Saturday, October 31, 2009
Return to Z
Forty years after its release, and now as a recent Criterion DVD reissue, Z, the 1969 film by Costa Gavras, stands tall as one of the great works in the history of cinema. It is a hard film to categorize. It reflects the vibrancy of the French Nouvelle vague, but technique and exploration into the possibilities of expressive cinema never get in the way or feel terribly dated. It is simultaneously a thriller and a political expose. Z is a rare film where all elements in film come together and radiate. It utilizes story telling that utilizes creativity in both expressionist and explanatory flashbacks that expand and contribute.
There is historical basis for what is depicted here. The setting is Greece and the incident is a 1963 assassination of political leader Gregoris Lambrakis. The film's credits clearly state "Any resemblance to real events, to persons living or dead, is not accidental. It is DELIBERATE." Yet it is delivered such an engaging cinematic fashion, the viewer only focuses on the tension, the drama and the story being told and is concerned not with history or the fidelity of how events are depicted.
Yves Montand is the marquee player and he is pivotal to the film as a leftist deputy who is killed, but the real dazzling screen presence belongs to another big French movie star of the sixties, Jean-Louis Trintignant, who as the investigating magistrate radiates a no-nonsense dedication to seeking the truth in what turns out to be a major governmental scandal. But I also enjoy the thug side of the story too featuring the assassins Yago (Renato Salvatori) and Vago (Marcel Bozzuffi)
I first saw this film maybe a year or two came out. I was circa 14 and it was one of the first foreign films I went to alone with my father. I don't think I ever saw a film that engaged me like Z did. Many months later, we took the family back to see it, but it was not the same. This time the film was dubbed and was on a double-bill with another much more sober, political, and difficult Garvas film, State of Siege, about CIA operations in Uruguay.
When I see Z today, I see much of what I liked the first time round nearly forty years ago. I love the fact that the primary hero of this piece is a reporter with a Nikon camera. Remember this was years before Watergate and the idea of investigative reporter as savior and sometimes superhero had not really infiltrated our culture yet.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:49 PM
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Friday, October 30, 2009
Virtual JFK
JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy HAd Lived. is a fascinating little film, essentially an illustrated lecture by Brown University hisorian James G Blight, co author of a book by the same title. In the film Blight i reviews the decisions that President John F Kennedy made in international politics and during the thousand days of his presidency as a foundation for the speculative question of how he would have ulitmately handled the Vietnam Crisis.
Despite the inference in its title, I don't find this film to be a bunch of pie in the sky speculating, but a carefully sculpted review of history beginning with 1961 which Blight calls one of the worst years an American President ever had." He walks the viewer through the foundational facts surrounding the plethora of crisis that Kennedy encountered: Bay of Pigs, Berlin, Laos and Cuba and how he resisted the opinion of advisers to utilize direct American force.
It is surprising how much of Kennedy's personality comes through in footage from news conferences during these critical showdowns. His wit, poise and generally grace under pressure. By the end of the film, one can become pretty convinced that Kennedy would have not allowed the war to escalate as his successor Lyndon Johnson did
And this conclusion is supportged greatly with the distinctively different style and rhetoric of Johnson in the latter part of the film, Blight's lecture climaxes with his conclusion that Johnson was indeed a different kind of president. He responded differently to the pressures of the pentagon and other top level advisors who were not able to gain the same level of decision making influence with Kennedy.
"It matters who we elect as President in times of war and peace." Blight concludes. The impact of this ultimately? The final title slide of the film sums that up: "Everytime history repeats itself, the price of the lesson goes up."
Director Koji Masutani employs many of the same kinds of conventions Erroll Morris developed and utilized in his films. Morris, of course, created a film biography af Robert McNamara, The Fog of War one of the most chilling films and thought-provoking films about the era. Voice over, vintage footage and Composer Joshua Kern's music all are utilzed in a way similar to many of Morris' film. This helps give Virtual JFK a kind of familiar foundation for a viewer rather than make it feel like blatant copycat. Instead it gives propels this lecture with a kind of economy that engages the viewer effectively and directly.
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:36 PM
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Sunday, October 25, 2009
UP Soccer Women vs. SFU 10.25.09
I had opportunity to share a University of Portland soccer game with a work colleague who had a spare ticket because his wife needed to work on a Sunday. I'm sure I will be back sometime next season. I was impressed with the setting, the scene and the intensity and focus that these women athletes bring to their game. The crowd was also extremely focused and well informed. Their encouragements and exclamations were most positive:"Come on Kendall." "That's the way it should be Halley" "Good job, Sophie." It was almost like a kind of chorus.
There is already one speculative writer type in my family, but this image has me considering a Biotech professor who fools everyone by genetically engineering a school mascot who, of course, runs amok during a critical game for the home team.
If one earns a spot on the UP Women's soccer team, they become a role model and an idol to dozens of tween and pre-tween girls. I became instant fan of many of these players after seeing them plummet the University of San Francisco, but figured I wasn't in the right demographic to ask for autographs.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:44 AM
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Saturday, October 24, 2009
A Finale for TP Market on 39th and Columbia
Can a yellow plastic sign of a Tee Pee shed a tear? There were solid decades and generations running this spot. As my neighborhood market, I personally came late to the game. The highlight for me were the years of mix and match imports six for six and later seven bucks. And it didn't matter how much it was worth.
They had a good butcher who knew what he was doing. And they would stock up on New Seasons or Whole Foods styled deli salads from a local caterer years before those establishments made the scene. Some of the first meals that Pam and I had at our 31st St place were purchased there.
I liked the times when it felt like neighborhood. An owner was the father-in-law of one of my high schools most beloved teachers among nerds. I often thought of that when I would drive by in the years of surly East Indian owners, then unsurly owners or workers and later years of vacancy, a fire and now what is apparently a multi office complex coming in. I've heard about a small market or coffee shop being a part of the plans. We'll see.
