Thursday, January 31, 2008

The Pacific Northwest of Jim Hughes


Pardon my indulgence. Today's post consists of biographical notes I prepared for an exhibition of my father's photography on display throughout February at Cocopelli's Coffee & Tea at the Academy building in Vancouver, WA.

Jim Hughes had the great fortune to use his photography to share his affection of the Pacific Northwest for over forty years. The work displayed in this room can be viewed as a kind of summary and coda to much of the kind of work he did during his career with the US Forest Service and Washington State Department of Natural Resources. The sixties, seventies and eighties were decades where those agencies made it a priority to promote and display the range of natural wonders that they were responsible for. Jim’s lifelong commitment towards photographic excellence and love of the Northwest was definitely up to the task.

Mountains and forests made a huge impression when he went to Fort Lewis as a young serviceman in the late forties and inspired him with almost immediate resolve that this was a place he was going to live someday, a region that had so much contrast with his prior life experience in the California’s San Joaquin valley or Oklahoma.

After the service, while studying Journalism at Fresno State University, Jim attended a guest lecture by The Columbian’s Managing Editor, Erwin Rieger to immediately inquire about the possibility of serving on summer internship for the paper. This led to a four-year relationship with the Columbian where he helped usher in the 35mm photojournalism revolution to Vancouver’s paper and gave him the opportunity to refine his skill set as a photographer and writer.

Jim’s interest in great photography was first sparked as a boy who looked forward to the weekly delivery of Life magazine. He continued to be impressed throughout his lifetime with phenomenal photographic talent like W. Eugene Smith and others who were associated with Life’s legendary photo editor Roy Stryker. And he appreciated other greats such as Edward Steichen, Magnum’s Robert Capa and Elliott Erwitt and, of course, nature photographers of the likes of Elliot Porter, Ansel Adams and Galen Rowell.

His 25 years of work with the PNW region of the US Forest Service allowed him to photograph in all of the National Forests and most of the wilderness areas in Oregon and Washington as well as events and individuals significant to the life of the agency. His work for the Forest Service appeared in a wide range of government publications such as maps and visitor guides, but also was used in a number of major magazines throughout the world such as National Geographic and American Forests. Near his retirement in 1987, Jim’s work appeared in retrospective exhibits at the Western Forestry Center in Portland, OR and the Department of Agriculture headquarters in Washington, DC.

After his formal career, Jim continued to spend much of his time photographing the Northwest, creating an independent freelance business, Photoventure, which enabled him to visit some favorite locations and discover new ones. This exhibit samples Jim’s work from those years of drives with his wife Priscilla to the Columbia River Gorge when he had reports that balsam wood flowers were in bloom, winter trips to the Oregon coast in search of spectacular post-storm sunset or to other promising locations up until his death in 1996.

“The Pacific Northwest is a great place to be a photographer.” he once told a writer and friend of his who was preparing an article on Jim’s work for a national magazine. That enthusiasm for place coupled with his devotion to the art and craft of photography will continue to stand as the legacy of his work.
posted by well-executed buffet at 5:31 AM
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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Another American Gangster




Flamboyant seventies drug dealer Nicky Barnes is a likely topic for a documentary, but not a very likable one. Recent biopic American Gangster on Frank Lucas was maybe enough of on this topic saturating the big time Harlem players of this era.

Mr. Untouchable, coming on the coattails of the biopic of American is straight forward in its approach and topic. Old players reminisce, the soundtrack pulls Mr. Big Stuff, Superfly and other likely choices and the cops and prosecutors add their story as well. Barnes went to the big house as a young junkie, kicked his habit and connected with Italian mobsters on the inside who schooled him and set him up with product when he came out with resolve to make a whole lot of money in the drug game. And he did--"quality" product in six. The film has inter titles with quotations from Machiaveli as his rise and fall is described. Barnes' ex-wife Thelma's soundbytes are the most forthright and seemingly candid in what the life was like. The house that Barnes bought her in Jersey looks uncannily like the one the Sopranos lived in.

The pivot point for Barnes came when he was the subject of a NY Times Sunday magazine cover story as Mr. Untouchable (due to no convictions never sticking to him) looking like a swaggering CEO. That was too much for a late seventies federal government who sought prosecution. Barnes went down in a trial where the case and evidence was not tied to drug evidence as it was the fact he had been engaged in a "continued criminal enterprise."

During his life sentence, Barnes later went balistic when he lost control of his business partners and women on the outside. So he spilled testifying in a black hood leading to nearly eighty convictions The viewer is not sure if he is bragging or not when he Barnes reminisces in the shadows of his unknown witness protection location about how a portion of the Louisburg Federal Pen is known as the Nicky Barnes Wing because of all the folks who reside there due to his cooperation.

The most intriguing component on this DVD is a speaker phone interview between Nicky Barnes and Frank Lucas, now in a wheelchair, who was the subject of American Gangster. The mundane, at times fawning, discussion between these two now somewhat elder men talking contemporary Presidential politics and comparing their notes of "back in the day" is another strange example on what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. These men were directly or indirectly responsible for scores of deaths of "business associates." And provided product to the streets that helped thousands become addicted to heroin. Yet the tone of their telephone reunion seemed more like folks who had played against each other on basketball teams during one or another's championship season.

There isn't room left, at least in my consciousness, for another treatment of 70s mack Harlem drug kingpins, at least until I return to another round of Slaughter-Superfly-Shaft-Mack- Cleopatra Jones junk food from the day back. I'll take my street product cut with classic blaxploitation, thank you very much.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:51 AM
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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

One Freethinker Meets Another


In the late seventies I first encountered Peter Watkins' three hour film about Norwegian Expressionist painter Edvard Munch. One could not view this work casually. Viewing it was committing yourself to a jagged world not disimilar to the lines in his painting. "Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life." is how Munch described key elements in his life that was presented by Watkins as if a 20th century filmmaker would step back into late 19th century Norway with the techniques and equipment of the modern documentarian and classical montage editing. Unsettled images of dark blue hues of Northern skies, claustrophobic pubs and death rooms, and one feel as though they were round after round of unrequited love torturing an artistic soul linger with the viewer long after the film is over.

