Sin City

Well, I saw the controversial Sin City last night and my reaction was much closer to Edelstein’s than to Taylor’s. But, of course, that just proves I am in fact a pimply fanboy, aging badly, according to Ella Taylor. And in this aggrieved fanboy mode, can I just ask what kind of reviewer mistakes the barrel of an automatic pistol for a “dagger.” wasn’t she paying attention? The movie looks great and is thrilling. I don’t think you will find well-crafted lessons on “how we live” but something that takes the visual aspect of movies seriously—if you don’t like it, fine, but at least it is fully a movie where every element is working together in a stunning way. Manohla gives it some lukewarm praise but ultimately finds it a bore, as does Hoberman—no doubt in Film Comment both will give it one or two stars while the latest by Godard—a French-accented monologue about “the elusiveness of the past and the duplicities of cinema” accompanying a two hour tracking shot of Isabelle Huppert walking across a Parisian parking lot where all the cars are on fire—receives four. And, by the way, what’s up with skipping Sin City and watching Vanity Fair?? I mean—Elijah Wood as a silent psychopathic cannibal geek wearing a Charlie Brown shirt, man! Of course, relishing this kind of detail is going to get me another slap from Ella. Yes, I played D&D in high school, I confess.
Continue reading Sin City

vera drake

watched this last night. the performances, the cinematography, the rhythm of the film–all these things are very well done and the film comes together really well. what is less subtle, or adroit, is the film’s handling of class. there are basically three kinds of people in this film: hardcore working class, working class on the move, and upper class. everyone in the first category is a saint, everyone in the second category is a traitor, and everybody in the third category is either vicious or vaccuous. while the film presents itself as quiet social realism what it really is is quiet agit-prop. nothing wrong with agit-prop of course, but here it is mostly condescending to the people on whose behalf it is agitating.

mira nair–vanity fair etc.

we didn’t get to “sin city” last night–instead we watched “vanity fair” on dvd. as some of you know i have a strong antipathy to mira nair. when asked to explain this i sometimes, in the interests of economy, say only that someone who makes a film like “kamasutra” should and can never be taken seriously again. she is an interesting figure, however: the minority/third world director trying to make it in mainstream hollywood. and it may be interesting to compare her career, and choices, with those of directors like ang lee and wayne wang (to name only two). i’m not going to do that here. i’ll note only that unlike those two nair hasn’t (or hadn’t until “vanity fair”) succeeded in crossing over into the hollywood mainstream–which for such directors may be marked by the making of a marquee film that has nothing to do with their culture of origin (nair’s “the perez family” flopped and i don’t know that it was a marquee film anyway).

i would argue that nair’s career is essentially all about the search for this mainstream crossover and that what differentiates her from someone like lee or wang is her continued deployment of her culture of origin whether it is wholesale in exoticizing trash like “kamasutra” or cynical ethnic-chic like “my big fat monsoon wedding”, or in what may finally have been her ticket to the big time, a big-budget costume extravaganza with a big hollywood star: “vanity fair”.

Continue reading mira nair–vanity fair etc.

deadwood: season 2

i can’t tell if this show is getting more or less ridiculous, but i am compelled to watch.

apparently the west was not the jolly barrel of laughs it was portrayed as being in films such as “paint your wagon” and “blazing saddles”. season 1 established that a lot of people swore then/there, and thanks to season 2 i know that doctors did not use much anaesthesia. but where exactly is all the laundry being done? the people on this show are done up better than on masterpiece theater. perhaps season 3 will clear this up.

speaking of boys’ clubs

did you lot read this article in the ny times about the new hollywood comedy power brokers?

Mr. Ferrell, Mr. Apatow and Ben Stiller are among the club’s kingpins. Mr. McKay, Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Vince Vaughn and Jack Black belong, as do Nick Stevens, a United Talent agent who represents Mr. Carrey and Mr. Stiller, and Mr. Gold and Mr. Miller, who have much of the group in their stable.

The funnymen appear in one another’s movies, from “Dodgeball” to “Anchorman” to “Elf” to “Zoolander,” creating a wheel-of-comedy effect that can leave viewers wondering just whose movie they’re watching. What’s more, the stars and their representatives live, work and play in a continuum that has virtually shut the studios out of the development process. By coming up with their own concepts, finding screenwriters and then offering the whole package for production – script, director and cast, take it or leave it – this group is reshaping screen humor to their liking.

whatever happened to janeane garofalo and sarah silverman?

Scripts

Under the Scorsese post, I was going to bring up Richard Price (who wrote the “NY Stories” segment directed by Marty, whom I call Marty). Price is a helluva novelist and an equally strong screenwriter, although the stuff he’s done tends toward the better B-movie genres and thus gets too little acclaim. (“Ransom,” for instance, despite workaday direction by little Ronnie Howard, gives Delroy Lindo and Gary Sinise and even Mel Gibson some great gristly chatter.)

There are a couple screenwriters or scripts which get the nod–they get bandied about in the trades, ballyhooed on awards show; it’s conceivable that they, too, are for better or worse celebrities in the star machine. Kaufman, the delightfully execrable Joe Eszterhas, etc.

But who are the unsung heroes of film writing? One of the reasons I love “After Hours” is its astonishingly precise and pitch-perfect script, by Joseph Minion. (I actually do searches trying to see what he’s done since–and it’s pretty hit or miss. Although the most recent flick he wrote, “On the Run,” has two great performances by Michael Imperioli and, especially, John Ventimiglia, who plays Artie Bucco on “The Sopranos.”) UNSUNG, now–don’t say John Sayles or Preston Sturges.

And speaking of unsung, I should add Delroy Lindo to my post on presences, or just give him his own heading. He is particularly astonishing in “Crooklyn,” “Clockers,” and even salvages some of “A Life Less Ordinary.”

Japan

I’ve been on a Japanese bender recently, especially after reading Peter Carey’s memoir Wrong About Japan: A Father’s Journey with His Son. I’ve read two novels by Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore and The Chronicle of the Wind-Up Bird (while critics seem to favor the latter I found his most recent novel, despite its flaws, the more entertaining and thought-provoking read) and watched a number of films: Yasujiro Ozu’s Floating Weeds, Isao Takahatu’s Grave of the Fireflies, Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s Like Grains of Sand, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life and Nobody Knows. I also watched Shunji Iwai’s All About Lily Chou Chou for a second time. I can’t say I have come any closer to an understanding of Japanese culture—if anything these works seem to reflect a country that is more radiant chimera than coherent nation. Continue reading Japan

Manohla Dargis

She writes: “The fact that “Oldboy” is embraced by some cinephiles is symptomatic of a bankrupt, reductive postmodernism: one that promotes a spurious aesthetic relativism (it’s all good) and finds its crudest expression in the hermetically sealed world of fan boys.” If there are no women on this site willing to speak, I’ll let Ms. Dargis do the talking. Boys what do you think?