Tuesday, September 30, 2008
True Soul That Lives On: Bloodstone's Natural High
Bloodstone's Natural High is one of the greatest soul singles ever. It was released in 1974 and reached the top ten. Like Al Green's Let's Stay Together,it is one of the few songs that has the immediate ability to stop time and put the listener into a zone somewhere between sensitivity and sensuality. And as we see here it is a song that continues to have a multipurposed life well beyond its initial release.
It was put to exquisite use in Quentin's Jackie Brown during the first encounter between Robert Forrester as Max Cherry and Pam Grier at the end of a really bad day.
And somebody caught Joan Osborne laying down the tune in an in store appearance. Sure the camera work is shaky and the setting a bit strange. But even under these conditions a song of the soul gods by a goddess is something to take pause with
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:31 AM
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Monday, September 29, 2008
The Documentary about Mia Zapata and The Gits
Kerri O' Kane's nonfiction film The Gits will, over time, likely prove itself to be one of the most important source materials about this rock band and the tragic fate of its lead singer, Mia Zapata as well as the rock renaissance era period of Seattle in the late eighties and early nineties. I came away from viewing the DVD with impressions on three major factors of this story; a sense the artistic legacy of the band and its frontwoman, the impact of a tragedy, and a portrait of a community and a time unique to itself, even in regards to the scene that received such international attention.
As for the art and rock of The Gits, this was news to me. The film delivers huge chunks of their music during the first half of the film, in particular. The best footage was sourced from Doug Pray's film Hype! but the basement or Comet Tavern VHS camcorder stuff holds quite a powerful punch as well. And this is mainly because of Mia Zapata. This woman could really sing. Several of the talking head interviews in the film talk about her ability to deliver the blues, especially in her formidable college days at Antioch before coming to Seattle with her bandmates. One commentator succinctly described Mia as infusing soul into punk. As my father used to say "You don't go away humming it" but this film does a fine job of introducing the viewer into what the intensity and presence of this band were all about with an emphasis of artistic relationship between guitarist Andy Kessler and Zapata.
The film has a greater job to do than simply celebrate this band's art and energy. It also needed to recount the tragic murder of Mia Zapata in July 1993 and its aftermath. The Gits were on the verge of national recognition and fame when this occurred. Filmmaker O'Kane includes police and prosecutors as well as the band and the Seattle rock community as the film explores the twelve years between murder and conviction. The murder, thought at first to be at the hand of an acquaintance of Zapata's turned out to be the result of an encounter with Jesus Mezquia, a predatory racist who was arrested in Florida through a DNA database match.
Ultimately, what impressed me most about the story of the Gits in this film was the story of the community and times that surrounded it. The band lived in a big timbered frame brown house known as The Rat House, on 19th and Denny Way. This location was ground zero to a punked out scene during the grunge rock years of Seattle central to The Gits but also to 7 Year Bitch, DC Beggars and other bands. The film's account of these years shows a group of folks living full with an uncompromising sense of possibility and zest that mostly ended with Zapata's murder. But it also shows how that community pulled together after her death with benefit concerts by Stig Evil (Gits Live spelled backwards) with Joan Jett to raise 50k for a private investigator and formed Home Alive, an educational advocacy group for women's safety that still exists.
One of the fascinating things about rock 'n roll is that it is both transitory in the moment and, at its best, begets (in this case, maybe begits?--sorry) a legacy when the moment is done. Recording and recounting that moment and providing the story for The Gits of the future ultimately is the mission for nonfiction films like this one. And in this case its mission was completed and accomplished quite successfully.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:56 PM
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Sunday, September 28, 2008
Alex Cox and Searchers 2.0 at the Cinema 21: 9.28.08
It came up quick on the calendar, but I didn't hesitate too long to have an opportunity to see Alex Cox, director of RepoMan and Sid and Nancy, screen a film and talk about it. He had a similar presentation at the Hollywood Theatre back in 2002 where he screened Three Businessmen and Straight to Hell that I very much enjoyed.
The Cinema 21 event was billed as a screening of The Searchers 2.0 I found this prospect fascinating because Cox, along with being an iconoclastic and radical filmmaker, is an ebullient scholar of all things cinema. I actually followed up on some references he made about Italian westerns at his 2002 appearance. I watched the John Ford Searchers dutifully beforehand so I would be able to truly appreciate nuances in this recent Cox project.
Searchers 2.0, however, turned out to be a very talky film about two former child actors how coincidentally meet each other and decide to travel to Monument Valley for a screening of a film they were both in as kids. But their trip is not nostalgic, they plan perform some kind of physical revenge on the film's screen writer who had abused them both. A daughter of one of the actors comes along as well and basically suffers and often joins their lengthy diatribes about film, politics, and the worth of their lives. It was filmed in December 2006 as a HD low buget microfeature with funding from a well known maestro of low budget features, Roger Corman and was, I believe, shown on the BBC.
This film has some fun moments and the acting by Del Zamora, who in real life supplements his acting addiction with doing day labor work as a pool laborer outside Home Depot (just as in his introductory scene in the film) is very interesting and solid. Yet it didn't connect with me in any kind of overwhelming fashion. And it seemed too far a reach for African American actor and Cox ensemble regular Sy Richardson to be Fritz Frobisher, the screenwriter that was at the object of these characters' obsession and quest: He was too young and too improbable to end up as this character. And by the time their showdown, which consisted of a trivia contest about spaghetti westerns, in the Valley of the Gods, I had kind of given up on Searchers 2.0 altogether.
Still, it was great to see Cox in person again. He seems to have boundless energy and really lights up a room. He most graciously accepted a DVD of a horror film a young filmmaker had made and was glad to talk to everyone who wanted his time despite the growing line outside for the 5pm Cinema 21 event, which was a local documentary on running marathons. Cox has a house on the Oregon coast, and I hope he continues to come in to the city from time to time to make himself available to fans and folks interested in his work.
It was also a chance to pick up his new book X Films: (as in roman numeral for 10)True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker which containsvery thorough essays about the making of ten of his films, but also some interesting views about the current opportunities that the digital age has for filmmakers and artists of all kinds. In his introductory and closing essays he refers to Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazzar, a bible of the Linux and open source movements. He addresses young filmmakers and tells them they have two choices. Either to be "a vocational filmmaker, affronted by Hollywood caring little about money or rewards, determined to tell your own tale." Or a hacker, "brave and curious, and not afraid of acquiring, applying and sharing information."
At another point he adds:
"In the case of the feature film, the battle for an independent personal art form is already won (thanks to the mini DV tape and the DVD), lost (thanks to the studios and their admirers) and irrelevant, anyway. Irrelevant, because the feature was the original art form of the twentieth century. It can't be the original art form of the twenty-first as well."
"In the case of the feature film, the battle for an independent personal art form is already won (thanks to the mini DV tape and the DVD), lost (thanks to the studios and their admirers) and irrelevant, anyway. Irrelevant, because the feature was the original art form of the twentieth century. It can't be the original art form of the twenty-first as well."