Twenty years later, Watkins created another film about a nineteenth century artist, August Strindberg, that was more challenging in scope and approach than the Munch film. Remarkably it was created in full collaboration with Swedish students. The five and a half hour long The Freethinker is an immersive experience with similarities into his prior excursion into the world of Munch, but also is a precursor to his most ambitious work to date, an over six hour reenactment of the Paris Commune uprising, mostly framed as if there was a modern 24 hour news network on the scene.

So you can clearly see that there is nothing conventional about subject or creator on this one. But there is such a richness to the experience here as we travel between various stages of Strindberg's life, hear and watch his works be reenacted, and watch actors talk about the lives of their characters. Social movements of 1870s Sweden are presented and explored. The viewer is asked to linger over facts, quotations and old photographs.

The most memorable of The Freethinker's performers is Lena Setterval playing Strindberg's suffering wife Siri, who Watkins reveals online essay about The Freethinker was a student of ecology at the Nordens Folk High School when he cast into this role. Setterval's expressive face and presence is reminiscent of Liv Ullman and others of Bergman's actresses.

You have to want to be challenged to sustain interest to screen Freethinker or Commune 1871. Watkins has always been an iconoclast with projects and intentions never mainstream. Detailed passionate essays fill his website where he talks about the media crisis which he defines as "the increasingly irresponsible manner in which the mass audiovisual media (MAVM) function, and to their disastrous impact on society, human affairs, and the environment."

I include his statement on Freethinker as a way to scan your interest. If you are intrigued by this, then visiting Watkins world of The Freethinker or Commune 1871 could be rewarding experiences for you. If not, I still recommend The War Game or Edvard Munch as pathways to checking out this filmmaker.

‘The Freethinker’ endeavours to show: a) how non-orthodox filmic language forms can expand our view of history, and our way of relating to people on the screen, and to each other b) that there are ways to produce audio-visual material other than according to the rigidly centralized methods used by the MAVM c) that, contrary to what we see on TV, there are potentially alternative processes for viewers as well - through which they can become individual participants instead of hierarchically dominated, passive receivers.'

Regardless, of rewards of immersing oneself in Watkins, Strindberg was not an easy person to spend time with over the past few days. He broods. He thrashes against 1870s Sweden and meddles in alchemy. His language is exceptionally violent to Siri and those closest to him as he continues the cycle from his own cruel upbringing.

So it is time to cleanse the palette. I recall the great feeling I had viewing What's Opera Doc? after completing my first time at the Ring Cycle in the early eighties. In that spirit, I present one of the Flash adventures of Strindberg and Helium. Check out the others online if you have not done so.

posted by well-executed buffet at 12:32 AM
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Monday, January 28, 2008

The Tenor Player Everyone Should Know About


He is often noted as being the sax player in the Miles Davis Quintet that was replaced by Wayne Shorter. Some folks refer to his classic solo on Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage. George Coleman is probably my favorite all-time sax player. He does the job, whatever is called for, with a distinct style and a tenor's bell full of class.

An interview in All About Jazz reveals Coleman's major influence as being Charlie Parker (as it is likely for his generation, he was born in 35) but it is also impressive to note that he was captivated by Ray Charles' work and caught his first break working for BB King. You can find Coleman on scores of blues albums, hard bop with the likes of Lee Morgan and of course, the brief Seven Steps to Heaven era with Miles. I like him as the tenor smoking compadre for Joey DeFrancesco's B3 on The Authorized Bootleg. And his solo on his Live at Yoshi's date with him on Mal Waldron's Soul Eyes is an exceptionally moving performance.

As is this wonderful YouTube clip with Ahmad Jamal where they take a classic ballad for a workout. Beware of My Foolish Heart indeed.

posted by well-executed buffet at 8:04 AM
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Sunday, January 27, 2008

No Direction Home in a Three Way Mirror


I was trudging through Peter Watkins' five and half hour multi-layered film on August Strindberg and had begun a three and a half hour compilation of John Ford's official film record of the Nuremberg trials when I decided to have a return viewing No Direction Home Martin Scorsese's biographical documentary about Bob Dylan. I guess the idea was a third monolith was needed to motivate me to complete the other two I had started, and I definitely was looking for something in contrast to Strindberg and Nazis. My first choice was to go to as far as I could: a Jerry Lewis movie, but I guess I'm not French enough. Despite cool casting of old Hollywood types (Phil Harris, Peter Lorre, Hans Conreid) I couldn't get much further than the credits of The Patsy.


I wanted to know how No Direction Home would look and feel after having had two other intense experiences with Dylan on film lately, namely Murray Lerner's excellent compilation The Other Side of the Mirror: Live at Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965 and, of course, the multifaceted revolutionary film of Todd Haynes, I'm Not There. My verdict: All three films complement each other wonderfully and signifcantly. If someone wanted to connect to what Dylan was about especially from the orgins to the motorcycle crash, they could lock into about an eight hour day of these three films.

A post-I'm Not There, Other Side of the Mirror viewing of the first half of the Scorsese film impressed me by the way it was able to take three major resources and weave them together in a way only a master filmmaker could.

The first element is the never ending tour version of a sixty something Dylan giving you his recollections first hand. If he had to be introduced by an overlay title, this Dylan could be identified as the author of Chronicle Volume I. He is full of clean, succinct, sumamries of what Hibbing and New York were like as well as providing details and intimacies of what his journey felt like from the inside.

The second component are the definitive "we were there too" interviews. Many of these were made just in time or are of quality sources of those no longer with us: Paul Nelson, Dave Van Ronk, Allen Ginsburg. Along with these folks, Scorsese gives us some of the tastiest of archival footage as he covers the story chronologically.

But it is his use of Pennebaker's footage from Eat the Document that gives No Direction Home its seasoning and its power. This documentary of the 1965 Dylan electric tour of England was often bootlegged and rarely seen. It is not familiar to us in the way that the film of the 1964 tour, Don't Look Back is. Dylan is at the extreme limits of his fame and probably physically as well. He is rubbery and jittery and the music simply explodes onstage.

