« August 2012 | Main | October 2012 »
"Are redheads adequately represented in films? Or is Hollywood guilty of gingerism," asks the Guardian.
Grown-up ginger Molly Ringwald's fiction debut is reviewed alongside that of her Pretty in Pink swain Blaine:
There’s a self-centered man-child at the center of Molly Ringwald’s debut novel-in-stories When It Happens to You, too which catalogues one couple as they plod through the five stages of grief that come after the husband's infidelity. Written in a spare, semi-detached way—like a trauma victim spitting out details of a tragedy—it suggests Ringwald, too, has been through some real shit since graduating from John Hughes high school. Her second husband, a book editor, may be the reason her prose is so sharp, but let's hope he's not her inspiration.
So happy to see Stephanie Zacharek at film.com, especially when she's wielding words like these:
“The Words” is one of those movies that makes being a writer seem like a sacred calling, a vocation akin to learning how to be the Dalai Lama or being chosen to receive personal orphan-washing lessons from Mother Teresa. In reality, the act of writing simply involves a lot of frowning, butt-scratching and imbibing of caffeinated beverages, though, admittedly, that doesn’t make for a very dynamic movie. It’s probably better to have Bradley Cooper star as an aspiring writer who toils away at the creation of a novel — it’s actually not a bad one, as a publishing type played by Ron Rifkin assures him — only to learn that there’s just no market for what he’s trying to do. Then one day he opens an old leather case that he and his new wife (Zoe Saldana) bought in an antiques store while honeymooning in Paris, and finds…
<snip>
By now, you may have noticed my repeated and very writerly use of ellipses. The ellipsis is an extremely useful device that real writers sometimes employ to put supposedly meaningful distance between… words. But I digress. In terms of visual lushness, “The Words” works reasonably well as a romance for adults. Cinematographer Antonio Calvache gives the period sections in particular a muted, pearlescent sheen, making it easier to believe that everyone just looked prettier and more handsome in olden times. And one of the picture’s key scenes works beautifully: Irons holds Cooper, and us, spellbound as he relays the true story behind the stolen novel. For a few golden minutes, Irons makes us believe his character has earned the deep, mournful hollows under his eyes. Quaid has a less significant role, but he does a lot with a little; he’s simultaneously wily and weathered, the kind of guy you’d love to trust even though you’re not sure you ought to.
But too much of the time we’re left watching Bradley Cooper, a mildly talented actor who has somehow become a sizable star. Cooper is possibly handsome, in a generic, Sexiest Man Alive way. When he needs to look vulnerable, he works so hard you can almost hear the gears turning; most of the time he just wears the beady-eyed look of someone who’s trying to put something over on someone.
FOC Dennis Lim talks with Olivier Assayas about his new film, Apres Mai, which I'm really looking forward to catching next month during my brief stint at NYFF:
[via]
Explaining Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which I swear stayed at our four-screen theatre all summer long:
No, here's what disturbs us about Temple of Doom: It's the straight-faced way the rough stuff is handled. The other Indy movies are spritely even when they're eliminating Nazis. But in the middle section of Doom, it's like the sense of humor switches off. The film goes into a trance. We become Willie, asking, How could this be happening?
Spielberg gave us a merciless close-up of Willie Scott as she descends toward the lava; Thuggee masters whip child slaves; we see Indy slug Short Round, probably the cruelest scene in any of the Jones movies. What's shocking is that Spielberg, that guy who later erased the rifles from E.T., seems to be enjoying it. Like Lucas, he had gone over to the dark side.
[via]
The Details looks closely at Michael Mann's ears [highlighting one of my favorite things about the framing -- in all senses of the word -- of private "eye" J.J. Gittes in Chinatown]:
Aiming to powerfully root these sensations in physical sources, Mann shifted towards wide-angle lenses, which, when viewing nearby objects, have a tendency to lend enormous tactility to those objects, making them as perilously close as they appear. The ear, when placed in front of this wide-angle lens that refuses to reduce deeper space to complete formlessness, therefore becomes a vivid part of its larger environment (an effect that is particularly pronounced in Public Enemies and, in some cases, the pilot of Luck). A shot of an ear with the cumulative flatness and sharpness of both digital and wide-angle lenses is quite distinct from a shot of an ear set against the shallow scope of The Insider; the former feels external, as if the ear is interacting with the world that surrounds it, while the latter feels internal, a representation of the sounds of a man’s mental landscape. Mann is now seeking to place his bodies in the context of their respective environments while maintaining a sense of firsthand experience, so his camera is positioned a close as possible to both the human and that human’s view as possible. The dividing line between these two areas of attention, of course, is the ear, one of exactly five vital pathways to the physical world. For the characters in Mann’s recent do-or-die dramas, it might be one of the most crucial.
