while talking with dionne this evening, she told me that rachel getting married will be making it's third run through the landmark theatres...really? that makes me wanna punch somebody in the jeans. i want wendy and lucy, and i want it now.
this will cheer me up
go buy incredibad by the lonely island you will be glad you did.
12 February 2009
07 February 2009
notes on the auteur theory in 2009
(note: this all started the other day when i convinced myself that i should go see spaz, sorry baz luhrman's australia at the dollar theater strictly on the basis that it was the work of a genuine filmmaker(as opposed to hollywood trash) thankfully, i have yet to do this...but it got me thinking)
there is a question posed in andrew sarris's notes on the auteur theory in 1962 that i beleive to be the second most important question facing the art after french critic andre bazin's famous "what is cinema?" sarris asks with humor, "how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee?" it seems as if this is the moment in time when film studies trancended the notion of a mere survey of entertainments and became a "serious" endeavor. by asking this question, sarris implies that there is indeed an answer, a way of differentiating a good director from a bad one. this way, which may or may not really exist, constitutes in some ways a science. the way that sarris describes has come to be known as the auteur theory. akin to the theory of montage which attempted to apply a science to the making of films, the auteur theory became one of the first major developments in the history of film theory that attempted to put a scientific spin on the value judgement of the art. by developing a system of context within which to place a film, auteurists turned the perception of cinema from that of petty, pithy entertainment into an artform, tinged with all the psychology, humanity, and beauty that life has to offer.
the auteur theory, or the politique des auteurs, started in 1950's france as an abstract aesthetic engrained within the writings of the film journal cahiers du cinema. the seminal early works of this movement were alexandre austruc's un camera stylo(the camera pen) and francois truffaut's a certain tendency of french cinema. the auteur theory at this time, however, was still rather undefined and served a greater purpose in the promotion of the young critic's burgeoning careers as film directors. the young writers of cahiers went on to direct feature films of great originality and keen understanding of the cinematic form under the monniker of the french new wave.
the auteur theory at this time was in its rudementary state. the cahiers critics essentially had only formed a few tenets of this burgeoning piece of theory. the main tenet at this point of evolution revolved around the idea that a director was the author of the film, that he used the camera as a pen to write his story in a manner similar to an author of a book. this was important to the new wavers, as at the time, the screenwriter dominated french cinema's "tradition of quality." truffaut set out to show how the writer's influence could be felt over the whole of france's cinematic output and was an ourage to a youthful movement full of enthusiasm. he contested that the same ten or so screenwriters, all of whom shared a similar, popularly assimilated stance, dominated the output of nearly a hundred or so films a year. this article argued the merits of such "cinematic" men and the films they made over the studio based "tradition of quality." truffaut held up on a pedestal directors like jean renoir, robert bresson, alfred hitchcock, howard hawks, and orson welles as directors whose art was not based in what truffaut beleived to be literary concerns, but was based in the image and all that was contained within. their films were considered better becuase they represented visions of a singular artistic statement as opposed to the films from writers jean aurenche, pierre bost, and clause autant-lara which the critics saw as nothing more than a popular, moralistic(often cynical and mean spirited) idealism transferred onto the preexisting aesthetic of the object of adaptation.
the history of auteurism served the cahier critics well. it started a shift in ideas on cinema that helped them immensely. by shifting the importance from dialougue/plot to the image/mise en scene, they made the director the most important figure in the film. they did this by giving the director the status of creator of the particular piece of art. this allows for the art to be put into context with the other pieces of art created by the same artist. this context and the greater idea that a single film is part of a larger whole served to turn film into a more "respectable" medium by providing a system of classification by which to study film and its merits. the placing of the diector as the high point on the totem pole that governed a "seious" artform gave the critics who revolutionized the theory a special status once they began making films. by placing themselves as sole cretors of a singular, individual vision, they, by default, garnered an audience that already respected them as artists instead of as mere entertainers and respected their films as art instead of entertainment.
the beginnings of the auteur theory paved the way for those who theorized to become auteurs. but in reality, what does that mean? the auteur theory, as conceptualized by the new wavers, doesn't really have shape. it eludes concrete definition. it still cannot answer the question it poses because of this lack of definition.
so, how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee? in 1962, andrew sarris attempted to set up a criterion for answering that very question. for sarris, the director is not always necessarily the author of a film. sarris argues that a film's sensibilities can come from a multitude of places(producers, prevailing social concerns). occasionally, there are directors who will exude their will over their films to the point that they become authors. in these cases, the directors distinct psychology permeates the work and becomes the psychology of the piece. it is at this point that the director becomes an auteur.
and only an auteur can be an auteur. but what does it mean to be an auteur? how can one judge whether or not one is an auteur? in his article notes on the auteur theory in 1962, sarris offers up three things that he feels necessary in the consideration of a director's auteur status. an auteur's film must be technically sound, possess recognizable characteristics that link it with other films in the director's oeuvre, and an interior meaning. in sarris's mind these criteria exist as concentric circles placed within each other. an auteur is a director who moves beyond technical achievement and similar motifs and into the smaller circle of interior meaning.
interior meaning is what the auteur theory according to sarris hinges upon. it also happens to be the least defined of the three criteria. as to wher technique and style (technically good diecting and recognizable characteristics) can be charted easily through the occurrence of recurring motifs and their technical execution, interior meaning is an idea represented in abstract, therefor eschewing classification. truffaut describes interior meaning as the director's temperature on the set. this is a good description for what the french regard as that certain "je ne sais quoi." but i feel it is best described by another truffaut statement.
in his essay, what do critics dream about, truffaut writes, "a succesful film had simultaneously to express an idea of the world and an idea of cinema." i like this as a quasi-definition of interior meaning. (a quasi-chimpanzee's definition, no doubt) as the meshing of a director's notion of the world with how they see cinema creates within a work a complete expression which, through its dependence upon images, refuses any verbal or literal framework for defining. in short, interior meaning is an atmosphere, or rather, it is the heaviness of the air that creates what we know as atmosphere. abstracts rule.
in reality there is no clear definition for interior meaning. but auteurs have it, and therefore, it must be open to investigation. after all, we still need to be able to tell the difference between a genuine director and a quasi-chimpanzee. critc/scholar peter wollen believes that unlocking the mystery of interior meaning is the key to answering this question. in signs and meaning in the cinema, he drafts a blueprint for trying to answer the tricky question of interior meaning. he draws from foucault the idea that an author is nothing more than a tool for cultural appropriation. the contention in this way of thinking is that the author is nothing more than a filter for the ideals and structures of the culture that surrounds them. while this would seem to turn the notion of an auteur as the author of a text upside down, in wollen's hands it becomes something much more interesting.
wollen understands that the hierarchy that dictates that a culture controls an author who, in turn, controls a work of art reduces that work of art to the role of cultural artifact. what wollen skillfully point out is that a film's creation really exists within a synthesis of culture and author. film, to wollen, seems to represent the reaction of an author to the cultural structures around them. wollen describes the films of john ford as being portraits of ford's unease with the opposing structures that pull at him from within his cultural surroundings. he points to the oppositions such as the garden vs. natural wilderness and human law vs. natural law as recurring themes of discussion in ford's films. while at first this seems like nothing more than a charting of recognizable characteristics, therefore rendering him as a mere "stylist" on the sarris scale, in wollen's world this becomes the foundation for interior meaning.
wollen finds interior meaning in the relationship ford has with the battle being waged by these recurring opposing forces. wollen finds interior meaning in the fact that over time in ford's work, the winners of these structural battles change. sometimes these battles would overwhelm a ford hero, such as when the home based vs. nomadic lifestyle battle leaves ethan(john wayne) in the searchers on the eternal quest for the meaning provided by the missing pieces of his life. but the interior meaning, wollen points out, exists in the constant war that these opposing cultural structures are fighting. over time, this collection of wars waged on film becomes, in effect, a philosophy on life. but the workof an auteur is far from being as definitive as philosophy attempts to be. rather, the work of an auteur is more of a conversation, a continuing dialogue between the director and the issue that life has put upon them. this constant negotiation and renegotiation is where interior meaning is established as life is nothing more than one's negotiation with their problems. an auteur's work, as a whole, boils down to nothing but a filmed, cinematic representation of their dialogues with problems and how they reconcile themselves with the world that caused them.
so, how does this allow us to differentiate between a genuine director and a quasi-chimpanzee? i mean, really, how do wollen's ideas on interior meaning help to further define what an auteur does, and, more importantly, how does it help us scientifically prove one's status as an auteur. the sad part is, that here in 2009, it really doesn't mean anything. i could sit here and say that an auteur has a consistent message, or at least that they are saying something about similar things consistently. but that means nothing. there are assholes out there(like me) who would argue that michael bay is an auteur because he has a consistent discourse about explosions and how to run from them. but, again, that means nothing. basically, auteur, as it exista today, is nothing more than a phrase like hippie, yuppie, or genius. nobody really knows what those words themselves mean, but everyone feels free to use them to label others. so i say, keep the word auteur as this. keep it as a superficial label to put upon one's favorite filmmakers. this way i can keep such "non-cinematic" men such as john sayles and whit stillman on my list of favorite auteurs, whil keeping spaz luhrman as a pathetically shallow stylist.
the auteur theory is nothing more than an abstract theory that means practically nothing to the art of cinema outside of the classrooms where theory is studied. a director can not even become an auteur until a bulk of work has been made and only then is the term auteur used as a way to historically canonize the work after the fact. so, how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee? you don't do it with a theory. you don't do it with auteurism. you do it with your gut. because only an auteur is an auteur, and only you can decide for yourself exactly what that means.
all i know right now is that baz is not...and i still haven't made it to australia.
there is a question posed in andrew sarris's notes on the auteur theory in 1962 that i beleive to be the second most important question facing the art after french critic andre bazin's famous "what is cinema?" sarris asks with humor, "how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee?" it seems as if this is the moment in time when film studies trancended the notion of a mere survey of entertainments and became a "serious" endeavor. by asking this question, sarris implies that there is indeed an answer, a way of differentiating a good director from a bad one. this way, which may or may not really exist, constitutes in some ways a science. the way that sarris describes has come to be known as the auteur theory. akin to the theory of montage which attempted to apply a science to the making of films, the auteur theory became one of the first major developments in the history of film theory that attempted to put a scientific spin on the value judgement of the art. by developing a system of context within which to place a film, auteurists turned the perception of cinema from that of petty, pithy entertainment into an artform, tinged with all the psychology, humanity, and beauty that life has to offer.
the auteur theory, or the politique des auteurs, started in 1950's france as an abstract aesthetic engrained within the writings of the film journal cahiers du cinema. the seminal early works of this movement were alexandre austruc's un camera stylo(the camera pen) and francois truffaut's a certain tendency of french cinema. the auteur theory at this time, however, was still rather undefined and served a greater purpose in the promotion of the young critic's burgeoning careers as film directors. the young writers of cahiers went on to direct feature films of great originality and keen understanding of the cinematic form under the monniker of the french new wave.