So here he is as three. A man looking back at his life significantly in a rear view mirror. The Rashomon treatment from his peers and past documentation. And the mercury lightning of the man at the edge captured seen by many of us for the first time. Add one master filmmaker connecting and pulling these three threads together with good choice and impeccable taste and you get No Direction Home.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:38 PM
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Saturday, January 26, 2008

An Outsider Needs Bearings


There is a most unforgettable shot about ten minutes into Cocalero, one of last year's Sundance documentaries obstensibly about the election of Bolivia's Evo Morales, said to be the first indigenous person to be the President of that country. He seems like he is going to be late for his own rally of somewhere around 80-100,000 people. The camera dodges and weaves as he does through the edges of the crowd and you feel the excitement building. After what seems coming close to the podium. There is a cut to a wide shot showing the scope of the crowd. We look forward to seeing him speak in a public setting and CUT to Morales getting his haircut, presumably the same day. The shot is first 2.5 minutes of the below embedded YouTube clip (the entrie feature is on You Tube in ten installments-- It's up to you if you want to catch the haircut and the beginning of the film's first union meeting segment of women coca plant workers which does not feature Evo)


Cocalero is less a complete nonfiction film than a collection of some sometimes very engaging footage that is more an all-access video photo essay of this intriguing and sometimes disturbing political phenom. Bolivian politics and the politics of Evo Morales needs the Frontline approach for us northern folk. Afterwards, I felt duped like I did in college where one of my floormates asked me to the movies, only later to find out that it was sponsored by the Jesus Club or the Marxist Student Union. Watching it alone on DVD, I had no friends to counter my post-screening frustration with, so I went to the Internet and found that critics from the NY Times and Variety both noted the incomplete nature of the expereince. At one point, I said to myself, they could show me just about anything here and how am I to digest it, I who know next to damn nothing about the political, social or economic scene of Bolivia, truly a country a world a part from my world of ubiquitous strip malls.

There is one other scene I will never forget in Cocalero where native peasant women, many who don't write or read, are practicing to learn how to vote correctly. Not necessarily just how to vote for Morales, but how to mark the ballot correctly so that their vote will count. As I said, it is a world away.
posted by well-executed buffet at 12:47 AM
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Friday, January 25, 2008

John Stewart, American Original


John Stewart's California Bloodlines is as fine a singer-songwriter album that was ever produced in the era when that medium and artform was arguably as important and impressive as any other contemporaneous expression. From the mid-late sixties to the mid-seventies, a singer songwriter album had the kind of clout, mystique, and cultural power as the poet or novelist did in their day in certain eras past. If Bloodlines had been Stewart's only contribution to American music, even in times less heady, that would have been most notable.

But he came in and helped gave the Kingston Trio, one of the most meteoric-risen American institutions (four quick intense years), a second life after Dave Guard left the group in 1961. He kept the high spirits alive with Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane but also brought serious poet songster to the mix. They celebrated the New Frontier and asked where the flowers went when it was over. But then came the Beatles and referee shirts were no longer cool on most any level.

Stewart died this week and all of the obits annoyingly gave his authorship of the Monkee's Daydream Believer as the link contribution for folks to go oh, yeah that guy. Will Neil Diamond be known first for I'm a Believer. Life in death just ain't fair. But that's the way entertainment obits are. Try to name the actor who died last week who was Alice from the Brady Bunch's boyfriend. You probably can't, but water coolers and lunch rooms across this country were babbling about him all week long.

Although I have not heard it in several years, looking at the song listing for California Bloodlines has me remembering and humming every single song. In a way it has connected me for years with the the south of Fresno homeland of my father, I guess those bloodlines of my own. The people and places are unforgettable. There are is the Razorback Woman and the Pirates of Stone County Road who despite human shortfalls and depression dustbowl conditions maintain dignity and dreams. There are the roads of lonesome pickers and Ernesto Juarez and his Omaha Rainbow. There is the ultimate romantic soul who "believes in losers" and "believes in me." There are road songs of resolve. And of course, pure horniness and macho of and the one who is sometimes known as the Saint of San Joaquin, Shannon (daughter of the devil) , and the July who is woman "more than any I have known."

The lyrics of California Bloodlines stand well on their own. These songs have the genius of often risking obscurity or being lost in non sequitur by stanzas that are linked by emotion but characters who pass through the lines linked by the emotion or grand scope of the canvas he is painting. For instance consider this excerpt from "Some Lonesome Picker"

Lilly McLean, you are standing in the rain
And you are cold, you are hungry and afraid
You are waiting for a sunrise
A sunrise makes you feel so very small
Darling Lilly, aren't we all?

Oh I'm believing, believing
Believing, that even when I'm gone
Maybe some lonesome picker will
Find some healing in this song

Julie get the gun, Julie throw it in the river
Let it roll far on out to sea
Let it carry the confusion
The hatred and the worry here in me
River rolling out to sea

Oh I'm believing, believing
Believing, that even when I'm gone
Maybe some lonesome picker will
Find some healing in this song

Lily and Julie are only connected by a chorus, but somehow that seems to be enough.

And then there is Stewart at his anthemic, almost over the top best. This performance of Mother Country from California Bloodlines eight months ago might find him weak of voice but damned strong of heart. I hope you take the time to enjoy the ride of Old Campaigner Sweetheart on Parade one more time.

posted by well-executed buffet at 12:02 AM
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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Miles of Life


It must have been nearly forty years ago. One of the first albums I ever checked out of the Fort Vancouver Regional library had this kind of Playmate looking woman on the cover in a sailboat. It also had been repaired with tape and had a warm concentric set of rings circle where the album had worn into the Ektachrome based image of the cover. I remember playing it a lot of times. I liked the way the big brassy sound of it and I recall liking the way the music flowed from one song to another, but basically it was kind of like background music for comics or whatever it was I was reading. I was twelve or so.

I had listened to a lot of Miles ten years later, by the time I walked into the Caroline Berg Swan Auditorium when the screening of an old CBS television show of the Miles Ahead session was already in progress. The shots moving through rows of shining notes and swinging yet tightly controlled musicians was so inviting. Can I go back and live on that camera boom in that studio for through those incredibly perfect segues ending with the wonderful New Rhumba.