Wesley Morris talks Argo and Affleck:
Something like this actually happened, and with the participation of the Canadian government, which also helped out with fake passports and was required, for reasons of diplomacy, to take credit for the whole thing. Poor Jimmy Carter couldn't brag about it at all during his reelection campaign. Anyway, it's a Hollywood movie that ultimately salutes Canada and Canadian hospitality. The suspense probably gave me some gray hairs to be detected later. "The Town" made it evident that Affleck knows what to do with a thriller. "Argo" is tense for both of its hours. I've never been this stressed out watching people shred documents.
The opening scenes are especially strong -- there's a lot of stock news footage and big crowd demonstrations that are almost indistinguishable from the real stuff. The handheld camerawork and zoom shots, the shiny comb-overs, the mustaches and tight vests, the avalanche of very good character actors: Whatever you wear to this movie will invariably winding up feeling like polyester. The only possible reason Sydney Pollack or Alan J. Pakuladidn't make this movie at the height of his powers is that the details of the mission weren't known until Bill Clinton declassified the case, in 1997.
That comparison is pretty much where Affleck is as a director, a smart, talented classicist who's good with actors and the rhythms of storytelling; someone who makes Hollywood entertainment look criminally easy. He's more the 21st-century Pakula than Pollack. I don't know that Affleck could do "Tootsie" or "Out of Africa." But he's barely 40. There's time. "Argo" suggests that, in the future, he might have something more currently topical to say, the way Pakula did. My only problem with the movie is that, after the opening scenes, it loses its nerve. Despite all the suspense the movie generates and how much fun it is to watch and listen to, it's safer than something about the Iranian hostage crisis should be. For now, he's Pakula without the paranoia.
Affleck spent so many years being pilloried in the press that I think he's afraid of not being liked at the movies. Even in "Argo," with his Warren Beatty shag and Beatty's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" beard, Affleck has a body and bone structure that would make Christian Bale feel insecure. He now takes his likability even more seriously than Robert Redford. Who else would cast himself as a bullying, bank-robbing thug who evolves into the male half of a Nora Ephron movie? That's what Affleck did in "The Town." Here his charisma's dialed all the way down; he's still a leading male, even when he's recessed. But when he directs himself, Affleck is a movie star who still isn't sure how brightly he should shine.
[via]
Elsewhere:
Spare a kind thought for the cinetrix, whose class is being observed at 2:30 today.
Friendly Doc update:
Notes from a festival programmer: Filmmakers, please stop being so cavalier about using the words "homo" and "fag":
I can AND will defend a director and writer’s use of any word. Language is as much an artistic tool as the camera itself.
What is not always defensible is the why a word was used. Which can be easy to parse at times and at others can be muddy and convoluted. And sometimes there is no why. Again, it comes down to choice.
Spike on the other hand, never really acknowledged that Tarantino’s worlds are specific and were never meant to speak to or replicate the African-American experience. At least not the African American experience that existed outside of a certain genre of films. A genre that, while reflected the themes and issues of African-Americans, never claimed or aimed to be realistic. Tarantino has repeatedly noted that some of his movies are meant to exist as a heightened reality in an alternate universe he’s called the “Realer Than Real World Universe”. Others exist in the “Movie Movie Universe” and these moves are much more like comic books and films.
...
We receive films that have women calling each other “bitches” and “ho’s”, black men and women calling each other “nigga” and LGBT characters calling each other “fags” or “dykes”. Over the years we have programmed some of those films with no reservations and with no concerns.
But, the number of film submissions over the years that have had straight characters casually calling each other “fag” and “homo” has been troubling. Yes, it’s true that people straight and gay call each other “fag” or “homo”. However, just because one replicates an event, big or small, in a film, in a book, or on stage, doesn’t mean that replication has verisimilitude. It doesn’t mean that replication gets deeper to the ideas, themes and undercurrents that those events represent and what led to those moments to begin with.
