Category: Suggestions

You might be interested in…

Netflixed Brute Force

Seth Anderson1 Comment

A Criterion Collection release of a classic prison drama, meaning a quality print of beautiful black and white cinematography, as is the Criterion Collection’s norm.

In this intense prison drama, Burt Lancaster plays Joe Collins, the toughest inmate on the cell block, and Hume Cronyn is Capt. Munsey, a corrupt prison guard whose ruthless nature has made him the bane of Collins’s existence. After one infraction too many, Munsey assigns Collins and his fellow prisoners to the dreaded drain pipe detail. With the support of his cellmates, Collins hatches an escape plan that could cost him his life. [Netflix Brute Force]

Of course, in the days of the Hays Code, the prisoners could never win, could never escape, never triumph over the power of the State. Despite the obvious ending to comply with the Hays Code, Brute Force is a powerful tale, with the sympathy all on the side of the prisoners. According to the Wiki entry for the Hays Code, even this was taboo, not sure how it passed muster.

The Production Code enumerated three “General Principles” as follows:

  1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
  2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
  3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

Bosley Crowther, in his 1947 review in the New York Times1, wrote:

Not having intimate knowledge of prisons or prisoners, we wouldn’t know whether the average American convict is so cruelly victimized as are the principal prison inmates in “Brute Force,” which came to Loew’s Criterion yesterday. But to judge by this “big house” melodrama, the poor chaps who languish in our jails are miserably and viciously mistreated and their jailers are either weaklings or brutes.

As a matter of fact, the foremost prisoners in this latest Mark Hellinger film seem to be rather all-around good fellows who deserve our most generous regard. One is an ex-Army corporal who apparently took the rap for a murder done by his girl-friend on her black-marketing father in Italy. (It is this noble lad who suggests the tactic, a flanking movement, for the eventual prison break.) Another is a former bookkeeper who only stole a few thousand, after all, to give his dear wife a mink coat. (When he hears she has quit him, it breaks his sensitive heart.) Yet another is a cool and charming con man. And the leader—the big boy—is a gent who apparently took to banditry in order to support an invalid sweetheart.

On the other hand, the warden of the prison is an obvious ineffectual, the doctor is a philosophical drunkard and the captain of the guards is a rogue. Indeed, he is a cold and scheming sadist who thirsts for power over men, who beats a prisoner to the tearful strains of Wagner and bears a fearful resemblance to—you know who!

Another factoid, according to IMDb, most of the actors in this film were subsequently blacklisted during the House Un-American Activities Committee insanity:

When the Group Theater (1931-1940), the first American acting company to attempt to put the Russian Stanislavski’s principles into action, disbanded many of the actors who had participated in its revolutionary realistic productions on Broadway (“Awake and Sing” “Waiting for Lefty”) made their way to Hollywood in search of work; among them the character actors Sam Levene (“Miller”), Roman Bohen (“Warden”), and Art Smith (“Dr. Walters”)– all of whom can be seen in this film. As many of the actors in The Group were members of the Communist Party or leftist organizations, they would soon be blacklisted during the HUAC period along with the director of this film, Jules Dassin. In 1946, a year before the release of this film, Elia Kazan, one of the members of The Group Theater who named names, happened to be in Hollywood and saw a production of one of Tennessee William’s early plays “Portrait of a Madonna” directed by Hume Cronyn – who plays the sadistic Capt. Munsey in this film. Kazan was so impressed by the work of Cronyn’s wife, Jessica Tandy, that he offered her the role of Blanche Dubois in his Broadway production of “Streetcar Named Desire.”

Disc extras:

Criterion’s beautiful restored print of Brute Force is accompanied by a small collection of supporting materials, including a commentary track by longtime film noir experts Alain Silver and James Ursini. They give a good brief on the film’s history, such as the disagreements between producer Mark Hellinger and director Jules Dassin on the subject of the movie’s use of flashbacks–an approach that would break the claustrophobia of the prison sequences and introduce female characters. Hellinger wanted the backstory, Dassin objected, and the producer won; but the point is definitely arguable. Prison-movie specialist Paul Mason gives a useful 15-minute talk, partly on Brute Force and partly on the genre of prison movies. Criterion’s booklet has an excellent essay by critic Michael Atkinson, a vintage 1947 profile of the colorful columnist-turned-producer Hellinger, and an intriguing, bitter exchange of letters between Hellinger and Production Code chief Joseph Breen on the subject of the film’s censorship problems

Footnotes:
  1. ain’t archived newspapers a great resource? I wish all media entities that have a historic record opened theirs up to the public [↩]