TP allowed credit to neighborhood customers well into the seventies. I remember a reminiscence of a couple of mischievous tweens, as we would call them now, a pair of cousins who put quite a candy fest on the bill one summer. It is a tale straight out of Cleary or the Brady Bunch. But in this case, because it was next to Trinity Lutheran Church, probably more like Davy and Goliath.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:20 PM
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Friday, October 23, 2009
Elvis Perkins in Dearland
It seems that Saturday evening walks are the best time for IPod listening of new artists. I think there is something almost primordial to listen to songs by their songwriters. I have been listening to the Doomsday EP and his Daytrotter session and have been fully captivated. There are only ten songs between them but they are lean and strong. And there is this great range of styles and topics. I bet Joe Strummer would love this guy.
"Known for their wide range of dynamics and eclectic instrumentation, Elvis Perkins in Dearland have frequently drawn comparisons to Leonard Cohen, Neutral Milk Hotel, Buddy Holly and The Band." But I don't know what the hell Neutral Milk Hotel is so I have to Wikilink to that one. For the record they are southern psychedelic folk band. Elvis' voice has more range than liked name predecessors Presley and Costello. He is kind of an encyclopedia of great folk singer songwriter and rock and roll. And he brings it out in his singing but never in a cornball way. I hear Leonard Cohen as well, but also Donavon, The Waterboys guy, The Pogues mixed with Velvets but at other times an Everly Brothers or Johnny Cash at Sun.
But meanwhile let's get back to Elvis Perkins and his band Elvis Perkins in Dearland. I'm really digging the inventiveness of this band. On The lead track of the Doomsday EP. He sounds kind of like he is inside a minature megaphone, but not in a Tom Waits way. Gypsy Davy comes next and Perkins sounds a lot like Harry Nillson. I love it when a good artist takes on an old folk standard and paints a new picture. This version is kind of like Charles Russell on acid.
A highlight Emile's Vietnam in The Sky on the Daytrotter session. I guess in his case he could have called it the Deartrotter session.
jean cocteau is covered in butter
the ghosts of cappucino and zaza hover
in the hallway where the devil and his lover
beg you for change on the slide
there's nothing really like a french blues
blown by an unknown soldier in you
to all your regrets and you rouse
i'll meet you down there when i try
and do you ever wonder where you go when you die?
emile's vietnam in the sky
Yes folks, I was captivated. And then a miraculous thing happend. Maybe one of the most miraculous things in my Wikipedia experience. It was the next paragraph: "Perkins is the son of actor Anthony Perkins. He was raised in Los Angeles, California, and New York City with his older brother, actor Oz Perkins. Perkins is a great-grandson of the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and a nephew of the actress Marisa Berenson. " And then later, "on September 11, 2001, when his mother, a passenger on the ill-fated American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, perished in the attack on New York City's twin towers, a day before the ninth anniversary of his father's death." His Father was Norman Bates. I had no idea.
Now his music is taking on a whole other dimension with that knowledge. You can't help but psychobabble speculate on the roots of this great talent now that one knows it exists. So you can't help but want to say something dumbass stupid like He took that unique life of his and moved that into his vibrant burning thing. I imagine that term papers are already being cast about this guy.
Doomsday EP is available from emusic and I imagine I Tunes. But here's the link for the free Daytrotter session. I think they used to do embeds. I wanted to include that, but I assure you, it is worth visiting the link.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:59 PM
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Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Carlos Saura and his Fado Journey
I'm not huge on Spanish cinema. There was that Beehive Frankenstein movie. Bunuel, of course, who is Spaniard, but like Dali and Picasso more European than nationalist even though Spain is sometimes more than a little evident with these artists. With the exception of Almodovar, maybe the only modern director I can think of from Spain is probably Carlos Saura.
Fados, one of the finest meetings of cinema and music I've ever seen reunites me for the first time to Saura's work since the Carmen Blood Wedding days of the eighties. Fado is a music of Portugal. Fado songs are mostly ballads of yearning for another time or condition (mostly involving love) almost to a point of being psychologically masochistic. Suprisingly, Fado is a pretty resilient and diverse musical form. And that is one of the biggest takeaways frm Saura's film. There are definitely straight forward ballads of pain, heartbreak, and longing. But there are also songs of patriotic loyalty and a spectrum of tunes which show strong ethnic influences from Brazil, (where it is said to originate) Cape Verde, and Mozambique. There is even a hip hop flavored Fado in the film.
Saura delivers approximately twenty song interpretations in a controlled, cinematic, sound stage environment but also draws from archival footage and various techniques of green screen like effects and backscreen projection. He has, in effect, created a film version of an anthology designed to bring forward awareness of this musical and cultural form.
And let us not forget that Saura is probably the most significant living practitioner for delivering dance to the screen. He livens up the screen significantly with a few numbers revolving around dance interpretations of the songs.
I found myself most impressed with the older more seasoned performers. Carlos Du Carmo is probably my favorite artist in the film. He looks like an executive or inn keeper in his sixties and sings with wisdom of many seasons behind him. Argentina Santos, another Fado elder is also exceptionally strking in her performance of Fado Minor.
There is no narration. Just a collection of songs with visuals, but Saura's presentation is not random. There is a kind of underlying continuity that allows one to travel through this world of song and culture.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:48 PM
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Backstage at the Oregon Zoo
Upon occasion the Oregon Zoo opens up their non-public areas for patrons and supporters. This year I was invited to come along and was also able to bring some youngsters to this behind the scenes glimpse of zoo animals and their keepers.
After a quick lecture about the care and feeding of Humboldt Penguins, one of their stars came in to show off a little bit for the visitors. You could even pet him if you wished.
If you are this close to a bear, it is nice to have those bars in place. Conrad the polar bear is one of the zoo's most popular residents. It was great to watch him feed, but I felt a tiny bit guilty our backstage view was stealing him away from the other patrons who wanted to watch him frolic around with his sister Tasul.
