moderate revolt

Crazy Ex-Girlfriends

2011-12-01T12:11:00.001-08:00

Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011)

David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method (2011)

Both David Cronenberg and Lars von Trier's new movies open on strikingly similar images: actresses expressing in one way or another their mental illnesses. Kirsten Dunst's Justine suffers from chronic depression and her dead, paralyzed eyes open at the beginning of Melancholia. Keira Knightley's Sabina is consumed by some unnamed masochism and we see her pained face flash through a carriage window on the way to a sanatarium at the beginning of A Dangerous Method. As a person that deals with both depression and wedding coordinators on a basis more regular than I'd like, I can attest to von Trier's veracity of depiction of Justine. As a person that would like to deal with actors and actresses on a movie set more frequently than I currently do, I enjoy the relationship that Cronenberg creates with his depiction of Carl Jung (played by Michael Fassbender) and Sabina. I think these movies would make a good double feature.

I describe von Trier's movie philosophy as "Look At It." He's an aggressive director, and it's easy to think that he doesn't like his audience or doesn't care that we are there at all. I do think he cares, but he forces us deal with unambiguous images that some might find anti-artistic or blindly iconoclastic. Charlotte Gainsbourg cutting off her clitoris, say. Hard core penetration in The Idiots. The title of Epidemic stays on the screen for the entire movie. Giant bells are really, actually, truly ringing from heaven at the end of Breaking the Waves. So many other directors would put at least some power of interpretation into the hands of the audience. Michael Haneke, for example, would explicitly not show us the act of violence in order to make it vivid in our imaginations. Fuck that, says von Trier. Look at it. Here, the violence is in Justine's eyes.

So much in Justine's actions dare us to hate her, but so much of Dunst's performance begs us to love her. Who but only the most chronically devastated can empathize with her golf course piss, her infidelity or her destruction of her own wedding. Yet those eyes aren't just dead. They have moments of love and excitement, sympathy and sincerity. I can't help but completely understand Justine when she says goodbye to her horse, Abraham, or hugs little Leo, or even sometimes when she snaps at her sister. And I think this is why Melancholia is the most successful use of von Trier's philosophy yet. He makes us look at and deal with the emotional complexities of his characters rather than a strictly filmic or artistic theory. He's done this before, but never to this degree. The first and last images of Melancholia are perfect partners.

Coupled well, too, are those images of A Dangerous Method. We begin with Sabina's intense mental flagellation and end with Jung's sadness, if you don't count the pointlessly boring epilogue text. Both are a kind of madness. In Justine's eyes, I see a void. Such a void, in fact, that it brings me inside her. Sabina, on the other hand, is so blatantly extroverted that it pushes me away, and pushes me so far that I leave the movie and start thinking about other things, particularly that I hate Keira Knightley's acting. Emma called it "Schmacting." As the movie progresses, though, I begin to understand Cronenberg's intent, and I am drawn back in. He often uses visual techniques to compare characters, and Method is no different. In Dead Ringers he used split screen to allow the twins equal space, and here he uses split focus to juxtapose Knightley and Fassbender, the latter so still and warmly colored in blues and greys that his calmness is what is shocking next to her violent, alien-like and contorted face. In that face I see Justine's opposite, but not simply her binary. I dislike Sabina and am continually dared to continue disliking her.

Cronenberg always seemed to me a director interested in the body and its possibilities, but since 2002's Spider his focus has shifted to the mind. It makes perfect sense to me that he would direct a movie about two psychologists. A pet theme of his that is somewhat overlooked, though, is media: how movies effect us, how they get into our psyches and change the way we behave, how we sometimes base our actions not on our true emotions but on tropes we've assimilated from literature, drama, movies, and comics. Method is ostensibly set on the eve of World War I, but cinema and psychoanalysis were born in the same year: 1895. Does that make Frued Lumiere and Jung Melies? How perfect a match.

As Cronenberg dramatizes it, Jung's relationship with Sabina is that of a director and actress. What got me thinking about this was Knightley's last scene in the film, which is without a doubt her best, and by 'best' I mean least grating and most emotionally rewarding. It was quite a visceral swing from the beginning of the film, when I was disgusted with her alien-faced over-acting. I hated that shit with my bones, but in this context it makes total sense. The actress, an artistic creature, has something inarticulatable to express. The script gives her the ability to speak, and the director gives her the ability to be safe. What does an actor fear most? A bad take. The danger of being revealed as a fake, as the inarticulate mess she fears herself to be. To be exposed as a schmactor. And how dangerous must it be to walk along that precipice, immerse yourself so utterly in a character that your every flaw is exposed, and beyond that to completely entrust those flaws to the director. Few actors have attempted this, and we all know what their style is called.

For this, Knightley is brave. She splays herself all over the screen, and Cronenberg makes us look at it. Over the course of the film, Jung shapes Sabina's life into a good, natural performance. But at the end of the movie, as he and she sit on the banks of Vienna, a new film has already started playing in his head: fountains of blood rushing down the alps. A premonition of something yet to come. And who is his new mistress? Another patient. Another actress. The story of Cronenberg's life, I'm sure.

My House Will Repossess Your Soul

2011-11-21T17:46:00.001-08:00

Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Drag Me to Hell is the kind of horror movie we need right this moment, but alas it came out two and a half years ago. Oh well. I bet if it got a re-release it would triple its money again. It's the story of Christine Brown, a bank loan officer, who wants a promotion. In order to look good in front of her boss she refuses an old gypsy an extension on a mortgage payment, condemning the old woman as well as her house. So, the gypsy curses Christine. The movie is not only hilarious but also fast as a fucking bullet and, it ends up, a damn fine economic morality tale that's gained layers with age. When it was released, the housing bubble had just collapsed but no one quite grasped the implications of our massive, systematic FUBAR. Since then we may have gotten some perspective on just how awful the situation actually is, but Sam and Ivan Raimi knew it all the time. If I could choose one movie to show future generations about the Great Recession it wouldn't be Inside Job, it'd be Drag Me to Hell.

Of course, the movie isn't at its core thinking about the economy. It's a fun horror movie filled with tropes and references steeped in Raimi's personality -- irreverent, silly, scary. Off the top of my head I can think of nods to Psycho, Beetlejuice, Night of the Living Dead, and Raimi's own Army of Darkness -- the latter from a scene in which Christine uses a pair of ice skates to cut a rope connected to an anvil to drop on the gypsy's head, which is so energetically shot that I can practically hear Raimi yelling, "I'm baaack!" after 17 years away from the genre. The set up is kind of a tropey one, too: the sinful woman punished for her decisions, trying to repent before it's too late. Those stories, for me, are inherently conservative much in the same way detective stories are. Say Sam Spade or C. Auguste Dupin have a mystery to solve that no one else within The System (usually the Police Force) can figure out. He stands alone, the individual against the system, to solve the crime and right the wrong. That sounds like a pretty progressive, individualistic, anti-establishment story, but really it's just the opposite. By solving the crime Spade or Dupin (or Bond, for that matter) reestablish the status quo, and allow The System to continue running smoothly despite its problems. They don't fix anything, they just plug up some leaks. It's like using Fix-a-Flat on a tire that obviously just needs to be replaced. Same with the moral horror movie. Nothing gets solved, someone just gets punished. Raimi does it just differently enough, though, to make me think twice.

From the beginning, Christine is stuck between two bad choices: she can either remain poor and struggle by, or she can "make the tough decisions" as her boss says and be a little ruthless to get her promotion. Her boss passive-aggressively pushes her to make the decision that ultimately dooms her, so right away the blame is dispersed. To totally blame totally her is at least an arguable point. Who wants to stay poor? Is it really, deep down, a sinful decision for a loan officer to deny someone a third extension on a twice-failed payment? The Raimi brothers ask more than that, though, to confuse the issue. Christine is also pitted against another, more ruthless loan officer going for the same promotion. She's obviously more qualified, but an appropriate discriptor for this man is "Douche Bag," and those are always hard to deal with. Some blame could go to him; or, more accurately, Christine has been pushed into the position of being the Blamed One by systematic problems: money, an economy that values ruthless Douche Bags over skilled workers, and the Douche Bag himself.

Funny thing, though: Christine has a pretty nice house for being poor. Two story, nice view, one bedroom craftsman. This detail of her life is never explicitly mentioned, but it sure gets played like an in-joke every time it gets trashed by an invisible goat-demon coming for Christine's soul. I didn't notice it on the first viewing, but this time I thought, "Oh, it must be a rental." Cheeky, Raimi! Very cheeky. Way to sneak in some filmic clues that maybe Christine really doesn't need that promotion. Maybe she's doing better for herself than she's letting on. Same with her apparently rich boyfriend Clay, played by Justin Long. Another slew of bone dry jokes come from his affluence: his parents live in a giant mansion and are clearly just frothing at the bit to give him a nice inheritance if only Christine would sack up and prove herself something other than a podunk farm girl; while Christine pawns everything (well, not everything) she owns to come up with a measly $3800, Clay drops $10k off screen just to pay for the seance that will hopefully save her soul from eternal damnation. Another funny in-joke: Christine tries to call Clay to save her from the goat-monster, but he's away from his iPhone because it's docked and charging. She's calling from a shitty Motorola. Clearly Clay could support them both if he were to just settle down with her. So is his hesitance to be blamed for her curse? Or are these further signs of Christine's selfishness? Raimi plays all of these scenes for dual meaning, so its difficult to tell.

At the center of this web of blame is the gypsy woman herself, the one who actually puts a curse on Christine. She's obviously evil -- proof being that she's cursed souls before -- and the code she lives by (the Gypsy Code, I assume, not the Old Lady Code), has the same kind of strictures that Christine's economic code has. If you steal from a gypsy, you get cursed. If you shame a gypsy, you get cursed. If you don't pay your mortgage, your house gets repossessed. If you want money, you step on people for money. Same dick different shower. If I were Christine, I'd obviously blame the gypsy for my curse, but by the end of the movie Christine has this kind of beautiful circular character arc where she admits that she was being selfish and that she could have given the gypsy and extension had she really wanted to. She comes to terms with her faults and agrees to move forward, settled down with Clay in, I assume, an existence less tied to her own monetary gain.

Raimi doesn't answer to any of those repentances. What he does do is drag Christine to Hell regardless of blame. Or, another more dangerous way to read the ending: Christine's to blame because she was not brave. Period. I dig this reading. It gets at what really could be progressive and anti-establishment about the genre, and feels like something usually forgotten: she made the choice, she takes the consequences, and regardless of The System it always comes down to the individual even if it means death, destruction, or poverty. And here Drag Me to Hell has the perfect balance and solution of the moral dilemma of bravery.

Consider with me for a moment, if you will, an ethical entanglement presented by philosopher Sam Harris. On a trip abroad, he encountered a woman being abducted on the street by a group of large, burly men. They were violently drunk and obviously meant her harm. Sam was the only one to witness this possible rape in progress. He immediately assessed the situation: if he were to interfere with force, he would be beaten or killed. So, he approached the group and began speaking to them in elevated English to confuse their foreign tongues. "Excuse me," he said, "I seem to have lost my hotel, my lodging, my place of residence, where I lie supine, not prone. Can you help me? Where is it? Where is it?" He continued the conversation like this, and in the lingual confusion the woman was able to slip away unnoticed, unharmed. Sam tells the rest, and could practically come from the mouth of Christine's soul after an eternity of introspection:

"While my conduct in the above situation seems to meet with the approval of almost everyone, I consider it an example of a moral failure ... My ethical failure, as I see it, is that I never actually opposed [the men's] actions -- hence they never received any correction from the world."

And thus Christine is doomed. She never opposes The System directly, hence she is complicit and must pay. Another way to put it: you might work at a fucked up bank, but that bank is so fucked up you shouldn't be working there in the first place. And if you need a talking goat to convince you of that, you have some real priorities to work out. In this context, the movie has some damn funny lines. Christine hoses her boss with a demonic projectile nose-bleed, and his only reaction is, "Did I get any in my mouth?!" Perfect selfishness. Same goes with the sequence where Christine sells only most of her stuff, not all of it, to pay for her ten thousand dollar seance. You'd think you'd get rid of every worldly possession to try to SAVE YOUR FUCKING SOUL, but that's an awfully nice table your stack of money is sitting on, girl. What the fuck. Raimi's funny 'tude toward all this reminds reminds me of the punk-rockiness I feel when I read Oscar Wilde's quote about charity, which I will leave you with only if you agree to read it in the voice of a demonic goat:

"It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair."

Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In

2011-10-31T12:42:00.000-07:00

And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."

At my old apartment I slept next to four items: a tiny dinosaur, which Stephanie sent in the mail, a rubber Creature From the Black Lagoon symbolizing Shawn, a Klein bottle given to me by Megan as a token of friendship and shared time studying Thomas Pynchon, and a Ralph Steadman-esque drawing of a man at an airport urinal in the 1960's drawn by Emma's uncle that she gave to me to show me that we are family. I called the place "home," but these things were home, and even then they were not home. They were just items that reminded me of my friends, but even then my relationship to those items wasn't that simple (particularly to the Klein bottle, which still confuses me and draws me into thinking about space, time, narratives, friendships, literature and the past). The bottle looks like a beaker that has been folded into itself so that there is no top / bottom / left / right, just one non-orientable surface. Think of it as a 3-D mobius strip. But, onto Almodovar's best movie since "Talk to Her."

"The Skin I Live In" is ostensibly the story of lonely, brilliant plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas). His wife and daughter have both committed suicide, he has no friends, only a mother that acts as his head maid. He illegally conducts a "transgenesis" experiment on a woman, links her cells with those of a pig and gives her nearly indestructible skin. Enough material there for at least one movie. "Skin," though, feels like at least three movies in one, but is more likely one movie folded in on itself three times. It opens in the present, which is actually our future, 2012, at Ledgard's home. The narrative pivots unexpectedly and about half way through the film flashes back six years to 2006, the year Ledgard lost his daughter. During this flashback the film jumps ahead two weeks, still in the past, to show Ledgard hunting down the man who he believes is responsible for his daughter's death, then playfully brings us back to the present with a title card that reads simply, "Back to the Present." Three times, all interacting with the present simultaneously, all informing and explaining Ledgard's emotional life. To call each act, each flashback, each new pocket separate from the last is to misunderstand the breadth of each move. The link between structure and character is one non-orientable surface. Lately Almodovar has shown that even his narrative can be beautiful, and "Skin" is the belle of the ball. Think of it as a 2-D Klein bottle.

The indistinguishable line between Ledgard and the way the film is told is what separates "Skin" from, and makes it more exciting than, many other films told out of chronology. The mixed up timeline is neither a gimmick nor does it particularly help explain the story in a conventional way. You could tell "Skin's" story in chronological order and have a perfectly crazy, satisfyingly horrific movie that makes total sense and is exciting on its own, but instead Almodovar lets Ledgard dictate the flow of the narrative. The first true flashback* comes after Ledgard has slept with his prisoner / experiment Vera Cruz, and is actually a disguised fever dream that he is having in the present. Even better, the next flashback (the jump ahead two weeks (still in the past)) is a dream that Vera is having while sleeping next to Ledgard. The two flashbacks are actually a weird combined dream of two characters in the present about their intertwined pasts, each picking up not where the other left off, but rather overlapping and merging before skipping ahead together as one.

In the middle of all this, Almodovar finds the center of his story, hidden and folded underneath all of these croissant layers. In the dream flashback (dreamback?) Ledgard's daughter, Norma, meets a young man named Vincente. They have a deep and instant connection, and wander off to a lusty forest. The second time I watched the film, even though I knew what was fated to happen, I felt like they would truly fall in love in that forest. Instead a wild sentence to write occurs, a sentence that will ultimately push Ledgard to become the final incarnation of the monster he is: Norma hears the song she sang when her mother threw herself out of a window, and in mid-coitus has a nervous screaming breakdown, causing Vicente to panic and beat her in order to mute her cries. *The only "expositional" flashback in the film comes before Ledgard's dream, and is actually just a story that Ledgard's mother tells to Vera about Norma's mother's death. Norma was singing a folk song at the moment of her mother's death. The other flashbacks, those stemming from Ledgard and his dreams, don't exposit the story so much as they flip the context in which we view Ledgard and his actions. With each step back we have to restart the movie in our minds to understand why Ledgard does what he does, and the moment Vicente strikes Norma down is the moment that Ledgard cannot return from.

