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Cinematic catch-up

Michel Gondry: A Cinephile's Labyrinth on Nowness.com.

The cinetrix just returned from several blissful days spent out-of-doors, only weakly tethered to the Interwebs via hotel wifi on my phone. Some of my favorites from what the world got up to in my absence.

The Guardian tallies John Cusack's five best moments.

Highlights from the Paley Center for Media's Henson holdings.

Fette Sans interviews Film Forum's Mike Maggiore.

Any interesting stories about filmmaker’s presenting her/his film for the first time at FF?
Many years ago, Francois Ozon graciously came to the theater to do some interviews for one of his early films and he noticed that we were selling popcorn in the lobby. He saw a young woman sprinkling salt in her bag and then taking it into the theater and he pointed at her and said, “She is not taking it inside??” I told him that of course, this is something Americans are very accustomed to. It’s part of the movie-going experience, etc. and he appeared mortified.

US Trailer for Laurence Anyways, directed by Xavier Dolan, 2012. [via]

• Stanwyck had become the highest paid woman in America. "Barbara" was the third most popular baby name in America — almost entirely because of Stanwyck.
• Kenny on Scorsese and on White.
• R.I.P. Boston Phoenix, where I briefly had a proofreading gig (Hot Dots!) in the 90s.
• Call For Entries: Tribeca Film Festival’s #6SecFilms Vine Competition.

 

Random reading

Once again, I should be grading. So here's what I've been squandering my time on instead.

• "The Great Lebowski Re-evaluation gradually took root among the youth counterculture after the goddamn plane crashed into the building—exactly 10 years after the Dude buys a carton of half-and-half in the opening scene of the movie," Benjamin wrote in an e-mail. And yes, it's true: That half-and-half purchase, soundtracked by a televised George H.W. Bush speech about aggression and the "Eye-rackies," gets paid for by a check dated September 11.

• The Hitchcock handbag -- they're quite fetishistic, vaginal things. I'm not the only one who's noticed this predilection and I don't find it a stretch. With all those crisp, snapped, soft or hard bodied rectangular satchels and muffs, Hitchcock's women clutched wombs of wonder that, like, many ladies obsessed with their handbags, seem to serve the purpose to only mystify men. Who cares so much about a damn handbag? Women do. And not just for fashion, as Hitchcock so astutely noticed, but for what Kier also so astutely pointed out. Organization. Organization in that chaotic organ that will spill out of your satchel in messy, sticky, dysfunctional passionate disarray. And purses, they always lose control.

• But as I reflect on what I could possibly say about a film that's been so closely analyzed, admired and adored, it seems like 8 1/2 calls for some kind of unique treatment from me. It's indisputably one of the great audacious salvage jobs of a man wrestling with creative blockage and artistic confusion, whose vision and scope had progressively enlarged with each new cinematic triumph, to the point where expectations had morphed into assumptions that the brilliance and magic would just flow unceasingly each time the Maestro called his cast and crew together. Of course, 8 1/2 famously draws us behind the curtain of that gruesome process by which the movies so many of us love somehow emerge from the clash of egos, the relentless criticisms and pressures, and the chaotic lunges from one crisis to another in the personal lives of the flawed and vulnerable humans who labor to get something tangible up on the screen. The film is a dazzling display of 20th century modernism, so self-reflexive and aware of itself as a phenomenon that it opens the doors of our perception to all the latent narcissism and willfully indulgent obscurity that eventually came to be labeled postmodernism. And it's also a beautiful portrait (as all of Fellini's films are, at least those I've seen) of ordinary people muddling their way through the plight of their lives with wit, confusion, dread and delight. There's a lot going on here, in this film, in the mind of Fellini as he made it, and in my own life as I watch 8 1/2 again and incorporate it into my own experience 50 years after it debuted. And today I'm just beginning the process of grappling with it all.