the auteur theory at this time was in its rudementary state. the cahiers critics essentially had only formed a few tenets of this burgeoning piece of theory. the main tenet at this point of evolution revolved around the idea that a director was the author of the film, that he used the camera as a pen to write his story in a manner similar to an author of a book. this was important to the new wavers, as at the time, the screenwriter dominated french cinema's "tradition of quality." truffaut set out to show how the writer's influence could be felt over the whole of france's cinematic output and was an ourage to a youthful movement full of enthusiasm. he contested that the same ten or so screenwriters, all of whom shared a similar, popularly assimilated stance, dominated the output of nearly a hundred or so films a year. this article argued the merits of such "cinematic" men and the films they made over the studio based "tradition of quality." truffaut held up on a pedestal directors like jean renoir, robert bresson, alfred hitchcock, howard hawks, and orson welles as directors whose art was not based in what truffaut beleived to be literary concerns, but was based in the image and all that was contained within. their films were considered better becuase they represented visions of a singular artistic statement as opposed to the films from writers jean aurenche, pierre bost, and clause autant-lara which the critics saw as nothing more than a popular, moralistic(often cynical and mean spirited) idealism transferred onto the preexisting aesthetic of the object of adaptation.
the history of auteurism served the cahier critics well. it started a shift in ideas on cinema that helped them immensely. by shifting the importance from dialougue/plot to the image/mise en scene, they made the director the most important figure in the film. they did this by giving the director the status of creator of the particular piece of art. this allows for the art to be put into context with the other pieces of art created by the same artist. this context and the greater idea that a single film is part of a larger whole served to turn film into a more "respectable" medium by providing a system of classification by which to study film and its merits. the placing of the diector as the high point on the totem pole that governed a "seious" artform gave the critics who revolutionized the theory a special status once they began making films. by placing themselves as sole cretors of a singular, individual vision, they, by default, garnered an audience that already respected them as artists instead of as mere entertainers and respected their films as art instead of entertainment.
the beginnings of the auteur theory paved the way for those who theorized to become auteurs. but in reality, what does that mean? the auteur theory, as conceptualized by the new wavers, doesn't really have shape. it eludes concrete definition. it still cannot answer the question it poses because of this lack of definition.
so, how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee? in 1962, andrew sarris attempted to set up a criterion for answering that very question. for sarris, the director is not always necessarily the author of a film. sarris argues that a film's sensibilities can come from a multitude of places(producers, prevailing social concerns). occasionally, there are directors who will exude their will over their films to the point that they become authors. in these cases, the directors distinct psychology permeates the work and becomes the psychology of the piece. it is at this point that the director becomes an auteur.
and only an auteur can be an auteur. but what does it mean to be an auteur? how can one judge whether or not one is an auteur? in his article notes on the auteur theory in 1962, sarris offers up three things that he feels necessary in the consideration of a director's auteur status. an auteur's film must be technically sound, possess recognizable characteristics that link it with other films in the director's oeuvre, and an interior meaning. in sarris's mind these criteria exist as concentric circles placed within each other. an auteur is a director who moves beyond technical achievement and similar motifs and into the smaller circle of interior meaning.
interior meaning is what the auteur theory according to sarris hinges upon. it also happens to be the least defined of the three criteria. as to wher technique and style (technically good diecting and recognizable characteristics) can be charted easily through the occurrence of recurring motifs and their technical execution, interior meaning is an idea represented in abstract, therefor eschewing classification. truffaut describes interior meaning as the director's temperature on the set. this is a good description for what the french regard as that certain "je ne sais quoi." but i feel it is best described by another truffaut statement.
in his essay, what do critics dream about, truffaut writes, "a succesful film had simultaneously to express an idea of the world and an idea of cinema." i like this as a quasi-definition of interior meaning. (a quasi-chimpanzee's definition, no doubt) as the meshing of a director's notion of the world with how they see cinema creates within a work a complete expression which, through its dependence upon images, refuses any verbal or literal framework for defining. in short, interior meaning is an atmosphere, or rather, it is the heaviness of the air that creates what we know as atmosphere. abstracts rule.
in reality there is no clear definition for interior meaning. but auteurs have it, and therefore, it must be open to investigation. after all, we still need to be able to tell the difference between a genuine director and a quasi-chimpanzee. critc/scholar peter wollen believes that unlocking the mystery of interior meaning is the key to answering this question. in signs and meaning in the cinema, he drafts a blueprint for trying to answer the tricky question of interior meaning. he draws from foucault the idea that an author is nothing more than a tool for cultural appropriation. the contention in this way of thinking is that the author is nothing more than a filter for the ideals and structures of the culture that surrounds them. while this would seem to turn the notion of an auteur as the author of a text upside down, in wollen's hands it becomes something much more interesting.
wollen understands that the hierarchy that dictates that a culture controls an author who, in turn, controls a work of art reduces that work of art to the role of cultural artifact. what wollen skillfully point out is that a film's creation really exists within a synthesis of culture and author. film, to wollen, seems to represent the reaction of an author to the cultural structures around them. wollen describes the films of john ford as being portraits of ford's unease with the opposing structures that pull at him from within his cultural surroundings. he points to the oppositions such as the garden vs. natural wilderness and human law vs. natural law as recurring themes of discussion in ford's films. while at first this seems like nothing more than a charting of recognizable characteristics, therefore rendering him as a mere "stylist" on the sarris scale, in wollen's world this becomes the foundation for interior meaning.
wollen finds interior meaning in the relationship ford has with the battle being waged by these recurring opposing forces. wollen finds interior meaning in the fact that over time in ford's work, the winners of these structural battles change. sometimes these battles would overwhelm a ford hero, such as when the home based vs. nomadic lifestyle battle leaves ethan(john wayne) in the searchers on the eternal quest for the meaning provided by the missing pieces of his life. but the interior meaning, wollen points out, exists in the constant war that these opposing cultural structures are fighting. over time, this collection of wars waged on film becomes, in effect, a philosophy on life. but the workof an auteur is far from being as definitive as philosophy attempts to be. rather, the work of an auteur is more of a conversation, a continuing dialogue between the director and the issue that life has put upon them. this constant negotiation and renegotiation is where interior meaning is established as life is nothing more than one's negotiation with their problems. an auteur's work, as a whole, boils down to nothing but a filmed, cinematic representation of their dialogues with problems and how they reconcile themselves with the world that caused them.
so, how does this allow us to differentiate between a genuine director and a quasi-chimpanzee? i mean, really, how do wollen's ideas on interior meaning help to further define what an auteur does, and, more importantly, how does it help us scientifically prove one's status as an auteur. the sad part is, that here in 2009, it really doesn't mean anything. i could sit here and say that an auteur has a consistent message, or at least that they are saying something about similar things consistently. but that means nothing. there are assholes out there(like me) who would argue that michael bay is an auteur because he has a consistent discourse about explosions and how to run from them. but, again, that means nothing. basically, auteur, as it exista today, is nothing more than a phrase like hippie, yuppie, or genius. nobody really knows what those words themselves mean, but everyone feels free to use them to label others. so i say, keep the word auteur as this. keep it as a superficial label to put upon one's favorite filmmakers. this way i can keep such "non-cinematic" men such as john sayles and whit stillman on my list of favorite auteurs, whil keeping spaz luhrman as a pathetically shallow stylist.
the auteur theory is nothing more than an abstract theory that means practically nothing to the art of cinema outside of the classrooms where theory is studied. a director can not even become an auteur until a bulk of work has been made and only then is the term auteur used as a way to historically canonize the work after the fact. so, how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee? you don't do it with a theory. you don't do it with auteurism. you do it with your gut. because only an auteur is an auteur, and only you can decide for yourself exactly what that means.
all i know right now is that baz is not...and i still haven't made it to australia.
02 February 2009
i can smoke like ten blunts and still smoke your ass in the hundred freestyle
of all the stories emanating from yesterday's crush of coverage from the super bowl, the one that intrigued me the most was that of american hero michael phelps. for those readers that do not already know, apparently over the weekend a london tabloid posted a picture of mr. phelps smoking some weed at a party.
as anyone who knows the staff here at beer cannes knows, we don't particularly care about that as we are not really in any place to cast judgment on anyone who partakes. in fact for the first few minutes after the venerable bob costas broke the story, we were running around the old office here and touting phelps as possibly the finest american currently living.
but then something kinda bullshit happened. roughly ten minutes after breaking the story, mr. costas came back on air and read a pre-prepared press statement that found phelps asking for forgiveness and blaming his "transgression" on youthful misjudgment. and it was then that i became truly saddened.
i wish, instead of responding with remorse, that phelps would have either not responded at all or, as in my dream scenario, would have responded with a somewhat caustic, "so the fuck what?"
i mean, really? who the fuck cares? and if you do, why? seriously, the double standard in this country is absolute bullshit. twenty-three year old michael phelps takes one toke off a pipe at a party and suddenly it is world news. meanwhile, if at the same party, phelps would have attempted to destroy his liver with like 15 irish car bombs and passed out on the sofa, nobody would have blinked an eye.
while the smoking vs. drinking double standard obviously irks me, i find that i am most disappointed in the phelps response as i feel that to end this ridiculous prohibition of marijuana people, and in particular people with a certain amount of cultural cache, need to start taking a stand and being honest about their recreational use. i wish phelps would have used this public forum that his fame provides to further the discussion on the legalization of pot. after all, it is no more detrimental to a person's system, or society as a whole, than the alcohol that is put up on a pedestal in this country. nobody ever apologizes for over-inbibing, unless they get caught behind the wheel. but get caught taking one hit, and the media blitz of judgment that eventually leads to false remorse is on.
so with this in mind, i have drafted my dream response to phelp's conundrum. it follows as such:
hell yeah, i smoked weed. i'm 23, i'm the best in the world ever at what i do, i only work like once every four years and after winning a record eight gold medals this summer, i feel it is my right to blow off a little steam at a party every once in awhile. really, why the fuck do you care and who are you to fucking judge me? i can smoke a pound of weed and still kill all you fools in a swim race, because that's how i roll. i'm michael phelps, bitches! and it's just a little weed, it's not like i'm making crystal meth in my bath tub. i'm just trying to get a little high, peace out.
but then again, if he made that statement he would have to apologize for the use of profanity because our precious puritanical american values(see: hypocracy)just couldn't handle it.
america has shit on its face because its head is stuck up its ass.
as anyone who knows the staff here at beer cannes knows, we don't particularly care about that as we are not really in any place to cast judgment on anyone who partakes. in fact for the first few minutes after the venerable bob costas broke the story, we were running around the old office here and touting phelps as possibly the finest american currently living.
but then something kinda bullshit happened. roughly ten minutes after breaking the story, mr. costas came back on air and read a pre-prepared press statement that found phelps asking for forgiveness and blaming his "transgression" on youthful misjudgment. and it was then that i became truly saddened.
i wish, instead of responding with remorse, that phelps would have either not responded at all or, as in my dream scenario, would have responded with a somewhat caustic, "so the fuck what?"
i mean, really? who the fuck cares? and if you do, why? seriously, the double standard in this country is absolute bullshit. twenty-three year old michael phelps takes one toke off a pipe at a party and suddenly it is world news. meanwhile, if at the same party, phelps would have attempted to destroy his liver with like 15 irish car bombs and passed out on the sofa, nobody would have blinked an eye.
while the smoking vs. drinking double standard obviously irks me, i find that i am most disappointed in the phelps response as i feel that to end this ridiculous prohibition of marijuana people, and in particular people with a certain amount of cultural cache, need to start taking a stand and being honest about their recreational use. i wish phelps would have used this public forum that his fame provides to further the discussion on the legalization of pot. after all, it is no more detrimental to a person's system, or society as a whole, than the alcohol that is put up on a pedestal in this country. nobody ever apologizes for over-inbibing, unless they get caught behind the wheel. but get caught taking one hit, and the media blitz of judgment that eventually leads to false remorse is on.
so with this in mind, i have drafted my dream response to phelp's conundrum. it follows as such:
hell yeah, i smoked weed. i'm 23, i'm the best in the world ever at what i do, i only work like once every four years and after winning a record eight gold medals this summer, i feel it is my right to blow off a little steam at a party every once in awhile. really, why the fuck do you care and who are you to fucking judge me? i can smoke a pound of weed and still kill all you fools in a swim race, because that's how i roll. i'm michael phelps, bitches! and it's just a little weed, it's not like i'm making crystal meth in my bath tub. i'm just trying to get a little high, peace out.
but then again, if he made that statement he would have to apologize for the use of profanity because our precious puritanical american values(see: hypocracy)just couldn't handle it.
america has shit on its face because its head is stuck up its ass.
