Monday, August 31, 2009
Kluge in Outer Space I
Der Grose Verhau is a part of one phase of iconoclastic German author/filmmaker/social commentator/philosopher Alexander which one commentator defined as low-fi Science Fiction. It features transistors posing as spaceships shot against slide and black screen.
in the midst of rough hewn intertitles, hippies cast as space admirals and bumbling pilots and a space geography hard to keep track ofm we meet an elder couple, a typisch Unkle and Tante. Maria and Vincenz Starr seem like the kind of folks who would serve a guest Kuche and Cognac in the afternoon. But they were bombed out of Transpluto and make a living as accumulators who make their living "from theft blackmail and counterfeiting" (although Vincenz insists that the last one the last one was too long time ago to be punishable.)
I'm not all toghether surprised to find Kluge plumbing this kind of cinematic ground. Low-Fi SciFi is a kind of genre itself. Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outerspace is a key part of this genre, but I also am fond of fodder like Rocketship X-M with Lloyd Bridges in 1950 and later odd films like Countdown (Robert Altman 1968) and Capricorn One about the government faking a Mars mission. There are low fi SciFi films by Sun Ra and the Flaming Lips. I remember a student I had once who accomplished his classproject by building and filming a spaceship. "I build them all the time." Sure, that statemtne makes one smile, but isn't it all a part of that cinematic genre that in recent years includes Soderbergh's Solaris and the recent Moon by David Bowie's kid, Duncan Jones.
The ultimate Lofi SciFi is, of course, Georges Melies' A Trip to the Moon (1907)
Sixty one years later, Kluge takes his models, stock footage, and a construction site of a spaceship and expands on that thread of cinematic tradtition. Der Grose Verhau means "the Big Mess." and he basic premise of the film it seems is that man will muck up space exploration just as he had the tempestuous times of the late sixties and early seventies that it was made. Kluge's low tech SciFi can never be confused with his social realism films following pre-feminist and feminist heroines of his earlier films, but then again, Alphaville is a far distance from the Paris of Belamondo in Breathless or the film set of Contempt. Godard and Kluge are both complete men of film in a way that our earlier generations had men of letters. There can be great reward in tracing or retracing their steps of cinematic exploration.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:02 AM
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Sunday, August 30, 2009
A Night in Fresno
posted by well-executed buffet at 5:10 PM
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Highway 99 Visited
Bob Dylan in Fresno 8.14.09 and in Stockton 8.15.09
I am convinced that Bob Dylan still matters in this world gone wrong of ours. Fresno and Stockton were at the end of the line of a mostly small town baseball park tour that also featured Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp on the bill. Dylan still makes the crowd come to him, just as he did when he "went electric" 44 years ago at Newport. One gets a sense at his shows that he provides a kind of snapshot of both where he is now with a look back or two to where both he and you have been.
His voice these days is often a raspy growl, but the voice of Dylan has polarized audiences for years. He mainly plays keyboards these days. (This reminds me of Miles Davis in his latter tours) His piano playing often consists of syncopated triplets and can sometimes sound like an ice rink organ out of control. If you know and like Dylan's harmonica playing you can adapt well to the way he uses keyboards in his current band setting. Only once during these two shows did he play guitar.
But we are talking about Bob Dylan here. The scope of his career is probably summarized best by his nightly introduction made by tour manager: "Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the poet laureate of rock 'n' roll. The voice of the promise of the '60s counterculture. The guy who forced folk into bed with rock, who donned makeup in the '70s and disappeared into a haze of substance abuse, who emerged to "find Jesus,' who was written off as a has-been by the end of the '80s, and who suddenly shifted gears and released some of the strongest music of his career beginning in the mid-'90s. Ladies and Gentleman, Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan..."