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:55 PM
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Saturday, September 27, 2008
The Anderson Tapes: A film to watch about being watched
I know my personal fantasies are different than those of other folk. I have a daydream where I would host a Q and A event with Sidney Lumet and do an on stage interview (ala Elvis Mitchell) immediately following a screening of The Anderson Tapes.
The choice of Lumet as my guest is pretty obvious. I think he is probably the most accomplished filmmaker currently alive. But The Anderson Tapes? I saw it when it came out in 1971 and it was a compelling experience for a 14 year old. Sean Connery was in it, but not as James Bond. Dyan Cannon was a sexy uninhibited hooker sort of straight out of Playboy magazine. It was a pretty fast moving heist movie with lots of adult stuff. But there was also this whole dimension of the film where all of the action was picked up by ubiquitous surveillance cameras and recorders. This surveillance served as kind of character in the film, several years before Coppola's The Conversationrecording all aspects of Connery and his crew as they plan and execute a complete robbery of the Central Park building that Cannon lives in.
I always wanted to see this film again, but never came accross it on revival, television, cable or VHS. So it was exciting to see it was finally released on DVD recently. It holds up pretty well with the exception of a stereotypical performance of Martin Balsam as a gay interior decorator. He doesn't come off as egregious Mickey Rooney playing an Asian in Breakfast at Tiffany's, but it does show Celluloid Closet style how it took Hollywood a while to mature in this area.
Another great surprise in looking back on The Anderson Tapes is the first appearance of Christopher Walken in a feature film. He plays The Kid, sometimes challenging Connery with some of the topical views of the sixties and seventies, but still remaining very much a part of the heist.
The last half hour of the film is the best. Out of the blue, Lumet uses flash forward interviews with the heist victims and intercuts them with the real time action. There is also a kind of shift to a documentary-like feel that we saw in Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico later in the seventies. Garret Morris leads a kind of SWAT team into the building without the Quincy Jones soundtrack music that is so effective in much of the rest of the film.
Its a shame this film has not had the opportunity to grow an audience over the years. It has a pace and energy that is kind of unique and the surveillance component gives it another interesting level as well. I see that there is a remake production due out in 2010. The thought of that makes me shudder slightly.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:59 AM
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Friday, September 26, 2008
Chuck, Clark, and Choke
Clark Gregg is a hard working actor who has admirably screen adapted and directed a version of cult novelist Chuck Palahniuk's book Choke. I can't recall another film with the exception of Gus Van Sant's Even Cowgirls get the Blues that had such an unblinking kind of seventies film feel to it without actually being made in the seventies.
I felt like I was at a screening of A Boy and His Dog or Where's Papa? or Harold and Maude back when the Fifth Avenue teamed up with KGON 92.3 for 92 cent movies at movie. (And, yes you would get eight cents back as change) This film doesn't blink. Nor wink at the audience. It takes you on a ride through all kinds of over the top dysfunction and perversity in a very matter of fact way. We left the theater not necessarily really liking what we experienced and not hating it. But noting that this was quite a ride for 90 minutes.
Sam Rockwell plays Victor Mancini, a restaurant food choking scam artist, sex addict, and historical reenactment worker with abandonment issues from his childhood. His mother Ida (Anjelica Huston) is in an extended care facility unable to recognize Victor when he comes to visit. The mother and son issue is central to the film, but it is filled with all kinds of sidebars and subplots that create its own kind of unique universe. Rockwell comes off as a little Dana Carvey muggy for my tastes, but that didn't distract the carnival sideshow or regularly scheduled group step therapy sessions led by Joel Grey and attended by a wide array of colorful folks with issues.
To messily paraphrase Hunter Thompson: In Choke, the going gets weird but Chuck, Clark and company turn it out as pros.
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:27 AM
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Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sing Out Spinster
Young @ Heart is a nonfiction film that follows seven weeks in the life of the Young @ Heart Chorus, a group of folks in their seventies and eighties who sing covers of multiple genres of popular song including hard, classic, and punk rock. They are a hard scrabble group of New Hampshirites, folks with a love for performance and a zest for life. But they are also not an atypical cross-section of folks who suffer the same concerns of heart and physical attrition that any group of seniors would have.
It all felt like novelty to me at first. Filmmaker Stephen Walker wisely uses a seven week preparation arc as the structure for the documentary. The viewer only gets glimpses of how good these folks are in performance during the rehearsals. It is an hour into the film until there is any concert footage of Young @ Heart with the exception of the opening, a comic turn of the Clash's Do I Stay or Do I Go. At an hour of interviews with various chorus members not only are you impressed by the performance but you are fully emotionally invested in these people and what the chorus means to them.
Director Walker presents a well-crafted but not necessarily artistically creative document here. The standard filmmaker as narrator voice over is a little off-putting at first. It reminded me of a BBC film on a political topic or those sensational documentary by Nick Broomfield. But ultimately, narration, off camera Q & A, and multiple cameras during rehearsals and performances is an approach that works well in transforming seven weeks of concert preparation into a non-fiction narrative.
Bob Cilman, director of the chorus also is the Arts Council director in Northhampton, NH. I am impressed how he can identify elements of one of these elders singing in a rehearsal and help them build it into a performance. He has created something unique that is worthy of a film and international tours. But at times he comes off a bit like Christopher Guest's character in Waiting for Guffman or that John Dwork guy who puts together the fairy wing "spectaculars" at certain String Cheese Incident shows.
Regardless, he has the sense to realize that what can carry a show besides folks singing with a lot of heart as well rehearsed as can be expected is a great band to accompany them. The band's interview with the band in DVD extras provides some of the best insight to this group. Drummer William E. Arnold talks about how the delivery of the lyrics is key to the power of Young @ Heart. They admit that there is an unpredictability to accompanying the chorus, but they credit pianist Ed Wise (formerly side kick of Martin Mull) as being able to quickly react to the timing and miscues that occur. This interview also reveals the greatest challenge of touring with Young @ Heart: getting everyone out of the airport at the same time. I can only imagine what it is like to wrangle 24 elders at a Flughafen in a major German city.
If any one has a pulse, I think it is impossible to get through this film with dry eyes and no joyous and spontaneous bouts of laughter. There are probably a few sad cases out there who could watch this without emotion, but that seems doubtful to me.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:52 PM
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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Buffet goes Kick Ass Classic Country
A work colleague told me in passing how great the Billie Jo Shaver video Get Thee Behind Me Satan was. I followed up and felt inclined to share this gem on the buffet as well as some other great moments by this underrated American original. God Bless you Billie Joe
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:42 PM
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Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Gegen Die Wand Revisited
After being so srongly impressed in recent weeks with Fatih Akin's Edge of Heaven (Andres) and Crossing the Bridge, I decided to return to his 2004 film Gegen die Wand.
