Friday, July 31, 2009
Samuel Fuller's Myths of the West
By the time Samuel Fuller directed his first film I Shot Jesse James, he was 37 years old but had careers as a newspaperman, dime novelist, screenwriter and WWII infantryman. All of these enterprises, beginning from the time of his first byline as a reporter (with five years of copyboy and other newspaper experience already under his belt) at seventeen can be found as informing his early films.
Fuller has always been interested in telling a darn fine yarn. If you have had the opportunity to watch him in the various documentaries and tributes such as The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera you encounter a most irrascible man in his late seventies or eighties chomping on a cigar and talking about the importance of creating story. In another Fuller documentary from 1989, Tell Me Sam from 1989 (excerpt embedded below) he says "Everything is a Story. On a newspaper the first thing an editor says to you is "what is the story?" In a studio the first thing the head of the studio who is going to make a picture. What is the Story? Fairy tales are the blood of civilization and without them you have no childhood."
His first two films, I Shot Jesse James and The Baron of Arizona are Fuller's broadly fictionalized and mythologized versions of two intriguing figures of the American West.
His version of the life of Robert Ford, the man who shot Jesse James emphasizing Ford's betrayal being motivated by his obsessive love for his girlfriend. Baronis about James Addison Reavis aka Baron de Peralta-Reavis who manufactured a hoax of Madoffian dimensions, portraying himself as the rightful Spanish deed holder of the State of Arizona.
Both films are strong character driven pieces with lovely crisp black and white photography that stand up well over the past half century. Both have a strong three act structure and are filled with interesting and sometimes twists. Jesse James is shot at the end of the first act and the Baron spends much of the first act in Spain in monastery and later with gypsies setting up his master forgery. The last two thirds of Jesse James are about the consequences of his act and the last acts of Baron consist of his almost pulling off the swindle, and even being offered 25 million dollars by the US government for the rites to Arizona, which Reavis denies in an act of hubris.
Also in both the performances are strong and feel credible. John Ireland plays Robert Ford and Vincent Price is pretty unforgettable as Reavis aka Baron. With these characters Fuller demonstrates how "he not only pulls up the roots, digging up the roots, but tearing up the roots of a man. It has to be done with pain and no description." For instance, in I Shot Jesse James, Frank James is able to wrought more violence on Ford by telling him the woman he loved and has killed for is not going to marry him. This obsessive character is thus crushed. Torn up from the roots indeed.
In Tell Me Sam, Fuller talks about how the New York Times review of his picture with a ten day shootI Shot Jesse James was described as the first psychological western, which Fuller denies as a bunch of hogwash critic talk. But there is no denying that it is a kind of noir western and Baron is a noirish view of American history. Criterion/Eclipse has once again given the world the gift of a box set, this one called The First Films of Samuel Fuller, which also includes his breakthrough film set in the Korean War, The Steel Helmet.
http://www.fathom.com/feature/122257/index.html
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:08 PM
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Thursday, July 30, 2009
Visits to Ingmar's Island
Bergman Island is a documentary consisting of a number of interviews with Swedish television journalist Marie Nyreröd circa 2003-04 with film and theatre director Ingmar Bergman who died two years ago today. The interviews were done at a time when Bergman had finished his final film Saraband and shortly before he closed out his apartment in Stockholm and the room that was maintained for him at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, and spent the rest of his days on the Island of Faro, where many of Bergman's films were made after 1965.
In one of the few scenes in the documentary that does not take place on Faro, he revisits the balcony of the Dramatic Theatre which he first visited in 1928. and tells how he came down with a fever and was bed ridden for several days "due to my first ever visit to a real theater." When one considers Bergman, this anecdote seems true and significant. He shared his passions, fears, and struggles in his films in a way few artists have. In the last scene of the film he reads through a list of his greatest demons that have plagued him in his life: the Demon of Disaster, the Demon of fear, the Demon of Rage, the Demon of Grudges, and the Demon of Nothingness. The last of these, which he describes as a kind block of creative is something he says he has never encountered and for that he is grateful.
Bergman Island is primarily an artist and elder taking tally and stock of his life and work. Many of the discussions are illustrated with scenes from home movies taken on production or clips of newsreels that are commented on by Bergman and Nyreröd (Fortunately, more of the production footage and 16mm home movies are being released sometime in the near future in Images from the Playground , which premiered at Cannes this past May.)
