Author: arnab

gimme shelter

i watched gimme shelter last night. i was pretty sure it had been talked about on the blog, but i couldn’t find a reference and there’s nothing here in the “rock documentaries” topic where you’d expect it to have been discussed. it is a really interesting film though i am not sure what exactly it is a document of. the first half, which largely has pre-altamont footage from a show in new york showcases jagger’s unbelievable charisma and the band’s power live–though the one brief clip of ike and tina turner blows the stones’ performances away.

(i remember reading stanley booth, the true adventures of the rolling stones way back in the late 80s at the american center library in delhi–i don’t know if anyone else here has read it, it is a chronicle of this tour, and is a riproaring read–and he notes that the stones were terrified of ike.)
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advertisements for the apocalypse

i haven’t watched a lot of movies of late, but if i may be allowed to extend this blog to a discussion of advertisements i’d like to direct your attention in mock-horror to a recent visa check card commercial. this is the one in which everything in a large cafeteria is moving like clockwork when a man shows up with cash and brings it all to a grinding halt. the ad itself seems like it must be a direct riff on the famous modern times sequence in which chaplin inserts himself into the assembly line and brings it to a halt with his body. here, however, the action of the human who breaks the chain, stops the line from moving is greeted with scorn, and mechanization of everyday life is presented as cheerful and hip. mechanization no longer evokes horror; it is presented instead as the bright, sunny prerequisite of paradise.

lucky louie

sunhee turned me on to this no-frills, stripped-down comedy on hbo and i spent the last two days catching up on the 6 episodes shown so far. this is from louis c.k, a writer on letterman, conan and the chris rock show–and also the writer of the chris rock spin-off, and the greatest film ever made, pootie tang. it is very, very good. very simple premise and setup: working class couple in shitty apartment with young daughter work out gender, marriage and adulthood issues. friends, co-workers and neighbours show up every once in a while. the writing is very good, and the performances, especially by the supporting cast, are perfect. well, c.k is the weak link in the acting department but it doesn’t really hurt the show, which while “real” in many ways–their apartment, their possessions, their milieu, everything fits their circumstances–it is not really after realism in the delivery. the show is quite theatrical and stagey, and the diy feel of the sets and the hyper-articulate dialog both nail the class context and highlight the artifice. that said, there’s a certain irony about a working class comedy about a couple not always making it from check to check airing on hbo.
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ringo lam

my recent mike-inspired johnnie to festival has spurred me to make my way more methodically through the films of other major hong kong directors. and so full contact last night. the only other films by lam that i’ve seen are prison on fire and city on fire. i think i liked both of those–though all i remember of the prison one is a rare scene of the protagonist of a film taking a noisy dump. i was expecting to like full contact a lot (i’ve heard a lot about it) but ended up mostly unmoved. yes, it has a lot of great action scenes, and chow yun-fat is as magnetic as ever (bad haircut and all) but the action and violence are of an almost decadent variety. there is a more realistic and cynical edge to it than in most of woo, and there’s something to be said for that. but the film tries in the end to have it both ways–chow is apparently a more chivalrous thief/killer than simon yam’s villain–and it just doesn’t work. i think i prefer both woo’s over-the-top, operatic explorations of codes of masculinity and to’s more off-kilter explorations of genre. and the portrayal of women in this film, and of the queer psychopathic villain are really quite deplorable.

are there other films by lam that you would recommend? or is anyone interested in defending this one?

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!

nizhalkkuthu (shadow kill)

this is adoor gopalakrishnan’s most recent film. adoor is one of the most lauded figures in india’s new cinema, and, of course, all but unknown outside of the film-festival circuit outside india. as far as i can tell, this is the only one of his films that is available on dvd–as part of some global cinema initiative (see comment 8 here). i hope more of his films will become available. this partly because while this film is interesting enough, and certainly quite beautiful to look at, it isn’t close to his best. it is about a hangman in the colonial era state of travancore (the film is set in 1940) and his spiritual/physical crisis around his work. there’s some dwelling on the ritual role of the hangman in the community–he doubles as a healer (his proximity to death making him closer to the goddess kali)–and some passing references to social justice/injustice, but it just didn’t all come together for me. in a director’s statement on the dvd adoor writes that this is a film to be understood after it is seen, not during, so maybe i need to think about it more, or maybe watch it again.

i would recommend it anyway (netflix has it). i’ll also repeat my earlier recommendations of the early films of shyam benegal (which netflix also has). as far as i can tell, no one but jeff has taken these up.

good night and good luck

do we already have a thread on this? i just finished watching this and found it terribly dull. i cannot believe that this got a best picture nomination or that so many smart people told me to watch it. perhaps it plays much better on a big screen, i don’t know. i do know that i felt no tension of any kind, felt no dramatic interest, and didn’t get the connection between the film’s narrative and its aesthetic, which frankly reeked of “good taste”. the opening scene looked a bit like a cross between ads by calvin klein and debeers diamonds, and the shiny beauty of the cinematography (not to mention the songs and score) muted for me the impact of what was being said. yes, it is a worthy story, and in these days of non-journalism, a necessary reminder of a time when the television news was worth watching, but it is not a great film by any means.

oh, and leland palmer is in it. i kept waiting for him to be possessed by bob and smash edward r. murrow’s face into a wall, but no such luck.

anyone else seen it?

vengeance is mine

sympathy for mr. vengeance is a stupid name for a movie, and as per sunhee is not the name of the film in korean; in korean it apparently translates directly as vengeance is mine and so i’m sticking with that. who the hell decides to make stupid changes to movie titles for english audience releases?

anyway: we watched it last night. i liked it a lot. stylistically very subdued compared to oldboy but with far more social and physical heft. to take the latter first: pain and violence are far more real here, we see slashed bodies and blood oozing out of the slashes, the sadism is not leavened with comedy as it often is in oldboy. i’m not sure what to make of the social part. Continue reading vengeance is mine