Netflixed Gallipoli

Seth Anderson1 Comment


Gallipoli


Australian Director Peter Weir takes on one of his country’s most tragic moments in history: the World War I confrontation with the German allied Turks. As the film leads up to the battle in act three, we get to know the young men destined to be casualties of war. A young Mel Gibson (on the heels of his successful turn in Mad Max) plays one of the innocent doomed. This poignant war drama swept the Australian Film Institute Awards with eight wins. [Netflix: Gallipoli]

Was predisposed not to like this film because:
a. it is a tragic war film, and who hasn’t seen enough of those
b. the film starred Mel Gibson

However, liked it a lot. The bloody spurts of war’s cruelty isn’t even on screen until the last act, and beside a lot of sound effects, and some blood, the carnage is more implied than fetishized. One could offer critique that war as depicted in Gallipoli is akin to a holiday camp for young men, but then it seems as if a lot of 17 year olds believe that to be the case. War as it really is too disturbing to watch. Gallipoli isn’t that sort of movie, choosing cinematography over grit every time, especially in the first act set in western Australia.

To be honest, I almost liked the included documentary about the making of the film as much if not more, but then I’m a film school drop-out. Your mileage may vary.


“Rum Sodomy & the Lash” (The Pogues)

Oh, also was strongly reminded of the Pogues song1: And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAKyA2ttv0I
[live version]
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPFjToKuZQM
[album version, with images from WW 1]

Footnotes:
  1. which due to the peculiarities of Shane MacGowan’s diction, and my own tin ears, never noticed that he is singing about Gallipoli specifically [↩]

Them Never Love Poor Marcus

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Right Time” (The Mighty Diamonds)

I always wonder what my subconscious is attempting to inform me of when I wake up singing a song. This morning the song ringing through my mind was the Mighty Diamonds classic 1976 cut: Them Never Love Poor Marcus.

Here’s a version.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DAJI8dpNIE


Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus-they
Never love him, oh no
Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus

Till they betray him
Him own brethren sell him fe rice ‘n’ peas
They didn’t know there would be days like this
Now do you man waste in such a squeeze, yeah

Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus-they
Never love him, oh no
Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus

Men like Bag O’ Wire should burn in fire
the betrayer of Marcus Garvey

Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus-they
Never love him, oh no
Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus

Till the betray, one bredren sell him for rice and peas
They didn’t know there would be days like these
Now the human race in such a squeeze, mmm Yeah

Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus-they
Never love him, oh no
Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus

Men like Bag O’ Wire should burn in fire fire fire, Lord
Betrayer.
[repeat chorus]

Black man come together, unity is forever

Such a great song, and a great album, but I’m not sure exactly the point I was making to myself. Hope it isn’t the obvious point, of betrayal and politics…

Ralph Heibutzki of Allmusic writes:

Few reggae bands evoked their audience’s suffering as viscerally as the Mighty Diamonds, not least because of lead vocalist Donald “Tabby” Shaw. Although overshadowed by stars likeBunny Wailer, Shaw’s aching lilt remains a compelling signature of the roots-oriented ’70s era. His graceful yet forceful presence on songs like “I Need a Roof” — which laments lack of housing — is exactly what the music needs. A strong moralistic undertone runs throughout the album. “Right Time” warns of an impending breakdown in social order, and “Why Me Black Brother Why” decries the rampant lawlessness afflicting the island nation. “Them Never Love Poor Marcus” scornfully denounces the people who betrayed the black nationalist leader (Marcus Garvey) for “rice and peas.” “Gnashing of Teeth” takes up the Biblical imperative of Judgment Day, in which “only good works shall see you through.” Some strategic departures help to leaven the band’s approach, most notably the love song “Shame and Pride.” Lloyd Ferguson steps out of his backup vocalist role on “Go Seek Your Rights,” which reminds people to respect their differences while striving for social change, and “Africa” is a wistful tribute to the continent that Rastafarian believers consider their final home. The playing is first-rate, bolstered by unobtrusive contributions from session aces like bassist Robbie Shakespeare and drummer Sly Dunbar. No student of the genre should miss this landmark roots album.

while Robert Christgau gives Right Time an A-

On the purely aural, preverbal evidence–the sweet, precise harmonies and arrangements, the intent beat–you’d figure they were singing songs of love, or at least sexual mastery. Ditto from their foolish stage act. But in fact there are no broken hearts in these lyrics, only broken bodies, and the exultation is the exultation of oppression defied. In other words, this follows reggae conventions as Americans know it, and on a few cuts conventional is how it sounds. Usually, though, lead singer Donald Sharpe sounds as if he’s learned all this more recently than the Bob Marley of Rastaman Vibration.