I'm not alone in my long time love affair with the first side of Miles Ahead. I knew there was a quote in Miles' Autobiography about the anti-depressive characteristics of the opening number, but don't have a copy of the book to look it up. As usual, Google to the rescue. I found a brief essay in as unlikely a location you could come up with for a Miles Davis reference: a brief essay by a fellow named Roger Aldridge in Types & Shadows: Journal of the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts. (I wonder if there is a special organization called "Friends of Miles" --sorry, I couldn't resist) Anyway, Alridge writes: "The autobiography of Miles Davis describes how Gil Evans (the great composer-arranger and best friend of Miles) once called on the phone at 3:00 AM and said, “Miles, if you’re ever depressed listen to “Springsville”,” and then hung up." Aldridge then goes on to write about the uplift he gets when ever he hears this music. I agree. It is strongly nourishing stuff that I've been fortunate to return for the past four decades. And with You Tube too we get to see and hangout on the CBS camera operators boom sweeping with music and watch Evans direct and reflect the joy of a New Rhumba.

Lastly, I think it is worth noting that the only really substantial time that Miles returned to a previous session was in the last summer of his life to collaborate with Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival recreating Miles Ahead and much of the other music he created with Gil Evans decades before.

posted by well-executed buffet at 6:07 AM
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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

When the ordinary meets evil: A History of Eastern Violent Promises


As individual works, David Cronenberg's films, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises stand as strong, multi-dimensional thrillers and melodramas with a level of depth not usually found in popular film entertainments. Those qualities are expanded almost exponentially when considered as a linked set, which I believe they will to some degree almost always be considered by critics, historians, and movie fans. This linkage will be due to having same actor and director, similar theme and tone, but also because they are just flat out very good and well-crafted films.

The themes are both universal and basic as well as compelling: We are almost all ordinary people living out our lives, but there is a dark side filled with organized machinations of badness out there as well. What happens when we step over into it accidentally? How do we change? How do we respond?

The second area these Cronenberg/Mortenson collaborations address is the one of identity and illusion, of not assuming that everyone is who they say they are. The mounds of criticism and ruminations online about these films (which these buffet bits are added to that bucket) sometimes mention that Violence and/or Promises are essentially classic-styled westerns. And I see them asking the question, How really black is that hat and how did it get that way?

I saw Eastern Promises about a week ago and quickly pulled up A History of Violence as soon as I could thereafter. I wish there were three or four more of these modern noirs ready to put in the que. One hopes that Cronenberg will continue to explore and produce more work of this kind of quality in this stage of his career with the same kind of abandon he gave to gore, exploding heads and fly ooze in his earlier years.
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:55 AM
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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

It's Hard to be a Good Pilgrim in the City


One of my heroes, Scott McCloud, did several presentations in Portland early last summer on the margins of the great Platform Animation Festival (which unfortunately, is not scheduled again until 2009.) In the fiery wake of McCloud's Making Comics tour, I am sure that there are thousands that had never picked up a 5 x 7.34" Japanese sized Manga book in their lives before with wide-eyed characters (I still find them weird), who followed up on from his most enthusiastic "how this works" breakdowns of the Scott Pilgrim comic series by Canadian Author/Artist Bryan Lee O'Malley by checking them out.

The world of Scott Pilgrim is unique. It's a post-child, but not entirely adult emotionally and socially developmental ground, a bit like Enid's from Dan Clowes' Ghostworld. And it isn't rooted in what we commonly think of as reality either. A reference is made in a Comic Book Resources interview (best I have seen with O'Malley) where the books have been described as video game realism. Evil ex-boy friends appear out of nowhere and jilted girlfriends settle scores in Ninja like comic book battles that are featured with multistoried dive gymnastics and sound effects depicted with words like SWOK and KPOK! The characters live in a service job barrista or unemployed bubble a bit like Richard Linklater's Slacker, but in a Toronto with defined seasons where dreams and the fantastic can take center stage at any given moment. O'Malley certainly has both own style and a sense for universal teen and post-teen archetypes of experience.

He also loves to play with form. His characters break down a fourth wall by referring to the book itself sometimes. His meta tags introducing or reintroducing characters and occasional asides are among the most entertaining aspects of his books. But mostly, it is a delight to see how he molds line, frame, shape and size in black and white to create his own universe.

Four Scott Pilgrim books are out currently in what O'Malley says will be a series of six. I read the first last summer and enjoyed its quirkiness, but I think the real reward of the Pilgrim books is to be found in a a bit of immersion. I returned to Pilgrim with a read through with books 1-3, and am probably going to hold off a little bit on four as an incentive to be able to read them again prior to four, because it will feel a little bit like a fond dream redux before the latest installment.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:24 AM
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Monday, January 21, 2008

JGD: Solid Wisdom on Hollywood and Film


Finally feeling like reading books again. And I picked out a gem: Regard: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne. I just finished the first section that contains several some excellent Hollywood insider tales from the front. What impresses me is that he and wife Joan Didion played the screenwriting game to keep insurance, enjoy occasional perks and luxury, o be engaged by the challenges and problems of the work which they would solve and worked on together as a team. Its evident too by his essays that they were entertained by some of the capitalist intrigue and excesses that reeks in about every level of the motion picture business. And because they understood the game and the business so well, they didn't seem to get a lot of that limburger on them very often or for very long. They worked in screenwriting, but they always knew there was more to life and work than what the movies could offer them

Here is a quick excerpt from a 1974 Atlantic article called Tinsel that basically looks like Dunne shuffled his index card notes and typed them up. But to great impact and effect. They are indeed little postcards from the front.

"Technique is easily learned. I sat through three consecutive showings of Seven Days in May at a second-run drive-in in Long Beach to count the number of sequences that made up a well-crafted movie. (As I remember, there were forty.) But most instructive of all is seeing the bad movies of good directors. Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451, Antonioni's Red Desert, Peckinpah's Major Dundee, Penn's The Chase--in each there is a moment or sequence that stands out in such bold relief from the surrounding debris as to make the reasons for its effectiveness clear."

Anyone who watches and loves movies knows exactly what he is talking about. Bazin's Cahiers youngbloods who changed cinema filled their criticism finding these kinds of moments and being very expansive about them and there is a culture of film goers and enthusiasts who spend a lot of time in that park.