• GY: Can you talk about the song in this clip? How did you find this moment of synch sound?
  PL: We spent maybe the first year of the project just figuring out what we were looking at and having these small victories. We were able to say, “Okay, we’ve figured out that this particular clip is Idaho Falls, Idaho.” And somehow we were able to figure out that it was roughly whatever month it was in 1971. Then we were able to go into the White House Communications Agency audio archive and scan for Idaho Falls. And because that clip has people singing, you knew that there’d be some way to find a synch. We were able to do that a few times, but this one was really great because we were able to use someone’s in-camera edits, and also someone else’s in-audio recorder edits. They’re totally unrelated; they just happen to be recording the same event.
  BF: My best guess is that the song was written by a high school teacher, and that it was something the choral group learned for the event. It’s kind of incomprehensible what exactly it’s supposed to be getting at: “We are Americans, we hope that you are too”?
• The early eighties were a particularly fertile period in my cinephilia. Having just gotten both cable and a VCR, it seemed that, after years of reading about so many movies, now I could finally watch them. And I did, one after another, the VCR becoming my best friend. But also, like any teenager/twenty-something, I watched a lot of whatever was on cable. Again and again and again. Two of those movies were Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Taps. Now, had you asked me at the time, right then in 1982 when I was watching these movies on cable, who would become stars and who wouldn’t, I would have probably given the wrong answer on some, the right answer on others.  Certainly Fast Times left me clueless. I found it to be dull, unfunny and shoddily put together.  I probably would’ve said that maybe Jennifer Jason Leigh will go on to big things, and maybe her goofy brother, Judge Reinhold, but nobody else. Oh, I thought Sean Penn was good enough as Spicoli, it’s just that with nothing else to base it on, I couldn’t be sure if this was a performance or, like Pauly Shore later, this was all he could do. Eric Stoltz? I couldn’t even tell you what he did. Forest Whitaker? The football player? Doesn’t seem like he did much. If you told me at the time that both Penn and Whitaker would go on to be highly respected Oscar winning actors, I probably would’ve assumed you’d been smoking some of that Spicoli weed again. Oh yeah, and did I mention Nicolas Cage? That’s right, Fast Times at Ridgemont High had three future Best Actor winners in it. Holy cow.

• Drivers exiting the Skyway onto Stony Island Avenue may mistake the Avalon (later the New Regal) as a religious building, with its minarets and onion dome. When designing this exemplary piece of Atmospheric Moorish Revivalism, Eberson took his inspiration from an incense burner he discovered at an antiques market. The theatre’s 2,255 seats are enveloped in romanticized motifs suggestive of a Persian bazaar under a twilight sky. The Middle Eastern theme continues into the marble-tiled lobby, which includes three large carved wood murals set within massive arches. Soaring above is a flying carpet of sorts—the design of an Oriental rug painted on plaster and inlaid with patterns of cut-glass gems sitting within the recessed ceiling. Requiring minor touchups, this relatively well-maintained theatre is set to reopen in early 2013 as a live entertainment venue.
• Doughty reasserts many of Mitford’s 50-year-old claims; both the sentimentality of love and misguidance of morticians prompt mourners to spend too much on rituals they aren’t invested in or on unnecessary burial preparations. Doughty also shares Mitford’s disgust with the ghoulishness of many standard American practices. Though bodies are viewed in many societies’ funeral practices, “The idea of the open casket is pretty specifically American,” Doughty says. “And that really, I think, came with the body-as-product revolution of the embalmers. … One of the things that they were able to sell was the embalmed body. The idea that they were making this body beautiful and lifelike again, and preserving it for eternity. So that’s when it started to become, we’re going to create this ‘memory picture’ with this beautiful embalmed body and then put it in its casket and then present it to you.”