There is an entire league of filmmaker if which Akin is a part, that are master story tellers, image makers, and experience creators whose vision spins out of their cultural experience. Scorsese comes to mind almost immediately and I still return to Mean Streets as I appreciate his more contemporary works because of the seminal and kinetic vision of that film and how you are practically bloodied by pool cues while being assaulted by the profanity seasoned expression of Little Italy. I saw Mean Streets at least three times in my teens between 1974 and 76 and it wasn't until about the third time that I got a sense of what was going on in terms of a culture so different from my middle class Pacific NW existance.
To a lesser degree, this is the case with Gegen die Wand. This film and his most recent Auf der anderen Seite have large canvas crossing between continents, and large themes of cultural identity, personal journey, and redemption. Gegen die Wand frames the story with what I assume is a traditional Turkish music ensemble singing a ballad as a kind of Greek chorus like device as we see the film's characters going through their changes and conflicts.
Immediately one feels that Cahit Tamruk (Birol Ünel) is out of control full of alcohol and anger until near the end of the film's quarter hour until drives his car at fast speeed into a wall. The doctor who is treating him assumes a suicide attempt. But his reply to that query is "Who said I want to kill myself." As he also tells Sibl. the young woman he marries as a beard for independence from her overbearing family that horizontal cuts on her suicide attempt would have proven to be more successful. It is not death they seek, but a kind of visceral feeling.
As I noted in my response to Auf der anderen Seite, Akin has a marvelous ability to take one from one set of perceptions about a character and navigate them to an entirely different place. I now plan to re-scren his first notable feature Im Juli, which I only realized fairly recently was the work of Akin, who at 35, is hopefully on only the first leg of a long journey that one hopes will span a career as long and explorative as an Allen or Antonioni or Bergman.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:15 AM
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Monday, September 22, 2008
Coen Brothers and Their Latest Cinematic Wimsey
Burn After Reading mixes together three major kind of film elements--the middle age infidelity comedy, the comedy of the eccentric and the fish in strange waters comedy-- and season them with some quirky spy and CIA stuff intrigue with only a kind of filter that only Joel and Ethan Coen possess.
I don't think I have ever met anyone who has unbridled love for all of the work of the Coens. Folks seem to have a few titles, like names of favorite uncles, that fall from their tongue very quickly and easily. And then they have a list of those movies they hold reservations about. That second list seems to vary greatly from individual to individual. This phenomena reminds me of the scene of Woody Allen and the aliens in Stardust Memories where they tell him they liked the earlier funny ones better.
But, regardless, it is an exceptional achievement that the Coen Brothers have been able to have such a track record with their thirteen features in the last twenty five years with films, consistently unique and often loved. (IMDB reports four more in production or filming---wow) Burn After Reading is likely to find its way to my Coen Brothers favorite uncle list along with Fargo and Oh Brother. There are several reasons for this, but an obvious one are the excellent comic performances by John Malkovich, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt. These are A list actors having a ball and their energy shines through to the audience. And then, of course, there is Frances McDormand who is exceptional at playing characters who are somewhat unexceptional, just regular folks trying to get over, like Burning's fitness center employee Linda Litzke or the unforgettable Police Chief Marge Gunderson from Fargo.
When you have comic content almost overbrimming as this film does, the role of the straight man is exceptionally important. And I found sequences with lawyers, doctors and CIA men probably the most rewarding in this film. There is over the top humor with our movie stars, but the button down Bob Newhart style dialog between the CIA officer played by David Rasche and J.K. Simmons (Juno's dad) is a comedy of an entirely different kind, exquisitely executed.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:55 PM
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Sunday, September 21, 2008
Werner Herzog Somewhat Suffering the Academics
On the Ecstasy of Ski-Flying: Werner Herzog in Conversation with Karen Beckman is an interview video of an art seminar Q and A session with film director Werner Herzog. It is one of the most awkward interview films or public events I have ever witnessed.
The interview is a deceptive art. Art historian Karen Beckman can not deliver a simple question. Her points to Herzog are lengthy mini-essays that Herzog attempts to unravel for this audience at University of Pennsylvania. Herzog obviously is not at home in this kind of setting. "Let's not extend the question too far, I keep losing you otherwise," he pleads patiently.
Still there will be fine nuggets in an interview with Werner Herzog. As a young man he had the goal to become a ski jumper, but that dream ended when one of his friends became injured in an accident. He hates psychoanalysis. His favorite silent comedian was Buster Keaton because of his solitude and stoic nature. And Fred Astaire is one of the true delights in film for Herzog. He talks about the demise manly men in Hollywood (Cooper, Wayne, Brando) vs. the current trend of softer leading men of today like Leo and Brad.
And he spends some time expressing his concern that a post structuralist perspective in the humanities education can stifle and hurt when the academics overly vivisect literature and art. An experience from his educational experience of pulling a a part Goethe's Faust resulted in him wanting to burn down his schools. The role of the academic should be about giving students an enthusiasm for literature and arts. He does try to offer a recipe or remedy for this, he only expresses his concern.
"Romanticism is the disease of reviewers of my films because normally reviewers don't know much about Germany. They don't know much about the Nazis and romanticism" And sometimes throw in a reference to Expressionism or Brecht. He says this leaves him baffled. Herzog's films are of tooth and claw, not Romantic. The jungle of Acquire is not a romantic jungle but one of a fever dream.
Herzog is impressed by the ability to watch films in DVD collections the same way that one could explore volumes of collective works of authors. His vision of the future technology was that we would use our cell phones mainly as a storage and download device to later watch a film, hopefully on a large screen. The collective experience of a hundred or so people going to film is important to Herzog and he is obviously saddened by its demise. But it begs the question...Is he somehow holding on to a romantic notion here?
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:27 PM
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Saturday, September 20, 2008
Dove Evolution: A Viral Video from 2006
Sure, this has been out there on the web for a couple years now, but I first encountered it from the Stash Motion Graphics video collection. One thing I am fairly certain of, anyone who sees this is going to have some kind of reaction or opinion on it: either on the content of the message or the viral marketing by a beauty company that is at least having the appearance of breaking the rules.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:49 PM
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Friday, September 19, 2008
Crossing the Bridge
Fatih Akin's Crossing the Bridge The Sound of Instanbul is a bright and fast paced trip into the world of the music of Istanbul and Turkey. Alexander Hacke, the bass player for Einstürzende Neubauten takes on a kind of Alan Lomax role and Akin gives him the impression of driving the agenda here.
Fatih Akin, as Gegen die Wand, im Juli, and Edge of Heaven testify, is a great filmmaker. And what makes this film special is the wonderful way he builds, executes and transitions the sequences of all kinds of musicians and musical experiences in Turkey.