The structure itself asks questions of Ledgard as well as the audience: how does the past effect us? How do you deal with it? How does time itself move? Is it a progression or is the passing of time an illusion? Is my life a non-orientable surface or is it actually a thing in forward motion as I am experiencing it, one moment after another? What is the nature not only of the Klein bottle, but that one Klein bottle on my desk? That bottle is the only item of the four mentioned that survived the move to my new house. What happened to my friendship with Megan? Were we ever truly friends? Was there a key moment like Vicente and Norma's that changed the fate of our friendship forever? Or was it doomed from "the beginning"? You could, after all, say that Ledgard's fate had been sealed long before the ambiguous "rape" of his daughter. All the possible instances are apparent in the film, stretching back even before his birth: he was doomed when his wife died, when his daughter was born, when he married his wife, when his mother had his brother, when he was born, when his mother was born.

These are the things I am thinking about during a movie like this, not the plot or the melodrama; those are just portals into my own life. And this reaction makes sense, I think, and stretches across so many of my relationships and hangups and shit from the past that dredges itself up to my surface at the most unexpected moments. Like a tiger walking into your house from out of the blue. It makes sense in the structure, and it makes sense in Banderas's acting style. It has a blankness, or an empty cup-ness that is inspired by Alain Delon's style in "Le Samurai" or "Le Cercle Rouge," and allows me, the viewer, the map myself not onto him but into him. This style, for me, is ironically a very intimate one, because on the surface it may seem stoic or still but really it is a magnet for my emotions and viscerally connects me with parts of my life I've otherwise ignored or let go of. Inside Ledgard I see my regrets and the people I let slip away from me and all the wrongs I've committed, small and personal as they may be.

The other irony here is that the expansive one-ness I feel from this movie comes straight out of its highly choreographed structure. I rarely have this feeling during movies that are actually about this topic, and practically never during movies that are structureless (or structureless enough that they feel meandering or inclusive). In fact, "Skin" brings these themes out by opposing them, by actively excluding the audience from key information, or daring me to empathize with Banderas's stoney face. And this is the beauty of the film. Each apparent opposition actually impregnates its opposite with meaning: Vera / Vicente, Marilia / Norma, Ledgard / Me. I would say that from inside Vera, Vicente actually finds more meaning in his life. Marilia finds meaning by telling Norma's story. And I find meaning from within Ledgard. We merge into one surface. That Klein bottle on my desk actually inspires little more than ambivalence in me, but if I imagine myself from inside it or looking out from Megan's eyes, I see my life in a more whole way. It, to me, is Ledgard's masky face. Maybe that is the perfect definition of an audience member: simply eyes without a face. And while on the surface his writing may seem literary or written or wrought with symbolism, Almodovar is smart enough to write with his camera, not his pen, and the film rides that razor's edge across my eyes all the way to the end.

***

It took two weeks of my life to find this article in me, and even now I don't know if it's any good. I did thank the film in a different way, though. For three of the last four Halloweens I've paid tribute to some of my favorite filmmakers. Steve Zissou (documentarian), Coffin Joe (horror maestro), and this year Almodovar. I dressed up as Vera Cruz and went to Cinefamily. That's me hanging out with Edith Head.

Shrimp 130 Ways

2011-10-10T14:54:00.001-07:00

"I see myself developing a deeper relationship with my food--like the Native Americans using every part of the animal they kill--and then someone tells me the shrimp vein is essentially their shit shoot and suddenly I don't feel so good about it. I also don't do the ones with faces. It's totally hypocritical, I know, but I'm just not entirely convinced they're dead. Like, maybe I could save them if I hurry them back into the water. Basically, San Carlos is fucking my mind." -- Emma Courtland, traveloguist

Molding our Space, our Time

2011-10-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

"But at the same time, [Steve Jobs] quietly built what the [music] labels most feared right into the iPod itself. Think about it: Who can afford to stock even say, a 40GB device-- somewhere in the realm of 7,000 songs-- by legally shelling out 99 cents each? A large part of Jobs' legacy was training us to think of music in terms of bulk storage and access, instead of merely cost."

I would also posit that Jobs trained us to think about music more temporally than before. Sure, CD's are famously made to hold the entirety of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on a single disc, and thus in a way restrict the artist to an hour-ish time frame, but at the iTunes store your time:money ratio stares you in the face. A seven or eight minute song costs often the same 99 cents as a two or one minute song, so the basic quantity of music paid for actually starts invading what was once more a quality-driven purchase. Music used to have a cost, but the breakdown was rarely so stark.

Once the song is stored on the iPod and played, two timers run simultaneously: how much time has passed since the beginning of this song and how much time remains until the next song. This constant, and I would argue obsessive tracking creates an entirely different listening experience than, say, vinyl, in which no timers are visible other than the abstract gliding needle. Not all CD players have timers displayed, either. Combine the displayed cost ratio, the visible countdown to a new song and the bulk storage the iPod offers and you get a listenership easily swayed to impatience and song-skipping. How many times have I been in a car with someone who can't stop switching songs? I knew a guy who would skip the outro's of songs because he could see that the song was winding down and deemed the last few seconds unimportant. This is largely a product of the bulk storage / easy access the iPod provides -- incessant song-skipping wouldn't be a problem with a stack of CD's or vinyl -- but storage space and time are intimately tied in the iPod's design.

iTunes displays the quantity of your music measured in days and gigabytes side by side, which is a weird mixture of space filled and time spent for an art that is by nature aural and ephemeral, without space and, at its best, evocative of a feeling without time. This definition of space and time gets in the way of deep, immersed enjoyment of a single album, and surely repeated listening is hampered as well. When you can download ten albums in as many minutes and throw them on your iPod all at once, quantity again overwhelms the listener.

Anthony Gonzalez aka M83

2011-10-05T11:01:00.001-07:00

"I don't sleep at night. Sometimes I wish I could just work at the bank, come back at the end of the day, and be able to play video games without feeling any guilt. I've always cared about how people are going to react to my albums-- it eats me from the inside. But that's also the reason I'm doing it. For creative people, it's very hard to forget about your job for a little while. It's a part of myself that I'm revealing to people. People think I'm a very sad person because I'm always talking about nostalgia and melancholy, but I'm super happy. I love what I do, and I'll do it until the end."

Eddie Campbell on Craig Thompson's "Carnet"

2011-10-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

"I have long felt that all of our rules and principles for constructing comic books are all designed to keep intact the suspension of disbelief within a time-governed narrative system, like cinema in other words. It is arguable that cinema is too much of an internalised way of our natural ‘seeing’ for it to be separated from the complex of our inner eye, but I would say that as long as we describe a picture of a face as a ‘close-up’ rather than, say, a ‘portrait’ then we are a willing slave to this semantic conditioning. The travel book, as I have been envisioning it here and as Thompson has rendered it, enables us to bypass such considerations."

Jean-Claude Carrier

2011-09-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

"Many, many novelists fail when they try to become screenwriters because they really believe that writing for a film is writing. It's not. Writing for a film is filming."

Longest Night

2011-09-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

We saw Fleet Foxes play at the Greek a few nights ago, and they lit the place up. It was a beautiful show by a funny group of friends. Robin, the lead singer, played a song he wrote two weeks ago to open the encore and I immediately hated it. I had a very guttural reaction to it, and the song kind of embarrassed me like I shouldn't have been listening to it or I accidentally stumbled into Robin's sad diary or teenage livejournal. It is, I think, his best song yet. Gone are the lonely folk metaphors of mountains, stars, railroads and wooden nests and here, I hope to stay, come the universities, living rooms, paperbacks and living room floors of real life. It was this closeness that embarrassed me. It feels like Robin asked a very scary question of himself, as a writer and as a person -- what am I not saying? -- and answered it here. Even their best songs, like "Montezuma" and "He Doesn't Know Why," have the privilege of imagining their own deaths or using frontier imagery to keep some kind of distance from the scary emotions they sing about. Not so with this one, which I guess will be called "Longest Night."

apartment hunting trumps blogging

2011-07-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately

A Shift in Recurring Dreams

2011-07-02T14:29:00.000-07:00

I used to have two related recurring dreams: I'm either being chased, or chasing someone / something. If I'm being chased, the battle usually involves guns, knives and close combat fighting. I'll usually run in and around vast ravaged buildings, huge skyscrapers that are crumbling away. Two tall brick buildings fallen into each other in the middle of an even bigger dirt pit. I climb around, fend off attackers and bullets, have knife fights in small cars. If I am chasing something, I never get there on time. I'll be at a concert and for some reason won't be able to get in. I wander around outside trying to get inside, and by the time I do the band is done playing. The music is always clear but distant.

Now I'm having a different dream. I've had three variations thus far. In the first, I can vividly hear and compose music. It comes out in loud and soaring electronic synthesizers, and I can see the colors of every note. Each chord has a different synaesthetic tone. They are all bright. I compose the song, then forget it. In the second dream, I write the first page of a novel in a blank white book already bound and ready for publication. The first page deftly sets up the rest of the book. I forget what I wrote as soon as the pieces all come together. In the third and most ridiculously literal of these dreams, I write and direct a fantastic episode of "The Larry Sanders Show." I wake up, and forget all the jokes. I haven't figured out if the forgetting is part of the dream, or if I need to learn how to retain the dream information once I awake.

The Big Decompress

2011-07-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

I've been wound up for about 3 years now. That's what I get, I guess, for having my first movie in my head for that long. I was not a documentarian when I began filming. I didn't know how to edit when I started editing. I still don't know how to record audio, even though I recorded at least half of it for the documentary and all of it for the short films we did in between. And I'm sure once the movie is on TV or wherever it ends up, I still won't have any idea how it got there.

My friends are amazing. Aaron still doesn't think he knows how to be a musician, but his music is a cornerstone of the film. He, Nick and Dave contributed invaluably to the movie. There were so many times I'd hit a wall then they would conveniently email me a new track that seemed to work perfectly. Ryan's cinematography definitely lends the film a warmth and care and I did nothing but it pace out. Some of the best scenes are those that I had nothing to do with: Nathan, Jason and Jesse wandering around Cowboy Church, for example. Though he doesn't think so, Jesse really structured the movie with his interviews, gave it a direction. He paved the roads I drove the car down. Her name isn't anywhere on it, but Emma watched the film a million times and told me what sucked and what didn't. I would have also had a mental collapse had she not been around, so if there's a credit for "Key Emotional Grip" she gets it. And though for the last four or five months I climbed into a hole to get this thing edited on time, I was always asking the Shawn in my brain what he thought. So, thanks for that everyone.

Now I'm in the middle of decompressing. I keep telling myself that it isn't a day process but maybe months. I want to jump into something new right away, of course, but it's hard even to write a movie review let alone something more creatively challenging. I'll know when the time is right, and it might not be now. I have some aces up my sleeve, though. Lots of stuff rolling toward the page and the screen alike. I have a comic book, a short documentary, two video essays (previously mentioned) and a script that finally has a title. I've also started the slow process of getting the doc sold. So. Plenty to do. I don't know how to do any of them, but I'll figure it out.

Memorial Day Weekend 2011

2011-07-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

New Year's Eve 1979

2011-06-20T17:37:00.000-07:00

Stay tuned for a couple of video essays, one of which I've had up my sleeve for almost a year now.

Świnoujście, Köln

2011-06-20T17:11:00.000-07:00

Ryan just posted a slew of amazing photos on his flickr. I like the ones with people in them.

Rainy Fields of Frost and Magic

2011-06-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

It is too far in the past and much too in depth to recap the entire month of Cassavetes films at Cinefamily throughout March, but I did want to mention one special moment that came at the end of the long madness. The final night of the retrospective involved an enormous Q+A with Cassavetes alumni: grips, DP's, actors and actresses, and an encore screening of "A Woman Under the Influence." Bo Harwood, Cassavetes' musical collaborator, was among the alumni on the bill, and when I found out he was going to be there performing songs I flipped out. There are musical moments in all of Cassavetes' films, "Woman" and "Killing of a Chinese Bookie" in particular, that move me to incredible heights. I'm thinking particularly of the moment in "Woman" when Mabel sees her kids pull up in the school bus. In the theater with an audience, hearing the piano and guitar come in together, moved me to tears. And that's all Bo Harwood. So I was pretty excited he showed up.

Why do hands feel so good?

I still find it difficult to associate Cassavetes with the pop-savvy, bad-ass musical cue kind of filmmaking that's synonymous with PT Anderson, Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson, but it's right there, kind of hidden like everything else but just as potent as Cassavetes' other talents. So, during the intermission I mosey up to Bo Harwood and ask him why, despite many minutes of googling, I can't find the soundtrack to "Killing of a Chinese Bookie." After explaining that the soundtrack has never been released and that he's going through the legal process of one day releasing a compilation of his efforts, he says it never even occurred to him to try to release a soundtrack to the film. He sums up his position in a way that expresses the profound sense of community and generosity that all the Cassavetes alumni appear to have about all of the films. He tells me, "I always figured the songs were exactly where they should be: in the movie."

I asked Bo about a particular song in "Chinese Bookie" that might be untitled. As far as I can tell, it is named for its first lyric: "Rainy Fields of Frost and Magic." For my money, this song is as good as any Neil Young composition. The thing is just so damned moving. He was genuinely flattered that I even knew the makeshift name of the song, and we chatted for a few minutes before he had to perform. He asked my name again, thanked me, and I sat down.

Bo played a few songs from "Opening Night," which were great to hear, then for his very last song he played "Rainy Fields," dedicated it to me by name, and thanked me again. It's difficult to explain how kind of him this was. It's a beautiful piano song, and he played as much as he could remember on guitar, apparently just for me. This alone would have been more than enough, but the song came at the end of a month long dive into John Cassavetes, a man who willed into creation at least seven works of deep personal worth armed with nothing but his love for the medium and his dedication to each film. At the time I was in the process of willing out my first movie, attempting to access this same well of love to just push the damn thing out of my brain and onto the screen. I think in every movie I saw that month I was searching for a bit of the answer to that question: how do I finish this? Where can I pull more energy from? How can I summon so much love for this one tiny flawed thing? How can I love this thing into being? And Bo kind of answered that for me. I loved this song of his so much, and in return he brought it from the screen into the real world for me just because of that love. Thanks, Bo.

Afterwards, instead of watching "Woman" again as I had planned to, Emma and I decided to head into the real world. We drove to Mabel's house. It's just a couple of miles from mine, sitting there pretending to be a normal apartment filled with people who may or may not know that they are living in a place of great emotion, love and otherwise. We sat outside for a while, took in the night, and drove home. I finished my movie.

Rainy Fields of Frost and Magic:

Reminds me of Maggie & Hopey

2011-03-14T20:44:00.001-07:00

And brings back memories from their kick ass Coachella set in 2004.

Ryan's Reel

2011-03-11T16:45:00.000-08:00

Cut this together a couple of days ago for a potential project. Was fun to cut, too. Watch it full screen in HD. Bigger the better.

Ryan Carmody's Reel from Ryan Carmody on Vimeo.

Ryan is killing it on his flickr.

2011-03-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

You say "Porno" I say "Tender." You say "Pussy" I say "Bright Light." Academy Screening #12: Dogtooth [Sp-sp-spoilers]

2011-02-21T13:54:00.000-08:00

Best Foreign Film: Dogtooth

Will it win? Judging by the very vocal reaction of the Academy members, hell no, pornography has no place in these walls!

Should it have been nominated? I bless the person who snuck this into the nominees.

I think courtroom dramas are, at their core, usually an exploration of language. Lawyers and plaintiffs and judges all just try to build up or tear down that thin but impenetrable facade of language. You say you invented Facebook? Well, I say you stole the idea from the two of me. Who's lying? Let's talk it out. Et voila, movie. The first time I saw "Dogtooth," the first twenty minutes seemed like a cold, bizarre string of banal conversations, but I should have known better! Everything is perfectly in its place, a whole world that just takes some getting used to. "Dogtooth" knows exactly what it is from the first moment. It opens on a tape recorder and the questions keep coming: a tape gets put into the recorder (what year is this? are the parents hiding technology from their kids or is this 1990? or have they just decided that tapes are more easily erasable, like dismissed evidence or ... ) a finger pushes the play button (can you remember if the finger had nail polish on it? if it were the younger daughter's finger, what kind of beautification do the parents allow them? she always seems the more curious of the siblings, so it might make sense she pressed ... ) and a woman's voice comes out and lists today's vocabulary words (is she a teacher? she sounds like an infomercial host) and "Sea" is a big chair ... "motorway" is a strong wind ... "carbine" is a white bird. OK. Yes, this might take some getting used to.

