Moot Point

1. Wild At Heart (David Lynch, 1990): Love love love love. It’s weirdo Lynch Wizard of Oz + Nicolas Cage’s Elvis fetish making dramatic sense for once + Laura Dern + half the cast of Twin Peaks = magic!! Also, this came out the same year as Cry-Baby. There’s totally a paper to be written about revisionist takes on ’50s nostalgia in the “end of history” era. Well, there probably already has been.
2. The Ex (Jesse Peretz, 2007): Way better than I thought it would be. I mean, it’s exactly what it looked like, which was a slight comedy about a handicapped guy who is a total asshole. But, it’s very good at being that: Zach Braff is good when he is funny and dorky, Jason Bateman is just awesome at everything (he is totally the best part), Amanda Peet was underused but they let her character be a real person and not just a long-suffering fungible sex-object for the male stars to fight over, and all the little parts are played by awesome people, like Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler and Charles Grodin and Mia Farrow and Josh Charles (the guy on Sports Night who wasn’t Peter Krause) and Amy Adams. Actually, it’s bizarre: why did all these people want to take small parts in a little movie with a director with basically no track record?
3. Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002): This was a little more uneven than I remembered. I’m a big fan of the Broadway show, which is dark and bitter and funny, and I realize they had to come up with a way to make the songs make sense on film because it is a really stagey play, but it only worked about half the time. Having “All That Jazz” be Velma taking the stage right after killing her husband and sister? Okay, that works. Intercutting “Cell Block Tango” with the ladies going about their jail business? Kind of pointless; I guess it’s supposed to underscore how it is just a fantasy for Roxie, but given how totally un-gritty jail is in this Hollywood musical, it kind of falls flat. Intercutting the circus-y “Razzle Dazzle” with the actual trial, creating a clever comparison between the trial and a circus in a clever and distinctly cinematic way? Now we’re in business. It also kind of blows because they focus so much on how all the numbers are in Roxie’s head and she’s remarkably unempathetic, so you lose a bunch of Velma’s numbers, which really blows because she is a more interesting, fun, character and also Catherine Zeta-Jones was miles better than Zellwegger. It’s still really pretty, with all the light sparkling off the sequins, but it would have been better if a) Marshall had made “real life” contrast even more with fantasy musical life, like, make it super-gritty and depressing (more like Pennies From Heaven) or even better, if b) he had stayed more in line with the Broadway show and gone full-bore theatrical, with little to no distinction between the characters’ “real” lives and the glitzy musical numbers, playing out the whole “life is a show” theme literally, especially since that is basically the point of the play. But it was Miramax, they were trying to make an Oscar film, and that would have been artistically risky or something. SIGH.

This was a pretty lame selection. I also watched most of this documentary on PBS about Jehovah’s Witnesses. I knew that they were persecuted during the Holocaust, but what I did not know was that they (unlike the gypsies and the Jewish prisoners) had the option to sign a paper renouncing their faith and then they could leave the concentration camps, but basically none of them did. That is pretty admirable, even if I hate it when they make me come to the door on Saturday mornings. Next week I will hopefully see more interesting movies. I might go see The Distant Journey on Wednesday, it looks interesting and I am big on expressionism.

Subtitle: “I have too much time on my hands”

My premise is that fathers and fatherhood have become increasingly central issues in Heroes, along with family in general. I think the pressures and cracks in the patriarchal family structure — which, as any good Lacanian knows, can be tied into bigger structures, like Law¹ — are central in the show, much more than the powers (and just to be clear, I have been saying something like this for months). The season finale last night made how much Heroes is about family and patriarchal power abundantly clear. And let’s not forget that powers are apparently hereditary!² Anyway, these are just some notes (and, SPOILERS if you haven’t seen the whole thing): Continue Reading »