Flat N All That Boyee

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America” (Thomas L. Friedman)

Matt Taibbi is not going to get invited to Tom Friedman’s 12,000 square foot mega-mansion anytime soon after publishing such a fun evisceration of Friedman’s “green” book, Hot Flat and Crowded. Especially when Mr. Taibbi’s review veers on tangents like:

I’ve been unhealthily obsessed with Thomas Friedman for more than a decade now. For most of that time, I just thought he was funny. And admittedly, what I thought was funniest about him was the kind of stuff that only another writer would really care about—in particular his tortured use of the English language. Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn’t make them up even if you were trying—and when you tried to actually picture the “illustrative” figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.

Remember Friedman’s take on Bush’s Iraq policy? “It’s OK to throw out your steering wheel,” he wrote, “as long as you remember you’re driving without one.” Picture that for a minute. Or how about Friedman’s analysis of America’s foreign policy outlook last May:

The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.” First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you’re supposed to stop digging when you’re in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol. Sending a line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests through the front gate. It should never, ever happen.

Wisconsin countryside

before even tackling the ridiculousness that is Tom Friedman’s latest tome:

Many people have rightly seen this new greenish pseudo-progressive tract as an ideological departure from Friedman’s previous works, which were all virtually identical exercises in bald greed-worship and capitalist tent-pitching. Approach-and-rhetoric wise, however, it’s the same old Friedman, a tireless social scientist whose research methods mainly include lunching, reading road signs, and watching people board airplanes.

Like The World is Flat, a book borne of Friedman’s stirring experience of seeing IBM sign in the distance while golfing in Bangalore, Hot, Flat and Crowded is a book whose great insights come when Friedman golfs (on global warming allowing him more winter golf days:“I will still take advantage of it—but I no longer think of it as something I got for free”), looks at Burger King signs (upon seeing a “nightmarish neon blur” of KFC, BK and McDonald’s signs in Texas, he realizes: “We’re on a fool’s errand”), and reads bumper stickers (the “Osama Loves your SUV” sticker he read turns into the thesis of his “Fill ‘er up with Dictators” chapter). This is Friedman’s life: He flies around the world, eats pricey lunches with other rich people and draws conclusions about the future of humanity by looking out his hotel window and counting the Applebee’s signs.

Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique that goes something like this: “I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train, when suddenly I said to myself, ‘We need better headlights for our tri-plane.’” And off he goes. You the reader end up spending so much time wondering what Dubai, BP and all those Balinese workers have to do with the rest of the story that you don’t notice that tri-planes don’t have headlights.And by the time you get all that sorted out, your well-lit tri-plane is flying from chapter to chapter delivering a million geo-green pizzas to a million Noahs on a million Arks. And you give up. There’s so much shit flying around the book’s atmosphere that you don’t notice the only action is Friedman talking to himself.

[From Flat N All That]

If you need a laugh today, or you are amused by graphs charting the size of Valerie Bertinelli’s ass, read the whole article.

The Thin Man turns 75

Seth Anderson0 comment

I’ve actually never read any of the Thin Man books, but I’ve seen all of the film adaptions [Netflix], and enjoyed their archness. I’ll have to pick up a copy…

“The Thin Man,” Dashiell Hammett’s fifth and final novel, turns 75 this month.

Written in the wake of the same author’s hard-boiled 1930 private-detective classic, “The Maltese Falcon” and his bleak 1931 thriller of civic corruption, “The Glass Key,” the amusing and flippant-seeming “The Thin Man” (in which almost all violence occurs offstage) took readers by surprise in 1934. Reviewers’ judgments at the time were mixed: The New York Herald Tribune thought it “a new hard-boiled opus worthy to stand beside the best of his other works,” but the New Republic found it “a less excitingly fresh performance.”

The author himself made no great claims for his creation. “Nobody ever invented a more insufferably smug pair of characters,” he said of the book’s married protagonists, Nick and Nora Charles; and in 1957, four years before his death, he would claim that “‘The Thin Man’ always bored me.”

Yet Hammett — often as hedonistic in life as the heavy drinkers in his stories — was sober and industrious while writing the novel during his tenancy in an unimpressive New York hotel managed by his friend and fellow author Nathanael West; and, one way or another, the book and its characters would earn Dashiell Hammett (according to biographer Richard Layman) close to a million dollars

[Click to continue reading His Camera-Ready Comedy – WSJ.com]

[non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

Don’t recall this line from the movie: perhaps it was altered, or judged too cynical for Hollywood:

Nick Charles is an expert on sorting out falsehoods and those who tell them. “The chief thing,” he advises a police lieutenant regarding one habitual fantasizer, “is not to let her tire you out. When you catch her in a lie, she admits it and gives you another lie to take its place and, when you catch her in that one, admits it and gives you still another, and so on. Most people — even women — get discouraged after you’ve caught them in the third or fourth straight lie and fall back on either the truth or silence, but not Mimi. She keeps trying and you’ve got to be careful or you’ll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you’re tired of disbelieving her.”