All the words have to do with exploration. I didn't catch this until I had one of my many conversations about the movie with friends, and like everything else in the film the vocabulary lesson is cut with a strictly logical joke: Sea ... motorway ... carbine? Like a rifle? Why the hell is carbine on that list? Every moment like this in the film raises ten questions, and the answers you can come up with are often hilarious. Come to find out, the parents have completely sheltered their children to the point where now, twenty or so years later, the kids have never left the gates of the front yard (so, you know, "sea" isn't in the house but a big chair is). This in and of itself is a high concept worthy of a Preston Sturges comedy: lock the kids away, see what happens. Et voila, movie. I can see Preston's opening scene now: dolly in on a crying baby, fade to the house, the parent's frantically worry about the modern world at large, they come to the hard but necessary decision to keep the kids away from immoral influences, then fade to twenty years later and the house is full of blank-faced, ill-equiped man-children. "Dogtooth" is great because rather than starting on this nugget of the joke, it unfolds in all directions all at once and often with conflicting emotions, and we have to keep up. And how does it unfold? The world builds itself from these questions: what was going through the mother's head when she tacked carbine onto that list? When and how did one of the kids stumble across the word? The possibilities are endless.

And I gotta say, it is SO FUNNY thinking about the possibilities. It's my favorite part of the movie. The parents have this kind of deadpan, surface logic to their decisions that is absolutely hilarious. Examples abound: How do you introduce a dog into the house? Well ... mom's pregnant with a boy a girl and a dog. If you behave, she won't have the kids and you won't have to share your rooms. But we'll hear no complaints about the dog. My favorite is the harpoon gun. The dad puts a bag of fish into the pool, which is then discovered by the daughter. He grabs his harpoon gun, swims around and hunts the fish. On first viewing, it seems like he's doing it to maintain alpha status and show the daughters that he can still protect them. On second viewing, I think dad just wants to use his harpoon gun. After all, it's gotta be tough having three grown kids in the house who never leave. He doesn't get out much, I'm sure. The movie is full of this stuff, and I'm sure by my third viewing I'll be seeing it strictly as a farce, which is very impressive since it is an extremely uncomfortable viewing experience the first time through. I was nervous the whole film. When's shit going to hit the fan? What's going on? Are those two people really having sex? Everything freaked me out, all the way down to the framing. Kind of like I was a sheltered child being led into a new, unknowable world. Hm.

The inevitable punchline to a 90 minute joke: what happens when you release one of these freak children into the real world? Lanthimos, our director, leaves it up to us to decide. The eldest smuggles herself out, bleeding and swollen, in the trunk of the car. She makes it all the way to her father's factory, where he drives every day for work. And we end on the trunk. Ten more questions. Is she alive? Is she dead? A funny scene plays out in my head where she bursts out of the car, confused and runs around. When I wonder aloud if she's okay or not, my friend David brings his answer back to the hilarious surface logic: "I don't think she knows how to open the trunk." Winner!

The film is all about getting into the heads of these people you've never imagined before. And in that way, I find it very human and inquisitive and sometimes even tender. The dance sequence is the best depiction of child-brain-in-adult-body I've ever seen, sad and funny and totally the breaking point for the Eldest, which makes it even funnier. You can sit and wonder about the intentions of the father, and the answer comes right in the middle (it builds center-out, unlike Sturges): Dad tells Christina the security guard, "I hope your kids have bad influences and develop bad personalities. I wish this with all my heart." And there it is: I kind of get where he's coming from. I can see how it started as a benign enough thing, hoping the best for his kids, and how it got mangled and warped into this kind of self-perpetuating myth. Everything happens right there in that moment. The film becomes a metaphor for something bigger (whatever that perpetual myth you choose -- government, religion, blah blah blah), the origin of the whole thing is explained, and the whole thing will fall apart.

Dad did beat a woman senseless, after all. All Christina has to do is go to her superiors and say, "You know that guy? He pays me to have sex with his son and he beat me with a VCR. You should look into that." Another funny hypothetical extension of this big "Dogtooth" world. I feel like that final scene when Dad pulls up, eldest in his trunk, and walks back into his factory building will be his undoing. Who could be waiting for him? Cops? Security? An angry woman? Any number of things. Come to think of it, to get in the factory compound he had to drive past the security booth. I wonder if Christina was there, and what the look on her face was? Did she stare at him, knowing silently who awaited him inside? Plus when they find his daughter wandering around ... ! That's going to be an awkward conversation, what with all the pussies on the ceiling.

Academy Screening #11: Social Network (an update with...The Ethicist!)

2011-02-17T12:10:00.000-08:00

Best Picture, Leading Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Everything Else, etc. etc: The Social Network

Will it win? Nope. King's Speech.

Should it have been nominated? Yes.

Aaron Sorkin's character Mark Zuckerberg is a shaman. I'm sure scholarly papers are already being written detailing the subject. But there are two key moments in "The Social Network" that make me think that Sorkin's primary attraction to the character is the possibility that Zuckerberg is a super-artist. A creative force that can and does completely control the execution of a system, project, art-piece (whatever you want to call Facebook) at a pace faster than ever before possible. The story rolls at an exhausting speed from moment one. Fincher obviously takes a hint from Sorkin's own directorial strategy and makes the actors speak more quickly than is natural to cram more words into a smaller time frame. The story logic is nice and weird: a break up leads to a drunken hacking / blogging spree to generate a hot-or-not kind of impromptu website which is so popular it shuts the Harvard network down which then gets Zuckerberg in trouble with the board but also brings him to the attention of a couple of rower / entrepreneurs who then give him the nugget of an idea for a social networking site which Zuckerberg then maybe steals to create Facebook but only with the key logarithm and funding from his best friend Eduardo.

And then, take a breath, the site goes live. I think this is the most moving scene Sorkin has ever put on paper, and it only lasts ten seconds. Maybe twenty. Mark closes his eyes, falls into a trance and rocks back and forth in his computer chair. Or maybe he comes out of a trance. What else could you call the myopic sprint to the finish line that he just went through? Is this the only time we see Mark without his guard up or is he completely guarded here, protected by the birth of his own creation? I do not know if he is totally alone or completely open at this moment, and I think that Sorkin would agree that saying "both" would be a copout. It's more complicated than that. He's moving in an out of systems that only he himself knows. And he is a super-artist. He created, from idea to execution, a world-changing system in the course of a couple months. Sorkin the writer surely knows the unfathomable energy this must take, and he puts it on the page perfectly.

Full disclosure: I love Aaron Sorkin. I've watched everything he's ever done since "Sports Night" started rerunning on Comedy Central in the '90's, and I appreciate his writer-ness. The pilot script to "Studio 60" is a polished stone of television bliss. Watching his TV shows and films is like watching a circus. I write this and realize the only reason I associate his scripts with circuses is that they always feel like I'm watching people jump through hoops. Verbal acrobatics: this is a much more apt simile. And so the thing that most interests me, and the thing I'm most pleased with, is the script of "Social Network."

Fincher is a more complicated guy. On one hand, he makes movies I hate. On the other, he's proven with "Zodiac" and "Social Network" that his peculiar way of mixing digital and analogue filmmaking really works to crazy effect. I've seen "Social" twice, once on 35mm projection and once on digital projection, and on film the effects are amazing. I was shocked that the Winklevii were actually one guy. And I was pissed / pleased whenever Fincher's camera would slyly move through a wall or a hand railing because I couldn't tell they were fake. I would practically throw my hands up in the air in surrender when this stuff happened. It's audacious, and I like that a lot. The movie won't win for cinematography, though. The digital projection at the Academy theater looked comparatively awful: fake breath was made more apparent, snow, falling leaves, and even some camera-blur shots involving the Winkelvii. Bummer, because if they played it on 35mm I bet it would win. (For a quick comparison: while "King's Speech" was shown on 35mm, I could tell from the first scene that there were fake shadows on the wall behind Colin Firth).

More important than any of the digitial icing is the conflict between Fincher's directorial style and Sorkin's writing. As a TV director, Sorkin is known for his long walk-and-talks. Think of the strolls through the office of "Sports Night" or the sprints through the White House corridors on "The West Wing." He'd overscript the scene, tell the actors to talk fast because they'd need to start here end there and finish on time, all in one take. It's TV, remember. Time is of the essence. Fincher is more cutty. It feels like an action movie at times, the editing is so fast. And I think this kind of points toward the main problem with the film. Not that the editing is bad or the directing is bad, but that the whole thing is over-dramatized. Not a lot happens. Or rather, it seems like a lot happens, but when you look at it from a distance it is a movie about Facebook, after all. Ryan pointed this out to me, and I remember feeling the same way when I first saw the trailer. Like, come on. Seriously? (It also ends on the legal drama cliche of "what happened then" text on the screen, which I could take or leave).

I would take the other side of the argument, though. I love movies about people who invest their whole lives into something tiny and ridiculous. In fact, there's this mule celebration in central California that happens every year, someone should really go film that. Hm. It just happens that Facebook blew up. And the combination of Trent Reznor's score and Fincher's directorial choices accentuate that self-important feeling well. The film is probably worth a third viewing just to see how its edited. Upon second viewing, the first scene actually plays much more slowly than I initially thought, and the takes are longer. When Eduardo shows up in Palo Alto and speaks to Mark in the hallway, everything plays out in one take as well. The whole thing just seems a hell of a lot faster than anything else I've seen Sorkin write.

I'm an Eisenberg fan. I love "Squid and the Whale." I think he killed it here, really did something he's never done and I don't think a lot of people expected he could do. At first I felt like he was doing a stone face Buster Keaton kind of thing, then I thought he was doing a Hannibal Lecter do nothing (but really do a bunch with your eyes) kind of thing, but it's neither. The eyes do help a lot: a constant inquisitive harshness that breaks into sadness around Eduardo, adoration around Sean, anger around lawyers. That smirk of his is really sad, but I think my favorite moment of his isn't even on screen: his weirdo, tittering laugh from the bathroom stall from Eduardo's point of view is hilarious. He runs circles around everyone around him, to the point where he runs circles around himself. And that's the second shamanic moment of the film, and my second favorite moment.

He builds Facebook in a sense to get back at his ex-girlfriend, then by the end of the film not only has it become gigantic but it has also ensnared said girlfriend. She's on Facebook. He hesitates, sends her a friend request. He hits refresh over and over waiting for her response. He's built his creative web, trapped her in it, then trapped himself in it. The super-artist has made his open system and then entered it himself and must play by its rules. A nice conclusion to a film with three present tenses.

Update: Randy Cohen has an interesting article on Hollywood copyright law at his article / podcast, The Ethicist.

Academy Screening #10: Hors-la-loi

2011-02-15T21:46:00.000-08:00

Best Foreign Film: Hors-la-loi

Will it win? No.

Should it have been nominated? Hell no.

"Outside the Law" has been raising some controversy at Cannes, apparently, since it is the rare film that deals with France's colonial / imperialist history in a bad light. This must be its only draw, and the only reason why it was nominated. I tried to think of something nice to say about it, but man, it was just a bad movie. Entire scenes play out as a string of cliches. The music does most of the work, but can never quite make anything seem suspenseful. The whole film is self-important and has 'scope' in that way where you never really feel it has any scope. It is a poorly made historical epic that I could not wait to get done with.

Academy Screening #9: Biutiful

2011-02-15T12:51:00.000-08:00

Best Actor: Biutiful

Will it win? No.

Should it have been nominated? It was a good performance, but were there not four better ones?

I like that Alejandro Innaritu focuses on small, passing things: ants on a window, moths on a wall, a blink from Javier Bardem, snow in the air or birds in the air. I do not like that at least two things on that list were computer generated, mainly because they are made prominent enough to catch my attention, yet unrealistic enough to lose it. And I don't think Innaritu was going for a marvelous, fantastical look that calls up the artifice of the mystical aspects of his film. He tries to be a very human filmmaker, which I appreciate, and Bardem embodies his struggling human well. Bardem's face consumes the screen, his features are enormous and the man can certainly hold a film together. If you were being generous, you would say that Bardem is the hub of the movie and the numerous stories that surround him -- his children, his relationship with his wife, the ghosts, the cancer, the sweat shop, the African ware-hockers -- all trace back to the great weight he carries around as a man nearing death. If you didn't feel that generosity, you would say that the film would have been better had any one or two of those threads been seen through with the same care shown to Bardem's own performance, and the rest left on the cutting room.

I was, frankly, bored most of the movie. Though even then I'm glad I saw it. There haven't been many Academy screenings I thoroughly liked, but a number of them had moments that I have never seen or heard on film before. "Biutiful" continues this trend. The film opens in a snowy forest, and Bardem talks to a man. The man describes the landscape and makes the sound of salt water waves and the sound of wind. Each noise is strange and lovely. Later, Bardem asks him to do both at once, and the sound is silly and funny. The man's face contorts in swirls. Bardem smiles and laughs a little in the snow.

Academy Screening #8: Inside Job

2011-02-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

Best Documentary: Inside Job

Will it win? It's quite possible. I'd say it's a toss-up between Inside Job and Waste Land

Should it have been nominated? It philosophically bothers me, but it is quite a juggernaut.

I would like to thank Charles Ferguson and his filmmaking team for being angry. "Inside Job" is a much more effective entry into the "Fuck You" documentary subgenre than Gasland, which I reviewed earlier, to the point where I wonder how Gasland even got nominated within "Inside Job's" expensive shadow. When the film was done, I looked at my hands and they were shaking I was so angry. Not that there are any surprises in "Inside Job." It's basically an angry, sometimes one-sided retelling of every Planet Money podcast and This American Life episode dealing with the financial crisis. The difference is, "Inside Job" has a small (and in my opinion easily eschewed) chapter about a predatory lender setting up an innocent, ignorant home owner for almost ensured foreclosure, and This American Life has an episode where they look at both sides of the equation: one chapter about the innocent home owner, one about the innocent lender being taken for a ride as well. "Inside Job" would be better to delete its 'emotional' scenes rather than open itself up to the criticism of being biased, since it is an important topic that is easily scoffed at by partisan disbelief.

The movie is a string of interviews and graphics describing and investigating the financial collapse: the players, how it happened, how CDO's work, who did what and why regulation is a joke when there are conflicts of interest. And boy, are there conflicts of interest. Ferguson does ask some hardball questions to financial players, but whenever someone refused to talk to the filmmakers, they let you know with a sometimes snarky title screen: "____ wouldn't share their opinions with us," "___ refused to comment," etc. This sucks because, without fail, those who refused are the ones holding more responsibility. It makes the angry hardball interviews with lenders and Harvard professors seem insignificant, like none of us can really peak that far behind the curtain. There were two moments in the film I thought were unfair, like the interviewees didn't know what they were getting into. A wall street guy asks to turn the camera off. A Harvard professor who advised Bush Jr. snaps at the interviewer (I assume it's Ferguson himself), "This isn't a deposition. I was kind enough to give you the time for this interview, foolishly I see now, but you have three minutes. Give it your best shot." The film proceeds to explain the professor's culpability in the whole scheme. And yes, he is culpable, but does any of his actions really get to the source of the problem? He's just a symptom of systematic corruption, so yes it is important to understand it but no, outing this man does nothing to fix the problem. It attacks the sneeze and not the cold.

There are moments of sad candor, too. Eliot Spitzer, as usual, is candid on film, to the point of refusing to comment on the ability to use the indiscretions of wall street bankers against them for political gain. "Inside Job" and "Client 9" would be a good double feature: one systematic, one personal.

The opening credits of the film are also totally infectious and hilarious. They do a great cocaine 80's buddy movie montage of New York. A great way to filmically reference the greed and excessive nature of the movie to come.

But if it wins, where do we have to go? "Inside Job" obviously has a huge budget, made very apparent by the incredible high-def airplane shots of New York and the semi-pissed off tone of Matt Damon's narration. It's more of a really nice power point presentation or an essay than a documentary. There's no present tense to the film: no action is captured, it just describes what happened or how or what will happen. There's no energy or being there to it. There's no humanity on film, which I think documentaries should always strive to find.

Academy Screening #7: The King's Speech

2011-02-15T10:33:00.000-08:00

Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting, Everything Else, Etc etc: The King's Speech

Will it win? I wouldn't be surprised.