30 January 2009
reasons and reasoning
as anyone who monitors my cinematic viewing patterns by perusing the the dear diary section directly to the left already knows, i have recently and very unintentionally completed a weeks worth of film spectatorship that contained three films that dealt with various themes of race relations. at this point i will concede that the discussion henceforth will not deal with my own thoughts on the issue, but instead with how well, or in instances not too well, clint eastwood's gran torino, tom mccarthy's the visior, and alan clarke's made in britain present their somewhat pre-structuralized takes on the issue.
in addition to serving as the endcap to this threesome, my viewing of made in britain also served as my introduction to the supposedly realist world of english resident genius filmmaker alan clarke. as one of a series of clarke films that deal with the structural failings of the conformity seeking mentality of the english educational system, the film started off well enough as clarke used his camera to calmly record, without much in the way of emotional hystrionics or pyrotechnics, a young tim roth's maniacal rampage against society. i begin to fall in love with the long tracking shots that casually observe the goings on with an almost bemused view of the anarchist rebellion on display and i convince myself that i am truly watching a master of the kitchen sink realism as clarke is allowing me to calmly observe while allowing me to reserve judgment for a later time, if not suspending it altogether. but then clarke does something that seems a bit out of character for the aesthetic that he has previously built. just as the film reaches the crux of it's issue, and finds itself at a point where it can finally provide some clarification on tim roth's seemingly unprovoked rebellion against society, it really seems to chicken out, allowing roth's character to babble incoherently and unconvincingly about the supposed fall of england being somehow tied to the influx of various non-native cultures. it is at this point that i am unsure whether clarke is making some blanket statement about racism being a crutch of the unenlightened or if he is just rendering his character as completely idiotic, therefore taking the stance that the rebellion has no idea what is even causing it to rebel. for argument's sake i will choose the latter, because it will allow me the room to compare clarke's ideology with that of the establishment educational system that he seems to distrust. when clarke hangs roth out to dry in that interogation scene, he essentially makes the point that these kids have no choice but to rebel because they aren't bright enough to see the systems at work that keep them in place, for only smart guys like alan clarke(or the english government) can do that. so they misplace their hate in petty things like racism until hopefully one day they see a slice of alan clarke's realism on the telly and realize the bullshit system in place and make a change. nope. clarke dips his otherwise aesthetically appealing film into the realm of smug intellectual finger pointing and therefore renders his "realism" as both artless and uninspired and he fails to reach the standards that accompany his premature annointment among the greats of british realism like leigh and loach. nice try alan, but next time save the political meanderings and intellectual superiority complex and just stick with the facts.
similar in smug intellectual approach is tom mccarthy's lackluster follow up to his heartfelt, emotionally complex station agent, the visitor. where in the station agent the battles toward forging a friendship and emotional connection are hard fought, the ones in the visitor are often times too easy. it's like, so let me get this straight, a cold, lonely, grieving, introspective prig of a professor comes back to his long abandoned old apartment in the city and finds two illegal immigrants have taken up residence and two seconds after everyone calms down from the all too quick emotional outbursts, this prig instantly becomes a neo-hippie, socialist who starts a commune for illegal immigrants in his apartment and sits around in his underwear playing in drum circles. really? that fast? shit doesn't change like that in two seconds. nerdy economists don't just adopt new personalities and become extroverted immigration law challengers over night because a few things happen to them or they witness some shit. it takes time to develop a new voice like that. it takes fighting and biting and piss and vigor. it's hardfought, like the station agent. and it's this lack of understanding of simple concepts of human personality that essentially negates mccarthy's right headed, sense of understanding between cultures as merely pre-programmed liberal agenda. this is a lite version of a film for the new yorker reading set who like to feel that they only have time for "important" films. i can't believe that the generally amiable and spot on richard jenkins pulled an oscar nom for a softball lobbing, walk in the park role like this one.
and that clint eastwood didn't for his badass turn as walt kowalski in gran torino. to be honest, i have never been a big fan of eastwood as a director, but i do love this film because it ascends to seemingly higher plane of human understanding than his usual turns at revisionist demythologising. while eastwood still relies on some tropes of genre to deconstruct the very essence of the "macho" myth of male behavior, i find that this time around eastwood id finding a bit of beauty in the gray area between violent reaction and a more peaceful resistance. whereas the eastwood demystification machine has previously stuck to the credo that violence, especially the unwarranted variety, only leads to more violence, and there is that message in this film too, this time he seems to revel in it. he seems to goad the audience into wanting an outlaw josey wales type response where clint goes in and mows down everyone. we want the violence and when we get the more intellectual resolution we are not entirely pleased or displeased. and the endpiece is more effective because of it. clint wins again with his level headed, anti-dirty harry, anti-"shoot first" mentality. but this time he does so in a way that doesn't condemn the violent reactions and responses in anyone. in clint's "shade of grey" world racists, who behave as such with a certain amount of dignity and reasoning, can be good people. people who lend a hand one minute can be bad news the next. things and minds are fluid, everchanging things, yet the essentials will always ring true. good people will find other good people even if they have to climb through all sorts of bullshit to do it. that and the mind is a better problem solver than the fists. good lessons, indeed.
in addition to serving as the endcap to this threesome, my viewing of made in britain also served as my introduction to the supposedly realist world of english resident genius filmmaker alan clarke. as one of a series of clarke films that deal with the structural failings of the conformity seeking mentality of the english educational system, the film started off well enough as clarke used his camera to calmly record, without much in the way of emotional hystrionics or pyrotechnics, a young tim roth's maniacal rampage against society. i begin to fall in love with the long tracking shots that casually observe the goings on with an almost bemused view of the anarchist rebellion on display and i convince myself that i am truly watching a master of the kitchen sink realism as clarke is allowing me to calmly observe while allowing me to reserve judgment for a later time, if not suspending it altogether. but then clarke does something that seems a bit out of character for the aesthetic that he has previously built. just as the film reaches the crux of it's issue, and finds itself at a point where it can finally provide some clarification on tim roth's seemingly unprovoked rebellion against society, it really seems to chicken out, allowing roth's character to babble incoherently and unconvincingly about the supposed fall of england being somehow tied to the influx of various non-native cultures. it is at this point that i am unsure whether clarke is making some blanket statement about racism being a crutch of the unenlightened or if he is just rendering his character as completely idiotic, therefore taking the stance that the rebellion has no idea what is even causing it to rebel. for argument's sake i will choose the latter, because it will allow me the room to compare clarke's ideology with that of the establishment educational system that he seems to distrust. when clarke hangs roth out to dry in that interogation scene, he essentially makes the point that these kids have no choice but to rebel because they aren't bright enough to see the systems at work that keep them in place, for only smart guys like alan clarke(or the english government) can do that. so they misplace their hate in petty things like racism until hopefully one day they see a slice of alan clarke's realism on the telly and realize the bullshit system in place and make a change. nope. clarke dips his otherwise aesthetically appealing film into the realm of smug intellectual finger pointing and therefore renders his "realism" as both artless and uninspired and he fails to reach the standards that accompany his premature annointment among the greats of british realism like leigh and loach. nice try alan, but next time save the political meanderings and intellectual superiority complex and just stick with the facts.
similar in smug intellectual approach is tom mccarthy's lackluster follow up to his heartfelt, emotionally complex station agent, the visitor. where in the station agent the battles toward forging a friendship and emotional connection are hard fought, the ones in the visitor are often times too easy. it's like, so let me get this straight, a cold, lonely, grieving, introspective prig of a professor comes back to his long abandoned old apartment in the city and finds two illegal immigrants have taken up residence and two seconds after everyone calms down from the all too quick emotional outbursts, this prig instantly becomes a neo-hippie, socialist who starts a commune for illegal immigrants in his apartment and sits around in his underwear playing in drum circles. really? that fast? shit doesn't change like that in two seconds. nerdy economists don't just adopt new personalities and become extroverted immigration law challengers over night because a few things happen to them or they witness some shit. it takes time to develop a new voice like that. it takes fighting and biting and piss and vigor. it's hardfought, like the station agent. and it's this lack of understanding of simple concepts of human personality that essentially negates mccarthy's right headed, sense of understanding between cultures as merely pre-programmed liberal agenda. this is a lite version of a film for the new yorker reading set who like to feel that they only have time for "important" films. i can't believe that the generally amiable and spot on richard jenkins pulled an oscar nom for a softball lobbing, walk in the park role like this one.
and that clint eastwood didn't for his badass turn as walt kowalski in gran torino. to be honest, i have never been a big fan of eastwood as a director, but i do love this film because it ascends to seemingly higher plane of human understanding than his usual turns at revisionist demythologising. while eastwood still relies on some tropes of genre to deconstruct the very essence of the "macho" myth of male behavior, i find that this time around eastwood id finding a bit of beauty in the gray area between violent reaction and a more peaceful resistance. whereas the eastwood demystification machine has previously stuck to the credo that violence, especially the unwarranted variety, only leads to more violence, and there is that message in this film too, this time he seems to revel in it. he seems to goad the audience into wanting an outlaw josey wales type response where clint goes in and mows down everyone. we want the violence and when we get the more intellectual resolution we are not entirely pleased or displeased. and the endpiece is more effective because of it. clint wins again with his level headed, anti-dirty harry, anti-"shoot first" mentality. but this time he does so in a way that doesn't condemn the violent reactions and responses in anyone. in clint's "shade of grey" world racists, who behave as such with a certain amount of dignity and reasoning, can be good people. people who lend a hand one minute can be bad news the next. things and minds are fluid, everchanging things, yet the essentials will always ring true. good people will find other good people even if they have to climb through all sorts of bullshit to do it. that and the mind is a better problem solver than the fists. good lessons, indeed.