Elephants are star attractions at the Oregon Zoo. The well-timed birth of a baby elephant late last summer lead to the passage of a major bond levy at a time when such a thing was unheard of in ragged down-turned economy. Backstage at the elephant house showed that taking care of these animals from keeping them fed and exercised, sexually segregated during breeding times, and well-exercised is an intensive and well-coordinated effort.
Packy is world renowned for being the first Indian elephant born in captivity. It is hard to describe what level of notoriety he had in PDX for decades. He was definitely a better known figure in this town or rivers and bridges than most Trailblazers ever were. And for his contribution all he gets is this bucket of windfall looking fruit?
Imagine if your job was to be a zoo animal. These young lions, recently acquired for the new Predators of the Serengeti exhibit seem to have the right idea. -- look regal and layabout in a photogenetic fashion. Nice work if you can get it.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:07 PM
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Monday, October 19, 2009
Marcell's Grand Opening and Oktoberfest
This is how my morning began. I put on my backpack and planned to hike to the farmer's market. It was a little after 10 and I paused to look at this riot of color down one of the side streets. I'm a sucker for dramatic colors in leaf and in sunset. I know fine arts folks who feel that taking such pictures is prosaic or whatever, I take more of the approach that the digital camera should, at times, be a sort of "extension of man" to be McLuhanesque. My nervous system responds to color and light so I record it. And with the digital world there is no cost to the individual except the time it takes to assess, and if one chooses, to edit and repurpose the image.
A few blocks from the house, I noticed it was starting to rain so I decided to stop at Marcell's earlier than I had planned. There was a band playing German music and all you can eat pancakes for less than 5 bucks. I decided to wait out the storm.
These images don't give one an idea of the ferocity and intensity of the morning rainstorm. I found a nice dry spot under the umbrellas for a while, read a book and the Saturday papers waiting for the storm to clear a bit. There are far worse places to be caught in a rainstorm.
Marcell's has turned into a fine little neighborhood gathering space, now with a shiny commercial kitchen and lots of nooks and crannies to connect your Wifi, meet a friend, read a book. It has been great to watch Marcell adapt and transform this place, formerly a little Ma and Pa market on 31st and Columbia streets in Vancouver USA.
The rains finally broke during Student Loan's set. These world traveling bluegrass/newgrass band is always a lot of fun. They can kick it with both a Bill Monroe tune or a Phish or Grateful Dead cover. I hope they will play on our side of the river as well.
Mayor Royce Pollard stopped by to give his tribute to Marcell and what she has been able to accomplish. He commented how we tend to emphasize big businesses that come into Vancouver such as SEH or Hewlett Packard, but it is the small business that really give our town its character. I personally hope that Royce fares well in the current election, and this is not the last time I see him in his convivial Bergermeister role. He does it so well talking about America's Vancouver and always ending his remarks with a God Bless America. He's old school, but I dig him.
The day's last act was a very fine one. Jacob Merlin has a voice very much like David Clayton Thomas' Blood Sweat and Tears lead singing back in the day. It is strong full and passionate and is matched well against a full, hard blowing horn section. He's the real deal, Tower of Power's Mic Gilette appears on the album, which is a surprising strong Rhythm and Blues, jazz rock offering. I'll probably have more to say about Merlin at a later time.
We couldn't take our beers into the street so folks tended to gather back behind the fence with our Wursts and Widmars. Marcell says she wants to do it again next year, maybe in the first weekend in October. I certainly hope to be there.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:52 PM
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Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Class
Entre les murs (Between the Walls) aka The Class, is a 2008 film written and starring a real life Paris public school instructor, François Bégaudeau This film, directed by Laurent Cantet features real students and faculty. It has a documentary feel, but the scenes are well-prepared through months of improvisational workshops at the school before filmming began.
The Class is, I believe, one of the best movies ever made about education. For those of us who have taught at any audience level, it is a flood of truths and daily circumstances. Over half of the film shows the conversations and interchanges of Francois' classroom of culturally diverse middle-school aged students with both moments of adolsescent resistance and obstinance, of breakthroughs in learning and behavior. The Class shows a kind of internal, cellular world that never really gets outside of the school and classroom. There isn't a bunch of To Sir With Love, Blackboard Jungle drama and histrionic here. It is a film that feels true without the distraction of subplots in the private lives of teachers and students.
Although it is fictionalized in a reality setting, The Class probably comes closer to any other fictional film to demonstrate truths about learing and turning into adults that is the territory of Michael Apted's amazing time machine capusules of the 7 Up Series (49 Up came out in 2005) Earlier this year, Waltz with Bashir brought us deeper truths of war with animation.The Class reveals truths in education by creating a very real looking, well-prepared fictionalized presentation. Both are unique film experiences from a still vital international film community and brought to us by Sony Pictures Classics and are both very much worth checking out.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:01 AM
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Saturday, October 17, 2009
Gervaise
Gervaise is a 1956 film adaptation by Rene Clement of a Emile Zola novel L'Assomoir. Maria Schell plays a woman with different bonds to three different men. She is a somewhat disabled laundress (words have to be measured so carefully in our modern world. For most of last century and prior lamed, crippled or handicapped would describe her) with two children from the lusty layabout Lantier (Armand Mestral). He leaves and Gervaise marries a roofer, Henri Coupeau played by François Périer. Lantier comes back and lives with them. There is also a blacksmith with love unrequited never quite connecting.
Gervaise faces on challenge and indignity after another. It is all on Schell's face. The victim of philanderers, alcoholics, double-crossers, and bad timing. Hers is the face like that of a Bergman heroine. And it expresses great joy as well, particularly in one of film's great set pieces, her name day dinner celebration. There is joy until the past and outside world intrude on Gervaise and the laundresses who work in her shop who are helping her celebrate.