The Thin Man box set

Sometimes a Great Notion

Seth Anderson0 comment

ooh, I’d like to hear this entire track, as discussed previously. Fun version of a familiar song…

In the next act, Anders wanders through the ruins and finds a broken guitar neck, which brings back memories of “All Along the Watchtower.” The score sneaks in with ambient strains of harmonium, tabla and electric sitar, recalling my “Watchtower” arrangement. This is the same sonic texture that underscored the Chief’s walk along the ruins, leading up to his memories of being in a marketplace on Earth.

However, the musical idea is taken a step farther here, as Anders remembers specific lyrics and recites them to himself. At this moment, the signature acoustic guitar riff that opens my arrangement of “Watchtower” enters, and you will also hear the distain vocal refrain of a new Brendan “Bt4” McCreary vocal performance.

Even though you’ll only catch a couple lines in the show, we actually recorded a complete performance of “All Along the Watchtower” for this episode, complete with all three verses, set in this trippy, ambient style. Perhaps it’ll end up on a soundtrack album one day? 🙂

[Click to read more [spoiler alert!] Bear’s Battlestar Blog » Blog Archive » BG4: “Sometimes a Great Notion”]

Wonder why the episode is titled after the Ken Kesey novel? Been years since I read it, but I recall it being a Cain/Abel tale, set in the Pacific north woods. Am I wrong?


“Sometimes a Great Notion (Penguin Classics)” (Ken Kesey)

Hmm, maybe not. From the Wikipedia entry:

The story centers on the Stamper family, a hard-headed logging clan in the fictional town of Wakonda, Oregon. The union loggers in the town of Wakonda go on strike in demand of the same pay for shorter hours, in response to the decreasing need for labor due to the introduction of the chainsaw. However, the Stamper family, which owns its own non-union family company, decides not only to keep working but also to supply the regional mill with all the lumber the town would have supplied had it not been on strike. This decision, and the surrounding details of the decision, are deeply explored in this multilayered historical background and relationship study — especially in its examination of the following characters: Henry Stamper, the old and half-crazed patriarch whose motto “Never Give A Inch!” has defined the nature of the family and its dynamic with the town; Hank, the oldest son of Henry whose strong will and personality make him a leader but his subtle insecurities and desires threaten the stability of his family; Leland, the younger son of Henry and half brother of Hank, whose constant weaknesses and the nature of his intellect led him away from the family to the East Coast, but whose eccentric behavior and want for revenge against Hank lead him back to Oregon; and Viv, whose love for her husband Hank fades quickly when she realizes he no longer wanted or needed her. The family house itself manifests the physical stubbornness of the Stamper family; as the nearby river widens slowly, all the other houses on the river have either been consumed by the waters or moved away from the current, except the Stamper house, which stands on a precious peninsula struggling to maintain every inch of land with the help of an arsenal of boards, sand bags, cables, and other miscellaneous items brandished by Henry Stamper in his fight against the encroaching river.

and from Bear McCreary:

“Sometimes I live in the country, sometimes I live in the town. Sometimes I get a great notion, to jump in the river and drown.” From Ken Kesey’s novel “Sometimes a Great Notion”

—
addendum, the above link, a blog post by the musical director of BSG, is fascinating. I’ll admit I don’t pay close enough attention to orchestral scores, but obviously the music and themes are extremely important to building mood. I almost want to see this episode again after reading such nuanced description of the process and intent of scoring BSG.

New Winnie-the-Pooh Book Due in October

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Winnie the Pooh 80th Anniversary Edition” (A.A. Milne)

Really?

The troubled book industry, in need of titles that will pull readers into the stores, will get a much-needed jolt this fall when the first authorized sequel to A.A. Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh” and “The House at Pooh Corner” is published Oct. 5 under the title “Return to the Hundred Acre Wood.”

Mr. Milne died in 1956. The author of the new book is David Benedictus, who produced two successful audiobooks based on Mr. Milne’s famous children’s titles. Mr. Benedictus, who lives in London, said that after an earlier offer to write a sequel was rebuffed, he heard back from the Milne estate about 2½ years ago. “People will be highly suspicious, but I hope they’ll think I didn’t do a bad job,” said Mr. Benedictus.

