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At home and away

As the first part of a two-tiered, holistic approach to recovering from the crimes against cinema witnessed over the weekend, the cinetrix programmed herself a double bill of recent documentaries.

Crawford was quite the crowd-pleaser at the recent Independent Film Festival of Boston, ultimately screening three times [most flicks get only one or two airings]. It takes a longitudinal look at the titular town from 2000 to the near-present, and what happens to the 705 residents of the one-stoplight burg after W. and Laura show up. There are good ol' boys and Greek diner owners, passionate teachers and put-upon newspapermen; all of them the just-folks types the Andover-Yale-Harvard alum will never be, no matter how much cedar he cuts. David Modigliani is fortunate in his characters, but the editing is also quite good. Some citizens maintain the same opinion of the POTUS throughout his occupation; others trace a gradual narrative arc; and one will break your heart. And it's not Crawford's other temporary resident, Cindy Sheehan.

The second film I watched was Academy Award-nominated doc No End in Sight, which tells what the president gets up to when he's not clearing brush in Crawford, and it's appalling. Charles Ferguson does a bang-up job of documenting the multiple fuck-ups since the launch of the invasion of Iraq eight years ago. He marshals talking heads from the Bush administration and the field [framed and shot quite elegantly] and combat footage with aplomb, often resorting to a split screen presentation of on-the-ground chaos I'm both sad and secretly relieved I missed on a big screen.

No End builds the case that there was no research done before going in and no plan made of how to get out. There are some revelations, particularly from disillusioned Dick Armitage, who says the most when he refuses to say anything. Among other things, we learn--or are reminded--that there were no veteran Arabists posted in important positions. No effort made at preventing looting by imposing martial law, or any law. No heed paid to advisers who cautioned against dissolving the Iraqi army, which created legions of angry, unemployed men who were good with guns and tired of the empty promises of the occupation forces. You may know them better as insurgents, armed militias, or followers of Sadr. It's no longer an option simply to throw good [money, policy, governance] after bad. It's just all bad.

Even if you knew much of what's shown already, the film assembles the evidence with damning rationality. First-time filmmaker  [albeit a deep-pocketed one with a stint at the Brookings Institute on his c.v.] Ferguson has made a beautiful film about an ugly war.

UPDATE: Live Action Projects partners with the world-renowned Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Road Show to bring CRAWFORD to the big screen on the Crawford football field, Sunday, June 8th @ 8:30pm. All of the major characters in the film will be present, along with the filmmaking team. Picnic blankets and chairs will provide a view from the field. Audience encouraged to come early and enjoy concessions from Crawford Booster Club to benefit Crawford Schools.

Pug'll be pleased.

What he said

It's official. The cinetrix currently hates the city too busy to hate, which was the site of the philistine clusterfuck alluded to below.

Which is not to say that there weren't absolutely wonderful people there--old friends and new. But there were also energy-sucking ignoramuses and other assorted blowhards who, in their complete cluelessness about film, totally harshed my mellow.

Then I read Filmbrain's latest post and was reminded of why I will go to the hustings again and again for the films that take risks and for the students I teach, who deserve better than "film via the Lifetime Movie Network" [or, in one case, a LOGO After School Special, if such an abomination of a genre existed. Seriously: this flick made The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love look like, well, Maedchen in Uniform or Je, Tu, Il, Elle or something].

Here's an excerpt from Herr Filmbrain:

...of late I find that few films require any sort of active engagement. Directors are happy to show us how clever/sensitive/witty they are, but they leave us with nothing to discuss, let alone think about. As small films made outside of the studio system, they needn't succumb to the lowest common denominator, but do nonetheless. I'm growing weary of independent and/or foreign films that are as compelling as a made-for-TV drama, that rely on heavy-handed symbolism while hammering their message into us. Films that tackle political/social issues, or moral struggles, and reduce them to childlike simplicity, with poorly written characters that exist purely as functions of the plot. More often than not these films are all about the third-act "big moment", which rarely comes as a surprise as the filmmaker has been dropping less-than-subtle hints throughout. With their meaning wrapped up and dispensed in a neat, foolproof package, these films not only discourage and resist discussion/analysis/interpretation, they're barely pleasurable even as divertissements.

Amen and hallelujah. Now go read the whole fucking post, s.v.p.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Greetings from a film selection meeting that's about to get ugly. The cinetrix is trapped in a room with well-meaning philistines. Send help!

The only winning move is not to play.

Apologies. The cinetrix and her laptop have been having a difference of opinion about functionality. More soon.

Candid

[via]

He’s got enough skin left. Ve do one more take.

Oh happy day! The cinetrix gets to flack two pals with one post by directing your attention to Gerald Peary's review of Chris Fujiwara's latest, The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger. If anything, ol' Otto was even more of a shit than you've heard. Here's Peary's own telling story about l'auteur terrible.

In 1980, the imperious 74-year-old Hollywood director came to Boston on a publicity tour for The Human Factor, a flawed adaptation of a Graham Greene novel that would prove his final film. I walked in to find Preminger screaming at a local radio reporter who had dared to request a five-minute interview without having first seen the movie. The reporter withered as Preminger blasted him. There would be no radio talk. A few minutes later, the famous filmmaker of Laura (1944), the formidable battler against the puritanical Hays Code, sat among reporters for a round-robin interview. Stephen Schiff, the Phoenix’s film editor, asked Preminger a somewhat challenging question. Preminger reached across the table and yanked Schiff’s beard. Hard! The Phoenix’s own yelled out: “OUCH!”

Figures. Factor was one of Greene's "entertainments," after all. You can read about more of the "hundred well-documented tales" of infamy  in Fujiwara’s book here.

Pullquote and the amazing Technicolor dream clip

Technicolor For Industrial Films, featuring fellow wonders rayon, linoleum, and Jell-O.

P.S.A.

Paying work of various stripes has kept the cinetrix busy all day, so she's ceding the floor to Wallace Shawn.

Blood-stained satin shoes and flying toupees

When the cinetrix was a graduate student--and miserable, natch--she spent a fair amount of time in the stacks of the Reg reading books not for class. Her three faves were The Battle of Brazil, Shock Value, and The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book.

Of course, her love affair with Astaire and Rogers dates back much further. From them she learned about the three B's: bias-cut dresses, bricolage, and Bowes [Maj. Edward], and reconsidered a fourth, Bullwinkle [Fractured Fairy Tales, to be precise], with a heightened sense of appreciation for the vocal stylings of stateside upper-class twit extraordinaire Edward Everett Horton.

The clip above condenses the most fully realized Astaire-Rogers film, Swing Time, into my two favorite dance sequences, but it neglects my parents' favorite number, A Fine Romance. Thrill to it below.

Science!

Shout that post title using your best stentorian Thomas Dolby-era bark, won't you? Then cast your eyes on New Scientist's post-Iron Man celebration of cinema that gets science right. [via]

As you might imagine, some of the usual suspects are listed. [Why, yes, we are looking at you, Gattaca.] But the cinetrix particularly liked the rationale behind the inclusion of Alien:

... It makes the list, though, for the vicious creature the crew encounters, in particular for the finer details of its life cycle.

The alien goes through three stages over the course of the film. It begins as an egg, which produces a kind of head-sized spider, equipped with a strong tail and a vaguely reptilian appearance. This attaches itself to the nearest living body and, while clamped over the face, implants an embryo into its victim's stomach. It then falls off and dies. The embryo survives by feeding on the victim's digested food. Eventually it breaks out (in the least pleasant way possible) and runs amok on the ship.

Every element of the life cycle can be found in nature, variously in parasites, robber wasps and social insects.

Well, when you put it like that....