In his Rolling Stone interview with Douglas Brinkley this past spring, Dylan said his band sounds like no other band. I think that is mainly due to these three guys on his stage right. Throughout the evening they kind of come off like the three musketeers working with D'artangan to discover new worlds on a cloud of American roots music and to mine and refine to old towards creating something new. Their light suits and dark hats contrast well with Dylan in black with whatever brim he is wearing for the evening. A band that backs Dylan has the job of helping Bob be Bob, whether it was Bloomfield/Kooper or the band in the sixties, David Mansfield and the folks of the Rolling Thunder seventies, his guest shots with the Grateful Dead and Tom Petty's heartbreakers, or more recent groups with the likes of Larry Campbell and now these guys. A Dylan band needs atmosphere, punctuation, driving and intensity and nuance. In concert, his songs need to be alive ready to take an audience to new places even if they know the words by heart.
Both evenings began with snarling versions of Ballad of A Thin Man. Coincidentally, Frank Rich's column in the NY Times on Sunday pulled together TV's Mad Men with the mad circus of the health care town hall debates we are enduring.
To be underwater — well, many Americans know what that’s like right now. But we are also at that 1963-like pivot point of our history, with a new young president unlike any we’ve seen before, and with the promise of a new frontier whose boundaries are a mystery. Something is happening here, as Bob Dylan framed this mood the last time around, but you don’t know what it is.
Well, Do you Mr. Jones? This question was responded to quickly on Friday with The Times They are A Changin' and a moving Forever Young on Saturday. But you don't stay in decades old past for long in a Dylan show. One is quickly dropped into the world of the newer records with contemporary backdrop of the American music tradition. Tunes like The Levee's Gonna Break or Rollin' and Tumblin' can demand a lot from the listener, but it is worth it because Dylan these days will take you home with Highway 61, Like A Rolling Stone and All Along the Watchtower but not in a greatest hits way, but in a way reflective of where he and his band happen to be at that point in their interpretation of the song and in the spirit of that particular evening.
To be underwater — well, many Americans know what that’s like right now. But we are also at that 1963-like pivot point of our history, with a new young president unlike any we’ve seen before, and with the promise of a new frontier whose boundaries are a mystery. Something is happening here, as Bob Dylan framed this mood the last time around, but you don’t know what it is.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:54 PM
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posted by well-executed buffet at 9:24 PM
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Monday, August 17, 2009
I'm Back
I'm back, but Blogger is being a real butt in terms of getting posts and pictures up. I have lots of tales to share regarding my five day trip to the San Jaoquin Valley including two evening concerts in minor league ballparks with Dylan, Willie, Cougar-Mellencamp, and The Wiyos, but have no time now to troubleshoot and post. Check back soon. I'll submit some post-dated entries a few as soon as technical issues and time provide the opportunity.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:53 AM
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Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Feelin' the Earth Move on Such A Spring Day
I was in eighth grade in the early Spring of 1971. That was a huge Spring for Carole King. The mega selling Tapestry was released in March and James Taylor released the album with I've Got A Friend on it a month later. She was everywhere with curly locks sitting in the window with the cat.
I have a special memory of those days. I had gotten a new snooze alarm radio for my birthday, also in March. My eighth grade year was my favorite year in my entire school career because the ninth grade class we shared the junior was the biggest bunch of extraverted drama nerds, anarchistics and mindless stupid chemical substance explorers I've encountered in my lifetime. The school district was in the midst of one of those sixties and early seventies innovation fad. That was the year of minimal general ed requirements and lots of opportunities to load up our day with cool things to do. That meant you could do a lot of time in the art room or in one of the science labs. There was an insane amount of movies shown and lots of field trips you could go on.
I remember lots of flippy hair stringy hair and that we seemed to have a lot of music assemblies and stuff like that. Like I said, the drama nerds were pretty high profile.
Anyway in the Spring of 1971 I remember having this absolutely delicious awakening one morning where I dreamed in technicolor that we were in a school assembly with this ninth grader in our school banging away on an electric piano while she sang a song called I Feel the Earth Move. I've never had another snooze alarm experience to match it.
I thought about this because I was listening to this really wonderful version of the song that began the Tapestry album and therefore, the beginning of the strongest and most popular era for the singer-songwriter. It is by Lonnie Smith before he wore a turban and called himself Dr. Lonnie Smith. (as in doctor of groove) One must not confuse him with Lonnie Liston Smith, who is a spacey player who played with Gato Barbieri and also had these kind of astral kick back and groove concept records.