21 January 2009
is wayne brady gonna have to choke a bitch?
as many of my people already know, i have become increasingly disappointed with our 44th president lately as he continues to eschew the "change" that we were promised and instead just plugs various members from the clinton administration into his cabinent. ram emmanuel? cool dude, but not change. hillary? she said it best when she said, "now that's change you can xerox!"
i suppose i am sad because i feel that, with a support camp that rival's the number of tila tequilla's friends on myspace, he could have made much more interesting and possibly better selections. that's where i come in.
so to right the wrongs of my man barry, i present to you...the dream cabinent.
secretary of the treasury: oprah winfrey. because that bitch practically prints money already. shit, oprah could buy up all the sub primes by herself and save this ship from having to bail water. as an added bonus, you know at some point there would be a photo op that would produce a picture of oprah standing next to alan greenspan...i'm practically designing the frame for it as i type.
surgeon general: dr phil. hell i don't even know if he's a real doctor, but really what the fuck does the surgeon general do anyway besides pimp out medic alert bracelets to the elderly on the tv like my guy c. everett koop. dr. phil could do that...and with a twangy drawl no less.
white house press secretary: steven spielberg. because that fuck can turn any old garbage into gold. i mean, did you see a.i.? yeah, me too unfortunately. but tis the genius of old steven, his name alone pretty much insures that we as an audience will swallow garbage and then say it's ok.
the secretary of defense: denzel washington. because when denzel gets agitated behind the podium and starts banging his fist, people listen. i dream of his "by any means necessary" speech where he states that we didn't land on 9/11, 9/11 landed on us, right before he lays waste to the desert with the nuclear holocaust. king kong indeed. (if denzel doesn't want to do it, wayne brady could also substitute)
and finally secretary of state: tony dungy. because for one, he ain't got no job. and two, if obama truly is the second coming of jim caveziel, then he's gonna need to bring along some disciples. and there is no better place to start than with saint dungy, the patron saint of one and done. i mean, everybody loves this guy, right? i think it's his muppet voice that sounds like a cross between a young kermit and an old yoda. fresh and wise simultaneously.
as for the other positions, mr. obama can handle those. although i do implore him to keep condoleeza rice around because condi is kinda foxy in an all-powerful, gap toothed sort of way.
i suppose i am sad because i feel that, with a support camp that rival's the number of tila tequilla's friends on myspace, he could have made much more interesting and possibly better selections. that's where i come in.
so to right the wrongs of my man barry, i present to you...the dream cabinent.
secretary of the treasury: oprah winfrey. because that bitch practically prints money already. shit, oprah could buy up all the sub primes by herself and save this ship from having to bail water. as an added bonus, you know at some point there would be a photo op that would produce a picture of oprah standing next to alan greenspan...i'm practically designing the frame for it as i type.
surgeon general: dr phil. hell i don't even know if he's a real doctor, but really what the fuck does the surgeon general do anyway besides pimp out medic alert bracelets to the elderly on the tv like my guy c. everett koop. dr. phil could do that...and with a twangy drawl no less.
white house press secretary: steven spielberg. because that fuck can turn any old garbage into gold. i mean, did you see a.i.? yeah, me too unfortunately. but tis the genius of old steven, his name alone pretty much insures that we as an audience will swallow garbage and then say it's ok.
the secretary of defense: denzel washington. because when denzel gets agitated behind the podium and starts banging his fist, people listen. i dream of his "by any means necessary" speech where he states that we didn't land on 9/11, 9/11 landed on us, right before he lays waste to the desert with the nuclear holocaust. king kong indeed. (if denzel doesn't want to do it, wayne brady could also substitute)
and finally secretary of state: tony dungy. because for one, he ain't got no job. and two, if obama truly is the second coming of jim caveziel, then he's gonna need to bring along some disciples. and there is no better place to start than with saint dungy, the patron saint of one and done. i mean, everybody loves this guy, right? i think it's his muppet voice that sounds like a cross between a young kermit and an old yoda. fresh and wise simultaneously.
as for the other positions, mr. obama can handle those. although i do implore him to keep condoleeza rice around because condi is kinda foxy in an all-powerful, gap toothed sort of way.
14 January 2009
an essay in the mold of la ronde(with apologies to max ophuls)
once upon a time, long before the director known as eyebrows was awarded a "lifetime achievement" oscar for his incredibly cheesy film the departed, i remember sitting in a film class the day after eminem was awarded one for his song from his movie when out of nowhere, in the middle of his lecture, venerable professor dennis bingham blurts out, "i can't believe i live in a world where eminem has an oscar and martin scorsese doesn't." it kinda reminds me of kate winslet, who, if she doesn't get her lifetime achievement oscar for essentially playing the same characters she always plays, will probably have to resort to offing herself to join the likes of another probable oscar winner because i couldn't possibly live in a world where heath ledger has an oscar and kate winslet doesn't, right? but, who cares? she got two globes, so at least one of them has to carry through to oscar night, right? the oscars, who needs em?
kudos to the golden globes for giving one to sally hawkins. happy go lucky is one of my favorite films of the year and she is wonderful in it as a girl who very much knows the occasional darkness of humanity and still chooses to almost cast herself as an ever cheerful, do-gooder dingbat in the mold of the great comedienes of the past like gracie allen or judy holiday. mike leigh has fashioned another complex tale around a character who knowingly play other characters within the lives of the people they portray as if he understands that human beings are constantly choosing what roles to take on in social acting classes everyday. sally hawkins, as poppy, seems like someone one could possibly come across in real life, as opposed to the shattered messes who wear their constantly changing emotions all over their "actor's visage" like the two aformentioned likely oscar winners.
and speaking of real life, i recently watched the lovely little film dan in real life. and while it is does not exactly portray what i would call "real life," i did enjoy it because any movie where anybody, in this case steve carell, steals a girl from dane cook(especially when dane cook is their brother) is a.o.k. with me despite its failed claims at some sort of realism. i am, however, completely sold on the idea of having sondre lerche music ambiently play over all the poignant moments in my life. we gotta make that a reality.
real. like this jam(please read on afterward)
that video goes a long way in proving the idea that as long as their are featured artist slots open in the realm of hip hop, no artist, no matter how played out or irrelevant, is ever truly career dead. except hammer. and vanilla ice, but i said rappers. congrats andre 3000 for momentarily forgetting your rampant uncle tom-ism and stylistic posturing formula and hopping on board a good jam. i didn't know you still had it in you.
speaking of formula, laurent firode's film happenstance totally rips off the structure of max ophul's luscious film la ronde, but completely forgets to tap into an ounce of ophul's abuntant visual poetry. and as i sit back and ponder it now, i think of la ronde and how good that movie is(simone signoret...yum) and even attempting to copy it seems quite sadistic, if not downright satanic.
and speaking of satan, this is for everyone, who like myself, thinks that michael mcdonald is the devil(please read on afterwards)
i have to admit, i learned of that killer video from bill simmons, the sports guy at espn.com. it was a link in one of his mailbag columns from a few weeks ago. we here at beer cannes whole heartedly suggest that once you are done reading this, that you head on over to espn.com and check him out if you don't already do so. karate kid and teen wolf references mixed with nba talk make for some interesting columns that explode from the chemical combination of sports, pop culture and humor. his mail bags responses are the best. go read his old shit.
and speaking of old shit, how about rachel getting married resurfacing at landmark? what's up with that, frost/nixon? jcvd? nope, you get rachel getting married! again.
is it sad that when i read that it was returning, i immediately thought that it would make topical the blog about it that i have been wanting to unleash for some time now? i guess no more sad than the fact that it's wednesday and i still haven't typed it up. that sucks too, because it is pretty good as it borrows, from an incredible book called flickers by gilbert adair, this fantastic argument about modernism and how antonioni and hitchcock fell on different sides of it and then discusses that argument in terms of rachel getting married and its modernist aspirations. i hope i get around to writing it soon, but i wouldn't hold my breath if i were you. as i sit here holding mine in anticipation of the wrestler, i just can't be bothered with old shit right now.
except for this old shit, reimagined...
beer cannes highly recommends checking out flickers. even as a personal, investigative chronicle of the first hundred years of cinema, it remains a relatively light, easy read. it is easy and fun, much like the book i am reading now, acting male by dennis bingham. i have only gotten through the quite long, twenty page introduction, but i am already sure of its status among all those things that we consider as "winners."
in his introduction, bingham writes of the acting style of jack nicholson, that he was a "post-modern actor" constantly taking on roles as people who spent a great deal of their time playing roles in public, not their "true selves"(whatever that is). and that he garnered much of his cultural cache as a great actor by essentially being the actor who was "cool enough" to pull off such character within a character mechanisms. this playing of a character which knowingly "wears a social mask" reminds me of sally hawkins as poppy in happy-go-lucky, which is anothe cool performance.
and with that, anton wolbrook says, the carousel has come full circle(and then some) and the ride is over. please dismount thine steed and exit to your left. thanks for stopping by.
kudos to the golden globes for giving one to sally hawkins. happy go lucky is one of my favorite films of the year and she is wonderful in it as a girl who very much knows the occasional darkness of humanity and still chooses to almost cast herself as an ever cheerful, do-gooder dingbat in the mold of the great comedienes of the past like gracie allen or judy holiday. mike leigh has fashioned another complex tale around a character who knowingly play other characters within the lives of the people they portray as if he understands that human beings are constantly choosing what roles to take on in social acting classes everyday. sally hawkins, as poppy, seems like someone one could possibly come across in real life, as opposed to the shattered messes who wear their constantly changing emotions all over their "actor's visage" like the two aformentioned likely oscar winners.
and speaking of real life, i recently watched the lovely little film dan in real life. and while it is does not exactly portray what i would call "real life," i did enjoy it because any movie where anybody, in this case steve carell, steals a girl from dane cook(especially when dane cook is their brother) is a.o.k. with me despite its failed claims at some sort of realism. i am, however, completely sold on the idea of having sondre lerche music ambiently play over all the poignant moments in my life. we gotta make that a reality.
real. like this jam(please read on afterward)
that video goes a long way in proving the idea that as long as their are featured artist slots open in the realm of hip hop, no artist, no matter how played out or irrelevant, is ever truly career dead. except hammer. and vanilla ice, but i said rappers. congrats andre 3000 for momentarily forgetting your rampant uncle tom-ism and stylistic posturing formula and hopping on board a good jam. i didn't know you still had it in you.
speaking of formula, laurent firode's film happenstance totally rips off the structure of max ophul's luscious film la ronde, but completely forgets to tap into an ounce of ophul's abuntant visual poetry. and as i sit back and ponder it now, i think of la ronde and how good that movie is(simone signoret...yum) and even attempting to copy it seems quite sadistic, if not downright satanic.
and speaking of satan, this is for everyone, who like myself, thinks that michael mcdonald is the devil(please read on afterwards)
i have to admit, i learned of that killer video from bill simmons, the sports guy at espn.com. it was a link in one of his mailbag columns from a few weeks ago. we here at beer cannes whole heartedly suggest that once you are done reading this, that you head on over to espn.com and check him out if you don't already do so. karate kid and teen wolf references mixed with nba talk make for some interesting columns that explode from the chemical combination of sports, pop culture and humor. his mail bags responses are the best. go read his old shit.