There is also a very enjoyable sequence where the peasants and hard working folk of their Androisement assembled for Gervaise's wedding decide to visit the Louvre to wait out the weather. Clement shows folks outside a lot in a very real looking Paris of the nineteenth century. The look and feel is like Manet meets Italian Neorealism meets John Ford. The last I say because Clement is a classicist. His films are constructed carefully with shots that linger a moment longer with emotion or content that enriches the experience.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:07 PM
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Friday, October 16, 2009
Design Captured: Objectified
Objectified a film by Gary Hustwit, can't help but be compared to Hustwit's first documentary about communications in the world around us, his 2007 documentary Helvetica. He takes 75 minutes to explore the world of design and designers, particularly those who design for industrially produced objects. There are nearly 20 designers and design experts representing a wide variety of approaches and types of products.
Objectified and Helvetica are documentaries that are designed to inform and expand the perceptions of talented subculture of individuals who change our everyday world through the means of their craft and creativity. They are kind of long form Ted Talks in a way connected by theme. Hustwit's script interconnects big time designers and a spectrum of the things we have in our lives.
Questions one might have about designers and design before watching Objectified are definitely addressed during the course of the film: "What is design? What do designers do? How do they think? Solve problems? But the discussions also consider how and when objects make us feel good, why humans need things, and there is the discussion of whether or not designers just making things that are heading for landfill.
I love hearing these men and women talk about their passions. Jonathan Ive, the Apple designer who, in his own way, has kind of changed the world a few times in the past couple of decades shows how materials for parts of a modern IMac interconnect with little wasted. Dieter Rams of Braun is absolutely charming. Interactive designer Bill Moggeridge tells how working on the first laptop computer seduced him into being more concerned with writing and designing software. There are many others who I look forward to seeing again when I show this film to my class next week.
Hustwit knows that the kind of person who finds this subject fascinating isn't going to be satisfied with just an hour and a quarter devoted to the subject. He also includes nearly another hour of high quality outtakes from the interviews.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:49 PM
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posted by well-executed buffet at 7:49 PM
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Thursday, October 15, 2009
PDX Jazz 2010 looks Good
It seems like almost a year ago when I submitted my most outward of critical posts ever about a public institutions when I ranted about PDX Jazz. It was mild as far as Internet discourse is concerned but I did kind of get impatient with Bill Royston and his press releases. But still the festival survived. Last year's festival was pretty good but the economy gave the organizers a major lesson. Make it more managable for mortals and realize that not even Portland is hip enough to sustain a couple of weekends of concerts at the Schnitz, which cand be a sad and lonely place when it is less than half full. Give props to Bill and his new team for laying out a really focused and interesting line up for 2010.
Here it is in take on this year's lineup:
Pharoah Sanders for a Sunday afternoon at the Newmark! There will be no place finer in the greater western United States. We are so damn lucky to see folks who really made contributions to jazz in the bop and beyond. Add the Pharoah Man, directly a part of spirtual relation of the spritualism meets freedom jazz and African American awareness zone that is home to Ayler and Coltrane, Rahasahn Rolaand Kirk and as well. A zone that then impacted decades of music even more easy to take in digest folks with greatness and chops their own. Thinking Grover Washington for one. Add Pharoh to the other great saxaphone days and nights witnessed in this area. John Handy, Red Holloway, Eddie Harris, Lou Donaldson,Lee Konitz, Sonny Rollins and now Pharoah. Life is good.
I am so very looking forward to a chance to see Luciana Souza. Portland is going to fall in love with this woman because of this opening night PDX show. I have four of her albums on my IPod. Some is straight (for a Brazilian, which isn't really ever straight), there is some Patrice Rushen flavoring at times and sometimes the rhythm of her pieces really take off but with great melody too like Tania Maria the first time you see her. But the coolest stuff in her catalogs are albums the anthologies dedicated to works by Neruda and Elizabeth Bishop. Through it all the genre and culture shifting seem absolutely natural. I guess you could describe her as a kind of fusion of Elianne Elias and Cassandra Wilson.
My third choice is a tie between Mingus Big Band or the Dave Holland Quintet. I think I'm going to pass on both probably. My choice for seeing the Mingus band would be on one of their Monday night gigs in NYC. Holland is a legend and am pretty certain that his will be a good show.
Dave Douglas Brass Ecstasy is not going to see my ticket dollar either. I like Davis' chamber jazz meets bold and fearless approach to music. My ears and part of my mind respond to it but I don't love this music. That's not because it isn't engaging, its just that a weekend with Pharaoh Sanders is going to have to more or lesss be all about Pharaoh Sanders.
But that doesn't mean that some of the three concert series of modern Norwegian jazz groups (no kidding) at a 80 year old, 300 seat Norse Hall on NE 11th and Couch should not be considered. In particular, the saxaphone/accordian duo of Trygve Seim & Frode Halti (is this second guy a hobbit?) is bound to be novel and intriguing by its very nature. When the heck are you likely going to see that again? If I was coming from out of town or if there was some kind of reasonable flat fee admission strucure for the entire festival, I think I would be more enthused to want to check out the piano based groups, In The Country or Christian Wallmurad Ensemble But I'm not super big on ECM-like introspection ince I was a wee college student wearing down Keith Jarret's Koln Concerts on my BIC turntable. I think the maybe the most enticing part of going to those concerts would be walking from downtown to the Norse Hall. but, hell, I can walk the Burnside Bridge any day of the week.
I think the 2010 Alaska Airlines and Horizon Airlines Portland Jazz Festival is going to a really fine event. I applaud Royston and folks for keeping it to a single long weekend where one could go to all eight concerts if they wish. Also its schedule is not all over the map with fewer venues: the Hilton, the Newmark, Crystal Ballroom, and, don't forget the Norse Hall.
The commute for a festival you live near can be kind of taxing, even if the event is about ten miles away. The Ornette Coleman-Ron Carter-Cecil Taylor weekend was a really long one a couple of years ago. Still, I am thinking just Souza and Pharoah with maybe the hobbit accordian guy thrown in there on Saturday afternoon, just because.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:24 PM
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Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Grandson of San Joaquin
The rains have come and worklife has moments lately where I feel like I am chained to a diner booth am forced to drink a bottomless cup of coffee. So I think about very big skies and temperatures of over 100. In August, I visited relations in the part of the country where my father grew up, "mid-way between Bakersfield and Fresno" was how my my grandmother used to describe her coordinates.