1. 28 Weeks Later (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007): I really enjoyed this. It wasn’t as good or as raw as the first one. However, I think they were smart to use the same general concept, but not have any characters carry over or anything like that. It made the “zombie movies are really about families” and the clear political statements that any zombie movie has really really overt, which I think is a valid way to go in 2007. Also, that sequence in the dark subway was wicked scary.
2. Where Danger Lives (John Farrow, 1950): Robert Mitchum and Maureen O’Hara were both really good, and you know how I like murder stories with crazy ladies. The best part was the section where they are on the run and they are so sure that the police are after them and everyone is onto them, but it is actually just a series of comic coincidences, which are contrasted with their rising hysteria. Talk about the panopticon! So there’s good stuff, but it doesn’t totally hold together. I wouldn’t turn it off if it comes on Turner Classic Movies, but I also wouldn’t necessarily recommend running out to see it.
3. Blues Brothers 2000 (John Landis, 1998): This is a total guilty pleasure for me. As a movie, it’s awful, and there’s lots of middle-aged-dude-wish-fulfillment (and I know because it is the kind of movie my dad would make, and my dad is essentially Dan Aykroyd, but an accountant), and there is a totally unneccessary kid, but as a series of legendary musician camoes strung together, it is pretty fantastic. The soundtrack is insanely, insanely good if you like blues and soul and stuff, which I do. The supergroup at the end, fronted by B.B. King, Bo Diddly and Eric Clapton, had like Dr. John tucked in the back and Isaac Hayes singing backup. Also, a record-breaking 60-car accident.
4. Electra Glide in Blue (James William Guercio, 1973): So 1970s; it was on TCM Underground (their cult movie Friday night thing, which is also where I saw Sisters and The Honeymoon Killers) and I started watching because the beginning section, which showed some peoples’ torsos doing stuff, caught my eye. It has Robert Blake as this highway motorcycle cop who’s trying to make detective and compensate for his shortness in every way possible. Vietnam comes up a lot. There are lots of hippies. It turns out the reason that every frame was a thing of beauty is that it was shot by legendary cinematographer Conrad Hall. It’s a good movie, not a great one; but it is absolutely gorgeous.
5. Withnail & I (Bruce Robinson, 1987): I’m still not sure what I think of this movie. It was smart and funny and well-acted, but it had that very British boys’ club feel. I mean, it was about male friendship and homosexual anxiety, so it’s not like it wasn’t critiquing the British boys’ club tradition.
6. The Saddest Music In The World (Guy Maddin, 2003): Oh! This movie had: Depression-era pastiche, beer, international mashups, Mark McKinney, Isabella Rosselini, family melodrama, and it deals with Canadian identity and the relationship between art and emotion. It is basically the perfect storm of everything I like and am interested in right now. It may not appeal as strongly to people who aren’t film grad students or me, but I think it was pretty awesome.

On the way to take the last two back to the video store, I tripped on some steps and fell down and scraped my hands and knees. Always classy!

• I have started running. Well, jogging, really. I never saw myself as a jogger. When they made us run in gym class in junior high, I was always the person who walked half the way and wound up with a 1K time of like, 15 minutes. People who would go running for fun totally confused me. I started “jogging, not running” out of a kind of health-based desperation. My current job as a grad student involves a lot of sitting very still and watching movies. Also, the only fun thing to do in Vancouver is go to restaurants. As a result, I have put on a bunch of weight since I have moved here, despite the fact that I mostly eat pretty well and do an insane amount of walking. To combat that, and also because the inertia was setting in, I have started jogging. At first, it was horrible, but I kept doing it because of the aforementioned ever-expanding ass situation. And all of a sudden, it started being fun! Or at least, not horrible. Kind of pleasant. Oddly satisfying, even. Especially when I am running back toward my house and the sun is shining and I can see the mountains in the distance and Martha Wainwright is singing about when they day is short; this is a nice feeling. Hopefully I will start losing weight soon.
• It is a bad week in TV: there was the LAST GILMORE GIRLS EVER, my beloved soul-lady Melinda was voted off American Idol, and Veronica Mars is over! (I’m sure I will write a long pretentious post bemoaning Veronica Mars’s cancellation and its many ups and downs after the big finale next week.) At least things are looking up for Jim and Pam.
• I’ve declared 2007 the year of the sundress. I don’t know why, I am just really into dresses this year. I got this amazing pleated-skirt one from Banana Republic: it’s a soft blue, with like, see-through crepey silk, and then it has a separate slip to match in more traditional type-silk. It was originally $225. I paid $55. Booyah.
• It is really easy to fill the time being unemployed. I just got my tax return money, which combined with my grading job, totally is enough to hold me over for at least a couple of months, so I am not very motivated to job-hunt. However, there are many compelling financial reasons for me not to start next school year flat broke, so I am trying to focus on those and get my resume into a temp agency or two. Then, oh ho, a-temping I will go.