• Pay attention to the differences that make a difference.
  Do not read about the object before you’ve completed your work. Let the link vultures quote you, not the other way around.
  However, do not be afraid of the associations the object brings forth for you, especially from other art forms than the one at hand. And do your best to find the best in these affinities, these links, no matter how fanciful.
• Obviously much of the initial energy associated with blogging has now been redirected into other formats, especially social media such as Twitter and Facebook (often in ways that aren’t productive–especially on Facebook), but I still consider the blog to be an important part of my academic and professional work, a place where ideas can be developed and shared in an extended format that wouldn’t work as well on other platforms.

• Geoff Gilmore (Chief Creative Officer), Genna Terranova (VP of Programming), Frederic Boyer (Artistic Director) and Sharon Badal (Shorts Programmer) went to the Livestream studio to talk the Festival slate for 2013. Moderated by Slate’s Dana Stevens, the discussion shed light on the programming process, and the group highlighted several films that they believe are must-sees at this year’s Festival. [via Lindsay]

• "I'm used to catching some flak for ever daring to make drinking sound glamorous," Schaap admits. "And I certainly try not to diminish or make light of real issues involving drinking out there. But no one makes it look more glamorous than Nick and Nora do." The author particularly admires the moment in the 1934 film when Myrna Loy orders a row of six martinis ("Line them up right here"), as well as William Powell's method of shaking cocktails to ballroom-dance rhythms. "They're just having such a grand time, and their chemistry is so spectacular, and you can't help thinking that somehow all those martinis make that possible."

Reeling and reading

Congratulations to my art house alma mater, the Brattle Theatre, on its successful Kickstarter campaign. Pictured is Major Strasser getting the full rear-projection treatment.

Another alum, A.S. Hamrah, shut award season down over at N+1 with his 2013 Oscar preview. As usual with Scott's writing, I find myself with too many favorites to excerpt, so you should just read the whole thing, OK? Because it's all as good as this:

I went to the Sunday matinee of Life of Pi, in 3D, at the Regal Union Square Stadium 14 and paid my $18.50 to get in. Since it was Sunday morning I had stopped on the way and bought a large coffee at a café across the street to drink while I watched the movie. As I approached the escalator to get to the floor where the movie was playing, a ticket taker stopped me and told me I could not go in with coffee. If I wanted to see the movie, I would have to finish it before I went in or ditch it. I asked why. He said it was the theater’s policy. I suggested that since the cineplex was almost empty because it was 11 in the morning, he might just look the other way if I brought the coffee in. No way, he said, they watch me on cameras. So I went back downstairs and got my money back. Sorry, Ang Lee. That coffee was more important to me that morning than seeing a movie in 3D.

Sing it, Kim Morgan! Over at Sunset Gun she advocates for a new Oscar category:

The ability to create a meaningful, visceral, powerfully edited soundtrack (and working with songs so damn perfectly and often songs not usually heard in movies, like the not one, but two songs by the band Love in Bottle Rocket, or Dignan running from the cops, tuned perfectly to The Stones' "2000 Man") is a specific talent that, thanks to Music Supervisors and the editors and directors who work with them (*note: a good question a commenter raised is, based on the collaborative nature of the process, who would win the award?) has created moments in movies so iconic, that we often can't imagine the song without the scene.

Early Sarris single, by way of Anthology:

NOWADAYS, IT IS POSSIBLE TO BECOME A DIRECTOR WITHOUT KNOWING TOO MUCH ABOUT THE TECHNICAL SIDE, EVEN THE CRUCIAL FUNCTIONS OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND EDITING. AN EXPERT PRODUCTION CREW COULD PROBABLY COVER UP FOR A CHIMPANZEE IN THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR. HOW DO YOU TELL THE GENUINE DIRECTOR FROM THE QUASICHIMPANZEE? AFTER A GIVEN NUMBER OF FILMS, A PATTERN IS ESTABLISHED.

