Month: May 2006

the leopard

i have never quite liked classic italian cinema — fellini, visconti, rossellini, de sica, you name ’em. i don’t think there’s a lot of people in italy who like them, but i may be generalizing what is the case in my family and the people of my region (italy is an extremely diverse country, to an extent that is probably hard for americans to comprehend). hollywood movies have always worked better in italy than italian movies. my mother, an educated woman, will simply not watch italian movies, however well done, inspiring, or american-like they are. she will barely watch any non-american movie, period. i suspect she may not be alone. Continue reading the leopard

Friends with Money

This is intensely personal.

Friends with Money is the first film I have seen in the theatre since the end of February. Since the janitors’ strike started (and gloriously ended) at the University of Miami, I have thought about nothing but winning this fight and teaching my classes. I have spent more time than in my entire American life hanging out with people whose lives are so different from mine – mainly from the point of view of class. That this should have been my first class-mingling experience is not something I’m either proud or ashamed of. I have learned a long time ago that this society is much more segregated than it believes itself to be, and not only in terms of race. Living in L.A., San Luis Obispo, and Miami has certainly not helped, but the reality I’ve been confronted with over and over again since coming to the US is that you don’t hang out with people of other classes – not easily, that is, and not comfortably. Please forgive me if I generalize an experience which is necessarily very limited. As I said, I have lived only in three cities that are very socially segregated, and I have hung out exclusively (alas) with academics. Continue reading Friends with Money

Eggleston

Michael Almereyda’s wonderful documentary William Eggleston in the Real World spends a lot of time noodling around about subjects Eggleston himself, in the closing conversation, professes to neither understand nor much fret about: what do [his] photographs do? How do they affect us? How do we watch them?

Luckily for us, the film doesn’t care to really answer, nor does it care only about that question. Instead, the film without any of that arty detachment follows Eggleston around as he takes pictures, content (mostly) to watch him work, or in the off hours to drink and draw and play music. He’s never terribly well-defined–and that’s actually to my liking, and the film’s effect. Rather than answering, it enacts the issues of art and image; the cinematography echoes and even at times captures the lush colors and compositions of the photographer’s work, and while never telling us exactly what to think it provokes sincere, curious reflection. I really enjoyed this. (Almereyda’s other doc on Sam Shepard–This So-Called Disaster–is also a fine film, about the staging of a play but best when hanging out with the playwright.)

overrated great films

picking up from the comments in the the passenger discussion.

many years ago most of us were involved in an email exchange listing our top 10 most over and under-rated movies. i admit to having placed some films on my overrated list just to piss specific people off (vertigo for michael, for example). let’s play again, but this time let’s restrict it to films (and directors) revered by film school snobs and serious critics as masterpieces. i like to say that i once lost a job at least partly because i made fun of bergman’s persona at a lunch. i’ll nominate that again and also the seventh seal (which was on my email list as well–let me trot out yet again my oh-so clever dismissal of it then: “mournful knight plays chess with death, my ass!”). much of fellini surely, la dolce vita (la grande bora) certainly.

then there are others, by godard for example, that i can appreciate as doing something new at the time, but which don’t seem to me to hold up outside of their immediate context. i can understand why i’m supposed to love a band apart but i don’t love it.

okay, let’s have at it!

Phil Hendrie, R.I.P.

This message pertains to radio, perhaps a forbidden topic on this visually oriented blog. But I had to take a moment to note the passing of the Phil Hendrie show whose last broadcast will be June 23rd 2006. to my mind it indicates one of the final nails going into the coffin of the medium of radio which once held so much promise. Initially founded on its simplicity–one man/woman and a microphone–the medium is now one of the most visible demonstrations of how homogenized our culture is. Imagine all of “classic rock” being whittled down to the same twenty songs. Imagine romance covered in the treacle of the Delilah show. Politics is now the province of the commentators who range from mild right wing to quasi fascist; even the mildest leftist point of view is reviled as a secular assualt on THE VALUES WE HOLD MOST DEAR! Continue reading Phil Hendrie, R.I.P.

The Passenger (1975)

How I love thee – let me count the ways. I enjoyed this film so much more than Blow-Up, which I recently re-watched (though I hardly dislike Blow-Up, just in comparison).

That last scene; the camera somehow leaving the bars on the hotel room window and turning around to show the hotel; that long, long shot… It is as astounding as (if not actually directly influenced by) the opening shot of Touch of Evil, but of course in Antonioni’s style; not a single word by the characters can be overheard. Even Maria Schneider’s last line, which is so key to the film, is barely perceptible.

I didn’t listen to the commentary by Nicholson, except for that last shot, in which he does indeed explain one of the most famous and puzzling shots ever put down, supposing that Anonioni wouldn’t mind. So it’d be worth renting just for that I think. He also says that it was shot that way because Antonioni “didn’t want to film a death scene.” Continue reading The Passenger (1975)