It seems fitting that Bergman participated in these long form interviews with Nyreröd, an attractive, intelligent nordic blonde. Perhaps this contributed to the relaxed and apparently candid nature of the interviews. Bergman's love life is in some ways almost as legendary as his theater and cinema career. He was married five times, and had extended relationships with his actresses Liv Ullman, Bibi Andersson, and Harriet Andersson. At one point Nyreröd asks him what it was like to be on the set with a woman he had lived with (Bibi Andersson) and another he would be with (Ullman) after the film was made. Reflectively holding an forefinger to his nose Bergman replies: "I can't say I was still young and inexperienced when I made that film. I'd been married a number of times and I had many children." Nyreröd reminds him he was 47 then. "Was I? But I usually say that I left puberty when I was 58." At another point he speaks candidly about his role as father. "I've been family lazy, you could say. It's quite simply I have never put an ounce of effort into my families. I never have."
From the end of WWII to 1955, he created ten years of films, many of them solid before the stunning international success of Smiles of a Summer Night. That success allowed him to have full creative control of his work, a privilege few film artists have ever had. I believe he was at the top of his game with his uncompromising, intense, often austere run of films from the sixties: Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence, Persona, Shame, and The Passion of Anna. These films in addition to his work of the forties, fifites, seventies and beyond, create a body of work worth dipping into for the rest of one's life.
Bergman Island certainly has a lot for anyone has a kind of nerdly passion for Bergman's work. Fans of this ilk will appreciate his story of how the chess playing between the knight and death of The Seventh Seal was inspired by a Albertus Pictor painting he saw in a chapel in Uppland he saw when his itinerant minister father preached there. Even better is that images of the painting are included. And another factoid Bergman morsel is his confession that the soundbite he made saying that the four women characters in Cries and Whispers was a lie, just something he made up to tell the press.
Bergman Island and the Peter Cowie half hour video lecture Bergman 101, which is also included on the recent Criterion DVD not only can satisfy the film buff jones of the long time admirer, but can serve as a kind of solid introduction to the man and his work to those new to Bergman.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:25 PM
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Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Caught by an Icon
I recently watched the German version of Josef Von Sternberg's 1930 film Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) for the first time. I had seen the English version on what was probably a bootleg print decades ago when I was in college, but not since, and certainly not in the context of the many other Weimar films I have been watching recently. I can see now the many reasons why this film is a classic. One reason is that its set up and its story are so deceptively simple but it covers a realm of thematic issues. The professor loses his reputation, his position, and his livelihood by a creature of much raw seductive power. Von Sternberg's directing is certainly a factor of this films success, but it would not have the longevity and power it did without great performances by Emil Jannings and, of course, Marlene Dietrich.
I've never been a big one for major golden age Hollywood icons. Not really a lover of Marilyn, Garland, Gable, Cooper or Grant. But this screening of Der blaue Engel has created a kind of fan fascination for Marlene that I share for a few other actors of this period who create timeless and wonderful kinds of miracles on the screen. Jannings had this ability. So too did Pola Negri in the epic films of Ernst Lubitsch's silent Berlin period as did Louise Brooks in her collaborations with GW Pabst.
The image of Dietrich in top hat all legs on the barrel is certainly one of the most known iconic images of the 20th century. It has a life bigger than the rest of her career and certainly bigger than the Der blaue Engel. I think generations tend to tune out images like this or Bert Sterns' pouty kissy image of Marilyn Monroe after a few decades of overuse. And this may be a reason why discovering or rediscovering the context of an image like that of Dietrich as Lola Lola and why it is so powerful is so rewarding.
The nightclub this film is named for is not presented by Sternberg in a romantic setting. It is as loud, rough hewn and primitive as a roadhouse ever could be. The backstage is a kind of barely controlled chaos. During Professor Rath's fateful visits, it is a mad intersection of costume changes, props, a dancing bear and a sad, sad clown who seems to move through the screen giving all of this movement and madness a kind of punctuation. His expression is blank and he says nothing. He turns out to be a kind of prophet for the events that unfold. One wonders if his backstory somehow resembles the tale of Rath.
Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt aka Falling in Love Again will always be the film's most important set piece, but how many viewers of Angel will recall that Dietrich delivers the song twice, once most famously on the barrel with the top hat, all leg and where they lead. But she sings it again late in the film. She is assured in both performances, but the second is truly star time. It is perhaps not well enough noted that Dietrich was almost thirty and a veteran of stage and silent films when she participated in this film.
One of the highlights of the Kino double DVD release is the inclusion of Dietrich's screen test for Der blaue Engel The first half minute is a little disconcerting. It is certainly quite a closeup. (Unfortunately there are not a lot of close ups in Sternberg's film. Could this be due to the kind of mise en scene he needed to maintain to film both English and German versions of the movie simulataneously) One is trying to figure out what's going on here. When Dietrich draws from her cigarette is it acting or attitude? When she begins to sing the insipid "You're the Cream In My Coffee" its like a switch or lever has been pulled. But this is no mechanical doll. The schtick with her angry at the piano player also kind of comes out of midair. It at first feels real. And then there is the way she brings it all back home when her butt joins the cigarette butt on top of the piano. The horn is sounded at the end of the take and she apologizes for something. Watch it for yourself. It is an amazing performance. I'm now on my way to view all of the Sternberg/Dietrich films from Morocco to Devil is a Woman.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:52 PM
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Wild Tokyo! Portmanteau
I have always had a weak space in my heart for the anthology or pormanteau film, especially when there are a variety of short films by multiple international artists. I always approach them with as open a mind as possible. Marquee directors in an anthology can disappoint or reinforce. For instance, Gus Van Sant's segment of Paris, je t'aime was disappointing, Alexander Payne's was probably better than his About Schmidt. It can also be a medium for discovering someone new. For instance, also in Paris, je t'aime, Christopher Doyle's piece with Barbet Schroeder as a beauty products salesman introduced me to a unique and dynamic vision.
Tokyo! is a 2008 anthology consisting three short films. The marquee director is Michel Gondry, French oddball visonary of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind as well as many shorts and music videos. Leos Carax is a French filmmaker who was well-acclaimed for his first couple of features followed by some rockier periods. Completing the group is Bong Joon-ho from South Korea.
Besides the setting of Tokyo, there seems to be a common theme in these three stories. All somehow deal with a supernatural relationship between humans and objects or they consider the extremes of human existence somehow. You could almost subtitle this film three weird films on the extensible human condition.
I must be cautious here about giving away too much. Spoilers in features can be laid out in such a way that the damage is limited. This is much more difficult to parse when it comes to short stories or short films. I will mention, however that Bong Joon-ho's film Shaking Tokyo features a push button tattoo. I've said for years I would entertain the idea of body art or piercing, if it would be more utilitarian, if it would do something for me. Seems Mr. Bong and company have a similar idea.
Maybe most memorable in this trio of films is Carax's creation of Merde (which I understand means s--t in French) a green coated red headed bearded man with a milky eye and a strange gait who comes out of the sewers periodically to terrorize Tokyo residents and find flowers to eat. Merde's language, only understood by a lawyer who resembles him consists of grunts, arm movements and self-generated slaps to the face. Carax creates a situation which is filled with lots of opportunity for observations about public and media frenzy. This may just be the beginning: Merde may become the next mutant terror creature sensation among those who are entertained by such entities.
There is a kind of ephemeral aspect to portmanteau films. I can only really remember one of the New York Stories and then only because I had extended lively arguments with a female friend on whether or not the Nick Nolte character was a pained artist or a manipulative cretin. Tokyo!'s three experiences blend together but was overall pretty entertaining because it contained three pretty strong contributions from visual artists who did not deliver "normal" tales and visions.
posted by well-executed buffet at 1:28 PM
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Monday, July 27, 2009
How Great Was That Picture Maker
If there is any question that John Ford was great filmmaker, one only need screen How Green Was My Valley. Early on the film finds its own pace. This adaptation of a popular novel (as Ford had also recently directed The Grapes of Wrath and Tobacco Road) invites and envelopes the viewer into the early 20th century world of the Welsh miner through the recollections of Huw Morgan, the youngest of a proud family of miners.
It touches on family and loyalty, heart and duty, even economics and unions. What ties it together is lots of Welsh singing and Ford's wonderful low angle omniscient images quietly recording the cycles of life, which means there will be discomfort and painful transitions from time to time.
