a day or two" suddenly becomes 10 days. Anyway, here's a slew of opinions:

Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) - CON+
A reminder never to underestimate Hollywood's astonishing ability to turn out crap, especially of the disjointed, tone-deaf, out of touch with popular culture variety. Save for a few scenes featuring The Rock - who out-acts everybody but is criminally underused - it's a mess, filled with sloppy scenes that go nowhere, hideous phoned-in performances and a plethora of ugly product placement. It's lazy filmmaking at its worst - cool it ain't.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004) - PRO
Surely one of last year's best; a wonderfully imaginative and moving tale of revenge, forgiveness and underwater exploration. It's every bit as expertly cast and realized as Anderson's earlier efforts, and just as aesthetically honest and consistent. What really puzzles me, though, is the overall lukewarm reception of this the third of Anderson's forays into a world of boyhood dreams and flawed father figures, even by critics who loved Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums. It's baffling to me. He's making the same film all over again? His insanely detailed and precise universe has somehow self-imploded? What the hell are you talking about? It's called a style. If you don't like that style - fine. But don't sit there and whine about Wes - one of few directors working in Hollywood today with a distinct personal look and feel to their work - and say he's repeating himself, and then turn around and praise a yawn-fest like Melinda and Melinda as a "return to form" for the Woodster [I refer first and foremost to the reaction in Swedish press; Life Aquatic opened here last week].

Body Snatchers (Abel Ferrara, 1993) - mixed+
Cleverly lifts the plot from the small-town setting of Siegel's version and the San Francisco of Kaufman's, to an anonymous, near-deserted army base, which serves as an interesting ironic backdrop: the alien invaders are creating mindless conformists in an already uniformed environment. Ferrara makes the best of the film's obviously modest budget, playing it low-key most of the time, but the finale boasts some surprisingly excessive fireworks, and the fine alien make-up is impressive. However, for a film made in 1993, it looks more like something from the late 80's, with its bad hair and cheesy music. Script in part by Larry Cohen, and if not for Ferrara's name in the credits, one could have suspected Cohen directed it too.

Meet the Fockers (Jay Roach, 2004) - CON
A horrible exercise in awfulness, filled with such gut-wrenchingly embarrassing moments and truly moronic characters that you not only feel insulted by them, but violated, in the prison sense. Usually I think it's pretty redundant to even bring this kind of a silly Hollywood sequel any attention, let alone vitriol, but this is vile, crude cinema. The filmmakers are obviously evil heartless sadists who should be jailed. And I'm a masochist for spending nearly two hours watching the shit.

Chihwaseon (Im Kwon-taek, 2002) - mixed-
By-the-numbers biopic about apparently legendary 19th century Korean artist Ohwon; pic is pretty as a landscape painting, and most of the time just as boring. Choi Min-Sik of Oldboy fame is a charismatic lead, but the film's statements re The Arts and Life are banal and too absolute for my taste.

Going Places

2005-04-02T22:14:00.000+02:00

I spent the entire Easter weekend in London, where I attended the wedding of a good old friend and his lovely lady. All in all it was a time well spent; the wedding was a success (nobody said ’no’, the sun was shining, happy days – although too many people were wearing really sloppy outfits, and the cake got wolfed down by a bunch of flown-in Americans before I even got to taste it; it was supposedly good), and the happy couple are now spending their honeymoon in Paris, in the very same apartment Bertolucci shot Last Tango in Paris (believe it or nuts!). The temperature in London was so pleasant that the cherry trees were blooming, shorts-wearing sports types played football in Hyde Park, and kids ate ice cream. I had both a couple of refreshing ales a day and a few tasty meals – including a nice midnight snack in Chinatown and my first ever visit to a legendary bagel joint on Brick Lane. And thanks to my crazy-person planning, which included bizarre print-outs of maps and journey planners in absurdum, the logistics went very well.

Needless to say, I was on a strict budget, and since my flight left Stansted at 7 in the morning on Tuesday after the weekend, I figured what the hell, and never booked a hotel room for that final night. Why spend €100 for a few lousy hours of restless sleep when you can stay out, clubbing and bar-hopping all night instead, and go straight to the airport in the wee hours? Quite. Of course, this meant I had to minimize my luggage – no small feat indeed. My small rucksack, in which I reluctantly stuffed my now worn suit and my extra pair of fancy shoes, along with everything else, was literally bursting at the seams. This also led to a strict no-shopping policy, since I basically couldn’t fit a thing in the bag – which is absolute murder when you’re in a place like London. No Blackmarket Records, no movie stores, no clothing stores, forget about books and posters and even magazines – but I did manage to squeeze in the smallest of goods: six coasters from wood designers extraordinaire Unto This Last, a thin book by Banksy, and two pairs of Paul Smith socks.

Tate Modern was having a big Joseph Beuys exhibit I really looked forward to, but demanded a hefty £8.50 for it, so I stuck with the regular (free) galleries instead, which suited me just fine. Similarly greedy, the National Gallery lured me into their lairs with promises of free admission, only to slap me in the face at the gates and inform me that the intriguing Caravaggio exhibit not only (1) would cost a lot of money but (2) was sold out for the day. ’Come back tomorrow’, the swine of a guard told me. ’Never’, I growled, used their men’s room, and left. I spent the afternoon in St. James Park instead. The evening ended on a good note, as I made my way into Bar Rumba, my favourite spot in SoHo for laid back clubbing. Mondays are That’s How It Is!, a legendary night out (now in its 11th year, I believe), originated by the Worldwide Don himself, Gilles Peterson. They recently changed resident DJs, so Gilles is not around as much as before, but it’s still all about the music. Without a doubt the friendliest club environment I’ve been in: hand-shakes, pats on backs and smiles all around. Pretty cheap to get in too, but the bar will rob you blind if you’re not careful. I stuck around for a couple of hours, before catching the night coach to Stansted, and arrived at home in Malmö before lunchtime. Pretty sweet, but although everything worked out as planned, I almost felt jetlagged there for a while.