Should it have been nominated? Maybe? Hard to tell.

I'm glad Geoffrey Rush exists. And I'm glad to have Colin Firth up against Jesse Eisenberg for Best Actor. Though it is obvious that Firth will win (even though Eisenberg would win in the Academy Awards of My Brain) I'm glad to have that choice. The film was good, and it had a couple of great scenes. In the opening scene, Firth stutters over a megaphone in a sports arena, and his syllables are broadcast over the crowd then back into his microphone then back to the crowd ... "Kkkk .... Ffff ..." It's something I've never heard on film before. It was also incredibly moving the first time Firth sings what he needs to say.

It's funny watching the film at the Academy. This colors it for me in a strange way. I listened to a friend of a friend's podcast interview with the screenwriter, and Seidler said "King's Speech" is basically a sports film: "Rocky at the Royal Palace." I think this is hilarious for many, many reasons. Rocky, the only film to win best picture twice, thirty years apart! The movie's studied apoliticism is also interesting. I like the idea of a monarchy movie being only about friendship. I'm not sure if the film's visual style enhanced the story or just got in the way. The opening credits are beautifully framed, and many times the wide angle, exaggerated framing works for me, but I know that at a certain point I was just thinking about who was in the left side of the frame and who was in the right, and if the sides changed each scene and if that meant anything thematically. It's a fun script to watch play out, and it is always fun to see Geoffrey Rush verbally spar. I'm not sure I would come back to it for anything else, though.

Academy Screening #6: Gasland

2011-02-09T17:18:00.000-08:00

Best Documentary: Gasland

Will it win? Eh, I hope Waste Land wins.

Should it have been nominated? Nah.

Gasland is not a well made documentary. There are no people in it, only evidence. Exhibit Andy, Exhibit Beth you might say. It is 107 minutes long and could have been told in 60. It plays like an op-ed piece, with facts at the forefront and personal quips sprinkled in. Josh Fox, our filmmaker and deadpan narrator, is the closest thing to a human in the film, and he is really only the sum of his quips.

It does have two huge things going for it, though. If I could put it in a subgenre, I would call it a "Fuck You" Documentary. This is because, at every fact the film states, I feel like raising both my middle fingers at the screen and shouting at it. The movie is a parade of corrupt politicians (the term gets nowhere near describing my total lack of respect for Dick Cheney), castrated environmental agencies, hypocritical corporations, congressional loopholes and, most importantly, the sick, dying, diseased, permanently brain damaged citizens that get bought out, ignored or killed by all of that ignorance and corruption. For this alone it is worth watching.

The second is the Mizoguchi-esque image at its center: an innocent man bent over his once-normal sink lighting his tap water on fire. The chemicals and gasses pumped into his well are so concentrated that he can light his fucking tap water on fire with a bic lighter. The movie would be nothing without this image, and Fox obviously knows it. The first time it happens it is absolutely bonkers. I'm yelling at the screen, gasping. Then it happens again and again with different families. And again and again. Which, yes, is important to see and important to think about, but much like the short docs the structure of Gasland slacks off in a lot of aspects, so everything drags and drags. And drags and drags. It's kind of a crime in my mind to not do full justice to ideas and images like this. It's like if the family in "Ugetsu" fled their home, loaded their boat into the river, floated through the fog, ceramic bowls piled high ... then fled a new house, ceramics piled. Then a fled. A boat piled high. Fled in the fog. Fog.

Academy Screening #5: Doc Shorts

2011-02-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

Doc Short Nominees:

“Killing in the Name” Jed Rothstein
“Poster Girl” Sara Nesson and Mitchell W. Block
“Strangers No More” Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon
“Sun Come Up” Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger
“The Warriors of Qiugang” Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon

Who will win? "Strangers No More."

Is it a good set of nominees? I don't think so.

I feel bad for the Doc Short nominees. This was the first academy screening in which the films really felt judged in the worst way. They play the films back to back to back, and every one of them deals with a social issue, because I guess the academy feels like it has to make political nominations instead of human ones. So every film feels worse than it actually is because the audience is forced into watching basically the same man vs. system movie five times.

So the first film comes up, "Killing in the Name," about Muslim on Muslim terrorism. The story is touching, but the film in my opinion is poorly crafted. I've always felt that poor craft or forced tone cuts the importance of a topic down unfairly by making it overwrought or maudlin or boring or whatever. "Killing" does this to an extent, and the audience can tell. A 30 second break between films and then "Poster GIrl" comes up, even more maudlin and I think some scenes were staged and poorly "acted." Which sucks, of course, but again if I didn't feel like I had just watched the same movie ten minutes before it might have been a little better. "Poster Girl," a portrait of a female soldier with post traumatic stress disorder, literally ends on a fake camera noise, fake flash and freeze frame like some poorly edited iMovie effect, and I can't believe it got nominated. Another 30 second break and "Strangers No More" comes up, which is not a well-made documentary, but it has the virtue of jokes and cute children, and the academy audience gets its first laugh of the program. Unfortunately I think this makes it the most memorable, and for this reason alone it will win. Ten minute intermission and "Sun Come Up" is next, about a sinking island culture. Literally their island is sinking. This is probably the film with the best craft that would function the best as a full-length movie. But, unfortunately for "Sun Come Up," it plays the exact same way as the first two films. It bummed me out. I ended up leaving before the final film, "Warriors of Qiugang," about Chinese workers trying to change factory regulations.

Last year's batch of Doc shorts had three films of great variety (the fall of the berlin wall from the POV of rabbits! how cool is that?), one decent film and one totally awful, how-did-this-get-nominated film. The awful one won. This year seems the opposite. Every nomination is, when put next to one another, totally homogenous, and the one with even the slightest hint of variety will win.

Up Next: Gasland!

Academy Screening #4: Animal Kingdom

2011-02-07T10:45:00.000-08:00

What a bitchin' poster

Supporting Actress: Animal Kingdom

Will it win? Nah, but that'd be cool. It'll be Melissa Leo, is my guess.

Should it have been nominated? Yes. Actually a good nomination.

My favorite part of The Sopranos (and I don't mean to fart out a comparison between this crime family movie and The Crime Family TV Show just because, but stick with me here) is that every once in a while you'd get an outside perspective that'd make you think that maybe the Sopranos were just a glorified bunch of goons. A side character, usually a different family's boss, would mention offhandedly how low-rent the Soprano family was, and this was a cool touch because it made you think about the point of view of the story, and the point of view you weren't getting and where the truth actually fit into how the story was being told. Animal Kingdom rides that same line and does it concisely and scarily and doesn't tip its hand until near the end of the film, and I loved it. There's another difficult touch that Animal Kingdom pulled off well: to give the family a depth and rigor and make it feel deserved. I felt how deep their history was and it wasn't forced, it was very lyrical and tonal. This is the first screening I've really liked, and the first I'd watch again.

Next Up: Doc Shorts!

Academy Screening #3: Rabbit Hole

2011-02-07T10:15:00.000-08:00

Lead Actress: Rabbit Hole

Will it win? No.

Should it have been nominated? I don't particularly think so.

There's only one scene in Rabbit Hole that I felt John Cameron Mitchell's presence whole heartedly, and it's when Aaron Eckhart and Sandra Oh get stoned before going into a grieving parents group for parents who have lost their children. I guess it was also the only time I felt like it wasn't one of those movies, single issue movies or maybe call them message movies about a certain devastating human experience that the characters must traverse to come out the other end cathartically healed. It was a hilarious scene, and one of only a few times when the characters popped up out of the pretense of the film and really became human. This happens a few times: Eckhart going over-the-top in a screaming match with Kidman, and Kidman meeting her son's killer for the first time. Otherwise I felt like I was missing a filmmaker capable of wild humanity. Restraining himself too much? Trying to move in another direction? I'm not sure. I hope he pulls off another great one though, regardless of genre.

Up Next: Animal Kingdom!

Shopping Cart, Idaho.

2011-02-05T11:43:00.001-08:00

Ryan's flickr is to the right.

! An addition to people we like

2011-02-03T10:47:00.000-08:00

Matthew Rocklin, long time friend and sometimes neighbor, has a blog up with the subtitle "Computational Mathmatics PhD Student carving a Californian Life out of Chicago." I only just found out about the blog, and so I haven't read any of the posts save for the most recent: Blizzard. Here are the two first paragraphs, which I'm sure you will read and love.

"Last night was the largest snowstorm in Chicago since 1967. Today is the first day in 40 years that the local Lab School has declared a snow day. Last night the University issued a "Shelter in Place" warning, asking everyone not to go outside for the night, even if they were still at work. We experienced Thundersnow and 20 foot waves on Lake Michigan. The highway is shut down. The city is shut down.

My experience during this time has been relatively pleasant and of course very exciting. I came home early around 3pm in high winds and light snow. The snow stung like needles. It worsened significantly until 8pm, when it hit peak and apparently it stayed there until early afternoon today. Friends coming home at 9pm had icicles in their beards. My power went out and, because my boiler is controlled by an electronic circuit, so did my heat. I spent the night with candles and a pile of blankets. I also went for a very brief run (just a few blocks) to experience a force of nature that I imagine I will never again experience in my life."

I try to send travel emails out whenever I'm on the road or on vacation to a new place, and Matt started doing this as well, in part (I'd like to think) inspired by me. His emails put mine to shame. So if the quality of his travel writing is any indication, the blog should be a very enjoyable, empathetically logical read. You can click the picture right now, or the blog will be on the sidelines to the right from now on.

Academy Screening #2: Barney's Version

2011-02-01T17:32:00.000-08:00

Make-up: Barney's Version

Will it win? Mmm probably not.

Should it have been nominated? Sure.

I started writing about this film and decided I have nothing interesting to say about it. Judging by the photo above, though, the make up artists did a great job on Rosamund Pike particularly. The film spans four decades of the characters' lives, so their appearances and ages play heavily into the story, which sometimes weaves two or three forward moving storylines together in a fluid way. Most of the time the make-up was noticeable artifice, much like the film's plot, so it made sense even when it was over-the-top. Hers was subtler, though, which made her character much more believable.

Up Next: Who knows?!

Academy Screening #1: Hereafter

2011-01-31T18:42:00.000-08:00

I hereby declare February renamed FebreeeAcademyScreeningMonth! And since I'll be seeing so many movies, I figured I'd post some blurbs about each one here. Shocker.

Visual Effects: Hereafter

Will it win? No.

Should it have been nominated? Hell no.

Sounds like a political nomination to me, since the effects are dated and boring and poorly executed. At one point a computer generated tear runs down a child actor's face. The movie was fairly ridiculous, too. Bad enough that I was chuckling at it, good enough that I felt bad about chuckling at it. In a good film, this 2+ hour movie would be about a 4 scene sequence that takes up maybe, maybe ten minutes of screen time. Though, there was one scene I really enjoyed. Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard take a cooking class together, and have a whole 'first flirt' conversation with Howard in a blindfold. She's doing blind taste testing, but having her in a blindfold was really visually arresting. I don't know if I've ever watched a whole scene, shot all in close ups, with one character casually blindfolded: big black mask over the top half of her face, you keep wanting to see her eyes and keep trying, despite the mask. Jump cut to Damon now wearing the blindfold, conversation continues. Reminds you of the first time Damon is on screen, his face totally in shadows and his eyes unreachable. Peter Morgan's screenplay cuts the scene's potential by explicitly accenting the 'she's blindfolded but actually revealing herself' aspect of the scene, and as is usual in his latest movies Clint Eastwood feels like he's directing the first draft of the script. Nice, funny scene, though that stood out in a long, boring movie.

Up Next: Barney's Version!

Update: A nice post about the importance of eyes in "The Social Network" over at Film Art Blog.

Catfish, storytelling, and why film criticism sucks right now.

2011-01-29T11:40:00.000-08:00

Spoilers. And a lot of people watching this movie try to avoid them.

"“Catfish” flops down into this paradoxical reality and proceeds to generate some complications of its own. Judged by the usual standards, it is a wretched documentary: visually and narratively sloppy; coy about its motives; slipshod in its adherence to basic ethical norms. The filmmakers, who occasionally appear on camera, shoot and edit with at least minimal competence, but their approach to the potentially volatile and undeniably exploitive implications of their stumbled-upon story is muddled and defensive. Shame on them, if that would mean anything to them." -- AO Scott's NY Times Review.

Nev Shulman's photocomposite of himself and fictional girl Megan, who is actually a model by a different name in real life.

The critical discussion about Catfish is extremely boring to me. In the same way that websites 'debunking' Inception are boring. It's like critics have to go back to the very basics of storytelling to show people why Inception is a bad movie. And all anyone can talk about is whether Catfish is real or not, or if its supposed 'formal incompetence' negates the story it tells. Inception inspired total ambivalence in me, but I was actually quite taken with Catfish. I had a great environment, though: I didn't know much about the movie, I didn't read about it beforehand, the theater was packed and receptive, and the filmmakers spoke afterwards, shining light on some parts of the film that could have used more illumination. If the film is fake then they are very good at lying in public. But who gives a shit if it's 'real' or 'well-made' or not? Or, better to ask why give a shit?

Seth drawing himself drawing a fictional cartoonist's work in his comic novel It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken

Unfortunately I think the answer to that question is the sad reality of filmmaking right now: there's not a lot of experimentation going on. As I mentioned in my previous post, I can count the number of really form-pusing movies I've seen since I started this blog on one hand, and most of them are foreign. I'm not necessarily saying that superficial films lead to superficial criticisms, but neither is helping the other.

So, you have a film like Catfish that blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction a little bit, since the Schulman brothers seem to have stumbled across a real-life 'thriller.' Lately documentaries have started taking on the structures of fictional films -- an easy example is "The Cove," which is structured like a heist movie -- but Catfish is slightly different. While the people in "The Cove" initiate the story (they decide to sneak in and film the titular inlet), the people in Catfish apparently were pulled into a story that existed without them. Sure the boys go and pay a midnight visit to Megan's farm, and thus generate more events to be filmed, but that's half way through the movie. For the first half, they are just cataloguing their surface interaction with Angela's already-assembled web of Facebook personalities. I guess it's like the difference between making a basketball from scratch (The Cove) and finding a basketball on the ground, picking it up and playing with it (Catfish). I guess the 'playing with it' part is what makes A.O. Scott think they are borderline unethical or filming with a "patronizing, pitying gaze." Please.

All of this is to say: I kind of wish it were fake. It would be equally interesting to me in a different way than it is now. As I said, documentaries usually take on the structure of a fictional film, but all too rarely do they experiment with fictional elements woven in as a piece of the narrative (I can only think of a few, and they are probably bad examples, so I'll let you come up with your own). And since this doesn't happen much or at all in major-distribution documentaries, critics and audience alike have an adverse reaction to the possibility of 'fakery.' "Is it all true? How can it be? I don't believe it!"and on and on.

But comic books have been going in this direction for years. In Seth's autobiographical comic It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, he and friend / real-life cartoonist Chester Brown stumble across a cartoonist from the 1950's named Kalo while reading through old magazines at pawn shops (cartoonists do this a lot, apparently). Seth can't find any more of Kalo's work, and so starts trying to track the guy down to give his wandering life some direction. Only, after Good Life had been out for a couple of years, Seth revealed that Kalo was totally made up, completely fictional. Even better, this revelation prompted cartoonist Eddie Campbell to quietly kill off his fictional cartoonist that he was trying to pass off as real in his fictional book, Bacchus. How I wish this formal play and artistic interaction would happen more in the film world.

Can you imagine documentaries with fictional characters, or fictional films with strictly documentary sequences (instead of just documentary aspects like camera work or 'interviews' with characters), or even better (!) fictional characters popping up in both a written film and a documentary directed by different people? Very few filmmakers even play with this idea, while prose and comics are miles ahead in their experimentation.

Real photo of funeral for Bunny Gibson, fictional cartoonist. That's Campbell next to the priest.

But alas, I'm pretty sure Catfish is real. So the discussion becomes, as Shawn so aptly summed up, 'Yeah, it's badly made, but what about the cultural implications.' The title of Scott's article? "The World Where You Aren't What You Post." I don't mean to pick on Scott's review, but his is a nice encapsulation of what I think is wrong with the discussion of Catfish in particular, and what's wrong with film criticism, scholarly and otherwise, on the whole. I've read about a dozen Catfish reviews, and they all fall into the same traps. Ebert's begins, "Here's one way to look at "Catfish." Some filmmakers in New York City, who think they're way cool, get taken apart by a ordinary family in Ishpeming, Mich. You can also view it as a cautionary tale about living your emotional life on the Internet. Or possibly the whole thing is a hoax. "As if the most important thing we should take away from this film is that, yes, internet fraud happens. This, to me, is just as boring as the true / hoax stuff.