The first section of the film is about Rock music in Turkey. There is the grunge-flavored Duman, whose lead singer actually spent time in Seattle but returned to Istanbul after being pulled back by Turkish music. I found the Replikas, whose album can be previewed at emusic, very adventurous and intriguing. I later found out they are known as the Sonic Youth of Turkey. The rock sequence ended with fairly quick reference to Erkin Koray, an iconoclastic rock and roller in Turkey who seems to now hold a special place as a kind of classic rock era icon. "I'm a bit too extreme for Turkey," still feeling like an outsider. Akin shows an old an old television clip and then the same song, (which seemed to be a kind of romantic paen of the streets) at a contemporary large outdoor festival where Erkin wears a shirt with embroidered rhinestone letter Es on each tab of his collar.
A premise of the film is that just about every form of music, east, west, European, or Arabic is going to find its way into the music of Turkey. Rap has a following in Turkey, as is profiled by Ceza. His section features one of his produced recordings: black music dance hall reggae rap style with a very rapid delivery but then cut to a freestyle section of the tune was amazing, dangerous even. He made not sounds but sonic objects that were like anything I have ever heard.
This performance was followed up with an interview with Ceza's sister who also has a fine flow of her own. Ceza talks about how his message is not gangsta, but political. Regardless, footage of Ceza and posse walking through the streets revealed them to have quite a presence. Interestingly, it reminded me of Mifune in Yojimbo. A far cry from typical NWA or Public Enemy music video at high speed montage mileage in full assault rap mode.
The segments continued to link together other forms of Turkish music. There was a kind of trip hop dervish music. There was footage of a fasil, which basically was a jam session with a sort of fast tempo tradtional sounding music. Another section featuring Aynur, a Kurdish musician with her songs of plaintive longing was also quite effective. Additionally, Hacke connects with some street musicians and jams with them.
The film moves towards its end with features on two important pop artists in Turkey. One is Orhan Gencebuy who kind of reminds me of a Kenny Rogers, Burt Reynolds character but with some real artistic goals and talent. Lastly, we see Sezen Aksu recording a song for Hacke. She is apparently about the biggest pop star that Turkey has ever seen. I'm thinking she is a bit like Barbara Streisand and Madonna merged together.
At the film's end, Hacke says he knows he has just scratched a surface of the Turkish music scene. But it is a music scene as lively as the currents in the Bosphorus, which stands as a kind of symbol for Turkey's connection with both East and West.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:15 PM
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Thursday, September 18, 2008
Richard Russo Explores the Nature of Comedy at PAL
Pam and I attended the first evening of the 25th season of Portland Arts and Lectures. Last night's evening with Richard Russo reminded me of another successful opening night of the series from several years past with Elmore Leonard. In both cases, the authors delivered by giving a prepared and personal exploration of an important element of their art and craft. Russo read an essay for the evening, but his delivery was wonderfully polished (maybe from those years of teaching) and it was so well paced with personal anecdote and experience, that it came across well and intimately in the 3000 seat Schnitz.
"The world is a funny place with those with eyes to see it." To be a comic author he said is a two step process. First you have to see the thing and then see its potential in a story.He gave an extended anecdote about a conversation he once observed in a southern waffle house where a customer took out his false teeth to demonstrate the options a waitress should consider when going in that day for a bridge. And also showed how humor can be a personal thing as in the example of his non-PC, even boorish behavior with a friend who did not feel that stuttering could be a source of humor.
Sometimes displacement or having things out of context makes it funny to the beholder. The title example of his essay was about a comode that was placed of his home when it was being remodeled because it had carpeting, a real life example I could relate to.
The sight of it cracked him up, but again due to the personal nature of humor, it did not create similar response of mirth from his wife and daughters.
"The inability of laugh is a form of mental illness." stated Russo. But for him the best humor is not that which is funny, but that which has a sense of truth in it.
Russo says his is an American story. He is the grandson of a glovecutter from Glove Cutter, NY. He believes that class, a theme he works on throughout his fiction, is the important American story to tell, even more so that race or gender.
I don't read a lot of big artistically crafted novels, so have not had much direct exposure to Russo as an artist. I recently read a couple stories from The Whore's Daughter to get ready for this. And a few spring breaks ago, I tried to read Straight Man, but a story of dysfunctional academic professionals didn't connect with me during that brief time off from a community of dysfunctional academic professionals. However, last night's presentation put Russo on my radar and I am sure I will read more of him in the future.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:55 PM
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Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Points of The Tin Star
My exploration of Anthony Mann westerns continues, and I haven't even gotten to the James Stewart ones yet. That would be like celebrating Sergio Leone (influenced by Mann??) without seeing a film wit Clint Eastwood. Regardless, The Tin Star from 1957 starring Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins holds up just fine as an exploration of mentorship, intolerance, and the intent to do the right thing and is filled with Mann's fine craftmanship.
Perkins plays a still wet behind the ears sheriff and Fonda a bounty hunter who is the stranger coming to town who guides and mentors him against the town's bigot and bully Bart Bogardis, played by Neville Brand. There is also a climatic gunfight with a couple of other misguided other side of the law half-Indians, one of whom is young Lee Van Cleef. (shades of Leone again).
When I saw the low angle, long focus shots which stand out like leitmotifs in Mann's playbook, I felt at home in this western, after seeing The Furies a few days earlier. Anthony Mann is a master and fine architect creating meaningful arrangements of men and their environments and men interacting with each other.
He also has the capability of creating long masterful set ups of dramatic impact that are key to the story. The tension between Fonda and the widow with an indian pre-adolescent he stays with is a good example of this, a sequence where music was noticeably absent helping to create a greater sense of dramatic reality. But even more so is this extended sequence of an old doctor whose circumstances create the action of the last third of the film. I would love to blather on about this particular sequence, but feel the result would be more of spoiler than analysis, especially to someone who may encounter this film in the future.
But on the other hand, it is not a spoiler, but just applied and obvious knowledge resulting from even casual movie-going that at the film's end certain things will take place. Fonda will be drifting out of town after the bad guys and bully are demobilized and that the town sheriff is on his way to gaining his skill set to be a successful component of the civilization of the prototype town we have seen in dozens of westerns. But knowing these results doesn't matter. What does is the stylish journey that Mann takes you on.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:40 PM
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008
A Fifties Filmmaker With Intelligence & Classic Sensibilities
My favorite writing, discussion and criticism on film is by filmmakers and those who later became filmmakers. Academics and popular press criticism certainly has its place, but the ebullience and admiration of the art and craft of film in Truffaut's writing in Cahiers du Cinema, for instance, reflects the intensity and impact the art form has made on him. This is also the case with the early criticism of Wim Wenders. More recently, interviews with the likes of Quentin Tarantino or the long form film lectures of Scorsese where he demonstratively rolls through clips that show his admiration for American and Italian Cinema are engaging introductions to what films and filmmakers matter to these artists. What one learns about in these resources like these or the journal, Projections, which was edited by John Boorman who are the filmmakers for filmmakers.