My two feet are firmly on the ground, but I still haven’t landed yet, emotionally. The days continue to go up and down, as feelings of happiness, sorrow, joy, and grief come at me from all sides. As I’m writing this, it’s Saturday, and I’ve spent the last few days at my parents’ house. My grandma’s funeral was this Thursday, and I guess the less said about it, the better. Not for it’s execution: everything went well, it was a very nice little ceremony, but I’m just glad it’s over. Hopefully, we can all move on now, and almost as if to illustrate that life really goes on, my sister gave birth to a healthy, cuddly little baby girl last week, and she certainly helps us to focus on the more positive aspects of life. She is to be named Stella Rosa Majken, and I am one proud uncle.

I also happened to watch two movies during my stay in England. More about them, and a few others I’ve seen lately, in a day or two.

Abandon Ship

2005-03-17T00:37:00.000+01:00

My resident movie discussion haven RT is slowly but surely going down the drain. Recently, it picked up the pace towards its inevitable downfall, by selling out to IGN, which, as many of you know, equals opening the Internet floodgates of troll-spamming teen 1337 h4XXoR geek hell. The effects of this have been staggering to the forums, since they are now put on the back burner for short-sighted financial reasons (no immediate revenues!), meaning in essence that they are nowadays administered by complete morons who cannot handle databases of RT's size, and who are incapable of dealing with spammers, trolls, and other schmucks who clutter our (let's face it) beloved forum. The result: chaos.

So, as a backup plan, which more and more looks like the only way out, a couple of the folks from the Critics Discussion at RT have opened up a new, fresh forum over at the Invision boards. Totally free, moderated by the members, etc. It's appropriately called RT CD Refugees. In a way, I guess we all hope that we don't have to make the jump, but right now it looks grim. We're a small bunch so far, and it's just getting started, but most of the regulars have joined, and I have some hope that it could be a decent replacement.

A Livingroom Hush

2005-03-10T00:59:00.000+01:00

The last few days have been an emotional rollercoaster. First I get word that my sister will give birth to her baby any day now - a good two, three weeks ahead of schedule. Everybody's fine, it's very exciting, and I'm waiting for the call. Also, I'm getting some work done, I'm taking care of business - and damnit if not spring is in the air. But then, yesterday, I get another call instead - my dad informing me that my grandma has passed away.

It didn't come as a shock, she had been weak and ill for quite some time; a sudden pneumonia took her out in less than a day. Still, there's the inevitable sorrow, the loss, and for me in particular a frustration over the fact that I can't be there for my parents, my grandfather, and the rest of my family, since all of them are miles and miles away from where I am, and I don't have any family members close by. So when my grandfather - like my grandmother a carefree, stormy bon vivant - picked up his accordion and played her one last song, I wasn't there. When my father opened up the 20 year old whiskey and saluted her, I wasn't there. And that stuff sticks, you know?

So picture this: in two weeks time, I'm getting off the plane from attending a wedding in London, only to get on the train bound for a funeral, after which I pop over to my sis to say hello to her newborn baby girl. That's life, right there.

Criminal Minded

2005-03-02T21:53:00.000+01:00

Criminal (Gregory Jacobs, 2004) - con

Disappointing, uninspired con movie with few ideas of its own. John C Reilly is his usual reliable self, and plays the lead pretty well, but he and his co-stars have very little to work with - Maggie Gyllenhaal is especially wasted as Reilly's estranged sister who gets involved in her brother's over-his-head scheme. The initial master/pupil relationship between Reilly and budding criminal sidekick Diego Luna plays a bit like Hard Eight, part two, but Criminal delivers nothing of that movie's slick, ultimately subdued story of everyday conmen, instead opting for an all-out Big Score with the obligatory twist ending, where everybody's playing each other for fools, and the viewer really couldn't care less. Shame on such talent.

Sleep Well, Duke

2005-02-21T23:10:00.000+01:00

He who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man.

The Classy Choons

2005-02-07T15:59:00.000+01:00

The public apparently demanded a tracklist for Scott Bradley's latest mess, Class, so here it is:

Cannibal Ox - Bonus
Kool G Rap & DJ Polo - Edge of Sanity
The Roots - Episodes
MC Solaar - Caroline
A Tribe Called Quest - Sucka Nigga
J-Live - Braggin Writes (DJ Spinna Rmx)
De La Soul featuring MF Doom - Rock Co. Kane Flow
Prefuse 73 - The Wrong Side of Reflection
Little Brother - Whatever You Say
Digable Planets - Where I'm From (Aural G. Ride 12")
Brand Nubian - Wake Up (Stimulated Dummies Mix)
Diamond D - I Went for Mine
Jurassic 5 - Jayou
Hieroglyphics - Burnt
Method Man - Bring the Pain (Chemical Vocal)
Quantic - Fresh Rhythm
Jay-Z vs Luke Vibert - Change Clothes
Forss - Lost Through Inversion
Viktor Vaughn - Back End
The Cinematic Orchestra featuring Roots Manuva - All Things to All Men

Sounds digable? It's still online. Go get it.

He Hate She*

2005-02-03T23:42:00.000+01:00

For most people, Spike Lee's joints are hit-or-miss, and for better or worse, at 46 years old and after some twenty-odd films to his record, he very much remains a polemic filmmaker. Those who dislike him, tend to dislike almost everything he does (as well as his public persona), the most common exception being Do the Right Thing - such a canonized film now that even its few detractors keep a low profile. Those who like Lee (like me) acknowledge him as a sometimes problematic auteur who even is his darkest hour manages to conjure up some worthwile sentiments, performances or situations. It was true in 1986, it is true now.

Whether Lee is a fearless filmmaker or just has poor judgment nowadays is certainly up for debate given his erratic oeuvre, but his recent output displays a frustrating, almost Oliver Stone-like unevenness. Just when you thought it was safe to trust the energetic Brooklynite again, after the stunningly return-to-form 25th Hour, he almost goes Girl 6 on our asses with the messy, overwrought, and mostly stereotypical She Hate Me [con+], which starts out as a decent corporate-scandal drama but quickly evolves into a story about a young black stud who gets paid wads of cash to impregnate lesbians (and in the process possibly reminding them that, you know, cock is pretty great, ladies). It's a film filled with unnecessary sidetracks, strange diversions and misdirections.