The hillside village that was constructed for the film is filled by Ford with extras he moves through the streets with a kind of choreography. Yet all the while honoring their relationship with their environment that reminds me of Lubitsch during his Berlin epic film period and also of Murnau, who Ford respected and admired. In fact, How Green could almost be presented as a non-synchronized silent era film with a minimal amount of inter-titles provided that the sound track mainly consisted of Welsh choral singing.
If William Wyler had made How Green Was My Valley, as producer Darryl F Zannuck had originally intended, it could have been a good movie. But in the hands and eyes of Ford, it became a poetic masterpiece while still retaining its mass appeal. I'm surprised I had not seen a film this notable, the movie that aced out both Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane for Best Picture. It probably just never showed up on television at the right time, I suppose. Another factor might be the kind of love/hate relationship I have had with Ford. I love his craft and his poetry, but have a certain tolerance level for his overt romanticism and streaks of low brow humor. In the past couple of weeks I suffered through Drums Along the Mohawk but watched the western noir of My Darling Clementine with much interest.
How Green Was My Valley is usually cited as being John Ford's favorite film. It was the last project for Zannuck and Fox before they became soldiers with cameras full time leading units for the Navy and Army respectfully. One doesn't want to read too much into this. But afterall How Green is no Tobacco Road. It looks and feels like a major statement on one's career in movies, a meditation on life, love and family that was offered up to the world before going off to war.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:20 PM
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Sunday, July 26, 2009
AFT's Lost In The Stars
Lost In The Stars was Kurt Weil's final score and production. The American Film Theater motion picture of the play in 1974 is one of the last musicals to use conventions and film techniques that came out of Hollywood. It is not musical comedy. The adaptation of Alan Patton's novel of South Africa, Cry the Beloved Country by Weil and Maxwell Anderson is what NY Times critic Mel Gusso (commenting on a 1986 revival) describes as a musical tragedy.
And it is indeed a tragedy, this story of a Zulu preacher who watches his son tried and executed. As is the additional tragedy of the setting with apartheid. This movie is not by any means an example of film making excellence, but journeyman director Daniel Mann (Butterfield 8, Rose Tattoo, Willard) brings a straight ahead sensibility to the tale which features some of the best African American talent of the times: Brock Peters, Melba Moore, Raymond St Jacques, etc.
The best moments are those that feature Weil's music. The ensemble dance number Big Mole has an impressive amount of energy and dynamics. Melba Moore's two numbers Trouble Man and Stay Well are sold performances. And Brock Peters' baritone (he also played the role in a broadway revival a year or so earlier) is up for the task of a moving interpretation of the title song which has been popularized and brought to the canon of American standards due to versions by Tony Bennett and others.
The earnestness of the material and the mission of American Film Theater to bring culture to mid America (Many AFT productions are stagy dreary affairs) might be a bit of a put off. And if one generally hates musicals, this one will probably not put that individual in conversion mode. But, overall, I enjoyed my hour and a half with this mid-century artifact of the American theater with high aspirations because of the quality of the cast, the score by Weil and Anderson, but also because it had movie musical conventions that surprisingly did not seem at total odds with the solemn content of the story.
There was a weird familiarity about the hills, skyline and general environment of the location work in the film. I knew, of course, that it was not filmed in South Africa. Wikipedia and some other sources revealed that this version of Lost In the Stars was filmed in Cottage Grove, Oregon. They even used the now abandoned rail line that at one point was part of the attraction of the Village Green, a Willamette Valley resort that probably saw its best years during the era this film was made.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:07 PM
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Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Passion of Godard in 82
For a lover of film, Jean Luc Godard's Passion is worth seeing because it features both Isabelle Huppert and Hanna Schygulla captured on film in 1982. Huppert circa 30, playing a worker fired for trying to bring in a union into her workplace factory with a kind of punk Norma Rae abandon. Schygulla owns a hotel and lives there with the factory owner. They both fall for an artistically plagued and Polish director in town to film a movie called passion that seems to consist of living reenactments of old masters paintings.