Single Ladies, multiple viewing options:
Finally, karma's a bitch, and the cinetrix is rooting for the earth-obliterating asteroid in this fight:
After four and a half months of this, Carney got in touch with me to propose a deal, saying, “I sincerely wish you well and I am sorry this issue has come between us.” “I am willing,” he writes, to “ship everything back for a modest consideration, simply to cover my costs and the time and trouble of having stored the material for the past seven-and-a-half years.” In return for my own films, I was to pay him $27,000! Some may call this extortion, I call it merely outrageous. Just to put it in perspective, that would equal 3 years of the monies I get from Social Security. To continue the suit to trial would have cost me about the same amount, in addition to the thousands I had already spent. I couldn’t afford to continue.
[via]
Rusty-James’ brother and idol, The Motorcycle Boy, wanders through the film in a v-neck cable sweater vest, occasionally covered by a two-button tweed sports jacket – with the collar upturned, naturally. The sweater feels like a grown-up version of the youngster’s vest: an evolution in the uniform of rebellion which echoes the characters’ relationship. This line from younger to older brother can be drawn further when their alcoholic father (Dennis Hopper) turns up in a trilby, rumpled striped suit with waistcoat and open-necked shirt. As a logical progression from Rourke’s sweater and jacket, Hopper’s costume provides a warning to his sons and a subtle signifier to the audience of what may lie in the boys’ future.
Beginner's Guide to International Cinema [via]
The canon and Criterion Collection are not the law. There are numerous issues with how people assume that these are but I’d like to point to how they are overwhelmingly skewed to films from France, UK, & the US and more than that, lack a complete racial diversity. As a result, even from the US you will get one of the gravest omissions, films from a scene likethe LA Rebellion scene that is completely ignored. And in general, you will get at the most one or two directors from a non-western country like Satyajit Ray (India) or Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand).
I was inspired by and definitely knew I would use Laura Mulvey because I was very interested in the whole idea of the gaze. She has a book that’s a few years old, Death 24x a Second, which is also about freezing and looking at frames. I needed a few anchor points so that [the project] would not be completely random, and she was one. [Roland] Barthes was another one, of course, with “The Third Meaning,” that great essay of his where he slows down The Battleship Potemkin and looks at the stills. You take a still out of a film and freeze it, and it’s not a part of a film and it’s not a photo; it’s a third thing, which is very elusive. That was really important in my thinking, and I knew I wanted to return to him. So those were the two main [influences] I knew I would quote, but I didn’t know I would go into the poets. I had no plan from the beginning of bringing in Brigit Pegeen Kelly or Roberto Bolano or those sorts of folks. In the beginning, I thought [the series] would be mostly theoretical, but I found that a lot of the fiction and poetry I was reading was sort of what we would call “theoretical” in a way. It was offering a theory of the world, of reality and how we fit memory into it. So those sort of morphed in, in real time, whereas Mulvey and Barthes where definitely there from the beginning.
<snip>
So much great film criticism from the pre-digital era is based on memory. Bazin and others would say, “I saw this film two years ago and I’m going to write about it as best I can.” I’ve been really interested in the way that digital technology gives us absolute control the same way we have always had over a book, in that you can go back to it over and over again. Maybe it’s something I never got over as someone who started teaching film when you needed a projector and it was so difficult to get the actual films. When DVDs came out, and streaming video, and the ability to own films and freeze them, that really opened up a new way of looking at film, and it changed our relationship to film time. We have taken back control. So that’s something that I think runs through all the projects—exploiting to its maximum potential the ability to seize back film and not be, in a sort of Marxist way, “under its spell.” Or, to break its spell without breaking our love for it. To even love it more. That’s really, for me, the common thread: using this technology and exploring what else we can do besides putting extras on a DVD. What else can we do in terms of film theory or scholarship to seize back the film?
