code red

i have neither read nor seen the da vinci code. until i saw, and, for a change, paid attention to a trailer of the film earlier this week (i space out during trailers), i had no idea what the big brouhaha about DVC was. one more conspiracy film about the vatican? big deal. you must by now know what the heresy of DVC is. if you don’t [SPOILER], here it is: jesus and mary magdalene got married and had children; this fact was concealed by the church through systematic erasure of evidenciary documentation. i think it’s pretty much it, though i’m not sure. as i said, i haven’t read the book. Continue reading code red

girl power

in the last six months, i started to write this post some twenty times, nineteen of them in my head. today the pony and i went to see stick it and the post finally materialized in my mind. this is not the kind of movie i would normally see, but i am happy i went, though it is a far from perfect movie, or even a good movie. it is, however, a very interesting movie, especially if you like daring aesthetics and girl power movies. there are three genres of movies i’m an all-round sucker for: heist, con, and girl power. Continue reading girl power

Dario

So, this is a hole in an ostensible horror fan’s c.v., but: I’d never seen a Dario Argento film, at least not all the way through, ’til last night. I watched Suspiria, a gothic potboiler Argento calls a “fairy tale for adults.” I had fun imagining my own silly taglines: Imagine if Vincente Minnelli and Henry James had a kid, and he directed films.

This was absolutely silly, if taken as plot, and only when you could make any sense of it at all. In other words, close to incoherent in terms of narrative. There are a few things that catch us viewers up–oh yes, the dour sinister headmistress! the strange help at the boarding school!–but mostly I stopped caring or paying any attention to the occasional moments when Argento stopped to try and explain things.

Instead, revel in–relish–the absurdly lush compositions and colors. The film’s brighter, its colors deeper, its production design more baroquely detailed and intricate than almost any film I’ve ever seen. You could pause any shot and just sink in. And the compositions and editing are equally beautiful. Take the film as a kind of rich, strange dream–and it’s dazzling. Even the “brutal” deaths are depicted in such florid composed fashions, it’s more like the gory Renaissance paintings of saints than a typical slasher flick.

I’m going to see more of this guy’s stuff. Note to the interested: It stars Jessica Harper, whose weird little-girl head and huge eyes seemed to intrigue many a strange director. Udo Kier pops up, looking way younger and not quite as inhuman.

I almost posted this under Gio’s post on The Leopard… simply to get some conversation going about Italian film. G named a number of big name filmmakers–in the context of a very interesting reading of Italy’s impact on film. I’m curious where Argento’s movies, or any of the gialli, fit into the cultural context….

two questions

1) why did curtis hanson make an unspeakably bad movie like in her shoes?

2) how does toni collette position herself in hollywood, being both not-beautiful and much in demand (she is always working)? or, to make the question more general, what is the place of non-beautiful women in mainstream american cinema, where beauty is constantly and explicitly presented as central?

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?

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!