In another passage Dunne talks about he dreads the annual Spring coming Academy awards and notes that the film critics of the likes of Andrew Sarris and Vincent Canby have an annual smirking ritual regarding the Oscars where they always speak of the "tacky" ceremony and the "moribund" choices. He explains:

"The Academy is essentially a trade union of some 3.000 members, a mixture of below-the-line sound men and lighting men, special-effects men an PR people, film editors an set dressers as well as above-the-line actors, directors, producers and writers, The awards are the awards of any union in any company town, a vote for jobs, and hits provide jobs, and flops don't. If the New York film critics, most of whom work for union-organized publications, opened their membership to several thousand typesetters from the Typographical Union and projectionists from ISATE and secretaries from the Newspaper Guild, I suspect that the Academy's choices would seem a lot less moribund. "

I find this an intriguing and timely observation with the industry reeling of the possibility of Oscarus Interuptus due to the writer's strike.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:51 PM
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Sunday, January 20, 2008

Coolness and Greatness: Elevator to the Gallows



I was given the Criterion DVD of Elevator for my birthday, but I had only looked at the extras, especially the featurette about Miles Davis and the creation of the soundtrack.

I saw this first when at college. I swear it was a bootleg print and group mind took over and dismissed it. I think in large order because we didn't get to hear enough Miles. Also, somehow it didn't seem "New Wave" enough and was hard to define as a Louis Malle film (whose films are pretty hard to categorize anyway)

But Wow! This holds up with the best of the coolest of French New Wave films from between when it was made in 1957 to about the time Godard hung out with the Stones and Truffaut did all his films in color. Great stuff. Intrigue, suspense, Jean Moreau! Hey I'm sounding like the trailer, which, in fact, I include here.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:38 PM
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Saturday, January 19, 2008

Graphic Novels, etc.--The Right Stimuli for Certain Conditions


This has been a rotten couple of days, Mr. Virus. I did get through a couple of movies. I couldn't manage to sit in a chair and work the computer and email or surf for very long. Conventional reading didn't really work very well. So I decided to plow through a stack of graphic novels and quality comics I had around the house. Most were scratch and dents I bought practically by the bag from Portland's Oni Press at last fall's Stumptown fest. Anyway it was a good choice. I could fall asleep after a couple of pages and find my book a half hour later quite easily.

What resulted were four or five very pleasant encounters of books diverse in topic and style. I remember my Dad going up to the store and getting comics for my brother and I when we were sick. I guess some old standbys: herb teas, fruit juice, saltines, broth, chicken soup, movies on the couch and comics (oops graphic novels) are about the best solutions out there when the bugs arrive.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:57 PM
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Friday, January 18, 2008

Notes on DVD Nodding from the Futon


Dratted virus. I hope this thing passes soon. Dr. Faustus and Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo are basically fever dream movies which don't do well with real fevers, I have concluded. Not good choices.

My sometimes habit of nodding cinematic intake is exacerbated when I am not well, i.e., I will fall out, chapter back and fall out again. Documentaries work better because there isn't usually an obvious arc and spoilers when you resume consciousness.

Therefore, I worked my way through two solid nonfiction features during this infirmity so far.

The Ritchie Boys is a swell little film that gives us well documented view of an otherwise not widely known aspect of WWII, such as Watermarks, Paragraph 154, or Fire on the Mountain did. In this case its the story of early war refugees, most of them Jewish who were inducted or joined the Army and were assigned roles primarily as POW interrogators and were trained at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. The passion and intelligence of these men recollecting on their experiences is unforgettable. Two gentlemen in particular, Guy Stern and Fred Howard are exceptionally intriguing as they tell of coercing German soldiers to give information by threatening to send them back to Russia. Stern would come in as a Russian General and this would terrify soldiers to submission. (So why do we waterboard?) Howard also tells an exceptionally moving tale of bringing Marlene Dietrich to visit German POWs. And...well, I can't spoil the last anecdote they have to share, but let me say, it is worth the duration of the film alone, but mostly it should be watched because you will feel richer for spending time with these men in their twilight telling their amazing stories from a perspective unique and extraordinary.

The Outsider both documents the work and life of Independent director James Toback and the 12 day shoot of a film called When Will I Be Loved I've been intrigued with the encounters I have had with Toback's films in the past, notably, Two Guys and a Girl and Black and White, but I can't say I've love or admired his work. He is a helluva character -- he has as an extreme a personality as many of his protagonists have: hedonist, compulsive about many things, notably gambling. There is an interesting, if not intentional structure that happens in this film, the first 2/3 seems to canonize Toback, even with his warts, but the last three interview sections put him into a kind of perspective. Ron Rotholz, his producer seems to be the only person who can tell Toback why his films are not and probably not ever be commercial. Norman Mailer, Toback's great artistic hero, is wonderfully curmudgeonly in his segment. But the closing dual interview with Toback and Harvey Keitel (in dark glasses) is great stuff indeed. In the seventies and early eighties, it seemed like directors (in films like Bad Timing and Toback's Exposed) was brought in to close up the movie bringing new energy to the film like a relief pitcher in a clutch series game. That is what happens here. He is blunt, honest, with at least all of the intensity he brings to his acting.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:30 PM
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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Fever and Faustus: Ich bin krank



It truly is a ying and yang universe. Tuesday night--perfect night out. Weds and Thurs. nasty viral entity comes to call: fever, aches and all of that.

Futon time with a movie on the nod. I somehow found a film that is pretty much one big cheesy lap-dissolve fever dream. Richard Burton's vanity production of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. In early scenes he is wearing these Harry Potter glasses and lots of his monologue is given to skulls and the likes of flesh with maggots. This probably wasn't the best choice of vid for a sick day.

Still, I have a soft place in my heart for the histrionics of Burton, O'Toole, and Richard Harris. I guess it is a late boomer thing, in fifth-eighth grade or so, their hijinks and UK high-toniness seemed exotic and erudite. And I will always take MacArthur Park over American Pie or even Hey Jude as my favorite long running 45 single.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:55 PM
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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Perfect Evening Out


It was a perfect evening out.

It was a perfect night out.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:30 PM
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Kevin Kelly as Non-fiction Film and
Internet Publishing Advocate



True Films 3.0 is a spirited contribution to the Internet and to the promotion of non-fiction film. He is offering the book up for free via the Net as an implementation of the new Ads for PDF revenue model that just might be what helps revolutionize the distribution of the online book.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:32 AM
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Monday, January 14, 2008

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings


I have resisted her charms, but no more. I am glad she is out there to keep the funk and soul alive. This clip is exceptionally cool and gives a sense of what it would be like to see a full set of great energy from Sharon and one tight-ass band with razor-sharp chops and charts. Long live the funk.

posted by well-executed buffet at 11:55 PM
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Sunday, January 13, 2008

Bay of Angels


Poor Jean Fournier. His first adventure as a man on is with a seasoned yet beautiful divorcee and hardened compulsive gambler. 1962 film Bay of Angels works because of its simplicity. It is the coming of age story meets social disease drama kind of like The Graduate plus Days of Wine and Roses.