The work, illustrated by Mark Burgess, is being published in the U.S. by Dutton Children’s Books, an imprint of Pearson PLC’s Penguin Young Readers Group (USA). Don Weisberg, president of Penguin Young Readers Group, said he expects the title to be a “huge seller for a long, long time.” The initial print run will be in excess of 100,000.

[From New Winnie-the-Pooh Book Due in October – WSJ.com]

[non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

I have a wait-and-see attitude, the original books were oft read in my childhood. Seems hard to imagine a new book would be as charming, but I don’t have a child of my own to test it upon.

Netflixed: WALL-E

Seth Anderson2 Comments


“Wall-E (Widescreen Single-Disc Edition)” (Andrew Stanton)

WALL-E, on the other hand, I liked a hell of a lot. WALL-E stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth-class, which kind of gives you an overview of the plot.

In a futuristic world, human beings have destroyed Earth and evacuated the planet, leaving the cleanup to an army of robots they’ve programmed to do their dirty work. Due to a mishap, the dutiful WALL-E is the only one left. But with the arrival of a female probe named EVE, the monotony of WALL-E’s existence is broken — and he experiences love for the first time. Andrew Stanton directs this Pixar tale (nominated for a Best Animated Feature Golden Globe) with a sci-fi twist. [Netflix: WALL-E]

Amazingly long sequences of the film have no human dialogue – if Pixar wasn’t an established hit maker, there’s no way a studio mogul would allow this aberration to the Hollywood method. Plenty of Apple computer references, start-up sounds, iPods, etc. too. Great fun.

Oh, included on the DVD was a short documentary about the sound designer, fascinating stuff. So much behind-the-scenes wizardry, nearly all of it done with analog methods originated from the original Disney team from the 1940s.

On the no-dialogue point, A. O. Scott wrote:

The first 40 minutes or so of “Wall-E” — in which barely any dialogue is spoken, and almost no human figures appear on screen — is a cinematic poem of such wit and beauty that its darker implications may take a while to sink in. The scene is an intricately rendered city, bristling with skyscrapers but bereft of any inhabitants apart from a battered, industrious robot and his loyal cockroach sidekick. Hazy, dust-filtered sunlight illuminates a landscape of eerie, post-apocalyptic silence. This is a world without people, you might say without animation, though it teems with evidence of past life.

We’ve grown accustomed to expecting surprises from Pixar, but “Wall-E” surely breaks new ground. It gives us a G-rated, computer-generated cartoon vision of our own potential extinction.

[From Movie Review – WALL-E – In a World Left Silent, One Heart Beeps – NYTimes.com]

Highly recommended.

Toujours Tingo

swanksalot2 Comments


“Toujours Tingo” (Adam Jacot de Boinod)

Oooh, sounds fun. Nothing like working in bizarre phrases into conversation

Toujours Tingo, a book by Adam Jacot de Boinod, lists weird words and bizarre phrases from around the world. The “tingo” of its title is an Easter Island word, meaning to borrow objects from a friend’s house one by one until there are none left.

some faves:

Layogenic: Filipino for someone good-looking from afar but ugly up close.

Mouton enragé : French for someone calm who loses their temper – literally, “an enraged sheep”.

Fensterln: German for climbing through a window to avoid someone’s parents so you can have sex without them knowing.

Stroitel: Russian for a man who likes to have sex with two women at the same time.

Okuri-okami: Japanese for a man who feigns thoughtfulness by offering to see a girl home only to try to molest her once he gets in the door – literally, a “see-you-home wolf

Les avoir a zero: French for “to have one’s testicles down to zero”, or be frightened.

Du kannst mir gern den buckel runterrutschen und mit der zunge bremsen: Austrian for “go to hell” – literally “You can slide down my hunchback using your tongue as a brake”.

[Continue reading Toujours Tingo: Weird words and bizarre phrases – Telegraph]

Perfect for the language maven on your Xmas list…

Netflixed: The Taste of Tea

Seth Anderson0 comment


“The Taste of Tea” (Katsuhito Ishii)

What a delightfully strange film, with very non-Hollywood pacing1… [Netflix]

Director Katsuhito Ishii’s whimsical episodic tale chronicles a summer in the lives of the quirky Haruno clan, who passes the unhurried days trying to realize their ambitions. As Mom (Satomi Tezuka) attempts to revive her career, her hypnotherapist hubby (Tomokazu Miura) practices on the family. Meanwhile, their pubescent son (Takahiro Sato) feels the pangs of love, and their 6-year-old daughter (Maya Banno) grapples with a pesky dopplegänger.