Ariel Schulman filming Nev Schulman with a painting of himself by Abby Pierce, fictional daughter of Angela Pierce

So what is Catfish, if not all of these superficial explanations? I think it is two things, one for the filmmakers and one for the audience. While most reviews note how cool or entitled the filmmakers think they are, I think it's a pretty bare-bones and ballsy depiction of their own naivete and superficiality. Critics seem to take this with negative connotation, but while watching it I was struck by the thought that this is a document of their lives, at this young age, for only them to come back to and laugh about, ponder over, reminisce and otherwise. This detail gets lost in all the talk about fakery, I think, and ironically those discussing the superficial elements of movie forget that those making the movie are actual people, flawed, presumptuous, superficial themselves, taken for a ride, involved in someone else's story. Like a home movie with a plot. But this is a filmmaker's perspective, and not necessarily for the audience to appreciate.

The audience could see this movie as a documentation of a new form of storytelling: The Facebook novel. Or, better call it, the interactive novel. Megan / Angela, the woman Nev travels to meet, has basically utilized the internet for a fully fledged interactive storytelling experience, and the filmmakers were lucky enough to document their interaction with, and exploration of her world. In the Q+A after the film, the guys called Angela "The J.K. Rowling of the internet," because she created an online world complete with not only characters, but plot points accessible in the outside, 'real' world, all to fulfill her need for a creative outlet. Talk about experimenting with a medium.

Here, though, is where the film fails. The craziest thing to me is that, sure, Angela created a bunch of Facebook profiles, gave them different roles to interact with Nev and uphold the facade, but the part that is the key to my interest isn't in the movie! Again during the Q+A, the filmmakers said that they printed out every bit of Facebook correspondence any of Angela's satellite characters had, and they found that the characters had been talking to one another. Do you follow me? This means that Angela, totally independent of Nev, was sending private messages to her characters in the voices of her other characters solely for her own artistic, creative, or personal fulfillment (whichever you prefer to call it). Nev, then, is not the protagonist here. He is not Michael Douglas in "The Game" in documentary-form. This film is instead a document of the cursory interaction three men's lives had with a totally self-contained fictional world one woman created. Which is a pretty impressively lucky thing to get on film. Doesn't it sound like a dream within a dream within a dream? Like we are in the film's world via Nev, via Angela, via Megan, via Abby, and on and on and on? Much like another movie I saw this year ... but I digress to superficiality.

So, much like the film, my article might be an overlong journey to a relatively simple conclusion. But I felt it should be said, and any film that makes me think about the experimentation waiting to be done in any medium, film, comics, or otherwise, is worth a look. And I think as video games and LARPing and other crudely written or poorly executed storytelling mediums try to interact more with 'real life,' Catfish catalogues an instance where the story became more and more detached from its medium, until it finally broke and became completely real by the end of the film. Though what I call 'story' some critics might call 'hoax' or 'lies.' I will leave you with fictional cartoonist Bunny Gibson's posthumous appearance in Eddie Campbell's autobiographical masterwork, Alec.

Films I Loved in 2010

2011-01-27T20:39:00.000-08:00

I began writing this before the Texas road trip, so the opening paragraph is somewhat out of date. I did notice that: thanks to editing, I've been thinking more visually lately. This is why there hasn't been much writing on the blog, only photos. I haven't written in earnest for a while because of Mule Days, so pardon any shallow insights into the following films. It's been a while.

2010!

We're all working our asses off over here at 438 to finish up post-production on "Motor Away." After months and months of working on and off, we're finally about 24 hours away from completion, with the film out of my hands looking and sounding great and in the mail. Very exciting, though I do kind of feel like I'm in the middle of taking a dump and other people are in charge of helping me finish.

2010 was an uninspiring year in film most of the time, but I think that a flood of films came there at the end. I enjoyed "True Grit," thought it was very funny (my God Matt Damon is on a roll) and "Black Swan" let Aronofsky shine inside a predictable script. I wrote a glowing review of "Toy Story 3," though in the light of "The Illusionist" and "Summer Wars" it seems dimmer. I think I was the only one who liked "Greenberg." "Ghost Writer" was a hilarious comedy masquerading as a thriller, which I liked for its concise beauty and because at times it was thrilling and funny at the same time. We had some good docs, too: "Restrepo," "Sweet Grass," and "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer" were all worth watching, some more than once. Dug the hell out of "Social Network" for a slew of reasons, not the least being the tension between Sorkin's writing style and Fincher's direction. "Scott Pilgrim," of my favorite comics ever, got turned into a very funny movie. The list goes on: "Mother," "Life During Wartime," "The American," "Douche Bag," "Never Let Me Go," "The Fighter." For all the crap it ended up being pretty good.

Here are my favorites, notwithstanding the films I didn't see, which I'll list at the end of the post.

The Illusionist

Who'd have guessed I'd love a new Tati movie, right? This is just a beautiful, hand drawn film -- that is, no rotoscoping, which makes the perfectly expressive animation that much more touching.t's like a 2-fer: we get a new Sylvain Chomet movie and a new Jacques Tati movie, with the strengths and sadness of both. It's hard for me to talk about the movie, really. I felt like crying the whole time and loved the hell out of it. What can I say? I turned to Emma about twenty minutes into the film and quietly said, "It's like he's still alive!"

Summer Wars

While Illusionist was a huge emotional experience for me, Summer Wars played with what's probably my favorite theme: the facade of order and responsibility. The movie is basically about a huge internet juggernaut -- imagine every major site and game and program all combined into one -- turning on its users. This kind of story has interested me more and more over the past decade as all of the major flaws in our country's infrastructure have been exposed since September 11th. My interest in nation-wide, systematic irresponsibility solidified with Katrina, then with the Gulf oil disaster, and was knocked out of the ballpark with the financial collapse. After the market collapse, I became obsessed with a podcast called "Planet Money," not only because they clearly and rigorously explained the inner workings our economy, but also because it was basically an extended discourse on this idea I fixated on: that everything we base our economy on is in some way false, or at least falsely regulated. There's some kind of massive facade of order and responsibility in place to fool ourselves. I'll never forget hearing Alan Greenspan say that the "once-in-a-century credit tsunami...turned out to be much broader than anything I could have imagined."

Anyways, all of that is to say: Summer Wars uses probably the biggest theme of the decade to great ends. Like most of my favorite movies, it's like three movies in one: a Japanese family drama, an animated action-adventure, and a simple, funny love story. When the main character is introduced to the 15 + family members at the enormous dinner table, it's hilarious because he, like us, thinks "How the hell am I going to remember all of these people?" But by the end of the movie I could tell you about every single one of them, and that's a huge accomplishment. Lovely film, exciting and breezy.

The Killer Inside Me

I think the Dardenne brothers said that you can find out just as much or more about a person by taking a portrait of the back of their head as you can by taking one of the face. Aronofsky definitely heard that, and I can name a few others, but Winterbottom understands the concept on a different plane. It might be the wide brimmed hat, but even when I'm looking at the face of Affleck's sheriff I still feel like I'm looking at the back of his head. Fucking deadpan creepy, and my favorite Winterbottom since "24 Hour Party People."

Dogtooth

Over the course of this blog, I've seen very few movies that I felt I had to write about. The films of Jose Mojica Marins, and Love Exposure are the only two that come to mind. Shawn is doing a good job of writing about Enter the Void, and Dogtooth will definitely have a dedicated post once I see it a couple more times this month at the Academy voter screenings. Two things I think about regularly when I think about Dogtooth: how amazingly fun it will be to watch the film again with the most uptight audience in Los Angeles (If "I Love You Phillip Morris" was received with adverse silence I cannot wait for this one), and something a professor of mine said about the book Maggie: A Girl of the Streets: "I have read this book a dozen times, and for the life of me I can't find a single cliche. That is why this book is great. It is completely without cliches."

Catfish

... Damn it. I started writing about Catfish, and I realized I opened up a huge can of worms. Two films, then, this year that I feel I have to write about at length. So, the recaps of my favorites ends here unfortunately. Tons more to come soon, but I just have to give these films proper space to write about.

Here's what I haven't seen.

White Material
Hereafter
Barney's Version
Tall Dark Stranger
The King's Speech
Jackass 3D
Inside Job
Carlos
The Kids Grow Up
Uncle Bonne Mi Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Wintersbone
Tangled
Megamind

Animal Kingdom
Biutiful

Hello neighbor, Fairfax Blvd.

2011-01-27T16:38:00.001-08:00

The street art searching has paid off. This is my favorite one so far: silly, weirdly ironic, weirdly sentimental. It sounds like lyrics to a song, and I don't know if they are referencing the recent astrological shift. And, even better, it was on the mailbox of the eastern european / eurotrash club on Fairfax Blvd.

Hipsters Ahead Beware on Beverly Blvd

2010-12-19T23:33:00.001-08:00

Free Humanity on Beverly Blvd.

2010-12-19T23:30:00.001-08:00

Peeler Top Hat

2010-11-30T12:53:00.001-08:00

Ogden Drive, 90036

These are around the neighborhood. No association.

Crazy Mel Gibson; Adrian Brody wearing a Crown of Thorns and Kanye Glasses

2010-11-30T12:30:00.001-08:00

Rosewood Drive, 90036

Testing out my blog app on my new phone. I'd like to start posting the various street posters around my house, and now I have a camera phone to do so.

Mules on the Brain

2010-11-17T10:49:00.001-08:00

Complicated Dance Steps

2010-11-16T12:34:00.000-08:00

Moderate Revolt founding member Christina Gubala recently quit her corporate job to pursue one of her many true callings in life: bringing wonderful music to everyone she can, in any way she can. She's managing the band Young Hunting (I'm a fan) and she recently started her own cassette label, Complicated Dance Steps. Check it out.

Portraits From a Mule Rodeo

2010-11-16T12:27:00.000-08:00

Today I Return to Editing

2010-11-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

Today I return to editing Mule Days. I've had 10 or 12 days to digest, and now I'm in the process of mustering the courage to turn the hard drive on. It is more difficult than you would expect. I posted the following questionnaire and I figured I would post some of the responses I got. They were edifying for the most part.

1. Did you understand the movie? Was anything confusing?

It seems like everyone understood the movie. I only got one response that said:

"I understood it ok, though I didn't get a great sense of the lives of packers outside of the rodeo."

This raises a good point. I wonder if I'll need more of that, especially in a PBS kind of situation. We always had an idea that the third portion of the movie might be an actual packing trip, or that we'd head out to Mike and Zack and see what they were doing. I don't think this will happen, but I think I can edit both the introduction of Mike and Zack and the "Mule People" to give a greater understanding.

2. Could you explain Mule Days to a friend?

Everyone can. That's good. This is up there more for the reader's well-being than my own. As long as they know what they would say, that's all that counts.

3. Were you bored? When?

"There were a lot of scenes of people riding mules around, but no real examination of what specifically they were doing or why. I felt like the dialog at those points was about other things, so I got a little bored with the images. If they had been explained a little more, I would have enjoyed it."

This gets at the biggest problem with the first half of the film: a lot of it is B-Roll propped up by interviews. It is not "scene driven" even when it is emotionally driven. The "Mule People" segment is the most difficult, because that has neither strength -- it neither has scenes nor emotion. It is strictly exposition, which I despise and try to avoid. A major overhaul of this segment is definitely needed.

The two most helpful comments both centered around the same scene, right in the middle of the "Mule People" segment when we see the announcer in his booth.

"Also there was a long shot inside the announcer's booth that didn't really connect for me to the scene before or after it."

Then someone else mentioned the scene before it:

"I found it a little hard to concentrate during the part w/ the woman talking and panning across the old photos of beauty queens."

"I thought you could use something behind the Miss Mule Days pictures, seemed too quiet right then.."

If I admit to myself why I included the beauty queens, it's simply because I like the shot ad it reminds me of the long, yellow mountain pan at the beginning of the film. The other shot that is arbitrary is the blue sky and trees after the parade. Both of them should be nixed.

I do believe that the long shot in the announcer's booth is not only hilarious, but very poignant if placed with the correct interview segment. It hits on both the ridiculousness of the event, and his isolation from his family. I'll need to draw this out better in the future.

4. What was your least favorite part of the movie?

"I liked the whole enchilada!!"

Thanks Grandma!

"I did not like the National Anthem at the beginning. It worked great at the end but in the beginning I thought it was annoying as I would rather have heard the announcer, laughter from the crowd and the roosters."

" I didn't like the National Anthem at the beginning. the cowboys in the stands were looking around, didn't have their hats off whereas the one at the end had lots of flags and everyone at attention with cowboy hats over their hearts. Also seemed contrived having it at the start and finish like that. I think some crowd action or the original with the clown and rooster with sound would be better. Or even moving the segment from the end to the beginning. I watched it twice, the first time through it seemed like there were some places that needed sound (either actual or sound track), I didn't notice it as much the 2nd time through. Some of the filler shots seemed to last just a second or two too long and the shot at the ground before Tucker seemed out of place."

Ah, the divisive National Anthem. When I edited that beginning, I knew it was border-line audacious, and that's my favorite feeling. For now, it stays. I think it will be hilarious and touching in a big group, and I'll know whether or not I need to cut it when I get a big audience together.

There is a great point in here, though: much like the shot of the sky after the parade, and the beauty queens, the fact that I return to the National Anthem is arbitrary. It is strictly form over function, which I don't like and try to avoid. It bookends the piece nicely, but only for the sake of bookending the piece nicely. I will try to strengthen that and incorporate it more into the story.

"I never really cared about the guy w/ the mustache and the big white hat. He was my least fav part. I liked the use of music. When i found myself about to stop paying attn the music would start and its so sad that it made me care about what happened to the characters."

I like this comment because it sounds like I brought the viewer to the brink of boredom, then reeled them back in with the music. The "mustache" guy is the announcer, who has always been on the fence with people. Some find him very touching and engaging, others find him ridiculous. This is probably a fault of my own editing, and I think his character hinges on that long shot I mentioned earlier. If I can find his feeling there, he'll come through as a glancing side character, not as a ridiculous complainer.

"mostly I was left longing for more context about what mule packers do for a living. They kept talking about going up a trail and cooking, guiding, and other things, but I didn't get to see that."

The problem of having an encapsulated documentary. We remain in the rodeo arena, and never travel up to the mountains. Is this necessarily a problem? This is the only comment I've received about this, but I think the viewer has a point. We're left with the competition rather than their actual lives. Interesting predicament that I have no way of solving, really.

5. Was there anything you DID NOT care about?

"The 3 stories were great. Kind of a 4th story was just "why mules" or "what are mules", this was the least effective story, but I liked it better the 2nd time around and it did give a little background to the rest of the stories."

"The story started and ended well, but was sort of scattered in the middle"

Exactly.

" I didn't care much about the rodeo clown, but that might just be my own thing with clowns..."

Awesome.

6. Did the story flow well?

"I liked the cyclic flow of the movie. Revisiting the characters towards the end and focussing on what their plans/attitudes were towards the future."

"Flowed very well. Some of the filler shots seemed to last just a second or two too long and the shot at the ground before Tucker seemed out of place. (ie, the mules walking by the roped hay/calf; the Mule Days queens, the empty stands)

"It flowed well ~~ back and forth but never herky-jerky or choppy"

"The movie flowed for me. I especially liked the patriotic music at the beginning and the end. The "National Anthem" reflects well the culture of the mule community."

At least people are specifically picking out the National Anthem, whether they love it or hate it. That makes me feel like I should keep it in.

If I were a better editor, I could intertwine the stories even more, but I'm glad that returning to them in a "dollhouse" structure helped nail home an emotional ending.

7. Who or what did you find MOST emotionally engaging?

I should be looking for who DID NOT get mentioned in this section...

"The story about the dad and son and how their way of life is dying out was the most emotionally engaging for me. The part about not seeing their family much too."

"The family stories by all the main players"

"I liked Tucker the most. But for emotionally engaging, i'd have to say, the packing family talking about their livilhoods being taken from them etc."

"The commentary from the clown."

"The old timers."