1. El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970): We saw a print of this that the distributor was touring around to promote the new DVD at the Cinematheque, and it was glorious. El Topo is, for those of you not in the know, basically the first midnight movie. I have had a thing about bizarre cult films lately, so Alex and I knew we had to go. There are cowboy archetypes, a river of blood, lots of dead animals, some weird sex, a ton of sacrilegious imagery, and corpses being eaten by bees.
2. The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973): I think I liked this even better than El Topo: it went further in terms of visual and ideological audacity. You can totally see how stoners would love it, but there are some pretty incredible scenes. Alex read me this quote where Jodorowsky said that he had Godard’s intellect, but more testicles. I think this sums up his aesthetic pretty well.
3. Spider-Man 3 (Sam Raimi, 2007): This…wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. There was a little too much exposition for my taste, and I would have liked to see more hilarious evil Peter Parker and NEVER HEAR KIRSTEN DUNST SING AGAIN. Nonetheless, I had a pretty good time overall. I like my superhero melodramas with a huge side of self-awareness, and Sam Raimi gets that: the disco stuff, the Stan Lee cameo, the moment Spidey poses against a glorious American flag. Good times. Also, it was nice to see Topher Grace doing well.
4. Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont, 1929): I just watched this on Turner Classic Movies because it was on and it was supposed to be all jazzy and scandalous. You can see how it would have been in 1929, what with the interracial romance and apparently unmarried lovers and all. The thing about these late-era silents is, they are often really nice to look at. For some reason, when sound came in, they stopped tinting (probably it was harder somehow?), so you lost all those golds and blues that they used to reflect day and night. Also, film language was pretty highly developed by then: there were some gorgeous compositions and some really impressive deep focus shots. The two lead actresses were also really good: Anna May Wong was surprisingly natural when she wasn’t being all dangerously Chinese, and Gilda Gray was really stunning: she did a lot with her eyes, it’s a shame she didn’t make more movies. Not that much happened given that it was a full two hours long, though, which made me focus even more on the cinematography, which was, as a I said, mightily impressive. This one shot, the nightclub owner is asking Anna May Wong, the poor scullery maid, to dance in the nightclub. She tells him she’s danced in public before, in Limehouse, and there was some trouble between some men. She looks at him, and the camera does a full 180 to his knowing reaction shot. Gorgeous.

On my agenda for this week: get a job. Also, see 28 Weeks Later: most of the reviews have been good, and I freaking loved the first one.

So Alex and I are walking down Main on Friday, after having some ice cream and buying some bagels.

