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Blown up

So the other night the cinetrix was fortunate enough to take in a new 35mm print of Zabriskie Point in the very companionable company of filmmaker Andrew Bujalski. Neither one of us had seen the Antonioni flick before, and now, having seen it, I for one am still trying to figure out what I think.

While I do, I have a question that purists might construe as a spoiler [although I'd contend that it's quite a different thing to discuss the "end" of a film so notorious for its loose attachment to traditional narrative structure].

Basically, I'd love to know whether anyone out there has a line on the pyrotechnical aspects, shall we say, toward the end of the film? I found that sequence to be incredibly beautiful and strangely lulling, but I also kept wondering about the how. How was it filmed? Where? What was entailed? And is it weird that it put me in mind of some of the odder bits in Punch Drunk Love?

It is, isn't it? That's OK. You can tell me.

Robots and Grapes

This interview with Walter Murch may not be new, but it sure is good.

Synchronization of sight and sound, which naturally does not exist in radio, can be the glory or the curse of cinema. A curse, because if overused, a string of images relentlessly chained to literal sound has the tyrannical power to strangle the very things it is trying to represent, stifling the imagination of the audience in the bargain. Yet the accommodating technology of cinema gives us the ability to loosen those chains and to re-associate the film's images with other, carefully-chosen sounds which at first hearing may be "wrong" in the literal sense, but which can offer instead richly descriptive sonic metaphors.

This metaphoric use of sound is one of the most flexible and productive means of opening up a conceptual gap into which the fertile imagination of the audience will reflexively rush, eager (even if unconsciously so) to complete circles that are only suggested, to answer questions that are only half-posed. What each person perceives on screen, then, will have entangled within it fragments of their own personal history, creating that paradoxical state of mass intimacy where—though the audience is being addressed as a whole—each individual feels the film is addressing things known only to him or her.

The cinetrix has a powerful brain crush on Walter Murch.

Want more? Michael Ondaatje's The Conversations is worth seeking out in hardback, as it is as beautifully designed as any of Murch's work.

Birth of the cool

The cinetrix saw the restored Elevator to the Gallows yesterday. It is as cool and slick as today's weather is hot and sticky. Jeanne Moreau glides down the nighttime streets of Paris like a specter, a gallic Hitchcock blonde, while her lover Maurice Ronet struggles to free himself from the titular conveyance that threatens to become his coffin.

And then there is that Miles Davis soundtrack. According to director Louis Malle's brother Vincent

[M]any things have been written about the film, lots of anecdotes about the shoot, about Louis. For example the famous night when Miles Davis recorded the music with a quintet of French musicians in a few hours, improvising each number and sipping champagne with Jeanne Moreau and their jazz-crazy director. By the way, the particular sound he made on the freeway scene was not premeditated. It turns out he lost a bit of his lower lip into the mouthpiece and therefore “blew” differently.

Once again, Rialto Pictures comes through with a superlative restoration. Do check it out, or at the very least watch the trailer. [That way, you can see how cute new cinetrix crush Yori Bertin, a perfect ye-ye ingenue, is.]

Everyone is so untrue

Bet you never thought you'd read these words here, but Manohla Dargis is right.

Maggie Gyllenhaal can sing.

As Jude, she puts over a song in a plangent, throaty alto, with a perfect Karen Carpenter catch in her voice. Even tired AM standards by Billy Joel regain their melancholy when she's at the karaoke mic.

That undercurrent of sorrow should be reason enough to see Don Roos' latest film, the oh-so archly titled Happy Endings. But the spite and kink of his debut feature, the acidic The Opposite of Sex, has been massaged away by the spa culture-embracing Los Angeles setting, and more's the pity.

Don't worry: There are still girls who are boys who like boys to be girls who do boys like they’re girls who do girls like they’re boys. Roos' universe is blithely polymorphous, but it's no longer quite so unapologetically perverse.

Mamie [Lisa Kudrow] is having an affair with her masseur [Bobby Cannavale] and being blackmailed by Nicky [Jesse Bradford], who may know the whereabouts of the son she gave away as a teen after sleeping with her stepbrother Charley [the delightfully wormy Steve Coogan]. Charley thinks that Diane [Sarah Chalke] and Pam [Laura Dern] may have used the sperm his partner Gil [David Sutcliffe] donated after all to conceive their baby.

Otis [Jason Ritter] works for Charley at his restaurant, running the karaoke night where he meets Jude, who helps convince his rich dad Frank [Tom Arnold. No, really] he's not gay by pretending to be his girlfriend. That is, until she decides to sink her hooks into Frank directly. Which works out pretty well for her until she falls in love for real.

It's quite an achievement. Yet even as you come away from Happy Endings filled with admiration for the skill involved in keeping all those plot-line plates spinning, ultimately only the wobbly ones--Jude, Frank, and weary Mamie--stand out while the rest just whirl away.

Yes children, this is the cool-out corner

Hot enough for you, New York?