and speaking of old shit, how about rachel getting married resurfacing at landmark? what's up with that, frost/nixon? jcvd? nope, you get rachel getting married! again.
is it sad that when i read that it was returning, i immediately thought that it would make topical the blog about it that i have been wanting to unleash for some time now? i guess no more sad than the fact that it's wednesday and i still haven't typed it up. that sucks too, because it is pretty good as it borrows, from an incredible book called flickers by gilbert adair, this fantastic argument about modernism and how antonioni and hitchcock fell on different sides of it and then discusses that argument in terms of rachel getting married and its modernist aspirations. i hope i get around to writing it soon, but i wouldn't hold my breath if i were you. as i sit here holding mine in anticipation of the wrestler, i just can't be bothered with old shit right now.
except for this old shit, reimagined...
beer cannes highly recommends checking out flickers. even as a personal, investigative chronicle of the first hundred years of cinema, it remains a relatively light, easy read. it is easy and fun, much like the book i am reading now, acting male by dennis bingham. i have only gotten through the quite long, twenty page introduction, but i am already sure of its status among all those things that we consider as "winners."
in his introduction, bingham writes of the acting style of jack nicholson, that he was a "post-modern actor" constantly taking on roles as people who spent a great deal of their time playing roles in public, not their "true selves"(whatever that is). and that he garnered much of his cultural cache as a great actor by essentially being the actor who was "cool enough" to pull off such character within a character mechanisms. this playing of a character which knowingly "wears a social mask" reminds me of sally hawkins as poppy in happy-go-lucky, which is anothe cool performance.
and with that, anton wolbrook says, the carousel has come full circle(and then some) and the ride is over. please dismount thine steed and exit to your left. thanks for stopping by.
08 January 2009
the beer cannes hall of awesomeness
some may recall bolo yeung as the neck breaking baddie from such martial arts faire as enter the dragon and various jean claude van damme films. but we here at the b.c. feel that bolo's main claim to fame lies in the huge boulders that he carries around on his chest. big boob bolo, or b3 if you will, was the type of dude that didn't take no shit from anyone. witness the primal death scream released on ray jackson in the uber-classic bloodsport. as my bro zach said the other day, it is primal in a way that suggests "sexual release." but i think that he might just be lactating. pretty fucking badass, but not heartless.
no, despite his murderous rage, one really can't call bolo heartless. in fact, it's more like heart-loss, as his heart is probably just hidden beneath those huge fucking pectoral muscles. i mean really, has anyone else ever seen an asian built like that? it's like he has been on horse steroids since the age of five. huge boobs. i am udderly impressed.
so with that in mind, beer cannes makes its innaugural entry into the beer cannes hall of fame...erm awesomeness, and we salute the work of big boob bolo yeung: professional badass. so to the only man to have a style of necktie named after him i say, welcome to the hall, bolo.
i wanna see jcvd
no, despite his murderous rage, one really can't call bolo heartless. in fact, it's more like heart-loss, as his heart is probably just hidden beneath those huge fucking pectoral muscles. i mean really, has anyone else ever seen an asian built like that? it's like he has been on horse steroids since the age of five. huge boobs. i am udderly impressed.
so with that in mind, beer cannes makes its innaugural entry into the beer cannes hall of fame...erm awesomeness, and we salute the work of big boob bolo yeung: professional badass. so to the only man to have a style of necktie named after him i say, welcome to the hall, bolo.
i wanna see jcvd
05 January 2009
a case against milk
on the promotional poster for the new film milk, there is a statement (from the director of good will hunting) that i find particularly instructive when viewing and subsequently reviewing the film. with this one statement, the producers seem to be implying that the last decade or so, one of the most creative periods of output by any film director ever by the way, never actually happened. and while i find it insulting to forget films like paranoid park, elephant, and gerry, i think overall this might be a useful tool in breaking down the reasonings behind my lukewarm reaction to gus van sant's latest work, as this is by far the most commercial (i.e. linear, straightforward narrative) product that van sant has put forth in a long time.
the film begins with harvey milk offering up his story into a microphone as if conducting a self interview. this vehichle will serve as a framing device throughout the narrative, bookending the film and occasionally popping up in the middle to over-emphasize parts that don't really need any additional emphasis. this rather traditional narrative structure, which would seem completely out of place in recent van sant work, fits right in with a film from the "director of good will hunting." i think of the journal in paranoid park, which serves as the narrator in that film, and how it mesmerised the audience with it's seeming inability to get to the point, to the crux of the matter. with it, the film became not necessarilly suspenseful, but more questioning, more probing, as if the viewer were being taken further and further down to the film's/event's emotional core. in this film there is no real searching for the heart of the matter, as its complete lack of subtlety takes hold frame one and doesn't really allow for any self discovery. we know from word one that milk is fighting for an issue of great imporatance, an issue that the film seems more than happy to make him a figurehead of.
in the role of harvey milk, sean penn physically resembles a grocery bag attempting to keep a nuclear bombs worth of kinetic energy bottled up. this is probably due to his uncontained excitement at the prospect of another oscar nomination, but for argument's sake we will contend that this energy comes from a man that can be bound up no longer. and that is all well and good, if the film made me think for at least one minute that harvey milk was the type of guy that could ever be bound up like that. unfortunately the film does not, as it seems to rest on this idea of harvey milk, not necessarily being a character, or a man, but as a representation of a much larger thing.(in this case the gay rights movement) ultimately, i left the theater with not so much of an understanding of milk the man, but with an understanding that milk was representative of an important cause.
i think that is because the film doesn't allow harvey milk to transcend his gayness and develop into an individual who has much more to offer than just that. i mean seriously, is it too much to ask that this man be given one character trait that doesn't involve his homosexuality. and no the interspersed title cards that told me what milk stood for(seniors, education) are not the types of character shading i was looking for as they merely seem to be trying to pile stuff on to a one dimensional character.
it is funny, but on the ride home from the film, i started daydreaming about van sant making a film about the one interesting character, supervisor dan white. i thought about how incredible a film structured like paranoid park with white as the film's center would be. how his journal reading as narration would create an enormously arresting picture of a man that van sant already tends to shade as a closet case. now that would be a worm hole worth going into, as i feel that white, played brilliantly by josh brolin, was the only character allowed any sort of greater emotional depth in milk. that, and as a confused, conflicted, possible homosexual, i feel he would have fit right in with other latter day van sant protagonists, about whom more interesting fare than milk centered around.
but unfortunately for me, milk isn't really a "gus van sant film," but rather a film by the "director of good will hunting." it's sad, but there is a difference. good will hunting's director is forced by his cast, by his studio's need for awards, by an issue too big into a straightforward, kind of bland narrative structure that leads to a big, important, utterly forgettable film. milk feels like a film thats issues are "too important" to be overshadowed by the type of "great film" that van sant normally makes. it makes me wonder if all the hoopla and applause that followed my viewing were directed at the film, or at the championaing of a cause that anybody with a sembelance of intelligence can get behind. my belief is that people are cheering for championing the cause, and looking past the fact that it is a mediocre film doing it.
the film begins with harvey milk offering up his story into a microphone as if conducting a self interview. this vehichle will serve as a framing device throughout the narrative, bookending the film and occasionally popping up in the middle to over-emphasize parts that don't really need any additional emphasis. this rather traditional narrative structure, which would seem completely out of place in recent van sant work, fits right in with a film from the "director of good will hunting." i think of the journal in paranoid park, which serves as the narrator in that film, and how it mesmerised the audience with it's seeming inability to get to the point, to the crux of the matter. with it, the film became not necessarilly suspenseful, but more questioning, more probing, as if the viewer were being taken further and further down to the film's/event's emotional core. in this film there is no real searching for the heart of the matter, as its complete lack of subtlety takes hold frame one and doesn't really allow for any self discovery. we know from word one that milk is fighting for an issue of great imporatance, an issue that the film seems more than happy to make him a figurehead of.
in the role of harvey milk, sean penn physically resembles a grocery bag attempting to keep a nuclear bombs worth of kinetic energy bottled up. this is probably due to his uncontained excitement at the prospect of another oscar nomination, but for argument's sake we will contend that this energy comes from a man that can be bound up no longer. and that is all well and good, if the film made me think for at least one minute that harvey milk was the type of guy that could ever be bound up like that. unfortunately the film does not, as it seems to rest on this idea of harvey milk, not necessarily being a character, or a man, but as a representation of a much larger thing.(in this case the gay rights movement) ultimately, i left the theater with not so much of an understanding of milk the man, but with an understanding that milk was representative of an important cause.
i think that is because the film doesn't allow harvey milk to transcend his gayness and develop into an individual who has much more to offer than just that. i mean seriously, is it too much to ask that this man be given one character trait that doesn't involve his homosexuality. and no the interspersed title cards that told me what milk stood for(seniors, education) are not the types of character shading i was looking for as they merely seem to be trying to pile stuff on to a one dimensional character.
it is funny, but on the ride home from the film, i started daydreaming about van sant making a film about the one interesting character, supervisor dan white. i thought about how incredible a film structured like paranoid park with white as the film's center would be. how his journal reading as narration would create an enormously arresting picture of a man that van sant already tends to shade as a closet case. now that would be a worm hole worth going into, as i feel that white, played brilliantly by josh brolin, was the only character allowed any sort of greater emotional depth in milk. that, and as a confused, conflicted, possible homosexual, i feel he would have fit right in with other latter day van sant protagonists, about whom more interesting fare than milk centered around.
but unfortunately for me, milk isn't really a "gus van sant film," but rather a film by the "director of good will hunting." it's sad, but there is a difference. good will hunting's director is forced by his cast, by his studio's need for awards, by an issue too big into a straightforward, kind of bland narrative structure that leads to a big, important, utterly forgettable film. milk feels like a film thats issues are "too important" to be overshadowed by the type of "great film" that van sant normally makes. it makes me wonder if all the hoopla and applause that followed my viewing were directed at the film, or at the championaing of a cause that anybody with a sembelance of intelligence can get behind. my belief is that people are cheering for championing the cause, and looking past the fact that it is a mediocre film doing it.
29 December 2008
hang in there...
hang in there with me, dear friends. i promise to go on a blog rampage shortly after the new years, at which time one will want to check back a couple of times a week.
but for right now, i'm still on holiday vacation, and although i spend time gathering materials, i don't do any mental lifting during the holidays.
hence, no work. at least not lately.
but fear not, nose goes back to grindstone on january 3rd.
i promise.
but for right now, i'm still on holiday vacation, and although i spend time gathering materials, i don't do any mental lifting during the holidays.
hence, no work. at least not lately.
but fear not, nose goes back to grindstone on january 3rd.
i promise.
07 December 2008
02 December 2008
tis the season
since films like revolutionary road and doubt are often cited as oscar bait, does that make the process of making such a film oscarbation.
are sam mendes and phillip seymour hoffman mere oscarbators?
cause i heard that just causes movies like blindness.
are sam mendes and phillip seymour hoffman mere oscarbators?
cause i heard that just causes movies like blindness.