This former feedlot, now dairy farm, is the most memorable landmark near where my family has farmed for over seventy years. I was beginning to doubt the GPS instructions when I saw this structure and new I was in the right place.
This is Spot, noble farm dog and pickup partner for my uncle when he does his water rounds during the day. He truly has the dog's life, if it gets too warm he lays under a tree, on the cool porch or a wet row or ditch, like the one he stands next to here.
During the summer, a farmer's irrigation concerns are 24/7. Over the few days I spent with family, I could not help but be exceptionally impressed by the amount of skill, concentration, problem solving and endurance it takes to grow crops. I came away from my visit with amounts of admiration for those who are engaged and are successful at this activity.
Spend some time in the San Jaoquin and a trip to the grocery store will be met with a new appreciation. For instance, here is the first stop for those prunes we have in the fridge in that yellow and purple tub. My aunt was amused by my city boy mis-identification of trees and crops we drove by. "Those are walnut trees, right?" "No, those are prune trees." You know, that kind of thing. I look forward to revisiting this country again in the Spring.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:59 AM
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Railtime Resistance
La bataille du rail (aka Battle of the Rails) is a melange of documentary and dramatic acted film of a subject basically contemporaneous. You can't help but think about it as a kind of template for other resistance films. But it is different than others. I agree with Dudley Andrews' comment that La bataille du rail: This 85 minute film was fabled; nevertheless it didn't produce any imitations."
And that is because it can't, and that is because of the energy it has. Trains and tanks play big parts in this film. Clement puts us into the action with filmic self-assurance and excellent editing and sound. Since writing about Alexander Kluge's work last week, I've been thinking about the Medium Cool zone and why we don't see it more often. I define this as a film that is by definition basically fiction but there is so much documentary in it, cross-cutting integrating scenes staged against backdrop of action and sometimes going with either the documentary footage or full and complete staged scenes to mix things up a bit further.
Train sequences in this film are sometimes quite magnificent. Shot choice and editing are tight and right. There is footage of a derailment over a cliff that seems to go on and on with a a nice staged touch at the end. And there is another really scary scene with a tank that has quite an impact as well.
Rene Clement's Forbidden Games is one of the most harrowing of films about the price of war.La bataille du rail may be one of the most authentic. Again, there is something darned uniqe about this film. It obviously parallels Roselini's Open City era but also has a tone and sensiblity not unlike Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers or Costa Gravas' Z. Any film with a voice and style all its own should be celebrated.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:36 PM
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Monday, October 12, 2009
Back in the Day
I remember this menu. It semi-permanent for many years. They even had these prices painted on the side of the building with this graphic of a boat catching fish with their mouths open above the two or three red picnic tables where you could eat your Colossals and fries. You know you've been on the planet for a while when you are reminded that a burger costs at least 400% more than it did when you were growing up. That doesn't happen overnight.
posted by well-executed buffet at 5:16 AM
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Sunday, October 11, 2009
Sherman Alexie at Wordstock PDX 10.11.09
I must have seen Sherman Alexie at various appearances, book lectures, and events almost a dozen times since he made it on the scene with The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. One thing about attending an Alexie reading, you always get a good sense of what is going in his life and likely will hear what is take is on what's currently going on in the world. We have seen Sherman celebratory of his marriage and being a new dad, waringly concerned about free speech after 9/11 and concerned about his place in the literary and cultural scene.
The October 2009 Sherman Alexie promoting War Dances, his new volume of stories and poems featured his colorful self-referential asides. He talked about the impact of his career after being introduced to thousands more as a National Book Award winning Young Adult author. ("I'm now back to my NC17 self") He also gave an account of a controversy he became embroiled in because of some negative comments he made online about the Amazon Kindle. And he commented on what must be his strange and weary world of booktour: "Any new mentally ill fans of mine..."--a punch line he didn't even need to fill in or elaborate.
Yet this time out more so than in many of his appearances I've seen in the last decade and a half, he seemed to spend more time interweaving big contemporary ideas. He intersected them almost seamlessly with some poems and story excerpts from War Dances. As he has in the past, Sherman uses a reading and author appearance as an opportunity to comment on the world at large, often talking and dealing with issues of race that a lot of folks could never get away with. If you little familiarity with Sherman, think Richard Pryor before megafame, immolation, and MS. Alexie also has the ability to make a punchline about race that wants to make you laugh and cry or wince a bit at the same time such as "Seattle is sooo white." (pause for laughter) "Portland is whiter."
One of his latest riffs is the observation that "White liberal American women are responsible for about 90% of what is good in the world, the greatest group of people ever." But, of course, Alexie can't leave that statement stand alone. He uses it as an opportunity for punchlines about vegans, yoga, and Tom's of Maine deodorant. He finds it curious why they resist taking credit for their greatness enumerating many accomplishments and the fact that they also great because "you pay my mortgage."
He also is one of the first folks outside of the likes of that frickin' Fox news, who I have heard call out liberals (me included, I suppose) on their blinding love for Obama and the presidency. I think he must of said bullshit four or five times when talking about the Nobel Peace prize. (Was it really decided last February as he indicated?) Bright and shiny promises by politicians leave him skeptical at best. "These guys will always turn you into battered spouses." And his experience of growing up on a reservation has him asking some very pointed questions about the reality and moving forward with government health plans as a kind of panacea.