Dr. Lonnie is widely considered as one of the greatest active B3 jazz organ players in the world. He does some pretty hip things such as an album where he interprets a bunch of Beck songs. This track is from the summer of 1971 and it must of been one of the first covers the song that wouldn't go away that year forever clustered with both Carole and James' version of You've Got A Friend. I've got another memory of that from summer camp but it isn't nearly as rewarding to consider when compared to the best school assembly I ever attended, even if it was in my shutter sunstroked bed.
LonnieSmith_feel_earth-move.mp3
LonnieSmith_feel_earth-move.mp3
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:27 PM
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Monday, August 3, 2009
The Business of a Non-Filmmaker Making a Movie
Sherman Alexie's The Business of Fancydancing is a kind of shaggy dog of an independent film that was released in 2002. It made the rounds and received with interest in the independent film festivals, but unfortunately did not find an audience in in its limited theatrical release. Thank goodness for DVD and its ability to capture brave cinematic undertakings like this so that they are not simply ephemeral moments in one's memory banks. There is much in Fancydancing that is imperfect and a little bit clumsy at times, but there are moments that are as strong and provocative as anything Alexie, a unique and provocative artist has created.
Digital video is a kind of technological miracle. Fancydancing shows what can happen when folks with a lot of talent as well as some solid technical and aesthetic resources come together in an artistic enterprise. This film is said to have been budgeted at $100,000, not a minor sum to be sure, but a surprisingly small sum for the production of a full length film. Again it is another example of how digital resources and technology create opportunities to create, to do things that would otherwise be impossible.
It is unfair to Fancy Dancing to lump it together with Smoke Signals, the 1998 ground breaking and successful feature film that Alexie wrote and was one of the primary creative sources behind. It had a budget twenty times larger and was clearly intended as a kind of mass entertainment. A way to consider the differences: Smoke Signals was an adaptation of Alexie's fiction, Fancy Dancing, which has much of its roots in time Alexie spent with a video collective in Seattle, is filled with his poetry, and poetry will never (nor is intended to) attract a similar level of audience.
In the DVD commentary track, Alexie recounts how the film's art director Jonny Saturen told him during production. "Sherman, this movie is going to be too white for Indians, too Indian for white people and too gay for everybody. Whose going to want to see this? Indians are rednecks. White people are rednecks. I said maybe about 10,000 people, Jonny. And so far that has been about accurate."
Nevertheless, If one is a fan of Alexie as our household is, trying never to miss a book tour or local personal appearance, the DVD is definitely worth checking out. As is the case in most of Alexie's enterprises, it is rooted firmly in his autobiographical experience as a Spokane Indian but with all kinds of twists and turns.
His protagonist Seymour Plotkin is gay and went to school in Seattle. Alexie is married with two children and went to school closer to home in Spokane and and Pullman before moving to Seattle. Probably the most direct biographical link in the film concerns its depiction of how Alexie's fame and public persona was responded to by his fellow tribal members.
There is a lot of emotion and naked honesty in this little film and much to admire despite some ragged edges. I still remember my introduction to Alexie fifteen years ago. I was doing deliveries on my weekend job and encountered an interview on NPR's Weekend Edition just after his first book of fiction, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. This was followed a few weeks later with a reading he did at my college (and now my work home.) The book readings, appearances and readings I've had pleasure to have attended since have always been memorable. But there was an exuberance and energy to those early encounters that is hard to describe, it was kind of like the opening chord of the Beatles' A Hard Days Night. There are moments in Fancydancing that are reminiscent of that time. They reflect the energy and excitement of a creative individual trying his hand, with a little help from his friends, at another medium and bringing the results home for us to see.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:46 PM
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Sunday, August 2, 2009
A Passion for Cultures and Intellectual Curiosity
Claude Levi-Strauss: In His Own Words is a compilation of interviews with a cultural anthropologist, now 100 years old. It is a surprisngly engaging scholar that serves as an accessible introduction to this man and his work. He is, as the film's introduction states "a man that each century only counts a few of."