Let Mister Senor Love Daddy chill your shit out tonight at Anthology, which is screening Do The Right Thing tonight at 7:30 p.m. Five dollars cheap. You know that when you hear the first few notes of "Fight the Power" you'll be glad you did.

No word on whether they'll be opening up a hydrant out front, but it couldn't hurt.

And there's a riot goin' on at the Brattle in Cambridge, where one of the cinetrix's all-time favorites, Gimme Shelter, unspools in all its spooky majesty at 5:30 and 9:45 p.m.

Girls talk

There are any number of good reasons to want to see the film Lila Says: it concerns itself with the ghetto dwellers of Marseille and provides a glimpse into the grim dead-end life that most young Arabic men who live there can expect to lead. It features music by Nitin Sawhney. It is directed by a promising young Arabic director and beautifully shot. It is Based on a True Story.

There is only one real reason to see Lila Says, and her name is Vahina Giocante. She plays Lila, the most beautiful cipher and plot device a film could want.

It's all about Lila--the angelic, foul-mouthed catalyst--and the fascination she holds for young Chimo, whose white teacher and supportive mother believe he has the talent to write himself out of Marseille and into a prestigious program in Paris. All he needs to do is submit a 30-page writing sample.

But what about? His pathological best friend Mouloud? Nah. Why bother with gritty realism when a beautiful blonde Polish emigre has bicycled into the neighborhood and invited the sensitive young writer to take a peek at "mon chat" as she pumps her legs and sails ever higher on a playground swing?

The camera shares Chimo's fascination with Lila, and it is just as willing to believe the pornographic fantasies that come pouring out of that rosebud pout. Unfortunately, sociopathic Mouloud is also willing to believe the worst of Lila and takes her provocations at face value, which leads, slowly, inexorably, to Tragedy-with-a-capital-T.

Chimo, heartbroken, pours his grief into his story and ultimately leaves the ghetto for Paris. And it is his story, because the film ends with us knowing no more about Lila than we did when it began, save that she, too, is forever changed for having known Chimo, having been brutally gang raped by his friends. And they don't seem to hand out scholarships for that.

Heart of gold

Craig Brewer, director of Hustle & Flow, shares a tender tale of a nonunion worker doing a union job:

Before you watch my movie, I wanted to tell you about an experience I had with Tequila. Not the kind of Tequila you put in a margarita, I'm talking about the kind that spins around a pole, wearing platform heels and a G-string.

Hustle & Flow is not my first stab at feature filmmaking. My first film, The Poor & Hungry, was a black and white, DV movie. I had a crew of two: my brother in law, Seth Hagee, held the boom pole, and I held the camera.

One of our locations for the movie was the King of Clubs, a strip joint in South Memphis. I had made arrangements with the owner to shoot some scenes on Sunday just before they opened their doors to the public. Many of the dancers came early to participate in the movie as background extras.

Since Seth and I were the only crew members, we ran into a bit of a problem. Seth had to flash a red light across the stage, which meant there was no one to catch audio by holding the boom.

This is when I met Tequila.

She was country as all get-out, with freckles running across her tiny nose, and a twang that would turn Loretta Lynn's head. She eagerly volunteered to be our boom operator (and if there are any boom operators reading this, let me tell you, watching little Tequila hold that boom over her head, wearing her clear high-heel pumps, and bright orange bikini, was a sight to behold.)

When we were packing up our gear, Tequila came up to us, excited and sad. "Y'all comin' back t'morrow?" she asked. "Cuz I can hold the pole s'more for ya."

I saw it in her eyes. She had been bitten by the creative bug.

Awwwww. The "keeping her off the pole" jokes just write themselves.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Please remember to tip your bartender.

Drop some sweet science

The Waldorf to our very own Statler, Ed Koch, here at Pullquote would have to be Elliott Kanbar of the Quad Cinema in New York. Together, these men inhabit those cat-calling balcony seats above the fray with aplomb, dispensing wisdom from on high.

If you don't subscribe to the Quad's weekly email, you're really missing out. Every week, the president of the nation's first multiplex sounds off about whatever's on his mind. Case in point:

I vividly remember renting my first apartment in New York shortly after my required stint in the army. It was apartment 2B at 240 Waverly Place in the heart of Greenwich Village. I had breakfast at the corner cafe, with the most delicious eggs I ever tasted, brought fresh every morning from a nearby Jersey farm. My favorite spot to grab dinner was Chez Brigitte, where Brigitte and her French assistant served the best home-cooked meals. The restaurant is still there but the incomparable Brigitte is long gone. I walked the crooked streets of the Village every day and every day I got lost trying to figure out the illogical patterns. I remember hearing a 16 year-old phenom by ther name of Barbra Streisand make her debut at the Bon Soir on 8th Street (seeing 8th Street now makes me sick). And, of course, in 1972, the QUAD CINEMA opened with almost the entire media predicting that the first multiplex in the U.S. will never work, especially one showing funky, low-budget films.