The most poignant moments of the afternoon came during the Q&A when he addressed the problems that are facing American Indians and especially Indian youth. He pulls no punches here when making statements like "Reservations were designed as rural concentration camps." Or that "The hopes and dreams of Indians are crushed more by Indians than by white people." He talked about the anger he encountered from Indian students at the UW who sat through statements of five tribal elders warning them about the dangers of higher Ed at a longhouse dedication. He challenges young Indians to get away from their own DNA and fall in love with themselves. And in the most sober moment of the day's talks he commented how he believes there is a major cultural civil war brewing on this front
I think there are three things you can expect from reading Sherman Alexie's work or seeing him "in performance." You will laugh. You will want to cry sometimes. And you will most certainly be challenged, regardless of your ethnicity or point of view. One of this friends refers to him as 'Shaman Perplexi.' In some strange way, it fits -- besides the obvious wordplay. I think he is more a griot of our modern times than a shaman. And certainly he is one of our more important artist-provocateurs.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:45 PM
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Saturday, October 10, 2009
Vancouver Saturday 10.10.09
Last week Kalama. This week Vancouver, my home town. Both weeks had stupendous weather. Next Week is Marcell's Coffee Shop One Year Anniversary Street Party. Can we hit three in a row?
I started to edit these pictures I took of my wandering by Kiggins Bowl late this aftenoon with all kinds of Reagan Morning in America sentiments raging. But then I looked at this picture closer and wondered if the guy with the number one sign is smoking or playing a Kojak and also if the coach has an itch.
Kiggins Bowl is a helluva slab of concrete slapped on a hill. It will be there for a long while to come
Hot Fun in the Summertime? Not hardly. Its the tenth day of the tenth month. Levrich Park used to only get crowds like this when Little Leagues and companies would old their picnics. Usually this time of year all you would find were weirdos, groping teens, and pandhandlers taking breaks from their sign shifts at the freeway exit on the other side of the park (a place worth a post of its own someday)
No. What brings this crowd to perviously lonesome and sometimes loathsome Levrich Park on 39th St and Levirch Park Way is Disc Golf, which I have to admit I thought was pretty goofy until I saw some folks working on a "hole" that required one to fly their disk off of a cliff.
Players are quite a bunch. I'm figuring a lot of these folks go to Dave Matthews concerts, and snowboard a lot. You got to give them props though. This park could get pretty pitiful without people.
There ain't no denying it. I am a child at the bottom of the I5 corridor and it has its charms. I kind of dig it. On the other side of Leverich Park, 46th and Leverich Park Way (if you can't tell by the street sign), there is a trailhead for a trail dedicated to a senior citizen who was seriously into walking and hiking. I went on a group hike with Ellen Davis as lead one time. She practically bounded up a hill. The park is in a gully parallel to the freeway and extends from the north end of Leverich to the southern border of Ross Substation property, which I did not visit on this particular day.
This was the big surprise of the day. I did not realize you could stand in the intersection of 44th, the street i live on and Washington Street and see all the way into downtown Portland. Look closely right above the bicyclist.
In my imagination I see Vancouver's Washington Street, which runs north>south intersect with the Washington that runs from east>west. in downtown Portland.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:12 PM
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Friday, October 9, 2009
Trouble The Water
Some folks are destined for the camera and for a greater mission. Kimberly Rivers, a 24 year old citizen of New Orleans will be unforgettable to anyone who has the opportunity to experience Trouble the Water a very fine non-fiction film that gives the viewer a close and often first-person perspective of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath.
I read some press on this one when it was hitting the festival circuit and reviewers worked hard it seem to let folks know that this one is different. It isn't Frontline or Spike Lee. And that it is worth revisiting the tragedy of New Orleans three or four years later with filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, Kimberly Rivers and her family.
Kimberly shot video footage on the eve of the storm recording the last moments of the old Ninth Ward on her video camera. Later she kept that camera running as often as she could as she opened her attic to neighbors watching the waters nearly cover a stop sign down below. She responds with a certainty and purpose sharing her food, water, and shelter with others. Someone in the attic wants to return to the waters. She responds: "This is not a game." In Kimberly's words and actions as well as those of some of her neighbors, we witness human condition of ordinary folks responding nobly under the direst of conditions. Whether you describe it as grace under pressure or heroism, it is undeniably something true and real that we hope we all have enough of if circumstances like a levee break were to occur to us as well.
Later the Deal/Lessin film crew catch up with them about a week later with one of the opening shots in the Trouble. Two weeks later the crew follows Kimberly, Scott and Brian, a recovering addict they have bonded with as they return to Ninth Ward. They return to the neighborhood to find relations decomposing in houses and reconstruct their flight from the city for the cameras.
I believe this is one of the best non-fiction film in years. The viewer gets the opportunity to experience the world of Kimberly and her husband Scott, the world of poor, struggling African-Americans. As Deal points out in the Q & A at the Roger Ebert Film Festival after a screening, this a story and these are the kinds of people we don't often get to see in a movie like this. Deal and Lessin let Kimberly and Scott show and tell their own story story but the filmmakers also make some very judicious choices in broadcast clips to create a contrapuntal frame of reference between the Katrina we saw on television and the one these fine folks endured through troubled waters both during and after the storm.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:08 PM
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Thursday, October 8, 2009
Herr Kluge Ringsum Ein
My indulgence this summer was the purchase of the Filmmuseum Edition set of the works of filmmaker and postwar cultural intellectual figure Alexander Kluge. I first read about this set a year earlier in a lenghty article in Flim Comment by ubiquitous German film scholar/writer Thomas Thomas Elsaesser, It spoke of a vast box set, thirty disks spanning forty years of film and television work. I kind of assumed I would never get hold of it. It seemed destined to be the kind of thing that college libraries and museums would purchase. Well, after an extended wait and a second shipment. (US mail did not come through this time, I'm saddened to report. On the other hand, FedEx had it here in about three days at the second try to get it from Munich to my doorstep)
Kluge is hard to describe to someone who has not been exposed to him. He is compared frequently to Godard, and in some ways it may be an apt comparison in regards to their unblinking uncompromising vision. Their approach to form also is sometimes similar. I can't think of any other major filmmakers who fuse text intertitles in their films in the post silent era. These titles sometimes connect or heighten the characters and stories, at other times create a counterpoint or commentary.