But director Jacques Demy does not make judgements on the morality of Jean and Jackie. They win. They lose it all. Win and lose again. Jackie's passion and obsession for gambling is all consuming. Jean is over his head and then some.

Jean Moreau is a wonder. She has transormational powers shifting from alluring and seductive to world weary haggard in seconds.

Early sequences focus on the mechanics of gambling. The issuance of cards, changing of chips and roll of the roulette wheel. Demy establishes a kind of sterility with these creating a kind of foundational world that the characters are churned among. No real subplots are established except in passing dialog. What matters are these characters and their circumstance.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:55 PM
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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Stormy Weather


Buffet goes to a reality show special this week. It is called Freak Storm and stars my mother and my homeboy boyhood home. Our backyard had a lot of transitions in my lifetime, mainly grass, big garden, mainly trees with landscaped stops, trees that got too big and then most of those cut down. Thursday it turned into a sea of branches as a strange little tornado came off Vancouver Lake then traveled a couple miles in a half mile wide zone in the area where I used to ride my bike a lot when I was a kid.

My mother survived the 1972 storm where she taught in the elementary storm and then this second tornado that rummaged through her yard. Coincidence and odds, anyone?

See www.pamrentz.com for a good overview of the storm and La Casa Priscilla.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:33 PM
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Friday, January 11, 2008

Manosexuality: A Preview Before the Mainstream


I am awaiting to read more in the popular press about Manosexaulity. It is neither gay or straight. It doesn't go for Republicans or Goths. They appreciate punk rock while wearing button down shirts. And can enjoy plays and really bad movies but only if they have attractive people to look at in them. They can get into sports but when it gets too repetitive, especially in bars that used to be smoky and now have a mote of smokers in front of them. Manosexuals, regardless of sexual preference in their most intimate lives think Japanese stuff and/or Riot Grrrls are pretty cool.

Manosexuality is only now making headroads into the academic community. And since Douglas Coupland or Jay Mcinhenerny have not exposed them yet to the general public, one could say they don't yet exist but their predecessors have been in just about every hipster comedy, but not their sequels.

They tend to analyze ads and not buy. They can be tempted by some cool packaging. But some are not likely to buy Smokey Robinson freezer projects because they saw the box with the really bad separation and balance on the first press run. They will be loyal to food types more than packaging and prefer pears over apples, but enjoy both.

They tend to try to support all of the phases of their favorite artists, recording or otherwise, but exceptions are inevitable, such as in the case of the Bob Dylan Jesus period. Music should be as important as any of the other basic affairs or needs of men.

Their politics are almost always right to them. They believe their arguments contain Lincoln log logic. They find solace in trivia and comparisons but they know too much of that will make them go blind.

They like immersive experiences in public spaces, but only for 56 hours maximum if there are no flush toilets and real showers available.

The only etymology on the prefix available is that it comes from Man Oh! which almost caught on as a beatnik slogan, but only the ones breeded by Geeno in The Wild One portrayed by Lee Marvin or Gilligan as Maynard G. Krebs.

You might even know a Manosexual. You can greet him with "Man Oh!" but the genetic decoder ringtone for that expired sometime ago. The reaction you will get will be more like mmmm coming out of the side of his or her mouth. But if there is enough coming out or outed, don't be surprised to hear them replying back with "Man Oh to you"
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:36 PM
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Thursday, January 10, 2008

Gogol Power


Gogol Bordello's performance on Henry Rollins' IFC show was the first time in a very long time where my jaw dropped while watching a band perform on television. It is also kind of cool not to have picked up on to this one too early on because now, thanks to emusic, I have several hours of gypsy punk to work through.

It kind of reminds me of the excitement of listening to the first side of Sandinista! by the Clash for the first time and realizing I had five more to go.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:10 AM
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Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Klimt Confusion



Chilean French expatriate director Raul Ruiz's film of Gustav Klimt is an odd and kaleidoscopic roller coaster ride with a center that does not hold long enough for the viewer to get any bearings at all.

John Malkovich is always interesting to watch when he gets a chance to play a tweaked out obsessive, but he seems lost in his frock coat with self absored dialog floating through series of soundstages and with time jumps throughout what appears to be the last ten years or so of Klimts life, but we can't be too sure.

I have learned to not dismiss out of hand as being bad if my dislike for something is strong at first taste. It took me multiple screenings to realize that Mean Streets was an artistic accomplishment of high order. Many musical artists I now revere and respect were not immediately appreciated. So when I read in Ruiz's imdb biography about his output of nearly 90 films where he described as "a poet of fantastic images whose films slip effortlessly from reality to imagination and back again. A manipulator of wild, intellectual games in which the rules are forever changing, Ruiz's techniques are as varied as film itself--a collection of odd Wellesian angles and close-ups, bewildering p.o.v. shots, dazzling colors, and labyrinthine narratives which weave and dodge the viewer's grasp with every shot." Additionally, the brief bio states that "Like Godard (whom Ruiz names as an early influence and who also owes a debt to B films), Ruiz makes no differentiation between the "high art" of Racine or Calderon and the "low art" of Roger Corman."

Yes, this sounds like someone I should be open to invesigating further. It makes sense how someone of John Malkovich's status would become attached with this project. At this point, very few of Ruiz's films are readily available. He sounds like a filmmaker that needs to be approached from an immersive perspective like Godard or Fassbinder. Hopefully someday he will be an Eclipse box set or will get the kind of comprehensive treatment that Kino gives Krzysztof Kieslowski or Wong Kar Wai.