01 December 2008
everyone's a winner...
well it looks like zach wins the mix tape by default. i will assume that this is due to an unbelievable plague of writer's block that hit the blogosphere while i was gone and not to the lack of want for the prize in question. anyway zach will recieve his awesome prize sometime soon.
as for the rest of you, since i am feeling generous i will give you the info on a dope new website and on the recent upgrades to an old favorite. because here, everyone's a winner.
over at the criterion collection website they have undergone a rather interesting facelift in their attempt to spread the message of cinematic history to the masses. through the application of streaming video and a partnership with another site that i will rhapsodize about later in this post, criterion is now allowing their catalog to be "rented" for online viewing. titles can be viewed as many times as one desires over the span of one week for the nominal fee of five u.s. dollars. then, if one decides to buy the dvd hard copy of the film(with all the delicious extras criterion is famous for) the five dollars will be credited to the purchase on the site. it's a try before you buy preview that rolls over into a sort of gift certificate. how sweet is that?
almost as sweet as the site of its partners in this venture, the auteurs. the auteurs is a site dedicated to the cinephile. in addition to the numerous forums available to sound off on all things cinematic, it also hosts quite a large collection of films in high def for your viewing pleasue. some of the films cost a fiver but the majority of them are free to view simply by clicking on the play button. in addition to great films from all over the planet like the dardenne's l'enfant and jia's the world, the auteurs also includes in their selections every month a programmed festival of films from the criterion catalog for free viewing. this month the festival is titled "cruel stories of youth" and includes films like victor erice's spirit of the beehive(the best film ever made) as well as louis malle's au revoir les enfants, catherine breillat's fat girl, and peter brook's lord of the flies, which i watched last night and which looks great(much better than the similar netflix apparatus)
so if you find yourself sickened by the slew of hollywood shit like four christmases this season, and you just can't wait for the new despelchin or aronofsky's the wrestler, do yourself a favor and click on the links above. it's the gift that keeps on giving from your friends here at beer cannes.
vive la cine.
as for the rest of you, since i am feeling generous i will give you the info on a dope new website and on the recent upgrades to an old favorite. because here, everyone's a winner.
over at the criterion collection website they have undergone a rather interesting facelift in their attempt to spread the message of cinematic history to the masses. through the application of streaming video and a partnership with another site that i will rhapsodize about later in this post, criterion is now allowing their catalog to be "rented" for online viewing. titles can be viewed as many times as one desires over the span of one week for the nominal fee of five u.s. dollars. then, if one decides to buy the dvd hard copy of the film(with all the delicious extras criterion is famous for) the five dollars will be credited to the purchase on the site. it's a try before you buy preview that rolls over into a sort of gift certificate. how sweet is that?
almost as sweet as the site of its partners in this venture, the auteurs. the auteurs is a site dedicated to the cinephile. in addition to the numerous forums available to sound off on all things cinematic, it also hosts quite a large collection of films in high def for your viewing pleasue. some of the films cost a fiver but the majority of them are free to view simply by clicking on the play button. in addition to great films from all over the planet like the dardenne's l'enfant and jia's the world, the auteurs also includes in their selections every month a programmed festival of films from the criterion catalog for free viewing. this month the festival is titled "cruel stories of youth" and includes films like victor erice's spirit of the beehive(the best film ever made) as well as louis malle's au revoir les enfants, catherine breillat's fat girl, and peter brook's lord of the flies, which i watched last night and which looks great(much better than the similar netflix apparatus)
so if you find yourself sickened by the slew of hollywood shit like four christmases this season, and you just can't wait for the new despelchin or aronofsky's the wrestler, do yourself a favor and click on the links above. it's the gift that keeps on giving from your friends here at beer cannes.
vive la cine.
22 November 2008
holler at your boy
some of you may have heard the rumor, and let me assure you it is true. the old beer cannes is taking this highwire act on the road to the bahamas for a week of swim up bars and on site sports book. but fear not, dear readers as i am leaving you with a fair bit of intrigue.
for a while now, i have been wanting to find a way to make the good old b.c. a little bit more fan friendly, a little bit more lively. also for a while i have been wanting to distribute prizes as a way into this new, interactive frenzy of my dreams. but up until lately i couldn't figure out what to distribute. then a few posts ago i wrote an old fashioned ode to the glory of a mixtape, and it hit me. why don't i give one of those away?
so that is what we are doing. in the first of hopefully many beer cannes contests to come the prize shall be a mix tape personally made by hand from the staff here at beer cannes. and it will be awesome.
right now i imagine all my readers jumping up in amazement and asking in a fairly boisterous fashion, "how do i win this...i want it so bad."
well i will tell you how you can win it.
as great fans of the diverse voices of the myriad peoples out in cyberspace, we here at the beer cannes are first and foremost about a good read. we check blogs daily, usually in the morning as if they were the gosphel that the good old star definitely is not. we know there are many talented writers out there that we know of, and probably a million more that we as of yet do not know.
so with this in mind, we are sponsoring the first ever beer cannes short essay contest.
in the comment section of this post, beer cannes asks that you write your best essay that consists of no more than three paragraphs. these pieces can be about anything that is running through your mind and are bound by no rules beyond those mandated by common decency, not that i figure that will be a problem. the winner will be judged on content, artistic merit, and basic je ne sais quoi by the staff here at beer cannes and beer cannnes alone. the contest ends on the friday after thanksgiving at noon and the winner will be chosen shortly thereafter, most likely opening to rave reviews of their verbal virtuosity on this here site. their awesome, hand made, kick ass mix tape will be made by the czar of beer cannes and delivered before christmas. one entry per person please.
good luck. i look forward to some genius, as it will be required in the quest for this tape
i will appreciate the struggles while i am giving thanks and eating turkey on the beach.
don't freeze...peace.
for a while now, i have been wanting to find a way to make the good old b.c. a little bit more fan friendly, a little bit more lively. also for a while i have been wanting to distribute prizes as a way into this new, interactive frenzy of my dreams. but up until lately i couldn't figure out what to distribute. then a few posts ago i wrote an old fashioned ode to the glory of a mixtape, and it hit me. why don't i give one of those away?
so that is what we are doing. in the first of hopefully many beer cannes contests to come the prize shall be a mix tape personally made by hand from the staff here at beer cannes. and it will be awesome.
right now i imagine all my readers jumping up in amazement and asking in a fairly boisterous fashion, "how do i win this...i want it so bad."
well i will tell you how you can win it.
as great fans of the diverse voices of the myriad peoples out in cyberspace, we here at the beer cannes are first and foremost about a good read. we check blogs daily, usually in the morning as if they were the gosphel that the good old star definitely is not. we know there are many talented writers out there that we know of, and probably a million more that we as of yet do not know.
so with this in mind, we are sponsoring the first ever beer cannes short essay contest.
in the comment section of this post, beer cannes asks that you write your best essay that consists of no more than three paragraphs. these pieces can be about anything that is running through your mind and are bound by no rules beyond those mandated by common decency, not that i figure that will be a problem. the winner will be judged on content, artistic merit, and basic je ne sais quoi by the staff here at beer cannes and beer cannnes alone. the contest ends on the friday after thanksgiving at noon and the winner will be chosen shortly thereafter, most likely opening to rave reviews of their verbal virtuosity on this here site. their awesome, hand made, kick ass mix tape will be made by the czar of beer cannes and delivered before christmas. one entry per person please.
good luck. i look forward to some genius, as it will be required in the quest for this tape
i will appreciate the struggles while i am giving thanks and eating turkey on the beach.
don't freeze...peace.
18 November 2008
is 2112 a fraternity?
i remember walking on campus at iupui in front of the old library on my way to a class in cavanaugh hall. it was early in the semester and scribbled in chalk along the pavement were advertisements for fraternities and sororities. join alpha epsilon! rush delta nu! and as i caught myself thinking, does iupui even have frats? and if so...why? but then that thought was cast assunder in a most meaningful way when toward the end of the line read a quite elaborate(for a chalk drawing) sign asking me to rush 2112.
i thought about it for a minute. and in that minute, i decided that if i were going to ever join a drinking institution...urm...fraternity, that i would probably be inclined to join this one over all the other, more greecian formula choices at my disposal.
but then i thought, nah..fuck that. i like to drink alone.
see i guess the thing is, i don't really "get" rush. and i am writing this blog because i feel that a good portion of the people who occasionally get down on here are indeed rush fans(fanatics) and i am honestly just looking for some input. i mean, i get that they are extremely talented musicians and that they employ quite intricate song structures and all, but i just really am having a hard time finding anything catchy in their songs.
given, all i ever hear are the songs the old q95 and jack recycle on two for tuesdays and shit.(freewill, tom sawyer and what not) and all those songgs play like bland pseudo- anthems. which sucks becausea i am the type of guy that judges songs based on a first listen's instant impression and second time's singability, so i needs my songs catchy ans sig-a-longable. i don't find either of those qualities in rush, but feel that it could be that i am just not hearing the undiscovered pop gems of their oeuvre. i mean, so many people seem to love them, so i figure it has to be in their somewhere, but still i ask: do rush write poppy songs? ever?
because i might like to hear them as they will give me a reason to sing along to rush other than for the joy of knowing that i, and everyone else...ever, have a better voice.
oh yeah, and fuck the red sox!
i thought about it for a minute. and in that minute, i decided that if i were going to ever join a drinking institution...urm...fraternity, that i would probably be inclined to join this one over all the other, more greecian formula choices at my disposal.
but then i thought, nah..fuck that. i like to drink alone.
see i guess the thing is, i don't really "get" rush. and i am writing this blog because i feel that a good portion of the people who occasionally get down on here are indeed rush fans(fanatics) and i am honestly just looking for some input. i mean, i get that they are extremely talented musicians and that they employ quite intricate song structures and all, but i just really am having a hard time finding anything catchy in their songs.
given, all i ever hear are the songs the old q95 and jack recycle on two for tuesdays and shit.(freewill, tom sawyer and what not) and all those songgs play like bland pseudo- anthems. which sucks becausea i am the type of guy that judges songs based on a first listen's instant impression and second time's singability, so i needs my songs catchy ans sig-a-longable. i don't find either of those qualities in rush, but feel that it could be that i am just not hearing the undiscovered pop gems of their oeuvre. i mean, so many people seem to love them, so i figure it has to be in their somewhere, but still i ask: do rush write poppy songs? ever?
because i might like to hear them as they will give me a reason to sing along to rush other than for the joy of knowing that i, and everyone else...ever, have a better voice.
oh yeah, and fuck the red sox!