It’s been a few years since I’ve watched Fanny and Alexander, but didn’t quite see this connection:

The Taste of Tea (茶の味 Cha no Aji ) is the third film by Japanese writer and director Katsuhito Ishii. The film is concerned with the lives of the Haruno family, who live in the countryside north of Tokyo. It has been referred to as a “surreal” version of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. It was a selection of the Cannes Film Festival.[1]

[From The Taste of Tea – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

From Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times:

A bit of patience is required to get through “The Taste of Tea,” but patience is often rewarded, and it certainly is by this droll and oddly touching film by Katsuhito Ishii. The movie is a family portrait as painted by a moderately demented Cubist: the family involved is nothing like yours, yet somehow, in its fractured way, exactly like yours.

Through a series of vignettes that are sometimes linked, sometimes not, we get to know the Harunos, who live quietly in the Japanese countryside. The most visually interesting is young Sachiko (Maya Banno), who is followed around by a giant version of herself, which she thinks she can get rid of if only she can manage to do a back flip on the horizontal bar.

The most emotionally interesting is Hajime (Takahiro Sato), a teenage boy who is prone to developing crushes and has a knack for being a bystander during strange interludes. (Two people dressed in cartoonish space gear board a train he is on; in a restaurant, the couple across from him discuss whether the woman should have her breasts enlarged.)

…

But a description someone gives of a song involved in one of the film’s many detours neatly summarizes the movie itself: “It’s more cool than weird, and it stays in your head.”

[From Movie Review – The Taste of Tea – A Cubist Family Portrait – NYTimes.com]

Never weird just to be weird, just weirdly intriguing. Minor warning: there’s a sequence which involves human excrement as a plot device, complete with a sample. I happened to be eating popcorn just as this scene began, so averted my gaze. Only lasted a couple moments, but perhaps you are less squeamish than me.

Footnotes:
  1. and I consider this a good thing, but your milage may vary [↩]

Soderbergh and Che

Seth Anderson0 comment

A four hour film about Che, sounds custom made for watching at home, on DVD, with adequate time to digest, and to take breaks.

Gandhi and Che

It was nearly a decade ago that Steven Soderbergh and two partners, actor Benicio Del Toro and producer Laura Bickford, first discussed making a long, ambitious film about revolutionary Che Guevara. It soon became apparent, however, that they were perhaps the only people in Hollywood willing to gamble on a four-hour epic made largely in Spanish.

Next weekend, Mr. Soderbergh’s movie will begin an unusual theatrical run with IFC Films. Funded largely by foreign backers after the Hollywood studios passed, “Che” will open as a 257-minute film on Dec. 12 and play for a single week in New York and Los Angeles; then, in January, IFC will reissue the epic as two separate two-hour films at theaters across the country before also releasing it on video on demand. Mr. Soderbergh’s struggles to get the film funded and released are signs of the mounting financing challenges facing filmmakers in today’s Hollywood. “For a while, we were financing the script and development ourselves, waiting to see what the best circumstances for the film would be,” he says.

Scrambling for production funds is nothing new for Mr. Soderbergh, a veteran director who works both inside and outside the studio system. The 45-year-old’s résumé includes franchises like “Ocean’s Eleven,” serious, critically acclaimed films like “Traffic” and tiny independent fare like his 2006 film “Bubble.”

[From A Director Tries ‘Guerrilla’ Financing – WSJ.com]

[Non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

and maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I detect a hint of politics in these three films having difficulty getting financed:

The harsh economic realities of today’s film industry have also forced prominent directors like Mr. Soderbergh to seek financing abroad. Spike Lee financed his most recent film with money from Italian investors; Oliver Stone’s “W.” was financed by a crew of equity partners from Asia and Europe.

A film about Che, trouble. A film by notorious Democrat, Spike Lee, trouble. A film about George W. Bush by notorious liberal, Oliver Stone, trouble. Does Clint Eastwood have trouble financing his films? Does Bruce Willis?

Regardless, Soderbergh’s movie sounds interesting. I give him a pass on disposable entertainment like the Ocean’s Eleven series because he makes films like Bubble. [Netflix]

The film follows the life of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentine doctor who rose up as an idealistic insurgent and became an international symbol of rebellion. Mr. Soderbergh shot the two parts in distinct styles. For the first part, which follows Che, played by Mr. Del Toro, as he meets Fidel Castro and rises to power during the Cuban Revolution to overthrow Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship, he used a wider frame evocative of a classic Hollywood style to highlight the triumphant nature of that revolt. The second film traces Che’s failed attempt to revolutionize Bolivia which ended with his capture and subsequent execution in 1967; Mr. Soderbergh shot the second chapter with a handheld camera to get across the uncertainty of Che’s mission.