"What's the Story?" is a question that everyone seems to be asking Jerzy, the director in the film (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) torn between the youth of Huppert and the steadied experience of Shygulla. Jerzy has so is chasing instead for cinematic camera moves on lavish sets. Ultimately, this is all Godard leaves this with. Sometimes one gets the impression that he just needs to follow some weird idea he got for shot. As was the case with one where the movements of a young girl in the set are hijacked for a post teen who moves up into the lighting grid and has a kind of dance that has the grips and the young woman reenacting her interactions with men until she is more or less ravished by one of them at the end of a sequence. There is another set of long shots that involve the camera moving on and off a biblical tableau of the Big Passion, not the low level kind that has been going on at the hotel and the set.
We may lack story, but we have a setting and circumstance of what happens when movies are made, especially on location. So I say let Passion be a part of this among company like David Mamet's Main Street, Truffaut's Day for Night., but maybe more so in tone with the likes of Fassbinder's Beware the Holy Whore or Godard's very own Contempt. Jerzy is artistically paralyzed too distracted and busy having affairs with the two goddesses in town. And then to add to his lack of stability he is challenged by the state of affairs taking place in Poland. (Solidaritie seems like a dream to me now)
A film is probably not going to be entriely successful ff it only has elements of great seting, circumstances and superior and attractive actors. Yet with a twisted genius of a director like Godard, you know that time spent is going to bring you some moments unique and often special. There are, for sure some nice patches of these in Passion. And the best of these seem to involve (guess who?) Huppert and Schygulla but, of course. As John Cougar Mellencamp sings at the end of Pink Houses, "That's good enough for me."
Here's what New York Times critic Vincent Canby wrote about Passion when it came out.
...Using a small group of absolutely splendid actors, who follow their leader with extraordinary confidence, Mr. Godard has made a funny, fractured, totally self-absorbed movie, without a real story, about the making of a movie that has no real story.
The result, which he calls Passion, is less a narrative film than an essay on the artistic process, which in this case happens to be the process by which a movie is made, with side comments on painting, music, films, labor relations, film distribution and love, plus a few jokes.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:39 PM
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Friday, July 24, 2009
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her Made In USA
Criterion has recently released two Jean Luc Godard films that were more or less created simultaneously in late 1966. Made In USA is the last feature he made with Anna Karina. 2 or 3 Things I Know About You features Marina Vlady, who at that time was a veteran Old Wave actress. Karina was Godard's wife and cinematic muse for most of the sixties. Early during the production of 2 or 3 Things, Godard proposed to Vlady, but was rejected. This may contribute to the feeling that we never get close to her in the film. In fact, most of the better scenes in the film are those with other actresses.
Made in USA still retains elements of plot even though it is also contains lots of Hollywood and political allusions as well as generally weird disjointed Godardisms. There are gangsters, cops and gun play. Karina's character takes on the role of a kind of detective trying to uncover who killed a former lover. It is not a conventional movie by any means, but in many ways resembles one.
On the other hand, 2 or 3 Things,is a kind of essay film commenting and prodding at life in the large apartment suburbs outside of central Paris and the consumerism that accompanies it. When they are paired, Made in USA really does look more like a normal movie. 2 or 3 Things feels like a random collection of impressions about these new areas of Paris. Godard whispers a narration about the current state of things filled with political references. The film is inspired by articles that Godard had encountered about housewives that were coming into Paris to supplement their income by being prostitutes. But ultimately it is an intriguing premise that does not come to be realized to any extent.
What I enjoy most about Godard of this period are the framing of his shots. He is fond of these wide screen images where his characters are backed with brightly colored backgrounds. Usually the human subject is a woman head or head and shoulders only located in the center or lower right corner of the frame. The bright colors of his background subject are usually bright with intense color.
It was intriguing to see these films back to back. Their contrast is profound. In one of Made in USA's supplemental features authors Richard Brody and Colin McCabe, who both wrote books on Godard, talk about how these films are a kind of cusp for Godard who would soon retreat from film making for quite sometime proclaiming that "Cinema is Dead" on his way out the door. Speaking of dead, Paula Nelson (Karina) does two shootings near the end of Made in USA. The first is Jean Pierre Leaud, (with the name of Donald Siegel, like I say, Hollywood references are everywhere here) the boy from Truffaut's The 400 Blows who later became a kind of symbolic figure for the French New Wave for Godard, Truffaut ond others. Also near the end Karina offs a writer named David Goodis, who is thought to be a slightly veiled version of Godard. Out with the old, in with the new. And if 2 or 3 Things points to that future, it is a cinema that continued to focus on idea vs. character, unless you count Godard himself as the character moving on his own path, a path that would soon include a dive into Maoism.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:16 PM
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Thursday, July 23, 2009
Fans With Big Grins: Perfect Game
Nothing beats well-captured reality of people feeling good about the world. And White Sox fans sure as heck felt good leaving the stadium today after seeing a perfect game by Mark Buherle and a high stakes catch in the ninth inning by Dewayne Wise.