I sure was dazzled with the brief clip from Ruiz's version of Proust I posted here on the bufffet last month and there are some images and sequences in Klimt that attracted my attention such as the fantastic scene where Klimt goes to Georges Melies' studio in hot pursuit of Lea de Castro and she is created as a shadow on the wall by Melies, (I'd like to know more about the real life Klimt/Melies connection) but I doubt I'll try a second round screening of Klimt until I have opportunity to try out other Ruiz works someday. When that will be, it is hard to say. There are lots of good B movies and other works that promise to entertain that are likely to attract my attention prior.
posted by well-executed buffet at 3:34 AM
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Tuesday, January 8, 2008

A Couple of Jamdom Notes



Jammuary If your are a subscriber of a cable service that has digital on demand cable service and you love music, I strongly recommend concert.tv's Jammuary set of shows offered this month. They are featuring 13 different programs ranging from potpourri specials of several bands at a festival or jam cruise as well as solid thirty minutes or better sections of live footage of Phish, Phil and Friends, Gov't. Mule, String Cheese Incident and lots of others.

I have listened to a lot of jam music in the last eight years or so. It is a hard thing to explain to an outsider. It isn't necessarily jazz or funk or country rock or bluegrass, but certain artists in those genres are definitely jam oriented. Improvisation is a key, but also so is a certain attitude. The Grateful Dead certainly laid down the kind of ethos that sometimes in spirit, sometimes in form, sometimes in essence, many of these bands follow Sets are often freer and change up regularly. The concert.tv offering is really vast and worth the attention of the viewer/listener wanting to explore. I have discovered some new bands I want to check out further and have returned to some old friends.

And Jam (as in traffic)Listening to the KMHD Jazz station traffic report on the way to work that comes on right after NPR news. "There is a severe slowing in Vancouver on 78th from Anderson Road to the freeway." What the heck! This is the Vancouver/Hazel Dell neighborhood I grew up in. There used to be a prune dryer near this interchange. My bus stop was near the top of this hill. 78th could be a busy street, but there was never enough folks or subdivisions in that area to create a traffic slowdown to the freeway! It was the kind of moment of personal profundity that makes one realize how long they have been on the planet and how things around them have changed.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:42 PM
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Monday, January 7, 2008

Of Film and Phones: David Lynch Speaks


You gotta love the Lynchman I found this on the Hacking Netflix website and felt it needed to be mirrored here. Not sure if the IPhone slide at the end was laid on the end by the Youtube poster or where the heck it came from. Language Advisory.
posted by well-executed buffet at 2:43 PM
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Sunday, January 6, 2008

A Visual Editorial


I have been looking at all of the bits raining and raging regarding today's Sunday paper. If a picture is indeed worth 1000 words, then I offer this commentary of the media world circa centuries 20 (mid to late) and 21 (quite early and maybe too late.)















posted by well-executed buffet at 9:05 PM
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Saturday, January 5, 2008

Gloria's Step


The first tune that made me sit up and listen closer working my way through Bill Evans' The Complete Fantasy Recordings was bassist Scott LaFaro's lovely composition Gloria's Step. It is less a complete song than collection of musical figures followed by a sweet chord progression that, for me, at least, evoke a recollective memory-like emotion.

This YouTube clip is very close to the performance I heard on the Complete Fantasy Recordings, which was originally released Bill Evans Live in Tokyo. It features Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morrell, a drummer that one of the You Tube commentators said resembles Nacho Libre.



The lovely puzzle of Gloria's Step had me checking out the famous June 25, 1961 concerts with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian at the Vilage Vanguard. I now am beginning to understand why Jazz fans and critics praise this trio and this concert with such a high level There is really something quite significant going on with what these three musicians. As Luc Bouquet states on the Jazz Break website: "What a wonderful articulation, trust in the other, unreal alchemy ! Who is leading here ? Evans, LaFaro or Motian ? Nobody, would we be tempted to answer, as the autonomy of each musician reinforces the cohesion of the trio."

My first close listen to Motian's playing was very relevatory. As I told a friend and drummer, it feels like he creates a natural current like a river. And I can hear where LaFaro has an amazing voice creating dialog and counter-dialog with the other two musicians. LaFaro's performance on the Vanguard recordings is also often noted and legendary because it was among his very last. He was killed in an automobile crash 10 days later.

Nils Jacobson commented in his All About Jazz review of the complete 3CD set of The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961: "Pieces like LaFaro's “Gloria's Step,” with its bluesy twist and saunter, are really worth hearing three times. Likewise with the two versions of “Waltz for Debby,” with its combination of classical romanticism and vivid swing." His statement reinforced my thought that the Gloria and Debby (always listed as Evans' greatest contribution compositionally) are kind of musical cousins related from the same musical stew that makes the Vanguard recordings a kind of holy grail for piano trio jazz of the latter 20th century. Both are delicate compositions that urge the listener to explore musically, but also to stop and check out how they feel about these captured moments of light, sound, and eloquence.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:53 AM
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Friday, January 4, 2008

Minard's Map




Edward Tufte made this famous in the modern world. I still like hanging out with it, as I did today and felt one more source on the Internet for it is probably a public service. Be sure to click on it for a larger version and check out Tufte's brief and brilliant lecture/explanation on it so you can have some ah-hah moments with this one, especially if you have never seen it before.


"Charles Joseph Minard (1781-1870), the French engineer, which shows the terrible fate of Napoleon's army in Russia. Described by E. J. Marey as seeming to defy the pen of the historian by its brutal eloquence, this combination of data map and time-series, drawn in 1861, portrays the devastating losses suffered in Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812. Beginning at the left on the Polish-Russian border near the Niemen River, the thick band shows the size of the army (422,000 men) as it invaded Rus sia in June 1812. The width of the band indicates the size of the army at each place on the map. In September, the army reached Moscow, which was by then sacked and deserted, with 100,000 men. The path of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow is depicted by the darker, lower band, which is linked to a temperature scale and dates at the bottom of the chart. It was a bitterly cold winter, and many froze on the march out of Russia. As the graphic shows, the crossing of the Berezina River was a disaster, and the army finally struggled back into Poland with only 10,000 men remaining. Also shown are the movements of auxiliary troops, as they sought to protect the rear and the flank of the advancing army. Minard's graphic tells a rich coherent storv with its multivariate data, far more enlightening than just a single number bouncing along over time. Six variables are plotted: the size of the army, its location on a two-dimensional surface, direction of the army's movement, and temperature on various dates during the retreat from Moscow.

"It may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn."
Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:06 PM
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Thursday, January 3, 2008

The Kingdom: Worth an E Ticket


My wife says my taste in films consists of "weird old foreign stuff with like, one guy in a room playing the accordion while a monkey tap dances." (Well there is the dancing chicken at the end of Herzog's Stroszek, so she might have a bit of a point there.) Well, regardless, I can still dig a good movie. And I trust my instincts and try to get something in the Netflix queue like Shooter or go to the theater when the likes of American Gangster hits the streets.