Alex:”Oh yeah, I saw someone from Battlestar Galactica today.”
Me: “Cool, who?”
Alex (nonchalantly): “The Chief.”
Me: “OhmygodyousawTheChief!!! Tell me everything.”
Alex: [details about how he saw The Chief while he was waiting for the bus, what he was wearing, etc.] “He had a certain…presence.”
Me: “I can’t believe that you have been talking to me for a whole two hours and did not tell me that you saw The Chief.” [goes on and on, jealously, wishing I could see The Chief while I was waiting for the bus]
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1. Paris When It Sizzles: I was watching this to distract myself while working on my resume, and it was pretty meh. Audrey Hepburn and William Holden were really charming and lovable, but the movie itself wasn’t any great shakes. It’s about a screenwriter on a deadline and the typist he hires to dictate his script to; then they, predictably, fall in love. (This is also the plot of Alex and Emma, which replaces the screen legends with Kate Hudson and Luke Wilson, and introduces an awkward “he gets over his girlfriend by writing a novel” element to the whole thing, and is generally less fun.) The best bits are the metajokes — like they’re writing a movie and one of them will say “the theme song, sung by someone like Frank Sinatra” and then you hear Sinatra actually singing a Sinatraian theme song to the fake movie they’re writing, or “no, he looks more like Tony Curtis,” and then the character is played by, obviously, Tony Curtis. But you know, goofy injokes does not a whole movie make.
2. Inland Empire: I can’t really explain what happened in this movie, because if I did, then it would not be very much fun for anyone who reads this if they choose to see it. I don’t know if I would recommend this to someone who wasn’t already a David Lynch fan; I really liked it, but it’s way less accessible than, say, Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive. It was shot on DV and often lit just with flashlights, so it doesn’t really have the sumptuousness of Blue Velvet; but it’s just as surreal and disturbing, and the plot makes even less linear sense! Plus [SPOILER ALERT]: dancing hookers.
3. M: I have somehow made it through several years of higher education in the studies of film without having seen this, so I thought I should. It’s pretty Weimar-tastic: lots of extreme angles, no one is likable, everyone distrusts everyone else, everyone likes absolutes, etc. etc. It’s really tense and well-paced, despite not even having anything resembling a protagonist.

That’s it for this week. I’ve been decompressing, but I have lots of spare time, a great video store down the street and ambitious summer film plans, so hopefully my weekly movies lists will soon return to their former glories. Or I will wind up just rewatching entire seasons of Buffy and mourning the ends of Gilmore Girls (confirmed, and I am okay with it because having the show end with Rory’s grad seems graceful, and it has been getting good again, so it will hopefully end on a high note) and Veronica Mars (likely, and I am not totally okay with it because even though the last episode was pretty bad and I am pretty dubious about this whole standalone episode thing, I feel like there’s still some good show in there). Wait, this was supposed to be about movies. Did I tell you about my new gloriously vanity-sized skinny jeans? I thought that they would look bad, but they don’t, they look cute. You win, fashion industry!

Dudes, I’m done all my essays! And I’m on summer break! So now I should probably get a job? Summer semester marking is NOT going to pay the the rent.

Ideally I will get a reception job where I can keep a book at my desk and they will pay me $20 an hour. Realistically I will get a reception job where I have tasks to be completed all the time and they will pay me $13 an hour. This isn’t a bad deal, it will put food on the table and rent movies for me. (Did you guys know Alex hasn’t seen Bring It On? This must be rectified.)

I have kind of had a rough couple of weeks, what with the being really stressed about school, having writer’s block or something, and reading the most depressing book ever. The world, it is not a good place. I am pretty sure I hate everything. Like, I may have thought I hated everything before, but I feel so negative about what is going on with the human race and the total lack of possible solutions and my total powerlessness in this regard that now I am pretty positive that this is the REAL DEAL of world-hating. Is this what growing up is? I mean, I am a functional world-hater, I make my fish tacos and watch my TV shows and do my work and find shopping oddly comforting, even if I don’t actually buy anything; but ultimately, my reaction to everything is run through a filter of world-hating cynicism. And I don’t think I could change that even if I wanted to. See above re: the world.

Things are dire: the entire world is going to hell in a handbasket, the only person who is upset about it is SIMON COWELL, it looks like Canadian forces have been handing prisoners over to the torture-happy local authorities (sigh), and Le Tigre licensed Deceptacon to a fucking Nivea commercial.