This link below is an AP clip that was posted on YouTube. When professional cameramen and editors have something to work with it can be quite memorable.
Good lord, I must be sick still. The buffet is devoting itself to baseball. What's next--A post on Disney musicals?
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:37 PM
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Waltz with Bashir
Experimentation with form and matching or contrasting it with content has been a source of great interest, pleasure and enlightenment for me. So many of my favorite film artists have created their kind of cinema from exploration on the limits of this in regards to the dynamics of the medium. This club includes Welles, Fellini, even Spike Lee.
But what really catches me are films and media that take explorations of form matched with media to a kind of extreme. Consider the use of still images in La Jette. Or the use of modern documentary techniques to tell the story in much earlier times as employed by Peter Watkins in Edvard Munch and other films.
The rhythm of the phrase Animated Documentary reminds me a bit of those crows giving Dumbo shit about being able to fly. "Well, I never heard of a movie real as cartoon!" Waltz with Bashir Israeli film by Ari Folman pretty much creates and defines this medium. When I heard about this animation of Israeli veterans of the 1980 conflict in Lebanon I was skeptical. Richard Linklatter's Waking Life kind of messed me over and Rotoscoping, in general, I find pretty darned annoying. But then, again, there is Chris Landreth's Ryan, which I consider to be one of the great works of art so far this century.
"This is not rotoscoping," exclaims on of the animators interviewed on the special features. The look is all of its own. Motion capture and procedural analysis are elements. There is certainly a mix of traditional and digital here. It sometmes has flat flash stuff going but there are other sections with beautiful multi planed layers. Brown, yellow. dark blues and greens are the most consistent hues in this world. When faces react there are lines and motions that have a kind of lingering shimmer after the folks speak.
Bashir is about memory. And since memory is interpretation, experimentation with form and content of documentary fits well here. The men in this film peel back repressed memories from this horrid modern war. There images of men at war that rival those of Apocolypse Now (especially the stuff with soldiers on beaches.)
It may not be what we could consider a kind of pure documentary, but it certainly has to be defined and described as a non-fiction film. There are nine individuals featured in Bashir, but only seven are heard and visually interpreted. Two of the individuals are actors.
And because there is a strong plot it has a kind of feel of a fictional film. Director Ari Folman, or rather an animated interpretation of himself visits others like himself who were twenty four years prior Israeli solidiers in Lebanon. He is seeking to flesh out memory. It is kind of like Hitchcock's Marnie without James Bond and Tipi Hedren.
Bashir takes you on a journey from memory image to clarity. It takes you from dream to reality. There really is no other film like it in the century plus history of motion pictures.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:48 PM
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Asphalt Jungle
In a wonderful introduction on the Warners DVD of The Asphalt Jungle, a fifties era John Huston talks about how The Asphalt Jungle is a melodrama but not melodramatic. That is a striking statement, but so are a couple of other wonderful lines in the film itself. It is hard to tell without extensive research if the authorship of these statements goes to W. R. Burnett, th author of the book the film is based on as well as co-screenwriting credit, co-screenwriter Ben Maddow or Huston. No matter, they belong alongside some of the best Bartlett like sayings ever.
Crime is just a left-handed form of human endeavor.
One Way or Another, We all work for our vice.
The second of these is spoken by Sam Jaffee who plays elder criminal "Doc" Riedenschneider who is the mastermind of the caper that is at the center of the film. His vice is described by Huston in the intro as "girls of a tender age." A dirty old man perhaps, but a cool and smart one, to be sure.
The Asphalt Jungle stands a bit a part from other 1950 era noirs because it deals with a fellowship of underworld folk, not just one guy astray with a fatale doomed on his journey into the shadows. This is a godfather of Reservoir Dogs also filled with familiar actors like James Whitmore, Sterling Hayden, and even Marilyn Monroe in one of her first big breaks. Sterling Hayden as a Kentuckian wanting to get back home to raise horses is especially striking. It is probably his best performance. It also is a precursor to the kind of kitchen sink location movie like On The Waterfront that came later in the decade.