14 November 2008
an infinite playlist
lately, i have been feeling really nostalgic for the pop culture artifacts from my past that i believed i had moved on from. i've been playing vice city(my favorite game from my college years) i've been talking incessantly with my cousin jon about the britpop that provided the soundtrack for my high school years. i've even been allowing my co-worker buzz to listen to hank fm at work on the chance that i may hear an old randy travis or george strait song that my mom used to listen to when i was a child.
but the thing i have been jonesing for the most is mix tapes.
in our ipod, cd rewriter universe the mix tape seems to have rapidly gone the way of the buffalo. and that is just sad as mix tapes often provided the best, most effective way to produce a cohesive playlist. i never really got into the mix cd thing because to make one, one didn't even need to listen to the songs that were being put on them. most mix cd's ended up as just a jumble of random songs that generally didn't have the flow or continuity that marked the best mix tapes. i don't have an ipod, but i imagine the same problems exist.
there was a very distinct artform to the mix tape. i used to make like one a week in my teens as i was on this journey , this stoned quest to find the optimal track listing. i took it as a personal challenge to my musical knowledge to find the perfect follow up to songs like big star's thirteen or suede's trash or ride's vapour trail. and while they weren't often perfect, they at least had alot of thought and alot of time put into them. and for that they ruled. i knew mix cd's basically sucked from the beginning when i realized i was putting more time and effort into the designing of the covers than i was into the designing of the playlist. hell, on most of the mix tapes i made, i never even made a cover or a track listing because the individual songs didn't matter as much as the overall feel of the tape.
i miss cassettes and mourn their near extinction. occasionally, i will still attempt to make one, but i usually give up about halfway through as i know i am doing it only for myself. you can't really give one to anybody anymore because you never know who even has the aparatus with which to play it. and that is just sad because it has led me to a time in which i may never know what song or songs could create a bridge between lil wayne and led zeppelin. taylor swift may never sit next to alex chilton. and i may never again get to use them all in an attempt to extend the olive branch of friendship to a fellow music lover.
if i were gonna make a mix tape right now these songs would be on it:
but the thing i have been jonesing for the most is mix tapes.
in our ipod, cd rewriter universe the mix tape seems to have rapidly gone the way of the buffalo. and that is just sad as mix tapes often provided the best, most effective way to produce a cohesive playlist. i never really got into the mix cd thing because to make one, one didn't even need to listen to the songs that were being put on them. most mix cd's ended up as just a jumble of random songs that generally didn't have the flow or continuity that marked the best mix tapes. i don't have an ipod, but i imagine the same problems exist.
there was a very distinct artform to the mix tape. i used to make like one a week in my teens as i was on this journey , this stoned quest to find the optimal track listing. i took it as a personal challenge to my musical knowledge to find the perfect follow up to songs like big star's thirteen or suede's trash or ride's vapour trail. and while they weren't often perfect, they at least had alot of thought and alot of time put into them. and for that they ruled. i knew mix cd's basically sucked from the beginning when i realized i was putting more time and effort into the designing of the covers than i was into the designing of the playlist. hell, on most of the mix tapes i made, i never even made a cover or a track listing because the individual songs didn't matter as much as the overall feel of the tape.
i miss cassettes and mourn their near extinction. occasionally, i will still attempt to make one, but i usually give up about halfway through as i know i am doing it only for myself. you can't really give one to anybody anymore because you never know who even has the aparatus with which to play it. and that is just sad because it has led me to a time in which i may never know what song or songs could create a bridge between lil wayne and led zeppelin. taylor swift may never sit next to alex chilton. and i may never again get to use them all in an attempt to extend the olive branch of friendship to a fellow music lover.
if i were gonna make a mix tape right now these songs would be on it:
04 November 2008
my list in lists
i did my patriotic duty today, and i hope everyone else did as well.
therefore i figure, this,of all days, is the day to be positive. right?
i figure, this is the day to get out from under the funk of the negative attitude towards everything that's been exposed lately. let's just get up and brush that dirt off our shoulders. let's put good vibe out in the world.
i figure, what's the worst that could happen?
so here goes, the things i feel positive about.
has everyone read the latest post over on ryan's blog, my year in lists. that is a pretty darn good, short read. and i highly recommend checking it out. that is a very welcome edition of his often essay deprived column, and i hope he keeps them coming. as for the guy maddin vs. kevin smith argument...
i have not yet made it to the zach and miri porno film as i know, like ryan, pretty much exactly what i am going to get. unlike ryan however, this perturbs me greatly as i still long for the glory days of the original trilogy, especially mallrats which i love more as time goes by. snoochie boochies. the argument about kevin smith's lack of visual prowess, actually makes me more pissed at kevin smith because i realize that his comedy is derived mostly from the writing and the general tomfoolery amongst the film's component parts. the fact that his act has grown stale is far more disheartening than what i find from maddin, as it tends to represent a more constrained, less willing to take some serious chances style for smith. i mean, clerks 2. i almost cried after i saw that piece of shit. that donkey scene alone seemed so contrived for the post tom green generation that it about made me want to puke.
but then i remember that it doesn't matter and this is an exercise in positivity and that even if you wanted to, you couldn't cross out all the fuck you's in the world. and i don't want to try. and i definitely don't want to be just another fuck you so... on with positivity, and on to guy maddin.
a friend and i recently got drunk and watched brand upon the brain! the lush criterion packaging had this really awesome feature that allowed us to pick our narrator for the film from a list of people who had done live readings at various screenings of the film worldwide. being that we was like, under the influence and such, we absolutely had to listen to crispin glover narration. and it was well worth it. freaking awesome.
and while my man ryan raises some valid criticisms of the relative staleness guy maddin's work, i tend to see it more as this continuing exploration of his own unique style. unlike gonzales-inaritu and merelies, he doesn't just work from the exact same template of both style and emotions every time out. brand upon the brain! is not my favorite(probably dracula or the saddest music) but it is at least an interesting take on what he does. it is dreamy, it is caught up in the genre-specific workings of the late silent/early talkie film, but it is also a fascinating exploration of memory and its relation to time and place that delves deeper than any of his film's have delved before. his clever staccatto editing patterns really drove home the utter nonexistence of the differentiation between memory and hallucination, as they both become thoughts on an equal plane through their interrelation to temporal and physical properties. and keep in mind that it was made to be an experienced work of art employing orchestral accompanyment and on the spot story telling principles to help his film transcend the usual boundries of merely sitting in front of a screen and viewing cookie cutter shit.
in guy maddin, i still see an artist growing and redefining his craft. he is immensely talented and works in a style that really allows that idiosyncratic talent to shine through. even though i will end up seeing zach and miri, i believe kevin smith, at this point is just shoveling out police academy IV, a shit sequel to his two already bad sequels to a good film.
in the old days, they just got some hack off the street to put his name as the director of that shit and you took producer credit. whatever. oh well, kev...up with jersey girl 9, and go run your little college tours for all i give a fuck
huckabee/palin 2012!!!
four more beers!
therefore i figure, this,of all days, is the day to be positive. right?
i figure, this is the day to get out from under the funk of the negative attitude towards everything that's been exposed lately. let's just get up and brush that dirt off our shoulders. let's put good vibe out in the world.
i figure, what's the worst that could happen?
so here goes, the things i feel positive about.
has everyone read the latest post over on ryan's blog, my year in lists. that is a pretty darn good, short read. and i highly recommend checking it out. that is a very welcome edition of his often essay deprived column, and i hope he keeps them coming. as for the guy maddin vs. kevin smith argument...
i have not yet made it to the zach and miri porno film as i know, like ryan, pretty much exactly what i am going to get. unlike ryan however, this perturbs me greatly as i still long for the glory days of the original trilogy, especially mallrats which i love more as time goes by. snoochie boochies. the argument about kevin smith's lack of visual prowess, actually makes me more pissed at kevin smith because i realize that his comedy is derived mostly from the writing and the general tomfoolery amongst the film's component parts. the fact that his act has grown stale is far more disheartening than what i find from maddin, as it tends to represent a more constrained, less willing to take some serious chances style for smith. i mean, clerks 2. i almost cried after i saw that piece of shit. that donkey scene alone seemed so contrived for the post tom green generation that it about made me want to puke.
but then i remember that it doesn't matter and this is an exercise in positivity and that even if you wanted to, you couldn't cross out all the fuck you's in the world. and i don't want to try. and i definitely don't want to be just another fuck you so... on with positivity, and on to guy maddin.
a friend and i recently got drunk and watched brand upon the brain! the lush criterion packaging had this really awesome feature that allowed us to pick our narrator for the film from a list of people who had done live readings at various screenings of the film worldwide. being that we was like, under the influence and such, we absolutely had to listen to crispin glover narration. and it was well worth it. freaking awesome.
and while my man ryan raises some valid criticisms of the relative staleness guy maddin's work, i tend to see it more as this continuing exploration of his own unique style. unlike gonzales-inaritu and merelies, he doesn't just work from the exact same template of both style and emotions every time out. brand upon the brain! is not my favorite(probably dracula or the saddest music) but it is at least an interesting take on what he does. it is dreamy, it is caught up in the genre-specific workings of the late silent/early talkie film, but it is also a fascinating exploration of memory and its relation to time and place that delves deeper than any of his film's have delved before. his clever staccatto editing patterns really drove home the utter nonexistence of the differentiation between memory and hallucination, as they both become thoughts on an equal plane through their interrelation to temporal and physical properties. and keep in mind that it was made to be an experienced work of art employing orchestral accompanyment and on the spot story telling principles to help his film transcend the usual boundries of merely sitting in front of a screen and viewing cookie cutter shit.
in guy maddin, i still see an artist growing and redefining his craft. he is immensely talented and works in a style that really allows that idiosyncratic talent to shine through. even though i will end up seeing zach and miri, i believe kevin smith, at this point is just shoveling out police academy IV, a shit sequel to his two already bad sequels to a good film.
in the old days, they just got some hack off the street to put his name as the director of that shit and you took producer credit. whatever. oh well, kev...up with jersey girl 9, and go run your little college tours for all i give a fuck
huckabee/palin 2012!!!
four more beers!
31 October 2008
president of what...
man, this election season has been a letdown. all these jackasses in powersuits talking about this and that and the economy and taxes and schools and such. but nobody really seems to be talking about the real reasons behind these problems. nobody wants to do a little introspection.
honestly, do you wanna know why america is fucked up? america is fucked up because americans are fucked up. i mean look around. our populace in its current incarnation is probably the least likely in history to take up the role of the good semaritan. hell, we can't even find time in our busy schedule of accumulating things to be polite to one another anymore. everybody is so concerned with getting their one dollar double cheeseburger that they don't care who they cut in the mcdonald's line. just so long as they get to stuff their obese, uncouth faces.
face it jack, americans are lazy, fat, ignorant and above all, perfectly content to be as such. they want to work their forty hours, go out and buy big screen tv's and houses out of their budget, and then cry when the repo man comes to collect. all because they were too stupid to realize that just because you see it on mtv cribs doesn't really mean that it is necessary for survival(or that it is affordable)
and all this rampant consumerism has just made us more greedy, less fulfilled, and ultimately unhappy because our life isn't filled with the type of everything promised by our fucked up idea of what the american dream is. it is the pursuit of happiness. but in our fast food culture, if happiness isn't served up in bio-degradable paper wrapping, we want no part of it. i mean seriously, do they expect us to work for the products that should rightfully be ours as americans?
and then we have the nerve to try to tell other cultures that this is the way to live. fuck us.
america sucks right now because the average american sucks right now. learn how to say please and thanks. learn how to be thankful for the oppurtunities you have. do this and maybe we will begin to climb out of the murderous, poverty stricken, verge of financial ruin hellhole that our nation has become.
fuck obama, fuck mccain. change starts from within. change yourself first, and stop looking at others as some sort of messsiah that will make all your troubles go away. because even if they did, your greedy ass will just make new ones.