The Kingdom surprised me. It covered a lot of ground: FBI procedural, A Fantastic Four (Black guy with attitude, smartass, old guy and babe) in a strange land, Three Kings style political thriller, cop buddy movie with a twist (black guy with attitude bonds with Arab cop), and a Three Kings lite story ripped from the nearby vicinity of today's headlines.

Actor/Director Peter Berg was given the keys to Michael Mann's SUV here and he takes us on a helluva spin. There are three or four major action sequences that most action adventure films would be happy to score. The characters are easily recognizable by type, but you end up having some involvement because stuff is really moving and the "this isn't Chinatown anymore, Jake" factor is so expanded so exponentially as these FBI agents try to do their thing in The Kingdom of Saud, recreated impressively in the Arizona desert.

Jamie Foxx makes for a good lead. Chris Cooper as the veteran agent is always great to watch, but the surprise was seeing Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner again together in a movie (do they have the same agent?) after catching Juno last week. I could be sucked into another movie with those two, even something cheesy like a remake of The Thin Man. (I'm telling y'all it isn't really all about the monkey and the accordion)

I had the extras on for wallpaper and was impressed to find out that Berg is using the same three camera technique for coverage that Steve Buscemi borrowed from Theo Van Gogh for Interview. Although there wasn't an extreme use of super washed out exposures to give that hot desert feel, hand held doesn't need to mean a bunch of jiggle. Yet, there was an immediacy to the action and feel of this film that was likely the yield of this three camera setup technique.

The Kingdom won't change your life or politics, but I think it deserved better than the critics and public gave it. I'm thinking there are lots of folks who are going to feel that way when they get to see the DVD and some amazingly tense and well executed work here. Rocket launchers in street gunfights! You don't see that everyday. My reaction was to try to see if we had any popcorn in the cupboard.

This trailer gives you a little bit of taste of heat and grit and fireballs that will await you in The Kingdom.
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:50 PM
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Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Need'n the Funk in Jammuary! Part One


Exhibit One: Sly kickin' it last Summer



Are a few minutes with a legend worth it? This clip from last Summer is definitely the Bomb! The rest of the video clips fof Sly Stone at the North Sea are a little more ragged affair, closer to the NY Times report of a gig he did last month where things never really came together. But thanks to the magic of YouTube, we can dream of what a full fledged Sly and the Family Stone show might someday be.

Exhibit Two: Plunky!



My favorite album of the moment. J. Plunky Branch and the Oneness are one of those regional treasures (Virginia, land of the great Chuck Brown and you can hear the go-go go) the rest of the country never hears about. His show here begins with African rhythms, and move it into a journey to jazz, and jazz and funk. He is one heckuva sax player with one fine wide-ranging performer. Internet gleanings show him to be a Richmond, Virginia based performer and music educator with his own label and a dozen releases. High Sierra! I would return to your mostly raggedy sameness if you would bring the likes of Plunky in to rewire the old jambanders!

A Plunky & Oneness Of Juju: Live In Parishas been a great emusic find for me with the exception of the keyboard funk of "Jungle Luv" which has me finding my track forward button, but hey, lots of great bands (George Clinton, Grateful Dead, String Cheese Incident, Allmans) never bat 1000 and there is always an opportunity for a bathroom break.

Stay tuned. I have a feeling radio WEFUNK is going to be coming to the buffet from time to time this winter. Are you ready for StarChild?
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:19 PM
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Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Raymond Bernard's Le Miserables


Raymond Bernard's 1934 Les Miserables seems more sophisticated and is more clearly an individual's artistic vision than what was, in general, happening contemporaneously in Hollywood. It is a big film, close to five hours long in three parts.

Bernard's camera often looks at the world of Valjean, Javert and company through a slightly skewed angle that is considered more common with the German expressionists. There is such a high degree of craft in Bernard's filmmaking it makes me wonder why he has not received more notoriety among international film buffs. Bernard impresses me as someone not afraid to be a bit experimental to get his point across. For instance there is the night carriage retreat of Valjean. Spotlights shine out into the void on at point of view of the driver. Day for night was not yet possible the motion and intensity here draw the viewer in much more effectively than much of the standard use of dark filters.

Bernard had been making films beginning in the mid-silent prior for 15 years prior to his version of Les Miserables. And his sense of craft is so apparent that parts of it feel, if not timeless, much more contemporary than a film made 74 years ago. A great variety in choices of angle, perspective, and tone. The first and third parts each have a distinct kind of tone and feeling to them. For instance, the fist half hour of part three feels like a 1832 version of Battle of Algiers. The focus is on barricade making and revolt preparations with a sense of detail and purpose. Music is not heard on the soundtrack until a very impressive shot of a model of Paris just before shots are fired.

If there is a low point in this film, it is a good part of the second part that involves the actions of the Thénardiers, the inn keeper folks who were Cosette's caretakers and later try their hand at larceny of the primary characters later on. The closed interior sets and staginess of this section contrasts greatly to the exteriors of Valjean's flight in part one and the concentration of the uprising in part three. Bernard seems restricted when the emphasis is on dialog and mise en scene. He is a dynamic director.

Harry Baur (as Valjean and other numerous aliases the character takes on) certainly is a large presence on the screen. Like Depardieu and Noiret later in French cinematic history, there is physical girth combined with a likability the gives this actor a true screen charisma. This version of Les Miserables is my introduction to him and I hope to see more of his eighty films in the future. He died as the result of Gestapo interrogation in 1943. This is a shame, he seems to me the kind of actor who would be very effective in the roles of patriarchs and strong-willed elders.

Wikipedia lists 45 film versions of Les Miserables. That means on average, there was some kind of Les Miserables release almost every two years since film became a popular medium. I don't have facility to venture why this is except perhaps to guess it is because it addresses its tale from both the perspective of personal story and epic struggle, two essential elements in drama that film can address and deliver well.

Praises again to the Criterion/Eclipse collections. I appreciate them introducing me to Bernard. I thoroughly enjoyed the Late Ozu collection and will be working my way through the Malle Documentaries in the next week or so.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:41 PM
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