In one of the interviews, Levi-Strauss gives this perspective "I think pessimism gives optimism its best chance because via the condition of pessimism that we become conscious of the dangers threatening us in being highly pessimistic, we can gain the courage to adopt necessary solutions." For some reason this statement resonates with me as does his love and relationship with music. He even applies the structure of classical musical form to some of his written output.
His life and career are a testimony to the intellectual curiosity. He was trained in philosophy and sociology and used these as the foundation to what ultimately became his life's work in ethnology and anthropology. His study in the late thirties of indigenous Brazilian peoples, especially the Bororo helped lead him to his life long study of cultures, myth and an early popularizer of the importance of ecology. His work on the importance of myth is reminiscent of ground Joseph Campbell covered.
Claude Levi-Strauss: In His Own Words is a very full ninety minutes seems to barely scratch the surface of the life and work of this fascinating man. His work can obviously be complex and dense. The film features a couple of telegenic Levi-Strauss scholars encouraging us all to try our hand at reading his work. At this point an introductory documentary will serve the buffet just fine, but it was time well-spent.
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:09 AM
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Saturday, August 1, 2009
A Clear Vision of A Decade Filled with Hysterical Blindness
I have only seen a small amount of her work, but based on what I have seen including an evening with Nair, it seems to me that their is definitely a parallel between her cinematic vision and interests between Anh Lee and herself. They both intensely study culture and subculture and are successful to applying a certain kind of ethnography mixed with a demonstration of the poignant truths of the human condition. In other words, they are devoted to bringing their audiences both characters and culture and are adroit at doing such for both their own heritage and ethnicity of both themselves and others.
2002 HBO film Hysterical Blindness is described by Nair on the commentary track as being a dark comedy. It endeavors to show honestly and unblinkly the 1980s for two female best friends in their mid to late twenties as well as one of their mothers and daughters. He also describes it as the often "untold story of the extremes we go to become desirable."
Bayonne NJ dwellers Debby and Beth (Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis) spend most every night in a little working class tavern almost as ritual. They both wear glam chic wardrobes and that are uncanny in their accuracy to the times. I felt like I was at the mall watching the Madonnabees back in the day. Debby's stress level and need to be loved and appreciated by someone lead her to bouts of hysterical blindness. This woman is hot wired with need. Mir brings the audience in as close as she can so that sometimes it makes uncomfortable to the level of almost cringing but we soon are hoping that somehow this character gets to experience some kind of love and self acceptance.
What probably made me cringe more was the accuracy of the setting of the bar. The jukebox was filled with tunes I really want to kind of forget: Whitesnake's Here I Go Again, Head to Toe by Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Promises Promises by Naked Eyes, Take Me Home by Phil Collins, Wang Chung's Dance Hall Days, Invincible by Pat Benatar and What You Need by INXS. It was like a bad dream that could only be made worse by a bunch of Duran Duran and Wake Me Up before you Go Go!
There are three songs, all of which interestingly are played outside of the bar. Debby cruises in her 84 Camaro to Message of Love by the Pretenders and Springsteen's Tunnel of Love. And Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun is also utilized in used in an exceptional manner I will not spoil.
Mir's visual philosophy is perhaps best summarized by the statement she makes on the DVD commentary tracks: "I try to enjoy every frame." She is clearly dedicated to the visual presentational aspect with excellence in photographic composition more so than many filmmakers. Hysterical Blindness began as a play, but Mir has turned it into a highly cinematic entity. It may be her documentary filmmaking background that has helped lead to her working fast (this film had a 23 day shooting schedule) in a production that was entirely handheld (but never swishingly, bouncingly annoying like some hand held productions.) She calls HBO he only independent film studio in town. She talks about how they support an artist to "unabashedly go after a vision."
It doesn't hurt that her actors are top drawer. Lewis and Thurman are wonderful and almost too convincing in their roles. But this film also features two of the greatest in the history of Independent cinema--John Cassavetes' veterans Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara. These two have always seemed to have a special chemistry when they appear on screen together.
Mir talks about how she and her actors plumb and crew "plumb" the various aspects of a film. And in Hysterical Blindess her vision in conjunction with a fine script and excellent, surprising performances the sum of the parts creates a very memorable, if not altogether pleasant film experience of one who desperately needs to be loved and how it impacts those about her.