either that or learn to be a fat american living in the hellhole which we deserve.
because make no mistake, our behavior dictates that we do indeed deserve exactly what we get.
trick or treat.
honestly, do you wanna know why america is fucked up? america is fucked up because americans are fucked up. i mean look around. our populace in its current incarnation is probably the least likely in history to take up the role of the good semaritan. hell, we can't even find time in our busy schedule of accumulating things to be polite to one another anymore. everybody is so concerned with getting their one dollar double cheeseburger that they don't care who they cut in the mcdonald's line. just so long as they get to stuff their obese, uncouth faces.
face it jack, americans are lazy, fat, ignorant and above all, perfectly content to be as such. they want to work their forty hours, go out and buy big screen tv's and houses out of their budget, and then cry when the repo man comes to collect. all because they were too stupid to realize that just because you see it on mtv cribs doesn't really mean that it is necessary for survival(or that it is affordable)
and all this rampant consumerism has just made us more greedy, less fulfilled, and ultimately unhappy because our life isn't filled with the type of everything promised by our fucked up idea of what the american dream is. it is the pursuit of happiness. but in our fast food culture, if happiness isn't served up in bio-degradable paper wrapping, we want no part of it. i mean seriously, do they expect us to work for the products that should rightfully be ours as americans?
and then we have the nerve to try to tell other cultures that this is the way to live. fuck us.
america sucks right now because the average american sucks right now. learn how to say please and thanks. learn how to be thankful for the oppurtunities you have. do this and maybe we will begin to climb out of the murderous, poverty stricken, verge of financial ruin hellhole that our nation has become.
fuck obama, fuck mccain. change starts from within. change yourself first, and stop looking at others as some sort of messsiah that will make all your troubles go away. because even if they did, your greedy ass will just make new ones.
either that or learn to be a fat american living in the hellhole which we deserve.
because make no mistake, our behavior dictates that we do indeed deserve exactly what we get.
trick or treat.
28 October 2008
have a take, don't suck...
on the jim rome radio show, there is but one rule of the jungle...have a take, don't suck. i often think this mandate should be applied to basically all forms of communication. if one is talking to another on the phone, they ought be something. come correct, be original. have a take, don't suck. if one decides to waste time and watch television, don't watch some cheese ball fake shit like the big bang theory, watch something that has an idea, watch entourage, something that has a take and doesn't suck. and for god's sake and mine as well, if one is going to attempt to make some kind of piece of cinema(and i use that term loosely) then by all means, please follow the ultimate rule of the jungle. have a take, don't suck.
with his latest effort, w., oliver stone has failed miserably on both accounts. often hailed as some sort of provacateur, stone really bitched out on this one. there is no sense of detail, no underlying nuance that gave any sort of credibility to the freshman year psych/dr. phil daddy issues that stone uses to explain away the philosophical/mental defects that played into possibly the worst eight year presidency in the history of our nation. instead stone goes for a sugar ray greatest hits album type of feel, going over the "gems" of the slim bush timeline as if they aren't already played again and again on the radio "every morning" (hell yeah...a sugar ray joke!) mark mcgrath for president!
but really, oliver stone sucks now. whatever flare he had in the past is gone now. when he took all the bareknuckle journalistic investigation of barbara walters onto the set, he broke the law of the jungle. he made a movie about george w. bush, somebody everybody has a take on, and didn't even have a take. he made a shitty reenactment for the not so substantial a&e biography of bush II. and for that...
he sucks.
next caller.
with his latest effort, w., oliver stone has failed miserably on both accounts. often hailed as some sort of provacateur, stone really bitched out on this one. there is no sense of detail, no underlying nuance that gave any sort of credibility to the freshman year psych/dr. phil daddy issues that stone uses to explain away the philosophical/mental defects that played into possibly the worst eight year presidency in the history of our nation. instead stone goes for a sugar ray greatest hits album type of feel, going over the "gems" of the slim bush timeline as if they aren't already played again and again on the radio "every morning" (hell yeah...a sugar ray joke!) mark mcgrath for president!
but really, oliver stone sucks now. whatever flare he had in the past is gone now. when he took all the bareknuckle journalistic investigation of barbara walters onto the set, he broke the law of the jungle. he made a movie about george w. bush, somebody everybody has a take on, and didn't even have a take. he made a shitty reenactment for the not so substantial a&e biography of bush II. and for that...
he sucks.
next caller.
18 October 2008
a moment of zen
for my boy justin, who has been in the mood to watch westerns lately...
a scene from the best, howard hawks lovely little film rio bravo.
a scene from the best, howard hawks lovely little film rio bravo.
16 October 2008
creatures of habitat
in last week's issue of indy.com or intake or whatever it is being called this month, the cover begged a rather interesting question. is indianapolis cool proof? naturally, as is normal for the same publishers of the star, a lack of journalistic integrity led not to an unearthing of answers, or an honest look at this question, but to merely a hipster friendly list of goods and services provided by towns that the rag deems as "cooler" than ours(what can we expect from a shit mag that employs joe shearer as a film reviwer) but, while the story inside proved to be bunk, the question on the cover was indeed a valid one and one that we here at the beer cannes have been mulling over for the last week, unable to find an angle from which to approach even the smallest beginnings of an answer.
and then this week's edition of the rival paper nuvo dropped into my lap the origins of a thesis on this particular quandry.
on its cover and within its pages, the issue presented the latest local "it" band of the moment margot and the nuclear so and so's on the verge of the release of its major label debut. to my suprise the story related seemed to offer a fairly interesting take on the question posed a week earlier.
the story relates the struggle between the band and their new benefactors at sony in coming to terms with a set list that is acceptable to both sides. margot wanted to put out one version, sony their own version. incredibly a compromise was reached and both sides got to release their own versions on specific formats(vinyl/cd/itunes)
and while this is a lovely little story of corporate compromise and all, it also seems to me a symptom of the greater problem of indianapolis' alledged "cool proof" ness in that when some entity,in this case margot,around these parts attains a certain level of cool, they automatically get thrust into this strange vortex where they begin to believe that they are much much cooler than they actually are.
i mean, who the fuck do margot and the nuclear so and so's think they are?
while they are so busy whining about how their songs need to go in this very particular order, there are literally a thousand bands around here that would kill to be in their position. good bands like red light driver and small arms fire would love to be reaping the promotional and touring benefits that come with releasing a major label album. yet all margot can do is whine and bitch about their "artistic integrity."
it makes me think about one of my favorite bands, van halen. i mean, can you picture eddie and david lee roth sitting around all mopey, wanting to release a different version of their first album because they wanted jamie's crying to come before running with the devil chronologically. no, they were just some future rock gods from pennsylvania that were ecstatic to be in a position to have their music heard beyond the region in which they lived. they got big heads much later, you know, after they had actually done something relevant.
margot pulls diva shit now, with marginal talent and an even smaller fan base because their songs are not memorable(unlike jamie's crying) so they try to pedestal themselves as true "artistes"
and that in a nutshell is something that is fundamentally flawed in this city. it's not that we are cool proof...it's that we are cool allergic. we get a little cool in our system and we can't handle it and we puff up like the mumps and blow things completely out of proportion.
when something becomes a big fish in our rather small pond, it goes straight to their head and they almost instantly become pretentious as all hell. like margot.
seriously, artists: just keep your nose to the grind and let your work speak for itself. if your shit is any good it won't matter what order it is placed in. it won't matter if some are b-sides and some are a's. if margot's songs are any good they will get out there. if the work on the album is any good, it will show through, no matter which version it is. just shut the hell up, and i might be able to take you seriously.
but as we here at the beer cannes are big big fans of humility, we can not in good faith recommend this trite bullshit. if you absolutely must drop coin on an album in the near future, buy the album by a tight little scottish outfit known as glasvegas. besides the fact that the singer croons like the new billy bragg, they strike me as the type of dudes who wouldn't bitch at their record label over whether geraldine comes before daddy's gone on the track listing because they are thankful for the oppurtunity just to get out of the hell hole that is glasgow, scotland. (or buy the red light driver album on itunes)shameless plug!
glasvegas-daddy's gone
glasvegas-geraldine(not the official video...but better)
red light driver
and then this week's edition of the rival paper nuvo dropped into my lap the origins of a thesis on this particular quandry.
on its cover and within its pages, the issue presented the latest local "it" band of the moment margot and the nuclear so and so's on the verge of the release of its major label debut. to my suprise the story related seemed to offer a fairly interesting take on the question posed a week earlier.
the story relates the struggle between the band and their new benefactors at sony in coming to terms with a set list that is acceptable to both sides. margot wanted to put out one version, sony their own version. incredibly a compromise was reached and both sides got to release their own versions on specific formats(vinyl/cd/itunes)
and while this is a lovely little story of corporate compromise and all, it also seems to me a symptom of the greater problem of indianapolis' alledged "cool proof" ness in that when some entity,in this case margot,around these parts attains a certain level of cool, they automatically get thrust into this strange vortex where they begin to believe that they are much much cooler than they actually are.
i mean, who the fuck do margot and the nuclear so and so's think they are?
while they are so busy whining about how their songs need to go in this very particular order, there are literally a thousand bands around here that would kill to be in their position. good bands like red light driver and small arms fire would love to be reaping the promotional and touring benefits that come with releasing a major label album. yet all margot can do is whine and bitch about their "artistic integrity."
it makes me think about one of my favorite bands, van halen. i mean, can you picture eddie and david lee roth sitting around all mopey, wanting to release a different version of their first album because they wanted jamie's crying to come before running with the devil chronologically. no, they were just some future rock gods from pennsylvania that were ecstatic to be in a position to have their music heard beyond the region in which they lived. they got big heads much later, you know, after they had actually done something relevant.
margot pulls diva shit now, with marginal talent and an even smaller fan base because their songs are not memorable(unlike jamie's crying) so they try to pedestal themselves as true "artistes"
and that in a nutshell is something that is fundamentally flawed in this city. it's not that we are cool proof...it's that we are cool allergic. we get a little cool in our system and we can't handle it and we puff up like the mumps and blow things completely out of proportion.
when something becomes a big fish in our rather small pond, it goes straight to their head and they almost instantly become pretentious as all hell. like margot.
seriously, artists: just keep your nose to the grind and let your work speak for itself. if your shit is any good it won't matter what order it is placed in. it won't matter if some are b-sides and some are a's. if margot's songs are any good they will get out there. if the work on the album is any good, it will show through, no matter which version it is. just shut the hell up, and i might be able to take you seriously.
but as we here at the beer cannes are big big fans of humility, we can not in good faith recommend this trite bullshit. if you absolutely must drop coin on an album in the near future, buy the album by a tight little scottish outfit known as glasvegas. besides the fact that the singer croons like the new billy bragg, they strike me as the type of dudes who wouldn't bitch at their record label over whether geraldine comes before daddy's gone on the track listing because they are thankful for the oppurtunity just to get out of the hell hole that is glasgow, scotland. (or buy the red light driver album on itunes)shameless plug!
glasvegas-daddy's gone
glasvegas-geraldine(not the official video...but better)
red light driver
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