Category: (by verdict)

League of Gentlemen

NOT the bowling flick, nor another terrible adaptation of Alan Moore’s comics. Instead, a very fine sort-of-sketchy, sort-of-Sherwood-Andersony comedy from Britain. Like other great sketch groups, a trio of performers enact every recurring character; unlike those shows, there is a loose plot (a man stranded in forlorn Royston Vasey, a rural town somewhere in the wilds of England) and the fun is all character-/setting-driven. There’s an undercurrent of dread and horror to the comedy that is peculiarly, brilliantly evoked.

Mark first cued me into these guys, and I saw the first series from a dvd at my library. I write simply to advise that the next two seasons come out on dvd in the next few weeks. Very much recommended.

bollywood recommendations

following on my brief comments on indian art cinema in anothe thread i thought i’d make some recommendations of bollywood films for the benefit of those who might be interested in a somewhat structured experience of the industry. first, a little definitional clarification: “bollywood” refers to the popular bombay hindi film industry. it is not a catch-all term for any indian cinema (as it is often used in american circles) and nor are people like gurinder chadha or mira nair bollywood filmmakers. these people use certain bollywood conventions in some of their films (nair entirely exploitatively/exotically) but they’re no more bollywood than someone like baz luhrman in “moulin rouge”. second clarification: this list, sorted by decade, is restricted to what’s available from netflix. i can expand it to other titles as well if people are interested (i am not sure if netflix is a good indicator of availability) . this is, of course, an idiosyncratic, highly personal list. as it should be. not sure which of these will “translate”–take your chances.

Continue reading bollywood recommendations

Perils of Minimalism?

I just watched Elephant and found it both compelling and puzzling. What puzzles me partly is its schizophrenic strategy of following precisely many of the details of the Columbine Harris/Klebold shootings (the attraction to Hitler, the playing of violent videogames, the timeline and strategy of pipe bombs and shootings, the warning to a student outside, the directive to “have fun,” even the realization of the rumor that the spree ended with harris shooting klebold rather than a mutual suicide) while allowing for a very loose improvisational style. Is the film a dramatization, deliberately courting status as a kind of lyrical re-creation of Columbine, or does it mean to suggest itself as a kind of film about Anywhere USA where banality is inexplicably interrupted by violence? What am I missing in the folding together of these two approaches? Why does it deliberately court cliché—the repetition of one of the most well-known pieces of classical music, the repeated images of “storm clouds massing?”
Continue reading Perils of Minimalism?

more music movies

I don’t like the idea of posting about movies I’ve not seen, and I don’t want to lead this blog down the Ain’t It Cool News road, but considering the recent posts about music documentaries, I thought some here might be interested in some upcoming music related films.

I just picked up the LA Film Festival schedule and there’s a few interesting ones mentioned.
Be Here To Love Me is about Texas singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. Townes alway struck me a bit as the Harry Nillson of country. Others had hits with his songs, and he was loved by the best in the biz, but that’s often not enough. Continue reading more music movies

Lemony

Got around to watching Lemony Snicket’s long title. Did someone post about that previously?

Well…. I am not going to hash around much with the film overall; it sort of works, sort of doesn’t. I think at age 12 I’d have been in love, but I’m not sure at 37 I could get past the crude stitching of slapstick to dry bitter irony.

But my god it looked good. Without aping Gorey, the film’s production (and the animation on the dvd, and in the film’s credits) was equally baroque, brutal, wondrous. I think it’s worth seeing if just to revel in that look ….

indian regional and “art” cinema

the magazine outlook is celebrating its 10 year anniversary with a series of articles on indian film, 1995-2005. the entire issue is here. one of the more interesting articles is this one which makes the case that while bollywood has swamped all other indian cinema in marketing terms, excellent regional and parallel cinema continues to thrive. after summing up the dominance of bollywood chatterjee writes:

Continue reading indian regional and “art” cinema

Male hysteria –> Stewart –> Hitchcock

(continuing from here.)

Stewart’s an emotional wreck in much of Hitchcock’s stuff. While Cary Grant maintains a kind of icy hauteur through the thick/thin of those thrillers, Stewart bubbles with barely-repressed confusion and turmoil. So–my wrongheaded snipe about melodramatics is completely, thoroughly wrong.

(I read an interesting little tidbit about Stewart yesterday in Jonathan Lethem’s collection, _The Disappointment Artist_–which I can’t recommend highly enough as a model of smart, personal criticism about art. He was noting how a biographer of Stewart had wondered how the “gentle” actor of early pictures turned, after his service in WWII, into the dark troubled soul of later pictures. And Stewart’s war record was, in part, sealed–protected as confidential. The biographer wondered if Stewart had been part of the Dresden bombing raid….)

There’s a project in here somewhere: Action films as male hysteria.

Shiri (and action-melodrama)

Shitty.

You liked this, Arnab? The camera did so many 360 turns I thought they had it rigged to a toilet. Okay, it wasn’t awful. But it wasn’t good, either. I don’t like it when there’s so much crying in an action movie. Suck it up, you fuckers. Sublimate your sadness in a good old-fashioned ass-whupping, like the rest of us.

I far prefer the action of “Nowhere to Hide” and the thriller politics of “J.S.A.” (and Park’s later films–“Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and “OldBoy”–are even better).

“Robot Stories” & Race

Anyone else seen this? Or heard of it? Low-budget anthology, all circling around “robots” introduced into an archetypal human experience (birth, love, and two about death). It’s a fine small film; smart, funny, compassionate. My favorite segment is called “The Robot Fixer,” and a distant mother grapples with her son’s comatose state by fixing up his collection of cheap quasi-Transformer toys.

And, okay, I admit: the film caught my eye first for its geeky premise, then for its almost entirely non-white cast. This cast is quite good, but it is striking–a sad commentary either on my own habits as a viewer or on the state of American film, or both–that I was/am surprised that a film so careful to cast predominantly Asian-American leads never mentions race, doesn’t bother to define race as central to the stories, doesn’t even hint at the ‘difference’ from mainstream cinema.

So my question out to all: is it racist to read the “robot” focus as in some way allegorical, or at least analogical, to the representation and experience of non-white racial identity in America?

Or–how about this: is this an “Asian-American” film? Debate.

Or don’t. Regardless, it’s a good flick.