Anthony Mann and Douglas Sirk are certainly filmmmaker's filmmakers. In the television-plagued Hollywood of the fifties, they both prospered as journeyman artists in the system who were able to create personal, visually oriented entertainments that have proven to be highly influential and still stand out as visions individual and impressive. I'm finding myself getting hooked on their work and that a Mann western or a Sirk melodrama is a great way to kick back on a Sunday afternoon. These are more than storytellers, they also possess the ability to tell stories in highly individual ways.
Mann is noted for his westerns of the fifties that have psychological content and character studies, as well as solid plots with loads of cinematic action and as much location shooting as he can include. Many of these starred Jimmy Stewart. I'm most familiar with Bend in the River, which I once watched in a Forest Service cabin along the Willamette River, and it felt like I was almost near the set of this film that was shot on the east and south side of Mt Hood. Probably the best known of the Mann/Stewart collaborations is Winchester 73.
Most recently I viewed the Criterion Collection release of Mann's The Furies starring Walter Huston in full coot mode and Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck has a heck of a time. She has a repressed love a long time Mexican sqautter who has been on her father's ranch for a long time, falls head over heels for a dandy who is more interested in settling a long time score over land with Huston, and is thrust into a major Electra complex conflict further when Huston announces his intent to marry a fairly awful urban socialite gold digger. This 1950 film may not be groundbreaking, but this is not the kind of stuff one routinely saw in the first twenty years of talkies.
"You can have patricide, every kind of 'cide' in a western and get away with it because its sort of where all action took place" Mann says in an interview included on the DVD for British television in 1967, the year he died. In the interview he talked about the immediacy of film which he attributes to its nature of being a medium of sight. "Everything has to be a picture," is how Mann stresses the visual nature of film. He talks about how his films are filled with men with a purpose who gets somewhere (or in the case of The Furies, a woman.) These are not necessarily heroes but individuals an audience can identify with.
Another DVD featurette, a contemporary interview with Mann's daughter, Nina, gives insight into Mann's origins. Between 1906 and 1919, his early years were spent in Point Loma at the Theosophical Institute, a non-traditional commune-like utopian experiment where children were removed from their parents. But this is also where he received an education in the Greek classics and Shakespearean plays that were performed in an outdoor Greek amphitheater for the local community.
I found a great deal of satisfaction and entertainment in The Furies and look forward to serving up Mann's body of work down here in the bunker buffet. I imagine there will be more comments on Mann to come in future blog entries.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:36 PM
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Monday, September 15, 2008
The Artist Walks
The sad news about the tragic death of David Foster Wallace, who undeniably was one of the most talented of contemporary men of letters, somehow got me thinking about the life of animator Ryan Larkin. Chris Landreth's animation film about Larkin is a significant exploration of a tragic artist, but it seemed like too dark an energy to bring into this blog space. So instead, I link up to Larkin's Academy Award nominated short Walking because it likely expresses the joy of movement as no other work of art has. If you used to hang out in art film movie theaters in the seventies, it is likely you have seen it before.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:04 PM
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Sunday, September 14, 2008
When High Fashion Met the Nouvelle Vague
Who are You, Polly Magoo? is the earliest (1966) of the three films included in the Criterion Eclipse DVD box set The Delirious Fictions of William Klein. I posted blog entries in recent months on the two other films in the set by this expatriate American photographer/director who was a part of the French New Wave, The Model Couple and Mr Freedom.
Polly Magoo feels like it was directed by some Richard Lester/Tony Richardson/Francois Truffaut/Jean Luc Godard super being in a time when pushing limits with the film form mattered. And was revolutionary even. It crackles with blackout gags, youth, and cinematic vibrancy of the mid-sixties where anything seemed possible. The biggest problem with the film is that it feels overstuffed with this kind of energy at times. Cinematic gags (an adult boy scout with a cigarette tries to cross Polly across the street) are interchanged with longer satiric sequences like the opening fashion show where models are clad in sheet metal constructions shown in a kind of bunker.
There are a couple of major threads going on in Polly Magoo. One involves a television documentary film crew that is trying to sculpt do a profile on Magoo lead by Jean Rochefort in a fine comic turn. The other plot line involves the love forlorn man child Prince Igor who is obsessed with marrying the supermodel. His room is a combination of Pop art construction, a boy's room and a playboy pad. His mythological country combines has a flag that consists of a split and reversed black and white target. Igor sends two henchmen into Paris to retireve the object of his desire and they are about as competent as the religious cultists in Help! who were seeking Ringo's ring.
Polly Magoo (Dorothy McGowen) is an unconventional beauty. She has an overbite, freckles and a kind of blank slate presence but still a youthful poise. She is a model who can be easily modeled. She is a convincing corpse in a goth fashion shoot and also a zesty majorette and Shirley Temple in one of the many fantasy sequences.
Dropping in on Who are you Polly Magoo is like taking a cinematic wayback machine to a kind of Goofyland destination. The whacked out tempos and disconnects can get to be a bit much despite their spirited fluidity. But in the midst of this film pointed observations are made about the superficiality reality of the world and its culture. In Igor's country giving someone your picture means you are engaged. One of the film crew members tells another "It's all surface. But Surface is reality too. That's life." Or my favorite McLuhanesque exchange between televison producer and Polly pursuer Gregoie and his collegue: "TV shows are better than movies. People watch TV absentmindedly. It's like life. People watch movies too closely. That's bad. There should be gaps. The little screen is one big gap."
Polly Magoo still has some pleasures, but it really can't be watched too closely. But fortunately, that is not a requirement to take a ride when and where the cinema was full of so much dynamic hyper possibility.
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:15 AM
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Saturday, September 13, 2008
An Hour With Jean Nouvel And Some Of His Work
Director Beat Kuert produced a one hour television documentary in 1998 on architect Jean Nouvel that is now available through Netflix. It served me as an interesting hour about regarding this architect and his work, but as with a great jazz set by a master or a lecture about a major writer or historical figure, I left engaged, enlightened, but scope and time limitations did not create a comprehensive portrait of the man and his art and his vocational calling.
Architecture is a subject that can be well suited to film, especially when the architect is essentially a visual artist. And even more so because Nouvel's work has a very high experential and even cinematic element to it. He even says in the film, "I have tempted by filmmaking," and he mentions having friends who are involved in filmmaking. He seems envious of the filmmaker's ability to transform their work late in the process with editing. Still, he finds similarity in the joy of being able to make decisions and positive changes when onsite contingencies and opportunities come up in a construction site. In architecture, Nouvel says you are bound by materials. And also in the film he emphasizes the most important aspect of his work is at the conceptualization stage. "Design stage is what counts. A building is a cultural statement. You can't get it wrong."
The film covers only a few of his many, many projects. But the ones that Kuert includes seem to be illustrative of what makes this architect unique. The Luzern Culture and Congress Center in Lucerne, Switzerland is a multipurpose building with an exceptionally large cantalevered roof that overhangs over a lake. It also uses windows light and colors to give someone moving through the building a cinematic kind of experience. The film also spends much time giving us a filmic interpretations af other noted Nouvel masterworks including the Cartier Building and the opera house of Lyon which are used to show his work with glass and how he works to create structures that have a relationship of integration with the environment around it.