It's not all bad though. There's an elegant score by Terence Blanchard, it looks great (Mathew Libatique works well with Lee, very comfortable with the NYC surroundings), and John Turturro does a funny Brando. Still, it is a film where Lee comes full circle in his dubious and unflattering view of women (both straight and gay), a tendency that has been plaguing his work on and off for most of his career. But as much as Lee's transparent attitudes in this film often reek of ignorance and/or wishful thinking (ie, if gays = hot lesbians, then it's OK with me!), he's still willing to throw it all in the fire, creating an unlikely yet fascinating, bloated movie - flawed in numerous ways but often entertaining. And he's still ballsy as fuck, case in point being the opening credit sequence - a magnificent three-dollar bill, blowing like a flag in the wind, adorned by the smirking chimp George W. Bush.

You wuz robbed. Again.

*shamelessly ripped off from Scott Tobias' review in The Onion, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Instead of Movies

2005-02-02T02:13:00.000+01:00

Been so stressed out the last week or so that I've hardly been able to sit down with a good movie at all, not even for clearing my head of trouble and angst. However, the hardest work is now behind me, and I can get back to filling my head with celluloid nonsense. I will return with some thoughts on this and that in a bit, but first: during my prolonged 24/7 sessions in front of the computer, I've been listening a lot to new and exciting music. Lord knows I have some catching up to do. These tracks are all in heavy rotation:

Matthew Herbert - Wake Up (best thing I've heard in months; best thing I've heard from Herbert since Foreign Bodies)
Mr. De - Whonleeone (on-its-toes übercool electro soul)
Amon Tobin - The Lighthouse (from his soundtrack to the new Splinter Cell game)
Akufen - Theo's Theory (lovely tribute to the man Parrish)
Recloose - Dust (such a great comeback)
Foreign Exchange - Be Alright (to keep me above water)
José Feliciano - Golden Lady (from the Wonder of Stevie compilation, one of my fav Stevie songs)
Jazztronik - Samurai (Osaka-based, epic broken funk)

I know you're feeling it.

"Now Fuck Off and Die"

2005-01-25T22:28:00.000+01:00

Two more 2004 notches for my gun today. First up the painful but numb directorial debut of Nicole Kassell, The Woodsman [mixed], starring Kevin Bacon as a child molester just released from prison. His struggle to re-establish himself into society is predictably difficult - his family doesn't want to see him, his parole officers keep him under constant surveillance, he gets the evil eye from his lumberyard co-workers - all the while resisting the urges to approach the children at a nearby school.

Just like the equally well-played but disappointing The Assassination of Richard Nixon, The Woodsman is an intense character study rather than a conventionally realized drama, and from that perspective, it's good - not great, but certainly worth seeing for the acting. However, it never really gets off the ground the way it would've had to in order to promote itself as something else, and combined with such a bleak premise, it ultimately falls short of being that engaging. Also worth mentioning: the mighty Mos Def turns in another subtle and impressive performance as Bacon's parol officer. Good year for Mos the actor, less so for Mos the MC.

***

There's a couple of great scenes in Closer [mixed+], the Mike Nichols-directed adaptation of Patrick Marber's play, and they all involve the phenomenal Clive Owen. His bitter and bold dismissal of Julia Roberts, as they argue over the graphic details of her infidelity, is an instant classic, on par with the best scenes in Nichols' battle-of-the-sexes shoutfests Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Carnal Knowledge. Owen is no stranger to this drama - he played the Jude Law part in the stage version of Closer, and that familiarity with the characters shows; his towering performance ironically upsets the balance of the movie, since no-one else matches him in acting chops. I have no real beef with the movie as it stands, but seeing that it is such a tightfisted emotional drama, with only four principle actors on the screen, a lot has to be demanded from these actors. And Owen can't do it all on his own.

Reading some of the criticism against Closer, I am a bit tempted to raise my rating for it, just for the hell of it. It's the same old criticism that arises whenever someone has the nerve to write a screenplay that features a) unsympathetic characters, and/or b) dialogue that sounds unnatural, "stagey", as if movies were "real". As a fan of the theatre, and movie writer-directors like Hal Hartley and Neil LaBute, I have absolutely no problems with either of those gripes.

It's strange that we (and by "we" I mean film critics and the movie-going public in general) still, in this day and age, need those "sympathetic" characters in order for us to feel the drama, the notion that we need to root for someone in order to get something out of the movie experience. I think it's bullshit, always have, always will. I don't need to align my emotions and attitudes to the ones of the characters on the screen or on the stage - if I feel it, I feel it, and that's all there is to it. And I'm glad I feel that way - otherwise my life wouldn't have been enriched by the likes of Strindberg, Ellroy, Tjechov, Lars Norén, Ionescu, Paul McCarthy, Charlie White and David Mamet. Thanks, y'all.

Hit the Road, Hack

2005-01-23T13:43:00.000+01:00

By pure coincidence, I happened to watch two Oscar-baiting biopics more or less back to back the other day: Ray [mixed-] and The Aviator [pro]. It prompted some inevitable comparisons, none of which work in Ray's favour. Because they do have a lot in common - they are both finely crafted, detailed period pieces, led on by charismatic leads (Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio, respectively). They both depict personal ups and downs of iconic Americans for some 150+ minutes each. But whereas Ray, helmed by Hollywood craftsman Taylor Hackford, goes for a by-the-numbers, cradle-to-the-grave approach, leaving no stone unturned and basically making Ray Charles' fascinating life story look like a boring and predictable fairytale triumph, Martin Scorsese, director of The Aviator, proves that for whatever he's lost in the way of choosing projects and drifting towards mainstream Miramax dramas, he's retained a personality, and a keen eye for Cinema.

Rather than presenting The Howard Hughes A-Z, Scorsese subjectively picks defining moments in this enigmatic innovator's life, and excels in the details, the snapshots, camera flashes, stopwatches and colours. Leo is as good as ever, and after getting over the first burst of Hepburnian swagger, Cate Blanchett is also reliably good. It's a piece of work, but the James Ellroy fan in me silently fantasizes about how amazingly awesome it would've been if Scorsese had used Ellroy's masterful American Tabloid as blueprint for his portrayal of Hughes; imagine Leo, the manic, paranoid junkie hermit sitting isolated in his lair, looming over Las Vegas and the clean Nevada desert, while henchmen and doctors provide him with drugs, porn and hush-hush info on Tinseltown talent rivalling Hoover's stash of sinful secrets.