Each of the five sets I have worked through so far basically consist of a themed double feature, a brief "eye opener" short he created for television that links up with the content of the set somehow as well as another short or two that were selected thematically. And many of the sets include notes, scripts, and full-text books by Kluge in digital format, but, alas, only in German.
I began with Deutschland im Herbst & Die Patriotin & Die Patriotin. Deutschland im Herbst is a collaborative film by a wide swath of New German filmmakers. It isn't an anthology or portmanteau film as much as an intense collaborative statement by nearly a dozen filmmakers including Fassbinder, Heinrich Boll, and Volker Schlöndorff. The film reflects their passion about events of Autumn 1977 involving the murder of an industrialist, a failed hijacking attempt and the in prison "suicides" of Red Army radicals in October and November of that year.
One of Kluge's contributions to Herbst is the character of Gabi Teichart, a teacher looking to understand and teach German history with a kind of truth and fidelity. Teichart is played by a wonderful actress, Hannelore Hoger who is sometimes placed in real government meeetings and other circumstances. Hoger also plays Lenni Peickert, an heir to a circus who wants to create a kind of fourth wall Brechtian performance experience (with animals even!) in two films in another set Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos & Die unbezähmbare Leni Peickert ( Artists in the Big Top: Perplexed and the The Indomitable Leni Peickert). Hoger is convincing as these characters in Kluge's reality bending world which mixes documentary settings and filming techniques with characters and narrative, sometimes very subtly.
Kluge's earlier features are combined in the set had him looking at the role of women in the modern Germany of the late sixties and early seventies in Abschied von gestern & Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin (Yesterday Girl and Part-time work of a Domestic Slave.) Both of these star his sister, Alexandra Kluge. Yesterday Girl is about a grown up war orphan with roots in East Germany. Domestic Slave is about an abortionist mother trying to get ahead who gets connected with labor politics and kind of goes Norma Rae on the world.
In Gefahr und größter Not bringt der Mittelweg den Tod & Der starke Ferdinand aka Edition Filmmuseum 23 aka In Danger and Deep Distress, the Middleway Spells Certain Death & Strongman Ferdinand also are interesting cultural documents of the mid-seventies. In Danger follows a prostitute/spy in the midst of campus riots and other signs of the times. It feels a bit like a German version of Wexler's Medium Cool Strongman Ferdinand is a kind of cautionary tale exploring what happens if one takes security too literally and too expansively. In our post 9/11, post bastardization of freedoms by Bush and Cheney, it feels quite contemporary.
Der große Verhau & Willi Tobler und der Untergang der 6. Flotte (The Big Mess & Willi Tobler and the Decline of the 6th Fleet) are Lo-fi Science Fiction films with Ed Wood like special effects and all sorts of improbabilities in situation and anachronism. Tobler features Kluge regular Alfred Edel, who has a kind of Klaus Kinski quality to him, but not nearly as weird and sometimes scary.
Like Godard, Kluge can sometimes be heard on the soundtrack of his films. His voice is clear polite and articulate, not droning and sometimes imposing like Godard's. One of my favorite shorts so far in the set is a 1999 television film Ich war Hitler's Bodyguard where Kluge and German cinema actor and writer Peter Berling create a fictional interview that comes off as a bit of a strange conterpart to the interviews of Traudl Junge in Blindspot where she recounts her experiences as Hitler's secretary.
I am at an interesting fork in the road as I work my through Kluge's work. I've caught up to Deutschland im Herbst again and I think I'm going to check it out again and then view again some of the films in this first round of films in the Kluge collection. I'll probably pass on the Science Fiction ones again for now though. Regardless, buffet readers will be hearing more about Kluge in the not-too-distant.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:58 PM
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Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Roy Redux
When things are going a little bit weird, I reflect on some of the best times I have had of late. Certainly, watching Roy Ayers throw down at Bumbershoot a few weeks back is one of those highlights. I stumbled across this tasty YouTube clip of him opening one of his shows from a couple years back with No Stranger to Love This is another example of the ecstatic funk. Check out the three minute mark where the sax madness turns into quiet storm at the wave of mallet.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:43 PM
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Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Beck's Record Club
This is maybe the coolest cover project since Halloween Phish shows. Beck gets togeher with some of his buddies such as wunderkind duo MGMT and moodfolksinger Devendra Barnhart. They get together in a studio with all kinds of retro instruments and gear and do live video performances of first all the songs from The Velvet Underground & Nico album (the one with the Warhol banana peel cover, of course) They are currently working their way through The Songs of Leonard Cohen.
They release a new song/video on Beck's web page each week. Their versions are interpretative and with artists like this (especially Beck) one gets the sense that they are exploring. Some of the readings are "straighter" than others, but all are intriguing. Sometimes the more traditional interpretations hit the marks and in other cases odd juxtapositions open doors.
I had a hard time deciding which Record Club tracks to embed on this post. I finally settled on Cohen's Winter Lady and the Velvet's I'll Be Your Mirror.
Record Club: Songs Of Leonard Cohen "Winter Lady" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.
Beck and friends have gave Winter Lady a layered atmosphere. I can't hear this song without thinking about Warren Beatty trudging through the Pacific NW snow with mules and fancy house dreams in his head when Cohen's original was used in McCabe and Mrs, Miller.
Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico "I'll Be Your Mirror" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.
I have an acquaintance who used to sing Velvets songs to her daughter when she put her asleep. I also had the pleasure of one of the offspring of my wife's cousin (there are a lot of them) sing I'll Be Your Mirror for me last summer. Beck and his summer camp pals do a fine job of it here as well.
I hope that there will be tracks every week on Beck's site for a very long time. What will he try next. I think he and his buddies should get the led out with Zep THree or Four.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:13 PM
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Monday, October 5, 2009
Dancing In the Near Dark
When I was in my youngest of elementary days, my parents would load up the car before dawn to assure we would get up to our relatives in Port Townsend Washington sometime before lunch time. I remember sitting in the back seat of our tan Impala kind of into a REMish nod. One time I woke up still pre-dawn and due through sleepy eyed filter saw some kind of industrial plant that used to be near the Port of Kalama looking far more resplendant than it was even well lit at pre-dawn. "Its Sleeping Beauty's Castle" I explained. My folks actually gave me a bad time about that one for years diminishing my waking moment by reminding me it was a smelter or refinery or whatever.