Nouvel believes that too much architecture is inert. He believes in light and getting things down to the essentials, seeing this as a reflection of modern life and design. Of this latter point, he gives the television as an example. When televisions came out we had a small picture in a huge box. Nowdays there is basically no box or frame at all, especially with LCD type technology. We are left with the thing itself.
As mentioned, this film is nowhere comprehensive about the man or his voluminous output. Nouvel's website lists over forty projects between 2005 and the present. Nor is there any biographical or personal information included in Kuert's film. It does show Nouvel as a man of nearly perpetual motion, not really having an office or desk of his own, but constantly moving between associates and projects. The latter he visits in a cloud of cigar smoke.
I was intrigued by this man and his vision and some of the insights into his process. He talked about he uses Michel Foucault's principles of discontinuity, specifity, reversal, and exteriority to solve design problems. He also states that ""The more we want to make things simple the more simple things become complicated." And there seems to be a kind of summarized certainty to his statement that "Architecture has a lot to do with technical expression."
I enjoy films that introduce me to folks like Nouvel and appreciate how DVD publishing and the Internet can give us the opportunity to explore and discover individuals of vision and accomplishment. I hope in this case, before I travel to a major European city (although he has created many projects in the US) I will check to see if there are any works of Nouvel in the vicinity. Because it is evident that his works are not just to be viewed, but experienced.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:30 AM
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Friday, September 12, 2008
Bring on the Global Noize: Lola's Room PDX 9.11.08
The band was on the stage probably into their first number when walked into Lola's room at about 9:30. The entire dance floor was empty and there were less than forty people in the room; most at the bar, a few at the size, and a few at tables that seemed to not know or care about the magnitude of the musicians who were on stage. I wasn't sure what to do with this. I bought a ginger ale and then went to the window near the north side of the stage and stood eight feet away from Bernie Worrell who was beginning to kick into a funk jam with DJ Logic that ended with huge smiles and a knuckle bump. Heaven should be like this, I thought.
Global Noize is one of those amalgamations of musicians, in this case great and mostly legendary players that is described as a project rather than a band. Keyboardist Jason Miles and DJ Logic are at the center of this. There is no logical (not even DJ Logical) way a tour for the project's album could include all of the artists who took part, But the core group who gave two hours of what seemed more like two hours of an extended in-store appearance or a performance at a private party was exceptional. Besides, Miles, Worrell, and Logic, the evening included drummer Mike Clark, sax player Jay Rodriguez, and beguiling young east Indian singer who brought a kind of Cornershop component to what would otherwise be an all star funk band with a DJ. Allman Brothers band bass player Oteil Burbridge, who is known to go into world beat territory is listed in much of the promotion info for this tour, but last night the bass chair was filled by Karl Denson's bassist Ron Johnson, who it goes without saying is one fine funkmaster.
The project album is fairly down tempo and reaches around in all sorts of groove textured and, covers all kinds of flavors of global music space on the margins of its drum, DJ, and bass center. But you aren't going to find a lot of downtempo when you have the likes of Bernie and Jason Miles on each side of the stage with a pair of well-equipped keyboards in their arsenal and a center stage with Logic, Rodriguez, Johnson and Clark.
Mike Clark may look like one of the guys who is standing in the background of Satriales when Tony Soprano is having a shit fit, but he is one classy groove making drummer, the kind that makes it look effortless. Since Clark helped define and is associated with the Headhunters, it only makes sense for Global Noize to include Chameleon in their set. It was fifteen minutes of tension and release. Jay Rodriguez was having a ball with laying out sax solos on such a solid foundation. There was even a section where Falu came on stage and did her thing with cascading vocals and a kind of Indian scat that is very circular in nature. But the highlight had to be watching Bernie do his thing on keyboard lines that belong to that other architect of funky keyboard, Herbie Hancock.
Jason Miles tells the band there is fifteen minutes left. What should they do? Well fifteen minutes of funk, of course. He hands things over to Bernie who leads up a version of We Want the Funk which can't be as large as a PFunk treatment of this tune of many chants, but it was damned funky. Global Noize may ostemsibly be a project lead by Miles and Logic, but you can't have Bernie Worrell in the house without him kind of being at the center of things. He has too much music in his long spidery fingers, whether it be in exploring rhythm or those slinky symphonic, make that symphunkic phrases that brought helped bring a kind of ecstatic joy to so much of the music of Talking Heads phase II as well as the bands of George.
It was a fine night in a great little room over Burnside with no smoke and some of the finest musicians in the world in project mode, which is more about uncut funk and unbrideled groove than the songs performed by a group. And believe me, with this bunch that is A-Okay.
Here are some pictures from a Global Noize show last Spring, DJ Logic is even wearing the same t-shirt he had on last night.
Here is the Global Noize My Space page.
And the Emusic page where you can sample the project's album.
posted by well-executed buffet at 5:45 AM
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Thursday, September 11, 2008
On the Other Side of the Edge of Heaven
The Edge of Heaven is the English market title for Fatih Akin's 2007 film, but On the Other Side, the literal translation of its German title Auf der anderen Seite seems so much more descriptive to me. Akin takes the viewer to sides of generations, cultures, and relationships in an incredibly compelling, emotional, but thought provoking way.
At its core, Auf der anderen Seite, is about six people, two cultures, woven between three cities (Hamburg, Bremen, and Istanbul) and three languages--German, English, and Turkish. This may seem like a broad canvas, but Akin is able to interconnect exceptionally intimate stories together in a way that is absolutely stunning. And stunned is how I felt in watching how this master is able to move his characters around each other on the edges of coincidence and destiny to result in a film that leaves one with an emotional experience but one where you are left to think hard about existence, life, death, and the relationship of parents and their offspring.
The intricate interconnectedness of the three parents and their grown children is at the core of this film. Two of the elders are certainly more than characters in a film. One gets the sense that Tuncel Kurtiz as Ali Aksu is representative in Akim's eyes as a generation of Turkish men who immigrated to German. And there certainly is no doubt that Hannah Shygulla's character is an archtype of the German mother the first generation after WWII. One scene that struck me was where she was trying to be absolutely resolute in telling her daughter that Turkey's unrest would be different after they joined the European Union, but you can tell on some level she is not entirely convinced. With Shygulla's characterization in particular, Akin achieves one of the most masterful tasks of the storyteller. He takes you from seeing and feeling about her one way and leaving you with another conclusion as the film transpires.