The devil's in the details.

In Other News...

2005-01-15T21:06:00.000+01:00

...this is driving me crazy.

But I'm seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. A couple of more weeks, then it's over.

Also, I noticed that the settings for making comments were all messed up. You now positively don't have to register to make comments. Sorry 'bout that snafu.

Bru Ha Ha

2005-01-15T16:27:00.000+01:00

I had a great movie experience the other day, one of those exhilarating, knock-the-winds-outta-ya moments you live for as a movie buff - and it hit me at a time when I least expected it.

I watched three movies in one day, starting with the lame Team America [con], a fart-and-puke fest vaguely disguising itself as a political satire. If indeed it can be considered a political movie, it's a political movie made by idiots who hate politics, and it wouldn't be as pointless and redundant if Parker/Stone had actually adhered to some sort of funny anarchism à la the most inspired moments of South Park, instead of lazily slugging out their nihilistic worldview left and right. Of course, that would be fine - or not so much of a quibble - if Team America was funny. Which, for the most part, it isn't. Making parody of action flicks like the ones made by überproducer Jerry Bruckheimer is not only pointless, it's been done to death - many times by Bruck's movies themselves (however accidentally).

Next up was the dreary literary adaptation A Love Song for Bobby Long [con], about a girl catching up with her family in the lower-class parts of New Orleans; a deceptively unassuming film which hides its pompousness as convincingly as the scenery-chewing Oscar hopeful John Travolta portraits a college professor. It's left to Scarlett Johansson to carry the film, and despite her efforts, it's a drag. Still, amazingly, there were a couple of scenes between Johansson and Travolta towards the end of the film that managed to squeeze some emotion out of me - out of fatigue or not, we will never know.

So, drained and desillusioned after two bad movies back-to-back, it was not with much enthusiasm I went into Kung Fu Hustle [PRO], the latest outing by Hong Kong stuntman-actor-writer-producer-director-madcap Stephen Chow. I enjoyed his previous Shaolin Soccer, a whacky soccer slash martial arts movie that despite some crappy CGI was very entertaining, thanks to a breakneck energy and visual style that, literally, took the ball and ran with it. In Kung Fu Hustle, the cross-culture element of Shaolin Soccer is gone in favour of a more traditional martial arts tale set in the 1950's, albeit with a fair share of quirkiness and odd characters. It's not so much a parody of the genre as it is a loving and exaggerated celebration of it - an insanely paced 90 minutes of unbelievable stunts, CGI-enhanced kung fu, retired shaolin masters, neighborhood uprisings, axe-wielding gangs, and young hoodlums trying to rise up the crime ladder. A familiarity with the genre is a major plus, admittedly, but as a pure action vehicle it beats the shit out of everything - East or West - from the last year or so.

Maybe my garde was down, maybe I was too tired to counterattack Chow's visual farce. But there's just nowhere to hide from this bad boy. Thinking about it now makes me nearly breathless, and I can't wait to see it again. This is what it's all about.

Band, Let Me Hear You Say Something

2005-01-11T13:00:00.000+01:00

Wow, that was one crazy, rambling post, wasn't it? This will be much shorter. Look, I need comments to my posts so I know I'm not just sitting here going insane all by myself. It's really easy, you don't have to register or anything, just click on the comments thingy below this post, and send me some love. Do it now.

I have also have this to say:

Shark Tale [con]
Mostly truly horrible - uninspired, bland animation coupled with a lame storyline (which is surprisingly, and unexplicably, ghetto-fied) and an embarrassing admiration for the lead voice talent, leading to asskissing sequences galore, especially in the case of Will Smith, who is showstoppingly awful. A few small sequences, some jokes, and a funny Martin Scorsese saves it from all caps.

Raving and Ranting and Rating

2005-01-11T01:31:00.000+01:00

Dagens Nyheter is the only remaining Swedish newspaper to still shun movie ratings - even Sydsvenskan introduced it hesistantly a while back, much to the dismay of my Film International colleague Michael Tapper, who writes film reviews for them. Tapper, not a stranger to clashes with the DN culture section, sees DN's stubborn refusal as "typical" and self-centered, but they will have to bow down eventually, he thinks - Swedish film criticism today is at such a low point that even the big, respectable media giants will be forced to speak the language of the tabloids in order to stay interesting to the commercial forces that run this show: quick snippets, a 1-5 rating, something to prep the ads with. Personally, I don't really like ratings, and I hate using them myself, even if I often do (when participating in the CDDB project). There's something inherently impatient and unsympathetic about handing out 1-5 stars (or whatever outrageous rating system you may use, like the popular 1-100 point system used by Gabe, Derek and other confused young individuals). I see the point, and I'm not rambling (even though I am), so what the hell has this got to do with anything? I'm not really sure.

But I was going to mention an article (Swedish) in Dagens Nyheter by Kerstin Gezelius this past Saturday. Gezelius is as uneven a critic as most others at DN, but she has her moments. In the article, which technically is to be considered a book review of J-Ro's new book about film canon, Essential Cinema, she discusses both her own fascination and fears about film canon aswell as Rosenbaum's. While she agrees that canon is complicated and difficult to write books about - where do you start? Do you have to pay respect to convention? etc - she has a strange way of shifting between admiration and attack of the Chi-Reader critic.

Consider, for example, how she takes the time to identify the near impossibility of compiling (as J-Ro has) a top 1000 list of your favourite films - a feat so absurd that a book like Rosenbaum's can reasonably only be seen as a suggestion, an argument in the Big Forever-Ongoing Debate of Film Canon, wood for the fire - and then turns around and criticizes J-Ro for including this or that movie, like the "good" and "bad" movies are set in stone. This after explaining in length how she understands the complexities of canon! Think again. She complains that Rosenbaum includes the recent movies Spider, Femme Fatale, and Down with Love - "turkeys!" - and moans about how he didn't include Amores perros, Mystic River or City of God.

