Month: June 2006

prisoner: cell block H

even since i came to the US and met simon (the two things happened very near each other) i’ve been hearing about this allegedly fabulous australian tv show. it just about broke simon’s heart to leave england while the show was still running, and a week before he was due on his one-way flight to los angeles he runned himself ragged looking for a recording of the theme song all over london. only now do i realize how lucky i am that he didn’t find it.

i discovered that prisoner had been realeased on dvd (not the whole thing, just some choice episodes), so i bought it for him. i barely lasted through the first episode. does anyone know this show? can someone explain to me the allure of english tv? (this is australian, as i said, but whatever). the only bbc production i’ve ever liked is prime suspect, but the styles are so different, it’s as if british tv had learned a thing or two from its american counterpart in the decade that separates prisoner and prime suspect.

so i ask, what is it with the campiness and the cheesiness?

Gore

No, not another post on violence. I saw An Inconvenient Truth last evening, and it’s a pretty damn good documentary. Admittedly, I kind of enjoy well-spun, finely-crafted talking-head documentaries, and this is essentially one guy on a stage doing a very fine power-point/multi-media presentation. That said, with a generally-refined sense of how to “open” up the lecture, the lecture is smart, witty, engaging, challenging. I think it’s a helluva good introductory argument about global warming, but it’s also just a fine documentary about a subject by an expert.

Now, that expert happens to be an ex-Veep, famous for having been displaced from the Presidency. Continue reading Gore

Cars

Saw Cars last and I enjoyed it. I’m a big fan of Pixar, and I’ve been really delighted with animated features coming from Emeryville, CA, the past two decades. Since Pixar merged with Disney last May, I’ve been eager to see what would come of the deal, creatively. Knowing Disney’s tendency to moralize, to idealize the American family, and to smuggle in apologies for consumer culture, I was wondering if Cars would be able to sustain the brilliance of Monsters, Inc. and the edginess of The Incredibles.

The film starts off on a high-kinetic note: the rookie Lightning McQueen, played by Owen Wilson, is on the verge of winning the Piston Cup. Suddenly there’s a crash and massive pile up (this sequence reminded me of the brontosaurus avalanche in King Kong: visually overstimulating and a little irritating). Lightning manages to get through the wreckage and come out in front. Shrugging off his pit crew’s pleas for fresh tires, he builds a commanding lead coming into the final lap. But about a quarter lap to go, he blows a tire. Then another. The favorite and the veteren cars–Chick Hicks and The King, respectively–close in on the struggling rookie. It’s all Lightning can do to stay get a 3-way tie in the photo-finish, forcing a run-off in Los Angeles, California, that will determine the winner. Thankfully, the film slows down considerably from here on out. The emphasis shifts from fast-paced action and exposition to character development and design. There are some amazing shots of Lightning’s trek across the country. Continue reading Cars

Ken Russell – Fall of the Louse of Usher

I’ve wondered for a couple of days whether to write about this film. I’m fascinated by Russell mostly because it’s interesting to see what happens to a director that had a very specific artistic vision that falls way out of favor with the public and film financers.

Since leaving Hollywood, Russell has taken his strong interest in classical music and literature and erotica and managed to keep busy directing British and Candian TV specials and documentaries, including one I’m keen to see on the origins of British folk songs. But for a guy whose highly stylized features were in vogue for a number of years, (1969’s Women in Love to 1991’s Whore), I have to wonder if he’s content not to direct features any more.

So I was excited to find a copy of Russell’s take on all things Poe from a couple of years ago: The Fall of the Louse of Usher, written, directed, shot, and edited by the man, as well as playing one of the main roles. Continue reading Ken Russell – Fall of the Louse of Usher

Prairie Home

Depending on your appreciation of Keillor’s conflation of schmaltzy cornpone and dry, sly sting (which brings out, in the actors, ham on wry), either a dreamy afternoon in good company or a forceful lug-wrench to the soft area between your forehead and your ear. I fall in between: I am a sucker when Keillor stops singing and wanders around flatfooted, mumbling out yarns and sidestepping emotional reactions; I’m equally smitten with the extravagant “Midwestern” dramatics of Meryl Streep’s Johnson sister or the equally outsized snap of Lily Tomlin’s more bilious, bibulous Johnson sister. I also happily confess to loving John Reilly and Woody Harrelson shamelessly twanging and slanging away in the wings.