"Mule People" are nowhere on the radar. How can I strengthen this segment? Probably by chopping it down to it's bare essentials and getting the hell out of there as fast as possible. We really have a coup of a first feature film: a series of short films that require NO EXPOSITION. All we have to do is hang out with our characters and have fun! How great is that set up? I'm overly worried about making sure that the movie MAKES SENSE, though. Our title card really helps with that: "Stories From a Mule Rodeo" really clears up any fog early on. The actual "What is Mule Days" section is a necessary evil, though, I just need to distill it.

8. What was your favorite part?

"Learning about the life and his own perspective on that life of the 72 year old jockey."

"Tucker"

"My fav was the rivalry between that girl & tucker. It was cute."

"the father and son. I'd like to see more about their lives before and after the rodeo."

Again, a nice spread but "Mule People" are totally off the radar.

9. If you could watch an entire movie about one of our characters, who would it be and why?

"I have a hard time deciding between the clown or the jockey. OK I'll choose the jockey"

"I liked the clown and the old guy who was a jockey."

"Tucker. What a great history, I wanted more"

"Tucker. He had an interesting life."

This is good, since we come back to a new clown and Tucker is our link to Year 2. Couldn't have asked for a better spread here.

10. Any general comments?

" I think it would be interesting to cover more about that young girl. Especially after the old lady talking about needing young ppl involved. Like, how did she get involved? Is she still involved? etc."

This taps into the same problem we've had with previous questions: we kind of breeze over the tops of many stories. I try to have each story talk to one another as if they were all one person, or all one story. I hope that when the film is finished that we have a sense of the greater story that trumps the individual. That we have a flourishing of tone rather than of specific facts.

"The scenery is beautiful, I wouldn't mind seeing more of it. The title page was a little awkward, and I wouldn't have minded chapter pages in the middle to focus on distinct aspects of the story."

I've had this discussion before. Chapters might be a huge help to us, even though I see them as a crutch and would rather breeze through the rodeo rather than divide it into subsections. Chapter titles are a future possibility, though.

Thanks to everyone who responded! No thanks to those who watched and didn't get back to me. Come on, people!

Hard Boiled Hong Kong

2010-11-10T23:27:00.001-08:00

Dream come true for Ryan and my walking-distance cinema going. @ LACMA

November 12	7:30 PM The Killer
November 12	9:30 PM As Tears Go By
November 13	5:30 PM The Mission
November 13	7:30 PM Hard Boiled
November 19	7:30 PM Fallen Angels
November 19	9:00 PM Time and Tide
November 20	5:00 PM Exiled
November 20	7:30 PM Once Upon a Time in China
November 26	7:30 PM Red Cliff: Part I
November 27	4:00 PM Red Cliff: Part I (Repeat Screening)
November 27	7:30 PM Red Cliff: Part II

Pat's Animation

2010-11-09T10:54:00.000-08:00

My friend Pat Horvath's very funny forays into animation. He does all the music, voices, sounds, and drawings.

EGO TRIP from Patrick Horvath on Vimeo.

BearWalk from Patrick Horvath on Vimeo.

Talker from Patrick Horvath on Vimeo.

Monster Dance Party Test from Patrick Horvath on Vimeo.

What I'm Reading

2010-11-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

1. Oral History of the Pixies

Very cleverly written book. It reads like a play, with character names listed in bold and their words printed next to it. The author pulls from interviews and articles with Pixies and other musicians to build a chronological history of the band.

2. Denial of Death

I picked this up from Michelle's mom years ago, and I'm finally smart enough to read it (that's how it feels). I remember opening the book in High School and thinking "What the hell?!" Now it's a very eloquent and engaging read. Helps me with life in general. Maybe not more than therapy did, but helps build on the stuff I've learned this year.

3. Kickstartup

Amazing and comprehensive article on fundraising via kickstarter. Once MULE DAYS nears the finish line we will almost certainly be using this website for seed-capital. Very helpful article for anyone interested in grass roots funding via the internet. Thanks to Nancy for sending me this.

4. Mr. Peel's Sardine Liquer

Actually I've been browsing the links on the side of his page more than I have read actual entries in his blog. Considering I run a blog that has a lot to do with movies, it seems absurd that I've never thought to actually search out and read other film blogs. A lot of them are very entertaining, and the most engaging are the most personal. Sunset Gun is the most personal I've found.

RED

2010-11-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

Warren Ellis has long been my favorite comics writer (that is, he's strictly a writer and not a cartoonist), and I'm glad one of his books has finally been adapted into a film. The man's a prolific and uneven writer, and frankly RED is an odd choice to adapt, not just speaking of Ellis's oeuvre but of adult comics in general. RED is neither his best nor his worst book, but a throwaway mini-series written in between a couple masterpieces of long-form comics, TRANSMETROPOLITAN and PLANETARY. While it is high-concept -- retired CIA agent comes out of the woodwork to defend his life -- it wasn't particularly successful with fans or sales, only skims the surface of Ellis's strengths as a writer, and isn't looked upon with any great esteem in the 'literate' comics community other than the name recognition its author brings. RED is like SCOTT PILGRIM: rarely would you find the book on the shelf of someone who didn't already read comics (unless I personally had shoved it into their hands). That's changed for PILGRIM now that the movie's out, but I don't know if the same will happen for RED.

RED the film holds onto only the frame of the comic book story: secret CIA agent defends his life against the very agency that made him. Basically the comic takes the doomed man approach: big plot set up at the beginning, no real unfolding plot exposition after that. We get impressions of the awful things Moses has done in the past. An inexperienced CIA director can't handle the information, and "disgusted by what he has seen, and fearing public reaction should any of those secrets leak out, he orders the assassination of Moses" (via wikipedia). We hang out with this crazy person Moses, get to know him on his path, watch all of the darkly funny ways he kills people.

Moses is a doomed man who fights his way to the CIA director not to figure out some larger conspiracy, but out of some basic need to prove that he deserved to remain a silent, inactive and retired monster who has now been robbed of his ability to deal with all the horrible things he's done in his life. Any character development is held off until the final moments of the book, and the result is surprisingly touching.

I also enjoy how the page can barely look at him. Moses is rarely seen in a close up. It's all fragments of his body, and long shots, like we're avoiding taking a close look at this guy. The effect is very scary. The comic also has a swift sense of story: Moses looks through a sniper rifle and is met with 4 quick flashbacks.

Everything we need to know about Moses's past. No words, no names (fictional or otherwise), and all taken care of in a quick page. Pages like this highlight Ellis's strength for synchronicity, and I think he does it better than a lot of writers. Here he ties RED's comic universe to our universe via political assassinations. It could feel ham-handed with exposition, and in a way maybe it still does (JFK? Really?), but it's over so quickly that we attribute it to Moses's internal character rather than any authorial exposition. He's got a knack for it, and even when it's silly he does it with speed.

The movie flips the structure of the book around: Moses is on the run to figure out some kind of mystery involving an elaborate back-plot of characters, and we are doled out information little by little as we piece together what's going on behind the scenes.

Moses is on a list of people to be killed. In the film, he's no longer alone. Instead, this is a retired-team action movie, one of many to hit theaters this year. The screenwriters actually made RED into a funny acronym: "Retired Extremely Dangerous." He assembles his team (also on the kill-list) to fight their way to the top of the conspiracy.

I think the lone gunman story is a lot more interesting, and would have probably been a better Willis vehicle in the long run. Willis is so lax, charming and bad ass that he could easily have held an audiences attention with a darker, more isolated Moses. Instead the script spends a lot of time trying to get us to like him, which is totally unnecessary. It also spends a lot of time keeping you up to date on plot twists and turns without letting any of them really take hold.

The plot is vague and cumbersome. I still don't know what happened in Guatemala. I still don't care, for that matter. The political aspects of the story are handled with kid gloves, which means that the big reveal of the picture falls flat on its face. After 80 minutes of searching, The Mastermind of the plot is revealed to be ... Senator Robert Stanton. Neither a real Senator, nor an pre-existing character in the movie. Just ... some guy. The characters rush to explain to me why he is significant and why I should care, but I don't.

I am reminded of Ellis's quick ability to associate real politics with his plot. Why spend two hours beating around the bush? In his review, Ebert very astutely notes how this feels not only in the endless exposition, but in the performances as well:

"The bad guys are in the upper reaches of the CIA, and the conspiracy reaches all the way to a vice president with connections to a huge private defense contractor. This man is played by Richard Dreyfuss, who subtly signals to us, “You only think this is my Dick Cheney imitation, but if the studio let me loose, I could nail this role.”

Whenever it counts, the filmmakers have completely abandoned the themes of the book. This isn't a story about dealing with old age, it's a story about dealing with a changing country.

It's not that Moses is old, it's that the younger generation are mutated.

Robert Schwentke doesn't seem to make too much of this shift. In his interview at iamrogue:

"What was the biggest challenge for you to bring this graphic novel to the big screen?

Well, getting the tone right was something that we spent a fair amount of time on and just calibrating it right. "

And Super Hero Hype:

"SHH: I remember a couple years ago the first time we talked about this, you were saying it already drifted away from the comic book. Obviously, visually it's nothing at all like the comic.

Schwentke: No, I mean, I felt like that in sort of making the narrative bigger you had to make certain choices, and I didn't mind moving away from the darker tone of the comic book. I always feel that adaptations don't ever obliterate what they're based on. I mean, they both still exist, and I think they're actually in spirit, they're very close."

I disagree. I can understand the need to make things more fun, or as Schwentke put it, "move the emphasis more to the comedic while still having people blow up," but in the process things go haywire. In my eyes, they've totally sacrificed the tone of the book for the tone of the movie, which would be fine if the comedy and fun of the movie were successful. Instead, everyone feels bored, actors and audience at my screening alike. There were one or two big laughs, but Malkovich was the only one consistently entertaining. In fact, I really liked watching him, and he made a ton of funny, hammy faces that fit right in with the tone Schwentke was going for. Mary Louise-Parker's character is so inconsistent that she comes off as vapid and an unintentionally creepy sex-addict. This sounds like an exaggeration, but somewhere in the middle of the film the script goes off the rails, and by the end of the movie I was revolted by her. The ending was downright weird.

Surprisingly, the film's done well in spite of this. Boxofficemojo.com tells me that the film has made its $58M budget back and more, and has placed in the top five for three weeks straight. Still, I wouldn't call it a good movie, or even a good adaptation. It is sometimes fun, and sometimes funny, but more often than not it was really apparently bad filmmaking. I'm glad it's done as well as it has because I'd like to see Ellis and his adaptations both succeed.

When SCOTT PILGRIM tanked, I was bummed for Edgar Wright, but the silver lining there was that the book has been selling like crazy. Crazy numbers that are well deserved for a very funny and touching comic book. I think the PILGRIM movie captured some of the spirit of the book at the expense of the slower, more floaty pace that a 1200 page comic book allows for, but that's OK since Wright turned it into a very funny and fun movie to watch. RED goes the other way on almost all accounts. A book that will take you maybe 30 minutes to read if you're going slowly has been inflated to almost two hours, and I spent most of that time trying to care.

Blogdanovich on PSYCHO

2010-10-31T14:07:00.000-07:00

Peter has a new blog up that has some great writing about great films. He has the ability to write very objectively good reviews that rely not on his idiosyncrasies as a person, but his craft as a writer. My best reviews have always relied heavily on the former, and when I strive for the latter I rarely achieve anything but statue-esque and pretentious write-ups. His piece on PSYCHO is particularly enjoyable. I always knew what the film did to its original audience, and Peter's piece doesn't give me any new factual information, but this is still the first time I've felt what it did so closely.

"I never heard the soundtrack for the shower stabbing-sequence until I saw the film on TV, so loudly were the people downstairs screaming."

1st Cut of Mule Days with Titles. Year 1.

2010-10-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

Hello. I realize the blog is in dire need of attention, and a layout overhaul. I hope that the extended silence has been worth it. Here's a half an hour of Mule Days.

Mule Days Year 1 First Cut from Joseph Peeler on Vimeo.

I missed a subtitle for one of Jesse's questions, but I think you can hear it fine. The fonts are bound to change, though I like the combination of "Funny Games" and "Stagecoach" that the current font has. The photos in Tucker's sequence are just roughly inserted. There will be zooms and cuts there.

For a few months I felt like I was making a PBS TV show. This isn't a bad thing, but it took me a long time to feel like I was making a film. When I figured out the National Anthem opening, I finally felt like it was a movie.

Also, I've decided to give the following questionnaire to my test-screeners. I stole the idea from Lucy Walker, whom I saw at a nice Q+A evening at Cinefamily a couple of weeks ago. I think it's a fantastic idea. She'd show a cut to her friends, then BEFORE anyone spoke to one another, she'd have them fill out a set of questions that basically asked the same question over and over again in different ways: what sucked? Here's what I came up with:

Feel free to fill it out and send it in.

You'd be surprised how much pace changes when you play something on the computer screen vs. the television screen. I had a cut of Year 1 finished a month ago, but after I played it on the TV the roommates and I were stunned. It was like a totally different, much worse movie. Since then, Aaron came up with two crucial bits of music and I basically reworked the entire structure. Tons of tweaks.

I've watched this version three times on TV so far. I think, I hope, it makes sense. That's what I really want. Most of my complaints come from my own inability as an editor. The "Mule People" segment flows as well as it ever has, but I still can see exactly what I was doing. I hope other places are more transparent, and the editing is lost to the story.

I'm excited to get to Year 2 because we shot it so differently. It will be much more scene-based, I think, rather than a combination of scene / voice over driving the narrative. My favorite parts of Year 1 are when people just shut up and things happen. We consciously went into 2010 trying to shoot a different kind of documentary, and I think we succeeded. The total change of pace will help bridge the gap between what is essentially two mini-films combined into one feature (if we can get it that far). The end of Year 1 really feels like an ending, so I want to make the weirdness of returning in 2010 an emotional bridge with a point to it, rather than just a feeling that the audience gets. That'll keep them from squirming, thinking "This should have ended a half an hour ago."

I think the next thing I'm going to edit is a two or three minute "trailer" for Jason's literary magazine. It's an isolated story that the clown tells, and I think it'll fit with what he's doing. We'll cut it together as more of an independent short film rather than a trailer, but I think it'll be great. That'll come next.

Feels like I'm coming up for air on this one. I'll give the blog a once over pretty soon and post more steadily. Was suffocating in Mule fumes there for a while.

This makes me very happy

2010-08-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

Things to come on the blog:

Writing Comedy
Noir thoughts
A cut of the first half out of Mule Days (slowly approaching)
A video essay on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive

Emma's binding books!

2010-08-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

A while ago Emma bound me a journal / sketchbook adorned with a sketch of her own taped to the cover: I asked her to draw me, and instead she drew a pig with a beard wearing a hat. Touche, little binder, touche.

She's continued binding books, and they are very crafty and beautiful. She used paper from her grandmother's collection for the covers, and pressed a variety of pages as filling: some lined paper, some sketch paper, some floor plans, some movie pictures.

A couple of years ago Grant sent us down a book for APE that was unbound, so Emma will tackle those next. There's ten of Grant's books, and if we can scrounge some other books together, we may have enough for another year at APE! I'll start asking around. Good job, Emma!

Movie Magic #1: How to Fake a Crowd

2010-08-01T23:42:00.000-07:00

I watched the restored "Metropolis" recently, and the giant crowd scenes were marvelous on the big screen. I have a soft spot for huge amounts of people running around on screen (see: Buster Keaton's "Seven Chances," Cagney's "American Madness," et al.), but Lang takes it a step further and has these masses of people run around both normal and miniature sized sets. I was struck by how seamless the effect was. Apparently,

"According to Magill's Survey of Cinema, [Shuffan's] photographic system “allowed people and miniature sets to be combined in a single shot, through the use of mirrors, rather than laboratory work.'' Other effects were created in the camera by cinematographer Karl Freund"

It got me thinking: How can you fake a good crowd scene with strictly in camera techniques? If, say, I wanted to make a big location like the stands at a rodeo arena look jam packed, how could we do it on the cheap? How many people would we really need?

Hypothetically.

Method #1: Pack the Frame

Lang had the luxury of over 1,000 extras. Faking this kind of scope in a wide shot is extremely difficult. I'm still trying to figure out how to achieve this kind of feeling with very few people:

OH SHIT

Impossible? Probably not, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Medium shots, on the other hand, are easier to fake. Hitchcock packs his frames in "The Manxman" to make it seem like there's 1. a bar full of sailors or 2. a whole neighborhood of onlookers, but really he gets away with 12-15 extras. The close up shot has even fewer: only 6.