Akin's other most noted accomplishment as a director is his 2004 film Gegen die Wand which is really more of an exploration of the Turkish-German experience. And like Auf der anderen Seite its title is better served by a literal translation. The English title is Head-on. The literal title is Against the Wall. Regardless, whether it is against the wall or on the other side of things, Fatih Akin has an amazing ability to take you places.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:55 PM
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Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Fears Can't Put Dreams to Sleep
Call this lighting a digital candle. So much energy surrounding that horrid woman from Alaska in the last fortnight. I haven't said much directly on it on the buffet. But I thought a quick link to Stevie's performance in Denver a couple of weeks ago would and could say more and in a much more positive light.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:38 PM
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Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Tiny Universe in the House
This is some very sweet funk jazz soul music from Karl Denson and his Tiny Universe posse. Denson is a little diesel engine of near perpetual motion when he is onstage. When all cylinders of this band are fully firing, I get that feeling that music can't be any better than this. Certainly, with the exception of Trombone Shorty, I have not experienced anyone besides Karl or George Clinton who has the special ability to lead a funk party into full ascension.
There is a lot to appreciate her. Be sure to check out Brian Jordan on guitar and the funky way that Karl works his horn and vocals together ala Junior Walker and the All Stars.
"Just kicking it, I got nothing to prove.." a lyric in this two part link up to Got To Get My Groove On kind of says it all.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:10 PM
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Monday, September 8, 2008
Casualties of the Economy: PDX Jazz and Maybe Vancouver Fireworks
Downtown Portland will no longer be the lively scene it has been in the middle of February during the past five years. The Portland Jazz Festival featured top name artists in concert halls, hotel ballrooms and clubs during each of its two week long festivals since 2004. Thousands of hotel rooms were filled each year with out of towners who made up about a third of the attendees. The festival, it was announced today will cease to exist because of lack of sponsorships. Qwest, who used to put in 50k per year has pulled out, other sponsors have also scaled back, and no new sponsors have stepped up to the plate in the past year.
Luciana Lopez/s article in the Oregonian today has made me a little bit sad and cranky. I appreciate what artistic director and founder of the festival Bill Royston was able to accomplish, but I think he is being elitist by not scaling back and revising his vision to keep the festival alive. In Lopez's article he states: "If we decided to reduce it to four or five ticketed shows, that's not a festival, that's a series of concerts." No, Bill it could be called a scaled back festival. And one could be put together in such a way that people who live in this town (attractive deals on flat fee or smorgasboard ticket packages) would have an incentive to come and support the festival. Why are you being all Ross Perot my way or the highway on us here?
"The festival's annual $686,000 budget had, at minimum, a $100,000 hole in it." stated Lopez's article. Couldn't there still be a class act festival with a 500,000 budget?
Make it one week instead of two. Couldn't a festival be built on two or three class musicians (maybe Joe Lovano, Ron Carter, Kenny Baron or a Marsalis) and give the public a chance to see them in a variety of settings rather than one single concert? Last year's Classical Jazz Quartet was a perfect example. It was great to see Baron, Carter, Stefon Harris, and Lewis Nash together but it was all over in less than 90 minutes. I would have gladly forked over another twenty or more to see Baron play solo or Carter play with some other musicians in a nice setting later that evening.
I have been to several sold out events at the festival. Last year's opening weekend of Ornette Coleman on Friday and Cecil Taylor on Sunday with the Classical Jazz Quartet in between will always standout as a highlight. But I have also been to some where things seemed a little bit stretched. One was the closing night at the Hilton Hotel ballroom of the 2006 festival that featured Donald Harrison and a tribute to Glen Moore. The event was marginally attended and there was a real been too long at the midway kind of feel to the evening.
The 70th Aniversary Blue Note theme for 2009 that Royston announced at last year's festival seemed to hold some promise, even after one does a mental roll call of all the artists associated with Blue Note's history who are no longer with us. But curiously enough, I noticed recently that Blue Note has assembled their own all star band to tour in conjunction with their anniversary. Weirder yet is the fact that they (Bill Charlap, Ravi Coltrane, Nicholas Payton and others) will be playing in Portland at the Newmark theater, the site of many Portland Jazz Festival events on Friday, January 9. Interesting. Wonder if there is a backstory on how the date couldn't get synched up with the Jazz festival's schedule.
Meanwhile, the Vancouver Fourth of July celebration is on uneasy ground because one of the fireworks vendors is apparently unable to contribute a quarter of a million as he has in the past according to Tony Bacon's Daily Insider.
I'm saddened about the end of the Portland Jazz Festival. And although I have always had reservations about the Vancouver Fourth of July, I recognize it as a tradition that this community is closely identified with. But clearly we are going to see more of these kinds of stories regarding events and institutions that need subsidies from businesses that are more likely to give it up, obviously, when times are not so tight.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:25 PM
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Sunday, September 7, 2008
Music for Our Times
I. Marvin Gaye What's Goin' On/What's Happening Brother
This is one wonderful piece of film. Apparently it coms from a 1973 concert film called Save the Children. There is a cutaway montage of street life and black families at leisure that actually adds to the musical performance which by itself is very remarkable.
Check out Marvin's extended piano solo. It would easy for a cynic to say it is in the same zip code as Patti Smith on clarinet or guitar. Or Fela or James Brown when they get into organ riffs. But the odd quasi-Monk flourishes work well against his conga player's rhythms because he is so totally into it. And the strength and passion of his vocal delivery here rejects comparisons to other performances of his or just about any other soul singer. The segue to What's Happening Brother took my breath away the first time I saw this.
II. Gil Scott Heron with the Amnesia Express: Winter in America
This performance from Spring 1990 shows Gil a little ragged, but the Amnesia Express including Ron Hollaway on flute contribute to give the tune the intensity and fire it deserves. I have played Winter in America as a kind of tonic to the world we live in since well before the Reagan years and will probably return to it for some time to come.
The Constitution, a noble piece of paper but free society
suffered and it died in vain.
Now Society is ragtag on the corner looking for some rain
There will be more winter, but there are also the robins in barren tree tops--just a little bit of hope even "if there is no one fighting because no one knows what to save." There is this lovely ascending keyboard figure that counters the heavy views of this country's status in Gil's lyric. Listen for it, it always feels very hopeful to me.
The Constitution, a noble piece of paper but free society
suffered and it died in vain.
Now Society is ragtag on the corner looking for some rain
posted by well-executed buffet at 2:59 PM
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Saturday, September 6, 2008
John Trudell & Bad Dog in Portland 9.6.08
Trudell is poet, activist, musician. He takes all three of these to an intense almost breaking point. This is a serious man with a serious message in a pretty uncompromising manner. And that was evident when he began tonight with his Crazy Horse poem, it is a highly spriitual and poetic piece expressed as both benediction and prayer. The presentation of music and word is on at equal footing much of the time. It was a gift to have Trudell's music outside and accessible to the city of Portland for free on a late summer evening..
I don't believe Quiltman was with Bad Dog(not to be confused with Bob Weir's Ratdog) the last and only other time I saw them. The use of traditional voice as a rock and roll instrument providing a layer and a texture to a rock band that is unique.