I bring up these sappy reminiscences after seeing the sensational documentary by Karen Kramer, "THE BALLAD OF GREENWICH VILLAGE", which opens today, July 22nd, at the QUAD.

"[S]appy reminiscences": I love this guy! Especially because there's not always a Quad tie-in to his digressions.[ It's like listening to Joe and Jerry call a Sox game on 'EEI.]  For example, this week's email shares "art and film critic" Hal Drucker's top 10 boxing movies.

THE TOP 10 BOXING MOVIES: OK, so "Cinderella Man" is a box office flop. I've always loved boxing films and was pleased when art and film critic Hal Drucker picked his top 10. They are:

BODY AND SOUL. This remains the finest boxing movie ever made. Cinematographer James Wong Howe donned roller skates in the ring to circle the combatants with a hand-held camera. And, there was no Hollywood boxer to surpass John Garfield. None!

CHAMPION. A young Kirk Douglas brilliantly played a brutal boxer, but I felt Arthur Kennedy made this a great movie.

RAGING BULL. Enough said about this one. Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarity were outstanding co-starring with Oscar-winner DeNiro.

CINDERELLA MAN. Didn't succeed at the box office but history will remember this as one of the best boxing films ever made. Zellweger slightly miscast. Too waspish!

THE HARDER THEY FALL. Looking sickly and frail, Humphrey Bogart gave the performance of his life. It was also his last film before dying at age 55.

SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME. A memorable film if only to remind us how thrilling those two Rocky Graziano-Tony Zale fights were back then.

REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT. Taking a little liberty here by including a TV film on the list. It was a live Playhouse 90 production written by Rod Serling and starring a virile Jack Palance. Doesn't get any better.

THE GREAT WHITE HOPE. If you want to know what a powerful actor James Earl Jones really is, rent this video.

ROCKY. In making this film and starring in it, Sylvestor Stallone gave new meaning to the word "underdog".

GOLDEN BOY. A Clifford Odets classic of a talented violinist who become a prizefighter. A young William Holden, in his movie debut, often thanked his more experienced co-star, Brabara Stanwyck, for being so "nice" to him.

Yep, it's always a one-two punch with Elliott.

Damn it feels good to be a critic

Is it too much to ask that A.O. Scott start dressing thematically for his Movie Minute video segments? Eh, probably. But that did stop the cinetrix from nurturing the tender hope that Tony would be all pimped out when I clicked on the link for his Hustle & Flow review? Nope. Sadly, there was nary a feather nor a stacked heel in sight. Not even a hat.

Before you write this off as a Friday flight of fancy, consider his review, which suggests a more than passing familiarity with turning out bitches, or perhaps just an extensive and previously unsuspected hip-hop collection:

• The pimp's mode is the hustle, a smooth, manipulative patter designed to separate johns from their money and keep hookers in line.
• But as every old-school hip-hop fan knows, pimping ain't easy. It sure is fascinating, though, to rappers and to filmmakers, both black (like the Hughes brothers, who made the wide-eyed documentary "American Pimp") and white (like Mr. Brewer).
• "It's hard out here for a pimp," goes the chorus to one of his songs (sung by the honey-voiced Shug), updating a point first made by Big Daddy Kane and noting that one of the problems facing a man in this business is "a lot of bitches jumping ship."
• A pimp might be forgiven for failing to see his own misogyny - pimping is not a profession usually associated with feminism - but the movie can't just slide off the hook along with its hero.
• This disdain for women is not incidental to the film; it is integral to the fantasy Mr. Brewer is selling, which is that pimping is not as hard as it looks.

Anyone else having a hard time shaking the image of ol' [A.]O.G. Scott practicing his flow to some classic gangsta shit in  his car [or on his iPod] a la Michael Bolton in Office Space? Perhaps we should refer to him as the Bishop Don Magic Tony from now on.

Electric Boogaloo

Over dinner with a bunch of contentious folks the other night the argument was made that the only truly acceptable sequel appellation was "Electric Boogaloo." The cinetrix concedes the point.

With that in mind, I give you the latest from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Alan Smithee.

Dear Mr. Smithee,

Hollywood is good at beating a dead horse with constant sequels. What makes your top 10 list?

M****** N****, Leland, N.C.

Dear Double-taker,

"Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo," "The Sting II," "Exorcist II: The Heretic," "Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid," "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace," "Psycho III," "Jeepers Creepers II," "Leprechaun 2," "The Godfather: Part III," "Jaws 3-D."

Solid selections all, but how could he forget The Two Jakes? [Which the cinetrix saw on a date. With someone who had never seen Chinatown. Needless to say, that relationship didn't go anywhere.] And let's not forget the recently announced Road House 2: Last Call, a likely candidate for future inclusion. There's just no way they can recreate magical dialogue like

Steve: Being called a cocksucker isn't personal?
Dalton: No. It's two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response.
Steve: What if somebody calls my mama a whore?
Dalton: Is she?