I thought of that moment when I was trying to come up with a description for the force of nature that maybe it only happens with full moons in October in converted Masonic Lodges overlooking the Columbia River. It felt like Weimar cabaret, Rhine Maidens in Wagner, and the first juke box tune at one of those infamous establishments in SE PDX. One thing for sure, these weren't Sleeping Beauty's fairy sprites.
The first part of this performance was quite organized and choreographed. It was fun to watch folks, like myself, I confess) who a few minutes prior were getting ready to find their car keys and make the half hour drive home get totally immersed and drawn into these tattoed lasses first in underground off white way Fosseland and later going to a free form, undulating, Middle East space.
The second part of their performance was loose and in the case of the midget ghost here a little bit audience participatory. A small group of mideast style musicians came to accompany. I tried to take some non-flash pictures of them as well, but they were too far in the dark and about that time I ran out of battery power.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:19 PM
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Sunday, October 4, 2009
Kalama Saturday Afternoon
It is a little town on I5 easy to miss except for the totem poles and the place where Elvis and Jack Benny once had pie. It sits on a hill staring at a place where the river has left metropolis and is in later stages of journey to Astoria and into the Pacific. I was there late afternoon prior to music and celebration and decided to take a walk around.
Church and school would never be this close together in modern city planning. They even more or less share a parking lot, but the clustering of these institutions on the steep hill seem to somehow fit.
One of the portable classrooms at the school had a mural on it celebrating diversity, both of culture and individual talents. Public murals of such commemoration are often a mixed bag, but I kind of like this particular juxtaposition.
The main street paralleling the freeway in Kalama is not nearly as bleak as this sign may indicate. In fact, there were a couple of promising looking restaurants I might have to try out sometime on one of my northern excursions.
And, hey, you have to give credit for any town that has a plaque for the Lorax and assures that their Librarian has a designated parking spot!
posted by well-executed buffet at 5:37 AM
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Saturday, October 3, 2009
Karl Denson: Tiny Universe at Music Millennium PDX 10.03.09
Karl Denson is associated with three groups. He has a sax-organ-drums trio, he plays a big role in a boogaloo organ group called the Grayboy Allstars that also features B3 maestro Robert Walter. But Karl is at his best, I believe when he is heading up Karl Denson's Tiny Universe. The Tiny Universe covers a wide world musically. The band is definitely about the funk, but they also have a very broad R&B and Soul sensibility with a tad of Afro pop to help flavor the mix even further. Karl also has a wicked way with a hook with a key change in just the right place of one of his tunes.
The Tiny Universe played for about forty minutes or so promoting their new album, Brother's Keeper and in town for a show at the Crystal Ballroom. KDTU is a band of road warriors. They seem to be out on tour a lot. . Karl records moderately often But surprisingly there have only been 2.5 studio records under the name Karl Denson's Tiny Universe. So it is a rare and cool thing for this band to make an appearance at Portland's Music Millennium, one of the great independent record stores remaining in the country. "This is hallowed ground" is what Denson had to say about being in a record store full of people looking at CDs instead of alone on their computers.
You can't see them well in the above picture, but there are Keep Portland Weird bumberstickers at Karl's feet and in the frame below them.
Karl's tenor sound is Jr Walker, Stanley Turrentine, King Curtis, and Maceo. The Millennium set was again another eclectic mix from the D for Diesel man. There was reggae, R & B, a bit of boogaloo jazz. and covers of seventies afrofunk group Osibisa (remember their Roger Dean album covers?) as well as an old track off of George Benson's Good King Bad.
I responding quite positively to the Brother's Keeper CD. Karl is tapping into soul heritage. There is a Gamble and Huff Philly thing going on with a few of the tunes and there is some Stevie Wonder/Marvin Gaye flavored social commentary on the album. The first KDTU album, the Bridge, is one of my all time favorites. I have a feeling Brother's Keeper is going to be nearby on the IPod and the car for sometime to come.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:58 PM
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Thursday, October 1, 2009
Fingers
Fingers directed by James Toback and starring a young and hungry Harvey Keitel is quintessential seventies. It feels like the end of an era of gritty NY Indy film that has some Cassavetes ancestory but probably started with Panic In Needle Park. Needle Park was filled with folks were pretty new to film including John Gregory Dunne, Dominic Dunne, and Al Pacino. Fingers, on the other hand was financed by BRUT fragrance and the debut of James Toback.
Toback is kind of like Kevin Smith. They are big guys with some big obsessions. Smith is into Star Wars, Comics, and assorted geekiness. Toback is into hagning with superstar black atheletes, kinky excess and assorted freakiness. I became inspried to rent out for Fingers after hearing a podcast of an interview with Elvis Mitchell and his program on KCRW called the Treatment where he was doing hustle cool for his biographical film of Mike Tyson that came out last winter.
Fingers is one of those films that has a vibrancy that keeps it from failing or looking like a hokey dramatic exercise. A lot of that comes from the outlandish Harvey Keitel issues. He's a Glen Gould like prodigy pianist that also acts as the muscle for his semi gangster father whom he has major daddy issues.
But this guy is this strange rock and roll geek of the streets whose psych charts are probably not too far from Travis Bickle. Except Harey does a similar "You talkin' to me with a boom box that incessantly plays fifties rock and pop hits. He also is capable of givng you quick rock history on his whole cassette playlist.
Another great thing about this movie is that it features both Dominic Chianese and Tony Sirico in parts much different than those of Uncle Junior and Pauly Walnuts that they would have more than twenty years later in The Sopranos.
Pass The Brut. Let's watch the comnentary track.