Too many dicks on the dance floor, indeed

Assembly of heads.

Creepy.

12-15 people seems to be the magic number in this situation. Again Lang goes way further: in the photo at the top of this post I count about 52 hands, which means about 26 kids lunging after Bridgette Helm. The wider you go, the more people you need I suppose ...

Method #2: Cardboard Cutouts

Parade

This sounds silly, but Tati uses cardboard cutouts to brilliant effect. In "Parade" he plays around with it by staging an audience -- of course it's a sight gag and you're supposed to notice it. In "Playtime," though, there are a number of shots with cardboard bystanders. Whenever public transportation is involved, there are very few real people on the bus, the rest are flat stand-ups. You can also see a lot of them in the background on the streets. 8 seconds into the following clip, take a look at the background.

A modern example of this, and a good example of filling stands, is "Seabiscuit." Cheering crowds were actually a mix of people and "pneumatic dolls;" basically mannequins with clothes on.

The mix is obviously the best way to fake a wide shot, especially when we're talking about audience / stands situations. But having people move around in the frame in a dynamic area? I'm going to poke around and see what I can find. Hopefully my findings will be Part II ... rear projection anyone?

Motor Away set photographs round 1

2010-07-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

This one's my favorite. Looks like a Kraftwerk cover

Here are some photos Charlie, our lead actor, took on set. He was sneaky and took a bunch on his iPhone with the Hipstamatic filter on, which I find very silly and entertaining. There are plenty more photos from both him and Emma, and those will trickle in soon enough.

The trip was exhausting and non-stop. By our final night I could hardly talk I was so tired (no thanks to my wrap party meal: cheese burger, pulled pork sliders, whiskey and soda, a lamb pita and appetizers). But! It was worth it and I had a lovely time. The creative pace of the summer has been pretty much perfect. I've been on two sets in the course of two months with my closest friends making what I think can and will be great films. I'm shocked at the progress we've made since we started this whole endeavor maybe 5 or 6 years ago. I'm not going to name off all the ways we've grown or whatever, but it just keeps getting more and more fun. Everything is stressful as hell on set, but I'm still surrounded by amazing people, and as we get a bigger grasp on our art and as we become more confident, I get happier and happier. Making these movies really makes my life better, and I love it with all my heart. Can't wait to see the first cut of Motor Away.

Have you read these music blogs?

2010-07-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

Just back from a beautiful time in Oregon. I downloaded music from the following three blogs for the trip:

somatose
gorillavsbear
experimental etc

I highly recommend thumbing through somatose. They have weird, silly bands that sound great. The band Weed has a track up there called Quilt that has a beautiful cover, and the band MICKEY MICKEY ROURKE (all caps) is surprisingly serious and awesome. There's an EP at honey from the bees that I can't wait to listen to: Bingo Pajamas - Shidiot. Hopefully it's better than COOLRUNNINGS - Babes Forever, which I wanted to like but just couldn't get into.

I'm looking for music blogs that have film soundtracks. I've had a hankerin' for some older composers (Miklos Rosza, some of Max Steiner's work with Huston), but anything will do. Any thoughts? Any other blogs I should be downloading from?

Schwabaudio's Greatest Hits

2010-07-09T17:35:00.000-07:00

Schwabaudio's Greatest Hits from Joseph Peeler on Vimeo.

Here's the best clips from Schwabaudio's time at Bishop this year, complete with a little Dub Step closer. Password protected, of course, email me if I haven't sent it out to you yet.

Toy Story 3

2010-07-05T16:29:00.000-07:00

It's unfair to say that "Toy Story 3" is the best of all the Pixar movies since it actually took three full films to build to this peak. But regardless, the view is beautiful. The opening train robbery / alien invasion / daring chase is a blitz of a reintroduction to the characters that have travelled with countless children grown now to adults, and quite the set-piece for a studio that, in my opinion, is setting the standard for high quality, high budget filmmaking, animated or otherwise. Pixar, as usual, whittle moment after moment of craft out of their simple story and start things off with a fantasy-within-a-film-within-a-film: inside Andy's childhood brain playing with his toys as his mother videotapes him until we telescope back out to the present, with Andy off to college and the toys stuffed in an old chest. What follows is a film more consistent than "Wall-E" or "Up," and more emotionally engaging than "Ratatouille," and a story that gets rolling and maintains a kind of perfection that I hope will continue in Pixar's work now that they are done (I think, I hope) with the era of Toy Story.

Maybe "perfection" is too much praise. There are a few flaws: Lotso Bear's good guy / bad guy duality and secret past come off a little blandly considering the growing depth of the other characters. CGI in all computer-animated cartoons, not just Pixar's, can't quite seem to get a decent looking human being on screen yet. Of course, Pixar has always turned this lack into a strength -- what better way to identify with a bunch of toys than make them the most expressive characters in the movie? And, as I said at the beginning, it leans heavily on the character-building work done in the previous two movies. But that's okay, too. No one's going to start with this one, anyways.

Maybe I'm just tempering my own love of the movie by wracking my brain for flaws to pick at. Honestly, I'm surprised by how much it effected me. It's been, what, over a week since I've seen the film and still, by total surprise, the fear and love and hopelessness and whatever other emotions that rushed over me in the final ten or so minutes of the film, all of these things still just pop up every once in a while in the middle of my day. And I think that's the mark of a really impressive movie. A great movie, in fact.

Pixar is in a unique position. They are, as near as I can tell, an almost independent studio backed by Disney-sized stacks of money. It is a very rare arrangement, and one that I am unsure will ever happen again. My suggestion to everyone watching is to enjoy the ride while it lasts. It won't be here forever, but you can still love it for the rest of your life.

Top 10 Killer Food Films

2010-07-03T12:56:00.000-07:00

Why, hello! In response to an earlier, crappier Top 10 Food Films list, Emma posted Top 10 Killer Food Films!! A nice mix of silly and serious, saucy and ... sauteed, the list is sure to spark discussion the world 'round. But remember, save your comments for after the film. Shhhhh ....

Mule Crew Action Shots

2010-06-28T15:12:00.000-07:00

The Killer Inside Me

2010-06-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to get this up here. Discussion to follow.

The Hulk Hands Theory

2010-06-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

Appropriation at its best! I found this animation gem on Cartoon Brew, and I really dig how weird it is. The animator's pen name is Nunub, and he did some rotoscoped animation of a scene from "The Big Bang" theory and mashed it up with a Turkish rock song. The result is totally strange and fantastic.

The Hulk Hands Theory (short version) from nunub on Vimeo.

Some thoughts lately ...

2010-06-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

- "Cassandra Cat," Vojtech Jasny

"Yup, still thinking there's a way to get back. He's been changing, sure, changing, plucking the albatross of self now and then, idly, half-conscious as picking his nose -- but the one ghost-feather his fingers always brush by is America. Poor asshole, he can't let her go. She's whispered love me too often to him in his sleep, vamped insatiably his waking attention with come-hitherings, incredible promises. One day -- he can see a day -- he might be able to finally say sorry, sure and leave her . . . but not just yet. One more try, one more change, one more deal, one more transfer to a hopeful line. Maybe it's just pride. What if there's no place for him in her stable any more? If she has turned him out, she'll never explain. Her 'stallions' have no rights. She is immune to their small, stupid questions. She is exactly the Amazon Bitch your fantasies have called her to be."

-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow; pgs. 635 - 6

Record Club: INXS "Never Tear Us Apart" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

"If you don't believe it's raining

I won't tell you that it's raining
but do you not believe it's raining

just because it gets you down?
If you don't believe in happiness

then don't believe in happiness
but if you don't believe in happiness

then man you must be down."

- Animal Collective, "Winter Wonderland"

More substance soon. Just finishing up a for-hire editing job then I'll get back to M. Days and the such.

The Illusionist!!!!

2010-06-15T23:17:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited! Probably click the link to open in a new window and watch it full screen.

2 Years Later ....

2010-05-26T00:06:00.001-07:00

Here's the comprehensive draft of Mule Days so far. It incorporates the music by Dave Hall and Aaron Stein-Chester. No changes, just a full upload of what we have. This is what we'll be giving to The Big Whigs to show them that we have something coming together.

May 25 Comprehensive Draft from Joseph Peeler on Vimeo.

I'm already exhausted, but I'll try to keep a journal during our time in Bishop. We'll be there from Thursday to Sunday. If not, I'll transcribe my physical journal writings a bit later and post them here some time next week.

I've learned a lot editing the picture so far, and I'm excited for our style to change a bit when we get into town this time. We have 5 interviews we know we need to get that tie into the story we already have:

1. Tucker.

2. Tucker's Mule.

3. The New Clown.

4. A Former Bishop Princess.

5. The Guy to Tell us About Mules.

Other than that, I simply want to implement the biggest lesson learned in my editing so far: the events need people, and the people need events. The example I've been using is the parade. It's a lovely bridge between scenes, but it would be better if our bridges were little scenes as well. If we talked to that dancing girl or a kid in the marching band or the guy holding the jackass sign, the parade could have had that little extra spark. I hope we'll find that as much as we can this time around.

The side stories we filmed in 2008 are difficult to implement into the movie right now because they are 1. too stationary and 2. without context. We usually conducted sit-down interviews with people we ran into and didn't really give them a place in the Mule Days celebration. So it works both ways. I'd like more stand up, in the moment "on the fly" active interviews like the one we have with Mike, the packer father, after he wins his competition. The people are more interesting in the event, and you care more about the event if you meet the people in it.

I'll refrain from posting clips, but I was very impressed by Louis Malle's approach in "God's Country," and his openness to his subjects. He helped me realized that we just need to be open to meeting and chatting with new people.

Excited and nervous. We'll have to hit the ground filming.

Tucker Doin' Work

2010-05-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

Here's my first attempt at editing to / with Dave's music (Nick's will come a bit later in the movie).

Tucker Doin' Work from Joseph Peeler on Vimeo.

Tucker's story is a bit more complicated to work with than Mike and Zack's. This is just the first portion, and it is without the true end to this sequence where Tucker talks about winning. I can already see a couple of places I can shave down, but I think it's pretty watchable and all came together in a burst yesterday and today.

There's a tone shift with Tucker, and I hope the way I edited it does justice to the send off "It's not about the money, it's about the competition." This definitely wouldn't have worked without the music. It sails us through the middle of the rodeo and helps a lot with the more difficult segments to edit. Competition is not only aesthetically difficult to piece together, but just simply getting the information across to the audience is a lot harder than the previous stories.

How does it feel? I'd like to know your thoughts. I know it's not as directly emotionally engaging as Mike and Zack, but as Tucker's various segments come together I think there will be a nice balance between his story and the other's featured so far.

From here, we'll do a loop backwards in time. Tucker's going to talk about his switch from cowboy to english jumper, then we'll get his back story, and then his story will continue forward. From there (I think) we'll go into Mule Days itself.

We leave on Thursday morning. I'll wait to post a comprehensive version until closer to this year's Mule Days, since I have a few days to do some touch up work. The next thing I post will be the version that we'll bring to Bishop this year to show various town and rodeo leaders.

Bresson, editing thoughts

2010-05-19T11:53:00.001-07:00

Editing to music today:

Dave and Aaron's Music!!

2010-05-10T23:45:00.001-07:00

Great news! Dave and Aaron combined artistic forces this week to record some steel guitar and violin. I did a quick cut and paste of the music and adjusted some levels, and it's near perfect already. Guys -- thank you so much for doing this. I'm so impressed. The first drafts are beyond my expectations and I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see your art and my art put together. The final product is going to sound beautiful. It kills me I love it so much.

Here's a clip of just the opening montage and title card.

Title Card from Joseph Peeler on Vimeo.

Dave's Music

2010-05-07T19:30:00.000-07:00

My long time friend Dave Hall, who apparently went up to Portland to hang out with Dayna and met Shawn (small world), recorded about a minute and a half of ideas for Mule Days music. I uploaded a 30 second clip of Tucker warming up with the piece of the song that I really like. This is just a first draft, quickly recorded sample, but I think Dave really got the idea down quickly. We can develop sounds like this with slide guitar, strings and harmonica. I dig it a lot.

Tucker Song from Joseph Peeler on Vimeo.

Mule Days April 30 Draft

2010-04-30T18:36:00.001-07:00

Mule Days April 30 from Joseph Peeler on Vimeo.

Today was my first full day off dedicated (mostly) to editing in about 2 months. I don't want to speak too soon, but I think I nailed down the first 8.5 minutes. I can't see any better way do what we want to do with the footage we have all the way through to the end of the parade. From there, who knows what direction we'll end up taking.

The first act sets a good tone. The two stories work well together, first the clown and his retirement and then the Toberers and their possible forced retirement. On one hand I'd like the whole movie to feel like this -- a series of portraits all emotionally tied to one another with a evenness of tone -- but the fact is we don't have that. Tucker, for example, has no real conflict. There's a lot of mining to be done to his footage, and a lot of different paths we can take. Right now it looks like the most viable is the "cowboy-turned-english-jumper" angle, which is more inspiring in tone than the first act. Then there's the more informational, but also funnier segment where the announcer discusses the various Mule Days activities. Along with this we have a lot of little moments with people that may build bridges to bigger scenes, just like the parade will eventually do. The tone will shift, but I hope I can balance the emotions.

We've decided to return to Mule Days this year. I made the reservations for Brown's Town Campground today. Some time in the last month I figured out that we don't have an ending. We have two acts, maybe two and a half, but everything falls away from itself in a big way. Since we didn't know who or what we'd be shooting, we didn't know what their stories looked like, and now that we do we're going to go back and wrap up some loose ends. The movie we're making needs some coherence and catharsis, and I just don't think we have it with the current footage. We have a lot of really nice loose ends, but they need a little more work.

Unfortunately, the Toberers will not be attending Mule Days this year. At first this seemed a set-back, but actually I think it'll be better for us. They probably aren't coming because they can't afford to, and I'd like to talk to them about the state of their business and family two years down the line. We'll go to their farm to end their story, and then probably go on a weekend or week-long packing trip with them, and possibly have another mini-documentary on our hands. If it ends up as two projects, we can use footage from our visit in both movies.

We will have a new clown to talk to. Very exciting.

I'll be doing more work on it tomorrow and the next day, and will hopefully have a new upload by next week. My goal is to catch up with ourselves by the time we return to Mule Days this year, so we know where we are at and have a little more direction going into our second year.

I'm gonna cook with Les Blank!!!

2010-04-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

Favorite Line

2010-04-28T12:15:00.001-07:00

This is one of my favorite lines in any script I've ever read.

Reichenfeld's Happy Hollows Music Video

2010-04-07T15:52:00.000-07:00

In other exciting news, our buddy Ryan Reichenfeld premiered his Happy Hollows music video last week. Various magazines and blogs have given him some coverage, which is pretty cool. The video has the marks of a true auteur, since it is actually a map of Ryan's consciousness. Examples include: unicorn with rocket powered sneakers, candy corn grass, knife grass, and great white shark neon vomit. Good job Ryan!!

Hopefully I will soon be posting the Carmody / Peeler music video for Lucky Dragons, which is slowly but surely nearing completion.

Adam's in a Wendy's commercial!!

2010-04-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

I was watching Seinfeld on TBS last night and did A HUGE DOUBLE TAKE when I saw my main man, my favorite actor, my good buddy Adam Carr ON NATIONAL TV!!! WOO WOO!!! Click the picture and you'll find him in the Wendy's ad "Subtraction." Good job Adam!!

Mule Days Music

2010-03-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

The music for the Mule Days documentary should sound something like how this photograph looks. Just barely pre-blues, strings and harmonica, trumpet and slide guitar. We're making a movie about Americana and nostalgia and fading ways of life. There's already an interesting push and pull between the past and future and where our characters are going, and I think the music can play along with these themes very well.

The latest Mule Clip is without any soundtrack, except for two songs played at the parade and the opening ceremony: "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Star Spangled Banner." I think this is very telling of the kind of event Mule Days is. It looks for a kind of classic Americanism when cowboys were stars and packing was still a relevant means of transportation. Our characters are either immersed in that culture, hanging onto it, or (in the case of the clown), just coming out of it.