I’m interested in what blocking reveals about a movie’s theme — and Hawks’s theme, as Jacques Rivette was the first to point out, is “the adventure of the intellect”; specifically, the drama and comedy that result when a highly civilized society (i.e., one marked by wit, irony, and sexual sophistication) is invaded by an avatar of altogether less civilized forces. In His Girl Friday, bland insurance man Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy), Hildy’s fiancé, is the avatar of such forces. For those worried, at whatever level of consciousness, that Weimar Germany’s fate might one day be America’s, the blocking in this scene — in which Grant inserts himself bodily between Hildy and Baldwin, then comically arches his eyebrows, smirks, and waggles his cigarette until Hildy begins to fall out of love with Kulturand back in love with Zivilisation — is propaganda of the most dramatic and welcome kind.
Film blogging and its discontents 1:
But what surprised me as I combed through the Long Pauses archive is that vast swaths of the original blogosphere are gone. Many of the sites I once included on my blogroll of “daily reads” have been deleted entirely, and the authors have vanished right along with them. Presumably, they’ve settled into new phases of their lives – like me, they’re now raising children or managing greater responsibilities in their professional lives; like me, they’re in their forties – while others simply lost interest after a short-lived burst of blogging enthusiasm. The Wayback Machine salvages bits and pieces of the wreckage, but the Internet, it turns out, is an ephemeral place. Moreso than I’d imagined. (I was disappointed to discover a few days ago that someone has beaten me to the punch: Internet Archaeology is already a thing.) Our virtual world is indeed a palimpsest.
Film blogging and its discontents 2:
I rather fool-heartedly assumed that I would return when the "time was right," when the desire to write would be so consuming I wouldn't be able to stop my fingers from running wild across my keyboard. Of course that never happened. It wasn't that I didn't wish to write any longer; I've done plenty of writing in my free time. It was that, among other things, I wasn't sure what I was doing with the blog any more. Although, truthfully, I just didn't like what I was doing with it. In the same way my fingers didn't start writing on their own, a clear idea of what I did want to do with the blog never came either, and its absence just gave me another excuse to delay making a decision about whether to return to the blog or bid it a fond farewell. I'm not sure what finally got me to realize that, if the universe had anything to say on the matter, it probably wasn't going to tell me in the ways I had been waiting for.
Long live the working class hunk:
We see this embrace in the resurgence of "mancrafting," we see it in the eroticization of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, with whom women fantasize about living a quiet existence in a backwoods cabin. It's in True Blood's Alcide, and in the return of the 80s "hardbodies" in The Expendables.
We even see it in this summer's Magic Mike, in which a man who yearns to work with his hands is driven to exploit his body as stripper. Behind the gyrations, Mike despairs at the demise of the feasibility of a working-class life. On the construction site, the main character is boxed out by non-union, under-trained labor, and his all-cash stripping-income makes it impossible to get a loan to build his own furniture. He's good at stripping, but in ten years, that job, too, will leave him behind.
You Tube and Archives, Scarcity and Abundance:
Watching videos online isn't the only way of accessing the moving image culture of the past, but we can do a lot with what we have available. Yes there are problems. There is the bias of the present to contend with - YouTube only has what people in the past seven years have deemed worth sharing. This bias applies to archives too, and YouTube is much more democratic, its "curators" and "archivists" representing much broader constituencies than those of institutions. There is often a question of provenance and completeness and identifying information. Sometimes we don't know what we're looking at on YouTube, and I never know if I can trust the YouTuber's facts - how do they know this was on TV in 1977? There is an ephemerality, too - things that were there once are gone, things that are there now might vanish tomorrow, and the copyright regimes of the future might end the freedom of access we now enjoy.
Annnnd, the Scott Baio Essential Eight:
It's a musical. It's a gangster movie. It's a children's film. It's Bugsy Malone, the bizarre effort from Midnight Express director Alan Parker that delivers the grit of The Godfather to the "Sesame Street" set (instead of bullets, Parker stuffed his tiny heels' tommy guns with cream pie filling). Baio plays the title role, of course, with just a taste of the spark we would later see in his fully realized interpretation of Charles "Chachi" Arcola. Sure, Jodie Foster acts circles around him, but humankind has yet to prove Foster isn't the result of extra terrestrial technology gifted to us decades ago by the Zeti Reticulans. It should be noted the Michael Jacskon in Bugsy Malone who plays Razamataz is not the late pop sensation of Thriller fame but in fact just some poor kid with the same moniker who never worked again.