Waterfront is definitely New York. The Asphalt Jungle is set in an undetermined midwestern city somewhere within driving distance of Cleveland. It even feels gritty.
It is the first independent film of one of the most independent of cinema directors. Huston keeps the camera low with deepish focus and the pace of the story kicking at a near stacatto. The Asphalt Jungle, like a lot of great films, spans beyond era and genre. It will be watched and remembered long after a lot of other films are forgotten.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:00 PM
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Sunday, July 12, 2009
Wim Wenders & Leica
When Wender talks about his father's Leicas I get a little choked up. My father's Leicas were so important in our household that they were kind of additional family members. Mom and Dad smartly budgeted for these most important tools in my father's life.
THis short artformercial might be one of Wim Wenders best films. Certainly it is a heck of an advertisement. It makes you want one real bad. The difference is that in the fifties, Leica was really the only solution of major quality in 35mm photgraphy. Nowadays you can get a really fine digital camera without having to buy the 3.5k Leica one. But watching Wim celebrate this camera and heritage, such logic disappears, if not for a quick moment.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:15 PM
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Saturday, July 11, 2009
Those Darlins: A Band For My Summer
Who can resist of musical group of young women with an agenda and an attitude? Well, I certainly have a weakness for such confederations. From Roches to Neoboys to L7 to The Slits to Swoosh to Breeders to Zap Mama to early Indigo Girls to the Donnas to Electralane even Dixie Chicks and Go-Gos; What's not to love and admire?
Summer of 2009 brings another to this list for me. I first heard about Those Darlins in an
article in the NY Times I was on emusic within the hour downloading and totally swept up a special kind of punk meets traditional country world that seems only to belong to this group.
How punk are they? Well their names are very Ramone like. Those Darlins consists of Kelley, Jessi, and Nikki Darlin as well as some guy who plays the drums for them. They are from Tennessee. Their heritage and culture are worn like the product you get at a d tattoo parlor with a Confederate flag overhead.
As their written profile at Daytrotter Session this is a band that sings a lot about drinking and heartache a lot. But the difference is they make it feel really convincing. Daytrotter has a four song set available through Wolfgang's Vault. Here's a track and a YouTube sample of Those Darlins in person. This is turning out to be quite an Americana summer. I really love what this group is doing. Maybe it is a bit of selfishness on my part, but I hope they have some more time to learn their craft before their audience gets to be too big.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:34 AM
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Friday, July 10, 2009
Arthur Lyman
Sometime in late 1963, my father brought a record into our home that proved to be one of the most oft played on our stereo. It was Love For Sale by Hawaiian vibraphonist Arthur Lyman. I loved the bird calls and the lazy relaxing sound of Lyman's vibes. Overt the years he purchased other Lyman albums and he continues to be one of my favorites. Much of his recorded output became more readily accessible during the Lounge craze of the 1990s, which has been pretty cool.
Lyman was a key part of Martin Denny's band. The bird noises in Denny's 1957 hit Quiet Village were created by Lyman. Lyman left Denny's group and went on to do his own thing, hitting the charts with a number of his Tiki flavored jazz albums. His music is just right to go with rum and fruit juice drinks.
The secret to Lyman's sound is that he has other instruments pianos, guitars, marimbas, glockenspiels, playing counterpart to his vibraphone work. His palette is a wide range of all kinds of percussive instruments sometimes fronted with a flute or a guitar. Despite its percussive base, Lyman's music has a kind of lightness and richness to it. It is music to help you stay out on a beach a little bit longer because the moonrise is impressing you.
I figured if I ever got a chance to go to Hawaii, one of my pilgrimages was going to be to go see Lyman and his quartet play. One of our albums at home had a profile of some kind of aluminum dome structure where Lyman and his group would greet hordes of tourists. Lyman died in 2002 at the the age of 70 but his hours of island music and standards with his unique signature will be with us for a long time to come.