The previous draft has a song I'm using as a place holder: "1000 Miles" by The Dirty Three. It comes in at the 2:15-ish mark if you want to listen to it. This song gets at some emotions that I'd like to keep exploring. It takes that Americana and spits it out the other end, where shit gets weird and you don't know what's going to happen. On one hand it sounds nostalgic, but when you listen to it you know that whatever its nostalgic for probably didn't exist in the first place. I love this idea: nostalgia for something that was never there. That's how I hope our music sounds.

There was a time in the 60's and 70's when American folk music really captured this feeling of being in limbo between remembering and going somewhere. I'm thinking about Bob Dylan, The Band, Neil Young, and Joan Baez. Its still around today, too; Bonnie Prince Billy, Nick Cave, Tom Waits. These have been huge inspirations for the film and for the music.

Whenever I edit, I always throw on an album in the background to set a tone. Neil Young's "After the Goldrush" has been a big staple.

From day one we've talked about Bonnie.

Here's a nutty version of 1000 Miles with an intro by my man Warren Ellis.

And, of course:

Combine this kind of music with an atmospheric bend, like the stuff at the beginning of this Nels Cline video, and you're arriving at the sound I think Mule Days should have.

We'll be recording a fairly small amount of music. My guess is 4-5 minutes MAXIMUM. As you can see from the two clips, "1000 Miles" and "Star Spangled" are used mainly as chapter breaks, or musical bridges between different scenes. I'm not looking for wall-to-wall sound, I'm looking for punctuation.

With all this in mind, maybe the music should sound more like this photograph than the last one.

March 5 Draft

2010-03-11T10:33:00.000-08:00

March 5 Draft from Joseph Peeler on Vimeo.

I broke the half way point. I'm aiming for somewhere between 24-28 minutes, and the movie is pushing 13 minutes right now. The structure feels good -- all the blocks are in place to return to Mike and Zack after the end of this clip. In fact, here's the structure so far:

Clown Prologue:

I changed the very, very beginning, and I like it. The clown now says a line over black screen that provides the tone-setter that I think we needed. Its just the beginning of the clip I'm already using, which is very convenient.

Opening Montage:

Will it get longer? Who knows. I forgot to add the musical transition from the clown to the montage, so I will fix that on the next upload.

Mule Days History:

Still intact.

Mike and Zack:

I'm trying to flesh out the introduction to Mike and Zack without slamming it home that they are our main characters. I want to walk a line between that loose, look-over-here kind of portraiture and actually directing the audience toward some important characters, and right now I think it is heading in the right direction. I just don't want it to feel too aimless. There's a bit that I dropped in about Mike's prayer and what it means, and I'm currently trying to make that clip longer and more family oriented to tie into the next clip about packing. Trying to do this was frustrating me, so here I am writing about the current draft.

Events:

I love the parade and the national anthem.

Announcer's Story:

I hope that I can blend the announcer's story with him telling us about Mule Days events. That way he's not just a narrator, but a person whose story happens to be the event we want to know about. It would be ideal to eliminate the line between narrator / person. I think it works pretty well right now, but could be better (how, though, I don't know).

He'll then bring us back to Mike via the Pack Race.

There's still the question of Tucker. Right now the most organic way to get to him is via the announcer: he mentions Tucker, says some things about him; not my ideal way to introduce anybody, but we'll see how it goes. Various rearrangements are already fluttering around in my head: it is possible that we could start Tucker's chapter after the parade, then come back to Mike and Zack via the announcer telling us about the various events.

This might be the way to go, since I have a feeling that Mike and Zack's story is going to have to end in the last minutes of the movie, since they are our biggest emotional thread. I'm half way through on the time limit, but I might already be in the third act of Mike and Zack's story. I have 2 segments in my head right now that come AFTER this draft ends: Mike and Zack's final segment, and the announcer's closing statements. Other additions include: a "Mule People"segment, various small interviews with a number of people, and Tucker. These may all come in the middle of the movie.

YouTube videos can't exceed 10 minutes, so next upload may be split in two. Keep you posted.

Tomorrow...

2010-03-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

I'll save some friendships by posting more Mule Days. Long weekend; will upload a new edit (broke the half way mark! 12+ minutes!).

Oscar Picks Part II

2010-03-03T18:59:00.000-08:00

Fresh off the road to the red carpet comes Oscar Picks Part II (now with fancy fonts!). Just a note: I tried to limit my picks to categories that I have seen the majority (3 of 5) of the films. This excludes the animated and live action short films, make up, costume design, art direction, and (surprisingly) actress in a leading role, although I feel like I've seen "Julie & Julia."

ALSO: Apologies for the annoying changes in font sizes throughout. Blogger flips out when I cut and paste things from other websites.

Anywho, here we go, folks!

Actor in a Leading Role

Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart”
George Clooney in “Up in the Air”
Colin Firth in “A Single Man”
Morgan Freeman in “Invictus”
Jeremy Renner in “The Hurt Locker”

Joe's Pick: Morgan Freeman in "Invictus"!

Sometimes we may forget how awesome Morgan Freeman is. A skim through his IMDB page makes me think that he's been phoning in performances for about a decade, and then here comes "Invictus": an intermittently good movie with two of the best performances of the year slapping us in the face. Freeman performs a great feat in this movie reserved for only the John Waynes and the Jimmy Stewarts: you forget you are watching Nelson Mandella (the character), and at the same time you forget that you are watching Morgan Freeman (the man). It is a great performance, and could have been even closer to perfect had Eastwood known how to edit a couple of ridiculous, comically unnecessary scenes from the script.

Seeing Clooney in "Up in the Air" made me realize that he's been phoning it in for a few years as well. Or at least leaning on a caricature of his acting ability a bit too much. His reserved style in "Air" reaches for the same greatness that Freeman arrives at, but doesn't shock your system with how amazing it is. Jeremy Renner was a competent lead in a solid movie, but shouldn't be on the list. I could see him acting the whole time. Colin Firth was vague unconvincing, though I think this was a problem with the director, not with the actor. He did the best he could. And Jeff Bridges, well ...

Oscar's Pick: Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart"!

From Leo McCarey to Martin Scorsese, Oscar is often a bit confused about who to give what award when. Jeff Bridges will be the next artist in the tradition of The Right Prize for the Wrong Movie. He's had it in the bag since late last year thanks to a push from internet buzz, and has already paved the way with a Golden Globe. Bridges is the by far best part about "Crazy Heart," and puts in a great performance. The same great performance that he's been putting in for years in good and bad movies alike, and finally he'll be recognized for his accomplishments. Too bad it wasn't in a better movie.

Actor in a Supporting Role

Matt Damon in “Invictus”
Woody Harrelson in “The Messenger”
Christopher Plummer in “The Last Station”
Stanley Tucci in “The Lovely Bones”
Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds”

Joe's Pick: Matt Damon in "Invictus!"

Between "Invictus" and "The Informant!", Matt Damon is doing the work of his career this year. He has completely erased any reservations I had about him as an actor. Morgan Freeman's performance may be toweringly awesome, but I actually think Damon's is better. He provides the perfect support role and is incredibly convincing; the first time he pops on screen I thought, "Oh, I get it: starring a 21 year old Matt Damon." Its hard to see him as any older throughout the entire movie. Add to this the fact that I actually like his reserved, classy style better than the Movie Star style Mr. Freeman employs, and you have a great combo. Of the five nominees, he surpasses three of them by miles. Christoph Waltz, on the other hand ...

Oscar's Pick: Christoph Waltz in "Inglorious Basterds!"

Oscar will pick Waltz, and Waltz deserves the prize. I really can't say enough good about his performance. He out-acts everyone else in the movie. He handles the drama and the comedy of Tarantino's writing in one hugely engaging performance. And he makes it look easy. In a movie that, as we've discussed, holds more formal rapture than it does emotional engagement, he lends a personal dimension to a cartoon character (complete with oversize pipe) that in carries the film in a big way.

Sound Editing

“Avatar” Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
“The Hurt Locker” Paul N.J. Ottosson
“Inglourious Basterds” Wylie Stateman
“Star Trek” Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin
“Up” Michael Silvers and Tom Myers

Joe's Pick: Paul N.J. Ottosson for "Hurt Locker!"

What the hell do I know about sound editing? Nothing, that's what. The only, and I mean the only thing I'm basing this pick on is the fact that in the middle of watching "The Hurt Locker," I said out loud under my breath, "Whew, that sounds good." That's it. That's all I'm basing this pick on. Does sound theory state that sound should be an invisible component to the film (i.e. if you don't realize you're hearing it, it's good sound editing)? Or is the accepted school more visceral and tries to grab the audience by the ears? I don't know. In the middle of the movie, I literally muttered out loud a comment on the sound. So BOOM. Winner.

Oscar's Pick: Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle for "Avatar!"

Because I bet that Oscar is going to award a lot of technical achievements to "Avatar," regardless of actual merit or quality of the individual aspects. This is just a hunch, and again, what the hell do I know?

Cinematography

“Avatar” Mauro Fiore
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” Bruno Delbonnel
“The Hurt Locker” Barry Ackroyd
“Inglourious Basterds” Robert Richardson
“The White Ribbon” Christian Berger

Joe's Pick: Christian Berger for "White Ribbon!"

This has nothing to do with my pick, but I thought I'd let you know: Ryan, my roommate / artmate / friendmate / soulmate, got to attend the American Society of Cinematographers Awards Ceremony this year. He got to attend because he and his co-cinematographer Masaki Imai won Honorable Mention in the Heritage Award category for their short film "Sounds of Silence." He talked giddily to Christian Berger in the parking lot for ten minutes about his work with Haneke. That's pretty damn cool.

You could hand "White Ribbon" to an audience member and, if they didn't know that the steadicam came into general use with Ashby and Avildsen in '76, you could tell them that it was made in '40 or '50 or '60 and they probably wouldn't think twice about it. It is weirdly timeless thanks to a number of different factors: casting plays a huge part, and so does Berger's cinematography. Berger taps into the quality of the masters -- I got the Clouzot and Bergman vibe while Ryan got the Bresson vibe -- but not in the pastiche, post-modern, ironic kind of way. He just taps into it with pure ability. There are scenes that just couldn't be shot any better way. He can literally film a closed door and make it riveting.

Oscar's Pick: Mauro Fiore for "Avatar!"

This is a tough call. Oscar might give the prize to Berger (fingers crossed!), but I'm thinking that the "Avatar" sweep starts early and fast. My second choice would be Barry Ackroyd for "Hurt Locker," since he was able to reign in the multiple-hand-held-camera style into something really concise and watchable. Usually it gives me a headache, but Ackroyd nailed it. Oscar, though, will look not at gorgeousness (Richardson for "Inglorious") or the utilitarian adherence to genre (Delbonell for "Harry Potter").

No, he'll go for a big, flashy endorsement of 3-D and its possibilities. And this will be a wasted prize. I think the camera work in "Avatar" was functional at best, which isn't necessarily as much of a dis on Fiore as it is on Cameron. Obviously the motion capture camera-stuff is amazing, but from what I understand this is more to help the computer animation than it is a tool in the cinematographers bag. It'll win not for its merits, but what it claims to be, which is a leap ahead in the world of cinema. I think its a pretty boring throwback.

More tomorrow!

Oscar Picks Part I

2010-03-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

I've never really liked watching the Oscars. They just piss me off. Even when Jon Stewart hosted, I could hardly stand to watch those who won win. Weirdly, though, this year I've been closer to the Oscars than ever. I go to the Academy theaters on a regular basis, and have watched a huge number of the nominated films. More than any year previous.

So, in honor of Emma's forthcoming Oscar's viewing party, I thought I'd do a couple of posts on my picks for winners. Then I realized that my fantasy world, in which everyone I like wins, probably will never materialize. So, ahead are two categories: Joe's Pick and Oscar's Pick. Oscar, of course, the collective personification of the Academy, and his / its picks, of course, purely a prediction. Who knows what will really happen! But, it'll be fun to see how my predictions stack up.

Bring it on!

Writing (Original Screenplay)

“The Hurt Locker” Written by Mark Boal
“Inglourious Basterds” Written by Quentin Tarantino
“The Messenger” Written by Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman
“A Serious Man” Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
“Up” Screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy

Joe's Pick: Inglourious Basterds!

I've had a contentious relationship with Quentin Tarantino's new film that I haven't quite parsed out yet. I have yet to see it twice (I know, I know -- required), and when I left the film the first time I think I said something like, "Well, I'll never watch that again." The movie has since pried around in my brain for months afterward, and my initial claim was admittedly short-sighted. It is my pick because it has the confident, exciting mark of its writer more than any of the other films, and none of them have stuck around like this one has.

"Up" does not get better than its first 15 minutes, "Serious Man" is wry and has great moments but is not The Brothers' best work, I haven't seen "The Messenger," and while I loved "Hurt Locker" for its various strengths, I still think that Basterds deserves the prize. I really can't put it any better than David Bordwell already has: "I call Inglourious Basterds mature because it exploits [Tarantino's] strengths in fresh but recognizable ways. ... So I’m not convinced that Inglourious Basterds lacks emotion. The emotions Tarantino aims for will arise not from character “identification” but from the overall structure and texture of the work. We are to be stirred, enraptured, astonished by a procession of splendors big and small. "

Oscar's Pick: Hurt Locker!

Tough, tough call, but I think Oscar will go for Mark Boal's script. And this isn't a bad thing: it is definitely my second pick for the prize. Actually, I loved the script. Save for a couple of throwaway scenes and a silly epigraph, the movie never sank into a preachy emotional explication in any way. There was no real "plot," it just kind of followed this New Guy around in various episodes of bomb dismantling. Even when you think the film is falling into a plotty kind of action movie, Boal manages to pull the rug out from under you and still bring it back to his characters. And it has a hilariously awesome / semi-poignant ending reminiscent of Kathryn Bigelow's other stand out flick, "Point Break." I'll pleased with either pick.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

“District 9” Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
“An Education” Screenplay by Nick Hornby
“In the Loop” Screenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” Screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher
“Up in the Air” Screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner

Joe's Pick: In the Loop!

What a seriously awesome satire this movie turned out to be. It was less funny than I thought it would be, but better than I thought it could be. It ended up like the best Daily Shows: funny stuffed with serious and weirdly emotional. I loved it. Can't wait to watch it again.

Oscar's Pick: Up in the Air!

I didn't like Reitman and Turner's script, but I think Oscar will. They won't win best picture or best director, but they have to give them something, so here it is. I thought that Reitman got some lovely performances out of his actors, but the script didn't have any kind of lasting goodness to it. All it did was the opposite of what you were dreading it would do, and then played that off as some kind of emotional truth: Clooney doesn't give a big emotional speech about how his outlook on life was bullshit, he just walks off stage. He runs back to his girl for the emotional reunion, but it doesn't work out. The emotional strings are hugely visible to the perceptive audience member, and I don't like that feeling. It feels false.

Visual Effects

“Avatar” Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones
“District 9” Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken
“Star Trek” Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton

Joe's Pick: Avatar!

Duh. They revolutionized the way green screen movies should be made. Rather than pasting the actors onto the 3d environment, they can see the environment in camera. The work flow is now correct. No contest.

Oscar's Pick: Avatar!

Duh. Why no nomination for "Transformers," though? They had a world record for number of individual moving layers to create their machines. Seems like a weird stiff to me.

Documentary (Short Subject)

“China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province” Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill
“The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner” Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher
“The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant” Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
“Music by Prudence” Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett
“Rabbit à la Berlin” Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra

Joe's Pick: The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner!

Seeing the Doc shorts was an interesting experience. They all feel very weighty and about 'important subjects,' save for "Rabbit a la Berlin": I loved it, but it was hilarious to watch it with bored Academy members. It is a documentary / educational film on the rise and fall of the Berlin wall from the perspective of Berlin's rabbit population. "Prudence" lost me from moment 1 with its annoyingly staged opening scene, which set the tone for the rest of a cheesy, self-important doc. I fell asleep through the aimless "Last Truck." The China documentary was very good and coherent and a good use of the format, but "Booth" was the most cohesive and engaging of the bunch. It was emotional, balanced, informative and felt like a full-length documentary with no strings, no falseness, just the observation of a single political race.

Oscar's Pick: The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner!

I just think its the most solid of any of the documentaries. Its only competition as far as accomplishment in the form is "China's Unnatural Disaster," and put side by side, "Booth" is just the better film.

More to come!