IN FACT,  THE AUTEUR THEORY ITSELF IS A PATTERN THEORY IN CONSTANT FLUX. I WOULD NEVER ENDORSE A PTOLEMAIC CONSTELLATION OF DIRECTORS IN A FIXED ORBIT

Stephanie Zacharek reviews the latest book by Jeannine Basinger, whose refreshingly lucid prose in A Woman's View [perhaps wrongly] convinced me there was room in the academy for writers who could express themselves without jargon. What? I was young.

Jeanine Basinger pinpoints the problem in her perceptive and nimble book I Do and I Don't: A History of Marriage in the Movies. Making movies that are truly about the state of being married has always been a thorny proposition. "Marriage, after all, was the known, not the unknown: the dull dinner party, not the madcap masquerade," Basinger writes in her introduction. (She doesn't say anything about toilets, but then, she doesn't have to.) "Worst of all," she continues, "marriage had no story arc. It just went on, day after day, month after month, year after year. Marriage took time, and movies had no time to give to it. A good story was usually a story in a hurry—good pacing being one of its best characteristics."

All hail Phoebe!

One thing I like to imagine when thinking about a film I really enjoy is what the side characters do in their spare time, that is, when they’re not busy propelling the story of the main character before us.   And I don’t mean what are they doing in this particular scene when they’re off-camera, I mean, “What is their life like outside of this story?” And it’s not like a find the main character dull, it’s just that sometimes that side character is so interesting I can’t help but want some more....

The first comes from All About Eve and it’s Phoebe.  Played by Barbara Bates in a wonderfully drawn bit part, Phoebe is, we are led to believe, the next Eve.  But Phoebe is so much more than that.  In just that tiny little scene, she shows more nerve, more gall, more brass than Eve ever did.  Eve sat outside in an alley night after night and played demure as long as she could until she could make her way into the world of Margo Channing and take over.  But Phoebe?  She just shows up at the door, busts her way in, grabs Eve’s award and admires herself in front of the mirror.  Eve’s mirror!  Phoebe isn’t the next Eve, Phoebe is a force of nature and somebody could make a damn good soap opera out of her ruthless exploits. 

Truly amazing memories of Orson Welles from the daughter of Todd School headmaster Roger Hill -- a must-read:

My parents enjoyed visiting with him. His visits were a daily occurrence. Here was a boy who could have a discussion about China, Europe, Toulouse Lautrec, Renoir, Mozart, Hugo, Voltaire and Shakespeare and many, many others. I was furious! Why would my parents spend hours with Orson, when they wouldn’t spend much time with me?

One day I tore into Orson, telling him just what I thought of his behavior, which was certainly very negative, He looked at me with a condescending, supercilious smile and said “Joanne, everyone has their little idiosyncrasies” and  marched off. I had no idea what he meant and dashed off to find a dictionary. I know he was right but he had more than most....

During the festival, Orson met Virginia Nicolson She had enrolled as a student. At the end of the summer they got married with the help of my parents. It was also during the festival that a student, William Vance, brought a camera to the campus. Orson with Virginia, Paul Edgerton, other students and Blackie O’Neal produced a ridiculous, meaningless film they called “The Hearts of Age.” It made no sense. Orson was just trying to discover the workings of a camera.

Finally, Max Goldberg speaks with Ernst Karel for Moving Image Source. [Fun fact: Before P.O.V. would air Sweetgrass, the sound of sheepherders pissing in plein aire on the range had to get turned way down.]

I was really surprised when people writing about Sweetgrass would comment on the sound as being somehow remarkable. To me, it was as straightforward a way of dealing with sound as I could imagine. We weren't doing anything tricky. There are no effects. A lot of it is sync sound, but I think it is something like what you just said, where the sound is allowed to intrude upon what's going on more than might otherwise be the case. For a lot of documentaries, the sound is reined in. It's especially exaggerated when you have a voiceover. Whenever that voice comes in, the sound mysteriously vanishes or gets shifted way down. Sound becomes an optional component of the image when it can suddenly come down for no reason other than someone wants to talk over it.