I’m less keen on the many false notes struck by the framing narratives (an odd misplaced wandering death angel, a vision more in keeping with Michael Landon than, say, Bergman; a dull plot about the end of the show, and a mean old capitalist from Texas, ably and acutely played by Tommy Lee Jones without one hint of whimsy but also lacking any hint of dramatic purpose); the waste of Kevin Kline and Maya Rudolph and a few other stray supporters, left drifting with the wisp of character and comic “bits”. And I almost always turn off the radio “Prairie” (if Kris will let me) whenever anyone starts singing; that ain’t my cup of joe, and it wears about as poorly when seen as when heard.
Continue reading Prairie Home

The Agronomist

Jonathan Demme’s documentary about Haitian journalist/activist Jean Dominique gets a quick recommendation from me. It doesn’t reinvent the form, nor is it the one film to see about Haiti’s political struggles over the last 40 years. But–kind of like the doc on William Eggleston–this film emerges from a personal relationship between filmmaker and subject; its talking head footage of Dominique was collected over a few years, during his periods of exile in NYC, and after Dominique’s assassination Demme spliced it together, fleshed out the history, caught up with some others.

What I very much appreciated about the film was that it didn’t stop to provide tons of explication–it demands that you either inform yourself or pay close attention, rather than giving you Haiti 101 on a plate. I also loved Dominique, garrulous and theatrical and impassioned–the film hews to his personality as a vehicle for conveying the storm of Haiti’s history, but never in that too-pat bio-doc format that collapses personal and national histories into one shared story. Instead, we are learning about Dominique… and necessarily, with this committed social activist, we engage with Haiti.
Continue reading The Agronomist

The Ringer

Mostly dead. I so wanted this to be a sly, subversively funny dismantling of disability tropes which employs–and then implodes–cultural stereotypes. Instead, it was not so sly, rarely funny, even if still nicely subversive of said tropes.

For those interested, it’s about a loser-wimp type (the ingratiating Johnny Knoxville) who tries to make some needed money by playing “disabled” so that he and a scurrilous uncle (the game Brian Cox) can rig bets on the Special Olympics. What’s kind of neat is that the film’s producers (the Farrelly Brothers, who have I think an *excellent* track record in upsetting disability tropes) engaged with the Olympics and it was filmed on site, with in-jokes and inside humor (sidestepping the frequent criticism of “laughing at”) and with performers with variously different abilities. One of the good jokes is that the other athletes recognize how bad Knoxville’s mimicry is, while the “norms” all get suckered. What’s less good is that the filmmakers employ a mix of actors, some of whom are playing disabled, and doing so generously but not persuasively (i.e., the movie’s central gimmick is itself replicated by the movie, inartfully).

I wanted it to be funnier, or even just funny. Nope. I recommend instead the under-appreciated Stuck on You and the brilliant documentary How’s Your News?.

incredible beauty, incredible sadness

i want to write about two beautiful films i just saw. they are, among other things, about children, a subject that lends itself to sentimentalism. i generally avoid films about kids, and i was tempted to avoid these too, had they not been by directors i like very much. one is deepa mehta’s water, the other is hirokazu koreeda nobody knows (koreeda made the sublime afterlife). i think that, for the most part, the directors do a good job at staying away from sentimentalism. nobody knows is hardly sentimental at all, though the beautiful face of the protagonist, young Yûya Yagira (who won best actor at cannes), is tremendously captivating and sweet. deepa mehta’s young protagonist is not a “cute” child (i at least didn’t find her so), but the film does get a bit sentimental at points. i suspect this may be due to the genre, i.e. that fact that water is an indian film that is certainly indebted to bollywood esthetics. since i know absolutely nothing about bollywood, whose beauty i don’t quite get (sorrysorrysorry), i will leave it at this, hoping someone can fill in this specific connection for me. Continue reading incredible beauty, incredible sadness

Summer Club

Okay–a proposal. We are (obviously) already starting conversations, suggesting films, following up on others’ suggestions and entering into discussion…. but for the summer months, I’m proposing that every week or two, someone suggest a movie that we all (or many) try to see, and jump into conversation on. I might suggest picking something less familiar, or an old favorite not recently seen, or insert-motif-here. But what the hell: let’s say anything goes. I’m not even going to suggest a timeline or anything. I’m just going to offer up the open-ended proposal.

If you’re interested, post on a flick–Summer Club: “X”–and those of us who are interested will track down said flick and watch it, too. I will wait a couple of days and do one of my own.

Obviously, I am trying to take my mind off tonight’s Sopranos closer, which I will see in a few days, thanks to Jeff.