And what she does right there, and I get so tired of it that I'm gonna stop now, is that she, better than I ever could in this post, flagrantly displays her unwillingness to break free from the canon of cultural newspaper sensibilities, to look beyond what her friends at DN or at other rags around Sweden (Stockholm, to be exact) are thinking and writing and expressing on the subject of film. culture. today. And as long as critics like her refuse to see the merits of a Femme Fatale or a Down with Love - and keeps knee-jerkingly salute arthouse exotism like City of God or Tarantino derivates like Amores perros, Swedish film criticism will not progress one fucking bit.

You know what else? The article is riddled with typos. Suckas!

Photogenique

2005-01-04T02:22:00.000+01:00

Here now some irrefutable proof that I really need to get my shit together and buy myself a digital camera, cause no-one's gonna do it for me, and I really need to chill, instead of constantly getting fits over my crappy camera every time I develop something. Anyway, enjoy these (slightly edited) photos.

Splicing It Up: Lulla and Heidi at our kräftskiva, way back in September

Miles Ahead: Heidi and Totto

Bunch of Flowers: one classy guy calling it quits

Packing the Pipe: Hector receives life lessons from his Godfather

Sofa So Good: snapshot from New Years Eve

2005

2005-01-03T18:35:00.000+01:00

Had a predictably amazing New Years Eve, c/o Jenandy, the most gracious and friendly of hosts. Bubbly, wine, more bubbly, food galore, dirty dancing and rooftop celebrations all up in that joint. This following a slow but soft Christmas week at my parents', which contained few surprises: Mom still makes great food, watching movies is a drug, and red wine is the bane of my existence. Much to my nephew Hector's relief, Santa had time to stop by and literally bury him with presents. And there was much rejoicing.

Some noteworthy films seen lately:

Eight Men Out [pro] - Conventional but thoroughly enjoyable period piece slash sports drama, ripe with do-or-die moments but sans any overbearing layers of sentimentality, which is a credit to screenwriter-director Sayles. Sort of puzzling that an über-indie fella like Sayles gets involved in a thing like this, but he does it well, just like with the other period piece based on real events he did the year before, Matewan. This film doesn't bear the personal marks of Sayles' more intimate, contemporary-set relationship dramas, but it's solid filmmaking all the way through.

***

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow [pro] - I anticipated I had to "get over" some initial reaction of something, related to the masturbatory use of green-screen technology; instead, I was surprised at how effective, true to form and genre, and to the point it was (what the point was is pretty redundant, but the flick moves with considerable grace and agility to get there, and fast). Rather than spending the entire film building exposition, the concept of the Sky Captain is more or less just there, obvious and unexplained, like an "of course there's a guy called Sky Captain and of course he's protecting us from evil! duh!" kind of thing. An admirable attitude, surprisingly rare these days, and mirrored to even greater effect in another even greater movie seen lately - The Incredibles [PRO].*

***

The Saddest Music in the World [pro+]- I've seen more or less every short film and every feature Guy Maddin has done up to this point, and I must say that his short films are where his anachronistic, surreal genius really shines. His features all suffer to various degrees from shifts in tempo that often makes them uneven, and he's yet to crank out truly great performances by his actors. Still, while I would say all of his shorts are PRO or pro in my book, his features don't come far behind (the only dud is of course Twilight of the Ice Nymphs). No matter how this phrase has been beaten to death: Maddin really is a unique voice in contemporary cinema.

***

Riding Giants [pro] - Stacy Peralta goes from one board to another. After the very impressive Dogtown and Z-Boys, he's turned to the sea, catching up with the history of the surfers, with an emphasis on the big wave surfers from Greg Noll up to Laird Hamilton et al. Fascinating stuff, much better than the sap-filled yada-yada that was Stepping Into Liquid, but the genre itself - self-congratulatory sports documentary - has its pitfalls, and Peralta steps in a few. Not as self-indulgent as Dogtown and Z-Boys was (as Peralta isn't himself a principal character, even though he narrates), but still sentimentally swooning after the legends, the mavericks, the daredevils and innovators. It looks great though - exquisitely shot and edited.

More stuff - and New Years pics! - tomorrow or something.

* which, when all is said and done, really is one of 2004's great movies, and almost predictably so. I had some doubts going in whether Bird's keen eye for detail, period, and humanity, so evident in The Iron Giant, would be contained, or if he'd be sucked up in Pixar's relatively carefree and perfect happyland. Thankfully, it looks like they've just open up the door (and the wallet) and let Bird have his way with this piece of work. It's probably not a disadvantage to be interested and easily amused by the world of superheroes and their impossible logics - guilty as charged.

Leaving the City

2004-12-20T01:10:00.000+01:00

Monday morning, I will leave the big city and visit my folks for the holidays. I'll be gone for about a week. With any luck, I'll check in once or twice and provide some comments to what I've been watching (in a sort of ambitious and/or sad move, the travel bag is packed with DVDs way overdue on the to-see list, like Rebecca, A Chinese Ghost Story, and Meet Me in St. Louis). Most likely scenario is that I'll just be dozing around my parents' house all week, never removing my slippers, constantly sipping on some glühwein and nibbling on various sorts of food.

Christmas time is also one of the few times in the year when I actually do some serious reading, and I have high hopes of finishing David Sedaris' Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and James Ellroy's latest, Destination: Morgue!, during the week. From one end of the literary spectrum to the other, to say the least.

In any event, have a nice week!

Scott Bradley presents Class

2004-12-19T19:17:00.000+01:00

My good friend Scott Bradley dropped by today and gave me a brand-new mix he put together during some recent late night sessions. He's calling it Class. All 75 minutes of it.

Scott Bradley presents Class

Tracklist will be provided on request.