Ebert selects 25 best films of 2008

Seth Anderson0 comment

Roger Ebert’s list of 20 films of 2008, plus 5 more documentary movies. I’ve seen exactly two of them1, so far, but several of Ebert’s selections sound intriguing.

In these hard times, you deserve two “best films” lists for the price of one. It is therefore with joy that I list the 20 best films of 2008, in alphabetical order. I am violating the age-old custom that film critics announce the year’s 10 best films, but after years of such lists, I’ve had it. A best films list should be a celebration of wonderful films, not a chopping process. And 2008 was a great year for movies, even if many of them didn’t receive wide distribution.

Look at my 20 titles, and you tell me which 10 you would cut. Nor can I select one to stand above the others, or decide which should be No. 7 and which No. 8. I can’t evaluate films that way. Nobody can, although we all pretend to. A “best films” list, certainly. But of exactly 10, in marching order? These 20 stood out for me, and I treasure them all. If it had been 19 or 21, that would have been OK. If you must have a Top 10 List, find a coin in your pocket. Heads, the odd-numbered movies are your 10. Tails, the even-numbered.

[From The best films of 2008… and there were a lot of them :: rogerebert.com :: News & comment]

Will I get around to making my own list? Maybe, I attempt to do so every year, but then often keep the list private, and don’t publish it. I’m too easily distracted by shiny new things.

Footnotes:
  1. Iron Man [Netflix], for some reason, and Encounters at the End of the World [Netflix] – a great film, review still untranscribed from my brain [↩]

Great Influenza

swanksalot0 comment


The Great Influenza

I haven’t quite finished John Barry’s history of the deadly flu epidemic of 1918, but it is a fascinating book.
Karen Brudney, M.D. writes:

The connection among public health, epidemic disease, and politics can be seen throughout history, from the responses to the Black Death in Italian cities in 1348 to the response — or lack thereof — to the resurgence of tuberculosis on the part of the New York City Department of Health in the 1980s. John M. Barry spells out this connection in fascinating detail in The Great Influenza. In his meticulous description of the dire consequences that resulted when short-term political expediency trumped the health of the public during the 1918 influenza pandemic, Barry reminds his readers that the government response to an epidemic is all too often colored by the politics of the moment. Barry is neither a scientist nor a professional historian, and some of the details he gives on virology and immunology are clearly targeted at a nonmedical audience, but physicians and scientists will find this book engrossing nonetheless. The influenza pandemic of 1918, the worst pandemic in history, killed more people than died in World War I and more than the tens of millions who have died, to date, in the AIDS pandemic.

Barry focuses only on what was occurring in the United States at the time, and he tries to place this unprecedented human disaster both against the background of American history and within the context of the history of medicine. He is right to try to acquaint the reader with the state of American medicine at the turn of the last century, focusing on the dismal status of medical education and laboratory research, particularly as compared with that in Europe at the same time. Much of his discussion centers on “great men” (and an occasional great woman), however, and the picture given of their lives and professional careers is superficial and occasionally repetitious, and it distracts from the main events. His point, presumably, is to convey the futility of all the efforts of these brilliant minds, and he begins and ends the book with anecdotes about Paul Lewis, a scientist who had helped to prove that poliomyelitis is caused by a virus and then developed a highly effective simian vaccine. Lewis is the symbol of the best and the brightest of the scientific establishment, and we follow him as he weaves in and out of the story. He, like all scientists of his time, failed to grasp the fact that influenza was caused by a virus, believing it to be caused by Pfeiffer’s bacillus, and he was therefore unable to develop a successful vaccine or to halt the devastation. The book becomes riveting once Barry begins to describe the origins and early weeks of the epidemic.

The fact that it was wartime and that hundreds of thousands of men were being called up, placed in overcrowded camps, and packed like sardines into ships to be delivered as efficiently as possible to Europe enabled influenza to spread rapidly among recruits. From the military camps, the virus spread into the civilian population in the United States and from the United States to France. Barry describes the first catastrophe at Camp Devens, in Massachusetts, in the late summer of 1918, where thousands of previously healthy men in their prime suddenly became critically ill, overwhelming the inadequate camp hospital, infecting the medical staff, and dying by the hundreds, apparently with acute respiratory distress syndrome. The smartest and most hardworking scientists, physicians, and nurses, both military and civilian, were stunned by the rapidity of the disease progression and the inexplicable death toll among the youngest and strongest. (Figure) Barry provides a fascinating picture of the response of the government — both federal and local. The former was sluggish at best and secretive and dishonest at worst, desperate to keep the war effort going and the public calm and to minimize the severity of the disease. In one of the more gripping chapters, Barry focuses on Philadelphia and tells us of the backwardness of its social infrastructure, the lack of a functioning health department, and the power of the local political machine.

