About once every three months I head to the local blood bank where I am hooked up to a machine which removes all of my blood, cycling in first some kind of plasma stuff then replacing my old, tired corpuscles with some from a chubby, fresh-faced 14-year-old Iowan. (Ex-fresh-faced, alas.) Anyway, I’m trapped there for two hours, and can’t move my arm. Whatever movie I’ve brought along and put on, I watch all the way through.
Today, I brought Smart People Continue reading Bloody hell
Saw the Express with Jeff last week, and have just finished up both series of Spaced with Kris, and they seem complementary experiences: heavily referential but more parroty homages than parody, attuned to the finer points of myriad pop cultural details iconic and not-so, each devoted to character more than plot, and equally invested in the many pleasures of forgetting forward motion to let said characters chatter and get wasted and circle around their intense emotional relationships with one another.
Both have been pumped up but I found them pleasurable, occasionally brilliant but not all that, even as they were always good company.
Blah di blah. My review is boring. I’d contemplated throwing out some noodling about a generation of filmmakers who commit to reflexivity yet avoid a kneejerk irony or detachment… but I’m feeling no burn to do so. It’s kind of neat that the adoring recreation of, say, a few shots from Tarantino are not just the filmmakers showing off but actually serve the characters–who shape themselves via such associations. And Spaced, in particular, can brilliantly weave such allusions into plots that explore and expand upon these characters’ worlds — the show deploys parody, but the parody’s not its own raison d’etre.
And now that I’ve casually used French, I bid you adieu.
I should have posted on Dark Knight and schooled Arnab, but instead I watched other things. The Last Winter was an indie horror about global warming, and Larry Fessenden is an interesting director, and it had a good cast, and it mostly sucked. So I tried Six Reasons Why, a Canadian indie that Netflix convinced me was something I’d like, and it has Colm Feore in it, and was a post-apocalyptic Western thingy shot on about a 48 cents per day budget. And you can see almost every penny in it. Sucked. Sucked, sucked, sucked.
So then I watched about 45 minutes of Blades of Glory, which didn’t suck, but wasn’t good. And Netflix wouldn’t send me Spaced or Mad Men, and that, too, sucked.
I’m still kind of reeling, stunned by this, but I’ll jump out on the limb and assert (and later reflect and expand upon the assertion): this is the best American pop/genre film since Silence of the Lambs.
How’s that for pumping up your expectations? More crazy-ass assertions to come on the centrality of anarchy and disorder to great American pop . . .
You’ve got to wonder how certain pitch meetings ever closed the deal. Imagine sitting down with this Irish fellow, a hot young prospect in an industry starting to stretch its global legs and move past the endless green hills & spirited lasses & the troubles & gnarled-wise-drunken old men & pubs of romanticized Eire. He says he’s got this crackin’ idea for horror (horror? in Irish film? feck yeah!), feeding on the European terrors of gen mod. “Great,” says the Film Board, “jes great. So what’s the pitch?”
Cows. Yeah, no, I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out. End of meeting. Except… Continue reading On the fundamental ridiculousness of a certain kind of horror film
Steve Martin is the first comedian I mimicked, whose work I eagerly bought up, whose routines I (pathetically) aped in my room. Richard Pryor was the most lacerating and challenging (the impact of which hasn’t faded, whenever I rewatch), but man he was funny, even when I got the edge and anger more than the punchline; Richard Belzer’s breezy nihilism (on a talk show, no less!) gave the adolescent Reynolds too much confidence in his own sarcasm, and; Albert Brooks was the guy I loved to love ’cause so few other people seemed to know him (or, as often, understood or found him funny)–my god, a parody of the Mr. Jaws records that was patently unfunny?–Brilliance!
But George Carlin. Ah, damn. I can come upon an old routine–about planes, pieces of corn in shit, God (“But he loves you!”), the infamous seven words and the lovely extended riff of further words (“Mongolian cluster-fuck” the one that sticks with me)–and I pull up short and watch, as I did about seventeen times today, and they still make me laugh. Routines from the ‘seventies, ‘eighties, ‘nineties, and more recently–funny, pushy, witty, biting stuff in each decade. No one pitched as neatly smart and silly and scatological as Carlin.
A while back I raved about The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, noting in particular how despite the bleak portrait of a bureaucracy which bogged the sick and dying down, the film depicted how consistently the humans the doomed Lazarescu came upon connected with him, fell into rich and personal conversations with others around them–in short, how the community’s compassion and connections thrived despite, around, underneath this oppressive system.
4 Months… is the flipside: here, the pervasive systemic bureaucracy and oppression manifest in each person and every interpersonal interaction as an inability to connect, breakdowns of trust, persistent lying, an endless struggle out from under or around rules both large and trivial. There are moments of compassion (a kitten given powdered milk, a bus rider offering a ticket to a freeloading passenger as the official comes around seeking proof of payment), and the film is centered on a roommate going above and beyond to help her roommate get an illegal abortion. But even that central act of compassion is marred by anger, frustration, lies, and–ultimately–a wall between the two women. The final scene (I’m giving nothing away) sits on the two, having endured much, sitting at a restaurant table, one pondering the menu, the other staring out the window–a shot held, silently, for an uncomfortable, meaningful stretch. This film is rather brilliantly done, again in the Lazarescu mode of a fly on the wall, the acting so naturalized, the scenes often playing out in a dazed and difficult real-time. But it’s harrowing, gripping, draining.
I’ve now seen 3 of the films of what some are calling the Romanian new wave (also including 12:08 East of Bucharest), and they are as dazzling and exciting as A. O. Scott raved (in an article to which I’ve linked under the Lazarescu post). I’m kind of fascinated at how a very common stylistic sensibility emerges, despite quite distinct tones: long takes, very precise production and composition yet a filmmaking style that resists showy technique, acting so subtle and precise it seems unacted, and an investment in (or even a reinvigoration of) social realist concerns.
Pity the poor screenwriter, saddled with the necessary nonsense of extensive historical “situating.” Lines like “We have just had 400 pounds of tea dumped in Boston Harbor, by vandals dressed as Indians!” The sort of stuff which would be a drag on even the sleekest, most energetic of historical dramas.
And John Adams moves more like a dirigible. Often pretty, but ponderous, gassy, its movements slow and wholly predictable. I keep hoping it’ll bust into flames, and go down in a blaze of destructive insanity. Maybe Paul Giamatti will go a little Harvey Pekar or (even better) Pig Vomit, kick the hammy Danny Huston (Sam Adams! That crazy!) in the codpiece. But I fear it will not come to pass.
This miniseries is lavishly produced, and shot quite beautifully by Tak Fujimoto. And I’m only one episode (of six total) in, so this isn’t fair, but…. Harrumph harrumph.
I’ve seen a few good films the last week or so, and haven’t piped up because they’re generally good–in fact, I enjoyed each of them quite a bit–but there wasn’t much ‘meaty’ to my initial reactions. But what the hell… I’m sitting in Nebraska, and I may as well do a post. Continue reading Pleasures
I have heard that comedy is greatly dependent on the specific manner of its delivery, and I will be undertaking an experiment to best evaluate this hypothesis. I started watching Ferrell’s last sportsy crazy-arrogant-guy-who-yells-a-lot movie in Widescreen, and never laughed once. I might have even been scowling. So I’ve just returned to the menu, opened the set-up, and arranged the film to be shown in Full Screen, with Mono sound. I’ll let you know how it goes.