Small bits on Ocean's Twelve

2004-12-17T18:55:00.000+01:00

I'm not in the mood for a proper review of Steven Soderbergh's latest heist flick Ocean's Twelve [PRO-] (plus the critical onslaught it received today on its opening here sort of drained me a bit), but I've cut-and-pasted some comments I posted on Rotten Tomatoes today and yesterday (slightly edited):

I'm a big fan of heist movies, and this is as good as it gets in the year of 2004 - postmodern, metariffic, stylish but not to hide flaws but rather to display its confidence and talent. It's also a forceful flex of the muscles, a message to all the untalented, unfocused, violent and confused "funny action" flicks being done around the clock in Tinseltown, a display of how it can be done - O12 is the jaded Martini drinker, looking on nonplussed as his younger brother is getting thrown out of the casino; and as a sequel it's the logical progression. If Hollywood insists on plowing down millions of thousands of tens of hundreds of dollars into lush, star-riddled vehicles, I prefer the money goes to productions like this. Big, stupid entertainment? Try big, smart entertainment - the best there is. Made by an expert filmmaker.

***

Ocean's Eleven was critically perceived as a clever, good-looking, sly piece of genre filmmaking, but the sequel gets the "what an unnecessary movie" treatment, which automatically voids it of merit and makes it inferior to any predecessor. And while it might in fact be inferior, that's not a very fair attitude to approach it with. The tone of the reviews here was of repulsion at the very idea that Soderbergh, Clooney et al had the nerve (yes!) to cruise around Europe pulling off heists that didn't make much sense, exchanging witty banter and wearing nice suits in the process - and make a movie about it! Those stupid, rich, wasteful Hollywood types. How dare they! Sort of.

Some critics also seem annoyed about the "impossible" twists and the self-serving tone, but personally, I couldn't care less about the heists themselves (in that respect O12 differs from O11, which put a much bigger emphasis on suspense) - it's the settings, the ridiculous plot twists, the never-ending cameos, Zeta-Jones' enormous wardrobe, the jokey acting, the fluid camerawork and the assured editing I get my kicks from. And those are all essential ingredients of the lighthearted caper/heist flick (like How to Steal a Million or Gambit), which is miles away from insanely detailed and grave stuff like Loophole or Adieu l'ami - and really shouldn't be judged on the same premises. While working within the same overall genre, I couldn't think of two films more different than, say, Who's Minding the Mint? and Rififi.

5x2 (Cinq fois deux)

2004-12-17T18:48:00.000+01:00

(François Ozon, 2004)

Unspectacular but very solid slice of marital breakup drama, soberly told in five vignettes, starting with the divorce and working its way backwards to the happy days. The acting is uniformly excellent and naturalistic, with leads Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Stéphane Freiss turning in great performances as the two spouses. Not entirely clear on Ozon's reasons for the whole reversed chronology thing, but thankfully, it never felt gimmicky or annoying.

[pro]

Melinda and Melinda

2004-12-15T14:38:00.000+01:00

Woody Allen doesn't like rehearsals. Many are the actors who tell stories about how they are asked to show up on the set and simply do their lines, straight up, often without discussing neither the script nor their part with the Woodster in advance, or without having met their co-actors. Interaction with Woody is kept at a minimum. Allen admits as much himself in Woody on Allen, his interview book with Stig Björkman, and confesses to not really giving much directions to actors at all - he relies on his seasoned cameramen, his scriptwriting craftmanship, and the usually inspired cast choices (courtesy of Juliet Taylor).

And there was a time when all these things came together to form often good, sometimes great films. Back in the days of his last period of greatness - say, from 1986 up 'til 1995 or so - Allen often had recurring actors doing terrific turns with essentially recurring material in recurring settings, and while we'd seen it done before even back then, it worked cause of the actors' familiarity with the material and its writer-director-often star. Remember Crimes and Misdemeanors? Husbands and Wives? Woody was on a roll. So what happened? Where is Judy Davis, Alan Alda or Diane Wiest when you need them the most?

Well, certainly not here, in Melinda and Melinda, Woody's latest filmic rehash of well-situated people falling in and out of love in Manhattan. Framed in the same way as his great Broadway Danny Rose, where a bunch of elderly comedians sat around a delicatessen and talked about the miserable failure Rose, Melinda and Melinda starts out with a group of people sitting in a bistro, rather quasi-intellectually discussing comedy versus tragedy, and whether or not both moods can be applied to an anecdote one man in the group just told. Wallace Shawn, never having left his seat from My Dinner With Andre (1981), claims the anecdote is the stuff of comedy, while another man only sees the tragedy of the whole affair. Cue parallell storylines, offering two sides of the same coin: Melinda (played in both stories by Radha Mitchell), a troubled young woman, descends on her unsuspecting friends in New York, and open up cans of worms like people put on pants. The "fun" supporting cast include Will Ferrell and Amanda Peet, while Chloë Sevigny and Jonny Lee Miller add some drama to the tragedy (except for Mitchell, there is no cast crossovers between the two stories). Structural similarities aside, the two stories don't have much in common; while one version of the story is a comedy and the other a tragedy, a lot of the comedy is not funny and the tragedy is never heartbreaking, so you're left with a big shrug. But if it weren't for the very pronounciated cuts between the two stories (ie always following a cut to the other story by showing the supporting cast, and not Melinda, as to avoid confusion), it might have become an interesting diffusion of two worlds, questioning things like identity, duality and origin. But this isn't Lynch or Altman or Bergman, and thus the two stories live their lives, cross cut but clinically separate. Too bad.

So who escapes unscathed from this flawed romcom/tragedy hybrid? Will Ferrell in the Woody part is at least given the best lines, and is quite apt at playing the straight man with a fair share of Allenisms, without succumbing to Branaghesque Woodster-channelling. Chiwetel Ejiofor, so good in Frears' Dirty Pretty Things, is solid as one of the very first African American cast member in an Allen movie not playing a servant or a hooker - it's not his fault that his character is a bit of an odd presence in the film: the Harlem-dwelling black man cultivated and neutralized for a white, upperscale Manhattan crowd. Chloë Sevigny barely makes it after a disastrous first half, but picks up at the end, and Radha Mitchell as Melinda x 2 is also passable, though her Aussie tone is a pinch unfitting for someone who supposedly grew up on Park Avenue.