Lyman's music will always remind me of my father and the Love For Sale album he so proudly brought home. This post is dedicated to Jim Hughes on what would have been his 83rd birthday. Here's a clip to celebrate that clearly shows the Lyman touch.
posted by well-executed buffet at 1:48 AM
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Friday, July 3, 2009
Angels In America Redux
I took most of a day to view Mike Nichols' 2003 six hour HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner's Angels in America and I am convinced that despite its very direct setting of AIDS in the eighties that it is epic, timeless and should be seen by just about everyone. I think it is one of those handful of "big" film experiences that I can see myself checking into every five years or so for the rest of my movie viewing time on this planet. An HBO miniseries was a great format for this project, it preserved the scope and content of Kushner's plays, gave it the budget, the CGI and stars it needed to make it available for those who did not get to see the plays or are likely to read them.
In the five or six years since I saw it last, I have developed quite a relationship with two of the film's primary actors. Angels was my introduction to Mary-Louise Parker who of course, plays Nancy Botwin in Weeds. But it also features Justin Kirk, who plays Andy, Nancy's manchild brother in law in Weeds. The opportunity to see the two of these folks in another setting put another fun and odd dimension to my return to Angels, especially in the the scene where they mutually share in each other's fantasy dream sequence.
There are so many outstanding scenes for actors in Angels. Al Pacino is a Roy Cohn for the ages. He is so emphatic, nasty and intense, particularly when he railing on his opiumnated vision of Ethel Rosenberg as portrayed by Meryl Streep. And then there is Emma Thompson as one of the most demanding angels of all time. The messenger has arrived indeed!
Then there is Jeffery Wright as Belize, Cohn's night nurse. Angels was my first exposure to his acting as well. Since then he has become a favorite of mine, right up there with Philip Seymour Hoffmann. Wright's take on Colin Powell was one of the highlight's of Oliver Stone's W.
This will remain one of my favorite of Nichols' work, I am certain of that. In a post a ouple months back I quoted NY TImes reporter Charles McGrath who stated: "it’s sometimes hard to say what makes a Nichols movie a Nichols movie. They seem like vehicles for actors, not the director, whose stamp is in leaving almost no trace of himself." In the article Nora Ephron describes him as having "an almost invisble fluidity." All hail the invisible man.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:30 PM
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Thursday, July 2, 2009
German Soccer Comes to PDX
The banner here is being waived by a very enthusiastic Bayren Munchen fan as their team meets up with the Portland Timbers. Watching this exhibition match was way to spend a summer evening and kick off the July 4 weekend. I don't know a whole heck of a lot about soccer but it seemed to me that the Timbers were still keyed up from their capacity exhibition the evening before with the MLS Seattle Sounders. MLS status in 2011 is still a possibility for the Timbers, I'm told, but I'm sure not holding my breath for it with lots of millions, politics, and a new home for the Portland Beavers yet undecided.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:56 PM
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Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Kurosawa's Scandal
Toshiro Mifune certainly has played roles in films by Kursosawa or others that were not period or samurai-related, but somehow the independent-spirited, principled motorcycling artist in Scandal (1950) suits him quite well still with the kind of code and sensibility that he posses in his later more famous roles in the Yojimbo, Seven Samurai, etc.
Of the five films in the Postwar Kurosawa Eclipse Criterion box set, Scandal seems most a curiosity of the time it was created. Yet at the same time, its examination of yellow scandal sheet journalism has a sense of prescience to it. Innocent images of an encounter Mifune has with a popstar in a mountain getaway are marketed as a sensational National Enquirer like outfit and cause quite a cultural sensation just as Brad and Angelina fodder does in our current pop culture.
Mifune''s artist character Ichiro Ayoye has high and strongly determined values. The other men in the film are weak, duplicitous or just plain crooked. The women are a picture of goodness, both the popstar and the infirmed daughter of the weak and flaky lawyer he hires. There are also a couple of sets of male characters that are stock and broadly drawn of the ilk one encounters in a John Ford or Frank Capra film.
Donald Richie comments on how Kurosawa was motivated to make this film because of an incident where his private life was put on display in the yellow press. And also because "The Occupation was coming to an end and for the first time in the history of Japan people were beginning to be allowed to say, do, read, write anything they pleased." and he harbored concerns about this.
Scandal is certainly worth looking at if one is working their way through the Criterion set, but isn't a standout by any means. It is pretty ordinary fare overall, but there are minor pleasures in it to be sure, it is great fun to watch Mifune do his thought scratching in another setting than feudal and he makes a fine knight of righteousness in a shallow world surrounding him.