Curfew was at ten, so it was time for all six of these folks to take it to the finish. It is one of those rare bands that has a certain kind of Booker T and Clash energy. very much a group of six musicians listening very closely to each other. Trudell's last and pretty much only loose talk rap of the evening was about considering intelligence an alternative energy resource.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:23 PM
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Friday, September 5, 2008
Married Life
I didn't know about Married Life when it had its theatrical release. When the new releases came through a week or so ago via Netflix, (Hot tip: check out this link on Sunday mornings to see what is becoming available on Tuesdays) I saw a brief description about Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan and the late forties. That seemed good enough for me to take a chance.
It is nice when those kinds of chances pay off. Ira Sach's film has a tone similar to Woody Allen (I found parallels in its approach to the recent Vicky Christina Barcelona) but it is essentially a kind of gene splice between a classic film noir and a New Yorker style short story about suburbia. Harry Allen (Cooper) is in his mid to late fifties, in love with war widow (Kay Nesbitt), and adrift from his own marriage with his wife Pat played by Clarkson. He decides that killing Pat is the best route to secure happiness for himself and to spare her the pain of divorce. What he doesn't take into account are the private lives of those around him including his pal Richard Langley, played by Brosnan.
It is a breath of fresh air to find a film that deals with adult relationships in a serious and filmic way. Mike Nichols' Closer and the recent expatriate Woody Allen era films come to mind in comparison. Chris Cooper is wonderful. It is great to see him in a role where he is neither government baddie or eccentric. One would not likely classify him readily as a physical actor, but there are some scenes here where nothing was said verbally, but his shoulders and spine carried an huge amount of emotion and expression.
The setting of 1949 also fairs well for this film. It helps that Brosnan and Cooper both look good in big shouldered suits and fine brimmed hats driving cars with big sterring wheels. There is a muted feel to the photography without having that kind of cloying nostalgic kind of lighting feel and the sets seem quite authentic.
Married Life is a story of the hearts that cross and interelate between people who have already done some living that is spiced with melodrama, but nevertheless has a kind of substance that moves beyond that genre. It is tight 90 minute feature that doesn't waste time or is filled with unsubstantial details. If you see it, be sure to watch the alternate endings on the DVD. It is my feeling that if these were used, the overall impact of the film would have been far more melodramatic.
posted by well-executed buffet at 1:36 AM
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Thursday, September 4, 2008
Andre and J Legend Deserve Their Heavy Rotation
Your You Tube VJ returns. This time he gives props to Green Light, the new tune from John "Ordinary People" Legend and Andre "OutKast"3000. This is a great tune to end the summer with. Sure, the video is pretty mindless stuff about guys macking on women and high end partying. But Green Light is filled good infectious vibes with its happy jump high end almost gogo beat. Legend's crooning style contrasts very nicely with Andre's nearly unbounded energy. His rap accompanying a Busby Berkeley number that takes place in a cocktail glass is especially spirited. "What kind of girl do you think I are? The kind that you meet in a bar? You think you can get whatever you want because you are some kind of star."
Here's the link, but I don't know how long it will last. There are lots of embedded disabled by requests in the multiple versions of Green Light residing in You Tube. If you can't get it here, go find one at YouTube central with a higher quality. I can't guarantee it, but, here are six minutes that might make you feel just a little bit better. "I'm Ready to go right now..."
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:32 PM
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Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Excellent (really) films on Computer Technology 0nline and extant
Google Video, you are my friend. You break the ceiling of many of YouTubes conventions such as hacking long pieces into sequences 9 minute or so. Here are two of my favorite non-fiction films that deal with the historical and cultural aspects of computing, without need for real change or commercial interaction
Revolution OS This 2001 film traces the orgins of Linux, GNU and open source software. The execution of telling this tale is top notch. It takes a creative nonfiction approach and is successful partly because the folks, those barbarian hackers at the gate are a colorful lot. It begins with Linus Torvalds explaining what an operating system is. How cool is that?
The Machine that Changed the World
This is an out of print PBS special that illustrates the roots of the main frame industry and beyond.
posted by well-executed buffet at 3:14 AM
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Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Quietude Between Holiday and School
I walked up to school/work today to take care of a few details. It happened to be the first day that public schools were in session and I was struck by how quiet the streets were. There is definitely change in the air, transitional and seasonal. I even heard a flock of geese the other evening.
The halls at Clark also felt different. The last days of a ten week quarter are wrapping up and preparations are underway for next academic year. Advising sessions are underway and a few folks are criss-crossing campus to take care of one kind of an errand or another, but there is definitely a sense of quietude that only occurs between academic quarters.
posted by well-executed buffet at 3:08 AM
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Monday, September 1, 2008
The Way West?
The Way Westis one of the last of the big oldtime Hollywood studio big budget movies. It features Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, and Richard Widmark. And was directed by John Ford protege Andrew V. McLaglen, the son of Victor McLaglen of The Informer, who mainly made his living in television directing.
I was ten years old when it came out. It was talked about in our household because it was filmed on Forest Service land, mainly in the Deschutes National forest in central Oregon. If you are familiar with the geography, you can conclude that Robert Mitchum is not doing a very good job guiding this wagon train. First you see the Sisters in the background, then Three Finger Jack, then views from McKenzie Pass, Mt Hood, and back to the Sisters and Three Finger Jack again. Oregon country? hell, they are there already just roaming around in circles pursued by Sioux indians (of Sisters?)
As a Forest Service public relations liasion, by father was sometimes involved with the needs of film people when they came to the Northwest, but my recollection is that he wasn't involved in this one. I remember a discussion about going to see it, but there seemed to be two reasons why we didn't. His colleagues had told him the film wasn't very good. And I recall some kind of allusion to their being some more grown up kind of content in it.
The Way West covers a cross section of characters in a wagon train led by a zealous senator, played by Douglas, who leads with a heavy hand and is propelled by some kind of flighty utopian vision of a community he will create in Oregon Country. Richard Widmark plays a likable everyman who can't resist the opportunity to travel west. Sally Fields plays a young lass in heat whose actions with a married man threaten this community of pioneers. It is interesting to see Hollywood loosening up a little bit with so-called "adult themes" but still playing Hays code paint by numbers for the most part.
Mitchum is not given much to do unfortunately. He is typically sleepy eyed and even says he wants to shack up with some Blackfoot women as soon as he gets the wagon train to its destination, and gives a lot of sage advise to the youngblood son of Widmark's who finally wins Sally Fields over. And you can almost sense that Richard Widmark is giving his all and wants to make the picture work. Douglas' character is not well-developed at all, and seems most at home when he is dangling from a rope during a sequence where the entire contents of the wagon train are repelled down into Crooked River Canyon.
Troubled as it may be, it was fun to watch a film with most of my brain either checked off or trying to figure out where they filmed specific sequence. You Tube featured a brief scene from The Way West from a dubbed Italian version of Camino de Oregón, as they titled it. I couldn't resist including it here.