But Woody doesn't escape unharmed. While it could be argued that he's run on empty for years, he's always managed to bounce back - not triumphantly, perhaps, but just so he could make it to the surface for a breather - with something amusing or at least semi-interesting. But when watching Melinda and Melinda, it strikes me how sloppy he's become. Yes, Vilmos Zsigmond's camerawork is fluid and flattering, but the editing seems to be slightly off-key all the time; a couple of frames here, a missed beat there. The pace, the rhythm of the dialogues - just not there. The acting is unfocused, rehearsal-like. If I hadn't seen it in a theatre, I might have guessed I was watching a workprint.

con

Wong Kar-Wai's 2046: A Film by Wong Kar-Wai

2004-12-14T16:14:00.000+01:00

Just got back from a screening of 2046. It's a piece of work, no doubt, but let's not get crazy. I was very enthusiastic about the first hour or so, when it acted on all the things In the Mood for Love never did - the emotions, the lust, the passion (albeit fleeting and sometime shallow) - and that was a big relief. Tony Leung is a cool cat, and Zhang Ziyi only confirms (again) what a formidable presence she is. She couldn't save House of Flying Daggers, but then who could? Anyway, I stick to my guns, she is a carnal actress if I ever saw one. And the Leung-Ziyi part of 2046 is by far the most impressive in all the areas where WKW regularly excels: the set design, the costumes, Doyle's camerawork. The acting is also top-notch.

However, I can't help thinking that the long-spanning production of the film (over five years in the making, and WKW fans still argue about what, if anything, WKW had to trim to get the film ready for the 04 festival circuit - it was originally supposed to be done for the 03 one) made WKW lose focus somewhat. The last act or so - the Singapore/casino part - is decidedly weaker than the others, and it feels like lots and lots have been shot, edited, twisted around, and ultimately left on the cutting room floor. Hints of characters, plots, moods and settings pop up all the time, but many are left untouched, merely brushed upon.

pro-

Those Who Wait

2004-12-13T22:07:00.000+01:00

What, huh? No updates in a long time? OK.

As if anyone gives two cents about my capsules page, I've added some new, crucial information to it, essentially explaining what's going on, or rather what's not. Read all about it here. In short, it tells you where to go - back here.

What will happen here in the future? Hopefully, less politically-themed posts (we got the Rude Pundit, Tom Tomorrow, The Smirking Chimp, and other insightful smartypants for that), and more movie-themed posts.

Back in a bit.

American cartographers commit mass suicide

2004-11-05T20:07:00.000+01:00

Not really. But these are some of the more inventive maps floating around the web. Ah, the web. Wonderful. And DANGEROUS.

TV:d

2004-11-05T01:52:00.000+01:00

It's a bit late, but I can't help myself: hilarious coverage of the election night as seen on TV, by the observers at TVgasm.

9:48pm, NBC
Ooh, I love Tim Russert because he HATES Jim DeMint, the new Senate winner (Republican, of course) from South Carolina. With good reason: DeMint is on the record stating that neither gays nor single mothers should be allowed to teach in public schools, and that abortion should be banned even in instances of grave danger to the life of the mother. Way to build a bridge to FASCISM.

Read all of it here.

Needless to say, The Daily Show's election night special was also a huge hit - worth seeing for the "previously on Election Night" spinoff bit from Indecision 2000 alone.

Apocalypse Now

2004-11-04T18:29:00.000+01:00

One of my cyberfriends is called Markey. He's an ex-GI who fought in the first Gulf War, but has since retired from the army and is now living and working in Europe, currently in Germany. After always voting Republican throughout the 80's and 90's, this year he cast his absentee ballot in favour of Kerry. Yesterday, he wrote an open letter/job application to Dick Cheney. I thought it was really good and funny, so here it is, in all its unedited gonzo glory (and a shout-out goes to Dr. Thompson):

dick cheney
c/o white house
washington D.C. nov 3,2004

Congratulations on your great victory last night in middle america. ive
really been on your side from the start,and this only confirms my
conviction. when you came on board in 1999 for VP, i knew it was all over.
who else could of annihilated the entire gender gap in 72 hours? the gay
marriage ban admendment will go down in the history of political science as
a master stroke. even james carville and frank mankiewicz burst into tears
and both said they were quitting politics forever.

i feel the same way, except that i will need work after this election and
thier is no place id rather work than the white house for the next 4 years,
especially with YOU in control. and that is inevitable,i think. i have
admired the raw power and awesome consistency of your work for many years
and i look foward to finally joining up with a winning team and putting my
expertise to work.

You can consider the Drug Problem SOLVED, for instance.dont worry about it.
Bush sr dident loose that war,he was just bidding his time and waiting for
the right kind of help... which is ME dick, i feel like Mohammad Ali on his
way to fight george foreman. we will kick more *** than anybody since
Truman.

Dont worry. i know what im doing, and so will a lot of other people pretty
soon. there will be grumbling, but only from the WRONG ones.we have cleared
the decks,dick. We will march on a road of bones.
And speaking of bones,dick-never mind all those crazy things i used to say
about george w bush. Hell no! remember that law about "sticks and stones may
break my bones, but words can never hurt me."
You bet. i have it framed on the wall right in front of my desk....
Hell,words are only pearls before swine,anyway. our job will be to make the
swine break thier teeth. we can turn them into impotentt sloats by using
thier fear against them. that is the main principle of kung fu.

OK,dick. thats about it,for now. Please give me a ring ASAP, so we can get a
running start on this thing. I am chomping at the bit, as they say, and the
drug/terror situation is so grim that we must move at once and get a jump on
the buggers before they really see the election results and run for cover.

Our time has come, and im ready if you are. we will crush them like hot
grapes.
With warmest regards, i remain your slavish admirer,
markeyD
c/o otzberg
Gen delivery
hessen,Germany

Aguirre: The Wrath of God

2004-10-31T21:31:00.000+01:00

Made these comments a couple of days ago in a different venue. I stand by them:

Fifteen years ago, my history teacher suggested a different approach to learning about the conquistadors and the colonization of South America. He dragged in an old TV in the classroom, closed the curtains, and started up a VHS tape of crummy quality with a movie about the subject. We were baffled. Everybody spoke German, yet they were all supposedly Spanish. And most of the time, they were just stuck on a river, on a raft; occasionally they were attacked by natives, at times they seemed to go insane. They fought, they died. And that was it, for ninety minutes. My teacher then passionately proclaimed to the class that this was his favourite movie ever, but most just looked at him and wondered what this guy was on. I was entranced. The images stayed with me for years, I couldn't shake them. What the hell did we just see?