Dr. Wilmer Krusen, a political appointee who was the director of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Charities, deliberately ignored warnings against allowing a Liberty Loan parade to proceed, even though influenza had devastated the local Navy Yard and begun to spread into the civilian population. Within 72 hours of the parade, every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hospitals was filled. Within 10 days the epidemic exploded from a few hundred civilian cases to hundreds of thousands and from a daily rate of one or two deaths to hundreds. The horror is most vivid in the dilemma surrounding the disposal of bodies. The city morgue had hundreds of bodies stacked up, which produced an unbearable stench, and undertakers rapidly ran out of coffins. Hundreds of bodies lay in homes exactly where they had been at the time of death; burial quickly became impossible, since there were not enough people to dig graves. Whether anything might have been done differently, and if it had, whether this would have made a difference, are questions that Barry leaves unanswered. His tone is often irritatingly and unnecessarily sensationalist. But his indictment of the public authorities for their dishonesty and deliberate minimization of the damage and dangers is particularly chilling in today’s climate of bioterrorism, in the midst of a war whose damages and dangers have been similarly minimized. Barry makes it all too easy to imagine a similarly devastating epidemic with a similarly inadequate response. I highly recommend this book to all.

A Revival for the White Russian

Seth Anderson0 comment


“The Big Lebowski – 10th Anniversary Edition” (Universal Studios)

Can’t say I’m a fan of the drink, just of the film that inspired the revival.

AMONG the significant dates in the history of Kahlúa, the Mexican coffee liqueur, surely March 6, 1998, rates a mention.

That was the release date of “The Big Lebowski,” the Coen Brothers movie about an aging slacker who calls himself the Dude, and who, after a thug urinates on his prized rug, becomes caught up in a Chandleresque mystery.

Played with slouchy brio by Jeff Bridges, the Dude’s chief pursuits involve bowling, avoiding work and drinking White Russians, the sweet cocktail made with vodka, Kahlúa and cream or milk.

The movie was a flop when it was released, but in the decade since, “The Big Lebowski” has attracted a cult following, and as the film’s renown has grown, so has the renown of the White Russian, or, as the Dude calls them, “Caucasians.” The drink is the subject of experimentation at cutting-edge bars like Tailor, in SoHo, which serves a crunchy dehydrated version — a sort of White Russian cereal. The British electro-pop band Hot Chip, meanwhile, recently invented a variation named the Black Tarantula. Not long ago, the cocktail was considered passé and often likened, in its original formula, to an alcoholic milkshake.

…

Believed to date to the 1950s or early 1960s, the White Russian has no great origin story; its culinary precursor is the Alexander. Having been popular in the disco ’70s, the cocktail is, in the words of Mr. Doudoroff, “a relic of an era that was the absolute nadir of the American bar.”

As it happens, this was the period when Jeff Dowd was living in Seattle, driving a taxi and doing a lot of “heavy hanging,” as he put it. Mr. Dowd, 59, an independent film producer and producers representative, is the inspiration for the Dude — a character Joel and Ethan Coen created by taking what Mr. Dowd was like back then and exaggerating a bit, although the White Russians preference is spot on.

“There was a woman I lived with named Connie,” Mr. Dowd said, by phone from his office in Santa Monica, Calif., beginning a rambling oration that was highly Dude-like. “She and her boyfriend, Jamie, were mixologists. We were hanging out and drinking at that time. We went from White Russians to Dirty Mothers, a darker version of a White Russian. It was a very hedonistic period.”

Mr. Dowd moved on from White Russians years ago, but has started drinking them again, mainly so as not to disappoint fans. “When I first met Cheech at the Sundance Film Festival,” he said, referring to Cheech Marin of the comedy duo Cheech and Chong, “the first thing we all wanted to do is smoke a joint with him so we could tell our grandchildren, ‘Hey, I smoked a joint with Cheech.’ Well, people want to say they had a White Russian with the Dude. I don’t want to turn them down, which has added a little extra tonnage to me.”

[Click to continue reading A Revival for the White Russian – NYTimes.com]

Horsies – Noam Chomsky

Seth Anderson0 comment

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gktRTuhehOA

Boy, does watching this video take me back. I saw the Horsies a few times that year. Not the best sound quality, but good enough to groove too.

The Horsies recorded live in Austin, Texas – January 18th, 1993

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja9miieLOgo

A bunch more related videos from the so-called Austin Slacker years are linked to at Metafilter. Missing a couple of favorites (2 Nice Girls, for instance), but a pretty representative sample.