I never remembered the name of that film, but I had a pretty good guess. And so, of course, when I watched Aguirre again recently, it all came back. What was a startling experience back then, in the worst possible watching conditions, was even more so now. Beautiful, crazy, hypnotic film.

Miserable Failures

2004-10-31T13:23:00.000+01:00

Considering no-one's actually reading this thing except for myself when I'm out of town and need to get in touch with how I'm doing, it's no wonder I haven't been updating this blog for a while. If you want to maintain a blog of some stature, you need to update it constantly, at least once a day. For the political pundits, that's a breeze these days leading up to the US prez selection, considering all the shit that's going down all over the place. So because of these well-informed bloggers I'm checking and reading more than I'm actually producing; comfortable and nice, but fuck you how lazy and Lutheran I'm feeling, at the same time. It's a good read, though. These bloggers are all on my daily briefings list:

Tom Tomorrow - not only one of the best political comic strip guys out there (This Modern World), he also maintains snippets and links to all sorts of interesting... snippets and links
The Rude Pundit - totally uncompromising and rude as all hell, this profanity-laden anonymous blogger, with obvious insights in campaigning, lecturing and other things prone to make him a bit more knowledgeable than your average hate-spewing mongrel, is a must read
The Smirking Chimp - the best place to find snippets and summaries of news articles and other media events

Needless to say, they are like, totally nonpartisan. Do some reading.

I now also have three political buttons - two embarrassingly big Kerry buttons which I simply cannot wear in public, and one small, subtle "No More Bushit" straight outta NYC. I'll wear that with pride for the next four years.

(I hope to abandon these pathetic little political-themed posts soon, and concentrate on what I know best - porn. No, wait, make that movies.)

------------

Off to celebrate Malmö FF. Yes, for the first time since 1988, my local football team has fulfilled the promise of getting back the gold to the city. It's crazy here, cars have been honking all night and people are dancing in the streets, despite the cold, horror-like autumn weather we're having.

So now, off I go to the Stortorget square for some official, city-sponsored celebrations. Fun fun fun.

EDIT: It was fun. But we didn't see a goddamn thing, too much fireworks and smoke and scarfs and kids on shoulders. It was freezing. An estimated 30,000 people turned out. Amazing.

And You Don't Stop

2004-10-19T14:25:00.000+02:00

Latest development in the Stewart case (Tuckergate as some cleverheads want to call it): the neocon goons try to spin it, talking about a massive backlash for Stewart, losing audience, acting irresponsible, losing face, etc. If anyone has had their asses handed to them in this case, it's Crossfire. And rightly so.

Bush: Sweden has no army

2004-10-17T16:49:00.000+02:00

In an article in today's New York Times Magazine, Ron Suskind goes to great details in describing the presidency of George W Bush. As a Swedish citizen, it's somewhat amusing (and/or disconcerting) to read the following:

There is one story about Bush's particular brand of certainty I am able to piece together and tell for the record.
In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored ''road map'' for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman -- the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress -- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.

''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''

Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ''Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.'' Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.

Bush held to his view. ''No, no, it's Sweden that has no army.''

The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.

A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. ''You were right,'' he said, with bonhomie. ''Sweden does have an army.''

This story was told to me by one of the senators in the Oval Office that December day, Joe Biden. Lantos, a liberal Democrat, would not comment about it. In general, people who meet with Bush will not discuss their encounters. (Lantos, through a spokesman, says it is a longstanding policy of his not to discuss Oval Office meetings.)
This is one key feature of the faith-based presidency: open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which undercuts faith. It could result in a loss of confidence in the decision-maker and, just as important, by the decision-maker. Nothing could be more vital, whether staying on message with the voters or the terrorists or a California congressman in a meeting about one of the world's most nagging problems. As Bush himself has said any number of times on the campaign trail, ''By remaining resolute and firm and strong, this world will be peaceful.''

About eighteen months prior to his 2002 comments, Dubya spent two days in Gothenburg, Sweden at an international summit.

How awesome is this? Should we be surprised? Cause this is what's baffling the world: how Dubya can go on, and on, and on, and on, seemingly forever, with these faux-pas, without ever anyone calling him on it, or without him ever suffering any consequences for it. It's astounding. And, in its absurdity, genial. I almost believe David Cross when he says that the president probably has to eat a Jewish baby on live television before people start saying, "Hey, what an asshole! This is our president?".

More Stewart

2004-10-16T10:44:00.000+02:00

BT links of the whole thing found here, both compressed wmv and the full avi. This is gonna be funny. Stewart takes a week off from The Daily Show, and winds up getting all the attention anyway. Between the last debates, this ordeal, and the devilishly delicious Bill O'Reilly debacle, he picked a lousy week for a vacation. If he would run for office - any office - he'd win in a landslide.

EDIT: Wonkette provides more links to the Crossfire video. Apparently, Tuckergate is the word of the hour.

• Random Foo
• iFilm
• Media Matters
• Indymedia

Aha - re. "catch"

2004-10-16T02:03:00.000+02:00

OK, so one immediate nuisance of this place is that there's no default setting for adding links? What the fuck?

My respect for Jon Stewart recently went up from 100% to 200%, if that is indeed possible. The reason: his appearance on CNN's Crossfire. So witty, so smart. He sticks it to 'em. Read the entire transcript here.

Doomed

2004-10-16T01:39:00.000+02:00

It would appear that even though I have no idea what I'm doing here, I have succumbed to the temptations of blogging. Not having any clever ideas never stopped anyone, though, so off I go. I will use this blog to highlight specific goings-on in the world of popular culture, politics, and other areas that I find stimulating, worthy of attention, or stupid. Does this mean spending even more hours in front of the screen, straining my eyes and sabotaging my recently fixed back? Probably. We Are A Winner.

Expected readers of this blog including the author: 1, although often I'm out of town and won't be able to check out every damn post, so give and take 1

I do like the suave design of this Blogger place; what's the catch?